aUiiiVJ'iU' 
 
 ;JJ..vj ju 
 
 <^ 
 
 \WE-lJNIV^-" 
 
 .?J-jU^ 
 
 "(JUiUVJiU' 
 
 •5-' 
 
 ■^iuj^y-iui- 
 
 ''J(iJ/\lNi 
 
 ,«i- 
 
 •/: 
 
 
 OF-CAKFf^P' 
 
 <\^rt 
 
 ^y' 
 
 <QU: 
 
 ?/:. 
 
 aFfAf! 
 
 r\F.*'AtipnD. 
 
 ^N^!"'
 
 n: 
 
 ^ Vi 
 
 ^OF-CAIIFO/?^ 
 
 g 
 
 ?■- 
 
 '^. 
 
 a 
 
 .vlFI 
 
 'WIVER% 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 ..in<;AMr.nrr 
 
 , aFTATfrriD 
 
 ^•lOSANCnrj-^ ^HIBRA^'V"' 
 
 % 
 
 V/^a^Aiwa -juv 
 
 i? i 
 
 y\V 
 
 3> — 
 
 r " 
 
 >" , 
 
 .iji:ijf;v i,i>r 
 
 <?-. 
 
 IBRARYQ^ 
 
 z 
 
 d 
 
 ^ 
 
 A^ 
 
 •N^' 
 
 >.\V^' 
 
 , AFTAftrnD/, 
 
 m 
 
 ,r»F.rAT:- 
 
 Ci- 
 
 
 
 
 ■31 
 
 <V.' 
 
 T o
 
 J^onore tie ISal^ac 
 
 V)
 
 jgonort tic Balzac 
 
 PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 VOLUME IX
 
 LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND COMPLETE COPIES 
 
 713 
 
 NO.
 
 iSytjMi^<<Aw( ^s»t^ S. db.9- c£>^. 
 
 J. ~
 
 AT COMTE OCTAVE'S, RUE PAYENNE. 
 
 "/ bring to yoji the only relative left me. If I 
 believe myself to be making a present to Your Ex- 
 cellency, I think also that I am giving my nephevu a 
 second father y
 
 THE NOVELS 
 
 OF 
 
 HONORE DE BALZAC 
 
 NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME 
 COMPLETELY TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH 
 
 HONORINE 
 COLONEL CHABERT 
 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 BY WILLIAM WALTON 
 
 WITH FIVE ETCHINGS BY RICARDO DE LOS RIOS, AFTER 
 PAINTINGS BY EDOUARD TOUDOUZE 
 
 IN ONE VOLUME 
 
 PRINTED ONLY FOR SUBSCRIBERS BY 
 
 GEORGE BARRIE & SON, PHILADELPHIA
 
 COPYRIGHTED, 1897, BY G. V. 4 SON
 
 ?9 
 
 a mi 
 
 S 
 
 en 
 O 
 
 .-H 
 
 HONORINE 
 
 189944
 
 TO MONSIEUR ACHILLE DEl^ERIA 
 
 An affectionate souvenir from the Author. 
 
 (3)
 
 HONORINE 
 
 If the French are as unwilling as the English are 
 eager to go traveling, perhaps the French and the 
 English are both justified. Wherever we go we 
 find something that is better than England, whilst 
 it is excessively difficult to meet anything like the 
 attractions of France outside of France. Other 
 countries offer admirable landscapes, there may be 
 found in them frequently a comfort superior to that 
 of France, which indeed makes but the slowest prog- 
 ress in this respect. They display sometimes a 
 magnificence, a grandeur, a bedazzling luxury; they 
 are wanting neither in gracefulness nor in noble 
 manners; but the intellectual life, the activity of 
 ideas, the talent of conversation and that atticism 
 so familiar in Paris, that quick understanding of 
 that which is thought but not uttered, that genius 
 for comprehending, which is half of the French 
 language, is met with nowhere else. Thus the 
 Frenchman, whose jesting is already so little com- 
 prehended, quickly withers abroad, like a trans- 
 planted tree. Emigration is a perversion of the 
 
 (5)
 
 6 HONORINE 
 
 French nation. Very many Frenchmen, of those of 
 whom we are here speaking, declare that they saw 
 again with pleasure the custom-house officers of 
 their native country, — which may be considered the 
 most daring hyperbole of patriotism. 
 
 This little preamble has for its object the recalling 
 to those Frenchmen who have traveled the very 
 great pleasure which they have experienced when, 
 as it happened, they have suddenly found all their 
 country again, an oasis in the salon of some diplo- 
 mat; a pleasure which will be comprehended with 
 difficulty by those who have never left the asphalt of 
 the Boulevard des Italiens, and for whom the line of 
 the quays, on the left bank, is already no longer 
 Paris. To find Paris again ! do you know what that 
 is, oh, Parisians ? It is to find again, not the cuisine 
 of the Rocker de Cancale, as Borel guards it for the 
 gourmets who know how to appreciate it, for that is 
 to be met with only in the Rue Montorgueil, but a 
 service which recalls it! It is to find again the 
 wines of France, which are quite mythological out- 
 side of France, and rare as is the woman whom we 
 shall here discuss! It is to find again, not the wit 
 i la mode, for, between Paris and the frontiers, it 
 evaporates; but that intelligent, comprehensive, 
 critical atmosphere in which the French live, from 
 the poet to the workman, from the duchess to the 
 street urchin. 
 
 In 1836, during the sojourn of the Sardinian court 
 at Genoa, two Parisians, more or less celebrated, 
 were enabled to believe themselves still in Paris
 
 HONORINE 7 
 
 when they found themselves in a palace leased by 
 the consul-general of France and which was seated 
 on a hill, the last fold of the Apennines between the 
 gate of Saint-Thomas and that famous lighthouse 
 which in the keepsakes adorns all the views of 
 Genoa. This palace is one of those magnificent 
 villas on which the Genoese nobles expended mil- 
 lions at the period when this aristocratic republic 
 was at the height of its power. If the half-light is 
 beautiful anywhere, it is assuredly so at Genoa, 
 when it has rained as it does rain there, in torrents, 
 during the whole forenoon; when the purity of the 
 sea rivals the purity of the sky ; when silence reigns 
 on the quay and in the groves of this villa, in its 
 marbles with gaping mouths from which the water 
 flows mysteriously; when the stars glitter, when 
 the waves of the Mediterranean follow each other 
 like the avowals of a woman from whom you draw 
 them one by one. Let us admit it, this moment in 
 which the balmy air perfumes both the lungs and 
 the reveries, in which voluptuousness, visible and 
 mobile as the atmosphere, envelops you in your 
 cushioned seat while, spoon in hand, you trifle with 
 the ices or the sorbets, a city at your feet, beautiful 
 women before you, — these hours of Boccaccio are to 
 be found only in Italy and on the shores of the Medi- 
 terranean. Let us suppose around the table the 
 Marquis di Negro, that Hospitaller brother of all 
 errant talents, and the Marquis Damaso Pareto, two 
 Frenchmen disguised as Genoese, a consul-general 
 having at his side a wife as beautiful as a Madonna,
 
 8 HONORINE 
 
 and two children, silent because slumber had envel- 
 oped them, the ambassador of France and his wife, 
 a first secretary of the embassy who thought himself 
 extinguished and malicious, and finally, two Paris- 
 ians who had come to take their farewells of the 
 consul-general's wife at a splendid dinner, you will 
 then have the picture which was presented by the 
 terrace of this villa about the middle of May, a pic- 
 ture dominated by one person, by a celebrated 
 woman on whom all looks were concentrated at 
 moments, and who was the heroine of this impro- 
 vised festival. One of the two Frenchmen was the 
 famous landscape painter, Leon de Lora, the other 
 was a celebrated critic, Claude Vignon. Both of 
 them were accompanying this woman, one of the 
 living illustrations of the fair sex. Mademoiselle des 
 Touches, known under the name of Camille Maupin 
 in the literary world. Mademoiselle des Touches 
 had gone to Florence on business. Through one of 
 those charming kindnesses of which she was so 
 prodigal, she had brought with her Leon de Lora to 
 show him Italy, and had gone as far as Rome to 
 show him the Campagna. Returning by the way 
 of the Simplon pass, she was taking the Corniche 
 road to Marseilles. Still for the benefit of the land- 
 scape painter, she had stopped at Genoa. The con- 
 sul-general had naturally wished to do the honors of 
 Genoa before the arrival of the Court to one who 
 was as strongly recommended by her fortune, her 
 name and her position as by her talent. Camille 
 Maupin, who knew Genoa down to its smallest
 
 HONORINE 9 
 
 chapels, had abandoned her landscapist to the cares 
 of the diplomat, to those of the two Genoese mar- 
 quises, and was very saving of her time. Although 
 the ambassador was himself a very distinguished 
 writer, the celebrated woman declined to yield to 
 his persuasions, fearing that which the English call 
 an exhibition; but she withdrew the claws of her 
 refusal when it became a question of a farewell day 
 spent at the consul's villa. Leon de Lora said to 
 Camille that her presence at the villa would be the 
 only return he could make to the ambassador and his 
 wife, tlie two Genoese marquises and the consul 
 and his wife. Mademoiselle des Touches thereupon 
 made the sacrifice of one of those days of complete 
 liberty which are not always to be found in Paris 
 by those on whom the world keeps its eyes. 
 
 The explanation of this reunion thus given, it is 
 easy to imagine that etiquette was banished from it, 
 as well as many women of the highest rank who 
 were curious to know if the virility of the talent of 
 Camille Maupin had not impaired the grace of the 
 pretty woman, and if, in a word, the breeches did 
 not show under the petticoats. From the dinner up 
 to the moment when the collation was served, at 
 nine o'clock, if the conversation had been alternately 
 serious and gay, ceaselessly enlivened by the shafts 
 of Leon de Lora, who passed for the most malicious 
 man in the Paris of the day, by a good taste which 
 will not be thought surprising from the selection of 
 the guests, there had been but little discussion of 
 literature ; but finally the wanderings of this French
 
 lO HONORINE 
 
 tourney necessarily led up to it, were it only to touch 
 lightly this essentially national subject. But, be- 
 fore arriving at this turning of the conversation, 
 which gave the speech to the consul-general, it 
 may be useful to say a word concerning his family 
 and himself. 
 
 This diplomat, a man of about thirty-four years 
 of age, married for the last six years, was the living 
 portrait of Lord Byron. The celebrity of this phys- 
 iognomy relieves us from the necessity of painting 
 that of the consul. It may, however, be observed 
 that there was no affectation in his dreamy air. Lord 
 Byron was a poet, and the diplomat was poetic; the 
 women know how to recognize this difference which 
 explains, without justifying, some of their attach- 
 ments. This masculine beauty, set off by a charm- 
 ing character, by the habits of a solitary and 
 laborious life, had seduced a Genoese heiress. A 
 Genoese heiress! this expression might cause a 
 smile in Genoa, where, in consequence of the ex- 
 heredation of daughters, a woman is rarely rich ; but 
 Onorina Pedrotti, the only child of a banker without 
 male heirs, is an exception. Notwithstanding all 
 the flatteries which might have been lavished by an 
 inspired passion, the consul-general had not seemed 
 to wish to wed. Nevertheless, after a residence of 
 two years, after some steps taken by the ambassador 
 during the sojourns of the Court at Genoa, the mar- 
 riage was concluded. The young man withdrew 
 his first refusals, less because of the touching affec- 
 tion of Onorina Pedrotti, than in consequence of an
 
 HONORINE II 
 
 unknown event, one of those crises of private life 
 which are so promptly buried under the daily cur- 
 rents of interests that, later, the most natural actions 
 seem inexplicable. This covering-up of causes 
 affects also very often the most serious events of 
 history. Such was, at least, the opinion of the city 
 of Genoa, in which, for some women, the excessive 
 reticence, the melancholy of the French consul, could 
 be explained only by the word passmj. We may 
 remark, en passant, that women never complain of 
 being the victims of a preference, they immolate 
 themselves very readily in the common cause. 
 Onorina Pedrotti, who perhaps would have hated 
 the consul if she had been absolutely disdained, 
 loved him none the less, and perhaps more, suo sposo, 
 in knowing him to be in love. Women admit prece- 
 dence in affairs of the heart. Everything is saved so 
 long as it is a question of the sex. A man is never a 
 diplomat with impunity; the sposo was as discreet 
 as the tomb, and so discreet that the merchants of 
 Genoa were disposed to see something of premedi- 
 tation in the attitude of the young consul, from 
 whom the heiress would perhaps have escaped if he 
 had not played this role of the Malade Imaginaire \n 
 love. If this were the truth, the women found it too 
 degrading to believe. The daughter of Pedrotti 
 made of her love a consolation, she nursed these un- 
 known sorrows in a bed of tenderness and of Italian 
 caresses. // signor Pedrotti had not, moreover, any- 
 thing to complain of in the choice to which he had 
 been constrained by his beloved daughter. Powerful
 
 12 HONORINE 
 
 protectors in Paris watched over the fortunes of 
 the young diplomat. Fulfilling the promise of the 
 ambassador to the father-in-law, the consul-general 
 was created a baron and a commander in the Legion 
 of Honor. Finally, // signor Pedrotti was made a count 
 by the King of Sardinia. The dot was a million. 
 As for the fortune of the casa Pedrotti, estimated at 
 two millions gained in the grain business, it fell to 
 the married couple six months after their union, for 
 the first and the last of the counts Pedrotti died in 
 January, 1831. Onorina Pedrotti is one of those 
 beautiful Genoese, the most magnificent creatures 
 of Italy when they are beautiful. For the tomb of 
 Julian, Michael Angelo took his models from Genoa. 
 Hence that amplitude, that curious disposition of the 
 breast in the figures of the Day and the Night, which 
 so many critics find to be exaggerated, but which 
 is peculiar to the women of Liguria. In Genoa, 
 beauty no longer exists to-day except under the 
 jnenaro, as in Venice it is only to be met with under 
 the faiiioti. This phenomenon may be observed 
 in all ruined nations. The noble type is not only 
 to be found among the people, as, after the con- 
 flagration of cities, the medals are hidden in the 
 cinders. But, as she is already an exception with 
 regard to her fortune, Onorina is another exception 
 as to patrician beauty. Recall to your memory the 
 Night which Michael Angelo has detained forever 
 under // Pensiero, clothe her in modern garments, 
 twist up that beautiful hair which is so long, 
 around that magnificent head, somewhat brown in
 
 HONORINE 13 
 
 tone, put a spark of fire in those dreamy eyes, 
 wrap that powerful breast in a scarf, imagine the 
 long white dress embroidered with flowers, suppose 
 that the statue, risen, is seated, with arms crossed, 
 like those of Mademoiselle Georges, and you will 
 have before your eyes the consul's wife, with a 
 child of six years, beautiful as the desire of a 
 mother, and a little girl of four years on her knees, 
 charming as some infantile type laboriously sought 
 for by David the sculptor for an ornament for a tomb. 
 This beautiful household attracted the secret atten- 
 tion of Camille. Mademoiselle des Touches thought 
 that the consul had a somewhat too absent air for a 
 perfectly happy man. 
 
 Although, during the whole of this day, the wife 
 and the husband presented to her the admirable spec- 
 tacle of the most complete happiness, Camille asked 
 herself why it was that one of the most distinguished 
 men she had ever met, and whom she had seen in 
 the salons of Paris, remained consul-general at 
 Genoa, when he was possessed of a fortune of a 
 hundred and some thousand francs of income! But 
 she had also recognized, by a thousand of those 
 nothings which the women pick up with the intelli- 
 gence of the Arab sage in Zadig, the most faithful 
 affection on the part of the husband. Certainly, 
 these two handsome beings would love each other 
 without fail until the end of their days. Camille 
 said to herself alternately, "What is it?"— "It is 
 nothing," according to the deceiving manifestations 
 of the consul-general's manner, who, let us say it,
 
 14 HONORINE 
 
 possessed the absolute calm of the English, of sav- 
 ages, of Orientals and of consummate diplomats. 
 
 In discussing literature, the talk turned on the 
 eternal stock in trade of the republic of letters, — the 
 woman's fault! And it presently appeared that 
 there were two opinions, — which, the man or the 
 woman, was in the wrong in this fault? The three 
 women present, the ambassador's wife, the consul- 
 general's wife and Mademoiselle des Touches, these 
 women naturally considered as irreproachable, were 
 pitiless for the woman. The men undertook to 
 prove to these three beautiful flowers of their sex 
 that there might remain some virtue in a woman 
 after her fall. 
 
 "How long are we going to play thus at hide-and- 
 seek?" said Leon de Lora. 
 
 "Cara vita — my dear life, — go and put your chil- 
 dren to bed, and send me by Gina, the little black 
 portfolio which is on my piece of Boule furniture," 
 said the consul to his wife. 
 
 She rose without making any observation, which 
 proves that she loved her husband well, for she 
 already knew enough French to comprehend that her 
 husband sent her away. 
 
 "I am going to relate to you a story in which I 
 took a part, after which we can discuss, for it seems 
 to me to be puerile to use a scalpel on an imaginary 
 corpse. In order to dissect, let us first take a body. " 
 
 Everyone arranged himself to listen with all the 
 more complaisance that each one had talked enough ; 
 the conversation was beginning to languish, and
 
 HONORINE 15 
 
 this moment is the opportunity which the story- 
 teller should select. This then is what the consul- 
 general related : 
 
 "At the age of twenty-two, having been qualified 
 as Doctor of Laws, my old uncle, the Abbe Loraux, 
 then seventy-two years of age, felt the necessity of 
 giving me a protector and of launching me on some 
 career. This excellent man, if indeed he were not 
 a saint, looked upon each additional year as a new 
 gift from God. I do not need to tell you how readily 
 the confessor to a royal highness can fmd an open- 
 ing for a young man educated by himself, the only 
 child of his sister. One day, therefore, toward the 
 end of the year 1824, this venerable old man, for 
 the last five years cure of the Blancs-Manteaux at 
 Paris, ascended to the chamber which I was then 
 occupying in his residence and said to me: 
 
 " 'Make your toilet, my child, I am going to pre- 
 sent you to the person who will take you into his 
 household as his secretary. If I do not deceive my- 
 self, this person will replace me, in case God should 
 call me to Himself. I shall have finished my mass 
 by nine o'clock, you have three-quarters of an hour 
 to yourself, be ready. ' 
 
 **'Ah! uncle, must I then say farewell to this 
 chamber in which I have been so happy for four 
 years ?' 
 
 " 'I have no fortune to leave you,' he replied. 
 
 " 'Will you not leave me the protection of your 
 name, the remembrance of your works, and — ?* 
 
 " 'We will not talk of that inheritance,' he said,
 
 l6 HONORINE 
 
 smiling. 'You do not yet know the world well 
 enough to be aware that it pays with difficulty a 
 legacy of that nature, whilst, in conducting you this 
 morning to Monsieur le Comte — ' Permit me," 
 said the consul interrupting himself, "to designate 
 my protector to you under his baptismal name only, 
 and to call him the Comte Octave — 'Whilst in con- 
 ducting you this morning to the house of Monsieur 
 le Comte Octave, 1 believe I am giving you a pro- 
 tection which, if you please this virtuous statesman, 
 as I am sure you will, will certainly be equal to the 
 fortune which I would have amassed for you if the 
 ruin of my brother-in-law and the death of my sister 
 had not fallen upon me by surprise like a clap of 
 thunder from a clear sky.' 
 
 " 'Are you the confessor of Monsieur le Comte?' 
 '"Eh! if I were, could I place you there? What 
 priest is capable of profiting by the secrets, the 
 knowledge of which comes to him in the tribunal of 
 penitence? No; you owe this protection to His 
 Grace the Keeper of the Seals. My dear Maurice, 
 you will be there as in a father's house. Mon- 
 sieur le Comte will give you a fixed salary of two 
 thousand four hundred francs, a lodging in his hotel, 
 and an allowance of twelve hundred francs for your 
 food; he will not admit you to his table and does 
 not wish to have you served separately, so that you 
 shall not be delivered to the service of underlings. 
 I have not accepted the offer which has been made 
 to me without having acquired the certainty that 
 the secretary of Comte Octave will never be merely
 
 HONORING 17 
 
 a first domestic. You will be overwhelmed with 
 work, for the count is a great worker; but you will 
 come out of his house capable of filling the highest 
 positions. I do not need to recommend to you dis- 
 cretion, the first virtue of men destined to public 
 functions.' 
 
 "You may judge of my curiosity! The Comte 
 Octave occupied at that time one of the highest 
 places in the magistracy, he possessed the confi- 
 dence of Madame la Dauphine, who had just named 
 him minister of State, he led an existence nearly 
 similar to that of the Comte de Serizy, whom you 
 all know, I think; but a more obscure one, for he 
 lived in the Marais, Rue Payenne, and scarcely 
 ever received. His private life escaped the public 
 observation by a monastic modesty and by contin- 
 uous labor. Let me paint to you in a few words my 
 situation. After having found in the grave head- 
 master of the college Saint-Louis a tutor to whom 
 my uncle had delegated his authority, 1 had finished 
 my studies at eighteen. I had issued from this 
 college as pure as a seminarist filled with faith 
 issues from Saint-Sulpice. On her deathbed my 
 mother had obtained from my uncle a promise that 
 I should not be made a priest; but I was as pious as 
 if I were to take holy orders. On my dejucher — 
 coming down from the roost— from the college, to 
 employ an old and very picturesque word, the Abbe 
 Loraux took me into his rectory and caused me to 
 go through with my law studies. During the four 
 years of studies necessary to take all the grades, I
 
 l8 HONORINE 
 
 worked industriously, and especially outside the arid 
 fields of jurisprudence. Separated from all literature 
 at the college, where I lived in the house of the head- 
 master, I had a great thirst to extinguish. As soon as 
 I had read a few of the modern masterpieces, the 
 works of all the preceding centuries were taken up. 
 1 developed a passion for the theatres, 1 attended them 
 every day for a long time, although my uncle only 
 gave me a hundred francs a month. This parsimony, 
 to which his tenderness for the poor restricted this 
 good, old man, had for its effect to restrain the young 
 man's appetites within just bounds. At the period 
 of my entry into Comte Octave's household, I was 
 not an innocent, but I considered my rare escapades 
 as so many crimes. My uncle was so truly angelic, 
 1 feared so much to distress him, that I had never 
 passed a night outside his doors during these four 
 years. This good man waited for my return before 
 going to bed himself. This maternal solicitude had 
 more power in restraining me than all the sermons 
 and all the reproaches with which the life of young 
 people is encrusted in puritanical families. A 
 stranger to the different worlds which compose Paris- 
 ian society, I knew of the women comma ilfaut and of 
 the bourgeoises only what I saw in my walks, or in 
 the boxes at the theatres, and that at the distance 
 from the parterre where I was. If, at that time, 
 some one had said to me, — 'You are going to see 
 Canalis or Camille Maupin,' I should have had my 
 head and my heart on fire. Famous people were to 
 me like the gods, who did not speak, did not walk,
 
 HONORINE 19 
 
 did not eat, like other men. How many tales of the 
 Thousand and One Nights are contained in one adoles- 
 cence !— how many IVonderful Lamps is it not neces- 
 sary to handle before recognizing that the true 
 Wonderful Lamp is either chance, or work, or 
 genius ! For some men, this dream of the awakened 
 intelligence is of short duration; mine still endures! 
 At that time I fell asleep every night grand duke 
 of Tuscany, — millionaire,— loved by a princess, — or 
 famous! 
 
 "Thus, to enter the household of the Comte Oc- 
 tave, to have a hundred louis a year for myself, was 
 to enter on an independent life. I foresaw some op- 
 portunities for entering society, for seeking there 
 that which my heart desired the most, a protectress 
 who would draw me from the dangerous way in 
 which young men of twenty-two years of age neces- 
 sarily wander in Paris, however wise and carefully 
 educated they may be. I began to fear myself. 
 The industrious study of international law, in which 
 I immersed myself, did not always suffice to repress 
 cruel fancies. Yes, sometimes 1 gave myself up in 
 imagination to the theatrical life; I thought 1 had it 
 in me to become a great actor ; I dreamed of triumphs 
 and of loves without end, ignorant of the deceptions 
 concealed behind the curtain, as everywhere else, 
 for every scene has its reverse side. I have some- 
 times issued forth, with my heart throbbing, carried 
 away by the desire to beat up the streets of Paris, 
 like a wood for game, to attach myself to some 
 beautiful woman whom 1 might encounter, to follow
 
 20 HONORINE 
 
 her to her door, to set a watch on her, to write to 
 her, to confide in her entirely and to vanquish her 
 by strength of loving. My poor uncle, that heart 
 eaten up by charity, that child of seventy years, 
 intelligent as God, ingenuous as a man of genius, 
 divined doubtless the tumult of my soul, for he 
 never failed to say to me, — 'Here, Maurice, you are 
 one of the poor also! here are twenty francs, amuse 
 yourself, you are not a priest!' when he felt the 
 cord by which he retained me stretched too tightly 
 and liable to break. If you could have seen the 
 will-o'-the-wisp fire which then came like gold into 
 his gray eyes, the smile which parted his kindly 
 lips and lifted them at the corners, in short, the 
 adorable expression of this august visage, the prim- 
 itive ugliness of which was rectified by an apostolic 
 spirit, you could comprehend the sentiment which 
 compelled me, for all response, to embrace the cure 
 of the Blancs-Manteaux as if he were my mother. 
 
 " 'You will not find a master,' said my uncle to 
 me as we went to the Rue Payenne, 'you will find 
 a friend in the Comte Octave; but he is suspicious, 
 or, to speak more correctly, he is prudent. The 
 friendship of this statesman is only to be acquired 
 in the course of time; for, notwithstanding his deep 
 perspicacity and his habit of judging men, he was 
 deceived by him whom you succeed, he all but be- 
 came the victim of an abuse of confidence. This is 
 enough to say to you concerning your conduct in his 
 household.' 
 
 "When we knocked at the immense great gate of
 
 HONORINE 21 
 
 a h6tel as vast as the Hotel Carnavelet and situated 
 between a court and a garden, the sound re-echoed 
 as through a solitude. While my uncle asked an 
 old porter in livery for the count, 1 threw one of 
 those glances which see everything on the court in 
 which the pavement disappeared under the grass, 
 upon the blackened walls which enclosed little gar- 
 dens superior to all the decorations of a charming 
 architecture, and upon roofs as high as those of the 
 Tuileries. The balustrades of the upper galleries 
 were rusted. Through a magnificent arcade I per- 
 ceived a second court, a lateral one, in which were 
 the servant's quarters, the doors of which were de- 
 caying. An old coachman was there washing an old 
 carriage. From the careless air of this domestic it 
 was readily to be presumed that the sumptuous 
 stables in which so many horses formerly neighed 
 now sheltered two at the most. The superb facade 
 of the court seemed to me to be gloomy, like that 
 of a hotel belonging to the State or to the Crown 
 and which is abandoned to some public service. 
 The stroke of a bell sounded as we went, my uncle 
 and I, from the porter's lodge — there was still to be 
 seen above the door, 'Inquire of the Porter' — to- 
 ward the perron, from which descended a valet 
 whose livery resembled that of the Labranches of 
 the Theatre Francais in the old repertoire. A visit 
 was so rare that the domestic finished getting 
 into his great coat as he opened a glass door with 
 little panes, on each side of which the smoke of the 
 two lamps had designed stars upon the walls. A
 
 22 HONORINE 
 
 peristyle of a magnificence worthy of Versailles 
 allowed to be seen one of those staircases such as 
 are no longer constructed in France, and which oc- 
 cupy the space of a modern house. In ascending 
 the stone steps, cold as tombstones, and on which 
 eight persons might march abreast, our footsteps 
 resounded under enormous vaults. You could have 
 believed yourself in a cathedral. The balustrades 
 interested the eye by the miracles of that gold- 
 smith's work of the ironworker in which unroll 
 themselves the fantasies of some artist of the reign 
 of Henri III. Enveloped in an icy mantle which 
 fell upon our shoulders, we traversed the antecham- 
 bers, a range of salons with polished wood floors, 
 carpetless, furnished with those superb old-fashioned 
 pieces which, from such places as these, fall into 
 the hands of the dealers in curiosities. Finally we 
 arrived at a grand cabinet situated in a square 
 pavilion all the windows of which opened on a great 
 garden. 
 
 " 'Monsieur le Cure des Blancs-Manteaux and his 
 nephew, Monsieur de THostall' announced the La- 
 branche to whose care we had been confided by the 
 theatrical valet in the first antechamber. 
 
 "The Comte Octave, who was dressed in a red- 
 ingote of gray swanskin and pantaloons with feet, 
 like hose, rose from an immense desk, came to the 
 chimney-piece and made me a sign to be seated, 
 taking my uncle's hands and pressing them 
 warmly. 
 
 " 'Although I am of the parish of Saint-Paul,' he
 
 << < 
 
 HONORINE 23 
 
 said to him, 'it would be strange if I had not heard 
 of the cure of the Blancs-Manteaux, and I am happy 
 to make his acquaintance.' 
 
 "'Your Excellency is very kind,' replied my 
 uncle. *I bring to you the only relative left me. 
 If I believe myself to be making a present to Your 
 Excellency, I think also that I am giving my 
 nephew a second father.' 
 
 "'1 can reply to you concerning that, Monsieur 
 I'Abbe, when we have tried each other, your nephew 
 and I,' said Comte Octave. 'What is your name?' 
 he asked me. 
 
 " 'Maurice.' 
 'He is a Doctor of Laws,' observed my uncle. 
 'Good, good,' said the count, looking at me from 
 head to foot. 'Monsieur I'Abbe, I hope that, for your 
 nephew in the first place, and secondly for myself, 
 you will do me the honor to dine here every Monday. 
 It will be our dinner, our family gathering.' 
 
 "My uncle and the count began to talk religion 
 from the political point of view, works of charity, 
 suppression of offences, and I could then examine at 
 my ease the man on whom my destiny was to de- 
 pend. The count was of medium stature, his gar- 
 ments prevented me from judging of his proportions ; 
 but he seemed to me to be thin and dry. His coun- 
 tenance was harsh and sunken. The features ex- 
 pressed shrewdness and intelligence. The mouth, 
 somewhat large, indicated at once irony and good- 
 ness. The forehead, too vast perhaps, terrified as 
 if it had been that of a madman, all the more so
 
 24 HONORINE 
 
 that it was in strong contrast with the lower part of 
 the face, which terminated suddenly in a little chin 
 brought up very close to the under lip. Two eyes 
 of a turquoise blue, as keen and intelligent as those 
 of the Prince de Talleyrand, whom I admired later, 
 and, like those of the prince, equally endowed with 
 the power of non-expression until they became 
 actually dull, contributed to the strange character of 
 this face, not pale, but yellow. This color seemed 
 to indicate an irritable character and violent pas- 
 sions. The hair, already silvered, carefully brushed, 
 marked the head with the alternate colors of black 
 and white. The fastidiousness of this dressing of 
 the hair interfered with the resemblance which I 
 found in the count to that extraordinary monk 
 whom Lewis has brought on the scene after the 
 Schedoni of the Confessional of the Black Penitents, 
 which seems to me to be a creation superior to that 
 of the Monk. As became a man who had to present 
 himself at the Palais at an early hour, the count 
 was already shaved. Two four-branched candle- 
 sticks, furnished with shades, placed at the two ex- 
 tremities of his desk, and the candles of which were 
 still burning, revealed with sufficient clearness that 
 the magistrate had risen before daylight. His 
 hands, which I saw when he took hold of the bell- 
 cord to ring for his valet de chambre, were very 
 handsome, and as white as those of a woman — 
 
 "In relating to you this history," said the consul- 
 general, interrupting himself, "I do not give you the 
 exact social position or the titles of this personage,
 
 HONORINE 25 
 
 though I show him to you in a situation analogous 
 to his own. Position, dignity, luxury, fortune, 
 manner of life, all these details are true; but 1 do 
 not wish to betray my benefactor or abandon my 
 habits of discretion. 
 
 "Instead of feeling myself that which I really 
 was," resumed the consul-general after a pause, 
 "speaking of social position, an insect before an 
 eagle, I experienced I know not what undefmable 
 sentiment at the count's aspect, and which I can 
 explain to-day. The artists of genius — " and he 
 made a slight and graceful inclination before the 
 ambassador, the famous woman and the two Pa- 
 risians, — "the true statesmen, the poets, a general 
 who has commanded armies, in short, the really 
 great personages, are simple; and their simplicity 
 puts you on the same footing with themselves. 
 You who are superior in intelligence, perhaps you 
 have remarked," he said, addressing his guests, 
 "how much feeling abridges the mental separations 
 created by society. If we are inferior to you in in- 
 telligence, we may equal you in friendly devotion. 
 In the temperature — permit me this expression — of 
 our hearts, I felt myself as near to my protector as 
 I was inferior to him in rank. In short, the soul 
 has its clairvoyance, it is conscious of the sorrow, 
 the vexation, the joy, the reproof, the hatred, in 
 the heart of another. I recognized vaguely the 
 symptoms of a mystery, in recognizing in the count 
 the same revelations of the physiognomy that I had 
 -observed in my uncle. The exercise of the virtues,
 
 26 HONORINE 
 
 the serenity of the conscience, the purity of the 
 thought, had transfigured my uncle, who from ugly, 
 had become very beautiful. I perceived a reversed 
 metamorphosis in the count's visage; at the first 
 glance I had taken him for fifty-five, but, after an 
 attentive examination, I recognized a youthfulness 
 buried under the ice of a profound grief, under the 
 fatigue of obstinately pursued studies, under the 
 warm tones of some passion crossed. At a word 
 from my uncle, the count's eyes became for a 
 moment as fresh as a periwinkle, he had an admir- 
 ing smile which revealed him to me at an age which I 
 thought to be the true one, about forty. I did not 
 make these observations at that time, but later, in 
 recalling the circumstances of this visit. 
 
 "The valet de chambre entered, carrying a waiter 
 on which was his master's dejeuner. 
 
 " 'I did not ring for my dejeuner,' said the count, 
 'leave it there however, and take monsieur upstairs 
 to show him his apartment' 
 
 **I followed the valet de chambre, who conducted 
 me to a pretty suite of rooms all complete, situated 
 below the flat roof, between the court of honor and 
 the servant's offices, over a gallery by means of 
 which the kitchens communicated with the grand 
 staircase of the hotel. When I returned to the 
 count's cabinet, I heard, before I opened the door, 
 my uncle pronouncing this judgment upon me: 
 
 " 'He may commit a fault, for he has a great deal 
 of heart, and we are all liable to honorable errors; 
 but he has no vices.'
 
 HONORINE 27 
 
 " 'Well,' said the count, giving me an affectionate 
 glance, ' will you please yourself there, do you think ? 
 There are so many apartments in this barracks 
 that, if you are not comfortable there, 1 can lodge 
 you elsewhere.' 
 
 " 'I have only one room in my uncle's house,' I 
 replied. 
 
 " 'Well, you can move in this evening,' said the 
 count to me, 'for you have doubtless the furniture 
 of all students, a hackney coach will suffice to 
 transport it. For to-day, we will dine together, we 
 three,' he added, looking at my uncle. 
 
 "A magnificent library adjoined the count's cab- 
 inet, he led us into it, showed me a coquettish little 
 corner ornamented with paintings, which had for- 
 merly served as an oratory. 
 
 "'There is your cell,' he said to me; 'you will 
 keep yourself there when you have to work with 
 me, for you shall not be fastened with a chain.' 
 
 "And he proceeded to detail to me the nature and 
 the duration of my occupations while with him ; as 
 1 listened to him i recognized in him a great political 
 preceptor. I took about a month to familiarize my- 
 self with things and people, to study the duties of my 
 new position and to accustom myself to the count's 
 methods. A secretary necessarily observes closely 
 the man in whose service he is. The tastes, the 
 passions, the character, the whims of this man be- 
 come the object of an involuntary study. The 
 union of these two intelligences is at the same time 
 more and less than a marriage. During three
 
 28 HONORINE 
 
 months the Comte Octave and I, we spied on each 
 other reciprocally. I learned with astonishment that 
 the count was only thirty-seven. The purely ex- 
 terior peacefulness of his life and the wisdom of his 
 conduct did not proceed solely from a profound sen- 
 timent of duty and from stoical reflection ; in associ- 
 ating with this man, extraordinary for those who 
 knew him well, I was conscious of vast depths under 
 his labors, under his acts of politeness, under his 
 mask of benevolence, under his resigned attitude, 
 which resembled calmness so closely that one 
 might readily be deceived. As in walking through 
 a forest, there are certain localities which announce 
 by the sound under the feet whether you are walk- 
 ing over great rocks or concealed hollows; in the 
 same manner, the concentrated egotism hidden 
 under the flowers of politeness and the voids caused 
 by unhappiness sound hollow at the perpetual con- 
 tact of daily life. It was sorrow and not discourage- 
 ment that dwelt in this truly great soul. The count 
 had comprehended that action, that the fact, is the 
 supreme law of the social man. Thus he went on 
 his way notwithstanding his secret wounds, and 
 regarded the future with a serene eye, like a martyr 
 full of faith. His hidden grief, the bitter deception 
 which he had suffered, had not ended by bringing 
 him to the philosophical regions of incredulity ; this 
 courageous statesman was religious, but without any 
 ostentation: he went to the early mass which was 
 given at Saint-Paul for the workpeople and pious 
 domestics. None of his friends, no one at Court,
 
 HONORINE 29 
 
 knew that he was so faithful in his religious observ- 
 ances. He practised the worship of God as certain 
 honest people practise a vice, in profound secrecy. 
 Thus was 1 to find one day the count lifted upon an 
 Alp of unhappiness much more lofty than those on 
 which they maintain themselves who believe them- 
 selves the most tried, who rail at the passions and 
 the beliefs of others because they have vanquished 
 their own, who play variations on all the tones of 
 irony and of disdain. He had no mockery then, 
 either for those who follow hope into all the sloughs 
 into which she leads you, or for those who ascend 
 a lofty peak there to isolate themselves, or for those 
 who persist in maintaining the struggle, reddening 
 the arena with their blood and strewing it with 
 their illusions; he saw the world in its entirety, he 
 surmounted the beliefs, he listened to the com- 
 plaints, he mistrusted the affections and, above all, 
 the devotions; but this great, this severe magistrate 
 was sympathetic, he admired them, not with a 
 passing enthusiasm, but by his silence, by an in- 
 ward withdrawing, by the communion of a soul 
 made tender. He was a species of Manfred, catho- 
 lic and without crime, carrying curiosity in his 
 faith, melting the snows in the heat of a volcano with- 
 out an outlet, holding converse with a star which 
 he alone saw! I recognized many obscure things 
 in his outward life. He concealed himself from my 
 observation, not like the traveler who, following a 
 route, disappears according to the inequalities of 
 the land in bogs or in ravines, but like a watchful
 
 30 HONORINE 
 
 skirmisher who wishes to conceal himself and who 
 seeks for shelter. 1 did not understand his frequent 
 absences, at the moments when he was the most 
 occupied, and which he did not conceal from me, for 
 he said to me, in confiding to me his task,— 'Con- 
 tinue this for me.' This man, so completely en- 
 veloped in the triple obligations of the statesman, 
 the magistrate and the orator, pleased me by that 
 taste for flowers which reveals a noble soul, and 
 which nearly all delicate natures have. His garden 
 and his cabinet were full of the most curious plants, 
 which he always bought faded. Perhaps he amused 
 himself with this image of his own destiny! — 
 he was withered like these flowers ready to die, 
 and the almost decomposed perfumes of which 
 caused him strange intoxications. The count loved 
 his country, he devoted himself to the public in- 
 terests with the fury of a heart which wishes to 
 master another passion; but neither study nor the 
 labors into which he plunged sufficed him; there 
 took place within him frightful conflicts, some 
 flashes of which reached me. In short, he allowed 
 to be perceived heart-breaking aspirations toward 
 happiness, and it seemed to me that he might yet 
 be happy; but what was the obstacle? Was he in 
 love with a woman ? This was a question that I 
 put to myself. You may judge of the extent of the 
 circles of sorrow which my mind must have inter- 
 rogated before arriving at so simple and so formid- 
 able a question. Notwithstanding his efforts then, 
 my patron did not succeed in smothering the action
 
 HONORINE 31 
 
 of his heart. Under his austere pose, under the 
 silence of the magistrate, there was struggling a 
 passion repressed with so much power that no one 
 except myself, his messmate as it were, had sus- 
 pected this secret. His device seemed to be,— 'I 
 suffer and I am silent' The accompaniment of re- 
 spect and of admiration which followed him, the 
 friendship of intrepid workers like himself, of the 
 Presidents Granville and Serizy, had no hold on 
 the count; either he revealed to them nothing, or 
 they knew all. Impassive, carrying his head high 
 in public, the count betrayed the man only at rare 
 intervals, when, alone in his garden, in his cabinet, 
 he thought himself unobserved; but then he became 
 a child again, he gave free vent to the tears con- 
 cealed under his toga, to the exaltations which, per- 
 haps wrongly interpreted, might have injured his 
 reputation for perspicacity as a statesman. When 
 all these things had arrived at the state of certainty 
 for me, the Comte Octave had acquired all the at- 
 tractions of a problem, and had obtained as much 
 affection as if he were my own father. Can you 
 comprehend curiosity repressed by respect? — What 
 misfortune had overwhelmed this learned man de- 
 voted, from the age of eighteen, like Pitt, to the 
 studies that lead to power, and who had no ambi- 
 tion ; this judge who was versed in diplomatic law, 
 political law, civil and criminal law, and who could 
 draw thence arms against all disquietudes or against 
 all errors; this profound legislator, this serious 
 writer, this religious celibate whose life revealed
 
 32 HONORINE 
 
 clearly enough that he incurred no reproach? A 
 criminal would not have been punished more severely 
 by God than was my patron : grief had destroyed 
 the half of his slumber, he never slept more than 
 four hours ! What contest existed at the bottom of 
 these hours which passed apparently calm, studious, 
 without noise or murmur, and during which 1 have 
 often surprised him with the pen fallen from his 
 fingers, his head supported on his hand, his eyes 
 like two stars fixed and sometimes wet with tears? 
 How was it that the water of this living spring 
 flowed over a burning strand without being dried up 
 by the subterranean fires ? — Was there, as under the 
 sea, between it and the internal fires of the globe, a 
 bed of granite? In short, would the volcano break 
 out? — Sometimes, the count looked at me with the 
 keen and sagacious curiosity, though rapid, with 
 which a man examines another when he seeks a con- 
 federate; then he avoided my eyes when he saw 
 them open, as it were, like a mouth which desires a 
 response and which seems to say, — 'Do you speak 
 first* Occasionally the Comte Octave betrayed a 
 wild and morose sadness. If the explosions of this 
 humor wounded me, he knew how to make returns 
 without asking my pardon in the least; but his 
 manners then became gracious even to the extent of 
 the humility of the Christian. When I had con- 
 ceived a filial attachment for this man, mysterious 
 for me, so comprehensible for the world to whom 
 the word original suffices to explain all the enigmas 
 of the heart, I brought about a change in the aspect
 
 HONORINE 33 
 
 of the household. The neglect of his own interests 
 amounted with the count to stupidity in the con- 
 duct of his affairs. With a fortune of about a hun- 
 dred and sixty thousand francs of income, without 
 counting the emoluments of his offices, three of 
 which were not subject to the law against holding 
 two offices at once, he expended sixty thousand 
 francs, thirty of which, at the least, went to his 
 domestics. At the end of the first year I sent away 
 all these scamps, and requested His Excellency to 
 use his interest to aid me in finding honest people. 
 At the end of the second year, the count, better fed, 
 better served, enjoyed some of the modern comforts; 
 he had some fine horses belonging to a coachman to 
 whom 1 gave so much a month for each horse ; his 
 dinners, on his reception days, served by Chevet at 
 a price that had been carefully settled, did him honor ; 
 his daily fare was the care of an excellent cook whom 
 my uncle had procured, aided by two kitchen maids; 
 the expense, not including the purchases, did not 
 amount to more than thirty thousand francs ; we had 
 two more domestics whose cares restored to the 
 hotel all its poetry, for this old place, so beautiful 
 in its decay, had a majesty which was dishonored 
 by neglect. 
 
 " 'I am no longer surprised,' he said on learning 
 these results, 'at the fortunes which my servants 
 have made. In seven years 1 have had two cooks 
 become rich restaurant keepers!' 
 
 " 'You have lost three hundred thousand francs 
 in seven years,' I replied. 'And you, a magistrate, 
 3
 
 34 HONORINE 
 
 who sign at the Palais, judgments against crime, 
 you have encouraged robbery in your own house.' 
 
 "At the commencement of the year 1826, the 
 count had doubtless concluded his observations upon 
 me, and we were as united as two men can be when 
 one is the subordinate of the other. He had said 
 nothing to me of my future; but he had devoted 
 himself, like a master and like a father, to my in- 
 struction. Frequently he caused me to reassemble 
 all the materials of his most arduous labors, I drew 
 up some of his reports, and he corrected them, indi- 
 cating to me the differences between his interpreta- 
 tions of the law, his views, and mine. When, 
 finally, I had produced a work that he could give 
 out as his own, he manifested a joy which served 
 me as a recompense, and he perceived that I took it 
 as such. This little incident, so momentary, pro- 
 duced upon this soul, severe in appearance, an ex- 
 traordinary effect. The count passed judgment 
 upon me, to make use of judicial language, as a 
 court of last appeal, and supreme; he took hold of me 
 and kissed me on the forehead. 
 
 " 'Maurice,' he exclaimed, 'you are no longer my 
 companion, I do not know yet what you will be to 
 me; but if my life does not change, perhaps you 
 may stand to me in place of a son !' 
 
 "The Comte Octave had presented me in the best 
 houses of Paris, where I went in his place, with his 
 servants and his carriage, on the too frequent occa- 
 sions when, ready to set out, he changed his mind 
 and sent for a public cabriolet, to go — where.?
 
 HONORINE 35 
 
 There was the mystery. By the welcome which I 
 received, I divined the sentiments which the count 
 entertained for me, and the serious nature of his 
 recommendations. As attentive as a father, he 
 supplied all my needs with so much the more liber- 
 ality that my discretion obliged him always to think 
 of me. About the end of the month of January, 
 1827, at Madame la Comtesse de Serizy's I experi- 
 enced such a constant run of ill fortune at play that I 
 lost two thousand francs, and 1 did not wish to take 
 them from the sum entrusted to me. The next day, 
 \ said to myself: 
 
 " 'Should I go and ask my uncle for them, or con- 
 fide in the count?' 
 
 "1 resolved on the latter course. 
 
 "'Yesterday,' I said to him while he took his 
 dejeuner, '1 lost constantly at play, 1 was nettled, 
 I kept on, I owe two thousand francs. Will you 
 permit me to take these two thousand francs on ac- 
 count from my allowance for the year?' 
 
 "'No,' he said with a charming smile. 'When 
 you play, in society, you should have a sum for play. 
 Take six thousand francs, pay your debts; we shall 
 have settled half our account to-day, for, if you 
 usually represent me, at least your self-respect 
 should not suffer for it. ' 
 
 "I did not thank the count. Thanks would have 
 seemed to him to be superfluous between us. This 
 slight detail will indicate to you the nature of our 
 relations. Nevertheless, we had not an unlimited 
 confidence in each other, he did not reveal to me
 
 36 HONORINE 
 
 those immense subterranean crypts which I had 
 recognized in his secret life, and, for my part, I did 
 not say to him, — 'What troubles you? from what 
 evil are you suffering?' What did he do during his 
 long evenings ? Frequently he returned on foot, or 
 in a public cabriolet, while I came home in a car- 
 riage, 1, his secretary! A man so pious, was he 
 then the prey of vices hypocritically concealed? 
 Did he employ all the forces of his intelligence in 
 satisfying a jealousy more skilful than that of 
 Othello? Was he living with a wife who was un- 
 worthy of him ? One morning when returning from 
 I do not remember what purveyor, living between 
 St. Paul and the Hotel de Ville, where I had been 
 to pay a bill, 1 surprised the Comte Octave in so 
 animated a conversation with an old woman that he 
 did not perceive me. The countenance of this old 
 woman awoke strange suspicions within me, sus- 
 picions all the better founded that I did not see the 
 count making any use of his savings. Is it not a 
 dreadful thought? I was constituting myself the 
 censor of my patron. At that moment I knew that 
 he had more than six hundred thousand francs to 
 invest, and if he had employed them in purchasing 
 shares of stock, his confidence in me was so com- 
 plete that I could not have remained in ignorance of 
 it. Sometimes the count walked up and down in his 
 garden in the morning, turning and returning like a 
 man to whom the walk was the hippogriff on which 
 a melancholy dreamer might mount. He came! he 
 went! he rubbed his hands as though he would take
 
 HONORINE 37 
 
 the skin from them ! And when I came suddenly 
 upon him, accosting him at the turning of an alley, 
 1 saw his countenance expand. His eyes, instead 
 of having the dryness of the turquoise, took on that 
 velvet quality of the periwinkle which had struck 
 me so forcibly at my first visit, because of the sur- 
 prising contrast between these two so different ex- 
 pressions, that of the happy man and that of the 
 unhappy man. On two or three occasions, at these 
 moments, he seized me by the arm, he led me away, 
 then he said to me, — 'What were you going to ask 
 me ?' instead of pouring his joy into my heart which 
 opened to him. Frequently also, the unhappy man, 
 especially when I could replace him in his labors and 
 draw up his reports, remained for entire hours 
 watching the goldfish which swam about in a mag- 
 nificent marble basin in the midst of his garden, and 
 around which the most beautiful flowers formed an 
 amphitheatre. This statesman seemed to have suc- 
 ceeded in making a passion of the mechanical pleas- 
 ure of crumbling bread for the fishes. 
 
 "It was in this manner that was finally discovered 
 the drama of this inward existence so profoundly 
 ravaged, so agitated, and where, in a circle forgotten 
 by Dante in his Inferno, there were begc tten horri- 
 ble joys — " 
 
 The consul-general made a pause. 
 
 "On a certain Monday," he resumed, "it so hap- 
 pened that Monsieur le President de Granville and 
 Monsieur de Serizy, then vice president of the 
 council of State, came to have a consultation with 
 
 189914
 
 38 HONORINE 
 
 the Comte Octave. These three constituted a com- 
 mission of which I was the secretary. The count 
 had already caused me to be appointed an auditor to 
 the council of State. All the material required for the 
 examination of the political question secretly sub- 
 mitted to these gentlemen was laid out on one of the 
 long tables in our library. Messieurs de Gran- 
 ville and de Serizy had sent them to the Comte 
 Octave for the preliminary examination of the doc- 
 uments relating to their task, hi order to avoid the 
 transportation of the papers to the house of Monsieur 
 de Serizy, the president of the commission, it had 
 been agreed that the meeting should take place at 
 first in the Rue Payenne. The cabinet of the Tuil- 
 eries attached a great deal of importance to this 
 work, which principally devolved upon me, and to 
 which I was indebted, in the course of this year, 
 for my appointment as referendary. Although the 
 Comtes de Granville and de Serizy, whose habits 
 resembled those of my patron, never dined outside 
 their own houses, we were surprised debating still 
 at an hour so advanced that the valet de chambre 
 asked for me to say to me : 
 
 " 'Messieurs the cures of Saint-Paul and of the 
 Blancs-Manteaux have been waiting in the salon for 
 two hours.' 
 
 "It was nine o'clock! 
 
 " 'You will be obliged, messieurs, to put up with 
 a cure's dinner, ' said the Comte Octave, laughing, to 
 his colleagues. *I do not know if Granville can 
 overcome his repugnance to the cassock. '
 
 HONORINE 39 
 
 ** 'That depends on the cures.' 
 
 '"Oh! one is my uncle and the other is the 
 Abbe Gaudron,' I replied to him. 'You need not 
 fear, the Abbe Fontanon is no longer vicar of Saint- 
 Paul—' 
 
 " 'Well, let us dine,' replied President de Gran- 
 ville. *A hypocrite terrifies me; but I do not know 
 any one as cheerful as a truly pious man !' 
 
 "And we went into the salon. The dinner was 
 charming. Men who are really well-informed, 
 politicians to whom the conduct of affairs gives a 
 consummate experience and the habit of speaking, 
 are admirable story-tellers when they know how to 
 relate. There is no medium for them, they are 
 either heavy or they are sublime. At this charm- 
 ing diversion, the Prince de Metternich is as expert 
 as Charles Nodier. Polished in facets, like a 
 diamond, the jesting of statesmen is clean cut, spark- 
 ling and full of sense.— Confident that the conven- 
 tionalities would be observed among these three men 
 of superior minds, my uncle gave free play to his 
 own wit, a delicate wit, of a penetrating softness, 
 and fine as is that of all those men accustomed to 
 concealing their thoughts under their black robes. 
 Remember, moreover, that there was nothing of com- 
 mon or of idle in this conversation, which 1 would 
 willingly compare, as to its effect on the soul, to the 
 music of Rossini. The Abbe Gaudron was, as 
 Monsieur de Granville said, a Saint-Peter rather 
 than a Saint-Paul, a peasant filled with faith, square 
 cut in the base as in the height, a sacerdotal ox
 
 40 HONORINE 
 
 whose ignorance in matters of the world and of lit- 
 erature served to animate the conversation by ingen- 
 uous astonishments and unforeseen interrogations. 
 Finally the talk turned on one of the wounds inherent 
 in the social state and with which we had just been 
 occupied, adultery! My uncle called attention to 
 the wide divergence which the legislators of the 
 Code, still under the effects of the storms of the 
 Revolution, had established in it between the civil 
 law and the religious law, and from which, he 
 thought, came all the evil ! 
 
 " 'For the Church,' he said, 'adultery is a crime; 
 for your tribunals, it is only a misdemeanor. Adul- 
 tery goes in a carriage to appear before the correc- 
 tional police, instead of taking its place on the 
 prisoners' bench in the court of assizes. Napoleon's 
 council of State, full of tenderness for the culpable 
 wife, betrayed great incapacity. Would it not be 
 advisable to bring into accord in this the civil and 
 the religious law, and send to the convent for the 
 rest of her life, as formerly, the culpable wife?' 
 
 "'To the convent!' replied Monsieur de Serizy; 
 'it would be necessary in the first place to create 
 convents, and, in these times, they are converting 
 the monasteries into barracks. And then, think of 
 it. Monsieur I'Abbe, — to give to God that which so- 
 ciety will not have! — ' 
 
 "'Oh!' said the Comte de Granville^ 'you do 
 not know France. They have been obliged to leave 
 to the husband the right of complaint; well, there 
 are not ten complaints of adultery in a year.'
 
 HONORINE , 41 
 
 "'Monsieur I'Abbe preaches for his saint, for it 
 was Jesus Christ who created adultery,' said Comte 
 Octave, 'hi the Orient, that cradle of humanity, 
 woman was only a thing of pleasure and one thing 
 was accepted, — no other virtues were asked of her 
 but obedience and beauty. By making the soul 
 superior to the body, the modern European family, 
 the daughter of Jesus, has invented the indissoluble 
 marriage, it has made of it a sacrament' 
 
 " 'Ah! the Church has indeed recognized all the 
 difficulties in the way,' cried Monsieur de Granville. 
 
 "'This institution has produced a new world,' 
 resumed the count, smiling; 'but the manners of this 
 world will never be those of those climates in which 
 the woman attains the nubile age at seven, and is 
 more than old at twenty-five. The Cathol ic Church 
 has forgotten the necessities of half the globe. Let 
 us then speak of Europe only. Is woman inferior 
 to us or superior ? that is the true question with re- 
 lation to ourselves. If woman is inferior to us, in 
 elevating her as high as the Church has done, it has 
 necessitated terrible punishments for adultery. 
 Therefore, formerly, it was so carried out. The 
 cloister or death, this was the whole of the ancient 
 legislation. But, since, manners have modified the 
 laws, as always happens. The throne has even 
 served as a couch for adultery, and the progress of 
 this pretty crime has marked the enfeeblement of 
 the dogmas of the Catholic Church. To-day, where 
 the Church no longer demands anything but a 
 sincere repentance from the erring wife, society
 
 42 HONORINE 
 
 contents itself with a brand instead of a torture. 
 The law, it is true, still condemns the culpable ones, 
 but it no longer intimidates them. Finally, there are 
 two codes of morals, — that of the world and that of 
 the Code. In that in which the Code is feeble, I 
 recognize it as well as our dear abbe, the world is 
 audacious and mocking. There are but few judges 
 who would not have wished to commit the misde- 
 meanor against which they launch the good-natured 
 thunders of their preambles. The world, which de- 
 nies the law, in its fetes, by its customs, by its 
 pleasures, is more severe than the Code and the 
 Church; the world punishes bungling after having 
 encouraged hypocrisy. All the provisions of the 
 law concerning marriage seem to me to require re- 
 vision, from top to bottom. Perhaps French law 
 would be perfect if it proclaimed the exheredation 
 of daughters. ' 
 
 " 'We know this question, we three, all the way 
 to the bottom,' caid the Comte de Granville, laugh- 
 ing. 'For myself, I have a wife with whom I cannot 
 live. Serizy has a wife who will not live with him. 
 Yours, Octave, yours has left you. We sum up 
 among ourselves then, we three, all the conditions 
 of the conjugal conscience; therefore, we shall 
 doubtless compose the commission, if ever the sub- 
 ject of divorce is returned to.' 
 
 "Octave's fork fell on his glass, broke it, broke 
 the plate. The count, suddenly pale as death, threw 
 upon President de Granville an overwhelming 
 look in which he indicated me, and which I caught.
 
 HONORINE 43 
 
 " 'Forgive me, my friend, I did not see Maurice,' 
 replied President de Granville. 'Serizyand I, we 
 were your confederates after having served you 
 as your witnesses; I did not think, then, of com- 
 mitting an indiscretion in the presence of these two 
 venerable ecclesiastics.' 
 
 "Monsieur de Serizy changed the conversation by 
 relating all that he had done to please his wife, 
 without having ever succeeded. This old man con- 
 cluded by finding it impossible to regulate human 
 sympathies and antipathies by too many rules; he 
 maintained that the social law is never more perfect 
 than when it approaches the natural law. Now, 
 nature takes no account of the union of souls, her 
 aim is accomplished by the propagation of the 
 species. Therefore, the present Code had been 
 very wise in leaving an enormous latitude to chance. 
 The exheredation of daughters, so long as there are 
 male heirs, was an excellent modification, either 
 for preventing the degeneracy of the race, or for 
 rendering households more happy by suppressing 
 scandalous unions, by causing the moral qualities 
 and beauty to be the only attractions sought. 
 
 " 'But,' he added, lifting his hand with a gesture 
 of disgust, 'what chance is there of perfecting legis- 
 lation when a country insists upon bringing together 
 seven or eight hundred legislators!— After all,' he 
 resumed, 'if I should be sacrificed, 1 have a child 
 who will succeed me — ' 
 
 " 'Putting aside all the religious question, ' replied 
 my uncle, '1 would observe to Your Excellency that
 
 44 HONORINE 
 
 Nature owes us only life, and that society owes us 
 happiness. Are you a father?' my uncle asked 
 him, 
 
 " And I, have 1 children?' said the Comte Octave 
 in a hollow voice, the accent of which caused such 
 an impression that there was no more talk either of 
 wives or of marriage. 
 
 "When we had taken coffee, the two counts and 
 the two cures went away on seeing the poor Octave 
 fall into such a state of melancholy that he was not 
 able to perceive these successive disappearances. 
 My protector was seated on a couch at the corner of 
 the fire, in the attitude of a man overwhelmed. 
 
 " 'You know the secret of my life,' he said to me 
 when he perceived that we were alone. 'After 
 three years of marriage, one evening on my return 
 home I was handed a letter in which the countess 
 announced to me her flight. This letter was not 
 wanting in nobility, for it is in the nature of women 
 to preserve still some virtues even in committing 
 this horrible fault — To-day, my wife is thought to 
 have embarked on a vessel that was shipwrecked, 
 she is considered dead. I have been living alone 
 for seven years ! — Enough for this evening, Maurice. 
 We will talk further of my situation when I shall 
 have become accustomed to the idea of speaking to 
 you about it. When one suffers from a chronic 
 malady, is it not advisable to make the best of it? 
 Often the best appears to be only another aspect of 
 the malady. ' 
 
 "I went to bed in great trouble, for the mystery,
 
 >10N0RINE 45 
 
 far from being cleared up, seemed to me more and 
 more obscure. I divined some strange drama, for I 
 comprehended that there could be nothing common- 
 place between a wife whom the count had chosen 
 and a character like his own. And then the events 
 which had driven the countess to leave a man so 
 noble, so considerate, so perfect, so loving, so 
 worthy of being loved, must have been at least 
 singular. Monsieur de Granville's phrase had been 
 like a torch thrown into the gloomy caverns in which 
 1 had so long been wandering; and, although 
 this flame lit them up but imperfectly, my eyes 
 could now discover their extent. I was able to ex- 
 plain to myself the count's sufferings, without 
 knowing either their depth or their bitterness. His 
 yellow mask, his withered temples, his gigantic 
 studies, his moments of reverie, the least details of 
 the life of this married celibate, took on a luminous 
 relief during this hour of mental examination which 
 is like the twilight of sleep and to which any man 
 with a heart would have yielded himself as I did. 
 Oh I how I loved my poor patron I he seemed to me 
 sublime. I read a melancholy poem, I perceived a 
 perpetual action in that heart which 1 had accused 
 of inertia. A supreme sorrow, does it not always 
 attain to immobility ? This magistrate who wielded 
 so much power, had he avenged himself? did he 
 glut himself on a long agony? Is there not such a 
 thing in Paris as a wrath that boils for ten years? 
 What had Octave done since this great misfortune, 
 for this separation of a married couple is the great
 
 46 HONORINE 
 
 misfortune in our epoch in which the private life 
 has become, what it was not formerly, a social 
 question? We passed several days in mutual ob- 
 servation, for the great sufferings have their 
 modesty; but finally, one evening, the count said 
 to me in a grave voice: 
 
 "'Remain!' 
 
 "This is, very nearly, his recital: 
 
 " 'My father had a ward, rich, beautiful, and six- 
 teen years of age at the period of my return from 
 college to this old hotel. Brought up by my mother, 
 Honorine was then awakening to life. Full of 
 graces and of youthfulness, she dreamed of happi- 
 ness as she would have dreamed of an ornament, 
 and perhaps happiness was for her the ornament of 
 the soul ? Her piety was not unaccompanied by 
 slight joys, for everything, even religion, was a 
 poetry for this ingenuous heart. She looked for- 
 ward to her future as to a perpetual festival. Inno- 
 cent and pure, no frenzy had ever troubled her 
 slumber. Shame and vexation had never marked 
 her cheek or made tearful her eyes. She did not 
 even investigate the secret of her involuntary emo- 
 tions on a fine day of spring. In short, she felt 
 herself weak, destined to obedience, and awaited 
 marriage without desiring it. Her laughing imagin- 
 ation was ignorant of the corruption, perhaps neces- 
 sary, that literature inoculates by the portrayal of 
 the passions; she knew nothing of the world, and 
 was acquainted with none of the dangers of society. 
 The dear child had suffered so little that she had
 
 HONORINE 47 
 
 not even displayed her courage. Her candor, indeed, 
 would have made her walk without fear in the midst 
 of serpents, like that ideal figure which a painter 
 has created, of Innocence. Never was there a fore- 
 head more serene and, at the same time, more smil- 
 ing than hers. Never was there permitted to a 
 mouth to strip more completely of their true mean- 
 ing interrogations stated with so much ignorance. 
 We lived together like two brothers. At the ex- 
 piration of a year I said to her, in the garden of this 
 hotel, before the fountain while throwing bread to 
 the fishes: 
 
 " ' "Are you willing that we should be married? 
 With me you can do whatever you wish, while 
 another man would make you unhappy." 
 
 " * "Mamma," she said to my mother, who came 
 toward us, "it is arranged between Octave and me 
 that we shall be married — " 
 
 " ' "At seventeen! — " replied my mother. "No, 
 you shall wait eighteen months; and, if in that 
 eighteen months you please each other, well, you 
 are of equal birth and fortune, you shall make at 
 the same time a marriage de convenance and of mutual 
 inclination." 
 
 " 'When I was twenty-six and Honorine was nine- 
 teen, we were married. Our respect for my father 
 and mother, old people of the ancient Court, pre- 
 vented us from arranging this hotel in modern style, 
 from changing the furniture, and we remained here, 
 as formerly, like children. Nevertheless, 1 went out 
 into the world, 1 initiated my wife into the life of
 
 48 HONORINE 
 
 society, and I considered it as one of my duties to 
 instruct her. I recognized later that the marriages 
 contracted under conditions similar to ours present 
 a danger against which may be broken many affec- 
 tions, many prudences, many existences. The 
 husband becomes a pedagogue, a professor if you 
 prefer; and love perishes under the ferule which, 
 sooner or later, wounds; for a wife young and 
 beautiful, discreet and joyous, will admit of no 
 superiorities above those with which she is endowed 
 by nature. Perhaps 1 committed errors? perhaps I 
 assumed, in the difficult beginnings of a household, 
 a magistral tone ? Perhaps, on the contrary, I com- 
 mitted the fault of confiding absolutely in that can- 
 did nature, and I did not keep a surveillance over 
 the countess, whose rebellion would have seemed 
 to me impossible? Alas! it is not known yet, either 
 in politics or in the household, whether empires and 
 happiness perish through too much confidence or 
 through too much severity. Perhaps, also, the hus- 
 band did not realize for Honorine the dreams of the 
 young girl ? Do we know, during the days of happi- 
 ness, in what precepts we have failed ?' 
 
 — "I only remember in the bulk the reproaches 
 which the count addressed to himself, with the 
 directness of an anatomist searching for the causes 
 of a malady which had escaped his confreres; but 
 his clement indulgence seemed to me at the time 
 truly worthy of that of Jesus Christ when he saved 
 the woman taken in adultery. — 
 
 " 'Eighteen months after my father's death, he
 
 HONORINE 49 
 
 preceding my mother by a few months to the tomb,' 
 he resumed after a pause, 'came the terrible night 
 when I was surprised by Honorine's letter of fare- 
 well. By what poetry had my wife been seduced? 
 Was it the senses ? was it the magnetism of unhap- 
 piness or of genius? which of these forces was it 
 that had surprised her or carried her away? I have 
 wished to know nothing. The stroke was so cruel 
 that I remained, as it were, stupefied for a month. 
 Later, reflection advised me to remain in my igno- 
 rance, and the misfortunes of Honorine have in- 
 structed me too much in these things. Up to the 
 present, Maurice, everything is very commonplace; 
 but everything is changed by this word, — I love 
 Honorine, I have not ceased to adore her ! From the 
 day of my abandonment I have lived on my sou- 
 venirs, I resume, one by one, the pleasures for 
 which doubtless Honorine had no taste. 
 
 "'Oh!* he said, seeing the astonishment in my 
 eyes, 'do not make of me a hero, do not think me 
 stupid enough, as a colonel of the Empire would 
 have said, not to have sought for distractions. Alas ! 
 my child, I was either too young or too much in 
 love; — I have not been able to find another woman 
 in the entire world. After frightful conflicts with 
 myself I sought to benumb myself; I went, money 
 in hand, as far as the threshold of infidelity; but 
 there rose up before me, like a white statue, the 
 memory of Honorine. In recalling the infinite deli- 
 cacy of that smooth skin through which could be seen 
 the blood circulating and the nerves palpitating; in 
 4
 
 50 HONORINE 
 
 seeing again that ingenuous head, as naive the even- 
 ing before my misfortune as on the day on which 
 I said to her,— "Are you willing that we should be 
 married ?" in remembering a perfume as heavenly as 
 that of virtue; in seeing again the light of her 
 glance, the prettiness of her gestures, I fled like a 
 man who had gone to violate a tomb and who had 
 seen issue from it the transfigured soul of the dead. 
 At the council, at the Palais, at night, I dream so 
 constantly of Honorine, that it requires of me an 
 excessive strength of soul to recall myself to what I 
 am doing, to what I am saying. This is the secret 
 of my labors. Well, I feel no more anger toward 
 her than a father would have in seeing his dear child 
 in a danger into which it had fallen through im- 
 prudence. I have comprehended that I had made of 
 my wife a poem which I enjoyed with so much intox- 
 ication that I believed my intoxication shared. Ah! 
 Maurice, a love without discretion is, on the part of 
 a husband, a fault which may prepare the way for 
 all the crimes of a wife ! 1 had probably left without 
 employment the powers of this child, cherished like 
 a child; I had perhaps wearied her with my love 
 before the hour of love had arrived for her. Too 
 young to foresee the devotion of the mother in the 
 constancy of the wife, she had taken this first trial 
 of marriage for life itself, and the pouting child had 
 rebelled against life unknown tome, not daring to 
 complain to me, through modesty perhaps ! In so 
 cruel a situation she found herself defenceless against 
 a man who had violently agitated her. And I, this
 
 HONORINE 51 
 
 SO sagacious magistrate, as I was called, I whose 
 heart is good but whose mind was occupied, I had 
 divined too late these laws of the unacknowledged 
 feminine code, 1 had read them in the light of the 
 conflagration which consumed the roof over my 
 head. Then I constituted in my heart a tribunal, 
 according to the law; for the law makes of the hus- 
 band a judge; — I acquitted my wife and I con- 
 demned myself. But love then took on within me 
 the form of passion, of that mean and arbitrary pas- 
 sion which takes possession of certain old men. 
 To-day, I love Honorine absent as one loves, at 
 threescore, a woman who must be had at any price, 
 and I feel within me the strength of a young man. 
 I have the audacity of the old and the restraint of 
 the adolescent My friend, society has nothing 
 but mockery for this frightful conjugal situation. 
 Where it would be pitiful for a lover, it sees in the 
 husband I know not what impotence; it laughs at 
 those who do not know how to keep a wife whom 
 they have acquired under the canopy of the Church 
 and before the scarf of the mayor. And I have been 
 obliged to keep silent! Serizy is happy. He owes 
 to her indulgence the pleasure of seeing his wife, he 
 protects her, he defends her ; and, as he adores her, he 
 knows the excessive pleasures of the benefactor who 
 is not worried about anything, not even about ridi- 
 cule, for he baptizes with it his paternal pleasures. 
 
 " ' "I remain married only because of my wife!" 
 said Serizy to me one day as we came out of the 
 council.
 
 52 HONORINE 
 
 "'But 1! — 1 have nothing, not even ridicule to 
 affront, I who sustain myself only by a love with 
 nothing to feed on ! 1 who have not a word to say to 
 a woman of the social world ! 1 who am repelled by 
 prostitution! I, faithful through incantation! Had 
 it not been for my religious faith, 1 should have 
 killed myself. I have challenged the abyss of work, 
 I have plunged into it, I have issued from it alive, 
 burning, ardent, having lost the power of sleep! — ' 
 
 " — I cannot recall to myself the words of this 
 man so eloquent, and to whom passion gave an elo- 
 quence so superior to that of the tribune that, like 
 himself, my cheeks were furrowed by tears as I 
 listened to him ! You may judge of my impressions 
 when, after a pause during which we dried our 
 eyes, he finished his recital by this revelation : — 
 
 " 'This is the drama in my soul, but it is not the 
 outward drama which is being played at this 
 moment in Paris! The inward drama interests no 
 one. I am aware of it, and you will recognize it 
 one day, you who weep at this moment with me; — 
 no one piles up on his heart or on his epidermis, 
 another's sorrow. The measure of all sorrows is 
 within us. You, yourself, you comprehend my suf' 
 ferings only by a very vague analogy. Are you 
 able to see me calming the most violent rage cf 
 despair by the contemplation of a miniature in 
 which my eyes find again her forehead to kiss it, 
 the smile of her lips, the outline of her visage, where 
 I can inhale the purity of her skin, and which per- 
 mits me almost to feel, to handle, the black clusters
 
 HONORINE 53 
 
 of her curling hair? Have you ever surprised 
 me when I leaped for hope, when 1 writhed under 
 the thousand shafts of despair, when I walked 
 through the mud of Paris in order to overcome my 
 impatience by fatigue? I have periods of enerva- 
 tion comparable to those of consumptives, of hilarity 
 like a madman, of the apprehension of an assassin 
 when he encounters a brigadier of gendarmes. In 
 short, my life is a continual paroxysm of terrors, of 
 joys, of despairs. As to the drama, this is it: — You 
 believe me occupied with the council of State, with 
 the Chamber, with the Palais, with political affairs! 
 — Eh! Mon Dieu, seven hours of the night suffice 
 for all, so much has the life I lead over-excited my 
 faculties. Honorine is my great occupation. To 
 reconquer my wife, that is my sole study ; to watch 
 her in the cage in which she is without her being 
 aware of my power ; to satisfy her needs, to super- 
 vise the little pleasure which she permits herself, to 
 be ceaselessly near her, like a sylph, without allow- 
 ing myself to be either seen or suspected, for then 
 all my future would be lost, this is my life, my real 
 life! For the last seven years 1 have never slept 
 without going to see the light of her night-lamp, or 
 her shadow on the window curtain. She left my 
 house without wishing to take away with her any- 
 thing but the garments she was wearing on that 
 day. The child carried her nobility of sentiments 
 to the point of stupidity! Moreover, eighteen 
 months after her flight she was abandoned by her 
 lover, who was terrified by the bitter and cold, the
 
 54 HONORINE 
 
 sinister and infectious aspect of poverty, the coward ! 
 This man had doubtless counted upon the happy and 
 gilded existence in Switzerland and in Italy, which 
 the great ladies permit themselves after leaving 
 their husbands. Honorine had in her own right 
 sixty thousand francs of income. This wretch left 
 the dear creature enceinte and without a sou! In 
 1820, in the month of November, I succeeded in 
 getting the best obstetrician in Paris to assume the 
 role of a little surgeon of the faubourg. I persuaded 
 the cure of the quarter in which the countess lived 
 to relieve her needs as if he were accomplishing a 
 work of charity. To conceal my wife's name, to 
 assure her her incognito, to find her a housekeeper 
 who was devoted to me and who would be an intel- 
 ligent confidante — bah! this was an undertaking 
 worthy of Figaro. You understand that to discover 
 my wife's asylum, it was sufficient for me to wish 
 it. After three months of hopelessness rather than 
 of despair, the thought of consecrating myself to 
 Honorine's happiness, in taking God for a witness 
 of my conduct, was one of those poems which fall 
 only on a lover's heart whatever happens! All ab- 
 solute love wishes something to feed upon. Ah! 
 should I not protect this child, culpable through my 
 imprudence only, against new disasters; accom- 
 plish, in short, my role of guardian angel ? After 
 seven months of nursing, the infant son died, hap- 
 pily for her and for me. My wife lay for nine 
 months between life and death, abandoned at the 
 moment when she had the greatest need of a man's
 
 HONORINE 55 
 
 arm, but this arm,' he said, extending his own with 
 a movement of angelic energy, 'was stretched over 
 her head. Honorine was cared for as if she had 
 been in her own hotel. When, restored to health, 
 she asked how, by whom, she had been succored, 
 she was answered, — "The Sisters of Charity of the 
 quarter, — The Maternity Society, — the cure of the 
 parish who was interested in her." This woman, 
 in whom pride goes to the extent of becoming a vice, 
 has displayed in unhappiness a strength of resist- 
 ance which, on certain evenings, I designate as the 
 obstinacy of a mule. Honorine wished to earn her 
 own living! my wife work! — For the last five years 
 I have kept her in a charming pavilion in the Rue 
 Saint-Maur, where she makes flowers and milli- 
 nery. She believes she sells the products of her 
 elegant handiwork to a merchant, who pays her for 
 them at such a rate that she makes twenty francs 
 a day, and for six years she has not had a single 
 suspicion. She pays for all her daily needs nearly 
 the third of what they are worth, so that with six 
 thousand francs a year she lives as though she had 
 fifteen thousand francs. She has a taste for flowers, 
 and gives a hundred ecus to a gardener who costs 
 me, myself, twelve hundred francs in wages, and 
 who sends me statements of two thousand francs 
 every three months. I have promised to this man 
 a kitchen garden and the house with it adjoining 
 the lodge of the concierge of the Rue Saint-Maur. 
 This property belongs to me under the name of a 
 register's clerk of the court. A single indiscretion
 
 56 HONORINE 
 
 would make the gardener lose everything. Hono- 
 rinehas her pavilion, a garden, a superb hothouse, 
 for five hundred francs of rent a year. She lives 
 there, under the name of her housekeeper Ma- 
 dame Gobain, this old woman of a discretion proof 
 against anything, whom I found, and by whom she 
 has made herself loved. But this zeal is, like that 
 of the gardener, sustained by the promise of a 
 recompense on the day of success. The concierge 
 and his wife cost me horribly dear, for the same 
 reasons. In short, for the last three years Hon- 
 orine has been happy, she thinks she owes to her 
 labor the luxury of her flowers, her toilet and her 
 comforts. 
 
 " 'Oh ! — I know what you wish to say,' cried the 
 count, seeing an interrogation in my eyes and on my 
 lips. 'Yes, yes, I made an attempt. My wife lived 
 previously in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. One 
 day when, on the word of the Gobain, I believed in 
 the chances of a reconciliation, I sent, by the post, 
 a letter in which I endeavored to persuade my wife, 
 a letter written, recommenced twenty times ! I will 
 not describe to you my anguish. I went from the 
 Rue Payenne to the Rue de Reuilly, like a con- 
 demned man who proceeds from the Palais to the 
 Hotel de Ville; but he is in a cart, and I, I walked! 
 — It was night, there was a fog. I went to meet Ma- 
 dame Gobain who was to come to tell me what my 
 wife had done. Honorine, on recognizing my hand- 
 writing, had thrown the letter in the fire without 
 reading it.
 
 HONORINE 57 
 
 •• ' "Madame Gobain," she said, "1 shall not be 
 in to any one to-morrow! — " 
 
 " 'Was this a dagger-stroke, this speech, for a 
 man who finds unlimited joys in the deception by 
 means of which he procures the finest velvet of 
 Lyons at twelve francs a yard, a pheasant, a fish, 
 fruits at a tenth of their value, for a woman igno- 
 rant enough to believe that she is paying sufficiently, 
 with two hundred and fifty francs, Madame Gobain, 
 the cook of a bishop?— You have surprised me at 
 times rubbing my hands and a prey to a kind of 
 happiness. Well, this has been when I have just 
 succeeded in carrying out a trick worthy of the 
 theatre; — I had deceived my wife by sending her by 
 a female dealer in toilet articles an Indian shawl, 
 offered to her as coming from an actress who had 
 scarcely worn it, but in which I, the grave magis- 
 trate whom you know, I had slept for one night! In 
 short, to-day, my life is summed up in the two 
 words in which can be expressed the most violent 
 of torments : — I love and I wait ! I have in Madame 
 Gobain a faithful spy upon the adored heart. I go 
 every night to talk with this old woman, to learn 
 from her everything that Honorine has done during 
 the day, the lightest words which she has spoken, for 
 a single exclamation might deliver to me the secrets 
 of this soul which has made itself deaf and mute. 
 Honorine is pious; she attends the services, she 
 prays; but she has never gone to confession and 
 does not take the communion ; — she knows what a 
 priest would say to her. She does not wish to hear
 
 58 HONORINE 
 
 the advice, the order, to return to me. This horror 
 of myself terrifies me and confounds me, for I never 
 did the least injury to Honorine ; I have always been 
 good to her. If we admit that 1 was sometimes 
 quick in instructing her, that my man's irony 
 wounded her legitimate pride of a young girl, — is 
 that a reason for persevering in a resolution which 
 the most implacable hatred alone could inspire? 
 Honorine has never revealed her identity to Ma- 
 dame Gobain, she preserves an absolute silence 
 concerning her marriage, so that this honest and 
 worthy woman cannot say a word in my favor, for 
 she is the only one in the household who has my 
 secret. The others know nothing; they live under 
 the terror which the name of the prefect of police in- 
 spires and in veneration of the power of a minister. 
 It is then impossible for me to penetrate into this 
 heart; the citadel is mine, but I cannot enter. I 
 have not a single means of action. Any violence 
 would ruin me for ever. How to combat reasons of 
 which you are ignorant.? To write a letter, to have 
 it copied by a public writer, and place it under the 
 eyes of Honorine ? — I have thought of it. But would 
 that not be to risk a third breaking-up.!* The last 
 one cost me a hundred and fifty thousand francs. 
 This purchase was at first made in the name of 
 the secretary whom you replaced. The wretch, 
 who did not know how lightly I slept, was surprised 
 by me opening with a false key the chest in which 
 I had placed the counter-deed; I coughed, he be- 
 came frightened; the next day I forced him to sell
 
 HONORINE 59 
 
 the house to my actual borrowed name, and 1 put 
 him out the door. Ah! if I did not feel within me 
 all the noble faculties of man satisfied, happy, ex- 
 panded; if the qualities of my role did not pertain 
 to those of the divine paternity, if I did not enjoy 
 through every pore, there would be moments in 
 which I would believe myself the victim of some 
 monomania. There are nights in which I hear the 
 tinkling of Folly's bells, I am afraid of these violent 
 transitions from a feeble hope, which sometimes 
 blazes up and shoots out, to a complete despair which 
 falls as far as a man can fall. 1 meditated seriously, 
 a few days ago, on the atrocious denouement of 
 Lovelace with Clarissa, saying to myself: 
 
 " ' "If Honorine had a child by me, would it not 
 be necessary for her to return to the conjugal roof?" 
 
 " 'Finally, I have such faith in a happy future 
 that, ten months ago, 1 acquired and paid for one 
 of the handsomest hotels in the Faubourg Saint- 
 Honore. If I reconquer Honorine, I do not wish her 
 to see this hotel again, or the chamber from which 
 she fled. I wish to put my idol in a new temple 
 where she may believe in a life entirely new. I am 
 having made of this hotel a marvel of taste and of 
 elegance. I have heard of a poet who, almost mad 
 with love for a cantatrice, had, at the beginning of 
 his passion, purchased the most beautiful bed in 
 Paris, without knowing the ending which the actress 
 reserved for his passion. Well, there is the coldest 
 of magistrates, a man who is thought to be the 
 gravest counselor of the Crown, all the fibres of
 
 6o HONORINE 
 
 whose heart were stirred by this anecdote. The 
 orator of the Chamber comprehended this poet who 
 fed his ideal on a material possibility. Three days 
 before the arrival of Marie-Louise, Napoleon rolled 
 himself in her nuptial bed at Compi^gne — All 
 gigantic passions have the same features. I love 
 like a poet and an emperor! — ' 
 
 "When I heard these last words I believed in the 
 reality of Comte Octave's fears: he rose, walked 
 about, gesticulated, but he stopped as though fright- 
 ened by the violence of words. 
 
 " 'I am very ridiculous,' he resumed, after a very 
 long pause, seeking for a look of compassion. 
 
 '* 'No, monsieur, you are very unhappy — ' 
 
 "'Oh! yes,' he said, resuming the flow of his 
 confidences, 'more than you think! From the vio- 
 lence of my words you might, and indeed you prob- 
 ably do, believe it to be a case of the most intense 
 physical passion, since for the last nine years it has 
 annulled all my faculties; but this is nothing in 
 comparison with the adoration which is inspired in 
 me by the soul, the intelligence, the manners, the 
 heart, all that which in the woman is not the 
 woman; in short, those ravishing divinities in the 
 train of Love with whom life is passed, and who are 
 the daily poetry of a fugitive pleasure. I can see, 
 through a retrospective phenomenon, those graces of 
 the heart and of the spirit of Honorine to which I 
 gave but little attention in the days of my happi- 
 ness, like all happy people! I have, from day to 
 day, recognized the extent of my loss in recognizing
 
 HONORINE 6l 
 
 the divine qualities with which was endowed this 
 capricious and unruly child, who has become so 
 strong and so proud under the heavy hand of pov- 
 erty, under the blow of the most cowardly abandon- 
 ment. And this celestial flower is withering 
 solitary and hidden! Ah! the law of which we 
 were speaking,' he resumed with a bitter irony, 
 'the law, it is a picket of gendarmes, it is my wife 
 seized and brought here by force! — Would that not 
 be to conquer a dead body? Religion has had no 
 hold upon her, she wished for some poetry in her 
 life, she prays without listening to the command- 
 ments of the Church. For myself, I have exhausted 
 everything in the way of clemency, kindness, love. 
 — I have come to the end. There remains only one 
 method of succeeding; — ^the shrewdness and the 
 patience with which the bird-catchers finally trap 
 the most suspicious, the most active, the most fan- 
 tastic and the rarest birds. Thus, Maurice, when 
 the very excusable indiscretion of Monsieur de 
 Granville revealed to you the secret of my life, I 
 finally came to see in this incident one of those 
 commands of fate, one of those notifications which 
 the gamblers ardently desire and to which they 
 listen in the midst of their most furious games — 
 Have you enough affection for me to be romantically 
 devoted to me ? — ' 
 
 " 'I anticipate you. Monsieur le Comte,' 1 replied, 
 interrupting him, M divine your intentions. Your 
 first secretary wished to pick the lock of your strong- 
 box ; I know the heart of the second, he is capable
 
 62 HONORINE 
 
 of loving your wife. And can you devote him to 
 misfortune by sending him to the fire? To put 
 his hand in a brasier without burning it, is that 
 possible?' 
 
 " 'You are a child,' replied the count, 'I will send 
 you gloved! It is not my secretary who will come 
 to take up his lodging in the Rue Saint-Maur, in the 
 little house of the kitchen gardener which 1 have 
 caused to be vacated, it will be my young cousin, 
 the Baron de I'Hostal, referendary — ' 
 
 "After a moment of surprise I heard the stroke of 
 a bell and a carriage rolled up to the perron. Pres- 
 ently the valet de chambre announced Madame de 
 Courteville and her daughter. Comte Octave had 
 very many relatives on his mother's side. Madame 
 de Courteville, his cousin, was the widow of a judge 
 of the tribunal of the Seine, who had left her with 
 a daughter and without any fortune whatever. How 
 could a woman of twenty-nine compare with a 
 young girl of twenty, as beautiful as the imagina- 
 tion could desire for an ideal mistress? 
 
 " 'Baron, referendary, keeper of the seals, while 
 waiting for something better, and this old hotel for 
 a dot, will you have reasons enough for not loving 
 the countess ?' he said in my ear as he took me by 
 the hand and presented me to Madame de Courte- 
 ville and her daughter. 
 
 "1 was dazzled, not by so many advantages which 
 I had never dared to dream of, but by Amelie de 
 Courteville, all whose beauties were set off by one 
 of those brilliant toilets which the mothers give
 
 HONORINE 63 
 
 their daughters when it is a question of marrying 
 them. 
 
 "We will not speak of myself," said the consul, 
 making a pause; — 
 
 "Twenty days later," he resumed, "I went to 
 live in the house of the kitchen gardener, which 
 had been cleaned, arranged and furnished with that 
 celerity which is explained by three words, — 
 Paris! the French workman ! money! I was as much 
 in love as the count could desire for his own secur- 
 ity. Would the prudence of a young man of 
 twenty-five suffice for the stratagems which I had 
 undertaken and in which was involved the happi- 
 ness of a friend? To resolve this question, I admit 
 to you that I counted a good deal on my uncle, for I 
 was authorized by the count to take him into my 
 confidence in case I should deem his intervention 
 necessary. I took a gardener, I made myself a most 
 zealous florist, I occupied myself furiously, like a 
 man who could be distracted by nothing, in digging 
 up the kitchen garden and preparing the soil for the 
 cultivation of flowers. After the manner of the 
 maniacs of Holland or of England, I gave myself out 
 for a monoflorist. I cultivated dahlias especially, 
 bringing together all the known varieties. You will 
 understand that my line of conduct, even in its 
 slightest deviations, was traced by the count, all 
 whose intellectual qualities were then attentive to 
 the last events of the tragic comedy which was about 
 to be played in the Rue Saint-Maur. As soon as 
 the countess had retired, almost every evening,
 
 64 HONORINE 
 
 between eleven o'clock and midnight, a council was 
 held between Octave, Madame Gobain and myself. 
 I heard the old woman rendering an account to Oc- 
 tave of the least movements of his wife during the 
 day; he informed himself of everything, the meals, 
 the occupations, the conduct, the menu for the next 
 day, the flowers which she proposed to imitate. I 
 comprehended that this was a love to the point of 
 despair, since it was composed of that triple love 
 which proceeds from the head, the heart and the 
 senses. Octave lived only during this hour. Dur- 
 ing the two months that the work lasted, I did not 
 turn my eyes on the pavilion in which my neigh- 
 bors lived. I had not even asked if I had a neigh- 
 bor, although the garden of the countess was 
 separated from mine only by a paling fence, along 
 which she had caused to be planted cypress, already 
 four feet high. One fine morning, Madame Gobain 
 announced to her mistress, as a great misfortune, 
 the intention of some original character who had 
 become her neighbor, of building, toward the end of 
 the year, a wall between the two gardens. I will 
 not speak to you of the curiosity by which I was 
 devoured. To see the countess! — this desire paled 
 even my budding love for Amelie de Courteville. 
 My project of building the wall was a frightfu) 
 menace. No more air for Honorine, whose garden 
 would become a species of alley enclosed between 
 my wall and her pavilion. This pavilion, formerly 
 a pleasure house, resembled a chateau of cards, it 
 was only about thirty feet in depth with a front of
 
 HONORINE 65 
 
 about a hundred. The facade, painted in the Ger- 
 man fashion, imitated a trellis of flowers to the 
 height of the first story, and presented a charming 
 specimen of that Pompadour style which is so well 
 named rococo. It was reached through a long avenue 
 of linden trees. The garden of the pavilion and my 
 kitchen garden resembled the blade of a hatchet, 
 the handle of which was represented by the avenue. 
 My wall would cut off three-quarters of the hatchet. 
 The countess was heartbroken over it, and said, 
 in the midst of her despair: 
 
 " 'My poor Gobain, what sort of a man is this 
 florist?' 
 
 "'Upon my word,' she replied, 'I do not know 
 that it is possible to do anything with him, he seems 
 to hold all women in horror. He is the nephew of a 
 cure in Paris. I have only seen the uncle once, a 
 fine old man of seventy-five, very ugly but very 
 gentle and kind. It may well be that this cure en- 
 courages his nephew, as is said in the quarter, in 
 his passion for flowers so that he may not do worse — ' 
 
 "'But what?' 
 
 " 'Well, your neighbor is a harebrained fellow! — ' 
 said the Gobain, pointing to her own head. 
 
 "The quiet fools are the only men of whom women 
 have no mistrust in matters of sentiment. You 
 will perceive in the end how clearly the count had 
 seen in choosing this role for me. 
 
 " 'But what is the matter with him?' asked the 
 countess. 
 
 " 'He has over-studied,' replied the Gobain, 'he 
 5
 
 66 HONORINE 
 
 has become wild. Finally, he has his reasons for 
 not loving women any more — there, since you wish 
 to know all that is said.' 
 
 " 'Well,' replied Honorine, 'crazy people frighten 
 me less than sensible ones, I will speak to him my- 
 self ! Say to him that I ask him to come and see me. 
 If I do not succeed with him, I will see the cure.' 
 
 "The morning after this conversation, as I was 
 walking in my laid-out garden paths, I caught a 
 glimpse of the curtains of a window on the first 
 floor of the pavilion drawn aside and of the face of 
 a woman looking out curiously. The Gobain ac- 
 costed me. I glanced brusquely at the pavilion and 
 made a brutal gesture, as though I said, — 'Well, it 
 is but little I care for your mistress!' 
 
 " 'Madame,' said the Gobain, returning to render 
 an account of her embassy, 'the crazy fellow asked 
 me to leave him alone, saying that every man was 
 master in his own house, especially when he has no 
 wife.' 
 
 " 'He is doubly right,' replied the countess. 
 
 " 'Yes, but he ended by saying to me, — 'I will 
 go!' when I told him that he would make very un- 
 happy a person who lived a retired life, and who 
 found great diversion in the culture of flowers.' 
 
 "The next morning I was aware by a sign from 
 the Gobain that my visit was expected. After the 
 countess's dejeuner, as she was walking in her pa- 
 vilion, 1 broke through the palings and went to her. 
 I had arrayed myself like a countryman; — old pan- 
 taloons with feet, of gray swanskin, heavy sabots,
 
 HONORINE 67 
 
 an old hunting vest, a cap on my head, a cheap 
 handkerchief around my neck, my hands soiled 
 with earth and a gardener's trowel in my hand. 
 
 " 'Madame, this is the monsieur who is your 
 neighbor!' cried the Gobain. 
 
 "The countess was not frightened. I finally saw 
 that woman whom her own conduct and the count's 
 confidences had rendered such an object of curiosity. 
 We were then in the first days of the month of May. 
 The pure air, the blue sky, the greenness of the first 
 leaves, the scent of the spring, made a frame for this 
 creation of sorrow. When I saw Honorine, I com- 
 prehended the passion of Octave and the truthful- 
 ness of that observation, a celestial flower ! Her 
 whiteness struck me at first by its peculiarity, for 
 there are as many whites as there are blues and reds. 
 In looking at the countess, the eye served to touch 
 that smooth skin in which the blood flowed through 
 bluish threads. At the slightest emotion, this blood 
 spread itself out under the tissues like a vapor in 
 rosy sheets. As we met, the rays of the sun, pass- 
 ing through the thin foliage of the acacias, sur- 
 rounded Honorine with that yellow and liquid 
 nimbus which Raphael and Titian, alone among 
 painters, have represented surrounding the Virgin. 
 Her brown eyes expressed at once tenderness and 
 gaiety; their light was reflected on her countenance 
 through the long, lowered lashes. With the move- 
 ment of these silky lashes Honorine threw a charm 
 upon you, so much was there of feeling, of majesty, 
 of terror, of scorn, in her manner of raising or
 
 68 HONORINE 
 
 lowering this veil of her soul. She could freeze you 
 or animate you by a glance. Her hair of a pale 
 brown, was gathered up negligently upon her head 
 and outlined a forehead like a poet's, large, power- 
 ful, dreamy. The mouth was entirely voluptuous. 
 Finally, as a great privilege, rare in France but 
 common in Italy, all the lines, the contours of this 
 head, had a character of nobility which would be 
 able to arrest the ravages of time. Although slen- 
 der, Honorine was not thin, and her outlines seemed 
 to me to be those which would awaken love again 
 when it thought itself extinguished. She was 
 well entitled to the appellation of mignonne, for she 
 belonged to that species of little, supple women 
 who allow themselves to be taken, flattered, aban- 
 doned and taken up again like cats. Her little feet, 
 which 1 heard on the gravel, made upon it a slight 
 noise which was in keeping with them and which 
 harmonized with the rustling of her dress; there 
 resulted a species of feminine music which en- 
 graved itself on the heart and which would have 
 distinguished her walk among a thousand other 
 women. Her carriage re.alled all her quarterings 
 of nobility with so much haughtiness that in the 
 streets the most audacious of the proletariat would 
 have stood aside for her. Mirthful and tender, 
 proud and imposing, she could not be comprehended 
 otherwise than as endowed with these qualities 
 which seem to exclude each other, and which never- 
 theless left her a child. But the child might become 
 as strong as an angel; and, like the angel, once
 
 HONORINE 69 
 
 wounded in her true nature, she would be impla- 
 cable. The coldness on this visage was doubtless 
 no less than death for those on whom her eyes had 
 smiled, for whom her lips had opened, for those 
 whose souls had welcomed the melody of this voice 
 which gave to words the poetry of song by peculiar 
 accentuations. When I scented the violet perfume 
 which she exhaled, I understood how the memory of 
 this woman had arrested the count on the threshold 
 of debauchery, and how impossible it would be to 
 ever forget her who was truly a flower to the touch, 
 a flower to look at, a flower by scent, and a celes- 
 tial flower for the soul. — Honorine inspired devotion, 
 a devotion chivalric and without recompense. You 
 said to yourself on seeing her, 'Think, and 1 will 
 divine your thoughts; speak, I will obey. If my 
 life, sacrificed in torment, can procure you a day 
 of happiness, take my life; I will smile like the 
 martyrs on their funeral piles, for I will carry that 
 day to God like a pledge which a father would 
 fulfil on recognizing a pleasure given to his child.' 
 Many women arrange for themselves a physiognomy 
 and succeed in producing effects similar to those 
 which you would have experienced on seeing the 
 countess; but, with her, everything proceeded from 
 a delicious naturalness, and this inimitable natural- 
 ness went straight to the heart. If I speak to you 
 thus, it is because the question is here only of her 
 soul, of her thoughts, of the delicacy of her heart, 
 and because you would have reproached me for not 
 having sketched them for you. I was on the point
 
 70 HONORINE 
 
 of forgetting my role of a man reputed crazy, brutal 
 and with very little chivalry. 
 
 " 'They have told me that you love flowers, ma- 
 dame ?' 
 
 " 'I am a workwoman in flowers, monsieur,' she 
 replied. 'After having raised the flowers, I copy 
 them, like a mother who is enough of an artist to 
 give herself the pleasure of painting her children.— 
 Is not that enough to say to you that I am poor, 
 and unable to pay for the concession which I wish 
 to obtain from you ?' 
 
 " 'And how is it,' I replied with the gravity of a 
 magistrate, 'that a person who seems to be as dis- 
 tinguished as you are occupies herself with such a 
 vocation? Have you then, like myself, reasons for 
 keeping your hands busy so that your head may 
 not do any work ?' 
 
 " 'Let us remain on the party wall,' she replied, 
 smiling. 
 
 " 'But we are at the foundations,' I said. 'Is it 
 not necessary that I should know, from our two sor- 
 rows, or, if you prefer, from our two crotchets, 
 which of us should yield to the other ? — Ah ! what a 
 pretty cluster of narcissus ! they are as fresh as this 
 morning!' 
 
 "I declare to you that she had created for herself, 
 as it were, a museum of flowers and shrubs, in which 
 the sun alone penetrated, the arrangement of which 
 had been dictated by an artistic genius, and which 
 the most unsensitive of landlords would have re- 
 spected. The masses of flowers, arranged with all
 
 HONORINE 71 
 
 the science of a florist or disposed in clusters, pro- 
 duced a pleasant effect on the soul. This quiet and 
 solitary garden exhaled consoling balsam and in- 
 spired only gentle thoughts, graceful images, volup- 
 tuous ones even. In it might be recognized that 
 ineffable signature which our true character im- 
 prints upon everything, when nothing constrains 
 us to obey the various hypocrisies, otherwise neces- 
 sary, which society requires. 1 looked alternately 
 at the heap of narcissus and at the countess, seeming 
 to be more attracted by them than by her, to carry 
 out my role. 
 
 " 'You love flowers, then, very much?' she said 
 to me. 
 
 "'They are,' I said, 'the only beings which do 
 not abuse our care and our tenderness.' 
 
 "Then I launched into so violent a tirade, draw- 
 ing a parallel between botanical things and the 
 world, that we found ourselves a thousand leagues 
 from the party wall, and that the countess must 
 have taken me for a suffering soul, wounded and 
 worthy of pity. Nevertheless, at the end of a half- 
 hour my neighbor brought me back naturally to the 
 question ; for the women, when they are not in love, 
 have all the coolness of an old attorney. 
 
 " 'If I allow you to keep the paling fence,' I said 
 to her, 'you will learn all the secrets of the culti- 
 vating which I wish to conceal, for I am seeking for 
 the blue dahlia, the blue rose, I am crazy on blue 
 flowers. Is not blue the favorite color of fine souls.? 
 We are neither of us in our own house; we might
 
 72 HONORINE 
 
 as well put in a little open-work gate which would 
 unite our two gardens. — You love flowers, you would 
 see mine, I should see yours. If you receive no 
 one, 1 am visited only by my uncle, the cure des 
 Blancs-Manteaux.' 
 
 " 'No,' she said, *I do not wish to give anyone 
 the right to enter my garden, my home, at any hour. 
 Come in, you will be always received like a neigh- 
 bor with whom I wish to live on friendly relations; 
 but I love my solitude too much to burden it with 
 any dependence whatever.' 
 
 " 'As you like!' I said. 
 
 "And I leaped over the paling with a bound. 
 
 " 'Of what use would a gate be?' 1 cried when I 
 was on my own ground, turning toward the countess 
 and mocking her with a gesture, with a crazy 
 grimace. 
 
 "I remained two weeks without seeming to think 
 of my neighbor. On a beautiful evening, about the 
 end of the month of May, it happened that we were 
 each on our own side of the paling, walking with 
 slow steps. When we came to the end, it seemed 
 to be necessary to exchange some words of polite- 
 ness ; she found me so completely crushed, plunged 
 into so dolorous a reverie, that she spoke to me of 
 hope, throwing to me some phrases which were like 
 those songs with which nurses put their children to 
 sleep. Then I crossed the hedge and found myself 
 for the second time near her. The countess made 
 me come into her house, wishing to lighten my sor- 
 row. I thus penetrated finally into that sanctuary
 
 HONORINE 73 
 
 in which everything was in harmony with the 
 woman whom I have endeavored to depict to you. 
 There reigned throughout an exquisite simplicity. 
 This pavilion, in its interior, was indeed the pretty 
 little box invented by the art of the eighteenth 
 century for the cheerful debauchery of a grand 
 seigneur. The walls of the dining-room, situated 
 on the ground floor, were covered with paintings in 
 fresco representing flowers on trellis work, of an 
 admirable and marvelous execution. The wall of 
 the staircase presented charming decorations in 
 cameo. The little salon, which was opposite to the 
 dining-room, was greatly damaged, but the countess 
 had hung on the walls curious old tapestries that 
 had formed parts of ancient screens. A bath-room 
 was adjoining. Upstairs, there was only one 
 chamber with its dressing-room and a library meta- 
 morphosed into a workroom. The kitchen was 
 concealed in the basement over which the pavilion 
 rose, for it was necessary to mount to it by a perron 
 of several steps. The balustrades of the gallery 
 and its garlands of Pompadour flowers disguised the 
 roof, of which nothing could be seen but the pin- 
 nacles in lead. In this retreat, you were a hundred 
 leagues from Paris. Were it not for the bitter 
 smile which sometimes played over the beautiful 
 red lips of this pale woman, you would have believed 
 in the happiness of this violet buried in its forest of 
 flowers. In the course of a few days, we arrived at 
 a state of confidence which sprang from our being 
 neighbors and from the certainty which the countess
 
 74 HONORINE 
 
 had of my complete indifference to women. One 
 look might have compromised everything, and never 
 did a single thought of her appear in my eyes! 
 Honorine wished to see in me something like an old 
 friend. Her manners with me proceeded from a 
 sort of compassion. Her looks, her voice, her con- 
 versation, everything revealed the fact that she was 
 a thousand leagues from those coquetries which the 
 most severe woman would perhaps have permitted 
 herself under similar circumstances. It was not 
 long before she gave me the right of entrance into 
 the charming workroom in which she made her 
 flowers, a retreat crowded with books and curiosi- 
 ties, adorned like a boudoir, and the richness of 
 which redeemed the commonness of the working 
 utensils. The countess had, in the long run, poet- 
 ized, as it were — which is the antipodes of poetry 
 — a manufacture. Of all the vocations which 
 women can pursue, that of making artificial flowers 
 is, perhaps, the one of which the details permit 
 them to display the most gracefulness. To color 
 them, a woman must lean over a table and give all 
 her faculties, with a certain amount of intenseness, 
 to this semi-painting. Tapestry weaving, followed 
 as assiduously as it must be by a workwoman who 
 wishes to earn her living by it, is apt to produce pul- 
 monary consumption, or curvature of the spine. 
 The engraving of plates of music is one of the 
 labors the most tyrannical by its minuteness, by the 
 care and the intelligence which it requires. Sew- 
 ing, embroidery, do not give the workwoman thirty
 
 HONORINE 75 
 
 SOUS a day. But the manufacture of flowers and 
 that of feminine fashions necessitate a multitude 
 of movements, of gestures, of ideas even, which 
 leave a pretty woman still in her own sphere; she 
 is still herself, she may talk, laugh, sing, or think. 
 Certainly there was an artistic sentiment in the 
 manner in which the countess disposed on a long 
 table of yellow pine the myriad of colored petals 
 which served to compose the flowers upon which she 
 had decided. Her cups of color were of white porce- 
 lain, and always clean, ranged in such a manner as 
 to permit the eye to fmd immediately the desired 
 shade in the whole gamut of tints. The noble artist 
 thus economized her time. A pretty piece of furni- 
 ture in ebony inlaid with ivory, with a hundred 
 Venetian drawers, contained the matrices of steel 
 with which she struck the leaves or certain petals. 
 A magnificent Japanese bowl contained the paste, 
 which she never allowed to become sour, and to 
 which she had adapted a cover with a hinge so light, 
 so m.ovable, that she lifted it with the tip of her 
 finger. The iron and the brass wire were kept in a 
 little drawer of her work-table, before her. The 
 living flower, with which she proposed to compete, 
 rose before her eyes in a Venetian glass, swelling 
 out like a calix upon its stem. She had a passion 
 for the most difficult masterpieces, she undertook 
 the most impossible tasks, bunches of grapes, the 
 most delicate corolla, heath, nectarines of the most 
 capricious shades. Her hands, as active as her 
 thoughts, went from her table to her flower as
 
 76 HONORINE 
 
 lightly as those of an artist on the keys of a piano. 
 Her fingers seemed to be fairies, to make use of an 
 expression of Perrault, so well did they conceal, 
 under the gracefulness of the movement, the differ- 
 ent forces of twisting, of application of weight re- 
 quired by each work, while adapting with instinc- 
 tive clearness each movement to the result desired. 
 I did not weary of the pleasure of admiring her 
 while she composed a flower as soon as all its parts 
 had been assembled before her, and perfecting, 
 covering a stem with down, and attaching the 
 leaves to it. She displayed the genius of a painter 
 in her audacious enterprises, she imitated faded 
 flowers, yellow leaves; she struggled with the field 
 flowers, with all that were the most natural, the 
 most complicated in their simplicity. 
 
 "'This art,' she said to me, 'is still in its in- 
 fancy. If Parisian women had a little of that 
 genius which the slavery of the harem requires in 
 the women of the Orient, they would give a com- 
 plete language to the flowers which they wear on 
 their heads. I have made, for my own artistic sat- 
 isfaction, faded flowers with the leaves of the color 
 of Florentine bronze, as they are found before or 
 after the winter. — This wreath, on the head of a 
 young woman whose life has been a disappointment, 
 or who is devoured by a secret grief, would it 
 lack poetical meaning? How many things could a 
 woman not express by her coiffure ? Are there not 
 flowers for the drunken bacchantes, flowers for the 
 gloomy and rigid pious souls, thoughtful flowers for
 
 HONORINE ^^ 
 
 wearied women ? Botany may express, it seems 
 to me, all the sensations and the thoughts of the 
 soul, even the most delicate ones!* 
 
 "She made use of me to stamp the leaves, to cut 
 out, to prepare the wire for the stems. My pre- 
 tended wish for distraction soon rendered me skilful. 
 We talked all the time we were working. When I 
 had nothing to do, I read the news to her, for I could 
 not lose sight of my role, and I feigned the man 
 wearied with life, worn out by griefs, morose, scep- 
 tical, bitter. My appearance procured me adorable 
 little jests upon the purely physical resemblance 
 — excepting the lame foot — to Lord Byron. It was 
 accepted as beyond question, that her own unhappi- 
 nesses, concerning which she wished to preserve 
 the most profound silence, outweighed mine, 
 although already the causes for my misanthropy 
 would have satisfied Young or Job. I will not 
 speak to you of the sentiments of shame which tor- 
 tured me in thus assuming for my heart, as do the 
 beggars in the streets for their limbs, false scars in 
 order thus to excite the pity of this admirable woman. 
 I soon came to understand all the extent of my de- 
 votion in comprehending all the baseness of spies. 
 The testimonials of sympathy which I then received 
 would have consoled the greatest of misfortunes. 
 This charming creature, severed from the world, 
 alone for so many years, had, outside of love, treas- 
 ures of affection to bestow, she offered them to me 
 with childlike effusion, with a pity which certainly 
 would have filled with bitterness the roue who might
 
 78 HONORINE 
 
 have loved her; for, alas! she was all charity, all 
 compassion. Her renunciation of love, her terror of 
 what is called happiness for women, broke out with 
 as much force as ingenuousness. These happy days 
 proved to me that the friendship of women is much 
 superior to their love. I permitted the confidences 
 of my griefs to be drawn from me with as many 
 affectations as the young ladies assume when seating 
 themselves at the piano, so conscious are they of 
 the weariness which they are about to inflict. As 
 you may imagine, the necessity of overcoming my 
 repugnance to speak had ended by forcing the count- 
 ess to draw closer the bonds of our intimacy; but 
 she found again in me so completely her own an- 
 tipathy to love, that she seemed to me to be happy 
 because of the chance which had sent to her in her 
 solitary island a species of man Friday. Perhaps 
 the solitude had commenced to weigh upon her. 
 Nevertheless, she was without the slightest co- 
 quetry, she had no longer anything of the woman, 
 she was no longer conscious of any heart, she said 
 to me, but in the ideal world in which she sought 
 refuge. Involuntarily I drew the comparison be- 
 tween these two existences, that of the count, all 
 action, all agitation, all emotion ; that of the count- 
 ess, quite passive, all inactivity, all motionless. 
 The woman and the man admirably obeyed each 
 his own nature. My misanthropy authorized me 
 to launch against men and women certain cynical in- 
 vectives, which 1 permitted myself, hoping thereby 
 to bring Honorine to some avowals; but she did not
 
 HONORINE 79 
 
 allow herself to be drawn into any trap, and I began 
 to comprehend that obstinacy of a mule, more common 
 among women than is thought. 
 
 "'The Orientals are right,' I said to her one 
 evening, 'in shutting you up and in considering you 
 as only the instruments of their pleasures. Europe 
 has been well punished for having admitted you as 
 part of the world, and for accepting you on a footing 
 of equality. In my opinion the woman is the most 
 dishonest and the most contemptible being that can 
 be encountered. And it is to that cause, moreover, 
 that she owes her charms; — there is very little 
 pleasure in hunting a domestic animal! When a 
 woman has inspired a man with a passion, she is 
 forever sacred to him ; she is, in his eyes, clothed 
 with an imprescriptible privilege. With man, the 
 gratitude for past pleasures is eternal. If he find 
 again his mistress old, or unworthy of him, this 
 woman still has certain rights over his heart; but, 
 for you women, a man whom you have loved is no 
 longer anything; more than that, he is guilty of an 
 unpardonable wrong, that of living! — You dare not 
 avow it ; but you all have in your heart that thought 
 which the popular calumnies called tradition ascribe 
 to the Lady of the Tour de Nesle. — What a pity it 
 is that you cannot nourish yourself on love as you 
 can on fruits! and that, of a repast partaken, there 
 nothing could remain to you but the feeling of 
 pleasure! — ' 
 
 "'God,' she said, 'has doubtless reserved this 
 perfect pleasure for Paradise. — But,' she went on,
 
 80 HONORINE 
 
 'if your argument seems to you very intelligent, it 
 has for me the misfortune of being false. What 
 are those women who give themselves up to several 
 loves ?' she asked me, looking at me as the Virgin of 
 Ingres looked at Louis XIII. offering her his kingdom. 
 
 " 'You are a genuine comedienne,' I replied, 'for 
 you have just given me one of those looks which 
 would make the fortune of an actress. But, beauti- 
 ful as you are, you have loved; therefore, you 
 forget. ' 
 
 " 'I,' she replied, eluding my question, 'I am not 
 a woman, I am a nun, of the age of seventy -two 
 years. ' 
 
 " 'How then can you affirm so authoritatively 
 that you feel with more sensitiveness than I ? Un- 
 happiness for women has only one form, they con- 
 sider as misfortunes only deceivings of the heart.' 
 
 "She looked at me with a gentle air, and did as 
 do all women, when, caught between the two horns 
 of a dilemma, or clutched in the grasp of truth, they 
 persist none the less in their will; she said to me: 
 
 " '1 am a nun, and you speak to me of a world in 
 which I can no longer set foot' 
 
 " 'Not even in thought?* I said to her. 
 
 " 'Is the world so worthy of being envied?' she 
 replied. 'Oh! when my thoughts wander, they go 
 much higher. — The angel of perfection, the beautiful 
 Gabriel, often sings in my heart,' she said. 'I 
 should be rich, I would work none the less, so that 
 I might not mount too often on the variegated wings 
 of the angel and fly away into the kingdom of fancy.
 
 HONORINE 8r 
 
 There are certain contemplations which are our un- 
 doing, we women ! I owe much of my tranquillity to 
 my flowers, though they do not always succeed in 
 occupying me. On certain days, I feel my soul 
 invaded by an objectless expectation ; I cannot ban- 
 ish a thought which takes possession of me, which 
 seems to make my fingers heavy. I believe that a 
 great event is preparing, that my life is about to 
 change; I listen in empty space, I look into the 
 shadows, I am without interest in my work, and I 
 find again, after a thousand fatigues, life — daily 
 life. Is it a forewarning from Heaven ? That is 
 what I ask myself — * 
 
 "After three months of the struggle between two 
 diplomatists, one concealed under the skin of a 
 melancholy juvenile and the other a woman ren- 
 dered invincible by loathing, I told the count that 
 it appeared to be impossible to make this tortoise 
 come out of her house. It would be necessary to 
 break her shell. The evening before, in a last 
 discussion, perfectly friendly, the countess had ex- 
 claimed: 
 
 " 'Lucretia wrote with her dagger and her blood 
 the first word of the charter of all women : Liberty !' 
 
 "The count gave me from this time carte blanche. 
 
 " 'I have sold for a hundred francs the flowers 
 and bonnets which I have made this week !' said 
 Honorine to me, joyously, one Saturday evening 
 when I went to see her in the little salon on the 
 ground floor, the gildings of which had been renewed 
 by the pretended owner. 
 6
 
 82 HONORINE 
 
 <<i 
 
 'It was ten o'clock. A July twilight and a 
 magnificent moon contributed their clouded light. 
 There were whiffs of mingled perfumes that caressed 
 the soul, the countess clinked in her hand the five 
 pieces of gold received from a false dealer in milli- 
 nery, another ally of Octave, whom a judge, Mon- 
 sieur Popinot, had found for him. 
 
 " 'To earn one's livelihood while amusing one's 
 self,' she said, *to be free, when men, armed with 
 their laws, have wished to make slaves of us ! Oh ! 
 every Saturday I have emotions of pride. In fact, 
 I love Monsieur Gaudissart's gold pieces as much 
 as Lord Byron, your twin, loved those of Murray.' 
 
 " 'It is scarcely a woman's role,' I replied. 
 
 " 'Bah! am I a woman? I am a youth endowed 
 with a tender soul, that is all ; a youth whom no 
 woman can torment — ' 
 
 " 'Your life is a negation of your entire being,' I 
 replied. 'What, you for whom God has expended 
 his most curious treasures of love and of beauty, 
 do you not desire sometimes — ?' 
 
 " 'What?' she asked, sufficiently mistrustful at a 
 phrase which, for the first time, contradicted my 
 assumed character. 
 
 " 'A pretty child with curling hair, coming, going 
 among these flowers, like a flower of life and of love, 
 crying to you: "Mamma!" — ' 
 
 "I waited for a reply. A silence somewhat too 
 prolonged made me perceive the terrible effect of my 
 words, which the darkness had concealed from me. — 
 Reclining on her divan, the countess had not fainted.
 
 HONORINE 83 
 
 but was chilled by a nervous attack, the first shiver- 
 ings of which although gentle, like everything 
 which emanated from her, resembled, as she after- 
 wards said, the first effects of the most subtle of 
 poisons. I called Madame Gobain, who came and 
 carried her mistress away, placed her upon her bed, 
 unlaced her, undressed her, restored her, not to life 
 but to the consciousness of a horrible pain. I 
 walked up and down the alley which ran in front of 
 the house, weeping, doubting of success. I would 
 have resigned my role of bird-catcher, so impru- 
 dently accepted. Madame Gobain, who came down 
 and found me with my face covered with tears, went 
 back promptly to say to the countess : 
 
 " 'Madame, what has happened .-' Monsieur Mau- 
 rice is weeping bitterly, like a child.' 
 
 "Stimulated by the dangerous interpretation 
 which might be put upon our mutual agitation, she 
 found a superhuman strength, put on a wrapper, 
 descended and came to me. 
 
 " 'You are not the cause of this attack,' she said 
 to me; *I am subject to spasms, a species of cramp 
 of the heart — ' 
 
 " 'And you wish to conceal from me your griefs.?' 
 — I said to her, drying my tears, and in that voice 
 which does not dissemble. 'Have you not just told 
 me that you have been a mother, that you have had 
 the sorrow of losing your child?' 
 
 " 'Marie!' she cried suddenly, ringing the bell. 
 
 "The Gobain made her appearance. 
 
 "'Some lights, and the tea,' she said, with the
 
 84 HONORINE 
 
 coolness of a lady armed with pride by that atro- 
 cious British education which is known to you 
 well. 
 
 "When the Gobain had lit the candles and closed 
 the shades, the countess presented to me a counte- 
 nance which revealed nothing; her indomitable 
 pride, her gravity of a savage, had already resumed 
 their sway; she said to me: 
 
 " *Do you know why I love Lord Byron so much ? 
 — He suffered as the animals suffer. Of what use 
 is a complaint when it is not an elegy like that of 
 Manfred, a bitter jesting like that of Don Juan, a 
 reverie like that of Childe Harold? No one will 
 know anything of me! — My heart is a poem that I 
 carry to God !' 
 
 '"If I wished—' I said. 
 
 " 'If?' she repeated. 
 
 " 'I am not interested in anything,' I replied, 'I 
 cannot be curious; but, if I wished, I would know 
 to-morrow all your secrets.' 
 
 " 'I defy you to do so!' she said with an ill-con- 
 cealed anxiety. 
 
 " 'Are you in earnest?' 
 
 "'Certainly,' she said, shaking her head, 'I 
 should know if this crime be possible.' 
 
 " 'In the first place, madame,' I replied, indicating 
 to her her hands, 'those pretty fingers, which reveal 
 clearly enough that you are not a young workwoman, 
 were they made for labor? Then, you call yourself 
 Madame Gobain, you who, before me, the other day, 
 when you received a letter said to Marie, — 'Here, it
 
 HONORINE 85 
 
 is for you,' Marie is the true Madame Gobain. 
 Tiierefore, you hide your own name under that of 
 your housekeeper. Oh ! madame, from me you need 
 fear nothing. You have in me the most devoted 
 friend that you will ever have — Friend, you under- 
 stand? 1 give to this word its holy and touching 
 meaning, so profaned in France, where we baptize 
 with it our enemies. This friend, who will defend 
 you against everything, wishes you to be as happy 
 as a woman like you should be. Who knows if the 
 pain I caused you involuntarily was not a voluntary 
 action ?* 
 
 "'Yes,' she replied with a menacing audacity, 
 *I wish it, you may become curious, and tell me all 
 that you can learn about me, but — ' she said, rais- 
 ing her finger, 'you will tell me also through what 
 sources you have derived this information. The 
 preservation of the feeble happiness which I enjoy 
 here depends upon your steps.' 
 
 " 'That is to say, that you would fly — ' 
 
 " 'As quickly as possible, and to the New 
 World—' 
 
 "'Where you would be, ' I interrupted her, 'at 
 the mercy of the brutality of the passions which 
 you would inspire. Is it not the quality of genius 
 and of beauty to shine, to attract all regards, to 
 excite covetousness and wickedness.? Paris is the 
 desert without the Bedouins; Paris is the only 
 spot in the world in which one can conceal him- 
 self when obliged to live by his own labor. Of 
 what do you complain? Who am I? one domestic
 
 86 HONORINE 
 
 the more, I am Monsieur Gobain, that is all. If 
 you have some duel on hand, you will require a 
 second.' 
 
 " 'Nevertheless, discover who I am, I have 
 already said: — / wish it! now, I entreat you,' she 
 repeated with a grace, which you always have at 
 your command," said the consul, looking at the 
 ladies. 
 
 " 'Very well, to-morrow, at this hour, I will tell 
 you what I have discovered,' I replied. 'But do not 
 conceive a hatred against me. Will you do as the 
 other women do ?' 
 
 " 'What is it the other women do?' 
 
 " 'They command us to make immense sacrifices, 
 and, when they are accomplished, they reproach us 
 with them a little later, as though they were 
 injuries.' 
 
 " 'They are right, if what they have demanded 
 of you have seemed to you to be sacrifices — ' she 
 replied, maliciously. 
 
 " 'Replace the word sacrifices by the word efforts, 
 and — * 
 
 " 'That would be,' she said, 'an impertinence.' 
 
 " 'Forgive me,' I said to her, 'I forgot that women 
 and the Pope are infallible.' 
 
 " 'Mon Dieu!' she said after a long pause, 'two 
 words only can trouble this peace so dearly pur- 
 chased, and which I enjoy as if it were a fraud — ' 
 
 "She rose, paying no more attention to me. 
 
 "'Whereto go?' she said. 'What to become — 
 Will it be necessary to leave this soft retreat,
 
 HONORINE 87 
 
 prepared with so much care that 1 might finish my 
 days in it?' 
 
 " 'Finish your days in it?' I said to her with a 
 visible terror, 'Has it then never occurred to you 
 that there will come a time when you can no longer 
 work, or when the price of flowers and of milli- 
 nery will have fallen through competition? — ' 
 
 " 'I have already a thousand ecus of savings !' she 
 said. 
 
 " 'Mon Dieu ! how many privations this sum must 
 represent? — ' I cried. 
 
 "'Till to-morrow,' she said to me, 'leave me. 
 This evening I am not myself, I wish to be alone. 
 Should 1 not gather my forces in case of misfortune? 
 for, if you should know something, the others who 
 have informed you, and then— Adieu,' she said, in 
 a quick tone and with an imperative gesture. 
 
 "'To-morrow, the combat,' I replied smiling, 
 so as not to lose the careless character which I had 
 given to this scene. 
 
 "But, in going away by the long avenue, I re- 
 peated to myself: 
 
 " 'To-morrow, the combat' 
 
 "And the count, whom I went to find, as every 
 evening, on the boulevard, cried likewise: 
 
 " 'To-morrow, the combat' 
 
 "Octave's anxiety equaled that of Honorine. 
 We remained, he and I, until two o'clock in the 
 morning, walking up and down along the moats of 
 the Bastille, like two generals who, the evening be- 
 fore a battle, weigh all the chances, examine the
 
 88 HONORINE 
 
 ground, and recognize that in the midst of the com- 
 bat the victory may be decided by an accident to 
 be taken advantage of. These two beings, violently 
 separated, were both watching, the one in the hope, 
 the other in the dread, of a reunion. The dramas 
 of life are not in the events, they are in the feelings 
 they take place in the heart, or, if you prefer, in that 
 immense world which we must call the spiritual 
 world. Octave and Honor ine acted, lived exclu- 
 sively in this world of the great intelligences. 
 
 "1 was prompt. At ten o'clock in the evening, 
 for the first time, I was admitted into a charming 
 chamber, white and blue, into the nest of this 
 wounded dove. The countess looked at me, wished 
 me to speak, and was terrified by my respectful air. 
 
 " 'Madame la Comtesse — ' I said to her, smiling 
 gravely. 
 
 "The poor woman, who had risen, fell back in 
 her armchair and remained there in an attitude of 
 distress which I could have wished some great 
 painter to seize. 
 
 "You are,' I said continuing, 'the wife of the 
 most noble of men and one of the greatest consider- 
 ation, of a man who is accepted as great, but who 
 is much more so toward you than he is in the eyes 
 of the world. You and he, you are two lofty char- 
 acters. Where do you think you are, here?' I 
 asked her. 
 
 " 'In my house,' she replied, opening eyes which 
 were dilated by astonishment. 
 
 "'In the house of Comte Octave!' 1 replied.
 
 HONORINE 89 
 
 'We have been tricked. Monsieur Lenormand, the 
 clerk of the court, is not the true proprietor, it is 
 the assumed name of your husband. The admir- 
 able peacefulness which you enjoy here is the work 
 of the count, the money that you earn comes from 
 the count, and his protection extends to the very 
 slightest details of your existence. Your husband 
 has saved you in the eyes of the world, he has 
 given plausible motives for your absence, he 
 ostensibly hopes that you were not lost in the ship- 
 wreck of the Cecile, the vessel upon which you 
 embarked to go to Havana, in order to secure the 
 inheritance of an old relative who might possibly 
 have forgotten you; you traveled in the company of 
 two women of his family and of an old steward! 
 The count claims that he has sent agents to those 
 distant localities, and that he has received letters 
 which give him a great deal of hope. — He takes, to 
 conceal you from all eyes, as many precautions as 
 you, yourself. — In short, he obeys you — ' 
 
 "'Enough,' she replied. 'I wish to know only 
 one thing more. From whom do you obtain these 
 details ?' 
 
 ***Eh! Moil Dieu ! madame, my uncle secured 
 the place of secretary in the office of the commissary 
 of police of this quarter for a young man without 
 fortune. This young man has told me everything. 
 If you should leave this pavilion secretly this even- 
 ing, your husband will know where you go, and his 
 protection will follow you everywhere. How could 
 a woman of intelligence be able to believe that the
 
 90 HONORINE 
 
 shopkeepers could pay as much for flowers and bon- 
 nets as they sell them for ? If you had asked of 
 them a thousand ecus for a bouquet, they would 
 have given it to you ! Never was the tenderness of 
 a mother more ingenious than that of your husband. 
 I have learned from the concierge of your house that 
 the count often comes, when everything is quiet, 
 behind the hedge, to watch the light of your night 
 lamp! Your great cashmere shawl is worth six 
 thousand francs. — The merchant from whom you 
 buy your toilet articles sells you as second-hand 
 goods that come from the very best manufactories — 
 In short, you here realize perfectly, Venus in the 
 toils of Vulcan ; but you are caught in them alone, 
 and by the invention of a sublime generosity, sub- 
 lime for the last seven years, and at every moment. ' 
 
 "The countess trembled as trembles a captive 
 swallow, and which, in the hand in which it is held, 
 stretches its neck, looks around it with a terrified 
 eye. She was agitated by a nervous convulsion, 
 and examined me with a mistrustful look. Her dry 
 eyes emitted a light that was almost warm; but she 
 was still a woman! — there came a moment in which 
 her tears broke forth, and she wept, not because 
 she was touched, she wept at her helplessness, she 
 wept with despair. She had thought herself inde- 
 pendent and free, marriage weighed upon her like 
 the prison upon the captive. 
 
 "'I will go,' she said, through her tears, 'he 
 forces me to it, I will go there where, certainly, no 
 one will follow me!'
 
 HONORINE 91 
 
 "'Ah!' I said, 'you will kill yourself — Come, 
 madame, you must have very powerful reasons for 
 not wishing to return to Comte Octave's house.' 
 
 "'Oh! certainly!' 
 
 " 'Well, tell them to me, tell them to my uncle; 
 you will have in us two devoted counselors. If my 
 uncle is a priest in a confessional, he never is in 
 a salon. We will listen to you, we will endeavor to 
 find a solution to the problems which you will pro- 
 pose to us : and, if you are the dupe or the victim 
 of some misunderstanding, perhaps we may be able 
 to clear it up. Your soul seems to me pure ; but, if 
 you have committed a fault, you have well expiated 
 it. — Finally, remember that you have in me the 
 most sincere friend. If you wish to save yourself 
 from the tyranny of the count, 1 will furnish you 
 with the means, he will never find you.' 
 
 " 'Oh! there is the convent,' she said. 
 
 " 'Yes, but the count, become Minister of State, 
 would cause you to be refused by all the convents 
 in the world. Although he is very powerful, I 
 would save you from him, — but — when you have 
 demonstrated to me that you cannot, that you should 
 not, return to him. Oh! do not think that you 
 would fly from his power to fall into mine,' 1 went 
 on, as I received from her a horrible glance of mis- 
 trust and one full of an exaggerated nobility. 'You 
 will have peace, solitude, and independence; in 
 short, you will be as free and as respected as if you 
 were an ugly and wicked old maid. 1 shall not be 
 able, myself, to see you without your consent'
 
 92 MONOKINE 
 
 " 'And how? by what means?' 
 
 " 'That, madame, is my secret. I do not deceive 
 you in the least, of that you may be certain. 
 Demonstrate to me that this life is the only one 
 which you can lead, that it is preferable to that of 
 the Comtesse Octave, rich, honored, in one of the 
 finest hotels in Paris, adored by her husband, a 
 happy mother — and I will decide your cause in your 
 favor. ' 
 
 " 'But,' she said, 'will there ever be a man who 
 will comprehend me? — ' 
 
 " 'No,' I replied. 'Therefore I have called in re- 
 ligion to judge us, the cure of the Blancs-Manteaux 
 is a saint, seventy-five years of age. My uncle is 
 not the grand inquisitor, he is Saint- John; but he 
 will make himself Fenelon for you, the Fenelon who 
 said to the Due de Bourgogne : — "Eat veal on Friday ; 
 but be a Christian, monseigneur !" ' 
 
 " 'No, monsieur, the convent is my last resource 
 and my sole asylum. There is no one but God who 
 can comprehend me. No man, were he Saint- 
 Augustine, the most tender of the Fathers of the 
 Church, could enter into the scruples of my con- 
 science, which for me are the insurmountable cir- 
 cles of Dante's inferno. Another than my husband, 
 another, however unworthy of this offering he may 
 have been, has had all my love ! He has not had 
 it, for he did not take it; 1 gave it to him as a 
 mother gives to her child a marvelous toy, which 
 the child breaks. For me, there were not two loves. 
 Love for certain souls makes no attempts; either it
 
 HONORINE 93 
 
 is, or it is not When it shows itself, when it rises, 
 it is all complete. Well, this life of eighteen 
 months was for me a life of eighteen years, I brought 
 to it all the faculties of my being, they were not im- 
 poverished by their effusion, they were exhausted 
 in that deceitful intimacy where I alone was frank. 
 For me, the cup of happiness is neither emptied nor 
 empty, nothing can fill it again, for it is broken. I 
 am out of the combat, I have no longer any weapons 
 — After having thus given myself up completely, 
 what am I ? the remnant of a feast. They gave me 
 only one name, Honorine, as I have but one heart. 
 My husband has had the young girl, an unworthy 
 lover has had the woman, there is nothing left! 
 Allow myself to be loved? that is the great word 
 which you are going to say to me. Oh ! I am still 
 something, and I revolt at the idea of being a prosti- 
 tute! Yes, I have seen clearly in the light of the 
 conflagration; and, yes, — I could conceive of yield- 
 ing to the love of another ; but to Octave ? — oh ! 
 never,' 
 
 " 'Oh! you love him,' I said to her. 
 
 " 'I esteem him, I respect him, I venerate him, he 
 has never done me the least harm ; he is good, he 
 is tender; but I can no longer love him — However,' 
 she said, 'let us speak no more of that. Discussion 
 makes everything little. I will convey to you in 
 writing, my ideas on this subject; for, at this mo- 
 ment, they suffocate me, I have a fever, my feet are 
 in the ashes of my Paraclete. Everything that I see, 
 those things which I believed I had won by my
 
 94 HONORINE 
 
 labor, recall to me now everything that I wish to 
 forget. Ah! I shall have to fly from here, as I went 
 away from my house. ' 
 
 "'To go where?' 1 said. 'Can a woman exist 
 without a protector? At thirty, in all the glory of 
 beauty, rich with forces which you do not suspect, 
 full of tenderness to bestow, will you go to live in 
 the desert where I can hide you? — Remain in peace. 
 The count, who in five years has not shown himself 
 here, will never enter here without your consent 
 You have for a guarantee of your tranquillity, his 
 sublime life for the last nine years. You can then 
 deliberate in all security on your future, with my 
 uncle and me. My uncle is as powerful as a Min- 
 ister of State. Calm yourself then, do not exagger- 
 ate your misfortune. A priest whose head has 
 grown white in the exercise of his sacred functions, 
 is not a child, you will be comprehended by one to 
 whom all passions have been confided for nearly 
 fifty years, and who weighs in his hands the bur- 
 dened hearts of kings and princes. If he is severe 
 under the stole, my uncle will be, before your 
 flowers, as gentle as they, and indulgent as his 
 Divine Master.' 
 
 "I left the countess at midnight, I left her in 
 appearance calm, but sad, and cherishing secret 
 dispositions which no perspicacity could divine. I 
 found the count a few steps away, in the RueSaint- 
 Maur, for he had quitted the designated locality on 
 the boulevard, drawn toward me by an invincible 
 force.
 
 HONORINE 95 
 
 " 'What a night the poor child is going to pass !' 
 he cried, when 1 had recounted to him the scene 
 which had just taken place. 'If I should go there/ 
 he said, 'if, suddenly, she should see me?' 
 
 " 'At this moment, she is a woman to throw her- 
 self out of the window,' I replied. 'The countess is 
 of those Lucretias who will not survive a violation, 
 even from a man to whom they have given them- 
 selves. ' 
 
 " 'You are young,' he answered me. 'You do not 
 know that the will, in a soul agitated by such cruel 
 debates, is like the waves of a lake over which a 
 tempest is passing, the wind changes at every 
 moment, and the current sets now toward one shore 
 and now toward another. During this night, there 
 are as many chances that, on seeing me, Honorine 
 will throw herself into my arms as that she will 
 throw herself out of the window.' 
 
 " 'And you would accept this alternative ?' 1 asked 
 him. 
 
 " 'Come,' he replied, 'I have, at my house, to en- 
 able me to wait till to-morrow evening, a dose of 
 opium which Desplein has prepared for me so that 
 1 may sleep without danger !' 
 
 "The next day, at noon, the Gobain brought me 
 a letter, saying that the countess, worn out with 
 fatigue, had gone to rest at six o'clock and that, 
 thanks to a draught of almond-milk, prepared by 
 the druggist, she was sleeping. Here is that let- 
 ter, I have kept a copy of it, — for, mademoiselle," 
 said the consul, addressing Camille Maupin, "you
 
 96 HONORINE 
 
 are acquainted with the resources of art, the tricks 
 of style, and the efforts of very many writers who do 
 not lack skilfulness in their compositions; but you 
 will recognize that literature would not know how 
 to find such writings as this in its affected entrails; 
 there is nothing so terrible as the true. See what 
 this woman wrote, or, rather, this sorrow: 
 
 "'Monsieur Maurice: 
 
 " 'I know all that your uncle could say to me, he 
 is not better informed than my conscience. Con- 
 science is in man the interpreter for God, I know 
 that if I do not reconcile myself with Octave, I shall 
 be damned: such is the decree of the religious law. 
 The civil law commands me to obedience, whatever 
 happens. If my husband does not repulse me, every- 
 thing is said, the world will consider me as pure, as 
 virtuous, whatever 1 may have done. Yes, marriage 
 has this of the sublime in it, that society ratifies 
 the husband's pardon ; but it has forgotten that it 
 is necessary that the pardon should be accepted. 
 On legal, on religious, on worldly grounds, I should 
 return to Octave. If we confine ourselves to the 
 human question, is there not something cruel in 
 refusing him happiness, in depriving him of chil- 
 dren, in effacing his name from the golden book of 
 the peerage .'' My sorrows, my repugnances, my 
 sentiments, all my egotism — for I know myself to be 
 egotistical — should be immolated for the benefit of 
 the family. 1 should be a mother, the caresses of 
 my children would dry a great many tears ! I should
 
 HONORINE 97 
 
 be very happy, I should certainly be honored, I 
 should pass by, proud and opulent, in a brilliant 
 equipage! I should have domestics, a hotel, a house- 
 hold, I should be the queen of as many festivals as 
 there are weeks in the year. The world would give 
 me welcome. In short, I should not remount into 
 the patrician heaven, I should not even have 
 descended from it. Thus God, the law, society, 
 everything is in accord. Against what do you 
 rebel .'' is said to me from the height of Heaven, 
 from the pulpit, from the tribunal and from the 
 throne, the august intervention of which would be 
 invoked, if necessary, by the count. Your uncle 
 would even speak to me, if it were required, of a 
 certain celestial grace which would inundate my 
 heart when 1 should be conscious of the pleasure of 
 having done my duty. God, the law, the world. 
 Octave, wish that I should live, is it not so.? Well, 
 if there be no other difficulty, my reply will cut 
 through all; I will not live! I shall become very 
 white, very innocent, for I shall be in my shroud, 
 adorned with the irreproachable paleness of death. 
 There is not here the least obstinacy of a mule. 
 This obstinacy of a mule, of which you have accused 
 me, laughingly, is, in a woman, the effect of a cer- 
 tainty, a vision of the future. If my husband, through 
 love, has the sublime generosity to forget everything, 
 I will not forget, I will not! Does forgetfulness de- 
 pend upon us? When a widow marries, love makes 
 her a young girl, she marries a man beloved; but I 
 cannot love the count. Everything is in that, you 
 7
 
 98 HONORINE 
 
 see. Every time that my eyes met his I should see 
 in them forever my fault, even when the eyes of my 
 husband were full of love. The greatness of his 
 generosity would attest before me the greatness of 
 my crime. My eyes, always mistrustful, would be 
 forever reading an invisible sentence. I should have 
 in my heart confused souvenirs which would com- 
 bat each other. Never would marriage awaken in 
 my being the cruel delights, the mortal delirium of 
 passion ; I should kill my husband by my coldness, 
 by comparisons which would suggest themselves, 
 though concealed in the depths of my consciousness. 
 Oh! on that day when, in a line in the forehead, in 
 a saddened look, in an imperceptible gesture, 1 
 should perceive some involuntary reproach, even 
 though repressed, nothing would retain me; — I 
 should be lying with my head crushed on a pave- 
 ment which I should fmd more kindly than my hus- 
 band. This horrible and gentle death would perhaps 
 be entirely due to my over-sensitiveness. I should 
 die, perhaps, the victim of some momentary impa- 
 tience which an event had caused Octave, or de- 
 ceived by an unjust suspicion. Alas! I might, 
 perhaps, mistake a proof of love for a proof of con- 
 tempt. What a double torture! Octave would be 
 forever doubting me, 1 should be forever doubting 
 him. I should oppose to him, quite involuntarily, a 
 rival unworthy of him, a man whom I despise, but 
 who has made me know voluptuousnesses engraved 
 in characters of fire, of which I am ashamed, and 
 which I am irresistibly compelled to remember. Is
 
 HONORINE 99 
 
 this enough to reveal to you my heart ? No one, 
 monsieur, can prove to me that love recommences, 
 for I cannot, and I do not wish to accept the love of 
 anyone. A young girl is like a flower which you 
 have just plucked ; but the culpable wife is a flower 
 which has been trodden upon. You are a florist, 
 you should know if it be possible to straighten up 
 again this stem, to revive these faded colors, to 
 bring back the sap in these tubes so delicate and on 
 the perfect uprightness of which depends all vege- 
 tative power. — If some botanist should give himself 
 up to this operation, would this man of genius be 
 able to smooth out the wrinkles of the rumpled tex- 
 ture.'* He would remake a flower, he would be God ! 
 God alone can make me new. 1 drink the bitter 
 cup of expiation; but, in drinking it, 1 have ter- 
 ribly spelled out this sentence: — To expiate is not 
 io efface. In my pavilion, alone, I eat a loaf 
 watered with my tears; but no one sees me eating 
 it, no one sees me weep. To enter again Octave's 
 house, would be to renounce my tears, my tears 
 would offend him. Oh! monsieur, how many vir- 
 tues would it not be necessary to tread under foot 
 in order, not to give one's self, but to yield one's 
 self, to a husband whom one has deceived!* — who 
 can count them .-' God only, for He only is the 
 confidant and He it is who prompts in our hearts 
 these terrible sensitivenesses, which might make 
 even His angels turn pale. Ah! I will even go fur- 
 ther. A wife has courage before a husband who 
 knows nothing; she displays then in her hypocrisies
 
 100 HONORINE 
 
 an untamed strength, she deceives in order to give 
 a double happiness. But a mutual certainty, is 
 it not debasing? For myself, I should exchange 
 humiliations for ecstasies. Would not Octave end 
 by finding depravity in my consentings? Mar- 
 riage is founded on esteem, on sacrifices made on 
 one side and the other; but neither Octave nor I 
 can foretell the future of our reunion: he will dis- 
 honor me by some old man's love for a courtesan; 
 and I, I should have the perpetual shame of being a 
 thing instead of being a lady. I should not be vir- 
 tue, I should be pleasure in my household. These 
 are the bitter fruits of a fault. I have made myself 
 a conjugal bed in which I can only turn myself on 
 live coals, a bed in which there is no slumber. 
 Here, I have hours of peacefulness, hours in which 
 I forget; but, in my own hotel, everything would 
 recall to me the stain which dishonors my wife's 
 robe. When I suffer here, I bless my sufferings, 
 I say to God: Thanks! But in his house, I should 
 be full of fright, tasting joys which are not my 
 due. All this, monsieur, is not reasoning, it is 
 the conviction of a soul greatly experienced, for 
 it has been furrowed for seven years by pain. 
 Finally, should I make to you this frightful avowal .' 
 I feel my breasts forever bitten by an infant con- 
 ceived in intoxication and joy, in the belief in 
 happiness, by an infant which I nourished during 
 seven months, of which I shall be pregnant all my 
 life. If new infants should draw from me their nour- 
 ishment, they would drink tears which, mingled with
 
 HONORINE lOI 
 
 my milk, would turn them sour. I am apparently 
 light-hearted, 1 seem to you childish — Oh! yes I 
 have the memory of the child, that memory that 
 renews itself on the edge of the tomb. Thus, as 
 you see, there is not one situation in the beautiful 
 life to which the world and the love of a husband 
 wish to bring me back, which is not false, which 
 does not conceal snares for me, which does not open 
 before me precipices over which I should roll, torn 
 by pitiless crags. It is now five years that I have 
 been wandering in the barren wastes of my future 
 without finding there a suitable place for my repent- 
 ance, because my soul has been taken possession of 
 by a true repentance. To all this, religion has its 
 replies, and I know them by heart. These suffer- 
 ings, these difficulties, are my punishment, it says, 
 and God will give me the strength to support them. 
 This, monsieur, is a reason for certain pious souls, 
 endowed with an energy in which I am wanting. 
 Between the hell in which God will not prevent me 
 from blessing him, and the hell which waits for me 
 in the house of Comte Octave, my choice is made. 
 " 'One last word. If 1 were a young girl, and were 
 it not for my actual experience, I would still choose 
 my husband ; but this is precisely the reason for my 
 refusal, — I do not wish to blush before this man. 
 What! I should be always on my knees, he would 
 be always standing before me! And, if we changed 
 our positions, I should find him despicable. I do 
 not wish to be better treated by him because of my 
 fault. The angel who would dare to commit certain
 
 I02 HONORINE 
 
 brutalities that are permitted on both sides when 
 they are mutually irreproachable, that angel does 
 not exist on earth ; he is in Heaven ! Octave is full 
 of delicacy, I know it; but there do not exist in that 
 soul — however grand they may make it, it is still a 
 man's soul — any guarantees for the new existence 
 which I should lead in his house. Come then to tell 
 me where I can fmd that solitude, that peace, that 
 silence, the friends of irreparable misfortunes, which 
 you have promised me?' 
 
 "After having taken of this letter the copy which 
 you see, so as to keep this memorial complete, I went 
 to the Rue Payenne. Anxiety had overcome the 
 power of the opium. Octave was walking up and 
 down like a madman in his garden. 
 
 " 'Reply to that,' I said to him, giving him his 
 wife's letter. 'Endeavor to reassure modesty that 
 is instructed. It is somewhat more difficult than to 
 circumvent modesty that is ignorant of itself, which 
 curiosity delivers up to you.' 
 
 " 'She is mine!'— cried the count, whose counte- 
 nance expressed his happiness in proportion as he 
 progressed in his reading. 
 
 "He made me a sign with his hand to leave him 
 alone, feeling himself watched in his joy. 1 com- 
 prehended that excessive happiness, like excessive 
 sorrow, obeys the same laws; I went to receive 
 Madame de Courteville and Amelie, who were to 
 dine with the count that day. However beautiful 
 Mademoiselle de Courteville may have been, I was
 
 HONORINE 103 
 
 conscious, on seeing her again, that love has three 
 faces, and that the women who inspire in us a com- 
 plete love are very rare. While comparing involun- 
 tarily Amelie with Honorine, I found more charm in 
 the wife in fault than in the pure young maid. For 
 Honorine, fidelity was not duty, but the fatality of 
 the heart; whilst Amelie was about to take the most 
 solemn promises with a serene air, without knowing 
 either their range or their obligations. The ex- 
 hausted wife, reputed dead, the penitent sinner to 
 be lifted, seemed to me sublime, she excited the 
 natural generosities of man, she demanded of the 
 heart all its treasures, of the strength, all its re- 
 sources; she filled life, she brought into it a contest 
 in the happiness; while Amelie, chaste and confid- 
 ing, would enclose herself in the sphere of a peace- 
 ful maternity, where the commonplace should be 
 poetical, where my spirit would find neither com- 
 bat nor victory. 
 
 "Between the plains of La Champagne and the 
 snowy and tempestuous but sublime Alps, where is 
 the young man who would choose the chalky and 
 peaceful level ? No, such comparisons are fatal and 
 evil on the threshold of the mayor's office. Alas ! it is 
 necessary to have had experience with life to know 
 that marriage excludes passion, that the family 
 should in no wise be founded upon the storms of love. 
 After having dreamed of an impossible love with 
 its innumerable ideal delights, after having tasted 
 the cruel deliciousness of the ideal, I had before my 
 eyes a modest reality. What would you have; give
 
 104 HONORINE 
 
 me your pity! At the age of twenty-five, 1 had 
 doubts of myself; but I took a virile resolution. I 
 went in search of the count again, under the pretext 
 of informing him of the arrival of his cousins and I 
 found him become young again in the reflection of 
 his hopes. 
 
 " 'What is it, Maurice?' he asked me, struck with 
 the alteration in my looks. 
 
 " 'Monsieur le Comte — ' 
 
 " 'You no longer call me Octave! you to whom I 
 shall owe life, happiness — ' 
 
 " 'My dear Octave, if you succeed in bringing 
 the countess back to her obligations, I have care- 
 fully observed her — ' he looked at me as Othello 
 must have looked at lago, when lago had succeeded 
 in communicating the first suspicion to the Moor — 
 'she should never see me again, she should be igno- 
 rant that you have had Maurice for a secretary; 
 never pronounce my name, let no one recall me, 
 otherwise,everything will be lost. — You have caused 
 me to be named referendary; well, obtain for me 
 some diplomatic post abroad, a consulate, and think 
 no more about marrying me to Amelie — Oh! have 
 no fears,' I went on, as I saw him start, 'I will carry 
 out my part to the end — ' 
 
 " 'Poor fellow !' — he said to me, taking me by the 
 hand, pressing it, and suppressing the tears which 
 moistened his eyes. 
 
 " 'You gave me gloves,' I replied, laughing, 'I did 
 not put them on, that is all.' 
 
 "We then came to an agreement as to what 1
 
 HONORINE 105 
 
 should do that evening at the pavilion, to which I 
 returned at the end of the day. It was then the 
 month of August, the day had been warm, stormy, 
 but the storm had remained in the air, the sky was 
 like brass, the perfumes of the flowers were heavy, 
 I seemed to be in a sweating-chamber, and sur- 
 prised myself wishing that the countess had gone 
 to the Indies; but she was wearing a redingote of 
 white muslin trimmed with knots of blue ribbons, 
 without a headdress, her crisp curls falling down 
 the sides of her cheeks, and seated on a wooden 
 bench made in the shape of a settee, under a sort 
 of little grove, her feet on a little wooden stool, 
 and showing a few inches below her dress. She did 
 not rise, she indicated to me with her hand a place 
 near her, saying to me: 
 " 'Is not life without any outlook for me?' 
 "'The life that you have made for yourself,' I 
 said to her, 'but not that which I wish to make 
 for you; for, if you wish it, you may be very 
 happy — ' 
 
 " 'And how?' she asked. 
 "Ail her body asked the question. 
 " 'Your letter is in the hands of the count' 
 "Honorine rose like a startled fawn, sprang away 
 three steps, walked about, taking turns in her gar- 
 den, remained standing for a few moments, and 
 finally went to take a seat alone in her salon, where 
 I rejoined her when I had left her a little time in 
 which to accustom herself to the pain of this dagger- 
 stroke.
 
 I06 HONORINE 
 
 " 'You! a friend! — Say rather a traitor, some spy 
 for my husband, perhaps?' 
 
 " Instinct, in women, is the equal of the perspi- 
 cacity of the greatest men. 
 
 " 'An answer was required for your letter, was 
 there not? and there was only one man in the world 
 who could write it — You will then read the reply, 
 dear countess, and, if you do not find any outlook 
 for your life after this reading, the spy will prove to 
 you that he is a friend, for I will put you in a convent 
 whence the count's power will never wrest you; 
 but, before going there, let us hear the other side. 
 There is a law, divine and human, which hatred 
 itself feigns to obey, and which commands not to 
 condemn without hearing the defence. You have, 
 up to the present, condemned, like the children, 
 while stopping your ears. A devotion of seven 
 years has its rights. You will then read the reply 
 which your husband will make. I have sent to him 
 by my uncle the copy of your letter, and my uncle 
 has asked him what his reply would be if his wife 
 should write him a letter conceived in similar terms. 
 Thus you are in no way compromised. The good 
 man will himself bring the count's letter. Before 
 this holy man and before me, through respect for 
 yourself, you should read it, or you would be only a 
 rebellious and angry child. You will make this 
 sacrifice to the world, to the law, to God.' 
 
 "As she did not see in compliance any affront 
 to her woman's will, she consented. All this labor 
 of four or five months had been built up for this
 
 HONORINE 107 
 
 moment. But do not the pyramids terminate by a 
 point upon which a bird can balance itself? — The 
 count rested all his hopes on this supreme hour, 
 and he had finally reached it. I do not know any- 
 thing, in all the memories of my life, more formi- 
 dable than the entrance of my uncle into this Pompa- 
 dour salon at ten o'clock in the evening. That 
 head, whose silver hair was set off by garments all 
 of black, and that countenance of a divine calm, 
 produced a magic effect upon the Comtesse Hono- 
 rine; she felt the freshness of a balm upon her 
 wounds, she was enlightened by a reflection of 
 that virtue, brilliant but unconscious, 
 
 "'Monsieur le Cure des Blancs-Manteaux!' said 
 the Gobain. 
 
 " 'Do you come, my dear uncle, with a message 
 of peace and of happiness.-" I asked him. 
 
 " 'Happiness and peace will always be found in 
 observing the commands of the Church,' he replied, 
 presenting the countess with the following letter: 
 
 '"My dear HONORINE, 
 
 ** 'If you had done me the kindness not to doubt 
 me, if you had read the letter which I wrote you 
 five years ago, you would have spared yourself five 
 years of useless toil and of privations which have 
 afflicted me. I then proposed to you a_compact, the 
 stipulations of which would have destroyed all your 
 fears and rendered possible our domestic life. I 
 have many reproaches to address to myself, and I 
 have become conscious of all my faults in seven
 
 I08 HONORINE 
 
 years of grief. I misunderstood marriage. I was 
 not able to suspect the danger when it threatened 
 you. An angel was in my house, the Lord had said 
 to me: Guard her well ! the Lord has punished the 
 rashness of my confidence. You cannot give your- 
 self a single blow without striking me. Have com- 
 passion on me, my dear Honorine! 1 have so well 
 comprehended your sensitiveness that I have not 
 been willing to bring you back to the old hotel of 
 the Rue Payenne, in which I can live without you, 
 but which I should not want to see again with you. 
 I am adorning with pleasure another house in the 
 Faubourg Saint-Honore, into which 1 conduct, in 
 anticipation, not a wife whom I owe to her ignor- 
 ance of life, duly acquired by law, but a sister who 
 will permit me to deposit on her forehead the kiss 
 which a father gives to a daughter daily blessed. 
 Will you deprive me of the right which I believed 
 myself to have conquered from your despair, that of 
 watching most closely over your needs, over your 
 pleasures, over your life even.? Women have a 
 heart of their own, always full of excuses, that of 
 their mother; you have never known any other 
 mother than mine, who would have brought you 
 back to me; but how is it that you have not divined 
 that I have for you the heart both of my mother and 
 of your own ! Oh ! Dear, my affection is neither 
 petty nor caviling, it is of those which do not allow 
 to contradiction even time enough to wrinkle the 
 countenance of an adored child. For whom do you 
 take the companion of your infancy, Honorine, in
 
 HONORINE 109 
 
 believing him capable of accepting kisses given in 
 trembling, of sharing joy and mistrust? Do not fear 
 that you may have to endure the lamentations of a 
 mendicant passion. I have not wished for you until 
 after having assured myself of the power of leaving 
 to you your complete liberty. Your solitary pride has 
 exaggerated the difficulties ; you could share the life 
 of a brother or of a father, without suffering and 
 without joy, if you wished; but you would find 
 around you neither mocking nor indifference, nor 
 misconstruing of intentions. The warmth of the 
 atmosphere in which you live shall be always 
 equable and mild, without storms, without possible 
 disturbances. If, later, after having acquired the 
 certainty of being in your home as you are in your 
 pavilion, you should be willing to introduce in it 
 other elements of happiness, pleasures, diversions, 
 you will enlarge the circle at your will. The ten- 
 derness of a mother has neither disdain nor pity; 
 what is it.? love without desire; — well, in me, ad- 
 miration will conceal all the sentiments in which 
 you might see offences. We may thus be able to 
 hold ourselves nobly, side by side. In you, the 
 kindness of a sister, the caressing spirit of a friend, 
 will be sufficient to satisfy the ambition of him who 
 wishes to be your companion, and you may measure 
 his tenderness by the efforts which he makes to 
 conceal it from you. We shall have, neither of us, 
 any uneasiness concerning our past, for we can 
 recognize in each other sufficient intelligence to 
 look ahead of us only. Therefore, you will be in
 
 no HONORINE 
 
 your own house, in your hotel, everything that you 
 are in the Rue Saint-Maur, — inviolable, solitary, 
 occupied as 3^ou please, governed by your own laws ; 
 but you will have, moreover, a lawful protection 
 which will then be under obligations to display for 
 you the most chivalric love, and that consideration 
 which adds so much lustre to women, and a fortune 
 which will permit you to undertake so many good 
 works. Honorine, when you wish a useless abso- 
 lution, you will come and ask for it; it will not be 
 imposed upon you, either by the Church or by the 
 Code; it will depend entirely upon your pride, upon 
 your own volition. My wife might have to fear all 
 that which terrifies you, but not the friend or the 
 sister toward whom I shall hold myself constrained 
 to display all the manners and all the considerations 
 of politeness. To see you happy will suffice for my 
 contentment, I have proved it during seven years. 
 Ah! the guarantees of my word, Honorine, are in 
 all the flowers which you have made, preciously 
 kept, watered by my tears, and which are, like the 
 quipos of the Peruvians, a history of our sorrows. 
 If this secret compact does not content you, my 
 child, I have requested the holy man who carries 
 this letter, not to say a word in my favor. I do not 
 wish to be indebted for your return either to the 
 terrors impressed upon you by the Church, or to 
 the commands of the Law. I wish to receive only 
 from yourself the simple and modest happiness 
 which I ask. If you persist in imposing upon me 
 the sombre life, deprived of any fraternal smile,
 
 HONORiNE III 
 
 which I have led for nine years, if you remain in 
 your desert, solitary and unmoved, my will will 
 give way before yours. Be sure of this, — you will 
 not be molested any more than you have been until 
 to-day. I will give his dismissal to that lunatic 
 who has interfered in your affairs, and who perhaps 
 has vexed you — ' 
 
 "'Monsieur,' said Honorine, interrupting her 
 letter, which she put in her corsage, and looking at 
 my uncle, 'I thank you, I will take advantage of the 
 permission which Monsieur le Comte has given me 
 to remain here — ' 
 
 "•Ah!' I exclaimed. 
 
 "This exclamation procured me from my uncle 
 an unquiet look, and from the countess a malicious 
 glance which enlightened me as to her motives. 
 Honorine had wished to know if I were an actor, a 
 bird-catcher, and 1 had the sorrowful satisfaction 
 of deceiving her by my exclamation, which was 
 one of those cries of the heart which women know 
 so well. 
 
 " 'Ah! Maurice,' she said to me, 'you know how 
 to love, you do !' 
 
 "The light which shone in my eyes was another 
 response which would have dissipated the count- 
 ess's distrust, if she had had any still. Thus the 
 count was served by me up to the last moment 
 Honorine then resumed her letter from her husband, 
 to finish it. My uncle made me a sign, I rose. 
 
 " 'We will leave madame,' he said to me.
 
 112 HONORINE 
 
 " 'Are you going already, Maurice?' she inquired 
 of me without looking at me. 
 
 "She rose, followed us out, still reading, and on 
 the threshold of the pavilion she took my hand, 
 pressed it very affectionately, and said to me : 
 
 " 'We shall see each other again — ' 
 
 " 'No,' I replied, grasping her hand till she cried 
 out. 'You love your husband! To-morrow, I go 
 away.* 
 
 "And I fled precipitately, leaving my uncle, to 
 whom she said : 
 
 " 'What is the matter with your nephew.?' 
 
 "The poor abbe completed my task by making 
 the gesture of indicating his head and his heart as 
 if to say: 'He is crazy, you must excuse him, 
 madame!' with much more truthfulness than he 
 thought. Six days later, I set off with my appoint- 
 ment as vice-consul in Spain, in a large commercial 
 city, where I could in a short time qualify myself 
 for the consular career, to which 1 limited my ambi- 
 tion. After my installation, I received this letter 
 from the count: 
 
 " 'MY DEAR Maurice, 
 
 " 'If I were happy, I would in no wise write to 
 you; but I have commenced another life of pain, — I 
 have become young again through desire, with ail 
 the impatiences of a man who has passed forty, 
 with the wisdom of the diplomat who knows how to 
 moderate his passion. When you went away, I was 
 not yet admitted to the pavilion in the Rue Saint-
 
 MONOKINE AND MAURICE. 
 
 "'On the threshold of the pavilion she took viy 
 hand, pressed it very affectionately, and said to nic : 
 
 "'We shall see each other again — ' 
 
 No' I replied, grasping her hand till she cried 
 out. ' Von love yonr liusband ! To-morrow I o-n 
 away! "
 
 ■p ■■ HP vHPV.'|| - 
 
 
 
 
 * .-tNT 
 
 
 ^?^ ■■■■ ^% i^'-i .-iiyi^ _ ^, 
 
 
 ,/^x 
 
 • -7. ■■■-^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 y^ii'i?^ 
 
 o^- 
 
 *^^^ 
 
 ^' "7
 
 HONORINE 113 
 
 Maur; but a letter had promised me the permission 
 to go there, the gentle and melancholy letter of a 
 woman who dreads the emotions of an interview. 
 After having waited more than a month, I risked 
 presenting myself, asking through the Gobain if I 
 should be received. I seated myself on a chair in 
 the avenue, near the lodge, my head in my hands, 
 and 1 remained there nearly an hour. 
 
 " ' "Madame wishes to dress," said the Gobain to 
 me in order to conceal under a feminine coquetry 
 which should be creditable to me, Honorine's irreso- 
 lutions. ' ' 
 
 " 'During a long quarter of an hour we had been, 
 each of us, affected by an involuntary nervous 
 trembling, as strong as that which seizes the orators 
 on the stand, and we addressed to each other fright- 
 ened phrases, like people surprised who make a pre- 
 tence of conversation. 
 
 "'"See Honorine," I said to her, my eyes full 
 of tears, "the ice is broken, and I am so trem- 
 bling with happiness that you must forgive the 
 incoherence of my language. It will be so for a 
 long time." 
 
 " ' "It is not a crime to be in love with your 
 wife," she replied with a forced smile. 
 
 " ' "Do me the favor not to work any more as you 
 have done. 1 know from Madame Gobain that you 
 have been living for the last twenty days on your 
 savings, you have sixty thousand francs income of 
 your own, and, if you will not give me your heart, 
 at least do not leave me your fortune." 
 8
 
 114 HONORINE 
 
 " ' "I have known your kindness for a long 
 time — " she said. 
 
 " ' "If it pleases you to remain here," 1 replied, 
 "and to preserve your independence; if the most 
 ardent love does not find favor in your eyes, do not 
 work any more — " 
 
 " 'I presented her with three certificates each of 
 twelve thousand francs interest, she took them, 
 opened them indifferently, and, after having read 
 them, Maurice, she gave me a look for sole reply. 
 Ah ! she comprehended perfectly that it was not 
 money which I gave her, but liberty. 
 
 " ' "I am vanquished," she said to me, extending 
 to me a hand which I kissed, "come to see me as 
 often as you wish." 
 
 " 'Thus she had only received me by doing vio- 
 lence to herself. The next day I found her armed 
 with a counterfeit gaiety, and it has required two 
 months of accustoming before seeing her in her true 
 character. But this was then like a delicious May, 
 a springtime of love which gave me ineffable joys; 
 she had no more fears, she studied me. Alas ! when 
 I proposed to her to go over to England with me in 
 order to join me ostensibly, in her house, to resume 
 her rank, to live in her new hotel, she was seized 
 with terror. 
 
 " ' "Why not live always this way?" she said. 
 
 " 'I resigned myself without a word. 
 
 " ' "Is this an experiment?" I asked myself as I 
 left her. 
 
 " 'In going from my own house to the Rue Saint-
 
 HONORINE 115 
 
 Maur, I became animated, thoughts of love swelled 
 my heart, and I said to myself, like the young 
 men: 
 
 " ' "This evening she will yield — " 
 
 " 'All this strength, factitious or real, was dissi- 
 pated by a smile, by a command in her eyes, proud 
 and calm, which passion never changed. That ter- 
 rible saying which you repeated: Lticretia ivrote 
 with her blood and her dagger the first word of the 
 charter of women, — LIBERTY, came back to me, 
 chilled me. I was profoundly convinced of the 
 necessity of the consent of Honorine, and of the im- 
 possibility of wresting it from her. Did she have 
 any suspicion of those storms which agitated me as 
 well during the return as during the going .? I finally 
 depicted to her my situation in a letter, renouncing 
 speaking to her about it. Honorine did not reply to 
 me, she remained so mournful that I acted as if 
 I had not written. I was greatly pained at having 
 afflicted her, she read in my heart and forgave me. 
 You shall know how. Three days ago, for the 
 first time, she received me in her white and blue 
 chamber. The room was full of flowers, adorned, 
 illuminated. Honorine had assumed a toilet which 
 made her ravishing. Her hair enclosed with its 
 light rolls that face which you know; on her head 
 she wore some tufts of Cape heather ; she wore a 
 dress of white muslin, a white girdle with long 
 floating ends. You knew what she is in this 
 simplicity; but, on this day, she was a bride, she 
 was the Honorine of the early days. My joy
 
 Il6 HONORINE 
 
 was immediately frozen, for iier countenance had 
 a cliaracter of terrible gravity, there was fire under 
 that ice. 
 
 " * "Octave," she said to me, "when you wish 
 it, I will be your wife; but, know it well, this sub- 
 mission has its dangers, I can resign myself — " 
 
 " *I made a gesture. 
 
 "'"Yes," she said, "I understand you, resigna- 
 tion offends you, and you wish that which I can- 
 not give, love! Religion, compassion, have caused 
 me to renounce my vow of solitude, you are 
 here!" 
 
 " 'She made a pause. 
 
 "'"In the first place," she went on, "you did 
 not ask more; now, you want your wife. Well, 
 I give up to you Honorine, such as she is, and 
 without deceiving you as to what she will be. 
 What shall 1 become ? A mother ! I wish it. Oh ! 
 believe it, I wish it sincerely. Endeavor to trans- 
 form me, I consent to it; but if I die, my friend, 
 do not curse my memory, and do not accuse of 
 obstinacy that which I should call the worship of 
 the ideal, if it were not more natural to call the 
 indefinable sentiment which will kill me, the 
 worship of the divine! The future does not con- 
 cern me, it is you who are charged with- it, take 
 counsel I — " 
 
 " 'She then seated herself in that serene attitude 
 which you have admired, and looked at me growing 
 pale under the pain which she had caused me. 
 My blood was chilled. When she saw the effect of
 
 HONORINE 117 
 
 her words, she took my hands, placed them in her 
 own and said to me: 
 
 " ' "Octave, I love you, but in another manner 
 than that in which you wish to be loved; I love 
 your soul — But, know it, I love you enough to die 
 in your service, like an Eastern slave, and without 
 regret. This will be my expiation." 
 
 " 'She did more, she placed herself on her knees 
 on a cushion before me, and, in an accession of 
 divine charity, she said to me: 
 
 " ' "After all, perhaps 1 shall not die?—" 
 
 " 'Here are the words with which I wrestle. 
 What can I do? — My heart is too full, 1 have sought 
 that of a friend to throw into it this cry: What 
 can I do ?' 
 
 "I made no reply. Two months later, the news- 
 paper announced the arrival, by an English packet- 
 boat, of the Comtesse Octave, restored to her 
 family, after a voyage, the events of which were 
 invented with a sufficient plausibility to be con- 
 tested by no one. On my arrival at Genoa, I 
 received a letter announcing the happy accouche- 
 ment of the countess, who presented her husband 
 with a son. I held the letter in my hands for 
 two hours, on that terrace seated on that bench. 
 Two months later, tormented by Octave, by Mes- 
 sieurs de Granville and Serizy, my protectors, 
 overwhelmed by the loss of my uncle, I consented 
 to marry. 
 
 "Six months after the Revolution of July, I
 
 Il8 HONORINE 
 
 received the following letter, which concludes the 
 history of this household: 
 
 " 'MONSIEUR Maurice, 
 
 " 'I am dying, although a mother, and perhaps 
 because 1 am a mother. I have played well my part 
 as wife ; I have deceived my husband, 1 have had 
 joys as real as the tears shed on the stage by 
 actresses. I die for society, for the family, for 
 marriage, as the first Christians died for God. I do 
 not know of what I am dying, I seek for it in good 
 faith, for I am not obstinate; but I desire to explain 
 to you my malady, to you who brought the heavenly 
 surgeon, your uncle, to whose words I yielded my- 
 self; he has been my confessor, 1 took care of him 
 in his last illness, and he showed Heaven to me in 
 commanding me to continue to do my duty. And I 
 have done my duty. I do not blame those who 
 forget, I admire them as strong natures, necessary 
 ones; but I have the infirmity of remembering! 
 That love of the heart which we identify with the 
 man loved, I have not been able to feel twice. Up 
 to the last moment, as you know, I cried in your 
 heart, in the confessional, to my husband: Have 
 pity on me! — Everything was without pity. Well, 
 I am dying. I die in displaying an unheard-of 
 courage. Never was courtesan more gay than 1. 
 My poor Octave is happy, I allow his love to feed 
 itself on the mirages of my heart In this terri- 
 ble game, I expend all my forces, the actress is 
 applauded, feted, covered with flowers; but the
 
 HONORINE 119 
 
 invisible rival comes to seek every day his prey, 
 a portion of my life. Torn apart, I smile! I smile 
 on two children, but the eldest, the dead one, — 
 triumphs! I have already said it to you, — the dead 
 child will call me, and I go to him. Intimacy with- 
 out love is a situation in which my soul dishonors 
 itself every hour. 1 can neither weep nor abandon 
 myself to my reveries but when alone. The require- 
 ments of the world, those of my household, the care 
 of my child, that of the happiness of Octave, do not 
 leave me an instant in which to renew my strength, 
 to acquire new forces as I did in my solitude. The 
 perpetual qui-vive always surprises my heart with a 
 start. I have not in the least been able to fix in my 
 soul that vigilance of the quick ear, of the lying 
 word, of the lynx eye. It is not a beloved mouth 
 which drinks my tears and which blesses my 
 eyelids, it is a handkerchief which stanches them; 
 it is water which refreshes my inflamed eyes, and 
 not beloved lips. I am a comedienne with my soul ; 
 and this is perhaps why I die ! I suppress my grief 
 with so much care that nothing of it appears on the 
 outside; it has indeed to devour something, it at- 
 tacks my life. I said to the doctors who discovered 
 my secret: 
 
 "'"Make me die of some plausible malady; 
 otherwise, I shall drag my husband with me." 
 
 " 'It is then agreed, between Messieurs Desplein, 
 Bianchon and myself that I am dying of the soften- 
 ing of some bone, I do not know which, that science 
 has perfectly described. Octave believes himself
 
 120 HONORINE 
 
 adored ! Do you understand me perfectly ? Thus 
 I am afraid that he will follow me. I write to you 
 to entreat you to be, in that case, the guardian of 
 the young count. You will find enclosed a codicil in 
 which I express this wish: you will only make use 
 of it when it becomes necessary, for perhaps I am 
 foolishly mistaken. My concealed devotion will 
 perhaps leave Octave inconsolable, but living! 
 Poor Octave! I wish for him a wife better than I 
 am, for he indeed deserves to be loved. Since my so 
 clever spy is married, let him remember that which 
 the fair florist of the Rue Saint-Maur here bequeaths 
 him as a testament, — See that your wife is very soon 
 a mother ! Throw her into the most commonplace 
 materialities of the household; prevent her from 
 cultivating in her heart the mysterious flower of the 
 ideal, that celestial perfection in which I have be- 
 lieved, that enchanted flower with burning colors, 
 and the perfume of which inspires disgust for real- 
 ities. I am a Saint-Theresa who can nourish her- 
 self only with ecstasies, in the depth of a convent 
 with the Divine Jesus, with an irreproachable angel, 
 winged, so as to come and go at pleasure. You 
 have seen me happy in the midst of my well-beloved 
 flowers. I have not told you all ; I saw love flour- 
 ishing under your feigned madness, I concealed from 
 you my thoughts, my poesies; I did not give you 
 entrance into my beautiful kingdom. Finally you 
 will love my child for the love of me, if he should 
 be left some day without his poor father. Guard my 
 secrets as the tomb will guard me. Do not weep
 
 HONORINE 121 
 
 for me: I have been dead a long time, if Saint- 
 Bernard was right in saying that there is no more 
 life where there is no more love." 
 
 "And," said the consul, folding his letters and 
 locking his portfolio with a key, "the countess is 
 dead." 
 
 "Is the count still living?" asked the ambassa- 
 dor, "for, since the Revolution of July, he has dis- 
 appeared from political life." 
 
 "Do you remember. Monsieur de Lora," said the 
 consul-general, "of having seen me conducting back 
 to the steamer — ?" 
 
 "A man with white hair, an old man?" asked 
 the painter. 
 
 "An old man of forty-five, going in quest of health, 
 of diversions, to southern Italy. This old man, he 
 was my poor friend, my protector, who passed 
 through Genoa to say adieu to me, to confide to me 
 his testament — He appoints me the guardian of his 
 son. I was not under the necessity of telling him of 
 Honorine's wish." 
 
 "Is he aware of his character of assassin?" said 
 Mademoiselle des Touches to the Baron de I'Hostal. 
 
 "He suspects the truth," replied the consul, "and 
 it is that which is killing him. I remained on the 
 steamer which is carrying him to Naples until we 
 were in the roadstead; there was a barque to bring 
 me back. We remained for some time exchanging 
 our farewells, which, I fear, will be eternal. God 
 knows how we love the confidant of our love, when
 
 122 HONORINE 
 
 she who has inspired it is no more! 'That man has 
 a charm,' said Octave to me, 'he wears an aureole.' 
 When we came out on the prow, the count looked 
 at the Mediterranean ; as it happened, the weather 
 was fine, and, doubtless, moved by this spectacle, 
 he left me these last words: 'In the interest of 
 human nature, would it not be necessary to investi- 
 gate that irresistible power which makes us sacrifice 
 to the most fleeting of all pleasures, and against our 
 reason, a divine creature ? — 1 have heard cries in my 
 conscience. Honorine was not the only one who 
 cried. And yet I wished! — I am devoured byre- 
 morse! I died, in the Rue Payenne, of the pleas- 
 ures which I had not; I shall die in Italy of the 
 pleasures which I have tasted ! — Whence comes this 
 discord between two natures equally noble, I dare 
 tosav?'" 
 
 A profound silence prevailed on the terrace for 
 some moments. 
 
 "Was she virtuous.'"' asked the consul of the two 
 ladies. 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches rose, took the consul by 
 the arm, led him off for a few steps, and said to 
 him: 
 
 "Are not men also culpable to come to us, to 
 make of a young girl a wife, while keeping at the 
 bottom of their hearts angelic images, comparing us 
 to unknown rivals, to perfections often drawn from 
 more than one memory, and then finding us always 
 inferior?" 
 
 "Mademoiselle, you would be right if marriage
 
 HONORINE 123 
 
 were founded on passion, and this was the error of 
 the two beings who soon will both be no more. 
 Marriage, with a heart's love between the two 
 spouses, that would be paradise." 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches left the consul and was 
 rejoined by Claude Vignon, who said to her in her 
 ear: 
 
 "He is somewhat vain and silly. Monsieur de 
 I'Hostal." 
 
 "No," she replied, slipping in Claude's ear this 
 sentence, "he has not yet discovered that Honorine 
 would have loved him. Oh!" she said, seeing the 
 consul's wife coming, "his wife has heard him, the 
 unfortunate man! — " 
 
 Eleven o'clock was sounded by the clocks, all the 
 guests returned on foot, along the sea beach. 
 
 "All that is not life," said Mademoiselle des 
 Touches. "That woman is one of the rarest excep- 
 tions, and perhaps the most monstrous of intelli- 
 gences, a pearl ! Life is composed of various 
 accidents, of sorrow and pleasures alternated. The 
 Paradise of Dante, that sublime expression of the 
 ideal, that constant blue, is found only in the soul, 
 and to demand it of the things of life is a voluptu- 
 ousness against which nature protests every hour. 
 For such souls, the six feet of a cell and a prie-Dieu 
 suffice." 
 
 "You are right, "said Leon de Lora. "But, how- 
 ever much of a good-for-nothing I may be, I cannot 
 restrain my admiration for a woman capable, as was 
 that one, of living by the side of an atelier, under
 
 124 HONORINE 
 
 the roof of a painter, without ever descending, or 
 seeing the world, or getting muddy in the streets." 
 
 "That has been seen for a few months at a time," 
 said Claude Vignon with a profound irony. 
 
 "The Comtesse Honorine is not the only one of 
 her kind," replied the ambassador to Mademoiselle 
 des Touches. "A man, we will even say a man of 
 politics, a bitter writer, was the object of a love of 
 this kind, and the pistol-shot that killed him touched 
 only him: she whom he loved was as if cloistered." 
 
 "There are still to be found, then, great souls in 
 this century!" said Camille Maupin, remaining 
 thoughtful, leaning against the quay for several 
 minutes. 
 
 Paris, January, 1843.
 
 COLONEL CHABERT 
 
 (125)
 
 TO MADAME LA COMTESSE IDA DE BOCARMi, 
 NEE DU CHASTELER 
 
 (127)
 
 l»-!;TlJW'tei 
 
 iiiii:Bej:;> > ■ ■v,aiuSl)Mill,yi,,u;JaSJ:51S!;ililil!E^3yi!;l;lliila 
 
 W8IS,i 
 
 ^A. 
 
 \ I 
 
 
 \.^
 
 COLONEL CHABERT AT M. DERVILLE'S. 
 
 " Well," said the colonel with a movement of con- 
 centrated rage, " / zvas not admitted until I had 
 announced myself under a borroivcd name, and the 
 day on ivhich I took my 07un, I was shozvn out of 
 her door. * * * Oh! from that day / have 
 lived for vengeance',' cried the old man in a muffled 
 voice, and rising suddenly before Derville. " She 
 knows that I am living."
 
 IN THE RUE DU EOUARRE. 
 
 " You shojild dress yourself more ivarvdy ivhen 
 yoiL go dozvn to that parlor." 
 
 " / do not like to keep them zuaiiing, those poor 
 people ! Well, ivhat is it that yon ivish of vie / " 
 
 " VVliy, I conic to invite yon to dinner to-morroiv 
 at the house of the Marqidse d'Espard^ 
 ******* 
 "And you ivant me to go and dine with her! 
 Are you crazy ? " said the Judge.
 
 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 * 
 
 In the year 1828, about one o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, two men came out of a hotel in the Rue du 
 Faubourg-Saint-Honore, near the Elysee-Bourbon: 
 one of them was a celebrated physician, Horace 
 Bianchon, the other, one of the most elegant men in 
 Paris, the Baron de Rastignac, and they were old 
 friends. Each had dismissed his own carriage, and 
 there were no others to be found in the Faubourg, 
 but the night was fine and the pavement dry. 
 
 "Let us walk as far as the boulevard," said 
 Eugene de Rastignac to Bianchon, "you can get a 
 carriage at the Club; they are to be found there till 
 morning. You will accompany me to my door." 
 
 "Willingly." 
 
 "Well, my dear fellow, what do you say about it?" 
 
 "About that woman?" replied the doctor, coldly. 
 
 "There I recognize my Bianchon," cried Ras- 
 tignac. 
 
 "Well, what?" 
 
 "But, my dear fellow, you speak of the Marquise 
 d'Espard as of a patient to be placed in your hos- 
 pital." 
 
 (233)
 
 234 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 "Do you wish to know what I think, Eugene? If 
 you leave Madame de Nucingen for this marchion- 
 ess, you will barter your one-eyed horse for a blind 
 one." 
 
 "Madame de Nucingen is thirty-six years old, 
 Bianchon. " 
 
 "And this one is thirty-three," replied the doctor, 
 quickly. 
 
 "Her most vindictive enemies would not make 
 her more than twenty-six." 
 
 "My dear fellow, when you are interested in dis- 
 covering a woman's age, look at her temples and the 
 end of her nose. Whatever the women may accom- 
 plish with their cosmetics, they can do nothing 
 against these incorruptible witnesses of their expe- 
 riences. Each one of their years has left there its 
 stigmata. When a woman's temples are softened, 
 lined, withered in a certain manner; when at the 
 end of her nose you may find those little points 
 which resemble the imperceptible black particles 
 which settle down in London from the chimneys in 
 which soft coal is burned — by your leave ! the lady 
 is over thirty. She may be beautiful, she may be 
 charming, she may be loving, she may be every- 
 thing that you could wish; but she will have passed 
 thirty, but she is reaching her maturity. I do not 
 blame those who attach themselves to a woman of 
 this kind; only, a man as distinguished as you are 
 should not take a rennet of February for a little api 
 apple which smiles upon its branch and asks to 
 be bitten. Love never goes to consult the civil
 
 THE INTERDICTION 235 
 
 registers; no one loves a woman because she is 
 of such or such an age, because she is beautiful 
 or ugly, stupid or witty: one loves because one 
 loves." 
 
 "Well now, I, 1 love her for very different 
 reasons. She is Marquise d'Espard, she was born 
 a Blamont-Chauvry, she is the fashion, she has a 
 soul in her, she has a foot as pretty as that of the 
 Duchesse de Berri, she has perhaps an income of a 
 hundred thousand francs, and I shall perhaps marry 
 her some day! finally, she will enable me to pay 
 my debts." 
 
 "I thought you were rich," said Bianchon, inter- 
 rupting Rastignac. 
 
 "Bah! I have an income of twenty thousand 
 francs, just enough to keep a stable. 1 have been 
 broken up, my dear fellow, in the affair of Monsieur 
 de Nucingen, I will relate that history to you. I 
 have married off my sisters, that is the greatest ad- 
 vantage I have gained since we have known each 
 other, and I am better pleased to have established 
 them than if I had a hundred thousand ecus of in- 
 come. Now then, what do you wish that I should 
 become? I am ambitious. To what could Madame 
 de Nucingen lead me ? In a year from now, I should 
 be labeled, pigeon-holed, like a married man. I 
 have all the disadvantages of marriage and those of 
 a bachelor, without having the advantages of either ; 
 a false situation, to which come all those who re- 
 main too long attached to the same petticoat." 
 
 "Ah! and you think that here you have a sure
 
 236 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 thing?" said Bianchon. "Your marchioness, my 
 dear fellow, is not at all to my taste." 
 
 "Your liberal opinions cloud your judgment If 
 Madame d'Espardwere a Madame Rabourdin — ." 
 
 "Listen to me, my dear fellow, noble or bour- 
 geoise, she would always be soulless, she would 
 always be the most complete type of egotism. Be- 
 lieve me, the doctors are accustomed to judge men 
 and things; the most skilful among us confess the 
 soul in confessing the body. Notwithstanding that 
 pretty boudoir in which we have passed the even- 
 ing, notwithstanding the luxury of that hotel, it is 
 possible that Madame la Marquise is in debt." 
 
 "What makes you think so?" 
 
 "I do not assert it, I make the supposition. She 
 speaks of her soul as the late Louis XVIII. spoke of 
 his heart. Listen to me! this woman, frail, white, 
 with her chestnut hair, and who complains that she 
 may hear herself pitied, enjoys a robust health, 
 has an appetite like a wolf, the strength and the 
 treachery of a tiger. Never was gauze, or silk, or 
 muslin, more skilfully wrapped around a lie! Ecco." 
 
 "You terrify me, Bianchon! You have then 
 learned a great many things since our sojourn in 
 the Vauquer establishment?" 
 
 "Yes, since that time, my dear fellow, I have seen 
 puppets, dolls and dancing-jacks! I know a little 
 about the manners of these beautiful ladies, the 
 health of whose bodies you guard, and that which 
 they have still more precious, their children, when 
 they love them, and their faces, which they always
 
 THE INTERDICTION 237 
 
 adore. You pass your nights at their bedsides, 
 you wear yourself out to save them the slightest 
 alteration of their beauty, no matter where; you 
 have succeeded, you keep the secret as if you were 
 dead, they send to you for their bill, and find it 
 horribly dear. What is it that has saved them? 
 Nature. Far from commending you, they slander 
 you, fearing that you may become the physician of 
 their dear friends. My dear fellow, these women, 
 of whom you say, 'They are angels!' I, I have 
 seen them stripped of the little appearances under 
 which they cover their souls, as well as of the dress 
 under which they disguise their imperfections, with- 
 out their manners and without their corsets, — they 
 are not beautiful. We began by seeing a great 
 many shoals, a great many filthy things under the 
 waves of the world when we were cast ashore on 
 the rock of the Vauquer establishment; that which 
 we saw there was nothing. Since 1 have been 
 going into the higher society, I have encountered 
 monstrosities clothed in satins, Michonneaus in 
 white gloves, Poirets bespangled with orders, grand 
 seigneurs practising usury better than Papa Gob- 
 seek! To the shame of mankind, when 1 have 
 wished to clasp hands with Virtue, 1 have found her 
 shivering in a garret, pursued by slander, living 
 from hand to mouth on fifteen hundred francs of 
 income or of wages, and considered either as crazy, 
 or original, or stupid. In short, my dear fellow, 
 the marchioness is a fashionable woman, and it is 
 precisely that kind of woman that I hold in horror.
 
 238 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 Do you wish to know why ? A woman who has 
 a lofty mind, a pure taste, a gentle spirit, a heart 
 richly endowed, who leads a simple life, has not 
 the slightest chance of being in the fashion. That 
 is why! A fashionable woman and a man in 
 power have certain analogies; but with this differ- 
 ence nearly, that the qualities which enable a man 
 to elevate himself above the others enlarge him and 
 constitute his glory; whilst the qualities by which 
 a woman attains her empire of a day are frightful 
 vices: she perverts herself to conceal her character, 
 she must— to lead this contentious worldly life — 
 have an iron health under a frail appearance. As 
 a physician, I know that the goodness of the stomach 
 excludes the goodness of the heart. Your fashion- 
 able woman has no feeling, her fury for pleasure 
 has its origin in a desire to warm up her cold nature, 
 she wishes to have emotions and enjoyments, just 
 as an old man stations himself on the stairway at 
 the Opera. As she has more head than heart, she 
 sacrifices to her triumph true passions and her 
 friends, as a general sends into the enemy's fire his 
 most devoted lieutenants that he may gain the bat- 
 tle. The fashionable woman is no longer a woman ; 
 she is neither mother, nor wife, nor lover, — she has 
 a sex in her brain, speaking medically. Thus your 
 marchioness has all the symptoms of her monstros- 
 ity, she has the beak of a bird of prey, the clear and 
 cold eye, the soft speech; she is polished like the 
 steel of a piece of machinery, she excites every- 
 thing, excepting the heart,"
 
 THE INTERDICTION 239 
 
 "There is some truth in what you say, Bianchon. " 
 "Some truth?" replied Bianchon. "It is all true. 
 Do you think that I did not feel to the bottom 
 of my heart the insulting politeness with which she 
 caused me to measure the imaginary distance which 
 rank puts between us ? that I was not moved by a 
 profound contempt for her cattish blandishments in 
 knowing her aim ? In a year from now, she would 
 not write a word to do me the slightest service, and 
 this evening she overwhelmed me with smiles, 
 thinking that I can influence my uncle Popinot, on 
 whom the gaining of her lawsuit depends — " 
 
 "My dear fellow, would you have preferred that 
 she had shown you nothing but stupidities ? I admit 
 the facts of your Catiline oration against fashion- 
 able women; but you are quite beside the question. 
 I should always prefer for a wife a Marquise d'Es- 
 pard to the most chaste, the most refined, the most 
 loving creature on earth. Marry an angel! you 
 would have to go and bury yourself in your happi- 
 ness in the depths of the country. The wife of a 
 political man is a governmental machine, a mechan- 
 ism for fine compliments, for curtsies; she is the 
 first, the most faithful of the instruments of which 
 an ambitious man can make use; in short, she is a 
 friend who can compromise herself without danger, 
 and whom you can repudiate without fear of conse- 
 quences. Suppose Mohammed were in Paris in the 
 nineteenth century ! his wife would be a Rohan, 
 fine and flattering as an ambassadress, shrewd as 
 Figaro. Your loving wife would lead to nothing, a
 
 240 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 fashionable woman would lead to everything, she 
 is the diamond with which a man cuts all window 
 panes, when he has not the golden key which opens 
 all doors. For the bourgeois, the bourgeois virtues; 
 for the ambitious, the vices of ambition. Moreover, 
 my dear fellow, do you not suppose that the love of 
 a Duchesse de Langeais or De Maufrigneuse, of a 
 Lady Dudley, does not bring with it immense 
 pleasures ,•' If you knew how the cold and severe 
 reserve of these women gives a value to the least 
 proof of their affection ! what joy to see a periwinkle 
 lying under the snow! A smile glancing under the 
 fan gives the lie to the reserve of an assumed atti- 
 tude, and it is worth all the unbridled tendernesses 
 of your bourgeoises with their hypothetical devotion, 
 — for, in love, devotion is very near to speculation. 
 Then, a fashionable woman, a Blamont-Chauvry 
 has her virtues also! Her virtues are fortune, 
 power, state, a certain scorn for everything which 
 is below her — " 
 
 "Thanks," said Bianchon. 
 
 "You old simpleton!" answered Rastignac, laugh- 
 ing. "Come now, do not be commonplace, do like 
 your friend Desplein, — be a baron, be a Chevalier 
 of the Order of Saint Michael, become peer of France, 
 and marry your daughters to dukes." 
 
 "1, I wish that the five hundred thousand 
 devils — " 
 
 "La, la! you have no superiority then excepting 
 in medicine; truly you give me great pain," 
 
 "1 hate this sort of people, I could wish for a
 
 THE INTERDICTION 24 1 
 
 revolution that would deliver us from them for- 
 ever." 
 
 "Therefore, dear Robespierre of the lancet, you 
 will not go to-morrow to your uncle Popinot's?" 
 
 "Oh! yes," said Bianchon, "when you are con- 
 cerned, 1 would go to seek water in hell — " 
 
 "Dear friend, you melt me; I have sworn that 
 the marquis should be interdicted! Wait a minute^ 
 I shall fmd an old tear with which to thank you." 
 
 "But," said Horace, continuing, "I do not promise 
 you to succeed according to your desires with Jean- 
 Jules Popinot. You do not know him ; but 1 will bring 
 him the day after to-morrow to your marchioness, 
 she may beguile him if she can. I doubt it. All the 
 truffles, all the duchesses, all the mistresses, all the 
 axes of the guillotine may be there in all the grace 
 of their seductions; the king may promise him the 
 peerage, the good God may grant him the investi- 
 ture of Paradise and the revenues of Purgatory, — 
 not one of these inducements would persuade him 
 to pass a straw from one scale to the other of his 
 balance. He is a judge, as Death is Death." 
 
 The two friends had by this time arrived at the 
 entrance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the 
 corner of the Boulevard des Capucines. 
 
 "Here you are at your door," said Bianchon, 
 laughing, indicating to him the hotel of the minister. 
 "And here is my carriage," he added, pointing to a 
 hackney coach. "Thus is the future summed up 
 for both of us." 
 
 "You will be happy at the bottom of the sea, 
 16
 
 242 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 while I shall be always struggling on the surface 
 with the tempests until, when I sink, I shall come 
 to ask a place too in your grotto, old friend!" 
 
 "Till Saturday," replied Bianchon. 
 
 "Agreed," said Rastignac. "You promise me 
 the Popinot?" 
 
 "Yes, I will do all that my conscience will permit 
 me to do. Perhaps this petition for an interdiction 
 conceals some little dramorama, to recall by a word 
 our bad good time." 
 
 "Poor Bianchon! he will never be more than an 
 honest man," said Rastignac to himself, as he saw 
 the hackney coach disappear. 
 
 "Rastignac has charged me with the most difficult 
 of all the negotiations," thought Bianchon when he 
 rose the next morning, remembering the delicate 
 commission which had been confided to him. "But 
 I have never asked of my uncle the least little ser- 
 vice at the Palais, and I have made for him more 
 than a thousand visits gratis. Moreover, between 
 ourselves, we feel no restraint. He will answer me 
 yes or no, and that will be all." 
 
 After this little monologue, the celebrated doctor 
 took his way, after seven o'clock in the morning, 
 towards the Rue du Fouarre, in which lived Mon- 
 sieur Jean- Jules Popinot, judge of the inferior court 
 for civil causes of the department of the Seine. 
 The Rue du Fouarre, a name which signified formerly 
 Rue de la Paille, was in the thirteenth century the 
 most illustrious street in Paris. In it were the 
 schools of the University at the period when the
 
 THE INTERDICTION 243 
 
 voice of Abelard and that of Gerson resounded 
 through the world of learning. It is to-day one of 
 the dirtiest streets of the twelfth arrondissement, the 
 poorest quarter of Paris, that in which two-thirds of 
 the population lack for wood in winter, that which 
 throws most brats into the turning-box of the Found- 
 ling Hospital, most patients into the Hotel-Dieu, 
 most beggars into the streets, which sends the 
 greatest number of rag-pickers to the corners of 
 the gutters, the greatest number of invalid old men 
 to sun themselves along the walls, the greatest 
 number of unemployed workmen into the public 
 squares, the greatest number of accused to the cor- 
 rectional police. In the middle of this always damp 
 street, the gutter of which rolls toward the Seine 
 the blackish waters of some dyeing establishments, 
 is situated an old house, doubtless restored under 
 Francois I., and constructed of bricks retained by 
 quoins of cut stone. Its solidity seems to be at- 
 tested by an exterior configuration which is not un- 
 common in some houses in Paris. If it be permitted 
 to make use of the word, it has something like a 
 belly produced by the swelling out of its first story, 
 sinking under the weight of the second and the third, 
 but sustained by the strong wall of the ground floor. 
 At the first glance it would seem that the spaces be- 
 tween the windows, although strengthened by their 
 borders in cut stone, would burst out; but the spec- 
 tator soon perceives that, in this house as in the 
 tower of Bologna, the old bricks and the old stones 
 worn away still preserve invincibly their centre of
 
 244 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 gravity. At all seasons of the year, the solid courses 
 of the ground floor present the yellowish tone and 
 the imperceptible oozing which dampness gives to 
 stone. The pedestrian has a chill in passing along 
 this wall the sloping edges of which protect it but 
 indifferently against the wheels of the cabriolets. 
 As in all the houses built before the invention of 
 carriages, the opening of the door forms an extremely 
 low archway, similar enough to the portal of a 
 prison. At the right of this doorway are three 
 windows protected on the exterior by an iron net- 
 ting so close that it is impossible for the curious to 
 see the interior arrangement of the damp and dark 
 apartments, all the more so that the window panes 
 are dirty and dusty; at the left are two other win- 
 dows like these, one of which, sometimes open, re- 
 veals the porter, his wife and his children swarming 
 about, working, cooking, eating and crying in an 
 apartment floored with planks, wainscoted, in which 
 everything is falling off in shreds and into which you 
 descend by two steps, — a depth which seems to in- 
 dicate the progressive raising of the Parisian pave- 
 ment. If, on some rainy day, some passer-by 
 takes shelter under the long vault with protecting 
 and whitewashed rafters, which leads from the door 
 to the stairway, it would be difficult for him not to 
 look in on the scene which the interior of this house 
 presents. At the left will be seen a little square 
 garden which would not permit you to make more 
 than four strides in any direction, a garden of black 
 earth in which there are trellises without any vine
 
 THE INTERDICTION 245 
 
 branches, in which, in default of vegetation, there 
 are in the shade of the two trees scraps of paper, 
 old cloths, potsherds, rubbish fallen from the roof; 
 an unfertile land in which time has deposited upon 
 the walls, upon the trunks of the trees and their 
 boughs, a powdery substance not unlike cold soot. 
 The two square main buildings which constitute the 
 house are lighted from this little garden, surrounded 
 by the two neighboring houses built with upright 
 joists in the partitions, decrepit, menacing ruin, in 
 which may be seen on each floor some curious in- 
 dication of the profession or vocation of the lodger. 
 Here, there are long sticks supporting immense 
 skeins of dyed wool drying; there, on a cord, are 
 white shirts hanging ; higher, rows of books newly 
 backed display upon a board their freshly marbled 
 edges; the women sing, the husbands whistle, the 
 children cry; the cabinet-maker saws his planks, a 
 coppersmith makes his metal resound, — all these 
 industries combine to produce a noise which the 
 number of instruments renders outrageous. The 
 general system of the interior decoration of this 
 passage, which is neither a court, nor a garden, nor 
 a vault, and which partakes of all these, consists 
 of wooden pillars supported upon square pedestals 
 of stone and which form ogive arches. Two 
 arcades open on the little garden; two others, which 
 face the porte-cochere, allow a wooden stairway to 
 be seen, the rail of which was formerly a marvel of 
 ironsmith's work, so grotesque are the forms given 
 to the metal, and of which the worn steps now
 
 246 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 shake under foot. The doors of each apartment 
 have casings brown with dirt, with grease and with 
 dust, and are furnished with double doors covered 
 with Utrecht velvet fastened with nails disposed in 
 lozenges and which have lost their gilding. These 
 remnants of splendor announce that under Louis 
 XIV., this house was inhabited by some councillor 
 of Parliament, by rich ecclesiastics, or by some State 
 treasurer. But these vestiges of ancient luxury now 
 bring a smile to the lips by the ingenuous contrast 
 which they offer between the present and the past. 
 Monsieur Jean-Jules Popinot lived on the first floor 
 of this house, where the want of light natural to 
 the first floors of Parisian houses was doubled by 
 the narrowness of the street This ancient dwelling 
 was known to the whole of the twelfth arrondisse- 
 ment, to whom Providence had given this magistrate 
 as it gives a beneficent plant to cure or to moderate 
 every malady. Here is a sketch of this personage 
 whom the brilliant Marquise d'Espard wished to 
 seduce : 
 
 hi his character as magistrate. Monsieur Popinot 
 was always clothed in black, a costume which con- 
 tributed toward rendering him ridiculous in the eyes 
 of those accustomed to judge everything by a super- 
 ficial examination. Men who are jealous to pre- 
 serve the dignity which this vestment imposes 
 should be able to submit to the most minute and 
 continual carefulness ; but the dear Monsieur Popinot 
 was incapable of maintaining upon himself the Pu- 
 ritanical cleanliness which black requires. His
 
 THE INTERDICTION 247 
 
 pantaloons, always well worn, resembled crape, a 
 stuff of which the robes of advocates are made, and 
 his habitual attitude caused such a multitude of 
 creases in them that there might be seen in places 
 lines whitish, reddish or shining which revealed 
 either a sordid avarice or the most heedless poverty. 
 His heavy woolen stockings puckered in his shape- 
 less shoes. His linen had that rusty tone which is 
 contracted by a long sojourn in the wardrobe, and 
 which announced that the late Madame Popinot had 
 a certain mania for linen; according to the Flemish 
 method, she doubtless gave herself only twice a 
 year the trouble of a washing with lye. The coat 
 and the waistcoat of the magistrate were in harmony 
 with the pantaloons, the shoes, the stockings and 
 the linen. He found a constant success in his care- 
 lessness, for, the very day on which he put on a new 
 coat he brought it into appropriateness with the rest 
 of his toilet by getting spots upon it with an inex- 
 plicable promptness. The good man waited until 
 his cook apprised him of the shabbiness of his hat 
 before procuring a new one. His cravat was 
 always twisted without any preparation whatever, 
 and never did he repair the disorder which his 
 judge's band had occasioned in his tumbled shirt 
 collar. He took no care of his gray hair, and shaved 
 only twice a week. He never wore gloves, and 
 buried his hands habitually in his empty pockets, 
 the soiled openings of which, nearly always torn, 
 added one trait the more to the negligence of his 
 person. Anyone who has frequented the Palais de
 
 248 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 Justice at Paris, a locality in which may be observed 
 all the varieties of black garments, may readily 
 imagine the style of Monsieur Popinot. The habit 
 of sitting for entire days produces material changes 
 in the bodily conformation, just as the weariness 
 caused by the interminable pleadings affects the 
 physiognomy of the magistrates. Enclosed in the 
 ridiculously narrow court rooms, with no majesty of 
 architecture and in which the air is speedily viti- 
 ated, the Parisian judge assumes through compul- 
 sion a frowning visage, aged by close attention, 
 saddened through weariness; his complexion 
 bleaches, contracts greenish or earthy tints ac- 
 cording to his individual temperament In short, 
 within a given time, the most flourishing young 
 man becomes a pale machine of whereases, a mech- 
 anism applying the Code to every possible case 
 with the imperturbability of the fly wheels of a 
 clock. If then. Nature had not endowed Monsieur 
 Popinot with a very agreeable exterior, the magis- 
 tracy had not embellished it. The scaffolding of his 
 bodily frame presented many angles. His big 
 knees, his great feet, his large hands, contrasted 
 with a sacerdotal countenance which vaguely re- 
 sembled a calf's head, mild to insipidity, badly 
 lighted by mismatched, bloodless eyes, divided by 
 a nose straight and flat, surmounted by a fore- 
 head without any protuberance, decorated by two 
 immense ears which waved without any grace. His 
 thin and scanty locks allowed his skull to be seen 
 through several irregular openings. A single feature
 
 THE INTERDICTION 249 
 
 recommended this countenance to the physiognomist. 
 This man had a mouth the lips of which breathed a 
 divine I<indliness. They were good, thick lips, 
 red, with a thousand wrinkles, sinuous, mobile, in 
 which Nature had expressed beautiful sentiments; 
 lips which spoke to the heart and revealed in this 
 man intelligence, perspicacity, the gift of second 
 sight, an angelic spirit; — so that you would have 
 comprehended him very badly by judging him only 
 by his depressed forehead, his eyes without warmth 
 and his pitiful carriage. His life corresponding 
 with his physiognomy, it was filled with secret 
 labors and concealed the virtue of a saint. Ex- 
 haustive legal studies had so well recommended him 
 that, when Napoleon reorganized the administration 
 of justice in 1806 and 181 1, in accordance with the 
 advice of Cambaceres, he was selected as one of the 
 first to preside in the imperial court at Paris. Po- 
 pinot was nothing of a self-seeker. At each new 
 emergency, at each new solicitation, the minister 
 pushed Popinot back a step, — he never set foot 
 either within the doors of the high-chancellor or 
 those of the chief justice. From the court, he was 
 transferred to the rolls of the tribunals, then pushed 
 gradually down to the last round of the ladder by 
 the intrigues of active and stirring competitors. 
 He was finally named assistant judge! A general 
 outcry rose in the Palais: "Popinot assistant 
 judge!" This injustice roused the judicial world, 
 the advocates, the bailiffs, everybody excepting 
 Popinot, who made no complaint at all. The first
 
 250 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 clamor over, everyone found that all was for the best 
 in the best of all possible worlds, which certainly 
 should be the judicial world. Popinot was assistant 
 judge up to the days on which the most celebrated 
 Keeper of the Seals of the Restoration avenged the 
 injustices done to this noblest and silent man by the 
 chief justices of the Empire. After having been 
 assistant judge for twelve years, Monsieur Popinot 
 was doubtless going to die as a simple judge of the 
 tribunal of the Seine. 
 
 In order to explain the obscure destiny of one of 
 the superior men in the judiciary order, it is neces- 
 sary here to enter into some considerations which 
 will serve to unveil his life, his character, and 
 which will show, moreover, some of the wheels 
 within wheels of that great machine that is called 
 Justice. Monsieur Popinot was classified by the 
 three presidents who presided successively over the 
 tribunal of the Seine in a category of jugerie — juris- 
 diction of a judge, his province, — the only word 
 which can express the desired idea. He did not 
 obtain in this company the reputation for capacity 
 to which his works had entitled him in advance. 
 In the same way that a painter is invariably in- 
 cluded in the category of landscapists, portraitists, 
 historical, marine, or genre painters, by the pub- 
 lic of the artists, the connoisseurs or the idiots, 
 who through envy, through critical omnipotence, 
 through prejudice, confine him in his intelligence, 
 believing, all, that there exist calli in all brains, 
 — a narrowness of judgment which the world
 
 THE INTERDICTION 25 1 
 
 applies to writers, to statesmen, to all those who 
 commence by a specialty before being proclaimed 
 universal; in this same manner, Popinot arrived at 
 his destination and was enclosed in his class. The 
 magistrates, the advocates, the attorneys, all those 
 who pasture in the judicial field, distinguish two 
 elements in a lawsuit, — law and equity. The 
 equity results from the facts, the law is the applica- 
 tion of principles to the facts. A man may be right 
 in equity, wrong in justice, without the judge being 
 accusable. Between the conscience and the action 
 there is a world of determining reasons which are 
 unknown to the judge, and which condemn or jus- 
 tify the action. A judge is not God, his duty is to 
 adapt facts to principles, to judge cases infinitely 
 varied by making use of a determinate standard. 
 If the judge had the power of reading the conscience 
 and distinguishing the motives so as to render 
 equitable judgments, each judge would be a great 
 man. France requires about six thousand judges; 
 no one generation has six thousand great men at its 
 service, for the best of reasons it cannot find them, 
 then, for its magistracy. Popinot was in the midst 
 of the Parisian civilization a very skilful cadi, who, 
 by the nature of his mind and through having thor- 
 oughly rubbed the letter of the law into the spirit 
 of facts, had recognized the defect of wilful and 
 violent applications. Aided by his judicial second 
 sight, he pierced the envelope of double falsehoods 
 in which the lawyers conceal the inner facts of the 
 cases. A judge, as the illustrious Desplein was a
 
 252 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 surgeon, he penetrated the consciences as that 
 learned man penetrated the bodies. His life and 
 his habits had led him to the exact appreciation of 
 the most secret thoughts by the examination of the 
 facts. He delved into a case as Cuvier turned over 
 the mould of the earth. Like that great thinker, 
 he proceeded from deduction to deduction before 
 coming to a conclusion, and reproduced the past of 
 the conscience as Cuvier reconstructed an anoplo- 
 therium. When it was a case of a report, he often 
 woke up suddenly in the night, surprised by a gleam 
 of truth which suddenly revealed itself in his 
 thoughts. Struck by the profound injustice which 
 characterizes these contests in which everything 
 disserves the honest man, in which everything is in 
 favor of the rogue, he often decided against the law 
 and in favor of equity in all causes in which there 
 were questions the truth of which might in some 
 manner be divined. He therefore passed among his 
 colleagues as sufficiently unpractical, his reasons, 
 doubly deduced, moreover prolonged the delibera- 
 tions ; when Popinot remarked their unwillingness to 
 listen to him, he gave his opinion briefly. It was 
 said that he was but an indifferent judge in these 
 cases; but, as he had a striking genius of apprecia- 
 tion, as his judgment was lucid and his penetration 
 profound, he was regarded as possessing a special 
 aptitude for the dreary functions of jiige d'instrtic- 
 tion* He remained therefore juge d'instruction 
 
 *Juge d'instruction— mAZiSira^e charged with the preliminary examination of 
 the accused.— Note by Translator.
 
 THE INTERDICTION 253 
 
 during the greater part of his judicial life. Although 
 his qualifications rendered him eminently fitted for 
 this difficult position, and although he had the rep- 
 utation of being a profound criminalist who found 
 pleasure in his functions, the kindness of his heart 
 kept him constantly in torture, and he was held be- 
 tween his conscience and his pity as in a vise. 
 Although better recompensedthanthoseof /z/o-^ cm/, 
 the functions of juge d'instruction would tempt no 
 one; they are too slavish and confining. Popinot, 
 a man of modesty and of honest erudition, without 
 ambition, an indefatigable worker, did not complain 
 of his condition ; he sacrificed to the public good his 
 tastes, his compassion, and allowed himself to be 
 deported into the lagunes of criminal examination, 
 where he was able to be at once severe and benev- 
 olent. Sometimes his clerk of the court conveyed 
 to the accused money for the purchase of tobacco, or 
 for a warm garment in winter, in conducting him 
 back from the judge's rooms to the Souriciere, a 
 temporary prison in which the accused are held at 
 the disposition of the juge d'instruction. He knew 
 how to be at once an inflexible judge and a chari- 
 table man. Thus no one could obtain more readily 
 than he, full confessions without resorting to any of 
 the judicial machinery. He had, moreover, all the 
 shrewdness of a keen observer. This man of an 
 apparently silly goodness.simple and absent-minded, 
 detected the tricks of the Crispins of the galleys, 
 outwitted the most cunning of jades, and made the 
 scoundrels tremble. Very unusual circumstances
 
 2 54 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 had sharpened his perspicacity; but, to relate them, 
 it is necessary to penetrate into his inward life; for 
 the judge was with him the social side; another 
 man, greater and less known, was to be found in 
 him. 
 
 Twelve years before the day on which this history 
 commences, in 1816, at the time of that terrible 
 scarcity which coincided fatally with the sojourn of 
 the so-called allies in France, Popinot was appointed 
 president of the extraordinary commission instituted 
 to distribute supplies to the poor of his quarter, at 
 the moment when he was proposing to abandon 
 the Rue du Fouarre, residence in which was no less 
 displeasing to him than to his wife. This grand 
 jurisconsult, this profound criminalist, in whom 
 superiority seemed to his colleagues an aberration, 
 had for the last five years perceived judicial results 
 without discovering their causes. In ascending into 
 garrets, in observing distress, in studying the cruel 
 necessities which gradually conduct the poor to 
 reprehensible actions, in measuring, in short, their 
 long struggles, he was filled with compassion. This 
 judge became then the Saint Vincent de Paul of 
 these grown-up children, of these suffering workers. 
 His transformation was not complete at once. Be- 
 nevolence may be led along gradually, like the vices. 
 Charity empties the purse of a saint, as roulette 
 devours the gambler's wealth, gradually. Popinot 
 went from misfortune to misfortune, from one alms- 
 giving to another; then, when he had lifted all 
 the rags which serve for this public misery as a
 
 THE INTERDICTION 255 
 
 dressing under which festers a feverish wound, he 
 became, at the end of a year, the Providence of his 
 quarter. He was a member of the committee of 
 benevolence and of the bureau of charity. Every- 
 where that his gratuitous functions were to be exer- 
 cised, he accepted them and performed them without 
 ostentation, after the manner of the man with the 
 little cloak,* who passes his life in carrying soups 
 into the markets and into localities where the 
 famished are to be found. Popinot had the happi- 
 ness to act within a larger circumference and in 
 a more elevated sphere ; — he surveyed everything, 
 he prevented crime, he gave employment to idle 
 workmen, he found situations for the helpless, he 
 distributed his assistance with discernment at all 
 the threatened points, constituted himself the ad- 
 viser of the widow, the protector of homeless 
 children^ the silent partner in small commercial 
 affairs. No one at the Palais or in Paris knew 
 anything of this secret life of Popinot. There are 
 virtues so brilliant that they permit of concealment; 
 men hasten to put them under a bushel. As to 
 those aided by the magistrate, all of them, working 
 during the day and fatigued at night, were but little 
 likely to sound his praises; they had all the in- 
 gratitude of children, who can never repay because 
 they owe too much. There are unnatural ingrati- 
 tudes; but what heart can sow good in order to 
 harvest gratitude and believe itself great? In the 
 
 *Homme aupetit manteau bleu — popular name given a celebrated philanthro- 
 pist named Champion, bom in 1764, died in 1852. — Note by Translator.
 
 256 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 second year of his secret apostleship, Popinot had 
 ended by converting the ground floor of his house 
 into a charity bureau, lit by the three windows 
 with iron gratings. The walls and the ceiling of 
 this large apartment had been whitewashed, and 
 the furniture consisted of wooden benches, like 
 those of the schools, of a cheap wardrobe, a walnut 
 desk and an armchair. In the wardrobe were his 
 charity registers, his models for bread-tickets, his 
 day-book. He kept his accounts in a business-like 
 manner, so as not to be the dupe of his own virtue. 
 All the distresses of the quarter were figured, set 
 down in a book in which each misfortune had its 
 own account, like a merchant's debtors on his 
 books. When he had doubts about a family, con- 
 cerning a man to be helped, the magistrate found at 
 his command the information of the detective police. 
 Lavienne, a domestic made for his master, was his 
 aide-de-camp. He withdrew or renewed the pledges 
 in the pawn shops, and explored the most threaten- 
 ing localities while his master was occupied at the 
 Palais. From four to seven o'clock in the morning 
 in summer, from six to nine o'clock in winter, this 
 apartment was full of women, of children, of the 
 poor, to whom Popinot gave hearings. There was 
 no need of a stove in winter, — the crowd thronged 
 so thickly that the atmosphere became warm ; but 
 Lavienne spread some straw on the too-damp pave- 
 ment. In the end, the benches became as polished 
 as mahogany varnished; also up to the height of 
 a man, the wall received an indescribable dusky
 
 THE INTERDICTION 257 
 
 painting, applied by the rags and the dilapidated 
 garments of the poor. These unfortunates loved 
 Popinot so much that, when, before the opening of 
 his door, they had gathered there in the winter 
 mornings, the women warming themselves with 
 foot warmers, the men slapping their arms for the 
 same purpose, there was never a murmur to trouble 
 his slumber. The rag-pickers, the night wanderers, 
 knew this dwelling, and often saw the magistrate's 
 cabinet lit up at unseasonable hours. Even the 
 thieves said in passing it: "That is his house," 
 and respected it. His mornings were devoted to the 
 poor, the middle of his day to the criminals, the 
 evenings to judicial labors. 
 
 The genius of observation that had taken posses- 
 sion of Popinot was then necessarily Bifrons,* — he 
 felt instinctively the virtues of poverty, the good 
 sentiments frustrated, the fine actions conceived, 
 the unknown devotions, as he sought in the depths 
 of consciences the slightest traces of crime, the most 
 delicate threads of misdemeanors, so as to discern 
 all. The Popinot patrimony was worth a thousand 
 ecus of income. His wife, the sister of Monsieur 
 Bianchon the father, doctor at Sancerre, had brought 
 him twice as much. She had been dead for five 
 years, and had left her fortune to her husband. As 
 the salary of an assistant judge is not considerable, 
 and as Popinot had not been a judge on full pay for 
 
 *Bifrons — a demon who, when he assumes the human form, instructs his 
 disciple in astroloE:y and in the influence of the planets; he excels in geometry 
 and knows the virtues of herbs, plants and precious stones.— Note by Trans- 
 lator. 
 
 17
 
 258 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 but four years, it is easy to guess the reason of his 
 parsimony in all that concerned his own person or 
 daily life, considering the mediocrity of his revenue 
 and the extent of his charity. Moreover, the indif- 
 ference as to garments, which in Popinot indicated 
 the preoccupied man, is it not the distinctive mark 
 of a lofty science, of art cultivated furiously, of a 
 mind perpetually active? To complete this por- 
 trait, it will suffice to add that Popinot was of the 
 very small number of judges of the tribunal of the 
 Seine to whom the decoration of the Legion of Honor 
 had not been given. 
 
 Such was the man whom the president of the 
 second chamber of the tribunal — to which Popinot 
 belonged, he having re-entered within the last two 
 years among the jugescivils — had commissioned to 
 proceed to the examination of the Marquis d'Espard, 
 upon the petition presented by his wife in order to 
 obtain an interdiction. 
 
 The Rue du Fouarre, where so many unfortunates 
 swarmed in the early morning, became deserted 
 at nine o'clock and resumed its sombre and poverty- 
 stricken aspect. Bianchon therefore hastened his 
 horse's trot, so that he might catch his uncle in the 
 midst of his audience. He did not think without a 
 smile of the strange contrast which the judge would 
 produce by the side of Madame d'Espard; but he 
 promised himself to persuade him to assume a cos- 
 tume that would not render him too absurd. 
 
 "if my uncle has only a new coat.?" said Bian- 
 chon to himself as he entered the Rue du Fouarre,
 
 THE INTERDICTION 259 
 
 in which the windows of the charity bureau emitted 
 a pale light. "1 should do better, I imagine, to con- 
 sult Lavienne on that point." 
 
 At the sound of the cabriolet, some ten poor people 
 issued from under the porch in surprise and un- 
 covered when they recognized the doctor; for Bian- 
 chon, who gratuitously attended the sick recom- 
 mended to him by the judge, was not less well 
 known than he to the unfortunates there assembled. 
 Bianchon perceived his uncle in the midst of his 
 bureau, the benches of which were, in fact, filled 
 by the indigent who presented such grotesque sin- 
 gularities of apparel that the least artistic of passers- 
 by would have stopped in the middle of the street to 
 look. Certainly, a designer, a Rembrandt, if there 
 existed such a one in our day, would have there 
 found material for one of his most magnificent com- 
 positions in seeing these miseries, frankly presented 
 and silent. Here, the wrinkled countenance of an 
 austere old man with a white beard, an apostolic 
 head, presented a Saint Peter already made. His 
 chest, partially uncovered, allowed the swelling 
 muscles to be seen, the indications of a tempera- 
 ment of bronze which had served him for a base of 
 resistance to sustain an epic of misfortune. There, 
 a young woman was nursing her youngest child, 
 that he might not cry, while holding another, of 
 about five years, between her knees. This breast, 
 the whiteness of which made a brilliant spot in the 
 midst of the rags, this infant with its transparent 
 skin, and its brother, whose attitude revealed the
 
 26o THE INTERDICTION 
 
 gamin of the future, affected the sympathies by a 
 sort of half gracious opposition to the long line of 
 figures reddened by the cold in the midst of which 
 this family appeared. Farther on, an old woman, 
 pale and cold, presented that repulsive face of 
 pauperism in revolt, ready to take vengeance on 
 some day of sedition for all its past pains. There 
 was to be found also the young workman, debili- 
 tated, indolent, in whom the intelligent eye revealed 
 superior faculties repressed by necessities vainly 
 struggled against, silent under suffering, and in 
 peril of death for want of an opportunity to gain 
 entrance into that immense enclosure in which 
 struggle all those self-devouring miseries. The 
 women were in the majority; their husbands, gone 
 off to their workshops, had doubtless left to them the 
 charge of pleading the household cause with that 
 lively intelligence that characterizes the wife of the 
 poor, nearly always the queen in her own hovel. 
 You might have seen on all the heads, torn handker- 
 chiefs, on all the bodies, dresses bordered with mud, 
 fichus in rags, jackets dirty and full of holes, but 
 everywhere eyes which glittered like so many living 
 flames. A horrible gathering, of which the aspect at 
 first inspired disgust, but which soon caused a kind 
 of terror as you came to perceive that the resigna- 
 tion, purely fortuitous, of these souls grappling with 
 all the daily necessities of life, was merely specu- 
 lating upon charity. The two candles which lit the 
 apartment flickered in a kind of fog caused by the 
 ill-smelling atmosphere of this badly-aired space.
 
 THE INTERDICTION 26 1 
 
 The magistrate was not the least picturesque per- 
 sonage in this assembly. He had on his head a 
 reddish cotton cap. As he was without a cravat, 
 his neck, red with cold and wrinkled, showed itself 
 plainly over the threadbare collar of his old dressing- 
 gown. His weary countenance presented the semi- 
 stupid appearance caused by absorbed attention. 
 His mouth, like that of all those who work, was 
 tightened like a purse of which the drawing-string 
 is pulled. His contracted forehead seemed to sup- 
 port the burden of all the confidences which were 
 made to him,— he felt, analyzed, and judged. As 
 attentive as a usurer over his petty loans, his eyes 
 left his books and his notes to penetrate to the in- 
 nermost conscience of the applicants, whom he ex- 
 amined with the quickness of glance by which the 
 avaricious express their disquietude. Standing 
 behind his master, ready to execute his orders, 
 Lavienne doubtless represented the police, and wel- 
 comed the newcomers, encouraging them to over- 
 come their own bashfulness. When the doctor 
 appeared, there was a general movement on the 
 benches. Lavienne turned his head and was 
 strangely surprised to see Bianchon. 
 
 "Ah! you here, my boy," said Popinot, stretch- 
 ing his arms. "What brings you here at this 
 hour.?" 
 
 "I feared that you would not make to-day, unless 
 you saw me, a certain judicial visit concerning 
 which I wish to see you." 
 
 "Well," resumed the judge, addressing a stout
 
 262 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 little woman who was standing near him, *'if you 
 do not tell me what is the matter with you, my 
 girl, I cannot guess it." 
 
 "Hurry up," said Lavienne to her, "do not take 
 up the time of others." 
 
 "Monsieur," said the woman finally, reddening 
 and lowering her voice so as not to be heard but by 
 Popinot and Lavienne, "I am a huckster, and I have 
 my last little one for whom I owe the nurse her 
 monthly wages. Then, I hid my poor little 
 money — " 
 
 "Well, your husband took it.?" said Popinot, 
 divining the termination of the confession. 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 "What is your name?" 
 
 "La Pomponne. " 
 
 "Your husband's?" 
 
 "Toupinet" 
 
 "Rue du Petit-Banquier?" resumed Popinot, 
 turning over the leaves of his register. "He is in 
 prison," he said, reading a note on the margin of 
 the leaf on which the case of this household was 
 inscribed. 
 
 "For debt, my dear monsieur." 
 
 Popinot shook his head. 
 
 "But, monsieur, I have nothing with which to fill 
 my hand-cart, the landlord came yesterday and made 
 me pay him; otherwise, I should have been put out 
 on the street." 
 
 Lavienne leaned toward his master and said some 
 words to him in his ear.
 
 THE INTERDICTION 263 
 
 "Well, how much do you need to buy your fruit 
 at the market?" 
 
 "Why, my dear monsieur, I should need, to go 
 on with my business, about — yes, I should certainly 
 need ten francs." 
 
 The judge made a sign to Lavienne, who drew 
 from a large bag ten francs and gave them to the 
 woman, while the judge set down the loan in his 
 register. By the involuntary movement of joy 
 which agitated her, Bianchon divined the anxieties 
 which had tormented this woman on her way from 
 her own house to the judge's. 
 
 "Your turn," said Lavienne to the old man with 
 the white beard. 
 
 Bianchon drew the valet to one side, and asked 
 him how long this audience would require. 
 
 "Monsieur has had two hundred persons this 
 morning, and here are still eighty to do," said 
 Lavienne; "Monsieur le Docteur will have time to 
 make his first calls." 
 
 "My boy," said the judge, turning and seizing 
 Horace by the arm, "see here, here are two ad- 
 dresses not far away, — one. Rue de Seine, and the 
 other, Rue de I'Arbalete. Run around there. In 
 the Rue de Seine, a young girl has asphyxiated her- 
 self, and you will find in the Rue de I'Arbalete a 
 man to send to your hospital. 1 will expect you at 
 dejeuner." 
 
 Bianchon returned at the expiration of an hour. 
 The Rue du Fouarre was deserted, the day was be- 
 ginning to break, his uncle had remounted to his
 
 264 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 apartments, the last poor wretch whose misery had 
 been soothed by the magistrate had gone away, 
 Lavienne's bag was empty. 
 
 "Well, how are they getting on?" said the judge 
 to the doctor as he mounted the steps. 
 
 "The man is dead," replied Bianchon, "the young 
 girl will recover." 
 
 Ever since it had lost the supervising eye and 
 hand of a woman, the apartment in which Popinot 
 lived had assumed an aspect that harmonized with 
 its master's. The carelessness of a man constantly 
 preoccupied by one over-mastering thought left its 
 curious seal on everything. Everywhere an invet- 
 erate dust, everywhere in the objects those changes 
 from their original purpose the ingenuity of which 
 recalled those of bachelor apartments. There were 
 papers thrust into the flower vases, empty ink bottles 
 on the furniture, forgotten plates, phosphorus boxes 
 converted into candlesticks at the moment when 
 it was necessary to search for something, partial 
 takings down and packings up, commenced and for- 
 gotten; in short, all the accumulations and the 
 emptyings caused by the abandonment of all thought 
 of arrangement. But the magistrate's cabinet, 
 especially stirred up by this incessant disorder, 
 revealed his ceaseless action, the constant preoccu- 
 pation of a man overwhelmed by affairs, pursued by 
 conflicting necessities. The library was as if 
 pillaged, the books were scattered about, some of 
 them with their backs thrust into the open pages of 
 others, some fallen face downward on the floor ; the
 
 THE INTERDICTION 265 
 
 legal documents arranged in a row, through the 
 greater part of the library, encumbered the floor. 
 This floor had not been waxed for two years. The 
 tables and the furniture were laden with the ex-votos 
 brought by grateful poverty. Upon the cornucopias 
 in blue glass which ornamented the chimney-piece 
 were two glass globes, filled with various colors 
 mingled together which gave them the appearance 
 of some curious product of nature. Bouquets of 
 artificial flowers, drawings in which the Popinot 
 monogram was surrounded by hearts and immor- 
 telles, decorated the walls. Here, were boxes in 
 cabinet work, pretentiously made, and which served 
 for nothing. There, were paper-weights, manufac- 
 tured in the style of those articles executed by con- 
 victs in the galleys. These masterpieces of 
 patience, these rebuses of gratitude, these dried-up 
 bouquets, gave to the judge's cabinet and chamber 
 the air of a shop of children's playthings. The 
 good man made mementos of these works, he filled 
 them with notes, with forgotten pens, and with 
 pieces of paper. These sublime testimonials of a 
 divine charity were filled with dust, without fresh- 
 ness. A few birds, perfectly stuffed but devoured 
 by worms, figured among this wilderness of trifles 
 over which presided an Angora, Madame Popinot's 
 favorite cat, which a naturalist without a sou had 
 restored with all the appearance of life, repaying 
 thus a slight alms with an eternal treasure. Some 
 artist of the quarter whose heart had led his brushes 
 astray, had also executed the portraits of Monsieur
 
 266 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 and of Madame Popinot. Even into the alcove of 
 the bedchamber there penetrated the embroidered- 
 pincushions, the landscape made in needlework 
 and the crosses in folded paper, the twisting of 
 which revealed a senseless amount of labor. The 
 curtains of the windows were blackened by smoke, 
 and the draperies had lost all their color. Between 
 the fireplace and the large square table at which the 
 magistrate sat, the cook had served two cups of 
 coffee with milk on a small table. Two ma- 
 hogany armchairs upholstered in horse-hair waited 
 for the uncle and his nephew. 
 
 As the daylight, intercepted by the window panes, 
 did not penetrate thus far, the cook had left two 
 candles burning, the immeasurably long wicks of 
 which had formed "thieves" and threw out that 
 reddish light which saves the candle by the slow- 
 ness of the combustion, — a discovery due to the 
 misers. 
 
 "Dear uncle, you should dress yourself more 
 warmly when you go down to that parlor." 
 
 "1 do not like to keep them waiting, those poor 
 people! Well, what is it that you wish of me?" 
 
 "Why, I come to invite you to dinner to-morrow 
 at the house of the Marquise d'Espard. " 
 
 "One of our relatives?" asked the judge with an 
 air of such naive preoccupation that Bianchon 
 laughed. 
 
 "No, uncle; the Marquise d'Espard is a high and 
 very influential lady who has presented to the tri- 
 bunal a petition to have her husband interdicted from
 
 THE INTERDICTION 267 
 
 disposing of his property, and you have been com- 
 missioned — " 
 
 "And you want me to go and dine with her ! Are 
 you crazy?" said the judge, seizing the Code of 
 legal procedure. "See here, read there the article 
 which forbids the magistrate to eat and to drink in 
 the house of either of the parties whom he is to 
 judge. Let her come to see me if she have any- 
 thing to say to me, your marchioness. In fact, I 
 shall have to go to-morrow to examine her husband 
 after having investigated the affair during the com- 
 ing night." 
 
 He rose, took a bundle of documents which were 
 held by a paper-weight, not far away, and said, 
 after having read the title: 
 
 "Here are the papers. Since this high and influ- 
 ential lady interests you, here is the petition." 
 
 Popinot crossed the flaps of his dressing-gown, 
 which always fell open and revealed his uncovered 
 chest; he dipped his strips of bread in his cold 
 coffee, and looked for the petition, which he read 
 aloud, permitting himself some interruptions and 
 some discussions in which his nephew joined. 
 
 To Monsieur le President du Tribunal Civil de Pre- 
 mise Instance of the Department of the Seine, sitting in 
 the Palais de Justice. 
 
 " 'Madame Jeanne-Clementine-Athenais de Bla- 
 mont-Chauvry, spouse of Monsieur Charles-Mau- 
 rice-Marie Andoche, Comte deN^grepelisse, Marquis
 
 268 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 d'Espard' — a fine nobility! — 'landholder; the afore- 
 said Dame d'Espard, living in the Rue du Faubourg- 
 Saint-Honore, number 104, and the aforesaid Sieur 
 d'Espard, Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevi^ve, 
 number 22' — ah! yes, Monsieur le President told me 
 that it was in my quarter! — 'having Maitre Des- 
 roches for her attorney — ' 
 
 "Desroches! a little pettifogger, a man in bad 
 odor with the court and with his colleagues, who 
 injures the cause of his clients!" 
 
 "Poor devil !" said Bianchon, "he unfortunately 
 has no fortune, and he struggles like the devil in a 
 holy-water basin, that is all." 
 
 " 'Has the honor to represent to you, Monsieur le 
 President, that, for the space of a year, the faculties, 
 moral and intellectual, of Monsieur d'Espard, her 
 husband, have undergone an alteration so profound, 
 that they constitute to-day the condition of de- 
 mentia and imbecility provided for by Article 486 
 of the Code Civil, and call for, in aid of his fortune, 
 of his person, and in the interests of his children 
 whom he keeps with him, the application of the 
 dispositions indicated in the same article. 
 
 " 'That, in fact, the moral condition of Monsieur 
 d'Espard, who, for the space of several years past, 
 has excited grave fears founded upon the system 
 adopted by him for the management of his affairs, 
 has traversed, especially during this last year, a 
 deplorable, descending scale; that his will was the
 
 THE INTERDICTION 269 
 
 first to feel the effects of the evil, and that his pros- 
 tration has left Monsieur le Marquis d'Espard a prey 
 to all the dangers of an incapacity fully established 
 by the following facts : 
 
 " 'For a long space of time, all the revenues accru- 
 ing from the property of the Marquis d'Espard have 
 passed, without any apparent cause and without 
 any advantages, even temporary, to an old woman 
 whose repulsive ugliness is matter of general report, 
 and who is named Madame Jeanrenaud, living some- 
 times in Paris, Rue de la Vrilli^re, number 8 ; some- 
 times at Villeparisis, near Claye, department of the 
 Seine-et-Marne, and to the benefit of her son, thirty- 
 six years of age, an officer of the ex-Imperial Guard, 
 whom, by his influence. Monsieur le Marquis 
 d'Espard has placed in the Garde Royale with the 
 rank of chief of squadron in the first regiment of 
 cuirassiers. These persons, who, in 1814, were re- 
 duced to the utmost misery, have successively 
 acquired real estate of a very considerable value, 
 lately, among others, a hotel in the Grande Rue 
 Verte, in which the Sieur Jeanrenaud is at present 
 expending considerable sums in order to establish 
 himself there with the Dame Jeanrenaud his 
 mother, in view of the marriage which he is con- 
 templating; which sums already amount to more 
 than a hundred thousand francs. This marriage is 
 being brought about by the negotiations of the Mar- 
 quis d'Espard with his banker, the Sieur Mongenod, 
 of whom he has asked his niece in marriage for the 
 aforesaid Sieur Jeanrenaud, promising to use his
 
 270 THE hYTERDICTION 
 
 credit to obtain for him the dignity of baron. This 
 appointment was, in fact, established by an ordi- 
 nance of His Majesty, dated the twenty-ninth of 
 December last, upon the solicitations of the Mar- 
 quis d'Espard, as can be established by his Grace, 
 Monseigneur the Keeper of the Seals, if the tribunal 
 judge it proper to have recourse to his testimony. 
 
 " 'That no reason, even drawn from those which are 
 reproved equally by morality and the law, can justify 
 the empire which the Dame Jeanrenaud, widow, has 
 established over the Marquis d'Espard, who, more- 
 over, sees her very rarely; or explain his strange 
 affection for the aforesaid Sieur Baron Jeanrenaud, 
 with whom his communications are infrequent; 
 nevertheless, their authority over him is so great 
 that, every time that they are in need of money, 
 even were it to satisfy their slightest wishes, this 
 dame or her son — ' 
 
 "Eh! eh! reason which morality and the law re- 
 prove ! What does the clerk or the attorney wish to 
 insinuate to us?" said Popinot. 
 
 Bianchon laughed. 
 
 " 'This dame or her son obtains without any dis- 
 cussion from the Marquis d'Espard that which they 
 ask, and, in default of cash. Monsieur d'Espard signs 
 bills of exchange negotiated by the Sieur Mongenod, 
 who has offered to the petitioner to testify to this 
 effect. 
 
 " 'That, moreover, in support of these facts, it has
 
 THE INTERDICTION 271 
 
 happened recently at the period of the renewal of 
 the leases of the D'Espard estate, the farmers hav- 
 ing given a sufficiently important sum for the con- 
 tinuation of their contracts, the Sieur Jeanrenaud 
 caused the immediate delivery of these sums to 
 himself. 
 
 " 'That the will of the Marquis d'Espard had so 
 little to do with the abandonment of these sums, 
 that, when he was spoken to about it, he did not 
 appear to remember anything concerning it; that 
 every time that he has been questioned by grave 
 personages concerning his devotion to these two 
 individuals, his responses have indicated so com- 
 plete an abnegation of his ideas, of his interests, that 
 there exists necessarily in this affair some occult 
 cause upon which the petitioner requests the eye of 
 justice, seeing that it is impossible that this cause 
 should not be criminal, improper and unlawful, or 
 of a nature to be appreciated by the medical juris- 
 prudence, if indeed, this obsession be not of those 
 which partake of the abuse of the moral powers, 
 and which can be qualified only by making use of 
 the extraordinary term possession — * 
 
 "The devil!" exclaimed Popinot, "what do you 
 say to that, doctor ? These facts are very strange. " 
 
 "They might be," replied Bianchon, "an effect 
 of some magnetic power." 
 
 "You believe then in the nonsense of Mesmer, in 
 his magnetizing tub, in seeing through walls?" 
 
 "Yes, uncle," said the doctor, gravely. "While
 
 272 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 listening to you reading this petition, I have been 
 thinking of it. I declare to you that 1 have verified, 
 in another field of action, several facts analogous to 
 these, relative to the boundless empire which one 
 man can acquire over another. I am, contrary to 
 the opinion of my colleagues, entirely convinced of 
 the power of the will, considered as a motive power. 
 I have seen, all connivance and charlatanism aside, 
 the effects of this possession. The actions promised 
 the magneti;(er by the magnetised during the sleep 
 have been scrupulously accomplished in the waking 
 state. The will of the one had become the will of 
 the other." 
 
 "Every species of action?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Even criminal ?" 
 
 "Even criminal." 
 
 "It is well that it is you who say so, or I would 
 not listen." 
 
 "I will make you a witness of it, " said Bianchon. 
 
 "Hum ! hum !" said the judge. "Supposing that 
 the cause of this pretended possession belongs to this 
 order of facts, it would be difficult to establish it and 
 to cause it to be recognized by the law." 
 
 "1 do not see, if this Dame Jeanrenaud is fright- 
 fully old and ugly, what other means of seduction 
 she could have employed," said Bianchon. 
 
 "But," replied the judge, "in 1814, the date at 
 which the seduction was accomplished, this woman 
 must have been fourteen years younger; if she 
 had become acquainted with Monsieur d'Espard ten
 
 THE INTERDICTION 273 
 
 years before that, these calculations of dates carry 
 us back twenty-four years, to a period in which the 
 lady may very well have been young and pretty, 
 and have acquired, by very natural methods, for 
 herself as well as for her son, over Monsieur d'Es- 
 pard, an empire from which certain men are unable 
 to escape. If the cause of this empire seem repre- 
 hensible in the eyes of justice, it is very justifiable 
 in the eyes of nature. Madame Jeanrenaud may 
 very well have been chagrined at the marriage con- 
 tracted probably about that time by the Marquis 
 d'Espard with Mademoiselle de Blamont-Chauvry ; 
 and there might be, at the bottom of all this, noth- 
 ing more than a woman's rivalry, since the marquis 
 has not lived for a long time with Madame d'Es- 
 pard." 
 
 "But this repulsive ugliness, uncle?" 
 "The power of seduction is in direct ratio to 
 ugliness; that is an old question! Moreover, the 
 small-pox, doctor? But let us continue. 
 
 " * — That, since the year 181 5, in order to furnish 
 the sums required by these two persons. Monsieur 
 le Marquis d'Espard has gone to live with his two 
 children in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Gen- 
 evi^ve, in an apartment the poverty of which is un- 
 worthy of his name and of his quality' — You can 
 live just as you please! — 'that he detains there his 
 two children, the Comte Clement d'Espard and the 
 Vicomte Camille d'Espard, in a manner of living 
 not in accord with their future, with their name and 
 18
 
 274 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 their fortune; that the want of money is frequently 
 so great that, recently, the landlord, one Sieur 
 Mariast, seized the furniture of these apartments; 
 that, when this due course of law was effected in 
 his presence, the Marquis d'Espard assisted the 
 sheriff's officer, whom he treated as a person of 
 quality, in offering him all the marks of courtesy 
 and attention which he would have displayed for a 
 person raised above himself in dignity of posi- 
 tion — * 
 
 The uncle and the nephew looked at each other, 
 laughing. 
 
 " ' — That, moreover, all the actions of his daily 
 life, outside of the facts alleged as to the Dame 
 Jeanrenaud, widow, and as to the Sieur Baron 
 Jeanrenaud, her son, are characterized by madness; 
 that, for nearly the space of ten years, he has occu- 
 pied himself so exclusively with China, with its 
 manners and customs, with its history, that he 
 compares everything to Chinese methods; that, 
 when questioned upon this point, he confounds the 
 affairs of the present time, the events of the day 
 before, with facts relative to China; that he cen- 
 sures the acts of the Government and the conduct 
 of the King although, moreover, he loves him per- 
 sonally, in comparing them to the political events 
 of China. 
 
 " 'That this monomania has urged the Marquis 
 d'Espard to actions void of all sense; that contrary
 
 THE INTERDICTION 275 
 
 to the customs of his rank and the ideas which he 
 professes concerning the duty of the nobihty, he 
 has undertaken a commercial enterprise for which 
 he daily signs obligations falling due at certain 
 dates which threaten to-day his honor and his for- 
 tune, seeing that they represent him in the quality 
 of a merchant, and can, if they are not met at the 
 expiration of their term, cause him to be declared a 
 bankrupt; that these obligations, contracted with 
 paper merchants, printers, lithographers and color- 
 ists, who have furnished the materials necessary for 
 this publication entitled: Picturesque History of 
 China, and appearing in parts, are of such magni- 
 tude, that these same furnishers have entreated the 
 petitioner to request the interdiction of the Marquis 
 d'Espard in order that they may save their 
 credit — ' 
 
 "This man is a fool," cried Bianchon. 
 
 "You think so, you do!" said the judge. "It is 
 necessary to hear him. Who listens to only one 
 bell, hears only one sound." 
 
 "But it seems to me — " said Bianchon. 
 
 "But it seems to me," said Popinot, "that if one 
 of my relatives wished to get possession of the ad- 
 ministration of my property, and that, if instead of 
 being a simple judge whose moral and mental con- 
 dition can be examined any day by his colleagues, 
 I were a duke and a peer, some attorney a little 
 sharp, as is Desroches, might draw up a petition 
 similar to this against me."
 
 276 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 " ' — That the education of his children has suf- 
 fered because of this monomania, and that he has 
 caused them to be taught, contrary to all the usages 
 of instruction, the facts of Chinese history which 
 contradict the doctrines of the Catholic religion, 
 and has caused them to be taught the Chinese dia- 
 lects — ' 
 
 "Here, Desroches seems to me absurd," said 
 Bianchon. 
 
 "The petition was drawn up by his head clerk, 
 Godeschal, whom you know, who is not very 
 Chinese," said the judge. 
 
 " ' — That he frequently leaves his children de- 
 prived of the most necessary articles; that the pe- 
 titioner, notwithstanding her repeated request, is 
 not permitted to see them ; that the Sieur Marquis 
 d'Espard brings them to her only once a year; that, 
 knowing the privations to which they are exposed, 
 she has made vain efforts to procure for them arti- 
 cles the most necessary for their existence, and of 
 which they are in need — ' 
 
 "Ah! Madame la Marquise, this is nonsense. 
 Who proves too much, proves nothing. My dear 
 fellow," said the judge, dropping the papers on his 
 knees, "where is the mother who has ever been so 
 lacking in heart, in wit, in compassion, as not to 
 rise even to the level of the inspiration of her natu- 
 ral instincts? A mother is as shrewd to get at her
 
 THE INTERDICTION 277 
 
 children as a young girl is to successfully conduct a 
 love intrigue. If your marchioness had really 
 wished to take care of or to clothe her children, the 
 devil himself could not have prevented her, hein ? 
 It is a little too long, this fme story, to be swallowed 
 by an old judge ! Let us continue. 
 
 >> 
 
 " • — That the age at which the said children have 
 arrived, requires that from the present time, pre- 
 cautions should be taken to protect them from the 
 fatal influence of this education, that they should be 
 provided for according to their rank, and that they 
 should not have before their eyes the example given 
 them by their father's conduct. 
 
 " 'That in support of the facts alleged in these 
 presents there exist proofs of which the tribunal 
 may readily obtain the evidence: very many times 
 Monsieur d'Espard has designated the judge of the 
 peace of the twelfth arrondissement as a mandarin 
 of the third class; he has often called the professors 
 of the College of Henri IV., the lettered.' — And they 
 resent it! — 'With relation to the most simple 
 things, he has said that they are not so managed in 
 China; he will make allusion, in the course of an 
 ordinary conversation, either to the Dame Jeanre- 
 naud, or to events that took place under the reign of 
 Louis XIV., and then remain plunged in the deepest 
 melancholy, — sometimes he imagines himself in 
 China. Several of his neighbors, notably the 
 Sieurs Edme Becker, student in medicine, Jean- 
 Baptiste Fremiot, professor, domiciled in the same
 
 278 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 house, believe, after having conversed with the 
 Marquis d'Espard, that his monomania, in all that 
 concerns China, is the result of apian formed by the 
 Sieur Baron Jeanrenaud and the Dame his mother, 
 widow, to complete the overthrow of the moral 
 faculties of the Marquis d'Espard, seeing that the 
 sole service which the Dame Jeanrenaud can render 
 Monsieur d'Espard is to procure for him everything 
 that relates to the Empire of China. 
 
 " 'That, finally, the petitioner offers to prove to 
 the tribunal that the sums absorbed by the Sieur 
 and the Dame Jeanrenaud, widow, from 1814 to 1828, 
 amount to not less than a million francs. 
 
 "In confirmation of the preceding facts, the peti- 
 tioner offers to Monsieur le President the testimony 
 of persons who are in the habit of seeing Monsieur 
 le Marquis d'Espard, and whose names and qualities 
 are set down here below, among whom many have 
 earnestly requested the procuring of the interdiction 
 of Monsieur le Marquis d'Espard, as the sole method 
 of protecting his fortune from his deplorable admin- 
 istration, and of removing his children from his fatal 
 influence. 
 
 " 'In consideration of this, Monsieur le President, 
 and in view of the documents hereto adjoined, the 
 petitioner requests that it should please you, seeing 
 that the preceding facts prove incontestably the 
 state of dementia and of imbecility of Monsieur le 
 Marquis d'Espard, named hereinbefore, his quality 
 and his domicile, to order that, for the purpose 
 of securing the interdiction of the same, the present
 
 THE INTERDICTION 279 
 
 petition and the documents in corroboration tliereof 
 siiali be communicated to Monsieur le Procureur 
 du Roi, and to commission one of Messieurs the 
 judges of the tribunal to the end that a report 
 may be made on a day that you may be pleased to 
 indicate, in order that judgment may finally be de- 
 creed by the tribunal as it shall see cause, and you 
 will do justice, etc' " 
 
 "And here is," said Popinot, "the ordinance of 
 the president who commissions me! Well, what 
 does she want with me, the Marquise d'Espard? 1 
 know what to do. I will go to-morrow with my 
 clerk to see Monsieur le Marquis, for this does not 
 seem to me clear at all." 
 
 "Listen to me, my dear uncle, I have never asked 
 of you the least little service relating to your 
 judicial functions; well, I entreat you to have for 
 Madame d'Espard the consideration to which her 
 station entitles her. If she comes here, you will 
 listen to her?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, goto hear her in her own house: Madame 
 d'Espard is a sickly, nervous, delicate woman who 
 would be very uncomfortable here in your rat's nest. 
 Go there in the evening, instead of accepting the 
 invitation to dinner, since the law forbids your eat- 
 ing and drinking in the houses of those under your 
 jurisdiction." 
 
 "Does not the law forbid your receiving legacies 
 from your dead patients?" said Popinot, thinking
 
 280 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 that he perceived a shade of irony on his nephew's 
 Hps. 
 
 "Come, uncle, since it is only for the sake of ar- 
 riving at the truth in this affair, grant me my re- 
 quest. You will go there asjuge d'instniciion, since 
 things do not seem to you clear. The deuce! the 
 interrogation of the marchioness is not less neces- 
 sary than that of her husband." 
 
 "You are right," said the magistrate, "it may 
 very well be that she is the lunatic. I will go." 
 
 "I will come to get you: writedown in your mem- 
 orandum book : To-morrow evening at nine o'clock, 
 at Madame d'Espard's. Good," said Bianchon, see- 
 in2 his uncle make a note of the rendezvous. 
 
 The next evening, at nine o'clock, Doctor Bian- 
 chon mounted the dusty stairway of his uncle's, and 
 found him working at the rendering of some thorny 
 judgment. The new coat ordered by Lavienne had 
 not been brought by the tailor, so that Popinot took 
 his old coat, covered with spots, and was still the 
 Popinot incomptus whose aspect excited the risibility 
 of those to whom his private life was unknown. 
 Bianchon succeeded, however, in putting his uncle's 
 cravat in order and in buttoning his coat, he con- 
 cealed the spots on the latter by crossing the revers 
 of the skirts from right to left and thus presenting the 
 part of the cloth that was still new. But in a very 
 few minutes the judge pushed his coat up on his chest 
 by the manner in which he thrust his hand into his 
 trousers pockets according to his usual custom. 
 The coat, multitudinously wrinkled behind and
 
 THE INTERDICTION 28 1 
 
 before, formed something like a hump in the middle 
 of the back, and produced between the waistcoat and 
 the pantaloons a space in which the shirt showed 
 itself. To his misfortune, Bianchon did not per- 
 ceive this excessively ridiculous effect until the 
 moment when his uncle presented himself in the 
 marchioness' salon. 
 
 A slight sketch of the life of this lady in whose 
 dwelling the doctor and the judge were at this 
 moment entering is necessary to render intelligible 
 the conference which Popinot was about to hold 
 with her. 
 
 Madame d'Espard had been, for the last seven 
 years, very much a la mode in Paris, where la Mode 
 alternately elevates and pulls down personages who, 
 sometimes great and sometimes little, — that is to 
 say, alternately in sight and forgotten, — become later 
 insupportable persons — as are all the disgraced min- 
 isters and all the dethroned monarchs. Inconvenient 
 because of their faded pretensions, these fawners 
 of the past know all, slander all, and, like the 
 ruined spendthrift, are the friends of all the world. 
 To have been forsaken by her husband about the 
 year 181 5, Madame d'Espard must have been married 
 early in the year 181 2. Her children were, therefore, 
 one fifteen and the other thirteen years of age. How 
 had it come to pass that the mother of a family, 
 thirty-three years of age, was cl la mode. Although 
 fashionable society be capricious, and though no 
 one can designate its favorites in advance, though 
 it often exalts the wife of a banker or some woman
 
 282 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 of a doubtful elegance or beauty, it would seem 
 supernatural that it should have assumed constitu- 
 tional features and adopted the presidency of age. 
 In this, society had done like all the rest of the 
 world, it accepted Madame d'Espard as a young 
 woman. The marchioness was thirty-three years 
 of age in the registers of the State, and twenty-two 
 in the evenings in a salon. But how many cares 
 and artifices ! Artificial ringlets concealed her tem- 
 ples. She condemned herself in her own apartments 
 to a half-light, posing as an invalid in order to re- 
 main in the protecting shades of a light passed 
 through muslin curtains. Like Diane de Poitiers, 
 she used cold water for her baths; like her, also, the 
 marchioness slept upon horse-hair, with her head 
 upon pillows of morocco leather, in order to preserve 
 her hair, ate but little, drank nothing but water, 
 combined all her movements so as to avoid fatigue, 
 and brought a monastic exactitude to the slightest 
 actions of her life. This rude system has been, it 
 is said, carried to the extent of even using ice in- 
 stead of water and cold aliments exclusively by an 
 illustrious Polish lady who, in our day, combines a 
 life already secular with the occupations, the cus- 
 toms of a studied elegance, of a petite-maiiresse. 
 Destined to live as long as did Marion Delorme, to 
 whom the biographies give a hundred and thirty 
 years, the wife of the former viceroy of Poland dis- 
 plays, at the age of nearly a hundred, a youthful 
 spirit and heart, a gracious face, a charming figure; 
 she can in her conversation, in which the bon mots
 
 THE INTERDICTION 283 
 
 sparkle like vine-twigs in the fire, compare the men 
 and the books of the literature of the day with the 
 men and the books of the eighteenth century. Liv- 
 ing in Warsaw, she orders her bonnets from Her- 
 bault. A great lady, she has the devotion of a young 
 girl, she swims, she runs like a student, and knows 
 how to throw herself on a divan quite as gracefully 
 as any young coquette ; she insults death and laughs 
 at life. After having formerly astonished the Em- 
 peror Alexander, she can to-day surprise the 
 Emperor Nicholas with the magnificence of her fes- 
 tivals. She can still cause some amorous young 
 man to shed tears, for she is of the age in which it 
 pleases her to have all the ineffable devotions of a 
 grisette. In short, she is a veritable fairy story, 
 if indeed she be not the fairy of the story. Had 
 Madame d'Espard known Madame Zayonscek.-* did 
 she wish to be her imitator? However this may 
 be, the marchioness proved the beneficence of this 
 regime, her complexion was pure, her forehead had 
 no wrinkles, her body preserved, like that of the 
 well-beloved of Henri 11,, the suppleness, the fresh- 
 ness, hidden charms which bring back love to a 
 woman and make it permanent. The so-simple pre- 
 cautions of this regime, indicated by art, by nature, 
 perhaps also by experience, found moreover in her 
 a general constitution which came to their aid. The 
 marchioness was endowed with a profound indiffer- 
 ence for everything which was outside herself; the 
 men amused her, but not one of them had ever 
 caused her those great excitements which move
 
 284 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 profoundly the two natures and break one against 
 the other. She knew neither hatred nor love. 
 When offended, she took her revenge coldly and 
 tranquilly, at her ease, while waiting the occasion 
 to satisfy the evil thought which she preserved 
 against anyone who remained unforgiven in her 
 memory. She did not stir herself, did not agitate 
 herself in the least; she spoke, for she knew that 
 in saying two words a woman can kill three men. 
 With a singular pleasure, she saw herself aban- 
 doned by Monsieur d'Espard — did he not carry away 
 with him two children who, at present, wearied her, 
 and who, in the future, could seriously injure her 
 pretensions? Her most intimate friends, as her 
 least persevering adorers, seeing nowhere with her 
 those jewels of Cornelia who go and come proclaim- 
 ing without knowing it, their mother's age, all took 
 her for a young woman. The two children, con- 
 cerning whom the marchioness appeared to be so 
 much concerned in her petition, were, as well as 
 their father, as unknown to the world as the North- 
 east passage is unknown to the mariner. Mon- 
 sieur d'Espard was considered to be an eccentric, 
 who had left his wife without having against her 
 the slightest cause of complaint. Finding herself 
 her own mistress at the age of twenty-two, and 
 mistress of her fortune, which gave her twenty-six 
 thousand francs a year, the marchioness hesitated 
 a long time before taking a part and deciding upon 
 her future existence. Although she profited by the 
 outlay which her husband had made in his hotel, of
 
 THE INTERDICTION 285 
 
 which she kept the furniture, the equipages, the 
 horses, in short, a complete establishment, she led 
 at first a retired life during the years sixteen, sev- 
 enteen and eighteen, an epoch in which the great 
 families repaired their disasters occasioned by the 
 political troubles. A member, moreover, of one of 
 the most considerable and most illustrious families 
 of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, her relatives ad- 
 vised her to lead a domestic life, after the compul- 
 sory separation to which she was condemned by the 
 inexplicable caprice of her husband. In 1820, the 
 marchioness shook off her lethargy, appeared at 
 the Court, at the f^tes, and received in her own 
 house. From 182 1 to 1827, she held great state in 
 her dwelling, caused herself to be remarked for her 
 taste and by her toilets; she had her day, her hours, 
 for receiving; then she presently seated herself on 
 the throne on which had formerly shone Madame la 
 Vicomtesse de Beauseant, the Duchesse de Lan- 
 geais, Madame Firmiani, who, after her marriage 
 with Monsieur de Camps, had resigned the sceptre 
 into the hands of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, 
 from whom Madame d'Espard had wrested it. 
 The world knew nothing more of the private life 
 of the Marquise d'Espard. She seemed to remain 
 a long time on the Parisian horizon, like a sun on 
 the point of setting but which never sets. The mar- 
 chioness had entered into a close alliance with a duch- 
 ess not less celebrated for her beauty than for her 
 devotion to the person of a prince then in disgrace, 
 but accustomed to entering always as the ruling
 
 286 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 spirit into coming. governments. IWadame d'Espard 
 was also the friend of a fair stranger in whose 
 society an illustrious and experienced Russian 
 diplomat was in the habit of analyzing public affairs. 
 Finally, an old countess, accustomed to shuffling the 
 cards of the great game of politics, had adopted her 
 in a maternal manner. In the eyes of any man 
 with lofty views, Madame d'Espard was thus pre- 
 paring herself to follow, with a silent but real influ- 
 ence, the public and frivolous empire which she 
 owed to fashion. Her salon took a political consis- 
 tency. These words: "What do they say of that 
 at Madame d'Espard's ? The salon of Madame d'Es- 
 pard is against such a measure," were beginning 
 to be repeated by a sufficiently great number of 
 dunces to give to her flock of the faithful the 
 authority of a coterie. A few crippled politicians, 
 cared for, flattered by her, such as the favorite of 
 Louis XVIII., who could no longer get himself taken 
 into consideration, and some former ministers 
 ready to return to power, declared her to be as 
 great a power in diplomacy as was the wife of the 
 Russian Ambassador at London. The marchioness 
 had, on several occasions, given, either to the 
 deputies or to the peers, certain words and ideas 
 which from the tribune had afterward resounded 
 through Europe. She had often formed an excellent 
 judgment on events of the day covering which 
 her coterie did not dare to venture an opinion. 
 The principal personages of the Court came to play 
 whist in her house in the evening. She had,
 
 THE INTERDICTION 287 
 
 moreover, the virtues of her defects. She was 
 considered to be discreet, and was so. Her friend- 
 ship seemed to be proof against anything. She 
 served her proteges with a persistence which testi- 
 fied that she was less concerned about securing 
 creatures of her own than about increasing her 
 credit. This conduct was inspired by her ruling 
 passion, vanity. The conquests and the pleasures 
 which hold so high a place in the estimation of so 
 many women, seemed to her but means to an end; 
 she wished to live on all the points of the very 
 greatest circle that life can describe. Among the 
 men still young and for whom the future held some- 
 thing, who frequented her salon on important occa- 
 sions, were to be seen Messieurs de Marsay, de 
 Ronquerolles, de Montriveau, de la Roche-Hugon, de 
 Serizy, Ferraud, Maxime de Trailles, de Listomere, 
 the two Vandenesses, du Ch^telet, etc. Frequently 
 she admitted a man without being willing to receive 
 his wife, and her power was already sufficiently well 
 established to impose these hard conditions upon 
 certain ambitious personages, such as two celebrated 
 royalist bankers, Messieurs de Nucingen and Ferdi- 
 nand du Tillet. She had so carefully studied the 
 strength and the weakness of Parisian life that she 
 had always conducted herself in such a manner as to 
 permit no man to have the slightest advantage over 
 her. A very large price might have been offered 
 for any note or letter that might compromise her, 
 without finding a single one. If the dryness of 
 her soul permitted her to play her part with such
 
 288 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 naturalness, her person served her not less well. 
 She had a youthful figure. Her voice was, at her 
 command, fresh and flexible, clear, hard. She pos- 
 sessed in an eminent degree the secrets of that 
 aristocratic attitude by which a woman effaces the 
 past. The marchioness knew perfectly the art of 
 placing an immense space between herself and the 
 man who believed himself entitled to certain rights 
 to familiarity after a chance happiness. Her im- 
 posing regard knew how to deny everything. In 
 her conversation, great and beautiful sentiments, 
 noble determinations, seemed to flow naturally from 
 a pure heart and soul; but she was in reality all 
 calculation, and perfectly capable of disgracing a 
 man who might be awkward in his transactions at 
 the very moment in which she was carrying out 
 without shame transactions for her own profit. In 
 endeavoring to attach himself to this woman, Ras- 
 tignac had well selected her as one of the most ex- 
 cellent of instruments: but he had not yet been 
 able to make use of it; far from being able to man- 
 age her, he was already brayed in a mortar by her 
 hands. This young condottiere of the intellect, con- 
 demned, like Napoleon, to forever give battle know- 
 ing that one defeat would be the tomb of his fortune, 
 had encountered in his protectress a dangerous ad- 
 versary. For the first time in his turbulent life, he 
 was playing a serious game with a partner worthy 
 of him. In the conquest of Madame d'Espard he per- 
 ceived a future ministry; therefore he served her 
 before making use of her: a dangerous debut.
 
 THE INTERDICTION 289 
 
 The Hotel d'Espard required a numerous train of 
 domestics and the marchioness's household was 
 very considerable. The grand receptions took place 
 on the ground floor, but the marchioness lived on 
 the first floor of her house. The style of the grand 
 staircase, magnificently decorated, the apartments 
 adorned in the noble taste which formerly prevailed 
 at Versailles, indicated an immense fortune. When 
 the judge saw the porte-cochere opening before his 
 nephew's cabriolet, he examined with a rapid 
 glance the lodge, the porter, the court, the stables, 
 the arrangements of this dwelling, the flowers which 
 embellished the stairway, the exquisite delicacy of 
 the balustrade, the walls, the carpets, and counted 
 the valets in livery who, at the sound of the bell, 
 appeared on the landing. His eyes, which, the day 
 before, had explored in his charity office the depths 
 of wretchedness under the muddy garments of the 
 people, now studied with the same clearness of 
 vision the furnishing and the decoration of the 
 apartments through which he passed, in order to 
 discover the wretchedness of greatness. 
 
 "Monsieur Popinot. " — "Monsieur Bianchon. " 
 These two announcements were made at the en- 
 trance to the boudoir in which the marchioness was, 
 a pretty room, recently refurnished, and which 
 looked out on the garden of the hotel. At this 
 moment Madame d'Espard was seated in one of 
 those ancient rococo arm-chairs which MADAME had 
 made the fashion. Rastignac occupied near her, 
 at her left, a low chair before the fireplace in which 
 19
 
 290 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 he had established himself like the primo of an 
 Italian lady. A third personage was standing at 
 the angle of the chimney-piece. As the knowing 
 doctor had shrewdly divined, the marchioness was 
 a woman of a dry and nervous temperament: had it 
 not been for her regime, her skin would have taken 
 on the reddish color which is occasioned by a con- 
 stant heat; but she increased her factitious white- 
 ness by the shades and the vigorous tones of the 
 draperies by which she surrounded herself or in 
 which she dressed. The reddish browns, the chest- 
 nut colors, the bistre with golden reflections suited 
 her marvelously. Her boudoir, copied from that of 
 a celebrated lady then the fashion in London, was 
 furnished in tan-colored velvet; but she had added 
 numerous embellishments the pretty designs of 
 which lightened the excessive pomp of this royal 
 color. Her hair was arranged like that of a young 
 woman, in bandeaux terminated by curls which 
 emphasized the somewhat long oval of her face; 
 but, just as the round form is ignoble, so is the 
 oval shape majestic. The double mirrors with 
 facets which lengthen or flatten out at will the 
 faces reflected in them, furnish an evident confirma- 
 tion of this rule as applied to the physiognomy. 
 When she saw Popinot, who stopped in the doorway 
 like a frightened animal, stretching his neck, his 
 left hand in his pocket, the right armed with a hat, 
 the lining of which was soiled, the marchioness 
 threw upon Rastignac a glance in which there was 
 the suggestion of derision. The somewhat silly
 
 THE INTERDICTION 291 
 
 aspect of the good man was so in accordance with 
 his grotesque apparel, with his terrified air, that, 
 on seeing Bianchon's unhappy face, he feeling him- 
 self humiliated in his uncle, Rastignac could not 
 keep from laughing, turning away his head. The 
 marchioness made her salutation with a movement 
 of her head, and with a painful effort to rise from 
 her armchair, into which she fell back, not without 
 grace, in seeming to apologize for her impoliteness 
 by an assumed weakness. 
 
 At this moment the personage who was standing 
 between the chimney-piece and the door bowed 
 slightly, pushed forward two chairs which he offered 
 by a gesture to the doctor and the judge; then, 
 when he saw them seated, he leaned back again 
 against the hangings and crossed his arms. One 
 word as to this man. There is a painter of our day, 
 Decamps, who possesses in the highest degree the 
 art of making interesting whatever he presents to 
 your regards, whether it be a stone or a man. In 
 this respect, his pencil is happier than his brush. 
 Let him design a bare room and leave a broom lean- 
 ing against the wall ; if he chooses he can make you 
 shudder: you will believe that that broom has just 
 served as the instrument of a crime and that it is 
 wet with blood; it is the broom which the widow 
 Bancal used to sweep the apartment in which 
 Fuald^s had his throat cut. Yes, the painter will 
 put his broom in such a dishevelled state as if it 
 were a man in a fury, he will make the splints 
 stand upright like your horrified hair; he will make
 
 292 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 of it, as it were, an interpreter between the secret 
 poetry of his own imagination and the poetry which 
 reveals itself in yours. After having frightened 
 you by the sight of this broom, he will design 
 another to-morrow, near which a sleeping cat, but 
 mysterious in its slumber, will reveal to you that 
 this broom serves the wife of a German shoemaker 
 to fly with to the Brocken. Or else it may be some 
 peaceful broom, on which he will hang the coat of 
 some Treasury clerk. Decamps has in his brush 
 that which Paganini had in his bow, a power mag- 
 netically communicative. Well, it would be neces- 
 sary to transport into literary style this compelling 
 genius, this chic of the pencil, to describe the erect 
 man, thin and tall, dressed in black, with long 
 black hair, who remained standing without saying 
 a word. This seigneur had a hatchet face, cold, 
 bitter, the color of which resembled the waters of 
 the Seine when they are disturbed and when they 
 carry in their currents the coal dust of some sunken 
 barge. He looked at the floor, listened and judged. 
 His attitude was terrifying. He was stationed 
 there like the celebrated broom to which Decamps 
 has given the accusing power of revealing a crime. 
 Several times the marchioness endeavored during 
 the conference to obtain a tacit opinion from this 
 personage by turning her eyes for a moment upon 
 him ; but no matter how searching the mute interro- 
 gation, he remained as grave and stiff as the statue 
 of the Commander. 
 
 The good Popinot, seated on the edge of his chair,
 
 THE INTERDICTION 293 
 
 facing the fire, his hat between his legs, looked at 
 the gilded candelabra in ormolu, the clock, the curi- 
 osities crowded on the mantelpiece, the material 
 and the embellishments of the hangings, in short, 
 at all those pretty nothings which are so costly 
 and with which a fashionable woman surrounds 
 herself. He was drawn from his bourgeois con- 
 templation by Madame d'Espard, who said to him 
 in a flute-like voice: 
 
 "Monsieur, 1 owe you a million acknowledg- 
 ments — " 
 
 "A million acknowledgments," said the good man 
 to himself, "that is too many, there is not one." 
 
 " — For the trouble which you condescend — " 
 
 "Condescend!" he thought, "she is making fun 
 of me." 
 
 " — Condescend to take in coming to see a poor 
 client, who is too unwell to go out — " 
 
 Here the judge interrupted the speech of the mar- 
 chioness by turning upon her the look of an inquis- 
 itor with which he examined the sanatory condition 
 of the poor client. 
 
 "She is perfectly well," he said to himself. 
 "Madame," he replied, assuming a respectful air, 
 "you owe me nothing. Although my proceeding 
 may not be usual according to the customs of the 
 court, we should spare ourselves nothing in order 
 to arrive at the truth in these cases. Our judg- 
 ments are then determined less by the letter of the 
 law than by the inspirations of our own consciences. 
 Whether I search for the truth in my cabinet or
 
 294 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 here, provided that I find it, everything is for the 
 best." 
 
 While Popinot was speaking, Rastignac grasped 
 Bianchon's hand, and the marchioness made to the 
 doctor a little inclination of the head, full of graceful 
 favors. 
 
 "Who is that gentleman?" said Bianchon in 
 Rastignac's ear, indicating the man in black. 
 
 "The Chevalier d'Espard, the brother of the mar- 
 quis." 
 
 "Monsieur your nephew has informed me," the 
 marchioness replied to Popinot, "how many occupa- 
 tions you have, and I know already that you are 
 good enough to wish to conceal a benefit, in order to 
 relieve from their gratitude those whom you have 
 favored. It seems that the court fatigues you ex- 
 tremely. Why do they not double the number of 
 the judges?" 
 
 "Ah! madame, that isnot the trouble, " said Popi- 
 not, "it would not be any worse because of that. But, 
 when that happens, the chickens will have teeth." 
 
 When he heard this phrase, which was so in har- 
 mony with the judge's appearance, the Chevalier 
 d'Espard looked at him from top to bottom and ap- 
 peared to say to himself: "We shall easily get the 
 better of him." 
 
 The marchioness glanced at Rastignac, who 
 leaned toward her. 
 
 "See," said the young dandy to her, "to what 
 kind of men is given the power of deciding upon 
 the interests and the life of individuals."
 
 THE INTERDICTION 2Q5 
 
 Like the greater number of men who have grown 
 old in a profession, Popinot allowed himself readily 
 to fall into the habits which he had contracted, 
 habits of thought, moreover. His conversation 
 smacked of the juged' instruction. He loved to ques- 
 tion his interlocutors, to drive them into unforeseen 
 consequences, to make them say more than they 
 wished to have known. Pozzo di Borgo amused 
 himself, it is said, by surprising the secrets of his 
 interlocutors, by catching them in his diplomatic 
 snares; he thus displayed, through the force of an 
 invincible habit, his crafty spirit. As soon as 
 Popinot had, as it were, reconnoitred the ground on 
 which he found himself, he concluded that it would 
 be necessary to have recourse to the most skilful 
 devices, the most carefully disguised, and the most 
 beguiling known in the Palais, in order to discover 
 the truth. Bianchon remained cold and grave, like 
 a man who decides to submit to a torture in silence ; 
 but inwardly he wished for his uncle the power to 
 tread on this woman as on a viper: a comparison 
 which was suggested to him by the long dress, the 
 curve of the attitude, the lengthened neck, the little 
 head and the undulating movements of the mar- 
 chioness. 
 
 "Well, monsieur," resumed Madame d'Espard, 
 "whatever may be my repugnance to playing the 
 egotist, I have been suffering for too long a time 
 not to desire that you should soon come to a conclu- 
 sion. May 1 expect soon a happy result.?" 
 
 "Madame, I will do all that 1 can as far as I am
 
 296 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 concerned to bring it to a conclusion," said Popinot 
 with an air of good humor. "Are you ignorant of 
 the cause which brought about the separation now 
 existing between yourself and the Marquis 
 d'Espard?" asked the judge, looking at the mar- 
 chioness. 
 
 "Yes, monsieur," she replied, settling herself to 
 relate a story prepared in advance. "At the begin- 
 ning of the year 1816, Monsieur d'Espard, who, for 
 the last three months, had completely changed in 
 his manners, proposed to me to go to live near 
 Brianfon, on one of his estates, without any regard 
 for my health which that climate would have ruined, 
 without taking any account of my habits; I refused 
 to follow him. My refusals furnished him occasion 
 for reproaches so unfounded that, from that moment, 
 I began to doubt the soundness of his mental facul- 
 ties. The next day he left me, leaving to me his 
 hotel, the free disposition of my income, and went 
 to live in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, 
 taking from me my two children — " 
 
 "Permit me, madame," said the judge, inter- 
 rupting, "what was that income?" 
 
 "Twenty-six thousand francs a year," she re- 
 plied in a parenthesis. "I immediately consulted 
 old Monsieur Bordin to know what 1 should do," 
 she went on; "but it appeared that the difficulties 
 in the way of taking from a father the control of 
 his children are such that I was obliged to resign 
 myself to living alone at twenty-two years of age, an 
 age at which very many young women might have
 
 THE INTERDICTION 297 
 
 committed many foolish actions. You have doubt- 
 less read my petition, monsieur, you are acquainted 
 with the principal facts upon which I base my re- 
 quest for the interdiction of Monsieur d'Espard?" 
 
 "Have you made any attempts, madame," asked 
 the judge, "to obtain your children from him?" 
 
 "Yes, monsieur, but they have all been fruitless. 
 It is very cruel for a mother to be deprived of the 
 affection of her children, above all when they could 
 give her those enjoyments which all women prize 
 so highly." 
 
 "The eldest must be sixteen years old," said the 
 judge. 
 
 "Fifteen!" replied the marchioness, quickly. 
 
 Here Bianchon looked at Rastignac. Madame 
 d'Espard bit her lips. 
 
 "Of what importance is the age of my children to 
 you?" 
 
 "Ah! madame," said the judge, without appear- 
 ing to attach any weight to the meaning of his 
 words, "a young lad of fifteen and his brother, 
 doubtless aged thirteen, have legs and wits, they 
 could readily come to see you secretly; if they do 
 not come, it is because they obey their father, and, 
 to obey him on this point, they must love him 
 greatly." 
 
 "I do not understand you," said the marchioness. 
 
 "You are ignorant, perhaps," replied Popinot, 
 "that your attorney pretends in your petition that 
 your dear children are very unhappy with their 
 father—"
 
 298 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 Madame d'Espard said with a charming inno- 
 cence : 
 
 "I do not know what the attorney has made me 
 say." 
 
 "Forgive me these inferences, but justice weighs 
 everything," Popinot replied. "Whatever I ask 
 you, madame, is inspired by the desire to become 
 thoroughly acquainted with the affair. According 
 to you, Monsieur d'Espard left you on the most 
 frivolous pretext. Instead of going to Briangon, 
 where he wished to take you, he has remained in 
 Paris. This point is not clear. Was he acquainted 
 with this Dame Jeanrenaud before his marriage?" 
 
 "No, monsieur," replied the marchioness with a 
 species of displeasure visible only to Rastignac and 
 the Chevalier d'Espard. 
 
 She was vexed to find herself put in the witness- 
 box by this judge, when she had proposed to herself 
 to pervert his judgment; but, as Popinot apparently 
 remained completely simple-minded through his 
 preoccupation, she concluded by attributing his 
 questions to the interrogating genius of Voltaire's 
 bailiff. 
 
 "My parents," she continued, "married me at the 
 age of sixteen to Monsieur d'Espard, whose name, 
 whose fortune and whose habits all answered to that 
 which my family required of the man who should 
 become my husband. Monsieur d'Espard was then 
 twenty-six, he was a gentleman in the English sense 
 of the word ; his manners pleased me, he appeared 
 to be very ambitious, and I like the ambitious," she
 
 THE INTERDICTION 299 
 
 said, looking at Rastignac. "If Monsieur d'Espard 
 had not met that Dame Jeanrenaud, his qualities, 
 his knowledge, his general attainments, according 
 to the judgment of his friends at that time, would 
 have carried him into the management of affairs; 
 the king Charles X., then MONSIEUR, held him in 
 high esteem, and the peerage, a post at the Court, 
 an elevated position, all awaited him. This woman 
 turned his head, and has destroyed the future of an 
 entire family." 
 
 "What were at that time the religious opinions of 
 Monsieur d'Espard?" 
 
 "He was," she replied, "he is still, of an exalted 
 piety." 
 
 "You do not think that Madame Jeanrenaud has 
 acted upon him through mysterious powers?" 
 
 "No, monsieur." 
 
 "You have a beautiful hotel, madame," said Po- 
 pinot brusquely, taking his hands out of his pockets, 
 and rising to separate the skirts of his coat and 
 warm himself. "This boudoir is very fine, those 
 are magnificent chairs, your apartments are very 
 sumptuous; you may well sigh, in fact, situated as 
 you are here, to know that your children are badly 
 lodged, badly clothed and badly cared for. For a 
 mother, I cannot imagine anything more frightful !" 
 
 "Yes, monsieur. I would wish so much to pro- 
 cure some pleasure for those poor little ones, whom 
 their father compels to labor from morning to night 
 on that deplorable work on China!" 
 
 "You give beautiful balls, they would amuse
 
 300 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 themselves at them, but they would perhaps acquire 
 a taste for dissipation; however, their father may 
 very well send them to you once or twice a 
 winter." 
 
 "He brings them to me on New Year's Day and 
 on my birthday. On those occasions. Monsieur 
 d'Espard does me the kindness to dine with them at 
 my house." 
 
 "This conduct is very singular," said Popinot, 
 assuming the air of a man convinced. "Have you 
 seen this Dame Jeanrenaud .''" 
 
 "One day, my brother-in-law, who, through in- 
 terest in his brother — " 
 
 "Ah! monsieur then, " said the judge, interrupting 
 the marchioness, "is Monsieur d'Espard's brother?" 
 
 The chevalier bowed without saying a word. 
 
 "Monsieur d'Espard, who has followed this affair, 
 conducted me to I'Oratoire, where this woman goes 
 to the service, for she is a Protestant. I saw her, 
 there is nothing attractive about her, she is like 
 a butcher's wife; she is extremely fat, horribly 
 pitted by the small-pox; she has hands and feet 
 like a man's, she squints,— in short, she is a 
 monster." 
 
 "It is inconceivable," said the judge, appearing 
 to be the most guileless of all the judges in the 
 kingdom. "And this creature lives near here, in 
 the Rue Verte, in a hotel ! There are then no more 
 bourgeois?" 
 
 "A hotel on which her son has expended insane 
 sums."
 
 THE INTERDICTION 3OI 
 
 "Madame," said the judge, "I live in the Fau- 
 bourg Saint-Marceau, I do not know that sort of ex- 
 pense, — what do you call expending insane sums?" 
 
 "Why," replied the marchioness, "a stable, five 
 horses, three carriages, — a caliche, a coupe, a cab- 
 riolet." 
 
 "That costs then a great deal ?" said Popinot sur- 
 prised. 
 
 "Enormously!" said Rastignac, intervening. 
 "An establishment such as that, requires, for the 
 stables, for the keeping of the carriages and the 
 clothing of the servants, between fifteen and sixteen 
 thousand francs." 
 
 "Do you think so, madame.'" asked the judge 
 with a surprised air. 
 
 "Yes, at the least," replied the marchioness. 
 
 "And the furnishing of the hotel must have cost 
 also a great deal.?" 
 
 "More than a hundred thousand francs," replied 
 the marchioness, who could not repress a smile at 
 the vulgarity of the judge. 
 
 "The judges, madame," the good man resumed, 
 are sufficiently incredulous, they are even paid to be 
 so, and I am so myself. Monsieur le Baron Jean- 
 renaud and his mother, if this be true, must have 
 strangely plundered Monsieur d'Espard. Here is a 
 stable which according to you, costs sixteen thou- 
 sand francs a year. The table, the domestics* 
 wages, the gross expenses of the household, must 
 be the double of that, which would require fifty 
 or sixty thousand francs a year. Do you believe
 
 302 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 that these people, formerly so poor, can possess so 
 great a fortune as that? A million yields scarcely 
 forty thousand francs of income." 
 
 "Monsieur, the son and the mother placed the 
 funds given them by Monsieur d'Espard in the 
 Funds when they were at sixty or eighty. 1 believe 
 that their income must amount to more than sixty 
 thousand francs. The son has, moreover, some 
 very good appointments." 
 
 "If they expend sixty thousand francs," said the 
 judge, "how much do you spend then?" 
 
 "Why," replied Madame d'Espard, "nearly as 
 much." 
 
 The chevalier made a movement, the marchioness 
 reddened, Bianchon looked at Rastignac, but the 
 judge maintained an air of simple good nature which 
 deceived Madame d'Espard. The chevalier took no 
 further interest in this conversation, he saw that 
 everything was lost. 
 
 "These people, madame, " said Popinot, "can be 
 brought before the criminal courts." 
 
 "Such was my opinion," replied the marchioness, 
 enchanted. "If they had been threatened with the 
 correctional police, they would have come to terms. " 
 
 "Madame," said Popinot, "when Monsieur 
 d'Espard left you, did he not give you a power-of- 
 attorneyto manage and administer your property?" 
 
 "1 do not understand the object of these ques- 
 tions," said the marchioness with some heat. "It 
 seems to me that, if you should take into con- 
 sideration the condition in which I am left by my
 
 THE INTERDICTION 303 
 
 husband's madness, you should occupy yourself with 
 him and not with me." 
 
 "Madame," said the judge, "we are coming to it. 
 Before confiding to you or to others the administra- 
 tion of the property of Monsieur d'Espard, if he should 
 be interdicted from managing it himself, the court 
 should be informed as to how you have taken care 
 of your own. If Monsieur d'Espard had given you 
 a power-of-attorney, he would have shown confi- 
 dence in you, and the court would appreciate this 
 fact. Have you had his power-of-attorney? You 
 may have purchased and sold real estate, and made 
 investments?" 
 
 "No, monsieur; the Blamont-Chauvrys are not 
 in the habit of going into business," she replied 
 quickly, touched in her pride of nobility and forget- 
 ting all about her case. "My property has remained 
 intact, and Monsieur d'Espard did not give me his 
 power-of-attorney. " 
 
 The chevalier put his hand over his eyes to con- 
 ceal the lively vexation caused him by the want of 
 foresight of his sister-in-law, who was ruining her- 
 self by her replies. Popinot had gone straight to 
 the important fact, notwithstanding all the detours 
 of his interrogation. 
 
 "Madame," said the judge, pointing to the chev- 
 alier, "monsieur doubtless is connected with you by 
 ties of relationship? we can speak openly before 
 these gentlemen?" 
 
 "Certainly," said the marchioness, astonished at 
 this precaution.
 
 304 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 "Well, madame, I concede that you should expend 
 only sixty thousand francs a year, and this sum will 
 seem well employed to whoever sees your stables, 
 your hotel, your numerous domestics, and the cus- 
 toms of a household the luxury of which seems to me 
 to be superior to that of the Jeanrenauds. " 
 
 The marchioness made a gesture of assent. 
 
 "Now," replied the judge, "if you should possess 
 only an income of twenty-six thousand francs, be- 
 tween ourselves, you could well be in debt to the 
 extent of a hundred thousand francs. The court 
 would then be entitled to believe that there existed 
 in the motives which led you to request the inter- 
 diction of monsieur your husband some personal 
 interest, some need of meeting your debts, if — you 
 — have — any. The recommendations which have 
 been made to me have interested me in your situ- 
 ation, examine it carefully, make your statement. 
 There would still be time, in case my suppositions 
 should prove to be well founded, to avoid the scan- 
 dal of a reproach which it would be within the attri- 
 butes of the court to express in the whereases of its 
 decision, if you should not render your position clear 
 and well-defined. We are obliged to examine the 
 motives of the plaintiffs as well as to listen to the 
 defence of the man to be interdicted, to investigate 
 if the petitioners are not controlled by passions, led 
 astray by mercenary motives unfortunately only too 
 common — " 
 
 The marchioness was on Saint Lawrence's grid- 
 iron.
 
 THE INTERDICTION 305 
 
 *' — And it is necessary for me to have explana- 
 tions on this subject," said the judge. "Madame, 
 I do not ask to have an accounting from you, but 
 only to know how you have managed to maintain 
 an establishment of sixty thousand francs a year, 
 and that for several years. There are a great many 
 women who accomplish this feat in their households, 
 but you are not one of those women. Speak, you 
 may have very legitimate resources, some royal 
 favors, some sources of income from the indem- 
 nities recently awarded; but, in that case, the 
 authorization of your husband would have been 
 necessary to have enabled you to receive them." 
 
 The marchioness was mute. 
 
 "Reflect," said Popinot, "that Monsieur d'Espard 
 may wish to defend himself, and his advocate will 
 have the right to investigate to ascertain if you have 
 any creditors. This boudoir has been recently re- 
 furnished, your apartments have not the furniture 
 which Monsieur le Marquis left you in 1816. If, as 
 you did me the honor to inform me, furnishing is 
 costly for the Jeanrenauds, it is still more so for 
 you, who are tine grande dame. Although I am a 
 judge, I am still a man, I may be deceived, enlighten 
 me. Reflect upon the duties which the law imposes 
 upon me, upon the vigorous research which it re- 
 quires, and then that it is a question of pronouncing 
 the interdiction of the father of a family, in the 
 flower of his age. Therefore, will you excuse, Ma- 
 dame la Marquise, the objections which I have the 
 honor to submit to you, and concerning which it is 
 20
 
 306 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 easy for you to give me some explanations. When 
 a man is interdicted because of dementia, a trustee 
 is required; who will be the trustee?" 
 
 "His brother," said the marchioness. 
 
 The chevalier bowed. There was a moment of 
 silence which was embarrassing for these five per- 
 sons in each other's company. Without appearing 
 to take it seriously, the judge had uncovered this 
 woman's wound. The good-natured bourgeois coun- 
 tenance of Popinot, at which the marchioness, the 
 chevalier and Rastignac had been disposed to laugh, 
 had acquired in their eyes its true physiognomy. 
 In looking at him by stealth, all three of them per- 
 ceived the thousand significations of that eloquent 
 mouth. The absurd man had become a sagacious 
 judge. His interest in examining the boudoir was 
 now explained; — he had taken the gilded elephant 
 which supported the mantel-clock for his point of 
 departure in questioning all this luxury, and he had 
 come to read the very depths of this woman's heart. 
 
 "If the Marquis d'Espard is crazy on China," 
 said Popinot, indicating the articles on the chimney- 
 piece, "I am charmed to see that its products please 
 you equally. But perhaps it is to Monsieur le Mar- 
 quis that you owe the charming Chinese things 
 there," he said, pointing to the precious trifles. 
 
 This neat jest made Bianchon smile, petrified 
 Rastignac, and the marchioness bit her thin lips. 
 
 "Monsieur, " said Madame d'Espard, "instead of 
 being the defender of a wife placed in the cruel 
 alternative of seeing her fortune and her children
 
 THE INTERDICTION 307 
 
 lost, or of appearing to be the enemy of her husband, 
 you accuse me! you are suspicious of my inten- 
 tions! You must admit that your conduct is 
 strange — " 
 
 "Madame," replied the judge quickly, "the dis- 
 cretion which the court brings to these cases would 
 have given you, in any other judge, a critic perhaps 
 less indulgent than I am. Moreover, do you believe 
 that Monsieur d'Espard's advocate will be very 
 considerate? Will he not be sure to represent in 
 the worst light intentions that maybe pure and dis- 
 interested? Your life will all be open to him, he 
 will investigate it without bringing to his researches 
 the respectful deference which I have for you." 
 
 "Monsieur, I thank you," replied the marchioness 
 ironically. "We will admit for the moment that I 
 owe thirty thousand, fifty thousand francs, that 
 would be, in the first place, a bagatelle for the 
 houses of D'Espard and of Blamont-Chauvry ; but, 
 if my husband is not in the possession of his intel- 
 lectual faculties, would that be any obstacle to his 
 interdiction?" 
 
 "No, madame," said Popinot. 
 
 "Although you have interrogated me with a crafty 
 keenness which I should not have thought to find in 
 a judge, under circumstances in which frankness 
 would have sufficed to learn everything," she re- 
 sumed, "and though I consider myself authorized to 
 say nothing more, I will reply to you without cir- 
 cumlocution that my position in the world, that all 
 these efforts made to preserve my relations with it,
 
 308 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 are not in harmony with my tastes. I began life 
 by dwelling for a long time in solitude; but the 
 interests of my children appealed to me, 1 felt that 
 I should make an effort to take their father's place. 
 By receiving my friends, by maintaining all these 
 relations, by contracting these debts, I have secured 
 their future, I have prepared for them brilliant 
 careers in which they will fmd aid and support; 
 and, in order to secure that which they will thus 
 have acquired, many shrewd calculators, magis- 
 trates or bankers, would willingly have paid all that 
 it has cost me." 
 
 "I appreciate your devotion, madame," replied 
 the judge. "It does honor to you, and I in no wise 
 blame your conduct. The magistrate belongs to all ; 
 he should be acquainted with everything, it is 
 necessary for him to weigh everything." 
 
 The tact of the marchioness and her habit of 
 judging men enabled her to perceive that Monsieur 
 Popinot could not be influenced by any considera- 
 tion. She had counted upon some ambitious magis- 
 trate, she had encountered a man with a conscience. 
 She instantly began to reflect upon other methods of 
 securing the success of her affair. The servants 
 brought in the tea. 
 
 "Has madame any other explanations to give 
 me?" said Popinot, seeing these preparations. 
 
 "Monsieur," she replied haughtily, "carry out 
 your commission; examine Monsieur d'Espard, and 
 you will commiserate me, of that I am certain — " 
 
 She lifted her head and looked at Popinot with
 
 THE INTERDICTION 309 
 
 mingled pride and impertinence; the good man 
 bowed to her respectfully. 
 
 "He is very fme, your uncle," said Rastignac to 
 Bianchon. "He seems to understand nothing at 
 all ? he does not know then what the Marquise 
 d'Espard is, he is ignorant then of her influence, of 
 her occult power in the world ? She will have in her 
 house to-morrow the keeper of the seals — " 
 
 "My dear fellow, what would you have me do?" 
 said Bianchon; "did 1 not forewarn you? This is 
 not a man to be cajoled." 
 
 "No," said Rastignac, "he is a man to be sunk." 
 
 The doctor was obliged to bow to the marchioness 
 and her mute chevalier to hasten after Popinot, who, 
 not being a man to remain in an awkward situation, 
 was trotting away through the salons. 
 
 "That woman owes a hundred thousand ecus," 
 said the judge as he got into his nephew's cabriolet. 
 
 "What do you think of the case?" 
 
 "I," said the judge, "I never have any opinion 
 until I have examined both sides. To-morrow, 
 early, I will summon Madame Jeanrenaud before me, 
 in my cabinet, at four o'clock, to demand some ex- 
 planations from her, on the facts which concern her, 
 for she is compromised." 
 
 "1 should like very much to know the end of this 
 affair." 
 
 "Eh! Mon Dieu! don't you see that the mar- 
 chioness is only the tool of that tall, dry man who 
 did not utter a word? There is a little of Cain in 
 him, but a Cain who searches his club in the
 
 3IO THE INTERDICTION 
 
 courts, where, unfortunately, we have some of Sam- 
 son's swords." 
 
 "Ah! Rastignac," exclaimed Bianchon, "what 
 are you doing in that company?" 
 
 "We are accustomed to seeing these little plots in 
 families; not a year elapses that requests for inter- 
 diction are not non-suited. According to our cus- 
 toms, no one is dishonored by these attempts; 
 whilst we send to the galleys a poor devil who has 
 broken the window frame which separates him 
 from a wooden bowl full of gold coins. Our Code 
 is not without its defects." 
 
 "But the facts of the petition ?" 
 
 "My boy, you are evidently unacquainted with 
 the judicial romances which the clients impose upon 
 their attorneys.'' If the attorneys condemned them- 
 selves to present nothing but the truth, they would 
 not gain the interest on their dues." 
 
 The next day, at four o'clock in the afternoon, a 
 fat lady with a sufficient resemblance to a cask on 
 which some one had put a dress and a sash, panted 
 and perspired as she mounted Judge Popinot's stair- 
 case. She had with great difficulty issued from a 
 green landau which suited her marvelously, — it 
 would be impossible to conceive of the woman 
 without the landau, or of the landau without the 
 woman. 
 
 "It is I, my dear monsieur," she said, presenting 
 herself at the door of the judge's cabinet, "Madame 
 Jeanrenaud, whom you have summoned neither 
 more nor less than if she were a thief."
 
 THE INTERDICTION 31I 
 
 These inelegant words were announced in an 
 inelegant voice, scanned, as it were, by tiie invol- 
 untary whistlings of an asthma, and terminated by 
 an attack of coughing. 
 
 "When I go through damp places, you would not 
 believe how I suffer, monsieur. I shall not make 
 any old bones, by your leave. Well, here I am." 
 
 The judge was quite stupefied at the aspect of 
 this pretended Marechale d'Ancre. Madame Jean- 
 renaud had a face pitted with an infinite number of 
 holes, with a great deal of color, a low forehead, a 
 turned-up nose, a face as round as a ball, for, with 
 this good woman, everything was round. She had 
 the keen eyes of a country woman, a frank air, a 
 jovial speech, chestnut hair retained by a false cap 
 under a green hat ornamented with an old tuft of 
 auriculas. Her voluminous breasts were provo- 
 cative of mirth and inspired fears of a grotesque 
 explosion at each fit of coughing. Her great legs 
 were of that species that cause it to be said of a 
 woman by the street urchins of Paris, that she is 
 built on piles. The widow wore a green dress 
 trimmed with chinchilla, which suited her like a 
 spot of wagon-grease on a bride's veil. In short, 
 everything about her was in accord with her last 
 words: "Here I am!" 
 
 "Madame," said Popinot to her, "you are sus- 
 pected of having employed means of seduction upon 
 Monsieur le Marquis d'Espard in order to procure for 
 yourself considerable sums of money." 
 
 "Of what! of what!" she said, "of seduction?
 
 312 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 But, my dear monsieur, you are a respectable man, 
 and, moreover, as a magistrate, you should have 
 good sense, look at me! Tell me if I am a woman 
 to seduce anyone. I cannot tie my shoestrings, or 
 stoop down. Here it is now twenty years, God be 
 praised, since I have been able to put on a corset 
 under penalty of sudden death. I was as slender 
 as an asparagus at sixteen, and pretty, 1 can say so 
 to you to-day. Then I married Jeanrenaud, an 
 honest man, the captain of a salt barge. I had my 
 son, who is a fine fellow: he is my glory; and, 
 without disparaging myself, he is the best thing I 
 have done. My little Jeanrenaud was a soldier to 
 make Napoleon proud, and served him in the Im- 
 perial Guard. Alas! the death of my husband, who 
 was drowned, changed everything for me; — I had 
 the small-pox, I remained two years in my cham- 
 ber, without budging, and I came out of it as big as 
 you see me, ugly for ever, and as unhappy as the 
 stones. — There are my seductions!" 
 
 "But, madame, what motives then can have in- 
 duced Monsieur d'Espard to give you sums that 
 are — " 
 
 '7«mense, monsieur, say the word, I am quite 
 willing; but, as to the motives, I am not authorized 
 to declare them." 
 
 "You would be in the wrong. At this moment, 
 his family, justly disquieted, are about to see — " 
 
 ''Dieii de Dieu!" said the good woman rising 
 with a bound, "is he liable to be tormented then 
 or my account.? the king of men, a man who has
 
 THE INTERDICTION 313 
 
 not his equal ! Sooner than that he should have 
 the slightest vexation, and, I dare to say it, one 
 hair the less on his head, we will give up every- 
 thing. Monsieur le Juge. Put that down on your 
 papers. Dieii de Dieu! I will run and tell Jean- 
 renaud what is the matter. Ah! this is a nice 
 business!" 
 
 And the little old woman rose, went out, rolled 
 down the stairway and disappeared. 
 
 "She does not lie, that woman," said the judge 
 to himself. "Well, to-morrow I shall know all, for 
 to-morrow I shall go to see the Marquis d'Espard." 
 
 Those who have passed the age at which a man 
 expends his energies at random are aware of the 
 influence exerted upon important events by actions 
 that are in appearance immaterial, and will not be 
 surprised at the consequences attending the slight 
 incident that follows. On the following day, Popi- 
 not had a coryza, a malady unattended by any 
 danger, known by the improper and ridiculous 
 name of a cold in the head. Unsuspicious of the 
 seriousness of a delay, the judge who had a 
 slight fever, kept his room and did not go to inter- 
 rogate the Marquis d'Espard. This day lost was, 
 in this affair, what on "Dupes Day" was the 
 bouillon taken by Marie de Medicis which, delaying 
 her conference with Louis Xlll., permitted Richelieu 
 to arrive first at Saint-Germain and resume posses- 
 sion of his royal captive. Before following the 
 magistrate and his clerk to the house of the Marquis 
 d'Espard, perhaps it will be necessary to glance at
 
 314 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 this household, at its interior and at the affairs of 
 this father of a family represented as demented in 
 his wife's petition. 
 
 There are to be met with here and there in the 
 old quarters of Paris several buildings in which the 
 arch^ologist recognizes a certain desire to ornament 
 the city, and that pride of ownership which leads 
 to construction with a view to durability. The 
 house in which Monsieur d'Espard then lived, in the 
 Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, was one of 
 these antique monuments built in cut stone, and 
 did not lack for a certain richness in the archi- 
 tecture; but time had blackened the stone, and 
 the city revolutions had greatly altered it, without 
 and within. The high personages who had formerly 
 inhabited the quarter of the Universite having 
 departed with the great ecclesiastical institutions, 
 this dwelling had come to shelter industries and in- 
 habitants for which it was never designed. During 
 the last century, a printing office had ruined the 
 floors, soiled the woodwork, blackened the walls 
 and destroyed the principal interior arrangements. 
 Formerly the hotel of a cardinal, this noble house 
 was at present delivered over to obscure lodgers. 
 The character of its architecture indicated that it 
 had been built during the reigns of Henri III. of 
 Henri IV. and of Louis XIII. at the period in which 
 were constructed in the neighborhood the hotels 
 Mignon and Serpente, the palace of the Princesse 
 Palatine and the Sorbonne. One old man remem- 
 bered having heard it called in the last century the
 
 THE INTERDICTION 31 5 
 
 Hdtel Duperron. It appeared to be probable that this 
 illustrious cardinal had built it, or at least had lived 
 in it. There exists, in fact, at the angle of the court, 
 a perron consisting of several steps by which the 
 house is entered; and in the middle of the interior 
 fagade there is another perron by which you descend 
 to the garden. Notwithstanding the dilapidation, 
 the luxury displayed by the architect in the balus- 
 trades and in the platforms of these two perrons 
 reveals the ingenuous intention of recalling the 
 name of the proprietor, a species of sculptural pun 
 which our ancestors frequently permitted to them- 
 selves. Finally, in support of this testimony, the 
 arch^ologistsare able to perceive in the tympanums 
 which ornament the two principal facades, some 
 traces of the cords of the Roman hat. Monsieur le 
 Marquis d'Espard occupied the ground floor, doubtless 
 in order to have the use of the garden, which might 
 pass as being spacious for this quarter and which 
 faced the south, two advantages required for the 
 health of his children. The situation of the house, 
 in a street the name of which indicates its steep 
 slope, secured for this ground floor a sufficiently 
 great elevation to preserve it against any dampness. 
 Monsieur d'Espard should have been able to lease his 
 apartment for a very modest sum, rents being low at 
 the period at which he came into this quarter so as to 
 be in the vicinity of the colleges and to be able to 
 supervise the education of his children. Moreover, 
 the condition in which the property was at the time, 
 with everything out of repair, had necessarily
 
 3l6 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 obliged the landlord to show himself very accommo- 
 dating. Monsieur d'Espard had thus, without lay- 
 ing himself open to any charge of lack of judgment, 
 been able to expend some money on his dwelling in 
 order to establish himself comfortably. The height 
 of the rooms, their disposition, their wainscotings, 
 the framework of which alone remained, the con- 
 struction of the ceilings, everything breathed some- 
 thing of that grandeur which the priesthood has 
 imprinted on all things undertaken or created by it, 
 and which the artists find to-day in the slightest 
 fragments remaining of it, be it only a book, a 
 garment, a library panel or some armchair. The 
 painting which the marquis had had done offered 
 those brown tones loved by the Hollanders, by the 
 ancient Parisian bourgeoisie, and which furnish to- 
 day such excellent effects to the painters of genre. 
 The panels were covered with a plain paper which 
 harmonized with the painting. The windows were 
 furnished with curtains of an inexpensive material, 
 which had been chosen with a view of complet- 
 ing the general unity of the effect. The pieces 
 of furniture were rare, and well placed. Whoever 
 entered this dwelling could not resist a gentle and 
 peaceful feeling, inspired by the profound calm, by 
 the silence which there reigned, by the modesty 
 and the unity of the color — using this expression in 
 the sense in which it is employed by the painters. 
 A certain nobility in the details, the exquisite clean- 
 liness of the furniture, a perfect accord between the 
 things and the inhabitants, everything brought to
 
 THE INTERDICTION 317 
 
 the lips the word agreeable. But very few persons 
 were admitted into these apartments inhabited by 
 the marquis and his two sons, the existence of whom 
 might seem mysterious to all the neighborhood. In 
 a part of the main building at right angles with the 
 street, on the third floor, there are three large rooms 
 which remained in the state of dilapidation and the 
 grotesque bareness in which the printing office had 
 left them. These three rooms, set apart for the 
 preparation of the Picturesque History of China, were 
 arranged in such a manner as to contain an office, 
 a store-room, and a cabinet in which Monsieur 
 d'Espard remained during a part of the day; for, 
 after the dejeuner, until four o'clock in the after- 
 noon, the marquis occupied his cabinet on the third 
 floor, to supervise the publication which he had 
 undertaken. His visitors usually found him there. 
 His two children, on their return from their classes, 
 frequently ascended to this office. The apartment 
 on the ground floor thus formed a sanctuary in 
 which the father and his sons remained from dinner- 
 time until the next day. His family life was thus 
 carefully secluded. Of servants, he had only a 
 cook, an old woman who had long been attached to 
 his family, and a valet de chambre of the age of 
 forty, who had served him before he had married 
 Mademoiselle de Blamont. The children's govern- 
 ess had remained with them. The minute care 
 shown by the aspect of the apartment revealed the 
 spirit of order, the maternal love which this woman 
 displayed in the interests of her master in the
 
 3l8 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 management of his house and in the government of 
 his children. Grave and taciturn, these three hon- 
 est servitors seemed to have comprehended the 
 ideas which directed the inward life of the marquis. 
 This contrast between their habits and those of the 
 greater number of valets constituted a singularity 
 which threw over this household an air of mystery, 
 and which contributed greatly to the calumny for 
 which Monsieur d'Espard himself furnished occa- 
 sion. Praiseworthy motives had induced him to 
 form a resolution not to associate with any of the 
 other inmates of the house. In undertaking the 
 education of his children, he wished to preserve 
 them from all contact with strangers. Perhaps also 
 he wished to avoid being wearied by his neighbors. 
 With a man of his quality, at a time when the Latin 
 Quarter was particularly agitated by Liberalism, 
 this conduct naturally excited against him small 
 animosities, feelings, the silliness of which is com- 
 parable only with their baseness, and which are 
 begotten by the gossip of porters, venomous gabbling 
 from door to door, of which Monsieur d'Espard and 
 his household remained ignorant. His valet de cham- 
 bre passed for a Jesuit, his cook was a sly plotter, 
 the governess had an understanding with Madame 
 Jeanrenaud to plunder the lunatic. The luna- 
 tic, that was the marquis. The other lodgers came 
 gradually to attribute to folly a number of things 
 observed in Monsieur d'Espard and sifted through 
 their appreciation without their being able to find 
 any reasonable motives for them. Having very
 
 THE INTERDICTION 319 
 
 little faith in the success of his publication upon 
 China, they had finally persuaded the landlord that 
 Monsieur d'Espard was without means, at the very 
 moment when, by an oversight committed by very 
 many busy persons, he had allowed the receiver of 
 taxes to send him a writ for the payment of his dues 
 in arrears. The landlord had at the same time 
 claimed his rent from the first of January by the 
 despatch of a receipt which the porter's wife had 
 amused herself by not delivering. On the fifteenth 
 of the month, a summons to pay having been served, 
 the portress had tardily communicated with Mon- 
 sieur d'Espard, who thought this to be some mis- 
 understanding, without believing in the uncivil be- 
 havior of a man in whose house he had been living 
 for twelve years. The marquis had his property 
 seized by a bailiff at the moment when his valet 
 was carrying the money for the rent to the proprie- 
 tor. This seizure, insidiously communicated to 
 those with whom he was in business relations for 
 his publication, had alarmed some of them who were 
 already in doubt as to the solvency of Monsieur 
 d'Espard, because of the enormous sums which, it 
 was said, were drawn from him by the Baron Jean- 
 renaud and his mother. The suspicions of the 
 lodgers, of the creditors and of the landlord were, 
 moreover, almost justified by the great economy 
 which the marquis displayed in his living expenses. 
 He carried himself like a ruined man. His domes- 
 tics paid cash in the quarter for the slightest objects 
 purchased for daily consumption, and acted like
 
 320 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 persons who wish no credit; if they had asked for 
 anything whatever upon promise to pay, they 
 would perhaps have been refused, so much had the 
 slanderous gossip obtained credit in the quarter. 
 There are tradesmen who like those of their cus- 
 tomers who pay slowly but who permit of a friendly 
 intercourse; whilst they hate those, otherwise ex- 
 cellent, who keep themselves at such a distance as 
 to avoid all familiarity. Men are thus constituted. 
 In almost all classes of society, they offer facilities to 
 those connected by slight ties or to base souls that 
 flatter them, favors refused to the superiority that 
 v/ounds them, in whatever manner it reveals itself. 
 The shopkeeper who clamors against the Court has 
 his own courtiers. In short, the daily habits of 
 the marquis and his children aroused naturally the 
 evil dispositions of their neighbors, and insensibly 
 urged them on to that degree of malice in which 
 persons recoil before no act of baseness that may 
 injure the enemy whom they have created for 
 themselves. Monsieur d'Espard was a gentil- 
 homme, as his wife was a grande dame, — two mag- 
 nificent types, already so rare in France that the 
 observer may readily enumerate all those that offer 
 a complete realization of it. These two personages 
 are based upon primitive ideas, upon beliefs that 
 are, so to speak, innate, upon habits acquired in 
 company, and which no longer exist. To believe in 
 blue blood, in a privileged race, to place one's self 
 in thought above other men, is it not necessary to 
 have measured from birth the space which separates
 
 THE INTERDICTION 32 1 
 
 the patricians from the people? To command, is it 
 not necessary to have known no equals ? Is it not 
 necessary, in short, that education should inculcate 
 the ideas with which nature inspires the great men 
 upon whose brows she had placed a crown before 
 their mothers could there press a kiss ? These ideas 
 and this education are no longer possible in France, 
 where, for the last forty years, chance has arrogated 
 to itself the right of making nobles by dipping them 
 in the blood of battle-fields, by gilding them with 
 glory, by crowning them with the aureole of genius ; 
 where the abolition of entail and of majorats, by 
 crumbling up the estates, obliges the noble to occupy 
 himself with his own affairs instead of with those 
 of the State, and where personal grandeur can no 
 longer be anything but a grandeur acquired by long 
 and patient labors, — an era completely new. Con- 
 sidered as a remnant of that great body called 
 Feudalism, Monsieur d'Espard was entitled to a 
 respectful admiration. If he believed himself 
 elevated by birth above other men, he believed 
 equally in all the obligations of nobility; he pos- 
 sessed the virtues and the strength which it re- 
 quires. He had educated his children in his 
 principles, and had communicated to them from the 
 cradle the religion of his caste. A profound senti- 
 ment of their own dignity, the pride of their name, 
 the certainty of being great in themselves, engen- 
 dered in them a royal pride, the courage of the 
 paladins and the protecting bounty of the lords of 
 the manor; their manners, in accord with their 
 21
 
 322 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 ideas, and which would have seemed admirable in 
 the company of princes, offended all the world of 
 the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, a land of 
 equality if there were any, where, moreover, Mon- 
 sieur d'Espard was believed to be ruined, where, 
 from the very meanest up to the greatest, everyone 
 refused the privileges of nobility to a noble without 
 money, — for the reason that each allowed them to be 
 assumed by burghers grown rich. Thus the want 
 of intercourse, spiritual and physical, between this 
 family and those around it, was complete. 
 
 With the father as well as with the children, the 
 outward aspect and the soul within were in harmony. 
 Monsieur d'Espard, then about fifty years of age, 
 might have served for a type to express the noble 
 aristocracy of the nineteenth century. He was 
 slender and blond; his countenance had, in the 
 outline and in the general expression, a native dis- 
 tinction which revealed elevated sentiments; but it 
 bore the imprint of an intended coldness which 
 commanded respect a little too austerely. His 
 aquiline nose, slightly twisted at the end from left to 
 right, a slight deviation which was not unattrac- 
 tive ; his blue eyes, his high forehead, sufficiently 
 advanced at the eyebrows to form a heavy projec- 
 tion which caught the light, thereby shading the 
 eye, indicated an upright spirit, capable of perse- 
 verance, a grand loyalty, but gave at the same time 
 a strange aspect to his physiognomy. This flexure 
 in the forehead might well have been taken, in 
 fact, as an indication of a slight degree of mental
 
 THE INTERDICTION 323 
 
 unsoundness, and his thick eyebrows which joined 
 added something more to this apparent oddness. 
 He had the white and carefully cared-for hand of a 
 gentleman, his feet were narrow and arched. His 
 speech was undecided, not only in the pronunciation, 
 which resembled that of a stammerer, but also in 
 the expression of his ideas, his thoughts and his 
 manner of speaking produced in the hearer's mind 
 the effect of a man who comes and goes, who, to 
 employ a familiar expression, meddles, tries at 
 everything, interrupts himself in his gestures, and 
 accomplishes nothing. This defect, purely exterior, 
 was in strong contrast with the decision expressed 
 by his firmly closed mouth, with the sharply cut 
 character of his physiognomy. His walk, which 
 was slightly jerky, suited his manner of speech. 
 These singularities served to corroborate his as- 
 serted dementia. Notwithstanding his elegance, he 
 was systematically economical concerning his own 
 person, and wore for three or four years the same 
 black frock coat, brushed with an extreme care by 
 his old valet de chambre. As to his children, they 
 were both handsome and endowed with a grace 
 which did not exclude the expression of an aristo- 
 cratic disdain. They had that lively color, that 
 freshness in the regard, that transparency of the 
 flesh, which reveal pure habits, an exact regimen, 
 regular habits of work and of amusement Both 
 had black hair and blue eyes, the nose twisted 
 like their father's; but it was their mother perhaps 
 who had transmitted to them that dignity of speech,
 
 324 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 of look, and of bearing, which is hereditary in the 
 Blamont-Chauvrys. Their voices, clear as crystal, 
 had the power to move their hearers and that soft- 
 ness which exercises such powers of seduction ; in 
 short, they had the voice which a woman would 
 have wished to hear after she had received the flame 
 of their looks. They preserved, above all, the 
 modesty of their pride, a chaste reserve, a noli me 
 tangere which, later, might have seemed to be cal- 
 culated, so much did their aspect inspire the desire 
 to know them. The elder, the Comte Clement de 
 Negrepelisse, had just entered his sixteenth year. 
 For the last two years he had abandoned the pretty 
 little English vest which his brother, the Vicomte 
 Camille d'Espard, still wore. The count, who, 
 within the last six months, had ceased going to the 
 College Henri IV., was dressed as a young man en- 
 joying the first pleasures of a high position. His 
 father had not wished to impose upon him a use- 
 less year of philosophy, he endeavored to give to 
 his accomplishments a sort of bond by the study of 
 the higher mathematics. At the same time the 
 marquis instructed him in the Oriental languages, 
 the diplomatic law of Europe, heraldry, and history 
 from the great sources, history in the charters, in 
 authentic documents, in the collections of ordi- 
 nances. Camille had lately taken up the study of 
 rhetoric. 
 
 The day on which Popinot proposed to himself to 
 go and interrogate Monsieur d'Espard was a Thurs- 
 day, a holiday. Before their father had arisen.
 
 THE INTERDICTION 325 
 
 about nine o'clock, the two brothers were amusing 
 themselves in the garden. Clement was defending 
 himself ineffectively against the urgency of his 
 brother, who wished to go shooting for the first 
 time, and who desired his support in the request 
 he was going to make to his father. The viscount 
 always made a little too much of his weakness, and 
 often took pleasure in contesting with his brother. 
 Both of them now fell to quarreling and to fighting 
 in sport, like two schoolboys. As they ran about 
 the garden, one after the other, they made noise 
 enough to waken their father, who came to the 
 window without being perceived by them, so warm 
 was the combat. The marquis pleased himself by 
 looking at his two children who were turning in and 
 out like two serpents, and showed in their faces the 
 animation caused by the exercise of their faculties; 
 — their countenances were white and pink, their 
 eyes shot light, their arms and legs twisted about 
 like cords in the fire; they fell down, rose again, 
 renewed their forces like two athletes in the arena, 
 and gave to their father one of those happinesses 
 which recompense for the keenest pains of an 
 agitated life. Two persons, one on the second, the 
 other on the first floor of the house, looked out in 
 the garden, and said that the old lunatic was 
 amusing himself by making his children fight. 
 Immediately several heads appeared at the win- 
 dows; the marquis perceived them, said a word to 
 his children, who, quickly climbing up to his win- 
 dow, leaped into his chamber, and Clement obtained
 
 326 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 the permission asked for by Camille. In the house, 
 nothing was heard of but the new proof of the mar- 
 quis's lunacy. 
 
 When Popinot, accompanied by his clerk, presented 
 himself about noon at the door, where he asked 
 for Monsieur d'Espard, the portress conducted him 
 up to the third floor, relating on the way how Mon- 
 sieur d'Espard, no later than that very morning, 
 had caused his children to fight, and had laughed 
 like the monster that he was, on seeing the younger 
 bite the elder till he bled, and how, doubtless, he 
 wished to see them destroy each other. 
 
 "If you ask me why!" she added, "he does not 
 know, himself." 
 
 As she uttered this definite statement, she brought 
 the judge to the third landing of the stairway, in 
 front of a door placarded with posters which an- 
 nounced the issue of the successive parts of the 
 Picturesque History of China. This muddy landing, 
 this dirty hand-rail, this door on which the print- 
 ing trade had left its black marks, this broken 
 window and these ceilings on which the appren- 
 tices had amused themselves by designing mon- 
 strosities with the smoky flame of their candles, 
 the collection of paper and rubbish piled up in the 
 corner, either purposely or through carelessness; in 
 short, all the details of this picture which presented 
 itself to the eye, were so in accord with the facts 
 alleged by the marchioness that, notwithstanding 
 his impartiality, the judge could not but believe 
 them.
 
 THE INTERDICTION 327 
 
 "Here you are, messieurs," said the portress, 
 "here is the manifactiire where the Chinese eat up 
 what would nourish the whole quarter." 
 
 The clerk looked at the judge and smiled, and 
 Popinot had some trouble to maintain his own 
 gravity. They both entered the first room, in 
 which they found an old man who doubtless served 
 at once as attendant in the office, as attendant in the 
 storeroom and as cashier. This old man was the 
 Maitre Jacques de la Chine. The walls of this 
 room were furnished with long planks on which 
 were piled up the published sections of the work. 
 At the back, a wooden partition and open-work 
 screen furnished with a green curtain on the in- 
 terior, shut off a cabinet. An opening through 
 which the ecus were intended to be received or 
 passed out, indicated the cashier's seat 
 
 "Monsieur d'Espard?" said Popinot, addressing 
 this man, who wore a gray blouse. 
 
 The attendant opened the door of the second 
 chamber, in which the magistrate and his clerk per- 
 ceived a venerable old man with white hair, dressed 
 simply, decorated with the cross of Saint-Louis, 
 seated before a desk, who interrupted his occupa- 
 tion of comparing sheets of colored paper to look 
 up at the two visitors. This room was a modest 
 office, filled with books and proofs. There was in 
 it a table of black wood at which doubtless worked 
 some person now absent. 
 
 "Monsieur is Monsieur le Marquis d'Espard?" 
 asked Popinot.
 
 328 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 "No, monsieur," replied the old man, rising. 
 "Wliat do you wisii with him?" he added, advanc- 
 ing toward them, and giving evidence by his manner 
 of the refined habits and customs of a gentleman. 
 
 "We wish to speak with him concerning matters 
 which are strictly personal," replied Popinot. 
 
 "D'Espard, here are some messieurs who wish to 
 see you," said this old man, entering the last apart- 
 ment in which the marquis was occupied in reading 
 the newspapers at the corner of the fire. 
 
 This last cabinet had a worn carpet, the windows 
 were furnished with curtains of gray linen; there 
 were only some mahogany chairs, two armchairs, a 
 cylinder secretary, a desk a la Tronchin, and on the 
 mantel a shabby clock and two old candelabras. 
 The old man preceded Popinot and his clerk, pushed 
 forward two chairs for them as if he were the master 
 of the house, and Monsieur d'Espard permitted him 
 to do so. After the respective salutations, during 
 which the judge narrowly observed the alleged luna- 
 tic, the marquis naturally inquired the object of their 
 visit. At this, Popinot looked at the old man and 
 at the marquis with a sufficiently significative air. 
 
 "I believe. Monsieur le Marquis, that the nature 
 of my functions and the inquiry which brings me 
 here require that we should be alone, although in 
 the spirit of the law, in these cases, the interroga- 
 tory receives a sort of domestic publicity. I am 
 judge of the Inferior Civil Court for the Depart- 
 ment of the Seine, and am commissioned by Mon- 
 sieur le President to interrogate you concerning
 
 THE INTERDICTION 329 
 
 the facts set forth in a petition for interdiction 
 presented by Madame la Marquise d'Espard." 
 
 The old man withdrew. When the judge and 
 his witness were alone, the clerk closed the door, 
 established himself without ceremony at the desk 
 a la Tronchin, where he unrolled his papers and pre- 
 pared his proces-verhal. Popinot had not ceased to 
 observe Monsieur d'Espard, — he watched the effect 
 upon him of this declaration, so wounding to a 
 reasoning man. The Marquis d'Espard, whose face 
 was ordinarily pale, as are those of blond persons, 
 became suddenly red with anger, he shook slightly, 
 sat down, placed his newspaper on the mantel, and 
 lowered his eyes. He resumed immediately his 
 dignity of the gentleman, and looked at the judge, 
 as if to seek in his countenance the indication of 
 his character. 
 
 "How is it, monsieur, that I have not been noti- 
 fied of such a petition.?" he asked. 
 
 "Monsieur le Marquis, the persons whose inter- 
 diction is requested, not being considered to be in 
 the possession of their reason, the notification of the 
 petition is useless. The duty of the tribunal is to 
 verify, before everything, the allegations of the 
 petitioners." 
 
 "Nothing can be more just," replied the marquis. 
 "Well, monsieur, will you indicate to me the man- 
 ner in which 1 should proceed — " 
 
 "You have only to reply to my questions, omit- 
 ting no details. However delicate may be the 
 reasons which have led you to act in the manner
 
 330 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 which has given Madame d'Espard the pretext for 
 her petition, speak without fear. It is unnecessary 
 to observe to- you that the magistracy is aware of 
 its duties, and that under similar circumstances the 
 most profound secrecy — " 
 
 "Monsieur," said the marquis, whose features 
 expressed a keen pain, "if from my explanations 
 there should ensue some censure for the line of con- 
 duct pursued by Madame d'Espard, what would 
 happen?" 
 
 "The Court might express a censure in the 
 reasons given for its judgment." 
 
 "Is this censure optional? If I should stipulate 
 with you, before replying to you, that nothing in- 
 jurious to Madame d'Espard should be set forth in 
 case your report should be favorable to me, would 
 the Court take into consideration my request?" 
 
 The judge looked at the marquis, and these two 
 men exchanged sentiments of an equal nobility. 
 
 "Noel," said Popinot to his clerk, "retire to 
 the next room. If 1 have need of you, I will call 
 you. — If, as 1 am at this moment inclined to be- 
 lieve," he resumed, addressing the marquis when 
 the clerk had left them, "there should be encoun- 
 tered in this affair some misunderstandings, I can 
 promise you, monsieur, that, on your request, the 
 tribunal would act with courtesy. There is a first 
 fact, alleged by Madame d'Espard, the gravest of 
 all, and concerning which I entreat you to enlighten 
 me," said the judge, after a pause. "It is a ques- 
 tion of the dissipation of your fortune for the benefit
 
 THE INTERDICTION 33 1 
 
 of a Dame Jeanrenaud, the widow of a captain of 
 a barge, or rather, for the benefit of her son, the 
 colonel, whom you have placed, for whom you have 
 exhausted the favor in which you are held by the 
 king, in short, for whom you have extended your 
 protection so far as to procure him a fine marriage. 
 The request causes it to be thought that this friend- 
 ship exceeds in devotion all natural sentiments, 
 even those reproved by morality — " 
 
 A sudden flush invaded the cheeks and the brow 
 of the marquis, there even came tears into his eyes, 
 his lashes were moist; then a just pride suppressed 
 this evidence of feeling which, in a man, is taken for 
 weakness. 
 
 "In truth, monsieur," he replied in an altered 
 voice, "you place me in a strange perplexity. The 
 motives of my conduct were condemned to die with 
 me. — To speak of them, I shall be obliged to discover 
 to you secret wounds, deliver up to you the honor 
 of my family, and — a delicate thing which you will 
 appreciate — speak of myself. I hope, monsieur, that 
 everything will remain secret between us. You will 
 know how to find in the judicial methods a form 
 which will permit you to draw up a decision without 
 there being in it any question of my revelations — " 
 
 "In this connection, everything is possible, Mon- 
 sieur le Marquis." 
 
 "Monsieur," said Monsieur d'Espard, "some time 
 after my marriage, my wife had expended such 
 sums that I was obliged to have recourse to a loan. 
 You are acquainted with the condition of the noble
 
 332 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 families during the Revolution? I was not per- 
 mitted to have either an intendant or a man of 
 business. To-day, noblemen are, nearly all of 
 them, obliged to look after their own business 
 affairs. The greater number of my titles to prop- 
 erty had been brought from Languedoc, from Pro- 
 vence or from Comtat to Paris by my father, who 
 feared, with sufficient reason, the investigations 
 which the family titles, and what were then called 
 the parchments of the privileged, would draw down 
 on their proprietors. We were Negrepelisses in our 
 own name. D'Espard is a title acquired under 
 Henri IV. by an alliance which gave us the property 
 and the titles of the house D'Espard, on condition of 
 placing in the middle of the shield in our arms the 
 coat-of-arms of the D'Espards, an old family of 
 Beam, allied to the house D'Albret through the 
 wives, — gold, three pales sable, quartered with a^ure 
 with two griffins^ claws argent armed gules posed 
 saltier with the famous Des Partem LEONIS 
 for device. In the days of this alliance we 
 lost Negrepelisse, a little city as celebrated during 
 the religious wars as was my ancestor who then 
 bore the name. The Capitaine de Negrepelisse 
 was ruined by the conflagration of his property, for 
 the Protestants did not spare a friend of Montluc. 
 The Crown was unjust to Monsieur de Negrepelisse, 
 he received neither the baton of marshal, nor com- 
 mand, nor indemnity; the king Charles IX., who 
 loved him, died without having been able to recom- 
 pense him; Henri IV. indeed brought about his
 
 THE INTERDICTION 333 
 
 marriage with Mademoiselle d'Espard, and secured 
 for him the domains of that house; but all the prop- 
 erty of the N^grepelisse had already passed into the 
 hands of the creditors. My great-grandfather, the 
 Marquis d'Espard, was, like myself, placed at an 
 early age at the head of his family by the death of 
 his father, who, after having dissipated his wife's 
 fortune, left her only the entailed lands of the house 
 D'Espard, which, moreover, were burdened with a 
 jointure. The young Marquis d'Espard found him- 
 self all the more crippled that he had a position at 
 Court. Particularly esteemed by Louis XIV., the 
 king's favor was to him a brevet of fortune. Here, 
 monsieur, there was thrown upon our coat-of-arms 
 a horrible, unheard-of spot, a spot of blood and of 
 mud which I am trying to remove. I discovered this 
 secret in the titles relating to the lands of Ndgre- 
 pelisse, and in the files of correspondence." 
 
 At this solemn moment the marquis spoke with- 
 out stammering, without any of those repetitions 
 which were habitual with him; but everyone has 
 been able to observe for himself that those persons 
 who in the ordinary affairs of life are affected by 
 these two defects, lose them at the moment when 
 some lively passion animates their discourse. 
 
 "The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes took 
 place," he resumed. "Perhaps you are ignorant, 
 monsieur, that this brought an accession of fortune 
 to very many of the royal favorites. Louis XIV. 
 gave to the grandees of his court, lands confiscated 
 from the Protestant families which had not arranged
 
 334 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 for the sale of their property. Some persons high 
 in favor, as was then said, went hunting for Protest- 
 ants. I have acquired the certainty tiiat the pres- 
 ent fortune of two ducal families is composed of 
 lands confiscated from the unhappy merchants. I 
 will not explain to you, a man of the law, the 
 manoeuvres employed to entrap those refugees who 
 had large fortunes to carry away: it will suffice for 
 you to know that the estate of Negrepelisse, consist- 
 ing of twenty-two parishes and right of taxation in 
 the city, that that of Gravenges, which formerly 
 belonged to us, were originally in the possession of 
 a Protestant family. My grandfather came into 
 possession of them through the grant made to him 
 by Louis XIV. This grant was based upon facts 
 stamped by frightful iniquity. The proprietor of 
 these two estates, believing that it would be possible 
 to return to France, had made an apparent sale and 
 then had gone to Switzerland to rejoin his family, 
 which he had sent there at the first alarm. He 
 wished, doubtless, to take advantage of all the delays 
 accorded by the ordinance, in order to regulate his 
 business affairs. This man was arrested by an 
 order of the governor, the feoffee admitted the facts, 
 the poor merchant was hanged, my father received 
 the two estates. I would willingly suppress the 
 part which my ancestor took in this intrigue; but 
 the governor was his maternal uncle, and I have 
 read, unhappily, a letter in which he requests him 
 to apply to Deodatus, a name for the king which 
 had been agreed upon among the courtiers. There
 
 THE INTERDICTION 335 
 
 prevails throughout this letter a jesting tone at the 
 expense of the victim which fills me with horror. 
 In fact, monsieur, the sums of money sent by the 
 refugee family to purchase the life of the poor man, 
 were retained by the governor, who none the less 
 dispatched the merchant." 
 
 The Marquis d'Espard stopped, as though these 
 souvenirs were still too painful for him. 
 
 "This unfortunate was named Jeanrenaud, " he 
 resumed. "This name will explain to you my con- 
 duct. 1 have not been able to reflect, without keen 
 pain, on the secret shame which weighed on my 
 family. This fortune permitted my grandfather to 
 espouse a Navarreins-Lansac, an heiress of the 
 property of that younger branch, at that time much 
 richer than was the elder branch of the Navarreins. 
 My father found himself from that time one of the 
 most considerable landed proprietors in the king- 
 dom. He was able to marry my mother, who was 
 a Grandlieu of the younger branch. Though ill- 
 acquired, this property has strangely profited with 
 us ! Resolved to repair the wrong promptly, I wrote 
 to Switzerland, and received no reply until the 
 moment when I was on the traces of the heirs of the 
 Protestant. I finally discovered that the Jean- 
 renauds, reduced to the utmost poverty, had left 
 Fribourg, and that they had come back to live in 
 France. At last I discovered in Monsieur Jean- 
 renaud, a simple lieutenant of cavalry under Bona- 
 parte, the heir of this unfortunate family, hi my 
 eyes, monsieur, the right of the Jeanrenauds was
 
 336 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 clear. In order to establish it, would it not be 
 necessary for them to attack the present hoi ders ? To 
 what authority would the refugees address them- 
 selves? their tribunal was above, or, rather, mon- 
 sieur, the tribunal was here," said the marquis, 
 striking his heart. "I have not wished that my 
 children should have the same opinion of me that I 
 have of my father and of my ancestors; I have 
 wished indeed to leave them a heritage and an es- 
 cutcheon without stain, I have not been willing 
 that nobility should be a lie in my person. In 
 short, speaking politically, should the noble emigres, 
 who protest against the confiscations of the Revolu- 
 tion, keep for themselves property which is the 
 fruit of confiscations obtained by crime.? In Mon- 
 sieur Jeanrenaud and in his mother I have met with 
 a rough honesty, — if you listened to them, you 
 would think that they were robbing me. In spite 
 of my insistence they have accepted only the value 
 which the property had when my family received 
 it from the king. This value was agreed between 
 us to be eleven hundred thousand francs, which they 
 gave me the privilege of paying at my own con- 
 venience, without interest. In order to do this, I 
 have been obliged to forego my revenues for a long 
 time. It was here, monsieur, that there first com- 
 menced the destruction of certain illusions which I 
 had cherished concerning the character of Madame 
 d'Espard. When I proposed to her to leave Paris 
 and to go to live in the provinces where, with the 
 half of our income we could live honorably, and
 
 THE INTERDICTION 337 
 
 thus be enabled to make more promptly a restitu- 
 tion of which I spoke to her without revealing to 
 her the gravity of the facts, Madame d'Espard con- 
 sidered me a lunatic. I then discovered the true 
 character of my wife, she would have approved 
 unscrupulously of my grandfather's conduct, and 
 would have derided the Huguenots. Terrified at 
 her coldness, at the slightness of her attachment to 
 her children, whom she abandoned to me without 
 regret, 1 resolved to leave her in the possession of 
 her own fortune, after having liquidated our com- 
 mon debts. It was not for her, moreover, she told 
 me, to pay for my stupidities. Having no longer 
 sufficient revenues to keep up my mode of life and 
 provide for the education of my children, I decided 
 to bring them up myself, to make of them men with 
 honorable feelings, gentlemen. By investing my 
 money in the public funds, I have been enabled to 
 pay much more promptly than I hoped, for I profited 
 by the opportunities presented by the rise in Rentes. 
 By reserving four thousand francs for my sons and 
 myself, I should have been able to pay only twenty 
 thousand ecus a year, which would have required 
 nearly eighteen years to accomplish my liberation, 
 whereas I have lately paid the last of my eleven 
 hundred thousand francs due. Thus 1 have the 
 happiness of having accomplished this restitution 
 without having wronged my children in the slight- 
 est These are, monsieur, the reasons for the pay- 
 ments made to Madame Jeanrenaud and her son." 
 "Thus," said the judge, suppressing the emotion 
 22
 
 338 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 which this recital caused him, "Madame la Marquise 
 is acquainted with the motives of your retreat?" 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 Popinot made a sufficiently expressive gesture, 
 rose suddenly and opened the door of the cabinet 
 
 "Noel, you may go, "he said to his clerk. "Mon- 
 sieur," he resumed, "although what you have said 
 to me is sufficient to enlighten me, I desire to hear 
 you concerning other facts alleged in the petition. 
 Thus, you have undertaken here a commercial 
 enterprise which is not in accord with the habits 
 of a man of quality." 
 
 "We cannot well speak of that here," said the 
 marquis, making a sign to the judge to pass out. 
 "Nouvion," he continued, addressing the old man, 
 "I am going down stairs to my apartment, my 
 sons will soon be in, you will dine with us." 
 
 "Monsieur le Marquis," said Popinot on the 
 stairway, "this is, then, not your apartment?" 
 
 "No, monsieur, I have rented these rooms for the 
 offices of this enterprise. You see," he said, point- 
 ing to a poster, "this history is published under the 
 name of one of the most honorable publishing 
 houses in Paris, and not by me." 
 
 The marquis caused the judge to enter into the 
 ground floor rooms, and said to him: 
 "This is my apartment, monsieur." 
 Popinot was moved, very naturally, by the poetry 
 rather found than sought for, which prevailed in 
 this dwelling. The weather was magnificent, the 
 windows were open, the air from the garden diffused
 
 THE INTERDICTION 339 
 
 through the salon the fresh vegetable odors ; the rays 
 of the sun lightened and animated the somewhat 
 darkened tones of the wainscoting. Popinot came 
 to the conclusion, as he saw this pleasant aspect, 
 that a lunatic would scarcely be capable of invent- 
 ing the agreeable harmony which appealed to him 
 at this moment. 
 
 "1 should have a similar apartment myself," he 
 thought Then he asked aloud: "You will leave 
 this quarter soon?" 
 
 "I hope so," replied the marquis; "but I shall 
 wait until my younger son shall have finished his 
 studies, and until the character of my children shall 
 have been formed, before introducing them into the 
 world by their mother's side; moreover, after hav- 
 ing imparted to them the solid instruction which 
 they now possess, 1 wish to complete it by making 
 them travel through the capitals of Europe, in order 
 that they may become acquainted with men and 
 things, and acquire facility in speaking the lan- 
 guages which they have been studying. Monsieur, " 
 he said, causing the judge to be seated in the salon, 
 "I could not speak to you concerning the publica- 
 tion upon China before an old friend of my family, 
 the Comte de Nouvion, returned from the emigra- 
 tion after the Revolution without any fortune 
 whatever, and in connection with whom I have un- 
 dertaken this affair, less for myself than for him. 
 Without confiding to him the reasons for my retreat, 
 1 said to him that I was ruined, like himself, but 
 that I had enough money to undertake a speculation
 
 340 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 in which he might make himself of service. My 
 preceptor was the Abbe Grozier, whom, at my 
 recommendation, Charles X. appointed his libra- 
 rian at the library of the Arsenal, which was given 
 him when the prince was still MONSIEUR. The 
 Abbe Grozier was profoundly informed concerning 
 China, its manners and customs; he had made me 
 his heir at an age in which it is difficult not to de- 
 velop an enthusiasm for that knowledge which is 
 acquired. At the age of twenty-five 1 was ac- 
 quainted with Chinese, and 1 admit that I have 
 never been able to preserve myself from an exclu- 
 sive admiration for this people, which has con- 
 quered its conquerors, whose annals incontestably 
 ascend to an epoch much more remote than are the 
 mythological or biblical times; which, by its im- 
 movable institutions, has preserved the integrity of 
 its territory, whose monuments are gigantic, whose 
 administration is perfect, with whom revolutions 
 are impossible, who have considered the ideal of the 
 beautiful in art as unfruitful, who have carried 
 luxury and industry to so high a degree, whom we 
 cannot surpass in any point, whilst they equal us 
 in those things in which we think ourselves su- 
 perior. But, monsieur, if I frequently permit my- 
 self to jest in comparing with China the actual 
 condition of the European states, I am not a Chinese, 
 I am a French gentleman. If you should have any 
 doubts concerning the financial success of this en- 
 terprise, I can prove to you that we count at this 
 moment two thousand five hundred subscribers to
 
 IN THE RUE DE LA MO NT AG N E- 
 SAINTE-GENEVIEVE. 
 
 " At the age of tiventy-five I was acquainted zvith 
 Chinese, and I adunt that I have never been able to 
 preserve myself from an exclusive admiration for 
 this people, winch has conquered its conquerors, 
 whose annals incontestably ascend to an epoch much 
 more remote than are the mythological or biblical 
 times ; zvhich, by its immovable institutions — "
 
 *N!H 
 
 K.f^'.,A/Ut»9rJy ■&. 'S. / .^»«.. 
 
 %■ 
 
 n^\ 
 
 > J- 
 
 ,*.# :■ ' 
 
 '^^8 B l i ! W »> 
 
 IT
 
 THE INTERDICTION 34I 
 
 this monument, literary, iconographic, statistical 
 and religious, the importance of which is generally 
 appreciated; our subscribers are scattered through 
 all the nations of Europe, we have only twelve hun- 
 dred in France. Our work will cost about three 
 hundred francs, and it furnishes the Comte de 
 Nouvion, for his part, with six or seven thousand 
 francs income, for his comfort was the secret 
 motive for undertaking this enterprise. As far as 
 1 am concerned, I have seen in it only the possibil- 
 ity of giving some pleasures to my children. The 
 hundred thousand francs which I have made, very 
 much in spite of myself, will pay for their fencing 
 lessons, their horses, their clothes, their theatres, 
 their lessons in deportment, the canvases which 
 they try to paint, the books which they wish to 
 buy, in short, all those little whims which it gives 
 the fathers so much pleasure to satisfy. If it had 
 been necessary for me to refuse these enjoyments to 
 my poor children, so deserving, so constant in their 
 studies, the sacrifice which I am making to the 
 honor of our name would have been doubly burden- 
 some. In fact, monsieur, the twelve years during 
 which I have retired from the world in order to edu- 
 cate my children have procured for me the most 
 complete oblivion at Court. 1 have forsaken the 
 career of politics, I have lost all my historic fortune, 
 ail the new distinctions which I might have left to 
 my children; but our house will have lost nothing, 
 my sons will be distinguished men. If I do not at- 
 tain to the peerage, they will conquer it nobly in
 
 342 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 consecrating themselves to the conduct of their 
 country's affairs, and in rendering to her those ser- 
 vices which are not forgotten. At the same time 
 that I have purified the past of our house I have as- 
 sured it a glorious future, — is not that to have ac- 
 complished a fine task, although secretly and with- 
 out glory? Have you now, monsieur, any other 
 subjects on which you wish to be informed?" 
 
 At this moment the noise of several horses was 
 heard in the court. 
 
 "There they are," said the marquis. 
 
 The two young men presently entered the salon, 
 simple yet elegant in their appearance, booted, 
 spurred, gloved, flourishing their riding whips gaily. 
 Their animated countenances brought in the fresh- 
 ness of the open air, they were sparkling with 
 health. Both came to grasp their father's hand, 
 exchanging with him, as between friends, a look 
 full of silent tenderness, and they saluted the judge 
 coldly. Popinot considered it entirely useless to 
 interrogate the marquis on his relations with his 
 sons. 
 
 "Did you enjoy yourselves?" their father asked 
 them. 
 
 "Yes, father. For the first time, I cut down six 
 puppets in twelve strokes!" said Camille. 
 
 "Where did you ride?" 
 
 "In the Bois, where we saw mother." 
 
 "Did she stop?" 
 
 "We were going so fast at that moment that she 
 doubtless did not see us," replied the young count.
 
 THE INTERDICTION 343 
 
 "But why then did you not go and present your- 
 selves to her?" 
 
 "1 have thought that 1 have noticed, father, that 
 she is not very well pleased when we speak to her 
 in public," said Clement in a low voice. "We are 
 somewhat too old." 
 
 The judge's ear was fine enough to catch this 
 phrase, which clouded the brow of the marquis. 
 Popinot pleased himself by the contemplation of the 
 spectacle which was presented to him by the father 
 and the sons. His eyes, filled with a sort of tender- 
 ness, returned to the face of Monsieur d'Espard, 
 whose features, whose look and whose manners 
 represented to him probity under its finest form, 
 probity spiritual and chivalrous, nobility in all its 
 beauty. 
 
 "You — you see, monsieur," said the marquis to 
 him, resuming his stammering, "you see that jus- 
 tice — that justice can enter here — here, at any 
 hour; yes, at any hour here. If there are any 
 crazy people — if there are any crazy people, they 
 can only be the children, who are a little crazy over 
 their father, and the father who is very crazy over 
 his children; but that is a lunacy of good sterling 
 quality." 
 
 At this moment the voice of Madame Jeanrenaud 
 was heard in the antechamber, and the good woman 
 came into the salon notwithstanding the remon- 
 strance of the valet de chambre. 
 
 "1 am not going in a roundabout way, I am not!" 
 she cried. "Yes, Monsieur le Marquis," she said,
 
 344 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 making a general salute to the company, "I must 
 speak to you at this very minute. Parbleu! I have 
 come too late, after all, for there is Monsieur the 
 criminal judge." 
 
 "Criminal !" said the two youths. 
 
 "There were very good reasons why 1 did not 
 find you at your house, since you were here. Oh, 
 bah! justice is always about when it is a question 
 of making mischief. I come, Monsieur le Marquis, 
 to say to you that I am of the same mind as my 
 son to return everything to you, since it concerns 
 our honor, which is attacked. My son and I, we 
 would rather refund all to you than to cause you 
 the slightest vexation. In truth, one would have to 
 be as stupid as the pots without handles to be willing 
 to see you interdicted — " 
 
 "Interdict our father!" cried the marquis's two 
 sons, pressing up against him. "What is the mat- 
 ter?" 
 
 "Chut, madame!" said Popinot 
 
 "Leave us, children," said the marquis. 
 
 The two young men withdrew to the garden with- 
 out making any observation, but full of anxiety. 
 
 "Madame," said the judge, "the sums of money 
 which Monsieur le Marquis has paid over to you 
 were legitimately due you, though they have been 
 given you in virtue of a principle of probity which 
 is carried to an extreme length. If all those who 
 are in possession of property that has been confis- 
 cated, in any manner whatever, even through per- 
 fidious methods, were obliged to make restitution
 
 THE INTERDICTION 345 
 
 after a hundred and fifty years, there would be 
 found in France very little legitimate ownership. 
 The wealth of Jacques Coeur has enriched twenty 
 noble families; the unjust confiscations of the 
 English in favor of their adherents, when the 
 English were in possession of a part of France, 
 have made the fortunes of several princely houses. 
 Our laws permit Monsieur le Marquis to dispose of 
 his revenues by free gift without exposing himself 
 to the charge of dissipation. The interdiction of a 
 man is based upon the absence of all reason in his 
 actions; but here, the cause of the restitutions 
 which have been made to you is found in the most 
 sacred, the most honorable motives. Therefore you 
 may keep everything without remorse, and allow 
 the world to put its own evil interpretation on this 
 fine action. !n Paris, it is the purest virtue that 
 is made the object of the vilest calumnies. It is 
 unfortunate that the present state of our society 
 makes the conduct of Monsieur le Marquis seem 
 sublime. I could wish, for the honor of our country, 
 that such acts should seem quite simple; but our 
 manners are such that I am forced, by comparison, 
 to regard Monsieur d'Espard as a man to whom a 
 crown should be awarded instead of being threatened 
 with a judgment of interdiction. During the course 
 of a long judicial life, I have never seen or heard 
 anything that has moved me more than that which 
 I have just seen and heard. But there is nothing 
 extraordinary in finding virtue in its most beautiful 
 form, there where it is practised by men who belong
 
 346 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 to the most elevated class. — After having thus ex- 
 plained myself, I hope, Monsieur le Marquis, that 
 you will be sure of my silence, and that you will 
 have no inquietude concerning the judgment to be 
 pronounced, if judgment there be." 
 
 "Well, good enough!" said Madame Jeanrenaud, 
 "here is a judge of the right kind! Really, my 
 dear monsieur, I would embrace you if I were not 
 so ugly; you talk like a book." 
 
 The marquis offered his hand to Popinot, and 
 Popinot placed his own into it softly, turning a look 
 full of penetrating accord upon this man, so great in 
 private life, to which the marquis replied by a 
 gracious smile. These two natures, so full, so rich, 
 the one bourgeois and divine, the other noble and 
 sublime, had come into unison with each other 
 gently, without shock, without outbreak of passion, 
 as if two pure flames had commingled. The father of 
 his whole quarter felt himself worthy to press the 
 hand of this man twice noble, and the marquis knew 
 by a movement in the depths of his heart that the 
 hand of the judge was one of those from which in- 
 cessantly flow the treasures of an inexhaustible 
 benevolence. 
 
 "Monsieur le Marquis," added Popinot as he 
 bowed, "I am happy to have to tell you that, from 
 the first words of this interrogation, I considered my 
 clerk superfluous." 
 
 Then he approached the marquis, drew him into 
 the embrasure of the window and said to him: 
 
 "It is time that you should return to your own
 
 THE INTERDICTION 347 
 
 house, monsieur; 1 believe that in this affair Ma- 
 dame la Marquise has been subject to influences 
 which you should begin to combat from to-day." 
 
 Popinot 'went out, and, as he walked, turned it 
 evermore than once in his mind in the court and in 
 the street, moved to tenderness by the memory of 
 this scene. It was one of those effects which im- 
 plant themselves in the mind, to flower again in 
 remembrance at certain hours in which the soul 
 seeks consolation. 
 
 "That apartment would suit me very well," he 
 said to himself on his arrival at his own house. 
 "If Monsieur d'Espard should leave it, I would take 
 up his lease — " 
 
 The next day, about ten o'clock in the morning, 
 Popinot, who, the evening before, had drawn up 
 his report, took his way to the Palais with the in- 
 tention of doing prompt and sound justice. As he 
 entered the vestry to assume his robe and put on 
 his band, the attendant of the chambers said to him 
 that the president of the tribunal requested him to 
 pass into his cabinet, where he was waiting for 
 him. Popinot immediately went there. 
 
 "Good day, my dear Popinot," said the magis- 
 trate to him. "I was waiting for you." 
 
 "Monsieur the president, is it a question of any- 
 thing serious?" 
 
 * ' A piece of nonsense, ' ' said the president ' ' The 
 keeper of the seals, with whom 1 had the honor to 
 dine yesterday, drew me aside into a corner. He 
 had learned that you had been to take tea with
 
 348 THE INTERDICTION 
 
 Madame d'Espard, with whose affair you were com- 
 missioned. He has caused me to understand that 
 it is advisable that you do not sit in this cause — " 
 
 "Ah! Monsieur the president, I can affirm that I 
 left Madame d'Espard's at the moment when the tea 
 was served; moreover, my conscience — " 
 
 "Yes, yes," said the president, "the whole tri- 
 bunal, the two courts, the Palais, know you. I 
 will not repeat to you what I said of you to His 
 Grace ; but you knew that Ccesar's wife should he 
 above suspicion. Therefore we will not make of 
 this nonsense a matter of discipline, but a question 
 of the proprieties. Between ourselves, it is less a 
 case of you than of the tribunal." 
 
 "But, Monsieur the president, if you were ac- 
 quainted with the case," said the judge, endeavor- 
 ing to draw his report from his pocket. 
 
 "I am convinced in advance that you have 
 brought to this affair the strictest independence. I, 
 myself, when I was in the provinces, a simple 
 judge, I have often taken much more than a cup of 
 tea with persons whose cases I had to judge; but it 
 is sufficient that the keeper of the seals has spoken 
 of it, that you may be gossiped about, to cause the 
 tribunal to avoid any discussion on the subject. AH 
 conflict with public opinion is always dangerous for 
 a constitutional body, even when it has right on its 
 side, for the weapons are not equal. The news- 
 papers may say everything, suppose everything; 
 and our own dignity forbids us to do anything, even 
 to reply. Moreover, I have conferred concerning it
 
 THE INTERDICTION 349 
 
 with your president, and Monsieur Camusot has 
 just been commissioned, on the recusation which 
 you will give. It is a matter all arranged in the 
 family. In short, I ask of you your recusation as a 
 personal service; in return, you shall have the cross 
 of the Legion of Honor, which has been so long due 
 you, I will make it my own affair," 
 
 As he saw Monsieur Camusot, a judge recently 
 called from a court of appeals to that of Paris, and 
 who now came forward, bowing to the judge and 
 the president, Popinot could not repress an ironical 
 smile. This young man, blond and pale, filled with 
 hidden ambition, seemed equally willing to hang or 
 to unhang, at the good pleasure of the kings of the 
 earth, the innocent as well as the guilty, and to 
 follow the example of the Laubardemonts rather 
 than those of the Moles. Popinot retired, bowing to 
 the president and the judge; he disdained to notice 
 the lying accusation brought against him. 
 
 Paris, February, 1836.
 
 LIST OF ETCHINGS 
 
 VOLUME XX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 AT COMTE OCTAVE'S, RUE PAYENNE . • . Fronts. 
 
 HONORINE AND MAURICE 112 
 
 COLONEL CHABERT AT M. DERVILLE'S 129 
 
 IN THE RUE DU FOUARRE 233 
 
 IN THE RUE DE LA MONTAGNE-SAINTE-GENEVIEVE • 340 
 
 20 N. & R., Hon. 351
 
 6^ 
 
 /I </
 
 QUj 
 
 ^.. 
 
 50 c 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped bdov^. 
 
 
 DATE SEN 
 
 APR 
 
 HATER 
 
 (\C rjt I I 
 
 l^ Ad V il(] 
 
 ii !ikir\ 
 
 REC'D C.L. M/iV 01 -96 
 
 4WK MAY 07 1996 
 
 315 
 
 < 
 
 U-J 
 
 > 
 
 :2: 
 
 ■s^. 
 
 ^ 
 
 k 
 
 .^^
 
 !1V3J0> 
 ^^.OfCAIIFO/?^ 
 
 
 AA 000 571 575 
 
 'S, 
 
 3 -— 
 
 CO 
 
 so 
 
 > 
 
 -< 
 
 ■«\ 
 
 >-' '. 
 
 lOS-ANCn^- 
 
 \ ^ 
 
 
 
 NTjUINOSr 
 
 
 c^" 
 
 c^EUJ^' "' 
 
 u.iivviu; 
 
 
 <_3 
 
 3 O 
 
 3> r: 
 
 1!^ 
 
 ■vAavaaiiiv' 
 
 • JjiO.VliUi' 
 
 ■^6 
 
 r c5v4r 
 
 jajAii>iijjtA>- 
 
 .ilVJJU 
 
 '^UJIiVJ-jU'- 
 
 'Jj 
 
 it