One morning in the market, Brigaut, lying in wait, was able to get near her. Though he saw her tremble and turn pale, like an autumn leaf about to flutter down, he did not lose his head, but quietly bought fruit of the market-woman with whom Sylvie was bargaining. He found his chance of slipping a note to Pierrette, all the while joking the woman with the ease of a man accustomed to such manoeuvres; so cool was he in action, though the blood hummed in his ears and rushed boiling through his veins and arteries. He had the firmness of a galley-slave without, and the shrinkings of innocence within him, — like certain mothers in their moments of mortal trial, when held between two dangers, two catastrophes.
Pierrette’s inward commotion was like Brigaut’s. She slipped the note into the pocket of her apron. The hectic spots upon her cheekbones turned to a cherry-scarlet. These two children went through, all unknown to themselves, many more emotions than go to the make-up of a dozen ordinary loves. This moment in the market-place left in their souls a well-spring of passionate feeling. Sylvie, who did not recognize the Breton accent, took no notice of Brigaut, and Pierrette went home safely with her treasure.
The letters of these two poor children were fated to serve as documents in a terrible judicial inquiry; otherwise, without the fatal circumstances that occasioned that inquiry, they would never have been heard of. Here is the one which Pierrette read that night in her chamber: —
My dear Pierrette, — At midnight, when everybody is asleep but me,
who am watching you, I will come every night under your window.
Let down a string long enough to reach me; it will not make any
noise; you must fasten to the end of it whatever you write to me.
I will tie my letter in the same way. I hear they have taught
you to read and write, — those wicked relations who were to do you
good, and have done you so much harm. You, Pierrette, the daughter
of a colonel who died for France, reduced by those monsters to be
their servant! That is where all your pretty color and health have
gone. My Pierrette, what has become of her? what have they done
with her. I see plainly you are not the same, not happy. Oh!
Pierrette, let us go back to Brittany. I can earn enough now to
give you what you need; for you yourself can earn three francs a
day and I can earn four or five; and thirty sous is all I want to
live on. Ah! Pierrette, how I have prayed the good God for you
ever since I came here! I have asked him to give me all your
sufferings, and you all pleasures. Why do you stay with them? why
do they keep you? Your grandmother is more to you than they. They
are vipers; they have taken your gaiety away from you. You do not
even walk as you once did in Brittany. Let us go back. I am here
to serve you, to do your will; tell me what you wish. If you need
money I have a hundred and fifty francs; I can send them up by the
string, though I would like to kiss your dear hands and lay the
money in them. Ah, dear Pierrette, it is a long time now that the
blue sky has been overcast for me. I have not had two hours’
happiness since I put you into that diligence of evil. And when I
saw you the other morning, looking like a shadow, I could not
reach you; that hag of a cousin came between us. But at least we
can have the consolation of praying to God together every Sunday
in church; perhaps he will hear us all the more when we pray
together.
Not good-by, my dear, Pierrette, but to-night.
This letter so affected Pierrette that she sat for more than an hour reading and re-reading and gazing at it. Then she remembered with anguish that she had nothing to write with. She summoned courage to make the difficult journey from her garret to the dining-room, where she obtained pen, paper, and ink, and returned safely without waking her terrible cousin. A few minutes before midnight she had finished the following letter: —
My Friend, — Oh! yes, my friend; for there is no one but you,
Jacques, and my grandmother to love me. God forgive me, but you
are the only two persons whom I love, both alike, neither more nor
less. I was too little to know my dear mamma; but you, Jacques,
and my grandmother, and my grandfather, — God grant him heaven, for
he suffered much from his ruin, which was mine, — but you two who
are left, I love you both, unhappy as I am. Indeed, to know how
much I love you, you will have to know how much I suffer; but I
don’t wish that, it would grieve you too much. They speak to me
as we would not speak to a dog; they treat me like the worst of
girls; and yet I do examine myself before God, and I cannot find
that I do wrong by them. Before you sang to me the marriage song I
saw the mercy of God in my sufferings; for I had prayed to him to
take me from the world, and I felt so ill I said to myself, “God
hears me!” But, Jacques, now you are here, I want to live and go
back to Brittany, to my grandmamma who loves me, though they say
she stole eight thousand francs of mine. Jacques, is that so? If
they are mine could you get them! But it is not true, for if my
grandmother had eight thousand francs she would not live at
Saint-Jacques.
I don’t want to trouble her last days, my kind, good grandmamma,
with the knowledge of my troubles; she might die of it. Ah! if she
knew they made her grandchild scrub the pots and pans, — she who
used to say to me, when I wanted to help her after her troubles,
“Don’t touch that, my darling; leave it — leave it — you will spoil
your pretty fingers.” Ah! my hands are never clean now. Sometimes
I can hardly carry the basket home from market, it cuts my arm.
Still I don’t think my cousins mean to be cruel; but it is their
way always to scold, and it seems that I have no right to leave
them. My cousin Rogron is my guardian. One day when I wanted to
run away because I could not bear it, and told them so, my cousin
Sylvie said the gendarmes would go after me, for the law was my
master. Oh! I know now that cousins cannot take the place of
father or mother, any more than the saints can take the place of
God.
My poor Jacques, what do you suppose I could do with your money?
Keep it for our journey. Oh! how I think of you and Pen-Hoel, and
the big pong, — that’s where we had our only happy days. I shall
have no more, for I feel I am going from bad to worse. I am very
ill, Jacques. I have dreadful pains in my head, and in my bones,
and back, which kill me, and I have no appetite except for horrid
things, — roots and leaves and such things. Sometimes I cry, when I
am all alone, for they won’t let me do anything I like if they
know it, not even cry. I have to hide to offer my tears to Him to
whom we owe the mercies which we call afflictions. It must have
been He who gave you the blessed thought to come and sing the
marriage song beneath my window. Ah! Jacques, my cousin heard you,
and she said I had a lover. If you wish to be my lover, love me
well. I promise to love you always, as I did in the past, and to
be
Your faithful servant,
Pierrette Lorrain.
You will love me always, won’t you?
She had brought a crust of bread from the kitchen, in which she now made a hole for the letter, and fastened it like a weight to her string. At midnight,
having opened her window with extreme caution, she lowered the letter with the crust, which made no noise against either the wall of the house or the blinds. Presently she felt the string pulled by Brigaut, who broke it and then crept softly away. When he reached the middle of the square she could see him indistinctly by the starlight; but he saw her quite clearly in the zone of light thrown by the candle. The two children stood thus for over an hour, Pierrette making him signs to go, he starting, she remaining, he coming back to his post, and Pierrette again signing that he must leave her. This was repeated till the child closed her window, went to bed, and blew out the candle. Once in bed she fell asleep, happy in heart though suffering in body, — she had Brigaut’s letter under her pillow. She slept as the persecuted sleep, — a slumber bright with angels; that slumber full of heavenly arabesques, in atmospheres of gold and lapis-lazuli, perceived and given to us by Raffaelle.
The moral nature had such empire over that frail physical nature that on the morrow Pierrette rose light and joyous as a lark, as radiant and as gay. Such a change could not escape the vigilant eye of her cousin Sylvie, who, this time, instead of scolding her, set about watching her with the scrutiny of a magpie. “What reason is there for such happiness?” was a thought of jealousy, not of tyranny. If the colonel had not been in Sylvie’s mind she would have said to Pierrette as formerly, “Pierrette, you are very noise, and very regardless of what you have often been told.” But now the old maid resolved to spy upon her as only old maids can spy. The day was still and gloomy, like the weather that precedes a storm.
“You don’t appear to be ill now, mademoiselle,” said Sylvie at dinner. “Didn’t I tell you she put it all on to annoy us?” she cried, addressing her brother, and not waiting for Pierrette’s answer.
“On the contrary, cousin, I have a sort of fever — ”
“Fever! what fever? You are as gay as a lark. Perhaps you have seen some one again?”
Pierrette trembled and dropped her eyes on her plate.
“Tartufe!” cried Sylvie; “and only fourteen years old! what a nature! Do you mean to come to a bad end?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Pierrette, raising her sweet and luminous brown eyes to her cousin.
“This evening,” said Sylvie, “you are to stay in the dining-room with a candle, and do your sewing. You are not wanted in the salon; I sha’n’t have you looking into my hand to help your favorites.”
Pierrette made no sign.
“Artful creature!” cried Sylvie, leaving the room.
Rogron, who did not understand his sister’s anger, said to Pierrette: “What is all this about? Try to please your cousin, Pierrette; she is very indulgent to you, very gentle, and if you put her out of temper the fault is certainly yours. Why do you squabble so? For my part I like to live in peace. Look at Mademoiselle Bathilde and take pattern by her.”
Pierrette felt able to bear everything. Brigaut would come at midnight and bring her an answer, and that hope was the viaticum of her day. But she was using up her last strength. She did not go to bed, and stood waiting for the hour to strike. At last midnight sounded; softly she opened the window; this time she used a string made by tying bits of twine together. She heard Brigaut’s step, and on drawing up the cord she found the following letter, which filled her with joy: —
My dear Pierrette, — As you are so ill you must not tire yourself
by waiting for me. You will hear me if I cry like an owl. Happily
my father taught me to imitate their note. So when you hear the
cry three times you will know I am there, and then you must let
down the cord. But I shall not come again for some days. I hope
then to bring you good news.
Oh! Pierrette, don’t talk of dying! Pierrette, don’t think such
things! All my heart shook, I felt as though I were dead myself at
the mere idea. No, my Pierrette, you must not die; you will live
happy, and soon you shall be delivered from your persecutors. If I
do not succeed in what I am undertaking for your rescue, I shall
appeal to the law, and I shall speak out before heaven and earth
and tell how your wicked relations are treating you. I am certain
that you have not many more days to suffer; have patience, my
Pierrette! Jacques is watching over you as in the old days when we
slid on the pond and I pulled you out of the hole in which we were
nearly drowned together.
Adieu, my dear Pierrette; in a few days, if God wills, we shall be
happy. Alas, I dare not tell you the only thing that may hinder
our meeting. But God loves us! In a few days I shall see my dear
Pierrette at liberty, without troubles, without any one to hinder
my looking at you — for, ah! Pierrette, I hunger to see you
— Pierrette, Pierrette, who deigns to love me and to tell me so.
Yes, Pierrette, I will be your lover when I have earned the
fortune you deserve; till then I will be to you only a devoted
servant whose life is yours to do what you please with it. Adieu.
Jacques Brigaut.
Here is a letter of which the major’s son said nothing to Pierrette. He wrote it to Madame Lorrain at Nantes: —
Madame Lorrain, — Your granddaughter will die, worn-out with
ill-treatment, if you do not come to fetch her. I could scarcely
recognize her; and to show you the state of things I enclose a
letter I have received from Pierrette. You are thought here to
have taken the money of your granddaughter, and you ought to
justify yourself. If you can, come at once. We may still be happy;
but if delay Pierrette will be dead.
I am, with respect, your devoted servant,
Jacques Brigaut.
At Monsieur Frappier’s, Cabinet-maker, Grand’Rue, Provins.
Brigaut’s fear was that the grandmother was dead.
Though this letter of the youth whom in her innocence she called her lover was almost enigmatical to Pierrette, she believed in it with all her virgin faith. Her heart was filled with that sensation which travellers in the desert feel when they see from afar the palm-trees round a well. In a few days her misery would end — Jacques said so. She relied on this promise of her childhood’s friend; and yet, as she laid the letter beside the other, a dreadful thought came to her in foreboding words.
“Poor Jacques,” she said to herself, “he does not know the hole into which I have now fallen!”
Sylvie had heard Pierrette, and she had also heard Brigaut under her window. She jumped out of bed and rushed to the window to look through the blinds into the square and there she saw, in the moonlight, a man hurrying in the direction of the colonel’s house, in front of which Brigaut happened to stop. The old maid gently opened her door, went upstairs, was amazed to find a light in Pierrette’s room, looked through the keyhole, and could see nothing.
“Pierrette,” she said, “are you ill?”
“No, cousin,” said Pierrette, surprised.
“Why is your candle burning at this time of night? Open the door; I must know what this means.”
Pierrette went to the door bare-footed, and as soon as Sylvie entered the room she saw the cord, which Pierrette had forgotten to put away, not dreaming of a surprise. Sylvie jumped upon it.
“What is that for?” she asked.
“Nothing, cousin.”
“Nothing!” she cried. “Always lying; you’ll never get to heaven that way. Go to bed; you’ll take cold.”
She asked no more questions and went away, leaving Pierrette terrified by her unusual clemency. Instead of exploding with rage, Sylvie had suddenly determined to surprise Pierrette and the colonel together, to seize their letters and confound the two lovers who were deceiving her. Pierrette, inspired by a sense of danger, sewed the letters into her cors
et and covered them with calico.
Here end the loves of Pierrette and Brigaut.
Pierrette rejoiced in the thought that Jacques had determined to hold no communication with her for some days, because her cousin’s suspicions would be quieted by finding nothing to feed them. Sylvie did in fact spend the next three nights on her legs, and each evening in watching the innocent colonel, without discovering either in him or in Pierrette, or in the house or out of it, anything that betrayed their understanding. She sent Pierrette to confession, and seized that moment to search the child’s room, with the method and penetration of a spy or a custom-house officer. She found nothing. Her fury reached the apogee of human sentiments. If Pierrette had been there she would certainly have struck her remorselessly. To a woman of her temper, jealousy was less a sentiment than an occupation; she existed in it, it made her heart beat, she felt emotions hitherto completely unknown to her; the slightest sound or movement kept her on the qui vive; she watched Pierrette with gloomy intentness.
“That miserable little wretch will kill me,” she said.
Sylvie’s severity to her cousin reached the point of refined cruelty, and made the deplorable condition of the poor girl worse daily. She had fever regularly, and the pains in her head became intolerable. By the end of the week even the visitors at the house noticed her suffering face, which would have touched to pity all selfishness less cruel than theirs. It happened that Doctor Neraud, possibly by Vinet’s advice, did not come to the house during that week. The colonel, knowing himself suspected by Sylvie, was afraid to risk his marriage by showing any solicitude for Pierrette. Bathilde explained the visible change in the girl by her natural growth. But at last, one Sunday evening, when Pierrette was in the salon, her sufferings overcame her and she fainted away. The colonel, who first saw her going, caught her in his arms and carried her to a sofa.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 352
