Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  Agathe trembled through her whole being. If it were impossible to love this son any longer, she could still suffer for him. Quivering with this last expression of motherhood, she wept as she saw the brilliant staff officer of the Emperor turn to enter tobacconist’s and pause on the threshold; he had felt in his pocket and found nothing. Agathe left the bridge, crossed the quai rapidly, took out her purse, thrust it into Philippe’s hand, and fled away as if she had committed a crime. After that, she ate nothing for two days; before her was the horrible vision of her son dying of hunger in the streets of Paris.

  “When he has spent all the money in my purse, who will give him any?” she thought. “Giroudeau did not deceive us; Philippe is just out of that hospital.”

  She no longer saw the assassin of her poor aunt, the scourge of the family, the domestic thief, the gambler, the drunkard, the low liver of a bad life; she saw only the man recovering from illness, yet doomed to die of starvation, the smoker deprived of his tobacco. At forty-seven years of age she grew to look like a woman of seventy. Her eyes were dimmed with tears and prayers. Yet it was not the last grief this son was to bring upon her; her worst apprehensions were destined to be realized. A conspiracy of officers was discovered at the heart of the army, and articles from the “Moniteur” giving details of the arrests were hawked about the streets.

  In the depths of her cage in the lottery-office of the rue Vivienne, Agathe heard the name of Philippe Bridau. She fainted, and the manager, understanding her trouble and the necessity of taking certain steps, gave her leave of absence for two weeks.

  “Ah! my friend,” she said to Joseph, as she went to bed that night, “it is our severity which drove him to it.”

  “I’ll go and see Desroches,” answered Joseph.

  While the artist was confiding his brother’s affairs to the younger Desroches, — who by this time had the reputation of being one of the keenest and most astute lawyers in Paris, and who, moreover, did sundry services for personages of distinction, among others for des Lupeaulx, then secretary of a ministry, — Giroudeau called upon the widow. This time, Agathe believed him.

  “Madame,” he said, “if you can produce twelve thousand francs your son will be set at liberty for want of proof. It is necessary to buy the silence of two witnesses.”

  “I will get the money,” said the poor mother, without knowing how or where.

  Inspired by this danger, she wrote to her godmother, old Madame Hochon, begging her to ask Jean-Jacques Rouget to send her the twelve thousand francs and save his nephew Philippe. If Rouget refused, she entreated Madame Hochon to lend them to her, promising to return them in two years. By return of courier, she received the following letter: —

  My dear girl: Though your brother has an income of not less than

  forty thousand francs a year, without counting the sums he has

  laid by for the last seventeen years, and which Monsieur Hochon

  estimates at more than six hundred thousand francs, he will not

  give one penny to nephews whom he has never seen. As for me, you

  know I cannot dispose of a farthing while my husband lives. Hochon

  is the greatest miser in Issoudun. I do not know what he does with

  his money; he does not give twenty francs a year to his

  grandchildren. As for borrowing the money, I should have to get

  his signature, and he would refuse it. I have not even attempted

  to speak to your brother, who lives with a concubine, to whom he

  is a slave. It is pitiable to see how the poor man is treated in

  his own home, when he might have a sister and nephews to take care

  of him.

  I have hinted to you several times that your presence at Issoudun

  might save your brother, and rescue a fortune of forty, perhaps

  sixty, thousand francs a year from the claws of that slut; but you

  either do not answer me, or you seem never to understand my

  meaning. So to-day I am obliged to write without epistolary

  circumlocution. I feel for the misfortune which has overtaken you,

  but, my dearest, I can do no more than pity you. And this is why:

  Hochon, at eighty-five years of age, takes four meals a day, eats

  a salad with hard-boiled eggs every night, and frisks about like a

  rabbit. I shall have spent my whole life — for he will live to

  write my epitaph — without ever having had twenty francs in my

  purse. If you will come to Issoudun and counteract the influence

  of that concubine over your brother, you must stay with me, for

  there are reasons why Rouget cannot receive you in his own house;

  but even then, I shall have hard work to get my husband to let me

  have you here. However, you can safely come; I can make him mind

  me as to that. I know a way to get what I want out of him; I have

  only to speak of making my will. It seems such a horrid thing to

  do that I do not often have recourse to it; but for you, dear

  Agathe, I will do the impossible.

  I hope your Philippe will get out of his trouble; and I beg you to

  employ a good lawyer. In any case, come to Issoudun as soon as you

  can. Remember that your imbecile of a brother at fifty-seven is an

  older and weaker man than Monsieur Hochon. So it is a pressing

  matter. People are talking already of a will that cuts off your

  inheritance; but Monsieur Hochon says there is still time to get

  it revoked.

  Adieu, my little Agathe; may God help you! Believe in the love of

  your godmother,

  Maximilienne Hochon, nee Lousteau.

  P.S. Has my nephew, Etienne, who writes in the newspapers and is

  intimate, they tell me, with your son Philippe, been to pay his

  respects to you? But come at once to Issoudun, and we will talk

  over things.

  This letter made a great impression on Agathe, who showed it, of course, to Joseph, to whom she had been forced to mention Giroudeau’s proposal. The artist, who grew wary when it concerned his brother, pointed out to her that she ought to tell everything to Desroches.

  Conscious of the wisdom of that advice, Agathe went with her son the next morning, at six o’clock, to find Desroches at his house in the rue de Bussy. The lawyer, as cold and stern as his late father, with a sharp voice, a rough skin, implacable eyes, and the visage of a fox as he licks his lips of the blood of chickens, bounded like a tiger when he heard of Giroudeau’s visit and proposal.

  “And pray, mere Bridau,” he cried, in his little cracked voice, “how long are you going to be duped by your cursed brigand of a son? Don’t give him a farthing. Make yourself easy, I’ll answer for Philippe. I should like to see him brought before the Court of Peers; it might save his future. You are afraid he will be condemned; but I say, may it please God his lawyer lets him be convicted. Go to Issoudun, secure the property for your children. If you don’t succeed, if your brother has made a will in favor of that woman, and you can’t make him revoke it, — well then, at least get all the evidence you can of undue influence, and I’ll institute proceedings for you. But you are too honest a woman to know how to get at the bottom facts of such a matter. I’ll go myself to Issoudun in the holidays, — if I can.”

  That “go myself” made Joseph tremble in his skin. Desroches winked at him to let his mother go downstairs first, and then the lawyer detained the young man for a single moment.

  “Your brother is a great scoundrel; he is the cause of the discovery of this conspiracy, — intentionally or not, I can’t say, for the rascal is so sly no one can find out the exact truth as to that. Fool or traitor, — take your choice. He will be put under the surveillance of the police, nothing more. You needn’t be uneasy; no one knows this secret but myself. Go to Issoudun with your mother. You have good s
ense; try to save the property.”

  “Come, my poor mother, Desroches is right,” said Joseph, rejoining Agathe on the staircase. “I have sold my two pictures, let us start for Berry; you have two weeks’ leave of absence.”

  After writing to her godmother to announce their arrival, Agathe and Joseph started the next evening for their trip to Issoudun, leaving Philippe to his fate. The diligence rolled through the rue d’Enfer toward the Orleans highroad. When Agathe saw the Luxembourg, to which Philippe had been transferred, she could not refrain from saying, —

  “If it were not for the Allies he would never be there!”

  Many sons would have made an impatient gesture and smiled with pity; but the artist, who was alone with his mother in the coupe, caught her in his arms and pressed her to his heart, exclaiming: —

  “Oh, mother! you are a mother just as Raphael was a painter. And you will always be a fool of a mother!”

  Madame Bridau’s mind, diverted before long from her griefs by the distractions of the journey, began to dwell on the purpose of it. She re-read the letter of Madame Hochon, which had so stirred up the lawyer Desroches. Struck with the words “concubine” and “slut,” which the pen of a septuagenarian as pious as she was respectable had used to designate the woman now in process of getting hold of Jean-Jacques Rouget’s property, struck also with the word “imbecile” applied to Rouget himself, she began to ask herself how, by her presence at Issoudun, she was to save the inheritance. Joseph, poor disinterested artist that he was, knew little enough about the Code, and his mother’s last remark absorbed his mind.

  “Before our friend Desroches sent us off to protect our rights, he ought to have explained to us the means of doing so,” he exclaimed.

  “So far as my poor head, which whirls at the thought of Philippe in prison, — without tobacco, perhaps, and about to appear before the Court of Peers! — leaves me any distinct memory,” returned Agathe, “I think young Desroches said we were to get evidence of undue influence, in case my brother has made a will in favor of that — that — woman.”

  “He is good at that, Desroches is,” cried the painter. “Bah! if we can make nothing of it I’ll get him to come himself.”

  “Well, don’t let us trouble our heads uselessly,” said Agathe. “When we get to Issoudun my godmother will tell us what to do.”

  This conversation, which took place just after Madame Bridau and Joseph changed coaches at Orleans and entered the Sologne, is sufficient proof of the incapacity of the painter and his mother to play the part the inexorable Desroches had assigned to them.

  In returning to Issoudun after thirty years’ absence, Agathe was about to find such changes in its manners and customs that it is necessary to sketch, in a few words, a picture of that town. Without it, the reader would scarcely understand the heroism displayed by Madame Hochon in assisting her goddaughter, or the strange situation of Jean-Jacques Rouget. Though Doctor Rouget had taught his son to regard Agathe in the light of a stranger, it was certainly a somewhat extraordinary thing that for thirty years a brother should have given no signs of life to a sister. Such a silence was evidently caused by peculiar circumstances, and any other sister and nephew than Agathe and Joseph would long ago have inquired into them. There is, moreover, a certain connection between the condition of the city of Issoudun and the interests of the Bridau family, which can only be seen as the story goes on.

  CHAPTER VII

  Issoudun, be it said without offence to Paris, is one of the oldest cities in France. In spite of the historical assumption which makes the emperor Probus the Noah of the Gauls, Caesar speaks of the excellent wine of Champ-Fort (“de Campo Forti”) still one of the best vintages of Issoudun. Rigord writes of this city in language which leaves no doubt as to its great population and its immense commerce. But these testimonies both assign a much lesser age to the city than its ancient antiquity demands. In fact, the excavations lately undertaken by a learned archaeologist of the place, Monsieur Armand Peremet, have brought to light, under the celebrated tower of Issoudun, a basilica of the fifth century, probably the only one in France. This church preserves, in its very materials, the sign-manual of an anterior civilization; for its stones came from a Roman temple which stood on the same site.

  Issoudun, therefore, according to the researches of this antiquary, like other cities of France whose ancient or modern autonym ends in “Dun” (“dunum”) bears in its very name the certificate of an autochthonous existence. The word “Dun,” the appanage of all dignity consecrated by Druidical worship, proves a religious and military settlement of the Celts. Beneath the Dun of the Gauls must have lain the Roman temple to Isis. From that comes, according to Chaumon, the name of the city, Issous-Dun, — ”Is” being the abbreviation of “Isis.” Richard Coeur-de-lion undoubtedly built the famous tower (in which he coined money) above the basilica of the fifth century, — the third monument of the third religion of this ancient town. He used the church as a necessary foundation, or stay, for the raising of the rampart; and he preserved it by covering it with feudal fortifications as with a mantle. Issoudun was at that time the seat of the ephemeral power of the Routiers and the Cottereaux, adventurers and free-lancers, whom Henry II. sent against his son Richard, at the time of his rebellion as Comte de Poitou.

  The history of Aquitaine, which was not written by the Benedictines, will probably never be written, because there are no longer Benedictines: thus we are not able to light up these archaeological tenebrae in the history of our manners and customs on every occasion of their appearance. There is another testimony to the ancient importance of Issoudun in the conversion into a canal of the Tournemine, a little stream raised several feet above the level of the Theols which surrounds the town. This is undoubtedly the work of Roman genius. Moreover, the suburb which extends from the castle in a northerly direction is intersected by a street which for more than two thousand years has borne the name of the rue de Rome; and the inhabitants of this suburb, whose racial characteristics, blood, and physiognomy have a special stamp of their own, call themselves descendants of the Romans. They are nearly all vine-growers, and display a remarkable inflexibility of manners and customs, due, undoubtedly, to their origin, — perhaps also to their victory over the Cottereaux and the Routiers, whom they exterminated on the plain of Charost in the twelfth century.

  After the insurrection of 1830, France was too agitated to pay much attention to the rising of the vine-growers of Issoudun; a terrible affair, the facts of which have never been made public, — for good reasons. In the first place, the bourgeois of Issoudun refused to allow the military to enter the town. They followed the use and wont of the bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages and declared themselves responsible for their own city. The government was obliged to yield to a sturdy people backed up by seven or eight thousand vine-growers, who had burned all the archives, also the offices of “indirect taxation,” and had dragged through the streets a customs officer, crying out at every street lantern, “Let us hang him here!” The poor man’s life was saved by the national guard, who took him to prison on pretext of drawing up his indictment. The general in command only entered the town by virtue of a compromise made with the vine-growers; and it needed some courage to go among them. At the moment when he showed himself at the hotel-de-ville, a man from the faubourg de Rome slung a “volant” round his neck (the “volant” is a huge pruning-hook fastened to a pole, with which they trim trees) crying out, “No more clerks, or there’s an end to compromise!” The fellow would have taken off that honored head, left untouched by sixteen years of war, had it not been for the hasty intervention of one of the leaders of the revolt, to whom a promise had been made that the chambers should be asked to suppress the excisemen.

  In the fourteenth century, Issoudun still had sixteen or seventeen thousand inhabitants, remains of a population double that number in the time of Rigord. Charles VII. possessed a mansion which still exists, and was known, as late as the eighteenth century, as the Maison du Roi. T
his town, then a centre of the woollen trade, supplied that commodity to the greater part of Europe, and manufactured on a large scale blankets, hats, and the excellent Chevreautin gloves. Under Louis XIV., Issoudun, the birthplace of Baron and Bourdaloue, was always cited as a city of elegance and good society, where the language was correctly spoken. The curate Poupard, in his History of Sancerre, mentions the inhabitants of Issoudun as remarkable among the other Berrichons for subtlety and natural wit. To-day, the wit and the splendor have alike disappeared. Issoudun, whose great extent of ground bears witness to its ancient importance, has now barely twelve thousand inhabitants, including the vine-dressers of four enormous suburbs, — those of Saint-Paterne, Vilatte, Rome, and Alouette, which are really small towns. The bourgeoisie, like that of Versailles, are spread over the length and breadth of the streets. Issoudun still holds the market for the fleeces of Berry; a commerce now threatened by improvements in the stock which are being introduced everywhere except in Berry.

  The vineyards of Issoudun produce a wine which is drunk throughout the two departments, and which, if manufactured as Burgundy and Gascony manufacture theirs, would be one of the best wines in France. Alas, “to do as our fathers did,” with no innovations, is the law of the land. Accordingly, the vine-growers continue to leave the refuse of the grape in the juice during its fermentation, which makes the wine detestable, when it might be a source of ever-springing wealth, and an industry for the community. Thanks to the bitterness which the refuse infuses into the wine, and which, they say, lessens with age, a vintage will keep a century. This reason, given by the vine-grower in excuse for his obstinacy, is of sufficient importance to oenology to be made public here; Guillaume le Breton has also proclaimed it in some lines of his “Phillippide.”