Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  morts) has no meaning in English.

  “What can he mean?” asked Madame de Clagny, puzzled by this vile pun.

  “I seem to be walking in the dark,” replied the Mayoress.

  “The jest would be lost in an explanation,” remarked Gatien.

  “Nowadays,” Lousteau went on, “a novelist draws characters, and instead of a ‘simple outline,’ he unveils the human heart and gives you some interest either in Lubin or in Toinette.”

  “For my part, I am alarmed at the progress of public knowledge in the matter of literature,” said Bianchon. “Like the Russians, beaten by Charles XII., who at least learned the art of war, the reader has learned the art of writing. Formerly all that was expected of a romance was that it should be interesting. As to style, no one cared for that, not even the author; as to ideas — zero; as to local color — non est. By degrees the reader has demanded style, interest, pathos, and complete information; he insists on the five literary senses — Invention, Style, Thought, Learning, and Feeling. Then some criticism commenting on everything. The critic, incapable of inventing anything but calumny, pronounces every work that proceeds from a not perfect brain to be deformed. Some magicians, as Walter Scott, for instance, having appeared in the world, who combined all the five literary senses, such writers as had but one — wit or learning, style or feeling — these cripples, these acephalous, maimed or purblind creatures — in a literary sense — have taken to shrieking that all is lost, and have preached a crusade against men who were spoiling the business, or have denounced their works.”

  “The history of your last literary quarrel!” Dinah observed.

  “For pity’s sake, come back to the Duke of Bracciano,” cried Monsieur de Clagny.

  To the despair of all the company, Lousteau went on with the made-up sheet.

  224 OLYMPIA

  I then wished to make sure of my

  misfortune that I might be avenged

  under the protection of Providence

  and the Law. The Duchess guessed

  my intentions. We were at war in

  our purposes before we fought with

  poison in our hands. We tried to

  tempt each other to such confidence

  as we could not feel, I to induce her

  to drink a potion, she to get posses-

  sion of me. She was a woman, and

  she won the day; for women have a

  snare more than we men. I fell into

  it — I was happy; but I awoke next

  day in this iron cage. All through

  the day I bellowed with rage in the

  OR ROMAN REVENGE 225

  darkness of this cellar, over which

  is the Duchess’ bedroom. At night

  an ingenious counterpoise acting as

  a lift raised me through the floor,

  and I saw the Duchess in her lover’s

  arms. She threw me a piece of

  bread, my daily pittance.

  “Thus have I lived for thirty

  months! From this marble prison

  my cries can reach no ear. There is

  no chance for me. I will hope no

  more. Indeed, the Duchess’ room is

  at the furthest end of the palace,

  and when I am carried up there

  none can hear my voice. Each time

  I see my wife she shows me the

  226 OLYMPIA

  poison I had prepared for her and

  her lover. I crave it for myself, but

  she will not let me die; she gives

  me bread, and I eat it.

  “I have done well to eat and live;

  I had not reckoned on robbers!”

  “Yes, Eccellenza, when those fools

  the honest men are asleep, we are

  wide awake.”

  “Oh, Rinaldo, all I possess shall

  be yours; we will share my treasure

  like brothers; I would give you

  everything — even to my Duchy — — ”

  “Eccellenza, procure from the

  Pope an absolution in articulo mor-

  tis. It would be of more use to me

  in my walk of life.”

  OR ROMAN REVENGE 227

  “What you will. Only file

  through the bars of my cage and

  lend me your dagger. We have but

  little time, quick, quick! Oh, if my

  teeth were but files! — I have tried

  to eat through this iron.”

  “Eccellenza,” said Rinaldo, “I

  have already filed through one bar.”

  “You are a god!”

  “Your wife was at the fete given

  by the Princess Villaviciosa. She

  brought home her little Frenchman;

  she is drunk with love. — You have

  plenty of time.”

  “Have you done?”

  “Yes.”

  228 OLYMPIA

  “Your dagger?” said the Duke

  eagerly to the brigand.

  “Here it is.”

  “Good. I hear the clatter of the

  spring.”

  “Do not forget me!” cried the

  robber, who knew what gratitude

  was.

  “No more than my father,” cried

  the Duke.

  “Good-bye!” said Rinaldo. “Lord!

  How he flies up!” he added to him-

  self as the Duke disappeared. — ”No

  more than his father! If that is

  all he means to do for me. — And I

  OR ROMAN REVENGE 229

  had sworn a vow never to injure a

  woman!”

  But let us leave the robber for a

  moment to his meditations and go

  up, like the Duke, to the rooms in

  the palace.

  “Another tailpiece, a Cupid on a snail! And page 230 is blank,” said the journalist. “Then there are two more blank pages before we come to the word it is such a joy to write when one is unhappily so happy as to be a novelist — Conclusion!

  CONCLUSION

  Never had the Duchess been more

  lovely; she came from her bath

  clothed like a goddess, and on seeing

  234 OLYMPIA

  Adolphe voluptuously reclining on

  piles of cushions —

  “You are beautiful,” said she.

  “And so are you, Olympia!”

  “And you still love me?”

  “More and more,” said he.

  “Ah, none but a Frenchman

  knows how to love!” cried the

  Duchess. “Do you love me well to-

  night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then come!”

  And with an impulse of love and

  hate — whether it was that Cardinal

  Borborigano had reminded her of

  her husband, or that she felt un-

  wonted passion to display, she

  pressed the springs and held out her

  arms.

  “That is all,” said Lousteau, “for the foreman has torn off the rest in wrapping up my proofs. But it is enough to show that the author was full of promise.”

  “I cannot make head or tail of it,” said Gatien Boirouge, who was the first to break the silence of the party from Sancerre.

  “Nor I,” replied Monsieur Gravier.

  “And yet it is a novel of the time of the Empire,” said Lousteau.

  “By the way in which the brigand is made to speak,” said Monsieur Gravier, “it is evident that the author knew nothing of Italy. Banditti do not allow themselves such graceful conceits.”

  Madame Gorju came up to Bianchon, seeing him pensive, and with a glance towards her daughter Mademoiselle Euphemie Gorju, the owner of a fairly good fortune — ”What a rhodomontade!” said she. “The prescriptions you write are worth more than all that rubbish.”

  The
Mayoress had elaborately worked up this speech, which, in her opinion, showed strong judgment.

  “Well, madame, we must be lenient, we have but twenty pages out of a thousand,” said Bianchon, looking at Mademoiselle Gorju, whose figure threatened terrible things after the birth of her first child.

  “Well, Monsieur de Clagny,” said Lousteau, “we were talking yesterday of the forms of revenge invented by husbands. What do you say to those invented by wives?”

  “I say,” replied the Public Prosecutor, “that the romance is not by a Councillor of State, but by a woman. For extravagant inventions the imagination of women far outdoes that of men; witness Frankenstein by Mrs. Shelley, Leone Leoni by George Sand, the works of Anne Radcliffe, and the Nouveau Promethee (New Prometheus) of Camille de Maupin.”

  Dinah looked steadily at Monsieur de Clagny, making him feel, by an expression that gave him a chill, that in spite of the illustrious examples he had quoted, she regarded this as a reflection on Paquita la Sevillane.

  “Pooh!” said little Baudraye, “the Duke of Bracciano, whom his wife puts into a cage, and to whom she shows herself every night in the arms of her lover, will kill her — and do you call that revenge? — Our laws and our society are far more cruel.”

  “Why, little La Baudraye is talking!” said Monsieur Boirouge to his wife.

  “Why, the woman is left to live on a small allowance, the world turns its back on her, she has no more finery, and no respect paid her — the two things which, in my opinion, are the sum-total of woman,” said the little old man.

  “But she has happiness!” said Madame de la Baudraye sententiously.

  “No,” said the master of the house, lighting his candle to go to bed, “for she has a lover.”

  “For a man who thinks of nothing but his vine-stocks and poles, he has some spunk,” said Lousteau.

  “Well, he must have something!” replied Bianchon.

  Madame de la Baudraye, the only person who could hear Bianchon’s remark, laughed so knowingly, and at the same time so bitterly, that the physician could guess the mystery of this woman’s life; her premature wrinkles had been puzzling him all day.

  But Dinah did not guess, on her part, the ominous prophecy contained for her in her husband’s little speech, which her kind old Abbe Duret, if he had been alive, would not have failed to elucidate. Little La Baudraye had detected in Dinah’s eyes, when she glanced at the journalist returning the ball of his jests, that swift and luminous flash of tenderness which gilds the gleam of a woman’s eye when prudence is cast to the winds, and she is fairly carried away. Dinah paid no more heed to her husband’s hint to her to observe the proprieties than Lousteau had done to Dinah’s significant warnings on the day of his arrival.

  Any other man than Bianchon would have been surprised at Lousteau’s immediate success; but he was so much the doctor, that he was not even nettled at Dinah’s marked preference for the newspaper-rather than the prescription-writer! In fact, Dinah, herself famous, was naturally more alive to wit than to fame. Love generally prefers contrast to similitude. Everything was against the physician — his frankness, his simplicity, and his profession. And this is why: Women who want to love — and Dinah wanted to love as much as to be loved — have an instinctive aversion for men who are devoted to an absorbing occupation; in spite of superiority, they are all women in the matter of encroachment. Lousteau, a poet and journalist, and a libertine with a veneer of misanthropy, had that tinsel of the intellect, and led the half-idle life that attracts women. The blunt good sense and keen insight of the really great man weighed upon Dinah, who would not confess her own smallness even to herself. She said in her mind — ”The doctor is perhaps the better man, but I do not like him.”

  Then, again, she reflected on his professional duties, wondering whether a woman could ever be anything but a subject to a medical man, who saw so many subjects in the course of a day’s work. The first sentence of the aphorism written by Bianchon in her album was a medical observation striking so directly at woman, that Dinah could not fail to be hit by it. And then Bianchon was leaving on the morrow; his practice required his return. What woman, short of having Cupid’s mythological dart in her heart, could decide in so short a time?

  These little things, which lead to such great catastrophes — having been seen in a mass by Bianchon, he pronounced the verdict he had come to as to Madame de la Baudraye in a few words to Lousteau, to the journalist’s great amazement.

  While the two friends stood talking together, a storm was gathering in the Sancerre circle, who could not in the least understand Lousteau’s paraphrases and commentaries, and who vented it on their hostess. Far from finding in his talk the romance which the Public Prosecutor, the Sous-prefet, the Presiding Judge, and his deputy, Lebas, had discovered there — to say nothing of Monsieur de la Baudraye and Dinah — the ladies now gathered round the tea-table, took the matter as a practical joke, and accused the Muse of Sancerre of having a finger in it. They had all looked forward to a delightful evening, and had all strained in vain every faculty of their mind. Nothing makes provincial folks so angry as the notion of having been a laughing-stock for Paris folks.

  Madame Piedefer left the table to say to her daughter, “Do go and talk to the ladies; they are quite annoyed by your behavior.”

  Lousteau could not fail to see Dinah’s great superiority over the best women of Sancerre; she was better dressed, her movements were graceful, her complexion was exquisitely white by candlelight — in short, she stood out against this background of old faces, shy and ill-dressed girls, like a queen in the midst of her court. Visions of Paris faded from his brain; Lousteau was accepting the provincial surroundings; and while he had too much imagination to remain unimpressed by the royal splendor of this chateau, the beautiful carvings, and the antique beauty of the rooms, he had also too much experience to overlook the value of the personality which completed this gem of the Renaissance. So by the time the visitors from Sancerre had taken their leave one by one — for they had an hour’s drive before them — when no one remained in the drawing-room but Monsieur de Clagny, Monsieur Lebas, Gatien, and Monsieur Gravier, who were all to sleep at Anzy — the journalist had already changed his mind about Dinah. His opinion had gone through the evolution that Madame de la Baudraye had so audaciously prophesied at their first meeting.

  “Ah, what things they will say about us on the drive home!” cried the mistress of the house, as she returned to the drawing-room after seeing the President and the Presidente to their carriage with Madame and Mademoiselle Popinot-Chandier.

  The rest of the evening had its pleasant side. In the intimacy of a small party each one brought to the conversation his contribution of epigrams on the figure the visitors from Sancerre had cut during Lousteau’s comments on the paper wrapped round the proofs.

  “My dear fellow,” said Bianchon to Lousteau as they went to bed — they had an enormous room with two beds in it — ”you will be the happy man of this woman’s choice — nee Piedefer!”

  “Do you think so?”

  “It is quite natural. You are supposed here to have had many mistresses in Paris; and to a woman there is something indescribably inviting in a man whom other women favor — something attractive and fascinating; is it that she prides herself on being longer remembered than all the rest? that she appeals to his experience, as a sick man will pay more to a famous physician? or that she is flattered by the revival of a world-worn heart?”

  “Vanity and the senses count for so much in love affairs,” said Lousteau, “that there may be some truth in all those hypotheses. However, if I remain, it will be in consequence of the certificate of innocence, without ignorance, that you have given Dinah. She is handsome, is she not?”

  “Love will make her beautiful,” said the doctor. “And, after all, she will be a rich widow some day or other! And a child would secure her the life-interest in the Master of La Baudraye’s fortune — ”

  “Why, it is quite an act of virtue to
make love to her,” said Lousteau, rolling himself up in the bed-clothes, “and to-morrow, with your help — yes, to-morrow, I — well, good-night.”

  On the following day, Madame de la Baudraye, to whom her husband had six months since given a pair of horses, which he also used in the fields, and an old carriage that rattled on the road, decided that she would take Bianchon so far on his way as Cosne, where he would get into the Lyons diligence as it passed through. She also took her mother and Lousteau, but she intended to drop her mother at La Baudraye, to go on to Cosne with the two Parisians, and return alone with Etienne. She was elegantly dressed, as the journalist at once perceived — bronze kid boots, gray silk stockings, a muslin dress, a green silk scarf with shaded fringe at the ends, and a pretty black lace bonnet with flowers in it. As to Lousteau, the wretch had assumed his war-paint — patent leather boots, trousers of English kerseymere with pleats in front, a very open waistcoat showing a particularly fine shirt and the black brocade waterfall of his handsome cravat, and a very thin, very short black riding-coat.

  Monsieur de Clagny and Monsieur Gravier looked at each other, feeling rather silly as they beheld the two Parisians in the carriage, while they, like two simpletons, were left standing at the foot of the steps. Monsieur de la Baudraye, who stood at the top waving his little hand in a little farewell to the doctor, could not forbear from smiling as he heard Monsieur de Clagny say to Monsieur Gravier:

  “You should have escorted them on horseback.”

  At this juncture, Gatien, riding Monsieur de la Baudraye’s quiet little mare, came out of the side road from the stables and joined the party in the chaise.

  “Ah, good,” said the Receiver-General, “the boy has mounted guard.”

  “What a bore!” cried Dinah as she saw Gatien. “In thirteen years — for I have been married nearly thirteen years — I have never had three hours’ liberty.