Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “What discussion can have arisen between you and Madame de Serizy?” the husband asked of Camusot.

  Before the lawyer could reply, the Countess held the fragments in the candle and threw them on the remains of her letters, which were not entirely consumed.

  “I shall be compelled,” said Camusot, “to lay a complaint against Madame la Comtesse — — ”

  “Heh! What has she done?” asked the public prosecutor, looking alternately at the lady and the magistrate.

  “I have burned the record of the examinations,” said the lady of fashion with a laugh, so pleased at her high-handed conduct that she did not yet feel the pain of the burns, “If that is a crime — well, monsieur must get his odious scrawl written out again.”

  “Very true,” said Camusot, trying to recover his dignity.

  “Well, well, ‘All’s well that ends well,’” said Monsieur de Granville. “But, my dear Countess, you must not often take such liberties with the Law; it might fail to discern who and what you are.”

  “Monsieur Camusot valiantly resisted a woman whom none can resist; the Honor of the Robe is safe!” said the Comte de Bauvan, laughing.

  “Indeed! Monsieur Camusot was resisting?” said the public prosecutor, laughing too. “He is a brave man indeed; I should not dare resist the Countess.”

  And thus for the moment this serious affair was no more than a pretty woman’s jest, at which Camusot himself must laugh.

  But Monsieur de Granville saw one man who was not amused. Not a little alarmed by the Comte de Serizy’s attitude and expression, his friend led him aside.

  “My dear fellow,” said he in a whisper, “your distress persuades me for the first and only time in my life to compromise with my duty.”

  The public prosecutor rang, and the office-boy appeared.

  “Desire Monsieur de Chargeboeuf to come here.”

  Monsieur de Chargeboeuf, a sucking barrister, was his private secretary.

  “My good friend,” said the Comte de Granville to Camusot, whom he took to the window, “go back to your chambers, get your clerk to reconstruct the report of the Abbe Carlos Herrera’s depositions; as he had not signed the first copy, there will be no difficulty about that. To-morrow you must confront your Spanish diplomate with Rastignac and Bianchon, who will not recognize him as Jacques Collin. Then, being sure of his release, the man will sign the document.

  “As to Lucien de Rubempre, set him free this evening; he is not likely to talk about an examination of which the evidence is destroyed, especially after such a lecture as I shall give him.

  “Now you will see how little justice suffers by these proceedings. If the Spaniard really is the convict, we have fifty ways of recapturing him and committing him for trial — for we will have his conduct in Spain thoroughly investigated. Corentin, the police agent, will take care of him for us, and we ourselves will keep an eye on him. So treat him decently; do not send him down to the cells again.

  “Can we be the death of the Comte and Comtesse de Serizy, as well as of Lucien, for the theft of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs as yet unproven, and to Lucien’s personal loss? Will it not be better for him to lose the money than to lose his character? Above all, if he is to drag with him in his fall a Minister of State, and his wife, and the Duchesse du Maufrigneuse.

  “This young man is a speckled orange; do not leave it to rot.

  “All this will take you about half an hour; go and get it done; we will wait for you. It is half-past three; you will find some judges about. Let me know if you can get a rule of insufficient evidence — or Lucien must wait till to-morrow morning.”

  Camusot bowed to the company and went; but Madame de Serizy, who was suffering a good deal from her burns, did not return his bow.

  Monsieur de Serizy, who had suddenly rushed away while the public prosecutor and the magistrate were talking together, presently returned, having fetched a small jar of virgin wax. With this he dressed his wife’s fingers, saying in an undertone:

  “Leontine, why did you come here without letting me know?”

  “My dear,” replied she in a whisper, “forgive me. I seem mad, but indeed your interests were as much involved as mine.”

  “Love this young fellow if fatality requires it, but do not display your passion to all the world,” said the luckless husband.

  “Well, my dear Countess,” said Monsieur de Granville, who had been engaged in conversation with Comte Octave, “I hope you may take Monsieur de Rubempre home to dine with you this evening.”

  This half promise produced a reaction; Madame de Serizy melted into tears.

  “I thought I had no tears left,” said she with a smile. “But could you not bring Monsieur de Rubempre to wait here?”

  “I will try if I can find the ushers to fetch him, so that he may not be seen under the escort of the gendarmes,” said Monsieur de Granville.

  “You are as good as God!” cried she, with a gush of feeling that made her voice sound like heavenly music.

  “These are the women,” said Comte Octave, “who are fascinating, irresistible!”

  And he became melancholy as he thought of his own wife. (See Honorine.)

  As he left the room, Monsieur de Granville was stopped by young Chargeboeuf, to whom he spoke to give him instructions as to what he was to say to Massol, one of the editors of the Gazette des Tribunaux.

  While beauties, ministers, and magistrates were conspiring to save Lucien, this was what he was doing at the Conciergerie. As he passed the gate the poet told the keeper that Monsieur Camusot had granted him leave to write, and he begged to have pens, ink, and paper. At a whispered word to the Governor from Camusot’s usher a warder was instructed to take them to him at once. During the short time that it took for the warder to fetch these things and carry them up to Lucien, the hapless young man, to whom the idea of facing Jacques Collin had become intolerable, sank into one of those fatal moods in which the idea of suicide — to which he had yielded before now, but without succeeding in carrying it out — rises to the pitch of mania. According to certain mad-doctors, suicide is in some temperaments the closing phase of mental aberration; and since his arrest Lucien had been possessed by that single idea. Esther’s letter, read and reread many times, increased the vehemence of his desire to die by reminding him of the catastrophe of Romeo dying to be with Juliet.

  This is what he wrote: —

  “This is my Last Will and Testament.

  “AT THE CONCIERGERIE, May 15th, 1830.

  “I, the undersigned, give and bequeath to the children of my

  sister, Madame Eve Chardon, wife of David Sechard, formerly a

  printer at Angouleme, and of Monsieur David Sechard, all the

  property, real and personal, of which I may be possessed at the

  time of my decease, due deduction being made for the payments and

  legacies, which I desire my executor to provide for.

  “And I earnestly beg Monsieur de Serizy to undertake the charge of

  being the executor of this my will.

  “First, to Monsieur l’Abbe Carlos Herrera I direct the payment of

  the sum of three hundred thousand francs. Secondly, to Monsieur le

  Baron de Nucingen the sum of fourteen hundred thousand francs,

  less seven hundred and fifty thousand if the sum stolen from

  Mademoiselle Esther should be recovered.

  “As universal legatee to Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck, I give and

  bequeath the sum of seven hundred and sixty thousand francs to the

  Board of Asylums of Paris for the foundation of a refuge

  especially dedicated to the use of public prostitutes who may wish

  to forsake their life of vice and ruin.

  “I also bequeath to the Asylums of Paris the sum of money

  necessary for the purchase of a certificate for dividends to the

  amount of thirty thousand francs per annum in five per cents, the

 
annual income to be devoted every six months to the release of

  prisoners for debts not exceeding two thousand francs. The Board

  of Asylums to select the most respectable of such persons

  imprisoned for debt.

  “I beg Monsieur de Serizy to devote the sum of forty thousand

  francs to erecting a monument to Mademoiselle Esther in the

  Eastern cemetery, and I desire to be buried by her side. The tomb

  is to be like an antique tomb — square, our two effigies lying

  thereon, in white marble, the heads on pillows, the hands folded

  and raised to heaven. There is to be no inscription whatever.

  “I beg Monsieur de Serizy to give to Monsieur de Rastignac a gold

  toilet-set that is in my room as a remembrance.

  “And as a remembrance, I beg my executor to accept my library of

  books as a gift from me.

  “LUCIEN CHARDON DE RUBEMPRE.”

  This Will was enclosed in a letter addressed to Monsieur le Comte de Granville, Public Prosecutor in the Supreme Court at Paris, as follows:

  “MONSIEUR LE COMTE, —

  “I place my Will in your hands. When you open this letter I shall

  be no more. In my desire to be free, I made such cowardly replies

  to Monsieur Camusot’s insidious questions, that, in spite of my

  innocence, I may find myself entangled in a disgraceful trial.

  Even if I were acquitted, a blameless life would henceforth be

  impossible to me in view of the opinions of the world.

  “I beg you to transmit the enclosed letter to the Abbe Carlos

  Herrera without opening it, and deliver to Monsieur Camusot the

  formal retraction I also enclose.

  “I suppose no one will dare to break the seal of a packet

  addressed to you. In this belief I bid you adieu, offering you my

  best respects for the last time, and begging you to believe that

  in writing to you I am giving you a token of my gratitude for all

  the kindness you have shown to your deceased humble servant,

  “LUCIEN DE R.”

  “To the Abbe Carlos Herrera.

  “MY DEAR ABBE, — I have had only benefits from you, and I have

  betrayed you. This involuntary ingratitude is killing me, and when

  you read these lines I shall have ceased to exist. You are not

  here now to save me.

  “You had given me full liberty, if I should find it advantageous,

  to destroy you by flinging you on the ground like a cigar-end; but

  I have ruined you by a blunder. To escape from a difficulty,

  deluded by a clever question from the examining judge, your son by

  adoption and grace went over to the side of those who aim at

  killing you at any cost, and insist on proving an identity, which

  I know to be impossible, between you and a French villain. All is

  said.

  “Between a man of your calibre and me — me of whom you tried to

  make a greater man than I am capable of being — no foolish

  sentiment can come at the moment of final parting. You hoped to

  make me powerful and famous, and you have thrown me into the gulf

  of suicide, that is all. I have long heard the broad pinions of

  that vertigo beating over my head.

  “As you have sometimes said, there is the posterity of Cain and

  the posterity of Abel. In the great human drama Cain is in

  opposition. You are descended from Adam through that line, in

  which the devil still fans the fire of which the first spark was

  flung on Eve. Among the demons of that pedigree, from time to time

  we see one of stupendous power, summing up every form of human

  energy, and resembling the fevered beasts of the desert, whose

  vitality demands the vast spaces they find there. Such men are as

  dangerous as lions would be in the heart of Normandy; they must

  have their prey, and they devour common men and crop the money of

  fools. Their sport is so dangerous that at last they kill the

  humble dog whom they have taken for a companion and made an idol

  of.

  “When it is God’s will, these mysterious beings may be a Moses, an

  Attila, Charlemagne, Mahomet, or Napoleon; but when He leaves a

  generation of these stupendous tools to rust at the bottom of the

  ocean, they are no more than a Pugatschef, a Fouche, a Louvel, or

  the Abbe Carlos Herrera. Gifted with immense power over tenderer

  souls, they entrap them and mangle them. It is grand, it is fine

  — in its way. It is the poisonous plant with gorgeous coloring that

  fascinates children in the woods. It is the poetry of evil. Men

  like you ought to dwell in caves and never come out of them. You

  have made me live that vast life, and I have had all my share of

  existence; so I may very well take my head out of the Gordian knot

  of your policy and slip it into the running knot of my cravat.

  “To repair the mischief I have done, I am forwarding to the public

  prosecutor a retraction of my deposition. You will know how to

  take advantage of this document.

  “In virtue of a will formally drawn up, restitution will be made,

  Monsieur l’Abbe, of the moneys belonging to your Order which you

  so imprudently devoted to my use, as a result of your paternal

  affection for me.

  “And so, farewell. Farewell, colossal image of Evil and

  Corruption; farewell — to you who, if started on the right road,

  might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than Richelieu! You

  have kept your promises. I find myself once more just as I was on

  the banks of the Charente, after enjoying, by your help, the

  enchantments of a dream. But, unfortunately, it is not now in the

  waters of my native place that I shall drown the errors of a boy;

  but in the Seine, and my hole is a cell in the Conciergerie.

  “Do not regret me: my contempt for you is as great as my

  admiration.

  “LUCIEN.”

  “Recantation.

  “I, the undersigned, hereby declare that I retract, without

  reservation, all that I deposed at my examination to-day before

  Monsieur Camusot.

  “The Abbe Carlos Herrera always called himself my spiritual

  father, and I was misled by the word father used in another sense

  by the judge, no doubt under a misapprehension.

  “I am aware that, for political ends, and to quash certain secrets

  concerning the Cabinets of Spain and of the Tuileries, some

  obscure diplomatic agents tried to show that the Abbe Carlos

  Herrera was a forger named Jacques Collin; but the Abbe Carlos

  Herrera never told me anything about the matter excepting that he

  was doing his best to obtain evidence of the death or of the

  continued existence of Jacques Collin.

  “LUCIEN DE RUBEMPRE.

  “AT THE CONCIERGERIE, May 15th, 1830.”

  The fever for suicide had given Lucien immense clearness of mind, and the swiftness of hand familiar to authors in the fever of composition. The impetus was so strong within him that these four documents were all written within half an hour; he folded them in a wrapper, fastened with wafers, on which he impressed with the strength of delirium the coat-of-arms engraved on a seal-ring he wore, and he then laid the packet very conspicuously in the middle of the floor.

  Certainly it would have been impossible to conduct himself with greater dignity, in the false position to which
all this infamy had led him; he was rescuing his memory from opprobrium, and repairing the injury done to his accomplice, so far as the wit of a man of the world could nullify the result of the poet’s trustfulness.

  If Lucien had been taken back to one of the lower cells, he would have been wrecked on the impossibility of carrying out his intentions, for those boxes of masonry have no furniture but a sort of camp-bed and a pail for necessary uses. There is not a nail, not a chair, not even a stool. The camp-bed is so firmly fixed that it is impossible to move it without an amount of labor that the warder would not fail to detect, for the iron-barred peephole is always open. Indeed, if a prisoner under suspicion gives reason for uneasiness, he is watched by a gendarme or a constable.

  In the private rooms for which prisoners pay, and in that whither Lucien had been conveyed by the judge’s courtesy to a young man belonging to the upper ranks of society, the movable bed, table, and chair might serve to carry out his purpose of suicide, though they hardly made it easy. Lucien wore a long blue silk necktie, and on his way back from examination he was already meditating on the means by which Pichegru, more or less voluntarily, ended his days. Still, to hang himself, a man must find a purchase, and have a sufficient space between it and the ground for his feet to find no support. Now the window of his room, looking out on the prison-yard, had no handle to the fastening; and the bars, being fixed outside, were divided from his reach by the thickness of the wall, and could not be used for a support.

  This, then, was the plan hit upon by Lucien to put himself out of the world. The boarding of the lower part of the opening, which prevented his seeing out into the yard, also hindered the warders outside from seeing what was done in the room; but while the lower portion of the window was replaced by two thick planks, the upper part of both halves still was filled with small panes, held in place by the cross pieces in which they were set. By standing on his table Lucien could reach the glazed part of the window, and take or break out two panes, so as to have a firm point of attachment in the angle of the lower bar. Round this he would tie his cravat, turn round once to tighten it round his neck after securing it firmly, and kick the table from under his feet.