Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “You are right, wife,” said Colleville.

  When they reached the rue des Deux-Eglises, which Phellion was to take, they all stopped to say good-night, and Felix Phellion, who was bring up the rear, said to Colleville: —

  “Monsieur, your son Francois could enter the Ecole Polytechnique if he were well-coached; I propose to you to fit him to pass the examinations this year.”

  “That’s an offer not to be refused! Thank you, my friend,” said Colleville. “We’ll see about it.”

  “Good!” said Phellion to his son, as they walked on.

  “Not a bad stroke!” said the mother.

  “What do you mean by that?” asked Felix.

  “You are very cleverly paying court to Celeste’s parents.”

  “May I never find the solution of my problem if I even thought of it!” cried the young professor. “I discovered, when talking with the little Collevilles, that Francois has a strong turn for mathematics, and I thought I ought to enlighten his father.”

  “Good, my son!” repeated Phellion. “I wouldn’t have you otherwise. My prayers are granted! I have a son whose honor, probity, and private and civic virtues are all that I could wish.”

  Madame Colleville, as soon as Celeste had gone to bed, said to her husband: —

  “Colleville, don’t utter those blunt opinions about people without knowing something about them. When you talk of Jesuits I know you mean priests; and I wish you would do me the kindness to keep your opinions on religion to yourself when you are in company with your daughter. We may sacrifice our own souls, but not the souls of our children. You don’t want Celeste to be a creature without religion? And remember, my dear, that we are at the mercy of others; we have four children to provide for; and how do you know that, some day or other, you may not need the services of this one or that one? Therefore don’t make enemies. You haven’t any now, for you are a good-natured fellow; and, thanks to that quality, which amounts in you to a charm, we have got along pretty well in life, so far.”

  “That’s enough!” said Colleville, flinging his coat on a chair and pulling off his cravat. “I’m wrong, and you are right, my beautiful Flavie.”

  “And on the next occasion, my dear old sheep,” said the sly creature, tapping her husband’s cheek, “you must try to be polite to that young lawyer; he is a schemer and we had better have him on our side. He is playing comedy — well! play comedy with him; be his dupe apparently; if he proves to have talent, if he has a future before him, make a friend of him. Do you think I want to see you forever in the mayor’s office?”

  “Come, wife Colleville,” said the former clarionet, tapping his knee to indicate the place he wished his wife to take. “Let us warm our toes and talk. — When I look at you I am more than ever convinced that the youth of women is in their figure.”

  “And in their heart.”

  “Well, both,” assented Colleville; “waist slender, heart solid — ”

  “No, you old stupid, deep.”

  “What is good about you is that you have kept your fairness without growing fat. But the fact is, you have such tiny bones. Flavie, it is a fact that if I had life to live over again I shouldn’t wish for any other wife than you.”

  “You know very well I have always preferred you to others. How unlucky that monseigneur is dead! Do you know what I covet for you?”

  “No; what?”

  “Some office at the Hotel de Ville, — an office worth twelve thousand francs a year; cashier, or something of that kind; either there, or at Poissy, in the municipal department; or else as manufacturer of musical instruments — ”

  “Any one of them would suit me.”

  “Well, then! if that queer barrister has power, and he certainly has plenty of intrigue, let us manage him. I’ll sound him; leave me to do the thing — and, above all, don’t thwart his game at the Thuilliers’.”

  Theodose had laid a finger on a sore sport in Flavie Colleville’s heart; and this requires an explanation, which may, perhaps, have the value of a synthetic glance at women’s life.

  At forty years of age a woman, above all, if she has tasted the poisoned apple of passion, undergoes a solemn shock; she sees two deaths before her: that of the body and that of the heart. Dividing women into two great categories which respond to the common ideas, and calling them either virtuous or guilty, it is allowable to say that after that fatal period they both suffer pangs of terrible intensity. If virtuous, and disappointed in the deepest hopes of their nature — whether they have had the courage to submit, whether they have buried their revolt in their hearts or at the foot of the altar — they never admit to themselves that all is over for them without horror. That thought has such strange and diabolical depths that in it lies the reason of some of those apostasies which have, at times, amazed the world and horrified it. If guilty, women of that age fall into one of several delirious conditions which often turn, alas! to madness, or end in suicide, or terminate in some with passion greater than the situation itself.

  The following is the “dilemmatic” meaning of this crisis. Either they have known happiness, known it in a virtuous life, and are unable to breathe in any air but that surcharged with incense, or act in any but a balmy atmosphere of flattery and worship, — if so, how is it possible to renounce it? — or, by a phenomenon less rare than singular, they have found only wearying pleasures while seeking for the happiness that escaped them — sustained in that eager chase by the irritating satisfactions of vanity, clinging to the game like a gambler to his double or quits; for to them these last days of beauty are their last stake against despair.

  “You have been loved, but never adored.”

  That speech of Theodose, accompanied by a look which read, not into her heart, but into her life, was the key-note to her enigma, and Flavie felt herself divined.

  The lawyer had merely repeated ideas which literature has rendered trivial; but what matter where the whip comes from, or how it is made, if it touches the sensitive spot of a horse’s hide? The emotion was in Flavie, not in the speech, just as the noise is not in the avalanche, though it produces it.

  A young officer, two fops, a banker, a clumsy youth, and Colleville, were poor attempts at happiness. Once in her life Madame Colleville had dreamed of it, but never attained it. Death had hastened to put an end to the only passion in which she had found a charm. For the last two years she had listened to the voice of religion, which told her that neither the Church, nor its votaries, should talk of love or happiness, but of duty and resignation; that the only happiness lay in the satisfaction of fulfilling painful and costly duties, the rewards for which were not in this world. All the same, however, she was conscious of another clamoring voice; but, inasmuch as her religion was only a mask which it suited her to wear, and not a conversion, she did not lay it aside, thinking it a resource. Believing also that piety, false or true, was a becoming manner in which to meet her future, she continued in the Church, as though it were the cross-roads of a forest, where, seated on a bench, she read the sign-posts, and waited for some lucky chance; feeling all the while that night was coming on.

  Thus it happened that her interest was keenly excited when Theodose put her secret condition of mind into words, seeming to promise her the realization of her castle in the air, already built and overthrown some six or eight times.

  From the beginning of the winter she had noticed that Theodose was examining and studying her, though cautiously and secretly. More than once, she had put on her gray moire silk with its black lace, and her headdress of Mechlin with a few flowers, in order to appear to her best advantage; and men know very well when a toilet has been made to please them. The old beau of the Empire, that handsome Thuillier, overwhelmed her with compliments, assuring her she was queen of the salon, but la Peyrade said infinitely more to the purpose by a look.

  Flavie had expected, Sunday after Sunday, a declaration, saying to herself at times: —

  “He knows I am ruined and haven’t a sou. Perhaps
he is really pious.”

  Theodose did nothing rashly; like a wise musician, he had marked the place in his symphony where he intended to tap his drum. When he saw Colleville attempting to warn Thuillier against him, he fired his broadside, cleverly prepared during the three or four months in which he had been studying Flavie; he now succeeded with her as he had, earlier in the day, succeeded with Thuillier.

  While getting into bed, Theodose said to himself: —

  “The wife is on my side; the husband can’t endure me; they are now quarrelling; and I shall get the better of it, for she does what she likes with that man.”

  The lawyer was mistaken in one thing: there was no dispute whatever, and Colleville was sleeping peacefully beside his dear little Flavie, while she was saying to herself: —

  “Certainly Theodose must be a superior man.”

  Many men, like la Peyrade, derive their superiority from the audacity, or the difficulty, of an enterprise; the strength they display increases their muscular power, and they spend it freely. Then when success is won, or defeat is met, the public is astonished to find how small, exhausted, and puny those men really are. After casting into the minds of the two persons on whom Celeste’s fate chiefly depended, an interest and curiosity that were almost feverish, Theodose pretended to be a very busy man; for five or six days he was out of the house from morning till night, in order not to meet Flavie until the time when her interest should increase to the point of overstepping conventionality, and also in order to force the handsome Thuillier to come and fetch him.

  The following Sunday he felt certain he should find Madame Colleville at church; he was not mistaken, for they came out, each of them, at the same moment, and met at the corner of the rue des Deux-Eglises. Theodose offered his arm, which Flavie accepted, leaving her daughter to walk in front with her brother Anatole. This youngest child, then about twelve years old, being destined for the seminary, was now at the Barniol institute, where he obtained an elementary education; Barniol, the son-in-law of the Phellions, was naturally making the tuition fees light, with a view to the hoped-for alliance between Felix and Celeste.

  “Have you done me the honor and favor of thinking over what I said to you so badly the other day?” asked the lawyer, in a caressing tone, pressing the lady’s arm to his heart with a movement both soft and strong; for he seemed to wish to restrain himself and appear respectful, in spite of his evident eagerness. “Do not misunderstand my intentions,” he continued, after receiving from Madame Colleville one of those looks which women trained to the management of passion know how to give, — a look that, by mere expression, can convey both severe rebuke and secret community of sentiment. “I love you as we love a noble nature struggling against misfortune; Christian charity enfolds both the strong and the weak; its treasure belongs to both. Refined, graceful, elegant as you are, made to be an ornament of the highest society, what man could see you without feeling an immense compassion in his heart — buried here among these odious bourgeois, who know nothing of you, not even the aristocratic value of a single one of your attitudes, or those enchanting inflections of your voice! Ah! if I were only rich! if I had power! your husband, who is certainly a good fellow, should be made receiver-general, and you yourself could get him elected deputy. But, alas! poor ambitious man, my first duty is to silence my ambition. Knowing myself at the bottom of the bag like the last number in a family lottery, I can only offer you my arm and not my heart. I hope all from a good marriage, and, believe me, I shall make my wife not only happy, but I shall make her one of the first in the land, receiving from her the means of success. It is so fine a day, will you not take a turn in the Luxembourg?” he added, as they reached the rue d’Enfer at the corner of Colleville’s house, opposite to which was a passage leading to the gardens by the stairway of a little building, the last remains of the famous convent of the Chartreux.

  The soft yielding of the arm within his own, indicated a tacit consent to this proposal, and as Flavie deserved the honor of a sort of enthusiasm, he drew her vehemently along, exclaiming: —

  “Come! we may never have so good a moment — But see!” he added, “there is your husband at the window looking at us; let us walk slowly.”

  “You have nothing to fear from Monsieur Colleville,” said Flavie, smiling; “he leaves me mistress of my own actions.”

  “Ah! here, indeed, is the woman I have dreamed of,” cried the Provencal, with that ecstasy that inflames the soul only, and in tones that issue only from Southern lips. “Pardon me, madame,” he said, recovering himself, and returning from an upper sphere to the exiled angel whom he looked at piously, — ”pardon me, I abandon what I was saying; but how can a man help feeling for the sorrows he has known himself when he sees them the lot of a being to whom life should bring only joy and happiness? Your sufferings are mine; I am no more in my right place than you are in yours; the same misfortune has made us brother and sister. Ah! dear Flavie, the first day it was granted to me to see you — the last Sunday in September, 1838 — you were very beautiful; I shall often recall you to memory in that pretty little gown of mousseline-de-laine of the color of some Scottish tartan! That day I said to myself: ‘Why is that woman so often at the Thuilliers’; above all, why did she ever have intimate relations with Thuillier himself? — ’”

  “Monsieur!” said Flavie, alarmed at the singular course la Peyrade was giving to the conversation.

  “Eh! I know all,” he cried, accompanying the words with a shrug of his shoulders. “I explain it all to my own mind, and I do not respect you less. You now have to gather the fruits of your sin, and I will help you. Celeste will be very rich, and in that lies your own future. You can have only one son-in-law; chose him wisely. An ambitious man might become a minister, but you would humble your daughter and make her miserable; and if such a man lost his place and fortune he could never recover it. Yes, I love you,” he continued. “I love you with an unlimited affection; you are far above the mass of petty considerations in which silly women entangle themselves. Let us understand each other.”

  Flavie was bewildered; she was, however, awake to the extreme frankness of such language, and she said to herself, “He is not a secret manoeuvrer, certainly.” Moreover, she admitted to her own mind that no one had ever so deeply stirred and excited her as this young man.

  “Monsieur,” she said, “I do not know who could have put into your mind so great an error as to my life, nor by what right you — ”

  “Ah! pardon me, madame,” interrupted the Provencal with a coolness that smacked of contempt. “I must have dreamed it. I said to myself, ‘She is all that!’ But I see I was judging from the outside. I know now why you are living and will always live on a fourth floor in the rue d’Enfer.”

  And he pointed his speech with an energetic gesture toward the Colleville windows, which could be seen through the passage from the alley of the Luxembourg, where they were walking alone, in that immense tract trodden by so many and various young ambitions.

  “I have been frank, and I expected reciprocity,” resumed Theodose. “I myself have had days without food, madame; I have managed to live, pursue my studies, obtain my degree, with two thousand francs for my sole dependence; and I entered Paris through the Barriere d’Italie, with five hundred francs in my pocket, firmly resolved, like one of my compatriots, to become, some day, one of the foremost men of our country. The man who has often picked his food from baskets of scraps where the restaurateurs put their refuse, which are emptied at six o’clock every morning — that man is not likely to recoil before any means, — avowable, of course. Well, do you think me the friend of the people?” he said, smiling. “One has to have a speaking-trumpet to reach the ear of Fame; she doesn’t listen if you speak with your lips; and without fame of what use is talent? The poor man’s advocate means to be some day the advocate of the rich. Is that plain speaking? Don’t I open my inmost being to you? Then open your heart to me. Say to me, ‘Let us be friends,’ and the day will come when we sh
all both be happy.”

  “Good heavens! why did I ever come here? Why did I ever take your arm?” cried Flavie.

  “Because it is in your destiny,” he replied. “Ah! my dear, beloved Flavie,” he added, again pressing her arm upon his heart, “did you expect to hear the vulgarities of love from me? We are brother and sister; that is all.”

  And he led her towards the passage to return to the rue d’Enfer.

  Flavie felt a sort of terror in the depths of the contentment which all women find in violent emotions; and she took that terror for the sort of fear which a new passion always excites; but for all that, she felt she was fascinated, and she walked along in absolute silence.

  “What are you thinking of?” asked Theodose, when they reached the middle of the passage.

  “Of what you have just said to me,” she answered.

  “At our age,” he said, “it is best to suppress preliminaries; we are not children; we both belong to a sphere in which we should understand each other. Remember this,” he added, as they reached the rue d’Enfer. — ”I am wholly yours.”

  So saying, he bowed low to her.

  “The iron’s in the fire now!” he thought to himself as he watched his giddy prey on her way home.

  CHAPTER VI. A KEYNOTE

  When Theodose reached home he found, waiting for him on the landing, a personage who is, as it were, the submarine current of this history; he will be found within it like some buried church on which has risen the facade of a palace. The sight of this man, who, after vainly ringing at la Peyrade’s door, was now trying that of Dutocq, made the Provencal barrister tremble — but secretly, within himself, not betraying externally his inward emotion. This man was Cerizet, whom Dutocq had mentioned to Thuillier as his copying-clerk.

  Cerizet was only thirty-eight years old, but he looked a man of fifty, so aged had he become from causes which age all men. His hairless head had a yellow skull, ill-covered by a rusty, discolored wig; the mask of his face, pale, flabby, and unnaturally rough, seemed the more horrible because the nose was eaten away, though not sufficiently to admit of its being replaced by a false one. From the spring of this nose at the forehead, down to the nostrils, it remained as nature had made it; but disease, after gnawing away the sides near the extremities, had left two holes of fantastic shape, which vitiated pronunciation and hampered speech. The eyes, originally handsome, but weakened by misery of all kinds and by sleepless nights, were red around the edges, and deeply sunken; the glance of those eyes, when the soul sent into them an expression of malignancy, would have frightened both judges and criminals, or any others whom nothing usually affrights.