This day, which for Brigitte began so ill, was, beyond all gainsaying, one of the stormiest and most portentous of this narrative.
CHAPTER XIV. A STORMY DAY
As an exact historian, we must go back and begin the day at six in the morning, when we can see Madame Thuillier going to the Madeleine to hear the mass that the Abbe Gondrin was in the habit of saying at that hour, and afterwards approaching the holy table, — a viaticum which pious souls never fail to give themselves when it is in their minds to accomplish some great resolution.
About mid-day the abbe received a visit in his own home from Madame Thuillier and Celeste. The poor child wanted a little development of the words by which the priest had given security, the evening before, in Brigitte’s salon, for the eternal welfare of Felix Phellion. It seemed strange to the mind of this girl-theologian that, without practising religion, a soul could be received into grace by the divine justice; for surely the anathema is clear: Out of the Church there is no salvation.
“My dear child,” said the Abbe Gondrin, “learn to understand that saying which seems to you so inexplicable. It is more a saying of thanksgiving for those who have the happiness to live within the pale of our holy mother the Church than a malediction upon those who have the misfortune to live apart from her. God sees to the depths of all hearts; He knows His elect; and so great is the treasure of His goodness that to none is it given to limit its riches and its munificence. Who shall dare to say to God: Thou wilt be generous and munificent so far and no farther. Jesus Christ forgave the woman in adultery, and on the cross He promised heaven to a thief, in order to prove to us that He deals with men, not according to human sentiments, but according to his wisdom and his mercy. He who thinks himself a Christian may be in the eyes of God an idolator; and another who is thought a pagan may, by his feelings and his actions be, without his own knowledge, a Christian. Our holy religion has this that is divine about it; all grandeur, all heroism are but the practice of its precepts. I was saying yesterday to Monsieur de la Peyrade that pure souls must be, in course of time, its inevitable conquest. It is all-important to give them their just credit; that is a confidence which returns great dividends; and, besides, charity commands it.”
“Ah! my God!” cried Celeste, “to learn that too late! I, who could have chosen between Felix and Monsieur de la Peyrade, and did not dare to follow the ideas of my heart! Oh! Monsieur l’abbe, couldn’t you speak to my mother? Your advice is always listened to.”
“Impossible, my dear child,” replied the vicar. “If I had the direction of Madame Colleville’s conscience I might perhaps say a word, but we are so often accused of meddling imprudently in family matters! Be sure that my intervention here, without authority or right, would do you more harm than good. It is for you and for those who love you,” he added, giving a look to Madame Thuillier, “to see if these arrangements, already so far advanced, could be changed in the direction of your wishes.”
It was written that the poor child was to drink to the dregs the cup she had herself prepared by her intolerance. As the abbe finished speaking, his housekeeper came in to ask if he would receive Monsieur Felix Phellion. Thus, like the Charter of 1830, Madame de Godollo’s officious falsehood was turned into truth.
“Go this way,” he said hastily, showing his two penitents out by a private corridor.
Life has such strange encounters that it does sometimes happen that the same form of proceeding must be used by courtesans and by the men of God.
“Monsieur l’abbe,” said Felix to the young vicar as soon as they met, “I have heard of the kind manner in which you were so very good as to speak of me in Monsieur Thuillier’s salon last night, and I should have hastened to express my gratitude if another interest had not drawn me to you.”
The Abbe Gondrin passed hastily over the compliments, eager to know in what way he could be useful to his fellow-man.
“With an intention that I wish to think kindly,” replied Felix, “you were spoken to yesterday about the state of my soul. Those who read it so fluently know more than I do about my inner being, for, during the last few days I have felt strange, inexplicable feelings within me. Never have I doubted God, but, in contact with that infinitude where he has permitted my thought to follow the traces of his work I seem to have gathered a sense of him less vague, more immediate; and this has led me to ask myself whether an honest and upright life is the only homage which his omnipotence expects of me. Nevertheless, there are numberless objections rising in my mind against the worship of which you are the minister; while sensible of the beauty of its external form in many of its precepts and practices, I find myself deterred by my reason. I shall have paid dearly, perhaps by the happiness of my whole life, for the slowness and want of vigor which I have shown in seeking the solution of my doubts. I have now decided to search to the bottom of them. No one so well as you, Monsieur l’abbe, can help me to solve them. I have come with confidence to lay them before you, to ask you to listen to me, to answer me, and to tell me by what studies I can pursue the search for light. It is a cruelly afflicted soul that appeals to you. Is not that a good ground for the seed of your word?”
The Abbe Gondrin eagerly protested the joy with which, notwithstanding his own insufficiency, he would undertake to reply to the scruples of conscience in the young savant. After asking him for a place in his friendship, and telling him to come at certain hours for conversation, he asked him to read, as a first step, the “Thoughts” of Pascal. A natural affinity, on the side of science, would, he believed, be established between the spirit of Pascal and that of the young mathematician.
While this scene was passing, a scene to which the greatness of the interests in question and the moral and intellectual elevation of the personages concerned in it gave a character of grandeur which, like all reposeful, tranquil aspects, is easier far to comprehend than to reproduce, another scene, of sharp and bitter discord, that chronic malady of bourgeois households, where the pettiness of minds and passions gives open way to it, was taking place in the Thuillier home.
Mounted upon her chair, her hair in disorder and her face and fingers dirty, Brigitte, duster in hand, was cleaning the shelves of the closet, where she was replacing her library of plates, dishes, and sauce-boats, when Flavie came in and accosted her.
“Brigitte,” she said, “when you have finished what you are about you had better come down to our apartment, or else I’ll send Celeste to you; she seems to me to be inclined to make trouble.”
“In what way?” asked Brigitte, continuing to dust.
“I think she and Madame Thuillier went to see the Abbe Gondrin this morning, and she has been attacking me about Felix Phellion, and talks of him as if he were a god; from that to refusing to marry la Peyrade is but a step.”
“Those cursed skull-caps!” said Brigitte; “they meddle in everything! I didn’t want to invite him, but you would insist.”
“Yes,” said Flavie, “it was proper.”
“Proper! I despise proprieties!” cried the old maid. “He’s a maker of speeches; he said nothing last night that wasn’t objectionable. Send Celeste to me; I’ll settle her.”
At this instant a servant announced to Brigitte the arrival of a clerk from the office of the new notary chosen, in default of Dupuis, to draw up the contract. Without considering her disorderly appearance, Brigitte ordered him to be shown in, but she made him the condescension of descending from her perch instead of talking from the height of it.
“Monsieur Thuillier,” said the clerk, “came to our office this morning to explain to the master the clauses of the contract he has been so good as to entrust to us. But before writing down the stipulations, we are in the habit of obtaining from the lips of each donor a direct expression of his or her intentions. In accordance with this rule, Monsieur Thuillier told us that he gives to the bride the reversion, at his death, of the house he inhabits, which I presume to be this one?”
“Yes,” said Brigitte, “that is the understanding.
As for me, I give three hundred thousand francs a year in the Three-per-cents, capital and interest; but the bride is married under the dotal system.”
“That is so,” said the clerk, consulting his notes. “Mademoiselle Brigitte, three thousand francs a year. Now, there is Madame Celeste Thuillier, wife of Louis-Jerome Thuillier, who gives six thousand in the Three-per-cents, capital and interest, and six thousand more at her death.”
“All that is just as if the notary had written it down,” said Brigitte; “but if it is your custom you can see my sister-in-law; they will show you the way.”
So saying, the old maid ordered the “male domestic” to take the clerk to Madame Thuillier.
A moment later the clerk returned, saying there was certainly some misunderstanding, and that Madame Thuillier declared she had no intention of making any agreement in favor of the marriage.
“That’s a pretty thing!” cried Brigitte. “Come with me, monsieur.”
Then, like a hurricane, she rushed into Madame Thuillier’s chamber; the latter was pale and trembling.
“What’s this you have told monsieur? — that you give nothing to Celeste’s ‘dot’?”
“Yes,” said the slave, declaring insurrection, although in a shaking voice; “my intention is to do nothing.”
“Your intention,” said Brigitte, scarlet with anger, “is something new.”
“That is my intention,” was all the rebel replied.
“At least you will give your reasons?”
“The marriage does not please me.”
“Ha! and since when?”
“It is not necessary that monsieur should listen to our discussion,” said Madame Thuillier; “it will not appear in the contract.”
“No wonder you are ashamed of it,” said Brigitte; “the appearance you are making is not very flattering to you — Monsieur,” she continued, addressing the clerk, “it is easier, is it not, to mark out passages in a contract than to add them?”
The clerk made an affirmative sign.
“Then put in what you were told to write; later, if madame persists, the clause can be stricken out.”
The clerk bowed and left the room.
When the two sisters-in-law were alone together, Brigitte began.
“Ah ca!” she cried, “have you lost your head? What is this crotchet you’ve taken into it?”
“It is not a crotchet; it is a fixed idea.”
“Which you got from the Abbe Gondrin; you dare not deny that you went to see him with Celeste.”
“It is true that Celeste and I saw our director this morning, but I did not open my lips to him about what I intended to do.”
“So, then, it is in your own empty head that this notion sprouted?”
“Yes. As I told you yesterday, I think Celeste can be more suitably married, and my intention is not to rob myself for a marriage of which I disapprove.”
“You disapprove! Upon my word! are we all to take madame’s advice?”
“I know well,” replied Madame Thuillier, “that I count for nothing in this house. So far as I am concerned, I have long accepted my position; but, when the matter concerns the happiness of a child I regard as my own — ”
“Parbleu!” cried Brigitte, “you never knew how to have one; for, certainly, Thuillier — ”
“Sister,” said Madame Thuillier, with dignity, “I took the sacrament this morning, and there are some things I cannot listen to.”
“There’s a canting hypocrite for you!” cried Brigitte; “playing the saint, and bringing trouble into families! And you think to succeed, do you? Wait till Thuillier comes home, and he’ll shake this out of you.”
By calling in the marital authority in support of her own, Brigitte showed weakness before the unexpected resistance thus made to her inveterate tyranny. Madame Thuillier’s calm words, which became every moment more resolute, baffled her completely, and she found no resource but insolence.
“A drone!” she cried; “a helpless good-for-nothing! who can’t even pick up her own handkerchief! that thing wants to be mistress of this house!”
“I wish so little to be its mistress,” said Madame Thuillier, “that last night I allowed you to silence me after the first words I said in behalf of Celeste. But I am mistress of my own property, and as I believe that Celeste will be wretched in this marriage, I keep it to use as may seem best to me.”
“Your property, indeed!” said Brigitte, with a sneer.
“Yes, that which I received from my father and my mother, and which I brought as my ‘dot’ to Monsieur Thuillier.”
“And pray who invested it, this property, and made it give you twelve thousand francs a year?”
“I have never asked you for any account of it,” said Madame Thuillier, gently. “If it had been lost in the uses you made of it, you would never have heard a single word from me; but it has prospered, and it is just that I should have the benefit. It is not for myself that I reserve it.”
“Perhaps not; if this is the course you take, it is not at all sure that you and I will go out of the same door long.”
“Do you mean that Monsieur Thuillier will send me away? He must have reasons for doing that, and, thank God! I have been a wife above reproach.”
“Viper! hypocrite! heartless creature!” cried Brigitte, coming to an end of her arguments.
“Sister,” said Madame Thuillier, “you are in my apartment — ”
“Am I, you imbecile?” cried the old maid, in a paroxysm of anger. “If I didn’t restrain myself — ”
And she made a gesture both insulting and threatening.
Madame Thuillier rose to leave the room.
“No! you shall not go out,” cried Brigitte, pushing her down into her chair; “and till Thuillier comes home and decides what he will do with you you’ll stay locked up here.”
Just as Brigitte, her face on fire, returned to the room where she had left Madame Colleville, her brother came in. He was radiant.
“My dear,” he said to the Megaera, not observing her fury, “everything is going on finely; the conspiracy of silence is broken; two papers, the ‘National’ and a Carlist journal, have copied articles from us, and there’s a little attack in a ministerial paper.”
“Well, all is not going on finely here,” said Brigitte, “and if it continues, I shall leave the barrack.”
“Whom are you angry with now?” asked Thuillier.
“With your insolent wife, who has made me a scene; I am trembling all over.”
“Celeste make you a scene!” said Thuillier; “then it is the very first time in her life.”
“There’s a beginning to everything, and if you don’t bring her to order — ”
“But what was it about — this scene?”
“About madame’s not choosing that la Peyrade should marry her goddaughter; and out of spite, to prevent the marriage, she refused to give anything in the contract.”
“Come, be calm,” said Thuillier, not disturbed himself, the admission of the “Echo” into the polemic making another Pangloss of him. “I’ll settle all that.”
“You, Flavie,” said Brigitte, when Thuillier had departed to his wife, “you will do me the pleasure to go down to your own apartment, and tell Mademoiselle Celeste that I don’t choose to see her now, because if she made me any irritating answer I might box her ears. You’ll tell her that I don’t like conspiracies; that she was left at liberty to choose Monsieur Phellion junior if she wanted him, and she did not want him; that the matter is now all arranged, and that if she does not wish to see her ‘dot’ reduced to what you are able to give her, which isn’t as much as a bank-messenger could carry in his waistcoat pocket — ”
“But, my dear Brigitte,” interrupted Flavie, turning upon her at this impertinence, “you may dispense with reminding us in this harsh way of our poverty; for, after all, we have never asked you for anything, and we pay our rent punctually; and as for the ‘dot,’ Monsieur Felix Phellion is quite ready to take Celeste with
no more than a bank-messenger could carry in his bag.”
And she emphasized the last word by her way of pronouncing it.
“Ha! so you too are going to meddle in this, are you?” cried Brigitte. “Very good; go and fetch him, your Felix. I know, my little woman, that this marriage has never suited you; it IS disagreeable to be nothing more than a mother to your son-in-law.”
Flavie had recovered the coolness she had lost for an instant, and without replying to this speech she merely shrugged her shoulders.
At this moment Thuillier returned; his air of beatitude had deserted him.
“My dear Brigitte,” he said to his sister, “you have a most excellent heart, but at times you are so violent — ”
“Ho!” said the old maid, “am I to be arraigned on this side too?”
“I certainly do not blame you for the cause of the trouble, and I have just rebuked Celeste for her assumption; but there are proper forms that must be kept.”
“Forms! what are you talking about? What forms have I neglected?”
“But, my dear friend, to raise your hand against your sister!”
“I, raise my hand against that imbecile? What nonsense you talk!”
“And besides,” continued Thuillier, “a woman of Celeste’s age can’t be kept in prison.”
“Your wife! — have I put her in prison?”
“You can’t deny it, for I found the door of her room double-locked.”
“Parbleu! all this because in my anger at the infamous things she was spitting at me I may have turned the key of the door without intending it.”
“Come, come,” said Thuillier, “these are not proper actions for people of our class.”
“Oh! so it is I who am to blame, is it? Well, my lad, some day you’ll remember this, and we shall see how your household will get along when I have stopped taking care of it.”
“You’ll always take care of it,” said Thuillier. “Housekeeping is your very life; you will be the first to get over this affair.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Brigitte; “after twenty years of devotion, to be treated like the lowest of the low!”
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 842
