Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “Then you like your life here?” said the young abbe.

  “Yes, monsieur; if God wills, I shall die rector of Montegnac. I could have wished that my example were followed by certain distinguished men who have thought they did better things in becoming philanthropists. But modern philanthropy is an evil to society; the principles of the Catholic religion can alone cure the diseases which permeate social bodies. Instead of describing those diseases and extending their ravages by complaining elegies, they should put their hand to the work and enter the Lord’s vineyard as simple laborers. My task is far from being accomplished here, monsieur. It is not enough to reform the people, whom I found in a frightful condition of impiety and wickedness; I wish to die in the midst of a generation of true believers.”

  “You have only done your duty, monsieur,” said the young man, still coldly, for his heart was stirred with envy.

  “Yes, monsieur,” replied the rector, modestly, giving his companion a glance which seemed to say: Is this a further test? “I pray that all may do their duty throughout the kingdom.”

  This remark, full of deep meaning, was still further emphasized by a tone of utterance, which proved that in 1829 this priest, as grand in thought as he was noble in humility of conduct, and who subordinated his thoughts to those of his superiors, saw clearly into the destinies of both church and monarchy.

  When the two afflicted women came the young abbe, very impatient to get back to Limoges, left the parsonage to see if the horses were harnessed. A few moments later he returned to say that all was ready. All four then started under the eyes of the whole population of Montegnac, which was gathered in the roadway before the post-house. The mother and sister kept silence. The two priests, seeing rocks ahead in many subjects, could neither talk indifferently nor allow themselves to be cheerful. While seeking for some neutral subject the carriage crossed the plain, the aspect of which dreary region seemed to influence the duration of their melancholy silence.

  “How came you to adopt the ecclesiastical profession?” asked the Abbe Gabriel, suddenly, with an impulsive curiosity which seized him as soon as the carriage turned into the high-road.

  “I did not look upon the priesthood as a profession,” replied the rector, simply. “I cannot understand how a man can become a priest for any other reason than the undefinable power of vocation. I know that many men have served in the Lord’s vineyard who have previously worn out their hearts in the service of passion; some have loved hopelessly, others have had their love betrayed; men have lost the flower of their lives in burying a precious wife or an adored mistress; some have been disgusted with social life at a period when uncertainty hovers over everything, even over feelings, and doubt mocks tender certainties by calling them beliefs; others abandon politics at a period when power seems to be an expiation and when the governed regard obedience as fatality. Many leave a society without banners; where opposing forces only unite to overthrow good. I do not think that any man would give himself to God from a covetous motive. Some men have looked upon the priesthood as a means of regenerating our country; but, according to my poor lights, a priest-patriot is a meaningless thing. The priest can only belong to God. I did not wish to offer our Father — who nevertheless accepts all — the wreck of my heart and the fragments of my will; I gave myself to him whole. In one of those touching theories of pagan religion, the victim sacrificed to the false gods goes to the altar decked with flowers. The significance of that custom has always deeply touched me. A sacrifice is nothing without grace. My life is simple and without the very slightest romance. My father, who has made his own way in the world, is a stern, inflexible man; he treats his wife and his children as he treats himself. I have never seen a smile upon his lips. His iron hand, his stern face, his gloomy, rough activity, oppressed us all — wife, children, clerks and servants — under an almost savage despotism. I could — I speak for myself only — I could have accommodated myself to this life if the power thus exercised had had an equal repression; but, captious and vacillating, he treated us all with intolerable alternations. We were always ignorant whether we were doing right or whether he considered us to blame; and the horrible expectancy which results from that is torture in domestic life. A street life seems better than a home under such circumstances. Had I been alone in the house I would have borne all from my father without murmuring; but my heart was torn by the bitter, unceasing anguish of my dear mother, whom I ardently loved and whose tears put me sometimes into a fury in which I nearly lost my reason. My school days, when boys are usually so full of misery and hard work, were to me a golden period. I dreaded holidays. My mother herself preferred to come and see me. When I had finished my philosophical course and was forced to return home and become my father’s clerk, I could not endure it more than a few months; my mind, bewildered by the fever of adolescence, threatened to give way. On a sad autumn evening as I was walking alone with my mother along the Boulevard Bourdon, then one of the most melancholy parts of Paris, I poured my heart into hers, and I told her that I saw no possible life before me except in the Church. My tastes, my ideas, all that I most loved would be continually thwarted so long as my father lived. Under the cassock of a priest he would be forced to respect me, and I might thus on certain occasions become the protector of my family. My mother wept much. Just at this period my eldest brother (since a general and killed at Leipzig) had entered the army as a private soldier, driven from his home for the same reasons that made me wish to be a priest. I showed my mother that her best means of protection would be to marry my sister, as soon as she was old enough, to some man of strong character, and to look for help to this new family. Under pretence of avoiding the conscription without costing my father a penny to buy me off, I entered the seminary of Saint-Sulpice at the age of nineteen. Within those celebrated old buildings I found a peace and happiness that were troubled only by the thought of my mother and my sister’s sufferings. Their domestic misery, no doubt, went on increasing; for whenever they saw me they sought to strengthen my resolution. Perhaps I had been initiated into the secrets of charity, such as our great Saint Paul defines it, by my own trials. At any rate, I longed to stanch the wounds of the poor in some forgotten corner of the earth, and to prove by my example, if God would deign to bless my efforts, that the Catholic religion, judged by its actions for humanity, is the only true, the only beneficent and noble civilizing force. During the last days of my diaconate, grace, no doubt, enlightened me. I have fully forgiven my father, regarding him as the instrument of my destiny. My mother, though I wrote her a long and tender letter, explaining all things and proving to her that the finger of God was guiding me, my poor mother wept many tears as she saw my hair cut off by the scissors of the Church. She knew herself how many pleasures I renounced, but she did not know the secret glories to which I aspired. Women are so tender! After I once belonged to God I felt a boundless peace; I felt no needs, no vanities, none of those cares which trouble men so much. I knew that Providence would take care of me as a thing of its own. I entered a world from which all fear is banished; where the future is certain; where all things are divine, even the silence. This quietude is one of the benefactions of grace. My mother could not conceive that a man could espouse a church. Nevertheless, seeing me happy, with a cloudless brow, she grew happier herself. After I was ordained I came to the Limousin to visit one of my paternal relations, who chanced to speak to me of the then condition of Montegnac. A thought darted into my mind with the vividness of lightning, and I said to myself inwardly: ‘Here is thy vineyard!’ I came here, and you see, monsieur, that my history is very simple and uneventful.”

  At this instant Limoges came into sight, bathed in the last rays of the setting sun. When the women saw it they could not restrain their tears; they wept aloud.

  IX. DENISE

  The young man whom these two different loves were now on their way to comfort, who excited so much artless curiosity, so much spurious sympathy and true solicitude, was lying on his prison pallet in one
of the condemned cells. A spy watched beside the door to catch, if possible, any words that might escape him, either in sleep or in one of his violent furies; so anxious were the officers of justice to exhaust all human means of discovering Jean-Francois Tascheron’s accomplice and recover the sums stolen.

  The des Vanneaulx had promised a reward to the police, and the police kept constant watch on the obstinate silence of the prisoner. When the man on duty looked through a loophole made for the purpose he saw the convict always in the same position, bound in the straight-jacket, his head secured by a leather thong ever since he had attempted to tear the stuff of the jacket with his teeth.

  Jean-Francois gazed steadily at the ceiling with a fixed and despairing eye, a burning eye, as if reddened by the terrible thoughts behind it. He was a living image of the antique Prometheus; the memory of some lost happiness gnawed at his heart. When the solicitor-general himself went to see him that magistrate could not help testifying his surprise at a character so obstinately persistent. No sooner did any one enter his cell than Jean-Francois flew into a frenzy which exceeded the limits known to physicians for such attacks. The moment he heard the key turn in the lock or the bolts of the barred door slide, a light foam whitened his lips.

  Jean-Francois Tascheron, then twenty-five years of age, was small but well-made. His wiry, crinkled hair, growing low on his forehead, indicated energy. His eyes, of a clear and luminous yellow, were too near the root of the nose, — a defect which gave him some resemblance to birds of prey. The face was round, of the warm brown coloring which marks the inhabitants of middle France. One feature of his physiognomy confirmed an assertion of Lavater as to persons who are destined to commit murder; his front teeth lapped each other. Nevertheless his face bore all the characteristics of integrity and a sweet and artless moral nature; there was nothing surprising in the fact that a woman had loved him passionately. His fresh mouth with its dazzling teeth was charming, but the vermilion of the lips was of the red-lead tint which indicates repressed ferocity, and, in many human beings, a free abandonment to pleasure. His demeanor showed none of the low habits of a workman. In the eyes of the women who were present at the trial it seemed evident that one of their sex had softened those muscles used to toil, had ennobled the countenance of the rustic, and given grace to his person. Women can always detect the traces of love in a man, just as men can see in a woman whether, as the saying is, love has passed that way.

  Toward evening of the day we are now relating Jean-Francois heard the sliding of bolts and the noise of the key in the lock. He turned his head violently and gave vent to the horrible growl with which his frenzies began; but he trembled all over when the beloved heads of his sister and his mother stood out against the fading light, and behind them the face of the rector of Montegnac.

  “The wretches! is this why they keep me alive?” he said, closing his eyes.

  Denise, who had lately been confined in a prison, was distrustful of everything; the spy had no doubt hidden himself merely to return in a few moments. The girl flung herself on her brother, bent her tearful face to his and whispered: —

  “They may be listening to us.”

  “Otherwise they would not have let you come here,” he replied in a loud voice. “I have long asked the favor that none of my family should be admitted here.”

  “Oh! how they have bound him!” cried the mother. “My poor child! my poor boy!” and she fell on her knees beside the pallet, hiding her head in the cassock of the priest, who was standing by her.

  “If Jean will promise me to be quiet,” said the rector, “and not attempt to injure himself, and to behave properly while we are with him, I will ask to have him unbound; but the least violation of his promise will reflect on me.”

  “I do so want to move as I please, dear Monsieur Bonnet,” said the criminal, his eyes moistening with tears, “that I give you my word to do as you wish.”

  The rector went out, and returned with the jailer, and the jacket was taken off.

  “You won’t kill me to-night, will you?” said the turnkey.

  Jean made no answer.

  “Poor brother!” said Denise, opening a basket which had just passed through a rigorous examination. “Here are some of the things you like; I dare say they don’t feed you for the love of God.”

  She showed him some fruit, gathered as soon as the rector had told her she could go to the jail, and a galette his mother had immediately baked for him. This attention, which reminded him of his boyhood, the voice and gestures of his sister, the presence of his mother and the rector, brought on a reaction and he burst into tears.

  “Ah! Denise,” he said, “I have not had a good meal for six months. I eat only when driven to it by hunger.”

  The mother and sister went out and then returned; with the natural housekeeping spirit of such women, who want to give their men material comfort, they soon had a supper for their poor child. In this the officials helped them; for an order had been given to do all that could with safety be done for the condemned man. The des Vanneaulx had contributed, with melancholy hope, toward the comfort of the man from whom they still expected to recover their inheritance. Thus poor Jean-Francois had a last glimpse of family joys, if joys they could be called under such circumstances.

  “Is my appeal rejected?” he said to Monsieur Bonnet.

  “Yes, my child; nothing is left for you to do but to make a Christian end. This life is nothing in comparison to that which awaits you; you must think now of your eternal happiness. You can pay your debt to man with your life, but God is not content with such a little thing as that.”

  “Give up my life! Ah! you do not know all that I am leaving.”

  Denise looked at her brother as if to warn him that even in matters of religion he must be cautious.

  “Let us say no more about it,” he resumed, eating the fruit with an avidity which told of his inward fire. “When am I — ”

  “No, no! say nothing of that before me!” said the mother.

  “But I should be easier in mind if I knew,” he said, in a low voice to the rector.

  “Always the same nature,” exclaimed Monsieur Bonnet. Then he bent down to the prisoner’s ear and whispered, “If you will reconcile yourself this night with God so that your repentance will enable me to absolve you, it will be to-morrow. We have already gained much in calming you,” he said, aloud.

  Hearing these last words, Jean’s lips turned pale, his eyes rolled up in a violent spasm, and an angry shudder passed through his frame.

  “Am I calm?” he asked himself. Happily his eyes encountered the tearful face of Denise, and he recovered his self-control. “So be it,” he said to the rector; “there is no one but you to whom I would listen; they have known how to conquer me.”

  And he flung himself on his mother’s breast.

  “My son,” said the mother, weeping, “listen to Monsieur Bonnet; he risks his life, the dear rector, in going to you to — ” she hesitated, and then said, “to the gate of eternal life.”

  Then she kissed Jean’s head and held it to her breast for some moments.

  “Will he, indeed, go with me?” asked Jean, looking at the rector, who bowed his head in assent. “Well, yes, I will listen to him; I will do all he asks of me.”

  “You promise it?” said Denise. “The saving of your soul is what we seek. Besides, you would not have all Limoges and the village say that a Tascheron knows not how to die a noble death? And then, too, think that all you lose here you will regain in heaven, where pardoned souls will meet again.”

  This superhuman effort parched the throat of the heroic girl. She was silent after this, like her mother, but she had triumphed. The criminal, furious at seeing his happiness torn from him by the law, now quivered at the sublime Catholic truth so simply expressed by his sister. All women, even young peasant-women like Denise, know how to touch these delicate chords; for does not every woman seek to make love eternal? Denise had touched two chords, each most sensitive. Awakened pri
de called on the other virtues chilled by misery and hardened by despair. Jean took his sister’s hand and kissed it, and laid it on his heart in a deeply significant manner; he applied it both gently and forcibly.

  “Yes,” he said, “I must renounce all; this is the last beating of my heart, its last thought. Keep them, Denise.”

  And he gave her one of those glances by which a man in crucial moments tries to put his soul into the soul of another human being.

  This thought, this word, was, in truth, a last testament, an unspoken legacy, to be as faithfully transmitted as it was trustfully given. It was so fully understood by mother, sister, and priest, that they all with one accord turned their faces from each other, to hide their tears and keep the secret of their thoughts in their own breasts. Those few words were the dying agony of a passion, the farewell of a soul to the glorious things of earth, in accordance with true Catholic renunciation. The rector, comprehending the majesty of all great human things, even criminal things, judged of this mysterious passion by the enormity of the sin. He raised his eyes to heaven as if to invoke the mercy of God. Thence come the consolations, the infinite tendernesses of the Catholic religion, — so humane, so gentle with the hand that descends to man, showing him the law of higher spheres; so awful, so divine, with that other hand held out to lead him into heaven.

  Denise had now significantly shown the rector the spot by which to strike that rock and make the waters of repentance flow. But suddenly, as though the memories evoked were dragging him backwards, Jean-Francois gave the harrowing cry of the hyena when the hunters overtake it.