Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “How was it with you?” asked Madame Graslin.

  “Ah! there,” replied Farrabesche, “I had luck; I never drew a lot to kill a convict; I never had to vote the death of any one of them; I never was punished; no man took a dislike to me; and I got on well with the three different men I was chained to; they all feared me but liked me. One reason was, my name was known and famous at the galleys before I got there. A chauffeur! they thought me one of those brigands. I have seen chauffing,” continued Farrabesche after a pause, in a low voice, “but I never either did it myself, or took any of the money obtained by it. I was a refractory, I evaded the conscription, that was all. I helped my comrades, I kept watch; I was sentinel and brought up the rear-guard; but I never shed any man’s blood except in self-defence. Ah! I told all to Monsieur Bonnet and my lawyer, and the judges knew well enough that I was no murderer. But, all the same, I am a great criminal; nothing that I ever did was morally right. However, before I got there, as I was saying, two of my comrades told of me as a man able to do great things. At the galleys, madame, nothing is so valuable as that reputation, not even money. In that republic of misery murder is a passport to tranquillity. I did nothing to destroy that opinion of me. I was sad, resigned, and they mistook the appearance of it. My gloomy manner, my silence, passed for ferocity. All that world, convicts, keepers, young and old, respected me. I was treated as first in my hall. No one interfered with my sleep; I was never suspected of informing; I behaved honorably according to their ideas; I never refused to do service; I never testified the slightest repugnance; I howled with the wolves outside, I prayed to God within. My last companion in chains was a soldier, twenty-two years of age, who had committed a theft and deserted in consequence of it. We were chained together for four years, and we were friends; wherever I may be I am certain to meet him when his time is up. This poor devil, whose name is Guepin, is not a scoundrel, he is merely heedless; his punishment may reform him. If my comrades had discovered that religion led me to submit to my trials, — that I meant, when my time was up, to live humbly in a corner, letting no one know where I was, intending to forget their horrible community and never to cross the path of any of them, — they would probably have driven me mad.”

  “Then,” said Madame Graslin, “if a poor young man, a tender soul, carried away by passion, having committed a murder, was spared from death and sent to the galleys — ”

  “Oh! madame,” said Farrabesche, interrupting her, “there is no sparing in that. The sentence may be commuted to twenty years at the galleys, but for a decent young man, that is awful! I could not speak to you of the life that awaits him there; a thousand times better die. Yes, to die upon the scaffold is happiness in comparison.”

  “I dared not think it,” murmured Madame Graslin.

  She had turned as white as wax. To hide her face she laid her forehead on the balustrade, and kept it there several minutes. Farrabesche did not know whether he ought to go or remain.

  Madame Graslin raised her head at last, looked at Farrabesche with an almost majestic air, and said, to his amazement, in a voice that stirred his heart: —

  “Thank you, my friend. But,” she added, after a pause, “where did you find courage to live and suffer?”

  “Ah! madame, Monsieur Bonnet put a treasure within my soul! and for that I love him better than all else on earth.”

  “Better than Catherine?” said Madame Graslin, smiling with a sort of bitterness.

  “Almost as well, madame.”

  “How did he do it?”

  “Madame, the words and the voice of that man conquered me. Catherine brought him to that hole in the ground I showed you on the common; he had come fearlessly alone. He was, he said, the new rector of Montegnac; I was his parishioner, he loved me; he knew I was only misguided, not lost; he did not intend to betray me, but to save me; in short, he said many such things that stirred my soul to its depths. That man, madame, commands you to do right with as much force as those who tell you to do wrong. It was he who told me, poor dear man, that Catherine was a mother, and that I was dooming two beings to shame and desertion. ‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘they are like me; I have no future.’ He answered that I had a future, two bad futures, before me — one in another world, one in this world — if I persisted in not changing my way of life. In this world, I should die on the scaffold. If I were captured my defence would be impossible. On the contrary, if I took advantage of the leniency of the new government toward all crimes traceable to the conscription, if I delivered myself up, he believed he could save my life; he would engage a good lawyer, who would get me off with ten years at the galleys. Then Monsieur Bonnet talked to me of the other life. Catherine wept like the Magdalen — See, madame,” said Farrabesche, holding out his right arm, “her face was in that hand, and I felt it wet with tears. She implored me to live. Monsieur Bonnet promised to secure me, when I had served my sentence, a peaceful life here with my child, and to protect me against affront. He catechised me as he would a little child. After three such visits at night he made me as supple as a glove. Would you like to know how, madame?”

  Farrabesche and Madame Graslin looked at each other, not explaining to themselves their mutual curiosity.

  “Well,” resumed the poor liberated convict, “when he left me the first time, and Catherine had gone with him to show the way, I was left alone. I then felt within my soul a freshness, a calmness, a sweetness, I had never known since childhood. It was like the happiness my poor Catherine had given me. The love of this dear man had come to seek me; that, and his thought for me, for my future, stirred my soul to its depths; it changed me. A light broke forth in my being. As long as he was there, speaking to me, I resisted. That’s not surprising; he was a priest, and we bandits don’t eat of their bread. But when I no longer heard his footsteps nor Catherine’s, oh! I was — as he told me two days later — enlightened by divine grace. God gave me thenceforth strength to bear all, — prison, sentence, irons, parting; even the life of the galleys. I believed in his word as I do in the Gospel; I looked upon my sufferings as a debt I was bound to pay. When I seemed to suffer too much, I looked across ten years and saw my home in the woods, my little Benjamin, my Catherine. He kept his word, that good Monsieur Bonnet. But one thing was lacking. When at last I was released, Catherine was not at the gate of the galleys; she was not on the common. No doubt she has died of grief. That is why I am always sad. Now, thanks to you, I shall have useful work to do; I can employ both body and soul, — and my boy, too, for whom I live.”

  “I begin to understand how it is that the rector has changed the character of this whole community,” said Madame Graslin.

  “Nothing can resist him,” said Farrabesche.

  “Yes, yes, I know it!” replied Veronique, hastily, making a gesture of farewell to her keeper.

  Farrabesche withdrew. Veronique remained alone on the terrace for a good part of the day, walking up and down in spite of a fine rain which fell till evening. When her face was thus convulsed, neither her mother nor Aline dared to interrupt her. She did not notice in the dusk that her mother was talking in the salon to Monsieur Bonnet; the old woman, anxious to put an end to this fresh attack of dreadful depression, sent little Francis to fetch her. The child took his mother’s hand and led her in. When she saw the rector she gave a start of surprise in which there seemed to be some fear. Monsieur Bonnet took her back to the terrace, saying: —

  “Well, madame, what were you talking about with Farrabesche?”

  In order not to speak falsely, Veronique evaded a reply; she questioned Monsieur Bonnet.

  “That man was your first victory here, was he not?” she said.

  “Yes,” he answered; “his conversion would, I thought, give me all Montegnac — and I was not mistaken.”

  Veronique pressed Monsieur Bonnet’s hand and said, with tears in her voice, “I am your penitent from this day forth, monsieur; I shall go to-morrow to the confessional.”

  Her last words showed a great inte
rnal effort, a terrible victory won over herself. The rector brought her back to the house without saying another word. After that he remained till dinner-time, talking about the proposed improvements at Montegnac.

  “Agriculture is a question of time,” he said; “the little that I know of it makes me understand what a gain it would be to get some good out of the winter. The rains are now beginning, and the mountains will soon be covered with snow; your operations cannot then be begun. Had you not better hasten Monsieur Grossetete?”

  Insensibly, Monsieur Bonnet, who at first did all the talking, led Madame Graslin to join in the conversation and so distract her thoughts; in fact, he left her almost recovered from the emotions of the day. Madame Sauviat, however, thought her daughter too violently agitated to be left alone, and she spent the night in her room.

  XVI. CONCERNS ONE OF THE BLUNDERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

  The following day an express, sent from Limoges by Monsieur Grossetete to Madame Graslin, brought her the following letter: —

  To Madame Graslin:

  My dear Child, — It was difficult to find horses, but I hope you

  are satisfied with those I sent you. If you want work or draft

  horses, you must look elsewhere. In any case, however, I advise

  you to do your tilling and transportation with oxen. All the

  countries where agriculture is carried on with horses lose capital

  when the horse is past work; whereas cattle always return a profit

  to those who use them.

  I approve in every way of your enterprise, my child; you will thus

  employ the passionate activity of your soul, which was turning

  against yourself and thus injuring you.

  Your second request, namely, for a man capable of understanding

  and seconding your projects, requires me to find you a rara avis

  such as we seldom raise in the provinces, where, if we do raise

  them, we never keep them. The education of that high product is

  too slow and too risky a speculation for country folks.

  Besides, men of intellect alarm us; we call them “originals.” The

  men belonging to the scientific category from which you will have

  to obtain your co-operator do not flourish here, and I was on the

  point of writing to you that I despaired of fulfilling your

  commission. You want a poet, a man of ideas, — in short, what we

  should here call a fool, and all our fools go to Paris. I have

  spoken of your plans to the young men employed in land surveying,

  to contractors on the canals, and makers of the embankments, and

  none of them see any “advantage” in what you propose.

  But suddenly, as good luck would have it, chance has thrown in my

  way the very man you want; a young man to whom I believe I render

  a service in naming him to you. You will see by his letter,

  herewith enclosed, that deeds of beneficence ought not to be done

  hap-hazard. Nothing needs more reflection than a good action. We

  never know whether that which seems best at one moment may not

  prove an evil later. The exercise of beneficence, as I have lived

  to discover, is to usurp the role of Destiny.

  As she read that sentence Madame Graslin let fall the letter and was thoughtful for several minutes.

  “My God!” she said at last, “when wilt thou cease to strike me down on all sides?”

  Then she took up the letter and continued reading it:

  Gerard seems to me to have a cool head and an ardent heart; that’s

  the sort of man you want. Paris is just now a hotbed of new

  doctrines; I should be delighted to have the lad removed from the

  traps which ambitious minds are setting for the generous youth of

  France. While I do not altogether approve of the narrow and

  stupefying life of the provinces, neither do I like the passionate

  life of Paris, with its ardor of reformation, which is driving

  youth into so many unknown ways. You alone know my opinions; to my

  mind the moral world revolves upon its own axis, like the material

  world. My poor protege demands (as you will see from his letter)

  things impossible. No power can resist ambitions so violent, so

  imperious, so absolute, as those of to-day. I am in favor of low

  levels and slowness in political change; I dislike these social

  overturns to which ambitious minds subject us.

  To you I confide these principles of a monarchical and prejudiced

  old man, because you are discreet. Here I hold my tongue in the

  midst of worthy people, who the more they fail the more they

  believe in progress; but I suffer deeply at the irreparable evils

  already inflicted on our dear country.

  I have replied to the enclosed letter, telling my young man that a

  worthy task awaits him. He will go to see you, and though his

  letter will enable you to judge of him, you had better study him

  still further before committing yourself, — though you women

  understand many things from the mere look of a man. However, all

  the men whom you employ, even the most insignificant, ought to be

  thoroughly satisfactory to you. If you don’t like him don’t take

  him; but if he suits you, my dear child, I beg you to cure him of

  his ill-disguised ambition. Make him take to a peaceful, happy,

  rural life, where true beneficence is perpetually exercised; where

  the capacities of great and strong souls find continual exercise,

  and they themselves discover daily fresh sources of admiration in

  the works of Nature, and in real ameliorations, real progress, an

  occupation worthy of any man.

  I am not oblivious of the fact that great ideas give birth to

  great actions; but as those ideas are necessarily few and far

  between, I think it may be said that usually things are more

  useful than ideas. He who fertilizes a corner of the earth, who

  brings to perfection a fruit-tree, who makes a turf on a thankless

  soil, is far more useful in his generation than he who seeks new

  theories for humanity. How, I ask you, has Newton’s science

  changed the condition of the country districts? Oh! my dear, I

  have always loved you; but to-day I, who fully understand what you

  are about to attempt, I adore you.

  No one at Limoges forgets you; we all admire your grand resolution

  to benefit Montegnac. Be a little grateful to us for having soul

  enough to admire a noble action, and do not forget that the first

  of your admirers is also your first friend.

  F. Grossetete.

  The enclosed letter was as follows: —

  To Monsieur Grossetete:

  Monsieur, — You have been to me a father when you might have been

  only a mere protector, and therefore I venture to make you a

  rather sad confidence. It is to you alone, you who have made me

  what I am, that I can tell my troubles.

  I am afflicted with a terrible malady, a cruel moral malady. In my

  soul are feelings and in my mind convictions which make me utterly

  unfit for what the State and society demand of me. This may seem

  to you ingratitude; it is only the statement of a condition. When

  I was twelve years old you, my generous god-father, saw in me, the

  son of a mere workman, an aptitude for the exact sciences and a

  precocious desire to rise in life. You favored my impulse toward

  better things when my natural fate was to stay a carpenter like myr />
  father, who, poor man, did not live long enough to enjoy my

  advancement. Indeed, monsieur, you did a good thing, and there is

  never a day that I do not bless you for it. It may be that I am

  now to blame; but whether I am right or wrong it is very certain

  that I suffer. In making my complaint to you I feel that I take

  you as my judge like God Himself. Will you listen to my story and

  grant me your indulgence?

  Between sixteen and eighteen years of age I gave myself to the

  study of the exact sciences with an ardor, you remember, that made

  me ill. My future depended on my admission to the Ecole

  Polytechnique. At that time my studies overworked my brain, and I

  came near dying; I studied night and day; I did more than the

  nature of my organs permitted. I wanted to pass such satisfying

  examinations that my place in the Ecole would be not only secure,

  but sufficiently advanced to release me from the cost of my