Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “But,” I said to him, “you excite our curiosity without satisfying it. Do you know what brought him there? Was it grief, or repentance; is it a mania; is it crime, is it — ”

  “Eh, monsieur, there’s no one but my father and I who know the real truth. My late mother was servant in the family of a lawyer to whom Cambremer told all by order of the priest, who wouldn’t give him absolution until he had done so — at least, that’s what the folks of the port say. My poor mother overheard Cambremer without trying to; the lawyer’s kitchen was close to the office, and that’s how she heard. She’s dead, and so is the lawyer. My mother made us promise, my father and I, not to talk about the matter to the folks of the neighborhood; but I can tell you my hair stood on end the night she told us the tale.”

  “Well, my man, tell it to us now, and we won’t speak of it.”

  The fisherman looked at us; then he continued:

  “Pierre Cambremer, whom you have seen there, is the eldest of the Cambremers, who from father to son have always been sailors; their name says it — the sea bends under them. Pierre was a deep-sea fisherman. He had boats, and fished for sardine, also for the big fishes, and sold them to dealers. He’d have charted a large vessel and trawled for cod if he hadn’t loved his wife so much; she was a fine woman, a Brouin of Guerande, with a good heart. She loved Cambremer so much that she couldn’t bear to have her man leave her for longer than to fish sardine. They lived over there, look!” said the fisherman, going up a hillock to show us an island in the little Mediterranean between the dunes where we were walking and the marshes of Guerande. “You can see the house from here. It belonged to him. Jacquette Brouin and Cambremer had only one son, a lad they loved — how shall I say? — well, they loved him like an only child, they were mad about him. How many times we have seen them at fairs buying all sorts of things to please him; it was out of all reason the way they indulged him, and so folks told them. The little Cambremer, seeing that he was never thwarted, grew as vicious as a red ass. When they told pere Cambremer, ‘Your son has nearly killed little such a one,’ he would laugh and say: ‘Bah! he’ll be a bold sailor; he’ll command the king’s fleets.’ — Another time, ‘Pierre Cambremer, did you know your lad very nearly put out the eye of the little Pougard girl?’ — ’Ha! he’ll like the girls,’ said Pierre. Nothing troubled him. At ten years old the little cur fought everybody, and amused himself with cutting the hens’ necks off and ripping up the pigs; in fact, you might say he wallowed in blood. ‘He’ll be a famous soldier,’ said Cambremer, ‘he’s got the taste of blood.’ Now, you see,” said the fisherman, “I can look back and remember all that — and Cambremer, too,” he added, after a pause. “By the time Jacques Cambremer was fifteen or sixteen years of age he had come to be — what shall I say? — a shark. He amused himself at Guerande, and was after the girls at Savenay. Then he wanted money. He robbed his mother, who didn’t dare say a word to his father. Cambremer was an honest man who’d have tramped fifty miles to return two sous that any one had overpaid him on a bill. At last, one day the mother was robbed of everything. During one of his father’s fishing-trips Jacques carried off all she had, furniture, pots and pans, sheets, linen, everything; he sold it to go to Nantes and carry on his capers there. The poor mother wept day and night. This time it couldn’t be hidden from the father, and she feared him — not for herself, you may be sure of that. When Pierre Cambremer came back and saw furniture in his house which the neighbors had lent to his wife, he said, —

  “‘What is all this?’

  “The poor woman, more dead than alive, replied:

  “‘We have been robbed.’

  “‘Where is Jacques?’

  “‘Jacques is off amusing himself.’

  “No one knew where the scoundrel was.

  “‘He amuses himself too much,’ said Pierre.

  “Six months later the poor father heard that his son was about to be arrested in Nantes. He walked there on foot, which is faster than by sea, put his hands on his son, and compelled him to return home. Once here, he did not ask him, ‘What have you done?’ but he said: —

  “‘If you do not conduct yourself properly at home with your mother and me, and go fishing, and behave like an honest man, you and I will have a reckoning.’

  “The crazy fellow, counting on his parent’s folly, made a face; on which Pierre struck him a blow which sent Jacques to his bed for six weeks. The poor mother nearly died of grief. One night, as she was fast asleep beside her husband, a noise awoke her; she rose up quickly, and was stabbed in the arm with a knife. She cried out loud, and when Pierre Cambremer struck a light and saw his wife wounded, he thought it was the doing of robbers, — as if we ever had any in these parts, where you might carry ten thousand francs in gold from Croisic to Saint-Nazaire without ever being asked what you had in your arms. Pierre looked for his son, but he could not find him. In the morning, if that monster didn’t have the face to come home, saying he had stayed at Batz all night! I should tell you that the mother had not known where to hide her money. Cambremer put his with Monsieur Dupotel at Croisic. Their son’s follies had by this time cost them so much that they were half-ruined, and that was hard for folks who once had twelve thousand francs, and who owned their island. No one ever knew what Cambremer paid at Nantes to get his son away from there. Bad luck seemed to follow the family. Troubles fell upon Cambremer’s brother, he needed help. Pierre said, to console him, that Jacques and Perotte (the brother’s daughter) could be married. Then, to help Joseph Cambremer to earn his bread, Pierre took him with him a-fishing; for the poor man was now obliged to live by his daily labor. His wife was dead of the fever, and money was owing for Perotte’s nursing. The wife of Pierre Cambremer owed about one hundred francs to divers persons for the little girl, — linen, clothes, and what not, — and it so chanced that she had sewed a bit of Spanish gold into her mattress for a nest-egg toward paying off that money. It was wrapped in paper, and on the paper was written by her: ‘For Perotte.’ Jacquette Brouin had had a fine education; she could write like a clerk, and had taught her son to write too. I can’t tell you how it was that the villain scented the gold, stole it, and went off to Croisic to enjoy himself. Pierre Cambremer, as if it was ordained, came back that day in his boat; as he landed he saw a bit of paper floating in the water, and he picked it up, looked at it, and carried it to his wife, who fell down as if dead, seeing her own writing. Cambremer said nothing, but he went to Croisic, and heard that his son was in a billiard room; so then he went to the mistress of the cafe, and said to her: —

  “‘I told Jacques not to use a piece of gold with which he will pay you; give it back to me, and I’ll give you white money in place of it.’

  “The good woman did as she was told. Cambremer took the money and just said ‘Good,’ and then he went home. So far, all the town knows that; but now comes what I alone know, though others have always had some suspicion of it. As I say, Cambremer came home; he told his wife to clean up their chamber, which is on the lower floor; he made a fire, lit two candles, placed two chairs on one side of the hearth, and a stool on the other. Then he told his wife to bring him his wedding-clothes, and ordered her to put on hers. He dressed himself. When dressed, he fetched his brother, and told him to watch before the door, and warn him of any noise on either of the beaches, — that of Croisic, or that of Guerande. Then he loaded a gun, and placed it at a corner of the fireplace. Jacques came home late; he had drunk and gambled till ten o’clock, and had to get back by way of the Carnouf point. His uncle heard his hail, and he went over and fetched him, but said nothing. When Jacques entered the house, his father said to him, —

  “‘Sit there,’ pointing to the stool. ‘You are,’ he said, ‘before your father and mother, whom you have offended, and who will now judge you.’

  “At this Jacques began to howl, for his father’s face was all distorted. His mother was rigid as an oar.

  “‘If you shout, if you stir, if you do not sit still on that stool,�
�� said Pierre, aiming the gun at him, ‘I will shoot you like a dog.’

  “Jacques was mute as a fish. The mother said nothing.

  “‘Here,’ said Pierre, ‘is a piece of paper which wrapped a Spanish gold piece. That piece of gold was in your mother’s bed; she alone knew where it was. I found that paper in the water when I landed here to-day. You gave a piece of Spanish gold this night to Mere Fleurant, and your mother’s piece is no longer in her bed. Explain all this.’

  “Jacques said he had not taken his mother’s money, and that the gold piece was one he had brought from Nantes.

  “‘I am glad of it,’ said Pierre; ‘now prove it.’

  “‘I had it all along.’

  “‘You did not take the gold piece belonging to your mother?’

  “‘No.’

  “‘Will you swear it on your eternal life?’

  “He was about to swear; his mother raised her eyes to him, and said: —

  “‘Jacques, my child, take care; do not swear if it is not true; you can repent, you can amend; there is still time.’

  “And she wept.

  “‘You are a this and a that,’ he said; ‘you have always wanted to ruin me.’

  “Cambremer turned white and said, —

  “‘Such language to your mother increases your crime. Come, to the point! Will you swear?’

  “‘Yes.’

  “‘Then,’ Pierre said, ‘was there upon your gold piece the little cross which the sardine merchant who paid it to me scratched on ours?’

  “Jacques broke down and wept.

  “‘Enough,’ said Pierre. ‘I shall not speak to you of the crimes you have committed before this. I do not choose that a Cambremer should die on a scaffold. Say your prayers and make haste. A priest is coming to confess you.’

  “The mother had left the room; she could not hear her son condemned. After she had gone, Joseph Cambremer, the uncle, brought in the rector of Piriac, to whom Jacques would say nothing. He was shrewd; he knew his father would not kill him until he had made his confession.

  “‘Thank you, and excuse us,’ said Cambremer to the priest, when he saw Jacques’ obstinacy. ‘I wished to give a lesson to my son, and will ask you to say nothing about it. As for you,’ he said to Jacques, ‘if you do not amend, the next offence you commit will be your last; I shall end it without confession.’

  “And he sent him to bed. The lad thought he could still get round his father. He slept. His father watched. When he saw that his son was soundly asleep, he covered his mouth with tow, blindfolded him tightly, bound him hand and foot — ’He raged, he wept blood,’ my mother heard Cambremer say to the lawyer. The mother threw herself at the father’s feet.

  “‘He is judged and condemned,’ replied Pierre; ‘you must now help me carry him to the boat.’

  “She refused; and Cambremer carried him alone; he laid him in the bottom of the boat, tied a stone to his neck, took the oars and rowed out of the cove to the open sea, till he came to the rock where he now is. When the poor mother, who had come up here with her brother-in-law, cried out, ‘Mercy, mercy!’ it was like throwing a stone at a wolf. There was a moon, and she saw the father casting her son into the water; her son, the child of her womb, and as there was no wind, she heard blouf! and then nothing — neither sound nor bubble. Ah! the sea is a fine keeper of what it gets. Rowing inshore to stop his wife’s cries, Cambremer found her half-dead. The two brothers couldn’t carry her the whole distance home, so they had to put her into the boat which had just served to kill her son, and they rowed back round the tower by the channel of Croisic. Well, well! the belle Brouin, as they called her, didn’t last a week. She died begging her husband to burn that accursed boat. Oh, he did it! As for him, he became I don’t know what; he staggered about like a man who can’t carry his wine. Then he went away and was gone ten days, and after he returned he put himself where you saw him, and since he has been there he has never said one word.”

  The fisherman related this history rapidly and more simply than I can write it. The lower classes make few comments as they relate a thing; they tell the fact that strikes them, and present it as they felt it. This tale was made as sharply incisive as the blow of an axe.

  “I shall not go to Batz,” said Pauline, when we came to the upper shore of the lake.

  We returned to Croisic by the salt marshes, through the labyrinth of which we were guided by our fisherman, now as silent as ourselves. The inclination of our souls was changed. We were both plunged into gloomy reflections, saddened by the recital of a drama which explained the sudden presentiment which had seized us on seeing Cambremer. Each of us had enough knowledge of life to divine all that our guide had not told of that triple existence. The anguish of those three beings rose up before us as if we had seen it in a drama, culminating in that of the father expiating his crime. We dared not look at the rock where sat the fatal man who held the whole countryside in awe. A few clouds dimmed the skies; mists were creeping up from the horizon. We walked through a landscape more bitterly gloomy than any our eyes had ever rested on, a nature that seemed sickly, suffering, covered with salty crust, the eczema, it might be called, of earth. Here, the soil was mapped out in squares of unequal size and shape, all encased with enormous ridges or embankments of gray earth and filled with water, to the surface of which the salt scum rises. These gullies, made by the hand of man, are again divided by causeways, along which the laborers pass, armed with long rakes, with which they drag this scum to the bank, heaping it on platforms placed at equal distances when the salt is fit to handle.

  For two hours we skirted the edge of this melancholy checkerboard, where salt has stifled all forms of vegetation, and where no one ever comes but a few “paludiers,” the local name given to the laborers of the salt marshes. These men, or rather this clan of Bretons, wear a special costume: a white jacket, something like that of brewers. They marry among themselves. There is no instance of a girl of the tribe having ever married any man who was not a paludier.

  The horrible aspects of these marshes, these sloughs, the mud of which was systematically raked, the dull gray earth that the Breton flora held in horror, were in keeping with the gloom that filled our souls. When we reached a spot where we crossed an arm of the sea, which no doubt serves to feed the stagnant salt-pools, we noticed with relief the puny vegetation which sprouted through the sand of the beach. As we crossed, we saw the island on which the Cambremers had lived; but we turned away our heads.

  Arriving at the hotel, we noticed a billiard-table, and finding that it was the only billiard-table in Croisic, we made our preparations to leave during the night. The next day we went to Guerande. Pauline was still sad, and I myself felt a return of that fever of the brain which will destroy me. I was so cruelly tortured by the visions that came to me of those three lives, that Pauline said at last, —

  “Louis, write it all down; that will change the nature of the fever within you.”

  So I have written you this narrative, dear uncle; but the shock of such an event has made me lose the calmness I was beginning to gain from sea-bathing and our stay in this place.

  MAITRE CORNELIUS

  Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

  Originally appearing in 1831, Maître Cornélius is a novella, which opens on All Saints’ Day in 1479, by the cathedral of Tours, in Balzac’s beloved home town.

  The imposing Catherdral at Tours, where the novella opens

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I. A CHURCH SCENE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

  CHAPTER II. THE TORCONNIER

  CHAPTER III. THE ROBBERY OF THE JEWELS OF THE DUKE OF BAVARIA

  CHAPTER IV. THE HIDDEN TREASURE

  DEDICATION

  To Monsieur le Comte Georges Mniszech:

  Some envious being may think on seeing this page illustrated by one of the most illustrious of Sarmatian names, that I am striving, as the goldsmiths do, to enhance a modern work with an ancient jewel, — a fancy of the fashions of the day
, — but you and a few others, dear count, will know that I am only seeking to pay my debt to Talent, Memory, and Friendship.

  CHAPTER I. A CHURCH SCENE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

  In 1479, on All Saints’ day, the moment at which this history begins, vespers were ending in the cathedral of Tours. The archbishop Helie de Bourdeilles was rising from his seat to give the benediction himself to the faithful. The sermon had been long; darkness had fallen during the service, and in certain parts of the noble church (the towers of which were not yet finished) the deepest obscurity prevailed. Nevertheless a goodly number of tapers were burning in honor of the saints on the triangular candle-trays destined to receive such pious offerings, the merit and signification of which have never been sufficiently explained. The lights on each altar and all the candelabra in the choir were burning. Irregularly shed among a forest of columns and arcades which supported the three naves of the cathedral, the gleam of these masses of candles barely lighted the immense building, because the strong shadows of the columns, projected among the galleries, produced fantastic forms which increased the darkness that already wrapped in gloom the arches, the vaulted ceilings, and the lateral chapels, always sombre, even at mid-day.

  The crowd presented effects that were no less picturesque. Certain figures were so vaguely defined in the “chiaroscuro” that they seemed like phantoms; whereas others, standing in a full gleam of the scattered light, attracted attention like the principal heads in a picture. Some statues seemed animated, some men seemed petrified. Here and there eyes shone in the flutings of the columns, the floor reflected looks, the marbles spoke, the vaults re-echoed sighs, the edifice itself seemed endowed with life.