Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  Caudine Forks of another petty trouble, as follows:

  THE AVOWAL.

  One morning, Adolphe is petted in a very unusual manner. The too happy husband wonders what may be the cause of this development of affection, and he hears Caroline, in her most winning tones, utter the word: “Adolphe?”

  “Well?” he replies, in alarm at the internal agitation betrayed by

  Caroline’s voice.

  “Promise not to be angry.”

  “Well.”

  “Not to be vexed with me.”

  “Never. Go on.”

  “To forgive me and never say anything about it.”

  “But tell me what it is!”

  “Besides, you are the one that’s in the wrong — ”

  “Speak, or I’ll go away.”

  “There’s no one but you that can get me out of the scrape — and it was you that got me into it.”

  “Come, come.”

  “It’s about — ”

  “About — ”

  “About Justine!”

  “Don’t speak of her, she’s discharged. I won’t see her again, her style of conduct exposes your reputation — ”

  “What can people say — what have they said?”

  The scene changes, the result of which is a secondary explanation which makes Caroline blush, as she sees the bearing of the suppositions of her best friends.

  “Well, now, Adolphe, it’s to you I owe all this. Why didn’t you tell me about Frederick?”

  “Frederick the Great? The King of Prussia?”

  “What creatures men are! Hypocrite, do you want to make me believe that you have forgotten your son so soon, M’lle Suzanne Beauminet’s son?”

  “Then you know — ?”

  “The whole thing! And old other Mahuchet, and your absences from home to give him a good dinner on holidays.”

  “How like moles you pious women can be if you try!” exclaims Adolphe, in his terror.

  “It was Justine that found it out.”

  “Ah! Now I understand the reason of her insolence.”

  “Oh, your Caroline has been very wretched, dear, and this spying system, which was produced by my love for you, for I do love you, and madly too, — if you deceived me, I would fly to the extremity of creation, — well, as I was going to say, this unfounded jealousy has put me in Justine’s power, so, my precious, get me out of it the best way you can!”

  “Let this teach you, my angel, never to make use of your servants, if you want them to be of use to you. It is the lowest of tyrannies, this being at the mercy of one’s people.”

  Adolphe takes advantage of this circumstance to alarm Caroline, he thinks of future Chaumontel’s affairs, and would be glad to have no more espionage.

  Justine is sent for, Adolphe peremptorily dismisses her without waiting to hear her explanation. Caroline imagines her vexations at an end. She gets another maid.

  Justine, whose twelve or fifteen thousand francs have attracted the notice of a water carrier, becomes Madame Chavagnac, and goes into the apple business. Ten months after, in Adolphe’s absence, Caroline receives a letter written upon school-boy paper, in strides which would require orthopedic treatment for three months, and thus conceived:

  “Madam!

  “Yu ar shaimphoolly diseeved bi yure huzban fur mame Deux fischtaminelle, hee goze their evry eavning, yu ar az blynde az a Batt. Your gott wott yu dizzurv, and I am Glad ovit, and I have thee honur ov prezenting yu the assurunz ov Mi moaste ds Sting guischt respecks.”

  Caroline starts like a lion who has been stung by a bumble-bee; she places herself once more, and of her own accord, upon the griddle of suspicion, and begins her struggle with the unknown all over again.

  When she has discovered the injustice of her suspicions, there comes another letter with an offer to furnish her with details relative to a Chaumontel’s affair which Justine has unearthed.

  The petty trouble of avowals, ladies, is often more serious than this, as you perhaps have occasion to remember.

  HUMILIATIONS.

  To the glory of women, let it be said, they care for their husbands even when their husbands care no more for them, not only because there are more ties, socially speaking, between a married woman and a man, than between the man and the wife; but also because woman has more delicacy and honor than man, the chief conjugal question apart, as a matter of course.

  Axiom. — In a husband, there is only a man; in a married woman, there is a man, a father, a mother and a woman.

  A married woman has sensibility enough for four, or for five even, if you look closely.

  Now, it is not improper to observe in this place, that, in a woman’s eyes, love is a general absolution: the man who is a good lover may commit crimes, if he will, he is always as pure as snow in the eyes of her who loves him, if he truly loves her. As to a married woman, loved or not, she feels so deeply that the honor and consideration of her husband are the fortune of her children, that she acts like the woman in love, — so active is the sense of community of interest.

  This profound sentiment engenders, for certain Carolines, petty troubles which, unfortunately for this book, have their dismal side.

  Adolphe is compromised. We will not enumerate all the methods of compromising oneself, for we might become personal. Let us take, as an example, the social error which our epoch excuses, permits, understands and commits the most of any — the case of an honest robbery, of skillfully concealed corruption in office, or of some misrepresentation that becomes excusable when it has succeeded, as, for instance, having an understanding with parties in power, for the sale of property at the highest possible price to a city, or a country.

  Thus, in a bankruptcy, Adolphe, in order to protect himself (this means to recover his claims), has become mixed up in certain unlawful doings which may bring a man to the necessity of testifying before the Court of Assizes. In fact, it is not known that the daring creditor will not be considered a party.

  Take notice that in all cases of bankruptcy, protecting oneself is regarded as the most sacred of duties, even by the most respectable houses: the thing is to keep the bad side of the protection out of sight, as they do in prudish England.

  Adolphe does not know what to do, as his counsel has told him not to appear in the matter: so he has recourse to Caroline. He gives her a lesson, he coaches her, he teaches her the Code, he examines her dress, he equips her as a brig sent on a voyage, and despatches her to the office of some judge, or some syndic. The judge is apparently a man of severe morality, but in reality a libertine: he retains his serious expression on seeing a pretty woman enter, and makes sundry very uncomplimentary remarks about Adolphe.

  “I pity you, madame, you belong to a man who may involve you in numerous unpleasant affairs: a few more matters like this, and he will be quite disgraced. Have you any children? Excuse my asking; you are so young, it is perfectly natural.” And the judge comes as near to Caroline as possible.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ah, great heavens! what a prospect is yours! My first thought was for the woman, but now I pity you doubly, I think of the mother. Ah, how you must have suffered in coming here! Poor, poor woman!”

  “Ah, sir, you take an interest in me, do you not?”

  “Alas, what can I do?” says the judge, darting a glance sidewise at Caroline. “What you ask of me is a dereliction of duty, and I am a magistrate before I am a man.”

  “Oh, sir, only be a man — ”

  “Are you aware of the full bearing of that request, fair creature?” At this point the magistrate tremblingly takes Caroline’s hand.

  Caroline, who remembers that the honor of her husband and children is at stake, says to herself that this is not the time to play the prude. She abandons her hand, making just resistance enough for the old man (happily he is an old man) to consider it a favor.

  “Come, come, my beauty,” resumes the judge, “I should be loath to cause so lovely a woman to shed tears; we’ll see about it. You s
hall come to-morrow evening and tell me the whole affair. We must look at the papers, we will examine them together — ”

  “Sir — ”

  “It’s indispensable.”

  “But, sir — ”

  “Don’t be alarmed, my dear, a judge is likely to know how to grant what is due to justice and — ” he puts on a shrewd look here — ”to beauty.”

  “But, sir — ”

  “Be quite at your ease,” he adds, holding her hand closely in his, “and we’ll try to reduce this great crime down to a peccadillo.” And he goes to the door with Caroline, who is frightened to death at an appointment thus proposed.

  The syndic is a lively young man, and he receives Madame Adolphe with a smile. He smiles at everything, and he smiles as he takes her round the waist with an agility which leaves Caroline no time to resist, especially as she says to herself, “Adolphe particularly recommended me not to vex the syndic.”

  Nevertheless Caroline escapes, in the interest of the syndic himself, and again pronounces the “Sir!” which she had said three times to the judge.

  “Don’t be angry with me, you are irresistible, you are an angel, and your husband is a monster: for what does he mean by sending a siren to a young man whom he knows to be inflammable!”

  “Sir, my husband could not come himself; he is in bed, very sick, and you threatened him so terribly that the urgency of the matter — ”

  “Hasn’t he got a lawyer, an attorney?”

  Caroline is terrified by this remark which reveals Adolphe’s profound rascality.

  “He supposed, sir, that you would have pity upon the mother of a family, upon her children — ”

  “Ta, ta, ta,” returns the syndic. “You have come to influence my independence, my conscience, you want me to give the creditors up to you: well, I’ll do more, I give you up my heart, my fortune! Your husband wants to save his honor, my honor is at your disposal!”

  “Sir,” cries Caroline, as she tries to raise the syndic who has thrown himself at her feet. “You alarm me!”

  She plays the terrified female and thus reaches the door, getting out of a delicate situation as women know how to do it, that is, without compromising anything or anybody.

  “I will come again,” she says smiling, “when you behave better.”

  “You leave me thus! Take care! Your husband may yet find himself seated at the bar of the Court of Assizes: he is accessory to a fraudulent bankruptcy, and we know several things about him that are not by any means honorable. It is not his first departure from rectitude; he has done a good many dirty things, he has been mixed up in disgraceful intrigues, and you are singularly careful of the honor of a man who cares as little for his own honor as he does for yours.”

  Caroline, alarmed by these words, lets go the door, shuts it and comes back.

  “What do you mean, sir?” she exclaims, furious at this outrageous broadside.

  “Why, this affair — ”

  “Chaumontel’s affair?”

  “No, his speculations in houses that he had built by people that were insolvent.”

  Caroline remembers the enterprise undertaken by Adolphe to double his income: (See The Jesuitism of Women) she trembles. Her curiosity is in the syndic’s favor.

  “Sit down here. There, at this distance, I will behave well, but I can look at you.”

  And he narrates, at length, the conception due to du Tillet the banker, interrupting himself to say: “Oh, what a pretty, cunning, little foot; no one but you could have such a foot as that — Du Tillet, therefore, compromised. What an ear, too! You have been doubtless told that you had a delicious ear — And du Tillet was right, for judgment had already been given — I love small ears, but let me have a model of yours, and I will do anything you like — du Tillet profited by this to throw the whole loss on your idiotic husband: oh, what a charming silk, you are divinely dressed!”

  “Where were we, sir?”

  “How can I remember while admiring your Raphaelistic head?”

  At the twenty-seventh compliment, Caroline considers the syndic a man of wit: she makes him a polite speech, and goes away without learning much more of the enterprise which, not long before had swallowed up three hundred thousand francs.

  There are many huge variations of this petty trouble.

  EXAMPLE. Adolphe is brave and susceptible: he is walking on the Champs Elysees, where there is a crowd of people; in this crowd are several ill-mannered young men who indulge in jokes of doubtful propriety: Caroline puts up with them and pretends not to hear them, in order to keep her husband out of a duel.

  ANOTHER EXAMPLE. A child belonging to the genus Terrible, exclaims in the presence of everybody:

  “Mamma, would you let Justine hit me?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Why do you ask, my little man?” inquires Madame Foullepointe.

  “Because she just gave father a big slap, and he’s ever so much stronger than me.”

  Madame Foullepointe laughs, and Adolphe, who intended to pay court to her, is cruelly joked by her, after having had a first last quarrel with Caroline.

  THE LAST QUARREL.

  In every household, husbands and wives must one day hear the striking of a fatal hour. It is a knell, the death and end of jealousy, a great, noble and charming passion, the only true symptom of love, if it is not even its double. When a woman is no longer jealous of her husband, all is over, she loves him no more. So, conjugal love expires in the last quarrel that a woman gives herself the trouble to raise.

  Axiom. — When a woman ceases to quarrel with her husband, the Minotaur has seated himself in a corner arm-chair, tapping his boots with his cane.

  Every woman must remember her last quarrel, that supreme petty trouble which often explodes about nothing, but more often still on some occasion of a brutal fact or of a decisive proof. This cruel farewell to faith, to the childishness of love, to virtue even, is in a degree as capricious as life itself. Like life it varies in every house.

  Here, the author ought perhaps to search out all the varieties of quarrels, if he desires to be precise.

  Thus, Caroline may have discovered that the judicial robe of the syndic in Chaumontel’s affair, hides a robe of infinitely softer stuff, of an agreeable, silky color: that Chaumontel’s hair, in short, is fair, and that his eyes are blue.

  Or else Caroline, who arose before Adolphe, may have seen his greatcoat thrown wrong side out across a chair; the edge of a little perfumed paper, just peeping out of the side-pocket, may have attracted her by its whiteness, like a ray of the sun entering a dark room through a crack in the window: or else, while taking Adolphe in her arms and feeling his pocket, she may have caused the note to crackle: or else she may have been informed of the state of things by a foreign odor that she has long noticed upon him, and may have read these lines:

  “Ungraitfull wun, wot du yu supoz I no About Hipolite. Kum, and yu shal se whether I Love yu.”

  Or this:

  “Yesterday, love, you made me wait for you: what will it be to-morrow?”

  Or this:

  “The women who love you, my dear sir, are very unhappy in hating you so, when you are not with them: take care, for the hatred which exists during your absence, may possibly encroach upon the hours you spend in their company.”

  Or this:

  “You traitorous Chodoreille, what were you doing yesterday on the boulevard with a woman hanging on your arm? If it was your wife, accept my compliments of condolence upon her absent charms: she has doubtless deposited them at the pawnbroker’s, and the ticket to redeem them with is lost.”

  Four notes emanating from the grisette, the lady, the pretentious woman in middle life, and the actress, among whom Adolphe has chosen his belle (according to the Fischtaminellian vocabulary).

  Or else Caroline, taken veiled by Ferdinand to Ranelagh Garden, sees with her own eyes Adolphe abandoning himself furiously to the polka, holding one of the ladies of honor to Queen Pomare in his arms; or els
e, again, Adolphe has for the seventh time, made a mistake in the name, and called his wife Juliette, Charlotte or Lisa: or, a grocer or restaurateur sends to the house, during Adolphe’s absence, certain damning bills which fall into Caroline’s hands.

  PAPERS RELATING TO CHAUMONTEL’S AFFAIR.

  (Private Tables Served.)

  M. Adolphe to Perrault,

  To 1 Pate de Foie Gras delivered at Madame

  Schontz’s, the 6th of January, fr. 22.50

  Six bottle of assorted wines, 70.00

  To one special breakfast delivered at Congress

  Hotel, the 11th of February, at No. 21 — —

  Stipulated price, 100.00

  Total, Francs, 192.50

  Caroline examines the dates and remembers them as appointments made for business connected with Chaumontel’s affair. Adolphe had designated the sixth of January as the day fixed for a meeting at which the creditors in Chaumontel’s affair were to receive the sums due them. On the eleventh of February he had an appointment with the notary, in order to sign a receipt relative to Chaumontel’s affair.

  Or else — but an attempt to mention all the chances of discovery would be the undertaking of a madman.

  Every woman will remember to herself how the bandage with which her eyes were bound fell off: how, after many doubts, and agonies of heart, she made up her mind to have a final quarrel for the simple purpose of finishing the romance, putting the seal to the book, stipulating for her independence, or beginning life over again.

  Some women are fortunate enough to have anticipated their husbands, and they then have the quarrel as a sort of justification.

  Nervous women give way to a burst of passion and commit acts of violence.

  Women of mild temper assume a decided tone which appalls the most intrepid husbands. Those who have no vengeance ready shed a great many tears.

  Those who love you forgive you. Ah, they conceive so readily, like the woman called “Ma berline,” that their Adolphe must be loved by the women of France, that they are rejoiced to possess, legally, a man about whom everybody goes crazy.