The Last Fay

by Honoré de Balzac

  “With that, one morning or one evening—it doesn’t matter which—the father brings by the hand some enchanter or other, and when he has spent an hour or two with his daughter, and has gone, the mother, at a sign from the father, says to the fay: ‘My child, that djinni is hunchbacked or sturdy, ugly or handsome—it doesn’t matter which—my child, that djinni has four hippogriffs and he possesses a diamond wand; he’ll come back tomorrow; try to please him, for that’s your husband.’

  “Then the little fay, who is curious to know why one marries, does not look twice, and, ignorant of what constitutes happiness or unhappiness, consents because she cannot do otherwise; then, after a fortnight, she has to marry the djinni, solely because he has a diamond wand. She will be happy if the character of the djinni is good, unhappy in the contrary case; that doesn’t matter; the wands are of the same genre, and that is the essential thing. So, very often—almost always, in fact—the fays are unhappy...

  “Then, in order to avenge themselves, they amuse themselves opposing their husbands; everything that comes from him is always poisoned, simply because it comes from him; if he has good qualities, that’s convenient, but there’s always something, some vice, that spoils them, and that vice always comes down to this: he’s a husband.

  “The enchanter, for his part, cannot love his fay, because she is always the same fay, and does not have the talent, as some fays have, of metamorphosing in a thousand ways, with the result that they offer a thousand fays in one; so, the majority of marriages are unhappy...”

  “What about you?” asked Abel, immediately. “Are you happy or unhappy? You have a beautiful wand—from whom did you get it?”

  “From an enchanter who was very dear to me…,” she said, then, and tears came to her eyes. “Abel, I have been married, my enchanter is dead, and I have been very unhappy! One day I shall tell you about my misfortune; let it suffice for you to know that I am free, and one of the most powerful and richest of all the fays...”

  They were on the edge of the forest; there, the Pearl Fay gently disengaged the arm that Abel was holding, and, by means of a gesture, forbade him to follow her. Soon, she disappeared, leaving the young man prey to his delirium.

  In fact, he had just seen the Pearl Fay, during that morning, perhaps even more beautiful than when she arrived by night, surrounded by the prestige of her power. She had shown herself in the simplest and most elegant costume; she had sparkled with intelligence and grace; her slender and delicate figure, the pure beauty of her face and the charm of her tender soul had all been deployed with a vivacity and a plenitude that had intoxicated him.

  “Oh, I love her!” he cried, after having listened for a long time to the chariot that was carrying the fay away. Will I ever be sure that my homage will not displease her? Alas, will I ever have the purity of soul, of desire and of thought worthy of that heavenly creature? All the softness of nature is in her gaze and her eyes seem to be a frail veil through which one can perceive her soul. What can I do to merit her? Then, she might love me!

  Such were his thoughts as he returned slowly to the cottage; the memory of that charming morning was engraved eternally in his heart, for he would always remember the fay’s merest words and slightest gestures, as well as the aspect that the sky presented during their conversation. That sweet remembrance is one of the attributes of amour.

  As he approached his cottage, Abel heard cries of immoderate joy, bursts of laughter and a sound of bottles and plates. He hastened to go in through the garden hedge, and found Caliban sitting on a stool with his elbows on a table covered with the debris of a host of dishes. The old servant was drunk; he was holding a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, and he was singing at the top of his voice.

  All that Abel could get out of him was to learn that in the morning he had gone to rub the lamp at the enchanted stone, that he had asked the djinni for a good feast, which had been brought and served in the space of two hours by the fay’s servants.

  Abel left poor Caliban with his bottles, and the old servant, in losing his reason, did not lose very much.

  Chapter X

  Catherine

  While these things were happening at the chemist’s cottage, the village was in revolution, and one can only give the reader a complete image of it by introducing the reader into the house of Monsieur Grandvani, the father of the lovely Catherine.

  Our painters often make interiors seductive in their admirable canvases; why should humble prose not be able to approach the effect the effect produced by the brush, and trace lines that the eye of the soul can color with the most vivid hues? The Muses are sisters, and hence rivals.

  Picture, then, that village, with only one street, and that not very straight, and thus obedient to the law that wants all human things to go awry. The cottages each had their little garden, their courtyard full of straw, the humble dwelling of a donkey or fecund chickens, and containing laborious inhabitants, poor but having a sum of happiness and unhappiness similar to that of city-dwellers, except that their affections were directed toward simpler objects.

  Half way along the street stood the house of the Lord, little different from those of the peasants, but endowed with a harmonious bell, a veridical historian that presided over life and death as well as all the occupations of the inhabitants. In front of the church, the God of which was simple and devoid of ostentation, a square surrounded by large elms saw every Sunday the frolics of a young troop of dancers, and heard the coarse laughter excited by wine, the sole amour of old men; and there, renown and public opinion set up their stalls, exactly as elsewhere, except that they were made of wood that still had its bark.

  On that square there was one house slightly less humble than the others; it had a first floor ornamented by three casements with green shutters; the door was painted with a very particular care, and the local Girodet had been able to find two shades of gray to depict the moldings. Finally, above the door he had written Mairie, without any spelling mistakes, because he had painted the sacramental word with the aid of the Bulletin des lois. To either side of the door lived a rose-bush surrounded by a little green trellis, and those bushes bore tufts at their head garnished with roses, all the way to the shutters of the first floor room inhabited by the charming Catherine—for that house is her father’s. It is the only one, except for the curé’s, to be covered with red tiles, and which has a grain-loft where the cambric that lifted Catherine’s bosom can be laid out and dried, along with the cravat from which the Maire had made his sash.

  On entering the house, one recognizes immediately the presence of a daughter, for the most careful cleanliness is the only thing that decorates the antique staircase that is offered to the gaze.

  To one side is the kitchen, with a large fireplace, terracotta ovens with tiles always brown but clean: the bread-bin, the food cupboard and the shiny table-top are all tidy, and there is not a single spider to listen to the melancholy sound of the dripping water escaping slowly from the osier fountain that garnishes one of the corners.

  To the other side is Grandvani’s room; at the back, one sees the bed with antique twisted posts and green serge curtains. The floor has walnut joists and the tiles are clean and always scrubbed. On the Portland stone fireplace there is a mirror, on one side of which hangs a calendar, and on the other a poor print representing The Death of Poor Credit, killed by painters, musicians, authors, actors and speculators, with a long story commenting on that tragic adventure, but the designer, unable to represent governments in material form because they change too frequently, has forgotten those assassins of poor Credit.

  Facing the fireplace is a long box that contains in its slender body the pendulum of a chiming clock, surmounted by the statue of an animal whose gilt is effaced. The paper that decorates the wall is charged with birds that are singing while looking at you incessantly, and seem as if they have been petrified, because they remain eternally in the same place, always looking at you with the same gaze, which sovereigns and friends do n
ot have.

  The window is ornamented by two printed cotton curtains with a thousand flowers, lined with calico. There, a chair permanently set before a small table, like a sewing-table, on which are scissors, a thimble, thread, wax, Grandvani’s jacket and a half-embroidered collerette, inform you that this is Catherine’s habitual station. It is there that she sits, because outside she can see, through the window, everything that is happening in the square.

  Before knowing Abel, she saw in the distance the sergeant, Jacques Bontems coming, and her father knew when he was approaching on seeing Catherine come to embrace him, for she dared not admit that she ran to look at herself in the mirror, in order to assure herself that her headscarf was straight, her face pleasant and the curls of hair neatly positioned. She blushed, listened, and ran to open the door after having placed a chair beside her father.

  As for Grandvani, he was in the corner of his hearth, beside his bed, in a large velvet winged armchair from Utrecht, the original color of which could no longer be distinguished, although it was a safe bet that it had once been yellow, given that it was now so worn that it was almost white, and only yellow turns white.

  The old man was always in black knee-breeches, black stockings, with a blue coat with big metal buttons sculpted in facets, wearing a round gray bonnet like those worn by diligence conductors. The cheerful fellow, a trifle miserly, loving wine but loving his daughter more, acted in the locale whose cock he was like the autocrats of the Orient—which is to say that he rarely went out, and his favorite occupations were chatting and reading. He had beside him a table on which lay the mayoral registers, an inkwell, a few quills, the seal—the sign of his power—and finally, a shelf of stamps, plus the laws and edicts that were sent to him, and from which he drew the principles of his conduct, while seeking to divine that of the government—research in which he was powerfully aided by Jacques Bontems, which ensured that they both went astray in that inextricable labyrinth.

  Most often, silence reigned, and the pendulum of the clock was alone in speaking, especially since Catherine had fallen in love with Abel.

  The furniture of that room was becoming: a walnut tale that had served for more than one feast, chairs garnished with printed cotton cushions, antique armchairs, and, in front of the mirror on the mantelpiece, a plaster virgin holding her infant, with carmine-tinted cheeks. A plaster portrait of the King and a bust of Bonaparte—the latter in the cupboard—completed the furniture of that abode of peace and tranquility.

  It was before that hearth and before Grandvani that all the quarrels of the village were settled; he was its king, and he had no other ministers than the curé and the sergeant: all people of good composition, having no liking for reactions, interventions, revolutions, destitutions, purges or conspiracies, veritable or otherwise.

  That haven of peace thus respired a rural ease, and a calm that pleased the soul; but it would have seemed like paradise to anyone who saw the charming Catherine sitting in her chair, her face illuminated by daylight, her agile hand plying a needle, in a mild reverie, and looking at her father with a meek and calm affection, a pure pleasure, sometimes pushing the curls of her hair away from her pale forehead rich in innocence, and getting up to chase away a few specks of dust—the only thing in the world she could hate.

  So she had been, once: naïve, cheerful, with a keen gaze, but ignorant and chaste, listening to everything with a virginal curiosity, and smiling at what she did not understand; but at the moment we are about to describe, although the furniture, the room, the atmosphere and the worthy Grandvani have not changed at all, the poor child is astonishing.

  A lamp is set on the mantelpiece. Grandvani is half-asleep in his armchair, and Catherine is embroidering a muslin headscarf by the ruddy light of the nocturnal star that is shining in that modest room. Françoise, the domestic, is in a corner turning her spinning-wheel and spinning in silence.

  Poor Catherine, who once chatted randomly about what was happening in the village and filled, for her father, the role of a gazette, preventing him from going to sleep after dinner, is mute, even after the event that is astonishing the village, news of which has not yet crossed the threshold of the Maire’s house. However, Catherine knows the fact, since she was one of its actors, and has seen with her own eyes that which is stupefying the entire village. Yes, but Catherine is mute, she is letting her father sleep, who has been trying for a long time to hold on to the snuff-box that has finally slipped from his fingers. Catherine is plying her needle slowly; she often stops, raises her eyes, thinks she sees a cherished image, and sighs in that contemplation.

  The poor child is in love, in love with her soul; her senses have nothing to do with it; she wants to hear forever the soft voice that speaks of enchantment and fays; she would like to mingle, by means of a gaze, her soul with that of the man who seems to her to be all beauty, all love.

  Silence reigns so well in the room that one can count the movements of the clock and Françoise’s spinning-wheel. Suddenly, someone knocks on the door, and several voices are heard, that of Jacques Bontems among them.

  Catherine does not get up precipitately; it is no longer her who runs to open the door; she no longer looks in the mirror framed in sculpted black wood; no, she remains motionless, tears ready to invade the crystal limpidity of her amorous eyes, and it is Françoise who gets up and runs to open the door.

  At that noise, Grandvani wakes up.

  Antoine’s father and the sergeant come in, and their countenances announce that something extraordinary has happened.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur le Maire,” said the stout farmer, sitting down next to Grandvani

  “Is all well, Père Grandvani?” says the cavalry sergeant, shaking the hand of Catherine’s father, and he adds, addressing the young woman: “And you, Mademoiselle, you no longer recognize your friends, since, for some time, you no longer come to open up…because I could hear through the door when it was you; you sang the refrain of a song so prettily!”

  Catherine made no reply and Jacques Bontems looked at her with astonishment.

  “Monsieur le Maire,” said the stout farmer, turning his hat in his hands, “I’ve come for an affair of consequence. Mademoiselle Catherine has doubtless talked to you about it, for there isn’t a child in the village who hasn’t heard about it.”

  “What is it, then?” Grandvani replied. “No, I don’t know anything, Françoise, bring us a bottle of wine; that will rinse our throats.”

  “And the dust will vanish in speech,” added the cuirassier.

  “Can you imagine,” continued the farmer, “that that little Juliette, who wants to marry my son, came home last night with thirty thousand francs in gold?”

  “Bah!” said Grandvani, opening his eyes wide. “Where did she get them, then?”

  “Ah, that’s it!” said Jacques Bontems. “There’s those who say that she, who hadn’t got a sou yesterday, and had the devil in her body for Antoine, must have robbed someone! For a girl in love in worse than a regiment of grenadiers...”

  At this point, Catherine blushed and abruptly interrupted the cuirassier, crying: “Get away! It’s wicked to accuse poor Juliette of such an infamous action! She, who is so gentle, so loving, so pretty, how can you?

  “Ah!” said the farmer. “You know something about it; for the whole village knows that you helped her to carry the bag of gold home.”

  “Certainly,” said Catherine.

  “Oh, Père Grandvani,” cried the cuirassier, “look at your daughter! She has a red footprint over her face, as if an English regiment had galloped over it.”

  Grandvani looked at his daughter, and said to her in a tone that he tried to render severe: “Catherine, what does this mystery signify? What has happened, then? Was it you who opened the door so quietly at ten o’clock? I thought it was Françoise! And I was already wondering who her lover could be.”

  “Yes, father, it was me...”

  At those words, Grandvani put his glass down on the table, Franço
ise quit her spinning-wheel, the sergeant caressed his moustache, the farmer stopped rotating his hat, and all four of them remained motionless, their eyes fixed on Catherine, open-mouthed; and the poor child, looking at the farmer, said to him:

  “So, Père Verniaud, you’re going to make your son happy, since Juliette is rich, and you’ve come here to fulfill the formalities.”

  “No, Mademoiselle,” said the farmer. “So long as I don’t know the source from which Juliette obtained her thirty thousand francs, I won’t budge.”

  “Go on, daughter, tell us where they came from.”

  Then Catherine blushing, over and over again, recounted the apparition of the djinni of the lamp, as soon as a handsome young man rubbed it and stamped on the enchanted stone. She told them everything she knew about the chemist’s son, and her naïve eulogies, her candor, ignited the bile of Jacques Bontems, who cried:

  “Name of the Devil, I can see it clearly! That fine conscript there is some villain who’s only paying her for what he took. By the bowl of my pipe and a thousand bombs, you won’t be the grandfather of your son’s child, Père Verniaud, for this business hides some farce, and I tell you that it’s a tale that Mademoiselle Catherine is giving us. A lamp that spits djinni that have gold coins…tell the others! Money’s so scarce that no one can get it! How can one believe that it grows like that?”

  “I’m telling the truth!” Catherine said, in a tone full of innocence. “And what I’ve told, I’ve seen—and as for Juliette, I don’t know what Monsieur Bontems means.”