The Last Fay

by Honoré de Balzac

  “I know that before the Revolution,” the Maire said, “that cottage had a chimney like that of a forge, and when I was there, by order of Monsieur le Curé, I saw diabolical things—but it could well be that someone was making false money there.”

  Grandvani’s idea was seized with avidity, and immediately, Françoise was sent to fetch Juliette.

  She came. Antoine was with her. They were holding hands, and the purest happiness animated their eyes, their movements and their expressions. They did not say a single word without consulting one another with their eyes, nor let a minute pass without looking at one another, and seemed to dread that Time, with all its centuries, would not have space enough to suffice for their tenderness. Antoine, tall and strong, and Juliette, thin, slender and pretty, were there before the Maire like a model, an eternal image, of a happy union.

  “Let’s see,” said the Maire, “one of the gold coins of your dowry.”

  Juliette threw one on to the table and everyone made it resound on the tiles, on the mantelpiece, and it always sounded pure and agreeable: that harmonica, the sound of which brings down the consciences of men and the walls of cities, after which everyone runs, and the noisiest racket of which is not worth as much as one minute of pleasure.

  “That’s quite extraordinary!” exclaimed Grandvani, convinced that the coin was authentic.

  “Well,” said the farmer, already fearing that the thirty thousand francs might escape him, “since Mademoiselle Catherine is a witness to the fact, Antoine shall marry Juliette, provided that the existence if the lamp is verified. It will be good for the village if people can have everything they desire.”

  There was no talk of anything but the Marvelous Lamp throughout the village, and everyone’s gaze was turned desirously toward the cottage. Some cast doubt on such an adventure; others, seeing Juliette and her dowry, wished that something similar might happen to them; in sum, everyone wanted to see the handsome inhabitant of the Devil’s cottage.

  In the midst of all these circumstances, there was such contentment at the fortunate success of Juliette and Antoine that every morning, the young women of the village came to put a flower on the banns attached to the door of the Mairie. Those ribbons and flowers, Catherine saw, and every day they excited a sharp pain in the depths of her heart, for Juliette’s felicity made her compare her fate with her own, and that comparison was very cruel for her.

  A few days after that scene she went to find Juliette and said to her: “You’re lucky! Oh, my dear friend, I’ve inherited all your misfortune. I love your benefactor. Help me, I beg you, to remain alone in possession of going to the cottage on the hill. You can see that everyone in the village is talking about going to his dwelling to see him, and it, his lamp—for it’s his lamp more than him that they want to examine. They’ll importune him; he’ll see other people than me. Isn’t it enough that I already have his fay for a rival? Help me, then, my dear Juliette, and let’s tell everyone that he has said that he only wants to communicate with one of us two, and you must take care, if anyone desires anything, always to leave it to me.”

  On hearing this speech, intermingled with tears, Juliette agreed to everything, but for her part she begged Catherine to make sure that the handsome stranger would come to her wedding and witness the happiness that was his work.

  When news of that singular determination on the part of the chemist’s son spread through the village, Jacques Bontemps, reflecting on the change in Catherine’s behavior, began to suspect some “drollery,” to use his expression, and he promised himself to discover the secret of the mysterious adventure.

  Chapter XI

  The Lamp is Stolen

  One morning, Catherine returned to the cottage that contained all her life and happiness. She perceived Abel sitting on his bench, and from the moment that she saw the man she loved, her face lost the expression of meek melancholy that resided there, to take on that of the purest joy. But she saw immediately that Abel was sad, and immediately, she became sad, for she resembled those clouds in the sky that borrow their color from the sun.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked him, in a tone of voice that respired a tender compassion.

  “Alas,” he replied, “for three days I haven’t seen my little fay; I can’t live without seeing her. Oh, my dear Catherine, she infused me with life by a glance; far from her, or without her, everything is cold, colorless, dull, dead; nothing pleases me. Just now, I said something harsh to Caliban, and the poor man wept. I would have liked to put myself on my knees and beg his pardon, but when I saw my dolor, he claimed would like always to be maltreated thus. I wept in my turn, and I took refuge here, on this bench, in order to think about the pretty Pearl Fay.”

  “Is she very pretty, then?” asked Catherine, forgetting momentarily all the recommendations of the village.

  “I don’t really know,” Abel replied, “for when I see her, I believe that I’m having a celestial vision that presents to me a pure soul, detached from all human circumstance.”

  “You don’t love anyone in the world except her…?” asked Catherine, trembling.

  “Yes,” said Abel, “although I love no one but her amorously, for I sense that I love you.”

  Catherine remained pensive; that statement, although stripped of the sentiment that she wanted, nevertheless appeared to her to be a divine discourse.

  Finally, she broke the silence in order to ask Abel to come to Juliette’s wedding. Abel refused for a long time, but Catherine put so much charm and grace into her ardent persistence that the chemist’s son agreed to come down to the village.

  “Catherine,” he said then, “that’s on one condition. I haven’t given you anything to remind you with what brotherly love I love you. I want you, at that fête where everyone will adorn themselves, to be brilliant. Will you come with me?”

  And, taking her by the hand, he took her to the stone. Abel performed the usual ceremony there with the lamp, which he always carried on his person. The lovely djinni with the head crowned with flowers, always fresh and always new, appeared immediately, and Abel asked for a superb adornment for Catherine. The djinni plucked a long blade of grass still charged with dew, took the measurement of the blushing young woman’s slender waist, and then promised to obey his master’s order as promptly as possible.

  Poor Catherine, full of joy—for she still had hope—announced the news to Juliette.

  “He’ll come,” she said. “Undoubtedly, all gazes will fall upon him, but I alone will be able to press his hand, sense his soul. Oh, that happiness is a great deal; it’s everything…yes, it’s everything that I could ask of heaven!”

  A few days later, Catherine was getting ready to go to bed. Suddenly, there is a loud noise in the square. She opens the window, and perceives a cavalier heading for the house. The cavalier draws nearer, and stops outside the door. Catherine goes downstairs, and, without saying a word, the stranger hands her a package on which she reads by the light of the moon, the only street-light there is in the village, which never runs out of gas: To Mademoiselle Catherine Grandvani.

  As one can imagine, Catherine could hardly sleep when, after returning to her modest room, she unwrapped the parcel and admired a charming costume, consisting of a white satin under-dress and another dress that seemed to her to be lace but which, really, was actually a beautiful embroidered tulle. A row of false pearls, which she took for real daughters of the Oriental waves, played and ran through the sinuosities of the creases that formed its decoration, and the neckline of the charming dress had a grace that delighted Catherine. In fact, the top of the sleeves was garnished with seed-pearls, which played around the arms and the corsage, between her two lovely breasts, designing an inverted delta, which was terminated at each angle by masses of pearls.

  A golden comb garnished with pearls, black satin shoes, and very fine glazed white gloves completed the outfit, but what showed that a woman had presided over that costume was that Catherine found at the bottom of the box a delightf
ul necklace and earrings formed by large pieces of magnificent jet. Apparently, the fay had thought that she was the only one whose skin was so white that pearls could be confounded with it.

  Was the black necklace an epigram addressed to her rival or a delicate attention? The question is difficult to decide, but at any rate, the necklace was the only thing that Catherine dared to try on. She took off her pretty collar, put the black necklace on, and jumped for joy, clapping her hands on seeing how her alabaster skin seemed a thousand times whiter by virtue of the effect of that jewelry.

  She went to her casement, and looked into the air in the direction of the hill, and there, her heart addressed a thousand loving affections to her cherished idol; and she charged the zephyrs with her prayers; certainly, they had to fly less rapidly, and that night, the flowers did not curb their heads under the embalmed breath of the sons of Flora.

  “It’s true what they say,” she added, on returning to her mirror. “A girl looks quite different with jewels! They give one an air...” And the poor child, intoxicated by a very forgivable pride—for it did not cause the loss of anyone—thinking of all brilliance with which she would shine at Juliette’s wedding, ran to wake Francoise, and for a second time she ecstasized over her adornment, enjoying it doubly on seeing the maid’s astonishment.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed, when she was in bed, “the man who gives such an adornment must love me...”

  The day of Antoine and Juliette’s wedding, so much desired, arrived. It would require the brush of the Dutch school to give an idea of the scene that the square in front of the church presented.

  Fine sand had been strewn under the tufted elms, and formed a square area, at the end of which a few empty barrels, covered with planks, served as a throne for the two village fiddlers, whose violins were garnished with multicolored ribbons. Before that musical Areopagus, a crowd of young men and women, all dressed up, their faces imprinted with the frank gaiety born of the forgetfulness of labor, were laughing, dancing and frolicking with a sincerity, a noise and a confusion that inspired the desire to join in.

  Around the square there were tables set up, and the old men in their best clothes were talking, arguing and rambling while serving themselves drinks or playing cards. A few, however, remained standing, hands behind their backs, contemplating the frolics of youth, remembering the years of their youth and making reflections on the approach of their winter. Those tanned faces, on which the words fatigue and toil were legible, were all smiling, and the songs of joy went as high as they could in the air. I imagine that there was some angel in heaven who, from the vault, was pouring down on them that spirit of the forgetfulness of evils, the most precious gift of all.

  The fortunate couple had not yet arrived, and Catherine was also missing. After mass, Catherine had got dressed furtively, and had gone furtively to fetch her dear Abel. So, after the dance, people looked toward the street, and a grave anxiety was manifest on the faces of the wedding guests, deprived of the sovereigns of the celebration. An even more powerful curiosity agitated minds, for it had not been forgotten that Juliette had boasted of seeing at her wedding her handsome benefactor, the chemist’s son.

  “Will he come with his lamp?” asked a young peasant-woman.

  “It’s said that he’s as handsome as an angel,” said another.

  “Do you know,” said a farmer to one of his colleagues, in a corner, “that fat Mathurin isn’t sure of renewing his lease for the beautiful farm of Madame la Duchesse de Sommerset,13 the rich English princess, and that there’s a good thing to be obtained by offering twelve thousand francs for it. If this lamp of which there’s so much talk has the power to sign leases, that would be even better.”

  “Do you believe these stupid things?” replied the farmer.

  At that moment, little children appeared in the high street of the village, running with an air of astonishment that gave rise to the belief that something extraordinary was happening. They turned their heads repeatedly, stopped, looked, and then ran on in silence, as if stupefied.

  Soon, Catherine was seen arriving in the square, in her brilliant outfit, giving her arm to Antoine, and the chemist’s son was conducting the lovely Juliette. Antoine’s father was following Abel respectfully, for a man who throws thirty thousand francs to a young woman as one throws a piece of bread to a stray dog, is not to be disdained.

  At the sight of that quadrille, silence fell, and people formed a hedge as they passed by; it seemed that no one had enough eyes to contemplated Abel, whose singular costume and striking beauty astonished all the peasants. The lamp especially, the lamp that he wore suspended around his neck, as the most precious thing in the world, since it came from the Pearl Fay, seemed a sun of which everyone wanted to have a ray. It was not until that first furor of curiosity had been slaked that a long murmur was heard when people saw Catherine so beautiful and so resplendent.

  The tax-collector found himself beside Jacques Bontems, who, at the sight of Catherine dressed so sumptuously, frowned and moved his head in a singular manner. The tax-collector said to one of his partisans, loudly enough for the cuirassier to hear: “That’s what comes from knowing enchanters! They give beautiful dresses; look at Mademoiselle Catherine; she’s rubbed the lamp nicely, for it’s said that it’s necessary to rub it to have what one wants.”

  The ironic tone of these words inflamed the sergeant, who turned to the tax-collector and looked at him in a fashion to make him fall silent immediately.

  “Bag of numbers,” he exclaimed, “by my bancal”—that is what cuirassiers call their sabers—“he hasn’t got anything that I don’t…if I ever hear another syllable of slander against Catherine, I’ll cut off the orator’s ears, you hear…march in step, and beware bombs!”

  Jacques Bontems loved Catherine, and he loved her profoundly, although his abrupt manners and his exterior seemed incompatible with such a delicate sentiment. The cuirassier’s sentiment was like the canvas of a great painter depicting a violently agitated man: you look, and nothing betrays the emotion; you examine closely, and the manner in which he is holding his hand, his foot or in which he sticks out his chest gives you a cold sweat; thus, a single word or gesture on Jacques’ part said everything: he would die for Catherine, with the same sang-froid with which he would have obeyed his captain.

  Abel was standing by the barrels; it goes without saying that Catherine was not elsewhere. Jacques came to find the Maire’s daughter, and looked at her with an expression of interest and dolor. He whispered in her ear, in such a manner that no one else could hear:

  “Catherine, I love you to the utmost depths of my heart, and if you were smitten with another, I wouldn’t love you any less, but my child, vanity will doom you; these beautiful clothes betray you, and everyone is talking about it. You can be more beautiful for the others, but for those who love you, under whatever form they see you, you’ll be the same. Who gave you that outfit?”

  “The lamp,” she said blushing.

  “The lamp!” repeated the cuirassier, shaking his head. “Oh, Catherine, Catherine, I’ll make sure of that…!”

  The pretty girl did not hear the last words. In fact, the presence of Abel, who only talked to her, and who remained by her side, had rendered Catherine drunk with happiness. She was cheerful, lively and animated, and her amorous folly seemed to spread through the whole assembly.

  At every moment Catherine wanted to collect Abel’s words, interrogate his soul, keep a lookout for his gazes, play with the lamp that a silk cord passed around his neck suspended over his heart; and Abel, for his part, with the naivety that distinguished him, passed his fingers through Catherine’s hair and held her hand in front of everyone—and everyone envied Catherine’s happiness, and no one, even Grandvani, dared to speak to the young man, who, by his pose and his expression, resembled a rock rising in the sea, at the base of which the inhabitants of the bitter waters were playing.

  “You’re very pretty today, Catherine,” Abel said to her, and Catherin
e, while dancing, smiling at everyone, said to Juliette: “I’m the happiest person there is on earth at this moment; he will love me, and the fervor of my love will be his recompense.”

  There had never been a happier day for Catherine, an epoch of her life more beautiful and more gracious; and the simplest incidents were for her events that were engraved in her memory in an ineradicable fashion.

  While she was dancing with an abandon, a charm and a celestial pleasure, her black necklace came undone, and fell to the ground at Abel’s feet. He picked it up, and held it in his hands or a long time, crumpling it, playing with it, turning it around.

  After the quadrille, Catherine noticed the absence of her necklace, and looked for it. Abel, who was hiding it in his bosom, left her prey to her anxiety for a few moments.

  “My necklace!” she said—and everyone looked for it.

  “I only attach value to it,” she said to Abel, “because it comes from you!”

  Abel took it out of his bosom, kissed the necklace, and put it around Catherine’s neck himself. Furtively, she kissed the necklace in the same place. From that day on, the necklace was her entire treasure.

  After each quadrille she ran to Abel with the joy, the lightness and the happiness of a young fawn returning to its mother after playing momentarily in the fresh grass. To gaze at that cherished lover while she danced, to desire the end of the figure in order to find herself at his side and hold his hand: such were the trivia that nuanced her happiness and her evening with accidents of pain and pleasure.

  It is necessary to have loved, necessary to have felt one’s breast torn by the last stroke of the hour of the rendezvous, when one has said: “At that hour, I’ll be waiting for you,” to understand Catherine’s joy, and to feel her pure voluptuousness on the reading this account of the simple events that form great gifts for the heart.