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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Second Home, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: A Second Home
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Clara Bell
+
+Release Date: August 29, 2005 [EBook #1810]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SECOND HOME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+                           A SECOND HOME
+
+                                 BY
+
+                         HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+                          Translated by
+                           Clara Bell
+
+
+
+                           DEDICATION
+
+      To Madame la Comtesse Louise de Turheim as a token of
+               remembrance and affectionate respect.
+
+
+
+                           A SECOND HOME
+
+
+
+The Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, formerly one of the darkest and most
+tortuous of the streets about the Hotel de Ville, zigzagged round the
+little gardens of the Paris Prefecture, and ended at the Rue Martroi,
+exactly at the angle of an old wall now pulled down. Here stood the
+turnstile to which the street owed its name; it was not removed till
+1823, when the Municipality built a ballroom on the garden plot
+adjoining the Hotel de Ville, for the fete given in honor of the Duc
+d'Angouleme on his return from Spain.
+
+The widest part of the Rue du Tourniquet was the end opening into the
+Rue de la Tixeranderie, and even there it was less than six feet
+across. Hence in rainy weather the gutter water was soon deep at the
+foot of the old houses, sweeping down with it the dust and refuse
+deposited at the corner-stones by the residents. As the dust-carts
+could not pass through, the inhabitants trusted to storms to wash
+their always miry alley; for how could it be clean? When the summer
+sun shed its perpendicular rays on Paris like a sheet of gold, but as
+piercing as the point of a sword, it lighted up the blackness of this
+street for a few minutes without drying the permanent damp that rose
+from the ground-floor to the first story of these dark and silent
+tenements.
+
+The residents, who lighted their lamps at five o'clock in the month of
+June, in winter never put them out. To this day the enterprising
+wayfarer who should approach the Marais along the quays, past the end
+of the Rue du Chaume, the Rues de l'Homme Arme, des Billettes, and des
+Deux-Portes, all leading to the Rue du Tourniquet, might think he had
+passed through cellars all the way.
+
+Almost all the streets of old Paris, of which ancient chronicles laud
+the magnificence, were like this damp and gloomy labyrinth, where the
+antiquaries still find historical curiosities to admire. For instance,
+on the house then forming the corner where the Rue du Tourniquet
+joined the Rue de la Tixeranderie, the clamps might still be seen of
+two strong iron rings fixed to the wall, the relics of the chains put
+up every night by the watch to secure public safety.
+
+This house, remarkable for its antiquity, had been constructed in a
+way that bore witness to the unhealthiness of these old dwellings;
+for, to preserve the ground-floor from damp, the arches of the cellars
+rose about two feet above the soil, and the house was entered up three
+outside steps. The door was crowned by a closed arch, of which the
+keystone bore a female head and some time-eaten arabesques. Three
+windows, their sills about five feet from the ground, belonged to a
+small set of rooms looking out on the Rue du Tourniquet, whence they
+derived their light. These windows were protected by strong iron bars,
+very wide apart, and ending below in an outward curve like the bars of
+a baker's window.
+
+If any passer-by during the day were curious enough to peep into the
+two rooms forming this little dwelling, he could see nothing; for only
+under the sun of July could he discern, in the second room, two beds
+hung with green serge, placed side by side under the paneling of an
+old-fashioned alcove; but in the afternoon, by about three o'clock,
+when the candles were lighted, through the pane of the first room an
+old woman might be seen sitting on a stool by the fireplace, where she
+nursed the fire in a brazier, to simmer a stew, such as porters' wives
+are expert in. A few kitchen utensils, hung up against the wall, were
+visible in the twilight.
+
+At that hour an old table on trestles, but bare of linen, was laid
+with pewter-spoons, and the dish concocted by the old woman. Three
+wretched chairs were all the furniture of this room, which was at once
+the kitchen and the dining-room. Over the chimney-piece were a piece
+of looking-glass, a tinder-box, three glasses, some matches, and a
+large, cracked white jug. Still, the floor, the utensils, the
+fireplace, all gave a pleasant sense of the perfect cleanliness and
+thrift that pervaded the dull and gloomy home.
+
+The old woman's pale, withered face was quite in harmony with the
+darkness of the street and the mustiness of the place. As she sat
+there, motionless, in her chair, it might have been thought that she
+was as inseparable from the house as a snail from its brown shell; her
+face, alert with a vague expression of mischief, was framed in a flat
+cap made of net, which barely covered her white hair; her fine, gray
+eyes were as quiet as the street, and the many wrinkles in her face
+might be compared to the cracks in the walls. Whether she had been
+born to poverty, or had fallen from some past splendor, she now seemed
+to have been long resigned to her melancholy existence.
+
+From sunrise till dark, excepting when she was getting a meal ready,
+or, with a basket on her arm, was out purchasing provisions, the old
+woman sat in the adjoining room by the further window, opposite a
+young girl. At any hour of the day the passer-by could see the
+needlewoman seated in an old, red velvet chair, bending over an
+embroidery frame, and stitching indefatigably.
+
+Her mother had a green pillow on her knee, and busied herself with
+hand-made net; but her fingers could move the bobbin but slowly; her
+sight was feeble, for on her nose there rested a pair of those
+antiquated spectacles which keep their place on the nostrils by the
+grip of a spring. By night these two hardworking women set a lamp
+between them; and the light, concentrated by two globe-shaped bottles
+of water, showed the elder the fine network made by the threads on her
+pillow, and the younger the most delicate details of the pattern she
+was embroidering. The outward bend of the window had allowed the girl
+to rest a box of earth on the window-sill, in which grew some sweet
+peas, nasturtiums, a sickly little honeysuckle, and some convolvulus
+that twined its frail stems up the iron bars. These etiolated plants
+produced a few pale flowers, and added a touch of indescribable
+sadness and sweetness to the picture offered by this window, in which
+the two figures were appropriately framed.
+
+The most selfish soul who chanced to see this domestic scene would
+carry away with him a perfect image of the life led in Paris by the
+working class of women, for the embroideress evidently lived by her
+needle. Many, as they passed through the turnstile, found themselves
+wondering how a girl could preserve her color, living in such a
+cellar. A student of lively imagination, going that way to cross to
+the Quartier-Latin, would compare this obscure and vegetative life to
+that of the ivy that clung to these chill walls, to that of the
+peasants born to labor, who are born, toil, and die unknown to the
+world they have helped to feed. A house-owner, after studying the
+house with the eye of a valuer, would have said, "What will become of
+those two women if embroidery should go out of fashion?" Among the men
+who, having some appointment at the Hotel de Ville or the Palais de
+Justice, were obliged to go through this street at fixed hours, either
+on their way to business or on their return home, there may have been
+some charitable soul. Some widower or Adonis of forty, brought so
+often into the secrets of these sad lives, may perhaps have reckoned
+on the poverty of this mother and daughter, and have hoped to become
+the master at no great cost of the innocent work-woman, whose nimble
+and dimpled fingers, youthful figure, and white skin--a charm due, no
+doubt, to living in this sunless street--had excited his admiration.
+Perhaps, again, some honest clerk, with twelve hundred francs a year,
+seeing every day the diligence the girl gave to her needle, and
+appreciating the purity of her life, was only waiting for improved
+prospects to unite one humble life with another, one form of toil to
+another, and to bring at any rate a man's arm and a calm affection,
+pale-hued like the flowers in the window, to uphold this home.
+
+Vague hope certainly gave life to the mother's dim, gray eyes. Every
+morning, after the most frugal breakfast, she took up her pillow,
+though chiefly for the look of the thing, for she would lay her
+spectacles on a little mahogany worktable as old as herself, and look
+out of the window from about half-past eight till ten at the regular
+passers in the street; she caught their glances, remarked on their
+gait, their dress, their countenance, and almost seemed to be offering
+her daughter, her gossiping eyes so evidently tried to attract some
+magnetic sympathy by manoeuvres worthy of the stage. It was evident
+that this little review was as good as a play to her, and perhaps her
+single amusement.
+
+The daughter rarely looked up. Modesty, or a painful consciousness of
+poverty, seemed to keep her eyes riveted to the work-frame; and only
+some exclamation of surprise from her mother moved her to show her
+small features. Then a clerk in a new coat, or who unexpectedly
+appeared with a woman on his arm, might catch sight of the girl's
+slightly upturned nose, her rosy mouth, and gray eyes, always bright
+and lively in spite of her fatiguing toil. Her late hours had left a
+trace on her face by a pale circle marked under each eye on the fresh
+rosiness of her cheeks. The poor child looked as if she were made for
+love and cheerfulness--for love, which had drawn two perfect arches
+above her eyelids, and had given her such a mass of chestnut hair,
+that she might have hidden under it as under a tent, impenetrable to
+the lover's eye--for cheerfulness, which gave quivering animation to
+her nostrils, which carved two dimples in her rosy cheeks, and made
+her quick to forget her troubles; cheerfulness, the blossom of hope,
+which gave her strength to look out without shuddering on the barren
+path of life.
+
+The girl's hair was always carefully dressed. After the manner of
+Paris needlewomen, her toilet seemed to her quite complete when she
+had brushed her hair smooth and tucked up the little short curls that
+played on each temple in contrast with the whiteness of her skin. The
+growth of it on the back of her neck was so pretty, and the brown
+line, so clearly traced, gave such a pleasing idea of her youth and
+charm, that the observer, seeing her bent over her work, and unmoved
+by any sound, was inclined to think of her as a coquette. Such
+inviting promise had excited the interest of more than one young man,
+who turned round in the vain hope of seeing that modest countenance.
+
+"Caroline, there is a new face that passes regularly by, and not one
+of the old ones to compare with it."
+
+These words, spoken in a low voice by her mother one August morning in
+1815, had vanquished the young needlewoman's indifference, and she
+looked out on the street; but in vain, the stranger was gone.
+
+"Where has he flown to?" said she.
+
+"He will come back no doubt at four; I shall see him coming, and will
+touch your foot with mine. I am sure he will come back; he has been
+through the street regularly for the last three days; but his hours
+vary. The first day he came by at six o'clock, the day before
+yesterday it was four, yesterday as early as three. I remember seeing
+him occasionally some time ago. He is some clerk in the Prefet's
+office who has moved to the Marais.--Why!" she exclaimed, after
+glancing down the street, "our gentleman of the brown coat has taken
+to wearing a wig; how much it alters him!"
+
+The gentleman of the brown coat was, it would seem, the individual who
+commonly closed the daily procession, for the old woman put on her
+spectacles and took up her work with a sigh, glancing at her daughter
+with so strange a look that Lavater himself would have found it
+difficult to interpret. Admiration, gratitude, a sort of hope for
+better days, were mingled with pride at having such a pretty daughter.
+
+At about four in the afternoon the old lady pushed her foot against
+Caroline's, and the girl looked up quickly enough to see the new
+actor, whose regular advent would thenceforth lend variety to the
+scene. He was tall and thin, and wore black, a man of about forty,
+with a certain solemnity of demeanor; as his piercing hazel eye met
+the old woman's dull gaze, he made her quake, for she felt as though
+he had the gift of reading hearts, or much practice in it, and his
+presence must surely be as icy as the air of this dank street. Was the
+dull, sallow complexion of that ominous face due to excess of work, or
+the result of delicate health?
+
+The old woman supplied twenty different answers to this question; but
+Caroline, next day, discerned the lines of long mental suffering on
+that brow that was so prompt to frown. The rather hollow cheeks of the
+Unknown bore the stamp of the seal which sorrow sets on its victims as
+if to grant them the consolation of common recognition and brotherly
+union for resistance. Though the girl's expression was at first one of
+lively but innocent curiosity, it assumed a look of gentle sympathy as
+the stranger receded from view, like a last relation following in a
+funeral train.
+
+The heat of the weather was so great, and the gentleman was so
+absent-minded, that he had taken off his hat and forgotten to put it on
+again as he went down the squalid street. Caroline could see the stern
+look given to his countenance by the way the hair was brushed from his
+forehead. The strong impression, devoid of charm, made on the girl by
+this man's appearance was totally unlike any sensation produced by the
+other passengers who used the street; for the first time in her life
+she was moved to pity for some one else than herself and her mother;
+she made no reply to the absurd conjectures that supplied material for
+the old woman's provoking volubility, and drew her long needle in
+silence through the web of stretched net; she only regretted not
+having seen the stranger more closely, and looked forward to the
+morrow to form a definite opinion of him.
+
+It was the first time, indeed, that a man passing down the street had
+ever given rise to much thought in her mind. She generally had nothing
+but a smile in response to her mother's hypotheses, for the old woman
+looked on every passer-by as a possible protector for her daughter.
+And if such suggestions, so crudely presented, gave rise to no evil
+thoughts in Caroline's mind, her indifference must be ascribed to the
+persistent and unfortunately inevitable toil in which the energies of
+her sweet youth were being spent, and which would infallibly mar the
+clearness of her eyes or steal from her fresh cheeks the bloom that
+still colored them.
+
+For two months or more the "Black Gentleman"--the name they had given
+him--was erratic in his movements; he did not always come down the Rue
+du Tourniquet; the old woman sometimes saw him in the evening when he
+had not passed in the morning, and he did not come by at such regular
+hours as the clerks who served Madame Crochard instead of a clock;
+moreover, excepting on the first occasion, when his look had given the
+old mother a sense of alarm, his eyes had never once dwelt on the
+weird picture of these two female gnomes. With the exception of two
+carriage-gates and a dark ironmonger's shop, there were in the Rue du
+Tourniquet only barred windows, giving light to the staircases of the
+neighboring houses; thus the stranger's lack of curiosity was not to
+be accounted for by the presence of dangerous rivals; and Madame
+Crochard was greatly piqued to see her "Black Gentleman" always lost
+in thought, his eyes fixed on the ground, or straight before him, as
+though he hoped to read the future in the fog of the Rue du
+Tourniquet. However, one morning, about the middle of September,
+Caroline Crochard's roguish face stood out so brightly against the
+dark background of the room, looking so fresh among the belated
+flowers and faded leaves that twined round the window-bars, the daily
+scene was gay with such contrasts of light and shade, of pink and
+white blending with the light material on which the pretty needlewoman
+was working, and with the red and brown hues of the chairs, that the
+stranger gazed very attentively at the effects of this living picture.
+In point of fact, the old woman, provoked by her "Black Gentleman's"
+indifference, had made such a clatter with her bobbins that the gloomy
+and pensive passer-by was perhaps prompted to look up by the unusual
+noise.
+
+The stranger merely exchanged glances with Caroline, swift indeed, but
+enough to effect a certain contact between their souls, and both were
+aware that they would think of each other. When the stranger came by
+again, at four in the afternoon, Caroline recognized the sound of his
+step on the echoing pavement; they looked steadily at each other, and
+with evident purpose; his eyes had an expression of kindliness which
+made him smile, and Caroline colored; the old mother noted them with
+satisfaction. Ever after that memorable afternoon, the Gentleman in
+Black went by twice a day, with rare exceptions, which both the women
+observed. They concluded from the irregularity of the hours of his
+homecoming that he was not released so early, nor so precisely
+punctual as a subordinate official.
+
+All through the first three winter months, twice a day, Caroline and
+the stranger thus saw each other for so long as it took him to
+traverse the piece of road that lay along the length of the door and
+three windows of the house. Day after day this brief interview had the
+hue of friendly sympathy which at last had acquired a sort of
+fraternal kindness. Caroline and the stranger seemed to understand
+each other from the first; and then, by dint of scrutinizing each
+other's faces, they learned to know them well. Ere long it came to be,
+as it were, a visit that the Unknown owed to Caroline; if by any
+chance her Gentleman in Black went by without bestowing on her the
+half-smile of his expressive lips, or the cordial glance of his brown
+eyes, something was missing to her all day. She felt as an old man
+does to whom the daily study of a newspaper is such an indispensable
+pleasure that on the day after any great holiday he wanders about
+quite lost, and seeking, as much out of vagueness as for want of
+patience, the sheet by which he cheats an hour of life.
+
+But these brief meetings had the charm of intimate friendliness, quite
+as much for the stranger as for Caroline. The girl could no more hide
+a vexation, a grief, or some slight ailment from the keen eye of her
+appreciative friend than he could conceal anxiety from hers.
+
+"He must have had some trouble yesterday," was the thought that
+constantly arose in the embroideress' mind as she saw some change in
+the features of the "Black Gentleman."
+
+"Oh, he has been working too hard!" was a reflection due to another
+shade of expression which Caroline could discern.
+
+The stranger, on his part, could guess when the girl had spent Sunday
+in finishing a dress, and he felt an interest in the pattern. As
+quarter-day came near he could see that her pretty face was clouded by
+anxiety, and he could guess when Caroline had sat up late at work; but
+above all, he noted how the gloomy thoughts that dimmed the cheerful
+and delicate features of her young face gradually vanished by degrees
+as their acquaintance ripened. When winter had killed the climbers and
+plants of her window garden, and the window was kept closed, it was
+not without a smile of gentle amusement that the stranger observed the
+concentration of the light within, just at the level of Caroline's
+head. The very small fire and the frosty red of the two women's faces
+betrayed the poverty of their home; but if ever his own countenance
+expressed regretful compassion, the girl proudly met it with assumed
+cheerfulness.
+
+Meanwhile the feelings that had arisen in their hearts remained buried
+there, no incident occurring to reveal to either of them how deep and
+strong they were in the other; they had never even heard the sound of
+each other's voice. These mute friends were even on their guard
+against any nearer acquaintance, as though it meant disaster. Each
+seemed to fear lest it should bring on the other some grief more
+serious than those they felt tempted to share. Was it shyness or
+friendship that checked them? Was it a dread of meeting with
+selfishness, or the odious distrust which sunders all the residents
+within the walls of a populous city? Did the voice of conscience warn
+them of approaching danger? It would be impossible to explain the
+instinct which made them as much enemies as friends, at once
+indifferent and attached, drawn to each other by impulse, and severed
+by circumstance. Each perhaps hoped to preserve a cherished illusion.
+It might almost have been thought that the stranger feared lest he
+should hear some vulgar word from those lips as fresh and pure as a
+flower, and that Caroline felt herself unworthy of the mysterious
+personage who was evidently possessed of power and wealth.
+
+As to Madame Crochard, that tender mother, almost angry at her
+daughter's persistent lack of decisiveness, now showed a sulky face to
+the "Black Gentleman," on whom she had hitherto smiled with a sort of
+benevolent servility. Never before had she complained so bitterly of
+being compelled, at her age, to do the cooking; never had her catarrh
+and her rheumatism wrung so many groans from her; finally, she could
+not, this winter, promise so many ells of net as Caroline had hitherto
+been able to count on.
+
+Under these circumstances, and towards the end of December, at the
+time when bread was dearest, and that dearth of corn was beginning to
+be felt which made the year 1816 so hard on the poor, the stranger
+observed on the features of the girl whose name was still unknown to
+him, the painful traces of a secret sorrow which his kindest smiles
+could not dispel. Before long he saw in Caroline's eyes the dimness
+attributed to long hours at night. One night, towards the end of the
+month, the Gentleman in Black passed down the Rue du Tourniquet at the
+quite unwonted hour of one in the morning. The perfect silence allowed
+of his hearing before passing the house the lachrymose voice of the
+old mother, and Caroline's even sadder tones, mingling with the swish
+of a shower of sleet. He crept along as slowly as he could; and then,
+at the risk of being taken up by the police, he stood still below the
+window to hear the mother and daughter, while watching them through
+the largest of the holes in the yellow muslin curtains, which were
+eaten away by wear as a cabbage leaf is riddled by caterpillars. The
+inquisitive stranger saw a sheet of paper on the table that stood
+between the two work-frames, and on which stood the lamp and the
+globes filled with water. He at once identified it as a writ. Madame
+Crochard was weeping, and Caroline's voice was thick, and had lost its
+sweet, caressing tone.
+
+"Why be so heartbroken, mother? Monsieur Molineux will not sell us up
+or turn us out before I have finished this dress; only two nights more
+and I shall take it home to Madame Roguin."
+
+"And supposing she keeps you waiting as usual?--And will the money for
+the gown pay the baker too?"
+
+The spectator of this scene had long practice in reading faces; he
+fancied he could discern that the mother's grief was as false as the
+daughter's was genuine; he turned away, and presently came back. When
+he next peeped through the hole in the curtain, Madame Crochard was in
+bed. The young needlewoman, bending over her frame, was embroidering
+with indefatigable diligence; on the table, with the writ lay a
+triangular hunch of bread, placed there, no doubt, to sustain her in
+the night and to remind her of the reward of her industry. The
+stranger was tremulous with pity and sympathy; he threw his purse in
+through a cracked pane so that it should fall at the girl's feet; and
+then, without waiting to enjoy her surprise, he escaped, his cheeks
+tingling.
+
+Next morning the shy and melancholy stranger went past with a look of
+deep preoccupation, but he could not escape Caroline's gratitude; she
+had opened her window and affected to be digging in the square window-
+box buried in snow, a pretext of which the clumsy ingenuity plainly
+told her benefactor that she had been resolved not to see him only
+through the pane. Her eyes were full of tears as she bowed her head,
+as much as to say to her benefactor, "I can only repay you from my
+heart."
+
+But the Gentleman in Black affected not to understand the meaning of
+this sincere gratitude. In the evening, as he came by, Caroline was
+busy mending the window with a sheet of paper, and she smiled at him,
+showing her row of pearly teeth like a promise. Thenceforth the
+Stranger went another way, and was no more seen in the Rue due
+Tourniquet.
+
+
+
+It was one day early in the following May that, as Caroline was giving
+the roots of the honeysuckle a glass of water, one Saturday morning,
+she caught sight of a narrow strip of cloudless blue between the black
+lines of houses, and said to her mother:
+
+"Mamma, we must go to-morrow for a trip to Montmorency!"
+
+She had scarcely uttered the words, in a tone of glee, when the
+Gentleman in Black came by, sadder and more dejected than ever.
+Caroline's innocent and ingratiating glance might have been taken for
+an invitation. And, in fact, on the following day, when Madame
+Crochard, dressed in a pelisse of claret-colored merinos, a silk
+bonnet, and striped shawl of an imitation Indian pattern, came out to
+choose seats in a chaise at the corner of the Rue du Faubourg
+Saint-Denis and the Rue d'Enghien, there she found her Unknown standing
+like a man waiting for his wife. A smile of pleasure lighted up the
+Stranger's face when his eye fell on Caroline, her neat feet shod in
+plum-colored prunella gaiters, and her white dress tossed by a breeze
+that would have been fatal to an ill-made woman, but which displayed
+her graceful form. Her face, shaded by a rice-straw bonnet lined with
+pink silk, seemed to beam with a reflection from heaven; her broad,
+plum-colored belt set off a waist he could have spanned; her hair,
+parted in two brown bands over a forehead as white as snow, gave her
+an expression of innocence which no other feature contradicted.
+Enjoyment seemed to have made Caroline as light as the straw of her
+hat; but when she saw the Gentleman in Black, radiant hope suddenly
+eclipsed her bright dress and her beauty. The Stranger, who appeared
+to be in doubt, had not perhaps made up his mind to be the girl's
+escort for the day till this revelation of the delight she felt on
+seeing him. He at once hired a vehicle with a fairly good horse, to
+drive to Saint-Leu-Taverny, and he offered Madame Crochard and her
+daughter seats by his side. The mother accepted without ado; but
+presently, when they were already on the way to Saint-Denis, she was
+by way of having scruples, and made a few civil speeches as to the
+possible inconvenience two women might cause their companion.
+
+"Perhaps, monsieur, you wished to drive alone to Saint-Leu-Taverny,"
+said she, with affected simplicity.
+
+Before long she complained of the heat, and especially of her cough,
+which, she said, had hindered her from closing her eyes all night; and
+by the time the carriage had reached Saint-Denis, Madame Crochard
+seemed to be fast asleep. Her snores, indeed, seemed, to the Gentleman
+in Black, rather doubtfully genuine, and he frowned as he looked at
+the old woman with a very suspicious eye.
+
+"Oh, she is fast asleep," said Caroline quilelessly; "she never ceased
+coughing all night. She must be very tired."
+
+Her companion made no reply, but he looked at the girl with a smile
+that seemed to say:
+
+"Poor child, you little know your mother!"
+
+However, in spite of his distrust, as the chaise made its way down the
+long avenue of poplars leading to Eaubonne, the Stranger thought that
+Madame Crochard was really asleep; perhaps he did not care to inquire
+how far her slumbers were genuine or feigned. Whether it were that the
+brilliant sky, the pure country air, and the heady fragrance of the
+first green shoots of the poplars, the catkins of willow, and the
+flowers of the blackthorn had inclined his heart to open like all the
+nature around him; or that any long restraint was too oppressive while
+Caroline's sparkling eyes responded to his own, the Gentleman in Black
+entered on a conversation with his young companion, as aimless as the
+swaying of the branches in the wind, as devious as the flitting of the
+butterflies in the azure air, as illogical as the melodious murmur of
+the fields, and, like it, full of mysterious love. At that season is
+not the rural country as tremulous as a bride that has donned her
+marriage robe; does it not invite the coldest soul to be happy? What
+heart could remain unthawed, and what lips could keep its secret, on
+leaving the gloomy streets of the Marais for the first time since the
+previous autumn, and entering the smiling and picturesque valley of
+Montmorency; on seeing it in the morning light, its endless horizons
+receding from view; and then lifting a charmed gaze to eyes which
+expressed no less infinitude mingled with love?
+
+The Stranger discovered that Caroline was sprightly rather than witty,
+affectionate, but ill educated; but while her laugh was giddy, her
+words promised genuine feeling. When, in response to her companion's
+shrewd questioning, the girl spoke with the heartfelt effusiveness of
+which the lower classes are lavish, not guarding it with reticence
+like people of the world, the Black Gentleman's face brightened, and
+seemed to renew its youth. His countenance by degrees lost the sadness
+that lent sternness to his features, and little by little they gained
+a look of handsome youthfulness which made Caroline proud and happy.
+The pretty needlewoman guessed that her new friend had been long
+weaned from tenderness and love, and no longer believed in the
+devotion of woman. Finally, some unexpected sally in Caroline's light
+prattle lifted the last veil that concealed the real youth and genuine
+character of the Stranger's physiognomy; he seemed to bid farewell to
+the ideas that haunted him, and showed the natural liveliness that lay
+beneath the solemnity of his expression.
+
+Their conversation had insensibly become so intimate, that by the time
+when the carriage stopped at the first houses of the straggling
+village of Saint-Leu, Caroline was calling the gentleman Monsieur
+Roger. Then for the first time the old mother awoke.
+
+"Caroline, she has heard everything!" said Roger suspiciously in the
+girl's ear.
+
+Caroline's reply was an exquisite smile of disbelief, which dissipated
+the dark cloud that his fear of some plot on the old woman's part had
+brought to this suspicious mortal's brow. Madame Crochard was amazed
+at nothing, approved of everything, followed her daughter and Monsieur
+Roger into the park, where the two young people had agreed to wander
+through the smiling meadows and fragrant copses made famous by the
+taste of Queen Hortense.
+
+"Good heavens! how lovely!" exclaimed Caroline when standing on the
+green ridge where the forest of Montmorency begins, she saw lying at
+her feet the wide valley with its combes sheltering scattered
+villages, its horizon of blue hills, its church towers, its meadows
+and fields, whence a murmur came up, to die on her ear like the swell
+of the ocean. The three wanderers made their way by the bank of an
+artificial stream and came to the Swiss valley, where stands a chalet
+that had more than once given shelter to Hortense and Napoleon. When
+Caroline had seated herself with pious reverence on the mossy wooden
+bench where kings and princesses and the Emperor had rested, Madame
+Crochard expressed a wish to have a nearer view of a bridge that hung
+across between two rocks at some little distance, and bent her steps
+towards that rural curiosity, leaving her daughter in Monsieur Roger's
+care, though telling them that she would not go out of sight.
+
+"What, poor child!" cried Roger, "have you never longed for wealth and
+the pleasures of luxury? Have you never wished that you might wear the
+beautiful dresses you embroider?"
+
+"It would not be the truth, Monsieur Roger, if I were to tell you that
+I never think how happy people must be who are rich. Oh yes! I often
+fancy, especially when I am going to sleep, how glad I should be to
+see my poor mother no longer compelled to go out, whatever the
+weather, to buy our little provisions, at her age. I should like her
+to have a servant who, every morning before she was up, would bring
+her up her coffee, nicely sweetened with white sugar. And she loves
+reading novels, poor dear soul! Well, and I would rather see her
+wearing out her eyes over her favorite books than over twisting her
+bobbins from morning till night. And again, she ought to have a little
+good wine. In short, I should like to see her comfortable--she is so
+good."
+
+"Then she has shown you great kindness?"
+
+"Oh yes," said the girl, in a tone of conviction. Then, after a short
+pause, during which the two young people stood watching Madame
+Crochard, who had got to the middle of the rustic bridge, and was
+shaking her finger at them, Caroline went on:
+
+"Oh yes, she has been so good to me. What care she took of me when I
+was little! She sold her last silver forks to apprentice me to the old
+maid who taught me to embroider.--And my poor father! What did she not
+go through to make him end his days in happiness!" The girl shivered
+at the remembrance, and hid her face in her hands.--"Well! come! let
+us forget past sorrows!" she added, trying to rally her high spirits.
+She blushed as she saw that Roger too was moved, but she dared not
+look at him.
+
+"What was your father?" he asked.
+
+"He was an opera-dancer before the Revolution," said she, with an air
+of perfect simplicity, "and my mother sang in the chorus. My father,
+who was leader of the figures on the stage, happened to be present at
+the siege of the Bastille. He was recognized by some of the
+assailants, who asked him whether he could not lead a real attack,
+since he was used to leading such enterprises on the boards. My father
+was brave; he accepted the post, led the insurgents, and was rewarded
+by the nomination to the rank of captain in the army of Sambre-et-Meuse,
+where he distinguished himself so far as to rise rapidly to be a
+colonel. But at Lutzen he was so badly wounded that, after a year's
+sufferings, he died in Paris.--The Bourbons returned; my mother could
+obtain no pension, and we fell into such abject misery that we were
+compelled to work for our living. For some time past she has been
+ailing, poor dear, and I have never known her so little resigned; she
+complains a good deal, and, indeed, I cannot wonder, for she has known
+the pleasures of an easy life. For my part, I cannot pine for delights
+I have never known, I have but one thing to wish for."
+
+"And that is?" said Roger eagerly, as if roused from a dream.
+
+"That women may continue to wear embroidered net dresses, so that I
+may never lack work."
+
+The frankness of this confession interested the young man, who looked
+with less hostile eyes on Madame Crochard as she slowly made her way
+back to them.
+
+"Well, children, have you had a long talk?" said she, with a
+half-laughing, half-indulgent air. "When I think, Monsieur Roger, that
+the 'little Corporal' has sat where you are sitting," she went on after
+a pause. "Poor man! how my husband worshiped him! Ah! Crochard did well
+to die, for he could not have borne to think of him where _they_ have
+sent him!"
+
+Roger put his finger to his lips, and the good woman went on very
+gravely, with a shake of her head:
+
+"All right, mouth shut and tongue still! But," added she, unhooking a
+bit of her bodice, and showing a ribbon and cross tied round her neck
+by a piece of black ribbon, "they shall never hinder me from wearing
+what _he_ gave to my poor Crochard, and I will have it buried with
+me."
+
+On hearing this speech, which at that time was regarded as seditious,
+Roger interrupted the old lady by rising suddenly, and they returned
+to the village through the park walks. The young man left them for a
+few minutes while he went to order a meal at the best eating-house in
+Taverny; then, returning to fetch them, he led the way through the
+alleys cut in the forest.
+
+The dinner was cheerful. Roger was no longer the melancholy shade that
+was wont to pass along the Rue du Tourniquet; he was not the "Black
+Gentleman," but rather a confiding young man ready to take life as it
+came, like the two hard-working women who, on the morrow, might lack
+bread; he seemed alive to all the joys of youth, his smile was quite
+affectionate and childlike.
+
+When, at five o'clock, this happy meal was ended with a few glasses of
+champagne, Roger was the first to propose that they should join the
+village ball under the chestnuts, where he and Caroline danced
+together. Their hands met with sympathetic pressure, their hearts beat
+with the same hopes; and under the blue sky and the slanting, rosy
+beams of sunset, their eyes sparkled with fires which, to them, made
+the glory of the heavens pale. How strange is the power of an idea, of
+a desire! To these two nothing seemed impossible. In such magic
+moments, when enjoyment sheds its reflections on the future, the soul
+foresees nothing but happiness. This sweet day had created memories
+for these two to which nothing could be compared in all their past
+existence. Would the source prove to be more beautiful than the river,
+the desire more enchanting than its gratification, the thing hoped for
+more delightful than the thing possessed?
+
+"So the day is already at an end!" On hearing this exclamation from
+her unknown friend when the dance was over, Caroline looked at him
+compassionately, as his face assumed once more a faint shade of
+sadness.
+
+"Why should you not be as happy in Paris as you are here?" she asked.
+"Is happiness to be found only at Saint-Leu? It seems to me that I can
+henceforth never be unhappy anywhere."
+
+Roger was struck by these words, spoken with the glad unrestraint that
+always carries a woman further than she intended, just as prudery
+often lends her greater cruelty than she feels. For the first time
+since that glance, which had, in a way, been the beginning of their
+friendship, Caroline and Roger had the same idea; though they did not
+express it, they felt it at the same instant, as a result of a common
+impression like that of a comforting fire cheering both under the
+frost of winter; then, as if frightened by each other's silence, they
+made their way to the spot where the carriage was waiting. But before
+getting into it, they playfully took hands and ran together down the
+dark avenue in front of Madame Crochard. When they could no longer see
+the white net cap, which showed as a speck through the leaves where
+the old woman was--"Caroline!" said Roger in a tremulous voice, and
+with a beating heart.
+
+The girl was startled, and drew back a few steps, understanding the
+invitation this question conveyed; however, she held out her hand,
+which was passionately kissed, but which she hastily withdrew, for by
+standing on tiptoe she could see her mother.
+
+Madame Crochard affected blindness, as if, with a reminiscence of her
+old parts, she was only required to figure as a supernumerary.
+
+
+
+The adventures of these two young people were not continued in the Rue
+du Tourniquet. To see Roger and Caroline once more, we must leap into
+the heart of modern Paris, where, in some of the newly-built houses,
+there are apartments that seem made on purpose for newly-married
+couples to spend their honeymoon in. There the paper and paint are as
+fresh as the bride and bridegroom, and the decorations are in blossom
+like their love; everything is in harmony with youthful notions and
+ardent wishes.
+
+Half-way down the Rue Taitbout, in a house whose stone walls were
+still white, where the columns of the hall and the doorway were as yet
+spotless, and the inner walls shone with the neat painting which our
+recent intimacy with English ways had brought into fashion, there was,
+on the second floor, a small set of rooms fitted by the architect as
+though he had known what their use would be. A simple airy ante-room,
+with a stucco dado, formed an entrance into a drawing-room and
+dining-room. Out of the drawing-room opened a pretty bedroom, with a
+bathroom beyond. Every chimney-shelf had over it a fine mirror elegantly
+framed. The doors were crowded with arabesques in good taste, and the
+cornices were in the best style. Any amateur would have discerned
+there the sense of distinction and decorative fitness which mark the
+work of modern French architects.
+
+For above a month Caroline had been at home in this apartment,
+furnished by an upholsterer who submitted to an artist's guidance. A
+short description of the principal room will suffice to give us an
+idea of the wonders it offered to Caroline's delighted eyes when Roger
+installed her there. Hangings of gray stuff trimmed with green silk
+adorned the walls of her bedroom; the seats, covered with light-colored
+woolen sateen, were of easy and comfortable shapes, and in the
+latest fashion; a chest of drawers of some simple wood, inlaid with
+lines of a darker hue, contained the treasures of the toilet; a
+writing-table to match served for inditing love-letters on scented
+paper; the bed, with antique draperies, could not fail to suggest
+thoughts of love by its soft hangings of elegant muslin; the
+window-curtains, of drab silk with green fringe, were always half drawn
+to subdue the light; a bronze clock represented Love crowning Psyche;
+and a carpet of Gothic design on a red ground set off the other
+accessories of this delightful retreat. There was a small
+dressing-table in front of a long glass, and here the needlewoman sat,
+out of patience with Plaisir, the famous hairdresser.
+
+"Do you think you will have done to-day?" said she.
+
+"Your hair is so long and so thick, madame," replied Plaisir.
+
+Caroline could not help smiling. The man's flattery had no doubt
+revived in her mind the memory of the passionate praises lavished by
+her lover on the beauty of her hair, which he delighted in.
+
+The hairdresser having done, a waiting-maid came and held counsel with
+her as to the dress in which Roger would like best to see her. It was
+the beginning of September 1816, and the weather was cold; she chose a
+green _grenadine_ trimmed with chinchilla. As soon as she was dressed,
+Caroline flew into the drawing-room and opened a window, out of which
+she stepped on to the elegant balcony, that adorned the front of the
+house; there she stood, with her arms crossed, in a charming attitude,
+not to show herself to the admiration of the passers-by and see them
+turn to gaze at her, but to be able to look out on the Boulevard at
+the bottom of the Rue Taitbout. This side view, really very comparable
+to the peephole made by actors in the drop-scene of a theatre, enabled
+her to catch a glimpse of numbers of elegant carriages, and a crowd of
+persons, swept past with the rapidity of _Ombres Chinoises_. Not
+knowing whether Roger would arrive in a carriage or on foot, the
+needlewoman from the Rue du Tourniquet looked by turns at the
+foot-passengers, and at the tilburies--light cabs introduced into Paris
+by the English.
+
+Expressions of refractoriness and of love passed by turns over her
+youthful face when, after waiting for a quarter of an hour, neither
+her keen eye nor her heart had announced the arrival of him whom she
+knew to be due. What disdain, what indifference were shown in her
+beautiful features for all the other creatures who were bustling like
+ants below her feet. Her gray eyes, sparkling with fun, now positively
+flamed. Given over to her passion, she avoided admiration with as much
+care as the proudest devote to encouraging it when they drive about
+Paris, certainly feeling no care as to whether her fair countenance
+leaning over the balcony, or her little foot between the bars, and the
+picture of her bright eyes and delicious turned-up nose would be
+effaced or no from the minds of the passers-by who admired them; she
+saw but one face, and had but one idea. When the spotted head of a
+certain bay horse happened to cross the narrow strip between the two
+rows of houses, Caroline gave a little shiver and stood on tiptoe in
+hope of recognizing the white traces and the color of the tilbury. It
+was he!
+
+Roger turned the corner of the street, saw the balcony, whipped the
+horse, which came up at a gallop, and stopped at the bronze-green door
+that he knew as well as his master did. The door of the apartment was
+opened at once by the maid, who had heard her mistress' exclamation of
+delight. Roger rushed up to the drawing-room, clasped Caroline in his
+arms, and embraced her with the effusive feeling natural when two
+beings who love each other rarely meet. He led her, or rather they
+went by a common impulse, their arms about each other, into the quiet
+and fragrant bedroom; a settee stood ready for them to sit by the
+fire, and for a moment they looked at each other in silence,
+expressing their happiness only by their clasped hands, and
+communicating their thoughts in a fond gaze.
+
+"Yes, it is he!" she said at last. "Yes, it is you. Do you know, I
+have not seen you for three long days, an age!--But what is the
+matter? You are unhappy."
+
+"My poor Caroline--"
+
+"There, you see! 'poor Caroline'--"
+
+"No, no, do not laugh, my darling; we cannot go to the Feydeau Theatre
+together this evening."
+
+Caroline put on a little pout, but it vanished immediately.
+
+"How absurd I am! How can I think of going to the play when I see you?
+Is not the sight of you the only spectacle I care for?" she cried,
+pushing her fingers through Roger's hair.
+
+"I am obliged to go to the Attorney-General's. We have a knotty case
+in hand. He met me in the great hall at the Palais; and as I am to
+plead, he asked me to dine with him. But, my dearest, you can go to
+the theatre with your mother, and I will join you if the meeting
+breaks up early."
+
+"To the theatre without you!" cried she in a tone of amazement; "enjoy
+any pleasure you do not share! O my Roger! you do not deserve a kiss,"
+she added, throwing her arms round his neck with an artless and
+impassioned impulse.
+
+"Caroline, I must go home and dress. The Marais is some way off, and I
+still have some business to finish."
+
+"Take care what you are saying, monsieur," said she, interrupting him.
+"My mother says that when a man begins to talk about his business, he
+is ceasing to love."
+
+"Caroline! Am I not here? Have I not stolen this hour from my
+pitiless--"
+
+"Hush!" said she, laying a finger on his mouth. "Don't you see that I
+am in jest."
+
+They had now come back to the drawing-room, and Roger's eye fell on an
+object brought home that morning by the cabinetmaker. Caroline's old
+rosewood embroidery-frame, by which she and her mother had earned
+their bread when they lived in the Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, had
+been refitted and polished, and a net dress, of elaborate design, was
+already stretched upon it.
+
+"Well, then, my dear, I shall do some work this evening. As I stitch,
+I shall fancy myself gone back to those early days when you used to
+pass by me without a word, but not without a glance; the days when the
+remembrance of your look kept me awake all night. Oh my dear old frame
+--the best piece of furniture in my room, though you did not give it
+me!--You cannot think," said she, seating herself on Roger's knees;
+for he, overcome by irresistible feelings, had dropped into a chair.
+"Listen.--All I can earn by my work I mean to give to the poor. You
+have made me rich. How I love that pretty home at Bellefeuille, less
+because of what it is than because you gave it me! But tell me, Roger,
+I should like to call myself Caroline de Bellefeuille--can I? You must
+know: is it legal or permissible?"
+
+As she saw a little affirmative grimace--for Roger hated the name of
+Crochard--Caroline jumped for glee, and clapped her hands.
+
+"I feel," said she, "as if I should more especially belong to you.
+Usually a woman gives up her own name and takes her husband's--" An
+idea forced itself upon her and made her blush. She took Roger's hand
+and led him to the open piano.--"Listen," said she, "I can play my
+sonata now like an angel!" and her fingers were already running over
+the ivory keys, when she felt herself seized round the waist.
+
+"Caroline, I ought to be far from hence!"
+
+"You insist on going? Well, go," said she, with a pretty pout, but she
+smiled as she looked at the clock and exclaimed joyfully, "At any
+rate, I have detained you a quarter of an hour!"
+
+"Good-bye, Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille," said he, with the gentle
+irony of love.
+
+She kissed him and saw her lover to the door; when the sound of his
+steps had died away on the stairs she ran out on to the balcony to see
+him get into the tilbury, to see him gather up the reins, to catch a
+parting look, hear the crack of his whip and the sound of his wheels
+on the stones, watch the handsome horse, the master's hat, the tiger's
+gold lace, and at last to stand gazing long after the dark corner of
+the street had eclipsed this vision.
+
+
+
+Five years after Mademoiselle Caroline de Bellefeuille had taken up
+her abode in the pretty house in the Rue Taitbout, we again look in on
+one of those home-scenes which tighten the bonds of affection between
+two persons who truly love. In the middle of the blue drawing-room, in
+front of the window opening to the balcony, a little boy of four was
+making a tremendous noise as he whipped the rocking-horse, whose two
+curved supports for the legs did not move fast enough to please him;
+his pretty face, framed in fair curls that fell over his white collar,
+smiled up like a cherub's at his mother when she said to him from the
+depths of an easy-chair, "Not so much noise, Charles; you will wake
+your little sister."
+
+The inquisitive boy suddenly got off his horse, and treading on tiptoe
+as if he were afraid of the sound of his feet on the carpet, came up
+with one finger between his little teeth, and standing in one of those
+childish attitudes that are so graceful because they are so perfectly
+natural, raised the muslin veil that hid the rosy face of a little
+girl sleeping on her mother's knee.
+
+"Is Eugenie asleep, then?" said he, quite astonished. "Why is she
+asleep when we are awake?" he added, looking up with large, liquid
+black eyes.
+
+"That only God can know," replied Caroline, with a smile.
+
+The mother and boy gazed at the infant, only that morning baptized.
+
+Caroline, now about four-and-twenty, showed the ripe beauty which had
+expanded under the influence of cloudless happiness and constant
+enjoyment. In her the Woman was complete.
+
+Delighted to obey her dear Roger's every wish, she had acquired the
+accomplishments she had lacked; she played the piano fairly well, and
+sang sweetly. Ignorant of the customs of a world that would have
+treated her as an outcast, and which she would not have cared for even
+if it had welcomed her--for a happy woman does not care for the world
+--she had not caught the elegance of manner or learned the art of
+conversation, abounding in words and devoid of ideas, which is current
+in fashionable drawing-rooms; on the other hand, she worked hard to
+gain the knowledge indispensable to a mother whose chief ambition is
+to bring up her children well. Never to lose sight of her boy, to give
+him from the cradle that training of every minute which impresses on
+the young a love of all that is good and beautiful, to shelter him
+from every evil influence and fulfil both the painful duties of a
+nurse and the tender offices of a mother,--these were her chief
+pleasures.
+
+The coy and gentle being had from the first day so fully resigned
+herself never to step beyond the enchanted sphere where she found all
+her happiness, that, after six years of the tenderest intimacy, she
+still knew her lover only by the name of Roger. A print of the picture
+of the Psyche lighting her lamp to gaze on Love in spite of his
+prohibition, hung in her room, and constantly reminded her of the
+conditions of her happiness. Through all these six years her humble
+pleasures had never importuned Roger by a single indiscreet ambition,
+and his heart was a treasure-house of kindness. Never had she longed
+for diamonds or fine clothes, and had again and again refused the
+luxury of a carriage which he had offered her. To look out from her
+balcony for Roger's cab, to go with him to the play or make excursions
+with him, on fine days in the environs of Paris, to long for him, to
+see him, and then to long again,--these made up the history of her
+life, poor in incidents but rich in happiness.
+
+As she rocked the infant, now a few months old, on her knee, singing
+the while, she allowed herself to recall the memories of the past. She
+lingered more especially on the months of September, when Roger was
+accustomed to take her to Bellefeuille and spend the delightful days
+which seem to combine the charms of every season. Nature is equally
+prodigal of flowers and fruit, the evenings are mild, the mornings
+bright, and a blaze of summer often returns after a spell of autumn
+gloom. During the early days of their love, Caroline had ascribed the
+even mind and gentle temper, of which Roger gave her so many proofs,
+to the rarity of their always longed-for meetings, and to their mode
+of life, which did not compel them to be constantly together, as a
+husband and wife must be. But now she could remember with rapture
+that, tortured by foolish fears, she had watched him with trembling
+during their first stay on this little estate in the Gatinais. Vain
+suspiciousness of love! Each of these months of happiness had passed
+like a dream in the midst of joys which never rang false. She had
+always seen that kind creature with a tender smile on his lips, a
+smile that seemed to mirror her own.
+
+As she called up these vivid pictures, her eyes filled with tears; she
+thought she could not love him enough, and was tempted to regard her
+ambiguous position as a sort of tax levied by Fate on her love.
+Finally, invincible curiosity led her to wonder for the thousandth
+time what events they could be that led so tender a heart as Roger's
+to find his pleasure in clandestine and illicit happiness. She
+invented a thousand romances on purpose really to avoid recognizing
+the true reason, which she had long suspected but tried not to believe
+in. She rose, and carrying the baby in her arms, went into the
+dining-room to superintend the preparations for dinner.
+
+It was the 6th of May 1822, the anniversary of the excursion to the
+Park of Saint-Leu, which had been the turning-point of her life; each
+year it had been marked by heartfelt rejoicing. Caroline chose the
+linen to be used, and arranged the dessert. Having attended with joy
+to these details, which touched Roger, she placed the infant in her
+pretty cot and went out on to the balcony, whence she presently saw
+the carriage which her friend, as he grew to riper years, now used
+instead of the smart tilbury of his youth. After submitting to the
+first fire of Caroline's embraces and the kisses of the little rogue
+who addressed him as papa, Roger went to the cradle, looked at his
+little sleeping daughter, kissed her forehead, and then took out of
+his pocket a document covered with black writing.
+
+"Caroline," said he, "here is the marriage portion of Mademoiselle
+Eugenie de Bellefeuille."
+
+The mother gratefully took the paper, a deed of gift of securities in
+the State funds.
+
+"Buy why," said she, "have you given Eugenie three thousand francs a
+year, and Charles no more than fifteen hundred?"
+
+"Charles, my love, will be a man," replied he. "Fifteen hundred francs
+are enough for him. With so much for certain, a man of courage is
+above poverty. And if by chance your son should turn out a nonentity,
+I do not wish him to be able to play the fool. If he is ambitious,
+this small income will give him a taste for work.--Eugenie is a girl;
+she must have a little fortune."
+
+The father then turned to play with his boy, whose effusive affection
+showed the independence and freedom in which he was brought up. No
+sort of shyness between the father and child interfered with the charm
+which rewards a parent for his devotion; and the cheerfulness of the
+little family was as sweet as it was genuine. In the evening a
+magic-lantern displayed its illusions and mysterious pictures on a
+white sheet to Charles' great surprise, and more than once the innocent
+child's heavenly rapture made Caroline and Roger laugh heartily.
+
+Later, when the little boy was in bed, the baby woke and craved its
+limpid nourishment. By the light of a lamp in the chimney corner,
+Roger enjoyed the scene of peace and comfort, and gave himself up to
+the happiness of contemplating the sweet picture of the child clinging
+to Caroline's white bosom as she sat, as fresh as a newly opened lily,
+while her hair fell in long brown curls that almost hid her neck. The
+lamplight enhanced the grace of the young mother, shedding over her,
+her dress, and the infant, the picturesque effects of strong light and
+shadow.
+
+The calm and silent woman's face struck Roger as a thousand times
+sweeter than ever, and he gazed tenderly at the rosy, pouting lips
+from which no harsh word had ever been heard. The very same thought
+was legible in Caroline's eyes as she gave a sidelong look at Roger,
+either to enjoy the effect she was producing on him, or to see what
+the end of the evening was to be. He, understanding the meaning of
+this cunning glance, said with assumed regret, "I must be going. I
+have a serious case to be finished, and I am expected at home. Duty
+before all things--don't you think so, my darling?"
+
+Caroline looked him in the face with an expression at once sad and
+sweet, with the resignation which does not, however, disguise the
+pangs of a sacrifice.
+
+"Good-bye, then," said she. "Go, for if you stay an hour longer I
+cannot so lightly bear to set you free."
+
+"My dearest," said he with a smile, "I have three days' holiday, and
+am supposed to be twenty leagues away from Paris."
+
+
+
+A few days after this anniversary of the 6th of May, Mademoiselle de
+Bellefeuille hurried off one morning to the Rue Saint-Louis, in the
+Marais, only hoping she might not arrive too late at a house where she
+commonly went once a week. An express messenger had just come to
+inform her that her mother, Madame Crochard, was sinking under a
+complication of disorders produced by constant catarrh and rheumatism.
+
+While the hackney coach-driver was flogging up his horses at
+Caroline's urgent request, supported by the promise of a handsome
+present, the timid old women, who had been Madame Crochard's friends
+during her later years, had brought a priest into the neat and
+comfortable second-floor rooms occupied by the old widow. Madame
+Crochard's maid did not know that the pretty lady at whose house her
+mistress so often dined was her daughter, and she was one of the first
+to suggest the services of a confessor, in the hope that this priest
+might be at least as useful to herself as to the sick woman. Between
+two games of boston, or out walking in the Jardin Turc, the old
+beldames with whom the widow gossiped all day had succeeded in rousing
+in their friend's stony heart some scruples as to her former life,
+some visions of the future, some fears of hell, and some hopes of
+forgiveness if she should return in sincerity to a religious life. So
+on this solemn morning three ancient females had settled themselves in
+the drawing-room where Madame Crochard was "at home" every Tuesday.
+Each in turn left her armchair to go to the poor old woman's bedside
+and sit with her, giving her the false hopes with which people delude
+the dying.
+
+At the same time, when the end was drawing near, when the physician
+called in the day before would no longer answer for her life, the
+three dames took counsel together as to whether it would not be well
+to send word to Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille. Francoise having been
+duly informed, it was decided that a commissionaire should go to the
+Rue Taitbout to inform the young relation whose influence was so
+disquieting to the four women; still, they hoped that the Auvergnat
+would be too late in bringing back the person who so certainly held
+the first place in the widow Crochard's affections. The widow,
+evidently in the enjoyment of a thousand crowns a year, would not have
+been so fondly cherished by this feminine trio, but that neither of
+them, nor Francoise herself knew of her having any heir. The wealth
+enjoyed by Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille, whom Madame Crochard, in
+obedience to the traditions of the older opera, never allowed herself
+to speak of by the affectionate name of daughter, almost justified the
+four women in their scheme of dividing among themselves the old
+woman's "pickings."
+
+Presently the one of these three sibyls who kept guard over the sick
+woman came shaking her head at the other anxious two, and said:
+
+"It is time we should be sending for the Abbe Fontanon. In another two
+hours she will neither have the wit nor the strength to write a line."
+
+Thereupon the toothless old cook went off, and returned with a man
+wearing a black gown. A low forehead showed a small mind in this
+priest, whose features were mean; his flabby, fat cheeks and double
+chin betrayed the easy-going egotist; his powdered hair gave him a
+pleasant look, till he raised his small, brown eyes, prominent under a
+flat forehead, and not unworthy to glitter under the brows of a
+Tartar.
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbe," said Francoise, "I thank you for all your advice;
+but believe me, I have taken the greatest care of the dear soul."
+
+But the servant, with her dragging step and woe-begone look, was
+silent when she saw that the door of the apartment was open, and that
+the most insinuating of the three dowagers was standing on the landing
+to be the first to speak with the confessor. When the priest had
+politely faced the honeyed and bigoted broadside of words fired off
+from the widow's three friends, he went into the sickroom to sit by
+Madame Crochard. Decency, and some sense of reserve, compelled the
+three women and old Francoise to remain in the sitting-room, and to
+make such grimaces of grief as are possible in perfection only to such
+wrinkled faces.
+
+"Oh, is it not ill-luck!" cried Francoise, heaving a sigh. "This is
+the fourth mistress I have buried. The first left me a hundred francs
+a year, the second a sum of fifty crowns, and the third a thousand
+crowns down. After thirty years' service, that is all I have to call
+my own."
+
+The woman took advantage of her freedom to come and go, to slip into a
+cupboard, whence she could hear the priest.
+
+"I see with pleasure, daughter," said Fontanon, "that you have pious
+sentiments; you have a sacred relic round your neck."
+
+Madame Crochard, with a feeble vagueness which seemed to show that she
+had not all her wits about her, pulled out the Imperial Cross of the
+Legion of Honor. The priest started back at seeing the Emperor's head;
+he went up to the penitent again, and she spoke to him, but in such a
+low tone that for some minutes Francoise could hear nothing.
+
+"Woe upon me!" cried the old woman suddenly. "Do not desert me. What,
+Monsieur l'Abbe, do you think I shall be called to account for my
+daughter's soul?"
+
+The Abbe spoke too low, and the partition was too thick for Francoise
+to hear the reply.
+
+"Alas!" sobbed the woman, "the wretch has left me nothing that I can
+bequeath. When he robbed me of my dear Caroline, he parted us, and
+only allowed me three thousand francs a year, of which the capital
+belongs to my daughter."
+
+"Madame has a daughter, and nothing to live on but an annuity,"
+shrieked Francoise, bursting into the drawing-room.
+
+The three old crones looked at each other in dismay. One of them,
+whose nose and chin nearly met with an expression that betrayed a
+superior type of hypocrisy and cunning, winked her eyes; and as soon
+as Francoise's back was turned, she gave her friends a nod, as much as
+to say, "That slut is too knowing by half; her name has figured in
+three wills already."
+
+So the three old dames sat on.
+
+However, the Abbe presently came out, and at a word from him the
+witches scuttered down the stairs at his heels, leaving Francoise
+alone with her mistress. Madame Crochard, whose sufferings increased
+in severity, rang, but in vain, for this woman, who only called out,
+"Coming, coming--in a minute!" The doors of cupboards and wardrobes
+were slamming as though Francoise were hunting high and low for a lost
+lottery ticket.
+
+Just as this crisis was at a climax, Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille came
+to stand by her mother's bed, lavishing tender words on her.
+
+"Oh my dear mother, how criminal I have been! You are ill, and I did
+not know it; my heart did not warn me. However, here I am--"
+
+"Caroline--"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"They fetched a priest--"
+
+"But send for a doctor, bless me!" cried Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille.
+"Francoise, a doctor! How is it that these ladies never sent for a
+doctor?"
+
+"They sent for a priest----" repeated the old woman with a gasp.
+
+"She is so ill--and no soothing draught, nothing on her table!"
+
+The mother made a vague sign, which Caroline's watchful eye
+understood, for she was silent to let her mother speak.
+
+"They brought a priest--to hear my confession, as they said.--Beware,
+Caroline!" cried the old woman with an effort, "the priest made me
+tell him your benefactor's name."
+
+"But who can have told you, poor mother?"
+
+The old woman died, trying to look knowingly cunning. If Mademoiselle
+de Bellefeuille had noted her mother's face she might have seen what
+no one ever will see--Death laughing.
+
+To enter into the interests that lay beneath this introduction to my
+tale, we must for a moment forget the actors in it, and look back at
+certain previous incidents, of which the last was closely concerned
+with the death of Madame Crochard. The two parts will then form a
+whole--a story which, by a law peculiar to life in Paris, was made up
+of two distinct sets of actions.
+
+Towards the close of the month of November 1805, a young barrister,
+aged about six-and-twenty, was going down the stairs of the hotel
+where the High Chancellor of the Empire resided, at about three
+o'clock one morning. Having reached the courtyard in full evening
+dress, under a keen frost, he could not help giving vent to an
+exclamation of dismay--qualified, however, by the spirit which rarely
+deserts a Frenchman--at seeing no hackney coach waiting outside the
+gates, and hearing no noises such as arise from the wooden shoes or
+harsh voices of the hackney-coachmen of Paris. The occasional pawing
+of the horses of the Chief Justice's carriage--the young man having
+left him still playing _bouillote_ with Cambaceres--alone rang out in
+the paved court, which was scarcely lighted by the carriage lamps.
+Suddenly the young lawyer felt a friendly hand on his shoulder, and
+turning round, found himself face to face with the Judge, to whom he
+bowed. As the footman let down the steps of his carriage, the old
+gentleman, who had served the Convention, suspected the junior's
+dilemma.
+
+"All cats are gray in the dark," said he good-humoredly. "The Chief
+Justice cannot compromise himself by putting a pleader in the right
+way! Especially," he went on, "when the pleader is the nephew of an
+old colleague, one of the lights of the grand Council of State which
+gave France the Napoleonic Code."
+
+At a gesture from the chief magistrate of France under the Empire, the
+foot-passenger got into the carriage.
+
+"Where do you live?" asked the great man, before the footman who
+awaited his orders had closed the door.
+
+"Quai des Augustins, monseigneur."
+
+The horses started, and the young man found himself alone with the
+Minister, to whom he had vainly tried to speak before and after the
+sumptuous dinner given by Cambaceres; in fact, the great man had
+evidently avoided him throughout the evening.
+
+"Well, Monsieur _de_ Granville, you are on the high road!"
+
+"So long as I sit by your Excellency's side--"
+
+"Nay, I am not jesting," said the Minister. "You were called two years
+since, and your defence in the case of Simeuse and Hauteserre had
+raised you high in your profession."
+
+"I had supposed that my interest in those unfortunate emigres had done
+me no good."
+
+"You are still very young," said the great man gravely. "But the High
+Chancellor," he went on, after a pause, "was greatly pleased with you
+this evening. Get a judgeship in the lower courts; we want men. The
+nephew of a man in whom Cambaceres and I take great interest must not
+remain in the background for lack of encouragement. Your uncle helped
+us to tide over a very stormy season, and services of that kind are
+not forgotten." The Minister sat silent for a few minutes. "Before
+long," he went on, "I shall have three vacancies open in the Lower
+Courts and in the Imperial Court in Paris. Come to see me, and take
+the place you prefer. Till then work hard, but do not be seen at my
+receptions. In the first place, I am overwhelmed with work; and
+besides that, your rivals may suspect your purpose and do you harm
+with the patron. Cambaceres and I, by not speaking a word to you this
+evening, have averted the accusation of favoritism."
+
+As the great man ceased speaking, the carriage drew up on the Quai des
+Augustins; the young lawyer thanked his generous patron for the two
+lifts he had conferred on him, and then knocked at his door pretty
+loudly, for the bitter wind blew cold about his calves. At last the
+old lodgekeeper pulled up the latch; and as the young man passed his
+window, called out in a hoarse voice, "Monsieur Granville, here is a
+letter for you."
+
+The young man took the letter, and in spite of the cold, tried to
+identify the writing by the gleam of a dull lamp fast dying out. "From
+my father!" he exclaimed, as he took his bedroom candle, which the
+porter at last had lighted. And he ran up to his room to read the
+following epistle:--
+
+  "Set off by the next mail; and if you can get here soon enough,
+  your fortune is made. Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems has lost her
+  sister; she is now an only child; and, as we know, she does not
+  hate you. Madame Bontems can now leave her about forty thousand
+  francs a year, besides whatever she may give her when she marries.
+  I have prepared the way.
+
+  "Our friends will wonder to see a family of old nobility allying
+  itself to the Bontems; old Bontems was a red republican of the
+  deepest dye, owning large quantities of the nationalized land,
+  that he bought for a mere song. But he held nothing but convent
+  lands, and the monks will not come back; and then, as you have
+  already so far derogated as to become a lawyer, I cannot see why
+  we should shrink from a further concession to the prevalent ideas.
+  The girl will have three hundred thousand francs; I can give you a
+  hundred thousand; your mother's property must be worth fifty
+  thousand crowns, more or less; so if you choose to take a
+  judgeship, my dear son, you are quite in a position to become a
+  senator as much as any other man. My brother-in-law the Councillor
+  of State will not indeed lend you a helping-hand; still, as he is
+  not married, his property will some day be yours, and if you are
+  not senator by your own efforts, you will get it through him. Then
+  you will be perched high enough to look on at events. Farewell.
+  Yours affectionately."
+
+So young Granville went to bed full of schemes, each fairer than the
+last. Under the powerful protection of the High Chancellor, the Chief
+Justice, and his mother's brother--one of the originators of the Code
+--he was about to make a start in a coveted position before the
+highest court of the Empire, and he already saw himself a member of
+the bench whence Napoleon selected the chief functionaries of the
+realm. He could also promise himself a fortune handsome enough to keep
+up his rank, for which the slender income of five thousand francs from
+an estate left him by his mother would be quite insufficient.
+
+To crown his ambitious dreams with a vision of happiness, he called up
+the guileless face of Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems, the companion of
+his childhood. Until he came to boyhood his father and mother had made
+no objection to his intimacy with their neighbor's pretty little
+daughter; but when, during his brief holiday visits to Bayeux, his
+parents, who prided themselves on their good birth, saw what friends
+the young people were, they forbade his ever thinking of her. Thus for
+ten years past Granville had only had occasional glimpses of the girl,
+whom he still sometimes thought of as "his little wife." And in those
+brief moments when they met free from the active watchfulness of their
+families, they had scarcely exchanged a few vague civilities at the
+church door or in the street. Their happiest days had been those when,
+brought together by one of those country festivities known in Normandy
+as _Assemblees_, they could steal a glance at each other from afar.
+
+In the course of the last vacation Granville had twice seen Angelique,
+and her downcast eyes and drooping attitude had led him to suppose
+that she was crushed by some unknown tyranny.
+
+He was off by seven next morning to the coach office in the Rue
+Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, and was so lucky as to find a vacant seat in
+the diligence then starting for Caen.
+
+It was not without deep emotion that the young lawyer saw once more
+the spires of the cathedral at Bayeux. As yet no hope of his life had
+been cheated, and his heart swelled with the generous feelings that
+expand in the youthful soul.
+
+After the too lengthy feast of welcome prepared by his father, who
+awaited him with some friends, the impatient youth was conducted to a
+house, long familiar to him, standing in the Rue Teinture. His heart
+beat high when his father--still known in the town of Bayeux as the
+Comte de Granville--knocked loudly at a carriage gate off which the
+green paint was dropping in scales. It was about four in the
+afternoon. A young maid-servant, in a cotton cap, dropped a short
+curtsey to the two gentlemen, and said that the ladies would soon be
+home from vespers.
+
+The Count and his son were shown into a low room used as a
+drawing-room, but more like a convent parlor. Polished panels of dark
+walnut made it gloomy enough, and around it some old-fashioned chairs
+covered with worsted work and stiff armchairs were symmetrically
+arranged. The stone chimney-shelf had no ornament but a discolored
+mirror, and on each side of it were the twisted branches of a pair of
+candle-brackets, such as were made at the time of the Peace of Utrecht.
+Against a panel opposite, young Granville saw an enormous crucifix of
+ebony and ivory surrounded by a wreath of box that had been blessed.
+Though there were three windows to the room, looking out on a
+country-town garden, laid out in formal square beds edged with box, the
+room was so dark that it was difficult to discern, on the wall opposite
+the windows, three pictures of sacred subjects painted by a skilled hand,
+and purchased, no doubt, during the Revolution by old Bontems, who, as
+governor of the district, had never neglected his opportunities. From
+the carefully polished floor to the green checked holland curtains
+everything shone with conventual cleanliness.
+
+The young man's heart felt an involuntary chill in this silent retreat
+where Angelique dwelt. The habit of frequenting the glittering Paris
+drawing-rooms, and the constant whirl of society, had effaced from his
+memory the dull and peaceful surroundings of a country life, and the
+contrast was so startling as to give him a sort of internal shiver. To
+have just left a party at the house of Cambaceres, where life was so
+large, where minds could expand, where the splendor of the Imperial
+Court was so vividly reflected, and to be dropped suddenly into a
+sphere of squalidly narrow ideas--was it not like a leap from Italy
+into Greenland?--"Living here is not life!" said he to himself, as he
+looked round the Methodistical room. The old Count, seeing his son's
+dismay, went up to him, and taking his hand, led him to a window,
+where there was still a gleam of daylight, and while the maid was
+lighting the yellow tapers in the candle branches he tried to clear
+away the clouds that the dreary place had brought to his brow.
+
+"Listen, my boy," said he. "Old Bontems' widow is a frenzied bigot.
+'When the devil is old--' you know! I see that the place goes against
+the grain. Well, this is the whole truth; the old woman is
+priest-ridden; they have persuaded her that it was high time to make
+sure of heaven, and the better to secure Saint Peter and his keys she
+pays before-hand. She goes to Mass every day, attends every service,
+takes the communion every Sunday God has made, and amuses herself by
+restoring chapels. She had given so many ornaments, and albs, and
+chasubles, she has crowned the canopy with so many feathers, that on
+the occasion of the last Corpus Christi procession as great a crowd
+came together as to see a man hanged, just to stare at the priests in
+their splendid dresses and all the vessels regilt. This house too is a
+sort of Holy Land. It was I who hindered her from giving those three
+pictures to the Church--a Domenichino, a Correggio, and an Andrea del
+Sarto--worth a good deal of money."
+
+"But Angelique?" asked the young man.
+
+"If you do not marry her, Angelique is done for," said the Count. "Our
+holy apostles counsel her to live a virgin martyr. I have had the
+utmost difficulty in stirring up her little heart, since she has been
+the only child, by talking to her of you; but, as you will easily
+understand, as soon as she is married you will carry her off to Paris.
+There, festivities, married life, the theatres, and the rush of
+Parisian society, will soon make her forget confessionals, and
+fasting, and hair shirts, and Masses, which are the exclusive
+nourishment of such creatures."
+
+"But the fifty thousand francs a year derived from Church property?
+Will not all that return--"
+
+"That is the point!" exclaimed the Count, with a cunning glance. "In
+consideration of this marriage--for Madame Bontems' vanity is not a
+little flattered by the notion of grafting the Bontems on to the
+genealogical tree of the Granvilles--the aforenamed mother agrees
+to settle her fortune absolutely on the girl, reserving only a
+life-interest. The priesthood, therefore, are set against the marriage;
+but I have had the banns published, everything is ready, and in a week
+you will be out of the clutches of the mother and her Abbes. You will
+have the prettiest girl in Bayeux, a good little soul who will give you
+no trouble, because she has sound principles. She has been mortified,
+as they say in their jargon, by fasting and prayer--and," he added in a
+low voice, "by her mother."
+
+A modest tap at the door silenced the Count, who expected to see the
+two ladies appear. A little page came in, evidently in a great hurry;
+but, abashed by the presence of the two gentlemen, he beckoned to a
+housekeeper, who followed him. Dressed in a blue cloth jacket with
+short tails, and blue-and-white striped trousers, his hair cut short
+all round, the boy's expression was that of a chorister, so strongly
+was it stamped with the compulsory propriety that marks every member
+of a bigoted household.
+
+"Mademoiselle Gatienne," said he, "do you know where the books are for
+the offices of the Virgin? The ladies of the Congregation of the
+Sacred Heart are going in procession this evening round the church."
+
+Gatienne went in search of the books.
+
+"Will they go on much longer, my little man?" asked the Count.
+
+"Oh, half an hour at most."
+
+"Let us go to look on," said the father to his son. "There will be
+some pretty women there, and a visit to the Cathedral can do us no
+harm."
+
+The young lawyer followed him with a doubtful expression.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked the Count.
+
+"The matter, father, is that I am sure I am right."
+
+"But you have said nothing."
+
+"No; but I have been thinking that you have still ten thousand francs
+a year left of your original fortune. You will leave them to me--as
+long a time hence as possible, I hope. But if you are ready to give me
+a hundred thousand francs to make a foolish match, you will surely
+allow me to ask you for only fifty thousand to save me from such a
+misfortune, and enjoy as a bachelor a fortune equal to what your
+Mademoiselle Bontems would bring me."
+
+"Are you crazy?"
+
+"No, father. These are the facts. The Chief Justice promised me
+yesterday that I should have a seat on the Bench. Fifty thousand
+francs added to what I have, and to the pay of my appointment, will
+give me an income of twelve thousand francs a year. And I then shall
+most certainly have a chance of marrying a fortune, better than this
+alliance, which will be poor in happiness if rich in goods."
+
+"It is very clear," said his father, "that you were not brought up
+under the old _regime_. Does a man of our rank ever allow his wife to
+be in his way?"
+
+"But, my dear father, in these days marriage is--"
+
+"Bless me!" cried the Count, interrupting his son, "then what my old
+_emigre_ friends tell me is true, I suppose. The Revolution has left
+us habits devoid of pleasure, and has infected all the young men with
+vulgar principles. You, like my Jacobin brother-in-law, will harangue
+me, I suppose, on the Nation, Public Morals, and Disinterestedness!
+--Good Heavens! But for the Emperor's sisters, where should we be?"
+
+The still hale old man, whom the peasants on the estate persisted in
+calling the Signeur de Granville, ended his speech as they entered the
+Cathedral porch. In spite of the sanctity of the place, and even as he
+dipped his fingers in the holy water, he hummed an air from the opera
+of _Rose et Colas_, and then led the way down the side aisles,
+stopping by each pillar to survey the rows of heads, all in lines like
+ranks of soldiers on parade.
+
+The special service of the Sacred Heart was about to begin. The ladies
+affiliated to that congregation were in front near the choir, so the
+Count and his son made their way to that part of the nave, and stood
+leaning against one of the columns where there was least light, whence
+they could command a view of this mass of faces, looking like a meadow
+full of flowers. Suddenly, close to young Granville, a voice, sweeter
+than it seemed possible to ascribe to a human being, broke into song,
+like the first nightingale when winter is past. Though it mingled with
+the voices of a thousand other women and the notes of the organ, that
+voice stirred his nerves as though they vibrated to the too full and
+too piercing sounds of a harmonium. The Parisian turned round, and,
+seeing a young figure, though, the head being bent, her face was
+entirely concealed by a large white bonnet, concluded that the voice
+was hers. He fancied that he recognized Angelique in spite of a brown
+merino pelisse that wrapped her, and he nudged his father's elbow.
+
+"Yes, there she is," said the Count, after looking where his son
+pointed, and then, by an expressive glance, he directed his attention
+to the pale face of an elderly woman who had already detected the
+strangers, though her false eyes, deep set in dark circles, did not
+seem to have strayed from the prayer-book she held.
+
+Angelique raised her face, gazing at the altar as if to inhale the
+heavy scent of the incense that came wafted in clouds over the two
+women. And then, in the doubtful light that the tapers shed down the
+nave, with that of a central lamp and of some lights round the
+pillars, the young man beheld a face which shook his determination. A
+white watered-silk bonnet closely framed features of perfect
+regularity, the oval being completed by the satin ribbon tie that
+fastened it under her dimpled chin. Over her forehead, very sweet
+though low, hair of a pale gold color parted in two bands and fell
+over her cheeks, like the shadow of leaves on a flower. The arches of
+her eyebrows were drawn with the accuracy we admire in the best
+Chinese paintings. Her nose, almost aquiline in profile, was
+exceptionally firmly cut, and her lips were like two rose lines
+lovingly traced with a delicate brush. Her eyes, of a light blue, were
+expressive of innocence.
+
+Though Granville discerned a sort of rigid reserve in this girlish
+face, he could ascribe it to the devotion in which Angelique was rapt.
+The solemn words of prayer, visible in the cold, came from between
+rows of pearls, like a fragrant mist, as it were. The young man
+involuntarily bent over her a little to breathe this diviner air. This
+movement attracted the girl's notice; her gaze, raised to the altar,
+was diverted to Granville, whom she could see but dimly in the gloom;
+but she recognized him as the companion of her youth, and a memory
+more vivid than prayer brought a supernatural glow to her face; she
+blushed. The young lawyer was thrilled with joy at seeing the hopes of
+another life overpowered by those of love, and the glory of the
+sanctuary eclipsed by earthly reminiscences; but his triumph was
+brief. Angelique dropped her veil, assumed a calm demeanor, and went
+on singing without letting her voice betray the least emotion.
+
+Granville was a prey to one single wish, and every thought of prudence
+vanished. By the time the service was ended, his impatience was so
+great that he could not leave the ladies to go home alone, but came at
+once to make his bow to "his little wife." They bashfully greeted each
+other in the Cathedral porch in the presence of the congregation.
+Madame Bontems was tremulous with pride as she took the Comte de
+Granville's arm, though he, forced to offer it in the presence of all
+the world was vexed enough with his son for his ill-advised
+impatience.
+
+For about a fortnight, between the official announcement of the
+intended marriage of the Vicomte de Granville to Mademoiselle Bontems
+and the solemn day of the wedding, he came assiduously to visit his
+lady-love in the dismal drawing-room, to which he became accustomed.
+His long calls were devoted to watching Angelique's character; for his
+prudence, happily, had made itself heard again in the day after their
+first meeting. He always found her seated at a little table of some
+West Indian wood, and engaged in marking the linen of her trousseau.
+Angelique never spoke first on the subject of religion. If the young
+lawyer amused himself with fingering the handsome rosary that she kept
+in a little green velvet bag, if he laughed as he looked at a relic
+such as usually is attached to this means of grace, Angelique would
+gently take the rosary out of his hands and replace it in the bag
+without a word, putting it away at once. When, now and then, Granville
+was so bold as to make mischievous remarks as to certain religious
+practices, the pretty girl listened to him with the obstinate smile of
+assurance.
+
+"You must either believe nothing, or believe everything the Church
+teaches," she would say. "Would you wish to have a woman without a
+religion as the mother of your children?--No.--What man may dare judge
+as between disbelievers and God? And how can I then blame what the
+Church allows?"
+
+Angelique appeared to be animated by such fervent charity, the young
+man saw her look at him with such perfect conviction, that he
+sometimes felt tempted to embrace her religious views; her firm belief
+that she was in the only right road aroused doubts in his mind, which
+she tried to turn to account.
+
+But then Granville committed the fatal blunder of mistaking the
+enchantment of desire for that of love. Angelique was so happy in
+reconciling the voice of her heart with that of duty, by giving way to
+a liking that had grown up with her from childhood, that the deluded
+man could not discern which of the two spoke the louder. Are not all
+young men ready to trust the promise of a pretty face and to infer
+beauty of soul from beauty of feature? An indefinable impulse leads
+them to believe that moral perfection must co-exist with physical
+perfection. If Angelique had not been at liberty to give vent to her
+sentiments, they would soon have dried up in her heart like a plant
+watered with some deadly acid. How should a lover be aware of bigotry
+so well hidden?
+
+This was the course of young Granville's feelings during that
+fortnight, devoured by him like a book of which the end is absorbing.
+Angelique, carefully watched by him, seemed the gentlest of creatures,
+and he even caught himself feeling grateful to Madame Bontems, who, by
+implanting so deeply the principles of religion, had in some degree
+inured her to meet the troubles of life.
+
+On the day named for signing the inevitable contract, Madame Bontems
+made her son-in-law pledge himself solemnly to respect her daughter's
+religious practices, to allow her entire liberty of conscience, to
+permit her to go to communion, to church, to confession as often as
+she pleased, and never to control her choice of priestly advisers. At
+this critical moment Angelique looked at her future husband with such
+pure and innocent eyes, that Granville did not hesitate to give his
+word. A smile puckered the lips of the Abbe Fontanon, a pale man, who
+directed the consciences of this household. Mademoiselle Bontems, by a
+slight nod, seemed to promise that she would never take an unfair
+advantage of this freedom. As to the old Count, he gently whistled the
+tune of an old song, _Va-t-en-voir s'ils viennent_ ("Go and see if
+they are coming on!")
+
+
+
+A few days after the wedding festivities of which so much is thought
+in the provinces, Granville and his wife went to Paris, whither the
+young man was recalled by his appointment as public prosecutor to the
+Supreme Court of the Seine circuit.
+
+When the young couple set out to find a residence, Angelique used the
+influence that the honeymoon gives to every wife in persuading her
+husband to take a large apartment in the ground-floor of a house at
+the corner of the Vieille Rue du Temple and the Rue Nueve
+Saint-Francois. Her chief reason for this choice was that the house
+was close to the Rue d'Orleans, where there was a church, and not far
+from a small chapel in the Rue Saint-Louis.
+
+"A good housewife provides for everything," said her husband,
+laughing.
+
+Angelique pointed out to him that this part of Paris, known as the
+Marais, was within easy reach of the Palais de Justice, and that the
+lawyers they knew lived in the neighborhood. A fairly large garden
+made the apartment particularly advantageous to a young couple; the
+children--if Heaven should send them any--could play in the open air;
+the courtyard was spacious, and there were good stables.
+
+The lawyer wished to live in the Chaussee d'Antin, where everything is
+fresh and bright, where the fashions may be seen while still new,
+where a well-dressed crowd throngs the Boulevards, and the distance is
+less to the theatres or places of amusement; but he was obliged to
+give way to the coaxing ways of a young wife, who asked this as his
+first favor; so, to please her, he settled in the Marais. Granville's
+duties required him to work hard--all the more, because they were new
+to him--so he devoted himself in the first place to furnishing his
+private study and arranging his books. He was soon established in a
+room crammed with papers, and left the decoration of the house to his
+wife. He was all the better pleased to plunge Angelique into the
+bustle of buying furniture and fittings, the source of so much
+pleasure and of so many associations to most young women, because he
+was rather ashamed of depriving her of his company more often than the
+usages of early married life require. As soon as his work was fairly
+under way, he gladly allowed his wife to tempt him out of his study to
+consider the effect of furniture or hangings, which he had before only
+seen piecemeal or unfinished.
+
+If the old adage is true that says a woman may be judged of from her
+front door, her rooms must express her mind with even greater
+fidelity. Madame de Granville had perhaps stamped the various things
+she had ordered with the seal of her own character; the young lawyer
+was certainly startled by the cold, arid solemnity that reigned in
+these rooms; he found nothing to charm his taste; everything was
+discordant, nothing gratified the eye. The rigid mannerism that
+prevailed in the sitting-room at Bayeux had invaded his home; the
+broad panels were hollowed in circles, and decorated with those
+arabesques of which the long, monotonous mouldings are in such bad
+taste. Anxious to find excuses for his wife, the young husband began
+again, looking first at the long and lofty ante-room through which the
+apartment was entered. The color of the panels, as ordered by his
+wife, was too heavy, and the very dark green velvet used to cover the
+benches added to the gloom of this entrance--not, to be sure, an
+important room, but giving a first impression--just as we measure a
+man's intelligence by his first address. An ante-room is a kind of
+preface which announces what is to follow, but promises nothing.
+
+The young husband wondered whether his wife could really have chosen
+the lamp of an antique pattern, which hung in the centre of this bare
+hall, the pavement of black and white marble, and the paper in
+imitation of blocks of stone, with green moss on them in places. A
+handsome, but not new, barometer hung on the middle of one of the
+walls, as if to accentuate the void. At the sight of it all, he looked
+round at his wife; he saw her so much pleased by the red braid binding
+to the cotton curtains, so satisfied with the barometer and the
+strictly decent statue that ornamented a large Gothic stove, that he
+had not the barbarous courage to overthrow such deep convictions.
+Instead of blaming his wife, Granville blamed himself, accusing
+himself of having failed in his duty of guiding the first steps in
+Paris of a girl brought up at Bayeux.
+
+From this specimen, what might not be expected of the other rooms?
+What was to be looked for from a woman who took fright at the bare
+legs of a Caryatid, and who would not look at a chandelier or a
+candle-stick if she saw on it the nude outlines of an Egyptian bust?
+At this date the school of David was at the height of its glory; all
+the art of France bore the stamp of his correct design and his love of
+antique types, which indeed gave his pictures the character of colored
+sculpture. But none of these devices of Imperial luxury found civic
+rights under Madame de Granville's roof. The spacious, square
+drawing-room remained as it had been left from the time of Louis XV.,
+in white and tarnished gold, lavishly adorned by the architect with
+checkered lattice-work and the hideous garlands due to the uninventive
+designers of the time. Still, if harmony at least had prevailed, if
+the furniture of modern mahogany had but assumed the twisted forms of
+which Boucher's corrupt taste first set the fashion, Angelique's room
+would only have suggested the fantastic contrast of a young couple in
+the nineteenth century living as though they were in the eighteenth;
+but a number of details were in ridiculous discord. The consoles, the
+clocks, the candelabra, were decorated with the military trophies
+which the wars of the Empire commended to the affections of the
+Parisians; and the Greek helmets, the Roman crossed daggers, and the
+shields so dear to military enthusiasm that they were introduced on
+furniture of the most peaceful uses, had no fitness side by side with
+the delicate and profuse arabesques that delighted Madame de
+Pompadour.
+
+Bigotry tends to an indescribably tiresome kind of humility which does
+not exclude pride. Whether from modesty or by choice, Madame de
+Granville seemed to have a horror of light and cheerful colors;
+perhaps, too, she imagined that brown and purple beseemed the dignity
+of a magistrate. How could a girl accustomed to an austere life have
+admitted the luxurious divans that may suggest evil thoughts, the
+elegant and tempting boudoirs where naughtiness may be imagined?
+
+The poor husband was in despair. From the tone in which he approved,
+only seconding the praises she bestowed on herself, Angelique
+understood that nothing really pleased him; and she expressed so much
+regret at her want of success, that Granville, who was very much in
+love, regarded her disappointment as a proof of her affection instead
+of resentment for an offence to her self-conceit. After all, could he
+expect a girl just snatched from the humdrum of country notions, with
+no experience of the niceties and grace of Paris life, to know or do
+any better? Rather would he believe that his wife's choice had been
+overruled by the tradesmen than allow himself to own the truth. If he
+had been less in love, he would have understood that the dealers,
+always quick to discern their customers' ideas, had blessed Heaven
+for sending them a tasteless little bigot, who would take their
+old-fashioned goods off their hands. So he comforted the pretty
+provincial.
+
+"Happiness, dear Angelique, does not depend on a more or less elegant
+piece of furniture; it depends on the wife's sweetness, gentleness,
+and love."
+
+"Why, it is my duty to love you," said Angelique mildly, "and I can
+have no more delightful duty to carry out."
+
+Nature has implanted in the heart of woman so great a desire to
+please, so deep a craving for love, that, even in a youthful bigot,
+the ideas of salvation and a future existence must give way to the
+happiness of early married life. And, in fact, from the month of
+April, when they were married, till the beginning of winter, the
+husband and wife lived in perfect union. Love and hard work have the
+grace of making a man tolerably indifferent to external matters. Being
+obliged to spend half the day in court fighting for the gravest
+interests of men's lives or fortunes, Granville was less alive than
+another might have been to certain facts in his household.
+
+If, on a Friday, he found none but Lenten fare, and by chance asked
+for a dish of meat without getting it, his wife, forbidden by the
+Gospel to tell a lie, could still, by such subterfuges as are
+permissible in the interests of religion, cloak what was premeditated
+purpose under some pretext of her own carelessness or the scarcity in
+the market. She would often exculpate herself at the expense of the
+cook, and even go so far as to scold him. At that time young lawyers
+did not, as they do now, keep the fasts of the Church, the four
+rogation seasons, and the vigils of festivals; so Granville was not at
+first aware of the regular recurrence of these Lenten meals, which his
+wife took care should be made dainty by the addition of teal, moor-hen,
+and fish-pies, that their amphibious meat or high seasoning might
+cheat his palate. Thus the young man unconsciously lived in strict
+orthodoxy, and worked out his salvation without knowing it.
+
+On week-days he did not know whether his wife went to Mass or no. On
+Sundays, with very natural amiability, he accompanied her to church to
+make up to her, as it were, for sometimes giving up vespers in favor
+of his company; he could not at first fully enter into the strictness
+of his wife's religious views. The theatres being impossible in summer
+by reason of the heat, Granville had not even the opportunity of the
+great success of a piece to give rise to the serious question of
+play-going. And, in short, at the early stage of a union to which a man
+has been led by a young girl's beauty, he can hardly be exacting as to
+his amusements. Youth is greedy rather than dainty, and possession has
+a charm in itself. How should he be keen to note coldness, dignity, and
+reserve in the woman to whom he ascribes the excitement he himself
+feels, and lends the glow of the fire that burns within him? He must
+have attained a certain conjugal calm before he discovers that a bigot
+sits waiting for love with her arms folded.
+
+Granville, therefore, believed himself happy till a fatal event
+brought its influence to bear on his married life. In the month of
+November 1808 the Canon of Bayeux Cathedral who had been the keeper of
+Madame Bontems' conscience and her daughter's, came to Paris, spurred
+by the ambition to be at the head of a church in the capital--a
+position which he regarded perhaps as the stepping-stone to a
+bishopric. On resuming his former control of this wandering lamb, he
+was horrified to find her already so much deteriorated by the air of
+Paris, and strove to reclaim her to his chilly fold. Frightened by the
+exhortations of this priest, a man of about eight-and-thirty, who
+brought with him, into the circle of the enlightened and tolerant
+Paris clergy, the bitter provincial catholicism and the inflexible
+bigotry which fetter timid souls with endless exactions, Madame de
+Granville did penance and returned from her Jansenist errors.
+
+It would be tiresome to describe minutely all the circumstances which
+insensibly brought disaster on this household; it will be enough to
+relate the simple facts without giving them in strict order of time.
+
+The first misunderstanding between the young couple was, however, a
+serious one.
+
+When Granville took his wife into society she never declined solemn
+functions, such as dinners, concerts, or parties given by the Judges
+superior to her husband in the legal profession; but for a long time
+she constantly excused herself on the plea of a sick headache when
+they were invited to a ball. One day Granville, out of patience with
+these assumed indispositions, destroyed a note of invitation to a ball
+at the house of a Councillor of State, and gave his wife only a verbal
+invitation. Then, on the evening, her health being quite above
+suspicion, he took her to a magnificent entertainment.
+
+"My dear," said he, on their return home, seeing her wear an offensive
+air of depression, "your position as a wife, the rank you hold in
+society, and the fortune you enjoy, impose on you certain duties of
+which no divine law can relieve you. Are you not your husband's pride?
+You are required to go to balls when I go, and to appear in a becoming
+manner."
+
+"And what is there, my dear, so disastrous in my dress?"
+
+"It is your manner, my dear. When a young man comes up to speak to
+you, you look so serious that a spiteful person might believe you
+doubtful of your own virtue. You seem to fear lest a smile should undo
+you. You really look as if you were asking forgiveness of God for the
+sins that may be committed around you. The world, my dearest, is not a
+convent.--But, as you mentioned your dress, I may confess to you that
+it is no less a duty to conform to the customs and fashions of
+Society."
+
+"Do you wish that I should display my shape like those indecent women
+who wear gowns so low that impudent eyes can stare at their bare
+shoulders and their--"
+
+"There is a difference, my dear," said her husband, interrupting her,
+"between uncovering your whole bust and giving some grace to your
+dress. You wear three rows of net frills that cover your throat up to
+your chin. You look as if you had desired your dressmaker to destroy
+the graceful line of your shoulders and bosom with as much care as a
+coquette would devote to obtaining from hers a bodice that might
+emphasize her covered form. Your bust is wrapped in so many folds that
+every one was laughing at your affectation of prudery. You would be
+really grieved if I were to repeat the ill-natured remarks made on
+your appearance."
+
+"Those who admire such obscenity will not have to bear the burthen if
+we sin," said the lady tartly.
+
+"And you did not dance?" asked Granville.
+
+"I shall never dance," she replied.
+
+"If I tell you that you ought to dance!" said her husband sharply.
+"Yes, you ought to follow the fashions, to wear flowers in your hair,
+and diamonds. Remember, my dear, that rich people--and we are rich
+--are obliged to keep up luxury in the State. Is it not far better to
+encourage manufacturers than to distribute money in the form of alms
+through the medium of the clergy?"
+
+"You talk as a statesman!" said Angelique.
+
+"And you as a priest," he retorted.
+
+The discussion was bitter. Madame de Granville's answers, though
+spoken very sweetly and in a voice as clear as a church bell, showed
+an obstinacy that betrayed priestly influence. When she appealed to
+the rights secured to her by Granville's promise, she added that her
+director specially forbade her going to balls; then her husband
+pointed out to her that the priest was overstepping the regulations of
+the Church.
+
+This odious theological dispute was renewed with great violence and
+acerbity on both sides when Granville proposed to take his wife to the
+play. Finally, the lawyer, whose sole aim was to defeat the pernicious
+influence exerted over his wife by her old confessor, placed the
+question on such a footing that Madame de Granville, in a spirit of
+defiance, referred it by writing to the Court of Rome, asking in so
+many words whether a woman could wear low gowns and go to the play and
+to balls without compromising her salvation.
+
+The reply of the venerable Pope Pius VII. came at once, strongly
+condemning the wife's recalcitrancy and blaming the priest. This
+letter, a chapter on conjugal duties, might have been dictated by the
+spirit of Fenelon, whose grace and tenderness pervaded every line.
+
+"A wife is right to go wherever her husband may take her. Even if she
+sins by his command, she will not be ultimately held answerable."
+These two sentences of the Pope's homily only made Madame de Granville
+and her director accuse him of irreligion.
+
+But before this letter had arrived, Granville had discovered the
+strict observance of fast days that his wife forced upon him, and gave
+his servants orders to serve him with meat every day in the year.
+However much annoyed his wife might be by these commands, Granville,
+who cared not a straw for such indulgence or abstinence, persisted
+with manly determination.
+
+Is it not an offence to the weakest creature that can think at all to
+be compelled to do, by the will of another, anything that he would
+otherwise have done simply of his own accord? Of all forms of tyranny,
+the most odious is that which constantly robs the soul of the merit of
+its thoughts and deeds. It has to abdicate without having reigned. The
+word we are readiest to speak, the feelings we most love to express,
+die when we are commanded to utter them.
+
+Ere long the young man ceased to invite his friends, to give parties
+or dinners; the house might have been shrouded in crape. A house where
+the mistress is a bigot has an atmosphere of its own. The servants,
+who are, of course, under her immediate control, are chosen among a
+class who call themselves pious, and who have an unmistakable
+physiognomy. Just as the jolliest fellow alive, when he joins the
+_gendarmerie_, has the countenance of a gendarme, so those who give
+themselves over to the habit of lowering their eyes and preserving a
+sanctimonious mien clothes them in a livery of hypocrisy which rogues
+can affect to perfection.
+
+And besides, bigots constitute a sort of republic; they all know each
+other; the servants they recommend and hand on from one to another are
+a race apart, and preserved by them, as horse-breeders will admit no
+animal into their stables that has not a pedigree. The more the
+impious--as they are thought--come to understand a household of
+bigots, the more they perceive that everything is stamped with an
+indescribable squalor; they find there, at the same time, an
+appearance of avarice and mystery, as in a miser's home, and the dank
+scent of cold incense which gives a chill to the stale atmosphere of a
+chapel. This methodical meanness, this narrowness of thought, which is
+visible in every detail, can only be expressed by one word--Bigotry.
+In these sinister and pitiless houses Bigotry is written on the
+furniture, the prints, the pictures; speech is bigoted, the silence is
+bigoted, the faces are those of bigots. The transformation of men and
+things into bigotry is an inexplicable mystery, but the fact is
+evident. Everybody can see that bigots do not walk, do not sit, do not
+speak, as men of the world walk, sit, and speak. Under their roof
+every one is ill at ease, no one laughs, stiffness and formality
+infect everything, from the mistress' cap down to her pincushion; eyes
+are not honest, the folks are more like shadows, and the lady of the
+house seems perched on a throne of ice.
+
+One morning poor Granville discerned with grief and pain that all the
+symptoms of bigotry had invaded his home. There are in the world
+different spheres in which the same effects are seen though produced
+by dissimilar causes. Dulness hedges such miserable homes round with
+walls of brass, enclosing the horrors of the desert and the infinite
+void. The home is not so much a tomb as that far worse thing--a
+convent. In the center of this icy sphere the lawyer could study his
+wife dispassionately. He observed, not without keen regret, the
+narrow-mindedness that stood confessed in the very way that her hair
+grew, low on the forehead, which was slightly depressed; he discovered
+in the perfect regularity of her features a certain set rigidity which
+before long made him hate the assumed sweetness that had bewitched
+him. Intuition told him that one day of disaster those thin lips might
+say, "My dear, it is for your good!"
+
+Madame de Granville's complexion was acquiring a dull pallor and an
+austere expression that were a kill-joy to all who came near her. Was
+this change wrought by the ascetic habits of a pharisaism which is not
+piety any more than avarice is economy? It would be hard to say.
+Beauty without expression is perhaps an imposture. This imperturbable
+set smile that the young wife always wore when she looked at Granville
+seemed to be a sort of Jesuitical formula of happiness, by which she
+thought to satisfy all the requirements of married life. Her charity
+was an offence, her soulless beauty was monstrous to those who knew
+her; the mildness of her speech was an irritation: she acted, not on
+feeling, but on duty.
+
+There are faults which may yield in a wife to the stern lessons of
+experience, or to a husband's warnings; but nothing can counteract
+false ideas of religion. An eternity of happiness to be won, set in
+the scale against worldly enjoyment, triumphs over everything and
+makes every pang endurable. Is it not the apotheosis of egotism, of
+Self beyond the grave? Thus even the Pope was censured at the tribunal
+of the priest and the young devotee. To be always in the right is a
+feeling which absorbs every other in these tyrannous souls.
+
+For some time past a secret struggle had been going on between the
+ideas of the husband and wife, and the young man was soon weary of a
+battle to which there could be no end. What man, what temper, can
+endure the sight of a hypocritically affectionate face and categorical
+resistance to his slightest wishes? What is to be done with a wife who
+takes advantage of his passion to protect her coldness, who seems
+determined on being blandly inexorable, prepares herself ecstatically
+to play the martyr, and looks on her husband as a scourge from God, a
+means of flagellation that may spare her the fires of purgatory? What
+picture can give an idea of these women who make virtue hateful by
+defying the gentle precepts of that faith which Saint John epitomized
+in the words, "Love one another"?
+
+If there was a bonnet to be found in a milliner's shop that was
+condemned to remain in the window, or to be packed off to the
+colonies, Granville was certain to see it on his wife's head; if a
+material of bad color or hideous design were to be found, she would
+select it. These hapless bigots are heart-breaking in their notions of
+dress. Want of taste is a defect inseparable from false pietism.
+
+And so, in the home-life that needs the fullest sympathy, Granville
+had no true companionship. He went out alone to parties and the
+theatres. Nothing in his house appealed to him. A huge Crucifix that
+hung between his bed and Angelique's seemed figurative of his destiny.
+Does it not represent a murdered Divinity, a Man-God, done to death in
+all the prime of life and beauty? The ivory of that cross was less
+cold than Angelique crucifying her husband under the plea of virtue.
+This it was that lay at the root of their woes; the young wife saw
+nothing but duty where she should have given love. Here, one Ash
+Wednesday, rose the pale and spectral form of Fasting in Lent, of
+Total Abstinence, commanded in a severe tone--and Granville did not
+deem it advisable to write in his turn to the Pope and take the
+opinion of the Consistory on the proper way of observing Lent, the
+Ember days, and the eve of great festivals.
+
+His misfortune was too great! He could not even complain, for what
+could he say? He had a pretty young wife attached to her duties,
+virtuous--nay, a model of all the virtues. She had a child every year,
+nursed them herself, and brought them up in the highest principles.
+Being charitable, Angelique was promoted to rank as an angel. The old
+women who constituted the circle in which she moved--for at that time
+it was not yet "the thing" for young women to be religious as a matter
+of fashion--all admired Madame de Granville's piety, and regarded her,
+not indeed as a virgin, but as a martyr. They blamed not the wife's
+scruples, but the barbarous philoprogenitiveness of the husband.
+
+Granville, by insensible degrees, overdone with work, bereft of
+conjugal consolations, and weary of a world in which he wandered
+alone, by the time he was two-and-thirty had sunk into the Slough of
+Despond. He hated life. Having too lofty a notion of the
+responsibilities imposed on him by his position to set the example of
+a dissipated life, he tried to deaden feeling by hard study, and began
+a great book on Law.
+
+But he was not allowed to enjoy the monastic peace he had hoped for.
+When the celestial Angelique saw him desert worldly society to work at
+home with such regularity, she tried to convert him. It had been a
+real sorrow to her to know that her husband's opinions were not
+strictly Christian; and she sometimes wept as she reflected that if
+her husband should die it would be in a state of final impenitence, so
+that she could not hope to snatch him from the eternal fires of Hell.
+Thus Granville was a mark for the mean ideas, the vacuous arguments,
+the narrow views by which his wife--fancying she had achieved the
+first victory--tried to gain a second by bringing him back within the
+pale of the Church.
+
+This was the last straw. What can be more intolerable than the blind
+struggle in which the obstinacy of a bigot tries to meet the acumen of
+a lawyer? What more terrible to endure than the acrimonious pin-pricks
+to which a passionate soul prefers a dagger-thrust? Granville
+neglected his home. Everything there was unendurable. His children,
+broken by their mother's frigid despotism, dared not go with him to
+the play; indeed, Granville could never give them any pleasure without
+bringing down punishment from their terrible mother. His loving nature
+was weaned to indifference, to a selfishness worse than death. His
+boys, indeed, he saved from this hell by sending them to school at an
+early age, and insisting on his right to train them. He rarely
+interfered between his wife and her daughters; but he was resolved
+that they should marry as soon as they were old enough.
+
+Even if he had wished to take violent measures, he could have found no
+justification; his wife, backed by a formidable army of dowagers,
+would have had him condemned by the whole world. Thus Granville had no
+choice but to live in complete isolation; but, crushed under the
+tyranny of misery, he could not himself bear to see how altered he was
+by grief and toil. And he dreaded any connection or intimacy with
+women of the world, having no hope of finding any consolation.
+
+The improving history of this melancholy household gave rise to no
+events worthy of record during the fifteen years between 1806 and
+1825. Madame de Granville was exactly the same after losing her
+husband's affection as she had been during the time when she called
+herself happy. She paid for Masses, beseeching God and the Saints to
+enlighten her as to what the faults were which displeased her husband,
+and to show her the way to restore the erring sheep; but the more
+fervent her prayers, the less was Granville to be seen at home.
+
+For about five years now, having achieved a high position as a judge,
+Granville had occupied the _entresol_ of the house to avoid living
+with the Comtesse de Granville. Every morning a little scene took
+place, which, if evil tongues are to be believed, is repeated in many
+households as the result of incompatibility of temper, of moral or
+physical malady, or of antagonisms leading to such disaster as is
+recorded in this history. At about eight in the morning a housekeeper,
+bearing no small resemblance to a nun, rang at the Comte de
+Granville's door. Admitted to the room next to the Judge's study, she
+always repeated the same message to the footman, and always in the
+same tone:
+
+"Madame would be glad to know whether Monsieur le Comte has had a good
+night, and if she is to have the pleasure of his company at
+breakfast."
+
+"Monsieur presents his compliments to Madame la Comtesse," the valet
+would say, after speaking with his master, "and begs her to hold him
+excused; important business compels him to be in court this morning."
+
+A minute later the woman reappeared and asked on madame's behalf
+whether she would have the pleasure of seeing Monsieur le Comte before
+he went out.
+
+"He is gone," was always the rely, though often his carriage was still
+waiting.
+
+This little dialogue by proxy became a daily ceremonial. Granville's
+servant, a favorite with his master, and the cause of more than one
+quarrel over his irreligious and dissipated conduct, would even go
+into his master's room, as a matter of form, when the Count was not
+there, and come back with the same formula in reply.
+
+The aggrieved wife was always on the watch for her husband's return,
+and standing on the steps so as to meet him like an embodiment of
+remorse. The petty aggressiveness which lies at the root of the
+monastic temper was the foundation of Madame de Granville's; she was
+now five-and-thirty, and looked forty. When the count was compelled by
+decency to speak to his wife or to dine at home, she was only too well
+pleased to inflict her company upon him, with her acid-sweet remarks
+and the intolerable dulness of her narrow-minded circle, and she tried
+to put him in the wrong before the servants and her charitable
+friends.
+
+When, at this time, the post of President in a provincial court was
+offered to the Comte de Granville, who was in high favor, he begged to
+be allowed to remain in Paris. This refusal, of which the Keeper of
+the Seals alone knew the reasons, gave rise to extraordinary
+conjectures on the part of the Countess' intimate friends and of her
+director. Granville, a rich man with a hundred thousand francs a year,
+belonged to one of the first families of Normandy. His appointment to
+be Presiding Judge would have been the stepping-stone to a peer's
+seat; whence this strange lack of ambition? Why had he given up his
+great book on Law? What was the meaning of the dissipation which for
+nearly six years had made him a stranger to his home, his family, his
+study, to all he ought to hold dear? The Countess' confessor, who
+based his hopes of a bishopric quite as much on the families he
+governed as on the services he rendered to an association of which he
+was an ardent propagator, was much disappointed by Granville's
+refusal, and tried to insinuate calumnious explanations: "If Monsieur
+le Comte had such an objection to provincial life, it was perhaps
+because he dreaded finding himself under the necessity of leading a
+regular life, compelled to set an example of moral conduct, and to
+live with the Countess, from whom nothing could have alienated him but
+some illicit connection; for how could a woman so pure as Madame de
+Granville ever tolerate the disorderly life into which her husband had
+drifted?" The sanctimonious woman accepted as facts these hints, which
+unluckily were not merely hypothetical, and Madame de Granville was
+stricken as by a thunderbolt.
+
+Angelique, knowing nothing of the world, of love and its follies, was
+so far from conceiving of any conditions of married life unlike those
+that had alienated her husband as possible, that she believed him to
+be incapable of the errors which are crimes in the eyes of any wife.
+When the Count ceased to demand anything of her, she imagined that the
+tranquillity he now seemed to enjoy was in the course of nature; and,
+as she had really given to him all the love which her heart was
+capable of feeling for a man, while the priest's conjectures were the
+utter destruction of the illusions she had hitherto cherished, she
+defended her husband; at the same time, she could not eradicate the
+suspicion that had been so ingeniously sown in her soul.
+
+These alarms wrought such havoc in her feeble brain that they made her
+ill; she was worn by low fever. These incidents took place during Lent
+1822; she would not pretermit her austerities, and fell into a decline
+that put her life in danger. Granville's indifference was added
+torture; his care and attention were such as a nephew feels himself
+bound to give to some old uncle.
+
+Though the Countess had given up her persistent nagging and
+remonstrances, and tried to receive her husband with affectionate
+words, the sharpness of the bigot showed through, and one speech would
+often undo the work of a week.
+
+Towards the end of May, the warm breath of spring, and more nourishing
+diet than her Lenten fare, restored Madame de Granville to a little
+strength. One morning, on coming home from Mass, she sat down on a
+stone bench in the little garden, where the sun's kisses reminded her
+of the early days of her married life, and she looked back across the
+years to see wherein she might have failed in her duty as a wife and
+mother. She was broken in upon by the Abbe Fontanon in an almost
+indescribable state of excitement.
+
+"Has any misfortune befallen you, Father?" she asked with filial
+solicitude.
+
+"Ah! I only wish," cried the Normandy priest, "that all the woes
+inflicted on you by the hand of God were dealt out to me; but, my
+admirable friend, there are trials to which you can but bow."
+
+"Can any worse punishments await me than those with which Providence
+crushes me by making my husband the instrument of His wrath?"
+
+"You must prepare yourself, daughter, to yet worse mischief than we
+and your pious friends had ever conceived of."
+
+"Then I may thank God," said the Countess, "for vouchsafing to use you
+as the messenger of His will, and thus, as ever, setting the treasures
+of mercy by the side of the scourges of His wrath, just as in bygone
+days He showed a spring to Hagar when He had driven her into the
+desert."
+
+"He measures your sufferings by the strength of your resignation and
+the weight of your sins."
+
+"Speak; I am ready to hear!" As she said it she cast her eyes up to
+heaven. "Speak, Monsieur Fontanon."
+
+"For seven years Monsieur Granville has lived in sin with a concubine,
+by whom he has two children; and on this adulterous connection he has
+spent more than five hundred thousand francs, which ought to have been
+the property of his legitimate family."
+
+"I must see it to believe it!" cried the Countess.
+
+"Far be it from you!" exclaimed the Abbe. "You must forgive, my
+daughter, and wait in patience and prayer till God enlightens your
+husband; unless, indeed, you choose to adopt against him the means
+offered you by human laws."
+
+The long conversation that ensued between the priest and his penitent
+resulted in an extraordinary change in the Countess; she abruptly
+dismissed him, called her servants who were alarmed at her flushed
+face and crazy energy. She ordered her carriage--countermanded it
+--changed her mind twenty times in the hour; but at last, at about
+three o'clock, as if she had come to some great determination, she
+went out, leaving the whole household in amazement at such a sudden
+transformation.
+
+"Is the Count coming home to dinner?" she asked of his servant, to
+whom she would never speak.
+
+"No, madame."
+
+"Did you go with him to the Courts this morning?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"And to-day is Monday?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"Then do the Courts sit on Mondays nowadays?"
+
+"Devil take you!" cried the man, as his mistress drove off after
+saying to the coachman:
+
+"Rue Taitbout."
+
+
+
+Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille was weeping: Roger, sitting by her side,
+held one of her hands between his own. He was silent, looking by turns
+at little Charles--who, not understanding his mother's grief, stood
+speechless at the sight of her tears--at the cot where Eugenie lay
+sleeping, and Caroline's face, on which grief had the effect of rain
+falling across the beams of cheerful sunshine.
+
+"Yes, my darling," said Roger, after a long silence, "that is the
+great secret: I am married. But some day I hope we may form but one
+family. My wife has been given over ever since last March. I do not
+wish her dead; still, if it should please God to take her to Himself,
+I believe she will be happier in Paradise than in a world to whose
+griefs and pleasures she is equally indifferent."
+
+"How I hate that woman! How could she bear to make you unhappy? And
+yet it is to that unhappiness that I owe my happiness!"
+
+Her tears suddenly ceased.
+
+"Caroline, let us hope," cried Roger. "Do not be frightened by
+anything that priest may have said to you. Though my wife's confessor
+is a man to be feared for his power in the congregation, if he should
+try to blight our happiness I would find means--"
+
+"What could you do?"
+
+"We would go to Italy: I would fly--"
+
+A shriek that rang out from the adjoining room made Roger start and
+Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille quake; but she rushed into the
+drawing-room, and there found Madame de Granville in a dead faint. When
+the Countess recovered her senses, she sighed deeply on finding herself
+supported by the Count and her rival, whom she instinctively pushed
+away with a gesture of contempt. Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille rose to
+withdraw.
+
+"You are at home, madame," said Granville, taking Caroline by the arm.
+"Stay."
+
+The Judge took up his wife in his arms, carried her to the carriage,
+and got into it with her.
+
+"Who is it that has brought you to the point of wishing me dead, of
+resolving to fly?" asked the Countess, looking at her husband with
+grief mingled with indignation. "Was I not young? you thought me
+pretty--what fault have you to find with me? Have I been false to you?
+Have I not been a virtuous and well-conducted wife? My heart has
+cherished no image but yours, my ears have listened to no other voice.
+What duty have I failed in? What have I ever denied you?"
+
+"Happiness, madame," said the Count severely. "You know, madame, that
+there are two ways of serving God. Some Christians imagine that by
+going to church at fixed hours to say a _Paternoster_, by attending
+Mass regularly and avoiding sin, they may win heaven--but they,
+madame, will go to hell; they have not loved God for himself, they
+have not worshiped Him as He chooses to be worshiped, they have made
+no sacrifice. Though mild in seeming, they are hard on their
+neighbors; they see the law, the letter, not the spirit.--This is how
+you have treated me, your earthly husband; you have sacrificed my
+happiness to your salvation; you were always absorbed in prayer when I
+came to you in gladness of heart; you wept when you should have
+cheered my toil; you have never tried to satisfy any demands I have
+made on you."
+
+"And if they were wicked," cried the Countess hotly, "was I to lose my
+soul to please you?"
+
+"It is a sacrifice which another, a more loving woman, has dared to
+make," said Granville coldly.
+
+"Dear God!" she cried, bursting into tears, "Thou hearest! Has he been
+worthy of the prayers and penance I have lived in, wearing myself out
+to atone for his sins and my own?--Of what avail is virtue?"
+
+"To win Heaven, my dear. A woman cannot be at the same time the wife
+of a man and the spouse of Christ. That would be bigamy; she must
+choose between a husband and a nunnery. For the sake of future
+advantage you have stripped your soul of all the love, all the
+devotion, which God commands that you should have for me, you have
+cherished no feeling but hatred--"
+
+"Have I not loved you?" she put in.
+
+"No, madame."
+
+"Then what is love?" the Countess involuntarily inquired.
+
+"Love, my dear," replied Granville, with a sort of ironical surprise,
+"you are incapable of understanding it. The cold sky of Normandy is
+not that of Spain. This difference of climate is no doubt the secret
+of our disaster.--To yield to our caprices, to guess them, to find
+pleasure in pain, to sacrifice the world's opinion, your pride, your
+religion even, and still regard these offerings as mere grains of
+incense burnt in honor of the idol--that is love--"
+
+"The love of ballet-girls!" cried the Countess in horror. "Such flames
+cannot last, and must soon leave nothing but ashes and cinders, regret
+or despair. A wife ought, in my opinion, to bring you true friendship,
+equable warmth--"
+
+"You speak of warmth as negroes speak of ice," retorted the Count,
+with a sardonic smile. "Consider that the humblest daisy has more
+charms than the proudest and most gorgeous of the red hawthorns that
+attract us in spring by their strong scent and brilliant color.--At
+the same time," he went on, "I will do you justice. You have kept so
+precisely in the straight path of imaginary duty prescribed by law,
+that only to make you understand wherein you have failed towards me, I
+should be obliged to enter into details which would offend your
+dignity, and instruct you in matters which would seem to you to
+undermine all morality."
+
+"And you dare to speak of morality when you have but just left the
+house where you have dissipated your children's fortune in
+debaucheries?" cried the Countess, maddened by her husband's
+reticence.
+
+"There, madame, I must correct you," said the Count, coolly
+interrupting his wife. "Though Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille is rich,
+it is at nobody's expense. My uncle was master of his fortune, and had
+several heirs. In his lifetime, and out of pure friendship, regarding
+her as his niece, he gave her the little estate of Bellefeuille. As
+for anything else, I owe it to his liberality--"
+
+"Such conduct is only worthy of a Jacobin!" said the sanctimonious
+Angelique.
+
+"Madame, you are forgetting that your own father was one of the
+Jacobins whom you scorn so uncharitably," said the Count severely.
+"Citizen Bontems was signing death-warrants at a time when my uncle
+was doing France good service."
+
+Madame de Granville was silenced. But after a short pause, the
+remembrance of what she had just seen reawakened in her soul the
+jealousy which nothing can kill in a woman's heart, and she murmured,
+as if to herself--"How can a woman thus destroy her own soul and that
+of others?"
+
+"Bless me, madame," replied the Count, tired of this dialogue, "you
+yourself may some day have to answer that question." The Countess was
+scared. "You perhaps will be held excused by the merciful Judge, who
+will weigh our sins," he went on, "in consideration of the conviction
+with which you have worked out my misery. I do not hate you--I hate
+those who have perverted your heart and your reason. You have prayed
+for me, just as Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille has given me her heart
+and crowned my life with love. You should have been my mistress and
+the prayerful saint by turns.--Do me the justice to confess that I am
+no reprobate, no debauchee. My life was cleanly. Alas! after seven
+years of wretchedness, the craving for happiness led me by an
+imperceptible descent to love another woman and make a second home.
+And do not imagine that I am singular; there are in this city
+thousands of husbands, all led by various causes to live this twofold
+life."
+
+"Great God!" cried the Countess. "How heavy is the cross Thou hast
+laid on me to bear! If the husband Thou hast given me here below in
+Thy wrath can only be made happy through my death, take me to
+Thyself!"
+
+"If you had always breathed such admirable sentiments and such
+devotion, we should be happy yet," said the Count coldly.
+
+"Indeed," cried Angelique, melting into a flood of tears, "forgive me
+if I have done any wrong. Yes, monsieur, I am ready to obey you in all
+things, feeling sure that you will desire nothing but what is just and
+natural; henceforth I will be all you can wish your wife to be."
+
+"If your purpose, madame, is to compel me to say that I no longer love
+you, I shall find the cruel courage to tell you so. Can I command my
+heart? Can I wipe out in an instant the traces of fifteen years of
+suffering?--I have ceased to love.--These words contain a mystery as
+deep as lies the words _I love_. Esteem, respect, friendship may be
+won, lost, regained; but as to love--I might school myself for a
+thousand years, and it would not blossom again, especially for a woman
+too old to respond to it."
+
+"I hope, Monsieur le Comte, I sincerely hope, that such words may not
+be spoken to you some day by the woman you love, and in such a tone
+and accent--"
+
+"Will you put on a dress _a la Grecque_ this evening, and come to the
+Opera?"
+
+The shudder with which the Countess received the suggestion was a mute
+reply.
+
+
+
+Early in December 1833, a man, whose perfectly white hair and worn
+features seemed to show that he was aged by grief rather than by
+years, was walking at midnight along the Rue Gaillon. Having reached a
+house of modest appearance, and only two stories high, he paused to
+look up at one of the attic windows that pierced the roof at regular
+intervals. A dim light scarcely showed through the humble panes, some
+of which had been repaired with paper. The man below was watching the
+wavering glimmer with the vague curiosity of a Paris idler, when a
+young man came out of the house. As the light of the street lamp fell
+full on the face of the first comer, it will not seem surprising that,
+in spite of the darkness, this young man went towards the passer-by,
+though with the hesitancy that is usual when we have any fear of
+making a mistake in recognizing an acquaintance.
+
+"What, is it you," cried he, "Monsieur le President? Alone at this
+hour, and so far from the Rue Saint-Lazare. Allow me to have the honor
+of giving you my arm.--The pavement is so greasy this morning, that if
+we do not hold each other up," he added, to soothe the elder man's
+susceptibilities, "we shall find it hard to escape a tumble."
+
+"But, my dear sir, I am no more than fifty-five, unfortunately for
+me," replied the Comte de Granville. "A physician of your celebrity
+must know that at that age a man is still hale and strong."
+
+"Then you are in waiting on a lady, I suppose," replied Horace
+Bianchon. "You are not, I imagine, in the habit of going about Paris
+on foot. When a man keeps such fine horses----"
+
+"Still, when I am not visiting in the evening, I commonly return from
+the Courts or the club on foot," replied the Count.
+
+"And with large sums of money about you, perhaps!" cried the doctor.
+"It is a positive invitation to the assassin's knife."
+
+"I am not afraid of that," said Granville, with melancholy
+indifference.
+
+"But, at least, do not stand about," said the doctor, leading the
+Count towards the boulevard. "A little more and I shall believe that
+you are bent of robbing me of your last illness, and dying by some
+other hand than mine."
+
+"You caught me playing the spy," said the Count. "Whether on foot or
+in a carriage, and at whatever hour of the night I may come by, I have
+for some time past observed at a window on the third floor of your
+house the shadow of a person who seems to work with heroic constancy."
+
+The Count paused as if he felt some sudden pain. "And I take as great
+an interest in that garret," he went on, "as a citizen of Paris must
+feel in the finishing of the Palais Royal."
+
+"Well," said Horace Bianchon eagerly, "I can tell you--"
+
+"Tell me nothing," replied Granville, cutting the doctor short. "I
+would not give a centime to know whether the shadow that moves across
+that shabby blind is that of a man or a woman, nor whether the
+inhabitant of that attic is happy or miserable. Though I was surprised
+to see no one at work there this evening, and though I stopped to
+look, it was solely for the pleasure of indulging in conjectures as
+numerous and as idiotic as those of idlers who see a building left
+half finished. For nine years, my young--" the Count hesitated to use
+a word; then he waved his hand, exclaiming--"No, I will not say friend
+--I hate everything that savors of sentiment.--Well, for nine years
+past I have ceased to wonder that old men amuse themselves with
+growing flowers and planting trees; the events of life have taught
+them disbelief in all human affection; and I grew old within a few
+days. I will no longer attach myself to any creature but to
+unreasoning animals, or plants, or superficial things. I think more of
+Taglioni's grace than of all human feeling. I abhor life and the world
+in which I live alone. Nothing, nothing," he went on, in a tone that
+startled the younger man, "no, nothing can move or interest me."
+
+"But you have children?"
+
+"My children!" he repeated bitterly. "Yes--well, is not my eldest
+daughter the Comtesse de Vandenesse? The other will, through her
+sister's connections, make some good match. As to my sons, have they
+not succeeded? The Viscount was public prosecutor at Limoges, and is
+now President of the Court at Orleans; the younger is public
+prosecutor in Paris.--My children have their own cares, their own
+anxieties and business to attend to. If of all those hearts one had
+been devoted to me, if one had tried by entire affection to fill up
+the void I have here," and he struck his breast, "well, that one would
+have failed in life, have sacrificed it to me. And why should he? Why?
+To bring sunshine into my few remaining years--and would he have
+succeeded? Might I not have accepted such generosity as a debt? But,
+doctor," and the Count smiled with deep irony, "it is not for nothing
+that we teach them arithmetic and how to count. At this moment perhaps
+they are waiting for my money."
+
+"O Monsieur le Comte, how could such an idea enter your head--you who
+are kind, friendly, and humane! Indeed, if I were not myself a living
+proof of the benevolence you exercise so liberally and so nobly--"
+
+"To please myself," replied the Count. "I pay for a sensation, as I
+would to-morrow pay a pile of gold to recover the most childish
+illusion that would but make my heart glow.--I help my fellow-creatures
+for my own sake, just as I gamble; and I look for gratitude from none.
+I should see you die without blinking; and I beg of you to feel the
+same with regard to me. I tell you, young man, the events of life
+have swept over my heart like the lavas of Vesuvius over Herculaneum.
+The town is there--dead."
+
+"Those who have brought a soul as warm and as living as yours was to
+such a pitch of indifference are indeed guilty!"
+
+"Say no more," said the Count, with a shudder of aversion.
+
+"You have a malady which you ought to allow me to treat," said
+Bianchon in a tone of deep emotion.
+
+"What, do you know of a cure for death?" cried the Count irritably.
+
+"I undertake, Monsieur le Comte, to revive the heart you believe to be
+frozen."
+
+"Are you a match for Talma, then?" asked the Count satirically.
+
+"No, Monsieur le Comte. But Nature is as far above Talma as Talma is
+superior to me.--Listen: the garret you are interested in is inhabited
+by a woman of about thirty, and in her love is carried to fanaticism.
+The object of her adoration is a young man of pleasing appearance but
+endowed by some malignant fairy with every conceivable vice. This
+fellow is a gambler, and it is hard to say which he is most addicted
+to--wine or women; he has, to my knowledge, committed acts deserving
+punishment by law. Well, and to him this unhappy woman sacrificed a
+life of ease, a man who worshiped her, and the father of her children.
+--But what is wrong, Monsieur le Comte?"
+
+"Nothing. Go on."
+
+"She has allowed him to squander a perfect fortune; she would, I
+believe, give him the world if she had it; she works night and day;
+and many a time she has, without a murmur, seen the wretch she adores
+rob her even of the money saved to buy the clothes the children need,
+and their food for the morrow. Only three days ago she sold her hair,
+the finest hair I ever saw; he came in, she could not hide the gold
+piece quickly enough, and he asked her for it. For a smile, for a
+kiss, she gave up the price of a fortnight's life and peace. Is it not
+dreadful, and yet sublime?--But work is wearing her cheeks hollow. Her
+children's crying has broken her heart; she is ill, and at this moment
+on her wretched bed. This evening they had nothing to eat; the
+children have not strength to cry, they were silent when I went up."
+
+Horace Bianchon stood still. Just then the Comte de Granville, in
+spite of himself, as it were, had put his hand into his waistcoat
+pocket.
+
+"I can guess, my young friend, how it is that she is yet alive if you
+attend her," said the elder man.
+
+"O poor soul!" cried the doctor, "who could refuse to help her? I only
+wish I were richer, for I hope to cure her of her passion."
+
+"But how can you expect me to pity a form of misery of which the joys
+to me would seem cheaply purchased with my whole fortune!" exclaimed
+the Count, taking his hand out of his pocket empty of the notes which
+Bianchon had supposed his patron to be feeling for. "That woman feels,
+she is alive! Would not Louis XV. have given his kingdom to rise from
+the grave and have three days of youth and life! And is not that the
+history of thousands of dead men, thousands of sick men, thousands of
+old men?"
+
+"Poor Caroline!" cried Bianchon.
+
+As he heard the name the Count shuddered, and grasped the doctor's arm
+with the grip of an iron vise, as it seemed to Bianchon.
+
+"Her name is Caroline Crochard?" asked the President, in a voice that
+was evidently broken.
+
+"Then you know her?" said the doctor, astonished.
+
+"And the wretch's name is Solvet.--Ay, you have kept your word!"
+exclaimed Granville; "you have roused my heart to the most terrible
+pain it can suffer till it is dust. That emotion, too, is a gift from
+hell, and I always know how to pay those debts."
+
+By this time the Count and the doctor had reached the corner of the
+Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin. One of those night-birds who wonder round
+with a basket on their back and crook in hand, and were, during the
+Revolution, facetiously called the Committee of Research, was standing
+by the curbstone where the two men now stopped. This scavenger had a
+shriveled face worthy of those immortalized by Charlet in his
+caricatures of the sweepers of Paris.
+
+"Do you ever pick up a thousand-franc note?"
+
+"Now and then, master."
+
+"And you restore them?"
+
+"It depends on the reward offered."
+
+"You're the man for me," cried the Count, giving the man a
+thousand-franc note. "Take this, but, remember, I give it to you on
+condition of your spending it at the wineshop, of your getting drunk,
+fighting, beating your wife, blacking your friends' eyes. That will
+give work to the watch, the surgeon, the druggist--perhaps to the
+police, the public prosecutor, the judge, and the prison warders. Do
+not try to do anything else, or the devil will be revenged on you
+sooner or later."
+
+A draughtsman would need at once the pencil of Charlet and of Callot,
+the brush of Teniers and of Rembrandt, to give a true notion of this
+night-scene.
+
+"Now I have squared accounts with hell, and had some pleasure for my
+money," said the Count in a deep voice, pointing out the indescribable
+physiognomy of the gaping scavenger to the doctor, who stood
+stupefied. "As for Caroline Crochard!--she may die of hunger and
+thirst, hearing the heartrending shrieks of her starving children, and
+convinced of the baseness of the man she loves. I will not give a sou
+to rescue her; and because you have helped her, I will see you no
+more----"
+
+The Count left Bianchon standing like a statue, and walked as briskly
+as a young man to the Rue Saint-Lazare, soon reaching the little house
+where he resided, and where, to his surprise, he found a carriage
+waiting at the door.
+
+"Monsieur, your son, the attorney-general, came about an hour since,"
+said the man-servant, "and is waiting for you in your bedroom."
+
+Granville signed to the man to leave him.
+
+"What motive can be strong enough to require you to infringe the order
+I have given my children never to come to me unless I send for them?"
+asked the Count of his son as he went into the room.
+
+"Father," replied the younger man in a tremulous voice, and with great
+respect, "I venture to hope that you will forgive me when you have
+heard me."
+
+"Your reply is proper," said the Count. "Sit down," and he pointed to
+a chair, "But whether I walk up and down, or take a seat, speak
+without heeding me."
+
+"Father," the son went on, "this afternoon, at four o'clock, a very
+young man who was arrested in the house of a friend of mine, whom he
+had robbed to a considerable extent, appealed to you.--He says he is
+your son."
+
+"His name?" asked the Count hoarsely.
+
+"Charles Crochard."
+
+"That will do," said the father, with an imperious wave of the hand.
+
+Granville paced the room in solemn silence, and his son took care not
+to break it.
+
+"My son," he began, and the words were pronounced in a voice so mild
+and fatherly, that the young lawyer started, "Charles Crochard spoke
+the truth.--I am glad you came to me to-night, my good Eugene," he
+added. "Here is a considerable sum of money"--and he gave him a bundle
+of banknotes--"you can make any use of them you think proper in this
+matter. I trust you implicitly, and approve beforehand whatever
+arrangements you may make, either in the present or for the future.
+--Eugene my dear son, kiss me. We part perhaps for the last time. I
+shall to-morrow crave my dismissal from the King, and I am going to
+Italy.
+
+"Though a father owes no account of his life to his children, he is
+bound to bequeath to them the experience Fate sells him so dearly--is
+it not a part of their inheritance?--When you marry," the count went
+on, with a little involuntary shudder, "do not undertake it lightly;
+that act is the most important of all which society requires of us.
+Remember to study at your leisure the character of the woman who is to
+be your partner; but consult me too, I will judge of her myself. A
+lack of union between husband and wife, from whatever cause, leads to
+terrible misfortune; sooner or later we are always punished for
+contravening the social law.--But I will write to you on this subject
+from Florence. A father who has the honor of presiding over a supreme
+court of justice must not have to blush in the presence of his son.
+Good-bye."
+
+
+
+PARIS, February 1830-January 1842.
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Beaumesnil, Mademoiselle
+  The Middle Classes
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
+Bianchon, Horace
+  Father Goriot
+  The Atheist's Mass
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  The Government Clerks
+  Pierrette
+  A Study of Woman
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  Honorine
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  The Magic Skin
+  A Prince of Bohemia
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Muse of the Department
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+  The Middle Classes
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Country Parson
+In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
+  Another Study of Woman
+  La Grande Breteche
+
+Crochard, Charles
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Fontanon, Abbe
+  The Government Clerks
+  Honorine
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Granville, Vicomte de (later Comte)
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  Honorine
+  Farewell (Adieu)
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Granville, Comtesse Angelique de
+  The Thirteen
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+Granville, Vicomte de
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Country Parson
+
+Granville, Baron Eugene de
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
+Molineux, Jean-Baptiste
+  The Purse
+  Cesar Birotteau
+
+Regnier, Claude-Antoine
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+
+Roguin, Madame
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+  Pierrette
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+Vandenesse, Comtesse Felix de
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Muse of the Department
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Second Home, by Honore de Balzac
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Second Home by Honore de Balzac
+#67 in our series by Honore de Balzac
+
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+A Second Home
+
+by Honore de Balzac
+
+Translated by Clara Bell
+
+July, 1999  [Etext #1810]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Second Home by Honore de Balzac
+******This file should be named 2ndhm10.txt or 2ndhm10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, 2ndhm11.txt
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+
+
+
+
+Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+and John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
+
+
+
+
+
+A Second Home
+
+by Honore de Balzac
+
+
+
+
+Translated by Clara Bell
+
+DEDICATION
+
+To Madame la Comtesse Louise de Turheim as a token of
+remembrance and affectionate respect.
+
+
+
+
+A SECOND HOME
+
+
+
+The Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, formerly one of the darkest and most
+tortuous of the streets about the Hotel de Ville, zigzagged round the
+little gardens of the Paris Prefecture, and ended at the Rue Martroi,
+exactly at the angle of an old wall now pulled down. Here stood the
+turnstile to which the street owed its name; it was not removed till
+1823, when the Municipality built a ballroom on the garden plot
+adjoining the Hotel de Ville, for the fete given in honor of the Duc
+d'Angouleme on his return from Spain.
+
+The widest part of the Rue du Tourniquet was the end opening into the
+Rue de la Tixeranderie, and even there it was less than six feet
+across. Hence in rainy weather the gutter water was soon deep at the
+foot of the old houses, sweeping down with it the dust and refuse
+deposited at the corner-stones by the residents. As the dust-carts
+could not pass through, the inhabitants trusted to storms to wash
+their always miry alley; for how could it be clean? When the summer
+sun shed its perpendicular rays on Paris like a sheet of gold, but as
+piercing as the point of a sword, it lighted up the blackness of this
+street for a few minutes without drying the permanent damp that rose
+from the ground-floor to the first story of these dark and silent
+tenements.
+
+The residents, who lighted their lamps at five o'clock in the month of
+June, in winter never put them out. To this day the enterprising
+wayfarer who should approach the Marais along the quays, past the end
+of the Rue du Chaume, the Rues de l'Homme Arme, des Billettes, and des
+Deux-Portes, all leading to the Rue du Tourniquet, might think he had
+passed through cellars all the way.
+
+Almost all the streets of old Paris, of which ancient chronicles laud
+the magnificence, were like this damp and gloomy labyrinth, where the
+antiquaries still find historical curiosities to admire. For instance,
+on the house then forming the corner where the Rue du Tourniquet
+joined the Rue de la Tixeranderie, the clamps might still be seen of
+two strong iron rings fixed to the wall, the relics of the chains put
+up every night by the watch to secure public safety.
+
+This house, remarkable for its antiquity, had been constructed in a
+way that bore witness to the unhealthiness of these old dwellings;
+for, to preserve the ground-floor from damp, the arches of the cellars
+rose about two feet above the soil, and the house was entered up three
+outside steps. The door was crowned by a closed arch, of which the
+keystone bore a female head and some time-eaten arabesques. Three
+windows, their sills about five feet from the ground, belonged to a
+small set of rooms looking out on the Rue du Tourniquet, whence they
+derived their light. These windows were protected by strong iron bars,
+very wide apart, and ending below in an outward curve like the bars of
+a baker's window.
+
+If any passer-by during the day were curious enough to peep into the
+two rooms forming this little dwelling, he could see nothing; for only
+under the sun of July could he discern, in the second room, two beds
+hung with green serge, placed side by side under the paneling of an
+old-fashioned alcove; but in the afternoon, by about three o'clock,
+when the candles were lighted, through the pane of the first room an
+old woman might be seen sitting on a stool by the fireplace, where she
+nursed the fire in a brazier, to simmer a stew, such as porters' wives
+are expert in. A few kitchen utensils, hung up against the wall, were
+visible in the twilight.
+
+At that hour an old table on trestles, but bare of linen, was laid
+with pewter-spoons, and the dish concocted by the old woman. Three
+wretched chairs were all the furniture of this room, which was at once
+the kitchen and the dining-room. Over the chimney-piece were a piece
+of looking-glass, a tinder-box, three glasses, some matches, and a
+large, cracked white jug. Still, the floor, the utensils, the
+fireplace, all gave a pleasant sense of the perfect cleanliness and
+thrift that pervaded the dull and gloomy home.
+
+The old woman's pale, withered face was quite in harmony with the
+darkness of the street and the mustiness of the place. As she sat
+there, motionless, in her chair, it might have been thought that she
+was as inseparable from the house as a snail from its brown shell; her
+face, alert with a vague expression of mischief, was framed in a flat
+cap made of net, which barely covered her white hair; her fine, gray
+eyes were as quiet as the street, and the many wrinkles in her face
+might be compared to the cracks in the walls. Whether she had been
+born to poverty, or had fallen from some past splendor, she now seemed
+to have been long resigned to her melancholy existence.
+
+From sunrise till dark, excepting when she was getting a meal ready,
+or, with a basket on her arm, was out purchasing provisions, the old
+woman sat in the adjoining room by the further window, opposite a
+young girl. At any hour of the day the passer-by could see the
+needlewoman seated in an old, red velvet chair, bending over an
+embroidery frame, and stitching indefatigably.
+
+Her mother had a green pillow on her knee, and busied herself with
+hand-made net; but her fingers could move the bobbin but slowly; her
+sight was feeble, for on her nose there rested a pair of those
+antiquated spectacles which keep their place on the nostrils by the
+grip of a spring. By night these two hardworking women set a lamp
+between them; and the light, concentrated by two globe-shaped bottles
+of water, showed the elder the fine network made by the threads on her
+pillow, and the younger the most delicate details of the pattern she
+was embroidering. The outward bend of the window had allowed the girl
+to rest a box of earth on the window-sill, in which grew some sweet
+peas, nasturtiums, a sickly little honeysuckle, and some convolvulus
+that twined its frail stems up the iron bars. These etiolated plants
+produced a few pale flowers, and added a touch of indescribable
+sadness and sweetness to the picture offered by this window, in which
+the two figures were appropriately framed.
+
+The most selfish soul who chanced to see this domestic scene would
+carry away with him a perfect image of the life led in Paris by the
+working class of women, for the embroideress evidently lived by her
+needle. Many, as they passed through the turnstile, found themselves
+wondering how a girl could preserve her color, living in such a
+cellar. A student of lively imagination, going that way to cross to
+the Quartier-Latin, would compare this obscure and vegetative life to
+that of the ivy that clung to these chill walls, to that of the
+peasants born to labor, who are born, toil, and die unknown to the
+world they have helped to feed. A house-owner, after studying the
+house with the eye of a valuer, would have said, "What will become of
+those two women if embroidery should go out of fashion?" Among the men
+who, having some appointment at the Hotel de Ville or the Palais de
+Justice, were obliged to go through this street at fixed hours, either
+on their way to business or on their return home, there may have been
+some charitable soul. Some widower or Adonis of forty, brought so
+often into the secrets of these sad lives, may perhaps have reckoned
+on the poverty of this mother and daughter, and have hoped to become
+the master at no great cost of the innocent work-woman, whose nimble
+and dimpled fingers, youthful figure, and white skin--a charm due, no
+doubt, to living in this sunless street--had excited his admiration.
+Perhaps, again, some honest clerk, with twelve hundred francs a year,
+seeing every day the diligence the girl gave to her needle, and
+appreciating the purity of her life, was only waiting for improved
+prospects to unite one humble life with another, one form of toil to
+another, and to bring at any rate a man's arm and a calm affection,
+pale-hued like the flowers in the window, to uphold this home.
+
+Vague hope certainly gave life to the mother's dim, gray eyes. Every
+morning, after the most frugal breakfast, she took up her pillow,
+though chiefly for the look of the thing, for she would lay her
+spectacles on a little mahogany worktable as old as herself, and look
+out of the window from about half-past eight till ten at the regular
+passers in the street; she caught their glances, remarked on their
+gait, their dress, their countenance, and almost seemed to be offering
+her daughter, her gossiping eyes so evidently tried to attract some
+magnetic sympathy by manoeuvres worthy of the stage. It was evident
+that this little review was as good as a play to her, and perhaps her
+single amusement.
+
+The daughter rarely looked up. Modesty, or a painful consciousness of
+poverty, seemed to keep her eyes riveted to the work-frame; and only
+some exclamation of surprise from her mother moved her to show her
+small features. Then a clerk in a new coat, or who unexpectedly
+appeared with a woman on his arm, might catch sight of the girl's
+slightly upturned nose, her rosy mouth, and gray eyes, always bright
+and lively in spite of her fatiguing toil. Her late hours had left a
+trace on her face by a pale circle marked under each eye on the fresh
+rosiness of her cheeks. The poor child looked as if she were made for
+love and cheerfulness--for love, which had drawn two perfect arches
+above her eyelids, and had given her such a mass of chestnut hair,
+that she might have hidden under it as under a tent, impenetrable to
+the lover's eye--for cheerfulness, which gave quivering animation to
+her nostrils, which carved two dimples in her rosy cheeks, and made
+her quick to forget her troubles; cheerfulness, the blossom of hope,
+which gave her strength to look out without shuddering on the barren
+path of life.
+
+The girl's hair was always carefully dressed. After the manner of
+Paris needlewomen, her toilet seemed to her quite complete when she
+had brushed her hair smooth and tucked up the little short curls that
+played on each temple in contrast with the whiteness of her skin. The
+growth of it on the back of her neck was so pretty, and the brown
+line, so clearly traced, gave such a pleasing idea of her youth and
+charm, that the observer, seeing her bent over her work, and unmoved
+by any sound, was inclined to think of her as a coquette. Such
+inviting promise had excited the interest of more than one young man,
+who turned round in the vain hope of seeing that modest countenance.
+
+"Caroline, there is a new face that passes regularly by, and not one
+of the old ones to compare with it."
+
+These words, spoken in a low voice by her mother one August morning in
+1815, had vanquished the young needlewoman's indifference, and she
+looked out on the street; but in vain, the stranger was gone.
+
+"Where has he flown to?" said she.
+
+"He will come back no doubt at four; I shall see him coming, and will
+touch your foot with mine. I am sure he will come back; he has been
+through the street regularly for the last three days; but his hours
+vary. The first day he came by at six o'clock, the day before
+yesterday it was four, yesterday as early as three. I remember seeing
+him occasionally some time ago. He is some clerk in the Prefet's
+office who has moved to the Marais.--Why!" she exclaimed, after
+glancing down the street, "our gentleman of the brown coat has taken
+to wearing a wig; how much it alters him!"
+
+The gentleman of the brown coat was, it would seem, the individual who
+commonly closed the daily procession, for the old woman put on her
+spectacles and took up her work with a sigh, glancing at her daughter
+with so strange a look that Lavater himself would have found it
+difficult to interpret. Admiration, gratitude, a sort of hope for
+better days, were mingled with pride at having such a pretty daughter.
+
+At about four in the afternoon the old lady pushed her foot against
+Caroline's, and the girl looked up quickly enough to see the new
+actor, whose regular advent would thenceforth lend variety to the
+scene. He was tall and thin, and wore black, a man of about forty,
+with a certain solemnity of demeanor; as his piercing hazel eye met
+the old woman's dull gaze, he made her quake, for she felt as though
+he had the gift of reading hearts, or much practice in it, and his
+presence must surely be as icy as the air of this dank street. Was the
+dull, sallow complexion of that ominous face due to excess of work, or
+the result of delicate health?
+
+The old woman supplied twenty different answers to this question; but
+Caroline, next day, discerned the lines of long mental suffering on
+that brow that was so prompt to frown. The rather hollow cheeks of the
+Unknown bore the stamp of the seal which sorrow sets on its victims as
+if to grant them the consolation of common recognition and brotherly
+union for resistance. Though the girl's expression was at first one of
+lively but innocent curiosity, it assumed a look of gentle sympathy as
+the stranger receded from view, like a last relation following in a
+funeral train.
+
+The heat of the weather was so great, and the gentleman was so absent-
+minded, that he had taken off his hat and forgotten to put it on again
+as he went down the squalid street. Caroline could see the stern look
+given to his countenance by the way the hair was brushed from his
+forehead. The strong impression, devoid of charm, made on the girl by
+this man's appearance was totally unlike any sensation produced by the
+other passengers who used the street; for the first time in her life
+she was moved to pity for some one else than herself and her mother;
+she made no reply to the absurd conjectures that supplied material for
+the old woman's provoking volubility, and drew her long needle in
+silence through the web of stretched net; she only regretted not
+having seen the stranger more closely, and looked forward to the
+morrow to form a definite opinion of him.
+
+It was the first time, indeed, that a man passing down the street had
+ever given rise to much thought in her mind. She generally had nothing
+but a smile in response to her mother's hypotheses, for the old woman
+looked on every passer-by as a possible protector for her daughter.
+And if such suggestions, so crudely presented, gave rise to no evil
+thoughts in Caroline's mind, her indifference must be ascribed to the
+persistent and unfortunately inevitable toil in which the energies of
+her sweet youth were being spent, and which would infallibly mar the
+clearness of her eyes or steal from her fresh cheeks the bloom that
+still colored them.
+
+For two months or more the "Black Gentleman"--the name they had given
+him--was erratic in his movements; he did not always come down the Rue
+du Tourniquet; the old woman sometimes saw him in the evening when he
+had not passed in the morning, and he did not come by at such regular
+hours as the clerks who served Madame Crochard instead of a clock;
+moreover, excepting on the first occasion, when his look had given the
+old mother a sense of alarm, his eyes had never once dwelt on the
+weird picture of these two female gnomes. With the exception of two
+carriage-gates and a dark ironmonger's shop, there were in the Rue du
+Tourniquet only barred windows, giving light to the staircases of the
+neighboring houses; thus the stranger's lack of curiosity was not to
+be accounted for by the presence of dangerous rivals; and Madame
+Crochard was greatly piqued to see her "Black Gentleman" always lost
+in thought, his eyes fixed on the ground, or straight before him, as
+though he hoped to read the future in the fog of the Rue du
+Tourniquet. However, one morning, about the middle of September,
+Caroline Crochard's roguish face stood out so brightly against the
+dark background of the room, looking so fresh among the belated
+flowers and faded leaves that twined round the window-bars, the daily
+scene was gay with such contrasts of light and shade, of pink and
+white blending with the light material on which the pretty needlewoman
+was working, and with the red and brown hues of the chairs, that the
+stranger gazed very attentively at the effects of this living picture.
+In point of fact, the old woman, provoked by her "Black Gentleman's"
+indifference, had made such a clatter with her bobbins that the gloomy
+and pensive passer-by was perhaps prompted to look up by the unusual
+noise.
+
+The stranger merely exchanged glances with Caroline, swift indeed, but
+enough to effect a certain contact between their souls, and both were
+aware that they would think of each other. When the stranger came by
+again, at four in the afternoon, Caroline recognized the sound of his
+step on the echoing pavement; they looked steadily at each other, and
+with evident purpose; his eyes had an expression of kindliness which
+made him smile, and Caroline colored; the old mother noted them with
+satisfaction. Ever after that memorable afternoon, the Gentleman in
+Black went by twice a day, with rare exceptions, which both the women
+observed. They concluded from the irregularity of the hours of his
+homecoming that he was not released so early, nor so precisely
+punctual as a subordinate official.
+
+All through the first three winter months, twice a day, Caroline and
+the stranger thus saw each other for so long as it took him to
+traverse the piece of road that lay along the length of the door and
+three windows of the house. Day after day this brief interview had the
+hue of friendly sympathy which at last had acquired a sort of
+fraternal kindness. Caroline and the stranger seemed to understand
+each other from the first; and then, by dint of scrutinizing each
+other's faces, they learned to know them well. Ere long it came to be,
+as it were, a visit that the Unknown owed to Caroline; if by any
+chance her Gentleman in Black went by without bestowing on her the
+half-smile of his expressive lips, or the cordial glance of his brown
+eyes, something was missing to her all day. She felt as an old man
+does to whom the daily study of a newspaper is such an indispensable
+pleasure that on the day after any great holiday he wanders about
+quite lost, and seeking, as much out of vagueness as for want of
+patience, the sheet by which he cheats an hour of life.
+
+But these brief meetings had the charm of intimate friendliness, quite
+as much for the stranger as for Caroline. The girl could no more hide
+a vexation, a grief, or some slight ailment from the keen eye of her
+appreciative friend than he could conceal anxiety from hers.
+
+"He must have had some trouble yesterday," was the thought that
+constantly arose in the embroideress' mind as she saw some change in
+the features of the "Black Gentleman."
+
+"Oh, he has been working too hard!" was a reflection due to another
+shade of expression which Caroline could discern.
+
+The stranger, on his part, could guess when the girl had spent Sunday
+in finishing a dress, and he felt an interest in the pattern. As 
+quarter-day came near he could see that her pretty face was clouded by
+anxiety, and he could guess when Caroline had sat up late at work; but
+above all, he noted how the gloomy thoughts that dimmed the cheerful
+and delicate features of her young face gradually vanished by degrees
+as their acquaintance ripened. When winter had killed the climbers and
+plants of her window garden, and the window was kept closed, it was
+not without a smile of gentle amusement that the stranger observed the
+concentration of the light within, just at the level of Caroline's
+head. The very small fire and the frosty red of the two women's faces
+betrayed the poverty of their home; but if ever his own countenance
+expressed regretful compassion, the girl proudly met it with assumed
+cheerfulness.
+
+Meanwhile the feelings that had arisen in their hearts remained buried
+there, no incident occurring to reveal to either of them how deep and
+strong they were in the other; they had never even heard the sound of
+each other's voice. These mute friends were even on their guard
+against any nearer acquaintance, as though it meant disaster. Each
+seemed to fear lest it should bring on the other some grief more
+serious than those they felt tempted to share. Was it shyness or
+friendship that checked them? Was it a dread of meeting with
+selfishness, or the odious distrust which sunders all the residents
+within the walls of a populous city? Did the voice of conscience warn
+them of approaching danger? It would be impossible to explain the
+instinct which made them as much enemies as friends, at once
+indifferent and attached, drawn to each other by impulse, and severed
+by circumstance. Each perhaps hoped to preserve a cherished illusion.
+It might almost have been thought that the stranger feared lest he
+should hear some vulgar word from those lips as fresh and pure as a
+flower, and that Caroline felt herself unworthy of the mysterious
+personage who was evidently possessed of power and wealth.
+
+As to Madame Crochard, that tender mother, almost angry at her
+daughter's persistent lack of decisiveness, now showed a sulky face to
+the "Black Gentleman," on whom she had hitherto smiled with a sort of
+benevolent servility. Never before had she complained so bitterly of
+being compelled, at her age, to do the cooking; never had her catarrh
+and her rheumatism wrung so many groans from her; finally, she could
+not, this winter, promise so many ells of net as Caroline had hitherto
+been able to count on.
+
+Under these circumstances, and towards the end of December, at the
+time when bread was dearest, and that dearth of corn was beginning to
+be felt which made the year 1816 so hard on the poor, the stranger
+observed on the features of the girl whose name was still unknown to
+him, the painful traces of a secret sorrow which his kindest smiles
+could not dispel. Before long he saw in Caroline's eyes the dimness
+attributed to long hours at night. One night, towards the end of the
+month, the Gentleman in Black passed down the Rue du Tourniquet at the
+quite unwonted hour of one in the morning. The perfect silence allowed
+of his hearing before passing the house the lachrymose voice of the
+old mother, and Caroline's even sadder tones, mingling with the swish
+of a shower of sleet. He crept along as slowly as he could; and then,
+at the risk of being taken up by the police, he stood still below the
+window to hear the mother and daughter, while watching them through
+the largest of the holes in the yellow muslin curtains, which were
+eaten away by wear as a cabbage leaf is riddled by caterpillars. The
+inquisitive stranger saw a sheet of paper on the table that stood
+between the two work-frames, and on which stood the lamp and the
+globes filled with water. He at once identified it as a writ. Madame
+Crochard was weeping, and Caroline's voice was thick, and had lost its
+sweet, caressing tone.
+
+"Why be so heartbroken, mother? Monsieur Molineux will not sell us up
+or turn us out before I have finished this dress; only two nights more
+and I shall take it home to Madame Roguin."
+
+"And supposing she keeps you waiting as usual?--And will the money for
+the gown pay the baker too?"
+
+The spectator of this scene had long practice in reading faces; he
+fancied he could discern that the mother's grief was as false as the
+daughter's was genuine; he turned away, and presently came back. When
+he next peeped through the hole in the curtain, Madame Crochard was in
+bed. The young needlewoman, bending over her frame, was embroidering
+with indefatigable diligence; on the table, with the writ lay a
+triangular hunch of bread, placed there, no doubt, to sustain her in
+the night and to remind her of the reward of her industry. The
+stranger was tremulous with pity and sympathy; he threw his purse in
+through a cracked pane so that it should fall at the girl's feet; and
+then, without waiting to enjoy her surprise, he escaped, his cheeks
+tingling.
+
+Next morning the shy and melancholy stranger went past with a look of
+deep preoccupation, but he could not escape Caroline's gratitude; she
+had opened her window and affected to be digging in the square window-
+box buried in snow, a pretext of which the clumsy ingenuity plainly
+told her benefactor that she had been resolved not to see him only
+through the pane. Her eyes were full of tears as she bowed her head,
+as much as to say to her benefactor, "I can only repay you from my
+heart."
+
+But the Gentleman in Black affected not to understand the meaning of
+this sincere gratitude. In the evening, as he came by, Caroline was
+busy mending the window with a sheet of paper, and she smiled at him,
+showing her row of pearly teeth like a promise. Thenceforth the
+Stranger went another way, and was no more seen in the Rue due
+Tourniquet.
+
+
+
+It was one day early in the following May that, as Caroline was giving
+the roots of the honeysuckle a glass of water, one Saturday morning,
+she caught sight of a narrow strip of cloudless blue between the black
+lines of houses, and said to her mother:
+
+"Mamma, we must go to-morrow for a trip to Montmorency!"
+
+She had scarcely uttered the words, in a tone of glee, when the
+Gentleman in Black came by, sadder and more dejected than ever.
+Caroline's innocent and ingratiating glance might have been taken for
+an invitation. And, in fact, on the following day, when Madame
+Crochard, dressed in a pelisse of claret-colored merinos, a silk
+bonnet, and striped shawl of an imitation Indian pattern, came out to
+choose seats in a chaise at the corner of the Rue du Faubourg Saint-
+Denis and the Rue d'Enghien, there she found her Unknown standing like
+a man waiting for his wife. A smile of pleasure lighted up the
+Stranger's face when his eye fell on Caroline, her neat feet shod in
+plum-colored prunella gaiters, and her white dress tossed by a breeze
+that would have been fatal to an ill-made woman, but which displayed
+her graceful form. Her face, shaded by a rice-straw bonnet lined with
+pink silk, seemed to beam with a reflection from heaven; her broad,
+plum-colored belt set off a waist he could have spanned; her hair,
+parted in two brown bands over a forehead as white as snow, gave her
+an expression of innocence which no other feature contradicted.
+Enjoyment seemed to have made Caroline as light as the straw of her
+hat; but when she saw the Gentleman in Black, radiant hope suddenly
+eclipsed her bright dress and her beauty. The Stranger, who appeared
+to be in doubt, had not perhaps made up his mind to be the girl's
+escort for the day till this revelation of the delight she felt on
+seeing him. He at once hired a vehicle with a fairly good horse, to
+drive to Saint-Leu-Taverny, and he offered Madame Crochard and her
+daughter seats by his side. The mother accepted without ado; but
+presently, when they were already on the way to Saint-Denis, she was
+by way of having scruples, and made a few civil speeches as to the
+possible inconvenience two women might cause their companion.
+
+"Perhaps, monsieur, you wished to drive alone to Saint-Leu-Taverny,"
+said she, with affected simplicity.
+
+Before long she complained of the heat, and especially of her cough,
+which, she said, had hindered her from closing her eyes all night; and
+by the time the carriage had reached Saint-Denis, Madame Crochard
+seemed to be fast asleep. Her snores, indeed, seemed, to the Gentleman
+in Black, rather doubtfully genuine, and he frowned as he looked at
+the old woman with a very suspicious eye.
+
+"Oh, she is fast asleep," said Caroline quilelessly; "she never ceased
+coughing all night. She must be very tired."
+
+Her companion made no reply, but he looked at the girl with a smile
+that seemed to say:
+
+"Poor child, you little know your mother!"
+
+However, in spite of his distrust, as the chaise made its way down the
+long avenue of poplars leading to Eaubonne, the Stranger thought that
+Madame Crochard was really asleep; perhaps he did not care to inquire
+how far her slumbers were genuine or feigned. Whether it were that the
+brilliant sky, the pure country air, and the heady fragrance of the
+first green shoots of the poplars, the catkins of willow, and the
+flowers of the blackthorn had inclined his heart to open like all the
+nature around him; or that any long restraint was too oppressive while
+Caroline's sparkling eyes responded to his own, the Gentleman in Black
+entered on a conversation with his young companion, as aimless as the
+swaying of the branches in the wind, as devious as the flitting of the
+butterflies in the azure air, as illogical as the melodious murmur of
+the fields, and, like it, full of mysterious love. At that season is
+not the rural country as tremulous as a bride that has donned her
+marriage robe; does it not invite the coldest soul to be happy? What
+heart could remain unthawed, and what lips could keep its secret, on
+leaving the gloomy streets of the Marais for the first time since the
+previous autumn, and entering the smiling and picturesque valley of
+Montmorency; on seeing it in the morning light, its endless horizons
+receding from view; and then lifting a charmed gaze to eyes which
+expressed no less infinitude mingled with love?
+
+The Stranger discovered that Caroline was sprightly rather than witty,
+affectionate, but ill educated; but while her laugh was giddy, her
+words promised genuine feeling. When, in response to her companion's
+shrewd questioning, the girl spoke with the heartfelt effusiveness of
+which the lower classes are lavish, not guarding it with reticence
+like people of the world, the Black Gentleman's face brightened, and
+seemed to renew its youth. His countenance by degrees lost the sadness
+that lent sternness to his features, and little by little they gained
+a look of handsome youthfulness which made Caroline proud and happy.
+The pretty needlewoman guessed that her new friend had been long
+weaned from tenderness and love, and no longer believed in the
+devotion of woman. Finally, some unexpected sally in Caroline's light
+prattle lifted the last veil that concealed the real youth and genuine
+character of the Stranger's physiognomy; he seemed to bid farewell to
+the ideas that haunted him, and showed the natural liveliness that lay
+beneath the solemnity of his expression.
+
+Their conversation had insensibly become so intimate, that by the time
+when the carriage stopped at the first houses of the straggling
+village of Saint-Leu, Caroline was calling the gentleman Monsieur
+Roger. Then for the first time the old mother awoke.
+
+"Caroline, she has heard everything!" said Roger suspiciously in the
+girl's ear.
+
+Caroline's reply was an exquisite smile of disbelief, which dissipated
+the dark cloud that his fear of some plot on the old woman's part had
+brought to this suspicious mortal's brow. Madame Crochard was amazed
+at nothing, approved of everything, followed her daughter and Monsieur
+Roger into the park, where the two young people had agreed to wander
+through the smiling meadows and fragrant copses made famous by the
+taste of Queen Hortense.
+
+"Good heavens! how lovely!" exclaimed Caroline when standing on the
+green ridge where the forest of Montmorency begins, she saw lying at
+her feet the wide valley with its combes sheltering scattered
+villages, its horizon of blue hills, its church towers, its meadows
+and fields, whence a murmur came up, to die on her ear like the swell
+of the ocean. The three wanderers made their way by the bank of an
+artificial stream and came to the Swiss valley, where stands a chalet
+that had more than once given shelter to Hortense and Napoleon. When
+Caroline had seated herself with pious reverence on the mossy wooden
+bench where kings and princesses and the Emperor had rested, Madame
+Crochard expressed a wish to have a nearer view of a bridge that hung
+across between two rocks at some little distance, and bent her steps
+towards that rural curiosity, leaving her daughter in Monsieur Roger's
+care, though telling them that she would not go out of sight.
+
+"What, poor child!" cried Roger, "have you never longed for wealth and
+the pleasures of luxury? Have you never wished that you might wear the
+beautiful dresses you embroider?"
+
+"It would not be the truth, Monsieur Roger, if I were to tell you that
+I never think how happy people must be who are rich. Oh yes! I often
+fancy, especially when I am going to sleep, how glad I should be to
+see my poor mother no longer compelled to go out, whatever the
+weather, to buy our little provisions, at her age. I should like her
+to have a servant who, every morning before she was up, would bring
+her up her coffee, nicely sweetened with white sugar. And she loves
+reading novels, poor dear soul! Well, and I would rather see her
+wearing out her eyes over her favorite books than over twisting her
+bobbins from morning till night. And again, she ought to have a little
+good wine. In short, I should like to see her comfortable--she is so
+good."
+
+"Then she has shown you great kindness?"
+
+"Oh yes," said the girl, in a tone of conviction. Then, after a short
+pause, during which the two young people stood watching Madame
+Crochard, who had got to the middle of the rustic bridge, and was
+shaking her finger at them, Caroline went on:
+
+"Oh yes, she has been so good to me. What care she took of me when I
+was little! She sold her last silver forks to apprentice me to the old
+maid who taught me to embroider.--And my poor father! What did she not
+go through to make him end his days in happiness!" The girl shivered
+at the remembrance, and hid her face in her hands.--"Well! come! let
+us forget past sorrows!" she added, trying to rally her high spirits.
+She blushed as she saw that Roger too was moved, but she dared not
+look at him.
+
+"What was your father?" he asked.
+
+"He was an opera-dancer before the Revolution," said she, with an air
+of perfect simplicity, "and my mother sang in the chorus. My father,
+who was leader of the figures on the stage, happened to be present at
+the siege of the Bastille. He was recognized by some of the
+assailants, who asked him whether he could not lead a real attack,
+since he was used to leading such enterprises on the boards. My father
+was brave; he accepted the post, led the insurgents, and was rewarded
+by the nomination to the rank of captain in the army of Sambre-et-
+Meuse, where he distinguished himself so far as to rise rapidly to be
+a colonel. But at Lutzen he was so badly wounded that, after a year's
+sufferings, he died in Paris.--The Bourbons returned; my mother could
+obtain no pension, and we fell into such abject misery that we were
+compelled to work for our living. For some time past she has been
+ailing, poor dear, and I have never known her so little resigned; she
+complains a good deal, and, indeed, I cannot wonder, for she has known
+the pleasures of an easy life. For my part, I cannot pine for delights
+I have never known, I have but one thing to wish for."
+
+"And that is?" said Roger eagerly, as if roused from a dream.
+
+"That women may continue to wear embroidered net dresses, so that I
+may never lack work."
+
+The frankness of this confession interested the young man, who looked
+with less hostile eyes on Madame Crochard as she slowly made her way
+back to them.
+
+"Well, children, have you had a long talk?" said she, with a half-
+laughing, half-indulgent air. "When I think, Monsieur Roger, that the
+'little Corporal' has sat where you are sitting," she went on after a
+pause. "Poor man! how my husband worshiped him! Ah! Crochard did well
+to die, for he could not have borne to think of him where /they/ have
+sent him!"
+
+Roger put his finger to his lips, and the good woman went on very
+gravely, with a shake of her head:
+
+"All right, mouth shut and tongue still! But," added she, unhooking a
+bit of her bodice, and showing a ribbon and cross tied round her neck
+by a piece of black ribbon, "they shall never hinder me from wearing
+what /he/ gave to my poor Crochard, and I will have it buried with
+me."
+
+On hearing this speech, which at that time was regarded as seditious,
+Roger interrupted the old lady by rising suddenly, and they returned
+to the village through the park walks. The young man left them for a
+few minutes while he went to order a meal at the best eating-house in
+Taverny; then, returning to fetch them, he led the way through the
+alleys cut in the forest.
+
+The dinner was cheerful. Roger was no longer the melancholy shade that
+was wont to pass along the Rue du Tourniquet; he was not the "Black
+Gentleman," but rather a confiding young man ready to take life as it
+came, like the two hard-working women who, on the morrow, might lack
+bread; he seemed alive to all the joys of youth, his smile was quite
+affectionate and childlike.
+
+When, at five o'clock, this happy meal was ended with a few glasses of
+champagne, Roger was the first to propose that they should join the
+village ball under the chestnuts, where he and Caroline danced
+together. Their hands met with sympathetic pressure, their hearts beat
+with the same hopes; and under the blue sky and the slanting, rosy
+beams of sunset, their eyes sparkled with fires which, to them, made
+the glory of the heavens pale. How strange is the power of an idea, of
+a desire! To these two nothing seemed impossible. In such magic
+moments, when enjoyment sheds its reflections on the future, the soul
+foresees nothing but happiness. This sweet day had created memories
+for these two to which nothing could be compared in all their past
+existence. Would the source prove to be more beautiful than the river,
+the desire more enchanting than its gratification, the thing hoped for
+more delightful than the thing possessed?
+
+"So the day is already at an end!" On hearing this exclamation from
+her unknown friend when the dance was over, Caroline looked at him
+compassionately, as his face assumed once more a faint shade of
+sadness.
+
+"Why should you not be as happy in Paris as you are here?" she asked.
+"Is happiness to be found only at Saint-Leu? It seems to me that I can
+henceforth never be unhappy anywhere."
+
+Roger was struck by these words, spoken with the glad unrestraint that
+always carries a woman further than she intended, just as prudery
+often lends her greater cruelty than she feels. For the first time
+since that glance, which had, in a way, been the beginning of their
+friendship, Caroline and Roger had the same idea; though they did not
+express it, they felt it at the same instant, as a result of a common
+impression like that of a comforting fire cheering both under the
+frost of winter; then, as if frightened by each other's silence, they
+made their way to the spot where the carriage was waiting. But before
+getting into it, they playfully took hands and ran together down the
+dark avenue in front of Madame Crochard. When they could no longer see
+the white net cap, which showed as a speck through the leaves where
+the old woman was--"Caroline!" said Roger in a tremulous voice, and
+with a beating heart.
+
+The girl was startled, and drew back a few steps, understanding the
+invitation this question conveyed; however, she held out her hand,
+which was passionately kissed, but which she hastily withdrew, for by
+standing on tiptoe she could see her mother.
+
+Madame Crochard affected blindness, as if, with a reminiscence of her
+old parts, she was only required to figure as a supernumerary.
+
+
+
+The adventures of these two young people were not continued in the Rue
+du Tourniquet. To see Roger and Caroline once more, we must leap into
+the heart of modern Paris, where, in some of the newly-built houses,
+there are apartments that seem made on purpose for newly-married
+couples to spend their honeymoon in. There the paper and paint are as
+fresh as the bride and bridegroom, and the decorations are in blossom
+like their love; everything is in harmony with youthful notions and
+ardent wishes.
+
+Half-way down the Rue Taitbout, in a house whose stone walls were
+still white, where the columns of the hall and the doorway were as yet
+spotless, and the inner walls shone with the neat painting which our
+recent intimacy with English ways had brought into fashion, there was,
+on the second floor, a small set of rooms fitted by the architect as
+though he had known what their use would be. A simple airy ante-room,
+with a stucco dado, formed an entrance into a drawing-room and dining-
+room. Out of the drawing-room opened a pretty bedroom, with a bathroom
+beyond. Every chimney-shelf had over it a fine mirror elegantly
+framed. The doors were crowded with arabesques in good taste, and the
+cornices were in the best style. Any amateur would have discerned
+there the sense of distinction and decorative fitness which mark the
+work of modern French architects.
+
+For above a month Caroline had been at home in this apartment,
+furnished by an upholsterer who submitted to an artist's guidance. A
+short description of the principal room will suffice to give us an
+idea of the wonders it offered to Caroline's delighted eyes when Roger
+installed her there. Hangings of gray stuff trimmed with green silk
+adorned the walls of her bedroom; the seats, covered with light-
+colored woolen sateen, were of easy and comfortable shapes, and in the
+latest fashion; a chest of drawers of some simple wood, inlaid with
+lines of a darker hue, contained the treasures of the toilet; a
+writing-table to match served for inditing love-letters on scented
+paper; the bed, with antique draperies, could not fail to suggest
+thoughts of love by its soft hangings of elegant muslin; the window-
+curtains, of drab silk with green fringe, were always half drawn to
+subdue the light; a bronze clock represented Love crowning Psyche; and
+a carpet of Gothic design on a red ground set off the other
+accessories of this delightful retreat. There was a small dressing-
+table in front of a long glass, and here the needlewoman sat, out of
+patience with Plaisir, the famous hairdresser.
+
+"Do you think you will have done to-day?" said she.
+
+"Your hair is so long and so thick, madame," replied Plaisir.
+
+Caroline could not help smiling. The man's flattery had no doubt
+revived in her mind the memory of the passionate praises lavished by
+her lover on the beauty of her hair, which he delighted in.
+
+The hairdresser having done, a waiting-maid came and held counsel with
+her as to the dress in which Roger would like best to see her. It was
+the beginning of September 1816, and the weather was cold; she chose a
+green /grenadine/ trimmed with chinchilla. As soon as she was dressed,
+Caroline flew into the drawing-room and opened a window, out of which
+she stepped on to the elegant balcony, that adorned the front of the
+house; there she stood, with her arms crossed, in a charming attitude,
+not to show herself to the admiration of the passers-by and see them
+turn to gaze at her, but to be able to look out on the Boulevard at
+the bottom of the Rue Taitbout. This side view, really very comparable
+to the peephole made by actors in the drop-scene of a theatre, enabled
+her to catch a glimpse of numbers of elegant carriages, and a crowd of
+persons, swept past with the rapidity of /Ombres Chinoises/. Not
+knowing whether Roger would arrive in a carriage or on foot, the
+needlewoman from the Rue du Tourniquet looked by turns at the foot-
+passengers, and at the tilburies--light cabs introduced into Paris by
+the English.
+
+Expressions of refractoriness and of love passed by turns over her
+youthful face when, after waiting for a quarter of an hour, neither
+her keen eye nor her heart had announced the arrival of him whom she
+knew to be due. What disdain, what indifference were shown in her
+beautiful features for all the other creatures who were bustling like
+ants below her feet. Her gray eyes, sparkling with fun, now positively
+flamed. Given over to her passion, she avoided admiration with as much
+care as the proudest devote to encouraging it when they drive about
+Paris, certainly feeling no care as to whether her fair countenance
+leaning over the balcony, or her little foot between the bars, and the
+picture of her bright eyes and delicious turned-up nose would be
+effaced or no from the minds of the passers-by who admired them; she
+saw but one face, and had but one idea. When the spotted head of a
+certain bay horse happened to cross the narrow strip between the two
+rows of houses, Caroline gave a little shiver and stood on tiptoe in
+hope of recognizing the white traces and the color of the tilbury. It
+was he!
+
+Roger turned the corner of the street, saw the balcony, whipped the
+horse, which came up at a gallop, and stopped at the bronze-green door
+that he knew as well as his master did. The door of the apartment was
+opened at once by the maid, who had heard her mistress' exclamation of
+delight. Roger rushed up to the drawing-room, clasped Caroline in his
+arms, and embraced her with the effusive feeling natural when two
+beings who love each other rarely meet. He led her, or rather they
+went by a common impulse, their arms about each other, into the quiet
+and fragrant bedroom; a settee stood ready for them to sit by the
+fire, and for a moment they looked at each other in silence,
+expressing their happiness only by their clasped hands, and
+communicating their thoughts in a fond gaze.
+
+"Yes, it is he!" she said at last. "Yes, it is you. Do you know, I
+have not seen you for three long days, an age!--But what is the
+matter? You are unhappy."
+
+"My poor Caroline--"
+
+"There, you see! 'poor Caroline'--"
+
+"No, no, do not laugh, my darling; we cannot go to the Feydeau Theatre
+together this evening."
+
+Caroline put on a little pout, but it vanished immediately.
+
+"How absurd I am! How can I think of going to the play when I see you?
+Is not the sight of you the only spectacle I care for?" she cried,
+pushing her fingers through Roger's hair.
+
+"I am obliged to go to the Attorney-General's. We have a knotty case
+in hand. He met me in the great hall at the Palais; and as I am to
+plead, he asked me to dine with him. But, my dearest, you can go to
+the theatre with your mother, and I will join you if the meeting
+breaks up early."
+
+"To the theatre without you!" cried she in a tone of amazement; "enjoy
+any pleasure you do not share! O my Roger! you do not deserve a kiss,"
+she added, throwing her arms round his neck with an artless and
+impassioned impulse.
+
+"Caroline, I must go home and dress. The Marais is some way off, and I
+still have some business to finish."
+
+"Take care what you are saying, monsieur," said she, interrupting him.
+"My mother says that when a man begins to talk about his business, he
+is ceasing to love."
+
+"Caroline! Am I not here? Have I not stolen this hour from my
+pitiless--"
+
+"Hush!" said she, laying a finger on his mouth. "Don't you see that I
+am in jest."
+
+They had now come back to the drawing-room, and Roger's eye fell on an
+object brought home that morning by the cabinetmaker. Caroline's old
+rosewood embroidery-frame, by which she and her mother had earned
+their bread when they lived in the Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, had
+been refitted and polished, and a net dress, of elaborate design, was
+already stretched upon it.
+
+"Well, then, my dear, I shall do some work this evening. As I stitch,
+I shall fancy myself gone back to those early days when you used to
+pass by me without a word, but not without a glance; the days when the
+remembrance of your look kept me awake all night. Oh my dear old frame
+--the best piece of furniture in my room, though you did not give it
+me!--You cannot think," said she, seating herself on Roger's knees;
+for he, overcome by irresistible feelings, had dropped into a chair.
+"Listen.--All I can earn by my work I mean to give to the poor. You
+have made me rich. How I love that pretty home at Bellefeuille, less
+because of what it is than because you gave it me! But tell me, Roger,
+I should like to call myself Caroline de Bellefeuille--can I? You must
+know: is it legal or permissible?"
+
+As she saw a little affirmative grimace--for Roger hated the name of
+Crochard--Caroline jumped for glee, and clapped her hands.
+
+"I feel," said she, "as if I should more especially belong to you.
+Usually a woman gives up her own name and takes her husband's--" An
+idea forced itself upon her and made her blush. She took Roger's hand
+and led him to the open piano.--"Listen," said she, "I can play my
+sonata now like an angel!" and her fingers were already running over
+the ivory keys, when she felt herself seized round the waist.
+
+"Caroline, I ought to be far from hence!"
+
+"You insist on going? Well, go," said she, with a pretty pout, but she
+smiled as she looked at the clock and exclaimed joyfully, "At any
+rate, I have detained you a quarter of an hour!"
+
+"Good-bye, Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille," said he, with the gentle
+irony of love.
+
+She kissed him and saw her lover to the door; when the sound of his
+steps had died away on the stairs she ran out on to the balcony to see
+him get into the tilbury, to see him gather up the reins, to catch a
+parting look, hear the crack of his whip and the sound of his wheels
+on the stones, watch the handsome horse, the master's hat, the tiger's
+gold lace, and at last to stand gazing long after the dark corner of
+the street had eclipsed this vision.
+
+
+
+Five years after Mademoiselle Caroline de Bellefeuille had taken up
+her abode in the pretty house in the Rue Taitbout, we again look in on
+one of those home-scenes which tighten the bonds of affection between
+two persons who truly love. In the middle of the blue drawing-room, in
+front of the window opening to the balcony, a little boy of four was
+making a tremendous noise as he whipped the rocking-horse, whose two
+curved supports for the legs did not move fast enough to please him;
+his pretty face, framed in fair curls that fell over his white collar,
+smiled up like a cherub's at his mother when she said to him from the
+depths of an easy-chair, "Not so much noise, Charles; you will wake
+your little sister."
+
+The inquisitive boy suddenly got off his horse, and treading on tiptoe
+as if he were afraid of the sound of his feet on the carpet, came up
+with one finger between his little teeth, and standing in one of those
+childish attitudes that are so graceful because they are so perfectly
+natural, raised the muslin veil that hid the rosy face of a little
+girl sleeping on her mother's knee.
+
+"Is Eugenie asleep, then?" said he, quite astonished. "Why is she
+asleep when we are awake?" he added, looking up with large, liquid
+black eyes.
+
+"That only God can know," replied Caroline, with a smile.
+
+The mother and boy gazed at the infant, only that morning baptized.
+
+Caroline, now about four-and-twenty, showed the ripe beauty which had
+expanded under the influence of cloudless happiness and constant
+enjoyment. In her the Woman was complete.
+
+Delighted to obey her dear Roger's every wish, she had acquired the
+accomplishments she had lacked; she played the piano fairly well, and
+sang sweetly. Ignorant of the customs of a world that would have
+treated her as an outcast, and which she would not have cared for even
+if it had welcomed her--for a happy woman does not care for the world
+--she had not caught the elegance of manner or learned the art of
+conversation, abounding in words and devoid of ideas, which is current
+in fashionable drawing-rooms; on the other hand, she worked hard to
+gain the knowledge indispensable to a mother whose chief ambition is
+to bring up her children well. Never to lose sight of her boy, to give
+him from the cradle that training of every minute which impresses on
+the young a love of all that is good and beautiful, to shelter him
+from every evil influence and fulfil both the painful duties of a
+nurse and the tender offices of a mother,--these were her chief
+pleasures.
+
+The coy and gentle being had from the first day so fully resigned
+herself never to step beyond the enchanted sphere where she found all
+her happiness, that, after six years of the tenderest intimacy, she
+still knew her lover only by the name of Roger. A print of the picture
+of the Psyche lighting her lamp to gaze on Love in spite of his
+prohibition, hung in her room, and constantly reminded her of the
+conditions of her happiness. Through all these six years her humble
+pleasures had never importuned Roger by a single indiscreet ambition,
+and his heart was a treasure-house of kindness. Never had she longed
+for diamonds or fine clothes, and had again and again refused the
+luxury of a carriage which he had offered her. To look out from her
+balcony for Roger's cab, to go with him to the play or make excursions
+with him, on fine days in the environs of Paris, to long for him, to
+see him, and then to long again,--these made up the history of her
+life, poor in incidents but rich in happiness.
+
+As she rocked the infant, now a few months old, on her knee, singing
+the while, she allowed herself to recall the memories of the past. She
+lingered more especially on the months of September, when Roger was
+accustomed to take her to Bellefeuille and spend the delightful days
+which seem to combine the charms of every season. Nature is equally
+prodigal of flowers and fruit, the evenings are mild, the mornings
+bright, and a blaze of summer often returns after a spell of autumn
+gloom. During the early days of their love, Caroline had ascribed the
+even mind and gentle temper, of which Roger gave her so many proofs,
+to the rarity of their always longed-for meetings, and to their mode
+of life, which did not compel them to be constantly together, as a
+husband and wife must be. But now she could remember with rapture
+that, tortured by foolish fears, she had watched him with trembling
+during their first stay on this little estate in the Gatinais. Vain
+suspiciousness of love! Each of these months of happiness had passed
+like a dream in the midst of joys which never rang false. She had
+always seen that kind creature with a tender smile on his lips, a
+smile that seemed to mirror her own.
+
+As she called up these vivid pictures, her eyes filled with tears; she
+thought she could not love him enough, and was tempted to regard her
+ambiguous position as a sort of tax levied by Fate on her love.
+Finally, invincible curiosity led her to wonder for the thousandth
+time what events they could be that led so tender a heart as Roger's
+to find his pleasure in clandestine and illicit happiness. She
+invented a thousand romances on purpose really to avoid recognizing
+the true reason, which she had long suspected but tried not to believe
+in. She rose, and carrying the baby in her arms, went into the dining-
+room to superintend the preparations for dinner.
+
+It was the 6th of May 1822, the anniversary of the excursion to the
+Park of Saint-Leu, which had been the turning-point of her life; each
+year it had been marked by heartfelt rejoicing. Caroline chose the
+linen to be used, and arranged the dessert. Having attended with joy
+to these details, which touched Roger, she placed the infant in her
+pretty cot and went out on to the balcony, whence she presently saw
+the carriage which her friend, as he grew to riper years, now used
+instead of the smart tilbury of his youth. After submitting to the
+first fire of Caroline's embraces and the kisses of the little rogue
+who addressed him as papa, Roger went to the cradle, looked at his
+little sleeping daughter, kissed her forehead, and then took out of
+his pocket a document covered with black writing.
+
+"Caroline," said he, "here is the marriage portion of Mademoiselle
+Eugenie de Bellefeuille."
+
+The mother gratefully took the paper, a deed of gift of securities in
+the State funds.
+
+"Buy why," said she, "have you given Eugenie three thousand francs a
+year, and Charles no more than fifteen hundred?"
+
+"Charles, my love, will be a man," replied he. "Fifteen hundred francs
+are enough for him. With so much for certain, a man of courage is
+above poverty. And if by chance your son should turn out a nonentity,
+I do not wish him to be able to play the fool. If he is ambitious,
+this small income will give him a taste for work.--Eugenie is a girl;
+she must have a little fortune."
+
+The father then turned to play with his boy, whose effusive affection
+showed the independence and freedom in which he was brought up. No
+sort of shyness between the father and child interfered with the charm
+which rewards a parent for his devotion; and the cheerfulness of the
+little family was as sweet as it was genuine. In the evening a magic-
+lantern displayed its illusions and mysterious pictures on a white
+sheet to Charles' great surprise, and more than once the innocent
+child's heavenly rapture made Caroline and Roger laugh heartily.
+
+Later, when the little boy was in bed, the baby woke and craved its
+limpid nourishment. By the light of a lamp in the chimney corner,
+Roger enjoyed the scene of peace and comfort, and gave himself up to
+the happiness of contemplating the sweet picture of the child clinging
+to Caroline's white bosom as she sat, as fresh as a newly opened lily,
+while her hair fell in long brown curls that almost hid her neck. The
+lamplight enhanced the grace of the young mother, shedding over her,
+her dress, and the infant, the picturesque effects of strong light and
+shadow.
+
+The calm and silent woman's face struck Roger as a thousand times
+sweeter than ever, and he gazed tenderly at the rosy, pouting lips
+from which no harsh word had ever been heard. The very same thought
+was legible in Caroline's eyes as she gave a sidelong look at Roger,
+either to enjoy the effect she was producing on him, or to see what
+the end of the evening was to be. He, understanding the meaning of
+this cunning glance, said with assumed regret, "I must be going. I
+have a serious case to be finished, and I am expected at home. Duty
+before all things--don't you think so, my darling?"
+
+Caroline looked him in the face with an expression at once sad and
+sweet, with the resignation which does not, however, disguise the
+pangs of a sacrifice.
+
+"Good-bye, then," said she. "Go, for if you stay an hour longer I
+cannot so lightly bear to set you free."
+
+"My dearest," said he with a smile, "I have three days' holiday, and
+am supposed to be twenty leagues away from Paris."
+
+
+
+A few days after this anniversary of the 6th of May, Mademoiselle de
+Bellefeuille hurried off one morning to the Rue Saint-Louis, in the
+Marais, only hoping she might not arrive too late at a house where she
+commonly went once a week. An express messenger had just come to
+inform her that her mother, Madame Crochard, was sinking under a
+complication of disorders produced by constant catarrh and rheumatism.
+
+While the hackney coach-driver was flogging up his horses at
+Caroline's urgent request, supported by the promise of a handsome
+present, the timid old women, who had been Madame Crochard's friends
+during her later years, had brought a priest into the neat and
+comfortable second-floor rooms occupied by the old widow. Madame
+Crochard's maid did not know that the pretty lady at whose house her
+mistress so often dined was her daughter, and she was one of the first
+to suggest the services of a confessor, in the hope that this priest
+might be at least as useful to herself as to the sick woman. Between
+two games of boston, or out walking in the Jardin Turc, the old
+beldames with whom the widow gossiped all day had succeeded in rousing
+in their friend's stony heart some scruples as to her former life,
+some visions of the future, some fears of hell, and some hopes of
+forgiveness if she should return in sincerity to a religious life. So
+on this solemn morning three ancient females had settled themselves in
+the drawing-room where Madame Crochard was "at home" every Tuesday.
+Each in turn left her armchair to go to the poor old woman's bedside
+and sit with her, giving her the false hopes with which people delude
+the dying.
+
+At the same time, when the end was drawing near, when the physician
+called in the day before would no longer answer for her life, the
+three dames took counsel together as to whether it would not be well
+to send word to Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille. Francoise having been
+duly informed, it was decided that a commissionaire should go to the
+Rue Taitbout to inform the young relation whose influence was so
+disquieting to the four women; still, they hoped that the Auvergnat
+would be too late in bringing back the person who so certainly held
+the first place in the widow Crochard's affections. The widow,
+evidently in the enjoyment of a thousand crowns a year, would not have
+been so fondly cherished by this feminine trio, but that neither of
+them, nor Francoise herself knew of her having any heir. The wealth
+enjoyed by Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille, whom Madame Crochard, in
+obedience to the traditions of the older opera, never allowed herself
+to speak of by the affectionate name of daughter, almost justified the
+four women in their scheme of dividing among themselves the old
+woman's "pickings."
+
+Presently the one of these three sibyls who kept guard over the sick
+woman came shaking her head at the other anxious two, and said:
+
+"It is time we should be sending for the Abbe Fontanon. In another two
+hours she will neither have the wit nor the strength to write a line."
+
+Thereupon the toothless old cook went off, and returned with a man
+wearing a black gown. A low forehead showed a small mind in this
+priest, whose features were mean; his flabby, fat cheeks and double
+chin betrayed the easy-going egotist; his powdered hair gave him a
+pleasant look, till he raised his small, brown eyes, prominent under a
+flat forehead, and not unworthy to glitter under the brows of a
+Tartar.
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbe," said Francoise, "I thank you for all your advice;
+but believe me, I have taken the greatest care of the dear soul."
+
+But the servant, with her dragging step and woe-begone look, was
+silent when she saw that the door of the apartment was open, and that
+the most insinuating of the three dowagers was standing on the landing
+to be the first to speak with the confessor. When the priest had
+politely faced the honeyed and bigoted broadside of words fired off
+from the widow's three friends, he went into the sickroom to sit by
+Madame Crochard. Decency, and some sense of reserve, compelled the
+three women and old Francoise to remain in the sitting-room, and to
+make such grimaces of grief as are possible in perfection only to such
+wrinkled faces.
+
+"Oh, is it not ill-luck!" cried Francoise, heaving a sigh. "This is
+the fourth mistress I have buried. The first left me a hundred francs
+a year, the second a sum of fifty crowns, and the third a thousand
+crowns down. After thirty years' service, that is all I have to call
+my own."
+
+The woman took advantage of her freedom to come and go, to slip into a
+cupboard, whence she could hear the priest.
+
+"I see with pleasure, daughter," said Fontanon, "that you have pious
+sentiments; you have a sacred relic round your neck."
+
+Madame Crochard, with a feeble vagueness which seemed to show that she
+had not all her wits about her, pulled out the Imperial Cross of the
+Legion of Honor. The priest started back at seeing the Emperor's head;
+he went up to the penitent again, and she spoke to him, but in such a
+low tone that for some minutes Francoise could hear nothing.
+
+"Woe upon me!" cried the old woman suddenly. "Do not desert me. What,
+Monsieur l'Abbe, do you think I shall be called to account for my
+daughter's soul?"
+
+The Abbe spoke too low, and the partition was too thick for Francoise
+to hear the reply.
+
+"Alas!" sobbed the woman, "the wretch has left me nothing that I can
+bequeath. When he robbed me of my dear Caroline, he parted us, and
+only allowed me three thousand francs a year, of which the capital
+belongs to my daughter."
+
+"Madame has a daughter, and nothing to live on but an annuity,"
+shrieked Francoise, bursting into the drawing-room.
+
+The three old crones looked at each other in dismay. One of them,
+whose nose and chin nearly met with an expression that betrayed a
+superior type of hypocrisy and cunning, winked her eyes; and as soon
+as Francoise's back was turned, she gave her friends a nod, as much as
+to say, "That slut is too knowing by half; her name has figured in
+three wills already."
+
+So the three old dames sat on.
+
+However, the Abbe presently came out, and at a word from him the
+witches scuttered down the stairs at his heels, leaving Francoise
+alone with her mistress. Madame Crochard, whose sufferings increased
+in severity, rang, but in vain, for this woman, who only called out,
+"Coming, coming--in a minute!" The doors of cupboards and wardrobes
+were slamming as though Francoise were hunting high and low for a lost
+lottery ticket.
+
+Just as this crisis was at a climax, Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille came
+to stand by her mother's bed, lavishing tender words on her.
+
+"Oh my dear mother, how criminal I have been! You are ill, and I did
+not know it; my heart did not warn me. However, here I am--"
+
+"Caroline--"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"They fetched a priest--"
+
+"But send for a doctor, bless me!" cried Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille.
+"Francoise, a doctor! How is it that these ladies never sent for a
+doctor?"
+
+"They sent for a priest----" repeated the old woman with a gasp.
+
+"She is so ill--and no soothing draught, nothing on her table!"
+
+The mother made a vague sign, which Caroline's watchful eye
+understood, for she was silent to let her mother speak.
+
+"They brought a priest--to hear my confession, as they said.--Beware,
+Caroline!" cried the old woman with an effort, "the priest made me
+tell him your benefactor's name."
+
+"But who can have told you, poor mother?"
+
+The old woman died, trying to look knowingly cunning. If Mademoiselle
+de Bellefeuille had noted her mother's face she might have seen what
+no one ever will see--Death laughing.
+
+To enter into the interests that lay beneath this introduction to my
+tale, we must for a moment forget the actors in it, and look back at
+certain previous incidents, of which the last was closely concerned
+with the death of Madame Crochard. The two parts will then form a
+whole--a story which, by a law peculiar to life in Paris, was made up
+of two distinct sets of actions.
+
+Towards the close of the month of November 1805, a young barrister,
+aged about six-and-twenty, was going down the stairs of the hotel
+where the High Chancellor of the Empire resided, at about three
+o'clock one morning. Having reached the courtyard in full evening
+dress, under a keen frost, he could not help giving vent to an
+exclamation of dismay--qualified, however, by the spirit which rarely
+deserts a Frenchman--at seeing no hackney coach waiting outside the
+gates, and hearing no noises such as arise from the wooden shoes or
+harsh voices of the hackney-coachmen of Paris. The occasional pawing
+of the horses of the Chief Justice's carriage--the young man having
+left him still playing /bouillote/ with Cambaceres--alone rang out in
+the paved court, which was scarcely lighted by the carriage lamps.
+Suddenly the young lawyer felt a friendly hand on his shoulder, and
+turning round, found himself face to face with the Judge, to whom he
+bowed. As the footman let down the steps of his carriage, the old
+gentleman, who had served the Convention, suspected the junior's
+dilemma.
+
+"All cats are gray in the dark," said he good-humoredly. "The Chief
+Justice cannot compromise himself by putting a pleader in the right
+way! Especially," he went on, "when the pleader is the nephew of an
+old colleague, one of the lights of the grand Council of State which
+gave France the Napoleonic Code."
+
+At a gesture from the chief magistrate of France under the Empire, the
+foot-passenger got into the carriage.
+
+"Where do you live?" asked the great man, before the footman who
+awaited his orders had closed the door.
+
+"Quai des Augustins, monseigneur."
+
+The horses started, and the young man found himself alone with the
+Minister, to whom he had vainly tried to speak before and after the
+sumptuous dinner given by Cambaceres; in fact, the great man had
+evidently avoided him throughout the evening.
+
+"Well, Monsieur /de/ Granville, you are on the high road!"
+
+"So long as I sit by your Excellency's side--"
+
+"Nay, I am not jesting," said the Minister. "You were called two years
+since, and your defence in the case of Simeuse and Hauteserre had
+raised you high in your profession."
+
+"I had supposed that my interest in those unfortunate emigres had done
+me no good."
+
+"You are still very young," said the great man gravely. "But the High
+Chancellor," he went on, after a pause, "was greatly pleased with you
+this evening. Get a judgeship in the lower courts; we want men. The
+nephew of a man in whom Cambaceres and I take great interest must not
+remain in the background for lack of encouragement. Your uncle helped
+us to tide over a very stormy season, and services of that kind are
+not forgotten." The Minister sat silent for a few minutes. "Before
+long," he went on, "I shall have three vacancies open in the Lower
+Courts and in the Imperial Court in Paris. Come to see me, and take
+the place you prefer. Till then work hard, but do not be seen at my
+receptions. In the first place, I am overwhelmed with work; and
+besides that, your rivals may suspect your purpose and do you harm
+with the patron. Cambaceres and I, by not speaking a word to you this
+evening, have averted the accusation of favoritism."
+
+As the great man ceased speaking, the carriage drew up on the Quai des
+Augustins; the young lawyer thanked his generous patron for the two
+lifts he had conferred on him, and then knocked at his door pretty
+loudly, for the bitter wind blew cold about his calves. At last the
+old lodgekeeper pulled up the latch; and as the young man passed his
+window, called out in a hoarse voice, "Monsieur Granville, here is a
+letter for you."
+
+The young man took the letter, and in spite of the cold, tried to
+identify the writing by the gleam of a dull lamp fast dying out. "From
+my father!" he exclaimed, as he took his bedroom candle, which the
+porter at last had lighted. And he ran up to his room to read the
+following epistle:--
+
+  "Set off by the next mail; and if you can get here soon enough,
+  your fortune is made. Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems has lost her
+  sister; she is now an only child; and, as we know, she does not
+  hate you. Madame Bontems can now leave her about forty thousand
+  francs a year, besides whatever she may give her when she marries.
+  I have prepared the way.
+
+  "Our friends will wonder to see a family of old nobility allying
+  itself to the Bontems; old Bontems was a red republican of the
+  deepest dye, owning large quantities of the nationalized land,
+  that he bought for a mere song. But he held nothing but convent
+  lands, and the monks will not come back; and then, as you have
+  already so far derogated as to become a lawyer, I cannot see why
+  we should shrink from a further concession to the prevalent ideas.
+  The girl will have three hundred thousand francs; I can give you a
+  hundred thousand; your mother's property must be worth fifty
+  thousand crowns, more or less; so if you choose to take a
+  judgeship, my dear son, you are quite in a position to become a
+  senator as much as any other man. My brother-in-law the Councillor
+  of State will not indeed lend you a helping-hand; still, as he is
+  not married, his property will some day be yours, and if you are
+  not senator by your own efforts, you will get it through him. Then
+  you will be perched high enough to look on at events. Farewell.
+  Yours affectionately."
+
+So young Granville went to bed full of schemes, each fairer than the
+last. Under the powerful protection of the High Chancellor, the Chief
+Justice, and his mother's brother--one of the originators of the Code
+--he was about to make a start in a coveted position before the
+highest court of the Empire, and he already saw himself a member of
+the bench whence Napoleon selected the chief functionaries of the
+realm. He could also promise himself a fortune handsome enough to keep
+up his rank, for which the slender income of five thousand francs from
+an estate left him by his mother would be quite insufficient.
+
+To crown his ambitious dreams with a vision of happiness, he called up
+the guileless face of Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems, the companion of
+his childhood. Until he came to boyhood his father and mother had made
+no objection to his intimacy with their neighbor's pretty little
+daughter; but when, during his brief holiday visits to Bayeux, his
+parents, who prided themselves on their good birth, saw what friends
+the young people were, they forbade his ever thinking of her. Thus for
+ten years past Granville had only had occasional glimpses of the girl,
+whom he still sometimes thought of as "his little wife." And in those
+brief moments when they met free from the active watchfulness of their
+families, they had scarcely exchanged a few vague civilities at the
+church door or in the street. Their happiest days had been those when,
+brought together by one of those country festivities known in Normandy
+as /Assemblees/, they could steal a glance at each other from afar.
+
+In the course of the last vacation Granville had twice seen Angelique,
+and her downcast eyes and drooping attitude had led him to suppose
+that she was crushed by some unknown tyranny.
+
+He was off by seven next morning to the coach office in the Rue Notre-
+Dame-des-Victoires, and was so lucky as to find a vacant seat in the
+diligence then starting for Caen.
+
+It was not without deep emotion that the young lawyer saw once more
+the spires of the cathedral at Bayeux. As yet no hope of his life had
+been cheated, and his heart swelled with the generous feelings that
+expand in the youthful soul.
+
+After the too lengthy feast of welcome prepared by his father, who
+awaited him with some friends, the impatient youth was conducted to a
+house, long familiar to him, standing in the Rue Teinture. His heart
+beat high when his father--still known in the town of Bayeux as the
+Comte de Granville--knocked loudly at a carriage gate off which the
+green paint was dropping in scales. It was about four in the
+afternoon. A young maid-servant, in a cotton cap, dropped a short
+curtsey to the two gentlemen, and said that the ladies would soon be
+home from vespers.
+
+The Count and his son were shown into a low room used as a drawing-
+room, but more like a convent parlor. Polished panels of dark walnut
+made it gloomy enough, and around it some old-fashioned chairs covered
+with worsted work and stiff armchairs were symmetrically arranged. The
+stone chimney-shelf had no ornament but a discolored mirror, and on
+each side of it were the twisted branches of a pair of candle-
+brackets, such as were made at the time of the Peace of Utrecht.
+Against a panel opposite, young Granville saw an enormous crucifix of
+ebony and ivory surrounded by a wreath of box that had been blessed.
+Though there were three windows to the room, looking out on a country-
+town garden, laid out in formal square beds edged with box, the room
+was so dark that it was difficult to discern, on the wall opposite the
+windows, three pictures of sacred subjects painted by a skilled hand,
+and purchased, no doubt, during the Revolution by old Bontems, who, as
+governor of the district, had never neglected his opportunities. From
+the carefully polished floor to the green checked holland curtains
+everything shone with conventual cleanliness.
+
+The young man's heart felt an involuntary chill in this silent retreat
+where Angelique dwelt. The habit of frequenting the glittering Paris
+drawing-rooms, and the constant whirl of society, had effaced from his
+memory the dull and peaceful surroundings of a country life, and the
+contrast was so startling as to give him a sort of internal shiver. To
+have just left a party at the house of Cambaceres, where life was so
+large, where minds could expand, where the splendor of the Imperial
+Court was so vividly reflected, and to be dropped suddenly into a
+sphere of squalidly narrow ideas--was it not like a leap from Italy
+into Greenland?--"Living here is not life!" said he to himself, as he
+looked round the Methodistical room. The old Count, seeing his son's
+dismay, went up to him, and taking his hand, led him to a window,
+where there was still a gleam of daylight, and while the maid was
+lighting the yellow tapers in the candle branches he tried to clear
+away the clouds that the dreary place had brought to his brow.
+
+"Listen, my boy," said he. "Old Bontems' widow is a frenzied bigot.
+'When the devil is old--' you know! I see that the place goes against
+the grain. Well, this is the whole truth; the old woman is priest-
+ridden; they have persuaded her that it was high time to make sure of
+heaven, and the better to secure Saint Peter and his keys she pays
+before-hand. She goes to Mass every day, attends every service, takes
+the communion every Sunday God has made, and amuses herself by
+restoring chapels. She had given so many ornaments, and albs, and
+chasubles, she has crowned the canopy with so many feathers, that on
+the occasion of the last Corpus Christi procession as great a crowd
+came together as to see a man hanged, just to stare at the priests in
+their splendid dresses and all the vessels regilt. This house too is a
+sort of Holy Land. It was I who hindered her from giving those three
+pictures to the Church--a Domenichino, a Correggio, and an Andrea del
+Sarto--worth a good deal of money."
+
+"But Angelique?" asked the young man.
+
+"If you do not marry her, Angelique is done for," said the Count. "Our
+holy apostles counsel her to live a virgin martyr. I have had the
+utmost difficulty in stirring up her little heart, since she has been
+the only child, by talking to her of you; but, as you will easily
+understand, as soon as she is married you will carry her off to Paris.
+There, festivities, married life, the theatres, and the rush of
+Parisian society, will soon make her forget confessionals, and
+fasting, and hair shirts, and Masses, which are the exclusive
+nourishment of such creatures."
+
+"But the fifty thousand francs a year derived from Church property?
+Will not all that return--"
+
+"That is the point!" exclaimed the Count, with a cunning glance. "In
+consideration of this marriage--for Madame Bontems' vanity is not a
+little flattered by the notion of grafting the Bontems on to the
+genealogical tree of the Granvilles--the aforenamed mother agrees to
+settle her fortune absolutely on the girl, reserving only a life-
+interest. The priesthood, therefore, are set against the marriage; but
+I have had the banns published, everything is ready, and in a week you
+will be out of the clutches of the mother and her Abbes. You will have
+the prettiest girl in Bayeux, a good little soul who will give you no
+trouble, because she has sound principles. She has been mortified, as
+they say in their jargon, by fasting and prayer--and," he added in a
+low voice, "by her mother."
+
+A modest tap at the door silenced the Count, who expected to see the
+two ladies appear. A little page came in, evidently in a great hurry;
+but, abashed by the presence of the two gentlemen, he beckoned to a
+housekeeper, who followed him. Dressed in a blue cloth jacket with
+short tails, and blue-and-white striped trousers, his hair cut short
+all round, the boy's expression was that of a chorister, so strongly
+was it stamped with the compulsory propriety that marks every member
+of a bigoted household.
+
+"Mademoiselle Gatienne," said he, "do you know where the books are for
+the offices of the Virgin? The ladies of the Congregation of the
+Sacred Heart are going in procession this evening round the church."
+
+Gatienne went in search of the books.
+
+"Will they go on much longer, my little man?" asked the Count.
+
+"Oh, half an hour at most."
+
+"Let us go to look on," said the father to his son. "There will be
+some pretty women there, and a visit to the Cathedral can do us no
+harm."
+
+The young lawyer followed him with a doubtful expression.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked the Count.
+
+"The matter, father, is that I am sure I am right."
+
+"But you have said nothing."
+
+"No; but I have been thinking that you have still ten thousand francs
+a year left of your original fortune. You will leave them to me--as
+long a time hence as possible, I hope. But if you are ready to give me
+a hundred thousand francs to make a foolish match, you will surely
+allow me to ask you for only fifty thousand to save me from such a
+misfortune, and enjoy as a bachelor a fortune equal to what your
+Mademoiselle Bontems would bring me."
+
+"Are you crazy?"
+
+"No, father. These are the facts. The Chief Justice promised me
+yesterday that I should have a seat on the Bench. Fifty thousand
+francs added to what I have, and to the pay of my appointment, will
+give me an income of twelve thousand francs a year. And I then shall
+most certainly have a chance of marrying a fortune, better than this
+alliance, which will be poor in happiness if rich in goods."
+
+"It is very clear," said his father, "that you were not brought up
+under the old /regime/. Does a man of our rank ever allow his wife to
+be in his way?"
+
+"But, my dear father, in these days marriage is--"
+
+"Bless me!" cried the Count, interrupting his son, "then what my old
+/emigre/ friends tell me is true, I suppose. The Revolution has left
+us habits devoid of pleasure, and has infected all the young men with
+vulgar principles. You, like my Jacobin brother-in-law, will harangue
+me, I suppose, on the Nation, Public Morals, and Disinterestedness!--
+Good Heavens! But for the Emperor's sisters, where should we be?"
+
+The still hale old man, whom the peasants on the estate persisted in
+calling the Signeur de Granville, ended his speech as they entered the
+Cathedral porch. In spite of the sanctity of the place, and even as he
+dipped his fingers in the holy water, he hummed an air from the opera
+of /Rose et Colas/, and then led the way down the side aisles,
+stopping by each pillar to survey the rows of heads, all in lines like
+ranks of soldiers on parade.
+
+The special service of the Sacred Heart was about to begin. The ladies
+affiliated to that congregation were in front near the choir, so the
+Count and his son made their way to that part of the nave, and stood
+leaning against one of the columns where there was least light, whence
+they could command a view of this mass of faces, looking like a meadow
+full of flowers. Suddenly, close to young Granville, a voice, sweeter
+than it seemed possible to ascribe to a human being, broke into song,
+like the first nightingale when winter is past. Though it mingled with
+the voices of a thousand other women and the notes of the organ, that
+voice stirred his nerves as though they vibrated to the too full and
+too piercing sounds of a harmonium. The Parisian turned round, and,
+seeing a young figure, though, the head being bent, her face was
+entirely concealed by a large white bonnet, concluded that the voice
+was hers. He fancied that he recognized Angelique in spite of a brown
+merino pelisse that wrapped her, and he nudged his father's elbow.
+
+"Yes, there she is," said the Count, after looking where his son
+pointed, and then, by an expressive glance, he directed his attention
+to the pale face of an elderly woman who had already detected the
+strangers, though her false eyes, deep set in dark circles, did not
+seem to have strayed from the prayer-book she held.
+
+Angelique raised her face, gazing at the altar as if to inhale the
+heavy scent of the incense that came wafted in clouds over the two
+women. And then, in the doubtful light that the tapers shed down the
+nave, with that of a central lamp and of some lights round the
+pillars, the young man beheld a face which shook his determination. A
+white watered-silk bonnet closely framed features of perfect
+regularity, the oval being completed by the satin ribbon tie that
+fastened it under her dimpled chin. Over her forehead, very sweet
+though low, hair of a pale gold color parted in two bands and fell
+over her cheeks, like the shadow of leaves on a flower. The arches of
+her eyebrows were drawn with the accuracy we admire in the best
+Chinese paintings. Her nose, almost aquiline in profile, was
+exceptionally firmly cut, and her lips were like two rose lines
+lovingly traced with a delicate brush. Her eyes, of a light blue, were
+expressive of innocence.
+
+Though Granville discerned a sort of rigid reserve in this girlish
+face, he could ascribe it to the devotion in which Angelique was rapt.
+The solemn words of prayer, visible in the cold, came from between
+rows of pearls, like a fragrant mist, as it were. The young man
+involuntarily bent over her a little to breathe this diviner air. This
+movement attracted the girl's notice; her gaze, raised to the altar,
+was diverted to Granville, whom she could see but dimly in the gloom;
+but she recognized him as the companion of her youth, and a memory
+more vivid than prayer brought a supernatural glow to her face; she
+blushed. The young lawyer was thrilled with joy at seeing the hopes of
+another life overpowered by those of love, and the glory of the
+sanctuary eclipsed by earthly reminiscences; but his triumph was
+brief. Angelique dropped her veil, assumed a calm demeanor, and went
+on singing without letting her voice betray the least emotion.
+
+Granville was a prey to one single wish, and every thought of prudence
+vanished. By the time the service was ended, his impatience was so
+great that he could not leave the ladies to go home alone, but came at
+once to make his bow to "his little wife." They bashfully greeted each
+other in the Cathedral porch in the presence of the congregation.
+Madame Bontems was tremulous with pride as she took the Comte de
+Granville's arm, though he, forced to offer it in the presence of all
+the world was vexed enough with his son for his ill-advised
+impatience.
+
+For about a fortnight, between the official announcement of the
+intended marriage of the Vicomte de Granville to Mademoiselle Bontems
+and the solemn day of the wedding, he came assiduously to visit his
+lady-love in the dismal drawing-room, to which he became accustomed.
+His long calls were devoted to watching Angelique's character; for his
+prudence, happily, had made itself heard again in the day after their
+first meeting. He always found her seated at a little table of some
+West Indian wood, and engaged in marking the linen of her trousseau.
+Angelique never spoke first on the subject of religion. If the young
+lawyer amused himself with fingering the handsome rosary that she kept
+in a little green velvet bag, if he laughed as he looked at a relic
+such as usually is attached to this means of grace, Angelique would
+gently take the rosary out of his hands and replace it in the bag
+without a word, putting it away at once. When, now and then, Granville
+was so bold as to make mischievous remarks as to certain religious
+practices, the pretty girl listened to him with the obstinate smile of
+assurance.
+
+"You must either believe nothing, or believe everything the Church
+teaches," she would say. "Would you wish to have a woman without a
+religion as the mother of your children?--No.--What man may dare judge
+as between disbelievers and God? And how can I then blame what the
+Church allows?"
+
+Angelique appeared to be animated by such fervent charity, the young
+man saw her look at him with such perfect conviction, that he
+sometimes felt tempted to embrace her religious views; her firm belief
+that she was in the only right road aroused doubts in his mind, which
+she tried to turn to account.
+
+But then Granville committed the fatal blunder of mistaking the
+enchantment of desire for that of love. Angelique was so happy in
+reconciling the voice of her heart with that of duty, by giving way to
+a liking that had grown up with her from childhood, that the deluded
+man could not discern which of the two spoke the louder. Are not all
+young men ready to trust the promise of a pretty face and to infer
+beauty of soul from beauty of feature? An indefinable impulse leads
+them to believe that moral perfection must co-exist with physical
+perfection. If Angelique had not been at liberty to give vent to her
+sentiments, they would soon have dried up in her heart like a plant
+watered with some deadly acid. How should a lover be aware of bigotry
+so well hidden?
+
+This was the course of young Granville's feelings during that
+fortnight, devoured by him like a book of which the end is absorbing.
+Angelique, carefully watched by him, seemed the gentlest of creatures,
+and he even caught himself feeling grateful to Madame Bontems, who, by
+implanting so deeply the principles of religion, had in some degree
+inured her to meet the troubles of life.
+
+On the day named for signing the inevitable contract, Madame Bontems
+made her son-in-law pledge himself solemnly to respect her daughter's
+religious practices, to allow her entire liberty of conscience, to
+permit her to go to communion, to church, to confession as often as
+she pleased, and never to control her choice of priestly advisers. At
+this critical moment Angelique looked at her future husband with such
+pure and innocent eyes, that Granville did not hesitate to give his
+word. A smile puckered the lips of the Abbe Fontanon, a pale man, who
+directed the consciences of this household. Mademoiselle Bontems, by a
+slight nod, seemed to promise that she would never take an unfair
+advantage of this freedom. As to the old Count, he gently whistled the
+tune of an old song, /Va-t-en-voir s'ils viennent/ ("Go and see if
+they are coming on!")
+
+
+
+A few days after the wedding festivities of which so much is thought
+in the provinces, Granville and his wife went to Paris, whither the
+young man was recalled by his appointment as public prosecutor to the
+Supreme Court of the Seine circuit.
+
+When the young couple set out to find a residence, Angelique used the
+influence that the honeymoon gives to every wife in persuading her
+husband to take a large apartment in the ground-floor of a house at
+the corner of the Vieille Rue du Temple and the Rue Nueve Saint-
+Francois. Her chief reason for this choice was that the house was
+close to the Rue d'Orleans, where there was a church, and not far from
+a small chapel in the Rue Saint-Louis.
+
+"A good housewife provides for everything," said her husband,
+laughing.
+
+Angelique pointed out to him that this part of Paris, known as the
+Marais, was within easy reach of the Palais de Justice, and that the
+lawyers they knew lived in the neighborhood. A fairly large garden
+made the apartment particularly advantageous to a young couple; the
+children--if Heaven should send them any--could play in the open air;
+the courtyard was spacious, and there were good stables.
+
+The lawyer wished to live in the Chaussee d'Antin, where everything is
+fresh and bright, where the fashions may be seen while still new,
+where a well-dressed crowd throngs the Boulevards, and the distance is
+less to the theatres or places of amusement; but he was obliged to
+give way to the coaxing ways of a young wife, who asked this as his
+first favor; so, to please her, he settled in the Marais. Granville's
+duties required him to work hard--all the more, because they were new
+to him--so he devoted himself in the first place to furnishing his
+private study and arranging his books. He was soon established in a
+room crammed with papers, and left the decoration of the house to his
+wife. He was all the better pleased to plunge Angelique into the
+bustle of buying furniture and fittings, the source of so much
+pleasure and of so many associations to most young women, because he
+was rather ashamed of depriving her of his company more often than the
+usages of early married life require. As soon as his work was fairly
+under way, he gladly allowed his wife to tempt him out of his study to
+consider the effect of furniture or hangings, which he had before only
+seen piecemeal or unfinished.
+
+If the old adage is true that says a woman may be judged of from her
+front door, her rooms must express her mind with even greater
+fidelity. Madame de Granville had perhaps stamped the various things
+she had ordered with the seal of her own character; the young lawyer
+was certainly startled by the cold, arid solemnity that reigned in
+these rooms; he found nothing to charm his taste; everything was
+discordant, nothing gratified the eye. The rigid mannerism that
+prevailed in the sitting-room at Bayeux had invaded his home; the
+broad panels were hollowed in circles, and decorated with those
+arabesques of which the long, monotonous mouldings are in such bad
+taste. Anxious to find excuses for his wife, the young husband began
+again, looking first at the long and lofty ante-room through which the
+apartment was entered. The color of the panels, as ordered by his
+wife, was too heavy, and the very dark green velvet used to cover the
+benches added to the gloom of this entrance--not, to be sure, an
+important room, but giving a first impression--just as we measure a
+man's intelligence by his first address. An ante-room is a kind of
+preface which announces what is to follow, but promises nothing.
+
+The young husband wondered whether his wife could really have chosen
+the lamp of an antique pattern, which hung in the centre of this bare
+hall, the pavement of black and white marble, and the paper in
+imitation of blocks of stone, with green moss on them in places. A
+handsome, but not new, barometer hung on the middle of one of the
+walls, as if to accentuate the void. At the sight of it all, he looked
+round at his wife; he saw her so much pleased by the red braid binding
+to the cotton curtains, so satisfied with the barometer and the
+strictly decent statue that ornamented a large Gothic stove, that he
+had not the barbarous courage to overthrow such deep convictions.
+Instead of blaming his wife, Granville blamed himself, accusing
+himself of having failed in his duty of guiding the first steps in
+Paris of a girl brought up at Bayeux.
+
+From this specimen, what might not be expected of the other rooms?
+What was to be looked for from a woman who took fright at the bare
+legs of a Caryatid, and who would not look at a chandelier or a
+candle-stick if she saw on it the nude outlines of an Egyptian bust?
+At this date the school of David was at the height of its glory; all
+the art of France bore the stamp of his correct design and his love of
+antique types, which indeed gave his pictures the character of colored
+sculpture. But none of these devices of Imperial luxury found civic
+rights under Madame de Granville's roof. The spacious, square drawing-
+room remained as it had been left from the time of Louis XV., in white
+and tarnished gold, lavishly adorned by the architect with checkered
+lattice-work and the hideous garlands due to the uninventive designers
+of the time. Still, if harmony at least had prevailed, if the
+furniture of modern mahogany had but assumed the twisted forms of
+which Boucher's corrupt taste first set the fashion, Angelique's room
+would only have suggested the fantastic contrast of a young couple in
+the nineteenth century living as though they were in the eighteenth;
+but a number of details were in ridiculous discord. The consoles, the
+clocks, the candelabra, were decorated with the military trophies
+which the wars of the Empire commended to the affections of the
+Parisians; and the Greek helmets, the Roman crossed daggers, and the
+shields so dear to military enthusiasm that they were introduced on
+furniture of the most peaceful uses, had no fitness side by side with
+the delicate and profuse arabesques that delighted Madame de
+Pompadour.
+
+Bigotry tends to an indescribably tiresome kind of humility which does
+not exclude pride. Whether from modesty or by choice, Madame de
+Granville seemed to have a horror of light and cheerful colors;
+perhaps, too, she imagined that brown and purple beseemed the dignity
+of a magistrate. How could a girl accustomed to an austere life have
+admitted the luxurious divans that may suggest evil thoughts, the
+elegant and tempting boudoirs where naughtiness may be imagined?
+
+The poor husband was in despair. From the tone in which he approved,
+only seconding the praises she bestowed on herself, Angelique
+understood that nothing really pleased him; and she expressed so much
+regret at her want of success, that Granville, who was very much in
+love, regarded her disappointment as a proof of her affection instead
+of resentment for an offence to her self-conceit. After all, could he
+expect a girl just snatched from the humdrum of country notions, with
+no experience of the niceties and grace of Paris life, to know or do
+any better? Rather would he believe that his wife's choice had been
+overruled by the tradesmen than allow himself to own the truth. If he
+had been less in love, he would have understood that the dealers,
+always quick to discern their customers' ideas, had blessed Heaven for
+sending them a tasteless little bigot, who would take their old-
+fashioned goods off their hands. So he comforted the pretty
+provincial.
+
+"Happiness, dear Angelique, does not depend on a more or less elegant
+piece of furniture; it depends on the wife's sweetness, gentleness,
+and love."
+
+"Why, it is my duty to love you," said Angelique mildly, "and I can
+have no more delightful duty to carry out."
+
+Nature has implanted in the heart of woman so great a desire to
+please, so deep a craving for love, that, even in a youthful bigot,
+the ideas of salvation and a future existence must give way to the
+happiness of early married life. And, in fact, from the month of
+April, when they were married, till the beginning of winter, the
+husband and wife lived in perfect union. Love and hard work have the
+grace of making a man tolerably indifferent to external matters. Being
+obliged to spend half the day in court fighting for the gravest
+interests of men's lives or fortunes, Granville was less alive than
+another might have been to certain facts in his household.
+
+If, on a Friday, he found none but Lenten fare, and by chance asked
+for a dish of meat without getting it, his wife, forbidden by the
+Gospel to tell a lie, could still, by such subterfuges as are
+permissible in the interests of religion, cloak what was premeditated
+purpose under some pretext of her own carelessness or the scarcity in
+the market. She would often exculpate herself at the expense of the
+cook, and even go so far as to scold him. At that time young lawyers
+did not, as they do now, keep the fasts of the Church, the four
+rogation seasons, and the vigils of festivals; so Granville was not at
+first aware of the regular recurrence of these Lenten meals, which his
+wife took care should be made dainty by the addition of teal, moor-
+hen, and fish-pies, that their amphibious meat or high seasoning might
+cheat his palate. Thus the young man unconsciously lived in strict
+orthodoxy, and worked out his salvation without knowing it.
+
+On week-days he did not know whether his wife went to Mass or no. On
+Sundays, with very natural amiability, he accompanied her to church to
+make up to her, as it were, for sometimes giving up vespers in favor
+of his company; he could not at first fully enter into the strictness
+of his wife's religious views. The theatres being impossible in summer
+by reason of the heat, Granville had not even the opportunity of the
+great success of a piece to give rise to the serious question of play-
+going. And, in short, at the early stage of a union to which a man has
+been led by a young girl's beauty, he can hardly be exacting as to his
+amusements. Youth is greedy rather than dainty, and possession has a
+charm in itself. How should he be keen to note coldness, dignity, and
+reserve in the woman to whom he ascribes the excitement he himself
+feels, and lends the glow of the fire that burns within him? He must
+have attained a certain conjugal calm before he discovers that a bigot
+sits waiting for love with her arms folded.
+
+Granville, therefore, believed himself happy till a fatal event
+brought its influence to bear on his married life. In the month of
+November 1808 the Canon of Bayeux Cathedral who had been the keeper of
+Madame Bontems' conscience and her daughter's, came to Paris, spurred
+by the ambition to be at the head of a church in the capital--a
+position which he regarded perhaps as the stepping-stone to a
+bishopric. On resuming his former control of this wandering lamb, he
+was horrified to find her already so much deteriorated by the air of
+Paris, and strove to reclaim her to his chilly fold. Frightened by the
+exhortations of this priest, a man of about eight-and-thirty, who
+brought with him, into the circle of the enlightened and tolerant
+Paris clergy, the bitter provincial catholicism and the inflexible
+bigotry which fetter timid souls with endless exactions, Madame de
+Granville did penance and returned from her Jansenist errors.
+
+It would be tiresome to describe minutely all the circumstances which
+insensibly brought disaster on this household; it will be enough to
+relate the simple facts without giving them in strict order of time.
+
+The first misunderstanding between the young couple was, however, a
+serious one.
+
+When Granville took his wife into society she never declined solemn
+functions, such as dinners, concerts, or parties given by the Judges
+superior to her husband in the legal profession; but for a long time
+she constantly excused herself on the plea of a sick headache when
+they were invited to a ball. One day Granville, out of patience with
+these assumed indispositions, destroyed a note of invitation to a ball
+at the house of a Councillor of State, and gave his wife only a verbal
+invitation. Then, on the evening, her health being quite above
+suspicion, he took her to a magnificent entertainment.
+
+"My dear," said he, on their return home, seeing her wear an offensive
+air of depression, "your position as a wife, the rank you hold in
+society, and the fortune you enjoy, impose on you certain duties of
+which no divine law can relieve you. Are you not your husband's pride?
+You are required to go to balls when I go, and to appear in a becoming
+manner."
+
+"And what is there, my dear, so disastrous in my dress?"
+
+"It is your manner, my dear. When a young man comes up to speak to
+you, you look so serious that a spiteful person might believe you
+doubtful of your own virtue. You seem to fear lest a smile should undo
+you. You really look as if you were asking forgiveness of God for the
+sins that may be committed around you. The world, my dearest, is not a
+convent.--But, as you mentioned your dress, I may confess to you that
+it is no less a duty to conform to the customs and fashions of
+Society."
+
+"Do you wish that I should display my shape like those indecent women
+who wear gowns so low that impudent eyes can stare at their bare
+shoulders and their--"
+
+"There is a difference, my dear," said her husband, interrupting her,
+"between uncovering your whole bust and giving some grace to your
+dress. You wear three rows of net frills that cover your throat up to
+your chin. You look as if you had desired your dressmaker to destroy
+the graceful line of your shoulders and bosom with as much care as a
+coquette would devote to obtaining from hers a bodice that might
+emphasize her covered form. Your bust is wrapped in so many folds that
+every one was laughing at your affectation of prudery. You would be
+really grieved if I were to repeat the ill-natured remarks made on
+your appearance."
+
+"Those who admire such obscenity will not have to bear the burthen if
+we sin," said the lady tartly.
+
+"And you did not dance?" asked Granville.
+
+"I shall never dance," she replied.
+
+"If I tell you that you ought to dance!" said her husband sharply.
+"Yes, you ought to follow the fashions, to wear flowers in your hair,
+and diamonds. Remember, my dear, that rich people--and we are rich--
+are obliged to keep up luxury in the State. Is it not far better to
+encourage manufacturers than to distribute money in the form of alms
+through the medium of the clergy?"
+
+"You talk as a statesman!" said Angelique.
+
+"And you as a priest," he retorted.
+
+The discussion was bitter. Madame de Granville's answers, though
+spoken very sweetly and in a voice as clear as a church bell, showed
+an obstinacy that betrayed priestly influence. When she appealed to
+the rights secured to her by Granville's promise, she added that her
+director specially forbade her going to balls; then her husband
+pointed out to her that the priest was overstepping the regulations of
+the Church.
+
+This odious theological dispute was renewed with great violence and
+acerbity on both sides when Granville proposed to take his wife to the
+play. Finally, the lawyer, whose sole aim was to defeat the pernicious
+influence exerted over his wife by her old confessor, placed the
+question on such a footing that Madame de Granville, in a spirit of
+defiance, referred it by writing to the Court of Rome, asking in so
+many words whether a woman could wear low gowns and go to the play and
+to balls without compromising her salvation.
+
+The reply of the venerable Pope Pius VII. came at once, strongly
+condemning the wife's recalcitrancy and blaming the priest. This
+letter, a chapter on conjugal duties, might have been dictated by the
+spirit of Fenelon, whose grace and tenderness pervaded every line.
+
+"A wife is right to go wherever her husband may take her. Even if she
+sins by his command, she will not be ultimately held answerable."
+These two sentences of the Pope's homily only made Madame de Granville
+and her director accuse him of irreligion.
+
+But before this letter had arrived, Granville had discovered the
+strict observance of fast days that his wife forced upon him, and gave
+his servants orders to serve him with meat every day in the year.
+However much annoyed his wife might be by these commands, Granville,
+who cared not a straw for such indulgence or abstinence, persisted
+with manly determination.
+
+Is it not an offence to the weakest creature that can think at all to
+be compelled to do, by the will of another, anything that he would
+otherwise have done simply of his own accord? Of all forms of tyranny,
+the most odious is that which constantly robs the soul of the merit of
+its thoughts and deeds. It has to abdicate without having reigned. The
+word we are readiest to speak, the feelings we most love to express,
+die when we are commanded to utter them.
+
+Ere long the young man ceased to invite his friends, to give parties
+or dinners; the house might have been shrouded in crape. A house where
+the mistress is a bigot has an atmosphere of its own. The servants,
+who are, of course, under her immediate control, are chosen among a
+class who call themselves pious, and who have an unmistakable
+physiognomy. Just as the jolliest fellow alive, when he joins the
+/gendarmerie/, has the countenance of a gendarme, so those who give
+themselves over to the habit of lowering their eyes and preserving a
+sanctimonious mien clothes them in a livery of hypocrisy which rogues
+can affect to perfection.
+
+And besides, bigots constitute a sort of republic; they all know each
+other; the servants they recommend and hand on from one to another are
+a race apart, and preserved by them, as horse-breeders will admit no
+animal into their stables that has not a pedigree. The more the
+impious--as they are thought--come to understand a household of
+bigots, the more they perceive that everything is stamped with an
+indescribable squalor; they find there, at the same time, an
+appearance of avarice and mystery, as in a miser's home, and the dank
+scent of cold incense which gives a chill to the stale atmosphere of a
+chapel. This methodical meanness, this narrowness of thought, which is
+visible in every detail, can only be expressed by one word--Bigotry.
+In these sinister and pitiless houses Bigotry is written on the
+furniture, the prints, the pictures; speech is bigoted, the silence is
+bigoted, the faces are those of bigots. The transformation of men and
+things into bigotry is an inexplicable mystery, but the fact is
+evident. Everybody can see that bigots do not walk, do not sit, do not
+speak, as men of the world walk, sit, and speak. Under their roof
+every one is ill at ease, no one laughs, stiffness and formality
+infect everything, from the mistress' cap down to her pincushion; eyes
+are not honest, the folks are more like shadows, and the lady of the
+house seems perched on a throne of ice.
+
+One morning poor Granville discerned with grief and pain that all the
+symptoms of bigotry had invaded his home. There are in the world
+different spheres in which the same effects are seen though produced
+by dissimilar causes. Dulness hedges such miserable homes round with
+walls of brass, enclosing the horrors of the desert and the infinite
+void. The home is not so much a tomb as that far worse thing--a
+convent. In the center of this icy sphere the lawyer could study his
+wife dispassionately. He observed, not without keen regret, the
+narrow-mindedness that stood confessed in the very way that her hair
+grew, low on the forehead, which was slightly depressed; he discovered
+in the perfect regularity of her features a certain set rigidity which
+before long made him hate the assumed sweetness that had bewitched
+him. Intuition told him that one day of disaster those thin lips might
+say, "My dear, it is for your good!"
+
+Madame de Granville's complexion was acquiring a dull pallor and an
+austere expression that were a kill-joy to all who came near her. Was
+this change wrought by the ascetic habits of a pharisaism which is not
+piety any more than avarice is economy? It would be hard to say.
+Beauty without expression is perhaps an imposture. This imperturbable
+set smile that the young wife always wore when she looked at Granville
+seemed to be a sort of Jesuitical formula of happiness, by which she
+thought to satisfy all the requirements of married life. Her charity
+was an offence, her soulless beauty was monstrous to those who knew
+her; the mildness of her speech was an irritation: she acted, not on
+feeling, but on duty.
+
+There are faults which may yield in a wife to the stern lessons of
+experience, or to a husband's warnings; but nothing can counteract
+false ideas of religion. An eternity of happiness to be won, set in
+the scale against worldly enjoyment, triumphs over everything and
+makes every pang endurable. Is it not the apotheosis of egotism, of
+Self beyond the grave? Thus even the Pope was censured at the tribunal
+of the priest and the young devotee. To be always in the right is a
+feeling which absorbs every other in these tyrannous souls.
+
+For some time past a secret struggle had been going on between the
+ideas of the husband and wife, and the young man was soon weary of a
+battle to which there could be no end. What man, what temper, can
+endure the sight of a hypocritically affectionate face and categorical
+resistance to his slightest wishes? What is to be done with a wife who
+takes advantage of his passion to protect her coldness, who seems
+determined on being blandly inexorable, prepares herself ecstatically
+to play the martyr, and looks on her husband as a scourge from God, a
+means of flagellation that may spare her the fires of purgatory? What
+picture can give an idea of these women who make virtue hateful by
+defying the gentle precepts of that faith which Saint John epitomized
+in the words, "Love one another"?
+
+If there was a bonnet to be found in a milliner's shop that was
+condemned to remain in the window, or to be packed off to the
+colonies, Granville was certain to see it on his wife's head; if a
+material of bad color or hideous design were to be found, she would
+select it. These hapless bigots are heart-breaking in their notions of
+dress. Want of taste is a defect inseparable from false pietism.
+
+And so, in the home-life that needs the fullest sympathy, Granville
+had no true companionship. He went out alone to parties and the
+theatres. Nothing in his house appealed to him. A huge Crucifix that
+hung between his bed and Angelique's seemed figurative of his destiny.
+Does it not represent a murdered Divinity, a Man-God, done to death in
+all the prime of life and beauty? The ivory of that cross was less
+cold than Angelique crucifying her husband under the plea of virtue.
+This it was that lay at the root of their woes; the young wife saw
+nothing but duty where she should have given love. Here, one Ash
+Wednesday, rose the pale and spectral form of Fasting in Lent, of
+Total Abstinence, commanded in a severe tone--and Granville did not
+deem it advisable to write in his turn to the Pope and take the
+opinion of the Consistory on the proper way of observing Lent, the
+Ember days, and the eve of great festivals.
+
+His misfortune was too great! He could not even complain, for what
+could he say? He had a pretty young wife attached to her duties,
+virtuous--nay, a model of all the virtues. She had a child every year,
+nursed them herself, and brought them up in the highest principles.
+Being charitable, Angelique was promoted to rank as an angel. The old
+women who constituted the circle in which she moved--for at that time
+it was not yet "the thing" for young women to be religious as a matter
+of fashion--all admired Madame de Granville's piety, and regarded her,
+not indeed as a virgin, but as a martyr. They blamed not the wife's
+scruples, but the barbarous philoprogenitiveness of the husband.
+
+Granville, by insensible degrees, overdone with work, bereft of
+conjugal consolations, and weary of a world in which he wandered
+alone, by the time he was two-and-thirty had sunk into the Slough of
+Despond. He hated life. Having too lofty a notion of the
+responsibilities imposed on him by his position to set the example of
+a dissipated life, he tried to deaden feeling by hard study, and began
+a great book on Law.
+
+But he was not allowed to enjoy the monastic peace he had hoped for.
+When the celestial Angelique saw him desert worldly society to work at
+home with such regularity, she tried to convert him. It had been a
+real sorrow to her to know that her husband's opinions were not
+strictly Christian; and she sometimes wept as she reflected that if
+her husband should die it would be in a state of final impenitence, so
+that she could not hope to snatch him from the eternal fires of Hell.
+Thus Granville was a mark for the mean ideas, the vacuous arguments,
+the narrow views by which his wife--fancying she had achieved the
+first victory--tried to gain a second by bringing him back within the
+pale of the Church.
+
+This was the last straw. What can be more intolerable than the blind
+struggle in which the obstinacy of a bigot tries to meet the acumen of
+a lawyer? What more terrible to endure than the acrimonious pin-pricks
+to which a passionate soul prefers a dagger-thrust? Granville
+neglected his home. Everything there was unendurable. His children,
+broken by their mother's frigid despotism, dared not go with him to
+the play; indeed, Granville could never give them any pleasure without
+bringing down punishment from their terrible mother. His loving nature
+was weaned to indifference, to a selfishness worse than death. His
+boys, indeed, he saved from this hell by sending them to school at an
+early age, and insisting on his right to train them. He rarely
+interfered between his wife and her daughters; but he was resolved
+that they should marry as soon as they were old enough.
+
+Even if he had wished to take violent measures, he could have found no
+justification; his wife, backed by a formidable army of dowagers,
+would have had him condemned by the whole world. Thus Granville had no
+choice but to live in complete isolation; but, crushed under the
+tyranny of misery, he could not himself bear to see how altered he was
+by grief and toil. And he dreaded any connection or intimacy with
+women of the world, having no hope of finding any consolation.
+
+The improving history of this melancholy household gave rise to no
+events worthy of record during the fifteen years between 1806 and
+1825. Madame de Granville was exactly the same after losing her
+husband's affection as she had been during the time when she called
+herself happy. She paid for Masses, beseeching God and the Saints to
+enlighten her as to what the faults were which displeased her husband,
+and to show her the way to restore the erring sheep; but the more
+fervent her prayers, the less was Granville to be seen at home.
+
+For about five years now, having achieved a high position as a judge,
+Granville had occupied the /entresol/ of the house to avoid living
+with the Comtesse de Granville. Every morning a little scene took
+place, which, if evil tongues are to be believed, is repeated in many
+households as the result of incompatibility of temper, of moral or
+physical malady, or of antagonisms leading to such disaster as is
+recorded in this history. At about eight in the morning a housekeeper,
+bearing no small resemblance to a nun, rang at the Comte de
+Granville's door. Admitted to the room next to the Judge's study, she
+always repeated the same message to the footman, and always in the
+same tone:
+
+"Madame would be glad to know whether Monsieur le Comte has had a good
+night, and if she is to have the pleasure of his company at
+breakfast."
+
+"Monsieur presents his compliments to Madame la Comtesse," the valet
+would say, after speaking with his master, "and begs her to hold him
+excused; important business compels him to be in court this morning."
+
+A minute later the woman reappeared and asked on madame's behalf
+whether she would have the pleasure of seeing Monsieur le Comte before
+he went out.
+
+"He is gone," was always the rely, though often his carriage was still
+waiting.
+
+This little dialogue by proxy became a daily ceremonial. Granville's
+servant, a favorite with his master, and the cause of more than one
+quarrel over his irreligious and dissipated conduct, would even go
+into his master's room, as a matter of form, when the Count was not
+there, and come back with the same formula in reply.
+
+The aggrieved wife was always on the watch for her husband's return,
+and standing on the steps so as to meet him like an embodiment of
+remorse. The petty aggressiveness which lies at the root of the
+monastic temper was the foundation of Madame de Granville's; she was
+now five-and-thirty, and looked forty. When the count was compelled by
+decency to speak to his wife or to dine at home, she was only too well
+pleased to inflict her company upon him, with her acid-sweet remarks
+and the intolerable dulness of her narrow-minded circle, and she tried
+to put him in the wrong before the servants and her charitable
+friends.
+
+When, at this time, the post of President in a provincial court was
+offered to the Comte de Granville, who was in high favor, he begged to
+be allowed to remain in Paris. This refusal, of which the Keeper of
+the Seals alone knew the reasons, gave rise to extraordinary
+conjectures on the part of the Countess' intimate friends and of her
+director. Granville, a rich man with a hundred thousand francs a year,
+belonged to one of the first families of Normandy. His appointment to
+be Presiding Judge would have been the stepping-stone to a peer's
+seat; whence this strange lack of ambition? Why had he given up his
+great book on Law? What was the meaning of the dissipation which for
+nearly six years had made him a stranger to his home, his family, his
+study, to all he ought to hold dear? The Countess' confessor, who
+based his hopes of a bishopric quite as much on the families he
+governed as on the services he rendered to an association of which he
+was an ardent propagator, was much disappointed by Granville's
+refusal, and tried to insinuate calumnious explanations: "If Monsieur
+le Comte had such an objection to provincial life, it was perhaps
+because he dreaded finding himself under the necessity of leading a
+regular life, compelled to set an example of moral conduct, and to
+live with the Countess, from whom nothing could have alienated him but
+some illicit connection; for how could a woman so pure as Madame de
+Granville ever tolerate the disorderly life into which her husband had
+drifted?" The sanctimonious woman accepted as facts these hints, which
+unluckily were not merely hypothetical, and Madame de Granville was
+stricken as by a thunderbolt.
+
+Angelique, knowing nothing of the world, of love and its follies, was
+so far from conceiving of any conditions of married life unlike those
+that had alienated her husband as possible, that she believed him to
+be incapable of the errors which are crimes in the eyes of any wife.
+When the Count ceased to demand anything of her, she imagined that the
+tranquillity he now seemed to enjoy was in the course of nature; and,
+as she had really given to him all the love which her heart was
+capable of feeling for a man, while the priest's conjectures were the
+utter destruction of the illusions she had hitherto cherished, she
+defended her husband; at the same time, she could not eradicate the
+suspicion that had been so ingeniously sown in her soul.
+
+These alarms wrought such havoc in her feeble brain that they made her
+ill; she was worn by low fever. These incidents took place during Lent
+1822; she would not pretermit her austerities, and fell into a decline
+that put her life in danger. Granville's indifference was added
+torture; his care and attention were such as a nephew feels himself
+bound to give to some old uncle.
+
+Though the Countess had given up her persistent nagging and
+remonstrances, and tried to receive her husband with affectionate
+words, the sharpness of the bigot showed through, and one speech would
+often undo the work of a week.
+
+Towards the end of May, the warm breath of spring, and more nourishing
+diet than her Lenten fare, restored Madame de Granville to a little
+strength. One morning, on coming home from Mass, she sat down on a
+stone bench in the little garden, where the sun's kisses reminded her
+of the early days of her married life, and she looked back across the
+years to see wherein she might have failed in her duty as a wife and
+mother. She was broken in upon by the Abbe Fontanon in an almost
+indescribable state of excitement.
+
+"Has any misfortune befallen you, Father?" she asked with filial
+solicitude.
+
+"Ah! I only wish," cried the Normandy priest, "that all the woes
+inflicted on you by the hand of God were dealt out to me; but, my
+admirable friend, there are trials to which you can but bow."
+
+"Can any worse punishments await me than those with which Providence
+crushes me by making my husband the instrument of His wrath?"
+
+"You must prepare yourself, daughter, to yet worse mischief than we
+and your pious friends had ever conceived of."
+
+"Then I may thank God," said the Countess, "for vouchsafing to use you
+as the messenger of His will, and thus, as ever, setting the treasures
+of mercy by the side of the scourges of His wrath, just as in bygone
+days He showed a spring to Hagar when He had driven her into the
+desert."
+
+"He measures your sufferings by the strength of your resignation and
+the weight of your sins."
+
+"Speak; I am ready to hear!" As she said it she cast her eyes up to
+heaven. "Speak, Monsieur Fontanon."
+
+"For seven years Monsieur Granville has lived in sin with a concubine,
+by whom he has two children; and on this adulterous connection he has
+spent more than five hundred thousand francs, which ought to have been
+the property of his legitimate family."
+
+"I must see it to believe it!" cried the Countess.
+
+"Far be it from you!" exclaimed the Abbe. "You must forgive, my
+daughter, and wait in patience and prayer till God enlightens your
+husband; unless, indeed, you choose to adopt against him the means
+offered you by human laws."
+
+The long conversation that ensued between the priest and his penitent
+resulted in an extraordinary change in the Countess; she abruptly
+dismissed him, called her servants who were alarmed at her flushed
+face and crazy energy. She ordered her carriage--countermanded it--
+changed her mind twenty times in the hour; but at last, at about three
+o'clock, as if she had come to some great determination, she went out,
+leaving the whole household in amazement at such a sudden
+transformation.
+
+"Is the Count coming home to dinner?" she asked of his servant, to
+whom she would never speak.
+
+"No, madame."
+
+"Did you go with him to the Courts this morning?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"And to-day is Monday?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"Then do the Courts sit on Mondays nowadays?"
+
+"Devil take you!" cried the man, as his mistress drove off after
+saying to the coachman:
+
+"Rue Taitbout."
+
+
+
+Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille was weeping: Roger, sitting by her side,
+held one of her hands between his own. He was silent, looking by turns
+at little Charles--who, not understanding his mother's grief, stood
+speechless at the sight of her tears--at the cot where Eugenie lay
+sleeping, and Caroline's face, on which grief had the effect of rain
+falling across the beams of cheerful sunshine.
+
+"Yes, my darling," said Roger, after a long silence, "that is the
+great secret: I am married. But some day I hope we may form but one
+family. My wife has been given over ever since last March. I do not
+wish her dead; still, if it should please God to take her to Himself,
+I believe she will be happier in Paradise than in a world to whose
+griefs and pleasures she is equally indifferent."
+
+"How I hate that woman! How could she bear to make you unhappy? And
+yet it is to that unhappiness that I owe my happiness!"
+
+Her tears suddenly ceased.
+
+"Caroline, let us hope," cried Roger. "Do not be frightened by
+anything that priest may have said to you. Though my wife's confessor
+is a man to be feared for his power in the congregation, if he should
+try to blight our happiness I would find means--"
+
+"What could you do?"
+
+"We would go to Italy: I would fly--"
+
+A shriek that rang out from the adjoining room made Roger start and
+Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille quake; but she rushed into the drawing-
+room, and there found Madame de Granville in a dead faint. When the
+Countess recovered her senses, she sighed deeply on finding herself
+supported by the Count and her rival, whom she instinctively pushed
+away with a gesture of contempt. Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille rose to
+withdraw.
+
+"You are at home, madame," said Granville, taking Caroline by the arm.
+"Stay."
+
+The Judge took up his wife in his arms, carried her to the carriage,
+and got into it with her.
+
+"Who is it that has brought you to the point of wishing me dead, of
+resolving to fly?" asked the Countess, looking at her husband with
+grief mingled with indignation. "Was I not young? you thought me
+pretty--what fault have you to find with me? Have I been false to you?
+Have I not been a virtuous and well-conducted wife? My heart has
+cherished no image but yours, my ears have listened to no other voice.
+What duty have I failed in? What have I ever denied you?"
+
+"Happiness, madame," said the Count severely. "You know, madame, that
+there are two ways of serving God. Some Christians imagine that by
+going to church at fixed hours to say a /Paternoster/, by attending
+Mass regularly and avoiding sin, they may win heaven--but they,
+madame, will go to hell; they have not loved God for himself, they
+have not worshiped Him as He chooses to be worshiped, they have made
+no sacrifice. Though mild in seeming, they are hard on their
+neighbors; they see the law, the letter, not the spirit.--This is how
+you have treated me, your earthly husband; you have sacrificed my
+happiness to your salvation; you were always absorbed in prayer when I
+came to you in gladness of heart; you wept when you should have
+cheered my toil; you have never tried to satisfy any demands I have
+made on you."
+
+"And if they were wicked," cried the Countess hotly, "was I to lose my
+soul to please you?"
+
+"It is a sacrifice which another, a more loving woman, has dared to
+make," said Granville coldly.
+
+"Dear God!" she cried, bursting into tears, "Thou hearest! Has he been
+worthy of the prayers and penance I have lived in, wearing myself out
+to atone for his sins and my own?--Of what avail is virtue?"
+
+"To win Heaven, my dear. A woman cannot be at the same time the wife
+of a man and the spouse of Christ. That would be bigamy; she must
+choose between a husband and a nunnery. For the sake of future
+advantage you have stripped your soul of all the love, all the
+devotion, which God commands that you should have for me, you have
+cherished no feeling but hatred--"
+
+"Have I not loved you?" she put in.
+
+"No, madame."
+
+"Then what is love?" the Countess involuntarily inquired.
+
+"Love, my dear," replied Granville, with a sort of ironical surprise,
+"you are incapable of understanding it. The cold sky of Normandy is
+not that of Spain. This difference of climate is no doubt the secret
+of our disaster.--To yield to our caprices, to guess them, to find
+pleasure in pain, to sacrifice the world's opinion, your pride, your
+religion even, and still regard these offerings as mere grains of
+incense burnt in honor of the idol--that is love--"
+
+"The love of ballet-girls!" cried the Countess in horror. "Such flames
+cannot last, and must soon leave nothing but ashes and cinders, regret
+or despair. A wife ought, in my opinion, to bring you true friendship,
+equable warmth--"
+
+"You speak of warmth as negroes speak of ice," retorted the Count,
+with a sardonic smile. "Consider that the humblest daisy has more
+charms than the proudest and most gorgeous of the red hawthorns that
+attract us in spring by their strong scent and brilliant color.--At
+the same time," he went on, "I will do you justice. You have kept so
+precisely in the straight path of imaginary duty prescribed by law,
+that only to make you understand wherein you have failed towards me, I
+should be obliged to enter into details which would offend your
+dignity, and instruct you in matters which would seem to you to
+undermine all morality."
+
+"And you dare to speak of morality when you have but just left the
+house where you have dissipated your children's fortune in
+debaucheries?" cried the Countess, maddened by her husband's
+reticence.
+
+"There, madame, I must correct you," said the Count, coolly
+interrupting his wife. "Though Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille is rich,
+it is at nobody's expense. My uncle was master of his fortune, and had
+several heirs. In his lifetime, and out of pure friendship, regarding
+her as his niece, he gave her the little estate of Bellefeuille. As
+for anything else, I owe it to his liberality--"
+
+"Such conduct is only worthy of a Jacobin!" said the sanctimonious
+Angelique.
+
+"Madame, you are forgetting that your own father was one of the
+Jacobins whom you scorn so uncharitably," said the Count severely.
+"Citizen Bontems was signing death-warrants at a time when my uncle
+was doing France good service."
+
+Madame de Granville was silenced. But after a short pause, the
+remembrance of what she had just seen reawakened in her soul the
+jealousy which nothing can kill in a woman's heart, and she murmured,
+as if to herself--"How can a woman thus destroy her own soul and that
+of others?"
+
+"Bless me, madame," replied the Count, tired of this dialogue, "you
+yourself may some day have to answer that question." The Countess was
+scared. "You perhaps will be held excused by the merciful Judge, who
+will weigh our sins," he went on, "in consideration of the conviction
+with which you have worked out my misery. I do not hate you--I hate
+those who have perverted your heart and your reason. You have prayed
+for me, just as Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille has given me her heart
+and crowned my life with love. You should have been my mistress and
+the prayerful saint by turns.--Do me the justice to confess that I am
+no reprobate, no debauchee. My life was cleanly. Alas! after seven
+years of wretchedness, the craving for happiness led me by an
+imperceptible descent to love another woman and make a second home.
+And do not imagine that I am singular; there are in this city
+thousands of husbands, all led by various causes to live this twofold
+life."
+
+"Great God!" cried the Countess. "How heavy is the cross Thou hast
+laid on me to bear! If the husband Thou hast given me here below in
+Thy wrath can only be made happy through my death, take me to
+Thyself!"
+
+"If you had always breathed such admirable sentiments and such
+devotion, we should be happy yet," said the Count coldly.
+
+"Indeed," cried Angelique, melting into a flood of tears, "forgive me
+if I have done any wrong. Yes, monsieur, I am ready to obey you in all
+things, feeling sure that you will desire nothing but what is just and
+natural; henceforth I will be all you can wish your wife to be."
+
+"If your purpose, madame, is to compel me to say that I no longer love
+you, I shall find the cruel courage to tell you so. Can I command my
+heart? Can I wipe out in an instant the traces of fifteen years of
+suffering?--I have ceased to love.--These words contain a mystery as
+deep as lies the words /I love/. Esteem, respect, friendship may be
+won, lost, regained; but as to love--I might school myself for a
+thousand years, and it would not blossom again, especially for a woman
+too old to respond to it."
+
+"I hope, Monsieur le Comte, I sincerely hope, that such words may not
+be spoken to you some day by the woman you love, and in such a tone
+and accent--"
+
+"Will you put on a dress /a la Grecque/ this evening, and come to the
+Opera?"
+
+The shudder with which the Countess received the suggestion was a mute
+reply.
+
+
+
+Early in December 1833, a man, whose perfectly white hair and worn
+features seemed to show that he was aged by grief rather than by
+years, was walking at midnight along the Rue Gaillon. Having reached a
+house of modest appearance, and only two stories high, he paused to
+look up at one of the attic windows that pierced the roof at regular
+intervals. A dim light scarcely showed through the humble panes, some
+of which had been repaired with paper. The man below was watching the
+wavering glimmer with the vague curiosity of a Paris idler, when a
+young man came out of the house. As the light of the street lamp fell
+full on the face of the first comer, it will not seem surprising that,
+in spite of the darkness, this young man went towards the passer-by,
+though with the hesitancy that is usual when we have any fear of
+making a mistake in recognizing an acquaintance.
+
+"What, is it you," cried he, "Monsieur le President? Alone at this
+hour, and so far from the Rue Saint-Lazare. Allow me to have the honor
+of giving you my arm.--The pavement is so greasy this morning, that if
+we do not hold each other up," he added, to soothe the elder man's
+susceptibilities, "we shall find it hard to escape a tumble."
+
+"But, my dear sir, I am no more than fifty-five, unfortunately for
+me," replied the Comte de Granville. "A physician of your celebrity
+must know that at that age a man is still hale and strong."
+
+"Then you are in waiting on a lady, I suppose," replied Horace
+Bianchon. "You are not, I imagine, in the habit of going about Paris
+on foot. When a man keeps such fine horses----"
+
+"Still, when I am not visiting in the evening, I commonly return from
+the Courts or the club on foot," replied the Count.
+
+"And with large sums of money about you, perhaps!" cried the doctor.
+"It is a positive invitation to the assassin's knife."
+
+"I am not afraid of that," said Granville, with melancholy
+indifference.
+
+"But, at least, do not stand about," said the doctor, leading the
+Count towards the boulevard. "A little more and I shall believe that
+you are bent of robbing me of your last illness, and dying by some
+other hand than mine."
+
+"You caught me playing the spy," said the Count. "Whether on foot or
+in a carriage, and at whatever hour of the night I may come by, I have
+for some time past observed at a window on the third floor of your
+house the shadow of a person who seems to work with heroic constancy."
+
+The Count paused as if he felt some sudden pain. "And I take as great
+an interest in that garret," he went on, "as a citizen of Paris must
+feel in the finishing of the Palais Royal."
+
+"Well," said Horace Bianchon eagerly, "I can tell you--"
+
+"Tell me nothing," replied Granville, cutting the doctor short. "I
+would not give a centime to know whether the shadow that moves across
+that shabby blind is that of a man or a woman, nor whether the
+inhabitant of that attic is happy or miserable. Though I was surprised
+to see no one at work there this evening, and though I stopped to
+look, it was solely for the pleasure of indulging in conjectures as
+numerous and as idiotic as those of idlers who see a building left
+half finished. For nine years, my young--" the Count hesitated to use
+a word; then he waved his hand, exclaiming--"No, I will not say friend
+--I hate everything that savors of sentiment.--Well, for nine years
+past I have ceased to wonder that old men amuse themselves with
+growing flowers and planting trees; the events of life have taught
+them disbelief in all human affection; and I grew old within a few
+days. I will no longer attach myself to any creature but to
+unreasoning animals, or plants, or superficial things. I think more of
+Taglioni's grace than of all human feeling. I abhor life and the world
+in which I live alone. Nothing, nothing," he went on, in a tone that
+startled the younger man, "no, nothing can move or interest me."
+
+"But you have children?"
+
+"My children!" he repeated bitterly. "Yes--well, is not my eldest
+daughter the Comtesse de Vandenesse? The other will, through her
+sister's connections, make some good match. As to my sons, have they
+not succeeded? The Viscount was public prosecutor at Limoges, and is
+now President of the Court at Orleans; the younger is public
+prosecutor in Paris.--My children have their own cares, their own
+anxieties and business to attend to. If of all those hearts one had
+been devoted to me, if one had tried by entire affection to fill up
+the void I have here," and he struck his breast, "well, that one would
+have failed in life, have sacrificed it to me. And why should he? Why?
+To bring sunshine into my few remaining years--and would he have
+succeeded? Might I not have accepted such generosity as a debt? But,
+doctor," and the Count smiled with deep irony, "it is not for nothing
+that we teach them arithmetic and how to count. At this moment perhaps
+they are waiting for my money."
+
+"O Monsieur le Comte, how could such an idea enter your head--you who
+are kind, friendly, and humane! Indeed, if I were not myself a living
+proof of the benevolence you exercise so liberally and so nobly--"
+
+"To please myself," replied the Count. "I pay for a sensation, as I
+would to-morrow pay a pile of gold to recover the most childish
+illusion that would but make my heart glow.--I help my fellow-
+creatures for my own sake, just as I gamble; and I look for gratitude
+from none. I should see you die without blinking; and I beg of you to
+feel the same with regard to me. I tell you, young man, the events of
+life have swept over my heart like the lavas of Vesuvius over
+Herculaneum. The town is there--dead."
+
+"Those who have brought a soul as warm and as living as yours was to
+such a pitch of indifference are indeed guilty!"
+
+"Say no more," said the Count, with a shudder of aversion.
+
+"You have a malady which you ought to allow me to treat," said
+Bianchon in a tone of deep emotion.
+
+"What, do you know of a cure for death?" cried the Count irritably.
+
+"I undertake, Monsieur le Comte, to revive the heart you believe to be
+frozen."
+
+"Are you a match for Talma, then?" asked the Count satirically.
+
+"No, Monsieur le Comte. But Nature is as far above Talma as Talma is
+superior to me.--Listen: the garret you are interested in is inhabited
+by a woman of about thirty, and in her love is carried to fanaticism.
+The object of her adoration is a young man of pleasing appearance but
+endowed by some malignant fairy with every conceivable vice. This
+fellow is a gambler, and it is hard to say which he is most addicted
+to--wine or women; he has, to my knowledge, committed acts deserving
+punishment by law. Well, and to him this unhappy woman sacrificed a
+life of ease, a man who worshiped her, and the father of her children.
+--But what is wrong, Monsieur le Comte?"
+
+"Nothing. Go on."
+
+"She has allowed him to squander a perfect fortune; she would, I
+believe, give him the world if she had it; she works night and day;
+and many a time she has, without a murmur, seen the wretch she adores
+rob her even of the money saved to buy the clothes the children need,
+and their food for the morrow. Only three days ago she sold her hair,
+the finest hair I ever saw; he came in, she could not hide the gold
+piece quickly enough, and he asked her for it. For a smile, for a
+kiss, she gave up the price of a fortnight's life and peace. Is it not
+dreadful, and yet sublime?--But work is wearing her cheeks hollow. Her
+children's crying has broken her heart; she is ill, and at this moment
+on her wretched bed. This evening they had nothing to eat; the
+children have not strength to cry, they were silent when I went up."
+
+Horace Bianchon stood still. Just then the Comte de Granville, in
+spite of himself, as it were, had put his hand into his waistcoat
+pocket.
+
+"I can guess, my young friend, how it is that she is yet alive if you
+attend her," said the elder man.
+
+"O poor soul!" cried the doctor, "who could refuse to help her? I only
+wish I were richer, for I hope to cure her of her passion."
+
+"But how can you expect me to pity a form of misery of which the joys
+to me would seem cheaply purchased with my whole fortune!" exclaimed
+the Count, taking his hand out of his pocket empty of the notes which
+Bianchon had supposed his patron to be feeling for. "That woman feels,
+she is alive! Would not Louis XV. have given his kingdom to rise from
+the grave and have three days of youth and life! And is not that the
+history of thousands of dead men, thousands of sick men, thousands of
+old men?"
+
+"Poor Caroline!" cried Bianchon.
+
+As he heard the name the Count shuddered, and grasped the doctor's arm
+with the grip of an iron vise, as it seemed to Bianchon.
+
+"Her name is Caroline Crochard?" asked the President, in a voice that
+was evidently broken.
+
+"Then you know her?" said the doctor, astonished.
+
+"And the wretch's name is Solvet.--Ay, you have kept your word!"
+exclaimed Granville; "you have roused my heart to the most terrible
+pain it can suffer till it is dust. That emotion, too, is a gift from
+hell, and I always know how to pay those debts."
+
+By this time the Count and the doctor had reached the corner of the
+Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin. One of those night-birds who wonder round
+with a basket on their back and crook in hand, and were, during the
+Revolution, facetiously called the Committee of Research, was standing
+by the curbstone where the two men now stopped. This scavenger had a
+shriveled face worthy of those immortalized by Charlet in his
+caricatures of the sweepers of Paris.
+
+"Do you ever pick up a thousand-franc note?"
+
+"Now and then, master."
+
+"And you restore them?"
+
+"It depends on the reward offered."
+
+"You're the man for me," cried the Count, giving the man a thousand-
+franc note. "Take this, but, remember, I give it to you on condition
+of your spending it at the wineshop, of your getting drunk, fighting,
+beating your wife, blacking your friends' eyes. That will give work to
+the watch, the surgeon, the druggist--perhaps to the police, the
+public prosecutor, the judge, and the prison warders. Do not try to do
+anything else, or the devil will be revenged on you sooner or later."
+
+A draughtsman would need at once the pencil of Charlet and of Callot,
+the brush of Teniers and of Rembrandt, to give a true notion of this
+night-scene.
+
+"Now I have squared accounts with hell, and had some pleasure for my
+money," said the Count in a deep voice, pointing out the indescribable
+physiognomy of the gaping scavenger to the doctor, who stood
+stupefied. "As for Caroline Crochard!--she may die of hunger and
+thirst, hearing the heartrending shrieks of her starving children, and
+convinced of the baseness of the man she loves. I will not give a sou
+to rescue her; and because you have helped her, I will see you no
+more----"
+
+The Count left Bianchon standing like a statue, and walked as briskly
+as a young man to the Rue Saint-Lazare, soon reaching the little house
+where he resided, and where, to his surprise, he found a carriage
+waiting at the door.
+
+"Monsieur, your son, the attorney-general, came about an hour since,"
+said the man-servant, "and is waiting for you in your bedroom."
+
+Granville signed to the man to leave him.
+
+"What motive can be strong enough to require you to infringe the order
+I have given my children never to come to me unless I send for them?"
+asked the Count of his son as he went into the room.
+
+"Father," replied the younger man in a tremulous voice, and with great
+respect, "I venture to hope that you will forgive me when you have
+heard me."
+
+"Your reply is proper," said the Count. "Sit down," and he pointed to
+a chair, "But whether I walk up and down, or take a seat, speak
+without heeding me."
+
+"Father," the son went on, "this afternoon, at four o'clock, a very
+young man who was arrested in the house of a friend of mine, whom he
+had robbed to a considerable extent, appealed to you.--He says he is
+your son."
+
+"His name?" asked the Count hoarsely.
+
+"Charles Crochard."
+
+"That will do," said the father, with an imperious wave of the hand.
+
+Granville paced the room in solemn silence, and his son took care not
+to break it.
+
+"My son," he began, and the words were pronounced in a voice so mild
+and fatherly, that the young lawyer started, "Charles Crochard spoke
+the truth.--I am glad you came to me to-night, my good Eugene," he
+added. "Here is a considerable sum of money"--and he gave him a bundle
+of banknotes--"you can make any use of them you think proper in this
+matter. I trust you implicitly, and approve beforehand whatever
+arrangements you may make, either in the present or for the future.--
+Eugene my dear son, kiss me. We part perhaps for the last time. I
+shall to-morrow crave my dismissal from the King, and I am going to
+Italy.
+
+"Though a father owes no account of his life to his children, he is
+bound to bequeath to them the experience Fate sells him so dearly--is
+it not a part of their inheritance?--When you marry," the count went
+on, with a little involuntary shudder, "do not undertake it lightly;
+that act is the most important of all which society requires of us.
+Remember to study at your leisure the character of the woman who is to
+be your partner; but consult me too, I will judge of her myself. A
+lack of union between husband and wife, from whatever cause, leads to
+terrible misfortune; sooner or later we are always punished for
+contravening the social law.--But I will write to you on this subject
+from Florence. A father who has the honor of presiding over a supreme
+court of justice must not have to blush in the presence of his son.
+Good-bye."
+
+
+
+PARIS, February 1830-January 1842.
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Beaumesnil, Mademoiselle
+  The Middle Classes
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
+Bianchon, Horace
+  Father Goriot
+  The Atheist's Mass
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  The Government Clerks
+  Pierrette
+  A Study of Woman
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  Honorine
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  The Magic Skin
+  A Prince of Bohemia
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Muse of the Department
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+  The Middle Classes
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Country Parson
+In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
+  Another Study of Woman
+  La Grande Breteche
+
+Crochard, Charles
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Fontanon, Abbe
+  The Government Clerks
+  Honorine
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Granville, Vicomte de (later Comte)
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  Honorine
+  Farewell (Adieu)
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Granville, Comtesse Angelique de
+  The Thirteen
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+Granville, Vicomte de
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Country Parson
+
+Granville, Baron Eugene de
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
+Molineux, Jean-Baptiste
+  The Purse
+  Cesar Birotteau
+
+Regnier, Claude-Antoine
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+
+Roguin, Madame
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+  Pierrette
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+Vandenesse, Comtesse Felix de
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Muse of the Department
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Second Home by Honore de Balzac
+
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