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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Colonel Chabert, 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.org
+
+
+Title: Colonel Chabert
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell
+
+Release Date: November, 1999  [Etext #1954]
+Posting Date: March 6, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLONEL CHABERT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+COLONEL CHABERT
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+       To Madame la Comtesse Ida de Bocarme nee du Chasteler.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+COLONEL CHABERT
+
+
+"HULLO! There is that old Box-coat again!"
+
+This exclamation was made by a lawyer's clerk of the class called in
+French offices a gutter-jumper--a messenger in fact--who at this moment
+was eating a piece of dry bread with a hearty appetite. He pulled off
+a morsel of crumb to make into a bullet, and fired it gleefully through
+the open pane of the window against which he was leaning. The pellet,
+well aimed, rebounded almost as high as the window, after hitting the
+hat of a stranger who was crossing the courtyard of a house in the Rue
+Vivienne, where dwelt Maitre Derville, attorney-at-law.
+
+"Come, Simonnin, don't play tricks on people, or I will turn you out of
+doors. However poor a client may be, he is still a man, hang it all!"
+said the head clerk, pausing in the addition of a bill of costs.
+
+The lawyer's messenger is commonly, as was Simonnin, a lad of thirteen
+or fourteen, who, in every office, is under the special jurisdiction of
+the managing clerk, whose errands and _billets-doux_ keep him employed
+on his way to carry writs to the bailiffs and petitions to the Courts.
+He is akin to the street boy in his habits, and to the pettifogger
+by fate. The boy is almost always ruthless, unbroken, unmanageable, a
+ribald rhymester, impudent, greedy, and idle. And yet, almost all these
+clerklings have an old mother lodging on some fifth floor with whom they
+share their pittance of thirty or forty francs a month.
+
+"If he is a man, why do you call him old Box-coat?" asked Simonnin, with
+the air of a schoolboy who has caught out his master.
+
+And he went on eating his bread and cheese, leaning his shoulder against
+the window jamb; for he rested standing like a cab-horse, one of his
+legs raised and propped against the other, on the toe of his shoe.
+
+"What trick can we play that cove?" said the third clerk, whose name was
+Godeschal, in a low voice, pausing in the middle of a discourse he
+was extemporizing in an appeal engrossed by the fourth clerk, of which
+copies were being made by two neophytes from the provinces.
+
+Then he went on improvising:
+
+"_But, in his noble and beneficent wisdom, his Majesty, Louis the
+Eighteenth_--(write it at full length, heh! Desroches the learned--you,
+as you engross it!)--_when he resumed the reins of Government,
+understood_--(what did that old nincompoop ever understand?)--_the high
+mission to which he had been called by Divine Providence!_--(a note of
+admiration and six stops. They are pious enough at the Courts to let us
+put six)--_and his first thought, as is proved by the date of the order
+hereinafter designated, was to repair the misfortunes caused by the
+terrible and sad disasters of the revolutionary times, by restoring to
+his numerous and faithful adherents_--('numerous' is flattering, and
+ought to please the Bench)--_all their unsold estates, whether within
+our realm, or in conquered or acquired territory, or in the endowments
+of public institutions, for we are, and proclaim ourselves competent to
+declare, that this is the spirit and meaning of the famous, truly loyal
+order given in_--Stop," said Godeschal to the three copying clerks,
+"that rascally sentence brings me to the end of my page.--Well," he went
+on, wetting the back fold of the sheet with his tongue, so as to be able
+to fold back the page of thick stamped paper, "well, if you want to play
+him a trick, tell him that the master can only see his clients between
+two and three in the morning; we shall see if he comes, the old
+ruffian!"
+
+And Godeschal took up the sentence he was dictating--"_given in_--Are
+you ready?"
+
+"Yes," cried the three writers.
+
+It all went all together, the appeal, the gossip, and the conspiracy.
+
+"_Given in_--Here, Daddy Boucard, what is the date of the order? We
+must dot our _i_'s and cross our _t_'s, by Jingo! it helps to fill the
+pages."
+
+"By Jingo!" repeated one of the copying clerks before Boucard, the head
+clerk, could reply.
+
+"What! have you written _by Jingo_?" cried Godeschal, looking at one of
+the novices, with an expression at once stern and humorous.
+
+"Why, yes," said Desroches, the fourth clerk, leaning across his
+neighbor's copy, "he has written, '_We must dot our i's_' and spelt it
+_by Gingo_!"
+
+All the clerks shouted with laughter.
+
+"Why! Monsieur Hure, you take 'By Jingo' for a law term, and you say you
+come from Mortagne!" exclaimed Simonnin.
+
+"Scratch it cleanly out," said the head clerk. "If the judge, whose
+business it is to tax the bill, were to see such things, he would say
+you were laughing at the whole boiling. You would hear of it from the
+chief! Come, no more of this nonsense, Monsieur Hure! A Norman ought not
+to write out an appeal without thought. It is the 'Shoulder arms!' of
+the law."
+
+"_Given in--in_?" asked Godeschal.--"Tell me when, Boucard."
+
+"June 1814," replied the head clerk, without looking up from his work.
+
+A knock at the office door interrupted the circumlocutions of the prolix
+document. Five clerks with rows of hungry teeth, bright, mocking eyes,
+and curly heads, lifted their noses towards the door, after crying all
+together in a singing tone, "Come in!"
+
+Boucard kept his face buried in a pile of papers--_broutilles_ (odds and
+ends) in French law jargon--and went on drawing out the bill of costs on
+which he was busy.
+
+The office was a large room furnished with the traditional stool which
+is to be seen in all these dens of law-quibbling. The stove-pipe crossed
+the room diagonally to the chimney of a bricked-up fireplace; on the
+marble chimney-piece were several chunks of bread, triangles of Brie
+cheese, pork cutlets, glasses, bottles, and the head clerk's cup of
+chocolate. The smell of these dainties blended so completely with that
+of the immoderately overheated stove and the odor peculiar to offices
+and old papers, that the trail of a fox would not have been perceptible.
+The floor was covered with mud and snow, brought in by the clerks. Near
+the window stood the desk with a revolving lid, where the head clerk
+worked, and against the back of it was the second clerk's table. The
+second clerk was at this moment in Court. It was between eight and nine
+in the morning.
+
+The only decoration of the office consisted in huge yellow posters,
+announcing seizures of real estate, sales, settlements under trust,
+final or interim judgments,--all the glory of a lawyer's office. Behind
+the head clerk was an enormous room, of which each division was crammed
+with bundles of papers with an infinite number of tickets hanging from
+them at the ends of red tape, which give a peculiar physiognomy to law
+papers. The lower rows were filled with cardboard boxes, yellow with
+use, on which might be read the names of the more important clients
+whose cases were juicily stewing at this present time. The dirty
+window-panes admitted but little daylight. Indeed, there are very few
+offices in Paris where it is possible to write without lamplight before
+ten in the morning in the month of February, for they are all left to
+very natural neglect; every one comes and no one stays; no one has any
+personal interest in a scene of mere routine--neither the attorney, nor
+the counsel, nor the clerks, trouble themselves about the appearance
+of a place which, to the youths, is a schoolroom; to the clients, a
+passage; to the chief, a laboratory. The greasy furniture is handed down
+to successive owners with such scrupulous care, that in some offices
+may still be seen boxes of _remainders_, machines for twisting
+parchment gut, and bags left by the prosecuting parties of the Chatelet
+(abbreviated to _Chlet_)--a Court which, under the old order of things,
+represented the present Court of First Instance (or County Court).
+
+So in this dark office, thick with dust, there was, as in all its
+fellows, something repulsive to the clients--something which made it
+one of the most hideous monstrosities of Paris. Nay, were it not for
+the mouldy sacristies where prayers are weighed out and paid for like
+groceries, and for the old-clothes shops, where flutter the rags that
+blight all the illusions of life by showing us the last end of all our
+festivities--an attorney's office would be, of all social marts, the
+most loathsome. But we might say the same of the gambling-hell, of the
+Law Court, of the lottery office, of the brothel.
+
+But why? In these places, perhaps, the drama being played in a man's
+soul makes him indifferent to accessories, which would also account for
+the single-mindedness of great thinkers and men of great ambitions.
+
+"Where is my penknife?"
+
+"I am eating my breakfast."
+
+"You go and be hanged! here is a blot on the copy."
+
+"Silence, gentlemen!"
+
+These various exclamations were uttered simultaneously at the moment
+when the old client shut the door with the sort of humility which
+disfigures the movements of a man down on his luck. The stranger tried
+to smile, but the muscles of his face relaxed as he vainly looked for
+some symptoms of amenity on the inexorably indifferent faces of the six
+clerks. Accustomed, no doubt, to gauge men, he very politely addressed
+the gutter-jumper, hoping to get a civil answer from this boy of all
+work.
+
+"Monsieur, is your master at home?"
+
+The pert messenger made no reply, but patted his ear with the fingers of
+his left hand, as much as to say, "I am deaf."
+
+"What do you want, sir?" asked Godeschal, swallowing as he spoke a
+mouthful of bread big enough to charge a four-pounder, flourishing his
+knife and crossing his legs, throwing up one foot in the air to the
+level of his eyes.
+
+"This is the fifth time I have called," replied the victim. "I wish to
+speak to M. Derville."
+
+"On business?"
+
+"Yes, but I can explain it to no one but--"
+
+"M. Derville is in bed; if you wish to consult him on some difficulty,
+he does no serious work till midnight. But if you will lay the case
+before us, we could help you just as well as he can to----"
+
+The stranger was unmoved; he looked timidly about him, like a dog who
+has got into a strange kitchen and expects a kick. By grace of their
+profession, lawyers' clerks have no fear of thieves; they did not
+suspect the owner of the box-coat, and left him to study the place,
+where he looked in vain for a chair to sit on, for he was evidently
+tired. Attorneys, on principle, do not have many chairs in their
+offices. The inferior client, being kept waiting on his feet, goes away
+grumbling, but then he does not waste time, which, as an old lawyer once
+said, is not allowed for when the bill is taxed.
+
+"Monsieur," said the old man, "as I have already told you, I cannot
+explain my business to any one but M. Derville. I will wait till he is
+up."
+
+Boucard had finished his bill. He smelt the fragrance of his chocolate,
+rose from his cane armchair, went to the chimney-piece, looked the old
+man from head to foot, stared at his coat, and made an indescribable
+grimace. He probably reflected that whichever way his client might be
+wrung, it would be impossible to squeeze out a centime, so he put in a
+few brief words to rid the office of a bad customer.
+
+"It is the truth, monsieur. The chief only works at night. If your
+business is important, I recommend you to return at one in the morning."
+The stranger looked at the head clerk with a bewildered expression, and
+remained motionless for a moment. The clerks, accustomed to every
+change of countenance, and the odd whimsicalities to which indecision or
+absence of mind gives rise in "parties," went on eating, making as much
+noise with their jaws as horses over a manger, and paying no further
+heed to the old man.
+
+"I will come again to-night," said the stranger at length, with the
+tenacious desire, peculiar to the unfortunate, to catch humanity at
+fault.
+
+The only irony allowed to poverty is to drive Justice and Benevolence to
+unjust denials. When a poor wretch has convicted Society of falsehood,
+he throws himself more eagerly on the mercy of God.
+
+"What do you think of that for a cracked pot?" said Simonnin, without
+waiting till the old man had shut the door.
+
+"He looks as if he had been buried and dug up again," said a clerk.
+
+"He is some colonel who wants his arrears of pay," said the head clerk.
+
+"No, he is a retired concierge," said Godeschal.
+
+"I bet you he is a nobleman," cried Boucard.
+
+"I bet you he has been a porter," retorted Godeschal. "Only porters are
+gifted by nature with shabby box-coats, as worn and greasy and frayed
+as that old body's. And did you see his trodden-down boots that let the
+water in, and his stock which serves for a shirt? He has slept in a dry
+arch."
+
+"He may be of noble birth, and yet have pulled the doorlatch," cried
+Desroches. "It has been known!"
+
+"No," Boucard insisted, in the midst of laughter, "I maintain that he
+was a brewer in 1789, and a colonel in the time of the Republic."
+
+"I bet theatre tickets round that he never was a soldier," said
+Godeschal.
+
+"Done with you," answered Boucard.
+
+"Monsieur! Monsieur!" shouted the little messenger, opening the window.
+
+"What are you at now, Simonnin?" asked Boucard.
+
+"I am calling him that you may ask him whether he is a colonel or a
+porter; he must know."
+
+All the clerks laughed. As to the old man, he was already coming
+upstairs again.
+
+"What can we say to him?" cried Godeschal.
+
+"Leave it to me," replied Boucard.
+
+The poor man came in nervously, his eyes cast down, perhaps not to
+betray how hungry he was by looking too greedily at the eatables.
+
+"Monsieur," said Boucard, "will you have the kindness to leave your
+name, so that M. Derville may know----"
+
+"Chabert."
+
+"The Colonel who was killed at Eylau?" asked Hure, who, having so far
+said nothing, was jealous of adding a jest to all the others.
+
+"The same, monsieur," replied the good man, with antique simplicity. And
+he went away.
+
+"Whew!"
+
+"Done brown!"
+
+"Poof!"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Boum!"
+
+"The old rogue!"
+
+"Ting-a-ring-ting!"
+
+"Sold again!"
+
+"Monsieur Desroches, you are going to the play without paying," said
+Hure to the fourth clerk, giving him a slap on the shoulder that might
+have killed a rhinoceros.
+
+There was a storm of cat-calls, cries, and exclamations, which all the
+onomatopeia of the language would fail to represent.
+
+"Which theatre shall we go to?"
+
+"To the opera," cried the head clerk.
+
+"In the first place," said Godeschal, "I never mentioned which theatre.
+I might, if I chose, take you to see Madame Saqui."
+
+"Madame Saqui is not the play."
+
+"What is a play?" replied Godeschal. "First, we must define the point
+of fact. What did I bet, gentlemen? A play. What is a play? A spectacle.
+What is a spectacle? Something to be seen--"
+
+"But on that principle you would pay your bet by taking us to see the
+water run under the Pont Neuf!" cried Simonnin, interrupting him.
+
+"To be seen for money," Godeschal added.
+
+"But a great many things are to be seen for money that are not plays.
+The definition is defective," said Desroches.
+
+"But do listen to me!"
+
+"You are talking nonsense, my dear boy," said Boucard.
+
+"Is Curtius' a play?" said Godeschal.
+
+"No," said the head clerk, "it is a collection of figures--but it is a
+spectacle."
+
+"I bet you a hundred francs to a sou," Godeschal resumed, "that Curtius'
+Waxworks forms such a show as might be called a play or theatre. It
+contains a thing to be seen at various prices, according to the place
+you choose to occupy."
+
+"And so on, and so forth!" said Simonnin.
+
+"You mind I don't box your ears!" said Godeschal.
+
+The clerk shrugged their shoulders.
+
+"Besides, it is not proved that that old ape was not making game of us,"
+he said, dropping his argument, which was drowned in the laughter of the
+other clerks. "On my honor, Colonel Chabert is really and truly dead.
+His wife is married again to Comte Ferraud, Councillor of State. Madame
+Ferraud is one of our clients."
+
+"Come, the case is remanded till to-morrow," said Boucard. "To work,
+gentlemen. The deuce is in it; we get nothing done here. Finish copying
+that appeal; it must be handed in before the sitting of the Fourth
+Chamber, judgment is to be given to-day. Come, on you go!"
+
+"If he really were Colonel Chabert, would not that impudent rascal
+Simonnin have felt the leather of his boot in the right place when he
+pretended to be deaf?" said Desroches, regarding this remark as more
+conclusive than Godeschal's.
+
+"Since nothing is settled," said Boucard, "let us all agree to go to the
+upper boxes of the Francais and see Talma in 'Nero.' Simonnin may go to
+the pit."
+
+And thereupon the head clerk sat down at his table, and the others
+followed his example.
+
+"_Given in June eighteen hundred and fourteen_ (in words)," said
+Godeschal. "Ready?"
+
+"Yes," replied the two copying-clerks and the engrosser, whose pens
+forthwith began to creak over the stamped paper, making as much noise
+in the office as a hundred cockchafers imprisoned by schoolboys in paper
+cages.
+
+"_And we hope that my lords on the Bench_," the extemporizing clerk went
+on. "Stop! I must read my sentence through again. I do not understand it
+myself."
+
+"Forty-six (that must often happen) and three forty-nines," said
+Boucard.
+
+"_We hope_," Godeschal began again, after reading all through the
+document, "_that my lords on the Bench will not be less magnanimous than
+the august author of the decree, and that they will do justice against
+the miserable claims of the acting committee of the chief Board of the
+Legion of Honor by interpreting the law in the wide sense we have here
+set forth_----"
+
+"Monsieur Godeschal, wouldn't you like a glass of water?" said the
+little messenger.
+
+"That imp of a boy!" said Boucard. "Here, get on your double-soled
+shanks-mare, take this packet, and spin off to the Invalides."
+
+"_Here set forth_," Godeschal went on. "Add _in the interest of Madame
+la Vicomtesse_ (at full length) _de Grandlieu_."
+
+"What!" cried the chief, "are you thinking of drawing up an appeal in
+the case of Vicomtesse de Grandlieu against the Legion of Honor--a case
+for the office to stand or fall by? You are something like an ass! Have
+the goodness to put aside your copies and your notes; you may keep all
+that for the case of Navarreins against the Hospitals. It is late.
+I will draw up a little petition myself, with a due allowance of
+'inasmuch,' and go to the Courts myself."
+
+This scene is typical of the thousand delights which, when we look back
+on our youth, make us say, "Those were good times."
+
+
+
+At about one in the morning Colonel Chabert, self-styled, knocked at the
+door of Maitre Derville, attorney to the Court of First Instance in the
+Department of the Seine. The porter told him that Monsieur Derville had
+not yet come in. The old man said he had an appointment, and was
+shown upstairs to the rooms occupied by the famous lawyer, who,
+notwithstanding his youth, was considered to have one of the longest
+heads in Paris.
+
+Having rung, the distrustful applicant was not a little astonished at
+finding the head clerk busily arranging in a convenient order on his
+master's dining-room table the papers relating to the cases to be tried
+on the morrow. The clerk, not less astonished, bowed to the Colonel and
+begged him to take a seat, which the client did.
+
+"On my word, monsieur, I thought you were joking yesterday when you
+named such an hour for an interview," said the old man, with the forced
+mirth of a ruined man, who does his best to smile.
+
+"The clerks were joking, but they were speaking the truth too," replied
+the man, going on with his work. "M. Derville chooses this hour for
+studying his cases, taking stock of their possibilities, arranging
+how to conduct them, deciding on the line of defence. His prodigious
+intellect is freer at this hour--the only time when he can have the
+silence and quiet needed for the conception of good ideas. Since he
+entered the profession, you are the third person to come to him for
+a consultation at this midnight hour. After coming in the chief will
+discuss each case, read everything, spend four or five hours perhaps
+over the business, then he will ring for me and explain to me his
+intentions. In the morning from ten to two he hears what his clients
+have to say, then he spends the rest of his day in appointments. In the
+evening he goes into society to keep up his connections. So he has only
+the night for undermining his cases, ransacking the arsenal of the code,
+and laying his plan of battle. He is determined never to lose a case;
+he loves his art. He will not undertake every case, as his brethren do.
+That is his life, an exceptionally active one. And he makes a great deal
+of money."
+
+As he listened to this explanation, the old man sat silent, and his
+strange face assumed an expression so bereft of intelligence, that the
+clerk, after looking at him, thought no more about him.
+
+A few minutes later Derville came in, in evening dress; his head clerk
+opened the door to him, and went back to finish arranging the papers.
+The young lawyer paused for a moment in amazement on seeing in the
+dim light the strange client who awaited him. Colonel Chabert was as
+absolutely immovable as one of the wax figures in Curtius' collection to
+which Godeschal had proposed to treat his fellow-clerks. This quiescence
+would not have been a subject for astonishment if it had not completed
+the supernatural aspect of the man's whole person. The old soldier was
+dry and lean. His forehead, intentionally hidden under a smoothly
+combed wig, gave him a look of mystery. His eyes seemed shrouded in a
+transparent film; you would have compared them to dingy mother-of-pearl
+with a blue iridescence changing in the gleam of the wax lights. His
+face, pale, livid, and as thin as a knife, if I may use such a vulgar
+expression, was as the face of the dead. Round his neck was a tight
+black silk stock.
+
+Below the dark line of this rag the body was so completely hidden in
+shadow that a man of imagination might have supposed the old head was
+due to some chance play of light and shade, or have taken it for a
+portrait by Rembrandt, without a frame. The brim of the hat which
+covered the old man's brow cast a black line of shadow on the upper part
+of the face. This grotesque effect, though natural, threw into relief by
+contrast the white furrows, the cold wrinkles, the colorless tone of the
+corpse-like countenance. And the absence of all movement in the
+figure, of all fire in the eye, were in harmony with a certain look of
+melancholy madness, and the deteriorating symptoms characteristic of
+senility, giving the face an indescribably ill-starred look which no
+human words could render.
+
+But an observer, especially a lawyer, could also have read in this
+stricken man the signs of deep sorrow, the traces of grief which had
+worn into this face, as drops of water from the sky falling on fine
+marble at last destroy its beauty. A physician, an author, or a judge
+might have discerned a whole drama at the sight of its sublime horror,
+while the least charm was its resemblance to the grotesques which
+artists amuse themselves by sketching on a corner of the lithographic
+stone while chatting with a friend.
+
+On seeing the attorney, the stranger started, with the convulsive thrill
+that comes over a poet when a sudden noise rouses him from a fruitful
+reverie in silence and at night. The old man hastily removed his hat
+and rose to bow to the young man; the leather lining of his hat was
+doubtless very greasy; his wig stuck to it without his noticing it,
+and left his head bare, showing his skull horribly disfigured by a
+scar beginning at the nape of the neck and ending over the right eye, a
+prominent seam all across his head. The sudden removal of the dirty
+wig which the poor man wore to hide this gash gave the two lawyers no
+inclination to laugh, so horrible to behold was this riven skull.
+The first idea suggested by the sight of this old wound was, "His
+intelligence must have escaped through that cut."
+
+"If this is not Colonel Chabert, he is some thorough-going trooper!"
+thought Boucard.
+
+"Monsieur," said Derville, "to whom have I the honor of speaking?"
+
+"To Colonel Chabert."
+
+"Which?"
+
+"He who was killed at Eylau," replied the old man.
+
+On hearing this strange speech, the lawyer and his clerk glanced at each
+other, as much as to say, "He is mad."
+
+"Monsieur," the Colonel went on, "I wish to confide to you the secret of
+my position."
+
+A thing worthy of note is the natural intrepidity of lawyers. Whether
+from the habit of receiving a great many persons, or from the deep sense
+of the protection conferred on them by the law, or from confidence in
+their missions, they enter everywhere, fearing nothing, like priests and
+physicians. Derville signed to Boucard, who vanished.
+
+"During the day, sir," said the attorney, "I am not so miserly of my
+time, but at night every minute is precious. So be brief and concise. Go
+to the facts without digression. I will ask for any explanations I may
+consider necessary. Speak."
+
+Having bid his strange client to be seated, the young man sat down at
+the table; but while he gave his attention to the deceased Colonel, he
+turned over the bundles of papers.
+
+"You know, perhaps," said the dead man, "that I commanded a cavalry
+regiment at Eylau. I was of important service to the success of Murat's
+famous charge which decided the victory. Unhappily for me, my death is
+a historical fact, recorded in _Victoires et Conquetes_, where it is
+related in full detail. We cut through the three Russian lines, which at
+once closed up and formed again, so that we had to repeat the movement
+back again. At the moment when we were nearing the Emperor, after
+having scattered the Russians, I came against a squadron of the enemy's
+cavalry. I rushed at the obstinate brutes. Two Russian officers, perfect
+giants, attacked me both at once. One of them gave me a cut across the
+head that crashed through everything, even a black silk cap I wore next
+my head, and cut deep into the skull. I fell from my horse. Murat came
+up to support me. He rode over my body, he and all his men, fifteen
+hundred of them--there might have been more! My death was announced
+to the Emperor, who as a precaution--for he was fond of me, was the
+master--wished to know if there were no hope of saving the man he had
+to thank for such a vigorous attack. He sent two surgeons to identify me
+and bring me into Hospital, saying, perhaps too carelessly, for he
+was very busy, 'Go and see whether by any chance poor Chabert is still
+alive.' These rascally saw-bones, who had just seen me lying under
+the hoofs of the horses of two regiments, no doubt did not trouble
+themselves to feel my pulse, and reported that I was quite dead. The
+certificate of death was probably made out in accordance with the rules
+of military jurisprudence."
+
+As he heard his visitor express himself with complete lucidity, and
+relate a story so probable though so strange, the young lawyer ceased
+fingering the papers, rested his left elbow on the table, and with his
+head on his hand looked steadily at the Colonel.
+
+"Do you know, monsieur, that I am lawyer to the Countess Ferraud," he
+said, interrupting the speaker, "Colonel Chabert's widow?"
+
+"My wife--yes monsieur. Therefore, after a hundred fruitless attempts to
+interest lawyers, who have all thought me mad, I made up my mind to come
+to you. I will tell you of my misfortunes afterwards; for the present,
+allow me to prove the facts, explaining rather how things must have
+fallen out rather than how they did occur. Certain circumstances, known,
+I suppose to no one but the Almighty, compel me to speak of some things
+as hypothetical. The wounds I had received must presumably have produced
+tetanus, or have thrown me into a state analogous to that of a disease
+called, I believe, catalepsy. Otherwise how is it conceivable that I
+should have been stripped, as is the custom in time of the war, and
+thrown into the common grave by the men ordered to bury the dead?
+
+"Allow me here to refer to a detail of which I could know nothing till
+after the event, which, after all, I must speak of as my death. At
+Stuttgart, in 1814, I met an old quartermaster of my regiment. This dear
+fellow, the only man who chose to recognize me, and of whom I will tell
+you more later, explained the marvel of my preservation, by telling me
+that my horse was shot in the flank at the moment when I was wounded.
+Man and beast went down together, like a monk cut out of card-paper. As
+I fell, to the right or to the left, I was no doubt covered by the body
+of my horse, which protected me from being trampled to death or hit by a
+ball.
+
+"When I came to myself, monsieur, I was in a position and an atmosphere
+of which I could give you no idea if I talked till to-morrow. The little
+air there was to breathe was foul. I wanted to move, and found no room.
+I opened my eyes, and saw nothing. The most alarming circumstance
+was the lack of air, and this enlightened me as to my situation. I
+understood that no fresh air could penetrate to me, and that I must die.
+This thought took off the sense of intolerable pain which had aroused
+me. There was a violent singing in my ears. I heard--or I thought I
+heard, I will assert nothing--groans from the world of dead among whom I
+was lying. Some nights I still think I hear those stifled moans;
+though the remembrance of that time is very obscure, and my memory very
+indistinct, in spite of my impressions of far more acute suffering I was
+fated to go through, and which have confused my ideas.
+
+"But there was something more awful than cries; there was a silence such
+as I have never known elsewhere--literally, the silence of the grave.
+At last, by raising my hands and feeling the dead, I discerned a vacant
+space between my head and the human carrion above. I could thus measure
+the space, granted by a chance of which I knew not the cause. It would
+seem that, thanks to the carelessness and the haste with which we had
+been pitched into the trench, two dead bodies had leaned across and
+against each other, forming an angle like that made by two cards when a
+child is building a card castle. Feeling about me at once, for there
+was no time for play, I happily felt an arm lying detached, the arm of
+a Hercules! A stout bone, to which I owed my rescue. But for this
+unhoped-for help, I must have perished. But with a fury you may imagine,
+I began to work my way through the bodies which separated me from the
+layer of earth which had no doubt been thrown over us--I say us, as if
+there had been others living! I worked with a will, monsieur, for here I
+am! But to this day I do not know how I succeeded in getting through the
+pile of flesh which formed a barrier between me and life. You will say I
+had three arms. This crowbar, which I used cleverly enough, opened out
+a little air between the bodies I moved, and I economized my breath. At
+last I saw daylight, but through snow!
+
+"At that moment I perceived that my head was cut open. Happily my blood,
+or that of my comrades, or perhaps the torn skin of my horse, who knows,
+had in coagulating formed a sort of natural plaster. But, in spite
+of it, I fainted away when my head came into contact with the snow.
+However, the little warmth left in me melted the snow about me; and when
+I recovered consciousness, I found myself in the middle of a round hole,
+where I stood shouting as long as I could. But the sun was rising, so I
+had very little chance of being heard. Was there any one in the fields
+yet? I pulled myself up, using my feet as a spring, resting on one of
+the dead, whose ribs were firm. You may suppose that this was not the
+moment for saying, 'Respect courage in misfortune!' In short, monsieur,
+after enduring the anguish, if the word is strong enough for my frenzy,
+of seeing for a long time, yes, quite a long time, those cursed Germans
+flying from a voice they heard where they could see no one, I was dug
+out by a woman, who was brave or curious enough to come close to my
+head, which must have looked as though it had sprouted from the ground
+like a mushroom. This woman went to fetch her husband, and between them
+they got me to their poor hovel.
+
+"It would seem that I must have again fallen into a catalepsy--allow me
+to use the word to describe a state of which I have no idea, but which,
+from the account given by my hosts, I suppose to have been the effect
+of that malady. I remained for six months between life and death; not
+speaking, or, if I spoke, talking in delirium. At last, my hosts got me
+admitted to the hospital at Heilsberg.
+
+"You will understand, Monsieur, that I came out of the womb of the grave
+as naked as I came from my mother's; so that six months afterwards, when
+I remembered, one fine morning, that I had been Colonel Chabert, and
+when, on recovering my wits, I tried to exact from my nurse rather more
+respect than she paid to any poor devil, all my companions in the ward
+began to laugh. Luckily for me, the surgeon, out of professional pride,
+had answered for my cure, and was naturally interested in his patient.
+When I told him coherently about my former life, this good man, named
+Sparchmann, signed a deposition, drawn up in the legal form of his
+country, giving an account of the miraculous way in which I had escaped
+from the trench dug for the dead, the day and hour when I had been found
+by my benefactress and her husband, the nature and exact spot of my
+injuries, adding to these documents a description of my person.
+
+"Well, monsieur, I have neither these important pieces of evidence,
+nor the declaration I made before a notary at Heilsberg, with a view
+to establishing my identity. From the day when I was turned out of that
+town by the events of the war, I have wandered about like a vagabond,
+begging my bread, treated as a madman when I have told my story, without
+ever having found or earned a sou to enable me to recover the deeds
+which would prove my statements, and restore me to society. My
+sufferings have often kept me for six months at a time in some little
+town, where every care was taken of the invalid Frenchman, but where he
+was laughed at to his face as soon as he said he was Colonel Chabert.
+For a long time that laughter, those doubts, used to put me into rages
+which did me harm, and which even led to my being locked up at Stuttgart
+as a madman. And indeed, as you may judge from my story, there was ample
+reason for shutting a man up.
+
+"At the end of two years' detention, which I was compelled to submit to,
+after hearing my keepers say a thousand times, 'Here is a poor man who
+thinks he is Colonel Chabert' to people who would reply, 'Poor fellow!'
+I became convinced of the impossibility of my own adventure. I grew
+melancholy, resigned, and quiet, and gave up calling myself Colonel
+Chabert, in order to get out of my prison, and see France once more. Oh,
+monsieur! To see Paris again was a delirium which I----"
+
+Without finishing his sentence, Colonel Chabert fell into a deep study,
+which Derville respected.
+
+"One fine day," his visitor resumed, "one spring day, they gave me the
+key of the fields, as we say, and ten thalers, admitting that I talked
+quite sensibly on all subjects, and no longer called myself Colonel
+Chabert. On my honor, at that time, and even to this day, sometimes I
+hate my name. I wish I were not myself. The sense of my rights kills me.
+If my illness had but deprived me of all memory of my past life, I could
+be happy. I should have entered the service again under any name,
+no matter what, and should, perhaps, have been made Field-Marshal in
+Austria or Russia. Who knows?"
+
+"Monsieur," said the attorney, "you have upset all my ideas. I feel as
+if I heard you in a dream. Pause for a moment, I beg of you."
+
+"You are the only person," said the Colonel, with a melancholy look,
+"who ever listened to me so patiently. No lawyer has been willing to
+lend me ten napoleons to enable me to procure from Germany the necessary
+documents to begin my lawsuit--"
+
+"What lawsuit?" said the attorney, who had forgotten his client's
+painful position in listening to the narrative of his past sufferings.
+
+"Why, monsieur, is not the Comtesse Ferraud my wife? She has thirty
+thousand francs a year, which belong to me, and she will not give me a
+son. When I tell lawyers these things--men of sense; when I propose--I,
+a beggar--to bring action against a Count and Countess; when I--a
+dead man--bring up as against a certificate of death a certificate of
+marriage and registers of births, they show me out, either with the air
+of cold politeness, which you all know how to assume to rid yourself of
+a hapless wretch, or brutally, like men who think they have to deal with
+a swindler or a madman--it depends on their nature. I have been buried
+under the dead; but now I am buried under the living, under papers,
+under facts, under the whole of society, which wants to shove me
+underground again!"
+
+"Pray resume your narrative," said Derville.
+
+"'Pray resume it!'" cried the hapless old man, taking the young lawyer's
+hand. "That is the first polite word I have heard since----"
+
+The Colonel wept. Gratitude choked his voice. The appealing and
+unutterable eloquence that lies in the eyes, in a gesture, even in
+silence, entirely convinced Derville, and touched him deeply.
+
+"Listen, monsieur," said he; "I have this evening won three hundred
+francs at cards. I may very well lay out half that sum in making a man
+happy. I will begin the inquiries and researches necessary to obtain the
+documents of which you speak, and until they arrive I will give you five
+francs a day. If you are Colonel Chabert, you will pardon the smallness
+of the loan as it is coming from a young man who has his fortune to
+make. Proceed."
+
+The Colonel, as he called himself, sat for a moment motionless and
+bewildered; the depth of his woes had no doubt destroyed his powers of
+belief. Though he was eager in pursuit of his military distinction, of
+his fortune, of himself, perhaps it was in obedience to the inexplicable
+feeling, the latent germ in every man's heart, to which we owe the
+experiments of alchemists, the passion for glory, the discoveries of
+astronomy and of physics, everything which prompts man to expand his
+being by multiplying himself through deeds or ideas. In his mind the
+_Ego_ was now but a secondary object, just as the vanity of success or
+the pleasures of winning become dearer to the gambler than the object
+he has at stake. The young lawyer's words were as a miracle to this man,
+for ten years repudiated by his wife, by justice, by the whole social
+creation. To find in a lawyer's office the ten gold pieces which had
+so long been refused him by so many people, and in so many ways! The
+colonel was like the lady who, having been ill of a fever for fifteen
+years, fancied she had some fresh complaint when she was cured. There
+are joys in which we have ceased to believe; they fall on us, it is like
+a thunderbolt; they burn us. The poor man's gratitude was too great to
+find utterance. To superficial observers he seemed cold, but Derville
+saw complete honesty under this amazement. A swindler would have found
+his voice.
+
+"Where was I?" said the Colonel, with the simplicity of a child or of
+a soldier, for there is often something of the child in a true soldier,
+and almost always something of the soldier in a child, especially in
+France.
+
+"At Stuttgart. You were out of prison," said Derville.
+
+"You know my wife?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"Yes," said Derville, with a bow.
+
+"What is she like?"
+
+"Still quite charming."
+
+The old man held up his hand, and seemed to be swallowing down
+some secret anguish with the grave and solemn resignation that is
+characteristic of men who have stood the ordeal of blood and fire on the
+battlefield.
+
+"Monsieur," said he, with a sort of cheerfulness--for he breathed again,
+the poor Colonel; he had again risen from the grave; he had just melted
+a covering of snow less easily thawed than that which had once before
+frozen his head; and he drew a deep breath, as if he had just escaped
+from a dungeon--"Monsieur, if I had been a handsome young fellow, none
+of my misfortunes would have befallen me. Women believe in men when they
+flavor their speeches with the word Love. They hurry then, they come,
+they go, they are everywhere at once; they intrigue, they assert facts,
+they play the very devil for a man who takes their fancy. But how could
+I interest a woman? I had a face like a Requiem. I was dressed like a
+_sans-culotte_. I was more like an Esquimaux than a Frenchman--I, who
+had formerly been considered one of the smartest of fops in 1799!--I,
+Chabert, Count of the Empire.
+
+"Well, on the very day when I was turned out into the streets like
+a dog, I met the quartermaster of whom I just now spoke. This old
+soldier's name was Boutin. The poor devil and I made the queerest pair
+of broken-down hacks I ever set eyes on. I met him out walking; but
+though I recognized him, he could not possibly guess who I was. We went
+into a tavern together. In there, when I told him my name, Boutin's
+mouth opened from ear to ear in a roar of laughter, like the bursting
+of a mortar. That mirth, monsieur, was one of the keenest pangs I have
+known. It told me without disguise how great were the changes in me! I
+was, then, unrecognizable even to the humblest and most grateful of my
+former friends!
+
+"I had once saved Boutin's life, but it was only the repayment of a debt
+I owed him. I need not tell you how he did me this service; it was at
+Ravenna, in Italy. The house where Boutin prevented my being stabbed was
+not extremely respectable. At that time I was not a colonel, but, like
+Boutin himself, a common trooper. Happily there were certain details of
+this adventure which could be known only to us two, and when I recalled
+them to his mind his incredulity diminished. I then told him the story
+of my singular experiences. Although my eyes and my voice, he told
+me, were strangely altered, although I had neither hair, teeth, nor
+eyebrows, and was as colorless as an Albino, he at last recognized his
+Colonel in the beggar, after a thousand questions, which I answered
+triumphantly.
+
+"He related his adventures; they were not less extraordinary than my
+own; he had lately come back from the frontiers of China, which he
+had tried to cross after escaping from Siberia. He told me of the
+catastrophe of the Russian campaign, and of Napoleon's first abdication.
+That news was one of the things which caused me most anguish!
+
+"We were two curious derelicts, having been rolled over the globe as
+pebbles are rolled by the ocean when storms bear them from shore to
+shore. Between us we had seen Egypt, Syria, Spain, Russia, Holland,
+Germany, Italy and Dalmatia, England, China, Tartary, Siberia; the only
+thing wanting was that neither of us had been to America or the Indies.
+Finally, Boutin, who still was more locomotive than I, undertook to go
+to Paris as quickly as might be to inform my wife of the predicament in
+which I was. I wrote a long letter full of details to Madame Chabert.
+That, monsieur, was the fourth! If I had had any relations, perhaps
+nothing of all this might have happened; but, to be frank with you, I
+am but a workhouse child, a soldier, whose sole fortune was his courage,
+whose sole family is mankind at large, whose country is France, whose
+only protector is the Almighty.--Nay, I am wrong! I had a father--the
+Emperor! Ah! if he were but here, the dear man! If he could see _his
+Chabert_, as he used to call me, in the state in which I am now, he
+would be in a rage! What is to be done? Our sun is set, and we are all
+out in the cold now. After all, political events might account for my
+wife's silence!
+
+"Boutin set out. He was a lucky fellow! He had two bears, admirably
+trained, which brought him in a living. I could not go with him; the
+pain I suffered forbade my walking long stages. I wept, monsieur, when
+we parted, after I had gone as far as my state allowed in company with
+him and his bears. At Carlsruhe I had an attack of neuralgia in the
+head, and lay for six weeks on straw in an inn. I should never have
+ended if I were to tell you all the distresses of my life as a beggar.
+Moral suffering, before which physical suffering pales, nevertheless
+excites less pity, because it is not seen. I remember shedding tears, as
+I stood in front of a fine house in Strassburg where once I had given
+an entertainment, and where nothing was given me, not even a piece of
+bread. Having agreed with Boutin on the road I was to take, I went to
+every post-office to ask if there were a letter or some money for me.
+I arrived at Paris without having found either. What despair I had been
+forced to endure! 'Boutin must be dead! I told myself, and in fact the
+poor fellow was killed at Waterloo. I heard of his death later, and by
+mere chance. His errand to my wife had, of course, been fruitless.
+
+"At last I entered Paris--with the Cossacks. To me this was grief on
+grief. On seeing the Russians in France, I quite forgot that I had no
+shoes on my feet nor money in my pocket. Yes, monsieur, my clothes were
+in tatters. The evening before I reached Paris I was obliged to bivouac
+in the woods of Claye. The chill of the night air no doubt brought on an
+attack of some nameless complaint which seized me as I was crossing
+the Faubourg Saint-Martin. I dropped almost senseless at the door of an
+ironmonger's shop. When I recovered I was in a bed in the Hotel-Dieu.
+There I stayed very contentedly for about a month. I was then turned
+out; I had no money, but I was well, and my feet were on the good stones
+of Paris. With what delight and haste did I make my way to the Rue du
+Mont-Blanc, where my wife should be living in a house belonging to me!
+Bah! the Rue du Mont-Blanc was now the Rue de la Chausee d'Antin; I
+could not find my house; it had been sold and pulled down. Speculators
+had built several houses over my gardens. Not knowing that my wife had
+married M. Ferraud, I could obtain no information.
+
+"At last I went to the house of an old lawyer who had been in charge of
+my affairs. This worthy man was dead, after selling his connection to
+a younger man. This gentleman informed me, to my great surprise, of the
+administration of my estate, the settlement of the moneys, of my wife's
+marriage, and the birth of her two children. When I told him that I was
+Colonel Chabert, he laughed so heartily that I left him without saying
+another word. My detention at Stuttgart had suggested possibilities of
+Charenton, and I determined to act with caution. Then, monsieur,
+knowing where my wife lived, I went to her house, my heart high with
+hope.--Well," said the Colonel, with a gesture of concentrated fury,
+"when I called under an assumed name I was not admitted, and on the day
+when I used my own I was turned out of doors.
+
+"To see the Countess come home from a ball or the play in the early
+morning, I have sat whole nights through, crouching close to the wall of
+her gateway. My eyes pierced the depths of the carriage, which flashed
+past me with the swiftness of lightning, and I caught a glimpse of the
+woman who is my wife and no longer mine. Oh, from that day I have
+lived for vengeance!" cried the old man in a hollow voice, and suddenly
+standing up in front of Derville. "She knows that I am alive; since my
+return she has had two letters written with my own hand. She loves me
+no more!--I--I know not whether I love or hate her. I long for her and
+curse her by turns. To me she owes all her fortune, all her happiness;
+well, she has not sent me the very smallest pittance. Sometimes I do not
+know what will become of me!"
+
+With these words the veteran dropped on to his chair again and remained
+motionless. Derville sat in silence, studying his client.
+
+"It is a serious business," he said at length, mechanically. "Even
+granting the genuineness of the documents to be procured from Heilsberg,
+it is not proved to me that we can at once win our case. It must go
+before three tribunals in succession. I must think such a matter over
+with a clear head; it is quite exceptional."
+
+"Oh," said the Colonel, coldly, with a haughty jerk of his head, "if I
+fail, I can die--but not alone."
+
+The feeble old man had vanished. The eyes were those of a man of energy,
+lighted up with the spark of desire and revenge.
+
+"We must perhaps compromise," said the lawyer.
+
+"Compromise!" echoed Colonel Chabert. "Am I dead, or am I alive?"
+
+"I hope, monsieur," the attorney went on, "that you will follow my
+advice. Your cause is mine. You will soon perceive the interest I take
+in your situation, almost unexampled in judicial records. For the moment
+I will give you a letter to my notary, who will pay to your order fifty
+francs every ten days. It would be unbecoming for you to come here to
+receive alms. If you are Colonel Chabert, you ought to be at no man's
+mercy. I shall record these advances as a loan; you have estates to
+recover; you are rich."
+
+This delicate compassion brought tears to the old man's eyes. Derville
+rose hastily, for it was perhaps not correct for a lawyer to show
+emotion; he went into the adjoining room, and came back with an unsealed
+letter, which he gave to the Colonel. When the poor man held it in his
+hand, he felt through the paper two gold pieces.
+
+"Will you be good enough to describe the documents, and tell me the name
+of the town, and in what kingdom?" said the lawyer.
+
+The Colonel dictated the information, and verified the spelling of the
+names of places; then he took his hat in one hand, looked at Derville,
+and held out the other--a horny hand, saying with much simplicity:
+
+"On my honor, sir, after the Emperor, you are the man to whom I shall
+owe most. You are a splendid fellow!"
+
+The attorney clapped his hand into the Colonel's, saw him to the stairs,
+and held a light for him.
+
+"Boucard," said Derville to his head clerk, "I have just listened to a
+tale that may cost me five and twenty louis. If I am robbed, I shall not
+regret the money, for I shall have seen the most consummate actor of the
+day."
+
+When the Colonel was in the street and close to a lamp, he took the two
+twenty-franc pieces out of the letter and looked at them for a moment
+under the light. It was the first gold he had seen for nine years.
+
+"I may smoke cigars!" he said to himself.
+
+
+
+About three months after this interview, at night, in Derville's room,
+the notary commissioned to advance the half-pay on Derville's account to
+his eccentric client, came to consult the attorney on a serious matter,
+and began by begging him to refund the six hundred francs that the old
+soldier had received.
+
+"Are you amusing yourself with pensioning the old army?" said the
+notary, laughing--a young man named Crottat, who had just bought up
+the office in which he had been head clerk, his chief having fled in
+consequence of a disastrous bankruptcy.
+
+"I have to thank you, my dear sir, for reminding me of that affair,"
+replied Derville. "My philanthropy will not carry me beyond twenty-five
+louis; I have, I fear, already been the dupe of my patriotism."
+
+As Derville finished the sentence, he saw on his desk the papers his
+head clerk had laid out for him. His eye was struck by the appearance
+of the stamps--long, square, and triangular, in red and blue ink, which
+distinguished a letter that had come through the Prussian, Austrian,
+Bavarian, and French post-offices.
+
+"Ah ha!" said he with a laugh, "here is the last act of the comedy; now
+we shall see if I have been taken in!"
+
+He took up the letter and opened it; but he could not read it; it was
+written in German.
+
+"Boucard, go yourself and have this letter translated, and bring it back
+immediately," said Derville, half opening his study door, and giving the
+letter to the head clerk.
+
+The notary at Berlin, to whom the lawyer had written, informed him that
+the documents he had been requested to forward would arrive within a
+few days of this note announcing them. They were, he said, all perfectly
+regular and duly witnessed, and legally stamped to serve as evidence
+in law. He also informed him that almost all the witnesses to the facts
+recorded under these affidavits were still to be found at Eylau, in
+Prussia, and that the woman to whom M. le Comte Chabert owed his life
+was still living in a suburb of Heilsberg.
+
+"This looks like business," cried Derville, when Boucard had given
+him the substance of the letter. "But look here, my boy," he went on,
+addressing the notary, "I shall want some information which ought to
+exist in your office. Was it not that old rascal Roguin--?"
+
+"We will say that unfortunate, that ill-used Roguin," interrupted
+Alexandre Crottat with a laugh.
+
+"Well, was it not that ill-used man who has just carried off eight
+hundred thousand francs of his clients' money, and reduced several
+families to despair, who effected the settlement of Chabert's estate? I
+fancy I have seen that in the documents in our case of Ferraud."
+
+"Yes," said Crottat. "It was when I was third clerk; I copied the papers
+and studied them thoroughly. Rose Chapotel, wife and widow of Hyacinthe,
+called Chabert, Count of the Empire, grand officer of the Legion of
+Honor. They had married without settlement; thus, they held all the
+property in common. To the best of my recollections, the personalty was
+about six hundred thousand francs. Before his marriage, Colonel Chabert
+had made a will in favor of the hospitals of Paris, by which he left
+them one-quarter of the fortune he might possess at the time of his
+decease, the State to take the other quarter. The will was contested,
+there was a forced sale, and then a division, for the attorneys went at
+a pace. At the time of the settlement the monster who was then governing
+France handed over to the widow, by special decree, the portion
+bequeathed to the treasury."
+
+"So that Comte Chabert's personal fortune was no more than three hundred
+thousand francs?"
+
+"Consequently so it was, old fellow!" said Crottat. "You lawyers
+sometimes are very clear-headed, though you are accused of false
+practices in pleading for one side or the other."
+
+Colonel Chabert, whose address was written at the bottom of the
+first receipt he had given the notary, was lodging in the Faubourg
+Saint-Marceau, Rue du Petit-Banquier, with an old quartermaster of the
+Imperial Guard, now a cowkeeper, named Vergniaud. Having reached the
+spot, Derville was obliged to go on foot in search of his client, for
+his coachman declined to drive along an unpaved street, where the ruts
+were rather too deep for cab wheels. Looking about him on all sides,
+the lawyer at last discovered at the end of the street nearest to the
+boulevard, between two walls built of bones and mud, two shabby stone
+gate-posts, much knocked about by carts, in spite of two wooden stumps
+that served as blocks. These posts supported a cross beam with a
+penthouse coping of tiles, and on the beam, in red letters, were the
+words, "Vergniaud, dairyman." To the right of this inscription were some
+eggs, to the left a cow, all painted in white. The gate was open, and no
+doubt remained open all day. Beyond a good-sized yard there was a house
+facing the gate, if indeed the name of house may be applied to one of
+the hovels built in the neighborhood of Paris, which are like nothing
+else, not even the most wretched dwellings in the country, of which they
+have all the poverty without their poetry.
+
+Indeed, in the midst of the fields, even a hovel may have a certain
+grace derived from the pure air, the verdure, the open country--a hill,
+a serpentine road, vineyards, quickset hedges, moss-grown thatch and
+rural implements; but poverty in Paris gains dignity only by horror.
+Though recently built, this house seemed ready to fall into ruins. None
+of its materials had found a legitimate use; they had been collected
+from the various demolitions which are going on every day in Paris. On
+a shutter made of the boards of a shop-sign Derville read the words,
+"Fancy Goods." The windows were all mismatched and grotesquely placed.
+The ground floor, which seemed to be the habitable part, was on one
+side raised above the soil, and on the other sunk in the rising ground.
+Between the gate and the house lay a puddle full of stable litter, into
+which flowed the rain-water and house waste. The back wall of this frail
+construction, which seemed rather more solidly built than the rest,
+supported a row of barred hutches, where rabbits bred their numerous
+families. To the right of the gate was the cowhouse, with a loft above
+for fodder; it communicated with the house through the dairy. To
+the left was a poultry yard, with a stable and pig-styes, the roofs
+finished, like that of the house, with rough deal boards nailed so as to
+overlap, and shabbily thatched with rushes.
+
+Like most of the places where the elements of the huge meal daily
+devoured by Paris are every day prepared, the yard Derville now entered
+showed traces of the hurry that comes of the necessity for being
+ready at a fixed hour. The large pot-bellied tin cans in which milk
+is carried, and the little pots for cream, were flung pell-mell at the
+dairy door, with their linen-covered stoppers. The rags that were used
+to clean them, fluttered in the sunshine, riddled with holes, hanging
+to strings fastened to poles. The placid horse, of a breed known only
+to milk-women, had gone a few steps from the cart, and was standing in
+front of the stable, the door being shut. A goat was munching the shoots
+of a starved and dusty vine that clung to the cracked yellow wall of the
+house. A cat, squatting on the cream jars, was licking them over. The
+fowls, scared by Derville's approach, scuttered away screaming, and the
+watch-dog barked.
+
+"And the man who decided the victory at Eylau is to be found here!" said
+Derville to himself, as his eyes took in at a glance the general effect
+of the squalid scene.
+
+The house had been left in charge of three little boys. One, who had
+climbed to the top of the cart loaded with hay, was pitching stones into
+the chimney of a neighboring house, in the hope that they might fall
+into a saucepan; another was trying to get a pig into a cart, to hoist
+it by making the whole thing tilt. When Derville asked them if M.
+Chabert lived there, neither of them replied, but all three looked at
+him with a sort of bright stupidity, if I may combine those two words.
+Derville repeated his questions, but without success. Provoked by the
+saucy cunning of these three imps, he abused them with the sort of
+pleasantry which young men think they have the right to address to
+little boys, and they broke the silence with a horse-laugh. Then
+Derville was angry.
+
+The Colonel, hearing him, now came out of the little low room, close to
+the dairy, and stood on the threshold of his doorway with indescribable
+military coolness. He had in his mouth a very finely-colored pipe--a
+technical phrase to a smoker--a humble, short clay pipe of the kind
+called "_brule-queule_." He lifted the peak of a dreadfully greasy
+cloth cap, saw Derville, and came straight across the midden to join his
+benefactor the sooner, calling out in friendly tones to the boys:
+
+"Silence in the ranks!"
+
+The children at once kept a respectful silence, which showed the power
+the old soldier had over them.
+
+"Why did you not write to me?" he said to Derville. "Go along by the
+cowhouse! There--the path is paved there," he exclaimed, seeing the
+lawyer's hesitancy, for he did not wish to wet his feet in the manure
+heap.
+
+Jumping from one dry spot to another, Derville reached the door by which
+the Colonel had come out. Chabert seemed but ill pleased at having to
+receive him in the bed-room he occupied; and, in fact, Derville found
+but one chair there. The Colonel's bed consisted of some trusses of
+straw, over which his hostess had spread two or three of those old
+fragments of carpet, picked up heaven knows where, which milk-women
+use to cover the seats of their carts. The floor was simply the trodden
+earth. The walls, sweating salt-petre, green with mould, and full of
+cracks, were so excessively damp that on the side where the Colonel's
+bed was a reed mat had been nailed. The famous box-coat hung on a nail.
+Two pairs of old boots lay in a corner. There was not a sign of linen.
+On the worm-eaten table the _Bulletins de la Grande Armee_, reprinted
+by Plancher, lay open, and seemed to be the Colonel's reading; his
+countenance was calm and serene in the midst of this squalor. His visit
+to Derville seemed to have altered his features; the lawyer perceived in
+them traces of a happy feeling, a particular gleam set there by hope.
+
+"Does the smell of the pipe annoy you?" he said, placing the dilapidated
+straw-bottomed chair for his lawyer.
+
+"But, Colonel, you are dreadfully uncomfortable here!"
+
+The speech was wrung from Derville by the distrust natural to lawyers,
+and the deplorable experience which they derive early in life from the
+appalling and obscure tragedies at which they look on.
+
+"Here," said he to himself, "is a man who has of course spent my money
+in satisfying a trooper's three theological virtues--play, wine, and
+women!"
+
+"To be sure, monsieur, we are not distinguished for luxury here. It is
+a camp lodging, tempered by friendship, but----" And the soldier shot a
+deep glance at the man of law--"I have done no one wrong, I have never
+turned my back on anybody, and I sleep in peace."
+
+Derville reflected that there would be some want of delicacy in asking
+his client to account for the sums of money he had advanced, so he
+merely said:
+
+"But why would you not come to Paris, where you might have lived as
+cheaply as you do here, but where you would have been better lodged?"
+
+"Why," replied the Colonel, "the good folks with whom I am living had
+taken me in and fed me _gratis_ for a year. How could I leave them just
+when I had a little money? Besides, the father of those three pickles is
+an old _Egyptian_--"
+
+"An Egyptian!"
+
+"We give that name to the troopers who came back from the expedition
+into Egypt, of which I was one. Not merely are all who get back
+brothers; Vergniaud was in my regiment. We have shared a draught of
+water in the desert; and besides, I have not yet finished teaching his
+brats to read."
+
+"He might have lodged you better for your money," said Derville.
+
+"Bah!" said the Colonel, "his children sleep on the straw as I do. He
+and his wife have no better bed; they are very poor you see. They
+have taken a bigger business than they can manage. But if I recover my
+fortune... However, it does very well."
+
+"Colonel, to-morrow or the next day, I shall receive your papers from
+Heilsberg. The woman who dug you out is still alive!"
+
+"Curse the money! To think I haven't got any!" he cried, flinging his
+pipe on the ground.
+
+Now, a well-colored pipe is to a smoker a precious possession; but the
+impulse was so natural, the emotion so generous, that every smoker, and
+the excise office itself, would have pardoned this crime of treason to
+tobacco. Perhaps the angels may have picked up the pieces.
+
+"Colonel, it is an exceedingly complicated business," said Derville as
+they left the room to walk up and down in the sunshine.
+
+"To me," said the soldier, "it appears exceedingly simple. I was thought
+to be dead, and here I am! Give me back my wife and my fortune; give me
+the rank of General, to which I have a right, for I was made Colonel of
+the Imperial Guard the day before the battle of Eylau."
+
+"Things are not done so in the legal world," said Derville. "Listen to
+me. You are Colonel Chabert, I am glad to think it; but it has to be
+proved judicially to persons whose interest it will be to deny it.
+Hence, your papers will be disputed. That contention will give rise to
+ten or twelve preliminary inquiries. Every question will be sent under
+contradiction up to the supreme court, and give rise to so many costly
+suits, which will hang on for a long time, however eagerly I may push
+them. Your opponents will demand an inquiry, which we cannot refuse, and
+which may necessitate the sending of a commission of investigation to
+Prussia. But even if we hope for the best; supposing that justice should
+at once recognize you as Colonel Chabert--can we know how the questions
+will be settled that will arise out of the very innocent bigamy
+committed by the Comtesse Ferraud?
+
+"In your case, the point of law is unknown to the Code, and can only be
+decided as a point in equity, as a jury decides in the delicate cases
+presented by the social eccentricities of some criminal prosecutions.
+Now, you had no children by your marriage; M. le Comte Ferraud has two.
+The judges might pronounce against the marriage where the family ties
+are weakest, to the confirmation of that where they are stronger, since
+it was contracted in perfect good faith. Would you be in a very becoming
+moral position if you insisted, at your age, and in your present
+circumstances, in resuming your rights over a woman who no longer loves
+you? You will have both your wife and her husband against you, two
+important persons who might influence the Bench. Thus, there are many
+elements which would prolong the case; you will have time to grow old in
+the bitterest regrets."
+
+"And my fortune?"
+
+"Do you suppose you had a fine fortune?"
+
+"Had I not thirty thousand francs a year?"
+
+"My dear Colonel, in 1799 you made a will before your marriage, leaving
+one-quarter of your property to hospitals."
+
+"That is true."
+
+"Well, when you were reported dead, it was necessary to make a
+valuation, and have a sale, to give this quarter away. Your wife was not
+particular about honesty as to the poor. The valuation, in which she no
+doubt took care not to include the ready money or jewelry, or too
+much of the plate, and in which the furniture would be estimated at
+two-thirds of its actual cost, either to benefit her, or to lighten the
+succession duty, and also because a valuer can be held responsible
+for the declared value--the valuation thus made stood at six hundred
+thousand francs. Your wife had a right of half for her share. Everything
+was sold and bought in by her; she got something out of it all, and the
+hospitals got their seventy-five thousand francs. Then, as the remainder
+went to the State, since you had made no mention of your wife in your
+will, the Emperor restored to your widow by decree the residue which
+would have reverted to the Exchequer. So, now, what can you claim? Three
+hundred thousand francs, no more, and minus the costs."
+
+"And you call that justice!" said the Colonel, in dismay.
+
+"Why, certainly--"
+
+"A pretty kind of justice!"
+
+"So it is, my dear Colonel. You see, that what you thought so easy is
+not so. Madame Ferraud might even choose to keep the sum given to her by
+the Emperor."
+
+"But she was not a widow. The decree is utterly void----"
+
+"I agree with you. But every case can get a hearing. Listen to me. I
+think that under these circumstances a compromise would be both for her
+and for you the best solution of the question. You will gain by it a
+more considerable sum than you can prove a right to."
+
+"That would be to sell my wife!"
+
+"With twenty-four thousand francs a year you could find a woman who, in
+the position in which you are, would suit you better than your own wife,
+and make you happier. I propose going this very day to see the Comtesse
+Ferraud and sounding the ground; but I would not take such a step
+without giving you due notice."
+
+"Let us go together."
+
+"What, just as you are?" said the lawyer. "No, my dear Colonel, no. You
+might lose your case on the spot."
+
+"Can I possibly gain it?"
+
+"On every count," replied Derville. "But, my dear Colonel Chabert, you
+overlook one thing. I am not rich; the price of my connection is not
+wholly paid up. If the bench should allow you a maintenance, that is to
+say, a sum advanced on your prospects, they will not do so till you
+have proved that you are Comte Chabert, grand officer of the Legion of
+Honor."
+
+"To be sure, I am a grand officer of the Legion of Honor; I had
+forgotten that," said he simply.
+
+"Well, until then," Derville went on, "will you not have to engage
+pleaders, to have documents copied, to keep the underlings of the
+law going, and to support yourself? The expenses of the preliminary
+inquiries will, at a rough guess, amount to ten or twelve thousand
+francs. I have not so much to lend you--I am crushed as it is by the
+enormous interest I have to pay on the money I borrowed to buy my
+business; and you?--Where can you find it."
+
+Large tears gathered in the poor veteran's faded eyes, and rolled down
+his withered cheeks. This outlook of difficulties discouraged him. The
+social and the legal world weighed on his breast like a nightmare.
+
+"I will go to the foot of the Vendome column!" he cried. "I will call
+out: 'I am Colonel Chabert who rode through the Russian square at
+Eylau!'--The statue--he--he will know me."
+
+"And you will find yourself in Charenton."
+
+At this terrible name the soldier's transports collapsed.
+
+"And will there be no hope for me at the Ministry of War?"
+
+"The war office!" said Derville. "Well, go there; but take a formal
+legal opinion with you, nullifying the certificate of your death. The
+government offices would be only too glad if they could annihilate the
+men of the Empire."
+
+The Colonel stood for a while, speechless, motionless, his eyes fixed,
+but seeing nothing, sunk in bottomless despair. Military justice is
+ready and swift; it decides with Turk-like finality, and almost always
+rightly. This was the only justice known to Chabert. As he saw the
+labyrinth of difficulties into which he must plunge, and how much money
+would be required for the journey, the poor old soldier was mortally hit
+in that power peculiar to man, and called the Will. He thought it would
+be impossible to live as party to a lawsuit; it seemed a thousand times
+simpler to remain poor and a beggar, or to enlist as a trooper if any
+regiment would pass him.
+
+His physical and mental sufferings had already impaired his bodily
+health in some of the most important organs. He was on the verge of one
+of those maladies for which medicine has no name, and of which the seat
+is in some degree variable, like the nervous system itself, the part
+most frequently attacked of the whole human machine, a malady which may
+be designated as the heart-sickness of the unfortunate. However serious
+this invisible but real disorder might already be, it could still be
+cured by a happy issue. But a fresh obstacle, an unexpected incident,
+would be enough to wreck this vigorous constitution, to break the
+weakened springs, and produce the hesitancy, the aimless, unfinished
+movements, which physiologists know well in men undermined by grief.
+
+Derville, detecting in his client the symptoms of extreme dejection,
+said to him:
+
+"Take courage; the end of the business cannot fail to be in your favor.
+Only, consider whether you can give me your whole confidence and blindly
+accept the result I may think best for your interests."
+
+"Do what you will," said Chabert.
+
+"Yes, but you surrender yourself to me like a man marching to his
+death."
+
+"Must I not be left to live without a position, without a name? Is that
+endurable?"
+
+"That is not my view of it," said the lawyer. "We will try a friendly
+suit, to annul both your death certificate and your marriage, so as to
+put you in possession of your rights. You may even, by Comte Ferraud's
+intervention, have your name replaced on the army list as general, and
+no doubt you will get a pension."
+
+"Well, proceed then," said Chabert. "I put myself entirely in your
+hands."
+
+"I will send you a power of attorney to sign," said Derville. "Good-bye.
+Keep up your courage. If you want money, rely on me."
+
+Chabert warmly wrung the lawyer's hand, and remained standing with his
+back against the wall, not having the energy to follow him excepting
+with his eyes. Like all men who know but little of legal matters, he was
+frightened by this unforeseen struggle.
+
+During their interview, several times, the figure of a man posted in the
+street had come forward from behind one of the gate-pillars, watching
+for Derville to depart, and he now accosted the lawyer. He was an old
+man, wearing a blue waistcoat and a white-pleated kilt, like a brewer's;
+on his head was an otter-skin cap. His face was tanned, hollow-cheeked,
+and wrinkled, but ruddy on the cheek-bones by hard work and exposure to
+the open air.
+
+"Asking your pardon, sir," said he, taking Derville by the arm, "if I
+take the liberty of speaking to you. But I fancied, from the look of
+you, that you were a friend of our General's."
+
+"And what then?" replied Derville. "What concern have you with him?--But
+who are you?" said the cautious lawyer.
+
+"I am Louis Vergniaud," he replied at once. "I have a few words to say
+to you."
+
+"So you are the man who has lodged Comte Chabert as I have found him?"
+
+"Asking your pardon, sir, he has the best room. I would have given him
+mine if I had had but one; I could have slept in the stable. A man
+who has suffered as he has, who teaches my kids to read, a general,
+an Egyptian, the first lieutenant I ever served under--What do you
+think?--Of us all, he is best served. I shared what I had with him.
+Unfortunately, it is not much to boast of--bread, milk, eggs. Well,
+well; it's neighbors' fare, sir. And he is heartily welcome.--But he has
+hurt our feelings."
+
+"He?"
+
+"Yes, sir, hurt our feelings. To be plain with you, I have taken a
+larger business than I can manage, and he saw it. Well, it worried
+him; he must needs mind the horse! I says to him, 'Really, General----'
+'Bah!' says he, 'I am not going to eat my head off doing nothing. I
+learned to rub a horse down many a year ago.'--I had some bills out for
+the purchase money of my dairy--a fellow named Grados--Do you know him,
+sir?"
+
+"But, my good man, I have not time to listen to your story. Only tell me
+how the Colonel offended you."
+
+"He hurt our feelings, sir, as sure as my name is Louis Vergniaud, and
+my wife cried about it. He heard from our neighbors that we had not a
+sou to begin to meet the bills with. The old soldier, as he is, he saved
+up all you gave him, he watched for the bill to come in, and he paid it.
+Such a trick! While my wife and me, we knew he had no tobacco, poor old
+boy, and went without.--Oh! now--yes, he has his cigar every morning!
+I would sell my soul for it--No, we are hurt. Well, so I wanted to ask
+you--for he said you were a good sort--to lend us a hundred crowns on
+the stock, so that we may get him some clothes, and furnish his room.
+He thought he was getting us out of debt, you see? Well, it's just
+the other way; the old man is running us into debt--and hurt our
+feelings!--He ought not to have stolen a march on us like that. And we
+his friends, too!--On my word as an honest man, as sure as my name is
+Louis Vergniaud, I would sooner sell up and enlist than fail to pay you
+back your money----"
+
+Derville looked at the dairyman, and stepped back a few paces to glance
+at the house, the yard, the manure-pool, the cowhouse, the rabbits, the
+children.
+
+"On my honor, I believe it is characteristic of virtue to have nothing
+to do with riches!" thought he.
+
+"All right, you shall have your hundred crowns, and more. But I shall
+not give them to you; the Colonel will be rich enough to help, and I
+will not deprive him of the pleasure."
+
+"And will that be soon?"
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+"Ah, dear God! how glad my wife will be!" and the cowkeeper's tanned
+face seemed to expand.
+
+"Now," said Derville to himself, as he got into his cab again, "let us
+call on our opponent. We must not show our hand, but try to see hers,
+and win the game at one stroke. She must be frightened. She is a woman.
+Now, what frightens women most? A woman is afraid of nothing but..."
+
+And he set to work to study the Countess' position, falling into one of
+those brown studies to which great politicians give themselves up when
+concocting their own plans and trying to guess the secrets of a hostile
+Cabinet. Are not attorneys, in a way, statesmen in charge of private
+affairs?
+
+But a brief survey of the situation in which the Comte Ferraud and
+his wife now found themselves is necessary for a comprehension of the
+lawyer's cleverness.
+
+Monsieur le Comte Ferraud was the only son of a former Councillor in the
+old _Parlement_ of Paris, who had emigrated during the Reign of Terror,
+and so, though he saved his head, lost his fortune. He came back under
+the Consulate, and remained persistently faithful to the cause of Louis
+XVIII., in whose circle his father had moved before the Revolution.
+He thus was one of the party in the Faubourg Saint-Germain which nobly
+stood out against Napoleon's blandishments. The reputation for capacity
+gained by the young Count--then simply called Monsieur Ferraud--made him
+the object of the Emperor's advances, for he was often as well pleased
+at his conquests among the aristocracy as at gaining a battle. The Count
+was promised the restitution of his title, of such of his estates as had
+not been sold, and he was shown in perspective a place in the ministry
+or as senator.
+
+The Emperor fell.
+
+At the time of Comte Chabert's death, M. Ferraud was a young man of
+six-and-twenty, without a fortune, of pleasing appearance, who had had
+his successes, and whom the Faubourg Saint-Germain had adopted as doing
+it credit; but Madame la Comtesse Chabert had managed to turn her share
+of her husband's fortune to such good account that, after eighteen
+months of widowhood, she had about forty thousand francs a year. Her
+marriage to the young Count was not regarded as news in the circles of
+the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Napoleon, approving of this union, which
+carried out his idea of fusion, restored to Madame Chabert the money
+falling to the Exchequer under her husband's will; but Napoleon's hopes
+were again disappointed. Madame Ferraud was not only in love with her
+lover; she had also been fascinated by the notion of getting into
+the haughty society which, in spite of its humiliation, was still
+predominant at the Imperial Court. By this marriage all her vanities
+were as much gratified as her passions. She was to become a real fine
+lady. When the Faubourg Saint-Germain understood that the young Count's
+marriage did not mean desertion, its drawing-rooms were thrown open to
+his wife.
+
+Then came the Restoration. The Count's political advancement was not
+rapid. He understood the exigencies of the situation in which Louis
+XVIII. found himself; he was one of the inner circle who waited till the
+"Gulf of Revolution should be closed"--for this phrase of the King's, at
+which the Liberals laughed so heartily, had a political sense. The order
+quoted in the long lawyer's preamble at the beginning of this story had,
+however, put him in possession of two tracts of forest, and of an estate
+which had considerably increased in value during its sequestration. At
+the present moment, though Comte Ferraud was a Councillor of State, and
+a Director-General, he regarded his position as merely the first step of
+his political career.
+
+Wholly occupied as he was by the anxieties of consuming ambition, he had
+attached to himself, as secretary, a ruined attorney named Delbecq, a
+more than clever man, versed in all the resources of the law, to whom he
+left the conduct of his private affairs. This shrewd practitioner had so
+well understood his position with the Count as to be honest in his own
+interest. He hoped to get some place by his master's influence, and he
+made the Count's fortune his first care. His conduct so effectually gave
+the lie to his former life, that he was regarded as a slandered man. The
+Countess, with the tact and shrewdness of which most women have a share
+more or less, understood the man's motives, watched him quietly,
+and managed him so well, that she had made good use of him for the
+augmentation of her private fortune. She had contrived to make Delbecq
+believe that she ruled her husband, and had promised to get him
+appointed President of an inferior court in some important provincial
+town, if he devoted himself entirely to her interests.
+
+The promise of a place, not dependent on changes of ministry, which
+would allow of his marrying advantageously, and rising subsequently to
+a high political position, by being chosen Depute, made Delbecq the
+Countess' abject slave. He had never allowed her to miss one of those
+favorable chances which the fluctuations of the Bourse and the increased
+value of property afforded to clever financiers in Paris during the
+first three years after the Restoration. He had trebled his protectress'
+capital, and all the more easily because the Countess had no scruples
+as to the means which might make her an enormous fortune as quickly as
+possible. The emoluments derived by the Count from the places he held
+she spent on the housekeeping, so as to reinvest her dividends; and
+Delbecq lent himself to these calculations of avarice without trying to
+account for her motives. People of that sort never trouble themselves
+about any secrets of which the discovery is not necessary to their own
+interests. And, indeed, he naturally found the reason in the thirst for
+money, which taints almost every Parisian woman; and as a fine fortune
+was needed to support the pretensions of Comte Ferraud, the secretary
+sometimes fancied that he saw in the Countess' greed a consequence of
+her devotion to a husband with whom she still was in love. The Countess
+buried the secrets of her conduct at the bottom of her heart. There lay
+the secrets of life and death to her, there lay the turning-point of
+this history.
+
+At the beginning of the year 1818 the Restoration was settled on
+an apparently immovable foundation; its doctrines of government, as
+understood by lofty minds, seemed calculated to bring to France an era
+of renewed prosperity, and Parisian society changed its aspect. Madame
+la Comtesse Ferraud found that by chance she had achieved for love a
+marriage that had brought her fortune and gratified ambition. Still
+young and handsome, Madame Ferraud played the part of a woman of
+fashion, and lived in the atmosphere of the Court. Rich herself, with a
+rich husband who was cried up as one of the ablest men of the royalist
+party, and, as a friend of the King, certain to be made Minister, she
+belonged to the aristocracy, and shared its magnificence. In the midst
+of this triumph she was attacked by a moral canker. There are feelings
+which women guess in spite of the care men take to bury them. On
+the first return of the King, Comte Ferraud had begun to regret his
+marriage. Colonel Chabert's widow had not been the means of allying him
+to anybody; he was alone and unsupported in steering his way in a course
+full of shoals and beset by enemies. Also, perhaps, when he came to
+judge his wife coolly, he may have discerned in her certain vices of
+education which made her unfit to second him in his schemes.
+
+A speech he made, _a propos_ of Talleyrand's marriage, enlightened the
+Countess, to whom it proved that if he had still been a free man she
+would never have been Madame Ferraud. What woman could forgive this
+repentance? Does it not include the germs of every insult, every crime,
+every form of repudiation? But what a wound must it have left in the
+Countess' heart, supposing that she lived in the dread of her first
+husband's return? She had known that he still lived, and she had ignored
+him. Then during the time when she had heard no more of him, she had
+chosen to believe that he had fallen at Waterloo with the Imperial
+Eagle, at the same time as Boutin. She resolved, nevertheless, to bind
+the Count to her by the strongest of all ties, by a chain of gold, and
+vowed to be so rich that her fortune might make her second marriage
+dissoluble, if by chance Colonel Chabert should ever reappear. And he
+had reappeared; and she could not explain to herself why the struggle
+she had dreaded had not already begun. Suffering, sickness, had perhaps
+delivered her from that man. Perhaps he was half mad, and Charenton
+might yet do her justice. She had not chosen to take either Delbecq or
+the police into her confidence, for fear of putting herself in their
+power, or of hastening the catastrophe. There are in Paris many women
+who, like the Countess Ferraud, live with an unknown moral monster, or
+on the brink of an abyss; a callus forms over the spot that tortures
+them, and they can still laugh and enjoy themselves.
+
+"There is something very strange in Comte Ferraud's position," said
+Derville to himself, on emerging from his long reverie, as his cab
+stopped at the door of the Hotel Ferraud in the Rue de Varennes. "How is
+it that he, so rich as he is, and such a favorite with the King, is not
+yet a peer of France? It may, to be sure, be true that the King, as
+Mme. de Grandlieu was telling me, desires to keep up the value of the
+_pairie_ by not bestowing it right and left. And, after all, the son of
+a Councillor of the _Parlement_ is not a Crillon nor a Rohan. A Comte
+Ferraud can only get into the Upper Chamber surreptitiously. But if his
+marriage were annulled, could he not get the dignity of some old peer
+who has only daughters transferred to himself, to the King's great
+satisfaction? At any rate this will be a good bogey to put forward and
+frighten the Countess," thought he as he went up the steps.
+
+Derville had without knowing it laid his finger on the hidden wound, put
+his hand on the canker that consumed Madame Ferraud.
+
+She received him in a pretty winter dining-room, where she was at
+breakfast, while playing with a monkey tethered by a chain to a little
+pole with climbing bars of iron. The Countess was in an elegant wrapper;
+the curls of her hair, carelessly pinned up, escaped from a cap, giving
+her an arch look. She was fresh and smiling. Silver, gilding, and
+mother-of-pearl shone on the table, and all about the room were rare
+plants growing in magnificent china jars. As he saw Colonel Chabert's
+wife, rich with his spoil, in the lap of luxury and the height of
+fashion, while he, poor wretch, was living with a poor dairyman among
+the beasts, the lawyer said to himself:
+
+"The moral of all this is that a pretty woman will never acknowledge as
+her husband, nor even as a lover, a man in an old box-coat, a tow wig,
+and boots with holes in them."
+
+A mischievous and bitter smile expressed the feelings, half
+philosophical and half satirical, which such a man was certain to
+experience--a man well situated to know the truth of things in spite of
+the lies behind which most families in Paris hide their mode of life.
+
+"Good-morning, Monsieur Derville," said she, giving the monkey some
+coffee to drink.
+
+"Madame," said he, a little sharply, for the light tone in which she
+spoke jarred on him. "I have come to speak with you on a very serious
+matter."
+
+"I am so _grieved_, M. le Comte is away--"
+
+"I, madame, am delighted. It would be grievous if he could be present at
+our interview. Besides, I am informed through M. Delbecq that you like
+to manage your own business without troubling the Count."
+
+"Then I will send for Delbecq," said she.
+
+"He would be of no use to you, clever as he is," replied Derville.
+"Listen to me, madame; one word will be enough to make you grave.
+Colonel Chabert is alive!"
+
+"Is it by telling me such nonsense as that that you think you can make
+me grave?" said she with a shout of laughter. But she was suddenly
+quelled by the singular penetration of the fixed gaze which Derville
+turned on her, seeming to read to the bottom of her soul.
+
+"Madame," he said with cold and piercing solemnity, "you know not the
+extent of the danger that threatens you. I need say nothing of the
+indisputable authenticity of the evidence nor of the fulness of proof
+which testifies to the identity of Comte Chabert. I am not, as you know,
+the man to take up a bad cause. If you resist our proceedings to show
+that the certificate of death was false, you will lose that first case,
+and that matter once settled, we shall gain every point."
+
+"What, then, do you wish to discuss with me?"
+
+"Neither the Colonel nor yourself. Nor need I allude to the briefs which
+clever advocates may draw up when armed with the curious facts of this
+case, or the advantage they may derive from the letters you received
+from your first husband before your marriage to your second."
+
+"It is false," she cried, with the violence of a spoilt woman. "I never
+had a letter from Comte Chabert; and if some one is pretending to be
+the Colonel, it is some swindler, some returned convict, like Coignard
+perhaps. It makes me shudder only to think of it. Can the Colonel rise
+from the dead, monsieur? Bonaparte sent an aide-de-camp to inquire for
+me on his death, and to this day I draw the pension of three thousand
+francs granted to this widow by the Government. I have been perfectly in
+the right to turn away all the Chaberts who have ever come, as I shall
+all who may come."
+
+"Happily we are alone, madame. We can tell lies at our ease," said he
+coolly, and finding it amusing to lash up the Countess' rage so as to
+lead her to betray herself, by tactics familiar to lawyers, who are
+accustomed to keep cool when their opponents or their clients are in
+a passion. "Well, then, we must fight it out," thought he, instantly
+hitting on a plan to entrap her and show her her weakness.
+
+"The proof that you received the first letter, madame, is that it
+contained some securities--"
+
+"Oh, as to securities--that it certainly did not."
+
+"Then you received the letter," said Derville, smiling. "You are caught,
+madame, in the first snare laid for you by an attorney, and you fancy
+you could fight against Justice----"
+
+The Countess colored, and then turned pale, hiding her face in her
+hands. Then she shook off her shame, and retorted with the natural
+impertinence of such women, "Since you are the so-called Chabert's
+attorney, be so good as to--"
+
+"Madame," said Derville, "I am at this moment as much your lawyer as I
+am Colonel Chabert's. Do you suppose I want to lose so valuable a client
+as you are?--But you are not listening."
+
+"Nay, speak on, monsieur," said she graciously.
+
+"Your fortune came to you from M. le Comte Chabert, and you cast him
+off. Your fortune is immense, and you leave him to beg. An advocate
+can be very eloquent when a cause is eloquent in itself; there are here
+circumstances which might turn public opinion strongly against you."
+
+"But, monsieur," said the Comtesse, provoked by the way in which
+Derville turned and laid her on the gridiron, "even if I grant that your
+M. Chabert is living, the law will uphold my second marriage on account
+of the children, and I shall get off with the restitution of two hundred
+and twenty-five thousand francs to M. Chabert."
+
+"It is impossible to foresee what view the Bench may take of the
+question. If on one side we have a mother and children, on the other we
+have an old man crushed by sorrows, made old by your refusals to know
+him. Where is he to find a wife? Can the judges contravene the law? Your
+marriage with Colonel Chabert has priority on its side and every legal
+right. But if you appear under disgraceful colors, you might have an
+unlooked-for adversary. That, madame, is the danger against which I
+would warn you."
+
+"And who is he?"
+
+"Comte Ferraud."
+
+"Monsieur Ferraud has too great an affection for me, too much respect
+for the mother of his children--"
+
+"Do not talk of such absurd things," interrupted Derville, "to lawyers,
+who are accustomed to read hearts to the bottom. At this instant
+Monsieur Ferraud has not the slightest wish to annual your union, and I
+am quite sure that he adores you; but if some one were to tell him that
+his marriage is void, that his wife will be called before the bar of
+public opinion as a criminal--"
+
+"He would defend me, monsieur."
+
+"No, madame."
+
+"What reason could he have for deserting me, monsieur?"
+
+"That he would be free to marry the only daughter of a peer of France,
+whose title would be conferred on him by patent from the King."
+
+The Countess turned pale.
+
+"A hit!" said Derville to himself. "I have you on the hip; the poor
+Colonel's case is won."--"Besides, madame," he went on aloud, "he would
+feel all the less remorse because a man covered with glory--a
+General, Count, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor--is not such a bad
+alternative; and if that man insisted on his wife's returning to him--"
+
+"Enough, enough, monsieur!" she exclaimed. "I will never have any lawyer
+but you. What is to be done?"
+
+"Compromise!" said Derville.
+
+"Does he still love me?" she said.
+
+"Well, I do not think he can do otherwise."
+
+The Countess raised her head at these words. A flash of hope shone in
+her eyes; she thought perhaps that she could speculate on her first
+husband's affection to gain her cause by some feminine cunning.
+
+"I shall await your orders, madame, to know whether I am to report our
+proceedings to you, or if you will come to my office to agree to the
+terms of a compromise," said Derville, taking leave.
+
+
+
+A week after Derville had paid these two visits, on a fine morning
+in June, the husband and wife, who had been separated by an almost
+supernatural chance, started from the opposite ends of Paris to meet in
+the office of the lawyer who was engaged by both. The supplies liberally
+advanced by Derville to Colonel Chabert had enabled him to dress as
+suited his position in life, and the dead man arrived in a very decent
+cab. He wore a wig suited to his face, was dressed in blue cloth with
+white linen, and wore under his waistcoat the broad red ribbon of the
+higher grade of the Legion of Honor. In resuming the habits of wealth he
+had recovered his soldierly style. He held himself up; his face, grave
+and mysterious-looking, reflected his happiness and all his hopes, and
+seemed to have acquired youth and _impasto_, to borrow a picturesque
+word from the painter's art. He was no more like the Chabert of the old
+box-coat than a cartwheel double sou is like a newly coined forty-franc
+piece. The passer-by, only to see him, would have recognized at once one
+of the noble wrecks of our old army, one of the heroic men on whom
+our national glory is reflected, as a splinter of ice on which the sun
+shines seems to reflect every beam. These veterans are at once a picture
+and a book.
+
+When the Count jumped out of his carriage to go into Derville's office,
+he did it as lightly as a young man. Hardly had his cab moved off,
+when a smart brougham drove up, splendid with coats-of-arms. Madame
+la Comtesse Ferraud stepped out in a dress which, though simple, was
+cleverly designed to show how youthful her figure was. She wore a pretty
+drawn bonnet lined with pink, which framed her face to perfection,
+softening its outlines and making it look younger.
+
+If the clients were rejuvenescent, the office was unaltered, and
+presented the same picture as that described at the beginning of this
+story. Simonnin was eating his breakfast, his shoulder leaning against
+the window, which was then open, and he was staring up at the blue sky
+in the opening of the courtyard enclosed by four gloomy houses.
+
+"Ah, ha!" cried the little clerk, "who will bet an evening at the play
+that Colonel Chabert is a General, and wears a red ribbon?"
+
+"The chief is a great magician," said Godeschal.
+
+"Then there is no trick to play on him this time?" asked Desroches.
+
+"His wife has taken that in hand, the Comtesse Ferraud," said Boucard.
+
+"What next?" said Godeschal. "Is Comtesse Ferraud required to belong to
+two men?"
+
+"Here she is," answered Simonnin.
+
+"So you are not deaf, you young rogue!" said Chabert, taking the
+gutter-jumper by the ear and twisting it, to the delight of the other
+clerks, who began to laugh, looking at the Colonel with the curious
+attention due to so singular a personage.
+
+Comte Chabert was in Derville's private room at the moment when his wife
+came in by the door of the office.
+
+"I say, Boucard, there is going to be a queer scene in the chief's room!
+There is a woman who can spend her days alternately, the odd with Comte
+Ferraud, and the even with Comte Chabert."
+
+"And in leap year," said Godeschal, "they must settle the _count_
+between them."
+
+"Silence, gentlemen, you can be heard!" said Boucard severely. "I never
+was in an office where there was so much jesting as there is here over
+the clients."
+
+Derville had made the Colonel retire to the bedroom when the Countess
+was admitted.
+
+"Madame," he said, "not knowing whether it would be agreeable to you
+to meet M. le Comte Chabert, I have placed you apart. If, however, you
+should wish it--"
+
+"It is an attention for which I am obliged to you."
+
+"I have drawn up the memorandum of an agreement of which you and M.
+Chabert can discuss the conditions, here, and now. I will go alternately
+to him and to you, and explain your views respectively."
+
+"Let me see, monsieur," said the Countess impatiently.
+
+Derville read aloud:
+
+"'Between the undersigned:
+
+"'M. Hyacinthe Chabert, Count, Marechal de Camp, and Grand Officer of
+the Legion of Honor, living in Paris, Rue du Petit-Banquier, on the one
+part;
+
+"'And Madame Rose Chapotel, wife of the aforesaid M. le Comte Chabert,
+_nee_--'"
+
+"Pass over the preliminaries," said she. "Come to the conditions."
+
+"Madame," said the lawyer, "the preamble briefly sets forth the position
+in which you stand to each other. Then, by the first clause, you
+acknowledge, in the presence of three witnesses, of whom two shall be
+notaries, and one the dairyman with whom your husband has been lodging,
+to all of whom your secret is known, and who will be absolutely
+silent--you acknowledge, I say, that the individual designated in the
+documents subjoined to the deed, and whose identity is to be further
+proved by an act of recognition prepared by your notary, Alexandre
+Crottat, is your first husband, Comte Chabert. By the second clause
+Comte Chabert, to secure your happiness, will undertake to assert his
+rights only under certain circumstances set forth in the deed.--And
+these," said Derville, in a parenthesis, "are none other than a failure
+to carry out the conditions of this secret agreement.--M. Chabert, on
+his part, agrees to accept judgment on a friendly suit, by which his
+certificate of death shall be annulled, and his marriage dissolved."
+
+"That will not suit me in the least," said the Countess with surprise.
+"I will be a party to no suit; you know why."
+
+"By the third clause," Derville went on, with imperturbable coolness,
+"you pledge yourself to secure to Hyacinthe Comte Chabert an income of
+twenty-four thousand francs on government stock held in his name, to
+revert to you at his death--"
+
+"But it is much too dear!" exclaimed the Countess.
+
+"Can you compromise the matter cheaper?"
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"But what do you want, madame?"
+
+"I want--I will not have a lawsuit. I want--"
+
+"You want him to remain dead?" said Derville, interrupting her hastily.
+
+"Monsieur," said the Countess, "if twenty-four thousand francs a year
+are necessary, we will go to law--"
+
+"Yes, we will go to law," said the Colonel in a deep voice, as he opened
+the door and stood before his wife, with one hand in his waistcoat and
+the other hanging by his side--an attitude to which the recollection of
+his adventure gave horrible significance.
+
+"It is he," said the Countess to herself.
+
+"Too dear!" the old soldier exclaimed. "I have given you near on a
+million, and you are cheapening my misfortunes. Very well; now I will
+have you--you and your fortune. Our goods are in common, our marriage is
+not dissolved--"
+
+"But monsieur is not Colonel Chabert!" cried the Countess, in feigned
+amazement.
+
+"Indeed!" said the old man, in a tone of intense irony. "Do you want
+proofs? I found you in the Palais Royal----"
+
+The Countess turned pale. Seeing her grow white under her rouge, the old
+soldier paused, touched by the acute suffering he was inflicting on the
+woman he had once so ardently loved; but she shot such a venomous glance
+at him that he abruptly went on:
+
+"You were with La--"
+
+"Allow me, Monsieur Derville," said the Countess to the lawyer. "You
+must give me leave to retire. I did not come here to listen to such
+dreadful things."
+
+She rose and went out. Derville rushed after her; but the Countess had
+taken wings, and seemed to have flown from the place.
+
+On returning to his private room, he found the Colonel in a towering
+rage, striding up and down.
+
+"In those times a man took his wife where he chose," said he. "But I was
+foolish and chose badly; I trusted to appearances. She has no heart."
+
+"Well, Colonel, was I not right to beg you not to come?--I am now
+positive of your identity; when you came in, the Countess gave a little
+start, of which the meaning was unequivocal. But you have lost your
+chances. Your wife knows that you are unrecognizable."
+
+"I will kill her!"
+
+"Madness! you will be caught and executed like any common wretch.
+Besides you might miss! That would be unpardonable. A man must not miss
+his shot when he wants to kill his wife.--Let me set things straight;
+you are only a big child. Go now. Take care of yourself; she is capable
+of setting some trap for you and shutting you up in Charenton. I will
+notify her of our proceedings to protect you against a surprise."
+
+The unhappy Colonel obeyed his young benefactor, and went away,
+stammering apologies. He slowly went down the dark staircase, lost in
+gloomy thoughts, and crushed perhaps by the blow just dealt him--the
+most cruel he could feel, the thrust that could most deeply pierce
+his heart--when he heard the rustle of a woman's dress on the lowest
+landing, and his wife stood before him.
+
+"Come, monsieur," said she, taking his arm with a gesture like those
+familiar to him of old. Her action and the accent of her voice, which
+had recovered its graciousness, were enough to allay the Colonel's
+wrath, and he allowed himself to be led to the carriage.
+
+"Well, get in!" said she, when the footman had let down the step.
+
+And as if by magic, he found himself sitting by his wife in the
+brougham.
+
+"Where to?" asked the servant.
+
+"To Groslay," said she.
+
+The horses started at once, and carried them all across Paris.
+
+"Monsieur," said the Countess, in a tone of voice which betrayed one of
+those emotions which are rare in our lives, and which agitate every part
+of our being. At such moments the heart, fibres, nerves, countenance,
+soul, and body, everything, every pore even, feels a thrill. Life
+no longer seems to be within us; it flows out, springs forth, is
+communicated as if by contagion, transmitted by a look, a tone of voice,
+a gesture, impressing our will on others. The old soldier started on
+hearing this single word, this first, terrible "monsieur!" But still it
+was at once a reproach and a pardon, a hope and a despair, a question
+and an answer. This word included them all; none but an actress could
+have thrown so much eloquence, so many feelings into a single word.
+Truth is less complete in its utterance; it does not put everything on
+the outside; it allows us to see what is within. The Colonel was filled
+with remorse for his suspicions, his demands, and his anger; he looked
+down not to betray his agitation.
+
+"Monsieur," repeated she, after an imperceptible pause, "I knew you at
+once."
+
+"Rosine," said the old soldier, "those words contain the only balm that
+can help me to forget my misfortunes."
+
+Two large tears rolled hot on to his wife's hands, which he pressed to
+show his paternal affection.
+
+"Monsieur," she went on, "could you not have guessed what it cost me
+to appear before a stranger in a position so false as mine now is? If
+I have to blush for it, at least let it be in the privacy of my family.
+Ought not such a secret to remain buried in our hearts? You will forgive
+me, I hope, for my apparent indifference to the woes of a Chabert in
+whose existence I could not possibly believe. I received your letters,"
+she hastily added, seeing in his face the objection it expressed, "but
+they did not reach me till thirteen months after the battle of Eylau.
+They were opened, dirty, the writing was unrecognizable; and after
+obtaining Napoleon's signature to my second marriage contract, I could
+not help believing that some clever swindler wanted to make a fool of
+me. Therefore, to avoid disturbing Monsieur Ferraud's peace of mind,
+and disturbing family ties, I was obliged to take precautions against a
+pretended Chabert. Was I not right, I ask you?"
+
+"Yes, you were right. It was I who was the idiot, the owl, the dolt, not
+to have calculated better what the consequences of such a position might
+be.--But where are we going?" he asked, seeing that they had reached the
+barrier of La Chapelle.
+
+"To my country house near Groslay, in the valley of Montmorency. There,
+monsieur, we will consider the steps to be taken. I know my duties.
+Though I am yours by right, I am no longer yours in fact. Can you wish
+that we should become the talk of Paris? We need not inform the public
+of a situation, which for me has its ridiculous side, and let us
+preserve our dignity. You still love me," she said, with a sad, sweet
+gaze at the Colonel, "but have not I been authorized to form other ties?
+In so strange a position, a secret voice bids me trust to your kindness,
+which is so well known to me. Can I be wrong in taking you as the sole
+arbiter of my fate? Be at once judge and party to the suit. I trust in
+your noble character; you will be generous enough to forgive me for the
+consequences of faults committed in innocence. I may then confess to
+you: I love M. Ferraud. I believed that I had a right to love him. I
+do not blush to make this confession to you; even if it offends you, it
+does not disgrace us. I cannot conceal the facts. When fate made me a
+widow, I was not a mother."
+
+The Colonel with a wave of his hand bid his wife be silent, and for a
+mile and a half they sat without speaking a single word. Chabert could
+fancy he saw the two little ones before him.
+
+"Rosine."
+
+"Monsieur?"
+
+"The dead are very wrong to come to life again."
+
+"Oh, monsieur, no, no! Do not think me ungrateful. Only, you find me a
+lover, a mother, while you left me merely a wife. Though it is no longer
+in my power to love, I know how much I owe you, and I can still offer
+you all the affection of a daughter."
+
+"Rosine," said the old man in a softened tone, "I no longer feel any
+resentment against you. We will forget anything," he added, with one of
+those smiles which always reflect a noble soul; "I have not so little
+delicacy as to demand the mockery of love from a wife who no longer
+loves me."
+
+The Countess gave him a flashing look full of such deep gratitude that
+poor Chabert would have been glad to sink again into his grave at Eylau.
+Some men have a soul strong enough for such self-devotion, of which the
+whole reward consists in the assurance that they have made the person
+they love happy.
+
+"My dear friend, we will talk all this over later when our hearts have
+rested," said the Countess.
+
+The conversation turned to other subjects, for it was impossible to
+dwell very long on this one. Though the couple came back again and
+again to their singular position, either by some allusion or of serious
+purpose, they had a delightful drive, recalling the events of their
+former life together and the times of the Empire. The Countess knew how
+to lend peculiar charm to her reminiscences, and gave the conversation
+the tinge of melancholy that was needed to keep it serious. She revived
+his love without awakening his desires, and allowed her first husband to
+discern the mental wealth she had acquired while trying to accustom him
+to moderate his pleasure to that which a father may feel in the society
+of a favorite daughter.
+
+The Colonel had known the Countess of the Empire; he found her a
+Countess of the Restoration.
+
+At last, by a cross-road, they arrived at the entrance to a large park
+lying in the little valley which divides the heights of Margency from
+the pretty village of Groslay. The Countess had there a delightful
+house, where the Colonel on arriving found everything in readiness
+for his stay there, as well as for his wife's. Misfortune is a kind
+of talisman whose virtue consists in its power to confirm our original
+nature; in some men it increases their distrust and malignancy, just as
+it improves the goodness of those who have a kind heart.
+
+Sorrow had made the Colonel even more helpful and good than he had
+always been, and he could understand some secrets of womanly distress
+which are unrevealed to most men. Nevertheless, in spite of his loyal
+trustfulness, he could not help saying to his wife:
+
+"Then you felt quite sure you would bring me here?"
+
+"Yes," replied she, "if I found Colonel Chabert in Derville's client."
+
+The appearance of truth she contrived to give to this answer dissipated
+the slight suspicions which the Colonel was ashamed to have felt. For
+three days the Countess was quite charming to her first husband. By
+tender attentions and unfailing sweetness she seemed anxious to wipe out
+the memory of the sufferings he had endured, and to earn forgiveness
+for the woes which, as she confessed, she had innocently caused him. She
+delighted in displaying for him the charms she knew he took pleasure
+in, while at the same time she assumed a kind of melancholy; for men are
+more especially accessible to certain ways, certain graces of the heart
+or of the mind which they cannot resist. She aimed at interesting him in
+her position, and appealing to his feelings so far as to take possession
+of his mind and control him despotically.
+
+Ready for anything to attain her ends, she did not yet know what she
+was to do with this man; but at any rate she meant to annihilate him
+socially. On the evening of the third day she felt that in spite of her
+efforts she could not conceal her uneasiness as to the results of her
+manoeuvres. To give herself a minute's reprieve she went up to her room,
+sat down before her writing-table, and laid aside the mask of composure
+which she wore in Chabert's presence, like an actress who, returning to
+her dressing-room after a fatiguing fifth act, drops half dead, leaving
+with the audience an image of herself which she no longer resembles. She
+proceeded to finish a letter she had begun to Delbecq, whom she desired
+to go in her name and demand of Derville the deeds relating to Colonel
+Chabert, to copy them, and to come to her at once to Groslay. She had
+hardly finished when she heard the Colonel's step in the passage; uneasy
+at her absence, he had come to look for her.
+
+"Alas!" she exclaimed, "I wish I were dead! My position is
+intolerable..."
+
+"Why, what is the matter?" asked the good man.
+
+"Nothing, nothing!" she replied.
+
+She rose, left the Colonel, and went down to speak privately to her
+maid, whom she sent off to Paris, impressing on her that she was herself
+to deliver to Delbecq the letter just written, and to bring it back to
+the writer as soon as he had read it. Then the Countess went out to sit
+on a bench sufficiently in sight for the Colonel to join her as soon as
+he might choose. The Colonel, who was looking for her, hastened up and
+sat down by her.
+
+"Rosine," said he, "what is the matter with you?"
+
+She did not answer.
+
+It was one of those glorious, calm evenings in the month of June, whose
+secret harmonies infuse such sweetness into the sunset. The air was
+clear, the stillness perfect, so that far away in the park they could
+hear the voices of some children, which added a kind of melody to the
+sublimity of the scene.
+
+"You do not answer me?" the Colonel said to his wife.
+
+"My husband----" said the Countess, who broke off, started a little, and
+with a blush stopped to ask him, "What am I to say when I speak of M.
+Ferraud?"
+
+"Call him your husband, my poor child," replied the Colonel, in a kind
+voice. "Is he not the father of your children?"
+
+"Well, then," she said, "if he should ask what I came here for, if he
+finds out that I came here, alone, with a stranger, what am I to say
+to him? Listen, monsieur," she went on, assuming a dignified attitude,
+"decide my fate, I am resigned to anything--"
+
+"My dear," said the Colonel, taking possession of his wife's hands, "I
+have made up my mind to sacrifice myself entirely for your happiness--"
+
+"That is impossible!" she exclaimed, with a sudden spasmodic movement.
+"Remember that you would have to renounce your identity, and in an
+authenticated form."
+
+"What?" said the Colonel. "Is not my word enough for you?"
+
+The word "authenticated" fell on the old man's heart, and roused
+involuntary distrust. He looked at his wife in a way that made her
+color, she cast down her eyes, and he feared that he might find himself
+compelled to despise her. The Countess was afraid lest she had scared
+the shy modesty, the stern honesty, of a man whose generous temper and
+primitive virtues were known to her. Though these feelings had brought
+the clouds to her brow, they immediately recovered their harmony. This
+was the way of it. A child's cry was heard in the distance.
+
+"Jules, leave your sister in peace," the Countess called out.
+
+"What, are your children here?" said Chabert.
+
+"Yes, but I told them not to trouble you."
+
+The old soldier understood the delicacy, the womanly tact of so gracious
+a precaution, and took the Countess' hand to kiss it.
+
+"But let them come," said he.
+
+The little girl ran up to complain of her brother.
+
+"Mamma!"
+
+"Mamma!"
+
+"It was Jules--"
+
+"It was her--"
+
+Their little hands were held out to their mother, and the two childish
+voices mingled; it was an unexpected and charming picture.
+
+"Poor little things!" cried the Countess, no longer restraining her
+tears, "I shall have to leave them. To whom will the law assign them? A
+mother's heart cannot be divided; I want them, I want them."
+
+"Are you making mamma cry?" said Jules, looking fiercely at the Colonel.
+
+"Silence, Jules!" said the mother in a decided tone.
+
+The two children stood speechless, examining their mother and the
+stranger with a curiosity which it is impossible to express in words.
+
+"Oh yes!" she cried. "If I am separated from the Count, only leave me my
+children, and I will submit to anything..."
+
+This was the decisive speech which gained all that she had hoped from
+it.
+
+"Yes," exclaimed the Colonel, as if he were ending a sentence already
+begun in his mind, "I must return underground again. I had told myself
+so already."
+
+"Can I accept such a sacrifice?" replied his wife. "If some men have
+died to save a mistress' honor, they gave their life but once. But
+in this case you would be giving your life every day. No, no. It is
+impossible. If it were only your life, it would be nothing; but to sign
+a declaration that you are not Colonel Chabert, to acknowledge yourself
+an imposter, to sacrifice your honor, and live a lie every hour of the
+day! Human devotion cannot go so far. Only think!--No. But for my poor
+children I would have fled with you by this time to the other end of the
+world."
+
+"But," said Chabert, "cannot I live here in your little lodge as one of
+your relations? I am as worn out as a cracked cannon; I want nothing but
+a little tobacco and the _Constitutionnel_."
+
+The Countess melted into tears. There was a contest of generosity
+between the Comtesse Ferraud and Colonel Chabert, and the soldier came
+out victorious. One evening, seeing this mother with her children, the
+soldier was bewitched by the touching grace of a family picture in the
+country, in the shade and the silence; he made a resolution to remain
+dead, and, frightened no longer at the authentication of a deed, he
+asked what he could do to secure beyond all risk the happiness of this
+family.
+
+"Do exactly as you like," said the Countess. "I declare to you that I
+will have nothing to do with this affair. I ought not."
+
+Delbecq had arrived some days before, and in obedience to the Countess'
+verbal instructions, the intendant had succeeded in gaining the old
+soldier's confidence. So on the following morning Colonel Chabert went
+with the erewhile attorney to Saint-Leu-Taverny, where Delbecq had
+caused the notary to draw up an affidavit in such terms that, after
+hearing it read, the Colonel started up and walked out of the office.
+
+"Turf and thunder! What a fool you must think me! Why, I should make
+myself out a swindler!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Indeed, monsieur," said Delbecq, "I should advise you not to sign in
+haste. In your place I would get at least thirty thousand francs a year
+out of the bargain. Madame would pay them."
+
+After annihilating this scoundrel _emeritus_ by the lightning look of an
+honest man insulted, the Colonel rushed off, carried away by a thousand
+contrary emotions. He was suspicious, indignant, and calm again by
+turns.
+
+Finally he made his way back into the park of Groslay by a gap in a
+fence, and slowly walked on to sit down and rest, and meditate at his
+ease, in a little room under a gazebo, from which the road to Saint-Leu
+could be seen. The path being strewn with the yellowish sand which is
+used instead of river-gravel, the Countess, who was sitting in the upper
+room of this little summer-house, did not hear the Colonel's approach,
+for she was too much preoccupied with the success of her business to pay
+the smallest attention to the slight noise made by her husband. Nor did
+the old man notice that his wife was in the room over him.
+
+"Well, Monsieur Delbecq, has he signed?" the Countess asked her
+secretary, whom she saw alone on the road beyond the hedge of a haha.
+
+"No, madame. I do not even know what has become of our man. The old
+horse reared."
+
+"Then we shall be obliged to put him into Charenton," said she, "since
+we have got him."
+
+The Colonel, who recovered the elasticity of youth to leap the haha,
+in the twinkling of an eye was standing in front of Delbecq, on whom he
+bestowed the two finest slaps that ever a scoundrel's cheeks received.
+
+"And you may add that old horses can kick!" said he.
+
+His rage spent, the Colonel no longer felt vigorous enough to leap the
+ditch. He had seen the truth in all its nakedness. The Countess' speech
+and Delbecq's reply had revealed the conspiracy of which he was to be
+the victim. The care taken of him was but a bait to entrap him in a
+snare. That speech was like a drop of subtle poison, bringing on in the
+old soldier a return of all his sufferings, physical and moral. He came
+back to the summer-house through the park gate, walking slowly like a
+broken man.
+
+Then for him there was to be neither peace nor truce. From this moment
+he must begin the odious warfare with this woman of which Derville had
+spoken, enter on a life of litigation, feed on gall, drink every morning
+of the cup of bitterness. And then--fearful thought!--where was he to
+find the money needful to pay the cost of the first proceedings? He felt
+such disgust of life, that if there had been any water at hand he would
+have thrown himself into it; that if he had had a pistol, he would
+have blown out his brains. Then he relapsed into the indecision of
+mind which, since his conversation with Derville at the dairyman's had
+changed his character.
+
+At last, having reached the kiosque, he went up to the gazebo, where
+little rose-windows afforded a view over each lovely landscape of the
+valley, and where he found his wife seated on a chair. The Countess was
+gazing at the distance, and preserved a calm countenance, showing that
+impenetrable face which women can assume when resolved to do their
+worst. She wiped her eyes as if she had been weeping, and played
+absently with the pink ribbons of her sash. Nevertheless, in spite of
+her apparent assurance, she could not help shuddering slightly when she
+saw before her her venerable benefactor, standing with folded arms, his
+face pale, his brow stern.
+
+"Madame," he said, after gazing at her fixedly for a moment and
+compelling her to blush, "Madame, I do not curse you--I scorn you. I can
+now thank the chance that has divided us. I do not feel even a desire
+for revenge; I no longer love you. I want nothing from you. Live in
+peace on the strength of my word; it is worth more than the scrawl of
+all the notaries in Paris. I will never assert my claim to the name I
+perhaps have made illustrious. I am henceforth but a poor devil named
+Hyacinthe, who asks no more than his share of the sunshine.--Farewell!"
+
+The Countess threw herself at his feet; she would have detained him by
+taking his hands, but he pushed her away with disgust, saying:
+
+"Do not touch me!"
+
+The Countess' expression when she heard her husband's retreating steps
+is quite indescribable. Then, with the deep perspicacity given only
+by utter villainy, or by fierce worldly selfishness, she knew that she
+might live in peace on the word and the contempt of this loyal veteran.
+
+Chabert, in fact, disappeared. The dairyman failed in business, and
+became a hackney-cab driver. The Colonel, perhaps, took up some similar
+industry for a time. Perhaps, like a stone flung into a chasm, he went
+falling from ledge to ledge, to be lost in the mire of rags that seethes
+through the streets of Paris.
+
+Six months after this event, Derville, hearing no more of Colonel
+Chabert or the Comtesse Ferraud, supposed that they had no doubt come
+to a compromise, which the Countess, out of revenge, had had arranged by
+some other lawyer. So one morning he added up the sums he had advanced
+to the said Chabert with the costs, and begged the Comtesse Ferraud to
+claim from M. le Comte Chabert the amount of the bill, assuming that she
+would know where to find her first husband.
+
+The very next day Comte Ferraud's man of business, lately appointed
+President of the County Court in a town of some importance, wrote this
+distressing note to Derville:
+
+  "MONSIEUR,--
+
+  "Madame la Comtesse Ferraud desires me to inform you that your
+  client took complete advantage of your confidence, and that the
+  individual calling himself Comte Chabert has acknowledged that he
+  came forward under false pretences.
+
+"Yours, etc., DELBECQ."
+
+
+"One comes across people who are, on my honor, too stupid by half,"
+cried Derville. "They don't deserve to be Christians! Be humane,
+generous, philanthropical, and a lawyer, and you are bound to
+be cheated! There is a piece of business that will cost me two
+thousand-franc notes!"
+
+
+
+Some time after receiving this letter, Derville went to the Palais de
+Justice in search of a pleader to whom he wished to speak, and who was
+employed in the Police Court. As chance would have it, Derville went
+into Court Number 6 at the moment when the Presiding Magistrate was
+sentencing one Hyacinthe to two months' imprisonment as a vagabond, and
+subsequently to be taken to the Mendicity House of Detention, a sentence
+which, by magistrates' law, is equivalent to perpetual imprisonment. On
+hearing the name of Hyacinthe, Derville looked at the deliquent, sitting
+between two _gendarmes_ on the bench for the accused, and recognized in
+the condemned man his false Colonel Chabert.
+
+The old soldier was placid, motionless, almost absentminded. In spite
+of his rags, in spite of the misery stamped on his countenance, it
+gave evidence of noble pride. His eye had a stoical expression which no
+magistrate ought to have misunderstood; but as soon as a man has fallen
+into the hands of justice, he is no more than a moral entity, a matter
+of law or of fact, just as to statists he has become a zero.
+
+When the veteran was taken back to the lock-up, to be removed later
+with the batch of vagabonds at that moment at the bar, Derville availed
+himself of the privilege accorded to lawyers of going wherever they
+please in the Courts, and followed him to the lock-up, where he stood
+scrutinizing him for some minutes, as well as the curious crew of
+beggars among whom he found himself. The passage to the lock-up at that
+moment afforded one of those spectacles which, unfortunately, neither
+legislators, nor philanthropists, nor painters, nor writers come to
+study. Like all the laboratories of the law, this ante-room is a dark
+and malodorous place; along the walls runs a wooden seat, blackened
+by the constant presence there of the wretches who come to this
+meeting-place of every form of social squalor, where not one of them is
+missing.
+
+A poet might say that the day was ashamed to light up this dreadful
+sewer through which so much misery flows! There is not a spot on that
+plank where some crime has not sat, in embryo or matured; not a corner
+where a man has never stood who, driven to despair by the blight which
+justice has set upon him after his first fault, has not there begun a
+career, at the end of which looms the guillotine or the pistol-snap of
+the suicide. All who fall on the pavement of Paris rebound against these
+yellow-gray walls, on which a philanthropist who was not a speculator
+might read a justification of the numerous suicides complained of by
+hypocritical writers who are incapable of taking a step to prevent
+them--for that justification is written in that ante-room, like a
+preface to the dramas of the Morgue, or to those enacted on the Place de
+la Greve.
+
+At this moment Colonel Chabert was sitting among these men--men with
+coarse faces, clothed in the horrible livery of misery, and silent at
+intervals, or talking in a low tone, for three gendarmes on duty paced
+to and fro, their sabres clattering on the floor.
+
+"Do you recognize me?" said Derville to the old man, standing in front
+of him.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Chabert, rising.
+
+"If you are an honest man," Derville went on in an undertone, "how could
+you remain in my debt?"
+
+The old soldier blushed as a young girl might when accused by her mother
+of a clandestine love affair.
+
+"What! Madame Ferraud has not paid you?" cried he in a loud voice.
+
+"Paid me?" said Derville. "She wrote to me that you were a swindler."
+
+The Colonel cast up his eyes in a sublime impulse of horror and
+imprecation, as if to call heaven to witness to this fresh subterfuge.
+
+"Monsieur," said he, in a voice that was calm by sheer huskiness, "get
+the gendarmes to allow me to go into the lock-up, and I will sign an
+order which will certainly be honored."
+
+At a word from Derville to the sergeant he was allowed to take his
+client into the room, where Hyacinthe wrote a few lines, and addressed
+them to the Comtesse Ferraud.
+
+"Send her that," said the soldier, "and you will be paid your costs and
+the money you advanced. Believe me, monsieur, if I have not shown
+you the gratitude I owe you for your kind offices, it is not the less
+there," and he laid his hand on his heart. "Yes, it is there, deep and
+sincere. But what can the unfortunate do? They live, and that is all."
+
+"What!" said Derville. "Did you not stipulate for an allowance?"
+
+"Do not speak of it!" cried the old man. "You cannot conceive how deep
+my contempt is for the outside life to which most men cling. I was
+suddenly attacked by a sickness--disgust of humanity. When I think
+that Napoleon is at Saint-Helena, everything on earth is a matter of
+indifference to me. I can no longer be a soldier; that is my only real
+grief. After all," he added with a gesture of childish simplicity, "it
+is better to enjoy luxury of feeling than of dress. For my part, I fear
+nobody's contempt."
+
+And the Colonel sat down on his bench again.
+
+Derville went away. On returning to his office, he sent Godeschal, at
+that time his second clerk, to the Comtesse Ferraud, who, on reading the
+note, at once paid the sum due to Comte Chabert's lawyer.
+
+
+
+In 1840, towards the end of June, Godeschal, now himself an attorney,
+went to Ris with Derville, to whom he had succeeded. When they reached
+the avenue leading from the highroad to Bicetre, they saw, under one
+of the elm-trees by the wayside, one of those old, broken, and hoary
+paupers who have earned the Marshal's staff among beggars by living on
+at Bicetre as poor women live on at la Salpetriere. This man, one of
+the two thousand poor creatures who are lodged in the infirmary for the
+aged, was seated on a corner-stone, and seemed to have concentrated all
+his intelligence on an operation well known to these pensioners, which
+consists in drying their snuffy pocket-handkerchiefs in the sun, perhaps
+to save washing them. This old man had an attractive countenance. He was
+dressed in a reddish cloth wrapper-coat which the work-house affords to
+its inmates, a sort of horrible livery.
+
+"I say, Derville," said Godeschal to his traveling companion, "look at
+that old fellow. Isn't he like those grotesque carved figures we get
+from Germany? And it is alive, perhaps it is happy."
+
+Derville looked at the poor man through his eyeglass, and with a little
+exclamation of surprise he said:
+
+"That old man, my dear fellow, is a whole poem, or, as the romantics
+say, a drama.--Did you ever meet the Comtesse Ferraud?"
+
+"Yes; she is a clever woman, and agreeable; but rather too pious," said
+Godeschal.
+
+"That old Bicetre pauper is her lawful husband, Comte Chabert, the
+old Colonel. She has had him sent here, no doubt. And if he is in
+this workhouse instead of living in a mansion, it is solely because he
+reminded the pretty Countess that he had taken her, like a hackney cab,
+on the street. I can remember now the tiger's glare she shot at him at
+that moment."
+
+This opening having excited Godeschal's curiosity, Derville related the
+story here told.
+
+Two days later, on Monday morning, as they returned to Paris, the two
+friends looked again at Bicetre, and Derville proposed that they should
+call on Colonel Chabert. Halfway up the avenue they found the old man
+sitting on the trunk of a felled tree. With his stick in one hand, he
+was amusing himself with drawing lines in the sand. On looking at him
+narrowly, they perceived that he had been breakfasting elsewhere than at
+Bicetre.
+
+"Good-morning, Colonel Chabert," said Derville.
+
+"Not Chabert! not Chabert! My name is Hyacinthe," replied the veteran.
+"I am no longer a man, I am No. 164, Room 7," he added, looking at
+Derville with timid anxiety, the fear of an old man and a child.--"Are
+you going to visit the man condemned to death?" he asked after a
+moment's silence. "He is not married! He is very lucky!"
+
+"Poor fellow!" said Godeschal. "Would you like something to buy snuff?"
+
+With all the simplicity of a street Arab, the Colonel eagerly held out
+his hand to the two strangers, who each gave him a twenty-franc piece;
+he thanked them with a puzzled look, saying:
+
+"Brave troopers!"
+
+He ported arms, pretended to take aim at them, and shouted with a smile:
+
+"Fire! both arms! _Vive Napoleon_!" And he drew a flourish in the air
+with his stick.
+
+"The nature of his wound has no doubt made him childish," said Derville.
+
+"Childish! he?" said another old pauper, who was looking on. "Why, there
+are days when you had better not tread on his corns. He is an old rogue,
+full of philosophy and imagination. But to-day, what can you expect! He
+has had his Monday treat.--He was here, monsieur, so long ago as 1820.
+At that time a Prussian officer, whose chaise was crawling up the hill
+of Villejuif, came by on foot. We two were together, Hyacinthe and I,
+by the roadside. The officer, as he walked, was talking to another, a
+Russian, or some animal of the same species, and when the Prussian saw
+the old boy, just to make fun, he said to him, 'Here is an old cavalry
+man who must have been at Rossbach.'--'I was too young to be there,'
+said Hyacinthe. 'But I was at Jena.' And the Prussian made off pretty
+quick, without asking any more questions."
+
+"What a destiny!" exclaimed Derville. "Taken out of the Foundling
+Hospital to die in the Infirmary for the Aged, after helping Napoleon
+between whiles to conquer Egypt and Europe.--Do you know, my dear
+fellow," Derville went on after a pause, "there are in modern society
+three men who can never think well of the world--the priest, the doctor,
+and the man of law? And they wear black robes, perhaps because they are
+in mourning for every virtue and every illusion. The most hapless of
+the three is the lawyer. When a man comes in search of the priest, he
+is prompted by repentance, by remorse, by beliefs which make him
+interesting, which elevate him and comfort the soul of the intercessor
+whose task will bring him a sort of gladness; he purifies, repairs and
+reconciles. But we lawyers, we see the same evil feelings repeated again
+and again, nothing can correct them; our offices are sewers which can
+never be cleansed.
+
+"How many things have I learned in the exercise of my profession! I have
+seen a father die in a garret, deserted by two daughters, to whom he had
+given forty thousand francs a year! I have known wills burned; I have
+seen mothers robbing their children, wives killing their husbands, and
+working on the love they could inspire to make the men idiotic or mad,
+that they might live in peace with a lover. I have seen women teaching
+the child of their marriage such tastes as must bring it to the grave in
+order to benefit the child of an illicit affection. I could not tell
+you all I have seen, for I have seen crimes against which justice is
+impotent. In short, all the horrors that romancers suppose they have
+invented are still below the truth. You will know something of these
+pretty things; as for me, I am going to live in the country with my
+wife. I have a horror of Paris."
+
+"I have seen plenty of them already in Desroches' office," replied
+Godeschal.
+
+
+PARIS, February-March 1832.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Bonaparte, Napoleon
+       The Vendetta
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Seamy Side of History
+       A Woman of Thirty
+
+     Crottat, Alexandre
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       A Start in Life
+       A Woman of Thirty
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Derville
+       Gobseck
+       A Start in Life
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Father Goriot
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
+     Desroches (son)
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Start in Life
+       A Woman of Thirty
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Man of Business
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Ferraud, Comtesse
+       The Government Clerks
+
+     Godeschal, Francois-Claude-Marie
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Start in Life
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Grandlieu, Vicomtesse de
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       Gobseck
+
+     Louis XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier
+       The Chouans
+       The Seamy Side of History
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Ball at Sceaux
+       The Lily of the Valley
+       The Government Clerks
+
+     Murat, Joachim, Prince
+       The Vendetta
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Country Doctor
+
+     Navarreins, Duc de
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       The Muse of the Department
+       The Thirteen
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       The Peasantry
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Country Parson
+       The Magic Skin
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       Cousin Betty
+
+     Vergniaud, Louis
+       The Vendetta
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Colonel Chabert, by Honore de Balzac
+
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