Title: The Brotherhood of Consolation
Author: Balzac, Honoré de
Language: English
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THE BROTHERHOOD OF CONSOLATION


By Honore De Balzac


Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley



FIRST EPISODE. MADAME DE LA CHANTERIE



I. THE MALADY OF THE AGE

On a fine evening in the month of September, 1836, a man about thirty
years of age was leaning on the parapet of that quay from which
a spectator can look up the Seine from the Jardin des Plantes to
Notre-Dame, and down, along the vast perspective of the river, to the
Louvre. There is not another point of view to compare with it in the
capital of ideas. We feel ourselves on the quarter-deck, as it were,
of a gigantic vessel. We dream of Paris from the days of the Romans
to those of the Franks, from the Normans to the Burgundians, the
Middle-Ages, the Valois, Henri IV., Louis XIV., Napoleon, and
Louis-Philippe. Vestiges are before us of all those sovereignties,
in monuments that recall their memory. The cupola of Sainte-Genevieve
towers above the Latin quarter. Behind us rises the noble apsis of the
cathedral. The Hotel de Ville tells of revolutions; the Hotel-Dieu, of
the miseries of Paris. After gazing at the splendors of the Louvre we
can, by taking two steps, look down upon the rags and tatters of that
ignoble nest of houses huddling between the quai de la Tournelle and the
Hotel-Dieu,--a foul spot, which a modern municipality is endeavoring at
the present moment to remove.

In 1836 this marvellous scene presented still another lesson to the eye:
between the Parisian leaning on the parapet and the cathedral lay the
“Terrain” (such was the ancient name of this barren spot), still strewn
with the ruins of the Archiepiscopal Palace. When we contemplate from
that quay so many commemorating scenes, when the soul has grasped the
past as it does the present of this city of Paris, then indeed Religion
seems to have alighted there as if to spread her hands above the sorrows
of both banks and extend her arms from the faubourg Saint-Antoine to
the faubourg Saint-Marceau. Let us hope that this sublime unity may be
completed by the erection of an episcopal palace of the Gothic order;
which shall replace the formless buildings now standing between the
“Terrain,” the rue d’Arcole, the cathedral, and the quai de la Cite.

This spot, the heart of ancient Paris, is the loneliest and most
melancholy of regions. The waters of the Seine break there noisily, the
cathedral casts its shadows at the setting of the sun. We can easily
believe that serious thoughts must have filled the mind of a man
afflicted with a moral malady as he leaned upon that parapet. Attracted
perhaps by the harmony between his thoughts and those to which these
diverse scenes gave birth, he rested his hands upon the coping and gave
way to a double contemplation,--of Paris, and of himself! The shadows
deepened, the lights shone out afar, but still he did not move, carried
along as he was on the current of a meditation, such as comes to many of
us, big with the future and rendered solemn by the past.

After a while he heard two persons coming towards him, whose voices had
caught his attention on the bridge which joins the Ile de la Cite with
the quai de la Tournelle. These persons no doubt thought themselves
alone, and therefore spoke louder than they would have done in more
frequented places. The voices betrayed a discussion which apparently,
from the few words that reached the ear of the involuntary listener,
related to a loan of money. Just as the pair approached the quay, one
of them, dressed like a working man, left the other with a despairing
gesture. The other stopped and called after him, saying:--

“You have not a sou to pay your way across the bridge. Take this,” he
added, giving the man a piece of money; “and remember, my friend,
that God Himself is speaking to us when a good thought comes into our
hearts.”

This last remark made the dreamer at the parapet quiver. The man who
made it little knew that, to use a proverbial expression, he was killing
two birds with one stone, addressing two miseries,--a working life
brought to despair, a suffering soul without a compass, the victim
of what Panurge’s sheep call progress, and what, in France, is called
equality. The words, simple in themselves, became sublime from the tone
of him who said them, in a voice that possesses a spell. Are there
not, in fact, some calm and tender voices that produce upon us the same
effect as a far horizon outlook?

By his dress the dreamer knew him to be a priest, and he saw by the last
gleams of the fading twilight a white, august, worn face. The sight of a
priest issuing from the beautiful cathedral of Saint-Etienne in Vienna,
bearing the Extreme Unction to a dying person, determined the celebrated
tragic author Werner to become a Catholic. Almost the same effect was
produced upon the dreamer when he looked upon the man who had, all
unknowing, given him comfort; on the threatening horizon of his future
he saw a luminous space where shone the blue of ether, and he followed
that light as the shepherds of the Gospel followed the voices that cried
to them: “Christ, the Lord, is born this day.”

The man who had said the beneficent words passed on by the wall of the
cathedral, taking, as a result of chance, which often leads to great
results, the direction of the street from which the dreamer came, and to
which he was now returning, led by the faults of his life.

This dreamer was named Godefroid. Whoever reads this history will
understand the reasons which lead the writer to use the Christian names
only of some who are mentioned in it. The motives which led Godefroid,
who lived in the quarter of the Chaussee-d’Antin, to the neighborhood of
Notre-Dame at such an hour were as follows:--

The son of a retail shopkeeper, whose economy enabled him to lay by a
sort of fortune, he was the sole object of ambition to his father and
mother, who dreamed of seeing him a notary in Paris. For this reason,
at the age of seven, he was sent to an institution, that of the Abbe
Liautard, to be thrown among children of distinguished families who,
during the Empire, chose this school for the education of their sons
in preference to the lyceums, where religion was too much overlooked.
Social inequalities were not noticeable among schoolmates; but in 1821,
his studies being ended, Godefroid, who was then with a notary, became
aware of the distance that separated him from those with whom he had
hitherto lived on familiar terms.

Obliged to go through the law school, he there found himself among a
crowd of the sons of the bourgeoisie, who, without fortunes to inherit
or hereditary distinctions, could look only to their own personal
merits or to persistent toil. The hopes that his father and mother, then
retired from business, placed upon him stimulated the youth’s vanity
without exciting his pride. His parents lived simply, like the thrifty
Dutch, spending only one fourth of an income of twelve thousand francs.
They intended their savings, together with half their capital, for the
purchase of a notary’s practice for their son. Subjected to the rule
of this domestic economy, Godefroid found his immediate state so
disproportioned to the visions of himself and his parents, that he
grew discouraged. In some feeble natures discouragement turns to envy;
others, in whom necessity, will, reflection, stand in place of talent,
march straight and resolutely in the path traced out for bourgeois
ambitions. Godefroid, on the contrary, revolted, wished to shine, tried
several brilliant ways, and blinded his eyes. He endeavored to succeed;
but all his efforts ended in proving the fact of his own impotence.
Admitting at last the inequality that existed between his desires
and his capacities, he began to hate all social supremacies, became
a Liberal, and attempted to reach celebrity by writing a book; but he
learned, to his cost, to regard talent as he did nobility. Having tried
the law, the notariat, and literature, without distinguishing himself in
any way, his mind now turned to the magistracy.

About this time his father died. His mother, who contented herself
in her old age with two thousand francs a year, gave the rest of the
fortune to Godefroid. Thus possessed, at the age of twenty-five, of ten
thousand francs a year, he felt himself rich; and he was so, relatively
to the past. Until then his life had been spent on acts without will, on
wishes that were impotent; now, to advance with the age, to act, to play
a part, he resolved to enter some career or find some connection that
should further his fortunes. He first thought of journalism, which
always opens its arms to any capital that may come in its way. To be the
owner of a newspaper is to become a personage at once; such a man works
intellect, and has all the gratifications of it and none of the labor.
Nothing is more tempting to inferior minds than to be able to rise in
this way on the talents of others. Paris has seen two or three parvenus
of this kind,--men whose success is a disgrace, both to the epoch and to
those who have lent them their shoulders.

In this sphere Godefroid was soon outdone by the brutal Machiavellianism
of some, or by the lavish prodigality of others; by the fortunes of
ambitious capitalists, or by the wit and shrewdness of editors. Meantime
he was drawn into all the dissipations that arise from literary
or political life, and he yielded to the temptations incurred by
journalists behind the scenes. He soon found himself in bad company; but
this experience taught him that his appearance was insignificant, that
he had one shoulder higher than the other, without the inequality being
redeemed by either malignancy or kindness of nature. Such were the
truths these artists made him feel.

Small, ill-made, without superiority of mind or settled purpose, what
chance was there for a man like that in an age when success in any
career demands that the highest qualities of the mind be furthered by
luck, or by tenacity of will which commands luck.

The revolution of 1830 stanched Godefroid’s wounds. He had the courage
of hope, which is equal to that of despair. He obtained an appointment,
like other obscure journalists, to a government situation in the
provinces, where his liberal ideas, conflicting with the necessities
of the new power, made him a troublesome instrument. Bitten with
liberalism, he did not know, as cleverer men did, how to steer a course.
Obedience to ministers he regarded as sacrificing his opinions. Besides,
the government seemed to him to be disobeying the laws of its own
origin. Godefroid declared for progress, where the object of the
government was to maintain the _statu quo_. He returned to Paris almost
poor, but faithful still to the doctrines of the Opposition.

Alarmed by the excesses of the press, more alarmed still by the
attempted outrages of the republican party, he sought in retirement
from the world the only life suitable for a being whose faculties were
incomplete, and without sufficient force to bear up against the rough
jostling of political life, the struggles and sufferings of which confer
no credit,--a being, too, who was wearied with his many miscarriages;
without friends, for friendship demands either striking merits or
striking defects, and yet possessing a sensibility of soul more dreamy
than profound. Surely a retired life was the course left for a young man
whom pleasure had more than once misled,--whose heart was already aged
by contact with a world as restless as it was disappointing.

His mother, who was dying in the peaceful village of Auteuil, recalled
her son to live with her, partly to have him near her, and partly to
put him in the way of finding an equable, tranquil happiness which might
satisfy a soul like his. She had ended by judging Godefroid, finding him
at twenty-eight with two-thirds of his fortune gone, his desires dulled,
his pretended capacities extinct, his activity dead, his ambition
humbled, and his hatred against all that reached legitimate success
increased by his own shortcomings.

She tried to marry him to an excellent young girl, the only daughter of
a retired merchant,--a woman well fitted to play the part of guardian
to the sickened soul of her son. But the father had the business
spirit which never abandons an old merchant, especially in matrimonial
negotiations, and after a year of attentions and neighborly intercourse,
Godefroid was not accepted. In the first place, his former career seemed
to these worthy people profoundly immoral; then, during this very year,
he had made still further inroads into his capital, as much to dazzle
the parents as to please the daughter. This vanity, excusable as it
was, caused his final rejection by the family, who held dissipation
of property in holy horror, and who now discovered that in six years
Godefroid had spent or lost a hundred and fifty thousand francs of his
capital.

This blow struck the young man’s already wounded heart the more deeply
because the girl herself had no personal beauty. But, guided by his
mother in judging her character, he had ended by recognizing in the
woman he sought the great value of an earnest soul, and the vast
advantages of a sound mind. He had grown accustomed to the face; he had
studied the countenance; he loved the voice, the manners, the glance of
that young girl. Having cast on this attachment the last stake of his
life, the disappointment he endured was the bitterest of all. His mother
died, and he found himself, he who had always desired luxury, with five
thousand francs a year for his whole fortune, and with the certainty
that never in his future life could he repair any loss whatsoever;
for he felt himself incapable of the effort expressed in that terrible
injunction, to _make his way_.

Weak, impatient grief cannot easily be shaken off. During his mourning,
Godefroid tried the various chances and distractions of Paris; he dined
at table-d’hotes; he made acquaintances heedlessly; he sought society,
with no result but that of increasing his expenditures. Walking along
the boulevards, he often suffered deeply at the sight of a mother
walking with a marriageable daughter,--a sight which caused him as
painful an emotion as he formerly felt when a young man passed him
riding to the Bois, or driving in an elegant equipage. The sense of
his impotence told him that he could never hope for the best of even
secondary positions, nor for any easily won career; and he had heart
enough to feel constantly wounded, mind enough to make in his own breast
the bitterest of elegies.

Unfitted to struggle against circumstances, having an inward
consciousness of superior faculties without the will that could put them
in action, feeling himself incomplete, without force to undertake any
great thing, without resistance against the tastes derived from his
earlier life, his education, and his indolence, he was the victim of
three maladies, any one of which would be enough to sicken of life a
young man long alienated from religious faith.

Thus it was that Godefroid presented, even to the eye, the face that we
meet so often in Paris that it might be called the type of the Parisian;
in it we may see ambitions deceived or dead, inward wretchedness, hatred
sleeping in the indolence of a life passed in watching the daily and
external life of Paris, apathy which seeks stimulation, lament without
talent, a mimicry of strength, the venom of past disappointments
which excites to cynicism, and spits upon all that enlarges and grows,
misconceives all necessary authority, rejoicing in its embarrassments,
and will not hold to any social form. This Parisian malady is to the
active and permanent impulse towards conspiracy in persons of energy
what the sapwood is to the sap of the trees; it preserves it, feeds it,
and conceals it.



II. OLD HOUSE, OLD PEOPLE, OLD CUSTOMS

Weary of himself, Godefroid attempted one day to give a meaning to his
life, after meeting a former comrade who had been the tortoise in the
fable, while he in earlier days had been the hare. In one of those
conversations which arise when schoolmates meet again in after years,--a
conversation held as they were walking together in the sunshine on the
boulevard des Italiens,--he was startled to learn the success of a
man endowed apparently with less gifts, less means, less fortune than
himself; but who had bent his will each morning to the purpose resolved
upon the night before. The sick soul then determined to imitate that
simple action.

“Social existence is like the soil,” his comrade had said to him; “it
makes us a return in proportion to our efforts.”

Godefroid was in debt. As a first test, a first task, he resolved to
live in some retired place, and pay his debts from his income. To a man
accustomed to spend six thousand francs when he had but five, it was
no small undertaking to bring himself to live on two thousand. Every
morning he studied advertisements, hoping to find the offer of some
asylum where his expenses could be fixed, where he might have the
solitude a man wants when he makes a return upon himself, examines
himself, and endeavors to give himself a vocation. The manners and
customs of bourgeois boarding-houses shocked his delicacy, sanitariums
seemed to him unhealthy, and he was about to fall back into the fatal
irresolution of persons without will, when the following advertisement
met his eye:--

  “To Let. A small lodging for seventy francs a month; suitable for
  an ecclesiastic. A quiet tenant desired. Board supplied; the rooms
  can be furnished at a moderate cost if mutually acceptable.

  “Inquire of M. Millet, grocer, rue Chanoinesse, near Notre-Dame,
  where all further information can be obtained.”

Attracted by a certain kindliness concealed beneath these words, and
the middle-class air which exhaled from them, Godefroid had, on the
afternoon when we found him on the quay, called at four o’clock on the
grocer, who told him that Madame de la Chanterie was then dining,
and did not receive any one when at her meals. The lady, he said, was
visible in the evening after seven o’clock, or in the morning between
ten and twelve. While speaking, Monsieur Millet examined Godefroid,
and made him submit to what magistrates call the “first degree of
interrogation.”

“Was monsieur unmarried? Madame wished a person of regular habits; the
gate was closed at eleven at the latest. Monsieur certainly seemed of an
age to suit Madame de la Chanterie.”

“How old do you think me?” asked Godefroid.

“About forty!” replied the grocer.

This ingenuous answer threw the young man into a state of misanthropic
gloom. He went off and dined at a restaurant on the quai de la
Tournelle, and afterwards went to the parapet to contemplate Notre-Dame
at the moment when the fires of the setting sun were rippling and
breaking about the manifold buttresses of the apsis.

The young man was floating between the promptings of despair and
the moving voice of religious harmonies sounding in the bell of the
cathedral when, amid the shadows, the silence, the half-veiled light
of the moon, he heard the words of the priest. Though, like most of the
sons of our century, he was far from religious, his sensibilities were
touched by those words, and he returned to the rue Chanoinesse, although
he had almost made up his mind not to do so.

The priest and Godefroid were both surprised when they entered together
the rue Massilon, which is opposite to the small north portal of the
cathedral, and turned together into the rue Chanoinesse, at the point
where, towards the rue de la Colombe, it becomes the rue des Marmousets.
When Godefroid stopped before the arched portal of Madame de la
Chanterie’s house, the priest turned towards him and examined him by the
light of the hanging street-lamp, probably one of the last to disappear
from the heart of old Paris.

“Have you come to see Madame de la Chanterie, monsieur?” said the
priest.

“Yes,” replied Godefroid. “The words I heard you say to that workman
show me that, if you live here, this house must be salutary for the
soul.”

“Then you were a witness of my defeat,” said the priest, raising the
knocker of the door, “for I did not succeed.”

“I thought, on the contrary, it was the workman who did not succeed; he
demanded money energetically.”

“Alas!” replied the priest, “one of the great evils of revolutions in
France is that each offers a fresh premium to the ambitions of the lower
classes. To get out of his condition, to make his fortune (which is
regarded to-day as the only social standard), the working-man throws
himself into some of those monstrous associations which, if they do not
succeed, ought to bring the speculators to account before human justice.
This is what trusts often lead to.”

The porter opened a heavy door. The priest said to Godefroid: “Monsieur
has perhaps come about the little suite of rooms?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

The priest and Godefroid then crossed a wide courtyard, at the farther
end of which loomed darkly a tall house flanked by a square tower which
rose above the roof, and appeared to be in a dilapidated condition.
Whoever knows the history of Paris, knows that the soil before and
around the cathedral has been so raised that there is not a vestige now
of the twelve steps which formerly led up to it. To-day the base of the
columns of the porch is on a level with the pavement; consequently what
was once the ground-floor of the house of which we speak is now its
cellar. A portico, reached by a few steps, leads to the entrance of the
tower, in which a spiral stairway winds up round a central shaft carved
with a grape-vine. This style, which recalls the stairways of Louis XII.
at the chateau of Blois, dates from the fourteenth century. Struck by
these and other evidences of antiquity, Godefroid could not help saying,
with a smile, to the priest: “This tower is not of yesterday.”

“It sustained, they say, an assault of the Normans, and probably formed
part of the first palace of the kings of Paris; but, according to actual
tradition, it was certainly the dwelling of the famous Canon Fulbert,
the uncle of Heloise.”

As he ended these words, the priest opened the door of the apartment
which appeared now to be the ground-floor of the house, but was in
reality towards both the front and back courtyard (for there was a small
interior court) on the first floor.

In the antechamber a maid-servant, wearing a cambric cap with fluted
frills for its sole decoration, was knitting by the light of a little
lamp. She stuck her needles into her hair, held her work in her hand,
and rose to open the door of a salon which looked out on the inner
court. The dress of the woman was somewhat like that of the Sisters of
Mercy.

“Madame, I bring you a tenant,” said the priest, ushering Godefroid into
the salon, where the latter saw three persons sitting in armchairs near
Madame de la Chanterie.

These three persons rose; the mistress of the house rose; then, when the
priest had drawn up another armchair for Godefroid, and when the future
tenant had seated himself in obedience to a gesture of Madame de
la Chanterie, accompanied by the old-fashioned words, “Be seated,
monsieur,” the man of the boulevards fancied himself at some enormous
distance from Paris,--in lower Brittany or the wilds of Canada.

Silence has perhaps its own degrees. Godefroid, already penetrated with
the silence of the rues Massillon and Chanoinesse, where two carriages
do not pass in a month, and grasped by the silence of the courtyard and
the tower, may have felt that he had reached the very heart of silence
in this still salon, guarded by so many old streets, old courts, old
walls.

This part of the Ile, which is called “the Cloister,” has preserved the
character of all cloisters; it is damp, cold, and monastically silent
even at the noisiest hours of the day. It will be remarked, also, that
this portion of the Cite, crowded between the flank of Notre-Dame
and the river, faces the north, and is always in the shadow of the
cathedral. The east winds swirl through it unopposed, and the fogs
of the Seine are caught and retained by the black walls of the
old metropolitan church. No one will therefore be surprised at the
sensations Godefroid felt when he found himself in this old dwelling, in
presence of four silent human beings, who seemed as solemn as the things
which surrounded them.

He did not look about him, being seized with curiosity as to Madame
de la Chanterie, whose name was already a puzzle to him. This lady was
evidently a person of another epoch, not to say of another world. Her
face was placid, its tones both soft and cold; the nose aquiline; the
forehead full of sweetness; the eyes brown; the chin double; and all
were framed in silvery white hair. Her gown could only be called by its
ancient name of “fourreau,” so tightly was she sheathed within it, after
the fashion of the eighteenth century. The material--a brown silk, with
very fine and multiplied green lines--seemed also of that period. The
bodice, which was one with the skirt, was partly hidden beneath a mantle
of _poult-de-soie_ edged with black lace, and fastened on the bosom by a
brooch enclosing a miniature. Her feet, in black velvet boots, rested
on a cushion. Madame de la Chanterie, like her maid, was knitting a
stocking, and she, too, had a needle stuck through her white curls
beneath the lace of her cap.

“Have you seen Monsieur Millet?” she said to Godefroid, in the head
voice peculiar to the dowagers of the faubourg Saint-Germain, observing
that her visitor seemed confused, and as if to put the words into his
mouth.

“Yes, madame.”

“I fear that the apartment will scarcely suit you,” she said, noticing
the elegance and newness of his clothes.

Godefroid was wearing polished leather boots, yellow gloves, handsome
studs, and a very pretty gold chain passed through the buttonhole of his
waistcoat of black silk with blue flowers. Madame de la Chanterie took
a little silver whistle from her pocket and blew it. The serving-woman
came.

“Manon, my child, show this gentleman the apartment. Would you, my dear
vicar, be so kind as to accompany him?” she said, addressing the priest.
“If by chance,” she added, rising and again looking at Godefroid, “the
apartment suits you, we will talk of the conditions.”

Godefroid bowed and went out. He heard the rattle of keys which Manon
took from a drawer, and he saw her light the candle in a large brass
candlestick. Manon went first, without uttering a word. When Godefroid
found himself again on the staircase, winding up two flights, he
doubted the reality of life, he dreamed awake, he saw with his eyes the
fantastic world of romances he had read in his idle hours. Any Parisian
leaving, as he did, the modern quarter, with its luxury of houses and
furniture, the glitter of its restaurants and theatres, the tumult and
movement of the heart of Paris, would have shared his feeling.

The candle carried by the woman feebly lighted the winding stair, where
spiders swung their draperies gray with dust. Manon wore a petticoat
with heavy plaits of a coarse woollen stuff; the bodice was square
before and square behind, and all her clothes seemed to hang together.
When she reached the second floor, which, it will be remembered, was
actually the third, Manon stopped, turned a key in an ancient lock, and
opened a door painted in a coarse imitation of mahogany.

“This is it,” she said, entering first.

Was it a miser, was it an artist dying in penury, was it a cynic to whom
the world was naught, or some religious soul detached from life, who had
occupied this apartment? That triple question might well be asked by one
who breathed the odor of that poverty, who saw the greasy spots upon the
papers yellow with smoke, the blackened ceilings, the dusty windows with
their casement panes, the discolored floor-bricks, the wainscots layered
with a sort of sticky glaze. A damp chill came from the chimneys with
their mantels of painted stone, surmounted by mirrors in panels of the
style of the seventeenth century. The apartment was square, like the
house, and looked out upon the inner court, which could not now be seen
because of the darkness.

“Who has lived here?” asked Godefroid of the priest.

“A former councillor of the parliament, a great-uncle of madame,
Monsieur de Boisfrelon. After the Revolution he fell into dotage; but
he did not die until 1832, at the age of ninety-six. Madame could not at
first make up her mind to let his rooms to a stranger, but she finds she
cannot afford to lose the rent.”

“Madame will have the apartment cleaned and furnished in a manner to
satisfy monsieur,” said Manon.

“That will depend on the arrangement you make with her,” said the
priest. “You have here a fine parlor, a large sleeping-room and closet,
and those little rooms in the angle will make an excellent study. It
is the same arrangement as in my apartment below, also in the one
overhead.”

“Yes,” said Manon, “Monsieur Alain’s apartment is just like this, only
his has a view of the tower.”

“I think I had better see the rooms by daylight,” said Godefroid,
timidly.

“Perhaps so,” said Manon.

The priest and Godefroid went downstairs, leaving the woman to lock the
doors. When they re-entered the salon, Godefroid, who was getting inured
to the surroundings, looked about him while discoursing with Madame de
la Chanterie, and examined the persons and things there present.

The salon had curtains at its windows of old red damask, with
lambrequins, tied back at the sides with silken cords. The red-tiled
floor showed at the edges of an old tapestry carpet too small to cover
the whole room. The woodwork was painted gray. The plastered ceiling,
divided in two parts by a heavy beam which started from the fireplace,
seemed a concession tardily made to luxury. Armchairs, with their
woodwork painted white, were covered with tapestry. A paltry clock,
between two copper-gilt candlesticks, decorated the mantel-shelf. Beside
Madame de la Chanterie was an ancient table with spindle legs, on which
lay her balls of worsted in a wicker basket. A hydrostatic lamp lighted
the scene. The four men, who were seated there, silent, immovable, like
bronze statues, had evidently stopped their conversation with Madame de
la Chanterie when they heard the stranger returning. They all had cold,
discreet faces, in keeping with the room, the house, the quarter of the
town.

Madame de la Chanterie admitted the justice of Godefroid’s observations;
but told him that she did not wish to make any change until she knew the
intentions of her lodger, or rather her boarder. If he would conform to
the customs of the house he could become her boarder; but these customs
were widely different from those of Paris. Life in the rue Chanoinesse
was like provincial life: the lodger must always be in by ten o’clock at
night; they disliked noise; and could have no women or children to break
up their customary habits. An ecclesiastic might conform to these ways.
Madame de la Chanterie desired, above all, some one of simple life,
who would not be exacting; she could afford to put only the strictest
necessaries into the apartment. Monsieur Alain (here she designated
one of the four men present) was satisfied, and she would do for a new
tenant just as she did for the others.

“I do not think,” said the priest, “that monsieur is inclined to enter
our convent.”

“Eh! why not?” said Monsieur Alain; “we are all well off here; we have
nothing to complain of.”

“Madame,” said Godefroid, rising, “I shall have the honor of calling
again to-morrow.”

Though he was a young man, the four old men and Madame de la Chanterie
rose, and the vicar accompanied him to the portico. A whistle sounded.
At that signal the porter came with a lantern, guided Godefroid to the
street, and closed behind him the enormous yellow door,--ponderous as
that of a prison, and decorated with arabesque ironwork of a remote
period that was difficult to determine.

Though Godefroid got into a cabriolet, and was soon rolling into the
living, lighted, glowing regions of Paris, what he had seen still
appeared to him a dream, and his impressions, as he made his way along
the boulevard des Italiens, had already the remoteness of a memory. He
asked himself, “Shall I to-morrow find those people there?”



III. THE HOUSE OF MONGENOD

The next day, as Godefroid rose amid the appointments of modern luxury
and the choice appliances of English “comfort,” he remembered the
details of his visit to that cloister of Notre-Dame, and the meaning of
the things he had seen there came into his mind. The three unknown and
silent men, whose dress, attitude, and stillness acted powerfully upon
him, were no doubt boarders like the priest. The solemnity of Madame de
la Chanterie now seemed to him a secret dignity with which she bore
some great misfortune. But still, in spite of the explanations which
Godefroid gave himself, he could not help fancying there was an air of
mystery about those sober figures.

He looked around him and selected the pieces of furniture that he would
keep, those that were indispensable to him; but when he transported them
in thought to the miserable lodging in the rue Chanoinesse, he began to
laugh at the contrast they would make there, resolving to sell all and
let Madame de la Chanterie furnish the rooms for him. He wanted a new
life, and the very sight of these objects would remind him of that which
he wished to forget. In his desire for transformation (for he belonged
to those characters who spring at a bound into the middle of a
situation, instead of advancing, as others do, step by step), he was
seized while he breakfasted with an idea,--he would turn his whole
property into money, pay his debts, and place the remainder of his
capital in the banking-house with which his father had done business.

This house was the firm of Mongenod and Company, established in 1816
or 1817, whose reputation for honesty and uprightness had never been
questioned in the midst of the commercial depravity which smirched,
more or less, all the banking-houses of Paris. In spite of their immense
wealth, the houses of Nucingen, du Tillet, the Keller Brothers, Palma
and Company, were each regarded, more or less, with secret disrespect,
although it is true this disrespect was only whispered. Evil means
had produced such fine results, such political successes, dynastic
principles covered so completely base workings, that no one in 1834
thought of the mud in which the roots of these fine trees, the mainstay
of the State, were plunged. Nevertheless there was not a single one of
those great bankers to whom the confidence expressed in the house of
Mongenod was not a wound. Like English houses, the Mongenods made no
external display of luxury. They lived in dignified stillness, satisfied
to do their business prudently, wisely, and with a stern uprightness
which enabled them to carry it from one end of the globe to the other.

The actual head of the house, Frederic Mongenod, is the brother-in-law
of the Vicomte de Fontaine; therefore, this numerous family is
allied through the Baron de Fontaine to Monsieur Grossetete, the
receiver-general, brother of the Grossetete and Company of Limoges,
to the Vandenesses, and to Planat de Baudry, another receiver-general.
These connections, having procured for the late Mongenod, father of the
present head of the house, many favors in the financial operations
under the Restoration, obtained for him also the confidence of the old
_noblesse_, whose property and whose savings, which were immense, were
deposited in this bank. Far from coveting a peerage, like the Kellers,
Nucingen, and du Tillet, the Mongenods kept away from politics, and only
knew as much about them as their banking interests demanded.

The house of Mongenod is established in a fine old mansion in the rue de
la Victoire, where Madame Mongenod, the mother, lived with her two sons,
all three being partners in the house,--the share of the Vicomtesse
de Fontaine having been bought out by them on the death of the elder
Mongenod in 1827.

Frederic Mongenod, a handsome young man about thirty-five years of
age, cold, silent, and reserved in manner like a Swiss, and neat as
an Englishman, had acquired by intercourse with his father all the
qualities necessary for his difficult profession. Better educated than
the generality of bankers, his studies had the breadth and universality
which characterize the polytechnic training; and he had, like most
bankers, predilections and tastes outside of his business,--he loved
mechanics and chemistry. The second brother, who was ten years younger
than Frederic, held the same position in the office of his elder brother
that a head clerk holds in that of a notary or lawyer. Frederic trained
him, as he had himself been trained by his father, in the variety of
knowledge necessary to a true banker, who is to money what a writer is
to ideas,--they must both know all of that with which they have to deal.

When Godefroid reached the banking house and gave his name, he saw
at once the estimation in which his father had been held; for he was
ushered through the offices without delay to the private counting-room
of the Mongenods. This counting-room was closed with a glass door, so
that Godefroid, without any desire to listen, overheard as he approached
it what was being said there.

“Madame, your account is balanced to sixteen hundred thousand francs,”
 said the younger Mongenod. “I do not know what my brother’s intentions
are; he alone can say whether an advance of a hundred thousand francs
can be made. You must have been imprudent. Sixteen hundred thousand
francs should not be entrusted to any business.”

“Do not speak so loud, Louis!” said a woman’s voice. “Your brother has
often told you to speak in a low voice. There may be some one in the
next room.”

At this moment Frederic Mongenod himself opened the door of
communication between his private house and the counting-room. He saw
Godefroid and crossed the room, bowing respectfully to the lady who was
conversing with his brother.

“To whom have I the honor of speaking?” he said to Godefroid.

As soon as Godefroid gave his name, Frederic begged him to be seated;
and as the banker opened the lid of his desk, Louis Mongenod and the
lady, who was no other than Madame de la Chanterie, rose and went up to
him. All three then moved into the embrasure of a window and talked in
a low voice with Madame Mongenod, the mother, who was sitting there, and
to whom all the affairs of the bank were confided. For over thirty years
this woman had given, to her husband first and then to her sons, such
proofs of business sagacity that she had long been a managing partner in
the firm and signed for it.

Godefroid, as he looked about him, noticed on a shelf certain boxes
ticketed with the words “De la Chanterie,” and numbered 1 to 7. When the
conference was ended by the banker saying to his brother, “Very good;
go down to the cashier,” Madame de la Chanterie turned round, saw
Godefroid, checked a gesture of surprise, and asked a few questions of
the banker in a low voice, to which he replied in a few words spoken
equally in a whisper.

Madame de la Chanterie now wore gray silk stockings and small prunella
shoes; her gown was the same as before, but she was wrapped in a
Venetian “mantua,”--a sort of cloak which was just then returning into
fashion. On her head was a drawn bonnet of green silk, lined with white
silk, of a style called _a la bonne femme_. Her face was framed by
a cloud of lace. She held herself very erect, in an attitude which
bespoke, if not noble birth, certainly the habits of an aristocratic
life. Without the extreme affability of her manner, she might have
seemed haughty; she was certainly imposing.

“It is the will of Providence rather than mere chance that has brought
us here together, monsieur,” she said to Godefroid; “for I had almost
decided to refuse a lodger whose ways of life seemed to me quite
antipathetic to those of my household; but Monsieur Mongenod has just
given me some information about your family which--”

“Ah, madame,--monsieur!” said Godefroid, addressing both Madame de la
Chanterie and the banker, “I have no longer a family; and I have come
here now to ask some financial advice of my father’s business advisers
as to the best method of adapting my means to a new way of life.”

Godefroid then succinctly, and in as few words as possible, related his
history, and expressed his desire to change his existence.

“Formerly,” he said, “a man in my position would have made himself a
monk; but there are no longer any religious orders.”

“Go and live with madame, if she is willing to take you,” said Frederic
Mongenod, after exchanging a glance with Madame de la Chanterie, “and
do not sell out your property; leave it in my hands. Give me the exact
amount of your debts; I will agree with your creditors for payment at
certain dates, and you can have for yourself about a hundred and fifty
francs a month. It will thus take two years to clear you. During those
two years, if you take those quiet lodgings, you will have time to think
of a career, especially among the persons with whom you will live, who
are all good counsellors.”

Here Louis Mongenod returned, bringing in his hand a hundred notes of a
thousand francs each, which he gave to Madame de la Chanterie. Godefroid
offered his arm to his future hostess, and took her down to the
hackney-coach which was waiting for her.

“I hope I shall see you soon, monsieur,” she said in a cordial tone of
voice.

“At what hour shall you be at home, madame?” he asked.

“At two o’clock.”

“I shall have time to sell my furniture,” he said, as he bowed to her.

During the short time that Madame de la Chanterie’s arm rested upon his
as they walked to the carriage, Godefroid could not escape the
glamour of the words: “Your account is for sixteen hundred thousand
francs!”--words said by Louis Mongenod to the woman whose life was spent
in the depths of the cloisters of Notre-Dame. The thought, “She must be
rich!” entirely changed his way of looking at the matter. “How old is
she?” he began to ask himself; and a vision of a romance in the rue
Chanoinesse came to him. “She certainly has an air of nobility! Can she
be concerned in some bank?” thought he.

In our day nine hundred and ninety-nine young men out of a thousand in
Godefroid’s position would have had the thought of marrying that woman.

A furniture dealer, who also had apartments to let, paid about three
thousand francs for the articles Godefroid was willing to sell, and
agreed to let him keep them during the few days that were needed to
prepare the shabby apartment in the rue Chanoinesse for this lodger with
a sick mind. Godefroid went there at once, and obtained from Madame de
la Chanterie the address of a painter who, for a moderate sum, agreed
to whiten the ceilings, clean the windows, paint the woodwork, and stain
the floors, within a week. Godefroid took the measure of the rooms,
intending to put the same carpet in all of them,--a green carpet of the
cheapest kind. He wished for the plainest uniformity in this retreat,
and Madame de la Chanterie approved of the idea. She calculated, with
Manon’s assistance, the number of yards of white calico required for
the window curtains, and also for those of the modest iron bed; and
she undertook to buy and have them made for a price so moderate as
to surprise Godefroid. Having brought with him a certain amount of
furniture, the whole cost of fitting up the rooms proved to be not over
six hundred francs.

“We lead here,” said Madame de la Chanterie, “a Christian life, which
does not, as you know, accord with many superfluities; I think you have
too many as it is.”

In giving this hint to her future lodger, she looked at a diamond which
gleamed in the ring through which Godefroid’s blue cravat was slipped.

“I only speak of this,” she added, “because of the intention you
expressed to abandon the frivolous life you complained of to Monsieur
Mongenod.”

Godefroid looked at Madame de la Chanterie as he listened to the
harmonies of her limpid voice; he examined that face so purely white,
resembling those of the cold, grave women of Holland whom the Flemish
painters have so wonderfully reproduced with their smooth skins, in
which a wrinkle is impossible.

“White and plump!” he said to himself, as he walked away; “but her hair
is white, too.”

Godefroid, like all weak natures, took readily to a new life, believing
it satisfactory; and he was now quite eager to take up his abode in the
rue Chanoinesse. Nevertheless, a prudent thought, or, if you prefer
to say so, a distrustful thought, occurred to him. Two days before his
installation, he went again to see Monsieur Mongenod to obtain some more
definite information about the house he was to enter.

During the few moments he had spent in his future lodgings overlooking
the changes that were being made in them, he had noticed the coming and
going of several persons whose appearance and behavior, without being
exactly mysterious, excited a belief that some secret occupation or
profession was being carried on in that house. At that particular period
there was much talk of attempts by the elder branch of the Bourbons to
recover the throne, and Godefroid suspected some conspiracy. When he
found himself in the banker’s counting-room held by the scrutinizing eye
of Frederic Mongenod while he made his inquiry, he felt ashamed as he
saw a derisive smile on the lips of the listener.

“Madame la Baronne de la Chanterie,” replied the banker, “is one of
the most obscure persons in Paris, but she is also one of the most
honorable. Have you any object in asking for information?”

Godefroid retreated into generalities: he was going to live among
strangers; he naturally wished to know something of those with whom he
should be intimately thrown. But the banker’s smile became more and more
sarcastic; and Godefroid, more and more embarrassed, was ashamed of the
step he had taken, and which bore no fruit, for he dared not continue
his questions about Madame de la Chanterie and her inmates.



IV. FAREWELL TO THE LIFE OF THE WORLD

Two days later, of a Monday evening, having dined for the last time
at the Cafe Anglais, and seen the two first pieces at the Varietes,
he went, at ten o’clock, to sleep for the first time in the rue
Chanoinesse, where Manon conducted him to his room.

Solitude has charms comparable only to those of savage life, which no
European has ever really abandoned after once tasting them. This may
seem strange at an epoch when every one lives so much to be seen
of others that all the world concern themselves in their neighbors’
affairs, and when private life will soon be a thing of the past, so
bold and so intrusive are the eyes of the press,--that modern Argus.
Nevertheless, it is a truth which rests on the authority of the first
six Christian centuries, during which no recluse ever returned to social
life. Few are the moral wounds that solitude will not heal.

So, at first, Godefroid was soothed by the deep peace and absolute
stillness of his new abode, as a weary traveller is relaxed by a bath.

The very day after his arrival at Madame de la Chanterie’s he was forced
to examine himself, under the sense that he was separated from all,
even from Paris, though he still lived in the shadow of its cathedral.
Stripped of his social vanities, he was about to have no other witnesses
of his acts than his own conscience and the inmates of that house. He
had quitted the great high-road of the world to enter an unknown path.
Where was that path to lead him to? to what occupation should he now be
drawn?

He had been for two hours absorbed in such reflections when Manon, the
only servant of the house, knocked at his door to tell him that the
second breakfast was served and the family were waiting for him. Twelve
o’clock was striking. The new lodger went down at once, stirred by a
wish to see and judge the five persons among whom his life was in future
to be spent.

When he entered the room he found all the inmates of the house standing;
they were dressed precisely as they were on the day when he came to make
his first inquiries.

“Did you sleep well?” asked Madame de la Chanterie.

“So well that I did not wake up till ten o’clock,” replied Godefroid,
bowing to the four men, who returned the bow with gravity.

“We thought so,” said an old man named Alain, smiling.

“Manon spoke of a second breakfast,” said Godefroid; “but I fear that I
have already broken some rule. At what hour do you rise?”

“Not quite so early as the old monks,” said Madame de la Chanterie,
courteously, “but as early as the working-men,--six in winter, half-past
three in summer. Our bed-time is ruled by that of the sun. We are always
asleep by nine in winter and eleven in summer. On rising, we all take a
little milk, which comes from our farm, after saying our prayers, except
the Abbe de Veze, who says the first mass, at six o’clock in summer
and seven o’clock in winter, at Notre-Dame, where these gentlemen are
present daily, as well as your humble servant.”

Madame de la Chanterie ended her explanation as the five lodgers took
their seats at table.

The dining-room, painted throughout in gray, the design of the woodwork
being in the style of Louis XIV., adjoined the sort of antechamber in
which Manon was usually stationed, and it seemed to be parallel with
Madame de la Chanterie’s bedroom, which also opened into the salon. This
room had no other ornament than a tall clock. The furniture consisted of
six chairs with oval backs covered with worsted-work, done probably
by Madame de la Chanterie’s own hand, two buffets and a table, all
of mahogany, on which Manon did not lay a cloth for breakfast. The
breakfast, of monastic frugality, was composed of a small turbot with
a white sauce, potatoes, a salad, and four dishes of fruit,--peaches,
grapes, strawberries, and fresh almonds; also, for relishes, honey
in the comb (as in Switzerland), radishes, cucumbers, sardines, and
butter,--the whole served in the well-known china with tiny blue flowers
and green leaves on a white ground, which was no doubt a luxury in the
days of Louis XIV., but had now, under the growing demands of luxury,
come to be regarded as common.

“We keep the fasts,” said Monsieur Alain. “As we go to mass every
morning, you will not be surprised to find us blindly following all the
customs of the Church, even the severest.”

“And you shall begin by imitating us,” said Madame de la Chanterie, with
a glance at Godefroid, whom she had placed beside her.

Of the five persons present Godefroid knew the names of three,--Madame
de la Chanterie, the Abbe de Veze, and Monsieur Alain. He wished to know
those of the other two; but they kept silence and ate their food with
the attention which recluses appear to give to every detail of a meal.

“Does this fine fruit come also from your farm, madame?” asked
Godefroid.

“Yes, monsieur,” she replied. “We have a little model farm, like the
government itself; we call it our country house; it is twelve miles from
here, on the road to Italy, near Villeneuve-Saint-Georges.”

“It is a property that belongs to us all, and is to go to the survivor,”
 said the goodman Alain.

“Oh, it is not very considerable!” added Madame de la Chanterie, rather
hastily, as if she feared that Godefroid might think these remarks a
bait.

“There are thirty acres of tilled land,” said one of the two personages
still unknown to Godefroid, “six of meadow, and an enclosure containing
four acres, in which our house, which adjoins the farmhouse, stands.”

“But such a property as that,” said Godefroid, “must be worth a hundred
thousand francs.”

“Oh, we don’t get anything out of it but our provisions!” said the same
personage.

He was a tall, grave, spare man, with all the appearance of having
served in the army. His white hair showed him to be past sixty, and his
face betrayed some violent grief controlled by religion.

The second unnamed person, who seemed to be something between a master
of rhetoric and a business agent, was of ordinary height, plump, but
active withal. His face had the jovial expression which characterizes
those of lawyers and notaries in Paris.

The dress of these four personages revealed a neatness due to the most
scrupulous personal care. The same hand, and it was that of Manon, could
be seen in every detail. Their coats were perhaps ten years old, but
they were preserved, like the coats of vicars, by the occult power of
the servant-woman, and the constant care with which they were worn.
These men seemed to wear on their backs the livery of a system of life;
they belonged to one thought, their looks said the same word, their
faces breathed a gentle resignation, a provoking quietude.

“Is it an indiscretion, madame,” said Godefroid, “to ask the names of
these gentlemen? I am ready to explain my life; can I know as much of
theirs as custom will allow?”

“That gentleman,” said Madame de la Chanterie, motioning to the tall,
thin man, “is Monsieur Nicolas; he is a colonel of gendarmerie, retired
with the rank of brigadier-general. And this,” she added, looking
towards the stout little man, “is a former councillor of the royal
courts of Paris, who retired from the magistracy in 1830. His name is
Monsieur Joseph. Though you have only been with us one day, I will tell
you that in the world Monsieur Nicolas once bore the name of the Marquis
de Montauran, and Monsieur Joseph that of Lecamus, Baron de Tresnes; but
for us, as for the world, those names no longer exist. These gentlemen
are without heirs; they only advance by a little the oblivion which
awaits their names; they are simply Monsieur Nicolas and Monsieur
Joseph, as you will be Monsieur Godefroid.”

As he heard those names,--one so celebrated in the annals of royalism
by the catastrophe which put an end to the uprising of the Chouans; the
other so revered in the halls of the old parliament of Paris,--Godefroid
could not repress a quiver. He looked at these relics of the grandest
things of the fallen monarchy,--the _noblesse_ and the law,--and he
could see no movement of the features, no change in the countenance,
that revealed the presence of a worldly thought. Those men no longer
remembered, or did not choose to remember, what they had been. This was
Godefroid’s first lesson.

“Each of your names, gentlemen, is a whole history in itself,” he said
respectfully.

“Yes, the history of my time,--ruins,” replied Monsieur Joseph.

“You are in good company,” said Monsieur Alain.

The latter can be described in a word: he was the small bourgeois of
Paris, the worthy middle-class being with a kindly face, relieved by
pure white hair, but made insipid by an eternal smile.

As for the priest, the Abbe de Veze, his presence said all. The priest
who fulfils his mission is known by the first glance he gives you, and
by the glance that others who know him give to him.

That which struck Godefroid most forcibly at first was the profound
respect which the four lodgers manifested for Madame de la Chanterie.
They all seemed, even the priest, in spite of the sacred character his
functions gave him, to regard her as a queen. Godefroid also noticed
their sobriety. Each seemed to eat only for nourishment. Madame de la
Chanterie took, as did the rest, a single peach and half a bunch of
grapes; but she told her new lodger, as she offered him the various
dishes, not to imitate such temperance.

Godefroid’s curiosity was excited to the highest degree by this
first entrance on his new life. When they returned to the salon after
breakfast, he was left alone; Madame de la Chanterie retired to the
embrasure of a window and held a little private council with her four
friends. This conference, entirely devoid of animation, lasted half an
hour. They spoke together in a low voice, exchanging words which each of
them appeared to have thought over. From time to time Monsieur Alain and
Monsieur Joseph consulted a note-book, turning over its leaves.

“See the faubourg,” said Madame de la Chanterie to Monsieur Joseph, who
left the house.

That was the only word Godefroid distinguished.

“And you the Saint-Marceau quarter,” she continued, addressing Monsieur
Nicolas. “Hunt through the faubourg Saint-Germain and see if you can
find what we want;” this to the Abbe de Veze, who went away immediately.
“And you, my dear Alain,” she added, smiling at the latter, “make an
examination. There, those important matters are all settled,” she said,
returning to Godefroid.

She seated herself in her armchair, took a little piece of linen from
the table before her, and began to sew as if she were employed to do so.

Godefroid, lost in conjecture, and still thinking of a royalist
conspiracy, took his landlady’s remark as an opening, and he began to
study her as he seated himself beside her. He was struck by the singular
dexterity with which she worked. Although everything about her bespoke
the great lady, she showed the dexterity of a workwoman; for every one
can see at a glance, by certain manipulations, the work of a workman or
an amateur.

“You do that,” said Godefroid, “as if you knew the trade.”

“Alas!” she answered, without raising her head, “I did know it once out
of necessity.”

Two large tears came into her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks to the
linen in her hand.

“Forgive me, madame!” cried Godefroid.

Madame de Chanterie looked at her new lodger, and saw such an expression
of genuine regret upon his face, that she made him a friendly sign.
After drying her eyes, she immediately recovered the calmness that
characterized her face, which was less cold than chastened.

“You are here, Monsieur Godefroid,--for you know already that we shall
call you by your baptized name,--you are here in the midst of ruins
caused by a great tempest. We have each been struck and wounded in our
hearts, our family interests, or our fortunes, by that whirlwind of
forty years, which overthrew religion and royalty, and dispersed the
elements of all that made old France. Words that seem quite harmless
do sometimes wound us all, and that is why we are so silent. We speak
rarely of ourselves; we forget ourselves, and we have found a way to
substitute another life for our lives. It is because, after hearing your
confidence at Monsieur Mongenod’s, I thought there seemed a likeness
between your situation and ours, that I induced my four friends to
receive you among us; besides, we wanted another monk in our convent.
But what are you going to do? No one can face solitude without some
moral resources.”

“Madame, I should be very glad, after hearing what you have said, if you
yourself would be the guide of my destiny.”

“You speak like a man of the world,” she answered, “and are trying to
flatter me,--a woman of sixty! My dear child,” she went on, “let me tell
you that you are here among persons who believe strongly in God; who
have all felt his hand, and have yielded themselves to him almost as
though they were Trappists. Have you ever remarked the profound sense of
safety in a true priest when he has given himself to the Lord, when he
listens to his voice, and strives to make himself a docile instrument in
the hand of Providence? He has no longer vanity or self-love,--nothing
of all that which wounds continually the hearts of the world. His
quietude is equal to that of the fatalist; his resignation does truly
enable him to bear all. The true priest, such a one as the Abbe de Veze,
lives like a child with its mother; for the Church, my dear Monsieur
Godefroid, is a good mother. Well, a man can be a priest without the
tonsure; all priests are not in orders. To vow one’s self to good, that
is imitating a true priest; it is obedience to God. I am not preaching
to you; I am not trying to convert you; I am explaining our lives to
you.”

“Instruct me, madame,” said Godefroid, deeply impressed, “so that I may
not fail in any of your rules.”

“That would be hard upon you; you will learn them by degrees. Never
speak here of your misfortunes; they are slight compared to the
catastrophes by which the lives of those you are now among were
blasted.”

While speaking thus, Madame de la Chanterie drew her needle and set her
stitches with unbroken regularity; but here she paused, raised her
head, and looked at Godefroid. She saw him charmed by the penetrating
sweetness of her voice, which possessed, let us say it here, an
apostolic unction. The sick soul contemplated with admiration the truly
extraordinary phenomenon presented by this woman, whose face was now
resplendent. Rosy tints were spreading on the waxen cheeks, her eyes
shone, the youthfulness of her soul changed the light wrinkles into
gracious lines, and all about her solicited affection. Godefroid in
that one moment measured the gulf that separated this woman from common
sentiments. He saw her inaccessible on a peak to which religion had led
her; and he was still too worldly not to be keenly piqued, and to long
to plunge through the gulf and up to the summit on which she stood, and
stand beside her. Giving himself up to this desire, he related to
her all the mistakes of his life, and much that he could not tell
at Mongenod’s, where his confidences had been confined to his actual
situation.

“Poor child!”

That exclamation, falling now and then from Madame de la Chanterie’s
lips as he went on, dropped like balm upon the heart of the sufferer.

“What can I substitute for so many hopes betrayed, so much affection
wasted?” he asked, looking at his hostess, who had now grown thoughtful.
“I came here,” he resumed, “to reflect and choose a course of action. I
have lost my mother; will you replace her?”

“Will you,” she said, “show a son’s obedience?”

“Yes, if you will have the tenderness that commands it.”

“I will try,” she said.

Godefroid put out his hand to take that of his hostess, who gave it to
him, guessing his intentions. He carried it respectfully to his lips.
Madame de la Chanterie’s hand was exquisitely beautiful,--without a
wrinkle; neither fat nor thin; white enough to be the envy of all young
women, and shapely enough for the model of a sculptor. Godefroid had
already admired those hands, conscious of their harmony with the spell
of her voice, and the celestial blue of her glance.

“Wait a moment,” said Madame de la Chanterie, rising and going into her
own room.

Godefroid was keenly excited; he did not know to what class of ideas her
movement was to be attributed. His perplexity did not last long, for she
presently returned with a book in her hand.

“Here, my dear child,” she said, “are the prescriptions of a great
physician of souls. When the things of ordinary life have not given
us the happiness we expected of them, we must seek for happiness in a
higher life. Here is the key of a new world. Read night and morning a
chapter of this book; but bring your full attention to bear upon what
you read; study the words as you would a foreign language. At the end of
a month you will be another man. It is now twenty years that I have read
a chapter every day; and my three friends, Messieurs Nicolas, Alain,
and Joseph, would no more fail in that practice than they would fail in
getting up and going to bed. Do as they do for love of God, for love of
me,” she said, with a divine serenity, an august confidence.

Godefroid turned over the book and read upon its back in gilt letters,
IMITATION OF JESUS CHRIST. The simplicity of this old woman, her
youthful candor, her certainty of doing a good deed, confounded the
ex-dandy. Madame de la Chanterie’s face wore a rapturous expression,
and her attitude was that of a woman who was offering a hundred thousand
francs to a merchant on the verge of bankruptcy.

“I have used that volume,” she said, “for twenty-six years. God grant
its touch may be contagious. Go now and buy me another copy; for this is
the hour when persons come here who must not be seen.”

Godefroid bowed and went to his room, where he flung the book upon the
table, exclaiming,--

“Poor, good woman! Well, so be it!”



V. THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS

The book, like all books frequently read, opened in a particular place.
Godefroid sat down as if to put his ideas in order, for he had gone
through more emotion during this one morning than he had often done in
the agitated months of his life; but above all, his curiosity was keenly
excited. Letting his eyes fall by chance, as people will when their
souls are launched in meditation, they rested mechanically on the two
open pages of the book; almost unconsciously he read the following
heading:--


  CHAPTER XII.

  THE ROYAL WAY OF THE HOLY CROSS

He took up the book; a sentence of that noble chapter caught his eye
like a flash of light:--

  “He has walked before thee, bearing his cross; he died for thee,
  that thou mightest bear thy cross, and be glad to die upon it.

  “Go where thou wilt, seek what thou wilt, never canst thou find a
  nobler, surer path than the royal way of the holy cross.

  “Dispose and order all things according to thy desires and thine
  own judgment and still thou shalt find trials to suffer, whether
  thou wilt or no; and so the cross is there; be it pain of body or
  pain of mind.

  “Sometimes God will seem to leave thee, sometimes men will harass
  thee. But, far worse, thou wilt find thyself a burden to thyself,
  and no remedy will deliver thee, no consolation comfort thee:
  until it pleases God to end thy trouble thou must bear it; for it
  is God’s will that we suffer without consolation, that we may go
  to him without one backward look, humble through tribulation.”

“What a strange book!” thought Godefroid, turning over the leaves. Then
his eyes lighted on the following words:--

  “When thou hast reached the height of finding all afflictions
  sweet, since they have made thee love the love of Jesus Christ,
  then know thyself happy; for thou hast found thy paradise in this
  world.”

Annoyed by this simplicity (the characteristic of strength), angry at
being foiled by a book, he closed the volume; but even then he saw, in
letters of gold on the green morocco cover, the words:--

  SEEK THAT WHICH IS ETERNAL, AND THAT ONLY.

“Have they found it here?” he asked himself.

He went out to buy the handsomest copy he could find of the “Imitation
of Jesus Christ” thinking that Madame de la Chanterie would wish to read
her chapter that night. When he reached the street he stood a moment
near the door, uncertain which way to take and debating in what
direction he was likely to find a bookseller. As he stood there he heard
the heavy sound of the massive porte-cochere closing.

Two men were leaving the hotel de la Chanterie. If the reader has fully
understood the character of this old house he will know that it was
one of the ancient mansions of the olden time. Manon, herself, when she
called Godefroid that morning, had asked him, smiling, how he had slept
in the hotel de la Chanterie.

Godefroid followed the two men without the slightest intention of
watching them; they took him for an accidental passer, and spoke in
tones which enabled him to hear distinctly in those lonely streets.

The two men passed along the rue Massillon beside the church and crossed
the open space in front of it.

“Well, you see, old man, it is easy enough to catch their sous. Say what
they want you to say, that’s all.”

“But we owe money.”

“To whom?”

“To that lady--”

“I’d like to see that old body try to get it; I’d--”

“You’d pay her.”

“Well, you’re right, for if I paid her I’d get more another time.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to do as they advise, and build up a good
business?”

“Pooh!”

“But she said she would get some one to lend us the money.”

“Then we should have to give up the life of--”

“Well, I’d rather; I’m sick of it; it isn’t being a man at all to be
drunk half one’s time.”

“Yes, but you know the abbe turned his back on old Marin the other day;
he refused him everything.”

“Because old Marin tried to swindle, and nobody can succeed in that but
millionnaires.”

Just then the two men, whose dress seemed to show that they were foremen
in some workshop, turned abruptly round towards the place Maubert by
the bridge of the Hotel-Dieu. Godefroid stepped aside to let them pass.
Seeing him so close behind them they looked rather anxiously at each
other, and their faces expressed a regret for having spoken.

Godefroid was the more interested by this conversation because it
reminded him of the scene between the Abbe de Veze and the workman the
day of his first visit.

Thinking over this circumstance, he went as far as a bookseller’s in the
rue Saint-Jacques, whence he returned with a very handsome copy of the
finest edition published in France of the “Imitation of Jesus Christ.”
 Walking slowly back, in order that he might arrive exactly at the dinner
hour, he recalled his own sensations during this morning and he was
conscious of a new impulse in his soul. He was seized by a sudden and
deep curiosity, but his curiosity paled before an inexplicable desire.
He was drawn to Madame de la Chanterie; he felt the keenest desire
to attach himself to her, to devote himself to her, to please her, to
deserve her praise: in short, he felt the first emotions of platonic
love; he saw glimpses of the untold grandeur of that soul, and he longed
to know it in its entirety. He grew impatient to enter the inner lives
of these pure Catholics. In that small company of faithful souls, the
majesty of practical religion was so thoroughly blended with all that
is most majestic in a French woman that Godefroid resolved to leave no
stone unturned to make himself accepted as a true member of the little
body. These feelings would have been unnaturally sudden in a busy
Parisian eagerly occupied with life, but Godefroid was, as we have seen,
in the position of a drowning man who catches at every floating branch
thinking it a solid stay, and his soul, ploughed and furrowed with
trial, was ready to receive all seed.

He found the four friends in the salon, and he presented the book to
Madame de la Chanterie, saying:

“I did not like to deprive you of it to-night.”

“God grant,” she said, smiling, as she looked at the magnificent volume,
“that this may be your last excess of elegance.”

Looking at the clothes of the four men present and observing how in
every particular they were reduced to mere utility and neatness, and
seeing, too, how rigorously the same principle was applied to all the
details of the house, Godefroid understood the value of the reproach so
courteously made to him.

“Madame,” he said, “the persons whom you obliged this morning are
scoundrels; I overheard, without intending it, what they said to each
other when they left the house; it was full of the basest ingratitude.”

“They were the two locksmiths of the rue Mouffetard,” said Madame de la
Chanterie to Monsieur Nicolas; “that is your affair.”

“The fish gets away more than once before it is caught,” said Monsieur
Alain, laughing.

The perfect indifference of Madame de la Chanterie on hearing of the
immediate ingratitude of persons to whom she had, no doubt, given money,
surprised Godefroid, who became thoughtful.

The dinner was enlivened by Monsieur Alain and Monsieur Joseph; but
Monsieur Nicolas remained quiet, sad, and cold; he bore on his features
the ineffaceable imprint of some bitter grief, some eternal sorrow.
Madame de la Chanterie paid equal attentions to all. Godefroid felt
himself observed by these persons, whose prudence equalled their piety;
his vanity led him to imitate their reserve, and he measured his words.

This first day was much more interesting than those which succeeded it.
Godefroid, who found himself set aside from all the serious conferences,
was obliged, during several hours in mornings and evenings when he was
left wholly to himself, to have recourse to the “Imitation of Jesus
Christ;” and he ended by studying that book as a man studies a book when
he has but one, or is a prisoner. A book is then like a woman with whom
we live in solitude; we must either hate or adore that woman, and, in
like manner, we must either enter into the soul of the author or not
read ten lines of his book.

Now, it is impossible not to be impressed by the “Imitation of Jesus
Christ,” which is to dogma what action is to thought. Catholicism
vibrates in it, pulses, breathes, and lives, body to body, with
human life. The book is a sure friend. It speaks to all passions, all
difficulties, even worldly ones; it solves all problems; it is more
eloquent than any preacher, for its voice is your own, it is the voice
within your soul, you hear it with your spirit. It is, in short, the
Gospel translated, adapted to all ages, the summit and crest of
all human situations. It is extraordinary that the Church has never
canonized John Gersen, for the Divine Spirit evidently inspired his pen.

For Godefroid, the hotel de la Chanterie now held a woman and a book;
day by day he loved the woman more; he discovered flowers buried beneath
the snows of winter in her heart; he had glimpses of the joys of a
sacred friendship which religion permits, on which the angels smile;
a friendship which here united these five persons and against which no
evil could prevail.

This is a sentiment higher than all others; a love of soul to soul,
resembling those rarest flowers born on the highest peaks of earth; a
love of which a few examples are offered to humanity from age to age,
by which lovers are sometimes bound together in one being, and which
explains those faithful attachments which are otherwise inexplicable
by the laws of the world. It is a bond without disappointment,
without misunderstanding, without vanity, without strife, without even
contradictions; so completely are the moral natures blended into one.

This sentiment, vast, infinite, born of Catholic charity, Godefroid
foresaw with all its joys. At times he could not believe the spectacle
before his eyes, and he sought for reasons to explain the sublime
friendship of these five persons, wondering in his heart to find true
Catholics, true Christians of the early Church, in the Paris of 1836.



VI. THE BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE OF CHANTERIE AND COMPANY

Within a week after his arrival Godefroid had seen such a concourse of
persons, he had overheard fragments of conversation relating to so many
serious topics, that he began to perceive an enormous activity in the
lives of the five inmates of the house. He noticed that none of them
slept more than five hours at the most.

They had all made, in some sort, a first day, before the second
breakfast. During that time strangers came and went, bringing or
carrying away money, sometimes in considerable sums. A messenger
from the Mongenod counting-room often came,--always very early in the
morning, so that his errand might not interfere with the business of the
bank.

One evening Monsieur Mongenod came himself, and Godefroid noticed that
he showed to Monsieur Alain a certain filial familiarity added to the
profound respect which he testified to the three other lodgers of Madame
de la Chanterie.

On that evening the banker merely put a few matter-of-fact questions to
Godefroid: “Was he comfortable? Did he intend to stay?” etc.,--at the
same time advising him to persevere in his plan.

“I need only one thing to make me contented,” said Godefroid.

“What is that?” asked the banker.

“An occupation.”

“An occupation!” remarked the Abbe de Veze. “Then you have changed your
mind? I thought you came to our cloister for rest.”

“Rest, without the prayers that enlivened monasteries, without the
meditation which peopled the Thebaids, becomes a disease,” said Monsieur
Joseph, sententiously.

“Learn book-keeping,” said Monsieur Mongenod, with a smile; “you might
become in a few months very useful to my friends here.”

“Oh! with pleasure,” cried Godefroid.

The next day was Sunday; Madame de la Chanterie requested him to give
her his arm to high mass.

“It is,” she said, “the only coercion I shall put upon you. Several
times during the past week I have wished to speak to you of religion,
but it did not seem to me that the time had come. You would find plenty
of occupation if you shared our beliefs, for then you would share our
labors as well.”

During mass Godefroid noticed the fervor of Messieurs Nicolas, Joseph,
and Alain; and as during the last few days he had also noticed their
superiority and intelligence, and the vast extent of their knowledge;
he concluded, when he saw how they humbled themselves, that the Catholic
religion had secrets which had hitherto escaped him.

“After all,” he said to himself, “it is the religion of Bossuet, Pascal,
Racine, Saint-Louis, Louis XIV., Raffaelle, Michel-Angelo, Ximenes,
Bayard, du Guesclin; and how could I, weakling that I am, compare myself
to those intellects, those statesmen, those poets, those heroes?”

If there were not some real instruction in these minor details it
would be imprudent to dwell upon them in these days; but they are
indispensable to the interests of this history, in which the present
public will be none too ready to believe, and which presents at the
outset a fact that is almost ridiculous,--namely, the empire which a
woman of sixty obtained over a young man disappointed with the world.

“You did not pray at all,” said Madame de la Chanterie to Godefroid as
they left the portal of Notre-Dame; “not for any one,--not even for the
soul of your mother.”

Godefroid colored and said nothing.

“Will you do me the favor,” continued Madame de la Chanterie, “to go to
your room and not come into the salon for an hour? You can meditate,
if you love me, on the first chapter in the third book of the
‘Imitation’--the one entitled: ‘Of inward communing.’”

Godefroid bowed stiffly and went to his room.

“The devil take them!” he exclaimed to himself, giving way to downright
anger. “What do they want with me here? What is all this traffic they
are carrying on? Pooh! all women, even pious ones, are up to the same
tricks. If Madame” (giving her the name by which her lodgers spoke of
her) “wants me out of the way it is probably because they are plotting
something against me.”

With that thought in his mind he tried to look from his window into that
of the salon; but the situation of the rooms did not allow it. He went
down one flight, and then returned,--reflecting that according to the
rigid principles of the house he should be dismissed if discovered
spying. To lose the respect of those five persons seemed to him as
serious as public dishonor.

He waited three quarters of an hour; then he resolved to surprise Madame
de la Chanterie and come upon her suddenly before she expected him. He
invented a lie to excuse himself, saying that his watch was wrong; for
which purpose he set it on twenty minutes. Then he went downstairs,
making no noise, reached the door of the salon, and opened it abruptly.

He saw a man, still young, but already celebrated, a poet, whom he had
frequently met in society, Victor de Vernisset, on his knees before
Madame de la Chanterie and kissing the hem of her dress. If the sky had
fallen, and shivered to atoms like glass, as the ancients thought it
was, Godefroid could not have been more astonished. Shocking thoughts
came into his mind, and then a reaction more terrible still when, before
the sarcasm he was about to utter had left his lips, he saw Monsieur
Alain in a corner of the room counting out bank-notes.

In an instant Vernisset was on his feet, and the worthy Alain looked
thunderstruck. Madame de la Chanterie, on her part, gave Godefroid a
look which petrified him; for the twofold expression on the face of the
visitor had not escaped him.

“Monsieur is one of us,” she said to the young poet, with a sign towards
Godefroid.

“Then you are a happy man, my dear fellow,” said Vernisset; “you are
saved! But, madame,” he added, turning to Madame de la Chanterie, “if
all Paris had seen me, I should rejoice in it. Nothing can ever mark my
gratitude to you. I am yours forever; I belong to you utterly. Command
me as you will and I obey. I owe you my life, and it is yours.”

“Well, well, young man!” said the kind Alain, “then be wise, be
virtuous,--only, _work_; but do not attack religion in your books.
Moreover, remember that you owe a debt.”

And he handed him an envelope thick with the bank-notes he had counted
out. The tears were in Victor de Vernisset’s eyes; he kissed Madame de
la Chanterie’s hand respectfully, and went away, after shaking hands
with Monsieur Alain and Godefroid.

“You have not obeyed madame,” said the goodman Alain solemnly, with a
sad expression on his face that Godefroid had never before seen there;
“and that is a great wrong; if it happens again we must part. This may
seem hard to you after we had begun to give you our confidence.”

“My dear Alain,” said Madame de la Chanterie, “have the kindness for my
sake to say no more about this piece of thoughtlessness. We ought not
to ask too much a new arrival, who has been spared great misfortunes
and knows nothing of religion; and who, moreover, has only an excessive
curiosity about our vocation, and does not yet believe in us.”

“Forgive me, madame,” said Godefroid; “I do desire, from this time
forth, to be worthy of you. I will submit to any trial you think
necessary before initiating me into the secrets of your work; and if the
Abbe de Veze will undertake to instruct me I will listen to him, soul
and mind.”

These words made Madame de la Chanterie so happy that a faint color
stole upon her cheeks. She took Godefroid’s hand and pressed it, then
she said, with strange emotion, “It is well.”

That evening, after dinner, visitors came in: a vicar-general of the
diocese of Paris, two canons, two former mayors of Paris, and one of
the ladies who distributed the charities of Notre-Dame. No cards were
played; but the conversation was gay, without being vapid.

A visit which surprised Godefroid greatly was that of the Comtesse de
Cinq-Cygne, one of the highest personages in aristocratic society, whose
salon was inaccessible to the bourgeoisie and to parvenus. The presence
of this great lady in Madame de la Chanterie’s salon was sufficiently
surprising; but the manner in which the two women met and treated
each other seemed to Godefroid inexplicable; for it showed the closest
intimacy and a constant intercourse which gave Madame de la Chanterie
an added value in his eyes. Madame de Cinq-Cygne was gracious and
affectionate in manner to the four friends of her friend, and showed the
utmost respect to Monsieur Nicolas.

We may see here how social vanities still governed Godefroid; for up to
this visit of Madame de Cinq-Cygne he was still undecided; but he now
resolved to give himself up, with or without conviction, to whatever
Madame de la Chanterie and her friends might exact of him, in order
to get affiliated with their order and initiated into their secrets,
assuring himself that in that way he should find a career.

The next day he went to a book-keeper whom Madame de la Chanterie
recommended, and arranged with him the hours at which they should work
together. His whole time was now employed. The Abbe de Veze instructed
him in the mornings; he was two hours a day with the book-keeper; and
he spent the rest of his time between breakfast and dinner in doing
imaginary commercial accounts which his master required him to write at
home.

Some time passed thus, during which Godefroid felt the charm of a life
in which each hour has its own employment. The recurrence of a settled
work at settled moments, regularity of action, is the secret of many a
happy life; and it proves how deeply the founders of religious orders
had meditated on the nature of man. Godefroid, who had made up his
mind to listen to the Abbe de Veze, began to have serious thoughts of
a future life, and to find how little he knew of the real gravity of
religious questions.

Moreover, from day to day Madame de la Chanterie, with whom he always
remained for an hour after the second breakfast, allowed him to discover
the treasures that were in her; he knew then that he never could have
imagined a loving-kindness so broad and so complete. A woman of Madame
de la Chanterie’s apparent age no longer has the pettiness of younger
women. She is a friend who offers you all feminine refinements, who
displays the graces, the choice attractions which nature inspires in a
woman for man; she gives them, and no longer sells them. Such a woman is
either detestable or perfect; for her gifts are either not of the flesh
or they are worthless. Madame de la Chanterie was perfect. She seemed
never to have had a youth; her glance never told of a past. Godefroid’s
curiosity was far from being appeased by a closer and more intimate
knowledge of this sublime nature; the discoveries of each succeeding day
only redoubled his desire to learn the anterior life of a woman whom he
now thought a saint. Had she ever loved? Had she been a wife,--a mother?
Nothing about her was characteristic of an old maid; she displayed all
the graces of a well-born woman; and an observer would perceive in
her robust health, in the extraordinary phenomena of her physical
preservation, a divine life, and a species of ignorance of the earthly
existence.

Except the gay and cheery goodman Alain, all these persons had suffered;
but Monsieur Nicolas himself seemed to give the palm of martyrdom to
Madame de la Chanterie. Nevertheless, the memory of her sorrows was so
restrained by religious resignation, by her secret avocations, that she
seemed to have been always happy.

“You are the life of your friends,” Godefroid said to her one day; “you
are the tie that unites them,--the house-mother, as it were, of some
great work; and, as we are all mortal, I ask myself sometimes what your
association would become without you.”

“That is what frightens the others; but Providence, to whom we owe our
new book-keeper,” she said, smiling, “will provide. Besides, I am on the
look-out.”

“Will your new book-keeper soon be allowed to work at your business?”
 asked Godefroid.

“That depends on himself,” she answered, smiling. “He must be sincerely
religious, truly pious, without the least self-interest, not concerned
about the riches of our house, able to rise above all petty social
considerations on the two wings which God has given us.”

“What are they?”

“Singleness of mind and purity,” replied Madame de la Chanterie. “Your
ignorance shows that you have neglected the reading of our book.”
 she added, laughing at the innocent trick she had played to know if
Godefroid had read the “Imitation of Jesus Christ.” “And, lastly,” she
went on, “fill your soul with Saint Paul’s epistle upon Charity. When
that is done,” she added, with a sublime look, “it will not be you who
belong to us, we shall belong to you, and you will be able to count up
greater riches than the sovereigns of this world possess; you will enjoy
as we enjoy; yes, let me tell you (if you remember the ‘Arabian Nights’)
that the treasures of Aladdin are nothing to those we possess. And so
for the last year we have not sufficed for our affairs, and we needed,
as you see, a book-keeper.”

While speaking, she studied Godefroid’s face; he, on his part, did not
know how to take this extraordinary confidence. But as the scene in the
counting-room at Mongenod’s came often to his mind, he hovered between
doubt and belief.

“Ah, you will be very happy!” she said.

Godefroid was so consumed with curiosity that from this moment he
determined to break through the reserve of one of the four friends
and question him. Now, the one to whom he felt the most drawn, and who
seemed naturally to excite the sympathies of all classes, was the kind,
gay, simple Monsieur Alain. By what strange path could Providence have
led a being so guileless into this monastery without a lock, where
recluses of both sexes lived beneath a rule in the midst of Paris,
in absolute freedom, as though they were guarded by the sternest of
superiors? What drama, what event, had made him leave his own road in
life, and take this path among the sorrows of the great city?

Godefroid resolved to ask.



VII. MONSIEUR ALAIN TELLS HIS SECRETS

One evening Godefroid determined to pay a visit to his neighbor on
the floor above him, with the intention of satisfying a curiosity
more excited by the apparent impossibility of a catastrophe in such an
existence than it would have been under the expectation of discovering
some terrible episode in the life of a corsair.

At the words “Come in!” given in answer to two raps struck discreetly
on the door, Godefroid turned the key which was in the lock and found
Monsieur Alain sitting by the fire reading, before he went to bed, his
accustomed chapter in the “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” by the light
of two wax-candles, each protected by a moveable green shade, such as
whist-players use.

The goodman wore trousers _a pied_ and his gray camlet dressing-gown.
His feet were at a level with the fire, resting on a cushion done in
worsted-work, as were his slippers, by Madame de la Chanterie. The fine
head of the old man, without other covering than its crown of white
hair, almost like that of a monk, stood out in clear relief against the
brown background of an enormous armchair.

Monsieur Alain gently laid his book, which was much worn at the corners,
on a little table with twisted legs, and signed to the young man to take
another chair, removing as he did so a pair of spectacles which were
hanging on the end of his nose.

“Are you ill, that you have left your room at this hour?” he asked.

“Dear Monsieur Alain,” said Godefroid, frankly, “I am tortured with
a curiosity which one word from you will make very harmless or very
indiscreet; and that explains clearly enough the spirit in which I shall
ask my question.”

“Oh! oh! and what is your question?” said the good soul, looking at the
young man with an eye that was half mischievous.

“What was it that brought you here to lead the life that you live here?
For, surely, to accept the doctrines of such total renunciation of all
personal interests, a man must have been disgusted with the world, or
else have injured others.”

“Eh! my dear lad,” replied the old man, letting a smile flicker on his
large lips, which gave to his rosy mouth the kindliest expression that
the genius of a painter ever imagined, “can we not be moved to the
deepest pity by the spectacle of human wretchedness which Paris holds
within her walls? Did Saint Vincent de Paul need the spur of remorse or
wounded vanity to make him devote himself to outcast children?”

“You close my mouth, for if ever a soul resembled that of the Christian
hero, it is yours,” said Godefroid.

In spite of the hardness which age had given to the wrinkled yellow skin
of his face, the old man blushed, for he seemed to have provoked that
comparison; though any one who knew his modesty would have been certain
he never dreamed of it. Godefroid was aware by this time that Madame
de la Chanterie’s inmates had no taste for that sort of incense.
Nevertheless, the extreme simplicity of the good old soul was more
disturbed by this idea than a young girl would have been by an improper
thought.

“Though I am very far indeed from Saint Vincent de Paul morally,” said
Monsieur Alain, “I think I do resemble him physically.”

Godefroid was about to speak, but was stopped by a gesture of the old
man, whose nose, it must be owned, had the tuberous appearance of
that of the Saint, and whose face, a good deal like that of an old
vine-dresser, was an exact duplicate of the broad, common face of the
founder of Foundling hospitals.

“As for me, you are right enough,” he went on; “my vocation for our work
was brought about by repentance, as the result of a--folly.”

“A folly,--you!” Godefroid exclaimed softly, the word entirely putting
out of his head what he meant to say.

“Ah! dear me, what I am going to tell you will seem, I dare say, a
trifle to you,--a mere bit of nonsense; but before the tribunal of
conscience it was another thing. If you persist in wishing to share our
work after hearing what I shall tell you, you will understand that the
power of a sentiment is according to the nature of souls, and that a
matter which would not in the least trouble a strong mind may very well
torment the conscience of a weak Christian.”

After a preface of this kind, the curiosity of the disciple of course
knew no bounds. What could be the crime of the worthy soul whom
Madame de la Chanterie called her _paschal lamb_? The thought crossed
Godefroid’s mind that a book might be written on it, called “The Sins of
a Sheep.” Sheep are sometimes quite ferocious towards grass and flowers.
One of the tenderest republicans of those days was heard to assert
that the best of human beings was cruel to something. But the kindly
Alain!--he, who like my uncle Toby, wouldn’t crush a gnat till it
had stung him twenty times,--that sweet soul to have been tortured by
repentance!

This reflection in Godefroid’s mind filled the pause made by the old man
after saying, “Now listen to me!”--a pause he filled himself by pushing
his cushion under Godefroid’s feet to share it with him.

“I was then about thirty years of age,” he said. “It was the year ‘98,
if I remember right,--a period when young men were forced to have the
experience of men of sixty. One morning, a little before my breakfast
hour, which was nine o’clock, my old housekeeper ushered in one of the
few friends remaining to me after the Revolution. My first word was to
ask him to breakfast. My friend--his name was Mongenod, a fellow about
twenty-eight years of age--accepted, but he did so in an awkward manner.
I had not seen him since 1793!”

“Mongenod!” cried Godefroid; “why, that is--”

“If you want to know the end before the beginning, how am I to tell you
my history?” said the old man, smiling.

Godefroid made a sign which promised absolute silence.

“When Mongenod sat down,” continued Monsieur Alain, “I noticed that his
shoes were worn out. His stockings had been washed so often that it
was difficult to say if they were silk or not. His breeches, of
apricot-colored cassimere, were so old that the color had disappeared
in spots; and the buckles, instead of being of steel, seemed to me to be
made of common iron. His white, flowered waistcoat, now yellow from
long wearing, also his shirt, the frill of which was frayed, betrayed
a horrible yet decent poverty. A mere glance at his coat was enough to
convince me that my friend had fallen into dire distress. That coat was
nut-brown in color, threadbare at the seams, carefully brushed, though
the collar was greasy from pomade or powder, and had the white metal
buttons now copper-colored. The whole was so shabby that I tried not to
look at it. The hat--an opera hat of a kind we then carried under the
arm, and not on the head--had seen many governments. Nevertheless,
my poor friend must have spent a few sous at the barber’s, for he was
neatly shaved; and his hair, gathered behind his head with a comb and
powdered carefully, smelt of pomade. I saw two chains hanging down on
his breeches,--two rusty steel chains,--but no appearance of a watch
in his pocket. I tell you all these details, as they come to me,” said
Monsieur Alain; “I seldom think of this matter now; but when I do, all
the particulars come vividly before me.”

He paused a moment and then resumed:--

“It was winter, and Mongenod evidently had no cloak; for I noticed that
several lumps of snow, which must have dropped from the roofs as he
walked along, were sticking to the collar of his coat. When he took off
his rabbit-skin gloves, and I saw his right hand, I noticed the signs
of labor, and toilsome labor, too. Now his father, the advocate of the
Grand Council, had left him some property,--about five or six thousand
francs a year. I saw at once that he had come to me to borrow money.
I had, in a secret hiding-place, two hundred louis d’or,--an enormous
hoard at that time; for they were worth I couldn’t now tell you how many
hundred thousand francs in assignats. Mongenod and I had studied at
the same collage,--that of Grassins,--and we had met again in the same
law-office,--that of Bordin,--a truly honest man. When you have spent
your boyhood and played your youthful pranks with the same comrade, the
sympathy between you and him has something sacred about it; his voice,
his glance, stir certain chords in your heart which only vibrate
under the memories that he brings back. Even if you have had cause of
complaint against such a comrade, the rights of the friendship between
you can never be effaced. But there had never been the slightest jar
between us two. At the death of his father, in 1787, Mongenod was left
richer than I. Though I had never borrowed money from him, I owed him
pleasures which my father’s economy denied me. Without my generous
comrade I should never had seen the first representation of the
‘Marriage of Figaro.’ Mongenod was what was called in those days a
charming cavalier; he was very gallant. Sometimes I blamed him for his
facile way of making intimacies and his too great amiability. His purse
opened freely; he lived in a free-handed way; he would serve a man as
second having only seen him twice. Good God! how you send me back to
the days and the ways of my youth!” said the worthy man, with his cheery
smile.

“Are you sorry?” said Godefroid.

“Oh, no! and you can judge by the minuteness with which I am telling you
all this how great a place this event has held in my life.

“Mongenod, endowed with an excellent heart and fine courage, a trifle
Voltairean, was inclined to play the nobleman,” went on Monsieur Alain.
“His education at Grassins, where there were many young nobles, and
his various gallantries, had given him the polished manners and ways of
people of condition, who were then called aristocrats. You can therefore
imagine how great was my surprise to see such symptoms of poverty in the
young and elegant Mongenod of 1787 when my eyes left his face and rested
on his garments. But as, at that unhappy period of our history, some
persons assumed a shabby exterior for safety, and as he might have had
some other and sufficient reasons for disguising himself, I awaited an
explanation, although I opened the way to it. ‘What a plight you are in,
my dear Mongenod!’ I said, accepting the pinch of snuff he offered me
from a copper and zinc snuff-box. ‘Sad indeed!’ he answered; ‘I have
but one friend left, and that is you. I have done all I could to avoid
appealing to you; but I must ask you for a hundred louis. The sum is
large, I know,’ he went on, seeing my surprise; ‘but if you gave me
fifty I should be unable ever to return them; whereas with one hundred
I can seek my fortune in better ways,--despair will inspire me to find
them.’ ‘Then you have nothing?’ I exclaimed. ‘I have,’ he said, brushing
away a tear, ‘five sous left of my last piece of money. To come here
to you I have had my boots blacked and my face shaved. I possess what
I have on my back. But,’ he added, with a gesture, ‘I owe my landlady
a thousand francs in assignats, and the man I buy cold victuals from
refused me credit yesterday. I am absolutely without resources.’ ‘What
do you think of doing?’ ‘Enlisting as a soldier if you cannot help me.’
‘You! a soldier, Mongenod?’ ‘I will get myself killed, or I will be
General Mongenod.’ ‘Well,’ I said, much moved, ‘eat your breakfast in
peace; I have a hundred louis.’

“At that point,” said the goodman, interrupting himself and looking at
Godefroid with a shrewd air, “I thought it best to tell him a bit of a
fib.”

“‘That is all I possess in the world,’ I said. ‘I have been waiting
for a fall in the Funds to invest that money; but I will put it in your
hands instead, and you shall consider me your partner; I will leave
to your conscience the duty of returning it to me in due time. The
conscience of an honest man,’ I said, ‘is a better security than the
Funds.’ Mongenod looked at me fixedly as I spoke, and seemed to be
inlaying my words upon his heart. He put out his right hand, I laid my
left into it, and we held them together,--I deeply moved, and he with
two big tears rolling down his cheeks. The sight of those tears wrung my
heart. I was more moved still when Mongenod pulled out a ragged foulard
handkerchief to wipe them away. ‘Wait here,’ I said; and I went to my
secret hiding-place with a heart as agitated as though I had heard a
woman say she loved me. I came back with two rolls of fifty louis each.
‘Here, count them.’ He would not count them; and he looked about him
for a desk on which to write, he said, a proper receipt. I positively
refused to take any paper. ‘If I should die,’ I said, ‘my heirs would
trouble you. This is to be between ourselves.’

“Well,” continued Monsieur Alain, smiling, “when Mongenod found me a
good friend he ceased to look as sad and anxious as when he entered; in
fact, he became quite gay. My housekeeper gave us some oysters, white
wine, and an omelet, with broiled kidneys, and the remains of a pate my
old mother had sent me; also some dessert, coffee, and liqueur of the
Iles. Mongenod, who had been starving for two days, was fed up. We were
so interested in talking about our life before the Revolution that we
sat at table till three in the afternoon. Mongenod told me how he had
lost his fortune. In the first place, his father having invested the
greater part of his capital in city loans, when they fell Mongenod lost
two thirds of all he had. Then, having sold his house in the rue de
Savoie, he was forced to receive the price in assignats. After that he
took into his head to found a newspaper, ‘La Sentinelle;’ that compelled
him to fly at the end of six months. His hopes, he said, were now fixed
on the success of a comic opera called ‘Les Peruviens.’ When he said
that I began to tremble. Mongenod turned author, wasting his money on
a newspaper, living no doubt in the theatres, connected with singers at
the Feydeau, with musicians, and all the queer people who lurk behind
the scenes,--to tell you the truth, he didn’t seem my Mongenod. I
trembled. But how could I take back the hundred louis? I saw each roll
in each pocket of his breeches like the barrels of two pistols.

“Then,” continued Monsieur Alain, and this time he sighed, “Mongenod
went away. When I was alone, and no longer in presence of hard and
cruel poverty, I began, in spite of myself, to reflect. I was sobered.
‘Mongenod,’ thought I, ‘is perhaps thoroughly depraved; he may have been
playing a comedy at my expense.’ His gaiety, the moment I had handed
over to him readily such a large sum of money, struck me then as being
too like the joy of the valets on the stage when they catch a Geronte.
I ended, where I ought to have begun, by resolving to make some
investigations as to my friend Mongenod, who had given me his
address,--written on the back of a playing card! I did not choose, as
a matter of delicacy, to go and see him the next day; he might have
thought there was distrust in such promptness, as, indeed, there would
have been. The second day I had certain matters to attend to which took
all my time, and it was only at the end of two weeks that, not seeing
or hearing of Mongenod, I went one morning from the Croix-Rouge, where I
was then living, to the rue des Moineaux, where he lived. I found he was
living in furnished lodgings of the lowest class; but the landlady was
a very worthy woman, the widow of a magistrate who had died on the
scaffold; she was utterly ruined by the Revolution, and had only a few
louis with which to begin the hazardous trade of taking lodgers.”

Here Monsieur Alain interrupted himself to explain. “I knew her later,”
 he said; “she then had seven houses in Saint-Roch, and was making quite
a little fortune.

“‘The citizen Mongenod is not at home,’ the landlady said to me; ‘but
there is some one there.’ This remark excited my curiosity. I went up to
the fifth story. A charming person opened the door,--oh, such a pretty
young woman! who looked at me rather suspiciously and kept the door half
closed. ‘I am Alain, a friend of Mongenod’s,’ I said. Instantly the door
opened wide, and I entered a miserable garret, which was, nevertheless,
kept with the utmost neatness. The pretty young woman offered me a chair
before a fireplace where were ashes but no fire, at the corner of which
I saw a common earthen foot-warmer. ‘It makes me very happy, monsieur,’
she said, taking my hand and pressing it affectionately, ‘to be able to
express to you my gratitude. You have indeed saved us. Were it not for
you I might never have seen Mongenod again. He might,--yes, he would
have thrown himself in the river. He was desperate when he left me to go
and see you.’ On examining this person I was surprised to see her head
tied up in a foulard, and along the temples a curious dark line; but I
presently saw that her head was shaved. ‘Have you been ill?’ I asked,
as I noticed this singularity. She cast a glance at a broken mirror in
a shabby frame and colored; then the tears came into her eyes. ‘Yes,
monsieur,’ she said, ‘I had horrible headaches, and I was obliged to
have my hair cut off; it came to my feet.’ ‘Am I speaking to Madame
Mongenod?’ I asked. ‘Yes, monsieur,’ she answered, giving me a truly
celestial look. I bowed to the poor little woman and went away,
intending to make the landlady tell me something about them; but she was
out. I was certain that poor young woman had sold her hair to buy bread.
I went from there to a wood merchant and ordered half a cord of wood,
telling the cartman and the sawyer to take the bill, which I made the
dealer receipt to the name of citizen Mongenod, and give it to the
little woman.

“There ends the period of what I long called _my foolishness_,” said
Monsieur Alain, clasping his hands and lifting them with a look of
repentance.

Godefroid could not help smiling. He was, as we shall see, greatly
mistaken in that smile.

“Two days later,” resumed the worthy man, “I met one of those men who
are neither friends nor strangers, with whom we have relations from
time to time, and call acquaintances,--a certain Monsieur Barillaud, who
remarked accidentally, _a propos_ of the ‘Peruviens,’ that the author
was a friend of his. ‘Then you know citizen Mongenod?’ I said.

“In those days we were obliged by law to call each other ‘citizen,’”
 said Monsieur Alain to Godefroid, by way of parenthesis. Then he
continued his narrative:--

“The citizen looked at me, exclaiming, ‘I wish I never had known him;
for he has several times borrowed money of me, and shown his friendship
by not returning it. He is a queer fellow,--good-hearted and all that,
but full of illusions! always an imagination on fire! I will do him this
justice,--he does not mean to deceive; but as he deceives himself about
everything, he manages to behave like a dishonest man.’ ‘How much does
he owe you?’ I asked. ‘Oh! a good many hundred francs. He’s a basket
with a hole in the bottom. Nobody knows where his money goes; perhaps
he doesn’t know himself.’ ‘Has he any resources?’ ‘Well, yes,’ said
Barillaud, laughing; ‘just now he is talking of buying land among
the savages in the United States.’ I carried away with me the drop of
vinegar which casual gossip thus put into my heart, and it soured all
my feelings. I went to see my old master, in whose office Mongenod and I
had studied law; he was now my counsel. When I told him about my loan to
Mongenod and the manner in which I had acted,--‘What!’ he cried, ‘one of
my old clerks to behave in that way! You ought to have put him off till
the next day and come to see me. You would then have found out that I
have forbidden my clerks to let Mongenod into this office. Within the
last year he has borrowed three hundred francs of me in silver,--an
enormous sum at present rates. Three days before he breakfasted with
you I met him on the street, and he gave such a piteous account of his
poverty that I let him have two louis.’ ‘If I have been the dupe of a
clever comedian,’ I said to Bordin, ‘so much the worse for him, not for
me. But tell me what to do.’ ‘You must try to get from him a written
acknowledgment; for a debtor, however, insolvent he may be, may become
solvent, and then he will pay.’ Thereupon Bordin took from a tin box a
case on which I saw the name of Mongenod; he showed me three receipts
of a hundred francs each. ‘The next time he comes I shall have him
admitted, and I shall make him add the interest and the two louis, and
give me a note for the whole. I shall, at any rate, have things properly
done, and be in a position to obtain payment.’ ‘Well,’ said I to Bordin,
‘can you have my matter set right so far, as well as yours? for I know
you are a good man, and what you do will be right.’ ‘I have remained
master of my ground,’ he said; ‘but when persons behave as you have done
they are at the mercy of a man who can snap his fingers at them. As for
me, I don’t choose that any man should get the better of me,--get the
better of a former attorney to the Chatelet!--ta-ra-ra! Every man to
whom a sum of money is lent as heedlessly as you lent yours to Mongenod,
ends, after a certain time, by thinking that money his own. It is no
longer your money, it is _his_ money; you become his creditor,--an
inconvenient, unpleasant person. A debtor will then try to get rid of
you by some juggling with his conscience, and out of one hundred men in
his position, seventy-five will do their best never to see or hear
of you again.’ ‘Then you think only twenty-five men in a hundred
are honest?’ ‘Did I say that?’ he replied, smiling maliciously. ‘The
estimate is too high?’”

Monsieur Alain paused to put the fire together; that done, he resumed:--

“Two weeks later I received a letter from Bordin asking me to go to his
office and get my receipt. I went. ‘I tried to get fifty of your louis
for you,’ he said, ‘but the birds had flown. Say good-by to your yellow
boys; those pretty canaries are off to other climes. You have had to do
with a sharper; that’s what he is. He declared to me that his wife and
father-in-law had gone to the United States with sixty of your louis
to buy land; that he intended to follow, for the purpose, he said, of
making a fortune and paying his debts; the amount of which, carefully
drawn up, he confided to me, requesting me to keep an eye on what
became of his creditors. Here is a list of the items,’ continued Bordin,
showing me a paper from which he read the total,--‘Seventeen thousand
francs in coin; a sum with which a house could be bought that would
bring in two thousand francs a year.’ After replacing the list in the
case, Bordin gave me a note for a sum equivalent to a hundred louis
in gold, with a letter in which Mongenod admitted having received my
hundred louis, on which he owed interest. ‘So now I am all right,’ I
said to Bordin. ‘He cannot deny the debt,’ replied my old master;
‘but where there are no funds, even the king--I should say the
Directory--can’t enforce rights.’ I went home. Believing that I had
been robbed in a way intentionally screened from the law, I withdrew my
esteem from Mongenod, and resigned myself philosophically.

“If I have dwelt on these details, which are so commonplace and seem so
slight,” said the worthy man, looking at Godefroid, “it is not without
good reason. I want to explain to you how I was led to act, as most
men act, in defiance of the rules which savages observe in the smallest
matters. Many persons would justify themselves by the opinion of
so excellent a man as Bordin; but to-day I know myself to have been
inexcusable. When it comes to condemning one of our fellows, and
withdrawing our esteem from him, we should act from our own convictions
only. But have we any right to make our heart a tribunal before which
we arraign our neighbor? Where is the law? what is our standard of
judgment? That which in us is weakness may be strength in our neighbor.
So many beings, so many different circumstances for every act; and there
are no two beings exactly alike in all humanity. Society alone has the
right over its members of repression; as for punishment, I deny it that
right. Repression suffices; and that, besides, brings with it punishment
enough.

“So,” resumed Monsieur Alain, continuing his history, having drawn from
it that noble teaching, “after listening to the gossip of the Parisian,
and relying on the wisdom of my old master, I condemned Mongenod. His
play, ‘Les Peruviens,’ was announced. I expected to receive a ticket
from Mongenod for the first representation; I established in my own mind
a sort of claim on him. It seemed to me that by reason of my loan my
friend was a sort of vassal of mine, who owed me a number of things
besides the interest on my money. We all think that. Mongenod not only
did not send me a ticket, but I saw him from a distance coming towards
me in that dark passage under the Theatre Feydeau, well dressed, almost
elegant; he pretended not to see me; then, after he had passed and I
turned to run after him, my debtor hastily escaped through a transverse
alley. This circumstance greatly irritated me; and the irritation,
instead of subsiding with time, only increased, and for the following
reason: Some days after this encounter, I wrote to Mongenod somewhat
in these terms: ‘My friend, you ought not to think me indifferent to
whatever happens to you of good or evil. Are you satisfied with the
success of ‘Les Peruviens’? You forgot me (of course it was your right
to do so) for the first representation, at which I should have applauded
you. But, nevertheless, I hope you found a Peru in your Peruvians, for I
have found a use for my funds, and shall look to you for the payment
of them when the note falls due. Your friend, Alain.’ After waiting two
weeks for an answer, I went to the rue des Moineaux. The landlady told
me that the little wife really did go away with her father at the time
when Mongenod told Bordin of their departure. Mongenod always left the
garret very early in the morning and did not return till late at night.
Another two weeks, I wrote again, thus: ‘My dear Mongenod, I cannot
find you, and you do not reply to my letters. I do not understand your
conduct. If I behaved thus to you, what would you think of me?’ I did
not subscribe the letter as before, ‘Your friend,’ I merely wrote, ‘Kind
regards.’

“Well, it was all of no use,” said Monsieur Alain. “A month went by
and I had no news of Mongenod. ‘Les Peruviens’ did not obtain the great
success on which he counted. I went to the twentieth representation,
thinking to find him and obtain my money. The house was less than half
full; but Madame Scio was very beautiful. They told me in the foyer that
the play would run a few nights longer. I went seven different times to
Mongenod’s lodging and did not find him; each time I left my name with
the landlady. At last I wrote again: ‘Monsieur, if you do not wish to
lose my respect, as you have my friendship, you will treat me now as a
stranger,--that is to say, with politeness; and you will tell me when
you will be ready to pay your note, which is now due. I shall act
according to your answer. Your obedient servant, Alain.’ No answer. We
were then in 1799; one year, all but two months, had expired. At the
end of those two months I went to Bordin. Bordin took the note, had
it protested, and sued Mongenod for me. Meantime the disasters of the
French armies had produced such depreciation of the Funds that investors
could buy a five-francs dividend on seven francs capital. Therefore,
for my hundred louis in gold, I might have bought myself fifteen hundred
francs of income. Every morning, as I took my coffee and read the paper,
I said to myself: ‘That cursed Mongenod! if it were not for him I
should have three thousand francs a year to live on.’ Mongenod became
my _bete-noire_; I inveighed against him even as I walked the streets.
‘Bordin is there,’ I thought to myself; ‘Bordin will put the screws on,
and a good thing, too.’ My feelings turned to hatred, and my hatred to
imprecations; I cursed the man, and I believed he had every vice. ‘Ah!
Monsieur Barillaud was very right,’ thought I, ‘in all he told me!’”

Monsieur Alain paused reflectively.

“Yes,” he said again, “I thought him very right in all he told me. At
last, one morning, in came my debtor, no more embarrassed than if he
didn’t owe me a sou. When I saw him I felt all the shame he ought to
have felt. I was like a criminal taken in the act; I was all upset.
The eighteenth Brumaire had just taken place. Public affairs were doing
well, the Funds had gone up. Bonaparte was off to fight the battle
of Marengo. ‘It is unfortunate, monsieur,’ I said, receiving Mongenod
standing, ‘that I owe your visit to a sheriff’s summons.’ Mongenod took
a chair and sat down. ‘I came to tell you,’ he said, ‘that I am totally
unable to pay you.’ ‘You made me miss a fine investment before the
election of the First Consul,--an investment which would have given me
a little fortune.’ ‘I know it, Alain,’ he said, ‘I know it. But what is
the good of suing me and crushing me with bills of costs? I have nothing
with which to pay anything. Lately I received letters from my wife and
father-in-law; they have bought land with the money you lent me, and
they send me a list of things they need to improve it. Now, unless some
one prevents it, I shall sail on a Dutch vessel from Flushing, whither I
have sent the few things I am taking out to them. Bonaparte has won the
battle of Marengo, peace will be signed, I may safely rejoin my family;
and I have need to, for my dear little wife is about to give birth to a
child.’ ‘And so you have sacrificed me to your own interests?’ said I.
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘for I believed you my friend.’ At that moment I
felt myself inferior to Mongenod, so sublime did he seem to me as he
said those grand words. ‘Did I not speak to you frankly,’ he said,
‘in this very room? I came to you, Alain, as the only person who would
really understand me. I told you that fifty louis would be lost, but a
hundred I could return to you. I did not bind myself by saying when; for
how could I know the time at which my long struggle with disaster would
end? You were my last friend. All others, even our old master Bordin,
despised me for the very reason that I borrowed money of them. Oh! you
do not know, Alain, the dreadful sensation which grips the heart of an
honest man when, in the throes of poverty, he goes to a friend and asks
him for succor,--and all that follows! I hope you never may know it;
it is far worse than the anguish of death. You have written me letters
which, if I had written them to you in a like situation, you would have
thought very odious. You expected of me that which it was out of my
power to do. But you are the only person to whom I shall try to justify
myself. In spite of your severity, and though from being a friend you
became a creditor on the day when Bordin asked for my note on your
behalf (thus abrogating the generous compact you had made with me there,
on that spot, when we clasped hands and mingled our tears),--well, in
spite of all that, I have remembered that day, and because of it I have
come here to say to you, You do not know misery, therefore do not judge
it. I have not had one moment when I could answer you. Would you have
wished me to come here and cajole you with words? I could not pay you;
I did not even have enough for the bare necessities of those whose lives
depended on me. My play brought little. A novice in theatrical ways, I
became a prey to musicians, actors, journalists, orchestras. To get
the means to leave Paris and join my family, and carry to them the few
things they need, I have sold “Les Peruviens” outright to the director,
with two other pieces which I had in my portfolio. I start for Holland
without a sou; I must reach Flushing as best I can; my voyage is paid,
that is all. Were it not for the pity of my landlady, who has confidence
in me, I should have to travel on foot, with my bag upon my back. But,
in spite of your doubts of me, I, remembering that without you I never
could have sent my wife and father-in-law to New York, am forever
grateful to you. No, Monsieur Alain, I shall not forget that the hundred
louis d’or you lent me would have yielded you to-day fifteen hundred
francs a year.’ ‘I desire to believe you, Mongenod,’ I said, shaken
by the tone in which he made this explanation. ‘Ah, you no longer say
_monsieur_ to me!’ he said quickly, with a tender glance. ‘My God! I
shall quit France with less regret if I can leave one man behind me in
whose eyes I am not half a swindler, nor a spendthrift, nor a man of
illusions! Alain, I have loved an angel in the midst of my misery. A man
who truly loves cannot be despicable.’ At those words I stretched out my
hand to him. He took it and wrung it. ‘May heaven protect you!’ I said.
‘Are we still friends?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It shall never
be that my childhood’s comrade and the friend of my youth left me for
America under the feeling that I was angry with him.’ Mongenod kissed
me, with tears in his eyes, and rushed away.”

Monsieur Alain stopped in his narrative for an instant and looked at
Godefroid. “I remember that day with some satisfaction,” he said. Then
he resumed:

“A week or so later I met Bordin and told him of that interview. He
smiled and said: ‘I hope it was not a pretty bit of comedy. Didn’t he
ask for anything?’ ‘No,’ I answered. ‘Well, he came to see me the same
day. I was almost as touched as you; and he asked me for means to get
food on his journey. Well, well, time will show!’ These remarks of
Bordin made me fear I had foolishly yielded to mistaken sensibility.
‘Nevertheless,’ I said to myself, ‘he, the old lawyer, did as I did.’
I do not think it necessary to explain to you how I lost all, or nearly
all, my property. I had placed a little in the Funds, which gave me five
hundred francs a year; all else was gone. I was then thirty-four years
old. I obtained, through the influence of Monsieur Bordin, a place as
clerk, with a salary of eight hundred francs, in a branch office of
the Mont-de-piete, rue des Augustins.[*] From that time I lived very
modestly. I found a small lodging in the rue des Marais, on the third
floor (two rooms and a closet), for two hundred and fifty francs a year.
I dined at a common boarding-house for forty francs a month. I copied
writings at night. Ugly as I was and poor, I had to renounce marriage.”

     [*] The Mont-de-Piete and its branches are pawn-shops under
     control of the government.--TR.

As Godefroid heard this judgment which the poor man passed upon himself
with beautiful simplicity and resignation, he made a movement which
proved, far more than any confidence in words could have done, the
resemblance of their destinies; and the goodman, in answer to that
eloquent gesture, seemed to expect the words that followed it.

“Have you never been loved?” asked Godefroid.

“Never!” he said; “except by Madame, who returns to us all the love we
have for her,--a love which I may call divine. You must be aware of it.
We live through her life as she lives through ours; we have but one soul
among us; and such pleasures, though they are not physical, are none the
less intense; we exist through our hearts. Ah, my child!” he continued,
“when women come to appreciate moral qualities, they are indifferent
to others; and they are then old--Oh! I have suffered deeply,--yes,
deeply!”

“And I, in the same way,” said Godefroid.

“Under the Empire,” said the worthy man, resuming his narrative, “the
Funds did not always pay their dividends regularly; it was necessary
to be prepared for suspensions of payment. From 1802 to 1814 there was
scarcely a week that I did not attribute my misfortune to Mongenod.
‘If it were not for Mongenod,’ I used to say to myself, ‘I might have
married. If I had never known him I should not be obliged to live in
such privation.’ But then, again, there were other times when I said,
‘Perhaps the unfortunate fellow has met with ill luck over there.’ In
1806, at a time when I found my life particularly hard to bear, I wrote
him a long letter, which I sent by way of Holland. I received no answer.
I waited three years, placing all my hopes on that answer. At last I
resigned myself to my life. To the five hundred francs I received from
the Funds I now added twelve hundred from the Mont-de-piete (for they
raised my salary), and five hundred which I obtained from Monsieur Cesar
Birotteau, perfumer, for keeping his books in the evening. Thus, not
only did I manage to get along comfortably, but I laid by eight hundred
francs a year. At the beginning of 1814 I invested nine thousand francs
of my savings at forty francs in the Funds, and thus I was sure of
sixteen hundred francs a year for my old age. By that time I had fifteen
hundred a year from the Mont-de-piete, six hundred for my book-keeping,
sixteen hundred from the Funds; in all, three thousand seven hundred
francs a year. I took a lodging in the rue de Seine, and lived a little
better. My place had brought me into relations with many unfortunates.
For the last twelve years I had known better than any man whatsoever the
misery of the poor. Once or twice I had been able to do a real service.
I felt a vivid pleasure when I found that out of ten persons relieved,
one or two households had been put on their feet. It came into my mind
that benevolence ought not to consist in throwing money to those who
suffered. ‘Doing charity,’ to use that common expression, seemed to me
too often a premium offered to crime. I began to study the question. I
was then fifty years of age, and my life was nearly over. ‘Of what good
am I?’ thought I. ‘To whom can I leave my savings? When I have furnished
my rooms handsomely, and found a good cook, and made my life suitable in
all respects, what then?--how shall I employ my time?’ Eleven years of
revolution, and fifteen years of poverty, had, as I may say, eaten up
the most precious parts of my life,--used it up in sterile toil for my
own individual preservation. No man at the age of fifty could spring
from that obscure, repressed condition to a brilliant future; but every
man could be of use. I understood by this time that watchful care and
wise counsels have tenfold greater value than money given; for the poor,
above all things, need a guide, if only in the labor they do for others,
for speculators are never lacking to take advantage of them. Here I saw
before me both an end and an occupation, not to speak of the exquisite
enjoyments obtained by playing in a miniature way the role of
Providence.”

“And to-day you play it in a grand way, do you not?” asked Godefroid,
eagerly.

“Ah! you want to know everything,” said the old man. “No, no! Would you
believe it,” he continued after this interruption, “the smallness of
my means to do the work I now desired to do brought back the thought
of Mongenod. ‘If it were not for Mongenod,’ I kept saying to myself, ‘I
could do so much more. If a dishonest man had not deprived me of fifteen
hundred francs a year I could save this or that poor family.’ Excusing
my own impotence by accusing another, I felt that the miseries of those
to whom I could offer nothing but words of consolation were a curse upon
Mongenod. That thought soothed my heart. One morning, in January, 1816,
my housekeeper announced,--whom do you suppose?--Mongenod! Monsieur
Mongenod! And whom do you think I saw enter my room? The beautiful young
woman I had once seen,--only now she was thirty-six years old,--followed
by her three children and Mongenod. He looked younger than when he went
away; for prosperity and happiness do shed a halo round their favorites.
Thin, pale, yellow, shrivelled, when I last saw him, he was now plump,
sleek, rosy as a prebendary, and well dressed. He flung himself into
my arms. Feeling, perhaps, that I received him coldly, his first words
were: ‘Friend, I could not come sooner. The ocean was not free to
passenger ships till 1815; then it took me a year to close up my
business and realize my property. I have succeeded, my friend. When I
received your letter in 1806, I started in a Dutch vessel to bring you
myself a little fortune; but the union of Holland with the French Empire
caused the vessel to be taken by the English and sent to Jamaica, from
which island I escaped by mere chance. When I reached New York I found
I was a victim to the bankruptcy of others. In my absence my poor
Charlotte had not been able to protect herself against schemers. I
was therefore forced to build up once more the edifice of my fortunes.
However, it is all done now, and here we are. By the way those children
are looking at you, you must be aware that we have often talked to
them of their father’s benefactor.’ ‘Oh, yes, yes, monsieur!’ said
the beautiful Mongenod, ‘we have never passed a single day without
remembering you. Your share has been set aside in all our affairs. We
have looked forward eagerly to the happiness we now have in returning
to you your fortune, not thinking for a moment that the payment of these
just dues can ever wipe out our debt of gratitude.’ With those words
Madame Mongenod held out to me that magnificent box you see over there,
in which were one hundred and fifty notes of a thousand francs each.”

The old man paused an instant as if to dwell on that moment; then he
went on:--

“Mongenod looked at me fixedly and said: ‘My poor Alain, you have
suffered, I know; but we did divine your sufferings; we did try every
means to send the money to you, and failed in every attempt. You told
me you could not marry,--that I had prevented it. But here is our eldest
daughter; she has been brought up in the thought of becoming your wife,
and she will have a dowry of five hundred thousand francs.’ ‘God forbid
that I should make her miserable!’ I cried hastily, looking at the girl,
who was as beautiful as her mother when I first saw her. I drew her to
me to kiss her brow. ‘Don’t be afraid, my beautiful child!’ I said. ‘A
man of fifty to a girl of seventeen?--never! and a man as plain and ugly
as I am?--never!’ I cried. ‘Monsieur,’ she said, ‘my father’s benefactor
could not be ugly for me.’ Those words, said spontaneously, with simple
candor, made me understand how true was all that Mongenod had said. I
then gave him my hand, and we embraced each other again. ‘My friend,’
I said, ‘I have done you wrong. I have often accused you, cursed
you.’ ‘You had the right to do so, Alain,’ he replied, blushing; ‘you
suffered, and through me.’ I took Mongenod’s note from my desk and
returned it to him. ‘You will all stay and breakfast with me, I hope?’ I
said to the family. ‘On condition that you dine with us,’ said Mongenod.
‘We arrived yesterday. We are going to buy a house; and I mean to open
a banking business between Paris and North America, so as to leave it to
this fellow here,’ he added, showing me his eldest son, who was fifteen
years old. We spent the rest of the day together and went to the play;
for Mongenod and his family were actually hungry for the theatre. The
next morning I placed the whole sum in the Funds, and I now had in all
about fifteen thousand francs a year. This fortune enabled me to give up
book-keeping at night, and also to resign my place at the Mont-de-piete,
to the great satisfaction of the underling who stepped into my shoes. My
friend died in 1827, at the age of sixty-three, after founding the great
banking-house of Mongenod and Company, which made enormous profits
from the first loans under the Restoration. His daughter, to whom he
subsequently gave a million in dowry, married the Vicomte de Fontaine.
The eldest son, whom you know, is not yet married; he lives with his
mother and brother. We obtain from them all the sums we need. Frederic
(his father gave him my name in America),--Frederic Mongenod is, at
thirty-seven years of age, one of the ablest, and most upright, bankers
in Paris. Not very long ago Madame Mongenod admitted to me that she had
sold her hair, as I suspected, for twelve francs to buy bread. She gives
me now twenty-four cords of wood a year for my poor people, in exchange
for the half cord which I once sent her.”

“This explains to me your relations with the house of Mongenod,” said
Godefroid,--“and your fortune.”

Again the goodman looked at Godefroid with a smile, and the same
expression of kindly mischief.

“Oh, go on!” said Godefroid, seeing from his manner that he had more to
tell.

“This conclusion, my dear Godefroid, made the deepest impression on me.
If the man who had suffered so much, if my friend forgave my injustice,
I could not forgive myself.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Godefroid.

“I resolved to devote all my superfluous means--about ten thousand
francs a year--to acts of intelligent benevolence,” continued Monsieur
Alain, tranquilly. “About this time it was that I made the acquaintance
of a judge of the Lower Civil Court of the Seine named Popinot, whom
we had the great grief of losing three years ago, and who practised for
fifteen years an active and most intelligent charity in the quartier
Saint-Marcel. It was he, with the venerable vicar of Notre-Dame and
Madame, who first thought of founding the work in which we are now
co-operating, and which, since 1825, has quietly done much good. This
work has found its soul in Madame de la Chanterie, for she is truly the
inspiration of this enterprise. The vicar has known how to make us more
religious than we were at first, by showing us the necessity of being
virtuous ourselves in order to inspire virtue; in short, to preach by
example. The farther we have advanced in our work, the happier we have
mutually found ourselves. And so, you see, it really was the repentance
I felt for misconceiving the heart of my friend which gave me the idea
of devoting to the poor, through my own hands, the fortune he returned
to me, and which I accepted without objecting to the immensity of the
sum returned in proportion to the sum lent. Its destination justified my
taking it.”

This narration, made quietly, without assumption, but with a gentle
kindliness in accent, look, and gesture, would have inspired Godefroid
to enter this noble and sacred association if his resolution had not
already been taken.

“You know the world very little,” he said, “if you have such scruples
about a matter that would not weigh on any other man’s conscience.”

“I know only the unfortunate,” said Monsieur Alain. “I do not desire to
know a world in which men are so little afraid of judging one another.
But see! it is almost midnight, and I still have my chapter of the
‘Imitation of Jesus Christ’ to meditate upon! Good-night!”

Godefroid took the old man’s hand and pressed it, with an expression of
admiration.

“Can you tell me Madame de la Chanterie’s history?”

“Impossible, without her consent,” replied Monsieur Alain; “for it is
connected with one of the most terrible events of Imperial policy. It
was through my friend Bordin that I first knew Madame. He had in his
possession all the secrets of that noble life; it was he who, if I may
say so, led me to this house.”

“I thank you,” said Godefroid, “for having told me your life; there are
many lessons in it for me.”

“Do you know what is the moral of it?”

“Tell me,” said Godefroid, “for perhaps I may see something different in
it from what you see.”

“Well, it is this: that pleasure is an accident in a Christian’s life;
it is not the aim of it; and this we learn too late.”

“What happens when we turn to Christianity?” asked Godefroid.

“See!” said the goodman.

He pointed with his finger to some letters of gold on a black ground
which the new lodger had not observed, for this was the first time he
had ever been in Monsieur Alain’s room. Godefroid turned and read the
words: TRANSIRE BENEFACIENDO.

“That is our motto. If you become one of us, that will be your only
commission. We read that commission, which we have given to ourselves,
at all times, in the morning when we rise, in the evening when we lie
down, and when we are dressing. Ah! if you did but know what immense
pleasures there are in accomplishing that motto!”

“Such as--?” said Godefroid, hoping for further revelations.

“I must tell you that we are as rich as Baron de Nucingen himself. But
the ‘Imitation of Jesus Christ’ forbids us to regard our wealth as our
own. We are only the spenders of it; and if we had any pride in
being that, we should not be worthy of dispensing it. It would not be
_transire benefaciendo_; it would be inward enjoyment. For if you say
to yourself with a swelling of the nostrils, ‘I play the part of
Providence!’ (as you might have thought if you had been in my place this
morning and saved the future lives of a whole family), you would become
a Sardanapalus,--an evil one! None of these gentlemen living here thinks
of himself when he does good. All vanity, all pride, all self-love, must
be stripped off, and that is hard to do,--yes, very hard.”

Godefroid bade him good-night, and returned to his own room, deeply
affected by this narrative. But his curiosity was more whetted than
satisfied, for the central figure of the picture was Madame de la
Chanterie. The history of the life of that woman became of the utmost
importance to him, so that he made the obtaining of it the object of
his stay in that house. He already perceived in this association of five
persons a vast enterprise of Charity; but he thought far less of that
than he did of its heroine.



VIII. WHO SHE WAS--WIFE AND MOTHER

The would-be disciple passed many days in observing more carefully than
he had hitherto done the rare persons among whom fate had brought
him; and he became the subject of a moral phenomenon which modern
philosophers have despised,--possibly out of ignorance.

The sphere in which he lived had a positive action upon Godefroid.
The laws which regulate the physical nature under relation to the
atmospheric environment in which it is developed, rule also in the
moral nature. Hence it follows that the assembling together of condemned
prisoners is one of the greatest of social crimes; and also that their
isolation is an experiment of doubtful success. Condemned criminals
ought to be in religious institutions, surrounded by prodigies of Good,
instead of being cast as they are into sight and knowledge of Evil only.
The Church can be expected to show an absolute devotion in this matter.
If it sends missionaries to heathen or savage nations, with how much
greater joy would it welcome the mission of redeeming the heathen of
civilization? for all criminals are atheists, and often without knowing
they are so.

Godefroid found these five associated persons endowed with the qualities
they required in him. They were all without pride, without vanity, truly
humble and pious; also without any of the pretension which constitutes
_devotion_, using that word in its worst sense. These virtues were
contagious; he was filled with a desire to imitate these hidden
heroes, and he ended by passionately studying the book he had begun by
despising. Within two weeks he reduced his views of life to its simplest
lines,--to what it really _is_ when we consider it from the higher point
of view to which the Divine spirit leads us. His curiosity--worldly at
first, and excited by many vulgar and material motives--purified itself;
if he did not renounce it altogether, the fault was not his; any one
would have found it difficult to resign an interest in Madame de la
Chanterie; but Godefroid showed, without intending it, a discretion
which was appreciated by these persons, in whom the divine Spirit had
developed a marvellous power of the faculties,--as, indeed, it often
does among recluses. The concentration of the moral forces, no matter
under what system it may be effected, increases the compass of them
tenfold.

“Our friend is not yet converted,” said the good Abbe de Veze, “but he
is seeking to be.”

An unforeseen circumstance brought about the revelation of Madame de la
Chanterie’s history to Godefroid; and so fully was this made to him
that the overpowering interest she excited in his soul was completely
satisfied.

The public mind was at that time much occupied by one of those horrible
criminal trials which mark the annals of our police-courts. This trial
had gathered its chief interest from the character of the criminals
themselves, whose audacity, superior intelligence in evil, and cynical
replies, had horrified the community. It is a matter worthy of remark
that no newspaper ever found its way into the hotel de la Chanterie, and
Godefroid only heard of the rejection of the criminals’ appeal from his
master in book-keeping; for the trial itself had taken place some time
before he came to live in his new abode.

“Do you ever encounter,” he said to his new friends, “such atrocious
villains as those men? and if you do encounter them, how do you manage
them?”

“In the first place,” said Monsieur Nicolas, “there are no atrocious
villains. There are diseased natures, to be cared for in asylums;
but outside of those rare medical cases, we find only persons who are
without religion, or who reason ill; and the mission of charity is to
teach them the right use of reason, to encourage the weak, and guide
aright those who go astray.”

“And,” said the Abbe de Veze, “all is possible to such teachers, for God
is with them.”

“If they were to send you those criminals, you could do nothing with
them, could you?” asked Godefroid.

“The time would be too short,” remarked Monsieur Alain.

“In general,” said Monsieur Nicolas, “persons turn over to religion
souls which have reached the last stages of evil, and leave it no time
to do its work. The criminals of whom you speak were men of remarkable
vigor; could they have been within our hands in time they might have
become distinguished men; but as soon as they committed a murder, it was
no longer possible to interfere; they then belonged to human justice.”

“That must mean,” said Godefroid, “that you are against the penalty of
death?”

Monsieur Nicolas rose hastily and left the room.

“Do not ever mention the penalty of death again before Monsieur
Nicolas,” said Monsieur Alain. “He recognized in a criminal at whose
execution he was officially present his natural son.”

“And the son was innocent!” added Monsieur Joseph.

Madame de la Chanterie, who had been absent for a while, returned to the
salon at this moment.

“But you must admit,” said Godefroid, addressing Monsieur Joseph, “that
society cannot exist without the death penalty, and that those persons
who to-morrow morning will have their heads cut--”

Godefroid felt his mouth suddenly closed by a vigorous hand, and he
saw the abbe leading away Madame de la Chanterie in an almost fainting
condition.

“What have you done?” Monsieur Joseph said to him. “Take him away,
Alain!” he added, removing the hand with which he had gagged Godefroid.
Then he followed the Abbe de Veze into Madame de la Chanterie’s room.

“Come!” said Monsieur Alain to Godefroid; “you have made it essential
that I should tell you the secrets of Madame’s life.”

They were presently sitting in the old man’s room.

“Well?” said Godefroid, whose face showed plainly his regret for having
been the cause of something which, in that peaceful home, might be
called a catastrophe.

“I am waiting till Manon comes to reassure us,” replied the goodman,
listening to the steps of the maid upon the staircase.

“Madame is better,” said Manon. “Monsieur l’abbe has deceived her as to
what was said.” And she looked at Godefroid angrily.

“Good God!” cried the poor fellow, in distress, the tears coming into
his eyes.

“Come, sit down,” said Monsieur Alain, sitting down himself. Then he
made a pause as if to gather up his ideas. “I don’t know,” he went on,
“if I have the talent to worthily relate a life so cruelly tried. You
must excuse me if the words of so poor a speaker as I are beneath the
level of its actions and catastrophes. Remember that it is long since
I left school, and that I am the child of a century in which men cared
more for thought than for effect,--a prosaic century which knew only how
to call things by their right names.”

Godefroid made an acquiescing gesture, with an expression of sincere
admiration, and said simply, “I am listening.”

“You have just had a proof, my young friend,” resumed the old man, “that
it is impossible you should remain among us without knowing at least
some of the terrible facts in the life of that saintly woman. There are
ideas and illusions and fatal words which are completely interdicted
in this house, lest they reopen wounds in Madame’s heart, and cause a
suffering which, if again renewed, might kill her.”

“Good God!” cried Godefroid, “what have I done?”

“If Monsieur Joseph had not stopped the words on your lips, you were
about to speak of that fatal instrument of death, and that would have
stricken down Madame de la Chanterie like a thunderbolt. It is time you
should know all, for you will really belong to us before long,--we all
think so. Here, then, is the history of her life:--

“Madame de la Chanterie,” he went on, after a pause, “comes from one of
the first families of Lower Normandy. Her maiden name was Mademoiselle
Barbe-Philiberte de Champignelles, of the younger branch of that house.
She was destined to take the veil unless she could make a marriage which
renounced on the husband’s side the dowry her family could not give her.
This was frequently the case in the families of poor nobles.

“A Sieur de la Chanterie, whose family had fallen into obscurity, though
it dates from the Crusade of Philip Augustus, was anxious to recover the
rank and position which this ancient lineage properly gave him in the
province of Normandy. This gentleman had doubly derogated from his
rightful station; for he had amassed a fortune of nearly a million of
francs as purveyor to the armies of the king at the time of the war in
Hanover. The old man had a son; and this son, presuming on his father’s
wealth (greatly exaggerated by rumor), was leading a life in Paris that
greatly disquieted his father.

“The word of Mademoiselle de Champignelle’s character was well known in
the Bessin,--that beautiful region of Lower Normandy near Bayeux, where
the family lived. The old man, whose little estate of la Chanterie was
between Caen and Saint-Lo, often heard regrets expressed before him
that so perfect a young girl, and one so capable of rendering a husband
happy, should be condemned to pass her life in a convent. When, on
reflection, he expressed a desire to know more of the young lady,
the hope was held out to him of obtaining the hand of Mademoiselle
Philiberte for his son, provided he would take her without dowry. He
went to Bayeux, had several interviews with the Champignelles’s family,
and was completely won by the noble qualities of the young girl.

“At sixteen years of age, Mademoiselle de Champignelles gave promise
of what she would ultimately become. It was easy to see in her a living
piety, an unalterable good sense, an inflexible uprightness, and one of
those souls which never detach themselves from an affection under any
compulsion. The old father, enriched by his extortions in the army,
recognized in this charming girl a woman who could restrain his son by
the power of virtue, and by the ascendancy of a nature that was firm
without rigidity.

“You have seen her,” said Monsieur Alain, pausing in his narrative, “and
you know that no one can be gentler than Madame de la Chanterie; and
also, I may tell you, that no one is more confiding. She has kept, even
to her declining years, the candor and simplicity of innocence; she has
never been willing to believe in evil, and the little mistrust you may
have noticed in her is due only to her terrible misfortunes.

“The old man,” said Monsieur Alain, continuing, “agreed with the
Champignelles family to give a receipt for the legal dower of
Mademoiselle Philiberte (this was necessary in those days); but
in return, the Champignelles, who were allied to many of the great
families, promised to obtain the erection of the little fief of la
Chanterie into a barony; and they kept their word. The aunt of the
future husband, Madame de Boisfrelon, the widow of a parliamentary
councillor, promised to bequeath her whole fortune to her nephew.

“When these arrangements had been completed by the two families, the
father sent for the son. At this time the latter was Master of petitions
to the Grand Council. He was twenty-five years of age, and had already
lived a life of folly with all the young seigneurs of the period; in
fact, the old purveyor had been forced more than once to pay his debts.
The poor father, foreseeing further follies, was only too glad to make a
settlement on his daughter-in-law of a certain sum; and he entailed the
estate of la Chanterie on the heirs male of the marriage.

“But the Revolution,” said Monsieur Alain in a parenthesis, “made that
last precaution useless.

“Gifted with the beauty of an angel,” he continued, “and with wonderful
grace and agility in all exercises of the body, the young Master of
petitions possessed the gift of _charm_. Mademoiselle de Champignelles
became, as you can readily believe, very much in love with her husband.
The old man, delighted with the outset of the marriage, and believing in
the reform of his son, sent the young couple to Paris. All this happened
about the beginning of the year 1788.

“Nearly a whole year of happiness followed. Madame de la Chanterie
enjoyed during that time the tenderest care and the most delicate
attentions that a man deeply in love can bestow upon a loving woman.
However short it may have been, the honeymoon did shine into the heart
of that noble and most unfortunate woman. You know that in those days
women nursed their children. Madame de la Chanterie had a daughter. That
period during which a woman ought to be the object of redoubled care and
tenderness proved, in this case, the beginning of untold miseries. The
Master of petitions was obliged to sell all the property he could lay
his hands on to pay former debts (which he had not acknowledged to his
father) and fresh losses at play. Then the National Assembly decreed
the dissolution of the Grand Council, the parliament, and all the law
offices so dearly bought.

“The young household, increased by a daughter, was soon without
other means than those settled upon Madame de la Chanterie by her
father-in-law. In twenty months that charming woman, now only seventeen
and a half years old, was obliged to live--she and the child she was
nursing--in an obscure quarter, and by the labor of her hands. She was
then entirely abandoned by her husband, who fell by degrees lower
and lower, into the society of women of the worst kind. Never did she
reproach her husband, never has she allowed herself to blame him. She
has sometimes told us how, during those wretched days, she would pray
for her ‘dear Henri.’

“That scamp was named Henri,” said the worthy man interrupting himself.
“We never mention that name here, nor that of Henriette. I resume:

“Never leaving her little room in the rue de la Corderie du Temple,
except to buy provisions or to fetch her work, Madame de la Chanterie
contrived to get along, thanks to a hundred francs which her
father-in-law, touched by her goodness, sent to her once a month.
Nevertheless, foreseeing that that resource might fail her, the poor
young woman had taken up the hard and toilsome work of corset-making in
the service of a celebrated dressmaker. This precaution proved a wise
one. The father died, and his property was obtained by the son (the
old monarchical laws of entail being then overthrown) and speedily
dissipated by him. The former Master of petitions was now one of the
most ferocious presidents of the Revolutionary tribunals of that period;
he became the terror of Normandy, and was able to satisfy all his
passions. Imprisoned in his turn after the fall of Robespierre, the
hatred of his department doomed him to certain death.

“Madame de la Chanterie heard of this through a letter of farewell which
her husband wrote to her. Instantly, giving her little girl to the care
of a neighbor, she went to the town where that wretch was imprisoned,
taking with her the few louis which were all that she owned. These louis
enabled her to make her way into the prison. She succeeded in saving her
husband by dressing him in her own clothes, under circumstances almost
identical with those which, sometime later, were so serviceable to
Madame de la Valette. She was condemned to death, but the government was
ashamed to carry out the sentence; and the Revolutionary tribunal
(the one over which her husband had formerly presided) connived at her
escape. She returned to Paris on foot, without means, sleeping in farm
buildings and fed by charity.”

“Good God!” cried Godefroid.

“Ah! wait,” said Monsieur Alain; “that is nothing. In eight years
the poor woman saw her husband three times. The first time he stayed
twenty-four hours in the humble lodging of his wife, and carried away
with him all her money; having showered her with marks of tenderness and
made her believe in his complete conversion. ‘I could not,’ she
said, ‘refuse a husband for whom I prayed daily and of whom I thought
exclusively.’ On the second occasion, Monsieur de la Chanterie arrived
almost dying, and with what an illness! She nursed him and saved his
life. Then she tried to bring him to better sentiments and a decent
life. After promising all that angel asked, the jacobin plunged back
into frightful profligacy, and finally escaped the hands of justice only
by again taking refuge with his wife, in whose care he died in safety.

“Oh! but that is nothing!” cried the goodman, seeing the pain on
Godefroid’s face. “No one, in the world in which he lived, had known
he was a married man. Two years after his death Madame de la Chanterie
discovered that a second Madame de la Chanterie existed, widowed like
herself, and, like her, ruined. That bigamist had found two angels
incapable of discarding him.

“Towards 1803,” resumed Alain after a pause, “Monsieur de Boisfrelon,
uncle of Madame de la Chanterie, came to Paris, his name having been
erased from the list of _emigres_, and brought Madame the sum of two
hundred thousand francs which her father-in-law, the old purveyor, had
formerly entrusted to him for the benefit of his son’s children. He
persuaded the widow to return to Normandy; where she completed the
education of her daughter and purchased on excellent terms and still by
the advice of her uncle, a patrimonial estate.”

“Ah!” cried Godefroid.

“All that is still nothing,” said Monsieur Alain; “we have not yet
reached the period of storms and darkness. I resume:

“In 1807, after four years of rest and peace, Madame de la Chanterie
married her daughter to a gentleman of rank, whose piety, antecedents,
and fortune offered every guarantee that could be given,--a man who,
to use a popular saying, ‘was after every one’s own heart,’ in the best
society of the provincial city where Madame and her daughter passed
their winters. I should tell you that this society was composed of
seven or eight families belonging to the highest nobility in France:
d’Esgrignon, Troisville, Casteran, Nouatre, etc. At the end of eighteen
months the baron deserted his wife, and disappeared in Paris, where he
changed his name.

“Madame de la Chanterie never knew the causes of this desertion until
the lightning of a dreadful storm revealed them. Her daughter, brought
up with anxious care and trained in the purest religious sentiments,
kept total silence as to her troubles. This lack of confidence in her
mother was a painful blow to Madame de la Chanterie. Already she had
several times noticed in her daughter indications of the reckless
disposition of the father, increased in the daughter by an almost virile
strength of will.

“The husband, however, abandoned his home of his own free will, leaving
his affairs in a pitiable condition. Madame de la Chanterie is, even to
this day, amazed at the catastrophe, which no human foresight could have
prevented. The persons she prudently consulted before the marriage had
assured her that the suitor’s fortune was clear and sound, and that
no mortgages were on his estate. Nevertheless it appeared, after the
husband’s departure, that for ten years his debts had exceeded the
entire value of his property. Everything was therefore sold, and the
poor young wife, now reduced to her own means, came back to her mother.
Madame de la Chanterie knew later that the most honorable persons of the
province had vouched for her son-in-law in their own interests; for he
owed them all large sums of money, and they looked upon his marriage
with Mademoiselle de la Chanterie as a means to recover them.

“There were, however, other reasons for this catastrophe, which you will
find later in a confidential paper written for the eyes of the Emperor.
Moreover, this man had long courted the good-will of the royalist
families by his devotion to the royal cause during the Revolution. He
was one of Louis XVIII.’s most active emissaries, and had taken part
after 1793 in all conspiracies,--escaping their penalties, however, with
such singular adroitness that he came, in the end, to be distrusted.
Thanked for his services by Louis XVIII., but completely set aside in
the royalist affairs, he had returned to live on his property, now much
encumbered with debt.

“These antecedents were then obscure (the persons initiated into
the secrets of the royal closet kept silence about so dangerous a
coadjutor), and he was therefore received with a species of reverence
in a city devoted to the Bourbons, where the cruellest deeds of the
Chouannerie were accepted as legitimate warfare. The d’Esgrignons,
Casterans, the Chevalier de Valois, in short, the whole aristocracy and
the Church opened their arms to this royalist diplomat and drew him
into their circle. Their protection was encouraged by the desire of his
creditors for the payment of his debts. For three years this man, who
was a villain at heart, a pendant to the late Baron de la Chanterie,
contrived to restrain his vices and assume the appearance of morality
and religion.

“During the first months of his marriage he exerted a sort of spell over
his wife; he tried to corrupt her mind by his doctrines (if it can be
said that atheism is a doctrine) and by the jesting tone in which he
spoke of sacred principles. From the time of his return to the provinces
this political manoeuvrer had an intimacy with a young man, overwhelmed
with debt like himself, but whose natural character was as frank and
courageous as the baron’s was hypocritical and base. This frequent
guest, whose accomplishments, strong character, and adventurous life
were calculated to influence a young girl’s mind, was an instrument in
the hands of the husband to bring the wife to adopt his theories. Never
did she let her mother know the abyss into which her fate had cast her.

“We may well distrust all human prudence when we think of the infinite
precautions taken by Madame de la Chanterie in marrying her only
daughter. The blow, when it came to a life so devoted, so pure, so truly
religious as that of a woman already tested by many trials, gave Madame
de la Chanterie a distrust of herself which served to isolate her from
her daughter; and all the more because her daughter, in compensation
for her misfortunes, exacted complete liberty, ruled her mother, and was
even, at times, unkind to her.

“Wounded thus in all her affections, mistaken in her devotion and
love for her husband, to whom she had sacrificed without a word
her happiness, her fortune, and her life; mistaken in the education
exclusively religious which she had given to her daughter; mistaken in
the confidence she had placed in others in the affair of her daughter’s
marriage; and obtaining no justice from the heart in which she had sown
none but noble sentiments, she united herself still more closely to God
as the hand of trouble lay heavy upon her. She was indeed almost a nun;
going daily to church, performing cloistral penances, and practising
economy that she might have means to help the poor.

“Could there be, up to this point, a saintlier life or one more tried
than that of this noble woman, so gentle under misfortune, so brave
in danger, and always Christian?” said Monsieur Alain, appealing to
Godefroid. “You know Madame now,--you know if she is wanting in sense,
judgment, reflection; in fact, she has those qualities to the highest
degree. Well! the misfortunes I have now told you, which might be said
to make her life surpass all others in adversity, are as nothing to
those that were still in store for this poor woman. But now let us
concern ourselves exclusively with Madame de la Chanterie’s daughter,”
 said the old man, resuming his narrative.

“At eighteen years of age, the period of her marriage, Mademoiselle de
la Chanterie was a young girl of delicate complexion, brown in tone with
a brilliant color, graceful in shape, and very pretty. Above a forehead
of great beauty was a mass of dark hair which harmonized with the brown
eyes and the general gaiety of her expression. A certain daintiness of
feature was misleading as to her true character and her almost virile
decision. She had small hands and small feet; in fact, there was
something fragile about her whole person which excluded the idea of
vigor and determination. Having always lived beside her mother, she had
a most perfect innocence of thought and behavior and a really remarkable
piety. This young girl, like her mother, was fanatically attached to
the Bourbons; she was therefore a bitter enemy to the Revolution, and
regarded the dominion of Napoleon as a curse inflicted by Providence
upon France in punishment of the crimes of 1793.

“The conformity of opinion on this subject between Madame de la
Chanterie and her daughter, and the daughter’s suitor, was one of the
determining reasons of the marriage.

“The friend of the husband had commanded a body of Chouans at the time
that hostilities were renewed in 1799; and it seems that the baron’s
object (Madame de la Chanterie’s son-in-law was a baron) in fostering
the intimacy between his wife and his friend was to obtain, through her
influence, certain succor from that friend.

“This requires a few words of explanation,” said Monsieur Alain,
interrupting his narrative, “about an association which in those days
made a great deal of noise. I mean the ‘Chauffeurs.’[*] Every province
in the west of France was at that time more or less overrun with these
‘brigands,’ whose object was far less pillage than a resurrection of the
royalist warfare. They profited, so it was said, by the great number of
‘refractories,’--the name applied to those who evaded the conscription,
which was at that time, as you probably know, enforced to actual abuse.

     [*] _Chauffeurs_. This name applies to royalists who robbed
     the mail-coaches conveying government funds, and levied
     tribute on those who bought the confiscated property of
     _emigres_ at the West. When the Thermidorian reaction began,
     after the fall of Robespierre, other companies of royalists,
     chiefly young nobles who had not emigrated, were formed at
     the South and East under various names, such as “The
     Avengers,” and “The Company of Jehu,” who stopped the
     diligences containing government money, which they
     transmitted to Brittany and La Vendee for the support of the
     royalist troops. They regarded this as legitimate warfare,
     and were scrupulous not to touch private property. When
     captured, however, they were tried and executed as
     highwaymen.--TR.

“Between Mortagne and Rennes, and even beyond, as far as the banks
of the Loire, nocturnal expeditions were organized, which attacked,
especially in Normandy, the holders of property bought from the National
domain.[*] These armed bands sent terror throughout those regions. I am
not misleading you when I ask you to observe that in certain departments
the action of the laws was for a long time paralyzed.

     [*] The National domain was the name given to the
     confiscated property of the _emigres_, which was sold from
     time to time at auction to the highest bidder.--TR.

“These last echoes of the civil war made much less noise than you would
imagine, accustomed as we are now to the frightful publicity given by
the press to every trial, even the least important, whether political
or individual. The system of the Imperial government was that of all
absolute governments. The censor allowed nothing to be published in the
matter of politics except accomplished facts, and those were travestied.
If you will take the trouble to look through files of the ‘Moniteur’ and
the other newspapers of that time, even those of the West, you will not
find a word about the four or five criminal trials which cost the lives
of sixty or eighty ‘brigands.’ The term _brigands_, applied during the
revolutionary period to the Vendeans, Chouans, and all those who took up
arms for the house of Bourbon, was afterwards continued judicially under
the Empire against all royalists accused of plots. To some ardent and
loyal natures the emperor and his government were the enemy; any form of
warfare against them was legitimate. I am only explaining to you these
opinions, not justifying them.

“Now,” he said, after one of those pauses which are necessary in such
long narratives, “if you realize how these royalists, ruined by the
civil war of 1793, were dominated by violent passions, and how some
exceptional natures (like that of Madame de la Chanterie’s son-in-law
and his friend) were eaten up with desires of all kinds, you may be
able to understand how it was that the acts of brigandage which their
political views justified when employed against the government in the
service of the good cause, might in some cases be committed for personal
ends.

“The younger of the two men had been for some time employed in
collecting the scattered fragments of Chouannerie, and was holding them
ready to act at an opportune moment. There came a terrible crisis in the
Emperor’s career when, shut up in the island of Lobau, he seemed about
to give way under the combined and simultaneous attack of England and
Austria. This was the moment for the Chouan uprising; but just as it was
about to take place, the victory of Wagram rendered the conspiracy in
the provinces powerless.

“This expectation of exciting civil war in Brittany, La Vendee, and
part of Normandy, coincided in time with the final wreck of the baron’s
fortune; and this wreck, coming at this time, led him to undertake an
expedition to capture funds of the government which he might apply to
the liquidation of the claims upon his property. But his wife and friend
refused to take part in applying to private interests the money taken
by armed force from the Receiver’s offices and the couriers and
post-carriages of the government,--money taken, as they thought,
justifiably by the rules of war to pay the regiments of ‘refractories’
and Chouans, and purchase the arms and ammunition with which to equip
them. At last, after an angry discussion in which the young leader,
supported by the wife, positively refused to hand over to the husband a
portion of the large sum of money which the young leader had seized for
the benefit of the royal armies from the treasury of the West, the baron
suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, to avoid arrest for debt, having
no means left by which to ward it off. Poor Madame de la Chanterie was
wholly ignorant of these facts; but even they are nothing to the plot
still hidden behind these preliminary facts.

“It is too late to-night,” said Monsieur Alain, looking at his little
clock, “to go on with my narrative, which would take me, in any case,
a long time to finish in my own words. Old Bordin, my friend, whose
management of the famous Simeuse case had won him much credit in the
royalist party, and who pleaded in the well-known criminal affair called
that of the Chauffeurs de Mortagne, gave me, after I was installed in
this house, two legal papers relating to the terrible history of Madame
de la Chanterie and her daughter. I kept them because Bordin died soon
after, before I had a chance to return them. You shall read them. You
will find the facts much more succinctly stated than I could state
them. Those facts are so numerous that I should only lose myself in the
details and confuse them, whereas in those papers you have them in a
legal summary. To-morrow, if you come to me, I will finish telling you
all that relates to Madame de la Chanterie; for you will then know the
general facts so thoroughly that I can end the whole story in a few
words.”



IX. THE LEGAL STATEMENT

Monsieur Alain placed the papers, yellowed by time, in Godefroid’s hand;
the latter, bidding the old man good-night, carried them off to his
room, where he read, before he slept, the following document:--

  THE INDICTMENT

  Court of Criminal and Special Justice for the Department of the Orne

  The attorney-general to the Imperial Court of Caen, appointed to
  fulfil his functions before the Special Criminal Court established
  by imperial decree under date September, 1809, and sitting at
  Alencon, states to the Imperial Court the following facts which
  have appeared under the above procedure.

  The plot of a company of brigands, evidently long planned with
  consummate care, and connected with a scheme for inciting the
  Western departments to revolt, has shown itself in certain
  attempts against the private property of citizens, but more
  especially in an armed attack and robbery committed on the
  mail-coach which transported, May --, 18--, the money in the treasury
  at Caen to the Treasury of France. This attack, which recalls the
  deplorable incidents of a civil war now happily extinguished,
  manifests a spirit of wickedness which the political passions of
  the present day do not justify.

  Let us pass to the facts. The plot is complicated, the details are
  numerous. The investigation has lasted one year; but the evidence,
  which has followed the crime step by step, has thrown the clearest
  light on its preparation, execution, and results.

  The conception of the plot was formed by one Charles-Amedee-Louis-Joseph
  Rifoel, calling himself Chevalier du Vissard, born at the Vissard,
  district of Saint-Mexme, near Ernee, and a former leader of the rebels.

  This criminal, whom H.M. the Emperor and King pardoned at the time
  of the general pacification, and who has profited by the
  sovereign’s magnanimity to commit other crimes, has already paid
  on the scaffold the penalty of his many misdeeds; but it is
  necessary to recall some of his actions, because his influence was
  great on the guilty persons now before the court, and he is
  closely connected with the facts of his case.

  This dangerous agitator, concealed, according to the usual custom
  of the rebels, under the name of Pierrot, went from place to place
  throughout the departments of the West gathering together the
  elements of rebellion; but his chief resort was the chateau of
  Saint-Savin, the residence of a Madame Lechantre and her daughter,
  a Madame Bryond, situated in the district of Saint-Savin,
  arrondissement of Mortagne. Several of the most horrible events of
  the rebellion of 1799 are connected with this strategic point.
  Here a bearer of despatches was murdered, his carriage pillaged by
  the brigands under command of a woman, assisted by the notorious
  Marche-a-Terre. Brigandage appeared to be endemic in that
  locality.

  An intimacy, which we shall not attempt to characterize, existed
  for more than a year between the woman Bryond and the said Rifoel.

  It was in this district that an interview took place, in April,
  1808, between Rifoel and a certain Boislaurier, a leader known by
  the name of August in the baneful rebellions of the West, who
  instigated the affair now before the court.

  The somewhat obscure point of the relations between these two
  leaders is cleared up by the testimony of numerous witnesses, and
  also by the judgment of the court which condemned Rifoel.

  From that time Boislaurier had an understanding with Rifoel, and
  they acted in concert.

  They communicated to each other, at first secretly, their infamous
  plans, encouraged by the absence of His Imperial and Royal Majesty
  with the armies in Spain. Their scheme was to obtain possession of
  the money of the Treasury as the fundamental basis of future
  operations.

  Some time after this, one named Dubut, of Caen, sent an emissary
  to the chateau of Saint-Savin named Hiley--commonly called “The
  Laborer,” long known as a highwayman, a robber of diligences--to
  give information as to the men who could safely be relied upon.

  It was thus by means of Hiley that the plotters obtained, from the
  beginning, the co-operation of one Herbomez, otherwise called
  General Hardi, a former rebel of the same stamp as Rifoel, and
  like him faithless to his pledges under the amnesty.

  Herbomez and Hiley recruited from the surrounding districts seven
  brigands whose names are:--

  1. Jean Cibot, called Pille-Miche, one of the boldest brigands of
  the corps formed by Montauran in the year VII., and a participator
  in the attack upon the courier of Mortagne and his murder.

  2. Francois Lisieux, called Grand-Fils, refractory of the
  department of the Mayenne.

  3. Charles Grenier, called Fleur-de-Genet, deserter from the 69th
  brigade.

  4. Gabriel Bruce, called Gros-Jean, one of the most ferocious
  Chouans of Fontaine’s division.

  5. Jacques Horeau, called Stuart, ex-lieutenant in the same
  brigade, one of the confederates of Tinteniac, well-known for his
  participation in the expedition to Quiberon.

  6. Marie-Anne Cabot, called Lajeunesse, former huntsman to the
  Sieur Carol of Alencon.

  7. Louis Minard, refractory.

  These confederates were lodged in three different districts, in
  the houses of the following named persons: Binet, Melin, and
  Laraviniere, innkeepers or publicans, and all devoted to Rifoel.

  The necessary arms were supplied by one Jean-Francois Leveille,
  notary; an incorrigible assistant of the brigands, and their
  go-between with certain hidden leaders; also by one Felix Courceuil,
  commonly called Confesseur, former surgeon of the rebel armies of
  La Vendee; both these men are from Alencon.

  Eleven muskets were hidden in a house belonging to the Sieur
  Bryond in the faubourg of Alencon, where they were placed without
  his knowledge.

  When the Sieur Bryond left his wife to pursue the fatal course she
  had chosen, these muskets, mysteriously taken from the said house,
  were transported by the woman Bryond in her own carriage to the
  chateau of Saint-Savin.

  It was then that the acts of brigandage in the department of the
  Orne and the adjacent departments took place,--acts that amazed
  both the authorities and the inhabitants of those regions, which
  had long been entirely pacificated; acts, moreover, which proved
  that these odious enemies of the government and the French Empire
  were in the secret of the coalition of 1809 through communication
  with the royalist party in foreign countries.

  The notary Leveille, the woman Bryond, Dubut of Caen, Herbomez of
  Mayenne, Boislaurier of Mans, and Rifoel, were therefore the heads
  of the association, which was composed of certain guilty persons
  already condemned to death and executed with Rifoel, certain
  others who are the accused persons at present under trial, and a
  number more who have escaped just punishment by flight or by the
  silence of their accomplices.

  It was Dubut who, living near Caen, notified the notary Leveille
  when the government money contained in the local tax-office would
  be despatched to the Treasury.

  We must remark here that after the time of the removal of the
  muskets, Leveille, who went to see Bruce, Grenier, and Cibot in
  the house of Melin, found them hiding the muskets in a shed on the
  premises, and himself assisted in the operation.

  A general rendezvous was arranged to take place at Mortagne, in
  the hotel de l’Ecu de France. All the accused persons were present
  under various disguises. It was then that Leveille, the woman
  Bryond, Dubut, Herbomez, Boislaurier and Hiley (the ablest of the
  secondary accomplices, as Cibot was the boldest) obtained the
  co-operation of one Vauthier, called Vieux-Chene, a former servant
  of the famous Longuy, and now hostler of the hotel. Vauthier
  agreed to notify the woman Bryond of the arrival and departure of
  the diligence bearing the government money, which always stopped
  for a time at the hotel.

  The woman Bryond collected the scattered brigands at the chateau
  de Saint-Savin, a few miles from Mortagne, where she had lived
  with her mother since the separation from her husband. The
  brigands, with Hiley at their head, stayed at the chateau for
  several days. The woman Bryond, assisted by her maid Godard,
  prepared with her own hands the food of these men. She had already
  filled a loft with hay, and there the provisions were taken to
  them. While awaiting the arrival of the government money these
  brigands made nightly sorties from Saint-Savin, and the whole
  region was alarmed by their depredations. There is no doubt that
  the outrages committed at la Sartiniere, at Vonay, and at the
  chateau of Saint-Seny, were committed by this band, whose boldness
  equals their criminality, though they were able to so terrify
  their victims that the latter have kept silence, and the
  authorities have been unable to obtain any testimony from them.

  While thus putting under contribution those persons in the
  neighborhood who had purchased lands of the National domain, these
  brigands carefully explored the forest of Chesnay which they
  selected as the theatre of their crime.

  Not far from this forest is the village of Louvigney. An inn is
  kept there by the brothers Chaussard, formerly game-keepers on the
  Troisville estate, which inn was made the final rendezvous of the
  brigands. These brothers knew beforehand the part they were to
  play in the affair. Courceuil and Boislaurier had long made
  overtures to them to revive their hatred against the government of
  our august Emperor, telling them that among the guests who would
  be sent to them would be certain men of their acquaintance, the
  dreaded Hiley and the not less dreaded Cibot.

  Accordingly, on the 6th, the seven bandits, under Hiley, arrived
  at the inn of the brothers Chaussard, and there they spent two
  days. On the 8th Hiley led off his men, saying they were going to
  a palace about nine miles distant, and asking the brothers to send
  provisions for them to a certain fork in the road not far distant
  from the village. Hiley himself returned and slept at the inn.

  Two persons on horseback, who were undoubtedly Rifoel and the
  woman Bryond (for it is stated that this woman accompanied Rifoel
  on these expeditions on horseback and dressed as a man), arrived
  during the evening and conversed with Hiley.

  The next day Hiley wrote a letter to the notary Leveille, which
  one of the Chaussard brothers took to the latter, bringing back
  his answer.

  Two hours later Rifoel and the woman Bryond returned and had an
  interview with Hiley.

  It was then found necessary to obtain an axe to open, as we shall
  see, the cases containing the money. The notary went with the
  woman Bryond to Saint-Savin, where they searched in vain for an
  axe. The notary returned alone; half way back he met Hiley, to
  whom he stated that they could not obtain an axe.

  Hiley returned to the inn, where he ordered supper for ten
  persons; seven of them being the brigands, who had now returned,
  fully armed. Hiley made them stack their arms in the military
  manner. They then sat down to table and supped in haste. Hiley
  ordered provisions prepared to take away with him. Then he took
  the elder Chaussard aside and asked him for an axe. The innkeeper
  who, if we believe him, was surprised, refused to give one.
  Courceuil and Boislaurier arrived; the night wore on; the three
  men walked the floor of their room discussing the plot. Courceuil,
  called “Confesseur,” the most wily of the party, obtained an axe;
  and about two in the morning they all went away by different
  paths.

  Every moment was of value; the execution of the crime was fixed
  for that night. Hiley, Courceuil, and Boislaurier led and placed
  their men. Hiley hid in ambush with Minard, Cabot, and Bruce at
  the right of the Chesnay forest; Boislaurier, Grenier, and Horeau
  took the centre; Courceuil, Herbomez, and Lisieux occupied the
  ravine to the left of the wood. All these positions are indicated
  on the ground-plan drawn by the engineer of the government
  survey-office, which is here subjoined.

  The diligence, which had left Mortagne about one in the morning,
  was driven by one Rousseau, whose conduct proved so suspicious
  that his arrest was judged necessary. The vehicle, driven slowly,
  would arrive about three o’clock in the forest of Chesnay.

  A single gendarme accompanied the diligence, which would stop for
  breakfast at Donnery. Three passengers only were making the trip,
  and were now walking up the hill with the gendarme.

  The driver, who had driven very slowly to the bridge of Chesnay at
  the entrance of the wood, now hastened his horses with a vigor and
  eagerness remarked by the passengers, and turned into a
  cross-road, called the road of Senzey. The carriage was thus out of
  sight; and the gendarme with the three young men were hurrying to
  overtake it when they heard a shout: “Halt!” and four shots were
  fired at them.

  The gendarme, who was not hit, drew his sabre and rushed in the
  direction of the vehicle. He was stopped by four armed men, who
  fired at him; his eagerness saved him, for he ran toward one of
  the three passengers to tell him to make for Chesnay and ring the
  tocsin. But two brigands followed him, and one of them, taking
  aim, sent a ball through his left shoulder, which broke his arm,
  and he fell helpless.

  The shouts and firing were heard in Donnery. A corporal stationed
  there and one gendarme ran toward the sounds. The firing of a
  squad of men took them to the opposite side of the wood to that
  where the pillage was taking place. The noise of the firing
  prevented the corporal from hearing the cries of the wounded
  gendarme; but he did distinguish a sound which proved to be that
  of an axe breaking and chopping into cases. He ran toward the
  sound. Meeting four armed bandits, he called out to them,
  “Surrender, villains!”

  They replied: “Stay where you are, or you are a dead man!” The
  corporal sprang forward; two shots were fired and one struck him;
  a ball went through his left leg and into the flank of his horse.
  The brave man, bathed in blood, was forced to give up the unequal
  fight; he shouted “Help! the brigands are at Chesnay!” but all in
  vain.

  The robbers, masters of the ground thanks to their numbers,
  ransacked the coach. They had gagged and bound the driver by way
  of deception. The cases were opened, the bags of money were thrown
  out; the horses were unharnessed and the silver and gold loaded on
  their backs. Three thousand francs in copper were rejected; but a
  sum in other coin of one hundred and three thousand francs was
  safely carried off on the four horses.

  The brigands took the road to the hamlet of Menneville, which is
  close to Saint-Savin. They stopped with their plunder at an
  isolated house belonging to the Chaussard brothers, where the
  Chaussards’ uncle, one Bourget, lived, who was knowing to the
  whole plot from its inception. This old man, aided by his wife,
  welcomed the brigands, charged them to make no noise, unloaded the
  bags of money, and gave the men something to drink. The wife
  performed the part of sentinel. The old man then took the horses
  through the wood, returned them to the driver, unbound the latter,
  and also the young men, who had been garotted. After resting for a
  time, Courceuil, Hiley, and Boislaurier paid their men a paltry
  sum for their trouble, and the whole band departed, leaving the
  plunder in charge of Bourget.

  When they reached a lonely place called Champ-Landry, these
  criminals, obeying the impulse which leads all malefactors into
  the blunders and miscalculations of crime, threw their guns into a
  wheat-field. This action, done by all of them, is a proof of their
  mutual understanding. Struck with terror at the boldness of their
  act, and even by its success, they dispersed.

  The robbery now having been committed, with the additional
  features of assault and assassination, other facts and other
  actors appear, all connected with the robbery itself and with the
  disposition of the plunder.

  Rifoel, concealed in Paris, whence he pulled every wire of the
  plot, transmits to Leveille an order to send him instantly fifty
  thousand francs.

  Courceuil, knowing to all the facts, sends Hiley to tell Leveille
  of the success of the attempt, and say that he will meet him at
  Mortagne. Leveille goes there.

  Vauthier, on whose fidelity they think they can rely, agrees to go
  to Bourget, the uncle of the Chaussards, in whose care the money
  was left, and ask for the booty. The old man tells Vauthier that
  he must go to his nephews, who have taken large sums to the woman
  Bryond. But he orders him to wait outside in the road, and brings
  him a bag containing the small sum of twelve hundred francs, which
  Vauthier delivers to the woman Lechantre for her daughter.

  At Leveille’s request, Vauthier returns to Bourget, who this time
  sends for his nephews. The elder Chaussard takes Vauthier to the
  wood, shows him a tree, and there they find a bag of one thousand
  francs buried in the earth. Leveille, Hiley, and Vauthier make
  other trips, obtaining only trifling sums compared with the large
  sum known to have been captured.

  The woman Lechantre receives these sums at Mortagne; and, on
  receipt of a letter from her daughter, removes them to
  Saint-Savin, where the woman Bryond now returns.

  This is not the moment to examine as to whether the woman
  Lechantre had any anterior knowledge of the plot.

  It suffices here to note that this woman left Mortagne to go to
  Saint-Savin the evening before the crime; that after the crime she
  met her daughter on the high-road, and they both returned to
  Mortagne; that on the following day Leveille, informed by Hiley of
  the success of the plot, goes from Alencon to Mortagne, and there
  visits the two women; later he persuades them to deposit the sums
  obtained with such difficulty from the Chaussards and Bourget in a
  house in Alencon, of which we shall speak presently,--that of the
  Sieur Pannier, merchant.

  The woman Lechantre writes to the bailiff at Saint-Savin to come
  and drive her and her daughter by the cross-roads towards Alencon.

  The funds now in their possession amount to twenty thousand
  francs; these the girl Godard puts into the carriage at night.

  The notary Leveille had given exact instructions. The two women
  reach Alencon and stop at the house of a confederate, one Louis
  Chargegrain, in the Littray district. Despite all the precautions
  of the notary, who came there to meet the women, witnesses were at
  hand who saw the portmanteaux and bags containing the money taken
  from the carriole.

  At the moment when Courceuil and Hiley, disguised as women, were
  consulting in the square at Alencon with the Sieur Pannier
  (treasurer of the rebels since 1794, and devoted to Rifoel) as to
  the best means of conveying to Rifoel the sum he asked for, the
  woman Lechantre became alarmed on hearing at the inn where she
  stopped of the suspicions and arrests already made. She fled
  during the night, taking her daughter with her through the byways
  and cross-roads to Saint-Savin, in order to take refuge, if
  necessary, in certain hiding-places prepared at the chateau de
  Saint-Savin. Courceuil, Boislaurier, and his relation Dubut,
  clandestinely changed two thousand francs in silver money for
  gold, and fled to Brittany and England.

  On arriving at Saint-Savin, the women Lechantre and Bryond heard
  of the arrest of Bourget, that of the driver of the diligence, and
  that of the two refractories.

  The magistrates and the gendarmerie struck such sure blows that it
  was thought advisable to place the woman Bryond beyond the reach
  of human justice; for she appears to have been an object of great
  devotion on the part of these criminals, who were captivated by
  her. She left Saint-Savin, and was hidden at first in Alencon,
  where her followers deliberated, and finally placed her in the
  cellar of Pannier’s house.

  Here new incidents develop themselves.

  After the arrest of Bourget and his wife, the Chaussards refuse to
  give up any more of the money, declaring themselves betrayed. This
  unexpected refusal was given at a moment when an urgent want of
  money was felt among the accomplices, if only for the purposes of
  escape. Rifoel was always clamorous for money. Hiley, Cibot, and
  Leveille began to suspect the Chaussards.

  Here comes in a new incident, which calls for the rigor of the
  law.

  Two gendarmes, detailed to discover the woman Bryond, succeeded in
  tracking her to Pannier’s. There a discussion is held; and these
  men, unworthy of the trust reposed in them, instead of arresting
  the woman Bryond, succumb to her seductions. These unworthy
  soldiers, named Ratel and Mallet, showed this woman the utmost
  interest and offered to take her to the Chaussards and force them
  to make restitution.

  The woman Bryond starts on horseback, disguised as a man,
  accompanied by Ratel, Mallet, and the girl Godard. She makes the
  journey by night. She has a conference alone with one of the
  brothers Chaussard, an excited conference. She is armed with a
  pistol, and threatens to blow out the brains of her accomplice if
  he refuses the money. Then he goes with her into the forest, and
  they return with a heavy bag of coin. In the bag are copper coins
  and twelve-sous silver pieces to the amount of fifteen hundred
  francs.

  When the woman Bryond returns to Alencon the accomplices propose
  to go in a body to the Chaussards’ house and torture them until
  they deliver up the whole sum.

  When Pannier hears of this failure he is furious. He threatens.
  The woman Bryond, though threatening him in return with Rifoel’s
  wrath, is forced to fly.

  These facts rest on the confession of Ratel.

  Mallet, pitying the woman Bryond’s position, offers her an asylum.
  Then Mallet and Ratel, accompanied by Hiley and Cibot, go at night
  to the brothers Chaussard; this time they find these brothers have
  left the place and have taken the rest of the money with them.

  This was the last effort of the accomplices to recover the
  proceeds of the robbery.

  It now becomes necessary to show the exact part taken by each of
  the actors in this crime.

  Dubut, Boislaurier, Herbomez, Courceuil, and Hiley were the
  ringleaders. Some deliberated and planned, others acted.

  Boislaurier, Dubut, and Courceuil, all three fugitives from
  justice and outlawed, are addicted to rebellion, fomenters of
  trouble, implacable enemies of Napoleon the Great, his victories,
  his dynasty, and his government, haters of our new laws and of the
  constitution of the Empire.

  Herbomez and Hiley audaciously executed that which the three
  former planned.

  The guilt of the seven instruments of the crime, namely, Cibot,
  Lisieux, Grenier, Bruce, Horeau, Cabot, and Minard, is evident; it
  appears from the confessions of those of them who are now in the
  hands of justice; Lisieux died during the investigation, and Bruce
  has fled the country.

  The conduct of Rousseau, who drove the coach, marks him as an
  accomplice. His slow method of driving, his haste at the entrance
  of the wood, his persistent declaration that his head was covered,
  whereas the passengers testify that the leader of the brigands
  told him to take the handkerchief off his head and recognize them;
  all these facts are strong presumptive evidence of collusion.

  As for the woman Bryond and the notary Leveille, could any
  co-operation be more connected, more continuous than theirs? They
  repeatedly furnished means for the crime; they were privy to it,
  and they abetted it. Leveille travelled constantly. The woman
  Bryond invented scheme after scheme; she risked all, even her
  life, to recover the plunder. She lent her house, her carriage;
  her hand is seen in the plot from the beginning; she did not
  dissuade the chief leader of all, Rifoel, since executed, although
  through her guilty influence upon him she might have done so. She
  made her waiting-woman, the girl Godard, an accomplice. As for
  Leveille, he took an active part in the actual perpetration of the
  crime by seeking the axe the brigands asked for.

  The woman Bourget, Vauthier, the Chaussards, Pannier, the woman
  Lechantre, Mallet and Ratel, all participated in the crime in
  their several degrees, as did the innkeepers Melin, Binet,
  Laraviniere, and Chargegrain.

  Bourget has died during the investigation, after making a
  confession which removes all doubt as to the part played by
  Vauthier and the woman Bryond; if he attempted to extenuate that
  of his wife and his nephews Chaussard, his motives are easy to
  understand.

  The Chaussards knowingly fed and lodged the brigands, they saw
  them armed, they witnessed all their arrangements and knew the
  object of them; and lastly, they received the plunder, which they
  hid, and as it appears, stole from their accomplices.

  Pannier, the former treasurer of the rebels, concealed the woman
  Bryond in his house; he is one of the most dangerous accomplices
  of this crime, which he knew from its inception. In him certain
  mysterious relations which are still obscure took their rise; the
  authorities now have these matters under investigation. Pannier
  was the right hand of Rifoel, the depositary of the secrets of the
  counter-revolutionary party of the West; he regretted that Rifoel
  introduced women into the plot and confided in them; it was he who
  received the stolen money from the woman Bryond and conveyed it to
  Rifoel.

  As for the conduct of the two gendarmes Ratel and Mallet, it
  deserves the severest penalty of the law. They betrayed their
  duty. One of them, foreseeing his fate, committed suicide, but not
  until he had made important revelations. The other, Mallet, denies
  nothing, his tacit admissions preclude all doubt, especially as to
  the guilt of the woman Bryond.

  The woman Lechantre, in spite of her constant denials, was privy
  to all. The hypocrisy of this woman, who attempts to shelter her
  assumed innocence under the mask of a false piety, has certain
  antecedents which prove her decision of character and her
  intrepidity in extreme cases. She alleges that she was misled by
  her daughter, and believed that the plundered money belonged to
  the Sieur Bryond,--a common excuse! If the Sieur Bryond had
  possessed any property, he would not have left the department on
  account of his debts. The woman Lechantre claims that she did not
  suspect a shameful theft, because she saw the proceedings approved
  by her ally, Boislaurier. But how does she explain the presence of
  Rifoel (already executed) at Saint-Savin; the journeys to and fro;
  the relations of that young man with her daughter; the stay of the
  brigands at Saint-Savin, where they were served by her daughter
  and the girl Godard? She alleges sleep; declares it to be her
  practice to go to bed at seven in the evening; and has no answer
  to make when the magistrate points out to her that if she rises,
  as she says she does, at dawn, she must have seen some signs of
  the plot, of the sojourn of so many persons, and of the nocturnal
  goings and comings of her daughter. To this she replies that she
  was occupied in prayer. This woman is a mass of hypocrisy. Lastly,
  her journey on the day of the crime, the care she takes to carry
  her daughter to Mortagne, her conduct about the money, her
  precipitate flight when all is discovered, the pains she is at to
  conceal herself, even the circumstances of her arrest, all go to
  prove a long-existing complicity. She has not acted like a mother
  who desires to save her daughter and withdraw her from danger, but
  like a trembling accomplice. And her complicity is not that of a
  misguided tenderness; it is the fruit of party spirit, the
  inspiration of a well-known hatred against the government of His
  Imperial and Royal Majesty. Misguided maternal tenderness, if that
  could be fairly alleged in her defence, would not, however, excuse
  it; and we must not forget that consentment, long-standing and
  premeditated, is the surest sign of guilt.

  Thus all the elements of the crime and the persons committing it
  are fully brought to light.

  We see the madness of faction combining with pillage and greed; we
  see assassination advised by party spirit, under whose aegis these
  criminals attempt to justify themselves for the basest crimes. The
  leaders give the signal for the pillage of the public money, which
  money is to be used for their ulterior crimes; vile stipendiaries
  do this work for a paltry price, not recoiling from murder; then
  the fomenters of rebellion, not less guilty because their own
  hands have neither robbed nor murdered, divide the booty and
  dispose of it. What community can tolerate such outrages? The law
  itself is scarcely rigorous enough to duly punish them.

  It is upon the above facts that this Court of Criminal and Special
  Justice is called upon to decide whether the prisoners Herbomez,
  Hiley, Cibot, Grenier, Horeau, Cabot, Minard, Melin, Binet,
  Laraviniere, Rousseau, the woman Bryond, Leveille, the woman
  Bourget, Vauthier, Chaussard the elder, Pannier, the widow
  Lechantre, Mallet, all herein named and described, and arraigned
  before this court; also Boislaurier, Dubut, Courceuil, Bruce, the
  younger Chaussard, Chargegrain, and the girl Godard,--these latter
  being absent and fugitives from justice,--are or are not guilty of
  the crimes charged in this indictment.

  Done at Caen, this 1st of December, 180-.

(Signed) Baron Bourlac, Attorney-General.



X. PRAY FOR THOSE WHO DESPITEFULLY USE YOU AND PERSECUTE YOU

This legal paper, much shorter and more imperative than such indictments
are these days, when they are far more detailed and more precise,
especially as to the antecedent life of accused persons, affected
Godefroid deeply. The dryness of the statement in which the official
pen narrated in red ink the principal details of the affair stirred his
imagination. Concise, abbreviated narratives are to some minds texts
into the hidden meaning of which they love to burrow.

In the middle of the night, aided by the silence, by the darkness, by
the terrible relation intimated by the worthy Alain between the facts
of that document and Madame de la Chanterie, Godefroid applied all the
forces of his intellect to decipher the dreadful theme.

Evidently the name Lechantre stood for la Chanterie; in all probably
the aristocracy of the name was intentionally thus concealed during the
Revolution and under the Empire.

Godefroid saw, in imagination, the landscape and the scenes where this
drama had taken place. The forms and faces of the accomplices passed
before his eyes. He pictured to himself not “one Rifoel” but a Chevalier
du Vissard, a young man something like the Fergus of Walter Scott,
a French Jacobite. He developed the romance of an ardent young girl
grossly deceived by an infamous husband (a style of romance then much
the fashion); loving the young and gallant leader of a rebellion against
the Empire; giving herself, body and soul, like another Diana Vernon, to
the conspiracy, and then, once launched on that fatal incline, unable to
stop herself. Had she rolled to the scaffold?

The young man saw in his own mind a whole world, and he peopled it. He
wandered in the shade of those Norman groves; he saw the Breton hero
and Madame Bryond among the gorse and shrubbery; he inhabited the old
chateau of Saint-Savin; he shared in the diverse acts of all those many
personages, picturing to himself the notary, the merchant, and those
bold Chouans. His mind conceived the state of that wild country where
lingered still the memory of the Comtes de Bauvan, de Longuy, the
exploits of Marche-a-Terre, the massacre at La Vivetiere, the death of
the Marquis de Montauran--of whose prowess Madame de la Chanterie had
told him.

This sort of vision of things, of men, of places was rapid. When he
remembered that this drama must relate to the dignified, noble, deeply
religious old woman whose virtue was acting upon him so powerfully as
to be upon the point of metamorphosing him, Godefroid was seized with a
sort of terror, and turned hastily to the second document which Monsieur
Alain had given him. This was entitled:--

   Summary on behalf of Madame Henriette Bryond des Tours-Minieres,
                    nee Lechantre de la Chanterie.

“No longer any doubt!” murmured Godefroid.

  We are condemned and guilty; but if ever the Sovereign had reason
  to exercise his right of clemency it is surely in a case like
  this.

  Here is a young woman, about to become a mother, and condemned to
  death.

  From a prison cell, with the scaffold before her, this woman will
  tell the truth.

  The trial before the Criminal Court of Alencon had, as in all
  cases where there are many accused persons in a conspiracy
  inspired by party-spirit, certain portions which were seriously
  obscure.

  The Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty knows now the
  truth about the mysterious personage named Le Marchand, whose
  presence in the department of the Orne was not denied by the
  government during the trial, but whom the prosecution did not
  think proper to call as witness, and whom the defence had neither
  the power nor the opportunity to find.

  That personage is, as the prosecuting officer, the police of
  Paris, and the Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty well
  know, the Sieur Bernard-Polydor Bryond des Tours-Minieres, the
  correspondent, since 1794, of the Comte de Lille,--known elsewhere
  as the Baron des Tours-Minieres, and on records of the Parisian
  police under the name of Contenson.

  He is notorious. His youth and name were degraded by vices so
  imperative, an immorality so profound, conduct so criminal, that
  his infamous life must have ended on the scaffold if he had not
  possessed the ability to play a double part, as indicated by his
  names. Hereafter, as his passions rule him more and more, he will
  end by falling to the depths of infamy in spite of his
  incontestable ability and a remarkable mind.

  When the Comte de Lille became aware of this man’s character he no
  longer permitted him to take part in the royalist councils or to
  handle the money sent to France; he thus lost the resources
  derived from these masters, whose service had been profitable to
  him.

  It was then that he returned to his country home, crippled with
  debt.

  His traitorous connection with the intrigues of England and the
  Comte de Lille, won him the confidence of the old families
  attached to the cause now vanquished by the genius of our immortal
  Emperor. He there met one of the former leaders of the rebellion,
  with whom at the time of the expedition to Quberon, and later, at
  the time of the last uprising of the Chouans, he had held certain
  relations as an envoy from England. He encouraged the schemes of
  this young agitator, Rifoel, who has since paid with his life on
  the scaffold for his plots against the State. Through him Bryond
  was able to penetrate once more into the secrets of that party
  which has misunderstood both the glory of H.M. the Emperor
  Napoleon I. and the true interests of the nation united in his
  august person.

  At the age of thirty-five, this man, then known under his true
  name of des Tours-Minieres, affecting a sincere piety, professing
  the utmost devotion to the interests of the Comte de Lille and a
  reverence for the memory of the insurgents who lost their lives at
  the West, disguising with great ability the secrets of his
  exhausted youth, and powerfully protected by the silence of
  creditors, and by the spirit of caste which exists among all
  country _ci-devants_,--this man, truly a whited sepulchre, was
  introduced, as possessing every claim for consideration, to Madame
  Lechantre, who was supposed to be the possessor of a large
  fortune.

  All parties conspired to promote a marriage between the young
  Henriette, only daughter of Madame Lechantre, and this protege of
  the _ci-devants_. Priests, nobles, creditors, each with a
  different interest, loyal in some, selfish in others, blind for
  the most part, all united in furthering the union of Bernard
  Bryond des Tours-Minieres with Henriette Lechantre.

  The good sense of the notary who had charge of Madame Lechantre’s
  affairs, and perhaps his distrust, were the actual cause of the
  disaster of this young girl. The Sieur Chesnel, notary at Alencon,
  put the estate of Saint-Savin, the sole property of the bride,
  under the dower system, reserving the right of habitation and a
  modest income to the mother.

  The creditors, who supposed, from Madame Lechantre’s orderly and
  frugal way of living, that she had capital laid by, were deceived
  in their expectations, and they then began suits which revealed
  the precarious financial condition of Bryond.

  Serious differences now arose between the newly married pair, and
  the young wife had occasion to know the depraved habits, the
  political and religious atheism and--shall I say the word?--the
  infamy of the man to whom her life had been so fatally united.
  Bryond, forced to let his wife into the secret of the royalist
  plots, gave a home in his house to their chief agent, Rifoel du
  Vissard.

  The character of Rifoel, adventurous, brave, generous, exercised a
  charm on all who came in contact with him, as was abundantly
  proved during his trials before three successive criminal courts.

  The irresistible influence, the absolute empire he acquired over
  the mind of a young woman who saw herself suddenly cast into the
  abyss of a fatal marriage, is but too visible in this catastrophe
  which now brings her a suppliant to the foot of the Throne. But
  that which the Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty can
  easily verify is the infamous encouragement given by Bryond to
  this intimacy. Far from fulfilling his duty as guide and
  counsellor to a child whose poor deceived mother had trusted her
  to him, he took pleasure in drawing closer still the bonds that
  united the young Henriette to the rebel leader.

  The plan of this odious being, who takes pride in despising all
  things and considers nothing but the satisfaction of his passions,
  admitting none of the restraints imposed by civil or religious
  morality, was as follows:--

  We must first remark, however, that such plotting was familiar to
  a man who, ever since 1794 has played a double part, who for eight
  years deceived the Comte de Lille and his adherents, and probably
  deceived at the same time the police of the Republic and the
  Empire: such men belong only to those who pay them most.

  Bryond pushed Rifoel to crime; he instigated the attacks of armed
  men upon the mail-coaches bearing the moneys of the government,
  and the levying of a heavy tribute from the purchasers of the
  National domain; a tax he enforced by means of tortures invented
  by him which carried terror through five departments. He then
  demanded that a sum of three hundred thousand francs derived from
  these plunderings be paid to him for the liquidation of his debts.

  When he met with resistance on the part of his wife and Rifoel,
  and saw the contempt his proposal inspired in upright minds who
  were acting only from party spirit, he determined to bring them
  both under the rigor of the law in the next occasion of their
  committing a crime.

  He disappeared, and returned to Paris, taking with him all
  information as to the then condition of the departments of the
  West.

  The brothers Chaussard and Vauthier were, as the chancellor knows,
  Bryond’s correspondents.

  As soon as the attack was made on the diligence from Caen, Bryond
  returned secretly and in disguise, under the name of Le Marchand.
  He put himself into secret communication with the prefect and the
  magistrates. What was the result? Never was any conspiracy, in
  which a great number of persons took part, so rapidly discovered
  and dealt with. Within six days after the committal of the crime
  all the guilty persons were followed and watched with an
  intelligence which showed the most accurate knowledge of the
  plans, and of the individuals concerned in them. The immediate
  arrest, trial, and execution of Rifoel and his accomplices are the
  proof of this. We repeat, the chancellor knows even more than we
  do on this subject.

  If ever a condemned person had a right to appeal to the
  Sovereign’s mercy it is Henriette Lechantre.

  Though led astray by love, by ideas of rebellion which she sucked
  in with the milk that fed her, she is, most certainly, inexcusable
  in the eyes of the law; but in the eyes of the most magnanimous of
  emperors, will not her misfortunes, the infamous betrayal of her
  husband, and a rash enthusiasm plead for her?

  The greatest of all captains, the immortal genius which pardoned
  the Prince of Hatzfeldt and is able to divine the reasons of the
  heart, will he not admit the fatal power of love, invincible in
  youth, which extenuates this crime, great as it was?

  Twenty-two heads have fallen under the blade of the law; only one
  of the guilty persons is now left, and she is a young woman, a
  minor, not twenty years of age. Will not the Emperor Napoleon the
  Great grant her life, and give her time in which to repent? Is not
  that to share the part of God?

  For Henriette Lechantre, wife of Bryond des Tour-Minieres,--



Her defender, Bordin, Barrister of the Lower Court of the Department of
the Seine.



This dreadful drama disturbed the little sleep that Godefroid took. He
dreamed of that penalty of death such as the physician Guillotin
has made it with a philanthropic object. Through the hot vapors of a
nightmare he saw a young woman, beautiful, enthusiastic, enduring the
last preparations, drawn in that fatal tumbril, mounting the scaffold,
and crying out, “Vive le roi!”

Eager to know the whole, Godefroid rose at dawn, dressed, and paced his
room; then stood mechanically at his window gazing at the sky, while
his thoughts reconstructed this drama in many volumes. Ever, on that
darksome background of Chouans, peasants, country gentlemen, rebel
leaders, spies, and officers of justice, he saw the vivid figures of the
mother and the daughter detach themselves; the daughter misleading the
mother; the daughter victim of a monster; victim, too, of her passion
for one of those bold men whom, later, we have glorified as heroes, and
to whom even Godefroid’s imagination lent a likeness to the Charettes
and the Georges Cadoudals,--those giants of the struggle between the
Republic and the Monarchy.

As soon as Godefroid heard the goodman Alain stirring in the room above
him, he went there; but he had no sooner opened the door than he closed
it and went back to his own apartment. The old man, kneeling by his
chair, was saying his morning prayer. The sight of that whitened head,
bowed in an attitude of humble reverence, reminded Godefroid of his own
forgotten duties, and he prayed fervently.

“I expected you,” said the kind old man, when Godefroid entered his room
some fifteen minutes later. “I got up earlier than usual, for I felt
sure you would be impatient.”

“Madame Henriette?” asked Godefroid, with visible anxiety.

“Was Madame’s daughter!” replied Monsieur Alain. “Madame’s name is
Lechantre de la Chanterie. Under the Empire none of the nobiliary titles
were allowed, nor any of the names added to the patronymic or original
names. Therefore, the Baronne des Tours-Minieres was called Madame
Bryond. The Marquis d’Esgrignon took his name of Carol (citizen Carol);
later he was called the Sieur Carol. The Troisvilles became the Sieurs
Guibelin.”

“But what happened? Did the Emperor pardon her?”

“Alas, no!” replied Alain. “The unfortunate little woman, not twenty-one
years old, perished on the scaffold. After reading Bordin’s appeal, the
Emperor answered very much in these terms: ‘Why be so bitter against the
spy? A spy is no longer a man; he ought not to have feelings; he is a
wheel of the machinery; Bryond did his duty. If instruments of that
kind were not what they are,--steel bars,--and intelligent only in the
service of the power employing them, government would not be possible.
The sentences of criminal courts must be carried out, or the judges
would cease to have confidence in themselves or in me. Besides, the
women of the West must be taught not to meddle in plots. It is precisely
in the case of a woman that justice should not be interfered with. There
is no excuse possible for an attack on power?’ This was the substance
of what the Emperor said, as Bordin repeated it to me. Learning a little
later that France and Russia were about to measure swords against each
other, and that the Emperor was to go two thousand miles from Paris to
attack a vast and desert country, Bordin understood the secret reason of
the Emperor’s harshness. To insure tranquillity at the West, now full of
refractories, Napoleon believed it necessary to inspire terror. Bordin
could do no more.”

“But Madame de la Chanterie?” said Godefroid.

“Madame de la Chanterie was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment,”
 replied Alain. “As she was already transferred to Bicetre, near Rouen,
to undergo her punishment, nothing was attempted on her behalf until
every effort had been made to save Henriette, who had grown dearer than
ever to her mother during this time of anxiety. Indeed, if it had not
been for Bordin’s assurance that he could obtain Henriette’s pardon,
it is doubtful if Madame could have survived the shock of the sentence.
When the appeal failed, they deceived the poor mother. She saw her
daughter once after the execution of the other prisoners, not knowing
that Madame Bryond’s respite was due to a false declaration of
pregnancy, made to gain time for the appeal.”

“Ah! I understand it all now,” exclaimed Godefroid.

“No, my dear child, there are things that no one can imagine. Madame
thought her daughter living for a long time.”

“How was that?”

“When Madame des Tours-Minieres learned from Bordin that her appeal was
rejected and that nothing could save her, that sublime little woman had
the courage to write twenty letters, dating them month by month after
the time of her execution, so as to make her poor mother in her prison
believe she was alive. In those letters she told of a gradual illness
which would end in death. They covered a period of two years. Madame
de la Chanterie was therefore prepared for the news of her daughter’s
death, but she thought it a natural one. She did not know until 1814
that Henriette had died on the scaffold. For two years Madame was herded
among the most depraved of her sex, but thanks to the urgency of the
Champignelles and the Beauseants she was, after the second year, placed
in a cell by herself, where she lived like a cloistered nun.”

“And the others?” asked Godefroid.

“The notary Leveille, Herbomez, Hiley, Cibot, Grenier, Horeau, Cabot,
Minard, and Mallet were condemned to death, and executed the same day.
Pannier, condemned to hard labor for twenty years, was branded and sent
to the galleys. The Chaussards and Vauthier received the same sentence,
but were pardoned by the Emperor. Melin, Laraviniere and Binet, were
condemned to five years’ imprisonment. The woman Bourget to twenty
years’ imprisonment. Chargegrain and Rousseau were acquitted. Those who
escaped were all condemned to death, except the girl Godard, who was no
other, as you have probably guessed, than our poor Manon--”

“Manon!” exclaimed Godefroid.

“Oh! you don’t know Manon yet,” replied the kind old Alain. “That
devoted creature, condemned to twelve years’ imprisonment, gave herself
up that she might take care of Madame de la Chanterie, and wait upon
her. Our dear vicar was the priest at Mortagne who gave the last
sacraments to the Baronne des Tours-Minieres; he had the courage to go
with her to the scaffold, and to him she gave her farewell kiss. That
courageous, noble priest had also accompanied the Chevalier du Vissard.
Our dear Abbe de Veze has therefore known all the secrets of those
days.”

“I see why his hair is so white,” said Godefroid.

“Alas! yes,” said Alain. “He received from Amedee du Vissard a miniature
of Madame des Tours-Minieres, the only portrait of her that exists;
therefore, the abbe became almost sacred in Madame de la Chanterie’s
eyes when she re-entered social existence.”

“When did that happen?” asked Godefroid.

“Why, at the restoration of Louis XVIII., in 1814. The Marquis du
Vissard, eldest brother of the Chevalier, was created peer of France and
loaded with honors by the king. The brother of Monsieur d’Herbomez was
made a count and receiver-general. The poor banker Pannier died of grief
at the galleys. Boislaurier died without children, a lieutenant-general
and governor of a royal chateau. Messieurs de Champignelles, de
Beauseant, the Duc de Verneuil, and the Keeper of the Seals presented
Madame de la Chanterie to the king. ‘You have suffered greatly for me,
madame la baronne; you have every right to my favor and gratitude,’ he
said to her. ‘Sire,’ she replied, ‘your Majesty has so many sorrows to
console that I do not wish that mine, which is inconsolable, should be
a burden upon you. To live forgotten, to mourn my daughter, and do some
good, that is my life. If anything could soften my grief, it is the
kindness of my king, it is the pleasure of seeing that Providence has
not allowed our long devotion to be useless.’”

“And what did Louis XVIII. do?” asked Godefroid.

“He restored two hundred thousand francs in money to Madame de la
Chanterie, for the estate of Saint-Savin had been sold to pay the costs
of the trial. In the decree of pardon issued for Madame la baronne and
her servant the king expressed regret for the suffering borne in his
cause, adding that ‘the zeal of his servants had gone too far in its
methods of execution.’ But--and this is a horrible thing; it will
serve to show you a curious trait in the character of that monarch--he
employed Bryond in his detective police throughout his reign.”

“Oh, kings! kings!” cried Godefroid; “and is the wretch still living?”

“No; the wretch, as you justly call him, who concealed his real name
under that of Contenson, died about the close of the year 1829 or the
beginning of 1830. In trying to arrest a criminal who escaped over a
roof, he fell into the street. Louis XVIII. shared Napoleon’s ideas
as to spies and police. Madame de la Chanterie is a saint; she prays
constantly for the soul of that man and has two masses said yearly for
him. As I have already told you, Madame de la Chanterie knew nothing of
the dangers her daughter was incurring until the day when the money
was carried to Alencon; nevertheless she was unable to establish her
innocence, although defended by one of the greatest lawyers of that
time. The president, du Ronceret, and the vice-president, Blondet,
of the court of Alencon did their best to save our poor lady. But the
influence of the councillor of the Imperial Court who presided at her
trial before the Criminal and Special Court, the famous Mergi, and that
of Bourlac the attorney-general was such over the other judges that they
obtained her condemnation. Both Bourlac and Mergi showed extraordinary
bitterness against mother and daughter; they called the Baronne des
Tours-Minieres ‘the woman Bryond,’ and Madame ‘the woman Lechantre.’
The names of accused persons in those days were all brought to one
republican level, and were sometimes unrecognizable. The trial had
several very extraordinary features, which I cannot now recall; one
piece of audacity remains in my memory which will serve to show you what
sort of men those Chouans were. The crowd which assembled to hear the
trial was immense; it even filled the corridors and the square before
the court-house. One morning, after the opening of the court-room and
before the arrival of the judges, Pille-Miche, a famous Chouan, sprang
over the balustrade into the middle of the crowd, elbowing right and
left, ‘charging like a wild boar,’ as Bordin told me, through the
frightened people. The guards and the gendarmes dashed after him and
caught him just as he reached the square; after that the guards were
doubled. A picket of gendarmerie was stationed in the square, for they
feared there were Chouans on the ground ready to rescue the prisoners.
As it was, three persons were crushed to death on this occasion. It was
afterwards discovered that Contenson (neither my friend Bordin nor I
could ever bring ourselves to call him the Baron des Tours-Minieres, nor
Bryond which is the name of an old family),--it was, I say, discovered
that this wretch Contenson had obtained sixty thousand francs of the
stolen money from the Chaussards; he gave ten thousand to the younger
Chaussard, whom he took with him into the detective police and
innoculated with his vices; his other accomplices got nothing from him.
Madame de la Chanterie invested the money restored to her by the king in
the public Funds, and bought this house to please her uncle, Monsieur
de Boisfrelon, who gave her the money for the purpose, and died in
the rooms you now occupy. This tranquil neighborhood is near the
archbishop’s palace, where our dear abbe has duties with the cardinal.
That was one of the chief reasons why Madame agreed to her uncle’s wish.
Here, in this cloistral life, the fearful misfortunes which overwhelmed
her for twenty-six years have been brought to a close. Now you can
understand the majesty, the grandeur of this victim--august, I venture
to call her.”

“Yes,” said Godefroid, “the imprint of all the blows she has received
remains and gives her something, I can scarcely describe it, that is
grand and majestic.”

“Every wound, every fresh blow, has increased her patience, her
resignation,” continued Alain; “but if you knew her as we know her you
would see how keen is her sensibility, how active the inexhaustible
tenderness of her heart, and you would almost stand in awe of the tears
she had shed, and the fervent prayers she had made to God. Ah! it was
necessary to have known, as she did, a brief period of happiness to bear
up as she has done under such misfortunes. Here is a tender heart,
a gentle soul in a steel body hardened by privations, by toil, by
austerities.”

“Her life explains why hermits live so long,” said Godefroid.

“There are days when I ask myself what is the meaning of a life like
hers? Can it be that God reserves such trials, such cruel tests, for
those of his creatures who are to sit on the morrow of their death at
his right hand?” said the good Alain, quite unconscious that he was
artlessly expressing the whole doctrine of Swedenborg on the angels.

“And you tell me,” said Godefroid, “that in prison Madame de la
Chanterie was put with--”

“Madame was sublime in her prison,” said Alain. “For three whole years
she realized the story of the Vicar of Wakefield, and was able to
convert many of the worst women about her. During her imprisonment she
observed the habits and customs of these women, and was seized with that
great pity for the sorrows of the people which has since filled her soul
and made her the angel of Parisian charity. In that dreadful Bicetre
of Rouen, she conceived the plan to the realization of which we are now
devoted. It was, she has often told us, a delightful dream, an angelic
inspiration in the midst of hell; though she never thought she should
realize it. When, in 1819, peace and quietude seemed really to return
to Paris, her dream came back to her. Madame la Duchesse d’Angouleme,
afterwards the dauphine, the Duchesse de Berry, the archbishop, later
the chancellor, and several pious persons contributed liberally the
first necessary sums. These funds have been increased by the addition
of our own available property, from which we take only enough for our
actual needs.”

Tears came into Godefroid’s eyes.

“We are the ministers of a Christian idea; we belong body and soul to
its work, the spirit of which, the founder of which, is the Baronne de
la Chanterie, whom you hear us so respectfully call ‘Madame.’”

“Ah! let me belong to you!” cried Godefroid, stretching out his hands to
the kind old man.

“Now you understand why there are some subjects of conversation which
are never mentioned here, nor even alluded to. You can now see the
obligations of delicacy that all who live in this house contract towards
one who seems to us a saint. You comprehend--do you not?--the influence
of a woman made sacred by such sorrows, who knows so many things, to
whom anguish has said its utmost word; who from each adversity has drawn
instruction, in whom all virtues have the double strength of cruel trial
and of constant practice; whose soul is spotless and without reproach,
whose motherhood knew only grief, whose married love knew only
bitterness; on whom life smiled for a brief time only, but for whom
heaven reserves a palm, the reward of resignation and of loving-kindness
under sorrow. Ah! does she not even triumph over Job in never murmuring?
Can you wonder that her words are so powerful, her old age so young,
her soul so communicative, her glance so convincing? She has obtained
extraordinary powers in dealing with sufferers, for she has suffered all
things.”

“She is the living image of Charity!” cried Godefroid, fervently. “Can I
ever be one of you?”

“You must first endure the tests, and above all BELIEVE!” said the old
man, gently. “So long as you have no faith, so long as you have not
absorbed into your heart and mind the divine meaning of Saint Paul’s
epistle upon Charity, you cannot share our work.”



SECOND EPISODE. THE INITIATE



XI. THE POLICE OF THE GOOD GOD

Like evil, good is contagious. Therefore when Madame de la Chanterie’s
lodger had lived in that old and silent house for some months after the
worthy Alain’s last confidence, which gave him the deepest respect for
the religious lives of those among whom his was cast, he experienced
that well-being of the soul which comes of a regulated existence, gentle
customs, and harmony of nature in those who surround us. At the end of
four months, during which time Godefroid heard neither a loud voice
nor an argument, he could not remember that he had ever been, if not as
happy, at least as tranquil and contented. He now judged soundly of the
world, seeing it from afar. At last, the desire he had felt for months
to be a sharer in the work of these mysterious persons became a passion.
Without being great philosophers we can all understand the force which
passions acquire in solitude.

Thus it happened that one day--a day made solemn by the power of the
spirit within him--Godefroid again went up to see the good old Alain,
him whom Madame de la Chanterie called her “lamb,” the member of
the community who seemed to Godefroid the least imposing, the most
approachable member of the fraternity, intending to obtain from him
some definite light on the conditions of the sacred work to which these
brothers of God were dedicated. The allusions made to a period of trial
seemed to imply an initiation, which he was now desirous of receiving.
His curiosity had not been satisfied by what the venerable old man had
already told him as to the causes which led to the work of Madame de la
Chanterie; he wanted to know more.

For the third time Godefroid entered Monsieur Alain’s room, just as the
old man was beginning his evening reading of the “Imitation of Jesus
Christ.” This time the kindly soul did not restrain a smile when he
saw the young man, and he said at once, without allowing Godefroid to
speak:--

“Why do you come to me, my dear boy; why not go to Madame? I am the most
ignorant, the most imperfect, the least spiritual of our number. For the
last three days,” he added, with a shrewd little glance, “Madame and my
other friends have read your heart.”

“What have they read there?” asked Godefroid.

“Ah!” replied the goodman, without evasion, “they see in you a rather
artless desire to belong to our little flock. But this sentiment is not
yet an ardent vocation. Yes,” he continued, replying to a gesture of
Godefroid’s, “you have more curiosity than fervor. You are not yet so
detached from your old ideas that you do not look forward to something
adventurous, romantic, as they say, in the incidents of our life.”

Godefroid could not keep himself from blushing.

“You see a likeness between our occupations and those of the caliphs of
the ‘Arabian Nights;’ and you are thinking about the satisfaction
you will have in playing the part of the good genii in the tales of
benevolence you are inventing. Ah, my dear boy! that shame-faced laugh
of yours proves to me that we were quite right in that conjecture. How
do you expect to conceal any feeling from persons whose business it is
to divine the most hidden motion of souls, the tricks of poverty, the
calculations of indigence,--honest spies, the police of the good God;
old judges, whose code contains nothing but absolutions; doctors of
suffering, whose only remedy is oftentimes the wise application of
money? But, you see, my child, we don’t wish to quarrel with the motives
which bring us a neophyte, provided he will really stay and become a
brother of the order. We shall judge you by your work. There are two
kinds of curiosity,--that of good and that of evil; just at this moment
you have that of good. If you should work in our vineyard, the juice of
our grapes will make you perpetually thirsty for the divine fruit. The
initiation is, as in that of all natural knowledge, easy in appearance,
difficult in reality. Benevolence is like poesy; nothing is easier
than to catch the appearance of it. But here, as in Parnassus, nothing
contents us but perfection. To become one to us, you must acquire a
great knowledge of life. And what a life,--good God! Parisian life,
which defies the sagacity of the minister of police and all his agents!
We have to circumvent the perpetual conspiracy of Evil, master it in
all its forms, while it changes so often as to seem infinite. Charity in
Paris must know as much as vice, just as a policeman must know all the
tricks of thieves. We must each be frank and each distrustful; we must
have quick perception and a sure and rapid judgment. And then, my child,
we are old and getting older; but we are so content with the results we
have now obtained, that we do not want to die without leaving successors
in the work. If you persist in your desire, you will be our first pupil,
and all the dearer to us on that account. There is no risk for us,
because God brought you to us. Yours is a good nature soured; since you
have been here the evil leaven has weakened. The divine nature of Madame
has acted upon yours. Yesterday we took counsel together; and inasmuch
as I have your confidence, my good brothers resolved to give me to you
as guardian and teacher. Does that please you?”

“Ah! my kind Monsieur Alain, your eloquence awakens--”

“No, my child, it is not I who speak well; it is things that are
eloquent. We can be sure of being great, even sublime, in obeying God,
in imitating Jesus Christ,--imitating him, I mean, as much as men are
able to do so, aided by faith.”

“This moment, then, decides my life!” cried Godefroid. “I feel within me
the fervor of a neophyte; I wish to spend my life in doing good.”

“That is the secret of remaining in God,” replied Alain. “Have you
studied our motto,--_Transire benefaciendo_? _Transire_ means to go
beyond this world, leaving benefits on our way.”

“Yes, I have understood it; I have put the motto of the order before my
bed.”

“That is well; it is a trifling action, but it counts for much in my
eyes. And now I have your first affair, your first duel with misery,
prepared for you; I’ll put your foot in the stirrup. We are about to
part. Yes, I myself am detached from the convent, to live for a time
in the crater of a volcano. I am to be a clerk in a great manufactory,
where the workmen are infected with communistic doctrines, and dream of
social destruction, the abolishment of masters,--not knowing that that
would be the death of industry, of commerce, of manufactures. I shall
stay there goodness knows how long,--perhaps a year,--keeping the books
and paying the wages. This will give me an entrance into a hundred or a
hundred and twenty homes of working-men, misled, no doubt, by poverty,
even before the pamphlets of the day misled them. But you and I can see
each other on Sundays and fete-days. We shall be in the same quarter;
and if you come to the church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas, you will
find me there any day at half-past seven, when I hear mass. If you meet
me elsewhere don’t recognize me, unless you see me rub my hands like
a man who is pleased at something. That is one of our signs. We have
a language of signs, like the deaf and dumb; you’ll soon find out the
absolute necessity of it.”

Godefroid made a gesture which the goodman Alain interpreted; for he
laughed, and immediately went on to say:--

“Now for your affair. We do not practise either the benevolence or the
philanthropy that you know about, which are really divided into several
branches, all taken advantage of by sharpers in charity as a business.
We practise charity as our great and sublime Saint Paul defines it; for,
my dear lad, we think that charity, and charity alone, which is Love,
can heal the wounds of Paris. In our eyes, misery, of whatever kind,
poverty, suffering, misfortune, grief, evil, no matter how produced, or
in what social class they show themselves, have equal rights. Whatever
his opinions or beliefs, an unhappy man is, before all else, an unhappy
man; and we ought not to attempt to turn his face to our holy mother
Church until we have saved him from despair or hunger. Moreover, we
ought to convert him to goodness more by example and by gentleness than
by any other means; and we believe that God will specially help us in
this. All constraint is bad. Of the manifold Parisian miseries, the most
difficult to discover, and the bitterest, is that of worthy persons
of the middle classes who have fallen into poverty; for they make
concealment a point of honor. Those sorrows, my dear Godefroid, are
to us the object of special solicitude. Such persons usually have
intelligence and good hearts. They return to us, sometimes with usury,
the sums that we lend them. Such restitutions recoup us in the long
run for the losses we occasionally incur through impostors, shiftless
creatures, or those whom misfortunes have rendered stupid. Through such
persons we often obtain invaluable help in our investigations. Our work
has now become so vast, its details are so multifarious, that we no
longer suffice of ourselves to carry it on. So, for the last year we
have a physician of our own in every arrondissement in Paris. Each of
us takes general charge of four arrondissements. We pay each physician
three thousand francs a year to take care of our poor. His time belongs
to us in the first instance, but we do not prevent him from attending
other sick persons if he can. Would you believe that for many months we
were unable to find twelve really trustworthy, valuable men, in spite
of all our own efforts and those of our friends? We could not employ
any but men of absolute discreetness, pure lives, sound knowledge,
experience, active men, and lovers of doing good. Now, although there
are in Paris some ten thousand individuals, more or less, who would
gladly do the work, we could not find twelve to meet our needs in a
whole year.”

“Our Saviour had difficulty in gathering his apostles, and even then a
traitor and an unbeliever got among them,” said Godefroid.

“However, within the last month all our arrondissements are provided
with a Visitor--that is the name we give to our physicians. At the same
time the business is increasing, and we have all redoubled our activity.
If I confide to you these secrets of our system, it is that you must
know the physician, that is, the Visitor of the arrondissement to which
we are about to send you; from him, all original information about our
cases comes. This Visitor is named Berton, Doctor Berton; he lives in
the rue d’Enfer. And now here are the facts: Doctor Berton is attending
a lady whose disease puzzles and defies science. That, of course, is not
our concern, but that of the Faculty. Our business is to discover the
condition of the family of this patient; Doctor Berton suspects that
their poverty is frightful, and concealed with a pride and determination
which demand our utmost care. Until now, my son, I should have found
time for this case, but the work I am undertaking obliges me to find a
helper in my four arrondissements, and you shall be that helper. This
family lives in the rue Notre-Dame des Champs, in a house at the corner
of the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse. You will find a room to let in the
same house, where you can live for a time so as to discover the truth
about these persons. Be sordid for yourself, but as for the money you
may think needed for this case have no uneasiness. I will remit you
such sums as we may judge necessary after ourselves considering all the
circumstances. But remember that you must study the moral qualities of
these unfortunates: their hearts, the honorableness of their feelings;
those are our guarantees. Miserly we may be for ourselves, and generous
to those who suffer, but we must be prudent and even calculating, for we
are dealing with the money of the poor. So then, to-morrow morning you
can start; think over the power we put in your hands: the brothers are
with you in heart.”

“Ah!” cried Godefroid, “you have given me such a pleasure in the
opportunity of doing good and making myself worthy to belong to you some
day, that I shall not sleep to-night.”

“One more word, my child. I told you not to recognize me without the
signal; the same rule applies to the other gentlemen and to Madame, and
even to the people you see about this house. We are forced to keep up an
absolute incognito in all we do; this is so necessary to our enterprises
that we have made a rule about it. We seek to be ignored, lost in this
great Paris. Remember also, my dear Godefroid, the spirit of our order;
which is, never to appear as benefactors, to play an obscure part, that
of intermediaries. We always present ourselves as the agent of a pious,
saintly person (in fact, we are working for God), so that none of those
we deal with may feel the obligation of gratitude towards any of us,
or think we are wealthy persons. True, sincere humility, not the false
humility of those who seek thereby to be set in the light, must inspire
you and rule all your thoughts. You may indeed be glad when you succeed;
but so long as you feel within you a sentiment of vanity or of pride,
you are not worthy to do the work of the order. We have known two
perfect men: one, who was one of our founders, Judge Popinot; the other
is revealed by his works; he is a country doctor whose name is written
on the annals of his canton. That man, my dear Godefroid, is one of the
greatest men of our time; he brought a whole region out of wretchedness
into prosperity, out of irreligion into Christianity, out of barbarism
into civilization.[*] The names of those two men are graven on our
hearts and we have taken them as our models. We should be happy indeed
if we ourselves could some day acquire in Paris the influence that
country doctor had in his canton. But here, the sore is vast, beyond our
strength at present. May God preserve to us Madame, may he send us
some young helpers like you, and perhaps we may yet leave behind us
an institution worthy of his divine religion. And now good-bye; your
initiation begins--Ah! I chatter like a professor and forget the
essential thing! Here is the address of that family,” he added, giving
Godefroid a piece of paper; “I have added the number of Dr. Berton’s
house in the rue d’Enfer; and now, go and pray to God to help you.”

     [*] The Country Doctor. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

Godefroid took the old man’s hands and pressed them tenderly, wishing
him good-night, and assuring him he would not neglect a single point of
his advice.

“All that you have said to me,” he added, “is graven in my memory
forever.”

The old man smiled, expressing no doubts; then he rose, to kneel in
his accustomed place. Godefroid retired, joyful in at last sharing the
mysteries of that house and in having an occupation, which, feeling as
he did then, was to him an untold pleasure.

The next day at breakfast, Monsieur Alain’s place was vacant, but no
one remarked upon it; Godefroid made no allusion to the cause of his
absence, neither did any one question him as to the mission the old man
had entrusted to him; he thus took his first lesson in discreetness.
Nevertheless, after breakfast, he did take Madame de la Chanterie apart
and told her that he should be absent for some days.

“That is good, my child,” replied Madame de la Chanterie; “try to do
honor to your godfather, who has answered for you to his brothers.”

Godefroid bade adieu to the three remaining brethren, who made him an
affectionate bow, by which they seemed to bless his entrance upon a
painful career.

ASSOCIATION, one of the greatest social forces, and that which made the
Europe of the middle-ages, rests on principles which, since 1792, no
longer exist in France, where the Individual has now triumphed over the
State. Association requires, in the first place, a self-devotion that is
not understood in our day; also a guileless faith which is contrary to
the spirit of the nation, and lastly, a discipline against which men in
these days revolt and which the Catholic religion alone can enforce. The
moment an association is formed among us, each member, returning to his
own home from an assembly where noble sentiments have been proclaimed,
thinks of making his own bed out of that collective devotion, that union
of forces, and of milking to his own profit the common cow, which, not
being able to supply so many individual demands, dies exhausted.

Who knows how many generous sentiments were blasted, how many fruitful
germs may have perished, lost to the nation through the infamous
deceptions of the French Carbonari, the patriotic subscriptions to the
Champ d’Asile, and other political deceptions which ought to have been
grand and noble dramas, and proved to be the farces and the melodramas
of police courts. It is the same with industrial association as it is
with political association. Love of self is substituted for the love
of collective bodies. The corporations and the Hanse leagues of the
middle-ages, _to which we shall some day return_, are still impossible.
Consequently, the only societies which actually exist are those of
religious bodies, against whom a heavy war is being made at this moment;
for the natural tendency of sick persons is to quarrel with remedies
and often with physicians. France ignores self-abnegation. Therefore,
no association can live except through religious sentiment; the only
sentiment that quells the rebellions of mind, the calculations of
ambition, and greeds of all kinds. The seekers of better worlds ignore
the fact that ASSOCIATION has such worlds to offer.

As he walked through the streets Godefroid felt himself another man.
Whoever could have looked into his being would have admired the curious
phenomenon of the communication of collective power. He was no longer a
mere man, he was a tenfold force, knowing himself the representative of
persons whose united forces upheld his actions and walked beside him.
Bearing that power in his heart, he felt within him a plenitude of life,
a noble might, which uplifted him. It was, as he afterwards said, one
of the finest moments of his whole existence; he was conscious of a new
sense, an omnipotence more sure than that of despots. Moral power is,
like thought, limitless.

“To live for others,” he thought, “to act with others, all as one, and
act alone as all together, to have for leader Charity, the noblest, the
most living of those ideal figures Christianity has made for us, this is
indeed to live!--Come, come, repress that petty joy, which father Alain
laughed at. And yet, how singular it is that in seeking to set myself
aside from life I have found the power I have sought so long! Yes, the
world of misery will belong to me!”



XII. A CASE TO INVESTIGATE

Godefroid walked from the cloister of Notre-Dame to the avenue de
l’Observatoire in such a state of exaltation that he never noticed the
length of the way.

When he reached the rue Notre-Dame des Champs at the point where it
joins the rue de l’Ouest he was amazed to find (neither of these streets
being paved at the time of which we write) great mud-holes in that fine
open quarter. Persons walked on planks laid down beside the houses and
along the marshy gardens, or on narrow paths flanked on each side by
stagnant water which sometimes turned them into rivulets.

By dint of searching he found the house he wanted, but he did not
reach it without difficulty. It was evidently an abandoned factory. The
building was narrow and the side of it was a long wall with many windows
and no architectural decoration whatever. None of these windows, which
were square, were on the lower floor, where there was no opening but a
very miserable entrance-door.

Godefroid supposed that the proprietor had turned the building into a
number of small tenements to make it profitable, for a written placard
above the door stated that there were “Several rooms to let.” Godefroid
rang, but no one came. While he was waiting, a person who went by
pointed out to him that the house had another entrance on the boulevard
where he might get admittance.

Godefroid followed this advice and saw at the farther end of a little
garden which extended along the boulevard a second door to the house.
The garden, rather ill-kept, sloped downward, for there was enough
difference in level between the boulevard and the rue Notre-Dame des
Champs to make it a sort of ditch. Godefroid therefore walked along one
of the paths, at the end of which he saw an old woman whose dilapidated
garments were in keeping with the house.

“Was it you who rang at the other door?” she asked.

“Yes, madame. Do you show the lodgings?”

On the woman’s replying that she did, Godefroid inquired if the other
lodgers were quiet persons; his occupations, he said, were such that he
needed silence and peace; he was a bachelor and would be glad to arrange
with the portress to do his housekeeping.

On this suggestion the portress assumed a gracious manner.

“Monsieur has fallen on his feet in coming here, then,” she said;
“except on the Chaumiere days the boulevard is as lonely as the Pontine
marshes.”

“Ah! you know the Pontine marshes?” said Godefroid.

“No, monsieur, I don’t; but I’ve got an old gentleman upstairs whose
daughter seems to get her living by being ill, and he says that; I only
repeat it. The poor old man will be glad to know that monsieur likes
quiet, for a noisy neighbor, he thinks, would kill his daughter. On the
second floor we have two writers; they don’t come in till midnight, and
are off before eight in the morning. They say they are authors, but I
don’t know where or when they write.”

While speaking, the portress was showing Godefroid up one of those
horrible stairways of brick and wood so ill put together that it is
hard to tell whether the wood is trying to get rid of the bricks or the
bricks are trying to get away from the wood; the gaps between them
were partly filled up by what was dust in summer and mud in winter.
The walls, of cracked and broken plaster, presented to the eye more
inscriptions than the Academy of Belles-lettres has yet composed. The
portress stopped on the first landing.

“Here, monsieur, are two rooms adjoining each other and very clean,
which open opposite to those of Monsieur Bernard; that’s the old
gentleman I told you of,--quite a proper person. He is decorated; but
it seems he has had misfortunes, for he never wears his ribbon. They
formerly had a servant from the provinces, but they sent him away about
three years ago; and now the young son of the lady does everything,
housework and all.”

Godefroid made a gesture.

“Oh!” cried the Portress, “don’t you be afraid; they won’t say anything
to you; they never speak to any one. They came here after the Revolution
of July, in 1830. I think they’re provincial folk ruined by the change
of government; they are proud, I tell you! and dumb as fishes. For three
years, monsieur, I declare they have not let me do the smallest thing
for them for fear they should have to pay for it. A hundred sous on
New Year’s day, that’s all I get out of them. Talk to me of authors,
indeed!”

This gossip made Godefroid hope he should get some assistance out of the
woman, who presently said, while praising the healthfulness of the two
rooms she offered him, that she was not a portress, but the confidential
agent of the proprietor, for whom she managed many of the affairs of the
house.

“You may have confidence in me, monsieur, that you may! Madame Vauthier,
it is well known, would rather have nothing than a single penny that
ought to go to others.”

Madame Vauthier soon came to terms with Godefroid who would not take the
rooms unless he could have them by the single month and furnished. These
miserable rooms of students and unlucky authors were rented furnished
or unfurnished as the case might be. The vast garret which extended over
the whole building was filled with such furniture. But Monsieur Bernard,
she said, had furnished his own rooms.

In making Madame Vauthier talk, Godefroid discovered she had intended
to keep boarders in the building, but for the last five years had not
obtained a single lodger of that description. She lived herself on the
ground-floor facing towards the boulevard; and looked after the whole
house, by the help of a huge mastiff, a stout servant-girl, and a lad
who blacked the boots, took care of the rooms, and did the errands.

These two servants were, like herself, in keeping with the poverty of
the house, that of the tenants, and the wild and tangled look of the
garden. Both were children abandoned by their parents to whom the widow
gave food for wages,--and what food! The lad, whom Godefroid caught a
glimpse of, wore a ragged blouse and list slippers instead of shoes, and
sabots when he went out. With his tousled head, looking like a sparrow
when it takes a bath, and his black hands, he went to measure wood at a
wood-yard on the boulevard as soon as he had finished the morning work
of the house; and after his day’s labor (which ends in wood-yards at
half-past four in the afternoon) he returned to his domestic avocations.
He went to the fountain of the Observatoire for the water used in the
house, which the widow supplied to the tenants, together with bundles of
kindling, sawed and tied up by him.

Nepomucene, such was the name of the widow Vauthier’s slave, brought
the daily journal to his mistress. In summer the poor forsaken lad was
a waiter in the wine-shops at the barrier; and then his mistress dressed
him properly.

As for the stout girl, she cooked under direction of the widow, and
helped her in another department of industry during the rest of the day;
for Madame Vauthier had a business,--she made list shoes, which were
bought and sold by pedlers.

Godefroid learned all these details in about an hour’s time; for the
widow took him everywhere, and showed him the whole building, explaining
its transformation into a dwelling. Until 1828 it had been a nursery for
silk-worms, less for the silk than to obtain what they call the eggs.
Eleven acres planted with mulberries on the plain of Montrouge, and
three acres on the rue de l’Ouest, afterwards built over, had supplied
this singular establishment.

Just as the widow was explaining to Godefroid how Monsieur Barbet,
having lent money to an Italian named Fresconi, the manager of the
business, could recover his money only by foreclosing a mortgage on the
building and seizing the three acres on the rue Notre-Dame des Champs,
a tall, spare old man with snow-white hair appeared at the end of the
street which leads into the square of the rue de l’Ouest.

“Ah! here he comes, just in time!” cried the Vauthier; “that’s your
neighbor Monsieur Bernard. Monsieur Bernard!” she called out as soon as
the old man was within hearing; “you won’t be alone any longer; here is
a gentleman who has hired the rooms opposite to yours.”

Monsieur Bernard turned his eyes on Godefroid with an apprehension it
was easy to fathom; the look seemed to say: “The misfortune I feared has
come to pass.”

“Monsieur,” he said aloud, “do you intend to live here?”

“Yes, monsieur,” said Godefroid, honestly. “It is not a resort for the
fortunate of this earth and it is the least expensive place I can find
in the quarter. Madame Vauthier does not pretend to lodge millionnaires.
Adieu, for the present, my good Madame Vauthier, and have everything
ready for me at six o’clock this evening; I shall return punctually.”

Godefroid turned toward the square of the rue de l’Ouest, walking
slowly, for the anxiety depicted on the face of the tall old man made
him think that he would follow him and come to an explanation. And, in
fact, after an instant’s hesitation Monsieur Bernard turned round and
retraced his steps so as to overtake Godefroid.

“The old villain! he’ll prevent him from returning,” thought Madame
Vauthier; “that’s the second time he has played me the same trick.
Patience! patience! five days hence he owes his rent, and if he doesn’t
pay sharp up I’ll turn him out. Monsieur Barbet is a kind of a tiger
one mustn’t offend, and--But I would like to know what he’s telling him.
Felicite! Felicite, you great gawk! where are you?” cried the widow
in her rasping, brutal voice,--she had been using her dulcet tones to
Godefroid.

The servant-girl, stout, squint-eyed, and red-haired, ran out.

“Keep your eye on things, do you hear me? I shall be back in five
minutes.”

And Madame Vauthier, formerly cook to the publisher Barbet, one of
the hardest lenders of money by the week, slipped along behind her
two tenants so as to be able to overtake Godefroid as soon as his
conversation with Monsieur Bernard came to an end.

Monsieur Bernard walked slowly, like a man who is undecided, or like a
debtor seeking for excuses to placate a creditor who has just left him
with threats. Godefroid, though some distance in front, saw him
while pretending to look about and examine the locality. It was not,
therefore, till they reached the middle of the great alley of the garden
of the Luxembourg that Monsieur Bernard came up to the young man.

“Pardon me, monsieur,” said Monsieur Bernard, bowing to Godefroid, who
returned his bow. “A thousand pardons for stopping you without having
the honor of your acquaintance; but is it really your intention to take
lodgings in that horrible house you have just left?”

“But, monsieur--”

“Yes, yes,” said the old man, interrupting Godefroid, with a gesture of
authority. “I know that you may well ask me by what right I meddle in
your affairs and presume to question you. Hear me, monsieur; you are
young and I am old; I am older than my years, and they are sixty-seven;
people take me for eighty. Age and misfortunes justify many things; but
I will not make a plea of my whitened head; I wish to speak of yourself.
Do you know that this quarter in which you propose to live is deserted
by eight o’clock at night, and the roads are full of dangers, the least
of which is robbery? Have you noticed those wide spaces not yet built
upon, these fields, these gardens? You may tell me that I live here;
but, monsieur, I never go out after six o’clock. You may also remind me
of the two young men on the second floor, above the apartment you are
going to take. But, monsieur, those two poor men of letters are pursued
by creditors. They are in hiding; they are away in the daytime and
only return at night; they have no reason to fear robbers or assassins;
besides, they always go together and are armed. I myself obtained
permission from the prefecture of police that they should carry arms.”

“Monsieur,” said Godefroid, “I am not afraid of robbers, for the same
reasons that make those gentlemen invulnerable; and I despise life
so heartily that if I were murdered by mistake I should bless the
murderer!”

“You do not look to me very unhappy,” said the old man, examining
Godefroid.

“I have, at the most, enough to get me bread to live on; and I have come
to this place, monsieur, because of its silent neighborhood. May I ask
you what interest you have in driving me away?”

The old man hesitated; he saw Madame Vauthier close behind them.
Godefroid, who examined him attentively, was astonished at the degree of
thinness to which grief, perhaps hunger, perhaps toil, had reduced him.
There were signs of all those causes upon that face, where the parched
skin clung to the bones as if it had been burned by the sun of Africa.
The dome of the forehead, high and threatening, overshadowed a pair
of steel-blue eyes,--two cold, hard, sagacious, penetrating eyes, like
those of savages, surrounded by a black and wrinkled circle. The large
nose, long and very thin, and the prominent chin, gave the old man a
strong resemblance to the well-known mask popularly ascribed to Don
Quixote; but a wicked Don Quixote, without illusions,--a terrible Don
Quixote.

And yet the old man, in spite of this general aspect of severity,
betrayed the weakness and timidity which indigence imparts to all
unfortunates. These two emotions seemed to have made crevices in
that solidly constructed face which the pickaxe of poverty was daily
enlarging. The mouth was eloquent and grave; in that feature Don Quixote
was complicated with Montesquieu’s president.

His clothing was entirely of black cloth, but cloth that was white at
the seams. The coat, of an old-fashioned cut, and the trousers, showed
various clumsy darns. The buttons had evidently just been renewed. The
coat, buttoned to the chin, showed no linen; and the cravat, of a rusty
black, hid the greater part of a false collar. These clothes, worn for
many years, smelt of poverty. And yet the lofty air of this mysterious
old man, his gait, the thought that dwelt on his brow and was manifest
in his eyes, excluded the idea of pauperism. An observer would have
hesitated how to class him.

Monsieur Bernard seemed so absorbed that he might have been taken for
a teacher employed in that quarter of the city, or for some learned man
plunged in exacting and tyrannical meditation. Godefroid, in any case,
would have felt a curiosity which his present mission of benevolence
sharpened into powerful interest.

“Monsieur,” continued the old man, “if I were sure that you are really
seeking silence and seclusion, I should say take those rooms near mine.”
 He raised his voice so that Madame Vauthier, who was now passing them,
could hear him. “Take those rooms. I am a father, monsieur. I have only
a daughter and a grandson to enable me to bear the miseries of life.
Now, my daughter needs silence and absolute tranquillity. All those
persons who, so far, have looked at the rooms you are now considering,
have listened to the reasons and the entreaties of a despairing father.
It was indifferent to them whether they lived in one house or another
of a quarter so deserted that plenty of lodgings can be had for a low
price. But I see in you a fixed determination, and I beg you, monsieur,
not to deceive me. Do you really desire a quiet life? If not, I shall be
forced to move and go beyond the barrier, and the removal may cost me my
daughter’s life.”

If the man could have wept, the tears would have covered his cheeks
while he spoke; as it was, they were, to use an expression now become
vulgar, “in his voice.” He covered his forehead with his hand, which was
nothing but bones and muscle.

“What is your daughter’s illness?” asked Godefroid, in a persuasive and
sympathetic voice.

“A terrible disease to which physicians give various names, but it has,
in truth, no name. My fortune is lost,” he added, with one of those
despairing gestures made only by the wretched. “The little money that I
had,--for in 1830 I was cast from a high position,--in fact, all that I
possessed, was soon used by on my daughter’s illness; her mother, too,
was ruined by it, and finally her husband. To-day the pension I receive
from the government barely suffices for the actual necessities of my
poor, dear, saintly child. The faculty of tears has left me; I have
suffered tortures. Monsieur, I must be granite not to have died. But
no, God had kept alive the father that the child might have a nurse, a
providence. Her poor mother died of the strain. Ah! you have come, young
man, at a moment when the old tree that never yet has bent feels the
axe--the axe of poverty, sharpened by sorrow--at his roots. Yes, here am
I, who never complain, talking to you of this illness so as to prevent
you from coming to the house; or, if you still persist, to implore you
not to trouble our peace. Monsieur, at this moment my daughter barks
like a dog, day and night.”

“Is she insane?” asked Godefroid.

“Her mind is sound; she is a saint,” replied the old man. “You will
presently think I am mad when I tell you all. Monsieur, my only child,
my daughter was born of a mother in excellent health. I never in my life
loved but one woman, the one I married. I married the daughter of one of
the bravest colonels of the Imperial guard, Tarlowski, a Pole, formerly
on the staff of the Emperor. The functions that I exercised in my high
position demanded the utmost purity of life and morals; but I have never
had room in my heart for many feelings, and I faithfully loved my wife,
who deserved such love. I am a father in like manner as I was a husband,
and that is telling you all in one word. My daughter never left her
mother; no child has ever lived more chastely, more truly a Christian
life than my dear daughter. She was born more than pretty, she was
born most beautiful; and her husband, a young man of whose morals I was
absolutely sure,--he was the son of a friend of mine, the judge of one
of the Royal courts,--did not in any way contribute to my daughter’s
illness.”

Godefroid and Monsieur Bernard made an involuntary pause, and looked at
each other.

“Marriage, as you know, sometimes changes a young woman greatly,”
 resumed the old man. “The first pregnancy passed well and produced a
son, my grandson, who now lives with us, the last scion of two families.
The second pregnancy was accompanied by such extraordinary symptoms
that the physicians, much astonished, attributed them to the caprice
of phenomena which sometimes manifest themselves in this state, and are
recorded by physicians in the annals of science. My daughter gave birth
to a dead child; in fact, it was twisted and smothered by internal
movements. The disease had begun, the pregnancy counted for nothing.
Perhaps you are a student of medicine?”

Godefroid made a sign which answered as well for affirmation as for
negation.

“After this terrible confinement,” resumed Monsieur Bernard,--“so
terrible and laborious that it made a violent impression on my
son-in-law and began the mortal melancholy of which he died,--my
daughter, two or three months later, complained of a general weakness
affecting, particularly, her feet, which she declared felt like
cottonwood. This debility changed to paralysis,--and what a paralysis!
My daughter’s feet and legs can be bent or twisted in any way and she
does not feel it. The limbs are there, apparently without blood or
muscles or bones. This affection, which is not connected with anything
known to science, spread to the arms and hands, and we then supposed
it to be a disease of the spinal cord. Doctors and remedies only made
matters worse until at last my poor daughter could not be moved without
dislocating either the shoulders, the arms, or the knees. I kept an
admirable surgeon almost constantly in the house, who, with the doctor,
or doctors (for many came out of interest in the case), replaced the
dislocated limbs,--sometimes, would you believe it monsieur? three and
four times a day! Ah!--This disease has so many forms that I forgot to
tell you that during the first period of weakness, before the paralysis
began, the strangest signs of catalepsy appeared--you know what
catalepsy is. She remained for days with her eyes wide open, motionless,
in whatever position she was when the attack seized her. The worst
symptoms of that strange affection were shown, even those of lockjaw.
This phase of her illness suggested to me the idea of employing
magnetism, and I was about to do so when the paralysis began. My
daughter, monsieur, has a miraculous clear-sightedness; her soul has
been the theatre of all the wonders of somnambulism, just as her body
has been that of all diseases.”

Godefroid began to ask himself if the old man were really sane.

“So that I,” continued Monsieur Bernard paying no attention to the
expression in Godefroid’s eyes, “even I, a child of the eighteenth
century, fed on Voltaire, Diderot, Helvetius,--I, a son of the
Revolution, who scoff at all that antiquity and the middle-ages tell
us of demoniacal possession,--well, monsieur, I affirm that nothing but
such possession can explain the condition of my child. As a somnambulist
she has never been able to tell us the cause of her sufferings; she has
never perceived it, and all the remedies she has proposed when in
that state, though carefully carried out, have done her no good. For
instance, she wished to be wrapped in the carcass of a freshly killed
pig; then she ordered us to run the sharp points of ret-hot magnets into
her legs; and to put hot sealing-wax on her spine--”

Godefroid looked at him in amazement.

“And then! what endless other troubles, monsieur! her teeth fell out;
she became deaf, then dumb; and then, after six months of absolute
dumbness, utter deafness, speech and hearing have returned to her! She
recovered, just as capriciously as she had lost, the use of her hands.
But her feet have continued in the same hapless condition for the last
seven years. She has shown marked and well-characterized symptoms of
hydrophobia. Not only does the sight of water, the sound of water, the
presence of a glass or a cup fling her at times into a state of fury,
but she barks like a dog, that melancholy bark, or rather howl, a dog
utters when he hears an organ. Several times we have thought her dying,
and the priests had administered the last sacraments; but she has always
returned to life to suffer with her full reason and the most absolute
clearness of mind; for her faculties of heart and soul are still
untouched. Though she has lived, monsieur, she has caused the deaths
of her mother and her husband, who have not been able to endure the
suffering of such scenes. Alas! monsieur, those distressing scenes are
becoming worse. All the natural functions are perverted; the Faculty
alone can explain the strange aberration of the organs. She was in this
state when I brought her from the provinces to Paris in 1829, because
the two or three distinguished doctors to whom I wrote, Desplein,
Bianchon, and Haudry, thought from my letters that I was telling them
fables. Magnetism was then energetically denied by all the schools of
medicine, and without saying that they doubted either my word or that of
the provincial doctors, they said we could not have observed thoroughly,
or else we had been misled by the exaggeration which patients are apt to
indulge in. But they were forced to change their minds when they saw my
daughter; and it is to the phenomena they then observed that the great
researches made in these latter days are owing; for I must tell you that
they class my daughter’s singular state as a form of neurosis. At the
last consultation of these gentlemen they decided to stop all medicines,
to let nature alone and study it. Since then I have had but one doctor,
and he is the doctor who attends the poor of this quarter. We do nothing
for her now but alleviate pain, for we know not the cause of it.”

Here the old man stopped as if overcome with his harrowing confidence.

“For the last five years,” he continued, “my daughter alternates between
revivals and relapses, but no new phenomena have appeared. She suffers
more or less from the varied nervous attacks I have briefly described
to you, but the paralysis of the legs and the derangement of the natural
functions are constant. The poverty into which we fell, and which alas!
is only increasing, obliged me to leave the rooms that I took, in 1829,
in the faubourg du Roule. My daughter cannot endure the fatigue of
moving; I came near losing her when I brought her to Paris, and again
when I removed her to this house. Here my worst financial misfortunes
have come upon me. After thirty years in the public service I was made
to wait four years before my pension was granted. I have only received
it during the last six months and even then the new government has
sternly cut it down to the minimum.”

Godefroid made a gesture of surprise which seemed to ask for a more
complete confidence. The old man so understood it, for he answered
immediately, casting a reproachful glance to heaven:--

“I am one of the thousand victims of political reaction. I conceal
my name because it is the mark for many a revenge. If the lessons of
experience were not always wasted from one generation to another I
should warn you, young man, never to adopt the sternness of any policy.
Not that I regret having done my duty; my conscience is perfectly clear
on that score; but the powers of to-day have not that solidarity which
formerly bound all governments together as governments, no matter how
different they might be; if to-day they reward zealous agents it is
because they are afraid of them. The instrument they have used, no
matter how faithful it has been, is, sooner or later, cast aside. You
see in me one of the firmest supporters of the government of the elder
branch of the Bourbons, as I was later of the Imperial power; yet here I
am in penury! Since I am too proud to beg, they have never dreamed that
I suffer untold misery. Five days ago, monsieur, the doctor who takes
care of my daughter, or rather I should say, observes her, told me that
he was unable to cure a disease the forms of which varied perpetually.
He says that neurotic patients are the despair of science, for
the causes of their conditions are only to be found in some as yet
unexplored system. He advised me to have recourse to a physician who has
been called a quack; but he carefully pointed out that this man was a
stranger, a Polish Jew, a refugee, and that the Parisian doctors were
extremely jealous of certain wonderful cures he had made, and also of
the opinion expressed by many that he is very learned and extremely
able. Only, Dr. Berton says, he is very exacting and overbearing. He
selects his patients, and will not allow an instant of his time to be
wasted; and he is--a communist! His name is Halpersohn. My grandson has
been twice to find him, but he is always too busy to attend to him; he
has not been to see us; I fully understand why.”

“Why?” asked Godefroid.

“Because my grandson, who is sixteen years old, is even more shabbily
dressed than I am. Would you believe it, monsieur? I _dare_ not go to
that doctor; my clothes are so out of keeping with a man of my age and
dignity. If he saw the father as shabby as I am, and the boy even worse,
he might not give my daughter the needful attention; he would treat us
as doctors treat the poor. And think, my dear monsieur, that I love my
daughter for all the suffering she has caused me, just as I used to
love her for the joys I had in her. She has become angelic. Alas! she is
nothing now but a soul, a soul which beams upon her son and me; the body
no longer exists; she has conquered suffering. Think what a spectacle
for a father! The whole world, to my daughter, is within the walls of
her room. I keep it filled with flowers, for she loves them. She reads
a great deal; and when she has the use of her hands she works like a
fairy. She has no conception of the horrible poverty to which we are
reduced. This makes our household way of life so strange, so eccentric,
that we cannot admit visitors. Do you now understand me, monsieur? Can
you not see how impossible a neighbor is? I should have to ask for
so much forbearance from him that the obligation would be too heavy.
Besides, I have no time for friends; I educate my grandson, and I have
so much other work to do that I only sleep three, or at most four hours
at night.”

“Monsieur,” said Godefroid, who had listened patiently, observing the
old man with sorrowful attention, “I will be your neighbor, and I will
help you.”

A scornful gesture, even an impatient one, escaped the old man, for he
was one who believed in nothing good in human nature.

“I will help you,” pursued Godefroid, taking his hand, “but in my own
way. Listen to me. What do you mean to make of your grandson?”

“He is soon to enter the Law school. I am bringing him up to the bar.”

“Then he will cost you six hundred francs a year.”

The old man made no reply.

“I myself,” continued Godefroid after a pause, “have nothing, but I may
be able to do much. I will obtain the Polish doctor for you. And if your
daughter is curable she shall be cured. We will find some way of paying
Halpersohn.”

“Oh! if my daughter be cured I will make a sacrifice I can make but
once,” cried the old man. “I will sell the pear I have kept for a
thirsty day.”

“You shall keep the pear--”

“Oh, youth! youth!” exclaimed Monsieur Bernard, shaking his head.
“Adieu, monsieur; or rather, au revoir. This is the hour for the
Library, and as my books are all sold I am obliged to go there every day
to do my work. I shall bear in mind the kindness you express, but I must
wait and see whether you will grant us the consideration I must ask from
my neighbor. That is all I expect of you.”

“Yes, monsieur, let me be your neighbor; for, I assure you, Barbet is
not a man to allow the rooms to be long unrented, and you might have far
worse neighbors than I. I do not ask you to believe in me, only to let
me be useful to you.”

“What object have you?” said the old man, preparing to go down the steps
from the cloister of the Chartreux which leads from the great alley of
the Luxembourg to the rue d’Enfer.

“Did you never, in your public functions, oblige any one?”

The old man looked at Godefroid with frowning brows; his eyes were
full of memories, like a man who turns the leaves of his book of life,
seeking for the action to which he owed this gratitude; then he turned
away coldly, with a bow, full of doubt.

“Well, for a first investigation I did not frighten him too much,”
 thought Godefroid.



XIII. FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS

Godefroid now went to the rue d’Enfer, the address given him by Monsieur
Alain, and there found Dr. Berton, a cold, grave man, who astonished him
much by confirming all the details given by Monsieur Bernard about
his daughter’s illness. From him Godefroid obtained the address of
Halpersohn.

This Polish doctor, since so celebrated, then lived in Chaillot, rue
Marbeuf, in an isolated house where he occupied the first floor. General
Romanus Zarnowski lived on the second floor, and the servants of the two
refugees inhabited the garret of this little house, which had but two
stories. Godefroid did not find Halpersohn, and was told that he had
gone into the provinces, sent for by a rich patient; he was almost glad
not to meet him, for in his hurry he had forgotten to supply himself
with money; and he now went back to the hotel de la Chanterie to get
some.

These various trips and the time consumed in dining at a restaurant in
the rue de l’Odeon brought Godefroid to the hour when he said he
would return and take possession of his lodging on the boulevard du
Mont-Parnasse. Nothing could be more forlorn than the manner in which
Madame Vauthier had furnished the two rooms. It seemed as though the
woman let rooms with the express purpose that no one should stay in
them. Evidently the bed, chairs, tables, bureau, secretary, curtains,
came from forced sales at auction, articles massed together in lots as
having no separate intrinsic value.

Madame Vauthier, with her hands on her hips, stood waiting for thanks;
she took Godefroid’s smile for one of surprise.

“There! I picked out for you the very best we have, my dear Monsieur
Godefroid,” she said with a triumphant air. “See those pretty silk
curtains, and the mahogany bedstead which hasn’t got a worm-hole in
it! It formerly belonged to the Prince of Wissembourg. When he left his
house, rue Louis-le-Grand, in 1809, I was the kitchen-girl. From there,
I went to live as cook with the present owner of this house.”

Godefroid stopped the flux of confidences by paying a month’s rent in
advance; and he also gave, in advance, the six francs he was to pay
Madame Vauthier for the care of his rooms. At that moment he heard
barking, and if he had not been duly warned by Monsieur Bernard, he
would certainly have supposed that his neighbor kept a dog.

“Does that dog bark at night?” he asked.

“Oh! don’t be uneasy, monsieur; you’ll only have one week to stand those
persons. Monsieur Bernard can’t pay his rent and we are going to put
him out. They are queer people, I tell you! I have never seen their
dog. That animal is sometimes months, yes, six months at a time without
making a sound; you might think they hadn’t a dog. The beast never
leaves the lady’s room. There’s a sick lady in there, and very sick,
too; she’s never been out of her room since she came. Old Monsieur
Bernard works hard, and the son, too; the lad is a day-scholar at the
school of Louis-le-Grand, where he is nearly through his philosophy
course, and only sixteen, too; that’s something to boast of! but the
little scamp has to work like one possessed. Presently you’ll hear them
bring out the plants they keep in the lady’s room and carry in fresh
ones. They themselves, the grandfather and the boy, only eat bread,
though they buy flowers and all sorts of dainties for the lady. She must
be very ill, not to leave her room once since entering it; and if one’s
to believe Monsieur Berton, the doctor, she’ll never come out except
feet foremost.”

“What does this Monsieur Bernard do?”

“It seems he’s a learned man; he writes and goes about to libraries.
Monsieur lends him money on his compositions.”

“Monsieur? who is he?”

“The proprietor of the house, Monsieur Barbet, the old bookseller. He is
a Norman who used to sell green stuff in the streets, and afterwards set
up a bookstall, in 1818, on the quay. Then he got a little shop, and now
he is very rich. He is a kind of a Jew, with a score of trades; he
was even a partner with the Italian who built this barrack to lodge
silk-worms.”

“So this house is a refuge for unfortunate authors?” said Godefroid.

“Is monsieur unluckily one himself?” asked the widow Vauthier.

“I am only just starting,” replied Godefroid.

“Oh! my dear monsieur, take my advice and don’t go on; journalist?
well,--I won’t say anything against that.”

Godefroid could not help laughing as he bade good-night to the portress,
who thus, all unconsciously, represented the bourgeoisie. As he went
to bed in the horrible room, floored with bricks that were not even
colored, and hung with a paper at seven sous a roll, Godefroid not only
regretted his little rooms in the rue Chanoinesse, but also the society
of Madame de la Chanterie. He felt a void in his soul. He had already
acquired habits of mind; and could not remember to have so keenly
regretted anything in all his former life as this break in his new
existence. These thoughts, as they pressed upon him, had a great effect
upon his soul; he felt that no life could compare in value with the one
he sought to embrace, and his resolution to emulate the good old Alain
became unshakable. Without having any vocation for the work, he had the
will to do it.

The next day Godefroid, already habituated by his new life to rising
early, saw from his window a young man about seventeen years of age,
dressed in a blouse, who was coming back, no doubt from the public
fountain, bringing a crock full of water in each hand. The face of this
lad, who was not aware that he was seen, revealed his feelings, and
never had Godefroid observed one so artless and so melancholy. The
graces of youth were all repressed by poverty, by study, by great
physical fatigue. Monsieur Bernard’s grandson was remarkable for a
complexion of extreme whiteness, which the contrast with his dark hair
seemed to make still whiter. He made three trips; when he returned from
the last he saw some men unloading a cord of wood which Godefroid
had ordered the night before, for the long-delayed winter of 1838 was
beginning to be felt; snow had fallen slightly during the night.

Nepomucene, who had begun his day by going for the wood (on which
Madame Vauthier levied a handsome tribute), spoke to the young lad while
waiting until the woodman had sawed enough for him to carry upstairs.
It was easy to see that the sudden cold was causing anxiety to Monsieur
Bernard’s grandson, and that the sight of the wood, as well as that of
the threatening sky, warned him that they ought to be making their
own provision for wintry weather. Suddenly, however, as if reproaching
himself for lost time, he seized his crocks and hastily entered the
house. It was, in fact, half-past seven o’clock, the hour was just
ringing from the belfry of the convent of the Visitation, and he was due
at the college of Louis-le-Grand by half-past eight.

As the young lad entered the house, Godefroid went to his door to admit
Madame Vauthier who brought her new lodger the wherewithal to make a
fire, and he thus became the witness of a scene which took place on the
landing.

A neighboring gardener, who had rung several times at Monsieur Bernard’s
door without making any one hear (for the bell was wrapped in paper),
had a rather rough dispute with the young lad who now came up with the
water, demanding to be paid for the flowers he had supplied. As the man
raised his voice angrily Monsieur Bernard appeared. “Auguste,” he said
to his grandson, “dress yourself, it is time for school.”

He himself took the two crocks of water, carried them into the first of
his rooms, in which were many pots of flowers, and returned to speak to
the gardener, carefully closing the door behind him. Godefroid’s door
was open, for Nepomucene had begun his trips, and was stacking the
wood in the front room. The gardener was silent in presence of Monsieur
Bernard, whose tall figure, robed in a violet silk dressing-gown,
buttoned to the throat, gave him an imposing air.

“You might ask for what is owing to you without such noise,” said
Monsieur Bernard.

“Be fair, my dear monsieur,” said the gardener. “You agreed to pay
me every week, and it now three months, ten weeks, since I have had a
penny; you owe me a hundred and twenty francs. We let out our plants to
rich people who pay us when we ask for the money; but this is the fifth
time I have come to you for it. I have my rent to pay and the wages of
my men; I am not a bit richer than you. My wife, who supplied you with
eggs and milk, will not come here any more; you owe her thirty francs.
She does not like to dun you, for she is kind-hearted, that she is! If I
listened to her, I couldn’t do business at all. And so I, who am not so
soft--you understand?”

Just then Auguste came out dressed in a shabby little green coat with
cloth trousers of the same color, a black cravat, and worn-out boots.
These clothes, though carefully brushed, showed the lowest degree of
poverty; they were all too short and too narrow, so that the lad seemed
likely to crack them at every motion. The seams were white, the edges
curled, the buttonholes torn in spite of many mendings; the whole
presenting to the most unobservant eyes the heart-breaking stigmas of
honest penury. This livery contrasted sadly with the youth of the lad,
who now disappeared munching a crust of stale bread with his strong and
handsome teeth. He breakfasted thus on his way to the rue Saint-Jacques,
carrying his books and papers under his arm, and wearing a little cap
much too small for his head, from which stuck out a mass of magnificent
black hair.

In passing before his grandfather the lad had given him rapidly a
look of deep distress; for he knew him to be in an almost hopeless
difficulty, the consequences of which might be terrible. To leave
room for the boy to pass, the gardener had stepped back to the sill
of Godefroid’s door, and as at that moment Nepomucene arrived with a
quantity of wood, the creditor was forced to retreat into the room.

“Monsieur Bernard!” cried the widow Vauthier, “do you think Monsieur
Godefroid hired his rooms to have you hold your meetings in them?”

“Excuse me, madame,” said the gardener, “but there was no room on the
landing.”

“I didn’t say that for you, Monsieur Cartier,” said the widow.

“Remain where you are!” cried Godefroid, addressing the gardener; “and
you, my dear neighbor,” he added, looking at Monsieur Bernard, who
seemed insensible to the cruel insult, “if it is convenient to you to
have an explanation with your gardener in my room, come in.”

The old man, half stupefied with his troubles, cast a look of gratitude
on Godefroid.

“As for you, my dear Madame Vauthier,” continued Godefroid, “don’t be
so rough with monsieur, who is in the first place an old man, and one to
whom you owe the obligation of my lodging here.”

“Oh, pooh!” said the widow.

“Besides, if poor people do not help each other, who will help them?
Leave us, Madame Vauthier; I’ll blow the fire myself. Have the rest of
my wood put in your cellar; I am sure you will take good care of it.”

Madame Vauthier disappeared, for Godefroid in telling her to take care
of his wood had given an opportunity to her greed.

“Come in this way,” said Godefroid, offering chairs to both debtor and
creditor.

The old man conversed standing, but the gardener sat down.

“My good Monsieur Cartier,” went on Godefroid, “rich people do not pay
as regularly as you say they do, and you ought not to dun a worthy man
for a few louis. Monsieur draws his pension every six months, and he
could not make you an assignment of it for such a paltry sum. I am
willing to advance the money, if you absolutely insist on having it.”

“Monsieur Bernard drew his pension two weeks ago, and has not paid me. I
am sorry to trouble him, of course.”

“Have you furnished him with plants all along?”

“Yes, monsieur, for six years, and he has always paid me.”

Monsieur Bernard, who was listening to some sound in his own rooms and
paying no attention to what was being said, now heard a cry through the
partitions and hurried away without a word.

“Come, come, my good man,” said Godefroid, taking advantage of the old
man’s absence, “bring some nice flowers, your best flowers, this very
morning, and tell your wife to send the eggs and milk as usual; I will
pay you this evening.”

Cartier looked oddly at Godefroid.

“Then you must know more than Madame Vauthier does; she sent me word to
hurry if I hoped to be paid,” he said. “Neither she nor I can make out
why folks who eat nothing but bread and the odds and ends of vegetables,
bits of carrots, turnips, and such things, which they get at the
back-doors of restaurants,--yes, monsieur, I assure you I came one day
on the little fellow filling an old handbag,--well, I want to know why
such persons spend nearly forty francs a month on flowers. They say the
old man’s pension is only three thousand francs.”

“At any rate,” said Godefroid, “it is not your business to complain if
they ruin themselves in flowers.”

“That’s true, monsieur,--provided they pay me.”

“Bring your bill to me.”

“Very good, monsieur,” said the gardener, with a tinge of respect.
“Monsieur no doubt wants to see the mysterious lady.”

“My good friend,” said Godefroid, stiffly, “you forget yourself. Go home
now and bring fresh plants for those you are to take away. If you can
also supply me with good cream and fresh eggs I will take them, and I
will go this morning and take a look at your establishment.”

“It is one of the finest in Paris, monsieur. I exhibit at the
Luxembourg. My garden, which covers three acres, is on the boulevard,
behind the garden of La Grande-Chaumiere.”

“Very good, Monsieur Cartier. You are, I see, much richer than I. Have
some consideration for us, therefore. Who knows how soon we may have
mutual need of each other?”

The gardener went away, much puzzled as to who and what Godefroid might
be.

“And yet I was once just like that,” thought Godefroid, blowing his
fire. “What a fine specimen of the bourgeois of to-day!--gossiping,
inquisitive, crazy for equality, jealous of his customers, furious at
not knowing why a poor sick woman stays in her room without being seen;
concealing his wealth, and yet vain enough to betray it when he thinks
it will put him above his neighbor. That man ought to be the lieutenant
of his company. I dare say he is. With what ease he plays the scene
of Monsieur Dimanche! A little more and I should have made a friend of
Monsieur Cartier.”

The old man broke into this soliloquy, which proves how Godefroid’s
ideas had changed in four months.

“Excuse me, neighbor,” said Monsieur Bernard, in a troubled voice; “I
see you have sent that gardener away satisfied, for he bowed civilly to
me on the landing. It seems, young man, as if Providence had sent you to
me at the very moment when I was about to succumb. Alas! the hard talk
of that man must have shown you many things! It is true that I received
the half-yearly payment of my pension two weeks ago; but I had more
pressing debts than his, and I was forced to put aside my rent for fear
of being turned out of the house. I have told you the state my daughter
is in, and you have probably heard her.”

He looked uneasily at Godefroid, who made him an affirmative sign.

“Well, then, you know it would be her death warrant, for I should then
be compelled to put her in a hospital. My grandson and I were fearing
that end this morning; but we do not dread Cartier so much as we do the
cold.”

“My dear Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid, “I have plenty of wood; take
all you want.”

“Ah!” said the old man, “but how can I ever return such services?”

“By accepting them without difficulty,” said Godefroid, quickly, “and by
giving me your confidence.”

“But what are my claims to so much generosity?” asked Monsieur Bernard,
becoming once more distrustful. “Ah! my pride and that of my grandson
are lowered indeed!” he cried bitterly. “We are compelled to offer
explanations to the few creditors--only two or three--whom we cannot
pay. The utterly unfortunate have no creditors; to have them one must
needs present an exterior of some show, and that we have now lost. But I
have not yet abdicated my common-sense,--my reason,” he added, as if he
were talking to himself.

“Monsieur,” replied Godefroid, gravely, “the history you gave me
yesterday would touch even a usurer.”

“No, no! for Barbet, that publisher, the proprietor of this house, is
speculating on my poverty, and has sent the Vauthier woman, his former
cook, to spy upon it.”

“How can he speculate upon you?” asked Godefroid.

“I will tell you later,” replied the old man. “My daughter is cold, and
since you offer it, I am reduced to accept alms, were it even from my
worst enemy.”

“I will carry in some wood,” said Godefroid, gathering up ten or a dozen
sticks, and taking them into Monsieur Bernard’s first room. The old
man took as many himself; and when he saw the little provision safely
deposited, he could not restrain the silly, and even idiotic smile with
which those who are saved from a mortal danger, which has seemed to them
inevitable, express their joy; for terror still lingers in their joy.

“Accept things from me, my dear Monsieur Bernard, without reluctance;
and when your daughter is safe, and you are once more at ease, we will
settle all. Meantime, let me act for you. I have been to see that Polish
doctor; unfortunately he is absent; he will not be back for two days.”

At this moment a voice which seemed to Godefroid to have, and really
had, a fresh, melodious ring, cried out, “Papa, papa!” on two expressive
notes.

While speaking to the old man, Godefroid had noticed that the jambs of
a door leading to another room were painted in a delicate manner,
altogether different from that of the rest of the lodging. His
curiosity, already so keenly excited, was now roused to the highest
pitch. He was conscious that his mission of benevolence was becoming
nothing more than a pretext; what he really wanted was to see that sick
woman. He refused to believe for an instant that a creature endowed with
such a voice could be an object of repulsion.

“You do, indeed, take too much trouble, papa!” said the voice. “Why not
have more servants?--and at your age, too! Good God!”

“But you know, my dear Vanda, that the boy and I cannot bear that any
one should wait upon you but ourselves!”

Those sentences, which Godefroid heard through the door, or rather
divined, for a heavy portiere on the inside smothered the sounds, gave
him an inkling of the truth. The sick woman, surrounded by luxury, was
evidently kept in ignorance of the real situation of her father and
son. The violet silk dressing-gown of Monsieur Bernard, the flowers,
his remarks to Cartier, had already roused some suspicion of this in
Godefroid’s mind. The young man stood still where he was, bewildered
by this prodigy of paternal love. The contrast, such as he imagined it,
between the invalid’s room and the rest of that squalid place,--yes, it
was bewildering!



XIV. HOW THE POOR AND HELPLESS ARE PREYED UPON

Through the door of a third chamber, which the old man had left open,
Godefroid beheld two cots of painted wood, like those of the cheapest
boarding-schools, each with a straw bed and a thin mattress, on which
there was but one blanket. A small iron stove like those that porters
cook by, near which lay a few squares of peat, would alone have shown
the poverty of the household without the help of other details.

Advancing a step or two, Godefroid saw utensils such as the poorest
persons use,--earthenware jugs, and pans in which potatoes floated
in dirty water. Two tables of blackened wood, covered with books and
papers, stood before the windows that looked out upon the rue Notre-Dame
des Champs, and indicated the nocturnal occupations of father and son.
On each of the tables was a flat iron candlestick, such as are used by
the very poor, and in them Godefroid noticed tallow-candles of the kind
that are sold at eight to the pound.

On a third table glittered two forks and spoons and another little spoon
of silver-gilt, together with plates, bowls, and cups of Sevres china,
and a silver-gilt knife and fork in an open case, all evidently for the
service of the sick woman.

The stove was lighted; the water in the copper was steaming slightly.
A painted wooden closet or wardrobe contained, no doubt, the linen and
clothing of Monsieur Bernard’s daughter. On the old man’s bed Godefroid
noticed that the habiliments he had worn the night before lay spread
as a covering. The floor, evidently seldom swept, looked like that of a
boy’s class-room. A six-pound loaf of bread, from which some slices had
been cut, was on a shelf above the table. Here was poverty in its last
stages, poverty resolutely accepted with stern endurance, making shift
with the lowest and poorest means. A strong and sickening odor came from
this room, which was rarely cleaned.

The antechamber, in which Godefroid stood, was at any rate decent, and
he suspected that it served to conceal the horrors of the room in which
the grandfather and the grandson lived. This antechamber, hung with a
checked paper of Scotch pattern, held four walnut chairs, a small table,
a colored engraving of the Emperor after Horace Vernet, also portraits
of Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Prince Poniatowski, no doubt the friend
of Monsieur Bernard’s father-in-law. The window was draped with white
calico curtains edged with red bands and fringe.

Godefroid watched for Nepomucene, and when the latter made his next trip
with wood signed to him to stack it very gently in Monsieur Bernard’s
antechamber; then (a perception which proved some progress in our
initiate) he closed the door of the inner lair that Madame Vauthier’s
slave might not see the old man’s squalor.

The antechamber was just then encumbered with three plant-stands filled
with plants; two were oblong, one round, all three were of a species
of ebony and of great elegance; even Nepomucene took notice of them and
said as he deposited the wood:--

“Hey! ain’t they pretty? They must have cost a good bit!”

“Jean! don’t make so much noise!” called Monsieur Bernard from his
daughter’s room.

“Did you hear that?” whispered Nepomucene to Godefroid. “He’s cracked,
for sure, that old fellow.”

“You don’t know what you may be at his age.”

“Yes, I do know,” responded Nepomucene, “I shall be in the sugar-bowl.”

“The sugar-bowl?”

“Yes, they’ll have made my bones into charcoal by that time; I often see
the carts of the refineries coming to Montsouris for charcoal; they tell
me they make sugar of it.” And he departed after another load of wood,
satisfied with this philosophical reflection.

Godefroid discreetly withdrew to his own rooms, closing Monsieur
Bernard’s door behind him. Madame Vauthier, who during this time had
been preparing her new lodger’s breakfast, now came up to serve it,
attended by Felicite. Godefroid, lost in reflection, stared into his
fire. He was absorbed in meditation on this great misery which contained
so many different miseries, and yet within which he could see the
ineffable joys of the many triumphs of paternal and filial love; they
were gems shining in the blackness of the pit.

“What romances, even those that are most famous, can equal such
realities?” he thought. “What a life it will be to relieve the burden of
such existences, to seek out causes and effects and remedy them, calming
sorrows, helping good; to incarnate one’s own being in misery; to
familiarize one’s self with homes like that; to act out constantly in
life those dramas which move us so in fiction! I never imagined that
good could be more interesting, more piquant than vice.”

“Is monsieur satisfied with his breakfast?” asked Madame Vauthier, who
now, with Felicite’s assistance, brought the table close to Godefroid.

Godefroid then saw a cup of excellent _cafe au lait_ with a smoking
omelet, fresh butter, and little red radishes.

“Where the devil did you get those radishes?” he asked.

“They were given me by Monsieur Cartier,” answered Madame Vauthier; “and
I make a present of them to monsieur.”

“And what are you going to ask me for such a breakfast daily?”

“Well now, monsieur, be fair,--I couldn’t do it for less than thirty
sous.”

“Very good, thirty sous then;” said Godefroid; “but how is it that
they ask me only forty-five francs a month for dinner, close by here at
Machillot’s? That is the same price you ask me for breakfast.”

“But what a difference, monsieur, between preparing a dinner for fifteen
or twenty persons and going out to get you just what you want for
breakfast! See here! there’s a roll, eggs, butter, the cost of lighting
a fire, sugar, milk, coffee!--just think! they ask you sixteen sous for
a cup of coffee alone on the place de l’Odeon, and then you have to give
a sou or two to the waiter. Here you have no trouble; you can breakfast
in slippers.”

“Very well, very well,” said Godefroid.

“Without Madame Cartier who supplies me with milk and eggs and herbs
I couldn’t manage it. You ought to go and see their establishment,
monsieur. Ha! it’s fine! They employ five journeymen gardeners, and
Nepomucene goes there in summer to draw water for them; they hire him of
me as a waterer. They make lots of money out of melons and strawberries.
It seems monsieur takes quite an interest in Monsieur Bernard,”
 continued the widow in dulcet tones; “or he wouldn’t be responsible for
his debts. Perhaps he doesn’t know all that family owes. There’s the
lady who keeps the circulating library on the place Saint-Michel; she is
always coming here after thirty francs they owe her,--and she needs it,
God knows! That sick woman in there, she reads, reads, reads! Two sous a
volume makes thirty francs in three months.”

“That means a hundred volumes a month,” said Godefroid.

“Ah! there’s the old man going now to fetch a roll and cream for his
daughter’s tea,--yes, tea! she lives on tea, that lady. She drinks it
twice a day. And twice a week she has to have sweet things. Oh! she’s
dainty! The old man buys cakes and pates from the pastry cook in the rue
de Buci. He don’t care what he spends, if it’s for her. He calls her his
daughter! It ain’t often that men of his age do for a daughter what he
does for her! He just kills himself, he and Auguste too, for that woman.
Monsieur is just like me; I’d give anything to see her. Monsieur Berton
says she’s a monster,--something like those they show for money. That’s
the reason they’ve come to live here, in this lonely quarter. Well, so
monsieur thinks of dining at Madame Machillot’s, does he?”

“Yes, I think of making an arrangement there.”

“Monsieur, it isn’t that I want to interfere, but I must say, comparing
food with food, you’d do much better to dine in the rue de Tournon; you
needn’t engage by the month, and you’ll find a better table.”

“Whereabouts in the rue de Tournon?”

“At the successors to Madame Giraud. That’s where the gentlemen upstairs
go; they are satisfied, and more than satisfied.”

“Well, I’ll take your advice and dine there to-day.”

“My dear monsieur,” said the woman, emboldened by the good-nature which
Godefroid intentionally assumed, “tell me seriously, you are not going
to be such a muff as to pay Monsieur Bernard’s debts? It would really
trouble me if you did; for just reflect, my kind monsieur Godefroid,
he’s nearly seventy, and after him, what then? not a penny of pension!
How’ll you get paid? Young men are so imprudent! Do you know that he
owes three thousand francs?”

“To whom?” inquired Godefroid.

“Oh! to whom? that’s not my affair,” said the widow, mysteriously; “it
is enough that he does owe them. Between ourselves I’ll tell you this:
somebody will soon be down on him for that money, and he can’t get a
penny of credit now in the quarter just on that account.”

“Three thousand francs!” repeated Godefroid; “oh, you needn’t be afraid
I’ll lend him that. If I had three thousand francs to dispose of I
shouldn’t be your lodger. But I can’t bear to see others suffer, and
just for a hundred or so of francs I sha’n’t let my neighbor, a man with
white hair too, lack for bread or wood; why, one often loses as much
as that at cards. But three thousand francs! good heavens! what are you
thinking of?”

Madame Vauthier, deceived by Godefroid’s apparent frankness, let a smile
of satisfaction appear on her specious face, which confirmed all her
lodger’s suspicions. Godefroid was convinced that the old woman was an
accomplice in some plot that was brewing against the unfortunate old
man.

“It is strange, monsieur,” she went on, “what fancies one takes into
one’s head! You’ll think me very curious, but yesterday, when I saw you
talking with Monsieur Bernard I said to myself that you were the clerk
of some publisher; for this, you know, is a publisher’s quarter. I once
lodged the foreman of a printing-house in the rue de Vaugirard, and his
name was the same as yours--”

“What does my business signify to you?” interrupted Godefroid.

“Oh, pooh! you can tell me, or you needn’t tell me; I shall know it all
the same,” retorted Vauthier. “There’s Monsieur Bernard, for instance,
for eighteen months he concealed everything from me, but on the
nineteenth I discovered that he had been a magistrate, a judge somewhere
or other, I forget where, and was writing a book on law matters. What
did he gain by concealing it, I ask you. If he had told me I’d have said
nothing about it--so there!”

“I am not yet a publisher’s clerk, but I expect to be,” said Godefroid.

“I thought so!” exclaimed Madame Vauthier, turning round from the bed
she had been making as a pretext for staying in the room. “You have come
here to cut the ground from under the feet of--Good! _a man warned_ is a
man armed.”

“Stop!” cried Godefroid, placing himself between the Vauthier and the
door. “Look here, what interest have you in the matter?”

“Gracious!” said the old woman, eyeing Godefroid cautiously, “you’re a
bold one, anyhow.”

She went to the door of the outer room and bolted it; then she came back
and sat down on a chair beside the fire.

“On my word of honor, and as sure as my name is Vauthier, I took you
for a student until I saw you giving your wood to that old Bernard. Ha!
you’re a sly one; and what a play-actor! I was so certain you were a
ninny! Look here, will you guarantee me a thousand francs? As sure as
the sun shines, my old Barbet and Monsieur Metivier have promised me
five hundred to keep my eyes open for them.”

“They! five hundred francs! nonsense!” cried Godefroid. “I know their
ways; two hundred is the very most, my good woman, and even that is only
promised; you can’t assign it. But I will say this: if you will put me
in the way to do the business they want to do with Monsieur Bernard I
will pay you four hundred francs. Now, then, how does the matter stand?”

“They have advanced fifteen hundred francs upon the work,” said Madame
Vauthier, making no further effort at deception, “and the old man has
signed an acknowledgment for three thousand. They wouldn’t do it under
a hundred per cent. He thought he could easily pay them out of his book,
but they have arranged to get the better of him there. It was they who
sent Cartier here, and the other creditors.”

Here Godefroid gave the old woman a glance of ironical intelligence,
which showed her that he saw through the role she was playing in
the interest of her proprietor. Her words were, in fact, a double
illumination to Godefroid; the curious scene between himself and the
gardener was now explained.

“Well,” she resumed, “they have got him now. Where is he to find three
thousand francs? They intend to offer him five hundred the day he puts
the first volume of his book into their hands, and five hundred for each
succeeding volume. The affair isn’t in their names; they have put
it into the hands of a publisher whom Barbet set up on the quai des
Augustins.”

“What, that little fellow?”

“Yes, that little Morand, who was formerly Barbet’s clerk. It seems they
expect a good bit of money out of the affair.”

“There’s a good bit to spend,” said Godefroid, with a significant
grimace.

Just then a gentle rap was heard at the door of the outer room.
Godefroid, glad of the interruption, having got all he wanted to know
out of Madame Vauthier, went to open it.

“What is said, is said, Madame Vauthier,” he remarked as he did so. The
visitor was Monsieur Bernard.

“Ah! Monsieur Bernard,” cried the widow when she saw him, “I’ve got a
letter downstairs for you.”

The old man followed her down a few steps. When they were out of hearing
from Godefroid’s room she stopped.

“No,” she said, “I haven’t any letter; I only wanted to tell you to
beware of that young man; he belongs to a publishing house.”

“That explains everything,” thought the old man.

He went back to his neighbor with a very different expression of
countenance.

The look of calm coldness with which Monsieur Bernard now entered the
room contrasted so strongly with the frank and cordial air he had worn
not an instant earlier that Godefroid was forcibly struck by it.

“Pardon me, monsieur,” said the old man, stiffly, “but you have shown
me many favors, and a benefactor creates certain rights in those he
benefits.”

Godefroid bowed.

“I, who for the last five years have endured a passion like that of
our Lord, I, who for thirty-six years represented social welfare,
government, public vengeance, have, as you may well believe, no
illusions--no, I have nothing left but anguish. Well, monsieur, I was
about to say that your little act in closing the door of my wretched
lair, that simple little thing, was to me the glass of water Bossuet
tells of. Yes, I did find in my heart, that exhausted heart which cannot
weep, just as my withered body cannot sweat, I did find a last drop of
the elixir which makes us fancy in our youth that all human beings
are noble, and I came to offer you my hand; I came to bring you that
celestial flower of belief in good--”

“Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid, remembering the kind old Alain’s
lessons. “I have done nothing to obtain your gratitude. You are quite
mistaken.”

“Ah, that is frankness indeed!” said the former magistrate. “Well, it
pleases me. I was about to reproach you; pardon me, I now esteem you.
So you are a publisher, and you have come here to get my work away from
Barbet, Metivier, and Morand? All is now explained. You are making me
advances in money as they did, only you do it with some grace.”

“Did Madame Vauthier just tell you that I was employed by a publisher?”
 asked Godefroid.

“Yes.”

“Well, then, Monsieur Bernard, before I can say how much I can _give_
over what those other gentlemen _offer_, I must know the terms on which
you stand with them.”

“That is fair,” said Monsieur Bernard, who seemed rather pleased to find
himself the object of a competition by which he might profit. “Do you
know what my work is?”

“No; I only know it is a good enterprise from a business point of view.”

“It is only half-past nine, my daughter has breakfasted, and Cartier
will not bring the flowers for an hour or more; we have time to talk,
Monsieur--Monsieur who?”

“Godefroid.”

“Monsieur Godefroid, the work in question was projected by me in
1825, at the time when the ministry, being alarmed by the persistent
destruction of landed estates, proposed that law of primogeniture which
was, you will remember, defeated. I had remarked certain imperfections
in our codes and in the fundamental institutions of France. Our codes
have often been the subject of important works, but those works were
all from the point of view of jurisprudence. No one had even ventured to
consider the work of the Revolution, or (if you prefer it) of Napoleon,
as a whole; no one had studied the spirit of those laws, and judged
them in their application. That is the main purpose of my work; it
is entitled, provisionally, ‘The Spirit of the New Laws;’ it includes
organic laws as well as codes, all codes; for we have many more than
five codes. Consequently, my work is in several volumes; six in all, the
last being a volume of citations, notes, and references. It will take
me now about three months to finish it. The proprietor of this house, a
former publisher, of whom I made a few inquiries, perceived, scented I
may say, the chance of a speculation. I, in the first instance, thought
only of doing a service to my country, and not of my own profit. Well,
this Barbet has circumvented me. You will ask me how it was possible for
a publisher to get the better of a magistrate, a man who knows the laws.
Well, it was in this way: You know my history; Barbet is an usurer;
he has the keen glance and the shrewd action of that breed of men. His
money was always at my heels to help me over my worst needs. Strange to
say, on the days I was most defenceless against despair he happened to
appear.”

“No, no, my dear Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid, “he had a spy in
Madame Vauthier; she told him when you needed money. But the terms, the
conditions? Tell them to me briefly.”

“He has lent me from time to time fifteen hundred francs, for which I
have signed three notes of a thousand francs each, and those notes are
secured by a sort of mortgage on the copyright of my book, so that I
cannot sell my book unless I pay off those notes, and the notes are now
protested,--he has taken the matter into court and obtained a judgment
against me. Such are the complications of poverty! At the lowest
valuation, the first edition of my great work, a work representing
ten years’ toil and thirty-six years’ experience, is fully worth ten
thousand francs. Well, ten days ago Morand proposed to give me three
thousand francs and my notes cancelled for the entire rights in
perpetuity. Now as it is not possible for me to refund the amount of my
notes and interest, namely, three thousand two hundred and forty francs,
I must,--unless you intend to step between those usurers and me,--I must
yield to them. They are not content with my word of honor; they
first obtained the notes, then they had them protested, and now I am
threatened with arrest for debt. If I could manage to pay them back,
those scoundrels would have doubled their money. If I accept their terms
they will make a fortune out of my book and I shall get almost nothing;
one of them is a paper-maker, and God knows how they may keep down the
costs of publication. They will have my name, and that alone will sell
ten thousand copies for them.”

“But, monsieur, how could you, a former magistrate!--”

“How could I help it? Not a friend, not a claim that I could make! And
yet I saved many heads, if I made some fall! And, then, my daughter,
my daughter! whose nurse I am, whose companion I must be; so that I can
work but a few hours snatched from sleep. Ah, young man! none but the
wretched can judge the wretched! Sometimes I think I used to be too
stern to misery.”

“Monsieur, I do not ask your name. I cannot provide three thousand
francs, especially if I pay Halpersohn and your lesser debts; but I
will save you if you will promise me not to part with your book
without letting me know. It is impossible for me to arrange a matter as
important as this without consulting others. My backers are powerful,
and I can promise you success if you, in return, will promise me
absolute secrecy, even to your children, and keep your promise.”

“The only success I care for is the recovery of my poor Vanda; for such
sufferings as hers extinguish every other feeling in a father’s heart.
As for fame, what is that to one who sees an open grave before him?”

“I will come and see you this evening; they expect Halpersohn at any
time, and I shall go there day after day until I find him.”

“Ah, monsieur! if you should be the cause of my daughter’s recovery, I
would like,--yes, I would like to give you my work!”

“Monsieur,” said Godefroid, “I am not a publisher.”

The old man started with surprise.

“I let that old Vauthier think so in order to discover the traps they
were laying for you.”

“Then who are you?”

“Godefroid,” replied the initiate; “and since you allow me to offer you
enough to make the pot boil, you can call me, if you like, Godefroid de
Bouillon.”

The old man was far too moved to laugh at a joke. He held out his hand
to Godefroid, and pressed that which the young man gave him in return.

“You wish to keep your incognito?” he said, looking at Godefroid sadly,
with some uneasiness.

“If you will allow it.”

“Well, as you will. Come to-night, and you shall see my daughter if her
condition permits.”

This was evidently a great concession in the eyes of the poor father,
and he had the satisfaction of seeing, by the look on Godefroid’s face,
that it was understood.

An hour later, Cartier returned with a number of beautiful flowering
plants, which he placed himself in the jardinieres, covering them
with fresh moss. Godefroid paid his bill; also that of the circulating
library, which was brought soon after. Books and flowers!--these were
the daily bread of this poor invalid, this tortured creature, who was
satisfied with so little.

As he thought of this family, coiled by misfortunes like that of the
Laocoon (sublime image of so many lives), Godefroid, who was now on
his way on foot to the rue Marbeuf, was conscious in his heart of more
curiosity than benevolence. This sick woman, surrounded by luxury in the
midst of such direful poverty, made him forget the horrible details of
the strangest of all nervous disorders, which is happily rare, though
recorded by a few historians. One of our most gossiping chroniclers,
Tallemant des Reaux, cites an instance of it. The mind instinctively
pictures a woman as being elegant in the midst of her worst sufferings;
and Godefroid let himself dwell on the pleasure of entering that chamber
where none but the father, son, and doctor had been admitted for six
years. Nevertheless, he ended by blaming himself for his curiosity. He
even felt that the sentiment, natural as it was, would cease as he went
on exercising his beneficent ministry, from the mere fact of seeing more
distressed homes and many sorrows.

Such agents do reach in time a divine serenity which nothing surprises
or confounds; just as in love we come to the divine quietude of that
emotion, sure of its strength, sure of its lastingness, through our
constant experience of its pains and sweetnesses.

Godefroid was told that Halpersohn had returned during the night, but
had been obliged to go out at once to visit patients who were awaiting
him. The porter told Godefroid to come the next day before nine o’clock
in the morning.

Remembering Monsieur Alain’s injunction to parsimony in his personal
expenses, Godefroid dined for twenty-five sous in the rue de Tournon,
and was rewarded for his abnegation by finding himself in the midst
of compositors and pressmen. He heard a discussion on costs of
manufacturing, and learned that an edition of one thousand copies of an
octavo volume of forty sheets did not cost more than thirty sous a copy,
in the best style of printing. He resolved to ascertain the price at
which publishers of law books sold their volumes, so as to be prepared
for a discussion with the men who held Monsieur Bernard in their
clutches if he should have to meet them.

Towards seven in the evening he returned to the boulevard du
Mont-Parnasse, by way of the rue de Vaugiraud and the rue de l’Ouest,
and he saw then how deserted the quarter was, for he met no one. It is
true that the cold was rigorous, and the snow fell in great flakes, the
wheels of the carriages making no noise upon the pavements.

“Ah, here you are, monsieur!” said Madame Vauthier. “If I had known you
were coming home so early I would have made your fire.”

“I don’t want one,” said Godefroid, seeing that the widow followed him.
“I shall spend the evening in Monsieur Bernard’s apartment.”

“Well, well! you must be his cousin, if you are hand and glove like
that! Perhaps monsieur will finish now the little conversation we
began.”

“Ah, yes!--about that four hundred francs. Look here, my good Madame
Vauthier, you are trying to see which way the cat jumps, and you’ll
tumble yourself between two stools. As for me, you have betrayed me, and
made me miss the whole affair.”

“Now, don’t think that, my dear monsieur. To-morrow, while you
breakfast--”

“To-morrow I shall not breakfast here. I am going out, like your
authors, at cock-crow.”

Godefroid’s antecedents, his life as a man of the world and a
journalist, served him in this, that he felt quite sure, unless he took
this tone, that Barbet’s spy would warn the old publisher of danger,
and probably lead to active measures under which Monsieur Bernard would
before long be arrested; whereas, if he left the trio of harpies to
suppose that their scheme ran no risk of defeat, they would keep quiet.

But Godefroid did not yet know Parisian human nature when embodied in
a Vauthier. That woman resolved to have Godefroid’s money and Barbet’s
too. She instantly ran off to her proprietor, while Godefroid changed
his clothes in order to present himself properly before the daughter of
Monsieur Bernard.



XV. AN EVENING WITH VANDA

Eight o’clock was striking from the convent of the Visitation, the clock
of the quarter, when the inquisitive Godefroid tapped gently at his
neighbor’s door. Auguste opened it. As it happened to be a Saturday, the
young lad had his evening to himself. Godefroid beheld him in a little
sack-coat of black velvet, a blue silk cravat, and black trousers. But
his surprise at the youth’s appearance, so different from that of this
outside life, ceased as soon as he had entered the invalid’s chamber. He
then understood the reason why both father and son were well dressed.

For a moment the contrast between the squalor of the other rooms, as he
had seen them that morning, and the luxury of this chamber, was so great
that Godefroid was dazzled, though habituated for years to the luxury
and elegance procured by wealth.

The walls of the room were hung with yellow silk, relieved by twisted
fringes of a bright green, giving a gay and cheerful aspect to the
chamber, the cold tiled floor of which was hidden by a moquette carpet
with a white ground strewn with flowers. The windows, draped by handsome
curtains lined with white silk, were like conservatories, so full were
they of plants in flower. The blinds were lowered, which prevented this
luxury, so rare in that quarter of the town, from being seen from the
street. The woodwork was painted in white enamel, touched up, here and
there, by a few gold lines.

At the door was a heavy portiere, embroidered by hand with fantastic
foliage on a yellow ground, so thick that all sounds from without were
stifled. This magnificent curtain was made by the sick woman herself,
who could work, when she had the use of her hands, like a fairy.

At the farther end of the room, and opposite to the door, was the
fireplace, with a green velvet mantel-shelf, on which a few extremely
elegant ornaments, the last relics of the opulence of two families,
were arranged. These consisted of a curious clock, in the shape of an
elephant supporting on its back a porcelain tower which was filled with
the choicest flowers; two candelabra in the same style, and several
precious Chinese treasures. The fender, andirons, tongs, and shovel were
all of the handsomest description.

The largest of the flower-stands was placed in the middle of the room,
and above it hung a porcelain chandelier designed with wreaths of
flowers.

The bed on which the old man’s daughter lay was one of those beautiful
white and gold carved bedsteads such as were made in the Louis XV.
period. By the sick woman’s pillow was a very pretty marquetry table,
on which were the various articles necessary to this bedridden life.
Against the wall was a bracket lamp with two branches, either of which
could be moved forward or back by a mere touch of the hand. A small
table, adapted to the use of the invalid, extended in front of her. The
bed, covered with a beautiful counterpane, and draped with curtains held
back by cords, was heaped with books, a work-basket, and articles of
embroidery, beneath which Godefroid would scarcely have distinguished
the sick woman herself had it not been for the light of the bracket
lamps.

There was nothing of her to be seen but a face of extreme whiteness,
browned around the eyes by suffering, in which shone eyes of fire, its
principal adornment being a magnificent mass of black hair, the numerous
heavy curls of which, carefully arranged, showed that the dressing of
those beautiful locks occupied a good part of the invalid’s morning.
This supposition was further strengthened by the portable mirror which
lay on the bed.

No modern arrangement for comfort was lacking. Even a few knick-knacks,
which amused poor Vanda, proved that the father’s love was almost
fanatical.

The old man rose from an elegant Louis XV. sofa in white and cold,
covered with tapestry, and advanced to Godefroid, who would certainly
not have recognized him elsewhere; for that cold, stern face now wore
the gay expression peculiar to old men of the world, who retain the
manners and apparent frivolity of the nobility about a court. His wadded
violet gown was in keeping with this luxury, and he took snuff from a
gold box studded with diamonds.

“Here, my dear daughter,” said Monsieur Bernard, taking Godefroid by the
hand, “is the neighbor of whom I told you.”

He signed to his grandson to draw up one of two armchairs, similar in
style to the sofa, which stood beside the fireplace.

“Monsieur’s name is Godefroid, and he is full of friendly kindness for
us.”

Vanda made a motion with her head in answer to Godefroid’s low bow; by
the very way in which her neck bent and then recovered itself, Godefroid
saw that the whole physical life of the invalid was in her head. The
thin arms and flaccid hands lay on the fine, white linen of the sheets,
like things not connected with the body, which, indeed, seemed to fill
no place at all in the bed. The articles necessary for a sick person
were on shelves standing behind the bedstead, and were concealed by a
drawn curtain.

“You are the first person, monsieur,--except my doctors, who are not men
to me,--whom I have seen for six years; therefore you cannot doubt
the interest you have excited in my mind, since my father told me
this morning that you were to pay me a visit--interest! no, it was an
unconquerable curiosity, like that of our mother Eve. My father, who is
so good to me, and my son, whom I love so much, do certainly suffice to
fill the desert of a soul which is almost without a body; but after all,
that soul is still a woman’s; I feel it in the childish joy the thought
of your visit has brought me. You will do me the pleasure to take a cup
of tea with us, I hope?”

“Monsieur has promised to pass the evening here,” said the old man, with
the air of a millionnaire receiving a guest.

Auguste, sitting on a tapestried chair at a marquetry table with brass
trimmings, was reading a book by the light of the candelabra on the
chimney piece.

“Auguste, my dear,” said his mother, “tell Jean to serve tea in an hour.
Would you believe it monsieur,” she added, “that for six years I have
been waited upon wholly by my father and son, and now, I really think, I
could bear no other attendance. If they were to fail me I should die.
My father will not even allow Jean, a poor Norman who has served us for
thirty years, to come into my room.”

“I should think not!” said the old man, quickly; “monsieur knows him; he
chops wood and brings it in, and cooks; he wears dirty aprons, and would
soon spoil all this elegance in which you take such pleasure--this room
is really the whole of life to my poor daughter, monsieur.”

“Ah! madame, your father is quite right.”

“But why?” she said; “if Jean did any damage to my room my father would
restore it.”

“Yes, my child; but remember you could not leave it; you don’t know what
Parisian tradesmen are; they would take three months to renovate your
room. Let Jean take care of it? no, indeed! how can you think of it?
Auguste and I take such precautions that we allow no dust, and so avoid
all sweeping.”

“It is a matter of health, not economy,” said Godefroid; “your father is
right.”

“I am not complaining,” said Vanda, in a caressing voice.

That voice was a concert of delightful sounds. Soul, motion, life itself
were concentrated in the glance and in the voice of this woman; for
Vanda had succeeded by study, for which time was certainly not lacking
to her, in conquering the difficulty produced by the loss of her teeth.

“I have much to make me happy in the midst of my sufferings, monsieur,”
 she said; “and certainly ample means are a great help in bearing
trouble. If we had been poor I should have died eighteen years ago,
but I still live. Oh, yes, I have many enjoyments, and they are all the
greater because they are perpetually won from death. I am afraid you
will think me quite garrulous,” she added, smiling.

“Madame, I should like to listen to you forever,” replied Godefroid;
“I have never heard a voice that was comparable to yours; it is music;
Rubini is not more enchanting.”

“Don’t speak of Rubini or the opera,” said the old man, sadly. “That
is a pleasure that, rich as I am, I cannot give to my daughter. She was
once a great musician, and the opera was her greatest pleasure.”

“Forgive me,” said Godefroid.

“You will soon get accustomed to us,” said the old man.

“Yes, and this is the process,” said the sick woman, laughing; “when
they’ve cried ‘puss, puss, puss,’ often enough you’ll learn the
puss-in-the-corner of our conversations.”

Godefroid gave a rapid glance at Monsieur Bernard, who, seeing the tears
in the eyes of his new neighbor, seemed to be making him a sign not to
undo the results of the self-command he and his grandson had practised
for so many years.

This sublime and perpetual imposture, proved by the complete illusion of
the sick woman, produced on Godefroid’s mind the impression of an
Alpine precipice down which two chamois hunters picked their way. The
magnificent gold snuff-box enriched with diamonds with which the old man
carelessly toyed as he sat by his daughter’s bedside was like the stroke
of genius which in the work of a great man elicits a cry of admiration.
Godefroid looked at that snuff-box, wondering it had not been sold or
found its way to the mont-de-piete.

“This evening, Monsieur Godefroid, my daughter received the announcement
of your visit with such excitement that all the curious symptoms of her
malady which have troubled us very much for the last twelve days have
entirely disappeared. You can fancy how grateful I am to you.”

“And I, too,” said the invalid in her caressing tones, drooping her head
with a motion full of coquetry. “Monsieur is to me a deputy from the
world. Since I was twenty years old, monsieur, I have not seen a salon,
or a party, or a ball. And I must tell you that I love dancing, and
adore the theatre, especially the opera. I imagine everything by
thought! I read a great deal; and then my father, who goes into society,
tells me about social events.”

Godefroid made an involuntary movement as if to kneel at the old man’s
feet.

“Yes, when he goes to the opera, and he often goes, he describes to me
the singing and tells me about the dresses of the ladies. Oh! I would I
were cured for the sake of my father, who lives solely for me as I live
by him and for him, and then for my son, to whom I would fain be a real
mother. Ah! monsieur, what blessed beings my old father and my good
son are! I should also like to recover so as to hear Lablache, Rubini,
Tamburini, Grisi, and ‘I Puritani.’ But--”

“Come, come, my child, be calm! If we talk music we are lost!” said the
old man, smiling.

That smile, which rejuvenated his face, was evidently a perpetual
deception to the sick woman.

“Yes, yes, I’ll be good,” said Vanda, with a petulant little air; “but
when will you give me an accordion?”

The portable instrument then called by that name had just been invented.
It could, if desired, be placed at the edge of a bedstead, and only
needed the pressure of a foot to give out the sounds of an organ. This
instrument, in its highest development, was equal to a piano; but the
cost of it was three hundred francs. Vanda, who read the newspapers and
reviews, knew of the existence of the instrument, and had wished for one
for the last two months.

“Yes, madame, you shall have one,” said Godefroid, after exchanging
a look with the old man. “A friend of mine who is just starting for
Algiers has a fine instrument and I will borrow it of him. Before
buying, you had better try one. It is possible that the powerful,
vibrating tones may be too much for you.”

“Can I have it to-morrow?” she said, with the wilfulness of a creole.

“To-morrow?” said Monsieur Bernard, “that is soon; besides, to-morrow is
Sunday.”

“Ah--” she exclaimed, looking at Godefroid, who fancied he could see a
soul hovering in the air as he admired the ubiquity of Vanda’s glances.

Until then, Godefroid had never known the power of voice and eyes when
the whole of life is put into them. The glance was no longer a glance,
a look, it was a flame, or rather, a divine incandescence, a radiance,
communicating life and mind,--it was thought made visible. The voice,
with its thousand intonations, took the place of motions, gestures,
attitudes. The variations of the complexion, changing color like the
famous chameleon, made the illusion, perhaps we should say the mirage,
complete. That suffering head lying on the white pillow edged with laces
was a whole person in itself.

Never in his life had Godefroid seen so wonderful a sight; he could
scarcely control his emotions. Another wonder, for all was wondrous in
this scene, so full of horror and yet of poesy, was that in those who
saw it soul alone existed. This atmosphere, filled with mental emotions
only, had a celestial influence. Those present felt their bodies as
little as the sick woman felt hers. They were all mind. As Godefroid
contemplated that frail fragment of woman he forgot the surrounding
elegancies of the room, and fancied himself beneath the open heavens. It
was not until half an hour had passed that he came back to his sense
of things about him; he then noticed a fine picture, which the invalid
asked him to examine, saying it was by Gericault.

“Gericault,” she told him, “came from Rouen; his family were under
certain obligations to my father, who was president of the court, and he
showed his gratitude by painting that portrait of me when I was a girl
of sixteen.”

“It is a beautiful picture,” said Godefroid; “and quite unknown to those
who are in search of the rare works of that master.”

“To me it is merely an object of affection,” replied Vanda; “I live in
my heart only,--and it is a beautiful life,” she added, casting a look
at her father in which she seemed to put her very soul. “Ah! monsieur,
if you only knew what my father really is! Who would believe that
the stern and lofty magistrate to whom the Emperor was under such
obligations that he gave him that snuff-box, and on whom Charles X.
bestowed as a reward that Sevres tea-set which you see behind you, who
would suppose that that rigid supporter of power and law, that learned
jurist, should have within his heart of rock the heart of a mother, too?
Oh! papa, papa! kiss me, kiss me! come!”

The old man rose, leaned over the bed and kissed the broad poetic
forehead of his daughter, whose passionate excitements did not always
take the turn of this tempest of affection. Then he walked about the
room; his slippers, embroidered by his daughter, making no noise.

“What are your occupations?” said Vanda to Godefroid, after a pause.

“Madame, I am employed by pious persons to help the unfortunate.”

“Ah! what a noble mission, monsieur!” she said. “Do you know the thought
of devoting myself to that very work has often come to me? but ah!
what ideas do not come to me?” she added, with a motion of her head.
“Suffering is like a torch which lights up life. If I were ever to
recover health--”

“You should amuse yourself, my child,” said her father.

“Oh yes!” she said; “I have the desire, but should I then have the
faculty? My son will be, I hope a magistrate, worthy of his two
grandfathers, and he will leave me. What should I do then? If God
restores me to life I will dedicate that life to Him--oh! after giving
you all you need of it,” she cried, looking tenderly at her father and
son. “There are moments, my dear father, when the ideas of Monsieur
de Maistre work within me powerfully, and I fancy that I am expiating
something.”

“See what it is to read too much!” said the old man, evidently troubled.

“That brave Polish general, my great grandfather, took part, though very
innocently, in the partition of Poland.”

“Well, well! now it is Poland!” said Monsieur Bernard.

“How can I help it, papa? my sufferings are infernal; they give me a
horror of life, they disgust me with myself. Well, I ask you, have I
done anything to deserve them? Such diseases are not a mere derangement
of health, they are caused by a perverted organization and--”

“Sing that national air your poor mother used to sing; Monsieur
Godefroid wants to hear it; I have told him about your voice,” said
the old man, endeavoring to distract her mind from the current of such
thoughts.

Vanda began, in a low and tender voice, to sing a Polish song which held
Godefroid dumb with admiration and also with sadness. This melody, which
greatly resembles the long drawn out melancholy airs of Brittany, is one
of those poems which vibrate in the heart long after the ear has heard
them. As he listened, Godefroid looked at Vanda, but he could not endure
the ecstatic glance of that fragment of a woman, partially insane, and
his eyes wandered to two cords which hung one on each side of the canopy
of the bed.

“Ah ha!” laughed Vanda, noticing his look, “do you want to know what
those cords are for?”

“Vanda!” said her father, hastily, “calm yourself, my daughter. See!
here comes tea. That, monsieur,” he continued, turning to Godefroid,
“is rather a costly affair. My daughter cannot rise, and therefore it is
difficult to change her sheets. Those cords are fastened to pulleys; by
slipping a square of leather beneath her and drawing it up by the four
corners with these pulleys, we are able to make her bed without fatigue
to her or to ourselves.”

“They swing me!” cried Vanda, gaily.

Happily, Auguste now came in with a teapot, which he placed on a table,
together with the Sevres tea-set; then he brought cakes and sandwiches
and cream. This sight diverted his mother’s mind from the nervous crisis
which seemed to threaten her.

“See, Vanda, here is Nathan’s new novel. If you wake in the night you
will have something to read.”

“Oh! delightful! ‘La Perle de Dol;’ it must be a love-story,--Auguste, I
have something to tell you! I’m to have an accordion!”

Auguste looked up suddenly with a strange glance at his grandfather.

“See how he loves his mother!” cried Vanda. “Come and kiss me, my
kitten. No, it is not your grandfather you are to thank, but monsieur,
who is good enough to lend me one. I am to have it to-morrow. How are
they made, monsieur?”

Godefroid, at a sign from the old man, explained an accordion at length,
while sipping the tea which Auguste brought him and which was in truth,
exquisite.

About half-past ten o’clock he retired, weary of beholding the desperate
struggle of the son and father, admiring their heroism, and the daily,
hourly patience with which they played their double parts, each equally
exhausting.

“Well,” said Monsieur Bernard, who followed him home, “you now see,
monsieur, the life I live. I am like a thief, on the watch all the time.
A word, a gesture might kill my daughter; a mere gewgaw less than she
is accustomed to seeing about her would reveal all to that mind that can
penetrate everything.”

“Monsieur,” replied Godefroid, “on Monday next Halpersohn shall
pronounce upon your daughter. He has returned. I myself doubt the
possibility of any science being able to revive that body.”

“Oh! I don’t expect that,” cried the father; “all I ask is that her life
be made supportable. I felt sure, monsieur, of your sympathy, and I see
that you have indeed comprehended everything--Ah! there’s the attack
coming on!” he exclaimed, as the sound of a cry came through the
partition; “she went beyond her strength.”

Pressing Godefroid’s hand, the old man hurriedly returned to his own
rooms.

At eight o’clock the next morning Godefroid knocked at the door of the
celebrated Polish doctor. He was shown by a footman to the first floor
of a little house Godefroid had been examining while the porter was
seeking and informing the footman.

Happily, Godefroid’s early arrival saved him the annoyance of being kept
waiting. He was, he supposed, the first comer. From a very plain and
simple antechamber he passed into a large study, where he saw an old
man in a dressing-gown smoking a long pipe. The dressing-gown, of
black bombazine, shiny with use, dated from the period of the Polish
emigration.

“What can I do for you?” said the Jewish doctor, “for I see you are
not ill.” And he fixed on his visitor a look which had the inquisitive,
piercing expression of the eyes of a Polish Jew, eyes which seem to have
ears of their own.

Halpersohn was, to Godefroid’s great astonishment, a man of fifty-six
years of age, with small bow-legs, and a broad, powerful chest and
shoulders. There was something oriental about the man, and his face in
its youth must have been very handsome. The nose was Hebraic, long and
curved like a Damascus blade. The forehead, truly Polish, broad and
noble, but creased like a bit of crumpled paper, resembled that given by
the old Italian masters to Saint Joseph. The eyes, of a sea-green,
and circled, like those of parrots, with a gray and wrinkled membrane,
expressed slyness and avarice in an eminent degree. The mouth, gashed
into the face like a wound, added to the already sinister expression of
the countenance all the sarcasm of distrust.

That pale, thin face, for Halpersohn’s whole person was remarkably thin,
surmounted by ill-kept gray hair, ended in a long and very thick, black
beard, slightly touched with white, which hid fully half the face,
so that nothing was really seen of it but the forehead, nose, eyes,
cheek-bones, and mouth.

This friend of the revolutionist Lelewel wore a black velvet cap which
came to a point on the brow, and took a high light worthy of the touch
of Rembrandt.

The question of the physician (who has since become so celebrated,
as much for his genius as for his avarice) caused some surprise in
Godefroid’s mind, and he said to himself:--

“I wonder if he takes me for a thief.”

The answer to this mental question was on the doctor’s table and
fireplace. Godefroid thought he was the first to arrive; he was really
the last. Preceding clients had left large offerings behind them; among
them Godefroid noticed piles of twenty and forty-franc gold pieces and
two notes of a thousand francs each. Could that be the product of one
morning? He doubted it, and suspected the Pole of intentional trickery.
Perhaps the grasping but infallible doctor took this method of showing
his clients, mostly rich persons, that gold must be dropped into his
pouch, and not buttons.

Moses Halpersohn was, undoubtedly, largely paid, for he cured, and
he cured precisely those desperate diseases which science declares
incurable. It is not known in Europe that the Slav races possess many
secrets. They have a collection of sovereign remedies, the fruits
of their connection with the Chinese, Persians, Cossacks, Turks, and
Tartars. Certain peasant women in Poland, who pass for witches, cure
insanity radically with the juice of herbs. A vast body of observation,
not codified, exists in Poland on the effects of certain plants, and
certain barks of trees reduced to powder, which are transmitted from
father to son, and family to family, producing cures that are almost
miraculous.

Halpersohn, who for five or six years was called a quack on account
of his powders and herb medicines, had the innate science of a great
physician. Not only had he studied much and observed much, but he had
travelled in every part of Germany, Russia, Persia, and Turkey, whence
he had gathered many a traditionary secret; and as he knew chemistry he
became a living volume of those wonderful recipes scattered among the
wise women, or, as the French call them, the _bonnes femmes_, of every
land to which his feet had gone, following his father, a perambulating
trader.

It must not be thought that the scene in “The Talisman” where Saladin
cures the King of England is a fiction. Halpersohn possesses a silk
purse which he steeps in water till the liquid is slightly colored;
certain fevers yield immediately when the patient has drunk the
prescribed dose of it. The virtue of plants, according to his man, is
infinite, and the cure of the worst diseases possible. Nevertheless,
he, like the rest of his professional brethren, stops short at
certain incomprehensibilities. Halpersohn approved of the invention of
homoeopathy, more on account of its therapeutics than for its medical
system; he was corresponding at this time with Hedenius of Dresden,
Chelius of Heidelburg, and the celebrated German doctors, all the while
holding his hand closed, though it was full of discoveries. He wished
for no pupils.

The frame was in keeping with this embodiment of a Rembrandt picture.
The study, hung with a paper imitating green velvet, was shabbily
furnished with a green divan, the cover of which was threadbare. A
worn-out green carpet was on the floor. A large armchair of black
leather, intended for clients, stood before the window, which was draped
with green curtains. A desk chair of Roman shape, made in mahogany and
covered with green morocco, was the doctor’s own seat.

Between the fireplace and the long table at which he wrote, a common
iron safe stood against the wall, and on it was a clock of Viennese
granite, surmounted by a group in bronze representing Cupid playing
with Death, the present of a great German sculptor whom Halpersohn
had doubtless cured. On the mantel-shelf was a vase between two
candlesticks, and no other ornament. On either side of the divan were
corner-buffets of ebony, holding plates and dishes, and Godefroid also
noticed upon them two silver bowls, glass decanters, and napkins.

This simplicity, which amounted almost to bareness struck Godefroid,
whose quick eye took it all in as he recovered his self-possession.

“Monsieur, I am, as you say, perfectly well myself; I have come on
behalf of a woman to whom you were asked to pay a visit some time ago.
She lives on the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse.”

“Ah! yes; the lady who has sent her son here several times. Well,
monsieur, let her come here to me.”

“Come here!” repeated Godefroid, indignantly. “Monsieur, she cannot even
be moved from her bed to a chair; they lift her with pulleys.”

“You are not a physician, I suppose?” said the Jewish doctor, with a
singular grimace which made his face appear more wicked than it really
was.

“If the Baron de Nucingen sent word that he was ill and wanted you to
visit him, would you reply, ‘Let him come here to me’?”

“I should go to him,” said the Jew, coldly, spitting into a Dutch pot
made of mahogany and full of sand.

“You would go,” said Godefroid, gently, “because the Baron de Nucingen
has two millions a year, and--”

“The rest has nothing to do with the matter; I should go.”

“Well, monsieur, you must go to the lady on the boulevard du
Mont-Parnasse for the same reason. Without possessing the fortune of
the Baron du Nucingen, I am here to tell you that you may yourself put
a price upon this lady’s cure, or upon your attendance if you fail; I am
ready to pay it in advance. But perhaps, monsieur, as you are a Polish
refugee and, I believe, a communist, the lady’s parentage may induce
you to make a sacrifice to Poland. She is the granddaughter of Colonel
Tarlowski, the friend of Poniatowski.”

“Monsieur, you came here to ask me to cure that lady, and not to give
me advice. In Poland I am a Pole; in Paris I am Parisian. Every man does
good in his own way; the greed with which I am credited is not without
its motive. The wealth I am amassing has its destination; it is a sacred
one. I sell health; the rich can afford to purchase it, and I make them
pay. The poor have their doctors. If I had not a purpose in view I would
not practise medicine. I live soberly and I spend my time in rushing
hither and thither; my natural inclination is to be lazy, and I used to
be a gambler. Draw your conclusions, young man. You are too young still
to judge old men.”

Godefroid was silent.

“From what you say,” went on the doctor, “the lady in question is the
granddaughter of that imbecile who had no courage but that of fighting,
and who took part in delivering over his country to Catherine II?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Well, be at her house Monday next at three o’clock,” said Halpersohn,
taking out a note-book in which he wrote a few words. “You will give me
then two hundred francs; and if I promise to cure the patient you will
give me three thousand. I am told,” he added, “that the lady has shrunk
to almost nothing.”

“Monsieur, if the most celebrated doctors in Paris are to be believed,
it is a neurotic case of so extraordinary a nature that they denied the
possibility of its symptoms until they saw them.”

“Ah! yes, I remember now what the young lad told me. To-morrow,
monsieur.”

Godefroid withdrew, after bowing to the man who seemed to him as odd as
he was extraordinary. Nothing about him indicated a physician, not even
the study, in which the most notable object was the iron safe, made by
Huret or Fichet.

Godefroid had just time to get to the passage Vivienne before the shops
closed for the day, and there he bought a superb accordion, which he
ordered sent at once to Monsieur Bernard, giving the address.



XVI. A LESSON IN CHARITY

From the doctor’s house Godefroid made his way to the rue Chanoinesse,
passing along the quai des Augustins, where he hoped to find one of the
shops of the commission-publishers open. He was fortunate enough to do
so, and had a long talk with a young clerk on books of jurisprudence.

When he reached the rue Chanoinesse, he found Madame de la Chanterie and
her friends just returning from high mass; in reply to the look she gave
him Godefroid made her a significant sign with his head.

“Isn’t our dear father Alain here to-day?” he said.

“No,” she replied, “not this Sunday; you will not see him till a week
from to-day--unless you go where he gave you rendezvous.”

“Madame,” said Godefroid in a low voice, “you know he doesn’t intimidate
me as these gentlemen do; I wanted to make my report to him--”

“And I?”

“Oh you! I can tell you all; and I have a great deal to tell. For
my first essay I have found a most extraordinary misfortune; a cruel
mingling of pauperism and the need for luxuries; also scenes of a
sublimity which surpasses all the inventions of our great novelists.”

“Nature, especially moral nature, is always greater than art, just
as God is greater than his creatures. But come,” said madame de la
Chanterie, “tell me the particulars of your first trip into worlds
unknown to you.”

Monsieur Nicolas and Monsieur Joseph (for the Abbe de Veze had remained
a few moments in Notre-Dame) left Madame de la Chanterie alone with
Godefroid, who, being still under the influence of the emotions he had
gone through the night before, related even the smallest details of his
story with the force and ardor and action of a first experience of such
a spectacle and its attendant persons and things. His narrative had
a great success; for the calm and gentle Madame de la Chanterie wept,
accustomed as she was to sound the depths of sorrows.

“You did quite right to send the accordion,” she said.

“I would like to do a great deal more,” said Godefroid; “inasmuch as
this family is the first that has shown me the pleasures of charity, I
should like to obtain for that splendid old man a full return for his
great book. I don’t know if you have confidence enough in my capacity to
give me the means of undertaking such an affair. From information I have
obtained, it will cost nine thousand francs to manufacture an edition
of fifteen hundred copies, and their selling value will be twenty-four
thousand francs. But as we should have to pay off the three thousand
and some hundred francs due to Barbet, it would be an outlay of twelve
thousand francs to risk. Oh! madame, if you only knew what bitter
regrets I feel for having dissipated my little fortune! The spirit of
charity has appeared to me; it fills me with the ardor of an initiate.
I wish to renounce the world, I long to embrace the life of these
gentlemen and be worthy of you. Many a time during the last two days I
have blessed the chance that brought me to this house. I will obey you
in all things until you judge me fit to be one of yours.”

“Then,” said Madame de la Chanterie, after reflecting for a time,
“listen to me, for I have important things to tell. You have been
allured, my child, by the poesy of misfortune. Yes, misfortunes are
often poetical; for, as I think, poesy is a certain effect on the
sensibilities, and sorrows affect the sensibilities,--life is so intense
in grief!”

“Yes, madame, I know that I have been gripped by the demon of
curiosity. But how could I help it? I have not yet acquired the habit of
penetrating to the heart of these great misfortunes; I cannot go among
them with the calmness of your three soldiers of the Lord. But, let me
tell you, it is since I have recovered from that first excitement that I
have chiefly longed to devote myself to your work.”

“Listen to me, my dear angel!” said Madame de la Chanterie, who uttered
the last three words with a gentle solemnity that touched the young
man strangely. “We have forbidden ourselves absolutely,--and we do
not trifle with words here; what is forbidden no longer occupies our
minds,--we have forbidden ourselves to enter into any speculations. To
print a book for sale on the chance of profit is a matter of business,
and any operation of that kind would throw us into all the entanglements
of commerce. Certainly your scheme seems to me feasible,--even
necessary. But do you think it is the first that has offered itself?
A score of times, a hundred times, we have come upon just such ways of
saving families, or firms. What would have become of us if we had taken
part in such affairs? We should be merchants. No, our true partnership
with misfortune is not to take the work into our own hands, but to
help the unfortunate to work themselves. Before long you will meet with
misfortunes more bitter still than these. Would you then do the same
thing,--that is, take the burdens of those unfortunates wholly on
yourself? You would soon be overwhelmed. Reflect, too, my dear child,
that for the last year even the Messieurs Mongenod find our accounts too
heavy for them. Half your time would be taken up in merely keeping our
books. We have to-day over two thousand debtors in Paris, and we must
keep the record of their debts. Not that we ask for payment; we simply
wait. We calculate that if half the money we expect is lost, the other
half comes back to us, sometimes doubled. Now, suppose your Monsieur
Bernard dies, the twelve thousand francs are probably lost. But if you
cure his daughter, if his grandson is put in the way of succeeding, if
he comes, some day, a magistrate, then, when the family is prosperous,
they will remember the debt, and return the money of the poor with
usury. Do you know that more than one family whom we have rescued from
poverty, and put upon their feet on the road to prosperity by loans of
money without interest, have laid aside a portion for the poor, and have
returned to us the money loaned doubled, and sometimes tripled?
Those are our only speculations. Moreover, reflect that what is now
interesting you so deeply (and you ought to be interested in it),
namely, the sale of this lawyer’s book, depends on the value of the
work. Have you read it? Besides, though the book may be an excellent
one, how many excellent books remain one, two, three years without
obtaining the success they deserve. Alas! how many crowns of fame are
laid upon a grave! I know that publishers have ways of negotiating and
realizing profits which make their business the most hazardous to do
with, and the most difficult to unravel, of all the trades of Paris.
Monsieur Joseph can tell you of these difficulties, inherent in the
making of books. Thus, you see, we are sensible; we have experience of
all miseries, also of all trades, for we have studied Paris for many
years. The Mongenods have helped us in this; they have been like torches
to us. It is through them that we know how the Bank of France holds the
publishing business under constant suspicion; although it is one of the
most profitable trades, it is unsound. As for the four thousand francs
necessary to save this noble family from the horrors of penury,--for
that poor boy and his grandfather must be fed and clothed properly,--I
will give them to you at once. There are sufferings, miseries, wants,
which we immediately relieve, without hesitation, without even asking
whom we help; religion, honor, character, are all indifferent to us; but
when it comes to lending money to the poor to assist them in any active
form of industry or commerce, then we require guarantees, with all the
sternness of usurers. So you must, my dear child, limit your enthusiasm
for this unhappy family to finding for the father an honest publisher.
This concerns Monsieur Joseph. He knows lawyers, professors, authors of
works on jurisprudence; I will speak to him, and next Sunday he will be
sure to have some good advice to give you. Don’t feel uneasy; some way
will certainly be found to solve the difficulty. Perhaps it would be
well, however, if Monsieur Joseph were to read the lawyer’s book. If you
think it can be done, you had better obtain the manuscript.”

Godefroid was amazed at the good sense of this woman, whom he had
thought controlled by the spirit of charity only. He took her beautiful
hand and kissed it, saying:--

“You are good sense and judgment too!”

“We must be all that in our business,” she replied, with the soft gaiety
of a real saint.

There was a moment’s silence, and then Godefroid exclaimed:--

“Two thousand debtors! did you say that, madame? two thousand accounts
to keep! why, it is immense!”

“Oh! I meant two thousand accounts which rely for liquidation, as I
told you, on the delicacy and good feeling of our debtors; but there are
fully three thousand other families whom we help who make us no other
return than thanks to God. This is why we feel, as I told you, the
necessity of keeping books ourselves. If you prove to us your discretion
and capacity you shall be, if you like, our accountant. We keep a
day-book, a ledger, a book of current accounts, and a bank-book. We have
many notes, but we lose a great deal of time in looking them up. Ah!
here are the gentlemen,” she added.

Godefroid, grave and thoughtful, took little part in the general
conversation which now followed. He was stunned by the communication
Madame de la Chanterie had just made to him, in a tone which implied
that she wished to reward his ardor.

“Five thousand families assisted!” he kept repeating to himself. “If
they were to cost what I am to spend on Monsieur Bernard, we must have
millions scattered through Paris.”

This thought was the last expiring movement of the spirit of the world,
which had slowly and insensibly become extinguished in Godefroid. On
reflection he saw that the united fortunes of Madame de la Chanterie,
Messieurs Alain, Nicolas, Joseph, and that of Judge Popinot, the gifts
obtained through the Abbe de Veze, and the assistance lent by the
firm of Mongenod must produce a large capital; and that this capital,
increased during the last dozen years by grateful returns from those
assisted, must have grown like a snowball, inasmuch as the charitable
stewards of it spent so little on themselves. Little by little he began
to see clearly into this vast work, and his desire to co-operate in it
increased.

He was preparing at nine o’clock to return on foot to the boulevard du
Mont-Parnasse; but Madame de la Chanterie, fearing the solitude of that
neighborhood at a late hour, made him take a cab. When he reached the
house Godefroid heard the sound of an instrument, though the shutters
were so carefully closed that not a ray of light issued through them. As
soon as he reached the landing, Auguste, who was probably on the watch
for him, opened the door of Monsieur Bernard’s apartment and said:--

“Mamma would like to see you, and my grandfather offers you a cup of
tea.”

When Godefroid entered, the patient seemed to him transfigured by the
pleasure she felt in making music; her face was radiant, her eyes were
sparkling like diamonds.

“I ought to have waited to let you hear the first sounds,” she said to
Godefroid, “but I flung myself upon the little organ as a starving man
flings himself on food. You have a soul that comprehends me, and I know
you will forgive.”

Vanda made a sign to her son, who placed himself in such a way as to
press with his foot the pedal which filled the bellows; and then the
invalid, whose fingers had for the time recovered all their strength
and agility, raising her eyes to heaven like Saint Cecilia, played the
“Prayer of Moses in Egypt,” which her son had bought for her and which
she had learned by heart in a few hours. Godefroid recognized in her
playing the same quality as in Chopin’s. The soul was satisfied by
divine sounds of which the dominant note was that of tender melancholy.
Monsieur Bernard had received Godefroid with a look that was long a
stranger to his eyes. If tears were not forever dried at their source,
withered by such scorching sorrows, that look would have been tearful.

The old man sat playing with his snuff-box and looking at his daughter
in silent ecstasy.

“To-morrow, madame,” said Godefroid, when the music ceased; “to-morrow
your fate will be decided. I bring you good news. The celebrated
Halpersohn is coming to see you at three o’clock in the afternoon. He
has promised,” added Godefroid in a low voice to Monsieur Bernard, “to
tell me the exact truth.”

The old man rose, and grasping Godefroid’s hand, drew him to a corner of
the room beside the fireplace.

“Ah! what a night I shall pass! a definitive decision! My daughter cured
or doomed!”

“Courage!” said Godefroid; “after tea come out with me.”

“My child, my child, don’t play any more,” said the old man; “you
will bring on an attack; such a strain upon your strength must end in
reaction.”

He made Auguste take away the instrument and offered a cup of tea to his
daughter with the coaxing manner of a nurse quieting the petulance of a
child.

“What is the doctor like?” she asked, her mind already distracted by the
prospect of seeing a new person.

Vanda, like all prisoners, was full of eager curiosity. When the
physical phenomena of her malady ceased, they seemed to betake
themselves to the moral nature; she conceived the strangest fancies, the
most violent caprices; she insisted on seeing Rossini, and wept when her
father, whom she believed to be all powerful, refused to fetch him.

Godefroid now gave her a minute account of the Jewish doctor and his
study; of which she knew nothing, for Monsieur Bernard had cautioned
Auguste not to tell his mother of his visits to Halpersohn, so much had
he feared to rouse hopes in her mind which might not be realized.

Vanda hung upon Godefroid’s words like one fascinated; and she fell into
a sort of ecstasy in her passionate desire to see this strange Polish
doctor.

“Poland has produced many singular, mysterious beings,” said Monsieur
Bernard. “To-day, for instance, besides this extraordinary doctor, we
have Hoene Wronski, the enlightened mathematician, the poet Mickievicz,
Towianksi the mystic, and Chopin, whose talent is supernatural. Great
national convulsions always produce various species of dwarfed giants.”

“Oh! dear papa; what a man you are! If you would only write down what we
hear you say merely to amuse me you would make your reputation. Fancy,
monsieur, my dear old father invents wonderful stories when I have no
novels to read; he often puts me to sleep in that way. His voice
lulls me, and he quiets my mind with his wit. Who can ever reward him?
Auguste, my child, you ought for my sake, to kiss the print of your
grandfather’s footsteps.”

The young man raised his beautiful moist eyes to his mother, and the
look he gave her, full of a long-repressed compassion, was a poem.
Godefroid rose, took the lad’s hand, and pressed it.

“God has placed two angels beside you, madame,” he said.

“Yes, I know that. And for that reason I often reproach myself for
harassing them. Come, my dear Auguste, and kiss your mother. He is a
child, monsieur, of whom all mothers might be proud; pure as gold, frank
and honest, a soul without sin--but too passionate a soul, alas! like
that of his poor mother. Perhaps God has fastened me in this bed to
keep me from the follies of women--who have too much heart,” she added,
smiling.

Godefroid replied with a smile and a bow.

“Adieu, monsieur; and thank your friend for the instrument; tell him it
makes the happiness of a poor cripple.”

“Monsieur,” said Godefroid, when they were alone in the latter’s room.
“I think I may assure you that you shall not be robbed by that trio of
bloodsuckers. I have the necessary sum to free your book, but you must
first show me your written agreement with them. And after that, in order
to do still more for you, you must let me have your work to read,--not
I myself, of course, I have not knowledge enough to judge of it, but a
former magistrate, a lawyer of eminence and of perfect integrity, who
will undertake, according to what he thinks of the book, to find you an
honorable publisher with whom you can make an equitable agreement. This,
however, I will not insist upon. Meantime here are five hundred francs,”
 he added, giving a bank-note to the stupefied old man, “to meet
your present needs. I do not ask for any receipt; you will be under
obligations to your own conscience only, and that conscience is not to
move you until you have recovered a sufficient competence,--I undertake
to pay Halpersohn.”

“Who are you, then?” asked the old man, dropping into a chair.

“I myself,” replied Godefroid, “am nothing; but I serve powerful persons
to whom your distress is known, and who feel an interest in you. Ask me
nothing more about them.”

“But what induces them to do this?” said the old man.

“Religion.”

“Religion! is it possible?”

“Yes, the catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion.”

“Ah! do you belong to the order of Jesus?”

“No, monsieur,” replied Godefroid. “Do not feel uneasy; these persons
have no designs upon you, except that of helping you to restore your
family to prosperity.”

“Can philanthropy be anything but vanity?”

“Ah! monsieur,” said Godefroid, hastily; “do not insult the virtue
defined by Saint Paul, sacred, catholic Love!”

Monsieur Bernard, hearing this answer, began to stride up and down with
long steps.

“I accept,” he said suddenly, “and I have but one way of thanking
you, and that is to offer you my work. The notes and citations are
unnecessary to the magistrate you speak of; and I have still two months’
work to do in arranging them for the press. To-morrow I will give you
the five volumes,” he added, offering Godefroid his hand.

“Can I have made a conversion?” thought Godefroid, struck by the new
expression which he saw on the old man’s face.



XVII. HALPERSOHN

The next afternoon at three o’clock a cabriolet stopped before the
house, and Godefroid saw Halpersohn getting out of it, wrapped in a
monstrous bear-skin pelisse. The cold had strengthened during the night,
the thermometer marking ten degrees of it.

The Jewish doctor examined with curious eyes, though furtively, the
room in which his client of the day before received him, and Godefroid
detected the suspicious thought which darted from his eyes like
the sharp point of a dagger. This rapid conception of distrust gave
Godefroid a cold chill, for he thought within himself that such a man
would be pitiless in all relations; it is so natural to suppose that
genius is connected with goodness that a strong sensation of disgust
took possession of him.

“Monsieur,” he said, “I see that the simplicity of my room makes you
uneasy; therefore you need not be surprised at my method of proceeding.
Here are your two hundred francs, and here, too, are three notes of a
thousand francs each,” he added, drawing from his pocket-book the money
Madame de la Chanterie had given him to release Monsieur Bernard’s
book; but in case you still feel doubtful of my solvency I offer you as
reference Messrs. Mongenod, bankers, rue de la Victoire.”

“I know them,” said Halpersohn, putting the ten gold pieces into his
pocket.

“He’ll inquire of them,” thought Godefroid.

“Where is the patient?” asked the doctor, rising like a man who knows
the value of time.

“This way, monsieur,” said Godefroid, preceding him to show the way.

The Jew examined with a shrewd and suspicious eye the places he passed
through, giving them the keen, rapid glance of a spy; he saw all the
horrors of poverty through the door of the room in which the grandfather
and the grandson lived; for, unfortunately, Monsieur Bernard had gone
in to change his clothes before entering his daughter’s room, and in his
haste to open the outer door to the doctor, he had forgotten to close
that of his lair.

He bowed in a stately manner to Halpersohn, and opened the door of his
daughter’s room cautiously.

“Vanda, my child, here is the doctor,” he said.

Then he stood aside to allow Halpersohn, who kept on his bear-skin
pelisse, to pass him. The Jew was evidently surprised at the luxury of
the room, which in this quarter, and more especially in this house, was
an anomaly; but his surprise only lasted for an instant, for he had
seen among German and Russian Jews many instances of the same contrast
between apparent misery and hoarded wealth. As he walked from the door
to the bed he kept his eye on the patient, and the moment he reached her
he said in Polish:--

“You are a Pole?”

“No, I am not; my mother was.”

“Whom did your grandfather, Colonel Tarlowski, marry?”

“A Pole.”

“From what province?”

“A Soboleska, of Pinsk.”

“Very good; monsieur is your father?”

“Yes.”

“Monsieur,” he said, turning to the old man; “your wife--”

“Is dead;” said Monsieur Bernard.

“Was she very fair?” said Halpersohn, showing a slight impatience at
being interrupted.

“Here is her portrait,” said Monsieur Bernard, unhooking from the wall a
handsome frame which enclosed several fine miniatures.

Halpersohn felt the head and handled the hair of the patient while he
looked at the portrait of Vanda Tarlowska, born Countess Sobolewska.

“Relate to me the symptoms of your illness,” he said, placing himself
on the sofa and looking fixedly at Vanda during the twenty minutes the
history, given alternately by the father and daughter, lasted.

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“Ah! good!” he cried, rising; “I will answer for the cure. Mind, I
do not say that I can restore the use of her legs; but cured of the
disease, that she shall be. Only, I must have her in a private hospital
under my own eye.”

“But, monsieur, my daughter cannot be moved!”

“I will answer for her,” said Halpersohn, curtly; “but I will answer
for her only on those conditions. She will have to exchange her present
malady for another still more terrible, which may last a year, six
months at the very least. You may come and see her at the hospital,
since you are her father.”

“Are you certain of curing her?” said Monsieur Bernard.

“Certain,” repeated the Jew. “Madame has in her body an element, a
vitiated fluid, the national disease, and it must be eliminated.
You must bring her to me at Challot, rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, private
hospital of Doctor Halpersohn.”

“How can I?”

“On a stretcher, just as all sick persons are carried to hospitals.”

“But the removal will kill her!”

“No.”

As he said the word in a curt tone he was already at the door; Godefroid
rejoined him on the staircase. The Jew, who was stifling with heat, said
in his ear:

“Besides the three thousand francs, the cost will be fifteen francs a
day, payable three months in advance.”

“Very good, monsieur. And,” continued Godefroid, putting one foot on the
step of the cabriolet, into which the doctor had sprung, “you say you
will answer for the cure?”

“I will answer for it,” said the Jewish doctor. “Are you in love with
the lady?”

“No,” replied Godefroid.

“You must not repeat what I am about to say to you; I only say it to
prove to you that I am certain of a cure. If you are guilty of the
slightest indiscretion you will kill her.”

Godefroid replied with a gesture only.

“For the last seventeen years she has been a victim to the element in
her system called _plica polonica_,[*] which has produced all these
ravages. I have seen more terrible cases than this. Now, I alone in the
present day know how to bring this disease to a crisis, and force it
outward so as to obtain a chance to cure it--for it cannot always be
cured. You see, monsieur, that I am disinterested. If this lady were of
great importance, a Baronne de Nucingen, or any other wife or daughter
of a modern Croesus, this cure would bring me one hundred--two hundred
thousand francs; in short, anything I chose to ask for it. However, it
is only a trifling loss to me.”

     [*] Balzac’s description of _plica polonica_ does not agree
     with that given in English medical dictionaries and
     cyclopedias. But as the book was written at Wierschovnia,
     Poland, in 1847, when he was attended by a celebrated Polish
     physician, and as, moreover, he was always so scrupulously
     accurate in his descriptions, it is fair to suppose that he
     knew of some form of the disease other than that given in
     the books. His account probably applies to the period before
     it takes the visible form described in the books.


“About conveying her?”

“Bah! she’ll seem to be dying, but she won’t die. There’s life enough
in her to last a hundred years, when the disease is out of her system.
Come, Jacques, drive on! quick,--rue de Monsieur! quick!” he said to his
man.

Godefroid was left on the boulevard gazing stupidly after the cabriolet.

“Who is that queer man in a bearskin?” asked Madame Vauthier, whom
nothing escaped; “is it true, what the man in the cabriolet told me,
that he is one of the greatest doctors in Paris?”

“What is that to you?”

“Oh! nothing at all,” she replied, making a face.

“You made a great mistake in not putting yourself on my side,” said
Godefroid, returning slowly to the house; “you would have made more out
of me than you will ever get from Barbet and Metivier; from whom, mark
my words, you’ll get nothing.”

“I am not for them particularly,” said Madame Vauthier, shrugging her
shoulders; “Monsieur Barbet is my proprietor, that’s all!”

It required two days’ persuasion to induce Monsieur Bernard to separate
from his daughter and take her to Chaillot. Godefroid and the old man
made the trip walking on each side of the litter, canopied with blue and
white striped linen, in which was the dear patient, partly bound to a
mattress, so much did her father dread the possible convulsions of
a nervous attack. They started at three o’clock and reached their
destination at five just as evening was coming on. Godefroid paid the
sum demanded for three months’ board in advance, being careful to obtain
a receipt for the money. When he went back to pay the bearers of the
litter, he was followed by Monsieur Bernard, who took from beneath the
mattress a bulky package carefully sealed up, and gave it to Godefroid.

“One of these men will fetch you a cab,” said the old man; “for you
cannot carry these four volumes under your arm. That is my book; give
it to your reader; he may keep it the whole of the coming week. I shall
stay at least that time in this quarter; for I cannot leave my daughter
in such total abandonment. I trust my grandson; he can take care of our
rooms; especially if you keep an eye on him. If I were what I once was I
would ask you the name of my critic, the former magistrate you spoke of;
there were but few of them whom I did not know.”

“Oh, there’s no mystery about it!” said Godefroid, interrupting Monsieur
Bernard. “Now that you have shown this entire confidence in trusting
me with your book, I will tell you that your censor is the former
president, Lecamus de Tresnes.”

“Oh, yes!--of the Royal Court of Paris. Take him the book; he is one of
the noblest characters of the present day. He and the late Popinot,
a judge of the Lower Court, were both worthy of the days of the old
Parliaments. All my fears, if I had any, are dissipated. Where does he
live? I should like to go and thank him for the trouble he is taking.”

“You will find him in the rue Chanoinesse, under the name of Monsieur
Joseph. I am going there now. Where is that agreement you made with your
swindlers?”

“Auguste will give it to you,” said the old man, re-entering the
courtyard of the hospital.

A cab was now brought up by the porter, and Godefroid jumped into
it,--promising the coachman a good pourboire if he would get him to the
rue Chanoinesse in good time, for he wanted to dine there.

Half an hour after Vanda’s departure, three men dressed in black, whom
Madame Vauthier let into the house by the door on the rue Notre-Dame des
Champs, filed up the staircase, accompanied by their female Judas, and
knocked gently at the door of Monsieur Bernard’s lodging. As it happened
to be a Thursday, Auguste was at home. He opened the door, and the three
men glided in like shadows.

“What do you want, messieurs?” asked the lad.

“These are the rooms of Monsieur Bernard,--that is, Monsieur le
baron,--are they not?”

“Yes; but what do you want?”

“You know very well, young man, what we want! We are informed that
your grandfather has left this house with a covered litter. That’s not
surprising; he had the right to do so. But I am the sheriff, and I have
come to seize everything he has left. On Monday he received a summons
to pay three thousand francs, with interest and costs, to Monsieur
Metivier, under pain of arrest for debt duly notified to him, and like
an old stager who is up to the tricks of his own trade, he has walked
off just in time. However, if we can’t catch him, his furniture hasn’t
taken wings. You see we know all about it, young man.”

“Here are the stamped papers your grandpapa didn’t choose to take,” said
Madame Vauthier, thrusting three writs into Auguste’s hand.

“Remain here, madame,” said the sheriff; “we shall make you legal
guardian of the property. The law gives you forty sous a day, and that’s
not to be sneezed at.”

“Ha! now I shall see the inside of that fine bedroom!” cried the
Vauthier.

“You shall not go into my mother’s room!” said the young lad, in a
threatening voice, springing between the door and the three men in
black.

At a sign from the sheriff, two of the men seized Auguste.

“No resistance, young man; you are not master here,” said the sheriff.
“We shall draw up the proces-verbal, and you will sleep in jail.”

Hearing that dreadful word, Auguste burst into tears.

“Ah, how fortunate,” he cried, “that mamma has gone! It would have
killed her.”

A conference now took place between the sheriff, the other men, and
Vauthier, by which Auguste discovered, although they spoke in a low
voice, that his grandfather’s manuscripts were what they chiefly wanted.
On that, he opened the door of his mother’s bedroom.

“Go in,” he said, “but take care to do no injury. You will be paid
to-morrow morning.”

Then he went off weeping into the lair, seized his grandfather’s notes
and stuck them into the stove, in which, as he knew very well, there was
not a spark of fire.

The thing was done so rapidly that the sheriff--a sly, keen fellow,
worthy of his clients Barbet and Metivier--found the lad weeping in his
chair when he entered the wretched room, after assuring himself that the
manuscripts were not in the antechamber.

Though it is not permissible to seize books or manuscripts for debt, the
bill of sale which Monsieur Bernard had made of his work justified
this proceeding. It was, however, easy to oppose various delays to this
seizure, and Monsieur Bernard, had he been there, would not have failed
to do so. For that reason the whole affair had been conducted slyly.
Madame Vauthier had not attempted to give the writs to Monsieur Bernard;
she meant to have flung them into the room on entering behind the
sheriff’s men, so to give the appearance of their being in the old man’s
possession.

The proces-verbal of the seizure took an hour to write down; the sheriff
omitted nothing, and declared that the value of the property seized
was sufficient to pay the debt. As soon as he and his men had
departed, Auguste took the writs and rushed to the hospital to find his
grandfather. The sheriff having told him that Madame Vauthier was now
responsible, under heavy penalties, for the safety of the property, he
could leave the house without fear of robbery.

The idea of his grandfather being dragged to prison for debt drove the
poor lad, if not exactly crazy, at any rate as crazy as youth becomes
under one of those dangerous and fatal excitements in which all powers
ferment at once, and lead as often to evil actions as to heroic deeds.
When he reached the rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, the porter told him that he
did not know what had become of the father of the lady who had arrived
that afternoon; the orders of Monsieur Halpersohn were to admit no one
to see her for the next eight days, under pain of putting her life in
danger.

This answer brought Auguste’s exasperation to a crisis. He returned to
the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, turning over in his mind the wildest
and most extravagant plans of action. He reached home at half-past eight
o’clock, half famished, and so exhausted with hunger and distress that
he listened to Madame Vauthier when she asked him to share her supper,
which happened to be a mutton stew with potatoes. The poor lad fell half
dead upon a chair in that atrocious woman’s room.

Persuaded by the wheedling and honeyed words of the old vulture, he
replied to a few questions about Godefroid which she adroitly put to
him, letting her discover that it was really her other lodger who was
to pay his grandfather’s debts the next day, and also that it was to him
they owed the improvement in their condition during the past week. The
widow listened to these confidences with a dubious air, plying Auguste
with several glasses of wine meantime.

About ten o’clock a cab stopped before the house, and Madame Vauthier
looking out exclaimed:--

“Oh! it is Monsieur Godefroid.”

Auguste at once took the key of his apartment and went up to meet the
protector of his family; but he found Godefroid’s face and manner so
changed that he hesitated to address him until, generous lad that he
was, the thought of his grandfather’s danger came over him and gave him
courage.



XVIII. WHO MONSIEUR BERNARD WAS

The cause of this change and of the sternness in Godefroid’s face was
an event which had just taken place in the rue Chanoinesse. When the
initiate arrived there he found Madame de la Chanterie and her friends
assembled in the salon awaiting dinner; and he instantly took Monsieur
Joseph apart to give him the four volumes on “The Spirit of Modern
Laws.” Monsieur Joseph took the voluminous manuscript to his room and
returned for dinner; then, after sharing in the conversation for part of
the evening, he went back to his room, intending to begin the reading of
the book that night.

Godefroid was much astonished when Manon came to him soon after Monsieur
Joseph’s retirement and asked if he would at once go up and speak to
that gentleman. He went up, conducted by Manon, and was unable to pay
any heed to the apartment (which he had never before entered) so amazed
was he by the agitated look and manner of a man who was usually calm and
placid.

“Do you know,” asked Monsieur Joseph, once more a judge, “who the author
of this work is?”

“He is Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid; “I know him only under that
name. I did not open the package.”

“True,” said Monsieur Joseph, as if to himself, “I broke the seals
myself. You have not tried to find out anything about his antecedents?”

“No, I only know that he made a love-match with the daughter of General
Tarlowski; that the daughter is named after the mother, Vanda; the
grandson is called Auguste; and I have seen a portrait of Monsieur
Bernard in the red robes of a president of the Royal Courts.”

“Here, read that,” said Monsieur Joseph, pointing to the titlepage of
the manuscript, written probably in Auguste’s handwriting:--


ON THE

SPIRIT OF MODERN LAWS

By M. Bernard-Jean-Baptiste Macloud, Baron Bourlac.

Formerly attorney-general to the Royal Court of Rouen. Grand officer of
the Legion of honor.


“Ha! the slayer of Madame’s daughter! of the Chevalier du Vissard! the
man who condemned her to twenty years’ imprisonment!” said Godefroid,
in a feeble voice. His legs gave way under him, and he dropped into a
chair. “What a beginning!” he muttered.

“This matter, my dear Godefroid,” resumed Monsieur Joseph, “concerns us
all. You have done your part; leave the rest to us. I beg you to have
no more to do with it; go and fetch the things you have left behind you.
Don’t say a word of all this. Practise absolute discretion. Tell the
Baron de Bourlac to address himself to me. By that time we shall have
decided how to act under the circumstances.”

Godefroid left him, took a cab, and went back as fast as he could to
the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, filled with horror as he remembered that
indictment signed with Bourlac’s name, the bloody drama ending on the
scaffold, and Madame de la Chanterie’s imprisonment at Bicetre. He
understood now the abandonment in which this former attorney-general,
another Fourquier-Tinville in the public mind, was ending his days, and
the true reasons for the concealment of his name.

“May Monsieur Joseph avenge her terribly!” he thought. As he uttered the
wish in his own mind, he saw Auguste.

“What do you want of me?” he asked.

“My good friend, such a dreadful misfortune has overtaken us that I am
almost mad. Wretches have come here and seized all my mother’s property,
and they are going to put my grandfather in prison. But it is not on
account of those misfortunes that I come to implore you,” said the lad,
with Roman pride; “it is to ask you to do me a service such as people do
to those who are condemned to die.”

“Go on, what is it?” said Godefroid.

“They came here to seize my grandfather’s manuscript; and as I think
he gave you the book itself I want you to take the notes, for Madame
Vauthier will not let me carry anything out of the house. Put them with
the volumes and--”

“Yes, yes,” said Godefroid, “go and get them at once.”

While the lad went back to his own rooms, returning immediately,
Godefroid reflected that the poor child was guilty of no crime, and that
he ought not to put despair into that young heart by speaking of his
grandfather and of the punishment for his savage political actions that
had overtaken his old age. He therefore took the little package with a
good grace.

“What is your mother’s name?” he asked.

“My mother is the Baronne de Mergi; my father was the son of the
president of the Royal Court at Rouen.”

“Ah!” said Godefroid; “then your grandfather married his daughter to the
son of the famous president Mergi.”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Now, my little friend, leave me,” said Godefroid. He went with young
Mergi to the landing, and called to Madame Vauthier.

“Mere Vauthier,” he said, “you can let my rooms. I shall not come back
any more.”

He gathered his things together, went downstairs, and got into the cab.

“Have you given anything to that gentleman?” said the Vauthier to
Auguste.

“Yes,” said the young man.

“You’re a pretty fellow! that’s the agent of your grandfather’s enemies.
He managed this whole business, and the proof is that, now that the
trick is played, he goes off and isn’t coming back any more. He has just
told me I can let his lodgings.”

Auguste flew to the boulevard and ran after the cab shouting so loudly
that he finally stopped it.

“What do you want?” asked Godefroid.

“My grandfather’s manuscripts.”

“Tell them he can get them from Monsieur Joseph.”

The youth thought the words were intended as a cruel joke. He sat down
in the snow as he saw the cab disappearing rapidly. Presently he sprang
up with momentary vigor, returned to his room and went to bed worn out
with fatigue and distress.

The next morning, when the poor boy woke alone in that apartment so
lately occupied by his mother and grandfather, the painful emotions of
his cruel position filled his mind. The solitude of his home, where up
to this time every moment had had its duty and its occupation, seemed
so hard to bear that he went down to Madame Vauthier to ask if she had
received any news of his grandfather. The woman answered sneeringly that
he knew very well, or he might know, where to find his grandfather; the
reason why he had not come in, she said, was because he had gone to live
at the chateau de Clichy. This malicious speech, from the woman who had
coaxed and wheedled him the evening before, put the lad into another
frenzy, and he rushed to the hospital once more, desperate with the idea
that his grandfather was in prison.

Baron Bourlac had wandered all night round the hospital, where he was
refused entrance, and round the private residence of Dr. Halpersohn from
whom he wished, naturally, to obtain an explanation of such treatment.
The doctor did not get home till two in the morning. At half-past one
the old man was at his door; on being told he was absent, he turned and
walked about the grand alley of the Champs Elysees until half-past
two. When he again went to the house, the porter told him that Monsieur
Halpersohn had returned, gone to bed, was asleep, and could not be
disturbed.

The poor father, in despair, wandered along the quay and under the
frost-laden trees of the Cours-la-reine, waiting for daylight. At nine
o’clock in the morning he again presented himself at the doctor’s
house, demanding to know the reason why his daughter was thus virtually
imprisoned.

“Monsieur,” replied the doctor, to whose presence he was admitted,
“yesterday I told you I would answer for your daughter’s recovery; but
to-day I am responsible for her life and you will readily understand
that I must be the sovereign master in such a case. Yesterday your
daughter took a medicine intended to bring out her disease, the _plica
polonica_; until that horrible disease shows itself on the surface you
cannot see her. I will not allow excitement or any mistake of management
to carry off my patient and your daughter. If you positively insist on
seeing her, I shall call a consultation of three physicians, so as to
relieve myself of responsibility, for the patient may die of it.”

The old man, worn out with fatigue, dropped on a chair; but he rose
immediately, saying:--

“Forgive me, monsieur. I have spent the night waiting for you in
dreadful distress of mind. You cannot know to what degree I love my
daughter; I have nursed her for fifteen years hovering between life and
death, and this week of waiting is torture to me.”

The baron left the room staggering like a drunken man. The doctor
followed and supported him by the arm until he saw him safely down the
staircase.

An hour later Auguste de Mergi entered the doctor’s room. On questioning
the porter at the hospital the unhappy lad heard that his grandfather
had been refused an entrance and had gone away to find Monsieur
Halpersohn, who could probably give information about him. As Auguste
entered the doctor’s study Halpersohn was breakfasting on a cup of
chocolate and a glass of water. He did not disturb himself at the young
man’s entrance, but went on sopping his bread in the chocolate; for he
never ate anything for breakfast but a small roll cut into four strips
with careful precision.

“Well, young man,” he said, glancing at Vanda’s son, “so you have come,
too, to find out about your mother?”

“Yes, monsieur;” replied Auguste de Mergi.

Auguste was standing near the table on which lay several bank-notes
among a pile of gold louis. Under the circumstances in which the unhappy
boy was placed the temptation was stronger than his principles, solid
as they were. He saw a means of saving his grandfather and the fruits
of almost a lifetime of toil. He yielded. The fascination was rapid
as thought; and it was justified to the child’s mind by the idea
of self-devotion. “I destroy myself, but I save my mother and my
grandfather,” he thought. Under the strain put upon his reason by this
criminal temptation he acquired, like madmen, a singular and momentary
dexterity.

Halpersohn, an experienced observer, had divined, retrospectively, the
life of the old man and that of the lad and of the mother. He felt or
perceived the truth; the Baronne de Mergi’s remarks had helped to unveil
it to him; and the result was a feeling of benevolent pity for his
new clients. As for respect or admiration, he was incapable of those
emotions.

“Well, my dear boy,” he replied familiarly, “I am taking care of your
mother, and I shall return her to you young and handsome and perfectly
well in health. Here is one of those rare cases in which physicians take
an interest. Besides, through her mother, she is a compatriot of mine.
You and your grandfather must for two weeks have the courage to keep
away from Madame--?”

“The Baronne de Mergi.”

“Ah! if she is a baroness, you must be a baron,” remarked Halpersohn.

At that instant the theft was accomplished. While the doctor was looking
at his sopped bread heavy with chocolate, Auguste snatched four notes
and put them into his pocket, as if he were merely putting his hand
there by accident.

“Yes, monsieur,” he replied, “I am a baron, and so is my grandfather; he
was attorney-general under the Restoration.”

“You blush, young man; there’s no need to blush for being a poor baron;
that’s common enough.”

“Who told you, monsieur, that we are poor?”

“Your grandfather told me he had spent the night in the Champs Elysees;
and though I know no palace with half so fine a ceiling as that of the
skies at two o’clock this morning, I assure you it was pretty cold in
the palace where your grandfather passed the night. We don’t select the
‘Star’ inn from choice.”

“Has my grandfather been here this morning?” said Auguste, seizing the
opportunity to get away. “I thank you, monsieur, and I will call again,
if you will permit me, to ask for news of my mother.”

As soon as he was in the street the young baron took a cab to go
as rapidly as he could to the sheriff’s office, where he paid his
grandfather’s debt. The sheriff gave him the papers and a receipted bill
of costs, and told one of his clerks to accompany the young man home and
relieve the legal guardian of her functions.

“As Messieurs Barbet and Metivier live in your quarter,” he said, “I
will tell my young man to carry the money there and obtain the bill of
sale of the books and return it to you.”

Auguste who did not understand either the terms or the formalities of
the law, did exactly as he was told. He received seven hundred francs
change from the four thousand francs he had stolen, and went away with
the clerk. He got back into the cab in a condition of semi-stupor; for,
the result being now obtained, remorse began; he saw himself dishonored,
cursed by his grandfather, whose inflexible nature was well-known
to him, and he felt that his mother would surely die if she knew him
guilty. All nature changed for him. He was hot; he did not see the snow;
the houses looked like spectres flitting past him.

By the time he reached home the young baron had decided on his course
which was certainly that of an honest man. He went to his mother’s room,
took the gold snuff-box set with diamonds given to his grandfather by
the Emperor, and wrapped it in a parcel with the seven hundred francs
and the following letter, which required several rough copies before it
was satisfactory. Then he directed the whole to Doctor Halpersohn:--

  Monsieur,--The fruits of twenty years of my grandfather’s toil
  were about to be seized by usurers, who even threatened to put him
  in prison. Three thousand three hundred francs were enough to save
  him. Seeing all that money on your table, I could not resist the
  happiness of freeing my grandfather from his danger. I borrowed,
  without your consent, four thousand francs of you; but as three
  thousand three hundred were all that was necessary, I send the
  other seven hundred in money, together with a gold snuff-box set
  with diamonds, given to my grandfather by the Emperor, the value
  of which will probably cover the whole sum.

  In case you do not believe in the honor of him who will forever
  regard you as a benefactor, I pray you to keep silence about an
  act which would be quite unjustifiable under other circumstances;
  for by so doing you will save my grandfather’s life, just as you
  are saving my mother’s life; and I shall be forever

Your devoted servant, Auguste de Mergi.


About half-past two o’clock in the afternoon, Auguste, who went himself
as far as the Champs Elysees, sent the package from there by a street
messenger to Doctor Halpersohn’s house; then he walked slowly homeward
by the pont de Jena, the Invalides, and the boulevards, relying on
Halpersohn’s generosity.

The Polish doctor had meanwhile discovered the theft, and he instantly
changed his opinion of his clients. He now thought the old man had come
to rob him, and being unable to succeed, had sent the boy. He doubted
the rank they had claimed, and went straight to the police-office where
he lodged a complaint, requesting that the lad might be arrested at
once.

The prudence with which the law proceeds seldom allows it to move as
rapidly as complainants desire; but about three o’clock of that day a
commissary of police, accompanied by agents who kept watch outside the
house, was questioning Madame Vauthier as to her lodgers, and the
widow was increasing, without being aware of it, the suspicions of the
policeman.

When Nepomucene saw the police agents stationed outside the house,
he thought they had come to arrest the old man, and as he was fond of
Monsieur Auguste, he rushed to meet Monsieur Bernard, whom he now saw on
his way home in the avenue de l’Observatoire.

“Hide yourself, monsieur!” he cried, “the police have come to arrest
you. The sheriff was here yesterday and seized everything. Madame
Vauthier didn’t give you the stamped papers, and she says you’ll be in
Clichy to-night or to-morrow. There, don’t you see those policemen?”

Baron Bourlac immediately resolved to go straight to Barbet. The former
publisher lived in the rue Saint-Catherine d’Enfer, and it took him a
quarter of an hour to reach the house.

“Ah! I suppose you have come to get that bill of sale,” said Barbet,
replying to the salutation of his victim. “Here it is.”

And, to Baron Bourlac’s great astonishment, he held out the document,
which the baron took, saying,--

“I do not understand.”

“Didn’t you pay me?” said the usurer.

“Are you paid?”

“Yes, your grandson took the money to the sheriff this morning.”

“Then it is true you made a seizure at my house yesterday?”

“Haven’t you been home for two days?” asked Barbet. “But an old
magistrate ought to know what a notification of arrest means.”

Hearing that remark, the baron bowed coldly to Barbet and returned home,
thinking that the policemen whom Nepomucene had pointed out must have
come for the two impecunious authors on the upper floor. He walked
slowly, lost in vague apprehensions; for, in spite of the explanation he
gave himself, Nepomucene’s words came back, and seemed to him more
and more obscure and inexplicable. Was it possible that Godefroid had
betrayed him?



XIX. VENGEANCE

The old man walked mechanically along the rue Notre-Dame des Champs, and
entered the house by the little door, which he noticed was open. There
he came suddenly upon Nepomucene.

“Oh, monsieur, come quick! they are taking Monsieur Auguste to prison!
They arrested him on the boulevard; it was he they were looking for;
they have examined him.”

The old man bounded like a tiger, rushed through the house with the
speed of an arrow, and reached the door on the boulevard in time to see
his grandson getting into a hackney-coach with three men.

“Auguste,” he said, “what does all this mean?”

The poor boy burst into tears and fainted away.

“Monsieur, I am the Baron Bourlac, formerly attorney-general,” he said
to the commissary of police, whose scarf now attracted his eye. “I
entreat you to explain all this.”

“Monsieur, if you are Baron Bourlac, two words will be enough. I have
just examined this young man, and he admits--”

“What?”

“The robbery of four thousand francs from Doctor Halpersohn!”

“Is that true, Auguste?”

“Grandpapa, I sent him as security your diamond snuff-box. I did it to
save you from going to prison.”

“Unhappy boy! what have you done? The diamonds are false!” cried the
baron; “I sold the real ones three years ago!”

The commissary of police and his agents looked at each other. That look,
full of many things, was intercepted by Baron Bourlac, and seemed to
blast him.

“Monsieur,” he said to the commissary, “you need not feel uneasy; I
shall go myself to the prefect; but you are witness to the fact that I
kept my grandson ignorant of the loss of the diamonds. Do your duty;
but I implore you, in the name of humanity, put that lad in a cell by
himself; I will go to the prison. To which one are you taking him?”

“Are you really Baron Bourlac?” asked the commissary.

“Oh, monsieur!”

“The fact is that the municipal judge and I doubted if it were possible
that you and your grandson could be guilty. We thought, and the doctor,
too, that some scoundrels had taken your name.”

He took the baron aside, and added:--

“Did you go to see Doctor Halpersohn this morning?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Your grandson went there half an hour after you.”

“Did he? I knew nothing of that. I have just returned home, and have not
seen my grandson for two days.”

“The writs he has shown me and the examination explain everything,” said
the commissary of police. “I see the cause of the crime. Monsieur, I
ought by rights to arrest you as accomplice to your grandson; for your
answers confirm the allegations in Doctor Halpersohn’s complaint. But
these papers, which I here return to you,” holding out to the old man a
bundle of papers, “do prove you to be Baron Bourlac. Nevertheless, you
must hold yourself ready to appear before Monsieur Marest, the judge
of the Municipal Court who has cognizance of the case. As for your
grandson, I will speak to the _procureur du roi_, and we will take all
the care of him that is due to the grandson of a former judge,--the
victim, no doubt, of youthful error. But the complaint has been made,
the delinquent admits his guilt, I have drawn up the proces-verbal,
and served the warrant of arrest; I cannot go back on that. As for the
incarceration, I will put him in the Conciergerie.”

“Thank you, monsieur,” said the unhappy Bourlac.

With the words he fell rigid on the snow, and rolled into one of the
hollows round the trees of the boulevard.

The commissary of police called for help, and Nepomucene ran up,
together with Madame Vauthier. The old man was carried to his room,
and Madame Vauthier begged the commissary to call on his way in the rue
d’Enfer, and send Doctor Berton as soon as possible.

“What is the matter with my grandfather?” asked poor Auguste.

“He is out of his head. You see what it is to steal,” said the Vauthier.

Auguste made a movement as though he would dash out his brains. The two
agents caught him.

“Come, young man, be calm,” said the commissary of police; “you have
done wrong, but it may not be irreparable--”

“Monsieur, will you tell that woman my grandfather hasn’t had anything
to ear for twenty-four hours?”

“Oh! the poor things!” exclaimed the commissary under his breath.

He stopped the coach, which had started, and said a word in the ear
of one of his agents, who got out and ran to Madame Vauthier, and then
returned.

When Dr. Berton arrived he declared that Monsieur Bernard (he knew him
only under that name) had a high fever of great intensity. After hearing
from Madame Vauthier all the events which had brought on this crisis
(related after the manner of such women) he informed Monsieur Alain
the next morning, at Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas, of the present state of
affairs; on which Monsieur Alain despatched a note in pencil by a street
messenger to Monsieur Joseph.

Godefroid had given Monsieur Joseph, on his return from the boulevard
du Mont-Parnasse the night before, the notes confided to him by Auguste,
and Monsieur Joseph had spent part of the night in reading the first
volume of Baron Bourlac’s work.

The next morning after breakfast Madame de la Chanterie told her
neophyte that he should, if his resolution still held good, be put to
work at once. Godefroid, initiated by her into the financial secrets
of the society, worked steadily seven or eight hours a day for several
months, under the inspection of Frederic Mongenod, who came every
Sunday to examine the work, and from whom he received much praise and
encouragement.

“You are,” he said, when the books were all in order and the accounts
audited, “a precious acquisition to the saints among whom you live. Two
or three hours a day will now suffice to keep the current accounts in
order, and you will have plenty of surplus time to help the work in
other ways, if you still have the vocation you showed for it six months
ago.”

It was now July, 1838. During the time that had elapsed since his
opening attempt on the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, Godefroid, eager
to prove himself worthy of his friends, had refrained from asking any
question relating to Baron Bourlac. Not hearing a single word on the
subject, and finding no record of any transaction concerning it in the
accounts, he regarded the silence maintained about the enemy of Madame
de la Chanterie and his family either as a test to which he himself was
subjected, or as a proof that the friends of the noble woman had in some
way avenged her.

Some two months after he had left Madame Vauthier’s lodgings he turned
his steps when out for a walk towards the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse,
where he came upon the widow herself, and asked for news of the Bernard
family.

“Just as if I knew what has become of them!” she replied. “Two days
after your departure--for it was you, slyboots, who got the affair away
from my proprietor--some men came here and rid me of that arrogant old
fool and all his belongings. Bless me! if they didn’t move everything
out within twenty-four hours; and as close as wax they were too; not a
word would they say to me. I think he went off to Algiers with his rogue
of a grandson; for Nepomucene, who had a fancy for that young thief,
being no better himself, couldn’t find him at the Conciergerie. I dare
say Nepomucene knows where he is, though, for he, too, has run away.
That’s what it is to bring up foundlings! that’s how they reward you for
all your trouble, leaving you in the lurch! I haven’t yet been able to
get a man in his place, and as the quarter is looking up the house is
full, and I am worked to death.”

Godefroid would never have known more about Baron Bourlac and his family
if it had not been for one of those chance encounters such as often
happens in Paris.

In the month of September he was walking down the great avenue of the
Champs Elysees, thinking, as he passed the end of the rue Marbeuf, of
Dr. Halpersohn.

“I might,” thought he, “go and see him and ask if he ever cured
Bourlac’s daughter. What a voice, what immense talents she had!--and she
wanted to consecrate herself to God!”

When he reached the Rond-point Godefroid crossed it quickly, on account
of the many carriages that were passing rapidly. As he reached the other
side in haste he knocked against a young man with a lady on his arm.

“Take care!” said the young man; “are you blind?”

“Hey! is it you?” cried Godefroid, recognizing Auguste de Mergi.

Auguste was so well-dressed, and looked so dandified and handsome and so
proud of giving his arm to a pretty woman, that if it had not been for
the youth’s voice and the memories that were just then in his own mind
he might not have recognized him.

“Oh! it is our dear Monsieur Godefroid!” said the lady.

Hearing those words in the celestial notes of Vanda’s enchanting voice,
Godefroid stopped short on the spot where he stood.

“Cured!” he exclaimed.

“For the last ten days he has allowed me to walk out,” she replied.

“Who? Halpersohn?”

“Yes,” she said. “Why have you not been to see us? Perhaps it was well
you didn’t;” she added; “my hair came off; this that you see is a wig;
but the doctor assures me it will grow again. Oh! how many things we
have to tell each other! Come and dine with us. Oh! your accordion! oh!
monsieur,”--she put her handkerchief to her eyes.

“I shall keep it all my life,” she went on, “and my son will preserve it
as a relic after me. My father has searched all Paris for you. And he
is also in search of his unknown benefactors; he will grieve himself to
death if you do not help him to discover them. Poor father! he is gnawed
by a melancholy I cannot always get the better of.”

As much attracted by that exquisite voice, now rescued from the silence
of the grave, as by a burning curiosity, Godefroid offered his arm to
the hand held out to him by the Baronne de Mergi, who signed to her
son to precede them, charging him with a commission which he seemed to
understand.

“I shall not take you far,” she said; “we live in the Allee d’Antin, in
a pretty little house built in the English fashion. We occupy it alone;
each of us has a floor. Oh! we are so comfortable. My father thinks that
you had a great deal to do with our good fortune.”

“I?”

“Yes; did you know that on a recommendation made by the minister of
public instruction a chair of international law has been created for
papa at the Sorbonne? He begins his first course next November. The
great work on which he has been engaged for so long will be published
this month by the firm of Cavalier and Co., who agree to share the
profits with my father; they have already paid him on account thirty
thousand francs. My father bought our house with that money. The
minister of justice has awarded me a pension of twelve hundred francs
as the daughter of a former judge; my father has his retiring pension of
three thousand, and his professorship will give him five thousand more.
We are so economical that we are almost rich. My dear Auguste will begin
his law studies in two months; but he is already employed in the office
of the attorney-general, and is earning twelve hundred francs a year.
Ah! Monsieur Godefroid, promise me you will never speak of that unhappy
affair of my poor Auguste. As for me, I bless him every day for his
action, though his grandfather has not yet forgiven him. Yes, his mother
blesses him, Halpersohn adores him, but my father is implacable!”

“What affair?” asked Godefroid.

“Ah! I recognize your generosity,” cried Vanda. “What a heart you have!
Your mother must be proud of you.”

She stopped as if a pain had struck her heart.

“I swear to you that I know nothing of the affair of which you speak,”
 said Godefroid.

“It is possible that you really did not know it?” said Vanda. And she
related naively, in terms of admiration for her son, the story of the
loan that he had secured from the doctor.

“We may not speak of it before Baron Bourlac,” said Godefroid, “tell me
now how your son got out of his trouble.”

“Well,” said Vanda, “I told you, I think, that he is now employed by the
attorney-general, who shows him the greatest kindness. Auguste was
only forty-eight hours in the Conciergerie, where he was put into the
governor’s house. The good doctor, who did not receive a noble letter
the boy wrote him till late at night, withdrew his complaint; and,
through the influence of a former judge of the Royal Courts, whom my
father has never been able to meet, the attorney-general was induced to
annul the proceedings in the court. There is no trace left of the
affair except in my heart and my son’s conscience, and alas! in his
grandfather’s mind. From that day he has treated Auguste as almost a
stranger. Only yesterday Halpersohn begged him to forgive the boy; but
my father, who never before refused me anything--me, whom he loves so
well!--replied: ‘You are the person robbed; you can, and you ought to
forgive; but I am responsible for the thief. When I was attorney-general
I never pardoned.’ ‘You’ll kill your daughter,’ said Halpersohn. My
father made no reply and turned away.”

“But who helped you in all this?”

“A gentleman, whom we think is employed to do the queen’s benefits.”

“What is he like?”

“Well, he is of medium height; rather stout, but active; with a kindly,
genial face. It was he who found my father ill of fever in the house
where you knew us and had him brought to that in which we now live. And
just fancy, as soon as my father recovered _I_ was installed there too,
in my very own room, just as if I had never left it. Halpersohn, whom
the gentleman captivated, I am sure I don’t know how, then told me all
the sufferings my father had endured. Ah, when I think of it! my father
and my son often without bread to eat, and when with me pretending to be
rich! even the diamonds in the snuff box sold! Oh, Monsieur Godefroid!
those two beings are martyrs. And so, what can I say to my father?
Between him and my son I can take no part; I can only make return to
them in kind by suffering with them, as they once suffered with me.”

“And you say you think that gentleman came from the queen?”

“Oh! I am sure you know him, I see it in your face,” cried Vanda, now at
the door of the house.

She seized Godefroid by the hand with the vigor of a nervous woman and
dragged him into a salon, the door of which stood open.

“Papa!” she cried, “here is Monsieur Godefroid! and I am certain he
knows our benefactors.”

Baron Bourlac, whom Godefroid now saw dressed in a manner suitable for
a man of his rank and position, rose and came forward, holding out his
hand to Godefroid, saying as he did so:--

“I was sure of it.”

Godefroid made a gesture denying that he shared in this noble vengeance,
but the former attorney-general gave him no chance to speak.

“Ah! monsieur,” he said, continuing, “Providence could not be more
powerful, love more ingenious, motherhood more clear-sighted than your
friends have been for us. I bless the chance that has brought you here
to-day; for Monsieur Joseph has disappeared forever; he has evaded all
the traps I set to discover his true name and residence. Here, read his
last letter. But perhaps you already know it.”

Godefroid read as follows:--

  Monsieur le Baron Bourlac,--The sums which we have spent for you,
  under the orders of a charitable lady, amount to fifteen thousand
  francs. Take note of this, so that you may return that sum either
  yourself, or through your descendants, whenever the prosperity of
  your family will admit of it,--for that money is the money of the
  poor. When you or your family are able to make this restitution,
  pay the sum you owe into the hands of Messrs. Mongenod and
  Company, bankers.

  May God forgive you.

Five crosses formed the mysterious signature of this letter, which
Godefroid returned to the baron.

“The five crosses are there,” he said as if to himself.

“Ah! monsieur,” said the old man; “you do know all; you were sent to me
by that mysterious lady--tell me her name!”

“Her name!” exclaimed Godefroid; “her name! Unhappy man! you must not
ask it; never seek to find it out. Ah! madame,” he cried, taking Madame
de Mergi’s hand; “tell your father, if he values his peace of mind, to
remain in his ignorance and make no effort to discover the truth.”

“No, tell it!” said Vanda.

“Well, then, she who saved your daughter,” said Godefroid, looking at
the old man, “who returns her to you young and beautiful and fresh and
happy, who rescued her from her coffin, she who saved your grandson from
disgrace, and has given you an old age of peace and honor--” He stopped
short--“is a woman whom you sent innocent to prison for twenty years;
to whom, as a magistrate, you did the foulest wrong; whose sanctity you
insulted; whose beautiful daughter you tore from her arms and condemned
to the cruellest of all deaths, for she died on the guillotine.”

Godefroid, seeing that Vanda had fallen back half fainting on her chair,
rushed into the corridor and from there into the street, running at full
speed.

“If you want your pardon,” said Baron Bourlac to his grandson, “follow
that man and find out where he lives.”

Auguste was off like an arrow.

The next morning at eight o’clock, Baron Bourlac knocked at the
old yellow door in the rue Chanoinesse, and asked for Madame de la
Chanterie. The portress showed him the portico. Happily it was the
breakfast hour. Godefroid saw the baron, through one of the casements on
the stairs, crossing the court-yard; he had just time to get down into
the salon where the friends were all assembled and to cry out:--

“Baron Bourlac is here!”

Madame de la Chanterie, hearing the name, rose; supported by the Abbe de
Veze she went to her room.

“You shall not come in, tool of Satan!” cried Manon, recognizing their
former prosecutor and preventing his entrance through the door of the
salon. “Have you come to kill Madame?”

“Manon, let the gentleman come in,” said Monsieur Alain.

Manon sat down on a chair as if both her legs had given way at once.

“Monsieur,” said the baron in an agitated voice, recognizing Monsieur
Joseph and Godefroid, and bowing to Monsieur Nicolas, “mercy gives
rights to those it benefits.”

“You owe us nothing, monsieur;” said the good old Alain; “you owe
everything to God.”

“You are saints, and you have the calmness of saints;” said the former
magistrate; “you will therefore listen to me. I know that the vast
benefits I have received during the last eighteen months have come from
the hand of a person whom I grievously injured in doing my duty. It was
fifteen years before I was convinced of her innocence; and that case is
the only one, gentlemen, for which I feel any remorse as to the exercise
of my functions. Listen to me! I have but a short time to live, but I
shall lose even that poor remnant of a life, still so important to my
children whom Madame de la Chanterie has saved, unless she will also
grant me her pardon. Yes, I will stay there on my knees on the pavement
of Notre-Dame until she says to me that word. I, who cannot weep, whom
the tortures of my child have dried like stubble, I shall find tears
within me to move her--”

The door of Madame de la Chanterie’s room opened; the Abbe de Veze
glided in like a shadow and said to Monsieur Joseph:--

“That voice is torturing Madame.”

“Ah! she is there!” exclaimed the baron.

He fell on his knees and burst into tears, crying out in a heart-rending
voice: “In the name of Jesus dying on the cross, forgive, forgive me,
for my daughter has suffered a thousand deaths!”

The old man fell forward on the floor so prone that the agitated
spectators thought him dead. At that instant Madame de la Chanterie
appeared like a spectre at the door of her room, against the frame of
which she supported herself.

“In the name of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette whom I see on their
scaffold, in the name of Madame Elisabeth, in the name of my daughter
and of yours, and for Jesus’ sake, I forgive you.”

Hearing those words the old man raised his head. “It is the vengeance of
angels!” he said.

Monsieur Joseph and Monsieur Nicolas raised him and led him to the
courtyard; Godefroid went to fetch a carriage, and when they put the old
man into it Monsieur Nicolas said to him gravely:--

“Do not return here, monsieur; the power of God is infinite, but human
nature has its limits.”

On that day Godefroid was admitted to the order of the Brotherhood of
Consolation.



ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
The Brotherhood of Consolation is also known by the title The Seamy Side
of History and is referred to by that title in other Addendums.

     Barbet
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       A Man of Business
       The Middle Classes

     Bianchon, Horace
       Father Goriot
       The Atheist’s Mass
       Cesar Birotteau
       The Commission in Lunacy
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       A Bachelor’s Establishment
       The Secrets of a Princess
       The Government Clerks
       Pierrette
       A Study of Woman
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       Honorine
       The Magic Skin
       A Second Home
       A Prince of Bohemia
       Letters of Two Brides
       The Muse of the Department
       The Imaginary Mistress
       The Middle Classes
       Cousin Betty
       The Country Parson
     In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
       Another Study of Woman
       La Grande Breteche

     Bonaparte, Napoleon
       The Vendetta
       The Gondreville Mystery
       Colonel Chabert
       Domestic Peace
       A Woman of Thirty

     Bordin
       The Gondreville Mystery
       The Commission in Lunacy
       Jealousies of a Country Town

     Bourlac, Bernard-Jean-Baptiste-Macloud, Baron de
       The Peasantry

     Casteran, De
       The Chouans
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       Beatrix
       The Peasantry

     Cavalier
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

     Champignelles, De
       The Deserted Woman

     Chesnel (or Choisnel)
       Jealousies of a Country Town

     Cibot, Jean (alias Pille-Miche)
       The Chouans

     Cinq-Cygne, Laurence, Comtesse (afterwards Marquise de)
       The Gondreville Mystery
       The Secrets of a Princess
       The Member for Arcis

     Desplein
       The Atheist’s Mass
       Cousin Pons
       Lost Illusions
       The Thirteen
       The Government Clerks
       Pierrette
       A Bachelor’s Establishment
       Modeste Mignon
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       Honorine

     Haudry (doctor)
       Cesar Birotteau
       The Thirteen
       A Bachelor’s Establishment
       Cousin Pons

     La Chanterie, Baronne Henri le Chantre de
       Cousin Betty

     Lelewel
       The Imaginary Mistress

     Leroi, Pierre
       The Chouans
       Jealousies of a Country Town

     Louis XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier
       The Chouans
       The Gondreville Mystery
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       The Ball at Sceaux
       The Lily of the Valley
       Colonel Chabert
       The Government Clerks

     Marest, Frederic
       A Start in Life
       The Member for Arcis

     Metivier (nephew)
       The Middle Classes

     Mongenod
       Cesar Birotteau

     Mongenod, Frederic
       The Commission in Lunacy

     Montauran, Marquis de (younger brother of Alphonse de)
       The Chouans
       Cousin Betty

     Nathan, Raoul
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       The Secrets of a Princess
       A Daughter of Eve
       Letters of Two Brides
       The Muse of the Department
       A Prince of Bohemia
       A Man of Business
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Popinot, Jean-Jules
       Cesar Birotteau
       Honorine
       The Commission in Lunacy
       The Middle Classes

     Tours-Minieres, Bernard-Polydor Bryond, Baron des
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

     Troisville, Guibelin, Vicomte de
       The Chouans
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       The Peasantry

     Vernisset, Victor de
       Beatrix
       Cousin Betty

     Vissard, Charles-Amedee-Louis-Joseph Rifoel, Chevalier du
       The Chouans





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