■v ■ ' ■ 
 
THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 ENDOWED BY THE 
 DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC 
 

UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 00016339909 
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU 
 
 GAU DISS ART THE GREA1 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hil 
 
 http://archive.org/details/csarbirotteaubatOObalz 
 

With his back against a tree in the boulevard, he 
 turned the pages over 
 
H. DE BALZAC 
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU p Q ^ 3 
 BEATRIX || 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 /ffff 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 ELLEN MARRIAGE and JAMES WARING 
 
 WITH PREFACES BY 
 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 The Gebbie Publishing Co., Ltd. 
 1899 
 
 St L 
 
 >y 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU 
 
 HIS APOGEE I 
 
 CESAR STRUGGLES WITH MISFORTUNES . . . . . iSo 
 
 GAVDISSART THE GREAT 343 
 
 VOLUME 11. 
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 BEATRIX 
 
 I. DRAMATIS PERSONS 2 
 
 II. THE DRAMA I3I 
 
 III. RETROSPECTIVE ADULTERY ...... 24I 
 
 THE PURSE . 357 
 
 819130 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 WITH HIS BACK AGAINST A TREE IN THE BOULEVARD, HE TURNED 
 
 THE pages over (p. 34) Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "GOOD-DAY, MY DEAR LADY," SAID BIROTTEAU FLIPPANTLY . 98 
 
 "TO WHAT DO I OWE THE HONOR OF YOUR VISIT, SIR?" . 2l6 
 
 " I MUST HAVE MY MONEY, I WANT MY MONEY ! " . . 286 
 
 Drawn by IV. Boucher. 
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT 343 
 
 Drawn by y. Ayton Symington. 
 
 VOLUME II. 
 
 AT THE UNEXPECTED SIGHT CALYSTE AND FELICITE SAT SILENT 
 
 FOR A MINUTE IOI 
 
 " SPARE THE HORSES, MY BOY THEY HAVE TWELVE LEAGUES 
 
 BEFORE THEM" I4I 
 
 "OPEN YOUR EYES, FORGIVE ME ! " SAID CALYSTE, " OR WE DIE 
 
 TOGETHER " 204 
 
 " LEAVE ME, DAUGHTER," SHE SAID, GOING TO HER PRIE-DIEU . 296 
 Drawn by W. Boucher. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Few books of Balzac's have been the subject of more diverse 
 judgment than " Cesar Birotteau." From the opinion of the 
 unnamed solicitor, who told Madame Serville that it was an 
 invaluable work to consult on bankruptcy, to that of M. Paul 
 Lacroix (beloved of many as the Bibliophile Jacob), that it 
 might be forgiven for the sake of " Le Pere Goriot " and the 
 " Peau de Chagrin," there is not perhaps quite so great a 
 distance as may appear ; but other expressions, opposed not 
 merely in form, but in fact, might probably be collected. 
 
 As for the unfavorable division of these opinions there is no 
 difficulty in discovering their causes ; and there should be 
 little, save in the case of blind partisans, in acknowledging 
 their partial validity. Although the book opens with one of 
 Balzac's most brilliant pieces of actual human observation — 
 the description of the vague and half-delirious terror of waking 
 from a bad dream — and though the subsequent conversation 
 between Cesar and Constance has the merit of no vulgar cur- 
 tain-lecture, it soon goes off into one of those endless retro- 
 spective narrations which are among the greatest blots on the 
 Comedie, which utterly stop the action, and which, in the 
 case of very many readers who are not gifted with the faculty 
 of what may be called literary mountaineering, are very 
 likely to cause the putting down of the book. To this initial 
 difficulty has to be added the choking of the latter part with 
 those bankruptcy details which did so charm the professional 
 mind of Laure Balzac's learned friend, and which, for unpro- 
 fessional minds, have something which is very much the re- 
 verse of charm. The reader of only moderate athletic powers, 
 who has with difficulty struggled through and up the sloughs 
 and slopes of the previous history of the Birotteau business, is 
 hardly to be blamed if he gives up the attempt in despair 
 
 (ix) 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 after some attempt on the slippery " screes" of commercial 
 law which Balzac has delighted to strew over the higher 
 ground. 
 
 Complaints of these drawbacks, I repeat, would be, and 
 are, just. Nevertheless, though the list of the faults of the 
 book is not even yet exhausted, it will be a very great pity if 
 any one is baffled by them and fails to go through to the end. 
 For "Cesar Birotteau " is a book than which none of Bal- 
 zac's is more thoroughly vecu, as his countrymen say, more 
 thoroughly inspired with the personal sympathies and ex- 
 periences of the author ; and this with Balzac was always a 
 guarantee of success. He too knew bankruptcy well, and not 
 merely by his studies in the lawyer's office ; for though I 
 believe he never actually " passed the court " (even his print- 
 ing and publishing operations, disastrous as they were, termi- 
 nated in arrangements), he was face to face with it all his 
 life. He, too, knew the attraction, the fatal attraction of une 
 bonne affaire, such as he speaks of in one of his letters — une 
 bonne affaire qui ne demande que cent mille francs. He was 
 perfectly capable of buying up all the nuts in Paris in order 
 to make hair-oil of them ; I should not be at all surprised 
 if he had actually had in view this very speculation. And 
 he thought he knew the ways of bankers and folk of that kind; 
 though whether he did or not, the sons of Zeruiah were 
 usually as much too hard for him as they were for Birotteau. 
 Hence there is even in the dryest details, even in the most 
 long-winded reportage of the book, the throb of personal in- 
 terest, the pulse and pant of life. 
 
 The action and characters also are interesting, if not, on 
 the whole, quite artistically probable. It will be observed 
 that the hero does a little underlie the constant objection of 
 the Devil's Advocate to Balzac, that almost every one of his 
 good characters is more or less of a fool. Even a keen man 
 of business may, of course, be easily outwitted in a game of 
 pure speculation — a proposition which we need not go to 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 France, or examine the long list of "crashes" from the ficti- 
 tious terrains de la Madeleine to the real Panama, in order to 
 establish. And a very keen man of business may be imprud- 
 ently expensive in a combined fit of personal vanity and affec- 
 tion for his family. But it is a little of a stretch on the 
 credulity of the reader to represent a plodding tradesman like 
 Birotteau, who, as we are expressly told, had an old-fashioned 
 horror of " paper," as not merely incurring large speculative 
 obligations, but as stripping himself of every rap of ready 
 money while exposing himself to an unusual demand for it. 
 The picture of his going a-borrowing and a-sorrowing is drawn 
 with great power and with much vivacity ; but here, too, his 
 simplicity is a thought exaggerated. And Constance's affection 
 for and fidelity to an unattractive man, whom she saw to be 
 little better than a fool, may be thought improbable in an 
 ideal beauty with a clear head, while some may even say that 
 ideal beauties are almost always extremely stupid. Yet, again, 
 in Cesarine, Momus may point to that superficiality and vague- 
 ness which usually, if not always, mar Balzac's treatment of 
 an " honest " girl. 
 
 Yet these things will not, any more than those formerly 
 mentioned, make any fair or genial judge give up the book to 
 a lower class than that of Balzac's best, if not of his very 
 best. Whatever faults Birotteau may have, his goodness and 
 his probity and, let us add (though it be a little illegitimate), 
 his tragic end, make him one of the author's most sympathetic 
 personages, as are also his wife and daughter. If Popinot is 
 rather the virtuous apprentice of the stage, and Du Tillet the 
 wicked ditto, who is not punished, the former at least is attrac- 
 tive ; and Pillerault, the good uncle, certainly cannot be ac- 
 cused of foolishness. All the minor figures come in well for 
 the action whenever Balzac will let them act, and not be talk- 
 ing himself; and even the bankruptcy affair acquires a sort of 
 interest from the rapidity and bustle of its conduct. As for 
 the ball — that famous and elaborate instance of the penalties 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 and disappointments of elaborately engineered and anticipated 
 pleasure — it is excellent. Nor should we close without special 
 commendation for Claparon, a less labored personage than 
 some of the author's, but a very happy sketch of rascality 
 which is not exactly scoundrelism, because, though entirely 
 unscrupulous, it is not in the least malign. 
 
 The book was originally published after a fashion not un- 
 common in France, but, I think, hardly, if at all, known in 
 England, with no publisher's name, and not for sale, but as 
 a bonus jointly given by the " Figaro " and the " Estafette " 
 to their subscribers for 1838. It bore that date, but was act- 
 ually issued in November, 1837. In this form it had two 
 volumes, three parts (the present two, and a third, " Le Tri- 
 omphe de Cesar"), and sixteen chapters and headings. Re- 
 published by Charpentier in 1839, li l° st tne chapter, but 
 kept the part-headings, the last being omitted when it be- 
 came a " Scene de la Vie Parisienne " in the general arrange- 
 ment of the Comedie (1844). 
 
 " Gaudissart the Great " is, of course, slight, not merely in 
 bulk, but in conception. Balzac's Tourangeau patriotism may 
 have amused itself by the idea of the villagers " rolling " the 
 great Gaudissart ; but the ending of the tale can hardly be 
 thought to be quite so good as the beginning. Still, that be- 
 ginning is altogether excellent. The sketch of the cotmnis- 
 voyageur generally smacks of that physiologic style of which 
 Balzac was so fond ; but it is good, and Gaudissart himself, as 
 well as the whole scene with his epouse libre, is delightful. 
 The Illustrious One was evidently a favorite character with 
 his creator. He nowhere plays a very great part ; but it is 
 everywhere a rather favorable and, except in this little mishap 
 with Margaritis (which, it must be observed, does not turn 
 entirely to his discomfiture), a rather successful part. We 
 have him in "Cesar Birotteau," superintending the early 
 efforts of Popinot to launch the Huile Cephalique. He was 
 present at the great ball. He served as intermediary to M. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xm 
 
 de Bauvan in the merciful scheme of buying at fancy prices 
 the handiwork of the Count's faithless spouse, and so providing 
 her with a livelihood ; and later, as a theatrical manager, a 
 little spoilt by his profession, we find him in " Le Cousin 
 Pons." But he is always what the French call "a good 
 devil," and here he is a very good devil, indeed. 
 
 G. S. 
 
 Note. — I hope it is not improper to bespeak unusual indulgence for the 
 translator in regard to the technicalities of this book. She has, I know, 
 taken the greatest pains with them. But to secure absolute success in 
 such a matter we must have an expert in French bankruptcy law who is 
 also an expert in English bankruptcy law, and perfect in both literatures 
 as well. One might go far before finding such a person. 
 
THE RISE AND FALL OF 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU, 
 
 Retail Perfumer, 
 
 Deputy-Mayor of the Second Arrondissement, Paris, 
 
 Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, etc. 
 
 To Monsieur Alphonse de Lamartine, from his admirer, 
 
 De Balzac. 
 
 I. 
 
 cesar's apogee. 
 
 There is but one brief interval of silence during a winter 
 night in the Rue Saint-Honore ; for to the sounds of carriages 
 rolling home from balls and theatres succeeds the rumbling 
 of market-gardeners' carts on their way to the Great Market. 
 During this pause in the great symphony of uproar sent up by 
 the streets of Paris, this cessation of traffic toward one o'clock 
 in the morning, the wife of M. Cesar Birotteau, of the retail 
 perfumery establishment near the Place Vendome, dreamed a 
 frightful dream, and awoke with a start. 
 
 She had met her double. She had appeared to herself, 
 clad in rags, laying a meagre, shriveled hand on her own 
 store-door handle. She had been at once in her chair at the 
 cash desk and on the threshold ; she had heard herself beg- 
 ging ; she had heard two selves speaking in fact, the one from 
 the desk, the other from the doorstep. She turned and 
 stretched out her hand for her husband, and found his place 
 cold. At that her terror grew to such a pitch that she could not 
 move her head, her neck seemed stiffened to stone, the walls 
 
 (1) 
 
2 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 of her throat were glued together, her voice failed her ; she 
 sat up rigid and motionless, staring before her with wide eyes. 
 Her hair rose with a painful sensation, strange sounds rang in 
 her ears, something clutched at her heart though it beat hard, 
 she was covered with perspiration, and yet shuddering with 
 cold in the alcove behind the two open folding-doors. 
 
 Fear, with its partially morbific effects, is an emotion which 
 puts so violent a strain upon the human mechanism that the 
 mental faculties are either suddenly stimulated by it to the 
 highest degree of activity or reduced to the last extremity 
 of disorganization. Physiology has long been puzzled to 
 account for a phenomenon which upsets its theories and stul- 
 tifies its hypotheses, although it is simply and solely a shock 
 brought about spontaneously, but, like all electrical phenom- 
 ena, erratic and unaccountable in its manifestations. This 
 explanation will become a commonplace when men of science 
 recognize the great part played by electricity in human think- 
 ing power. 
 
 Mme. Birotteau was just then enduring the pangs which 
 bring about a certain mental lucidity consequent on those 
 terrible discharges when the will is contracted or expanded 
 by a mysterious mechanism. So that, during a lapse of time, 
 exceedingly short if measured by the tickings of a clock, but 
 incommensurable by reason of the infinite rapid impressions 
 which it brought, the poor woman had the prodigious power 
 of uttering more thoughts and of calling up more memories 
 than would have arisen in her mind in its normal state in the 
 course of a whole day. Her soliloquy during this vivid and 
 painful experience may be resumed in a few words she uttered, 
 incongruous and nonsensical as they were — 
 
 "There is no reason whatever why Birotteau should be out 
 of bed. He ate so much veal ; perhaps it disagreed with 
 him. But if he had been taken ill, he would have waked me 
 up. These nineteen years that we have slept here together 
 under this roof, he has never got up in the middle of the 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 3 
 
 night without telling me, poor dear ! He has never slept out 
 except when lie was on guard. Did he go to bed when I did? 
 Why, yes. Dear me ! how stupid I am ! " 
 
 She glanced over the bed. There lay her husband's night- 
 cap, moulded to the almost conical shape of his head. 
 
 " Can he be dead ? Can he have made away with himself? 
 Why should he?" she thought. "Since they made him 
 deputy-mayor two years ago, I haven't known what to make of 
 him. To get mixed up with public affairs, on the word of an 
 woman, isn't it enough to make you feel sorry for a man ? 
 The business is doing well. He has just given me a shawl. 
 Perhaps it is doing badly ! Pshaw ! I should know of it if it 
 were. But is there any knowing what is in the bottom of a 
 man's mind? Or a woman's either? There is no harm in 
 that. Haven't sales amounted to five thousand francs this very 
 day ! And then a deputy-mayor is not likely to kill himself; 
 he knows the law too well for that. But where can he be? " 
 
 She had no power to turn her head ; she could not stretch 
 out a hand to the bell-rope, which would have set in motion 
 a general servant, three clerks, and the errand boy. The 
 nightmare that lasted on into her waking moments was so 
 strong upon her that she forgot her daughter, peacefully sleep- 
 ing in the next room, beyond the door which opened at the 
 foot of the bed. 
 
 "Birotteau? " She received no answer. She fancied that 
 she had called aloud, but, as a matter of fact, she had only 
 spoken in her thoughts. 
 
 " Suppose he should have a mistress? But he has not wit 
 enough for that," she thought, "and then he is too fond of 
 me. Didn't he tell Madame Roguin that he had never been 
 unfaithful to me, even in thought? Why, the man is honesty 
 itself! If any one deserves to go to heaven, he does. What 
 he finds to say to his confessor, I don't know. He tells him 
 make-believes. For a Royalist as he is (without any reason to 
 give for it, by-the-by), he does not make much of a puff of 
 
4 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 his religion. Poor dear, he slips out to mass at eight o'clock 
 as if he were running off to amuse himself on the sly. It is 
 the fear of God that he has before his eyes ; he does not 
 trouble himself much about hell. How should he have a 
 mistress? He keeps so close to my apron-strings that I get 
 tired of it. He loves me like the apple of his eye ; he would 
 put out his eyes for me. All these nineteen years he has 
 never spoken a harsh word to myself. I come before his 
 
 daughter with him. Why, Cesarine is there (Cesarine ! 
 
 Cesarine !) Birotteau never has a thought that he does not 
 tell me. It was a true word he said when he came to the 
 sign of the Little Sailor and told me that it would take time 
 
 to know him. And he's gone ! that is the extraordinary 
 
 thing!" 
 
 She turned her head with an effort and peered into the 
 darkness. Night filled the room with picturesque effects, the 
 despair of language, the exclusive province of the painter of 
 genre. What words could reproduce the whimsical shapes 
 that the curtains took as the draft swelled them, or the startling 
 zigzag shadows that they cast ? The dim night-light flickered 
 over the red cotton folds ; the brass rosette of the curtain-rest 
 reflected the crimson gleams from a central boss, blood-shot 
 like a robber's eye; a ghostly gown was kneeling there; the 
 room was filled, in fact, with all the strange, unfamiliar appear- 
 ances which appal the imagination at a time when it can only 
 see horrors and exaggerate them. 
 
 Mme. Birotteau fancied that she saw a bright light in the 
 next room, and a thought of fire flashed across her ; but she 
 caught sight of a red bandanna handkerchief, which looked 
 to her like a pool of blood, and in another moment she dis- 
 covered traces of a struggle in the arrangement of the furni- 
 ture, and could think of nothing but burglars. She remem- 
 bered that there was a sum of money in the safe, and a gener- 
 ous fear extinguished the cold ague of nightmare. Thoroughly 
 alarmed, she sprang out on to the floor in her night-dress, to 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 5 
 
 go to the assistance of the husband whom she fancied as en- 
 gaged in a hand-to-hand conflict with assassins. 
 
 " Birotteau ! Birotteau ! " she cried in a voice of anguish. 
 
 The retail perfumer was standing in the middle of the ad- 
 jacent room, apparently engaged in measuring the air with a 
 yard -stick. His dressing-gown (of green cotton with choco- 
 late-colored spots) covered him so ill that his bare legs were 
 red with the cold, but he did not seem to notice this. 
 
 When Cesar turned round with a "Well, what is it, Con- 
 stance?" he looked as a man absorbed by his schemes is apt 
 to look — so ludicrously foolish, that Mme. Birotteau began to 
 laugh. 
 
 " Dear me, Cesar, how queer you look ! " said she. " What 
 made you leave me alone without saying anything? I nearly 
 died of fright. I did not know what to think. What are you 
 after, open to every wind that blows ? You will catch your 
 death of cold. Birotteau ! do you hear? " 
 
 "Yes, wife; here I am," and the perfumer returned to the 
 bedroom. 
 
 "There, come along and warm yourself, and tell me what 
 crotchet you have in your head," returned Mme. Birotteau, 
 raking among the ashes, which she hastily tried to rekindle. 
 "I am frozen. How stupid it was of me to get up in my 
 night-dress ! But I really thought you were being mur- 
 dered." 
 
 The merchant set down the bedroom candlestick on the 
 mantel, huddled himself in his dressing-gown, and looked 
 about the room in an absent fashion for his wife's flannel 
 petticoat. 
 
 "Here, pussie, just put this on," said he. "Twenty-two 
 
 by eighteen " he added, continuing his soliloquy. "We 
 
 could have a magnificent drawing-room." 
 
 " Look here ! Birotteau, you seem to be in a fair way to 
 lose your wits. Are you dreaming?" 
 
 " No j I am thinking, wife." 
 
6 C&SAR BTROTTEAU. 
 
 " Then you might wait ; your follies will keep till daylight, 
 at any rate," cried she, and, fastening her petticoat under her 
 sleeping-jacket, she went to open the door of their daughter's 
 room. 
 
 " Cesarine is fast asleep. She will not hear a word. Come, 
 Birotteau, tell me about it. What is it ? " 
 
 " We can give the ball." 
 
 " Give a ball ! We give a ball ! My dear ! on the word 
 of an honest woman, you are dreaming ! 
 
 "Dreaming? not a bit of it, darling." 
 
 " Listen ; you should always do your duty according to your 
 station in life. Now the Government has brought me into 
 prominence, I belong to the Government, and it is incumbent 
 upon us to study its spirit and to forward its aims by develop- 
 ing them. The Due de Richelieu has just put an end to the 
 occupation of the allied troops. According to Monsieur de 
 la Billardiere, official functionaries who represent the city of 
 Paris ought to regard it as a duty — each in his own sphere of 
 influence — to celebrate the liberation of French soil. Let us 
 establish beyond proof a genuine patriotism which shall put 
 those accursed schemers that call themselves Liberals to the 
 blush, eh ? Do you think that I do not love my country ? I 
 mean to show the Liberals and my enemies that to love the 
 King is to love France." 
 
 " Then do you think that you have any enemies, my poor 
 Birotteau?" 
 
 "Why, yes, we have enemies, wife. And half our friends 
 in the quarter are among them. They all say, ' Birotteau has 
 such luck ; Birotteau was once a nobody, and look at him 
 now ! He is deputy-mayor ; everything has prospered with 
 him.' Very well; there is a nice disappointment still in 
 store for them. You shall be the first to hear that I am a 
 chevalier of the Legion of Honor ; the King signed the patent 
 yesterday." 
 
 " Oh ! well then, dear, we must give the ball," cried Mme. 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 7 
 
 Birotteau, greatly excited. " But what can you have done so 
 great as to have the cross ? " 
 
 Birotteau was embarrassed. 
 
 " When Monsieur de la Billardiere told me about it yester- 
 day," said he, " I asked myself, just as you did, what claim I 
 had to it. But, after thinking it over, I saw that I deserved 
 it, and ended by approving the action of the Government. 
 To begin with, I am a Royalist, and I was wounded at Saint- 
 Roch in Vendemiaire ; it is something, isn't it, to have borne 
 arms for the good cause in those times ? Then some of the 
 merchants think that the way I discharged my duties as arbi- 
 trator at the Consular Tribunal had given general satisfaction ; 
 and, lastly, I am a deputy-mayor, and the King is distributing 
 four crosses among the municipal authorities in the city of 
 Paris. After they had gone into the claims of the deputy- 
 mayors for a decoration, the prefect put me down at the top 
 of the list. The King, too, is sure to know my name ; thanks 
 to old Ragon, I supply him with the only hair powder he will 
 use ; no one else has the recipe for the powder the late Queen 
 used to wear, poor dear august victim ! The mayor backed 
 me up with all his might. What was I to do ? If the King 
 gives me the cross when I don't ask him for it, it looks to 
 me as if I could not decline it without failing in respect. 
 Was it my doing that I was made a deputy-mayor ? So as we 
 have the wind in our sails, wife, as your uncle Pillerault says 
 when he is in a joking humor, I have made up my mind that 
 we must live up to our high position. If I am to be some- 
 body, I will have a try at being whatever Providence meant 
 me to be ; a sub-prefect, if such is my destiny. And you 
 make a great mistake, wife, when you imagine that a citizen 
 has discharged all the duty he owes his country when he has 
 supplied his customers with scent across the counter for a 
 score of years. If the State demands the cooperation of our 
 intelligence, we are as much bound to give it as to pay suc- 
 cession duty or the door and window tax, et cetera. Do you 
 
8 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 want to sit at your desk all your. life ? You have been there 
 a pretty long time (God be thanked). The ball will be a 
 private fete of our own. No more of the store ; for you, that 
 is. I shall burn the signboard The Queen of Roses, and 
 the words, Cesar Birotteau (late Ragon), Retail Per- 
 fumer, shall be painted out on the store-front. I shall simply 
 put up Perfumery in big gold letters instead. There will be 
 room on the mezzanine floor for a cash desk and the safe, 
 and a nice little room for you. I shall make the back-store 
 and the present dining-room and kitchen into a warehouse. 
 Then I mean to take the second floor next door, and make a 
 way into it through the wall. The staircase must be altered 
 so that we can walk on the level out of one house and into 
 the other. We shall have a fine set of rooms then, furnished 
 up to the nines. 
 
 "Yes. I will have your room done up and contrive a 
 boudoir for you, and Cesarine shall have a pretty room. You 
 must engage a young lady for the store, and she and the assist- 
 ant and your waiting-maid (yes, madame, you shall have a 
 waiting-maid) shall have rooms on the third floor. The 
 kitchen must be on the fourth floor. The cook and the errand- 
 boy shall be lodged up there, and we will keep the stock of 
 bottles, and flasks, and china on the fifth. The workrooms 
 can be in the attics, so when people come in they will not see 
 bottles being filled and stoppered and labeled, nor sachets 
 being made. That sort of thing is all very well for the Rue 
 Saint-Denis, but it won't do in the Rue Saint-Honore ! Bad 
 style. Our store ought to be as snug as a drawing-room. 
 Just tell me this : are we the only perfumers who have come 
 in for honors? Aren't there vinegar-makers and mustard 
 manufacturers who have a command in the National Guard, 
 and are well looked on at the Tuileries ? Let us do as they 
 do, and extend the business, at the same time making our 
 way in society." 
 
 (i One moment, Birotteau. Do you know what I think while 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 9 
 
 I hear you talk? Well, to me, it is just as if a man was start- 
 ing out on a wild-goose chase. Don't you remember what I 
 told you when there was talk of your being made mayor ? A 
 quiet life before all things, I said ; you are about as fit for 
 public life as my arm for a windmill sail. Grand doings will 
 be the ruin of you. 
 
 "You did not listen to me; and here the ruin has come 
 upon us. If you are going to take part in politics, you must 
 have money ; and have we money ? What ! you mean to 
 burn the signboard that cost six hundred francs, and give up 
 the Queen of Roses and your real glory? Leave ambition 
 to other people. If you put your hand in the fire, you get 
 singed, don't you? Politics are very hot nowadays. We 
 have a hundred thousand francs good money invested outside 
 the business, the stock, and the factory, have we ? If you 
 have a mind to increase it, do now as you did in 1793. The 
 funds are at seventy-two, buy rentes ; you would have ten 
 thousand livres a year coming in without drawing anything 
 out of the business. Then take advantage of the transfer to 
 marry our Cesarine, sell the business, and let us go and live 
 in your part of the world. Why, any time for these fifteen 
 years you have talked of buying the Treasury Farm, that nice 
 little place near Chinon, with streams, and meadows, and 
 woods and vineyards, and crofts. It would bring you in a 
 thousand crowns a year, and we both of us like the house. 
 It is still to be had for sixty thousand crowns, and my gentle- 
 man must meddle and make in politics, must he? 
 
 " Just remember what we are — we are perfumers. Sixteen 
 years ago, before you thought of the Superfine Pate des Sul- 
 tanes and the Carminative Toilet Lotion, if any one had come 
 and said to you, ' You will have money enough to buy the 
 Treasury Farm,' wouldn't you have been wild with joy? 
 Very well ; and now, when you can buy the property which 
 you wanted so much that you talked of nothing else every 
 time that you opened your mouth, you begin to talk of squan-- 
 
10 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 dering the money that we have earned by the sweat of our 
 brows, ours I may say, for all along I have sat there at the 
 desk like a dog in a kennel. Now, instead of turning five 
 sous into six centimes, and six centimes into nothing at all, 
 wouldn't it be better to have a daughter married to a notary 
 in Paris, and a house that you can stay at, and to spend eight 
 months in the year at Chinon ? 
 
 "Wait until the funds rise. You can give your daughter 
 eight thousand livres a year ; we will keep two thousand for 
 ourselves, and the sale of the business will pay for the Treasury 
 Farm. We will take the furniture down into the country, 
 dear, it is quite worth while, and there we can live like 
 princes, while here one must have at least a million to cut a 
 figure." 
 
 "That is just what I expected," said Cesar Birotteau. 
 " Oh ! you think I am very foolish, no doubt, but I am not 
 so foolish but that I have looked at the thing all around. 
 Attend to what I am going to say. Alexandre Crottat is a 
 son-in-law that would suit us to a T, and he will have Roguin's 
 practice; but do you imagine that he would be satisfied with 
 a hundred thousand francs? (always supposing that we pay 
 down all our ready money when we marry our daughter; and 
 I am of that way of thinking, for I would have nothing but 
 dry bread for the rest of my days to see her as happy as a 
 queen and the wife of a Paris notary, as you say). Very well, 
 but a hundred thousand francs down, or even eight thousand 
 francs of rentes, would go no way toward buying Roguin's 
 practice. 
 
 "Young Xandrot (as we call him) thinks, like everybody 
 else, that we are a great deal richer than we are. If that 
 father of his, a rich farmer who sticks to his property like a 
 leech, does not sell something like a hundred thousand francs 
 worth of land, Xandrot will not be a notary, for Roguin's 
 practice is worth four or five hundred thousand francs. If 
 Crottat does not pay half the money down, how will he man- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 11 
 
 age the business? Cesarine ought to have a portion of two 
 hundred thousand francs, and we should retire like decent 
 citizens of Paris on fifteen thousand livres a year in the funds; 
 that is what I should like. If I could make you see all this as 
 clear as daylight, you would have nothing left to say for your- 
 self, eh ? " 
 
 "Oh ! if you have the wealth of the Indies " his wife 
 
 returned. 
 
 "So I have, darling. Yes," he put his arm round his 
 wife's waist, and tapped her gently with his fingers, impelled 
 by the joy that shone from every feature of his face. " I did 
 not want to say a word about this to you till the thing was 
 ripe, but, faith ! to-morrow perhaps it will be settled. This 
 is it : 
 
 " Roguin has been proposing a business speculation to me, 
 so safe that he and one or two of his clients, and Ragon, and 
 your uncle Pillerault, are going into it. We are to buy some 
 building land near the Madeleine. Roguin thinks that we 
 can buy it now for a quarter of the price it will fetch in three 
 years' time when the leases will be out, and we shall be free 
 to exploit it. There are six of us ; each agrees to take so 
 much ; I am finding three hundred thousand francs for the 
 purchase of three-eighths. If any of us are short of money, 
 Roguin will advance it, taking a mortgage on the share of the 
 land as security. Pillerault, old Ragon, and I are going to 
 take half of it among us ; but I want to have it registered in 
 my name, so as to keep hold of the handle of the pan and 
 see how the fish are frying. Roguin himself, under the name 
 of Monsieur Charles Claparon, will be joint-owner with me ; 
 he will give a guarantee to each of his partners, and I shall 
 do the same with mine. The deeds of purchase will be private 
 deeds until we have all the land in our hands. Roguin will 
 look into it and see which of the purchases must be com- 
 pleted, for he is not sure that we can dispense with intermedi- 
 ary registration, and yet transfer a separate title to the buyers 
 
12 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 when we break up the estate into separate lots ; but it would 
 take too long to explain it to you. 
 
 " When the building land has been paid for, we shall have 
 nothing to do but fold our arms, and in three years' time we 
 shall have a million. Cesarine will be twenty years old, we 
 shall have sold the business, and then, God willing, we will 
 go modestly toward greatness." 
 
 " Well, but where are the three hundred thousand francs to 
 come from?" asked Mme. Birotteau. 
 
 "My dear little woman, you know nothing of business. 
 There are the hundred thousand francs in Roguin's hands ; I 
 will pay them down. Then I shall borrow forty thousand 
 francs on the buildings and the land that our factory stands 
 on, over in the Faubourg du Temple, and we have twenty 
 thousand francs in bills and acceptances in the portfolio — 
 altogether that makes a hundred and sixty thousand francs. 
 There remain a hundred and forty thousand francs to be 
 raised ; I will draw bills to the order of Charles Claparon the 
 banker; he will advance the money, less the discount. And 
 there are our three hundred thousand francs : and you don't 
 owe an account until it is due. When the bills fall due we 
 shall be ready for them with the profits of the business. If 
 we should find any difficulty in meeting them, Roguin would 
 lend me the money at five per cent, on a mortgage on my 
 share of the building land. But there is no need to borrow. 
 I have discovered a specific for making the hair grow, a Com- 
 agen oil. Livingston has put up a hydraulic press for me 
 down yonder for the hazelnuts ; all the oil should be squeezed 
 out at once under such strong pressure. In a year's time the 
 probabilities are that I shall have made a hundred thousand 
 francs at least. I am thinking about a placard with Down 
 with Wigs ! for a heading. It would make a prodigious 
 sensation. You don't notice how I lie awake. These three 
 months past Macassar Oil has not let me sleep. I mean to do 
 for Macassar \ " 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAIT. 13 
 
 " So these are the fine plans that have been running in your 
 head for a couple of months, and not a word to me about 
 them. And I have just seen myself begging at my own door; 
 what a warning from heaven ! There will be nothing left to 
 us after a while except our eyes to cry with over our troubles. 
 Never shall you do it so long as I am alive ; do you hear, 
 Cesar ? There is some underhand work somewhere that you 
 do not see ; you are so straightforward and honest that you 
 don't suspect others of cheating. What makes them come to 
 offer you millions? You are giving bills ; you are going be- 
 yond your means; and how if the Oil does not take? Sup- 
 pose that the money does not come in — suppose that you do 
 not sell the building lots, how are you going to meet the bills? 
 With the hazelnut shells ? You want to rise in the world ; 
 you don't intend to have your name over your own store-door 
 any longer ; you mean to take down the sign — the Queen of 
 Roses — and yet you are making up rigmaroles of prospectuses 
 and placards, and Cesar Birotteau's name will be posted up at 
 every street-corner and all over the hoardings, wherever there 
 is building going on." 
 
 " Oh, no such thing ! I shall open a branch business under 
 the name of Popinot. I shall take a store somewhere near 
 the Rue des Lombardes, and put in young Anselme Popinot 
 to look after it. I shall pay a debt of gratitude which we owe 
 to Monsieur and Madame Ragon by starting their nephew in 
 a business that may make his fortune. The poor Ragons have 
 looked very seedy for some time past, I have thought." 
 
 " There ! those people are after your money." 
 
 "Why, what people, my charmer? Your own uncle who 
 loves us like his own life, and comes to dine here every Sun- 
 day? Then there is that kind old Ragon, our predecessor, 
 who plays boston with us; old Ragon, with a record of forty 
 years of fair dealing. And, lastly, do you mean Roguin, a 
 notary of Paris, a man of fifty, who has been in practice for 
 twenty-five years ? A notary of Paris would be the best of 
 
14 CASAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 the bunch if all honest folk were not equally good. My 
 partners will help me out at a pinch. Where is the plot, dar- 
 ling? Look here, I must give you a piece of my mind. On 
 my word as an honest man, it weighs upon me. You have 
 always been as suspicious as a cat ! As soon as we had five 
 sous' worth of goods in the store, you began to think that the 
 customers were thieves. A man has to go down on his knees 
 and beg and pray of you to allow your fortune to be made. 
 For a daughter of Paris you have scarcely any ambition ! If 
 it were not for your eternal fears, there would not be a happier 
 man than I am. If I had listened to you, I should never 
 have made the Pate des Sultanes nor the Carminative Toilet 
 Lotion. We have made a living out of the store, but it was 
 those two discoveries and our soaps that brought in the hun- 
 dred and sixty thousand francs which we have over and above 
 the business ! But for my genius, for I have talent as a per- 
 fumer, we should be petty storekeepers, hard put to it to make 
 both ends meet, and I should not be one of the notable mer- 
 chants who elect the judges at the Tribunal of Commerce ; I 
 should neither have been a judge nor a deputy-mayor. Do you 
 know what I should have been ? A storekeeper like old Ragon — 
 no offense to him, for I respect stores ; a store has been the 
 making of us. After selling perfumery for forty years we should 
 have had three thousand livres a year, as he has ; and as prices 
 go now, when things are twice as dear as they used to be, we too 
 should have had hardly enough to live upon. (Day after day, 
 it goes to my heart more and more to think of that old couple. 
 I must come at the truth ; I will have it out of Popinot to- 
 morrow.) Yes, if I had taken advice of you, of you that are 
 afraid of your own luck and are always asking if you will 
 have to-morrow what you hold to-day, I should have no credit, 
 nor the cross of the Legion of Honor, and I should not be 
 looked on as a man who knows what he is about. Oh, you 
 may shake your head ; if this succeeds, I may be deputy for 
 Paris some day. Aha ! I was not named Cesar for nothing ; 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 15 
 
 everything has succeeded with me. This is inconceivable ! 
 Everybody out of my own house admits that I have some 
 capacity ; but here at home, the one person that I want so 
 much to please, and I toil and moil to make her happy, is just 
 the very one who takes me for a fool." 
 
 There was such a depth of real and constant affection in 
 these phrases, divided up by eloquent pauses, and hurled 
 forth like cannon balls (as is the wont of those who take up 
 a recriminating attitude), that Mine. Birotteau in her secret 
 heart felt touched, but, wife-like, she took advantage of the 
 love she inspired to gain her own ends. 
 
 "Very well, Birotteau," said she, " if you love me, let me 
 be happy in my own way. Neither you nor I have had any 
 education ; we do not know how to talk, nor how to flatter 
 like worldly-wise people, and how can you expect that we 
 should succeed in office under Government ? I myself should 
 be quite happy at the Treasury Farm. I have always been 
 fond of animals and birds, and I could spend my time quite 
 well in looking after the poultry, and living like a farmer's 
 wife. Let us sell the business, marry our Cesarine, and let 
 your ' Imogen ' alone. We will pass the winters in Paris in 
 our son-in-law's house, and we shall be happy ; nothing in 
 politics nor in business could change our ways. Why should 
 you try to eclipse other people ? Is not our fortune enough 
 for us ? When you are a millionaire, will you be able to eat 
 two dinners a day? Do you want another wife! Look at 
 uncle Pillerault ! He is wisely satisfied with what he has, 
 and spends his life in doing good. What does he want with 
 fine furniture? For I know you have been ordering furni- 
 ture ; I saw Braschon in the shop, and he was not here to buy 
 scent. " 
 
 "Well, yes, darling, there is some furniture ordered for 
 you. The workmen will begin to-morrow under an architect 
 recommended by Monsieur de la Billardiere." 
 
 " Good Lord, have mercy upon us ! " 
 
16 CESAR BIROTTEAV. 
 
 " Why, you are unreasonable, pet. Do you think that, 
 fresh and pretty as you are, you can go and bury yourself at 
 thirty-seven at Chinon ? I myself, thank the Lord, am only 
 thirty-nine. Chance has opened up a fine career to me, and 
 I am going to enter upon it. If I manage wisely, I can found 
 a house famous among Paris citizens, as people used to do, 
 build up a business, and the Birotteaus shall be like Roguin, 
 Cochin, Guillaume, Le Bas, Nucingen, Saillard, Popinot, and 
 Matifat, all of whom are making, or have made, their mark 
 in their quarter. Come ! come ! if this speculation were not 
 as safe as gold ingots " 
 
 "Safe!" 
 
 " Yes, safe. I have been reckoning it out these two months. 
 Without appearing to do so, I have been making inquiries as 
 to building, at the Hotel de Ville, and of architects and con- 
 tractors. Monsieur Grindot, the young architect who is to 
 remodel our place, is in despair because he has no capital to 
 invest in our speculation." 
 
 " He knows that there will be houses to build ; he is urging 
 you on so as to gobble you up." 
 
 " Can people like Pillerault, like Charles Claparon, and 
 Roguin be taken in ? The gain is as certain as the profits on 
 the Pate, you see. ' ' 
 
 "But why should Roguin want to speculate, dear, when 
 he has bought his practice and made his fortune? I see him 
 go by sometimes; he looks as thoughtful as a minister; 
 he has an underhand look that I do not like ; he has secret 
 cares. In five years he has come to look like an old rake. 
 Whose word have you for it that he will not take to his 
 heels as soon as your money is in his hands? Such things 
 have been known. Do we know much about him ? It is 
 true that we have been acquainted for fifteen years, but he 
 is not one that I would put my hands into the fire for. I 
 have it ! he has ozsena ; he does not live with his wife ; 
 he has mistresses no doubt, and they are ruining him ; 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 17 
 
 there is no other reason for his low spirits that I see. As 
 I dress in the morning, I look through the blinds, and I 
 see him going home on foot. Where does he come from? 
 Nobody knows. It looks to me as if he had another es- 
 tablishment somewhere in town, and he spends one way 
 and madame another. 
 
 "Is that a life for a notary? If they make fifty thou- 
 sand francs and get through sixty thousand, there will be 
 an end of the money ; in twenty years' time they would be 
 as bare as shorn lambs; but if a man is used to shine, 
 he will plunder his friends without mercy. Charity should 
 properly begin at home. That little rascal du Tillet, who 
 used to be with us, is one of his cronies, and I see nothing 
 good in that friendship. If he could not find out du Tillet 
 he is very blind ; and if he knows him, why does he make 
 so much of him? You will say that there is something 
 between Roguin's wife and du Tillet. Very well ; I look 
 for no good from a man who has no sense of honor where 
 his wife is concerned. And in any case, aren't the owners 
 of the building lots very stupid to sell the worth of a hun- 
 dred francs for a hundred sous ? If you were to meet a 
 child who did not know what a louis was worth, would 
 you not tell him ? Your stroke of business looks to me 
 myself very much like a robbery, no offense to you. 1 ' 
 
 " Dear me ! what queer things women are sometimes, 
 and how they mix up their ideas ! If Roguin had never 
 meddled in the matter, you would have said, ' Stay, Cesar, 
 stop a bit ; you are acting without consulting Roguin, it will 
 come to no good.' In this present instance he is pledged as 
 it were, and you tell me " 
 
 " No ; it is a Monsieur Claparon." 
 
 "But a notary's name cannot appear in a speculation." 
 
 "Then why should he do something against the law? 
 What do you say to that, you who are such a stickler for the 
 law?" 
 2 
 
18 CESAR BIRO TIE ACT. 
 
 " Just let me go on. Roguin is going into it himself, and 
 you tell me that it will come to no good. Is that sensible? 
 Again you say, ' He is doing something against the law.' 
 But his name will appear in it if necessary. And now you 
 tell me that 'he is rich.' Might not people say as much of 
 me ? Ragon and Pillerault might just as well say of me, 
 ' Why are you going into this when you are wallowing in 
 riches?"' 
 
 "A tradesman is one thing and a notary another," ob- 
 jected Mme. Birotteau. 
 
 "In short, my conscience is quite clear," Cesar went on. 
 "People who sell, sell because they cannot help it ; we are 
 no more robbing them than we rob fund-holders when we buy 
 at seventy-five. To-day you buy building lots at to-day's 
 prices ; in two years' time it will be different, just as it is 
 with rentes. You may be quite sure, Constance-Barbe-Jose- 
 phine Pillerault, that you will never catch Cesar Birotteau 
 doing anything that is against the law, nor against his con- 
 science, nor unscrupulous, or not strictly just and fair. That 
 a man who has been in business eighteen years should be 
 suspected in his own family of cheating ! " 
 
 " Come, Cesar, be pacified ! A wife who has known you 
 all that time knows the depths of your soul. You are the 
 master after all. You made the money, didn't you? It is 
 yours ; you can spend it. We might be brought to the lowest 
 depths of poverty, but neither your daughter nor I would ever 
 say a single word of reproach. But listen. When you in- 
 vented the Pate des Sultanes and the Carminative Toilet 
 Lotion, what risk did you run? Five or six thousand francs 
 perhaps. To-day you are risking all you have on a single 
 stake, and you are not the only player in this game, and some 
 of the others may turn out sharper than you are. 
 
 "You could" give this ball and have the rooms redecorated, 
 and spend a thousand francs over it — a useless expense, but 
 not ruinous — but as to the Madeleine affair, I am against it, 
 
CASAR BIROTTEAU. 19 
 
 once and for all. Your are a perfumer ; be a perfumer and 
 not a speculator in building land. We women have an in- 
 stinct that does not lead us astray. I have warned you ; now 
 act on your own ideas. You have been a judge at the Tri- 
 bunal of Commerce, you know the law, you have steered your 
 boat wisely, and I will follow you, Cesar ! But I shall have 
 misgivings until I see our fortune on a sound basis and Cesar- 
 ine well married. God send that my dream was not pro- 
 phetic ! " 
 
 This meekness was annoying to Birotteau. He had recourse 
 to a simple stratagem, which he found useful on such occasions. 
 
 "Listen, Constance; I have not really given my word, 
 though it is as good as if I had." 
 
 "Oh! Cesar, there is nothing more to be said, so let us 
 say no more about it. Honor before riches. Come, get 
 into bed, dear ; there is no firewood left. Beside, it is easier 
 to talk in bed if it amuses you. Oh ! the bad dream I had ! 
 Good Lord, to see yourself 7 Why, it was fearful ! Cesarine 
 and I will make a pretty number of novenas for the success 
 of the land." 
 
 " Of course, the help of God would do us no harm," 
 Birotteau said gravely, " but the essence of hazelnuts is a 
 power likewise, wife. I discovered this, like the Pate des 
 Sultanes, by accident ; the first time it was by opening a book, 
 but it was an engraving of ' Hero and Leander ' that sug- 
 gested this new idea to me. A woman, you know, pouring 
 oil on her lover's head; isn't it nice? The most certain 
 speculations are those that are based on vanity, self-love, or 
 a regard for appearances. Those sentiments will never be 
 extinct." 
 
 "Alas, I see that clearly." 
 
 "At a certain age," pursued Birotteau, " men will do any- 
 thing to grow hair on their heads when they have none. 
 Hairdressers have told me for some time past that they are 
 selling hair-dyes and all sorts of drugs that are said to pro- 
 
20 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 mote the growth of the hair as well as Macassar Oil. Since 
 the peace, men live more among women, and women do not 
 like bald heads, eh ! eh ! pet ! So the demand for that 
 class of article can be explained by the political situation. 
 
 "A composition which would keep your hair in good con- 
 dition would sell like bread, and all the more so because the 
 essence will doubtless be approved by the Academie des 
 Sciences. Perhaps kind Monsieur Vauquelin will do me 
 another good turn. I shall go to submit my notion to him 
 to-morrow, and ask him to accept that engraving which I have 
 found at last after inquiring for it for two years in Germany. 
 Monsieur Vauquelin is engaged in analyzing hair, precisely 
 the subject, so Chiffreville (who is associated with him in the 
 production of chemicals) tells me. If my discovery concurs 
 with his, my essence will be bought by both sexes. There is 
 a fortune in my idea, I repeat. Good heavens ! I cannot 
 sleep for it. Eh ! luckily, little Popinot has the finest head 
 of hair in the world. With a young lady in the shop whose 
 hair should reach to the ground, and who should say (if the 
 thing is possible without sinning against God or your neighbor) 
 that the Comagen Oil (for it is decidedly an oil) counts for 
 something in bringing that about ; all the grizzled heads will 
 be down upon it like poverty upon the world. And I say, 
 dearie, how about your ball ? I am not spiteful, but I really 
 should like to have that little rogue of a du Tillet, who 
 swaggers about and never sees me on 'Change. He knows 
 that I know something that is not pretty about him. Perhaps 
 I let him off too easily. How funny it is, wife, that one 
 should always be punished for good actions ; here below, of 
 course ! I have been like a father to him ; you do not know 
 all that I have done for him." 
 
 " Simply to hear you talk of him makes my flesh creep. 
 If you had known what he intended to do to you, you would 
 not have kept the theft of three thousand francs so quiet (for 
 I have guessed how the thing was arranged). If you had put 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 21 
 
 him in the police court, perhaps you might have done a good 
 many people a service." 
 
 " What did he mean to do to me?" 
 
 "Nothing. Birotteau, if you were inclined to listen to me 
 to-night, I would give you a bit of sound advice, and that is 
 to let du Tillet alone." 
 
 " Would not people think it very strange if I were to forbid 
 an old assistant my house after I had been his surety for twenty 
 thousand francs when he first started in business for himself? 
 There, let us do good for its own sake. And perhaps du 
 Tillet has mended his ways." 
 
 " Everything must be put topsy-turvy here ! " 
 
 " What is this about topsy-turvy ? Why, it will all be ruled 
 like a sheet of music. So you have forgotten already what I 
 have just told you about the staircase, and how I have ar- 
 ranged with Cayron, the umbrella merchant next door, to 
 take part of his house ! He and I must go together in the 
 morning to see his landlord, Monsieur Molineux. I have as 
 much business on hand to-morrow as a minister." 
 
 "You have made me dizzy with your plans," said Con- 
 stance; "I am muddled with them; and, beside, Birotteau, 
 I am sleepy." 
 
 " Good -morning," returned her husband. "Just listen — 
 I say good-morning, because it is morning now, pet ! Ah ! 
 she has dropped off to sleep, dear child ! There ! you shall 
 be the richest of the rich, or my name will not be Cesar any 
 longer," and a few minutes later Constance and Cesar were 
 peacefully snoring. 
 
 A rapid glance over the previous history of this household 
 will confirm the impression which should have been conveyed 
 by the friendly dispute between the two principal personages 
 in this scene, in which the lives of a retail storekeeper and his 
 wife are depicted. This sketch will explain, moreover, the 
 strange chances by which Cesar Birotteau became a perfumer, 
 
22 C&SAR BIROTTEAV. 
 
 a deputy-mayor, an ex-officer of the National Guard, and a 
 chevalier of the Legion of Honor. By laying bare the depths 
 of his character and the springs of his greatness, it will be 
 possible to comprehend how it is that the vicissitudes of com- 
 merce, which strong heads turn to their advantage, become 
 irreparable catastrophes for weaker spirits. Events are never 
 absolute ; their consequences depend entirely upon the indi- 
 vidual. The misfortune which is a stepping-stone for genius 
 becomes a chapel for the Christian, a treasure for a quick- 
 witted man, and for weaklings an abyss. 
 
 A cotter, Jacques Birotteau by name, living near Chinon, 
 took unto himself a wife, a domestic servant in the house of 
 a lady, who employed him in her vineyard. Three sons were 
 born to them ; his wife died at the birth of the third, and the 
 poor fellow did not long survive her. Then the mistress, out 
 of affection for her maid, adopted the oldest of the cotter's 
 boys; she brought him up with her own son, and placed him 
 in a seminary. This Francois Birotteau took orders, and 
 during the Revolution led the wandering life of priests who 
 would not take the oath, hiding from those who hunted them 
 down like wild beasts, lucky to meet with no worse fate than 
 the guillotine. At the time when this story begins he was a 
 priest of the cathedral at Tours, and had but once left that 
 city to see his brother Cesar. On that occasion the traffic in 
 the streets of Paris so bewildered the good man that he dared 
 not leave his room; he called the cabs "half-coaches," and 
 was astonished at everything. He stayed one week, and then 
 went back to Tours, promising himself that he would never 
 revisit the capital. 
 
 The vine-dresser's second son, Jean Birotteau, was drawn 
 by the army, and during the early wars of the Revolution 
 promptly became a captain. ' At the battle of the Trebbia, 
 Macdonald called for volunteers to storm a battery, and Con- 
 tain Jean Birotteau charged with his company and fell. \% 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAZT. 23 
 
 appeared to be the destiny of the Birotteaus that other men 
 should supplant them, or that events should be too strong for 
 them wherever they might be. 
 
 The youngest son is the chief actor in this scene. When 
 Cesar was fourteen years old, and could read, write, and 
 cipher, he left the district, and with one louis in his pocket set 
 out on foot for Paris to make his fortune. On the recommen- 
 dation of an apothecary in Tours, M. and Mme. Ragon, re- 
 tail perfumers, took him as errand boy. Cesar at that time 
 was possessed of a pair of hobnailed shoes, a pair of breeches, 
 blue stockings, a sprigged vest, a countryman's jacket, three 
 ample shirts of good linen, and a stout walking-cane. His 
 hair might be clipped like a chorister's, but he was a solidly 
 built Tourangeau ; and any tendency to the laziness rampant 
 in his district was counteracted in him by a strong desire to 
 make his way in the world. Perhaps he was lacking some- 
 what in brains as in education, but he had inherited upright 
 instincts and scrupulous integrity from his mother, who had 
 " a heart of gold," as they say in Touraine. 
 
 Cesar was paid six francs a month by way of wages. He 
 boarded in the house, and slept on a truckle-bed in the attics 
 next to the servant's room. The clerks showed him how to 
 fetch and carry and tie up parcels, to sweep out the store and 
 the pavement before it, and made a butt of him, breaking 
 him in to business after the manner of their kind, and contriv- 
 ing to blend a good deal of amusement (for themselves) with 
 his instruction. M. and Mme. Ragon spoke to him as if he 
 were a dog. Nobody cared how tired the apprentice might 
 be, and he was often very tired and footsore of a night after 
 tramping over the pavements, and his shoulders often ached. 
 The principle "each for himself," that gospel of great cities, 
 put in application, made Cesar's life in Paris a very hard one. 
 He used to cry sometimes when the day was over and he 
 thought of Touraine, where the peasant works leisurely and 
 the mason takes his time about laying a stone, and toil is. 
 
 b 
 
24 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 judiciously tempered by idleness ; but he usually fell asleep 
 before he reached the point of thinking of running away, for 
 his morning's round of work awaited him, and he did his 
 duty with the instinctive obedience of a yard dog. If he 
 happened to complain, the first clerk would smile jocosely. 
 "Ah, my boy," said he, " life is not all roses at the Queen 
 of Roses, and larks don't drop ready roasted into your mouth ; 
 first catch your lark, and then you want the other things before 
 you cook it." 
 
 The cook, a stout Picarde, kept the best morsels for her- 
 self, and never spoke to Cesar but to complain of M. and 
 Mme. Ragon, who left her nothing to purloin. On one 
 Sunday at the end of every month she was obliged to stop in 
 the house, and then she broke ground with Cesar. Ursule, 
 scoured for Sunday, was a charming creature in the eyes of 
 the poor errand boy, who, but for a chance, was about to 
 make shipwreck on the first sunken reef in his career. Like 
 all human beings who have no one to care for them, he fell in 
 love with the first woman who gave him a kind glance. The 
 cook took Cesar under her wing and secret love passages 
 followed, at which the assistants jeered unmercifully. Luck- 
 ily, two years later, the cook threw over Cesar for a young 
 runaway from the army, a fellow-countryman of hers who was 
 hiding in Paris; and the Picard, a landowner to the extent 
 of several acres, allowed himself to be drawn into a marriage 
 with Ursule. 
 
 But during those two years the cook fed her lad Cesar well, 
 and explained to him the seamy side of not a few of the mys- 
 teries of Paris. Motives of jealousy led her to instil into him 
 a perfect horror of low haunts, whose perils seemingly were not 
 unknown to her. In 1792 Cesar, the basely deserted, had 
 grown accustomed to his life ; his feet were used to the pave- 
 ments, his shoulders accommodated to packing-cases, his wits 
 to what he called the humbug of Paris. So, when Ursule 
 threw him over, he promptly took comfort, for she had not 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 25 
 
 realized any of his intuitive ideas as to sentiments. Lasciv- 
 ious, bad-tempered, fawning, and rapacious, a selfish woman, 
 given to drink, she had jarred on Birotteau's unsophisticated 
 nature and had opened out no fair future to him. At times 
 the poor boy saw with dismay that he was bound by the 
 strongest of ties, for a simple heart, to a creature with whom he 
 had no sympathy. By the time that he was set free he had 
 developed and had reached the age of sixteen. His wits had 
 been sharpened by Ursule and by the clerk's jokes ; he set 
 himself to learn the business. Intelligence was hidden beneath 
 his simplicity. He watched the customers with shrewd eyes. 
 In his spare moments he asked for explanations concerning 
 the goods ; he remembered where everything was kept ; one 
 fine day he knew the goods, prices, and quantities in stock 
 better than the newer comers, and thenceforward M. and 
 Mme. Ragon looked on him as a settled institution. 
 
 When the requisition of the terrible year II. made a clean 
 sweep of Citizen Ragon's house, Cesar Birotteau, promoted to 
 be second assistant, improved his position, received a salary 
 of fifty livres oer month, and seated himself at the Radons' 
 table with joy unspeakable. The second assistant at the sign 
 of the Queen of Roses had by this time saved six hundred 
 francs, and he now had a room filled with furniture such as he 
 had for a long time coveted, in which he could keep the be- 
 longings which he had accumulated, under lock and key. On 
 Decadis,* dressed after the fashion of an epoch which affected 
 rough and homely ways, the quiet, humble peasant lad looked 
 at least the equal of other young citizens, and in this way he 
 overleaped the social barriers which in domestic life would, in 
 different times, have been raised between the peasant and the 
 trading classes. Toward the end of that year his honesty won 
 for him the control of the till. The awe-inspiring Citizeness 
 Ragon saw to his linen, and husband and wife treated him 
 like one of the family. 
 
 * Each tenth day, replacing Sunday. 
 
26 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 In Vendemiaire 1794 Cesar Birotteau, being possessed of 
 one hundred gold louis, exchanged them for six thousand 
 francs in assignats, bought rentes therewith at thirty francs, 
 paid for them when depreciated prices ruled on the Exchange, 
 and hoarded his stock-receipt with unspeakable delight. From 
 that day forward he followed the rise and fall of the funds and 
 the course of events with a secret anxiety that made his heart 
 beat fast at the tidings of every victory or defeat which marked 
 the history of that period. 
 
 At this critical period M. Ragon, sometime purveyor of 
 perfumes to her majesty Queen Marie-Antoinette, confided to 
 Cesar Birotteau his attachment to the fallen tyrants. This 
 confidence was an event of capital importance in Cesar's life. 
 The Tourangeau was transformed into a fanatical adherent of 
 royalty in the course of the evening conversations after the 
 shutters were put up, the books posted, and the streets quiet 
 without. Cesar was simply obeying his natural instincts. 
 His imagination kindled at the tale of the virtuous deeds of 
 Louis XVI., followed by anecdotes told by husband and wife 
 of the good qualities of the Queen whom they extolled. His 
 tender heart was revolted by the horrible fate of the two 
 crowned heads, struck off but a few paces from the store-door, 
 and he conceived a hatred for a system of government which 
 poured forth innocent blood that cost nothing to shed. 
 
 Commercial instincts made him quick to see the death of 
 trade in the law of maximum prices, and in political storms, 
 which always bode ill to business. In his quality of perfumer, 
 moreover, he loathed a Revolution that forbade powder and 
 was responsible for the fashion of wearing the hair cropped. 
 The tranquillity secured to the nation by an absolute monarchy 
 seemed to be the one possible condition in which life and 
 property would be safe, so he waxed zealous for a monarchy. 
 
 M. Ragon, finding so apt a disciple, made him his assistant 
 in the shop, and initiated him into the secrets of the Queen 
 of Roses. Some of the customers were the most active and 
 
CiSAR BIROTTEAU. 27 
 
 devoted of the secret agents of the Bourbons and kept up a 
 correspondence between Paris and the west. Carried away 
 by youthful enthusiasm, electrified by contact with such men 
 as Georges, La Billardiere, Montauran, Bauvan, Longuy, 
 Manda, Bernier, du Guenic, and Fontaine, Cesar flung him- 
 self into the conspiracy of the 13th Vendemiaire, when Roy- 
 alists and Terrorists combined against the dying Convention. 
 
 Cesar had the honor of warring against Napoleon on the 
 steps of the church of Saint-Roch, and was wounded at the 
 beginning of the action. Every one knows the result of this 
 attempt. The obscurity from which Barms' aide-de-camp 
 then emerged was Birotteau's salvation. A few friends carried 
 the bellicose counterhand home to the Queen of Roses, where 
 he lay in hiding in the garret, nursed by Mme. Ragon, and 
 lucky to be forgotten. Cesar's military courage had been 
 nothing but a flash. During his month of convalescence he 
 came to some sound conclusions as to the ludicrous alliance 
 of politics and perfumery. If a Royalist he remained, he 
 made up his mind that he would be simply and solely a Roy- 
 alist perfumer, that he would never compromise himself again, 
 and he threw himself body and soul into his calling. 
 
 After the 18th Brumaire, M. and Mme. Ragon, despairing 
 of the Royalist cause, determined to retire from the perfumery 
 trade, to live like respectable private citizens, and to cease 
 to meddle in politics. If they were to receive the full value 
 of their business, it behooved them to find a man who had 
 more honesty than ambition, and more homely sense than 
 brilliancy, so Ragon broached the matter to his first assistant. 
 Birotteau hesitated. He was twenty years old, with a thou- 
 sand francs a year invested in the public funds; it was his 
 ambition to go to live near Chinon as soon as he should have 
 fifteen hundred francs a year, and the First Consul, after con- 
 solidating his position at the Tuileries, should have consoli- 
 dated the national debt. He asked himself why he should 
 risk his little honestly earned independence in business. He 
 
28 CESAR BlROTTEAU. 
 
 had never expected to make so much wealth ; it was entirely 
 owing to chances which are only embraced in youth; and 
 now he was thinking of taking a wife in Touraine, a woman 
 who should have an equal fortune, so that he might buy and 
 cultivate a little property called the Treasury Farm, a bit of 
 land on which he had set longing eyes since he had come 
 to man's estate. He dreamed of adding more land to the 
 Treasury Farm, of making a thousand crowns a year, of lead- 
 ing a happy and obscure life there. He was on the point of 
 refusing the perfumer's offer when love suddenly altered his 
 former resolutions and multiplied the sum-total of his ambi- 
 tions by ten. 
 
 Since Ursule's base desertion, Cesar had led a steady life; 
 this was partly a consequence of hard work, partly a dread of 
 the risks run in pursuit of pleasure in Paris. Desire that re- 
 mains unsatisfied becomes a craving, and marriage for the 
 lower middle classes becomes a fixed idea, for it is the one 
 way open to them of winning and appropriating a woman. 
 Cesar Birotteau was in this case. The first assistant was the 
 responsible person at the Queen of Roses ; he had not a mo- 
 ment to spare for amusement. In such a life the craving is 
 still more imperatively felt ; so it happened that the apparition 
 of a handsome girl, to whom a dissipated young fellow would 
 scarcely have given a thought, was bound to make the greatest 
 impression on the steady Cesar. 
 
 One fine June day, as he was about to cross the Pont Marie 
 to the He Saint-Louis, he saw a girl standing in the doorway 
 of a corner store on the Quai d'Anjou. Constance Pillerault 
 was a forewoman in a dry goods establishment, at the sign of 
 the Little Sailor, a pioneer instance of a kind of store which 
 has since spread all over Paris, with painted signboards more 
 or less in evidence, flying flags, much display. Shawls are 
 suspended in the windows, and piles of cravats erected like 
 card castles, together with countless devices to attract custom, 
 ribbon streamers, showcards, notices of fixed prices ; optical 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 29 
 
 illusions and effects carried to the pitch of perfection which 
 has made of store windows the fairyland of commerce. 
 
 The low prices asked at the sign of the Little Sailor for the 
 goods described as " novelties " had brought this store, in 
 one of the quietest and least fashionable quarters of Paris, an 
 unheard-of influx of custom. 
 
 The aforesaid young lady behind the counter was as cele- 
 brated for her beauty as "La belle Limonadiere " of the 
 Cafe des Milles Colonnes at a later day, and not a few others 
 whose unfortunate lot it has been to attract faces, young and 
 old, more numerous than the paving-stones of Paris, to the 
 windows of milliners' stores and cafes. The first assistant 
 from the Queen of Roses, whose life was spent between Saint- 
 Roch and the Rue de la Sourdiere, in the daily routine of 
 the perfumery business, did not so much as suspect the exist- 
 ence of the Little Sailor, for retailers in Paris know very 
 little of each other. 
 
 Cesar was so violently smitten with the beautiful Constance 
 that he hurried tempestuously into the Little Sailor to bargain 
 for a half-dozen linen shirts. Long did he haggle over the 
 price, bale after bale of linen was displayed for his inspection ; 
 he behaved exactly like an Englishwoman in a humor for 
 shopping. The young lady condescended to interest herself 
 in Cesar's purchase ; perceiving, by certain signs which women 
 understand, that he had come to the shop more for the sake 
 of the saleswoman than for her goods. He gave his name 
 and address to the young lady, who became quite indifferent 
 to the customer's admiration as soon as he had made his pur- 
 chase. The poor assistant had done but little to gain Ursule's 
 good graces ; if he had been sheepish then, love now made 
 him more sheepish still ; he did not dare to say a syllable, 
 and was, moreover, too much dazzled to note the indifference 
 which succeeded to the smiles of this siren of commerce. 
 
 Every evening for a week he took up his post before the 
 Little Sailor, hanging about for a glance as a dog waits for a 
 
30 CESAR BlROTTEAtJ. 
 
 bone at a kitchen-door ; regardless of the gibes in which the 
 clerks and saleswomen indulged at his expense ; making way 
 meekly for customers or passers-by, watchful of every little 
 change that took place in the store. A few days later, he 
 again entered the paradise where his angel dwelt, not so 
 much to purchase pocket-handkerchiefs of her as with a view 
 of communicating a luminous idea to the angel's mind. 
 
 " If you should require any perfumery, mademoiselle," he 
 remarked, as he paid the bill, " I could supply you in the 
 same way." 
 
 Constance Pillerault daily received brilliant proposals in 
 which there was never any mention of marriage ; and though 
 her heart was as pure as her white forehead, it was not until 
 the indefatigable Cesar had proved his love by six months of 
 strategical operations that she deigned to receive his atten- 
 tions. Even then she would not commit herself. Prudence 
 had been demanded of her by the multitudinous number of 
 her admirers — wholesale wine merchants, well-to-do bar- 
 keepers, and others, who made eyes at her. The lover found 
 a supporter in her guardian, M. Claude-Joseph Pillerault, an 
 iron-monger on the Quai de la Ferraille, a discovery made by 
 the secret espionage which is pre-eminently a lover's shift. 
 
 In this rapid sketch, it is impossible to describe the delights 
 of this harmless Parisian love-intrigue ; the little extravagances 
 characteristic of the clerk — the first melons of the season, the 
 little dinners at Venua's, followed by the theatre, the drives 
 into the country in a cab on Sunday — must be passed over in 
 silence. Cesar was not a positively handsome young fellow, 
 but there was nothing in his appearance to repel love. Life 
 in Paris and days spent in a dark store had toned down the 
 high color natural to the peasant lad. His thick, black hair, 
 his Norman breadth of shoulder, his sturdy limbs, his simple, 
 straightforward look, all contributed to prepossess people in 
 his favor. Uncle Pillerault, the responsible guardian of his 
 brother's child, made various inquiries about the Tourangeau, 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 31 
 
 and gave his consent; and, in the fair month of May, 1800, 
 Mile. Pillerault promised to marry Cesar Birotteau. He 
 nearly fainted with joy when Constance-Barbe-Josephine 
 accepted him as her husband under a lime tree at Sceaux. 
 
 "You will have a good husband, my little girl," said M. 
 Pillerault. "He has a warm heart and sentiments of honor. 
 He is as straight as a line, and as good as the Child Jesus ; 
 he is a king of men, in short." 
 
 Constance put away once and for all the dreams of a 
 brilliant future, which, like most store-girls, she had some- 
 times indulged. She meant to be a faithful wife and a good 
 mother, and took up this life in accordance with the religious 
 programme of the middle classes. After all, this part suited 
 her ideas much better than the dangerous vanities tempting 
 to a youthful Parisian imagination. Constance's intelligence 
 was a narrow one ; she was the typical small tradesman's wife, 
 who always grumbles a little over her work, who refuses a 
 thing at the outset, and is vexed when she is taken at her 
 word ; whose restless activity takes all things, from cash-box 
 to kitchen, as its province, and supervises everything, from 
 the weightiest business transactions down to almost invisible 
 darns in the household linen. Such a woman scolds while 
 she loves, and can only conceive ideas of the very simplest ; 
 only the small change, as it were, of thought passes current 
 with her ; she argues about everything, lives in chronic fear 
 of the unknown, makes constant forecasts, and is always 
 thinking of the future. Her statuesque yet girlish beauty, 
 her engaging looks, her freshness, prevented Cesar from think- 
 ing of her shortcomings ; and, moreover, she made up for 
 them by a woman's sensitive conscientiousness, an excessive 
 thrift, by her fanatical love of work, and genius as a sales- 
 woman. 
 
 Constance was just eighteen years old, and the possessor of 
 eleven thousand francs. Cesar, in whom love had developed 
 the most unbounded ambition, bought the perfumery business, 
 
32 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 and transplanted the Queen of Roses to a handsome store 
 near the Place Vendome. He was only twenty-one years of age, 
 married to a beautiful and adored wife, and almost the owner 
 of his establishment, for he had paid three-fourths of the 
 amount. He saw (how should he have seen otherwise ?) the 
 future in fair colors, which seemed fairer still as he measured 
 his career from its starting-point. 
 
 Roguin (Ragon's notary) drew up the marriage-contract, and 
 gave sage counsels to the young perfumer ; he it was who in- 
 terfered when the latter was about to complete the purchase 
 of the business with his wife's money. " Just keep the money 
 by you, my boy ; ready money is sometimes a handy thing in 
 a business," he had said. 
 
 Birotteau gazed at the notary in admiration, fell into the 
 habit of consulting him, and made a friend of Roguin. Like 
 Ragon and Pillerault, he had so much faith in notaries as a 
 class that he placed himself in Roguin's hands without admit- 
 ting a doubt of him. Thanks to this advice, Cesar started 
 business with the eleven thousand francs brought him by Con- 
 stance; and would not have "changed places" with the 
 First Consul, however brilliant Napoleon's lot might seem 
 to be. 
 
 At first the Birotteau establishment had but one servant- 
 maid. They lodged on the mezzanine floor above the store. 
 In this sort of den, passably furnished by an upholsterer, the 
 newly wedded pair entered upon a perennial honeymoon. 
 Mine. Cesar at her cash desk was a marvel to see. Her 
 famous beauty exercised an enormous influence on the sales ; 
 the dandies of the Empire talked of nothing but the lovely 
 Mme. Birotteau. If Cesar's political principles were tainted 
 with royalism, it was acknowledged that his business princi- 
 ples were above suspicion ; and if some of his fellow-tradesmen 
 envied him his luck, he was believed to deserve it. That 
 shot on the steps of the church of Saint-Roch had gained him 
 a certain reputation — he was looked upon as a brave man, and 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 38 
 
 a man deep in political secrets ; though he had nothing of a 
 soldier's courage in his composition, and not even a rudi- 
 mentary political notion in his head. 
 
 On these data the good folk of the arrondissement made 
 him a captain of the National Guard, but he was cashiered by 
 Napoleon (according to Birotteau, that matter of Vendemiaire 
 still rankled in the First Consul's mind), and thenceforward 
 Cesar was invested with a certain halo of martyrdom, cheaply 
 acquired, which made him interesting to opponents and gave 
 him a certain importance. 
 
 Here, in brief, is the history of this household, so happy in 
 itself, and disturbed by none but the ever-recurring business 
 cares. 
 
 During the first year, Cesar instructed his wife in all the 
 ins and outs of the perfumery business, which she was ad- 
 mirably quick to grasp ; she might have been brought into the 
 world for that sole purpose, so well did she adapt herself to 
 her customers. The result of the stocktaking at the end of 
 the year alarmed the ambitious perfumer. After deducting all 
 expenses, he might perhaps hope, in twenty years' time, to 
 make the modest sum of a hundred thousand francs, the price 
 of his felicity. He determined then and there to find some 
 speedier road to fortune, and, by way of a beginning, to be a 
 manufacturer as well as a retailer. 
 
 Acting against his wife's counsel, he took the lease of a 
 shed on some building land in the Faubourg du Temple, and 
 painted up thereon, in huge letters, Cesar Birotteau' s Fac- 
 tory. He enticed a workman from Grasse, and with him 
 began to manufacture several kinds of soap, essences, and 
 eau-de-cologne, on the system of half-profits. The partnership 
 only lasted six months and ended in a loss, which he had to 
 sustain alone ; but Birotteau did not lose heart. He meant to 
 obtain a result at any price, if it were only to escape a scold- 
 ing from his wife ; and, indeed, he confessed to her afterward 
 that, in those days of despair, his head used to boil like a pot 
 3 
 
34 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 on the fire, and that many a time, but for his religious princi- 
 ples, he would have thrown himself into the Seine. 
 
 One day, depressed by several unsuccessful experiments, 
 he was sauntering home to dinner along the boulevards (the 
 lounger in Paris is a man in despair quite as often as a genuine 
 idler), when a book among a basketful at six sous a piece 
 caught his attention ; his eyes were attracted by the yellow, 
 dusty title-page. It ran, "Abdeker, or the Art of Preserving 
 Beauty." 
 
 Birotteau took up the work. It claimed to be a transla- 
 tion from the Arabic, but in reality it was a sort of romance 
 written by a physician in the previous century. Cesar hap- 
 pened to stumble upon a passage therein which treated of per- 
 fumes, and, with his back against a tree in the boulevard, he 
 turned the pages over till he reached a footnote, wherein the 
 learned author discoursed of the nature of the dermis and 
 epidermis. The writer showed conclusively that such and 
 such an unguent or soap often produced an effect exactly op- 
 posite to that intended, and the ointment, or the soap, acted 
 as a tonic upon a skin that required a lenitive treatment, or 
 vice vers 5,. 
 
 Birotteau saw a fortune in the book, and bought it. Yet, 
 feeling little confidence in his unaided lights, he went to Vau- 
 quelin, the celebrated chemist, and in all simplicity asked 
 him how to compose a double cosmetic which should produce 
 the required effect upon the human epidermis in either case. 
 The really learned — men so truly great in this sense that they 
 can never receive in their lifetime all the fame that should 
 reward vast labors like theirs — are almost always helpful and 
 kindly to the poor in intellect. So it was with Vauquelin. 
 He came to the assistance of the perfumer, gave him a formula 
 for a paste to whiten the hands, and allowed him to style him- 
 self its inventor. It was this cosmetic that Birotteau called 
 the Superfine Pate des Sultanes. The more thoroughly to 
 accomplish his purpose, he used the recipe for the paste for a 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 35 
 
 wash for the complexion, which he called the Carminative 
 Toilet Lotion. 
 
 He took a hint from the Little Sailor, and was the first 
 among perfumers to make the lavish use of placards, hand- 
 bills, and divers kinds of advertisements, which, perhaps not 
 undeservedly, are called quackery. The Pate des Sultanes 
 and the Carminative Toilet Lotion were introduced to the 
 polite world and to commerce by gorgeous placards, with the 
 words Approved by the Institute at the head. The effect 
 of this formula, employed thus for the first time, was magical. 
 Not France only, but the face of Europe was covered with 
 flaming proclamations, yellow, scarlet, and blue, which in- 
 formed the world that the sovereign lord of the Queen of 
 Roses manufactured, kept in stock, and supplied everything 
 in his line of business at moderate charges. 
 
 At a time when the east was the one topic of conversation, 
 in a country where every man has a natural turn for the part 
 of a sultan, and every woman is no less minded to become a 
 sultana, the idea of giving to any cosmetic such a name as the 
 Pate des Sultanes might have occurred to any ordinary man, 
 it needed no cleverness to foresee its fascination ; but the 
 public always judges by results, and Birotteau's reputation 
 for business ability but grew the more when he indited a pros- 
 pectus, and the very absurdity of its language contributed to 
 its success. In France we only laugh at men and things who 
 are talked about, and those who fail to make any mark are not 
 talked about. So although Birotteau's stupidity was real and 
 not feigned, people gave him credit for playing the fool on 
 purpose. 
 
 A copy of the prospectus has been procured, not without 
 difficulty, by the house of Popinot & Co., druggists in the 
 Rue des Lombards. In a more elevated connection this 
 curious piece of rhetoric would be styled an historical docu- 
 ment, and valued for the light that it sheds on contemporary 
 manners. Here, therefore, it is given : 
 
36 CESAR BIROTTEAUi 
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU'S 
 
 SUPERFINE PATE DES SULTANES 
 
 AND 
 
 CARMINATIVE TOILET LOTION. 
 
 A Marvelous Discovery ! 
 
 Approved by the Institute. 
 
 " For some time past a preparation for the hands and a toilet lotion 
 more efficacious than Eau-de-Cologne have been generally desired by 
 both sexes throughout Europe. After devoting long nights to the study 
 of the dermis and epidermis of both sexes — for both attach, and with 
 reason, the greatest importance to the softness, suppleness, bloom, and 
 delicate surface of the skin — M. Birotteau, a perfumer of high standing 
 and well known in the capital and abroad, has invented two preparations, 
 which from their first appearance have been deservedly called ' marvel- 
 ous ' by people of the highest fashion in Paris. Both preparations possess 
 astonishing properties, and act upon the skin without bringing about pre- 
 mature wrinkles, the inevitable result of the rash use of the drugs hitherto 
 compounded by ignorance and cupidity. 
 
 " These inventions are based upon the difference of temperaments, 
 which are divided into two great classes, are indicated by the difference 
 of color in the pate and the lotion; the rose-colored preparations being 
 intended for the dermis and epidermis of persons of lymphatic constitu- 
 tion, and the white for those endowed with a sanguine temperament. 
 
 " The pate is called the Pate des Sultanes, because the specific was 
 in the first instance invented for the Seraglio by an Arab physician. It 
 has been approved by the Institute on the report of our illustrious chemist 
 Vauquelin, and the lotion, likewise approved, is compounded upon the 
 same principles. 
 
 " The Pate des Sultanes, an invaluable preparation, which exhales the 
 sweetest fragrance, dissipates the most obstinate freckles, whitens the skin 
 in the most stubborn cases, and represses the perspiration of the hand 
 from which women suffer no less than men. 
 
 "The Carminative Toilet Lotion removes the slight pimples 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 37 
 
 which sometimes appear inopportunely on ladies' faces and contravene 
 their projects for the ball ; it refreshes and revives the color by opening 
 or closing the pores of the skin in accordance with the exigencies of the 
 temperament, while its efficacy in arresting the ravages of time is so well 
 known already that many ladies, out of gratitude, call it the Friend of 
 Beauty. 
 
 " Eau-de-Cologne is purely and simply an ordinary perfume without 
 special efficacy, while the Superfine Pate des Sultanes and the Carmina- 
 tive Toilet Lotion are two active remedies, powerful agents, perfectly 
 harmless in their operation of seconding the efforts of nature ; their per- 
 fumes, essentially balsamic and exhilarating, admirably refresh the animal 
 spirits, and charm and revive ideas. Their merits are as marvelous as 
 their simplicity ; in short, to woman they offer an added charm, while a 
 means of attraction is put within the reach of man. 
 
 " The daily use of the Carminative Toilet Lotion allays the smarting 
 sensation caused by shaving, while it keeps the lips red and smooth, and 
 prevents chapping; it gradually dissipates freckles by natural means; 
 and, finally, it restores tone to the complexion. These results are the signs 
 of that perfect equilibrium of the humors of the body, which insures 
 immunity from the migraine to those who are subject to that distressing 
 complaint. In short, the Carminative Toilet Lotion, which may be used 
 in all the operations of the toilet, is a preventive of cutaneous affections, 
 by permitting free transpiration through the tissues, while imparting a per- 
 manent bloom to the skin. 
 
 " All communications should be prepaid and addressed to M. Cesar 
 Birotteau (late Ragon), Perfumer toherlate majesty Queen Marie-Antoin- 
 ette, at the Queen of Roses, Rue Saint-Honor6, near the Place Vendome, 
 Paris. 
 
 " The price of the Pate is three Uv res per tablet, and of the Toilet I otion, 
 six livres per bottle. 
 
 "To prevent fraudulent imitations, M. Birotteau warns the public that 
 the wrapper of every tablet bears his signature, and that his name is 
 stamped on every bottle of the Toilet Lotion." 
 
 The success of this scheme was due, as a matter of fact 
 (though Cesar did not suspect it), to Constance, who pro- 
 posed that they should send sample cases of the Carminative 
 Toilet Lotion and the Superfine Pate des Sultanes to every 
 
38 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 perfumer in France or abroad, offering, at the same time, a 
 discount of thirty per cent, as an inducement to take a gross 
 of either article at a time? 
 
 The Pate and the Lotion were really better than similar 
 cosmetics, and the simple were attracted by that distinction 
 made between the two temperaments. The discount was 
 tempting to hundreds of perfumers all over France, and each 
 would take annually three hundred gross or more of both 
 preparations ; and, if the profits on each article were small, 
 the demand was great and the output enormous. Cesar was 
 able to buy the sheds and the plot of land in the Faubourg du 
 Temple. He built a large factory there, and had the Queen 
 of Roses magnificently decorated. The household began to 
 feel the small comforts of an easier existence, and the wife 
 quaked less than heretofore. 
 
 In 1810 Mme. Cesar predicted a rise in house rents. At 
 her instance her husband took the lease of the whole house 
 above the store, and they removed from the mezzanine floor 
 (where they had begun housekeeping together) to the second 
 floor. A piece of luck which befell them about that time 
 decided Constance to shut her eyes to Birotteau's follies in 
 the matter of decorating a room for her. The perfumer was 
 made a judge of the Tribunal of Commerce. It was his char- 
 acter for integrity and conscientiousness, together with the 
 esteem in which he was held, that gained this dignity for 
 him ; thenceforward he must be considered as a notable among 
 the tradesmen of Paris. 
 
 He used to rise at five o'clock in the morning to read 
 handbooks on jurisprudence and works which treated of 
 commercial law. With his instinct for fair dealing, his up- 
 rightness, his readiness to take trouble — all qualities essential 
 for the appreciation of the knotty points submitted to arbitra- 
 tion — he was one of the most highly esteemed judges in the 
 Tribunal. His faults contributed no less to his reputation. 
 Cesar was so conscious of his inferiority that he was readv 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 39 
 
 and willing to take his colleagues' opinion, and they were 
 flattered by the attention with which he listened to them. 
 Some of them thought a good deal of the silent approbation 
 of such a listener, reputed to be a hard-headed man; others 
 were delighted with his amiability and modesty, and extolled 
 him on those grounds. Those amenable to his jurisdiction 
 lauded his benevolence and conciliatory spirit, and he was 
 often called in to act as arbitrator in disputes wherein his 
 homely sense suggested to him a kind of Cadi's justice. 
 
 He managed to invent and use throughout his term of office 
 a style of his own ; it was stuffed with platitudes, interspersed 
 with trite sayings, and pieces of reasoning rounded into 
 phrases which came out without effort, and sounded like 
 eloquence in the ears of shallow people. In this way he com- 
 mended himself to the naturally mediocre majority, con- 
 demned to penal servitude for life and to views of the earth 
 earthy. 
 
 Cesar lost so much time at the Tribunal that his wife put 
 pressure upon him, and thenceforward he declined the costly 
 honor. 
 
 In the year 1813 this household, thanks to its constant 
 unity, after plodding along through life in a humdrum fashion, 
 entered upon an era of prosperity which nothing seemingly 
 ought to check. 
 
 M. and Mme. Ragon (their predecessors), Uncle Pillerault, 
 Roguin the notary, the Matifats (druggists in the Rue des 
 Lombards who supplied the Queen of Roses), Joseph Lebas 
 (a retail draper, a leading light in the Rue Saint-Denis, suc- 
 cessor to Guillaume at the Cat and Racket), Judge Popinot 
 (Mme. Ragon's brother), Chiffreville (of the firm of Protez 
 & Chiffreville), M. Cochin (a clerk of the Treasury, and a 
 sleeping partner in Matifat's business), his wife, Mme. Cochin, 
 and the Abbe Loraux (confessor and director of the devout 
 among this little circle) made up, with one or two others, the 
 number of their acquaintance. Cesar Birotteau might be a 
 
CO CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Royalist, but public opinion at that time was in his favor ; 
 and, though he had scarcely a hundred thousand francs beside 
 his business, was looked upon as a very wealthy man. His 
 steady-going ways, his punctuality, his habit of paying ready 
 money for everything, of never discounting bills, while he 
 would take paper to oblige a customer of whom he was sure- 
 all these things, together with his readiness to oblige, had 
 brought him a great reputation. And not only so ; he had 
 really made a good deal of money, but the building of his 
 factories had absorbed most of it, and he paid nearly twenty 
 thousand francs a year in rent. The education of their only 
 daughter, whom Constance and Cesar both idolized, had been 
 a heavy expense. Neither the husband nor the wife thought 
 of money where Cesarine's pleasure was concerned, and they 
 had never brought themselves to part with her. 
 
 Imagine the delight of the poor peasant-parvenu when he 
 heard his charming Cesarine play a sonata by Steibelt or sing 
 a ballad ; when he saw her writing French correctly, or mak- 
 ing sepia drawings of landscape, or listened while she read 
 aloud from the Racines, father and son, and explained the 
 beauties of the poetry. What happiness it was for him to live 
 again in this fair, innocent flower, not yet plucked from the 
 parent stem ; this angel, over whose growing graces and ear- 
 liest development they had watched with such passionate ten- 
 derness ; this only child, incapable of despising her father or 
 of laughing at his want of education, so much was she his 
 little daughter. 
 
 When Cesar came to Paris he had known how to read, 
 write, and cipher, and at that point his education had been 
 arrested. There had been no opportunity in his hard-working 
 life of acquiring new ideas and information beyond the per- 
 fumery trade. He had spent his time among folk to whom 
 science and literature were matters of indifference, and whose 
 knowledge was of a limited and special kind ; he himself, 
 having no time to spare for loftier studies, became perforce a 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 41 
 
 practical man. He adopted (how should he have done other- 
 wise ?) the language, errors, and opinions of the Parisian 
 tradesman who admires Moliere, Voltaire, and Rousseau on 
 hearsay, and buys their works, but never opens them ; who 
 will have it that the proper way to pronounce armoire is 
 ormoire : or means gold and moire means silk, and women's 
 dresses used almost always to be made of silk, and in their 
 cupboards they locked up silk and gold — therefore, ormoire is 
 right and armoire (closet) is an innovation. Talma, Mile. 
 Mars, and other actors and actresses were millionaires ten 
 times over, and did not live like ordinary mortals : the great 
 tragedian lived on raw meat, and Mile. Mars would have a 
 fricassee of pearls now and then — an idea she had taken from 
 some celebrated Egyptian actress. As to the Emperor, his 
 vest pockets were lined with leather, so that he could take a 
 handful of snuff at a time; he used to ride at full gallop up 
 the staircase of the orangery at Versailles. Authors and artists 
 ended in the workhouse, the natural close to their eccentric 
 careers ; they were, every one of them, atheists into the bar- 
 gain, so that you had to be very careful not to admit anybody 
 of that sort into your house. Joseph Lebas used to advert 
 with horror to the story of his sister-in-law Augustine who 
 married the artist Sommervieux. Astronomers lived on spiders. 
 These bright examples of the attitude of the bourgeois mind 
 toward philology, the drama, politics, and science will throw 
 light upon its breadth of view and powers of comprehension. 
 
 Let a poet pass along the Rue des Lombards, and some 
 stray sweet scent shall set him dreaming of the east ; for him, 
 with the odor of the Khuskus grass, would come a vision of 
 Nautch girls in an eastern bath. The brilliant red lac would 
 call up thoughts of Vedic hymns, of alien creeds and castes ; 
 and at a chance contact with an ivory tusk, he would mount 
 an elephant and make love, like the king of Lahore, in a 
 muslin-curtained howdah. 
 
 But the petty tradesman does not so much as know whence 
 
42 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 the raw materials of his business are brought. Of natural 
 history or of chemistry, Birotteau the perfumer, for instance, 
 knew nothing whatever. It is true that he regarded Vauquelin 
 as a great man, but Vauquelin was an exception. Cesar him- 
 self was about on a par with the retired grocer, who summed 
 up a discussion on the ways of growing tea by announcing 
 with a knowing air that " there are only two ways of obtain- 
 ing tea — from Havre or by the overland route." And Bi- 
 rotteau thought that aloes and opium were only to be found in 
 the Rue des Lombards. People told you that attar of roses 
 came from Constantinople, but, like Eau-de-Cologne, it was 
 made in Paris. These names of foreign places were humbug; 
 they had been invented to amuse the French nation, who 
 cannot abide anything that is made in France. A French 
 merchant has to call his discovery an English invention, or 
 people will not buy it ; it is just the same in England, the 
 druggists there tell you that things come from France. 
 
 Yet Cesar was not altogether a fool or a dunce ; an honest 
 and kind heart shed a lustre over everything that he did and 
 made his a worthy life, and a kindly deed absolves all possible 
 forms of ignorance. His unvarying success gave him assur- 
 ance ; and, in Paris, assurance, the sign of power, is taken 
 for power itself. 
 
 Cesar's wife, who had learned to know her husband's char- 
 acter during the early years of their marriage, led a life of 
 perpetual terror ; she represented sound sense and foresight 
 in the partnership; she was doubt, opposition, and fear; 
 while Cesar represented boldness, ambition, activity, the 
 element of chance and undreamed-of good-luck. In spite of 
 appearances, the merchant was the weaker vessel, and it was 
 the wife who really had the patience and courage. So it had 
 come to pass that a timid mediocrity, without education, 
 knowledge, or strength of character, a being who could in no- 
 wise have succeeded in the world's slipperiest places, was taken 
 for a remarkable man, a man of spirit and resolution, thanks 
 
CtSAR BIROTTEAU. 43 
 
 to his Instinctive uprightness and sense of justice, to the good- 
 ness of a truly Christian soul, and love for the one woman 
 who had been his. 
 
 The public only sees results. Of all Cesar's circle, only 
 Pillerault and Judge Popinot saw beneath the surface; none 
 of the rest could pronounce on his character. Those twenty 
 or thirty friends, moreover, who met at one another's houses, 
 retailed the same platitudes, repeated the same stale common- 
 places, and each one among them regarded himself as superior 
 to his company. There was a rivalry among the women in 
 dinners and dress ; each one summed up her husband in some 
 contemptuous word. 
 
 Mme. Birotteau alone had the good sense to show respect 
 and deference to her husband in public. She saw in him the 
 man who, in spite of his private weaknesses, had made the 
 wealth and earned the esteem which she shared along with him ; 
 though she sometimes privately wondered if all men who 
 were spoken of as superior intellects were like her husband. 
 This attitude of hers contributed not a little to maintain the 
 respect and esteem shown by others to the merchant, in a 
 country where wives are quick-witted enough to belittle their 
 husbands and to complain of them. 
 
 The first days of the year 1814, so fatal to Imperial France, 
 were memorable in the Birotteau household for two events, 
 which would have passed almost unnoticed anywhere else; 
 but they were of a kind to leave a deep impression on simple 
 souls like Cesar and his wife, who, looking back upon their 
 past, found no painful memories. 
 
 They had engaged a young man of two-and-twenty, Fer- 
 dinand du Tillet by name, as first assistant. The lad had 
 come to them from another house in the perfumery trade, 
 where they had declined to give him a percentage on the 
 profits. He was thought to be a genius, and he had been very 
 anxious to go to the Queen of Roses, knowing the place, and 
 the people, and their ways. Birotteau had engaged him at a 
 
44 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 salary of a thousand francs, meaning that du Tillet should be 
 his successor. This Ferdinand du Tillet was destined to ex- 
 ercise so great an influence over the family fortunes that a few 
 words must be said about him. 
 
 He had begun life simply on his Christian name of Ferdi- 
 nand. There was an immense advantage in anonymity, he 
 thought, at a time when Napoleon was pressing the young men 
 of every family into the army ; but if he had no name, he had 
 been born somewhere, and owed his birth to some cruel or 
 voluptuous fancy. Here, in brief, are the few facts known as 
 to his name and designation. 
 
 In 1793 a poor girl of Tillet, a little hamlet near the An- 
 delys, bore a child one night in the cure's garden at Tillet, 
 tapped on the shutters, and then drowned herself. The good 
 man received the child, named him after the saint of that day 
 in the calendar, and reared him as if he had been his own son. 
 In 1804 the cure died, and the little property that he left was 
 insufficient to complete the education thus begun. Ferdinand, 
 thrown upon Paris, there led the life of a freebooter, amid 
 chances that might bring him to the scaffold or to fortune, to 
 the bar, the army, commerce, or private life. Ferdinand, 
 compelled to live like a very Figaro, first became a commer- 
 cial traveler, then, after traveling round France and seeing 
 life, became a perfumer's assistant, with a fixed determination 
 to make his way at all costs. In 181 3 he considered it ex- 
 pedient to ascertain his age and to acquire a status as a citizen ; 
 he, therefore, petitioned the Tribunal of the Andelys to 
 transfer the entry of his baptism from the church records to 
 the mayor's register; and, further, he asked that they should 
 insert the surname of du Tillet, which he had assumed, on 
 the ground of his exposure at birth in the commune of that 
 name. 
 
 He had neither father nor mother; he had no guardian save 
 the procureur-imperial ; he was alone in the world, and owed 
 no account of himself to any one ; society was to him a harsh 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 45 
 
 stepdame, and he showed no mercy in his dealings with so- 
 ciety, knew no guide but his own interests, found all means 
 of success permissible. The Norman, armed with these dan- 
 gerous capacities, combined with his desire to succeed the 
 crabbed faults for which the natives of his province are, rightly 
 or wrongly, blamed. Beneath his insinuating manner there 
 was a contentious spirit ; he was a most formidable antagonist 
 — a blustering litigant, disputing another's least rights auda- 
 ciously, while he never yielded a point himself. He had time 
 on his side, and wearied out his opponents by his inflexible 
 pertinacity. His principal merits were those of the Scapins 
 of old comedy ; he possessed their fertility of resource, their 
 skill in sailing near the wind, their itch to seize on what seems 
 good to have and hold. Indeed, he meant to apply to his 
 poverty a motto which the Abbe Terray applied in statecraft ; 
 he would make a clean record by turning honest at some 
 time later on. 
 
 He was endowed with strenuous energy, with the military 
 intrepidity which demands good deeds or bad indifferently of 
 everybody, justifying his demand by the theory of personal 
 interest ; he was bound to succeed ; he had too great a scorn 
 of human nature ; he believed too firmly that all men have 
 their price ; he was too little troubled by scruples as to the 
 choice of means, when all were alike permissible ; his eyes 
 were too fixedly set upon the success and wealth that should 
 purchase absolution for a system of morals which worked thus 
 not to be successful. 
 
 Such a man, between the convict's prison on the one hand 
 and millions upon the other, must of necessity become vindic 
 tive, domineering, swift in his decisions, a dissembling Crom- 
 well scheming to cut off the head of probity. A light, mock- 
 ing wit concealed the depth of his character; mere clerk 
 though he was, his ambition knew no bounds ; he had com- 
 prehended society in one glance of hatred, and said to himself, 
 " You are in my power." He had vowed that he would not 
 
46 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 marry before he was forty years old. He kept his word with 
 himself. 
 
 As to Ferdinand's outward appearance, he was a slim, well- 
 shaped young fellow, with adaptable manners that enabled 
 him at need to take any tone through the whole gamut of 
 society. At first sight his weasel face was not displeasing ; 
 but, after more observation, you detected the strange expres- 
 sions which are visible on the surface of those who are not at 
 peace with themselves, or who hear at times the warning 
 voice of conscience. His hard, high color glowed under the 
 soft Norman skin. There was a furtive look in the wall-eyes, 
 lined with silver leaf, which grew terrible when they were 
 fixed full on his victim. His voice was husky, as if he had 
 been speaking for long. The thin lips were not unpleasing, 
 but the sharply-pointed nose and slightly-rounded forehead 
 revealed a defect of race. Indeed, the coloring of his hair, 
 which looked as if it had been dyed black, indicated the 
 social half-breed, who had his cleverness from a dissolute 
 great lord, his low ideas from the peasant girl, the victim of 
 seduction ; who owed his knowledge to an incomplete educa- 
 tion ; whose vices were those of the waif and stray. 
 
 Birotteau learned, to his unbounded amazement, that his 
 assistant went out very elegantly arrayed, came in very late, 
 and went to balls at bankers' and notaries' houses. These 
 habits found no favor with Cesar. To his way of thinking 
 an assistant should study the ledgers and think of nothing 
 but the business. The perfumer had no patience with folly. 
 He spoke gently to du Tillet about wearing such fine linen, 
 about visiting cards, which bore the name F. du Tillet — 
 manners and customs which, according to his commercial 
 jurisprudence, should be confined to the fashionable world. 
 
 But Ferdinand had established himself in this house to play 
 Tartuffe to Birotteau's Orgon ; he paid court to Mme. Cesar, 
 tried to seduce her, and, gauging his employer with appalling 
 quickness, judged him as his wife had previously judged. Du 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 4$ 
 
 Tillet only said what he meant to say, and was both reserved 
 and discreet; but he unveiled opinions of mankind and views 
 of life in a fashion that dismayed a timorous, conscientious 
 woman, who thought it a sin to do the slightest wrong to her 
 neighbor. In spite of the tact which Mine. Birotteau em- 
 ployed, du Tillet felt her contempt for him ; and Constance, 
 to whom Ferdinand had written several amorous epistles, soon 
 noticed a change in the manners of her assistant. He began 
 to behave presumptuously, to give others the impression that 
 there was an understanding between them. Without inform- 
 ing her husband of her private reasons, she recommended him 
 to dismiss the man, and Birotteau was of his wife's opinion 
 on this head. Du Tillet's dismissal was resolved upon ; but 
 one evening, on the Saturday before he gave notice, Birotteau 
 balanced his books, as he was wont to do every month, and 
 found that he was three thousand francs short. He was in 
 terrible consternation. It was not so much the actual loss 
 that affected him as the suspicion that hung over his three 
 assistants and the servant, the errand boy, and the workmen. 
 On whom was he to lay the blame? Mme. Birotteau was 
 never away from the cash desk. The book-keeper, who 
 lodged in the house, was a young man of eighteen, Popinot 
 byname, a nephew of M. Ragon, and honesty itself. Indeed, 
 on Popinot's own showing the money was missing, for the 
 cash did not agree with the balance. Husband and wife 
 agreed to say nothing, and to watch every one in the house. 
 
 Monday came, and their friends came to spend the evening. 
 Every family in this set entertained in turn. While they 
 played at cards, Roguin the notary put down on the table 
 one old louis-d'or which Mme. Cesar had taken some days 
 before of a bride, Mme. d'Espart. 
 
 "Have you been robbing the poor-box?" asked the per- 
 fumer, laughing. 
 
 Roguin said that he had won the money of du Tillet at a 
 banker's house on the previous evening, and du Tillet bore 
 
48 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 him out in this without a blush. As for the perfumer, he 
 turned crimson. When the visitors had gone, and Ferdinand 
 was about to go to bed, Birotteau called him down into the 
 shop, on pretense of business to discuss. 
 
 " We are three thousand francs short in the cash, du Tillet," 
 the good man said, "and I cannot suspect anybody. The 
 matter of the old louis-d'or seems to be too much against you 
 to be passed over entirely, so we will not go to bed till we 
 have found out the mistake, for, after all, it can be nothing 
 but a mistake. Very likely you took the louis on account of 
 your salary." 
 
 Du Tillet owned to having taken the louis. The perfumer 
 thereupon opened the ledger ; the assistant's account had not 
 yet been debited with the sum. 
 
 " I was in a hurry. I ought to have asked Popinot to enter 
 it," said Ferdinand. 
 
 " Quite true," said Birotteau, disconcerted by this off-hand 
 coolness. The Norman had taken the measure of the good 
 folk among whom he had come with a view to making his 
 fortune. 
 
 The perfumer and his assistant spent the night in checking 
 the books, the worthy merchant knowing all the while that it 
 was trouble thrown away. As he came and went he slipped 
 three bank-notes of a thousand francs each into the safe, 
 pressing them between the side of the drawer and the groove 
 in the safe ; then he pretended to be tired out, seemed to be 
 fast asleep, and snored. Du Tillet awakened him in triumph, 
 and showed exaggerated delight over the discovery of the 
 mistake. 
 
 The next morning Birotteau scolded little Popinot and 
 Mme. Cesar in public, and waxed wrathful over their care- 
 lessness. 
 
 A fortnight later, Ferdinand du Tillet entered a stock- 
 broker's office. The perfumery trade did not suit him, he 
 said ; he wanted to study banking. At the same time, he 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 49 
 
 spoke of Mme. Cesar in a way that gave the impression that 
 motives of jealousy had procured his dismissal. 
 
 A few months later du Tillet came to see his late employer, 
 and asked him to be his surety- for twenty thousand francs, to 
 complete the guarantees required in a matter which was to 
 put him in the way of making his fortune. Seeing Birotteau's 
 surprise at this piece of effrontery, du Tillet scowled and 
 asked the perfumer whether he had no confidence in him. 
 Matifat and two men with whom Birotteau did business were 
 there at the time ; his indignation did not escape them, 
 though he controlled his anger in their presence. Perhaps 
 du Tillet had returned to honesty ; a gambling debt or some 
 woman in distress might have been at the root of that error 
 of his ; and the fact that an honest man publicly declined 
 to have anything to do with him might launch a man, still 
 young, and perhaps penitent, on a career of crime and mis- 
 fortune. The angel of mercy took up the pen and set his 
 signature on du Tibet's papers, saying as he did so that he 
 was heartily glad to do a small service for a lad who had 
 been very useful to him. The color came into the good 
 man's face as he told that kindly lie. Du Tillet could not 
 meet his eyes, and doubtless at that moment vowed an eternal 
 enmity, the truceless hate that the angels of darkness bear the 
 angels of light. 
 
 Du Tillet kept his balance so skillfully upon the tight-rope 
 of speculation that he was always fashionably dressed, and 
 was apparently rich long before he was rich in reality. When 
 he set up a cabriolet he never put it down again ; he held 
 his own in the lofty spheres where pleasure and business are 
 mingled, among the Turcarets of the epoch for whom the 
 crush-room of the opera is a branch of the Stock Exchange. 
 
 Thanks to Mme. Roguin, whom he had met among the 
 
 Birotteaus' circle, he became rapidly known in high financial 
 
 regions. Ferdinand du Tillet had attained a prosperity in 
 
 nowise delusive ; he was on an excellent footing with the firm 
 
 4 
 
60 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 of Nucingen, to whom Roguin had introduced him ; and he 
 had not been slow to secure the Keller connection and to 
 make friends among the upper banking world. Nobody knew 
 where the young fellow found the vast capital which he could 
 command, but they set down his luck to his intelligence and 
 honesty. 
 
 The Restoration made a personage of Cesar Birotteau, and, 
 in the vortex of political crises, he not unnaturally forgot 
 these two cross-events in his household. The tenacity with 
 which he had held to his opinions — for though since his 
 wound it had been a strictly passive tenacity, he still held to 
 his principles for decency's sake — had brought him patronage 
 in high quarters,- precisely because he had asked for nothing. 
 He received an appointment as major in the National Guard, 
 though he did not so much as know a single word of com- 
 mand. 
 
 In 1815 Napoleon, inimical as ever to Birotteau, ejected 
 him from his post. During the Hundred Days, Birotteau be- 
 came the bete noire (wild boar; i.e., butt) of the Liberals in 
 his quarter; for party feeling began to run high in that year 
 among the commercial class, who hitherto had been unani- 
 mous in voting for peace for business reasons. 
 
 After the second Restoration, the Royalist government 
 found it necessary to manipulate the municipal body. The 
 prefect wanted to transform Birotteau into a mayor, but, 
 thanks to his wife, the perfumer accepted the less conspicuous 
 position of deputy-maygr. His modesty added not a little 
 to his reputation, and brought him the friendship of the 
 mayor, M. Flamet de la Billardiere. Birotteau, who had 
 seen him in the Queen of Roses in the days when Royalist 
 plotters used to meet at Ragon's store, suggested his name to 
 the prefect of the Seine, who consulted the perfumer on the 
 choice. M. and Mme. Birotteau were never forgotten in 
 the mayor's invitations, and Mme. Birotteau often asked for 
 charitable subscriptions at Saint-Roch in good society. 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 51 
 
 La Billardiere warmly supported Birotteau when it was 
 proposed to distribute the crosses awarded to the municipal 
 body ; when names were being weighed he laid stress upon 
 Cesar's wound received at Saint-Roch, on his attachment to 
 the Bourbons, and on the respect in which Birotteau was 
 held. So the minister who, while he endeavored to undo the 
 work of Napoleon, was wishful to make creatures of his own, 
 and, to secure partisans for the Bourbons from the ranks of 
 commerce and among men of art and science, included Bi- 
 rotteau in the list of those to be distinguished. 
 
 This favor, together with the glory which Cesar already 
 shed around him in his arrondissement, put him in a position 
 that was bound to magnify the ideas of a man who had met 
 hitherto with nothing but success ; and when the mayor told 
 him of the approaching distinction, it was the final argument 
 which urged the perfumer into the speculation which he had 
 just disclosed to his wife; for it opened up a way of quitting 
 the perfumery trade and of rising to the upper ranks of the 
 Parisian bourgeoisie. 
 
 Cesar was forty years old. Hard work at his factory had 
 set one or two premature wrinkles in his face and slightly 
 silvered the long, bushy hair, on which the constant pressure 
 of his hat had impressed a glossy ring. The outlines of his 
 hair described five points on the forehead, which told a story 
 of simplicity of life. There was nothing alarming about the 
 bushy eyebrows, for the blue eyes, with their clear, straight- 
 forward expression, were in keeping with the honest man's 
 brow. His nose, broken at his birth and blunt at the tip, 
 gave him the astonished look of the typical Parisian cockney. 
 His lips were very thick, his chin heavy and straight. It was 
 a high-colored face with square outlines, and a peculiar dispo- 
 sition of the wrinkles — altogether it was of the ingenuous, 
 shrewd, peasant type; and his evident physical strength, his 
 sturdy limbs, broad shoulders, and big feet, all denoted the 
 countryman transported to Paris. The large hands, covered 
 
52 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 with hair, the creases in the plump finger-joints, and broad, 
 square-shaped nails at the tips, would alone have attested his 
 origin if there had not been signs of it about his whole 
 person. 
 
 He always wore the bland smile with which a storekeeper 
 welcomes a customer ; but this smile, assumed for business 
 purposes in his case, was the outward and visible expression 
 of inward content and reflected the serenity of a kindly soul. 
 His distrust of his species was strictly confined to the busi- 
 ness; he parted company with his shrewdness as he came away 
 from the Exchange or shut his ledger. Suspicion for him was 
 one of the exigencies of business, like his printed bill-heads. 
 
 There was a comical mixture of assurance, fatuity, and good- 
 nature in his face, which gave it a certain character of its own, 
 and redeemed it, to some extent, from the vapid uniformity 
 of Parisian bourgeois countenances. But for that expression 
 of artless wonder and trustfulness, people would have stood 
 too much in awe of him ; it was thus that he paid his quota 
 of absurdity that put him on a footing of equality with his 
 kind. 
 
 It was a habit of his to cross his hands behind him while 
 speaking ; and, when he meant to say something particularly 
 civil or striking, he gradually raised himself on tiptoe once or 
 twice, and came down heavily upon his heels, as if to em- 
 phasize his remark. Sometimes in the height of a discussion 
 he would suddenly swing himself round, take a step or two as 
 if in search of objections, and then turn abruptly upon his 
 opponent. He never interrupted anybody, and not seldom 
 fell a victim to his finer punctilious observance of good man- 
 ners, for others did not scruple to take the words out of his 
 mouth, and when the worthy man came away he had been 
 unable to put in a word. 
 
 In his wide experience of business he had acquired habits 
 which others sometimes described as a mania. For instance, 
 if a bill had not been met, he would put it in the hands of the 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 53 
 
 process-server and gave himself no further trouble about it, 
 save to receive the capital, interest, and court expenses. The 
 matter might drive the customer into bankruptcy, and then 
 Cesar went no further. He never attended a meeting of 
 creditors ; his name never appeared in any list ; he kept his 
 claims. This system, together with an implacable contempt 
 for bankrupts, had been handed down to him by old M. 
 Ragon, who, after a long commercial experience, had come 
 to the conclusion that the meagre and uncertain dividend 
 paid under the circumstances was a very poor return for the 
 time wasted in law proceedings, and held that he could spend 
 his time to better purpose than in running about after excuses 
 for dishonesty. 
 
 " If the bankrupt is an honest man and makes his way again, 
 he will pay you," M. Ragon was wont to say. "If he has 
 nothing, and is simply unfortunate, what is the good of tor- 
 menting him ? And if he is a rogue, you will get nothing in 
 any case. If you have a name for being hard on people, they 
 will not try to make terms with you ; and so long as they can 
 pay at all, you are the man whom they will pay." 
 
 Cesar kept his appointments punctually; he would wait for 
 ten minutes, and nothing would induce him to stay any 
 longer, a characteristic which was a cause of punctuality in 
 others who had to do with him. 
 
 His dress was in keeping with his appearance and habits. 
 No power on earth would have induced him to resign the white 
 lawn neck-cloths with drooping ends, embroidered by his wife 
 or daughter. His white drill vests, adorned with a double row 
 of buttons, descended low upon his prominent abdomen, for 
 Birotteau was inclined to corpulence. He wore blue breeches, 
 black silk stockings, and walking-shoes adorned with ribbon 
 bows that were apt to come unfastened. Out of doors his 
 too ample green overcoat and broad-brimmed hat gave him a 
 somewhat Quakerly appearance. On Sunday - evenings he 
 wore a coat of chestnut-brown cloth, with long tails and ample 
 
54 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 skirts, and black silk breeches ; the corners of the inevitable 
 vest were turned down a little to display the pleated shirt- 
 front beneath, and there were gold buckles on his shoes. 
 Until the year 1819 his person was further adorned by two 
 parallel lines of watch-chain, but he only wore the second 
 when in full dress. 
 
 Such was Cesar Birotteau — a worthy soul, from whom the 
 mysterious powers that preside at the making of man had 
 withheld the faculty of seeing life or politics as a whole, and 
 the capacity of rising above the social level of the lower 
 middle class ; in all things he was destined to follow in the 
 ruts of the old road ; he had caught his opinions like an in- 
 fection, and he put them in practice without examining into 
 them. But if he was blind, he was a good man ; if he was 
 not very clever, he was deeply religious, and his heart was 
 pure. In that heart there shone but one love, the light of 
 his life and its motive-power ; for his desire to rise in the 
 world, like the meagre knowledge that he had learned in it, 
 had its source in his love for his wife and daughter. 
 
 As for Mme. Cesar, at that time, at the age of thirty-seven, 
 she so exactly resembled the Venus of Milo that, when the 
 Due de Riviere sent the beautiful statue to France, all her 
 acquaintance recognized the likeness. A few short months, 
 and trouble so swiftly spread its sallow tinge over the dazzling 
 fairness of her face, so ruthlessly darkened and hollowed the 
 blue-veined circles in which the beautiful hazel eyes were set, 
 that she came to look like an aged Madonna ; for in the wreck 
 of her beauty she never lost her sweet ingenuousness, though 
 there was a sad expression in the clear eyes ; and it was im- 
 possible not to see in her a still beautiful woman, staid in her 
 demeanor and full of dignity. Moreover, during this ball of 
 Cesar's planning, her beauty was to shine forth radiantly and 
 exquisitely adorned for the last time to the admiration of 
 beholders. 
 
 Every life has its apogee ; there is a time in every existence 
 
CASAR B1R0TTEAU. 55 
 
 when active causes bring about exactly proportionate results. 
 This high-noon of life, when the vital forces are evenly bal- 
 anced and put forth in all the glory of their strength, is com- 
 mon not only to organic life ; you will find it even in the 
 history of cities and nations and institutions and ideas, in 
 commerce, and in every kind of human effort, for, like noble 
 families and dynasties, these too have their birth and rise and 
 fall. 
 
 How comes it that this argument of waxing and waning is 
 applied so inexorably to everything throughout the system of 
 things ? — to death as to life ; for in times of pestilence death 
 runs his course — abates, returns again, lies dormant. Who 
 knows but that our globe itself is a rocket somewhat longer 
 lived than other fireworks ? 
 
 History, telling over and over again the reasons of the rise 
 and fall of all that has been in the world in the past, might 
 be a warning to man that there is a moment when the active 
 play of all his faculties must cease ; but neither conquerors, 
 nor actors, nor women, nor writers heed the wholesome ad- 
 monition. Cesar Birotteau, who should have looked upon 
 himself as having reached the apogee of his career, mistook 
 the summit for the starting-point. He did not know the 
 reason of the downfalls of which history is full ; nay, neither 
 kings nor peoples have made any effort to engrave in imper- 
 ishable characters the causes of the catastrophes of which the 
 history of royal and of commercial houses affords such con- 
 spicuous examples. Why should not pyramids be reared anew 
 to put us constantly in mind of the immutable law which should 
 govern the affairs of nations as well as of individuals : When 
 the effect produced is no longer in direct relation with nor in 
 exact proportion to the cause, disorganization sets in ? And yet 
 — these monuments are all about us — in legends, in the stones 
 that cry out to us of a past, and bear perpetual record to the 
 freaks of a stubborn Fate whose hand sweeps away our illu- 
 sions, and makes it clear to us that the greatest events resolve 
 
 c 
 
56 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 themselves at last into an Idea, and the " Tale of Troy " and 
 the "Story of Napoleon " are poems and nothing more. 
 
 Would that this story might be the Epic of the Bourgeoisie ; 
 there are dealings of fate with man which inspire no voice, 
 because they lack grandeur, yet are even for that very reason 
 immense : for this is not the story of an isolated soul, but of 
 a whole nation of sorrows. 
 
 Cesar as he dropped off to sleep feared that his wife might 
 bring forward some peremptory objection in the morning, 
 and laid it upon himself to wake betimes and settle every- 
 thing. As soon as it grew light, he rose noiselessly, leaving 
 his wife asleep, dressed quickly, and went down into the shop 
 just as the boy was taking down the numbered shutters. 
 Birotteau, finding himself in solitary possession, stood wait- 
 ing in the doorway for the assistants, watching critically mean- 
 while the way in which Raguet the errand boy discharged his 
 duties, for Birotteau was an old hand. The weather was 
 magnificent in spite of the cold. 
 
 "Popinot, fetch your hat and your walking shoes, and tell 
 Monsieur Celestin to come down ; you and I will go to the 
 Tuileries and have a little talk together," said he, when 
 Anselme came. 
 
 Popinot, that admirable foil to du Tillet, whom one of 
 those happy chances which induce a belief in a protecting 
 providence had established in Cesar's houshold, will play so 
 great a part in this story that it is necessary to give a sketch 
 of him here. 
 
 Mme. Ragon's maiden name was Popinot. She had two 
 brothers. One of them, the youngest of the family, was at 
 the present time a judge in the Tribunal of First Instance of 
 the Seine. The elder had gone into the wool-trade, had lost 
 his patrimony, and died, leaving his only son to the Ragons 
 and his brother the judge, who had no children. The child's 
 mother had died at his birth. 
 
 Mme. Ragon had found this situation for her nephew, and 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 57 
 
 hoped to see him succeed to Birotteau. Anselme Popinot 
 (for that was his name) was short and club-footed, a dispensa- 
 tion common to Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and Talleyrand, 
 lest others thus afflicted should be too much discouraged. He 
 had the brilliant complexion covered with freckles which 
 usually distinguishes red-haired people ; but a clear forehead, 
 eyes like agates streaked with gray, a pretty mouth* a pale 
 face, the charm of youthful diffidence, and a want of confi- 
 dence in himself, due to his physical deformity, aroused a 
 kindly feeling toward him in others. We love the weak, and 
 people felt interested in Popinot. 
 
 Little Popinot, as everybody called him, took after his 
 family. They were people essentially religious, whose virtues 
 were informed by intelligence, whose quiet lives were full of 
 good deeds. So the child, brought up by his uncle the judge, 
 united all the qualities pleasing in youth ; he was a good and 
 affectionate boy, a little bashful, but full of enthusiasm ; 
 docile as a lamb, but hard-working, faithful, and steady; 
 endowed with all the virtues of a Christian in the early days 
 of the church. 
 
 When Popinot heard of the proposed walk to the Tuileries, 
 the most unlooked-for remark that his awe-inspiring employer 
 could have made at that time of day, his thoughts went to his 
 own settlement in life, and thence all at once to Cesarine, the 
 real queen of roses, the living sign of the house. He had 
 fallen in love on his very first day in the shop, two months 
 before du Tillet's departure. He was obliged to stop more 
 than once on his way upstairs, his heart so swelled and his 
 pulses beat so hard. 
 
 In another moment he came down, followed by Celestin, 
 the first assistant. Then Anselme and his employer set out 
 without a word for the Tuileries. 
 
 Anselme Popinot was just twenty-one years of age ; Birotteau 
 had married at one-and-twenty, so Anselme saw no hindrance 
 to his marriage with Cesarine on that score. It was her beauty 
 
58 C&SAR BJROTTEAU. 
 
 and her father's wealth that set enormous obstacles in the 
 way of such ambitious wishes as his, but love grows with every 
 up-leaping of hope ; the wilder the hopes, the more he clung 
 to them, and his longings grew the stronger for the distance 
 between him and his love. Happy boy, who in a time when 
 all and sundry are brought down to the same level, when 
 every head is crowned with a precisely similar hat, can still 
 contrive to create a distance between a perfumer's daughter 
 and himself — the scion of an old Parisian family ! And he 
 was happy, in spite of his doubts and fears : every day of his 
 life he sat next to Cesarine at dinner ; he set about his busi- 
 ness with a zeal and enthusiasm that left no element of 
 drudgery in his work ; he did everything in the name of 
 Cesarine, and never wearied. At one-and-twenty devotion is 
 food sufficient for love. 
 
 " He will be a merchant some of these days; he will get 
 on," Cesar would say, speaking of Anselme to Mme. Ragon, 
 and he would praise Anselme's activity in the filling-out de- 
 partment, extolling his quickness at comprehending the mys- 
 teries of the craft, relating how that, when goods were to be 
 sent off in a hurry, Anselme would roll up his sleeves and work 
 bare-armed at packing the cases and nailing down the lids, 
 and the lame lad would do more than all the rest of them put 
 together. 
 
 There was another serious obstacle in the way of the or- 
 phan's success. It was a well-known and recognized fact that 
 Alexandre Crottat, Roguin's head clerk, the son of a rich 
 farmer of la Brie, hoped to marry Cesarine ; and there were 
 other difficulties yet more formidable. In the depths of 
 Popinot's heart there lay buried sad secrets which set a yet 
 wider gulf between him and Cesarine. The Ragons, on whom 
 he might have counted, were in difficulties; the orphan boy 
 was happy to take them his scanty salary to help them to eke out 
 a living. But, in spite of all these things, he hoped to suc- 
 ceed 1 More than once he had caught a glance from Cesarine, 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 59 
 
 and beneath her apparent pride he had dared to read a secret 
 thought full of tender hopes in the depths of her blue eyes. 
 So he worked on, set in a ferment by that gleam of hope, 
 tremulous and mute, like all young men in a like case when 
 life is breaking into blossom. 
 
 "Popinot," the good man began, "is your aunt quite 
 well?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Somehow she has seemed to me to have an anxious look for 
 some time past ; can something have gone askew with them ? 
 Look here, my boy, you must not make a stranger of me, that 
 am almost like one of the family, for I have known your Uncle 
 Ragon these five-and-twenty years. When I first came to 
 him I was fresh from the country and wore a pair of hob- 
 nailed boots. They call the place the Treasury Farm, but all 
 I brought away with me was one gold louis which my god- 
 mother gave me, Madame the late Marquise d'Uxelles, who 
 was related to le Due and la Duchesse de Lenoncourt, who 
 are among our patrons. So I always say a prayer every Sun- 
 day for her and all the family ; and her niece, Madame de 
 Mortsauf, in Touraine, has all her perfumery from us. Cus- 
 tomers are always coming to me through them. There is 
 Monsieur de Vandenesse, for example, who spends twelve 
 hundred francs with us every year. One ought to be grateful 
 from prudence, if one is not grateful by nature ; but I am a 
 well-wisher to you, without an after-thought and for your own 
 sake." 
 
 "Ah, sir, if you will allow me to say so, you had a level 
 head." 
 
 " No, my boy, no ; that won't do everything. I don't say 
 that my headpiece isn't as good as another's, but I stuck to 
 honesty through thick and thin ; I was steady, and I never 
 loved any one but my wife. Love is a fine vehicle, a neat 
 expression of Monsieur de Villele's yesterday at the Tribune." 
 
 " Love !" cried Popinot. "Oh! sir, do you ?" 
 
60 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "Stop a bit, stop a bit! There is old Roguin coming 
 along the further side of the Place Louis XV. at eight o'clock 
 in the morning. What can the old boy be about?" said 
 Cesar to himself, and he forgot Anselme Popinot and the 
 hazelnut oil. 
 
 His wife's theories came up in his memory, and, instead of 
 turning into the garden of the Tuileries, he walked on to meet 
 the notary. Anselme followed at a distance, quite at a loss 
 to explain the sudden interest which Birotteau appeared to 
 take in a matter so unimportant ; but very happy in the en- 
 couragement which he derived from his employer's little 
 speech about hobnailed boots and louis-d'or, and love. 
 
 Roguin, a tall, burly man, with a pimpled face, an almost 
 bald forehead, and black hair, had not formerly been lacking 
 in comeliness ; and he had been young and ambitious once, 
 too, and from a mere clerk had come to be a notary ; but now 
 a keen observer would have read in his face the exhaustion 
 and fatigue of a jaded seeker after pleasure. When a man 
 plunges into the mire of excess, his face hardly escapes with- 
 out a splash, and the lines engraved on Roguin's countenance 
 and its florid color were alike ignoble. Instead of the pure 
 glow which suffuses the tissues of men of temperate life and 
 imparts a bloom of health, there was visible in Roguin the 
 tainted blood inflamed by a strain against which the body 
 rebelled. His nose was meanly turned up at the end, as is 
 apt to be the case with those in whom humors taking this 
 channel induce an internal affection, which a virtuous Queen 
 of France innocently believed to be a misfortune common to 
 the species, never having approached any man but the King 
 sufficiently close to discover her mistake. Roguin's efforts 
 to disguise his infirmity by taking quantities of Spanish snuff 
 served rather to aggravate the troublesome symptoms, which 
 had been the principal cause of his misfortunes. 
 
 Is it not carrying flattery of society somewhat too far to 
 paint individuals always in false colors, to conceal in certain 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 61 
 
 cases the real causes of their vicissitudes, so often brought 
 about by disease? Physical ills, in their moral aspects and 
 the influences that they bring to bear on the mechanism of 
 life, have perhaps been too much neglected hitherto by the 
 historian of manners. Mme. Cesar had rightly guessed the 
 secret of Roguin's married life. 
 
 His wife, a charming girl, the only daughter of Chevrel, 
 the banker, felt an unconquerable repugnance for the poor 
 notary, which dated from the night of her marriage, and had 
 been determined to demand an immediate divorce. But 
 Roguin, too happy to have a wife who brought him five hun- 
 dred thousand francs, to say nothing of her expectations, had 
 implored her not to enter her plea, leaving her her liberty, 
 and accepting all the consequences of such a compact. Mme. 
 Roguin, mistress of the situation, treated her husband as a 
 courtesan treats an elderly adorer. Roguin soon found his 
 wife too dear, and, like many another Parisian, had a second 
 establishment in the town. At first the expenditure did not 
 exceed a moderate limit. 
 
 For a while Roguin found, at no great outlay, grisettes who 
 were too glad of his protection ; but at the end of three years 
 he fell a prey to a violent sexagenarian passion for one of the 
 most magnificent creatures of the time, known as the Beau- 
 tiful Dutchwoman in the calendars of the demi-monde, for she 
 shortly afterward fell back into that gulf, which her death 
 made illustrious. One of Roguin's clients had formerly 
 brought her to Paris from Bruges; and when, in 1815, politi- 
 cal considerations forced him to fly he made her over to the 
 notary. Roguin had taken a little house in the Champs- 
 Elysees for his enchantress ; he had furnished it handsomely, 
 and had allowed himself to be led by her, until he had squan- 
 dered away his fortune to satisfy her extravagant whims. 
 
 The gloomy expression, which vanished from Roguin's 
 countenance at the sight of his client, was connected with 
 mysterious events, wherein laid the secret of du Tillet's rapid 
 
62 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 success. While du Tillet was still under Birotteau's roof, on 
 the first Sunday which gave him an opportunity of observing 
 how M. and Mme. Roguin were situated with regard to each 
 other, his plans had undergone a change. His designs upon 
 Mme. Cesar had been subordinated to another purpose ; he had 
 meant to compel an offer of Cesarine's hand as compensation 
 for repulsed advances ; but it cost him the less to give up this 
 marriage since he had discovered that Cesar was not rich, as 
 he had believed. Then du Tillet played the spy on the 
 notary, insinuated himself into his confidence, obtained an 
 introduction to the Beautiful Dutchwoman, ascertained the 
 terms on which she stood with Roguin, and learned that 
 she was threatening to dismiss her adorer if he curtailed her 
 extravagance. The Beautiful Dutchwoman was one of those 
 scatterbrained creatures who take money without disturbing 
 themselves as to how it was made or how they come by it ; 
 women who would give a banquet with a parricide's dollars. 
 She took no thought for the morrow and was careless of yes- 
 terday. The future for her meant after dinner, and eternity 
 lay between the present moment and the end of the month, 
 even when she had bills to fall due. Du Tillet was delighted 
 to find a first lever to his hand, and began his campaign by 
 obtaining a reduction from the Beautiful Dutchwoman, who 
 agreed to solace Roguin's existence for thirty thousand francs 
 instead of fifty thousand, a kind of service which sexagenarian 
 passion rarely forgets. 
 
 At length, one night after deep potations, Roguin opened 
 out his financial position to du Tillet in an after-supper confi- 
 dence. His real estate was mortgaged to its full value under 
 his wife's marriage settlement, and in his infatuation he had 
 appropriated moneys deposited with him by his clients ; more 
 than half the value of his practice had been embezzled in this 
 way. When he had run through the rest, the unfortunate 
 Roguin would blow his brains out, for he thought he should 
 diminish the scandal of his failure by exciting the pity of 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 63 
 
 the public. Du Tillet, listening, beheld success, rapid and 
 assured, gleaming like a flash of lightning through the ob- 
 scurity of drunkenness. He reassured Roguin, and repaid 
 his confidence by persuading him to fire his pistols into the 
 air. 
 
 "When a man of your calibre takes such risks upon him- 
 self," said he, " he ought not to flounder about like a fool; 
 he should set to work boldly." 
 
 Du Tillet counseled Roguin to help himself to a large sum 
 of money, and to intrust it to him (du Tillet) to speculate 
 boldly with it on the Stock Exchange, or in some other en- 
 terprise among the hundreds that were being started at that 
 speculative epoch. If the stroke was successful, the two of 
 them should found a bank, speculate with the deposits, and 
 with the profits the notary should satisfy his cravings. If the 
 luck went against them, Roguin should go abroad, instead of 
 killing himself, for his devoted du Tillet would be faithful to 
 the last penny. It was a rope flung out to a drowning man, 
 and Roguin did not see that the perfumer's salesman was 
 fastening it around his neck. 
 
 Du Tillet, master of Roguin's secret, used it to establish 
 his power over the wife, the husband, and the mistress. Mme. 
 Roguin, to whom he gave warning of a disaster, which she 
 was far from suspecting, accepted du Tillet's assiduities, and 
 then it was that the latter left the perfumer's shop, feeling 
 that his future was secure. It was not difficult to persuade 
 the mistress to risk a sum of money that in case of need she 
 might not be obliged to go on the street. The wife looked 
 into her affairs, and accumulated a small amount of capital, 
 which she handed over to the man in whom her husband 
 placed confidence, for at the outset the notary put a hundred 
 thousand francs into the hands of his accomplice. Brought 
 in this way into close contact with Mme. Roguin, du Tillet 
 contrived to transform interest into affection and to inspire a 
 violent passion in that handsome woman. In his speculations 
 
64 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 on the Stock Exchange he naturally shared in the profits of 
 his three associates, but this was not enough for him ; he had 
 the audacity to come to an understanding with an opponent, 
 who refunded to him the amount of fictitious losses, for he 
 played for his own hand as well as for his clients. 
 
 As soon as he had fifty thousand francs, he was sure of 
 making a large fortune. He watched with the eagle's eye, 
 that was one of his characteristics, over the phases of political 
 life in France ; he speculated for a fall in the funds during 
 the campaign of France, and for a rise when the Bourbons 
 came back. 
 
 Two months after the return of Louis XVIII. , Mme. Ro- 
 guin possessed two hundred thousand francs and du Tillet a 
 hundred thousand crowns. In the notary's eyes this young 
 man was an angel ; he had restored order in his affairs. But 
 the Beautiful Dutchwoman fell a victim to a wasting com- 
 plaint which nothing could cure, a virulent cancer called 
 Maxime de Trailles, one of the late Emperor's pages. Du 
 Tillet discovered the woman's real name from her signature 
 to a document. It was Sarah Gobseck. Then he remem- 
 bered that he had heard of a money-lender of the name of 
 Gobseck ; and, struck by the coincidence, paid a visit to that 
 aged discounter of bills and providence of young men with 
 prospects, to find out how this female relative's credit stood 
 with him. The bill-broking Brutus proved inexorable where 
 his grandniece was concerned, but du Tillet himself managed 
 to find favor in his eyes by posing as Sarah's banker with 
 capital to invest. The Norman and the money-lender found 
 each other congenial. 
 
 Gobseck wanted a clever young fellow who could look after 
 a bit of business abroad for him just then. The return of the 
 Bourbons had taken a State auditor by surprise. To this 
 financier, wishful to stand well at Court, it had occurred that 
 he might buy up the debts contracted by the Princes in Ger- 
 many during the emigration. He offered the profits of the 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 65 
 
 affair, which for him was purely a matter of policy, to any 
 one who would advance the necessary money. Old Gobseck 
 had no mind to disburse moneys over and above the market 
 value of the debts, into which a shrewd representative must 
 first examine. Money-lenders trust nobody ; they must always 
 have a guarantee ; the occasion is omnipotent with them ; 
 they are ice when they have no need of a man, affable and 
 obliging when he is likely to be useful. Du Tillet knew the 
 immense part played, below the surface, in the Paris money 
 market by Werbrust and Gigonnet, discount brokers of the 
 Rue Saint-Denis and Rue Saint-Martin, and by Palma, a 
 banker in the Faubourg Poissonniere, who was almost always 
 associated with Gobseck. He therefore offered to pay down 
 caution money, requiring on his own side a share in the profits 
 of the transaction, and asking that these gentlemen should 
 employ in the money-lending business the capital which he 
 should deposit with them. In this way he secured supporters. 
 Then he accompanied M. Clement Chardin des Lupeaulx on 
 a trip to Germany during the Hundred Days, and came back 
 with the Second Restoration, with some added knowledge 
 that should lead to success rather than with actual wealth. 
 He had had an initiation into the secrets of one of the clever- 
 est schemers in Paris ; he had won the good-will of the man 
 whom he had been set to watch ; a dexterous juggler had laid 
 bare for him the springs of political intrigue and the rules of 
 the game. 
 
 Du Tillet's intelligence was of the order which understands 
 at half a word ; this journey formed him. On his return he 
 found Mme. Roguin still faithful ; but the poor notary was 
 expecting Ferdinand with quite as much impatience as his 
 wife. The Beautiful Dutchwoman had ruined him again ! 
 
 Du Tillet, questioning the Beautiful Dutchwoman, could 
 not elicit from her an account that represented all the money 
 which she had squandered. And then it was that he dis- 
 covered the secret so carefully kept from him — Sarah Gob- 
 5 
 
66 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 seck's infatuation for Maxime de Trailles, known at the very 
 outset of his career of vice and debauchery for a political 
 hanger-on of a kind indispensable to all good government, 
 and for an insatiable gambler. After this discovery du Tillet 
 understood old Gobseck's indifference to his grandniece. 
 
 At this critical juncture du Tillet the banker (for by this 
 time he was a banker) strongly recommended Roguin to put 
 by something for a rainy day ; to engage some of his richest 
 clients in a business speculation, and then to keep back con- 
 siderable sums out of the money paid over to him, in case he 
 should be compelled to become a bankrupt in the course of a 
 second career of speculation. After various rises and falls in 
 the price of stocks, which brought luck only to du Tillet and 
 Mme. Roguin, the notary's hour struck. He was insolvent, 
 and thereupon, in his extremity, his closest friend exploited 
 him, and du Tillet discovered that speculation in building 
 land in the neighborhood of the Madeleine. Naturally one 
 hundred thousand francs which Birotteau had deposited with 
 Roguin until an investment should be found for them were 
 paid over to du Tillet, who, bent upon compassing the per- 
 fumer's ruin, made Roguin understand that he ran less risk by 
 ensnaring his own intimate friends in his toils. 
 
 "A friend," said du Tillet, "will not go all lengths even 
 in anger." 
 
 There are not many people at this present day who know 
 how little land was worth per foot in the district of the Mad- 
 eleine at this time ; but the building lots must necessarily 
 shortly be sold for more than their momentary depreciation, 
 caused by the necessity of finding purchasers who would profit 
 by the opportunity. Now it was du Tillet's idea to reap the 
 benefit without keeping his money locked up in a lengthy 
 speculation. In other words, he meant to kill the affair, so 
 that a corpse which he knew how to resuscitate might be 
 knocked down to him. 
 
 In such emergencies as this, the Gobsecks, Pal mas, Wer- 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 67 
 
 brusts, and Gigonnets all lent each other a hand, but du Tillet 
 did not know them well enough to ask them to help him; and, 
 beside, he meant to hide his action in the matter so thoroughly 
 that, while he steered the whole business, he might receive all 
 the profits and none of the disgrace of the robbery. So he 
 saw the necessity of one of those animated lay figures termed 
 "men of straw" in commercial phrase. The man who had 
 once before acted the part of a stock-jobber for him seemed to 
 be a suitable tool to his hand, and he infringed the divine rights 
 by creating a man. Of a former commercial traveler, without 
 a centime on this earth, with no ability, no capacity save for 
 empty rambling talk on all sorts of subjects, and but just suf- 
 ficient wit to suffer himself to be drilled in a part and to play 
 it without compromising the piece, and yet endowed with the 
 rarest sense of honor — that is to say, a faculty for silently 
 accepting the dishonor of his principal — of him, du Tillet 
 made a banker, the originator and promoter of commercial en- 
 terprises on the largest scale ; him he metamorphosed into 
 the head of the firm of Claparon. 
 
 Should the exigencies of du Tillet's affairs at any time de- 
 mand a bankruptcy, it was to be Charles Claparon's fate to 
 be delivered over to Jews and Pharisees, and Claparon knew 
 it. Still, for the present, the scraps and pickings that fell to 
 his share were an El Dorado for a poor devil who, when his 
 chum du Tillet came across him, was sauntering along the 
 boulevards with no prospects beyond the two-franc piece in 
 his pockets ; so his friendship for and devotion to du Tillet, 
 * swelled by a gratitude that did not look to the future and 
 stimulated by the cravings of a dissolute and disreputable life, 
 led him to say Amen to everything. 
 
 When he had once sold his honor he saw that it was risked 
 with so much prudence that at length he came to have a sort 
 of dog-like attachment for his old comrade du Tillet. Clap- 
 aron was a very ugly performing poodle, but he was ready at 
 any moment to make the leap of Curtius for his master. 
 
68 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 In the present scheme Claparon was to represent one-half 
 of the purchasers of the lots, as Birotteau represented the 
 other half. Then the bills which Claparon would receive 
 from Birotteau should be discounted by some money-lender, 
 whose name du Tillet would borrow ; so that, when Roguin 
 absconded with the rest of the purchase-money, Birotteau 
 would be left on the brink of ruin. Du Tillet meant to direct 
 the action of the assignees; there should be a forced sale of 
 the building land, and du Tillet meant to be the purchaser ; 
 he would buy it for about half its value, and pay for it with 
 Roguin's money and the dividend of the bankruptcy; so 
 under different names he was in possession of the money paid 
 down by the perfumer and his creditor to boot. 
 
 It was a prospect of a goodly share of the spoils that led 
 Roguin to meddle in this scheme; but he had practically 
 surrendered himself at discretion to a man who could and 
 did take the lion's part. It was impossible to bring du Tillet 
 into a court of law, and the notary in a remote part of Swit- 
 zerland, where he found beauties of a less expensive kind, 
 was lucky to have a bone flung to him once a month or so. 
 
 The ugly scheme was no deliberate invention, no outcome 
 of the broodings of a tragedian weaving a plot, but the result 
 of circumstance. Hatred, unaccompanied by a desire for 
 revenge, is as seed sown upon the granite rock : du Tillet 
 swore to be revenged upon Cesar Birotteau, and the prompt- 
 ing was one of the most natural things in the world ; if it 
 had been otherwise, there had been no quarrel between angels 
 of darkness and the angels of light. 
 
 Du Tillet could not, without great inconvenience, murder 
 the one man in Paris who knew that he had been guilty of 
 petty theft ; but he could sully his old master's name and 
 crush him until his testimony was no longer admissible. For 
 a long time past the thought of vengeance had been germin- 
 ating in his mind ; but it had come to nothing. The rush 
 of life in Paris is so swift and so full of stir, chance counts 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 69 
 
 for so much in it, that even the most energetic haters do not 
 look very far ahead ; yet, on the other hand, if the constant 
 ebb and flow is unfavorable to premeditated action, it affords 
 excellent opportunities for carrying out projects that lurk in 
 politic brains, clever enough to lie in wait for the chances 
 that come with the tide. Du Tillet had had a dim inkling 
 of the possibility of ruining Cesar from the moment when 
 Roguin first opened out his case to him; and he had not 
 miscalculated. 
 
 Roguin, meanwhile, on the very point of leaving his idol, 
 drained the rest of the philtre from the broken cup, going 
 daily to the Champs-Elysees and returning home in the small 
 hours. There were good grounds, therefore, for Madame 
 Cesar's suspicious theories. When a man has made up his 
 mind to play such a part as du Tillet had assigned to Roguin, 
 he perforce acquires the talents of a great actor ; he has the 
 eyes of a lynx and the penetration of a seer ; he finds ways 
 of magnetizing his dupe ; so the notary had seen Birotteau 
 long before Birotteau set eyes on him ; and when he saw that 
 he was recognized, he held out a hand while he was still at 
 some distance. 
 
 " I have just been making the will of a great person who 
 has not a week to live," said he, with the most natural air in 
 the world, " but they have treated me like a village doctor — 
 sent their carriage to fetch me and let me go home from 
 thence afoot." 
 
 A slight cloud of suspicion which had darkened the per- 
 fumer's brows cleared away at these words ; but Roguin had 
 noticed it and took good care not to be the first to speak 
 about the building land, for he meant to give his victim the 
 finishing stroke. 
 
 "After a will come marriage-contracts," said Birotteau; 
 "such is life. Ah ! by-the-by, Roguin, old fellow, when do 
 we make a match of it with the Madeleine, eh ? " and he 
 tapped the other on the chest. Among men, the best-con- 
 
70 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 • 
 
 ducted bourgeois will try to appear a bit of a rogue with the 
 women. 
 
 "Well, it is to-day or never," returned the notary with a 
 diplomatic look. "We are afraid that the affair will get 
 noised abroad ; already two of my richest clients want to go 
 into the speculation, and are very keen about it. So you can 
 take it or leave it. After twelve o'clock this morning I shall 
 draw up the deeds, and till one o'clock it is open to you to 
 join us if you choose. Good-by. Xandrot made a rough 
 draft of the documents for me last night, and I am about to 
 read them through this very minute." 
 
 "All right, the thing is settled, you have my word," cried 
 Birotteau, hurrying after the notary, and striking hands upon 
 it. " Take the hundred thousand francs that were to have 
 been my daughter's portion." 
 
 " Good," said Roguin, as he walked away. 
 _ In the brief interval as Birotteau returned to young Popinot 
 he felt a sensation of feverish heat run through him, his dia- 
 phragm contracted, sounds rang in his ears. 
 
 " What is the matter, sir ? " asked the assistant, looking at 
 his employer's pale face. 
 
 " Ah, my boy, I have just concluded a big piece of business 
 with a single word. No one in such a position can help feel- 
 ing some emotion. You know all about it, however ; and, 
 beside, I brought you here so that we could talk comfortably 
 where no one will listen to us. Your aunt is pinched ; what 
 did she lose her money in ? Tell me about it." 
 
 " My uncle and aunt put their capital into Nucingen's 
 bank, and were obliged to take over shares in the Worstchin 
 mines in settlement of their claims ; no dividends have been 
 paid on them as yet, and at their time of life it is difficult to 
 live on hope." 
 
 " Then how do they live ? " 
 
 " They have been so good as to accept my salary." 
 
 "Good, Anselme, good," said the perfumer, looking up 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 71 
 
 with a tear in his eyes ; " you are worthy of the attachment I 
 feel for you. And you shall be well rewarded for your appli- 
 cation in my service." 
 
 As he spoke, the merchant grew greater in his own estima- 
 tion as well as in Popinot's eyes ; a sense of his adventitious 
 superiority was artlessly revealed in his homely and paternal 
 way of speaking. 
 
 " What ! Can you have guessed my passion for ?" 
 
 " For whom ? " asked the perfumer. 
 
 "For Mademoiselle Cesarine." 
 
 "Boy!" cried Birotteau, "you are very bold. But keep 
 your secret carefully ; I promise to forget it, and you shall go 
 out of the house to-morrow. I don't blame you ; the devil, 
 no ! In your place I should have done just the same. She 
 is so pretty." 
 
 "Ah, sir ! " cried the assistant, in such a perspiration that 
 his shirt felt damp. 
 
 " This cannot be settled in a day, my boy. Cesarine is 
 her own mistress, and her mother has her ideas. So keep 
 yourself to yourself, wipe your eyes, hold your heart well in 
 hand, and we will say no more about it. I should not blush 
 to have you for a son-in-law. As the nephew of Monsieur 
 Popinot, judge of a Tribunal of First Instance, and as the 
 Ragons' nephew, you have as good a right to make your way 
 as another, but there are ifs and buts and ands / What a 
 devil of a notion you have sprung upon me in the middle of 
 a talk about business ! There, sit you down on that bench, 
 and business first and love affairs after. Now, Popinot, is 
 there mettle in you ? " said Birotteau, looking at his assistant. 
 " Do you feel that you have courage enough to wrestle with 
 those that are much stronger than you? for a hand-to-hand 
 fight, eh?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " To keep up a long and dangerous combat ?" 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
72 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " To drive Macassar Oil from the field ! " cried Birotteau, 
 drawing himself up like one of Plutarch's heroes. " We must 
 not undervalue the enemy ; he is strong, well intrenched, and 
 formidable. Macassar Oil has been well pushed. It is a 
 clever idea, and the shape of the bottles is out of the com- 
 mon. I had thoughts of a triangular bottle for this plan of 
 mine, but, after mature reflection, I am inclined for little 
 blown glass flasks covered with wicker work ; they would look 
 mysterious, and the public like anything that tickles their 
 curiosity." 
 
 " It would cost a good deal," said Popinot. " Everything 
 ought to be on the cheapest possible footing, so as to allow a 
 heavy discount to the trade." 
 
 "Right, my boy; those are sound principles of business. 
 Bear in mind that Macassar Oil will show fight ! 'Tis a spe- 
 cious thing; the name is attractive. It is put before the public 
 as a foreign importation, and we, unluckily, are in our own 
 country. Look here, Popinot, do you feel strong enough to 
 do for Macassar? To begin with, you will oust it from the 
 export trade ; it seems that Macassar really does come from 
 the Indies, so it is more natural to send French goods to the 
 Indians than to ship them back the stuff that' they are sup- 
 posed to send to us. So there's the export trade for you ! 
 But it will have to be fought out abroad, and all over the 
 country ; and Macassar Oil has been so well advertised that 
 it is no use blinking the fact that it has a hold ; it is pushed 
 everywhere, and the public is familiar with it." 
 
 " I will do for it ! " cried Popinot, with eyes on fire. 
 
 "And how? " returned Birotteau. "It is like the impetu- 
 osity of these young people ! Just hear me out." 
 
 Anselme looked like a soldier presenting arms to a marshal 
 of France. 
 
 " I have invented an oil, Popinot, an oil which invigorates 
 the scalp, stimulates the growth of the hair, and preserves its 
 color — an oil for both sexes. The essence should have no 
 
CESAR B1R0TTEAU. 73 
 
 less success than the Pate and the Lotion, but I do not want 
 to exploit the secret by myself; I am thinking of retiring 
 from business. I want you, my boy, to bring out the Coma- 
 gen — from the Latin word coma, which means hair (so Mon- 
 sieur Alibert, physician to the King, told me). In ' Bere- 
 nice,' Racine's tragedy, too, there is a king of Comagene, a 
 lover of the beautiful queen who was so famous for her hair ; 
 no doubt it was out of compliment to her that he called his 
 kingdom Comagene. How clever these great men of genius 
 are ! they descend to the smallest details." 
 
 Little Popinot listened to these incongruities, evidently 
 meant for his benefit, who had had some education, and yet 
 kept his countenance. 
 
 "Anselme," continued Birotteau, "I have cast my eyes on 
 you as the founder of a wholesale druggist's business in the 
 Rue des Lombards. I will be a sleeping-partner, and find 
 you the capital to start it with. When we have begun with 
 the Comagen, we will try essence of vanilla and essence of 
 peppermint. In short, by degrees we will go into the drug 
 trade and revolutionize it, by selling articles in a concentrated 
 form instead of the raw products. Are you satisfied, ambi- 
 tious young man ? " 
 
 Anselme was so overcome that he could not reply, but his 
 tear-filled eyes made answer for him. It seemed to him that 
 this offer was the outcome of a fatherly indulgence which took 
 this means of saying, "Deserve Cesarine by earning wealth 
 and respect." 
 
 "I, too, will succeed, sir," he said at last, taking Birot- 
 teau's emotion for astonishment. 
 
 " Just what I was at your age," cried the perfumer ; " those 
 were just the very words I used ! Whether you have my 
 daughter or not, at any rate you will have a fortune. Well, 
 my boy, what has come to you ? " 
 
 "Let me hope that by gaining the one I may win the 
 other." 
 
74 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " I do not forbid you to hope, my dear fellow," said Birot- 
 teau, touched by Anselme's tone. 
 
 " Very well, sir ; may I begin to look out at once for a store, 
 so as to begin as soon as possible ? " 
 
 "Yes, my boy. To-morrow we will shut ourselves up in 
 the factory. You might look in at Livingston's on your way 
 to the Rue des Lombards and see if my hydraulic press will 
 be in working order by to-morrow. To-night, at dinner-time, 
 we will go to see that great man, kind Monsieur Vauquelin, 
 and ask him about this. He has been investigating the com- 
 position of hair quite lately, trying to find out its coloring 
 matter, and where it comes from, and what hair is made of. 
 It all lies in that, Popinot. You shall know my secret, and 
 all that remains to do is to exploit it intelligently. Look in 
 at Pieri Berard's before you go. round to Livingston. My 
 boy, Monsieur Vauquelin's disinterestedness is one of the great 
 troubles of my life. You cannot get him to accept anything. 
 Luckily, I found out from Chiffreville that he wanted a 
 Madonna at Dresden, engraved by one Miiller, and, after two 
 years of inquiry for it in Germany, Berard has found a copy 
 at last — a proof before letters on India paper ; it cost fifteen 
 hundred francs, my boy. And now to-day our benefactor 
 shall see it in the antechamber when he comes to the door 
 with us; framed, of course, you will make sure of that. So in 
 that way we shall recall ourselves to his memory, my wife and 
 Iij for, as to gratitude, we have put his name in our prayers 
 every day these sixteen years. For my part, I shall never for- 
 get him ; but, you know, Popinot, these men of science are so 
 deep in their work that they forget everything, wife and chil- 
 dren, and those they have done a good turn to. As for the 
 like of us, our little intelligence permits us to have warm hearts 
 at any rate, That is some comfort for not being a great man. 
 These gentlemen at the Institute are all brain, as you will see; 
 you will never come across one of them in a church. There 
 is Monsieur Vauquelin, always in his study when he isn't in 
 
CJESAR BIROTTEAU. 75 
 
 his laboratory; I like to believe though that he thinks of God 
 while he analyzes His works. This is the understanding : I 
 am to find the capital, I will put you in possession of my 
 secret, and we will divide the profits equally, so there will be 
 no need to draw up a deed. Good success to us both ! We 
 will tune our pipes. Off with you, my boy ; I have affairs of 
 my own to see after. One moment, Popinot ; in three weeks' 
 time I am going to give a grand ball, have a suit of clothes 
 made, and come to it like a merchant already in a good way 
 of business " 
 
 This last piece of kindness touched Popinot so much that 
 he grasped Cesar's large hand in his and kissed it. The good 
 man's confidence had flattered the lover, and a man in love 
 is capable of anything. 
 
 " Poor fellow ! " said Birotteau, as he watched his assistant 
 hurrying across the gardens of the Tuileries, "if Cesarine 
 only cared about him ! But he limps, his hair is the color of 
 a basin, and girls are such queer things ! I can scarcely be- 
 lieve that Cesarine And her mother would like to see 
 
 her a notary's wife. Alexandre Crottat would make her a rich 
 woman ; money makes anything endurable, while there is no 
 happiness that will stand the test of poverty. After all, I have 
 made up my mind that my girl shall be mistress of herself, so 
 that she stops short of folly." 
 
 Birotteau's next-door neighbor, Cayron by name, was a 
 dealer in umbrellas, sunshades, and walking-sticks. He came 
 from Languedoc, his business was not doing well, and Cesar 
 had helped him several times. Cayron asked nothing better 
 than to contract his limits and to effect a proportionate saving 
 in house rent by giving up two second-floor rooms to the 
 wealthy perfumer. 
 
 "Well, neighbor," said Birotteau familiarly as he entered 
 the umbrella store, "my wife consents to the enlargement of 
 our place. If you like, we will go round and see Monsieur 
 Molineux at eleven o'clock." 
 
76 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "My dear Monsieur Birotteau," returned he of the um- 
 brella store, " I have never asked anything for the concession 
 on my part, but you know that a good man of business ought 
 to turn everything to money." 
 
 " The deuce ! " cried the perfumer ; " I have no money to 
 throw away, and I am waiting to know if my architect thinks 
 the thing feasible. ' Before you settle anything,' so he said, 
 ' we must know whether the floors are on a level ; and then we 
 must have Monsieur Molineux's leave to make an opening in 
 the wall, and is it a party wall ? ' And after that I shall have 
 to turn the staircase in my house, so as to alter the landing 
 and have the whole place level from end to end. There will 
 be a lot of expense, and I don't want to ruin myself." 
 
 "Ah, sir," cried the Languedocien, " when you are ruined, 
 heaven and earth will come together and have a family." 
 
 Birotteau stroked his chin, raised himself on tiptoe, and 
 came down again. 
 
 "Beside," Cayron went on, "I only ask you to take this 
 
 ' paper of me " and he held out a little statement for five 
 
 thousand francs and sixteen bills. 
 
 "Ah!" said the perfumer, turning them over, "all for 
 small amounts, at two months and three months " 
 
 "Take them of me, and don't charge me more than six 
 per cent.," pleaded the umbrella dealer humbly. 
 
 "Am I a Jew?" asked the perfumer reproachfully. 
 
 " Goodness, sir, I took them to du Tillet that used to be 
 your assistant, and he would not have them at any price; 
 he wanted to know how much I would consent to lose, no 
 doubt." 
 
 "I know none of these signatures," said the perfumer. 
 
 " Well, we have funny names in the cane and umbrella 
 trade ; they are hawkers." 
 
 "Well, well; I do not say that I will take the lot, but I 
 might manage to take all at the shortest dates." 
 
 " Don't leave me to run after those horse-leeches that drain 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 77 
 
 us of the best part of the profits, for a thousand francs at four 
 months ; take the lot, sir ! I do so little discounting that no 
 one gives me credit ; that is the death of us poor retailers in a 
 small way." 
 
 " Well, well, I will take your little bills. Celestin shall 
 settle it with you. Be ready at eleven. Here comes my 
 architect, Monsieur Grindot," added the perfumer, as he saw 
 the young man whom he had met by appointment at Monsieur 
 de la Billardiere's house on the previous evening. " Unlike 
 most men of talent, you are punctual, sir," said Cesar, in his 
 most genteel manner. 
 
 " If punctuality — in the phrase of a king who was a clever 
 man as well as a great statesman — is the courtesy of kings, it 
 is no less the fortune of architects. Time — time is money; 
 most of all for your artists. Architecture combines all the 
 other arts, I permit myself to say. We will not go through 
 the store," he added, as he showed the way to the sham car- 
 riage entrance. 
 
 Four years ago M. Grindot had taken the Grand Prize 
 for architecture ; and now he had just returned from a three 
 years' sojourn in Rome at the expense of the State. While he 
 was in Italy the young artist had thought of his art ; in Paris 
 he turned his attention to money-making. Governments 
 alone can give the necessary millions to erect public buildings 
 and monuments to an architect's enduring fame ; and it is 
 so natural, when fresh from Rome, to take one's self for a 
 Fontaine or a Percier, that every ambitious young architect 
 has a leaning toward ministerialism ; so the subsidized Liberal, 
 metamorphosed into a Royalist, sought to find patrons in 
 power ; and when a Grand Prize conducts himself after this 
 fashion, his comrades call him a sycophant. 
 
 Two courses lay open to the youthful architect — he might 
 serve the perfumer or make as much as he could out of him. 
 But Birotteau the deputy-mayor ; Birotteau, the future pos- 
 sessor of half of that building estate near the Madeleine, 
 
78 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 where a quarter full of handsome houses was sure to be built 
 sooner or later, was a man worth humoring, so Grindot sacri- 
 ficed present gain to future opportunities. Patiently he lis- 
 tened to the plans, ideas, and vain repetitions of this store- 
 keeping Philistine, the artist's butt and laughing-stock, and 
 the particular object of his scorn, and followed the perfumer 
 about his house, bowing respectfully to his ideas. When 
 Birotteau had said all that he had to say, the young architect 
 tried to give a summary of his own views. 
 
 "You have three windows looking out upon the street in 
 your own house," he said, " as well as the window that is 
 wasted on the stairs and required for the landing. To these 
 four windows you add two on the same floor in the next house, 
 by turning the staircase so that you can walk on level from 
 one end to the other on the side nearest the street." 
 
 "You have understood me exactly," said the amazed per- 
 fumer. 
 
 "To carry out your plan, we shall have to light the new 
 staircase from above, and contrive a porter's lodge in the 
 plinth." 
 
 "Plinth?" 
 
 "Yes ; the part of the wall under the " 
 
 " I see, sir." 
 
 "As to your rooms, and their arrangements and decora- 
 tion, give me carte-blanche. I should like to make them 
 worthy " 
 
 " Worthy ! You have said the very word, sir." 
 
 " How long can you give me to carry out this scheme of 
 decoration ? " 
 
 ' ' Twenty days. ' ' 
 
 " What are you prepared to put down for the workmen ? " 
 
 " Well, what are the repairs likely to mount up to ? " 
 
 "An architect can estimate the cost of a new building al- 
 most to a centime," said the other ; " but as I have not under- 
 taken a bourgeois job as yet (pardon me, sir, the word slipped 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 79 
 
 out), I ought to tell you beforehand that it is impossible for 
 me to give estimates for alterations and repairs. In a week's 
 time I might be able to make a rough guess. Put your confi- 
 dence in me; you shall have a charming staircase lighted 
 from above, and a pretty vestibule, and in the plinth " 
 
 "The plinth again ! " 
 
 " Do not be anxious. I will find room for a little porter's 
 lodge. The alteration and decoration of your rooms will be 
 a labor of love. Yes, sir, I am thinking of art and not of 
 making money. Above all things, if I am to succeed, I must 
 be talked about, must I not? So, in my opinion, the best 
 way is not to haggle with tradesmen, but to obtain a good 
 effect cheaply." 
 
 " With such ideas, young man," Birotteau said patroniz- 
 ingly, " you will succeed." 
 
 " So you will yourself arrange with the bricklayers, 
 painters, locksmiths, carpenters, and cabinet-makers ; and I, 
 for my part, undertake to check their accounts. You will 
 simply agree to pay me a fee of two thousand francs ; it will 
 be money well laid out. Put the whole place into my hands 
 by twelve o'clock to-morrow and tell me whom you mean to 
 employ." 
 
 " What is it likely to cost at first sight ? " asked the elated 
 Birotteau. 
 
 "Ten to twelve thousand francs," said Grindot, "without 
 counting the furniture; for, of course, you will refurnish the 
 rooms. Will you give me the address of your carpet manu- 
 facturer? I ought to come to an understanding with him 
 about the colors, so as to have a harmonious unity." 
 
 " Monsieur Braschon in the Rue Saint-Antoine has my 
 order," said the perfumer, assuming a ducal air. 
 
 The architect made a note of the address on one of those 
 little tablets which are unmistakably a pretty woman's gift. 
 
 " Well," said Birotteau, " I leave it all to you, sir. Still, 
 wait until I have arranged to take over the lease of the two 
 
80 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 rooms next door, and obtained permission to make an open- 
 ing through the wall." 
 
 "Send me a note this evening," said the architect. "I 
 must spend the night in drawing plans.. We architects would 
 rather work for a city merchant than for the King of Prussia ; 
 that is to say, as far as our own taste is concerned. In any 
 case, I will set about taking measurements, the height of the 
 rooms, the dimensions of the door and window embrasures, 
 and the size of the windows." 
 
 " It must be finished by the date I have given, or it is no 
 good." 
 
 "It certainly must," returned the architect. "The men 
 shall work day and night, and we will employ processes for 
 drying the paint; but do not let builders swindle you, make 
 them quote beforehand, and have the agreement in writing." 
 
 "Paris is the only place in the world where one can make 
 such strokes of the wand," said Birotteau, indulging in a 
 flourish worthy of some Asiatic potentate in the " Arabian 
 Nights." "Do me the honor of coming to my ball, sir. 
 All men of talent do not feel the contempt for trade which 
 some heap upon it ; and I expect you will meet one scientific 
 man of the highest rank — Monsieur Vauquelin of the Institute ! 
 — beside Monsieur de la Billardiere, Messieurs le Comte de 
 Fontaine, Lebas, a judge, and president of the Tribunal of 
 Commerce ; and several magistrates, le Comte de Granville 
 of the Court Royal, and Popinot of the Court of First In- 
 stance, Camusot of the Tribunal of Commerce, and his father- 
 in-law Cardot. Perhaps, even le Due de Lenoncourt, First 
 Gentleman of the Bedchamber. It is a gathering of my 
 friends, quite as much in honor of — er — the liberation of the 
 soil — as to celebrate my — promotion to the order of the 
 Legion of Honor." 
 
 Grindot's gesture was peculiar. 
 
 "Possibly — I have deserved this — signal mark of royal — 
 favor by the discharge of my functions at the Consular Tribu- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 81 
 
 nal, and by fighting for the Bourbons on the steps of Saint- 
 Roch's church on the 13th Vendemiaire, when I was wounded 
 by Napoleon. These claims to " 
 
 Constance, in morning dress, came out of Cesarine's bed- 
 room, where she had been dressing ; her first glance stopped 
 her husband's fervid eloquence ; he cast about for some every- 
 day phrase which should modestly convey the tidings of the 
 glory awaiting him on the morrow. 
 
 " Here, pet, this is M. de Grindot, a distinguished young 
 man of great talent. This gentleman is the architect whom 
 Monsieur de la Billardiere recommended ; he will superintend 
 our little alterations here." 
 
 The perfumer placed himself so that his wife could not see 
 him, and put his finger on his lips as he uttered the word 
 little. The architect understood. 
 
 "Constance, this gentleman will take the dimensions of 
 the rooms. Let him do it, dear," said Birotteau, and he 
 whisked out into the street. 
 
 "Will it cost a great deal?" Constance asked the archi- 
 tect. 
 
 " No, madame ; six thousand francs, roughly speaking " 
 
 " Roughly speaking ! " cried Mme. Birotteau. " Sir, I 
 beg of you not to begin without an estimate, and to do noth- 
 ing until a contract has been signed. I know the way of 
 those gentlemen the builders — six thousand means twenty 
 thousand. We are not in a position to squander money. I 
 beg of you, sir, although my husband is certainly master in 
 his own house, to leave him time to think this over." 
 
 " Monsieur told me, madame, that he must have the rooms 
 finished in twenty days ; if we make a delay, you may incur 
 the expense without obtaining the result." 
 
 " There is expense and expense," said the fair mistress of 
 the Queen of Roses. 
 
 " Eh ! madame ; is it so very glorious, do you think, for 
 an architect who would like to erect public monuments to 
 6 
 
82 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 superintend alterations in a private house? I only undertook 
 the little commission to oblige Monsieur de la Billardiere, 
 and if you are alarmed " 
 
 He made as if he would withdraw. 
 
 " Well, well, sir," said Constance, going back to her room. 
 Once there, she hid her head on her daughter's shoulder. 
 " My child," she cried, " your father is ruining himself! 
 He has engaged an architect who wears mustaches and an 
 imperial on his chin, and talks about erecting public monu- 
 ments ! He will fling the house out of the windows to build 
 us a Louvre. Cesar is always in a hurry when there is any- 
 thing crazy to be done ; he only told me about the plan last 
 night, and he is setting about it this morning." 
 
 " Bah ! mamma, never mind papa ; Providence has always 
 taken care of you," said Cesarine, putting her arms about her 
 mother. Then she (the demoiselle) went to the piano, to 
 show the architect that a perfumer's daughter was no stranger 
 to the fine arts. 
 
 When the architect came into the room, he was surprised 
 by Cesarine's beauty, and stood almost dumfounded. For 
 the artist saw before him Cesarine just come from her little 
 room, in her loose morning-gown, bright and blooming with 
 the freshness and the bloom of eighteen years, blue-eyed, 
 and slender, and fair-haired. Youth gave the elasticity (so 
 rare in Paris) which lends firmness to the most delicate tissues; 
 youth tinted the blue network of veins throbbing beneath the 
 transparent skin with the color adored by painters. For 
 though she lived in the relaxing atmosphere of a Parisian 
 store, where the fresh air can scarcely penetrate and the sun- 
 light seldom comes, the outdoor life of Roman Trasteverine 
 could not have been a more successful beautifier than Cesar- 
 ine's manner of living. Her thick hair grew erect like her 
 father's, and, being dressed high, afforded a view of a well-set 
 neck among a shower of curls — the elaborate coiffure of the 
 damsels of the counter, in whom a desire to shine inspires a 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 83 
 
 more than English attention to trifling details in matters of 
 the toilet. 
 
 Cesarine's beauty was neither that of an English court lady 
 nor of a French duchess, but the plump and auburn-haired 
 comeliness of Rubens' Flemish women. She had inherited 
 her father's turned-up nose, but its delicacy of outline gave a 
 sprightly charm to a face of the essentially French type so 
 well rendered by Largilliere. The rich silken tissue of the 
 skin indicated the abundant vitality of girlhood. Her mother's 
 broad brow was lightened by a girlish serenity, untroubled by 
 care, and there was a tender grace in the expression of the 
 blue liquid eyes of the happy-hearted, fair-haired maid. If 
 happiness had taken from her face the romantic interest which 
 painters inevitably give to their compositions by an expres- 
 sion somewhat too pensive, the vague, wistful instincts of the 
 young girl who has never left her mother's wing made an 
 approach to this ideal. With all her apparent slenderness, 
 she was strongly made. Her feet indicated her father's peas- 
 ant origin, a racial defect, like the redness of her hands — the 
 sign-manual of a purely bourgeois descent. Sooner or later 
 she was sure to grow stout. Occasionally young and fashion- 
 able women had come within her ken ; and in course of time 
 she had acquired from them the instinct of dress, certain ways 
 of carrying her head, and manners of speaking and moving, 
 thus copied, which turned the heads of the assistants and 
 other young men ; in their eyes she seemed to have a distin- 
 guished air. 
 
 Popinot had vowed to himself that no woman but Cesarine 
 should be his wife. This mobile blonde, whom a glance 
 seemed to read, who seemed ready to melt into tears at a harsh 
 word, was the one woman in whose presence he could feel 
 conscious of masculine superiority. This charming girl in- 
 spired love, without leaving time to consider whether or not 
 she had sufficient soul to insure that the love should be last- 
 ing ; but what need is there for what we in Paris call esprit, in a 
 
84 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 class where the essential elements of happiness are good-sense 
 and virtue ? 
 
 In character, Cesarine was a second edition of her mother, 
 slightly improved by an education which had taught her 
 superfluous accomplishments. She was fond of music, and 
 had made a crayon drawing of the " Madonna of the Chair; " 
 she perused the works of Mesdames Cottin and Riccoboni, 
 and the writings of Fenelon, Racine, and Bernardin de Saint- 
 Pierre. She never appeared at her mother's side at the cash 
 desk save for a few moments before dinner, or when, on rare 
 occasions, she took her place. Her father and mother, like 
 all self-made people, who hasten to plant the seeds of ingrat- 
 itude in their children by putting the younger generation on a 
 higher level, delighted to make an idol of Cesarine, who, 
 happily, possessed the good qualities of her class and did not 
 take advantage of their weakness. 
 
 Mme. Birotteau followed the architect's movements with 
 earnest, anxious eyes; looking on in consternation, calling 
 her daughter's attention to the strange gyrations of the foot- 
 rule, as Grindot took his measurements after the manner of 
 architects and builders. For her, each one of those strokes 
 of the wand seemed to lay the place under an evil enchant- 
 ment and boded ill to the house ; she would fain have had 
 the walls less lofty and the rooms smaller, and dared not put 
 any questions to the young man as to the results of this 
 sorcery. 
 
 "Be easy, madame," he said, with a smile; "I shall not 
 carry anything away." 
 
 Cesarine could not help laughing. 
 
 "Sir," pleaded Constance, who did not so much as notice 
 the architect's quip, " aim at economy ; some day we may be 
 able to make you a return " 
 
 Before Cesar went to M. Molineux, the landlord of the 
 next house, he asked Roguin for the transfer of the lease 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU: 86 
 
 which Alexandre Crottat was to have drawn up. As he came 
 away from the notary's house, he saw du Tillet at Roguin's 
 study window. Although the liaison between his sometime 
 assistant and Mme. Roguin was a sufficient explanation of du 
 Tillet's presence in the house at a time when the negotiations 
 for the building land were impending, Birotteau, trustful 
 though he was, felt uncomfortable. Du Tillet's animated 
 face suggested that a discussion was going on. 
 
 "Suppose that he should be in the business ! " he asked 
 himself, in an access of his commercial prudence. 
 
 The suspicion flashed like lightning across his mind. 
 He turned again and saw Mme. Roguin at the window ; 
 and then the banker's presence no longer looked so suspi- 
 cious. 
 
 "Still, how if Constance was right?" he asked himself. 
 " How stupid I am to pay any attention to a woman's no- 
 tions ! However, I will talk it over this morning with our 
 uncle. It is only a step from the Cour Batave, where Moli- 
 neux lives, to the Rue des Bourdonnais." 
 
 A suspicious onlooker, a man of business with some experi- 
 ence of rogues, would have been warned ; but Birotteau's 
 previous career, together with his lack of mental grasp (for he 
 was but little fitted for retracing a chain of inductions, a pro- 
 cess by which an able man arrives at a cause), all led to his 
 ruin. He found the umbrella dealer dressed in his best, and 
 was starting away with him to the landlord, when Virginie, 
 the servant, caught her master by the arm. 
 
 "The mistress hopes you will not go out again, sir " 
 
 "Come!" cried Birotteau; "some more women's no- 
 tions! " 
 
 "Without taking your cup of coffee. It is ready for you." 
 
 " Oh ! all right. I have so many things in my head, 
 neighbor," said Birotteau, turning to Cayron, " that I do not 
 listen to my stomach. Be so good as to walk on ; we shall 
 meet each other at Monsieur Molineux's door, unless you go 
 
86 CESAR BIROTTEAO. 
 
 up and explain the matter to him first. We should save time 
 that way." 
 
 M. Molineux was an eccentric person of independent means, 
 a specimen of a kind of humanity which you will no more find 
 out of Paris than you will find Iceland moss growing anywhere 
 out of Iceland. The comparison is but so much the more apt, 
 for that the man in question belonged to that doubtful border- 
 land between the animal and vegetable kingdoms which awaits 
 the Mercier, who shall classify the various cryptogamia which 
 strike root, thrive, or die among the plaster walls of the 
 strange unwholesome old houses affected by the species. 
 
 This particular human plant was an umbellifer, to judge by 
 the blue tubular cap which crowned a stem sheathed in a pair 
 of greenish-colored breeches, and terminated by bulbous roots 
 enveloped in list slippers. At first sight the plant seems 
 harmless and colorless enough ; there is certainly nothing to 
 suggest poison in its appearance. In this strange freak of 
 nature you would have recognized the typical shareholder, 
 who believes in all the news which the daily press baptizes 
 with printer's ink, whose "Look at the paper" is a final ap- 
 peal to authority ; this (you would have thought) was the 
 bourgeois, essentially a lover of order, always (in theory) in 
 rebellion against the powers that be, to whom in practice he 
 punctually yields obedience ; a ferocious creature, take him 
 singly, who grows tame in a crowd of his like. The man 
 who is obdurate as a bailiff where his dues are concerned,, 
 gives fresh groundsel to his birds, and saves the fish-bones for 
 the cat ; he looks up in the middle of making out a receipt to 
 whistle to the canary ; he is suspicious as a turnkey, but will 
 hurry to invest his money in some doubtful undertaking, and 
 then try to recover his losses by the most sordid meanness. 
 The noxious qualities of this hybrid growth are only discov- 
 ered by use ; its nauseous bitterness requires the coction of 
 some piece of business wherein its interests are mingled with 
 those of men. 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 87 
 
 Like all Parisians, Molineux felt a need to make his power 
 felt. He craved that particular privilege of a sovereignty- 
 more or less exercised by every creature, down to the very 
 porter, over a larger or smaller number of victims — a woman, 
 a child, a clerk,- or lodger, a horse, a dog, or monkey — that 
 part of domination which consists in handing on to another 
 the mortifications received by an aspirant to higher spheres. 
 The tiresome little old person in question, having neither 
 wife, nor child, nor niece, nor nephew, treated his charwoman 
 so harshly that she gave him no opportunity of venting his 
 spleen upon her, and avoided all collision with him by a 
 rigorous discharge of her duties. 
 
 So his appetite for domestic tyranny being thus balked, he 
 was fain to find other ways of satisfying it. He had made a 
 patient study of the law of landlord and tenant and of the legal 
 aspects of the party-wall ; he had fathomed the mysteries 
 of jurisprudence with regard to house-property in Paris, and 
 was learned in its infinitely minute intricacies with regard to 
 boundaries and abutments, easements, rates, charges, regula- 
 tions for the cleansing of the street, hangings for Fete-Dieu 
 processions, waste-pipes, lights, projections over the public 
 way, and the near proximity of insanitary dwellings. All his 
 mental and physical energies, all his intelligence, was de- 
 voted to maintaining his authority as a landlord with a high 
 hand ; he had made a hobby of his occupation, and the hobby 
 was becoming a mania. 
 
 He loyed to protect citizens against encroachments on their 
 rights, but opportunities occurred so seldom that his thwarted 
 passion expended itself upon his tenants. A tenant became 
 his enemy, his inferior, his subject, his vassal. He felt that 
 their homage was a due, and regarded those who passed him 
 without a salutation on the stairs as boors. He made out his 
 receipts himself, and sent them at noon on the quarter-day; 
 and those who were behindhand received a summons by a 
 certain hour. Then followed a distraint and costs, and all 
 
 D 
 
88 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 the cavalry of the law came into the field with the celerity of 
 "the machine," as the headsman calls his instrument of ex- 
 ecution. Molineux gave no grace and no delay ; his heart 
 was indurated on the side of rents. 
 
 " I will lend you the money if you want it;" he would say 
 to a solvent tenant, " but pay me my rent ; any getting be- 
 hindhand with the rent means a loss of interest for which the 
 law provides no remedy." 
 
 After a prolonged study of the skittish humors of successive 
 tenants who conformed to no standard, and, like successive 
 dynasties, nor more nor less, invariably overturned the insti- 
 tutions of their predecessors, Molineux had promulgated a 
 charter which he observed religiously. By virtue of it the 
 good man never did any repairs; none of his chimneys 
 smoked, his staircases were always in order, his ceilings white, 
 his cornices above reproach, his floors held securely to the 
 joists, and there was no fault to find with the paint. All the 
 locks had been put in within the last three years, every win- 
 dow-pane was whole, and as for cracks in the walls they did 
 not exist; he could see no broken tiles in the floors till the 
 tenants were leaving the house. He usually appeared upon 
 the scene to receive the incoming tenants with a locksmith 
 and a painter and glazier, very handy fellows, he said. The 
 tenant was doubtless at liberty to make improvements; but if 
 the thriftless creature redecorated his rooms, old Molineux set 
 his wits to work and pondered night and day how to dis- 
 lodge him and let the newly papered and painted abode to 
 another comer. He set his snares, bided his time, and began 
 the whole series of his unhallowed devices. There was no 
 subtlety in the regulations of Paris with regard tcrleases that 
 he did not know. He indited polite and amiable communi- 
 cations to his victims ; but beneath the manner, as beneath the 
 harmless and obliging expression of the pettifogging scribbler 
 himself, lurked the spirit of a Shylock. 
 
 He must always be paid six months in advance, to be de- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 89 
 
 ducted from the last half-year's rent, subject to a host of 
 thorny conditions of his own invention. He assured himself 
 that the value of the tenant's furniture was sufficient to cover 
 the rent, and reconnoitred every new tenant like a detective 
 when he came in. There were some occupations which he 
 did not like, and the least sound of a hammer frightened him. 
 When the time came for handing over a lease, he kept it back 
 for a week, conning it over for fear it should contain what he 
 denominated " notary's et ceteras." 
 
 Apart from his character of landlord, Jean-Baptiste Moli- 
 neux was apparently good-natured and obliging. He could 
 play a game of boston without complaining of being badly 
 seconded by his partner ; his stock subjects for conversation 
 were of the ordinary bourgeois kind, and he found the same 
 things laughable — the arbitrary acts of bakers (the rascals), 
 who give short weights, which are winked at by the police, 
 the heroic seventeen deputies of the Left. He read the Cure 
 ' Meslier's "Bon Sens" (Free Thinker), yet went to mass, 
 halting between Deism and Christianity ; but he subscribed 
 nothing for sacramental bread, under the plea that you must 
 resist the encroachments of the priesthood. The indefati- 
 gable redresser of grievances would write to this effect to the 
 newspapers, though the newspapers neither inserted his letters 
 nor replied to them. Molineux was, in short, in many re- 
 spects the ordinary estimable citizen who burns a yule-log at 
 Christmas, draws for king on Twelfth Night, plays tricks on 
 the First of April, makes the rounds of the boulevards when 
 the weather is fine, goes to watch the skating ; and on days 
 when there are to be fireworks in the Place Louis XV. will 
 take his place there at two o'clock in the afternoon with a 
 piece of bread in his pocket, so as to be "in the front row." 
 The Cour Batave, where the little old man lived, is a result 
 of one of those freaks of the speculative builder which cannot 
 be explained after they have taken substantial form. It is a 
 cloister-like building with its freestone arcading, its covered 
 
90 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 galleries surrounding the court with a fountain in the middle 
 — a thirsty fountain with its lion jaws agape, not to supply, 
 but to ask for water of every passer-by. Possibly it was in- 
 tended for a sort of Palais-Royal to adorn the Faubourg Saint- 
 Denis. There is a little light and stir of life during the day 
 in the unwholesome pile shut in on all four sides by tall 
 houses ; it lies in the centre of a labyrinth of dank alleys, 
 where the rheumatism lurks for the hurrying foot-passenger, a 
 maze of dark, narrow passages which converge here and con- 
 nect the Quartier des Halles and the Quartier Saint-Martin 
 by the famous Rue Quincampoix ; but at night there is no 
 spot in Paris more deserted, and these little slums might be 
 called the catacombs of commerce. It is the sink of several 
 industries ; and if there are few natives of Batavia proper, 
 there are plenty of small tradesmen. 
 
 Naturally, all the suites of rooms in this merchant's palace 
 have but one outlook— into the central courtyard — and for 
 this and other reasons the rents asked are of the lowest. M. 
 Molineux inhabited one of the angles of the building. Con- 
 siderations of health had prompted the choice of a sixth-floor 
 lodging; for fresh air was only to be had at a height of 
 seventy feet from the ground. From the leads, where the 
 worthy owner of house-property was wont to take exercise, he 
 enjoyed a charming view of the windmills of Montmartre. 
 He grew flowers up there, too, in defiance of police regula- 
 tions against these hanging-gardens of the modern Babylon. 
 His sixth-floor establishment consisted of four rooms, without 
 counting the water-closets on the floor above, a valuable prop- 
 erty to which his claim was incontestable ; he had the key, he 
 had established them. On a first entrance, an indecent bare- 
 ness at once revealed the miserly nature of the man. Half-a- 
 dozen straw-bottomed chairs stood in the lobby ; there was a 
 glazed earthenware stove ; and on the walls, covered with a 
 bottle-green paper, hung four prints bought at sales. In the 
 dining-room you beheld a couple of sideboards, two cages full 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 91 
 
 of birds, a table covered with oilcloth, a weather-glass, mahog- 
 any chairs with horsehair cushions, and through a French 
 window a view of the aforesaid hanging-gardens. Short, 
 antiquated, green silk curtains adorned the sitting-room, and 
 the white-painted wooden furniture was upholstered in green 
 Utrecht velvet. As for the furniture of the old bachelor's 
 room, it was of the period of Louis XV.; disfigured by pro- 
 longed wear, and so dirty that a woman in a white gown 
 would have shrunk from contact with it. The mantel boasted 
 a clock ; the dial, between two columns, served as a pediment 
 beneath a statuette of Pallas brandishing a lance — a fabulous 
 personage of antiquity. The tiled floor was so littered over 
 with plates full of scraps for the cats that it was scarcely pos- 
 sible to move about without setting a foot in one of them. 
 Above the rosewood chest of drawers hung a pastel — Moli- 
 neux in his youth. Add a few books, tables covered with 
 shabby, green cardboard boxes, a case full of the stuffed forms 
 of some departed canaries on a console table, and, to com- 
 plete the list, a bed so chilly-looking that it might have been 
 a rebuke to a Carmelite. 
 
 Cesar Birotteau was charmed with Molineux's exquisite 
 politeness. He found the latter in his gray flannel dressing- 
 gown, keeping an eye on the milk set on a little cast-iron 
 plate warmer, in a corner of the hearth, while he poured the 
 contents of a brown earthen pipkin, in which he had been 
 boiling coffee-grounds, into his coffee-pot by spoonfuls at a 
 time. The umbrella dealer had opened the door, lest his 
 landlord should be disturbed in this occupation ; but Moli- 
 neux, holding mayors and deputy-mayors ("our municipal 
 officers," as he called them) in great veneration, rose at first 
 sight of the magistrate, and stood cap in hand until the great 
 Birotteau should be seated. 
 
 " No, sir Yes, sir Ah, sir, if I had known that I 
 
 was to have the honor of housing a member of the municipal 
 government of Paris amid my humble Penates, pray believe 
 
92 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 that I should have made it my business to repair to your 
 house ; although I am your landlord, or — on the point — of — 
 being " 
 
 Here Birotteau by a gesture entreated him to put on his 
 cap. 
 
 "I shall do nothing of the kind; I shall remain bare- 
 headed until you are seated, and have put on your hat if you 
 have a cold. My room is rather chilly ; my narrow means 
 do not permit — God bless you, Mr. Deputy-mayor ! 
 
 Birotteau had sneezed while fumbling for his papers. He 
 held them out, not without remarking that to save any delay 
 he had had them made out at his own expense by M. Roguin 
 his notary. 
 
 " I do not call Monsieur Roguin's knowledge in question ; 
 'tis an old name, well known in the Parisian notariat ; but I 
 have my little ways of doing things, and I look after my 
 affairs myself, a hobby excusable enough ; and, then, my 
 notary is " 
 
 "But this is such a simple matter," said the perfumer, 
 accustomed to prompt decisions on the part of buyers and 
 sellers. 
 
 "Simple /" echoed Molineux. " Nothing is simple where 
 house-property is concerned. Ah ! you are not a landlord, 
 sir ; so much the happier, you ! If you but knew the lengths 
 to which a tenant will push ingratitude and what precautions 
 we have to take ! Now just listen to this, sir ; I have a tenant 
 
 that " and for fifteen minutes he held forth, relating 
 
 how that M. Gendrin, a draughtsman, had eluded the vigi- 
 lance of the caretaker in the Rue Saint-Honore. M. Gendrin 
 had perpetrated scandals worthy of a Marat, obscene draw- 
 ings ! and the police tolerated it ; nay, they were made with 
 the connivance of the police ! Then this Gendrin, an artist 
 of thoroughly immoral character, had gone back to the house 
 with loose women, and made it impossible to go up and down 
 the stairs, a prank worthy of a man who drew caricatures to 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 93 
 
 ridicule the Government. And why all these misdeeds ? Be- 
 cause he was asked to pay his rent on the 15th. Gendrin 
 and Molineux were about to go to law about it ; for, while the 
 artist did not pay, he insisted on occupying the empty rooms. 
 Molineux received anonymous letters — from Gendrin, no 
 doubt — threatening to murder him some night in the alleys 
 about the Cour Batave. 
 
 "Things have arrived at such a pitch, sir," he went on, 
 " that the prefect of police, to whom in confidence I related 
 my difficulty (at the same time I took the opportunity of saying 
 a word or two touching the alterations that ought to be made in 
 the provisions of the law for such cases), gave me an authori- 
 zation to carry firearms in self-defense." 
 
 The little old man got up to look for his pistols. 
 
 " Here they are, sir ! " cried he. 
 
 " But you have nothing of that kind to fear from me, sir," 
 said Birotteau, glancing at Cayron with a smile that plainly 
 expressed his pity for such a man. 
 
 Molineux caught the glance, and was shocked to see such 
 a look on the countenance of a "municipal officer," whose 
 duty it was to see to the safety of those in his district. He 
 could have forgiven it in anybody else, but in Birotteau it was 
 unpardonable. 
 
 "Sir," Molineux answered drily, "one of the most highly 
 respected judges in the Consular Tribune, a deputy-mayor, 
 and an honorable merchant, would not condescend to such 
 baseness, for baseness it is ! But in this particular case you 
 want the consent of your landlord, Monsieur le Comte de 
 Granville, before you make a hole in the wall, and stipulations 
 must be made in the agreement touching the restoration of the 
 wall on the expiration of the lease. As a matter of fact, 
 too, the rent is a great deal lower than it will be ; rents will 
 go up all about the Place Vendome ; they are going up 
 already ! The Rue Castiglione is about to be built. I am 
 binding myself down — I am binding — myself " 
 
94 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 ''Let us have done with it," said Birotteau. "What do 
 you want? I have had enough experience of business to 
 guess that your reasonings can be silenced by the great argu- 
 ment — money ! Well, how much do you want?" 
 
 " Nothing but what is fair, sir. How long has your lease 
 to run? " 
 
 "Seven years," answered Birotteau. 
 
 "What may not my second floor be worth in seven years' 
 time ? " cried Molineux. " What will two furnished rooms let 
 for over in your quarter ? More than two hundred francs a 
 month very likely! I am binding myself; binding myself 
 down by a lease. So we will set down the rent at fifteen 
 hundred francs. At that figure I will consent to receive you 
 as a tenant for the two rooms instead of M. Cayron here," 
 giving the dealer a sly wink, "and let you have them on 
 lease for seven consecutive years. The opening in the wall 
 you will make at your own charges, subject to your bringing 
 to me proof that Monsieur le Comte de Granville sanctions it 
 and waives all his rights in the matter. Whatever happens in 
 consequence of the small opening, the responsibility will rest 
 upon you ; but you shall be in nowise bound to reinstate the 
 wall so far as I am concerned ; you shall pay me down five 
 hundred francs now instead ; we never can tell what may 
 happen ; and I don't want to run about after anybody to put 
 up my wall again for me." 
 
 " The conditions seem to me scarcely fair," put in Birotteau. 
 
 "Then you must pay me down seven hundred and fifty 
 francs hie et nunc, to be carried forward till the last six months 
 of possession ; the lease will be a sufficient discharge. Oh ! 
 I will take bills of exchange for value received in rent, at any 
 date you please, so that I have my guarantee. I am a plain- 
 dealing man, and go straight to the point in business. We 
 will stipulate that you shall wall up the door on my staircase, 
 where you have no right of way — at your own expense — in 
 brick and mortar. Reassure yourself, I shall not call upon you 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 95 
 
 to make it good when the lease expires ; I shall regard the 
 five hundred francs as an indemnity. You will always find me 
 reasonable, sir." 
 
 " We in business are not so particular," said the perfumer ; 
 " if we had all these formalities, we should do no business at 
 all." 
 
 " Oh, in business, that is quite another thing, especially in 
 the perfumery line, where everything slips off and on like a 
 glove," said the little old man, with a sour smile. "But 
 with house-property in Paris, sir, you cannot be too particular. 
 Why, I had a tenant in the Rue Montorgueil " 
 
 " I should be very sorry to delay your breakfast, sir," said 
 Birotteau; " here are the deeds, set them right, all that you 
 ask me is agreed to ; let us sign the documents to-morrow, 
 and give our promises by word of mouth to-day, for to-mor- 
 row my architect must be put in possession of the place." 
 
 Molineux looked again at the umbrella dealer. " There is 
 part of the term expired, sir ; Monsieur Cayron has no mind 
 to pay for it ; we will add the amount to the little bills, so 
 that the agreement will run from January to January. That 
 will be more business-like." 
 
 " So be it," said Birotteau. 
 . " There is the sou in the franc for the porter " 
 
 " Why, you are not allowing me to use the staircase and 
 the doorway; it is not right that " 
 
 "Oh! but you are a tenant!" cried little Molineux in 
 peremptory tones, up in arms for the principle involved. 
 " You must pay door and window taxes and your share of the 
 others. If once we clearly understand each other, sir, there 
 will be no difficulties hereafter. Is your business rapidly in- 
 creasing, sir ; are you doing well ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Birotteau, " but that is not my reason. I am 
 inviting a few of my friends, partly to celebrate the evacuation 
 of the foreign troops, partly on the occasion of my own pro- 
 motion to the Legion of Honor " 
 
96 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "Aha!" said the flattering Molineux, "a well-deserved 
 honor." 
 
 "Yes," said Birotteau. "It may be that I have shown 
 myself not unworthy of this signal mark of royal favor by act- 
 ing in my capacity at the Consular Tribunal, and by fighting 
 for the Bourbons on the steps of Saint-Roch, on the 13th 
 of Vendemiaire, where I was wounded by Napoleon ; these 
 claims " 
 
 " Equal those of our heroes in the late army. The ribbon 
 is red, because it has been dyed in blood shed for France." 
 
 At these words, a quotation from the " Constitutional," 
 Birotteau could not resist the impulse to invite little Molineux, 
 who grew quite incoherent in his thanks, and was almost 
 ready to forgive the slight which had been put upon him. 
 The old man went as far as the stairhead with his new tenant, 
 overwhelming him with civilities. 
 
 As soon as they were outside in the Cour Batave, Birotteau 
 looked at Cayron with an amused expression. 
 
 " I did not think that there was such a weak-minded crea- 
 ture in existence," he said ; " idiot " had been on the tip of 
 his tongue, but he suppressed it in time. 
 
 "Ah, sir!" said Cayron, " everybody is not so clever as 
 you are." 
 
 Birotteau might be excused for thinking himself a clever 
 man compared with Molineux ; the umbrella-dealer's reply 
 drew a pleasant smile from him ; he took leave of his com- 
 panion with a regal air. 
 
 " Here am I at the Market," he said to himself; " let us 
 arrange about the hazelnuts." 
 
 After an hour spent in making inquiries, the market-women 
 referred Birotteau to the Rue des Lombards, the headquarters 
 of the trade in nuts for confectionery, and there his friends 
 the Matifats informed him that the only wholesale dealer in 
 hazelnuts was one Mme. Angelique Madou, resident in the 
 Rue Perrin-Gasselin ; and that this was the one house in the 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 97 
 
 trade for genuine Provencal filberts and white Alpine hazel- 
 nuts. 
 
 The Rue Perrin-Gasselin lies in a quadrangle bounded by 
 the quay, the Rue Saint-Denis, the Rue de la Ferronnerie, 
 and the Rue de la Monnaie, a labyrinth of slums which are, 
 as it were, the entrails of Paris. Here countless numbers of 
 heterogeneous and nondescript industries are carried on ; evil- 
 smelling trades, and the manufacture of the daintiest finery, 
 herrings and lawn, silk and honey, butter and tulle, jostle 
 each other in its squalid precincts. Here are the headquarters 
 of those multitudinous small trades which Paris no more sus- 
 pects in its midst than a man surmises the functions performed 
 by the pancreas in the human economy. In this congested 
 district, in which one Bidault of the Rue Grenetat (otherwise 
 known as Gigonnet the pawnbroker) played the part of leech, 
 the whole stock of goods sold in the Great Market is kept. 
 The ancient stables are warehouses where tons of oil are 
 stored ; the old coach-houses hold thousands of pairs of cot- 
 ton stockings. 
 
 Mme. Madou, sometime a fish-wife, had gone into the 
 "dry-fruit line" some ten years before this present year of 
 grace, on her entrance into a partnership with the late owner 
 of the business, who had an old-established connection among 
 the ladies of the Great Market. Her beauty, of a vigorous 
 and provocative order, had disappeared in excessive stoutness. 
 She lived on the first floor of a yellow, dilapidated house, held 
 together by iron clamps at every story. The departed dealer 
 in dry-fruit had succeeded in ridding himself of competitors 
 and had secured a monopoly of the trade ; so that, in spite of 
 some slight defects of education, his successor could continue 
 in the same groove, and came and went in her warehouses, 
 old out-buildings, stables, and workshops, where she waged 
 war against insect life with some success. 
 
 Mme. Angelique Madou dispensed with counting-house, 
 safe, and book-keeping (for she could neither read nor write), 
 7 
 
98 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 and answered a letter by blows of the fist, for she looked upon 
 it as an insult. In other respects she was a good-natured 
 soul, with a high-colored countenance, and a bandanna hand- 
 kerchief tied about her head beneath her cap, and a trumpet 
 voice which won the respect of the carmen who brought goods 
 to the Rue Perrin-Gasselin, and whose "rows" with her 
 usually ended in a small bottle of white wine. She could not 
 well have any trouble with the growers who supplied her, for 
 she always paid cash on delivery, the only way of carrying on 
 such a business as hers, and Mother Madou went into the 
 country to see them in the summer-time. 
 
 Birotteau found this shrewish saleswoman among her sacks 
 of hazelnuts, chestnuts, and walnuts. 
 
 "Good-day, my dear lady," said the jaunty Birotteau flip- 
 pantly. 
 
 " Your dear/" returned she. "So you have pleasant 
 recollections of your dealings with me, have you ? Have we 
 met each other at court ? " 
 
 " I am a perfumer, and, what is more, deputy-mayor of the 
 Second Arrondissement of Paris, and I have a right to expect 
 a different tone from you." 
 
 "I marry when I have a mind," said the virago; "I am 
 no customer at the mayor's office, and don't trouble deputy- 
 mayors much. And as for my customers they adore me, and 
 I talk to 'em as I please. If they don't like it, they may take 
 themselves somewhere else." 
 
 "See what comes of a monopoly," muttered Birotteau. 
 
 " Popole? that's my godson ; he has been up to some foolery 
 perhaps ; have you come for him, your worship ? " she asked, 
 in milder tones. 
 
 " No. I have the honor to inform you that I come to you 
 as a customer." 
 
 "All right. What is your name, my lad ? I haven't seen 
 you here before." 
 
 "If that is the way you talk, you ought to sell your nuts 
 
'Good-day, my dear lady," said birotteau flippantly. 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 99 
 
 cheap," said Birotteau, and he mentioned his name and 
 designation. 
 
 " Oh ! you are the famous Birotteau with the handsome 
 wife. Well, and what weight do you want of these little dears 
 of hazelnuts, honey?" 
 
 "Six thousand pounds weight." 
 
 "It is as much as I have," said the saleswoman, with a 
 voice like a cracked flute. "You are not in the do-nothing 
 line, marrying the girls, and making scent for them. Lord, 
 bless you ! you do a trade, you do ! Sorry I have so little 
 for you ! You will be a fine customer, and your name will 
 be written on the heart of the woman that I love best in the 
 world " 
 
 " Who may that be ? " 
 
 "Who but dear Madame Madou." 
 
 " What do you want for the nuts? " 
 
 " Twenty-five francs the hundredweight to you, mister, it 
 you take the lot." 
 
 "Twenty-five francs," said Birotteau. "That is fifteen 
 hundred francs ! And I shall very likely take a hundred 
 thousand pounds weight in a year ! " 
 
 "But just look at the quality ; no husks!" cried she, 
 plunging a red arm into a sack of filberts. " Sound kernels, 
 my dear sir. Just think, now, the grocers sell their mixed 
 dessert fruits at twenty-four sous the pound, and in every four 
 pounds they put more than a pound of hazelnuts. Am I to lose 
 money on the goods to please you? You are a nice man, but 
 I don't care enough about you yet to do that. As you are 
 taking such a quantity, we might let you have them at twenty 
 francs, for it won't do to send away a deputy-mayor ; it would 
 bring bad luck to the young couples! A good article; just 
 feel the weight of them ! They wouldn't go fifty to the 
 pound ! Sound nuts they are, not one single maggot among 
 them ! " 
 
 " Well, send six thousand pounds weight early to-morrow 
 
100 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 morning to my factory in the Rue Faubourg du Temple, for 
 two thousand francs at ninety days." 
 
 " They shall be punctual as a bride at a wedding. Well, 
 good-by, Monsieur le Maire; we part good friends. But if it 
 is all the same to you," following Birotteau into the court, " I 
 would rather have a bill at forty days, for I have let you have 
 them too cheap, and I can't afford to lose the interest on the 
 money too. For all his sentimental ways, old Gigonnet sucks 
 the life out of us, as a spider sucks a fly." 
 
 " Very well, yes, fifty days. But I'll have the nuts by 
 weight, so as not to lose on the hollow ones. They must be 
 weighed or I'll have nothing to do with them." 
 
 " Oh, the fox; he knows that dodge, does he?" said Mme. 
 Madou ; "you can't catch him napping. Those beggars in 
 the Rue des Lombards put him up to that 1 Those great 
 wolves yonder are all in a league to devour us poor lambs." 
 
 The lamb was five feet high and three feet around ; she had 
 not a vestige of a waist, and looked like a post in a striped 
 cotton gown. 
 
 As he went along the Rue Saint-Honor6, the perfumer, 
 lost in his schemes, meditated on his duel with Macassar 
 Oil. He designed the labels, decided on the shape of the 
 bottles, the quality of the corks, the color of the placards. 
 And people say that there is no poetry in business ! Newton 
 did not make more calculations over the discovery of the 
 famous binomial theorem than Birotteau made for the ". Com- 
 agen Essence" (for it was an essence now; the words oil 
 and essence possessed no definite meaning for him, and he 
 went from the one to the other). All these combinations 
 were seething in his head, and he mistook the ferment of an 
 empty brain for the germination of an idea. So absorbed was 
 he in his meditations that he went past the Rue des Bourdon- 
 nais, and, bethinking himself of his uncle, was obliged to re- 
 trace his steps. 
 
 Claude-Joseph Pillerault, formerly a retail hardware dealer 
 
CESAR SIROTTEAU. 101 
 
 at the sign of the Golden Bell, was one of those human beings 
 whose exterior is the outward and visible expression of a 
 beautiful nature ; and heart and brain, language and thought, 
 his manner and the clothes that he wore, were all in harmony. 
 He was the. only relation that Mine. Birotteau had in the 
 world, and upon her and on Cesarine Pillerault had centred 
 all his affections ; for in the course of his business career he 
 had lost his wife and his son, and a boy whom he had adopted, 
 the son of his cook. 
 
 These cruel bereavements had given to the good man's 
 thoughts a cast of Christian stoicism, a lofty doctrine which 
 was the informing spirit of his life, and shed the radiance of a 
 winter sunset over his last years, a glow that brings no warmth. 
 There was a tinge of asceticism about the thin, worn face, 
 where sallow and swarthy tones were harmoniously blended ; 
 you saw in it a striking resemblance to typical presentments 
 of Time ; but the every-day cares of a retail business had 
 touched this face, there was less of the monumental quality, 
 less of the grimness insisted upon by painters, sculptors, and 
 designers of bronze figures for clocks. 
 
 Pillerault was of middle height, and thick-set rather than 
 stout. Nature had fashioned him for hard work and a long 
 life; he was strongly built, as his square shoulders indicated; 
 a man of phlegmatic temper, whose feelings, though he could 
 feel, did not lie on the surface. His quiet manner and reso- 
 lute face indicated that he was little given to the expression 
 of his emotions ; but, reserved and undemonstrative though he 
 was, there were depths of tenderness in Pillerault's nature. 
 The principal characteristic of the hazel eyes, with dark 
 specks in them, was their unvarying clearness. There were 
 deep furrows in a forehead sallowed by time, narrow, con- 
 tracted, and stern, and covered with gray hair, cut so short 
 that it looked like felt. Prudence, not avarice, was expressed 
 in the lines of the thin lips. The brightness of the eyes told 
 of a temperate life ; and, indeed, sincerity, a sense of duty, and 
 
102 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 a. real humility glorified his features and set off his face, as 
 health does. 
 
 For sixty years he had led a hard and dreary existence, a 
 constant struggle for a livelihood. It was the same story as 
 Cesar's own, with Cesar's luck omitted. Pillerault had re- 
 mained an assistant till he was thirty years old ; he had em- 
 barked his capital in business at an age when Cesar was 
 investing his savings in rentes ; then the law of the maximum 
 had hit him hard, and his pickaxes and spades had been req- 
 uisitioned. His taciturn wisdom, his foresight, and logical 
 clear-headedness had had their effect on his "ways of doing 
 business." His bargains were concluded, as a rule, by 
 word of mouth, and difficulties seldom arose. Like most 
 meditative people, he was an observer ; he said little, and 
 studied those who talked ; often he had declined good bar- 
 gains of which his neighbors had availed themselves, and sub- 
 sequently repented, and vowed that Pillerault could smell out 
 a rogue. He preferred sure gains, if of the smallest, to bold 
 strokes of business involving heavy sums. 
 
 His stock of hardware consisted of grates, gridirons, cast- 
 iron fire-dogs, boilers, and copper caldrons, hoes, and such 
 agricultural implements as laborers use; somewhat unremuner- 
 ative branches of a business that involves continual drudgery. 
 Hardware is ponderous, awkward to handle, and difficult to 
 store, and the profits are not heavy in proportion ; so Pillerault 
 had nailed up many a case, sent off many packages, and un- 
 loaded many vans. Never had a competence been more 
 honorably earned, more thoroughly deserved, more to the 
 credit of the man who had made it. He had never asked too 
 much, had never run after business. Toward the end of the 
 Ume, you might have seen him smoking his pipe in the door- 
 way and watching his assistants at work. In 1814, when he 
 retired, his actual capital at first consisted of seventy thousand 
 francs, which he invested in Government stock that brought 
 him in five thousand and some odd hundred francs a year, 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 103 
 
 with a further forty thousand francs due in five years' time, 
 when the assistant to whom he had sold the business was to 
 pay for it. On this amount, meanwhile, no interest was paid. 
 For thirty years he had annually made seven per cent, on a 
 turnover of a hundred thousand francs, and had lived on half 
 his income. Such was his balance-sheet. 
 
 His neighbors, but little jealous of this by no means brilliant 
 success, extolled his wisdom without comprehending it. 
 
 At the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie and the Rue Saint- 
 Honore stands the Cafe David, where a few retired trades- 
 men, such as Pillerault, congregate of an evening to take 
 their coffee. At one time, Pillerault's adoption of his_ cook's 
 son had occasioned a few jokes among its frequenters, such 
 jokes as are addressed to a man looked up to among his 
 fellows, for the hardware man received a respect for which he 
 had not sought ; his own self-respect sufficed him. So when 
 Pillerault lost the poor young fellow there were more than 
 two hundred people at the funeral who followed his adopted 
 child to the grave. He behaved heroically in those days, 
 making no parade of his grief, bearing it as a brave man 
 bears sorrow. This increased the sympathy felt in the quarter 
 for the "good man," as they called him, and the accent in 
 which the words were spoken gave the words a wider and 
 ennobled meaning when they applied to Pillerault. 
 
 Claude Pillerault had become so accustomed to the sober 
 even tenor of his life that, when he retired from business and 
 entered upon the time of leisure, which hangs so heavily on 
 many a Parisian tradesman's hands, he could not unbend and 
 divert himself with the amusements of an idle life ; he made 
 no change in his housekeeping ; and his old age was enlivened 
 by his political opinions, which, let us admit it at once, were 
 those of the extreme Left. 
 
 Pillerault belonged to the artisan class, which the Revolu- 
 tion had brought into cooperation with the small storekeepers. 
 The one blot on his character was the importance which he 
 
104 C£SA& BIROTTEAU. 
 
 attached to the victory of his principles ; he dwelt fondly oil 
 his rights, on liberty, on the great results of the Revolution ; 
 he firmly believed that his political freedom and existence 
 were being undermined by the Jesuits, whose underhand 
 power the Liberals discovered, and threatened by the ideas 
 with which the " Constitutionnel " credited Monsieur the 
 King's brother. He was, however, consistent in his life and 
 in his ideas ; there was nothing narrow in his political views ; 
 he never abused his adversaries, he held courtiers in suspicion, 
 and believed in Republican virtues. He imagined that Manuel 
 was guiltless of any excesses, that General Foy was a great 
 man, and Casimir Perier without ambition ; to his thinking, 
 Lafayette was a political prophet, Courier a good man. In 
 short, he beheld noble chimerical. visions. 
 
 The good man was domestic in his habits ; he made part of 
 the family circle in which his niece lived — the Ragons, Judge 
 Popinot, Joseph Lebas, and the Matifats. Fifteen hundred 
 francs a year supplied his needs ; the rest of his income was 
 spent in charitable deeds and in presents to his grandniece; 
 four times a year he gave a dinner to his friends at Roland's 
 in the Rue du Hasard, and took them afterward to the play. 
 He played the part of the old bachelor friend on whom 
 married women draw bills at sight for their fancies; for a 
 country excursion, a party for the opera or the Montagnes- 
 Beaujon ; and Pillerault would be very happy at such times in 
 the pleasure which he was giving, and felt the gladness in other 
 hearts. 
 
 If Molineux's character was written at large in his queer 
 furniture, Pillerault's pure heart and simple life were no less 
 revealed by his surroundings. His abode consisted of a lobby, 
 a sitting-room, and bedroom. But for the difference in size, 
 it might have been a Carthusian's cell. The lobby, floored 
 with red tiles, which were beeswaxed, boasted but one window, 
 hung with dimity curtains edged with scarlet ; mahogany 
 chairs, with red leather cushions and studded with brass nails, 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 105 
 
 stood against the wall, which was covered with an olive-green 
 paper, and adorned with pictures — a "Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence," a portrait of Bonaparte as First Consul, and a 
 " Battle of Austerlitz." The furniture of the sitting-room, 
 doubtless left to the upholsterer, was yellow, and covered with 
 a flowered pattern ; there was a carpet on the floor ; the 
 bronze ornaments on the mantel were not gilded. There was 
 a painted fire-screen before the grate ; a vase of artificial 
 flowers under a glass shade stood on a console, and a liqueur 
 stand on a round table covered with a cloth. It was evident 
 from the unused look of the room that it was a concession to 
 convention on the part of the retired hardware dealer, who 
 rarely received visitors. 
 
 His own room was as bare as that of a monk or an old sol- 
 dier, the two men who make the truest estimate of life. In the 
 alcove a holy-water stoup caught the eye, a profoundly touch- 
 ing confession of faith in a Republican stoic and a strict anti- 
 jesuit. 
 
 An old woman came in to do the work of the establishment ; 
 but, so great was Pillerault's reverence for womankind, that he 
 would not allow her to clean his shoes and made an arrange- 
 ment with a bootblack. 
 
 His costume was plain and never varied. He always wore 
 a coat and breeches of blue cloth, a cotton vest, a white cravat, 
 and very low walking shoes ; and on high-days and holidays a 
 coat with metal buttons. He rose, breakfasted, went out, 
 dined, and returned home when the evening was over with the 
 strictest regularity, for a methodical life conduces to health 
 and length of days. Cesar, the Ragons, and the Abbe Loraux 
 always avoided the subject of politics ; those of his own circle 
 knew better than to court attack by trying to convert him. 
 Like his nephew and the Ragons, he put great faith in Roguin ; 
 for him a notary of Paris was always a being to be venerated 
 and probity incarnate. In the matter of the building land, 
 Pillerault had examined it so thoroughly that the remembrance 
 
106 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 of his investigations had given Cesar moral support in the 
 combat with his wife's forebodings. 
 
 As Cesar climbed the seventy-two steps of the stairs which 
 led to the low, brown doorway of his uncle's rooms, he thought 
 within himself that the old man must be very hale to go up 
 and down them daily without a murmur. He found the coat 
 and breeches hanging on a peg outside, and Mme. Vaillant 
 busy rubbing and brushing them ; while the philosopher him- 
 self, in his gray flannel dressing-gown, was breakfasting by the 
 fireside, and conning the reports of parliamentary debates in 
 the " Constitutionnel " or the " Journal du Commerce." 
 
 "The affair is settled, uncle," said Cesar, "they are just 
 about to draft the documents ; but if you have any doubts or 
 regret about it, there is still time to cry off." 
 
 "Why should I cry off? It is a good piece of business, 
 but it takes some time to realize, like everything that is safe. 
 My fifty thousand francs are lying at the bank ; the last install- 
 ment of five thousand francs for my business was paid in yes- 
 terday. As for the Ragons, they are putting all that they have 
 into it." 
 
 " Why, how do they live ? " 
 
 "Never mind; they live, at all events." 
 
 " I understand you, uncle," said Birotteau, deeply touched, 
 and he grasped the austere old man's hands tightly in his. 
 
 " What are you going to do about this business? " Pillerault 
 asked abruptly. 
 
 " I shall take three-eighths ; you and the Ragons will take 
 an eighth between you ; I shall credit you with the amount in 
 my books until they decide the question of the deeds." 
 
 " Good ! Are you so very rich, my boy, that you pay down 
 three hundred thousand francs? It looks to me as though you 
 were risking a good deal of money outside your business ; 
 won't the business suffer? After all, it is your own affair. If 
 you are pulled up, here are the funds at ninety ; I could sell 
 out two thousand francs in consols. Take care, though, my 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 107 
 
 boy ; if you come to me you will be laying hands on your 
 girl's fortune." 
 
 " Uncle, you say the kindest things as if they were a matter 
 of course ; it goes to my heart to hear you." 
 
 " General Foy touched me after another fashion just now ! 
 There, at all events, it is settled. The building lots won't 
 fly away ; we shall have them for half their value ; and, even if 
 we should have to wait six years, there will still be something 
 in the way of interest ; lumber yards would pay rent, so we can- 
 not lose. There is only one thing, and that is impossible — 
 Roguin will not run away with our capital " 
 
 " But that is what my wife said last night ; she is afraid " 
 
 "That Roguin will run off with our money," said Piller- 
 ault, laughing ; " and why ? " 
 
 "Well, she says she doesn't like the cut of his features; 
 and, like all men who cannot have women, he is frantic 
 for " 
 
 An incredulous smile stole over Pillerault's face ; he tore a 
 leaf out of a little book, filled in the amount, and signed his 
 name. 
 
 " Here, this is an order on the bank for a hundred thousand 
 francs, for Ragon's share and mine. Those poor people, 
 though, to make up the money, sold out their fifteen shares in 
 the Wortschin mines to your worthless rogue of a du Tillet. 
 Good people in sore straits ; it goes to one's heart to see it. 
 And such good people they are, such noble people, the flower 
 of the old-fashioned bourgeoisie, in fact ! Their brother Pop- 
 inot. the judge, knows nothing about it ; they are hiding 
 their affairs from him, lest they should hinder him from giving 
 free course to his benevolence. People who have worked as 
 I did for thirty years " 
 
 " God grant that the Comagen Oil succeeds ! " cried Birot- 
 teau, " and I shall be doubly pleased. Good-day, uncle; you 
 are coming to dine with us on Sunday with the Ragons and 
 Roguin ; and Monsieur Claparon is coming, for we are all 
 
108 CESAR BIROTTEAU. " 
 
 going to sign the papers the day after to-morrow ; to-morrow 
 will be Friday, and I don't want to do bus " 
 
 " Do you really believe in those superstitions?" 
 
 " I shall never believe that the day when the Son of God 
 was put to death by men can be a lucky day, uncle. Why ? 
 — people stop all business even on the 21st of January." 
 
 " Good-by till Sunday," said Pillerault abruptly. 
 
 " If it weren't for his political opinions," said Birotteau to 
 himself, as he went downstairs again, " I do not know where 
 they would find his equal here below. What are politics to 
 him? He would get on very nicely without thinking of them 
 at all. His infatuation shows that no one is perfect. Three 
 o'clock already ! " said Cesar, as he entered his store. 
 
 "Are you going to take these bills, sir?" asked Celestin, 
 holding out the umbrella-dealer's collection of bills. 
 
 "Yes, at six per cent., no commission. Wife, put out all 
 my things ready for me ; I am going to call on Monsieur 
 Vauquelin, you know why. Above all things, a white cravat." 
 
 Birotteau gave some orders to his assistants ; he did not see 
 Popinot, guessed that his future partner had gone to dress for 
 the visit, and went up at once to his own room, where the 
 Dresden Madonna met his eyes in a magnificent frame, ac- 
 cording to his orders. 
 
 " Well, it looks fine, doesn't it ? " 
 
 "Why, papa, say it is beautiful, or people will laugh at 
 you!" 
 
 " Here is a girl for you that scolds her father ! Well, 
 
 for my own part, I like ' Hero and Leander ' quite as much. 
 The ' Madonna ' is a religious subject, which could be hung 
 up in an oratory ; but ' Hero and Leander ! ' Ah ! I will 
 buy it, for the flask of oil suggested some ideas to me." 
 
 " But I don't understand, papa." 
 
 " Virginie, call a cab!" shouted Cesar, in a voice that 
 rang through the house. He had finished shaving, and the 
 shy Anselme Popinot appeared, dragging his feet, for he 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 109 
 
 thought of Cesarine. He had not discovered, as yet, that he 
 was not lame in the eyes of his lady-love, a sweet proof of love, 
 which only those to whom fate has given some bodily defor- 
 mity can receive. 
 
 "The press will be in working order to-morrow, sir," he 
 said. 
 
 " Very well. What is the matter, Popinot? " asked Cesar, 
 seeing Anselme's flushed face. 
 
 " I am so glad, sir ; I have found a place, a front and back 
 store, and a kitchen, and the rooms above, and a wareroom, 
 all for twelve hundred francs a year, in the Rue des Cinq- 
 Diamants." 
 
 " We must have an eighteen years' lease of it," said Bi- 
 rotteau. " But let us go to Monsieur Vauquelin and we can 
 talk on the way," and Cesar and Popinot drove away under 
 the eyes of the assistants, who were at a loss what to think 
 of such magnificent attire and so unusual a portent as a cab, 
 ignorant as they were of the mighty matters that occupied the 
 owner of the Queen of Roses. 
 
 "So we shall soon know the truth about the hazelnuts!" 
 said the perfumer. 
 
 "Hazelnuts?" queried Popinot. 
 
 "You have my secret, Popinot," said the perfumer; "I 
 let slip the word ' hazelnuts,' and that tells everything. 
 Hazelnut oil is the only oil which produces any effect on the 
 hair; no other house has thought of it. When I saw the 
 print of 'Hero and Leander,' I said to myself, ' If the an- 
 cients put so much oil on their heads, there must have been 
 some reason for it,' for the ancients are the ancients ! In 
 spite of modern pretensions, I am of Boileau's opinion about 
 the ancients. From that I came to the idea of hazelnuts, 
 thanks to young Bianchon, the medical student, your relative; 
 he told me that the students at the Ecole put hazelnut oil on 
 their mustaches and whiskers to make them grow. All we 
 want now is the illustrious Monsieur Vauquelin's approval. 
 
110 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Enlightened by him, we shall not deceive the public. Only 
 just now I was over in the market buying the raw material of 
 a saleswoman there ; and in another moment I shall be in the 
 presence of one of the greatest scientific men in France for 
 the quintessence of the matter. There's sense in proverbs — 
 extremes meet. Trade is the intermediary between vegetable 
 products and science, you see, my boy. Angelique Ma- 
 dou collects the material, Vauquelin distills it, and we 
 sell an essence. Hazelnuts are worth five sous the pound, 
 Monsieur Vauquelin will increase their value a hundredfold, 
 and we shall perhaps do a service to humanity ; for, if vanity 
 is a plague of man, a good cosmetic is a benefit." 
 
 The devout admiration with which Popinot listened to the 
 father of his Cesarine stimulated Birotteau's eloquence; he 
 indulged in the crudest rhetorical display that a Philistine's 
 brain can devise. 
 
 "Be reverent, Anselme," he said, as they reached the 
 street in which Vauquelin lived ; "we are about to enter the 
 sanctuary of science. Put the ' Madonna ' in evidence, but 
 without making any parade of it, on a chair in the dining- 
 room. If only I can manage to say what I want to say without 
 making a muddle of it ! " cried Birotteau artlessly. "Popi- 
 not, that man produces a chemical effect on me, the sound of 
 his voice makes me quite hot inside, and even gives me a 
 slight colic. He is my benefactor, Anselme, and in a few 
 minutes he will be your benefactor too." 
 
 Popinot turned cold at the words, set down his feet as if 
 he were treading on eggs, and looked uneasily around the 
 room. 
 
 M. Vauquelin was in his study when Birotteau was an- 
 nounced. The man of science knew that the perfumer was 
 a deputy-mayor and in high favor ; he received his visitor. 
 
 " So you do not forget me now that you are so high up in 
 the world," he said; "well, between a chemist and a per- 
 fumer there is but a hand's-breadth," 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. Ill 
 
 " Alas ! there is a great distance between your genius and 
 a plain man like me, sir ; and, as for what you call ' being 
 high up in the world,' it is all owing to you, and I shall 
 never forget it in this world or the next." 
 
 " Oh ! in the next we shall all be equal, they say, cobblers 
 and kings." 
 
 " That is to say, those kings and cobblers who have lived 
 piously," remarked Birotteau. 
 
 "Is this your son?" asked Vauquelin, looking at little 
 Popinot, who was beyond expression amazed to find nothing 
 extraordinary in the study. He had expected to see prodig- 
 ious marvels, giant engines, vivified substances, and metals 
 flying about. 
 
 " No, sir ; but he is a young man in whom I am very 
 much interested, and he has come to entreat your goodness, 
 which is equal to your talent, and is it not infinite?" re- 
 marked Birotteau diplomatically. "We have come, after an 
 interval of sixteen years, to consult you a second time on a 
 matter of importance, concerning which I am as ignorant as 
 a perfumer." 
 
 " Let us hear about it. What is it ? " 
 
 " I know that the subject of hair occupies your nights, and 
 that you are devoting yourself to the analysis of the substance ! 
 While you have been thinking for glory, I have been thinking, 
 too, for trade." 
 
 " Dear Monsieur Birotteau, what do you want of me — an 
 analysis of hair ? " 
 
 He took up a loose sheet. 
 
 " I am about to read a paper before the Academie des 
 Sciences," he went on. " Hair is composed of a somewhat 
 large proportion of mucus, a little colorless oil, a larger pro- 
 portion of dark-greenish oil, and iron ; I find a certain amount 
 of oxide of manganese, and of phosphate of lime, and traces 
 of carbonate of lime, and silica ; sulphur enters largely into 
 its composition. The proportions in which these different 
 
112 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 substances are present vary, and so cause the different color- 
 ings of hair. Red hair, for example, on analysis yields much 
 more of the dark-green oil than the other kinds give." 
 
 Cesar and Popinot opened their eyes ludicrously wide. 
 
 " Nine things," cried Birotteau. " What, are there metals 
 and oils in hair ? It takes the word of a man like you, whom 
 I venerate, to make me believe it. How extraordinary ! 
 God is great, M. Vauquelin." 
 
 " Hair is produced by a follicular organ," the great chemist 
 continued ; "a follicle is a sort of bag open at both ends ; at 
 the one end it is connected with nerves and bloodvessels, 
 and the hair issues from the other. According to some of 
 our learned associates, one of whom is Monsieur de Blainville, 
 the hair is dead matter expelled from the sac or secreting 
 gland, which is full of a pulpy tissue." 
 
 " It is like perspiration in sticks, as you might say," cried 
 Popinot, for which the perfumer promptly kicked his shins. 
 
 Vauquelin smiled at Popinot's notion. On this, " He has 
 capacity, hasn't he? " said Cesar, looking at Popinot. if But 
 if hair is dead, to begin with, sir, you can't possibly restore 
 it, and it is all over with us ! the prospectus is nonsense ! 
 You don't know how funny the public is; you can't go and 
 tell people " 
 
 " That there is a rubbish heap on their heads," said Popi- 
 not, trying to make Vauquelin laugh again. 
 
 "An aerial catacomb," returned the chemist, keeping up 
 the joke. 
 
 "And the nuts that are bought! " cried Birotteau, with a 
 lively sense of the pecuniary loss. "But why do they sell 
 such ?" 
 
 " Reassure yourself," said Vauquelin, smiling. " I see some 
 secret for preventing the hair from falling out or turning gray 
 is the matter in question. Listen ; here are my conclusions 
 after all my researches." 
 
 Popinot pricked up his ears at this like a startled leveret. 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 113 
 
 "The blanching of the fibres, dead or alive, is, in my 
 opinion, produced by an interruption of the secretion of the 
 coloring matter ; this theory would explain the fact that some 
 fur-bearing animals in cold climates turn white, or some lighter 
 color, at the beginning of winter." 
 
 "Hm! Popinot." 
 
 "It is evident," Vauquelin continued, "that the change 
 of color is due to sudden change in the temperature of the 
 circumambient air " 
 
 " Circumambient, Popinot — mind that ! mind that ! " cried 
 Cesar. 
 
 "Yes," said Vauquelin, " to alternations of cold or heat, 
 or to interior phenomena, which produce the same effect. So, 
 in all probability, headaches and other local affections dissi- 
 pate the fluid or derange the secretions. The inside of the 
 head is the doctors' province. As for the outside, put on 
 your cosmetics by all means." 
 
 "Well, sir," said Birotteau, "now I can breathe again 
 after what you say. I thought of selling the oil of hazelnuts, 
 remembering the use the ancients made of oil for their hair ; 
 and the ancients are the ancients, I am of Boileau's opinion. 
 Why did wrestlers oil themselves ?" 
 
 " Olive oil would do quite as well as oil of hazelnuts," said 
 Vauquelin, who had paid no attention to Birotteau's remarks. 
 "Any oil will do to protect the hair-bulbs from outside in- 
 fluences injurious to the substances which it contains in pro- 
 cess of formation ; in course of deposit, we chemists would 
 say. Perhaps you are right ; the essential oil of hazelnuts is 
 an irritant, so Dupuytren once told me. I will try to find 
 out the difference between walnut and beechnut oils, colza, 
 olive, and so forth." 
 
 "Then I am not mistaken," Birotteau exclaimed triumph- 
 antly, "and a great man bears me out in my opinion. Ma- 
 cassar is done for ! Macassar, sir, is a cosmetic they give you, 
 that is, sell you, and sell very dear, to make your hair grow." 
 8 
 
114 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "My dear Monsieur Birotteau," said Vauquelin, "there 
 are not two ounces of oil of Macassar in Europe. Oil of 
 Macassar produces not the slightest effect on hair. The 
 Malays will pay its weight in gold for it, because of its sup- 
 posed preservative action on the hair, not knowing that whale 
 oil is quite as good. No possible power whether chemical or 
 divine " 
 
 " Oh ! divine — do not say that, Monsieur Vauquelin." 
 
 " Why, my dear sir, God's first law is conformity with 
 Himself; without unity there is no power " 
 
 "Oh, looked at in that way " 
 
 " No power whatever can make the hair grow on a bald 
 head, and you cannot dye white or red hair without danger ; 
 but you will do no harm, and there will be no fraud in extol- 
 ling your oil, and I think that those who use it might preserve 
 their hair." 
 
 " Do you think that the Royal Academy of Science would 
 approve it?" 
 
 "Oh! it is no discovery," said M. Vauquelin. "And, 
 beside, quacks have taken the name of the Academy in vain 
 so often that it would not help you at all. My conscience 
 will not allow me to look on oil of hazelnuts as a prodigy." 
 
 "What would be the best way of extracting it, by pressure 
 or by decoction?" asked Birotteau. 
 
 "You will obtain the most oil by pressure between two hot 
 plates ; but if the plates are cold, it will be of better quality. 
 It ought to be applied to the skin itself, and not rubbed into 
 the hair," continued Vauquelin very good-naturedly, " or the 
 effect will be lost." 
 
 "Mind you remember this, Popinot," said Birotteau, as 
 his face flushed up with enthusiasm. "You see in him, sir, a 
 young man who will reckon this day among the great days of 
 his life. He knew and revered you before he had seen you. 
 Ah ! we often talk of you at home ; a name that is always in 
 the heart comes often to the lips. We pray every day for 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 115 
 
 you, my wife and daughter and I, as we ought to do for our 
 benefactor. ' ' 
 
 "It is too much for so little," said Vauquelin, embarrassed 
 by the perfumer's voluble gratitude. 
 
 " Tut, tut, tut ! " said Birotteau. "You cannot hinder us 
 from loving you, you who will accept nothing from me. You 
 are like the sun ; you shed light around you, and those on 
 whom it shines can do nothing for you in return." 
 
 The man of science rose, smiling, to his feet ; Birotte&a 
 and Anselme Popinot rose also. 
 
 " Look around, Anselme; take a good look at this study. 
 If you will allow him, sir ? Your time is so valuable, perhaps 
 he will never come here again." 
 
 "Well, are you satisfied with your business* '' asked 
 Vauquelin, turning to Birotteau; "for, after all, we are both 
 of us men of business " 
 
 " Pretty well, sir," said Birotteau, going toward the dining- 
 room, whither Vauquelin followed him; "but it will take a 
 great deal of capital to start this oil under the name of 
 Comagen Essence " 
 
 " ' Essence ' and ' Comagen ' are two words that clash. 
 Call your cosmetic Birotteau's Oil ; or, if you have no mind 
 
 to blaze your name abroad, take another Why, there is 
 
 the Dresden Madonna Ah ! Monsieur Birotteau, you 
 
 mean us to fall out at parting." 
 
 " Monsieur Vauquelin," said the perfumer, taking both the 
 chemist's hands in his. " the scarce print has no value save 
 for the persistent efforts which I have made to find it ; all 
 Germany has been ransacked for a proof before letters on 
 India paper; I knew you wished to have it, you were too 
 busy to procure it yourself, so I have taken it upon myself 
 to be your agent. Please accept, not a paltry print, but the 
 earnest efforts, the care, and pains which prove a boundless 
 devotion. I should have been glad if you had wanted some 
 substances that could only be found in the depths of an abyss, 
 
116 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 that I might come to tell you, ' Here they are ! • We have 
 so many chances to be forgotten, ret me put myself, my 
 wife, and daughter, and the son-in-law whom I shall have one 
 day, all before your eyes ; and say to yourself when you see 
 the Madonna, ' There are honest folk who think of me.' " 
 
 "I accept it," said Vauquelin. 
 
 Popinot and Birotteau wiped their eyes, so much moved 
 were they by the kind tone in which the chemist spoke. 
 
 "Will you carry your kindness yet further?" asked the 
 perfumer. . 
 
 " What is it ? " asked Vauquelin. 
 
 " I am inviting a few of my friends — (here he raised him- 
 self on tiptoe, but his face assumed a humble expression) — 
 partly to celebrate the liberation of the soil, and partly on the 
 occasion of my own promotion to the Legion of Honor." 
 
 "Aha ! " said Vauquelin in astonishment. 
 
 " It may be that I have shown myself worthy of this signal 
 mark of royal favor by discharging my functions at the Con- 
 sular Tribunal and by fighting for the Bourbons on the steps 
 of Saint-Roch's church on the 13th of Vendemiaire, when 1 
 was wounded by Napoleon. My wife is giving a ball on Sun- 
 day in twenty days' time; will you come to it, sir? Do us 
 the honor of dining with us on that day ; and, for my own 
 part, it will be as if they had given me the cross twice. I 
 will write to you in good time." 
 
 "Very well, yes," said Vauquelin. 
 
 " My heart is swelling with pleasure," cried the perfumer 
 when they were in the street. " He will come to my house ! 
 lam afraid that I have forgotten what he said about hair; do 
 you remember it, Popinot ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir, and in twenty years' time I shall still remember 
 it." 
 
 "A great man, that he is ! What insight and what penetra- 
 tion ! " exclaimed Birotteau. " He went straight to the 
 point, he read our thoughts at once, and showed us ho\v to 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAW. 117 
 
 make a clean sweep of Macassar Oil. Ah ! nothing can make 
 hair grow, Macassar, so that is a lie ! Popinot, there is a 
 fortune within our grasp. So let us be at the factory by seven 
 o'clock to-morrow morning, the nuts will come in, and we 
 will make the oil. There is no use in his saying that any oil 
 will do ; it would be all over with us if the public knew that. 
 If there were not a little hazelnut oil and scent in this compo- 
 sition of ours, what excuse should we have for selling it at 
 three or four francs for as many ounces? " 
 
 "And you are to be decorated, sir? " said Popinot. " What 
 glory for " 
 
 " For commerce, isn't it, my boy ? " 
 
 Cesar Birotteau, sure of a fortune, looked so triumphant 
 that the assistants noticed his expression and made signs to 
 each other ; for the appearance of a cab, and the fact that 
 their employer and his cashier had changed their clothes, had 
 given rise to the wildest imaginings. The very evident satis- 
 faction of the pair, revealed by the diplomatic glances ex- 
 changed between them, and the hopeful eyes that Popinot 
 turned once or twice on Cesarine, announced that some im- 
 portant event was imminent, and confirmed the assistants' 
 suspicions. The smallest chance events in their busy and 
 almost monastic lives were as interesting to them as to any 
 prisoner in solitary confinement. Mme. Cesar's face (for she 
 responded doubtfully to the Olympian looks her husband 
 turned on her) portended some new development in the busi- 
 ness, for at any other time Mme. Cesar would have been 
 serenely content — Mme. Cesar, who was so blithe over a 
 good day, and to-day the takings had amounted to the extra- 
 ordinary sum of six thousand francs ; some old outstanding 
 accounts had been paid. 
 
 The dining-room and the kitchen were both on the mez- 
 zanine floor, where Cesar and Constance had lived during the 
 first years of their married life. This dining-room, where 
 their honeymoon had been spent, looked like a little drawing- 
 
118 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 room. The kitchen windows looked out into a little yard ; a 
 passage separated the two rooms and gave access to the stair- 
 case, contrived in a corner of the back-shop. 
 
 Raguet, the errand boy, looked after the store while they 
 sat at dinner ; but, when dessert appeared, the assistants went 
 downstairs again and left Cesar and his wife and daughter to 
 finish their meal by the fireside. This tradition had been 
 handed down from the days of the Ragons, who had kept up 
 all the old-fashioned customs and usages in full vigor, and set 
 the same enormous distance between themselves and the as- 
 sistants that formerly existed between masters and apprentices. 
 Cesarine or Constance would then prepare the cup of coffee, 
 which the perfumer took in a low chair by the fire. It was 
 the hour when Cesar told his wife all the small news of the 
 day ; he would tell her anything that he had seen in Paris, or 
 what they were doing in the Faubourg du Temple, and about 
 the difficulties that arose there. 
 
 "This is certainly one of the most memorable days in our 
 lives, wife ! " he began, when the assistants had gone down- 
 stairs. "The hazelnuts have been bought, the hydraulic press 
 will be ready for work to-morrow, the matter of the building 
 lands has been concluded. And, while I think of it, just put 
 away this order on the bank," he went on, handing over to 
 her Pillerault's draft. " The redecoration of the rooms, our 
 new rooms, has been settled. Dear me ! I saw a very queer 
 man to-day in the Cour Batave ! " 
 
 And he told the women about M. Molineux. 
 
 "I see," his wife broke in, in the middle of a tirade, 
 "that you will have to pay two hundred thousand francs ! " 
 
 " True, my wife," said the perfumer, with mock humility. 
 " Good Lord ! and how are we to pay it ? for the building 
 lands near the Madeleine, that will be the finest quarter of 
 Paris some day, must be taken as worth nothing." 
 
 " Some day, Cesar." 
 
 "Dear, dear ! " he continued his joke — " my three-eighths 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 119 
 
 will only be worth a million in six years' time. And how 
 shall we pay two hundred thousand francs?" asked Cesar, 
 making as though he were aghast. " Well, we will pay it 
 with this," and he drew from his pocket one of Mme. 
 Madou's hazelnuts, which he had carefully kept. 
 
 He held it up between his thumb and finger. Constance 
 said nothing; but Cesarine, whose curiosity was tickled, 
 brought her father his cup of coffee with a " Come, now, 
 papa, are you joking? " 
 
 The perfumer, like his assistants, had noticed the glances 
 Popinot had given Cesarine during dinner ; he meant to clear 
 up his suspicions. 
 
 " Well, little girl, this hazelnut is to work a revolution in 
 the house. There will be one less under our roof after to- 
 night." 
 
 Cesarine looked straight at her father, as who should say, 
 "What is that to me?" 
 
 " Popinot is going away." 
 
 Although Cesar was a poor observer, although his remark 
 had been meant to prepare the way for the announcement of 
 the new firm of A. Popinot and Company, as well as for a 
 trap for his daughter, his father's tenderness told him the 
 secret of the vague emotions which sprang up in the girl's 
 heart, and blossomed in red upon her cheek and brow, bright- 
 ening her eyes before they fell. Cesar thought at once that 
 some word had been exchanged between Cesarine and Popi- 
 not. Nothing of the kind had happened ; the boy and girl 
 understood each other, after the fashion of shy young lovers, 
 without a word. 
 
 There are moralists who hold that love is the most involun- 
 tary, the most disinterested and least calculating of all passions, 
 a mother's love always excepted, a doctrine which contains a 
 gross error. The larger part of mankind may be ignorant of 
 their motives ; but any sympathy, physical or mental, is none 
 the less based upon calculations made by brain or heart or 
 
 E 
 
120 CASAR B1ROTTEAU. 
 
 animal instincts. Love is essentially an egoistical affection, 
 and egoism implies profound calculation. For the order of 
 mind which is only impressed by outward and visible results, 
 it may seem an improbable or unusual thing that a poor, lame, 
 red-haired lad should find favor in the eyes of a beautiful 
 girl like Cesarine ; and yet it was only what might be ex- 
 pected from the workings of the bourgeois mind in matters 
 of sentiment. The explanation would account for other 
 marriages that are a constant source of amazement to on- 
 lookers, between tall or beautiful women and insignificant 
 men, or when some well-grown stripling marries some ugly 
 little creature. 
 
 For a man afflicted with any physical deformity, be it a 
 club-foot, lameness, a hunch-back, excessive ugliness, spot, 
 blemish, or disfigurement, Roguin's infirmity, or other anom- 
 alous affection for which his progenitors are not responsible, 
 there are but two courses open : he must either make himself 
 feared or cultivate an exquisite goodness — he cannot afford to 
 steer an undecided middle course between the two extremes 
 like the rest of humanity. The first alternative requires talent, 
 genius, or force of character ; for a man can only inspire 
 terror by his power to do harm, impose respect by his genius, 
 or compel fear by his prodigious wit. In the second he 
 studies to be adored ; he lends himself- admirably to feminine 
 tyranny, and is wiser in love than others of irreproachable 
 physical proportions. 
 
 Anselme Popinet had been brought up by the good Ra- 
 gons, upright citizens of the best type, and by his uncle 
 the judge — a course of training which, with his ingenuous 
 and religious nature, had led him to redeem his slight defor- 
 mity by the perfection of his character. Constance and 
 Cesar, struck by a disposition which makes youth so attract- 
 ive, had often praised Anselme in Cesarine' s hearing. With 
 all their narrowness in other respects, this storekeeper and his 
 wife possessed nobility of soul, and hearts that were quick to 
 
C£SAR BIROTTEAU. 121 
 
 comprehend. Their praises found an echo in the girl's own 
 heart; in spite of her inexperience she read in Anselme's 
 frank eyes a passion that is always flattering, no matter what 
 the age, rank, or figure of the lover may be. 
 
 Little Popinot, not being a well-shaped man, had all the 
 more reasons for loving a woman. Should she be fair, he 
 would be her lover till his dying day ; love would give him 
 ambition ; he would work himself to death to make his wife 
 happy; he would suffer her to be the sovereign mistress of 
 his home ; and her empire over him would be without change 
 and boundless. 
 
 This, crudely stated, is perhaps what Cesarine thought, un- 
 consciously within herself; she had had a bird's-eye glimpse 
 of the harvests of love, and she had drawn her own infer- 
 ences; her mother's happiness was under her eyes, she wished 
 no other life for herself; instinctively she discerned in An- 
 selme another Cesar, polished by education, as she herself 
 had been. In her dreams, Popinot was the mayor of an 
 arrondissement, and she liked to imagine herself asking for 
 subscriptions to charities in her district, as her own mother 
 did in the parish of Saint-Roch. And so at length she forgot 
 that one of Popinot's legs was shorter than the other, and 
 would have been quite capable of asking, " Does he really 
 limp? " She liked the clear eyes; she liked to see the change 
 that came over them when, at a glance from her, they lighted 
 up at once with a flash of timid love, and then fell despond- 
 ently again. 
 
 Roguin's head clerk, Alexandre Crottat, gifted with a pre- 
 cocious knowledge of the world, acquired by professional 
 experience, disgusted Cesarine with his half-cynical, half- 
 good-natured air, after putting her out of patience with his 
 commonplace talk. Popinot's silence revealed a gentle na- 
 ture ; she liked to watch the half-sad smile with which he 
 endured meaningless trivialities ; the babble which made him 
 
122 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 smile always roused a feeling of annoyance in her; they 
 smiled or looked condolence at each other. 
 
 Anselme's mental superiority did not prevent him from 
 working hard with his hands ; the way in which he threw 
 himself into everything that he did also pleased Cesarine ; 
 she guessed that while all the other assistants said, ',.' Cesarine 
 is going to be married to Monsieur Roguin's head clerk," 
 Anselme, lame and poor and red-haired, did not despair of 
 winning her. The strength of a hope proves the strength of 
 a love. 
 
 " Where is he going?" Cesarine asked, trying to look in- 
 different. 
 
 "He is going to set up for himself in the Rue des Cinq- 
 
 Diamants ! And, upon my word, by the grace of God ! " 
 
 But neither his wife nor daughter understood the ejaculation. 
 When Birotteau's mind encountered any difficulty, he behaved 
 like an insect that encounters an obstacle, he swerved to left 
 or right ; so now he changed the subject, promising himself to 
 speak of Cesarine to his wife. 
 
 " I told uncle your notions about Roguin and your fears; 
 he began to laugh," he went on, addressing Constance. 
 
 " You ought never to repeat things that we say between 
 ourselves," she cried. "Poor Roguin ! he may be the most 
 honest man in the world ; he is fifty-eight years old, and I 
 expect he no more thinks " 
 
 She too broke off; she saw that Cesarine was listening, and 
 warned Cesar of that fact by a glance. 
 
 " So I did well to strike the bargain." 
 
 "Why, you are the master," returned she. 
 
 Cesar took both his wife's hands in his and kissed her on 
 the forehead. That answer had always been her passive form 
 of assent to her husband's projects. And, with that, Birotteau 
 went downstairs into the store. 
 
 "Come!" he cried, speaking to the assistants, "we will 
 put up the shutters at ten o'clock. We must do a stroke of 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 123 
 
 work, gentlemen ! We must set about moving all the furni- 
 ture from the second floor to the third to-night ! We shall 
 have to put the little pots into the big ones, as the saying is, 
 so as to give my architect elbow-room to-morrow. Popinot 
 has gone out without leave," said Cesar, looking round. 
 " Oh ! I forgot, he does not sleep here. He has gone to see 
 about the store, or else he is putting down Monsieur Vauque- 
 lin's ideas," he thought. 
 
 "We know why the furniture is being moved, sir," said 
 Celestin, spokesman for the two assistants and Raguet, who 
 stood by him. " May we be allowed to congratulate you on 
 an honor which reflects glory on the whole establishment ? 
 Popinot told us " 
 
 "Well, boys, it can't be helped; I have been decorated. 
 So we are inviting a few friends, partly to celebrate the libera- 
 tion of the soil and partly on the occasion of my own promo- 
 tion to the Legion of Honor. It may be that I have shown 
 myself worthy of this signal mark of royal favor by the dis- 
 charge of my functions at the Consular Tribunal and by 
 fighting for the Royalist cause — when I was your age — on the 
 steps of Saint-Roch, on the 13th of Vendemiaire ; and, on 
 my word, Napoleon the Emperor, as they called him, gave 
 me my wound. For I was wounded, and on the thigh, what 
 is more, and Madame Ragon nursed me. Be brave, and you 
 will be rewarded ! So there, you see, my children, that a 
 mishap is never all loss." 
 
 " People don't fight in the streets nowadays," said Celestin. 
 
 "Well, we must hope," said Cesar, and thereupon he took 
 occasion to read his assistants a little homily, which he 
 rounded off with an invitation. 
 
 The prospect of a dance put new life into the three assist- 
 ants ; under the stimulus of the excitement, the three, with 
 Virginie and Raguet, performed acrobatic feats. They came 
 and went up and down the stairs with their loads, and nothing 
 was broken, nothing was upset. By two o'clock in the morn- 
 
124 C£SA£ BIROTTEAU. 
 
 ing the removal was accomplished ; Cesar and his wife slept 
 on the third floor, Celestin and the second assistant occupied 
 Popinot's room. The fourth floor was converted, for the time 
 being, into a furniture warehouse. 
 
 When the assistants had gone down into the shop after din- 
 ner, Popinot, usually so quiet and equable, had been as fidgety 
 as a race-horse just arrived upon the course. A burning desire 
 to do something great was upon him, induced by a super- 
 abundance of nervous fluid, which turns the diaphragm of the 
 lover or the man of restless ambition into a furnace. 
 
 " What can be the matter with you ? " Celestin had asked. 
 
 •'What a day! I am setting up for myself, my dear fel- 
 low," he whispered in Celestin's ear, "and Monsieur _Cesar is 
 to be decorated." 
 
 "You are very lucky; the governor is helping you," ex- 
 claimed the assistant. 
 
 Popinot gave him no answer ; he vanished, whirled away 
 by the wind — the wind of success. 
 
 " Oh, as to lucky ! " said an assistant, as he sorted gloves 
 in dozens, to his neighbor, who was busy checking the prices 
 on the tickets. " The governor has seen the eyes that Popinot 
 has been making at Mademoiselle Cesarine ; he is a shrewd 
 one, the governor, so he is getting rid of Anselme ; it would 
 be difficult to refuse outright, because of the relatives. Celes- 
 tin takes the trick by this generosity." 
 
 Anselme Popinot meanwhile had turned down the Rue 
 Saint-Honore and hurried along the Rue des Deux-Ecus to 
 secure some one in whom his commercial second-sight beheld 
 the principal instrument of success. Judge Popinot had once 
 done a service to this young man, the cleverest commercial 
 traveler in Paris, whose activity and triumphant gift of the gab 
 was to earn for him at a later day the title of " The Illustrious." 
 At this time the great commercial traveler was devoting his 
 energies to the hat-trade and the " fancy-goods line;" he was 
 simply Gaudissart as yet, without the prefix, but at the age of 
 
CJESAR BIROTTEAU. 125 
 
 twenty-two he had already distinguished himself; his magnetic 
 influence upon customers was beginning to be recognized. 
 He was thin and bright-eyed at that time ; he had an elo- 
 quent face, an indefatigable memory, a quick perception of 
 the taste of those with whom he came in contact ; he deserved 
 to be, what he afterward became — the king of commercial 
 travelers, the Frenchman par excellence. 
 
 Popinot had come across Gaudissart some days previously, 
 and the latter had announced that he was about to go on a 
 journey ; the hope of finding him still in Paris had sent 
 Popinot flying down the Rue des Deux-Ecus. At the coach- 
 office he learned that the commercial traveler had taken his 
 place. Gaudissart's leave-taking of his beloved city had taken 
 the shape of an evening at the Vaudeville, where there was a 
 new play. Popinot resolved to wait for him. To confide 
 the agency of the hazelnut oil to this invaluable launcher of 
 commercial enterprise, already courted and cherished by the 
 best houses, was exactly like drawing a bill of exchange on 
 fortune ! 
 
 Popinot had claims on Gaudissart. The commercial trav- 
 eler, so skilled in the art of entangling that forward race, the 
 petty country storekeepers, in his toils, had once allowed 
 himself to become entangled in a political web, in the first 
 conspiracy against the Bourbons after the Hundred Days; 
 and Gaudissart, to whom open air was a vital necessity, found 
 himself in prison with a capital charge hanging over him. 
 Judge Popinot, the examining magistrate, saw that it was a 
 piece of youthful folly that implicated Gaudissart in the affair, 
 and set him at liberty ; but if the young man had chanced 
 upon a magistrate eager to commend himself to the authori- 
 ties, or upon a rabid Royalist, the luckless pioneer of com- 
 merce might have mounted the scaffold. Gaudissart, who 
 knew that he owed his life to the judge, was in despair, be- 
 cause a barren gratitude was all the return he could make ; 
 and, as it was impossible to thank a judge for doing justice/ 
 
126 CAsAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 he had betaken himself to the Ragons, and there sworn fealty 
 to the family of Popinot. 
 
 While Popinot waited he naturally spent the time in going 
 to see his store in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants once more. 
 He asked for the landlord's address, so as to come to terms 
 with him about the lease. Then, wandering through the 
 murky labyrinth about the Great Market, with his thoughts 
 full of ways and means of making a rapid fortune, Popinot 
 came into the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, and there met with a 
 wonderful and auspicious opportunity, with which Cesar's 
 heart should be gladdened on the morrow. Then he took up 
 his post at the door of the Hotel du Commerce, at the end of 
 the Rue des Deux-Ecus ; and toward midnight heard, afar off, 
 a voice uplifted in the Rue de Grenelle ; it was Gaudissart 
 singing a bit of the last song in the piece, to the accompani- 
 ment of the sound of a walking-stick, trailed with expression 
 upon the pavement. 
 
 " Sir," cried Anselme, suddenly emerging from the door- 
 way, " can I have a couple of words with you? " 
 
 " Eleven, if you like," said the other, raising a loaded cane. 
 
 " I am Popinot," said poor Anselme. 
 
 " Right," said Gaudissart, recognizing his friend. " What 
 do you want? Money? Absent on leave, but there is some 
 somewhere. An arm for a duel ? I am at your service from 
 heel to head. 
 
 " • You see him where he stands — ■ 
 Every inch a Frenchman and a soldier ! ' " 
 
 " Come and have ten minutes' talk with me, not in your 
 
 room, we might be overheard, but on the Quai de l'Horloge ; 
 
 there is nobody there at this time of night," said Popinot, 
 
 " it is a question of the greatest importance." 
 " You are in a hurry, are you ? Come along ! " 
 Ten minutes later, Gaudissart, now put in possession of 
 
 Popinot's secrets, recognized the importance of the matter- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 127 
 
 "Approach, ye hairdressers and retail perfumers," cried 
 Gaudissart, mimicking Lafon in the Cid. " I will get hold 
 of all the perfumers of France and Navarre. Oh ! I have it ! 
 I was going away, but I shall stop here now and take agencies 
 from the Parisian perfumery trade." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " To choke off your competitors, innocent ! By taking on 
 their agencies, I can make their perfidious cosmetics drink to 
 their own confusion in your oil, for I shall talk of nothing 
 else and push no other kind. A fine commercial traveler's 
 dodge! Aha! we are the diplomatists of commerce. Fa- 
 mous ! As for your prospectus, I will see to it. I have known 
 Andoche Finot since we were boys ; his father is a hatter in the 
 Rue du Coq, the old fellow started me ; it was through him 
 that I began to travel in the hat line. Andoche is a very 
 clever fellow ; he has the cleverness of all the heads that his 
 father ever fitted with hats. He is in the literary line ; he 
 does the minor theatres for the ' Courrier des Spectacles.' 
 His father, an old fox, has abundant reason for not liking 
 cleverness; he doesn't believe in cleverness ; it is impossible 
 to make him see that cleverness will sell, and that a young man 
 of spirit can make a fortune by his wits; indeed, as to spirit, 
 the only spirit he approves of is proof-spirit. Old Finot is 
 reducing young Finot by famine. Andoche can do anything, 
 and he is my friend, moreover, and I don't rub against fools 
 (except in the way of business). Finot does mottoes for the 
 'Fidele Berger,' which pays him, while the newspapers, for 
 which he works like a galley-slave, snub him right and left. 
 How jealous they are in that line ! It is just like it is in the 
 fancy article trade. 
 
 " Finot wrote a splendid one-act comedy for Mademoiselle 
 Mars, the greatest of the great. (Ah ! there's a woman that I 
 admire !) Well, and to see it put on the stage at all, he had 
 to take it to the Gaite\ Andoche understands prospectuses ; 
 he enters into a man's ideas about business, he is not proud, 
 
128 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 he will block out our prospectus gratis. Goodness ! we will 
 treat him to a bowl of punch and little cakes; for no non- 
 sense, Popinot ; I will travel for you without commission or 
 expenses; your competitors shall pay me, I will bamboozle 
 them. Let us understand each other clearly. The success 
 of this thing is a point of honor with me ; my reward shall 
 be to be best-man at your wedding ! I will go to Italy, 
 Germany, and England ! I will take placards in every lan- 
 guage with me and have them posted up everywhere, in the 
 villages, at church-doors, and in all good situations that I 
 know in country towns ! The oil shall make a blaze ; it 
 shall be on every head ! Ah ! your marriage will not be a 
 marriage in water-colors ; it shall be done in oils ! You shall 
 have your Cesarine, or I am not 'The Illustrious,' a nickname 
 old Finot gave me because I made a success of his gray hats. 
 I shall be sticking to my own line, too, the human head ; oil 
 and hats, as is well known, are meant to preserve the hair of 
 the public." 
 
 Popinot went to his aunt's house, where he was to spend 
 the night, in such a fever, brought on by visions of success, 
 that the streets seemed to him to be rivers of oil. He scarcely 
 slept at all, dreamed that his hair was growing at a furioua 
 rate, and beheld two angels, who unrolled above his head a 
 scroll (as in a pantomime), whereon the words " Cesarian 
 Oil " were written ; and he awoke, but remembered his 
 dream, and determined to give the name to the oil of hazel- 
 nuts. He saw the will of heaven revealed in this fancy. 
 
 Cesar and Popinot were both at the factory in the Faubourg 
 du Temple long before the hazelnuts arrived. While they 
 waited for Mme. Madou's porters, Popinot in high-glee told 
 the whole history of his treaty of alliance with Gaudissart the 
 Great. 
 
 "We have the illustrious Gaudissart for us; we shall be 
 millionaires ! " cried the perfumer, holding out a hand to his 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 129 
 
 cashier, with the air of Louis XIV. receiving a Marechal de 
 Villairs after Denain. 
 
 "And yet another thing," said the happy assistant, drawing 
 a bottle from his pocket, a gourd-shaped flask, flattened so as 
 to present several sides. " I have found ten thousand bottles 
 like this one, ready made and washed, at four sous and six 
 months' credit." 
 
 "Anselme," said Birotteau, beholding this marvel, " yes- 
 terday " (here his voice grew solemn), "yesterday, in the 
 garden of the Tuileries — yes, no longer ago than yesterday — 
 your words to me were, ' I shall succeed.' To-day I myself 
 say to you, ' You will succeed ! ' Four sous ! Six months ! 
 An entirely new shape ! Macassar is shaking in his shoes ; 
 what a death-blow for Macassar ! What a good thing that I 
 have bought up all the nuts I could lay my hands on in Paris ! 
 But where did you find these bottles? " 
 
 " I was waiting to speak to Gaudissart, and sauntering 
 about " 
 
 "Just as I once did ! " exclaimed Birotteau. 
 
 "And as I went down the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, I saw a 
 wholesale glass-merchant's place, a dealer in bell-glasses and 
 
 glass shades, who has a very large stock ; I saw this bottle 
 
 Oh ! it stared me in the face like a flash of light ; something 
 said, ' Here is the thing for you ! ' " 
 
 "A born merchant ! He shall have my daughter," mut- 
 tered Cesar. 
 
 " In I went, and saw thousands of the bottles standing there 
 in boxes." 
 
 "Did you ask him about them?" 
 
 "You do not think me such a ninny!" cried Anselme, 
 grieved at the thought. 
 
 " Born merchant ! " repeated Birotteau. 
 
 " I went in to ask for glass shades for little wax statuettes. 
 While I was bargaining for the glass shades, I found fault with 
 the shape of these bottles. That led to a general confession ; 
 9 
 
130 CESAR BIROTTBAU. 
 
 my bottle merchant went from one thing to another, and told 
 me that Faille and Bouchot, who failed lately, were about to. 
 bring out a cosmetic, and wanted an out-of-the-way shape. 
 He distrusted them; he wanted half the money down; Faille 
 and Bouchot, hoping for a success, parted with the money, 
 and the failure came out while the bottles were being made. 
 When they put in a claim to the trustees for the rest, the 
 trustees compromised the matter by leaving them with all the 
 bottles and half the money that had been paid, as an indemnity 
 for goods which they said were absurdly shaped and im- 
 possible to dispose of. The bottles cost him eight sous, and 
 he would be glad to let any one have them for four. He 
 might have them on his hands for heaven knew how long ; 
 there was no sale for such a shape. ' Will you engage to supply 
 ten thousand at four sous ? I can take the bottles off your 
 hands ; I am Monsieur Birotteau's assistant.' And so I opened 
 up the subject, and drew him out, led him on, and put pres- 
 sure on my man, and he is ours." 
 
 "Four sous!" said Birotteau. "Do you know that we 
 can bring out the oil at three francs, and make thirty sous, 
 leaving twenty to the retailers? " 
 
 "The Cesarian Oil ! " cried Popinot. 
 
 " Cesarian Oil? Ah, master lover, you have a mind 
 
 to flatter father and daughter. Very well ; let it be Cesarian 
 Oil if you like. The Caesars conquered the world ; they 
 must have had famous heads of hair." 
 
 " Caesar was bald," said Popinot. 
 
 "Because he did not use our oil, people will say. The 
 Cesarian Oil at three francs ; Macassar Oil costs twice as 
 much. Gaudissart is in it; we shall make a hundred thousand 
 francs a year, for we will set down all heads that respect them- 
 selves for a dozen bottles every twelvemonth ; eighteen francs 
 of profit ! Say there are eighteen thousand heads — a hundred 
 and forty- four thousand francs. We shall be millionaires." 
 
 When the hazelnuts arrived, Raguet and the work-people, 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 131 
 
 with Popinot and Cesar, cracked the shells, and a sufficient 
 quantity was pressed. In four hours' time they had several 
 pounds weight of oil. Popinot took some of it to Vauquelin, 
 who presented him with a formula for diluting the essential 
 oil with a less expensive medium and for perfuming it. Pop- 
 inot straightway took steps for taking out a patent for the in- 
 vention and the improvement. It was Popinot's ambition to 
 pay his share of the expense of starting the enterprise, and 
 the devoted Gaudissart lent the money for the deposit. 
 
 Prosperity has an intoxicating effect, which always turns 
 weak heads. One result of this uplifted state of mind is 
 readily foreseen. Grindot came. He brought with him a 
 sketch in water-colors of a charming interior, the design for 
 the future rooms when furnished. Birotteau was carried away 
 by it. He agreed to everything, and the workmen began at 
 once ; every stroke of the pickaxe drew groans from the 
 house and from Constance. The painter, M. Lourdois, a 
 very wealthy contractor, who engaged to leave nothing un- 
 done, talked of gilding the drawing-room. Constance inter- 
 posed at this. 
 
 " Monsieur Lourdois," said she, " you have thirty thousand 
 francs a year of your own ; you live in your own house, and 
 you can do what you like in it ; but for people like us " 
 
 " Madame, commerce ought to shine ; it should not suffer 
 itself to be eclipsed by the aristocracy. Beside, here is Mon- 
 sieur Birotteau in the Government ; he is a public man " 
 
 "Yes, but he is still in the store," said Constance aloud, 
 before the assistants and her five auditors ; " neither he, nor 
 I, nor his friends, nor his enemies will forget that." 
 
 Birotteau raised himself on tiptoe several times, with his 
 hands clasped behind his back. 
 
 "My wife is right," said he. "We will be modest in 
 prosperity. Beside, so long as a man is in business, he ought 
 to be careful of his expenses and to keep them within 
 bounds; indeed, he is bound by law not to indulge in 'ex* 
 
132 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 cessive expenditure.' If the enlargement of my premises 
 and the amount spent on the alterations exceed a certain 
 limit, it would be imprudent in me to go beyond it ; you 
 yourself would blame me, Lourdois. The quarter has its eyes 
 upon me; successful people are looked upon jealously and 
 envied. Ah ! you will soon know that, young man," he said, 
 addressing Grindot ; " if they slander us, at any rate let us 
 give them no cause to say evil of us." 
 
 " Neither slander nor spite can touch you," said Lourdois; 
 "your position makes an exception of you; and you have 
 had such a great experience of business that you know how 
 to always keep your affairs within due limits. You are very 
 shrewd, monsieur." 
 
 "I have had some experience of business it is true; do 
 you know the reason why we are enlarging our house ? If I 
 exact a heavy penalty to secure punctuality it is " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Well, then, my wife and I are inviting a few friends, 
 partly to celebrate the liberation of the soil, partly on the 
 occasion of my promotion to the Order of the Legion of 
 Honor." 
 
 "What, what?" cried Lourdois. " Have they given you 
 the cross ? ' ' 
 
 " Yes. It may be that I have shown myself worthy of this 
 signal mark of royal favor by discharging my functions at 
 the Consular Tribunal and by fighting for the Royalist cause 
 on the 13th of Vend^miaire at Saint-Roch, when I was 
 wounded by Napoleon. Will you come and bring your wife 
 and your young lady ?'" 
 
 " Enchanted by the honor you condescend to bestow upon 
 me," said Lourdois, a Liberal. " But you are a droll fellow, 
 Birotteau ; you mean to make sure that I shall keep my word, 
 and that is why you ask me to come. Well, well ; I will set 
 my best workmen on to it ; we will have roaring fires to dry 
 the paint and use drying processes, for it will not do to dance 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 133 
 
 in a room full of steam from the damp plaster. The surface 
 shall be varnished, so that there shall be no smell." 
 
 Three days later, the announcement of Birotteau's forth- 
 coming ball created a flutter in the commercial world of that 
 quarter. And not only so, every one could see for himself 
 the timber props, necessitated by the hurried alteration of the 
 staircase, and the square wooden shaft-holes, through which 
 the rubbish was shot into the carts beneath. The men in 
 their haste worked by torchlight, for they had a night-and- 
 day shift, and this collected idlers and inquisitive gazers in 
 the street. On such preparations as these, the gossip of the 
 neighborhood reared sumptuous fabrics of conjecture. 
 
 On the Sunday, when the documents relative to the build- 
 ing land were to be signed, M. and Mme. Ragon and Uncle 
 Pillerault came at four o'clock, after vespers. Cesar said that, 
 as the house was so much pulled to pieces, he could only ask 
 Charles Claparon, Roguin, and Crottat for that day. The 
 notary brought a copy of the "Journal des Debats," in 
 which M. de la Billardiere had inserted the following para- 
 graph : 
 
 "We hear that the liberation of the soil will be celebrated 
 with enthusiasm throughout France ; but, in Paris, the mem- 
 bers of the municipal administration have felt that the time 
 had come for reviving the splendor of the capital, which has 
 been eclipsed during the foreign occupation from a feeling of 
 patriotism. Each of the mayors and deputy-mayors proposes 
 to give a ball, so that the winter season promises to be a very 
 brilliant one, and the National movement will be followed up. 
 Among the many fetes about to take place is the much-talked- 
 of ball to be given by M. Birotteau, recently nominated for 
 the Legion of Honor, and so widely known for his devotion 
 to the Royalist cause. M. Birotteau, wounded in the affair 
 of Saint-Roch on the 13th of Vendemiaire, and one of the 
 
134 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 most highly respected judges of the Consular Tribunal, has 
 doubly deserved this distinction." 
 
 " How well they write nowadays ! " exclaimed C6sar. 
 "They are talking about us in the paper," he added, turning 
 to Pillerault. 
 
 "Well, and what of that?" returned the uncle, who par- 
 ticularly detested the "Journal des Debats." 
 
 " Perhaps the paragraph may sell some of the Pate des Sul- 
 tanes and the Toilet Lotion," said Mme. C6sar in a low voice 
 to Mme. Ragon. Mme. Birotteau did not share her husband's 
 exhilaration. 
 
 Mme. Ragon, a tall, thin woman, with a sharp nose and 
 thin lips, looked a very fair imitation of a marquise of the 
 ancien regime. A somewhat wide margin of red encircled her 
 eyes, as sometimes happens with aged women who have known 
 many troubles. Her fine austere face, in spite of its kindli- 
 ness, was dignified, and there was, moreover, a quaint some- 
 thing about her which struck beholders, yet did not excite a 
 smile, a something interpreted by her manner and her dress. 
 She wore mittens ; she carried in all weathers a cane umbrella, 
 such as Marie Antoinette used at the Trianon ; her favorite 
 color was that particular pale shade of brown known zsfeuille- 
 morte (dead leaves) ; her skirts hung from her waist in folds, 
 which will never be seen again, for the dowager ladies of a 
 bygone day have taken their secret with them. Mme. Ragon 
 had not given up the black mantilla bordered with square- 
 meshed black lace ; the ornaments in her old-fashioned caps 
 reminded you of the filigree work on old picture-frames. She 
 took snuff with the dainty neatness and the little gestures 
 which a younger generation may recall, if they have been so 
 fortunate as to see their great-aunt or grandmother solemnly 
 set her gold snuff-box on the table beside her, and shake the 
 stray grains from her fichu. 
 
 The Sieur Ragon was a little man, five feet high at the 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 135 
 
 most, with a countenance of the nutcracker type. Two eyes 
 were visible, two prominent cheek-bones, a nose, and a chin. 
 As he had lost his teeth, he mumbled half his words, but he 
 talked like a brook, politely, somewhat pompously, and always 
 with a smile — the same smile with which he had greeted the 
 Fair ladies of quality whom one chance or another brought to 
 his store. His hair, tightly scraped back from his forehead 
 and powdered, described a snowy half-moon on his head, with 
 a pair of "pigeon's wings " on either side of a neat queue 
 tied with ribbon. He wore a cornflower-blue coat, a white 
 vest, silk breeches and stockings, black silk gloves, and shoes 
 with gold buckles to them. The most peculiar thing about 
 him was his habit of walking out in the street hat in hand. 
 He looked rather like a messenger of the Chamber of Peers 
 or some usher-in-waiting at the palace — one of those attendant 
 satellites of some great power, which shine with a reflected 
 glory and remain intrinsically insignificant. 
 
 "Well, Birotteau," he remarked, and from his tone he 
 might have been addressing an assistant, "are you sorry now, 
 my boy, that you took our advice in those days? Did we 
 ever doubt the gratitude of our beloved royal family?" 
 
 "You must be very happy, my dear," said Mme. Ragon, 
 addressing Mme. Birotteau. 
 
 "Yes, indeed," returned the fair Constance, who always 
 fell under the charm of that cane umbrella, those butterfly 
 caps, those tight-fitting sleeves, and the ample fichu a la Julie 
 that Mme. Ragon wore. 
 
 " Cesarine looks charming. Come here, pretty child," 
 said Mme. Ragon. She spoke in a patronizing manner and 
 with a high head-voice. 
 
 " Shall we settle the business before dinner?" asked Uncle 
 Pillerault. 
 
 "We are waiting for Monsieur Claparon," said Roguin; 
 "he was dressing when I left him." 
 
 "Monsieur Roguin," Cesar began, "does he quite un- 
 
136 C&SAR BIkOTTEAU. 
 
 derstand that we are to dine to-day in a wretched little entre- 
 sol " 
 
 ("Sixteen years ago he thought it magnificent," murmured 
 Constance.) 
 
 "Among the rubbish, and with all the workmen about?" 
 
 " Pooh ! you will find him a good fellow, and not hard to 
 please," said Roguin. 
 
 "I have left Raguet to look after the store; we cannot 
 come in and out of our own door now ; as you have seen, it 
 has all been pulled down," Cesar returned. 
 
 "Why did you not bring your nephew?" asked Pillerault 
 of Mme. Ragon. 
 
 "Shall we see him later?" suggested Cesarine. 
 
 "No, darling," said Mme. Ragon. " Anselme, dear boy, 
 is working himself to death. I am afraid of that close street 
 where the sun never shines, that vile-smelling Rue des Cinq- 
 Diamants ; the gutter is always black or blue or green. I 
 am afraid he may die there. But when young people set their 
 
 minds upon anything !" she said, turning to Cesarine 
 
 with a gesture that interpreted "mind" as "heart." 
 
 "Then, has the lease been signed?" asked Cesar. 
 
 "Yesterday, before a notary," Ragon replied. " He has 
 taken the place for eighteen years, but he pays the rent six 
 months in advance." 
 
 "Well, Monsieur Ragon, are you satisfied with me?" 
 Birotteau asked. " I have given him the secret of a new dis- 
 covery — in fact ! ' ' 
 
 "We know you by heart, Cesar," said little Ragon, taking 
 Cesar's hands and pressing them with devout friendliness. 
 
 Roguin meanwhile was not without inward qualms. Cla- 
 paron was about to appear on the scene, and his habits and 
 manner of talking might be something of a shock to these re- 
 spectable citizens. He thought it necessary to prepare their 
 minds, and spoke, addressing Ragon, Pillerault, and the 
 women. 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 137 
 
 " You will see an eccentric character," he said ; "he hides 
 his talents beneath shocking bad manners; his ideas have 
 raised him from a very low position. No doubt he will ac- 
 quire better tastes in the society of bankers. You might 
 come across him slouching half-fuddled along the boulevard 
 or in a cafe playing at billiards ; he looks like a great hulking 
 idiot. But nothing of the kind ; he is thinking all the time, 
 pondering how to put life into trade by new ideas." 
 
 "lean understand that," said Birotteau ; " my best ideas* 
 came to me while I was sauntering about, didn't they, dear? " 
 
 " Claparon makes up for lost time at night, after spending 
 the daytime in meditating over business combinations. All 
 these very clever people lead queer inexplicable lives," Roguin 
 continued. "Well, with all his desultory ways, he gains his 
 end, as I can testify. He made all the owners of our build- 
 ing land give way at last ; they were not willing, they de- 
 murred at this and that ; he mystified them — tired them out ; 
 day after day he went to see them, and this time the lots are 
 ours." 
 
 A peculiar sounding brown / brown ! characteristic of drink- 
 ers of strong waters and spirits, announced the arrival of the 
 most grotesque personage in this story — who was in the future 
 to enact the part of the arbiter of Cesar's destinies. The 
 perfumer hurried down the narrow, dark staircase, partly to 
 tell Raguet to close the store, partly to make his excuses for 
 receiving Claparon in the dining-room. 
 
 "Eh, what? Oh, it will do very well for stowing the 
 vict , I mean for doing business in." 
 
 In spite of Roguin's skillful opening, the entrance of the 
 sham great banker at once produced an unpleasant impression 
 upon those well-bred citizens, M. and Mme. Ragon, upon 
 the observant Pillerault, and upon Cesarine and her mother. 
 
 At the age of twenty-eight, or thereabouts, the former com- 
 mercial traveler had not a hair on his head, and wore a wig 
 of corkscrew curls. Such a manner of dressing the hair de* 
 
138 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 mands a girlish freshness, a milk-white skin, and the daintiest 
 feminine charm ; so it brought out all the vulgarity of a 
 pimpled countenance, a dark-red complexion, flushed like that 
 of a stage coachman, and covered with premature wrinkles 
 and deeply-cut grotesque lines which told of a dissolute life ; 
 its ill effects could be read only too plainly in the bad state 
 of his teeth and the black specks dotted Over the shriveled 
 skin. 
 
 There was something about Claparon that suggested the 
 provincial actor who frequents fairs, and is prepared to play 
 any and every part, to whose worn, shrunken cheeks and 
 flabby lips the paint refuses to adhere; the tongue always 
 wagging even when the man is drunk ; the shameless eyes, 
 the compromising gestures. Such a face as this, lighted up 
 by the hilarious flames of punch, little befitted a man accus- 
 tomed to important business. Indeed, only after prolonged 
 and necessary studies in mimicry had Claparon succeeded in 
 adopting a manner not wholly out of keeping with his sup- 
 posed importance. Du Tillet had assisted personally at Cla- 
 paron's toilet, anxious as a nervous manager over the first ap- 
 pearance of his principal actor, for he trembled lest the vicious 
 habits of a reckless life should appear through the veneer of 
 the banker. 
 
 "Say as little as you can," said his mentor; "a. banker 
 never babbles ; he acts, thinks, meditates, listens, and pon- 
 ders. So, to look like a real banker, you must either not 
 speak at all or say insignificant things. Keep those ribald 
 eyes of yours quiet; look solemn at the risk of looking stupid. 
 In politics, be for the Government, but keep to generalities, 
 such as — * There is a heavy budget ; compromise as parties 
 stand is out of the question ; Liberalism is dangerous ; the 
 Bourbons ought to avoid all collisions ; Liberalism is a cloak 
 to hide the schemes of the coalition ; the Bourbons are inau- 
 gurating an epoch of prosperity, so let us give them our sup- 
 port, whether we are well affected to them or not ; France 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 139 
 
 has had enough of political experiments,' and the like. And 
 don't sprawl over all the tables; remember that you have to 
 sustain the dignity of a millionaire. Don't snort like a pen- 
 sioner when you take snuff; play with your snuff-box and look 
 at your boots or at the ceiling before you give an answer ; look 
 as wise as you can, in fact. Above all things, rid yourself of 
 your unlucky habit of fingering everything. In society a 
 banker ought to look as if he were glad to let his fingers rest. 
 And look here ! you work at night, you are stupid with 
 making calculations, there are so many things to consider in 
 the starting of an enterprise ! so much thinking is involved ! 
 Grumble, above all things, and say that trade is very bad. 
 Trade is dull, slow, hard to move, perplexing. Keep to that, 
 and let particulars alone. Don't begin to sing drolleries of 
 Beranger's at table, and don't drink too much ; you will ruin 
 your prospects if you get tipsy. Roguin will keep an eye on 
 you ; you are going among moral people, respectable, steady- 
 going folk, don't frighten them by letting out some of your 
 pot-house principles." 
 
 This homily produced on Charles Claparon's mind an effect 
 very similar to the strange sensation of his new suit of clothes. 
 The rollicking prodigal, hail-fellow-well-met with everybody, 
 accustomed to the comfortable, disreputable garments in 
 which his outer man was as much at home as his thoughts in 
 the language that clothed them, held himself upright, stiff as 
 a poker in the new clothes for which the tailor had kept him 
 waiting to the last minute, and was as ill at ease in his move- 
 ments as in this new phraseology. He put out a hand un- 
 thinkingly toward a flask or a box, then, hurriedly recollect- 
 ing himself, drew it in again, and in the same way he began a 
 sentence and stopped short in the middle, distinguishing him- 
 self by a ludicrous incoherence, which did not escape the 
 observant Pillerault. His round face, like the rakish-looking 
 corkscrew ringlets of his wig, were totally out of keeping 
 with his manner, and he seemed to think one thing and say 
 
140 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 another. But the good folk concluded that his inconsequence 
 was the result of preoccupation. 
 
 "He does so much business," said Roguin. 
 
 "Business has given him very little breeding," Mme. Ra- 
 gon said to Cesarine. 
 
 M. Roguin overheard her, and laid a finger on his lips. 
 " He is rich, clever, and honorable to a fault," he said, bend- 
 ing to Mme. Ragon. 
 
 " He may be excused something for such qualities as those," 
 said Pillerault to Ragon. 
 
 " Let us read over the papers before dinner," said Roguin. 
 " We are alone." 
 
 Mme. Ragon, Cesarine, and Constance left the contracting 
 parties, Pillerault, Ragon, Cesar, Roguin, and Claparon, to 
 listen to the reading of the documents by Alexandre Crottat. 
 Cesar signed a mortgage bond for forty thousand francs se- 
 cured on the land and the factory in the Faubourg du Temple 
 (the money had been lent by one of Roguin's clients); he 
 paid over to Roguin Pillerault's order on the bank, gave 
 (without taking a receipt) twenty thousand francs worth of 
 bills from his portfolio, and drew another bill for the remain- 
 ing hundred and forty thousand francs on Charles Claparon. 
 
 "I have no receipt to give you," said that gentleman. 
 "You are acting for your own side with Monsieur Roguin, as 
 we are doing for our share. Our vendors will receive their 
 money from him in coin ; I only undertake to complete your 
 payment by paying a hundred and forty thousand francs for 
 your bills " 
 
 " That is right," said Pillerault. 
 
 "Well, then, gentlemen, let us call in the ladies again, for 
 it is cold without them," said Claparon, with a look at Ro- 
 guin to see whether he had gone too far. 
 
 " Ladies ! Ah ! mademoiselle is your young lady, of 
 
 course," said Claparon, looking at Birotteau and straighten- 
 ing himself up. " Well, well, you are not a bungler. Not 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 141 
 
 one of the roses that you have distilled can be compared with 
 her, and, perhaps, it is because you have distilled roses 
 that " 
 
 " Faith ! " said Roguin, interrupting him, "I own that I 
 am hungry." 
 
 " Very well, let us have dinner," said Birotteau. 
 
 " We are to have dinner in the presence of a notary," said 
 Claparon, with an important air. 
 
 "You do a great deal of business, do you not ?" said Pil- 
 lerault, purposely seating himself next to the banker. 
 
 "A tremendous amount, wholesale," replied Claparon; 
 " but trade is dull, hard to move — there are canals now. Oh, 
 canals ! You have no idea how busy we are with canals. 
 That is comprehensible. The Government wants canals. A 
 canal is a want generally felt. All the trade of a department 
 is interested in a canal, you know ! A stream, said Pascal, 
 is a moving highway. The next thing is a market, and mar- 
 kets depend on embankments, for there are a frightful lot of 
 embankments, and the embankments interest the poorer 
 classes, and that means a loan, which finally benefits the 
 poor! Voltaire said, 'Canal, canard, canaille I' But Gov- 
 ernment depends for information on its own engineers ; it is 
 difficult to meddle in the matter — at least, it is difficult to 
 
 come to an understanding with them ; for the Chamber 
 
 Oh ! sir, the Chamber gives us trouble ! The Chamber does 
 not want to grapple with the political question hidden be- 
 neath the financial question. There is bad faith on all sides. 
 Would you believe this? There are the Kellers — well, then, 
 Francois Keller is a public speaker, he attacks the measures 
 of the Government as to the funds and canals. He comes 
 home, and then my fine gentleman finds us with our proposi- 
 tions ; they are favorable, and he has to make it up with the 
 aforesaid Government, which he attacked so insolently an 
 hour ago. The interests of the public speaker clash with the 
 interests of the banker; we are between two fires. Now you 
 
142, CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 understand how thorny affairs become ; you have to satisfy 
 everybody — the clerks, the people in the chambers, and the 
 people in the ante-chambers, and the ministers " 
 
 "The ministers? " asked Pillerault, who wished to probe 
 this partner's mind thoroughly. 
 
 "Yes, sir, the ministers." 
 
 "Well, then, the newspapers. are right," said Pillerault. 
 
 "Here is uncle on politics," said Birotteau; "Monsieur 
 Claparon has set him off," 
 
 "Newspapers!" said Claparon, "there are some more 
 confounded humbugs ! Newspapers throw us all into confu- 
 sion ; they do us a good turn now and then, but the cruel 
 nights they make me spend ! I would as lief be without 
 them ; they are the ruin of my eyes, in fact, poring over them 
 and working out calculations." 
 
 "But to return to the ministers," said Pillerault, hoping 
 for revelations. 
 
 "Ministers have exigencies which are purely governmental. 
 But what am I eating; is it ambrosia?" asked Claparon, in- 
 terrupting himself. " Here is a sort of sauce that you only 
 have in citizens' houses ; you never get it at grub-shops " 
 
 At that word, the ornaments on Mme. Ragon's cap skipped 
 like rams. Claparon gathered that the expression was low, 
 and tried to retrieve his error. 
 
 "That is what the heads of large banking firms call the 
 high-class taverns — Very and the Freres Provencaux. Well, 
 neither those vile grub-shops nor our most accomplished 
 cooks make you a soft, mellow sauce ; some give you water 
 with lemon-juice in it, and others give you chemical concoc- 
 tions." 
 
 The conversation at dinner chiefly consisted in attacks from 
 Pillerault, who tried to plumb his man, and only found empti- 
 ness ; he looked upon him as a dangerous person. 
 
 "It is going on all right," said Roguin in Charles Cla- 
 paron 's ear. 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU, 143 
 
 "Oh ! I shall get out of my clothes to-night, I suppose," 
 answered Claparon, who was gasping for breath. 
 
 " We are obliged to use our dining-room as a sitting-room, 
 sir," said Birotteau, "because we are looking forward to a 
 little gathering of our friends in eighteen days' time, partly 
 to celebrate the liberation of the soil " 
 
 "Right, sir; I myself am also for the Government. 
 My political convictions incline me to the statu quo of the 
 great man who guides the destinies of the house of Austria, a 
 fine fellow ! Keep what you have, to get more ; and, in the 
 first place, get more, to keep what you have. So now you 
 know the bottom of my opinions, which have the honor to be 
 those of Prince Metternich ! " 
 
 " Partly on the occasion of my promotion to the Order of 
 the Legion of Honor," Cesar went on. 
 
 " Why, yes, I know. Now who was telling me about that? 
 Was it the Kellers or Nucingen ? " 
 
 Roguin, amazed at so much presence of mind, signified his 
 admiration. 
 
 " Oh, no; it was at the Chamber." 
 
 "At the Chamber. Was it Monsieur de la Billardiere ? " 
 asked Cesar. 
 
 " The very man." 
 
 " He is charming," said Cesar, addressing his uncle. 
 
 "He pours out talk, talk, talk, till you are drowned in 
 talk," said Pillerault. 
 
 "It may be," resumed Birotteau, "that I have shown 
 myself worthy of this favor " 
 
 " By your achievements in perfumery ; the Bourbons know 
 how to reward merit of every kind. Ah ! let us stand by our 
 generous legitimate Princes, to whom we shall owe unheard-of 
 prosperity about to be. For, you may be sure of it, the 
 Restoration feels that she must enter the lists with the Empire, 
 and the Restoration will make peaceful conquests ; you will 
 see conquests ! " 
 
144 CESAR BIROTTEAV. 
 
 "You will no doubt honor us by coming to our ball, sir," 
 said Mme. Cesar. 
 
 "To spend an evening with you, madame, I would miss a 
 chance of making millions." 
 
 " He certainly is a babbler," said Cesar in his uncle's ear. 
 
 While the waning glory of the Queen of Roses was about 
 to shed abroad its parting rays, a faint star was rising above 
 the commercial horizon ; at that very hour, little Popinot was 
 laying the foundations of his fortune in the Rue des Cinq- 
 Diamants. The Rue des Cinq-Diamants, a short, narrow 
 thoroughfare, where loaded wagons can scarcely pass each 
 other, runs between the Rue des Lombards and the Rue 
 Aubry-le-Boucher, into which it opens just opposite the end 
 of the Rue Quincampoix, that street so famous in the history 
 of France and of old Paris. 
 
 In spite of this narrowness, the near neighborhood of the 
 druggists' quarter made the place convenient ; and from that 
 point of view Popinot had not made a bad choice. The house 
 (the second from the end nearest the Rue des Lombards) was 
 so dark that at times it was necessary to work by artificial 
 light in the daytime. Popinot had taken possession the even- 
 ing before of all its darkest and most unsavory recesses. His 
 predecessor, a dealer in molasses and raw sugars, had left his 
 mark on the place ; the walls, the yard, and the warehouse 
 bore unmistakable traces of his occupation. 
 
 Imagine a large and roomy store, the huge doors barred 
 with iron and painted dragon-green, the solid iron scroll-work, 
 with bolt-heads as large as mushrooms by way of ornament. 
 The store was adorned and protected, as bakers' stores used 
 to be, by wire-work lattices, which bulged at the bottom, and 
 was paved with great slabs of white stone, cracked for the 
 most part. The walls of a guard-house are not yellower nor 
 barer. Further on came the back-shop and kitchen, which 
 looked out into the yard ; and behind these again a second 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 145 
 
 wareroom, which must at one time have been a stable. An 
 inside staircase had been contrived in the back-shop, by which 
 you gained two rooms that looked out upon the street ; here 
 Popinot meant to have his counting-house and his ledgers. 
 Above the warehouse there were three small rooms, all backed 
 against the party-wall, and lighted by windows on the side of 
 the yard. It was in these dilapidated rooms that Popinot pro- 
 posed to live. 
 
 The view from the windows was shut in by the high walls 
 that rose about the dingy, crooked yard, walls so damp that 
 even in the driest weather they looked as if they had been 
 newly distempered. The cracks in the paving-stones were 
 choked with black, malodorous filth, deposited there during 
 the tenancy of the dealer in molasses and raw sugars. So 
 much for the outlook. As to the rooms themselves, only one 
 of them boasted a fireplace ; the floors were of brick, the walls 
 were un papered. 
 
 Gaudissart and Popinot had been busy there ever since the 
 morning, putting up a cheap wall-paper with their own hands 
 in the ugly room ; a journeyman paperhanger whom Gaudissart 
 ferreted out had varnished it for them. The furniture con- 
 sisted of a student's mattress, a wooden bedstead painted red, 
 a rickety nightstand, a venerable chest of drawers, a table, a 
 couple of armchairs, and half-a-dozen ordinary chairs, a 
 present from Popinet the judge to his nephew. Gaudissart 
 had put a cheap pier-glass over the mantel. It was almost 
 eight o'clock in the evening, and the two friends, sitting 
 before a blazing fire, were about to discuss the remains of their 
 breakfast. 
 
 "Away with the cold mutton ! It is out of character in a 
 house-warming," cried Gaudissart. 
 
 Popinot held up his last twenty-franc piece, which was to 
 pay for the prospectus. " But I " he began. 
 
 "I?" retorted Gaudissart, sticking a forty-franc piece into 
 his eye. 
 10 
 
146 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 A knock at the street-door reverberated through the yard. 
 It was Sunday. The workpeople were taking their holiday 
 away from their workshops, and the idle echoes greeted every 
 sound. 
 
 " There is my trusty man from the Rue de la Poterie," Gau- 
 dissart went on. " For my own part, it is not simply ' I ' but 
 'I have.' " 
 
 And, in fact, a waiter appeared, followed by two kitchen- 
 boys, carrying between them three wicker baskets, containing 
 a dinner, and crowned by six bottles of wine selected with 
 discrimination. 
 
 "But how are we to eat such a lot of things?" asked 
 Popinot. 
 
 " There is the man of letters," cried Gaudissart. " Finot 
 understands the pomps and vanities. The artless youth will 
 be here directly with a prospectus fit to make your hair stand 
 on end (neat that, eh?), and prospectuses are always dry work. 
 You must water the seeds if you mean to have flowers. Here, 
 minions," he added, striking an attitude for the benefit of the 
 kitchen-boys, "here's gold for you." 
 
 He held out six sous with a gesture worthy of his idol, 
 Napoleon. 
 
 "Thank you, Monsieur Gaudissart," said the scullions, 
 more pleased with the joke than with the few ceutimes of 
 money. 
 
 "As for thee, my son," he continued, turning to the waiter 
 who remained, " there is a portress here. She crouches in 
 the depths of a cave, where at times she does some cooking, 
 as erewhile Nausicaa did the washing, simply by way of re- 
 laxation. Hie thee to her, work on her trustful nature ; in- 
 terest her, young man, in the temperature of thy hot dishes. 
 Say to her that she shall be blessed, and above all things re- 
 spected, highly respected, by Felix Gaudissart, son of Jean- 
 Francois Gaudissart, and grandson of Gaudissart, vile prole- 
 taries of remote lineage, his ancestors. Off with you, and act 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 147 
 
 in such a sort that everything shall be good ; for if it isn*t I 
 will make you laugh on the wrong side of your face." 
 
 There was another knock at the door. 
 
 "That is the ingenious Andoche," said Gaudissart. 
 
 A stout young fellow suddenly entered. He had somewhat 
 chubby cheeks, was of middle height, and from head to foot 
 looked like the hatter's son. A certain shrewdness lurked 
 beneath the air of constraint that sat on his rounded features. 
 The habitual dejection of a man who is tired of poverty left 
 him, and a hilarious expression crossed his countenance at 
 the sight of the preparations on the table and the significant 
 seals on the bottle-corks. At Gaudissart's shout, a twinkle 
 came into the pale-blue eyes, the big head, on which a 
 Kalmuck physiognomy had been carved, rolled from side to 
 side, and he gave Popinot a distant greeting, in which there 
 was neither servility nor respect, like a man who feels out of 
 his element and stands on his dignity. 
 
 Finot was just beginning to discover that he had no sort of 
 talent for literature; he did not think of quitting his calling: 
 he meant to exploit literature by raising himself on the shoul- 
 ders of men who possessed the talent which he lacked. In- 
 stead of doing ill-paid work himself he would turn his business 
 capacities to account. He was just at the turning-point; he 
 had exhausted the expedients of humility ; he had experienced 
 to the full the humiliations of failure ; and, like those who 
 take a wide outlook over the financial world, he resolved to 
 change his tactics and to be insolent in future. He needed 
 capital in the first instance, and Gaudissart had opened out a 
 prospect of making the money by putting Popinot's oil before 
 the public. 
 
 "You will make his arrangements with the newspapers," 
 Gaudissart had said, " but don't swindle him ; if you do there 
 will be a duel to the death between us ; give him value for 
 his money ! " 
 
 Popinot looked uneasily at the "author." Your true man 
 
148 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 of business regards an author with mixed feelings, in which 
 alarm and curiosity are blended with compassion ; and though 
 Popinot had been well educated, his relations' attitude of 
 mind and ways of thinking, together with a course of drudgery 
 in a store, had produced their effect on his intelligence, and 
 he bent beneath the yoke of use and wont. You can see this 
 by noticing the metamorphoses which ten years will effect 
 among a hundred boys, who when they left school or college 
 were almost exactly alike. 
 
 Andoche mistook the impression which he had made for 
 admiration. v 
 
 "Very well. Let us run through the prospectus before 
 dinner, then it will be off our minds, and we can drink," 
 said Gaudissart. "It is uncomfortable to read after dinner; 
 the tongue is digesting too." 
 
 "Sir," said Popinot, "a prospectus often means a whole 
 fortune." 
 
 "And for nobodies like me," said Andoche, "fortune is 
 nothing but a prospectus." 
 
 "Ah! very good," said Gaudissart. "That droll fellow 
 of an Andoche has wit enough for the Forty." 
 
 " For a hundred," said Popinot, awestruck with the idea. 
 
 Gaudissart snatched up the manuscript, and read aloud, 
 and with emphasis, the first two words — " Cephalic Oil ! " 
 
 " I like Cesarian Oil better," said Popinot. ' 
 
 "You don't know them in the provinces, my friend," said 
 Gaudissart. "There is a surgical operation known by that 
 name, and they are so stupid that they will think your oil is 
 meant to facilitate childbirth ; and if they start off with the 
 notion, it would be too hard work to bring them all the way 
 back to hair again." 
 
 "Without defending the name," observed the author, "I 
 would call your attention to the fact that Cephalic Oil means 
 oil for the head, and resumes your ideas." 
 
 " Go on ! " said Popinot impatiently. 
 
CltSAR BIROTTEAU: 149 
 
 And here follows a second historical document, a pros- 
 pectus, which even at this day is circulating by thousands 
 among retail perfumers : 
 
 GOLD MEDAL, PARIS, 1824.* 
 
 CEPHALIC OIL 
 
 (Improved Patent). 
 
 No cosmetic can make the hair grow ; and in the same way, it cannot 
 be dyed by chemical preparations without danger to the seat of the intelli- 
 gence. Science has recently proclaimed that the hair is not a living sub- 
 stance, and that there is no means of preventing it from blanching or falling 
 out. To prevent xerasia and baldness, the bulb at the roots should be pre- 
 served from all atmospheric influences and the natural temperature of the 
 head evenly maintained. The Cephalic Oil, based on these principles 
 established by the Royal Academy of Sciences, induces the important 
 result so highly prized by the ancients, the Romans and Greeks, and the 
 nations of the North — a fine head of hair. Learned research has brought 
 to light the fact that the nobles of olden times, who were distinguished by 
 their long, flowing locks, used no other means than these; their recipe, 
 long lost, has been ingeniously rediscovered by A. Popinot, inventor of 
 Cephalic Oil. 
 
 To preserve the glands, and not to provoke an impossible or hurtful 
 stimulation of the dermis which contains them, is, therefore, the function 
 of Cephalic Oil. This oil, which exhales a delicious fragrance, prevents 
 the exfoliation of the pellicle ; while the substances of which it is com- 
 posed (the essential oil of the hazelnut being the principal element) coun- 
 teract the effects of atmospheric air upon the head, thus preventing chills, 
 catarrh, and all unpleasant encephalic affections by maintaining the natural 
 temperature. In this manner the glands, which contain the hair-producing 
 secretions, are never attacked by heat or cold. A fine head of hair — that 
 glorious product so highly valued by either sex — may be retained to ex- 
 treme old age by the use of Cephalic Oil, which imparts to the hair the 
 
 * The next " Quinquennial Exhibition." 
 
150 CESAR BIROTTEAlf. 
 
 brilliancy, silkiness, and gloss which constitutes the charm of children's 
 heads. 
 
 Directions for use are issued on the wrapper of every bottle. 
 
 DIRECTIONS FOR USE. 
 
 It is perfectly useless to apply oil to the hair itself; beside being an 
 absurd superstition, it is an obnoxious practice, for the cosmetic leaves its 
 traces everywhere. 
 
 It is only necessary to part the hair with a comb, and to apply the oil 
 to the roots every morning with a small, fine sponge, proceeding thus until 
 the whole surface of the skin has received a slight application, the hair 
 having been previously combed and brushed. 
 
 To prevent spurious imitations, each bottle bears the signature of the 
 inventor. Sold at the price of three francs by A. Popinot, Rue des 
 Cinq-Diamants, Quartier des Lombards, Paris. 
 
 It is particularly requested that all communications by post should be 
 prepaid. 
 
 Note. — A. Popinot also supplies essences and pharmaceutical prepara- 
 tions, such as neroli, oil of spike-lavender, oil of sweet-almonds, cacao- 
 butter, caffein, castor oil, et ccetera. 
 
 " My dear fellow," said the illustrious Gaudissart, address- 
 ing Finot, " it is perfectly written ! Ye gods, how we plunge 
 into deep science ! No shuffling ; we go straight to the point ! 
 Ah ! I congratulate you heartily ; there is literature of some 
 practical use ! " 
 
 "A fine prospectus ! " cried Popinot enthusiastically. 
 
 "The very first sentence is a death-blow to Macassar," said 
 Gaudissart, rising to his feet with a magisterial air, to pro- 
 claim with an oratorical gesture between each word, " ' You — 
 cannot — make — hair — grow. It — cannot — be — dyed — with- 
 out — danger ! ' Aha ! success lies in that. Modern science 
 corroborates the custom of the ancients. You can suit your- 
 self to old and young. You have to do with an old man. 
 'Aha, sir ! the Greeks and Romans, the ancients, were in the 
 right ; they were not such fools as some would make them out 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 151 
 
 to be ! ' Or if it is a young man. ' My dear fellow, another 
 discovery due to the progress of enlightenment ; we are pro- 
 gressing. What must we not expect from steam, and the 
 telegraph, and such like inventions? This oil is the outcome 
 of Monsieur Vauquelin's investigations ! ' How if we were to 
 print an extract from M. Vauquelin's paper, eh? Capital! 
 Come, Finot, draw up your chair ! Let us stow the victuals, 
 and tipple down the champagne to our young friend's suc- 
 cess ! " 
 
 "It seemed to me," said the author modestly, "that the 
 time for the light and playful prospectus has gone by ; we are 
 entering on an epoch of science, and must talk learnedly and 
 authoritatively to make an impression on the public." 
 
 "We will push the oil. My feet, and my tongue, too, are 
 hankering to go. I have agencies for all the houses that deal 
 in hairdressers' goods, not one of them gives more than thirty 
 per cent, of discount ; make up your mind to give forty, and 
 I will engage to sell a hundred thousand bottles in six months. 
 I will make a set on all the druggists, grocers, and hair- 
 dressers ! And if you will allow them forty per cent, on your 
 oil, they will all send their customers wild for it." 
 
 The three young men ate like lions, drank like Swiss, and 
 waxed merry over the future success of the Cephalic Oil. 
 
 "This oil goes to your head," said Finot, smiling, and 
 Gaudissart exhausted whole series of puns on the words oil, 
 head, and hair. 
 
 In the midst of their Homeric laughter over the dessert, 
 the knocker sounded, and, in spite of the toasts and the 
 wishes for luck exchanged among the three friends, they 
 heard it. 
 
 "It is my uncle 1 He is capable of coming to see me," 
 cried Popinot. 
 
 "An uncle? " asked Finot, " and we have not a glass ! " 
 
 " My friend Popinot's uncle is an examining magistrate," 
 said Gaudissart, by way of reply to Finot ; " there is no occa- 
 
152 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 sion to hoax him, he saved my life. Ah ! if you had found 
 yourself in the fix I was in, with the scaffold staring you in the 
 face, where, kouik, off goes your hair for good ! " (and he im- 
 itated the fatal knife by a gesture), " you would be apt to 
 remember the righteous judge to whom you owe the preserva- 
 tion of the channel that the champagne goes down ! You 
 would remember him if you were dead drunk. You don't 
 know, Finot, but what you may want M. Popinot one day. 
 Saquerlotie ! You must make your bow to him, and thirteen 
 to the dozen ! " 
 
 It was, as a matter of fact, the " righteous judge," who was 
 asking for his nephew of the woman who opened the door. 
 Anselme recognized the voice, and went down, candle in 
 hand, to light his way. 
 
 "Good-evening, gentlemen," said the magistrate. 
 
 The illustrious Gaudissart made a profound bow. Finot 
 looked the new-comer over with drunken eyes, and decided 
 that Popinot's uncle was tolerably wooden-headed. 
 
 "There is no luxury here," said the judge, gravely looking 
 round the room ; " but, my boy, you must begin by being 
 nothing if you are to be something great." 
 
 "How profound he is ! " exclaimed Gaudissart, turning to 
 Finot. 
 
 "An idea for an article," said the journalist. 
 
 " Oh ! is that you, sir ? " asked the judge, recognizing the 
 commercial traveler. " Eh ! what are you doing here? " 
 
 " I want to do all my little part, sir, toward making your 
 dear nephew's fortune. We have just been pondering over 
 the prospectus for this oil of his, and this gentleman here is 
 the author of the prospectus, which seems to us to be one of 
 the finest things in the literature of periwigs." 
 
 The judge looked at Finot. 
 
 " This gentleman is Monsieur Andoche Finot," Gaudissart 
 said, "one of the most distinguished young men in literature; 
 he does political leaders and the minor theatres for the Gov- 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 153 
 
 ernment newspapers; he is a minister who is by way of being 
 an author." 
 
 Here Finot tugged at Gaudissart's coat-tails. 
 
 "Very well, boys," said the judge, to whom these words 
 explained the appearance of the table covered with the rem- 
 nants of a feast very excusable under the circumstances. 
 
 "As for you, Anselme," he continued, turning to Popinot, 
 "get ready to pay a visit to Monsieur Birotteau ; I must go to 
 see him this evening. You will sign your deed of partnership; 
 I have gone through it very carefully. As you are going to 
 manufacture your oil in the Faubourg du Temple, I think that 
 he ought to make over the lease of the workshop to you, and 
 that he has power to sublet ; if things are all in order, it will 
 save disputes afterward. These walls look to me to be very 
 damp, Anselme; bring up trusses of straw and put them round 
 about where your bed stands." 
 
 " Excuse me, sir," said Gaudissart with a courtier's supple- 
 ness, "we have just put up the wall-paper ourselves to-day, 
 and — it — is — not quite dry." 
 
 " Economy ! good ! " said the judge. 
 
 "Listen," said Gaudissart in Finot's ear; "my friend 
 Popinot is a good young man ; he is going off with his uncle, 
 so come along and let us finish the evening with our fair 
 cousins." 
 
 The journalist turned out the lining of his vest pocket. 
 Popinot saw the manoeuvre, and slipped a twenty-franc piece 
 into the hand of the author of his prospectus. The judge had 
 a cab waiting at the corner of the street, and carried off his 
 nephew to call on Birotteau. 
 
 Pillerault, M. and Mine. E.agon, and Roguin were playing 
 at boston, and Cesarine was embroidering a fichu, when the 
 elder Popinot and Anselme appeared. Roguin, sitting op- 
 posite Mme. Ragon, could watch Cesarine, who sat by her 
 side, and saw the happy look on the girl's face when Anselme 
 came in, saw her flush up red as a pomegranate flower, and 
 
154 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 called his head clerk's attention to her by a significant 
 gesture. 
 
 " So this is to be a day of deeds, is it ? " said the perfumer, 
 when greetings had been exchanged, and the judge explained 
 the reason of the visit. 
 
 Cesar, Anselme, and the judge went up to the perfumer's 
 temporary quarters on the second floor to debate the matter 
 of the lease and the deed of partnership drawn up by the 
 elder Popinot. It was arranged that the lease should run for 
 eighteen years, so as to be conterminous with the lease of the 
 house in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants ; trifling matter as it 
 appeared at the time, it was destined later to serve Birotteau's 
 interests. 
 
 When they returned to the sitting-room, the elder Popinot, 
 surprised by the confusion and the men at work on a Sunday 
 in the house of so devout a man, asked the reason of it all. 
 This was the question for which Cesar was waiting. 
 
 "Although you are not worldly, sir, you will not object to 
 our celebrating our deliverance ; and that is not all — if we 
 are arranging for a little gathering of our friends, it is partly 
 also to celebrate my promotion to the Order of the Legion of 
 Honor." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the examining magistrate (who had not been 
 decorated). 
 
 " It may be that I have shown myself not unworthy of this 
 signal mark of royal favor by discharging my functions at the 
 
 Tribunal oh ! I mean to say Consular Tribunal, and by 
 
 fighting for the Royalist cause on the steps " 
 
 "Yes," said the magistrate. 
 
 "Steps of Saint-Roch, on the 13th of Vendemiaire, where 
 I was wounded by Napoleon." 
 
 "I shall be glad to come," said M. Popinet ; "and if my 
 wife is well enough, I will bring her." 
 
 "Xandrot," said Roguin, on the doorstep, "give up all 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 155 
 
 thoughts of marrying Cesarine ; in six weeks' time you will 
 see that I have given you sound counsel." 
 
 "Why?" asked Crottat. 
 
 " My dear fellow, Birotteau is about to spend a hundred 
 thousand francs over this ball of his, and he is embarking 
 his whole fortune, against my advice, in this building-land 
 scheme. In six weeks' time these people will not have bread 
 to eat. Marry Mademoiselle Lourdois, the house-painter's 
 daughter ; she has three hundred thousand francs to her for- 
 tune. I have planned this shift for you. If you will pay me 
 down the money, you can have my practice to-morrow for a 
 hundred thousand francs." 
 
 The splendors of the perfumer's forthcoming bail, an- 
 nounced to Europe by the newspapers, were very differently 
 announced in commercial circles by flying rumors of work- 
 people employed night and day on the perfumer's house. 
 The rumors took various forms ; here it was said that Cesar 
 had taken the house on either side ; there, that his drawing- 
 rooms were to be gilded ; some said that no tradespeople 
 would be invited, and that the ball was given to Government 
 officials only ; and the perfumer was severely blamed for his 
 ambition, they scoffed at his political aspirations, they denied 
 that he had been wounded ! More than one scheme was set 
 on foot, in the second arrondissement, in consequence of the 
 ball ; the friends of the family took things quietly, but the 
 claims of distant acquaintances were vast. 
 
 Those who have favor to bestow never lack courtiers ; and 
 a goodly number of the guests were at no little pains to pro- 
 cure their cards of invitation. The Birotteaus were amazed 
 to find so many friends whose existence they had not sus- 
 pected. This eagerness on their part alarmed Mme. Birot- 
 teau ; she looked more and more gloomy as the days went 
 by and the solemn festival came nearer. She had confessed 
 to Cesar from the very first that she should not know how to 
 
156 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 act her part as hostess, and the innumerable small details 
 frightened her. Where was the plate to come from ? How 
 about the glass, the refreshments, the forks and spoons? And 
 who would look after it all ? She begged Birotteau to stand 
 near the door and see that no one came who had not been 
 asked to the ball ; she had heard strange things about people 
 who came to dances claiming acquaintance with people whom 
 they did not know by name. 
 
 One evening, ten days before the famous Sunday, Messieurs 
 Braschon, Grindot, Lourdois, and Chaffaroux the contractor 
 having given their word that the rooms should be ready for 
 the 17th of December, there had been a laughable conference 
 after dinner in the humble little sitting-room on the mezza- 
 nine floor — Cesar and his wife and daughter were making a 
 list of guests and writing the cards of invitation, which had 
 been sent in only that morning, nicely printed in the English 
 fashion on rose-colored paper, in accordance with the precepts 
 laid down in the " Complete Guide to Etiquette." 
 
 "Look here ! " said Cesar; "we must not leave anybody 
 out." 
 
 "If we forget any one," remarked Constance, "we shall 
 be reminded of it. Madame Derville, who never called upon 
 us before, sailed in yesterday evening in great state." 
 
 "She was very pretty; I liked her," said Cesarine. 
 
 " Yet before she was married she was even worse off than 
 was I," said Constance ; " she used to do plain needlework in 
 the Rue Montmartre ; she has made shirts for your father." 
 
 " Well, let us put the great people down at the top of the 
 list," said Cesar. " Write ' M. le Due and Mme. la Duchesse 
 de Lenoncourt,' Cesarine." 
 
 "Goodness! Cesar," cried Constance, "pray don't begin 
 to send invitations to people whom you only know through 
 the business. Are you going to ask the Princesse de Blamont- 
 Chauvry ? She is more nearly related to your late godmother, 
 the Marquise d'Uxelles, than even the Due de Lenoncourt. 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 157 
 
 And shall you ask the two Messieurs Vandenesse, de Marsay, 
 de Ronquerolles, de l'Aiglemont ; in short, all your cus- 
 tomers ? You are mad ; honors are turning your head " 
 
 " Yes ! but Monsieur le Comte de Fontaine and his family. 
 Eh ? He used to come to the Queen of Roses under the 
 name of Grand-Jacques with the Gars (M. le Marquis de 
 Montauran that was) and Monsieur de la Billardiere, whom 
 they called the Nantais in the days before the great affair of 
 the 13th of Vendemiaire. And they would shake hands with 
 you then, and it was, ' My dear Birotteau, keep your heart 
 up, and give your life, like the rest of us, for the good cause ! ' 
 We are old fellow-conspirators." 
 
 "Put him down," said Constance; "if Monsieur de la 
 Billardiere and his son are coming they must have somebody 
 to speak to." 
 
 "Set down his name, Cesarine," said Birotteau. "Impri- 
 mis, his worship the prefect of the Seine ; he may or may not 
 come, but he is the head of the municipal corporation, and 
 ' honor to whom honor is due.' Monsieur de la Billardiere, 
 the mayor, and his son. (Write down the number of the 
 people after every name.) My colleague, Monsieur Granet, 
 and his wife. She is very ugly, but, all the same, we cannot 
 leave her out. Monsieur Curel, the goldsmith, colonel of the 
 National Guard, and his wife and two daughters. Those are 
 what I call the authorities. Now for the big-wigs ! Monsieur 
 le Comte and Madame la Comtesse de Fontaine and their 
 daughter, Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine." 
 
 "An insolent girl, who makes me come out of the store to 
 speak to her at her carriage-door in all weathers," said Mme. 
 Cesar. "If she comes at all, it will be to make fun of us." 
 
 " In that case, perhaps, she will come," said Cesar, who 
 meant to fill his rooms at all costs. " Go on, Cesarine — • 
 Monsieur le Comte and Madame la Comtesse de Granville, my 
 landlord, the hardest head in the Court of Appeal, Derville 
 says. Oh ! by-the-by ; Monsieur de la Billardiere has arranged 
 
158 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 for me to be presented to-morrow by Monsieur le Comte de 
 Lacepede himself; it is only polite to ask the grand chan- 
 cellor to dinner and to the ball. Monsieur Vauquelin. Put 
 him down for the dinner and for the ball too, Cesarine. And, 
 while we remember it, all the Chiffrevilles and the Protez 
 family. Monsieur Popinot, judge of the Tribunal of the 
 Seine, and Madame Popinot. Monsieur and Madame Thi- 
 rion, he is an usher of the Privy Chamber and a friend 
 of the Ragons ; it is said that their daughter is to be married 
 to one of Monsieur Camusot's sons by his first marriage." 
 
 " Cesar, do not forget young Horace Bianchon ; he is Popi- 
 not's nephew and Anselme's cousin," put in Constance. 
 
 "Ah, to be sure? Cesarine has put a figure four very 
 plainly after the Popinots. Monsieur and Madame Ra- 
 bourdin ; Rabourdin is at the head of one of the departments 
 in de la Billardiere's division. Monsieur Cochin of the same 
 department, and his wife and son ; they are sleeping-partners 
 in Matifat's concern ; and, while we are about it, put down 
 Monsieur and Madame and Mademoiselle Matifat." 
 
 " The Matifats have been making overtures for their friends, 
 Monsieur and Madame Colleville, Monsieur and Madame 
 Thuillier, and the Saillards." 
 
 "We shall see," said Cesar. "Our stockbroker, Jules 
 Desmarets, and his wife." 
 
 "She will be the prettiest woman in the room!" cried 
 Cesarine. "I like her, oh ! more than any one ! " 
 
 " Derville and his wife." 
 
 "Just put down Monsieur and Madame Coquelin, who 
 took over Uncle Pillerault's business," said Constance. "They 
 made so sure of being asked that the poor little thing is 
 having a grand ball-dress made by my dressmaker — a white 
 satin overskirt covered with tulle, embroidered with blue 
 chicory flowers. It would not have taken much to persuade 
 her to have a gold-embroidered court-dress. If we left them 
 out,. we should make two bitter enemies." 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 159 
 
 " Put them down, Cesarine ; we must show our respect for 
 trade, for we are tradespeople ourselves. Monsieur and 
 Madame Roguin." 
 
 " Mamma, Madame Roguin will wear her necklace, all her 
 diamonds, and her mechlin-lace gown." 
 
 " Monsieur and Madame Lebas," Cesar continued. "And 
 next, the president of the Tribunal of Commerce and his wife 
 and two daughters (I forgot to put them among the authorities). 
 Monsieur and Madame Lourdois and their daughter. Cla- 
 paron the banker ; du Tillet, Grindot, Monsieur Molineux ; 
 Pillerault and his landlord ; Monsieur and Madame Camusot, 
 the rich silk mercer, and all their family, the one at the 
 Ecole Polytechnique and the advocate ; he will receive an 
 appointment as judge — he is the one that is engaged to be 
 married to Mademoiselle Thirion." 
 
 "It will only be a provincial appointment," said Made- 
 moiselle Cesarine. 
 
 " Monsieur Cardot, Camusot' s father-in-law, and all the 
 young Cardots. Stay ! there are the Guillaumes in the Rue 
 du Colombier, Lebas' wife's people, two old folk who will 
 be wall-flowers. Alexandre Crottat — Celestin " 
 
 " Papa, do not forget Andoche Finot and Gaudissart, two 
 young men who have been so useful to Anselme." 
 
 "Gaudissart? He got himself into trouble. But never 
 mind, he is going away in a few days, and will travel for our 
 oil — so put him down ! As for Master Andoche Finot, what 
 is he to us ? " 
 
 "Anselme says that he will be a great man ; he is as clever 
 as Voltaire." 
 
 "An author is he? They are all of them atheists." 
 
 "Put him down, papa; so far there are not so very many 
 men who dance. Beside, your nice prospectus for the oil was 
 his doing." 
 
 "He believes in our oil, does he?" said Cesar. "Put 
 him down, dear child." 
 
160 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "So I, too, have my proteges on the list," commented 
 Cesarine. 
 
 "Put Mitral, my process-server, and our doctor, Monsieur 
 Haudry; it is for form's sake, he will not come." 
 
 " He will come for his game of cards," said Cesarine. 
 
 "Ah ! by-the-by, Cesar, I hope that you will ask Monsieur 
 l'Abbe Loraux to dinner ! " 
 
 " I have written to him already," said Cesar. 
 
 "Oh! we must not forget Lebas' sister-in-law, Madame 
 Augustine de Sommervieux," said Cesarine. "Poor little 
 thing ! she is very unwell ; Lebas said that she was dying of 
 grief." 
 
 " See what comes of marrying an artist," cried the per- 
 fumer. "Just look at your mother; she has fallen asleep," 
 he said, in a low voice, to his daughter. " By-by — sleep 
 softly, Madame Cesar. Well, now," said Cesar, turning to 
 his daughter, " how about your mother's dress ? " 
 
 " Yes, papa, everything will be ready. Mamma thinks 
 that she is to have a Canton crepe gown like mine, and the 
 dressmaker is sure that there is no need to try it on." 
 
 "How many are there altogether?" Cesar went on aloud, 
 as his wife opened her eyes. 
 
 "A hundred and nine, with the assistants," said Cesarine. 
 
 "Where are we going to put all those people?" asked 
 Mme. Birotteau. " And when all is over, after the Sunday 
 comes Monday," she said na'ively. 
 
 Nothing can be done simply when people aspire to rise 
 from one social rank to another. Neither Mme. Birotteau, 
 nor Cesar, nor any one else might venture on any pretext 
 whatsoever on to the second floor. Cesar had promised the 
 errand-boy Raguet a new suit of clothes if he kept watch 
 faithfully and carried out his orders properly. Like the Em- 
 peror Napoleon at Compiegne, when he had the chateau 
 restored for his marriage with Marie-Louise of Austria, Birot- 
 teau wanted to see nothing until the whole was finished ; he 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 161 
 
 meant to enjoy "the surprise." So all unconsciously the 
 old enemies met, this time not on the field of battle, but on 
 the common ground of bourgeois vanity. M. Grindot was to 
 take Cesar over the new rooms like a cicerone exhibiting a 
 gallery to a tourist. 
 
 Every one in the house, moreover, had his or her own 
 "surprise." Cesarine, the dear child, had spent a hundred 
 louis, all her little hoard, on books for her father. M. Grindot 
 had confided to her one morning that there were two fitted 
 bookcases in her father's room, which was to be a study; this 
 was the architect's surprise ; and Cesarine spent all her savings 
 with a bookseller. She had bought the works of Bossuet, 
 Racine, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Mo- 
 liere, Buffon, Fenelon, Delille, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, La 
 Fontaine, Corneille, Pascal, and La Harpe ; in short, the 
 ordinary collection of classics to be seen everywhere, books 
 which her father would never read. A terrible bookbinder's 
 bill must of necessity be the result. Thouvenin, that great 
 and unpunctual artist and binder, had undertaken to send the 
 books home on the 18th at midday. Cesarine had told her 
 uncle in confidence of her difficulty, and he had undertaken 
 the bill. Cesar's surprise for his wife took the shape of a 
 cherry-colored velvet gown trimmed with lace; it was of this 
 dress that he had just spoken to the daughter, who had been 
 his accomplice. Mme. Birotteau's surprise for the new 
 Chevalier of Honor consisted of a pair of gold buckles and a 
 solitaire-pin. Finally, there was the surprise of the new rooms 
 for the whole family, to be followed in a fortnight by the 
 great surprise of the bills to be paid. 
 
 After mature reflection, Cesar decided that some of the 
 invitations must be given in person, and some might be de- 
 livered by Raguet in the evening. He took a cab and handed 
 his wife into it (his wife, whose beauty suffered a temporary 
 eclipse from a hat and feathers and the last new shawl, the 
 cashmere shawl for which she had longed for fifteen years), 
 11 
 
162 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 and away went the perfumers dressed in their best to acquit 
 themselves of twenty-two calls in a morning. 
 
 Cesar spared his wife the difficulties attendant on straining 
 the resources of a bourgeois household to prepare the various 
 confections which the splendor of the occasion demanded. 
 A treaty was arranged between Birotteau and the great Chevet. 
 Chevet would furnish the dinner and the wines ; he would 
 provide a splendid service of plate (which brings in as much 
 as an estate to its owner), and a retinue of servants under the 
 command of a sufficiently imposing chief steward, all of them 
 responsible for their sayings and doings. Chevet was to take 
 up his quarters in the kitchen and dining-room on the mezza- 
 nine floor, and not to quit possession until he had served up 
 a dinner for twenty persons at six o'clock, and a grand colla- 
 tion an hour after midnight. The ices, to be served in pretty 
 cups with silver-gilt spoons on silver trays, would be supplied 
 by Foy's Cafe, and the refreshments by Tanrade — an added 
 lustre to the feast. 
 
 " Be easy," Cesar said to his wife, who looked somewhat 
 over-anxious on the day before the great day, " Chevet, Tan- 
 rade, and the people from Foy's Cafe will occupy the mezza- 
 nine floor, Virginie will be on guard above, and the store 
 shall be shut up. There is nothing left for us to do but to 
 strut about on the second floor." 
 
 On the 16th, at two o'clock, M. de la Billardiere came for 
 Cesar. They were to go together to the Chancellerie de la 
 Legion d'honneur, where Birotteau, with some ten others, was 
 to be received as a Chevalier by M. le Comte de Lacepede. 
 The perfumer had tears in his eyes when the mayor came for 
 him ; the surprise which Constance had planned had just 
 taken place, and Cesar had been presented with the gold 
 buckles and solitaire. 
 
 "It is very sweet to be so loved," said he, as he stepped 
 into the cab ; Constance and Cesarine standing on the thresh- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 163 
 
 old, and the assistants gathered in a group to see him go. 
 All of them gazed at Cesar in his silk stockings and black- 
 silk breeches, and the new coat of cornflower-blue on which 
 the ribbon was about to blaze — the red ribbon which, accord- 
 ing to Molineux, had been steeped in blood. 
 
 When Cesar came back at dinner-time, he was pale with 
 joy. He looked at his cross in every looking-glass, for in his 
 first intoxication he could not be content to wear the ribbon 
 only ; there was no tinge of false modesty about his elation. 
 
 "The grand chancellor is charming, dear," said he; "at 
 a word from Monsieur de la Billardiere, he accepted my in- 
 vitation ; he is coming with Monsieur Vauquelin. De Lace- 
 pede is a great man, yes, as great as Vauquelin. He has 
 written forty volumes. And then he is a peer of France as 
 well as an author. We must not forget to say ' Your Lord- 
 ship ' or ' Monsieur le Comte ' when we address him." 
 
 " Do eat your dinner," remarked his wife. "Your father 
 is worse than a child," Constance added, looking at Cesarine. 
 
 " How nice that looks at your button-hole ! " said Cesarine. 
 "They will present arms when you pass ; we will go out to- 
 gether ! I" 
 
 " All the sentries will present arms to me." 
 
 Grindot and Braschon came downstairs as he spoke. " After 
 dinner, sir, you and madame and mademoiselle may like to 
 look over the rooms ; Braschon's foreman is just putting up a 
 few curtain brackets, and three men are lighting the candles." 
 
 "You will need a hundred and twenty candles," said 
 Braschon. 
 
 "A bill for two hundred francs from Trudon," began 
 Mme. Cesar, but a look from the chevalier checked her 
 lamentations. 
 
 "Your fete will be magnificent, Monsieur le Chevalier," 
 put in Braschon. 
 
 " Flatterers already ! " Cesar thought within himself. "The 
 good Abb6 Loraux enjoined it upon me not to fall into their 
 
164 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 snares and to remain humble ; I will always keep my origin 
 in mind." 
 
 But Cesar did not understand the drift of the remark let 
 fall by the rich upholsterer of the Rue Saint-Antoine. 
 Braschon had made a dozen futile efforts to secure invita- 
 tions for himself and his wife, his daughter, aunt, and 
 mother-in-law. And so Cesar made an enemy. On the 
 threshold, Braschon did not call him again " Monsieur le 
 Chevalier." 
 
 Then came the private view. Cesar and his wife and 
 Cesarine went out through the store and came in from the 
 street. The door had been reconstructed in a grand style, 
 the two leaves were divided up into square panels, and in 
 the centre of each panel was a cast-iron ornament, duly 
 painted. This kind of door, which is now so common in 
 Paris, was at that time the very newest thing. Beneath 
 the double staircase in the vestibule, opposite the door, in 
 the plinth which had so disturbed Cesar's mind, a sort of 
 box had been contrived where an old woman could be en- 
 sconced. The vestibule, with its black-and-white marble 
 floor and its walls painted to look like marble, was lighted 
 by a lamp of antique pattern, with four sockets for the 
 wicks. The architect had combined a rich effect with ap- 
 parent simplicity. A narrow crimson carpet relieved the 
 whiteness of the stone. The first landing gave access to the 
 mezzanine floor. The door on the staircase, which gave 
 access to the second-floor rooms, was in the same style as 
 the street-door, but this was a piece of cabinet-work. 
 
 " How charming ! " said Cesarine. "And yet there is noth- 
 ing which catches the eye." 
 
 " Exactly, mademoiselle, the effect is produced by the exact 
 proportions of the stylobates, the plinths, the cornice, and 
 the ornaments ; and then I have not employed gilding any- 
 where ; the colors are subdued, and there are no glaring 
 tones.'* 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 165 
 
 "It is a science," said Cesarine. 
 
 Then they entered the anteroom ; it was simple, spacious, 
 and tastefully decorated ; a parquet floor had been laid down. 
 The drawing-room was lighted by three windows, which 
 looked upon the street ; here the colors were white and 
 red ; the outlines of the cornices were delicate, so was the 
 paint. There was nothing to dazzle the eyes. The orna- 
 ments on the mantel, of white marble supported on white 
 marble columns, had been carefully chosen ; there was noth- 
 ing tawdry about them, and they were in keeping with the 
 details of the furniture. In fact, throughout the room a subtle 
 harmony prevailed, such as none but an artist can establish, 
 by subordinating everything, down to the least accessories, to 
 the general scheme of decoration ; a harmony which strikes 
 the philistine, though he cannot account for it. The light 
 of twenty-four wax-candles in the chandelier displayed the 
 glories of the crimson-silk curtains ; the parquet floor tempted 
 Cesarine to dance. Through a green-and-white boudoir they 
 reached Cesar's study. 
 
 "I have put a bed here," said Grindot, throwing open the 
 doors of an alcove, cleverly concealed between the two book- 
 cases. " Either you or Madame Birotteau may fall ill, and an 
 invalid requires a separate room." 
 
 " But the bookcase is full of bound books ! Oh ! wife, 
 wife ! " cried Cesar. 
 
 "No, this is Cesarine's surprise." 
 
 "Pardon a father's emotion," exclaimed Birotteau, em- 
 bracing his daughter. 
 
 "Of course, of course, sir," said Grindot. "You are in 
 your own house." 
 
 The prevailing tone of the study was brown, relieved by 
 green ; for by skillful modulations all the rooms were brought 
 into harmony with each other. Thus the prevailing color of 
 one room was more sparingly introduced as a subsidiary in 
 another, and vice versd. The print of " Hero and Le- 
 
166 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 ander " shone conspicuous from a fine panel in Cesar's new 
 sanctum. 
 
 "And you are to pay for all this? " Cesar said merrily. 
 
 " That beautiful engraving is Monsieur Anselme's gift to 
 you," said Cesarine. 
 
 (Anselme, like the others, had managed to afford his sur- 
 prise.) 
 
 M Poor boy ! he has done as I did for Monsieur Vau- 
 quelin." 
 
 Mme. Birotteau's room came next in order. Here the ar- 
 chitect had lavished splendors to please the good folk whom 
 he wished to use to his own ends. He had promised to make 
 a study of this redecoration, and he had kept his word. The 
 room was hung with blue silk, but the cords and tassels were 
 white ; while the furniture, covered with white cashmere, was 
 relieved with blue. The clock on the white marble mantel 
 took the form of a marble slab, on which Venus reclined. 
 The pretty Wilton carpet, of Eastern design, was the keynote 
 of Cesarine's apartment, a dainty little bedroom hung with 
 chintz ; there stood her piano, a pretty wardrobe with a mirror 
 in it, a small white bed with plain curtains, and all the little 
 possessions that girls love. 
 
 The dining-room lay behind Cesar's study and the blue*- 
 and-white bedroom, and was entered by a door on the stair- 
 case. Here the decorations were in the style known as Louis 
 XIV. The sideboards were inlaid with brass and tortoise- 
 shell ; there was a boule clock; and the walls were hung with 
 stuffs and adorned with gilt studs. 
 
 No words can describe the joy of these three human beings, 
 which reached its height when Mine. Birotteau, returning to 
 her room, found her new dress lying there on the bed ; the 
 cherry-colored velvet gown, trimmed with lace, which her 
 husband had given her. Virginie had stolen in on tiptoe to 
 lay it there. 
 
 " The rooms do you great credit, sir," Constance said, ad' 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 167 
 
 dressing Grindot. " More than a hundred people will be here 
 to-morrow evening, and you will be complimented by every- 
 body." 
 
 "I shall recommend you," said Cesar. " You will meet 
 all the first-rate people, and you will be better known in a 
 single evening than if you had built a hundred houses." 
 
 Constance, touched by what had happened, no longer 
 thought of the expense or of criticising her husband, and for 
 the following reasons : That morning, when Popinot had 
 brought the ..." Hero and Leander," he had assured her that 
 the Cephalic Oil would be a success ; Constance had always 
 had a high opinion of Popinot's abilities and intelligence, and 
 Popinot was working with unheard-of enthusiasm. The 
 money lavished by Birotteau on these extravagancies might 
 amount to a good round sum ; but the young lover had 
 promised that, in six months' time, Birotteau's share of the 
 profits on the sales of the oil would cover them. After nine- 
 teen years of apprehension, it was so sweet to put doubts 
 aside for a single day ; and Constance promised her daughter 
 that she would not spoil her husband's joy by any after-thought, 
 but would give herself up entirely to gladness. So when M. 
 Grindot left them about eleven o'clock, she flung her arms 
 about her husband's neck and shed a few tears of joy. 
 
 "Ah, Cesar," she said, "you make me very silly and very 
 happy." 
 
 " If it will only last, you mean, do you not ? " Cesar asked, 
 smiling. 
 
 "It will last; I have no fear now," said Mme. Cesar. 
 
 " That is right ; you appreciate me at last." 
 
 Those who have sufficient greatness of character to know 
 their weaknesses will confess that a poor orphan girl who, 
 eighteen years ago, had been earning her living behind the 
 counter of the Little Sailor in the He Saint-Louis, and a poor 
 peasant-lad who had come on foot from Touraine, stick in hand 
 and with hobnailed shoes on his feet, might well feel gratified 
 
168 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 and happy to give such a fete on an occasion so much to their 
 credit. 
 
 " My God, I would willingly give a hundred francs for a 
 visitor," cried Cesar. 
 
 "Monsieur l'Abbe Loraux," announced Virginie, and the 
 abbe appeared. The priest was at this time curate of Saint- 
 Sulpice. Never has the power of the soul been more plainly 
 revealed than in this reverend ecclesiastic, who left a pro- 
 found impression on the minds of all those with whom he 
 came in contact. The exercise of Catholic virtues had given 
 sublimity to a harsh face, almost repellent in its ugliness ; it 
 was as if something of the light of heaven shone from it before 
 the time. The influences of a simple and sincere life, passing 
 into the blood, had modified those rugged features, the fires 
 of charity had chastened their uncouth outlines. In Cla- 
 paron's case, the nature of the man had stamped itself on his 
 face and degraded and brutalized it, but here the grace of the 
 three fair human virtues, Hope, Faith, and Charity, hovered 
 about the wrinkled lines. There was a penetrating power in 
 his words, slowly and gently spoken. He dressed like other 
 priests in Paris, and allowed himself a chestnut-brown over- 
 coat. No trace of ambition had sullied the pure heart, which 
 the angels would surely bear to God in its primitive inno- 
 cence ; it had required all the kindly urgency of the daughter 
 of Louis XVI. to induce the Abbe Loraux to accept a benefice 
 in Paris, and then he had taken one of the poorest. 
 
 Just now he looked somewhat disquieted as he surveyed 
 all these splendors ; he smiled at the three before him and 
 shook his head. 
 
 "Children," he said, "it is my part to comfort those that 
 mourn, and not to be present at festivals. I have come to 
 thank Monsieur Cesar and to congratulate you. There is only 
 one festival that will bring me here — the marriage of this 
 pretty maid." 
 
 A quarter of an hour later the abbe took his leave, and 
 
CESAR BIKOTTEAU. 169 
 
 neither Cesar nor his wife had dared to show him the new 
 arrangements. The sober apparition threw a few drops of 
 cold water on Cesar's joyous ebullitions. 
 
 They slept that night amid the new glories, each taking 
 possession of the little luxuries and pretty furniture for which 
 they had longed. Cesarine helped her mother to undress 
 before the mirror of the white marble toilet table ; Cesar was 
 fain to use his newly acquired superfluities at once ; and the 
 heads of all the three were filled with visions of the joys of the 
 morrow. 
 
 The next day, at four o'clock, they had been to mass and 
 had read vespers; the mezzanine floor had been delivered over 
 to the secular arm, in the shape of Chevet's people, and Ce- 
 sarine and her mother betook themselves to their toilets. 
 Never was costume more becoming to Mme. Cesar than the 
 cherry-colored velvet gown with the lace about it, the short 
 sleeves adorned with lappets ; the rich stuff and the glowing 
 color set off the youthful freshness of her shapely arms, the 
 dazzling whiteness of her skin, the gracious outlines of her 
 neck and shoulders. The naive happiness felt by every 
 woman when she is conscious that she looks at her best lent a 
 vague sweetness to Mme. Birotteau's Grecian profile ; and the 
 outlines of her face, finely cut as a cameo, appeared in all their 
 delicate beauty. Cesarine, in her white crepe dress, with a 
 wreath of white roses in her hair and a rose at her waist, her 
 shoulders and the outlines of her bodice modestly covered by 
 a scarf, turned Popinot's head. 
 
 " These people are eclipsing us," said Mme. Roguin to her 
 husband, as she went through the rooms. 
 
 The notary's wife was furious. A woman can always 
 measure the superiority or inferiority of a rival, and Mme. 
 Roguin felt that she was not as beautiful as Mme. Cesar. 
 
 " Pooh, not for long. In a little while the poor thing will 
 be ruined, and your carriage will splash the mud on her as 
 she goes afoot through the streets." 
 
170 C/tSAK BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Vauquelin's manner was perfect. He came with M. de 
 Lacepede, who had brought his colleague in his carriage. To 
 Mme. Cesar, in her radiant beauty, the two learned Acade- 
 micians paid compliments in scientific language. 
 
 " You possess the secret, unknown to chemistry, of retain- 
 ing youth and beauty, madame." 
 
 "You are in your own house, so to speak, Monsieur 
 l'Academician," said Birotteau. "Yes, Monsieur le Comte," 
 he went on, turning to the Grand Chancellor of the Legion 
 of Honor, " I owe my success to Monsieur Vauquelin. I 
 have the honor of presenting to your lordship Monsieur le 
 President (of the Tribunal of Commerce). That is Monsieur 
 le Comte de Lacepede, a peer of France, and one of the 
 greatest men in France beside ; he has written forty volumes," 
 he added, for the benefit of Joseph Lebas, who came with the 
 president. 
 
 The guests were punctual. The ordinary tradesman's 
 dinner-party followed, abundant in good humor and merri- 
 ment, and enlivened by the homely jokes that never fail to 
 provoke laughter. Ample justice was done to the excellent 
 dishes, and the wines were thoroughly appreciated. It was 
 half-past nine before they went into the drawing-room for 
 coffee, and cabs had already begun to arrive with impatient 
 dancers. An hour later the rooms were full, and the dance 
 had become a crush. M. de Lacepede and M. Vauquelin 
 went, in spite of entreaties from Cesar, who followed them 
 despairingly to the staircase. He had better fortune with the 
 elder Popinot and M. de la Billardiere, who remained. 
 
 With the exception of three women, Mile. Fontaine, Mme. 
 Jules, and Mme. Rabourdin, who severally represented aris- 
 tocracy, finance, and official dignities, and by their brilliant 
 beauty, dress, and manner presented a striking contrast to the 
 rest of the assembly, the toilets of the remainder were of the 
 heavy and substantial order, too suggestive of a well-lined 
 purse, which gives to a crowd of citizens' wives and daughters 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 171 
 
 a certain air of vulgarity, made cruelly prominent in the present 
 case by the daintiness and grace of the three ladies. 
 
 The bourgeoisie of the Rue Saint-Denis displayed itself 
 majestically in the full glory of its absurdities carried to the 
 burlesque point. It was that same bourgeoisie, nor more nor 
 less, which tricks its offspring out in the uniform of the Lancers 
 or of the National Guard, that buys " Victories and Con- 
 quests," " The Old Soldier at the Plough," and admires "The 
 Pauper's Funeral," which rejoices to go on guard, goes on 
 Sundays to the inevitable country-house, is at pains to acquire 
 a distinguished air, and dreams of municipal honors; the 
 bourgeoisie that looks on every one with jealous eyes, and yet 
 is kindly, helpful, devoted, warm-hearted, and compassionate, 
 ready to subscribe for the orphan children of a General Foy, 
 for the Greeks (all unwitting of their piracies), for the Champ 
 d'Asile when it no longer exists ; a bourgeoisie that falls a 
 victim to its own good qualities, and is flouted by a social 
 superiority which marks a real inferiority, for an ignorance of 
 social conventions fosters that native kindliness of heart ; a 
 bourgeoisie which brings up frank-hearted daughters inured to 
 work, full of good qualities, which are lost at once if they 
 mingle with the classes above them ; a commonsense, matter- 
 of-fact womankind, from among whom the worthy Chrysale 
 should have taken a wife ; that bourgeoisie, in short, so admir- 
 ably represented by the Matifats, the druggists in the Rue des 
 Lombards, who had supplied the Queen of Roses for sixty 
 years. 
 
 Mme. Matifat, anxious to appear stately, wore a turban on 
 her head, and was dancing in a heavy poppy-red gown em- 
 broidered with gold, a toilet that harmonized with a haughty 
 countenance, a Roman nose, and the splendors of a crimson 
 complexion. Even M. Matifat, so glorious when the National 
 Gu.ird was reviewed, when you might see the chain and bunch 
 of seals blazing on his portly person fifty paces away, was 
 obscured by this Catherine II. of the counting-house; yet her 
 
172 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 short, stout, spectacled consort, with his shirt collar almost up 
 to his ears, distinguished himself by his deep bass voice and 
 by the richness of his vocabulary. 
 
 He never said " Corneille," but " the sublime Corneille." 
 Racine was the "tender Racine;" Voltaire, oh! Voltaire, 
 " takes the second place in every class, more of a wit than a 
 genius, but nevertheless a man of genius!" Rousseau, "a 
 gloomy, suspicious nature, a man overbrimming with pride, 
 who ended by hanging himself." He related tedious stock 
 anecdotes about Piron, who is looked upon as a prodigious 
 personage among the bourgeoisie. There was a slight ten- 
 dency to obscenity in Matifat's conversation; he was an in- 
 fatuated admirer of theatrical divinities ; and it was even said 
 of him that, in imitation of old Cardot and the wealthy Cam- 
 usot, he kept a mistress. Now and then Mme. Matifat would 
 hastily interrupt him on the brink of an anecdote by crying, 
 at the top of her voice, " Mind what you are going to tell us, 
 old man ! " In familiar conversation she always addressed 
 him as "old man." The voluminous lady of the Rue des 
 Lombards caused Mile, de Fontaine's aristocratic coun- 
 tenance to lose its repose ; the haughty damsel could not help 
 smiling when she overheard Mme. Matifat say to her husband, 
 " Don't make a rush for the ices, old man ; it is bad style ! " 
 
 It is harder to explain the differences which distinguish 
 the great world from the bourgeoisie than it is for the bour- 
 geoisie to efface them. The women, conscious of their toil- 
 ets, felt that this was a holiday ; they made no attempt to 
 conceal an enjoyment which plainly showed that this ball was 
 a great event in their busy lives; while the three women, each 
 of whom represented a different higher social sphere, were at 
 that moment as they would be on the morrow. They did not 
 seem to be dressed for the occasion, had no desire to behold 
 themselves amid the unaccustomed marvels of their costume, 
 and showed no uneasiness as to its effect, which they had 
 ascertained once and for all as they put the last touches to 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 173 
 
 their ball-dresses before the mirror ; there was no excitement 
 in their faces ; they danced with the grace and ease of move- 
 ment which the forgotten sculptors of a bygone age caught 
 and recorded in their statues. But the others bore the im- 
 press of daily toil — toil showed itself in their attitude, in their 
 exaggerated enjoyment ; their glances were naively curious, 
 their voices were not subdued to the key of the low murmur 
 which gives such an inimitable piquancy to ballroom conver- 
 sations ; and, above all things, they lacked the impertinent 
 gravity which contains the germ of epigram, the repose of 
 manner which marks those whose self-command is perfect. 
 So Mme. Rabourdin, Mme. Jules, and Mile, de Fontaine, 
 who had expected infinite amusement from this perfumer's 
 ball, stood out against the background of citizens' wives and 
 daughters, conspicuous by their languid grace, by the exquisite 
 taste displayed in their toilets, and by their manner of dan- 
 cing, even as three principal performers at the opera are set 
 off by the rank and file of supernumeraries on the stage. Jeal- 
 ous and astonished eyes watched them. Mme. Roguin, Con- 
 stance, and Cesarine formed a link, as it were, between these 
 three aristocratic types and the tradesmen's womankind. 
 
 At every ball a moment comes when excitement or the 
 torrents of light, the gaiety, the music, and the movement of 
 the dance carries away the dancers, and all the shades of dif- 
 ference are drowned in the crescendo of the tutti. In a little 
 while the ball would become a romp. Mile, de Fontaine de- 
 termined to go ; but, as she sought the venerable Vendean 
 leader's arm, Birotteau and his wife and daughter hastened to 
 prevent the defection of the aristocracy of their assembly. 
 
 "There is a perfume of good taste about the rooms which 
 really surprises me; I congratulate you upon it," said the 
 insolent girl, addressing the perfumer. 
 
 Birotteau was too much intoxicated by the compliments 
 publicly addressed to him to understand this speech ; but his 
 wife flushed up and did not know what to answer. 
 
174 CESAR BTROTTEAU. 
 
 " This is a national festival which does you honor," Camu- 
 sot said. 
 
 " I have seldom seen so fine a ball," said Monsieur de la 
 Billardiere, an official fib that cost him nothing. 
 
 Birotteau took all the congratulations seriously. 
 
 " What a charming sight, and how good the band is ! Shall 
 you often give us balls? " asked Mme. Lebas. 
 
 "What beautiful rooms ! Did you plan them yourself?" 
 inquired Mme. Desmarets, and Cesar ventured on a lie, and 
 allowed it to be thought that he was the originator of the 
 scheme of decoration. Cesarine, whose list of partners for 
 the quadrilles was of course filled up, learned how much 
 delicacy there was in Anselme's nature. 
 
 " If I only listened to my own wishes," he had said in her 
 ear as they arose from dinner, * I would entreat the favor of 
 a quadrille with you, but my happiness would cost our self- 
 love too dear." 
 
 Cesarine, who thought all men who walked straight ungrace- 
 ful in their gait, determined to open the ball with Popinot. 
 Popinot, encouraged by his aunt, who had bade him be 
 bold, dared to speak of his love during the quadrille to the 
 charming girl at his side, but in the roundabout ways that 
 timid lovers take. 
 
 " My fortune depends on you, mademoiselle." 
 
 "And how?" 
 
 "There is but one hope which can give me the power to 
 make it." 
 
 "Then hope." 
 
 " Do you really know all that you have said in those two 
 words?" asked Popinot. 
 
 "Hope for fortune," said Cesarine, with a mischievous 
 smile. 
 
 As soon as the quadrille was over, Anselme rushed to his 
 friend. " Gaudissart ! Gaudissart ! succeed, or I shall blow 
 my brains out ! " He squeezed his friend's arm in a Hercu- 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 175 
 
 lean grasp. "Success means that I 'shall marry Cesarine. 
 She has told me so; and see how beautiful she is ! " 
 
 "Yes, she is prettily rigged out," said Gaudissart; "and 
 she is rich. We will do her in oil." 
 
 The good understanding between Mile. Lourdois and 
 Alexandre Crottat (Roguin's successor-designate) did not 
 escape Mme. Birotteau, who could not give up without a pang 
 the prospect of seeing her daughter the wife of a Paris notary. 
 Uncle Pillerault, after exchanging a greeting with little Mol- 
 ineux, took up his quarters in an easy-chair near the bookcase. 
 Hence he watched the card-players, listened to the talk about 
 him, and went from time to time to the door to look at the 
 moving flower-garden as the dancers' heads swayed in the 
 figures of the quadrille. He turned a truly philosophical 
 countenance on it all. The men were unspeakable, with the 
 exception of du Tillet, who had already learned something of 
 the manners of the fashionable world ; of young Billardiere, 
 an incipient dandy ; M. Jules Desmartes, and the official per- 
 sonages. But among the faces, all more or less comical, which 
 gave the assembly its character, there was one in particular, 
 worn into meaningless smoothness, like the head on a five- 
 franc piece issued by the Republic, but curious by reason of 
 its association with a suit of clothes. This person, it will 
 have been guessed, was none other than the petty tyrant of 
 the Cour Batave, arrayed in fine linen, yellowed with lying- 
 by in the press, displaying a shirt frill of venerable lace, 
 secured by a pin with a bluish cameo. Short breeches of 
 black silk treacherously revealed the spindle shanks on which 
 he dared to repose his weight. Cesar triumphantly took him 
 around the four apartments devised by the architect on the 
 second floor of his house. 
 
 "Hey! hey! it is your own affair, sir," said Molineux, 
 " My second floor done up in this way will be worth another 
 thousand crowns." 
 
 Birotteau turned this off with a joke, but the little old 
 
176 CESAR BIROTTEAV. 
 
 man's words and tone had been like the prick of a needle. 
 " I shall soon have my second floor again ; this man is ruin- 
 ing himself! " that was the underlying sense of that " will be 
 worth" which had been a sudden revelation of Molineux's 
 claws. 
 
 The pale, meagre face and cruel eyes struck du Tillet, whose 
 attention had been called to the landlord in the first instance 
 by the watch-chain from which a pound weight of trinkets 
 hung and jingled, the green coat with white threads in it, and 
 the odd-looking, turned-up collar, which gave the old man 
 somewhat the appearance of a rattlesnake. So the banker 
 went over to the little money-lender to learn how he came to 
 be at a merry-making. 
 
 " Here, sir," said Molineux, putting a foot into the boudoir, 
 " I am on Monsieur le Comte de Granville's property, but 
 here " (he pointed to the other foot) " I am on my own, for 
 this house belongs to me." 
 
 And Molineux, more than willing to gratify the only one 
 who had a mind to listen to him, was so charmed with du 
 Tillet's attentive attitude that he described himself and gave 
 an account of his habits, together with a complete history of 
 the sauciness of Master Gendrin and an exact relation of his 
 transactions with the perfumer, without which transaction the 
 ball would not have taken place. 
 
 "Ah ! so Monsieur Cesar has paid his rent beforehand," 
 said du Tillet ; " nothing is more contrary to his habits." 
 
 " Oh ! I asked him to do so ; I am so accommodating with 
 my tenants ! " 
 
 " If old Birotteau goes bankrupt," thought du Tillet, "that 
 little rogue will certainly make a capital assignee. Such cap*- 
 tiousness is not often met with ; he must amuse himself at 
 home, like Domitian, by killing flies when he is alone." 
 
 Du Tillet betook himself to the card-tables, where Claparon 
 (by his orders) had already taken his post. Du Tillet thought 
 that, screened by a lamp-shade, at bouillotte, his dummy- 
 
CASAR B1R0TTEAU. 177 
 
 banker would escape all scrutiny. As they sat opposite one 
 another, they looked such perfect strangers that the most sus- 
 picious observer could have discovered no sign of an under- 
 standing between them. Gaudissart, who knew that Claparon 
 had risen in the world, did not dare to approach him ; the 
 wealthy ex-commercial traveler had given him the portentously 
 cool stare of an upstart who does not care to be claimed by 
 an old acquaintance. 
 
 Toward five o'clock in the morning the ball came to an 
 end, like a spent rocket. By that time there only remained 
 some forty cabs out of a hundred or more which had filled 
 the Rue Saint-Honore ; and in the ballroom they were dan- 
 cing the boulangere, which later was succeeded by the cotillon 
 and the English galop. Du Tillet, Roguin, young Cardot, 
 Jules Desmarets, and the Comte de Granville were playing 
 bouillotte. Du Tillet had won three thousand francs. The 
 light of the wax-candles was growing pale in the dawn when 
 the card-players rose to join in the last quadrille. 
 
 In bourgeois houses this supreme enjoyment never comes to 
 an end without some enormities. Those who imposed awe 
 or restraint on the others are gone ; the intoxication of move- 
 ment, the hot rooms, the spirits that lurk in the most harm- 
 less beverages, relax the stiffness of the dowagers, who allow 
 themselves to be drawn into the quadrilles, and yield to the 
 excitement of the moment ; men are heated, the lank hair 
 comes down over their faces, and their grotesque appearance 
 provokes laughter ; the younger women grow frivolous, flowers 
 have fallen here and there from their hair. Then it is that 
 the bourgeois Momus enters, followed by his antic crew ! 
 Laughter breaks out in peals, and every one gives himself up 
 to the merriment, thinking that with morning labor will re- 
 sume its sway over him. Matifat was dancing with a woman's 
 hat on his head ; Celestin was indulging in burlesque move- 
 ments. A few of the ladies clapped their hands noisily when 
 they changed the figures of the interminable quadrille. 
 12 
 
178 CASAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "How they are enjoying themselves!" said the happy 
 Birotteau. 
 
 "If only they break nothing," said Constance, who stood 
 by Uncle Pillerault. 
 
 " You have given the most magnificent ball that I have 
 seen, and I have seen many," said du Tillet, with a bow to 
 his late employer. 
 
 There is in one of Beethoven's eight symphonies a fantasia 
 like a great poem; it is the culminating point of the finale 
 of the symphony in C minor. When, after the slow prep- 
 aration of the mighty magician, so well understood by 
 Habeneck, the rich curtain rises on this scene ; when the 
 bow of the enthusiastic leader of the orchestra calls forth the 
 dazzling motif, through which the whole gathered force of the 
 music flows, the poet, as his heart beats fast, will understand 
 that this ball was in Birotteau's life like this moment when 
 his own imagination feels the quickening power of the music, 
 of this motif, which in itself, perhaps, raises the symphony in 
 C minor above its glorious sisters. For a radiant fairy springs 
 up and waves her wand, and you hear the rustling of the 
 purple silken curtains raised by angels ; the golden doors, 
 carved like the bronze gates of the baptistery in Florence, 
 turn upon their hinges of adamant, and your eyes wander 
 over far-off glories and vistas of fairy palaces. Forms not 
 of this earth glide among them, the incense of prosperity 
 rises, the fire is kindled on the altar of fortune, the scented 
 air circles about it. Beings clad in white blue-bordered tunics 
 smile divinely as they float before your eyes, shapes delicate 
 and ethereal beyond expression turn faces of unearthly beauty 
 upon you. The Loves hover in the air, filling it with the 
 flames of their torches. You feel that you are loved ; you 
 are glad with a joy that you drink in without comprehending 
 it as you bathe in the floods of a torrent of harmony which 
 pours out for each the nectar of his choice ; for, as the music 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAIT. 179 
 
 slides into your inmost soul, its desires are realized for a 
 moment. Then when you have walked for a while in heaven, 
 the enchanter plunges you back, by some deep and mysterious 
 transition of the bass, into the morass of chill reality, only 
 to draw you thence when he has awakened in you a thirst for 
 his divine melodies, and your soul cries out to hear those 
 sounds again. The history of the soul at the most glorious 
 point in that beautiful finale is the history of the sensations 
 which this festival brought in abundance for Constance and 
 Cesar. But it was no Beethoven, but a Collinet, who had 
 composed upon his flute the finale of their commercial 
 symphony. 
 
 The three Birotteaus, tired but happy, slept that morning 
 with the sounds of the festival ringing in their ears. The 
 building, repairs, furniture, banquets, toilets, and Cesarine's 
 library (for the money had been repaid her) had altogether 
 raised the expense of that entertainment, without Cesar hav- 
 ing a suspicion of it, to sixty thousand francs. So much 
 did that luckless red ribbon, fastened by the King to a per- 
 fumer's button-hole, cost the wearer. If any misfortune 
 should befall Cesar Birotteau, this extravagance of his was 
 like to bring him into serious trouble at the police court ; a 
 merchant lays himself open to a term of two years' imprison- 
 ment if, on examination, his expenses are considered excessive. 
 It is, perhaps, more unpleasant to go to the sixth chamber for 
 simple bad management or for a foolish trifle, than to come 
 before a court of assize for a gigantic fraud ; and in some 
 people's eyes it is better to be a knave than a fool. 
 
II. 
 
 CESAR STRUGGLES WITH MISFORTUNE. 
 
 A week after the ball, that final flare of the straw-fire of a 
 prosperity which had lasted for eighteen years and now was 
 about to die out in darkness, Cesar stood watching the passers- 
 by. through his store window. He was thinking of the wide 
 extent of his business affairs, and found them almost more 
 than he could manage. Hitherto his life had been quite 
 simple; he manufactured and sold his goods, or he bought to 
 sell again. But now there was the speculation in building 
 land, and his own share in the enterprise of A. Popinot & 
 Company, beside a hundred and sixty thousand francs' worth 
 of bills to meet. Before long he would be compelled to 
 discount some of his customers' bills (and his wife would not 
 like it), or there must be an unheard-of success on Popinot's 
 part ; altogether, the poor man had so many things to think 
 of that he felt as if he had more skeins to wind than he 
 could, hold. 
 
 How would Anselme steer his course ? Birotteau treated 
 Popinot much as a professor of rhetoric treats a student ; he 
 felt little confidence in his capacity, and was sorry that he 
 could not be always on hand to look after him. The admon- 
 itory kick bestowed on Anselme's shins by way of a recom- 
 mendation to hold his tongue in Vauquelin's presence will 
 illustrate the fears which the perfumer felt as to the newly 
 started business. Birotteau was very careful to hide his thoughts 
 from his wife and daughter and from his assistant; but within 
 himself he felt as a Seine boatman might feel if by some freak 
 of fortune a minister should give him the command of a 
 frigate. Such thoughts as these, rising like a fog in his brain, 
 (180) 
 
CJESAR BIROTTEAU. 181 
 
 were but little favorable to clear thinking; he stood, there- 
 fore, trying to see things distinctly in his own mind. 
 
 Just at that moment a figure, for which he felt an intense 
 aversion, appeared in the street ; he beheld his second land- 
 lord, little Molineux. Everybody knows those dreams in 
 which events are so crowded together that we pass through a 
 whole lifetime, dreams in which a fantastical being reappears 
 from time to time, always as the bearer of bad-tidings — the 
 villain of the piece. It seemed to Birotteau that fate had 
 sent Molineux to play a similar part in his waking life. That 
 countenance had grinned diabolically at him when the feast 
 was at its height, and had turned an evil eye on the splendor; 
 and now, when Cesar saw it again, he remembered the impres- 
 sion which the "little curmudgeon" (to use his own expres- 
 sion) had given him but so much the more vividly, because 
 Molineux had given him a fresh feeling of repulsion by sud- 
 denly breaking in upon his musings. 
 
 "Sir," said the little old man in his vampire's voice, "we 
 did this business in such an off-hand fashion that you forgot 
 to approve the additions to this little private covenant of 
 ours." 
 
 As Birotteau took up the lease to repair the omission, the 
 architect came in, bowed to the perfumer, and hovered about 
 him with a diplomatic air. 
 
 "You know, sir, the difficulties at the outset when you are 
 starting in business," he said at last in Birotteau's ear; " you 
 are satisfied with me; you would oblige me very much by 
 paying my honorarium at once." 
 
 Birotteau, who had paid away all his ready money and 
 emptied his portfolio, told Celestin to draw a bill for two 
 thousand francs at three months and a form of receipt. 
 
 " It is a very lucky thing for me that you undertook to pay 
 the quarter which your next-door neighbor owed," said Mol- 
 ineux, with malicious cunning in his smile. " My porter has 
 been around to tell me that the authorities have been affixing 
 
182 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 seals to his property, because Master Cayron has disappeared 
 from the scene." 
 
 " If only they don't come down on me for the five thousand 
 francs ! " thought Birotteau. 
 
 "People thought that he was doing very well," said 
 Lourdois, who had just come in to hand his statement to 
 the perfumer. 
 
 "No one in business is quite safe from reverses until he 
 retires," remarked little Molineux, folding up his document 
 with punctilious neatness. 
 
 The architect watched the little old creature with the 
 pleasure that every artist feels at the sight of a living caricature 
 which confirms his prejudices against the bourgeoisie. 
 
 " When you hold an umbrella over your head, you generally 
 suppose that it is sheltered if it rains," he observed. 
 
 Molineux looked harder at the architect's mustache and 
 "imperial" than at his face, and the contempt that he felt 
 for Grindot quite equaled Grindot's contempt for him. He 
 stayed on to give the architect a parting scratch. By dint of 
 living with his cats there had come to be something feline in 
 Molineux's ways as well as in his eyes. 
 
 Just at that moment Ragon and Pillerault came in together. 
 
 " We have been talking over this business with the judge," 
 Ragon said in Cesar's ear. " He says that in a speculation 
 of this kind we must actually complete the purchase and have 
 a receipt from the vendors if we are really to be severally 
 propriet " 
 
 "Oh! are you in the affair of the Madeleine?" asked 
 Lourdois. " People are talking about it ; there will be houses 
 to build!" 
 
 The house-painter had come to ask for a prompt settlement, 
 but he found it to his interest not to press the perfumer. 
 
 " I have sent in my statement because it is the end of the 
 year," he said in a low voice for Cesar's benefit; "I do not 
 want anything." 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 183 
 
 "Well, what is it, Cesar?" asked Pillerault, noticing his 
 nephew's surprise ; for Cesar, overcome by the sight of the 
 statement, made no answer to either Ragon or Lourdois. 
 
 "Oh! a trifle; I took five thousand francs of bills from a 
 neighbor, the umbrella dealer, who is bankrupt. If he has 
 given me bad paper, I shall be caught like a simpleton." 
 
 "Why, I told you so long ago," cried Ragon; "a drown- 
 ing man will catch hold of his father's leg to save himself, 
 and drag him down with him. I have seen so much of bank- 
 ruptcies ! A man is not exactly a rogue to begin with ; but, 
 when he gets into trouble, he is forced to become one." 
 
 "True," said Pillerault. 
 
 " Ah ! if I ever get as far as the Chamber of Deputies, or 
 
 have some influence with Government " said Birotteau, 
 
 rising on tiptoe and sinking back again on his heels. 
 
 " What will you do? " asked Lourdois. " You are a wise 
 man." 
 
 Molineux, always interested by a discussion on law, stayed 
 in the store to listen ; and, as the attention paid by others is 
 infectious, Pillerault and Ragon, who knew Cesar's opinions, 
 listened none the less with as much gravity as the three 
 strangers. 
 
 "I should have a Tribunal and a permanent bench of 
 judges," said Cesar, "and a public prosecutor for criminal 
 cases. After an examination, made by a judge who should 
 discharge the functions of agents by procuration trustees and 
 registrar, the trader should be declared temporarily insolvent 
 or a fraudulent bankrupt. In the first case, he should be 
 bound over to pay his creditors in full ; to that end, he should 
 be trustee for his own and his wife's property (for everything 
 he had, or might inherit, would belong to his creditors) ; he 
 should manage his estate for their benefit and under their in- 
 spection ; in fact, he should carry on the business for them, 
 signing his name, in every case, as ' such a one, in liquidation ,' 
 until everybody was paid in full. But if he were made a bank- 
 
 G 
 
184 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 nipt, he should be condemned to stand in the pillory in the 
 Exchange for a couple of hours, as they used to do, with a 
 green cap on his head. His own property and his wife's, and 
 his interest in any other estate, should be forfeit to his 
 creditors, and he should be banished the kingdom." 
 
 "Business would be a little safer," said Lourdois ; "people 
 would think twice before going into a speculation." 
 
 " The law as it stands is never carried out," cried Cesar, 
 lashing himself up ; "more than fifty merchants out of a hun- 
 dred could only pay seventy-five per cent., or they sell goods 
 at twenty-five per cent, below invoice price and spoil trade in 
 that way." 
 
 " Monsieur Birotteau is in the right," said Molineux; " the 
 law allows far too much latitude. The entire estate should 
 be made over to the creditors, or the man should be dis- 
 graced." 
 
 " Bother take it," said Cesar, " at the rate at which things 
 are going, a merchant will become a licensed robber. By 
 signing his name he can dip in any one's purse." 
 
 "You are severe, Monsieur Birotteau," said Lourdois. 
 
 "He is right," said old Ragon. 
 
 "Every man who fails is a suspicious character," Cesar 
 went on, exasperated by the little loss which rang in his ears; 
 it was like the huntsman's first distant halloo to a stag. 
 
 As he spoke, Chevet's steward brought his invoice, a pastry- 
 cook's boy from Felix and the Cafe Foy arrived, together 
 with the clarionet-player of Collinet's band, each with an 
 account. 
 
 "The 'Rabelais' quarter-of-an-hour,' " smiled Ragon. 
 
 " My word, that was a splendid fete of yours," said Lourdois. 
 
 "I am busy," Cesar said, and the messengers departed, 
 leaving their invoices. 
 
 "Monsieur Grindot," said Lourdois, who noticed that the 
 architect was folding up a bill which bore Cesar's signature, 
 "you will check my account and see that it is all in order; 
 
CJESAR BIROTTEAU. 185 
 
 you need do nothing more than run through it, all the prices 
 have been agreed to on Monsieur Birotteau's behalf." 
 
 Pillerault looked at Lourdois and Grindot. 
 
 " If architect and contractor settle the prices between them, 
 you are being robbed," he said in his nephew's ear. 
 
 Grindot went out. Molineux followed and came up to him 
 with a mysterious expression. 
 
 " Sir," he remarked, " you heard what I said, but you did 
 not take my meaning ; I wish you an umbrella when it comes 
 on to rain." 
 
 Fear seized on Grindot. A man clings all the more tightly 
 to gain which is not lawfully his ; such is human nature. As 
 a matter of fact, too, this had been a labor of love for the 
 artist ; he had given all his time and his utmost skill to the 
 alterations of the rooms ; he had done five times as much as 
 he had been paid for, and had fallen a victim to his own self- 
 love. The contractors had had little difficulty in tempting 
 him. And, beside the irresistible argument, there was a 
 menace, understood though not expressed, of doing him an 
 injury by slandering him, and there was a yet more cogent 
 reason for yielding — the remark that Lourdois made as to the 
 building land near the Madeleine. Clearly, Birotteau did 
 not mean to put up a single house ; he was only speculating in 
 land. 
 
 Architects and contractors are in somewhat the same rela- 
 tive positions as actors and dramatists ; they are dependent 
 on each other. Grindot, to whom Birotteau left the settle- 
 ment of the charges, was for the handicraftsman as against 
 the citizen-householder. So the end of it was that three large 
 contractors — Lourdois, Chaffaroux, and Thorien the carpenter 
 — declared him to be "one of those good fellows for whom 
 it is a pleasure to work." Grindot foresaw that the accounts 
 on which he was to have his share would be paid, like his own 
 fee, by bills; and this little old man had given him doubts as 
 to whether those bills would be met, Grindot was prepared 
 
186 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 to show no mercy ; after the manner of artists, the most ruth- 
 less enemies of the bourgeois. 
 
 By the end of December, Cesar had invoices for sixty thou- 
 sand francs. Felix, the Cafe Foy, Tanrade, and others, to 
 whom small amounts were owing which must be paid in cash, 
 had sent three times for the money. In business these small 
 trifles do more harm than a heavy loss ; they set rumors in 
 circulation. A loss which every one knows is a definite thing, 
 but panic knows no limits. Birotteau's safe was empty. 
 
 Then fear seized on the perfumer. Such a thing had never 
 happened before in his business career. Like all people who 
 have almost forgotten their struggles with poverty, and have 
 little strength of character, this incident — a daily occurrence 
 in the lives of most petty storekeepers in Paris — troubled 
 Cesar's brain. 
 
 He told Celestin to send in invoices to his own customers ; 
 such an unheard-of order had to be repeated twice before the 
 astonished first assistant understood it. The "clients" — 
 the grand name that storekeepers used to apply to their cus- 
 tomers, and retained by Cesar in speaking of them, in spite 
 of his wife, who had yielded at last with a " Call them what 
 you like, so long as they pay us" — the "clients" were 
 wealthy people, who paid when they pleased ; in Cesar's busi- 
 ness there were no bad debts, though the outstanding accounts 
 often amounted to fifty or sixty thousand francs. The second 
 assistant took the invoice-book and began to copy out the 
 largest amounts. Cesar stood in fear of his wife. He did 
 not wish-her to see his prostration beneath the simoom of mis- 
 fortune, so he determined to go out. 
 
 "Good-day, sir," said Grindot, coming in with the careless 
 air that artists assume when they talk of business matters, to 
 which they say they are entirely unaccustomed. " I cannot 
 obtain ready money of any sort or description for your paper, 
 so I am compelled to ask you to give me cash instead. It is 
 a most unfortunate thing for me that I must take this step; 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAV. 187 
 
 but I have not been to the money-lenders about it ; I should 
 not like to hawk your name about; I know enough of busi- 
 ness to know that it would be casting a slur on it ; so it is 
 to your own interest to " 
 
 " Speak lower, sir, if you please," said Birotteau in bewil- 
 derment. " I am very much surprised at this." 
 
 Lourdois came in. 
 
 "Here, Lourdois," said Birotteau with a smile, "do you 
 
 know about this? " he stopped short. With the good 
 
 faith of a merchant who feels secure, the poor man had been 
 about to ask Lourdois to take Grindot's bill, by way of 
 laughing at the architect ; but he saw a cloud on Lourdois' 
 brow, and trembled at his own imprudence. The harmless 
 joke was the death-knell of a credit not above suspicion. In 
 such a case a rich merchant takes back his bill ; he does not 
 offer it. Birotteau felt dizzy ; it was as if a stroke of a pick- 
 axe had laid open the pit which yawned at his feet. 
 
 " My dear Monsieur Birotteau," said Lourdois, retiring 
 with him to the back of the store, " my account has been 
 checked and passed ; I must ask you to have the money ready 
 for me by to-morrow. My daughter is going to be married 
 to young Crottat ; he wants money, and notaries will not wait 
 and bargain ; beside, no one has ever seen my name on a 
 bill." 
 
 "You can send round the day after to-morrow," said Birot- 
 teau stiffly (he counted on the payment of the invoices). 
 "And you also, sir," he spoke to Grindot. 
 
 " Why can I not have it at once ? " asked the architect. 
 
 " I have my men's wages to pay in the Faubourg," said 
 Cesar, who had never told a lie. 
 
 He took up his hat to go with them ; but the bricklayer 
 came in with Thorien and Chaffaroux, and stopped him just 
 as he shut the door. 
 
 "We really want the money, sir," said Chaffaroux. 
 
 "Eh ! I haven't the wealth of the Indies," cried Cesar, 
 
188 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 out of patience ; and he quickly put a hundred paces between 
 himself and the three visitors. " There is something under- 
 neath all this. Confound the ball ! Everybody takes you 
 for a millionaire. Still, there was something very strange 
 about Lourdois," he thought; "there is some snake in the 
 hedge." 
 
 He went along the Rue Saint-Honore without thinking 
 where he was going, feeling at a very low ebb, when at a 
 corner of the street he ran up against Alexandre Crottat, like 
 a battering-ram, or as one mathematician absorbed in the 
 working of a problem might collide with another. 
 
 "Ah ! sir," exclaimed the future notary, " one word with 
 you ! Did Roguin pay over your four hundred thousand 
 francs to Monsieur Claparon ? " 
 
 "You were there when the thing was done. Claparon 
 gave me no receipt of any kind ; my bills were to be nego- 
 tiated. Roguin ought to have paid them to him my two 
 
 hundred and forty thousand francs in coin. He was told that 
 the money was to be paid down and the transaction com- 
 pleted. Popinot of the Tribunal says — — The vendor's 
 receipt ! But what makes you ask the question ? " 
 
 "What makes me ask you such a question? To know 
 whether your two hundred thousand francs are in Claparon's 
 hands or Roguin's. Roguin is such an old acquaintance of 
 yours that he might have scrupled to take your money, and 
 handed it over to Claparon ; if so, you will have had a narrow 
 escape ! But how stupid I am ! He has made off with them, 
 for he has Claparon's money; luckily, Claparon had only paid 
 a hundred thousand francs. Roguin has absconded ; I myself 
 paid him a hundred thousand francs for his practice without 
 taking a receipt ; I gave it him as I might give my purse to 
 you to keep for me. Your vendors have not been paid a 
 stiver ; they have just been round to see me. The money 
 you raised on your land has no existence for you, nor for the 
 man of whom you borrowed it ; Roguin had swallowed it like 
 
CESAR B1R0TTEAU. 189 
 
 your hundred thousand francs ; which er — he has not had 
 this long while. And he has taken your last payment of a 
 hundred thousand francs with him too ; I remember going to 
 the bank for the money." 
 
 The pupils of Cesar's eyes dilated so widely that he could 
 see nothing but red flames before him. 
 
 "Your draft on the bank for a hundred thousand francs, a 
 hundred thousand francs of mine paid for the practice, and 
 a hundred thousand francs belonging to M. Claparon — three 
 hundred thousand francs gone like smoke, to say nothing of 
 the defalcations that have yet to be found out," the young 
 notary went on. " They feared for Madame Roguin's life ; 
 Monsieur du Tillet spent the night beside her. Du Tillet 
 himself has had a narrow escape ! Roguin has been pestering 
 him this month past to draw him into the Madeleine specula- 
 tion, but, luckily, all his capital was locked up in some pro- 
 ject of the Nucingens. Roguin wrote his wife a frightful 
 letter. I have just seen it. For five years he has been gam- 
 bling with his clients' money, and why? To spend it on a 
 mistress — the Beautiful Dutchwoman ; he left her a fortnight 
 before he made this stroke. She had squandered till she had 
 not a farthing ; her furniture was sold ; she had put her name 
 on bills of exchange. Then she hid from her creditors in a 
 house in the Palais-Royal, and was murdered there last even- 
 ing by an officer in the army. Heaven soon dealt the punish- 
 ment to her who, beyond a doubt, had run through Roguin's 
 fortune. There are women to whom nothing is sacred ; think 
 of squandering away a notary's practice ! 
 
 "Madame Roguin will having nothing except what has 
 been secured to her by her legal mortgage, and all the 
 scoundrel's property has been mortgaged beyond its value. 
 The practice is to be sold for three hundred thousand francs ! 
 And I, who thought I was doing a good stroke of business, 
 must begin by paying an extra hundred thousand francs for 
 my practice ; I hold no receipt ; and there are defalcations 
 
190 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 which will eat up the value of the practice and the deposit of 
 caution-money. The creditors will think that I am in it if I 
 say anything about my hundred thousand francs, and you 
 have to be very careful of your reputation when you are be- 
 ginning for yourself. You will hardly get thirty per cent. 
 Such a brew to drink of at my age ! That a man of fifty- 
 nine should take up with a woman. The old rogue! Three 
 weeks ago he told me not to marry Cesarine, and said that 
 before long you would not have bread to eat, the monster ! " 
 
 Alexandre might have talked on for a long while ; Birotteau 
 stood like a man turned to stone. Each sentence fell like a 
 stunning blow. He heard nothing in the sounds but his 
 death-knell ; just as when Alexandre first began to speak, he 
 had seemed to see his own house in flames. He looked so 
 white and stood so motionless that Alexandre Crottat, who 
 had taken the worthy perfumer for a clear-headed, capable 
 man of business, was frightened at last. Roguin's successor 
 did not know that this stroke had swept away Cesar's whole 
 fortune. A swift thought of suicide flashed through the brain 
 of the merchant, so profoundly religious by nature. In such 
 a case suicide is a way of escape from a thousand deaths, and 
 it seems logical to accept but one. Alexandre Crottat lent 
 his arm and tried to walk with him, but it was impossible — 
 Cesar tottered as if he had been drunk. 
 
 "Why, what is the matter with you?" asked Crottat. 
 " My good Monsieur Cesar, pluck up heart a little ! It takes 
 more than this to kill a man ! Beside you will recover forty 
 thousand francs ; the man who lent you the money had not 
 the money to lend, and did not pay it over to you ; you 
 might plead that the contract was void." 
 
 "My ball. My cross. Two hundred thousand francs' 
 worth of my paper on the market, and not anything in the 
 
 safe to The Ragons, Pillerault And my wife, who 
 
 saw it all! " 
 
 A shower of confused words, which called up ideas that 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 191 
 
 overwhelmed him and caused unspeakable pangs, fell like hail 
 laying waste the flower-beds of the Queen of Roses. 
 
 " If only my head were cut of," Birotteau cried at last; 
 "it is so heavy that it weighs me down, and it is good for 
 nothing in this " 
 
 " Poor old Birotteau ! " said Alexandre ; " then are you in 
 difficulties?" 
 
 "Difficulties! " 
 
 " Very well ; keep up your heart and struggle with them." 
 
 "Struggle ! " echoed the perfumer. 
 
 " Du Tillet used to be your assistant; he has a level head, 
 he will help you." 
 
 "Du Tillet?" 
 
 " Come along ! " 
 
 "Good heavens! I don't like to go home like this," 
 cried Birotteau. "You that are my friend, if friends there 
 are, you who have dined with me, you in whom I have taken 
 an interest, call a cab for me, for my wife's sake ; and come 
 with me, Xandrot " 
 
 With no little difficulty Crottat put the inert mechanism, 
 called Cesar, into a cab. 
 
 "Xandrot," he said, in a voice broken with tears, for the 
 tears had begun to fall and the iron band about his head 
 seemed to be loosened a little, "let us call at the store. 
 Speak to Celestin for me. My friend, tell him that it is a 
 matter of life and death for me and for my wife. And let 
 no one prattle about Roguin's disappearance on any pretext 
 whatever. Ask Cesarine to come down, and beg her to allow 
 no one to say anything about it to her mother. You must 
 beware of your best friends, Pillerault, the Ragons, every- 
 body " 
 
 The change in Birotteau's voice made a deep impression on 
 Crottat, who understood the importance of the request. On 
 their way to the magistrate they stopped at the house in the 
 Rue Saint-Honore. Celestin and Cesarine were horrified to 
 
192 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 see Birotteau lying back in white and speechless hebetude, 
 as it were, in the cab- 
 
 "Keep the affair a secret for me," said the perfumer. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Xandrot to himself, " he is coming round ; I 
 thought it was all over with him." 
 
 The conference between Alexandre and the magistrate 
 lasted long. The president of the Chamber of Notaries was 
 sent for ; Cesar was taken hither and thither like a parcel ; 
 he did not stir, he did not utter a word. Toward seven 
 o'clock in the evening Alexandre Crottat took the perfumer 
 home again, and the thought of appearing before his wife had 
 a bracing effect upon Cesar. The young notary had the 
 charity to precede him, to tell Mme. Birotteau that her hus- 
 band had had a sort of fit. 
 
 "His ideas are confused," he said, making a gesture to de- 
 scribe a bewildered state of the brain ; " perhaps he should 
 be bled or leeches ought to be put on him." 
 
 "I knew how it would be," said Constance — nothing was 
 further from her thoughts than the actual disaster — "he did 
 not take his medicine as usual at the beginning of winter, 
 and for these two months he has been working like a galley 
 slave, as if he had to earn his daily bread." 
 
 So Cesar's wife and daughter begged him to go to bed, and 
 Dr. Haudry, Birotteau's doctor, was sent for. Old Haudry 
 was a doctor of the school of Moliere ; he had a large prac- 
 tice, and adhered to old-fashioned methods and out-of-date 
 formulas ; consulting-physician though he was, he drugged his 
 patients like any quack doctor. He came, made his diag- 
 nosis, and ordered the immediate application of a sinapism to 
 the soles of Cesar's feet ; he detected symptoms of cerebral 
 congestion. 
 
 " What can have brought it on ? " asked Constance. 
 
 "The damp weather," said the doctor. Cesarine had 
 given him a hint. 
 
 A doctor is often obliged professionally to talk nonsense 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 19S 
 
 with a learned air, to save the honor or the life of persons in 
 health who stand about the patient's bed. The old physician 
 had seen so much that half a word sufficed for him. Ce- 
 sarine went out with the doctor on to the stairs to ask about 
 the treatment. 
 
 " Rest and quiet ; then when there is less pressure on the 
 head, we will venture on tonics." 
 
 For two days Mme. Cesar sat by her husband's bedside. 
 Often she thought that he was delirious. As he lay in his 
 wife's pretty blue-chamber he said many things, which were 
 enigmas for Constance, at the sight of the hangings, the 
 furniture, and the costly magnificence of the room. 
 
 " He is light-headed," she said to Cesarine, when Cesar 
 sat upright in bed and began solemnly to repeat scraps of the 
 Code. "If the personal or household expenses are considered 
 excessive Take away those curtains ! " he cried. 
 
 After three dreadful days of anxiety for Cesar's reason, the 
 Tourangeau's strong peasant constitution triumphed, the 
 pressure on the brain ceased. M. Haudry ordered cordials 
 and a strengthening diet, and, after a cup of coffee seasonably 
 administered, Cesar was on his feet again. Constance, worn 
 out, took her husband's place. 
 
 "Poor thing!" said Cesar, when he saw her sleeping. 
 
 "Come, papa, take courage! You have so much talent, 
 that you will triumph over this. Never mind. Monsieur 
 Anselme will help you," and Cesarine murmured the sweet, 
 vague words, made still sweeter by tenderness, which put 
 courage into the most sorely defeated, as a mother's croon- 
 ing songs soothe the pain of a teething infant. 
 
 "Yes, child, I will struggle. But not a word of this to 
 any one whatever; not to Popinot, who loves us, nor to 
 your uncle. In the first place, I will write to my brother ; 
 he is a canon, I believe, a priest attached to a cathedral. 
 He spends nothing, so he must have saved something. 
 Five thousand francs put by every year for twenty years — 
 13 
 
194 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 he ought to have a hundred thousand francs. Priests have 
 credit in country places." 
 
 Cesarine, in her hurry to set a little table and the neces- 
 saries for writing a letter before her father, brought the 
 remainder of the rose- colored cards for the ball. 
 
 "Burn them all!" cried the merchant. "The devil 
 alone could have put the notion of that ball into my head. 
 If I fail, it will look as if I were a rogue. Come, let us 
 go straight to the point." 
 
 Cesar's Letter to Francois Birotteau. 
 
 "My dear Brother: — My business is passing through a 
 crisis so difficult that I implore you to send me all the 
 money at your disposal, even if you are obliged to borrow. 
 Yours truly, Cesar. 
 
 "Your niece, Cesarine, who is with me as I write this 
 letter, while my poor wife is asleep, desires to be remembered 
 to you, and sends her love." 
 
 This postscript was added at Cesarine's instance. She gave 
 the letter to Raguet. 
 
 "Father," said she when she came up again, "here is 
 Monsieur Lebas, who wants to speak to you." 
 
 " M. Lebas! " cried Cesar, starting as though misfortune 
 had made a criminal of him, " a judge ! " 
 
 " Dear Monsieur Birotteau," said the stout merchant-draper 
 as he came in, " I take too deep an interest in you — knowing 
 each other so long as we have, and being elected judges to- 
 gether, as we were, for the first time — not to let you know 
 that one Bidault, otherwise Gigonnet, has bills of yours made 
 payable to his order, without guarantee, by the firm of Cla- 
 paron. Those two words are not merely an insult; they give 
 a fatal shake to your credit." 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 195 
 
 " Monsieur Claparon would like to speak with you," said 
 Celestin, putting in his head ; " am I to show him up ? " 
 
 "We shall soon hear the why and wherefore of this af- 
 front," remarked Lebas. 
 
 "This is Monsieur Lebas, sir," said Cesar, as Claparon 
 came in ; " he is a judge of the Tribunal of Commerce, and 
 my friend " 
 
 "Oh! the gentleman is Monsieur Lebas, is he?" said 
 Claparon, interrupting Cesar; "delighted to make his ac- 
 quaintance ; Monsieur Lebas of the Tribunal, there are so 
 many Lebas,* to say nothing of the hauts (high) and the bas 
 (low) " 
 
 " He has seen the bills which I gave to you, and which 
 (so you told me) should not be negotiated," Birotteau 
 went on, interrupting the rattle in his turn ; " he has seen 
 them, too, with the words ' without guarantee ' written upon 
 them." 
 
 " Well," said Claparon, "and as a matter of fact they will 
 not be negotiated ; they are in the hands of a man with 
 whom I do a great deal of business — old Bidault. That is 
 why I put ' without guarantee ' on them. If the bills had 
 been meant to be put in circulation, you would have made 
 them to his order in the first place. Monsieur Lebas, as a judge, 
 will understand my position. What do the bills represent? 
 The price of some landed property. To be paid by whom ? 
 By Birotteau. Why would you have me guarantee Birotteau 
 by my signature ? We must, each of us, pay our share of the 
 aforesaid price. Now isn't it enough to be jointly and sev- 
 erally responsible to the vendors? I have made an inflexible 
 rule in business: I no more give my signature for nothing 
 than I give a receipt for money that is still to be paid. I as- 
 sume the worst. Who signs, pays. I don't want to be laid 
 open to pay three times over." 
 
 "Three times," said Cesar. 
 
 * Le bas : the low. 
 
196 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Claparon. "I have already guaranteed 
 Birotteau to the vendors ; why should I guarantee him again 
 to the bill-discounter? Our case is a hard one ; Roguin goes 
 off with a hundred thousand francs of mine ; so, even now, 
 my half of the land is costing me five hundred thousand in- 
 stead of four. Roguin has taken two hundred and forty 
 thousand francs belonging to Birotteau. What would you do 
 in my place, Monsieur Lebas ? Put yourself in my shoes. I 
 have not the honor of being known to you, any more than I 
 know Monsieur Birotteau. Do you take me ? We go halves 
 in a business speculation. You pay down all your share of 
 the money in cash ; and, as for me, I give bills for- my share. 
 I offer you the bills, and out of excessive benevolence you take 
 them and give money for them. You learn that Claparon, 
 the rich banker, looked up to by every one — I accept all the 
 virtues in the world — that the virtuous Claparon is in diffi- 
 culties for a matter of six millions ; would you select that 
 moment to give your name as a guarantee for mine? You 
 would be mad ! Well now, Monsieur Lebas, Birotteau is in 
 the position in which I imagined Claparon to be. Don't you 
 see that in that case, being jointly and severally responsible, 
 I may be made to pay the purchasers ; that I can be called 
 upon to pay a second time for Birotteau' s share to the extent 
 of his bills; that is, if I back them, without having " 
 
 "Pay whom?" interrupted the perfumer. 
 
 "Without having his half of the land," pursued Claparon, 
 heedless of the interruption, " for I should have no hold on 
 him ; so I should have to buy it over again. So — I might pay 
 three times over." 
 
 " Repay whom?" insisted Birotteau, 
 
 " Why, the holder of the bills ; if I endorsed them, and you 
 came to grief." 
 
 " I shall not fail, sir," said Birotteau. 
 
 "All right," said Claparon. " You have been a judge, you 
 are a clever man of business, you know that we ought to pro- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 197 
 
 vide for all contingencies, so do not be astonished if I act in 
 a business-like way." 
 
 "Monsieur Claparon is right," said Joseph Lebas. 
 
 " I am right," continued Claparon, " right from a business 
 point of view. But this is a question of landed property. 
 Now, what ought I myself to receive? Money, for the ven- 
 dors must be paid in coin. Let us set aside the two hundred 
 and forty thousand francs, which Monsieur Birotteau will find, 
 I am sure," said Claparon, looking at Lebas. "I came to 
 ask you for the trifling sum of twenty-five thousand francs," 
 he added, looking at Birotteau. 
 
 " Twenty-five thousand francs ! " cried Cesar, and it seemed 
 to him that the blood turned to ice in his veins. "But, sir, 
 what for?" 
 
 " Eh ! my dear sir, we are bound to sign, seal, and deliver 
 the deeds in the presence of a notary. Now, as to paying for 
 the land, we may arrange that among ourselves, but when the 
 Treasury comes in — your humble servant ! The Treasury does 
 not amuse itself with idle words ; it allows you credit from 
 your hand to your pocket, and we shall have to come down 
 with the money — forty-four thousand francs this week in law 
 expenses. I was far from expecting reproaches when I came 
 here ; for, thinking that you might find it inconvenient to pay 
 twenty-five thousand francs, I was going to tell you that by 
 the merest chance I had saved for you " 
 
 "What?" asked Birotteau, giving in that word that cry 
 of distress which no man can mistake. 
 
 "A trifle! Twenty-five thousand francs in bills given to 
 you by one and another, which Roguin gave me to discount. 
 I have credited you with the amount as against the registration 
 and other expenses ; I will send you the account ; there is a 
 little matter to deduct for discounting them, and six or seven 
 thousand francs will still be owing to me." 
 
 "This all seems to me to be perfectly fair," said Lebas. 
 " In the place of this gentleman, who appears to me to un- 
 
198 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 derstand business very well, I should act the same toward a 
 stranger." 
 
 "This will not be the death of Monsieur Birotteau," 'said 
 Claparon ; "it takes more than one blow to kill an old wolf; 
 I have seen wolves with bullets in their heads running about 
 like — Lord, yes, like wolves." 
 
 " Who could have foreseen such rascality on Roguin's 
 part ? " asked Lebas, as much alarmed by Cesar's dumbness 
 as by so vast a speculation outside the perfumery trade. 
 
 "A little more, and I should have given this gentleman a 
 receipt for four hundred thousand francs," said Claparon, 
 " and I was in a stew. I had paid over a hundred thousand 
 francs to Roguin the night before. Our mutual confidence 
 saved me. It would have seemed to us all a matter of indiffer- 
 ence whether the money should be lying at his office or in my 
 possession till the day when the contracts were completed." 
 
 " It would have been much better if each had deposited his 
 money with the Bank of France till the time came for paying 
 it over," said Lebas. 
 
 " Roguin was as good as the bank, I thought," said Cesar. 
 " But he, too, is in this business," he added, looking at Cla- 
 paron. 
 
 " Yes, for a fourth, and in name only," answered Claparon. 
 "After the imbecility of allowing him to go off with my 
 money, there is but one thing more out-and-out idiotic — and 
 that would be to make him a present of some more. If he 
 sends me back my hundred thousand francs, and two hundred 
 thousand more on his own account, then we shall see ! But 
 he will take good care not to put the money into an affair 
 that must simmer for four years before you have a spoonful of 
 soup. If he has only gone off with three hundred thousand 
 francs, as they say, he will want quite fifty thousand livres a 
 year to live decently abroad." 
 "The bandit ! " 
 " Eh ! goodness ! An infatuation for a woman brought 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 199 
 
 Roguin to that pass," said Claparon. "What man at his 
 age can answer for it that he will not be mastered and carried 
 away by a last fancy ? Not one of us, sober as we are, can 
 tell where it will end. A last love is the most violent. Look 
 at Cardot, and Camusot, and Matifat — every one of them has 
 a mistress ! And if all of us are gulled, is it not our own 
 fault ? How was it that we did not suspect a notary who 
 speculated on his own account? Any notary, any bill-broker, 
 or stock-broker who does business on his own account, is not 
 to be trusted. Failure for them is fraudulent bankruptcy ; 
 they are sent up to the court of assize for trial ; so, of course, 
 they prefer a foreign court. I shall not make that blunder 
 again. Well, well, we are all too weak to pass judgment by 
 default on a man with whom we have dined, who has given 
 grand balls, a man in society, in fact ! Nobody complains ; 
 it is wrong." 
 
 "Very wrong," said Birotteau. "The provisions of the 
 law with regard to liquidations and insolvency ought to be 
 revised throughout." 
 
 "If you should happen to need me," said Lebas, turning 
 himself to and addressing Birotteau, " I am quite at your 
 service." 
 
 "Monsieur Birotteau has need of no one," said the inde- 
 fatigable prattler (du Tillet had opened the sluices after pour- 
 ing in the water, and Claparon was repeating a lesson which 
 du Tillet had very skillfully taught him). "His position is 
 clear. Roguin's estate will pay a dividend of fifty per cent., 
 from what young Crottat tells me. Beside the dividend, 
 Monsieur Cesar will come by the forty thousand francs which 
 the lender on the mortgage did not pay over ; he can raise 
 more money on his property; and we have four months in 
 which to pay two hundred thousand francs to the vendors. 
 Between now and then Monsieur Birotteau will meet his bills 
 (for he ought not to reckon on meeting them with the money 
 which Roguin made off with). But if Monsieur Birotteau 
 
200 CfiSAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 should find himself a little pinched well, with one or two 
 
 accommodation bills, he will pull through." 
 
 The perfumer took heart as he listened. Claparon analyzed 
 the business, summed it up, and traced out a plan of action, 
 as it were, for him. Gradually his expression grew decided 
 and resolute, and he conceived a great respect for the ex-com- 
 mercial traveler's business capacity. Du Tillet had thought 
 it expedient to make Claparon believe that he was one of 
 Roguin's victims. He had given Claparon a hundred thou- 
 sand francs to give to Roguin, who returned them to du 
 Tillet. Claparon, being uneasy, played his part to the life ; 
 he told anybody who cared to listen to him that Roguin had 
 mulcted him of a hundred thousand francs. Du Tillet 
 doubted Claparon's strength of mind ; he fancied that prin- 
 ciples of honesty and conscientious scruples still lingered in 
 his puppet, and would not confide the whole of his plans to 
 him ; he knew, moreover, that his instrument was incapable 
 of guessing at them. 
 
 A day came when his commercial go-between reproached 
 him. "If our first friend is not our first dupe, we should 
 never find the second," said du Tillet to the dissipated Clap- 
 aron, and he broke in pieces the tool which was no longer 
 useful. 
 
 M. Lebas and Claparon went out together, and Birotteau 
 was left alone. 
 
 " I can pull through," he said to himself. " My liabilities, 
 in the shape of bills to be met, amount to two hundred and 
 thirty-five thousand francs. That is-to say — seventy-five thou- 
 sand francs for the house and a hundred and seventy-five 
 thousand francs for the building land. Now, to cover this, I 
 have Roguin's dividend, which will amount may be to a 
 hundred thousand francs ; and I can cancel the loan on my 
 land, that is a hundred and forty thousand francs in all. 
 The thing to be done is to make a hundred thousand francs 
 by the Cephalic Oil ; and a few accommodation bills or a 
 
CESAR BlROTTEAtt 201 
 
 loan from a banker will tide me over until I can make good 
 the loss and the building land reaches its enhanced value." 
 
 When a man in misfortune can once weave a romance of 
 hope out of the more or less solid reasonings with which he 
 fills the pillow on which he lays his head, he is often saved. 
 Many a one has taken the confidence given by an illusion for 
 energy. Perhaps the half of courage is really hope, and the 
 Catholic religion reckons hope among the virtues. Has not 
 hope buoyed up many a weakling, giving him time to await 
 the chances which life brings? 
 
 Birotteau made up his mind to apply, in the first place, to 
 his wife's uncle, and to disclose his position to his relative 
 before going elsewhere. He went down the Rue Saint- 
 Honore and reached the Rue Bourdonnais, not without ex- 
 periencing inward pangs, which caused such violent internal 
 disturbance that he thought his health was deranged. There 
 was a fire in his vitals. As a matter of fact, those whose sen- 
 tience is keenest in the diaphragm suffer in that region ; just 
 as those whose faculty of perception resides in the brain suffer 
 in the head. In grave crises the system is attacked at the 
 point where the temperament locates the seat of life in the 
 individual ; weaklings have the colic, a Napoleon grows 
 drowsy. 
 
 Before a man of honor can storm a confidence and over- 
 leap the barriers of pride, he must have felt the prick of the 
 spur of Necessity, that hard rider, more than once. So for 
 two days Birotteau had borne that spurring before he went to 
 see Pillerault, and then family reasons decided him — however 
 things might go, he must explain the position to the stern 
 hardware man. Yet, for all that, when he reached the door he 
 felt in his inmost soul as a child feels on a visit to the dentist, 
 that his courage was sinking away ; and Birotteau was not about 
 to face a momentary pang, he quailed before a whole lifetime 
 to come. Slowly he went up the stairs, and found the old 
 man reading the " Constitutionnel " by the fireside; on a 
 
202 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 little round table his frugal breakfast was set — a roll, butter, 
 Brie cheese, and a cup of coffee. 
 
 " There is real wisdom," said Birotteau to himself, and he 
 envied his uncle's life. 
 
 "Well," said Pillerault, laying down his spectacles, "I 
 heard about Roguin's affair yesterday at the Cafe David ; so 
 his mistress, the Beautiful Dutchwoman, is murdered ! I hope 
 that, warned by us who want to be actual proprietors, you 
 have been to Claparon and taken a receipt?" 
 
 " Alas ! uncle, that is just it; you have laid your finger on 
 the spot. No." 
 
 "Oh, bother! you are ruined," said Pillerault, dropping 
 his paper ; and Birotteau picked it up, although it was the 
 " Constitutionnel." 
 
 This thought was such a shock that Pillerault' s stern feat- 
 ures, always like a profile on a coin, grew hard as if they had 
 been struck in bronze. He stared with steady eyes that saw 
 nothing, through the windows, at the opposite wall, and lis- 
 tened while Birotteau poured out a long discourse. Evidently 
 while he heard he deliberated ; he was pondering the case 
 with the inflexibility of a Minos who crossed the Styx of com- 
 merce, when he left the Quai des Morfondos for his little 
 fourth-floor dwelling. 
 
 "Well, uncle?" asked Birotteau at last, expecting some 
 answer to a final entreaty to sell rentes worth sixty thousand 
 francs a year. 
 
 "Well, my poor nephew, I cannot do it. Things have 
 gone too far. We, the Ragons and I, shall both lose fifty 
 thousand francs. It was by my advice that the good folk sold 
 their shares in the Worstchin Mines. I feel myself bound, if 
 they lose the money, not to replace their capital, but to give 
 them a helping hand, and to help my niece and Cesarine. 
 You might, perhaps, all of you want bread, and you must come 
 to me " 
 
 "Bread, uncle?" 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 203 
 
 "Well, yes, bread. Just look the facts in the face : you 
 will not pull through / Out of five thousand six hundred 
 francs a year, I will set aside four thousand to divide between 
 you and the Ragons. When your disaster comes, I know 
 Constance, she will slave and deny herself everything — and 
 so will you, Cesar ! " 
 
 " There is yet hope, uncle." 
 
 " I do not see it as you do." 
 
 " I will prove the contrary." 
 
 " Nothing would please me better." 
 
 Birotteau went without an answer for Pillerault. He had 
 come to find comfort and encouragement, he had received a 
 second blow ; a blow less heavy than the first one, it is true ; 
 but whereas the first had been dealt at his head, this thrust had 
 gone to his heart, and the poor man's life lay in his affections. 
 He had gone down part of the way, and then he turned and 
 went up again. 
 
 " Sir," he said, in a constrained voice, " Constance knows 
 nothing of this, keep the secret for me at least ; and beg the 
 Ragons not to disturb the peace that I need if I am to fight 
 against misfortune." 
 
 Pillerault made a sign of assent. 
 
 "Take courage, Cesar," he said. "I see that you are 
 angry with me, but some day you will acknowledge that I am 
 right, when you think of your wife and daughter." 
 
 Discouraged by this opinion given by his uncle, whose 
 clear-headedness he acknowledged, Cesar suddenly dropped 
 from the heights of hope into the miry slough of uncertainty. 
 When a man's affairs take an ugly turn like this he is apt to 
 become the plaything of circumstances, unless he is of Piller- 
 ault's temper; he follows other people's ideas, or his own, much 
 as a wayfarer pursues a will-o'-the-wisp. He allows himself to 
 be swept away by the whirlwind when he should either lie 
 prostrate with his eyes shut, and let it pass over him, or rise 
 and watch the direction that it takes, to escape the blast. In 
 
204 CESAR B1ROTTEAU. 
 
 the midst of his anguish, Birotteau bethought himself of the 
 necessary steps to be taken with regard to his loan. He went 
 to see Derville, a consulting barrister in the Rue Vivienne, so 
 as to set about it the sooner, if Derville should see any 
 chance of canceling the contract. Him he found sitting, 
 wrapped in his white flannel dressing-gown, by the fireside, 
 staid and self-possessed, as is the wont of men of law, accus- 
 tomed as they are to the most harrowing disclosures. Bi- 
 rotteau felt, as a new thing in his experience, this necessary 
 coolness ; it was like ice to an excited man like Birotteau 
 telling the story of his misfortunes, smarting from the wounds 
 that he had received, stricken with the fever induced by the 
 risks his fortunes were running, and cruelly beset, since honor 
 and life and wife and child were all imperiled. 
 
 "If it is proved," said Derville, when he had heard him 
 out, " that the lender no longer had in Roguin's keeping the 
 sum of money which Roguin induced you to borrow of him, 
 as there has been no transfer of the actual money, the con- 
 tract might be annulled, and the lender will have his remedy 
 (as you also will have for your hundred thousand francs) in 
 Roguin's caution-money. In that case, I will answer for your 
 lawsuit, so far as it is possible to answer for any action at law, 
 for no action is a foregone conclusion." 
 
 The opinion of so learned. an expert put a little heart into 
 Birotteau. He begged Derville to obtain a judgment within 
 a fortnight. The advocate answered to the effect that Birot- 
 teau might be obliged to wait three months before the contract 
 would be annulled. 
 
 "Three months!" cried Birotteau, who thought that he 
 had found an expedient for raising money at once. 
 
 " Well, if you yourself succeed in gaining a prompt hearing 
 for your case, we cannot hurry your opponent to suit your 
 pace ; he will take advantage of the delays of procedure ; 
 advocates are not always at the Palais ; who knows but that 
 the other party will let judgment go against him by default ? 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 205 
 
 And he will appeal. You can't set your own pace, my dear 
 sir! " said Derville, smiling. 
 
 "But at the Tribunal of Commerce " 
 
 " Oh ! " said the advocate, " the Consular Tribunal is one 
 thing and the Tribunal of First Instance is another. You 
 do things in a slashing way over yonder. Now, at the Palais 
 de Justice there are formalities to be gone through. These 
 formalities are the bulwarks of justice. How would you like 
 it if a demand for forty thousand francs was suddenly fired off 
 at you ? Well, your opponent, who will see that amount 
 compromised, will dispute it. Delays are the spiked wall of 
 the law." 
 
 "You are right," said Birotteau, and he took leave of 
 Derville with a deadly chill at his heart. " They are all 
 right. Money ! Money ! " cried the perfumer, out in the 
 street, talking to himself, as is the wont of busy men in this 
 turbulent, seething Paris, which a modern poet calls " a vat." 
 
 As he came into his store, one of the assistants, who had 
 been out delivering invoices to the customers, told him that, 
 as the New Year was at hand, every one had torn off the 
 receipt-form at the foot and kept the invoices. 
 
 "Then there is no money anywhere ! " Birotteau exclaimed 
 aloud in the store. All the assistants looked up at this, and 
 he bit his lips. 
 
 In this way five days went by; and during those five days 
 Braschon, Lourdois, Thorien, Grindot, Chaffaroux, and all 
 the creditors whose bills remained unpaid, passed through the 
 chameleon's intermediate transitions of tone, from the serene 
 hues of confidence to the wrathful red of the commercial 
 Bellona. In Paris, in such crises, suspicion is as quick to 
 reach the panic stage as confidence is slow to show expansive 
 symptoms ; and, when a creditor once adopts the restringent 
 system of doubts and precautions in business relations, he is 
 apt to descend to underhand villainies that put him below his 
 debtor's level. From cringing civility the creditors passed 
 
206 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 successively through the inflammatory phase, the red of im- 
 patience, the lurid coruscations of importunity, to outbursts 
 of disappointment, and from the cold-blue stage of making 
 up their minds to the black insolence of threatening to serve 
 a writ. 
 
 Braschon, the rich furniture dealer of the Faubourg Saint- 
 Antoine, who had not been included in the invitations to the 
 ball, sounded to arms in his quality of the creditor whose self- 
 love has been wounded. Paid he meant to be, and within 
 twenty-four hours ; he required security, not deposits of furni- 
 ture, but a second mortgage, the mortgage for forty thousand 
 francs on the property in the Faubourg du Temple. In spite 
 of their furious recriminations, these gentry still left Cesar 
 occasional intervals of peace when he might breathe ; but in- 
 stead of bringing a resolute will to carry these outworks of an 
 awkward position, and so putting an end to them, Birotteau 
 was taxing all his wits to keep the state of things from the 
 knowledge of his wife, and the one person who could give 
 him counsel knew nothing of his difficulties. He stood sen- 
 tinel on the threshold of his store. He confided his mo- 
 mentary inconvenience to Celestin, who watched his employer 
 with curious and astonished eyes ; already Cesar had fallen 
 somewhat in his esteem, as men accustomed to prosperity 
 are apt to dwindle when evil days discover that all their 
 power consists in the increased facility of dealing with mat- 
 ters of every-day experience, acquired by an ordinary intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 But if Cesar lacked the mental energy required for defend- 
 ing himself when attacked at so many points at once, he had 
 sufficient courage to face his position. Before the 15th of 
 January he required the sum of sixty thousand francs, and 
 thirty thousand of these were due on the 31st of December. 
 Part of this sum was owing for the house, part for rent and 
 accounts to be paid in ready money, part of it in bills to 
 be met ; with all his efforts he could only collect twenty 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 207 
 
 thousand francs, so that there was a deficit of ten thousand to 
 be made up by the end of the month. Nothing seemed hope- 
 less to him, for he had already ceased to look beyond the 
 present moment, and, like an adventurer, had begun to live 
 from day to day. At length he resolved to make what for 
 him was a bold stroke. Before it was known that he was in 
 difficulties, he would apply to Francois Keller, banker, orator, 
 and philanthropist, widely known for his beneficence, and for 
 his desire to stand well with the mercantile world of Paris, 
 always with a view to representing their interests one day as a 
 deputy in the Chamber. In politics the banker was a Liberal, 
 and Cesar was a Royalist ; but the perfumer decided that the 
 capitalist was a man after his own heart, and that a difference 
 of opinion in politics was but one reason the more for opening 
 an account. If paper should be necessary, he did not doubt 
 Popinot's devotion, and counted upon obtaining from him 
 some thirty bills of a thousand francs each ; with these he 
 might hold out until he gained his lawsuit, the forty thousand 
 francs involved in it being offered as security to the most 
 urgent creditors. 
 
 The effusive soul, who was wont to confide to the pillow of 
 his dear Constance the least emotions of his existence, who 
 drew his courage from her, and was wont to seek of her the 
 light thrown by contradiction on all topics, was cut off from 
 all exchange of ideas with his first assistant, his uncle, and 
 his wife, and found that the weight of his cares was thereby 
 doubled. Yet this self-sacrificing martyr preferred suffering 
 ?lone to the alternative of casting his wife's soul into the fiery 
 furnace ; he would tell her about the danger when it was past. 
 Perhaps, too, he shrank from telling her the hideous secret ; 
 he stood in some fear of his wife, and this fear lent him cour- 
 age. He went every morning to low mass at Saint-Roch and 
 told his troubles to God. 
 
 " If I do not meet a soldier on my way back from Saint- 
 Roch, I will take it as a sign that my prayer is heard. It 
 
208 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 shall be God's answer to me," he said to himself, after he had 
 prayed for deliverance. 
 
 And, for his happiness, he did not meet a soldier. Yet, 
 nevertheless, his heart was overfull, and he needed another 
 human heart to whom he could make moan. Cesarine, to 
 whom he had already told the fatal news, learned the whole 
 truth, and stolen glances were exchanged between them, 
 glances fraught with despair or repressed hope, passionate 
 invocations, appeals, and sympathetic responses, answering 
 gleams of intelligence between soul and soul. For his wife 
 Cesar put on high spirits and mirth. If Constance asked any 
 question — " Pshaw, everything was all right. Popinot " (to 
 whom Cesar gave not a thought) " was doing well ! The Oil 
 was selling ! Claparon's bills would be met; there was noth- 
 ing to fear." The hollow merriment was ghastly. When his 
 wife lay sleeping amid the splendors, Birotteau would rise 
 and fall to thinking over his misfortunes ; and more than once 
 Cesarine came in, in her night-dress, barefooted, with a shawl 
 about her white shoulders. 
 
 "Papa, you are crying; I can hear you," she would say, 
 and she would cry herself as she spoke. 
 
 When Cesar had written to ask the great Francois Keller 
 to make an appointment with him he fell into such a state of 
 torpor that Cesarine persuaded him to walk out with her. In 
 the streets of Paris he saw nothing but huge red placards, and 
 the words Cephalic Oil in staring letters everywhere met his 
 eyes. 
 
 While the glory of the Queen of Roses was thus waning in 
 disastrous gloom, the firm of A. Popinot was dawning radiant 
 with the sunrise splendors of success. Anselme had taken 
 counsel of Gaudissart and Finot, and had launched his oil 
 boldly. During the past three days two thousand placards 
 had been posted in the most conspicuous situations in Paris. 
 Every one in the streets was confronted with the Cephalic Oil, 
 and willy-nilly must read the pithy remarks from Finot' s pen 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 209 
 
 as to the impossibility of stimulating the growth of the hair, 
 and the perils attendant on dyeing it, together with an extract 
 from a paper read before the Academie des Sciences by Vau- 
 quelin. It was as good as a certificate of existence for dead 
 hair, thus held out to those who should use the Cephalic Oil. 
 The store-doors of every perfumer, hair-dresser, and wigmaker 
 in Paris were made glorious with gilded frames, containing a 
 beautiful design, printed on vellum paper, with a reduced 
 fac -simile of the picture of " Hero and Leander " at the top, 
 and beneath it ran the motto : The ancie?it peoples of antiquity 
 preserved their hair by the use of Cephalic Oil. 
 
 '■' He has thought of permanent frames ; he has found an 
 advertisement that will last for ever ! " said Birotteau to him- 
 self, as he stood staring in dull amazement at the store-front 
 of the Silver Bell. 
 
 "Then you did not see a frame on your own door?" 
 asked his daughter. " Monsieur Anselme brought it himself, 
 and left three hundred bottles of the oil with Ceiestin." 
 
 "No, I did not see it," he answered. 
 
 " And Ceiestin has already sold fifty to chance-comers and 
 sixty to our own customers." 
 
 "Oh!" said Cesar. 
 
 The sound of myriad bells that misery sets ringing in the 
 ears of her victims had made the perfumer dizzy ; his head 
 seemed to spin round and round in those days. Popinot had 
 waited a whole hour to speak with him on the day before, 
 and had gone away after chatting with Constance and 
 Cesarine ; the women told him that Cesar was very busy 
 over his great scheme. 
 
 " Oh yes, the building land ! " Popinot had said. 
 
 Luckily, Popinot had not left the Rue des Cinq-Diamants 
 for a month ; he had worked day and night at his business, 
 and had seen neither Ragon, nor Pillerault, nor his uncle. 
 The poor lad was never in bed before two o'clock in the 
 morning; he had only two assistants, and at the rate at which 
 14 
 
210 CESAR BlROTTEAtZ 
 
 things were going he would soon have work enough for 
 four. Opportunity is everything in business ; success is a 
 horse which, if caught by the mane and ridden by a bold 
 rider, will carry him on to fortune. Popinot told himself 
 that he should receive a welcome when, at the end of six 
 months, he could carry the news to his aunt and uncle — " I 
 am saved; my fortune is made!" — a welcome, too, from 
 Birotteau when, at the end of the first half-year, he should 
 bring him his share of the profits — thirty or forty thousand 
 francs ! He had not heard of Roguin's disappearance, nor 
 of Cesar's consequent disasters and difficulties ; so that he 
 could not let fall any indiscreet remarks in Madame Birot- 
 teau's presence. 
 
 Popinot had promised Finot five hundred francs for each 
 of the leading newspapers (ten in all), and three hundred 
 francs for each second-rate paper (and of these, too, there 
 were ten), if the Cephalic Oil was mentioned three times a 
 month in each. Of those eight thousand francs, Finot be- 
 held three thousand as his own, his first stake to lay on the 
 vast green table of speculation. So he had sprung like a lion 
 upon his friends and acquaintances ; he haunted newspaper 
 offices ; writers of newspaper articles awoke from slumber to 
 find him sitting by their pillows; and the evening found him 
 pacing the lobbies of all the theatres. " Remember my oil, 
 my dear fellow ; it is nothing to me ; a matter of good-fel- 
 lowship, you know; Gaudissart, a jolly dog." With this 
 formula, his harangues always began -and ended. He filled 
 up spaces at the foot of the last columns in the papers, and 
 left the money to those upon the staff. He was as cunning 
 as any super who is minded to transform himself into an 
 actor, and as active as an errand boy on sixty francs a month; 
 he wrote insinuating letters, he worked on the vanity of all 
 and sundry, he did dirty work for editors, to the end that his 
 paragraphs might be inserted in their papers. His enthusi- 
 astic energy left no means untried — money, dinners, plati- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 211 
 
 tudes. By means of tickets for the play he corrupted the 
 men who finish off the columns toward midnight with short 
 paragraphs of small news items already set up ; hanging about 
 the printing-office for that purpose, as if he had proofs to 
 revise. 
 
 So by dint of making every one his friend, Finot secured 
 the triumph of the Cephalic Oil over the Pate de Regnault 
 and the Mixture Bresilienne, over all the inventions, in fact, 
 whose promoters had the wit to comprehend the influence of 
 journalism and the effect produced upon the public mind by 
 the piston-stroke of the reiterated paragraph. In that age 
 of innocence, journalists, like draught-oxen, were unaware of 
 their strength ; their heads ran on actresses — Mesdemoiselles 
 Florine, Tullia, Mariette — they lorded it over all creation, 
 and made no practical use of their powers. In Andoche's 
 propositions there was no actress to be applauded, no drama 
 to be put upon the stage ; he did not ask them to make a 
 success of his vaudevilles, nor to pay him for his paragraphs ; 
 on the contrary, he offered money in season and opportune 
 breakfasts ; so there was not a newspaper that did not men- 
 tion the Cephalic Oil, and how that it was in accordance with 
 Vauquelin's investigations; not a journal that did not scoff 
 at the superstition that the hair could be induced to grow 
 and proclaim the danger of dyeing it. 
 
 These paragraphs rejoiced Gaudissart's heart. He laid in 
 a supply of papers wherewith to demolish prejudice in the 
 provinces, and accomplished the manoeuvre known among 
 speculators since his time as "taking the public by storm." 
 In those days newspapers from Paris exercised a great influ- 
 ence in the departments, the hapless country districts being 
 still "without organs." The Paris newspaper, therefore, was 
 taken up as a serious study, and read through from the head- 
 ing to the printer's name on the last line of the last page, 
 where the irony of persecuted opinion might be supposed 
 to lurk. 
 
212 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Gaudissart, thus supported by the press, had a brilliant suc- 
 cess from the very first in every town where his tongue had 
 play. Every provincial storekeeper was anxious for a frame 
 and copies of "Hero and Leander." Finot devised that 
 charming joke against Macassar Oil, which drew such laughter 
 at the Funambules, when Pierrot takes up an old house-brush, 
 visibly worn down to the holes, and rubs it with Macassar Oil, 
 and, lo, the stump becomes a mop — a piece of irony which 
 brought down the house. In later days Finot would gaily re- 
 late how that but for those three thousand francs he must 
 have died of want and misery. For him three thousand francs 
 was a fortune. In this campaign he discovered the power 
 of advertising, which he was to wield so wisely and so much 
 to his own profit. Three months later this pioneer was the 
 editor of a small paper, of which after a time he became the 
 proprietor, and so laid the foundation of his fortune. Even 
 as the illustrious Gaudissart, that Murat among commercial 
 travelers, "took the public by storm," and gained brilliant 
 victories along the frontiers and in the provinces for the house 
 of Popinot, so did the cause gain ground in public opinion in 
 Paris, thanks to the desperate assault upon the newspapers, 
 which gave it the prompt publicity likewise secured by the 
 Mixture Bresilienne and the Pate de Regnault. Three for- 
 tunes were made by this means, and then began the descent 
 of the thousands of ambitious tradesmen who have since gone 
 down by battalions into the arena of journalism, and there 
 called advertising into being. A mighty revolution was 
 wrought. 
 
 At that moment the words "Popinot & Company" were 
 flaunting on every wall and store-door; and Birotteau, unable 
 to measure the enormous area over which these announcements 
 were displayed, contented himself with saying to Cesarine, 
 "Little Popinot is following in my footsteps," without com- 
 prehending the difference of the times, without appreciation 
 of the new methods and improved means of communication 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 213 
 
 which spread intelligence much more rapidly than hereto- 
 fore. 
 
 Birotteau had not set foot in his factory since the ball ; he 
 did not know how busy and energetic Popinot had been. 
 Anselme had set all Birotteau's operatives on the work, and 
 slept in the place. He saw Cesarine sitting on every packing- 
 case and reclining on every package ; her face looked at him 
 from each new invoice. " She will be my wife ! " he said to 
 himself, as, with coat thrown off and shirt-sleeves rolled above 
 the elbows, he hammered in the nails with all his might, 
 while his assistants were sent out on business. 
 
 The next day, after spending the whole night in pondering 
 what to say and what not to say to the great banker, Cesar 
 reached the Rue du Houssaye and entered, with a heart that 
 beat painfully fast, the mansion of the Liberal financier, the 
 adherent of a political party accused, and not unjustly, of 
 desiring the downfall of the Bourbons. To Birotteau, as to 
 most small merchants in Paris, the manners and customs and 
 the personality of those who move in high financial circles 
 were quite unknown ; for the smaller traders usually deal with 
 lesser houses, which form a sort of intermediate term, a highly 
 satisfactory arrangement for the great capitalists, who find in 
 them one guarantee the more. 
 
 Constance and Birotteau, who had never overdrawn their 
 balance, who had never known what it was to have no money 
 in the safe and no bills in the portfolio, had not had recourse 
 to these banks of the second order ; and, for the best reasons, 
 were entirely unknown in the higher financial world. Per- 
 haps it is a mistaken policy seduously to abstain from borrow- 
 ing even though you may not require the money ; opinions 
 differ on this head ; but be that as it may, Birotteau at that 
 moment deeply regretted that he had never put his signature 
 to a piece of paper. Yet, as he was known as a deputy-mayor 
 and a shrewd man of business, he imagined that he would 
 only have to mention his name, and he should see the banker 
 
214 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 at once ; he did not know that men flocked to the Kellers' 
 audiences as to the court of a king. In the antechamber of 
 the study occupied by the man with so many claims to great- 
 ness, Birotteau found himself among a crowd composed of 
 deputies, writers, journalists, stockbrokers, great merchants, 
 men of business, engineers, and, above all, of familiars, who 
 made their way through the groups of speakers and knocked 
 in a particular manner at the door of the study, where they 
 had the privilege of entry. 
 
 " What am I in the middle of this machinery? " Birotteau 
 asked himself, quite bewildered by the stir and bustle in this 
 factory, where so much brain-power was at work furnishing 
 daily bread for the camp of the Opposition ; this theatre where 
 rehearsals of the grand tragi-comedy played by the Left were 
 wont to take place. 
 
 On one hand he heard a discussion relative to a loan that 
 was being negotiated to complete the construction of the 
 principal lines of canal recommended by the Department of 
 Roads and Bridges ; a question of millions ! On the other f 
 journalists, the bankers' jackals, were talking of yesterday'? 
 sitting and of their patron's extempore speech. During the 
 two hours while he waited, he saw the banker-politician 
 thrice emerge from his cabinet, accompanying some visitor of 
 importance for a few paces through the antechamber. Keller 
 went as far as the door with the last — General Foy. 
 
 " It is all over with me ! " Birotteau said to himself, and 
 something clutched at his heart. 
 
 As the great banker returned to his cabinet, the whole troop 
 of courtiers, friends, and followers crowded after him, like 
 the canine race about some attractive female of the species. 
 One or two bolder curs slipped in spite of him into the audi- 
 ence chamber. The conferences lasted for five minutes, ten 
 minutes, a quarter of an hour. Some went away visibly chop- 
 fallen ; some with a satisfied look ; some assumed important 
 airs. Time went by, and Birotteau looked anxiously at ths? 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 215 
 
 clock. No one paid the slightest attention to the man with 
 a secret care, sighing restlessly in the gilded chair by the 
 hearth, at the very door of the closet that contained that 
 panacea for all troubles — credit. 
 
 Dolefully Cesar thought how that he, too, in his own house, 
 and for a little while, had been a king, as this man was, 
 morning after morning ; and he fathomed the depths of the 
 abyss into which he was falling. He had bitter thoughts ! 
 How many unshed tears were crowded in those two hours ! 
 How many petitions he put up that this man might incline 
 a favorable ear ; for, beneath the husk of popularity-seeking 
 good-nature, Birotteau instinctively felt that there lurked in 
 Keller an insolent, tyrannous, and violent temper, a brutal 
 craving to domineer, which alarmed his meek nature. At 
 length, when but ten or a dozen people were left, Birotteau 
 determined to start up when the outer door of the audience 
 chamber creaked on its hinges, and to put himself on a level 
 with the great public speaker with the remark, "I am Birot- 
 teau ! " The first grenadier who flung himself into the re- 
 doubt at Borodino did not display more courage than the per- 
 fumer when he made up his mind to carry out this manoeuvre. 
 
 " After all," said he to himself, " I am his deputy-mayor," 
 and he rose to give his name. 
 
 Francois Keller's countenance took on an amiable expres- 
 sion ; clearly he meant to be civil ; he glanced at Birotteau's 
 red ribbon, turned, opened the door of his cabinet, and indi- 
 cated the way ; but stayed behind himself for a while to speak 
 with two new-comers who sprang up the staircase with tem- 
 pestuous speed. 
 
 " Decazes would like to speak with you," said one of these 
 two. 
 
 " It is a question of making an end of the Pavilion Marsan ! 
 The King sees clearly. He is coming over to us ! " cried the 
 Other. 
 
 •'We will all go to the Chambers," returned the banker, 
 
 H 
 
216 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 and he entered his cabinet with the air of the frog that would 
 fain be an ox. 
 
 "How can he think of his own affairs?" thought Cesar, 
 overwhelmed. 
 
 The radiance of the sun of superiority dazzled the per- 
 fumer, as the light blinds those insects which can only exist 
 in the shade or in the dusk of a summer night. 
 
 Birotteau saw a copy of the Budget lying on a vast table, 
 among piles of pamphlets and volumes of the " Moniteur," 
 which lay open, displaying marked passages, past utterances 
 of a minister, which were shortly to be hurled at his head ; he 
 was to be made to eat his words amid the plaudits of a crowd 
 of dunces, incapable of comprehending that events modify 
 everything. On another table stood a collection of boxes 
 full of papers, a heap of memorials and projects, the thousand 
 and one reports confided to a man in whose exchequer every 
 nascent industry endeavors to dip. 
 
 The regal splendor of the cabinet, filled with pictures and 
 statues and works of art ; the litter on the mantel ; the accum- 
 ulations of documents relating to business concerns at home 
 and abroad, heaped up like bales of goods — all these things 
 impressed Birotteau ; he dwindled in his own eyes, his ner- 
 vousness increased, the blood ran cold in his veins. 
 
 On Francois Keller's desk there lay some bundles of bills, 
 letters of exchange, and circular-letters. To these the great 
 man addressed himself; and, as he swiftly put his signature to 
 those that required no examination, "To what do I owe the 
 honor of your visit, sir? asked he. 
 
 At these words addressed to him alone, by the voice that 
 spoke to all Europe, while the restless hand never ceased to 
 traverse the paper, the poor perfumer felt as if a red-hot iron 
 had been thrust through his vitals. His face forthwith as- 
 sumed that ingratiating expression with which the banker had 
 grown familiar during ten years of experience ; the expres- 
 sion always meant that the wearers desired to involve the 
 
TO WHAT DO I OWE THE HONOR OE YOUR VISIT, SIR?' 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 217 
 
 house of Keller in some affair of great importance to the 
 would-be borrowers and to no one else, an expression which 
 shuts the banker's doors upon them at once. So Francois 
 Keller shot a glance at Cesar, a Napoleonic glance, which 
 seemed to go through the perfumer's head. This imitation 
 of their Emperor was a slight piece of affectation which 
 certain parvenus permitted themselves, though the false coin 
 was scarcely a passable copy of the true. For Cesar, of the 
 extreme Right in politics, the fanatical partisan of the Govern- 
 ment, the factor in the monarchical election, that glance was 
 like the stamp which a custom-house officer sets on a bale of 
 goods. 
 
 " I do not want to take up your minutes unduly, sir; I will 
 be brief. I have come on a simple matter of private business, 
 to know if you will open a loan account with me. As an ex- 
 judge of the Tribunal of Commerce and a man well-known 
 at the Bank of France, you can understand that if I had bills 
 to discount I should only have to apply to the bank where 
 you are a governor. I have had the honor of being associ- 
 ated in my functions at the Tribunal with Monsieur le Baron 
 Thibon, the head of the bill-discounting department, and he 
 certainly would not refuse me. But, as I have never tried to 
 borrow money nor accepted a bill, my signature is unknown, 
 and you know how many difficulties lie in the way of nego- 
 tiating a loan in such a case " 
 
 Keller moved his head ; and Birotteau, construing this as a 
 sign of impatience, continued — 
 
 " The fact is, sir, that I have engaged in a speculation in 
 land, outside my own line of business " 
 
 Francois Keller, still signing and reading, and, to all ap- 
 pearance, paying no attention to Cesar's remarks, turned at 
 this, with a sign that he was following what was said. Birot- 
 teau took heart ; his affair was in a promising way, he thought, 
 he breathed more freely. 
 
 " Go on ; I understand," said Keller good-humoredly. 
 
218 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "lam the purchaser of one-half of the building land neai 
 the Madeleine." 
 
 "Yes. I heard from Nucingen of the big affair that the 
 firm of Claparon is negotiating." 
 
 " Well," the perfumer went on, " a loan of a hundred thou- 
 sand francs, secured on my share of the land or on my busi- 
 ness, would suffice to tide me over until I can touch the 
 profits which must shortly accrue from a venture in my own 
 way of business. If necessary, I would cover the amount by 
 bills drawn on a new firm — Popinot & Company — a young 
 house which " 
 
 Keller seemed to be very little interested in this description 
 of the firm of Popinot, and Birotteau gathered that he had 
 somehow taken a wrong turn ; he stopped ; then, in dismay at 
 the pause, he went on again — 
 
 "As for the interest, we " 
 
 " Yes, yes," said the banker ; " the thing may be arranged, 
 and do not doubt my desire to meet you in the matter. Oc- 
 cupied as I am, I have all the finances of Europe on my 
 hands, and the Chamber absorbs every moment of my time, 
 so you will not be surprised to hear that I leave the investiga- 
 tion of a vast amount of regular business to my managers. Go 
 downstairs and see my brother Adolphe ; explain the nature 
 of your guarantees to him ; and, if he assents, return here with 
 him to-morrow or the day after, at the time when I look into 
 affairs of this kind, at five o'clock in the morning. We shall 
 be proud and happy to receive your confidence ; you are one 
 of the consistent Royalists ; and your esteem is the more flat- 
 tering, since that politically we may find ourselves at enmity." 
 
 "Sir," said the perfumer, elated by this oratorical flourish, 
 " I am as deserving of the honor you do me as of the signal 
 
 mark of royal favor not unmerited by the discharge of 
 
 my functions at the Consular Tribunal, and by fighting for 
 the " 
 
 " Yes," continued the banker, " the reputation which you 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 219 
 
 enjoy is a passport, Monsieur Birotteau. You are sure to 
 propose nothing that is not feasible, and you can reckon upon 
 our cooperation." 
 
 A door, which Birotteau had not noticed, was opened, and 
 a woman entered ; it was Mme. Keller, one of the two daugh- 
 ters of the Comte de Gondreville, a peer of France. 
 
 " I hope I shall see you, dear, before you go to the Cham- 
 ber," said she. 
 
 "It is two o'clock," exclaimed the banker; "the battle 
 has begun. Excuse me, sir, the question is one of upsetting a 
 
 ministry " he went as far as the door of the salon with the 
 
 perfumer, and bade a man in livery : "Take this gentleman to 
 Monsieur Adolphe." 
 
 Birotteau traversed a labyrinth of staircases on the way to 
 a private office, less sumptuous than the cabinet of the head 
 of the firm, but more business-like in appearance ; he was 
 borne along by an if, that easiest pacing mount that hope can 
 furnish ; he stroked his chin, and thought that the great man's 
 compliments augured excellently well for his plans. It was 
 regrettable that a man so amiable, so capable, so great an 
 orator, should be inimical to the Bourbons. 
 
 Still full of these illusions, he entered M. Adolphe Keller's 
 sanctum, a bare, chilly-looking room. Dingy curtains hung 
 in the windows, the floor was covered with a much-worn 
 carpet, and the furniture consisted of a couple of cylinder 
 desks and one or two office chairs. This cabinet was to the 
 first as the kitchen to the dining-room, as the factory to the 
 store. Here matters of business were penetrated to the core, 
 here enterprises were analyzed, and preliminary charges levied 
 by the bank on all promising undertakings. Here originated 
 all those bold strokes for which the Kellers were so well known 
 in the highest commercial regions, when they would secure 
 and rapidly exploit a monopoly in a few days. Here, too, 
 omissions on the part of the legislature received careful atten- 
 tion, and unblushing demands were made for "sops in the 
 
220 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 pan " (in the language of the Stock Exchange) ; that is to say, 
 for money paid in consideration for small indefinable services, 
 for standing godfather to an infant enterprise, and so accred- 
 iting it. Here were woven those tissues of fraud after a legal 
 pattern, which consist in investing money as a sleeping- 
 partner in some concern in temporary difficulties, with a view 
 to slaughtering the affair as soon as it succeeds ; the brothers 
 would lie in wait, call in their capital at a critical moment — 
 an ugly manoeuvre that put the whole thing in their own 
 hands and involved the hapless active partner in their covet- 
 ous toils. 
 
 The two brothers adopted separate rdles. On high stood 
 Francois, the politician, the man of brilliant parts; he bore 
 himself like a king, he distributed favors and promises, he 
 made himself agreeable to every one. Everything was easy 
 when you spoke with him ; he did business royally ; he poured 
 out the heady wine of fair words, which intoxicated inexperi- 
 enced speculators and promoters of new schemes ; he devel- 
 oped their own ideas for them. But Adolphe below absolved 
 his brother on the score of political preoccupations, and clev- 
 erly raked in the winnings ; he was the responsible brother, 
 the one who was hard to persuade, so that there were two 
 words to every bargain concluded with that treacherous house, 
 and not seldom the gracious Yes of the sumptuous cabinet was 
 transmuted into a dry No in Adolphe's office. 
 
 This manoeuvre of delay gained time for reflection, and 
 often served to amuse less skillful competitors. 
 
 Adolphe Keller was chatting with the famous Palma, the 
 trusted counselor of the house, who withdrew as Birotteau 
 came in. The perfumer explained his errand ; and Adolphe, 
 the more cunning of the two brothers, lynx-natured, keen- 
 eyed, thin-lipped, hard-favored, listened to him with lowered 
 head, watching the applicant over his spectacles, eying him 
 the while with what must be called the banker's gaze, in 
 which there is something of the vulture, something of the 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 221 
 
 attorney ; a gaze at once covetous and cold, clear and inscru- 
 table, sombre and ablaze with light. 
 
 tl Will you be so good as to send me the documents relative 
 to this Madeleine affair," said he, "since therein lies the 
 guarantee of the account ; they must be examined into before 
 we begin to discuss the case on its merits. If the affair is 
 satisfactory, we might possibly, to avoid encumbering you, be 
 content to take part of the profits instead of discount." 
 
 "Come," said Birotteau to himself, as he went home 
 again, "I see his drift. Like the hunted beaver, I must part 
 with some Of my skin. It is better to lose your fleece than to 
 lose your life." 
 
 He went upstairs in high spirits, and his mirth had a 
 genuine ring. 
 
 " I am saved," he told Cesarine ; " Keller will open a loan 
 account with me." 
 
 But not until the 29th of December could Birotteau gain 
 admittance a second time to Adolphe Keller's office. On the 
 occasion of his first call, Adolphe was six leagues away from 
 Paris, looking at some property which the great orator had a 
 mind to buy. The next time both the Kellers were closeted 
 together, and could see no one that morning ; it was a ques- 
 tion of a tender for a loan proposed by the Chambers, and 
 they begged M. Birotteau to return on the following Friday. 
 These delays were heartbreaking to the perfumer ; but Friday 
 came at last, and Birotteau sat by the fire in the office, with 
 the daylight falling full on his face, and Adolphe Keller, 
 sitting opposite, was saying, as he held up the notarial deeds, 
 •' These are all right, sir ; but what proportion of the pur- 
 chase-money have you paid ? " 
 
 "A hundred and forty thousand francs." 
 
 " In money? " 
 
 "In bills." 
 
 " Have they been met? " 
 
 "They have not fallen due." 
 
22'2 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "But suppose that you have given more for the land than 
 it is actually worth (taking it at its present value), where is 
 our guarantee? We should have no security but the good 
 opinion which you inspire and the esteem in which you are 
 held. Business is not based on sentiment. If you had paid 
 two hundred thousand francs, supposing that you have 
 given too much by a hundred thousand francs to get pos- 
 session of the land, we should in that case have at any rate 
 a guarantee of a hundred thousand francs for the hundred 
 thousand you want to borrow. The result for us would 
 be that we should be owners of the land in your place, by 
 paying your share ; in that case we must know if it is a 
 good piece of business. For if we are to wait five years to 
 double our capital, it would better to put the money out to 
 interest through the bank. So many things may happen. 
 You want to draw an accommodation bill to meet your bills 
 when they fall due ? It is a risky thing to do ! You go back 
 to take a leap better. This is not in our way of business." 
 
 For Birotteau, it was as if the executioner had touched his 
 shoulder with the branding-iron. He lost his head. 
 
 "Let us see," said Adolphe, "my brother takes a warm 
 interest in you ; he spoke of you to me. Let us look into 
 your affairs," he added, and he glanced at the perfumer with 
 the expression of a courtesan pressed for a quarter's rent. 
 
 Birotteau became a Molineux, and acted the part of the 
 man at whom he had laughed so loftily. Kept in play by the 
 banker, who took a pleasure in unwinding the skein of the 
 poor man's thoughts, and showed himself as expert in the art 
 of examining a merchant as the elder Popinot was skilled in 
 unloosing a criminal's tongue, Cesar told the story of his 
 business career ; he brought the Pate des Sultanes and the 
 Toilet Lotion upon the scene ; he gave a complete account of 
 his dealings with Roguin, and, finally, of the lawsuit with 
 regard to that mortgage from which he had reaped no benefit. 
 He saw Keller's musing smile and jerk of the head from time 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 223 
 
 to time, and said to himself, "■ He is giving an ear to me ! 
 He is interested; I shall have my loan!" and Adolphe 
 Keller was laughing at Birotteau, as Birotteau himself had 
 laughed at Molineux. Carried away by the impulse of loqua- 
 city peculiar to those people on whom misfortune has an 
 intoxicating effect, Cesar showed himself as he really was ; he 
 helped the banker to take his measure when he suggested as his 
 final expedient the Cephalic Oil and the firm of Popinot by 
 way of a guarantee. Led away by a delusive hope, he allowed 
 Adolphe Keller to fathom him and examine into his affairs, 
 until Adolphe Keller saw in the man before him a Royalist 
 blockhead on the brink of bankruptcy. Then, delighted at 
 the prospect of this failure of the deputy-mayor of his arron- 
 dissement, of a man whose party was in power, who had been 
 but lately decorated, Adolphe told Birotteau plainly that he 
 could neither open a loan account with him nor speak on his 
 behalf to the orator brother, the great Francois. If Francois 
 were inclined to extend an imbecile generosity to a political 
 adversary, and to come to the aid of a man who held opinions 
 diametrically opposed to his own, he, Adolphe, had no mind 
 that his brother should be a dupe ; he would do all that in 
 him lay to prevent his brother from holding out a helping 
 hand to one of Napoleon's old antagonists, to a man who was 
 wounded at Saint-Roch. Birotteau, exasperated at this, tried 
 to say something about covetousness in the high-places of the 
 financial world, of hard-heartedness and sham philanthropy; 
 but he was overcome with such terrible distress that he could 
 scarcely stammer out a few words about the institution of the 
 Bank of France, to which the Kellers had recourse. 
 
 "But the Bank of France will never make an advance 
 which a private bank declines," said Adolphe Keller. 
 
 "It has always seemed to me," said Birotteau, "that the 
 bank was not fulfilling the purpose for which it was estab- 
 lished, when the governors congratulate themselves on a 
 balance-sheet in which they have only lost one or two hun- 
 
224 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 dred thousand francs in transactions with the mercantile 
 world of Paris ; it is the province of the bank to watch over 
 and foster trade." 
 
 Adolphe began to smile, and rose to his feet like a man 
 who is bored. 
 
 " If the bank began to finance all the men in difficulties 
 on 'Change, where rascality congregates in the slipperiest 
 places of the financial world, the bank would file her schedule 
 before a year was out. The bank is hard put to it as it is to 
 guard against accommodation bills and fraudulent letters of 
 exchange, and how would it be possible to examine into the 
 affairs of every one who should be minded to apply for assist- 
 ance? " 
 
 " I want ten thousand francs for to-morrow, Saturday the 
 30th; and where are they to come from ? " Birotteau asked 
 himself, as he crossed the court. 
 
 When the 31st is a holiday, payment is due on the 30th, 
 according to custom. Cesar's eyes were so full of tears that, 
 as he reached the great gateway, he scarcely saw a handsome 
 English horse, covered with foam, that pulled up sharply at 
 the gate, and one of the neatest cabriolets to be seen in the 
 streets of Paris. He would fain have been run over by the 
 cabriolet ; it would be an accidental death, and the confusion 
 in his affairs would have been set down to the suddenness of 
 the catastrophe. He did not recognize du Tillet's slender 
 figure in faultless morning dress, or see him fling the reins to 
 his servant and put a rug over the back of the thoroughbred. 
 
 "What brings you here?" asked du Tillet, addressing his 
 old master. 
 
 Du Tillet knew quite well why Birotteau had come. The 
 Kellers had made inquiries of Claparon, and Claparon, taking 
 his cue from du Tillet, had blighted the perfumer's old- 
 established business reputation. The tears in the unlucky 
 merchant's eyes told the tale sufficiently plain, in spite of 
 his sudden effort to keep them back. 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 225 
 
 " Perhaps you have been asking these Turks to oblige you 
 in some way," said du Tillet, "cut-throats of commerce that 
 they are, who have played many a mean trick ; they will 
 make a corner in indigo, for instance ; they lower rice, for- 
 cing holders to sell cheap, so that they can get the game into 
 their own hands and control the market ; they are inhuman 
 pirates, who know neither law, nor faith, nor conscience. 
 You cannot know what things they are capable of doing. 
 They will open a loan account with you if you have some 
 promising bit of business ; and, as soon as you have gone too 
 far to draw back, they will pull you up and put pressure upon 
 you till you make the whole affair over to them for next to noth- 
 ing. Pretty stories they could tell you at Havre and Bordeaux 
 and Marseilles about the Kellers ! Politics are a cloak that 
 covers a lot of dirty doings, I can tell you ! So I make them 
 useful without scruple. Let us take a turn or two, my dear 
 Birotteau. Joseph, walk the horse up and down, he is over- 
 heated, and a thousand crowns is a big investment in horse- 
 flesh." 
 
 He turned toward the boulevard. 
 
 " Now, my dear master (for you used to be my master), is 
 it money that you need ? And they have asked you for secu- 
 rity, the wretches! Well, for my own part, I know you ; and 
 I can offer to give you cash against your bills. I have made 
 my money honorably and with unheard-of toil. I went in 
 quest of fortune to Germany ! At this time of day, I may tell 
 you this — that I bought up the King's debts there for forty 
 per cent, of their value ; your guarantee was very useful to me 
 then, and I am grateful. If you want ten thousand francs, 
 they are at your service." 
 
 " What ! du Tillet," cried Cesar, "do you really mean it? 
 Are you not making game of me? Yes, I am a little pressed 
 for money, just for the moment " 
 
 " I know ; Roguin's affair," returned du Tillet. "Eh ! yes. 
 I myself have been let in there for ten thousand francs, which 
 15 
 
226 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 the old rogue borrowed of me to run away with ; but Madame 
 Roguin will repay the money out of her claims on his estate. 
 I advised her, poor thing, not to be so foolish as to give up 
 her fortune to pay debts contracted for a mistress ; it would be 
 very well if she could pay them all, but how is she to make 
 distinctions in favor of this or that creditor to the prejudice 
 of others? You are no Roguin ; I know you," continued du 
 Tillet ; " you would rather blow your brains out than cause 
 me to lose a sou. Here we are in the Rue de la Chaussee- 
 d'Antin ; come up and see me." 
 
 It pleased the young upstart to take his old employer, not 
 through the offices, but by way of the private entry, and to walk 
 deliberately, so as to give him a full view of a handsome and 
 luxuriously furnished dining-room, adorned with pictures 
 bought in Germany ; through two drawing-rooms, more splen- 
 did and elegant than any rooms that Birotteau had yet seen 
 save in the Due de Lenoncourt's house. The good citizen 
 was dazzled by the gilding, the works of art, the costly knick- 
 knacks, precious vases, and countless little details. All the 
 glories of Constance's rooms paled before this display ; and 
 knowing, as he did, the cost of his own extravagance — 
 " Where can he have found all these millions? " said he to 
 himself. 
 
 Then they entered a bedroom, which as much surpassed his 
 wife's as the mansion of a great singer at the opera surpasses 
 the third-floor dwelling of some supernumerary. The ceiling 
 was covered with violet satin relieved with silken folds of white, 
 and the white fur of an ermine rug beside the bed brought out 
 in contrast all the violet tints of a carpet from the Levant. 
 The furniture and the accessories were novel in form, and 
 exhibited the verv refinement of extravagance. Birotteau 
 stopped in front of an exquisite timepiece, with a Cupid and 
 Psyche upon it, a replica of one which had just been made 
 for a celebrated banker. At length master and assistant 
 reached a cabinet, the dainty sanctum of a fashionable dandy, 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 227 
 
 redolent rather of love than of finance. It was Mrae. Roguin, 
 doubtless, who, in her gratitude for the care and thought given 
 to her fortune, had bestowed, by way of a thank-offering, the 
 paper-cutter of wrought gold, the carved malachite paper- 
 weights, and all the costly gewgaws of unbridled luxury. The 
 carpet, one of the richest products of the Belgian loom, was 
 as great a surprise to the eyes as its soft, thick pile to the tread. 
 Du Tillet drew a chair to the fire for the poor dazzled and be- 
 wildered perfumer. 
 
 " Will you breakfast with me ? " He rang the bell ; it was 
 answered by a servant, who was better dressed than the visitor. 
 
 "Ask Monsieur Legras to come up and then tell Joseph to 
 return, you will find him at the door of Keller's bank ; and 
 you can go to Adolphe Keller's house and say that, instead 
 of seeing him now, I shall wait till he goes on 'Change. 
 Send up breakfast, and be quick about it." 
 
 This talk dazed the perfumer. 
 
 " So he, du Tillet, makes that formidable Adolphe Keller 
 come to him at his whistle, as if he were a dog ! " 
 
 A hop-o'-my-thumb of a page came in and spread a table 
 so slender that it had escaped Birotteau's notice, setting 
 thereon a Strasbourg pie, a bottle of Bordeaux wine, and 
 various luxuries which did not appear on Birotteau's table 
 twice in a quarter, on high-days and holidays. Du Tillet 
 was enjoying himself. His feeling of hatred for the one man 
 who had a right to despise him diffused itself like a warm 
 glow through his veins, till the sight of Birotteau stirred in 
 the depths of his nature the same sensations that the spectacle 
 of a sheep struggling for its life against a tiger might give. 
 A generous thought flashed across him; he asked himself 
 whether he had not carried his vengeance far enough ; he 
 hesitated between the counsels of a newly awakened pity and 
 those of a hate grown drowsy. 
 
 " Commercially speaking, I can annihilate the man," he 
 thought ; " I have power of life and death over him, over his 
 
228 CESAR EIROTTEAU. 
 
 wife, who kept me on the rack, and his daughter, whose hand 
 once seemed to me to grasp a whole fortune. I have his 
 money as it is, so let us be content to let the poor simpleton 
 swim to the end of his tether, which I shall hold." 
 
 But honest folk are wanting in tact ; they do what seems 
 good to them without calculating its effect on others, because 
 they themselves are straightforward, and have no after- 
 thoughts. So Birotteau filled up the measure of his own mis- 
 fortune ; he irritated the tiger; all unwittingly he sent a shaft 
 home, and made an implacable enemy of him at a word, by 
 his praise, by giving expression to his honest thoughts, by the 
 sheer light-heartedness which is the gift of a blameless con- 
 science. The cashier came in ; and du Tillet said, looking 
 toward Cesar, " Monsieur Legras, bring me ten thousand 
 francs in cash, and a bill for the amount payable to my order 
 in ninety days by this gentleman, who is Monsieur Birotteau, 
 as you know." 
 
 Du Tillet waited on his guest, and poured out a glass of 
 Bordeaux wine for him ; and Birotteau, who thought himself 
 saved, laughed convulsively, fingered his watch-chain, and 
 did not touch the food until his ex-assistant said, " You do 
 not eat." In this way he laid bare the depths of the gulf 
 into which du Tillet's hand had plunged him, while the hand 
 which had drawn him out was still stretched over him, and 
 might yet plunge him back again. When the cashier re- 
 turned, and the bill had been accepted, and Cesar felt the ten 
 bank-notes in his pocket, he could no longer contain his joy. 
 But a moment ago the news that he could not meet his en- 
 gagements seemed about to be published abroad through his 
 quarter, the bank must know it, he must confess that he was 
 ruined to his wife ; now everything was safe ! The joy of 
 his deliverance was as keen as the torture of impending bank- 
 ruptcy had been. Tears filled the poor man's eyes in spite 
 of himself. 
 
 "What can be the matter, my dear master?" asked du 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 229 
 
 Tillet. "Would you not do to-morrow for me what I am 
 doing to-day for you? Isn't it as simple as saying good- 
 day?" 
 
 " Du Tillet," said the worthy man, with solemn emphasis, 
 as he rose and took his ex-assistant by the hand, "I restore 
 you to your old place in my esteem." 
 
 " What ! had I forfeited it ? " asked du Tillet ; and, for all 
 his prosperity, he felt this rude home-thrust, and his color 
 rose. 
 
 " Forfeited not exactly that," said Birotteau, thunder- 
 struck by his folly ; " people talked about you and Madame 
 
 Roguin. The devil ! another man's wife " 
 
 • "You are beating about the bush, old boy," thought du 
 Tillet, in an old phrase learned in his earlier days. 
 
 And even as that thought crossed his mind, he returned to 
 his old design. He would lay this virtue low, he would 
 trample it under foot ; all Paris should point the finger of 
 scorn at the honest and honorable man who had caught him, 
 du Tillet, with his hand in the till. Every hatred of every 
 kind, political or private, between woman and woman, or be- 
 tween man and man, dates from some similar detection. There 
 is no cause for hate in compromised interests, in a wound, nor 
 even in a box on the ear ; such injuries as these are not irre- 
 parable. But to be found out in some base piece of iniquity, 
 
 to be caught in the act ! The duel that ensues between 
 
 the criminal and the discoverer of the crime cannot but be to 
 the death. 
 
 "Oh ! Madame Roguin," said du Tillet laughingly, " but 
 isn't that rather a feather in a young man's cap? I under- 
 stand you, my dear master, they must have told you that he 
 lent me money. Well, on the contrary, it is I who have re- 
 established her finances, which were curiously involved in her 
 husband's affairs. My fortune has been honestly made, as I 
 have just told you. I had nothing, as you know. Young 
 men sometimes find themselves in terrible straits, and in dire 
 
230 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 need one may strain a point ; but if, like the Republic, one 
 has made a forced loan now and again, why, one returns it 
 afterward, and is as honest as France herself." 
 
 "Just so," said Cesar. " My boy — God — Isn't it Voltaire 
 who says — 
 
 " ' He made of repentance the virtue of mortals ? ' " 
 
 "So long as one does not take his neighbor's money in a 
 base and cowardly way," du Tillet continued, smarting once 
 more under this application of verse ; " as if you, for instance, 
 were to fail before the three months are out, and it would 
 
 be all up with my ten thousand francs " 
 
 "I fail?" cried Birotteau (he had taken three glasses of 
 wine, and happiness had gone to his head). " My opinions 
 of bankruptcy are well known. A failure is commercial 
 death. I should die." 
 
 " Long life to you ! " said du Tillet. 
 
 '■', To your prosperity ! " returned the perfumer. " Why do 
 you not come to me for your perfumery ? " 
 
 "Upon my word," said du Tillet, "I confess that I am 
 afraid to meet Madame Cesar, she always made an impression 
 
 upon me ; and if you were not my master, faith, I " 
 
 " Oh ! you are not the first who has thought her handsome, 
 and wanted her, but she loves me ! Well, du Tillet, my 
 friend, do not do things by halves ! " 
 "What?" 
 
 Birotteau explained the affair of the building land, and du 
 Tillet opened his eyes, complimented Cesar upon his acumen 
 and foresight, and spoke highly of the prospects. 
 
 "Oh, well, I am much pleased to have your approbation; 
 you are supposed to have one of the longest heads in the bank- 
 ing line, du Tillet ! You can negotiate a loan from the Bank 
 of France for me until the Cephalic Oil has made its way." 
 
 "I can send you to the firm of Nucingen," answered du 
 Tillet, inwardly vowing that his victim should dance the whole 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 231 
 
 mazy round of bankruptcy. He sat down to his desk to write 
 the following letter to the Baron de Nucingen : 
 
 " My dear Baron : — The bearer of this letter is M. Cesar 
 Birotteau, deputy-mayor of the second arrondissement, and 
 one of the best known manufacturing perfumers in Paris. He 
 desires to be put in communication with you ; you need not 
 hesitate to do anything that he asks of you, and by obliging 
 him you oblige your friend, 
 
 "F. du Tillet." 
 
 Du Tillet put no dot over the i in his name. Among his 
 business associates this clerical error was a sign which they all 
 understood, and it was always made of set purpose ; it an- 
 nulled the heartiest recommendations, the warmest praise and 
 instance in the body of the letter. On receiving such a note 
 as this, where the very exclamation-marks breathed entreaty, 
 in which du Tillet, figuratively speaking, went down on his 
 knees, his associates knew that the writer had been unable to 
 refuse the letter which was to be regarded as null and void. 
 At sight of that undotted i, the receiver of the letter forth- 
 with dismissed the applicant with empty compliments and 
 vain promises. Not a few men of considerable reputation in 
 the world are put off like children by this trick ; for men of 
 business, bankers, bill-discounters, and advocates have one 
 and all two methods of signing their names; one is a dead 
 letter, the other living. The shrewdest are deceived by it. 
 You must have felt the double effect of a cold communication 
 and a warm one to discover the stratagem. 
 
 "You are saving me, du Tillet," said Cesar, as he read the 
 present specimen. 
 
 " Oh dear me," said du Tillet, "just ask Nucingen for the 
 money, and when he has read my letter he will let you have 
 all that you want. Unluckily, my own capital is locked up 
 at present, or I would not send you to the prince of bankers, 
 
232 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 for the Kellers are dwarfs compared with Nucingen. He is a 
 second Law. With my bill of exchange, you will be ready 
 for the 15th, and after that we will see. Nucingen and I are 
 the best friends in the world ; he would not disoblige me for 
 a million." 
 
 "It is as good as a guarantee," said Birotteau to himself, 
 and as he went away his heart thrilled with gratitude for du 
 Tillet. "Ah, well," he thought, "a. good deed never loses 
 its reward," and he fell incontinently to moralizing. Yet 
 there was one bitter drop in his cup of happiness. He had, 
 it is true, prevented his wife from looking into the ledgers for 
 several days. Celestin must undertake the book-keeping in 
 addition to his work, with some help from his master; he 
 could have wished his wife and daughter to remain upstairs in 
 possession of the beautiful rooms which he had arranged and 
 furnished for them ; but when the first little glow of enjoy- 
 ment was over, Mme. Cesar would have died sooner than re- 
 nounce the personal supervision of the details of the business, 
 "the handle of the frying-pan," to use her own Tourangeau 
 expression. 
 
 Birotteau was at his wits' end ; he had done everything that 
 he could think of to conceal the symptoms of his embarrass- 
 ment from her eyes. Constance had strongly disapproved of 
 sending in the accounts ; she had scolded the assistants, and 
 asked Celestin if he meant to ruin the house, believing that 
 the idea was Celestin's own. And Celestin meekly bore the 
 blame by Birotteau's orders. In the assistant's opinion, Mme. 
 Cesar governed the perfumer ; and, though it is possible to 
 deceive the public, those of the household always know who 
 is the real power in it. The confession was bound to come, 
 and that soon, for du Tillet's loan would appear in the books, 
 and must be accounted for. 
 
 As Birotteau came in at the door he saw, not without a 
 shudder, that Constance was at her post, going through the 
 amounts due to be paid, and doubtless balancing the books. 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 233 
 
 " How will you pay these to-morrow?" she asked in his 
 ear, when he took his place beside her. 
 
 "With money," he replied, drawing the bank-notes from 
 his pocket, with a sign to Celestin to take them. 
 
 "But where do those notes come from?" 
 
 "I will tell you the whole story to-night. Celestin, enter 
 in the bill-book a bill for ten thousand francs due at the end 
 of March, to order of du Tillet." 
 
 " Du Tillet ! " echoed Constance, terror-stricken. 
 
 "I am just going to Popinot," said Cesar. "It is too 
 bad of me ; I have not been round to see him yet. Is his oil 
 selling?" 
 
 " The three hundred bottles which he brought are all sold 
 out." 
 
 " Birotteau, do not go out again ; I have something to say 
 to you," said Constance. She caught her husband's arm, 
 and drew him to her room in a hurry, which, under any 
 other circumstances, would have been ludicrous. " Du Til- 
 let!" she exclaimed, when the husband and wife were to- 
 gether, and she had made sure that there was no one but 
 Cesarine present; " Du Tillet robbed us of three thousand 
 francs ! And you are doing business with du Tillet ! A 
 monster who — who tried to seduce me," she said in his ear. 
 
 "A bit of boyish folly," said Birotteau, suddenly trans- 
 formed into a freethinker. 
 
 " Listen to me, Birotteau ; you are falling out of your old 
 ways ; you never go to the factory now. There is something, 
 I can feel it. Tell me about it ; I want to know everything." 
 
 "Well, then," said Birotteau, "we have nearly been ruined ; 
 we were ruined, in fact, this very morning, but everything is 
 set straight again," and he told the dreadful story of the past 
 two weeks. 
 
 " So that was the cause of your illness ! " exclaimed Con- 
 stance. 
 
 "Yes, mamma," cried Cesarine. "Father has been very 
 
234 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 brave, I am sure. If I were loved as he loves you, I would 
 not wish more. He thought of nothing but your trouble." 
 
 " My dream has come true," said the poor wife, and pale, 
 haggard, and terror-stricken, she sank down upon the sofa by 
 the fireside. "I foresaw all this. I told you so that fatal 
 night, in the old room which you have pulled down; we shall 
 have nothing left but our eyes to cry over our losses. Poor 
 Cesarine, I " 
 
 " Come, now; so that is what you say ! " cried Birotteau. 
 " I stand in need of courage, and you are damping it ! " 
 
 "Forgive me, dear," said Constance, grasping Cesar's 
 hand in hers, with a tender pressure that went to the poor 
 man's. heart. "I was wrong; the misfortune has befallen us, 
 I will be dumb, resigned, and strong to bear it. No, Cesar, 
 you shall never hear a complaint from me." 
 
 She sprang into Cesar's arms, and said, while her tears fell 
 fast, "Take courage, dear. I should have courage enough 
 for two, if it were needed." 
 
 " There is the Oil, dear wife; the Oil will save us." 
 
 " May God protect us ! " cried Constance. 
 
 "Will not Anselme come to father's assistance?" asked 
 Cesarine. 
 
 " I will go to him now," exclaimed Cesar. His wife's heart- 
 breaking tone had been too much for his feelings ; it seemed 
 that he did not know her yet, after nineteen years of married 
 life. "Do not be afraid, Constance; there is no fear now. 
 Here, read Monsieur du Tillet's letter to Monsieur de Nu- 
 cingen ; he is sure to lend us the money. Between then and 
 now I shall have gained my lawsuit. Beside," he added (a 
 lying hope to fit the circumstances), " there is your Uncle 
 Pillerault. Courage is all that is wanted." 
 
 "If that were all?" said Constance, smiling. 
 
 Birotteau, with the great weight taken off his mind, walked 
 like a man set free from prison ; but within himself he felt the 
 indefinable exhaustion consequent on mental exertion which 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 235 
 
 had made heavy demands upon his nervous system and re- 
 quired more than the daily allowance of will-power ; he was 
 conscious of the deficit when a man has drawn, as it were, 
 on the capital of his vitality. Birotteau was growing old 
 ahead v. 
 
 J 
 
 Popinot's store in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants had under- 
 gone great changes in the last two months. It had been re- 
 painted. The rows of bottles ensconced in the pigeon-hole 
 shelves, touched up with paint, rejoiced the eyes of every mer- 
 chant who knows the signs of prosperity. The floor of the 
 store was covered with packing-paper. The warehouse con- 
 tained certain casks of oil, for which the devoted Gaudissart 
 had procured an agency for Popinot. The books were kept 
 upstairs in the counting-room. An old servant had been in- 
 stalled as housekeeper to Popinot and his three assistants. 
 
 Popinot himself, penned in a cash desk in the corner of the 
 store screened off by a green partition, was usually arrayed in 
 a green baize apron and a pair of green-cloth oversleeves, 
 when he was not buried, as at this moment, in a pile of papers. 
 The post had just come in, and Popinot, with a pen behind 
 his ear, was taking in handfuls of business letters and orders, 
 when at the words, "Well, my boy?" he raised his head, 
 saw his late employer, locked his cash desk, and came for- 
 ward joyously. The tip of the young man's nose was red, 
 for there was no fire in the store and the street-door stood 
 wide open. 
 
 "I began to fear that you were never coming to see me," 
 he answered respectfully. 
 
 The assistants hurried in, eager to see the great man of the 
 perfumery trade, their own master's partner, the deputy-mayor 
 who wore the red ribbon. Cesar was flattered by this mute 
 homage, and he who had felt so small in the Kellers' bank 
 must needs imitate the Kellers. He stroked his chin, raised 
 himself on tiptoe once or twice with an air, and poured forth 
 his commonplaces. 
 
236 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " Well, my dear fellow, are you always up early in the morn- 
 ings?" asked he. 
 
 "No, we don't always go to bed," said Popinot; "one 
 must succeed by hook or by crook." 
 
 " Well, what did I tell you? My Oil is a fortune." 
 
 " Yes, sir, but the method of selling it counts for something; 
 I have given your diamond a worthy setting." 
 
 "As a matter of fact," said the perfumer, "how are we 
 getting on? Have any profits been made?" 
 
 "At the end of a month ! " cried Popinot. " Did you ex- 
 pect it ? My friend Gaudissart has not been gone much more 
 than three weeks. He took a post-chaise without telling me 
 about it. Oh ! he has thrown himself into this. We shall owe a 
 good deal to my uncle ! The newspapers will cost us twelve 
 thousand francs," he added in Birotteau's ear. 
 
 " The newspapers ! " cried the deputy-mayor. 
 
 " Have you not seen them? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Then you know nothing of this," said Popinot. " Twenty 
 thousand francs in placards, frames, and prints ! A hundred 
 thousand bottles paid for ! Oh ! it is nothing but sacrifice at 
 this moment. We are bringing out the Oil on a large scale. 
 If you had stepped over to the Faubourg, where I have often 
 been at work all night, you would have seen a little con- 
 trivance of mine for cracking the nuts, which is not to be 
 sneezed at. For my own part, during the last five days I 
 have made three thousand francs in commission on the drug- 
 gists' oils." 
 
 " What a good head ! " said Birotteau, laying his hand on 
 little Popinot's hair, and stroking it as if the young man had 
 been a little child, " I foresaw how it would be." 
 
 Several people came into the store. 
 
 " Good-by till Sunday; we are going to dine then with 
 your aunt, Madame Ragon," said Birotteau, and he left 
 Popinot to his own affairs. Evidently the roast which he had 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 237 
 
 scented was not yet ready to carve. " How extraordinary it 
 is ! An assistant becomes a merchant in twenty-four hours," he 
 thought, and Birotteau was as much taken aback by Popinot's 
 prosperity and self-possession as by du Tillet's luxurious rooms. 
 "Here is Anselme drawing himself up a bit when I put my 
 hand on his head, as if he were a Francois Keller already." 
 
 It did not occur to Birotteau that the assistants were look- 
 ing on, and that the head of an establishment must preserve 
 his dignity in his own house. Here, as in du Tillet's case, the 
 good man had made a blunder in the kindness of his heart, 
 and the real feeling expressed in that homely familiar way 
 would have mortified any one but Anselme. 
 
 The Sunday dinner-party at the Ragons' house was destined 
 to be the last festivity in the nineteen years of Cesar's married 
 life, the life which had been so completely happy. The 
 Ragons lived on the third floor of a quaint and rather stately 
 old house in the Rue du Petit-Bourbon-Saint-Sulpice. Over 
 the paneled walls of their rooms danced eighteen-century 
 shepherdesses in hooped petticoats, amid browsing eighteen- 
 century sheep ; and the old people themselves belonged to 
 the bourgeoisie of that bygone century, with its solemn 
 gravity, its quaint habits and customs, its respectful attitude 
 to the noblesse, its loyal devotion to church and King. 
 
 The timepieces, the linen, the plates and dishes, all the fur- 
 niture, in fact, had such an old-world air, that by very rea- 
 son of its antiquity it seemed new. The sitting-room, hung 
 with brocatelle damask curtains, contained a collection of 
 " duchesse " chairs and whatnots; and from the wall a 
 superb Popinot, Mme. Ragon's father, the alderman of San- 
 cerre, painted by Latour, smiled down upon the room like a 
 parvenu in all his glory. Mme. Ragon at home was incom- 
 plete without her tiny King Charles, who reposed with mar- 
 velous effect on her hard little rococo sofa, a piece of furni- 
 ture which certainly had never played the part of Crebillon's 
 sofa. 
 
238 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Among the Ragons' many virtues, the possession of old 
 wines arrived at perfect maturity was by no means the least 
 endearing; to say nothing of certain liqueurs of Mme. 
 Anfoux's, brought from the West Indies by the lovely Mme. 
 Ragon's admirers, sufficiently dogged to love on without 
 hope (so it was said). Wherefore the Ragons' little dinners 
 were highly appreciated. Jeannette, the old cook, served the 
 two old folk with a blind devotion ; for them she would have 
 stolen fruit to make preserves ; and, so far from investing her 
 money in the savings bank, she prudently put it in the lottery, 
 hoping one day to carry home the great prize to her master 
 and mistress. In spite of her sixty years, Jeannette, on 
 Sundays when they had company, superintended the dishes in 
 the kitchen and waited at table with a deft quickness which 
 would have given hints to Mile. Contat as Suzanne in the 
 "Marriage of Figaro." 
 
 This time the guests were ten in number — the elder Popinot, 
 Uncle Pillerault, Anselme, Cesar and his wife and daughter, 
 the three Matifats, and the Abbe Loraux. Mme. Matifat, first 
 introduced arrayed for the dance in her turban, now wore a 
 gown of blue velvet, thick cotton stockings, kid slippers, 
 green-fringed chamois-leather gloves, and a hat lined with 
 pink and adorned with blossoming auriculas. 
 
 Every one had arrived by five o'clock. ' The Ragons used 
 to beg their guests to be punctual ; and when the good folk 
 themselves were asked out to dinner, their friends were careful 
 to dine at the same hour, for at the age of seventy the diges- 
 tion does not take kindly to the new-fangled times and seasons 
 ordained by fashionable society. 
 
 Cesarine knew that Mme. Ragon would seat Anselme beside 
 her ; all women, even devotees, or the feeblest feminine in- 
 tellects, understand each other in the matter of a love affair. 
 The toilet of the perfumer's daughter was designed to turn 
 young Popinot's head. Constance, who had given up, not 
 without a pang, the idea of the notary, who for her was an 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 239 
 
 heir-presumptive to a throne, had helped Cesarine to dress, 
 certain bitter reflections mingling with her thoughts the while. 
 Foreseeing the future, she lowered the modest gauze kerchief 
 somewhat on Cesarine's shoulders, so as to display rather 
 more of their outline, as well as the throat on which the young 
 girl's head was set with striking grace. The Grecian bodice, 
 four or five folds crossing from left to right, gave short 
 glimpses of delicately rounded contours beneath ; and the 
 leaden-gray merino gown, with its flounces trimmed with 
 green ornaments, clearly defined a shape which had never 
 seemed so slender and so lissome. Gold filigree earrings hung 
 from her ears. Her hair, dressed high in Chinese style, was 
 drawn back from her face, so that the delicate freshness of its 
 surface and the dim tracery of the veins which suffused the 
 white velvet with the purest glow of life were apparent at a 
 glance. Indeed, Cesarine was so coquettishly lovely that 
 Mme. Matifat could not help saying so, without perceiving 
 that the mother and daughter had felt the necessity of be- 
 witching young Popinot. 
 
 Neither Birotteau, nor his wife, nor Mme. Matifat, nor any 
 one else, broke in upon the delicious talk between the two 
 young people ; love glowed within them as they spoke with 
 lowered voices in the draughty window-seat, where the cold 
 made a miniature northeaster. Moreover, the conversation 
 of their seniors grew animated when the elder Popinot let 
 something drop concerning Roguin's flight, saying that this 
 was the second notary-defaulter, and that hitherto such a 
 thing had been unknown. Mme. Ragon had touched her 
 brother's foot at the mention of Roguin, Pillerault had spoken 
 aloud to cover the judge's remark, and both looked signifi- 
 cantly from him to Mme. Birotteau. 
 
 " I know all," Constance said, and in her gentle voice there 
 was a note of pain. 
 
 " Oh, well then," said Mme. Matifat, addressing herself to 
 Birotteau, who humbly bent his head, "how much of your 
 
240 C£SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 money did he run away with ? To listen to the gossip, you 
 might be ruined." 
 
 " He had two hundred thousand francs of mine. As for 
 the forty thousand which he pretended to borrow for me from 
 one of his clients whose money he had squandered, we are 
 going to law about it." 
 
 "You will see that settled this coming week," said the 
 elder Popinot. "I thought that you would not mind my 
 explaining your position to the president ; he has ordered 
 Roguin's papers to be brought into the Council Chamber ; 
 on examination it will be discovered when the lender's capital 
 was embezzled, and Derville's allegations can be proved or 
 disproved. Derville is pleading in person, to save expense 
 to you." 
 
 " Shall we gain the day?" asked Mme. Birotteau. 
 
 "I do not know," Popinot answered. "Although I be- 
 long to the Chamber before which the case will come, I shall 
 refrain from deliberating upon it, even if I should be called 
 upon to do so." 
 
 "But can there be any doubt about such a straightforward 
 case?" asked Pillerault. "Ought not the deed to state that 
 the money was actually paid down, and must not the notaries 
 declare that they have seen it handed over ? Roguin would 
 go to the galleys if he fell into the hands of justice." 
 
 " In my opinion," the judge answered, " the lender should 
 look to Roguin's caution-money and the amount paid for the 
 practice for his remedy ; but sometimes, in still simpler cases 
 than this, the councilors at the Court-Royal have been divided 
 six against six." 
 
 " What is this, mademoiselle ; has Monsieur Roguin run 
 away?" asked Anselme, overhearing at last what was being 
 said. " Monsieur Cesar said nothing about it to me — to me 
 who would give my life for him " 
 
 Cesarine felt that the whole family was included in that 
 "for him ; " for if the girl's inexperience had not understood 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 241 
 
 the tone, she could not mistake the look that wrapped her in 
 a rosy flame. 
 
 " I was sure of it ; I told him so, but he hid it all from 
 mother, and told his secret to no one but me." 
 
 " You spoke to him of me in this matter," said Anselme; 
 " you read my heart, but do you read all that is there ? " 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 - " Oh ! I am very happy," said Anselme. " If you will re- 
 move all my fears, in a year's time I shall be so rich that your 
 father will not receive me so badly when I shall speak to him 
 then of our marriage. Five hours of sleep shall be enough 
 for me now of a night " 
 
 "Do not make yourself ill," said Cesarine, and no words 
 can reproduce the tones of her voice as she gave Anselme a 
 glance wherein all her thoughts might be read. . 
 
 "Wife," said Cesar, as they rose from table, "I think 
 those young people are in love." 
 
 "Oh, well, so much the better," said Constance gravely; 
 " my daughter will be the wife of a man who has a head on 
 his shoulders and plenty of energy. Brains are the best en- 
 dowment in a marriage." 
 
 She hurried away into Mme. Ragon's room. During dinner, 
 Cesar had let fall several remarks which had drawn a smile 
 from Pillerault and the judge, so plainly did they exhibit the 
 speaker's ignorance; and it was borne in upon the unfortunate 
 woman how little fitted her husband was to struggle with mis- 
 fortune. Constance's heart was heavv with unshed tears. 
 
 J 
 
 Instinctively she mistrusted du Tillet, for all mothers under- 
 stand timeo Danaos et dona ferentes without learning Latin. 
 She wept, and her daughter and Mme. Ragon, with their 
 arms about her, could not learn the cause of her trouble. 
 
 "It is the nerves," she said. 
 
 The rest of the evening was spent over the card-table by 
 the old people, and the younger ones played the blithe child- 
 ish games styled " innocent amusements," because they cover 
 16 
 
242 C&SAR B1R0TTEAU. 
 
 the innocent mischief of bourgeois lovers. The Matifats 
 joined the young people. 
 
 "Cesar," said Constance, as they went home again, "go 
 to Monsieur le Baron de Nucingen some time about the 8th, 
 so as to be sure some days beforehand that you can meet your 
 engagements on the 15th. If there should be any hitch in 
 your arrangements, would you raise a loan one day to pay 
 your debts between one day and the next? " 
 
 "I will go, wife," Cesar answered, and he grasped her 
 hand and Cesarine's in his as he added, " My darlings, I have 
 given you bitter New Year's gifts ! " And in the darkness 
 inside the cab the two women, who could not see the poor 
 perfumer, felt hot tears falling on their hands. 
 
 " Hope, dear," said Constance. 
 
 "Everything will go well, papa; Monsieur Popinot told 
 me that he would give his life for you." 
 
 "Forme — and for my family; that is it, is it not?" an- 
 swered Cesar, trying to speak gaily. 
 
 Cesarine pressed her father's hand in a way which told him 
 that Anselme was her betrothed. 
 
 Two hundred cards arrived for Birotteau on New Year's 
 Day and the two following days. This influx of tokens of 
 favor and of false friendship is a painful thing for people who 
 are being swept away by the current of misfortune. Three 
 times Cesar presented himself at the Baron de Nucingen's 
 hotel, and each time in vain. The New Year's festivities 
 sufficiently excused the banker's absence. But on the last 
 visit Birotteau went as far as the banker's private office and 
 learned from a German, the head clerk, that M. de Nucingen 
 had only returned from a ball given by the Kellers at five 
 o'clock that morning, and that he would not be visible until 
 half-past nine. Birotteau chatted with this man for nearly 
 half an hour, and contrived to interest the German in his 
 affairs. So, during the day, this cabinet minister of the 
 house of Nucingen wrote to tell Cesar that the Baron would 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 243 
 
 see him at twelve o'clock the following morning, January the 
 third. Although every hour brought its drop of bitterness, that 
 day went by with dreadful swiftness. The perfumer took a 
 cab and drove to the hotel ; the courtyard was already blocked 
 with carriages, and the poor honest man's heart was oppressed 
 by the splendors of that celebrated house. 
 
 "Yet he has failed twice," he said to himself, as he went 
 up the handsome staircase, with flowers on either side, and 
 through the luxuriously furnished rooms by which the Bar- 
 oness, Delphine de Nucingen, had made a name for herself. 
 The Baroness strove to rival the most splendid houses in the 
 Faubourg Saint-Germain — the houses of a circle into which 
 as yet she had no right of entry. 
 
 The Baron and his wife were at breakfast. In spite of the 
 number of those who were waiting in his offices for him, he 
 said that he would see du Tillet's friends at any hour. 
 Birotteau trembled with hope at the change which the 
 Baron's message produced on the contemptuous lackey's in- 
 solent face. 
 
 "Bardon me, my tear," said the Baron, addressing his 
 wife, as he rose to his feet and bowed slightly to Birotteau, 
 "dees shentleman ees ein goot Royaleest and de indimate 
 frient of du Tillet. Meinnesir Pirodot is teputy-mayor of de 
 second arrontussement, and gifs palls of Asiatic magnifi- 
 cence ; you vill make, no doubt, his agquaintance mit 
 Measure." 
 
 " I should be delighted to take lessons of Madame Birotteau, 
 
 for Ferdinand " (" Come," thought the perfumer, "she 
 
 calls him Ferdinand, plump and plain.") " Ferdinand spoke 
 of the ball to us with an admiration which says the more, 
 because Ferdinand is very critical ; everything must have 
 been perfect. Shall you soon give another ? " asked Mme. 
 de Nucingen, with a most amiable expression. 
 
 "Madame, poor folk like us seldom amuse ourselves," an- 
 swered the perfumer, doubtful whether the Baroness was 
 
244 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 laughing at him, or if her words were simply an empty com- 
 pliment. 
 
 " Meinnesir Crintod suberindended de alderations in your 
 house," said the Baron. 
 
 " Oh ! Grindot ! is he that nice young architect who has 
 just come back from Rome? " asked Delphine de Nucingen. 
 "I am quite wild about him; he is making lovely sketches 
 for my album. ' ' 
 
 No conspirator in the hands of the executioner in the 
 torture chamber of the Venetian Republic could have felt 
 less at his ease in the boots* than Birotteau in his ordinary 
 clothes at that moment. Every word had for him an ironical 
 sound. 
 
 "Ve too gif liddle palls here," the Baron continued, 
 giving the visitor a searching glance. " Eferypody does it, 
 you see ! ' ' 
 
 "Will Monsieur Birotteau join us at breakfast?" asked 
 Delphine, and indicated the luxuriously furnished table. 
 
 " I am here on business, Madame la Baronne, and " 
 
 " Yes ! " said the Baron. " Matame, vill you bermit us to 
 talk pizness ? " 
 
 Delphine made a little gesture of assent. "Are you about 
 to buy some perfumery?" she asked of the Baron, who 
 shrugged his shoulders, and turned in despair to Cesar. 
 
 " Du Dillet take de greatest inderest in you," said he. 
 
 "At last we are coming to the point," thought the hapless 
 merchant. 
 
 " Mit his ledder, your gretid mit my house is only limited 
 py de pounds of my own fortune." 
 
 The life-giving draught which the angel bore to Hagar in 
 the wilderness must surely have been like the dew which these 
 outlandish words effused through Birotteau's veins. The cun- 
 ning Baron clung of set purpose to the horrible accent of the 
 German Jew, who flatters himself that he has mastered an 
 
 * An instrument of torture in which the legs were crushed, 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 alien tongue ; for this system led to misapprehensions highly- 
 useful to him in the way of business. 
 
 "And you shall have ein gurrent aggount, dat is how we 
 vill do it," remarked the good, the great, and venerable 
 financier, with Alsatian geniality. 
 
 Birotteau's doubts were all laid to rest ; he had had experi- 
 ence of business, and he knew that a man never goes into 
 details unless he is disposed to oblige you and to carry out a 
 plan. 
 
 "I neet not say to you that the pank demands dree zigna- 
 tures off eferypody, gif de amount is large or small. So you 
 shall make all your pills to de order off our friend du Dillet, 
 who vill send dem de same day to de pank mit my zignature, 
 and py four o'glock you shall have de amount of de pills dat you 
 haf accept in de morning, and at pank rate. I do not vant gom- 
 mission nor discount — nor nossing ; for I shall haf de bleasure 
 
 of peing agreeable to you But I make one gondition ! " 
 
 he added, touching his nose with the forefinger of his left 
 hand and putting an indescribable cunning into the gesture. 
 
 "It is granted before you ask it, Monsieur le Baron," said 
 Birotteau, imagining that the banker meant to stipulate for a 
 share in the profits. 
 
 "Ein gondition to vich I addach de greatest price, because 
 I should like Montame de Nichinguenne to take, as she has 
 said, some lessons of Montame Pirodot." 
 
 " Monsieur le Baron, do not laugh at me, I beg." 
 
 " Meinnesir Pirodot," said the financier seriously, "it is 
 an agreement ; you are to infite us to your next pall. My 
 wife is chealous ; she would like to see your house, of vich 
 eferypody says such great dings." 
 
 " Monsieur le Baron ! " 
 
 "Oh! if you refuse me, no loan aggount! You are in 
 great favor. Yes ! I know dat de brefect of de Seine was 
 go to you." 
 
 " Monsieur le Baron ! " 
 
246 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "You had La Pillartiere, ein shentleman-in-ordinary to de 
 King; and de goot Fenteheine, for you were wounded — at 
 Sainte " 
 
 "On the 13th of Vendemiaire, Monsieur le Baron." 
 
 "You had Meinnesir de Lassebette, Meinnesir Fauqueleine 
 of de Agademie " 
 
 " Monsieur le Baron ! " 
 
 " Eh ! der teufel, do not be so modest, Meester Teputy- 
 Mayor; I haf heard dat de King said dat your pall " 
 
 "The King?" asked Birotteau, destined to learn no more, 
 for at this moment a young man came into the room ; the 
 sound of his footsteps, heard at a distance, had brought a 
 bright color into Delphine de Nucingen's fair and beautiful 
 face. 
 
 " Goot-tay, my tear de Marsay," said the Baron. "Take 
 my blace ; dere are a lot of beoples in my office, dey say. 
 Who knows why? De mines off Wortschinne are baying two 
 hunderd ber cent. ! Yes. I have receifed de aggounts. You 
 haf a hunderd tousand francs more of ingom dis year, Mon- 
 tame de Nichinguenne ; you could buy girdles and kew-kaws 
 to make yourself pretty, as if you neeted dem ! " 
 
 "Good heavens!" exclaimed Birotteau. "The Ragoni 
 have sold their shares ! " 
 
 " Who may these gentlemen be?" asked the young dandy 
 with a smile. 
 
 " Dere ! " said Nucingen, who had gone as far as the door 
 
 already, " it looks to me as if dose bersons Te Marsay, 
 
 dis is Meinnesir Pirodot, your berfumer, who gifs palls mit 
 Asiatic magnificence, and has been degoraded py de King 
 and " l 
 
 De Marsay, taking up his eyeglass, remarked, "Ah ! to be 
 sure. I thought that the face was familiar. Then are you 
 about to perfume your affairs with some efficacious oil, to make 
 them run smoothly ? " 
 
 " Ach ! veil, dose Rakkons had an aggount mit me," the 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 247 
 
 Baron went on. "I put dem in de vay of ein fortune, and 
 dey could not vait one more day for it." 
 
 "Monsieur le Baron ! " cried Birotteau. 
 
 The worthy perfumer found himself very much in the dark 
 about his affairs, and fled after the banker without taking 
 leave of the Baroness or of de Marsay. M. de Nucingen was 
 on the lowest step of the stairs, but even as he reached the 
 door of his office, Birotteau was beside him. As he turned 
 the handle he saw the despairing gesture of the poor creature, 
 for whom the gulf was yawning, and said — 
 
 "Eh! it is understood, is it not? See du Dillet, and 
 arranche it all mit him." 
 
 It occurred to Birotteau that de Marsay might have some 
 influence with the Baron ; he darted upstairs with the speed 
 of a swallow, and slipped into the dining-room where, by 
 rights, the Baroness and de Marsay should have been, for he 
 had left Delphine waiting for her coffee and cream. The 
 coffee indeed was now waiting, but the Baroness and the young 
 dandy had vanished ; the servant looked amused at Birotteau's 
 astonishment, and there was nothing for it but to go more 
 leisurely downstairs again. From the Nucingens' hotel, he 
 went at once to du Tillet, only to hear that he was at Mme. 
 Roguin's house in the country. He took a cab, and paid an 
 extra fare to be driven to Nogent-sur-Marne as quickly as if he 
 had traveled post. But at Nogent-sur-Marne the porter told 
 him that Monsieur and Madame had set out for Paris, and 
 Birotteau returned quite tired out. 
 
 When he told his wife and daughter the story of his excur- 
 sion, he was amazed to receive the sweetest consolation and 
 assurances that all would go well from Constance, who had 
 always taken all the little ups and downs of business as occa- 
 sions on which to utter her boding cries. 
 
 At seven o'clock the next morning, Birotteau took up his 
 position before du Tillet'sdoor in the dim light. He begged 
 the porter to put him into communication with du Tillet's 
 
 i 
 
248 CESAR BIROTTEAU: 
 
 man, and, by dint of slipping ten francs into the porter's 
 hands, obtained the favor of an interview with du Tillet's 
 man ; of him he asked to give him an interview with du Til- 
 let as soon as du Tillet should be visible, and to that end a 
 couple of gold-pieces found their way into the possession of 
 du Tillet's men. By way of these little sacrifices and great 
 humiliations, common to courtiers and petitioners, he attained 
 his end. At half-past eight, when his ex-assistant had slipped 
 on a dressing-gown and shaken off the confused ideas of a 
 man awakened from sleep, had yawned, stretched himself, 
 and asked pardon of his old master, Birotteau found himself 
 face to face with the tiger thirsting for revenge, the man 
 whom he was fain to consider as his one friend in the world. 
 " Do not mind me," said Birotteau, replying to the apology. 
 "What do you want, my good Cesar?'''' asked du Tillet; 
 and C6sar, not without terrible palpitations, gave the Baron 
 de Nucingen's answer and demands to an inattentive listener, 
 who looked about for the bellows, and scolded his manservant 
 for taking so long over lighting the fire. 
 
 Cesar did not notice at first that, if the master was not 
 heedful, the man was interested ; but seeing this at last he 
 grew confused and broke off, to begin again, spurred on by a 
 " Go on, go on ; I am listening," from the abstracted banker. 
 The good man's shirt was soaked with perspiration, which 
 turned icy cold when du Tillet looked full and steadily at 
 him, and he could see those eyes of silver streaked with a few 
 gold threads ; there was a diabolical light in them which 
 pierced him to the heart. 
 
 " My dear master, the bank refused your paper, passed on 
 to Gigonnet without guarantee by the firm of Claparon ; is 
 that my fault ? What ! you have been a judge at the Con- 
 sular Tribunal, how could you make such blunders? I am, 
 before all things, a banker. I will give you my money, but I 
 could not expose my signature to a refusal from the bank. I 
 Jive by credit. So do we all. Do you want money? " 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAUl 249 
 
 " Can you let me have all that I need in cash ? " 
 " That depends upon the amount to be paid. How much 
 do you want ? " 
 
 " Thirty thousand francs." 
 
 "Plenty of chimney-pots tumbling about my ears!" ex- 
 claimed du Tillet, and he burst into a laugh. 
 
 The perfumer, misled by the splendor of du Tillet's sur- 
 roundings, chose to regard that laugh as a sign that the sum 
 was a mere trifle. He breathed again. Du Tillet rang the 
 bell. 
 
 " Tell the cashier to come up." 
 " He is not here yet, sir," the servant answered. 
 "Those rogues are laughing at me! It is half-past eight; 
 they ought to have done a million francs' worth of business 
 by now." 
 
 Five minutes later M. Legras came upstairs. 
 " How much have we in the safe ? " 
 
 " Only twenty thousand francs. Your orders were to buy 
 thirty thousand livres per annum in rentes, at present price, 
 payable on the 15th." 
 
 " That is right ; I am still asleep." 
 The cashier gave Birotteau a sly glance, and went. 
 "If truth were banished from the earth she would leave 
 her last word with a cashier," said du Tillet. " But have you 
 -not an interest in little Popinot's business, now that he has just 
 set up for himself?" he added, after a horrible pause in 
 which the sweat gathered in drops on Birotteau's forehead. 
 
 "Yes," said Cesar innocently. "Do you think you could 
 discount his signature for a fair amount? " 
 
 "Bring me fifty thousand francs' worth of his acceptances, 
 and I will get them negotiated for you at a reasonable rate by 
 one Gobseck ; very easy to do business with when he has plenty 
 of uncalled-for capital on his hands, and he has a good deal 
 just now." 
 
 Birotteau went home again heartbroken. He did not see 
 
250 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 that bankers and bill-discounters were sending him backward 
 and forward in a game of battledore and shuttlecock ; but 
 Constance guessed even then that it would be impossible to 
 obtain a loan of any sort. If three bankers had already re- 
 fused credit to a man so well known as the deputy-mayor 
 every one would hear of it, and the Bank of France was no 
 longer to be thought of. 
 
 "Try to renew" (this was Constance's advice). "Go to 
 your co-associate, Monsieur Claparon, to every one, in fact, 
 whose bills fall due on the 15th, and ask them to renew. 
 There will be time enough then to go to bill-discounters with 
 Popinot's bills." 
 
 " To-morrow will be the 13th ! " exclaimed Birotteau, worn 
 out with anxiety. 
 
 He was " endowed with a sanguine temperament," to quote 
 his own prospectus ; a temperament upon which the wear 
 and tear of emotion and of thought tell so enormously that 
 sleep is imperatively needed to repair the waste. Cesarine 
 brought her father into the drawing-room, and played " Rous- 
 seau's Djeam," that charming composition of Herold's, while 
 Constance sat sewing by her husband's side. The poor man 
 lay back on the ottoman couch. Every time his eyes rested 
 on his wife he saw a sweet smile on her lips, and so he fell 
 asleep. 
 
 " Poor man ! " said Constance. " What torture is in store 
 for him ! If only he can endure it ! " 
 
 "Oh, mamma, what is it?" asked Cesarine, seeing her 
 mother in tears. 
 
 " I see bankruptcy ahead, darling. If your father is obliged 
 to file his schedule there must be no asking for pity of any 
 one. You must be prepared to be an ordinary store-girl, my 
 dear. If I see you doing your part bravely, I shall have 
 strength to begin life again. I know your father; he will 
 not keep back one centime ; I shall give up my claims, all 
 that we have will be sold. Take your clothes and trinkets 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 251 
 
 to-morrow to Uncle Pillerault ; you are not bound to lose 
 anything, my child." 
 
 At these words, spoken with such devout sincerity, Cesar- 
 ine's terror knew no bounds. She thought of going to An- 
 selme, but a feeling of delicacy withheld her. 
 
 The next morning found Birotteau in the Rue de Provence 
 at nine o'clock. He had fallen a victim to fresh anxieties of 
 a totally different kind. To borrow money is not necessarily a 
 complicated process in business ; it is a matter of daily oc- 
 currence, for capital must always be found wherever a new 
 enterprise is started ; but to ask a man to renew a bill is in 
 commercial circles what the police court is to the court of 
 assize ; it is a first step to bankruptcy, even as a misde- 
 meanor is half-way to a crime. The secret of your weakness 
 and your embarrassment passes out of your own keeping. A 
 merchant delivers himself up, bound hand and foot, to another 
 merchant, and charity is not a virtue much practiced on the 
 Stock Exchange. 
 
 The perfumer, who hitherto had walked the streets of Paris 
 with bright confident eyes, now cast down by doubts, hesi- 
 tated to go to Claparon ; he was beginning to understand 
 that with bankers the heart is merely a portion of the internal 
 economy. Claparon had seemed to him so brutal in his coarse 
 hilarity, and he had felt so much vulgarity in the man, that 
 he shrank from approaching this creditor. 
 
 " He is nearer the people, perhaps he will have more soul ! " 
 This was the first word of accusation which the anguish of his 
 position wrung from him. 
 
 Cesar glanced up at the windows and at the green curtains 
 yellowed by the sun ; then he drew the last of his stock of 
 courage up from the depths of his soul, and climbed the stairs 
 that led to a shabby mezzanine floor. He read the word 
 "Office," engraven in black letters on an oval brass-plate 
 upon the door, and knocked. No one answered, so he went in. 
 
 The whole place was something more than humble ; it sav- 
 
252 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 ored of dire poverty, avarice, or neglect. No clerk showed 
 his face behind the barrier of unpainted pine, surmounted at 
 elbow-height by a brass-wire lattice, an arrangement which 
 screened off an inner space occupied by tables and desks of 
 blackened wood. Scattered about the deserted offices lay 
 inkstands in which mold was growing, quill-pens touzled 
 like a street urchin's head, twisted up into suns with rays ; 
 the rooms were littered with cardboard cases, papers, and cir- 
 culars, useless no doubt. The floor of the lobby was as worn, 
 as damp and gritty as the floor of a lodging-house parlor. 
 Through a door on which the word "Counting-room" was 
 inscribed, the visitor entered a second room, where every- 
 thing was in keeping with the sinister waggery displayed in 
 the first. In one corner stood a large cage of oak with a grill 
 of copper-wire, and a cashier's sliding window. An enor- 
 mous iron letter-box had doubtless been abandoned to the rats 
 for a playground. The open door of this cage gave a view 
 of yet another of these whimsical offices, and of a shabby and 
 worm-eaten green chair, a mass of horsehair escaping through 
 a hole underneath this piece of furniture in countless cork- 
 screw curls that called its owner's wig in mind. Evidently 
 this room had been the drawing-room of the house before it 
 had been converted into offices, but the only attempt at orna- 
 mental furniture was a round table covered with a green cloth, 
 and some old chairs covered with black leather and adorned 
 with gilt nail-heads which stood about it. The mantel had 
 some pretensions to elegance, the hearthstone was unblack- 
 ened, and there were no visible signs that a fire had been 
 lighted there. The pier-glass above it, tarnished with fly- 
 spots, had a mean look ; so had a mahogany clock-case bought 
 at the sale of some departed notary's office furniture, a dreary 
 object which, enhanced the depressing effect of the pair of 
 empty candlesticks and the all-pervading sticky grime. The 
 dinginess of the paper on the walls, drab with a rose-colored 
 border, spoke plainly of the habitual presence of smokers and 
 
Cesar birotteaQ: 253 
 
 absence of ventilation. The whole stale-looking room re- 
 sembled nothing so much as a newspaper editor's office. 
 Birotteau, afraid of intruding on the banker's privacy, gave 
 three sharp taps on the door opposite the one by which he 
 had entered. 
 
 " Come in ! " cried Claparon, and the sound of his voice 
 evidently came from a room beyond. The perfumer could 
 hear a good fire crackling on the hearth, but the banker was 
 not there. This apartment did duty, as a matter of fact, for 
 a private office. Francois Keller's elegantly furnished sanc- 
 tum differed from the grotesque neglect of this sham capi- 
 talist's surroundings as widely as Versailles differs from the 
 wigwam of a Huron chief; and Birotteau, who had beheld 
 the glories of the banking world, was about to be introduced 
 to its blackguardism. 
 
 In a sort of oblong den, contrived behind the private office, 
 where the whole of the furniture, scarcely elegant in its prime, 
 had been battered, broken, covered with grease, slit to rags, 
 soiled and spoiled by the slovenly habits of the occupier, 
 reclined Claparon, who, at sight of Birotteau, flung on a filthy 
 dressing-gown, laid down his pipe, and drew the bed-curtains 
 with a haste that seemed suspicious even to the innocent 
 perfumer. 
 
 "Take a seat, sir," said du Tillet's banker puppet. 
 
 Claparon without his wig, his head tied up in a bandanna 
 handkerchief all awry, was to Birotteau's thinking the more 
 repulsive in that his loose dressing-gown gave glimpses of a 
 nondescript knitted woolen garment, once white, but now a 
 dingy brown, from indefinitely prolonged wear. 
 
 "Will you breakfast with me?" asked Claparon, bethink- 
 ing himself of the ball, and prompted partly by a wish to turn 
 the tables on his host, partly by anxiety to put Birotteau off 
 the scent. And, in point of fact, a round table, hastily cleared 
 of papers, was suspiciously suggestive ; for it displayed a p£t6, 
 oysters, white wine, and a dish of vulgar kidneys, sautes au vin 
 
254 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 de Champagne, cooling in their gravy, while an omelette with 
 truffles was browning before the sea-coal fire. The table was 
 set for two persons \ two table-napkins, soiled at supper on 
 the previous evening, would have enlightened the purest inno- 
 cence. Claparon, in the character of a man who has a belief 
 in his own adroitness, insisted in spite of Birotteau's polite 
 refusals. 
 
 " I should by rights have had somebody to breakfast, but 
 that somebody has not kept the appointment," cried the cun- 
 ning commercial traveler, speaking loud, so that the words 
 might reach the ears of an auditor hiding under the blankets. 
 
 "I have come on business pure and simple, sir," said 
 Birotteau, "and I shall not detain you long." 
 
 "I am overwhelmed with business," returned Claparon, 
 pointing to a cylinder-desk and to the tables, which were heaped 
 up with papers ; " not a poor little minute may I have to my- 
 self. I never see people except on Saturdays ; but for you, my 
 dear sir, I am always at home. I have no time left nowadays 
 for love affairs or lounging about ; I am losing the business in- 
 stinct, which takes intervals of carefully timed idleness, if it 
 is to keep its freshness. Nobody sees me busy doing nothing 
 in the boulevards. Pshaw ! business bores me, I don't care 
 to hear any more about business at present ; I have money 
 enough, and I shall never have pleasure enough. My word, 
 I have a mind to turn tourist and see Italy. Ah ! beloved 
 Italy ! fair even amid her adversity, adorable land, where, 
 doubtless, I shall find some magnificent, indolent Italian 
 beauty; I have always admired Italian women! Have you 
 ever had an Italian mistress? No? Oh, well, come to Italy 
 with me. We will see Venice, the city of the Doges, fallen, 
 more's the pity, into the hands of those Philistines the Aus- 
 trians, who know nothing of art. Pooh ! let us leave business, 
 and canals, and loans, and governments in peace. I am a 
 prince when my pockets are well lined. Let us travel, by 
 Jove!" 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 255 
 
 "Just one word, sir, and I will go," said Birotteau. "You 
 passed my bills on to Monsieur Bidault." 
 
 " Gigonnet, you mean ; nice little fellow, Gigonnet ; a man 
 as easy-going as a — as a slip-knot." 
 
 " Yes," said Cesar. " I should be glad — and in this mat- 
 ter I am relying on your integrity and honor" — (Claparon 
 bowed) — " I should be glad if I could renew " 
 
 "Impossible," said the banker roundly — "impossible. I 
 am not the only man in the affair. We are all in council, 
 'tis a regular Chamber; but that we are all on good terms 
 among ourselves, like rashers in a pan. Oh, we deliberate, 
 that we do ! The building land by the Madeleine is nothing; 
 we are doing other things elsewhere. Eh ! my good sir, if 
 we were not busy in the Champs-Elysees, near the new Ex- 
 change which has just been finished, in the Quartier Saint- 
 Lazare and about the Tivoli, we should not be vinanciers, as 
 old Nucingen says. So what is the Madeleine ? A little 
 speck of a business. Prrr ! we do not dabble, my good sir," 
 he said, tapping Birotteau's chest, and giving him a hug. 
 "There, come and have your breakfast, and we will have a 
 talk," Claparon continued, by way of softening his refusal. 
 
 " By all means," said Birotteau. " So much the worse for 
 the other," thought he. He would wait till the wine went to 
 Claparon's head, and find out then who his partners really 
 w^re in this affair, which began to have a very shady look. 
 
 "That is right! Victoire ! " shouted the banker, and at 
 *he call appeared a genuine Leonarda, tricked out like a fish- 
 wife. 
 
 "Tell the clerks that I cannot see anybody, not even 
 Nucingen, Keller, Gigonnet, and the rest of them ! " 
 
 " There is no one here but Monsieur Lempereur." 
 
 "He can receive the fashionables," said Claparon, "and 
 the small fry need not go beyond the public office. They 
 can be told that I am meditating how to get a pull — at a 
 bottle of champagne." 
 
266 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 To make an old commercial traveler tipsy is to achieve the 
 impossible. Cesar had mistaken his boon companion's symp- 
 toms, and thought his boisterous vulgarity was due to intoxi- 
 cation, when he tried to shrive him. 
 
 " There is that rascal Roguin still in it with you," said 
 Birotteau; " ought you not to write and tell him to help out 
 a friend whom he has left in the lurch, a friend with whom 
 he dined every Sunday, and whom he has known for twenty 
 years?" 
 
 " Roguin ? A fool ; we have his share. Don't be down- 
 hearted, my good friend, it will be all right. Pay on the 
 15th, and that done, we shall see! I say, 'we shall see' — 
 (a glass of wine ! ) — but the capital is no concern of mine 
 whatever. Oh ! if you should not pay at all, / should not 
 give you black looks ; my share in the affair is limited to a 
 percentage on the purchase-money and something down on 
 completion of the contract, in consideration of which I 
 brought round the vendors. Do you understand ? Your asso- 
 ciates are good men, so I am not afraid, my dear sir. Business is 
 so divided up nowadays. Every business requires the co- 
 operation of so many specialists ! Do you join the rest of us? 
 Then do not dabble in combs and pomade-pots — a paltry way 
 of doing business ; fleece the public, and go in for the specu- 
 lation." 
 
 "A speculation?" asked the perfumer; "what sort of 
 business is it ? " 
 
 "It is commerce in the abstract," replied Claparon, "an 
 affair which will only come to light in ten years' time at the 
 bidding of the great Nucingen, the Napoleon of finance, a 
 scheme by which a man embraces sum-totals and skims the 
 cream of profits yet to be made ; a gigantic conception, a 
 method of marking expectations like timber for annual fell- 
 ing; it is a new cabal, in short. There are but ten or twelve 
 of us as yet, long-headed men, all initiated into the cabalistic 
 secrets of these magnificent combinations." 
 
CM.SAR BIROTTEAU. 257 
 
 Cdsar opened his eyes and ears, trying to comprehend these 
 mixed metaphors. 
 
 " Listen to me," Claparon continued, after a pause ; " such 
 strokes as these need very capable men. Now, there is the 
 man who has ideas but has not a penny, like all men with 
 ideas. That sort of man spends and is spent, and cares for 
 nothing. Imagine a pig roaming about a wood for truffles, 
 and a knowing fellow on his tracks ; that is the man with the 
 money, who waits till he hears a grunt over a find. When 
 the man with the ideas has hit upon a good notion, the man 
 with the money taps him on the shoulder with a ' What is 
 this? You are putting yourself in the furnace-mouth, my 
 good friend ; your back is not strong enough to carry this ; 
 here are a thousand francs for you, and let me put this affair 
 in working order.' Good! Then the banker summons the 
 manufacturers — ' Set to work, my friends ! Out with your 
 prospectuses ! Blarney to the death ! ' Out come the hunt- 
 ing-horns, and they pipe up with 'A hundred thousand 
 francs for five sous ! ' — or five sous for a hundred thousand 
 francs, gold-mines, coal-mines; all the flourishes and alarums 
 of commerce, in short. Art and science are paid to give 
 their opinion, the affair is paraded about, the public rushes 
 into it and receives paper for its money, and our takings are 
 in our hands. The pig is safe in his stye with his potatoes, 
 and the rest of them are wallowing in bills of exchange. 
 That is how it is done, my dear sir. Go in for speculation. 
 What do you want to be ? A pig or a gull, a clown or a 
 millionaire ? Think it over. I have summed up the modern 
 theory of loans for you. Come to see me ; you will find a 
 good fellow, always jolly. French joviality, at once grave 
 and gay, does no harm in business, quite the contrary ! Men 
 who can drink are made to understand each other. Come ! 
 another glass of champagne ? It is choice wine, eh ? It was 
 sent me by a man at Epernay, for whom I have sold a good 
 deal of it, and at good prices too (I used to be in the wine 
 17 
 
258 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 trade). He shows his gratitude and remembers me in my 
 prosperity. A rare trait." 
 
 Birotteau, bewildered by this flippancy and careless tone 
 in a man whom everybody credited with such astonishing 
 profundity and breadth, did not dare to question him any 
 further. But, in spite of the confusion and excitement in- 
 duced by unwonted potations of champagne, a name let fall 
 by du Tillet came up in his mind, and he asked for the ad- 
 dress of a bill-discounter named Gobseck. 
 
 " Is that what you are after, my dear sir? " asked Claparon. 
 " Gobseck is a bill-discounter in the same sense that the 
 hangman is a doctor. The first thing that he says to you is 
 'Fifty per cent.' He belongs to the school of Harpagon ; 
 he will supply you with canary birds and stuffed boa-con- 
 strictors, with furs in summer and nankeen in winter. And 
 whose bills are you going to offer him ? He will want you to 
 deposit your wife, your daughter, your umbrella, and every- 
 thing that is yours, down to your hat-box, your clogs (do you 
 wear hinged clogs ?), poker and tongs, and the firewood in 
 your cellar, before he will take your bills with your bare name 
 to them ! Gobseck ! Gobseck ! In the name of mis- 
 fortune, who sent you to the guillotine of commerce?" 
 
 "M. du Tillet." 
 
 "Oh! the rogue; just like him. We used to be friends 
 once upon a time ; and if the quarrel has gone so far that we 
 do not speak to each other now, I have good reason for dis- 
 liking him, believe me ! He let me see to the bottom of his 
 soul of mud, and he made me uncomfortable at that fine ball you 
 gave. I, cannot bear him, with the coxcomb's airs he gives 
 himself, because he has the good graces of a notaresse ! I 
 could have marquises myself if I had a mind ; he will never 
 have my esteem, I know. Ah ! my esteem is a princess who 
 will never take up too much room on his pillow. I say 
 though, old man, you are a funny one to give us a ball and 
 then come and ask us to renew two months afterward ! You 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 259 
 
 are likely to go far. Let us go into speculation together. 
 You have a character ; it would be useful to me. Oh ! du 
 Tillet was born to understand Gobseck. Du Tillet will come 
 to a bad end in the Place de Greve. If, as they say, he is one 
 of Gobseck's lambs, he will soon come to the length of his 
 tether. Gobseck squats in a corner of his web like an old 
 spider who has seen the world. Sooner or later, zut ! and the 
 money-lender sucks in his man like a glass of wine. So 
 much the better ! Du Tillet played me a trick — oh! a scurvy 
 trick! " 
 
 After an hour and a half spent in listening to meaningless 
 .prate, Birotteau determined to go, for the commercial trav- 
 eler was preparing to relate the adventure of a representative 
 of the people at Marseilles, who had fallen in love with an 
 actress who played the part of " La belle Arsene." The Roy- 
 alist pit hissed the lady. 
 
 " Up he gets," said Claparon, "and stands bolt upright in 
 
 his box. 'Arte qui V a siblee ? ' says he ; ' eu / Si c 1 "est 
 
 oune femme, je V amprise ; si c' est oune homme, nous se verrons ; 
 
 si c' est ni Vun ni V autte, que le troun di Diou le cure ? ' 
 
 How do you think the adventure ended ? " 
 
 "Good-day, sir," said Birotteau. 
 
 "You will have to come and see me," said Claparon at 
 this. " Cayron's first bill has come back protested, and I am 
 the indorser ; I have reimbursed the money, and I shall send 
 it on to you, for business is business." 
 
 Birotteau felt this cold affectation of a readiness to oblige, 
 as he had already felt Keller's hardness and Nucingen's Teu- 
 tonic banter, in his very heart. The man's familiarity, his 
 grotesque confidences made in the generous glow of cham- 
 pagne, had been like a blight to the perfumer; he felt as if he 
 were leaving some evil haunt in the world financial. 
 
 He walked downstairs ; he found himself in the street and 
 went, not knowing whither he went. He followed the boule- 
 vard till he reached the Rue Saint-Denis then he bethought 
 
260 CfiSAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 himself of Molineux, and turned to go toward the Cour 
 Batave. He mounted the same dirty tortuous staircase which 
 he had ascended but lately in the pride of his glory. He 
 remembered Molineux's peevish meanness, and winced at the 
 thought of asking a favor of him. As on the occasion of his 
 previous visit, he found the owner of house-property by the 
 fireside, but this time he had eaten his breakfast. Birotteau 
 formulated his demand. 
 
 " Renew a bill for twelve hundred francs? " said Molineux, 
 with an incredulous smile. "You do not mean it, sir. If 
 you have not twelve hundred francs on the 15 th to meet my 
 bill, will you please to send me back my receipt for rent that 
 has not been paid ? Ah ! I should be angry ; I do not use the 
 slightest ceremony in money matters ; my rents are my income. 
 If I acted otherwise, how should I pay my way ? A man in 
 business will not disapprove of that wholesome rule. Money 
 knows nobody ; money has no ears ; money has no heart. It 
 is a cold winter, and here is firewood dearer again. If you 
 do not pay on the 15th, you will receive a little summons by 
 noon on the 16th. Pshaw ! old Mitral, who serves your pro- 
 cesses, acts for me too ; he will send you your summons in an 
 envelope, with due regard for your high position." , 
 
 "A writ has never yet been served on me, sir," said Birot- 
 teau. 
 
 "Everything must have a beginning," retorted Molineux. 
 
 The perfumer was taken aback by the little old man's frank 
 ferocity ; the knell of credit rang in his ears ; and every fresh 
 stroke awoke memories of his own sayings as to bankruptcies, 
 prompted by his remorseless jurisprudence. Those opinions 
 of his seemed to be traced in letters of fire on the soft sub- 
 stance of his brain. 
 
 "By-the-by," Molineux was saying, "you forgot to write 
 ' For value received in rent ' across your bills ; that might 
 give me a preferential claim." 
 
 " My position forbids me to do anything to the prejudice 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 261 
 
 of my creditors," said Birotteau, dazed by that glimpse into 
 the gulf before him. 
 
 " Good, sir, very good. I thought that I had nothing left 
 to learn in my dealings with messieurs my tenants. You have 
 taught me never to take bills in payment. Oh ! I will take 
 the thing into court, for your answer as good as tells me that 
 you will not meet your engagements. The case touches every 
 landlord in Paris." 
 
 Birotteau went out, sick of life. Feeble and tender natures 
 lose heart at the first rebuff, just as a first success puts courage 
 into them. Cesar's only hope now lay in little Popinot's 
 devotion ; his thoughts naturally turned to him as he passed 
 the Marche des Innocents. 
 
 " Poor boy ! who would have told me this when I started 
 him six weeks ago at the Tuileries ! " 
 
 It was nearly four o'clock, the time when the magistrates 
 leave the palais. As it fell out, the elder Popinot had gone 
 to see his nephew. The examining magistrate, who in moral 
 questions had a kind of second-sight which laid bare the 
 secret motives of others, who discerned the underlying signifi- 
 cance of the most commonplace actions of daily life, the 
 germs of crime, the roots of a misdemeanor, was watching 
 Birotteau, though Birotteau did not suspect it. Birotteau 
 seemed to be put out by finding the uncle with the nephew; 
 the perfumer's manner was constrained, he was preoccupied 
 and thoughtful. Little Popinot, busy as usual with his pen 
 behind his ear, always fell flat, figuratively speaking, before 
 Cesarine's father. Cesar's meaningless remarks to his partner, 
 to the judge's thinking, were merely screens, some important 
 demand was about to be made. Instead of leaving the shop, 
 therefore, the shrewd man of law stayed with his nephew in 
 spite of his nephew, for he thought that Cesar would try to 
 get rid of him by making a move himself. And so it was. 
 When Birotteau had gone the judge followed, but he noticed 
 Cesar lounging along the Rue des Cinq-Diamants in the 
 
262 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 direction of the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher. This infinitely small 
 matter bred suspicion in the mind of Popinot the elder; he 
 mistrusted Cesar's intentions, went along the Rue des Lom- 
 bards, watched the perfumer go back to Anselme's shop, and 
 promptly repaired thither. 
 
 " My dear Popinot," Cesar had begun, "I have come to 
 ask you to do me a service." 
 
 "What is there to be done?" asked Popinot, with gener- 
 ous eagerness. 
 
 "Ah! you give me life!" cried the good man, rejoicing 
 in this warmth from the heart that sent a glow through him 
 after those twenty-five days of glacial cold. " It is this, to 
 allow me to draw a bill on you on account of my share of the 
 profits; we will settle between ourselves." 
 
 Popinot looked steadily at Cesar ; Cesar lowered his eyes. 
 Just at that moment the magistrate reappeared. 
 
 " My boy — Oh ! I beg your pardon, Monsieur Birotteau — 
 
 my boy, I forgot to say that " and with the imperative 
 
 gesture learned in the exercise of his profession, the elder 
 Popinot drew his nephew out into the street and marched 
 him, bareheaded and in shirt-sleeves as he was, in the direc- 
 tion of the Rue des Lombards. 
 
 "Your old master will verv likely find himself in such 
 straits that he may be forced to file his schedule, nephew. 
 Before a man comes to that, a man who, may be, has a record 
 of forty years of upright dealing, nay the very best of men, 
 in his anxiety to save his honor, will behave like the most 
 frantic gambler. Men in that predicament will do anything. 
 They will sell their wives and traffic in their daughters ; they 
 will bring their best friends into the scrape and pawn property 
 which is not theirs ; they will go to the gaming-table, turn 
 actors — nay, liars ; they will shed tears at need. In short, I 
 have known them do the most extraordinary things. You 
 yourself know how good-natured Roguin was, a man who 
 looked as though butter would not melt in his mouth. I do 
 
C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 263 
 
 not press these conclusions home in Monsieur Birotteau's 
 case; I believe that he is honest ; but if he should ask you to 
 do anything at all irregular, no matter what it is; if he should 
 want you, for instance, to accept accommodation bills and so 
 start you in a system which, to my way of thinking, is the 
 beginning of all sorts of rascality (for it is counterfeit paper- 
 money), promise me that you will sign nothing without first 
 consulting me. You must remember that if 'you love his 
 daughter, even for your own sake and hers, you must not spoil 
 your future. If Monsieur Birotteau must come to grief, what 
 is the use of going with him? What is it but cutting your- 
 selves off from all chance of escape through your business, 
 which will be his refuge?" 
 
 "Thank you, uncle; a word to the wise is sufficient," said 
 Anselme; his uncle's words explained that heartrending cry 
 from his master. 
 
 The merchant who dealt in druggists' oils and sundries 
 looked thoughtful as he entered his dark store. Birotteau 
 saw the change. 
 
 "Will you honor me by coming up to my room? we can 
 talk more at our ease there than here. The assistants, busy as 
 they are, might overhear us." 
 
 Birotteau followed Popinot, a victim to such cruel suspense 
 as the condemned man knows, while he waits for a reprieve 
 or the rejection of his appeal. 
 
 "My dear benefactor," Anselme began, "you do not 
 doubt my devotion; it is blind. Permit me to ask but one 
 thing, will this sum of money save you once and for all ? Or 
 will it merely put off some catastrophe? in which case, what 
 is the use of carrying me with you ? You want bills at ninety 
 days. Very well, but I am sure that I myself shall not be able 
 to meet them in three months' time." 
 
 Birotteau, white and grave, rose to his feet, and looked into 
 Popinot's face. 
 
 Popinot, in alarm, cried, "I will do it if you wish it." 
 
264 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "Ungrateful boy!" cried the perfumer, gathering alb his 
 strength to hurl at Anselme the words which should brand him 
 as infamous. 
 
 Birotteau walked to the door and went. Popinot, recover- 
 ing from the sensation which the terrible words had produced 
 in him, darted downstairs and rushed into the street, but saw 
 no sign of the perfumer. The dreadful words of doom rang 
 in the ears of Cesarine's lover, poor Cesar's face of anguish 
 was always before his eyes; he lived, indeed, like Hamlet, 
 haunted by a ghastly spectre. 
 
 Birotteau staggered along the streets like a drunken man. 
 He found himself at last on the quay, and followed its course 
 to Sevres, where he spent the night in an inn,. stupefied with 
 sorrow ; and his frightened wife dared not make any inquiries 
 for him. Under such circumstances it is fatal to give the 
 alarm rashly. Constance wisely immolated her anxiety to her 
 husband's business reputation ; she sat up all night for him, 
 mingling prayers with her fears. Was Cesar dead ? Had he 
 left Paris in the pursuit of some last hope? When morning 
 came she behaved as though she knew the cause of his ab- 
 sence ; but when at five o'clock Cesar had not returned, she 
 sent word to her uncle and begged him to go to the morgue. 
 All through that day the brave woman sat at her desk, her 
 daughter doing her embroidery by her side, and, neither sad 
 nor smiling, both confronted the public with quiet faces. 
 
 When Pillerault came, he brought Cesar with him ; he had 
 met his niece's husband after 'Change in the Palais Royal, 
 hesitating to enter a gaming-house. That day was the 14th. 
 
 Cesar could eat nothing at dinner. His stomach, too vio- 
 lently contracted, rejected food. It was a miserable meal ; 
 but it was not so bad as the evening that came after it. For 
 the hundredth time, the merchant experienced one of the 
 hideous alternations of despair and hope which wear out weak 
 natures, when the soul passes through the whole scale of sen- 
 sations, from the highest pitch of joy to the lowest depths of de- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 265 
 
 spair. Derville, the consulting barrister, rushed into the splen- 
 did drawing-room. Mine. Cesar had done everything in her 
 power to keep her poor husband there ; he had wanted to sleep 
 in the attic, "so as not to see the monuments of my folly," 
 he said. 
 
 " We have gained the day ! " cried Derville. 
 
 At those words the lines in Cesar's face were smoothed out, 
 but his joy alarmed Pillerault and Derville. The two fright- 
 ened women went away to cry in Cesarine's room. 
 
 " Now I can borrow on the property ! " exclaimed the per- 
 fumer. 
 
 " It would not be wise to do so," said Derville ; " they have 
 given notice of appeal, the Court-Royal may reverse the de- 
 cision, but we shall know in a month's time." 
 
 "A month ! " 
 
 Cesar sank into a lethargy, from which no one attempted 
 to rouse him. This species of intermittent catalepsy, during 
 which the body lives and suffers while the action of the mind 
 is suspended, this fortuitous respite from mental anguish, was 
 regarded as a godsend by Constance, Cesarine, Pillerault, and 
 Derville — and they were right. In this way Birotteau was 
 able to recover from the wear and tear of the night's emotions. 
 He lay in a low chair by the fireside ; over against him sat 
 his wife, who watched him closely, with a sweet smile on her 
 lips — one of those smiles which prove that women are nearer 
 to the angels than men, in that they can blend infinite ten- 
 derness with the most sincere compassion, a secret known 
 only to the angels whose presence is revealed to us in the 
 dreams providentially scattered at long intervals in the course 
 of human life. Cesarine, sitting on a footstool at her 
 mother's feet, now and again bent her head over her father's 
 hands and brushed them lightly with her hair, as if by this 
 caress she would fain communicate through the sense of touch 
 the thoughts which at such a time are importunate when ren- 
 dered by articulate speech. 
 
266 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Pillerault, that philosopher prepared for every emergency, 
 sat in his armchair, like the statue of the chancellor of the 
 hopital in the peristyle of the Chamber of Deputies, wearing 
 the same look of intelligence which is stamped on the features 
 of an Egyptian sphinx, and talked in a low voice with Der- 
 ville. Constance had recommended that the lawyer, whose 
 discretion was above suspicion, should be consulted. With 
 the schedule already drafted in her mind, she laid the situation 
 before Derville ; and after an hour's consultation or there- 
 about, held in the presence of the dozing perfumer, Derville 
 looked at Pillerault and shook his head. 
 
 "Madame," said he, with the pitiless coolness of a man 
 of business, " you must file your petition. Suppose that by 
 some means or other you should contrive to meet your 
 bills to-morrow, you must eventually pay at least three thou- 
 sand francs before you can borrow on the whole of your landed 
 property. To your liabilities, amounting to five hundred and 
 fifty thousand francs, you oppose assets consisting of a very 
 valuable and very promising piece of property which cannot 
 be realized — you must give up in a given time, and it is better, 
 in my opinion, to jump from the window than to roll down 
 the stairs." 
 
 "I am of that opinion, too, my child," said Pillerault. 
 
 Mme. Cesar and Pillerault both went to the door with Der- 
 ville. 
 
 "Poor father! " said Cesarine, rising softly to put a kiss 
 on Cesar's forehead. "Then could Anselme do nothing?" 
 she asked, when her mother and uncle came in again. 
 
 "The ungrateful boy!" cried Cesar. The name had 
 touched the one sensitive spot in his memory, like the string 
 of a piano resonant to the stroke of the hammer. 
 
 Little Popinot, meanwhile, since those words had been 
 hurled at him like an anathema, had not had a moment's 
 peace nor a wink of sleep. The hapless youth called down 
 maledictions on his uncle, and went in search of him. To in- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 267 
 
 duce experience and legal acumen to capitulate, young Popi- 
 not poured forth all a lover's eloquence, hoping to work on 
 the feelings of a judge, but his words slid over the man of 
 law like water over oilcloth. 
 
 " Commercial usage," pleaded Anselme, " permits a sleep- 
 ing partner to draw to a certain extent upon his co-associate 
 on account of profits; and in our partnership we ought to 
 put it in practice. After looking into my business all round, 
 I feel sure that I am good to pay forty thousand francs in 
 three months' time. Birotteau's honesty permits me to feel 
 confident that' he will use the forty thousand francs to meet 
 his bills. So, if he fails, the creditors will have no reason 
 to complain of this action on our part. And, beside, uncle, I 
 would rather lose forty thousand francs than give up Cesarine. 
 At this moment, while I am speaking, she will have heard of 
 my refusal and I shall be lowered in her eyes. I said that I 
 would give my life for my benefactor ! I am in the case of 
 the young sailor who must go to the bottom with his captain 
 or the soldier who is bound to perish with his general." 
 
 "A good heart and a bad man of business; you will not 
 "be lowered in my eyes," said the judge, grasping his nephew's 
 hand. " I have thought a good deal about this," he con- 
 tinued ; "I know that you love Cesarine to distraction; I 
 think that you can obey the laws of your heart without break- 
 ing the laws of commerce." 
 
 " Oh ! uncle, if you have found out a way, you will save 
 my honor." 
 
 "Lend Birotteau fifty thousand francs on his proprietary 
 interest in your Oil ; it has become, as it were, a piece of 
 property ; I will draw up the document for you." 
 
 Anselme embraced his uncle, went home, made out bills 
 for fifty thousand francs, and ran all the way from the Rue 
 des Cinq-Diamants to the Place Vendome ; so that at the 
 very moment when Cesarine, her mother, and Pillerault were 
 gazing at the perfumer, amazed by the sepulchral tone in 
 
268 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 which the words, " Ungrateful boy ! " were uttered in answer 
 to the girl's question, the drawing-room door opened and 
 Popinot appeared. 
 
 " My dearly beloved master," he said, wiping the perspi- 
 ration from his forehead, " here is the thing for which you 
 asked me." 
 
 He held out the bills. 
 
 " Yes. I have thought carefully over my position \ I shall 
 meet them, never fear ! Save your honor ! " 
 
 " I was quite sure of him," cried Cesarine, grasping Popi- 
 not's hand convulsively. 
 
 Mme. Cesar embraced Popinot. The perfumer rose out of 
 his chair, like the righteous at the sound of the last trump ; 
 he too was issuing from a tomb. Then with frenzied eager- 
 ness he clutched the fifty stamped papers. 
 
 " One moment ! " cried the stern Uncle Pillerault, snatch- 
 ing up Popinot's bills. " One moment ! " 
 
 The four persons composing this family group — Cesar and 
 his wife, Cesarine and Popinot — bewildered by their uncle's 
 interposition and by the tone in which he spoke, looked on 
 in terror while he tore the bills to pieces and flung them into 
 the fire, where they blazed up before any one of them could 
 stop him. 
 
 "Uncle!" 
 
 "Uncle!" 
 
 "Uncle!" 
 
 "Sir!" 
 
 There were four voices and four hearts in one, a formidable 
 unanimity. Uncle Pillerault put an arm around little Popinot, 
 held him tightly to his heart, and put a kiss on his forehead. 
 
 "You deserve to be adored by any one who has a heart at 
 all," said he. "If you loved my daughter, and she had a 
 million, and you had nothing but that' 1 '' (he pointed to the 
 blackened scraps of paper), " you should marry her in a fort- 
 night if she loved you. Your master," indicating Cesar, "is 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 269 
 
 mad. Now, nephew," Pillerault began gravely, addressing 
 the perfumer, "no more illusions! Business must be carried 
 on with hard coin, and not with sentiments. This is sublime, 
 but it is useless. I have been on 'Change for a couple of 
 hours. No one will give you credit for two centimes ; every- 
 body is talking about your disaster; everybody knows that 
 you could not get renewals, that you went to more than one 
 banker and that they would have nothing to say to you, and 
 all your other follies; it is known that you climbed six pairs 
 of stairs to ask a landlord who chatters like a jackdaw to 
 renew a bill for twelve hundred francs ; everybody says that 
 you gave a ball to hide your embarrassment. They will say 
 directly that you had no money deposited with Roguin. 
 Roguin is a blind, according to your enemies. One of my 
 friends, commissioned to report everything, has brought con- 
 firmation of my suspicions. Every one expects that you will 
 try to put Popinot's bills on the market ; in fact, you set him 
 up on purpose to tide you over your difficulties. In short, all 
 the gossip and slander usually set in motion by any man who 
 tries to mount a step in the social scale is going the round of 
 business circles at this moment. You would spend a week in 
 hawking Popinot's bills from place to place, you would meet 
 with humiliating refusals, and nobody would have anything to 
 do with them. There is nothing to show how many of them 
 you are issuing, and people look to see you sacrificing this 
 poor boy to save yourself. You would ruin Popinot's credit 
 in pure waste. Do you know how much the most sanguine 
 bill-discounter would give you for your fifty thousand francs? 
 Twenty thousand ; twenty thousand, do you understand ? 
 There are times in business when you must contrive to hold 
 out for three days without food, as if you had the indigestion, 
 and the fourth brings admission to the pantry of credit. You 
 cannot hold out for the three days, and therein lies the whole 
 position. But take heart, my poor nephew, you must file your 
 schedule. Here is Popinot, and here am I ; as soon as your 
 
270 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 assistants have gone to bed we will set to work to spare you 
 the misery of it." 
 
 "Uncle! " cried the wretched perfumer, clasping his 
 
 hands. 
 
 " Cesar, do you really mean to arrive at a fraudulent bank- 
 ruptcy with assets nil? Your interest in Popinot's business 
 saves your honor." 
 
 This last fatal light thrown on his position made it clear 
 to Cesar ; he saw the full extent of the hideous truth ; he 
 sank down into his low chair, and then on to his knees ; 
 his mind wandered, he became a child again. His wife 
 thought the shock had killed him and knelt to raise him, 
 but she clung close to him when she saw him clasp his 
 hands and raise his eyes ; and in spite of the presence of 
 his uncle, his daughter, and Popinot, he began with remorse- 
 ful resignation to repeat the sublime prayer of the church 
 on earth — 
 
 "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy 
 name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, 
 as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And 
 forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass 
 against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver 
 us from evil. Amen." 
 
 Tears filled Pillerault's stoical eyes, and Cesarine stood, 
 white and rigid as marble, with her tear-stained face hidden 
 on Anselme's shoulder. Then the old merchant took the 
 young man's arm, "Let us go downstairs," he said. 
 
 At half-past eleven they left Cesar in the care of his 
 wife and daughter. Just at that moment Celestin, who had 
 looked after the business during this storm, came upstairs 
 and opened the drawing-room door. Cesarine heard his 
 footsteps and hurried forward to place herself so as to screen 
 the prostrate master of the house. 
 
 "Among this evening's letters," he said, " there was one 
 from Tours, the direction was not clear, it has been delayed. 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 271 
 
 I thought it might be from the master's brother, so I did 
 not open it." 
 
 "Father," cried Cesarine, "there is a letter from uncle 
 at Tours." 
 
 "Ah! I am saved!" exclaimed Cesar. "My brother! 
 my brother! " and he kissed the letter, which ran thus: 
 
 Francois Birotteau to Cesar Birotteau. 
 
 "Tours, 17th. 
 "My beloved Brother: — Your letter has given me the 
 keenest distress ; and so when I had read it, I offered up 
 to God on your behalf the holy sacrifice of the mass, pray- 
 ing Him, by the blood shed for us by our divine Redeemer, 
 to look mercifully upon you in your affliction. And now 
 that I have put up my prayer pro meo fratre Ccssare, my 
 eyes are filled with tears to think that by misfortune I am 
 separated from you at a time when you must need the 
 support of a brother's affection. But then I bethought me 
 that the worthy and venerated M. Pillerault will doubtless 
 fill my place. My dear Cesar, in the midst of your troubles, 
 do not forget that this life of ours is a life of trial and a 
 transition state ; that one day we shall be rewarded if we 
 have suffered for the holy name of God, for His Holy Church, 
 for putting in practice the doctrines of the Gospel, or for 
 leading a virtuous life ; if it were not so, the things of this 
 present world would be unintelligible. I repeat these words, 
 though I know how good and pious you are, because it may 
 happen to those who, like you, are tossed by the tempests of 
 this world and launched upon the perilous seas of human con- 
 cerns, to be led to blaspheme in their distresses, distracted as 
 they are by pain. Do not curse the men who will wound 
 you, nor God, who mingles bitterness with your life at His 
 will. Look not on the earth, but rather keep your eyes lifted 
 to heaven ; thence comes comfort for the weak, the riches of 
 the poor are there, and the fears of the rich " 
 
272 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "Oh, Birotteau," interrupted his wife, "just miss that out 
 and see if he is sending us anything." 
 
 " We will often read it over," said her husband, drying his 
 eyes. He opened the letter and a draft on the Treasury fell 
 out. "I was quite sure of him, poor brother," said Birot- 
 teau, picking up the draft. 
 
 "I went to see Mme. de Listomere," he continued, reading 
 in a voice choked with tears, " and without giving a reason 
 for my request, I begged her to lend me all that she could 
 spare, so as to swell the amount of my savings. Her gen- 
 erosity enables me to make up the sum of a thousand francs, 
 which I send you in the form of a draft by the receiver- 
 general of Tours upon the Treasury." 
 
 "A handsome advance!" said Constance, looking at 
 Cdsarine. 
 
 " By retrenching some superfluities in my way of living, I 
 shall be able to repay Mme. de Listomere the money I have 
 borrowed of her in three years' time ; so do not trouble about 
 it, my dear Cesar. I am sending you all that I have in the 
 world, with the wish that the sum may assist you to bring 
 your difficulties to a happy termination ; doubtless they are 
 but momentary. I know your delicacy, and wish to anticipate 
 your scruples. Do not dream of paying any interest on the 
 amount, nor of returning it in the day of prosperity, which 
 will dawn for you before long, if God deigns to grant the 
 petitions which I make daily for you. , After your last letter, 
 received two years ago, I thought that you were rich, and 
 that I might give my savings to the poor; but now all that I 
 have belongs to you. When you have weathered this passing 
 squall, keep the money for my niece Cesarine, so that when 
 she is established in life she may spend it on some trifle which 
 will remind her of an old uncle whose hands are always 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 273 
 
 raised to heaven to implore God's blessing upon her, and for 
 all those who shall be dear to her. Bear in mind, in fact, 
 dear Cesar, that I am a poor priest, living by the grace of 
 God, as the wild-birds live in the fields, walking quietly in 
 my own path, striving to keep the commandments of our 
 divine Saviour, and consequently needing but little. So do 
 not have the least hesitation in your difficult position, and 
 think of me as one who loves you tenderly. Our excellent 
 Abbe Chapeloud (to whom I have not said a word about your 
 strait) knows that I am writing to you, and wishes me to send 
 the most kindly messages to all your family, with wishes for 
 your continued prosperity. May God vouchsafe to preserve 
 you and your wife and daughter in good health ; and I pray 
 for patience to you all and courage in the day of adversity. 
 
 " Francois Birotteau. 
 
 " Priest of the Cathedral Church of Tours and Vicar of the 
 Parish Church of Saint-Gatien." 
 
 "A thousand francs ! " cried Mme. Birotteau, in vehement 
 anger. 
 
 ' ' Lock it up, " Cesar said gravely ; ' { it is all he has. Beside, 
 it belongs to our Cesarine, and should enable us to live with- 
 out asking anything of our creditors." 
 
 "And then they will believe that you have taken away 
 large sums." 
 
 "I shall show them his letter." 
 
 " They will say that it is a fraud." 
 
 " Oh ! my God ! my God ! " cried Cesar, appalled at this ; 
 " I have often thought that very thing of poor folk who, no 
 doubt, were just in my position." 
 
 Mother and daughter were both too anxious about Cesar to 
 
 leave him, and they sewed on by his side. There was a deep 
 
 silence. At two o'clock in the morning the drawing-room 
 
 door was softly opened and Popinot beckoned to Mme. C6sar 
 is 
 
274 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 to come downstairs. At the sight of his niece, who had 
 followed him into the store, Uncle Pillerault took off his 
 spectacles. 
 
 " There is hope yet, my child," he said ; "all is not over; 
 but your husband could not stand the strain of the ups and 
 downs of this business, so Popinot and I will try to arrange 
 it. Do not leave the store to-morrow, and take down the 
 names of all the holders of the bills ; we have all the day till 
 four o'clock. This is my idea : There is nothing to fear from 
 Ragon or from me. Suppose now that Roguin had paid over 
 to the vendors the hundred thousand francs you deposited 
 with him — in that case, you would no more have them than 
 you have them to-day. You have to meet bills to the amount 
 of a hundred and forty thousand francs, payable to Claparon's 
 order ; you must pay them anyhow, so it is not Roguin's 
 bankruptcy which is ruining you. Now, to meet your liabili- 
 ties, I see forty thousand francs to be borrowed sooner or 
 later on your factory, and sixty thousand francs in Popinot's 
 bills. So you may struggle through ; for, once through, you 
 can raise money on that building land by the Madeleine. If 
 your principal creditor agrees to help you, I shall not consider 
 my fortune ; I will sell my rentes ; I shall be without bread ; 
 Popinot will be between life and death ; and, as for you, you 
 will be at the mercy of the smallest events. But the Oil will 
 give a good return, no doubt. Popinot and I have been con- 
 sulting together ; we will support you in this struggle. Oh, 
 I will eat my dry bread gaily, if success dawns on the hori- 
 zon. But everything depends on Gigonnet and on Claparon 
 and his associates. We are going to see Gigonnet between 
 seven and eight, Popinot and I, and then we shall know what 
 to make of their intentions." 
 
 Constance, carried away by her feelings, put her arms about 
 her uncle, and could not speak for tears and sobs. Neither 
 Popinot nor Pillerault could know that Bidault, alias Gigon- 
 net, and Claparon were but two of du Tillet's doubles, and 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 275 
 
 that du Tillet had set his heart upon reading this terrible 
 paragraph in the " Gazette: " 
 
 " Decree of the Tribunal of Commerce. M. Cesar Birot- 
 teau, wholesale perfumer, of 397 Rue Saint-Honore, Paris, 
 declared a bankrupt, date provisionally fixed, 16th of January, 
 1819. Registrar: M. Gobenheim-Keller. Agent: M. Moli- 
 neux." 
 
 Anselme and Pillerault studied Cesar's affairs till daylight 
 came, and at eight o'clock that morning the two heroic com- 
 rades, the old veteran and the subaltern of yesterday, neither 
 of whom was destined to experience on his own account the 
 dreadful agony of mind endured by those who go up and 
 down the stairs of Bidault, otherwise Gigonnet, betook them- 
 selves without a word to the Rue Grenetat. It was a painful 
 time for both of them. More than once Pillerault passed his 
 hand over his forehead. 
 
 In the Rue Grenetat multifarious small trades are carried 
 on in every overcrowded house. Every building has a repul- 
 sive aspect. The hideousness of these houses has a distinct 
 quality of its own, in which the mean squalor of a poor indus- 
 trial neighborhood predominates. 
 
 Old Gigonnet inhabited the fourth floor in one of these 
 houses. All the windows, with their dirty, square panes of 
 glass, were secured to the frames by pivots, and tilted to 
 admit the air ; you walked straight up the staircase from the 
 street, and the porter lived in the box on the mezzanine floor 
 lighted from the staircase. Every one in the house, except 
 Gigonnet, plied some handicraft ; workmen came and went 
 all day long. Every step on the stairs, where filth was al- 
 lowed to accumulate, was plastered over with a coating of 
 mud, hard or soft, according to the state of the weather. 
 Each landing on this fetid stair displayed the name of some 
 craftsman painted in gilt letters on a sheet of iron, which was 
 
276 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 painted red and varnished, and some sample of the man's 
 achievements in his trade. The doors, for the most part, 
 stood ajar, affording glimpses of grotesque combinations of 
 industry and domestic life ; the sounds which issued thence, 
 snatches of song, yells, whistlings, and uncouth growls re- 
 called the noises heard at the Jardin des Plantes toward four 
 o'clock. The smartest braces for the trade in the article Paris 
 were being made in a loathsome den on the first floor ; on 
 the second, among heaps of the most unsavory litter, the 
 manufacture of the dantiest cardboard boxes, displayed at 
 the New Year in store windows, was carried on. Gigonnet, 
 who was worth eighteen hundred thousand francs, lived and 
 died on the fourth floor in this house. Nothing would induce 
 him to leave it, although his niece, Mme. Saillard, offered 
 him rooms in a mansion in the Place Royale. 
 
 "Courage ! " said Pillerault, as he jerked the cord of the 
 lever bell-pull that hung by Gigonnet's neat gray-painted 
 door. 
 
 Gigonnet himself opened it, and the perfumer's two cham- 
 pions in the lists of bankruptcy went through a formal, chilly- 
 looking room, with curtainless windows, and entered a second, 
 where all three seated themselves. 
 
 The bill-discounter took up his position before a grate full 
 of ashes, in which the wood maintained a stubborn resistance 
 to the flames. The sight of his green cardboard cases and 
 the monastic austerity of the office, windy as a cave, sent a 
 cold chill through Popinot. His dazed eyes wandered over 
 the pattern of the cheap wall-paper — tricolor flowers on a bluish 
 background — which had been hung some five-and-twenty years 
 back; and turned from that depressing sight to the ornaments 
 on the chimney-piece, a lyre-shaped clock and oval vases, blue 
 Sevres ware, handsomely mounted in gilt copper. This bit of 
 flotsam, recovered by Gigonnet from the wreck of Versailles, 
 when the palace was sacked by the populace, came from a 
 queen's boudoir, but the magnificent-looking ornaments were 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 277 
 
 flanked by a couple of wrought-iron candlesticks of the com- 
 monest description, a harsh contrast which continually re- 
 minded the beholder of the manner in which their owner had 
 come by those royal splendors. 
 
 " I know that you cannot come on your own account," said 
 Gigonnet, " but for the great Birotteau. Well, what is it, my 
 friends?" 
 
 "I know that you have nothing to learn, so we will be 
 brief," said Pillerault. " Have you his bills payable to Cla- 
 paron? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Will you exchange the first fifty thousand francs that will 
 fall due for bills accepted by Monsieur Popinot here, less the 
 discount, of course? " 
 
 Gigonnet lifted the terrible green cap, which seemed to 
 have been born with him, and displayed a bald butter-colored 
 pate, then with a Voltairean grin — 
 
 "You want to pay me in oil for hair," he remarked, "and 
 what should I do with it ? " 
 
 "When you joke, it is time for us to take ourselves off," 
 said Pillerault. 
 
 "You speak like the sensible man that you are," said 
 Gigonnet, with a flattering smile. 
 
 " Very well, and how if I back Monsieur Popinot's bills ? " 
 asked Pillerault, making a final effort. 
 
 "You are as good as gold ingots, Monsieur Pillerault; 
 but I have no use for gold ingots, all that I want is current 
 coin." 
 
 Pillerault and Popinot took their leave and went. Even 
 at the foot of the staircase Popinot's knees still shook under 
 him. 
 
 " Is he a man ? " he asked of Pillerault. 
 
 " People say so," answered the older one. " Keep this 
 little interview always in mind, Anselme ! You have seen 
 what money-lending is, stripped of its masquerade and palaver. 
 
278 CASAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Some unforeseen event turns the screw upon us, and we are 
 the grapes and bill-discounters the barrels. This specula- 
 tion in building land is a good piece of business, no doubt ; 
 Gigonnet, or somebody behind him, has a mind to cut Cesar's 
 throat and to step into his shoes. That is all ; there is no help 
 for it now. And this is what comes of borrowing money ; 
 never resort to it." 
 
 It had been a dreadful morning for Mme. Birotteau. For 
 the first time she had taken the addresses of those who came 
 for money, and had sent away the bank collector without 
 paying him ; yet the brave woman was glad to spare her hus- 
 band these humiliations. Toward eleven o'clock she saw 
 Pillerault and Anselme returning ; she had been expecting 
 them with ever-increasing anxiety, and now she read her 
 doom in their faces. There was no help for it, the schedule 
 must be filed. 
 
 " He will die of grief," said the poor wife. 
 
 " I could wish that he might," said Pillerault gravely; "but 
 he is so devout that, as things stand, his director the Abb6 
 Loraux alone can save him." 
 
 Pillerault, Popinot, and Constance remained below, while 
 one of the assistants went for the Abbe Loraux. The abbe 
 should prepare Birotteau for the schedule which Celestin was 
 copying out fair for his master's signature. The assistants 
 were in despair ; they loved their employer. At four o'clock 
 the good priest came. Constance told him all the details of 
 the calamity which had befallen them, and the abbe went up- 
 stairs like a soldier mounting to the breach. 
 
 " 1 know why you have come," Cesar exclaimed. 
 
 " My son," said the priest, " your sentiments of submission 
 to the divine will have long been known to me, now you are 
 called upon to put them in practice. Keep your eyes fixed 
 ever upon the cross, contemplate the cross without ceasing, 
 and think of the cup of humiliation of which the Saviour of 
 men was compelled to drink, think of the anguish of His 
 
CESAR BIR0T1EAU. 279 
 
 passion, and thus you may endure the mortifications sent to 
 you by God " 
 
 "My brother, the abbe, has already prepared me," said 
 Cesar, holding out the letter, which he read over again, to 
 his confessor. 
 
 "You have a good brother," said M. Loraux, "a virtuous 
 and sweet-natured wife, and a loving daughter, two real 
 friends in your uncle and dear Anselme, two indulgent 
 creditors in the Ragons. All these kind hearts will pour 
 balm into your wounds continually, and will help you to 
 carry your cross. Promise me to bear yourself with a 
 martyr's courage and to take the blow without wincing." 
 
 The abbe coughed, a signal to Pillerault in the next room. 
 
 "My submission is unlimited," said Cesar calmly. "Dis- 
 grace has come upon me ; I ought only to think of making 
 reparation." 
 
 Cesarine and the priest were both very much surprised by 
 poor Birotteau's tone and look. And yet nothing was more 
 natural. Every man bears a definitely known misfortune 
 better than suspense and constant alternations of excessive 
 joy at one moment, followed on the next by the last extremity 
 of anguish. 
 
 "I have been dreaming for twenty-two years," he said, 
 "and to-day I wake to find myself staff in hand again." 
 Cesar had once more become the Tourangeau peasant. 
 
 At these words Pillerault held his nephew tightly in his 
 arms. Cesar looked up and saw his wife and Celestin, the 
 latter with significant documents in his hands; then he 
 glanced calmly round the group ; all the eyes that met his 
 were sad but friendly. 
 
 " One moment ! " he said, and unfastening his cross of the 
 Legion of Honor, which he gave to the Abbe Loraux, "you 
 will give that back to me when I can wear it without a blush. 
 Celestin," he continued, turning to his assistant, "send in 
 my resignation ; I am no longer deputy -mayor. The abbe 
 
 a 
 
280 CESAR B1ROTTEAU. 
 
 will dictate the letter to you, date it January 14th, and send 
 Raguet with it to Monsieur de la Billardiere." 
 
 Celestin and the Abbe Loraux went downstairs. For 
 nearly a quarter of an hour perfect silence prevailed in Cdsar's 
 study. Such firmness took the family by surprise. Celestin 
 and the abbe came back again, and Cesar signed the letter of 
 resignation ; but when Pillerault laid the schedule before 
 him poor Birotteau could not repress a dreadful nervous 
 tremor. 
 
 " Oh, God ! have mercy upon us ! " he said, as he signed 
 the terrible instrument and handed it to Celestin. 
 
 Then Anselme Popinot spoke, and a gleam of light crossed 
 his clouded brow. " Monsieur and Madame," he said, "will 
 you grant me the honor of mademoiselle's hand ?" 
 
 This speech brought tears into the eyes of all who heard it ; 
 Cesar alone rose to his feet, took Anselme's hand, and said 
 in a hollow voice, but with dry eyes, " My boy, you shall 
 never marry a bankrupt's daughter." 
 
 Anselme looked Birotteau steadily in the face. 
 
 "Will you promise, sir, in the presence of your whole 
 family, to consent to our marriage, if mademoiselle will take 
 me for her husband, on the day when you shall have paid all 
 your creditors in full? " 
 
 There was a moment's pause, Every one felt the influence 
 of the emotion recorded in the perfumer's weary face. 
 
 "Yes," he said at last. 
 
 Anselme stretched out his hand to Cesarine with an inde- 
 scribable gesture ; she gave him hers, and he kissed it. 
 
 " Do you also consent ? " he asked her. 
 
 " Yes," she said. 
 
 "So, I'm really one of the family. I have a right to in- 
 terest myself in your affairs," was his comment, with an 
 enigmatical look. 
 
 Anselme hurried away lest he should betray a joy in too 
 great contrast with his master's trouble, Anselme was not 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 281 
 
 exactly delighted with the bankruptcy ; but so absolute, so 
 egoistical is love, that Cesarine herself in her inmost heart 
 felt a glow of happiness strangely at variance with her bitter 
 distress of mind. 
 
 " While we are about it, let us strike every blow at once," 
 said Pillerault in Constance's ear. 
 
 An involuntary gesture, a sign not of assent, but of sorrow, 
 was Mme. Birotteau's answer. 
 
 "What do you mean to do, nephew?" said Pillerault, 
 turning to Cesar. 
 
 "To continue the business." 
 
 "I am not of that opinion," said Pillerault. " Go into 
 liquidation, let your assets go to your creditors in the shape of 
 dividend, and go out of business altogether. I have often 
 thought what I should do if I were placed in a similar posi- 
 tion. (Oh ! you must be prepared for everything ! The 
 merchant who does not contemplate possible insolvency is 
 like a general who does not lay his account with a defeat ; he 
 is only half a merchant.) I myself should never have gone 
 on again. What ! Be compelled to blush before men whom 
 I should have wronged, to endure their suspicious looks and 
 unspoken reproaches? I can think of the guillotine — in one 
 instant all is over; but to carry a head on your shoulders to 
 have it cut off daily is a kind of torture from which I should 
 escape. Plenty of men begin again as though nothing had 
 happened ; so much the better for them ! — they are braver 
 than Claude-Joseph Pillerault. If you pay your way (and pay 
 ready money you must) people will say that you managed to 
 save something for yourself; and if you have not a halfpenny, 
 you will never recover. 'Tis good-evening to you. Surren- 
 der your assets, let them sell you up, and do something else." 
 
 "But what?" asked Cesar. 
 
 "Eh ! try for a place under the Government," said Piller- 
 ault; "you have influence, have you not? There are the 
 Due and Duchesse de Lenoncourt, Madame de Mortsauf, 
 
282 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Monsieur de Vandenesse ! Write to them, go to see them, 
 they will find you some post in the household, with a thou- 
 sand crowns or so hanging to it ; your wife will earn as much 
 again ; your daughter, perhaps, may do the same. The case 
 is not desperate. You three among you will earn something 
 like ten thousand francs a year. In ten years' time you will 
 be in a position to pay a hundred thousand francs, for you 
 will have no expenses meanwhile ; your womankind shall have 
 fifteen hundred francs from me ; and, as for you, we shall see." 
 
 It was Constance, and not Cesar, who pondered these wise 
 words, and Pillerault went on 'Change. At that time stock- 
 brokers used to congregate in a provisional structure of planks 
 and scaffolding, a large circular room, with an entrance in 
 the Rue Feydeau. The perfumer's failure was already known 
 and had created a sensation in high commercial circles, for 
 their prevailing politics were constitutional at that time. 
 Birotteau was a conspicuous personage, and envied by many. 
 Merchants, on the other hand, who leaned toward Liberalism, 
 regarded Birotteau's too celebrated ball as an audacious at- 
 tempt to trade on their sentiments, for the Opposition were 
 fain to monopolize patriotism. Royalists were allowed to 
 love the King, but the love of their country was the exclusive 
 privilege of the Left, the Left was for the people ; and those 
 in power had no right to rejoice thus vicariously through the 
 administration, in a national event which the Liberals meant 
 to exploit for their own benefit. For which reasons the fall 
 of a Ministerialist in favor at Court, of an incorrigible Roy- 
 alist who had insulted Liberty by fighting against the glorious 
 French Revolution on Vendemiaire 13th, set all tongues 
 wagging on 'Change, and was received with almost universal 
 applause. 
 
 Pillerault wanted to know what was being said, and to study 
 public opinion. He went up to one of the most eager groups ; 
 du Tillet, Gobenheim-Keller, Nucingen, old Guillaume and 
 his son-in-law Joseph Lebas, Claparon, Gigonnet, Mongenod, 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 283 
 
 Camusot, Gobseck, Adolphe Keller, Palma, Chiffreville, Mati- 
 fat, Grindot, and Lourdois were discussing the news. 
 
 "Well, well, how careful one had need to be!" said 
 Gobenheim, addressing du Tillet ; "my brothers-in-law all 
 but opened an account with Birotteau, it was a near thing." 
 
 " I am let in for ten thousand francs myself," said du Tillet; 
 " he came to me a fortnight ago and I let him have the money 
 on his bare signature. But he obliged me once, and I shall 
 lose it without regret." 
 
 "Your nephew is like the rest," said Lourdois, addressing 
 Pillerault. " Gave entertainments. I can imagine that a 
 rogue might try to throw dust in your eyes to induce confi- 
 dence ; but how could a man who passed for the cream of 
 honest folk descend to the stale mountebank's trickery that 
 never fails to catch us? " 
 
 "Like leeches," commented Gobseck. 
 
 " Only trust a man if he lives in a den like Claparon," said 
 Gigonnet. 
 
 "Veil," said the stout Baron Nucingen, for du Tillet's 
 benefit, " you haf dried to blay me a nice drick, sending 
 Pirodot to me. I do not know," he went on, turning to 
 Gobenheim the manufacturer, " why he did not send rount to 
 me for vifty tousend vrancs ; I should haf led him haf dem." 
 
 "Oh! not you, Monsieur le Baron," said Joseph Lebas. 
 " You must have known quite well that the bank had refused 
 his paper; you were on the Discount Committee which de- 
 clined it. This poor man, for whom I still feel a very great 
 respect, fails under singular circumstances " 
 
 Pillerault grasped Joseph Lebas' hand. 
 
 "It is, in fact, impossible to explain how the thing has 
 happened," said Mongenod, " except by the theory that there 
 is some one behind Gigonnet, some banker whose intention 
 it is to spoil the Madeleine speculation." 
 
 "The thing which has happened to him always happens to 
 people who go out of their own line," said Claparon, inter- 
 
284 CESAR BIRO'JTEAU. 
 
 rupting Mongenod. " If he had brought out his Cephalic Oil 
 himself, instead of sending up the price of building lots in 
 Paris by rushing into land speculation, he would have lost his 
 hundred thousand francs through Roguin, but he would not 
 have gone bankrupt. He will start afresh under the name of 
 Popinot." 
 
 "Keep an eye on Popinot," said Gigonnet. 
 
 According to this crowd of merchants, Roguin was " poor 
 Roguin;" the perfumer was that "unlucky Birotteau." A 
 great passion seemed to excuse the one, the other appeared 
 the more to blame on account of his pretensions. Gigonnet 
 left the Exchange and took the Rue Perrin-Gasselin on his 
 way home to the Rue Grenetat. He looked in on Mme. 
 Madou, the dry-fruit saleswoman. 
 
 "Well, old lady," said he, with his cruel good humor, 
 " and how are we getting on in our way of business ? " 
 
 "Middling," said Mme. Madou respectfully, and she 
 offered the money-lender her only armchair with a friendly 
 officiousness which she had never shown to any one else but 
 the dear departed. 
 
 Mother Madou, who would fell a carman with a blow if he 
 were refractory or carried a joke too far, who had not feared 
 to assist at the storming of the Tuileries on the ioth of Octo- 
 ber, who railed at her best customers (for that matter, she was 
 capable of heading a deputation of the Dames de la Halle, 
 and speaking to the King himself without a tremor) — Ange. 
 lique Madou received Gigonnet with the utmost respect. She 
 was helpless in his presence ; she winced under his hard eyes. 
 It will be a long while yet before the executioner ceases to be 
 a terror to the people, and Gigonnet was the executioner of 
 the small traders. The man who sets money in circulation is 
 more looked up to in the Great Market than any other power ; 
 all other human institutions are as naught compared with him. 
 For them the Commissaire is Justice personified, and with the 
 Commissaire they of the Market become familiar. But the 
 
C&SAR B1R0TTEAU. 285 
 
 sight of the money-lender intrenched behind his green card- 
 board cases, of the usurer whom they implore with fear in 
 their hearts, dries up the sources of wit, parches the throat, 
 and abashes the bold eyes ; the people grow respectful in his 
 presence. 
 
 " Have you come to ask something of me?" said she. 
 
 " A mere trifle ; be prepared to refund the amount of Birot- 
 teau's bills, the old man has gone bankrupt, so all outstanding 
 claims must be sent in ; I shall send you in a statement to- 
 morrow. " 
 
 The pupils of Mme. Madou's eyes first contracted like the 
 eyes of a cat, then flames leaped forth from them. 
 
 " O the beggar ! O the scamp ! and he came here himself 
 to tell me that he was deputy-mayor, piling on his lies. The 
 Lord ha' mercy ! That's just the way with business ; there 
 is no trusting mayors nowadays ; the Government cheats us ! 
 You wait, I will have the money out of them, I will " 
 
 "Eh ! every one comes out of this sort of thing the best 
 way he can, my little dear! " said Gigonnet, lifting one leg 
 with the precise little gesture of a cat picking its way among 
 puddles, a trick to which he owed his nickname.* "Some 
 swells have been let in who mean to get themselves out of the 
 scrape " 
 
 " Good ! good ! I will get my hazelnuts out. Marie 
 Jeanne ! my clogs and my lamb's-wool shawl. Quick ! or I 
 will lend you a clout that will warm your cheeks." 
 
 " That will make it hot for them yonder up the street," 
 said Gigonnet to himself, as he rubbed his hands. " Du 
 Tillet will be satisfied ; there will be a scandal in the quarter. 
 What that poor devil of a perfumer can have done to him, I 
 don't know ; for my own part, I am as sorry for the man as 
 for a dog with a broken paw. He isn't a man ; he has no 
 fight in him." 
 
 Mme. Madou broke out like an insurrection in the Fan» 
 * Gigonnet, from Gigotter, to kick the legs about. 
 
286 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 bourg Saint-Antoine toward seven o'clock that evening, and 
 swept to the luckless Birotteau's door, which she opened with 
 unnecessary violence, for her walk had had an exciting effect. 
 
 "Brood of vermin, I must have my money, I want my 
 money ! You give me my money ! or I will have sachets and 
 satin gimcracks and fans till I have the worth of my two thou= 
 sand francs ! A mayor robbing the people ! Did any one 
 ever see the like? If you don't pay me, I will send him to 
 jail ; I will go for the public prosecutor ; I will put the whole 
 posse of them on his tracks ! I do not stir from here without 
 my money, in fact." 
 
 She looked as if she would open the glass-door of a cup- 
 board in which expensive goods were kept. 
 
 "The Madou is about helping herself," said Celestin in a 
 low voice to his neighbor. The lady overheard the remark, 
 for during a paroxysm of rage the senses are either deadened 
 or preternaturally alert, according to the temperament. She 
 bestowed on Celestin the most vigorous box on the ear ever 
 given and received in a perfumer's store. 
 
 " Learn to respect women, my cherub," quoth she, "and 
 not to bedraggle the names of the people you rob." 
 
 Mme. Birotteau came forward from the back-store. Her 
 husband by chance was also there ; in spite of Pillerault he 
 chose to remain, carrying his humility and obedience to the 
 law so far as to be ready to submit to be put in prison. 
 " Madame," said Constance, "for heaven's sake, do not bring 
 a crowd together in the street." 
 
 "Eh! let them come in," cried the saleswoman, "I will 
 tell them about it ; it will make them laugh ! Yes, my goods 
 and the francs I made by the sweat of my brow go for you to 
 give balls. You go dressed like a queen of France, forsooth, 
 and fleece poor lambs like me for the wool ! Jesus / stolen 
 goods would burn my shoulders, I know ! I have nothing but 
 shoddy on my carcase, but it is my own ! Bandits and thieves ! 
 my money, or " 
 
"/ MUST HAVE MY MONEY, I WANT MY MONEY!" 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 287 
 
 She pounced upon a pretty inlaid case full of costly per- 
 fumery. 
 
 "Leave it alone, madame," said Cesar, appearing on the 
 scene; "nothing here belongs to me, it is all the property of 
 my creditors. I have nothing left but myself; and if you have 
 a mind to seize me and put me in jail, I give you my word of 
 honor" (a tear overflowed his eyes at this) "that I will 
 wait here for your process-server, police-officer, and bailiff's 
 men." 
 
 From his tone and gesture, he evidently meant to do as he 
 said ; Mme. Madou's anger died down. 
 
 "A notary has absconded with my money, and the disasters 
 which I cause come through no fault of mine," Cesar went 
 on ; " but in time you shall be paid, if I have to work 
 myself to death and earn the money by my hands as a market- 
 porter." 
 
 "Come, you are a good man," said the market-woman. 
 " Excuse my speaking, madame ; but I shall have to fling 
 myself into the river, for Gigonnet will be down upon me, and 
 I have nothing but bills at ten months to give for your cursed 
 paper. ' ' 
 
 " Come round and see me to-morrow morning," said Pille- 
 rault, coming forward ; " I will arrange the business for you at 
 five per cent, with a friend of mine." 
 
 "Well! that is good Father Pillerault ! Why, yes, he is 
 your uncle," she went on, turning to Constance. "Come, 
 now, you are honest folk; I shall not lose anything, shall I? 
 Good-by till to-morrow, old Brutus," she added, for the ben- 
 efit of the retired hardware merchant. 
 
 Cesar insisted on remaining amid the ruins of his glory and 
 would hear of no other course ; he said that by so doing he 
 could explain his position to all his creditors. In this deter- 
 mination Uncle Pillerault upheld Cesar in spite of the entreaties 
 of his niece. Cesar was persuaded to go upstairs, and then 
 the wily old man hurried to M. Haudry, put Cesar's case 
 
288 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 before him, obtained a prescription for a sleeping-draught, had 
 it made up, and went back to spend the evening in his nephew's 
 house. With Cesarine's assistance he constrained Cesar to 
 drink as they did ; the narcotic did its work ; and fourteen 
 hours later Birotteau awoke to find himself in Pillerault's own 
 bedroom in the Rue des Bourdonnais, a prisoner in the house 
 of his uncle, who slept on a camp bedstead put up in the 
 sitting-room. 
 
 When Pillerault had put Cesar into the cab, and Constance 
 had heard it roll away, then her courage failed her. Our 
 strength is often called forth by the necessity of sustaining 
 some one weaker than ourselves ; and the poor woman, now 
 that she was left alone with her daughter, wept as she would 
 have wept for Cesar if he had been lying dead. 
 
 "Mamma," said Cesarine, seating herself on her mother's 
 knee, with the gracious kitten-like ways that women only 
 display for each other, "you said that if I bore my part 
 bravely, you would be able to face adversity. So do not 
 cry, mother dear. I am ready to work in a store ; I will 
 forget what we have been ; I will be a forewoman, as you were 
 when you were a girl ; you shall never hear a regret or a com- 
 plaint from me. And I have a hope. Did you not hear 
 Monsieur Popinot ?" 
 
 " Dear boy ! he shall not be my son-in-law." 
 
 "Oh! mamma " 
 
 '.' He will be my own son." 
 
 "There is this one good thing about trouble, it teaches us 
 to know our real friends," said Cesarine; and, changing 
 places with her mother, she at last comforted her and soothed 
 the poor woman's grief. 
 
 The next morning Constance left a note for the Due de 
 Lenoncourt, one of the first gentlemen of the bedchamber. 
 She asked for an interview at a certain hour. Meanwhile, 
 she went to M. de la Billardiere, told him of the predicament 
 in which Cesar found himself in consequence of Roguin's 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 289 
 
 flight from the country, and begged the mayor to give her 
 his support with the Duke and to speak for her, for she 
 feared that she might express herself ill. She wanted some 
 post for Birotteau. Birotteau would be the most honest of 
 cashiers, if there are degrees in the quality of honesty. 
 
 "The King has just appointed the Comte de Fontaine as 
 comptroller-general of the royal household ; there is no time 
 to be lost." 
 
 At two o'clock La Billardiere and Mme. Cesar ascended 
 the great staircase of the Hotel de Lenoncourt in the Rue 
 Saint-Dominique, and were brought into the presence of one 
 of the nobles highest in the King's favor, in so far as Louis 
 XVIII. could be said to have preferences. The gracious 
 reception accorded to her by a great noble, one of the little 
 group who formed a connecting link between the eighteenth- 
 century noblesse and those of the nineteenth, put hope into 
 Mme. Cesar. The perfumer's wife was great and simple in 
 her sorrow; sorrow ennobles the most commonplace natures, 
 for it has a grandeur of its own, but only those who are true 
 and sincere can take its polish. Constance was essentially 
 sincere. It was a question of prompt application to the 
 King. 
 
 In the midst of the discussion, M. de Vandenesse was 
 announced. 
 
 " Here is your deliverer," exclaimed the Duke. 
 
 Mme. Birotteau was not unknown to the young man, who 
 had been once or twice to the perfumer's store for those trifles 
 which are as often of as much importance as great things. 
 The Duke explained La Billardiere's views ; and, when Van- 
 denesse learned the disasters, he went immediately with La 
 Billardiere to see the Comte de Fontaine on behalf of the 
 Marquise d'Uxelles' godson. Mine. Birotteau was asked to 
 await the result. 
 
 M. le Comte de Fontaine, like La Billardiere, was one of 
 the provincial noblesse, the almost unknown heroes of La 
 19 
 
290 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Vendee. Birotteau was no stranger to him, for he had seen 
 the perfumer at the Queen of Roses in former days. At that 
 time, those who had shed their blood for the Royalist cause 
 enjoyed privileges, which the King kept secret for fear of 
 hurting Liberal susceptibilities, and M. de Fontaine, one of 
 the King's favorites, was supposed to be in the confidence of 
 Louis XVIII. Not only did this influential person definitely 
 promise to obtain a post for the perfumer, but he went to the 
 Due de Lenoncourt, then in attendance, to ask him for a 
 moment's speech with the King that evening, and to entreat 
 for La Billardiere an audience with Monsieur the King's 
 brother, who had a particular regard for the old Vendean. 
 
 That very evening M. le Comte de Fontaine came from the 
 Tuileries to inform Mme. Birotteau that, as soon as her hus- 
 band had received his discharge, he would be appointed to a 
 post worth two thousand five hundred francs per annum in 
 the Sinking Fund Department, all places in the household 
 being at that time filled with noble supernumeraries to whom 
 the Royalist family were bound. 
 
 This success was but a part of the task undertaken by Mme. 
 Birotteau. The poor woman went to Joseph Lebas at the 
 sign of the Cat and Racket in the Rue Saint-Denis. On the 
 way thither she met Mme. Roguin in her showy carriage, 
 doubtless on a shopping expedition. Their eyes met, and the 
 visible confusion on the beautiful face of the notary's wife, at 
 this meeting with the woman who had been brought to ruin, 
 gave Constance courage. 
 
 " Never will I drive in a carriage paid for with other peo- 
 ple's money," said she to herself. 
 
 Welcomed by Joseph Lebas, she asked him to look for a 
 situation for her daughter in some respectable house of business. 
 Lebas made no promises, but a week later it was arranged that 
 Cesarine should be placed in a branch of one of the largest 
 dry goods establishments in Paris, which had just been opened 
 in the Quartier des Italiens. She was to live in the house, 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 291 
 
 and to take charge of the store and counting-room, with a 
 salary of three thousand francs. She would represent the 
 master and mistress, and the forewoman was to act under her 
 orders. 
 
 As for Mme. Cesar herself, she went on the same day to 
 ask Popinot to allow her to take charge of the books, the cor- 
 respondence, and the household. Popinot knew well that this 
 was the one commercial house in which the perfumer's wife 
 might take a subordinate position and still receive the respect 
 due her. The noble-hearted boy installed her in his house, 
 gave her a salary of three thousand francs, arranged to give 
 his own room to her, and went up into the attic. And so it 
 came to pass that the beautiful woman, after one short month 
 spent amid novel splendors, was compelled to take up her 
 abode in the poor room where Gaudissart, Anselme, and 
 Finot had inaugurated the Cephalic Oil. 
 
 The Tribunal of Commerce had appointed Molineux as 
 agent, and he came to take formal possession of Cesar's prop- 
 erty. Constance, with Celestin's help, went through the in- 
 ventory with him ; and then mother and daughter went to 
 stay with Pillerault. They went out on foot and simply 
 dressed, and without turning their heads, and this was their 
 leave-taking of the house in which they had spent the third 
 part of a lifetime. Silently they walked to the Rue des Bour- 
 donnais, and dined with Cesar, for the first time since their 
 separation. It was a melancholy dinner. They had each 
 had time to think over the position, to weigh the burden laid 
 upon them, to estimate their courage. All three were like 
 sailors, prepared to face the coming tempest without blinking 
 the danger. Birotteau took heart again when he heard that 
 great personages had interested themselves for him and pro- 
 vided for It is future ; but he broke down when he heard of 
 the arrangement which had been made for his daughter. 
 Then hearing how bravely his wife had begun to work again,. 
 he held out his hand to her. 
 
292 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Tears filled Pillerault's eyes for the last time in his life at 
 the sight of this pathetic picture of the father, mother, and 
 daughter united in one embrace; while Birotteau, the most 
 helpless and downcast of the three, held up his hand and cried, 
 " We must hope ! " 
 
 " To save expense, you must live here with me; you shall 
 have my room and share my bread. For a long time past I 
 have been tired of living alone ; you will take the place of 
 that poor boy I lost. And it will only be a step from here to 
 your office in the Rue d'Oratoire." 
 
 "Merciful God!" cried Birotteau. "There is a star to 
 guide me when the storm is at its height." 
 
 By resignation to his fate, the victim of a misfortune con- 
 sumes his misfortune. Birotteau could fall no further; he 
 had accepted the position, he became strong again. 
 
 In France, when a merchant has filed his petition, the only 
 thing he need trouble himself to do is to retreat to some oasis 
 at home or abroad where he may passively exist like the child 
 that he is in the eye of the law; theoretically he is a minor, 
 and incapable of acting in any capacity as a citizen.* Prac- 
 tically, however, he is by no means a nullity. He does not, 
 indeed, show his face until he receives a "certificate of im- 
 munity from arrest " (which no registrar nor creditor has been 
 known to refuse), for if he is found at large without it he is 
 liable to be put in prison ; but once provided with his safe- 
 conduct, his flag of truce, he can take a stroll through the 
 enemy's camp, not from idle curiosity, but to counteract and 
 thwart the evil intentions of the law with regard to bankrupts. 
 
 A prodigious development of perverse ingenuity is the 
 direct result of any law which touches private interests. The 
 
 * In France a bankrupt loses his civil and political status ; he recovers 
 the right of administering his own affairs after his discharge ; but the dis- 
 abilities are only removed by rehabilitation. This is an order granted by 
 the court when it is proved that the bankrupt has paid debts and costs in 
 full. 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 293 
 
 one thought of a bankrupt, as of everybody else who finds his 
 purposes crossed in any way by the law of the land, is how to 
 evade it. The period of civil death, during which time a 
 bankrupt must be considered as a kind of commercial chrysalis, 
 lasts for three months or thereabouts, the interval required for 
 the formalities which must be gone through before creditors 
 and debtor sign a treaty of peace, otherwise known as a con- 
 cordat, a word which indicates very clearly that concord reigns 
 after the storm raised by the clashing of various interests which 
 run counter to one another. 
 
 Directly the schedule is deposited, the Tribunal of Com- 
 merce appoints a registrar to watch over the interests of the 
 throng of unascertained creditors on the one hand, and on the 
 other to protect the bankrupt from the vexatious importunities 
 and inroads of infuriated creditors, a double part which pre- 
 sents magnificent possibilities if registrars had but time to 
 develop them. The registrar authorizes an agent by procura- 
 tion to take formal possession of the bankrupt's property, 
 bills, and effects, and the agent checks the statement of assets 
 in the schedule ; lastly, the clerk of the court convenes a 
 meeting of creditors, by tuck of drum ; that is to say, by adver- 
 tisements in the newspapers. The creditors, genuine or other- 
 wise, are called upon to assemble and agree among themselves 
 to appoint provisional trustees, who shall replace the agent, 
 step into the bankrupt's shoes, and, by a legal fiction, become 
 indeed the bankrupt himself. These have power to realize 
 everything, to make compromises, or to sell outright ; in 
 short, to wind up the whole business for the benefit of the 
 creditors, provided that the bankrupt makes no opposition. 
 As a rule, in Paris, the bankruptcy is not carried beyond the 
 stage of the provisional trustees, and for the following reasons : 
 
 The nomination of trustees is a proceeding calculated to 
 stir up more angry feeling than any other resolution which can 
 be passed by an assembly of men, deluded, baffled, befooled, 
 ensnared, bamboozled, robbed, cheated, and thirsting for ven- 
 
294 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 geance ; and albeit, as a general thing, the creditor is cheated, 
 robbed, bamboozled, ensnared, befooled, baffled, and deluded, 
 in Paris no commercial crisis, no feeling, however high, can 
 last for three mortal months. Nothing in commerce but a 
 bill of exchange is capable of starting up clamorous for pay- 
 ment at the expiration of ninety days. Before the three 
 months are out, all the creditors, exhausted by the wear and 
 tear, and worn out by the marches and countermarches of 
 the liquidation, sleep soundly by the side of their excellent 
 little wives. These facts may enable those who are not 
 Frenchmen to understand how it comes to pass that the ap- 
 pointment of provisional trustees is usually final ; out of a 
 thousand provisional trustees, there are not five who are ap- 
 pointed to carry the thing further. The reasons of the swift 
 abjuration of commercial enmity which has its source in a 
 failure may be imagined ; but for those who have not the good 
 fortune to be merchants, some explanation of the drama 
 known as bankruptcy is necessary if they are to comprehend 
 how it constitutes the most monstrous legal farce in Paris and 
 understand the ordinary rule to which Cesar's case was to be 
 so marked an exception : 
 
 A failure in business is a thrilling drama in three distinct 
 acts. Act the first may be called The Agent ; act the second, 
 The Trustees; and act the third, The Concordat, or payment 
 of composition. The spectacle is twofold, as is the case with 
 plays performed on the stage ; for there is the spectacular 
 effect intended for the public, and the more or less invisible 
 mechanism by which the effects are produced, and the same 
 play if seen before and behind the scenes looks quite different 
 from different points of view. In the wings stand the bank- 
 rupt and his attorney (one of the advocates who practice at the 
 Tribunal of Commerce), and the trustees and agent and the 
 registrar complete the list. 
 
 Nobody outside Paris knows what no Parisian can fail to 
 know, that a registrar is the most extraordinary kind of magis- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 295 
 
 trate which the freaks of civilization have devised. In the 
 first place he is a judge who, at every moment of his official 
 life, may go in fear that his own measure may be dealt to him 
 again. Paris has even seen the president of her Tribunal of 
 Commerce compelled to file his petition ; and the ordinary 
 judge, who is called upon to act as a registrar, is no venerable 
 merchant retired from business, whose magistracy is a tribute 
 to a stainless career, but the active senior partner of some 
 great house, a man burdened with the responsibility of vast 
 enterprises. It is a sine qua non that a judge who is bound to 
 give decisions on the torrents of commercial disputes which 
 pour incessantly upon the capital shall have as much or more 
 business of his own than he can manage. 
 
 Thus the Tribunal of Commerce, which might have been a 
 useful transition stage and half-way house between the trading 
 community and the regions of the noblesse, is composed of 
 busy merchants, who may one day be made to suffer for un- 
 popular awards, and a Birotteau among them may find a du 
 Tillet. 
 
 The judge or registrar, therefore, is of necessity a personage 
 in whose presence a great deal is said to which perforce he 
 lends an ear, thinking the while of his private concerns. He 
 is very apt to leave public business in the hands of the trus- 
 tees and the attorneys who practice at the Tribunal of Com- 
 merce, unless some odd and unusual case turns up ; some 
 instance of theft under curious circumstances, to draw from 
 him the remark that either the creditor or the debtor must be 
 a clever fellow. This personage set on high above the scene, 
 like the portrait of a king in an audience-chamber, is to be 
 seen of a morning from five to seven o'clock in his yard if he 
 is a lumber merchant ; in his store, if, like Birotteau, he is a 
 perfumer; and again in the evening at dessert after dinner, 
 but always and in any case terribly busy. For these reasons 
 this functionary is usually dumb. 
 
 Let us do justice to the law; the registrar's hands are tied 
 
296 CASAK BIROTTEAU. 
 
 by the hasty legislation which provided for these matters ; 
 and many a time he sanctions frauds which he is powerless to 
 hinder, as will shortly be seen. 
 
 The agent, instead of being the creditor's man, may play 
 into the debtor's hands. Each creditor hopes to swell his 
 share and in some way to make better terms for himself with 
 the bankrupt, whom every one suspects of a secret hoard. 
 The agent can make something out of both sides, by dealing 
 leniently with the bankrupt on the one hand, or, on the other, 
 by securing something for the more influential creditors, and 
 in this way can hold with the hare and run with the hounds. 
 Not unfrequently a crafty agent has annulled a judgment by 
 buying out the creditors and releasing the merchant, who 
 springs up again at a rebound like an india-rubber ball. 
 
 The agent turns to the best furnished crib ; he will, if nec- 
 essary, cover the largest creditors and let the debtor go bare, 
 or he will sacrifice the creditors to the merchant's future, as 
 suits him best. So the whole drama turns on the first act ; 
 and the agent, like the attorney of the Tribunal, is the utility- 
 man in a piece in which neither will play unless he is sure of 
 his fees beforehand. In nine hundred and ninety-nine cases 
 out of a thousand, the agent is for the debtor. 
 
 At the time when this story took place, it was the practice 
 of attorneys at the Tribunal of Commerce to go to the judge 
 who was to act as registrar and nominate a man of their own, 
 some one who knew something of the debtor's affairs and 
 could manage to reconcile the interests of the many and of 
 the one — the honorable trader who had fallen into misfortune. 
 Of late years it has been the practice of shrewd judges to 
 wait till this has been done so as to avoid the nominee, and 
 to make an effort to appoint a man of passable integrity. 
 
 During this first act the creditors, genuine or presumed, 
 present themselves to select the provisional trustees, an ap- 
 pointment which, as has been said, is practically final. In 
 this electoral assembly every creditor has a voice, whether his 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAV. 297 
 
 claim is for fifty sous or fifty thousand francs, and the votes 
 are reckoned by count and not by weight. The names of the 
 trustees are proposed at the meeting, packed by the debtor 
 with sham creditors (the only ones who never fail to put in an 
 appearance) ; and from the names thus sent in, the registrar, 
 the powerless president, is bound to choose those who shall 
 act. Naturally, therefore, the registrar takes the trustees from 
 the debtor's hands, another abuse which turns this catastrophe 
 into one of the most burlesque dramas sanctioned by a court 
 of justice. The "honorable trader fallen into misfortune" 
 is master of the situation, and proceeds to carry out a pre- 
 meditated robbery with the law at his back. In Paris, as a 
 rule, the petty tradesmen are blameless. Before a storekeeper 
 files his schedule, the poor honest fellow has left no stone 
 unturned ; he has sold his wife's shawl and pawned his 
 spoons and forks ; and when he gives in at last, it is with 
 empty hands, he is utterly ruined, and has not even money to 
 pay the attorney, who troubles himself very little about his 
 client. 
 
 The law demands that the concordat, which remits a part 
 of the debt and restores the debtor to the management of his 
 affairs, should be put to the vote and carried by a sufficient 
 majority, with due regard to the amounts claimed by the 
 voters. To secure the majority is a great feat which demands 
 the most skillful diplomacy on the part of the debtor, his 
 attorney, and the trustees amid the clash of conflicting inter- 
 ests. The ordinary commonplace stratagem consists in offer- 
 ing to such a body of the creditors as will represent the 
 majority required by the law a premium to be paid over and 
 above the dividend which the meeting of creditors is to consent 
 to accept. For this gigantic swindle there is no remedy. Suc- 
 cessive Tribunals of Commerce, familiar with it by dint of prac- 
 tice in non-official capacity and grown wise by experience, 
 have decided of late that all claims are made void where there 
 is a suspicion of fraud ; thus it is to the debtor's interest to 
 
298 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 complain of the "extortion," and the judges of the Tribunal 
 hope in this way to raise the moral tone of proceedings in 
 liquidation. But they will only succeed in making matters 
 worse ; creditors will exercise their ingenuity to invent still 
 more rascally devices, which the judges will brand as regis- 
 trars and profit by as merchants. 
 
 Another extremely popular expedient, which gave rise to 
 the expression "serious and legitimate creditor," consists in 
 creating creditors, much as du Tillet created a firm of bankers. 
 By introducing a sufficient number of Claparons into the 
 meeting, the debtor, in these diverse manifestations, receives 
 a share of the spoils, and sensibly diminishes the dividends 
 of the real creditors. This plan has a double advantage : 
 The debtor obtains resources for the future, and at the same 
 time secures the proper number of votes representing (to all 
 appearance) a sufficient proportion of the claims upon the 
 estate, the majority necessary for his discharge. These " gay 
 bogus creditors " are like sham electors in the electoral col- 
 lege. What help has the " serious bond-fide creditor " against 
 his " gay bogus " compeer? He can rid himself of him by 
 attacking him ! Very good. But if the "serious and bond- 
 fide" creditor means to oust the intruder, he must leave his 
 own business to take care of itself, and he must employ an 
 attorney; and, as the said attorney makes little or nothing out 
 of the case, he prefers to "conduct " bankruptcies, and does 
 not take a bit of pettifogging business too seriously. Then, 
 at the outset, before the "gay and bogus" one can be un- 
 earthed, a labyrinth of procedure must be entered upon, the 
 bankrupt's books must be gone through to some remote epoch, 
 and application must be made to the Court to require that the 
 books of the pretended creditor shall be likewise produced ; 
 the improbability of the fiction must be set forth and clearly 
 proved to the satisfaction of the judges of the Tribunal, and 
 the serious creditor must come and go and plead and arouse 
 interest in the indifferent. This Quixotic performance, more- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 299 
 
 over, must be gone through afresh in each separate case ; and 
 each gay and bogus creditor, if fairly convicted of "gaiety," 
 makes his bow to the Court with an "Excuse me, there is 
 some mistake; I am very serious indeed." All this is done 
 without prejudice to the rights of the debtor, who may appeal 
 and bring Don Quixote into the Court-Royal. And in the 
 meantime Don Quixote's own affairs go askew, and he too 
 may be compelled to file his schedule. 
 
 Moral : Let the debtor choose his trustees, verify the claims, 
 and arrange the amount of composition himself. 
 
 Given these conditions, who cannot imagine the underhand 
 schemes, the tricks worthy of Sganarelle, stratagems that a 
 Frontin might have devised, the lies that would do credit to 
 a Mascarille, the empty wallets of a Scapin, and all the results 
 of these two systems ? Any bankruptcy since insolvency came 
 into fashion would supply a writer with material sufficient to 
 fill the fourteen volumes of "Clarissa Harlowe." A single 
 example shall suffice : 
 
 The illustrious Gobseck, the master at whose feet the Pal- 
 mas, Gigonnets, Werbrusts, Kellers, and Nucingens of Paris 
 have sat, once found himself among the creditors of a bank- 
 rupt who had managed to swindle him, and whom, on that 
 account, he proposed to handle roughly. Of this person he 
 received bills to fall due after the discharge for a sum which 
 (taken together with the dividends received at the time) 
 should pay the amount owing to him (Gobseck) in full. Gob- 
 seck, in consequence, recommended that a final dividend of 
 twenty-five per cent, be paid. Behold the creditors swindled 
 for Gobseck's benefit ! But the merchant had signed the 
 illegal bills in the name of the insolvent firm ; and when the 
 time came, a dividend of twenty-five per cent, was all that he 
 could be made to pay upon them, and Gobseck, the great 
 Gobseck, received a bare fifty per cent. He always took off 
 his hat with ironical respect when he met that debtor. 
 
 As all transactions which take place within ten days before 
 
300 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 the time when a man files his schedule are open to question, 
 certain prudent prospective bankrupts are careful to break 
 ground early, and to approach some of their creditors, whose 
 interest it is, not less than their own, to arrive at a prompt 
 settlement. Then the more astute creditors will go in search 
 of the simple or of the very busy, paint the failure in the 
 darkest colors, and finally buy up their claims for half their 
 value. When the estate is liquidated, these shrewd folk come 
 by the dividend on their own share, and make fifty, thirty, or 
 twenty-five per cent, on the liabilities which they have pur- 
 chased, and in this way contrive to lose nothing. 
 
 After the failure is declared, the house in which a few bags of 
 money yet remain from the pillage is more or less hermetically 
 sealed. Happy the merchant who can effect an entrance by the 
 window, the roof, the cellar, or a hole in the wall, and secure a 
 bag to swell his share ! When things have come to this pass, 
 this Beresina, where the cry of " Each for himself" has been 
 raised, it is hard to say what is legal or illegal, true or false, 
 honest or dishonest. A creditor is thought a clever fellow if 
 he "covers himself; " that is to say, if he secures himself at 
 the expense of the rest. All France once rang with discussion 
 of a prodigious failure, which took place in a certain city 
 where there was a Court-Royal ; the magistrates therein being 
 all personally interested in the case arrayed their shoulders in 
 waterproof cloaks so heavy that the mantle of justice was 
 worn into holes, on which grounds it was necessary to transfer 
 the affair into another court. There was no registrar, no 
 agent, no final judgment possible in the bankrupt's own 
 district. 
 
 In Paris these commercial quicksands are so thoroughly well 
 appreciated that every merchant, however much time he may 
 have on his hands, accepts the loss as an uninsured accident ; 
 and, unless he is involved for some very large sum, passes the 
 matter to the wrong side of his profit and loss account. He 
 is not so foolish as to waste time over wasted money; he pre- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 301 
 
 fers to keep his own pot boiling. As for the little trader, 
 hard put to it to pay his monthly accounts, and tied to the 
 narrow round of his own business, tedious law proceedings, 
 involving a heavy initial outlay, scare him ; he gives up the 
 attempt to see through the matter, follows the example of the 
 great merchant, and makes up his mind to his loss. Whole- 
 sale merchants do not file their schedule in these days; they 
 liquidate by private arrangement ; their creditors take what is 
 offered them, and give a receipt in full ; a plan which saves 
 publicity, and the delays of the law, and solicitors' fees, and 
 depreciation of stock consequent on a sudden realization. It 
 is a common belief that it pays better to have a private arrange- 
 ment than to force the estate into bankruptcy, so private 
 arrangements are more frequent than failures in Paris. 
 
 The second act of the drama is intended to prove that a 
 trustee is incorruptible ; that there is not the slightest attempt 
 at collusion between them and the debtor. The audience, 
 who have most of them been at some time cast for the part of 
 trustees themselves, know that a trustee is another name for a 
 creditor whose claims are "covered." He listens, and be- 
 lieves as much as he pleases, till, after three months spent in 
 investigating liabilities and assets, the day comes when com- 
 position is offered and accepted. Then the provisional trus- 
 tees read a little report for the assembled creditors. The 
 following is a general formula : 
 
 " Gentlemen : — The total amount owing to us was one 
 million. We have dismantled our man like a stranded frigate. 
 The sale of old iron, timber, and copper has brought in three 
 hundred thousand francs, the assets therefore amount to thirty 
 per cent, of the liabilities. In our joy at finding this sum, 
 when our debtor might have left us a bare hundred thousand 
 francs, we proclaim him to be an Aristides. We vote him 
 crowns and a premium by way of encouragement ! We pro- 
 pose to leave him his assets, and to give him ten or a dozen 
 
302 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 years in which to pay us the dividend of fifty per cent., which 
 he condescends to promise us. Here is the concordat, walk up 
 to the desk and put your names to it ! " 
 
 At these words the happy creditors fall on each other's 
 necks and congratulate one another. When the concordat has 
 been ratified by the Tribunal the merchant's assets are put at 
 his disposition, and he begins business again as if nothing had 
 happene'd. He is at liberty to fail once more over the pay- 
 ment of the promised dividends — a sort of great-grandchild 
 of a failure, which not seldom appears like an infant borne 
 by a mother nine months after she had married her daughter. 
 
 If the concordat is not accepted, the creditors forthwith 
 make a final appointment of trustees. They resort to extreme 
 measures, and band themselves together to exploit the debtor's 
 property and business ; they lay their hands on everything he 
 has or may have, his reversionary rights in the property of 
 father and mother, uncles and aunts, and the like. This is a 
 desperate remedy found by a " union of the creditors." 
 
 If a man fails in business, therefore, there are two ways 
 open to him : by the first method, he takes things into his 
 own hands, and means to recover himself; in the second, 
 having fallen into the water, he is content to go to the bot- 
 tom. Pillerault knew the difference well. He was of Ragon's 
 opinion, that it was as hard to issue from the first experience 
 with clean hands as to emerge from the second a wealthy 
 man. He counseled surrender at discretion, and betook him- 
 self to the most upright attorney on 'Change, asking him to 
 conduct the liquidation and to put the proceeds at the dispo- 
 sition of the creditors. The law requires that the creditors 
 should make an allowance for the support of the debtor and 
 his family while the drama is in progress. Pillerault gave 
 notice to the registrar that he himself would maintain his 
 niece and nephew. 
 
 Du Til let had planned everything with a view to prolong- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 303 
 
 ing the agony of his old master's failure, and in the following 
 manner. Time is so valuable in Paris, that, though there are 
 usually two trustees appointed, one only acts in the case; the 
 other is nominated for form's sake ; he approves the proceed- 
 ings, like the second notary in a notarial deed; and the active 
 trustee as often as not leaves the work to the attorney em- 
 ployed by the bankrupt. By these means a failure of the first 
 kind is conducted so vigorously that everything is patched 
 up, fixed, settled, and arranged during the minimum time re- 
 quired by the legal procedure. In a hundred days the registrar 
 might repeat the cold-blooded epigram of the minister who 
 announced that "Order reigns in Warsaw." 
 
 Du Tillet meant to make an end of Cesar, commercially 
 speaking. So the names of the trustees appointed through 
 his influence had an ominous sound for Pillerault. M. 
 Bidault, otherwise Gigonnet, the principal creditor, was to do 
 nothing. Molineux, the fidgety little old person who had 
 lost nothing, was to do everything. Du Tillet had thrown 
 this noble corpse of a business to the little jackal to worry 
 before he devoured it. 
 
 Little Molineux went home after the meeting of creditors, 
 at which the trustees were appointed, "honored " (so he put 
 it) " by the suffrages of his fellow-citizens," and as happy in 
 the prospect of domineering over Birotteau as an urchin who 
 has an insect to torment. The owner of house-property, being 
 a stickler for the law, bought a copy of the " Code of Com- 
 merce," and asked du Tillet to give him the benefit of his 
 lights. Luckily, Joseph Lebas, forewarned by Pillerault, had, 
 at the outset, obtained a sagacious and benevolent registrar, 
 and Gobenheim-Keller (on whom du Tillet had fixed his 
 choice) was replaced by M. Camusot, an assistant judge, and 
 Pillerault's landlord, a Liberal, and a rich silk merchant, 
 spoken of as an honorable man. 
 
 One of the most dreadful scenes in Cesar's life was his en- 
 forced conference with little Molineux ; the creature whom 
 
304 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 he had looked upon as such a nullity had now, by a legal 
 fiction, become Cesar Birotteau. There was no help for it ; 
 so, accompanied by his uncle, he climbed the six flights of 
 stairs in the Cour Batave, reached the old man's dismal room, 
 and confronted his guardian, his quasi judge, the man who 
 represented the body of his creditors. 
 
 "What is the matter?" Pillerault asked on the stairs, 
 hearing a groan from Cesar. 
 
 " Oh ! uncle, you do not know what kind of a man this 
 Molineux is." 
 
 "I have seen him at the Cafe David these fifteen years; 
 he plays a game of dominoes there of an evening now and 
 then. That is why I came with you." 
 
 Molineux was prodigiously civil to Pillerault, and his man- 
 ner toward the bankrupt was contemptuously patronizing. 
 The little old man had thought out his course, studied his be- 
 havior down to the minutest details, and his ideas were ready 
 prepared. 
 
 "What information do you want?" asked Pillerault. 
 "None of the claims are disputed." 
 
 "Oh ! the claims are all in order," said little Molineux; 
 " they are all verified. The creditors are serious and bo?i&- 
 fide ! But there's the law, sir ; there's the law ! The bank- 
 rupt's expenditure is out of proportion to his means. It ap- 
 pears that the ball " 
 
 "At which you were an invited guest," put in the adroit 
 Pillerault. 
 
 " Cost nearly sixty thousand francs ! At any rate, that 
 amount was spent on the occasion, and the debtor's capital at 
 the time only amounted to a hundred and some odd thousand 
 francs ! There is warrant sufficient for bringing the matter 
 before a registrar-extraordinary, as a case of bankruptcy caused 
 by serious mismanagement." 
 
 "Is that your opinion?" asked Pillerault, who noticed 
 Birotteau's despondency at those words. 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 305 
 
 " Sir, the said Birotteau was a municipal officer, that makes 
 a difference " 
 
 "You did not send for us, I suppose, to tell us that the 
 case was to be transferred to a criminal court?" said Pille- 
 rault. " The whole Cafe David would laugh this evening at 
 your conduct." 
 
 The little old man seemed to stand in some awe of the 
 opinion of the Cafe David ; he gave Pillerault a scared look. 
 He had reckoned upon dealing with Birotteau alone, and had 
 promised himself that he would pose as sovereign lord and 
 Jupiter. He had meant to strike terror into Birotteau's soul 
 by the thunderbolts of a formal indictment, to brandish the 
 axe above his head, to enjoy the spectacle of his anguish and 
 alarm, and then to relent at the prayer of his victim, and send 
 him away with eternal gratitude in his soul. But, instead of 
 the insect, he was confronted with this business-like old 
 sphinx. 
 
 " There is nothing whatever to laugh at, sir ! " said he. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," returned Pillerault. "You are con- 
 sulting Monsieur Claparon pretty freely ; you are neglecting 
 the interests of the other creditors to obtain a decision that 
 you have preferential claims. Now I, as a creditor, can in- 
 tervene. The registrar is there." 
 
 "Sir," said Molineux, "I am incorruptible." 
 
 " I know you are," said Pillerault ; " you are only getting 
 yourself out of the scrape, as the saying is. You are shrewd ; 
 you have done as you did in the case of that tenant of 
 yours " 
 
 " Oh ! sir, my lawsuit in the matter of the Rue Montorgueil 
 is not decided yet ! " cried the trustee, slipping back into the 
 landlord at the word, just as the cat who became a woman 
 pounced upon the mouse. "A new issue, as they say, has 
 been raised. It is not a sub-tenancy ; he holds direct, and 
 the scamp says now that as he paid his rent a year in advance. 
 and there is only a year to run " (at this point Pillerault gave 
 20 
 
306 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Cesar a glance which recommended the closest attention to 
 what should follow), "and the year's rent being prepaid, 
 he might clear his furniture out of the premises. So there 
 is a new lawsuit. As a matter of fact, I ought to look after 
 my guarantees until I am paid in full ; there may be repairs 
 for which the tenant ought to pay." 
 
 "But you cannot distrain except for rent," remarked 
 Pillerault. 
 
 " And accessories ! " cried Molineux, attacked in the centre. 
 "The article in the Code is interpreted by the light of de- 
 cisions ; there are precedents. The law, however, certainly 
 wants mending in this respect. At this moment I am drafting 
 a petition to his lordship the keeper of the seals concerning 
 the hiatus. It would become the Government to consider 
 the interests of owners of property. The State depends upon 
 us, for we bear the brunt of the taxes." 
 
 "You are well qualified to enlighten the Government," 
 said Pillerault; "but on what point in this business of ours 
 can we throw any light for you? " 
 
 " I want to know," said Molineux with imperious emphasis, 
 "whether Monsieur Birotteau has received any money from 
 Monsieur Popinot." 
 
 "No, sir," answered Birotteau. A discussion followed as 
 to Birotteau's interest in the firm of Popinot, in the course of 
 which it was decided that Popinot had a right to demand the 
 repayment of his advances in full without putting in his claim 
 under the bankruptcy as one of Birotteau's creditors for the 
 half of the expenses of starting his business, which Birotteau 
 ought to have paid. Gradually, under Pillerault's handling, 
 Molineux became more and more civil, a symptom which 
 proved that he set no little store on the opinion of the fre- 
 quenters of the Cafe David. Before the interview ended he 
 was condoling with Birotteau, and asked him no less than 
 Pillerault to share his humble dinner. If the ex-perfumer 
 had gone by himself, he would perhaps have exasperated 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 307 
 
 Molineux, and brought rancor into the business ; and now, as 
 at some other times, old Pillerault played the part of guardian 
 angel. 
 
 One horrible form of torture the law inflicts upon bank- 
 rupts : they are bound to appear in person with the provisional 
 trustees and the registrar at the meeting of creditors which de- 
 cides their fate. For a man who can rise above it, as for the 
 merchant who is seeking his revenge, the dismal ceremony is 
 not very formidable ; but for any one like Cesar the whole 
 thing is an agony only paralleled by the last day in the con- 
 demned cell. Pillerault did all in his power to make that day 
 endurable to his nephew. 
 
 Molineux's proceedings, sanctioned by the bankrupt, had 
 been on this wise : The lawsuit concerning the mortgage on 
 the property in the Faubourg du Temple had been gained in 
 the Court of Appeal. The trustees decided to sell the land, 
 and Cesar made no objections. Du Tillet, knowing that the 
 Government meant to construct a canal to open communica- 
 tion between Saint-Denis and the' upper Seine, and that the 
 canal would pass through the Faubourg du Temple, bought 
 Cesar's property for seventy thousand francs. Cesar's rights 
 in the Madeleine building land were abandoned to M. Cla- 
 paron, on condition that he on his side should make no de- 
 mand for half the registration fees, which Cesar should have 
 paid on the completion of the contract ; it was arranged that 
 Claparon should take over the land and pay for it, and receive 
 the dividend in the bankruptcy which was due to the vendors. 
 
 The perfumer's interest in the firm of Popinot & Company 
 was sold to the said Popinot for forty-eight thousand francs. 
 Celestin Crevel bought the business as a going concern for 
 fifty-seven thousand francs, together with the lease of the 
 premises, the stock, the fittings, the proprietary rights in the 
 Pate des Sultanes and Carminative Toilet Lotion, a twelve 
 years' lease of the factory and the plant being included in the 
 sale. 
 
308 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 The liquid assets reached a total of one hundred and ninety- 
 five thousand francs, to which the trustees added seventy 
 thousand francs from the liquidation of " that unlucky fellow 
 Roguin." Two hundred and sixty-five thousand francs in 
 all. The liabilities amounted to about four hundred and forty 
 thousand francs, so that there would be a dividend of more 
 than fifty per cent. 
 
 A liquidation is something like a chemical process, from 
 which the clever insolvent merchant endeavors to emerge as a 
 saturated solution. Birotteau, distilled entirely in this retort, 
 yielded a result which infuriated du Tillet. Du Tillet thought 
 that there would be a dishonoring bankruptcy, and behold a 
 liquidation highly creditable to his man. He cared very little 
 about the pecuniary gain, for he would have the building land 
 by the Madeleine without opening his purse; he wished to see 
 the poor merchant disgraced, ruined, and humbled in the dust. 
 The meeting of creditors would doubtless carry out the per- 
 fumer in triumph on their shoulders. 
 
 As Birotteau's courage returned, his uncle, like a wise 
 physician, gradually told him the details of the proceedings 
 in bankruptcy. These rigorous measures were so many heavy 
 blows. A merchant cannot but feel depressed when the 
 things on which he has spent so much money and so much 
 thought are sold for so little. He was petrified with astonish- 
 ment at the tidings which Pillerault brought. 
 
 " Fifty-seven thousand francs for the Queen of Roses ! 
 Why, the stock is worth ten thousand francs ! We spent 
 forty thousand francs on the rooms and the fittings; the 
 plant, the moulds and boilers over at the factory cost thirty 
 thousand francs ! Why, if the things are sold for half their 
 value, there is the worth of ten thousand francs in the store, 
 and the Pate des Sultanes and the Lotion are as good as a 
 farm ! " 
 
 Poor ruined Cesar's jeremiads did not alarm Pillerault 
 very much. The old merchant took them much as a 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 309 
 
 horse takes a shower of rain ; but when he came to talk of 
 the meeting of creditors, Cesar's gloomy silence frightened 
 him. Those who understand the weakness and vanity of 
 human nature in every social sphere will understand that for 
 an ex-judge to return as a bankrupt to the Palais where he had 
 sat was a ghastly form of torture. He must receive his en- 
 emies in the very place where he had been so often thanked 
 for his services ; he, Birotteau, whose views as to bankruptcy 
 were so well known in Paris; he who had said, "A man who 
 files his schedule is an honest man still, but by the time he 
 comes out of a meeting of creditors he is a rogue. ' ' His uncle 
 watched for favorable opportunities, and tried to accustom 
 him to the idea of appearing before his creditors assembled, as 
 the law requires. This condition was killing Birotteau. His 
 dumb resignation made a deep impression on Pillerault, who, 
 through the thin partition wall, used to hear him cry at night, 
 " Never ! never ! I will die sooner." 
 
 Pillerault, so strong himself by reason of his simple life, 
 understood weakness. He made up his mind to spare Birot- 
 teau the anguish to which his nephew might succumb, the 
 dreadful and inevitable meeting with his creditors ! The law 
 is precise, positive, and unflinching in this respect; the debtor 
 who refuses to appear is liable on these grounds alone to have 
 his case transferred out of the commercial into the criminal 
 court. But if the law compels the appearance of the debtor, 
 it exercises no such constraint upon the creditors. 
 
 A meeting of creditors is a mere formality except in certain 
 cases; when, for example, a rogue is to be ousted, or the 
 creditors unite to refuse the dividend offered, or cannot agree 
 among themselves because some of their number are privileged 
 to the prejudice of the rest, or the dividend offered is out- 
 rageously small, and the bankrupt is doubtful of obtaining a 
 majority to carry the resolution. But when the estate has 
 been honestly liquidated, or when a rascally debtor has 
 squared everybody, the meeting is only a matter of form. So 
 
310 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Pillerault went round to the creditors one after another and 
 asked each to empower his attorney to represent him on that 
 occasion. Every creditor, du Tillet excepted, was sorry for 
 Birotteau now that he had been brought low. All of them 
 knew how he had behaved, how well his books had been kept, 
 and how straightforward he had been in the matter. They 
 were well pleased to find not one "gay" creditor among 
 their number. Molineux, as agent in the first place, and 
 afterward as trustee, had found all that the poor man pos- 
 sessed, down to the print of "Hero and Leander " which 
 Popinot had given him. Birotteau had not taken away such 
 small matters as his gold-buckles, his pin, and the two watches, 
 which even an honest man might not have scrupled to keep. 
 This touching obedience to the law made a great sensation in 
 commercial circles. Birotteau's enemies represented these 
 things as conclusive signs of the man's stupidity ; but sensible 
 people saw them in their true light, as a magnificent excess of 
 honesty. In two months a change had been brought about in 
 opinion on 'Change. The most indifferent admitted that this 
 failure was one of the greatest curiosities of commerce ever 
 heard of. So when the creditors knew that they were to 
 receive sixty per cent., they agreed to do all that Pillerault 
 asked of them. There are but few attorneys practicing at the 
 Tribunal ; so several of the creditors deputed the same man to 
 represent them, and the whole formidable assemblage was 
 reduced to three attorneys, Ragon, the two trustees, and the 
 registrar. 
 
 "Cesar, you can go without fear to your meeting to-day; 
 you will find nobody there," Pillerault said on the morning 
 of that memorable day. 
 
 M. Ragon wished to go with his debtor. At the sound of 
 the thin elderly voice of the previous owner of the Queen of 
 Roses, all the color left his successor's face ; but the kind little 
 old man held out his arms, and Birotteau went to him likr a 
 child to his father, and both shed tears. This jindiilge-.trg 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 311 
 
 goodness put fresh heart into Cesar, and he followed his 
 uncle to the cab. 
 
 Punctually at half-past three they arrived in the Cloitre 
 Saint-Merri, where the Tribunal of Commerce then held its 
 sessions. The Salle des Faillites was deserted. The day and 
 the hour had been fixed to that end with the approbation of 
 the trustees and the registrar. The attorneys were there on 
 behalf of their clients ; there was nothing to fill Cesar's soul 
 with dread; and yet the poor man could not enter M. Camu- 
 sot's room (which had once been his) without deep emotion, 
 and he shuddered as he went through the Salle des Faillites. 
 
 "It is cold," said M. Camusot, turning to Birotteau ; 
 "these gentlemen will not be sorry to stay here instead of 
 being frozen in the Salle." (He would not say the Salle des 
 Faillites.*) "Seat yourselves, gentlemen." 
 
 Every one sat down; the registrar put Cesar, still confused, 
 into his own armchair. Then trustees and attorneys signed 
 their names. 
 
 "In consideration of the abandonment of your estate," 
 said Camusot, again addressing Birotteau, " your creditors 
 unanimously agree to forego the remainder of their claims ; 
 your concordat is couched in language which may soften your 
 regrets ; your attorney will have it confirmed by the Tribunal 
 at once. So you are discharged. All the judges of the Tri- 
 bunal have felt sorry that you should be placed in such a 
 position, dear Monsieur Birotteau, without being surprised by 
 your courage," Camusot went on, taking Birotteau's hands, 
 " and there is no one but appreciates your integrity. Through 
 your disasters you have shown yourself worthy of the position 
 which you held here. I have been in business these twenty 
 years, and this is the second time that I have seen a merchant 
 rise in public esteem ' after his failure.' " 
 
 Birotteau grasped the registrar's hand and squeezed it. 
 There were tears in his eyes. Camusot asked him what he 
 
 * Bankrupts' Hall. 
 
312 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 meant to do, and Birotteau answered that he was going to 
 work, and that he intended to pay his creditors in full. 
 
 " If you should be in want of a few thousand francs to 
 carry out your noble design, you will always find them if you 
 come to me," said Camusot ; "I would give them with great 
 pleasure to see a thing not often seen in Paris." 
 
 Pillerauk, Ragon, and Birotteau left the Tribunal. 
 
 " Well, was it so bad after all ? " said Pillerault, when they 
 stood outside. 
 
 "I can see your hand in it, uncle," said Cesar, deeply 
 touched. 
 
 " And now that you are on your feet again, come and see 
 my nephew," said Ragon ; "it is only a step to the Rue des 
 Cinq-Diamants." 
 
 It was with a cruel pang that Cesar looked up and saw Con- 
 stance sitting at her desk in a room on the low, dark floor 
 above the store ; dark, for a signboard outside, on which the 
 name "A. Popinot " was painted, cutoff one-third of the 
 light from the window. 
 
 " Here is one of Alexander's lieutenants." said Birotteau, 
 pointing to the sign with the forced mirth of misfortune. 
 
 This constrained gaiety, the naive expression of Birotteau's 
 old belief in his superior talents, made Ragon shudder, de- 
 spite his seventy years. But Cesar's cheerfulness broke down 
 when his wife brought in letters for Popinot to sign, and his 
 face turned white in spite of himself. 
 
 "Good-evening, dear." she said, smiling at him. 
 
 " I need not ask whether you are comfortable here," Cesar 
 said, and he looked at Popinot. 
 
 "I might be in my own son's house," she said, and her 
 husband was struck by the tender expression which crossed 
 her face. 
 
 Birotteau embraced Popinot, saying, "I have just lost for 
 ever the right to call you my son." 
 
 "Let us hope," said Popinot, "Your Oil is going well, 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 313 
 
 thanks to our efforts in the newspapers, and thanks to Gaud- 
 issart, who has been all over and flooded France with placards 
 and prospectuses. He is having prospectuses in German 
 printed at Strasbourg, and is just about to descend on Ger- 
 many like an invasion. We have orders for three thousand 
 gross." 
 
 " Three thousand gross ! " echoed Cesar. 
 
 " And I have bought some land in the Faubourg Saint- 
 Marceau, not badly ; a factory is to be built there. I shall 
 keep on at the other place in the Faubourg du Temple." 
 
 " With a little help, wife," Birotteau said in Constance's 
 ear, " we shall pull through." 
 
 From that memorable day Cesar and his wife and daughter 
 understood one another. Poor clerk, as he was, he had set 
 himself a task which, if not impossible, was gigantic ; he 
 would pay his creditors in full ! The three, united by a 
 common bond of fierce independence, grew miserly and 
 denied themselves everything; every centime was consecrated 
 to this end. Cesarine, with one object in •her mind, threw 
 herself into her work with a young girl's devotion. She spent 
 her nights in devising schemes for increasing the prosperity 
 of the house ; she invented designs for materials, and brought 
 her inborn business faculties into play. Her employers were 
 obliged to check her ardor for work, and rewarded her with 
 presents, but she declined the ornaments and trinkets which 
 they offered ; it was money that she preferred. Every month 
 she took her salary, her little earnings, to her Uncle Pillerault, 
 and Cesar and Mme. Birotteau did the same. All three of them 
 recognized their lack of ability, and shrank from assuming" the 
 responsible task of investing their savings. So the uncle went 
 into business again, and studied the money market. At a 
 later time it was known that Jules Desmarets and Joseph 
 Lebas had helped him with their counsel ; both had zealously 
 looked for safe investments. 
 
 Birotteau, living in his uncle's house, did not even dare to 
 
314 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 ask any questions about the uses to which the family savings 
 were put. He went through the streets with a bent head, 
 shrinking from all eyes, downcast, nervous, blind to all that 
 passed. It vexed him that he must wear fine cloth. 
 
 "At any rate, I am not eating my creditors' bread," he 
 said, with an angelic glance at the kind old man. "Your 
 bread is sweet " (he went on), " although you give it me out 
 of pity, when I think that, thanks to this sacred charity, I am 
 not robbing my creditors of my earnings." 
 
 The merchants who met the Birotteau of those days could 
 not see a trace of the Birotteau whom they used to know. 
 Vast thoughts were awakened in indifferent beholders at sight 
 of that face so dark with the blackest misery, of the man who 
 had never been thoughtful so bowed down beneath the weight 
 of a thought ; it was a revelation of the depths, in that this 
 being, dwelling on so ordinary a human level, could have had 
 so far to fall. To the man who would fain be wiped out comes 
 no extinction. Shallow natures who lack a conscience, and 
 are incapable of*much feeling, can never furnish forth the 
 tragedy of man and fate. Religion alone sets its peculiar seal 
 on those who have sounded these depths ; they believe in 
 a future and in a Providence ; a certain light shines in them, 
 a look of holy resignation, blended with hope, which touches 
 those who behold it ; they know all that they have lost, like 
 the exiled angel weeping at the gates of heaven. A bankrupt 
 cannot show his face on 'Change; and Cesar, thrust out from 
 the society of honest men, was like the angel sighing for 
 pardon. 
 
 For fourteen months Cesar refused all amusements; his 
 mind was full of religious thoughts, inspired by his fall. Sure 
 though he was of the Ragons' friendship, it was impossible to 
 induce him to dine with them ; nor would he visit the Lebas, 
 nor the Matifats, the Protez and Chiffrevilles, nor even M. 
 Vauquelin, though all were anxious to show their admiration 
 for Cesar's behavior. He would rather be alone in his own 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 315 
 
 room, where he could not meet the eyes of any one to whom 
 he owed money ; and the most cordial kindness on the part 
 of his friends recalled him to a sense of the bitterness of his 
 position. 
 
 Constance and Cesarine went nowhere. On Sundays and 
 holidays, the only times when they were free, the two women 
 went first to mass, and then home with Cesar after the service. 
 Pillerault used to ask the Abbe Loraux to come — the Abbe 
 Loraux who had sustained Cesar in his trouble — and they made 
 a family party. The old hardware merchant could not but 
 approve his nephew's scruples, his own sense of commercial 
 honor was too keen ; and therefore his mind was bent upon 
 increasing the number of people whom the bankrupt might 
 look in the face with a clear brow. 
 
 In May, 1821, the efforts of the family thus struggling with 
 adversity were rewarded by a holiday, contrived by the arbiter 
 of their destinies. The first Sunday in that month was the 
 anniversary of the betrothal of Cesar and Constance. Pil- 
 lerault and the Ragons had taken a little house in the country 
 at Sceaux, and the old hardware dealer wanted to make a 
 festival of the house-warming. 
 
 On the Saturday evening he spoke to his nephew. " We 
 are going into the country to-morrow, Cesar," he said, "and 
 you must come, too." 
 
 Cesar, who wrote a beautiful hand, copied documents for 
 Derville and several other lawyers in the evenings, and on 
 Sundays (with a dispensation from the cure) he worked like a 
 
 negro. 
 
 " No," he answered ; " Monsieur Derville is waiting for an 
 account of a guardianship." 
 
 " Your wife and daughter deserve a holiday, and there will 
 be no one but our friends — the Abbe Loraux, the Ragons, 
 and Popinot and his uncle. Beside, I want you to come." 
 
 Cesar and his wife, carried away by the daily round of their 
 busy lives, had never gone back to Sceaux, though from 
 
316 CESAR BIROTTEAV. 
 
 time to time they both had wished to see the garden again, 
 and the lime-tree beneath which Cesar had almost swooned 
 with joy, in the days when he was still an assistant at the 
 Queen of Roses. To-day, when Popinot drove them, and 
 Birotteau sat with Constance and their daughter, his wife's 
 eyes turned to his from time to time, but the look of intelli- 
 gence in them drew no answering smile from his lips. She 
 whispered a few words in his ear, but a shake of the head was 
 the only response. The sweet expressions of tenderness, un- 
 alterable, but now forced somewhat, brought no light into 
 Cesar's eyes; his face grew gloomier, the tears which he had 
 kept back began to fill his eyes. Twenty years ago he had 
 been along this very road, when he was young and prosperous 
 and full of hope, the lover of a girl as lovely as Cesarine, 
 who was with them now. Then he had dreamed of happiness 
 to come; to-day he saw his noble child's face, pale with long 
 hours of work, and his brave wife, of whose great beauty 
 there remained such traces as are left to a beautiful city after 
 the lava flood has poured over it. Of all that had been, love 
 alone was left. Cesar's attitude repressed the joy in the girl's 
 heart and in Anselme, the two who now represented the lovers 
 of that bygone day. 
 
 " Be happy, children ; you deserve to be happy," said the 
 poor father, in heartrending tones. " You can love each 
 other with no after-thoughts," added he; and as he spoke he 
 took both his wife's hands in his and kissed them with a rev- 
 erent, admiring affection which touched her more than the 
 brightest cheerfulness. Pillerault, the Ragons, the Abbe 
 Loraux, and Popinot the elder were all waiting for them at 
 the house; there was an understanding among those five 
 kindly souls, and their manner, and looks, and words put 
 Cesar at his ease, for it went to their hearts to see him always 
 as if on the morrow of his failure. 
 
 <; Take a walk in the Bois d'Aulnay," said Pillerault, 
 putting Cesar's hand into that of his wife's. " Go and 
 
CESAR B1R0TTEAU. 317 
 
 take Anselme and Cdsarine with you, and come back again at 
 four o'clock." 
 
 "Poor things, we are in the way," said Mme. Ragon, 
 touched by her debtor's unfeigned misery ; "he will be very 
 happy before long." 
 
 "It is a repentance without the sin," said the Abbe 
 Loraux. 
 
 " He could only have grown great through misfortune," 
 said the judge. 
 
 The power of forgetting is the great secret of strong and 
 creative natures ; they forget after the manner of nature, who 
 knows nothing of a past ; with every hour she begins afresh 
 the constant mysterious workings of fertility. But weak na- 
 tures, like Birotteau, take their sorrows into their lives instead 
 of transmuting them into the axioms of experience ; and, 
 steeping themselves in their troubles, wear themselves out by 
 reverting daily to the old unhappiness. 
 
 When the two couples had found the footpath which leads to 
 the Bois d'Aulnay, set like a crown on one of the loveliest of 
 the low hills about Paris; when the Vallee-aux-Loups lay below 
 them in its enchanting beauty, the bright day, the charm of 
 the view, the fresh green leaves about them, and delicious 
 memories of that fairest day of their youth, relaxed the chords 
 which grief had strung to resonance in Cesar's soul ; he held 
 his wife's arm tightly against his beating heart ; his eyes were 
 glazed no longer, a glad light shone in them. 
 
 "At last I see you again, my dear Cesar," Constance said. 
 " It seems to me that we are behaving well enough to allow 
 ourselves a little pleasure from time to time." 
 
 "How can I?" poor Birotteau answered. "Oh! Con- 
 stance, your love is the one good left to me. I have lost 
 everything, even the confidence that I used to have in myself. 
 I have no heart left in me; I want to live long enough to pay 
 my dues on earth before I die, and that is all. You, dear, 
 who have been wisdom and prudence for me, who saw things 
 
318 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 clearly, you who are not to blame, may be glad. Among us 
 three, I am the only guilty one. Eighteen months ago, at 
 that unlucky ball, I saw this Constance of mine, the only 
 woman whom I have loved, more beautiful perhaps than the 
 young girl with whom I wandered along this path twenty years 
 ago, as our children are wandering together now. In less than 
 two years I have blighted that beauty, my pride, and I had a 
 right to be proud of it. I love you more as I know you better. 
 Oh ! dearest ! " and his tone gave the word an eloquence that 
 went to his wife's heart, " if only I might hear you scold me, 
 instead of soothing my distress." 
 
 "I did not think it possible," she said, " that a woman 
 could love her husband more after twenty years of life to- 
 gether." 
 
 For a moment Cesar forgot all his troubles at the words 
 that brought such a wealth of happiness to a heart like his. It 
 was with something like joy in his soul that he went toward 
 their tree, which by some chance had not been cut down. 
 Husband and wife sat down beneath it, and watched Anselme 
 and Cesarine, who walked to and fro on the same plot of 
 grass, unconscious of their movements, fancying perhaps that 
 they were still walking on and on. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," Anselme was saying, "do you think me 
 so base and so greedy as to take advantage of the fact that I 
 own your father's interest in the Cephalic Oil? I have care- 
 fully set aside his share of the profits ; I am keeping them for 
 him. I am adding interest to the money; if there are any 
 doubtful debts, I pass them to my own account. We can only 
 belong to each other when your father has been rehabilitated ; 
 I am trying with all the strength that love gives me to bring 
 that day soon." 
 
 He had carefully kept his secret from Cesarine's mother ; 
 but the simplest lover is always anxious to be great in his 
 love's eyes. 
 
 "And will it come soon ?" she asked. 
 
CESAR B7R0TTEAU 319 
 
 "Very soon," said Popinot. 
 
 The tone in which the answer was given was so penetrating 
 that the innocent and pure-hearted girl held up her forehead 
 for her lover's kiss, fervent and respectful, for Cesarine's noble 
 nature had spoken so plainly in the impulse. 
 
 " Everything is going well, papa," she said, with the air of 
 one who knows a great deal. " Be nice, and talk, and don't 
 look so sad any longer." 
 
 When these four people, so closely bound together, returned 
 to Pillerault's new house, Cesar, unobservant though he was, 
 felt from the Ragons' altered manner that something was im- 
 pending. Mme. Ragon was peculiarly gracious ; her look 
 and tone said plainly to Cesar, " We are paid." 
 
 After dinner the notary of Sceaux appeared. Pillerault 
 asked him to be seated, and glanced at Birotteau, who began 
 to suspect some surprise, though he did not imagine how 
 great it would be. Pillerault began — 
 
 "Your savings for eighteen months, nephew, and those of 
 your wife and daughter amount to twenty thousand francs. I 
 received thirty thousand francs in the shape of dividend, so 
 we have fifty thousand francs to divide among your creditors. 
 Monsieur Ragon has had thirty thousand francs as dividend ; 
 so this gentleman, who is the notary of Sceaux, is about to 
 hand you a receipt in full for principal and interest, paid 
 to your friends. The rest of the money is with Crottat for 
 Lourdois, Madame Madou, the builder, and the carpenter, 
 and the more pressing of your creditors. Next year we shall 
 see. One can go a long way with time and patience." 
 
 Birotteau's joy cannot be described ; he embraced his uncle, 
 and shed tears. 
 
 " Let him wear his cross to-day," said Ragon, addressing 
 the Abbe Loraux, and the confessor fastened the red ribbon 
 to Cesar's button-hole. A score of times that evening he 
 looked at himself in the mirrors on the walls of the sitting- 
 room with a delight which people who believe themselves to 
 
320 CESAR BIROTIEAU. 
 
 be superior would laugh at ; but these good-hearted citizens 
 saw nothing unnatural in it. The next day Birotteau went to 
 see Mme. Madou. 
 
 " Oh ! is that you ! " she cried ; " I did not know you, 
 old man, you have grown so gray. Still, the like of you 
 don't come to grief; there are places under Government for 
 you. I myself am working as hard as a poodle that turns a 
 spit, and deserves to be christened." 
 
 " But, madame " 
 
 "Oh, I'm not blaming you," she said; "you had your 
 discharge." 
 
 "I have come to tell you that I will pay you the balance 
 to-day, at Maitre Crottat's office, and interest also " 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 " You must be there at half-past eleven." 
 
 "There's honesty for you ! good measure, and thirteen to 
 the dozen," cried she, in outspoken admiration. " Stop, sir, 
 I do a good trade with that red-haired youngster of yours ; he 
 is a nice young fellow; he lets me make my profit without 
 haggling over the price, so as to make up to me for the loss. 
 Well, then, I will give you the receipt ; keep your money, 
 poor old soul ! La Madou fires up like tinder, she hollers 
 out, but she has something here," and she tapped the most 
 ample cushion of live flesh ever known in the Great Market. 
 
 "Never!" said Birotteau, "the law is explicit; I mean 
 to pay you in full." 
 
 " Then there is no need to keep on begging and praying 
 of me. And to-morrow at the Market I will sound your 
 praises ; they shall all know about you. Oh ! it is a rare 
 joke ! " 
 
 The worthy man went through the same scene again with 
 the house-painter, Crottat's father-in-law, but with some varia- 
 tions. It was raining. Cesar left his umbrella in a corner 
 by the door, and the well-to-do house-painter, sitting at 
 breakfast with his wife in a handsomely furnished room, saw 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 321 
 
 the stream of water trickle across the floor, and was not too 
 considerate. 
 
 " Halloo, poor old Birotteau, what do you want ? " he asked, 
 in the hard tone which people use to a tiresome beggar. 
 
 " Has not your son-in-law asked you, sir " 
 
 "What?" Lourdois broke in impatiently. Some request 
 was to follow, he thought. 
 
 " To go to his office this morning at half-past eleven, to 
 give me a receipt in full for the balance of your claim ? " 
 
 " Oh ! that is another thing ! Just sit you down, Monsieur 
 Birotteau, and take a bite with us " 
 
 "Do us the honor of breakfasting with us," said Mme. 
 Lourdois. 
 
 " Doing pretty well? " asked her burly spouse. 
 
 " No, sir. I have had to lunch off a roll in my office to 
 get some money together, but I hope in time to repair the 
 wrong done to my neighbors." 
 
 "Really, you are a man of honor," remarked the house- 
 painter, as he swallowed a mouthful of bread and butter and 
 Strasbourg pie. 
 
 "And what is Madame Birotteau doing?" asked Mme. 
 Lourdois. 
 
 " She is keeping the books in Monsieur Anselme Popinot's 
 counting-house." 
 
 " Poor things ! " said Mme. Lourdois, in a low voice. 
 
 " If you should want me, come and see me, my dear Mon- 
 sieur Birotteau," began Lourdois; " I might be of use " 
 
 " I want you at eleven o'clock, sir," said Birotteau, and 
 with that he went. 
 
 This first result gave Birotteau fresh courage, but it did not 
 give him peace of mind. The desire to redeem his character 
 perturbed him beyond all measure. He completely lost the 
 bloom which used to appear in his face, his eyes grew dull, 
 his cheeks hollow. Old acquaintances who met him at eight 
 o'clock in the morning, or after four in the afternoon on his 
 31 
 
322 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 way to and from the Rue de l'Oratoire, saw a pale-faced, 
 nervous, white-haired man, wearing the same overcoat which 
 he had had at the time of the bankruptcy (for he was as care- 
 ful of it as a poor sub-lieutenant who economizes his uniform). 
 Sometimes they would stop him in spite of himself, for he 
 was quick-sighted, slinking home, keeping close to the wall 
 like a thief. 
 
 "People know how you have behaved, my friend," they 
 would say. " Everybody is sorry to see how hardly you live, 
 you and your wife and daughter." 
 
 ''Take a little more time about it," others would suggest. 
 " A wound in the purse is not mortal." 
 
 " No, but a wound in the soul is deadly indeed," the poor 
 feeble Cesar said one day in answer to Matifat. 
 
 At the beginning of the year 1823 the Canal Saint-Martin 
 was decided upon, and land in the Faubourg du Temple 
 fetched fabulous prices. The canal would actually pass 
 through the property once Cesar's, now du Tillet's. The 
 company who had purchased the concessions were prepared to 
 pay du Tillet an exorbitant sum for the land if he Would put 
 them in possession within a given time, and Popinot's lease 
 was the one obstacle in the way. So du Tillet went to see the 
 druggist in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants. 
 
 If Popinot himself regarded du Tillet with indifference, as 
 Cesarine's lover he felt an instinctive hatred of the man. He 
 knew nothing of the theft, nor of the disgraceful machinations 
 of the lucky banker, but a voice within him said, "This is a 
 thief who goes unpunished." Popinot had not had the slightest 
 transaction with du Tillet, whose presence was hateful to him, 
 and particularly hateful at that moment when he beheld du 
 Tillet enriched with the spoils of his employer's property, for 
 the building land at the Madeleine was beginning to command 
 prices which presaged the exorbitant sums which were asked 
 for lots in 1827. So when the banker explained the reason 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 323 
 
 of his visit, Popinot looked at him with concentrated indig- 
 nation. 
 
 "I do not mean to refuse outright to surrender my lease, 
 but I must have sixty thousand francs for it, and I will not 
 bate a centime." 
 
 "Sixty thousand francs!" cried du Tillet, making as 
 though he would go. 
 
 " The lease has fifteen years to run, and it will take another 
 three thousand francs per annum to replace the factory. So, 
 sixty thousand francs, or we will say no more about it," said 
 Popinot, turning into the store, whither du Tillet followed 
 him. 
 
 The discussion waxed warm, when Mme. Birotteau, hear- 
 ing her husband's name pronounced, came downstairs and 
 saw du Tillet for the first time since the famous ball. He, on 
 his side, could not avoid making a startled gesture at the sight 
 of the change wrought in her face — he was frightened at his 
 work and lowered his eyes. 
 
 " This gentleman is receiving three hundred thousand francs 
 for your land," said Popinot, addressing Mme. Cesar, "and 
 he declines to pay us sixty thousand francs by way of indem- 
 nity for our lease " 
 
 " Three thousand francs per annum," said du Tillet, laying 
 stress on the words. 
 
 "Three thousand francs J '" Madame Cesar repeated the 
 words quietly and significantly. 
 
 Du Tillet turned pale; Popinot looked at Mme. Birotteau. 
 * There was a pause and a deep silence, which made the scene 
 still more inexplicable to Anselme. 
 
 "Sign your surrender," said du Tillet; "I have had the 
 document drafted by Crottat," and he drew a stamped agree- 
 ment from a side-pocket. " I will give you a draft on the 
 bank for sixty thousand francs." 
 
 Popinot stared at Mme. Cesar with great and unfeigned 
 astonishment ; he thought that he was dreaming. While du 
 
324 CESAR BIROTTEACT. 
 
 Tillet was making out his draft at a desk, Mme. Cesar van- 
 ished upstairs again. The druggist and the banker exchanged 
 papers, and du Tillet went out with a very frigid bow to 
 Popinot. 
 
 "At last!" cried Popinot. "Only a few months now, 
 and I shall have my Cesarine, thanks to this queer business," 
 and he watched du Tillet turn into the Rue des Lombards, 
 where his cab was waiting for him. " My dear little wife 
 shall not wear herself to death at her work. What ! was a 
 look from Madame Cesar enough ? What is there between 
 her and that brigand? It is a very extraordinary thing." 
 
 Popinot sent the draft to be cashed at the bank and went 
 upstairs to speak to Mme. Birotteau ; but she was not in the 
 counting-house, doubtless she had gone to her room. Anselme 
 and Constance lived like a mother-in-law and son-in-law 
 when these are on good terms with each other, so he went to 
 Constance's room in all the haste natural in a lover who sees 
 happiness within his grasp. 
 
 Great was his astonishment to find his mother-in-law (whom 
 he surprised by springing into the room) reading a letter from 
 du Tillet, for Anselme recognized the handwriting at once. 
 The sight of a lighted candle and black phantom scraps of 
 burnt paper on the floor sent a shudder through Popinot, 
 whose long-sighted eyes had involuntarily read the words with 
 which the letter began, " I adore you ! You know it, angel 
 of my life, and why " 
 
 "What hold have you on du Tillet to make him conclude 
 such a bargain as this? " he asked, with the jerky laugh of 
 repressed suspicion. 
 
 "Let us not talk of it," she said, and he saw that she was 
 painfully agitated. 
 
 "Yes," answered Popinot, quite taken aback, "we must 
 talk of the end of your troubles." Anselme swung round on 
 his heels and drummed on the window-pane, staring out into 
 the yard. "Very well," said he to himself, "and suppose 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 325 
 
 that she loved du Tillet, is that any reason why I should not 
 behave like a man of honor? " 
 
 " What is it, my boy?" the poor woman asked. 
 
 "The net profits on the Cephalic Oil amount to two hun- 
 dred and forty-two thousand francs, and the half of two hun- 
 dred and forty-two is one hundred and twenty-one," said Pop- 
 inot abruptly. " If I deduct from that sum the forty-eight 
 thousand francs already paid to Monsieur Birotteau, there still 
 remain seventy-three thousand; add to it the sixty thousand 
 just paid for the surrender of the lease, and you will have one 
 hundred and thirtv-three thousand francs." 
 
 Mme. Cesar listened in such glad excitement that Popinot 
 could hear the beating of her heart. 
 
 "Well, I have always looked on Monsieur Birotteau as my 
 partner," he continued; "we can employ the money in re- 
 paying his creditors. Your savings, twenty-eight thousand 
 francs, in Uncle Pillerault's keeping, will raise the sum to a 
 hundred and sixty-one thousand francs. Uncle will not refuse 
 to give us a receipt for his twenty-five thousand francs. No 
 power on earth can prevent my lending to my father-in-law, 
 on account of next year's profits, enough to pay off the re- 
 mainder of his creditors. And — he — will — be — rehabili- 
 tated " 
 
 "Rehabilitated ! " cried Mme. Cesar, kneeling before her 
 chair, and, clasping her hands, she repeated a prayer. The 
 letter had slipped from her fingers. She crossed herself. 
 "Dear Anselme ! " she said, "dear boy!" She took his 
 face in her hands, kissed him on the forehead, and held him 
 tightly in her arms. " Cesarine is yours, indeed," she cried. 
 " My daughter will be very happy. She will leave the house 
 where she is working herself to death." 
 
 "Through love," said Anselme. 
 
 "Yes," smiled the mother. 
 
 " Listen to a little secret," said Anselme, looking out of the 
 corner of his eye at the unlucky letter. " I obliged Celestin 
 
326 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 when he wanted capital to buy your business, but it was on 
 one condition : Your rooms are just as you left them. I had 
 my own idea, but I did not think then that fortune would 
 favor us so greatly. Celestin has undertaken to sub-let your 
 old rooms to you ; he has not set foot in them, and all the 
 furniture there is yours. I am reserving the third story, so 
 that Cesarine and I may live there ; she shall never leave you. 
 After we are married, I will spend the day here from eight 
 o'clock in the morning till six in the evening. Then I will 
 buy out Monsieur Cesar's interest in the business for a hundred 
 thousand francs, so that, with his post, you will have ten thou- 
 sand livres a year. Will you not be happy? " 
 
 " Do not say any more, Anselme, or I shall go mad with 
 joy." 
 
 Mme. Cesar's angelic bearing, her pure eyes, the innocence 
 on her fair brow, gave the lie so magnificently to the countless 
 thoughts which surged up in the young lover's brain, that he 
 made up his mind to slay the chimeras of his fancy. The sin 
 was irreconcilable with the life and the sentiments of Pille- 
 rault's niece. 
 
 " My dear adored mother," he began, "a horrible doubt 
 has just crossed my mind. If you would see me happy, you 
 will set it at rest." 
 
 Popinot held out his hand as he spoke, and took possession 
 of the letter. 
 
 " Unintentionally I read the first words in du Tillet's hand- 
 writing," he said, alarmed at the consternation in her face. 
 "The words coincide so oddly with the effect you just pro- 
 duced upon the man, who complied at once with my extrava- 
 gant demands, that anybody would find the explanation which 
 the devil suggests to me in spite of myself. A glance from 
 you, and three words were enough " 
 
 " Stop," said Mme. Cesar, and, taking back the letter, she 
 burned it under Anselme's eyes. " I am cruelly punished for 
 a trifling fault, my child. And now you must know all, An- 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 327 
 
 selme. The suspicion attaching to the mother must not do 
 her daughter an injury, and, beside, I may speak without a 
 blush ; I could tell my husband this that I am about to tell 
 you. Du Tillet tried to seduce me, my husband was warned 
 at once, and du Tillet was to be dismissed. The very day 
 that my husband was to discharge him du Tillet took three 
 thousand francs." 
 
 " I suspected it," said Popinot, with all his hatred of the 
 man in his tone. 
 
 "Anselme, your future and your happiness required this 
 confidence, but it must die in your own breast, as it had 
 died in Cesar's and mine. You surely remember the fuss my 
 husband made about the mistake in the books. Monsieur Birot- 
 teau, no doubt, put three thousand francs into the safe (the price 
 of the shawl, which was not given to me for three years), so 
 as to avoid ruining the young man by bringing him into a 
 police court. So there you have the explanation of my cry 
 of surprise. Alas, my dear boy, I will confess my childish 
 conduct. Du Tillet had written three love letters to me, 
 letters which showed his nature so plainly that I kept them — 
 as a curiosity. I only read them once ; but, after all, it was 
 not wise to keep them. When I saw du Tillet, I thought of 
 them, and went up to my room to burn them. When you 
 came in, I was looking at the last one. That is all, my 
 dear." 
 
 Anselme knelt and kissed Mme. Cesar's hand. The ex- 
 pression in his eyes drew tears of admiring affection from 
 hers. Constance raised her son-in-law and clasped him to 
 her heart. 
 
 That day was destined to be a day of joy for C6sar. 
 The King's private secretary, M. de Vandenesse, came 
 to the office to speak with him. They went out together 
 into the little courtyard of the Sinking Fund Department. 
 
 "Monsieur Birotteau," said the Vicomte, "the story of 
 your struggle to pay your creditors came by chance to the 
 
328 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 King's knowledge. His majesty was touched by such un- 
 usual conduct ; and learning that, from motives of humility, 
 you were not wearing the cross of the Legion of Honor, 
 he has sent me to command you to resume it. His majesty 
 also wishes to assist you to discharge your obligations, and 
 has ordered me to pay this amount to you out of his own 
 privy purse, with regrets that he can do no more for you. 
 Let the matter remain a profound secret, for his majesty 
 thinks it little becomes a King to make official proclama- 
 tion of his good actions," and the private secretary paid 
 over six thousand francs to the employe, who heard these 
 words with indescribable emotions. 
 
 Birotteau could only stammer inarticulate thanks. Van- 
 denesse smiled and waved his hand. Cesar's principles are 
 so rarely seen in practice in Paris that by degrees his life 
 had won just admiration. Joseph Lebas, Popinot the elder, 
 Camusot, Ragon, the Abbe Loraux, the head partner of the 
 firm which employed Cesarine, Lourdois, and M. de la Bil- 
 lardiere had spoken of it. The scale of opinion had already 
 turned in his favor, and people praised him to the skies. 
 
 " There goes a man of honor ! " The words had reached 
 Cesar's ears several times in the street ; he heard them 
 with the sensations of an author who hears his name pro- 
 nounced. This fair renown disgusted du Tillet. Cesar's 
 first thought on receiving the King's bank-notes was of repay- 
 ment to his ex-assistant. The good man betook himself to 
 the Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin, and it so fell out that the 
 banker, returning home from business, met him upon the 
 staircase. 
 
 " Well, my poor Birotteau," said he, in a caressing tone. 
 
 " Poor?" the other cried proudly. "I am very rich. I 
 shall lay my head on the pillow to-night with the satisfaction 
 of knowing that I have paid you." 
 
 The words, so full of honesty, put du Tillet for a moment 
 on the rack. Every one respected him, but he had lost his 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 329 
 
 own self-respect ; a voice which could not be stifled cried 
 within him, " This man is heroic ! " But he spoke — 
 
 " Pay me ! What business can you be in ? " he enviously 
 inquired. 
 
 Birotteau felt quite sure that du Tillet would not repeat the 
 story. 
 
 "I shall never start in business again, sir. No human 
 power could foresee the thing that befell me. Who knows 
 but what I might be the victim of another Roguin ? But my 
 conduct has been put before the King, his heart has deigned 
 to compassionate my struggles, and he has encouraged them 
 by sending me at once a fairly large sum, which " 
 
 " Do you want a receipt in full ? " du Tillet cut him short. 
 "Are you paying " 
 
 " In full, and interest beside. So I must beg you to come 
 to Monsieur Crottat's office, a step or two away." 
 
 " In the presence of a notary ! " 
 
 " Why, sir, there is nothing to prevent me from thinking 
 of my rehabilitation, and a document so authenticated is legal 
 evidence " 
 
 " Come, let us go," said du Tillet, and he went out with 
 Birotteau; "it is only a step. But who will find you so 
 much money?" he went on. 
 
 " No one finds it for me," said Cesar. "lam earning it 
 by the sweat of my brow." 
 
 "You owe an enormous amount to Claparon." 
 
 "Alas ! yes, that is the heaviest of my debts ; I am afraid 
 the effort will be too much for me." 
 
 " Oh ! you will never be able to pay it all," said du Tillet 
 harshly. 
 
 " He is right," thought Birotteau. 
 
 He went home again by way of the Rue Saint-Honore, a 
 piece of inadvertence, for he always went round some other 
 way that he might not see his shop, nor the windows of his 
 old home. For the first time since his fall, he saw the house 
 
330 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 where he had spent eighteen happy years, and three months 
 of anguish that effaced those memories. 
 
 " I used to count on ending my days there," he said to 
 himself; and he quickened his pace at the sight of a new 
 name on the store-front : 
 
 Celestin Crevel 
 Formerly Cesar Birotteau. 
 
 " My eyes dazzle Is that Cesarine? " he cried, think- 
 ing that he had seen a golden head at the window. 
 
 It was really Cesarine whom he saw, and his wife was there, 
 and so was Popinot. The two lovers knew that Birotteau 
 never went past his old home ; and it was impossible that 
 they should imagine the great event in the Rue de l'Oratoire, 
 so they had gone to make arrangements for the fete they were 
 planning to give in Birotteau's honor. The strange appari- 
 tion astonished Cesar so much that he stood stockstill. 
 
 "There is Monsieur Birotteau looking at his old house," 
 said M. Molineux to a storekeeper who lived over against the 
 Queen of Roses. 
 
 "Poor man!" returned Birotteau's old neighbor, "he 
 gave one of the grandest balls there — there were two hundred 
 carriages in the street." 
 
 "I went to it; he went bankrupt three months afterward, 
 and I was trustee," said Molineux. 
 
 Birotteau fled, his legs trembling beneath him, and reached 
 Pillerault's house. 
 
 Pillerault knew what was passing in the Rue des Cinq-Dia- 
 mants, and it seemed to him that his nephew was scarcely fit 
 to bear the shock of a joy so great as his rehabilitation. He 
 had been a daily witness of Cesar's mental sufferings, knew 
 that Birotteau's own stern doctrine as to bankrupts was always 
 in his thoughts, and that he was living up to the very limit 
 of his strength. Dead honor might yet have its Easter Day 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 331 
 
 for him ; and it was this hope that gave him no respite from 
 pain. Pillerault undertook to prepare Cesar for the good 
 news ; so when he came in, his uncle was thinking how to 
 attain his end. Cesar began to tell the news of the interest 
 that the King had taken in him, his joy seemed to Pillerault 
 to be auspicious, and his amazement that Cesarine should be 
 at the window at the sign of the Queen of Roses afforded an 
 excellent opening. 
 
 "Well, Cesar," Pillerault began, "do you know what 
 brought it about? Popinot is impatient to marry Cesarine. 
 He will not and ought not to be bound any longer by your 
 extravagant ideas of honor, to spend his youth in eating dry 
 bread and smelling a good dinner. Popinot is determined to 
 pay off your creditors in full." 
 
 " He is going to buy his wife." 
 
 "Isn't it to his credit that he wants to rehabilitate his 
 father-in-law? " 
 
 " But questions might be raised, and, beside " 
 
 "And, beside," cried Uncle Pillerault in feigned anger, 
 "you may sacrifice yourself if you like, but you have no right 
 to sacrifice your daughter." 
 
 A lively discussion began, and Pillerault apparently worked 
 himself up. 
 
 "Eh! If Popinot lent you nothing," cried he; " if he 
 had looked upon you as his partner; if he chose to consider 
 the money that he paid over to your creditors for your interest 
 in the Oil as an advance on account of the profits, so that you 
 should not be robbed " 
 
 " It would look as though I had arranged with him to cheat 
 my creditors." 
 
 Pillerault pretended to be defeated by this logic. He knew 
 enough of human nature to guess that during the night the 
 good man would argue out the case with himself; and those 
 private reflections of his would accustom him to the idea of 
 rehabilitation. 
 
332 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "But how came my wife and daughter to be in our old 
 house?" he asked at dinner. 
 
 " Anselme means to take one of the floors, and he and 
 Cesarine will set up housekeeping there. Your wife is on his 
 side. They have had the banns put up without telling you, 
 so as to compel you to give your consent. Popinot says that 
 there will be less merit in marrying Cesarine after you are 
 rehabilitated. You accept the King's six thousand francs, 
 and yet you will take nothing from your relatives ! Now, for 
 my own part, I am quite justified in giving you a receipt in 
 full ; would you refuse it? " 
 
 "No," said Cesar. "But it would not hinder me from 
 saving the money to pay you, receipt or not." 
 
 "All this is splitting hairs," said Pillerault, "and when 
 honesty is in question, I ought to be allowed to know what is 
 right. What folly were you talking just now? When your 
 creditors are all paid in full, will you still persist that you have 
 cheated them ! " 
 
 Cesar looked full at Pillerault as he spoke, and it touched 
 the older man to see a bright smile on his nephew's face after 
 three years of dejection. 
 
 " You are right," he said, " they would be paid. But it is 
 like selling my daughter ! " 
 
 "And I wish to be bought," cried Cesarine, who came in 
 with Popinot. 
 
 The lovers stealing on tiptoe through the lobby had over- 
 heard the words. Mme. Birotteau was just behind them. 
 The three had made a round in a cab, asking all the creditors 
 to meet in Crottat's office that evening; Popinot's lover's 
 logic bore down Cesar's scruples ; but he still persisted in 
 calling himself a debtor, and would have it that he was out- 
 flanking the law by a substitution. Conscience yielded to an 
 outburst from Popinot — 
 
 " So you mean to kill your daughter, do you?" 
 
 "Kill my daughter! " echoed Cesar, bewildered. 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 333 
 
 "Well, now," said Popinot, " what is there to prevent me 
 from making a deed of gift in your favor of a sum which on 
 my conscience I believe to be yours? Can you refuse ? " 
 
 "No," said Cesar. 
 
 " Good. Then let us go to Alexandre Crottat this evening, 
 so that there shall be no going back upon it, and our marriage- 
 contract can be decided at the same time." 
 
 An application for reinstatement and all the necessary 
 certificates were duly deposited by Derville at the office of 
 the procureur-general of the Court of Appeal. 
 
 During the month which elapsed between the putting up of 
 the banns and the marriage, and during the progress of the 
 formalities, Cesar lived in a state of constant nervous excite- 
 ment. He was ill at ease. He feared that he might not live to 
 see the great day when his disabilities should be formally 
 removed. His pulse throbbed unaccountably, he said, and he 
 complained of a dull pain about the heart. He had been 
 exhausted by painful emotion and this supreme joy was 
 wearing him out. Decrees of rehabilitation are rare in 
 Paris ; there is scarcely one in ten years. 
 
 There is something indescribably solemn and imposing in 
 the ceremonial of justice for those who take society seriously. 
 An institution is to men as they consider it, and is invested 
 with dignity and grandeur by their thoughts. When a nation 
 has ceased, not to feel the religious instinct, but to believe ; 
 when primary education relaxes the bonds of union by teach- 
 ing children a habit of merciless anaylsis, a nation is dissolved ; 
 for the only ties that are left to bind men together and make 
 of them one body are the ignoble ties of material interest 
 and the dictates of the selfish cult created by egoism well 
 carried out. Birotteau, sustained by religion, saw Justice as 
 Justice ought to be regarded among men, as the expression 
 of society itself; beneath the forms he saw the sovereign 
 will, the laws by which men have agreed to live. If the 
 magistrate .is old, feeble, and white-haired, so much the more 
 
334 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 solemn does his priestly office appear, an office which demands 
 so profound a study of human nature and of things, an office 
 to which the heart is immolated, for of necessity it becomes 
 callous in a guardian of so many palpitating interests. 
 
 In these days the men who cannot ascend the staircase of 
 the Court of Appeal in the old Palais de Justice in Paris 
 without feeling deeply stirred are growing rare; but Birot- 
 teau was one of these men. There are not many who notice 
 the majestic grandeur of that staircase, so magnificently 
 planned to produce an effect. It rises at the further end of 
 the peristyle which adorns the Cour du Palais. The doorway 
 opens on the centre of the gallery which leads from the vast 
 Salle des Pas Perdus at its one end to the Sainte-Chapelle at 
 the other, two monuments which may well dwarf everything 
 about them into insignificance. The church of St. Louis is 
 in itself one of the grandest buildings in Paris, and there is 
 an indescribable dim atmosphere of romance about it when 
 approached by way of this gallery ; while the vast Salle des 
 Pas Perdus is flooded with daylight, and it is hard to forget 
 memories of the history of France that cling about its walls. 
 So the staircase must have a grandeur of its own if it is not 
 utterly overshadowed by the glories of those two famous 
 buildings. Perhaps there is something to stir the soul at 
 the sight of the place where decrees are executed, beheld 
 through the rich scroll-work of the screen of the Palais. 
 The staircase gives entrance to a vast room, the Salle des 
 Pas Perdus of this court, beyond which lies the Hall of Audi- 
 ence. Imagine the feeling with which Birotteau (always so 
 much impressed by the circumstance of justice) mounted the 
 staircase among a little crowd of his friends — Lebas, at that 
 time president of the Tribunal of Commerce ; Camusot, who 
 had acted as registrar ; Ragon, his old master ; and the Abbe 
 Loraux, his confessor. The presence of the good priest 
 enhanced these earthly honors by a reflection from heaven, 
 which gave them yet more value in Cesar's eyes, 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 335 
 
 Pillerault, that practical philosopher, had bethought him 
 of the expedient of dwelling upon and exaggerating the joy 
 of the release, so that the actual experience might not over- 
 whelm Cesar. Just as he finished dressing he found himself 
 surrounded by faithful friends, all anxious for the honor of 
 accompanying him to the bar of the court. The delight 
 which suffused the good man's soul at the sight of this group 
 raised him to a pitch of happiness necessary for him if he was 
 to endure the alarming ordeal. He found others of his friends 
 standing in the Great Hall of Audience, where a dozen coun- 
 cilors were sitting. 
 
 After the case had been called, Birotteau's attorney made 
 application in a brief formula. At a sign from the president, 
 the attorney-general rose to give his opinion. In the name 
 of the court, the attorney-general, the public accuser, was 
 about to make demand that the merchant's honor, which had 
 been pledged, should be vindicated ; a proceeding unique in 
 law, for a condemned man can only be pardoned. Those 
 who have hearts that feel can imagine Birotteau's feelings 
 when M. de Granville spoke somewhat as follows : 
 
 "Gentlemen," said the great lawyer, "on the 16th of 
 January, 1820, Birotteau was declared a bankrupt by the Tri- 
 bunal of Commerce of the Seine. The insolvency was not 
 occasioned by imprudence on the part of the merchant, nor 
 by dishonest speculation, nor any other cause which could 
 stain his honor. We feel that it is necessary to state it pub- 
 licly — the calamity was brought about by one of those disas- 
 ters which occur from time to time, to the great affliction of 
 justice and of the city of Paris. It was reserved for this 
 present century, in which the evil leaven of subverted morals 
 and revolutionary ideas will long ferment, to behold the Paris- 
 ian notariat depart from the honorable traditions of its past; 
 there have been more cases of insolvency in that body during 
 the last few years than in two preceding centuries under the 
 ancient monarchy. The greed of gold rapidly acquired has 
 
336 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 seized upon officials, those guardians of the public welfare 
 and intermediary authorities." 
 
 Then followed a tirade based on this text, in the course of 
 which M. le Comte de Granville (speaking in character) took 
 occasion to incriminate Liberals, Bonapartists, and all and 
 sundry who were disaffected, as in duty bound. Events have 
 shown that there was good ground for the councilor's appre- 
 hensions. 
 
 "The immediate cause of the plaintiffs ruin was the action 
 of a Paris notary, who absconded with the money which 
 Birotteau deposited with him. The sentence passed by the 
 court in Roguin's case shows how shamefully he had betrayed 
 his client's trust. A concordat followed. We will observe, 
 for the honor of the applicant, that the proceedings were 
 characterized by honesty not to be met with in the scan- 
 dalous failures which daily occur in Paris. Birotteau's cred- 
 itors, gentlemen, found every trifle that he possessed, down to 
 trinkets and articles of wearing apparel belonging not only to 
 him, but to his wife, who, to swell the assets, gave up all that 
 she had. Birotteau at this juncture showed himself worthy 
 of the respect which he had won by the discharge of his muni- 
 cipal functions ; for he was at that time deputy-mayor of the 
 second arrondissement, and had just received the cross of the 
 Legion of Honor accorded to the devoted Royalist, who shed 
 his blood for the cause on the steps of Saint-Roch in Vende- 
 miaire ; and, no less, to the consular judge, who had won 
 respect by his ability and popularity by his conciliatory 
 spirit ; to the modest municipal officer, who declined the 
 honors of the mayoralty for himself and put forward the 
 name of another as more worthy — the honorable Baron de la 
 Billardiere, one of the noble Vehdeans whom he had learned 
 to esteem in evil days." 
 
 " He put that better than I did," said Cesar in his uncle's 
 ear. 
 
 "The creditors, therefore, receiving sixty percent, of their 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 337 
 
 claims, thanks to the upright merchant and his wife and 
 daughter, who surrendered everything that they possessed, 
 gave expression to their respect in the concordat, by which 
 they forwent the remainder of their claims in consideration 
 of the dividend. The attention of the court is called to the 
 manner in which this record is worded." Here the attorney- 
 general read the concordat. " After such expressions of good- 
 will, gentlemen, many a trader would have considered him- 
 self free, and would have walked with head erect in public; 
 but, so far from considering his liabilities to be discharged, 
 Birotteau would not give way to despair, but made an inward 
 resolution to hasten the coming of a glorious day which here 
 and now dawns for him. Nothing turned him aside from his 
 purpose. Our beloved sovereign gave a post to the man who 
 was wounded at Saint-Roch, and the bankrupt merchant set 
 by the whole of his salary for the benefit of his creditors, for 
 the devotion of his family did not fail him " 
 
 Tears came into Birotteau's eyes as he squeezed his uncle's 
 hand. 
 
 "His wife and daughter poured their earnings into the 
 common treasury; they, too, had embraced Birotteau's loyal 
 purpose. They descended from their position to take a sub- 
 ordinate place. Such sacrifices as these, gentlemen, deserve 
 all honor, for they are the hardest of all. This was the task 
 which Birotteau laid upon himself." 
 
 The attorney read an abbreviated version of the schedule, 
 giving the names of the creditors and the balances due to 
 them. 
 
 " Every one of these amounts, gentlemen, has been paid, 
 interest included. The receipts have not been given by 
 notes of hand which demand investigation, but by certificates 
 of payment made in the presence of a notary, documents 
 which do not abuse the good faith of the court, though, never- 
 theless, the inquiries required by the law have been duly 
 made. You, therefore, restore to Birotteau not his honor, 
 22 
 
338 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 but the civil and political privileges of which he has been 
 deprived, and in so doing you do justice. Such cases come 
 so seldom before you that we cannot refrain from giving 
 expression to our admiration of the conduct of the applicant, 
 who has already received the encouragement of august patron- 
 age." 
 
 With that, he read the formal application. The court 
 deliberated without retiring, and the president rose to pro- 
 nounce the decree. 
 
 "The court charges me to inform Monsieur Birotteau of 
 the satisfaction with which the decree, granted under such 
 circumstances, is passed. Call the next case." 
 
 Birotteau, already invested with a caftan of honor by the 
 attorney-general's speech, was struck dumb with joy when 
 he heard these solemn words from the president of the highest 
 Court of Appeal in France, words which made those who 
 heard them feel that the impassive Themis had a heart. He 
 could not move from his place, he seemed to be glued to the 
 floor, and gazed with bewildered eyes at the councilors, who 
 seemed to him like angels who had opened the gates which 
 admitted him to life among his fellows. His uncle took him 
 by the arm and drew him away. Then Cesar, who had not 
 obeyed the desire of Louis XVIII., fastened the red ribbon 
 at his button-hole, like a man in a dream, and went down in 
 triumph with his friends about him to the hackney-cab. 
 
 " Where are you taking me? " he asked of Joseph Lebas, 
 Pillerault, and Ragon. 
 
 "Home." 
 
 " No. It is three o'clock ; I want to go on 'Change again, 
 now that I have the right." 
 
 "To the Exchange," Pillerault gave the order and looked 
 significantly at Lebas, for there were symptoms which made 
 him uneasy; he feared for Birotteau's reason. 
 
 So Birotteau went back on 'Change between his uncle and 
 Joseph Lebas; the two merchants whom every one respected 
 
CESAR BIR O TTEA U. 339 
 
 linked their arms in his. The news of his rehabilitation was 
 abroad. Du Tillet was the first to see the three and old 
 Ragon, who followed behind. 
 
 "Ah ! my dear master ! Delighted to hear that you have 
 pulled through your difficulties. Perhaps I contributed to 
 bring about this happy termination by allowing little Popinot 
 to pluck me so easily. I am as glad of your happiness as if 
 it were my own." 
 
 "It is the only way open to you," said Pillerault, "for you 
 will never experience it yourself." 
 
 " What do you mean, sir ? " asked du Tillet. 
 
 "A good dig in the ribs, by George," said Lebas, smiling 
 at Pillerault's malicious revenge. He knew nothing of the 
 part that du Tillet had played, but he looked on him as a 
 scoundrel. 
 
 Matifat saw Cesar, and immediately all the most respected 
 merchants crowded about the perfumer ; he received an ovation 
 on 'Change, the most flattering congratulations and hand- 
 shakes, which caused here and there some heart-burnings and 
 here and there a pang of remorse, for fifty out of every hun- 
 dred present had been insolvent at some time or other. 
 
 Gigonnet and Gobseck, chatting in a corner, stared at 
 Cesar as the learned must have stared when the first electric 
 eel was brought for their inspection and they beheld that 
 strange curiosity, a living leyden jar. 
 
 Then, still breathing the incense of triumph, Cesar went 
 out to the cab and drove home to his house, where the mar- 
 riage-contract between his dear child Cesarine and the de- 
 voted Popinot was to be signed that evening. He laughed 
 nervously, in a way that alarmed his three old friends. 
 
 It is one of the mistakes of youth to imagine that every one 
 has the vitality of youth, a defect nearly akin to its best en- 
 dowment ; for youth does not behold life through a pair of 
 spectacles, but through the radiant hues of a reflected glow, 
 and age itself is credited with its own exuberant life. Popi 
 
340 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 not, like Cesar and Constance, cherished memories of the 
 pomp and splendor of the ball : the strains of Collinet's 
 orchestra had often rung in his ears ; he had seen the gay 
 throng of dancers, and tasted the joy so cruelly punished, as 
 Adam and Eve might have thought of the forbidden fruit 
 which banished them from the Garden, and brought Death 
 and Birth into the world, for it seems that the multiplication 
 of the anarels is one of the mvsteries of the Paradise above. 
 
 Popinot, however, could think of that night's festivity not 
 only without remorse, but with joy in his heart, for then it 
 was that Cesarine in all her glory had given her promise to 
 him in his poverty. That evening he had known beyond all 
 doubt that he was loved for himself alone. So when he paid 
 Celestin for the rooms which Grindot had restored, and stipu- 
 lated that everything should be left untouched ; when he had 
 carefully seen that the merest trifles belonging to Cesar and 
 Constance were in their place, he had dreamed of giving a 
 ball there on the day of his wedding. The preparations for 
 the fete had been a work of love. It should be exactly like 
 the previous one, except in the extravagances. Extravagance 
 was over and done with. Still, the dinner was to be served 
 by Chevet, and the guests were almost the same. The Abbe 
 Loraux took the place of the grand chancellor ; and Lebas, 
 the president of the Tribunal of Commerce, was to be there. 
 Popinot added M. Camusot's name to the list, as an acknowl- 
 edgment of the kindness he had shown to Birotteau in so 
 many ways. M. de Vandenesse and M. de Fontaine took the 
 place of M. and Mme. Roguin. 
 
 Cesarine and Popinot had exercised their discretion in the 
 matter of invitations to the ball. They both shrank from 
 making a festival of their wedding, and had avoided the pub- 
 licity which jars on pure and tender hearts by giving the 
 dance on the occasion of the signing of the contract. Con- 
 stance had found the cherry-colored velvet dress in which she 
 had shone for the brief space of a single day; and Cesarine 
 
CESAR BIROTTEAU. 341 
 
 had pleased herself by surprising Popinot in the ball-dress of 
 which he had talked times out of mind. So the house was to 
 wear the same air of an enchanted festival, and neither Con- 
 stance, nor Cesarine, nor Anselme thought that there was any 
 danger for Cesar in this joyful surprise. They waited till 
 four o'clock, and grew almost childish in their happiness. 
 
 After the hero of the hour had passed through the inde- 
 scribable emotions of returning to the Exchange, a fresh 
 shock awaited him in the Rue Saint-Honore. As he came up 
 the stairs, which still looked new, he saw his wife in the 
 cherry-colored velvet dress ; he saw Cesarine, the Comte de 
 Fontaine, the Vicomte de Vandenesse, the Baron de la Bil- 
 lardiere, and the great Vauquelin ; a light film spread over his 
 eyes, and Uncle Pillerault, on whose arm he leaned, felt the 
 shudder that ran through his nephew. 
 
 " It is too much for him," the old philosopher said to the 
 enamored Anselme; " he will not stand all the wine which you 
 have poured out for him." 
 
 But all hearts beat so high with joy that Cesar's emotion 
 and tottering steps were ascribed to an intoxication, very 
 natural, as they thought — but not seldom fatal. When he 
 looked round the drawing-room and saw it filled with guests 
 and women in ball toilets, the sublime rhythm of the finale 
 of Beethoven's great symphony beat in his pulses and flooded 
 his brain. That imaginary music streamed in on him like 
 rays of light, sparkling from modulation to modulation ; it was 
 to be, indeed, the filiate that rang clear and high through the 
 recesses of the tired brain. Overcome by the harmony that 
 swept through him, he laid his hand on his wife's arm, and 
 in tones, rendered almost inaudible by the effort to keep back 
 the flowing blood which filled his mouth — 
 
 " I am not well," he said. 
 
 Constance, in alarm, led her husband to her room ; he was 
 barely able to reach the armchair, into which he sank, ex- 
 claiming, " Monsieur Haudry ! Monsieur Loraux ! " 
 
342 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 The abbe came in, followed by the guests and women in 
 evening dress, who stood in consternation. Cesar, in the 
 midst of this brightly colored throng, grasped his confessor's 
 hand, and laid his head on the breast of the wife who knelt 
 beside him. A bloodvessel had been ruptured in the lungs 
 and the resulting aneurism was stopping his last breath. 
 
 "Behold the death of the righteous!" the Abbe Loraux 
 said solemnly, as he stretched his hand toward Cesar with one 
 of those divine gestures which Rembrandt's inspiration be- 
 held and recorded in his picture of Christ raising Lazarus 
 from the dead. 
 
 Christ bade Earth surrender her prey ; the good priest sped 
 a soul to heaven, where the martyr to commercial integrity 
 should receive an unfading palm. 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT 
 
 {L? Illustrc Gaudissari). 
 PARISIANS IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Translated by James Waring. 
 
 To Madame la Duchesse de Castries. 
 
 Is not the commercial traveler — a being quite unknown in 
 earlier times — one of the most curious types produced by 
 the manners and customs of this age ? And is it not his 
 peculiar function to carry out in a certain class of things 
 the immense transition which connects the age of material 
 development with that of intellectual development? Our 
 epoch will be the link between the age of isolated forces 
 rich in original creativeness and that of the uniform but 
 leveling force which gives monotony to its products, casting 
 them in masses, and following out one unifying idea — the 
 ultimate expression of social communities. After the Satur- 
 nalia of intellectual communism, after the last struggles of 
 many civilizations concentrating all the treasures of the 
 world on a single spot, must not the darkness of barbarism 
 invariably supervene ? 
 
 The commercial traveler is to ideas what coaches are to 
 men and things. He carts them about ; he sets them 
 moving, brings them into impact. He loads himself at 
 the centre of enlightenment with a supply of beams which 
 he scatters among torpid communities. This human pyro- 
 phoros is an ignorant instructor, mystified and mystifying, 
 a disbelieving priest who talks all the more glibly of arcana 
 and dogmas. A strange figure ! The man has seen every- 
 
 M t 343 ) 
 
344 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 thing, he knows everything, he is acquainted with everybody. 
 Saturated in Parisian vice, he can assume the rusticity of the 
 countryman. Is he not the link that joins the village to the 
 capital, though himself not essentially either Parisian or pro- 
 vincial? 
 
 For he is a wanderer. He never sees to the bottom of 
 things ; he learns only the names of men and places, only 
 the surface of things ; he has his own foot-rule and measures 
 everything by that standard ; his glance glides over all he 
 sees, and never penetrates the depths. He is inquisitive 
 about everything, and really cares for nothing. A scoffer, 
 always ready with a political song, and apparently equally 
 attached to all parties, he is generally patriotic at heart. A 
 good actor, he can assume by turns the smile of liking, satis- 
 faction, and obligingness, or cast it off and appear in his 
 true character, in the normal frame which is his state of 
 rest. 
 
 He is bound to be an observer or to renounce his calling. 
 Is he not constantly compelled to sound a man at a glance, 
 and guess his mode of action, his character, and, above all, 
 his solvency ; and, in order to save time, to calculate swiftly 
 the chances of profit ? This habit of deciding promptly in 
 matters of business makes him essentially dogmatic ; he settles 
 questions out of hand and talks, as a master, of the Paris 
 theatres and actors, and of those in the provinces. Beside, 
 he knows all the good and all the bad places in the kingdom, 
 by both doing and seeing. He would steer you with equal 
 confidence to the abode of virtue or of vice. Gifted as he is 
 with the eloquence of a hot-water tap turned on at will, he 
 can with equal readiness stop short or begin again, without a 
 mistake, his stream of ready-made phrases, flowing without 
 pause, and producing on the victim the effect of a moral 
 douche. He is full of pertinent anecdotes, he smokes, he 
 drinks. He wears a chain with seals and trinkets, he im- 
 presses the "small fry," is looked at as a milord in the vil- 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 345 
 
 lages, never allows himself to be "got over " — a word of his 
 slang — and knows exactly when to slap his pocket and make 
 the money jingle so as not to be taken for a "sneak" by 
 the women servants — a suspicious race — of the houses he 
 calls at. 
 
 As to his energy, is it not the least of the characteristics of 
 this human machine ? Not the kite pouncing on its prey, 
 not the stag inventing fresh doublings to escape the hounds 
 and put the hunter off the trail, not the dogs coursing the 
 game, can compare with the swiftness of his rush when he 
 scents a commission, the neatness with which he trips up a 
 rival to gain upon him, the keenness with which he feels, 
 sniffs, and spies out an opportunity for "doing business." 
 How many special talents must such a man possess ! And 
 how many will you find in any country of these diplomats of 
 the lower class, profound negotiators, representatives of the 
 calico, jewelry, cloth, or wine trades, and often with more 
 acumen than ambassadors, who are indeed for the most part 
 but superficial ? 
 
 Nobody in France suspects the immense power constantly 
 wielded by the commercial traveler, the bold pioneer of the 
 transactions which embody to the humblest hamlet the genius 
 of civilization and Parisian inventiveness in its struggle against 
 the commonsense, the ignorance, or the habits of rustic life. 
 We must not overlook these ingenious laborers, by whom the 
 intelligence of the masses is kneaded, moulding the most re- 
 fractory material by sheer talk, and resembling in this the per- 
 severing polishers whose file licks the hardest porphyry smooth. 
 Do you want to know the power of the tongue and the co- 
 ercive force of mere phrases on the most tenacious coin known 
 — that of the country freeholder in his rustic lair? Then 
 listen to what some high dignitary of Paris industry can tell 
 you, for whose benefit these clever pistons of the steam-engine 
 called speculation work, and strike, and squeeze. 
 
 " Monsieur," said the" director-eashier-manager-secretary- 
 
346 GAUD1SSART THE GREAT. 
 
 and-chairman of a famous fire insurance company to an ex- 
 perienced economist, "in the country, out of five hundred 
 thousand francs to be collected in renewing insurances, not 
 more than fifty thousand are paid willingly. The other four 
 hundred and fifty thousand are only extracted by the persist- 
 ency of our agents, who go to dun the customers who are in 
 arrears till they have renewed their policies, and "frighten and 
 excite them by fearful tales of fires. Eloquence, the gift of 
 the gab, is, in fact, nine-tenths of the matter in the ways and 
 means of working our business." 
 
 To talk — to make one's self heard — is not this seduction ? 
 A nation with two Chambers, 'a woman with two ears, alike 
 are lost ! Eve and the serpent are the perennial myth of a 
 daily recurring fact which began and will probably only end 
 with the world. 
 
 "After two hours' talk you ought to have won a man over 
 to your side," said an attorney who had retired from business. 
 
 Walk round the commercial traveler ! Study the man. 
 Note his olive-green overcoat, his cloak, his morocco stock, 
 his pipe, his blue-striped cotton shirt. In that figure, so 
 genuinely original that it can stand friction, how many dif- 
 ferent natures you may discover. See ! What an athlete, 
 what a circus, and what a weapon ! He — the world — and his 
 tongue. 
 
 A daring seaman, he embarks with a stock of mere words 
 to go and fish for money, five or six hundred thousand francs, 
 say, in the frozen ocean, the land of savages, of Iroquois — in 
 France ! The task before him is to extract by a purely mental 
 process and painless operation the gold that lies buried in 
 rural hiding-places. The provincial fish will not stand the 
 harpoon or the torch ; it is only to be caught in the seine or 
 the landing-net — the gentlest snare. 
 
 Can you ever think again without a shudder of the deluge 
 of phrases which begins anew every day at dawn in France? 
 You know the genus ; now for the individual. 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 347 
 
 There dwells in Paris a matchless drummer, the paragon of 
 his kind, a man possessing in the highest degree every condi- 
 tion indispensable to success in his profession. In his words 
 vitriol mingles with bird-lime : bird-lime to catch the victim, 
 besmear it and stick it to the trapper, vitriol to dissolve the 
 hardest limestone. 
 
 His "line" was hats — he traveled in hats; but his gifts, 
 and the skill with which he ensnared folk, had earned him 
 such commercial celebrity that dealers in V Article Paris* the 
 dainty novelties invented in Paris workshops, positively courted 
 him to undertake their business. Thus, when he was in Paris, 
 on his return from some triumphant progress, he was perpetu- 
 ally being feasted ; in the provinces the agents made much of 
 him ; in Paris the largest houses were respectful to him. Wel- 
 comed, entertained, and fed wherever he went, to him a 
 breakfast or a dinner in solitude was a pleasure and a debauch. 
 He led the life of a sovereign — nay, better, of a journalist. 
 And was he not the living organ of Paris trade ? 
 
 His name was Gaudissart ; and his fame, his influence, and 
 the praises poured on him had gained him the epithet of 
 Gaudissart the Great. Wherever he made his appearance, 
 whether in a counting-house or an inn, in a drawing-room or 
 a diligence, in a garret or a bank, each one would exclaim on 
 seeing him, "Ah, ha ! here is Gaudissart the Great ! " 
 
 Never was a nickname better suited to the appearance, the 
 manners, the countenance, the voice, or the language of a 
 man. Everything smiled on the traveler, and he smiled on 
 all. Similia Similibus ; he was for homoeopathy : Puns, a 
 horse-laugh, the complexion of a jolly friar, a Rabelaisian 
 aspect ; dress, mien, character, and face combined to give his 
 whole person a stamp of jollification and ribaldry. 
 
 Blunt in business, good-natured and capital fun, you would 
 have known him at once for a favorite of the grisette — a man 
 who can climb with a grace to the top of a coach, offer a hand 
 
 * Fancy notions. 
 
348 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 to a lady in difficulties over getting out, jest with the postillion 
 about his bandana, and sell him a hat ; smile at the inn-maid, 
 taking her by the waist — or by the fancy ; who at table will 
 imitate the gurgle of a bottle by tapping his cheek while put- 
 ting his tongue in it, knows how to make beer go off by draw- 
 ing the air between his lips, can hit a champagne glass a sharp 
 blow with a knife without breaking it, saying to the others, 
 "Can you do that?" — who chaffs shy travelers, contradicts 
 well-informed men, is supreme at table, and secures all the 
 best bits. 
 
 A clever man, too, he could on occasion put aside all such 
 pleasantries and look very serious when, throwing away the 
 end of his cigar, he would look out on a town and say, "I 
 mean to see what the folk here are made of." Then Gaudis- 
 sart was the most cunning and shrewd of ambassadors. He 
 knew how to be the official with the prefect, the capitalist with 
 the banker, orthodox and monarchical with the Royalist, the 
 blunt citizen with the citizen — in short, all things to all 
 men, just what he ought to be wherever he went, leaving 
 Gaudissart outside the door, and finding him again as he went 
 out. 
 
 Until 1830 Gaudissart the Great remained faithful to the 
 Article Paris. This line of business, in all its branches, ap- 
 pealing to the greater number of human fancies, had enabled 
 him to study the secrets of the heart, had taught him the uses 
 of his persuasive eloquence, the way to open the most closely 
 tied money-bags, to incite the fancy of wives and husbands, 
 of children and servants, and to persuade them to gratify it. 
 None so well as he knew how to lure a dealer by the tempta- 
 tions of a job, and to turn away at the moment when his desire 
 for the bait was at a climax. He acknowledged his indebted- 
 ness to the hatter's trade, saying that it was by studying the 
 outside of the head that he had learned to understand its in- 
 side, that he was accustomed to find caps to fit folk, to throw 
 
GAUD1SSART THE GREAT. 349 
 
 himself at their head, and so forth. His jests on hats were 
 inexhaustible. 
 
 Nevertheless, after the August and October of 1830, he 
 gave up traveling in hats and the Article Paris, and left off 
 trading in all things mechanical and visible to soar in the 
 loftier spheres of Parisian enterprise. He had given up matter 
 for mind, as he himself said, and manufactured products for 
 the infinitely more subtle outcome of the intellect. 
 
 This needs explanation. 
 
 The stir and upset of 1830 gave rise, as everybody knows, 
 to the new birth of various antiquated ideas which skillful 
 speculators strove to rejuvenate. After 1830 ideas were more 
 than ever a marketable commodity; and, as was once said by 
 a writer who is clever enough to publish nothing, more ideas 
 than pocket-handkerchiefs are filched nowadays. Some day, 
 perhaps, there may be an Exchange for ideas ; but even now, 
 good or bad, ideas have their price, are regarded as a crop 
 imported, transferred, and sold, can be realized, and are 
 viewed as an investment. When there are no ideas in the 
 market, speculators try to bring words into fashion, to give 
 them the consistency of an idea, and live on those words as 
 birds live on millet. 
 
 Nay, do not laugh ! A word is as good as an idea in a 
 country where the ticket on the bale is thought more of than 
 the contents. Have we not seen the book-trade thriving on 
 the word "picturesque" when literature had sealed the doom 
 of the word " fantastic." 
 
 Consequently, the excise has levied a tax on the intellect; 
 it has exactly measured the acreage of advertisements, has 
 assessed the prospectus, and weighed thought — Rue de la Paix 
 Hotel tlu Timbre (the Stamp Office). On being constituted 
 taxable goods, the intellect and its products were bound to 
 obey the method used in manufacturing undertakings. Thus 
 the ideas conceived after drinking in the brain of some of 
 those apparently idle Parisians who do battle on intellectual 
 
350 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 ground while emptying a bottle or carving a pheasant's thigh, 
 were handed over the day after their mental birth to com- 
 mercial travelers, whose business it was to set forth, with due 
 skill, urbi et orbi, the fried bacon of advertisement and pros- 
 pectus by which the departmental mouse is tempted into the 
 editor's trap, and becomes known in the vulgar tongue as a 
 subscriber, or a shareholder, a corresponding member, or, 
 perhaps, a backer or a part owner — and being always a flat. 
 
 "What a flat I am!" has more than one poor investor 
 exclaimed after being tempted by the prospect of founding 
 something, which has finally proved to be the founding that 
 melts down some thousand or twelve hundred francs. 
 
 " Subscribers are the fools who cannot understand that it 
 costs more to forge ahead in the realm of intellect than to 
 travel all over Europe," is the speculator's view. 
 
 So there is a constant struggle going on between the dilatory 
 public which declines to pay the Paris taxes and the collectors 
 who, living on their percentages, baste that public with new 
 ideas, lard it with undertakings, roast it with prospectuses, 
 spit it on flattery, and at last eat it up with some new sauce 
 in which it gets caught and intoxicated like a fly in molasses. 
 What has not been done in France since 1830 to stimulate 
 the zeal, the conceit of the intelligent and progressive masses? 
 Titles, medals, diplomas, a sort of Legion of Honor, invented 
 for the vulgar martyrs, have crowded on each other's heels. 
 And then every manufacturer of intellectual commodities has 
 discovered a spice, a special condiment, his particular make- 
 weight. Hence the promises of premiums and of anticipated 
 dividends; hence the advertisements of celebrated names 
 without the knowledge of the hapless artists who own them, 
 and thus find themselves implicated unawares in more under- 
 takings than there are days in the year ; for the law could 
 not foresee this theft of names. Hence, too, this rape of 
 ideas which the contractors for public intelligence — like the 
 slave merchants of the East — snatch from the paternal brain 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 361 
 
 at a tender age, and strip and parade before the greenhorn, 
 their bewildered Sultan the terrible public, who, if not 
 amused, beheads them by stopping their rations of gold. 
 
 This mania of the day reacted on Gaudissart the Great, 
 and this was how : A company gotten up to effect insurances 
 on life and properly heard of his irresistible eloquence and 
 offered him extraordinarily handsome terms, which he ac- 
 cepted. The bargain concluded, the compact signed, the 
 drummer was weaned of the past under the eye of the secre- 
 tary of the society, who freed Gaudissart's mind of its 
 swaddling-clothes, explained the dark corners of the business, 
 taught him its lingo, showed him all the mechanism bit by 
 bit, anatomized the particular class of the public on whom he 
 was to work, stuffed him with cant phrases, crammed him 
 with repartees, stocked him with peremptory arguments, and, 
 so to speak, put an edge on the tongue that was to operate on 
 life in France. The puppet responded admirably to the care 
 lavished on him by Monsieur the Secretary. 
 
 The directors of the insurance company were so loud in 
 their praises of Gaudissart the Great, showed him so much 
 attention, put the talents of this living prospectus in so favor- 
 able a light in the higher circles of banking and of intellec- 
 tual diplomacy, that the financial managers of two news- 
 papers, then living but since dead, thought of employing him 
 to tout for subscriptions. The "Globe," the organ of the 
 doctrines of Saint-Simon, and the " Mouvement," a Repub- 
 lican paper, invited Gaudissart the Great to their private 
 offices and promised him, each, ten francs a head on every 
 subscriber if he secured a thousand, but only five francs a 
 head if he could catch no more than five hundred. As the 
 line of the political paper did not interfere with that of the 
 insurance company, the bargain was concluded. At the 
 same time, Gaudissart demanded an indemnity of five hun- 
 dred francs for the week he must spend in "getting up " the 
 doctrine of Saint-Simon, pointing out what efforts of memory 
 
352 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 and brain would be necessary to enable him to become thor- 
 oughly conversant with this article, and to talk of it so coher- 
 ently as to avoid, said he, " putting his foot in it." 
 
 He made no claim on the Republicans. In the first place, 
 he himself had a leaning to Republican notions — the only 
 views according to the Gaudissart philosophy that could bring 
 about rational equality ; and then Gaudissart had ere now- 
 dabbled in the plots of the French carbonari (Nativists and 
 Extreme Democrats). He had even been arrested, but re- 
 leased for lack of evidence ; and, finally, he pointed out to 
 the backers of the paper that since July he had allowed his 
 mustache to grow, and that he now only needed a particular 
 shape of cap and long spurs to be representative of the Re- 
 public. 
 
 So for a week he went every morning to be Saint-Simonized 
 at the "Globe" office, and every evening he haunted the 
 bureau of the insurance company to learn the elegancies of 
 financial slang. His aptitude and memory were so good that 
 he was ready to start by the 15 th of April, the date at which 
 he usually set out on his first annual circuit. 
 
 Two large commercial houses, alarmed at the downward 
 tendency of trade, tempted the ambitious Gaudissart still to 
 undertake their agency, and the King of Commercial Trav- 
 elers showed his clemency in consideration of old friendship 
 and of the enormous percentage he was to take. 
 
 " Listen to me, my little Jenny," said he, riding in a hack 
 with a pretty little flower-maker. 
 
 Every truly great man loves to be tyrannized over by some 
 feeble creature, and Jenny was Gaudissart's tyrant ; he was 
 seeing her home at eleven o'clock from the Gymnase theatre, 
 where he had taken her in full dress to a private box on the 
 first tier. 
 
 " When I come back, Jenny, I will furnish your room quite 
 elegantly. That gawky Mathilde, who makes you sick with 
 her innuendoes, her real Indian shawls brought by the Rus- 
 
GAUD ISS ART THE GREAT. 353 
 
 sian ambassador's messengers, her silver-gilt, and her Russian 
 Prince — who is, it strikes me, a rank humbug — even she shall 
 not find a fault in it. I will devote all the ' Children ' I can 
 get in the provinces to the decoration of your room." 
 
 "Well, that is a nice story, I must say," cried the florist. 
 " What, you monster of a man, you talk to me so coolly of 
 your children ! Do you suppose that I will put up with any- 
 thing of that kind ?" 
 
 " Pshaw ! Jenny, are you out of your wits ? It is a way of 
 talking in my line of business." 
 
 "A pretty line of business indeed ! " 
 
 " Well, but listen ; if you go on talking so much, you will 
 find yourself in the right." 
 
 " I choose always to be in the right ! I may say you are a 
 cool hand to-night." 
 
 u You will not let me say what I have to say? I have to 
 push a most capital idea, a magazine that is to be brought out 
 for children. In our walk of life a traveler, when he has 
 worked up a town and got, let us say, ten subscriptions to the 
 ' Children's Magazine,' says I have gotten ten ' Children ; ' just 
 as, if I had ten subscriptions to the ' Mouvement,' I should 
 simply say I have gotten ten ' Mouvements.' Now do you un- 
 derstand ?" 
 
 "A pretty thing too ! So you are meddling in politics? 
 I can see you already in Sainte-Pelagie, and shall have to trot 
 there to see you every day. Oh, when we love a man, my 
 word ! If we knew what we are in for, we should leave you 
 to manage for yourselves, you men ! Well, well, you are 
 going to-morrow, don't let us get the black dog on our 
 shoulders ; it is too silly." 
 
 The cab drew up before a pretty house, newly built, in the 
 Rue d'Artois, where Gaudissart and Jenny went up to the 
 fourth floor. Here resided Mademoiselle Jenny Courand, 
 who was commonly supposed to have been privately married 
 to Gaudissart, a report which the traveler did not deny. To 
 23 
 
354 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 maintain her power over him, Jenny Courand compelled him 
 to pay her a thousand little attentions, always threatening to 
 abandon him to his fate if he failed in the least of them. 
 Gaudissart was to write to her from each town he stopped at 
 and give an account of every action. 
 
 "And how many ' Children ' will you want to furnish my 
 room?" said she, throwing off her shawl and sitting down 
 by a good fire. 
 
 " I get five sous on each subscription." 
 
 " A pretty joke ! Do you expect to make me a rich woman 
 — five sous at a time ? Unless you are a wandering Jew and 
 have your pocket sewn up tight." 
 
 "But, Jenny, I shall get thousands of 'Children.' Just 
 think, the little ones have never had a paper of their own. 
 However, I am a great simpleton to try to explain the econ- 
 omy of business to you — you understand nothing about such 
 matters." 
 
 " And pray, then, Gaudissart, if I am such a gaby, why do 
 you love me ? " 
 
 "Because you are such a sublime gaby! Listen, Jenny. 
 You see, if I can get people to take the ' Globe ' and the 
 ' Mouvement,' and to pay their insurances, instead of earning 
 a miserable eight or ten thousand francs a year by trundling 
 around like a man in a show, I may make twenty to thirty 
 thousand francs out of one round." 
 
 "Unlace my stays, Gaudissart, and pull straight — don't 
 drag me askew." 
 
 "And then," said the commercial traveler, as he admired 
 the girl's satin shoulders, " I shall be a shareholder in the 
 papers, like Finot, a friend of mine, the son of a hatter, who 
 has thirty thousand francs a year, and will get himself made 
 a peer ! And when you think of little Popinot ! By the 
 way, I forgot to tell you that Monsieur Popinot was yesterday 
 made minister of commerce. Why should not I, too, be 
 ambitious? Ah, ha! I could easily catch the cant of the 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 355 
 
 Tribune, and I might be made a minister — something like a 
 minister, too ! Just listen — 
 
 " ' Gentlemen,' " and he took his stand behind an armchair, 
 " ' the press is not a mere tool, nor a mere trade. From the 
 point of view of the politician, the press is an institution. 
 Now we are absolutely required here to take the political view 
 of things, hence ' " — he paused for breath — " ' hence we are 
 bound to inquire whether it is useful or mischievous, whether 
 it should be encouraged or repressed, whether it should be 
 taxed or free — serious questions all. I believe I shall not be 
 wasting the precious moments of this Chamber by investigating 
 this article and showing you the conditions of the case. We 
 are walking on to a precipice. The laws indeed are not so 
 guarded as they should be ' 
 
 "How is that?" said he, looking at Jenny. "Every 
 orator says that France is marching toward a precipice ; they 
 either say that or they talk of the chariot of the State and 
 political tempest and clouds on the horizon. Don't I know 
 every shade of color ! I know the dodges of every trade. 
 And do you know why ? I was born with a caul on. My old 
 grandmother kept the caul, and I will give it to you. So, 
 you see, I shall soon be in power ! " 
 
 "You?" 
 
 " Why shouldn't I be Baron Gaudissart and Peer of France ? 
 Has not Monsieur Popinot been twice returned deputy for the 
 fourth arrondissement ? And he dines with Louis-Philippe. 
 Finot is to be a councilor of State, they say. Oh ! if only they 
 » would send me to London as ambassador, I am the man to non- 
 plus the English, I can tell you. Nobody has ever caught Gaud- 
 issart napping — Gaudissart the Great. No, no one has ever got- 
 ten the better of me, and no one ever shall in any line, politics 
 or impolitics, here or anywhere. But for the present I must 
 give my mind to insuring property, to the 'Globe,' to the 
 'Mouvement,' to the 'Children's' paper, and to the 'Article 
 de Paris.' " 
 
356 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 " You will be caught over your newspapers. I will lay a 
 wager that you will not get as far as Poitiers without being 
 done." 
 
 " I am ready to bet, my jewel." 
 
 "A shawl! " 
 
 " Done. If I lose the shawl, I will go back to trade and 
 hats. But, get the better of Gaud issart ? Never! never!" 
 
 And the illustrious commercial traveler struck an attitude in 
 front of Jenny, looking at her haughtily, one hand in his 
 vest, and his head half-turned in a Napoleonic pose. 
 
 "How absurd you are! What have you been eating this 
 evening ! " 
 
 Gaudissart was a man of eight-and-thirty, of middle height, 
 burly and fat, as a man is who is accustomed to go about in 
 mail-coaches ; his face was as round as a pumpkin, florid, and 
 with regular features, resembling the traditional type adopted 
 by sculptors in every country for their statues of Abundance, 
 of Law, Force, Commerce, and the like. His prominent 
 stomach was pear-shaped and his legs were thin, but he was 
 wiry and active. He picked up Jenny, who was half-undressed, 
 and carried her to her bed. 
 
 "Hold your tongue, free woman" said he. "Ah, you 
 don't know anything about the free woman and Saint-Simon- 
 ism, and antagonism, and Fourierism, and criticism, and de- 
 termined push — well it is — in short, it is ten francs on every 
 subscription, Madame Gaudissart." 
 
 " On my honor, you are going crazy, Gaudissart." 
 
 "Always more and more crazy about you," said he, tossing 
 his hat on to the sofa. 
 
 Next day, after breakfasting in style with Jenny Courand, 
 Gaudissart set out on horseback to call in all the market towns 
 which he had been particularly instructed to work up by the 
 various companies to whose success he was devoting his genius. 
 After spending forty-five days in beating the country lying 
 between Paris and Blois, he stayed for a fortnight in this little 
 
GAtJDISSART THE GREAT. 357 
 
 city, devoting the time to writing letters and visiting the 
 neighboring towns. The day before leaving for Tours he 
 wrote to Mademoiselle Jenny Courand the following letter, of 
 which the fullness and charm cannot be matched by any narra- 
 tive, and which also serves to prove the peculiar legitimacy 
 of the ties that bound these two persons together : 
 
 Letter frotn Gaudissart to Jenny Courand. 
 
 " My dear Jenny: — I am afraid you will lose your bet. 
 Like Napoleon, Gaudissart has his star, but will know no 
 Waterloo. I have triumphed everywhere under the conditions 
 set forth. The insurance business is doing very well. Be- 
 tween Paris and Blois I secured near on two millions ; but 
 toward the middle of France heads are remarkably hard, and 
 millions infinitely scarcer. The Article Paris toddles on 
 nicely, as usual ; it is a ring on your finger. With my usual 
 rattle, I can always come round the storekeepers. I got rid 
 of sixty-two Ternaux shawls at Orleans ; but, on my honor, I 
 don't know what they will do with them unless they put them 
 back on the sheep. 
 
 "As to the newspaper line, the deuce is in it ! that is quite 
 another pair of shoes. God above us ! what a deal of piping 
 those good people take before they have learned a new tune. 
 I have gotten no more than sixty-two ' Mouvements' so far; 
 and that in my whole journey is less than the Ternaux shawls 
 in one town. These rascally Republicans won't subscribe 
 at all; you talk to them, and they talk; they are quite of 
 your way of thinking, and you are soon all agreed to upset 
 everything that exists. Do you think the man will fork out ? 
 Not a bit of it. And if he has three square inches of ground, 
 enough to grow a dozen cabbages, or wood enough to cut a 
 toothpick, your man will talk of the settlement of landed 
 estate, of taxation, and crops, and compensation — a pack of 
 nonsense, while I waste my time and spittle in patriotism. 
 
358 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 Business is bad, and the S Mouvement ' generally is dull. I 
 am writing to the owners to say so. And I am very sorry as 
 a matter of opinion. 
 
 "As to the * Globe,' that is another story. If I talk of the 
 new doctrines to men who seem likely to have a leaning to 
 such quirks, you might think it was a proposal to burn their 
 house down. I tell them that it is the coming thing, the most 
 advantageous to their interests, the principle of work by which 
 nothing is lost ; that men have oppressed men long enough, 
 that woman is a slave, that we must strive to secure the tri- 
 umph of the great Idea of thrift, and achieve a more rational 
 coordination of society — in short, all the rhodomontade at 
 my command. All in vain ! As soon as I "start on this sub- 
 ject, these country louts shut up their cupboards as if I had 
 come to steal something, and beg me to be off. 
 
 " What fools these owls are ! The ' Globe ' is nowhere. I 
 told them so. I said, ' You are too advanced. You are getting 
 forward, and that is all very well ; but you must have something 
 to show. In the provinces they want to see results.' However, 
 I have gotten a hundred 'Globes ; ' and, seeing the density of 
 these country noodles, it is really a miracle. But I promise 
 them such a heap of fine things, that be hanged if I know how 
 the Globules, or Globists, or Globites, or Globians are ever 
 going to give them. However, as they assured me that they 
 would arrange the world far better than it is arranged at 
 present, I lead the way and prophesy good things at ten francs 
 per head. 
 
 "There is a farmer who thought it must have to do with 
 soils, by reason of the name, and I rammed the ' Globe ' 
 down his throat ; he will take to it, I feel sure ; he has a 
 prominent forehead, and men with prominent foreheads are 
 always ideologists. 
 
 " But as to the children ! give me the children. I got 
 two thousand children between Paris and Blois — a nice little 
 turn ! And there is less waste of words. You show the pic- 
 
GAUD1SSART THE GREAT. S59 
 
 ture to the mother on the sly, so that the child wants to see; 
 then, of course, the child sees; and he tugs at mamma's 
 skirts till he gets his paper, because ' Daddy has his'n paper.' 
 Mamma's gown cost twenty francs, and she does not want it 
 torn by the brat ; the paper costs but six francs, that is 
 cheaper ; so the subscription is dragged out. It is capital, 
 and meets a real want — something between the sugar-plum 
 and the picture-book, the two eternal cravings of childhood. 
 And they can read, too, these frenzied brats. 
 
 "Here, at the table d'hote, I had a dispute about news- 
 papers and my opinions. I was sitting, peacefully eating, by 
 the side of a man in a white hat who was reading the ' De- 
 bats.' Said I to myself, ' I must give him a taste of my elo- 
 quence. Here is a man who is all for the dynasty ; I must 
 try to catch him. Such a triumph would be a splendid fore- 
 cast of success as a minister.' So I set to work, beginning by 
 praising his paper. It was a precious long job, I can tell 
 you. From one thing to another I began to overrule my 
 man, giving him four-horse speeches, arguments in F sharp, 
 and all the precious rhodomontade. Everybody was listening, 
 and I saw a man with 'July' in his mustaches, ready to bite 
 for the ' Mouvement.' But, by ill-luck, I don't know how I 
 let slip the word ganachc (old woman). Away went my 
 dynastic white hat — and a bad hat too, a Lyons hat, half-silk 
 and half-cotton — with the bit between his teeth in a fury. So 
 I put on my grand air — you know it — and I say to him, 
 ' Heyday, monsieur, you are a hot pot ! If you are vexed, 
 
 I am ready to answer for my words. I fought in July ' 
 
 ' Though I am the father of a family,' says he, ' I am 
 
 ready ' 'You are the father of a family, my dear sir,' 
 
 say I. 'You have children?' 'Yes, monsieur.' 'Of 
 eleven?' 'Thereabouts.' 'Well, then, monsieur, "The 
 Children's Magazine " is just about to be published — six 
 francs per annum, one number a month, two columns, contrib- 
 utors of the highest literary rank, gotten up in the best style, 
 
360 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 good paper, illustrations from drawings by our first artists, 
 genuine India-paper proofs, and colors that will not fade.' 
 And then I give him a broadside. The father is overpowered ! 
 The squabble ends in a subscription. 
 
 " 'No one but Gaudissart can play that game,' cried little 
 tomtit Lamard to that long noodle Bulot when he told him 
 the story at the cafe. 
 
 " To-morrow I am off to Amboise. I shall do Amboise in 
 two days and write next from Tours, where I am going to try 
 my hand on the deadliest country from the point of view of 
 intelligence and speculation. But, on the honor of Gaudis- 
 sart, they will be done, they shall be done ! Done brown ! 
 By-by, little one ; love me long and always be true to me. 
 Fidelity through thick and thin is one of the characteristics 
 of the free woman. Who kisses your eyes ? 
 
 ' ' Yours, Felix for ever. ' ' 
 
 Five days later Gaudissart set out one morning from the 
 Faisan hotel, where he put up at Tours, and went to Vouvray, 
 a rich and populous district where the public mind seemed to 
 him to be open to conviction. He was trotting along the 
 river quay on his nag, thinking no more of the speeches he 
 was about to make than an actor thinks of the part he has 
 played a hundred times. Gaudissart the Great cantered on, 
 admiring the landscape, and thinking of nothing, never 
 dreaming that the happy valleys of Vouvray were to witness 
 the overthrow of his commercial infallibility. 
 
 It will here be necessary to give the reader some insight 
 into the public spirit of Touraine. The peculiar wit of a sly 
 romancer, full of banter and epigram, which stamps every 
 page of Rabelais' work, is the faithful expression of the Tou- 
 rangeau nature, of an intellect as keen and polished as it must 
 inevitably be in a province where the Kings of France long 
 held their court ; an ardent, artistic, poetical, and luxurious 
 nature, but prompt to forget its first impulse. The softness 
 
GAUD1SSART THE GREAT. 361 
 
 of the atmosphere, the beauty of the climate, a certain ease 
 of living and simplicity of manners, soon stifle the feeling 
 for art, narrow the most expansive heart, and corrode the 
 most tenacious will. 
 
 Transplant the native of Touraine, and his qualities de- 
 velop and lead to great things, as has been proved in the most 
 dissimilar ways by Rabelais and by Semblancay ; by Plantin 
 the printer and by Descartes ; by Boucicault, the Napoleon 
 of his day ; by Pinaigrier, who painted the greater part of our 
 cathedral glass ; by Verville and Courier. But, left at home, 
 the countryman of Touraine, so remarkable elsewhere, re- 
 mains like the Indian on his rug, like the Turk on his divan. 
 He uses his wit to make fun of his neighbor, to amuse him- 
 self, and to live happy to the end of his days. Touraine is 
 the true Abbey of Thelema, so mucn praised in Gargantua's 
 book. Consenting nuns may be found there, as in the poet's 
 dream, and the good-cheer sung so loudly by Rabelais is 
 supreme. 
 
 As to his indolence, it is sublime, and well characterized in 
 the popular witticism : " Tourangeau, will you have some 
 broth?" "Yes." "Then bring your bowl." "I am no 
 longer hungry." 
 
 Is it to the glee of the vine-dresser, to the harmonious 
 beauty of the loveliest scenery in France, or to the perennial 
 peace of a province which has always escaped the invading 
 armies of the foreigner, that the soft indifference of those 
 mild and easy habits is due ? To this question there is no 
 answer. Go yourself to that Turkey in France, and there 
 you will stay, indolent, idle, and happy. Though you were 
 as ambitious as Napoleon or a poet like Byron, an irresistible, 
 indescribable influence would compel you to keep your poetry 
 to yourself and reduce your most ambitious schemes to day- 
 dreams. 
 
 Gaudissart the Great was fated to meet in Vouvray one of 
 those indigenous wags whose mockery is offensive only by 
 
362 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 its absolute perfection of fun, and with whom he had a deadly 
 battle. Rightly or wrongly, your Tourangeau likes to come 
 into his father's property. Hence the doctrines of Saint- 
 Simon were held particularly odious, and heartily abused in 
 those parts; still, only as things are hated and abused in 
 Touraine, with the disdain and lofty pleasantry worthy of the 
 land of good stories and jokes played between neighbors — a 
 spirit which is vanishing day by day before what Lord Byron 
 called English cant. 
 
 After putting up his horse at the Soleil d'Or, kept by one 
 Mitouflet, a discharged grenadier of the Imperial Guard, who 
 had married a wealthy mistress of vinelands, and to whose 
 care he solemnly confided his steed, Gaudissart, for his 
 sins, went first to the prime wit of Vouvray, the life and 
 soul of the district, the jester whose reputation and nature 
 alike made it incumbent on him to keep his neighbors' 
 spirits up. This rustic Figaro, a retired dyer, was the happy 
 possessor of seven or eight thousand francs a year, of a pretty 
 house on the slope of a hill, of a plump little wife, and of 
 robust health. For ten years past he had had nothing to do 
 but to take care of his garden and his wife, to get his daughter 
 married, to play his game of an evening, to keep himself in> 
 formed of all the scandal that came within his jurisdiction, to 
 give trouble at elections, to squabble with the great land- 
 owners, and arrange big dinners ; to air himself on the quay, 
 inquire what was going on in the town, and bother the priest ; 
 and, for dramatic interest, to look out for the sale of a plot of 
 ground that cut into the ring fence of his vineyard. In short, 
 he lived the life of Touraine, the usual life of a small country 
 town. 
 
 At the same time, he was the most important of the minor 
 notabilities of the place and the leader of the small proprie- 
 tors — a jealous and envious class, chewing the cud of slander 
 and calumny against the aristocracy, and repeating them with 
 relish, grinding everything down to one level, hostile to every 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 363 
 
 form of superiority, scorning it, indeed, with the admirable 
 coolness of ignorance. 
 
 Monsieur Vernier — so this little great man of the place was 
 named — was finishing his breakfast, between his wife and his 
 daughter, when Gaudissart made his appearance in the dining- 
 room — one of the most cheerful dining-rooms for miles around, 
 with a view from the windows over the Loire and the Cher. 
 
 " Is it to Monsieur Vernier himself that I now have the 
 
 honor ?" said the traveler, bending his vertebral column 
 
 with so much grace that it seemed to be elastic. 
 
 " Yes, monsieur," said the wily dyer, interrupting him with 
 a scrutinizing glance, by which he at once took the measure 
 of the man he had to do with. 
 
 " I have come, monsieur," Gaudissart went on, " to request 
 the assistance of vour enlightenment to direct' me in this dis- 
 trict where, as I learn from Mitoufiet, you exert the greatest 
 influence. I am an emissary, monsieur, to this department 
 in behalf of an undertaking of the highest importance, backed 
 by bankers who are anxious " 
 
 "Anxious to swindle us!" said Vernier, laughing, long 
 since used to deal with the commercial traveler and to follow 
 his game. 
 
 "Just so," replied Gaudissart the Great with perfect impu- 
 dence. "But, as you very well know, sir, since you are so 
 clear-sighted, people are not to be swindled unless they think 
 it to their interest to allow themselves to be swindled. I beg 
 you will not take me for one of the common ruck of commer- 
 cial gentlemen who trust to cunning or importunity to win 
 success. I am no longer a traveler ; I was one, monsieur, and 
 I glory in it. But I have now a mission of supreme import- 
 ance, which ought to make every man of superior mind regard 
 me as devoted to the enlightenment of his fellow-countrymen. 
 Be kind enough to hear me, monsieur, and you will find that 
 you will have profited greatly by the half-hour's conversation 
 I beg you to grant me. The great Paris bankers have not 
 
364 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 merely lent their names to this concern, as to certain dis- 
 creditable speculations such as I call mere rat-traps. No, no, 
 nothing of the kind. I can assure you, I would never allow 
 myself to engage in promoting such booby-traps. No, mon- 
 sieur, the soundest and most respectable houses in Paris are 
 concerned in the undertaking, both as shareholders and as 
 guarantors " 
 
 And Gaudissart unrolled the frippery of his phrases, while 
 Monsieur Vernier listened with an affectation of interest that 
 quite deceived the orator. But at the word. guarantor, Vernier 
 had, in fact, ceased to heed this drummer's rhetoric ; he was 
 bent on playing him some sly trick, so as to clear off this kind 
 of Parisian caterpillar, once for all, from a district justly re- 
 garded as barbarian by speculators, who can get no footing 
 there. 
 
 At the head of a delightful valley, known as the Vallee 
 coquette (coquette's valley), from its curves and bends, new at 
 every step, and each more charming than the last, whether 
 you go up or down the winding slope, there dwelt, in a little 
 house surrounded by a vineyard, a more than half-crazy crea- 
 ture named Margaritis. This man, an Italian by birth, was 
 married, but had no children, and his wife took care of him 
 with a degree of courage that was universally admired ; for 
 Madame Margaritis certainly ran some risk in living with a 
 man who, among other manias, insisted on always having two 
 long knives about him, not unfrequently threatening her with 
 them. But who does not know the admirable devotion with 
 which country people care for afflicted creatures, perhaps in 
 consequence of the discredit that attaches to a middle-class 
 wife if she abandons her child or her husband to the tender 
 mercies of a public asylum ? Again, the aversion is well 
 known which country folk feel for paying a hundred louis, 
 or perhaps a thousand crowns, the price charged at Charenton 
 or in a private asylum. If any one spoke to Madame Mar- 
 garitis of Dubuisson, Esquirol, Blanche, or other mad-doctors, 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 365 
 
 she preferred, with lofty indignation, to keep her three thou- 
 sand francs and her good man. 
 
 The inexplicable caprices of this worthy's insanity being 
 closely connected with the course of my story, it is needful 
 to mention some of his more conspicuous vagaries. Margaritis 
 would always go out as soon as it began to rain, to walk bare- 
 headed among his vines. Indoors he was perpetually asking 
 for the newspaper ; just to satisfy him, his wife or the maid- 
 servant would give him an old "Journal d'Indre-et-Loire," 
 and for seven years he had never discovered that it was al- 
 ways the same copy. A doctor might perhaps have found 
 it interesting to note the connection between his attacks of 
 asking for the paper and the variations in the weather. The 
 poor madman's constant occupation was to study the state of 
 the sky and its effect on the vines. 
 
 When his wife had company, which was almost every even- 
 ing — for the neighbors, in pity for her position, came in to 
 play boston with her — Margaritis sat in silence in a corner, 
 never moving ; but when ten o'clock struck by a clock in a 
 tall wooden case, he rose at the last stroke with the mechanical 
 precision of the figures moved by a spring in a German toy, 
 went slowly up to the card-players, looked at them with eyes 
 strangely like the automatic gaze of the Greeks and Turks to 
 be seen in the Boulevard du Temple in Paris, and said, "Go 
 away ! ' ' 
 
 At times, however, this man recovered his natural wits 
 and could then advise his wife very shrewdly as to the sale of 
 her wine ; but at those times he was exceedingly troublesome, 
 stealing dainties out of the cupboards and eating them in 
 secret. 
 
 Occasionally when the customary visitors came in he an- 
 swered their inquiries civily, but he more often replied quite 
 at random. To a lady who asked him, " How are you to- 
 day, Monsieur Margaritis?" "I have shaved," he would 
 reply, " and you ? " 
 
366 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 "Are you better, monsieur?" another would say. "Jeru- 
 salem ! Jerusalem ! " was the answer. But he usually looked 
 at them with a blank face, not speaking a word, and then his 
 wife would say, "The goodman cannot hear anything to- 
 day." Twice or thrice in the course of five years, always 
 about the time of the equinox, he had flown into a rage at 
 this remark, had drawn a knife, and shrieked, "That hussy 
 disgraces me!" 
 
 Still, he drank, ate, and walked out like any man in perfect 
 health ; and by degrees every one was accustomed to pay him 
 no more respect or attention than if he had been a clumsy 
 piece of furniture. 
 
 Of all his eccentricities, there was one to which no one had 
 ever been able to discover a clue ; for the wise heads of the 
 district had in the course of time accounted for, or explained, 
 most of the poor lunatic's maddest acts. He insisted on al- 
 ways having a sack of flour in the house, and on keeping two 
 casks of wine from the vintage, never allowing any one to 
 touch either the flour or the wine. But, when the month of 
 June came round, he began to be anxious to sell the sack and 
 the wine-barrels with all the fretfulness of a madman. Mad- 
 ame Margaritis generally told him that she had sold the two 
 puncheons at an exorbitant price, and gave him the money, 
 which he then hid without his wife or his servant ever having 
 succeeded, even by watching, in discovering the hiding-place. 
 
 The day before Gaudissart's visit to Vouvray, Madame 
 Margaritis had had more difficulty than ever in managing her 
 husband, who had an attack of lucid reason. 
 
 "I declare I do not know how I shall get through to- 
 morrow," said she to Madame Vernier. "Only fancy, my 
 old man insisted on seeing his two casks of wine. And he 
 gave me no peace all day till I showed him two full puncheons. 
 Our neighbor, Pierre Champlain, luckily had two casks he 
 had not been able to sell, and at my request he rolled them 
 into our cellar. And then what must he want, after seeing 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 367 
 
 the casks, but nothing will content him but selling them 
 himself." 
 
 Madame Vernier had just been telling her husband of this 
 difficult state of things when Gaudissart walked in. At the 
 commercial traveler's very first words Vernier determined to 
 let him loose on old Margaritis. 
 
 " Monsieur," replied the dyer, when Gaudissart the Great 
 had exhausted his first broadside, " I will not conceal from 
 you that your undertaking will meet with great obstacles 
 in this district. In our part of the world the good folk go 
 on, bodily, in a way of their own ; it is a country where no 
 new idea can ever take root. We live as our fathers did, 
 amusing ourselves by eating four meals a day, occupying our- 
 selves by looking after our vineyards, and selling our wine 
 at a good price. Our notion of business is, very honestly, to 
 sell things for more than they cost. We shall go on in that 
 rut, and neither God nor the devil can get us out of it. But 
 I will give you some good advice, and good advice is worth 
 an eye. We have in this neighborhood a retired banker, in 
 whose judgment I myself have the utmost confidence, and if 
 you win his support you shall have mine. If your proposals 
 offer any substantial prospects, and we are convinced of it, 
 Monsieur Margaritis' vote carries mine with it, and there are 
 twenty well-to-do houses in Vouvray where purses will be 
 opened and your panacea will be tried." 
 
 As she heard him mention the madman, Madame Vernier 
 looked up at her husband. 
 
 " By the way, I believe my wife was just going to call on 
 Madame Margaritis with a neighbor of ours. Wait a minute, 
 and the ladies will show you the way. You can go round 
 and pick up Madame Fontanieu," said the old dyer with a 
 wink at his wife. 
 
 This suggestion that she should take with her the merriest, 
 the most voluble, the most facetious of all the merry wives of 
 Vouvray, was as much as to tell Madame Vernier to secure a 
 
368 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 witness to report the scene which would certainly take place 
 between the drummer and the lunatic, so as to amuse the 
 country with it for a month to come. Monsieur and Madame 
 Vernier played their parts so well that Gaudissart had no sus- 
 picions and rushed headlong into the snare. He politely 
 offered his arm to Madame Vernier and fancied he had quite 
 made a conquest of both ladies on the way, being dazzlingly 
 witty, and pelting them with waggery and puns which they 
 did not understand. 
 
 The so-called banker lived in the first house at the opening 
 into the Vallee coquette. It was called la Fuye, and was not 
 particularly remarkable. On the first floor was a large paneled 
 sitting-room, with a bedroom on each side for the master and 
 mistress. The entrance was through a hall, where they dined, 
 opening into the kitchen. This first floor, quite lacking the 
 external elegance for which even the humblest dwellings in 
 Touraine are noted, was crowned by attics, to which an out- 
 side stair led up, built against one of the gable ends, and 
 covered in by a lean-to roof. A small garden, full of mari- 
 golds, seringa, and alders, divided the house from the vine- 
 yard. Round the courtyard were the buildings for the wine- 
 presses and storage. 
 
 Margaritis, seated in a yellow Utrecht velvet chair by the 
 window in the drawing-room, did not rise as the ladies came 
 in with Gaudissart ; he was thinking of the sale of his butts of 
 wine. He was a lean man, with a pear-shaped head, bald 
 above the forehead, and furnished with a few hairs at the 
 back. His deep-set eyes, shaded by thick, black brows, 
 and with dark rings round them, his nose as thin as the blade 
 of a knife, his high cheek-bones and hollow cheeks, his gener- 
 ally oblong outline — everything, down to his absurdly long 
 flat chin, contributed to give a strange look to his coun- 
 tenance, suggesting that of a professor of rhetoric — or of a 
 ragpicker. 
 
 "Monsieur Margaritis," said Madame Vernier, "come, 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 3S9 
 
 wake up ! Here is a gentleman sent to you by my husband, 
 and you are to hear him with attention. Put aside your 
 mathematical calculations and talk to him." 
 
 At this speech the madman rose, looked at Gaudissart, waved 
 to him to be seated, and said — 
 
 "Let us talk, monsieur." 
 
 The three women went into Madame Margaritis' room, 
 leaving the door open so as to hear all that went on, and in- 
 tervene in case of need. Hardly were they seated when Mon- 
 sieur Vernier came in quietly from the vineyard, and made 
 them let him in through the window without a sound. 
 
 "You were in business, monsieur?" Gaudissart fluently 
 began. 
 
 " Public business," replied Margaritis, interrupting him, 
 " I pacified Calabria when Murat was King." 
 
 " Heyday, he has been in Calabria now ! " said Vernier in 
 a whisper. 
 
 "Oh, indeed!" said Gaudissart. "Then, monsieur, we 
 cannot fail to come to an understanding." 
 
 " I am listening," replied Margaritis, settling himself in 
 the attitude of a man sitting for his portrait. 
 
 " Monsieur," said Gaudissart, fidgeting with his watch-key, 
 which he twisted round and round without thinking of what 
 he was doing, with a regular rotatory twirl which engaged the 
 madman's attention and, perhaps, helped to keep him quiet; 
 " Monsieur, if you were not a man of superior intelligence " — 
 Margaritis bowed — "I should restrict myself to setting forth 
 the material advantages of this concern ; but its psychological 
 value is worthy of your attention. Mark me ! Of all forms 
 of social wealth, time is the most precious ; to save time is to 
 grow rich, is it not ? Now, is there anything which takes up 
 more time in our lives than anxiety as to what I may call 
 boiling the pot — a homely metaphor, but clearly stating the 
 question ? Or is there anything which consumes more time 
 than the lack of a guarantee to offer as security to those of 
 24 
 
370 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 whom you ask money when, though impecunious for a time, 
 you yet are rich in prospects? " 
 
 " Money — you have come to the point." 
 
 "Well, then, monsieur, I am the emissary to the depart- 
 ments of a company of bankers and capitalists who have 
 perceived what enormous loss of time, and consequently of 
 productive intelligence and activity, is thus entailed on men 
 with the future before them. Now, the idea has occurred to 
 us that, to such men, we may capitalize the future, we may 
 discount their talents, by discounting what? why, their time, 
 and securing its value to their heirs. This is not merely to 
 economize time ; it is to price it, to value it, to represent in a 
 pecuniary form the products you may expect to obtain in a 
 certain unknown time by representing the moral qualities with 
 which you are gifted, and which are, monsieur, a living force, 
 like a waterfall, or a steam-engine of three, ten, twenty, fifty 
 horse-power. This is progress, a great movement toward a 
 better order of things, a movement due to the energy of our 
 age — an essentially progressive age, as I can prove to you when 
 we come to the conception of a more logical coordination of 
 social interests. 
 
 " I will explain myself by tangible instances. I quit the 
 purely abstract argument which we, in our line, call the mathe- 
 matics of ideas. Supposing that instead of being a man of 
 property, living on your dividends, you are a painter, a musi- 
 cian, a poet " 
 
 "I am a painter," the other put in by way of parenthesis. 
 
 "Very good, so be it, since you take my metaphor; you 
 are a painter, you have a great future before you. But I am 
 going further " 
 
 At those words the lunatic studied Gaudissart uneasily to 
 see if he meant to go away, but was reassured on seeing him 
 remain seated. 
 
 "You are nothing at all," Gaudissart went on, "but you 
 feel yourself " 
 
GAUDISSAKT THE GREAT. 371 
 
 "I feel myself," said Margaritis. 
 
 " You say to yourself, ' I shall be a minister; ' very good. 
 You, the painter, you, the artist, the man of letters, the future 
 minister, you calculate your prospects, you value them at so 
 much — you estimate them, let us say — at a hundred thousand 
 crowns ' ' 
 
 "And you have brought me a hundred thousand crowns?" 
 said the lunatic. 
 
 "Yes, monsieur, you will see. Either your heirs will get 
 them without fail, in the event of your death, since the com- 
 pany pledges itself to pay, or, if you live, you get them by 
 your works of art or your fortunate speculations. Nay, if 
 you have made a mistake, you can begin all over again. But, 
 when once you have fixed the value, as I have had the honor 
 of explaining to you, of your intellectual capital — for it is 
 intellectual capital, bear that clearly in mind, monsieur." 
 
 "I understand," said the madman. 
 
 "You sign a policy of insurance with this company, which 
 credits you with the value of a hundred thousand francs — you, 
 the painter " 
 
 "I am a painter," said Margaritis. 
 
 " You the musician, the minister — and promises to pay that 
 sum to your family, your heirs, if, in consequence of your 
 demise, the hopes of the income to be derived from your in- 
 tellectual capital should be lost. The payment of the premium 
 is thus all that is needed to consolidate your " 
 
 "Your cash-box," said the madman, interrupting him. 
 
 "Well, of course, monsieur; I see that you understand 
 business." 
 
 "Yes," said Margaritis, "I was the founder of the Banque 
 Territoriale, Rue des Fosses-Montmartre in Paris, in 1798." 
 
 " For," Gaudissart went on, "in order to repay the intel- 
 lectual capital with which each of us credits himself, must not 
 all who insure pay a certain premium — three per cent., an- 
 nually three per cent. ? And thus, by paying a very small 
 
372 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 sum, a mere nothing, you are protecting your family against 
 the disastrous effects of your death." 
 
 "But I am alive," objected the lunatic. 
 
 "Ah yes, and if you live to be old — that is the objection 
 commonly raised, the objection of the vulgar, and you must 
 see that if we had not anticipated and annihilated it, we 
 should be unworthy to become — what ? What are we, in 
 fact ? The book-keepers of the great Bank of Intellect. 
 
 "Monsieur, I do not say this to you; but wherever I go, 
 I meet with men who pretend to teach something new, to 
 bring forward some fresh argument against those who have 
 grown pale with studying the business — on my word of honor, 
 it is contemptible ! However, the world is made so, and I 
 have no hope of reforming it. Your objection, monsieur, is 
 absurd " 
 
 "Quesaco? (What?)" said Margaritis. 
 
 "For this reason. If you should live, and if you have 
 the money credited to you in your policy of insurance against 
 the chances of death — you follow me " 
 
 "I follow." 
 
 "Well, then, it is because you have succeeded in your 
 undertakings ! And you will have succeeded solely in 
 consequence of that policy of insurance ; for, by ridding 
 yourself of all the anxieties which are involved in having a 
 wife at your heels, and children whom your death may re- 
 duce to beggary, you simply double your chances of success. 
 If you are at the top of the tree, you have grasped the intel- 
 lectual capital compared with which the insurance money is a 
 trifle, a mere trifle." 
 
 "An admirable idea ! " 
 
 "Is it not, monsieur? I call this beneficent institution 
 the Mutual Insurance against beggary ! — or, if you prefer it, 
 the Office for discounting Talent. For talent, sir, talent is a 
 bill of exchange, bestowed by nature on a man of genius, 
 and which is often at long date — ha, hah ! " 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 373 
 
 "Very handsome usury," cried Margaritis. 
 
 "The deuce ! He is sharp enough, this old boy ! I have 
 made a mistake ; I must attack this man on higher grounds 
 with palaver Ai," thought Gaudissart. "Not at all," mon- 
 sieur," said he aloud. " To you who " 
 
 " Will you take a glass of wine? " asked Margaritis. 
 
 "With pleasure," said Gaudissart. 
 
 " Wife ! give us a bottle of the wine of which two casks 
 are left. You are here in the headquarters of Vouvray," 
 said the master, pointing to his vines. " The clos (vineyard) 
 Margaritis." 
 
 The maid brought in glasses and a bottle of the wine of 
 1819. The worthy lunatic filled a glass with scrupulous 
 care and solemnly presented it to Gaudissart, who drank it. 
 
 "But you are playing me some trick, monsieur," said 
 the commercial traveler. "This is Madeira, genuine Ma- 
 deira! " 
 
 "I should think it is!" replied the lunatic. "The only 
 fault of the Vouvray wine, monsieur, is that it cannot be used 
 as an ordinaire, as a table wine. It is too generous, too 
 strong ; and it is sold in Paris as Madeira after being doc- 
 tored with brandy. Our wine is so rich that many of the 
 Paris merchants, when the French crop is sufficient for Hol- 
 land and Belgium, buy our wine to mix with the wine grown 
 about Paris, and so manufacture a Bordeaux wine. But what 
 you are drinking at this moment, my dear and very amiable 
 sir, is fit for a king ; it is the head of Vouvray. I have two 
 casks, only two casks of it. Persons who appreciate the finest 
 wines, high-class wines, and like to put a wine on their table 
 which has a character not to be met with in the regular trade, 
 apply direct to us. Now, monsieur, do you happen to know 
 any one " 
 
 " Let us get back to our business," said Gaudissart. 
 
 "We are there, monsieur," replied the madman. "My 
 wine is heady, and you are talking of capital ; the etymology 
 
374 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 of capital is caput — head. Heh ? The head of Vouvray— 
 the connection is obvious." 
 
 "As I was saying," persisted Gaudissart, "either you have 
 realized your intellectual capital " 
 
 " I have realized, monsieur. Will you take my two punch 
 eons? I will give you favorable terms." 
 
 "No," said Gaudissart the Great, "I allude to the insur- 
 ance of intellectual capital and policies on life. I will resume 
 the thread of my argument." 
 
 The madman grew calmer, sat down, and looked at Gau- 
 dissart. 
 
 " I was saying, monsieur, that if you should die, the capital 
 is paid over to your family without difficulty." 
 
 "Without difficulty." 
 
 "Yes, excepting in the case of suicide " 
 
 " A question for the law." 
 
 " No, sir. As you know, suicide is an act that is always 
 easily proved." 
 
 "In France," said Margaritis. "But " 
 
 " But abroad," said Gaudissart. " Well, monsieur, to con- 
 clude that part of the question, I may say at once that death 
 abroad or on the field of battle is not included " 
 
 "What do you insure, then? Nothing whatever," cried 
 the other. " Now, my bank was based on " 
 
 "Nothing whatever, sir?" cried Gaudissart, interrupting 
 him. " Nothing whatever? How about illness, grief, poverty, 
 and the passions? But we need not discuss exceptional cases." 
 
 " No, we will not discuss them," said the madman. 
 
 " What, then, is the upshot of this transaction ? " exclaimed 
 Gaudissart. "To you, as a banker, I will simply state the 
 figures. You have a man, a man with a future, well dressed, 
 living on his art — he wants money, he asks for it — a blank. 
 Civilization at large will refuse to advance money to this 
 man, who, in thought, dominates over civilization, who will 
 some day dominate over it by his brush, his chisel, by wordsj 
 
GAUDISSAET THE GREAT. 375 
 
 or ideas, or a system. Civilization is merciless. She has no 
 bread for the great men who provide her with luxuries ; she 
 feeds them on abuse and mockery, the gilded slut ! The ex- 
 pression is a strong one, but I will not retract it. Well, your 
 misprized great man comes to us; we recognize his greatness, 
 we bow to him respectfully, we listen to him, and he says 
 to us — 
 
 " ' Gentlemen of the insurance company, my life is worth 
 so much; I will pay you so much per cent, on my works.' 
 Well, what do we do ? At once, without grudging, we admit 
 him to the splendid banquet of civilization as an important 
 guest " 
 
 " Then you must have wine," said the madman. 
 
 " As an important guest. He signs his policy, he takes our 
 contemptible paper rags — mere miserable rags, which, rags as 
 they are, have more power than his genius had. For, in fact, 
 if he wants money, everybody on seeing that sheet of paper is 
 ready to lend to him. On the Bourse, at the bankers', anv- 
 where, even at the money-lenders', he can get money — because 
 he can offer security. Well, sir, was not this a gulf that 
 needed filling in the social system? 
 
 "But, sir, this is but a part of the business undertaken by 
 the life insurance company. We also insure debtors on a 
 different scale of premiums. We offer annuities on terms 
 graduated by age, on an infinitely more favorable calculation 
 than has yet been allowed in tontines based on tables of 
 mortality now known to be inaccurate. Our society, opera- 
 ting on the mass, our annuitants need have no fear of the 
 reflections that sadden their latter years, in themselves sad 
 enough ; such thoughts as must necessarily invade them when 
 their money is in private hands. So, you see, monsieur, we 
 have taken the measure of life under every aspect " 
 
 "Sucked it at every pore," said Margaritis. "But take a 
 glass of wine; you have certainly earned it. You must lay 
 some velvet on your stomach if you want to keep your jaw in 
 
 iN 
 
376 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 working order. And the wine of Vouvray, monsieur, is, when 
 old enough, pure velvet." 
 
 "And what do you think of it all?" said Gaudissart, 
 emptying his glass. 
 
 "It is all very fine, very new, very advantageous; but I 
 think better of the system of loans on land that was in use in 
 my bank in the Rue des Fosses-Montmartre." 
 
 "There you are right, monsieur," said Gaudissart, "that 
 has been worked and worked out, done and done again. We 
 now have the Mortgage Society which lends on real estate, 
 and works that system on a large scale. But is not that a mere 
 trifle in comparison with our idea of consolidating possibil- 
 ities. Consolidating hopes, coagulating — financially — each 
 man's desires for wealth, and securing their realization. It 
 remained for our age, sir, an age of transition — of transition 
 and progress combined ! " 
 
 "Ay, of progress," said the lunatic. "I like progress, 
 especially such, as brings good times for the wine-trade 
 
 "The 'Times — le Temps' !" exclaimed Gaudissart, 
 
 not heeding the madman's meaning. "A poor paper, sir; 
 if you take it in, I pity you." 
 
 "The newspaper?" cried Margaritis. "To be sure, I am 
 devoted to the newspaper. Wife, wife! where is the news- 
 paper?" he went on, turning toward the door. 
 
 "Very good, monsieur; if you take an interest in the 
 papers, we shall certainly agree." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; but before you hear the paper, confess that this 
 
 wine is " 
 
 • "Delicious," said Gaudissart. 
 
 "Come on, then, we will finish the bottle between us." 
 The madman a quarter filled his own glass and poured out a 
 bumper for Gaudissart. 
 
 " As I say, sir, I have two casks of that very wine. If you 
 think it good, and are disposed to deal " 
 
 "The fathers of the Saint-Simonian doctrine have, in fact, 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 377 
 
 commissioned me to forward them such products as But 
 
 let me tell you of their splendid newspaper. You, who under- 
 stand the insurance business, and are ready to help me to ex- 
 tend it in this district " 
 
 "Certainly," said Margaritis, "if " 
 
 " Of course, if I take your wine. And your wine is very 
 good, monsieur; it goes to the spot." 
 
 " Champagne is made of it. There is a gentleman here, 
 from Paris, who has come to make champagne at Tours." 
 
 "I quite believe it. The 'Globe,' which you must have 
 heard mentioned " 
 
 " I know it well," said Margaritis. 
 
 " I was sure of it," said Gaudissart. " Monsieur, you have 
 a powerful head — >a bump which is known as the equine 
 head. There is something of the horse in the head of every 
 great man. Now a man can be a genius and live unknown. 
 It is a trick that has happened often enough to men who, in 
 spite of their talents, live in obscurity, and which nearly 
 befell the great Saint-Simon and Monsieur Vico, a man of 
 mark who is making his way. He is coming on well is Vico, 
 and I am glad. Here we enter on the new theory and for- 
 mula of the human race. Attention, monsieur " 
 
 "Attention ! " echoed Margaritis. 
 
 " The oppression of man by man ought to have ended, 
 monsieur, on the day when Christ — I do not say Jesus Christ, 
 I say Christ — came to proclaim the equality of men before 
 God. But has not this equality been hitherto the most illu- 
 sory chimera? Now, Saint-Simon supplements Christ. Christ 
 has served His time " 
 
 "Then, is He released?" asked Margaritis. 
 
 " He has served His time from the point of view of Liber- 
 alism. There is something stronger to guide us now — the new 
 creed, free and individual creativeness, social coordination bv 
 which each one shall receive his social reward equitably, in 
 accordance with his work, and no longer be the hireling of 
 
378 GAUDISSART THE. GREAT. 
 
 individuals who, incapable themselves, make all labor for 
 the benefit of one alone. Hence the doctrine " 
 
 "And what becomes of the servants?" asked Margaritis. 
 
 " They remain servants, monsieur, if they are only capable 
 of being servants." 
 
 " Then of what use is the doctrine ? " 
 
 " Oh, to judge of that, monsieur, you must take your stand 
 on the highest point of view whence you can clearly command 
 a general prospect of humanity. This brings us to Ballanche ! 
 Do you know Monsieur Ballanche?" 
 
 " It is my principal business," said the madman, who mis- 
 understood the name for la planche (boards or staves). 
 
 "Very good," said Gaudissart. " Then, sir, if the palin- 
 genesis and successive developments of the spiritualized 
 'Globe' touch you, delight you, appeal to you — then, my 
 dear sir, the newspaper called the 'Globe,' a fine name, ac- 
 curately expressing its mission — the ' Globe ' is the cicerone 
 who will explain to you every morning the fresh conditions 
 under which, in quite a short time, the world will undergo a 
 political and moral change." 
 
 "What is that? " asked Margaritis. 
 
 " I will explain the argument by a simile," said Gaudissart. 
 "If, as children, our nurses took us to Seraphin, do not we 
 older men need a presentment of the future ? These gentle- 
 men " 
 
 " Do they drink wine ? " 
 
 "Yes, monsieur. Their house is established, I may say, 
 on an admirable footing — a prophetic footing ; handsome re- 
 ceptions, all the bigwigs, splendid parties." 
 
 " To be sure," said the madman, "the laborers who pull 
 down must be fed as "well as those who build." 
 
 "All the more so, monsieur, when they pull down with one 
 hand and build up with the other, as the apostles of the 
 'Globe' do." 
 
 " Then they must have wine, the wine of Vouvray ; the two 
 
GAUD1SSART THE GREAT. 379 
 
 casks I have left — three hundred bottles for a hundred francs 
 — a mere song." 
 
 " How. much a bottle does that come to? " said Gaudissart. 
 " Let me see ; there is the carriage, and the town dues — not 
 seven sous — a very good bargain." ("I have caught my 
 man," thought Gaudissart. " You want to sell me the wine, 
 which I want, and I can get the whip hand of you.") "They 
 pay more for other wine," he went on. " Well, monsieur, 
 men who haggle are sure to agree. Speak honestly ; you have 
 considerable influence in the district ? " 
 
 " I believe so," said the madman. " The head of Vouvray, 
 you see." 
 
 "Well, and you perfectly understand the working of the 
 intellectual capital insurance?" 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 "You have realized the vast proportions of the 'Globe? ' " 
 
 "Twice — on foot." 
 
 Gaudissart did not heed him ; he was entangled in the 
 maze of his own thoughts, and listening to his own words, 
 assured of success. 
 
 "Well, seeing the position you hold, I can understand that 
 at your age you have nothing to insure. But, monsieur, you 
 can persuade those persons in this district to insure who, 
 either by their personal merits or by the precarious position 
 of their families, may be anxious to provide for the future. 
 And so, if you will subscribe to the ' Globe,' and if you will 
 give me the support of your authority in this district to invite 
 the investment of capital in annuities — for annuities are pop- 
 ular in the provinces — well, we may come to an agreement as 
 to the purchase of the two casks of wine. Will you take in 
 the 'Globe?'" 
 
 "I live on the Globe." 
 
 " Will you support me with the influential residents in the 
 district?" 
 
 " I support " 
 
380 GAUD1SSART THE GREAT, 
 
 "And " 
 
 "And?- 
 
 " And I But you will pay your subscription to the 
 
 * Globe?'" 
 
 " The f. Globe ' — a good paper — an annuity? " 
 
 "An annuity, monsieur? Well, yes, you are right; for it 
 is full of life, of vitality, and learning; choke full of learning; 
 a handsome paper, well printed, a good color, thick paper. 
 Oh, it is none of your flimsy shoddy, mere waste-paper that 
 tears if you look at it. And it goes deep, gives you reasoning 
 that you may think over at leisure, and pleasant occupation 
 here in the depths of the country." 
 
 "That is the thing for me," said the madman. 
 
 " It costs a mere trifle — eighty francs a year." 
 
 "That is not the thing for me," said Margaritis. 
 
 "Monsieur," said Gaudissart, " of course you have little 
 children?" 
 
 " Some," said Margaritis, who misunderstood have for love. 
 
 "Well, then, the 'Journal des Enfants,' seven francs a 
 year " 
 
 " Buy my two casks of wine," said Margaritis, " and I will 
 subscribe to your children's paper ; that is the thing for me ; 
 a fine idea. Intellectual tyranny — a child — heh ? Does not 
 man tyrannize over man ? " 
 
 " Right you are," said Gaudissart. 
 
 "Right lam." 
 
 " And you consent to steer me round the district ? " 
 
 "Round the district." 
 
 " I have your approbation ? " 
 
 "You have." 
 
 "Well, then, sir, I will take your two casks of wine at a 
 hundred francs " 
 
 " No, no, a hundred and ten." 
 
 " Monsieur, a hundred and ten, I will say a hundred and 
 ten, but it is a hundred and ten to the gentlemen of the paper 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 381 
 
 and one hundred to me. If I find you a buyer, you owe me 
 ti commission." 
 
 "A hundred and twenty to them. No commission to the 
 commissioners." 
 
 " Very neat. And not only witty, but spirited." 
 
 " No, spirituous." 
 
 " Better and better — like Nicolet." 
 
 "That is my way," said the lunatic. " Come and look at 
 my vineyards ? " 
 
 "With pleasure," said Gaudissart. "That wine goes 
 strangely to the head." 
 
 And Gaudissart the Great went out with Monsieur Mar- 
 garitis, who led him from terrace to terrace, from vine to vine. 
 
 The three ladies and Monsieur Vernier could laugh now at 
 their ease, as they saw the two men from the window gesticu- 
 lating, haranguing, standing still, and going on again, talking 
 vehemently. 
 
 " Why did your good man take him out of hearing ? " said 
 Vernier. 
 
 At last Margaritis came in again with the commercial trav- 
 eler ; they were both walking at a great pace as if in a hurry 
 to conclude the business. 
 
 "And the countryman, I bet, has been too many for the 
 Parisian," said Vernier. 
 
 In point of fact, Gaudissart the Great, sitting at one end 
 of the card table, to the great delight of Margaritis, wrote an 
 order for the delivery of two casks of wine. Then, after 
 reading through the contract, Margaritis paid him down seven 
 francs as a subscription to the children's paper. 
 
 "Till to-morrow, then, monsieur," said Gaudissart the 
 Great, twisting his watch-key; "I shall have the honor of 
 calling for you to-morrow. You can send the wine to Paris 
 direct to the address I have given you, and forward it as soon 
 as you receive the money." 
 
 Gaudissart was from Normandy; there were two sides to 
 
382 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 every bargain he made, and he required an agreement from 
 Monsieur Margaritis, who with a madman's glee in gratifying 
 his favorite whim, signed, after 'reading, a contract to deliver 
 two casks of wine of " Clos Margaritis." 
 
 So Gaudissart went off in high spirits, humming Le roi des 
 mers, prends plus bas, to the Golden Sun inn, where he natu- 
 rally had a chat with the host while waiting for dinner. 
 Mitouflet was an old soldier, simple but cunning, as peasants 
 are, but never laughing at a joke, as being a man who is ac- 
 customed to the roar of cannon, and to passing a jest in the 
 ranks. 
 
 "You have some very tough customers hereabouts," said 
 Gaudissart, leaning against the door-post and lighting his 
 cigar at Mitouflet's pipe. 
 
 " How is that? " asked Mitouflet. 
 
 " Well, men who ride roughshod over political and finan- 
 cial theories." 
 
 " Whom have you been talking to, if I may make so bold?" 
 asked the innkeeper guilelessly, while he skillfully expectorated 
 after the manner of smokers. 
 
 "To a wideawake chap named Margaritis." 
 
 Mitouflet glanced at his customer, twice, with calm irony. 
 
 " Oh yes, he is wideawake, no doubt ! He knows too much 
 for most people : they don't follow him " 
 
 "I can quite believe it. He has a thorough knowledge 
 of the higher branches of finance." 
 
 " Yes, indeed," said Mitouflet ; "and, for my part, I have 
 always thought it a pity that he should be mad." 
 
 "Mad? How?" 
 
 "How? Why, mad, as a madman is mad," repeated the 
 tavern-keeper. " But he is not dangerous, and his wife looks 
 carefully after him. So you understood each other? That's 
 funny," said the relentless Mitouflet, with the utmost calm. 
 
 "Funny?" cried Gaudissart. "Funny? But your pre- 
 cious Monsieur Vernier was making a fool of me ! " 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 383 
 
 " Did he send you there ? " said Mitouflet. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I say, wife," cried the innkeeper, " listen to that ! Mon- 
 sieur Vernier actually sent monsieur here to talk to old Mar- 
 garitis " 
 
 "And what did you find to say to each other, my good 
 gentleman," said the woman, "since he is quite mad?" 
 
 " He sold me two casks of wine." 
 
 "And you bought them ? " 
 
 "Yes.*' 
 
 " But it is his mania to want to sell wine ; he has none." 
 
 " Very good ! " cried the drummer. " In the first place, I 
 will go and thank Monsieur Vernier." 
 
 Gaudissart, boiling with rage, went off to the house of the 
 ex-dyer, whom he found in his parlor laughing with the 
 neighbors, to whom he was already telling the story. 
 
 " Monsieur," said this Prince of Drummers, his eyes glar- 
 ing with wrath, " you are a sneak and a blackguard ; and if 
 you are not the lowest of turnkeys — a class I rank below the 
 convicts — you will give me satisfaction for the insult you have 
 done me by placing me in the power of a man whom you knew 
 to be mad. Do you hear me, Monsieur Vernier, the dyer?" 
 
 This was the speech Gaudissart had prepared, as a tragedian 
 prepares his entrance on the stage. 
 
 " What next? " retorted Vernier, encouraged by the pres- 
 ence of his neighbors. " Do you think we have not good 
 right to make game of a gentleman who arrives at Vouvray 
 with an air and a flourish, to get our money out of us under 
 pretense of being great men — painters or verse-mongers — 
 and who thus gratuitously places us on a level with a penniless 
 horde, out at elbows, homeless and roofless ? What have we 
 done to deserve it, we who are fathers of families ? A rogue, 
 who asks us to subscribe to the 'Globe,' a paper which 
 preaches as the first law of God, if you please, that a man 
 
384 GAUD ISS ART THE GREAT. 
 
 shall not inherit what his father and mother can leave him ? 
 On my sacred word of honor, old Margaritis can talk more 
 sense than that. 
 
 "And, after all, what have you to complain of? You were 
 quite of a mind, you and he. These gentlemen can bear wit- 
 ness that if you had speechified to all the people in the country- 
 side you would not have been so well understood." 
 
 " That is all very well to say, but I consider myself insulted, 
 monsieur, and I expect satisfaction." 
 
 "Very good, sir; I consider you insulted if that will be 
 any comfort to you, and I will not give you satisfaction, for 
 there is not satisfaction enough in the whole silly business for 
 me to give you any. Is he absurd, I ask you ? " 
 
 At these words Gaudissart rushed on the dyer to give him a 
 blow ; but the Vouvrillons were on the alert and threw them- 
 selves between them, so that Gaudissart the Great onlv hit 
 the dyer's wig, which flew off and alighted on the head of 
 Mademoiselle Claire Vernier. 
 
 " If you are not satisfied now, monsieur, I shall be at the 
 inn till to-morrow morning; you will find me there, and ready 
 to show you what is meant by satisfaction for an insult. I 
 fought in July, monsieur ! " 
 
 "Very well," said the dyer, " you shall fight at Vouvray ; 
 and you will stay here rather longer than you bargained for." 
 
 Gaudissart departed, pondering on this reply, which seemed 
 to him ominous of mischief. For the first time in his life he 
 dined cheerlessly. 
 
 The whole borough of Vouvray was in a stir over the meet- 
 ing between Gaudissart and Monsieur Vernier. A duel was a 
 thing unheard of in this benign region. 
 
 " Monsieur Mitouflet, I am going to fight Monsieur Vernier 
 to-morrow morning," said Gaudissart to his host. "I know 
 nobody here ; will you be my second ? " 
 
 "With pleasure," said Mitouflet. 
 
 Gaudissart had hardly finished his dinner when Madame 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 385 
 
 Fontanieu and the mayor's deputy came to the Golden Sun, 
 took Mitouflet aside, and represented to him what a sad thing 
 it would be for the whole district if a violent death should 
 occur ; they described the frightful state of affairs for good 
 Madame Vernier, and implored him to patch the matter up so 
 as to save the honor of the community. 
 
 " I will see to it," said the innkeeper with a wink. 
 
 In the evening Mitouflet went up to Gaudissart's room, 
 carrying pens, ink, and paper. 
 
 "What is all that?" inquired Gaudissart of the tavern- 
 keeper. 
 
 " Well, as you are to fight to-morrow, I thought you might 
 be glad to leave some little instructions and that you might 
 wish to write some letters, for we all have some one who is 
 dear to us. Oh ! that will not kill you. Are you a good 
 fencer? Would you like to practice a little ? I have some 
 foils." 
 
 " I should be glad to do so." 
 
 Mitouflet fetched the foils and two masks. 
 
 " Now, let us see." 
 
 The innkeeper and the drummer stood on guard. Mitouflet, 
 who had been an instructor of grenadiers, hit Gaudissart sixty- 
 eight times, driving him back to the wall. 
 
 "The devil ! you are good at the game ! " said Gaudissart, 
 out of breath. 
 
 "I am no match for Monsieur Vernier." 
 
 " The deuce ! Then I will fight with pistols." 
 
 " I advise you to. You see, if you use large horse-pistols 
 and load them to the muzzle, they are sure to kick and miss, 
 and each man withdraws with unblemished honor. Leave me 
 to arrange it. By the mass, two good men would be great 
 fools to kill each other for a jest." 
 
 "Are you sure the pistols will fire wide enough? I should 
 be sorry to kill the man," said Gaudissart. 
 
 " Sleep easy." 
 25 
 
386 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 Next morning the adversaries, both rather pale, met at the 
 foot of the Pont de la Cise. 
 
 The worthy Vernier narrowly missed killing a cow that was 
 grazing by the roadside ten yards ofF. 
 
 "Ah! you fired in the air!" exclaimed Gaudissart, and 
 with these words the enemies fell into each other's arms. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the traveler, "your joke was a little 
 rough, but it was funny. I am sorry I spoke so strongly, but 
 I was beside myself. I hold you a man of honor." 
 
 " Monsieur, we will get you twenty subscribers to the chil- 
 dren's paper," replied the dyer, still rather pale. 
 
 "That being the case," said Gaudissart, " why should we 
 not breakfast together? Men who have fought are always 
 ready to understand each other." 
 
 "Monsieur Mitouflet," said Gaudissart, as they went in, 
 " there is a bailiff here, I suppose ? " 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "I mean to serve a notice on my dear little Monsieur 
 Margaritis, requiring him to supply me with two casks of his 
 wine." 
 
 " But he has none," said Vernier. 
 
 " Well, monsieur, I will say no more about it for an indem- 
 nity of twenty francs. But I will not have it said in your 
 town that you stole a march on Gaudissart the Great." 
 
 Madame Margaritis, afraid of an action, which the plaintiff 
 would certainly gain, brought the twenty francs to the clement 
 drummer, who was also spared the pains of any further propa- 
 ganda in one of the most jovial districts of France, and at 
 the same time the least open to new ideas. 
 
 On his return from his tour in the southern provinces, 
 Gaudissart the Great was traveling in the coupe of the Laffite- 
 Caillard diligence, and had for a fellow-passenger a young 
 man to whom, having passed Angoul&me, he condescended 
 to expatiate on the mysteries of life, fancying him, no doubt, 
 but a baby. 
 
GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 387 
 
 On reaching Vouvray, the youth exclaimed — 
 
 " What a lovely situation ! " 
 
 "Yes, monsieur," said Gaudissart, "but the land is unin- 
 habitable by reason of the inhabitants. You would have a 
 duel on your hands every day. Why, only three months ago 
 I fought on that very spot " — and he pointed to the bridge — 
 " with a confounded dyer — pistols; but — I fleeced him ! " 
 
 Paris, November, 1832. 
 
 \Note. — The book " Parisians in the Country " consists of " Gaudissart 
 the Great" and the "Muse of the Department." As they are not re- 
 lated to each other they are, for mechanical reasons, placed in separate 
 volumes. — Pub.] 
 
BEATRIX 
 
 |F pi 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 " Beatrix" was built up in the odd fashion in which 
 Balzac sometimes did build up his novels, and which may be 
 thought to account for an occasional lack of unity and grasp 
 in them. The original book, written in 1838, and published 
 with the rather flowery dedication "to Sarah" at the end of 
 that year, stopped at the marriage of Calyste and Sabine. 
 The last part, separately entitled " Un Adultere Retrospectif," 
 was not added till six years later. It cannot be said to be 
 either very shocking or very unnatural that the young husband 
 should exemplify the truth of that uncomfortable proverb, Quia 
 bu boira; and it is perhaps rather more surprising that Balzac 
 should have allowed him to be " refished " (as the French say) 
 in a finally satisfactory condition by his lawful spouse. 
 
 Still, I do not think the addition can be considered on the 
 whole an improvement to the book, of which it is at the best 
 rather an appendix than an integral part. The conception of 
 Beatrix herself seems to have changed somewhat, and that not 
 as the conception of her immortal namesake in "Esmond" 
 and " The Virginians " changes, merely to suit the irreparable 
 outrage of years. The end has unsavory details, which have 
 not, as the repetition of them in more tragic form a little later 
 in "La Cousine Bette " has, the justification of a really tragic 
 retribution ; and a man must have a great deal of disinterested 
 good-nature about him to feel any satisfaction, or indeed to 
 take much interest, in the restoration of the domestic happi- 
 ness of two such persons as M. and Madame de Rochefide. 
 Calyste du Guenic, whose character was earlier rather exag- 
 gerated, is now almost a caricature, and to me at least the 
 thing is not much excused by the fact that it gives Balzac an 
 opportunity of introducing his pattern gentleman-scoundrel, 
 
 (ix) 
 
t PREFACE. 
 
 Maxime de Trailles, and his pet Bohemian, La Palfenne. 
 The many-named Italian here indeed plays a comparatively 
 benevolent part, as does Trailles ; but they are both as great 
 " raffs " and " tigers " as ever. 
 
 The first and larger part of the book, on the other hand — 
 the book proper, as we may call it — is a remarkable, a well- 
 designed, and a very interesting study. It is not so much of 
 an additional attraction to me, as it perhaps is to most people, 
 that contemporaries, without much contradiction, or in all 
 cases improbability, chose to regard the parts and personages 
 of Felicite des Touches, Beatrix de Rochefide, Claud Vignon, 
 and the musician Conti, as designed, and pretty closely de- 
 signed, after George Sand, Madame d'Agoult (known as 
 " Daniel Stern "), Gustave Planche, the critic, and Liszt. 
 As to the first pair, there can, of course, be no doubt ; for 
 Balzac, by representing "Camille Maupin " as George Sand's 
 rival, and by introducing divers ingenious and legitimate 
 adaptations of the famous she-novelist's career, both invites 
 and, in a way, authorizes the attribution. There is nothing 
 offensive in it ; indeed, Felicite is one of the most effective 
 and sympathetic of his female characters, and would always 
 have been incapable of the rather heartless action by which 
 the actual George Sand amused herself intellectually and senti- 
 mentally with lover after lover, and then threw them away. 
 Unless the accounts of Planche that we have are very unfair — 
 and they possibly are, for he was a critic, and was particularly 
 obnoxious to the extreme Romantic school, which was perhaps 
 why Balzac liked him — Claud Vignon is a still more flattered 
 portrait, though Balzac's low, if not quite impartial, opinion 
 of critics in general comes out in it. Conti may be fair 
 enough for Liszt ; and if Beatrix is certainly a libel on poor 
 Madame d'Agoult, it must be remembered that this later 
 Madame de Stael was generally misrepresented in her lifetime, 
 though since her death she has had more justice. 
 
 The "key "-interest of books, however, is always a minor, 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 and sometimes a purely illegitimate one. It ought to be suffi- 
 cient for us that the interest of the quartette, even if there had 
 been no such persons as George Sand, Daniel Stern, Planche, 
 and Liszt in the world, would be very great, and that it is well 
 composed with and maintained by the accessory and auxiliary 
 facts and characters. The picture of the Guenic household 
 (which, after Balzac's usual fashion, throws us back to " Les 
 Chouans," while Beatrix as a Casteran, and thus a connection 
 of the luckless Mile, de Verneuil, is also connected with that 
 book) may seem to some to be a little too fully painted ; it 
 does not seem so to me. Whether, as hinted above, the char- 
 acter of Calyste has its childishness exaggerated or not, I must 
 leave to readers to decide for themselves. His casting of 
 Beatrix into the sea, beside being illegal, may seem to some 
 extravagant ; but it must be remembered that Balzac was 
 originally writing when the heyday of the Romantic move- 
 ment was by no means over, and when melodrama was still 
 pretty fully in fashion. It is difficult, too, to see what better 
 contrast and uniting scheme for the contrasted worldlinesses 
 of the four chief characters could have been devised ; while 
 the childishness itself is not inconceivable or unnatural in a 
 boy brought up in a sort of household of romance by a heroic 
 father and a doting mother, both utterly unworldly, his head 
 being further fired by participation in actual civil war on be- 
 half of an injured princess, and his heart exposed without 
 preparation to such different influences as those of Mile, des 
 Touches and of Beatrix. 
 
 The contrast of the two ladies is also fine; indeed, Beatrix 
 seems to me, though by no means Balzac's most perfect work, 
 to be an attempt in a higher style of novel writing than any 
 other heroine of his. It is impossible not to suspect in Fe- 
 licite, good, clever, and so forth as she is, a covert satire on 
 the variety of womankind which had begun to be fashionable. 
 The satire on the unamiable side of mere womanliness which 
 the sketch of Beatrix contains is, of course, open and un- 
 
xS PREFACE. 
 
 deniable. I think that Thackeray has far excelled it, but I 
 am not certain that he was not indebted to it as a pattern. 
 The fault of the French Beatrix has been expressed by her 
 creator on nearly the last page of the book. A woman sans 
 cceur ni ttte may do a great deal of mischief; but she cannot 
 quite play the part attributed to Madame de Rochefide. 
 
 The two first parts of "Beatrix" (in which Madame de 
 Rochefide was at first called Roche^ak) appeared in the 
 "Siecle" during April and May, 1839, with the alternative 
 title "ou les Amours Forces," and they were published in 
 book form by Souverain in the same year. They were then 
 divided briefly: the first part, which was called " Moeurs 
 D' Autrefois" in the "Siecle," and "Une Famille Patri- 
 arcale" in the book, had eight headed chapters; the second 
 (" Moeurs D'Aujourdhui" in the first, "UneFemrae Celebre" 
 in the second) eleven; and a third division, " Les Rivalries," 
 eight. As a "Scene de la Vie Privee," which it became in 
 1842, it had no chapters; it was little altered otherwise; and 
 the present completion was anticipated, though not given, in 
 a final paragraph. It also had the simple title of "Beatrix." 
 The completion itself did not appear till the midwinter (De- 
 cember-January) of 1844-45. ty was fi rst called "Les Petits 
 Maneges d'une Femme Vertueuse " in the "Messager," and 
 when, shortly afterward, it was published by Chlendowski as 
 a book, "La Lune de Miel." In these forms it had fifty-nine 
 headed chapters. In the same year, however, it became, with 
 its forerunners, part of the Comedie, and the chapters were 
 swept away throughout. 
 
 " The Purse " (" La Bourse "), though agreeable, is a little 
 slight. It was early written, apparently for the second edi- 
 tion of the " Scenes de la Vie Privee," in which it appeared. 
 In 1835 it was moved over to the "Scenes de la Vie Paris- 
 ienne," between which and the Vie Privee there is in fact a 
 good deal of cross and arbitrary division. But when the full 
 Comedie took shape it moved back again. G. S. 
 
BEATRIX. 
 
 To Sarah. 
 
 In clear weather, on the Mediterranean shore, 
 where formerly your name held elegant sway, the 
 waves sometimes allow us to perceive beneath the mist 
 of waters a sea-flower, one of JVaiure's masterpieces ; 
 the lacework of its tissue, tinged with purple, russet, 
 rose, violet, or gold, the crispness of that living fili- 
 gree, the velvet texture, all vanish as soon as curiosity 
 draivs it forth and spreads it on the strand. 
 
 Thus would the glare of publicity o fend your tender 
 modesty ; so, in dedicating this work to you, I must 
 reserve a name which would, indeed, be its pride. 
 But, under the shelter of this half- concealment, your 
 superb hands may bless it, your noble brow may bend 
 and dream over it, your eyes, full of motherly love, 
 may smile upon it, since you are here at once present 
 and veiled. Like that gem of the ocean-garden, you 
 will dwell on the fine, white, level sand where your 
 beautiful life expands, hidden by a wave that is trans- 
 parent only to certain friendly and reticent eyes. 
 
 I would gladly have laid at your feet a work in 
 harmony with your perfections ; but as that was im- 
 possible, I knew, for my consolation, that I was grat- 
 ifying one of your instincts by offering you something to 
 protect. 
 
 De Balzac. 
 
 (1) 
 
PART I. 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS. 
 
 France, and more especially Brittany, still has some few 
 towns that stand entirely outside the social movement which 
 gives a character to the nineteenth century. For lack of rapid 
 and constant communications with Paris, connected only by 
 an ill-made road with the prefecture or chief town to which 
 they belong, these places hear and see modern civilization 
 pass by like a spectacle ; they are amazed, but they do not 
 applaud ; and whether they fear it or make light of it, they 
 remain faithful to the antiquated manners of which they pre- 
 serve the stamp. Any one who should travel as a moral 
 archaeologist, and study men instead of stones, might find a 
 picture of the age of Louis XV. in some village of Provence, 
 that of the time of Louis XIV. in the depths of Poitou, that 
 of yet remoter ages in the heart of Brittany. 
 
 Most of these places have fallen from some splendor of 
 which history has kept no record, busied as it is with facts and 
 dates rather than manners, but of which the memory still sur- 
 vives in tradition ; as in Brittany, where the character of the 
 people allows no forgetfulness of anything that concerns the 
 home country. Many of these towns have been the capital 
 of some little feudal territory — a county or a duchy conquered 
 by the Crown, or broken up by inheritors in default of a direct 
 male line. Then, deprived of their activity, these heads be- 
 came arms ; the arms, bereft of nutrition, have dried up and 
 merely vegetate ; and within these thirty years these images 
 of remote times are beginning to die out and grow very rare. 
 
 Modern industry, toiling for the masses, goes on destroying 
 
 the creations of ancient art, for its outcome was as personal to 
 
 the purchaser as to the maker. We have products nowadays ; 
 
 we no longer have works. Buildings play a large part in 
 
 (2) 
 
BE A TRIX. 3 
 
 the phenomena of retrospection ; but to industry buildings 
 are stone-quarries or saltpetre mines, or warehouses for cotton. 
 A few years more and these primitive towns will be trans- 
 formed, known no more except in this literary iconography. 
 
 One of the towns where the physiognomy of the feudal ages 
 is still most plainly visible is Guerande. The name alone will 
 revive a thousand memories in the mind of painters, artists, 
 and thinkers, who may have been to the coast and have seen 
 this noble gem of feudality proudly perched where it com- 
 mands the sand-hills and the strand at low tide, the top 
 corner, as it were, of a triangle at whose other points stand 
 two not less curious relics — le Croisic and le Bourg de Batz. 
 Beside Guerande there are but two places — Vitre, in the very 
 centre of Brittany, and Avignon, in the south — which preserve 
 . their mediaeval aspect and features in the midst of our century. 
 Guerande is to this day inclosed by mighty walls, its wide 
 moats are full of water, its battlements are unbroken, its 
 loopholes are not filled up with shrub, the ivy has thrown no 
 mantle over its round and square towers. It has three gates, 
 where the rings may still be seen for suspending the port- 
 cullis ; it is entered over drawbridges of timber shod with 
 iron, which could be raised, though they are raised no longer. 
 The municipality was blamed in 1820 for planting poplars by 
 the side of the moat to shade the walk ; it replied that on the 
 land side, by the sand-hills, for above a hundred years, the 
 fine long esplanade by the walls, which look as if they had 
 been built yesterday, had been made into a mall overshadowed 
 by elms, where the inhabitants took their pleasure. 
 
 The houses have known no changes ; they are neither more 
 nor less in number. Not one of them has felt on its face the 
 hammer of the builder or the brush of the whitewasher, nor 
 trembled under the weight of an added story. They all re- 
 tain their primitive character. Some are raised on wooden 
 columns forming "rows," under which there is a footway, 
 floored with planks that yield but do not break. The store- 
 
i BEATRIX. 
 
 dwellings are small and low, and faced with slate shingles. 
 Woodwork, now decayed, has been largely used for carved 
 window-frames ; and the beams, prolonged beyond the pillars, 
 project in grotesque heads, or at the angles, in the form of 
 fantastic creatures, vivified by the great idea of art, which at 
 that time lent life to dead matter. These ancient things, defy- 
 ing the touch of time, offer to painters the brown tones and 
 obliterated lines that they delight in. 
 
 The streets are what they were a hundred years ago. Only, 
 as the population is thinner now, as the social stir is less 
 active, a traveler curious to wander through this town, as fine 
 as a perfect suit of antique armor, may find his way, not un- 
 touched by melancholy, down an almost deserted street, where 
 the stone window-frames are choked with concrete to avoid 
 the tax. This street ends at a postern-gate built up with a 
 stone-wall, and crowned by a clump of saplings planted there 
 by the hand of Breton Nature — France can hardly show a 
 more luxuriant and all-pervading vegetation. If he is a poet 
 or a painter, our wanderer will sit down, absorbed in the 
 enjoyment of the perfect silence that reigns under the still 
 sharp-cut vaulting of this side-gate, whither no sound comes 
 from the peaceful town, whence the rich country may be seen 
 in all its beauty through loopholes, once held by archers and 
 cross-bowmen, which seem placed like the little windows 
 arranged to frame a view from a summer-house. 
 
 It is impossible to go through the town without being re- 
 minded at every step of the manners and customs of long past 
 times ; every stone speaks of them ; traditions of the Middle 
 Ages survive there as superstitions. If by chance a gendarme 
 passes in his laced hat, his presence is an anachronism against 
 which the mind protests ; but nothing is rarer than to meet a 
 being or a thing of the present. There is little to be seen 
 even of the dress of the day ; so much of it as the natives 
 have accepted has become to some extent appropriate to their 
 unchanging habits and hereditary physiognomy. The market- 
 
BE A TRIX. 5 
 
 place is filled with Breton costumes, which artists come here 
 to study, and which are amazingly varied. The whiteness of 
 the linen clothes worn by the paludiers, the salt-workers who 
 collect salt from the pans in the marshes, contrasts effectively 
 with the blues and browns worn by the inland peasants, and 
 the primitive jewelry piously preserved by the women. These 
 two classes and the jacketed seamen, with their round, var- 
 nished leather hats, are as distinct as the castes in India, and 
 they still recognize the distinctions that separate the towns- 
 folk, the clergy, and the nobility. Here every landmark still 
 exists; the revolutionary plane found the divisions too rugged 
 and too hard to work over ; it would have been notched if 
 not broken. Here the immutability which nature has given 
 to zoological species is to be seen in men. In short, even 
 since the revolution of 1830, Guerande is still a place unique, 
 essentially Breton, fervently Catholic, silent, meditative, where 
 new ideas can scarcely penetrate. 
 
 Its geographical position accounts for this singularity. 
 This pretty town overlooks the salt marshes ; its salt is indeed 
 known throughout Brittany as Sel de Guerande, and to its 
 merits many of the natives ascribe the excellence of their 
 butter and sardines. It has no communication with the rest 
 of France but by two roads, one leading to Savenay, the chief 
 town of the immediate district, and thence to Saint-Nazaire; 
 and the other by Vannes on to Morbihan. The district road 
 connects it with Nantes by land ; that by Saint-Nazaire and 
 then by boat also leads to Nantes. The inland road is used 
 only by the Government, the shorter and more frequented way 
 is by Saint-Nazaire. Between that town and Guerande lies a 
 distance of at least six leagues, which the mails do not serve, 
 and for a very good reason — there are not three travelers by 
 coach a year. Saint-Nazaire is divided from Paimboeuf by 
 the estuary of the Loire, there four leagues in width. The bar 
 of the river makes the navigation by steamboat somewhat un- 
 certain ; and, to add to the difficulties, there was, in 1829, no 
 
6 BE A TRIX. 
 
 landing quay at the cape of Saint- Nazaire; the point ended 
 in slimy shoals and granite reefs, the natural fortifications of 
 its picturesque church, compelling arriving voyagers to fling 
 themselves and their baggage into boats when the sea was 
 high, or, in fine weather, to walk across the rocks as far as 
 the jetty then in course of construction. These obstacles, ill 
 suited to invite the amateur, may perhaps still exist there. 
 In the first place, the authorities move but slowly ; and then 
 the natives of this corner of land, which you may see pro- 
 jecting like a tooth on the map of France between Saint- 
 Nazaire, le Bourg de Batz, and le Croisic, are very well 
 content with the hindrances that protect their territory from 
 the incursions of strangers. 
 
 Thus flung down on the edge of a continent, Guerande 
 leads no whither, and no one ever comes there. Happy in 
 being unknown, the town cares only for itself. The centre 
 of the immense produce of the salt marshes, paying not less 
 than a million francs in taxes, is at le Croisic, a peninsular 
 town communicating with Guerande across a tract of shifting 
 sands, where the road traced each day is washed out each 
 night, and by boats indispensable for crossing the inlet, 
 which forms the port of le Croisic, and which encroaches on 
 the sand. Thus this charming little town is a Herculaneum 
 of feudalism, minus the winding-sheet of lava. It stands, 
 but is not alive ; its only reason for surviving is that it has 
 not been pulled down. 
 
 If you arrive at Guerande from le Croisic, after crossing 
 the tract of salt marshes, you are startled and excited at the 
 sight of this immense fortification, apparently quite new. 
 Coming on it from Saint-Nazaire, its picturesque position and 
 the rural charm of the neighborhood are no less fascinating. 
 The country round it is charming, the hedges full of flowers — 
 honeysuckles, roses, and beautiful shrubs ; you might fancy it 
 was an English wild-garden planned by a great artist. This 
 rich landscape, so homelike, so little visited, with all the 
 
BEATRIX. 7 
 
 charm of a clump of violets or lily-of-the-valley found in the 
 midst of a forest, is set in an African desert shut in by the 
 ocean — a desert without a tree, without a blade of grass, 
 without a bird, where, on a sunny day, the marshmen, dressed 
 all in white, and scattered at wide intervals over the dismal 
 flats where the salt is collected, look just like Arabs wrapped 
 in their burnouse. Indeed, Guerande, with its pretty scenery 
 inland, and its desert bounded on the right by le Croisic and 
 on the left by Batz, is quite unlike anything else to be seen by 
 the traveler in France. The two types of nature so strongly 
 contrasted and linked by this last monument of feudal life 
 are quite indescribably striking. The town itself has the 
 effect on the mind that a soporific has on the body ; it is as 
 soundless as Venice. 
 
 There is no public conveyance but that of a carrier who 
 transports travelers, parcels, and possibly letters, in a wretched 
 vehicle, from Saint-Nazaire to Guerande or back again. 
 Bernus, the driver of this conveyance, was, in 1829, the fac- 
 totum of the whole community. He goes as he likes, the 
 whole country knows him, he does everybody's commissions. 
 The arrival of a carriage is an immense event — some lady who 
 is passing through Guerande by the land road to le Croisic, or 
 a few old invalids on their way to take sea-baths, which 
 among the rocks of this peninsula have virtues superior to 
 those of Boulogne, Dieppe, or les Sables. The peasants come 
 on horseback, and for the most part bring in their produce in 
 sacks. They come hither chiefly, as do the salt-makers, for 
 the business of purchasing the jewelry peculiar to their caste, 
 which must always be given to Breton maidens on betrothal, 
 and the white linen or the cloth for their clothes. For ten 
 leagues round, Guerande is still that illustrious Guerande 
 where a treaty was signed famous in French history ; the key 
 of the coast, displaying no less than le Bourg de Batz a mag- 
 nificence now lost in the darkness of ages. The jewelry, the 
 cloth, the linen, the ribbons, and hats are manufactured else- 
 
8 BEATRIX 
 
 where, but to the purchasers they are the specialty of Guer- 
 ande. 
 
 Every artist, nay, and every one who is not an artist, who 
 passes through Guerande, feels a desire — soon forgotten — to 
 end his days in its peace and stillness, walking out in fine 
 weather on the mall that runs round the town from one gate 
 to the other on the seaward side. Now and again a vision of 
 this town comes to knock at the gates of memory ; it comes 
 in crowned with towers, belted with walls ; it displays its robe 
 strewn with lovely flowers, shakes its mantle of sand-hills, 
 wafts the intoxicating perfumes of its pretty thorn-hedged 
 lanes, decked with posies lightly flung together; it fills your 
 mind, and invites you like some divine woman whom you 
 have once seen in a foreign land, and who has made herself a 
 home in your heart. 
 
 Close to the church of Guerande a house may be seen 
 which is to the town what the town is to the country, an 
 exact image of the past, the symbol of a great thing now 
 gone, a poem. This house belongs to the noblest family in 
 the land — that of du Guaisnic, who, in the time of the du 
 Guesclin, were as superior to them in fortune and antiquity as 
 the Trojans were to the Romans. The Guaisqlain (also for- 
 merly spelt du Glaicquin) — which has become Guesclin — are 
 descended from the Guaisnics. The Guaisnics, as old as the 
 granite of Brittany, are neither Franks nor Gauls ; they are 
 Bretons, or, to be exact, Celts. Of old they must have been 
 Druids, have cut the mistletoe in sacred groves, and have 
 sacrificed men on dolmens. To-day this race, the equals of 
 the Rohans, but never chosing to be made princes, powerful 
 in the land before Hugues Capet's ancestors had been heard 
 of, this family, pure from every alloy, is possessed of about 
 two thousand francs a year, this house at Guerande, and the 
 little Castle of le Guaisnic. All the estates belonging to the 
 Barony of le Guaisnic, the oldest in Brittany, are in the 
 
BEATRIX. 9 
 
 hands of farmers, and bring in about sixty thousand francs a 
 year in spite of defective culture. The du Guaisnics are in- 
 deed still the owners of the land ; but as they cannot pay up 
 the capital deposited with them two hundred years ago by 
 those who then held them, they cannot take the income. 
 They are in the position of the French Crown toward its 
 tenants in 1789. When and where could the barons find the 
 million francs handed over to them by their farmers ? Until 
 1789 the tenure of the fiefs held of the Castle of le Guaisnic, 
 which stands on a hill, was still worth fifty thousand francs ; 
 but by a single vote the National Assembly suppressed the 
 fines on leases and sales paid to the feudal lords. In such 
 circumstances, this family, no longer of any consequence in 
 France, would be a subject of ridicule in Paris ; at Guerande, 
 it is an epitome of Brittany. At Guerande, the Baron du 
 Guaisnic is one of the great barons of France, one of the men 
 above whom there is but one — the King of France, chosen 
 of old to be their chief. In these days the name of du Guais- 
 nic — full of local meanings, of which the etymology has been 
 explained in " Les Chouans or Brittany in 1799 " — has under- 
 gone the same change as disfigures that of du Guaisqlain. 
 The tax-collector, like every one else, writes it Guenic. 
 
 At the end of a silent, damp, and gloomy alley, formed 
 by the gabled fronts of- the neighboring houses, the arch 
 of a door in the wall may be seen, high and wide enough 
 to admit a horseman, which is in itself sufficient evidence 
 of the house having been finished at a time when car- 
 riages as yet were not. This arch, raised on jambs, is all 
 of granite. The door, made of oak. has cracked like 
 the bark of the trees that furnished the timber, and is 
 set with enormous nails in a geometrical pattern. The 
 arch is coved, and displays the coat-of-arms of the du 
 Guaisnics, as sharp and clean-cut as though the carver had 
 but just finished it. This shield would delight an ama- 
 teur of heraldry by its simplicity, testifying to the pride and 
 
10 BE A TRIX. 
 
 the antiquity of the family. It is still the same as on the 
 day when the crusaders of the Christian world invented these 
 symbols to know each other by ; the Guaisnics have never 
 quartered their bearings with any others. It is always true 
 to itself, like the arms of France, which heralds may recog- 
 nize borne in chief or quarterly in the coats of the oldest 
 families. This is the blazon, as you still may see it at Guer- 
 ande : Gules, a hand proper manched ermine holding a sword 
 argent in pale, with this tremendous motto, Fac. Is not that 
 a fine and great thing ? The wreath of the baronial coronet 
 surmounts this simple shield, on which the vertical lines, used, 
 instead of color, to represent gules, are still clear and sharp. 
 
 The sculptor has given an indescribable look of pride and 
 chivalry to the hand. With what vigor does it hold the 
 sword which has done the family service only yesterday ! In- 
 deed, if you should go to Guerande after reading this story, 
 you will not look at that coat-of-arms without a thrill. The 
 most determined Republican cannot fail to be touched by the 
 fidelity, the nobleness, and the dignity buried at the bottom 
 of that narrow street. The du Guaisnics did well yesterday; 
 they are ready to do well to-morrow. " To do " is the great 
 word of chivalrv. "You did well in the fight" was alwavs 
 the praise bestowed by the High Constable par excellence, 
 the great du Guesclin, who for a while drove the English 
 out of France. The depth of the carving, protected from 
 the weather by the projecting curved margin of the arch, 
 seems in harmony with the deeply graven moral of the motto 
 in the spirit of this family. To those who know the Guaisnics 
 this peculiarity is very pathetic. 
 
 The open door reveals a fairly large courtyard with stables 
 to the right and kitchen offices to the left. The house is 
 built of squared stone from cellar to garret. The front to the 
 courtyard has a double flight of outside steps ; the decorated 
 landing at the top is covered with vestiges of sculpture much 
 injured by time ; but the eye of the antiquarian can still dis- 
 
BEATRIX. 11 
 
 tinguish in the centre-piece of the principal ornament the 
 hand holding the sword. Below this elegant balcony, graced 
 with mouldings now broken in many places, and polished 
 here and there by long use, is a little lodge, once occupied 
 by a watch-dog. The stone balustrade is disjointed, and 
 weeds, tiny flowers, and mosses sprout in the seams and on 
 the steps, which ages have dislodged without destroying their 
 solidity. The door into the house must have been pretty in 
 its day. So far as the remains allow us to judge, it must have 
 been wrought by an artist trained in the great Venetian school 
 of the thirteenth century; it shows a singular combination 
 of the Mauresque and Byzantine styles, and is crowned by a 
 semicircular bracket, which is overgrown with plants, a posy 
 of rose, yellow, brown, or blue, according to the season. 
 The door, of nail-studded oak, opens into a vast hall, beyond 
 which is a similar door leading to such another balcony, and 
 steps down into the garden. 
 
 This hall is in wonderful preservation. The wainscot, up 
 to the height of a man's elbow, is in chestnut-wood; the 
 walls above are covered with splendid Spanish leather stamped 
 in relief, its gilding rubbed and rusty. The ceiling is coffered, 
 artistically moulded, painted, and gilt, but the gold is 
 scarcely visible ; it is in the same condition as that on the 
 cordova leather ; a few red flowers and green leaves can still 
 be seen. It seems probable that cleaning would revive the 
 paintings and show them to be like those which decorate the 
 woodwork of the House at Tours, called la Maison de Tristan, 
 which would prove that they had been restored or repaired in 
 the time of Louis XI. The fireplace is enormous, of carved 
 stone, with huge wrought-iron dogs of the finest workmanship. 
 They would carry a cartload of logs. All the seats in this 
 hall are of oak, and have the family shield carved on their 
 backs. Hanging to nails on the wall are three English mus- 
 kets, fit alike for war or for sport, three cavalry swords, two 
 game-bags, and various tackle for hunting and fishing. 
 
12 BE A TRIX. 
 
 On one side is the dining-room, communicating with the 
 kitchen by a door in a corner turret. This turret corresponds 
 with another in the general design of the front, containing a 
 winding-stair up to the two stories above. The dining-room 
 is hung with tapestries dating from the fourteenth century; 
 the style and spelling of the legends on ribbons below each 
 figure prove their antiquity; but as they are couched in the 
 frank language of the Fabliaux,* they cannot be transcribed 
 here. These pieces, which are well preserved in the corners 
 where the light has not faded them, are set in frames of carved 
 oak now as black as ebony. The ceiling is supported on 
 beams carved with foliage, and all different; the flats between 
 are of painted wood, wreaths of flowers on a blue ground. 
 Two old dressers with cupboards face each other; and on the 
 shelves, rubbed with Breton perseverance by Mariotte the 
 cook, may be seen now — as at the time when kings were quite 
 as poor in 1200 as the du Guaisnics in 1830 — four old goblets, 
 an ancient soup-tureen, and two salt-cellars in silver, a quan- 
 tity of metal plates, a number of blue and gray stoneware 
 pitchers with arabesque designs and the du Guaisnic arms, 
 and crowned with hinged metal lids. 
 
 The fireplace has been modernized ; its state shows that 
 since the last century this has been the family sitting-room. 
 It is of carved stone in the Louis XV. style, surmounted by a 
 mirror framed in a beaded and gilt moulding. This anachro- 
 nism, to which the family is indifferent, would grieve a poet. 
 On the shelf, covered with red velvet, there stands in the 
 middle a clock of tortoise-shell, inlaid with brass, flanked by a 
 pair of silver candelabra of strange design. A large table on 
 heavy twisted legs stands in the middle of the room ; the 
 chairs are of turned wood, covered with tapestry. A round- 
 table with a centre leg and claw carved to represent a vine- 
 stock stands in front of the window to the garden, and on it 
 
 * Ancient stories in verse. 
 
BEA TRIX. 13 
 
 stands a quaint lamp. This lamp is formed of a globe of 
 common glass, rather smaller than an ostrich's egg, held in a 
 candlestick by a glass knob at the bottom. From an opening 
 at the top comes a flat wick in a sort of brass nozzle ; the plait 
 of cotton, curled up like a worm in a phial, is fed with nut 
 oil from the glass vessel. The window looking out on the 
 garden, like that on the courtyard — for they are alike — has 
 stone mullions and hexagon panes set in lead ; they are hung 
 with curtains and valances, decorated with heavy tassels of an 
 old-fashioned stuff — red silk shot with yellow, formerly known 
 as brocatelle or damask. 
 
 Each floor of the house — there are but two below the attics 
 — consists of only two rooms. The second floor was of old 
 inhabited by the head of the family ; the third was given up to 
 the children ; guests were lodged in the attic rooms. The 
 servants were housed over the kitchens and stables. The 
 sloping roof, leaded at every angle, has to the front and back 
 alike a noble dormer window with a pointed arch, almost as 
 high as the ridge of the roof, supported on graceful brackets ; 
 but the carving of the stone is worn and eaten by the salt vapor 
 of the atmosphere. Above the windows, divided into four by 
 mullions of carved stone, the aristocratic weathercock still 
 creaks as it veers. 
 
 A detail, precious by its originality and not devoid of 
 merit in the eyes of the archaeologist, must not be overlooked. 
 The turret containing the winding stairs finishes the angle of a 
 broad gabled wall in which there is no window. The stairs 
 go down to a small arched door, opening on a sandy plot 
 dividing the house from the outer wall which forms the back 
 of the stables. The turret is repeated at the corner of the 
 garden-front ; but, instead of being circular, this turret has 
 five angles and a hemispherical dome ; also, it is crowned by 
 a little belfry instead of carrying a conical cap like its sister. 
 This is how those elegant architects lent variety to symmetry. 
 On the level of the second floor these turrets are connected 
 
 O 
 
14 BEATRIX. 
 
 by a stone balcony, supported by brackets like prows with 
 human heads. This outside gallery has a balustrade wrought 
 with marvelous elegance and finish. Then from the top of 
 the gable, below which there is a single small loophole, falls 
 an ornamental stone canopy, like those which are seen over 
 the heads of saints in a cathedral porch. Each turret has a 
 pretty little doorway under a pointed arch, opening on to 
 this balcony. Thus did the architects of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury turn to account the bare, cold wall which is presented to 
 us in modern times by the end-section of a house. 
 
 Cannot you see a lady walking on this balcony in the morn- 
 ing and looking out over Guerande to where the sun sheds 
 a golden light on the sands and is mirrored in the face of the 
 ocean ? Do you not admire this wall with itsfinial and gable, 
 furnished at its corners with these reed-like turrets — one sud- 
 denly rounded off like a swallow's nest, the other displaying 
 its little door and gothic arch decorated with the hand and 
 sword ? 
 
 The other end of the Hotel du Guaisnic joins on to the next 
 house. 
 
 The harmony of effect so carefully aimed at by the builders 
 of that period is preserved in the front to the courtyard by 
 the turret corresponding to that containing the winding stair 
 or vyse, an old word derived from the French vis. It serves 
 as a passage from the dining-room to the kitchen, but it ends 
 at the second floor, and is capped by a little cupola on pillars 
 covering a blackened statue of Saint Calixtus. 
 
 The garden is sumptuous within its ancient inclosure; it is 
 more than half an acre in extent, and the walls are covered 
 with fruit trees ; the square beds for vegetables are marked 
 out by standards, and kept by a manservant named Gasselin, 
 who also takes charge of the horses. At the bottom of the 
 garden is an arbor with a bench under it. In the midst 
 stands a sundial. The paths are graveled. 
 
 The garden-front has no second turret to correspond with 
 
BE A TRIX. 15 
 
 that at the corner of the gable ; to make up for this there is a 
 column with a spiral twist from bottom to top, which of old 
 must have borne the standard of the family, for it ends in a 
 large rusty iron socket in which lank weeds are growing. This 
 ornament, harmonizing with the remains of stonework, shows 
 that the building was designed by a Venetian architect ; this 
 elegant standard is like a sign manual left by Venice, and re- 
 vealing the chivalry and refinement of the thirteenth century. 
 If there could still be any doubt, the character of the details 
 would remove them. The trefoils of the Guaisnic house have 
 four leaves. This variant betrays the Venetian school debased 
 by its trade with the East, since the semi-Mauresque architects, 
 indifferent to Catholic symbolism, gave the trefoil a fourth 
 leaf, while Christian architects remained faithful to the emblem 
 of the Trinity. From this point of view Venetian inventive- 
 ness was heretical. 
 
 If this house moves you to admiration, you will wonder, 
 perhaps, why the present age never repeats these miracles of 
 art. In our day such fine houses are sold and pulled down, 
 and make way for streets. Nobody knows whether the next 
 generation will keep up the ancestral home, where each one 
 abides as in an inn ; whereas formerly men labored, or at 
 least believed that they labored, for an eternal posterity. 
 Hence the beauty of their houses. Faith in themselves 
 worked wonders, as much as faith in God. 
 
 With regard to the arrangement and furniture of the upper 
 stories, thev can only be imagined from this description of 
 the first floor and from the appearance and habits of the 
 family. For the last fifty years the du Guaisnics have never 
 admitted a visitor into any room but these two, which, like 
 the courtyard and the external features of the house, are redo- 
 lent of the grace, the spirit, and originality of the noble 
 province of old Brittany. 
 
 Without this topography and description of the town, with- 
 out this detailed picture of their home, the singular figures of 
 
16 BE A TRIX. 
 
 the family dwelling there might have been less well under- 
 stood. The frame was necessarily placed before the portraits. 
 Everyone must feel that mere things have an effect on people. 
 There are buildings whose influence is visible on the persons 
 who live near them. It is difficult to be irreligious under the 
 shadow of a cathedral like that of Bourges. The soul that is 
 constantly reminded of its destiny by imagery finds it less 
 easy to fall short of it. So thought our ancestors, but the 
 opinion is no longer held by a generation which has neither 
 symbols nor distinctions, while its manners change every ten 
 years. Do you not expect to find the Baron du Guaisnic, 
 sword in hand — or all this picture will be false ? 
 
 In 1836, when this drama opens, in the early days of 
 August, the family consisted still of Monsieur and Madame 
 du Guenic, of Mademoiselle du Guenic, the Baron's elder 
 sister, and of a son aged one-and-twenty, named Gaudebert- 
 Calyste-Louis, in obedience to an old custom in the family. 
 His father's name was Gaudebert-Calyste-Charles. Only the 
 last name was ever changed ; Saint-Gaudebert and Saint- 
 Calixtus were always the patrons of the Guenics. 
 
 The Baron du Guenic had gone forth from Guerande as 
 soon as la Vendee and Brittany had taken up arms, and he 
 had fought with Charette, with Catelineau, la Rochejaquelein, 
 d'Elbee, Bonchamps, and the Prince de Loudon. Before go- 
 ing, he had sold all his possessions to his elder sister, Made- 
 moiselle Zephirine du Guenic, a stroke of prudence unique in 
 Revolutionary annals. After the death of all the heroes of 
 the West, the Baron, preserved by some miracle from ending 
 as they did, would not yield to Napoleon. He fought on till 
 1802, when, having narrowly escaped capture, he came back 
 to Guerande, and from Guerande went to le Croisic, whence 
 he sailed to Ireland — faithful to the traditional hatred of the 
 Bretons for England. 
 
 The good people of Guerande pretended not to know that 
 
BE A TRIX. 17 
 
 the Baron was alive ; during twenty years not a word be- 
 trayed him. Mademoiselle du Guenic collected the rents, 
 and sent the money to her brother through the hands of 
 fishermen. 
 
 In 1813, Monsieur du Guenic came back to Guerande with 
 as little fuss as if he had been spending the summer at Nantes. 
 During his sojourn in Dublin, in spite of his fifty years, the 
 Breton noble had fallen in love with a charming Irish girl, the 
 daughter of one of the oldest and poorest houses of that un- 
 happy country. Miss Fanny O'Brien was at that time one- 
 and-twenty. The Baron du Guenic came to fetch the papers 
 needed for his marriage, went back to be married, and re- 
 turned ten months later, at the beginning of 1814, with his 
 wife, who gave birth to a son on the very day when Louis 
 XVIII. landed at Calais — which accounts for the name of 
 Louis. 
 
 The loyal old man was now seventy-three years old, but the 
 guerilla warfare against the Republic, his sufferings during 
 five sea-voyages in open boats, and his life at Dublin, had all 
 told on him ; he looked more than a hundred. Hence, never 
 had there been a Guenic whose appearance was in more perfect 
 harmony with the antiquity of the house built at a time when 
 a court was held at Guerande. 
 
 Monsieur du Guenic was a tall old man, upright, shriveled, 
 strongly knit and lean. His oval face was puckered by a 
 thousand wrinkles, forming arched fringes above the cheek- 
 bones and eyebrows, giving his face some resemblance to those 
 of the old men painted with such a loving brush by Van Os- 
 tade, Rembrandt, Mieris, and Gerard Dow — heads that need 
 a magnifying glass to show their finish. His countenance was 
 buried, as it were, under these numerous furrows produced by 
 an open-air life, by the habit of scanning the horizon in the 
 sunshine, .at sunrise, and at the fall of day. But the sym- 
 pathetic observer could still discern the imperishable forms 
 of the human face, which always speak to the soul even when 
 2 
 
18 BE A TRIX. 
 
 the eye sees no more than a death's head. The firm modeling 
 of the features, the high brow, the sternness of outline, the 
 severe nose, the form of the bones which wounds alone can 
 alter, expressed disinterested courage, boundless faith, im- 
 plicit obedience, incorruptible fidelity, unchanging affection. 
 In him the granite of Brittany was made man. 
 
 The Baron had no teeth. His lips, once red, but now 
 blue, were supported only by the hardened gums with which 
 he ate the bread his wife took care first to soften by wrapping 
 it in a damp cloth, and they were sunk in his face while pre- 
 serving a proud and threatening smile. His chin aimed at 
 touching his nose ; but the character of that nose — high in 
 the middle — showed his Breton vigor and power of resistance. 
 His complexion, marbled with red that showed through the 
 wrinkles, was that of a full-blooded, high-tempered man, able 
 to endure the fatigues which had often, no doubt, saved him 
 from apoplexy. The head was crowned with hair as white as 
 silver, falling in curls on his shoulders. His face, that seemed 
 partly extinct, still lived by the brightness of a pair of black 
 eyes, sparkling in their dark, sunken sockets, and flashing 
 with the last fires of a generous and loyal soul. The eyebrows 
 and eyelashes were gone. The skin had set, and would not 
 yield ; the difficulty of shaving compelled the old man to 
 grow a fan-shaped beard. 
 
 What a painter would most have admired in this old lion 
 of Brittany, with his broad shoulders and sinewy breast, was 
 the hands, splendid soldier's hands — hands such as du Gues- 
 clin's must have been, broad, firm, and hairy; the hands that 
 had seized the sword never to relinquish it — any more than 
 Jeanne d'Arc's — till the day when the royal standard floated 
 in the Cathedral at Reims ; hands that had often streamed 
 with blood from the thorns of the Bocage — the thickets of la 
 Vendee — that had pulled the oar in the Marais to steal upon 
 the " blues," or on the open sea to help Georges to land ; the 
 hands of a partisan and of a gunner, of a private and of a 
 
BE A TR1X. 19 
 
 captain ; hands that were now white, though the Bourbons of 
 the elder branch were in exile ; but if you looked at them, 
 you could see certain recent marks revealing that the Baron, 
 not so long ago, had joined Madame in la Vendee, since the 
 truth may now be told. These hands were a living commen- 
 tary on the noble motto to which no Guenic had ever been 
 false, "Facf" 
 
 The forehead attracted attention by the golden tone on the 
 temples, in contrast with the tan of that narrow, hard, set 
 brow to which baldness had given height enough to add 
 majesty to the noble ruin. The whole countenance, some- 
 what unintellectual it must be owned — and how should it be 
 otherwise ? — had, like the other Breton faces grouped about 
 it, a touch of savagery, a stolid calm, like the impassibility 
 of Huron Indians, an indescribable stupidity, due perhaps to 
 the complete reaction that follows on excessive fatigue when 
 the animal alone is left evident. Thought was rare there; 
 it was visibly an effort ; its seat was in the heart rather than 
 the head ; and its outcome was action rather than an idea. 
 But on studying this fine old man with sustained attention, 
 the mystery could be detected of this practical antagonism to 
 the spirit of the age. His feelings and beliefs were, so to 
 speak, intuitive, and saved him all thought. He had learned 
 his duties by dint of living. Religion and institutions thought 
 for him. Hence he and his kindred reserved their powers of 
 mind for action, without frittering them on any of the things 
 they thought useless, though others considered them import- 
 ant. He brought his thought out of his mind as he drew 
 his sword from the scabbard, dazzling with rectitude like the 
 hand in its ermine sleeve on his coat-of-arms. As soon as 
 this secret was understood everything was clear. It explained 
 the depth of the resolutions due to clear, definite, loyal ideas, 
 as immaculate as ermine. It accounted for the sale to his 
 sister before the war, though to him it had meant everything 
 — death, confiscation, exile. The beauty of these two old 
 
20 BEATRIX. 
 
 persons' characters — for the sister lived only in and for her 
 brother — cannot be fully appreciated by the selfish habits 
 which lie at the root of the uncertainty and changefulness of 
 our day. An archangel sent down to read their hearts would 
 not have found in them a single thought bearing the stamp 
 of self. In 1814, when the priest of Guerande hinted to 
 Baron du Guenic that he should go to Paris to claim his re- 
 ward, the old sister, though avaricious for the family, ex- 
 claimed — 
 
 " Shame ! Need my brother go begging like a vagrant ?" 
 
 "It would be supposed that I had served the King from 
 interested motives," said the old man. " Beside, it is his 
 business to remember. And, after all, the poor King has 
 enough to do with all who are harassing him. If he were to 
 give France away piecemeal, he would still be asked for 
 more." 
 
 This devoted servant, who cared so loyally for Louis 
 XVIII., received a colonelcy, the cross of Saint-Louis, and 
 a pension of two thousand francs. 
 
 " The King has remembered ! " he exclaimed, on receiving 
 his letters patent. 
 
 No one undeceived him. The business had been carried 
 through by the Due de Feltre from the lists of the Army 
 of la Vendee, in which he found the name of du Guenic 
 with a few other Breton names ending in ic. 
 
 And so, in gratitude to the King, the Baron stood a 
 siege at Guerande in 1815 against the forces of General 
 Travot ; he would not surrender the stronghold ; and when 
 he was compelled to evacuate, he made his escape into the 
 woods with a party of Chouans, who remained under arms 
 till the second return of the Bourbons. Guerande still 
 preserves the memory of this last siege. If the old Breton 
 trainbands had but joined, the war begun by this heroic 
 resistance would have fired the whole of la Vendee. 
 
 It must be confessed that the Baron du Guenic was 
 
BE A TRIX. 21 
 
 wholly illiterate — as illiterate as a peasant; he could read, 
 write, and knew a little of arithmetic; he understood the 
 art of war and heraldry ; but he had not read three books 
 in his life beside his prayer-book. 
 
 His dress, a not unimportant detail, was always the same ; 
 it consisted of heavy shoes, thick woolen stockings, velvet 
 breeches of a greenish hue, a cloth vest, and a coat with a 
 high collar, on which hung the cross of Saint-Louis. 
 
 Beautiful peace rested on this countenance, which, for a 
 year past, frequent slumber, the precursor of death, seemed 
 to be preparing for eternal rest. This constant sleepiness, 
 increasing day by day, did not distress his wife, nor his now 
 blind sister, nor his friends, whose medical knowledge was 
 not great. To them these solemn pauses of a blameless 
 but weary soul were naturally accounted for — the Baron had 
 done his duty. This told all. 
 
 In this house the predominant interest centred in the 
 fate of the deposed elder branch. The future of the exiled 
 Bourbons and the Catholic religion, and the influence of 
 the new politics on Brittany, exclusively absorbed the Baron's 
 family. No other interest mingled with these but the affec- 
 tion they all felt for the son of the house, Calyste, the heir 
 and only hope of the great name of du Guenic. The old 
 Vendeen, the old Chouan, had shown a sort of renewal of 
 his youth a few years since, to give his son the habit of those 
 athletic exercises that befit a gentleman who may be called 
 upon to fight at any moment. As soon as Calyste reached 
 the age of sixteen, his father had gone out with him in the 
 woods and marshes, teaching him by the pleasures of sport 
 the rudiments of war, preaching by example, resisting fatigue, 
 steadfast in the saddle, sure of his aim, whatever the game 
 might be, ground game or birds, reckless in overcoming ob- 
 stacles, inciting his son to face danger as though he had ten 
 children to spare. 
 
 Then, when the Duchesse de Berry came to France to 
 
22 BE A TRIX. 
 
 conquer the kingdom, the father carried off his son to make 
 him act on the family motto. The Baron set out in the night 
 without warning his wife, who might perhaps have displayed 
 her emotion, leading his only child under fire as if it were to 
 a festival, and followed by Gasselin, his only vassal, who rode 
 forth gleefully. The three men of the house were away for 
 six months, without sending any news to the Baroness — who 
 never read the " Quotidienne " without quaking over every 
 line — nor to her old sister-in-law, heroically upright, whose 
 brow never flinched as she listened to the paper. So the 
 three muskets hanging in the hall had seen service re- 
 cently. The Baron, in whose opinion this call to arms was 
 unavailing, had left the field before the -fight at La Penis- 
 siere, otherwise the noble race of Guenic might have become 
 extinct. 
 
 When, one night of dreadful weather, the father, son, and 
 serving-man had reached home after taking leave of Madame, 
 surprising their friends, the Baroness and old Mademoiselle 
 du Guenic — though she, by a gift bestowed on all blind 
 people, had recognized the steps of three men in the little 
 street — the Baron looked around on the circle of his anxious 
 friends gathered around the little table lighted up by the 
 antique lamp, and merely said, in a quavering voice, while 
 Gasselin hung up the muskets and swords in their place, these 
 words of feudal simplicity — 
 
 " Not all the Barons did their duty." 
 
 Then he kissed his wife and sister, sat down in his old arm- 
 chair, and ordered supper for his son, himself, and Gasselin. 
 Gasselin, having screened Calyste with his body, had received 
 a sabre cut on his shoulder; such a small matter, that he was 
 scarcely thanked for it. 
 
 Neither the Baron nor his guests uttered a curse or a word 
 of abuse of the conquerors. This taciturnity is a character- 
 istically Breton trait. In forty years no one had ever heard a 
 contemptuous speech from the Baron as to his adversaries. 
 
BEATRIX. 23 
 
 They could but do their business, as he did his duty. Such 
 stern silence is an indication of immutable determination. 
 
 This last struggle, "the flicker of exhausted powers, had 
 resulted in the weakness under which the Baron was now 
 failing. The second exile of the Bourbons, as miraculously 
 ousted as they had been miraculously restored, plunged him 
 in bitter melancholy. 
 
 At about six in the evening, on the day when the scene 
 opens, the Baron, who, according to old custom, had done 
 his dinner by four o'clock, had gone to sleep while listening 
 to the reading of the " Quotidienne." His head rested 
 against the back of his armchair by the fireside, at the garden 
 end. 
 
 The Baroness, sitting on one of the old chairs in front of 
 the fire, by the side of this gnarled trunk of an ancient tree, 
 was of the type of those adorable women which exist nowhere 
 but in England, Scotland, or Ireland. There only do we 
 find girls kneaded with milk, golden-haired, with curls twined 
 by angels' fingers, for the light of heaven seems to ripple over 
 their tendrils with every air that fans them. Fanny O'Brien 
 was one of those sylphs, strong in tenderness, invincible in 
 misfortune, as sweet as the music of her voice, as pure as the 
 blue of her eyes, elegantly lovely and refined, with the pretti- 
 ness and the exquisite flesh — satin to the touch and a joy to 
 the eye — that neither pencil nor pen can do justice to. Beau- 
 tiful still at forty-two, many a man would have been happy to 
 marry her as he looked at the charms of this glorious, richly 
 toned autumn, full of flower and fruit, and renewed by dews 
 from heaven. The Baroness held the newspaper in a hand 
 soft with dimples, and turned-up finger-tips with squarely cut 
 nails like those of an antique statue. She leaned back in her 
 chair, without awkwardness or affectation, her feet thrust for- 
 ward to get warm ; and she wore a black velvet dress, for the 
 wind had turned cold these last few days. The bodice, fitting 
 
24 BEATRIX. 
 
 tight to the throat, covered shoulders of noble outline and a 
 bosom which had suffered no disfigurement from having 
 nursed an only child. Her hair fell in ringlets on each side 
 of her face, close to her cheeks, in the English fashion ; a 
 simple twist on the top of her head was held by a tortoise- 
 shell comb; and the mass, instead of being of a doubtful hue, 
 glittered in the light like threads of brownish gold. She had 
 made a plait of the loose short hairs that grow low down and 
 are a mark of fine breeding. This tiny tress, lost in the rest 
 of her hair that was combed high on her head, allowed the 
 eye to note with pleasure the flowing line from her neck to 
 her beautiful shoulders. This little detail shows the care she 
 always gave to her toilet. She persisted in charming the old 
 man's eye. What a delightful and touching attention ! 
 
 When you see a woman lavishing in her home-life the care 
 for appearance which other women find for one feeling only, 
 you may be sure that she is a noble mother, as she is a noble 
 wife, the joy and flower of the household ; she understands 
 her duties as a woman, the elegance of her appearance dwells 
 in her soul and her affections, she does good in secret, she 
 knows how to love truly without ulterior motives, she loves her 
 neighbor as she loves God, for himself. And it really seemed 
 as though the Virgin in paradise, under whose protection she 
 lived, had rewarded her chaste girlhood and saintly woman- 
 hood by the side of the noble old man by throwing over her 
 a sort of glory that preserved her from the ravages of time. 
 
 Plato would perhaps have honored the fading of her beauty 
 as so much added grace. Her skin, once so white, had ac- 
 quired those warm and pearly tones that painters delight in. 
 Her forehead, broad and finely moulded, seemed to love the 
 light that played on it with sheeny touches. Her eyes of 
 turquoise-blue gleamed with wonderful softness under light 
 velvety lashes. The drooping lids and pathetic temples sug- 
 gested some unspeakable, silent melancholy ; below the eyes 
 her cheeks were dead white, faintly veined with blue to the 
 
BE A TRIX. 25 
 
 bridge of the nose. The nose, aquiline and thin, had a touch 
 of royal dignity, a reminder of her noble birth. Her lips, 
 pure and delicately cut, were graced by a smile, the natural 
 outcome of inexhaustible good humor. Her teeth were small 
 and white. She had grown a little stout, but her shapely 
 hips and slender waist were not disfigured by it ; the autumn 
 of her beauty displayed still some bright flowers forgotten by 
 spring and the warmer glories of summer. Her finely moulded 
 arms, her smooth lustrous skin had gained a finer texture; 
 the forms had filled out. And her open, serene countenance, 
 with its faint color, the purity of her blue eyes, to which too 
 rude a gaze would have been an offense, expressed unchanging 
 gentleness, the infinite tenderness of the angels. 
 
 At the other side of the fireplace, in another armchair, sat 
 the old sister of eighty, in every particular but dress the 
 exact image of her brother ; she listened to the paper while 
 knitting stockings, for which sight is not needed. Her eyes 
 were darkened by cataract, and she obstinately refused to be 
 operated on, in spite of her sister-in-law's entreaties. She 
 alone knew the secret motive of her determination; she as- 
 cribed it to lack of courage, but in fact she did not choose 
 that twenty-five louis should be spent on her ; there would 
 have been so much less in the house. Nevertheless, she would 
 have liked to see her brother again. These two old people 
 were an admirable foil to the Baroness' beauty. What woman 
 would not have seemed young and handsome between Mon- 
 sieur du Guenic and his sister? 
 
 Mademoiselle Zephirine, deprived of sight, knew nothing 
 of the changes that her eighty years had wrought in her 
 looks. Her pallid, hollow face, to which the fixity of her 
 white and sightless eyes gave a look of death, while three or 
 four projecting teeth added an almost threatening expression ; 
 in which the deep eye-sockets were circled with red lines, and 
 a few manly hairs, long since white, were visible on the chin 
 and lips — this cold, calm face was framed in a little brown 
 
26 BEATRIX. 
 
 cotton hood quilted like a counterpane, edged with a cambric 
 frill, and tied under her chin with ribbons that were never 
 fresh. She wore a short upper skirt of stout cloth over a 
 quilted petticoat, a perfect mattress, within which lurked 
 double louis d'or; and she had pockets sewn to a waistband, 
 which she took off at night and put on in the morning as a 
 garment. Her figure was wrapped in the usual jacket bodice 
 of Breton women, made of cloth like the skirt, and finished 
 with a close pleated frill, of which the washing formed the 
 only subject of difference between her and the Baroness ; she 
 insisted on changing it but once a week. Out of the wadded 
 sleeves of this jacket came a pair of withered but sinewy arms, 
 and two ever-busy hands, somewhat red, which made her arms 
 look as white as poplar wood. These fingers, claw-like from 
 the contraction induced by the habit of knitting, were like a 
 stocking-machine in constant motion ; the wonder would have 
 been to see them at rest. Now and then Mademoiselle du 
 Guenic would take one of the long knitting-needles darned 
 into the bosom of her dress, and push it in under her hood 
 among her white hairs. A stranger would have laughed to 
 see how calmly she stuck it in again, without any fear of 
 pricking herself. She was as upright as a steeple ; her colum- 
 nar rigidity might be regarded as one of those old women's 
 vanities which prove that pride is a passion indispensable 
 to vitality. She had a bright smile ; she, too, had done her 
 duty. 
 
 As soon as Fanny saw that the Baron was asleep, she ceased 
 reading. A sunbeam shot across from window to window, 
 cutting the atmosphere of the old room in two by a band of 
 gold, and casting a glory on the almost blackened furniture. 
 The light caught the carvings of the cornice, fluttered over the 
 cabinets, spread a shining face over the oak table, and gave 
 cheerfulness to this softly sombre room, just as Fanny's voice 
 brought to the old woman's spirit a harmony as luminous and 
 gay as the sunbeam. Ere long the rays of the sun assumed a 
 
Beatrix. 21 
 
 reddish glow, which by insensible degrees sank to the melan- 
 choly hues of dusk. The Baroness fell into serious thought, 
 one of those spells of perfect silence which her old sister-in- 
 law had noticed during a fortnight past, trying to account for 
 them without questioning the Baroness in any way ; but she 
 was studying the causes of this absence of mind as only blind 
 people can, who read as it were a black book with white 
 letters, while every sound rings through their soul as though 
 it were an oracular echo. The old blind woman, to whom 
 the falling darkness now meant nothing, went on knitting, 
 and the silence was so complete that the tick of her steel 
 knitting-needles could be heard. 
 
 "You have dropped the paper — but you are not asleep, 
 sister," said the old woman sagaciously. 
 
 It was now dark ; Mariotte came in to light the lamp and 
 placed it on a square table in front of the fire ; then she 
 fetched her distaff, her hank of flax, and a little stool, and sat 
 down to spin in the window recess on the side toward the 
 courtyard, as she did every evening. Gasselin was still busy 
 in the outbuildings, attending to the Baron's horse and that 
 of Calyste, seeing that all was right in the stables, and giving 
 the two fine hounds their evening meal. The glad barking 
 of these two creatures was the last sound that roused the 
 echoes lurking in the dark walls of the house. 
 
 These two horses and two dogs were the last remains of the 
 splendor of chivalry. An imaginative man, sitting on the 
 outer steps, and abandoning himself to the poetry of the 
 images still living in this dwelling, might have been startled 
 at hearing the dogs and the tramping hoofs of the neighing 
 steeds. 
 
 Gasselin was one of the short, sturdy, square-built Breton 
 race, with black hair and tanned faces, silent, slow, as stub- 
 born as mules, but always going on the road marked out for 
 them. He was now forty-two, and had lived in the house 
 twenty-five years. Mademoiselle had engaged Gasselin as 
 
28 BEATRIX. 
 
 servant when he was fifteen, on hearing of the Baron's mar- 
 riage and probable return. This henchman considered him- 
 self a member of the family. He had played with Calyste, he 
 loved the horses and dogs, and talked to them and petted 
 them as though they were his own. He wore a short jacket 
 of blue linen with little pockets that flapped over his hips, and 
 a vest and trousers of the same material, in all seasons alike, 
 blue stockings and hobnailed shoes. When the weather was 
 very cold or wet he added the goatskin with the hair on worn 
 in his province. 
 
 Mariotte, who was also past forty, was as a woman exactly 
 what Gasselin was as a man. Never did a better pair run in 
 harness ; the same color, the same figure, the same small, 
 sharp black eyes. It was hard to imagine why Mariotte and 
 Gasselin had never married ; but it might have been criminal ; 
 they almost seemed like brother 'and sister. Mariotte had 
 thirty crowns a year in wages and Gasselin a hundred livres; 
 but not for a thousand francs a year would they have quitted 
 the house of the Guenics. They were both under the juris- 
 diction of old mademoiselle, who had been in the habit of 
 managing the house from the time of the war in la Vendee 
 till her brother's return. Hence she had been greatly upset 
 on hearing that her brother was bringing home a mistress of 
 the house, supposing that she would have to lay down the 
 domestic sceptre in favor of the Baronne du Guenic, whose 
 first subject she would then be. 
 
 Mademoiselle Zephirine had been very agreeably surprised 
 on finding that Miss Fanny O'Brien was born to a lofty posi- 
 tion, a girl who detested the minute cares of housekeeping, 
 and who, like all noble souls, would have preferred dry bread 
 from the bakers to any food she had to prepare herself; capa- 
 ble of fulfilling all the duties of motherhood, strong to endure 
 every necessary privation, but without energy for common- 
 place industry. When the Baron, in the name of his shrinking 
 wife, begged his sister to rule the house, the old maid em- 
 
BE A TRIX. 2d 
 
 braced the Baroness as her sister ; she made a daughter of 
 her, she adored her, happy in being allowed to continue her 
 care of governing the house, and keeping it with incredible 
 rigor and most economical habits,, which she relaxed only on 
 great occasions, such as her sister-in-law's confinement and 
 feeding, and everything that could affect Calyste, the wor- 
 shiped son of the house. 
 
 Though the two servants were accustomed to this strict 
 rule, and needed no telling ; though they took more care of 
 their master's interests than of their own, still Mademoiselle 
 Zephirine had an eye on everything. Her attention having 
 nothing to divert it, she was the woman to know without going 
 to look how large the pile of walnuts should be in the loft, 
 and how much corn was left in the stable-bin without plunging 
 her sinewy arm into its depths. She wore a boatswain's 
 whistle attached by a string to her waistband, and called 
 Mariotte by whistling once and Gasselin by whistling twice. 
 Gasselin's chief happiness consisted in cultivating the garden 
 and raising fine fruit and good vegetables. He had so little 
 to do that but for his gardening he would have been bored to 
 death. When he had groomed the horses in the morning he 
 polished the floors and cleaned the two first-floor rooms ; he 
 had little to do for his masters. So in the garden you could 
 not have found a weed or a noxious insect. Sometimes Gas- 
 selin might be seen standing motionless and bareheaded in 
 the sunshine, watching for a field-rat or the dreadful larvae of 
 the cockchafer ; then he would rush in with a child's glee to 
 show the master the creature he had spent a week in catching. 
 On fast days it was his delight to go to le Croisic to buy fish, 
 cheaper there than at Guerande. 
 
 Never was there a family more united, on better terms, 
 or more inseparable, than this pious and noble household. 
 Masters and servants seemed to have been made for each 
 other. In five-and-twenty years there had never been a trouble 
 or a discord. The only sorrows they had known were the 
 
30 &EATMX. 
 
 child's little ailments, and the only anxieties had come of the 
 events of 1814, and again of 1830. If the same things were 
 invariably done at the same hours, if the food varied only 
 with the changes of the seasons, this monotony, like that of 
 nature, with its alternation of cloud, rain, and sunshine, was 
 made endurable by the affection that filled every heart, and 
 was all the more helpful and beneficent because it was the 
 outcome of natural laws. 
 
 When twilight was ended, Gasselin came into the room 
 and respectfully inquired whether he were wanted. 
 
 "After prayers you can go out or go to bed," said the 
 Baron, rousing himself, "unless madame or my sister " 
 
 The two ladies nodded agreement. Gasselin, seeing them 
 all rise to kneel on their chairs, fell on his knees. Mariotte 
 knelt on her stool. Old Mademoiselle du Guenic said prayers 
 aloud. 
 
 As she finished, a knock was heard at the outer gate. Gas- 
 selin went to open it. 
 
 "It is Monsieur le Cure, no doubt; he is almost always 
 the first," remarked Mariotte. 
 
 And, in fact, they all recognized the footstep of the parish 
 priest on the resonant steps to the balcony entrance. The 
 cure bowed respectfully to the three, addressing the Baron 
 and the two ladies with the unctuous civility that a priest has 
 at his command. In reply to an absent-minded " Good-even- 
 ing " from the mistress of the house, he gave her a look of 
 priestly scrutiny. 
 
 " Are you uneasy, madame, or unwell? " he asked. 
 
 " Thank you, no ! " said she. 
 
 Monsieur Grimont, a man of about fifty, of middle height, 
 wrapped in his gown, beneath which a pair of thick shoes 
 with silver buckles were visible, showed above his bands a fat 
 face, on the whole fair, but sallow. His hands were plump. 
 His abbot-like countenance had something of the Dutch 
 burgomaster in its calm complexion and the tones of the flesh, 
 
BE A TRIX. 31 
 
 and something, too, of the Breton peasant in its straight black 
 hair and sparkling black eyes, which nevertheless were under 
 the control of priestly decorum. His cheerfulness, like that 
 of all people whose conscience is calm and pure, consented to 
 jest. There was nothing anxious or forbidding in his look, 
 as in that of those unhappy priests whose maintenance or 
 power is disputed by their parishioners, and who instead of 
 being, as Napoleon so grandly said, the moral leaders of the 
 people and natural justices of the peace, are regarded as ene- 
 mies. The most unbelieving of strangers who should see 
 Monsieur Grimont walking through Guerande would have 
 recognized him as the sovereign of the Catholic town ; but 
 this sovereign abdicated his spiritual rule before the feudal 
 supremacy of the du Guenic family. In this drawing-room 
 he was as a chaplain in the hall of his liege. In church, as 
 he gave the blessing, his hand always turned first toward the 
 chapel of the house, where their hand and sword and their 
 motto were carved on the keystone of the vaulting. 
 
 "J thought that Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel was here," said 
 the cure, seating himself, as he kissed the Baroness' hand. 
 " She is losing her good habits. Is the fashion for dissipation 
 spreading? For I observe that Monsieur le Chevalier is at 
 Ies Touches again this evening." 
 
 " Say nothing of his visits there before Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel," exclaimed the old lady in an undertone. 
 
 "Ah! mademoiselle," Mariotte put in, "how can you 
 keep the whole town from talking?" 
 
 "And what do they say ? " asked the Baroness. 
 
 "All the girls and the old gossips — everybody, in short — 
 is saying that he is in love with Mademoiselle des Touches." 
 
 "A young fellow so handsome as Calyste is only following 
 his calling by making himself loved," said the Baron. 
 
 "Here is Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel," said Mariotte. 
 
 The gravel in the courtyard was, in fact, heard to crunch 
 under this lady's deliberate steps, heralded by a lad bearing a 
 
32 BEATRIX. 
 
 lantern. On seeing this retainer, Mariotte transferred her 
 stool and distaff to the large hall, where she could chat with 
 him by the light of the rosin candle that burned at the cost 
 of the rich and stingy old maid, thus saving her master's. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel was a slight, thin woman, as 
 yellow as the parchment of an archive, and wrinkled like a 
 lake swept by the wind, with gray eyes, large prominent teeth, 
 and hands like a man's ; she was short, certainly crooked, 
 and perhaps even hump-backed ; but no one had ever been 
 curious to study her perfections or imperfections. Dressed in 
 the same style as Mademoiselle du Guenic, she made quite a 
 commotion in a huge mass of petticoats and frills when she 
 tried to find one of the two openings in her gown by which 
 she got at her pockets ; the strangest clinking of keys and 
 money was then heard from beneath these skirts. All the 
 iron paraphernalia of a good housewife was to be found on 
 one side, and on the other her silver snuff-box, her thimble, 
 her knitting, and other jangling objects. 
 
 Instead of the quilted hood worn by Mademoiselle du 
 Guenic, she had a green bonnet, which she no doubt wore 
 when she went to look at her melons; like them, it has faded 
 from green to yellow, and as for its shape, fashion has lately 
 revived it in Paris under the name of Bibi. This bonnet was 
 made under her own eye by her nieces, of green sarsnet pur- 
 chased at Guerande, on a shape she bought new every five. 
 years at Nantes — for she allowed it the life of an administra- 
 tion. Her nieces also made her gowns, cut by an immemorial 
 pattern. The old maid still used the crutch-handled cane 
 which ladies carried at the beginning of the reign of Marie- 
 Antoinette. She was of the first nobility of Brittany. On 
 her shield figured the ermines of the ancient duchy ; the illus- 
 trious Breton house of Pen-Hoel ended in her and her 
 sister. 
 
 This younger sister had married a Kergarouet, who, in 
 spite of the disapprobation of the neighbors, had added the 
 
BE A TRIX. 38 
 
 name of Pen-Hoel to his own, and called himself the Vi- 
 comte de Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel. 
 
 " Heaven has punished him," the old maid would say. 
 " He has only daughters, and the name of Kergarouet-Pen- 
 Hoel will become extinct." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel enjoyed an income of about 
 seven thousand francs from land. For thirty-six years, since 
 she had come of age, she herself had managed her estates ; 
 she rode out to inspect them, and on every point displayed 
 the firmness of will characteristic of deformed persons. Her 
 avarice was the amazement of all for ten leagues around, but 
 viewed with no disapprobation. She kept one woman ser- 
 vant and this lad ; all her expenditure, not inclusive of taxes, 
 did not come to more than a thousand francs a year. Hence 
 she was the object of the most flattering attentions from the 
 Kergarouet-Pen-Hoels, who spent the winter at Nantes and 
 the summer at their country-house on the banks of the Loire 
 just below Indret. It was known that she intended to leave 
 her fortune and her savings to that one of her nieces whom 
 she might prefer. Every three months one of the four 
 Demoiselles de Kergarouet came to spend a few days with 
 her. 
 
 Jacqueline de Pen-Hoel, a great friend of Zephirine de 
 Guenic's, and brought up in the faith and fear of the Breton 
 dignity of the Guenics, had conceived a plan, since Calyste's 
 birth, of securing her wealth to this youth by getting him to 
 marry one of these nieces, to be bestowed on him by the 
 Vicomtesse de Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel. She proposed to re- 
 purchase some of the best land for the Guenics by paying off 
 the farmers' loans. When avarice has an end in view it 
 ceases to be a vice ; it is the instrument of virtue ; its stern 
 privations become a constant sacrifice ; in short, it has great- 
 ness of purpose concealed beneath its meanness. Zephirine 
 was perhaps in Jacqueline's secret. Perhaps, too, the Bar- 
 oness, whose whole intelligence was absorbed in love for her 
 3 
 
34 BE A TRIX. 
 
 son and tender care for his father, may have guessed some- 
 thing when she saw with what pertinacious perseverance 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel would bring with her, day after 
 day, Charlotte de Kergarouet, her favorite niece, now fifteen. 
 The priest, Monsieur Grimont, was undoubtedly in her con- 
 fidence ; he helped the old lady to invest her money well. 
 But if Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had had three hundred 
 thousand francs in gold — the sum at which her savings were 
 commonly estimated ; if she had had ten times more land 
 than she owned, the du Guenics would never have allowed 
 themselves to pay her such attention as might lead the old 
 maid to fancy that they were thinking of her fortune. With 
 an admirable instinct of truly Breton pride, Jacqueline de 
 Pen-Hoel, gladly accepting the supremacy assumed by her old 
 friends Zephirine and the du Guenics, always expressed her- 
 self honored by a visit when the descendant of Irish kings 
 and Zephirine condescended to call on her. She went so far 
 as to conceal with care the little extravagance which she 
 winked at every evening by permitting her boy to burn an 
 oribus at the du Guenics' — the gingerbread-colored candle 
 which is commonly used in various districts in the West. 
 This rich old maid was indeed aristocracy, pride, and dignity 
 personified. 
 
 At the moment when the reader is studying her portrait, an 
 indiscretion on the part of the cure had betrayed the fact 
 that, on the evening when the old Baron, the young cheva- 
 lier, and Gasselin stole away armed with swords and fowling- 
 pieces to join Madame in la Vendee — to Fanny's extreme 
 terror and to the great joy of the Bretons — Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel had placed in the Baron's hands a sum of ten thou- 
 sand francs in gold, an immense sacrifice, supplemented by 
 ten thousand francs more, the fruits of a tithe collected by 
 the cure, which the old partisan was requested to lay at the 
 feet of Henri V.'s mother, in the name of the Pen-Hoels and 
 of the parish of Gu6rande, 
 
BEATRIX. 35 
 
 Meanwhile she treated Calyste with the airs of a woman 
 who believes she is in her rights ; her schemes justified her in 
 keeping an eye on him ; not that she was strait-laced in her 
 ideas as to questions of gallantry — she had all the indulgence 
 of a woman of the old regime ; but she had a horror of Rev- 
 olutionary manners. Calyste, who might have risen in her 
 esteem by intrigues with Breton women, would have fallen 
 immensely if he had taken up what she called the new-fangled 
 ways. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, who would have unearthed 
 a sum of money to pay off a girl he had seduced, would have 
 regarded Calyste as a reckless spendthrift if she had seen him 
 driving a tilbury, or heard him talk of setting out for Paris. 
 And if she had found him reading some impious review or 
 newspaper, it is impossible to imagine what she might have 
 done. To her, new notions meant the rotation of crops, 
 sheer ruin under the guise of improvements and methods, 
 lands ultimately mortgaged as a result of experiments. To 
 her, thrift was the real way to make a fortune ; good manage- 
 ment consisted in filling her outhouses with buckwheat, rye, 
 and hemp ; at waiting for prices to rise at the risk of being 
 known to force the market, and in resolutely hoarding her 
 corn-sacks. As it happened, strangely enough, she had often 
 met with good bargains that confirmed her in her principles. 
 She was thought cunning, but she was not really clever; she 
 had only the methodical habits of a Dutchwoman, the caution 
 of a cat, the pertinacity of a priest ; and this, in a land of 
 routine, was as good as the deepest perspicacity. 
 
 "Shall we see Monsieur du Halga this evening?" asked 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, taking off her knitted worsted 
 mittens after exchanging the usual civilities. 
 
 " Yes, mademoiselle, I saw him airing his dog in the mall," 
 replied the cure. 
 
 "Then our mouche will be lively this evening," said she. 
 "We were but four last night." 
 
 On hearing the word mouche, the priest rose and brought 
 
36 BEATRIX. 
 
 out of a drawer of one of the cabinets a small round basket 
 of fine willow, some ivory counters as yellow as Turkish 
 tobacco, from twenty years' service, and a pack of cards as 
 greasy as those of the custom-house officers of Saint-Nazaire, 
 who only have a new pack once a fortnight. The abbe him- 
 self sorted out the proper number of counters for each player, 
 and put the basket by the lamp in the middle of the table, 
 with childish eagerness and the manner of a man accustomed 
 to fulfill this little task. A loud rap in military style presently 
 echoed through the silent depths of the old house. Made- 
 moiselle de Pen-HoeTs little servant went solemnly to open 
 the gate. Before long the tall, lean figure of the Chevalier 
 du Halga, formerly flag-captain under Admiral de Kergarouet, 
 was seen, carefully dressed to suit the season, a black object 
 in the dusk that still prevailed outside. 
 
 "Come in, chevalier," cried Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. 
 " The altar is prepared ! " said the priest. 
 Du Halga, whose health was poor, wore flannel for the 
 rheumatism, a black silk cap to protect his head against the 
 fog, and a spencer to guard his precious chest from the sud- 
 den blasts of wind that refresh the atmosphere of Guerande. 
 He always went about armed with a rattan to drive off dogs 
 when they tried to make inopportune love to his own, which was 
 a lady. This man, as minutely particular as any fine lady, put 
 out by the smallest obstacles, speaking low to spare the voice 
 remaining to him, had been in his day one of the bravest and 
 most capable officers of the King's navy. He had been hon- 
 ored with the confidence of the Bailli de Suffren and the 
 Comte de Portenduere's friendship. His valor, as captain of 
 Admiral de Kergarouet's flag-ship, was scored in legible char- 
 acters on his face, seamed with scars. No one, on looking at 
 him, could have recognized the voice that had roared down 
 the storm, the eye that had swept the horizon, the indomitable 
 courage of a Breton seaman. He did not smoke, he never 
 swore ; he was as gentle and quiet as a girl, and devoted him- 
 
BE A TRTX. 37 
 
 self to his dog Thisbe and her various little whims with the 
 absorption of an old woman. He gave every one a high 
 idea of his departed gallantry. He never spoke of the startling 
 acts which had amazed the Comte d'Estaing. 
 
 Though he stooped like a pensioner and walked as though 
 he feared to tread on eggs at every step, though he complained 
 of a cool breeze, of a scorching sun, of a damp fog, he dis- 
 played fine white teeth set in red gums, which were reassuring 
 as to his health ; and, indeed, his complaint must have been 
 an expensive one, for it consisted in eating four meals a day 
 of monastic abundance. His frame, like the Baron's, was 
 large-boned and indestructibly strong, covered with parch- 
 ment stretched tightly over the bones, like the coat of an Arab 
 horse that shines in the sun over its sinews. His complexion 
 had preserved the tanned hue it had acquired in his voyages 
 to India, but he had brought back no ideas and no reminis- 
 cences. He had emigrated ; he had lost all his fortune ; then 
 he had recovered the cross of Saint-Louis and a pension of 
 two thousand francs, legitimately earned by his services, and 
 paid out of the fund for naval pensions. The harmless hypo- 
 chondria that led him to invent a thousand imaginary ailments 
 was easily accounted, for by his sufferings during the emigra- 
 tion. He had served in the Russian navy till the day when 
 the Emperor Alexander wanted him to serve against France ; 
 he then retired and went to live at Odessa, near the Due de 
 Richelieu, with whom he came home, and who procured the 
 payment of the pension due to this noble wreck of the old 
 Breton navy. 
 
 At the death of Louis XVIII. he came home to Guerande 
 and was chosen mayor of the town. The cure, the chevalier, 
 and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had been for fifteen years in 
 the habit of spending their evenings at the Hotel du Guenic, 
 whither also came a few persons of good family from the town 
 and immediate neighborhood. It is easy to see that the 
 Guenic family were the leaders of this little Faubourg Saint- 
 
38 BE A TR1X. 
 
 Germain of the district, into which no official was admitted 
 who had been appointed to his post by the new Government. 
 For six years past the cure invariably coughed at the critical 
 words of Domine, salvumfac regent. Politics always stuck at 
 that point in Guerande. 
 
 Mouche (a sort of loo) is a game played with five cards in 
 each hand and a turn-up. The turned-up card decides the 
 trumps. At every fresh deal each player is at liberty to play 
 or to retire. If he throws away his hand, he loses only his 
 deposit ; for as long as no fines have been paid into the pool, 
 each player must contribute to it. Those who play must 
 make a trick, paid for in proportion to the contents of the 
 pool ; if there are five sous in the trick, he pays one sou. 
 The player who fails to pay is looed ; he then owes as much as 
 the pool contains, which increases it for the following deal. 
 The fines due are written down ; they are added to the pools 
 one after another in diminishing order, the heaviest before 
 the lesser sums. Those who decline to play show their cards 
 during the play, but they count for nothing. The players 
 may discard and draw from the pack, as at ecarte, in order of 
 seniority. Each player may change as many cards as he likes, 
 so the eldest and the second hands may use up the pack be- 
 tween them. The turned-up card belongs to the dealer, who 
 is the youngest hand ; he has a right to exchange it for any 
 card in his own hand. One terrible card takes all others, and 
 is known as mistigris; mistigris is the knave of clubs. This 
 game, though so excessively simple, is not devoid of interest. 
 The covetousness natural to man finds scope in it, as well as 
 some diplomatic finessing and play of expression. 
 
 At the Hotel du Guenic each player purchased twenty 
 counters for five sous, by which the stake amounted to five 
 liards each deal, an important sum in the eyes of these gam- 
 blers. With very great luck a player might win fifty sous, 
 more than any one in Guerande spent in a day. And Made- 
 
BEATRIX. 39 
 
 moiselle de Pen-Hoel came to this game — of which the sim- 
 plicity is unsurpassed in the nomenclature of the Academy, 
 unless by that of Beggar my Neighbor — with an eagerness as 
 great as that of a sportsman at a great hunting party. Made- 
 moiselle Zephirine, who was the Baroness' partner, attached 
 no less importance to the game of mouche. To risk a liard* for 
 the chance of winning five, deal after deal, constituted a 
 serious financial speculation to the thrifty old woman, and she 
 threw herself into it with as much moral energy as the greed- 
 iest speculator puts into gambling on the Bourse for the rise 
 and fall of shares. 
 
 By a diplomatic convention, dating from September, 1825, 
 after a certain evening when Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had 
 lost thirty-seven sous, the game was ended as soon as any one 
 expressed a wish to that effect after losing ten sous. Polite- 
 ness would not allow of a player being put to the little dis- 
 comfort of looking on at the game without taking part in it. 
 But every passion has its Jesuitical side. The Chevalier du 
 Halga and the Baron, two old politicians, had found a way of 
 evading the act. When all the players were equally eager to 
 prolong an exciting game, the brave chevalier, one of those 
 bachelors who are prodigal and rich by the expenses they 
 save, always offered to lend Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel or 
 Mademoiselle Zephirine ten counters when either of them had 
 lost her five sous, on the understanding that she should repay 
 them if she should win. An old bachelor might allow him- 
 self such an act of gallantry to the unmarried ladies. The 
 Baron also would offer the old maids ten counters, under pre- 
 tense of not stopping the game. The avaricious old women 
 always accepted, not without some pressing, after the usage 
 and custom of old maids. But to allow themselves such a 
 piece of extravagance the Baron and the chevalier must first 
 have won, otherwise the offer bore the character of an affront. 
 
 This game was in its glory when a young Mademoiselle de 
 * A liard was the fourth of a sou? 
 
40 BEATRIX. 
 
 Kergarouet was on a visit to her aunt — Kergarouet only, for 
 the family had never succeeded in getting itself called Kerga- 
 rouct-Pen-Hoel by anybody here, not even by the servants, 
 who had indeed peremptory orders on this point. The aunt 
 spoke of the mouche parties at the Guenics' as a great treat. The 
 girl was enjoined to make herself agreeable — an easy matter 
 enough when she saw the handsome Calyste, on whom the 
 four young ladies all doted. These damsels, brought up in 
 the midst of modern civilization, thought little of five sous, 
 and paid fine after fine. Then fines would be scored up to a 
 total sometimes of five francs, on a scale ranging from two 
 sous and a half up to ten sous. These were evenings of intense 
 excitement to the old blind woman. The tricks were called 
 mains (or hands) at Guerande. The Baroness would press her 
 foot on her sister-in-law's as many times as she had, as she 
 believed, tricks in her hand. The question of play or no play 
 on occasions when the pool was full led to secret struggles in 
 which covetousness contended with alarms. The players would 
 ask each other, "Are you coming in ? " with feelings of envy 
 of those who had good enough cards to tempt fate and spasms 
 of despair when they were forced to retire. 
 
 If Charlotte de Kergarouet, who was commonly thought 
 foolhardy, was lucky in her daring when her aunt had won 
 nothing, she was treated with coldness when they got home, 
 and had a little lecture : " She was too decided and forward ; 
 a young girl ought not to challenge persons older than her- 
 self; she had an overbold manner of seizing the pool or de- 
 claring to play ; a young person should show more reserve and 
 modesty in her manners ; it was not seemly to laugh at the 
 misfortunes of others," and so forth. 
 
 Then perennial jests, repeated a thousand times a year, but 
 always fresh, turned on the carriage of the basket when the 
 pool overfilled it. They must get oxen to draw it, elephants, 
 horses, asses, dogs. And at the end of twenty years no One 
 noticed the staleness of the joke ; it always provoked the same 
 
BE A TRIX. 41 
 
 smile. It was the same thing with the remarks caused by the 
 annoyance of seeing a pool taken from those who had helped 
 to fill it and got nothing out. The cards were dealt with 
 automatic slowness. They talked in chest tones. And these 
 respectable and high-born personages were so delightfully 
 mean as to suspect each other's play. Mademoiselle de Pen- 
 Hoel almost always accused the cure of cheating when he won 
 a pool. 
 
 " But what is so odd," the cure would say, " is that I never 
 cheat when I am fined." 
 
 No one laid down a card without profound meditation, 
 without keen scrutiny, and more or less astute hints, inge- 
 nious and searching remarks. The deals were interrupted, 
 you may be sure, by gossip as to what was going on in the 
 town, or discussions on politics. Frequently the players 
 would pause for a quarter of an hour, their cards held in a 
 fan against their chest, absorbed in talk. Then, if after such 
 an interruption a counter was short in the pool, everybody 
 was certain that his or her counter was not missing ; and gen- 
 erally it was the chevalier who made up the loss, under general 
 accusations of thinking of nothing but the singing in his ears, 
 his headache, or his fads, and of forgetting to put in. As 
 soon as he had paid up a counter, old Zephirine or the cun- 
 ning hunchback was seized with remorse ; they then fancied 
 that perhaps the fault was theirs ; they thought, they doubted ; 
 but, after all, the chevalier could afford the little loss ! The 
 Baron often quite forgot what he was about when the misfor- 
 tunes of the royal family came under discussion. 
 
 Sometimes the game resulted in a way that was invariably a 
 surprise to the players, who each counted on being the winner. 
 After a certain number of rounds each had won back his 
 counters and went away, the hour being late, without loss or 
 profit, but not without excitement. On these depressing 
 evenings the mouche was abused ; it had not been interesting; 
 the players accused the game, as negroes beat the reflection of 
 
42 BE A TRIX. 
 
 the moon in water when the weather is bad. The evening 
 had been dull ; they had toiled so hard for so little. 
 
 When, on their first visit, the Vicomte de Kergarouet and his 
 wife spoke of whist and boston as games more interesting than 
 mouche, and were encouraged to teach them by the Baroness, 
 who was bored to death by mouche, the company lent them- 
 selves to the innovation, not without strong protest; but it was 
 impossible to make these games understood ; and as soon as 
 the Kergarouets had left, they were spoken of as overwhelm- 
 ingly abstruse, as algebraical puzzles, and incredibly difficult. 
 They all preferred their beloved mouche, their unpretentious 
 little mouche. And mouche triumphed over the modern games, 
 as old things constantly triumph over new in Brittany. 
 
 While the cure dealt the cards, the Baroness was asking the 
 Chevalier du Halga the same questions as she had asked the 
 day before as to his health. The chevalier made it a point 
 of honor to have some new complaint. Though the questions 
 were always the same, the captain had a great advantage in his 
 replies. To-day his false ribs had been troubling him. The 
 remarkable thing was that the worthy man never complained 
 of his wounds. Everything serious he was prepared for, he 
 understood it ; but fantastic ailments — pains in his head, dogs 
 devouring his inside, bells ringing in his ears — and a thousand 
 other crotchets worried him greatly ; he set up as an incurable, 
 with all the more reason that physicians know no remedy for 
 maladies that are non-existent. 
 
 "Yesterday, I fancy you had pains in your legs," said the 
 cure very seriously. 
 
 "They move about," replied du Halga. 
 
 "Legs in your false ribs?" asked Mademoiselle Zephirine. 
 
 "And made no halt on the way ? " said Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel with a smile. 
 
 The chevalier bowed gravely, with a negative shake of the 
 head, not without fun in it, which would have proved to an 
 
BEA TRIX. 43 
 
 observer that in his youth the seaman must have been witty, 
 loved and loving. His fossilized life at Guerande covered 
 perhaps many memories. As he stood planted on his heron's 
 legs in the sun, stupidly watching the sea or his dog sporting 
 on the mall, perhaps he was alive again in the earthly para- 
 dise of a past rich in remembrance. 
 
 " So the old Due de Lenoncourt is dead ? " said the Baron, 
 recalling the passage in the " Quotidienne " at which his wife 
 had stopped. " Well, well, the first gentleman-in-waiting 
 had not long to wait before following his master. I shall soon 
 go too." 
 
 " My dear ! my dear!" said his wife, gently patting his 
 lean and bony hand. 
 
 " Let him talk, sister," said Zephirine. " So long as I am 
 above ground, he will not go under ground. He is younger 
 than I am." 
 
 A cheerful smile brightened the old woman's face when the 
 Baron dropped a reflection of this kind, the players and callers 
 would look at each other anxiously, grieved to find the King 
 of Guerande out of spirits. Those who had come to see him 
 would say as they went away, " Monsieur de Guenic is much 
 depressed; have you noticed how much he sleeps?" And 
 next day all Guerande would be talking of it : " The Baron 
 du Guenic is failing." The words began the conversation in 
 every house in the place. 
 
 " And is Thisbe well?" asked Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel 
 as soon as the deal was over. 
 
 "The poor little beast is like me," said the chevalier. 
 " Her nerves are out of order ; she is always holding up one 
 of her legs as she runs. Like this." 
 
 And in showing how Thisbe ran, by bending his arm as he 
 raised it, the chevalier allowed his neighbor, Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel, to see his cards; she wanted to know whether he 
 had trumps or mistigris. This was the first finesse to which he 
 fell a prey. 
 
44 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "Oh ! " exclaimed the Baroness, " the tip of Monsieur le 
 Cure's nose has turned pale, he must have mistigris ! " 
 
 The joy of having mistigris was so great to the cure, as to 
 all the players, that the poor priest could not disguise it. 
 There is in each human face some spot where every secret 
 emotion of the heart betrays itself; and these good people, 
 accustomed to watch each other, had, after the lapse of years, 
 discovered the weak place in the cure — when he had mistigris 
 the tip of his nose turned white. Then they all took care 
 not to play. 
 
 "You have had visitors to-day?" said the chevalier to 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. 
 
 "Yes; one of my brother-in-law's cousins. He surprised 
 me by telling me of the intended marriage of Madame la 
 Comtesse de Kergarouet, a Demoiselle de Fontaine " 
 
 "A daughter of Grand-Jacques!" exclaimed du Halga, 
 who during his stay in Paris had never left his admiral's 
 side. 
 
 ".The Countess inherits everything; she has married a man 
 who was ambassador. He told me the most extraordinary 
 things about our neighbor, Mademoiselle des Touches ; so 
 extraordinary, that I will not believe them. Calyste could 
 never be so attentive to her ; he has surely enough good sense 
 to perceive such monstrosities." 
 
 " Monstrosities ! " said the Baron, roused by the word. 
 
 The Baroness and the priest looked meaningly at each 
 other. The cards were dealt. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel 
 had mistigris; she did not want to continue the conversation, 
 but was glad to cover her delight under the general amaze- 
 ment caused by this word. 
 
 "It is your turn to lead, Monsieur le Baron," said she, 
 bridling. 
 
 " My dear nephew is not one of those young men who 
 like monstrosities," said Zephirine, poking her knitting-pin 
 through her hair, 
 
BEATRIX. 45 
 
 " Mistigris ! " cried Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, without 
 answering her friend. 
 
 The cure, who appeared fully informed as to all that con- 
 cerned Calyste and Mademoiselle des Touches, did not enter 
 the lists. 
 
 "What does she do that is so extraordinary, this Made- 
 moiselle des Touches?" asked the Baron. 
 
 " She smokes," said Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. 
 
 "It is very wholesome," said the chevalier. 
 
 " Her bacon ? " asked the Baron. 
 
 " Her bacon ! She does not save it," retorted the old maid. 
 
 "Every one played, and every one is looed ; I have the 
 king, queen, and knave of trumps, mistigris, and a king," 
 said the Baroness. "The pool is ours, sister." 
 
 This stroke, won without play, overwhelmed Mademoiselle 
 de Pen-Hoel, who thought no more of Calyste and Made- 
 moiselle des Touches. At nine o'clock no one remained in 
 the room but the Baroness and the cure. The four old 
 people had gone away and to bed. 
 
 The chevalier, as usual, escorted Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel 
 to her own house in the market-place, making remarks on the 
 skill of the last player, on their good or ill luck, or on the 
 ever-new glee with which Mademoiselle Zephirine's pocket 
 engulfed her winnings, for the old blind woman made no 
 attempt now to disguise the expression of her sentiments in 
 her face. Madame du Guenic's absence of mind was their 
 subject to-night. The chevalier had observed the charming 
 Irishwoman's inattention to the game. On the doorstep, 
 when her boy had gone upstairs, the old lady replied in con- 
 fidence to the chevalier's guesses as to the Baroness' strange 
 manner by these words, big with importance — 
 
 " I know the reason ; Calyste is'done for if he is not soon 
 married. He is in love with Mademoiselle des Touches — an 
 actress ! " 
 
 " In that case, send for Charlotte." 
 
46 BE A TRIX. 
 
 " My sister shall hear from me to-morrow," said Mademoi- 
 selle de Pen-Hoel, bidding him good-night. 
 
 From this study of a normal evening, the commotion may 
 be imagined that was produced in the home circles of Guer- 
 ande by the arrival, the stay, the departure, or even the passing 
 through of a stranger. 
 
 When not a sound was audible in the Baron's room or in 
 his sister's, Madame du Guenic turned to the priest, who was 
 pensively playing with the counters. 
 
 " I see that you at last share my uneasiness about Calyste," 
 she said. 
 
 " Did you notice Mademoiselle de Pen-HoeTs prim air this 
 evening?" asked he. 
 
 "Yes," replied the Baroness. 
 
 "She has, I know, the very best intentions toward our dear 
 Calyste ; she loves him as if he were her son ; and his conduct 
 in la Vandee at his father's side, with Madame's praise of his 
 devoted behavior, has added to the affection Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel feels for him. She will endow either of her nieces 
 whom Calyste may marry with all her fortune by deed of 
 gift. 
 
 " You have, I know, in Ireland, a far richer match for your 
 beloved boy ; but it is well to have two strings to one's bow. 
 In the event of your family not choosing to undertake to settle 
 anything on Calyste, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's fortune is 
 not to be despised. You could, no doubt, find your son a 
 wife with seven thousand francs a year, but not the savings 
 of forty years, nor lands managed, tilled, and kept up as 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's are. That wicked woman, Made- 
 moiselle des Touches, has come to spoil everything. We have 
 at last found out something about her." 
 
 " Well ? " asked the mother. 
 
 "Oh, she is a slut, a baggage," exclaimed the cure. "A 
 woman of doubtful habits, always hanging about the theatres 
 in the company of actors and actresses, squandering her for- 
 
BEATRIX. 47 
 
 tune with journalists, painters, musicians — the devil's own, in 
 short ! When she writes, she uses a different name in her 
 books, and is better known by that, it is said, than by that 
 of des Touches. A perfect imp, who has never been inside a 
 church since her first communion, excepting to stare at statues 
 or pictures. She has spent her fortune in decorating les 
 Touches in the most improper manner to make it a sort of 
 Mahomet's paradise, where the houris are not women. There 
 is more good wine drunk there while she is in the place than 
 in all Guerande beside in a year. Last year the Demoiselles 
 Bougniol had for lodgers some men with goats' beards, sus- 
 pected of being ' blues,' who used to go to her house, and 
 who sang songs that made those virtuous girls blush and weep. 
 That is the woman your son at present adores. 
 
 " If that creature were to ask this evening for one of the 
 atrocious books in which atheists nowadays laugh everything 
 to scorn, the young chevalier would come and saddle his 
 horse with his own hands, to ride off at a gallop to fetch it for 
 her from Nantes. I do not know that Calyste would do so 
 much for the church. And then, Bretonne as she is, she is 
 not a Royalist. If it were necessary to march out, gun in 
 hand, for the good cause, should Mademoiselle des Touches — 
 or Camille Maupin, for that, I remember, is her name — want 
 to keep Calyste with her, your son would let his old father set 
 out alone." 
 
 "No," said the Baroness. 
 
 " I should not like to put him to the test, you might feel it 
 too painfully," replied the cure. "All .Guerande is in a 
 commotion over the chevalier's passion for this amphibious 
 creature that is neither man nor woman, who smokes like a 
 trooper, writes like a journalist, and, at this moment, has 
 under her roof the most malignant writer of them all, accord- 
 ing to the postmaster — a trimmer who reads all the papers. 
 It is talked of at Nantes. This morning the Kergarouet 
 cousin, who wants to see Charlotte married to a man who has 
 
48 BE A TRIX. 
 
 sixty thousand francs a year, came to call on Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel, and turned her head with roundabout tales about 
 Mademoiselle des Touches which lasted seven hours. There 
 is a quarter to ten striking by the church clock, and Calyste 
 is not come in ; he is at les Touches — perhaps he will not 
 come back until morning." 
 
 The Baroness listened to the cure, who had unconsciously 
 substituted monologue for dialogue ; he was looking at this 
 lamb of his flock, reading her uneasy thoughts in her face. 
 The Baroness was blushing and trembling. When the Abbe 
 Grimont saw tears in the distressed mother's beautiful eyes, 
 he was deeply touched. 
 
 " I will see Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel to-morrow, be com- 
 forted," said he, in an encouraging tone. "The mischief is, 
 perhaps, not so great as rumor says ; I will find out the truth. 
 Beside, Mademoiselle Jacqueline has confidence in me. 
 Again, we have brought up Calyste, and he will not allow 
 himself to be bewitched by the demon ; he will do nothing 
 to disturb the peace of his family, or the plans we are making 
 for his future life. Do not weep ; all is not lost, madame ; 
 one fault is not vice." 
 
 "You only tell me the details," said the Baroness. "Was 
 not I the first to perceive the change in Calyste? A mother 
 feels keenly the pain of being second in her son's affections, 
 the grief of not being alone in his heart. That phase of a 
 man's life is one of the woes of motherhood ; but though I 
 knew it must come, I did not expect it so soon. And, then, 
 I could have wished that he should have taken into his heart 
 some beautiful and noble creature, not a mere actress, a pos- 
 ture-maker, a woman who frequents theatres, an authoress 
 accustomed to feign feeling, a bad woman who will deceive 
 him and make him wretched. She has had 'affairs?' " 
 
 "With many men," said the Abbe Grimont. "And yet 
 this miscreant was born in Brittany. She is a disgrace to her 
 native soil. On Sunday I will preach a sermon about her." 
 
BE A TR1X. 49 
 
 "By no means!" exclaimed the Baroness. "The marsh- 
 men and peasants are capable of attacking les Touches. 
 Calyste is worthy of his name : he is a true Breton ; and some 
 evil might come of it if he were there, for he would fight for 
 her as if she were the blessed Virgin." 
 
 "It is striking ten; I will bid you good-night," said the 
 abbe, lighting the oribus of his lantern, of which the clear 
 glass-panes and glittering metal-work showed his housekeeper's 
 minute care for all the concerns of the house. " Who could 
 have told me, madame," he went on, "that a young man 
 nursed at your breast, brought up by me in Christian ideas, a 
 fervent Catholic, a boy who lived like a lamb without spot, 
 would plunge into such a foul bog? " 
 
 "But is that quite certain?" said the mother. "And, 
 after all, how could any woman help loving Calyste? " 
 
 "No proof is needed beyond that witch's prolonged stay 
 at les Touches. During twenty-four years, since she came of 
 age, this is the longest visit she has paid here. Happily for 
 us, her apparitions have hitherto been brief." 
 
 "A woman past forty ! " said the Baroness. "I have heard 
 it said in Ireland that such a woman is the most dangerous 
 mistress a young man can have." 
 
 " On that point I am ignorant," replied the cure. " Nay, 
 and I shall die in my ignorance." 
 
 " Alas ! and so shall I," said the Baroness. " I wish now 
 that I had ever been in love, to be able to study, advise, and 
 comfort Calyste." 
 
 The priest did not cross the clean little courtyard alone ; 
 Madame du Guenic went with him as far as the gate, in 
 the hope of hearing Calyste's step in Guerande ; but she 
 heard only the heavy sound of the abbe's deliberate tread, 
 which grew fainter in the distance, and ceased when the 
 shutting of the priest's door echoed through the silent 
 town. 
 
 The poor mother went indoors in despair at learning 
 4 
 
SO BEATRIX. 
 
 that the whole town was informed of what she had believed 
 herself alone in knowing. She sat down, revived the lamp 
 by cutting the wick with a pair of old scissors, and took up 
 the worsted work she was accustomed to do while waiting 
 for Calyste. She flattered herself that she thus induced her 
 son to come home earlier, to spend less time with Mademoi- 
 selle des Touches. But this stratagem of maternal jealousy 
 was in vain. Calyste's visits to les Touches became more 
 and more frequent, and every evening he came in a little later ; 
 at last, the previous night, he had not returned until midnight. 
 
 The Baroness, sunk in meditation, set her stitches with the 
 energy of women who can think while following some manual 
 occupation. Any one who should have seen her bent to catch 
 the light of the lamp, in the midst of the paneling of this 
 room, four centuries old, must have admired the noble pic- 
 ture. Fanny's flesh had a transparency that seemed to show 
 her thoughts legible on her brow. Stung, now, by the curi- 
 osity that comes to pure-minded women, she wondered by 
 what diabolical secrets these daughters of Baal so bewitched 
 a man as to make him forget his mother and family, his coun- 
 try, his self-interest. Then she went so far as to wish she 
 could see the woman, so as to judge her sanely. She calcu- 
 lated the extent of the mischief that the innovating spirit of 
 the age — which the cure described as so dangerous to youthful 
 souls — might do to her only child, till now as guileless and 
 pure as an innocent girl, whose beauty could not be fresher 
 than his. 
 
 Calyste, a noble offshoot of the oldest Breton and the no- 
 blest Irish blood, had been carefully brought up by his 
 mother. Till the moment when the Baroness handed him 
 over to the cure of Guerande, she was sure that not an inde- 
 cent word, nor an evil idea, had ever soiled her son's ear or 
 his understanding. The mother, after rearing him on her 
 own milk, and thus giving him a double infusion of her blood, 
 could present him in virginal innocence to the priest who, 
 
BEA TRIX. 61 
 
 out of reverence for the family, undertook to give him a 
 complete and Christian education. Calyste was educated on 
 the plan of the seminary where the Abbe Grimont had been 
 brought up. His mother taught him English. A mathemat- 
 ical master was discovered, not without difficulty, among the 
 clerks at Saint-Nazaire. Calyste, of course, knew nothing of 
 modern literature, or of the latest advance and progress of 
 science. His education was limited to the geography and 
 emasculated history taught in girls' schools, to the Latin and 
 Greek of the seminary, to the literature of dead languages, 
 and a limited selection of French writers. When, at sixteen, 
 he began what the abbe called his course of philosophy, he 
 was still as innocent as at the moment when Fanny had 
 handed him over to the cure. The church was no less ma- 
 ternal than the mother ; without being bigoted or ridiculous, 
 this well-beloved youth was a fervent Catholic. 
 
 The Baroness longed to plan a happy and obscure life for 
 her handsome and immaculate son. She expected some little 
 fortune from an old aunt, about two or three thousand pounds 
 sterling; this sum, added to- the present fortune of the 
 Guenics, might enable her to find a wife for Calyste who 
 would bring him twelve or fifteen thousand francs a year. 
 Charlotte de Kergarouet, with her aunt's money, some rich 
 Irish girl, or any other heiress — it was a matter of indifference 
 to the Baroness. She knew nothing of love ; like all the 
 people among whom she lived, she regarded marriage as a 
 stepping-stone to fortune. Passion was a thing unknown to 
 these Catholics, old people wholly occupied in saving their 
 souls, in thinking of God, the King, and their own wealth. 
 
 No one, therefore, can be surprised at the gravity of the re- 
 flections that mingled with the wounded feelings in this 
 mother's heart, living, as she did, as much for her boy's 
 interests as by his affection. If the young couple would but 
 listen to reason, by living parsimoniously and economizing, 
 as country folk know how, by the second generation the du 
 
52 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Guenics might repurchase their old estates and reconquer the 
 splendor of wealth. The Baroness hoped to live to be old 
 that she might see the dawn of that life of ease. Mademoiselle 
 du Guenic had understood and adopted this scheme, and now 
 it was threatened by Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 
 Madame du Guenic heard midnight strike with horror, and 
 she endured an hour more of fearful alarms, for the stroke of 
 one rang out, and still Calyste had not come home. 
 
 " Will he stay there? " she wondered. " It would be the 
 first time — poor child." 
 
 At this moment Calyste' s step was heard in the street. 
 The poor mother, in whose heart joy took the place of anxiety, 
 flew from the room to the gate and opened it for her son. 
 
 " My dearest mother," cried Calyste, with a look of vexa- 
 tion, "why sit up for me? I have the latch-key and a tinder- 
 box." 
 
 " You know, my child, that I can never sleep while you are 
 out," said she, kissing him. 
 
 When the Baroness had returned to the room, she looked 
 into her son's face to read in its expression what had hap- 
 pened during the evening ; but this look produced in her, as 
 it always did, a certain emotion which custom does not weaken 
 — which all loving mothers feel as they gaze at their human 
 masterpiece, and which for a moment dims their sight. 
 
 Calyste had black eyes, full of vigor and sunshine, inherited 
 from his father, with the fine fair hair, the aquiline nose and 
 lovely mouth, the turned-up finger-tips, the soft complexion, 
 finish, and fairness of his mother. Though he looked not unlike 
 a girl dressed as a man, he was wonderfully strong. His sinews 
 had the elasticity and tension of steel springs, and the singular 
 effect of his black eyes had a charm of its own. As yet he had 
 no hair on his face ; this late development, it is said, is a promise 
 of long life. The young chevalier, who wore a short jacket 
 of black velvet, like his mother's gown, with silver buttons, 
 had a blue neckerchief, neat gaiters, and trousers of gray 
 
BE A TRIX. 53 
 
 drill. His snow-white forehead bore the traces, as it seemed.. 
 of great fatigue, but, in fact, they were those of a burden of 
 sad thoughts. His mother, having no suspicion of the sorrows 
 that were eating the lad's heart out, ascribed this transient 
 change to happiness. Calyste was, nevertheless, as beautiful 
 as a Greek god, handsome without conceit ; for, in the first 
 place, he was accustomed to see his mother, and he also cared 
 bu: little for beauty, which he knew to be useless. 
 
 ••'And those lovely smooth cheeks," thought she, "where 
 the rich young blood flows in a thousand tiny veins, belong to 
 another woman, who is mistress, too, of that girl-like brow? 
 Passion will stamp them with its agitations, and dim those fine 
 eyes, as liquid now as a child's ! " 
 
 The bitter thought fell heavy on Madame du Guenic's heart 
 and spoilt her pleasure. 
 
 It must seem strange that, in a family where six persons 
 were obliged to live on three thousand francs a year, the son 
 should have a velvet coat and the mother a velvet dress ; but 
 Fanny O'Brien had rich relations and aunts in London who 
 reminded the Breton Baroness of their existence by sending 
 her presents. Some of her sisters, having married well, took 
 an interest in Calyste so far as to think of finding him a rich 
 wife, knowing that he was as handsome and as well born as 
 their exiled favorite Fanny. 
 
 1 ' You stayed later at les Touches than you did yesterday, 
 my darling ? " she said at last, in a broken voice. 
 
 "Yes, mother dear," replied he, without adding any ex- 
 planation. 
 
 The brevity of the answer brought a cloud to his mother's 
 brow : she postponed any explanation till the morrow. When 
 mothers are disturbed by such alarms as the Baroness felt at 
 this moment, they almost tremble before their sons ; they in- 
 stinctively feel the effects of the great emancipation of love ; 
 they understand all that this new feeling will rob them of; 
 but, at the same time, they are, in a sense, glad of their son's 
 
54 BE A TRIX. 
 
 happiness ; there is a fierce struggle in their hearts. Though 
 the result is that the son is grown up, and on a higher level, 
 true mothers do not like their tacit abdication ; they would 
 rather keep their child little and wanting care. That, per- 
 haps, is the secret of mothers' favoritism for weakly, deformed, 
 and helpless children. 
 
 "You are very tired, dear child," said she, swallowing 
 down her tears. "Go to bed." 
 
 A mother who does not know everything her son is doing 
 thinks of him as lost when she loves and is as well loved as 
 Fanny. And perhaps any other mother would have quaked 
 in her place as much as Madame du Guenic. The patience 
 of twenty years might be made useless. Calyste — a human 
 masterpiece of noble, prudent, and religious training — might 
 be ruined ; the happiness so carefully prepared for him might 
 be destroyed for ever by a woman. 
 
 Next day Calyste slept till noon, for his mother would not 
 allow him to be roused ; Mariotte gave the spoilt boy his 
 breakfast in bed. The immutable and almost conventual rule 
 that governed the hours of meals yielded to the young gen- 
 tleman's caprices. Indeed, when at any time it was necessary 
 to obtain Mademoiselle du Guenic's bunch of keys to get out 
 something between meals which would necessitate intermin- 
 able explanations, the only way of doing it was to plead some 
 whim of Calyste's. 
 
 At about one o'clock the Baron, his wife, and mademoiselle 
 were sitting in the dining-room ; they dined at three. The 
 Baroness had taken up the " Quotidienne " and was finishing 
 it to her husband, who was always rather more wakeful before 
 his meals. Just as she had done, Madame du Guenic heard 
 her son's step on the floor above, and laid down the paper, 
 saying — 
 
 " Calyste, I suppose, is dining at les Touches again to-day ; 
 he has just finished dressing." 
 
BE A TRIX. 55 
 
 "He takes his pleasure — that boy!" said the old lady, 
 pulling a silver whistle out of her pocket, and whistling once. 
 
 Mariotte came through the turret, making her appearance 
 at the door, which was hidden by a silk damask curtain, like 
 those at the windows. 
 
 " Yes," said she, " did you please to want anything? " 
 
 "The chevalier is dining at les Touches; we shall not want 
 the fish." 
 
 " Well, we do not know yet," said the Baroness. 
 
 ' ' You seem vexed about it, sister ; I know by the tone of 
 your voice," said the blind woman. 
 
 "Monsieur Grimont has learned some serious facts about 
 Mademoiselle des Touches, who, during the last year, has 
 done so much to change our dear Calvste." 
 
 " In what way? " asked the Baron. 
 
 " Well, he reads all sorts of books." 
 
 " Ah, ha ! " said the Baron ; " then that is why he neglects 
 hunting and riding." 
 
 " She leads a very reprehensible life and calls herself by a 
 man's name," Madame du Guenic went on. 
 
 "A nickname among comrades," said the old man. "I 
 used to be called V Intime, the Comte de Fontaine was Grand- 
 Jacques, the Marquis de Montauran was le Gars. I was a 
 great friend of Ferdinand' 's ; he did not submit, any more 
 than I did. Those were good times ! There was plenty of 
 fighting, and we had some fun here and there, all the same." 
 
 These reminiscences of the war, thus taking the place of 
 paternal anxiety, distressed Fanny for a moment. The cure's 
 revelations and her son's want of confidence had hindered 
 her sleeping. 
 
 "And if Monsieur le Chevalier should be in love with 
 Mademoiselle des Touches, where is the harm?" exclaimed 
 Mariotte. "She is a fine woman and has thirty thousand 
 crowns a year." 
 
 " What are you talking about, Mariotte," cried the old man. 
 
56 BEATRIX. 
 
 " A du Guenic to marry a des Touches ! The des Touches 
 were not even our squires at a time when the du Guesclins 
 regarded an alliance with us as a distinguished honor." 
 
 "A woman who calls herself by a man's name — Camille 
 Maupin ! " added the Baroness. 
 
 "The Maupins are an old family," said the old man. 
 
 "They are Norman, and bear gules, three " he stopped 
 
 short. " But she cannot be a man and a woman at the same 
 time." 
 
 "She calls herself Maupin at the theatre." 
 
 "A des Touches cannot be an actress," said the old man. 
 " If I did not know you, Fanny, I should think you were 
 mad." 
 
 " She writes pieces and books," the Baroness went on. 
 
 "Writes books ! " said the Baron, looking at his wife with 
 as much astonishment as if he had heard of a miracle. " I 
 have heard that Mademoiselle de Scuderi and Madame de 
 Sevigne wrote books, and that was not the best of what they 
 did. But only Louis XIV. and his court could produce such 
 prodigies." 
 
 " You will be dining at les Touches, won't you, monsieur?" 
 said Mariotte to Calyste, who came in. 
 
 "Probably," said the young man. 
 
 Mariotte was not inquisitive, and she was one of the family; 
 she left the room without waiting to hear the question Madame 
 du Guenic was about to put to Calyste. 
 
 "You are going to les Touches again, my Calyste?" said 
 she, with an emphasis on my Calyste. "And les Touches is 
 not a decent and reputable house. The mistress of it leads a 
 wild life; she will corrupt our boy. Camille Maupin makes 
 him read a great many books — she has had a great many ad- 
 ventures ! And you knew it, bad child, and never said any- 
 thing about it to your old folk." 
 
 " The chevalier is discreet," said his father, " an old-world 
 virtue ! " 
 
BE A TRIX. 57 
 
 "Too discreet ! " said the jealous mother, as she saw the 
 color mount to her son's brow. 
 
 "My dear mother," said Calyste, kneeling down before 
 her; "I did not think it necessary to proclaim my defeat. 
 Mademoiselle des Touches, or, if you prefer it, Camille 
 Maupin, rejected my love eighteen months since, when she 
 was here last. She gently made fun of me ; she might be my 
 mother, she said ; a woman of forty who loved a minor com- 
 mitted a sort of incest, and she was incapable of such de- 
 pravity. In short, she laughed at me in a hundred ways, and 
 quite overpowered me, for she has the wit of an angel. Then, 
 when she saw me crying bitter tears, she comforted me by 
 offering me her friendship in the noblest way. She has even 
 more heart than brains ; she is as generous as you are. I am 
 like a child to her now. Then, when she came here again, I 
 heard that she loved another man and I resigned myself. 
 Do not repeat all the calumnies you hear about her ; Camille 
 is an artist ; she has genius, and leads one of those exceptional 
 lives which cannot be judged by provincial or ordinary stand- 
 ards." 
 
 " My child ! " said the pious Fanny, " nothing can excuse 
 a woman for not living according to the ordinances of the 
 church. She fails in her duties toward God and toward so- 
 ciety by failing in the gentle religion of her sex. A woman 
 commits a sin even by going to a theatre ; but when she writes 
 impieties to be repeated by actors, and flies about the world, 
 sometimes with an enemy of the Pope's, sometimes with a 
 ■» musician Oil, Calyste ! you will find it hard to con- 
 vince me that such things are acts of faith, hope, or charity. 
 Her fortune was given her by God to do good. What use 
 does she make of it ? " 
 
 Calyste suddenly stood up ; he looked at his mother and 
 said — 
 
 " Mother, Camille is my friend. I cannot hear her spoken 
 of in this way, for I would give my life for her." 
 
58 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "Your life?" said the Baroness, gazing at her son in ter- 
 ror. " Your life is our life — the life of us all ! " 
 
 " My handsome nephew has made use of many words that 
 I do not understand," said the old blind woman, turning to 
 Calyste. 
 
 "Where has he learned them?" added his mother. "At 
 les Touches." 
 
 " Why, my dear mother, she found me as ignorant as a 
 carp." 
 
 "You knew all that was essential in knowing the duties 
 enjoined on us by religion," replied the Baroness. "Ah! 
 that woman will undermine your noble and holy beliefs." 
 
 The old aunt rose and solemnly extended her hand toward 
 her brother, who was sleeping. 
 
 "Calyste," said she, in a voice that came from her heart, 
 " your father never opened a book,, he speaks Breton, he 
 fought in the midst of perils for the King and for God. 
 Educated men had done the mischief, and gentlemen of 
 learning had deserted their country. Learn if you will." 
 
 She sat down again and began knitting with the vehemence 
 that came of her mental agitation. Calyste was struck by 
 this Phocion-like utterance. 
 
 " In short, my dearest, I have a presentiment of some evil 
 hanging over you in that house," said his mother, in a broken 
 voice, as her tears fell. 
 
 "Who is making Fanny cry?" exclaimed the old man, 
 suddenly wakened by the sound of his wife's voice. He 
 looked round at her, his son, and his sister. 
 
 "What is the matter?" 
 
 " Nothing, my dear," replied the Baroness. 
 
 " Mamma," said Calyste, in his mother's ear, "it is im- 
 possible that I should explain matters now ; but we will talk 
 it over this evening. When you know all, you will bless 
 Mademoiselle des Touches." 
 
 "Mothers have no love of cursing," replied the Baroness, 
 
BE A TRIX. 69 
 
 " and I should never curse any woman who truly loved my 
 Calyste." 
 
 The young man said good-by to his father, and left the 
 house. The Baron and his wife rose to watch him as he 
 crossed the courtyard, opened the gate, and disappeared. 
 The Baroness did not take up the paper again ; she was 
 agitated. In a life so peaceful, so monotonous, this little dis- 
 cussion was as serious as a quarrel in any other family ; and 
 the mother's anxiety, though soothed, was not dispelled. 
 Whither would this friendship, which might demand and im- 
 peril her boy's life, ultimately lead him ? How could she, 
 the Baroness, have reason to bless Mademoiselle des Touches ? 
 These two questions were as all-important to her simple soul 
 as the maddest revolution can be to a diplomatist. Camille 
 Maupin was a revolution in the quiet and simple home. 
 
 "I am very much afraid that this woman will spoil him for 
 us," said she, taking up the newspaper again. 
 
 "My dear Fanny," said the old Baron, with knowing 
 sprightliness, "you are too completely an angel to understand 
 such things. Mademoiselle des Touches is, they say, as black 
 as a crow, as strong as a Turk, and she is forty — our dear boy 
 was sure to be attracted by her. He will tell a few very honor- 
 able fibs to conceal his happiness. Let him enjoy the illusions 
 of his first love." 
 
 "If it were anv other woman " 
 
 " But, dearest Fanny, if the woman were a saint, she would 
 not make your son welcome." 
 
 The Baroness went back to the paper. 
 
 "I will go to see her," said the old man, "and tell you 
 what I think of her." 
 
 The speech has no point but in retrospect. After hearing 
 the history of Camille Maupin, you may imagine the Baron 
 face to face with this famous woman. 
 
 The town of Guerande, which for two months past had seen 
 Calyste — its flower and its pride — going every day, morning 
 
60 BE A TRIX. 
 
 or evening — sometimes both morning and evening — to les 
 Touches, supposed that Mademoiselle des Touches was pas- 
 sionately in love with the handsome lad, and did her utmost 
 to bewitch him. More than one girl and one young woman 
 wondered what was the witchcraft of an old woman that she 
 had such absolute empire over the angelic youth. And so, as 
 Calyste crossed the High street to go out by the gate to le 
 Croisic, more than one eye looked anxiously after him. 
 
 It now becomes necessary to account for the reports that 
 were current concerning the personage whom Calyste was going 
 to see. These rumors, swelled by Breton gossip and enven- 
 omed by the ignorance of the public, had reached even the 
 cure. The tax-receiver, the justice of the peace, the head 
 clerk of the customs at Saint-Nazaire, and other literate per- 
 sons in the district, had not reassured the abbe by telling him 
 of the eccentric life led by the woman and artist hidden under 
 the name of Camille Maupin. 
 
 She had not yet come to eating little children, to killing 
 her slaves, like Cleopatra, to throwing men into the river, as 
 the heroine of the "Tour de Nesle" is falsely accused of 
 doing ; still, to the Abbe Grimont, this monstrous creature, 
 at once a siren and an atheist, was a most immoral combina- 
 tion of woman and philosopher, and fell short of every social 
 law laid down to control or utilize the weaknesses of the fair 
 sex. Just as Clara Gazul is the feminine pseudonym of a 
 clever man and George Sand that of a woman of genius, so 
 Camille Maupin was the mask behind which a charming girl 
 long hid herself — a Bretonne named Felicite des Touches, she 
 who was now giving the Baronne du Guenic and the worthy 
 Cure of Guerande so much cause for anxiety. This family 
 has no connection with that of the des Touches of Touraine, 
 to which the Regent's ambassador belongs, a man more famous 
 now for his literary talents than for his diplomacy. 
 
 Camille Maupin, one of the few famous women of the nine- 
 
BEATRIX. 61 
 
 teenth century, was long supposed to be really a man, so 
 manly was her first appearance as an author. Everybody is 
 now familiar with the two volumes of dramas, impossible to 
 put on the stage, written in the manner of Shakespeare or of 
 Lopez de Vega, and brought out in 1822, which caused a sort 
 of literary revolution when the great question of Romanticism 
 versus Classicism was a burning one in the papers, at clubs, 
 and at the Academic Since then Camille Maupin has written 
 several plays and a novel which have not belied the success of 
 her first efforts, now rather too completely forgotten, except 
 by literati. 
 
 An explanation of the chain of circumstances by which a 
 girl assumed a masculine incarnation — by which Felicite 
 des Touches made herself a man and a writer — of how, 
 more fortunate than Madame de Stael, she remained free, 
 and so was more readily excused for her celebrity — will, no 
 doubt, satisfy much curiosity, and justify the existence of one 
 of those monstrosities which stand up among mankind like 
 monuments, their fame being favored by their rarity — for in 
 twenty centuries scarcely twenty great women are to be 
 counted. Hence, though she here plays but a secondary part, 
 as she had great influence over Calyste, and is a figure in the 
 literary history of the time, no one will be sorry if we pause 
 to study her for a rather longer time than modern fiction 
 usually allows. 
 
 In 1793 Mademoiselle Felicite des Touches found herself 
 an orphan. Thus her estates escaped the confiscation which 
 no doubt would have fallen on her father or brother. Her 
 father died on the 10th of August, killed on the palace steps 
 among the defenders of the King, on whom he was in waiting 
 as major of the bodyguard. Her brother, a young member 
 of the corps, was massacred at les Carmes. Mademoiselle 
 des Touches was but two years old when her mother died of 
 grief a few days after this second blow. On her death-bed 
 Madame des Touches placed her little girl in the care of her 
 
62 BEATRIX. 
 
 sister, a nun at Chelles. This nun, Madame de Faucombe, 
 very prudently took the child to Faucombe, an estate of some 
 extent near Nantes, belonging to Madame des Touches, where 
 she settled with three sisters from the convent. During the 
 last days of the Terror, the mob of Nantes demolished the 
 chateau and seized the sisters and Mademoiselle des Touches, 
 who were thrown into prison under a false charge of having 
 harbored emissaries from Pitt and from Coburg. The ninth 
 Thermidor saved them. Felicite's aunt died of the fright ; 
 two of the sisters fled from France ; the third handed the 
 little girl over to her nearest relation, Monsieur de Faucombe, 
 her mother's uncle, who lived at Nantes, and then joined her 
 companions in exile. 
 
 Monsieur de Faucombe, a man of sixty, had married a 
 young wife, to whom he left the management of his affairs. 
 He busied himself only with archaeology, a passion, or, to be 
 accurate, a mania, which helps old men to think themselves 
 alive. His ward's education was left entirely to chance. 
 Felicite, little cared for by a young woman who threw herself 
 into all the pleasures of the Emperor's reign, brought herself 
 up like a boy. She sat with Monsieur de Faucombe in his 
 library, and read whatever he might happen to be reading. 
 Thus she knew life well in theory, and preserved no inno- 
 cence of mind though virginal at heart. Her intelligence 
 wandered through all the impurities of science while her heart 
 remained pure. Her knowledge was something amazing, fed 
 by her passion for reading and well served by an excellent 
 memory. Thus, at eighteen, she was as learned as the authors 
 of to-day ought to be before trying to write. This prodigious 
 amount of study controlled her passions far better than a 
 convent life, which only inflames a young girl's imagination ; 
 this brain, crammed with undigested and unclassified informa- 
 tion, governed the heart of a child. Such a depravity of 
 mind, absolutely devoid of any influence on her chastity of 
 person, would have amazed a philosopher or an observer, if 
 
BE A TRIX. 63 
 
 any one at Nantes could have suspected the fine qualities of 
 Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 
 The result was in inverse proportion to the cause : Felicite 
 had no predisposition toward evil ; she conceived of every- 
 thing by her intelligence, but held aloof from the facts. She 
 delighted old Faucombe and helped him in his works, writ- 
 ing three books for the wort4iy gentleman, who believed them 
 to be his own, for his spiritual paternity also was blind. Such 
 severe work, out of harmony with the development of her 
 girlhood, had its natural effect : Felicite fell ill, there was a 
 fever in her blood, her lungs were threatened with inflamma- 
 tion. The doctors ordered her horse-exercise and social 
 amusements. Mademoiselle des Touches became a splendid 
 horsewoman, and had recovered in a few months. 
 
 At eighteen she made her appearance in the world, where 
 she produced such a sensation that at Nantes she was never 
 called anything but the beautiful Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 But the adoration of which she was the object left her insen- 
 sible, and she had come to this by the influence of one of the 
 sentiments which are imperishable in a woman, however su- 
 perior she may be. Snubbed by her aunt and cousins, who 
 laughed at her studies and made fun of her distant manners, 
 assuming that she was incapable of being attractive, Felicite 
 aimed at being light and coquettish — in short, a woman. She 
 had expected to find some interchange of ideas, some fascina- 
 tion on a level with her own lofty intelligence ; she was dis- 
 gusted by the commonplaces of ordinary conversation and the 
 nonsense of flirtation ; above all, she was provoked by the 
 aristocratic airs of the military, to whom at that time every- 
 thing gave way. 
 
 She had, as a matter of course, neglected the drawing-room 
 arts. When she found herself less considered than the dolls 
 who could play the piano and make themselves agreeable by 
 singing ballads, she aspired to become a musician. She re- 
 tired into deep solitude and set to work to study unremittingly 
 
64 BEATRIX. 
 
 under the guidance of the best master in the town. She was 
 rich, she sent for Steibelt to give her finishing lessons, to the 
 great astonishment of her neighbors. This princely outlay is 
 still remembered at Nantes. The master's stay there cost her 
 twelve thousand francs. She became at last a consummate 
 musician. Later, in Paris, she took lessons in harmony and 
 counterpoint, and composed two operas, which were im- 
 mensely successful, though the public never knew her secret. 
 These operas were ostensibly the work of Conti, one of the 
 most eminent artists of our day ; but this circumstance was 
 connected with the history of her heart and will be explained 
 presently. The mediocrity of provincial society wearied her 
 so excessively, her imagination was full of such grand ideas, that 
 she withdrew from all the drawing-rooms after reappearing for 
 a time to eclipse all other women by the splendor of her 
 beauty, to enjoy her triumph over the musical performers, and 
 win the devotion of all clever people ; still, after proving her 
 power to her two cousins and driving two lovers to despera- 
 tion, she came back to her books, to her piano, to the works 
 of Beethoven, and to old Faucombe. 
 
 In 1812 she was one-and-twenty ; the archaeologist ac- 
 counted to her for his management of her property ; and from 
 that time forth she herself controlled her fortune, consisting 
 of fifteen thousand francs a year from les Touches, her father's 
 estate ; twelve thousand francs, the income at that time from 
 the lands of Faucombe, which increased by a third when the 
 leases were renewed ; beside a capital sum of three hundred 
 thousand francs saved by her guardian. Felicite derived 
 nothing from her country training but an apprehension of 
 money matters, and that instinct for wise administration 
 which perhaps restores, in the provinces, the balance against 
 the constant tendency of capital to centre in Paris. She with- 
 drew her three hundred thousand francs from the bank where 
 the archaeologist had deposited them, and invested in consols 
 just at the time of the disastrous retreat from Moscow. Thus 
 
BEATRIX. 65 
 
 she had thirty thousand francs a year more. When all her 
 expenses were paid she had a surplus of fifty thousand francs 
 a year to be invested. 
 
 A girl of one-and-twenty, with such a power of will, was a 
 match for a man of thirty. Her intellect had gained immense 
 breadth and habits of criticism, which enabled her to judge 
 sanely of men and things, art and politics. Thenceforward 
 she purposed leaving Nantes; but old Monsieur Faucombe fell 
 ill of the malady that carried him off. She was like a wife to 
 the old man ; she nursed him for eighteen months with the 
 devotion of a guardian angel, and closed his eyes at the very 
 time when Napoleon was fighting with Europe over the dead 
 body of France. She therefore postponed her departure for 
 Paris till the end of the war. 
 
 As a Royalist she flew to hail the return of the Bourbons to 
 Paris. She was welcomed there by the Grandlieus, with 
 whom she was distantly connected ; but then befell the catas- 
 trophe of the 20th of March, and everything remained in 
 suspense. She had the opportunity of seeing on the spot this 
 last resurrection of the Empire, of admiring the "Grand 
 Army" which came out on the Champ de Mars, as in an 
 arena, to salute its Caesar before dying at Waterloo. Felicite's 
 great and lofty soul was captivated by the magical spectacle. 
 Political agitations and the fairy transformations of the theat- 
 rical drama, lasting for three months, and known as the Hun- 
 dred Days, absorbed her wholly, and preserved her from any 
 passion, in the midst of an upheaval that broke up the Royalist 
 circle in which she had first come out. The Grandlieus fol- 
 lowed the Bourbons to Ghent, leaving their house at Made- 
 moiselle des Touches' service. 
 
 Felicite, who could not accept a dependent position, bought 
 for the sum of a hundred and thirty thousand francs one of 
 the handsomest mansions in the Rue du Mont-Blanc, where 
 she settled on the return of the Bourbons in 1815 ; the garden 
 alone is worth two million francs now. Being accustomed to 
 5 
 
66 BEATRIX. 
 
 act on her own responsibility, Felicite soon took the habit of 
 independent action, which seems the privilege of men only. 
 In 1816 she was five-and-twenty. She knew nothing of mar- 
 riage ; she conceived of it only in her brain, judged of it by 
 its causes instead of observing its effect, and saw only its dis- 
 advantages. Her superior mind rebelled against the abdica- 
 tion which begins the life of a married woman ; she keenly felt 
 the preciousness of independence and had nothing but disgust 
 for the cares of motherhood. These details are necessary to 
 justify the anomalies that characterize Camille Maupin. She 
 never knew father or mother, she was her own mistress from 
 her childhood, her guardian was an old antiquary, chance 
 placed her in the domain of science and imagination, in the 
 literary world, instead of keeping her within the circle drawn 
 by the futile education given to women — a mother's lectures 
 on dress, on the hypocritical proprieties and man-hunting 
 graces of her sex. And so, long before she became famous, 
 it could be seen at a glance that she had never played the doll. 
 
 Toward the end of the year 181 7 Felicite des Touches per- 
 ceived that her face showed symptoms not indeed of fading, 
 but of the beginning of fatigue. She understood that her 
 beauty would suffer from the fact of her persistent celibacy ; 
 she was bent on remaining beautiful, for at that time she 
 prized her beauty. Knowledge warned her of the doom set 
 by Nature on her creations, which deteriorate as much by 
 misapplication as by ignorance of her laws. The vision of her 
 aunt's emaciated face rose before her and made her shudder. 
 Thus placed between marriage and passion, she determined to 
 remain free ; but she no longer scorned the homage that she 
 met with on all hands. 
 
 At the date when this story begins she was almost the same 
 as she had been in 181 7. Eighteen years had passed over her 
 and left her still untouched ; at the age of forty she might have 
 called herself twenty-five. Thus a picture of her in 1836 will 
 represent her as she was in 181 7. Women who know under 
 
BE A TRIX. 67 
 
 what conditions of temperament and beauty a woman must 
 live to resist the attacks of time will understand how and why 
 Felicite des Touches enjoyed such high privileges, as they 
 study a portrait for which the most glowing colors of the 
 palette and the richest setting must be brought into play. 
 
 Brittany offers a singular problem in the predominance of 
 brown hair, brown eyes, and a dark complexion, in a country 
 so close to England, where the atmospheric conditions are so 
 nearly similar. Does the question turn on the wider one of 
 race or on unobserved physical influences ? Scientific men 
 will some day perhaps inquire into the cause of this peculi- 
 arity, which does not exist in the neighboring province of 
 Normandy. Pending its solution, the strange fact Jies before 
 us that fair women are rare among the women of Brittany, 
 who almost always have the brilliant eyes of Southerners; 
 but, instead of showing the tall figures and serpentine grace 
 of Italy or Spain, they are usually small, short, with neat, set 
 figures, excepting some women of the upper classes which 
 have been crossed bv aristocratic alliances. 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches, a thoroughbred Bretonne, is of 
 medium height, about five feet, though she looks taller. This 
 illusion is produced by the character of her countenance, 
 which gives her dignity. She has the complexion which is 
 characteristic of Italian beauty, pale olive by day, and white 
 under artificial light ; you might think it was animated ivory. 
 Light glides over such a skin as over a polished surface, it 
 glistens on it ; only strong emotion can bring a faint flush to 
 the middle of each cheek, and it disappears at once. This 
 peculiarity gives her face the placidity of a savage. The 
 face, long rather than oval, resembles that of some beautiful 
 Isis in the bas-reliefs of Egina ; it has the purity of a Sphinx's 
 head, polished by desert fires, lovingly touched by the flame 
 of the Egyptian sun. Her hair, black and thick, falls in 
 plaited loops over her neck, like the head-dress with ridged 
 double locks of the statues at Memphis, accentuating very 
 
68 BE A TRIX. 
 
 finely the general severity of her features. She has a full, 
 broad forehead, bossy at the temples, bright with its smooth 
 surface on which the light lingers, and moulded like that of a 
 hunting Diana ; a powerful, willful brow, calm and still. 
 The eyebrows, strongly arched, bend over eyes in which the 
 fire sparkles now and again like that of fixed stars. The white 
 of the eye is not bluish, nor veined with red, nor is it pure 
 white ; its texture looks horny, still it is warm in tone ; the 
 black centre has an orange ring round the edge ; it is bronze 
 set in gold — but living gold, animated bronze. The pupil is 
 deep. It is not, as in some eyes, lined, as it were, like a 
 mirror, reflecting the light, and making them look like the 
 eyes of tigers and cats ; it has not that terrible fixity of gaze 
 that makes sensitive persons shiver ; but this depth has infini- 
 tude, just as the brightness of mirror-eyes has finality. The 
 gaze of the observer can sink and lose itself in that soul, 
 which can shrink and retire as rapidly as it can flash forth 
 from those velvet eyes. In a moment of passion Camille 
 Maupin's eye is superb; the gold of her glance lights up the 
 yellowish white, and the whole flashes fire ; but when at rest 
 it is dull, the torpor of deep thought often gives it a look of 
 stupidity ; and when the light of the soul is absent, the lines 
 of the face also look sad. The lashes are short, but as black 
 and thick-set as the hair of an ermine's tail. The lids are 
 tawny, and netted with fine red veins, giving them at once 
 strength and elegance, two qualities hard to combine in 
 women. All round the eyes there is not the faintest wrinkle 
 or stain. Here again you will think of Egyptian granite 
 mellowed by time. Only the cheek-bones, though softly 
 rounded, are more prominent than in most women, and con- 
 firm the impression of strength stamped on the face. 
 
 Her nose, narrow and straight, has high-cut nostrils, with 
 enough of passionate dilation to show the rosy gleam of their 
 delicate lining ; this nose is well set on to the brow, to which 
 it is joined by an exquisite curve, and it is perfectly white to 
 
BEATRIX. 69 
 
 the very tip — a tip endowed with a sort of proper motion that 
 works wonders whenever Camille is angry, indignant, or re- 
 bellious. There especially — as Talma noted — the rage of 
 irony of lofty souls finds expression. Rigid nostrils betray a 
 certain shallowness. The nose of a miser never quivers, it is 
 tightly set like his lips ; everything in his face is as close shut 
 as himself. 
 
 Camille's mouth, arched at the corners, is brightly red ; the 
 lips, full of blood, supply that living, impulsive carmine that 
 gives them such infinite charm and may reassure the lover 
 who might be alarmed by the grave majesty of the face. The 
 upper lip is thin, the furrow beneath the nose dents it low 
 down, like a bow, which gives peculiar emphasis to her scorn. 
 Camille has no difficulty in expressing anger. This pretty lip 
 meets the broader red edge of a lower lip that is exquisitely 
 kind, full of love, and carved, it might be, by Phidias, as the 
 edge of an opened pomegranate, which it resembles in color. 
 The chin is round and firm, a little heavy, but expressing de- 
 termination, and finishing well this royal, if not goddess-like, 
 profile. It is necessary to add that below the nose the lip is 
 faintly shaded by a down that is wholly charming ; nature 
 would have blundered if she had not there placed that tender 
 smoky tinge. 
 
 The ear is most delicately formed, a sign of other concealed 
 daintinesses. The bust broad, the bosom small but not flat, 
 the hips slender but graceful. The slope of the back is mag- 
 nificent, more suggestive of the Bacchus than of the Venus 
 Callipyge. Herein we see a detail that distinguishes almost 
 all famous women from the rest of their sex ; they have in this 
 a vague resemblance to men; they have neither the pliancy 
 nor the freedom of line that we see in women destined by 
 nature to be mothers ; their gait is unbroken by a gentle sway. 
 This observation is, indeed, two-edged ; it has its counterpart 
 in men whose hips have a resemblance to those of women — 
 men who are cunning, sly, false, and cowardly. 
 
70 BEATRIX, 
 
 Camille's head, instead of having a hollow at the nape of 
 the neck, is set on her shoulders with a swelling outline with- 
 out an inward curve, an unmistakable sign of power ; and 
 this neck, in some attitudes, has folds of athletic firmness. 
 The muscles attaching the upper arm, splendidly moulded, are 
 those of a colossal woman. The arm is powerfully modeled, 
 ending in wrists of English slenderness and pretty delicate 
 hands, plump and full of dimples, finished off with pink nails 
 cut to an almond shape, and well set in the flesh. Her hands 
 are of a whiteness which proclaims that all the body, full, 
 firm, and solid, is of a quite different tone from her face. 
 The cold, steadfast carriage of her head is contradicted by the 
 ready mobility of the lips, their varying expression, and the 
 sensitive nostrils of an artist. 
 
 Still, in spite of this exciting promise, not wholly visible to 
 the profane, there is something provoking in the calmness of 
 this countenance. The face is melancholy and serious rather 
 than gracious, stamped with the sadness of constant medita- 
 tion. Mademoiselle des Touches listens more than she speaks. 
 She is alarming by her silence and that look of deep scrutiny. 
 Nobody among really well-informed persons can ever have 
 seen her without thinking of the real Cleopatra, the little 
 brown woman who so nearly changed the face of the earth ; 
 but in Camille the animal is so perfect, so homogeneous, so 
 truly leonine, that a man with anything of the Turk in him 
 regrets the embodiment of so great a mind in such a frame, 
 and wishes it were altogether woman. Every one fears lest he 
 may find there the strange corruption of a diabolical soul. 
 Do not cold analysis and positive ideas throw their light upon 
 the passions in this unwedded soul? In her does not judg- 
 ment take the place of feeling? Or, a still more terrible 
 phenomenon, does she not feel and judge both together? 
 Her brain being omnipotent, can she stop where other women 
 stop? Has the intellectual powers left the affections weak? 
 Can she be gracious ? Can she condescend to the pathetic 
 
BE A TRIX. 71 
 
 trifles by which a woman busies, amuses, and interests the 
 man she loves? Does she not crush a sentiment at once if it 
 does not answer to the infinite that she apprehends and con- 
 templates? Who can fill up the gulfs in her eyes? 
 
 We fear lest we should find in her some mysterious element 
 of unsubdued virginity. The strength of a woman ought to 
 be merely symbolical ; we are frightened at finding it real. 
 Camille Maupin is in some degree the living image of Schiller's 
 Isis, hidden in the depths of the temple, at whose feet the 
 priests found the dying gladiators who had dared to consult 
 her. Her various "affairs," believed in by the world, and 
 not denied by Camille herself, confirm the doubts suggested 
 by her appearance. But perhaps she enjoys this calumny? 
 The character of her beauty has not been without effect on 
 her reputation ; it has helped her, just as her fortune and 
 position have upheld her in the midst of society. If a sculptor 
 should wish to make an admirable statue of Brittany, he might 
 copy Mademoiselle des Touches. Such a sanguine, bilious 
 temperament alone can withstand the action of time. The 
 perennially nourished texture of such a skin, as it were var- 
 nished, is the only weapon given to women by nature to ward 
 off wrinkles, which in Camille are hindered also by the pas- 
 sivity of her features. 
 
 In 1817 this enchanting woman threw open her house to 
 artists, famous authors, learned men, and journalists, the men 
 to whom she was instinctively attracted. She had a drawing- 
 room like that of Baron Gerard, where the aristocracy mingled 
 with distinguished talents and the cream of Parisian woman- 
 hood. Mademoiselle des Touches' family connections and 
 her fine fortune, now augmented by that of her aunt the nun, 
 protected her in her undertaking — a difficult one in Paris — of 
 forming a circle. Her independence was one cause of her 
 success. Many ambitious mothers dreamed of getting her to 
 marry a son whose wealth was disproportioned to the splendor 
 of his armorial bearings. Certain peers of France, attracted 
 
12 Beatrix. 
 
 by her eighty thousand francs a year, and tempted by her 
 splendid house and establishment, brought the strictest and 
 most fastidious ladies of their family. The diplomatic world, 
 on the lookout for wit and amusement, came and found pleas- 
 ure there. 
 
 Thus Mademoiselle des Touches, the centre of so many 
 interests, could study the different comedies which all men, 
 even the most distinguished, are led to play by passion, ava- 
 rice, or ambition. She soon saw the world as it really is, and 
 was so fortunate as not to fall at once into such an absorbing 
 love as engrosses a woman's intellect and faculties and pre- 
 vents her wholesome judgment. Generally a woman feels, 
 enjoys, and judges, each in turn ; hence three ages, the last 
 coinciding with the sad period of old age. To Felicite the 
 order was reversed. Her youth was shrouded in the snows 
 of science, the chill of thoughtfulness. This transposition 
 also explains the oddity of her life and the character of her 
 talents. She was studying men at the age when most women 
 see but one; she despised what they admire; she detected 
 falsehood in the flatteries they accept as truth ; she laughed at 
 what makes them serious. 
 
 This contradictory state lasted a long time ; it had a dis- 
 astrous termination ; it was her fate to find her first love, 
 new-born and tender in her heart, at an age when women are 
 required by nature to renounce love. Her first entanglement 
 was kept so secret that no one ever knew of it. Felicite, like 
 all women who believe in the commonsense of their feelings, 
 was led to count on finding a beautiful soul in a beautiful 
 body; she fell in love with a face and discovered all the 
 foolishness of a lady's man, who thought of her merely as a 
 woman. It took her some time to get over her disgust and 
 this mad connection. Another man guessed her trouble, and 
 consoled her without looking for any return, or at any rate he 
 concealed his purpose. Felicite thought she had found the 
 magnanimity of heart and mind that the dandy had lacked. 
 
BE A TR1X. 73 
 
 This man had one of the most original intellects of the day. 
 He himself wrote under a pseudonym, and his first works re- 
 vealed him as an admirer of Italy. Felicite must needs travel 
 or perpetuate the only form of ignorance in which she re- 
 mained. This man, a skeptic and a scoffer, took Felicite to 
 study the land of art. This famous "Anonymous " may be 
 regarded as Camille Maupin's teacher and creator. He re- 
 duced her vast information to order, he added to it a knowl- 
 edge of the masterpieces of which Italy is full, and gave her 
 that subtle and ingenious tone, epigrammatic and yet deep, 
 which is characteristic of his talent — always a little eccentric 
 in its expression — but modified in Camille Maupin by the 
 delicate feeling and the ingenious turn natural to women ; he 
 inoculated her with a taste for the works of English and Ger- 
 man literature, and made her learn the two languages while 
 traveling. 
 
 At Rome, in 1820, Mademoiselle des Touches found herself 
 deserted for an Italian. But for this disaster she might never 
 have become really famous. Napoleon once said that Misfor- 
 tune was midwife to Genius. This event also gave Made- 
 moiselle des Touches at once and for ever the scorn of man- 
 kind, which is her great strength. Felicite was now dead 
 and Camille was born. 
 
 She returned to Paris in the company of Conti, the great 
 musician, for whom she wrote the libretti of two operas; but 
 she had no illusions left, and became, though the world did 
 not know it, a sort of female Don Juan — without either debts 
 or conquests. Encouraged by success, she published the two 
 volumes of dramas which immediately placed Camille Maupin 
 among the anonymous celebrities. She told the story of her 
 betrayed love in an admirable little romance, one of the 
 masterpieces of the time. This book, a dangerous example, 
 was compared and on a level with "Adolphe," a horrible 
 lament, of which the counterpart was found in Camille's tale. 
 The delicate nature of her literary disguise is not yet fully 
 
74 BE A TRIX. 
 
 understood ; some refined intelligences still see nothing in it 
 but the magnanimity that subjects a man to criticism and 
 screens a woman from fame by allowing her to remain un- 
 known. 
 
 In spite of herself, her reputation grew every day, as much 
 by the influence of her Salon as for her repartees, the sound- 
 ness of her judgment, and the solidity of her acquirements. 
 She was regarded as an authority, her witticisms were re- 
 peated, she could not abdicate the functions with which 
 Parisian society invested her. She became a recognized excep- 
 tion. The fashionable world bowed to the talent and the 
 wealth of this strange girl ; it acknowledged and sanctioned 
 her independence ; women admired her gifts and men her 
 beauty. Indeed, her conduct was always ruled by the social 
 proprieties. Her friendships seemed to be entirely Platonic. 
 There was nothing of the authoress — the female author — about 
 her ; as a woman of the world Mademoiselle des Touches is 
 delightful — weak at appropriate moments, indolent, coquettish, 
 devoted to dress, charmed with the trivialities that appeal to 
 women and poets. 
 
 She perfectly understood that after Madame de Stael there 
 was no place in this century for a Sappho, and that no Ninon 
 could exist in Paris when there were no great lords, no volup- 
 tuous court. She is the Ninon of intellect ; she adores art 
 and artists ; she goes from the poet to the musician, from the 
 sculptor to the prose-writer. She is full of a noble generosity 
 that verges on credulity, so ready is she to pity misfortune 
 and to disdain the fortunate. Since 1830 she has lived in a 
 chosen circle of proved friends, who truly love and esteem 
 each other. She dwells far removed from such turmoil as 
 Madame de StaeTs, and not less far from political conflict ; 
 and she makes great fun of Camille Maupin as the younger 
 brother of George Sand,* of whom she speaks as "Brother 
 Cain," for this new glory has killed her own. Mademoiselle 
 
 * See Preface. 
 
BEATRIX. 75- 
 
 des Touches admires her happier rival with angelic readiness, 
 without any feeling of jealousy or covert envy. 
 
 Until the time when this story opens she had led the hap- 
 piest life conceivable for a woman who is strong enough to 
 take care of herself. She had come to les Touches five or 
 six times between 1817 and 1834. Her first visit had been 
 made just after her first disenchantment, in 1818. Her house 
 at les Touches was uninhabitable ; she sent her steward to 
 Guerande, and took his little house at les Touches. As yet 
 she had no suspicion of her coming fame ; she was sad, she 
 would see no one ; she wanted to contemplate herself, as it 
 were, after this great catastrophe. She wrote to a lady in 
 Paris, a friend, explaining her intentions, and giving instruc- 
 tions for furniture to be sent for les Touches. The things 
 came by ship to Nantes, were transhipped to a smaller boat 
 for le Croisic, and thence were carried, not without difficulty, 
 across the sands to les Touches. She sent for workmen from 
 Paris, and settled herself at les Touches, which she particu- 
 larly liked. She meant to meditate there on the events of 
 life, as in a little private chartreuse. 
 
 At the beginning of winter she returned to Paris. Then 
 the little town of Guerande was torn by diabolical curiosity ; 
 nothing was talked of but the Asiatic luxury of Mademoiselle 
 des Touches. The notary, her agent, gave tickets to admit 
 visitors to les Touches, and people came from Batz, from le 
 Croisic, and from Savenay. This curiosity produced in two 
 years the enormous sum for the gatekeeper and gardener of 
 seventeen francs. 
 
 Mademoiselle did not come there again till two years later, 
 on her return from Italy, and arrived by le Croisic. For 
 some time no one knew that she was at Guerande, and with 
 her Conti the composer. Her appearance at intervals did 
 not srreatlv excite the curiositv of the little town of Guerande. 
 Her steward and the notary at most had been in the secret of 
 Camille Maupin's fame. By this time, however, new idea*' 
 
76 BEATRIX. 
 
 had made some little progress at Guerande, and several per- 
 sons knew of Mademoiselle des Touches' double existence. 
 The postmaster got letters addressed to " Camille Maupin, 
 aux Touches." 
 
 At last the veil was rent. In a district so essentially Cath- 
 olic, old-world, and full of prejudices, the strange life led by 
 this illustrious and unmarried woman could not fail to start 
 the rumors which had frightened the Abbe Grimont ; it could 
 never be understood ; she seemed an anomaly. 
 
 Felicite was not alone at les Touches ; she had a guest. 
 This visitor was Claud Vignon, the haughty and contemptu- 
 ous writer, who, though he has never published anything but 
 criticism, has impressed the public and literary circles with 
 an idea of his superiority. Felicite, who for the last seven 
 years had made this writer welcome, as she had a hundred 
 others — authors, journalists, artists, and people of fashion — 
 who knew his inelastic temperament, his idleness, his utter 
 poverty, his carelessness, and his disgust at things in general, 
 seemed by her behavior to him to wish to marry him. She 
 explained her conduct, incomprehensible to her friends, 
 by her ambition and the horror she felt of growing old ; 
 she wanted to place the rest of her life in the hands of a 
 superior man for whom her fortune might be a stepping- 
 stone, and who would uphold her importance in the literary 
 world. So she had carried off Claud Vignon from Paris to 
 les Touches, as an eagle takes a kid in his talons, to study 
 him and take some vehement step; but she was deceiving 
 both Calyste and Claud — she was not thinking of marriage. 
 She was in the most violent throes that can convulse a soul 
 so firm as hers, for she found herself the dupe of her own in- 
 tellect, and saw her life illuminated too late by the sunshine 
 of love, glowing as it glows in the heart of a girl of twenty. 
 
 Now for a picture of Camille's " Chartreuse." 
 
 At a few hundred paces from Guerande the terra firma of 
 Brittany ends and the salt-marshes and sand-hills begin. A, 
 
BEATRIX. 77 
 
 rugged road, to which vehicles are unknown, leads down a 
 ravine to the desert of sands left by the sea as neutral ground 
 between the waters and the land. This desert consists of 
 barren hills, of "pans" of various sizes edged with a ridge 
 of clay, in which the salt is collected, of the creek which 
 divides the mainland from the island of le Croisic. Though 
 in geography le Croisic is a peninsula, as it is attached to 
 Brittany only by the strand between it and the Bourg de Batz, 
 a shifting bottom which it is very difficult to cross, it may be 
 regarded as an island. At an angle where the road from le 
 Croisic to Guerande joins the road on the mainland stands a 
 country house, inclosed in a large garden remarkable for its 
 wrung and distorted pine trees — some spreading parasol-like 
 at the top, others stripped of their boughs, and all showing 
 red scarred trunks where the bark has been torn away. These 
 trees, martyrs to the storm, growing literally in spite of wind 
 and tide, prepare the mind for the melancholy and strange 
 spectacle of the salt-marshes and the sand-hills looking like 
 solidified waves. 
 
 The house, well built of schistose stone and cement held 
 together by courses of granite, has no pretensions to archi- 
 tecture ; the eye sees only a bare wall, regularly pierced by 
 the windows ; those on the second floor have large panes, on 
 the first floor small quarries. Above the second floor there 
 are lofts, under an enormously high-pointed roof, with a gable 
 at each end, and two large dormers on each side. Under 
 the angle of each gable a window looks out, like a Cyclops' 
 eye, to the west over the sea, to the east at Guerande. One 
 side of the house faces the Guerande road ; the other the 
 waste over which le Croisic is seen, and beyond that the open 
 sea. A little stream escapes through an opening in the garden- 
 wall on the side by the road to le Croisic, which it crosses, 
 and is soon lost in the sand or in the little pool of salt-water 
 inclosed by the sand-hills and marsh-land, being left there by 
 the arm of the sea. 
 
 O 
 
78 BE A TRIX. 
 
 A few fathoms of roadway, constructed in this break in the 
 soil, leads to the house. It is entered through a gate; the 
 courtyard is surrounded by unpretentious rural outhouses — 
 a stable, a coach-house, a gardener's cottage with a poultry- 
 yard and sheds adjoining, of more use to the gatekeeper than 
 to his mistress. The gray tones of this building harmonize 
 delightfully with the scenery it stands in. The grounds are 
 an oasis in this desert, on the edge of which the traveler has 
 passed a mud-hovel, where custom-house officers keep guard. 
 The house, with no lands, or rather of which the lands lie in 
 the district of Guerande, derives an income of ten thousand 
 francs from the marshes and from farms scattered about the 
 mainland. This was the fief of les Touches, deprived of its 
 feudal revenues by the Revolution. Les Touches is still a 
 property ; the marshmen still speak of the Castle, and they 
 would talk of the Lord if the owner were not a woman. 
 When Felicite restored les Touches, she was too much of an 
 artist to think of altering the desolate-looking exterior which 
 gives this lonely building the appearance of a prison. Only 
 the gate was improved by the addition of two brick piers with 
 an architrave, under which a carriage can drive in. The court- 
 yard was planted. 
 
 The arrangement of the first floor is common to most coun- 
 try houses built a hundred years ago. The dwelling was 
 evidently constructed on the ruins of a little castle perched 
 there as a link connecting le Croisic and Batz with Guerande, 
 and lording it over the marshes. A hall had been contrived 
 at the foot of the stairs. The first room is a large wainscoted 
 anteroom where Felicite has a billiard-table ; next comes an 
 immense drawing-room with six windows, two of which, at the 
 gable-end, form doors leading to the garden, down ten steps, 
 corresponding in the arrangement of the room with the door 
 into the billiard-room and that into the dining-room. The 
 kitchen, at the other end, communicates with the dining-room 
 through the pantry. The staircase is between the billiard- 
 
BE A TRIX. 79 
 
 room and the kitchen, which formerly had a door into the 
 hall ; this Mademoiselle des Touches closed, and opened one 
 to the courtyard. 
 
 The loftiness and spaciousness of the rooms enabled Camille 
 to treat this first floor with noble simplicity. She was careful 
 not to introduce any elaboration of detail. The drawing- 
 room, painted gray, has old mahogany furniture with green 
 silk cushions, white cotton window-curtains bordered with 
 green, two consoles, and a round table ; in the middle is a 
 carpet with a large pattern in squares ; over the huge chimney- 
 place are an immense mirror and a clock representing Apollo's 
 car, between candelabra of the style of the Empire. The bil- 
 liard-room has gray cotton curtains, bordered with green, 
 and two divans. The dining-room furniture consists of four 
 large mahogany sideboards, a table, twelve mahogany chairs 
 with horsehair seats, and some magnificent engravings by 
 Audran in mahogany frames. From the middle of the ceiling 
 hangs an elegant lamp such as were usual on the staircases of 
 fine houses, with two lights. All the ceilings and the beams 
 supporting them are painted to imitate wood. The old stair- 
 case, of wood with a heavy balustrade, is carpeted with green 
 from top to bottom. 
 
 On the second floor were two sets of rooms divided by the 
 staircase. Camille chose for her own those which look over 
 the marshes, the sand-hills, and the sea, arranging them as a 
 little sitting-room, a bedroom, a dressing-room, and a study. 
 On the other side of the house she contrived two bedrooms, 
 each with a dressing-closet and anteroom. The servants' 
 rooms are above. The two spare rooms had at first only the 
 most necessary furniture. The artistic luxuries for which she 
 had sent to Paris she reserved for her own rooms. In this 
 gloomy and melancholy dwelling, looking out on that gloomy 
 and melancholy landscape, she wanted to have the most fan- 
 tastic creations of art. Her sitting-room is hung with fine 
 Gobelin tapestry, set in wonderfully carved frames. The 
 
80 BEATRIX. 
 
 windows are draped with heavy antique stuffs, a splendid 
 brocade with a doubly shot ground, gold and red, yellow and 
 green, falling in many bold folds, edged with royal fringes 
 and tassels worthy of the most splendid baldachins of the 
 church. The room contains a cabinet which her agent found 
 for her, worth seven or eight thousand francs now, a table of 
 carved ebony, a writing bureau, brought from Venice, with a 
 hundred drawers, inlaid with arabesques of ivory, and some 
 beautiful Gothic furniture. There are pictures and statuettes, 
 the best that an artist friend could select in the old curiosity 
 shops, where the dealers never suspected in 1818 the price 
 their treasures would afterward fetch. On her tables stand 
 fine Chinese vases of grotesque designs. The carpet is Per- 
 sian, smuggled in across the sand-hills. 
 
 Her bedroom is in the Louis XV. style, and a perfectly 
 exact imitation. Here we have the carved wooden bedstead, 
 painted white, with the arched head and side, and figures of 
 Loves throwing flowers, the lower part stuffed and upholstered 
 in brocaded silk, the crown above decorated with four bunches 
 of feathers; the walls are hung with India chintz draped 
 with silk cords and knots. The fireplace is finished with 
 rustic work ; the clock of ormolu, between two large vases of 
 the choicest blue Sevres mounted in gilt copper; the mirror 
 is framed to match. The Pompadour toilet-table has its lace 
 hangings and its glass ; and then there is all the fanciful small 
 furniture, the duchesses, the couch, the little formal settee, the 
 easy-chair with a quilted back, the lacquer screen, the curtains 
 of silk to match the chairs, lined with pink satin and draped 
 with thick ropes ; the carpet woven at la Savonnerie — in short, 
 all the elegant, rich, sumptuous, and fragile things among 
 which the ladies of the eighteenth century made love. 
 
 The study, absolutely modern, in contrast with the gallant 
 suggestiveness of the days of Louis XV., has pretty mahogany 
 furniture. The bookshelves are full ; it looks like a boudoir ; 
 there is a divan in it. It is crowded with the dainty trifles 
 
BE A TR1X. 81 
 
 that women love : books that lock up, boxes for handkerchiefs 
 and gloves; pictured lamp-shades, statuettes. Chinese gro- 
 tesques, writing-cases, two or three albums, paper-weights; in 
 short, every fashionable toy. The curious visitor notes with 
 uneasy surprise a pair of pistols, a narghileh, a riding-whip, a 
 hammock, a pipe, a fowling-piece, a blouse, some tobacco, 
 and a soldier's knapsack — a motley collection characteristic 
 of Felicite. 
 
 Every lofty soul on looking around must be struck by the 
 peculiar beauty of the landscape that spreads its breadth be- 
 yond the grounds, the last vegetation of the continent. Those 
 dismal squares of brackish water, divided by little, white dykes 
 on which the marshman walks, all in white, to rake out and 
 collect the salt and heap it up; that tract over which salt- 
 vapors rise, forbidding birds to fly across, while they at the 
 same time choke every attempt at plant-life ; those sands 
 where the eye can find no comfort but in the stiff evergreen 
 leaves of a small plant with rose-colored flowers and in the 
 Carthusian pink ; that pool of sea-water, the sand of the 
 dunes, and the view of le Croisic — a miniature town dropped 
 like Venice into the sea ; and beyond, the immensity of 
 ocean, tossing a fringe of foam over the granite reefs to em- 
 phasize their wild forms — this scene elevates while it saddens 
 the spirit, the effect always produced in the end by anything 
 sublime which makes us yearn regretfully for unknown things 
 that the soul apprehends at unattainable heights. Indeed, 
 these wild harmonies have no charm for any but lofty natures 
 and great sorrows. This desert, not unbroken, where the 
 sunbeams are sometimes reflected from the water and the 
 sand, whiten the houses of Batz, and ripple over the roofs of 
 le Croisic with a pitiless dazzling glare, would absorb Camille 
 for days at a time. She rarely turned to the delightful green 
 views, the thickets, and flowery hedges that garland Guerande 
 like a bride, with flowers and posies and veils and festoons. 
 She was suffering dreadful and unknown misery. 
 6 
 
82 BE A TRIX. 
 
 As Calyste saw the weathercocks of the two gables peeping 
 above the furze-bushes of the high-road and the gnarled heads 
 of the fir trees, the air seemed to him lighter ; to him Guer- 
 ande was a prison, his life was at les Touches. Who can- 
 not understand the attractions it held for a simple-minded 
 lad? 
 
 His love, like that of Cherubino, which had brought him to 
 the feet of a personage who had been a great idea to him 
 before being a woman, naturally survived her inexplicable 
 rejections. This feeling, which is rather the desire for love 
 than love itself, had no doubt failed to elude the inexorable 
 analysis of Camille Maupin, and hence, perhaps, her repulses, 
 a nobleness of mind misunderstood by Calyste. And, then, 
 the marvels of modern civilization seemed all the more daz- 
 zling here by contrast with Guerande, where the poverty of 
 the Guenics was considered splendor. Here, spread before 
 the ravished eyes of this ignorant youth, who had never seen 
 anvthin? but the vellow broom of Brittanv and the heaths of 
 la Vendee, lay the Parisian glories of a new world ; just as 
 here he heard an unknown and sonorous language. Calyste 
 here listened to the poetical tones of the finest music, the 
 amazing music of the nineteenth century, in which melody 
 and harmony vie with each other as equal powers, and singing 
 and orchestration have achieved incredible perfection. He 
 here saw the works of the most prodigal painting — that of the 
 French school of to-day, the inheritor of Italy, Spain, and 
 Flanders, in which talent has become so common that our 
 eyes and hearts, weary of so much talent, cry out loudly for a 
 genius. He here read those works of imagination, those 
 astounding creations of modern literature, which produce 
 their fullest effect on a fresh young heart. In short, our 
 grand nineteenth century rose before him in all its magnifi- 
 cence as a whole — its criticism, its struggles for every kind of 
 renovation, its vast experiments, almost all measured by the 
 standard of the giant who nursed its infancy in his flag, and 
 
BEATRIX. 83 
 
 sang it hymns to an accompaniment of the terrible bass of 
 cannon. 
 
 Initiated by Felicite into all this grandeur, which perhaps 
 escapes the ken of those who put it on the stage and are its 
 makers, Calyste satisfied at les Touches the love of the mar- 
 velous that is so strong at his age, and that guileless admira- 
 tion, the first love of a growing man, which is so wroth with 
 criticism. It is so natural that flame should fly upward ! He 
 heard the light Parisian banter, the graceful irony which re- 
 vealed to him what French wit should be, and awoke in him 
 a thousand ideas that had been kept asleep by the mild torpor 
 of home life. To him Mademoiselle des Touches was the 
 mother of his intelligence, a mother with whom he might 
 be in love without committing a crime. She was so kind to 
 him: a woman is always adorably kind to a man in whom she 
 has inspired a passion, even though she should not seem to 
 share it. 
 
 At this very moment Felicite was giving him music lessons. 
 To him the spacious rooms on the first floor, looking all the 
 larger by reason of the skillful arrangement of the lawns and 
 shrubs in the little park ; the staircase, lined with masterpieces 
 of Italian patience — carved wood, Venetian and Florentine 
 mosaics, bas-reliefs in ivory and marble, curious toys made to 
 the order of the fairies of the Middle Ages ; the upper rooms, 
 so cozy, so dainty, so voluptuously artistic, were all informed 
 and living with a light, a spirit, an atmosphere, that wer& 
 supernatural, indefinable, and strange. The modern world 
 with its poetry was in strong contrast to the solemn patriarchal 
 world of Guerande, and the two systems here were face to face. 
 On one hand the myriad effects of art ; on the other the sim- 
 plicity of wild Brittany. No one, then, need ask why the 
 poor boy, as weary as his mother was of the subtleties of mouche, 
 always felt a qualm as he entered this house, as he rang the 
 bell, as he crossed the yard. It is to be observed that these 
 presentiments cease to agitate men of riper growth, inured to 
 
84 BE A TRIX. 
 
 the mishaps of life, whom nothing can surprise, and who are 
 prepared for everything. 
 
 As he went in, Calyste heard the sound of the piano; he 
 thought that Camille Maupin was in the drawing-room ; but 
 on entering the billiard-room he could no longer hear it. 
 Camille was playing, no doubt, on the little upright piano, 
 brought for her from England by Conti, which stood in the 
 little drawing-room above. As he mounted the stairs, where 
 the thick carpet completely deadened the sound of footsteps, 
 Calyste went more and more slowly. He perceived that this 
 music was something extraordinary. Felicite was playing to 
 herself alone ; she was talking to herself. Instead of going 
 in, the young man sat down on a Gothic settle with a green 
 velvet cushion, on the landing, beneath the window, which 
 was artistically framed in carved wood stained with walnut- 
 juice and varnished. 
 
 Nothing could be more mysteriously melancholy than 
 Camille's improvisation ; it might have been the cry of a soul 
 wailing a De profundis to its God from the depths of the 
 grave. 
 
 The young lover knew it for the prayer of love in despair, the 
 tenderness of resigned grief, the sighing of controlled anguish. 
 
 Camille was amplifying, varying, and changing the introduc- 
 tion to the cavatina, " Gr&ce pour tot, grdce pour mot," from 
 the fourth act of "Robert le Diable." Suddenly she began 
 to sing the scena in heartrending tones, and broke off. Calyste 
 went in and saw the reason of this abrupt ending. Poor 
 Camille Maupin, beautiful Felicite, turned to him without 
 affectation, her face bathed in tears, took out her handker- 
 chief to wipe them away, and said simply — 
 
 " Good-morning." 
 
 She was charming in her morning dress ; on her head was 
 one of the red chenille nets at that time in fashion, from 
 which the shining curls of her black hair fell on her neck. 
 A very short pelisse formed a modern Greek tunic, showing 
 
BEATRIX. 85 
 
 below it cambric trousers with embroidered frills, and the 
 prettiest scarlet and gold Turkish slippers. 
 
 "What is the matter?" asked Calyste. 
 
 "He has not come back," she replied, standing up at the 
 window and looking out over the sands, the creek, and the 
 marshes. 
 
 This reply accounted for her costume. Camille, it would 
 seem, was expecting Claud Vignon, and she was fretted as a 
 woman who had wasted her pains. A man of thirty would 
 have seen this. Calyste only saw that she was unhappy. 
 
 " You are anxious? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes," she replied, with a melancholy that this boy could 
 not fathom. 
 
 Calyste was hastily leaving the room. 
 
 " Well, where are you going? " 
 
 "To find him." 
 
 " Dear child ! " said she, taking his hand, and drawing 
 him to her with one of those tearful looks which to a young 
 soul is the highest reward. " Are you mad ? Where do you 
 think you can find him on this shore ? " 
 
 " I will find him." 
 
 "Your mother will suffer mortal anguish. Beside — stay. 
 Come, I insist upon it," and she made him sit down on the 
 divan. " Do not break your heart about me. These tears 
 that you see are the tears we take pleasure in. There is a 
 faculty in women which men have not : that of abandoning 
 ourselves to our nerves by indulging our feelings to excess. 
 By imagining certain situations, and giving way to the idea, 
 we work ourselves up to tears, sometimes into a serious condi- 
 tion and real illness. A woman's fancies are not the sport 
 of the mind merely, but of the heart. You have come at the 
 right moment ; solitude is bad for me. I am not deluded by 
 the wish he felt to go without me to study le Croisic and its 
 rocks, the Bourg de Batz, and its sands and salt-marshes. I 
 knew he would spend several days over it instead of one. He 
 
86 BE A TRIX. 
 
 wished to leave us two alone ; he is jealous, or rather he is 
 acting jealousy. You are young; you are handsome." 
 
 "Why did you not tell me sooner? Must I come no 
 more?" asked Calyste, failing to restrain a tear that rolled 
 down his cheek, and touched Felicite deeply. 
 
 " You are an angel ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 Then she lightly sang Mathilde's strain " Restez " out of 
 " William Tell," to efface all gravity from this grand reply 
 of a princess to her subject. 
 
 "He thus hopes," she added, "to make me believe in a 
 greater love for me than he feels. He knows all the regard I 
 feel for him," she went on, looking narrowly at Calyste, 
 " but he is perhaps humiliated to find himself my inferior in 
 this. Possibly, too, he has formed some suspicions of you 
 and thinks he will take us by surprise. But, even if he is 
 guilty of nothing worse than of wishing to enjoy the delights 
 of this expedition in the wilds without me, of refusing to let 
 me share his excursions, and the ideas the scenes may arouse 
 in him, of leaving me in mortal alarms — is not that enough? 
 His great brain has no more love for me than the musician 
 had, the wit, the soldier. Sterne is right : names have a 
 meaning, and mine is the bitterest mockery. I shall die 
 without ever finding in a man such love as I have in my heart, 
 such poetry as I have in my soul." 
 
 She sat with her arms hanging limp, her head thrown 
 back on the cushion, her eyes dull with concentrated 
 thought and fixed on a flower in the carpet. The sufferings 
 of superior minds are mysteriously grand and imposing ; they 
 reveal immense expanses of the soul, to which the spectator's 
 fancy adds yet greater breadth. Such souls share in the priv- 
 ilege of royalty, whose affections cling to a nation, and then 
 strike a whole world. 
 
 "Why did you ?" began Calyste, who could not 
 
 finish the sentence. Camille Maupin's beautiful, burning 
 hand was laid on his, and eloquently stopped him. 
 
BEATRIX. 87 
 
 " Nature has forsworn her laws by granting me five or six 
 years of added youth. I have repelled you out of selfishness. 
 Sooner or later age would have divided us. I am thirteen 
 years older than he is, and that is quite enough ! " 
 
 "You will still be beautiful when you are sixty ! " cried 
 Calyste heroically. 
 
 "God grant it ! " she replied with a smile. "But, my 
 dear child, I intend to love him. In spite of his insensibility, 
 his lack of imagination, his cowardly indifference, and the 
 envy that consumes him, I believe that there is greatness 
 under those husks ; I hope to galvanize his heart, to save 
 
 him from himself, to attach him to me Alas ! I have the 
 
 brain to see clearly while my heart is blind." 
 
 She was appallingly clear as to herself. She could suffer and 
 analyze her suffering, as Cuvier and Dupuytren could explain 
 to their friends the fatal progress of their diseases and the 
 steady advance of death. Camille Maupin knew passion as 
 these two learned men knew anatomy. 
 
 " I came here on purpose to form an opinion about him -, 
 he is already bored. He misses Paris, as I told him ; he is 
 homesick for something to criticise. Here there is no author 
 to be plucked, no system to be undermined, no poet to be 
 driven to despair ; he dares not here rush into some excess in 
 which he could unburden himself of the weight of thought. 
 Alas ! my love perhaps is not true enough to refresh his brain. 
 In short, I cannot intoxicate him ! To-night you and he 
 must get drunk together ; I shall say I am ailing, and stay 
 in my room ; I shall know if I am mistaken." 
 
 Calyste turned as red as a cherry, red from his chin to his 
 hair, and his ears tingled with the glow. 
 
 " Good God ! " she exclaimed, " and here am I depraving 
 your maiden innocence without thinking of what I was doing ! 
 Forgive me, Calyste. When you love you will know that 
 you would try to set the Seine on fire to give the least pleasure 
 to 'the object of your affections,' as the fortune-tellers say." 
 
88 BEATRIX. 
 
 She paused. 
 
 "There are some proud and logical spirits," she went on, 
 "who at a certain age can exclaim, ' If I could live my life 
 again, I would do everything the same.' Now I — and I do 
 not think myself weak — I say, * I would be such a woman as 
 your mother.' 
 
 " To have a Calyste of my own ! What happiness ! If I 
 had the greatest fool on earth for a husband, I should have 
 been a humble and submissive wife. And yet I have not 
 sinned against society, I have only hurt myself. Alas ! dear 
 child, a woman can no longer go into society unprotected 
 excepting in what is called a primitive state. The affections 
 that are not in harmony with social or natural laws, the affec- 
 tions which are not binding, in short, evade us. If I am to 
 suffer for suffering's sake, I might as well be useful. What do 
 I care for the children of my Faucombe cousins, who are no 
 longer Faucombes, whom I have not seen for twenty years, 
 and who married merchants only ! You are a son who has 
 cost me none of the cares of motherhood ; I shall leave you 
 my fortune and you will be happy, at any rate so far as that 
 is concerned, by my act, dear jewel of beauty and sweetness, 
 which nothing should ever change or fade ! " 
 
 As she spoke these words in a deep voice, her eyelids fell 
 that he should not read her eyes. 
 
 "You have never chosen to accept anything from me," 
 said Calyste. " I shall restore your fortune to your heirs." 
 
 " Child ! " said Camille in her rich tones, while the tears 
 fell down her beautiful cheeks, " can nothing save me from 
 myself? " 
 
 "You have a story to tell me, and a letter to " the 
 
 generous boy began, to divert her from her distress. But she 
 interrupted him before he could finish the sentence. 
 
 "You are right. I must, above all things, keep my word. 
 It was too late yesterday ; but we shall have time enough to- 
 day, it would seem," she said in a half-playful, half-bitter 
 
BEATRIX. 89 
 
 tone. " To fulfill my promise, I will sit where I can look 
 down the road to the cliffs." 
 
 Calyste placed a deep Gothic armchair, where she could 
 look out in that direction, and opened the window. Camille 
 Maupin, who shared the Oriental tastes of the more illustrious 
 writer of her own sex, took out a magnificent Persian narghileh 
 that an ambassador had given her; she filled it with patchouli 
 leaves, cleaned the mouthpiece, scented the quill before she 
 inserted it — it would serve her but once— put a match to the 
 dried leaves, placed the handsome instrument of pleasure, 
 with its long-necked bowl of blue-and-gold enamel, at no 
 great distance, and then rang for tea. 
 
 " If you would like a cigarette? Ah ! I always forget that 
 you do not smoke. Such immaculateness as yours is rare ! 
 I feel as though only the fingers of an Eve fresh from the 
 hand of God ought to caress the downy satin of your 
 cheeks." 
 
 Calyste reddened and sat down on a stool ; he did not 
 observe the deep emotion that made Camille blush. 
 
 "The person from whom I yesterday received this letter, 
 and who will perhaps be here to-morrow, is the Marquise de 
 Rochefide," said Felicite. "After getting his eldest daughter 
 married to a Portuguese grandee who had settled in France, 
 old Rochefide, whose family is not so old as yours, wanted 
 to connect his son with the highest nobility, so as to procure 
 for him a peerage he had failed to obtain for himself. The 
 Comtesse de Montcornet told him that in the department of 
 the Orne there was a certain Mademoiselle Beatrix Maxi- 
 milienne Rose de Casteran, the youngest daughter of the 
 Marquis de Casteran, who wanted to get his two daughters 
 off his hands without any money, so as to leave his whole 
 fortune to his son, the Comte de Casteran. The Casterans, it 
 would seem, are descended direct from Adam. 
 
 " Beatrix, born and brought up in the chateau of Casteran, at 
 the time of her marriage, in 1828, was twenty years of age. 
 
90 BE A TRIX. 
 
 She was remarkable for what you provincials call eccentricity, 
 which is simply a superior mind, enthusiasm, a sense of the 
 beautiful, and a fervid feeling for works of art. Take the word 
 of a poor woman who has trusted herself on these slopes, there 
 is nothing more perilous for a woman ; if she tries them, she 
 arrives where you see me, and where the Marquise is — in an 
 abyss. Men only have the staff that can be a support on the 
 edge of those precipices, a strength which we lack, or which 
 makes us monsters if we have it. 
 
 " Her old grandmother, the dowager Marquise de Casteran, 
 was delighted to see her marry a man whose superior she would 
 certainly be in birth and mind. The Rochefides did every- 
 thing extremely well, Beatrix could but be satisfied ; and in 
 the same way Rochefide had every reason to be pleased with 
 the Casterans, who, as connected with the Verneuils, the 
 d'Esgrignons, and the Troisvilles, obtained the peerage for 
 their son-in-law as one of the last batch made by Charles X., 
 though it was annulled by a decree of the Revolution of July. 
 
 " Rochefide is a fool ; however, he began by having a son ; 
 and, as he gave his wife no respite and almost killed her with 
 his company, she soon had enough of him. The early days of 
 married life are a rock of danger for small minds as for great 
 passions. Rochefide, being a fool, mistook his wife's igno- 
 rance for coldness; he regarded Beatrix as a lymphatic crea- 
 ture — she is very fair — and thereupon lulled himself into per- 
 fect security and led a bachelor life, trusting to the Marquise's 
 supposed coldness, her. pride, her haughtiness, and the splen- 
 dor of a style of living which surrounds a woman in Paris with 
 a thousand barriers. When you go there you will understand 
 what I mean. Those who hoped to take advantage of his easy 
 indifference would say to him, 'You are a lucky fellow. You 
 have a heartless wife, whose passions will all be in her brain ; 
 she is content with shining; her fancies are purely artistic ; 
 her jealousy and wishes will be amply satisfied if she can form 
 a Salon where all the wits and talents meet ; she will have 
 
BE A TRIX. 91 
 
 debauches of music, orgies of literature.' And the husband 
 took in all this nonsense with which simpletons are stuffed in 
 Paris. 
 
 " At the same time, Rochefide is not a common idiot ; he 
 has as much vanity and pride as a clever man, with this differ- 
 ence, that clever men assume some modesty and become cats ; 
 they coax to be coaxed in return ; whereas Rochefide has a 
 fine flourishing conceit, rosy and plump, that admires itself in 
 public, and is always smiling, tjis vanity rolls in the stable 
 and feeds noisily from the manger, tugging out the hay. He 
 has faults such as are known only to those who are in a posi- 
 tion to judge him intimately, which are noticeable only in 
 the shade and mystery of private life, while in society and to 
 society the man seems charming. Rochfide must have been 
 intolerable the moment he fancied that his hearth and home 
 were threatened ; for his is that cunning and squalid jealousy 
 that is brutal when it is aroused, cowardly for six months, and 
 murderous the seventh. He thought he deceived his wife, 
 and he feared her — two reasons for tyranny if the day should 
 come when he discerned that his wife was so merciful as to 
 affect indifference to his infidelities. 
 
 "I have analyzed his character to explain Beatrix's con- 
 duct. The Marquise used to admire me greatly; but there is but 
 one step from admiration to jealousy. I have one of the most 
 remarkable Salons of Paris ; she wished to have one and tried 
 to win away my circle. I have not the art of keeping those 
 who wish to leave me. She has won such superficial persons 
 as are everybody's friends from vacuity, and whose object is 
 always to go out of a room as soon as they have come in ; but 
 she has not had time to make a circle. At that time I sup- 
 posed that she was consumed with the desire of any kind of 
 celebrity. Nevertheless, she had some greatness of soul, a 
 royal pride, ideas, and a wonderful gift of apprehending and 
 understanding everything. She will talk of metaphysics and 
 of music, of theology and of painting. You will see her as a 
 
92 BE A TRIX. 
 
 woman what we saw her as a bride ; but she is not without a 
 little conceit; she gives herself too much the air of knowing 
 difficult things — Chinese or Hebrew, of having ideas about 
 hieroglyphics, and of being able to explain the papyrus that 
 wraps a mummy. 
 
 "Beatrix is one of those fair women by whom fair Eve 
 would look like a negress. She is as tall and straight as a 
 taper and as white as the holy wafer ; she has a long pointed 
 face and a very variable complexion, to-day as colorless as 
 cambric, to-morrow dull and mottled under the skin with a 
 myriad tiny specks, as though the blood had left dust there in 
 the course of the night. Her forehead is grand, but a little 
 too bold ; her eyes, pale aquamarine-tinted, floating in the 
 white cornea under colorless eyebrows and indolent lids. 
 There is often a dark circle around her eves. Her nose, 
 curved to a quarter of a circle, is pinched at the nostrils and 
 full of refinement, but it is impertinent. She has the Austrian 
 mouth, the upper lip thicker than the lower, which has a 
 scornful droop. Her pale cheeks only flush under some very 
 strong emotion. Her chin is rather fat; mine is not thin; 
 and perhaps I ought not to tell you that women with a fat 
 chin are exacting in love affairs. She has one of the most 
 beautiful figures I ever saw ; a back of dazzling whiteness, 
 which used to be very flat, but which now, I am told, has 
 filled out and grown dimpled ; but the bust is not so fine as 
 the shoulders; her arms are still thin. However, she has a 
 mien and a freedom of manner which redeem all her defects 
 and throw her beauties into relief. Nature has bestowed on 
 her that air, as of a princess, which can never be acquired, 
 which becomes her and at once reveals the woman of birth; 
 it is in harmony with the slender hips of exquisite form, with 
 the prettiest foot in the world, and the abundant angel-like 
 hair, resembling waves of light, such as Girodet's brush has so 
 often painted. 
 
 "Without being faultlessly beautiful or pretty, when she 
 
BE A TR1X. 93 
 
 chooses she can make an indelible impression. She has only 
 to dress in cherry-colored velvet, with lace frillings, and red 
 roses in her hair, to be divine. If on any pretext Beatrix 
 could dress in the costume of a time when women wore 
 pointed stomachers laced with ribbon, rising, slender and 
 fragile-looking, from the padded fulness of brocade skirts set 
 in thick deep pleats; when their heads were framed in starched 
 ruffs, and their arms hidden under slashed sleeves with lace 
 ruffles, out of which the hand appeared like the pistil from the 
 cup of a flower ; when their hair was tossed back in a thou- 
 sand little curls over a knot held up by a network of jewels, 
 Beatrix would appear as a successful rival to any of the ideal 
 beauties you may see in that array." 
 
 Felicite showed Calyste a good copy of Miens' picture in 
 which a lady in white satin stands singing with a gentleman 
 of Brabant, while a negro pours old Spanish wine into a glass 
 with a foot, and a housekeeper is arranging some biscuits. 
 
 "Fair women," she went on, "have the advantage over us 
 dark women of the most delightful variety ; you may be fair 
 in a hundred ways, but there is only one way of being dark. 
 Fair women are more womanly than we are ; we dark French- 
 women are too like men. Well," she added, "do not be 
 falling in love with Beatrix on the strength of the portrait I 
 have given you, exactly like some prince in the 'Arabian 
 Nights.' Too late in the day, my dear boy! But be com- 
 forted. With her the bones are for the first comer." 
 
 She spoke with meaning; the admiration expressed in the 
 youth's face was evidently more for the picture than for the 
 painter whose touch had missed its purpose. 
 
 "In spite of her being a blonde," she resumed, "Beatrix 
 has not the delicacy of her coloring ; the lines are severe, she 
 is elegant and hard ; she has the look of a strictly accurate 
 drawing, and you might fancy she had southern fires in her 
 soul. She is a flaming angel, slowly drying up. Her eyes 
 look thirsty. Her front face is the best ; in profile her face 
 
94 BEA TRIX. 
 
 looks as if it had been flattened between two doors. You 
 will see if I am wrong. 
 
 "This is what led to our being such intimate friends: 
 For three years, from 1828 to 1831, Beatrix, while enjoying 
 the last gayeties of the Restoration, wandering through draw- 
 ing-rooms, going to court, gracing the fancy-dress balls at the 
 Elysee Bourbon, was judging men, things, and events from 
 the heights of her intellect. Her mind was fully occupied. 
 This first bewilderment at seeing the world kept her heart 
 dormant, and it remained torpid under the first startling 
 experiences of marriage — a baby — a confinement, and all the 
 business of motherhood, which I cannot bear ; I am not a 
 woman so far as that is concerned. To me children are unen- 
 durable ; they bring a thousand sorrows and incessant anxi- 
 eties. I must say that I regard it as one of the blessings of 
 modern society of which that hypocrite Jean-Jacques deprived 
 us, that we were free to be or not to be mothers. Though I 
 am not the only woman that thinks this, I am the only one to 
 say it. 
 
 "During the storm of 1830 and 1831 Beatrix went to her 
 husband's country house, where she was as much bored as a 
 saint in his stall in paradise. On her return to Paris, the 
 Marquise thought, and perhaps rightly, that the Revolution, 
 which in the eyes of most people was purely political, would 
 be a moral revolution too. The world to which she belonged 
 had failed to reconstitute itself during the unlooked-for fifteen 
 years of triumph under the Restoration, so it must crumble 
 away under the steady battering ram of the middle class. 
 She had understood Monsieur Laine's great words, ' Kings 
 are departing.' This opinion, I suspect, was not without its 
 influence on her conduct. 
 
 " She sympathized intellectually with the new doctrines 
 which, for three years after that July, swarmed into life like 
 flies in the sunshine, and which turned many women's heads; 
 but, like all the nobility, though she thought the new ideas 
 
BEATRIX. 95 
 
 magnificent, she wished to save the nobility. Finding no 
 opening now for personal superiority, seeing the uppermost 
 class again setting up the speechless opposition it had already 
 shown to Napoleon — which, during the dominion of actions 
 and facts, was the only attitude it could take, whereas, in a 
 time of moral transition, it was equivalent to retiring from the 
 contest — she preferred a happy life to this mute antagonism. 
 
 "When we began to breathe a little, the Marquise met at 
 my house the man with whom I had thought to end my days 
 — Gennaro Conti, the great composer, of Neapolitan parent- 
 age, but born at Marseilles. Conti is a very clever fellow 
 and has gifts as a composer, though he can never rise to 
 the highest rank. If we had not Meyerbeer and Rossini, he 
 might perhaps have passed for a genius. He has this advan- 
 tage over them, that he is as a singer what Paganini is on the 
 violin, Liszt on the piano, Taglioni as a dancer — in short, 
 what the famous Garat was, of whom he reminds those who 
 ever heard that singer. It is not a voice, my dear boy, it is 
 a soul. When that singing answers to certain ideas, certain 
 indescribable moods in which a woman sometimes finds herself, 
 if she hears Gennaro she is lost. The Marquise fell madly in 
 love with him and won him from me. It was excessively 
 provincial, but fair warfare. She gained my esteem and 
 friendship by her conduct toward me. She fancied I was the 
 woman to fight for my possession ; she could not tell that in 
 my eyes the most ridiculous thing in the world under such 
 circumstances is the subject of the contest. She came to see 
 me. The woman, proud as she is, was so much in love that 
 she betrayed her secret and left me mistress of her fate. She 
 was quite charming ; in my eyes she remained a woman and 
 a marquise. 
 
 " I may tell you, my friend, that women are sometimes 
 bad ; but they have a secret greatness which men will never 
 be able to appreciate. And so, as I may wind up my affairs 
 as a woman on the brink of old age, which is awaiting me, I 
 
§6 BE A TRIX. 
 
 will tell you that I had been faithful to Conti, that I should 
 have continued faithful till death, and that nevertheless I 
 knew him thoroughly. He has apparently a delightful nature, 
 at bottom he is detestable. In matters of feeling he is a 
 charlatan. 
 
 "There are men, like Nathan, of whom I have spoken to 
 you, who are charlatans on the surface but honest. Such men 
 lie to themselves. Perched on stilts, they fancy that they are 
 on their feet, and play their tricks with a sort of innocence; 
 their vanity is in their blood ; they are born actors, swaggerers, 
 grotesquely funny like a Chinese jar ; they might even laugh 
 at themselves. Their personal impulses are generous, and, 
 like the gaudiness of Murat's royal costume, they attract 
 danger. 
 
 " But Conti's rascality will never be known to any one but 
 his mistress. He has as an artist that famous Italian jealousy 
 which led Carlone to assassinate Piola and caused Paesiello a 
 stiletto thrust. This terrible envy is hidden beneath the most 
 charming good-fellowship. Conti has not the courage of his 
 vice; he smiles at Meyerbeer and pays him compliments while 
 he longs to rend him. He feels himself weak, and gives him- 
 self the airs of force ; and his vanity is such that he affects 
 the sentiments furthest from his heart. He assumes to be an 
 artist inspired direct from heaven. To him Art is something 
 sacred and holy. He is a fanatic ; he is sublime in his fooling 
 of fashionable folk ; his eloquence seems to flow from the 
 deepest convictions. He is a seer, a demon, a god, an angel. 
 In short, though I have warned you, Calyste, you will be his 
 dupe. This southerner, this seething artist, is as cold as a 
 well-rope. 
 
 " You listen to him ; the artist is a missionary, Art is a re- 
 ligion that has its priesthood and must have its martyrs. 
 Once started, Gennaro mounts to the most disheveled pathos 
 that ever a German philosopher spouted out on his audience. 
 You admire his convictions — he believes in nothing. He 
 
BE A TRIX. 97 
 
 carries you up to heaven by a song that seems to be some 
 mysterious fluid, flowing with love ; he gives you a glance of 
 ecstasy ; but he keeps an eye on your admiration ; he is asking 
 himself, 'Am I really a god to these people?' And in the 
 same instant he is perhaps saying to himself, ' I have eaten too 
 much macaroni.' You fancy he loves you — he hates you ; and 
 you do not know why. But I always knew. He had seen 
 some woman the day before, loved her for a whim, insulted 
 me with false love, with hypocritical kisses, making me pay 
 dearly for his feigned fidelity. In short, he is insatiable for 
 applause; he shams everything and trifles with everything; 
 he can act joy as well as grief, and he succeeds to perfection. 
 He can please, he is loved, he can get admiration whenever he 
 chooses. 
 
 " I left him hating his voice ; he owed it more success than 
 he could get from his talent as a composer ; and he would 
 rather be a man of genius like Rossini than a performer as fine 
 as Rubini. I had been so foolish as to attach myself to him, 
 and I would have decked the idol to the last. Conti, like 
 many artists, is very dainty and likes his ease and his little 
 enjoyments; he is dandified, elegant, well dressed; well, I 
 humored all his manias, I loved that weak but astute character. 
 I was envied, and I sometimes smiled with disdain. I re- 
 spected his courage ; he is brave, and bravery, it is said, is 
 the only virtue which no hypocrisy can simulate. On one 
 occasion, when traveling, I saw him put to the test; he was 
 ready to risk his life — and he loves it ; but, strange to say, 
 in Paris I have known him guilty of what I call mental cow- 
 ardice. 
 
 " My dear boy, I knew all this. I said to the poor Mar- 
 quise, ' You do not know what a gulf you are setting foot in ; 
 you are the Perseus of a hapless Andromeda ; you are rescuing 
 me from the rock. If he loves you, so much the better ; but 
 I doubt it, he loves no one but himself.' 
 
 " Gennaro was in the seventh heaven of pride. I was no 
 7 
 
98 BE A TRTX. 
 
 marquise, I was not born a Casteran ; I was forgotten in a day. 
 I allowed myself the fierce pleasure of studying this character 
 to its depths. Certain of what the end would be, I meant to 
 watch Conti's contortions. My poor boy, in one week I saw 
 horrors of sentimentality, hideous manoeuvring ! I will tell 
 you no more; you will see the man here. Only, as he knows 
 that I know him, he hates me now. If he could safely stab 
 me I should not be alive for two seconds. 
 
 "I have never said a word of this to Beatrix. Gennaro's 
 last and constant insult is that he believes me capable of com- 
 municating my painful knowledge to the Marquise. He has 
 become restless and absent-minded, for he cannot believe in 
 good feeling in any one. He still performs for my benefit 
 the part of a man grieved to have deserted me. You will 
 find him full of the most penetrating cordiality ; he will 
 wheedle, he will be chivalrous. -To him every woman is a 
 Madonna ! . You have to live with him for some time before 
 you detect the secret of that false frankness or know the 
 stiletto prick of his humbug. His air of conviction would 
 take in God. And so you will be enmeshed by his feline 
 blandishments, and will never conceive of the deep and rapid 
 arithmetic of his inmost rnind. Let him be. 
 
 "I carried indifference to the point of receiving them to- 
 gether at my house. The consequence of this was that the 
 most suspicious world on earth, the world of Paris, knew 
 nothing of the intrigue. Though Gennaro was drunk with 
 pride, he wanted, no doubt, to pose before Beatrix ; his dis- 
 simulation was consummate. He surprised me ; I had ex- 
 pected to find that he insisted on a stage-effect. It was she 
 who compromised herself, after a year of happiness under all 
 the vicissitudes and risks of Parisian existence. 
 
 " She had not seen Gennaro for some clays and I had in- 
 vited him to dine with me, as she was coming in the evening. 
 Rochefide had no suspicions ; but Beatrix knew her husband 
 so well, that, as she often told me, she would have preferred 
 
BE A TRIX. 99 
 
 the worst poverty to the wretched life that awaited her in the 
 event of that man ever having a right to scorn or to torment 
 her. I had chosen the evening when our friend the Com- 
 tesse de Montcornet was at home. After seeing her husband 
 served with his coffee, Beatrix left the drawing-room to 
 dress, though she was not in the habit of getting ready so 
 early. 
 
 " 'Your hairdresser is not here yet,' said Rochefide, when 
 he heard why she was going. 
 
 " 'Therese can do my hair,' she replied. 
 
 "'Why, where are you going? You cannot go to Mad- 
 ame de Montcornet's at eight o'clock.' 
 
 " ' No,' said she, ' but I shall hear the first act at the Italian 
 opera.' 
 
 " The catechising bailiff in Voltaire's ' Huron ' is a silent 
 man by comparison with an idle husband. Beatrix fled, to 
 be no farther questioned, and did not hear her husband say, 
 'Very well ; we will go together.' 
 
 " He did not do it on purpose ; he had no reason to 
 suspect his wife ; she was allowed so much liberty ! He tried 
 never to fetter her in any way ; he prided himself on it. 
 And, indeed, her conduct did not offer the smallest hold for the 
 strictest critic. The Marquis was going who knows where — 
 to see his mistress perhaps. He had dressed before dinner; 
 he had only to take up his hat and gloves when he heard his 
 wife's carriage draw up under the awning of the steps in the 
 courtyard. He went to her room and found her ready, but 
 amazed at seeing him. 
 
 " ' Where are you going? ' said she. 
 
 " ' Did I not tell you I would go with you to the opera? ' 
 
 " The Marquise controlled the outward expression of in- 
 tense annoyance ; but her cheeks turned as scarlet as though 
 she had used rouge. 
 
 " 'Well, come then,' she replied. 
 
 "Rochefide followed her, without heeding the agitation 
 
100 BEATRIX. 
 
 betrayed by her voice ; she was burning with the most violent 
 suppressed rage. 
 
 " ' To the opera,' said her husband. 
 
 " ' No,' cried Beatrix, ' to Mademoiselle des Touches'. 
 I have a word to say to her,' she added when the door was 
 shut. 
 
 " The carriage started. 
 
 " ' But if you like,' Beatrix added, ' I can take you first to 
 the opera and go to her afterward.' 
 
 " ' No,' said the Marquis; f if you have only a few words 
 to say to her, I will wait in the carriage ; it is only half-past 
 seven.' 
 
 " If Beatrix had said to her husband, ' Go to the opera and 
 leave me alone,' he would have obeyed her quite calmly. 
 Like every clever woman, knowing herself guilty, she was 
 afraid of rousing his suspicions, and resigned herself. Thus, 
 when she gave up the opera to come to my house, her husband 
 accompanied her. She came in scarlet with rage and impa- 
 tience. She walked straight up to me, and said in a low 
 voice, with the calmest manner in the world — 
 
 " ' My dear Felicite, I shall start for Italy to-morrow even- 
 ing with Conti ; beg him to make his arrangements, and wait 
 for me here with a carriage and passport.' 
 
 "Then she left with her husband. Violent passions insist 
 on liberty at any cost. Beatrix had for a year been suffering 
 from want of freedom and the rarity of their meetings, for 
 she considered herself one with Gennaro. So nothing could 
 surprise me. In her place, with my temper, I should have 
 acted as she did. Conti's happiness broke my heart; only 
 his vanity was engaged in this matter. 
 
 " ' That is indeed being loved ! ' he exclaimed, in the 
 midst of his transports. ' How few women would thus forego 
 their whole life, their fortune, their reputation ! ' 
 
 V ' Oh yes, she loves you,' said I; ' but you do not love 
 her ! ' 
 
AT THE UNEXPECTED SIGHT CALYSTE AND FEL1CITE SAT 
 SILENT FOR A MINUTE. 
 
BE A TRIX. 101 
 
 "He flew into a fury and made a scene ; he harangued, he 
 scolded, he described his passion, saying he had never thought 
 it possible that he could love so much. I was immovably 
 cool, and lent him the money he might want for the journey 
 that had taken him by surprise. 
 
 " Beatrix wrote a letter to her husband and set out for Italy 
 the next evening. She stayed there two years ; she wrote to 
 me several times. Her letters are bewitchingly friendly ; the 
 poor child clings to me as the only woman that understands 
 her. She tells me she adores me. Want of money compelled 
 Gennaro to write an opera ; he did not find in Italy the 
 pecuniary resources open to a composer in Paris. Here is 
 her last letter ; you can understand it now if, at your age, you 
 can analyze the emotions of the heart," she added, handing 
 him the letter. 
 
 At this moment Claud Vignon came in. At the unexpected 
 sight Calyste and Felicite sat silent for a minute, she from 
 surprise, he from vague dissatisfaction. Claud's vast, high, 
 and wide forehead, bald at seven-and-thirty, was dark with 
 clouds. His firm, judicious lips expressed cold irony. Claud 
 Vignon is an imposing person, in spite of the changes in a 
 face that was splendid and is now grown livid. From the 
 age of eighteen to five-and-twenty he had a strong likeness to 
 the divine young Raphael ; but his nose, the human feature 
 which most readily alters, has grown sharp ; his countenance 
 has, as it were, sunk under mysterious hollows, the outlines 
 have grown puffy, and with a bad color ; leaden grays pre- 
 dominate in the worn complexion, though no one knows what 
 the fatigues can be of a young man, aged perhaps by crushing 
 loneliness, and an abuse of keen discernment. He is always 
 examining other men's minds, without object or system; the 
 pickaxe of his criticism is always destroying, and never con- 
 structing anything. His weariness is that of the laborer, not 
 of the architect. 
 
102 BE A TRIX. 
 
 His eyes, light blue and once bright, are dimmed with 
 unconfessed suffering or clouded by sullen sadness. Dissipa- 
 tion has darkened the eyelids beneath the brows ; the temples 
 have lost their smoothness. The chin, most nobly moulded, 
 has grown double without dignity. His voice, never very 
 sonorous, has grown thin ; it is not hoarse, not husky, but 
 something between the two. The inscrutability of this fine 
 face, the fixity of that gaze, cover an irresolution and weak- 
 ness that are betrayed in the shrewd and ironical smile. This 
 weakness affects his actions, but not his mind; the stamp of 
 encyclopaedic intellect is on that brow and in the habit of 
 that face, at once childlike and lofty. 
 
 One detail may help to explain the eccentricities of this 
 character. The man is tall and already somewhat bent, like 
 all who bear a world of ideas. These tall, long frames have 
 never been remarkable for tenacious energy, for creative 
 activity. Charlemagne, Narses, Belisarius, and Constantine 
 have been, in this particular, very noteworthy exceptions. 
 Claud Vignon, no doubt, suggests mysteries to be solved. In 
 the first place, he is at once very simple and very deep. 
 Though he rushes into excess with the readiness of a court- 
 esan, his mind remains unclouded. The intellect which can 
 criticise art, science, literature, and politics is inadequate to 
 control his outer life. Claud contemplates himself in the 
 wide extent of his intellectual realm, and gives up the form 
 of things with Diogenes-like indifference. Content with 
 seeing into everything, understanding everything, he scorns 
 material details ; but, being beset with hesitancy as soon as 
 creation is needed, he sees obstacles without being carried 
 away by beauties, and, by dint of discussing means, he sits, 
 his hands hanging idle, producing no results. Intellectually 
 he is a Turk in whom meditation induces sleep. Criticism is 
 his opium, and his harem of books has disgusted him with 
 any work he might do. 
 
 He is equally indifferent to the smallest and to the greatest 
 
BEATRIX. 103 
 
 things, and is compelled by the mere weight of his brain to 
 throw himself into debauchery to abdicate for a little while 
 the irresistible power of his omnipotent analysis. He is too 
 much absorbed by the seamy side of genius, and you may 
 now conceive that Camille Maupin should try to show him 
 the right side. 
 
 The task was a fascinating one. Claud Vignon believed 
 himself no less great as a politician than he was as a writer; 
 but this Machiavelli of private life laughs in his sleeve at 
 ambitious persons, he knows all he can ever know, he instinc- 
 tively measures his future life by his faculties, he sees himself 
 great, he looks obstacles in the face, perceives the folly of par- 
 venus, takes fright or is disgusted, and lets the time slip by 
 without doing anything. Like Etienne Lousteau, the feuille- 
 ton writer; like Nathan, the famous dramatic author; like 
 Blondet, another journalist, he was born in the middle class 
 to which we owe most of our great writers. 
 
 "Which way did you come?" said Mademoiselle des 
 Touches, coloring with pleasure or surprise. 
 
 "In at the door," replied Claud Vignon drily. 
 
 "Well," she replied, with a shrug, "I know you are not a 
 man to come in at the window." 
 
 " Scaling a balcony is a sort of cross of honor for the 
 beloved fair." 
 
 "Enough ! " said Felicite. 
 
 " I am in the way ? " said Claud Vignon. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the guileless Calyste, "this letter " 
 
 "Keep it; I ask no questions. At our age such things 
 need no words," said he, in a satirical tone, interrupting 
 Calyste. 
 
 "But, indeed, monsieur " Calyste began indignantly. 
 
 "Be calm, young man; my indulgence for feelings is 
 boundless." 
 
 "My dear Calyste," said Camille, anxious to speak. 
 
 " Dear?" said Vignon, interrupting her. 
 
104 BEATRIX. 
 
 "Claud is jesting," Camille went on, addressing Calyste ; 
 " and he is wrong — with you who know nothing of Paris and 
 its 'chaff.'" 
 
 "I had no idea that I was funny," said Vignon very 
 gravely. 
 
 " By what road did you come ? For two hours I have 
 never ceased looking out toward le Croisic." 
 
 "You were not incessantly looking," replied Vignon. 
 
 "You are intolerable with your banter." 
 
 "Banter! I?" 
 
 Calyste rose. 
 
 "You are not so badly off here that you need leave," said 
 Vignon. 
 
 "On the contrary," said the indignant youth, to whom 
 Camille gave her hand, which he kissed instead of merely 
 taking it, and left on it a scalding tear. 
 
 " I wish I were that little young man," said the critic, seat- 
 ing himself, and taking the end of the hookah. " How he 
 will love ! " 
 
 " Too much, for then he will not be loved," said Made- 
 moiselle des Touches. " Madame de Rochefide is coming 
 here." 
 
 " Good ! " said Claud \ " and with Conti ? " 
 
 " She will stay here alone, but he is bringing her." 
 
 " Have they quarreled ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Play me a sonata by Beethoven ; I know nothing of the 
 music he has written for the piano." 
 
 Claud filled the bowl of the hookah with tobacco, watching 
 Camille more closely than she knew ; a hideous idea possessed 
 him ; he fancied that a straightforward woman believed she 
 had duped him. The situation was a new one. 
 
 Calyste as he went away was thinking neither of Beatrix de 
 Rochefide nor her letter ; he was furious with Claud Vignon, 
 
BE A TRIX. 105 
 
 full of wrath at what he thought want of delicacy, and of pity 
 for poor Felicite. How could a man be loved by that perfect 
 woman and not worship her on his knees, not trust her on the 
 faith of a look or a smile ? After being the privileged spec- 
 tator of the suffering Felicite had endured while waiting, he 
 felt an impulse to rend that pale, cold spectre. He knew 
 nothing himself, as Felicite had told him, of the sort of decep- 
 tive witticisms in which the satirists of the press excel. To 
 him love was a human form of religion. 
 
 On seeing him cross the courtyard, his mother could not 
 restrain a joyful exclamation, and old Mademoiselle du Guenic 
 whistled for Mariotte. 
 
 " Mariotte, here is the child ; give us the hibine." 
 
 "I saw him, mademoiselle," replied the cook. 
 
 His mother, a little distressed by the melancholy that sat 
 on Calyste's brow, never suspecting that it was caused by what 
 he thought Vignon's bad treatment of Felicite, took up her 
 worsted work. The old aunt pulled out her knitting. The 
 Baron gave up his easy-chair to his son and walked up and 
 down the room as if to unstiffen his legs before taking a turn 
 in the garden. No Flemish or Dutch picture represents an 
 interior of richer tone or furnished with more happily suitable 
 figures. The handsome youth, dressed in black velvet, the 
 mother, still so handsome, and the two old folk, in the setting 
 of ancient paneling, were the expression of the most touching 
 domestic harmony. 
 
 Fanny longed to question Calyste, but he had taken Beatrix's 
 letter out of his pocket — the letter which was, perhaps, to de- 
 stroy all the happiness this noble family enjoyed. As he un- 
 folded it, Calyste's lively imagination called up the Marquise 
 dressed as Camille Maupin had fantastically described her. 
 
106 BEATRIX. 
 
 Front Beatrix to Felicite. 
 
 " Genoa, July 2d. 
 
 " I have not written to you, my dear friend, since our stay 
 at Florence, but Venice and Rome took up all tny time ; 
 and happiness, as you know, fills a large place in life. We 
 are neither of us likely to take strict account of a letter more 
 or less. I am a little tired ; I insisted on seeing everything, 
 and to a mind not easily satiated the repetition of pleasures 
 brings fatigue. Our friend had great triumphs at the Scala, 
 at the Fenice, and these last three days at the San Carlo. 
 Three Italian operas in two years ! You cannot say that love 
 has made him idle. 
 
 " We have been warmly welcomed everywhere, but I should 
 have preferred silence and solitude. Is not that the only 
 mode of life that suits a woman in direct antagonism with the 
 world? This was what I had expected. Love, my dear, is a 
 more exacting master than marriage ; but it is sweet to serve 
 him. After having played at love all my life, I did not know 
 that I must see the world again, even in glimpses, and the atten- 
 tions paid me on all hands were so many wounds. I was no 
 longer on an equal footing with women of the highest type. 
 The more kindly I was treated, the more was my inferiority 
 marked. Gennaro did not understand these subtleties, but he 
 was so happy that I should have been graceless if I had not 
 sacrificed such petty vanities to a thing so splendid as an 
 artist's life. 
 
 "We live only by love, while men live by love and action 
 — otherwise they would not be men. There are, however, 
 immense disadvantages to a woman in the position in which 
 I have placed myself; and you have avoided them. You 
 have remained great in the face of the world which had no 
 rights over you ; you have perfect liberty, and I have lost 
 mine. I am speaking only with reference to concerns of the 
 heart, and not to social matters, which I have wholly sacri- 
 
BEATRIX. 107 
 
 flced. You might be vain and willful, you might have all the 
 graces of a woman in love, who can give or refuse anything as 
 she chooses ; you had preserved the privilege of being capri- 
 cious, even in the interest of your affection and of the man 
 you might like. In short, you, even now, have still your own 
 sanction ; I have not the freedom of feeling which, as I think, 
 it is always delightful to assert in love, even when the passion 
 is an eternal one. I have not the right to quarrel in jest, 
 which we women so highly and so rightly prize : is it not the 
 line by which we sound the heart ? I dare not threaten, I 
 must rely for attractiveness on infinite docility and sweetness, 
 I must be impressive through the immenseness of my love ; I 
 would rather die than give up Gennaro, for the holiness of my 
 passion is its only plea for pardon. 
 
 " I did not hesitate between my social dignity and my own 
 little dignity — a secret between me and my conscience. 
 Though I have fits of melancholy, like the clouds which float 
 across the clearest sky, to which we women like to give way, 
 I silence them at once; they would look like regret. Dear 
 me ! I so fully understood the extent of my debt to him that 
 I have equipped myself with unlimited indulgence; but 
 hitherto Gennaro has not aroused my sensitive jealousy. In- 
 deed, I cannot see how my dear great genius can do wrong. 
 I am, my dear, rather like the devotees who argue with their 
 God, for is it not to you that I owe my happiness? And you 
 cannot doubt that I have often thought of you. 
 
 "At last I have seen Italy ! As you saw it, as it ought to 
 be seen, illuminated to the soul by love, as it is by its glorious 
 sun and its masterpieces of art. I pity those who are inces- 
 santly fired by the admiration it calls for at every step when 
 they have not a hand to clasp, a heart into which they may 
 pour the overflow of emotions which then subside as they 
 grow deeper. These two years are to me all my life, and my 
 memory will have reaped a rich harvest. Did you not, as I 
 did, dream of settling at Chiavari, of buying a palace at 
 
108 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Venice, a villa at Sorrento, a house at Florence ? Do not all 
 women who love shun the world ? And I, for ever an out- 
 cast, could I help longing to bury myself in a lovely land- 
 scape, in a heap of flowers, looking out on the pretty sea, or 
 a valley as good as the sea, like the valley you look on from 
 Fiesole ? 
 
 " But, alas, we are poor artists, and want of money is drag- 
 ging the wanderers back to Paris again. Gennaro cannot 
 bear me to feel that I have left all my luxury, and he is 
 bringing a new work, a grand opera, to be rehearsed in Paris. 
 Even at the cost of my love, I cannot bear to meet one of 
 those looks from a woman or a man which would make me 
 feel murderous. Yes ! for I could hack any one to pieces 
 who should condescend to pity me, should offer me the pro- 
 tection of patronage — like that enchanting Chateauneuf who, 
 in the time of Henri III., I think, spurred her horse to trample 
 down the Provost of Paris for some such offense. 
 
 " So I am writing to tell you that without delay I shall 
 arrive to join you at les Touches, and wait for our Gennaro 
 in that quiet spot. You see how bold I am with my bene- 
 factress and sister. Still, the magnitude of the obligation 
 will not betray my heart, like some others, into base ingraU 
 itude. 
 
 "You have told me so much about the difficulties of the 
 journey that I shall try to reach le Croisic by sea. This idea 
 occurred to me on hearing that there was here a little Danish 
 vessel, loaded with marble, which will put in at le Croisic 
 to take up salt on its way back to the Baltic. By this voyage 
 I shall avoid the fatigue and expense of traveling by post. I 
 know you are not alone, and I am glad of it ; I had some 
 remorse in the midst of my happiness. You are the only 
 person with whom I could bear to be alone without Conti. 
 Will it not be a pleasure to you, too, to have a woman with 
 you who will understand your happiness and not be jealous 
 of it? 
 
BEATRIX. 109 
 
 "Well, till our meeting ! The wind is fair, and I am off, 
 sending you a kiss." 
 
 "Well, well, she too knows how to love ! " said Calyste to 
 himself, folding up the letter, with a sad expression. 
 
 This sadness flashed on his mother's heart like a gleam 
 lighting up an abyss. The Baron had just left the room. 
 Fanny bolted the door to the turret, and returned to lean 
 over the back of the chair in which her boy was sitting, as 
 Dido's sister bends over her in Guerin's picture. She kissed 
 his forehead and said — 
 
 " What is the matter, my child ? what makes you unhappy? 
 You promised to account to me for your constant visits to les 
 Touches ; I ought to bless its mistress, you say? " 
 
 "Yes, indeed," he replied. "She, my dear mother, has 
 shown me all the defects of my education in these times, 
 when men of noble birth must acquire personal merit if they 
 are to restore their names to life again. I was as remote 
 from my day as Guerande is from Paris. She has been, in a 
 way, the mother of my intelligence." 
 
 "Not for that can I bless her!" said the Baroness, her 
 eyes filling with tears. 
 
 "Mother," cried Calyste, on whose forehead the hot tears 
 fell, drops of heartbroken motherhood, " mother, do not cry. 
 Just now, when, to do her a pleasure, I proposed scouring 
 the coast from the custom-house hut to the Bourg de Batz, 
 she said to me, ' How anxious your mother would be ! ' " 
 
 " She said so ! Then I can forgive her much," said Fanny. 
 
 " Felicite wishes me well," replied Calyste, "and she often 
 checks herself from saying some of those hasty and doubtful 
 things which artists let fall, so as not to shake my faith — 
 knowing that it is not immovable. She has told me of the 
 life led in Paris by youths of the highest rank, going from 
 their country homes as I might from mine, leaving their 
 family without any fortune, and making great wealth by the 
 
110 BE A TRIX. 
 
 force of their will and their intelligence. I can do what the 
 Baron de Rastignac has done, and he is in the Ministry. 
 She gives me lessons on the piano, she teaches me Italian, 
 she has let me into a thousand social secrets of which no one 
 has an inkling at Guerande. She could not give me the 
 treasures of her love ; she gives me those of her vast intellect, 
 her wit, her genius. She does not choose to be a mere pleas- 
 ure, but a light to me ; she offends none of my creeds ; she 
 believes in the nobility, she loves Brittany " 
 
 " She has changed our Calyste," said the old blind woman, 
 interrupting him, "for I understand nothing of this talk. 
 You have a fine old house over your head, nephew, old' rela- 
 tions who worship you, good old servants ; you can marry a 
 good little Bretonne, a pious and well-bred girl who will make 
 you happy, and you can reserve your ambitions for your eldest 
 son, who will be three times as rich as you are if you are wise 
 enough to live quietly and economically, in the shade and in 
 the peace of the Lord, so as to redeem the family estates. 
 That is as simple as a Breton heart. You will get rich less 
 quickly, but far more surely." 
 
 " Your aunt is right, my darling; she cares as much for 
 your happiness as I do. If I should not succeed in arranging 
 your marriage with Miss Margaret, your uncle Lord Fitz- 
 William's daughter, it is almost certain that Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel will leave her money to either of her nieces you may 
 prefer.'' 
 
 "And there will be a few crown-pieces here," said the old 
 aunt in a low mysterious voice. 
 
 " I ! Marry at my age? " said he, with one of those looks 
 which weaken a mother's reason. "Am I to have no sweet 
 and crazy love-making? Am I never to tremble, thrill, 
 flutter, fear, lie down under a pitiless gaze and presently melt 
 it ? May I never know the beauty that is free, the fancy of 
 the soul, the clouds that fleet over the serene blue of happi- 
 ness and that the breath of enjoyment blows away? May I 
 
BEATRIX. Ill 
 
 never stand under a gutter-spout without discovering that it is 
 raining, like the lovers seen by Diderot ? Shall I never hold 
 a burning coal in the palm of my hand like the Due de Lor- 
 raine ? Shall I never climb a silken rope-ladder, nor cling to 
 a rotten old trellis without feeling it yield ? Am I never to 
 hide in a closet or under a bed ? Must I know nothing of 
 woman but wifely surrender, or of love but its equitable lamp- 
 light ? Is all my curiosity to be satiated before it is excited ? 
 Am I to live without ever feeling that fury of the heart which 
 adds to a man's power? Am I to be a married monk ? No ! 
 I have set my teeth in the Paris apple of civilization. Do you 
 not perceive that by your chaste, your ignorant family habits you 
 have laid the fire that is consuming me, and that I shall be 
 burnt up before I can adore the divinity I see wherever I turn 
 — in the green foliage and in the sand glowing in the sun- 
 shine, and in all the beautiful, lordly, and elegant women who 
 are described in the books and poems I have devoured at Ca- 
 mille's ? Alas ! There is but one such woman in all Guerande, 
 and that is you, mother ! The lovely blue birds of my dreams 
 come from Paris ; they live in the pages of Lord Byron and 
 Scott ; they are Parisina, Effie, Minna ! Or, again, that 
 Royal Duchess I saw on the moors among the heath and 
 broom, whose beauty sent my blood with a rush to the 
 heart! " 
 
 These thoughts were clearer, more brilliant, more living, to 
 the Baroness' eye than art can make them to the reader ; she 
 saw them in a flash shot from the boy's glance like the arrows 
 from a quiver that is upset. Though she had never read 
 Beaumarchais, she thought, as any woman would, that it would 
 be a crime to make this Cherubino marry. 
 
 "Oh, my dear boy! " said she, taking him in her arms, 
 pressing him to her, and kissing his beautiful hair — still her 
 own — " marry when you please, only be happy. It is not my 
 part to tease you." 
 
 Mariotte came to lay the table. Gasselin had gone out to 
 
112 BEATRIX. 
 
 exercise Calyste's horse, for he had not ridden it these two 
 months. The three women, the mother, the aunt, and Mari- 
 otte were of one mind, with the natural cunning of women, to 
 make much of Calyste when he dined at home. Breton penu- 
 riousness, fortified by the memories and habits of childhood, 
 tried to contend with the civilization of Paris so faithfully 
 represented at les Touches, so close to Gnerande. Mariotte 
 tried to disgust her young master with the elaborate dishes 
 prepared in Camille Maupin's kitchen, as his mother and aunt 
 vied with each other in attentions to enmesh their child in 
 the nets of their tenderness, and to make comparisons impos- 
 sible. 
 
 "Ah, ha! You have a lubine (a sort of fish), Monsieur 
 Calyste, and snipe, and pancakes such as you will never get 
 anywhere but here," said Mariotte, with a knowing and tri- 
 umphant air, as she looked down on the white cloth, a perfect 
 sheet of snow. 
 
 After dinner, when his old aunt had settled down to her 
 knitting again, when the cure of Guerande and the Chevalier 
 du Halga came in, attracted by their game of mouche, Calyste 
 went out to go back to les Touches, saying he must return 
 Beatrix's letter. 
 
 Claud Vignon and Mademoiselle des Touches were still at 
 table. The great critic had a tendency to greediness, and 
 this vice was humored by Felicite, who knew how a woman 
 makes herself indispensable by such attentions. 
 
 The dining-room, lately finished by considerable additions, 
 showed how readily and how quickly a woman can marry 
 the nature, adopt the profession, the passions, and the tastes 
 of the man she loves or means to, love. The table had the 
 rich and dazzling appearance which modern luxury, seconded 
 by the improvements in manufactures, stamps on every detail. 
 The noble but impoverished house of du Guenic knew not 
 the antagonist with whom it had to do battle, nor how large a 
 
Beatrix. us 
 
 sum was needed to contend with the brand-new plate brought 
 from Paris by Mademoiselle des Touches, with her china — 
 thought good enough for the country — her fine linen, her 
 silver-gilt, all the trifles on her table, and all the skill of her 
 man-cook. 
 
 Calyste declined to take any of the liqueurs contained in 
 one of the beautiful inlaid cases of precious woods, that 
 might be shrines. 
 
 " Here is your letter," he said, with childish ostentation, 
 looking at Claud, who was sipping a glass of West India 
 liqueur. 
 
 "Well, what do you think of it?" asked Mademoiselle 
 des Touches, tossing the letter across the table to Vignon, 
 who read it, alternately lifting and setting down his glass. 
 
 "Why — that the women of Paris are very happy; they all 
 have men of genius, who love them, to worship." 
 
 " Dear me, you are still but a rustic ! " said Felicite, with a 
 laugh. "What! You did not discover that she already 
 loves him less, that " 
 
 "It is self-evident ! " said Claud Vignon, who had as yet 
 read no more than the first page. "When a woman is really 
 in love, does she trouble her head in the least about her posi- 
 tion ? Is she as finely observant as the Marquise? Can she 
 calculate ? Can she distinguish ? Our dear Beatrix is tied to 
 Conti by her pride ; she is condemned to love him, come 
 what may." 
 
 " Poor woman ! " said Camille. 
 
 Calyste sat staring at the table, but he saw nothing. The 
 beautiful creature in her fantastic costume, as sketched by 
 Felicite that morning, rose before him, radiant with light ; she 
 smiled on him, she played with her fan, and her other hand, 
 emerging from a frill of lace and cherry-colored velvet, lay 
 white and still on the full folds of her magnificent petticoat. 
 
 " This is the very thing for you," said Claud Vignon, with 
 a sardonic smile at Calyste. 
 8 
 
114 BEATRIX. 
 
 Calyste was offended at the words the very thing. 
 
 "Do not suggest the idea of such an intrigue to the dear 
 child ; you do not know how dangerous such a jest may be. 
 I know Beatrix ; she has too much magnanimity of temper to 
 change; beside, Conti will be with her." 
 
 "Ah ! " said Claud Vignon satirically, "a little twinge of 
 jealousy, heh ? " 
 
 " Can you suppose it? " said Camille proudly. 
 
 " You are more clear-sighted than a mother could be," re- 
 plied Claud. 
 
 "But I ask you, is it possible?" and she looked at Ca- 
 lyste. 
 
 "And yet," Vignon went on, "they would be well 
 matched. She is ten years older than he is ; he would be 
 the girl." 
 
 "A girl, monsieur, who has twice been under fire in la 
 Vendee. If there had but been twenty thousand of such 
 girls " 
 
 "I was singing your praise," said Vignon, "an easier 
 matter than singeing your beard." 
 
 " I have a sword to cut the beards of those who wear them 
 too long," retorted Calyste. 
 
 " And I have a tongue that cuts sharply too," replied 
 Vignon, smiling. " We are Frenchmen — the affair can be 
 arranged." 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches gave Calyste a beseeching look, 
 which calmed him at once. 
 
 "Why," said Felicite, to end the discussion, " why is it 
 that youths, like my Calyste there, always begin by loving 
 women no longer young? " 
 
 " I know of no more guileless and generous impulse," said 
 Vignon. " It is the consequence of the delightful qualities 
 of youth. And, beside, to what end would old women come 
 if it were not for such love? You are young and hand- 
 some, and will be for twenty years to come; before you 
 
BEATRIX. 115 
 
 We may speak plainly," he went on, with a keen glance at 
 Mademoiselle des Touches. " In the first place, the semi-dow- 
 agers to whom very young men attach themselves know how 
 to love far better than young women. A youth is too like a 
 woman for a young woman to attract him. Such a passion 
 is too suggestive of the myth of Narcissus. Beside this, there 
 is, I believe, a common want of experience which keeps them 
 asunder. Hence the reason which makes it true that a young 
 woman's heart can only be understood by a man in whom 
 long practice is veiled by his real or assumed passion is the 
 same as that which, allowing for differences of nature, makes 
 a woman past her youth more seductive to a boy ; he is in- 
 tensely conscious that he will succeed with her, and the 
 woman's vanity is intensely flattered by his pursuit of her. 
 
 " Then, again, it is natural that the young should seize on 
 fruit, and autumn offers many fine and luscious kinds. Is it 
 nothing to meet those looks, at once bold and reserved, lan- 
 guishing at the proper moments, soft with the last gleams of 
 love, so warm, so soothing ? And the elaborate elegance of 
 speech, the splendid ripe shoulders so finely filled out, the 
 ample roundness, the rich and undulating plumpness, the 
 hands full of dimples, the pulpy, well-nourished skin, the 
 brow full of overflowing sentiment, on which the light lingers, 
 the hair, so carefully cherished and dressed, where fine part- 
 ings of white skin are delicately traced, and the throat with 
 those fine curves, the inviting nape where every resource of 
 art is applied to bring out the contrast between the hair and 
 the tones of the flesh, to emphasize all the audacity of life 
 and love ? Dark women then get some of the tones of the 
 fairest, the amber shade of maturity. 
 
 " Then, again, these women betray their knowledge of the 
 world in their smiles, and display it in their conversation; 
 they know how to talk ; they will set the whole world before 
 you to raise a smile ; they have sublime touches of dignity 
 and pride ; they can shriek with despair in a way to break 
 
116 BE A TRIX. 
 
 your heart, wail a farewell to love, knowing that it is futile, 
 and only resuscitates passion ; they grow young again by dint 
 of varying the most desperately simple things. They con^ 
 stantly expect to be contradicted as to the falling off they 
 so coquettishly proclaim, and the intoxication of their tri- 
 umph is contagious. Their devotion is complete ; they listen ; 
 in short, they love ; they clutch at love as a man condemned 
 to death clings to the smallest trifles of living ; they are like 
 those lawyers who can urge every plea in a case without fa- 
 tiguing the court; they exhaust every means in their power; 
 indeed, perfect love can only be known in them. 
 
 " I doubt if they are ever forgotten, any more than we can 
 forget anything vast and sublime. 
 
 "A young woman has a thousand other things to amuse 
 her, these women have nothing ; they have no conceit left, no 
 vanity, no meanness; their love is the Loire at its mouth, 
 immense, swelled by every disenchantment, every affluent of 
 life, and that is why — my daughter is dumb ! " he ended, 
 seeing Mademoiselle des Touches in an attitude of ecstasy, 
 clutching Calyste's hand tightly, perhaps to thank him for 
 having been the cause of such a moment for her, of such a 
 tribute of praise that she could detect no snare in it. 
 
 All through the evening Claud Vignon and Felicite were 
 brilliantly witty, telling anecdotes and describing the life of 
 Paris to Calyste, who quite fell in love with Claud, for wit 
 exerts a peculiar charm on men of feeling. 
 
 " I should not be in the least surprised to see Madame de 
 Rochefide land here to-morrow with Conti, who is accom- 
 panying her no doubt," said Claud at the end of the evening. 
 " When I came up from le Croisic the seamen had spied a 
 small ship, Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian." 
 
 This speech brought the color to Camille's cheeks, calm as 
 she was. 
 
 That night, again, Madame du Guenic sat up for her son 
 
BEATRIX. 117 
 
 till one o'clock, unable to imagine what he could be doing at 
 les Touches if Felicite did not love him. 
 
 "He must be in the way," thought this delightful mother. 
 
 "What have you had to talk about so long?" she asked, 
 as she saw him come in. 
 
 "Oh, mother! I never spent a more delightful evening. 
 Genius is a great, a most sublime thing! Why did you not 
 bestow genius on me? With genius a man must be able to 
 choose the woman he loves from all the world ; she must 
 inevitably be his ! " 
 
 "But you are handsome, my Calyste." 
 
 "Beauty has no place but in women. And, beside, Claud 
 Vignon is fine. Men of genius have a brow that beams, eyes 
 where lightnings play — and I, unhappy wretch, I only know 
 how to love." 
 
 "They say that is all-sufficient, my darling," said she, 
 kissing his forehead. 
 
 "Really, truly?" 
 
 "I have been told so. I have had no experience." 
 
 It was now Calyste's turn to kiss his mother's hand with 
 reverence. 
 
 " I will love for all those who might have been your 
 adorers," said he. 
 
 "Dear child, it is in some degree your duty; you have 
 inherited all my feelings. So do not be rash ; try to love 
 only high-souled women, if you must love." 
 
 What young man, welling over with passion and suppressed 
 vitality, but would have had the triumphant idea of going to 
 le Croisic to see Madame de Rochefide land, so as to be able 
 to study her, himself unknown ? Calyste greatly amazed his 
 father and mother, who knew nothing of the fair Marquise's 
 arrival, by setting out in the morning without waiting for 
 breakfast. Heaven knows how briskly the boy stepped out. 
 He felt as if some new strength had come to his aid, he was 
 
118 BE A TRIX. 
 
 so light ; he kept close under the walls of les Touches to avoid 
 being seen. The delightful boy was ashamed of his ardor, and 
 had perhaps a miserable fear of being laughed at ; Felicite and 
 Claud Vignon were so horribly keen -sighted ! And, then, in 
 such cases a youth believes that his forehead is transparent. 
 
 He followed the zigzag path across the maze of salt-marshes, 
 reached the sands, and was across them with a skip and a 
 hop, in spite of the scorching sun that twinkled on them. 
 
 This brought him to the edge of the strand, banked up 
 with a breakwater, near which stands a house where travelers 
 may find shelter from storms, sea-gales, rain, and the whirl- 
 wind. It is not always possible to cross the little strait, nor 
 are there always boats, and it is convenient, while they are 
 crossing from the port, to have shelter for the horses, asses, 
 merchandise, or passengers' luggage. From thence men can 
 scan the open sea and the port of le Croisic ; and from thence 
 Calyste soon discerned two boats coming, loaded with bag- 
 gage — bundles, trunks, carpet-bags, and cases, of which the 
 shape and size proclaimed to the natives the arrival of extra- 
 ordinary things, such as could only belong to a voyager of 
 distinction. 
 
 In one of these boats sat a young woman with a straw hat 
 and green veil, accompanied by a man. This boat was the 
 first to come to land. Calyste felt a thrill ; but their appear- 
 ance showed them to be a maid and a manservant, and he 
 dared not question them. 
 
 "Are you crossing to le Croisic, Monsieur Calyste?" 
 asked one of the boatmen, who knew him ; but he replied 
 only by a negative shake of the head, ashamed of having his 
 name mentioned. 
 
 Calyste was enchanted at the sight of a trunk covered with 
 waterproof canvas, on which he read Madame la Marquise 
 PE Rochefide. The name glittered in his eyes like some 
 talisman ; it had to him a purport of mysterious doom ; he 
 knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he should fall in love 
 
BE A TRIX. 119 
 
 with this woman ; the smallest things, relating to her inter- 
 ested him already, spurred his fancy and his curiosity. Why? 
 In the burning desert of its immeasurable and objectless de- 
 sires does not youth put forth all its powers toward the first 
 woman who comes within reach ? Beatrix had fallen heir to 
 the love that Camille had disdained. 
 
 Calyste watched the landing of the baggage, looking out 
 from time to time at le Croisic, hoping to see a boat come 
 out of the harbor, cross to this little headland, and reveal to 
 him the Beatrix who had already become to him what another 
 Beatrix was to Dante, an eternal statue of marble on whose 
 hands he would hang his flowers and wreaths. He stood with 
 his arms folded, lost in the dream of expectancy. A thing 
 worthy of remark, but which nevertheless has never been re- 
 marked, is the way in which we frequently subordinate our 
 feelings to our will, how we pledge ourself to ourself as it 
 were, and how we make our fate ; chance has certainly far 
 less share in it than we suppose. 
 
 "I see no horses," said the maid, sitting on a trunk. 
 
 "And I see no carriage-road," said the valet. 
 
 " Well, horses have certainly been here," replied the woman, 
 pointing to their traces. "Monsieur," said she, addressing 
 Calyste, " is that the road leading to Guerande? " 
 
 "Yes," said he, "whom are you expecting?" 
 
 "We were told that we should be met, fetched to les 
 Touches. If they are very late, I do not know how madame 
 can dress," said she to the man. "You had better walk on 
 to les Touches. What a land of savages ! " 
 
 It dawned on Calyste that he was in a false position. 
 
 "Then your mistress is going to les Touches?" he asked. 
 
 " Mademoiselle came to meet her at seven this morning:," 
 was the reply. " Ah ! here come the horses." 
 
 Calyste fled, running back to Guerande with the swiftness 
 and lightness of a chamois, and doubling like a hare to avoid 
 being seen by the servants from les Touches; still, he met 
 
120 BEATRIX. 
 
 two of them in the narrow way across the marsh which he 
 had to cross. 
 
 " Shall I go in ? Shall I not? " he asked himself as he saw 
 the tops of the pine trees of les Touches. 
 
 He was afraid ; he returned to Guerande, hang-dog and 
 repentant, and walked up and down the mall, where he con- 
 tinued the discussion with himself. 
 
 He started as he caught sight of les Touches, and studied 
 the weathercocks. 
 
 "She can have no idea of my excitement," said he to 
 himself. 
 
 His wandering thoughts became so many grapnels that 
 caught in his heart and held the Marquise there. Calyste 
 had felt none of these terrors, these anticipatory joys with 
 regard to Camille ; he had first met her on horseback, and 
 his desire had sprung up, as at the sight of a beautiful flower 
 he might have longed to pluck. These vacillations constitute 
 a sort of poem in a timid soul. Fired by the first flames of 
 imagination, these souls rise up in wrath, are appeased, and 
 eager by turns, and in silence and solitude reach the utmost 
 heights of love before they have even spoken to the object of 
 so many struggles. 
 
 Calyste saw from afar, on the mall, the Chevalier du Halga, 
 walking with Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel ; he hid himself. 
 The chevalier and the old lady, believing themselves alone on 
 the mall, were talking aloud. 
 
 "Since Charlotte de Kergarouet is coming to you," said 
 the chevalier, "keep her three or four months. How can 
 you expect her to flirt with Calyste? She never stays here 
 long enough to attempt it ; whereas, if they see each other 
 every day, the two children will end by being desperately in 
 love, and you will see them married this winter. If you say 
 two words of your plans to Charlotte, she will at once say four 
 to Calyste; and a girl of sixteen will certainly win the day 
 against a woman of forty-something! " 
 
BEATRIX. 121 
 
 The two old folk turned to retrace their steps. Calyste 
 heard no more, but he had understood what Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel's plan was. In his present frame of mind nothing 
 could be more disastrous. Is it in the fever of a preconceived 
 passion that a young man will accept as his wife a girl found 
 for him by others ? Calyste, who cared not a straw for Charlotte 
 de Kergarouet, felt inclined to repulse her. Considerations of 
 money could not touch him ; he had been accustomed from 
 childhood to the modest style of his father's house; beside, 
 seeing Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel live as poorly as the Guenics 
 themselves, he had no notion of her wealth. And a youth 
 brought up as Calyste had been would not, in any case, con- 
 sider anything but feeling; and all his mind was set on the 
 Marquise. 
 
 Compared with the portrait drawn by Camille, what was 
 Charlotte? The companion of his childhood, whom he 
 treated as his sister. 
 
 He did not get home until five o'clock. When he went 
 into the room, his mother, with a melancholy smile, handed 
 him a note from Mademoiselle des Touches, as follows : 
 
 "My dear Calyste: — The beautiful Marquise de Roche- 
 fide has arrived ; we count on you to do honor to her advent. 
 Claud, always satirical, declares that you will be Bice and 
 she Dante. The honor of Brittany and of the Guenics is at 
 stake when there is a Casteran to be welcomed. So let us 
 meet soon. Yours, 
 
 " Camille Maupin. 
 
 " Come as you are, without ceremony, or we shall look 
 ridiculous." 
 
 Calyste showed his mother the note, and went at once. 
 "What are these Casterans?" said she to the Baron. 
 "An old Norman family, related to William the Con- 
 
122 BEATRIX. 
 
 queror," he replied. " Their arms are In tierce per fess azure 
 gules and or, a horse rearing argent hoofed or. The beautiful 
 creature for whom le Gars was killed at Fougeres in 1800 was 
 the daughter of a Casteran, who became a nun at Seez and 
 was made abbess, after being thrown over by the Due de 
 Verneuil." 
 
 "And the Rochefides?" 
 
 " I do not know the name ; I should want to see their 
 arms," said he. 
 
 The Baroness was a little relieved at hearing that the Mar- 
 quise Beatrix de Rochefide was of an old family ; still, she 
 felt some alarm at knowing that her son was exposed to fresh 
 fascinations. 
 
 Calyste, as he walked, felt the most violent and yet de- 
 lightful impulses; his throat was choked, his heart full, his 
 brain confused ; he was devoured by fever. He wanted to 
 walk slower, but a superior power urged him on. All young 
 men have known this perturbation of the senses caused by a 
 vague hope : a subtle fire flames within and raises a halo, like 
 the glory shown about the divine persons in a sacred picture, 
 through which they see nature in a glow and woman radiant. 
 Are they not, then, like the saints themselves, full of faith, 
 ardor, hope, and purity? 
 
 The young Breton found the whole party in Camille's little 
 private drawing-room. It was by this time nearly six o'clock ; 
 through the windows the sinking sun shed a ruddy light, 
 broken by the trees ; the air was still, the room was full of 
 the soft gloom that women love so well. 
 
 " Here is the member for Brittany," said Camille Maupin, 
 smiling to her friend, as Calyste lifted the tapestry curtain 
 over the door. "As punctual as a king ! " 
 
 "You recognized his step? " said Claud Vignon to Made- 
 moiselle des Touches. 
 
 Calyste bowed to the Marquise, who merely nodded to him j 
 
BEATRIX. 123 
 
 he had not looked at her. He shook hands with Claud Vig- 
 non, who offered him his hand. 
 
 " Here is the great man of whom you have heard so much, 
 Gennaro Conti," Camille went on, without answering Claud 
 Vignon. 
 
 She introduced to Calyste a man of middle height, thin and 
 slender, with chestnut hair, eyes that were almost orange 
 color, with a white, freckled skin; in short, so exactly the 
 well-known head of Lord Byron that it would be superfluous 
 to describe it — but perhaps he held it better. Conti was not 
 a little proud of this resemblance. 
 
 "I am delighted, being but one day at les Touches, to meet 
 monsieur," said Gennaro. 
 
 "It is my part to say as much to you," replied Calyste, 
 with sufficient ease of manner. 
 
 " He is as handsome as an angel ! " the Marquise said to 
 Felicite. Calyste, standing between the divan and the two 
 women, overheard the words, though spoken in a whisper. 
 He moved to an armchair, and stole watchful looks at the 
 Marquise. In the soft light of the setting sun he saw lounging 
 on the divan, as though a sculptor had placed her in position, 
 a white sinuous figure which seemed to dazzle his sight. 
 Felicite, without knowing it, had served her friend well by 
 her description. 
 
 Beatrix was superior to the not too flattering portrait drawn 
 by Camille. Was it not partly for the stranger's benefit that 
 Beatrix had placed in her splendid hair bunches of blue corn- 
 flowers, which showed off the pale gleam of her ringlets, ar- 
 ranged to frame her face and flicker over her cheeks ? Her 
 eyes were set in circles darkened by fatigue, tut only to the 
 tone of the purest and most opalescent mother-of-pearl ; her 
 cheeks were as bright as her eyes. Under her white skin, as 
 delicate as the silky lining of an egg-shell, life flushed in the 
 purple blood. The finish of her features was exquisite ; 
 her brow seemed diaphanous. This fair and gentle head, 
 
124 BE A TRIX. 
 
 finely set on a long neck of marvelous beauty, lent itself to 
 the most varying expression. 
 
 Her waist, slight enough to span, had a bewitching grace ; 
 her bare shoulders gleamed in the twilight like a white 
 camellia in black hair. The bosom, well supported, but 
 covered with a clear handkerchief, showed two exquisitely 
 enticing curves. The India-muslin dress, white flowered 
 with blue ; the wide sleeves ; the bodice, pointed and without 
 any sash ; the shoes with sandals crossed over fine thread 
 stockings — all showed perfect knowledge of the arts of dress. 
 Earrings of silver filigree, marvels of Genoese work which no 
 doubt were coming into fashion, were admirably suited to the 
 exquisite softness of the fair hair starred with cornflowers. 
 
 At a single eager glance Calyste took in all this beauty, 
 which stamped itself on his soul. Beatrix, so fair, and 
 Felicite, so dark, recalled the "Keepsake" contrasts, so 
 much affected by English engravers and draughtsmen. They 
 were woman's weakness and woman's strength in their utmost 
 expression, a perfect antithesis. These two women could 
 never be rivals ; each had her empire. They were like a 
 delicate pale periwinkle or lily by the side of a sumptuous 
 and gorgeous red poppy, or a turquoise by a ruby. In an 
 instant Calyste was possessed by a passion which crowned the 
 secret working of his hopes, his fears, his doubts. Mademoi- 
 selle des Touches had roused his senses, Beatrix fired his mind 
 and heart. The young Breton was conscious of the birth 
 within himself of an all-conquering force that would respect 
 nothing. And he shot at Conti a look of envy and hatred, 
 gloomy, and full of alarms, a look he had never had for 
 Claud Vignon. 
 
 Calyste called up all his resolution to restrain himself, 
 thinking, nevertheless, that the Turks were very right to keep 
 their women shut up, and that such beautiful creatures should 
 be forbidden to show themselves in their tempting witcheries 
 to young men aflame with love. This hot hurricane was 
 
BEATRIX. 125 
 
 lulled as soon as Beatrix turned her eyes on him and her 
 gentle voice made itself heard ; the poor boy already feared 
 her as he feared God. 
 
 The dinner-bell rang. 
 
 " Calyste, give your arm to the Marquise," said Made- 
 moiselle des Touches, taking Conti on her right and Claud 
 on her left, as she stood aside to let the young couple pass. 
 
 Thus to go down the old staircase of les Touches was to 
 Calyste like a first battle ; his heart failed him, he found noth- 
 ing to say, a faint moisture stood on his brow and down his 
 spine. His arm trembled so violently that at the bottom step 
 the Marquise said to him — 
 
 "What is the matter?" 
 
 "Never," said he in a choked voice, . " never in my life 
 have I seen a woman so beautiful as you are, excepting my 
 mother; and I cannot control my agitation." 
 
 "Why, have you not Camille Maupin here?" 
 
 "But what a difference ! " said Calyste artlessly. 
 
 " Ha ! Calyste," Felicite whispered in his ear ; " did I not 
 tell you that you would forget me as though I had never 
 existed? Sit there, next her on the right, and Vignon on 
 her left. As for you, Gennaro, I keep you by me," she added, 
 laughing; " we will keep an eye on her flirtations." 
 
 The accent in which Camille spoke struck Claud, who 
 looked at her with the wily and apparently absent glance, 
 which in him showed that he was observant. He never 
 once ceased watching Mademoiselle des Touches throughout 
 dinner. 
 
 " Flirtations ! ' ' replied the Marquise, drawing off her gloves 
 and showing her beautiful hands; "I have every excuse ; on 
 one side of me I have a poet," and she turned to Claud, "on 
 the other poetry." 
 
 Gennaro bestowed on Calyste a gaze full of flattery. 
 
 By candle-light Beatrix looked even more beautiful than 
 before. The pale gleam of the wax-lights cast a satin sheen 
 
126 BEATRIX. 
 
 on her forehead, set sparks in her gazelle-like eyes, and fell 
 through her silky ringlets, making separate hairs shine like 
 threads of gold. With a graceful movement she threw off 
 her gauze scarf, uncovering her shoulders. Calyste could then 
 see the delicate nape, as white as milk, with a deep hollow 
 that parted into two, curving off toward each shoulder with 
 a lovely and delusive symmetry. The changes of aspect in 
 which pretty women indulge produce very little effect in the 
 fashionable world, where every eye is blase, but they commit 
 fearful ravages in a soul as fresh as was Calyste's. This bust, 
 so unlike Camille's, revealed a perfectly different character in 
 Beatrix. There could be seen pride of race, a tenacity pecu- 
 liar to the aristocracy, and a certain hardness in that double 
 muscle of the shoulder, which is perhaps the last surviving 
 vestige of the conquerors' strength. 
 
 Calyste found it very difficult to seem to eat ; he was full 
 of nervous feelings, which took away his hunger. As in all 
 young men, nature was in the clutches of those throes which 
 precede first love, and stamp it so deeply on the soul. At his 
 age the ardor of. the heart repressed by the ardor of the 
 moral sense leads to an internal conflict, which accounts for 
 the long, respectful hesitancy, the deep absorption of love, 
 the absence of all self-interest — all the peculiar attractions of 
 youths whose heart and life are pure. 
 
 As he noted — by stealth, so as not to rouse Gennaro's 
 jealous suspicions — all the details which make the Marquise 
 de Rochefide so supremely beautiful, Calyste was oppressed 
 by the majesty of the lady beloved ; he felt himself shrink 
 before the haughtiness of some of her glances, the imposing 
 aspect of her face, overflowing with aristocratic self-conscious- 
 ness, a pride which women can express by slight movements, 
 by airs of the head and a magnificent slowness of gesture, 
 which are all less affected and less studied than might be sup- 
 posed. There is a sentiment behind all these modes of ex- 
 pression. The ambiguous position in which Beatrix found 
 
JB£A TRIX. 127 
 
 herself compelled her to keep a watch over herself, to be im- 
 posing without being ridiculous ; and women of the highest 
 stamp can all achieve this, though it is the rock on which 
 ordinary women are wrecked. 
 
 Beatrix could guess from Felicite's looks all the secret 
 adoration she inspired in her neighbor, and that it was un- 
 worthy of her to encourage it ; so from time to time she 
 bestowed on him a repellent glance that fell on him like an 
 avalanche of snow. The unfortunate youth appealed to 
 Mademoiselle des Touches by a gaze in which she felt the 
 tears kept down in his heart by superhuman determination, 
 and Felicite kindly asked him why he ate nothing. Calyste 
 stuffed to order, and made a feint of joining in the conversa- 
 tion. The idea of being tiresome instead of agreeable was 
 unendurable, and hammered at his brain. He was all the 
 more bashful because he saw, behind the Marquise's chair, the 
 manservant he had met in the morning on the jetty, who 
 would no doubt report his curiosity. 
 
 Whether he were contrite or happy, Madame de Rochefide 
 paid no attention to him. Mademoiselle des Touches had 
 led her to talk of her journey in Italy, and she gave a very 
 witty account of the point-blank fire of passion with which a 
 little Russian diplomat at Florence had honored her, laugh- 
 ing at these little young men who fling themselves at a woman 
 as a locust rushes on grass. She made Claud Vignon and 
 Gennaro laugh, and Felicite also ; but these darts of sarcasm 
 went straight to Calyste's heart, who only heard words 
 through the humming in his ears and brain. The poor boy 
 made no vow, as some obstinate men have done, to win this 
 woman at any cost ; no, he was not angry, he was miserable. 
 When he discerned in Beatrix an intention to sacrifice him at 
 Gennaro's feet, he only said to himself — " If only I can 
 serve her in any way ! " and allowed himself to be trampled 
 on with the meekness of a lamb. 
 
 "How is it," said Claud Vignon to the Marquise, "that 
 
128 BEATRIX. 
 
 you, who so much admire poetry, give it so bad a reception ? 
 Such artless admiration, so sweet in its expression, with no 
 second thought, no reservation, is not that the poetry of the 
 heart ? Confess now that it gives you a sense of satisfaction 
 and well-being." 
 
 " Certainly," she replied, " but we should be very unhappy 
 and, above all, very worthless if we yielded to every passion 
 we inspire." 
 
 " If you made no selection," said Conti, " we should not 
 be so proud of being loved." 
 
 " When shall I be chosen and distinguished by a woman ? " 
 Calyste wondered to himself, restraining his agony of emotion 
 with difficulty. 
 
 He reddened like a sufferer on whose wound a finger is 
 laid. Mademoiselle des Touches was startled by the expres- 
 sion she saw in Calyste's face, and tried to comfort him with 
 a sympathizing look. Claud Vignon caught that look. From 
 that moment the writer's spirits rose and he vented his gayety 
 in sarcasms : he maintained that love lived only in desire, that 
 most women were mistaken in their love, that they often loved 
 for reasons unknown to the men and to themselves, that they 
 sometimes wished to deceive themselves, that the noblest of 
 them were still insincere. 
 
 " Be content to criticise books, and do not criticise our 
 feelings," said Camille, with an imperious flash. 
 
 The dinner ceased to be lively. Claud Vignon's satire had 
 made both the women grave. Calyste was in acute torment 
 in spite of the happiness of gazing at Beatrix. Conti tried 
 to read Madame de Rochefide's eyes and guess her thoughts. 
 When the meal was ended, Mademoiselle des Touches took 
 Calyste's arm, left the other two men to the Marquise, and 
 allowed them to lead the way, so as to say to the youth — 
 
 '•' My dear boy, if the Marquise falls in love with you, she 
 will pitch Conti out of the window ; but you are behaving 
 in such a way as to tighten their bonds. Even if she were 
 
BE A TRIX. 129 
 
 enchanted by your worship, could she take any notice of it? 
 Command yourself." 
 
 "She is so hard on me, she will never love me," said 
 Calyste; " and if she does not love me, I shall die." 
 
 "Die? you! My dear Calyste, you are childish," said 
 Camille. " You would not have died for me, then ? " 
 
 "You made yourself my friend," replied he. 
 
 After the little chat that always accompanies the coffee, 
 Vignon begged Conti to sing. Mademoiselle des Touches 
 sat down to the piano. Camille and Gennaro sang Dunque 
 il mio bene tu mia sarai, the final duet in Zingarelli's " Romeo 
 and Juliet," one of the most pathetic pages of modern 
 music. The passage Di tanti palpiti expresses love in all its 
 passion. Calyste, sitting in the armchair where he had sat 
 when Felicite had told him the story of the Marquise, lis- 
 tened devoutly. Beatrix and Vignon stood on each side of 
 the piano. 
 
 Conti's exquisite voice blended perfectly with Felicite's. 
 They both had frequently sung the piece ; they knew all its 
 resources, and agreed wonderfully in bringing them out. It 
 was in their hands what the musician had intended to create, 
 a poem of divine melancholy, the swan's song of two lovers. 
 When the duet was ended the hearers were all in a state of 
 feeling that cannot find expression in vulgar applause. 
 
 " Oh, Music is the queen of the arts ! " exclaimed the Mar- 
 quise. 
 
 " Camille gives the first place to youth and beauty — the 
 queen of all poetry," said Claud Vignon. 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches looked at Claud, dissembling a 
 vague uneasiness. Beatrix, not seeing Calyste, looked round 
 to see what effect the music had on him, less out of interest 
 in him than for Conti's satisfaction. In a recess she saw a 
 pale face covered with tears. At the sight she hastily turned 
 away, as if some acute pain had stung her, and looked at 
 Gennaro. 
 9 
 
130 BEATRIX. 
 
 It was not merely that Music had risen up before Calyste, 
 had touched him with her divine hand, had launched him on 
 creation and stripped it of its mysteries to his eyes — he was 
 overwhelmed by Conti's genius. In spite of what Camille 
 Maupin had told him of the man's character, he believed at 
 this moment that the singer must have a beautiful soul, a heart 
 full of love. How was he to contend against such an artist? 
 How could a woman ever cease to adore him? The song 
 must pierce her soul like another soul. 
 
 The poor boy was as much overcome by poetic feeling as by 
 despair : he saw himself as so small a thing ! This ingenuous 
 conviction of his own nothingness was to be read in his face, 
 mingling with his admiration. He did not observe Beatrix, 
 who, attracted to Calyste by the contagion of genuine feeling, 
 pointed him out by a glance to Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 
 " Oh ! such a delightful nature ! " said Felicite. " Conti, 
 you will never receive any applause to compare with the 
 homage paid you by this boy. Let us sing a trio. Come, 
 Beatrix, my dear." 
 
 When the Marquise, Camille, and Conti had returned to 
 the piano, Calyste rose unperceived, flung himself on a sofa 
 in the adjoining bedroom, of which the door was open, and 
 remained there sunk in despair. 
 
PART II. 
 
 THE DRAMA. ' 
 
 "What is the matter with you, my boy?" said Claud 
 Vignon, stealing quietly in after hiirf and taking his hand. 
 "You are in love, you believe yourself scorned; but it is not 
 so. In a few days the field will be open to you, you will be 
 supreme here, and be loved by more than one woman ; in 
 fact, if you know how to manage matters, you will be a sultan 
 here." 
 
 " What are you saying? " cried Calyste, starting to his feet 
 and dragging Claud away into the library. "Who that is 
 here loves me ? " 
 
 "Camille," said Vignon. 
 
 "Camille loves me?" said Calyste. "And what of you?" 
 
 "I," said Claud, "I " 
 
 He paused. Then he sat down and rested his head against 
 a pillow, in the deepest melancholy. 
 
 "I am weary of life," he went on, after a short silence, 
 "and I have not the courage to end it. I wish I were mis- 
 taken in what I have told you ; but within the last few days 
 more than one vivid gleam has flashed upon me. I did not 
 wander about the rocks of le Croisic for my amusement, on 
 my soul ! The bitterness of my tone when, on my return, I 
 found you talking to Camille, had its source in the depths of 
 my wounded self-respect. I will have an explanation presently 
 with Camille. Two minds so clear-sighted as hers and mine 
 cannot deceive each other. Between two professional duelists 
 a fight is soon ended. So I may at once announce my de- 
 parture. Yes, I shall leave les Touches, to-morrow perhaps, 
 with Conti. 
 
 " When we are no longer here, some strange — perhaps ter- 
 
 (131) 
 
132 BE A TRIX. 
 
 rible — things will certainly happen, and I shall be sorry not 
 to look on at these struggles of passion, so rare in France, 
 and so dramatic ! You are very young to enter on so perilous 
 a fight ; I am interested in you. But for the deep disgust I 
 feel for women, I would stay to help you to play the game ; it 
 is difficult ; you may lose it ; you have two remarkable women 
 to deal with, and you are already too much in love with one 
 to make use of the other. 
 
 "Beatrix must surely have some tenacity in her nature, and 
 Camille has magnanimity. You, perhaps, like some fragile 
 and brittle thing, will be dashed between the two rocks, swept 
 away by the torrent of passion. Take care." 
 
 Calyste's amazement on hearing these words allowed Claud 
 Vignon to finish his speech and leave the lad, who remained 
 in the position of a traveler in the Alps to whom his guide 
 has proved the depth of an abyss by dropping in a stone. 
 
 He had heard from Claud himself that Camille loved him, 
 Calyste, at the moment when he knew that his love for Beatrix 
 would end only with his life. There was something in the 
 situation too much for such a guileless young soul. Crushed 
 by immense regret that weighed upon him for the past, killed 
 by the perplexities of the present, between Beatrix, whom he 
 loved, and Camille, whom he no longer loved, when Claud said 
 that she loved him, the poor youth was desperate ; he sat 
 undecided, lost in thought. He vainly sought to guess the 
 reasons for which Felicite had rejected his devotion, to go to 
 Paris and accept that of Claud Vignon. 
 
 Now and again Madame de Rochefide's voice came to his 
 ear, pure and clear, reviving the violent excitement from 
 which he had fled in leaving the drawing-room. Several 
 times he could hardly master himself so far as to restrain a 
 fierce desire to seize her and snatch her away. What would 
 become of him? Could he ever come again to les Touches? 
 Knowing that Camille loved him, how could he here worship 
 Beatrix? He could find no issue from his difficulties. 
 
BE A TRIX. 133 
 
 Gradually silence fell on the house. Without heeding it, 
 he heard the shutting of doors. Then suddenly he counted 
 the twelve strokes of midnight told by the clock in the next 
 room, where the voices of Camille and Claud now roused 
 him from the numbing contemplation of the future. A light 
 shone there amid the darkness. Before he could show him- 
 self to them, he heard these dreadful words spoken by Claud 
 Vignon. 
 
 "You came back from Paris madly in love with Calyste," 
 he was saying to Felicite. "But you were appalled at the 
 consequences of such a passion at your age ; it would lead you 
 into a gulf, a hell — to suicide perhaps. Love can exist only 
 in the belief that it is eternal, and you could foresee, a few 
 paces before you in life, a terrible parting — weariness and old 
 age putting a dreadful end to a beautiful poem. You remem- 
 ber Adolphe, the disastrous termination of the loves of Mad- 
 ame de Stael and Benjamin Constant, who were, nevertheless, 
 much better matched in age than you and Calyste. 
 
 " So, then, you took me, as men take fascines, to raise an 
 intrenchment between yourself and the enemy. But while 
 you tried to attach me to les Touches, was it not that you 
 might spend your days in secret worship of your divinity? 
 But to carry out such a scheme, at once unworthy and sub- 
 lime, you should have chosen a common man or a man so 
 absorbed by lofty thought that he would be easily deceived. 
 You fancied that I was simple and as easy to cheat as a man 
 of genius. I am, it would seem, no more than a clever man . 
 I saw through you. When yesterday I sang the praises of 
 women of your age and explained to you why Calyste loved 
 you, do you suppose that I thought all your ecstatic looks — 
 brilliant, enchanting — were meant for me ? Had I not al- 
 ready read your soul? The eyes, indeed, were fixed on mine, 
 but the heart throbbed for Calyste. You have never been 
 loved, my poor Maupin ; and you never will be now, after 
 denying yourself the beautiful fruit which chance put in your 
 
134 BEATRIX. 
 
 way at the very gates of woman's hell, which must close at 
 the touch of the figure 50." 
 
 "And why has love always avoided me?" she asked, in a 
 broken voice. "You who know everything, tell me." 
 
 "Why, you are unamiable," said he; " you will not yield 
 to love, you want it to yield to you. You can perhaps be led 
 into the mischief and spirit of a school-boy ; but you have no 
 youth of heart ; your mind is too deep, you never were artless, 
 and you cannot begin now. Your charm lies in mystery ; it 
 is abstract, and not practical. And, again, your power repels 
 very powerful natures ; they dread a conflict. Your strength 
 may attract young souls, which, like Calyste's, love to feel 
 protected ; but, in the long run, it is fatiguing. You are 
 superior, sublime ! You must accept the disadvantages of 
 these two qualities ; they are wearisome." 
 
 "What a verdict!" cried Camille. "Can I never be a 
 woman? Am I a monster? " 
 
 "Possibly," said Claud. 
 
 " We shall see," cried the woman, stung to the quick. 
 
 " Good-night, my dear. I leave to-morrow. I owe you 
 no grudge, Camille ; I think you the greatest of women ; but 
 if I should consent to play the part any longer of a screen or 
 a curtain," said Claud, with two marked inflexions of his 
 voice, " you would despise me utterly. We can part now 
 without grief or remorse; we have no happiness to mourn 
 for, no hopes to disappoint. 
 
 "To you, as to some infinitely rare men of genius, love is 
 not what nature made it — a vehement necessity, with acute 
 but transient delights attached to its satisfaction, and then 
 death ; you regard it as what Christianity has made it : an ideal 
 realm full of noble sentiments, of immense small things, 
 of poetry and spiritual sensations, of sacrifices, flowers of 
 morality, enchanting harmonies, placed far above all vulgar 
 grossness, but whither two beings joined to be one angel are 
 carried up on the wings of pleasure. This was what I hoped 
 
BE A TRIX. 135 
 
 for ; I thought I held one of the keys which open the door 
 that is shut to so many persons, and through which we soar 
 into infinitude. You were there already ! And so I was 
 deceived. 
 
 "I am going back to misery in my vast prison, Paris. 
 Such a deception at the beginning of my career would have 
 been enough to make me flee from woman ; now, it fills my 
 soul with such disenchantment as casts me for ever into ap- 
 palling solitude ; I shall be destitute even of the faith which 
 helped the holy fathers to people it with sacred visions. 
 This, my dear Camille, is what a superior nature brings us to. 
 We may each of us sing the terrible chant that a poet has put 
 into the mouth of Moses addressing the Almighty — 
 
 " ' O Lord ! Thou hast made me powerful and alone ! ' " 
 
 At this moment Calyste came in. 
 
 " I ought to let you know that I am here," said he. 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches looked absolutely terrified ; a 
 sudden color flushed her calm features with a fiery red. All 
 through the scene she was handsomer than she had ever been 
 in her life. 
 
 "We thought you had gone, Calyste," said Claud; "but 
 this involuntary indiscretion on both sides will have done no 
 harm ; perhaps you will feel more free at les Touches now 
 that you know Felicite so completely. Her silence shows me 
 that I was not mistaken as to the part she intended that I 
 should play. She loves you, as I told you ; but she loves you 
 for yourself and not for herself — a feeling which few women 
 are fitted to conceive of or to cling to : very few of them 
 know the delights of pain kept alive by desire. It is one of 
 the grander passions reserved for men ; but she is somewhat 
 of a man," he added, with a smile. "Your passion for 
 Beatrix will torture her and make her happy, both at once." 
 
 Tears rose to Mademoiselle des Touches' eyes ; she dared 
 not look either at the merciless Claud or the ingenuous 
 
136 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Calyste. She was frightened at having been understood J 
 she had not supposed that any man, whatever his gifts, 
 could divine such a torment of refined feeling, such lofty 
 heroism as hers. And Calyste, seeing her so humiliated at 
 finding her magnanimity betrayed, sympathized with the 
 agitation of the woman he had placed so high, and whom 
 he beheld so stricken. By an irresistible impulse, he fell at 
 Camille's feet and kissed her hands, hiding his tear-washed 
 face in them. 
 
 "Claud!" she cried, "do not desert me; what will be- 
 come of me?" 
 
 "What have you to fear?" replied the critic. "Calyste 
 already loves the Marquise like a madman. You can cer- 
 tainly have no stronger barrier between him and yourself 
 than this passion fanned into life by your own act. It is 
 quite as effectual as I could be. Yesterday there was danger 
 for you and for him ; but to-day everything will give you 
 maternal joys," and he gave her a mocking glance. "You 
 will be proud of his triumphs." 
 
 Felicite looked at Calyste, who, at these words, raised his 
 head with a hasty movement. Claud Vignon was suffi- 
 ciently revenged by the pleasure he took in seeing their 
 confusion. 
 
 "You pushed him toward Madame de Rochefide," Vig- 
 non went on ; " he is now under the spell. You have dug 
 your own grave. If you had but trusted yourself to me, 
 you would have avoided the disasters that await you." 
 
 "Disasters!" cried Camille Maupin, raising Calyste's 
 head to the level of her own, kissing his hair and wetting 
 it with her tears. "No, Calyste. Forget all you have just 
 heard, and count me for nothing ! " 
 
 She stood up in front of the two men, drawn to her full 
 height, quelling them by the lightnings that flashed from her 
 eyes in which all her soul shone. 
 
 "While Claud was speaking," she went on, "I saw all 
 
BEATRIX. 157 
 
 the beauty, the dignity of hopeless love ; is it not the 
 only sentiment that brings us near to God ? Do not love 
 me, Calyste ; but I — I will love you as no other woman 
 can ever love ! " 
 
 It was the wildest cry that ever a wounded eagle sent 
 out from his eyrie. Claud, on one knee, took her hand and 
 kissed it. 
 
 "Now go, my dear boy," said Mademoiselle des Touches 
 to Calyste ; " your mother may be uneasy." 
 
 Calyste returned to Guerande at a leisurely pace, turning 
 around to see the light which shone from the windows of 
 Beatrix's rooms. He was himself surprised that he felt so 
 little pity for Camille ; he was almost annoyed with her for 
 having deprived him of fifteen months of happiness. And 
 again, now and then, he felt the same thrill in himself that 
 Camille had just caused him, he felt the tears she had shed 
 on his hair, he suffered in her suffering, he fancied he could 
 hear the moans — for, no doubt, she was moaning — of this 
 wonderful woman for whom he had so longed a few days 
 since. 
 
 As he opened the courtyard gate at home, where all was 
 silent, he saw through the window his mother working by 
 the primitive lamp while waiting for him. Tears rose to his 
 eyes at the sight. 
 
 "What more has happened?" asked Fanny, her face ex- 
 pressive of terrible anxiety. Calyste's only reply was to 
 clasp his mother in his arms and kiss her cheeks, her fore- 
 head, her hair, with the passionate effusion which delights a 
 mother, infusing into her the subtle fires of the life she 
 gave. 
 
 " It is you that I love ! " said Calyste to his mother, blush- 
 ing and almost shamefaced; "you who live for me alone, 
 whom I would fain make happy." 
 
 " But you are not in your usual frame of mind, my child," 
 
138 BEATRIX. 
 
 said the Baroness, looking at her son. "What has hap- 
 pened ?" 
 
 " Camille loves me," said he; "and I no longer love 
 her." 
 
 The Baroness drew him toward her and kissed him on the 
 forehead, and in the deep silence of the gloomy old tapes- 
 tried room he could hear the rapid beating of his mother's 
 heart. The Irishwoman was jealous of Camille, and had 
 suspected the truth. While awaiting her son night after 
 night she had studied that woman's passion ; led by the light 
 of persistent meditation, she had entered into Camille's 
 heart ; and without being able to account for it, she had 
 understood that in that unwedded soul there was a sort of 
 motherly affection. Calyste's story horrified this simple and 
 guileless mother. 
 
 " Well," said she, after a pause, " love Madame de Roche- 
 fide; she will cause me no sorrow." 
 
 Beatrix was not free ; she could not upset any of the plans 
 they had made for Calyste's happiness, at least so Fanny 
 thought ; she saw in her a sort of daughter-in-law to love, and 
 not a rival mother to contend with. 
 
 " But Beatrix will never love me ! " cried Calyste. 
 
 " Perhaps," replied the Baroness, with a knowing air. 
 " Did you not say that she is to be alone to-morrow ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, my child," said the mother, coloring, "jealousy 
 lurks in all our hearts, but I did not know that I should ever 
 find it at the bottom of my own, for I did not think that any 
 one would try to rob me of my Calyste's affection ! " She 
 sighed. " I fancied," she went on, " that marriage would be 
 to you what it was to me. What lights you have thrown on 
 my mind during these two months ! What colors are reflected 
 on your very natural passion, my poor darling! Well, still 
 seem to love your Mademoiselle des Touches ; the Marquise 
 will be jealous of her and will be yours." 
 
BE A IRIX. 139 
 
 " Oh, my sweet mother, Camille would never have told me 
 that ! " cried Calyste, taking his mother by the waist and 
 kissing her on the neck. 
 
 "You make me very wicked, you bad child," said she, 
 quite happy at seeing the beaming face hope gave to her son, 
 who gaily went up the winding stairs. 
 
 Next morning Calyste desired Gasselin to stand on the 
 road from Guerande to Saint-Nazaire and watch for Made- 
 moiselle des Touches' carriage ; then, as it went past, he was 
 to count the persons in it. 
 
 Gasselin returned just as the family had sat down together 
 at breakfast. 
 
 " What now can have happened?" said Mademoiselle du 
 Guenic ; " Gasselin is running as if Guerande were burning." 
 
 "He must have caught the rat," said Mariotte, who was 
 bringing in the coffee, milk, and toast. 
 
 " He is coming from the town and not from the garden," 
 replied the blind woman. 
 
 "But the rat's hole is behind the wall to the front by the 
 street," said Mariotte. 
 
 " Monsieur le Chevalier, there were five of them ; four 
 inside and the coachman." 
 
 " Two ladies on the back seat ? " asked Calyste. 
 
 "And two gentlemen in front," replied Gasselin. 
 
 " Saddle my father's horse, ride after them ; be at Saint- 
 Nazaire by the time the boat starts for Paimbceuf ; and if the 
 two men go on board, come back and tell me as fast as you 
 can gallop." 
 
 Gasselin went. 
 
 "Why, nephew, you have the very devil in you!" ex- 
 claimed old Aunt Zephirine. 
 
 "Let him please himself, sister," cried the Baron. "He 
 was as gloomy as an owl, and now he is as merry as a lark." 
 
 " Perhaps you told him that our dear Charlotte was com- 
 ing," said the old lady, turning to her sister-in-law. 
 
140 BEATRIX. 
 
 "No," replied the Baroness. 
 
 " I thought he might wish to go to meet her," said Made- 
 moiselle du Guenic slily. 
 
 "If Charlotte is to stay three months with her aunt he has 
 time enough to see her in," replied the Baroness. 
 
 "Why, sister, what has occurred since yesterday," asked 
 the old lady. "You were so delighted to think that Made- 
 moiselle de Pen-Hoel was going this morning to fetch her 
 niece." 
 
 "Jacqueline wants me to marry Charlotte to snatch me from 
 perdition, aunt," said Calyste, laughing, and giving his mother 
 a look of intelligence. " I was on the mall this morning when 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel was talking to Monsieur du Halga ; 
 she did not reflect that it would be far worse perdition for me 
 to be married at my age." 
 
 "It is written above," cried the old aunt, interrupting 
 Calyste, " that I am to die neither happy nor at peace. I 
 should have liked to see our family continued, and some of 
 our lands redeemed — but nothing of the kind ! Can you, my 
 fine nephew, put anything in the scale to outweigh such duties 
 as these?" 
 
 "Why," said the Baron, "can Mademoiselle des Touches 
 hinder Calyste from marrying in due course? I must goto 
 see her." 
 
 "I can assure you, father, that Felicite will never be an 
 obstacle in the way of my marriage." 
 
 " I cannot make head or tail of it ! " said the blind woman, 
 who knew nothing of her nephew's sudden passion for the 
 Marquise de Rochefide. 
 
 The mother kept her son's secret ; in such matters silence 
 is instinctive in all women. The old aunt sank into deep 
 meditation, listening with all her might, spying every voice, 
 every sound, to guess the mystery they were evidently keeping 
 from her. 
 
 Gasselin soon returned, and told his young master that he. 
 
Spare the horses, my boy — they have twelve 
 leagues before them." 
 
BE A TR1X. 141 
 
 had not needed to go so far as Saint-Nazaire to learn that 
 Mademoiselle des Touches and the lady would return alone ; 
 he had heard it in town, from Bernus the carrier, who had 
 taken charge of the gentlemen's baggage. 
 
 " They will come back alone ? " said Calyste. "Bring out 
 my horse." 
 
 Gasselin supposed from his young master's voice that there 
 was something serious on hand ; he saddled both the horses, 
 loaded the pistols without saying anything, and dressed to 
 ride out with Calyste. Calyste was so delighted to know that 
 Claud and Gennaro were gone that he never thought of the 
 party he would meet at Saint-Nazaire ; he thought only of the 
 pleasure of escorting the Marquise. He took his old father's 
 hands and pressed them affectionately, he kissed his mother, 
 and put his arm round his old aunt's waist. 
 
 "Well, at any rate I like him better thus than when he is 
 sad," said old Zephirine. • 
 
 "Where are you off to, chevalier?" asked his father. 
 
 "To Saint-Nazaire." 
 
 " The deuce you are ! And when is the wedding to be?" 
 said the Baron, who thought he was in a hurry to see Charlotte 
 de Kergarouet. "I should like to be a grandfather; it is 
 high time." 
 
 When Gasselin showed his evident intention of riding out 
 with Calyste, it occurred to the young man that he might 
 return in Camille's carriage with Beatrix, leaving his horse 
 in Gasselin's care, and he clapped the man on the shoulder, 
 saying — 
 
 " That was well thought of." 
 
 "So I should think," replied Gasselin. 
 
 "Spare the horses, my boy," said his father, coming out 
 on the steps with Fanny; "they have twelve leagues before 
 them." 
 
 Calyste exchanged looks full of meaning with his mother 
 and was gone. 
 
142 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "Dearest treasure!" said she, seeing him bend his head 
 under the top of the gate. 
 
 "God preserve him!" replied the Baron, "for we shall 
 never make another." 
 
 This little speech, in the rather coarse taste of a country 
 gentleman, made the Baroness shiver. 
 
 " My nephew is not so much in love with Charlotte as to rush 
 to meet her," said old mademoiselle to Mariotte, who was 
 clearing the table. 
 
 " Oh, a fine lady has come to les Touches, a Marquise, and 
 he is running after her. Well, well, he is young ! " said 
 Mariotte. 
 
 "Those women will be the death of him," said Made- 
 moiselle du Guenic. 
 
 "That won't kill him, mademoiselle, quite the contrary," 
 replied Mariotte, who seemed quite happy in Calyste's hap- 
 piness. 
 
 Calyste was riding at a pace th'at might have killed his 
 horse, when Gasselin very happily asked his master whether 
 he wished to arrive before the departure of the boat; this was 
 by no means his purpose ; he had no wish to be seen by either 
 Conti or Vignon. The young man reined in his horse and 
 looked complacently at the double furrow traced by the wheels 
 of the carriage on the sandy parts of the road. He was wildly 
 gay merely at the thought : "She passed this way; she will 
 come back this way ; her eyes rested on those woods, on these 
 trees ! " 
 
 " What a pretty road ! " said he to Gasselin, looking around 
 admiringly. 
 
 "Yes, sir, Brittany is the finest country in the world," re- 
 plied the servant. "Are there such flowers in the hedges 
 or green lanes that wind like this one anywhere else to be 
 found?" 
 
 "Nowhere, Gasselin." 
 
 " Here comes Bernus' carriage,'* said Gasselin. 
 
BEATRIX. 143 
 
 " Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel will be in it with her niece ; 
 let us hide," said Calyste. 
 
 " Hide here, sir ! are you crazy ? We are in the midst of 
 the sands." 
 
 The carriage, which was in fact crawling up a sandy hill 
 above Saint-Nazaire, presently appeared, in all the artless 
 simplicity of rude Breton construction. To Calyste's great 
 astonishment, the conveyance was full. 
 
 " We have left Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel and her sister 
 and her niece in a great pother," said the driver to Gasselin ; 
 "all the places had been taken by the custom-house." 
 
 " I am done for ! " cried Calyste. 
 
 The vehicle was in fact full of custom-house men, on their 
 way, no doubt, to relieve those in charge at the salt-marshes. 
 
 When Calyste reached the little esplanade surrounding the 
 church of Saint-Nazaire, whence there is a view of Paimboeuf 
 and of the majestic estuary of the Loire where it struggles with 
 the tide, he found Camille and the Marquise waving their 
 handkerchiefs to bid a last farewell to the two passengers borne 
 away by the steam packet. Beatrix was quite bewitching, her 
 face tenderly shaded by the reflection from a rice-straw hat on 
 which poppies were lightly piled, tied by a scarlet ribbon ; in 
 a flowered India-muslin dress, one little slender foot put for- 
 ward in a green-gaitered shoe, leaning on her slight parasol- 
 stick, and waving her well-gloved hand. Nothing is more 
 strikingly effective than a woman on a rock, like a statue on 
 its pedestal. 
 
 Conti could see Calyste go up to Camille. 
 
 "I thought," said the youth to Mademoiselle des Touches, 
 "that you two ladies would be returning alone." 
 
 "That was very nice of you, Calyste," she replied, taking 
 his hand. Beatrix looked around, glanced at her young 
 adorer, and gave him the most imperious flash at her com- 
 mand. A smile that the Marquise caught on Canaille's eloquent 
 lips made her feel the vulgarity of this impulse worthy of a 
 
144 BEATRIX. 
 
 mere bourgeoise. Madame de Rochefide then said with a 
 smile to Calyste — 
 
 "And was it not rather impertinent to suppose that I could 
 bore Camille on the way?" 
 
 " My dear, one man for two widows is not much in the 
 way," said Mademoiselle des Touches, taking Calyste's arm, 
 and leaving Beatrix to gaze after the boat. 
 
 At this instant Calyste heard in the street of what must be 
 called the port of Saint-Nazaire the voices of Mademoiselle 
 de Pen-Hoel, Charlotte, and Gasselin, all three chattering 
 like magpies. The old maid was catechising Gasselin, and 
 wanted to know what had brought him and his master to 
 Saint-Nazaire ; Mademoiselle des Touches' carriage had made 
 a commotion. 
 
 Before the lad could escape, Charlotte had caught sight of 
 him. 
 
 "There is Calyste ! " cried the girl, pointing him out to 
 her companions. 
 
 "Go and offer them my carriage; their woman can sit by 
 my coachman," said Camille, who knew that Madame de Ker- 
 garouet with her daughter and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel 
 had failed to get places. 
 
 Calyste, who could not avoid obeying Camille, went to 
 deliver this message. As soon as she knew that she would 
 have to ride with the Marquise de Rochefide and the famous 
 Camille Maupin, Madame de Kergarouet ignored her elder 
 sister's objections ; Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel refused to avail 
 herself of what she called the devil's chariot. At Nantes 
 people lived in rather more civilized latitudes than at Guer- 
 ande ; Camille was admired ; she was regarded as the Muse 
 of Brittany and an honor to the country ; she excited as much 
 curiosity as jealousy. The absolution granted her in Paris by 
 the fashionable world was consecrated by Mademoiselle des 
 Touches' fine fortune, and perhaps by her former successes at 
 
BEATRIX. 145 
 
 Nantes, which was proud of having been the birthplace of 
 Camiile Maupin. 
 
 So the Viscountess, crazy with curiosity, dragged away her 
 old sister, turning a deaf ear to her jeremiads. 
 
 " Good-morning, Calyste," said little Charlotte. 
 
 "Good-morning, Charlotte," replied Calyste, but he did 
 not offer her his arm. 
 
 Both speechless with surprise, she at ins coldness, he at his 
 own cruelty, they went up the hollow ravine that is called a 
 street at Saint-Nazaire, following the two sisters in silence. 
 In an instant the girl of sixteen saw the castle in the air which 
 her romantic hopes had built and furnished crumble into 
 ruins. She and Calyste had so constantly played together 
 during their childhood, they had been so intimately connected, 
 that she imagined her future life secure. She had hurried on, 
 carried away by heedless happiness, like a bird rushing down 
 on a field of wheat ; she was checked in her flight without 
 being able to imagine what the obstacle could be. 
 
 "What is the matter, Calyste?" she asked, taking his 
 hand. 
 
 " Nothing," he replied, withdrawing his hand with terrible 
 haste as he thought of his aunt's schemes and Mademoiselle 
 de Pen-HoeTs. 
 
 Tears filled Charlotte's eyes. She looked at the handsome 
 youth without animosity ; but she was to feel the first pangs 
 of jealousy and know the dreadful rage of rivalry at the sight 
 of the two Parisian beauties, which led her to suspect the 
 cause of Calyste's coldness. 
 
 Charlotte de Kergarouet was of middle height ; she had 
 rustic rosy cheeks, a round face with wide-awake black eyes 
 that affected intelligence, a quantity of brown hair, a round 
 waist, flat back, and thin arms, and the crisp, decided tone 
 of speech adopted by country-bred girls who do not wish to 
 seem simpletons. She was the spoiled child of the family in 
 consequence of her aunt's preference for her. At this moment 
 10 
 
146 BEATRIX. 
 
 she was wearing the plaid tweed cloak lined with green silk 
 that she had put on for the passage in the steamboat. Her 
 traveling gown of cheap stuff, with a chaste, gathered body 
 and a finely pleated collar, would presently strike her as being 
 hideous in comparison with the fresh morning dress worn by 
 Beatrix and Camille. She would be painfully conscious of 
 stockings soiled on the rocks and the boats she had jumped 
 into, of old leather shoes, chosen especially that there might 
 be nothing good to spoil on the journey, as is the manner and 
 custom of provincial folk. 
 
 As to the Vicomtesse de Kergarouet, she was typically pro- 
 vincial. Tall, lean, faded, full of covert pretentiousness 
 which only showed when it was wounded, a great talker, and 
 by dint of talk picking up a few ideas as a billiard-player 
 makes a cannon, which gave her a reputation for brilliancy; 
 trying to snub Parisians by a display of blunt country shrewd- 
 ness, and an assumption of perfect contentment constantly 
 paraded ; stooping in the hope of being picked up, and furi- 
 ous at being left on her knees ; fishing for compliments, as 
 the English have it, and not always catching them ; dressing 
 in a style at once exaggerated and slatternly; fancying that 
 a lack of politeness was lofty impertinence, and that she could 
 distress people greatly by paying them no attention ; refusing 
 things she wished for to have them offered a second time and 
 pressed on her beyond reason ; her head full of extinct sub- 
 jects, and much astonished to find herself behind the times; 
 finally, hardly able to abstain for one hour from dragging in 
 Nantes, and the small lions of Nantes, and the gossip of the 
 upper ten of Nantes ; complaining of Nantes, and criticising 
 Nantes, and then regarding as a personal affront the concur- 
 rence extorted from the politeness of those who rashly agreed 
 with all she said. 
 
 Her manners, her speech, and her ideas had to some extent 
 rubbed off on her four daughters. 
 
 To meet Camille Maupin and Madame de Rochefide! 
 
BE A TRIX. 14? 
 
 Here wa.i fame for the future and matter for a hundred con- 
 versations ! She marched on the church as if to take it by 
 storm, flourishing her handkerchief, which she unfolded to 
 show the corners ponderously embroidered at home, and 
 trimmed with worn-out lace. She had a rather stalwart gait, 
 which did not matter in a woman of seven-and-forty. 
 
 "Monsieur le Chevalier," said she, and she pointed to 
 Calyste, who was following sulkily enough with Charlotte, 
 "has informed us of your amiable offer; but my sister, my 
 daughter, and I fear we shall incommode you." 
 
 "Not I, sister; I shall not inconvenience these ladies," 
 said the old maid sharply. " I can surely find a horse in 
 Saint-Nazaire to carry me home." 
 
 Camille and Beatrix exchanged sidelong looks, which Ca- 
 lyste noted, and that glance was enough to annihilate every 
 memory of his youth, all his belief in the Kergarouet-Pen- 
 Hoels, and to wreck for ever the schemes laid by the two 
 families. 
 
 " Five can sit quite easily in the carriage," replied Made- 
 moiselle des Touches, on whom Jacqueline had turned her 
 back. " Even if we were horribly squeezed, which is impos- 
 sible, as you are all so slight, I should be amply compensated 
 by the pleasure of doing a service to friends of Calyste's. 
 Your maid, madame, will find a seat ; and your bundles, if 
 you have any, can be put in the rumble ; I have no servant 
 with me." 
 
 The Viscountess was profusely grateful, and blamed her 
 sister Jacqueline, who had been in such a hurry for her niece 
 that she would not give her time to travel by land in their 
 carriage ; to be sure, the post-road was not only longer, but 
 expensive ; she must return immediately to Nantes, where she 
 had left three more little kittens eager to have her back again 
 — and she stroked her daughter's chin. But Charlotte put 
 on a little victimized air as she looked up at her mother, 
 which made it seem likely that the Viscountess bored her four 
 
148 BE A TRIX. 
 
 daughters most consumedly by trotting them out as persist- 
 ently as, in "Tristram Shandy," Corporal Trim puts his 
 cap on. 
 
 "You are a happy mother, and you must " Camille 
 
 began ; but she broke off, remembering that Beatrix must 
 have deserted her boy to follow Conti. 
 
 " Oh ! " said the Viscountess, " though it is my misfortune 
 to spend my life in the country and at Nantes, I have the 
 comfort of knowing that my children adore me. Have you 
 any children?" she asked Camille. 
 
 "I am Mademoiselle des Touches," replied Camille. 
 "Madame is the Marquise de Rochefide." 
 
 "Then you are to be pitied for not knowing the greatest 
 happiness we poor mere women can have. Is it not so, 
 madame?" said she to the Marquise, to remedy her blunder. 
 "But you have many compensations." 
 
 A hot tear welled up in Beatrix's eyes ; she turned hastily 
 away and went to the clumsy parapet at the edge of the rock, 
 whither Calyste followed her. 
 
 "Madame," said Camille in a low voice to Madame de 
 Kergarouet, "do you not know that the Marquise is separated 
 from her husband, that she has not seen her son for two years, 
 and does not know when they may meet again ? " 
 
 "Dear!" cried Madame de Kergarouet! " Poor lady ! 
 Is it a judicial separation?" 
 
 "No, incompatibility," said Camille. 
 
 "I can quite understand that," replied the Viscountess 
 undaunted. 
 
 Old Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had intrenched herself a 
 few yards off with her dear Charlotte. Calyste, after assuring 
 himself that no one could see them, took the Marquise's hand 
 and kissed it, leaving a tear on it. Beatrix turned on him, 
 her eyes dried by anger ; some cruel word was on her tongue, 
 but she could say nothing as she saw the tears on the beautiful 
 face of the angelic youth, as deeply moved as she was. 
 
BEATRIX. 149 
 
 "Good heavens, Calyste ! " said Camille in a whisper as 
 he rejoined them with Madame de Rochefide, " you will have 
 that for a mother-in-law, and that little gaby for your wife." 
 
 "Because her aunt is rich," added Calyste sarcastically. 
 
 The whole party now moved toward the inn, and the Vis- 
 countess thought it incumbent on her part to make some 
 satirical remarks to Camille Maupin on the savages of Saint- 
 Naz^iire. 
 
 " I love Brittany, madame," replied Felicite gravely. " I 
 was born at Guerande." 
 
 Calyste could not help admiring Mademoiselle des Touches, 
 who, by the tones of her voice, her steady gaze, and placid 
 manners, put him at his ease, notwithstanding the terrible 
 confessions of the scene that had taken place last night. Still, 
 she looked tired ; her features betrayed that she had not slept ; 
 they looked thickened, but the forehead suppressed the in- 
 ternal storm with relentless calm. 
 
 "What queens ! " said he to Charlotte, pointing to Beatrix 
 and Camille, as he gave the girl his arm, to Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-HoeTs great satisfaction. 
 
 "What notion was this of your mother's," said the old 
 lady, also giving a lean arm to her niece, "to throw us into 
 the company of this wretched woman ? " 
 
 "Oh, aunt ! a woman who is the glory of Brittany." 
 
 " The disgrace, child ! Do not let me see you too cringing 
 to her." 
 
 "Mademoiselle Charlotte is right," said Calyste; "you 
 are unjust." 
 
 " Oh. she has bewitched you ! " retorted Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel. 
 
 " I have the same friendship for her that I have for you," 
 said Calyste. 
 
 " How long have the du Guenics taken to lying? " said the 
 old woman. 
 
 " Since the Pen-Hoels took to being deaf," retorted Calyste. 
 
150 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "Then you are not in love with her?" asked the aunt, 
 delighted. 
 
 " I was, but I am no longer," he replied. 
 
 " Bad boy ! Then why have you given us so much anxiety? 
 I knew that love was but a folly ; only marriage is to be relied 
 on," said she, looking at Charlotte. 
 
 Charlotte, somewhat reassured, hoped to reconquer her 
 advantages by an appeal to the memories of their childhood, 
 and clung to Calyste's arm ; but he vowed to himself that he 
 would come to a clear and candid understanding with the lit- 
 tle heiress. 
 
 " Oh, what famous games of mouche we will have, Calyste," 
 said she, "and what capital fun ! " 
 
 The horses were put in ; Camille made the Viscountess and 
 Charlotte take the best seats, for Jacqueline had disappeared ; 
 then she and the Marquise sat with their back to the horses. 
 Calyste, forced to give up the pleasure he had promised him- 
 self, rode at the side of the carriage; and the horses, all tired, 
 went slowly enough to allow of his gazing at Beatrix. 
 
 History has kept no record of the singular conversation of 
 these four persons, so strangely thrown together by chance in 
 this carriage ; for it is impossible to accept the hundred and 
 something versions which were current at Nantes as to the 
 stories, the repartees, and the witticisms which Madame de 
 Kergarouet heard from Camille Maupin himself. She took 
 good care not to repeat, nor even understand, the replies 
 made by Mademoiselle des Touches to all her ridiculous 
 inquiries — such as writers so often hear, and by which they 
 are made to pay dearly for their few joys. 
 
 "How do you write your books?" asked Madame de 
 Kergarouet. 
 
 "Why, just as you do your needlework," said Camille, 
 "your netting, or cross-stitch." 
 
 "And where did you find all those deep observations and 
 attractive pictures?" 
 
BEATRIX. 151 
 
 "Where you find all the clever things you say, madame. 
 Nothing is easier than writing, and if you chose " 
 
 "Ah, it all lies in the choosing? I should never have 
 thought it ! And which of your works do you yourself 
 prefer ? ' ' 
 
 "It is difficult to have any preference for these little 
 kittens." 
 
 " You* are surfeited with compliments; it is impossible to 
 say anything new." 
 
 "Believe me, madame, I appreciate the form you give to 
 yours." 
 
 The Viscountess, anxious not to seem neglectful of the 
 Marquise, said, looking archly at her — 
 
 " I shall never forget this drive, sitting between wit and 
 beauty." 
 
 The Marquise laughed. 
 
 " You flatter me, madame," said she. " It is not in nature 
 that wit should be noticed in the company of genius, and I 
 have not vet said much." 
 
 Charlotte, keenly alive to her mother's absurdity, looked 
 at her, hoping to check her ; but the Viscountess still valiantly 
 showed fight against the two laughing Parisian ladies. 
 Calyste, trotting at an easy pace by the carriage, could only 
 see the two women on the back seat, and his eyes fell on them 
 alternately, betraying a very melancholy mood. Beatrix, 
 who could not help being seen, persistently avoided looking 
 at the youth; with a placidity that is maddening to a lover, 
 she sat with her hands folded over her crossed shawl, and 
 seemed lost in deep meditation. 
 
 At a spot where the road is shaded and as moist and green 
 as a cool forest path, where the wheels of the carriage were 
 scarcely audible, and the wind brought a resinous scent, 
 Camille remarked on the beauty of the place, and, leaning 
 her hand on Beatrix's knee, she pointed to Calyste and 
 said — 
 
152 BEATRIX. 
 
 " How well he rides ! " 
 
 " Calyste ? " said Madame de Kergarouet. " He is a capital 
 
 horseman." 
 
 '■• Oh, Calyste is so nice ! " said Charlotte. 
 
 " There are so many Englishmen just like him " replied 
 
 the Marquise indifferently, without finishing her sentence. 
 
 " His mother is Irish — an O'Brien," said Charlotte, feeling 
 personally attacked. 
 
 Camille and the Marquise drove into Guerande with the 
 Vicomtesse de Kergarouet and her daughter, to the great as- 
 tonishment of the gaping townspeople ; they left their travel- 
 ing companions at the corner of the little Rue du Guenic, 
 where there was something very like a crowd. Calyste had 
 ridden on to announce to his mother the arrival of the party, 
 who were expected to dinner. The meal had been politely 
 put off till four o'clock. 
 
 The chevalier went back to give The ladies his arm ; he 
 kissed Camille's hand, hoping to touch that of the Marquise, 
 but she firmly kept her arms folded, and he besought her in 
 vain with eyes sparkling through wasted tears. 
 
 "You little goose ! " said Camille in his ear, with a light, 
 friendly kiss on it. 
 
 "True enough!" said Calyste to himself as the carriage 
 turned. "I forget my mother's counsels — but I believe I 
 always shall forget them." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, who arrived valiantly mounted 
 on a hired nag, Madame de Kergarouet, and Charlotte found 
 the table laid, and were cordially, if not luxuriously, received 
 by the du Guenics. Old Zephirine had sent for certain bot- 
 tles of fine wine from the depths of the cellar, and Mariotte 
 had surpassed herself in Breton dishes. The Viscountess, de- 
 lighted to have traveled with the famous Camille Maupin, tried 
 to expatiate on modern literature and the place held in it by 
 Camille ; but as it had been with the game of whist, so it was 
 with literary matters; neither the du Guenics, nor the cure, 
 
BEATRIX. 153 
 
 who looked in, nor the Chevalier du Halga understood any- 
 thing about them. The abbe and the old naval officer sipped 
 the liqueurs at dessert. 
 
 As soon as Mariotte, helped by Gasselin and by Madame 
 de Kergarouet's maid, had cleared the table, there was an en- 
 thusiastic clamor for moache. Joy prevailed. Everybody 
 believed Calyste to be free, and saw him married ere long to 
 little Charlotte. Calyste sat silent. For the first time in his 
 life he was making comparisons between the Kergarouets and 
 the two elegant and clever women, full of taste, who, at this 
 very moment, were probably laughing at the two provincials, 
 if he might judge from the first glances they had exchanged. 
 Fanny, knowing Calyste's secret, noticed his dejection. Char- 
 lotte's coquetting and her mother's attacks had no effect on 
 him. Her dear boy was evidently bored ; his body was in this 
 room, where of yore he could have been amused by the ab- 
 surdities of tnouche, but his spirit was wandering round les 
 Touches. 
 
 "How can I send him off to Camille's?" thought the 
 mother, who loved him, and who was bored because he was 
 bored. Her affection lent her inventiveness. 
 
 " You are dying to be off to les Touches to see her?'''' she 
 whispered to Calyste. 
 
 The boy's answer was a smile and a blush that thrilled this 
 devoted mother to her heart's very core. 
 
 " Madame," said she to the Viscountess, " you will be very 
 uncomfortable to-morrow in the carrier's chaise, and obliged 
 to start very early in the morning. Would it not be better 
 if you were to have Mademoiselle des Touches' carriage? Go 
 over, Calyste," said she, turning to her son, "and arrange 
 the matter at les Touches; but come back quickly." 
 
 "It will not take ten minutes," cried Calyste, giving his 
 mother a wild hug out on the steps, whither she followed him. 
 
 Calyste flew with the speed of a fawn, and was in the en- 
 trance hall of les Touches just as Camille and Beatrix came 
 
154 BE A TRIX. 
 
 out of the dining-room after dinner. He had the wit to offer 
 his arm to Felicite. 
 
 " You have deserted the Viscountess and her daughter for 
 us," said she, pressing his arm. " We are able to appreciate 
 the extent of the sacrifice." 
 
 "Are these Kergarouets related to the Portendueres and old 
 Admiral de Kergarouet, whose widow married Charles de Van- 
 denesse?" Madame de Rochefide asked Camille. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Charlotte is the admiral's grand-niece," 
 replied Camille. 
 
 "She is a charming young person," said Beatrix, seating 
 herself in a Gothic armchair; " the very thing for Monsieur 
 du Guenic." 
 
 "That marriage shall never be!" cried Camille vehe- 
 mently. 
 
 Calyste, overwhelmed by the cold indifference of the Mar- 
 quise, who spoke of the little country girl as the only creature 
 for whom he, the country chevalier, was a match, sat speech- 
 less and bewildered. 
 
 "And why not, Camille? " said Madame de Rochefide. 
 
 "My dear," said Camille, seeing Calyste's despair, " I did 
 not advise Conti to get married, and I believe I was delightful 
 to him — you are ungenerous." 
 
 Beatrix looked at her with surprise mingled with indefinable 
 suspicions. Calyste almost understood Camille's self-immo- 
 lation as he saw the pale flush rise in her cheeks, which, in 
 her, betrayed the most violent emotions; he went up to her 
 awkwardly enough, took her hand, and kissed it. Camille 
 sat down to the piano with an easy air, as if equally 
 sure of her friend and of the lover she had claimed, turn- 
 ing her back upon them, and leaving them to each other. 
 She improvised some variations on airs, unconsciously sug- 
 gested by her thoughts, for they were all deeply sad. The 
 Marquise appeared to be listening ; but she was watching 
 Calyste, who was too young and too guileless to play the part 
 
BEATRIX. 155 
 
 suggested to him by Camille, and sat lost in ecstasy before his 
 real idol. At the end of an hour, during which Mademoiselle 
 des Touches gave herself up to her jealous feelings, Beatrix 
 went to her room. 
 
 Camille at once led Calyste into her own room, so as not 
 to be overheard, for women have an admirable sense of dis- 
 trust. 
 
 "My child," said she, "you must pretend to love me or 
 you are lost ; you are a perfect child ; you know nothing about 
 women, you know only how to love. To love and to be 
 loved are two very different things. You are rushing into ter- 
 rible suffering. I want you to be happy. If you provoke 
 Beatrix, not in her pride, but in her obstinacy, she is capable 
 of flying off to join Conti at a few leagues from Paris. Then 
 what would become of you ? " 
 
 " I should love her," replied Calyste. 
 
 " You would not see her again." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I should," said he. 
 
 "Pray, how?" 
 
 "I should follow her." 
 
 " But you are as poor as Job, my dear child." 
 
 " My father, Gasselin, and I lived in la Vendee for three 
 months on a hundred and fifty francs, marching day and 
 night." 
 
 " Calyste," said Felicite, " listen to me. I see you are too 
 honest to act a part ; I do not wish to corrupt so pure a nature 
 as yours. I will take' it all on myself. Beatrix shall love 
 you." 
 
 "Is it possible?" he cried, clasping his hands. 
 
 "Yes," said Camille. "But we must undo the vows she 
 had made to herself. I will lie for you. Only do not inter- 
 fere in any way with the arduoustask I am about to undertake. 
 The Marquise has much aristocratic cunning ; she is intellec- 
 tually suspicious ; no hunter ever had to take more difficult 
 game ; so in this case, my poor boy, the sportsman must take 
 
156 BE A TRIX. 
 
 his dog's advice. Will you promise to obey me blindly ? I 
 will be your Fox," said she, naming Calyste's best hound. 
 
 " What then am I to do?" replied the young man. 
 
 "Very little," said Camille. "Come here every day at 
 noon. I, like an impatient mistress, shall always be at the 
 window of the corridor that looks out on the Guerande road 
 to see you coming. I shall fly to my room so as not to be 
 seen — not to let you know the depth of a passion that is a 
 burden on you ; but sometimes you will see me and wave 
 your handkerchief to me. Then in the courtyard, and as 
 you come upstairs, you must put on a look of some annoy- 
 ance. That will be no dissimulation, my child,' ' said she, 
 leaning her head on his breast, " will it ? Do not hurry up ; 
 look out of the staircase window on to the garden to look for 
 Beatrix. When she is there — and she will be there, never 
 fear — if she sees you, come straight, but very slowly, to the 
 little drawing-room, and thence to my room. If you should 
 see me at the window spying your treachery, you must start 
 back that I may not catch you imploring a glance from 
 Beatrix. Once in my room you will be my prisoner. Yes ; 
 we will sit there till four o'clock. You may spend the time 
 in reading ; I will smoke. You will be horribly bored by 
 not seeing her, but I will provide you with interesting books. 
 You have read nothing of George Sand's; I will send a man 
 to-night to buy her works at Nantes, and those of some other 
 writers that are unknown to you. 
 
 " I shall be the first to leave the room; you must not put 
 down your book or come into the little drawing-room till 
 you hear Beatrix in there talking to me. Whenever you see a 
 music-book open on the piano, you can ask if you may stay. 
 You may be positively rude to me if you can ; I give you 
 leave ; all will be well." 
 
 "I know, Camille," said he, with delightful good faith, 
 "that you have the rarest affection for me; it mokes me quite 
 sorry that I ever saw Beatrix; but what do you hope for? " 
 
&EA TRIX. 157 
 
 "In a week Beatrix will be crazy about you." 
 
 " Good God ! " cried he, " is that possible? " and, clasp- 
 ing his hands, he fell on his knees before Camille, who was 
 touched and happy to give him such joy at her own cost. 
 
 "Listen to me," said she. " If you speak to the Mar- 
 quise — not merely in the way of conversation, but if you 
 exchange even a few words with her — if you allow her to 
 question you, if you fail in the wordless part I set you to 
 play, and which is certainly easy enough, understand clearly," 
 and she spoke in a serious tone, " you will lose her for ever." 
 
 "I do not understand anything of all this, Camille," cried 
 Calyste, looking at her with adorable guilelessness. 
 
 •' If you understood, you would not be the exquisite child 
 that you are, the noble, handsome Calyste," said she, taking 
 his hand and kissing it. 
 
 And Calyste did what he had never done before ; he put 
 his arm round Camille and kissed her gently on the neck, 
 without passion, but tenderly, as he kissed his mother. Made- 
 moiselle des Touches could not restrain a burst of .tears. 
 
 "Now go, child," said she, "and tell your Viscountess 
 that my carriage is at her orders." 
 
 Calyste wanted to stay, but he was obliged to obey Ca- 
 mille's imperious and imperative gesture. He went home in 
 high spirits, for he was sure of being loved within a week 
 by the beautiful Rochefide. 
 
 The mouche players found in him the Calyste they had lost 
 these two months. Charlotte ascribed the change to her 
 own presence. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel was affectionately 
 teasing. The Abbe Grimont tried to read in the Baroness' 
 eyes the reason for the calm he saw there. The Chevalier du 
 Halga rubbed his hands. 
 
 The two old maids were as lively as a couple of lizards. 
 The Viscountess owed five francs' worth of accumulated fines. 
 Zephirine's avarice was so keenly excited that she lamented 
 her inability to see the cards, and was sharply severe on her 
 
158 BE A T&IX. 
 
 sister-in-law, who was distracted from the game by Calyste's 
 good spirits, and who asked him a question now and then 
 without understanding his replies. 
 
 The game went on until eleven o'clock. Two players had 
 retired ; the Baron and du Halga were asleep in their arm- 
 chairs. Mariotte had made some buckwheat cakes ; the 
 Baroness brought out her tea-caddy ; and before the Kerga- 
 rouets left, the noble house of du Guenic offered its guests 
 a collation, with fresh butter, fruit, and cream, for which the 
 silver teapot was brought out, and the English China tea- 
 service sent to the Baroness by one of her aunts. This air of 
 modern splendor in that antique room, the Baroness' exquisite 
 grace, accustomed as a good Irishwoman to make and pour 
 out tea, a great business with Englishwomen, were really de- 
 lightful. The greatest luxury would not have given such a 
 simple, unpretending, and dignified effect as this impulse of 
 glad hospitality. 
 
 When there was no one left in the room but the Baroness 
 and her son, she looked inquiringly at Calyste. 
 
 "What happened this evening at les Touches?" she 
 asked. 
 
 Calyste told her of the hope Camille had put into his heart 
 and of her strange instructions. 
 
 " Poor woman ! " exclaimed Fanny, clasping her hands, 
 and for the first time pitying Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 
 Some minutes after Calyste had left, Beatrix, who had 
 heard him leave the house, came into her friend's room, and 
 found her sunk on a sofa, her eyes wet with tears. 
 
 " What is the matter, Felicite? " asked the Marquise, with 
 concern. 
 
 " That I am forty and in love, my dear ! " said Mademoi- 
 selle des Touches, in a tone of terrible fury, her eyes suddenly 
 dry and hard. " If only you could know, Beatrix, how many 
 tears I shed daily over the lost days of my youth ! To be 
 
BEATRIX. 159 
 
 loved out of pity, to know that one's pittance of happiness 
 is earned by painful toil, by catlike tricks, by snares laid for 
 the innocence and virtue of a mere boy — is not that shameful ? 
 Happily, we find a sort of absolution in the infinitude of pas- 
 sion, in the energy of happiness, in the certainty of being for 
 ever supreme above other women in a young heart, on which 
 our name is graven by unforgettable pleasure and insane self- 
 sacrifice. Yes, if he asked it of me, I would throw myself 
 into the sea at his least signal. Sometimes I catch myself 
 wishing that he would desire it ; it would be a sacrifice, and 
 not suicide. 
 
 " Oh ! Beatrix, in coming here you set me a cruel task ! I 
 know how difficult it is to triumph against you ; but you love 
 Conti, you are noble and generous, and you will not deceive 
 me ; on the contrary, you will help me to preserve my Calyste. 
 I was prepared for the impression you would make on him, 
 but I have not been so foolish as to seem jealous ; that would 
 but add fuel to the fire. On the contrary, I announced your 
 arrival, depicting you in such bright colors that you could 
 never come up to the portrait, and unluckily you are hand- 
 somer than ever." 
 
 This vehement lament, in which truth and untruth were 
 mingled, completely deceived Madame de Rochefide. Claud 
 Vignon had told Conti his reasons for leaving ; Beatrix was, 
 of course, informed, so she showed magnanimity by behaving 
 coldly to Calyste ; but at this instant there awoke in her that 
 thrill of joy which every woman feels at the bottom of her 
 heart on hearing that she is loved. The love she inspires in 
 any man implies an unfeigned flattery which it is impossible 
 not to appreciate ; but when the man belongs to another 
 woman, his homage gives more than joy, it is heavenly bliss. 
 Beatrix sat down by her friend, and was full of little coaxing 
 ways. 
 
 "You have not a white hair," said she; "you have not a 
 wrinkle ; your temples are smooth still, while I know many a 
 
160 BE A TRIX. 
 
 woman of thirty obliged to cover hers. Look, my dear," 
 she added, raising her curls, " what my journey cost me." 
 
 She showed the faintest pucker that ruffled the surface of 
 her exquisite skin ; she turned up her sleeve and displayed 
 the same wrinkles on her wrists, where the transparent texture 
 already showed lines, and a network of swollen veins, and 
 three deep marks made a bracelet of furrows. 
 
 "Are not these the two spots which can tell no lies, as a 
 writer, investigating our miseries, has said ? We must suffer 
 much before we see the truth of his terrible shrewdness ; but, 
 happily for us, most men know nothing about it, and do not 
 read that atrocious writer." 
 
 "Your letter told me all," replied Camille. "Happiness 
 is not fatuous ; you boasted too much of yours. In love, 
 truth is deaf, dumb, and blind. And I, knowing you had 
 reasons for throwing over Conti, dreaded your visit here. 
 My dear, Calyste is an angel ; he is as good as he is hand- 
 some ; the poor innocent will not resist one look from you, 
 he admires you too much not to love on the smallest encour- 
 agement ; your disdain will preserve him to me. I confess it 
 with the cowardice of true passion : if you take him from me, 
 you kill me. 'Adolphe,' that terrible book by Benjamin 
 Constant, has told us of Adolphe's sufferings; but what of the 
 woman's, heh? He did not study them enough to depict 
 them, and what woman would dare reveal them ? They would 
 discredit our sex, humiliate our virtues, add to our vices. 
 Ah ! if I may measure them by my fears, these tortures are 
 like the torments of hell. But if he deserts me, my deter- 
 mination is fixed." 
 
 " And what have you determined ? " asked Beatrix, with an 
 eagerness that was a shock to Camille. 
 
 On this the two friends looked at each other with the keen- 
 ness of two Venetian inquisitors of State, a swift glance, in 
 which their souls met and struck fire like two flints. The 
 Marquise's eyes fell. 
 
BEATRIX. Ifil 
 
 "Beside man there is only God ! " said the famous woman 
 gravely. " God is the unknown. I should cast myself into 
 it as into a gulf. Calyste has just sworn that he admires you 
 only as he might admire a picture; but you are eight-and- 
 twenty, and in all the splendor of your beauty. So the 
 struggle between him and me has begun by a falsehood. 
 Happily I know how to win." 
 
 " And how is that? " 
 
 " That, my dear, is my secret. Leave me the advantages 
 of my age. Though Claud Vignon has cast me into the abyss 
 — me, when I had raised myself to a spot which I believed to 
 be inaccessible — I may at least pluck the pale blossoms, etio- 
 lated but delicious, which grow at the foot of the precipice." 
 
 Madame de Rochefide was moulded like wax by Mademoi- 
 selle des Touches, who reveled in savage pleasure as she in- 
 volved her in her meshes. Camille sent her to bed, nettled 
 with curiosity, tossed between jealousy and generosity, but 
 certainly thinking much about the handsome youth. 
 
 "She would be delighted if she could betray me," said 
 Camille to herself, as they kissed and said good-night. 
 
 Then, when she was alone, the author made way for the 
 woman — she melted into tears; she filled her hookah with 
 tobacco dipped in opium, and spent the greater part of the 
 night smoking, and thus numbing the tortures of her love, 
 while seeing, through the clouds of smoke, Calyste's charming 
 head. 
 
 "What a fine book might be written containing the story 
 of my sorrows?" said she to herself; "but it has been done. 
 Sappho lived before me. Sappho was young ! A touching 
 and lovely heroine indeed is a woman of forty ! Smoke your 
 hookah, my poor Camille, you have not even the privilege of 
 making a poem out of your woes; this crowns them all." 
 
 She did not go to bed till daybreak, mingling tears, spasms 
 of rage, and magnanimous resolutions in the long meditation 
 wherein she sometimes considered the mysteries of the Catholic 
 U 
 
162 BEATRIX. 
 
 religion, of which she had never thought in the course of her 
 reckless life as an artist and an unbelieving writer. 
 
 Next day, Calyste, advised by his mother to act exactly on 
 Camille's instructions, came at noon and stole mysteriously 
 up to Mademoiselle des Touches' room, where he found 
 plenty of books. Felicite sat in an armchair by the window, 
 smoking, and gazing alternately at the wild marsh landscape, 
 at the sea, and at Calyste, with whom she exchanged a few 
 words concerning Beatrix. At a certain moment, seeing the 
 Marquise walking in the garden, she went to the window to 
 unfasten the curtains, so that her friend should see her, and 
 drew them to shut out the light, leaving only a strip that fell 
 on Calyste's book. 
 
 " I shall ask you to stay to dinner this evening, my child," 
 said she, tumbling his hair, " and you must refuse, looking at 
 Beatrix; you will have no difficulty in making her understand 
 how deeply you regret being unable to remain here." 
 
 At about four o'clock Camille left him and went to play 
 the dreadful farce of her false happiness to the Marquise, 
 whom she brought back to the drawing-room. Calyste then 
 came out of the adjoining room ; at that moment he felt the 
 shame of his position. The look he gave Beatrix, though 
 watched for by Felicite, was even more expressive than she 
 had expected. Beatrix was beautifully dressed. 
 
 "How elegant you are, my sweetheart!" said Camille, 
 when Calvste had left. 
 
 These manoeuvres went on for six days ; they were seconded, 
 without Calyste's knowledge, by the most ingenious conver- 
 sations between Camille and her friend. There was between 
 the two women a duel without truce, in which the weapons 
 were cunning, feints, generosity, false confessions, astute con- 
 fidences, in which one hid her love and the other stripped 
 hers bare, while nevertheless the iron sharpness, red hot with 
 Camille's treacherous words, pierced her friend's heart to the 
 core, implanting some of those evil feelings which good women 
 
BE A TRIX. 163 
 
 find it so hard to suppress. Beatrix in the end took offense 
 at the suspicions betrayed by Camille ; she thought them dis- 
 honoring to both alike ; she was delighted to discover in the 
 great authoress the weakness of her sex, and longed for the 
 pleasure of showing her where her superiority ended, how she 
 might be humiliated. 
 
 "Well, my dear, what are you going to tell him to-day?" 
 she asked, with a spiteful glance at her friend, when the im- 
 aginary lover asked leave to remain. " On Monday we had 
 something to talk over ; on Tuesday you had too poor a din- 
 ner ; on Wednesday you were afraid of annoying the Baroness ; 
 on Thursday we were going out together ; yesterday you bid 
 him good-by as soon as he opened his mouth. Now, I want 
 him to stay to-day, poor boy ! " 
 
 ''Already, my dear ! " said Camille, with biting irony. 
 
 Beatrix colored. 
 
 "Then stay, Monsieur du Guenic," said Mademoiselle des 
 Touches, assuming a queenly air, as though she were nettled. 
 
 Beatrix turned cold and hard ; she was crushing, satirical, 
 and intolerable to Calyste, whom Felicite sent off to play 
 mouche with Mademoiselle de Kergarouet. 
 
 " That girl is not dangerous ! " said Beatrix, smiling. 
 
 Young men in love are like starving people, the cook's 
 preparations do not satisfy them ; they think too much of the 
 end to understand the means. As he returned from les 
 Touches to Guerande, Calyste's mind was full of Beatrix ; he 
 did not know what deep feminine skill Felicite was employing 
 to promote his interests — to use a cant phrase. In the course 
 of this week the Marquise had written but one letter to Conti, 
 a symptom of indifference which had not escaped Camille. 
 
 Calyste's whole life was concentrated in the short mo- 
 ments when he saw Beatrix ; this drop of water, far from 
 quenching his thirst, only increased it. The magic words, 
 "You shall be loved," spoken by Camille and endorsed by 
 his mother, were the talisman by which he checked the fire 
 
164 BEATRIX. 
 
 of his passion. He tried to kill time ; he could not sleep, 
 and cheated his sleeplessness by reading, bringing home a 
 barrow-load of books every evening, as Mariotte expressed it. 
 His aunt cursed Mademoiselle des Touches ; but the Baroness, 
 who had often gone up to her son's room on seeing a light 
 there, knew the secret of this wakefulness. Though Fanny 
 had never gotten beyond her timidity as an ignorant girl, and 
 love's books had remained close to her, her motherly tender- 
 ness guided her to certain notions ; still, the abysses of the 
 sentiment were dark to her and hidden by clouds, and she was 
 very much alarmed at the state in which she saw her son, ter- 
 rifying herself over the one absorbing and incomprehensible 
 desire that was consuming him. 
 
 Calyste had, in fact, but one idea : the image of Beatrix was 
 always before him. During the evening, over the cards, his 
 absence of mind was like his father's slumbers. Finding him 
 so unlike what he had been when he had believed himself in 
 love with Camille, his mother recognized with a sort of terror 
 the symptoms of a genuine passion, a thing altogether un- 
 known in the old family home. Feverish irritability and con- 
 stant dreaming made Calyste stupid. He would often sit for 
 hours gazing at one figure in the tapestry. That morning she 
 had advised him to go no more to les Touches, but to give up 
 these two women. 
 
 " Not go to les Touches ! " cried he. 
 
 "Nay, go, my dear, go; do not be angry, my darling," 
 replied she, kissing his eyes, which had flashed flame at her. 
 
 In this state Calyste was within an ace of losing the fruits of 
 Camille's skilled manoeuvres by the Breton impetuosity of his 
 love, which he could no longer master. In spite of his 
 promises to Felicite, he vowed that he would see and speak to 
 Beatrix. He wanted to read her eyes, to drown his gaze in 
 their depths, to study the little details of her dress, to breathe 
 its fragrance, to hear the music of her voice, follow the elegant 
 deliberateness of her movements, embrace her figure in a 
 
BEA TRIX. • 165 
 
 glance — to contemplate her, in short, as a great general 
 studies the field on which a decisive battle is to be fought. 
 He wanted her, as lovers want ; he was the prey of such desire 
 as closed his ears, dulled his intellect, and threw him into a 
 morbid condition, in which he no longer saw obstacles or dis- 
 tance, and was not even conscious of his body. 
 
 It struck him that he might go to les Touches before the 
 hour agreed upon, hoping to find Beatrix in the garden. He 
 knew that she walked there while waiting for breakfast. 
 Mademoiselle des Touches and her friend had been in the 
 morning to see the salt-marshes and the basin with its shore 
 of fine sand, into which the sea oozes, looking like a lake in 
 the midst of the sand-hills ; they had come home, and were 
 talking as they wandered about the yellow gravel paths in the 
 garden. 
 
 "If this landscape interests you," said Camille, "you 
 should go to le Croisic with Calyste. There are some very 
 fine rocks there, cascades of granite, little bays with natural 
 basins, wonders of capricious variety, and the seashore with 
 thousands of fragments of marble, a whole world of amuse- 
 ment. You will see women making wood ; that is to say, 
 plastering masses of cow-dung against the wall to dry, and 
 then piling them to keep, like peat in Paris ; then, in winter, 
 they warm themselves by that fuel." 
 
 "And you will trust Calyste?" said the Marquise, laugh- 
 ing, in a tone which plainly showed that Camille, by sulking 
 with Beatrix the night before, had obliged her to think of 
 Calyste. 
 
 " Oh, my dear, when you know the angelic soul of a boy 
 like him you will understand me. In him beauty is as noth- 
 ing, you must know that pure heart, that guilelessness that is 
 amazed at every step taken in the realm of love. What 
 faith ! what candor ! what grace ! The ancients had good 
 reason to worship beauty as holy. 
 
 " Some traveler, I forget whom, tells us that horses in a 
 
166 BEATRIX. 
 
 state of freedom take the handsomest of them to be their 
 leader. Beauty, my dear, is the genius of matter ; it is the 
 hall-mark set by nature on her most perfect creations ; it is 
 the truest symbol, as it is the greatest chance. Did any one 
 ever imagine a deformed angel ? Do not they combine grace 
 and strength ? What has kept us standing for hours together 
 before certain pictures in Italy, in which genius has striven 
 for years to realize one of these caprices of nature? Come, 
 with your hand on your conscience, was it not the ideal of 
 beauty which we combined in our minds with moral grandeur ? 
 Well, and Calyste is one of those dreams made real ; he has 
 the courage of the lion, who remains quiet without suspecting 
 his sovereignty. When he feels at ease he is brilliant ; I like 
 his girlish diffidence. In his heart, my soul is refreshed after 
 all the corruption, the ideas of science, literature, the world, 
 politics — all the futile accessories under which we stifle happi- 
 ness. I am now what I never was before — I am a child ! I 
 am sure of him, but I like to pretend jealousy; it makes him 
 happy. Beside, it is part of my secret." 
 
 Beatrix walked on, silent and pensive ; Camille was en- 
 during unspoken martyrdom, and flashing side-glances at her 
 that looked like flames. 
 
 "Ah, my dear, you — you are happy," said Beatrix, leaning 
 her hand on Camille's arm like a woman weary of some covert 
 resistance. 
 
 f Yes ! very happy!" replied poor Felicite, with savage 
 bitterness. 
 
 The women sank on to a bench, both exhausted. No crea- 
 ture of her sex was ever subjected to more elaborate seduction 
 or more clear-sighted Machiavellism than Madame de Roche- 
 fide had been during the last week. 
 
 " But I — I who see Conti's infidelities, who swallow them, 
 who " 
 
 "And why do you not give him up?" said Camille, dis- 
 cerning a favorable moment for striking a decisive blow. 
 
BEATRIX. 167 
 
 "Can I?" • 
 
 " Oh ! poor child " 
 
 They both sat stupidly gazing at a clump of trees. 
 
 "I will go and hasten breakfast," said Camille, " this walk 
 has given me an appetite." 
 
 " Our conversation has taken away mine," said Beatrix. 
 
 Beatrix, a white figure in a morning dress, stood out against 
 the green masses of foliage. Calyste, who had stolen into the 
 garden through the drawing-room, turned down a path, 
 walking slowly to meet the Marquise by chance, as it were; 
 and Beatrix could not help starting a little when she saw 
 him. 
 
 "How did I displease you yesterday, madame?" asked 
 Calyste, after a few commonplace remarks had been ex- 
 changed. 
 
 "Why, you neither please me nor displease me," said she 
 gently. 
 
 Her tone, her manner, her delightful grace encouraged 
 Calyste. 
 
 " I am indifferent to you? " said he, in a voice husky with 
 the tears that rose to his eyes. 
 
 "Must we not be indifferent to each other?" replied 
 Beatrix. " Each of us has a sincere attachment " 
 
 " Oh ! " said Calyste eagerly, "I did love Camille; but I 
 do not love her now." 
 
 "Then what do you do every day, all the morning long?" 
 asked she, with a perfidious smile. " I cannot suppose that, 
 in spite of her passion for tobacco, Camille prefers her cigar 
 to you; or that, in spite of your admiration for authoresses, 
 you spend four hours in reading novels by women." 
 
 " Then you know? " said the innocent boy, his face flushed 
 with the joy of gazing at his idol. 
 
 "Calyste!" cried Camille violently, as she appeared on 
 the scene, seizing him by the arm and pulling him some steps; 
 " Calyste, is this what you promised me? " 
 
168 BEATRIX. 
 
 The Marquise heard this reproof, while Mademoiselle des 
 Touches went off scolding and leading away Calyste ; she 
 stood mystified by Calyste's avowal, and unable to understand 
 it. Madame de Rochefide was not so clear-sighted as Claud 
 Vignon. The truth of the terrible and sublime comedy per- 
 formed by Camille is one of those parts of magnanimous 
 infamy which a woman can conceive of only in the last 
 extremity. It means a breaking heart, the end of her feelings 
 as, a woman, and the beginning of a sacrifice, which drags her 
 down to hell or leads her to heaven. 
 
 During breakfast, to which Calyste was invited, Beatrix, 
 whose feelings were lofty and proud, had already undergone 
 a revulsion, stifling the germs of love that were sprouting in 
 her heart. She was not hard or cold to Calyste, but her mild 
 indifference wrung his heart. Felicite proposed that they 
 should go on the next day but one to make an excursion 
 through the strange tract of country lying between les Touches, 
 le Croisic, and le Bourg de Batz. She begged Calyste to spend 
 the morrow in finding a boat and some men, in case they 
 should wish to go out by sea. She undertook to supply 
 provisions, horses, and everything necessary to spare them 
 any fatigue in this party of pleasure. 
 
 Beatrix cut her short by saying that she would not take the 
 risk of running about the country. Calyste's face, which had 
 expressed lively delight, was suddenly clouded. 
 
 " Why, what are you afraid of, my dear?" said Camille. 
 
 " My position is too delicate to allow of my compromising, 
 not my reputation, but my happiness," she said with mean- 
 ing, and she looked at the lad. " You know how jealous 
 Conti is; if he knew " 
 
 "And who is to tell him?" 
 
 " Will he not come back to fetch me?" 
 
 At these words Calyste turned pale. Notwithstanding 
 Felicite's arguments and those of the young Breton, Madame 
 de Rochefide was inexorable and showed what Camille called 
 
BEATRIX. 169 
 
 her obstinacy. Calyste, in spite of the hopes Felicite gave 
 him, left les Touches in one of those fits of lover's distress of 
 which the violence often risesto the pitch of madness. 
 
 On his return home, Calyste did not quit his room till 
 dinner-time, and went back again soon after. At ten o'clock 
 his mother became uneasy and went up to him ; she found 
 him writing in the midst of a quantity of torn papers and 
 rough copy. He was writing to Beatrix, for he distrusted 
 Camille; the Marquise's manner during their interview in the 
 garden had encouraged him strangely. 
 
 Never did a first love-letter spring in a burning fount from 
 the soul, as might be supposed. In all youths, as yet uncor- 
 rupted, such a letter is produced with a flow too hotly effer- 
 vescent not to be the elixir of several letters begun, rejected, 
 and re- written. 
 
 Here is that sent by Calyste, which he read to his poor, 
 astonished mother. To her, the old house was on fire ; her 
 son's love blazed up in it like the flare of a conflagration : 
 
 Calyste to Beatrix. 
 
 " Madame : — I loved you when as yet you were but a dream 
 to me ; imagine the fervor assumed by my love when I saw 
 you. The dream was surpassed by the reality. My regret is 
 that I have nothing to tell you that you do not know, when I 
 say how beautiful you are; still, perhaps, your beauty never 
 gave rise to so many feelings in any one as in me. You are 
 beautiful in so many ways ; I have studied you so thoroughly 
 by thinking of you day and night, that I have penetrated the 
 mystery of your personality, the secrets of your heart, and 
 your misprized refinements. Have you ever been loved as 
 you deserve ? 
 
 " Let me tell you, then, that there is nothing in you which 
 has not its interpretation in my heart : your pride answers to 
 
170 BEATRIX. 
 
 mine, the dignity of your looks, the grace of your mien, the 
 elegance of your movements — everything in you is in har- 
 mony with the thoughts and wishes hidden in your secret 
 soul ; and it is because I can read them that I think myself 
 worthy of you. If I had not become, within these few days, 
 your second self, should I dare speak to you of myself? To 
 read myself would be egotistic ; it is you I speak of here, not 
 Calyste. 
 
 "To write to you, Beatrix, I have set my twenty years 
 aside ; I have stolen a march on myself and aged my mind — 
 or, perhaps, you have aged it by a week of the most horrible 
 torments, caused, innocently indeed, by you. Do not take 
 me for one of those commonplace lovers at whom you laugh 
 with such good reason. What merit is there, indeed, in loving 
 a young, beautiful, clever, noble woman ! Alas, I cannot even 
 dream of deserving you! What am I to you? A boy at- 
 tracted by beauty and moral worth, as an insect is attracted 
 by light. You cannot do anything else than trample on the 
 flowers of my soul, yet all my happiness lies in seeing you 
 spurn them under foot. Absolute devotion, unlimited faith, 
 the maddest passion — all these treasures of a true and loving 
 heart are nothing ; they help me to love, they cannot win 
 love. 
 
 "Sometimes I wonder that such fervent fanaticism should 
 fail to warm the idol ; and when I meet your severe, cold 
 eye, I feel myself turn to ice. Your disdain affects me then 
 and not my adoration. Why? You cannot possibly hate me 
 so much as I love you ; so ought the weaker feeling to get the 
 mastery over the stronger? 
 
 "I loved Felicite with all the strength of my heart; I 
 forgot her in a day, in an instant, on seeing you. She was a 
 mistake, you are the truth. You, without knowing it, have 
 wrecked my happiness, and you owe me nothing in exchange. 
 I loved Camille without hope, and you give me no hopes ; 
 nothing is changed but the divinity. I was a pagan, I am a 
 
BE A TRIX. 171 
 
 Christian ; that is all. Only, you have taught me to love — 
 to be loved, does not come till later. Camille says it is not 
 love that loves only for a few days ; the love that does not 
 grow day by day is a contemptible passion ; to continue grow- 
 ing it must not foresee its end, and she could see the setting 
 of our sun. 
 
 "On seeing you, I understood these sayings which I had 
 struggled against with all my youth, all the rage of my de- 
 sires, all the fierce despotism of my twenty years. Then our 
 great and sublime Camille mingled her tears with mine. So I 
 may love you on earth and in heaven, as we love God. If you 
 loved me, you could not meet me with the reasoning by which 
 Camille annihilated my efforts. We are both young, we can 
 fly on the same wings, under the same sky, and never fear the 
 storm that threatened that eagle. 
 
 "But what am I saying? I am carried far beyond the 
 modesty of my hopes. You will cease to believe in the sub- 
 mission, the patience, the mute worship, which I implore you 
 not to wound needlessly. I know, Beatrix, that you cannot 
 love me without falling in your own esteem. And I ask for 
 no return. 
 
 " Camille said once that there was an innate fatality in 
 names, as in her own. I felt this fatality in yours when on 
 the pier at Guerande it struck my eyes on the seashore ; you 
 will come into my life as Beatrice came into Dante's. My 
 heart will be the pedestal for a white statue — vindictive, jeal- 
 ous, and tyrannous. You are prohibited from loving me; 
 you would endure a thousand deaths; you would be deceived, 
 mortified, unhappy. There is in you a diabolical pride which 
 binds you to the pillar you have laid hold on ; you will perish 
 while shaking the temple like Samson. I did not discover all 
 these things; my love is too blind ; Camille told me. Here 
 it is not my mind that speaks, but hers ; I have no wits when 
 you are in question, a tide of blood comes up from my heart, 
 darkening my intellect with its waves, depriving me of my 
 
172 BE A TRIX. 
 
 powers, paralyzing my tongue, making my knees quake and 
 bend. I can only adore you, whatever you do. Camille 
 calls your firmness obstinacy ; I defend you ; I believe it to 
 be dictated by virtue. You are only the more beautiful in 
 my eyes. I know my fate ; the pride of Brittany is a match 
 for the woman who has made a virtue of hers. 
 
 " And so, dear Beatrix, be kind and comforting to me. 
 When the victims were chosen, they were crowned with 
 flowers ; you owe me the garlands of compassion and music 
 for the sacrifice. Am I not the proof of your greatness, and 
 will you not rise to the height of my love, scorned in spite of 
 its sincerity, in spite of its undying fires? 
 
 "Ask Camille what my conduct has been since the day 
 when she told me that she loved Claud Vignon. I was mute; 
 I suffered in silence. Well, then, for you I could find yet 
 greater strength, if you do not drive me to desperation, if you 
 understand my heroism. One word of praise from you would 
 enable me to bear the torments of martyrdom. If you per- 
 sist in this cold silence, this deadly disdain, you will make 
 me believe that I am to be feared. Oh, be to me all you can 
 be — charming, gay, witty, affectionate. Talk to me of Gen- 
 naro as Camille did of Claud. I have no genius but that of 
 love ; there is nothing formidable in me, and in your presence 
 I will behave as though I did not love you. 
 
 " Can you reject the prayer of such humble devotion, of a 
 hapless youth, who only asks that his sun should give him 
 light and warm him ? The man you love will always see you ; 
 poor Calyste has but a few days before him, you will soon be 
 rid of him. So I may go to les Touches again to-morrow, 
 may I not ? You will not refuse my arm to guide you around 
 the shores of le Croisic and le Bourg de Batz ? If you should 
 not come, that will be an answer, and understood by Calyste." 
 
 There were four pages more of close small writing, in which 
 Calyste explained the terrible threat contained in these last 
 
BEATRIX. 173 
 
 words, by relating the story of his boyhood and life ; but he 
 told it in exclamatory phrases ; there were many of those dots 
 and dashes lavishly scattered through modern literature in 
 perilous passages, like planks laid before the reader to enable 
 him to cross the gulf. This artless picture would be a repeti- 
 tion of our narrative ; if it did not touch Madame de Roche- 
 fide, it could scarcely interest those who seek strong sensa- 
 tions ; but it made his mother weep and say — 
 
 "Then you have not been happy?" 
 
 This terrible poem of feeling that had come like a storm on 
 Calyste's heart, and was to be sent like a whirlwind to another, 
 frightened the Baroness ; it was the first time in her life that 
 she had ever read a love-letter. 
 
 Calyste was standing up; there was one great difficulty: 
 he did not know how to send his letter. 
 
 The Chevalier du Halga was still in the sitting-room, where 
 they were playing off the last pool of a very lively mouche. 
 Charlotte de Kergarouet, in despair at Calyste's indifference, 
 was trying to charm the old people in the hope of thus secur- 
 ing her marriage. Calyste followed his mother, and came 
 back into the room with the letter in his breast-pocket — it 
 seemed to scorch his heart ; he wandered about and up and 
 down the room like a moth that had come in by mistake. At 
 last the mother and son got Monsieur du Halga into the hall, 
 whence they dismissed Mariotte and Mademoiselle de Pen- 
 HoeTs little servant. 
 
 " What do they want of the chevalier? " said old Zephirine 
 to the other old maid. 
 
 " Calyste seems to me to be out of his mind," replied she. 
 " He pays no more heed to Charlotte than if she were one of 
 the marsh-girls." 
 
 The Baroness had very shrewdly supposed that the Chevalier 
 du Halga must, somewhere about the year 17S0, have sailed 
 the seas of gallant adventure, and she advised Calyste to con- 
 sult him. 
 
174 BEATRIX. 
 
 " What is the best way to send a letter secretly to a lady?" 
 said Calyste to the chevalier in a whisper. 
 
 "You can give the note to her lady's-maid, with a few 
 louis in her hand, for sooner or later the maid is in the 
 secret, and it is best to let her know it from the first," replied 
 the chevalier, who could not suppress a smile ; " but it is 
 better to deliver it yourself." 
 
 "A few louis ! " exclaimed the Baroness. 
 
 Calyste went away and fetched his hat ; then he flew off to 
 les Touches, and walked like an apparition into the little 
 drawing-room, where he heard Beatrix and Camille talking. 
 They were sitting on the divan, and seemed on the best possi- 
 ble terms. Calyste, with the sudden wit that love imparts, 
 flung himself heedlessly on the divan by the Marquise, seized 
 her hand, and pressed the letter into it, so that Felicite, 
 watchful as she might be, could not see it done. Calyste's 
 heart fluttered with an emotion that was at once acute and 
 delightful, as he felt Beatrix's hand grasp his, and without 
 even interrupting her sentence or seeming surprised, she 
 slipped the letter into her gloves. 
 
 "You fling yourself on a woman as if she were a divan," 
 said she with a laugh. 
 
 " He has not, however, adopted the doctrine of the Turks ! " 
 said Felicity, who could not forbear from this retort. 
 
 Calyste rose, took Camille's hand, and kissed it ; then he 
 went to the piano and made every note sound in a long scale 
 by running one finger over them. This glad excitement puz- 
 zled Camille, who told him to come to speak to her. 
 
 " What is it ? " she asked in his ear. 
 
 " Nothing," said he. 
 
 "There is something between them," said Mademoiselle 
 des Touches to herself. 
 
 The Marquise was impenetrable. Camille tried to make 
 Calyste talk, hoping that he might betray himself; but the 
 boy made an excuse of the uneasiness his mother would feel, 
 
BEATRIX. 175 
 
 and he left les Touches at eleven o'clock, not without having 
 stood the fire of a piercing look from Camille, to whom he 
 had never before made this excuse. 
 
 After the agitations of a night filled with Beatrix, after he 
 had been into the town twenty times in the course of the 
 morning, in the hope of meeting the answer which did not 
 come, the Marquise's maid came to the Hotel du Guenic, 
 and gave the following reply to Calyste, who went off to read 
 it in the arbor at the end of the garden : 
 
 Beatrix to Calyste. 
 
 " You are a noble boy, but you are a boy. You owe your- 
 self to Camille, who worships you. You will not find in me 
 either the perfections that distinguish her or the happiness 
 she lavishes on you. Whatever you may think, it is she who 
 is young and I who am old ; her heart is full of treasures, and 
 mine is empty. She is devoted to you in a way you do not 
 appreciate enough ; she has no selfishness, and lives wholly 
 in you. I should be full of doubts ; I should drag you into 
 a life that is weariful, ignoble, and spoiled by my own fault. 
 Camille is free, she comes and goes at her will ; I am a slave. 
 In short, you forget that I love and am loved. The position 
 in which I find myself ought to protect me against any hom- 
 age. To love me, to tell me that you love me, is an insult. 
 Would not a second lapse place me on the level of the most 
 abandoned women ? 
 
 " You, who are young and full of delicate feeling, how can 
 you compel me to say things which the heart cannot utter 
 without being torn. 
 
 " I preferred the scandal of an irreparable disaster to the 
 shame of perpetual deceit, my own ruin to the loss of my 
 self-respect. In the eyes of many people whose esteem I 
 value, I still stand high; if I should change, I should fall 
 some steps lower. The world is still merciful to women 
 
176 BE A TRIX. 
 
 whose constancy cloaks their illicit happiness, but it is pitiless 
 to a vicious habit. 
 
 " I feel neither scorn nor anger ; I am answering you with 
 frank simplicity. You are young, you know nothing of the 
 world, you are carried away by imagination, and, like all men 
 of pure life, you are incapable of the reflections induced by 
 disaster. I will go further : If I should be of all women the 
 most mortified ; if I had horrible misery to hide ; if I were 
 deceived and deserted at last — and, thank God, nothing of 
 that is possible — if, I say, by the vengeance of heaven these 
 things were, no one in the world would ever see me again. 
 And then I could find it in me to kill the man who should 
 speak to me of love, if a man could still find me where I 
 should be. There you have the whole of my mind. 
 
 " Perhaps I have to thank you for having written to me. 
 After your letter, and especially after my reply, I may be 
 quite at my ease with you at les Touches, follow the bent of 
 my humor, and be what you ask me to be. I say nothing of 
 the bitter ridicule I should incur if my eyes should cease to 
 express the sentiments of which you complain. To rob 
 Camille a second time would be an evidence of weakness to 
 which no woman could twice resign herself. If I loved you 
 madly, if I were blind, if I were forgetful of everything else, 
 I should always see Camille. Her love for you is a barrier 
 too high to be crossed by any force, even with the wings of 
 an angel ; only demons would not recoil from such base 
 treachery. 
 
 "In this, my child, lies a world of reasons which noble 
 and refined women keep to themselves, of which you men 
 know nothing, even when a man is so like a woman as you 
 are at this moment. 
 
 "Finally, you have a mother who has shown you what a 
 woman's life ought to be; pure and spotless, she has fulfilled 
 her fate nobly ; all I know of her has filled my eyes with 
 tears of envy which has risen from the depths of my heart. 
 
BEATRIX. 177 
 
 I might have been like her ! Calyste, this is what your wife 
 ought to be; this is what her life ought to be. 
 
 " I will not again cast you back maliciously, as I have done, 
 on little Charlotte, who would bore you from the first, but on 
 some exquisite girl who is worthy of you. If I gave myself 
 to you, I should spoil your life. Either you would fail in 
 faithfulness, in constancy, or you would resolve to devote 
 your life to me : I will be honest — I should take it ; I should 
 carry you off I. know not whither, far from the world; I 
 should make you very unhappy ; I am jealous. I see mon- 
 sters in a drop of water ; I am in despair over odious trifles 
 which many women put up with ; there are even inexorable 
 thoughts, originating in myself, not caused by you, which 
 would wound me to death. When a man is not as respectful 
 and as delicate in the tenth year of his happiness as he was 
 on the eve of the day when he was a beggar for a favor, he 
 seems to me a wretch and degrades me in my own eyes. 
 Such a lover no longer believes in the Amadis and Cyrus of 
 my dreams. In our day love is purely mythical ; and in you 
 I find no more than the fatuity of a desire which knows not 
 its end. I am not forty ; I cannot yet bring my pride to 
 bend to the authority of experience ; I know not the love 
 that could make me humble ; in fact, I am a woman whose 
 nature is still too youthful not to be detestable. I cannot 
 answer for my moods ; all my graciousness is on the surface. 
 Perhaps I have not suffered enough yet to have acquired the 
 indulgent ways, the perfect tenderness that we owe to cruel 
 deceptions. Happiness has its impertinence, and I am very 
 impertinent. Camille will always be your devoted slave, I 
 should be an unreasonable tyrant. 
 
 " Indeed, is not Camille set by your side by your good 
 angel, to guard you till you have reached the moment when 
 you must start on the life that is in store for you, and which 
 you must not fail in ? I know Felicite ! Her tenderness is 
 inexhaustible ; she may perhaps lack some of the graces of her 
 12 
 
178 BE A TRIX. 
 
 sex, but she shows that vivifying strength, that genius for con« 
 stancy, and that lofty courage which make everything accept- 
 able. She will see you marry while suffering tortures; she will 
 find you a free Beatrix, if Beatrix fulfills your ideal of woman 
 and answers to your dreams ; she will smooth out all the diffi- 
 culties in your future life. The sale of a single acre of her 
 land in Paris will redeem your estates in Brittany ; she will 
 make you her heir — has she not already adopted you as a 
 son ? And I, alas ! What can I do for your happiness ? 
 Nothing. 
 
 " Do not be false to an immeasurable affection which has 
 made up its mind to the duties of motherliness. To me she 
 seems most happy — this Camille ! The admiration you feel 
 for poor Beatrix is such a peccadillo as women of Camille's 
 age view with the greatest indulgence. When they are sure 
 of being loved they will allow constancy a little infidelity ; 
 nay, one of their keenest pleasures is to triumph over the 
 youth of their rivals. 
 
 " Camille is superior to other women, all this does not bear 
 upon her; I only say it to reassure your conscience. I have 
 studied Camille well ; she is in my eyes one of the grandest 
 figures of our time. She is both clever and kind, two quali- 
 ties rarely united in a woman ; she is generous and simple, two 
 more great qualities seldom found together. I have seen trust- 
 worthy treasures in the depths of her heart ; it would seem 
 as though Dante had written for her in the ' Paradiso ' the 
 beautiful lines on eternal happiness which she was interpreting 
 to you the other evening, ending with Senza brama sicura 
 richezza. 
 
 " She has talked to me of her fate in life, told me all her 
 experience, and proved to me that love, the object of our de- 
 sires and dreams, had always evaded her ; I replied that she 
 seemed to me a proof of that difficulty of matching anything 
 sublime, which accounts for much unhappiness. Yours is one 
 of the angelic souls whose sister-soul it seems impossible to 
 
BEATRIX. 179 
 
 And. This misfortune, dear child, is what Camille will spare 
 you; even if she should die for it, she will find you a being 
 with whom you may live happy as a husband. 
 
 " I offer you a friend's hand, and trust, not to your heart, 
 but to your sense, to find that we are henceforth to each other 
 a brother and sister, and to terminate our correspondence, 
 which, between les Touches and Guerande, is odd, to say the 
 least of it. 
 
 "Beatrix de Casteran." 
 
 The Baroness, in the highest degree excited by the details 
 and progress of her son's love affairs with the beautiful Roche- 
 fide, could not sit still in the room, where she was working at 
 her cross-stitch, looking up at every stitch to watch Calyste ; 
 she rose from her chair and came up to him with a mixture of 
 diffidence and boldness. The mother had all the graces of a 
 courtesan about to ask a favor. 
 
 "Well?" said she, trembling, but not actually asking to 
 see the letter. 
 
 Calyste showed it her in his hand, and read it aloud to her. 
 The two noble souls, so simple and ingenuous, discovered in 
 this astute and perfidious reply none of the treachery and 
 snares infused into it by the Marquise. 
 
 "She is a noble and high-minded woman!" said the 
 Baroness, whose eyes glistened with moisture. "I will pray 
 to God for her. I never believed that a mother could desert 
 her husband and child and preserve so much virtue. She 
 deserves to be forgiven." 
 
 "Am I not right to worship her?" cried Calyste. 
 
 " But whither will this love lead you?" said his mother. 
 "Oh! my child, how dangerous are these women of noble 
 sentiments! Bad women are less to be feared. Marry 
 Charlotte de Kergarouet, and release two-thirds of the family 
 estates. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel can achieve this great 
 end by selling a few farms, and the good soul will devote 
 
180 BEATRIX. 
 
 herself to improving the property. You may leave your 
 children a noble name, a fine fortune " 
 
 "What, forget Beatrix?" said Calyste in a hollow voice, 
 his eyes fixed on the floor. 
 
 He left his mother, and went up to his room to reply to this 
 letter. 
 
 Madame du Guenic had Madame de Rochefide's words 
 stamped on her heart : she wanted to know on what Calyste 
 founded his hopes. At about this hour the chevalier would 
 be exercising his dog on the mall ; the Baroness, sure of 
 finding him there, put on a bonnet and shawl and went out. 
 It was so extraordinary an event to see Madame du Guenic 
 out, excepting at church, or in one of the two pretty alleys 
 that were frequented on fete-days, when she would accompany 
 her husband and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, that, within two 
 hours, every one was saying to every one else, " Madame du 
 Guenic was out to-day ; did you see her? " Thus before long 
 the news came to Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's ears, and she 
 said to her niece — 
 
 " Something very strange is certainly happening at the du 
 GuenicsV 
 
 " Calyste is madly in love with the beautiful Marquise de 
 Rochefide," said Charlotte. "I should do better to leave 
 Guerande and go back to Nantes." 
 
 At this moment the Chevalier du Halga, surprised at being 
 sought out by the Baroness, had released Thisbe from her 
 cord, recognizing the impossibility of attending to two ladies 
 at once. 
 
 " Chevalier, you have had some experience in love affairs ?" 
 said the Baroness. 
 
 Captain du Halga drew himself up with not a little of the 
 airs of a coxcomb. Madame du Guenic, without naming her 
 son or the Marquise, told him the contents of the love letter, 
 asking him what could be the meaning of such an answer. 
 The chevalier stood with his nose in the air caressing his 
 
BE A TRIX. 181 
 
 chin ; he listened with little grimaces ; and at last he looked 
 keenly at the Baroness. 
 
 " When a thoroughbred horse means to leap a fence, it goes 
 up to it first to smell it and examine it," he said. " Calyste 
 will be the happiest young rogue " 
 
 " Hush ! " said the Baroness. 
 
 " I am dumb. In old times that was my only point," said 
 the old man. "It is fine weather," he went on after a pause, 
 " the wind is northeasterly. By heaven ! how the Belle- 
 
 Poule danced before that wind on the day But," he 
 
 went on, interrupting himself, " I have a singing in my ears 
 and pains in the false-ribs; the weather will change. You 
 know that the fight of the Belle-Poule was so famous that 
 ladies wore Belle-Poule caps. Madame de Kergarouet was 
 the first to appear at the opera in such a head-dress. ' You 
 are dressed for conquest,' I said to her. The words were 
 repeated in every box." 
 
 The Baroness listened politely to the old man, who, faithful 
 to the laws of old-world etiquette, escorted her back to the 
 little street, neglecting Thisbe. He let out the secret of 
 Thisbe's birth. She was the granddaughter of that sweet 
 Thisbe that had belonged to Madame la Comtesse de Kerga- 
 rouet, the Admiral's first wife. This Thisbe the third was 
 eighteen years old. 
 
 The Baroness ran lightly up to Calyste's room, as gleeful as 
 if she were in love herself. Calyste was not there, but Fanny 
 saw a letter on the table addressed to Madame de Rochefide, 
 folded, but not sealed. Irresistible curiosity prompted the 
 anxious mother to read her son's answer. The indiscretion 
 was cruelly punished ; she felt horrible anguish when she saw 
 the precipice toward which love was driving Calyste. 
 
 Calyste to Beatrix. 
 " What do I care for the family of du Guenic in such times 
 as we live in, dearest Beatrix ! My name is Beatrix, the hap- 
 
182 BE A TRIX. 
 
 piness of Beatrix is my happiness, her life is my life, and all 
 my fortune is in her heart. Our lands have been in pledge 
 these two hundred years, and may remain so for two hundred 
 more ; our farmers have them, no one can take them away. 
 To see and love you ! That is my religion. 
 
 "Marry! The idea has made me heartsick. Are there 
 two such as Beatrix ? I will marry no one but you ; I will 
 wait twenty years if I must ; I am young, and you will always 
 be beautiful. My mother is a saint, and it is not for me to 
 judge her. She never loved ! I know how much she has 
 lost, and what sacrifices she has made. You, Beatrix, haVe 
 taught me to love my mother better ; she dwells in my heart 
 with you — there will never be any one else ; she is your only 
 rival. Is not this as much as to say that no one shares 
 your throne ? So your reassuring letter has no effect on my 
 mind. 
 
 "As to Camille, you have only to give me a hint, and I will 
 beg her to tell you herself that I do not love her ; she is the 
 mother of my intelligence ; nothing more, nothing less. As 
 soon as I saw you she became a sister to me, my friend — my 
 man friend — what you will ; but we have no claims on each 
 other beyond those of friendship. I thought she was a woman 
 till the moment when I first saw you. But you show me that 
 Camille is a man; she swims, hunts, rides; she smokes and 
 drinks ; she writes, she can analyze a book or a heart ; she has 
 not the smallest weakness ; she walks on in her strength ; she 
 has not your free grace, your step like the flight of a bird, 
 your voice — the voice of love — your arch looks, your gracious 
 demeanor. She is Camille Maupin, and nothing else ; she has 
 nothing of the woman about her, and you have everything 
 that I love in woman ; I felt from the day when I first saw 
 you that you were mine. 
 
 "You will laugh at this feeling, but it has gone on in- 
 creasing ; it strikes me as monstrous that we should be divided ; 
 you are my soul, my life, and I cannot live where you are 
 
BE A TRIX. 183 
 
 not. Let me love you ! We will fly, we will go far, far from 
 the world, into some country where you will know nobody, 
 and where you will have no one but me and God in your 
 heart. My mother, who loves you, will come some day to 
 live with us. Ireland has many country houses, and my 
 mother's family will surely lend us one. Great God ! Let us 
 be off! A boat, some sailors, and we shall be there before 
 any one can guess whither we have fled from the world you 
 dread so greatly. 
 
 " You have never been loved; I feel it as I re-read your 
 letter, and I fancy I can perceive that, if none of the reasons 
 of which you speak existed, you would allow yourself to be 
 loved by me. Beatrix, a holy love will wipe out the past. 
 
 "Is it possible in your presence to think of anything but 
 you ? Oh ! I love so much that I could wish you a thousand 
 times disgraced, so as to prove to you the power of my love 
 by adoring you as if you were the holiest of creatures. You 
 call my love for you an insult. Oh, Beatrix, you do not think 
 that ! The love of 'a noble child ' — you call me so — would 
 do honor to a queen. 
 
 " So to-morrow we will wander lover-like along by the rocks 
 and the sea, and you shall tread the sands of old Brittany and 
 consecrate them anew for me. Give me that day of joy, and 
 the transient alms — leaving perhaps, alas ! no trace on your 
 memory — will be a perennial treasure to Calyste " 
 
 The Baroness dropped the letter unfinished ; she knelt on a 
 chair and put up a silent prayer to God, imploring Him to pre- 
 serve her son's wits, to deliver him from madness and error, 
 and snatch him back from the ways in which she saw him 
 rushing. 
 
 " What are you doing, mother? " said Calyste's voice. 
 
 "Praying for you," she replied, looking at him with eyes 
 full of tears. "I have been so wrong as to read this letter. 
 My Calyste is gone mad." 
 
184 JSt-ATKlJi.. 
 
 "It is the sweetest form of madness," said the youth, kiss- 
 ing his mother. 
 
 " I should like to see this woman, my child." 
 
 " Well, mamma, we shall take a boat to-morrow to cross 
 over to le Croisic; come to the jetty." 
 
 He sealed his letter and went off to les Touches. The 
 thing which above all others appalled the Baroness was to see 
 that, by sheer force of instinct, feeling could acquire the in- 
 sight of consummate experience. Calyste had written to 
 Beatrix as he might have done under the guidance of Monsieur 
 du Halga. 
 
 One of the greatest joys, perhaps, that a small mind can 
 know is that of duping a great soul and catching it in a snare. 
 Beatrix knew herself to be very inferior to Camille Maupin. 
 This inferiority was not merely in the sum-total of intellectual 
 qualities known as talent, but also in those qualities of the 
 heart that are called passion. At the moment when Calyste 
 arrived at les Touches, with the impetuous haste of first love 
 borne on the pinions of hope, the Marquise was conscious of 
 keen satisfaction in knowing herself to be loved by this charm- 
 ing youth. She did not go so far as to wish to be his accom- 
 plice in this feeling ; she made it a point of heroism to repress 
 this capriccio, as the Italians say, and fancied she would thus 
 be on a par with her friend ; she was happy to be able to 
 make her some sacrifice. In short, the vanities peculiar to a 
 Frenchwoman, which constitute the famous coquetterie whence 
 she derives her superiority, were in her flattered and amply 
 satisfied ; she was tempted by the utmost seduction, and she 
 resisted it ; her virtues sang a sweet concert of praise in her ear. 
 
 The two women, apparently indolent, were lounging on the 
 divan in that little drawing-room so full of harmony, in the 
 midst of a world of flowers, with the window open, for the 
 north winds had ceased to blow. A melting southerly breeze 
 dimpled the salt-water lake that they could see in front of 
 
BE A TR1X. 185 
 
 them, and the sun scorched the golden sands. Their spirits 
 were as deeply tossed as nature lay calm, and not less burning. 
 Camille, broken on the wheel of the machinery she was work- 
 ing, was obliged to keep a guard over herself, the friendly foe 
 she had admitted into her cage was so prodigiously keen ; not 
 to betray her secret she gave herself up to observing the secrets 
 of nature ; she cheated her pain by seeking a meaning in the 
 motions of the spheres, and found God in the sublime solitude 
 of the sky. 
 
 When once an infidel acknowledges God, he throws him- 
 self headlong into Catholicism, which, viewed as a system, is 
 perfect. 
 
 That morning Camille had shown the Marquise a face still 
 radiant with the light of her research, carried on during a 
 night spent in lamentation. Calyste was always before her 
 like a heavenly vision. She regarded this beautiful youth, to 
 whom she devoted herself, as her guardian angel. Was it not 
 he who was leading her to the supernal regions where suffer- 
 ings have an end under the weight of incomprehensible im- 
 mensity? Still, Camille was made uneasy by Beatrix's tri- 
 umphant looks. One woman does not gain such an advantage 
 over another without allowing it to be guessed, while justifying 
 herself for having taken it. Nothing could be stranger than 
 this covert moral struggle between the two friends, each hiding 
 a secret from the other, and each believing herself to be the 
 creditor for unspoken sacrifices. 
 
 Calyste arrived holding his letter under his glove, ready to 
 ., slip it into Beatrix's hand. Camille, who had not failed to 
 mark the change in her guest's manner, affected not to look 
 at her, but studied her in a mirror just when Calyste made his 
 entrance. That is the sunken rock for every woman. The 
 cleverest and the most stupid, the most frank and the most 
 astute, are not then mistress of their secret ; at that moment 
 it blazes out to another woman's eyes. Too much reserve or 
 too much freedom, an open and a beaming glance, or a mys- 
 
186 BEATRIX. 
 
 terious droop of the eyelids — everything then reveals the feel- 
 ing above all others difficult to conceal, for indifference is so 
 absolutely cold that it can never be well acted. Women have 
 the genius of shades of manner — they use them too often not 
 to know them all — and on these occasions they take in a rival 
 from head to foot at a glance ; they see the slightest twitch 
 of a foot under a petticoat, the most imperceptible start in the 
 figure, and know the meaning of what to a man seems to have 
 none. Two women watching one another play one of the 
 finest comedies to be seen. 
 
 " Calyste has committed some folly," thought Camille, 
 observing in both of them the indefinable look of persons who 
 understand each other. 
 
 There was no formality or affected indifference in the Mar- 
 quise now ; she looked at Calyste as if he belonged to her. 
 Calyste explained matters ; he reddened like a guilty creature, 
 like a happy lover. He had just settled everything for their 
 excursion on the morrow. 
 
 "Then you are really going, my dear?" said Camille. 
 
 "Yes," said Beatrix. 
 
 " How did you know that ? " said Mademoiselle des Touches 
 to Calyste. 
 
 " I have come to ask," he replied, at a glance shot at him 
 by Madame de Rochefide, who did not wish her friend to 
 have any suspicion of their correspondence. 
 
 "They have already come to an understanding," said Ca- 
 mille to herself, catching this look by a side-glance from the 
 corner of her eye. " It is all over ; there is nothing left to 
 me but to disappear." 
 
 And under the pressure of this thought, a deathlike change 
 passed over her face that gave Beatrix a chill. 
 
 "What is the matter, dear?" said she. 
 
 " Nothing. Then, Calyste, will you send on my horses 
 and yours so that we may find them ready on the other side 
 of le Croisic and ride back through le Bourg de Batz ? We 
 
BE A TRIX. 187 
 
 will breakfast at le Croisic and dine here. You will under- 
 take to find boatmen. We will start at half-past eight in 
 the morning. Such fine scenery!" she added to Beatrix. 
 "You will see Cambremer, a man who is doing penance on a 
 rock for having murdered his son. Oh ! you are in a primi- 
 tive land where men do not feel like the common herd. 
 Calyste will tell you the story." 
 
 She went into her room ; she was stifling. Calyste deliv- 
 ered his letter and followed Camille. 
 
 "Calyste, she loves you, I believe; but you are hiding 
 something; you have certainly disobeyed my injunctions." 
 
 " She loves me ! " said he, dropping into a chair. 
 
 Camille looked out at the door. Beatrix had vanished. 
 This was strange. A woman does not fly from a room where 
 the man is whom she loves and whom she is certain to see 
 again, unless she has something better to do. Mademoiselle 
 des Touches asked herself, " Can she have a letter from Ca- 
 lyste ? " But she thought the innocent lad incapable of such 
 audacity. 
 
 "If you have disobeyed me, all is lost by your own 
 fault," said she gravely. "Go and prepare for the joys of 
 to-morrow." 
 
 She dismissed him with a gesture which Calyste could not 
 rebel against. There are silent sorrows that are despotically 
 eloquent. As he went to le Croisic to find the boatmen, Ca- 
 lyste had some qualms of fear. Camille's speech bore a stamp 
 of doom that revealed the foresight of a mother. 
 
 Four hours later, when he returned, very tired, counting on 
 dining at les Touches, he was met at the door by Camille's 
 maid, who told him that her mistress and the Marquise could 
 not see him this evening. Calyste was surprised, and wanted 
 to question the maid, but she shut the door and vanished. 
 
 Six o'clock was striking by the clocks of Guerande. Ca- 
 lyste went home, asked for some dinner, and then played 
 mouche, a prey to gloomy meditations. These alternations of 
 
188 BE A TRIX. 
 
 joy and grief, the overthrow of his hopes following hard 
 upon what seemed the certainty that he was loved, crushed 
 the young soul that had been soaring heavenward to the sky, 
 and had risen so high that the fall must be tremendous. 
 
 "What ails you, my Calyste ? " his mother whispered to 
 him. 
 
 "Nothing," said he, looking at her with eyes whence the 
 light of his soul and the flame of love had died out. 
 
 It is not hope but despair that gives the measure of our 
 ambitions. We give ourselves over in secret to the beautiful 
 poems of hope, while grief shows itself unveiled. 
 
 "Calyste, you are not at all nice," said Charlotte, after 
 vainly wasting on him those little provincial teasing ways 
 which always degenerate into annoyance. 
 
 "I am tired," he said, rising and bidding the party good- 
 night. 
 
 "Calyste is much altered," said Mademoiselle de Pen- 
 Hoel. 
 
 " We haven't fine gowns covered with lace; we don't 
 flourish our sleeves like this ; we don't sit so, or know how to 
 look on one side and wriggle our heads," said Charlotte, 
 imitating and caricaturing the Marquise's airs and attitude 
 and looks. " We haven't a voice with a squeak in the head, 
 or a little interesting cough, heugh / heugh ! like the sigh of 
 a ghost ; we are so unfortunate as to have robust health, 
 and be fond of our friends without any nonsense; when 
 we look at them we do not seem to be stabbing them 
 with a dart, or examining them with a hypocritical glance. 
 We don't know how to droop our heads like a weeping wil- 
 low, and appear quite affable merely by raising it, so ! " 
 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel could not help laughing at her 
 niece's performance ; but neither the chevalier nor the Baron 
 understood this satire of the country on Paris. 
 
 "But the Marquise de Rochefide is very handsome," said 
 the old lady. 
 
BEATRIX. 189 
 
 "My dear," said the Baroness to her husband, " I happen 
 to know that she is going to-morrow to le Croisic ; we will 
 walk down there. I should very much like to meet her." 
 
 While Calyste was racking his brain to divine why the door 
 of les Touches should have been closed in his face, a scene 
 was taking place between the two friends which was to have 
 its effect on the events of the morrow. Calyste's letter had 
 given birth to unknown emotions in Madame de Rochefide's 
 heart. A woman is not often the object of a passion so youth- 
 ful, so guileless, so sincere and absolute as was this boy's. 
 Beatrix had loved more than she had been loved. After 
 being a slave she felt an unaccountable longing to be the 
 tyrant in her turn. 
 
 In the midst of her joy, as she read and re-read Calyste's 
 letter, a cruel thought pierced her like a stab. What had 
 Calyste and Camille been about together since Claud Vignon's 
 departure? If Calyste did not love Camille, and Camille 
 knew it, what did they do in those long mornings? The 
 memory of her brain insidiously compared this remark with 
 all Camille had said. It was as though a smiling devil held 
 up before her, as in a mirror, the portrait of her heroic friend, 
 with certain looks, certain gestures, which finally enlightened 
 Beatrix. Far from being Felicite's equal, she was crushed by 
 her ; far from deceiving her, it was she who was deceived ; 
 she herself was but a toy that Camille wanted to give the 
 child she loved with an extraordinary and never vulgar 
 passion. 
 
 To a woman like Beatrix this discovery was a thunderbolt. 
 She recalled every detail of the past week. In an instant 
 Camille's part and her own lay before her in their fullest 
 development ; she saw herself strangely abased. In the rush 
 of her jealous hatred she fancied she detected in Camille some 
 plot of revenge on Conti. All the events of the past two 
 years had perhaps led up to these two weeks. Once started 
 on the downward slope of suspicions, hypotheses, and anger. 
 
190 BEATRIX. 
 
 Beatrix did not check herself; she walked up and down her 
 rooms, spurred by impulses of passion, or, sitting down now 
 and again, tried to make a plan ; still, until the dinner-hour, 
 she remained a prey to indecision, and only went down when 
 dinner was served without changing her dress. 
 
 On seeing her rival come in, Camille guessed everything. 
 Beatrix, in morning dress, had a cold look and an expression 
 of reserve, which to an observer so keen as Camille betrayed 
 the animosity of embittered feelings. Camille immediately 
 left the room and gave the order that had so greatly astonished 
 Calyste ; she thought that if the guileless lad, with his insane 
 adoration, came into the middle of the quarrel he might never 
 see Beatrix again, and compromise the future of his passion by 
 some foolish bluntness. She meant to fight out this duel of 
 dupery without any witness. Beatrix, with no one to uphold 
 her, must certainly yield. Camille knew how shallow her 
 soul was, and how mean her pride, to which she had justly 
 given the name of obstinacy. 
 
 The dinner was gloomy. Both the women had too much 
 spirit and good taste to have any explanation before the 
 servants, or when they might listen at the doors. Camille 
 was gentle and kind ; she felt herself so much the superior ! 
 The Marquise was hard and biting ; she knew she was being 
 fooled like a child. There was, all through dinner, a warfare 
 of looks, shrugs, half-spoken words, to which the servants 
 could have no clue, but which gave warning of a terrible 
 storm. When they were going upstairs again Camille mis- 
 chievously offered Beatrix her arm ; the Marquise affected not 
 to see, and rushed forward alone. As soon as coffee was 
 served, Mademoiselle des Touches said to her servant, " You 
 can go," and this was the signal for battle. 
 
 " The romances you act out, my dear, are rather more 
 dangerous than those you write," said the Marquise. 
 
 "They have, however, one great merit," said Camille, 
 taking a cigarette. 
 
BE A TRIX. 191 
 
 "What is that?" asked Beatrix. 
 
 "They are unpublished, my angel." 
 
 "Will that in which you have plunged me make a book?" 
 
 "I have no genius for the task of GEdipus; you have the 
 wit and beauty of the sphinx, I know, but do not ask me any 
 riddles; speak out, my dear Beatrix." 
 
 " When in order to make men happy, to amuse them, please 
 them, dispel their annoyances, we appeal to the devil himself 
 to help us " 
 
 " The men blame us afterward for our endeavor, and be- 
 lieve it to be dictated by a spirit of depravity," said Camille, 
 taking her cigarette from her lips to interrupt her friend. 
 
 " They forget the love which carried us away, and which 
 justified our excesses — for whither may we not be carried? 
 But they are only playing out their part as men, they are un- 
 grateful and unjust," said Beatrix. "Women know each 
 other ; they know how truly lofty and noble their attitude is 
 under all circumstances — nay, I may say, how virtuous. 
 
 " Still, Camille, I have begun to perceive the truth of cer- 
 tain remarks I have heard you complain of. Yes, my dear, 
 there is something of the man in you ; you behave like men ; 
 nothing checks you ; and if you have not all their merits your 
 mind conducts itself like theirs, and you share their contempt 
 for us women. I have no reason to be pleased with you, my 
 dear, and I am too frank to conceal the fact. Nobody, per- 
 haps, will ever inflict so deep a wound on my heart as that I 
 am now suffering from. Though you are not always a woman 
 in love matters, you become one again in revenge. Only a 
 woman of genius could have discovered the tenderest spot in 
 our delicate sentiments — I am speaking of Calyste, and of the 
 trickery, my dear, for that is the right word, that you have 
 employed against me. How low you have fallen, you, Camille 
 Maupin ; and to what end? " 
 
 "Still and still more the sphinx," said Camille, smiling. 
 
 " You wanted to make me throw myself at Calyste's head ; 
 
192 BEATRIX. 
 
 I am still too young for such doings. To me love is 
 love, with its intolerable jealousy and despotic demands. I 
 am not a writer; it is not possible to me to find ideas in 
 feelings " 
 
 " You think yourself capable of loving foolishly ? " Camille 
 asked her. " Be quite easy, you still have all your wits about 
 you. You malign yourself, my dear ; you are cold enough for 
 your head always to remain supreme judge of the achieve- 
 ments of your heart." 
 
 This epigram brought the color to the Marquise's face; she 
 shot a look full of hatred, an envenomed look, at Camille ; 
 and at once, without stopping to choose them, let fly all the 
 sharpest arrows in her quiver. Camille, smoking her cigarettes, 
 listened calmly to this furious attack, bristling with such viru- 
 lent abuse that it is impossible to record it. Beatrix, provoked 
 by her adversary's imperturbable manner, fell back on odious 
 personalities and Mademoiselle des Touches' age. 
 
 " Is that all? " asked Camille, blowing a cloud of smoke. 
 "Are you in love with Calyste? " 
 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 "So much the better," replied Camille. "I am, and far 
 too much for my happiness. He has, no doubt, a fancy for 
 you. You are the loveliest blonde in the world, and I am as 
 brown as a mole ; you are slim and slender, my figure is too 
 dignified. In short, you are young ; that is the great fact, 
 and you have not spared me. You have made an abuse of 
 your advantages over me as a woman, neither more nor less 
 than as a comic paper makes an abuse of humor. I have done 
 all in my power to prevent what is now inevitable," and she 
 raised her eyes to the ceiling. "However little I may seem 
 to be a woman, I still have enough of the woman in me for a 
 rival to need my help in order to triumph over me S " This 
 cruel speech, uttered with an air of perfect innocence, went 
 to the Marquise's heart. " You must think me a very idiotic 
 person if you believe all that Calyste tries to make you believe 
 
BEATRIX. 193 
 
 about me. I am neither lofty nor mean ; I am a woman, and 
 very much a woman. Throw off your airs and give me your 
 hand," said Camille, taking possession of Beatrix's hand. 
 " You do not love Calyste, that is the truth — is it not? Then 
 do not get in a rage ! Be stern with him to-morrow, cold and 
 hard, and he will end by submitting after the scolding I shall 
 give him, for I have not exhausted the resources of our arsenal, 
 and, after all, pleasure always gets the better of desire. 
 
 " But Calyste is a Breton. If he persists in paying you his 
 addresses, tell me honestly, and you can go at once to a 
 little country-house of mine at six leagues from Paris, where 
 you will find every comfort, and where Conti can join you. 
 If Calyste slanders me ! Why, good heavens ! The purest 
 love lies six times a day; its illusions prove its strength." 
 
 There was a proud coldness in Camille's expression that 
 made the Marquise uneasy and afraid. She did not know 
 what answer to make. 
 
 Camille struck the final blow. 
 
 "I am more trusting and less bitter than you," she went 
 on. "I do not imagine that you intended to hide under 
 recrimination an attack which would imperil my life ; you 
 know me ; I should not survive the loss of Calyste, and I 
 must lose him- sooner or later. But, indeed, Calyste loves 
 me, and I know it." 
 
 " Here is his answer to a letter from me in which I wrote 
 only of you," said Beatrix, holding out Calyste's letter. 
 
 Camille took it and read it. As she read her eyes filled 
 with tears ; she wept, as all women weep in acute suffering. 
 
 " Good God ! " said she. " He loves her ! Then I must 
 die without ever having been understood or loved ! " 
 
 She sat for some minutes with her head resting on her 
 friend's shoulder; her pain was genuine; she felt in her own 
 soul the same terrible blow that Madame du Guenic had re- 
 ceived on reading this letter. 
 
 " Do you love him?" said she, sitting up and looking at 
 13^ 
 
194 BEATRIX. 
 
 Beatrix. " Do you feel for him that infinite devotion which 
 triumphs over all suffering and survives scorn, betrayal, even 
 the certainty of never being loved again ? Do you love him 
 for himself, for the very joy of loving? " 
 
 "My dearest friend!" said the Marquise, much moved. 
 " Well, be content, I will leave to-morrow." 
 
 " Do not go away ; he loves you, I see it ! And I love him 
 so well that I should be in despair if I saw him miserable and 
 unhappy. I had dreamed of many things for him ; but if he 
 loves you, that is all at an end." 
 
 " Yes, Cam i He, I love him," said the Marquise with de- 
 lightful simplicity, but coloring. 
 
 " You love him, and you can resist him ! " cried Camille. 
 " No, you do not love him ! " 
 
 "I do not know what new virtues he has aroused in me, 
 but he has certainly made me ashamed of myself," said 
 Beatrix. " I could wish to be virtuous and free, so as to 
 have something else to sacrifice to him beside the remnants 
 of a heart and disgraceful bonds. I will not accept an incom- 
 plete destiny either for him or for myself." 
 
 " Cold brain ! it can love and calculate ! " cried Camille, 
 with a sort of horror. 
 
 " Whatever you please, but I will not blight his life or be 
 a stone round his neck, an everlasting regret. As I cannot 
 be his wife, I will not be his mistress. He has — you will not 
 laugh at me ? No ? Well, then, his beautiful love has puri- 
 fied me." 
 
 Camille gave Beatrix a look — the wildest, fiercest look that 
 ever a jealous woman flung at her rival. 
 
 " On that ground," said she, " I fancied I stood alone. 
 Beatrix, that speech has parted us for ever ; we are no longer 
 friends. We are at the beginning of a hideous struggle. 
 Now, I tell you plainly, you must succumb or fly." 
 
 Felicite rushed away into her own room after showing to 
 Beatrix, who was amazed, a face like an infuriated lioness. 
 
BEATRIX. 195 
 
 " Are you coming to le Croisic to-morrow? " said Camille, 
 lifting the curtain. 
 
 " Certainly," said the Marquise loftily; " I will not fly — 
 nor will I succumb." 
 
 "I play with my hand on the table," retorted Camille; "I 
 shall write to Conti." 
 
 Beatrix turned as white as her gauze scarf. 
 
 "For each of us life is at stake," replied Beatrix, who did 
 not know what to decide on. 
 
 The violent passions to which this scene had given rise be- 
 tween the two women subsided during the night. They both 
 reasoned with themselves and came back to a reliance on the 
 perfidious temporizing which fascinates most women — an ex- 
 cellent system between them and men, but a bad one between 
 woman and woman. It was in the midst of this last storm 
 that Mademoiselle des Touches heard the great voice which 
 dominates even the bravest. Beatrix listened to the counsels 
 of worldly wisdom ; she feared the contempt of society. So 
 Felicite's last master-stroke, weighted with the accents of in- 
 tense jealousy, was perfectly successful. Calyste's blunder 
 was remedied, but any fresh mistake might ruin his hopes for- 
 ever. 
 
 The month of August was drawing to a close, the sky was 
 magnificently clear. On the horizon the ocean, like a southern 
 sea, had a hue as of molten silver, and fluttered to the strand 
 in sparkling ripples. A sort of glistening vapor, produced 
 by the sun's rays falling directly on the sand, made an atmos- 
 phere at least equal to that of the tropics. The salt blos- 
 somed into little white stars on the surface of the salt-pans. 
 The laborious marshmen, dressed in white on purpose to defy 
 the heat of the sun, were at their post by daybreak armed 
 with their long rakes, some leaning against the mud-walls 
 dividing the plots, and watching this process of natural chem- 
 istry, familiar to them from their infancy; others playing with 
 
196 BEATRIX. 
 
 their little ones and wives. Those green dragons called ex- 
 cisemen smoked their pipes in peace. There was something 
 Oriental in the picture, and certainly a Parisian, suddenly 
 dropped there, would not have believed that he was in France. 
 
 The Baron and Baroness, who had made a pretext of their 
 wish to see how the salt-raking was going on, were on the 
 jetty, admiring the silent scene, where no sound was to be 
 heard but the sea moaning with regular rhythm, where boats 
 cut through the water, and the green belt of cultivated land 
 was all the more lovely in its effect because it is so uncommon 
 on the desert shores of the ocean. 
 
 " Well, my friends, I shall have seen the marshes of Guer- 
 ande once more before I die," said the Baron to the marsh- 
 men, who stood in groups at the fringe of the marsh to greet 
 him. 
 
 " As if the du Guenics died ! " said one of the men. 
 
 At this moment the little party from les Touches came 
 down the narrow road. The Marquise led the way alone, 
 Calyste and Camille followed arm in arm. About twenty 
 yards behind them came Gasselin. 
 
 " There are my father and mother," said Calyste to Camille. 
 
 The Marquise stopped. Madame du Guenic felt the most 
 vehement repulsion at the sight of Beatrix, though she was 
 dressed to advantage, in a broad-brimmed Leghorn hat 
 trimmed with blue cornflowers, her hair waved beneath it ; a 
 dress of gray linen stuff, and a blue sash with long ends ; in 
 short, the garb of a princess disguised as a shepherdess. 
 
 " She has no heart ! " said Fanny to herself. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said Calyste to Camille, "here are 
 Madame du Guenic and my father." 
 
 Then he added to his parents — 
 
 " Mademoiselle des Touches and Madame la Marquise de 
 Rochefide, nee de Casteran — my father." 
 
 The Baron bowed to Mademoiselle des Touches, who bowed 
 with an air of humble gratitude to the Baroness, 
 
BE A TRIX. 197 
 
 "She," thought the observant Fanny, "really loves my 
 boy ; she seems to be thanking me for having brought him 
 into the world." 
 
 " You, like me, are come to see if the yield is good ; but 
 you have more reasons than I for curiosity, mademoiselle," 
 said the Baron to Camille, " for you have property here." 
 
 " Mademoiselle is the richest owner of them all," said one 
 of the marshmen ; " and God preserve her, for she is a very 
 good lady ! " 
 
 The two parties bowed and went their way. 
 
 "You would never suppose Mademoiselle des Touches to 
 be more than thirty," said the good man to his wife. " She 
 is very handsome. And Calyste prefers that jade of a Parisian 
 Marquise to that good daughter of Brittany?" 
 
 "Alas, yes ! " said the Baroness. 
 
 A boat was lying at the end of the jetty ; they got in, but 
 not in high spirits. Beatrix was cold and dignified. Camille 
 had scolded Calyste for his disobedience and explained to 
 him the position of his love affair. Calyste, sunk in gloomy 
 despair, cast eyes at Beatrix, in which love and hatred strug- 
 gled for the upper hand. 
 
 Not a word was spoken during the short passage from the 
 jetty of Guerande to the extreme point of the harbor of le 
 Croisic, the spot where the salt is shipped, being brought down 
 to the shore by women, in large earthen crocks, which they 
 carry on their heads, holding them in such a way as to look 
 like caryatides. These women are barefoot and wear a very 
 short skirt. Many of them leave the kerchief that covers 
 their shoulders to fly loose, and several wear only a shift, and 
 are the proudest, for the less clothes they wear the more they 
 display their modest beauties. 
 
 The little Danish bark was taking in her cargo. Thus the 
 landing of these two beautiful ladies excited the curiosity of 
 the salt-carriers ; and partly to escape them, as well as to do 
 Calyste a service, Camille hurried on toward the rocks, leav- 
 
198 BEATRIX. 
 
 ing him with Beatrix. Gasselin lingered at least two hundred 
 yards behind his master. 
 
 On the seaward side the peninsula of le Croisic is fringed 
 with granite rocks so singularly grotesque in form that they 
 can only be appreciated by travelers who are able from ex- 
 perience to make comparisons between the different grand 
 spectacles of wild nature. The rocks of le Croisic have, per- 
 haps, the same superiority over other similar scenes that the 
 road to the Grande Chartreuse is admitted to have over other 
 narrow gorges. Neither the Corsican shore, where the granite 
 forms very remarkable reefs, nor that of Sardinia, where nature 
 has reveled in grand and terrible effects, nor the basaltic 
 formations of northern seas, have quite so distinctive a char- 
 acter. Fancy seems to have disported itself there in endless 
 arabesques, where the most grotesque shapes mingle or stand 
 forth. Every form may be seen there. Imagination may, 
 perhaps, be weary of this vast collection of monsters, among 
 which, in furious weather, the sea rushes in, and has at last 
 polished down all the rough edges. 
 
 Under a natural vault, arched with a boldness only faintly 
 imitated by Brunelleschi — for the greatest efforts of art are 
 but a timid counterpart of some work of nature — you will 
 find a basin polished like a marble bath and strewn with 
 smooth, fine white sand, in which you may bathe in safety in 
 four feet of tepid water. As you walk on you admire the cool 
 little creeks, under shelter of porticoes rough-hewn but stately, 
 like those of the Pitti palace — another imitation of the freaks 
 of nature. The variety is infinite ; nothing is lacking that 
 the most extravagant fancy could invent or wish for. 
 
 There is even a large shrub of box,* a thing so rare on 
 the shore of the Atlantic that perhaps this is the only speci- 
 men. This box-shrub, the greatest curiosity in le Croisic, 
 where trees cannot grow, is at about a league from the port, 
 on the utmost headland of the coast. On one of the promon- 
 
 * Buis, "whence (says Balzac) the word buisson," shrub or bush. 
 
BE A TRIX. 199 
 
 tories formed by the granite, rising so high above the sea that 
 the waves cannot reach it even in the wildest storms, and 
 facing the south, the floods have worn a hollow shelf about 
 four feet deep. In this cleft, chance, or perhaps man, has 
 deposited soil enough to enable a box, sown by some bird, to 
 grow thick and closely shorn. The gnarled roots would indi- 
 cate an age of at least three hundred years. Below it the 
 rock falls sheer. 
 
 Some shock, of which the traces are stamped in indelible 
 characters on this coast, has swept off the fragments of granite 
 I know not whither. The sea comes, without breaking over 
 any shoals, to the bottom of this cliff, where the water is more 
 than five hundred feet deep. On either hand some reefs, just 
 beneath the surface, form a sort of large cirque, traceable by 
 the foaming breakers. It needs some courage and resolution 
 to climb to the top of this little Gibraltar; its cap is almost 
 spherical, and a gust of wind might carry the inquirer into 
 the sea, or, which would be worse, on to the rocks below. 
 This giant sentinel is like the lantern towers of old chateaux, 
 whence miles of country could be scanned and attacks guarded 
 against ; from its height are seen the steeple and the thrifty 
 fields of le Croisic, the sand-hills that threaten to encroach on 
 the arable land, and which have invaded the neighborhood 
 of le Bourg de Batz. Some old men declare that there was, 
 long ago, a castle on this spot. The sardine fishers have a 
 name for this headland, which can be seen from afar at sea; 
 but I must be forgiven for having forgotten that Breton name, 
 as hard to pronounce as it is to remember. ■ 
 
 Calyste led Beatrix toward this height, whence the view is 
 superb, and where the forms of the granite surpass all the sur- 
 prises they can have caused along the sandy margin of the 
 shore. 
 
 It is vain to explain why Camille had hurried on in front; 
 like a wounded animal, she longed for solitude ; she lost her- 
 self in the grottoes, reappeared on the boulders, chased the 
 
200 BEATRIX. 
 
 crabs out of their holes or discovered them in the very act of 
 their eccentric behavior. Not to be inconvenienced by her" 
 woman's skirts, she had put on Turkish trousers with embroid- 
 ered frills, a short blouse, and a felt hat ; and, by way of a 
 traveler's staff, she carried a riding-whip, for she was always 
 vain of her strength and agility. Thus attired, she was a 
 hundred times handsomer than Beatrix ; she had tied a little 
 red, China silk shawl across her bosom and knotted behind, as 
 we wrap a child. For some little time Beatrix and Calyste 
 saw her flitting over rocks and rifts like a will-o'-the-wisp, 
 trying to stultify grief by facing perils. 
 
 She was the first to arrive at the box-cliff, and sat down in 
 the shade of one of the clefts, lost in meditation. What 
 could such a woman as she do in old age, after drinking the 
 cup of fame which all great talents, too greedy to sip the dull 
 driblets of vanity, drain at one draught ? She has since con- 
 fessed that then and there, one of the coincidences suggested 
 by a mere trifle, by one of the accidents which count for 
 nothing with ordinary people, though they open a gulf of 
 meditation to a great soul, brought her to a decision as to the 
 strange deed, which was afterward the close of her social 
 career. She drew out of her pocket a little box in which she 
 had brought, in case of thirst, some strawberry pastilles; she 
 ate several ; but as she sucked them, she could not help re- 
 flecting that the strawberries, which were no more, yet lived 
 by their qualities. Hence she concluded that it might be the 
 same with us. The sea offered her an image of the infinite. 
 No great mind can get away from the infinite, granting the 
 immortality of the soul, without being brought to infer some 
 religious future. This idea still haunted her when she smelt 
 at her scent-bottle of Eau de Portugal. 
 
 Her manoeuvres for handing Beatrix over to Calyste then 
 struck her as very sordid ; she felt the woman die in her, and 
 she emerged as the noble angelic being hitherto veiled in the 
 flesh. Her vast intellect, her learning, her acquirements, her 
 
BE A TRIX. 201 
 
 spurious loves had brought her face to face with what ? Who 
 could have foretold it? With the yearning mother, the con- 
 soler of the sorrowing — the Roman Church — so mild toward 
 repentance, so poetical to poets, so artless with children, so 
 deep and mysterious to wild and anxious spirits, that they can 
 for ever plunge deeper into it and still satisfy their inextin- 
 guishable curiosity which is constantly excited. 
 
 She glanced back at the devious ways to which she had 
 been led by Calyste, comparing them to the tortuous paths 
 among these rocks. Calyste was still in her eyes the lovely 
 messenger from heaven, a divine leader. She smothered 
 earthly in sacred love. 
 
 After walking on for some time in silence, Calyste, at an 
 exclamation from Beatrix at the beauty of the ocean, very dif- 
 ferent from the Mediterranean, could not resist drawing a 
 comparison between that sea and his love, in its purity and 
 extent, its agitations, its depth, its eternity. 
 
 "It has a rock for its shore," said Beatrix with a little 
 mocking laugh. 
 
 "When you speak to me in that tone," replied he with a 
 heavenly flash, "I see you and hear you, and I can find an 
 angel's patience ; but when I am alone, you would pity me if 
 you could see me. My mother cries over my grief." 
 
 " Listen, Calyste, this must come to an end," said the Mar- 
 quise, stepping down on to the sandy path. " Perhaps we are 
 now in the one propitious spot for the utterance of such things, 
 for never in my life have I seen one where nature was more in 
 harmony with my thoughts. I have seen Italy, where every- 
 thing speaks of love ; I have seen Switzerland, where all is fresh 
 and expressive of true happiness, laborious happiness, where the 
 verdure, the calm waters, the most placid outlines are over- 
 powered by the snow-crowned Alps; but I have seen nothing 
 which more truly paints the scorching barrenness of my life 
 than this little plain, withered by sea-gales, corroded by salt 
 mists, where melancholy tillage struggles in the face of the im- 
 
202 BEATRIX. 
 
 mense ocean and under the hedgerows of Brittany, whence 
 rise the towers of your Guerande. 
 
 " Well, Calyste, that is Beatrix. Do not attach yourself to 
 that. I love you, but I will never be yours, for I am con- 
 scious of my inward desolation. Ah ! you can never know 
 how cruel I am to myself when I tell you this. No, you shall 
 never see your idol — if I am your idol — stoop ; it shall not 
 fall from the height where you have set it. I have now a 
 horror of a passion which the world and religion alike repro- 
 bate ; I will be humbled no more, nor will I steal happiness. 
 I shall remain where I am ; I shall be the sandy, unfertile 
 desert, without verdure or flowers, which lies before you." 
 
 "And. if you should be deserted?" said Calyste. 
 
 " Then I should go and beg for mercy. I would humble 
 myself before the "man I have sinned against, but I would 
 never run the risk of rushing into happiness which I know 
 would end." 
 
 ''End?" cried Calyste. 
 
 " End," repeated the Marquise, interrupting the rhapsody 
 into which her lover was plunging, by a tone which reduced 
 him to silence. 
 
 This contradiction gave rise in the youth's soul to one of 
 those wordless rages which are known only to those who have 
 loved without hope. He and Beatrix walked on for about 
 three hundred yards in utter silence, looking neither at the 
 sea, nor the rocks, nor the fields of le Croisic. 
 
 " I should make you so happy ! " said Calyste. 
 
 "All men begin by promising us happiness, and they be- 
 queath to us shame, desertion, disgust. I have nothing of 
 which to accuse the man to whom I ought to be faithful ; he 
 made me no promises ; I went to him. But the only way to 
 make my fault less is to make it eternal." 
 
 " Say at once, madame, that you do not love me ! I who 
 love you, know by myself that love does not argue, it sees 
 nothing but itself, there is no sacrifice I could not make for 
 
BE A TR1X. 203 
 
 it. Command me, and I will attempt the impossible. The 
 man who of old scorned his mistress for having thrown her 
 glove to the lions and commanded him to rescue it did not 
 love ! He misprized your right to test us, to make sure of 
 our love, and never to lay down your arms but to superhuman 
 magnanimity. To you I would sacrifice my family? my name, 
 my future life." 
 
 " What an insult lies in that word sacrifice ! " replied she 
 in a reproachful tone, which made Calyste feel all the folly of 
 his expression. 
 
 Only women who loved wholly, or utter coquettes, can take 
 a word as a fulcrum, and spring to prodigious heights ; wit 
 and feeling act on the same lines ; but the woman who loves 
 is grieved, the coquette is contemptuous. 
 
 "You are right," said Calyste, dropping two tears, "the 
 word can only be applied to the achievement you demand 
 of me." 
 
 "Be silent," said Beatrix, startled by a reply in which for 
 the first time Calyste really expressed his love. " I have done 
 wrong enough. Do not tempt me." 
 
 They had just reached the base of the box-cliff. Calyste felt 
 intoxicating joys in helping the Marquise to climb the rock; 
 she was bent on mounting to the very top. The poor boy 
 thought it the height of rapture to support her by the waist, 
 to feel her slightly tremulous : she needed him ! The un- 
 hoped-for joy turned his brain, he saw nothing, he put his 
 arm around her body. 
 
 " Well ! " she said with an imperious look. 
 
 " You will never be mine? " he asked in a voice choked 
 by a storm in his blood. 
 
 "Never, my dear," said she. "To you I can only be 
 Beatrix — a dream. And is not a dream sweet ? We shall 
 know no bitterness, no regrets, no repentance." 
 
 "And you will return to Conti? " 
 
 "There is no help for it." 
 
204 BEATRIX. 
 
 "Then you shall never more be any man's," cried Ca- 
 lyste, flinging her from him with mad violence. 
 
 He listened for her fall before throwing himself after her, 
 but he only heard a dull noise, the harsh rending of stuff, and 
 the heavy sound of a body falling on earth. Instead of tum- 
 bling head foremost, Beatrix had turned over ; she had fallen 
 into the box-tree ; but she would have rolled to the bottom 
 of the sea, nevertheless, if her gown had not caught on a 
 corner, and, by tearing, checked the force of her fall on the 
 bush. 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches, who had witnessed the scene, 
 could not call out, for she was aghast, and could only signal 
 to Gasselin to hasten up. Calyste leaned over, prompted by 
 a fierce sort of curiosity ; he saw Beatrix as she lay, and shud- 
 dered. She seemed to be praying ; she thought she must die, 
 she felt the box-tree giving way. With the sudden presence 
 of mind inspired by love, and the supernatural agility of 
 youth in the face of danger, he let himself down the nine 
 feet of rock by his hands, clinging to the rough edges, to the 
 little shelf, where he was in time to rescue the Marquise by 
 taking her in his arms, at the risk of their both falling into 
 the sea. When he caught Beatrix she became unconscious ; 
 but he could dream that she was his, wholly his, in this aerial 
 bed where they might have to remain a long time, and his 
 first feeling was an impulse of gladness. 
 
 "Open your eyes, forgive me!" said Calyste. "Or we 
 die together." 
 
 "Die?" said she, opening her eyes and unsealing her 
 pale lips. 
 
 Calyste received the word with a kiss, and then was aware 
 of a spasmodic thrill in the Marquise, which was ecstasy to 
 him. At that instant Gasselin's nailed shoes were audible 
 above them. Camille followed the Breton, and they were 
 anxiously considering the means of saving the lovers. 
 
 "There is but one way, mademoiselle," said Grasselin, 
 
'OPEN YOUR EYES, FORGIVE ME'" SAID CALYSTE. " OR WE 
 
 DIE TOGETHER." 
 
BEATRIX. 205 
 
 " I will let myself down ; they will climb up on my shoulders, 
 and you will give them your hand." 
 
 "And you?" said Camille. 
 
 The man seemed astonished at being held of any account 
 when his young master was in danger. 
 
 "It will be better to fetch a ladder from le Croisic," said 
 Camille. 
 
 " She is a knowing one, she is ! " said Gasselin to himself, 
 as he went off. 
 
 Beatrix, in a feeble voice, begged to be laid on the ground ; 
 she felt faint. Calyste laid her down on the cool earth be- 
 tween the rock and the box-tree. 
 
 "I saw you, Calyste," said Camille. "Whether Beatrix 
 dies or is saved, this must never be anything but an accident." 
 
 " She will hate me ! " he cried, his eyes full of tears. 
 
 " She will worship you," replied Camille. " This is an end 
 to our excursion ; she must be carried to les Touches. What 
 would have become of you if she had been killed ? " she said. 
 
 "I should have followed her." 
 
 "And your mother? — and," she softly added after a pause, 
 "and me?" 
 
 Calyste stood pale, motionless, and silent, his back against 
 the granite. Gasselin very soon returned from one of the 
 little farms that lie scattered among the fields, running with 
 a ladder he had borrowed. Beatrix had somewhat recovered 
 her strength. When Gasselin had fixed the ladder, the 
 Marquise, helped by Gasselin, who begged Calyste to put 
 Camille's red shawl round Beatrix, under her arms, and to 
 give him up the ends, climbed up to the little plateau, where 
 Gasselin took her in his arms like a child, and carried her 
 down to the shore. 
 
 " Death I would not say nay to — but pain ! " said she in a 
 weak voice to Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 
 The faintness and shock from which Beatrix was suffering 
 made it necessary that she should be carried as far as the farm 
 
 U 
 
206 BEATRIX. 
 
 whence Gasselin had borrowed the ladder. Calyste, Gasselin, 
 and Camille took off such garments as they could dispense 
 with, and made a sort of mattress on the ladder, on which 
 they laid Beatrix, carrying it like a litter. The farm-people 
 offered their bed. Gasselin hurried off to the spot where the 
 horses were waiting for them, took one, and fetched a surgeon 
 from le Croisic, after ordering the boatmen to come up the 
 creek that lay nearest to the farm. Calyste, sitting on a low 
 stool, answered Camille's remarks with nods and rare mono- 
 syllables, and Mademoiselle des Touches was equally uneasy 
 as to Beatrix's condition and Calyste's. 
 
 After being bled the patient felt better; she could speak; 
 she consented to go in the boat ; and at about five in the 
 afternoon they crossed to Guerande, where the town doctor 
 was waiting for her. The news of the accident had spread 
 in this deserted and almost uninhabited land with amazing 
 rapidity. 
 
 Calyste spent the night at les Touches at the foot of Beatrix's 
 bed with Camille. The doctor promised that by next morn- 
 ing the Marquise would suffer from nothing worse than stiff- 
 ness. Through Calyste's despair a great happiness beamed. 
 He was at the foot of Beatrix's bed watching her asleep or 
 waking ; he could study her pale face, her lightest movements. 
 Camille smiled bitterly as she recognized in the lad all the 
 symptoms of a passion such as tinges the soul and mind of a 
 man by becoming a part of his life at a time when no thought, 
 no cares counteract this torturing mental process. 
 
 Calyste would never discern the real woman in Beatrix. 
 How guilelessly did the young Breton allow her to read his 
 most secret soul ! Why, he fancied she was his, merely be- 
 cause he found himself here, in her room, admiring her in the 
 disorder of the bed. He watched Beatrix in her slightest 
 movement with rapturous attention ; his face expressed such 
 sweet curiosity, his ecstasy was so artlessly betrayed, that 
 
BEATRIX. 207 
 
 there was a moment when the two women looked at each 
 other with a smile. As Calyste read in the invalid's fine sea- 
 green eyes a mixed expression of confusion, love, and amuse- 
 ment, he blushed and looked away. 
 
 " Did I not say to you, Calyste, that you men promised us 
 happiness and ended by throwing us over a precipice?" 
 
 As he heard this little jest, spoken in a charming tone of 
 voice, which betrayed some change in Beatrix's heart, Calyste 
 knelt down, took one of her moist hands, which she allowed 
 him to hold, and kissed it very submissively. 
 
 " You have every right to reject my love for ever," said he, 
 penitently, "and I have no right ever to say a single word to 
 you again." 
 
 "Ah! " cried Camille, as she saw the expression of her 
 friend's face, and compared it with that she had seen after 
 every effort of diplomacy; "love unaided will always have 
 more wit than all the world beside. Take your draught, my 
 dear, and go to sleep." 
 
 This evening spent by Calyste with Mademoiselle des 
 Touches, who read books on mystical theology, while Calyste 
 read "Indiana " — the first work of Camille's famous rival, in 
 which he found the captivating picture of a young man who 
 loved with idolatry and devotion, with mysterious rapture, 
 and for his whole life — a book of fatal teaching for him ! this 
 evening left an ineffaceable mark on the heart of the unhappy 
 youth, for Felicite at last convinced him that any woman who 
 was not a monster could only be happy and flattered in every 
 vanity, by knowing herself to be the object of a crime. 
 
 "You would never, never, have thrown me into the sea ! " 
 said poor Camille wiping away a tear. 
 
 Toward morning Calyste, quite worn out, fell asleep in his 
 chair. It was now the Marquise's turn to look at the pretty 
 boy, pale with agitation and his first love-watch ; she heard 
 him murmuring words in his sleep. 
 
 " He loves in his very dreams ! " said she to Camille. 
 
208 BE A TRIX. 
 
 " We must send him home to bed," said F6licit6, awaking 
 him. 
 
 No one was alarmed at the du Guenics' ; Mademoiselle des 
 Touches had written a few words to the Baroness. 
 
 Calyste dined at les Touches next day. He found Beatrix 
 up, pale, languid, and tired. But there was no hardness now 
 in her speech or looks. After that evening, which Camille 
 filled with music, seating herself at the piano to allow Calyste 
 to hold and press Beatrix's hands while they could say nothing 
 to each other, there was never a storm at les Touches. Felicite 
 completely effaced herself. 
 
 Women like Madame de Rochefide, cold, fragile, hard, and 
 thin — such women, whose throat shows a form of collar-bone 
 suggestive of the feline race — have souls as pale and colorless 
 as their pale gray or green eyes ; to melt them, to vitrify these 
 flints, a thunderbolt is needed. To Beatrix this thunderbolt 
 had fallen in Calyste's rage of love and attempt on her life ; 
 it was such a flame as nothing can resist, changing the most 
 stubborn nature. Beatrix felt herself softened ; pure and true 
 love flooded her soul with its soothing, lapping glow. She 
 floated in a mild and tender atmosphere of feeling hitherto 
 unknown, in which she felt ennobled, elevated ; she had en- 
 tered into the heaven where, in all ages, woman has dwelt, in 
 Brittany. She enjoyed the respectful worship of this boy, 
 whose happiness cost her so little; for a smile, a look, a word 
 was enough for Calyste. Such value "set by feeling on such 
 trifles touched her extremely. To this angelic soul, the glove 
 she had worn could be more than her whole body was to the 
 man who ought to have adored her. What a contrast ! 
 
 What woman could have resisted this persistent idolatry? 
 She was sure of being understood and obeyed. If she had 
 bid Calyste to risk his life for her smallest whim, he would 
 not even have paused to think. And Beatrix acquired an in- 
 describable air of imposing dignity; she looked at love on its 
 loftiest side, and sought in it a footing, as it were, which 
 
BEATRIX. 209 
 
 would enable her to remain, in Calyste's eyes, the supreme 
 woman; she wished her power over him to be eternal. She 
 coquetted all the more persistently because she felt herself 
 weak. 
 
 For a whole week she played the invalid with engaging 
 hypocrisy. How many times did she walk around and around 
 the green lawn that spread on the garden side of the house, 
 leaning on Calyste's arm, and reviving in Camille the tor- 
 ments she had caused her during the first week of her visit. 
 
 "Well, my dear, you are taking him the Grand Tour!" 
 said Mademoiselle des Touches to the Marquise. 
 
 One evening, before the excursion to le Croisic, the two 
 women had been discussing love, and laughing over the 
 various ways in which men made their declarations, confessing 
 that the most skillful, and, of course, therefore the least de- 
 voted, did not waste time in wandering through the mazes of 
 sentimentality, and were right ; so that those who loved best 
 were, at a certain stage, the worst used. 
 
 "They set to work as La Fontaine did to get into the 
 Academy," said Camille. 
 
 Her remark now recalled this conversation to Beatrix's 
 memory while reproving her Machiavellian conduct. Madame 
 de Rochefide had absolute power over Calyste, and could 
 keep him within the bounds she chose, reminding him by a 
 look or a gesture of his horrible violence by the seashore. 
 Then the poor martyr's eyes would fill with tears ; he was 
 silent, swallowing down his arguments, his hopes, his griefs, 
 with a heroism that would have touched any other woman. 
 
 Her infernal coquetting brought him to such desperation 
 that he came one day to throw himself into Camille's arms 
 and ask her advice. Beatrix, armed with Calyste's letter, had 
 picked out the passage in which he said that loving was the 
 chief happiness, that being loved was second to it, and she 
 had made use of this axiom to suppress his passion to such a 
 degree of respectful idolatry as she chose to permit. She 
 14 
 
210 BEATRIX. 
 
 reveled in having her spirit soothed by the sweet concert of 
 praise and adoration which nature suggests to youth ; and 
 there is so much art too, though unconscious, so much inno- 
 cent seductiveness in their cries, their prayers, their exclama- 
 tions, their appeals to themselves, in their readiness to mort- 
 gage the future, that Beatrix took care not to answer him. 
 She had told him she doubted ! Happiness was not yet in 
 question, only the permission to love that the lad was con- 
 stantly asking for, persistently bent on taking the citadel 
 from the strongest side — that of the mind and heart. 
 
 The woman who is bravest in word is often weak in action. 
 After seeing what progress he had made by his attempt to 
 push Beatrix into the sea, it is strange that Calyste should 
 not have continued the pursuit of happiness through violence ; 
 but love in these young lads is so ecstatic and religious that it 
 insists on absolute conviction. Hence its sublimity. 
 
 However, one day Calyste, driven to bay by desire, com- 
 plained vehemently to Camille of Madame de Rochefide's 
 conduct. 
 
 " I wanted to cure you by enabling you to know her from 
 the first," replied Mademoiselle des Touches, "but you spoilt 
 all by your impetuosity. Ten days since you were her master ; 
 now you are her slave, my poor boy. So you would never be 
 strong enough to carry out my orders." 
 
 "What must I do?" 
 
 "Quarrel with her on the ground of her cruelty. A 
 woman is always carried away by talk ; make her treat you 
 badly, and do not return to les Touches till she sends for 
 you." 
 
 There is a moment in every severe disease when the patient 
 accepts the most painful remedies and submits to the most 
 horrible operations. Calyste was at this crisis. He took 
 Camille's advice : he stayed at home for two days ; but on 
 the third he was tapping at Beatrix's door and telling her that 
 he and Camille were waiting breakfast for her. 
 
BEATRIX. 211 
 
 "Another chance lost!" said Camille, seeing him sneak 
 back so tamely. 
 
 During those two days Beatrix had stopped frequently at 
 the window whence the Guerande road could be seen. When 
 Camille found her there she said that she was studying the 
 effect of the gorse by the roadside, its golden bloom blazing 
 under the September sun. Thus Camille had read her 
 friend's secret ; she had only to say the word for Calyste to 
 be happy. But she did not speak it ; she was still too much 
 a woman to urge him to the deed so dreaded by young 
 hearts, who seem aware of all that their ideal must lose by it. 
 
 Beatrix kept Camille and Calyste waiting some little time ; 
 if he had been any other man, the delay would have seemed 
 significant, for the Marquise's dress suggested her wish to 
 fascinate Calyste and prevent his absenting himself again. 
 After breakfast she went to walk in the garden, and en- 
 chanted him with joy, as she enchanted him with love, by 
 expressing her wish to go with him again to see the spot 
 where she had so nearly perished. 
 
 " Let us go alone," said Calyste in a broken voice. 
 
 "If I refused," said she, "I might give you reason to 
 think that you were dangerous. Alas ! as I have told you a 
 thousand times, I belong to another, and must forever be his 
 alone. I chose him, knowing nothing of love. The fault 
 was twofold, and the punishment double." 
 
 When she spoke thus, her eyes moist with the rare tears 
 such women can shed, Calyste felt a sort of pity that cooled 
 his furious ardor ; he worshiped her then as a Madonna. 
 We must not expect that different natures should resemble 
 each other in the expression of their feelings, any more than 
 we look for the same fruits from different trees. Beatrix at 
 this moment was torn in her mind ; she hesitated between 
 herself and Calyste ; between the world, where she hoped 
 some day to be seen again, and perfect happiness ; between 
 ruining herself finally by a second unpardonable passion and 
 
212 BE A TRIX. 
 
 social forgiveness. She was beginning to listen without even 
 affected annoyance to the language of blind love ; she allowed 
 herself to be soothed by the gentle hands of pity. Already 
 many times, she had been moved to tears by hearing Calyste 
 promising her love enough to make up for all she could lose 
 in the eyes of the world, and pitying her for being bound to 
 such an evil genius, to a man so false as Conti. More than 
 once she had not silenced Calyste when she had told him of 
 the misery and sufferings that overwhelmed her in Italy when 
 she found that she did not reign alone in Conti's heart. 
 Camille had given Calyste more than one lecture on this 
 subject, and Calyste had profited by them. 
 
 "I," said he, "love you wholly; you will find in me 
 none of the triumphs of art, nor the pleasures derived from 
 seeing a crowd bewildered by the wonders of talent ; my 
 only talent is for loving you, my only joys will be in yours; 
 no woman's admiration will seem to me worthy of considera- 
 tion ; you need fear no odious rivals. You are misprized ; 
 and wherever you are accepted I desire also to be accepted 
 every day." 
 
 She listened to his words with a drooping head and down- 
 cast mien, allowing him to kiss her hands, and confessing to 
 herself silently but very readily that she was, perhaps, a misun- 
 derstood angel. 
 
 "I am too much humiliated," she replied; "my past de- 
 prives me of all security for the future." 
 
 It was a great day for Calyste when, on reaching les 
 Touches at seven in the morning, he saw from between two 
 gorse bushes Beatrix at a window, wearing the same straw hat 
 that she had worn on the day of their excursion. He felt 
 quite dazzled. These small details of passion make the world 
 wider. 
 
 Only Frenchwomen, perhaps, have the secret of these the- 
 atrical touches ; they owe them to their graceful wit, of which 
 
BE A TRIX. 213 
 
 they infuse just so much into feeling as it can bear without 
 losing its force. 
 
 Ah ! how lightly she leaned on Calyste's arm. They went 
 out together by the garden gate leading to the sand-hills. Bea- 
 trix thought their wildness pleasing ; she saw the little rigid 
 plants that grow there with their pink blossoms, and gathered 
 several, with some of the Carthusian pinks, which also thrive 
 on barren, sands, and divided the flowers significantly with 
 Calyste, to whom these blossoms and leaves were to have an 
 eternally sinister association. 
 
 "We will add a sprig of box ! " said she with a smile. 
 
 She stood for some time waiting for the boat on the jetty, 
 where Calyste told her of his childish eagerness the day of her 
 arrival. 
 
 "That expedition, which I heard of, was the cause of my 
 severity that first day," said she. 
 
 Throughout their walk Madame de Rochefide talked in the 
 half-jesting tone of a woman who loves, and with tenderness 
 and freedom of manner. Calyste might believe himself loved. 
 But when, as they went along the strand under the rocks, and 
 down into one of those pretty bays where the waves have 
 thrown up a marvelous mosaic of the strangest marbles, with 
 which they played like children at picking up the finest speci- 
 mens — when Calyste, at the height of intoxication, proposed 
 in so many words that they should fly to Ireland, she assumed 
 a dignified and mysterious air, begged to take his arm, and 
 went on toward the cliff she had called her Tarpeian rock. 
 
 " My dear fellow," said she, as they slowly climbed the fine 
 block of granite she meant to take as her pedestal, " I have 
 not courage enough to conceal all you are to me. For the 
 last ten years I have known no happiness to compare with that 
 we have just enjoyed in hunting for shells among those tide- 
 washed rocks, in exchanging pebbles, of which I shall have a 
 necklace made, more precious in my eyes than if it were com- 
 posed of the finest diamonds. I have been a child again, a 
 
214 BE A TRIX. 
 
 little girl, such as I was at thirteen or fourteen, when I was 
 worthy of you. The love I have been so happy as to inspire 
 you with has elevated me in my own eyes. Understand this 
 in all its magical meaning. You have made me the proudest, 
 the happiest of my sex, and you will live longer in my memory 
 than I probably shall in yours." 
 
 At this moment she had reached the summit of the cliff, 
 whence the vast ocean was seen spreading on one side, and on 
 the other the Brittany coast with its golden islets, its feudal 
 towers, and its clumps of gorse. Never had a woman a finer 
 stage on which to make a grand avowal. 
 
 " But," she went on, " I am not my own ; I am more firmly 
 bound by my own act than I was by law. So you are pun- 
 ished for my misfortune ; you must be content to know that 
 we suffer together. Dante never saw Beatrice again, Petrarch 
 never possessed his Laura. Such disasters befall none but 
 great souls. 
 
 " Oh ! if ever I should be deserted, if I should fall a thou- 
 sand degrees lower in shame and infamy, if your Beatrix is 
 cruelly misunderstood by a world that will be loathsome to 
 her, if she should be the most despised of women ! Then, be- 
 loved child," she added, taking his hand, "you will know 
 that she is the foremost of them all, that she could rise to 
 heaven with your support. But, then, my friend," she added, 
 with a lofty glance at him, "when you want to throw her 
 down, do not miss your stroke ; after your love, death ! " 
 
 Calyste had his arm around her waist ; he clasped her to 
 his heart. To confirm her tender words, Madame de Roche- 
 fide sealed Calyste's forehead with the most chaste and timid 
 kiss. Then they went down the path and returned slowly, 
 talking like two people who perfectly understand and enter 
 into each other's minds ; she believing she had secured peace, 
 he no longer doubting that he was to be happy — and both 
 deceived. 
 
 Calyste hoped from what Camille had observed that Conti 
 
BEATRIX. 215 
 
 would be delighted to seize the opportunity of giving up 
 Beatrix. The Marquise, on her part, abandoned herself to 
 the uncertainty of things, waiting on chance. Calyste was 
 too deeply in love and too ingenuous to create the chance. 
 They both reached les Touches in the most delightful frame 
 of mind, going in by the garden gate, of which Calyste had 
 taken the key. 
 
 It was now about six o'clock. The intoxicating perfumes, 
 the mild atmosphere, the golden tones of the evening light 
 were all in harmony with their tender mood and talk. Their 
 steps were matched and equal as those of lovers are ; their 
 movements betrayed the unison of their mind. Such silence 
 reigned at les Touches that the sound of the opening and 
 closing gate echoed distinctly, and must have been heard all 
 over the grounds. As Calyste and Beatrix had said all they 
 had to say, and their agitating walk had tired them, they 
 came in slowly and without speaking. 
 
 Suddenly, as she turned an angle, Beatrix was seized with 
 a spasm of horror — the infectious dread that is caused by the 
 sight of a reptile, and that chilled Calyste before he saw its 
 occasion. On a bench under a weeping ash Conti sat talking 
 to Camille Maupin. Madame de Rochefide's convulsive inter- 
 nal trembling was more evident than she wished. Calyste now 
 realized how dear he was to this woman who had just built 
 the barrier between herself and him, no doubt with a view 
 to securing a few days more for coquetting before overleap- 
 ing it. 
 
 In one instant a tragical drama in endless perspective was 
 felt in each heart. 
 
 "You did not expect me so soon, I dare say," said the 
 artist, offering Beatrix his arm. 
 
 The Marquise could not avoid relinquishing Calyste's arm 
 and taking Conti's. This undignified transition, so impera- 
 tively demanded, so full of offense to the later love, was too 
 much for Calyste, who went to throw himself on the bench 
 
216 BEATRIX. 
 
 by Camille, after exchanging the most distant greeting with 
 his rival. He felt a hundred contending sensations. On dis- 
 cerning how much'Beatrix loved him, his first impulse was to 
 rush at the artist and declare that she was his ; but the poor 
 woman's moral convulsion, betraying her sufferings — for she 
 had in that one moment paid the forfeit of all her sins — had 
 startled him so much that he remained stupefied, stricken, like 
 her, by relentless necessity. These antagonistic impulses pro- 
 duced the most violent storm of feeling he had yet known 
 since he had loved Beatrix. 
 
 Madame de Rochefide and Conti went past the seat where 
 Calyste had thrown himself by Camille's side, the Marquise 
 looking at her rival with one of those terrible flashes by which 
 a woman can convey everything. She avoided Calyste' s eye, 
 and seemed to listen to Conti, who was talking lightly. 
 
 "What can they be saying?" asked the agitated Calyste 
 of Camille. 
 
 " Dear child, you have no idea yet of the terrible hold a 
 man has over a woman on the strength of a dead passion. 
 Beatrix could not refuse him her hand. He is laughing at 
 her, no doubt, over her fresh love affair ; he guessed it, of 
 course, from your behavior and the way in which you came 
 in together when he saw you." 
 
 " He is laughing at her ! " cried the vehement youth. 
 
 "Keep calm," said Camille, "or you will lose the few 
 chances that remain to you. If he wounds Beatrix too much 
 in her vanities, she will trample him under foot like a worm. 
 But he is astute ; he will know how to do it cleverly. He will 
 not suppose that the haughty Madame de Rochefide could 
 possibly be false to him ! It would be too base to love a 
 young man for his beauty ! He will no doubt speak of you 
 to her as a mere boy bewitched by the notion of possessing a 
 Marquise and of ruling the destinies of two women. Finally, 
 he will thunder with the rattling artillery of insulting insinu- 
 ations. Then Beatrix will be obliged to combat him with 
 
BEATRIX. 217 
 
 false denials, of which he will take advantage and remain 
 master of the field." 
 
 "Ah ! " cried Calyste, "he does not love. I should leave 
 her free. Love demands a choice renewed every minute, con- 
 firmed every day. The morrow is the justification of yester- 
 day, and increases our hoard of joys. A few days later and 
 he would not have found us here. What brought him back?" 
 
 "A journalist's taunt," said Camille. "The opera on 
 whose success he had counted is a failure — a dead failure. 
 These words spoken in the greenroom, perhaps by Claud 
 Vignon, ' It is hard to lose your reputation and your mistress 
 both at once ! ' stung him no doubt in all his vanities. Love 
 based on mean sentiments is merciless. 
 
 " I questioned him ; but who can trust so false and deceit- 
 ful a nature? He seemed weary of poverty and of love, dis- 
 gusted with life. He regretted having connected himself so 
 publicly with the Marquise, and in speaking of their past 
 happiness fell into a strain of poetic melancholy rather too 
 elegant to be genuine. He hoped no doubt to extract the 
 secret of your love from the joy his flattery must give me." 
 
 "Well?" said Calyste, looking at Beatrix and Conti re- 
 turning, and listening no longer to Camille. 
 
 Camille had prudently kept on the defensive ; she had not 
 betrayed either Calyste's secret or Beatrix's. The artist was 
 a man to dupe any one in the world, and Mademoiselle des 
 Touches warned Calyste to be on his guard with him. 
 
 " My dear child," said she, " this is for you the most crit- 
 ical moment ; such prudence and skill are needed as you 
 have not, and you will be fooled by the most cunning man 
 on earth ; for I can do no more for you." 
 
 A bell announced that dinner was served. Conti offered 
 his arm to Camille, Beatrix took that of Calyste. Camille 
 let the Marquise lead the way; she had a moment to look at 
 Calyste and enjoin prudence by putting her finger to her lips. 
 
 All through dinner Conti was in the highest spirits. This 
 
218 BE A TRIX. 
 
 was perhaps a way of gauging Madame de Rochefide, who 
 played her part badly. As a coquette she might have de- 
 ceived Conti ; but, being seriously in love, she betrayed her- 
 self. -The wily musician, far from watching her, seemed not 
 to observe her embarrassment. At dessert he began talking 
 of women and crying up their noble feelings. 
 
 " A woman who would desert us in prosperity will sacrifice 
 everything to us in adversity," said he. " Women have the 
 advantage of men in constancy ; a woman must be deeply 
 offended indeed to throw over a first lover ; she clings to him 
 
 as to her honor; a second love is a disgrace " and so 
 
 forth. 
 
 He was astoundingly moral ; he burnt incense before the 
 altar on which a heart was bleeding pierced by a thousand 
 stabs. Only Camille and Beatrix understood the virulence 
 of the acrid satire he poured out in the form of praises. 
 Now and again they both colored, but they were obliged to 
 control themselves; they went up to Camille's sitting-room 
 arm in arm, and with one consent passed through the larger 
 drawing-room, where there were no lights, and they could 
 exchange a few words. 
 
 "I cannot endure to let Conti walk over my prostrate body, 
 to give him a right over me," said Beatrix in an undertone. 
 "The convict on the hulks is always at the mercy of the man 
 he is chained to. I am lost ! I must go back to the hulks of 
 love ! And it is you who have sent me back. Ah, you made 
 him come a day too late — or too soon. I recognize your in- 
 fernal gift of romance. Yes, the revenge is complete and the 
 climax perfect." 
 
 " I could threaten you that I would write to Conti, but as 
 to doing it ! I am incapable of such a thing ! " cried Camille. 
 "You are miserable, so I forgive you." 
 
 "What will become of Calyste?" said the Marquise, with 
 the exquisite artlessness of vanity. 
 
 " Then is Conti taking you away ? " cried Camille. 
 
BEATRIX. 219 
 
 "Ah ! you expect to triumph?" retorted Beatrix. 
 
 The Marquise spoke the hideous words with rage, her beauti- 
 ful features distorted, while Camille tried to conceal her glad- 
 ness under an assumed expression of regret ; but the light in 
 her eyes gave the lie to the gravity of her face, and Beatrix 
 could see through a mask ! When they saw each other by 
 candlelight, sitting on the divan where during the last three 
 weeks so many comedies had been played out, where the secret 
 tragedy of so many thwarted passions had had its beginning, 
 the two women studied each other for the last time ; they saw 
 that they were divided by a deep gulf of hatred. 
 
 "I leave you Calyste," said Beatrix, seeing her rival's eyes. 
 " But I am fixed in his heart, and no woman will oust me." 
 
 Camille retorted by quoting, in a tone of subtle irony 
 which stung the Marquise to the quick, the famous speech of 
 Mazarin's niece to Louis XIV.: "You reign, you love him, 
 and you are going J " 
 
 Neither of them throughout this scene, which was a stormy 
 one, noticed the absence of Calyste and Conti. The artist 
 had remained at table with his rival, desiring him to keep him 
 company and finish a bottle of champagne. 
 
 " We have something to say to each other," said Conti, to 
 anticipate any refusal. 
 
 In the position in which they stood to each other, the 
 young Breton was obliged to obey the behest. 
 
 "My dear boy," said the singer in a soothing voice when 
 Calyste had drunk two glasses of wine, " we are a couple of 
 good fellows; we may be frank with each other. I did not 
 come here because I was suspicious. Beatrix loves me." 
 And he assumed a fatuous air. " For my part, I love her no 
 longer ; I have come, not to carry her off, but to break with 
 her and leave her the credit of the rupture. You are young ; 
 you do not know how necessary it is to seem the victim when 
 you feel that you are the executioner. Young men spout fire 
 and flame, they make a parade of throwing over a woman, 
 
220 BEATRIX. 
 
 they often scorn her and make her hate them ; but a wise man 
 gets himself dismissed, and puts on a humiliated expression 
 which leaves the lady some regrets and a sweet sense of supe- 
 riority. The displeasure of the divinity is not irremediable, 
 while abdication is past all reparation. 
 
 "You, happily for you, do not yet know how our lives may 
 be hampered by the senseless promises which women are such 
 fools as to accept, when gallantry requires us to tie such slip- 
 knots to divert the idle hours of happiness. The pair then 
 swear eternal fidelity. A man has some adventure with a 
 woman — he does not fail to assure her politely that he hopes 
 to live and die with her; he pretends to be impatiently await- 
 ing the demise of a husband while earnestly wishing him per- 
 fect health. If the husband should die, there are women so 
 provincial or so tenacious, so silly or so wily, as to rush on the 
 man, crying, ' I am free — here I am ! ' 
 
 " Not one of us is free. The spent ball recoils and falls 
 into the midst of our best-planned triumph or our greatest 
 happiness. 
 
 "I foresaw that you would love Beatrix; I left her in a 
 situation in which she must need flirt with you without abdi- 
 cating her sacred majesty, were it only to annoy that angel, 
 Camille Maupin. Well, my dear fellow, love her : you will 
 be doing me a service. I only want her to behave atrociously 
 to me. I dread her pride and her virtue. Perhaps, in spite 
 of good-will on my side, some time will be required for this 
 manceuvre. On such occasions the one who does not take 
 the first step wins. Just now, as we walked around the lawn, 
 I tried to tell her that I knew all, and wished her joy of her 
 happiness. Well, she was very angry. 
 
 "I, at this moment, am in love with the youngest of our 
 singers, Mademoiselle Falcon, of the opera, and I want to 
 marry her. Yes, I have gotten so far as that-! But when 
 you come to Paris, you will say I have exchanged a marquise 
 for a queen ! " 
 
SEA TRIX. 221 
 
 Joy shed its glory on Calyste's candid face; he confessed 
 his love ; this was all that Conti wanted. 
 
 There is not a man in the world, however blase, however 
 depraved, whose love does not revive as soon as it is threat- 
 ened by a rival. We may wish to be rid of a woman ; we do 
 not wish that she should throw us over. When lovers have 
 come' to this extremity, men and women alike try to be first 
 in the field, so cruel is the wound to their self-respect. Per^ 
 haps what is at stake is all that society has thrown into that 
 feeling) it is indeed less a matter of self-respect than of life 
 itself, the whole future is in the balance; we feel as if we were 
 2osing not the interest, but the capital. 
 
 Calyste, cross-examined by the artist, related all that had 
 happened during these three weeks at les Touches, and was 
 delighted with Conti, who concealed his rage under a sem- 
 blance of delightful good-nature. 
 
 "Let us go upstairs," said he. "Women are not trustful ; 
 they will not understand how we can have sat together for so 
 long without clutching at each other's hair; they might come 
 down to listen. I will do all I can for you, my dear child. 
 I will be odious, rude, and jealous with the Marquise ; I will 
 constantly suspect her of deceiving me — there is nothing more 
 certain to lead a woman to a betrayal ; you will be happy, 
 and I shall be free. You, this evening, must assume the part 
 of a disconcerted lover ; I shall play the suspicious and jealous 
 man. Pity the angel for her inthrallment to a man without 
 fine feelings — weep ! You can weep, you are young. I, alas, 
 can no longer weep ; it is a great advantage lost." 
 
 Calyste and Conti went upstairs. The musician, requested 
 to sing by his young rival, chose the greatest test known to 
 musical executants, the famous "Pria che spunti T aurora " 
 which Rubini himself never attempts without a qualm, and in 
 which Conti had often triumphed. Never had he been more 
 wonderful than at this moment when so many feelings were 
 seething in his breast. Calyste was in ecstasies. At the first 
 
222 BE A TRIX. 
 
 note of the cavatina the singer fired a glance at the Marquise 
 which gave cruel significance to the words, and which was 
 understood. Camille, playing the accompaniment, guessed 
 that it was a command that made Beatrix bow her head. She 
 looked at Calyste, and suspected that the boy had fallen into 
 some snare in spite of her warnings. She was certain of it 
 when the youth went gleefully to bid Beatrix good-night, 
 kissing her hand and pressing it with a little knowing and 
 confident look. 
 
 By the time Calyste had reached Guerande the ladies' maid 
 and servants were packing Conti's traveling carriage ; and 
 " before the dawn," as he had sung, he had carried off Beatrix, 
 with Camille's horses, as far as the first posting-house. 
 
 Under cover of the darkness, Madame de Rochefide was 
 able to look back at Guerande, whose tower, white in the 
 daybreak, stood out in the gray light. She gave herself up 
 to melancholy — for she was leaving there one of the fairest 
 flowers of life — love such as the purest girls may dream of. 
 Respect of persons was crushing the only true love this woman 
 had ever known, or could ever know, in all her life. The 
 woman of the world was obeying the laws of the world, sacri- 
 ficing love to appearances, as some women sacrifice it to re- 
 ligion or to duty. From this point of view, this terrible story 
 is that of many women. 
 
 Next day, at about noon, Calyste arrived at les Touches. 
 When he reached the turn in the road whence, yesterday, he 
 had seen Beatrix at the window, he caught sight of Camille, 
 who hurried out to meet him. At the bottom of the stairs 
 she said this cruel word — 
 
 "Gone!" 
 
 " Beatrix? " cried Calyste, stunned. 
 
 "You were duped by Conti. You told me nothing; I 
 could do nothing." 
 
 She led the poor boy to her little drawing-room ; he sank 
 on the divan, in the place where he had so often seen the 
 
BE A TRIX. 223 
 
 Marquise, and melted into tears. Felicite said nothing ; she 
 smoked her hookah, knowing that nothing can stem the first 
 rush of such suffering, which is always deaf and speechless. 
 Calyste, since there was nothing to be done, stayed there all 
 day in a state of utter torpor. Just before dinner, Camille 
 tried to say a few words to him, after begging that he would 
 listen to her. 
 
 "My dear boy," said she, "you have been the cause to 
 me of intense suffering, and I have not, as you have, a fair 
 future life in which to recover. To me the earth has no 
 further springtime, the soul no further love. So I, to find 
 comfort, must look higher. 
 
 " Here, the day before Beatrix came, I painted her por- 
 trait ; I would not darken it, you would have thought that I 
 was jealous. Now, listen to the truth. Madame de Roche- 
 fide is as far as possible from being worthy of you. The dis- 
 play of her fall was not necessary, but she would have been 
 nobody but for that scandal ; she made it on purpose to have 
 a part to play. She is one of those women who prefer the 
 parade of wrongdoing to the calm peace of happiness ; they 
 affront society to wring from it the evil gift of a slander ; 
 they must be talked about, at whatever cost. She was eaten 
 up by vanity. Her fortune and wit had not availed to give 
 her the feminine dominion which she had tried to conquer by 
 presiding over a salon ; she had fancied that she could achieve 
 the celebrity of the Duchesse de Langeais and the Vicomtesse 
 de Beauseant ; but the world is just, it bestows the honors of 
 its interest only on genuine passion. 
 
 " Her flight was not justified by any obstacles. Damocles' 
 sword did not hang glittering over her festivities ; and beside, 
 in Paris, those who love truly and sincerely may easily be 
 happy in a quiet way. In short, if she could be tender and 
 loving, she would not have gone off last night with Conti." 
 
 Camille talked for a long time, and very eloquently, but 
 this last effort was in vain ; she ceased on seeing a shrug, by 
 
224 BE A TRIX. 
 
 which Calyste conveyed his entire belief in Beatrix, and she 
 insisted on his coming down and sitting with her at dinner, 
 for he found it impossible to eat. 
 
 It is only while we are very young that these spasmodic 
 symptoms occur. At a later period the organs have formed 
 habits, and are, as it were, hardened. The reaction of the 
 moral system on the physical is never strong enough to induce 
 mortal illness unless the constitution preserves its original 
 delicacy. A man can resist a violent grief which kills a 
 youth, less because his feelings are not so strong than because 
 his organs are stronger. Mademoiselle des Touches was in- 
 deed alarmed from the first by Calyste' s calm and resigned 
 attitude after the first flood of tears. Before leaving the 
 house, he begged to see Beatrix's room once more, and hid 
 his face in the pillow on which hers had rested. 
 
 "This is folly! " said he, shaking hands with Camille and 
 leaving her, sunk in melancholy. 
 
 He returned home, found the usual party engaged in playing 
 tnouche, and sat by his mother all the evening. The cure, 
 the Chevalier du Halga, and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel all 
 knew of Madame de Rochefide's departure, and were all glad. 
 Calyste would now come back to them, and they all watched, 
 almost by stealth, seeing that he was silent. Nobody in that 
 old house could conceive of all that this death of a first love 
 must be to a heart so true and artless as Calyste's. 
 
 For some days Calyste went regularly to les Touches; he 
 would wander round the grass-plot where he had sometimes 
 walked arm in arm with Beatrix. He often went as far as 
 le Croisic, and climbed the rock whence he had tried to throw 
 her into the sea; he would sit for hours leaning on the box- 
 shrub, for by examining the projections on the riven rock he 
 had learned to climb up and down the face of it. His solitary 
 expeditions, his silence, and his lack of appetite at last made 
 his mother uneasy. At the end of a fortnight, while these 
 
BE A TRIX. 225 
 
 proceedings lasted — a good deal like those of an animal in its 
 cage, and the despairing lover's cage was, to adopt La Fon- 
 taine's phrase, "the spots honored by the footstep, illumi- 
 nated by the eyes" of Beatrix — Calyste could no longer cross 
 the little inlet ; he had only strength enough to drag himself 
 as far on the Guerande road as the spot whence he had seen 
 Beatrix at the window. 
 
 The family, glad at the departing of "the Parisians," to 
 use the provincial phrase, discerned nothing ominous or sickly 
 in Calyste. The two old maids and the cure, following up 
 their plan, had kept Charlotte de Kergarouet, who, in the 
 evening, made eyes at Calyste, and got nothing in return but 
 advice as to her game of mouche. All through the evening 
 Calyste would sit between his mother and his provincial 
 fiancee, under the eye of the cure and of Charlotte's aunt, 
 who, on their way home, would comment on his greater or 
 less dejection. They took the unhappy boy's indifference for 
 acquiescence in their plans. 
 
 One evening, when Calyste, being tired, had gone early to 
 bed, the players all left their cards on the table and looked at 
 each other as the young man shut his bedroom door. They 
 had listened anxiously to his footsteps. 
 
 "Something ails Calyste," said the Baroness, wiping her 
 eyes. 
 
 "There is nothing the matter with him," replied Made- 
 moiselle de Pen-Hoel ; " we must get him married as soon as 
 may be." 
 
 " Do you think that will divert him ? " said the chevalier. 
 
 Charlotte looked sternly at Monsieur du Halga, whom she 
 thought, in very bad taste this evening, immoral, depraved, 
 irreligious, and quite ridiculous with his dog, in spite of her 
 aunt, who always took the old sailor's part. 
 
 "To-morrow morning I will lecture Calyste," said the old 
 Baron, whom they had thought asleep ; " I do not want to go 
 out of this world without having seen my grandson, a little 
 15 
 
226 BE A TRIX. 
 
 pink-and-white du Guenic, with a Breton hood on, in his 
 
 cradle." 
 
 " He never speaks a word," said old Zephirine*-; "no one 
 knows what ails him ; he never ate less in his life ; what does 
 he live on ? If he eats at les Touches, the devil's cookery- 
 does him no good." 
 
 " He is in love'," said the chevalier, proffering this opinion 
 with extreme timidity. 
 
 " Now, then, old dotard, you have not put into the pool," 
 said Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. " When you are thinking 
 of your young days, you forget everything else." 
 
 " Come to breakfast with us to-morrow morning," said old 
 Zephirine to Charlotte and Jacqueline ; " my brother will talk 
 to his son, and we will settle everything. One nail drives out 
 another." 
 
 " Not in a Breton," said the chevalier. 
 
 The next morning Calyste saw Charlotte arrive, dressed with 
 unusual care, though it was still early, just as his father had 
 ended giving him, in the dining-room, a discourse on matri- 
 mony, to which the lad could find nothing to say. He knew 
 how ignorant his aunt, his father, and his mother were, and 
 all their friends ; he was gathering the fruits of knowledge ■ 
 he found himself isolated, no longer speaking the language of 
 the household. So he only begged a few days' respite, and 
 his father rubbed his hands with joy and gave new life to tht 
 Baroness by whispering the good news in her ear. 
 
 Breakfast was a cheerful meal. Charlotte, to whom the 
 Baron had given a wink, was in high spirits. A rumor filtered 
 through Gasselin, by which all the town knew that the du 
 Guenics and the Kergarouets had come to an understanding. 
 After breakfast Calyste went out of the hall by the steps on 
 the garden-side, and was followed by Charlotte ; he offered 
 her his arm, and led her to the arbor at the bottom of the 
 garden. The old folk, standing at the window, looked at 
 them with a sort of pathos. Charlotte looked back at the 
 
BE A TRIX. 227 
 
 pretty house, somewhat uneasy at her companion's silence, and 
 took advantage of their presence to begin the conversation by 
 saying to Calyste, " They are watching us ! " 
 
 "They cannot hear us," he replied. 
 
 " No, but they can see us." 
 
 " Let us sit down," said Calyste gently, as he took her 
 hand. 
 
 "Is it true that your banner once floated from that twisted 
 pillar?" asked Charlotte, looking at the house as if it were 
 her own. "It would look well there! How happy one 
 might be here ! You will make some alterations in the ar- 
 rangement of your house, will you not, Calyste?" 
 
 "I shall have no time for it, my dear Charlotte," said the 
 young man, taking her hands and kissing them. " I will tell 
 you my secret. I love a woman whom you have seen, and 
 who loves me — love her too well to make any other woman 
 happy ; and I know that from our infancy you and I have 
 always been intended to marry." 
 
 "But she is married, Calyste," said Charlotte. 
 
 " I will wait," said the boy. 
 
 "And so will I," said Charlotte, her eyes full of tears. 
 " You cannot love that woman for long; she has gone off with 
 a singer, they say " 
 
 "Marry some one else, my dear Charlotte," said Calyste. 
 " With such a fortune as your aunt has to leave you, which is 
 enormous in Brittany, you can find a better match than I. 
 You will find a man with a title. I have not brought you out 
 here to tell you what you already know, but to entreat you in 
 the name of our long friendship to take the matter upon your- 
 self and to refuse me. Say that you can have nothing to say 
 to a man whose heart is not free, and my passion will at least 
 have been so far serviceable that I shall have done you no 
 wrong. You cannot think how life weighs upon me ! I 
 cannot endure any struggle, I am as weak as a body deserted 
 by its soul, by the very element of life. But for the grief that 
 
228 BEA TRIX. 
 
 my death would be to my mother and my aunt, I should have 
 thrown myself into the sea ere now, and I have never gone to 
 the rocks of le Croisic since the day when the temptation 
 began to be irresistible. Say nothing of this. Charlotte, fare- 
 well." 
 
 He took the girl's head in his hands, kissed her hair, went 
 out by the path under the gable, and made his escape to 
 Camille's, where he remained till midnight. 
 
 On returning at about one in the morning he found his 
 mother busy with her tapestry, waiting for him. He crept in 
 softly, took her hand, and asked — 
 
 " Is Charlotte gone ? " 
 
 "She is going to-morrow with her aunt; they are both in 
 despair. Come to Ireland, my Calyste," she added, caressing 
 him-. 
 
 "How many times have I dreamed of flying thither!" 
 said he. 
 
 " Really ! " exclaimed the Baroness. 
 
 "With Beatrix," he added. 
 
 Some days after Charlotte's departure, Calyste was walking 
 with the Chevalier du Halga on the mall, and he sat down in 
 the sun on a bench whence his eye could command the whole 
 landscape, from the weathercocks of les Touches to the shoals 
 marked out by the foaming breakers which dance above the 
 reefs at high-tide. Calyste was thin and pale, his strength 
 was diminishing, he was beginning to have little periodical 
 shivering fits, symptomatic of fever. His eyes, with dark 
 marks round them, had the hard glitter which a fixed idea 
 will give to lonely persons, or which the ardor of the struggle 
 imparts to the bold leaders of the civilization of our age. 
 The chevalier was the only person with whom he sometimes 
 exchanged his ideas \ he had discerned in this old man an 
 apostle of his religion, and found in him the traces of a never- 
 dying love. 
 
 "Have you loved many women in your life?" he asked, 
 
BE A TRIX. 229 
 
 the second time that he and the old navy man sailed in com- 
 pany, as the captain called it, up and down the mall. 
 
 "Only one," said the captain. 
 
 "Was she free?" 
 
 "No," said the chevalier. "Ah, I suffered much! She 
 was my best friend's wife — my patron's, my chief's; but we 
 loved each other so much ! " 
 
 " She loved you, then ? " 
 
 "Passionately," replied du Halga with unwonted vehem- 
 ence. 
 
 "And you were happy? " 
 
 "Till her death. She died at the age of forty-nine, an 
 emigree at Saint-Petersburg ; the climate killed her. She 
 must be very cold in her coffin ! I have often thought of 
 going to bring her away and lay her in our beloved Brittany, 
 near me ! But she rests in my heart ? " 
 
 The chevalier wiped his eyes ; Calyste took his hands and 
 pressed them. 
 
 "I cling to that dog more than to my life," said he, point- 
 ing to Thisbe. "That little creature is in every particular 
 exactly like the dog she used to fondle with her beautiful 
 hands, and to take on her knees. I never look at Thisbe 
 without seeing Madame de Kergarouet's hands." 
 
 "Have you seen Madame de Rochefide?" asked Calyste. 
 
 "No," replied du Halga. "It is fifty-eight years now 
 since I looked at a woman, excepting your mother; there is 
 something in her coloring that is like the admiral's wife." 
 
 Three days later the chevalier said to Calyste as they met 
 on the mall — 
 
 " My boy, all I have in the world is a hundred and eighty 
 louis. When you know where to find Madame de Rochefide, 
 come and ask me for them, to go to see her." 
 
 Calyste thanked the old man, whose life he envied. But 
 day by day he became more morose ; he seemed to care for 
 no one ; he was gentle and kind only to his mother. The 
 
230 BEATRIX. 
 
 Baroness watched the progress of this mania with increasing 
 anxiety ; she alone, by much entreaty, could persuade Calyste 
 to take some nourishment. 
 
 By the beginning of October the young fellow could no 
 longer walk on the mall with the chevalier, who came in vain 
 to ask him out with an old man's attempts at coaxing. 
 
 " We will talk about Madame de Rochefide," said he. "I 
 will tell you the history of my first adventure. Your son is 
 very ill, M said he to the Baroness, on the day when his 
 urgency proved useless. 
 
 Calyste replied to all who questioned him that he was 
 perfectly well, and, like all melancholy youths, relished the 
 notion of death ; but he never left the house now ; he sat 
 in the garden on the seat, warming himself in the pale, 
 mild autumn sunshine, alone with his thoughts, and avoid- 
 ing all company. 
 
 After the day when Calyste no longer went to call on her, 
 Felicite begged the cure of Guerande to go to see her. The 
 Abbe Grimont's regularity in going to les Touches almost 
 every morning, and dining there from time to time, became 
 the news of the moment ; it was talked of in all the neigh- 
 borhood, and even at Nantes. However, he never missed 
 spending the evening at Guerande, where despair reigned. 
 Masters and servants, all were grieved by Calyste's obstinacy, 
 though they did not think him in any danger. It never oc- 
 curred to any one of these good people that the poor youth 
 could die of love. The chevalier had no record of such a 
 death in all his travels or reminiscences. Everybody ascribed 
 Calyste's emaciation to want of nutrition. His mother would 
 go on her knees to beseech him to eat. To please her, Ca- 
 lyste tried to overcome his repugnance, and the food thus 
 taken against his will added to the low fever that was consum- 
 ing the handsome boy. 
 
 At the end of October the beloved son no longer went up to 
 
BE A TRIX. 231 
 
 his room on the second floor ; he had his bed brought down 
 into the sitting-room, and lay there generally, in the midst of 
 the family, who at last sent for the Guerande doctor. 
 
 The medical man tried to check the fever by quinine, and 
 for a few days it yielded to the treatment. The doctor also 
 ordered Calyste to take exercise and to amuse himself. The 
 Baron rallied his strength and shook off his torpor ; he grew 
 young as his son grew old. He took out Calyste, Gasselin, 
 and the two fine sporting dogs. Calyste obeyed his father, 
 and for a few days the three men went out together ; they 
 went through the forest and visited their friends in neighbor- 
 ing chateaux; but Calyste had no spirit, no one could beguile 
 him of a smile, his pale, rigid face revealed a perfectly passive 
 creature. 
 
 The Baron, broken by fatigue, fell into a state of collapse 
 and was forced to come home, bringing Calyste with him in 
 the same condition. Within a few days both father and son 
 were so ill that, at the request of the Guerande doctor him- 
 self, the two first physicians of Nantes were called in. The 
 Baron had been quite knocked over by the visible alteration 
 in Calyste. With the terrible prescience that nature bestows 
 on the dying, he trembled like a child at the thought that his 
 family would be extinct ; he said nothing, he only clasped 
 his hands, praying as he sat in his chair, to which he was tied 
 by weakness. He sat facing the bed occupied by Calyste, 
 and watched him constantly. At his child's slightest move- 
 ment he was greatly agitated, as if the flame of his life were 
 fluttered by it. 
 
 The Baroness never left the room, and old Zephirine sat 
 knitting by the fire in a state of agonizing anxiety. She was 
 constantly being asked for wood, for the father and son both 
 felt the cold, and her stores were invaded. She had made up 
 her mind to give up her keys, for she was no longer brisk 
 enough to go with Mariotte ; but she insisted on knowing 
 everything ; every minute she questioned Mariotte or her sis- 
 
232 BE A TRIX. 
 
 ter-in-law, and would take them aside to hear about the state 
 of her brother and nephew. 
 
 One evening, when Calyste and his father were dozing, old 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel remarked that they would no 
 doubt have to resign themselves to losing the Baron, whose 
 face was quite white, and had assumed a waxen look. Made- 
 moiselle du Guenic dropped her knitting, fumbled in her 
 pocket, and pulled out an old rosary of black wooden beads, 
 which she proceeded to tell with a fervency that gave such a 
 glory of energy to her ancient parched features that the other 
 old maid followed her example ; and then, at a sign from the 
 cure, they all united in the silent exaltation of the old blind 
 lady. 
 
 "I was the first to pray to God," said the Baroness, re- 
 membering the fateful letter written by Calyste, "but He did 
 not hear me!" 
 
 "Perhaps," said the Abbe Grimont, "we should be wise 
 to beg Mademoiselle des Touches to come to see Calyste." 
 
 " She ! " cried old Zephirine, " the author of all our woes, 
 she who lured him away from his family, who tore him from 
 us, who made him read impious books, who taught him the 
 language of heresy ! Curse her, and may God never forgive 
 her ! She has crushed the du Guenics ! " 
 
 " She may perhaps raise them up again," said the cure in a 
 mild voice. "She is a saintly and virtuous woman: I am 
 her warranty. She has none but good intentions as regards 
 Calyste. May she be able to realize them ! " 
 
 " Give me notice the day she is to set foot here, and I will 
 go out," cried the old lady. " She has killed both father and 
 son. Do you suppose I cannot hear how weak Calyste's voice 
 is ! — he hardly has strength to speak." 
 
 Just then the three physicians came in. They wearied 
 Calyste with questions. As to his father, their examination 
 was brief; they knew all in a moment ; the only wonder was 
 that he still lived. The Guerande doctor quietly explained 
 
BE A TRIX. 233 
 
 to the Baroness that it would probably be necessary to take 
 Calyste to Paris to consult the most eminent authorities, for 
 that it would cost more than a hundred louis to bring them to 
 Guerande. 
 
 "A man must die of something, but love is nothing," said 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoe'l. 
 
 "Alas, whatever the cause may be, Calyste is dying," said 
 his mother. "I recognize every symptom of consumption, 
 the most horrible malady of my native land." 
 
 "Calyste is dying?" said the Baron, opening his eyes, 
 whence trickled two large tears which, caught in the many 
 furrows of his face, slowly fell to the bottom of his cheeks — 
 the only tears, no doubt, that he had ever shed in his life. 
 
 He dragged himself on to his feet, shuffled to his son's bed, 
 took his hands, and looked at him. 
 
 "What do you want, father?" said the boy. 
 
 " I want you to live ! " cried the Baron. 
 
 "I cannot live without Beatrix," said Calyste to the old 
 man, who sank back into his chair. 
 
 "Where can I find a hundred louis to fetch the doctors 
 from Paris?" cried the Baroness. "We have yet time." 
 
 "A hundred louis!" exclaimed Zephirine. "Will they 
 save him? " 
 
 Without waiting for her sister-in-law's reply, the old woman 
 put her hands into her pocket-holes and untied an under pet- 
 ticoat, which fell with a heavy sound. She knew so well 
 where she had sewn in her louis that she ripped them out 
 with a rapidity that seemed magical. The gold-pieces rang 
 as they dropped one by one. Old Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel 
 looked on with stupefied amazement. 
 
 " They can see you ! " she whispered, as a warning, in her 
 friend's ear. 
 
 "Thirty-seven," said Zephirine, counting the gold. 
 
 " Every one will know how much you have." 
 
 "Forty-two." 
 
234 BEATRIX. 
 
 " Double louis, and all new ! how did you get them, you 
 who cannot see them ? ' ' 
 
 "I could feel them. Here are a hundred and four louis," 
 cried Zephirine. " Is that enough? " 
 
 "What are you doing?" asked the Chevalier du Halga, 
 coming in, and unable to imagine what was the meaning of 
 the old lady's holding out her lap full of louis d'or. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel explained the case in two words. 
 
 " I had heard of it," said he, "and I came to bring you 
 a hundred and forty louis I had kept at Calyste's service, as 
 he knows." 
 
 The chevalier took out of his pocket two rolls of coin, 
 which he showed them. Mariotte, seeing all these riches, 
 bid Gasselin lock the door. 
 
 "Gold will not restore him to health," said the Baroness, 
 •in tears. 
 
 "But it may enable him to run after his Marquise," said 
 du Halga. " Come, Calyste ! " 
 
 Calyste sat up in bed, and exclaimed gleefully — 
 
 "Let us be off!" 
 
 "Then he will live," said the Baron, in a stricken voice, 
 "and I may die. Go and fetch the cure." 
 
 These words struck them all with terror. Calyste, seeing 
 his father turn ghastly pale from the painful agitation of this 
 scene, could not restrain his tears. The cure, who knew the 
 decision the doctors had come to, had gone off to fetch 
 Mademoiselle des Touches ; for at this moment he displayed 
 as much admiration for her as he had not long since felt 
 repugnance, and could defend her as a pastor defends one of 
 the favorites of his flock. 
 
 On hearing of the Baron's desperate extremity, a crowd 
 gathered in the little street ; the peasants, the marshmen, and 
 the townsfolk all kneeling in the courtyard, while the priest 
 administered the last sacrament to the old Breton warrior. 
 Everybody was deeply touched to think of the father dying 
 
BE A TRIX. 235 
 
 by the bed of his sick son. The extinction of the old family 
 was regarded as a public calamity. 
 
 The ceremony struck Calyste; for a while his grief silenced 
 his passion. All through the death-struggles of this heroic 
 defender of the monarchy he remained on his knees, watch- 
 ing the approach of death, and Weeping. 
 
 The old man died in his chair, in the presence of the as- 
 sembled family. 
 
 "I die faithful to the King and religion. Great God, as 
 the reward of my efforts, let Calyste live ! " he said. 
 
 "I Will live, father, and obey you," replied the young 
 man. 
 
 "If you would make my death as easy as Fanny has made 
 my life, swear that yOu will marry." 
 
 " I promise it, father." 
 
 It Was touching to see Calyste, or rather his ghost, leaning 
 on the old chevalier, a spectre leading a shade, following the 
 Baron's bier as chief mourner. The church and the little 
 square before the porch were full of people, who had come 
 from ten leagues round. 
 
 The Baroness and Zephirine were deeply grieved when 
 they saw that, in spite of his efforts to obey his father, 
 Calyste \vas still sunk in an ominous stupor. On the first day 
 of their mourning the Baroness led her son to the seat at the 
 bottom of the garden, and questioned him. Calyste replied 
 with gentle submissiveness, but his answers were heartbreak- 
 ing. 
 
 "Mother," said he, fi there is no life left in hie; what I 
 eat does not nourish me, the air I breathe into my lungs does 
 not renew my blood ; the sun seems cold to me, and when it 
 shines for you on the front of the house as at this moment, 
 where you see carvings bathed in light I see dim forms 
 wrapped in mist. If Beatrix were here, all would be bright 
 once more. There is but one thing in the world that has her 
 color and form — this flower and these leaves," and he drew 
 
236 BE A TRIX. 
 
 out of his bosom the withered blossoms that the Marquise 
 had given him. 
 
 The Baroness dared ask him no more ; the madness be- 
 trayed by his replies seemed worse than the sorrow of his 
 silence. 
 
 But Calyste was thrilled as he caught sight of Mademoiselle 
 des Touches through the windows at opposite ends of the 
 room. Felicite reminded him of Beatrix. Thus it was to 
 her that the two women owed the one gleam of joy that 
 lightened their griefs. 
 
 "Well, Calyste," said Mademoiselle des Touches, when 
 she saw him, " the carriage is ready ; we will go together and 
 find Beatrix. Come." 
 
 The pale, thin face of the boy, all in black, was brightened 
 by a flush, and a smile dawned on his features. 
 
 "We will save him ! " said Mademoiselle des Touches to 
 the mother, who wrung her hand, shedding tears of joy. 
 
 A week after the Baron's death, Mademoiselle des Touches, 
 the Baronne du Guenic, and Calyste set out for Paris, leaving 
 the business matters in the hands of old mademoiselle. 
 
 Felicite' s affection for Calyste had planned a brilliant future 
 for the poor boy. She was connected with the Grandlieus, 
 and the ducal branch was ending in a family of five daughters. 
 She had written to the Duchesse de Grandlieu, telling her the 
 whole story of Calyste, and announcing her intention of sell- 
 ing her house in the Rue du Mont-Blanc, for which a com- 
 pany of speculators had offered two million five hundred 
 thousand francs. Her business manager had already bought 
 for her one of the finest houses in the Rue de Bourbon, at a 
 cost of seven hundred thousand francs. Out of the surplus 
 money from the sale of the house in the Rue Mont-Blanc she 
 meant to devote one million to repurchasing the estates of the 
 du Guenics, and would leave the rest of her fortune among 
 the five de Grandlieu girls, 
 
BE A TRIX. 237 
 
 Felicite knew the plans made by the Duke and Duchess, 
 who intended that their youngest daughter should marry the 
 Vicomte de Grandlieu, the heir to their titles ; Clotilde-Fred- 
 erique, the second, meant, she knew, to remain unmarried, 
 without taking the veil, however, as her eldest sister had done ; 
 so the only one to be disposed of was Sabine, a pretty creature 
 just twenty years of age, on whom she counted to cure Calyst s 
 of his passion for Madame de Rochefide. 
 
 During their journey Felicite told Madame du Guenic of 
 all these plans. The house in the Rue de Bourbon was now 
 being furnished, and in it Calyste was to live if these schemes 
 should succeed. 
 
 They all three went straight to the Hotel Grandlieu, where 
 the Baroness was received with all the respect due to her 
 name as a girl and as a wife. Mademoiselle des Touches, of 
 course, advised Calyste to see all he could of Paris while she 
 made inquiries as to where Beatrix might be, and she left him 
 to the fascinations of every kind which awaited him there. 
 The Duchess, her daughters, and their friends did the honors 
 of the capital for Calyste just at the season when it was begin- 
 ning to be gayest. 
 
 The bustle of Paris entirely diverted the young Breton's 
 mind. He fancied there was some likeness in the minds of 
 Madame de Rochefide and Sabine de Grandlieu, who at that 
 time was certainly one of the loveliest and most charming 
 girls in Paris society, and he thenceforward paid an amount 
 of attention to her advances which no other woman would 
 have won from him. Sabine de Grandlieu played her part 
 all the more successfully because she liked Calyste. 
 
 Matters were so skillfully managed that, in the course of the 
 winter of 1837, the young Baron, who had recovered his color 
 and youthful beauty, could listen without disgust when his 
 mother reminded him of his promise to his dying father, and 
 spoke of his marrying Sabine de Grandlieu. Still, while 
 keeping his promise, he concealed an indifference which the 
 
 V 
 
238 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Baroness could discern, while she hoped it might be dispelled 
 by the satisfactions of a happy home. 
 
 On the day when the Grandlieu family and the Baroness, 
 supported on this occasion by her relations from England, 
 held a sitting in the large drawing-room of the Duke's house, 
 while Leopold Hannequin, the family notary, explained the 
 conditions of the marriage-contract before reading it through, 
 Calyste, whose brow was clouded, as all could see, refused point- 
 blank to accept the benefactions offered to him by Made- 
 moiselle des Touches. He still trusted to Felicite's devotion 
 and believed that she was seeking Beatrix. 
 
 At this moment, in the midst of the dismay of both 
 families, Sabine came in, dressed so as to remind Calyste of 
 the Marquise de Rochefide, though her complexion was dark, 
 and she placed in Calyste' s hand the following letter : 
 
 Camille to Calyste. 
 
 " Calyste, before retiring into my cell as a novice, I may 
 be allowed to glance back at the world I am quitting to enter 
 the world of prayer. This glance is solely for you, who in 
 these later days have been all the world to me. My voice will 
 reach you, if I have calculated exactly, in the middle of a 
 ceremony which I could not possibly witness. On the day 
 when you stand before the altar, to give your hand to a young 
 and lovely girl who is free to love before heaven and the 
 world, I shall be in a religious house at Nantes — before the 
 altar too, but plighted for ever to Him who can never deceive 
 nor disappoint. 
 
 " I write, not to sadden you, but to beseech you not to 
 allow any false delicacy to hinder the good I have always 
 wished to do you since our first meeting. Do not deny the 
 right I have so hardly earned. If love is suffering, then I 
 have loved you well, Calyste; but you need feel no remorse. 
 The only pleasures I have known in my life I owe to you, and 
 
BE A TRIX. 239 
 
 the pain has come from myself. Compensate me for all this 
 past suffering by giving me one eternal joy. Let me, dear, 
 be in some sort a perfume in the flowers of your life, and 
 mingle with it always without being importunate. I shall 
 certainly owe to you my happiness in life eternal ; will you 
 not let me pay my debt by the offering of some transient and 
 perishable possessions? You will not fail in generosity? 
 You will not regard this as the last subterfuge of scorned 
 love ? 
 
 " Calyste, the world was nothing to me without you; you 
 made it a fearful desert, and you have led the infidel Camille 
 Maupin, the writer of books and dramas, which I shall 
 solemnly disown — you have led that audacious and perverted 
 woman, tied hand and foot, to the throne of God. I am 
 now, what I ought always to have been, an innocent child. 
 Yes, I have washed my robes in the tears of repentance, and 
 I may go to the altar presented by an angel — by my dearly 
 loved Calyste ! How sweet it is to call you so — now that my 
 resolution has sanctified the word. I love you without self- 
 interest, as a mother loves her son, as the church loves her 
 children. I can pray for you and yours without the infusion 
 of a single desire but that for your happiness. 
 
 "If you knew the • supreme peace in which I live after 
 having lifted myself by thought above the petty interests of 
 the world, and how exquisite is the feeling of having done 
 one's duty, in accordance with your noble motto, you would 
 enter on your happy life with a firm step, nor glance behind 
 nor around you. So I am writing to beseech you to be true 
 to yourself and to your family. 
 
 "My dear, the society in which you must live cannot exist 
 without the religion of duty ; and you will misunderstand life, 
 as I have misunderstood it, if you give yourself up to passion 
 and to fancy as I have done. Woman can only be equal with 
 man by making her life a perpetual sacrifice, as man's must be 
 perpetual action. Now my life has been, as it were, one long 
 
240 BEATRIX. 
 
 outbreak of egoism. God, perhaps, brought you in its evening 
 to my door, as a messenger charged with my punishment and 
 pardon. Remember this confession from a woman to whom 
 fame was a pharos whose light showed her the right way. Be 
 great ! sacrifice your fancy to your duties as the head of a 
 house, as husband and father. Raise the downtrodden banner 
 of the old du Guenics; show the present age, when principles 
 and religion are denied* what a gentleman may be in all his 
 glory and distinction. 
 
 "Dear child of my soul, let me play the mother a little : 
 the angelic Fanny will not be jealous of a woman dead to the 
 world, of whom you will henceforth know nothing but that 
 her hands are always raised to heaven. In these days the no- 
 bility need fortune more than ever, so accept a part of mine, 
 dear Calyste, and make a good use of it. It is not a gift ; it 
 is trust-money. I am thinking more of your children and 
 your old Breton estate than of yourself when I offer you the 
 interest which time has accumulated for me on my Paris 
 property." 
 
 "I am ready to sign," said the young Baron, to the great 
 delight of the assembly. 
 
PART III. 
 
 RETROSPECTIVE ADULTERY. 
 
 The week after this, when the marriage service had been 
 celebrated at Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, at seven in the morning, 
 as was the custom in some families of the Faubourg Saint- 
 Germain— Calyste and Sabine got into a neat traveling-car- 
 riage in the midst of the embracing, congratulations, and tears 
 of a score of persons gathered in groups under the awning of 
 the Hotel de Grandlieu. The congratulations were offered 
 by the witnesses and the men ; the tears were to be seen in 
 the eyes of the Duchesse de Grandlieu and her daughter Clo- 
 tilde — both tremulous, and from the same reflection. 
 
 " Poor Sabine ! she is starting in life at the mercy of a man 
 who is married not altogether willingly." 
 
 Marriage does not consist solely of pleasures, which are as 
 fugitive under those conditions as under any others ; it in- 
 volves a consonance of tempers and physical sympathies, a 
 concord of character, which make this social necessity an ever- 
 new problem. Girls to be married know the conditions and 
 dangers of this lottery fully as well as their mothers do ; this 
 is why women shed tears as they look on at a marriage, while 
 men smile ; the men think they risk nothing ; the women 
 know pretty well how much they risk. 
 
 In another carriage, which had started first, was the Baronne 
 du Guenic, to whom the Duchess had said at parting — 
 
 "You are a mother though you have only a son. Try to 
 fill my place to my darling Sabine." 
 
 On the box of that carriage sat a groom, serving as a courier, 
 
 and behind it two ladies'-maids. The four postillions, in 
 
 splendid liveries — each carriage having four horses — all had 
 
 nosegays in their button-holes and favors in their hats. The 
 
 16 (241) 
 
242 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Due de Grandlieu, even by paying them, had the greatest dif- 
 ficulty in persuading them to remove the ribbons. The 
 French postillion is eminently intelligent, but he loves his 
 joke ; and these took the money and replaced the favors out- 
 side the city walls. 
 
 " Well, well, good-by, Sabine ! " said the Duchess. " Re- 
 member your promise, and write often. Calyste, I say no 
 more, but you understand me." 
 
 Clotilde, leaning on the arm of her youngest sister Athenai's, 
 who was smiling at the Vicomte Juste de Grandlieu, gave the 
 bride a keen glance through her tears and watched the carriage 
 till it disappeared amid the repeated salvoes of four postillions' 
 whips, noisier than pistol-shots. In a very short time the gay 
 procession reached the Esplanade of the Invalides, followed 
 the quay to the Pont d'lena, the Passy Gate, the Versailles 
 avenue, and, finally, the high-road to Brittany. 
 
 Is it not strange, to say the least, that the artisan class of 
 Switzerland and Germany, and the greatest families of France 
 and England, obey the same custom, and start on a journey 
 after the nuptial ceremony ? The rich pack themselves into 
 a box on wheels. The poor walk gayly along the roads, resting 
 in the woods, feeding at every inn, so long as their glee, or 
 rather their money, holds out. A moralist would find it diffi- 
 cult to decide which is the finest flower of modesty — that 
 which hides from the public eye, inaugurating the domestic 
 hearth and bed as the worthy citizen does, or that which flies 
 from the family and displays itself in the fierce light of the 
 high-road to the eyes of strangers? Refined natures must 
 crave for solitude, and avoid the world and the family alike. 
 The rush of love that begins a marriage is a diamond, a pearl, 
 a gem cut by the highest of all arts, a treasure to be buried 
 deep in the heart. 
 
 Who could tell the tale of a honeymoon except the bride? 
 And how many women would here admit that this period of 
 uncertain duration — sometimes of only a single night — is the 
 
BEATRIX. 243 
 
 preface to married life? Sabine's first three letters to her 
 mother betrayed a state of things which, unfortunately, will 
 not seem new to some young wives, nor to many old women. 
 All who have become sick-nurses, so to speak, to a man's 
 heart have not found it out so quickly as Sabine did. But 
 the girls of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, when they are keen- 
 witted, are women already in mind. Before marriage they 
 have received the baptism of fine manners from the world and 
 from their mothers. Duchesses, anxious to perpetuate the 
 tradition, are often unaware of all the bearings of their les- 
 sons when they say to their daughters — " No one ever does 
 that." "Do not laugh at such things." " You must never 
 fling yourself on a sofa, you must sit down quietly." " Never 
 do such a thing again." "It is most incorrect, my dear! " 
 and so forth. 
 
 And critical middle-class folk refuse to recognize any inno- 
 cence or virtue in young creatures who, like Sabine, are virgin 
 souls, but perfected by cleverness, by the habits of good style, 
 and good taste, knowing from the age of sixteen how to use 
 an opera-glass. Sabine, to lend herself to Mademoiselle des 
 Touches' schemes for her marriage, could not but be of the 
 school of Mademoiselle de Chaulieu. This innate mother-wit, 
 these gifts of birth, may perhaps make this young wife as in- 
 teresting as the heroine of the " Memoires de deux jeunes 
 Mariees " (Letters of Two Brides), in which we see the vanity 
 of such social advantages in the great crises of married life, 
 where they are often crushed under the double weight of un- 
 happiness and passion. 
 
 To Madame la Duchesse de Grandlieu. 
 
 Guerande, April, 1838. 
 
 " Dear Mother : — You can easily understand why I did 
 not write to you on the journey; one's mind turns like the 
 
244 BEATRIX. 
 
 wheels. So here I have been these two days in the depths of 
 Brittany, at the Hotel du Guenic, a house carved all over like 
 a cocoanut-box. Notwithstanding the affectionate attentions 
 of Calyste's family, I feel an eager longing to fly away to 
 you and tell you a thousand things which I feel can only be 
 told to a mother. 
 
 " Dear mamma, Calyste married me cherishing a great sor- 
 sow in his soul ; we all of us knew it, and you did not disguise 
 the difficulties of my position ; but, alas ! they are greater 
 than you imagined. Oh, dear mamma, how much experience 
 we may acquire in a few days — why should I not say to you in 
 a few hours ? All your counsels proved useless, and you will 
 understand why by this . simple fact : I love Calyste as if he 
 were not my husband. That is to say, if I were married to 
 another man and were traveling with Calyste, I should love 
 him and hate my husband. Consider him, then, as a man 
 loved entirely, involuntarily, absolutely, and as many more 
 adverbs as you choose to supply. So, in spite of your warn- 
 ings, my slavery is an established fact. 
 
 " You advised me to keep myself lofty, haughty, dignified, 
 and proud, in order to bring Calyste to a state of feeling 
 which should never undergo any change throughout life ; in 
 the esteem and respect which must sanctify the wife in the 
 home and family. You spoke warmly, and with reason, no 
 doubt, against the young women of the day who, under the 
 excuse of living on good terms with their husbands, begin by 
 being docile, obliging, submissive, with a familiarity, a free- 
 and-easiness which are, in your opinion, rather too cheap — a 
 word I own to not understanding yet, but we shall see by- 
 and-by — and which, if you are right, are only the early and 
 rapid stages toward indifference and, perhaps, contempt. 
 
 "'Remember that you are a Grandlieu,' you said in my 
 ear. 
 
 " This advice, full of the maternal eloquence of Dedalus, 
 has shared the fate of mythological things. Dear, darling 
 
BEA TRIX. 245 
 
 mother, could you believe that I should begin by the catas- 
 trophe which, according to you, closes the honeymoon of the 
 young wives of our day ? 
 
 " When Calyste and I were alone in the carriage, each 
 thought the other as silly as himself, as we both perceived the 
 importance of the first word, the first look ; and each, bewil- 
 dered by the marriage sacrament, sat looking out of a window. 
 It was so preposterous that, as we got near the city gate, 
 monsieur made me a little speech in a rather broken voice — a 
 speech prepared, no doubt, like all extempore efforts, to 
 which I listened with a beating heart, and which I take the 
 liberty of epitomizing for your benefit. 
 
 "'My dear Sabine,' said he, 'I wish you to be happy, 
 and, above all, to be happy in your own way,' he added. 'In 
 our position, instead of deceiving each other as to our charac- 
 ters and sentiments, by magnanimous concessions, let us both 
 be now what we should be a few years hence. Regard me as 
 being your brother, as I would wish to find a sister in you.' 
 
 " Though this was most delicately meant, I did not find in 
 this first speech of married love anything answering to the 
 eagerness of my soul, and, after replying that I felt quite as 
 he did, I remained pensive. After this declaration of rights 
 to be equally cold, we talked of the weather, the dust, the 
 houses, and the scenery with the most gracious politeness, I 
 laughing a rather forced laugh, he lost in dreams. 
 
 " Finally, as we left Versailles, I asked Calyste point-blank 
 — calling him ' my dear Calyste,' as he called me ' my dear 
 Sabine ' — if he could tell me the history of the events which 
 had brought him to death's door, and to which I owed the 
 honor of being his wife. He hesitated for a long time. In 
 fact, it was the subject of a little discussion lasting through 
 three stages ; I trying to play the part of a willful girl deter- 
 mined to sulk; he debating with himself on the ominous 
 question asked as a challenge to Charles X. by the public 
 press : ' Will the King give in ? ' At last, when we had left 
 
246 BEATRIX. 
 
 Verneuil, and after swearing often enough to satisfy three 
 dynasties that I would never remind him of his folly, never 
 treat him coldly, and so on, he painted his passion for 
 Madame de Rochefade : ' I do not wish,' he said, in conclu- 
 sion, ' that there should be any secrets between us.' 
 
 '* Poor dear Calyste did not know, I suppose, that his friend 
 Mademoiselle des Touches and you had been obliged to tell 
 me all ; for a girl cannot be dressed as I was on the day of 
 the contract without being taught her part. 
 
 " I cannot but tell everything to so good a mother as you 
 are. Well, then, I was deeply hurt at seeing that he had 
 yielded far less to my request than to his own wish to talk 
 about the unknown object of his passion. Will you blame 
 me, dearest mother, for having wanted to know the extent of 
 this sorrow, of the aching wound in his heart of which you 
 had told me? 
 
 "Thus, within eight hours of having been blessed by the 
 cure of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, your Sabine found herself in 
 the rather false position of a young wife hearing from her 
 husband's own lips his confidences as to a cheated passion 
 and the misdeeds of a rival. Yes, I was playing a part in the 
 drama of a young wife, officially informed that she owed her 
 marriage to the disdain of an old beauty ! 
 
 " By this narrative I gained what I sought. ' What ? ' you 
 will ask. Oh, my dear mother ! on clocks and chimney carv- 
 ings I have often enough seen Loves leading each other on, 
 hand in hand, to put the lesson into practice ! Calyste ended 
 the romance of his memories with the most vehement protes- 
 tations that he had entirely gotten over what he called his mad- 
 ness. Every protest needs a signature. The happy hapless 
 one took my hand, pressed it to his lips, and then held it for 
 a long time. A declaration followed. This one seemed to 
 me more suitable than the first to our position as man and 
 wife, though our lips' did not utter a single word. This hap- 
 piness I owed to my spirited indignation against the bad taste 
 
BEATRIX. 247 
 
 of a woman so stupid as not to love my handsome and delight- 
 ful Calyste. 
 
 " I am called away to play a game of cards, which I have 
 not yet mastered. I will continue my letter to-morrow. That 
 I should have to leave you just now to make the fifth at a 
 game of mouche / Such a thing is impossible anywhere but in 
 the depths of Brittany. 
 
 "May. 
 
 " I resume the tale of my Odyssey. By the third day your 
 children had dropped the ceremonial vous (you) and adopted 
 the loverlike tu (thou). My mother-in-law, delighted to see 
 us happy, tried to fill your place, dearest mother; and, as is 
 always the case with those who take a part with the idea of 
 effacing past impressions, she is so delightful that she has been 
 almost as much to me as you could be. She, no doubt, 
 guessed how heroic my conduct was ; at the beginning of our 
 journey she hid her anxiety too carefully not to betray it by 
 her excessive precautions. 
 
 " When I caught sight of the towers of Guerande I said in 
 your son-in-law's ear, ' Have you quite forgotten her? ' 
 
 "And my husband, now my angel, had perhaps never 
 known the depth of an artless and genuine affection, for that 
 little speech made him almost crazy with joy. 
 
 "Unluckily my desire to make him forget Madame de 
 Rochefide led me too far. How could I help it ! I love him, 
 and I am almost Portuguese, for I am like you rather than my 
 father. Calyste accepted everything, as spoilt children do ; 
 he is above everything an only son. Between you and me, I 
 will never let my daughter — -if I ever should have a daughter — 
 marry an only son. It is quite enough to have to manage one 
 tyrant, and in an only son there are several. And so we 
 exchanged parts; I played the devoted wife. There are 
 dangers in self-devotion to gain an end ; it is loss of dignity. 
 So I have to announce the wreck in me of that semi-virtue; 
 
248 BEATRIX. 
 
 dignity is really no more than a screen set up by pride, behind 
 which we may fume at our ease. How could I help myself, 
 mamma; you were not here, and I looked into a gulf. If I 
 had maintained my dignity, I should have known the chill 
 pangs of a sort of brotherliness, which would certainly have 
 become simple indifference. And what future would have 
 lain before me ? 
 
 " As a result of my devotion, I am Calyste's slave. Shall 
 I get out of that position ? We shall see ; for the present I 
 like it. I love Calyste — I love him entirely with the frenzy 
 of a mother who thinks everything right that her son can do, 
 even when he punishes her a little. 
 
 "May 15. 
 
 " So far, dear mother, marriage has come to me in a most 
 attractive form. I lavish all my tenderest affection on the 
 handsomest of men, who was thrown over by a fool for the 
 sake of a wretched singer — for the woman is evidently a fool, 
 and a fool in cold blood, the worst sort of fool. I am chari- 
 table in my lawful passion, and heal his scars while inflicting 
 eternal wounds on myself. Yes, for the more I love Calyste, 
 the more I feel that I should die of grief if anything put an 
 end to our present happiness. And I am worshiped, too, by 
 all the family, and by the little company that meets at the 
 Hotel du Guenic, all of them born figures in some ancient 
 tapestry, and having stepped out of it to show that the im- 
 possible can exist. One day when I am alone I will describe 
 them to you — Aunt Zephirine, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, 
 the Chevalier du Halga, the Demoiselles de Kergarouet, and 
 the rest, down to the two servants, whom I shall be allowed, 
 I hope, to take to Paris — Mariotte and Gasselin, who regard 
 me as an angel alighted on earth from heaven, and who are 
 still startled when I speak to them — they are all figures to put 
 under glass shades. 
 
 " My mother-in-law solemnly installed us in the rooms she 
 
BEATRIX. 24d 
 
 and her deceased husband had formerly inhabited. The 
 scene was a touching one. ' I lived all my married life here,' 
 said she, ' quite happy. May that be a happy omen for you, 
 my dear children ! ' And she has taken Calyste's room. 
 The saintly woman seemed to wish to divest herself of her 
 memories and her admirable life as a wife to endow us with 
 them. 
 
 "The Province of Brittany, this town, this family with its 
 antique manners — the whole thing, in spite of the absurdities, 
 which are invisible to any but a mocking Parisian woman, has 
 something indescribably grandiose, even in its details, to be 
 expressed only by the word sacred. The tenants of the vast 
 estates of the du Guenics, repurchased, as you know, by 
 Mademoiselle des Touches — whom we are to visit in the con- 
 vent — all came out to receive us. These good folk in their 
 holiday dresses, expressing the greatest joy at greeting Calyste 
 as really their master once more, made me understand what 
 Brittany is, and feudality, and old France. It was a festival 
 I will not write about ; I will tell you when we meet. The 
 terms of all the leases have been proposed by the tenants 
 themselves, and we are to sign after the tour of inspection we 
 are to make round our lands that have been pledged this 
 century and a half. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel tells us that 
 these yeomen have assessed the returns with an accuracy that 
 Paris folk would not believe in. We are to start three days 
 hence and ride everywhere. 
 
 "On my return I will write again, dear mother; but what 
 ? can I have to say to you, since my happiness is already com- 
 plete ? So I must write what you know already, namely, how 
 much I love you." 
 
260 BEATRIX. 
 
 II. 
 
 From the same to the same. 
 
 " Nantes, June. 
 
 "After playing the part of the Lady of the Castle, wor- 
 shiped by her vassals as though the revolutions of 1830 and 
 1789 had never torn down our banners; after riding through 
 woods, halting at farms, dining at old tables spread with 
 cloths a century old, and groaning under Homeric dishes 
 served in antediluvian plate; after drinking delicious wine 
 out of goblets like those we see in the hands of conjurers ; 
 after salvoes fired at dessert, and deafening shouts of ' Vive 
 les du Guenics ! ' and balls, where the orchestra is a bagpipe, 
 which a man blows at for ten hours on end ! and such bou- 
 quets ! and brides who insist on having our blessing ! and 
 healthy fatigue, cured by such sleep as I had never known, 
 and a delicious waking to love as radiant as the sun that 
 shines above us, twinkling on a myriad insects that hum in 
 genuine Bretagne ! Finally, after a grotesque visit to the Cas- 
 tle of du Guenic, where the windows are open gates, and the 
 cows might pasture on the grass grown in the halls ; but we 
 have vowed to restore it, and furnish it, so as to come here 
 every year and be hailed by the vassals of the clan, one of 
 whom carried our banner. Ouf ! here I am at Nantes. 
 
 " What a day we had when we went to le Guenic ! The 
 priest and all the clergy came out to meet us, all crowned 
 with flowers, mother, and blessed us with such joy ! The 
 tears come into my eyes as I write about it. And my lordly 
 Calyste played his part as a liege like a figure of Walter 
 Scott's. Monsieur received homage as if we had stepped 
 back into the thirteenth century. I heard girls and women 
 saying, ' What a handsome master we have ! ' just like the 
 chorus of a comic opera. 
 
 " The old folk discussed Calyste's likeness to the du 
 
BEATRIX. 251 
 
 Guenics whom they had known. Oh ! Brittany is a noble 
 and sublime country, a land of faith and religion. But prog- 
 ress has an eye on it ; bridges and roads are to be made, ideas 
 will invade it, and farewell to the sublime. The peasants 
 will certainly cease to be as free and proud as I saw them 
 when it has been proved to them that they are Calyste's 
 equals, if, indeed, they can be brought to believe it. 
 
 "So after the poetry of this pacific restoration, when we 
 had signed the leases we left that delightful country, flowery 
 and smiling, gloomy and barren by turns, and we came here 
 to kneel before her, to whom we owe our good fortune, and 
 give her thanks. Calyste and I both felt the need to thank 
 the novice of the visitation. In memory of her he will bear 
 on his shield quarterly the arms of des Touches : party per 
 pale engrailed or and vert. He will assume one of the silver 
 eagles as a supporter, and place in its beak the pretty womanly 
 motto, 'Souviegne-vous. 1 So we went yesterday to the Con- 
 vent of the Ladies of the Visitation, conducted by the Abbe 
 Grimont, a friend of the Guenic family ; he told us that your 
 beloved Felicite, dear mamma, is a saint; indeed, she can be 
 no less to him, since this illustrious conversion has led to his 
 being made vicar-general of the diocese. Mademoiselle des 
 Touches would not see Calyste ; she received me alone. I 
 found her a little altered, paler and thinner ; she seemed ex- 
 tremely pleased by my visit. 
 
 "'Tell Calyste,' said she in a low voice, 'that my not 
 seeing him is a matter of conscience and self-discipline, for I 
 have permission ; but I would rather not purchase the happi- 
 ness of a few minutes with months of suffering ! Oh, if you 
 could only know how difficult I find it to answer when I am 
 asked, " What are you thinking about?" The mistress of the 
 novices can never understand the vastness and multiplicity of 
 \he ideas which rush through my brain like a whirlwind. 
 Sometimes I see Italy once more, or Paris, with all their dis- 
 play, always with Calyste, who,' she said with the poetic turn 
 
252 BE A TRIX. 
 
 you know so well, ' is the sun of my memory. I was too old 
 to be admitted to the Carmelites, so I chose the order of 
 Saint Francis de Sales, solely because he said, "I will have 
 you bareheaded instead of barefoot ! " disapproving of such 
 austerities as only mortify the body. In fact, the head is the 
 sinner. The holy bishop did well to make his rule stern to 
 the brain and merciless to the will ! This was what I needed, 
 for my mind is the real culprit ; it deceived me as to my heart 
 till the age of forty, when, though we are sometimes for a 
 moment forty times happier than younger women, we are some- 
 times fifty times more wretched. Well, my child, and are 
 you happy? ' she ended by asking me, evidently glad to say 
 no more about herself. 
 
 '-.' 'You see me in a rapture of love and happiness,' I told 
 her. 
 
 " ' Calyste is as kind and genuine as he is noble and hand- 
 some,' she said gravely. 'You are my heiress; you have, 
 beside my fortune, the twofold ideal of which I dreamed. I 
 am glad of what I have done,' she added after a pause. 
 ' Now, my child, do not be blinded. You have easily 
 grasped happiness, you had only to put out your hand ; now 
 try to keep it. If you had come here merely to carry away 
 the advice of my experience, your journey would be well 
 rewarded. Calyste at this moment is fired by an infection of 
 passion ; you did not inspire it. To make your happiness 
 durable, dear child, strive to add this element to the former 
 one. In your own interest and your husband's, try to be 
 capricious, coy, a little severe if necessary. I do not advise 
 a spirit of odious calculation, nor tyranny, but the science of 
 conduct. Between usury and extravagance there is economy. 
 Learn to acquire a certain decent control of your husband. 
 
 " ' These are the last worldly words I shall ever speak ; I 
 have been waiting to say them to you, for my conscience 
 quaked at the notion of having sacrificed you to save Calyste ; 
 attach him to you, give him children, let him respect you as 
 
BE A TRIX. 253 
 
 their mother. Finally,' she added in an agitated voice, 
 ' manage that he shall never see Beatrix again ! ' 
 
 " This name was enough to produce a sort of torpor in us 
 both ; we remained looking into each other's eyes, exchanging 
 our vague sentiments of uneasiness. 
 
 " ' Are you going home to Guerande ? ' she asked. 
 
 " < Yes,' said I. 
 
 " 'Well, never go to les Touches. I was wrong to give 
 you the place.' 
 
 "'Why?' 
 
 " ' Child, les Touches is for you a Bluebeard's cupboard, 
 for there is nothing so dangerous as again rousing a sleeping 
 passion.' 
 
 "I have given you the substance of our conversation, my 
 dear mother. If Mademoiselle des Touches made me talk, 
 on the other hand she gave me much to think about — all the 
 more because in the excitement of our travels, and my happi- 
 ness with my Calyste, I had forgotten the serious matter of 
 which I spoke in my first letter. 
 
 "After admiring Nantes, a delightful and splendid city; 
 after going to see, in the Place de Bretagne, the spot where 
 Charette so nobly fell, we arranged to return to Saint-Nazaire 
 down the Loire, since we had already gone from Nantes to 
 Guerande by the road. Public traveling is an invention of 
 the modern monster the Monopole. Two rather pretty 
 women belonging to Nantes were behaving rather noisily on 
 deck, suffering evidently from Kergarouetism — a jest you will 
 understand when I shall have told you what the Kergarouets 
 are. Calyste behaved very well. Like a true gentleman, he 
 did not parade me as his wife. Though pleased by his good 
 taste, like a child with his first drum, I thought this an admir- 
 able opportunity for practicing the system recommended by 
 Camille Maupin — for it was certainly not the novice that had 
 spoken to me. I put on a little sulky face, and Calyste was 
 Tery flatteringly distressed. In reply to his question, whis- 
 
254 BEATRIX. 
 
 pered in my ear, ' What is the matter ? ' I answered the 
 truth — 
 
 " ' Nothing whatever.' 
 
 1 * And I could judge at once how little effect the truth has 
 in the first instance. Falsehood is a decisive weapon in cases 
 where rapidity is the only salvation for a woman or an empire. 
 Calyste became very urgent, very anxious. I led him to the 
 forepart of the boat, among a mass of ropes, and there, in a 
 voice full of alarms, if not of tears, I told him all the woes 
 and fears of a woman whose husband happens to be the hand- 
 somest of men. 
 
 " ' Oh, Calyste ! ' said I, ' there is one dreadful blot on our 
 marriage. You did not love me ; you did not choose me ! 
 You did not stand fixed like a statue when you saw me for the 
 first time. My heart, my attachment, my tenderness cry out 
 to you for affection, and some day you will punish me for 
 having been the first to offer the treasure of my pure and in- 
 voluntary girlish love ! I ought to be grudging and capri- 
 cious, but I have no strength for it against you. If that odious 
 woman who scorned you had been in my place now, you 
 would not even have seen those two hideous provincial crea- 
 tures who would be classed with cattle by the Paris octroi.'* 
 
 " Calyste, my dear mother, had tears in his eyes, and 
 turned away to hide them ; he saw la Basse Indre, and ran to 
 desire the captain to put us on shore. No one can hold out 
 against such a response, especially as it was followed by a stay 
 of three hours in a little country inn, where we breakfasted 
 off fresh fish, in a little room such as genre painters love, 
 while through the windows came' the roar of the ironworks of 
 Indret across the broad waters of the Loire. Seeing the happy 
 result of the experiments of experience, I exclaimed, ? Oh, 
 sweet Felicite ! ' 
 
 " Calyste, who of course knew nothing of the advice I had 
 received, or of the artfulness of my behavior, fell into a de- 
 * Tax-collectors at the city gates. 
 
BEATRIX. 255 
 
 lightful punning blunder by replying, ' Never let us forget it ! 
 We will send an artist here to sketch the scene.' 
 
 "I laughed, dear mamma! — well, I laughed until Calyste 
 was quite disconcerted and on the point of being angry. 
 
 " ' Yes,' said I, ' but there is in my heart a picture of this 
 landscape, of this scene, which nothing can ever efface, and 
 inimitable in its color.' 
 
 "Indeed, mother, I find it impossible to give my love the 
 appearance of a warfare or hostility. Calyste can do what he 
 likes with me. That tear is, I believe, the first he ever be- 
 stowed on me; is it not worth more than a second declaration 
 of a wife's rights? A heartless woman, after the scene on the 
 boat, would have been mistress of the situation ; I lost all I 
 had gained. By your system, the more I am a wife, the more 
 I become a sort of harlot, for I am a coward in happiness ; I 
 cannot hold out against a glance from my lord. I do not 
 abandon myself to love ; I hug it as a mother clasps her child 
 to her breast for fear of some harm." 
 
 III. 
 
 From the same to the same. 
 
 "July, GUERANDE. 
 
 " Oh ! my dear mother, to be jealous after three months 
 of married life ! My heart is indeed full. I feel the deepest 
 hatred and the deepest love. I am worse than deserted, I 
 am not loved ! Happy am I to have a mother, another heart 
 to which I may cry at my ease. 
 
 " To us wives who are still to some extent girls, it is quite 
 enough to be told — ' Here, among the keys of your palace, is 
 one all rusty with remembrance ; go where you will, enjoy 
 everything, but beware of visiting les Touches' — to make us 
 rush in hot-foot, our eyes full of Eve's curiosity. What a 
 provoking element Mademoiselle des Touches had infused 
 
256 BEATRIX. 
 
 into my love ! And why was I forbidden les Touches? What ! 
 does such happiness as mine hang on an excursion, on a visit 
 to an old house in Brittany? What have I to fear? In short, 
 add to Mrs. Bluebeard's reasons the craving that gnaws at 
 every woman's heart to know whether her power is precarious 
 or durable, and you will understand why one day I asked, 
 With an air of indifference — 
 
 * ' What sort of place is les Touches ? ' 
 
 " ' Les Touches is your own,' said my adorable mother-in- 
 law. 
 
 " ' Ah ! If only Calyste had never set his foot there ! ' 
 
 said Aunt Zephirine, shaking her head. 
 
 " ' He would not now be my husband,' said I. 
 
 " ' Then you know what happened there ? ' thus my mother- 
 in-law, sharply. 
 
 ** ' It is a place of perdition,' said Mademoiselle de Pen- 
 Hoel. ' Mademoiselle des Touches committed many sins 
 there, for which she now begs forgiveness of God.' 
 
 "'And has it not saved that noble creature's soul, beside 
 making the fortune of the convent ? ' cried the Chevalier du 
 Halga. 'The Abbe Grimont tells me that she has given a 
 hundred thousand francs to the Ladies of the Visitation.' 
 
 " ' Would you like to go to les Touches ? ' said the Baroness. 
 ' It is worth seeing.' 
 
 " ' No, no ! ' cried I, eagerly. 
 
 " Now, does not this little scene strike you as taken from 
 some diabolical drama? And it was repeated under a hun- 
 dred pretenses. At last my mother-in-law said — 
 
 " ' I understand why you should not wish to go to les 
 Touches. You are quite right.' 
 
 " Confess, dear mamma, that such a stab, so unintentionally 
 given, would have made you determine that you must know 
 whether your happiness really rested on so frail a basis that it 
 must perish under one particular roof? I must do this justice 
 to Calyste, he had never proposed to visit this retreat which 
 
 
BEATRIX. 257 
 
 is now his property. Certainly when we love, we become 
 bereft of our senses, for his silence and reserve nettled me, 
 till I said one day, ' What are you afraid of seeing at les 
 Touches that you never mention it even ? ' 
 " ' Let us go there,' said he. 
 
 " I was caught, as every woman is who wishes to be caught, 
 and who trusts to chance to cut the Gordian knot of her 
 hesitancy. So we went to les Touches. 
 
 "It is a delightful spot, most artistically tasteful, and I 
 revel in the abyss whither Mademoiselle des Touches had 
 warned me never to go. All poison-flowers are beautiful. 
 The devil sows them — for there are flowers of Satan's and 
 flowers from God ! We have only to look into our own 
 hearts to see that they went halves in the work of creation. 
 What bitter-sweet joys I found in this place where I played, 
 not with fire, but with ashes. I watched Calyste ; I wanted 
 to know if every spark was dead, and looked out for every 
 chance draught of air, believe me ! I noted his face as we 
 went from room to room, from one piece of furniture to an- 
 other, exactly like children seeking some hidden object. He 
 seemed thoughtful ; still, at first, I fancied I had conquered. 
 I felt brave enough to speak of Madame de Rochefide, who, 
 since the adventure of her fall at le Croisic, is called Roche- 
 perfide. Finally, we went to look at the famous box-shrub on 
 which Beatrix was caught when Calyste pushed her into the 
 sea that she might never belong to any man. 
 
 " 'She must be very light to have rested there ! ' said I, 
 laughing. 
 
 " Calyste said nothing. ' Peace to the dead,' I added. 
 
 " Still he was silent. ' Have I vexed you? ' I asked. 
 
 " ' No. But do not galvanize that passion,' he replied. 
 
 " What a speech ! Calyste, seeing it had saddened me, 
 was doubly kind and tender to me. 
 
 17 
 
268 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "August. 
 
 " Alas ! I was at the bottom of the pit and amusing myself, 
 like the innocents in a melodrama, with plucking the flowers. 
 Suddenly a horrible idea came galloping across my happiness 
 like the horse in the German ballad. I fancied I could dis- 
 cern that Calyste's love was fed by his reminiscences, that he 
 was wreaking on me the storms I could revive in him, by re- 
 minding him of that horrible coquette Beatrix. That unwhole- 
 some, cold, limp, tenacious nature — akin to the mollusc and 
 the coral insect — dares to be called Beatrix ! 
 
 " So already, dear mother, I am forced to have an eye on a 
 suspicion when my heart is wholly Calyste's, and is it not a 
 terrible misfortune that the eye should get the better of the 
 heart; that the suspicion, in short, has been justified? And 
 in this way — 
 
 " ' I love this place,' I said to Calyste one morning, ' for I 
 owe my happiness to it — so I forgive you for sometimes mis- 
 taking me for another woman ' 
 
 " My loyal Breton colored, and I threw my arms round his 
 neck ; but I came away from les Touches, and shall never go 
 back there. 
 
 " The depth of my hatred, which makes me long for the 
 death of Madame de Rochefide — oh dear, a natural death, of 
 course, from a cold, or some accident — revealed to me the 
 extent and vehemence of my love for Calyste. This woman 
 has haunted my slumbers ; I have seen her in my dreams. 
 Am I fated to meet her ? Yes, the novice in the convent was 
 right ; les Touches is a fatal spot. Calyste renewed his im- 
 pressions there, and they are stronger than the pleasures of 
 our love. 
 
 " Find out, my dear mother, whether Madame de Rochefide 
 is in Paris ; for, if so, I shall remain on our estates in Brittany. 
 Poor Mademoiselle des Touches, who is now sorry that she 
 dressed me like Beatrix on the day when our marriage-contract 
 was signed, to carry out her scheme — if she could now know 
 
BEATRIX. 259 
 
 how completely I am a substitute for our odious rival ! What 
 would she say? Why, it is prostitution! I am no longer 
 myself ! I am put to shame. I am suffering from a mad 
 desire to flee from Guerande and the sands of le Croisic. 
 
 "August 25. 
 " I am quite resolved to return to the ruins of le Guenic. 
 Calyste, troubled at seeing me so uneasy, is taking me thither. 
 Either he does not know much of the world or he guesses 
 nothing; or, if he knows the reason of my flight, he does not 
 love me. I am so afraid of discovering the hideous certainty 
 if I seek it, that, like the children, I cover my eyes with my 
 hands not to hear the explosion. Oh, mother! I am not 
 loved with such love as I feel in my own heart. Calyste, to 
 be sure, is charming; but what man short of a monster would 
 not be, like Calyste, amiable and gracious, when he is given 
 all the opening blossoms of the soul of a girl of twenty, 
 brought up by you, pure as I am, and loving, and — as many 
 women have told you — very pretty " 
 
 "Le Guenic, September \%th. 
 
 "Has he forgotten her? This is the one thought which 
 echoes like remorse in my soul. Dear mother, has every wife, 
 like me, some such memory to contend with ? Pure girls ought to 
 marry none but innocent youths ! And yet that is an illusory 
 Utopia ; and it is better to have a rival in the past than in 
 the future. Pity me, mamma, though at this moment I am 
 happy ; happy as a woman is who fears to lose her happiness 
 and clings to it ! — a way of killing it sometimes, says wise 
 Clotilde. 
 
 "I perceive that for the last five months I have thought 
 only of myself; that is, of Calyste. Tell my sister Clotilde 
 that the dicta of her melancholy wisdom recur to me some- 
 times. She is happy in being faithful to the dead ; she need 
 fear no rival. 
 
260 BEATRIX. 
 
 " A kiss to my dear Athenais ; I see that Juste is madly in 
 love with her. From what you say in your last letter, all he 
 fears is that he may not win her. Cultivate that fear as a 
 precious flower. Athenais 'will be mistress ; I; who dreaded 
 lest I should not win Calyste from himself, shall be the hand- 
 maid. A thousand loves, dearest mother. Indeed, if my 
 fears should not prove vain, I shall have paid very dear for 
 Camille Maupin's fortune. Affectionate respects to my 
 father." 
 
 These letters fully explain the secret attitude of this hus- 
 band and wife. Where Sabine saw a love-match, Calyste saw 
 a mariage de convenance. And the joys of the honeymoon 
 had not altogether fulfilled the requirements of the law as to 
 community of goods. 
 
 During their stay in Brittany the work of restoring, ar- 
 ranging, and decorating the Hotel du Guenic in Paris had 
 been carried on by the famous architect Grindot, under the 
 eye of Clotilde and the Duchesse and Due de Grandlieu. 
 Every step was taken to enable the young couple to return to 
 Paris in December, 1838; and Sabine was glad to settle in the 
 Rue de Bourbon, less for the pleasure of being mistress of 
 the house than to discover what her family thought of her 
 married life. Calyste, handsome and indifferent, readily al- 
 lowed himself to be guided in matters of fashion by Clotilde 
 and his mother-in-law, who were gratified by his docility. 
 He filled the place in the world to which his name, his for- 
 tune, and his connection entitled him. His wife's success, 
 regarded as she was as one of the most charming women of 
 the year, the amusements of the best society, duties to be 
 done, and the dissipations of a Paris season, somewhat re- 
 cruited the happiness of the young couple by supplying 
 excitement and interludes. The Duchesse and Clotilde be- 
 lieved in Sabine's happiness, ascribing Calyste's cold manners 
 to his English blood, and the young wife got over her gloomy 
 
BEATRIX. 261 
 
 notions ; she heard herself envied by so many less happy 
 wives, that she banished her terrors to the limbo of bad 
 dreams. Finally, Sabine's prospect of motherhood was the 
 crowning guarantee for the future of this neutral-tinted union, 
 a good augury on which women of experience rely. 
 
 In October, 1839, the young Baronne du Guenic had a son, 
 and was so foolish as to nurse him herself, like almost every 
 woman under similar circumstances. How can she help being 
 wholly a mother when her child is the child of a husband so 
 truly idolized ? Thus by the end of the following summer 
 Sabine was preparing to wean her first child. 
 
 In the course of a two years' residence in Paris, Calyste 
 had entirely shed the innocence which had cast the light of 
 its prestige on his first experience in the world of passion. 
 Calyste, as the comrade of the young Due de Maufrigneuse — 
 like himself, lately married to an heiress, Berthe de Cinq-Cygne 
 — of the Vicomte Savinien de Portenduere, of the Due and 
 Duchesse de Rhetore, the Due and Duchesse de Lenoncourt- 
 Chaulieu, and all the company that met in his mother-in-law's 
 drawing-room, learned to see the differences that divide pro- 
 vincial from Paris life. Wealth has its dark hours, its tracts 
 of idleness, for which Paris, better than any other capital, can 
 provide amusement, diversion, and interest. Hence, under 
 the influence of these young husbands, who would leave the 
 noblest and most beautiful creatures for the delights of the 
 cigar or of whist, for the sublime conversation at a club or 
 the absorbing interests of the turf, many of the domestic 
 virtues were undermined in the young Breton husband. The 
 maternal instinct in a woman who cannot endure to bore her 
 husband is always ready to support young married men in 
 their dissipations. A woman is so proud of seeing the man 
 she leaves perfectly free come back to her side. 
 
 One evening, in October this year, to escape the cries of a 
 weaned child, Calyste — on whose brow Sabine could not bear 
 to see a cloud — was advised by her to go to the Theatre des 
 
362 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Varietes, where a new piece was being acted. The servant 
 sent to secure a stall had taken one quite near to the stage- 
 boxes. Between the first and second acts, Calyste, looking 
 about him, saw in one of these boxes on the ground tier, not 
 four yards away, Madame de Rochefide. 
 
 Beatrix in Paris ! Beatrix in public ! The two ideas 
 pierced Calyste's brain like two arrows. He could see her 
 again after nearly three years ! Who can describe the com- 
 motion in the soul of this lover who, far from forgetting, had 
 sometimes so completely identified Beatrix with his wife that 
 Sabine had been conscious of it ? Who can understand how 
 this poem of a lost and misprized love, ever living in the 
 heart of Sabine's husband, overshadowed the young wife's 
 dutiful charms and ineffable tenderness? Beatrix became 
 light, the day-star, excitement, life, the unknown; while 
 Sabine was duty, darkness, the familiar ! In that instant one 
 was pleasure, the other satiety. It was a thunderbolt. 
 
 Sabine's husband in a loyal impulse felt a noble prompting 
 to leave the house. As he went out from the stalls, the door 
 of the box was open, and in spite of himself his feet carried 
 him in. He found Beatrix between two very distinguished 
 men, Canalis and Nathan — a politician and a literary celeb- 
 rity. During nearly three years, since Calyste had last seen 
 Madame de Rochefide, she had altered very much ; but 
 though the metamorphosis had changed the woman's nature, 
 she seemed all the more poetical and attractive in Calyste's 
 eyes. Up to the age of thirty, clothing is all a pretty Paris- 
 ian demands of dress ; but when she has crossed the threshold 
 of the thirties, she looks to finery for armor, fascinations, and 
 embellishment ; she composes it to lend her graces ; she finds 
 a purpose in it, assumes a character, makes herself young 
 again, studies the smallest accessories — in short, abandons 
 nature for art. 
 
 Madame de Rochefide had just gone through the changing 
 scenes of the drama whichj in this history of the manners of 
 
BEATRIX. 263 
 
 the French in the nineteenth century, is called " The De- 
 serted Woman." Conti having thrown her over, she had 
 naturally become a great artist in dress, in flirtation, and in 
 artificial bloom of every description. 
 
 "How is it that Conti is not here?" asked Calyste of 
 Canalis in a whisper, after the commonplace greetings which 
 begin the most momentous meeting when it takes place in 
 public. 
 
 The erewhile poet of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, twice 
 minister, and now for the fourth time a speaker hoping for 
 fresh promotion, laid his finger with meaning on his lips. 
 This explained all. 
 
 "I am so glad to see you," said Beatrix, in a kittenish 
 way. " I said to myself as soon as I saw you, before you saw 
 me, that you, at any rate, would not disown me ! Oh, my 
 Calyste ! " she murmured in his ear, " why are you married ? 
 — and to such a little fool, too ! " 
 
 As soon as a woman whispers to a new-comer in her box, 
 and makes him sit down by her, men of breeding always find 
 some excuse for leaving them together. 
 
 "Are you coming, Nathan?" said Canalis; "Madame la 
 Marquise will excuse me if I go to speak a word to d'Arthez, 
 whom I see with the Princesse de Cadignan. I must talk 
 about a combination of speakers for to-morrow's sitting." 
 
 This retreat, effected with good taste, gave Calyste a chance 
 of recovering from the shock he had sustained ; but he lost 
 all his remaining strength and presence of mind as he inhaled 
 the, to him, intoxicating and poisonous fragrance of the poem 
 called Beatrix. 
 
 Madame de Rochefide, who had grown bony and stringy, 
 whose complexion was almost ruined, thin, faded, with dark 
 circles around her eyes, had that evening wreathed the un- 
 timely ruin with the most ingenious devices of Parisian frip- 
 pery. Like all deserted women, she had tried to give herself 
 a virgin grace, and by the effect of various white draperies to 
 
264 BEATRIX. 
 
 recall the maidens of Ossian, with names ending in a, so poet' 
 ically represented by Girodet. Her fair hair fell about her 
 long face in bunches of curls, reflecting the flare of the foot- 
 lights in the sheen of scented oil. Her pale forehead shone; 
 she had applied an imperceptible touch of rouge over the dull 
 whiteness of her skin, bathed in bran-water, and its brilliancy 
 cheated the eye. A scarf, so fine that it was hard to believe 
 that man could have woven it of silk, was wound about her 
 neck so as to diminish its length by hiding it, and barely 
 revealing the treasures enticingly displayed by her stays. The 
 bodice was a masterpiece of art. As to her attitude, it is 
 enough to say that it was well worth the pains she had taken 
 to elaborate it. Her arms, lean and hard, were scarcely 
 visible through the carefully arranged puffs of her wide sleeves. 
 She presented that mixture of false glitter and sheeny silk, of 
 flowing gauze and frizzled hair, of liveliness, coolness, and 
 movement which has been called je ne sais quoi.* Every one 
 knows what is meant by thisy> ne sais quoi. It is a compound 
 of cleverness, taste, and temperament. Beatrix was, in fact, a 
 drama, a spectacle, all scenery, and transformations, and mar- 
 velous machinery. 
 
 The performance of these fairy pieces, which are no less 
 brilliant in dialogue, turns the head of a man blessed with 
 honesty ; for, by the law of contrast, he feels a frenzied desire 
 to play with the artificial thing. It is false and seductive, 
 elaborate, but pleasing, and there are men who adore these 
 women who play at being charming as one plays a game of 
 cards. This is the reason — man's desire is a syllogism, and 
 argues from this external skill to the secret theorems of volup- 
 tuous enjoyment. .The mind concludes, though not in words, 
 "A woman who can make herself so attractive must have 
 other resources of passion." And it is true. The women 
 who are deserted are the women who love ; the women who 
 keep their lovers are those know how to love. Now, though 
 
 * I know not what. 
 
BEATRIX. 265 
 
 this lesson in Italian had been a hard one for Beatrix's vanity, 
 her nature was too thoroughly artificial not to profit by it. 
 
 " It is not a matter of loving you men," she had been say- 
 ing some minutes before Calyste went in ; "we have to worry 
 you when we have got you ; that is the secret of keeping you. 
 Dragons who guard treasures are armed with talons and 
 wings ! ' ' 
 
 " Your idea might be put into a sonnet," Canalis was saying 
 just as Calyste entered the box. 
 
 At one glance Beatrix read Calyste's condition ; she saw, 
 still fresh and raw, the marks of the collar she had put on him 
 at les Touches. Calyste, offended by her phrase about his 
 wife, hesitated between his dignity as a husband, defending 
 Sabine, and finding a sharp word to cast on the heart whence, 
 for him, arose such fragrant reminiscences — a heart he believed 
 to be yet bleeding. The Marquise discerned this hesitancy ; 
 she had spoken thus solely to gauge the extent of her power 
 over Calyste, and, seeing him so weak, she came to his assist- 
 ance to get him out of his difficulty. 
 
 "Well, my friend," said she, when the two courtiers had 
 left, " you see me alone — yes, alone in the world ! " 
 
 "And you never thought of me ? " said Calyste. 
 
 " You ? " she replied ; " are you not married ? It has been 
 one of my great griefs among the many I have endured since 
 we last met. ' Not merely have I lost love,' I said to myself, 
 * but friendship, too, a friendship I believed to be wholly 
 Breton.' We get used to anything. I now suffer less, but I 
 am broken. This is the first time for a long while that I have 
 unburdened my heart. Compelled to be reserved in the 
 presence of indifferent persons, and as arrogant to those who 
 court me as though I had never fallen, and having lost my 
 dear Felicite, I have no ear into which to breathe the words, 
 ' I am wretched ! ' And even now, can I tell you what my 
 anguish was when I saw you a few yards away from me, not 
 recognizing me ; or what my joy is at seeing you close tc me? 
 
266 BEATRIX. 
 
 Yes," said she, at a movement on Calyste's part, "it is almost 
 fidelity ! In this you see what misfortune means ! A nothing, 
 a visit, is everything. 
 
 "Yes, you really loved me, as I deserved to be loved by 
 the man who has chosen to trample on all the treasures I cast 
 at his feet. And, alas ! to my woe, I cannot forget ; I love, 
 and I mean to be true to the past, which can never return." 
 
 As she poured out this speech, a hundred times rehearsed, 
 she used her eyes in such a way as to double the effect of 
 words which seemed to surge up from her soul with the vio- 
 lence of a long-restrained torrent. Calyste, instead of speak- 
 ing, let fall the tears that had been gathering in his eyes. 
 Beatrix took his hand and pressed it, making him turn pale. 
 
 " Thank you, Calyste ; thank you, my poor boy ; that is 
 the way a true friend should respond to a friend's sorrow. 
 We understand each other. There, do not add another word ! 
 Go now; if we were seen, you might cause your wife grief if 
 by chance any one told her that we had met — though inno- 
 cently enough, in the face of a thousand people. Good-by, I 
 
 am brave, you see " And she wiped her eyes by what 
 
 should be called in feminine rhetoric the antithesis of action. 
 
 " Leave me to laugh the laugh of the damned with the 
 people I do not care for, but who amuse me," she went on. 
 " I see artists and writers, the circle that I knew at our poor 
 Camille's — she was right, no doubt ! Enrich the man you 
 love, and then disappear, saying, ' I am too old for him ! ' It 
 is to die a martyr. And that is best when one cannot die a 
 virgin." 
 
 She laughed, as if to efface the melancholy impression she 
 might have made on her adorer. 
 
 " But where can I call on you? " asked Calyste. 
 
 "I have hidden myself in the Rue de Courcelles, close to 
 the Pare Monceaux, in a tiny house suited to my fortune, and 
 I cram my brain with literature — but for my own satisfaction 
 only, to amuse myself. Heaven preserve me from the mania 
 
BEATRIX. 267 
 
 of writing ! Go, leave me ; I do not want to be talked about, 
 and what will not people say if they see us together? And, 
 beside, Calyste, I tell you, if you stay a minute longer I shall 
 cry, for I can't help it." 
 
 Calyste withdrew, after giving his hand to Beatrix, and 
 feeling a second time the deep strange sensation of a pressure 
 on both sides full of suggestive incitement. 
 
 "My God ! Sabine never stirred my heart like this," was 
 the thought that assailed him in the corridor. 
 
 Throughout the rest of the evening the Marquise de Roche- 
 fide did not look three times straight at Calyste ; but she sent 
 him side-glances which rent the soul of the man who had given 
 himself up wholly to his first and rejected love. 
 
 When the Baron du Guenic was at home again, the magnifi- 
 cence of his rooms reminded him of the. sort of mediocrity 
 to which Beatrix had alluded, and he felt a hatred for the 
 fortune that did not belong to that fallen angel. On hearing 
 that Sabine had been in bed some time, he was happy in 
 having a night to himself to live in his emotions. 
 
 He now cursed the perspicacity given to Sabine by her 
 affection. When it happens that a man is adored by his wife, 
 she can read his face like a book, she knows the slightest quiver 
 of his muscles, she divines the reason when he is calm, she 
 questions herself when he is in the least sad, wondering if she 
 is in fault, she watches his eyes ; to her those eyes are colored 
 by his ruling thought — they love or they love not. Calyste 
 knew himself to be the object of a worship so complete, so 
 artless, so jealous, that he doubted whether he could assume 
 a countenance that would preserve the secret of the change 
 that had come over him. 
 
 "What shall I do to-morrow morning?" said he to him- 
 self as he fell asleep, fearing Sabine's scrutiny. 
 
 For when they first met, or even in the course of the day, 
 Sabine would ask him, " Do you love me as much as ever? " 
 or, "I don't bore you?" Gracious questionings, varying 
 
268 BEATRIX. 
 
 according to the wife's wit or mood, and covering real or 
 imaginary terrors. 
 
 A storm will stir up mud and bring it to the top of the noblest 
 and purest hearts. And so, next morning, Calyste, who was 
 genuinely fond of his child, felt a thrill of joy at hearing that 
 Sabine was anxious as to the cause of some symptoms, and, 
 fearing croup, could not leave the infant Calyste. The Baron 
 excused himself on the score of business from breakfasting at 
 home, and went out. He fled as a prisoner escapes, happy 
 in the mere act of walking, in going across the Pont Louis 
 XVI. and the Champs-Elysees to a cafe on the boulevard, 
 where he breakfasted alone. 
 
 What is there in love ? Does nature turn restive under the 
 social yoke ? Does nature insist that the spring of a devoted 
 life shall be spontaneous and free, its flow that of a wild 
 torrent tossed by the rocks of contradiction and caprice, in- 
 stead of a tranquil stream trickling between two banks — the 
 mairie on one side and the church on the other? Has she 
 schemes of her own when she is hatching those volcanic erup- 
 tions to which perhaps we owe our great men ? 
 
 It would have been difficult to find a young man more 
 piously brought up than Calyste, of purer life, or less tainted 
 by infidelity ; and he was rushing toward a woman quite 
 unworthy of him, when a merciful and glorious chance 
 brought to him, in Sabine, a girl of really aristocratic beauty, 
 with a refined and delicate mind, pious, loving, and wholly 
 attached to him ; her angelic sweetness still touched with the 
 pathos of love, passionate love in spite of marriage — such 
 love as his for Beatrix. 
 
 The greatest men, perhaps, have still some clay in their com- 
 position ; the mire still has charms. So, in spite of folly and 
 frailty, the woman would then be the less imperfect creature. 
 Madame de Rochefide in the midst of the crowd of artistic 
 pretenders who surrounded her, and in spite of her fall, 
 
BE A TRIX. 269 
 
 belonged to the highest nobility all the same ; her nature was 
 ethereal rather than earth-born, and she hid the courtesan 
 she meant to be under the most aristocratic exterior. So this 
 explanation cannot account for Calyste's strange passion. 
 
 The reason may perhaps be found in a vanity so deeply 
 buried that moralists have not yet discerned that side of vice. 
 There are men, truly noble as Calyste was, and as handsome, 
 rich, elegant, and well bred, who weary — unconsciously per- 
 haps — of wedded life with a nature like their own ; beings 
 whose loftiness is not amazed by loftiness, who are left cold 
 by a dignity and refinement on a constant level with their own, 
 but who crave to find in inferior or fallen natures a corrobora- 
 tion of their own superiority though they would not ask their 
 praises. The contrast of moral degradation and magnanimity 
 fascinates their sight. What is pure shines so vividly by the 
 side of what is impure ? This comparison is pleasing. Calyste 
 found nothing in Sabine to protect ; she was irreproachable ; 
 all the wasted energies of his heart went forth to Beatrix. 
 And if we have seen great men playing the part of Jesus, 
 raising up the woman taken in adultery, how should common- 
 place folk be any wiser ? 
 
 Calyste lived till two o'clock on the thought, " I shall see 
 her again ! " a poem which ere now has proved sustaining 
 during a journey of seven hundred leagues. Then he went 
 with a light step to the Rue de Courcelles ; he recognized the 
 house though he had never seen it ; and he, the Due de 
 Grandlieu's son-in-law, he, as rich, as noble as the Bourbons, 
 stood at the foot of the stairs, stopped by the question from 
 an old butler, " Your name, if you please, sir ? " 
 
 Calyste understood that he must leave Madame de Roche- 
 fide free to act, and he looked out on the garden and the 
 walls streaked with black and yellow lines left by the rain on 
 the stucco of Paris. 
 
 Madame de Rochefide, like most fine ladies when they 
 break their chain, had fled, leaving her fortune in her hus- 
 
 W 
 
270 BE A TRIX. 
 
 band's hands, and she would not appeal for help to her tyrant. 
 Conti and Mademoiselle des Touches had spared Beatrix all 
 the cares of material life, and her mother from time to time 
 sent her a sum of money. Now that she was alone, she was 
 reduced to economy of a rather severe kind to a woman used 
 to luxury. So she had taken herself to the top of the hill on 
 which lies the Pare Monceaux, sheltering herself in a little 
 old house of some departed magnate, facing the street, but 
 with a charming little garden behind it, at a rent of not more 
 than eighteen hundred francs. And still, with an old man- 
 servant, a maid and a cook from Alencon, who had clung to 
 her in her reverses, her poverty would have seemed opulence 
 to many an ambitious middle-class housewife. 
 
 Calyste went up a flight of well-whitened stone stairs, the 
 landings gay with flowers. On the second floor the old butler 
 showed Calyste into the rooms through a double door of red 
 velvet paneled with red silk and gilt nails. The rooms he 
 went through were also hung with red silk and velvet. Dark- 
 toned carpets, hangings across the windows and doors, the 
 whole interior was in contrast with the outside, which the 
 owner was at no pains to keep up. 
 
 Calyste stood waiting for Beatrix in a drawing-room, quite 
 in style, where luxury affected simplicity. It was hung with 
 bright crimson velvet set off by cording of dull yellow silk ; 
 the carpet was a darker red, the windows looked like conserva- 
 tories, they were so crowded with flowers, and there was so little 
 daylight that he could scarcely see two vases of fine, old red 
 porcelain, and between them a silver cup attributed to Ben- 
 venuto Cellini, and brought from Italy by Beatrix. The 
 furniture of gilt wood upholstered with velvet, the handsome 
 consoles, on one of which stood a curious clock, the table 
 covered with a Persian cloth, all bore witness to past wealth, 
 of which the remains were carefully arranged. On a small 
 table Calyste saw some trinkets, and a book half-read, in 
 which the place was marked by a dagger — symbolical of criti* 
 
BEATRIX. 271 
 
 cism — its handle sparkling with jewels. On the walls ten 
 water-color drawings, handsomely framed, all representing 
 bedrooms in the various houses where Beatrix had lived in 
 the course of her wandering life, gave an idea of her supreme 
 impertinence. 
 
 The rustle of a silk dress announced the unfortunate lady, 
 who appeared in a studied toilet, which, if Calyste had been 
 an older hand, would certainly have shown him that he was 
 expected. The dress, made like a dressing-gown to show a 
 triangle of the white throat, was of pearl-gray watered silk 
 with open hanging sleeves, showing the arms covered with an 
 undersleeve made with puffs divided by straps, and with lace 
 ruffles. Her fine hair, loosely fastened with a comb, escaped 
 from under a cap of lace and flowers. 
 
 "So soon," said she with a smile. "A lover would not 
 have been so eager. So you have some secrets to tell me, I 
 suppose?" And she seated herself on a sofa, signing to 
 Calyste to take a place by her. 
 
 By some chance — not perhaps unintentional, for women 
 have two kinds of memory, that of the angels and that of the 
 devils — Beatrix carried about her the same perfume that she 
 had used at les Touches when she had first met Calyste. The 
 breath of this scent, the touch of that dress, the look of those 
 eyes, which in the twilight seemed to focus and reflect light, 
 all went to Calyste's brain. The unhappy fellow felt the 
 same surge of violence as had already so nearly killed Beatrix ; 
 but now the Marquise was on the edge of a divan, not of the 
 ocean ; she rose to ring the bell, putting her finger to her 
 lips. At this Calyste, called to order, controlled himself; he 
 understood that Beatrix had no hostile intentions. 
 
 " Antoine, I am not at home," said she to the old servant. 
 " Put some wood on the fire. You see, Calyste, I treat you 
 as a friend," she added with dignity when the old man was 
 gone. " Do not treat me as your mistress. I have two re- 
 marks to make : First, that I should not make any foolish 
 
272 BE A TRIX. 
 
 stipulations with a man I loved ; next, that I will never belong 
 again to any man in the world. For I believed myself loved, 
 Calyste, by a sort of Rizzio whom no pledges could bind, a 
 man absolutely free, and you see whither that fatal infatuation 
 has brought me. As for you, you are tied to the most sacred 
 duties ; you have a young, amiable, delightful wife ; and you 
 are a father. I should be as inexcusable as you are, and we 
 should both be mad " 
 
 " My dear Beatrix, all your logic falls before one word. I 
 have never loved any one on earth but you, and I married in 
 spite of myself." 
 
 "A little trick played us by Mademoiselle des Touches," 
 said she with a smile. 
 
 For three hours Madame de Rochefide kept Calyste faithful 
 to his conjugal duties by pressing on him the horrible ulti- 
 matum of a complete breach with Sabine. Nothing less, she 
 declared, could reassure her in the dreadful position in which 
 she would be placed by Calyste's passion. And, indeed, she 
 thought little of ruthlessly sacrificing Sabine ; she knew her so 
 well. 
 
 " Why, my dear boy, she is a woman who fulfills all the 
 promise of her girlhood. She is a thorough Grandlieu, as 
 brown as her Portuguese mother, not to say orange-colored, 
 and as dry as her father. To speak the truth, your wife will 
 never be lost to you ; she is just a great boy, and can walk 
 alone. Poor Calyste ! is this the wife to suit you ? She has 
 fine eyes, but such eyes are common in Italy, Spain, and 
 Portugal. Can a woman so lean be really tender ? Eve was 
 fair ; dark women are descended from Adam, fair women 
 from God, whose hand left a last touch on Eve when all crea- 
 tion was complete." 
 
 At about six o'clock Calyste in desperation took up his hat 
 to go. 
 
 " Yes, go, my poor friend ; do not let her have the disap- 
 pointment of dining without you." 
 
BEATRIX. 273 
 
 Calyste stayed. He was so young, so easy to take on the 
 
 wrong side. 
 
 " You would really dare to dine with me? " said Beatrix, 
 affecting the most provoking surprise. "My humble fare 
 does not frighten you away, and you have enough independ- 
 ence of spirit to crown my joy by this little proof of genuine 
 affection? " 
 
 "Only let me write a line to Sabine," said he, "for she 
 would wait for me till nine o'clock." 
 
 " There is my writing-table," said Beatrix. 
 
 She herself lighted the candles and brought one to the 
 table to see what Calyste would write. 
 
 " My dear Sabine." 
 
 " My dear ! Is your wife still dear to you?" said she, 
 looking at him so coldly that it froze the marrow in his bones. 
 " Go, then, go to dine with her." 
 
 " I am dining at an eating-house with some friends — ■ — " 
 
 "That is a lie. For shame! You are unworthy of her 
 love or mine. All men are cowards with us. That will do, 
 monsieur ; go and dine with your dear Sabine ! " 
 
 Calyste threw himself back in his armchair and turned paler 
 than death. Bretons have a sort of obstinate courage which 
 makes them hold their own under difficulties. The young 
 Baron sat up again with his elbow firmly set on the table, his 
 chin in his hand, and his sparkling eyes fixed on Beatrix, who 
 was relentless. He looked so fine that a true northern or 
 southern woman would have fallen on her knees, saying, 
 "Take me!" But in Beatrix, born on the border between 
 Normandy and Brittany, of the race of Casteran, desertion 
 had brought out the ferocity of the Frank and the malignity 
 of the Norman ; she craved a tremendous and terrible re- 
 venge ; she did not yield to his noble impulse. 
 
 "Dictate what I am to write, and I will obey," said the 
 poor boy. " But then " 
 
 "Then, yes," she replied, " for you will love me then as 
 18 
 
274 BEATRIX. 
 
 you loved me at Guerande. Write, 'I am dining in town j 
 do not wait.' " 
 
 " And ? " said Calyste, expecting something more. 
 
 "Nothing. Sign it. Good," she said, seizing this note 
 with covert joy. " I will send it by a messenger." 
 
 " Now ! " cried Calyste, starting up like a happy man. 
 
 " I have preserved my liberty of action, I believe," said 
 she, looking around and pausing half-way between the table 
 and the fireplace, where she was about to ring. 
 
 "Here, Antoine, have this note taken to the address. 
 Monsieur will dine with me." 
 
 Calyste went home at about two in the morning. 
 
 After sitting up till half-past twelve, Sabine had gone to 
 bed, tired out. She slept, though she had been cruelly star- 
 tled by the brevity of her husband's note ; still, she accounted 
 for it. True love in a woman can always explain everything 
 to the advantage of the man she loves. 
 
 " Calyste was in a hurry ! " thought she. 
 
 Next day the child had recovered, the mother's alarms 
 were past. Sabine came in smiling with the little Calyste in 
 her arms to show him to his father just before breakfast, full 
 of the pretty nonsense, and saying the silly things that all 
 young mothers are full of. This little domestic scene enabled 
 Calyste to put a good face on matters, and he was charming 
 to his wife while feeling that he was a wretch. He played 
 like a boy himself with Monsieur le Chevalier ; indeed, he 
 overdid it, overacting his part ; but Sabine had not reached 
 that pitch of distrust in which a wife notes so subtle a shade. 
 
 At last, during breakfast, Sabine asked — 
 
 " And what were you doing yesterday? " 
 
 " Portenduere," said he, "kept me to dinner, and we went 
 to the club to play a few rubbers of whist." 
 
 "It is a foolish life, my Calyste," replied Sabine. "The 
 young men of our day ought rather to think of recovering all 
 the estates in the country that their fathers lost. They can- 
 
BEATRIX. 275 
 
 not live by smoking cigars, playing whist, and dissipating 
 their idleness by being content with making impertinent 
 speeches to the parvenus who are ousting them from all their 
 dignities, by cutting themselves off from the masses, whose 
 soul and brain they ought to be, and to whom they should 
 appear as Providence. Instead of being a party, you will 
 only be an opinion, as de Marsay said. Oh ! if you could 
 only know how my views have expanded since I have rocked 
 and suckled your child. I want to see the old name of du 
 Guenic figure in history." 
 
 Then, suddenly looking straight into Calyste's eyes, which 
 were pensively fixed on her, she said — 
 
 "You must admit that the first note you ever wrote me was 
 a little abrupt?" 
 
 "I never thought of writing till I reached the club." 
 - " But you wrote on a woman's paper ; it had some womanly 
 scent." 
 
 " The club managers do such queer things " 
 
 The Vicomte de Portenduere and his wife, a charming young 
 couple, had become so intimate with the du Guenics that they 
 shared a box at the Italian opera. The two young women, 
 Sabine and Ursule, had been drawn into this friendship by a 
 delightful exchange of advice, anxieties, and confidences about 
 their babies. While Calyste, a novice in falsehood, was 
 thinking to himself, "I must go to warn Savinien," Sabine 
 was reflecting, " I fancied that the paper was stamped with a 
 coronet ! " 
 
 The suspicion flashed like lightning through her conscious- 
 ness, and she blamed herself for it ; but she made up her 
 mind to look for the note, which, in the midst of her alarms 
 on the previous day, she had tossed into her letter-box. 
 
 After breakfast Calyste went out, telling his wife he should 
 soon return ; he got into one of the little low one-horse car- 
 riages which were just beginning to take the place of the in- 
 
276 BE A TRIX. 
 
 convenient cabriolet of our grandfathers. In a few minutes 
 he reached the Rue des Saints-Peres, where the Vicomte lived, 
 and begged him to do him the little kindness of lying in case 
 Sabine should question the Vicomtesse — he would do as much 
 for him next time. Then, when once out of the house, Calyste, 
 having first bidden the coachman to hurry as much as possible, 
 went in a few minutes from the Rue des Saints-Peres to the 
 Rue de Courcelles. He was anxious to know how Beatrix had 
 spent the rest of the night. 
 
 He found the happy victim of fate just out of her bath, 
 fresh, beautified, and breakfasting with a good appetite. He 
 admired the grace with which his angel ate boiled eggs, and 
 was delighted with the service of gold, a present from a music- 
 mad lord for whom Conti had written some songs, on ideas 
 supplied by his lordship, who had published them as his own. 
 Calyste listened to a few piquant anecdotes related by his 
 idol, whose chief aim was to amuse him, though she got angry 
 and cried when he left her. He fancied he had been with her 
 half an hour, and did not get home till three o'clock. His 
 horse, a fine beast given him by the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, 
 looked as if it had come out of the river, it was so streaming 
 with sweat. 
 
 By such a chance as a jealous woman always plans, Sabine 
 was on guard at a window looking out into the courtyard, out 
 of patience at Calyste's late return, and uneasy without 
 knowing why. She was struck by the condition of the horse, 
 its mouth full of foam. 
 
 " Where has he been ? " 
 
 The question was whispered in her ear by that power which 
 is not conscience — not the devil, nor an angel — the power 
 which sees, feels, knows, and shows us the unknown ; which 
 makes us believe in the existence of spiritual beings, creatures 
 of our own brain, going and coming, and living in the invisible 
 sphere of ideas. 
 
 "Where have you come from, my darling?" said she, 
 
BE A TKIX. 277 
 
 going down to the first landing to meet Calyste. "Abd-el- 
 Kader is half-dead ; you said you would be out but a few 
 minutes, and I have been expecting you these three hours." 
 
 "Well, well," said Calyste to himself, improving in the 
 art of dissimulation, "I must get out of the scrape by a 
 present. Dear little nurse," said he, putting his arm round 
 his wife's waist with a more coaxing pressure than he would 
 have given it if he had not felt guilty, " it is impossible, I 
 see, to keep a secret, however innocent, from a loving wife 
 who " 
 
 " We don't tell secrets on the stairs," she replied, laughing. 
 " Come along ! " 
 
 In the middle of the drawing-room that led to the bed- 
 room, she saw, reflected in a mirror, Calyste's face, in which, 
 not knowing that it could be seen, his fatigue and his real 
 feelings showed ; he had ceased to smile. 
 
 " That secret?" said she, turning round. 
 
 "You have been such a heroic nurse that the heir-presump- 
 tive of the du Guenics is dearer to me than ever ; I wanted 
 to surprise you — just like a worthy citizen of the Rue Saint- 
 Denis. A dressing-table is being fitted for you which is a 
 work of art — my mother and Aunt Zephirine have helped " 
 
 Sabine threw her arms round Calyste, and held him clasped 
 to her heart, her head on his neck, trembling with the weight 
 of happiness, not on account of the dressing-table, but be- 
 cause her suspicions were blown to the winds. It was one of 
 those glorious gushes of joy which can be counted in a life- 
 time, and of which even the most excessive love cannot be 
 prodigal, for life would be too quickly burnt out. Men 
 ought, in such moments, to kneel at the woman's feet in 
 adoration, for the impulse is sublime ; all the powers of the 
 heart and intellect overflow as water gushes from the urn 
 of fountain-nymphs. Sabine melted into tears. 
 
 Suddenly, as if stung by a viper, she pushed Calyste from 
 her, dropped on to a divan, and fainted away; the sudden 
 
278 BEATRIX. 
 
 chill on her glowing heart had almost killed her. As she 
 held Calyste, her nose in his necktie, given up to happiness, 
 she had smelt the same perfume as that on the note-paper ! 
 Another woman's head had lain there, her face and hair had 
 left the very scent of adultery. She had just kissed the spot 
 where her rival's kisses were still warm. 
 
 " What is the matter? " said Calyste, after bringing Sabine 
 back to her senses by bathing her face with a wet handker- 
 chief. 
 
 " Go and fetch the doctor and the accoucheur — both. 
 
 Yes, I feel the milk has turned to fever They will not 
 
 come at once unless you go yourself " Vous, she said, 
 
 not tu, and the vous startled Calyste, who flew off in alarm. 
 As soon as Sabine heard the outer gate shut she sprang to her 
 feet like a frightened deer, and walked round and round the 
 room like a crazy thing, exclaiming, "My God! my God ! 
 my God ! " 
 
 The two words took the place of thought. The crisis she 
 had used as a pretext really came on. The hair on her head 
 felt like so many eels, made red-hot in the fire of nervous 
 torment. Her heated blood seemed to her to have mingled 
 with her nerves, and to be bursting from every pore. For a 
 moment she was blind. " I am dying ! " she shrieked. 
 
 At this fearful cry of an insulted wife and mother, her 
 maid came in ; and when she had been carried to her bed and 
 had recovered her sight and senses, her first gleam of intelli- 
 gence made her send the woman to fetch her friend Madame 
 de Portenduere. Sabine felt her thoughts swirling in her 
 brain like straws in a whirlwind. 
 
 " I saw myraids of them at once," she said afterward. 
 
 Then she rang for the manservant, and in the transport of 
 fever found strength enough to write the following note, for 
 she was possessed by a mania, she must be sure of the truth : 
 
BE A TRIX. 279 
 
 To Madame la Baronne du Guinic. 
 
 "Dear Mamma: — When you come to Paris, as you have 
 led us to hope you may, I will thank you in person for the 
 beautiful present by which you and Aunt Zephirine and Cal- 
 yste propose to thank me for having done my duty. I have 
 been amply paid by my own happiness. I cannot attempt 
 to express my pleasure in this beautiful dressing-table : when 
 you are here I will try to tell you. Believe me, when I dress 
 before this glass, I shall always think, like the Roman lady, 
 that my choicest jewel is our darling angel," and so on. 
 
 She had this letter posted by her own maid. 
 
 When the Vicomtesse de Portenduere came in, the shivering 
 fit of a violent fever had succeeded the first paroxysm of 
 madness. 
 
 " Ursule, I believe I am going to die," said she. 
 
 " What ails you, my dear? " 
 
 "Tell me, what did Calyste and Savinien do yesterday 
 evening after dinner at your house? " 
 
 "What dinner?" replied Ursule, to whom her husband 
 had as yet said nothing, not expecting an immediate inquiry. 
 "Savinien and I dined alone last evening, and went to the 
 opera without Calyste." 
 
 " Ursule, dear child, in the name of yonr love for Savinien, 
 I adjure you, keep the secret of what I have asked you and 
 what I will tell you. You alone will know what I am dying 
 of — I am betrayed, at the end of three years — when I am not 
 yet three-and-twenty " 
 
 Her teeth chattered ; her eyes were lifeless and dull ; her 
 face had the greenish hue and surface of old Venetian glass. 
 
 " You — so handsome ! But for whom ? " 
 
 " I do not know. But Calyste has lied to me — twice. 
 Not a word ! Do not pity me, do not be indignant, affect 
 
280 BEATRIX. 
 
 ignorance; you will hear who, perhaps, through Savinien. 
 Oh ! yesterday's note " 
 
 And, shivering in her shift, she flew to a little cabinet and 
 took out the letter. 
 
 " A marquise's coronet ! " she said, getting into bed again. 
 "Find out whether Madame de Rochefide is in Paris. Have 
 I a heart left to weep or groan ? Oh, my dear, to see my 
 beliefs, my poem, my idol, my virtue, my happiness, all, all 
 destroyed, crushed, lost ! There is no God in heaven now, 
 no love on earth, no more life in my heart — nothing ! I do 
 not feel sure of the daylight ; I doubt if there is a sun. In 
 short, my heart is suffering so cruelly that I hardly feel the 
 horrible pain in my breast and my face. Happily the child 
 is weaned. My milk would have poisoned him! " And at 
 this thought a torrent of tears relieved her eyes, hitherto dry. 
 
 Pretty Madame de Portenduere, holding the fatal note 
 which Sabine had smelt of for certainty, stood speechless at 
 this desperate woe, amazed by this death of love, and unable 
 to say anything in spite of the incoherent fragments in which 
 Sabine strove to tell her all. Suddenly Ursule was enlight- 
 ened by one of those flashes which come only to sincere souls. 
 
 "I must save her!" thought she. "Wait until I return, 
 Sabine," cried she. "I will know the truth." 
 
 " Oh, and I shall love you in my grave ! " cried Sabine. 
 
 Madame de Portenduere went to the Duchesse de Grandlieu, 
 insisted on absolute secrecy, and informed her as to the state 
 Sabine was in. 
 
 "Madame," said she, in conclusion, "are you not of 
 opinion that, to save her from some dreadful illness, or per- 
 haps even madness — who can tell ? — we ought to tell the 
 doctor everything, and invent some fables about that abomin- 
 able Calyste, so as to make him seem innocent, at any rate, 
 for the present." 
 
 " My dear child," said the Duchess, who had felt a chill at 
 this revelation, " friendship has lent you for the nonce the 
 
BEATRIX. 281 
 
 experience of a woman of my age. I know how Sabine wor- 
 ships her husband ; you are right, she may go mad." 
 
 "And she might lose her beauty, which would be worse," 
 said the Vicomtesse. 
 
 " Let us go at once ! " cried the Duchess. 
 
 They, happily, were a few minutes in advance of the famous 
 accoucheur Dommanget, the only one of the two doctors whom 
 Calyste had succeeded in finding. 
 
 " Ursule has told me all," said the Duchess to her daughter. 
 "You are mistaken. In the first place, Beatrix is not in 
 Paris. As to what your husband was doing yesterday, my 
 darling, he lost a great deal of money, and does not know 
 where to find enough to pay for your dressing-table " 
 
 " And this ? " interrupted Sabine, holding out the note. 
 
 "This!" said the Duchess, laughing, "is Jockey Club 
 paper. Every one writes on coroneted paper — the grocers 
 will have titles soon " 
 
 The prudent mother tossed the ill-starred document into 
 the fire. 
 
 When Calyste and Dommanget arrived, the Duchess, who 
 had given her orders, was informed ; she left Sabine with 
 Madame de Portenduere, and met the doctor and Calyste in 
 the drawing-room. 
 
 " Sabine's life is in danger, monsieur," said she to Calyste. 
 "You have been false to her with Madame de Rochefide " — 
 Calyste blushed like a still decent girl caught tripping — "and 
 as you do not know how to deceive," the Duchess went on, 
 I " you were so clumsy that Sabine guessed everything. You 
 do not wish my daughter's death, I suppose ? All this, Mon- 
 sieur Dommanget, gives you a clue to my daughter's illness 
 and its cause. As for you, Calyste, an old woman like me 
 can understand your error, but I do not forgive you. Such 
 forgiveness can only be purchased by a life of happiness. If 
 you desire my esteem, first save my child's life. Then forget 
 Madame de Rochefide — she is good for nothing after the first 
 
282 BEATRIX. 
 
 time ! Learn to lie, have the courage and impudence of a 
 criminal. I have lied, God knows ! I, who shall be com- 
 pelled to do cruel penance for such mortal sin." 
 
 She explained to him the fictions she had just invented. 
 The skillful doctor, sitting by the bed, was studying the 
 patient's symptoms and the means of staving off the mischief. 
 While he was prescribing measures, of which the success must 
 depend on their immediate execution, Calyste, at the foot of 
 the bed, kept his eyes fixed on Sabine, trying to give them 
 an expression of tender anxiety. 
 
 "Then it is gambling that has given you those dark marks 
 round your eyes ? " she said in a feeble voice. 
 
 The words startled the doctor, the mother, and Ursule, 
 who looked at each other ; Calyste turned as red as a cherry. 
 
 "That comes of suckling your child," said Dommanget, 
 cleverly but roughly. " Then husbands are dull, being so 
 much separated from their wives, they go to the club and 
 play high. But do not lament over the thirty thousand 
 francs that Monsieur le Baron lost last night " 
 
 " Thirty thousand francs!" said Ursule like a simpleton. 
 
 "Yes, I know it for certain," replied Dommanget. "I 
 heard this morning at the house of the Duchesse Berthe de 
 Maufrigneuse that you lost the money to Monsieur de Trailles," 
 he added to Calyste. " How can you play with such a man? 
 Honestly, Monsieur le Baron, I understand your being ashamed 
 of yourself.' ' 
 
 Calyste, a kind and generous soul, when he saw his mother- 
 in-law — the pious Duchess, the young Viscountess — a happy 
 wife, and a selfish old doctor all lying like curiosity dealers, 
 understood the greatness of the danger ; he shed two large 
 tears which deceived Sabine. 
 
 "Monsieur," said she, sitting up in bed, and looking 
 wrathfully at Dommanget, " Monsieur du Guenic may lose 
 thirty, fifty, a hundred thousand francs if he chooses without 
 giving any one a right to find fault with him or lecture him, 
 
BE A TRIX. 283 
 
 It is better that Monsieur de Trailles should have won the 
 money from him than that we, we, should have won from 
 Monsieur de Trailles ! " 
 
 Calyste rose and put his arm round his wife's neck. Kissing 
 her on both cheeks, he said in her ear, " Sabine, you are an 
 angel ! " 
 
 Two days later the young Baroness was considered out of 
 danger. On the following day Calyste went to Madame de 
 Rochefide, and making a virtue of his infamy — 
 
 "Beatrix," said he, "you owe me much happiness. I 
 sacrificed my poor wife to you, and she discovered everything. 
 The fatal note-paper on which you made me write, with your 
 initial and coronet on it, which I did not happen to see — I 
 saw nothing but you ! The letter B, happily, was worn away ; 
 but the scent you left clinging to me, the lies in which I en- 
 tangled myself like a fool, have ruined my happiness. Sabine 
 has been at death's door ; the milk went to her brain, she has 
 erysipelas, and will perhaps be disfigured for life " 
 
 Beatrix, while listening to this harangue, had a face of Arctic 
 coldness, enough to freeze the Seine if she had looked at it. 
 
 " Well, so much the better; it may bleach her a little, per- 
 haps." And Beatrix, as dry as her own bones, as variable as 
 her complexion, as sharp as her voice, went on in this tone, a 
 tirade of cruel epigrams. 
 
 There can be no greater blunder than for a husband to talk 
 to his mistress of his wife, if she is virtuous, unless it be to talk 
 to his wife of his mistress if she is handsome. But Calyste 
 had not yet had the sort of Parisian education which may be 
 called the good manners of the passions. He could neither 
 tell his wife a lie nor tell his mistress the truth — an indispen- 
 sable training to enable a man to manage women. So he was 
 obliged to appeal to all the powers of passion for two long 
 hours, to wring from Beatrix the forgiveness he begged, denied 
 him by an angel who raised her eyes to heaven not to see the 
 
284 BE A TRIX. 
 
 culprit, and who uttered the reasons peculiar to marquises in 
 a voice choked with well-feigned tears, that she furtively wiped 
 away with the lace edge of her handkerchief. 
 
 " You can talk to me of your wife the very day after I have 
 yielded ! Why not say at once that she is a pearl of virtue ! 
 I know, she admires your beauty ! That is what I call de- 
 pravity ! I — I love your soul ! For I assure you, my dear 
 boy, you are hideous compared with some shepherds of the 
 Roman Campagna ," etc., etc. 
 
 This tone may seem strange, but it was the part of a system 
 deliberately planned by Beatrix. In her third incarnation — 
 for a woman completely changes with each fresh passion — she 
 is far advanced in fraud — that is the only word that can de- 
 scribe the result of the experience gained in such adventures. 
 The Marquise de Rochefide had sat in judgment on herself in 
 front of her mirror. Clever women have no delusions about 
 themselves; they count their wrinkles; they watch the begin- 
 ning of crows'-feet; they note the appearance of every speck 
 in their skin ; they know themselves by heart, and show it too 
 plainly by the immense pains they take to preserve their beauty. 
 And so, to contend against a beautiful young wife, to triumph 
 over her six days a week, Beatrix sought to win by the weapons 
 of the courtesan. Without confessing to herself the baseness 
 of her conduct, and carried away to use such means by a Turk- 
 like passion for the handsome young man, she resolved to 
 make him believe that he was clumsy, ugly, ill-made, and to 
 behave as if she hated him. 
 
 There is no more successful method with men of a domi- 
 neering nature. To them the conquest of such disdain is the 
 triumph of the first day renewed on every morrow. It is 
 more ; it is flattery hidden under the mask of aversion, and 
 owing to it the charm and truth which underlie all the meta- 
 morphoses invented by the great nameless poets. Does not a 
 man then say to himself, "I am irresistible!" or "I must 
 love her well, since I conquer her repugnance! " If you 
 
BE A TRIX. 285 
 
 deny this principle, which flirts and courtesans of every social 
 grade discovered long ago, you must discredit the pursuers of 
 science, the inquirers into secrets, who have long been re- 
 pulsed in their duel with hidden causes. 
 
 Beatrix seconded her use of contempt as a moral incitement 
 by a constant comparison between her comfortable, poetic 
 home and the Hotel du Guenic. Every deserted wife neglects 
 her home out of deep discouragement. Foreseeing this, 
 Madame de Rochefide began covert innuendoes as to the 
 luxury of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, which she stigmatized 
 as absurd. The reconciliation scene, when Beatrix made 
 Calyste swear to hate the wife who, as she said, was playing 
 the farce of spilt milk, took place in a perfect bower, where 
 she put herself into attitudes in the midst of beautiful flowers 
 and jardinieres of lavish costliness. She carried the art of 
 trifles, of fashionable toys, to an extreme. Beatrix, sunk into 
 contempt since Conti's desertion, was bent on gaining such 
 fame as may be had by sheer perversity. The woes of a 
 young wife, a Grandlieu, rich and lovely, were to build her a 
 pedestal. 
 
 When a woman reappears in society after nursing her first 
 child, she comes out again improved in charm and beauty. 
 If this phase of maternity can rejuvenate even women no 
 longer in their first youth, it gives young wives a splendid 
 freshness, a cheerful activity, a brio of life — if we may apply 
 to the body a word which the Italians have invented for the 
 mind. But while trying to resume the pleasant habits of the 
 honeymoon, Sabine did not find the same Calyste. The un- 
 happy girl watched him instead of abandoning herself to 
 happiness. She expected the fatal perfume, and she smelt it ; 
 and she no longer confided in Ursule, nor in her mother, who 
 had so charitably deceived her. She wanted certainty, and 
 she had not long to wait for it. Certainty is never coy ; it is 
 like the sun, we soon need to pull down the blinds before it. 
 In love it is a repetition of the fable of the Woodman calling 
 
286 BEATRIX. 
 
 on Death. We wish that certainty would blind us. One 
 morning, a fortnight after the first catastrophe, Sabine received 
 this dreadful letter : 
 
 To Madame la Baronne du Guenic. 
 
 " Gu£rande. 
 
 "My dear Daughter: — My sister Zephirine and I are 
 lost in conjectures as to the dressing-table mentioned in your 
 letter; I am writing about it to Calyste, and beg your forgive- 
 ness for my ignorance. You cannot doubt our affection. We 
 are saving treasure for you. Thanks to Mademoiselle de Pen- 
 HoeTs advice as to the management of your land, you will in 
 a few years find yourself possessed of a considerable capital 
 without having to diminish your expenditure. 
 
 "Your letter, dearest daughter — whom I love as much as if 
 I had borne you and fed you at my own breast — surprised me 
 by its brevity, and especially by your making no mention of 
 my dear little Calyste ; you had nothing to tell me about the 
 elder Calyste; he, I know, is happy," etc. 
 
 Sabine wrote across this letter, "Brittany is too noble to lie 
 with one accord 7" and laid it on Calyste's writing-table. He 
 found it and read it. After recognizing Sabine's writing in 
 the line across it, he threw it into the fire, determined never 
 to have seen it. Sabine spent a whole week in misery, of 
 which the secret may be understood by those celestial or 
 hermit souls that have never been touched by the wing of the 
 fallen angel. Calyste's silence terrified Sabine. 
 
 "I, who ought to be all sweetness, all joy to him — I have 
 vexed him, hurt him ! My virtue is become hateful ; I have 
 perhaps humiliated my idol," said she to herself. 
 
 These thoughts ploughed furrows in her soul. She thought 
 of asking forgiveness for this fault, but certainty brought her 
 fresh proofs. 
 
BE A TRIX. 287 
 
 Beatrix, insolently bold, wrote to Calyste one day at his 
 own house. The letter was put into Madame du Guenic's 
 hands ; she gave it to her husband unopened, but she said, 
 with death in her soul, and in a broken voice — 
 
 " My dear, this note is from the Jockey Club; I know the 
 scent and the paper." 
 
 Calyste blushed and put the letter in his pocket. 
 
 " Why do you not read it ? " 
 
 " I know what they want." 
 
 The young wife sat down. She did not get an attack of 
 fever, she did not cry, but she felt one of those surges of rage 
 which in such feeble creatures bring forth monsters of crime, 
 which arm them with arsenic for themselves or for their rivals. 
 Little Calyste was presently brought to her, and she took him 
 on her lap ; the child, but just weaned, turned to find the 
 breast under her dress. 
 
 " He remembers ! " said she in a whisper. 
 
 •Calyste went to his room to read the letter. When he was 
 gone the poor young cr?ature burst into tears, such tears as 
 women shed when they are alone. Pain, like pleasure, has 
 its initiatory stage ; the first anguish, like that of which 
 Sabine had so nearly died, can never recur, any more than a 
 first experience of any kind. It is the first wedge of the 
 torture of the heart ; the others are expected, the wringing 
 of the nerves is a known thing, the capital of strength has 
 accumulated a deposit for firm resistance. And Sabine, sure 
 now of the worst, sat by the fire for three hours with her boy 
 on her knee, and was quite startled when Gasselin, now their 
 house-servant, came to announce that dinner was on the table. 
 
 " Let monsieur know." 
 
 " Monsieur is not dining at home, Madame la Baronne." 
 
 Who can tell all the misery for a young woman of three- 
 and-twenty, the torture of finding herself alone in the midst 
 of a vast dining-room, in an ancient house, served by silent 
 men and in such circumstances ? 
 
288 BEATRIX. 
 
 " Order the carriage," she said suddenly ; "lam going to 
 the opera." 
 
 She dressed splendidly ; she meant to show herself alone, 
 and smiling like a happy woman. In the midst of her re- 
 morse for the endorsement on that letter she was determined 
 to triumph, to bring Calyste back to her by the greatest gen- 
 tleness, by wifely virtues, by the meekness of a Paschal lamb. 
 She would lie to all Paris. She loved him, she loved him as 
 courtesans love, or angels, with pride and with humility. 
 
 But the opera was " Othello." When Rubini sang // mio 
 cor si divide, she fled. Music is often more powerful than the 
 poet and the actor, the two most formidable natures com- 
 bined. Savinien de Portenduere accompanied Sabine to the 
 portico and put her into her carriage, unable to account for 
 her precipitate escape. 
 
 Madame du Guenic now entered on a period of sufferings 
 such as only the highest classes can know. You who are 
 poor, envious, wretched, when you see on ladies' arms those 
 snakes with diamond heads, those necklaces and pins, tell 
 yourselves that those vipers sting, that those necklaces have 
 poisoned teeth, that those light bonds cut into the tender 
 flesh to the very quick. All this luxury must be paid for. In 
 Sabine's position women can curse the pleasures of wealth; 
 they cease to see the gilding of their rooms, the silk of sofas 
 is as tow, exotic flowers as nettles, perfumes stink, miracles 
 of cookery scrape the throat like barley-bread, and life has 
 the bitterness of the Dead Sea. 
 
 Two or three instances will so plainly show the reaction 
 of a room or of a woman on* happiness, that every one who 
 has experienced it will be reminded of their home-life. 
 
 Sabine, warned of the dreadful truth, studied her husband 
 when he was going out, to guess at the day's prospects. 
 With what a surge of suppressed fury does a woman fling 
 herself on to the red-hot pikes of such torture? What joy 
 for Sabine when he did not go to the Rue de Courcelles J 
 
BE A TRIX. 289 
 
 When he came in she would look at his brow, his hair, 
 his eyes, his expression and attitude, with a horrible interest 
 in trifles, arid the studious observation of the most recondite 
 details of his dress, by which a woman loses her self-respect 
 and dignity. These sinister investigations, buried in her 
 heart, turned sour there and corroded the slender roots, 
 whence grow the blue flowers of holy confidence, the golden 
 stars of saintly love, all the blossoms of memory. 
 
 One day Calyste looked around at everything with ill- 
 humor, but he stayed at home. Sabine was coaxing and 
 humble, cheerful and amusing. 
 
 "You are cross with me, Calyste; am I not a good wife? 
 What is there here that you do not like? " 
 
 " All the rooms are so cold and bare," said he. "You do 
 not understand this kind of thing." 
 
 "What is wanting?" 
 
 " Flowers " 
 
 " Very good," said Sabine to herself; " Madame de Roche- 
 fide is fond of flowers, it would seem." 
 
 Two days later the rooms at the Hotel du Guenic were com- 
 pletely altered. No house in Paris could pride itself on finer 
 flowers than those that decorated it. 
 
 Some time after this Calyste, one evening after dinner, 
 complained of the cold. He shivered in his chair, looking 
 about him to see whence the draught came, and evidently 
 seeking something close about him. It was some time before 
 Sabine could guess the meaning of this new whim, for the house 
 was fitted with a hot-air furnace to warm the staircase, ante- 
 rooms and passages, Finally, after three days' meditation, it 
 struck her that her rival had a screen, no doubt, so as to pro- 
 duce the subdued light that was favorable to the deterioration 
 of her face ; so Sabine purchased a screen made of glass, and 
 of Jewish magnificence. 
 
 "Which way will the wind blow now? " she wondered. 
 
 This was not the end of the mistress' indirect criticism. 
 19 
 
290 BEATRIX. 
 
 Calyste ate so little at home as to drive Sabine crazy; 
 he sent away his plate after nibbling two or three mouth- 
 fuls. 
 
 "Is it not nice?" asked Sabine, in despair, seeing all 
 the pains wasted which she devoted to her conferences with 
 the cook. 
 
 "I do not say so, my darling," replied Calyste, without 
 annoyance. "I am not hungry, that is all." 
 
 A wife given up to a legitimate passion and to such a con- 
 test as this, feels a sort of fury in her desire to triumph 
 over her rival, and often outruns the mark even in the 
 most secret regions of married life. This cruel struggle, 
 fierce and ceaseless, over the visible and outward facts of 
 home life was carried on with equal frenzy over the feelings 
 of the heart. Sabine studied her attitude and dress, and 
 watched herself in the smallest trivialities of love. 
 
 This matter of the cookery went on for nearly a month. * 
 Sabine, with the help of Mariotte and Gasselin, invented 
 stage tricks to discover what dishes Madame de Rochefide 
 served up for Calyste. Gasselin took the place of the coach- 
 man, who fell ill to order, and was thus enabled to make 
 friends with Beatrix's cook; so at last Sabine could give 
 Calyste the same fare, only better ; but again she saw him 
 give himself airs over it. 
 
 " What is wanting?" she said. 
 
 "Nothing," he answered, looking round the table for 
 something that was not there. 
 
 " Ah ! " cried Sabine to herself, as she woke next morning, 
 "Calyste is pining for powdered cockroaches* and all the 
 English condiments which are sold by the druggist in cruets; 
 Madame de Rochefide has accustomed him to all sorts or 
 spices." 
 
 She bought an English cruet-stand and its scorching con- 
 
 * Balzac has hannetons, cockchafers. It was an old joke that Soy was 
 made of cockroaches. — Translator. 
 
BE A TRIX. 291 
 
 tents; but she could not pursue her discoveries down to every 
 dainty devised by her rival. 
 
 This phase lasted for several months; nor need we wonder 
 when we remember all the attractions of such a contest. It 
 is life ; with all its wounds and pangs, it is preferable to the 
 blank gloom of disgust, to the poison of contempt, to the 
 blankness of abdication, to the death of the heart that we 
 call indifference. Still, all Sabine's courage oozed out one 
 evening when she appeared dressed, as women only dress by 
 a sort of inspiration, in the hope of winning the victory over 
 another, and when Calyste said with a laugh — 
 
 " Do what you will, Sabine, you will never be anything but 
 a lovely Andalusian ! " 
 
 "Alas ! " said she, sinking on to her sofa, "I can never 
 be fair. .But if this goes on, I know that I shall soon be five- 
 and-thirty." 
 
 She refused to go to the Italian opera ; she meant to stay 
 in her room all the evening. When she was alone she tore the 
 flowers from her hair and stamped upon them, she undressed, 
 trampled her gown, her sash, all her finery under foot, exactly 
 like a goat caught in a loop of its tether, which never ceases 
 struggling till death. Then she went to bed. The maid pres- 
 ently came in. Imagine her surprise ! 
 
 "It is nothing," said Sabine. " It is monsieur." 
 
 Unhappy wives know this superb vanity, these falsehoods, 
 where, of two kinds of shame both in arms, the more 
 womanly wins the day. 
 
 Sabine was growing thin under these terrible agitations, 
 grief ate into her soul ; but she never forgot the part she had 
 forced on herself. A sort of fever kept her up; her life sent 
 back to her throat the bitter words suggested to her by grief; 
 she sheathed the lightnings of her fine black eyes and made 
 them soft, even humble. 
 
 Her fading health was soon perceptible. The Duchess, an 
 
292 BEA TRIX. 
 
 admirable mother, though her piety had become more and 
 more Portuguese, thought there was some mortal disease in the 
 really sickly condition which Sabine evidently encouraged. 
 She knew of the acknowledged intimacy of Calyste and 
 Beatrix. She took care to have her daughter with her to try 
 to heal her wounded feelings, and, above all, to save her 
 from her daily martyrdom ; but Sabine for a long time re- 
 mained persistently silent as to her woes, fearing some inter- 
 vention between herself and Calyste. She declared she was 
 happy ! Having exhausted sorrow, she fell back on her pride, 
 on all her virtues. 
 
 At the end of a month, however, of being petted by her 
 sister Clotilde and her mother, she confessed her griefs, told 
 them all her sufferings, and cursed life, saying that she looked 
 forward to death with delirious joy. She desired- Clotilde, 
 who meant never to marry, to be a mother to little Calyste, 
 the loveliest child any royal race need wish for as its heir- 
 presumptive. 
 
 One evening, sitting with her youngest sister AthenaVs — 
 who was to be married to the Vicomte de Grandlieu after 
 Lent — with Clotilde and the Duchess, Sabine uttered the last 
 cry of her anguish of heart, wrung from her by the extremity 
 of her last humiliation. 
 
 "Athenai's," said she, when at about eleven o'clock the 
 young Vicomte Juste de Grandlieu took his leave, " you are 
 going to be married ; profit by my example ! Keep your 
 best qualities to yourself as if they were a crime, resist the 
 temptation to display them in order to please Juste. Be calm, 
 dignified, cold ; measure out the happiness you give in pro- 
 portion to what you receive ! It is mean, but it is necessary. 
 You see, I am ruined by my merits. All I feel within me 
 that is the best of me, that is fine, holy, noble — all my virtues 
 have been rocks on which my happiness is shipwrecked. I 
 have ceased to be attractive because I am not six-and-thirty ! 
 
BE A TRIX. 293 
 
 In some men's eyes youth is a defect ! There is no guess- 
 work in a guileless face. 
 
 "I laugh honestly, and that is quite wrong when, to be 
 fascinating, you ought to be able to elaborate the melan- 
 choly, suppressed smile of the fallen angels who are obliged 
 to hide their long yellow teeth. A fresh complexion is so 
 monotonous ; far preferable is a doll's waxen surface, com- 
 pounded of rouge, spermaceti, and cold-cream. I am straight- 
 forward, and double dealing is more pleasing ! I am frankly 
 in love like an honest woman, and I ought to be trained to 
 tricks and manoeuvres like a country actress. I am intoxi- 
 cated with the delight of having one of the most charming 
 men in France for my husband, and I tell him sincerely how 
 fine a gentleman he is, how gracefully he moves, how hand- 
 some I think him ; to win him I ought to look away with 
 affected aversion, to hate love-making, to tell him that his air 
 of distinction is simply an unhealthy pallor and the figure of 
 a consumptive patient, to cry up the shoulders of the Farnese 
 Hercules, to make him angry, keep him at a distance as 
 though a struggle were needed to hide from him at the mo- 
 ment of happiness some imperfection which might destroy 
 love. I am so unlucky as to be able to admire a fine thing 
 without striving to give myself importance by bitter and envi- 
 ous criticism of everything glorious in poetry or beauty. I 
 do not want to be told in verse and in prose by Canalis and 
 Nathan that I have a superior intellect ! I am a mere simple 
 girl ; I see no one but Calyste ! 
 
 " If I had only run over all the world as she has ; if, like 
 her, I had said, ' I love you,' in every European tongue, I 
 should be made much of, and pitied, and adored, and could 
 serve him up a Macedonian banquet of cosmopolitan loves ! 
 A man does not thank you for your tenderness till you have 
 set it off by contrast with malignity. So I, a well-born wife, 
 
 must learn all impurity, the interested charms of a harlot \ 
 
 And Calyste. the dupe of this grimacing ! Oh, mother ! 
 
294 BEATRIX. 
 
 oh, my dear Clotilde ! I am stricken to death. My pride is 
 a deceptive segis ; I am defenseless against sorrow ; I still 
 love my husband like a fool, and to bring him back to me I 
 need to borrow the keen wit of indifference." 
 
 " Silly child," whispered Clotilde, "pretend that you are 
 bent on vengeance." 
 
 " I mean to die blameless, without even the appearance of 
 wrong-doing," replied Sabine. " Our vengeance should be 
 worthy of our love." 
 
 " My child," said the Duchess, "a mother should look on 
 life with colder eyes than yours. Love is not the end but the 
 means of family life. Do not imitate that poor little Baronne 
 de Macumer. Excessive passion is barren and fatal. And 
 God sends us our afflictions for reasons of His own which we 
 cannot understand. 
 
 "Now that Athenais' marriage is a settled thing, I shall 
 have time to attend to you. I have already discussed the 
 delicate position in which you are placed with your father and 
 the Due de Chaulieu and d'Ajuda. We shall find means to 
 bring Calyste back to you." 
 
 " With the Marquise de Rochefide there is no cause for 
 despair," said Clotilde, smiling at her sister. "She does 
 not keep her adorers long." 
 
 " D'Ajuda, my darling, was Monsieur de Rochefide's 
 brother-in-law. If our good confessor approves of the little 
 manoeuvres we must achieve to insure the success of the plan 
 I have submitted to your father, I will guarantee Calyste's 
 return. My conscience loathes the use of such methods, and 
 I will lay them before the Abbe Brossette. We need not 
 wait, my child, till you are in extremis to come to your assist- 
 ance. Keep up your hopes. Your grief this evening is so 
 great that I have let out my secret ; I cannot bear not to give 
 you a little encouragement." 
 
 "Will it cause Calyste any grief?" asked Sabine, looking 
 anxiously at the Duchess. 
 
BEATRIX. 295 
 
 "Bless me, shall I be such another fool?" asked Athena'is 
 simply. 
 
 " Oh ! child, you cannot know the straits into which virtue 
 can plunge us when she allows herself to be overruled by 
 love?" replied Sabine, so bewildered with grief that she fell 
 into a vein of poetry. 
 
 The words were spoken with such intense bitterness that the 
 Duchess, enlightened by her daughter's tone, accent, and look, 
 understood that there was some unconfessed trouble. 
 
 "Girls, it is midnight; go to bed," said she to the two 
 others, whose eyes were sparkling. 
 
 "And am I in the way, too, in spite of my six-and-thirty 
 years?" asked Clotilde ironically. And while Athenai's was 
 kissing her mother, she whispered in Sabine's ear — 
 
 " You shall tell me all about it. I will dine with you to- 
 morrow. If mamma is afraid of compromising her con- 
 science, I myself will rescue Calyste from the hands of the 
 infidels." 
 
 "Well, Sabine," said the Duchess, leading her daughter 
 into her bedroom, "tell me, my child, what is the new 
 trouble?" 
 
 " Oh, mother, I am done for ! " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I wanted to triumph over that horrible woman; I suc- 
 ceeded, I have another child coming, and Calyste loves her 
 so vehemently that I foresee being absolutely deserted. When 
 she has proof of this infidelity to her she will be furious. Oh, 
 I am suffering such torments that I must die. I know when 
 he is going to her, know it by his glee ; then his surliness 
 shows me when he has left her. In short, he makes no secret 
 of it ; he cannot endure me. Her influence over him is as 
 unwholesome as she is herself, body and soul. You will see ; 
 as her reward for making up some quarrel, she will insist on a 
 public rupture with me, a breach like her own ; she will carry 
 him off to Switzerland, perhaps, or to Italy. He has been 
 
296 BE A TRIX. 
 
 saying that it is ridiculous to know nothing of Europe, and I 
 can guess what these hints mean, thrown out as a warning. 
 If Calyste is not cured within the next three months, I do not 
 know what will come of it — I shall kill myself, I know ! " 
 
 " Unhappy child ! And your son ? Suicide is a mortal 
 sin." 
 
 "But you do not understand — she might bear him a child; 
 
 and if Calyste loved that woman's more than mine Oh ! 
 
 this is the end of my patience and resignation." 
 
 She dropped on a chair; she had poured out the inmost 
 thoughts of her heart ; she had no hidden pang left ; and sor- 
 row is like the iron prop that sculptors place inside a clay 
 figure — it is supporting, it is a power. 
 
 " Well, well, go home now, poor little thing ! Face to face 
 with so much suffering, perhaps the abbe will give me absolu- 
 tion for the venial sins we are forced to commit by the trickery 
 of the world. Leave me, daughter," she said, going to her 
 prie-Dieu; " I will beseech the Lord and the blessed Virgin 
 more especially for you. Above all, do not neglect your 
 religious duties if you hope for success." 
 
 " Succeed as we may, mother, we can only save the family 
 honor. Calyste has killed the sacred fervor of love in me by 
 exhausting all my powers, even of suffering. What a honey- 
 moon was that in which from the first day I was bitterly con- 
 scious of his retrospective adultery ! " 
 
 At about one in the afternoon of the following day one of 
 the priests of the Faubourg Saint-Germain — a man distin- 
 guished among the clergy of Paris, designate as a bishop in 
 1840, but who had three times refused a see — the Abbe Bros- 
 sette, was crossing the courtyard of the Hotel Grandlieu with 
 the peculiar gait one must call the ecclesiastical gait, so ex- 
 pressive is it of prudence, mystery, calmness, gravity, and 
 dignity itself. He was a small, lean man, about fifty years 
 of age, with a face as white as an old woman's, chilled by 
 
LEAVE ME, DAUGHTER," SHE SAID, GOING TO HER 
 PRIE-DIEU. 
 
BEATRIX. 297 
 
 priestly fasting, furrowed by all the sufferings he made his 
 own. Black eyes, alight with faith, but softened by an ex- 
 pression that was mysterious rather than mystical, gave life to 
 this apostolic countenance. He almost smiled as he went up 
 the steps, so little did he believe in the enormity of the case 
 for which his penitent had sent for him ; but, as the Duchess' 
 hand was a sieve for alms, she was well worth the time her 
 guileless confessions stole from the serious troubles of his 
 parish. On hearing him announced, the Duchess arose and 
 went forward a few steps to meet him, an honor she did to 
 none but cardinals, bishops, priests of every grade, duchesses 
 older than herself, and personages of the blood royal. 
 
 "My dear abbe," said she, pointing to an armchair, and 
 speaking in a low tone, "I require the authority of your ex- 
 perience before I embark on a rather nasty intrigue, from 
 which, however, I hope for a good result ; I wish to learn 
 from you whether I shall find the way of salvation very thorny 
 in consequence." 
 
 " Madame la Duchesse," said the Abbe Brossette, "do not 
 mix up spiritual and worldly matters ; they are often irrecon- 
 cilable. In the first place, what is this business?" 
 
 " My daughter Sabine, you know, is dying of grief. Mon- 
 sieur du Guenic neglects her for Madame de Rochefide." 
 
 "It is terrible — a very serious matter; but you know what 
 the beloved Saint-Francois de Sales says of such a case. And 
 remember Madame de Guyon, who bewailed the lack of mys- 
 ticism in the proofs of conjugal love ; she would have been 
 only too glad to find a Madame de Rochefide for her husband." 
 
 " Sabine is only too meek, she is only too completely 
 the Christian wife; but she has not the smallest taste for 
 mysticism." 
 
 " Poor young thing ! " said the cure slily. "And what is 
 your plan for remedying the mischief? " 
 
 " I have been so sinful, my dear director, as to think that 
 I might let loose at her a smart little gentleman, willful, and 
 
298 BEATRIX. 
 
 stocked with evil characteristics, who will certainly get my 
 son-in-law out of the way." 
 
 " Daughter," said he, stroking his chin, " we are not in the 
 tribunal of the repentant ; I need not speak as your judge. 
 From a worldly point of view, I confess it would be final " 
 
 " Such a proceeding strikes me as truly odious ! " she put in. 
 
 "And why? It is, no doubt, far more the part of a Chris- 
 tian to snatch a woman from her evil ways than to push her 
 forward in them ; still, when she has already gone so far as 
 Madame de Rochefide, it is not the hand of man, but the 
 hand of God, that can rescue the sinner. She needs a special 
 sign from heaven." 
 
 " Thank you, father, for your indulgence," said the Duchess. 
 " But we must remember that my son-in-law is brave and a 
 Breton ; he was heroic at the time of that poor Madame's 
 attempted rising. Now, if the young scapegrace who should 
 undertake to charm Madame de Rochefide were to fall out 
 with Calyste, and a duel should ensue " 
 
 " There, Madame la Duchesse, you show your wisdom ; 
 this proves that in such devious courses we always find some 
 stumbling-block. ' ' 
 
 " But I hit upon a means, my dear abbe, of doing good, of 
 rescuing Madame de Rochefide from the fatal path she is 
 following, of bringing Calyste back to his wife, and of saving 
 a poor wandering soul perhaps from hell " 
 
 "But, then, why consult me?" said the cure, smiling. 
 
 "Well," said the Duchess, "I should have to do some 
 ugly things " 
 
 " You do not mean to rob any one? " 
 
 " On the contrary, I shall probably spend a good deal of 
 money." 
 
 "You will not slander anybody, nor " 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "Nor do any injury to your neighbor?" 
 
 "Well, well, I cannot answer for that." 
 
BEATRIX. 299 
 
 "Let us hear this new plan," said the cure, really curious. 
 
 " If, instead of driving one nail out by another, thought 
 I, as I knelt on my prie-Dieu, after beseeching the blessed 
 Virgin to guide me, I were to get Monsieur de Rochefide to 
 take back his wife and pack off Calyste — then, instead of 
 abetting evil to do good, I should be doing a good action 
 through another by means of a no less good deed of my 
 
 own " The priest looked at the lady, and seemed 
 
 thoughtful. 
 
 " The idea has evidently come to you from so far that " 
 
 "Yes," said the simple and humble-minded woman, "and 
 I have thanked the Virgin. And I vowed that beside paying 
 for a novena, I would give twelve hundred francs to some 
 poor family if I should succeed. But when I spoke of the 
 matter to Monsieur de Grandlieu, he burst out laughing, and 
 said — ' I really believe that at your time of life you women 
 have a special devil all to yourselves.' " 
 
 "Monsieur le Due said, in a husband's fashion, just what I 
 was about to observe when you interrupted me," replied the 
 abbe, who could not helping smiling. 
 
 " Oh, father, if you approve of the plan, will you approve 
 of the method of execution ? The point will be to do with a 
 certain Madame Schontz — a Beatrix of the Saint-Georges quar- 
 ter — what I had intended to do with Beatrix ; the Marquis will 
 then return to his wife." 
 
 " I am sure you will do no wrong," said the abbe dexter- 
 ously, not choosing to know more, as he thought the result 
 necessary. " And you can consult me if your conscience 
 makes itself heard," he added. "Supposing that instead of 
 affording the lady in the Rue Saint-Georges some fresh occa- 
 sion of misconduct, your were to find her a husband? " 
 
 "Ah, my dear director, you have set right the only bad 
 feature of my scheme. You are worthy to be an archbishop, 
 and I hope to live to address you as your Eminence." 
 
 "In all this, I see but one hitch," the priest went on. 
 
300 BEATRIX. 
 
 "And what is that?" 
 
 " Madame de Rochefide might keep your son-in-law even 
 if she returned to her husband ? " 
 
 "That is my affair," said the Duchess. "We, who so 
 rarely intrigue, when we do " 
 
 "Do it badly, very badly," said the abbe. "Practice is 
 needed for everything. Try to annex one of the rascally race 
 who live on intrigue and employ him without betraying 
 yourself." 
 
 " Oh ! Monsieur le Cure, but if we have recourse to hell, 
 will heaven be on our side ? ' ' 
 
 "You are not in the confessional," replied the abbe; 
 "save your child." 
 
 The good Duchess, delighted with the keeper of her con- 
 science, escorted him as far as the drawing-room door. 
 
 A storm, it will be seen, was gathering over Monsieur de 
 Rochefide, who, at this time, was enjoying the greatest share 
 of happiness that a Parisian need desire, finding himself quite 
 as much the master in Madame Schontz's house as in his wife's; 
 as the Duke had very shrewdly remarked to his wife, it would 
 seem impossible to upset so delightful and perfect a plan of 
 life. This theory of the matter necessitates a few details as to 
 the life led by Monsieur de Rochefide since his wife had placed 
 him in the position of a deserted husband. We shall thus un- 
 derstand the enormous difference in the view taken by law 
 and by custom of the two sexes in the same circumstances. 
 Everything that works woe to a deserted wife becomes happi- 
 ness to the deserted husband. This striking antithesis may 
 perhaps induce more than one young wife to remain in her 
 home and fight it out, like Sabine du Guenic, by practicing 
 the most cruel or the most inoffensive virtues, whichever she 
 may prefer. 
 
 A few days after Beatrix's flight, Arthur de Rochefide — an 
 only child after the death of his sister, the first wife of the 
 
BEATRIX. 301 
 
 Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, who left him no children — found 
 himself master of the family mansion of the Rochefides, Rue 
 d'Anjou-Saint-Honore, and of two hundred thousand francs a 
 year, left to him by his father. This fine fortune, added to 
 that which he had when he married, raised his income, includ- 
 ing his wife's portion, to a thousand francs a day. To a 
 gentleman of such a character as Mademoiselle des Touches 
 had sketched to Calyste, such a fortune was happiness. While 
 his wife was occupied with lovemaking and motherhood, 
 Rochefide was enjoying his vast possessions, but he did not 
 waste the money any more than he would waste his intel- 
 ligence. His burly, good-natured conceit, amply satisfied 
 with the reputation for being a fine man, to which he owed 
 some success, entitling him, as he believed, to condemn 
 women as a class, gave itself full play in the sphere of intellect. 
 He was gifted with the sort of wit which may be termed re- 
 fracting, by the way he repeated other persons' jests and wit- 
 ticisms from plays or the newspapers ; he appropriated them 
 as his own ; he affected to ridicule them, caricaturing them in 
 repetition, and using them as a formula of criticism ; then his 
 military high spirits — for he had served in the King's Guard — 
 lent spice to his conversation, so that dull women called him 
 witty, and the rest dared not contradict them. 
 
 Arthur carried this system out in everything ; he owed to 
 nature the useful trick of being an imitator without being an 
 ape ; he could imitate quite seriously. And so, though he had 
 no taste, he was always the first to take up and to drop a 
 fashion. He was accused of giving too much time to his 
 toilet and of wearing stays ; but he was a typical example of 
 those men who, by accepting the notions and the follies of 
 others, never offend any one, who, always being up to date, 
 never grow any older. They are the heroes of the second- 
 rate. 
 
 This husband was pitied ; Beatrix was held inexcusable for 
 having run sway from the best fellow in the world ; ridicule 
 
 X 
 
302 BEATRIX. 
 
 fell only on the wife. This worthy, loyal, and very silly 
 gentleman, a member of every club, a subscriber to every 
 absurdity to which blundering patriotism and party-spirit gave 
 rise, with a facile good-nature which brought him to the front 
 on every occasion, was, of course, bent on glorifying himself 
 by some fashionable hobby. His chief pride was to be the 
 sultan of a four-footed seraglio, managed by an old English 
 groom, and this kennel cost him from four to five thousand 
 francs a month. His favorite fad was running horses; he 
 patronized breeders, and paid the expenses of a paper in the 
 racing interest ; but he knew little about horses, and from the 
 bridle to the shoes trusted to his groom. This is enough to 
 show that this "grass-husband" had nothing of his own — 
 neither wit, nor taste, nor position, nor even absurdities ; and 
 his fortune had come to him from his forefathers. 
 
 After having tasted all the annoyances of married life, he 
 was so happy to find himself a bachelor again that he would 
 say among friends, " I was born to good luck ! " He re- 
 joiced especially in being able to live free of the expenses to 
 which married folk are compelled ; and his house, in which 
 nothing had been altered since his father's death, was in the 
 state of a man's home when he is traveling; he rarely went 
 there, never fed there, and scarcely ever slept there. 
 
 This was the history of this neglect : After many love 
 affairs, tired of women of fashion, who are indeed weariful 
 enough, and who set too many dry thorn-hedges round the 
 happiness they have to give, he had practically married 
 Madame Schontz, a woman notorious in the world of Fanny 
 Beaupre and Suzanne du Val-Noble, of Mariettes, Floren- 
 tines, Jenny Cadines, and the like. This world — of which 
 one of our draughtsmen wittily remarked, as he pointed to 
 the whirl of an opera ball, "When you think that all that 
 mob is well housed, and dressed, and fed, you can form a 
 good idea of what men are!" — this dangerous world has 
 already been seen in this History of Manners in the typical 
 
BEATRIX. 303 
 
 figures of Florine and the famous Malaga (of "A Daughter 
 of Eve " and "The Imaginary Mistress ") ; but to paint it 
 faithfully, the historian would have to represent such persons 
 in some numerical proportion to the variety of their strange 
 individual lives, ending in poverty of the most hideous-kind, 
 in early death, in ease, in happy marriages, or sometimes in 
 great wealth. 
 
 Madame Schontz, at first known as la Petite Aurelie, to 
 distinguish her from a rival far less clever than herself, be- 
 longed to the higher class of these women on whose social 
 uses no doubt can be thrown either by the prefect of the 
 Seine or by those who take an interest in the prosperity of the 
 city of Paris. Certainly the " rats " accused of devouring 
 fortunes, which are often imaginary, in some respects are 
 more like a beaver. Without the Aspasias of the Notre- Dame 
 de Lorette quarter, fewer houses would be built in Paris. 
 Pioneers of fresh stucco, in tow of speculation, pitch their 
 outlying tents along the hillsides of Montmartre, beyond 
 those deserts of masonry which are to be seen in the streets 
 round the Place de l'Europe — Amsterdam, Milan, Stockholm, 
 London, and Moscow — architectural steppes betraying their 
 emptiness by endless placards announcing Apartments to 
 Let. 
 
 The position of these ladies is commensurate with that of 
 their lodgings in these innominate regions. If the house is 
 near the line marked by the Rue de Provence, the woman 
 has money in the Funds, her income is assured ; but if she 
 lives out near the exterior boulevards, or on the height toward 
 the horrible suburb of Batignolles, she is certainly poor. 
 
 Now when Monsieur de Rochefide first met Madame 
 Schontz, she was lodging on the fourth floor of the only 
 house then standing in the Rue de Berlin. The name of this 
 unmarried wife, as you will have understood, was neither 
 Aurelie nor Schontz. She concealed her father's name — that 
 of an old soldier of the Empire, the perennial colonel whe 
 
304 BEATRIX. 
 
 always adorns the origin of these existences, as the father or 
 the seducer. Madame Schontz had enjoyed , the benefits of a„ 
 gratuitous education at Saint-Denis, where the young persons 
 are admirably taught, but where the young persons are not 
 provided on leaving with husbands or a living — an admirable 
 foundation of the Emperor's, the only thing lacking being 
 the Emperor himself! " I shall be there to provide for the 
 daughters of my legionaries," said he, in answer to one of his 
 ministers who looked forward to the future. And in the same 
 way Napoleon said "I shall 'be there" to the members of 
 the Institute, to whom it would be better to give no honor- 
 arium at all than to pay them eighty-three francs a month, less 
 than the wages of many an office clerk. 
 
 Aurelie was very certainly the daughter of the valiant Col- 
 onel Schiltz, a leader of those daring Alsatian partisans who 
 so nearly succeeded in saving the Emperor in the French 
 campaign ; he died at Metz, robbed, neglected, and ruined. 
 In 1814 Napoleon sent little Josephine Schiltz, then nine 
 years old, to school at Saint-Denis. Without father or mother, 
 home or money, the poor child was not driven out of the 
 institution on the second return of the Bourbons. She re- 
 mained there as under-teacher until 1827; but then her 
 patience failed and her beauty led her astray. When she 
 was of age, Josephine Schiltz,' the Empress' god-daughter, 
 embarked on the adventurous life of the courtesan, tempted 
 to this doubtful career by the fatal example of some of her 
 school-fellows as destitute as she was, and who rejoiced in 
 their decision. She substituted on for //in her father's name, 
 and placed herself under the protection of Saint Aurelia. 
 
 Clever, witty, and well informed, she made more mistakes 
 than her more stupid companions, whose wrong-doing was 
 always based on self-interest. After various connections with 
 writers, some poor but unmannerly, some clever but in debt; 
 after trying her fortune with some rich men as close-fisted as 
 they were silly ; after sacrificing ease to a true passion, and 
 
BE A TRIX. 305 
 
 learning in every school where experience may be gained, one 
 day, when, in the depths of poverty, she was dancing at Val- 
 entino's — the first stage to Musard's — dressed in a borrowed 
 gown, hat, and cape, she attracted Rochefide's attention ; he 
 had come to see the famous galop ! Her cleverness bewitched 
 the gentleman, who had exhausted every sensation ; and when, 
 two years after, being deserted by Beatrix, whose wit had 
 often disconcerted him, he allied himself with a second-hand 
 Beatrix " of the Thirteenth Arrondissement," no one thought 
 of blaming him. 
 
 We may here give a sketch of the four seasons of such a 
 happy home. It is desirable to show how the theory of "a 
 marriage in the Thirteenth Arrondissement" includes all the 
 whole connection. Whether a marquis of forty or a retired 
 storekeeper of sixty, a millionaire six times over or a man of 
 narrow private means, a fine gentleman or a middle-class citi- 
 zen, the tactics of passion, barring the differences inseparable 
 from dissimilar social spheres, never vary. Heart and banking 
 account maintain an exact and definite relation. And you 
 will be able to form an idea of the obstacles the Duchess 
 must meet with to her charitable scheme. 
 
 Few persons understand the power of words over ordinary 
 folk in France, or the mischief done by the wits who invent 
 them. For instance, no bookkeeper could add up the figures 
 of the sums of money which have lain unproductive and rusty 
 at the bottom of generous hearts and full coffers in conse- 
 quence of the mean phrase Tirer une carotte — to fleece or 
 bleed a victim. The words have become so common that 
 they must be allowed to deface this page. Beside, if we ven- 
 ture into the " Thirteenth Arrondissement," we must needs 
 adopt its picturesque language. 
 
 Monsieur de Rochefide, like all small minds, was constantly 
 
 in fear of being bled. From the beginning of his attachment 
 
 to Madame Schontz, Arthur was on his guard, and was at that 
 
 time a dreadful screw, very rat, to use another slang word of 
 
 20" 
 
306 BEATRIX. 
 
 the studio and the brothel. This word rat (which in French 
 has many slang uses) when applied to a young girl means the 
 person entertained, but applied to a man means the stingy 
 entertainer. Madame Schontz had too much intelligence, 
 and knew men too thoroughly, not to found high hopes on 
 such a beginning. Monsieur de Rochefide allowed Madame 
 Schontz five hundred francs a month, furnished, meagrely 
 enough, a set of rooms at twelve hundred francs a year on 
 the second floor of a house in the Rue Coquenard, and set 
 himself to study Aurelie's character; and she, finding herself 
 spied upon, gave him character to study. 
 
 Rochefide was delighted to have come across a woman of 
 such a noble nature, but it did not astonish him ; her mother 
 was a Barnheim of Baden, quite a lady ! And then Aurelie 
 had been so well brought up ! Speaking English, German, 
 and Italian, she was versed in foreign literature ; she could 
 pit herself, without discomfiture, against pianists of the second 
 class. And, note the point ! she behaved as regarded her 
 talents like a woman of breeding : she never talked about 
 them. In a painter's studio she would take up a brush in 
 fun and sketch a head with so much go as to amaze the com- 
 pany. As a pastime, when she was pining as a school-teacher, 
 she had dabbled in some sciences, but her life as a kept mis- 
 tress had sown salt over all this good seed, and, of course, she 
 laid the flowers of these precious growths, revived for him, at 
 Arthur's feet. Thus did Aurelie at first make a display of 
 disinterestedness to match the pleasures she could give, which 
 enabled this light corvette to cast her grappling-irons firmly 
 on board the statelier craft. Still, even at the end of the 
 first year, she made a vulgar noise in the anteroom, managing 
 to come in just when the Marquis was waiting for her, and 
 tried to hide the disgracefully muddy hem of her gown in 
 such a way as to make it more conspicuous. In short, she so 
 cleverly contrived to persuade her Gros Papa that her utmost 
 ambition, after so many vicissitudes, was to enjoy a simple, 
 
BEATRIX. 307 
 
 middle-class existence, that by the end of ten months the 
 second phase of their connection began. 
 
 Then Madame Schontz had a fine apartment in the Rue 
 Saint-Georges. Arthur, who could no longer conceal from 
 her the fact of his wealth, gave her handsome furniture, a 
 service of plate, twelve hundred francs a month, and a little, 
 low carriage, with a single horse, by the week, and he granted 
 her a little groom with a fairly good grace. She knew what 
 this munificence was worth ; she detected the motives of her 
 Arthur's conduct, and saw in them the calculations of a close- 
 fisted man. Tired of living at restaurants, where the food is 
 generally execrable, where the simplest dinner of any refine- 
 ment cost sixty francs, and two hundred for a party of four 
 friends, Rochefide offered Madame Schontz forty francs a day 
 for his dinner and a friend's, wine included. Aurelie had no 
 mind to refuse. After getting all her moral bills of exchange 
 accepted, drawn on Monsieur de Rochefide's habits at a 
 year's date, she was favorably heard when she asked for five 
 hundred francs a year more for dress, on the plea that her 
 Gros Papa, whose friends all belonged to the Jockey Club, 
 might not be ashamed of her. 
 
 " A pretty thing, indeed," said she, " if Rastignac, Maxime 
 de Trailles, la Roche-Hugon, Ronquerolles, Laginski, Lenon- 
 court, and the rest should see you with a Madame Everard ! 
 Put your trust in me, Gros P'ere, and you will be the gainer." 
 
 And Aurelie did, in fact, lay herself out for a fresh display 
 of virtues in these new circumstances. She sketched a part 
 for herself as the housewife, in which she won ample credit. 
 She made both ends meet, said she, at the end of the month, 
 and had no debts, on two thousand five hundred francs, such 
 a thing as had never been seen in the Faubourg Saint-Germain 
 of the Thirteenth Arrondissement — the upper ten of the demi- 
 reps world ; and she gave dinners infinitely better than Nucin- 
 gen's, with first-class wines at ten and twelve francs a bottle. 
 So that Rochefide, amazed and delighted to be able to ask 
 
308 BEA TRIX. 
 
 his friends pretty often to his mistress' house as a matter of 
 economy, would say to her, with his arm round her waist, 
 " You are a perfect treasure ! " 
 
 Before long he took a third share in an opera box for her, 
 and at last went with her to first-night performances. He 
 began to take counsel of his Aurelie, acknowledging the 
 soundness of her advice ; she allowed him to appropriate the 
 wit she was always ready with ; and her sallies, being new, 
 won him the reputation for being an amusing man. At last 
 he felt perfectly sure that she loved him truly, and for himself. 
 Aurelie refused to make a Russian prince happy at the rate 
 of five thousand francs a month. 
 
 "You are a happy man, my dear Marquis," cried old 
 Prince Galathionne as they ended a rubber of whist at the 
 club. " Yesterday, when you left us together, I tried to get 
 her away from you ; but ' Mon Prince,' said she ' you are not 
 handsomer than Rochefide though you are older ; you would 
 beat me, and he is like a father to me ; show me then the 
 quarter of a good reason for leaving him ! I do not love 
 Arthur with the crazy passion I had for the young rogues with 
 patent-leather shoes, whose bills I used to pay ; but I love him 
 as a wife loves her husband when she is a decent woman.' 
 And she showed me to the door." 
 
 This speech, which had no appearance of exaggeration, had 
 the effect of adding considerably to the state of neglect and 
 shabbiness that disfigured the home of the Rochefides. Ere 
 long Arthur had transplanted his existence and his pleasures 
 to Madame Schontz's lodgings, and found it answer ; for by 
 the end of three years he had four hundred thousand francs 
 to invest. 
 
 Then began the third phase. Madame Schontz became the 
 kindest of mothers to Arthur's son ; she fetched him from 
 school and took him back herself; she loaded him with 
 presents, sweetmeats, and pocket-money ; and the child, who 
 adored her, called her his " little mamma." She advised her 
 
BE A TRIX. 309 
 
 Arthur in the management of his money-matters, making him 
 buy consols at the fall before the famous treaty of London, 
 which led to the overthrow of the Ministry on the ist of 
 March. Arthur made two hundred thousand francs, and 
 Aurelie did not ask for a sou. Rochefide, being a gentleman, 
 invested his six hundred thousand francs in bank bills, half of 
 them in the name of Mademoiselle Josephine Schiltz. 
 
 A small house, rented in the Rue de la Bruyere, was placed 
 in the hands of Grindot, that great architect on a small scale, 
 with instructions to make it a delicious jewel case. Thence- 
 forth Rochefide left everything in the hands of Madame 
 Schontz, who received the dividends and paid the bills. Thus 
 installed in his wife's place, she justified him by making her 
 Gros Papa happier than ever. She understood his whims and 
 satisfied them, as Madame de Pompadour humored the fancies 
 of Louis XV. She was, in fact, maitresse en titre — absolute 
 mistress. 
 
 She now allowed herself to patronize certain charming 
 young men, artists and literary youths newly born to glory, 
 who disowned the ancients and the moderns alike, and tried 
 to achieve a great reputation by achieving nothing else. 
 Madame Schontz's conduct, a masterwork of tactics, shows 
 her superior intelligence. In the first place, a party of ten or 
 twelve young men amused Arthur, supplied him with witty 
 sayings and shrewd opinions on every subject, and never cast 
 any doubt on the fidelity of the mistress of the house ; in the 
 second place, they looked up to her as a highly intellectual 
 woman. These living advertisements, these walking "puffs," 
 reported that Madame Schontz was the most charming woman 
 to be found on the borderland dividing the Thirteenth Arron- 
 dissement from the other twelve. 
 
 Her rivals, Suzanne Gaillard, who since 1838 had the ad- 
 vantage over her of being a legitimately married wife, Fanny 
 Beaupre, Mariette, and Antonia, spread more than scandalous 
 reports as to the beauty of these youths and the kindness with 
 
310 BE A TRIX. 
 
 which Monsieur de Rochefide welcomed them. Madame 
 Schontz, who could, she declared, give these ladies a start of 
 three bad jokes and beat them, exclaimed one evening, at a 
 supper given by Florine after an opera, when she had set forth 
 to them her good fortune and her success, " Do thou like- 
 wise 1 " a retort which had been remembered against her. At 
 this stage of her career Madame Schontz got the racers sold, 
 in deference to certain considerations, which she owed no 
 doubt to the critical acumen of Claud Vignon, a frequent 
 visitor. 
 
 " I could quite understand," said she one day, after lashing 
 the horses with her tongue, " that princes and rich men should 
 take horse-breeding to heart, but for the good of the country 
 and not for the childish satisfaction of a gambler's vanity. 
 If you had stud stables on your estates and could breed a 
 thousand or twelve hundred horses, if each owner sent the 
 best horse in his stable, and if every breeder in France and 
 Navarre should compete every time, it would be a great and 
 fine thing; but you buy a single horse, as the manager of a 
 theatre engages his artists, you reduce an institution to the 
 level of a game, you have a Bourse for legs as you have a 
 Bourse for shares. It is degrading. Would you spend sixty 
 thousand francs to see in the papers — ' Monsieur de Roche- 
 fide's Lelia beat Monsieur le Due de Rhetore's Fleur-de Genet 
 
 by a length ' Why, you had better give the money to a 
 
 poet who will hand you down to immortality in verse or in 
 prose, like the late lamented Montyon ! " 
 
 By dint of such goading the Marquis was brought to see 
 the hollowness of the turf; he saved his sixty thousand francs; 
 and next year Madame Schontz could say to him : "I cost 
 you nothing now, Arthur." 
 
 Many rich men envied the Marquis his Aurelie, and tried 
 to win her from him ; but, like the Russian prince, they 
 wasted their old age. 
 
 "Listen to me, my dear fellow," she had said a fortnight 
 
BEATRIX. 311 
 
 ago to Finot, now a very rich men, " I know that Rochefide 
 would forgive me for a little flirtation if I really fell in love 
 with another man, but no woman would give up a marquis 
 who is such a thorough good fellow to take up with a parvenu 
 like you. You would never keep me in such a position as 
 Arthur has placed me in. He has made me all but his wife, 
 and half a lady, and you could never do as much for me even 
 if you married me." 
 
 This was the last rivet that held the fortunate slave. The 
 speech reached those absent ears for which it was intended. 
 
 Thus began the fourth phase, that of habit, the crowning 
 victory of the plan of campaign which enables a woman of 
 this stamp to say of the man, " I have him safe ! ' ' Rochefide, 
 who had just bought a pretty house in the name of Mademoi- 
 selle Josephine Schiltz, a mere trifle of eighty thousand francs, 
 had, at the time when the Duchess was laying her plans, come 
 to the point when he was vain of his mistress, calling her 
 Ninon II., and boasting of her strict honesty, her excellent 
 manners, her information, and wit. He had concentrated his 
 good and bad qualities, his tastes and pleasures all in Madame 
 Schontz, and had reached that stage of life when from weari- 
 ness, indifference, or philosophy a man changes no more, but 
 is faithful to his wife or his mistress. 
 
 The importance to which Madame Schontz had risen in 
 five years may be understood when it is said that to be intro- 
 duced to her a man had to be mentioned to her some time in 
 advance. She had refused to make the acquaintance of 
 certain tiresome rich men, and others of fly-blown reputa- 
 tions ; she made no exceptions to this strict rule but in the 
 case of certain great aristocratic names. 
 
 " They have a right to be stupid," she would say, " because 
 they are swells." 
 
 Ostensibly she possessed the three hundred thousand francs 
 that Rochefide had given her, and that a thorough good 
 fellow, a stockbroker named Gobenheim — the only stock- 
 
312 BE A TRIX. 
 
 broker she allowed in her house — managed for her; but she 
 also managed for herself a little private fortune of two hun- 
 dred thousand francs, formed of her savings on her house 
 allowance for three years, by constantly buying and selling 
 with the three hundred thousand francs, which were all she 
 would ever confess to. 
 
 "The more you make, the less you seem to have," Goben- 
 heim remarked one day. 
 
 " Water is so dear ! " said she. 
 
 This unrevealed store was increased by the jewelry and 
 diamonds which Aurelie would wear for a month and then 
 sell, and by money given her for fancies she had forgotten. 
 When she heard herself called rich, Madame Schontz would 
 reply that, at present rates, three hundred thousand francs 
 brought in twelve thousand francs, and that she had spent it 
 all in the hard times of her life when Lousteau had been her 
 lover. 
 
 Such method showed a plan ; and Madame Schontz, you 
 may be sure, had a plan. For the last two years she had been 
 jealous of Madame du Bruel, and the desire to be married at 
 the mayor's and in church gnawed at her heart. Every social 
 grade has its forbidden fruit, some little thing exaggerated by 
 desire, till it seems as weighty as the globe. This ambition 
 had, of course, its duplicate in the ambition of a second 
 Arthur, whom watchfulness had entirely failed to discover. 
 Bixiou would have it that the favorite was Leon de Lora; the 
 painter believed that it was Bixiou, who was now past forty, 
 and should be thinking of settling. Suspicion also fell on 
 Victor de Vernisset, a young poet of the Canalis school, 
 whose passion for Madame Schontz was a perfect madness ; 
 while the poet accused Stidmann, a sculptor, of being his 
 favored rival. This artist, a very good-looking young man, 
 worked for goldsmiths, for bronze dealers, and jewelers ; he 
 dreamed of being a Benvenuto Cellini. Claud Vignon, the 
 
BEATRIX. 313 
 
 young Comte de la Palferine, Gobenheim, Vermanton, a 
 cynic philosopher, and other frequenters of this lively salon 
 were suspected by turns, but all acquitted. No one was a 
 match for Madame Schontz, not even Rochefide, who fancied 
 she had a weakness for la Palferine, a clever youth ; she was, 
 in fact, virtuous in her own interests, and thought only of 
 making a good match. 
 
 Only one man of equivocal repute was ever to be seen at 
 Madame Schontz's, and that was Couture, who had more 
 than once been howled at on the Bourse ; but Couture was 
 one of Madame Schontz's oldest friends, and she alone re- 
 mained faithful to him. The false alarm of 1840 swept away 
 this speculator's last capital ; he had trusted to the 1st of 
 March Ministry ; Aurelie, seeing that luck was against him, 
 made Rochefide play for the other side. It was she who 
 spoke of the last overthrow of this inventor of premiums and 
 joint-stock companies as a Decouture (unripping a rip). 
 
 Couture, delighted to find a knife and fork laid for him at 
 Aurelie's, and getting from Finot — the cleverest or, perhaps, 
 the luckiest of parvenus — a few thousand-franc notes now 
 and then, was the only man shrewd enough to offer his name 
 to Madame Schontz, who studied him to ascertain whether 
 this bold speculator would have strength enough to make a 
 political career for himself, and gratitude enough not to 
 desert his wife. A man of about forty-three years old, and 
 worn for his age, Couture did not redeem the ill-repute of his 
 name by his birth ; he had little to say of his progenitors. 
 Madame Schontz was lamenting the rarity of men of business 
 capacity, when one day Couture himself introduced to her a 
 provincial gentleman who happened to be provided with the 
 two handles by which women hold this sort of pitcher when 
 they mean not to drop it. 
 
 A sketch of this personage will be a portrait of a certain 
 type of young man of the day. A digression will, in this 
 case, be history. 
 
314 BE A TRIX. 
 
 In 1838 Fabien du Ronceret, the son of a president of the 
 Chamber at the King's Court of Caen, having lost his father 
 about a year before, came from Alencon, throwing up his 
 appointment as magistrate, in which, as he said, his father 
 had made him waste his time, and settled in Paris. His in- 
 tention now was to get on in the world by cutting a dash, a 
 Norman scheme somewhat difficult of accomplishment, since 
 he had scarcely eight thousand francs a year, his mother still 
 being alive and enjoying the life-interest of some fine house- 
 property in the heart of Alencon. This youth had already, 
 in the course of various visits to Paris, tried his foot on the 
 tight-rope ; he had discerned the weak point of the social 
 stucco restoration of 1830, and meant to work on it for his 
 own profit, following the lead of the sharpers of the middle 
 class. To explain this, we must glance at one of the results 
 of the new state of things. 
 
 Modern notions of equality, which in our day have assumed 
 such extravagant proportions, have inevitably developed in 
 private life — in a parallel line with political life — pride, con- 
 ceit, and vanity, the three grand divisions of the social I. 
 Fools wish to pass for clever men, clever men want to be men 
 of talent, men of talent expect to be treated as geniuses : as 
 to the geniuses, they are more reasonable ; they consent to be 
 regarded as no more than demi-gods. This tendency of the 
 spirit of the time, which in the Chamber of Deputies makes 
 the manufacturer jealous of the statesman, and the adminis- 
 trator jealous of the poet, prompts fools to run down clever 
 men, clever men to run down men of talent, men of talent to 
 run down those who are a few inches higher than themselves, 
 and the demi-gods to threaten institutions, the throne itself, 
 in short, everything and everybody that does not worship 
 them unconditionally. 
 
 As soon as a nation is so impolitic as to overthrow recog- 
 nized social superiority, it opens the sluice-gates, through 
 which rushes forthwith a torrent of second-rate ambitions, the 
 
BEATRIX. 315 
 
 least of which would fain be first. According to the demo- 
 crats, its aristocracy was a disease, but a definite and circum- 
 scribed disease ; it has exchanged this for ten armed and 
 contending aristocracies, the worst possible state of things. 
 To proclaim the equality of all is to declare the rights of the 
 envious. We are enjoying now the Saturnalia of the Revolution 
 transferred to the apparently peaceful sphere of intelligence, 
 industry, and politics ; it seems as though the reputations 
 earned by hard work, good service, and talent were a privi- 
 lege granted at the expense of the masses. The agrarian law 
 will ere long be extended to the field of glory. 
 
 Thus, at no time have men demanded public recognition 
 on more puerile grounds. They must be remarked at any 
 cost for an affectation of devotion to the cause of Poland, to 
 the penitential system, to the future prospects of released con- 
 victs, to that of small rogues under or over the age of twelve, 
 to any kind of social quackery. These various manias give 
 rise to spurious dignities — presidents, vice-presidents, and 
 secretaries of societies, which, in Paris, outnumber the social 
 questions to be solved. Society on a grand scale has been 
 demolished to make way for a thousand small ones in the 
 image of the dead one. 
 
 Do not all these parasitical organisms point to decomposi- 
 tion ? Are they not the worms swarming in the carcase ? 
 All these social bodies are the daughters of one mother — 
 Vanity. Not thus does Catholic charity act, or true benevo- 
 lence ; these study disease while healing its sores, and do not 
 speechify in public on morbid symptoms for the mere pleasure 
 of talking. 
 
 Fabien du Ronceret, without being a superior man, had 
 divined, by the exercise of that acquisitive spirit peculiar to 
 the Norman race, all the advantage he might take of this 
 public distemper. Each age has its characteristic, which 
 clever men trade on. Fabien's only aim was to get himself 
 talked about. 
 
316 BE A TRIX. 
 
 " My dear fellow, a man must make his name known if he 
 wants to get on," said he as he left, to du Bousquier, a friend 
 of his father's, and the King of Alencon. " In six months I 
 shall be better known than you." 
 
 This was how Fabien interpreted the spirit of his time ; he 
 did not rule it, he obeyed it. 
 
 He had first appeared in bohemia, a district of the moral 
 topography of Paris (see "A Prince of Bohemia"), and was 
 known as "The Heir," in consequence of a certain premedi- 
 tated parade of extravagance. Du Ronceret had taken advan- 
 tage of Couture's follies in behalf of pretty Madame Cadine — 
 one of the newer actresses, who was considered extremely clever 
 at the second-class theatres — for whom he had furnished a 
 charming first-floor apartment with a garden, in the Rue 
 Blanche. 
 
 This was the way in which the men made acquaintance : 
 The Norman, in search of ready-made luxury, bought the 
 furniture from Couture, with all the decorative fixtures he 
 could not remove from the rooms, a garden-room for smoking 
 in, with a veranda built of rustic woodwork, hung with Indian 
 matting, and decorated with pottery, to get to the smoking- 
 room in rainy weather. When the Heir was complimented 
 on his rooms, he called them his den. The provincial took 
 care not to mention that Grindot the architect had lavished 
 all his art there, as had Stidmann on the carvings, and Leon 
 de Lora on the paintings ; for his greatest fault was that form 
 of conceit which goes so far as lying with a view to self-glorifi- 
 cation. 
 
 The Heir put the finishing touch to this splendor by build- 
 ing a conservatory against a south wall, not because he loved 
 flowers, but because he meant to attack public repute by means 
 of horticulture. At this moment he had almost attained his 
 end. As vice-president of some gardening society, under the 
 presidency of the Due de Vissembourg, brother of the Prince 
 de Chiavari, the younger son of the late Marechal Vernon, he 
 
BE A TRIX. 317 
 
 had been able to decorate the vice-presidential coat with the 
 ribbon of the Legion of Honor, after an exhibition of horti- 
 cultural produce, which he opened by an address given out as 
 his own, but purchased of Lousteau for five hundred francs. 
 He was conspicuous by wearing a flower given to him by old 
 Blondet of Alencon, Emile Blondet's father, which he said had 
 bloomed in his conservatory. 
 
 But this triumph was nothing. Du Ronceret, who was 
 anxious to pass as a man of superior intelligence, had schemed 
 to ally himself with a set of famous men, to shine by a reflected 
 light, a plan very difficult to carry out on the basis of an in- 
 come of eight thousand francs. And, in fact, he had looked 
 by turns, but in vain, to Bixiou, Stidmann, and Leon de Lora 
 to introduce him to Madame Schontz, so as to become a 
 member of that menagerie of lions of every degree. Then he 
 dined Couture so often that Couture proved categorically to 
 Madame Schontz that she had to admit such an eccentric 
 specimen, were it only to secure him as one of those graceful 
 unpaid messengers whom house-mistresses are glad to employ 
 on the errands for which servants are unsuited. 
 
 By the end of the third evening Madame Schontz knew 
 Fabien through and through, and said to herself, " If Couture 
 does not serve my turn, I am perfectly certain of this man. 
 My future life runs on wheels." 
 
 So this simpleton, laughed at by every one, was the man of 
 her choice ; but with a deliberate purpose which made the 
 preference an insult, and the choice was never suspected from 
 its utter improbability. Madame Schontz turned Fabien's 
 brain by stolen smiles, by little scenes on the threshold when 
 she saw him out the last, if Monsieur de Rochefide spent the 
 evening there. She constantly invited Fabien to be the third 
 with Arthur in her box at the Italiens or at first-night per- 
 formances ; excusing herself by saying that he had done her 
 this or that service, and that she had no other way of return- 
 ing it. 
 
318 BEATRIX. 
 
 Men have a rivalry of conceit among themselves — in com- 
 mon indeed with women — in their desire to be loved for 
 themselves. Hence of all flattering attachments, none is 
 more highly valued than that of a Madame Schontz for the 
 man she makes the object of her heart's affections in contrast 
 with the other kind of love. Such a woman as Madame 
 Schontz, who played at being a fine lady, and who was in 
 truth a very superior woman, was, as she could not fail to be, 
 a subject of pride to Fabien, who fell so desperately in love 
 with her that he never appeared in her presence but in full 
 dress, patent-leather shoes, lemon-colored gloves, an em- 
 broidered and frilled shirt, an endless variety of vests; in 
 short, every external symptom of the sincerest adoration. 
 
 A month before the conference between the Duchess and 
 the abbe, Madame Schontz had confided the secret of her 
 birth and her real name to Fabien, who could not understand 
 the object of this disclosure. A fortnight later Madame 
 Schontz, puzzled by the Norman's lack of comprehension, 
 exclaimed to herself — 
 
 " Good heavens, what an idiot I am ! Why, he believes 
 that I am in love with him ! " 
 
 So then she took him out for a drive in the Bois, in her 
 carriage, for she had had a low phaeton with a pair of horses 
 for a year past. 
 
 In the course of this public tiie-a-Ute she discussed the 
 question of her ultimate fate, and explained that she wished 
 to get married. 
 
 "I have seven hundred thousand francs," said she; "and 
 I may confess to you that if I could meet with a man of 
 great ambition, who could understand me thoroughly, I would 
 change my condition ; for, do you know, the dream of my 
 life is to be a good citizen's wife, connected with a respectable 
 family, and to make my husband and children all very happy." 
 
 The Norman was content to be a favorite with Madame 
 Schontz ; but to marry her seemed madness beyond discussion 
 
BE A TRIX. 319 
 
 to a bachelor of eight-and-thirty, of whom the revolution of 
 July had made a judge. Seeing his hesitation, Madame 
 Schontz made the Heir a butt for the arrows of her wit, her 
 irony, and her scorn, and turned to Couture. Within a week 
 the speculator, tempted by a hint of her savings, offered her 
 his hand, his heart, and his future prospects — all three of 
 equal value. 
 
 Madame Schontz's manoeuvres had reached this stage when 
 Madame de Grandlieu began to inquire as to the manners and 
 customs of this Beatrix of the Rue Saint-Georges. 
 
 Following the Abbe Brossette's advice, the Duchess begged 
 the Marquis d'Ajuda to bring to her house that prince of 
 political jugglers, the famous Comte de Trailles, the Arch- 
 duke of bohemia, and the youngest of the young, though he 
 was now fifty. Monsieur d'Ajuda arranged to dine with 
 Maxime at the club in the Rue de Beaune, and proposed that 
 they should go on together to play dummy whist with the 
 Due de Grandlieu, who, having had an attack of the gout 
 before dinner, would be alone. Though the Duke's son-in- 
 law, the Duchess' cousin, had every right to introduce him 
 into a house where he had never as yet set foot, Maxime de 
 Trailles was under no misapprehension as to the invitation 
 thus conveyed ; he concluded that either the Duke or the 
 Duchess wanted to make use of him. A not unimportant 
 feature of the time is the club life, where men gamble with 
 others whom they would never receive in their own houses. 
 
 The Duke so far honored Maxime as to confess that he was 
 ill ; after fifteen games of whist he went to bed, leaving his 
 wife with Maxime and d'Ajuda. The Duchess, supported 
 by the Marquis, explained her plans to Monsieur de Trailles 
 and asked his assistance, while seeming only to ask his advice. 
 Maxime listened to the end without saying anything decisive, 
 and would not speak till the Duchess had asked him point- 
 blank to help her. 
 
320 BE A TR1X. 
 
 " I quite understand the matter, madame," said he, after 
 giving her one of those looks — keen, astute, and comprehen- 
 sive — by which these old hands can compromise their allies. 
 " D'Ajuda will tell you that I, if any one in Paris, can man- 
 age this double business, without your appearing in it, without 
 its being known even that I have been here this evening. But 
 first of all, we must settle the preliminaries of Leoben. What 
 do you propose to sacrifice for this end? " 
 
 "Everything that is required." 
 
 "Very good, Madame la Duchesse. Then, as the reward 
 of my services, you will do me the honor of receiving here 
 and giving your countenance to Madame la Comtesse de 
 Trailles?" 
 
 " Are you married?" exclaimed d'Ajuda. 
 
 "I am going to be married in a fortnight to the only 
 daughter of a wealthy family, but to the last degree middle- 
 class ! It is a sacrifice to opinion ; I am adopting the strict- 
 est principles of my government. I am now casting my old 
 skin. 
 
 " So you will understand, Madame la Duchesse, how im- 
 portant for me it would be that you and your family should 
 take up my wife. I am quite certain to be elected deputy 
 when my father-in-law retires from his post, as he intends 
 doing, and I have been promised a diplomatic appointment 
 that befits my new fortune. I cannot see why my wife should 
 not be as well received as Madame de Portenduere in a society 
 of young wives where such stars are to be seen as Mesdames 
 de la Bastie, Georges de Maufrigneuse, de l'Estorade, du 
 Guenic, d'Ajuda, de Restaud, de Rastignac, and de Van- 
 denesse. My wife is pretty, and I will undertake to wake 
 her up. 
 
 '•' Does this meet your views, have you any objections, 
 Madame la Duchesse ? 
 
 "You are a religious woman; and if you say yes, your 
 promise, which I know will be sacred, will help me immensely 
 
BEATRIX. 321 
 
 in my changed life. And it will be another good action ! 
 Alas, I have long been the chief of a rascally crew ; but I 
 want to be quit of all that. After all, our arms are good : 
 Azure, a chimera or, spouting fire, armed gules, scaled vert ; 
 a chief counter ermine ; granted by Francis I., who thought 
 it desirable to give a patent of nobility to Louis XL's groom 
 of the chambers — and we have been counts since the time of 
 Catherine de Medicis." 
 
 "I will receive and introduce your wife," replied the 
 Duchess solemnly, "and my family shall never turn its back 
 on her, I give you my word." 
 
 "Oh, Madame la Duchesse," exclaimed Maxime, visibly 
 touched, "if Monsieur le Due will also condescend to treat 
 me kindly, I promise you on my part to make your plan suc- 
 ceed with no great loss to yourself. But," he went on, 
 after a pause, " you must pledge yourself to obey my instruc- 
 tions This is the last intrigue of my bachelor life ; it 
 
 must be carried through with all the more care because it is a 
 good action," he said, smiling. 
 
 "Obey?" said the Duchess. "But must I appear in all 
 this?" 
 
 "Indeed, madame, I will not compromise you," cried 
 Maxime, " and I respect you too implicitly to ask for security. 
 You have only to follow my advice. Thus, for instance, du 
 Guenic must be carried off by his wife like a sacred object, 
 and kept away for two years; she must take him to see Swit- 
 zerland, Italy, Germany, the more strange and distant lands 
 the better " 
 
 "Ah, that answers a fear expressed by my director," ex- 
 claimed the Duchess guilelessly, as she remembered the Abbe 
 Brossette's judicious observation. Maxime and d'Ajuda could 
 not help smiling at the idea of this coincidence of heaven and 
 hell. 
 
 "To prevent Madame de Rochefide from ever seeing Calyste 
 again," she added, "we will all travel, Juste and his wife, 
 21 
 
322 BEATRIX. 
 
 Calyste and Sabine, and I. I will leave Clotilde with her 
 
 father " 
 
 "Do not let us shout ' Victory ' just yet, madame," said 
 Maxime. "I foresee immense difficulties; I shall conquer 
 them, no doubt. Your esteem and favor are a prize for which 
 I will plunge through much dirt; but it will be " 
 
 " Dirt ! " said the Duchess, interrupting the modern condot- 
 tiere with a face equally expressive of disgust and surprise. 
 
 "Ay, and you will have to step in it, madame, since I act 
 for you. Are you really so ignorant of the pitch of blindness 
 to which Madame de Rochefide has brought your son-in-law? 
 I know it, through Nathan and Canalis, between whom she 
 was hesitating when Calyste threw himself into that lioness' 
 maw. Beatrix has made the noble Breton believe that she 
 never loved any one but him, that she is virtuous, that her 
 attachment to Conti was of the head only, and that her heart 
 and the rest had very little to do with it — a musical passion, 
 in short. As to Rochefide, that was a matter of duty. 
 
 " So, you understand, she is virginal. And she proves it 
 by forgetting her son ; for a year past she has not made the 
 smallest attempt to see him. The little Count is, in point of 
 fact, nearly twelve years old, and he has found a mother in 
 Madame Schontz ; motherhood is the mania, as you know, of 
 women of that stamp. 
 
 " Du Guenic would be cut in pieces, and let his wife be cut 
 in pieces, for Beatrix. And do you suppose that it is easy to 
 drag a man back from the depths of the abyss of credulity? 
 Why, madame, Shakespeare's Iago would waste all his hand- 
 kerchiefs in such a task. It is generally imagined that Othello, 
 his younger brother Orosmane, and Saint-Preux, and Ren6, 
 and Werther, and other lovers who are famous, typify love ! 
 Their icy-hearted creators never knew what was meant by an 
 absorbing passion, Moliere alone had a suspicion of it. Love, 
 Madame la Duchesse, is not an attachment to a noble woman, 
 to a Clarissa ; a great achievement that, on my word ! Love 
 
BEATRIX. 323 
 
 is to say to one's self: ' The woman I worship is a wretch ; she 
 is deceiving me, she will deceive me again, she is an old hand, 
 she smells of the burning pit ! ' — and to fly to her, to find the 
 blue of heaven, the flowers of Paradise. That is how Moliere 
 loved, and how we love, we scamps and rips ; for I can cry at 
 the great scene in ' Arnolphe ! ' That is how your son-in-law 
 loves Beatrix. 
 
 "I shall have some difficulty in getting Rochefide from 
 Madame Schontz; however, Madame Schontz can, no doubt, 
 be got to abet us ; I will study her household. As to Calyste 
 and Beatrix, it will need an axe to divide them, treachery of 
 the best quality, infamy so base that your virtuous imagination 
 could not go so low unless your director held your hand. 
 You have asked for the impossible, you shall have it. Still, in 
 spite of my determination to employ the sword and fire, I can- 
 not absolutely pledge myself to success. I know lovers who 
 do not shrink under the most entire disenchantment. You 
 are too virtuous to understand the power of women who have 
 no virtue." 
 
 " Do not attempt these infamies till I shall have consulted 
 the Abbe Brossette, to know how far I am involved in them," 
 cried the Duchess, with an artlessness that revealed how selfish 
 religion can be. 
 
 "You know nothing about it, my dear mother," said the 
 Marquis d'Ajuda. 
 
 On the steps, while waiting for Ajuda's carriage to come up, 
 the Marquis said to Maxime — 
 
 "You have frightened our good Duchess." 
 
 " But she has no idea of the difficulty of the thing she wants 
 done ! Are we going to the Jockey Club ? Rochefide must 
 ask me to dine to-morrow at Schontz's rooms; in the course 
 of to-night my plans will be laid, and I shall have chosen the 
 pawns in my chessboard that are to move in the game I mean 
 to play. In the days of her splendor Beatrix would have 
 nothing to say to me ; I will settle accounts with her, and 
 
324 BE A TRIX. 
 
 avenge your sister-in-law so cruelly, that perhaps she will 
 think I have overdone it." 
 
 On the following day Rochefide told Madame Schontz that 
 Maxime de Trailles was coming to dinner. This was to warn 
 her to display the utmost luxury, and prepare the very best 
 fare for this distinguished connoisseur, who was the terror of 
 every woman of Madame Schontz's class; and she gave as 
 much care to her toilet as to arranging her house in a fitting 
 way to receive the great man. 
 
 In Paris there are almost as many royal heads as there are 
 different arts or special sciences, faculties, or professions; the 
 best of those who exercise each has a royal dignity proper to 
 himself; he is revered and respected by his peers, who know 
 the difficulties of his work, and admire unreservedly the man 
 who can defy them. In the eyes of the corps de ballet and 
 courtesans Maxime was an extremely powerful and capable 
 man, for he had succeeded in being immensely loved. He 
 was admired by everybody who knew how hard it is to live 
 in Paris on decent terms with your creditors ; and he had 
 never had any rival in elegance, demeanor, and wit but the 
 famous de Marsay, who had employed him on political mis- 
 sions. This is enough to account for his interview with the 
 Duchess, his influence over Madame Schontz, and the au- 
 thority of his tone in a conference he intended to hold on the 
 Boulevard des Italiens with a young man, who was already 
 famous though recently introduced to the bohemia of Paris. 
 
 As he arose next morning, Maxime de Trailles heard Finot 
 announced, to whom he had sent the night before ; he begged 
 him to arrange a fortuitous meeting at breakfast at the Cafe 
 Anglais between Couture, Lousteau, and himself, where they 
 would chat in his hearing. Finot, who was to Maxime de 
 Trailles as a lieutenant in the presence of a marshal of France, 
 could refuse him nothing ; it was indeed too dangerous to 
 provoke this lion. So when Maxime came in to breakfast, he 
 
BE A TRIX. 32-5 
 
 found Finot and his two friends at a table ; the conversation 
 had already been directed toward the subject of Madame 
 Schontz. Couture, cleverly steered by Finot and Lousteau, 
 who, unknown to himself, was Finot's abettor, let out every- 
 thing that the Comte de Trailles wanted to know about 
 Madame Schontz. 
 
 By one o'clock, Maxime, chewing his toothpick, was talking 
 to du Tillet on the steps of Tortoni's, where speculators form 
 a little Bourse preliminary to real dealings on 'Change. He 
 seemed to be absorbed in business, but he was waiting to see the 
 young Comte de la Palferine, who must pass that way sooner 
 or later. The Boulevard des Italiens is now what the Pont 
 Neuf was in 1650; everybody who is anybody crosses it at 
 least once a day. 
 
 In fact, within ten minutes, Maxime took his hand from du 
 Tillet's arm, and, nodding to the young Prince of bohemia, 
 said with a smile, " Two words with you, Count ! " 
 
 The rivals, one a setting star, the other a rising sun, took 
 their seat on four chairs outside the Cafe de Paris. Maxime 
 was careful to place himself at a sufficient distance from cer- 
 tain old fogies who, from sheer habit, plant themselves in a 
 row against the wall after one in the afternoon, to dry out 
 their rheumatic pains. He had ample reasons for distrusting 
 these old men. (See "A Man of Business.") 
 
 " Have you any debts ? " asked Maxime de Trailles of the 
 young man. 
 
 " If I had not, should I be worthy to succeed you? " re- 
 plied la Palferine. 
 
 " When I ask you such a question, it is not to cast any 
 doubt on the matter," said de Trailles. " I only want to know 
 if they amount to a respectable sum-total, running into five or 
 six." 
 
 " Five or six what ? " said la Palferine. 
 
 "Six figures! Do you owe 50,000, 100,000? My debts 
 ran up to 600,000 francs." 
 
326 BE A TRIX. 
 
 La Palferine took off his hat with an air of mocking re- 
 spect. 
 
 " If I had credit enough to borrow a hundred thousand 
 francs," replied he, " I would cut ray creditors and go to live 
 at Venice in the midst of its masterpieces of painting, spend- 
 ing the evening at the theatre, the night with pretty women, 
 and " 
 
 "At my age where would you be? " 
 
 " I should not last so long," replied the young Count. 
 
 Maxime returned his rival's civility by just raising his hat 
 with an expression of comical gravity. 
 
 " That is another view of life," he replied, as a connoisseur 
 answering a connoisseur. " Then you owe ? " 
 
 " Oh, a mere trifle, not worth confessing to an uncle, if I 
 had one. He would disinherit me for such a contemptible 
 sum ; six thousand francs." 
 
 " Six thousand give one more trouble than a hundred thou- 
 sand," said Maxime sententiously. "La Palferine, you have 
 a bold wit, you have even more wit than boldness ; you may 
 go far and become a political personage. Look here — of all 
 the men who have rushed into the career which I have run, 
 and who have been pitted against me, you are the only one I 
 ever liked." 
 
 La Palferine colored, so greatly was he flattered by this con- 
 fession, made with gracious bluntness, by the greatest of 
 Parisian adventurers. This instinct of vanity was a confession 
 of inferiority which annoyed him; but Maxime understood 
 the reaction easy to foresee in so clever a man, and did his 
 best to correct it at once by placing himself at the young 
 man's discretion. 
 
 "Will you do something for me now that I am retiring 
 from the Olympian course by marrying, and marrying well? 
 I would do a good deal for you," he added. 
 
 " You make me very proud," said la Palferine ; " this is to 
 put the fable of the lion and the mouse into practice." 
 
BE A TRIX. 327 
 
 " In the first place, I will lend you twenty thousand francs," 
 Maxime went on. 
 
 "Twenty thousand francs? I knew that if I walked this 
 boulevard long enough ! " said la Palferine in a paren- 
 thesis. 
 
 " My dear boy, you must set yourself up in some sort of 
 style," said Maxime, smiling. "Do not trot about on your 
 two feet ; set up six. Do as I have done ; I never got lower 
 than a tilbury " 
 
 " But then you must want me to do something quite beyond 
 my powers." 
 
 " No. Only to make a woman fall in love with you within 
 a fortnight." 
 
 "A woman of the town?" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " That would be out of the question ; but if she is a lady, 
 quite a lady, and very clever " 
 
 " She is a marquise of the first water." 
 
 " You want her letters," said the young Count. 
 
 "Ah, you are a man after my own heart ! " cried Maxime. 
 " No. That is not what is wanted." 
 
 " I am really to love her? " 
 
 "Yes, really and truly." 
 
 " If I am to go beyond aesthetics, it is quite impossible," 
 said la Palferine. " With regard to women, you see, I have 
 a kind of honesty; we may trick them, but not " 
 
 "Then I have not been mistaken," exclaimed Maxime. 
 " Do you suppose I am the man to scheme for some little 
 
 tu'penny meanness? No, you must go, you must dazzle 
 
 and conquer I give you twenty thousand, and ten days 
 
 to win in. Till this evening at Madame Schontz's." 
 
 " I am dining there." 
 
 "Good," said Maxime. "By-and-by, when you want 
 me, you will find me, Monsieur le Comte," he added, with 
 the air of a king pledging his word rather than promising. 
 
328 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "The poor woman has done you some terrible mischief 
 then? " asked la Palferine. 
 
 "Do not try to sound the depth of my waters, my son ; but 
 let me tell you that, if you succeed, you will secure such 
 powerful interest, that when you are tired of your bohemian 
 life you may, like me, retire on the strength of a rich 
 marriage." 
 
 "Does a time come, then, when we are tired of amusing 
 ourselves," said la Palferine, "of being nothing, of living as 
 the birds live, of hunting in Paris like wild men, and laugh- 
 ing at all that turns up? " 
 
 "We tire of everything, even of hell ! " said Maxime with 
 a laugh. " Till this evening." 
 
 The two scamps, the old one and the young one, rose. As 
 Maxime got into his one-horse cab, he said to himself — 
 
 "Madame d'Espard cannot endure Beatrix; she will help 
 me. To the Hotel Grandlieu," he cried to the coachman, 
 seeing Rastignac pass. (Find a great man without a weakness.) 
 
 Maxime found the Duchess, Madame du Guenic, and Clo- 
 tilde in tears. 
 
 " What has happened ? " he asked the Duchess. 
 
 " Calyste did not come in — it is the first time, and my 
 poor Sabine is in despair." 
 
 "Madame la Duchesse," said Maxime, drawing the pious 
 lady into a window-bay, " in the name of God, who will 
 judge us, do not breathe a word as to my devotion ; pledge 
 d'Ajuda to secrecy ; never let Calyste know anything of our 
 plots, or we shall fight a duel to the death. When I told you 
 this would not cost you much, I meant that you would not 
 have to spend any monstrous sum. I want about twenty 
 thousand francs, but everything else is my business ; you may 
 have to find some good appointments — one receiver-general's, 
 perhaps. ' ' 
 
 The Duchess and Maxime left the room. When Madame 
 de Grandlieu came back to her two daughters, she heard a 
 
BE A TRIX. 329 
 
 fresh lament from Sabine, full of domestic details, even more 
 heartbreaking than those which had put an end to the young 
 wife's happiness. 
 
 "Becalm, my child," said the Duchess to her daughter; 
 "Beatrix will pay dearly for all your tears and misery; she 
 will endure ten humiliations for each one of yours." 
 
 Madame Schontz had sent word to Claud Vignon, who had 
 frequently expressed a wish to make the acquaintance of 
 Maxime de Trailles ; she invited Couture, Fabien, Bixiou, 
 Leon de Lora, la Palferine, and Nathan, whom Rochefide 
 begged to have for Maxime's benefit. Thus she had a party 
 of nine, all of the first water, excepting du Ronceret ; but 
 the Heir's Norman vanity and brutality were a match for 
 Claud Vignon's literary force, for Nathan's poetry, la Pal- 
 ferine's acumen, Couture's keen eye to the main chance, 
 Bixiou's wit, Finot's foresight, Maxime's depth, and Leon de 
 Lora's genius. 
 
 Madame Schontz, who aimed at appearing young and hand- 
 some, fortified herself in such a toilet as women of that class 
 alone can achieve — a point-lace cape of spider-web fineness; 
 a blue velvet dress, of which the elegant bodice was buttoned 
 with opals ; her hair in smooth bands and shining like ebony. 
 Madame Schontz owed her fame as a beauty to the brilliancy 
 and color of a warm, creamy complexion like a Creole's, a 
 face full of original details, with the clean-cut, firm features 
 — of which the Comtesse de Merlin was the most famous ex- 
 ample and the most perennially young — peculiar perhaps to 
 southern faces. Unluckily, since her life had been so calm, 
 so easy, little Madame Schontz had grown decidedly far. 
 Her neck and shoulders, bewitchingly round, were getting 
 coarse. Still, in France a woman's face is thought all-impor- 
 tant, and a fine head will secure a long life to an ungraceful 
 shape. 
 
 "Mv dear child," said Maxime as he came in and kissed 
 
330 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Aurelie on the forehead, "Rochefide wanted me to see your 
 home, where I have not yet been ; it is almost worthy of his 
 income of four hundred thousand francs. Well, he had less 
 by fifty thousand a year when he first knew you; in less than 
 five years you have gained for him as much as any other 
 woman — Antonia, Malaga, Cadine, or Florentine — would 
 have devoured." 
 
 "I am not a baggage — I am an artist!" said Madame 
 Schontz, with some dignity. " I hope to end by founding a 
 family of respectable folk, as they say in the play." 
 
 "It is dreadful, we all getting married," said Maxime, 
 dropping into a chair by the £re. " Here am I within a few 
 days of making a Comtesse Maxime." 
 
 ' ' Oh ! how I should like to see her ! ' ' cried Madame Schontz. 
 " But allow me," she went on, " to introduce Monsieur Claud 
 Vignon — Monsieur Claud Vignon, Monsieur de Trailles." 
 
 "Ah, it was you who let Camille Maupin — mine hostess of 
 literature — go into a convent? " cried Maxime. " After you, 
 God ! No one ever did me so much honor. Mademoiselle 
 des Touches made a Louis XIV. of you, monsieur." 
 
 "And this is how history is written ! " said Claud Vignon. 
 " Did you not know that her fortune was spent in releasing 
 Monsieur du Guenic's estates? If she knew that Calyste had 
 
 fallen into the arms of her ex-friend ! " (Maxime kicked 
 
 the critic's foot, looking at Monsieur de Rochefide) " on my 
 word, I believe she would come out of her nunnery to snatch 
 him from her." 
 
 "I declare, my dear Rochefide," said Maxime, finding 
 that his warning had failed to check Claud Vignon, "in your 
 place I would give my wife her fortune, that the world might 
 not suppose that she had taken up Calyste du Guenic for want 
 of money." 
 
 "Maxime is right!" said Madame Schontz, looking at 
 Arthur, who colored violently. " If I have saved you some 
 thousand francs to invest, you could not spend them better. 
 
BEATRIX. 331 
 
 I should have secured the happiness of both husband and wife. 
 What a good-conduct stripe ! " 
 
 " I never thought of it," replied the Marquis. Then, after 
 a pause, " But it is true ; one is a gentleman first, and a hus- 
 band after." 
 
 "Let me advise you of the appropriate moment for your 
 generosity," said Maxime. 
 
 "Arthur," said Aurelie, " Maxime is right. Our generous 
 actions, you see, old boy, must be done as Couture's shares 
 must be sold," and she looked in the glass to see who was 
 coming in, " in the nick of time." 
 
 Couture was followed by Finot, and in a few minutes all 
 the guests were assembled in the handsome blue-and-gold 
 drawing-room of the "Hotel Schontz," as the men called 
 their place of meeting since Rochefide had bought it for his 
 Ninon II. On seeing la Pal ferine come in the last, Maxime 
 went up to him, drew him into a recess, and gave him the 
 twenty bank-notes. 
 
 "Above all, do not be stingy with them," said he, with 
 the native grace of a spendthrift. 
 
 " No one knows so well as you how to double the value of 
 what appears to be a gift," replied la Palferine. 
 
 " Then you agree ? " 
 
 "Well, since I take the money!" replied the youth, with 
 some pride and irony. 
 
 "Very well. Nathan, who is here, will take you within 
 two days to call on the Marquise de Rochefide," said Maxime 
 in his ear. 
 
 La Palferine jumped as he heard the name. 
 
 "Do not fail to declare yourself madly in love with her; 
 and, to arouse no suspicions, drink — wine, liqueurs no end! 
 I will tell Aurelie to put you next to Nathan. Only, my son, 
 we must now meet every night on the Boulevard de la Made- 
 leine, at one in the morning; you to report progress, and I 
 to give you instructions." 
 
332 BEATRIX. 
 
 " I will be there, master," said the young Count, with a 
 bow. 
 
 " What makes you ask a fellow to dine with us who comes 
 dressed like a waiter?" said Maxime to Madame Schontz in 
 a whisper and looking at du Ronceret. 
 
 " Have you never seen ' The Heir?' Du Ronceret, from 
 Alencon." 
 
 "Monsieur," said Maxime to Fabien, "you must know 
 my friend d'Esgrignon ?" 
 
 " Victorien dropped the acquaintance long since," replied 
 Fabien ; " but we were very intimate as boys." 
 
 The dinner was such as can only be given in Paris, and in 
 the houses of these perfectly reckless women, for their refined 
 luxury amazes the most fastidious. It was at a supper of this 
 kind, given by a rich and handsome courtesan like Madame 
 Schontz, that Paganini declared that he had never eaten such 
 food at the table of any sovereign, nor drunk such wine in 
 any prince's house, nor heard such witty conversation, nor 
 seen such attractive and tasteful magnificence. 
 
 Maxime and Madame Schontz were the first to return to the 
 drawing-room, at about ten o'clock, leaving the other guests, 
 who had ceased to veil their anecdotes, and who boasted of 
 their powers, with sticky lips glued to liqueur-glasses that they 
 could not empty. 
 
 "Well, pretty one," said Maxime, "you are quite right. 
 Yes, I came to get something out of you. It is a serious mat- 
 ter ; you must give up Arthur. But I will see that he gives 
 you two hundred thousand francs." 
 
 "And why am I to give him up, poor old boy?" 
 
 "To marry that noodle who came from Alencon on pur- 
 pose. He has already been a judge ; I will get him made 
 president of the court in the place of old Blondet, who is 
 nearly eighty-two, and, if you know how to catch the wind, 
 your husband will be elected deputy. You will be people of 
 importance, and crush Madame la Comtesse du Bruel -" 
 
BE A TRIX. 333 
 
 "Never!" cried the wily Madame Schontz ; "she is a 
 countess." 
 
 " Is he of the stuff they make counts of ? " 
 
 " Well, he has a coat-of-arms," said Aurelie, seeking a letter 
 in a handsome bag that hung by the fireplace and handing 
 it to Maxime. " What does it all mean ? There are combs 
 on it." 
 
 " He bears : Quarterly, the first argent three combs gules, 
 second and third three bunches of grapes with stems and 
 leaves all proper, fourth azure four pens or, laid in fret. 
 Motto, Servir, and a squire's helmet. No great things ! 
 They were granted by Louis XV. They must have had some 
 haberdasher grandfather, the maternal ancestry made money 
 in wine, and the du Ronceret who got the arms must have 
 been a registrar. But if you succeed in throwing off Arthur, 
 the du Roncerets shall be Barons at least, I promise you, my 
 pretty pigeon. You see, child, you must lie in pickle for five 
 or six years in the country if you want to bury la Schontz in 
 Madame la Presidente. The rascal cast eyes at you, of which 
 the meaning was quite clear ; you have hooked him." 
 
 " No," said Aurelie. "When I offered him my hand, he 
 was as quiet as brandy is in the market." 
 
 " I will make up his mind for him if he is tipsy. Go and 
 see how they are all getting on." 
 
 " It is not worth the trouble of going. I hear no one but 
 Bixiou giving one of his caricatures, to which nobody is lis- 
 tening; but I know my Arthur; he thinks it necessary to be 
 polite to Bixiou, and he is staring at him still, even if his eyes 
 are shut." 
 
 "Let us go back then." 
 
 " By-the-by, for whose benefit am I doing all this, 
 Maxime? " said Madame Schontz suddenly. 
 
 "For Madame de Rochefide," replied Maxime bluntly. 
 " It is impossible to patch up matters between her and Arthur 
 so long as you keep hold of him. To her it is a matter of 
 
 Y 
 
334 BEATRIX. 
 
 being at the head of her house and having four hundred 
 thousand francs a year." 
 
 "'And she only offers me two hundred thousand francs 
 down ? I will have three hundred thousand if she is at the 
 bottom of it. What, I have taken every care of her brat and 
 her husband, I have filled her place in every way, and she is 
 to beat me down ? Look here, my dear fellow, I shall then 
 have just a million. And beside that, you promise me the 
 presidency of the court at Alencon if only I can make up for 
 Madame du Ronceret " 
 
 " Right you are ! " said Maxime. 
 
 " How I shall be bored in that little town ! " said Aurelie 
 philosophically. "I have heard so much about that part of 
 the country from d'Esgrignon and Madame Val-Noble that 
 it is as though I had lived there already." 
 
 "But if I could promise you the help of the title? " 
 
 "Oh, Maxime, if you can really do that. Ay, but the 
 pigeon refuses to fly " 
 
 "And he is very ugly, with his skin like a plum; he has 
 bristles instead of whiskers, and looks like a wild boar, 
 though he has eyes like a bird of prey. He will be the finest 
 president ever seen. Be easy ! In ten minutes he will be 
 singing you Isabelle's song in the fourth act of 'Robert le 
 Diable,' ' Je suis a tes genoux' (I am at thy knees). But you 
 must undertake to send Arthur back to fall at Beatrix's feet." 
 
 " It is difficult, but among us we may manage it." 
 
 At about half-past ten the gentlemen came into the drawing- 
 room to take coffee. In the position in which Madame 
 Schontz, Couture, and du Ronceret found themselves, it is 
 easy to imagine the effect that was produced on the ambitious 
 Norman by the following conversation between Couture and 
 Maxime in a corner, carried on indeed in an undertone that 
 they might not be overheard, but which Fabien contrived to 
 hear. 
 
 "My dear fellow, if you were wise, you would accept the place 
 
BE A TRIX. 335 
 
 of receiver-general in some out-of-the-way place; Madame de 
 Rochefide would get it for you. Aurelie's million francs 
 would enable you to deposit the security, and you would 
 settle everything on her as your wife. Then, if you steered 
 your boat cleverly, you would be made deputy, and the only 
 premium I ask for having saved you will be your vote in the 
 Chamber." 
 
 '•' I shall always be proud to serve under you." 
 
 "Oh, my boy, you have had a very close shave! Just 
 fancy, Aurelie thought herself in love with that Norman from 
 Alencon ; she wanted to have him made a baron, president 
 of the court in his native town, and officer of the Legion of 
 Honor. The noodle never guessed what Madame Schontz 
 was worth, and you owe your good fortune to her disgust ; so 
 do not give such a clever woman time to change her mind. 
 For my part, I will go and put the irons in the fire." 
 
 So Maxime left Couture in the seventh heaven of happiness, 
 and said to la Pal ferine, " Shall I take you with me, my son ? " 
 
 By eleven o'clock Aurelie found herself left with Couture, 
 Fabien, and Rochefide. Arthur was asleep in an armchair ; 
 Couture and Fabien were trying to outstay each other, but 
 without success. Madame Schontz put an end to this contest 
 by saying to Couture, "Till to-morrow, dear boy! " which 
 he took in good part. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said Fabien, in a low voice, "when you 
 saw me so unready to respond to the proposal you made me 
 indirectly, do not imagine that there was the smallest hesita- 
 tion on my part ; but you do not know my mother ; she 
 would never consent to my happiness " 
 
 "You are of age to address her with a sommation respec- 
 tueuse* my dear fellow," retorted Aurelie quite insolently. 
 " However, if you are afraid of mamma, you are not the man 
 for my money." 
 
 *A legal form by which French sons can reduce the obstinacy of recal- 
 citrant parents when they refuse their consent to a marriage. 
 
336 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "Josephine ! " said the Heir affectionately, as he boldly 
 put his right arm around Madame Schontz's waist, "I be- 
 lieved that you loved me." 
 
 "And what then?" 
 
 " I might perhaps pacify my mother, and gain more than 
 her consent." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "If you would use your influence " 
 
 " To get you created baron, officer of the Legion of Honor, 
 and president of the court, my boy — is that it ? Listen to 
 me, I have done so many things in the course of my life that 
 I am capable of being virtuous ! I could be an honest woman, 
 a loyal wife, and take my husband in tow to upper regions ; 
 but I insist on being so loved by him that not a glance, not 
 a thought, shall ever be given to any heart but mine, not even 
 
 in a wish How does that do for you ? Do not bind 
 
 yourself rashly; it is for life, my boy." 
 
 "With a woman like you, done, without looking twice ! " 
 cried Fabien, as much intoxicated by a look as he was by the 
 West Indian liqueurs. 
 
 "You shall never repent of that word, my brave boy; you 
 shall be a peer of France. As to that poor old chap," she 
 went on, looking at Rochefide asleep, " it is a, double 1, all, 
 o-v-e-r, ver — all over ! " 
 
 She said it so cleverly and so prettily that Fabien seized 
 Madame Schontz and kissed her with an impulse of passion 
 and joy, in which the intoxication of love and wine were 
 second to that of happiness and ambition. 
 
 "But now, my dear child," said she, "you must remem- 
 ber henceforth to behave respectfully to your wife, not to 
 play the lover, and to leave me to get out of my slough as 
 decently as may be. And Couture, who believed himself a 
 rich man and receiver-general ! " 
 
 "I have a horror of the man," said Fabien. "I wish I 
 might never see him again !" 
 
BEATRIX. 337 
 
 "I will have him here no more," said the courtesan with 
 a little prudish air. "Now that we understand each other, 
 my Fabien, go; it is one o'clock." 
 
 This little scene gave rise in the Schontz household, hith- 
 erto so perfectly happy, to a phase of domestic warfare be- 
 tween Arthur and Aurelie, such as any covert interest on the 
 part of one of the partners is certain to give rise to. 
 
 The very next day Arthur woke to find himself alone ; 
 Madame Schontz was cold, as women of that sort know 
 how to be. 
 
 " What happened last night?" asked he at breakfast, look- 
 ing at Aurelie. 
 
 "That is the way of it in Paris," said she. "You go 
 to bed on a wet night, next morning the pavement is dry, 
 and everything so frozen that the dust flies ; would you like 
 a brush?" 
 
 " But what ails you, dear little woman ? " 
 
 " Go, go to your great gawk of a wife ! " 
 
 "My wife?" cried the unhappy Marquis. 
 
 "Couldn't I guess why you brought Maxime here? You 
 wanted to make it up with Madame de Rochefide, who wants 
 you perhaps for some tell-tale baby. And I, whom you think 
 so cunning, was advising you to give her back her money ! 
 Oh, I know your tricks. After five years my gentleman is 
 tired of me. I am fat, Beatrix is bony ; it will be a change. 
 You are not the first man I have known with a taste for 
 skeletons. Your Beatrix dresses well, too, and you are one 
 of the men who like a clotheshorse. Beside, you want to 
 send Monsieur de Guenic packing ! That would be a tri- 
 umph ! How well it will look ! Won't it be talked about ! 
 You will be quite a hero ! " 
 
 At two o'clock Madame Schontz had not come to an end 
 
 of her ironical banter, in spite of Arthur's protestations. She 
 
 said she was engaged to dine out. She desired the " faithless 
 
 one " to go without her to the Italiens ; she was going to a 
 
 22 
 
338 BE A TRIX. 
 
 first-night performance at the Ambigu-Comique, and to make 
 the acquaintance of a charming woman, Lousteau's mistress, 
 Madame de la Baudraye. 
 
 To prove his eternal attachment to his little Aurelie and 
 his aversion for his wife, Arthur offered to set out the very 
 next day for Italy and to live as her husband in Rome, Na- 
 ples, or Florence, whichever Aurelie might prefer, giving her 
 sixty thousand francs a year. 
 
 "All that is pure whims," said she. " That will not hinder 
 your making it up with your wife, and you will be wise to 
 do so." 
 
 At the end of this formidable discussion, Arthur and Aurelie 
 parted, he to play and dine at the club, she to dress and spend 
 the evening tete-a-tite with Fabien. 
 
 Monsieur de Rochefide found Maxime at the club, and 
 poured out his complaints, as a man who felt happiness being 
 torn up from his heart by the roots that clung by every fibre. 
 Maxime listened to the Marquise's lament as polite people can 
 listen while thinking of something else. 
 
 "I am a capital counselor in such cases, my dear fellow," 
 said he. "Well, you make a great mistake in letting Aurelie 
 see how much you care for her. Let me introduce you to 
 Madame Antonia — a heart to let. You will see la Schontz 
 sing very small. Why, she is seven-and-thirty, is your Schontz, 
 and Antonia is but twenty-six ! And such a woman ! Her 
 wits are not all in her brains, I can tell you. Indeed, she is 
 my pupil. If Madame Schontz still struts out her pride, do 
 you know what it means? " 
 
 "On my honor, no." 
 
 "That she means to get married; and then nothing can 
 hinder her from throwing you over. After a six years' lease 
 the woman has a right to do it. But if you will listen to me, 
 you can do better than that. At the present time your wife 
 is worth a thousand Schontzes and Antonias of the Saint- 
 Georges quarter. She will be hard to win, but not impos- 
 
BEATRIX. 339 
 
 sible ; and she will make you as happy as Orgon ! At any 
 rate, if you do not wish to look like a fool, come to supper to- 
 night at Antonia's." 
 
 " No, I love Aurelie too well ; I will not allow her to have 
 any cause for blaming me." 
 
 " Oh, my dear fellow ! what a life you are making for your- 
 self ! " cried Maxime. 
 
 " It is eleven o'clock. She will have returned from the 
 Ambigu," said Rochefide, going off. And he roared at the 
 coachman to drive as fast as he could to the Rue de la 
 Bruyere. 
 
 Madame Schontz had given distinct orders, and monsieur 
 was admitted exactly as though he and madame were the best 
 of friends; but madame, informed of monsieur's return, took 
 care to let monsieur hear the slam of her dressing-room door, 
 shut as doors are shut when a lady is taken by surprise. Then, 
 on the corner of the piano was Fabien's hat, intentionally for- 
 gotten, and conspicuously fetched away by the maid as soon 
 as monsieur and madame were engaged in conversation. 
 
 " So you did not go to the play, little woman ? " 
 
 "No, I changed my mind." 
 
 "And who has been here ? " he asked quite simply, seeing 
 the maid carry away the hat. 
 
 "Nobody." 
 
 To this audacious falsehood Arthur could only bow his 
 head ; this was passing under the Caudine forks of submission. 
 True love has this magnanimous cowardice. Arthur behaved 
 to Madame Schontz as Sabine did to Calyste, as Calyste did 
 to Beatrix. 
 
 Within a week there was a change like that of a grub to a 
 butterfly in the handsome and clever young Count, Charles- 
 Edouard Rusticoli de la Palferine (the hero of the sketch 
 called "A Prince of Bohemia," which makes it unnecessary 
 to describe his person and character in this place). . Hitherto 
 
340 BEATRIX. 
 
 he had lived very poorly, making up his deficits with the 
 audacity of a Danton ; now he paid his debts, by Maxime's 
 advice he had a little low carriage, he was elected to the 
 Jockey-Club, to the club in the Rue de Grammont, he be- 
 came superlatively elegant. Finally, he published in the 
 "Journal des Debats " a novel which earned him in a few 
 days such a reputation as professional writers do not achieve 
 after many years of labor and success, for in Paris nothing is 
 so vehement as what is to prove ephemeral. Nathan, per- 
 fectly certain that the Count would never write anything 
 more, praised this elegant and impertinent youth to Madame 
 de Rochefide in such terms that Beatrix, spurred on by the 
 poet's account of him, expressed a wish to see this prince of 
 fashionable vagabonds. 
 
 " He will be all the more delighted to come here," replied 
 Nathan, " because I know he is so much in love with you as 
 to commit any folly." 
 
 " But he has committed every folly already, I am told," 
 said Beatrix. 
 
 "Every folly? No," replied Nathan, "he has not yet 
 been so foolish as to love a decent woman." 
 
 A few days after the plot of the boulevard had been laid 
 between- Maxime and the seductive Count Charles-Edouard, 
 this young gentleman, on whom nature had bestowed — in 
 irony, no doubt — a pathetically melancholy countenance, 
 made his first incursion into the nest in the Rue de Cour- 
 celles, where the dove, to receive him, fixed an evening when 
 Calyste was obliged to go out with his wife. If ever you meet 
 la Palferine — or when you come to the " Prince of Bohemia " 
 in the third part of this long picture of modern manners — 
 you will at once understand the triumph achieved in a single 
 evening by that sparkling wit, those astonishing high spirits, 
 especially if you can conceive of the capital by-play of the 
 sponsor who agreed to second him on this occasion. Nathan 
 was a good fellow ; he showed off the young Count as a jeweler 
 
BEATRIX. 341 
 
 shows off a necklace he wants to sell, by making the stones 
 sparkle in the light. 
 
 La Palferine discreetly was the first to leave ; he left Nathan 
 and the Marquise together, trusting to the great author's co- 
 operation, which was admirable. Seeing the Marquise quite 
 amazed, he fired her fancy by a certain reticence, which 
 stirred in her such chords of curiosity as she did not know 
 existed in her. Nathan gave her to understand that it was 
 not so much la Palferine's wit that won him his successes with 
 women as his superior gifts in the art of love ; and he cried 
 him up beyond measure. 
 
 This is the place for setting forth a novel result of the great 
 law of contrasts, which gives rise to many a crisis in the 
 human heart, and accounts for so many vagaries that we are 
 forced to refer to it sometimes, as well as to the law of affini- 
 ties. Courtesans — including all that portion of the female 
 sex which is named, unnamed, and renamed every quarter of 
 a century — all preserve, in the depths of their hearts, a vigor- 
 ous wish to recover their liberty, to feel a pure, saintly, and 
 heroic love for some man to whom they can sacrifice every- 
 thing. (See "A Harlot's Progress.") They feel this anti- 
 thetical need so keenly, that it is rare to find a woman of the 
 kind who has not many times aspired to become virtuous 
 *hrough love. The most frightful deception cannot discour- 
 age them. Women who are, on the contrary, restrained by 
 education, and by their rank in life, fettered by the dignity 
 of their family, living in the midst of wealth, crowned by a 
 halo of virtue, are tempted — secretly, of course — to try the 
 tropical regions of passion. These two antagonistic types of 
 women have, at the bottom of their hearts, the one a little 
 craving for virtue, the other a little craving for dissipation, 
 which Jean-Jacques Rousseau first had the courage to point 
 out. In those. it is the last gleam of the divine light not yet 
 extinct ; in these it is a trace of the primitive clay. 
 
 This remaining claw of the beast was tickled, this hair of 
 
342 BEATRIX. 
 
 the devil was pulled with the greatest skill, by Nathan. The 
 Marquise seriously wondered whether she had not hitherto 
 been the dupe of her intellect, whether her education was 
 complete. Vice ! — is perhaps the desire to know everything. 
 
 Next day Calyste was seen by Beatrix as what he was — a 
 perfect and loyal gentleman, devoid of spirit and wit. 
 
 In Paris, to be known as a wit, a man's wit must flow as 
 water flows from a spring ; for all men of fashion, and Paris- 
 ians in general, are witty. But Calyste was too much in love, 
 he was too much absorbed to observe the change in Beatrix, 
 and satisfy her by opening up fresh veins ; he was very color- 
 less in the reflected light of the previous evening and could 
 not give the greedy Beatrix the smallest excitement. A great 
 love is a credit account open to such voracious drafts on it 
 that the moment of bankruptcy is inevitable. 
 
 In spite of the weariness of this day — the day when a 
 woman is bored by her lover ! — Beatrix shuddered with fears 
 as she thought of a duel between la Palferine, the successor 
 of Maxime de Trailles, and Calyste du Guenic, a brave man 
 without brag. She therefore hesitated to see the young 
 Count any more ; but the knot was cut by a simple incident. 
 Beatrix had a third share in a box at the Italiens — a dark box 
 on the pit tier where she might not be seen. For some few days 
 Calyste had been so bold as to accompany the Marquise and 
 sit behind her, timing their arrival late enough to attract no 
 attention. Beatrix was always one of the first to leave before 
 the end of the last act, and Calyste escorted her, keeping an 
 eye on her, though old Antoine was, as usual, in waiting on 
 his mistress. 
 
 Maxime and la Palferine studied these tactics, dictated by 
 the proprieties, by the love of concealment characteristic of 
 the "Eternal Baby," and also by a dread that weighs on 
 every woman who, having once been a constellation of fashion, 
 has fallen for love from her rank in the zodiac. She then 
 fears humiliation as a worse agony than death ; but this agony 
 
BE A TRIX. 343 
 
 of\pride, this shipwreck, which women who have kept their 
 place on Olympus inflict on those who have fallen, came upon 
 her, by Maxime's contriving, under the most horrible circum- 
 stances. 
 
 At a performance of "Lucia," which ended, as is well 
 known, by one of Rubini's greatest triumphs, Madame de 
 Rochefide, before she was called by Antoine, came out from 
 the corridor into the vestibule of the theatre, where the stairs 
 were crowded with pretty women, grouped on the steps, or 
 standing in knots till their servants should bring up their 
 carriages. Beatrix was at once recognized by all ; a whisper 
 ran through every group, rising to a murmur. In the twink- 
 ling of an eye every woman vanished ; the Marquise was left 
 alone as if plague-stricken. Calyste, seeing his wife on one 
 of the staircases, dared not join the outcast, and it was in 
 vain that Beatrix twice gave him a tearful look, an entreaty to 
 come to her support. At that moment la Palferine, elegant, 
 lordly, and charming, quitted two other women, and came, 
 with a bow, to talk to the Marquise. 
 
 " Take my arm and come defiantly with me ; I can find 
 your carriage," said he. 
 
 "Will you finish the evening with me?" she replied, as 
 she got into her carriage and made room for him by her side. 
 
 La Palferine said to his groom, " Follow madame's car- 
 riage," and got in with Madame de Rochefide, to Calyste's 
 amazement. He was left standing, planted on his feet as 
 though they were made of lead, for it was on seeing him 
 looking pale and blank that Beatrix had invited the young 
 Count to accompany her. Every dove is a Robespierre in 
 white feathers. 
 
 Three carriages arrived together at the Rue de Courcelles 
 with lightning swiftness — Calyste's, la Palferine's, and the 
 Marquise's. 
 
 " So you are here ? " said Beatrix, on going into her draw- 
 ing-room leaning on the young Count's arm, and finding 
 
344 BEATRIX. 
 
 Calyste already there, his horse having out-distanced .the 
 other two carriages. 
 
 " So you are acquainted with this gentleman ! " said Calyste 
 to Beatrix with suppressed fury. 
 
 " Monsieur le Comte de la Palferine was introduced to me 
 by Nathan ten days ago," said Beatrix; " and you, monsieur, 
 have known me for four years " 
 
 "And I am ready, madame," said la Palferine, " to make 
 Madame d'Espard repent of having been the first to turn her 
 back on you — down to her grandchildren " 
 
 " Oh, it was she ! " cried Beatrix. " I will pay her out." 
 
 " If you want to be revenged, you must win back your 
 husband, but I am prepared to bring him back to you," said 
 la Palferine in her ear. 
 
 The conversation thus begun was carried on until two in 
 the morning, without giving Calyste an opportunity of speak- 
 ing two words apart to Beatrix, who constantly kept his rage 
 in subjection by her glances. La Palferine, who was not in 
 love with her, was as superior in good taste, wit, and charm 
 as Calyste was beneath himself; writhing on his seat like a 
 worm cut in two, and thrice starting to his feet with an im- 
 pulse to stop la Palferine. The third time that Calyste flew 
 at his rival, the Count said, "Are you in pain, monsieur?" 
 in a tone that made Calyste sit down on the nearest chair, 
 and remain as immovable as an image. 
 
 The Marquise chatted with the light ease of a Celimene, 
 ignoring Calyste's presence. La Palferine was so supremely 
 clever as to depart on a last witty speech, leaving the two 
 lovers at war. 
 
 Thus, by Maxime's skill, the flames of discord were raging 
 in the divided households of Monsieur and Madame de 
 Rochefide. 
 
 On the morrow, having heard from la Palferine, at the 
 Jockey-Club, where the young Count was playing whist with 
 great profit, of the success of the scene he had plotted, Maxime 
 
BE A TRIX. 345 
 
 went to the Hotel Schontz to ascertain how Aurelie was man- 
 aging her affairs. 
 
 "My dear fellow," cried Madame Schontz, laughing as she 
 saw him, " I am at my wits' end. I am closing my career 
 with the discovery that it is a misfortune to be clever." 
 
 "Explain your meaning. " 
 
 " In the first place, my dear friend, I kept my Arthur for a 
 week on a regimen of kicking his shins, with the most patri- 
 otic old stories and the most unpleasant discipline known in 
 our profession. 'You are ill,' said he with fatherly mild- 
 ness, ' for I have never been anything but kind to you, and I 
 perfectly adore you.' 'You have one fault, my dear,' said I; 
 'you bore me.' 'Well, but have you not all the cleverest 
 men and the handsomest young fellows in Paris to amuse 
 you ? ' said the poor man. I was shut up. Then I felt that I 
 loved him." 
 
 " Hah ! " said Maxime. 
 
 " What is to be done ? These ways are too much for us ; it 
 is impossible to resist them. Then I changed the stop ; I 
 made eyes at that wild boar of a lawyer, my future husband, 
 as great a sheep now as Arthur ; I made him sit there in Roche- 
 fide's armchair, and I thought him a perfect fool. How 
 bored I was ! But, of course, I had to keep Fabien there 
 that we might be discovered together " 
 
 " Well," cried Maxime, " get on with your story ! When 
 Rochefide found you together, what next?" 
 
 " You would never guess, my good fellow. By your in- 
 structions the banns are published, the marriage-contract is 
 being drawn, Notre-Dame de Lorette is out of court. When 
 it is a case of matrimony, something may be paid on account. 
 When he found us together, Fabien and me, poor Arthur stole 
 off on tiptoe to the dining-room, and began growling and 
 clearing his throat and knocking the chairs about. That 
 great gaby Fabien, to whom I cannot tell everything, was 
 frightened, and that, my dear Maxime, is the point we have 
 
346 BEATRIX. 
 
 reached. Why, if Arthur should find the couple of us some 
 morning on coming into my room, he is capable of saying, 
 ' Have you had a pleasant night, children ? ' " 
 
 Maxime nodded his head, and for some minutes sat twirling 
 his cane. 
 
 "I know the sort of man," said he. "This is what you 
 must do ; there- is no help for it but to throw Arthur out the 
 window and keep the door tightly shut. You must begin 
 again the same scene with Fabien " 
 
 " How intolerable ! For, after all, you see, the sacrament 
 has not yet blessed me with virtue " 
 
 "You must contrive to catch Arthur's eye when he finds 
 you together," Maxime went on; "if he gets angry, there is 
 an end of the matter. If he only growls as before, there is 
 yet more an end of it." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "Well, you must be angry; you must say, 'I thought you 
 loved and valued me ; but you have ceased to care for me ; 
 
 you feel no jealousy ' but you know it all, chapter and 
 
 verse. ' Under such circumstances Maxime ' (drag me in) 
 ' would kill his man on the spot ' (and cry). ' And Fabien ' 
 (make him ashamed of himself by comparing him with Fabien) 
 — * Fabien would have a dagger ready to stab you to the heart. 
 That is what I call love ! There, go ! Good-night, good-by ! 
 Take back your house; I am going to marry Fabien. He 
 will give me his name, he will ! He has thrown over his old 
 mother ! ' In short, you " 
 
 " Of course, of course! I will be magnificent!" cried 
 Madame Schontz. " Ah, Maxime ! There will never be but 
 one Maxime, as there never was but one de Marsay." 
 
 "La Palferine is greater than I," said de Trailles modestly. 
 " He is getting on famously." 
 
 "He has a tongue, but you have backbone and a grip. 
 How many people you have kept going ! How many you 
 have doubled up ! " 
 
BE A TRIX. 347 
 
 " La Palferine has every qualification ; he is deep and well 
 informed, while I am ignorant," replied Maxime. "I have 
 seen Rastignac, who came to terms at once with the keeper of 
 the seals. Fabien will be made president of the court and 
 officer of the Legion of Honor after a year's probation." 
 
 " I will take up religion," replied Madame Schontz, em- 
 phasizing the phrase so as to win an approving look from 
 Maxime. 
 
 " Priests are worth a hundred of us ! " said Maxime. 
 
 "Really?" said Aurelie. "Then I may find some one to 
 talk to in a country town. I have begun my part. Fabien 
 has already told his mother that grace has dawned on me, and 
 he has bewitched the good woman with my million and his 
 presidency ; she agrees that we are to live with her ; she asked 
 for a portrait of me and has sent me hers ; if Love were to 
 look at it, he would fall backward. Go then, Maxime; I 
 will demolish the poor man this evening. It goes to my 
 heart." 
 
 Two days later la Palferine and Maxime met at the door of 
 the Jockey-Club. 
 
 "It is done," said Charles-Edouard. 
 
 The words, containing a whole horrible and terrible drama, 
 such as vengeance often carries out, made the Comte de 
 Trailles smile. 
 
 " We shall have all de Rochefide's jeremiads," said Maxime, 
 "for you and Aurelie have finished together. Aurelie has 
 turned Arthur out of doors, and now we must get hold of him. 
 He is to give three hundred thousand francs to Madame du 
 Ronceret and return to his wife. We will prove to him that 
 Beatrix is superior to Aurelie." 
 
 "We have at least ten days before us," said Charles- 
 Edouard sapiently, "and not too much in all conscience; 
 for now I know the Marquise, and the poor man will be hand- 
 somely fleeced." 
 
348 BEATRIX. 
 
 "What will you do when the bomb bursts?" asked Max- 
 ime de Trailles. 
 
 " We can always be clever when we have time to think it 
 out ; I am grand when I am able to prepare for it." 
 
 The two gamblers went into the drawing-room together, 
 and found the Marquis de Rochefide looking two years older; 
 he had no stays on ; he had sacrificed his elegance ; his beard 
 had grown. 
 
 "Well, my dear Marquis?" said Maxime. 
 
 "Oh, my dear fellow, my life is broken " and for ten 
 
 minutes Arthur talked and Maxime gravely listened; he 
 was thinking of his marriage, which was to take place a week 
 hence. 
 
 " My dear Arthur, I advised you of the only means I knew 
 of to keep Aurelie, and you did not choose " 
 
 "What means?" 
 
 "Did I not advise you to go to supper with Antonia?" 
 
 " Quite true. How can I help it? I love her. And you, 
 you make love as Grisier fences." 
 
 "Listen to me, Arthur; give her three hundred thousand 
 francs for her little house, and I promise you I will find you 
 something better. I will speak to you again of the unknown 
 fair one by-and-by ; I see d'Ajuda, who wants to say two 
 words to me." 
 
 And Maxime left the inconsolable man to talk to the rep- 
 resentative of the family needing consolation. 
 
 " My dear fellow," said the other Marquis in an undertone, 
 "the Duchess is in despair; Calyste has quietly packed up 
 and procured a passport. Sabine wants to follow the fugi- 
 tives, catch Beatrix, and claw her. She is expecting another 
 child ; and the whole thing looks rather murderous, for she 
 has gone quite openly and bought pistols." 
 
 "Tell the Duchess that Madame de Rochefide is not going, 
 and within a fortnight the whole thing will be settled. Now, 
 your hand on it, d'Ajuda. Neither you nor I have said any- 
 
BE A TRIX. 349 
 
 thing or known anything. We shall admire the effects of 
 chance." 
 
 " The Duchess has already made me swear secrecy on the 
 Gospels and the cross." 
 
 " You will receive my wife a month hence? " 
 
 " With pleasure." 
 
 "Everybody will be satisfied," replied Maxime. "Only 
 warn the Duchess that something is about to happen which 
 will delay her departure for Italy for six weeks ; it concerns 
 Monsieur du Guenic. You will know all about it later." 
 
 "What is it?" asked d'Ajuda, who was looking at la 
 Palferine. 
 
 " Socrates said before his death, ' We owe a cock to ^Es- 
 culapius.' But your brother-in-law will be let off for the 
 comb," replied la Palferine without hesitation. 
 
 For ten days Calyste endured the burden of a woman's 
 anger, all the more implacable because it was seconded by a 
 real passion. Beatrix felt that form of love so roughly but 
 truly described to the Duchess by Maxime de Trailles. Per- 
 haps there is no highly organized being that does not expe- 
 rience this overwhelming passion once in a lifetime. The 
 Marquise felt herself quelled by a superior force, by a young 
 man who was not impressed by her rank, who, being of as 
 noble birth as herself, could look at her with a calm and pow- 
 erful eye, and from whom her greatest feminine efforts could 
 scarcely extract a smile of admiration. Finally, she was 
 crushed by a tyrant, who always left her bathed in tears, 
 deeply hurt, and believing herself wronged. Charles-Edouard 
 played the same farce on Madame de Rochefide that she had 
 been playing these six months on Calyste. 
 
 Since the scene of her mortification at the Italiens, Beatrix 
 had adhered to one formula — 
 
 " You preferred the world and your wife to me, so you do 
 not love me. If you wish to prove that you do love me, 
 sacrifice your wife and the world. Give up Sabine, leave 
 
350 BE A TRIX. 
 
 her, and let us go to live in Switzerland, in Italy, or in 
 Germany." 
 
 Justifying herself by this cool ultimatum, she had estab- 
 lished the sort of blockade which women carry into effect by 
 cold looks, scornful shrugs, and a face like a stone citadel. 
 She believed herself rid of Calyste ; she thought he would 
 never venture on a breach with the Grandlieus. To give up 
 Sabine, to whom Mademoiselle des Touches had given hex 
 fortune, meant poverty for him. 
 
 However, Calyste, mad with despair, had secretly pro- 
 cured a passport, and begged his mother to forward him a 
 considerable sum. While waiting for the money to reach 
 him, he kept watch over Beatrix, himself a victim to the 
 jealousy of a Breton. At last, nine days after the fateful 
 communication made by la Palferine to Maxime at the club, 
 the Baron, to whom his mother had sent thirty thousand 
 francs, flew to the Rue de Courcelles, determined to force the 
 blockade, to turn out la Palferine, and to leave Paris with his 
 idol appeased. 
 
 This was one of those fearful alternatives when a woman 
 who has preserved a fragment of self-respect may sink for ever 
 into the depths of vice, but may, on the other hand, return 
 to virtue. Hitherto Madame de Rochefide had regarded 
 herself as a virtuous woman, whose heart had been invaded 
 by two passions ; but to love Charles-Edouard, and allow her- 
 self to be loved by Calyste, would wreck her self-esteem ; for 
 where falsehood begins, infamy begins. She had granted 
 rights to Calyste, and no human power could hinder the 
 Breton from throwing himself at her feet and watering them 
 with the tears of abject repentance. Many persons wonder to 
 see the icy insensibility under which women smother their 
 passions ; but if they could not thus blot out the past, life 
 for them would be bereft of dignity ; they could never escape 
 from the inevitable collusion to which they had once suc- 
 cumbed. 
 
BE A TRIX. 351 
 
 In her entirely new position Beatrix would have been saved 
 if la Palferine had come to her; but old Antoine's alertness 
 was her ruin. 
 
 On hearing a carriage stop at the door, she exclaimed to 
 Calyste, "Here are visitors!" and she hurried away to 
 prevent a castastrophe. 
 
 Antoine, a prudent man, replied to Charles-Edouard, who 
 had called solely to hear these very words, " Madame is gone 
 out." 
 
 When Beatrix heard from the old servant that the young 
 Count had called, and what he had been told, she said, 
 "Quite right," and returned to the drawing-room, saying to 
 herself, " I will be a nun ! " 
 
 Calyste, who had made so bold as to open the window, 
 caught sight of his rival. 
 
 " Who was it ? " he asked. 
 
 " I do not know ; Antoine has not come up yet." 
 
 " It was la Palferine " 
 
 "Very possibly." 
 
 "You love him, and that is why you find fault with me. 
 I saw him ! " 
 
 "You saw him?" 
 
 "I opened the window." 
 
 Beatrix dropped half-dead on the sofa. Then she tried to 
 temporize to save the future ; she put off their departure for 
 ten days on the plea of business, and vowed to herself that 
 she would close her door against Calyste if only she could 
 pacify la Palferine, for these are the terrible consequences, 
 the horrible compromises and burning torments that underlie 
 lives that have gone off the rails on which the great train of 
 society runs. 
 
 As soon as Beatrix was alone she felt so miserable, so deeply 
 humiliated, that she went to bed; she was ill; that fearful 
 struggle that rent her heart seemed to leave a horrible reac- 
 tion, and she sent for the doctor ; but at the same time she 
 
352 BEATRIX. 
 
 dispatched to la Palferine the following note, in which she 
 avenged herself on Calyste with a sort of frenzy : 
 
 " Come to see me, my friend, I am in desperation. An- 
 toine turned you away when your visit would have put an end 
 to one of the most horrible nightmares of my life by rescuing 
 me from a man I hate, whom I hope never to see again. I 
 love no one on earth but you, and I never shall love any one 
 but you, though I am so unhappy as not to please you so much 
 as I could wish " 
 
 She covered four pages, which, having begun thus, ended 
 in a rhapsody, far too poetical to be reproduced in print, in 
 which Beatrix so effectually compromised herself that in con- 
 clusion she said — 
 
 "Am I not wholly at your mercy? Ah, no price would be 
 too great for me to prove how dearly you are loved ! " 
 
 And she signed her name, a thing she had never done for 
 either Calyste or Conti. 
 
 On the following day, when the young Count called on the 
 Marquise, she was taking a bath. Antoine begged him to 
 wait. But he dismissed Calyste in his turn, when, starving with 
 passion, he also came early; and la Palferine could see him as 
 he got into his carriage again in despair. 
 
 "Oh, Charles," said the Marquise, coming into the draw- 
 ing-room, " you have ruined me!" 
 
 "I know it, madame," replied he coolly. "You swore 
 that you loved me alone, you offered to give me a letter in 
 which you will set down the reasons you would have had for 
 killing yourself, so that in the event of your being unfaithful 
 to me I might poison you without fear of human justice — as if 
 superior souls needed to resort to poison to avenge themselves ! 
 You wrote, ' No price would be too great for me to prove how 
 dearly you are loved ! ' Well, I find a contradiction between 
 these closing words of your letter and your speech, ' You have 
 
BEA TRIX. 353 
 
 ruined me.' I will know now whether you have had the 
 courage to break with du Guenic." 
 
 " You are revenged on him beforehand," said she, throw- 
 ing her arms round his neck. "And that matter is enough 
 to bind you and me for ever " 
 
 " Madame," said the Prince of bohemia coldly, " if you 
 desire my friendship, I consent ; but there are condi- 
 tions " 
 
 "Conditions?" 
 
 "Yes, conditions — as follows: You must be reconciled with 
 Monsieur de Rochefide, resume the honors of your position, 
 return to your fine house in the Rue d'Anjou — you will be one 
 of the queens of Paris. You can achieve this by making 
 Rochefide play a part in politics and guiding your conduct 
 with such skill and tenacity as Madame d'Espard has dis- 
 played. This is the position which any woman must fill whom 
 I am to honor with my devotion " 
 
 "But you forget that Monsieur de Rochefide's consent is 
 necessary." 
 
 " Oh, my dear child," replied la Palferine, "we have pre- 
 pared him for it. I have pledged my honor as a gentleman 
 that you were worth all the Schontzes of the Quartier Saint- 
 Georges put together, and you owe it to my honor " 
 
 For eight days, every day, Calyste called on Beatrix and 
 was invariably sent away by Antoine, who put on a grave face 
 and assured him, " Madame la Marquise is seriously ill." 
 
 From thence Calyste rushed off to la Palferine, whose ser- 
 vant always explained, " Monsieur le Comte is gone hunting." 
 And each time Calyste left a letter for the Count. 
 
 At last, on the ninth day, Calyste, in reply to a note from 
 la Palferine fixing a time for an explanation, found him at 
 home, but with him Maxime de Trailles, to whom the younger 
 rake wished, no doubt, to give proof of his abilities by getting 
 him to witness the scene. 
 23 
 
354 BEATRIX. 
 
 11 Monsieur le Baron," said Charles-Edouard quietly, " here 
 are the six notes you have done me the honor of writing me. 
 They are unopened, just as you sent them ; I knew beforehand 
 what might be in them when I heard that you had been seek- 
 ing me everywhere since the day when I looked at you out of 
 the window, while you were at the door of a house where, 
 on the previous day, I had been at the door while you were 
 at the window. I thought it best to remain ignorant of an 
 ill-judged challenge. Between you and me, you have too 
 much good taste to owe a woman a grudge because she has 
 ceased to love you. And to fight your preferred rival is a 
 bad way to reinstate yourself. 
 
 "Also, in the present case, your letters were invalidated, 
 null, and void, as lawyers say, in consequence of a radical 
 error : you have too much good sense to quarrel with a hus- 
 band for taking back his wife. Monsieur de Rochefide feels 
 that the Marquise's position is undignified. You will no 
 longer find Madame de Rochefide in the Rue de Courcelles ; 
 six months hence, next winter, you will see her in her hus- 
 band's home. You very rashly thrust yourself into the midst 
 of a reconciliation between a married couple, to which you 
 yourself gave rise by failing to shelter Madame de Rochefide 
 from the mortification she endured at the opera-house. As 
 we left, Beatrix, to whom I had already brought some friendly 
 advances on her husband's part, took me in her carriage, and 
 her first words were, ' Go and bring Arthur ! ' " 
 
 "Oh, heavens!" cried Calyste, "she was right; I had 
 failed in my devotion " 
 
 " But, unfortunately, monsieur, poor Arthur was living with 
 one of those dreadful women — that Madame Schontz, who for 
 a long time had expected every hour to find herself deserted. 
 Madame Schontz, who, on the strength of Beatrix's complex- 
 ion, cherished a desire to see herself some day the Marquise 
 de Rochefide, was furious when she saw her castles in the air 
 fallen. Those women, monsieur, will lose an eye if they can 
 
BEATRIX. 355 
 
 spoil two for an enemy ; la Schontz, who has just left Paris, 
 has been the instrument of spoiling six ! And if I had been 
 so rash as to love Beatrix, the sum-total would have been 
 eight. You, monsieur, must have discovered that you need 
 an oculist." 
 
 Maxime could not help smiling at the change in Calyste's 
 face; he turned pale as his eyes were opened to the situation. 
 
 " Would you believe, Monsieur le Baron, that that wretched 
 woman has consented to marry the man who furnished her 
 with means of revenge ? Oh ! women ! You understand now 
 why Beatrix should shut herself up with Arthur for a few 
 months at Nogent-sur-Marne, where they have a charming 
 little house ; they will recover their sight there. Meanwhile 
 their house will be entirely redecorated ; the Marquise means 
 to display a princely style of splendor. When a man is sin- 
 cerely in love with so noble a woman, so great, so exquisite, 
 the victim of conjugal devotion, as soon as she has the courage 
 to return to her duties as a wife, the part of those who adore 
 her as you do, who admire her as I do, is to remain her friends 
 when they can be nothing more. 
 
 " You will forgive me for having thought it well to invite 
 Monsieur de Trailles to be present at this explanation, but I 
 was particularly anxious to make this all perfectly clear. For 
 my part, I especially wished to assure you that, though I ad- 
 mire Madame de Rochefide's cleverness as a woman, she is to 
 me supremely odious." 
 
 " And that is what our fairest dreams, our celestial loves end 
 in ! " said Calyste, overwhelmed by so many revelations and 
 disenchantments. 
 
 " In a fish's tail," cried Maxime, " or, which is worse, in 
 an apothecary's gallipot ! I have never known a first love 
 that did not end idiotically. Ah, Monsieur le Baron, what- 
 ever there may be that is heavenly in man finds its nourish- 
 ment in heaven alone ! This is the excuse for us rakes. I, 
 monsieur, have gone deeply into the question, and, as you see, 
 
356 BEATRIX. 
 
 I am just married. I shall be faithful to my wife, and I 
 would urge you to return to Madame du Guenic — but — three 
 months hence. 
 
 " Do' not regret Beatrix; she is a pattern of those vain 
 natures, devoid of energy, but flirts out of vainglory — a 
 Madame d'Espard without political faculty, a woman devoid 
 of heart and brain, frivolous in wickedness. Madame de 
 Rochefide loves no one but Madame de Rochefide ; she would 
 have involved you in an irremediable quarrel with Madame du 
 Guenic, and then have thrown you over without a qualm ; in 
 fact, she is as inadequate for vice as for virtue." 
 
 "I do not agree with you, Maxime," said la Palferine ; 
 " she will be the most delightful mistress of a great house in 
 all Paris." 
 
 Calyste did not leave the house without shaking hands with 
 Charles-Edouard and Maxime de Trailles, thanking them for 
 having cured him of his illusions. 
 
 Three days later the Duchesse de Grandlieu, who had not 
 seen her daughter Sabine since the morning of the great con- 
 ference, called one morning and found Calyste in his bath- 
 room. Sabine was sewing at some new finery for her baby- 
 clothes. 
 
 " Well, how are you children getting on ? " asked the kind 
 Duchess. 
 
 " As well as possible, dear mamma," replied Sabine, look- 
 ing at her mother with eyes bright with happiness. "We 
 have acted out the fable of the Two Pigeons — that is all." 
 
 Calyste held out his hand to his wife and pressed hers ten- 
 derly. 
 
 1 838-1 844. 
 
THE PURSE. 
 
 Translated by Clara Bell. 
 
 To Sqfka. 
 
 *' 'Have you observed, mademoiselle, that the painters 
 and sculptors of the Middle Ages, when they placed 
 two figures in adoration, one on each side of a fair 
 Saint, never failed to give them a family likeness ? 
 When you here see your name among those that are 
 dear to me, and under whose auspices I place my 
 works, remember that touching harmony, and you will 
 see in this not so much an act of homage as an expres- 
 sion of the brotherly affection of your devoted servant, 
 
 "De Balzac." 
 
 For souls to whom effusiveness is easy there is a delicious 
 hour that falls when it is not yet night, but is no longer day ; 
 the twilight gleam throws softened lights or tricksy reflections 
 on every object, and favors a dreamy mood which vaguely 
 weds itself to the play of light and shade. The silence which 
 generally prevails at that time makes it particularly dear to 
 artists, who grow contemplative, stand a few paces back from 
 the pictures on which they can no longer work, and pass 
 judgment on them, rapt by the subject whose most recondite 
 meaning then flashes on the inner eye of genius. He who 
 has never stood pensive by a friend's side in such an hour of 
 poetic dreaming can hardly understand its inexpressible sooth- 
 ingness. Favored by the clear-obscure, the material skill 
 employed by art to produce illusion entirely disappears. If 
 the work is a picture, the figures represented seem to speak 
 and walk ; the shade is shadow, the light is day ; the flesh 
 
 (357) 
 
858 THE PURSE. 
 
 lives, eyes move, blood flows in their veins, and stuffs have 
 a changing sheen. Imagination helps the realism of every 
 detail, and only sees the beauties of the work. At that hour 
 illusion reigns despotically ; perhaps it awakes at nightfall ! 
 Is not illusion a sort of night to the mind, which we people 
 with dreams? Illusion then unfolds its wings, it bears the 
 soul aloft to the world of fancies, a world full of voluptuous 
 imaginings, where the artist forgets the real world, yesterday 
 and the morrow, the future — everything down to its miseries, 
 the good and the evil alike. 
 
 At this magic hour a young painter, a man of talent, who 
 saw in art nothing but Art itself, was perched on a step-ladder 
 which helped him to work at a large, high painting, now 
 nearly finished. Criticising himself, honestly admiring him- 
 self, floating on the current of his thoughts, he then lost 
 himself in one of those meditative moods which ravish and 
 elevate the soul, soothe it, and comfort it. His reverie had 
 no doubt lasted a long time. Night fell. Whether he meant 
 to come down from his perch, or whether he made some ill- 
 judged movement, believing himself to be on the floor — the 
 event did not allow of his remembering exactly the cause of 
 his accident — he fell, his head struck a footstool, he lost con- 
 sciousness and lay motionless during a space of time of which 
 he knew not the length. 
 
 A sweet voice aroused him from the stunned condition into 
 which he had sunk. When he opened his eyes the flash of a 
 bright light made him close them again immediately ; but 
 through the mist that veiled his senses he heard the whisper- 
 ing of two women, and felt two young, two timid hands on 
 which his head was resting. He soon recovered conscious- 
 ness, and by the light of an old-fashioned argand lamp he 
 could make out the most charming girl's face he had ever 
 seen, one of those heads which are often supposed to be a 
 freak of the brush, but which to him suddenly realized the 
 theories of the ideal beauty which every artist creates for him- 
 
THE PURSE. 35$ 
 
 self, and whence his art proceeds. The features of the un- 
 known belonged, so to say, to the refined and delicate type 
 of Prudhon's school, but had also the poetic sentiment which 
 Girodet gave to the inventions of his phantasy. The fresh- 
 ness of the temples, the regular arch of the eyebrows, the 
 purity of outline, the virginal innocence so plainly stamped 
 on every feature of her countenance, made the girl a perfect 
 creature. Her figure was slight and graceful, and frail in 
 form. Her dress, though simple and neat, revealed neither 
 wealth nor penury. 
 
 As he recovered his senses, the painter gave expression to 
 his admiration by a look of surprise, and stammered some 
 confused thanks. He found a handkerchief pressed to his 
 forehead, and above the smell peculiar to a studio, he 
 recognized the strong odor of ether, applied no doubt to 
 revive him from his fainting fit. Finally he saw an old 
 woman, looking like a marquise of the old school, who held 
 the lamp and was advising the young girl. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the younger woman in reply to one of 
 the questions put by the painter during the few minutes when 
 he was still under the influence of the vagueness that the 
 shock had produced in his ideas, " my mother and I heard 
 the noise of your fall on the floor, and we fancied we heard 
 a groan. The silence following on the crash alarmed us, 
 and we hurried up. Finding the key in the latch, we happily 
 took the liberty of entering, and we found you lying motion- 
 less on the ground. My mother went to fetch what was 
 needed to bathe your head and revive you. You have cut 
 your forehead — there. Do you feel it?" 
 
 " Yes, I do now," he replied. 
 
 "Oh, it will be nothing," said the old mother. "Hap- 
 pily your head rested against this lay-figure." 
 
 "I feel infinitely better," replied the painter. "I need 
 nothing further but a hackney cab to take me home. The 
 porter's wife will go for one." 
 
360 THE PURSE. 
 
 He tried to repeat his thanks to the two strangers ; but at 
 each sentence the elder lady interrupted him, saying, " To- 
 morrow, monsieur, pray be careful to put on leeches or to be 
 bled, and drink a few cups of something healing. A fall may 
 be dangerous." 
 
 The young girl stole a look at the painter and at the 
 pictures in the studio. Her expression and her glances 
 revealed perfect propriety ; her curiosity seemed rather ab- 
 sence of mind, and her eyes seemed to speak the interest 
 which women feel, with the most engaging spontaneity, in 
 everything which causes us suffering. The two strangers 
 seemed to forget the painter's works in the painter's mis- 
 hap. When he had reassured them as to his condition 
 they left, looking at him with an anxiety that was equally 
 free from insistence and from familiarity, without asking 
 any indiscreet questions, or trying to incite him to any 
 wish to visit them. Their proceedings all bore the hall- 
 mark of natural refinement and good taste. Their noble 
 and simple manners at first made no great impression on 
 the painter, but subsequently, as he recalled all the details 
 of the incident, he was greatly struck by them. 
 
 When they reached the floor beneath that occupied as 
 the painter's studio, the old lady gently observed, "Ade- 
 laide, you left the door open." 
 
 '•'That was to come to my assistance," said the painter, 
 with a grateful smile. 
 
 "You came down just now, mother," replied the young 
 girl, with a blush. 
 
 " Would you like us to accompany you all the way down 
 stairs?" asked the mother. "The stairs are dark." 
 
 "No, thank you, indeed, madame; I am much better." 
 
 "Hold tightly by the rail." - 
 
 The two women remained on the landing to light the 
 young man, listening to the sound of his steps as he de- 
 scended the stairs. 
 
THE PURSE. 361 
 
 In order to set forth clearly all the exciting and unex- 
 pected interest this scene might have for the young painter, 
 it must be told that he had only a few days since estab- 
 lished his studio in the attics of this house, situated in the 
 darkest and, therefore, the most muddy part of the Rue de 
 Suresnes, almost opposite the church of the Madeleine, and 
 quite close to his rooms in the Rue des Champs-Elysees. 
 The fame his talent had won him having made him one of 
 the artists most dear to his country, he was beginning to 
 feel free from want, and, to use his own expression, was 
 enjoying his last privations. Instead of going to his work 
 in one of the studios near the city gates, where the mod- 
 erate rents had hitherto been in proportion to his humble 
 earnings, he had gratified a wish that was new every morning, 
 by sparing himself a long walk, and the loss of much time, 
 now more valuable than ever. 
 
 No man in the world would have inspired feelings of a 
 greater interest than Hippolyte Schinner if he would ever 
 have consented to make acquaintance ; but he did not lightly 
 intrust to others the secrets of his life. He was the idol 
 of a necessitous mother, who had brought him up at the 
 cost of the severest privations. Mademoiselle Schinner, the 
 daughter of an Alsatian farmer, had never been married. Her 
 tender soul had been cruelly crushed, long ago, by a rich 
 man, who did not pride himself on any great delicacy in his 
 love affairs. The day when, as a young girl, in all the radi- 
 ance of her beauty and all the triumph of her life, she suffered, 
 at the cost of her heart and her sweet illusions, the disen- 
 chantment which falls on us so slowly and yet so quickly — 
 for we try to postpone as long as possible our belief in evil, 
 and it seems to come too soon — that day was a whole age of 
 reflection, and it was also a day of religious thought and 
 resignation. She refused the alms of the man who had be- 
 trayed her, renounced the world, and made a glory of her 
 shame. She gave herself up entirely to her motherly love, 
 
362 THE PURSE. 
 
 seeking in it all her joys in exchange for the social pleasures 
 to which she bid farewell. She lived by work, saving up a 
 treasure in her son. And, in after years, a day, an hour, 
 repaid her amply for the long and weary sacrifices of her 
 indigence. 
 
 At the last exhibition her son had received the Cross of the 
 Legion of Honor. The newspapers, unanimous in hailing an 
 unknown genius, still rang with sincere praises. Artists 
 themselves acknowledged Schinner as a master, and dealers 
 covered his canvasses with gold-pieces. At five-and-twenty 
 Hippolyte Schinner, to whom his mother had transmitted her 
 woman's soul, understood more clearly than ever his position 
 in the world. Anxious to restore to his mother the pleasures 
 of which society had so long robbed her, he lived for her, 
 hoping by the aid of fame and fortune to see her one day 
 happy, rich, respected, and surrounded by men of mark. 
 Schinner had therefore chosen his friends among the most 
 honorable and distinguished men. Fastidious in the selection 
 of his intimates, he desired to raise still further a position 
 which his talent had placed high. The work to which he had 
 devoted himself from boyhood, by compelling him to dwell 
 in solitude — the mother of great thoughts — had left him the 
 beautiful beliefs which grace the early days of life. His 
 adolescent soul was not closed to any of the thousand bashful 
 emotions by which a young man is a being apart, whose heart 
 abounds in joys, in poetry, in virginal hopes, puerile in the 
 eyes of men of the world, but deep because they are single- 
 hearted. 
 
 He was endowed with the gentle and polite manners which 
 speak to the soul, and fascinate even those who do not under- 
 stand them. He was well-made. His voice, coming from 
 his heart, stirred that of others to noble sentiments, and bore 
 witness to his true modesty by a certain ingenuousness of 
 tone. Those who saw him felt drawn to him by that attrac- 
 tion of the moral nature which men of science are happily 
 
THE PURSE. 363 
 
 unable to analyze ; they would detect in it some phenomenon 
 of galvanism, or the current of I know not what fluid, and 
 express our sentiments in a formula of ratios of oxygen and 
 electricity. 
 
 These details will perhaps explain to strong-minded persons 
 and to men of fashion why, in the absence of the porter whom 
 he had sent to the end of the Rue de la Madeleine to call him 
 a coach, Hippolyte Schinner did not ask the man's wife any 
 questions concerning the two women whose kindness of heart 
 had shown itself in his behalf. But though he replied Yes or 
 No to the inquiries, natural under the circumstances, which 
 the good woman made as to his accident, and the friendly 
 intervention of the tenants occupying the fourth floor, he 
 could not hinder her from following the instinct of her 
 kind; she mentioned the two strangers, speaking of them as 
 prompted by the interests of her policy and the subterranean 
 opinions of the porter's lodge. 
 
 "Ah," said she, "they were, no doubt, Mademoiselle 
 Leseigneur and her mother, who have lived here these four 
 years. We do not yet know exactly what these ladies do ; 
 in the morning, only till the hour of noon, an old woman who 
 is half deaf, and who never speaks any more than a wall, comes 
 in to help them ; in the evening, two or three old gentlemen, 
 with loops of ribbon, like you, monsieur, come to see them, 
 and often stay very late. One of them comes in a carriage 
 with servants, and is said to have sixty thousand francs a year. 
 However, they are very quiet tenants, as you are, monsieur; 
 and economical! they live on nothing, and as soon as a letter 
 is brought they pay for it. It is a queer thing, monsieur, the 
 mother's name is not the same as the daughter's. Ah, but 
 when they go for a walk in the Tuileries, mademoiselle is very 
 smart, and she never goes out but she is followed by a lot of 
 young men ; but she shuts the door in their faces, and she is 
 quite right. The proprietor would never allow " 
 
 The coach having come, Hippolyte heard no more, and 
 
364 THE PURSE. 
 
 went home. His mother, to whom he related his adventure, 
 dressed his wound afresh, and would not allow him to go to 
 the studio next day. After taking advice, various treatments 
 were prescribed, and Hippolyte remained at home three days. 
 During this retirement his idle fancy recalled vividly, bit by 
 bit, the details of the scene that had ensued on his fainting fit. 
 The young girl's profile was clearly projected against the dark- 
 ness of his inward vision ; he saw once more the mother's 
 faded features, or he felt the touch of Adelaide's hands. He 
 remembered some gesture which at first had not greatly struck 
 him, but whose exquisite grace was thrown into relief by 
 memory ; then an attitude, or the tones of a melodious voice, 
 enhanced by the distance of remembrance, suddenly rose be- 
 fore him, as objects plunging to the bottom of deep waters 
 come back to the surface. 
 
 So, on the day when he could resume work, he went early 
 to his studio ; but the visit he undoubtedly had a right to pay 
 to his neighbors was the true cause of his haste ; he had already 
 forgotten the pictures he had begun. At the moment when a 
 passion throws off its swaddling clothes, inexplicable pleasures 
 are felt, known to those who have loved. So some readers 
 will understand why the painter mounted the stairs to the 
 fourth floor but slowly, and will be in the secret of the throbs 
 that followed each other so rapidly in his heart at the moment 
 when he saw the humble brown door of the rooms inhabited by 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur. This girl, whose name was not the 
 same as her mother's, had aroused the young painter's deepest 
 sympathies ; he chose to fancy some similarity between him- 
 self and her as to their position, and attributed to her misfor- 
 tunes of birth akin to his own. All the time he worked Hip- 
 polyte gave himself very willingly to thoughts of love, and 
 made a great deal of noise to compel the two ladies to think 
 of him as he was thinking of them. He stayed late at the 
 studio and dined there; then, at about seven o'clock, he went 
 down to call on his neighbors. 
 
THE PURSE. 365 
 
 No painter of manners has ventured to initiate us — perhaps 
 out of modesty — into the really curious privacy of certain 
 Parisian existences, into the secret of the dwellings whence 
 emerge such fresh and elegant toilets, such brilliant women, 
 who, rich on the surface, allow the signs of very doubtful 
 comfort to peep out in every part of their home. If, here, the 
 picture is too boldly drawn, if you find it tedious in places, do 
 not blame the description, which is, indeed, part and parcel 
 of my story ; for the appearance of the rooms inhabited by his 
 two neighbors had a great influence on the feelings and hopes 
 of Hippolyte Schinner. 
 
 The house belonged to one of those proprietors in whom 
 there is a foregone and profound horror of repairs and decora- 
 tion, one of the men who regard their position as Paris house- 
 owners as a business. In the vast chain of moral species, 
 these people hold a middle place between the miser and the 
 usurer. Optimists in their own interests, they are all faithful 
 to the Austrian status quo. If you speak of moving a cup- 
 board or a door, of opening the most indispensable air-hole, 
 their eyes flash, their bile rises, they rear like a frightened 
 horse. When the wind blows down a few chimney-pots they 
 are quite ill, and deprive themselves of an evening at the 
 Gymnase or the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, "on account of 
 repairs." Hippolyte, who had seen the performance gratis 
 of a comical scene with Monsieur Molineux, as concerning 
 certain decorative repairs in his studio, was not surprised to 
 see the dark, greasy paint, the oily stains, spots, and other 
 disagreeable accessories that varied the woodwork. And 
 these stigmata of poverty are not altogether devoid of poetry 
 in an artist's eyes. 
 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur herself opened the door. On 
 recognizing the young artist she bowed, and at the same time, 
 with Parisian adroitness and with the presence of mind that 
 pride can lend, turned round to shut a door in a glass par- 
 tition through which Hippolyte might have caught sight of 
 
 Z 
 
366 THE PURSE. 
 
 some linen hung by lines over patent ironing stoves, an old 
 camp-bed, some wood-embers, charcoal, irons, a filter, the 
 household crockery, and all the utensils familiar to a small 
 household. India-muslin curtains, fairly white, carefully 
 screened this lumber-room — a capharnaum, as the French 
 call such a domestic laboratory — which was lighted by win- 
 dows looking out on a neighboring yard. 
 
 Hippolyte, with the quick eye of an artist, saw the uses, 
 the furniture, the general effect and condition of this first 
 room, thus cut in half. The more honorable half, which 
 served both as anteroom and dining-room, was hung with an 
 old salmon-rose-colored paper, with a flock border, the manu- 
 facture of Reveillon, no doubt ; the holes and spots had been 
 carefully touched over with wafers. Prints representing the 
 battles of Alexander, by Lebrun, in frames with the gilding 
 rubbed off, were symmetrically arranged on the walls. In 
 the middle stood a massive mahogany table, old-fashioned in 
 shape, and worn at the edges. A small stove, whose thin 
 straight pipe was scarcely visible, stood in front of the 
 chimney-place, but the hearth was occupied by a cupboard. 
 By a strange contrast the chairs showed some remains of 
 former splendor ; they were of carved mahogany, but the red 
 morocco seats, the gilt nails and reeded backs, showed as 
 many scars as an old sergeant of the Imperial Guard. 
 
 This room did duty as a museum of certain objects, such 
 as are never seen but in this kind of amphibious household ; 
 nameless objects with the stamp at once of luxury and penury. 
 Among other curiosities Hippolyte noticed a splendidly 
 finished telescope, hanging over the small discolored glass 
 that decorated the chimney. To harmonize with this strange 
 collection of furniture there was, between the chimney and 
 the partition, a wretched sideboard of painted wood, pre- 
 tending to be mahogany, of all woods the most impossible to 
 imitate. But the slippery red quarries, the shabby little rugs 
 in front of the chairs, and all the furniture shone with the 
 
THE PURSE. 367 
 
 hard-rubbing cleanliness which lends a treacherous lustre to 
 old things by making their defects, their age, and their long 
 service still more conspicuous. An indescribable odor per- 
 vaded the room, a mingled smell of the exhalations from the 
 lumber-room and the vapors of the dining-room, with those 
 from the stairs, though the window was partly open. The air 
 from the street fluttered the dusty curtains, which were care- 
 fully drawn so as to hide the window-bay, where former 
 tenants had testified to their presence by various ornamental 
 additions — a sort of domestic fresco. 
 
 Adelaide hastened to open the door of the inner room, 
 where she announced the painter with evident pleasure. Hip- 
 polyte, who, of yore, had seen the same signs of poverty in his 
 mother's home, noted them with the singular vividness of im- 
 pression which characterizes the earliest acquisitions of memory, 
 and entered into the details of this existence better than any 
 one else would have done. As he recognized the facts of his 
 life as a child, the kind young fellow felt neither scorn for 
 disguised misfortune nor pride in the luxury he had lately 
 conquered for his mother. 
 
 " Well, monsieur, I hope you no longer feel the effects of 
 your fall," said the old lady, rising from an antique armchair 
 that stood by the chimney, and offering him a seat. 
 
 "No, madame. I have come to thank you for the kind 
 care you gave me, and above all mademoiselle, who heard me 
 fall." 
 
 As he uttered this speech, stamped with the exquisite stu- 
 pidity given to the mind by the first disturbing symptoms of 
 true love, Hippolyte looked at the young girl. Adelaide was 
 lighting the argand lamp, no doubt, that she might get rid of 
 a tallow candle fixed in a large, fiat, copper candlestick, and 
 graced with a heavy fluting of grease from its guttering. She 
 answered with a slight bow, carried the flat candlestick into 
 the anteroom, came back, and, after placing the lamp on the 
 mantel, seated herself by her mother, a little behind the 
 
368 THE PURSE. 
 
 painter, so as to be able to look at him at her ease, while 
 apparently much interested in the burning of the lamp ; the 
 flame, checked by the damp in a dingy chimney, sputtered as 
 it struggled with a charred and badly trimmed wick. Hip- 
 polyte, seeing the large mirror that decorated the mantel, 
 immediately fixed his eyes on it to admire Adelaide. Thus 
 the girl's little stratagem only served to embarrass them both. 
 
 While talking with Madame Leseigneur, for Hippolyte, 
 called her so, on the chance of being right, he examined the 
 room, but unobtrusively and by stealth. 
 
 The Egyptian figures on the iron fire-dogs were scarcely 
 visible, the hearth was so heaped with cinders ; two brands 
 tried to meet in front of a sham log of firebrick, as care- 
 fully buried as a miser's treasure could ever be. An old 
 Aubusson carpet, very much faded, very much mended, and 
 as worn as a pensioner's coat, did not cover the whole of 
 the tiled floor, and the cold struck to his feet. The walls 
 were hung with a reddish paper, imitating figured silk with a 
 yellow pattern. In the middle of the wall opposite the 
 windows the painter saw a crack, and the outline marked on 
 the paper of double-doors, shutting off a recess where Madame 
 Leseigneur slept no doubt, a fact ill disguised by a sofa in front 
 of the door. Facing the chimney, above a mahogany chest 
 of drawers of handsome and tasteful design, was the portrait 
 of an officer of rank, which the dim light did not allow him 
 to see well ; but from what he could make out he thought 
 that the fearful daub must have been painted in China. The 
 window-curtains of red silk were as much faded as the furni- 
 ture, in red and yellow worsted work, if this room "con- 
 trived a double debt to pay." On the marble top of the 
 chest of drawers was a costly malachite tray, with a dozen 
 coffee cups magnificently painted, and made, no doubt, at 
 Sevres. On the chimney-shelf stood the omnipresent Empire 
 clock: a warrior driving the four horses of a chariot, whose 
 wheel bore the numbers of the hours on its spokes. The 
 
THE PURSE. 369 
 
 tapers in the tall candlesticks were yellow with smoke, and 
 at each corner of the shelf stood a porcelain vase crowned 
 with artificial flowers full of dust and stuck into moss. 
 
 In the middle of the room Hippoiyte remarked a card-table 
 ready for play, with new packs of cards. For an observer 
 there was something heartrending in the sight of this misery 
 painted up like an old woman who wants to falsify her face. 
 At such a sight every man of sense must at once have stated 
 to himself this obvious dilemma — either these two women are 
 honesty itself, or they live by intrigue and gambling. But 
 on looking at Adelaide, a man so pure-minded as Schinner 
 could not but believe in her perfect innocence, and ascribe 
 the incoherence of the furniture to honorable causes. 
 
 "My dear," said the old lady to the young one, " I am 
 cold ; make a little fire, and give me my shawl." 
 
 Adelaide went into a room next the drawing-room, where 
 she no doubt slept, and returned bringing her mother a cash- 
 mere shawl, which when new must have been very costly ; 
 the pattern was Indian ; but it was old, faded, and full of 
 darns, and matched the furniture. Madame Leseigneur 
 wrapped herself in it very artistically, and with the readiness 
 of an old woman who wishes to make her words seem truth. 
 The young girl ran lightly off to the lumber-room and reap- 
 peared with a bundle of small wood, which she gallantly threw 
 on the fire to revive it. 
 
 It would be rather difficult to reproduce the conversation 
 which followed among these three persons. Hippoiyte, guided 
 by the tact which is almost always the outcome of misfortune 
 suffered in early youth, dared not allow himself to make the 
 least remark as to his neighbors' situation, as he saw all about 
 him the signs of ill-disguised poverty. The simplest question 
 would have been an indiscretion, and could only be ventured 
 on by old friendship. The painter was nevertheless absorbed 
 in the thought of this concealed penury, it pained his generous 
 soul ; but knowing how offensive every kind of pity may be, 
 24 
 
370 THE PURSE. 
 
 even the friendliest, the disparity between his thoughts and 
 his words made him feel uncomfortable. 
 
 The two ladies at first talked of painting, for women easily 
 guess the secret embarrassment of a first call ; they themselves 
 feel it, perhaps, and the nature of their minds supplies them 
 with a thousand devices to put an end to it. By questioning 
 the young man as to the material exercise of his art, and as 
 to his studies, Adelaide and her mother emboldened him to 
 talk. The indefinable nothings of their chat, animated by 
 kindly feeling, naturally led Hippolyte to flash forth remarks 
 or reflections which showed the character of his habits and of 
 his mind. Trouble had prematurely faded the old lady's face, 
 formerly handsome, no doubt ; nothing was left but the more 
 prominent features, the outline ; in a word, the skeleton of a 
 countenance of which the whole effect indicated great shrewd- 
 ness with much grace in the play of the eyes, in which could 
 be discerned the expression peculiar to women of the old 
 Court ; an expression that cannot be defined in words. Those 
 fine and mobile features might quite as well indicate bad feel- 
 ings, and suggest astuteness and womanly artifice carried to a 
 high pitch of wickedness, as reveal the refined delicacy of 
 a beautiful soul. 
 
 Indeed, the face of a woman has this element of mystery 
 to puzzle the ordinary observer, that the difference between 
 frankness and duplicity, the genius for intrigue and the genius 
 of the heart, is there inscrutable. A man gifted with a pene- 
 trating eye can read the intangible shade of difference pro- 
 duced by a more or less curved line, a more or less deep 
 dimple, a more or less prominent feature. The appreciation 
 of these indications lies entirely in the domain of intuition ; 
 this alone can lead to the discovery of what every one is 
 interested in concealing. This old lady's face was like the 
 room she inhabited ; it seemed as difficult to detect whether 
 this squalor covered vice or the highest virtue, as to decide 
 whether Adelaide's mother was an old coquette accustomed 
 
THE PURSE. 371 
 
 to weigh, to calculate, to sell everything, or a loving woman, 
 full of noble feeling and amiable qualities. But at Schinner's 
 age the first impulse of the heart is to believe in goodness. 
 And, indeed, as he studied Adelaide's noble and almost 
 haughty brow, as he looked into her eyes full of soul and 
 thought, he breathed, so to speak, the sweet and modest fra- 
 grance of virtue. In the course of the conversation he seized 
 an opportunity of discussing portraits in general, to give him- 
 self a pretext for examining the frightful pastel, of which the 
 color had flown, and the chalk in many places fallen away. 
 
 " You are attached to that picture for the sake of the like- 
 ness, no doubt, mesdames, for the drawing is dreadful?" he 
 said, looking at Adelaide. 
 
 "It was done at Calcutta, in great haste," replied the 
 mother, in an agitated voice. 
 
 She gazed at the formless sketch with the deep absorption 
 which memories of happiness produce when they are roused 
 and fall on the heart like a beneficent dew to whose refreshing 
 touch we love to yield ourselves ; but in the expression of 
 the old lady's face there were traces, too, of perennial regret. 
 At least, it was thus that the painter chose to interpret her 
 attitude and countenance, and he presently sat down again by 
 her side. 
 
 "Madame," he said, "in a very short time the colors of 
 that pastel will have disappeared. The portrait will only sur- 
 vive in your memory. Where you will still see the face that 
 is dear to you, others will see nothing at all. Will you allow 
 me to reproduce the likeness on canvas? It will be more per- 
 manently recorded then than on that sheet of paper. Grant 
 me, I beg, as a neighborly favor, the pleasure of doing you 
 this service. There are times when an artist is glad of a 
 respite from his greater undertakings by doing work of less 
 lofty pretensions, so it will be a recreation for me to paint 
 that head." 
 
 The old lady flushed as she heard the painter's words, and 
 
372 THE PURSE. 
 
 Adelaide shot one of those glances of deep feeling which seem 
 to flash from the soul. Hippolyte wanted to feel some tie 
 linking him with his two neighbors, to conquer a right to 
 mingle in their life. His offer, appealing as it did to the live- 
 liest affections of the heart, was the only one he could possibly 
 make ; it gratified his pride as an artist and could not hurt the 
 feelings of the ladies. Madame Leseigneur accepted, without 
 eagerness or reluctance, but with the self-possession of a noble 
 soul, fully aware of the character of bonds formed by such an 
 obligation, while, at the same time, they are its highest glory 
 as a proof of esteem. 
 
 " I fancy," said the painter, " that the uniform is that of a 
 naval officer ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes," she said, "that of a captain in command of a 
 vessel. Monsieur de Rouville — my husband — died at Batavia 
 in consequence of a wound received in a fight with an English 
 ship they fell in with off the Asiatic coast. He commanded a 
 frigate of fifty-six guns, and the Revenge carried ninety-six. 
 The struggle was very unequal, but he defended his ship so 
 bravely that he held out till nightfall and got away. When I 
 came back to France Bonaparte was not yet in power, and I 
 was refused a pension. When I applied again for it, quite 
 lately, I was sternly informed that if the Baron de Rouville 
 had emigrated I should not have lost him ; that by this time 
 he would have been rear-admiral ; finally, his excellency 
 quoted I know not what decree of forfeiture. I took this step, 
 to which I was urged by my friends, only for the sake of my 
 poor Adelaide. I have always hated the idea of holding out 
 my hand'as a beggar in the name of a grief which deprives a 
 woman of voice and strength. I do not like this money valu- 
 ation for blood irreparably spilt " 
 
 " Dear mother, this subject always does you harm," said 
 her daughter. 
 
 In response to this remark from Adelaide, the Baronne 
 Leseigneur bowed, and was silent. 
 
THE PURSE. 373 
 
 41 
 
 Monsieur," said the young girl to Hippolyte, "I had 
 supposed that a painter's work was generally fairly quiet? " 
 
 At this question Schinner colored, remembering the noise 
 he had made. Adelaide said no more, and spared him a 
 falsehood by rising at the sound of a carriage stopping at the 
 door. She went into her own room, and returned carrying a 
 pair of tall, gilt candlesticks with partly burnt wax-candles, 
 which she quickly lighted, and, without waiting for the bell to 
 ring, she opened the door of the outer room, where she set 
 the lamp down. The sound of a kiss given and received 
 found an echo in Hippolyte's heart. The young man's im- 
 patience to see the man who treated Adelaide with so much 
 familiarity was not immediately gratified ; the new-comers 
 had a conversation, which he thought very long, in an under- 
 tone, with the young girl. 
 
 At last Mademoiselle de Rouville returned, followed by 
 two men, whose costume, countenance, and appearance are a 
 long story. 
 
 The first, a man of about sixty, wore one of the coats in- 
 vented, I believe, for Louis XVIII., then on the throne, in 
 which the most difficult problem of the sartorial art had been 
 solved by a tailor who ought to be immortal. That artist 
 certainly understood the art of compromise, which was the 
 moving genius of that period of shifting politics. Is it not a 
 rare merit to be able to take the measure of the time? This 
 coat, which the young men of the present day may conceive 
 to be fabulous, was neither civil nor military, and might pass 
 for civil or military by turns. Fleurs-de-lis (lily flowers) were 
 embroidered on the lapels of the back skirts. The gilt but- 
 tons also bore fleurs-de-lis ; on the shoulders a pair of straps 
 cried out for useless epaulettes; these military appendages 
 were there like a petition without a recommendation. This 
 old gentleman's coat was of dark blue cloth, and the button- 
 hole had blossomed into many colored ribbons. He, no 
 doubt, always carried his hat in his hand — a three-cornered 
 
374 THE PURSE. . 
 
 cocked hat, with a gold cord — for the snowy wings of his 
 powdered hair showed not a trace of its pressure. He might 
 have been taken for not more than fifty years of age, and 
 seemed to enjoy robust health. While wearing the frank and 
 loyal expression of the old emigres, his countenance also 
 hinted at the easy habits of a libertine, at the light and reck- 
 less passions of the Musketeers formerly so famous in the 
 annals of gallantry. His gestures, his attitude, and his manner 
 proclaimed that he had no intention of correcting himself of 
 his royalism, of his religion, or of his love affairs. 
 
 A really fantastic figure came in behind this specimen of 
 "Louis XIV.'s light infantry" — a nickname given by the 
 Bonapartists. to these venerable survivors of the Monarchy. 
 To do it justice it ought to be made the principal object in 
 the picture, and it is but an accessory. Imagine, a lean, dry 
 man, dressed like the former, but seeming to be only his 
 reflection, or his shadow, if you will. The coat, new on the 
 first, on the second was old ; the powder in his hair looked 
 less white, the gold of the fleurs-de-lis less bright, the shoulder- 
 straps more hopeless and dog's-eared; his intellect seemed 
 more feeble, his life nearer the fatal term than in the former. 
 In short, he realized Rivarol's witticism on Champcenetz, 
 " He is the moonlight of me." He was simply his double, a 
 paler and poorer double, for there was between them all the 
 difference that lies between the first and last impressions of a 
 lithograph. 
 
 This speechless old man was a mystery to the painter, and 
 always remained a mystery. The chevalier, for he was a 
 chevalier, did not speak, nobody spoke to him. Was he a 
 friend, a poor relation, a man who followed at the old gallant's 
 heels as a lady companion does at an old lady's? Did he fill 
 a place midway between a dog, a parrot, and a friend ? Had 
 he saved his patron's fortune, or only his life? Was he the 
 Trim to another Captain Toby? Elsewhere, as at the Baronne 
 de Rouville's, he always piqued curiosity without satisfying it. 
 
THE PURSE. 375 
 
 Who, after the Restoration, could remember the attachment 
 which, before the Revolution, had bound this man to his 
 friend's wife, dead now these twenty years? 
 
 The leader, who appeared the least dilapidated of these 
 wrecks, came gallantly up to Madame de Rouville, kissed 
 her hand, and sat down by her. The other bowed and 
 placed himself not far from his model, at a distance rep- 
 resented by two chairs. Adelaide came behind the old 
 gentleman's armchair and leaned her elbows on the back, 
 unconsciously imitating the attitude given to Dido's sister by 
 Guerin in his famous picture. 
 
 Though the gentleman's familiarity was that of a father, 
 his freedom seemed at the moment to annoy the young girl. 
 
 " What, are you sulky with me?" he said. 
 
 Then he shot at Schinner one of those side-looks full of 
 shrewdness and cunning, diplomatic looks, whose expression 
 betrays the discreet uneasiness, the polite curiosity of well- 
 bred people, and seems to ask, when they see a stranger, " Is 
 he one of us? " 
 
 "This is our neighbor," said the old lady, pointing to 
 Hippolyte. "Monsieur is a celebrated painter, whose name 
 must be known to you in spite of your indifference to the 
 arts." 
 
 The old man saw his friend's mischievous intent in sup- 
 pressing the name, and bowed to the young man. 
 
 "Certainly," said he. "I heard a great deal about his 
 pictures at the last Salon. Talent has immense privileges," 
 he added, observing the artist's red ribbon. "That distinc- 
 tion, which we must earn at the cost of our blood and long 
 service, you win in your youth ; but all glory is of the same 
 kindred," he said, laying his hand on his cross of Saint- 
 Louis. 
 
 Hippolyte murmured a few words of acknowledgment, 
 and was silent again, satisfied to admire with growing 
 enthusiasm the beautiful girl's head that charmed him so 
 
376 THE PURSE. 
 
 much. He was soon lost in contemplation, completely 
 forgetting the extreme misery of the dwelling. To him 
 Adelaide's face stood out against a luminous atmosphere. 
 He replied briefly to the questions addressed to him, 
 which, by very good luck, he heard, thanks to a singular 
 faculty of the soul which sometimes seems to have a 
 double consciousness. Who has not known what it is to sit 
 lost in sad or delicious meditation, listening to its voice 
 within, while attending to a conversation or to reading? An 
 admirable duality which often helps us to tolerate a bore! 
 Hope, prolific and smiling, poured out before him a thousand 
 visions of happiness ; and he refused to consider what was 
 going on around him. As confiding as a child, it seemed to 
 him base to analyze a pleasure. After a short lapse of time 
 he perceived that the old lady and her daughter were playing 
 cards with the old gentleman. As to the satellite, faithful to 
 his function as a shadow, he stood behind his friend's chair 
 watching his game, and answering the player's mute inquiries 
 by little approving nods, repeating the questioning gestures 
 of the other countenance. 
 
 " Du Halga, I always lose," said the gentleman. 
 
 "You discard badly," replied the Baronne de Rouville. 
 
 " For three months now I have never won a single 
 game," said he. 
 
 " Have you the aces?" asked the old lady. 
 
 "Yes, one more to mark," said he. 
 
 " Shall I come and advise you? " inquired Adelaide of the 
 irascible player. 
 
 "No, no. Stay where I can see you. By Gad, it would 
 be losing too much not to have you to look at ! " 
 
 At last the game was over. The gentleman pulled out his 
 purse, and throwing two louis d'or on the table, not without 
 temper — 
 
 "Forty francs," he exclaimed, "the exact sum. Deuce 
 take it ! It is eleven o'clock." 
 
THE PURSE. 377 
 
 "It is eleven o'clock," repeated the silent figure, looking 
 at the painter. 
 
 The young man, hearing these words rather more distinctly 
 than all the others, thought it time to retire. Coming back 
 to the world of ordinary ideas, he found a few commonplace 
 remarks to make, took leave of the Baroness, her daughter, 
 and the two strangers, and went away, wholly possessed by 
 the first raptures of true love, without attempting to analyze 
 the little incidents of the evening. 
 
 On the morrow the young painter felt the most ardent 
 desire to see Adelaide once more. If he had followed the 
 call of his passion, he would have gone to his neighbors 5 
 door at six in the morning, when he went to his studio. 
 . However, he still was reasonable enough to wait till the after- 
 noon. But as soon as he thought he could present himself to 
 Madame de Rouville, he went downstairs, rang, blushing like 
 a girl, shyly asked Mademoiselle Leseigneur, who came to let 
 him in, to let him have the portrait of the Baron. 
 
 "But come in," said Adelaide, who had no doubt heard 
 him come down from the studio. 
 
 The painter followed, bashful and out of countenance, not 
 knowing what to say, happiness had so dulled his wit. To 
 see Adelaide, to hear the rustle of her skirt, after longing for 
 a whole morning to be near her, after starting up a hundred 
 times — " I will go down now" — and not to have gone; this 
 was to him life so rich that such sensations, too greatly pro- 
 longed, would have worn out his spirit. The heart has the 
 ? singular power of giving extraordinary value to mere noth- 
 ings. What joy it is to a traveler to treasure a blade of 
 grass, an unfamiliar leaf, if he has risked his life to pluck it ! 
 It is the same with the trifles of love. 
 
 The old lady was not in the drawing-room. When the 
 young girl found herself there, alone with the painter, she 
 brought a chair to stand on, to take down the picture; but 
 perceiving that she could not unhook it without setting her 
 
378 THE PURSE. 
 
 foot on the chest of drawers, she turned to Hippolyte, and 
 said with a blush — 
 
 " I am not tall enough. Will you get it down? " 
 
 A feeling of modesty, betrayed in the expression of her face 
 and the tones of her voice, was the real motive of her re- 
 quest ; and the young man, understanding this, gave her one 
 of those glances of intelligence which are the sweetest lan- 
 guage of love. Seeing that the painter had read .her soul, 
 Adelaide cast down her eyes with the instinct of reserve 
 which is the secret of a maiden's heart. Hippolyte, finding 
 nothing to say, and feeling almost timid, took down the pic- 
 ture, examined it gravely, carrying it to the light at the win- 
 dow, and then went away, without saying a word to Mademoi- 
 selle Leseigneur but, " I will return it soon." 
 
 During this brief moment they both went through one of 
 those storms of agitation of which the effects in the soul may 
 be compared to those of a stone flung into a deep lake. The 
 most delightful waves of thought rise and follow each other, 
 indescribable, repeated, and aimless, tossing the heart like 
 the circular ripples, which for a long time fret the waters, 
 starting from the point where the stone fell. 
 
 Hippolyte returned to the studio bearing the portrait. His 
 easel was ready with a fresh canvas, and his palette set, his 
 brushes cleaned, the spot and the light carefully chosen. 
 And till the dinner hour he worked at the painting with the 
 ardor artists throw into their whims. He went again that 
 evening to the Baronne de Rouville's, and remained from 
 nine till eleven. Excepting the different subjects of conver- 
 sation, this evening was exactly like the last. The two old 
 men arrived at the same hour, the same game of piquet was 
 played, the same speeches made by the players, the sum lost 
 by Adelaide's friend was not less considerable than on the 
 previous evening; only Hippolyte, a little bolder, ventured 
 to chat with the young girl. 
 
 A week passed thus, and in the course of it the painter's 
 
THE PURSE. 379 
 
 feelings and Adelaide's underwent the slow and delightful 
 transformations which bring two souls to a perfect under- 
 standing. Every day the look with which the girl welcomed 
 her friend grew more intimate, more confiding, gayer, and 
 more open ; her voice and manner became more eager and 
 more familiar. They laughed and talked together, telling 
 each other their thoughts, speaking of themselves with the 
 simplicity of two children who have made friends in a day, as 
 much as if they had met constantly for three years. Schinner 
 wished to be taught piquet. Being ignorant and a novice, he, 
 of course, made blunder after blunder, and, like the old man, 
 he lost almost every game. Without having spoken a word 
 of love the lovers knew that they were all in all to one an- 
 other. Hippolyte enjoyed exerting his power over his gentle 
 little friend, and many concessions were made to him by 
 Adelaide, who, timid and devoted to him, was quite deceived 
 by the assumed fits of temper, such as the least skilled lover 
 and the most guileless girl can affect ; and which they con- 
 stantly play off, as spoiled children abuse the power they owe 
 to their mother's affection. Thus all familiarity between the 
 girl and the old Count was soon put a stop to. She under- 
 stood the painter's melancholy, and the thoughts hidden in 
 the furrows on his brow, from the abrupt tone of the few 
 words he spoke when the old man unceremoniously kissed 
 Adelaide's hands or throat. 
 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur, on her part, soon expected her 
 lover to give her a short account of all his actions ; she was 
 so unhappy, so restless when Hippolyte did not come ; she 
 scolded him so effectually for his absence that the painter 
 had to give up seeing his other friends and now went no- 
 where. Adelaide allowed the natural jealousy of women to 
 be perceived when she heard that sometimes at eleven o'clock, 
 on quitting the house, the painter still had visits to pay, and 
 was to be seen in the most brilliant drawing-rooms of Paris. 
 This mode of life, she assured him, was bad for his health ; 
 
380 THE PURSE. 
 
 then, with the intense conviction to which the accent, the 
 emphasis, and the look of one we love lend so much weight, 
 she asserted that a man who was obliged to expend his time 
 and the charms of his wit on several women at once could 
 not be the object of any very warm affection. Thus the 
 painter was led, as much by the tyranny of his passion as 
 by the exactions of a girl in love, to live exclusively in the 
 little apartment where everything attracted him. 
 
 And never was there a purer or more ardent love. On 
 both sides the same trustfulness, the same delicacy, gave their 
 passion increase without the aid of those sacrifices by which 
 many persons try to prove their affection. Between these two 
 there was such a constant interchange of sweet emotion that 
 they knew not which gave or received the most. 
 
 A spontaneous affinity made the union of their souls a close 
 one. The progress of this true feeling was so rapid that two 
 months after the accident to which the painter owed the hap- 
 piness of knowing Adelaide, their lives were one life. From 
 early morning the young girl, hearing footsteps overhead, 
 could say to herself, " He is there." When Hippolyte went 
 home to his mother at the dinner hour he never failed to look 
 in on his neighbors, and in the evening he flew there at the 
 accustomed hour with a lover's punctuality. Thus the most 
 tyrannical woman or the most ambitious in the matter of love 
 could not have found the smallest fault with the young painter. 
 And Adelaide tasted of unmixed and unbounded happiness as 
 she saw the fullest realization of the ideal of which, at her 
 age, it is so natural to dream. 
 
 The old gentleman now came more rarely ; Hippolyte, who 
 had been jealous, had taken his place at the green table, and 
 shared his constant ill-luck at cards. And sometimes, in the 
 midst of his happiness, as he considered Madame de Rouville's 
 disastrous position — for he had had more than one proof of 
 her extreme poverty — an importunate thought would haunt 
 him. Several times he had said to himself as he went home, 
 
THE PURSE. 381 
 
 " Strange ! twenty francs every evening? " and he dared not 
 confess to himsef his odious suspicions. 
 
 He spent two months over the portrait, and when it was 
 finished, varnished, and framed, he looked upon it as one of 
 his best works. Madame la Baronne de Rouville had never 
 spoken of it again. Was this from indifference or pride ? The 
 painter would not allow himself to account for this silence. 
 He joyfully plotted with Adelaide to hang the picture in its 
 place when Madame de Rouville should be out. So one day, 
 during the walk her mother usually took in the Tuileries, 
 Adelaide for the first time went up to Hippolyte's studio, on 
 the pretext of seeing the portrait in the good light in which it 
 had been painted. She stood speechless and motionless, but 
 in ecstatic contemplation, in which all a woman's feelings 
 were merged. For are they not all comprehended in bound- 
 less admiration for the man she loves ? When the painter, 
 uneasy at her silence, leaned forward to look at her, she held 
 out her hand, unable to speak a word, but two tears fell from 
 her eyes. Hippolyte took her hand and covered it with 
 kisses; for a minute they looked at each other in silence, both 
 longing to confess their love, and not daring. The. painter 
 kept her hand in his, and the same glow, the same throb, told 
 them that their hearts were both beating wildly. The young 
 girl, too greatly agitated, gently drew away from Hippolyte, 
 and said, with a look of the utmost simplicity — 
 
 "You will make my mother very happy." 
 
 " What ! only your mother? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, I am too happy." 
 
 The painter bent his head and remained silent, frightened 
 at the vehemence of the feelings which her tones stirred in his 
 heart. Then, both understanding the perils of the situation, 
 they went downstairs and hung up the picture in its place. 
 Hippolyte dined for the first time with the Baroness, who, 
 greatly overcome and drowned in tears, must needs embrace 
 him. 
 
382 THE PURSE. 
 
 In the evening the old emigre, the Baron de Rouville's old 
 comrade, paid the ladies a visit to announce that he had just 
 been promoted to the rank of vice-admiral. His voyages by- 
 land over Germany and Russia had been counted as naval 
 campaigns. On seeing the portrait he cordially shook the 
 painter's hand, and exclaimed, " By Gad ! though my old 
 hulk does not deserve to be perpetuated, I would gladly give 
 five hundred pistoles to see myself as like as that is to my dear 
 old Rouville." 
 
 At this hint the Baroness looked at her young friend and 
 smiled, while her face lighted up with an expression of sudden 
 gratitude. Hippolyte suspected that the old admiral wished 
 to offer him the price of both portraits while paying for his 
 own. His pride as an artist, no less than his jealousy perhaps, 
 took offense at the thought, and he replied — 
 
 " Monsieur, if I were a portrait painter, I should not have 
 done this one." 
 
 The admiral bit his lip and sat down to cards. 
 
 The painter remained near Adelaide, who proposed a dozen 
 hands of piquet, to which he agreed. As he played he ob- 
 served jn Madame de Rouville an excitement over the game 
 which surprised him. Never before had the old Baroness 
 manifested so ardent a desire to win or so keen a joy in fin- 
 gering the old gentleman's gold-pieces. During the evening 
 evil suspicions troubled Hippolyte's happiness and filled him 
 with distrust. Could it be that Madame de Rouville lived by 
 gambling ? Was she playing at this moment to pay off some 
 debt or under the pressure of necessity ? Perhaps she had 
 not paid her rent. That old man seemed shrewd enough not 
 to allow his money to be taken with impunity. What interest 
 attracted him to this poverty-stricken house, he who was rich? 
 Why, when he had formerly been so familiar with Adelaide, 
 had he given up the rights he had acquired and which were 
 perhaps his due? 
 
 These involuntary reflections prompted him to watch the 
 
THE PURSE. 383 
 
 old man and the Baroness, whose meaning looks and certain 
 sidelong glances cast at Adelaide displeased him. "Am I 
 being duped?" was Hippolyte's last idea — horrible, scathing, 
 for he believed it just enough to be tortured by it. He de- 
 termined to stay after the departure of the two old men, to 
 confirm or to dissipate his suspicions. He drew out his purse 
 to pay Adelaide; but, carried away by his poignant thoughts, 
 he laid it on the table, falling into a reverie of brief duration ; 
 then, ashamed of his silence, he arose, answered some com- 
 monplace question from Madame de Rouville, and went close 
 up to her to examine the withered features while he was talk- 
 ing to her. 
 
 He went away, racked by a thousand doubts. He had 
 gone down but a few steps when he turned back to fetch the 
 forgotten purse. 
 
 " I left my purse here ! " he said to the young girl. 
 
 "No," she said, reddening. 
 
 " I thought it was there," and he pointed to the card-table. 
 Not finding it, in his shame for Adelaide and the Baroness, 
 he looked at them with a blank amazement that made them 
 laugh, turned pale, felt his waistcoat, and said, "I must have 
 made a mistake. I have it somewhere, no doubt." 
 
 In one end of the purse there were fifteen louis d'or, and 
 in the other some small change. The theft was so flagrant, 
 and denied with such effrontery, that Hippolyte no longer 
 felt a doubt as to his neighbors' morals. He stood still on 
 the stairs and got down with some difficulty ; his knees shook, 
 he felt dizzy, he was in a cold sweat, he shivered, and found 
 himself unable to walk, struggling, as he was, with the ago- 
 nizing shock caused by the destruction of all his hopes. And 
 at this moment he found lurking in his memory a number of 
 observations, trifling in themselves, but which corroborated 
 his frightful suspicions, and which, by proving the certainty 
 of this last incident, opened his eyes' as to the character and 
 life of these two women. 
 
384 THE PURSE. 
 
 Had they really waited until the portrait was given them 
 before robbing him of his purse ? In such a combination the 
 theft was even more odious. The painter recollected that for 
 the last two or three evenings Adelaide, while seeming to 
 examine with a girl's curiosity the particular stitch of the 
 worn silk netting, was probably counting the coins in the 
 purse, while making some light jests, quite innocent in ap- 
 pearance, but no doubt with the object of watching for a 
 moment when the sum was worth stealing. 
 
 " The old admiral has perhaps good reasons for not marry- 
 ing Adelaide, and so the Baroness has tried " 
 
 But at this hypothesis he checked himself, not finishing his 
 thought, which was contradicted by a very just reflection, 
 " If the Baroness hopes to get me to marry her daughter," 
 thought he, "they would not have robbed me." 
 
 Then, clinging to his illusion, to the love that already had 
 taken such deep root, he tried to find a justification in some 
 accident. "The purse must have fallen on the floor," said 
 he to himself, "or I left it lying on my chair. Or perhaps I 
 have it about me — lam so absent-minded!" He searched 
 himself with hurried movements, but did not find the ill- 
 starred purse. His memory cruelly retraced the fatal truth, 
 minute by minute. He distinctly saw the purse lying on the 
 green cloth ; but then, doubtful no longer, he excused Ade- 
 laide, telling himself that persons in misfortune should not be 
 so hastily condemned. There was, of course, some secret 
 behind this apparently degrading action. He would not 
 admit that that proud and noble face was a lie. 
 
 At the same time the wretched rooms rose before him, 
 denuded of the poetry of love which beautifies everything ; 
 he saw them dirty and faded, regarding them as emblematic 
 of an inner life devoid of honor, idle and vicious. Are not 
 our feelings written, as it were, on things about us? 
 
 Next morning he arose, not having slept. The heartache, 
 that terrible malady of the soul, had made rapid inroads. 
 
THE PURSE. 385 
 
 To lose the bliss we dreamed of, to renounce our whole future, 
 is a keener pang than that caused by the loss of known 
 happiness, however complete it may have been ; for is not 
 Hope better than Memory ? The thoughts into which our 
 spirit is suddenly plunged are like a shoreless sea in which 
 we may swim for a moment, but where our love is doomed to 
 drown and die. And it is a frightful death. Are not our 
 feelings the most glorious part of our life ? It is this partial 
 death which, in certain delicate or powerful natures, leads to the 
 terrible ruin produced by disenchantment, by hopes and pas- 
 sions betrayed. Thus it was with the young painter. He went 
 out at a very early hour to walk under the fresh shade of the 
 Tuileries, absorbed in his thoughts, forgetting everything in 
 the world. 
 
 There by chance he met one of his most intimate friends, 
 a schoolfellow and studio-mate, with whom he had lived on 
 better terms than with a brother. 
 
 "Why, Hippolyte, what ails you?" asked Francois 
 Souchet, the young sculptor who had just won the first prize 
 and was soon to set out for Italy. 
 
 "I am most unhappy," replied Hippolyte gravely. 
 
 " Nothing but a love affair can cause you grief. Money, 
 glory, respect — you lack nothing." 
 
 Insensibly the painter was led into confidences, and con- 
 fessed his love. The moment he mentioned the Rue de 
 Suresne, and a young girl living on the fourth floor, " Stop, 
 stop," cried Souchet lightly. "A little girl I see every 
 morning at the church of the Assumption, and with whom I 
 have a flirtation. But, my dear fellow, we all know her. 
 The mother is a Baroness. Do you really believe in a 
 Baroness living up four flights of stairs? Brrr ! Why, you 
 are a relic of the golden age ! We see the old mother here, 
 in this avenue, every day ; why, her face, her appearance, tell 
 everything. What, have you not known her for what she is 
 by the way she holds her bag? " 
 25 
 
386 THE PURSE. 
 
 The two friends walked up and down for some time, and 
 several young men who knew Souchet or Schinner joined 
 them. The painter's adventure, which the sculptor regarded 
 as unimportant, was repeated by him. 
 
 " So he, too, has seen that young lady ! " said Souchet. 
 
 And then there were comments, laughter, innocent mockery, 
 full of the liveliness familiar to artists, but which pained 
 Hippolyte frightfully. A certain native reticence made him 
 uncomfortable as he saw his heart's secret so carelessly handled, 
 his passion rent, torn to tatters, a young and unknown girl, 
 whose life seemed to be so modest, the victim of conden> 
 nation, right or wrong, but pronounced with such reckless 
 indifference. He pretended to be moved by a spirit of con- 
 tradiction, asking each for proofs of his assertions, and their 
 jests began again. 
 
 "But, my dear boy, have you seen the Baroness* shawl?" 
 asked Souchet. 
 
 " Have you ever followed the girl when she patters off to 
 church in the morning?" said Joseph Bridau, a young 
 dauber in Gros' studio. 
 
 "Oh, the mother has among other virtues a certain gray 
 gown, which I regard as typical," said Bixiou, the caricaturist. 
 
 "Listen, Hippolyte," the sculptor went on. "Come here 
 at about four o'clock and just study the walk of both mother 
 and daughter. If after that you still have doubts ! well, no 
 one can ever make anything of you; you would be capable 
 of marrying your porter's daughter." 
 
 Torn by the most conflicting feelings, the painter parted 
 from his friends. It seemed to him that Adelaide and her 
 mother must be superior to these accusations, and at the bottom 
 of his heart he was filled with remorse for having suspected the 
 purity of this beautiful and simple girl. He went to his studio, 
 passing the door of the rooms where Adelaide was, and con- 
 scious of a pain at his heart which no man can misapprehend. 
 He loved Mademoiselle de Rouville so passionately that, in spite 
 
THE PURSE. 387 
 
 of the theft of the purse, he still worshiped her. His love was 
 that of the Chevalier des Grieux admiring his mistress, and 
 holding her as pure, even on the cart which carries such lost 
 creatures to prison. " Why should my love not keep her the 
 purest of women ? Why abandon her to evil and to vice with- 
 out holding out a rescuing hand to her? " 
 
 The idea of this mission pleased him. Love makes a gain 
 of everything. Nothing tempts a young man more than to 
 play the part of a good genius to a woman. There is some- 
 thing inexplicably romantic in such an enterprise which ap- 
 peals to a highly strung soul. Is it not the utmost stretch of 
 devotion under the loftiest and most engaging aspect? Is 
 there not something grand in the thought that we love 
 enough still to love on when the love of others dwindles and 
 dies? 
 
 Hippolyte sat down in his studio, gazed at his picture with- 
 out doing anything to it, seeing the figures through tears that 
 swelled in his eyes, holding his brush in his hand, going up to 
 the canvas as if to soften down an effect, but not touching it. 
 Night fell, and he was still in this attitude. Roused from his 
 moodiness by the darkness, he went downstairs, met the old 
 admiral on the way, looked darkly at him as he bowed, and 
 fled. 
 
 He had intended going in to see the ladies, but the sight 
 of Adelaide's protector froze his heart and dispelled his pur- 
 pose. For the hundredth time he wondered what interest 
 could bring this old prodigal, with his eighty thousand francs 
 a year, to this fourth story, where he lost about forty francs 
 every evening ; and he thought he could guess what it was. 
 
 The next and following days Hippolyte threw himself into 
 his work, to try to conquer his passion by the swift rush of 
 ideas and the ardor of composition. He half succeeded. 
 Study consoled him, though it could not smother the memo- 
 ries of so many tender hours spent with Adelaide. 
 
 One evening, as he left his studio, he saw the door of the 
 
388 THE PURSE. 
 
 ladies' rooms half open. Somebody was standing in the recess 
 of the window, and the position of the door and the staircase 
 made it impossible that the painter should pass without seeing 
 Adelaide. He bowed coldly, with a glance of supreme indif- 
 ference ; but, judging of the girl's suffering by his own, he felt 
 an inward shudder as he reflected on the bitterness which that 
 look and that coldness must produce in a loving heart. To 
 crown the most delightful feast which ever brought joy to two 
 pure souls, by eight days of disdain, of the deepest and most 
 utter contempt ! A frightful conclusion ! And perhaps the 
 purse had been found, perhaps Adelaide had looked for her 
 friend every evening. 
 
 This simple and natural idea filled the lover with fresh re- 
 morse; he asked himself whether the proofs of attachment 
 given him by the young girl, the delightful talks, full of the 
 love that had so charmed him, did not deserve at least an 
 inquiry; were not worthy of some justification. Ashamed of 
 having resisted the promptings of his heart for a whole week, 
 and feeling himself almost a criminal in this mental struggle, 
 he called the same evening on Madame de Rouville. 
 
 All his suspicions, all his evil thoughts vanished at the sight 
 of the young girl, who had grown pale and thin. 
 
 "Good heavens ! what is the matter?" he asked her, after 
 greeting the Baroness. 
 
 Adelaide made no reply, but she gave him a look of deep 
 melancholy, a sad, dejected look, which pained and humili- 
 ated him. 
 
 "You have, no doubt, been working hard," said the old 
 lady. "You are altered. We are the cause of your seclu- 
 sion. That portrait had delayed some pictures essential to 
 your reputation." 
 
 Hippolyte was glad to find so good an excuse for his rude- 
 ness. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I have been very busy, but I have been 
 suffering " 
 
THE PURSE. 380 
 
 At these words Adelaide raised her head, looked at her 
 lover, and her anxious eyes had now no hint of reproach. 
 
 " You must have thought us quite indifferent to any good 
 or ill that may befall you ? " said the old lady. 
 
 "I was wrong," he replied. "Still, there are forms of 
 pain which we know not how to confide to any one, even to a 
 friendship of older date than that with which you honor me." 
 
 " The sincerity and strength of friendship are not to be 
 measured by time. I have seen old friends who had not a 
 tear to bestow on misfortune," said the Baroness, nodding 
 sadly. 
 
 " But you — what ails you ? " the young man asked Adelaide. 
 
 "Oh, nothing," replied the Baroness; "Adelaide has sat 
 up late for some nights to finish some little piece of woman's 
 work, and would not listen to me when I told her that a day 
 more or less did not matter " 
 
 Hippolyte was not listening. As he looked at these two 
 noble, calm faces, he blushed for his suspicions and ascribed 
 the loss of his purse to some unknown accident. 
 
 This was a delicious evening to him, and perhaps to her 
 too. There are some secrets which young souls understand 
 so well. Adelaide could read Hippolyte's thoughts. Though 
 he could not confess his misdeeds, the painter knew them, 
 and he had come back to his mistress more in love and more 
 affectionate, trying thus to purchase her tacit forgiveness. 
 Adelaide was enjoying such perfect, such sweet happiness, 
 that she did not think she had paid too dear for it with all the 
 grief that had so cruelly crushed her soul. And yet, this true 
 concord of hearts, this understanding so full of magic charm, 
 was disturbed by a little speech of Madame de Rouville's. 
 
 "Let us have our little game," she said, "for my old 
 friend Kergarouet will not let me off." 
 
 These words revived all the young painter's fears; he col- 
 ored as he looked at Adelaide's mother, but he saw nothing 
 in her countenance but the expression of the frankest good- 
 
390 THE PURSE. 
 
 nature ; no double meaning marred its charm ; its keenness 
 was not perfidious, its humor seemed kindly, and no trace of 
 remorse disturbed its equanimity. 
 
 He sat down to the card-table. Adelaide took side with 
 the painter, saying that he did not know piquet, and needed 
 a- partner. 
 
 All through the game Madame de Rouville and her daugh- 
 ter exchanged looks of intelligence, which alarmed Hippolyte 
 all the more because he was winning ; but at last a final hand 
 left the lovers in the old lady's debt. 
 
 To feel for some money in his pocket the painter took his 
 hands off the table, and he then saw before him a purse 
 which Adelaide had slipped in front of him without his 
 noticing it ; the poor child had the old one in her hand, and, 
 to keep her countenance, was looking into it for the money 
 to pay her mother. The blood rushed to Hippolyte's heart 
 with such force that he was near fainting. 
 
 The new purse, substituted for his own, and which con- 
 tained his fifteen gold louis, was worked with gilt beads. 
 The rings and tassels bore witness to Adelaide's good taste, 
 and she had no doubt spent all her little hoard in ornament- 
 ing this pretty piece of work. It was impossible to say with 
 greater delicacy that the painter's gift could only be repaid 
 by some proof of affection. Hippolyte, overcome with hap- 
 piness, turned to look at Adelaide and her mother, and saw 
 that they were tremulous with pleasure and delight at their 
 little trick. He felt himself mean, sordid, a fool; he longed 
 to punish himself, to rend his heart. A few tears rose to his 
 eyes, by an irresistible impulse he sprang up, clasped Adelaide 
 in his arms, pressed her to his heart, and stole a kiss ; then 
 with the simple heartiness of an artist : " I ask her for my 
 wife ! " he exclaimed, looking at the Baroness. 
 
 Adelaide looked at him with half-wrathful eyes, and Mad- 
 ame de Rouville, somewhat astonished, was considering her 
 reply, when the scene was interrupted by a ring at the bell. 
 
THE PURSE. 391 
 
 The old vice-admiral came in, followed by his shadow and 
 Madame Schinner. Having guessed the cause of the grief 
 her son vainly endeavored to conceal, Hippolyte's mother 
 had made inquiries among her friends concerning Adelaide. 
 Very justly alarmed by the calumnies which weighed on the 
 young girl, unknown to the Comte de Kergarouet, whose 
 name she learned from the porter's wife, she went to report 
 them to the vice-admiral; and he, in his rage, declared "he 
 would crop all the scoundrels' ears for them." 
 
 Then, prompted by his wrath, he went on to explain to 
 Madame Schinner the secret of his losing intentionally at 
 cards, because the Baronne's pride left him none but these 
 ingenious means of assisting her. 
 
 When Madame Schinner had paid her respects to Madame 
 de Rouville, the Baroness looked at the Comte de Kergarouet, 
 at the Chevalier du Halga — the friend of the departed Com- 
 tesse de Kergarouet — at Hippolyte and Adelaide, and then 
 said, with the grace that comes from the heart, "So we are a 
 family party this evening." 
 
 Paris, May, 1832.