At last the doctor forbade Mme. Willemsens to leave her room. Every day it was brightened by the flowers that she loved, and her children were always with her. One day, early in November, she sat at the piano for the last time. A picture — a Swiss landscape — hung above the instrument; and at the window she could see her children standing with their heads close together. Again and again she looked from the children to the landscape, and then again at the children. Her face flushed, her fingers flew with passionate feeling over the ivory keys. This was her last great day, an unmarked day of festival, held in her own soul by the spirit of her memories. When the doctor came, he ordered her to stay in bed. The alarming dictum was received with bewildered silence.
When the doctor had gone, she turned to the older boy.
“Louis,” she said, “take me out on the terrace, so that I may see my country once more.”
The boy gave his arm at those simply uttered words, and brought his mother out upon the terrace; but her eyes turned, perhaps unconsciously, to heaven rather than to the earth, and indeed, it would have been hard to say whether heaven or earth was the fairer — for the clouds traced shadowy outlines, like the grandest Alpine glaciers, against the sky. Mme. Willemsens’ brows contracted vehemently; there was a look of anguish and remorse in her eyes. She caught the children’s hands, and clutched them to a heavily-throbbing heart.
“‘Parentage unknown!’” she cried, with a look that went to their hearts. “Poor angels, what will become of you? And when you are twenty years old, what strict account may you not require of my life and your own?”
She put the children from her, and leaning her arms upon the balustrade, stood for a while hiding her face, alone with herself, fearful of all eyes. When she recovered from the paroxysm, she saw Louis and Marie kneeling on either side of her, like two angels; they watched the expression of her face, and smiled lovingly at her.
“If only I could take that smile with me!” she said, drying her eyes.
Then she went into the house and took to the bed, which she would only leave for her coffin.
A week went by, one day exactly like another. Old Annette and Louis took it in turns to sit up with Mme. Willemsens, never taking their eyes from the invalid. It was the deeply tragical hour that comes in all our lives, the hour of listening in terror to every deep breath lest it should be the last, a dark hour protracted over many days. On the fifth day of that fatal week the doctor interdicted flowers in the room. The illusions of life were going one by one.
Then Marie and his brother felt their mother’s lips hot as fire beneath their kisses; and at last, on the Saturday evening, Mme. Willemsens was too ill to bear the slightest sound, and her room was left in disorder. This neglect for a woman of refined taste, who clung so persistently to the graces of life, meant the beginning of the death-agony. After this, Louis refused to leave his mother. On Sunday night, in the midst of the deepest silence, when Louis thought that she had grown drowsy, he saw a white, moist hand move the curtain in the lamplight.
“My son!” she said. There was something so solemn in the dying woman’s tones, that the power of her wrought-up soul produced a violent reaction on the boy; he felt an intense heat pass through the marrow of his bones.
“What is it, mother?”
“Listen! To-morrow all will be over for me. We shall see each other no more. To-morrow you will be a man, my child. So I am obliged to make some arrangements, which must remain a secret, known only to us. Take the key of my little table. That is it. Now open the drawer. You will find two sealed papers to the left. There is the name of LOUIS on one, and on the other MARIE.”
“Here they are, mother.”
“Those are your certificates of birth, darling; you will want them. Give them to our poor, old Annette to keep for you; ask her for them when you need them. Now,” she continued, “is there not another paper as well, something in my handwriting?”
“Yes, mother,” and Louis began to read, “Marie Willemsens, born at — — ”
“That is enough,” she broke in quickly, “do not go on. When I am dead, give that paper, too, to Annette, and tell her to send it to the registrar at Saint-Cyr; it will be wanted if my certificate of death is to be made out in due form. Now find writing materials for a letter which I will dictate to you.”
When she saw that he was ready to begin, and turned towards her for the words, they came from her quietly: —
“Monsieur le Comte, your wife, Lady Brandon, died at Saint-Cyr, near Tours, in the department of Indre-et-Loire. She forgave you.”
“Sign yourself — — ” she stopped, hesitating and perturbed.
“Are you feeling worse?” asked Louis.
“Put ‘Louis-Gaston,’” she went on.
She sighed, then she went on.
“Seal the letter, and direct it. To Lord Brandon, Brandon Square, Hyde Park, London, Angleterre. — That is right. When I am dead, post the letter in Tours, and prepay the postage. — Now,” she added, after a pause, “take the little pocketbook that you know, and come here, my dear child.... There are twelve thousand francs in it,” she said, when Louis had returned to her side. “That is all your own. Oh me! you would have been better off if your father — — ”
“My father,” cried the boy, “where is he?”
“He is dead,” she said, laying her finger on her lips; “he died to save my honor and my life.”
She looked upwards. If any tears had been left to her, she would have wept for pain.
“Louis,” she continued, “swear to me, as I lie here, that you will forget all that you have written, all that I have told you.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Kiss me, dear angel.”
She was silent for a long while, she seemed to be drawing strength from God, and to be measuring her words by the life that remained in her.
“Listen,” she began. “Those twelve thousand francs are all that you have in the world. You must keep the money upon you, because when I am dead the lawyers will come and seal everything up. Nothing will be yours then, not even your mother. All that remains for you to do will be to go out, poor orphan children, God knows where. I have made Annette’s future secure. She will have an annuity of a hundred crowns, and she will stay at Tours no doubt. But what will you do for yourself and your brother?”
She raised herself, and looked at the brave child, standing by her bedside. There were drops of perspiration on his forehead, he was pale with emotion, and his eyes were dim with tears.
“I have thought it over, mother,” he answered in a deep voice. “I will take Marie to the school here in Tours. I will give ten thousand francs to our old Annette, and ask her to take care of them, and to look after Marie. Then, with the remaining two thousand francs, I will go to Brest, and go to sea as an apprentice. While Marie is at school, I will rise to be a lieutenant on board a man-of-war. There, after all, die in peace, my mother; I shall come back again a rich man, and our little one shall go to the Ecole polytechnique, and I will find a career to suit his bent.”
A gleam of joy shone in the dying woman’s eyes. Two tears brimmed over, and fell over her fevered cheeks; then a deep sigh escaped between her lips. The sudden joy of finding the father’s spirit in the son, who had grown all at once to be a man, almost killed her.
“Angel of heaven,” she cried, weeping, “by one word you have effaced all my sorrows. Ah! I can bear them. — This is my son,” she said, “I bore, I reared this man,” and she raised her hands above her, and clasped them as if in ecstasy, then she lay back on the pillow.
“Mother, your face is growing pale!” cried the lad.
“Some one must go for a priest,” she answered, with a dying voice.
Louis wakened Annette, and the terrified old woman hurried to the parsonage at Saint-Cyr.
When morning came, Mme. Willemsens received the sacrament amid the most touching surroundings. Her children were kneeling in the room, with Annette and the vinedresser’s family, simple folk, w
ho had already become part of the household. The silver crucifix, carried by a chorister, a peasant child from the village, was lifted up, and the dying mother received the Viaticum from an aged priest. The Viaticum! sublime word, containing an idea yet more sublime, an idea only possessed by the apostolic religion of the Roman church.
“This woman has suffered greatly!” the old cure said in his simple way.
Marie Willemsens heard no voices now, but her eyes were still fixed upon her children. Those about her listened in terror to her breathing in the deep silence; already it came more slowly, though at intervals a deep sigh told them that she still lived, and of a struggle within her; then at last it ceased. Every one burst into tears except Marie. He, poor child, was still too young to know what death meant.
Annette and the vinedresser’s wife closed the eyes of the adorable woman, whose beauty shone out in all its radiance after death. Then the women took possession of the chamber of death, removed the furniture, wrapped the dead in her winding-sheet, and laid her upon the couch. They lit tapers about her, and arranged everything — the crucifix, the sprigs of box, and the holy-water stoup — after the custom of the countryside, bolting the shutters and drawing the curtains. Later the curate came to pass the night in prayer with Louis, who refused to leave his mother. On Tuesday morning an old woman and two children and a vinedresser’s wife followed the dead to her grave. These were the only mourners. Yet this was a woman whose wit and beauty and charm had won a European reputation, a woman whose funeral, if it had taken place in London, would have been recorded in pompous newspaper paragraphs, as a sort of aristocratic rite, if she had not committed the sweetest of crimes, a crime always expiated in this world, so that the pardoned spirit may enter heaven. Marie cried when they threw the earth on his mother’s coffin; he understood that he should see her no more.
A simple, wooden cross, set up to mark her grave, bore this inscription, due to the cure of Saint-Cyr: —
HERE LIES
AN UNHAPPY WOMAN,
WHO DIED AT THE AGE OF THIRTY-SIX.
KNOWN IN HEAVEN BY THE NAME OF AUGUSTA.
Pray for her!
When all was over, the children came back to La Grenadiere to take a last look at their home; then, hand in hand, they turned to go with Annette, leaving the vinedresser in charge, with directions to hand over everything duly to the proper authorities.
At this moment, Annette called to Louis from the steps by the kitchen door, and took him aside with, “Here is madame’s ring, Monsieur Louis.”
The sight of this vivid remembrance of his dead mother moved him so deeply that he wept. In his fortitude, he had not even thought of this supreme piety; and he flung his arms round the old woman’s neck. Then the three set out down the beaten path, and the stone staircase, and so to Tours, without turning their heads.
“Mamma used to come there!” Marie said when they reached the bridge.
Annette had a relative, a retired dressmaker, who lived in the Rue de la Guerche. She took the two children to this cousin’s house, meaning that they should live together thenceforth. But Louis told her of his plans, gave Marie’s certificate of birth and the ten thousand francs into her keeping, and the two went the next morning to take Marie to school.
Louis very briefly explained his position to the headmaster, and went. Marie came with him as far as the gateway. There Louis gave solemn parting words of the tenderest counsel, telling Marie that he would now be left alone in the world. He looked at his brother for a moment, and put his arms about him, took one more long look, brushed a tear from his eyes, and went, turning again and again till the very last to see his brother standing there in the gateway of the school.
A month later Louis-Gaston, now an apprentice on board a man-of-war, left the harbor of Rochefort. Leaning over the bulwarks of the corvette Iris, he watched the coast of France receding swiftly till it became indistinguishable from the faint blue horizon line. In a little while he felt that he was really alone, and lost in the wide ocean, lost and alone in the world and in life.
“There is no need to cry, lad; there is a God for us all,” said an old sailor, with rough kindliness in his thick voice.
The boy thanked him with pride in his eyes. Then he bowed his head, and resigned himself to a sailor’s life. He was a father.
ANGOULEME, August, 1832.
THE DESERTED WOMAN
Translated by Ellen Marriage
This short story was published in 1832 and relates the story of Baron Gaston de Nueil, a young man sent to rural Normandy to recover his health. The Baron fits into the aristocratic scene easily, when he hears that the notorious Madame de Beauseant, who has been thrown over by the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, has arrived. The young Baron is intrigued and manages to bring about an introduction from one of her kinsmen.
DEDICATION
To Her Grace the Duchesse d’Abrantes,
from her devoted servant,
Honoré de Balzac.
PARIS, August 1835.
THE DESERTED WOMAN
In the early spring of 1822, the Paris doctors sent to Lower Normandy a young man just recovering from an inflammatory complaint, brought on by overstudy, or perhaps by excess of some other kind. His convalescence demanded complete rest, a light diet, bracing air, and freedom from excitement of every kind, and the fat lands of Bessin seemed to offer all these conditions of recovery. To Bayeux, a picturesque place about six miles from the sea, the patient therefore betook himself, and was received with the cordiality characteristic of relatives who lead very retired lives, and regard a new arrival as a godsend.
All little towns are alike, save for a few local customs. When M. le Baron Gaston de Nueil, the young Parisian in question, had spent two or three evenings in his cousin’s house, or with the friends who made up Mme. de Sainte-Severe’s circle, he very soon had made the acquaintance of the persons whom this exclusive society considered to be “the whole town.” Gaston de Nueil recognized in them the invariable stock characters which every observer finds in every one of the many capitals of the little States which made up the France of an older day.
First of all comes the family whose claims to nobility are regarded as incontestable, and of the highest antiquity in the department, though no one has so much as heard of them a bare fifty leagues away. This species of royal family on a small scale is distantly, but unmistakably, connected with the Navarreins and the Grandlieu family, and related to the Cadignans, and the Blamont-Chauvrys. The head of the illustrious house is invariably a determined sportsman. He has no manners, crushes everybody else with his nominal superiority, tolerates the sub-prefect much as he submits to the taxes, and declines to acknowledge any of the novel powers created by the nineteenth century, pointing out to you as a political monstrosity the fact that the prime minister is a man of no birth. His wife takes a decided tone, and talks in a loud voice. She has had adorers in her time, but takes the sacrament regularly at Easter. She brings up her daughters badly, and is of the opinion that they will always be rich enough with their name.
Neither husband nor wife has the remotest idea of modern luxury. They retain a livery only seen elsewhere on the stage, and cling to old fashions in plate, furniture, and equipages, as in language and manner of life. This is a kind of ancient state, moreover, that suits passably well with provincial thrift. The good folk are, in fact, the lords of the manor of a bygone age, minus the quitrents and heriots, the pack of hounds and the laced coats; full of honor among themselves, and one and all loyally devoted to princes whom they only see at a distance. The historical house incognito is as quaint a survival as a piece of ancient tapestry. Vegetating somewhere among them there is sure to be an uncle or a brother, a lieutenant-general, an old courtier of the Kings’s, who wears the red ribbon of the order of Saint-Louis, and went to Hanover with the Marechal de Richelieu: and here you will find him like a stray leaf out of some old pamphlet of the time of Louis Quinze.
This fossil greatness finds a rival in another house,
wealthier, though of less ancient lineage. Husband and wife spend a couple of months of every winter in Paris, bringing back with them its frivolous tone and short-lived contemporary crazes. Madame is a woman of fashion, though she looks rather conscious of her clothes, and is always behind the mode. She scoffs, however, at the ignorance affected by her neighbors. Her plate is of modern fashion; she has “grooms,” Negroes, a valet-de-chambre, and what-not. Her oldest son drives a tilbury, and does nothing (the estate is entailed upon him), his younger brother is auditor to a Council of State. The father is well posted up in official scandals, and tells you anecdotes of Louis XVIII. and Madame du Cayla. He invests his money in the five per cents, and is careful to avoid the topic of cider, but has been known occasionally to fall a victim to the craze for rectifying the conjectural sums-total of the various fortunes of the department. He is a member of the Departmental Council, has his clothes from Paris, and wears the Cross of the Legion of Honor. In short, he is a country gentleman who has fully grasped the significance of the Restoration, and is coining money at the Chamber, but his Royalism is less pure than that of the rival house; he takes the Gazette and the Debats, the other family only read the Quotidienne.
His lordship the Bishop, a sometime Vicar-General, fluctuates between the two powers, who pay him the respect due to religion, but at times they bring home to him the moral appended by the worthy Lafontaine to the fable of the Ass laden with Relics. The good man’s origin is distinctly plebeian.
Then come stars of the second magnitude, men of family with ten or twelve hundred livres a year, captains in the navy or cavalry regiments, or nothing at all. Out on the roads, on horseback, they rank half-way between the cure bearing the sacraments and the tax collector on his rounds. Pretty nearly all of them have been in the Pages or in the Household Troops, and now are peaceably ending their days in a faisance-valoir, more interested in felling timber and the cider prospects than in the Monarchy.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 151