Scarcely one of those present heard the words without a shudder. Justice might give over a d’Esgrignon to the executioner’s branding iron. There was a dreadful pause. The old Marquise de Casteran could not keep back a tear that stole down over her rouge, and turned her head away to hide it.
Next day at noon, in the sunny weather, a whole excited population was dispersed in groups along the high street, which ran through the heart of the town, and nothing was talked of but the great affair. Was the Count in prison or was he not? — All at once the Comte d’Esgrignon’s well-known tilbury was seen driving down the Rue Saint-Blaise; it had evidently come from the Prefecture, the Count himself was on the box seat, and by his side sat a charming young man, whom nobody recognized. The pair were laughing and talking and in great spirits. They wore Bengal roses in their button-holes. Altogether, it was a theatrical surprise which words fail to describe.
At ten o’clock the court had decided to dismiss the charge, stating their very sufficient reasons for setting the Count at liberty, in a document which contained a thunderbolt for du Croisier, in the shape of an inasmuch that gave the Count the right to institute proceedings for libel. Old Chesnel was walking up the Grand Rue, as if by accident, telling all who cared to hear him that du Croisier had set the most shameful of snares for the d’Esgrignons’ honor, and that it was entirely owing to the forbearance and magnanimity of the family that he was not prosecuted for slander.
On the evening of that famous day, after the Marquis d’Esgrignon had gone to bed, the Count, Mlle. Armande, and the Chevalier were left with the handsome young page, now about to return to Paris. The charming cavalier’s sex could not be hidden from the Chevalier, and he alone, besides the three officials and Mme. Camusot, knew that the Duchess had been among them.
“The house is saved,” began Chesnel, “but after this shock it will take a hundred years to rise again. The debts must be paid now; you must marry an heiress, M. le Comte, there is nothing left for you to do.”
“And take her where you may find her,” said the Duchess.
“A second mesalliance!” exclaimed Mlle. Armande.
The Duchess began to laugh.
“It is better to marry than to die,” she said. As she spoke she drew from her waistcoat pocket a tiny crystal phial that came from the court apothecary.
Mlle. Armande shrank away in horror. Old Chesnel took the fair Maufrigneuse’s hand, and kissed it without permission.
“Are you all out of your minds here?” continued the Duchess. “Do you really expect to live in the fifteenth century when the rest of the world has reached the nineteenth? My dear children, there is no noblesse nowadays; there is no aristocracy left! Napoleon’s Code Civil made an end of the parchments, exactly as cannon made an end of feudal castles. When you have some money, you will be very much more of nobles than you are now. Marry anybody you please, Victurnien, you will raise your wife to your rank; that is the most substantial privilege left to the French noblesse. Did not M. de Talleyrand marry Mme. Grandt without compromising his position? Remember that Louis XIV. took the Widow Scarron for his wife.”
“He did not marry her for her money,” interposed Mlle. Armande.
“If the Comtesse d’Esgrignon were one du Croisier’s niece, for instance, would you receive her?” asked Chesnel.
“Perhaps,” replied the Duchess; “but the King, beyond all doubt, would be very glad to see her. — So you do not know what is going on in the world?” continued she, seeing the amazement in their faces. “Victurnien has been in Paris; he knows how things go there. We had more influence under Napoleon. Marry Mlle. Duval, Victurnien; she will be just as much Marquise d’Esgrignon as I am Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.”
“All is lost — even honor!” said the Chevalier, with a wave of the hand.
“Good-bye, Victurnien,” said the Duchess, kissing her lover on the forehead; “we shall not see each other again. Live on your lands; that is the best thing for you to do; the air of Paris is not at all good for you.”
“Diane!” the young Count cried despairingly.
“Monsieur, you forget yourself strangely,” the Duchess retorted coolly, as she laid aside her role of man and mistress, and became not merely an angel again, but a duchess, and not only a duchess, but Moliere’s Celimene.
The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse made a stately bow to these four personages, and drew from the Chevalier his last tear of admiration at the service of le beau sexe.
“How like she is to the Princess Goritza!” he exclaimed in a low voice.
Diane had disappeared. The crack of the postilion’s whip told Victurnien that the fair romance of his first love was over. While peril lasted, Diane could still see her lover in the young Count; but out of danger, she despised him for the weakling that he was.
Six months afterwards, Camusot received the appointment of assistant judge at Paris, and later he became an examining magistrate. Goodman Blondet was made a councillor to the Royal-Court; he held the post just long enough to secure a retiring pension, and then went back to live in his pretty little house. Joseph Blondet sat in his father’s seat at the court till the end of his days; there was not the faintest chance of promotion for him, but he became Mlle. Blandereau’s husband; and she, no doubt, is leading to-day, in the little flower-covered brick house, as dull a life as any carp in a marble basin. Michu and Camusot also received the Cross of the Legion of Honor, while Blondet became an Officer. As for M. Sauvager, deputy public prosecutor, he was sent to Corsica, to du Croisier’s great relief; he had decidedly no mind to bestow his niece upon that functionary.
Du Croisier himself, urged by President du Ronceret, appealed from the finding of the Tribunal to the Court-Royal, and lost his cause. The Liberals throughout the department held that little d’Esgrignon was guilty; while the Royalists, on the other hand, told frightful stories of plots woven by “that abominable du Croisier” to compass his revenge. A duel was fought indeed; the hazard of arms favored du Croisier, the young Count was dangerously wounded, and his antagonist maintained his words. This affair embittered the strife between the two parties; the Liberals brought it forward on all occasions. Meanwhile du Croisier never could carry his election, and saw no hope of marrying his niece to the Count, especially after the duel.
A month after the decision of the Tribunal was confirmed in the Court-Royal, Chesnel died, exhausted by the dreadful strain, which had weakened and shaken him mentally and physically. He died in the hour of victory, like some old faithful hound that has brought the boar to bay, and gets his death on the tusks. He died as happily as might be, seeing that he left the great House all but ruined, and the heir in penury, bored to death by an idle life, and without a hope of establishing himself. That bitter thought and his own exhaustion, no doubt, hastened the old man’s end. One great comfort came to him as he lay amid the wreck of so many hopes, sinking under the burden of so many cares — the old Marquis, at his sister’s entreaty, gave him back all the old friendship. The great lord came to the little house in the Rue du Bercail, and sat by his old servant’s bedside, all unaware how much that servant had done and sacrificed for him. Chesnel sat upright, and repeated Simeon’s cry. — The Marquis allowed them to bury Chesnel in the castle chapel; they laid him crosswise at the foot of the tomb which was waiting for the Marquis himself, the last, in a sense, of the d’Esgrignons.
And so died one of the last representatives of that great and beautiful thing, Service; giving to that often discredited word its original meaning, the relation between feudal lord and servitor. That relation, only to be found in some out-of-the-way province, or among a few old servants of the King, did honor alike to a noblesse that could call forth such affection, and to a bourgeoisie that could conceive it. Such noble and magnificent devotion is no longer possible among us. Noble houses have no servitors left; even as France has no longer a King, nor an hereditary peerage, nor lands that are bound irrevocably to an historic house, that the glorious names of the nation may be perpetuated.
Chesnel was not merely one of the obscure great men of private life; he was something more — he was a great fact. In his sustained self-devotion is there not something indefinably solemn and sublime, something that rises above the one beneficent deed, or the heroic height which is reached by a moment’s supreme effort? Chesnel’s virtues belong essentially to the classes which stand between the poverty of the people on the one hand, and the greatness of the aristocracy on the other; for these can combine homely burgher virtues with the heroic ideals of the noble, enlightening both by a solid education.
Victurnien was not well looked upon at Court; there was no more chance of a great match for him, nor a place. His Majesty steadily refused to raise the d’Esgrignons to the peerage, the one royal favor which could rescue Victurnien from his wretched position. It was impossible that he should marry a bourgeoise heiress in his father’s lifetime, so he was bound to live on shabbily under the paternal roof with memories of his two years of splendor in Paris, and the lost love of a great lady to bear him company. He grew moody and depressed, vegetating at home with a careworn aunt and a half heart-broken father, who attributed his son’s condition to a wasting malady. Chesnel was no longer there.
The Marquis died in 1830. The great d’Esgrignon, with a following of all the less infirm noblesse from the Collection of Antiquities, went to wait upon Charles X. at Nonancourt; he paid his respects to his sovereign, and swelled the meagre train of the fallen king. It was an act of courage which seems simple enough to-day, but, in that time of enthusiastic revolt, it was heroism.
“The Gaul has conquered!” These were the Marquis’ last words.
By that time du Croisier’s victory was complete. The new Marquis d’Esgrignon accepted Mlle. Duval as his wife a week after his old father’s death. His bride brought him three millions of francs for du Croisier and his wife settled the reversion of their fortunes upon her in the marriage-contract. Du Croisier took occasion to say during the ceremony that the d’Esgrignon family was the most honorable of all the ancient houses in France.
Some day the present Marquis d’Esgrignon will have an income of more than a hundred thousand crowns. You may see him in Paris, for he comes to town every winter and leads a jolly bachelor life, while he treats his wife with something more than the indifference of the grand seigneur of olden times; he takes no thought whatever for her.
“As for Mlle. d’Esgrignon,” said Emile Blondet, to whom all the detail of the story is due, “if she is no longer like the divinely fair woman whom I saw by glimpses in my childhood, she is decidedly, at the age of sixty-seven, the most pathetic and interesting figure in the Collection of Antiquities. She queens it among them still. I saw her when I made my last journey to my native place in search of the necessary papers for my marriage. When my father knew who it was that I had married, he was struck dumb with amazement; he had not a word to say until I told him that I was a prefect.
“‘You were born to it,’ he said, with a smile.
“As I took a walk around the town, I met Mlle. Armande. She looked taller than ever. I looked at her, and thought of Marius among the ruins of Carthage. Had she not outlived her creed, and the beliefs that had been destroyed? She is a sad and silent woman, with nothing of her old beauty left except the eyes, that shine with an unearthly light. I watched her on her way to mass, with her book in her hand, and could not help thinking that she prayed to God to take her out of the world.”
LES JARDIES, July 1837.
Lost Illusions
TWO POETS
Translated by Ellen Marriage
This novel is the first part of a trilogy, published under the title Illusions perdues, written between 1837 and 1843. The trilogy begins in the provinces, moving to Paris and finally returning to provincial France. The work is celebrated for its realistic and unbiased portrayal of all types of social life at that time in France.
Les Deux poètes introduces Lucien Chardon, the son of a lower middle-class father and an impoverished mother of remote aristocratic descent, who is the pivotal figure of the trilogy. Living at Angoulême, he is handsome and ambitious, in spite of his poverty. His widowed mother, his sister Ève and his best friend, David Séchard, do nothing to lessen his high opinion of his own talents. Even as the first part of Illusions perdues begins, Lucien has already written a historical novel and a sonnet sequence, whereas David is a scientist. But both, according to Balzac, are “poets” as they creatively seek truth..
Balzac’s annotated manuscripts of this trilogy
An original illustration
DEDICATION
To Monsieur Victor Hugo,
It was your birthright to be, like a Rafael or a Pitt, a great poet at an age when other men are children; it was your fate, the fate of Chateaubriand and of every man of genius, to struggle against jealousy skulking behind the columns of a newspaper, or crouching in the subterranean places of journalism. For this reason I desired that your victorious name should help to win a victory for this work that I inscribe to you, a work which, if some persons are to be believed, is an act of courage as well as a veracious history. If there had been journalists in the time of Moliere, who can doubt but that they, like marquises, financiers, doctors, and lawyers, would have been within the province of the writer of plays? And why should Comedy, qui castigat ridendo mores, make an exception in favor of one power, when the Parisian press spares none? I am happy, monsieur, in this opportunity of subscribing myself your sincere admirer and friend,
DE BALZAC.
TWO POETS
At the time when this story opens, the Stanhope press and the ink-distributing roller were not as yet in general use in small provincial printing establishments. Even at Angouleme, so closely connected through its paper-mills with the art of typography in Paris, the only machinery in use was the primitive wooden invention to which the language owes a figure of speech — ”the press groans” was no mere rhetorical expression in those days. Leather ink-balls were still used in old-fashioned printing houses; the pressman dabbed the ink by hand on the characters, and the movable table on which the form of type was placed in readiness for the sheet of paper, being made of marble, literally deserved its name of “impression-stone.” Modern machinery has swept all this old-world mechanism into oblivion; the wooden press which, with all its imperfections, turned out such beautiful work for the Elzevirs, Plantin, Aldus, and Didot is so completely forgotten, that something must be said as to the obsolete gear on which Jerome-Nicolas Sechard set an almost superstitious affection, for it plays a part in this chronicle of great small things.
Sechard had been in his time a journeyman pressman, a “bear” in compositors’ slang. The continued pacing to and fro of the pressman from ink-table to press, from press to ink-table, no doubt suggested the nickname. The “bears,” however, make matters even by calling the compositors monkeys, on account of the nimble industry displayed by those gentlemen in picking out the type from the hundred and fifty-two compartments of the cases.
In the disastrous year 1793, Sechard, being fifty years old and a married man, escaped the great Requisition which swept the bulk of French workmen into the army. The old pressman was the only hand left in the printing-house; and when the master (otherwise the “gaffer”) died, leaving a widow, but no children, the business seemed to be on the verge of extinction; for the solitary “bear” was quite incapable of the feat of transformation into a “monkey,” and in his quality of pressman had never learned to read or write. Just then, however, a Representative of the People being in a mighty hurry to publish the Decrees of the Convention, bestowed a master printer’s license on Sechard, and requisitioned the establishment. Citizen Sechard accepted the dangerous patent, bought the business of his master’s widow with his wife’s savings, and took over the plant at half its value. But he was not even at the beginning. He was bound to print the Decrees of the Republic without mistakes and without delay.
In this strait Jerome-Nicolas Sechard had the luck to discover a noble Marseillais who
had no mind to emigrate and lose his lands, nor yet to show himself openly and lose his head, and consequently was fain to earn a living by some lawful industry. A bargain was struck. M. le Comte de Maucombe, disguised in a provincial printer’s jacket, set up, read, and corrected the decrees which forbade citizens to harbor aristocrats under pain of death; while the “bear,” now a “gaffer,” printed the copies and duly posted them, and the pair remained safe and sound.
In 1795, when the squall of the Terror had passed over, Nicolas Sechard was obliged to look out for another jack-of-all-trades to be compositor, reader, and foreman in one; and an Abbe who declined the oath succeeded the Comte de Maucombe as soon as the First Consul restored public worship. The Abbe became a Bishop at the Restoration, and in after days the Count and the Abbe met and sat together on the same bench of the House of Peers.
In 1795 Jerome-Nicolas had not known how to read or write; in 1802 he had made no progress in either art; but by allowing a handsome margin for “wear and tear” in his estimates, he managed to pay a foreman’s wages. The once easy-going journeyman was a terror to his “bears” and “monkeys.” Where poverty ceases, avarice begins. From the day when Sechard first caught a glimpse of the possibility of making a fortune, a growing covetousness developed and sharpened in him a certain practical faculty for business — greedy, suspicious, and keen-eyed. He carried on his craft in disdain of theory. In course of time he had learned to estimate at a glance the cost of printing per page or per sheet in every kind of type. He proved to unlettered customers that large type costs more to move; or, if small type was under discussion, that it was more difficult to handle. The setting-up of the type was the one part of his craft of which he knew nothing; and so great was his terror lest he should not charge enough, that he always made a heavy profit. He never took his eyes off his compositors while they were paid by the hour. If he knew that a paper manufacturer was in difficulties, he would buy up his stock at a cheap rate and warehouse the paper. So from this time forward he was his own landlord, and owned the old house which had been a printing office from time immemorial.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 451