Except the gay and cheery goodman Alain, all these persons had suffered; but Monsieur Nicolas himself seemed to give the palm of martyrdom to Madame de la Chanterie. Nevertheless, the memory of her sorrows was so restrained by religious resignation, by her secret avocations, that she seemed to have been always happy.
“You are the life of your friends,” Godefroid said to her one day; “you are the tie that unites them, — the house-mother, as it were, of some great work; and, as we are all mortal, I ask myself sometimes what your association would become without you.”
“That is what frightens the others; but Providence, to whom we owe our new book-keeper,” she said, smiling, “will provide. Besides, I am on the look-out.”
“Will your new book-keeper soon be allowed to work at your business?” asked Godefroid.
“That depends on himself,” she answered, smiling. “He must be sincerely religious, truly pious, without the least self-interest, not concerned about the riches of our house, able to rise above all petty social considerations on the two wings which God has given us.”
“What are they?”
“Singleness of mind and purity,” replied Madame de la Chanterie. “Your ignorance shows that you have neglected the reading of our book.” she added, laughing at the innocent trick she had played to know if Godefroid had read the “Imitation of Jesus Christ.” “And, lastly,” she went on, “fill your soul with Saint Paul’s epistle upon Charity. When that is done,” she added, with a sublime look, “it will not be you who belong to us, we shall belong to you, and you will be able to count up greater riches than the sovereigns of this world possess; you will enjoy as we enjoy; yes, let me tell you (if you remember the ‘Arabian Nights’) that the treasures of Aladdin are nothing to those we possess. And so for the last year we have not sufficed for our affairs, and we needed, as you see, a book-keeper.”
While speaking, she studied Godefroid’s face; he, on his part, did not know how to take this extraordinary confidence. But as the scene in the counting-room at Mongenod’s came often to his mind, he hovered between doubt and belief.
“Ah, you will be very happy!” she said.
Godefroid was so consumed with curiosity that from this moment he determined to break through the reserve of one of the four friends and question him. Now, the one to whom he felt the most drawn, and who seemed naturally to excite the sympathies of all classes, was the kind, gay, simple Monsieur Alain. By what strange path could Providence have led a being so guileless into this monastery without a lock, where recluses of both sexes lived beneath a rule in the midst of Paris, in absolute freedom, as though they were guarded by the sternest of superiors? What drama, what event, had made him leave his own road in life, and take this path among the sorrows of the great city?
Godefroid resolved to ask.
VII. MONSIEUR ALAIN TELLS HIS SECRETS
One evening Godefroid determined to pay a visit to his neighbor on the floor above him, with the intention of satisfying a curiosity more excited by the apparent impossibility of a catastrophe in such an existence than it would have been under the expectation of discovering some terrible episode in the life of a corsair.
At the words “Come in!” given in answer to two raps struck discreetly on the door, Godefroid turned the key which was in the lock and found Monsieur Alain sitting by the fire reading, before he went to bed, his accustomed chapter in the “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” by the light of two wax-candles, each protected by a moveable green shade, such as whist-players use.
The goodman wore trousers a pied and his gray camlet dressing-gown. His feet were at a level with the fire, resting on a cushion done in worsted-work, as were his slippers, by Madame de la Chanterie. The fine head of the old man, without other covering than its crown of white hair, almost like that of a monk, stood out in clear relief against the brown background of an enormous armchair.
Monsieur Alain gently laid his book, which was much worn at the corners, on a little table with twisted legs, and signed to the young man to take another chair, removing as he did so a pair of spectacles which were hanging on the end of his nose.
“Are you ill, that you have left your room at this hour?” he asked.
“Dear Monsieur Alain,” said Godefroid, frankly, “I am tortured with a curiosity which one word from you will make very harmless or very indiscreet; and that explains clearly enough the spirit in which I shall ask my question.”
“Oh! oh! and what is your question?” said the good soul, looking at the young man with an eye that was half mischievous.
“What was it that brought you here to lead the life that you live here? For, surely, to accept the doctrines of such total renunciation of all personal interests, a man must have been disgusted with the world, or else have injured others.”
“Eh! my dear lad,” replied the old man, letting a smile flicker on his large lips, which gave to his rosy mouth the kindliest expression that the genius of a painter ever imagined, “can we not be moved to the deepest pity by the spectacle of human wretchedness which Paris holds within her walls? Did Saint Vincent de Paul need the spur of remorse or wounded vanity to make him devote himself to outcast children?”
“You close my mouth, for if ever a soul resembled that of the Christian hero, it is yours,” said Godefroid.
In spite of the hardness which age had given to the wrinkled yellow skin of his face, the old man blushed, for he seemed to have provoked that comparison; though any one who knew his modesty would have been certain he never dreamed of it. Godefroid was aware by this time that Madame de la Chanterie’s inmates had no taste for that sort of incense. Nevertheless, the extreme simplicity of the good old soul was more disturbed by this idea than a young girl would have been by an improper thought.
“Though I am very far indeed from Saint Vincent de Paul morally,” said Monsieur Alain, “I think I do resemble him physically.”
Godefroid was about to speak, but was stopped by a gesture of the old man, whose nose, it must be owned, had the tuberous appearance of that of the Saint, and whose face, a good deal like that of an old vine-dresser, was an exact duplicate of the broad, common face of the founder of Foundling hospitals.
“As for me, you are right enough,” he went on; “my vocation for our work was brought about by repentance, as the result of a — folly.”
“A folly, — you!” Godefroid exclaimed softly, the word entirely putting out of his head what he meant to say.
“Ah! dear me, what I am going to tell you will seem, I dare say, a trifle to you, — a mere bit of nonsense; but before the tribunal of conscience it was another thing. If you persist in wishing to share our work after hearing what I shall tell you, you will understand that the power of a sentiment is according to the nature of souls, and that a matter which would not in the least trouble a strong mind may very well torment the conscience of a weak Christian.”
After a preface of this kind, the curiosity of the disciple of course knew no bounds. What could be the crime of the worthy soul whom Madame de la Chanterie called her paschal lamb? The thought crossed Godefroid’s mind that a book might be written on it, called “The Sins of a Sheep.” Sheep are sometimes quite ferocious towards grass and flowers. One of the tenderest republicans of those days was heard to assert that the best of human beings was cruel to something. But the kindly Alain! — he, who like my uncle Toby, wouldn’t crush a gnat till it had stung him twenty times, — that sweet soul to have been tortured by repentance!
This reflection in Godefroid’s mind filled the pause made by the old man after saying, “Now listen to me!” — a pause he filled himself by pushing his cushion under Godefroid’s feet to share it with him.
“I was then about thirty years of age,” he said. “It was the year ‘98, if I remember right, — a period when young men were forced to have the experience of men of sixty. One morning, a little before my breakfast hour, which was nine o’clock, my old housekeeper ushered in one of the few friends remaining to me after the Revolutio
n. My first word was to ask him to breakfast. My friend — his name was Mongenod, a fellow about twenty-eight years of age — accepted, but he did so in an awkward manner. I had not seen him since 1793!”
“Mongenod!” cried Godefroid; “why, that is — ”
“If you want to know the end before the beginning, how am I to tell you my history?” said the old man, smiling.
Godefroid made a sign which promised absolute silence.
“When Mongenod sat down,” continued Monsieur Alain, “I noticed that his shoes were worn out. His stockings had been washed so often that it was difficult to say if they were silk or not. His breeches, of apricot-colored cassimere, were so old that the color had disappeared in spots; and the buckles, instead of being of steel, seemed to me to be made of common iron. His white, flowered waistcoat, now yellow from long wearing, also his shirt, the frill of which was frayed, betrayed a horrible yet decent poverty. A mere glance at his coat was enough to convince me that my friend had fallen into dire distress. That coat was nut-brown in color, threadbare at the seams, carefully brushed, though the collar was greasy from pomade or powder, and had the white metal buttons now copper-colored. The whole was so shabby that I tried not to look at it. The hat — an opera hat of a kind we then carried under the arm, and not on the head — had seen many governments. Nevertheless, my poor friend must have spent a few sous at the barber’s, for he was neatly shaved; and his hair, gathered behind his head with a comb and powdered carefully, smelt of pomade. I saw two chains hanging down on his breeches, — two rusty steel chains, — but no appearance of a watch in his pocket. I tell you all these details, as they come to me,” said Monsieur Alain; “I seldom think of this matter now; but when I do, all the particulars come vividly before me.”
He paused a moment and then resumed: —
“It was winter, and Mongenod evidently had no cloak; for I noticed that several lumps of snow, which must have dropped from the roofs as he walked along, were sticking to the collar of his coat. When he took off his rabbit-skin gloves, and I saw his right hand, I noticed the signs of labor, and toilsome labor, too. Now his father, the advocate of the Grand Council, had left him some property, — about five or six thousand francs a year. I saw at once that he had come to me to borrow money. I had, in a secret hiding-place, two hundred louis d’or, — an enormous hoard at that time; for they were worth I couldn’t now tell you how many hundred thousand francs in assignats. Mongenod and I had studied at the same collage, — that of Grassins, — and we had met again in the same law-office, — that of Bordin, — a truly honest man. When you have spent your boyhood and played your youthful pranks with the same comrade, the sympathy between you and him has something sacred about it; his voice, his glance, stir certain chords in your heart which only vibrate under the memories that he brings back. Even if you have had cause of complaint against such a comrade, the rights of the friendship between you can never be effaced. But there had never been the slightest jar between us two. At the death of his father, in 1787, Mongenod was left richer than I. Though I had never borrowed money from him, I owed him pleasures which my father’s economy denied me. Without my generous comrade I should never had seen the first representation of the ‘Marriage of Figaro.’ Mongenod was what was called in those days a charming cavalier; he was very gallant. Sometimes I blamed him for his facile way of making intimacies and his too great amiability. His purse opened freely; he lived in a free-handed way; he would serve a man as second having only seen him twice. Good God! how you send me back to the days and the ways of my youth!” said the worthy man, with his cheery smile.
“Are you sorry?” said Godefroid.
“Oh, no! and you can judge by the minuteness with which I am telling you all this how great a place this event has held in my life.
“Mongenod, endowed with an excellent heart and fine courage, a trifle Voltairean, was inclined to play the nobleman,” went on Monsieur Alain. “His education at Grassins, where there were many young nobles, and his various gallantries, had given him the polished manners and ways of people of condition, who were then called aristocrats. You can therefore imagine how great was my surprise to see such symptoms of poverty in the young and elegant Mongenod of 1787 when my eyes left his face and rested on his garments. But as, at that unhappy period of our history, some persons assumed a shabby exterior for safety, and as he might have had some other and sufficient reasons for disguising himself, I awaited an explanation, although I opened the way to it. ‘What a plight you are in, my dear Mongenod!’ I said, accepting the pinch of snuff he offered me from a copper and zinc snuff-box. ‘Sad indeed!’ he answered; ‘I have but one friend left, and that is you. I have done all I could to avoid appealing to you; but I must ask you for a hundred louis. The sum is large, I know,’ he went on, seeing my surprise; ‘but if you gave me fifty I should be unable ever to return them; whereas with one hundred I can seek my fortune in better ways, — despair will inspire me to find them.’ ‘Then you have nothing?’ I exclaimed. ‘I have,’ he said, brushing away a tear, ‘five sous left of my last piece of money. To come here to you I have had my boots blacked and my face shaved. I possess what I have on my back. But,’ he added, with a gesture, ‘I owe my landlady a thousand francs in assignats, and the man I buy cold victuals from refused me credit yesterday. I am absolutely without resources.’ ‘What do you think of doing?’ ‘Enlisting as a soldier if you cannot help me.’ ‘You! a soldier, Mongenod?’ ‘I will get myself killed, or I will be General Mongenod.’ ‘Well,’ I said, much moved, ‘eat your breakfast in peace; I have a hundred louis.’
“At that point,” said the goodman, interrupting himself and looking at Godefroid with a shrewd air, “I thought it best to tell him a bit of a fib.”
“‘That is all I possess in the world,’ I said. ‘I have been waiting for a fall in the Funds to invest that money; but I will put it in your hands instead, and you shall consider me your partner; I will leave to your conscience the duty of returning it to me in due time. The conscience of an honest man,’ I said, ‘is a better security than the Funds.’ Mongenod looked at me fixedly as I spoke, and seemed to be inlaying my words upon his heart. He put out his right hand, I laid my left into it, and we held them together, — I deeply moved, and he with two big tears rolling down his cheeks. The sight of those tears wrung my heart. I was more moved still when Mongenod pulled out a ragged foulard handkerchief to wipe them away. ‘Wait here,’ I said; and I went to my secret hiding-place with a heart as agitated as though I had heard a woman say she loved me. I came back with two rolls of fifty louis each. ‘Here, count them.’ He would not count them; and he looked about him for a desk on which to write, he said, a proper receipt. I positively refused to take any paper. ‘If I should die,’ I said, ‘my heirs would trouble you. This is to be between ourselves.’
“Well,” continued Monsieur Alain, smiling, “when Mongenod found me a good friend he ceased to look as sad and anxious as when he entered; in fact, he became quite gay. My housekeeper gave us some oysters, white wine, and an omelet, with broiled kidneys, and the remains of a pate my old mother had sent me; also some dessert, coffee, and liqueur of the Iles. Mongenod, who had been starving for two days, was fed up. We were so interested in talking about our life before the Revolution that we sat at table till three in the afternoon. Mongenod told me how he had lost his fortune. In the first place, his father having invested the greater part of his capital in city loans, when they fell Mongenod lost two thirds of all he had. Then, having sold his house in the rue de Savoie, he was forced to receive the price in assignats. After that he took into his head to found a newspaper, ‘La Sentinelle;’ that compelled him to fly at the end of six months. His hopes, he said, were now fixed on the success of a comic opera called ‘Les Peruviens.’ When he said that I began to tremble. Mongenod turned author, wasting his money on a newspaper, living no doubt in the theatres, connected with singers at the Feydeau, with musicians, and all the queer people who lurk behind the scenes, — to tel
l you the truth, he didn’t seem my Mongenod. I trembled. But how could I take back the hundred louis? I saw each roll in each pocket of his breeches like the barrels of two pistols.
“Then,” continued Monsieur Alain, and this time he sighed, “Mongenod went away. When I was alone, and no longer in presence of hard and cruel poverty, I began, in spite of myself, to reflect. I was sobered. ‘Mongenod,’ thought I, ‘is perhaps thoroughly depraved; he may have been playing a comedy at my expense.’ His gaiety, the moment I had handed over to him readily such a large sum of money, struck me then as being too like the joy of the valets on the stage when they catch a Geronte. I ended, where I ought to have begun, by resolving to make some investigations as to my friend Mongenod, who had given me his address, — written on the back of a playing card! I did not choose, as a matter of delicacy, to go and see him the next day; he might have thought there was distrust in such promptness, as, indeed, there would have been. The second day I had certain matters to attend to which took all my time, and it was only at the end of two weeks that, not seeing or hearing of Mongenod, I went one morning from the Croix-Rouge, where I was then living, to the rue des Moineaux, where he lived. I found he was living in furnished lodgings of the lowest class; but the landlady was a very worthy woman, the widow of a magistrate who had died on the scaffold; she was utterly ruined by the Revolution, and had only a few louis with which to begin the hazardous trade of taking lodgers.”
Here Monsieur Alain interrupted himself to explain. “I knew her later,” he said; “she then had seven houses in Saint-Roch, and was making quite a little fortune.
“‘The citizen Mongenod is not at home,’ the landlady said to me; ‘but there is some one there.’ This remark excited my curiosity. I went up to the fifth story. A charming person opened the door, — oh, such a pretty young woman! who looked at me rather suspiciously and kept the door half closed. ‘I am Alain, a friend of Mongenod’s,’ I said. Instantly the door opened wide, and I entered a miserable garret, which was, nevertheless, kept with the utmost neatness. The pretty young woman offered me a chair before a fireplace where were ashes but no fire, at the corner of which I saw a common earthen foot-warmer. ‘It makes me very happy, monsieur,’ she said, taking my hand and pressing it affectionately, ‘to be able to express to you my gratitude. You have indeed saved us. Were it not for you I might never have seen Mongenod again. He might, — yes, he would have thrown himself in the river. He was desperate when he left me to go and see you.’ On examining this person I was surprised to see her head tied up in a foulard, and along the temples a curious dark line; but I presently saw that her head was shaved. ‘Have you been ill?’ I asked, as I noticed this singularity. She cast a glance at a broken mirror in a shabby frame and colored; then the tears came into her eyes. ‘Yes, monsieur,’ she said, ‘I had horrible headaches, and I was obliged to have my hair cut off; it came to my feet.’ ‘Am I speaking to Madame Mongenod?’ I asked. ‘Yes, monsieur,’ she answered, giving me a truly celestial look. I bowed to the poor little woman and went away, intending to make the landlady tell me something about them; but she was out. I was certain that poor young woman had sold her hair to buy bread. I went from there to a wood merchant and ordered half a cord of wood, telling the cartman and the sawyer to take the bill, which I made the dealer receipt to the name of citizen Mongenod, and give it to the little woman.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 854