Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “Monsieur,” he said, “I see that the simplicity of my room makes you uneasy; therefore you need not be surprised at my method of proceeding. Here are your two hundred francs, and here, too, are three notes of a thousand francs each,” he added, drawing from his pocket-book the money Madame de la Chanterie had given him to release Monsieur Bernard’s book; but in case you still feel doubtful of my solvency I offer you as reference Messrs. Mongenod, bankers, rue de la Victoire.”

  “I know them,” said Halpersohn, putting the ten gold pieces into his pocket.

  “He’ll inquire of them,” thought Godefroid.

  “Where is the patient?” asked the doctor, rising like a man who knows the value of time.

  “This way, monsieur,” said Godefroid, preceding him to show the way.

  The Jew examined with a shrewd and suspicious eye the places he passed through, giving them the keen, rapid glance of a spy; he saw all the horrors of poverty through the door of the room in which the grandfather and the grandson lived; for, unfortunately, Monsieur Bernard had gone in to change his clothes before entering his daughter’s room, and in his haste to open the outer door to the doctor, he had forgotten to close that of his lair.

  He bowed in a stately manner to Halpersohn, and opened the door of his daughter’s room cautiously.

  “Vanda, my child, here is the doctor,” he said.

  Then he stood aside to allow Halpersohn, who kept on his bear-skin pelisse, to pass him. The Jew was evidently surprised at the luxury of the room, which in this quarter, and more especially in this house, was an anomaly; but his surprise only lasted for an instant, for he had seen among German and Russian Jews many instances of the same contrast between apparent misery and hoarded wealth. As he walked from the door to the bed he kept his eye on the patient, and the moment he reached her he said in Polish: —

  “You are a Pole?”

  “No, I am not; my mother was.”

  “Whom did your grandfather, Colonel Tarlowski, marry?”

  “A Pole.”

  “From what province?”

  “A Soboleska, of Pinsk.”

  “Very good; monsieur is your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Monsieur,” he said, turning to the old man; “your wife — ”

  “Is dead;” said Monsieur Bernard.

  “Was she very fair?” said Halpersohn, showing a slight impatience at being interrupted.

  “Here is her portrait,” said Monsieur Bernard, unhooking from the wall a handsome frame which enclosed several fine miniatures.

  Halpersohn felt the head and handled the hair of the patient while he looked at the portrait of Vanda Tarlowska, born Countess Sobolewska.

  “Relate to me the symptoms of your illness,” he said, placing himself on the sofa and looking fixedly at Vanda during the twenty minutes the history, given alternately by the father and daughter, lasted.

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-eight.”

  “Ah! good!” he cried, rising; “I will answer for the cure. Mind, I do not say that I can restore the use of her legs; but cured of the disease, that she shall be. Only, I must have her in a private hospital under my own eye.”

  “But, monsieur, my daughter cannot be moved!”

  “I will answer for her,” said Halpersohn, curtly; “but I will answer for her only on those conditions. She will have to exchange her present malady for another still more terrible, which may last a year, six months at the very least. You may come and see her at the hospital, since you are her father.”

  “Are you certain of curing her?” said Monsieur Bernard.

  “Certain,” repeated the Jew. “Madame has in her body an element, a vitiated fluid, the national disease, and it must be eliminated. You must bring her to me at Challot, rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, private hospital of Doctor Halpersohn.”

  “How can I?”

  “On a stretcher, just as all sick persons are carried to hospitals.”

  “But the removal will kill her!”

  “No.”

  As he said the word in a curt tone he was already at the door; Godefroid rejoined him on the staircase. The Jew, who was stifling with heat, said in his ear:

  “Besides the three thousand francs, the cost will be fifteen francs a day, payable three months in advance.”

  “Very good, monsieur. And,” continued Godefroid, putting one foot on the step of the cabriolet, into which the doctor had sprung, “you say you will answer for the cure?”

  “I will answer for it,” said the Jewish doctor. “Are you in love with the lady?”

  “No,” replied Godefroid.

  “You must not repeat what I am about to say to you; I only say it to prove to you that I am certain of a cure. If you are guilty of the slightest indiscretion you will kill her.”

  Godefroid replied with a gesture only.

  “For the last seventeen years she has been a victim to the element in her system called plica polonica,[*] which has produced all these ravages. I have seen more terrible cases than this. Now, I alone in the present day know how to bring this disease to a crisis, and force it outward so as to obtain a chance to cure it — for it cannot always be cured. You see, monsieur, that I am disinterested. If this lady were of great importance, a Baronne de Nucingen, or any other wife or daughter of a modern Croesus, this cure would bring me one hundred — two hundred thousand francs; in short, anything I chose to ask for it. However, it is only a trifling loss to me.”

  [*] Balzac’s description of plica polonica does not agree

  with that given in English medical dictionaries and

  cyclopedias. But as the book was written at Wierschovnia,

  Poland, in 1847, when he was attended by a celebrated Polish

  physician, and as, moreover, he was always so scrupulously

  accurate in his descriptions, it is fair to suppose that he

  knew of some form of the disease other than that given in

  the books. His account probably applies to the period before

  it takes the visible form described in the books.

  “About conveying her?”

  “Bah! she’ll seem to be dying, but she won’t die. There’s life enough in her to last a hundred years, when the disease is out of her system. Come, Jacques, drive on! quick, — rue de Monsieur! quick!” he said to his man.

  Godefroid was left on the boulevard gazing stupidly after the cabriolet.

  “Who is that queer man in a bearskin?” asked Madame Vauthier, whom nothing escaped; “is it true, what the man in the cabriolet told me, that he is one of the greatest doctors in Paris?”

  “What is that to you?”

  “Oh! nothing at all,” she replied, making a face.

  “You made a great mistake in not putting yourself on my side,” said Godefroid, returning slowly to the house; “you would have made more out of me than you will ever get from Barbet and Metivier; from whom, mark my words, you’ll get nothing.”

  “I am not for them particularly,” said Madame Vauthier, shrugging her shoulders; “Monsieur Barbet is my proprietor, that’s all!”

  It required two days’ persuasion to induce Monsieur Bernard to separate from his daughter and take her to Chaillot. Godefroid and the old man made the trip walking on each side of the litter, canopied with blue and white striped linen, in which was the dear patient, partly bound to a mattress, so much did her father dread the possible convulsions of a nervous attack. They started at three o’clock and reached their destination at five just as evening was coming on. Godefroid paid the sum demanded for three months’ board in advance, being careful to obtain a receipt for the money. When he went back to pay the bearers of the litter, he was followed by Monsieur Bernard, who took from beneath the mattress a bulky package carefully sealed up, and gave it to Godefroid.

  “One of these men will fetch you a cab,” said the old man; “for you cannot carry these four volumes under your arm. That is my book; give it to your reader; he may keep it the who
le of the coming week. I shall stay at least that time in this quarter; for I cannot leave my daughter in such total abandonment. I trust my grandson; he can take care of our rooms; especially if you keep an eye on him. If I were what I once was I would ask you the name of my critic, the former magistrate you spoke of; there were but few of them whom I did not know.”

  “Oh, there’s no mystery about it!” said Godefroid, interrupting Monsieur Bernard. “Now that you have shown this entire confidence in trusting me with your book, I will tell you that your censor is the former president, Lecamus de Tresnes.”

  “Oh, yes! — of the Royal Court of Paris. Take him the book; he is one of the noblest characters of the present day. He and the late Popinot, a judge of the Lower Court, were both worthy of the days of the old Parliaments. All my fears, if I had any, are dissipated. Where does he live? I should like to go and thank him for the trouble he is taking.”

  “You will find him in the rue Chanoinesse, under the name of Monsieur Joseph. I am going there now. Where is that agreement you made with your swindlers?”

  “Auguste will give it to you,” said the old man, re-entering the courtyard of the hospital.

  A cab was now brought up by the porter, and Godefroid jumped into it, — promising the coachman a good pourboire if he would get him to the rue Chanoinesse in good time, for he wanted to dine there.

  Half an hour after Vanda’s departure, three men dressed in black, whom Madame Vauthier let into the house by the door on the rue Notre-Dame des Champs, filed up the staircase, accompanied by their female Judas, and knocked gently at the door of Monsieur Bernard’s lodging. As it happened to be a Thursday, Auguste was at home. He opened the door, and the three men glided in like shadows.

  “What do you want, messieurs?” asked the lad.

  “These are the rooms of Monsieur Bernard, — that is, Monsieur le baron, — are they not?”

  “Yes; but what do you want?”

  “You know very well, young man, what we want! We are informed that your grandfather has left this house with a covered litter. That’s not surprising; he had the right to do so. But I am the sheriff, and I have come to seize everything he has left. On Monday he received a summons to pay three thousand francs, with interest and costs, to Monsieur Metivier, under pain of arrest for debt duly notified to him, and like an old stager who is up to the tricks of his own trade, he has walked off just in time. However, if we can’t catch him, his furniture hasn’t taken wings. You see we know all about it, young man.”

  “Here are the stamped papers your grandpapa didn’t choose to take,” said Madame Vauthier, thrusting three writs into Auguste’s hand.

  “Remain here, madame,” said the sheriff; “we shall make you legal guardian of the property. The law gives you forty sous a day, and that’s not to be sneezed at.”

  “Ha! now I shall see the inside of that fine bedroom!” cried the Vauthier.

  “You shall not go into my mother’s room!” said the young lad, in a threatening voice, springing between the door and the three men in black.

  At a sign from the sheriff, two of the men seized Auguste.

  “No resistance, young man; you are not master here,” said the sheriff. “We shall draw up the proces-verbal, and you will sleep in jail.”

  Hearing that dreadful word, Auguste burst into tears.

  “Ah, how fortunate,” he cried, “that mamma has gone! It would have killed her.”

  A conference now took place between the sheriff, the other men, and Vauthier, by which Auguste discovered, although they spoke in a low voice, that his grandfather’s manuscripts were what they chiefly wanted. On that, he opened the door of his mother’s bedroom.

  “Go in,” he said, “but take care to do no injury. You will be paid to-morrow morning.”

  Then he went off weeping into the lair, seized his grandfather’s notes and stuck them into the stove, in which, as he knew very well, there was not a spark of fire.

  The thing was done so rapidly that the sheriff — a sly, keen fellow, worthy of his clients Barbet and Metivier — found the lad weeping in his chair when he entered the wretched room, after assuring himself that the manuscripts were not in the antechamber.

  Though it is not permissible to seize books or manuscripts for debt, the bill of sale which Monsieur Bernard had made of his work justified this proceeding. It was, however, easy to oppose various delays to this seizure, and Monsieur Bernard, had he been there, would not have failed to do so. For that reason the whole affair had been conducted slyly. Madame Vauthier had not attempted to give the writs to Monsieur Bernard; she meant to have flung them into the room on entering behind the sheriff’s men, so to give the appearance of their being in the old man’s possession.

  The proces-verbal of the seizure took an hour to write down; the sheriff omitted nothing, and declared that the value of the property seized was sufficient to pay the debt. As soon as he and his men had departed, Auguste took the writs and rushed to the hospital to find his grandfather. The sheriff having told him that Madame Vauthier was now responsible, under heavy penalties, for the safety of the property, he could leave the house without fear of robbery.

  The idea of his grandfather being dragged to prison for debt drove the poor lad, if not exactly crazy, at any rate as crazy as youth becomes under one of those dangerous and fatal excitements in which all powers ferment at once, and lead as often to evil actions as to heroic deeds. When he reached the rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, the porter told him that he did not know what had become of the father of the lady who had arrived that afternoon; the orders of Monsieur Halpersohn were to admit no one to see her for the next eight days, under pain of putting her life in danger.

  This answer brought Auguste’s exasperation to a crisis. He returned to the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, turning over in his mind the wildest and most extravagant plans of action. He reached home at half-past eight o’clock, half famished, and so exhausted with hunger and distress that he listened to Madame Vauthier when she asked him to share her supper, which happened to be a mutton stew with potatoes. The poor lad fell half dead upon a chair in that atrocious woman’s room.

  Persuaded by the wheedling and honeyed words of the old vulture, he replied to a few questions about Godefroid which she adroitly put to him, letting her discover that it was really her other lodger who was to pay his grandfather’s debts the next day, and also that it was to him they owed the improvement in their condition during the past week. The widow listened to these confidences with a dubious air, plying Auguste with several glasses of wine meantime.

  About ten o’clock a cab stopped before the house, and Madame Vauthier looking out exclaimed: —

  “Oh! it is Monsieur Godefroid.”

  Auguste at once took the key of his apartment and went up to meet the protector of his family; but he found Godefroid’s face and manner so changed that he hesitated to address him until, generous lad that he was, the thought of his grandfather’s danger came over him and gave him courage.

  XVIII. WHO MONSIEUR BERNARD WAS

  The cause of this change and of the sternness in Godefroid’s face was an event which had just taken place in the rue Chanoinesse. When the initiate arrived there he found Madame de la Chanterie and her friends assembled in the salon awaiting dinner; and he instantly took Monsieur Joseph apart to give him the four volumes on “The Spirit of Modern Laws.” Monsieur Joseph took the voluminous manuscript to his room and returned for dinner; then, after sharing in the conversation for part of the evening, he went back to his room, intending to begin the reading of the book that night.

  Godefroid was much astonished when Manon came to him soon after Monsieur Joseph’s retirement and asked if he would at once go up and speak to that gentleman. He went up, conducted by Manon, and was unable to pay any heed to the apartment (which he had never before entered) so amazed was he by the agitated look and manner of a man who was usually calm and placid.

  “Do you know,” asked Monsieur Joseph, once more a judge, “wh
o the author of this work is?”

  “He is Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid; “I know him only under that name. I did not open the package.”

  “True,” said Monsieur Joseph, as if to himself, “I broke the seals myself. You have not tried to find out anything about his antecedents?”

  “No, I only know that he made a love-match with the daughter of General Tarlowski; that the daughter is named after the mother, Vanda; the grandson is called Auguste; and I have seen a portrait of Monsieur Bernard in the red robes of a president of the Royal Courts.”

  “Here, read that,” said Monsieur Joseph, pointing to the titlepage of the manuscript, written probably in Auguste’s handwriting: —

  ON THE

  SPIRIT OF MODERN LAWS

  By M. Bernard-Jean-Baptiste Macloud, Baron Bourlac.

  Formerly attorney-general to the Royal Court of Rouen. Grand officer of the Legion of honor.

  “Ha! the slayer of Madame’s daughter! of the Chevalier du Vissard! the man who condemned her to twenty years’ imprisonment!” said Godefroid, in a feeble voice. His legs gave way under him, and he dropped into a chair. “What a beginning!” he muttered.

  “This matter, my dear Godefroid,” resumed Monsieur Joseph, “concerns us all. You have done your part; leave the rest to us. I beg you to have no more to do with it; go and fetch the things you have left behind you. Don’t say a word of all this. Practise absolute discretion. Tell the Baron de Bourlac to address himself to me. By that time we shall have decided how to act under the circumstances.”

  Godefroid left him, took a cab, and went back as fast as he could to the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, filled with horror as he remembered that indictment signed with Bourlac’s name, the bloody drama ending on the scaffold, and Madame de la Chanterie’s imprisonment at Bicetre. He understood now the abandonment in which this former attorney-general, another Fourquier-Tinville in the public mind, was ending his days, and the true reasons for the concealment of his name.

  “May Monsieur Joseph avenge her terribly!” he thought. As he uttered the wish in his own mind, he saw Auguste.