Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  Marie looked long and carefully at the old tapestry on the walls. Guided by her innate taste she found among the brilliant tints of these hangings the shades by which to connect their antique beauty with the furniture and accessories of the boudoir, either by the harmony of color or the charm of contrast. The same thought guided the arrangement of the flowers with which she filled the twisted vases which decorated her chamber. The sofa was placed beside the fire. On either side of the bed, which filled the space parallel to that of the chimney, she placed on gilded tables tall Dresden vases filled with foliage and flowers that were sweetly fragrant. She quivered more than once as she arranged the folds of the green damask above the bed, and studied the fall of the drapery which concealed it. Such preparations have a secret, ineffable happiness about them; they cause so many delightful emotions that a woman as she makes them forgets her doubts; and Mademoiselle de Verneuil forgot hers. There is in truth a religious sentiment in the multiplicity of cares taken for one beloved who is not there to see them and reward them, but who will reward them later with the approving smile these tender preparations (always so fully understood) obtain. Women, as they make them, love in advance; and there are few indeed who would not say to themselves, as Mademoiselle de Verneuil now thought: “To-night I shall be happy!” That soft hope lies in every fold of silk or muslin; insensibly, the harmony the woman makes about her gives an atmosphere of love in which she breathes; to her these things are beings, witnesses; she has made them the sharers of her coming joy. Every movement, every thought brings that joy within her grasp. But presently she expects no longer, she hopes no more, she questions silence; the slightest sound is to her an omen; doubt hooks its claws once more into her heart; she burns, she trembles, she is grasped by a thought which holds her like a physical force; she alternates from triumph to agony, and without the hope of coming happiness she could not endure the torture. A score of times did Mademoiselle de Verneuil raise the window-curtain, hoping to see the smoke rising above the rocks; but the fog only took a grayer tone, which her excited imagination turned into a warning. At last she let fall the curtain, impatiently resolving not to raise it again. She looked gloomily around the charming room to which she had given a soul and a voice, asking herself if it were done in vain, and this thought brought her back to her preparations.

  “Francine,” she said, drawing her into a little dressing-room which adjoined her chamber and was lighted through a small round window opening on a dark corner of the fortifications where they joined the rock terrace of the Promenade, “put everything in order. As for the salon, you can leave that as it is,” she added, with a smile which women reserve for their nearest friends, the delicate sentiment of which men seldom understand.

  “Ah! how sweet you are!” exclaimed the little maid.

  “A lover is our beauty — foolish women that we are!” she replied gaily.

  Francine left her lying on the ottoman and went away convinced that, whether her mistress were loved or not, she would never betray Montauran.

  “Are you sure of what you are telling me, old woman?” Hulot was saying to Barbette, who had sought him out as soon as she had reached Fougeres.

  “Have you got eyes? Look at the rocks of Saint-Sulpice, there, my good man, to the right of Saint-Leonard.”

  Corentin, who was with Hulot, looked towards the summit in the direction pointed out by Barbette, and, as the fog was beginning to lift, he could see with some distinctness the column of white smoke the woman told of.

  “But when is he coming, old woman? — to-night, or this evening?”

  “My good man,” said Barbette, “I don’t know.”

  “Why do you betray your own side?” said Hulot, quickly, having drawn her out of hearing of Corentin.

  “Ah! general, see my boy’s foot — that’s washed in the blood of my man, whom the Chouans have killed like a calf, to punish him for the few words you got out of me the other day when I was working in the fields. Take my boy, for you’ve deprived him of his father and his mother; make a Blue of him, my good man, teach him to kill Chouans. Here, there’s two hundred crowns, — keep them for him; if he is careful, they’ll last him long, for it took his father twelve years to lay them by.”

  Hulot looked with amazement at the pale and withered woman, whose eyes were dry.

  “But you, mother,” he said, “what will become of you? you had better keep the money.”

  “I?” she replied, shaking her head sadly. “I don’t need anything in this world. You might bolt me into that highest tower over there” (pointing to the battlements of the castle) “and the Chouans would contrive to come and kill me.”

  She kissed her boy with an awful expression of grief, looked at him, wiped away her tears, looked at him again, and disappeared.

  “Commandant,” said Corentin, “this is an occasion when two heads are better than one. We know all, and yet we know nothing. If you surrounded Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s house now, you will only warn her. Neither you, nor I, nor your Blues and your battalions are strong enough to get the better of that girl if she takes it into her head to save the ci-devant. The fellow is brave, and consequently wily; he is a young man full of daring. We can never get hold of him as he enters Fougeres. Perhaps he is here already. Domiciliary visit? Absurdity! that’s no good, it will only give them warning.”

  “Well,” said Hulot impatiently, “I shall tell the sentry on the Place Saint-Leonard to keep his eye on the house, and pass word along the other sentinels, if a young man enters it; as soon as the signal reaches me I shall take a corporal and four men and — ”

  “ — and,” said Corentin, interrupting the old soldier, “if the young man is not the marquis, or if the marquis doesn’t go in by the front door, or if he is already there, if — if — if — what then?”

  Corentin looked at the commandant with so insulting an air of superiority that the old soldier shouted out: “God’s thousand thunders! get out of here, citizen of hell! What have I got to do with your intrigues? If that cockchafer buzzes into my guard-room I shall shoot him; if I hear he is in a house I shall surround that house and take him when he leaves it and shoot him, but may the devil get me if I soil my uniform with any of your tricks.”

  “Commandant, the order of the ministers states that you are to obey Mademoiselle de Verneuil.”

  “Let her come and give them to me herself and I’ll see about it.”

  “Well, citizen,” said Corentin, haughtily, “she shall come. She shall tell you herself the hour at which she expects the ci-devant. Possibly she won’t be easy till you do post the sentinels round the house.”

  “The devil is made man,” thought the old leader as he watched Corentin hurrying up the Queen’s Staircase at the foot of which this scene had taken place. “He means to deliver Montauran bound hand and foot, with no chance to fight for his life, and I shall be harrassed to death with a court-martial. However,” he added, shrugging his shoulders, “the Gars certainly is an enemy of the Republic, and he killed my poor Gerard, and his death will make a noble the less — the devil take him!”

  He turned on the heels of his boots and went off, whistling the Marseillaise, to inspect his guard-rooms.

  Mademoiselle de Verneuil was absorbed in one of those meditations the mysteries of which are buried in the soul, and prove by their thousand contradictory emotions, to the woman who undergoes them, that it is possible to have a stormy and passionate existence between four walls without even moving from the ottoman on which her very life is burning itself away. She had reached the final scene of the drama she had come to enact, and her mind was going over and over the phases of love and anger which had so powerfully stirred her during the ten days which had now elapsed since her first meeting with the marquis. A man’s step suddenly sounded in the adjoining room and she trembled; the door opened, she turned quickly and saw Corentin.

  “You little cheat!” said the police-agent, “when will you stop deceiving? Ah, Marie, Marie, you are playing a dangerous
game by not taking me into your confidence. Why do you play such tricks without consulting me? If the marquis escapes his fate — ”

  “It won’t be your fault, will it?” she replied, sarcastically. “Monsieur,” she continued, in a grave voice, “by what right do you come into my house?”

  “Your house?” he exclaimed.

  “You remind me,” she answered, coldly, “that I have no home. Perhaps you chose this house deliberately for the purpose of committing murder. I shall leave it. I would live in a desert to get away from — ”

  “Spies, say the word,” interrupted Corentin. “But this house is neither yours nor mine, it belongs to the government; and as for leaving it you will do nothing of the kind,” he added, giving her a diabolical look.

  Mademoiselle de Verneuil rose indignantly, made a few steps to leave the room, but stopped short suddenly as Corentin raised the curtain of the window and beckoned her, with a smile, to come to him.

  “Do you see that column of smoke?” he asked, with the calmness he always kept on his livid face, however intense his feelings might be.

  “What has my departure to do with that burning brush?” she asked.

  “Why does your voice tremble?” he said. “You poor thing!” he added, in a gentle voice, “I know all. The marquis is coming to Fougeres this evening; and it is not with any intention of delivering him to us that you have arranged this boudoir and the flowers and candles.”

  Mademoiselle de Verneuil turned pale, for she saw her lover’s death in the eyes of this tiger with a human face, and her love for him rose to frenzy. Each hair on her head caused her an acute pain she could not endure, and she fell on the ottoman. Corentin stood looking at her for a moment with his arms folded, half pleased at inflicting a torture which avenged him for the contempt and the sarcasms this woman had heaped upon his head, half grieved by the sufferings of a creature whose yoke was pleasant to him, heavy as it was.

  “She loves him!” he muttered.

  “Loves him!” she cried. “Ah! what are words? Corentin! he is my life, my soul, my breath!” She flung herself at the feet of the man, whose silence terrified her. “Soul of vileness!” she cried, “I would rather degrade myself to save his life than degrade myself by betraying him. I will save him at the cost of my own blood. Speak, what price must I pay you?”

  Corentin quivered.

  “I came to take your orders, Marie,” he said, raising her. “Yes, Marie, your insults will not hinder my devotion to your wishes, provided you will promise not to deceive me again; you must know by this time that no one dupes me with impunity.”

  “If you want me to love you, Corentin, help me to save him.”

  “At what hour is he coming?” asked the spy, endeavoring to ask the question calmly.

  “Alas, I do not know.”

  They looked at each other in silence.

  “I am lost!” thought Mademoiselle de Verneuil.

  “She is deceiving me!” thought Corentin. “Marie,” he continued, “I have two maxims. One is never to believe a single word a woman says to me — that’s the only means of not being duped; the other is to find what interest she has in doing the opposite of what she says, and behaving in contradiction to the facts she pretends to confide to me. I think that you and I understand each other now.”

  “Perfectly,” replied Mademoiselle de Verneuil. “You want proofs of my good faith; but I reserve them for the time when you give me some of yours.”

  “Adieu, mademoiselle,” said Corentin, coolly.

  “Nonsense,” said the girl, smiling; “sit down, and pray don’t sulk; but if you do I shall know how to save the marquis without you. As for the three hundred thousand francs which are always spread before your eyes, I will give them to you in good gold as soon as the marquis is safe.”

  Corentin rose, stepped back a pace or two, and looked at Marie.

  “You have grown rich in a very short time,” he said, in a tone of ill-disguised bitterness.

  “Montauran,” she continued, “will make you a better offer still for his ransom. Now, then, prove to me that you have the means of guaranteeing him from all danger and — ”

  “Can’t you send him away the moment he arrives?” cried Corentin, suddenly. “Hulot does not know he is coming, and — ” He stopped as if he had said too much. “But how absurd that you should ask me how to play a trick,” he said, with an easy laugh. “Now listen, Marie, I do feel certain of your loyalty. Promise me a compensation for all I lose in furthering your wishes, and I will make that old fool of a commandant so unsuspicious that the marquis will be as safe at Fougeres as at Saint-James.”

  “Yes, I promise it,” said the girl, with a sort of solemnity.

  “No, not in that way,” he said, “swear it by your mother.”

  Mademoiselle de Verneuil shuddered; raising a trembling hand she made the oath required by the man whose tone to her had changed so suddenly.

  “You can command me,” he said; “don’t deceive me again, and you shall have reason to bless me to-night.”

  “I will trust you, Corentin,” cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil, much moved. She bowed her head gently towards him and smiled with a kindness not unmixed with surprise, as she saw an expression of melancholy tenderness on his face.

  “What an enchanting creature!” thought Corentin, as he left the house. “Shall I ever get her as a means to fortune and a source of delight? To fling herself at my feet! Oh, yes, the marquis shall die! If I can’t get that woman in any other way than by dragging her through the mud, I’ll sink her in it. At any rate,” he thought, as he reached the square unconscious of his steps, “she no longer distrusts me. Three hundred thousand francs down! she thinks me grasping! Either the offer was a trick or she is already married to him.”

  Corentin, buried in thought, was unable to come to a resolution. The fog which the sun had dispersed at mid-day was now rolling thicker and thicker, so that he could hardly see the trees at a little distance.

  “That’s another piece of ill-luck,” he muttered, as he turned slowly homeward. “It is impossible to see ten feet. The weather protects the lovers. How is one to watch a house in such a fog? Who goes there?” he cried, catching the arm of a boy who seemed to have clambered up the dangerous rocks which made the terrace of the Promenade.

  “It is I,” said a childish voice.

  “Ah! the boy with the bloody foot. Do you want to revenge your father?” said Corentin.

  “Yes,” said the child.

  “Very good. Do you know the Gars?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good again. Now, don’t leave me except to do what I bid you, and you will obey your mother and earn some big sous — do you like sous?”

  “Yes.”

  “You like sous, and you want to kill the Gars who killed your father — well, I’ll take care of you. Ah! Marie,” he muttered, after a pause, “you yourself shall betray him, as you engaged to do! She is too violent to suspect me — passion never reflects. She does not know the marquis’s writing. Yes, I can set a trap into which her nature will drive her headlong. But I must first see Hulot.”

  Mademoiselle de Verneuil and Francine were deliberating on the means of saving the marquis from the more than doubtful generosity of Corentin and Hulot’s bayonets.

  “I could go and warn him,” said the Breton girl.

  “But we don’t know where he is,” replied Marie; “even I, with the instincts of love, could never find him.”

  After making and rejecting a number of plans Mademoiselle de Verneuil exclaimed, “When I see him his danger will inspire me.”

  She thought, like other ardent souls, to act on the spur of the moment, trusting to her star, or to that instinct of adroitness which rarely, if ever, fails a woman. Perhaps her heart was never so wrung. At times she seemed stupefied, her eyes were fixed, and then, at the least noise, she shook like a half-uprooted tree which the woodsman drags with a rope to hasten its fall. Suddenly, a loud report from a dozen guns echoed from
a distance. Marie turned pale and grasped Francine’s hand. “I am dying,” she cried; “they have killed him!”

  The heavy footfall of a man was heard in the antechamber. Francine went out and returned with a corporal. The man, making a military salute to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, produced some letters, the covers of which were a good deal soiled. Receiving no acknowledgment, the Blue said as he withdrew, “Madame, they are from the commandant.”

  Mademoiselle de Verneuil, a prey to horrible presentiments, read a letter written apparently in great haste by Hulot: —

  “Mademoiselle — a party of my men have just caught a messenger from

  the Gars and have shot him. Among the intercepted letters is one

  which may be useful to you and I transmit it — etc.”

  “Thank God, it was not he they shot,” she exclaimed, flinging the letter into the fire.

  She breathed more freely and took up the other letter, enclosed by Hulot. It was apparently written to Madame du Gua by the marquis.

  “No, my angel,” the letter said, “I cannot go to-night to La

  Vivetiere. You must lose your wager with the count. I triumph over

  the Republic in the person of their beautiful emissary. You must

  allow that she is worth the sacrifice of one night. It will be my

  only victory in this campaign, for I have received the news that

  La Vendee surrenders. I can do nothing more in France. Let us go

  back to England — but we will talk of all this to-morrow.”

  The letter fell from Marie’s hands; she closed her eyes, and was silent, leaning backward, with her head on a cushion. After a long pause she looked at the clock, which then marked four in the afternoon.

  “My lord keeps me waiting,” she said, with savage irony.