by Eugène Sue
How can it be otherwise? Who imparts to inexperienced youth that knowledge, that instruction, those rudiments of individual and social economy? No one.
The rich man is thrown into the heart of society with his riches, as the poor man with his poverty. No one takes any more care of the superfluities of the one than of the wants of the other. No one thinks any more of making the one moralise than the other. Ought not power to fulfil this great and noble task?
If, taking to its pity the miseries, the continually increasing troubles, of the still resigned workmen, repressing a rivalry injurious to all, and, addressing itself finally to the imminent question of the organisation of labour, it gave itself the salutary lesson of the association of capital and labour; and if there were an honourable, intelligent, equitable association, which should assure the well-doing of the artisan, without injuring the fortune of the rich, and which, establishing between the two classes the bonds of affection and gratitude, would for ever keep safeguard over the tranquillity of the state, — how powerful, then, would be the consequences of such a practical instruction!
Amongst the rich, who then would hesitate as to the dishonourable, disastrous chances of stock-jobbing, the gross pleasures of avarice, the foolish vanities of a ruinous dissipation; or, a means at once remunerative and beneficial, which would shed ease, morality, happiness, and joy, over scores of families?
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ADIEUX.
THE DAY AFTER that on which the Comte de Saint-Remy had been so shamefully tricked by his son, a touching scene took place at St. Lazare at the hour of recreation amongst the prisoners.
On this day, during the walk of the other prisoners, Fleur-de-Marie was seated on a bench close to the fountain of the courtyard, which was already named “La Goualeuse’s Bench.” By a kind of taciturn agreement, the prisoners had entirely given up this seat to her, as she had evinced a marked preference for it, — for the young girl’s influence had decidedly increased. La Goualeuse had selected this bench, situated close to the basin, because the small quantity of moss which velveted the margin of the reservoir reminded her of the verdure of the fields, as the clear water with which it was filled reminded her of the small river of Bouqueval. To the saddened gaze of a prisoner a tuft of grass is a meadow, a flower is a garden.
Relying on the kind promises of Madame d’Harville, Fleur-de-Marie had for two days expected her release from St. Lazare. Although she had no reason for being anxious about the delay in her discharge, the young girl, from her experience in misfortune, scarcely ventured to hope for a speedy liberation. Since her return amongst creatures whose appearance revived at each moment in her mind the incurable memory of her early disgrace, Fleur-de-Marie’s sadness had become more and more overwhelming. This was not all. A new subject of trouble, distress, and almost alarm to her, had arisen from the impassioned excitement of her gratitude towards Rodolph.
It was strange, but she only fathomed the depth of the abyss into which she had been plunged, in order to measure the distance which separated her from him whose perfection appeared to her more than human, from this man whose goodness was so extreme, and his power so terrible to the wicked. In spite of the respect with which her adoration for him was imbued, sometimes, alas! Fleur-de-Marie feared to detect in this adoration the symptoms of love, but of a love as secret as it was deep, as chaste as it was secret, and as hopeless as it was chaste. The unhappy girl had not thought of reading this withering revelation in her heart until after her interview with Madame d’Harville, who was herself smitten with a love for Rodolph, of which he himself was ignorant.
After the departure and the promises of the marquise, Fleur-de-Marie should have been transported with joy on thinking of her friends at Bouqueval, of Rodolph whom she was again about to see. But she was not. Her heart was painfully distressed, and to her memory occurred incessantly the severe language, the haughty scrutiny, the angry looks, of Madame d’Harville, as the poor prisoner had been excited to enthusiasm when alluding to her benefactor. By singular intuition La Goualeuse had thus detected a portion of Madame d’Harville’s secret.
“The excess of my gratitude to M. Rodolph offended this young lady, so handsome and of such high rank,” thought Fleur-de-Marie; “now I comprehend the severity of her words, they expressed a jealous disdain. She jealous of me! Then she must love him, and I must love, too — him? Yes, and my love must have betrayed itself in spite of me! Love him, — I — I — a creature fallen for ever, ungrateful and wretched as I am! Oh, if it were so, death were a hundred times preferable!”
Let us hasten to say that the unhappy girl, thus a martyr to her feelings, greatly exaggerated what she called her love.
To her profound gratitude towards Rodolph was united involuntary admiration of the gracefulness, strength, and manly beauty which distinguished him from other men. Nothing could be less gross, more pure, than this admiration; but it existed in full and active force, because physical beauty is always attractive. And then the voice of blood, so often denied, mute, unknown, or misinterpreted, is sometimes in full force, and these throbs of passionate tenderness which attracted Fleur-de-Marie towards Rodolph, and which so greatly startled her, because in her ignorance she misinterpreted their tendency, these feelings resulted from mysterious sympathies, as palpable, but as inexplicable, as the resemblance of features. In a word, Fleur-de-Marie, on learning that she was Rodolph’s daughter, could have accounted to herself for the strong affection she had for him, and thus, completely enlightened on the point, she would have admired without a scruple her father’s manly beauty.
Thus do we explain Fleur-de-Marie’s dejection. Although she was every instant awaiting, according to Madame d’Harville’s promise, her release from St. Lazare, Fleur-de-Marie, melancholy and pensive, was seated on her bench near the basin, looking with a kind of mechanical interest at the sports of some bold little birds who came to play on the margin of the stone-work. She had ceased for an instant to work at a baby’s nightgown, which she had just finished hemming. Need we say that this nightgown belonged to the lying-in clothes so generously offered to Mont Saint-Jean by the prisoners, through the kind intervention of Fleur-de-Marie? The poor misshapen protégée of La Goualeuse was sitting at her feet, working at a small cap, and, from time to time, casting at her benefactress a look at once grateful, timid, and confiding, such a look as a dog throws at his master. The beauty, attraction, and delicious sweetness of Fleur-de-Marie had inspired this fallen creature with sentiments of the most profound respect.
There is always something holy and great in the aspirations of a heart, which, although degraded, yet feels for the first time sensations of gratitude; and, up to this time, no one had ever given Mont Saint-Jean the opportunity of even testifying whether or not she could comprehend the religious ardour of a sentiment so wholly unknown to her. After some moments Fleur-de-Marie shuddered slightly, wiped a tear from her eyes, and resumed her sewing with much activity.
“You will not then leave off your work even during the time for rest, my good angel?” said Mont Saint-Jean to La Goualeuse.
“I have not given you any money towards buying your lying-in clothes, and I must therefore furnish my part with my own work,” replied the young girl.
“Your part! Why, but for you, instead of this good white linen, this nice warm wrapper for my child, I should have nothing but the rags they dragged in the mud of the yard. I am very grateful to my companions who have been so very kind to me; that’s quite true! But you! — ah, you! — how can I tell you all I feel?” added the poor creature, hesitating, and greatly embarrassed how to express her thought. “There,” she said, “there is the sun, is it not? That is the sun?”
“Yes, Mont Saint-Jean; I am attending to you,” replied Fleur-de-Marie, stooping her lovely face towards the hideous countenance of her companion.
“Ah, you’ll laugh at me,” she replied, sorrowfully. “I want to say something, and I do not know how.”
“Oh, yes, say it, Mont Sain
t-Jean!”
“How kind you look always,” said the prisoner, looking at Fleur-de-Marie in a sort of ecstasy; “your eyes encourage me, — those kind eyes! Well, then, I will try and say what I wish: There is the sun, is it not? It is so warm, it lights up the prison, it is very pleasant to see and feel, isn’t it?”
“Certainly.”
“But I have an idea, — the sun didn’t make itself, and if we are grateful to it, why, there is greater reason still why—”
“Why we should be grateful to him who created it; that is what you mean, Mont Saint-Jean? You are right; and we ought to pray to, adore him, — he is God!”
“Yes, that is my idea!” exclaimed the prisoner, joyously. “That is it! I ought to be grateful to my companions, but I ought to pray to, adore you, Goualeuse, for it is you who made them so good to me, instead of being so unkind as they had been.”
“It is God you should thank, Mont Saint-Jean, and not me.”
“Yes, yes, yes, it is you, I see you; and it is you who did me such kindness, by yourself and others.”
“But if I am as good as you say, Mont Saint-Jean, it is God who has made me so, and it is he, therefore, whom we ought to thank.”
“Ah, indeed, it may be so since you say it!” replied the prisoner, whose mind was by no means decided; “and if you desire it, let it be so; as you please.”
“Yes, my poor Mont Saint-Jean, pray to him constantly, that is the best way of proving to me that you love me a little.”
“If I love you, Goualeuse? Don’t you remember, then, what you said to those other prisoners to prevent them from beating me?— ‘It is not only her whom you beat, it is her child also!’ Well, it is all the same as the way I love you; it is not only for myself that I love you, but also for my child.”
“Thanks, thanks, Mont Saint-Jean, you please me exceedingly when you say that.” And Fleur-de-Marie, much moved, extended her hand to her companion.
“What a pretty, little, fairy-like hand! How white and small!” said Mont Saint-Jean, receding as though she were afraid to touch it with her coarse and clumsy hands.
Yet, after a moment’s hesitation, she respectfully applied her lips to the end of the slender fingers which Fleur-de-Marie extended to her, then, kneeling suddenly, she fixed on her an attentive, concentrated look.
“Come and sit here by me,” said La Goualeuse.
“Oh, no, indeed; never, never!”
“Why not?”
“Respect discipline, as my brave Mont Saint-Jean used to say; soldiers together, officers together, each with his equals.”
“You are crazy; there is no difference between us two.”
“No difference! And you say that when I see you, as I do now, as handsome as a queen. Oh, what do you mean now? Leave me alone, on my knees, that I may look at you as I do now. Who knows, although I am a real monster, my child may perhaps resemble you? They say that sometimes happens from a look.”
Then by a scruple of incredible delicacy in a creature of her position, fearing, perhaps, that she had humiliated or wounded Fleur-de-Marie by her strange desire, Mont Saint-Jean added, sorrowfully:
“No, no, I was only joking, Goualeuse; I never could allow myself to look at you with such an idea, — unless with your free consent. If my child is as ugly as I am, what shall I care? I sha’n’t love it any the less, poor little, unhappy thing; it never asked to be born, as they say. And if it lives what will become of it?” she added, with a mournful and reflective air. “Alas, yes, what will become of us?”
La Goualeuse shuddered at these words. In fact, what was to become of the child of this miserable, degraded, abased, poor, despised creature?
“What a fate! What a future!”
“Do not think of that, Mont Saint-Jean,” said Fleur-de-Marie; “let us hope that your child will find benevolent friends in its way.”
“That chance never occurs twice, Goualeuse,” replied Mont Saint-Jean, bitterly, and shaking her head. “I have met with you, that is a great chance; and then — no offence — I should much rather my child had had that good luck than myself, and that wish is all I can do for it!”
“Pray, pray, and God will hear you.”
“Well, I will pray, if that is any pleasure to you, Goualeuse, for it may perhaps bring me good luck. Indeed, who could have thought, when La Louve beat me, and I was the butt of all the world, that I should meet with my little guardian angel, who with her pretty soft voice would be even stronger than all the rest, and that La Louve who is so strong and so wicked—”
“Yes, but La Louve became very good to you as soon as she reflected that you were doubly to be pitied.”
“Yes, that is very true, thanks to you; I shall never forget it. But, tell me, Goualeuse, why did she the other day request to have her quarters changed, — La Louve, she, who, in spite of her passionate temper, seemed unable to do without you?”
“She is rather wilful.”
“How odd! A woman, who came this morning from the quarter of the prison where La Louve now is, says that she is wholly changed.”
“How?”
“Instead of quarrelling and contending with everybody, she is sad, quite sad, and sits by herself, and if they speak to her she turns her back and makes no answer. It is really wonderful to see her quite still, who used always to be making such a riot; and then the woman says another thing, which I really cannot believe.”
“And what is that?”
“Why, that she had seen La Louve crying; La Louve crying, — that’s impossible!”
“Poor Louve! It was on my account she changed her quarters; I vexed her without intending it,” said La Goualeuse, with a sigh.
“You vex any one, my good angel?”
At this moment, the inspectress, Madame Armand, entered the yard. After having looked for Fleur-de-Marie, she came towards her with a smiling and satisfied air.
“Good news, my child.”
“What do you mean, madame?” said La Goualeuse, rising.
“Your friends have not forgotten you, they have obtained your discharge; the governor has just received the information.”
“Can it be possible, madame? Ah, what happiness!”
Fleur-de-Marie’s emotion was so violent that she turned pale, placed her hand on her heart, which throbbed violently, and fell back on the seat.
“Don’t agitate yourself, my poor girl,” said Madame Armand, kindly. “Fortunately these shocks are not dangerous.”
“Ah, madame, what gratitude!”
“No doubt it is Madame d’Harville who has obtained your liberty. There is an elderly female charged to conduct you to the persons who are interested in you. Wait for me, I will return for you; I have some directions to give in the work-room.”
It would be difficult to paint the expression of extreme desolation which overcast the features of Mont Saint-Jean, when she learned that her good angel, as she called La Goualeuse, was about to quit St. Lazare. This woman’s grief was less caused by the fear of becoming again the ill-used butt of the prison, than by her anguish at seeing herself separated from the only being who had ever testified any interest in her.
Still seated at the foot of the bench, Mont Saint-Jean lifted both her hands to the sides of her matted and coarse hair, which projected in disorder from the sides of her old black cap, as if to tear them out; then this deep affliction gave way to dejection, and she drooped her head and remained mute and motionless, with her face hidden in her hands, and her elbows resting on her knees.
In spite of her joy at leaving the prison, Fleur-de-Marie could not help shuddering when she thought for an instant of the Chouette and the Schoolmaster, recollecting that these two monsters had made her swear never to inform her benefactors of her wretched fate. But these dispiriting thoughts were soon effaced from Fleur-de-Marie’s mind before the hope of seeing Bouqueval once more, with Madame Georges and Rodolph, to whom she meant to intercede for La Louve and Martial. It even seemed to her that the warm feeling which she reproached hersel
f for having of her benefactor, being no longer nourished by sadness and solitude, would be calmed down as soon as she resumed her rustic occupations, which she so much delighted in sharing with the good and simple inhabitants of the farm.
Astonished at the silence of her companion, a silence whose source she did not suspect, La Goualeuse touched her gently on the shoulder, saying to her:
“Mont Saint-Jean, as I am now free, can I be in any way useful to you?”
The prisoner trembled as she felt La Goualeuse’s hand upon her, let her hands drop on her knees, and turned towards the young girl, her face streaming with tears. So bitter a grief overspread the features of Mont Saint-Jean that their ugliness had disappeared.
“What is the matter?” said La Goualeuse. “You are weeping!”
“You are going away!” murmured the poor prisoner, with a voice broken by sobs. “And I had never thought that you would go away, and that I should never see you more, — never, no, never!”
“I assure you that I shall always think of your good feeling towards me, Mont Saint-Jean.”
“Oh, and to think how I loved you, when I was sitting there at your feet on the ground! It seemed as if I was saved, — that I had nothing more to fear! It was not for the blows which the other women may, perhaps, begin again to give me that I said that I have led a hard life; but it seemed to me that you were my good fortune, and would bring good luck to my child, just because you had pity on me. But, then, when one is used to be ill-treated, one is then more sensible than others to kindness.” Then, interrupting herself, to burst again into a loud fit of sobs,— “Well, well, it’s done, — it’s finished, — all over! And so it must be some day or other. I was wrong to think any otherwise. It’s done — done — done!”