Droll Stories

by Honoré de Balzac

  “That’s a good girl,” said her lord. “And the woods?”

  “Ah! I should not like to be there alone, you will take me there. But,” said she, “give me a little of that liquor which La Ponneuse has taken such pains to prepare for us.”

  “And why, my darling? It would put fire into your body.”

  “Oh! that’s what I should like,” said she, biting her lips with vexation, “because I desire to give you a child as soon as possible; and I am sure that liquor is good for the purpose.”

  “Ah, my little one,” said the seneschal, knowing by this that Blanche was a virgin from head to foot, “the goodwill of God is necessary for this business, and women must be in a state of harvest.”

  “And when shall I be in a state of harvest?” asked she, smiling.

  “When nature so wills it,” said he, trying to laugh.

  “What is it necessary to do for this?” replied she.

  “Bah! a cabalistical and alchemical operation which is very dangerous.”

  “Ah!” said she, with a dreamy look, “that’s the reason why my mother cried when thinking of the said metamorphosis; but Bertha de Breuilly, who is so thankful for being made a wife, told me it was the easiest thing in the world.”

  “That’s according to the age,” replied the old lord. “But did you see at the stable the beautiful white mare so much spoken of in Touraine?”

  “Yes, she is very gentle and nice.”

  “Well, I give her to you, and you can ride her as often as the fancy takes you.”

  “Oh, you are very kind, and they did not lie when they told me so.”

  “Here,” continued he, “sweetheart: the butler, the chaplain, the treasurer, the equerry, the farrier, the bailiff, even the Sire de Montsoreau, the young varlet whose name is Gauttier and bears my banner, with his men at arms, captains, followers, and beasts—all are yours, and will instantly obey your orders under pain of being incommoded with a hempen collar.”

  “But,” replied she, “this mysterious operation—cannot it be performed immediately?”

  “Oh, no!” replied the seneschal. “Because it is necessary above all things that both the one and the other of us should be in a state of grace before God; otherwise we should have a bad child, full of sins; which is forbidden by the canons of the Church. This is the reason there are so many incorrigible scapegraces in the world. Their parents have not wisely waited to have their souls pure, and have given wicked souls to their children. The beautiful and the virtuous come of immaculate fathers; that is why we cause our beds to be blessed, as the Abbot of Marmoustiers has done this one. Have you not transgressed the ordinances of the Church?”

  “Oh, no,” said she, quickly, “I received before Mass absolution for all my faults and have remained since without committing the slightest sin.”

  “You are very perfect,” cried the cunning lord; “and I am delighted to have you for a wife; but I have sworn like an infidel.”

  “Oh! and why?”

  “Because the dancing did not finish, and I could not have you to myself to bring you here and kiss you.”

  Thereupon he gallantly took her hands and covered them with kisses, whispering to her little endearments and superficial words of affection which made her quite pleased and contented.

  Then, fatigued with the dance and all the ceremonies, she settled down to her slumbers, saying to the seneschal—

  “I will take care to-morrow that you shall not sin,” and she left the old man quite smitten with her white beauty, amorous of her delicate nature, and as embarrassed to know how he should be able to keep her in her innocence as to explain why oxen chew their food twice over. Although he did not augur to himself any good therefrom, it inflamed him so much to see the exquisite perfections of Blanche during her innocent and gentle sleep, that he resolved to preserve and defend this pretty jewel of love. With tears in his eyes he kissed her sweet golden tresses, her beautiful eyelids, and her ripe red mouth, and he did it softly for fear of waking her. That was all his fruition, the dumb delight which still inflamed his heart without in the least affecting Blanche. Then he deplored the snows of his leafless old age, the poor old man, and he saw clearly that God had amused himself by giving him nuts when his teeth were gone.

  HOW THE SENESCHAL STRUGGLED WITH HIS WIFE’S MODESTY

  During the first days of his marriage the seneschal invented many fibs to tell his wife, whose so estimable innocence he abused. Firstly, he found in his judicial functions good excuses for leaving her at times alone; then he occupied himself with the peasants of the neighbourhood, and took them to dress the vines on his lands at Vouvray, and at length pampered her up with a thousand absurd tales.

  At one time he would say that lords did not behave like common people, that the children were only planted at certain celestial conjunctions ascertained by learned astrologers; at another that one should abstain from begetting children on feast days because it was a great undertaking; and he observed the feasts like a man who wished to enter into Paradise without contest. Sometimes he would pretend that if by chance the parents were not in a state of grace, the children commenced on the day of St. Claire were blind, of St. Gatien had the gout, of St. Agnes were scaldheaded, of St. Roch had the plague, sometimes that those begotten in February were chilly; in March, too turbulent; in April, were worth nothing at all; and that handsome boys were conceived in May. In short he wished his to be perfect, to have his hair of two colours; and for this it was necessary that all the required conditions should be observed. At other times he would say to Blanche that the right of a man was to bestow a child upon his wife according to his sole and unique will, and that if she pretended to be a virtuous woman she should conform to the wishes of her husband; in fact, it was necessary to await the return of the Lady of Azay in order that she should assist at the confinement; from all of which Blanche concluded that the seneschal was annoyed by her requests, and was perhaps right, since he was old and full of experience; so she submitted herself and thought no more, except to herself, of this so much-desired child, that is to say, she was always thinking of it, like a woman who has a desire in her head, without suspecting that she was behaving like a gay lady or a town-walker running after her enjoyment. One evening by accident Bruyn spoke of children, a discourse that he avoided as cats avoid water, but he was complaining of a boy condemned by him that morning for great misdeeds, saying for certain he was the offspring of people laden with mortal sins.

  “Alas,” said Blanche, “if you will give me one, although you have not got absolution, I will correct him so well that you will be pleased with him.”

  Then the count saw that his wife was bitten by a warm desire, and that it was time to dissipate her innocence in order to make himself master of it, to conquer it, to beat it, or to appease and extinguish it.

  “What, my dear, you wish to be a mother?” said he; “you do not yet know the business of a wife, you are not accustomed to being mistress of the house.”

  “Oh! oh!” said she, “to be a perfect countess, and have in my loins a little count, must I play the great lady? I will do it, and thoroughly.”

  Then Blanche, in order to obtain issue, began to hunt the fawns and the stags, leaping the ditches, galloping upon her mare over valley and mountain, through the woods and the fields, taking great delight in watching the falcons fly, in unhooding them and while hunting always carried them gracefully upon her little wrist, which was what the seneschal had desired. But in this pursuit, Blanche gained an appetite of nun and prelate, that is to say, wished to procreate, had her desires whetted, and could scarcely restrain her hunger, when on her return she gave play to her teeth. Now by reason of reading the legends written by the way, and of separating by death the embraces of birds and wild beasts, she discovered a mystery of natural alchemy, while colouring her complexion, and superagitating her feeble imagination, which did little to pacify her warlike nature, and strongly tickled her desire which laughed, played, and frisked unmistakably. Th
e seneschal thought to disarm the rebellious virtue of his wife by making her scour the country; but his fraud turned out badly, for the unknown lust that circulated in the veins of Blanche emerged from these assaults more hardy than before, inviting jousts and tourneys as a herald the armed knight.

  The good lord saw then that he had grossly erred and that he was now upon the horns of a dilemma; also he no longer knew what course to adopt; the longer he left it the more it would resist. From this combat, there must result one conquered and one contused—a diabolical contusion which he wished to keep distant from his physiognomy by God’s help until after his death. The poor seneschal had already great trouble to follow his lady to the chase, without being dismounted; he sweated under the weight of his trappings, and almost expired in that pursuit wherein his frisky wife cheered her life and took great pleasure. Many times in the evening she wished to dance. Now the good man, swathed in his heavy clothing, found himself quite worn out with these exercises, in which he was constrained to participate either in giving her his hand, when she performed the vaults of the Moorish girl, or in holding the lighted faggot for her, when she had a fancy to do the torchlight dance; and in spite of his sciaticas, accretions, and rheumatisms, he was obliged to smile and say to her some gentle words and gallantries after all the evolutions, mummeries, and comic pantomimes which she indulged in to divert herself; for he loved her so madly that if she had asked him for an impossibility he would have sought one for her immediately.

  Nevertheless one fine day he recognized the fact that his frame was in a state of too great debility to struggle with the vigorous nature of his wife, and humiliating himself before his wife’s virtue, he resolved to let things take their course, relying a little upon the modesty, religion and bashfulness of Blanche, but he always slept with one eye open, for he suspected that God had made virginities to be taken like partridges, to be spitted and roasted. One wet morning, when the weather was that in which the snails make their tracks, a melancholy time, and suitable to reverie, Blanche was in the house sitting in her chair in deep thought, because nothing produces more lively coctions of the substantive essences, and no receipt, specific or philtre is more penetrating, transpiercing, or doubly transpiercing and titillating than the subtle warmth which simmers between the nap of a chair and a maiden sitting during certain weather.

  Now without knowing it, the countess was incommoded by her innocence, which gave her more trouble than it was worth to her brain, and gnawed her all over. Then the good man, seriously grieved to see her languishing, wished to drive away the thoughts which were ultra-conjugal principles of love.

  “Whence comes your sadness, sweetheart?” said he.

  “From shame.”

  “What then affronts you?”

  “The not being a good woman; because I am without a child, and you without lineage! Is one a lady without progeny? Nay! look! … all my neighbours have it, and I was married to have it, as you to give it me; the nobles of Touraine are all amply furnished with children, and their wives give them lapfuls, you alone have none, they laugh at you there. What will become of your name and your fiefs and your seigniories? A child is our natural company; it is a delight to us to make a fright of it, to fondle it, to swaddle it, to dress and undress it, to cuddle it, to sing it lullabies, to cradle it, to get it up, to put it to bed, and to nourish it, and I feel that if I had only the half of one, I would kiss it, swaddle it and unharness it, and I would make it jump and crow all day long, as the other ladies do.”

  “Were it not that in giving them birth women die, and that for this you are still too delicate and too close in the bud, you would be already a mother,” replied the seneschal, made giddy with the flow of words. “But will you buy one ready made—that will cost you neither pain nor labour.”

  “But,” said she, “I want the pain and labour, without which it will not be ours. I know very well it should be the fruit of my body, because at church they say that Jesus was the fruit of the Virgin’s womb.”

  “Very well, then pray God that it may be so,” cried the seneschal, “and intercede with the Virgin of Egrignolles. Many a lady has conceived after the neuvaine; you must not fail to do one.”

  Then the same day Blanche set out towards Notre-Dame de l’Egrignolles, decked out like a queen, riding her beautiful mare, having on her a robe of green velvet, laced down with fine gold lace, open at the breast, having sleeves of scarlet, little shoes, and a high hat ornamented with precious stones, and a gold waistband that showed off her little waist, as slim as a pole. She wished to give her dress to Madame the Virgin, and in fact promised it her, for the day of her churching. The Sire de Montsoreau galloped before her, his eye bright as that of a hawk, keeping the people back and guarding with his knights the security of the journey. Near Marmoustiers the seneschal, rendered sleepy by the heat, seeing it was the month of August, waggled about in his saddle, like a diadem upon the head of a cow, and seeing so frolicsome and so pretty a lady by the side of so old a fellow, a peasant girl, who was squatting near the trunk of a tree and drinking water out of her stone jug, inquired of a toothless old hag, who picked up a trifle by gleaning, if this princess was going to bury her dead.

  “Nay,” said the old woman, “it is our lady of Roche-Corbon, wife of the seneschal of Poitou and Touraine, in quest of a child.”

  “Ah! ah!” said the young girl, laughing like a fly just satisfied; then pointing to the handsome knight who was at the head of the procession—“he who marches at the head would manage that; she would save the wax-candles and the vow.”

  “Ha! my little one,” replied the hag, “I am rather surprised that she should go to Notre-Dame de l’Egrignolles, seeing that there are no handsome priests there. She might very well stop for a short time beneath the shadow of the belfry of Marmoustiers; she would soon be fertile, these good fathers are so lively.”

  “By a nun’s oath!” said a tramp walking up, “look; the Sire de Montsoreau is lively and delicate enough to open the ladies’ heart, the more so as he is well formed to do so.”

  And all commenced to laugh. The Sire de Montsoreau wished to go to them and hang them to a lime-tree by the road as a punishment for their bad words, but Blanche cried out quickly—

  “Oh, sir, do not hang them yet. They have not said all they mean; and we shall see them on our return.”

  She blushed, and the Sire de Montsoreau looked at her eagerly, as though to shoot into her the mystic comprehensions of love, but the clearing out of her intelligence had already been commenced by the sayings of the peasants, which were fructifying in her understanding—her innocence was like touchwood, there was only need for a word to inflame it.

  Thus Blanche perceived now the notable and physical differences between the qualities of her old husband and the perfections of the said Gauttier, a gentleman who was not over affected with his twenty-three years, but held himself upright as a ninepin in the saddle, and as wideawake as the matin chimes, while in contrast to him, slept the seneschal; he had courage and dexterity there where his master failed. He was one of those smart fellows whom the jades would sooner wear at night than a leathern garment, because they then no longer fear the fleas; there are some who vituperate them, but no one should be blamed, because every one should sleep as he likes.

  So much did the seneschal’s lady think, and so imperially well, that by the time she arrived at the bridge of Tours she loved Gauttier secretly, as a maiden loves, without suspecting that it is love. From that she became a proper woman, that is to say, she desired the good of others, the best that men have, she fell into a fit of love-sickness, going at the first jump to the depth of her misery, seeing that all is flame between the first coveting and the last desire, and she knew not how she then learnt that by the eyes can flow in a subtle essence, causing such powerful corrosions in all the veins of the body, recesses of the heart, nerves of the members, roots of the hair, perspiration of the substance, limbo of the brain, orifices of the epidermis, windings of the pluck, tube
s of the hypochondriac and other channels, which in her were suddenly dilated, heated, tickled, envenomed, clawed, harrowed and disturbed, as if she had a basketful of needles in her inside. This was a maiden’s desire, a well-conditioned desire, which troubled her sight to such a degree that she no longer saw her old spouse, but clearly the young Gauttier, whose nature was as ample as the glorious chin of an abbot. When the good man entered Tours, the Ah! Ah! of the crowd woke him up, and he came with great pomp with his suite to the church of Notre-Dame de l’Egrignolles, formerly called la greigneur, as if you said that which has the most merit. Blanche went into the chapel where children are asked of God and of the Virgin and went there alone, as was the custom, always however in presence of the seneschal, of his varlets and the loiterers who remained outside the grill. When the countess saw the priest come who had charge of the masses said for children, and who received the said vows, she asked him if there were many barren women. To which the good priest replied, that he must not complain, and that the children were good revenue to the Church.

  “And do you often see,” said Blanche, “young women with such old husbands as my lord?”

  “Rarely,” said he.

  “But have those obtained offspring?”

  “Always,” replied the priest, smiling.

  “And the others whose companions are not so old?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Oh! oh!” said she, “there is more certainty than with one like the seneschal?”

  “To be sure,” said the priest.

  “Why?” said she.

  “Madame,” gravely replied the priest, “before that age God alone interferes with the affair, after, it is the men.” At this time it was a true thing that all the wisdom had gone to the clergy. Blanche made her vow, which was a very profitable one, seing that her decorations were worth quite two thousand gold crowns.

  “You are very joyful!” said the old seneschal to her when on the home journey she made her mare prance, jump and frisk.