Droll Stories

by Honoré de Balzac

  “Well, gentlemen,” said the king, re-entering the room, “let us fall-to; we have had a good day’s sport.”

  And the surgeon, the cardinal, a fat bishop, the captain of the Scotch guard, a parliamentary envoy, and a judge loved of the king, followed the two ladies into the room where one rubs the rust off one’s jawbones. And there they lined the mould of their doublets. What is that? It is to pave the stomach, to practise the chemistry of nature, to register the various dishes, to regale your tripes, to dig your grave with your teeth, play with the sword of Cain, to inter sauces, to support a cuckold. But more philosophically it is to make ordure with one’s teeth. Now do you understand? How many words does it require to burst open the lid of your understanding?

  The king did not fail to distil into his guests this splendid and first-class supper. He stuffed them with green peas, returning to the hotch-potch, praising the plums, commending the fish, saying to one, “Why do you not eat?” to another, “Drink to Madame”; to all of them, “Gentlemen, taste these lobsters; put this bottle to death! You do not know the flavour of this forcemeat. And these lampreys—ah! what do you say to them? And, by the Lord! the finest barbel ever drawn from the Loire! Just stick your teeth into this pasty. This game is my own hunting; he who takes it not offends me.” And again, “Drink, the king’s eyes are the other way. Just give me your opinion of these preserves, they are Madame’s own. Have some of these grapes, they are my own growing. Have some medlars.” And while inducing them to swell out their abdominal protuberances, the good monarch laughed with them, and they joked, and disputed, and spat, and blew their noses, and kicked up just as though the king had not been with them. Then so much victuals had been taken on board, so many flagons drained and stews spoilt, that the faces of the guests were the colour of cardinals’ gowns, and their doublets appeared ready to burst, since they were crammed with meat like Troyes sausages from the top to the bottom of their paunches. Going into the salon again, they broke into a profuse sweat, began to blow, and to curse their gluttony. The king sat quietly apart; each of them was the more willing to be silent because all their forces were required for the intestinal digestion of the huge platefuls confined in their stomachs, which began to wabble and rumble violently. One said to himself, “I was stupid to eat of that sauce.” Another scolded himself for having indulged in a plate of eels cooked with capers. Another thought to himself, “Oh! oh! the forcemeat is serving me out.” The cardinal, who was the biggest-bellied man of the lot, snorted through his nostrils like a frightened horse. It was he who was first compelled to give vent to a loud sounding belch, and then he soon wished himself in Germany, where this is a form of salutation, for the king hearing this gastric language looked at the cardinal with knitted brows.

  “What does this mean?” said he, “am I a simple clerk?”

  This was heard with terror, because usually the king made much of a good belch well off the stomach. The other guests determined to get rid in another way of the vapours which were dodging about in their pancreatic retorts; and at first they endeavoured to hold them for a little while in the pleats of their mesenteries. It was then that some of them puffed and swelled like tax-gatherers. Beaupertuys took the good king aside and said to him—

  “Know now that I have had made by the Church jeweller, Peccard, two large dolls, exactly resembling this lady and myself. Now when hard pressed by the drugs which I have put in their goblets, they desire to mount the throne to which we are now about to pretend to go, they will always find the place taken; by this means you will enjoy their writhings.”

  Thus having said, La Beaupertuys disappeared with the lady to go and turn the wheel, after the custom of women, and of which I will tell you the origin in another place. And after an honest lapse of water, Beaupertuys came back alone, leaving it to be believed that she had left the lady at the little laboratory of natural alchemy. Thereupon the king, singling out the cardinal, made him get up, and talked with him seriously of his affairs, holding him by the tassel of his amice. To all that the king said, La Balue replied, “Yes, sir,” to be delivered from this favour, and to slip out of the room, since the water was in his cellars, and he was about to lose the key of his back-door. All the guests were in a state of not knowing how to arrest the progress of the fæcal matter to which nature has given, even more than to water, the property of finding a certain level. Their substances modified themselves and glided working downward, like those insects who demand to be let out of their cocoons, raging, tormenting, and ungrateful to the higher powers; for nothing is so ignorant, so insolent as those cursed objects, and they are importunate like all things detained to whom one owes liberty. So they slipped at every turn like eels out of a net, and each one had need of great efforts and science not to disgrace himself before the king. Louis took great pleasure in interrogating his guests, and was much amused with the vicissitudes of their physiognomies, on which were reflected the dirty grimaces of their writhings. The counsellor of justice said to Olivier, “I would give my office to be behind a hedge for half a dozen seconds.”

  “Oh, there is no enjoyment to equal a good stool; and now I am no longer astonished at the sempiternal droppings of a fly,” replied the surgeon.

  The cardinal believing that the lady had obtained her receipt from the bank of deposit, left the tassels of his girdle in the king’s hand, making a start as if he had forgotten to say his prayers, and made his way towards the door.

  “What is the matter with you, Monsieur le Cardinal?” said the king.

  “By my halidame, what is the matter with me? It appears that everything is on a grand scale here, sire!”

  The cardinal slipped out, leaving the others astonished at his cunning. He proceeded gloriously towards the lower room, loosing a little the strings of his purse; but when he opened the blessed little door he found the lady at her functions upon the throne, like a pope about to be consecrated. Then restraining his impatience, he descended the stairs to go into the garden. However, on the last steps the barking of the dogs put him in great fear of being bitten in one of his precious hemispheres; and not knowing where to deliver himself of his chemical produce he came back into the room, shivering like a man who has been in the open air! The others, seeing the cardinal return, imagined that he had emptied his natural reservoirs, unburdened his ecclesiastical bowels, and believed him happy. Then the surgeon rose quickly, as if to take note of the tapestries and count the rafters, but gained the door before any one else, and relaxing his sphincter in advance, he hummed a tune on his way to the retreat; arrived there he was compelled, like La Balue, to murmur words of excuse to this student of perpetual motion, shutting the door with as much promptitude as he had opened it; and he came back burdened with an accumulation which seriously impeded his private channels. And in the same way went the guests one after the other, without being able to unburden themselves of their sauces, and soon again found themselves all in the presence of Louis the Eleventh, as much distressed as before, looking at each other slyly, understanding each other better with their tails than they ever understood with their mouths, for there is never an equivoque in the transactions of the parts of nature, and everything therein is rational and of easy comprehension, seeing that it is a science which we learn at our birth.

  “I believe,” said the cardinal to the surgeon, “that lady will go on until to-morrow. What was La Beaupertuys about, to ask such a case of diarrhoea here?”

  “She’s been an hour working at what I would get done in a minute. May the fever seize her!” cried Olivier le Daim.

  All the courtiers seized with colic were walking up and down to make their importunate matters patient, when the said lady reappeared in the room. You can believe they found her beautiful and graceful, and would willingly have kissed her, there where they so longed to go; and never did they salute the day with more favour than this lady, the liberator of their poor unfortunate bodies. La Balue rose; the others, from honour, esteem, and reverence of the church, gave way to the cler
gy, and, biding their time, they continued to make grimaces, at which the king laughed to himself with Nicole, who aided him to stop the respiration of these loose-bowelled gentlemen. The good Scotch captain, who had more than all the others eaten of a dish in which the cook had put an aperient powder, tried gently to break wind, and spoiled his trousers. He went ashamed into a corner, hoping that before the king, his mishap might escape detection. At this moment the cardinal returned horribly upset, because he had found La Beaupertuys on the episcopal seat. Now, in his torments, not knowing if she were in the room, he came back and gave vent to a diabolical “Oh!” on beholding her near his master.

  “What do you mean?” exclaimed the king, looking at the priest in a way to give him the fever.

  “Sire,” said La Balue, insolently, “the affairs of purgatory are in my ministery, and I am bound to inform you that there is sorcery going on in this house.”

  “Ah! little priest, you wish to make game of me!” said the king.

  At these words the company were in a terrible state.

  “So, you treat me with disrespect?” said the king, which made them turn pale. “Ho, there! Tristan, my friend!” cried Louis XI. from the window, which he threw up suddenly, “come up here!”

  The grand provost of the hotel was not long before he appeared; and as these gentlemen were all nobodies, raised to their present position by the favour of the king, Louis, in a moment of anger, could crush them at will; so that with the exception of the cardinal, who relied upon his cassock, Tristan found them all rigid and aghast.

  “Conduct these gentlemen to the Pretorium, on the Mall, my friend, they have disgraced themselves through over-eating.”

  “Am I not good at jokes?” said Nicole to him.

  “The farce is good, but it is fetid,” replied he, laughing.

  This royal answer showed the courtiers that this time the king did not intend to play with their heads, for which they thanked heaven. This monarch was partial to these dirty tricks. He was not at all a bad fellow, as the guests remarked while relieving themselves against the side of the Mall with Tristan, who, like a good Frenchman, kept them company, and escorted them to their homes. This is why since that time the citizens of Tours have never failed to defile the Mall of Chardonneret, because the gentlemen of the court had been there.

  I will not leave this great king without committing to writing the good joke which he played upon La Godegrand, who was an old maid, much disgusted that she had not, during the forty years she had lived, been able to find a lid to her saucepan, enraged, in her yellow skin, that she was still as virgin as a mule. This old maid had her apartments on the other side of the house which belonged to La Beaupertuys, at the corner of Rue de Hiérusalem, in such a position that, standing on the balcony joining the wall, it was easy to see what she was doing, and hear what she was saying in the lower room where she lived; and often the king derived much amusement from the antics of the old girl, who did not know that she was so much within the range of his majesty’s culverin. Now one market day it happened that the king had caused to be hanged a young citizen of Tours, who had violated a noble lady of a certain age, believing that she was a young maiden. There would have been no harm in this, and it would have been a thing greatly to the credit of the said lady to have been taken for a virgin; but on finding out his mistake, he had abominably insulted her, and suspecting her of trickery, had taken it into his head to rob her of a splendid silver goblet, in payment of the present he had just made her. This young man had long hair, and was so handsome that the whole town wished to see him hanged, both from regret and out of curiosity. You may be sure that at this hanging there were more bonnets than hats. Indeed, the said young man swung very well; and, after the fashion and custom of persons hanged, he died gallantly with his lance erect, which fact made a great noise in the town. Many ladies said on this subject that it was a murder not to have preserved so fine a fellow from the scaffold.

  “Suppose we were to put this handsome corpse in the bed of La Godegrand,” said La Beaupertuys to the king.

  “We should terrify her,” replied Louis.

  “Not at all, sire. Be sure that she will welcome even a dead man, so madly does she long for a living one. Yesterday I saw her making love to a young man’s cap placed on the top of a chair, and you would have laughed heartily at her words and gestures.”

  Now while this forty-year-old virgin was at vespers, the king sent to have the young townsman, who had just finished the last scene of his tragic farce, taken down, and having dressed him in a white shirt, two officers got over the walls of La Godegrand’s garden, and put the corpse into her bed, on the side nearest the street. Having done this they went away, and the king remained in the room with the balcony to it, playing with Beaupertuys, and awaiting the hour at which the old maid should go to bed. La Godegrand soon came back with a hop, skip, and jump, as the Tourainians say, from the church of St. Martin, from which she was not far, since the Rue d’Hiérusalem touches the walls of the cloister. She entered her house, laid down her prayer-book, chaplet, and rosary, and other ammunition which these old girls carry, then poked the fire, blew it, warmed herself at it, settled herself in her chair, and played with her cat for want of something better; then she went to the larder, supping and sighing, and sighing and supping, eating alone, with her eyes cast down upon the carpet; and after having drunk, behaved in a manner forbidden in court society.

  “Ah! if the corpse said to her, ‘God bless you!’”

  At this joke of La Beaupertuys, both laughed heartily in their sleeves. And with great attention this very Christian king watched the undressing of the old maid, who admired herself while removing her things—pulling out a hair, or scratching a pimple which had maliciously come upon her nose; picking her teeth, and doing a thousand little things which, alas! all ladies, virgins or not, are obliged to do, much to their annoyance; but without these little faults of nature, they would be too proud, and one would not be able to enjoy their society. Having achieved her aquatic and musical discourse, the old maid got in between the sheets, and yelled forth a fine, great, ample, and curious cry, when she saw, when she smelt the fresh vigour of this hanged man and the sweet perfume of his manly youth: then sprang away from him out of coquetry. But as she did not know he was really dead, she came back again believing he was mocking her, and counterfeiting death.

  “Go away, you bad young man!” said she.

  But you can imagine that she preferred this request in a most humble and gracious tone of voice. Then seeing that he did not move, she examined him more closely, and was much astonished at this so fine human nature when she recognized the young fellow, upon whom the fancy took her to perform some purely scientific experiments in the interests of hanged persons.

  “What is she doing?” said La Beaupertuys to the king.

  “She is trying to reanimate him. It is a work of Christian humanity.”

  And the old girl rubbed and warmed this fine young man, supplicating holy Mary the Egyptian to aid her to renew the life of this husband who had for her fallen so amorously from heaven, when, suddenly looking at the dead body she was so charitably rubbing, she thought she saw a slight movement in the eyes; then she put her hand upon the man’s heart, and felt it beat feebly. At length, from the warmth of the bed and of affection, and by the temperature of old maids, which is by far more burning than the warm blasts of African deserts, she had the delight of bringing to life that fine handsome young fellow who by a lucky chance had been very badly hanged.

  “See how my executioners serve me!” said Louis, laughing.

  “Ah!” said La Beaupertuys, “you will not have him hanged again? he is too handsome.”

  “The decree does not say that he shall be hanged twice, but he shall marry the old woman.”

  Indeed, the good lady went in a great hurry to seek a master leech, a good bleeder, who lived in the Abbey, and brought him back directly. He immediately took his lancet, and bled the young man. And as no blood
came out: “Ah!” said he, “it is too late, the trans-shipment of blood in the lungs has taken place.”

  But suddenly this good young blood oozed out a little, and then came in abundance, and the hempen apoplexy, which had only just begun, was arrested in its course. The young man moved and came more to life; then he fell, from natural causes, into a state of great weakness and profound sadness, prostration of flesh and general flabbiness. Now the old maid, who was all eyes, and followed the great and notable changes which were taking place in the person of this badly hanged man, pulled the surgeon by the sleeve, and pointing out to him, by a curious glance of the eye, the piteous case, said to him—

  “Will he for the future be always like that?”

  “Often,” replied the veracious surgeon.

  “Oh! he was much nicer hanged!”

  At this speech the king burst out laughing. Seeing him at the window, the woman and the surgeon were much frightened, for this laugh seemed to them a second sentence of death for their poor victim. But the king kept his word, and married them. And in order to do justice he gave the husband the name of the Sieur de Mortsauf in the place of the one he had lost upon the scaffold. As La Godegrand had a very big basket full of crowns, they founded a good family in Touraine, which still exists and is much respected, since M. de Mortsauf faithfully served Louis the Eleventh on different occasions. Only he never liked to come across gibbets or old women, and never again made amorous assignations in the night.

  This teaches us to thoroughly verify and recognize women, and not to deceive ourselves in the local difference which exists between the old and the young, for if we are not hanged for our errors of love, there are always great risks to run.