Оноре де Бальзак
The Brotherhood of Consolation
“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, “who 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.
“What do you want of me?” he asked.
“My good friend, such a dreadful misfortune has overtaken us that I am almost mad. Wretches have come here and seized all my mother’s property, and they are going to put my grandfather in prison. But it is not on account of those misfortunes that I come to implore you,” said the lad, with Roman pride; “it is to ask you to do me a service such as people do to those who are condemned to die.”
“Go on, what is it?” said Godefroid.
“They came here to seize my grandfather’s manuscript; and as I think he gave you the book itself I want you to take the notes, for Madame Vauthier will not let me carry anything out of the house. Put them with the volumes and – ”
“Yes, yes,” said Godefroid, “go and get them at once.”
While the lad went back to his own rooms, returning immediately, Godefroid reflected that the poor child was guilty of no crime, and that he ought not to put despair into that young heart by speaking of his grandfather and of the punishment for his savage political actions that had overtaken his old age. He therefore took the little package with a good grace.
“What is your mother’s name?” he asked.
“My mother is the Baronne de Mergi; my father was the son of the president of the Royal Court at Rouen.”
“Ah!” said Godefroid; “then your grandfather married his daughter to the son of the famous president Mergi.”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Now, my little friend, leave me,” said Godefroid. He went with young Mergi to the landing, and called to Madame Vauthier.
“Mere Vauthier,” he said, “you can let my rooms. I shall not come back any more.”
He gathered his things together, went downstairs, and got into the cab.
“Have you given anything to that gentleman?” said the Vauthier to Auguste.
“Yes,” said the young man.
“You’re a pretty fellow! that’s the agent of your grandfather’s enemies. He managed this whole business, and the proof is that, now that the trick is played, he goes off and isn’t coming back any more. He has just told me I can let his lodgings.”
Auguste flew to the boulevard and ran after the cab shouting so loudly that he finally stopped it.
“What do you want?” asked Godefroid.
“My grandfather’s manuscripts.”
“Tell them he can get them from Monsieur Joseph.”
The youth thought the words were intended as a cruel joke. He sat down in the snow as he saw the cab disappearing rapidly. Presently he sprang up with momentary vigor, returned to his room and went to bed worn out with fatigue and distress.
The next morning, when the poor boy woke alone in that apartment so lately occupied by his mother and grandfather, the painful emotions of his cruel position filled his mind. The solitude of his home, where up to this time every moment had had its duty and its occupation, seemed so hard to bear that he went down to Madame Vauthier to ask if she had received any news of his grandfather. The woman answered sneeringly that he knew very well, or he might know, where to find his grandfather; the reason why he had not come in, she said, was because he had gone to live at the chateau de Clichy. This malicious speech, from the woman who had coaxed and wheedled him the evening before, put the lad into another frenzy, and he rushed to the hospital once more, desperate with the idea that his grandfather was in prison.
Baron Bourlac had wandered all night round the hospital, where he was refused entrance, and round the private residence of Dr. Halpersohn from whom he wished, naturally, to obtain an explanation of such treatment. The doctor did not get home till two in the morning. At half-past one the old man was at his door; on being told he was absent, he turned and walked about the grand alley of the Champs Elysees until half-past two. When he again went to the house, the porter told him that Monsieur Halpersohn had returned, gone to bed, was asleep, and could not be disturbed.
The poor father, in despair, wandered along the quay and under the frost-laden trees of the Cours-la-reine, waiting for daylight. At nine o’clock in the morning he again presented himself at the doctor’s house, demanding to know the reason why his daughter was thus virtually imprisoned.
“Monsieur,” replied the doctor, to whose presence he was admitted, “yesterday I told you I would answer for your daughter’s recovery; but to-day I am responsible for her life and you will readily understand that I must be the sovereign master in such a case. Yesterday your daughter took a medicine intended to bring out her disease, the plica polonica; until that horrible disease shows itself on the surface you cannot see her. I will not allow excitement or any mistake of management to carry off my patient and your daughter. If you positively insist on seeing her, I shall call a consultation of three physicians, so as to relieve myself of responsibility, for the patient may die of it.”
The old man, worn out with fatigue, dropped on a chair; but he rose immediately, saying: —
“Forgive me, monsieur. I have spent the night waiting for you in dreadful distress of mind. You cannot know to what degree I love my daughter; I have nursed her for fifteen years hovering between life and death, and this week of waiting is torture to me.”
The baron left the room staggering like a drunken man. The doctor followed and supported him by the arm until he saw him safely down the staircase.
An hour later Auguste de Mergi entered the doctor’s room. On questioning the porter at the hospital the unhappy lad heard that his grandfather had been refused an entrance and had gone away to find Monsieur Halpersohn, who could probably give information about him. As Auguste entered the doctor’s study Halpersohn was breakfasting on a cup of chocolate and a glass of water. He did not disturb himself at the young man’s entrance, but went on sopping his bread in the chocolate; for he never ate anything for breakfast but a small roll cut into four strips with careful precision.
“Well, young man,” he said, glancing at Vanda’s son, “so you have come, too, to find out about your mother?”
“Yes, monsieur;” replied Auguste de Mergi.
Auguste was standing near the table on which lay several bank-notes among a pile of gold louis. Under the circumstances in which the unhappy boy was placed the temptation was stronger than his principles, solid as they were. He saw a means of saving his grandfather and the fruits of almost a lifetime of toil. He yielded. The fascination was rapid as thought; and it was justified to the child’s mind by the idea of self-devotion. “I destroy myself, but I save my mother and my grandfather,” he thought. Under the strain put upon his reason by this criminal temptation he acquired, like madmen, a singular and momentary dexterity.
Halpersohn, an experienced observer, had divined, retrospectively, the life of the old man and that of the lad and of the mother. He felt or perceived the truth; the Baronne de Mergi’s remarks had helped to unveil it to him; and the result was a feeling of benevolent pity for his new clients. As for respect or admiration, he was incapable of those emotions.
“Well, my dear boy,” he replied familiarly, “I am taking care of your mother, and I shall return her to you young and handsome and perfectly well in health. Here is one of those rare cases in which physicians take an interest. Besides, through her mother, she is a compatriot of mine. You and your grandfather must for two weeks have the courage to keep away from Madame – ?”
“The Baronne de Mergi.”
“Ah! if she is a baroness, you must be a baron,” remarked Halpersohn.
At that instant the theft was accomplished. While the doctor was looking at his sopped bread heavy with chocolate, Auguste snatched four notes and put them into his pocket, as if he were merely putting his hand there by accident.
“Yes, monsieur,” he replied, “I am a baron, and so is my grandfather; he was attorney-general under the Restoration.”
“You blush, young man; there’s no need to blush for being a poor baron; that’s common enough.”
“Who told you, monsieur, that we are poor?”
“Your grandfather told me he had spent the night in the Champs Elysees; and though I know no palace with half so fine a ceiling as that of the skies at two o’clock this morning, I assure you it was pretty cold in the palace where your grandfather passed the night. We don’t select the ‘Star’ inn from choice.”
“Has my grandfather been here this morning?” said Auguste, seizing the opportunity to get away. “I thank you, monsieur, and I will call again, if you will permit me, to ask for news of my mother.”
As soon as he was in the street the young baron took a cab to go as rapidly as he could to the sheriff’s office, where he paid his grandfather’s debt. The sheriff gave him the papers and a receipted bill of costs, and told one of his clerks to accompany the young man home and relieve the legal guardian of her functions.
“As Messieurs Barbet and Metivier live in your quarter,” he said, “I will tell my young man to carry the money there and obtain the bill of sale of the books and return it to you.”
Auguste who did not understand either the terms or the formalities of the law, did exactly as he was told. He received seven hundred francs change from the four thousand francs he had stolen, and went away with the clerk. He got back into the cab in a condition of semi-stupor; for, the result being now obtained, remorse began; he saw himself dishonored, cursed by his grandfather, whose inflexible nature was well-known to him, and he felt that his mother would surely die if she knew him guilty. All nature changed for him. He was hot; he did not see the snow; the houses looked like spectres flitting past him.
By the time he reached home the young baron had decided on his course which was certainly that of an honest man. He went to his mother’s room, took the gold snuff-box set with diamonds given to his grandfather by the Emperor, and wrapped it in a parcel with the seven hundred francs and the following letter, which required several rough copies before it was satisfactory. Then he directed the whole to Doctor Halpersohn: —
Monsieur, – The fruits of twenty years of my grandfather’s toil were about to be seized by usurers, who even threatened to put him in prison. Three thousand three hundred francs were enough to save him. Seeing all that money on your table, I could not resist the happiness of freeing my grandfather from his danger. I borrowed, without your consent, four thousand francs of you; but as three thousand three hundred were all that was necessary, I send the other seven hundred in money, together with a gold snuff-box set with diamonds, given to my grandfather by the Emperor, the value of which will probably cover the whole sum.
In case you do not believe in the honor of him who will forever regard you as a benefactor, I pray you to keep silence about an act which would be quite unjustifiable under other circumstances; for by so doing you will save my grandfather’s life, just as you are saving my mother’s life; and I shall be forever
Your devoted servant, Auguste de Mergi.
About half-past two o’clock in the afternoon, Auguste, who went himself as far as the Champs Elysees, sent the package from there by a street messenger to Doctor Halpersohn’s house; then he walked slowly homeward by the pont de Jena, the Invalides, and the boulevards, relying on Halpersohn’s generosity.
The Polish doctor had meanwhile discovered the theft, and he instantly changed his opinion of his clients. He now thought the old man had come to rob him, and being unable to succeed, had sent the boy. He doubted the rank they had claimed, and went straight to the police-office where he lodged a complaint, requesting that the lad might be arrested at once.
The prudence with which the law proceeds seldom allows it to move as rapidly as complainants desire; but about three o’clock of that day a commissary of police, accompanied by agents who kept watch outside the house, was questioning Madame Vauthier as to her lodgers, and the widow was increasing, without being aware of it, the suspicions of the policeman.
When Nepomucene saw the police agents stationed outside the house, he thought they had come to arrest the old man, and as he was fond of Monsieur Auguste, he rushed to meet Monsieur Bernard, whom he now saw on his way home in the avenue de l’Observatoire.
“Hide yourself, monsieur!” he cried, “the police have come to arrest you. The sheriff was here yesterday and seized everything. Madame Vauthier didn’t give you the stamped papers, and she says you’ll be in Clichy to-night or to-morrow. There, don’t you see those policemen?”
Baron Bourlac immediately resolved to go straight to Barbet. The former publisher lived in the rue Saint-Catherine d’Enfer, and it took him a quarter of an hour to reach the house.
“Ah! I suppose you have come to get that bill of sale,” said Barbet, replying to the salutation of his victim. “Here it is.”
And, to Baron Bourlac’s great astonishment, he held out the document, which the baron took, saying, —
“I do not understand.”
“Didn’t you pay me?” said the usurer.
“Are you paid?”
“Yes, your grandson took the money to the sheriff this morning.”
“Then it is true you made a seizure at my house yesterday?”
“Haven’t you been home for two days?” asked Barbet. “But an old magistrate ought to know what a notification of arrest means.”
Hearing that remark, the baron bowed coldly to Barbet and returned home, thinking that the policemen whom Nepomucene had pointed out must have come for the two impecunious authors on the upper floor. He walked slowly, lost in vague apprehensions; for, in spite of the explanation he gave himself, Nepomucene’s words came back, and seemed to him more and more obscure and inexplicable. Was it possible that Godefroid had betrayed him?