Оноре де Бальзак
The Commission in Lunacy
Twelve years before the beginning of this story, in 1816, during the terrible scarcity which coincided disastrously with the stay in France of the so-called Allies, Popinot was appointed President of the Commission Extraordinary formed to distribute food to the poor of his neighborhood, just when he had planned to move from the Rue du Fouarre, which he as little liked to live in as his wife did. The great lawyer, the clear-sighted criminal judge, whose superiority seemed to his colleagues a form of aberration, had for five years been watching legal results without seeing their causes. As he scrambled up into the lofts, as he saw the poverty, as he studied the desperate necessities which gradually bring the poor to criminal acts, as he estimated their long struggles, compassion filled his soul. The judge then became the Saint Vincent de Paul of these grown-up children, these suffering toilers. The transformation was not immediately complete. Beneficence has its temptations as vice has. Charity consumes a saint’s purse, as roulette consumes the possessions of a gambler, quite gradually. Popinot went from misery to misery, from charity to charity; then, by the time he had lifted all the rags which cover public pauperism, like a bandage under which an inflamed wound lies festering, at the end of a year he had become the Providence incarnate of that quarter of the town. He was a member of the Benevolent Committee and of the Charity Organization. Wherever any gratuitous services were needed he was ready, and did everything without fuss, like the man with the short cloak, who spends his life in carrying soup round the markets and other places where there are starving folks.
Popinot was fortunate in acting on a larger circle and in a higher sphere; he had an eye on everything, he prevented crime, he gave work to the unemployed, he found a refuge for the helpless, he distributed aid with discernment wherever danger threatened, he made himself the counselor of the widow, the protector of homeless children, the sleeping partner of small traders. No one at the Courts, no one in Paris, knew of this secret life of Popinot’s. There are virtues so splendid that they necessitate obscurity; men make haste to hide them under a bushel. As to those whom the lawyer succored, they, hard at work all day and tired at night, were little able to sing his praises; theirs was the gracelessness of children, who can never pay because they owe too much. There is such compulsory ingratitude; but what heart that has sown good to reap gratitude can think itself great?
By the end of the second year of his apostolic work, Popinot had turned the storeroom at the bottom of his house into a parlor, lighted by the three iron-barred windows. The walls and ceiling of this spacious room were whitewashed, and the furniture consisted of wooden benches like those seen in schools, a clumsy cupboard, a walnut-wood writing-table, and an armchair. In the cupboard were his registers of donations, his tickets for orders for bread, and his diary. He kept his ledger like a tradesman, that he might not be ruined by kindness. All the sorrows of the neighborhood were entered and numbered in a book, where each had its little account, as merchants’ customers have theirs. When there was any question as to a man or a family needing help, the lawyer could always command information from the police.
Lavienne, a man made for his master, was his aide-de-camp. He redeemed or renewed pawn-tickets, and visited the districts most threatened with famine, while his master was in court.
From four till seven in the morning in summer, from six till nine in winter, this room was full of women, children, and paupers, while Popinot gave audience. There was no need for a stove in winter; the crowd was so dense that the air was warmed; only, Lavienne strewed straw on the wet floor. By long use the benches were as polished as varnished mahogany; at the height of a man’s shoulders the wall had a coat of dark, indescribable color, given to it by the rags and tattered clothes of these poor creatures. The poor wretches loved Popinot so well that when they assembled before his door was opened, before daybreak on a winter’s morning, the women warming themselves with their foot-brasiers, the men swinging their arms for circulation, never a sound had disturbed his sleep. Rag-pickers and other toilers of the night knew the house, and often saw a light burning in the lawyer’s private room at unholy hours. Even thieves, as they passed by, said, “That is his house,” and respected it. The morning he gave to the poor, the mid-day hours to criminals, the evening to law work.
Thus the gift of observation that characterized Popinot was necessarily bifrons; he could guess the virtues of a pauper – good feelings nipped, fine actions in embryo, unrecognized self-sacrifice, just as he could read at the bottom of a man’s conscience the faintest outlines of a crime, the slenderest threads of wrongdoing, and infer all the rest.
Popinot’s inherited fortune was a thousand crowns a year. His wife, sister to M. Bianchon Senior, a doctor at Sancerre, had brought him about twice as much. She, dying five years since, had left her fortune to her husband. As the salary of a supernumerary judge is not large, and Popinot had been a fully salaried judge only for four years, we may guess his reasons for parsimony in all that concerned his person and mode of life, when we consider how small his means were and how great his beneficence. Besides, is not such indifference to dress as stamped Popinot an absent-minded man, a distinguishing mark of scientific attainment, of art passionately pursued, of a perpetually active mind? To complete this portrait, it will be enough to add that Popinot was one of the few judges of the Court of the Seine on whom the ribbon of the Legion of Honor had not been conferred.
Such was the man who had been instructed by the President of the Second Chamber of the Court – to which Popinot had belonged since his reinstatement among the judges in civil law – to examine the Marquis d’Espard at the request of his wife, who sued for a Commission in Lunacy.
The Rue du Fouarre, where so many unhappy wretches swarmed in the early morning, would be deserted by nine o’clock, and as gloomy and squalid as ever. Bianchon put his horse to a trot in order to find his uncle in the midst of his business. It was not without a smile that he thought of the curious contrast the judge’s appearance would make in Madame d’Espard’s room; but he promised himself that he would persuade him to dress in a way that should not be too ridiculous.
“If only my uncle happens to have a new coat!” said Bianchon to himself, as he turned into the Rue du Fouarre, where a pale light shone from the parlor windows. “I shall do well, I believe, to talk that over with Lavienne.”
At the sound of wheels half a score of startled paupers came out from under the gateway, and took off their hats on recognizing Bianchon; for the doctor, who treated gratuitously the sick recommended to him by the lawyer, was not less well known than he to the poor creatures assembled there.
Bianchon found his uncle in the middle of the parlor, where the benches were occupied by patients presenting such grotesque singularities of costume as would have made the least artistic passer-by turn round to gaze at them. A draughtsman – a Rembrandt, if there were one in our day – might have conceived of one of his finest compositions from seeing these children of misery, in artless attitudes, and all silent.
Here was the rugged countenance of an old man with a white beard and an apostolic head – a Saint Peter ready to hand; his chest, partly uncovered, showed salient muscles, the evidence of an iron constitution which had served him as a fulcrum to resist a whole poem of sorrows. There a young woman was suckling her youngest-born to keep it from crying, while another of about five stood between her knees. Her white bosom, gleaming amid rags, the baby with its transparent flesh-tints, and the brother, whose attitude promised a street arab in the future, touched the fancy with pathos by its almost graceful contrast with the long row of faces crimson with cold, in the midst of which sat this family group. Further away, an old woman, pale and rigid, had the repulsive look of rebellious pauperism, eager to avenge all its past woes in one day of violence.
There, again, was the young workman, weakly and indolent, whose brightly intelligent eye revealed fine faculties crushed by necessity struggled with in vain, saying nothing of his sufferings, and nearly dead for lack of an opportunity to squeeze between the bars of the vast stews where the wretched swim round and round and devour each other.
The majority were women; their husbands, gone to their work, left it to them, no doubt, to plead the cause of the family with the ingenuity which characterizes the woman of the people, who is almost always queen in her hovel. You would have seen a torn bandana on every head, on every form a skirt deep in mud, ragged kerchiefs, worn and dirty jackets, but eyes that burnt like live coals. It was a horrible assemblage, raising at first sight a feeling of disgust, but giving a certain sense of terror the instant you perceived that the resignation of these souls, all engaged in the struggle for every necessary of life, was purely fortuitous, a speculation on benevolence. The two tallow candles which lighted the parlor flickered in a sort of fog caused by the fetid atmosphere of the ill-ventilated room.
The magistrate himself was not the least picturesque figure in the midst of this assembly. He had on his head a rusty cotton night-cap; as he had no cravat, his neck was visible, red with cold and wrinkled, in contrast with the threadbare collar of his old dressing-gown. His worn face had the half-stupid look that comes of absorbed attention. His lips, like those of all men who work, were puckered up like a bag with the strings drawn tight. His knitted brows seemed to bear the burden of all the sorrows confided to him: he felt, analyzed, and judged them all. As watchful as a Jew money-lender, he never raised his eyes from his books and registers but to look into the very heart of the persons he was examining, with the flashing glance by which a miser expresses his alarm.
Lavienne, standing behind his master, ready to carry out his orders, served no doubt as a sort of police, and welcomed newcomers by encouraging them to get over their shyness. When the doctor appeared there was a stir on the benches. Lavienne turned his head, and was strangely surprised to see Bianchon.
“Ah! It is you, old boy!” exclaimed Popinot, stretching himself. “What brings you so early?”
“I was afraid lest you should make an official visit about which I wish to speak to you before I could see you.”
“Well,” said the lawyer, addressing a stout little woman who was still standing close to him, “if you do not tell me what it is you want, I cannot guess it, child.”
“Make haste,” said Lavienne. “Do not waste other people’s time.”
“Monsieur,” said the woman at last, turning red, and speaking so low as only to be heard by Popinot and Lavienne, “I have a green-grocery truck, and I have my last baby to nurse, and I owe for his keep. Well, I had hidden my little bit of money – ”
“Yes; and your man took it?” said Popinot, guessing the sequel.
“Yes, sir.”
“What is your name?”
“La Pomponne.”
“And your husband’s?”
“Toupinet.”
“Rue du Petit-Banquier?” said Popinot, turning over his register. “He is in prison,” he added, reading a note at the margin of the section in which this family was described.
“For debt, my kind monsieur.”
Popinot shook his head.
“But I have nothing to buy any stock for my truck; the landlord came yesterday and made me pay up; otherwise I should have been turned out.”
Lavienne bent over his master, and whispered in his ear.
“Well, how much do you want to buy fruit in the market?”
“Why, my good monsieur, to carry on my business, I should want – Yes, I should certainly want ten francs.”
Popinot signed to Lavienne, who took ten francs out of a large bag, and handed them to the woman, while the lawyer made a note of the loan in his ledger. As he saw the thrill of delight that made the poor hawker tremble, Bianchon understood the apprehensions that must have agitated her on her way to the lawyer’s house.
“You next,” said Lavienne to the old man with the white beard.
Bianchon drew the servant aside, and asked him how long this audience would last.
“Monsieur has had two hundred persons this morning, and there are eight to be turned off,” said Lavienne. “You will have time to pay your early visit, sir.”
“Here, my boy,” said the lawyer, turning round and taking Horace by the arm; “here are two addresses near this – one in the Rue de Seine, and the other in the Rue de l’Arbalete. Go there at once. Rue de Seine, a young girl has just asphyxiated herself; and Rue de l’Arbalete, you will find a man to remove to your hospital. I will wait breakfast for you.”
Bianchon returned an hour later. The Rue du Fouarre was deserted; day was beginning to dawn there; his uncle had gone up to his rooms; the last poor wretch whose misery the judge had relieved was departing, and Lavienne’s money bag was empty.
“Well, how are they going on?” asked the old lawyer, as the doctor came in.
“The man is dead,” replied Bianchon; “the girl will get over it.”
Since the eye and hand of a woman had been lacking, the flat in which Popinot lived had assumed an aspect in harmony with its master’s. The indifference of a man who is absorbed in one dominant idea had set its stamp of eccentricity on everything. Everywhere lay unconquerable dust, every object was adapted to a wrong purpose with a pertinacity suggestive of a bachelor’s home. There were papers in the flower vases, empty ink-bottles on the tables, plates that had been forgotten, matches used as tapers for a minute when something had to be found, drawers or boxes half-turned out and left unfinished; in short, all the confusion and vacancies resulting from plans for order never carried out. The lawyer’s private room, especially disordered by this incessant rummage, bore witness to his unresting pace, the hurry of a man overwhelmed with business, hunted by contradictory necessities. The bookcase looked as if it had been sacked; there were books scattered over everything, some piled up open, one on another, others on the floor face downwards; registers of proceedings laid on the floor in rows, lengthwise, in front of the shelves; and that floor had not been polished for two years.
The tables and shelves were covered with ex votos, the offerings of the grateful poor. On a pair of blue glass jars which ornamented the chimney-shelf there were two glass balls, of which the core was made up of many-colored fragments, giving them the appearance of some singular natural product. Against the wall hung frames of artificial flowers, and decorations in which Popinot’s initials were surrounded by hearts and everlasting flowers. Here were boxes of elaborate and useless cabinet work; there letter-weights carved in the style of work done by convicts in penal servitude. These masterpieces of patience, enigmas of gratitude, and withered bouquets gave the lawyer’s room the appearance of a toyshop. The good man used these works of art as hiding-places which he filled with bills, worn-out pens, and scraps of paper. All these pathetic witnesses to his divine charity were thick with dust, dingy, and faded.
Some birds, beautifully stuffed, but eaten by moth, perched in this wilderness of trumpery, presided over by an Angora cat, Madame Popinot’s pet, restored to her no doubt with all the graces of life by some impecunious naturalist, who thus repaid a gift of charity with a perennial treasure. Some local artist whose heart had misguided his brush had painted portraits of M. and Madame Popinot. Even in the bedroom there were embroidered pin-cushions, landscapes in cross-stitch, and crosses in folded paper, so elaborately cockled as to show the senseless labor they had cost.
The window-curtains were black with smoke, and the hangings absolutely colorless. Between the fireplace and the large square table at which the magistrate worked, the cook had set two cups of coffee on a small table, and two armchairs, in mahogany and horsehair, awaited the uncle and nephew. As daylight, darkened by the windows, could not penetrate to this corner, the cook had left two dips burning, whose unsnuffed wicks showed a sort of mushroom growth, giving the red light which promises length of life to the candle from slowness of combustion – a discovery due to some miser.
“My dear uncle, you ought to wrap yourself more warmly when you go down to that parlor.”
“I cannot bear to keep them waiting, poor souls! – Well, and what do you want of me?”
“I have come to ask you to dine to-morrow with the Marquise d’Espard.”
“A relation of ours?” asked Popinot, with such genuine absence of mind that Bianchon laughed.
“No, uncle; the Marquise d’Espard is a high and puissant lady, who has laid before the Courts a petition desiring that a Commission in Lunacy should sit on her husband, and you are appointed – ”
“And you want me to dine with her! Are you mad?” said the lawyer, taking up the code of proceedings. “Here, only read this article, prohibiting any magistrate’s eating or drinking in the house of either of two parties whom he is called upon to decide between. Let her come and see me, your Marquise, if she has anything to say to me. I was, in fact, to go to examine her husband to-morrow, after working the case up to-night.”
He rose, took up a packet of papers that lay under a weight where he could see it, and after reading the title, he said:
“Here is the affidavit. Since you take an interest in this high and puissant lady, let us see what she wants.”
Popinot wrapped his dressing-gown across his body, from which it was constantly slipping and leaving his chest bare; he sopped his bread in the half-cold coffee, and opened the petition, which he read, allowing himself to throw in a parenthesis now and then, and some discussions, in which his nephew took part: —
“‘To Monsieur the President of the Civil Tribunal of the Lower Court of the Department of the Seine, sitting at the Palais de Justice.
“‘Madame Jeanne Clementine Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, wife of M. Charles Maurice Marie Andoche, Comte de Negrepelisse, Marquis d’Espard’ – a very good family – ‘landowner, the said Mme. d’Espard living in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, No. 104, and the said M. d’Espard in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, No. 22,’ – to be sure, the President told me he lived in this part of the town – ‘having for her solicitor Maitre Desroches’ – Desroches! a pettifogging jobber, a man looked down upon by his brother lawyers, and who does his clients no good – ”
“Poor fellow!” said Bianchon, “unluckily he has no money, and he rushes round like the devil in holy water – That is all.”
“‘Has the honor to submit to you, Monsieur the President, that for a year past the moral and intellectual powers of her husband, M. d’Espard, have undergone so serious a change, that at the present day they have reached the state of dementia and idiocy provided for by Article 448 of the Civil Code, and require the application of the remedies set forth by that article, for the security of his fortune and his person, and to guard the interest of his children whom he keeps to live with him.
“‘That, in point of fact, the mental condition of M. d’Espard, which for some years has given grounds for alarm based on the system he has pursued in the management of his affairs, has reached, during the last twelvemonth, a deplorable depth of depression; that his infirm will was the first thing to show the results of the malady; and that its effete state leaves M. the Marquis d’Espard exposed to all the perils of his incompetency, as is proved by the following facts:
“‘For a long time all the income accruing from M. d’Espard’s estates are paid, without any reasonable cause, or even temporary advantage, into the hands of an old woman, whose repulsive ugliness is generally remarked on, named Madame Jeanrenaud, living sometimes in Paris, Rue de la Vrilliere, No. 8, sometimes at Villeparisis, near Claye, in the Department of Seine et Marne, and for the benefit of her son, aged thirty-six, an officer in the ex-Imperial Guards, whom the Marquis d’Espard has placed by his influence in the King’s Guards, as Major in the First Regiment of Cuirassiers. These two persons, who in 1814 were in extreme poverty, have since then purchased house-property of considerable value; among other items, quite recently, a large house in the Grand Rue Verte, where the said Jeanrenaud is laying out considerable sums in order to settle there with the woman Jeanrenaud, intending to marry: these sums amount already to more than a hundred thousand francs. The marriage has been arranged by the intervention of M. d’Espard with his banker, one Mongenod, whose niece he has asked in marriage for the said Jeanrenaud, promising to use his influence to procure him the title and dignity of baron. This has in fact been secured by His Majesty’s letters patent, dated December 29th of last year, at the request of the Marquis d’Espard, as can be proved by His Excellency the Keeper of the Seals, if the Court should think proper to require his testimony.
“‘That no reason, not even such as morality and the law would concur in disapproving, can justify the influence which the said Mme. Jeanrenaud exerts over M. d’Espard, who, indeed, sees her very seldom; nor account for his strange affection for the said Baron Jeanrenaud, Major with whom he has but little intercourse. And yet their power is so considerable, that whenever they need money, if only to gratify a mere whim, this lady, or her son – ’ Heh, heh! No reason even such as morality and the law concur in disapproving! What does the clerk or the attorney mean to insinuate?” said Popinot.
Bianchon laughed.
“‘This lady, or her son, obtain whatever they ask of the Marquis d’Espard without demur; and if he has not ready money, M. d’Espard draws bills to be paid by the said Mongenod, who has offered to give evidence to that effect for the petitioner.
“‘That, moreover, in further proof of these facts, lately, on the occasion of the renewal of the leases on the Espard estate, the farmers having paid a considerable premium for the renewal of their leases on the old terms, M. Jeanrenaud at once secured the payment of it into his own hands.
“‘That the Marquis d’Espard parts with these sums of money so little of his own free-will, that when he was spoken to on the subject he seemed to remember nothing of the matter; that whenever anybody of any weight has questioned him as to his devotion to these two persons, his replies have shown so complete an absence of ideas and of sense of his own interests, that there obviously must be some occult cause at work to which the petitioner begs to direct the eye of justice, inasmuch as it is impossible but that this cause should be criminal, malignant, and wrongful, or else of a nature to come under medical jurisdiction; unless this influence is of the kind which constitutes an abuse of moral power – such as can only be described by the word possession– ‘The devil!” exclaimed Popinot. “What do you say to that, doctor. These are strange statements.”
“They might certainly,” said Bianchon, “be an effect of magnetic force.”
“Then do you believe in Mesmer’s nonsense, and his tub, and seeing through walls?”
“Yes, uncle,” said the doctor gravely. “As I heard you read that petition I thought of that. I assure you that I have verified, in another sphere of action, several analogous facts proving the unlimited influence one man may acquire over another. In contradiction to the opinion of my brethren, I am perfectly convinced of the power of the will regarded as a motor force. All collusion and charlatanism apart, I have seen the results of such a possession. Actions promised during sleep by a magnetized patient to the magnetizer have been scrupulously performed on waking. The will of one had become the will of the other.”
“Every kind of action?”
“Yes.”
“Even a criminal act?”
“Even a crime.”
“If it were not from you, I would not listen to such a thing.”
“I will make you witness it,” said Bianchon.
“Hm, hm,” muttered the lawyer. “But supposing that this so-called possession fell under this class of facts, it would be difficult to prove it as legal evidence.”
“If this woman Jeanrenaud is so hideously old and ugly, I do not see what other means of fascination she can have used,” observed Bianchon.
“But,” observed the lawyer, “in 1814, the time at which this fascination is supposed to have taken place, this woman was fourteen years younger; if she had been connected with M. d’Espard ten years before that, these calculations take us back four-and-twenty years, to a time when the lady may have been young and pretty, and have won for herself and her son a power over M. d’Espard which some men do not know how to evade. Though the source of this power is reprehensible in the sight of justice, it is justifiable in the eye of nature. Madame Jeanrenaud may have been aggrieved by the marriage, contracted probably at about that time, between the Marquis d’Espard and Mademoiselle de Blamont-Chauvry, and at the bottom of all this there may be nothing more than the rivalry of two women, since the Marquis had for a long time lived apart from Mme. d’Espard.”
“But her repulsive ugliness, uncle?”
“Power of fascination is in direct proportion to ugliness,” said the lawyer; “that is the old story. And then think of the smallpox, doctor. But to proceed.
“‘That so long ago as in 1815, in order to supply the sums of money required by these two persons, the Marquis d’Espard went with his two children to live in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, in rooms quite unworthy of his name and rank’ – well, we may live as we please – ‘that he keeps his two children there, the Comte Clement d’Espard and Vicomte Camille d’Espard, in a style of living quite unsuited to their future prospects, their name and fortune; that he often wants money, to such a point, that not long since the landlord, one Mariast, put in an execution on the furniture in the rooms; that when this execution was carried out in his presence, the Marquis d’Espard helped the bailiff, whom he treated like a man of rank, paying him all the marks of attention and respect which he would have shown to a person of superior birth and dignity to himself.’”
The uncle and nephew glanced at each other and laughed.
“‘That, moreover, every act of his life, besides the facts with reference to the widow Jeanrenaud and the Baron Jeanrenaud, her son, are those of a madman; that for nearly ten years he has given his thoughts exclusively to China, its customs, manners, and history; that he refers everything to a Chinese origin; that when he is questioned on the subject, he confuses the events of the day and the business of yesterday with facts relating to China; that he censures the acts of the Government and the conduct of the King, though he is personally much attached to him, by comparing them with the politics of China;
“‘That this monomania has driven the Marquis d’Espard to conduct devoid of all sense: against the customs of men of rank, and, in opposition to his own professed ideas as to the duties of the nobility, he has joined a commercial undertaking, for which he constantly draws bills which, as they fall due, threaten both his honor and his fortune, since they stamp him as a trader, and in default of payment may lead to his being declared insolvent; that these debts, which are owing to stationers, printers, lithographers, and print-colorists, who have supplied the materials for his publication, called A Picturesque History of China, now coming out in parts, are so heavy that these tradesmen have requested the petitioner to apply for a Commission in Lunacy with regard to the Marquis d’Espard in order to save their own credit.’”
“The man is mad!” exclaimed Bianchon.
“You think so, do you?” said his uncle. “If you listen to only one bell, you hear only one sound.”
“But it seems to me – ” said Bianchon.
“But it seems to me,” said Popinot, “that if any relation of mine wanted to get hold of the management of my affairs, and if, instead of being a humble lawyer, whose colleagues can, any day, verify what his condition is, I were a duke of the realm, an attorney with a little cunning, like Desroches, might bring just such a petition against me.
“‘That his children’s education has been neglected for this monomania; and that he has taught them, against all the rules of education, the facts of Chinese history, which contradict the tenets of the Catholic Church. He also has them taught the Chinese dialects.’”