THE ATHEIST'S MASS

 BY

 HONORE DE BALZAC

 Translated by Clara Bell

 This is dedicated to Auguste Borget by his friend De Balzac

Bianchon, a physician to whom science owes a fine system of theoreticalphysiology, and who, while still young, made himself a celebrity in themedical school of Paris, that central luminary to which European doctorsdo homage, practised surgery for a long time before he took up medicine. His earliest studies were guided by one of the greatest of Frenchsurgeons, the illustrious Desplein, who flashed across science like ameteor. By the consensus even of his enemies, he took with him to thetomb an incommunicable method. Like all men of genius, he had no heirs;he carried everything in him, and carried it away with him. The glory ofa surgeon is like that of an actor: they live only so long as they arealive, and their talent leaves no trace when they are gone. Actors andsurgeons, like great singers too, like the executants who by theirperformance increase the power of music tenfold, are all the heroes of amoment. 

Desplein is a case in proof of this resemblance in the destinies of suchtransient genius. His name, yesterday so famous, to-day almostforgotten, will survive in his special department without crossing itslimits. For must there not be some extraordinary circumstances to exaltthe name of a professor from the history of Science to the generalhistory of the human race? Had Desplein that universal command ofknowledge which makes a man the living word, the great figure of hisage? Desplein had a godlike eye; he saw into the sufferer and his maladyby an intuition, natural or acquired, which enabled him to grasp thediagnostics peculiar to the individual, to determine the very time, thehour, the minute when an operation should be performed, making dueallowance for atmospheric conditions and peculiarities of individualtemperament. To proceed thus, hand in hand with nature, had he thenstudied the constant assimilation by living beings, of the elementscontained in the atmosphere, or yielded by the earth to man who absorbsthem, deriving from them a particular expression of life? Did he work itall out by the power of deduction and analogy, to which we owe thegenius of Cuvier? Be this as it may, this man was in all the secrets ofthe human frame; he knew it in the past and in the future, emphasizingthe present. 

But did he epitomize all science in his own person as Hippocrates didand Galen and Aristotle? Did he guide a whole school towards new worlds?No. Though it is impossible to deny that this persistent observer ofhuman chemistry possessed that antique science of the Mages, that is tosay, knowledge of the elements in fusion, the causes of life, lifeantecedent to life, and what it must be in its incubation or ever it _is_, it must be confessed that, unfortunately, everything in him was purelypersonal. Isolated during his life by his egoism, that egoism is nowsuicidal of his glory. On his tomb there is no proclaiming statue torepeat to posterity the mysteries which genius seeks out at its owncost. 

But perhaps Desplein's genius was answerable for his beliefs, and forthat reason mortal. To him the terrestrial atmosphere was a generativeenvelope; he saw the earth as an egg within its shell; and not beingable to determine whether the egg or the hen first was, he would notrecognize either the cock or the egg. He believed neither in theantecedent animal nor the surviving spirit of man. Desplein had nodoubts; he was positive. His bold and unqualified atheism was like thatof many scientific men, the best men in the world, but invincibleatheists--atheists such as religious people declare to be impossible. This opinion could scarcely exist otherwise in a man who was accustomedfrom his youth to dissect the creature above all others--before, during, and after life; to hunt through all his organs without ever finding theindividual soul, which is indispensable to religious theory. When hedetected a cerebral centre, a nervous centre, and a centre for aeratingthe blood--the first two so perfectly complementary that in the latteryears of his life he came to a conviction that the sense of hearing isnot absolutely necessary for hearing, nor the sense of sight for seeing, and that the solar plexus could supply their place without anypossibility of doubt--Desplein, thus finding two souls in man, confirmedhis atheism by this fact, though it is no evidence against God. This mandied, it is said, in final impenitence, as do, unfortunately, many noblegeniuses, whom God may forgive. 

The life of this man, great as he was, was marred by many meannesses, touse the expression employed by his enemies, who were anxious to diminishhis glory, but which it would be more proper to call apparentcontradictions. Envious people and fools, having no knowledge of thedeterminations by which superior spirits are moved, seize at once onsuperficial inconsistencies, to formulate an accusation and so to passsentence on them. If, subsequently, the proceedings thus attacked arecrowned with success, showing the correlations of the preliminaries andthe results, a few of the vanguard of calumnies always survive. In ourday, for instance, Napoleon was condemned by our contemporaries when hespread his eagle's wings to alight in England: only 1822 could explain1804 and the flatboats at Boulogne. 

As, in Desplein, his glory and science were invulnerable, his enemiesattacked his odd moods and his temper, whereas, in fact, he was simplycharacterized by what the English call eccentricity. Sometimes veryhandsomely dressed, like Crebillon the tragical, he would suddenlyaffect extreme indifference as to what he wore; he was sometimes seen ina carriage, and sometimes on foot. By turns rough and kind, harsh andcovetous on the surface, but capable of offering his whole fortune tohis exiled masters--who did him the honor of accepting it for a fewdays--no man ever gave rise to such contradictory judgements. Althoughto obtain a black ribbon, which physicians ought not to intrigue for, hewas capable of dropping a prayer-book out of his pocket at Court, in hisheart he mocked at everything; he had a deep contempt for men, afterstudying them from above and below, after detecting their genuineexpression when performing the most solemn and the meanest acts of theirlives. 

The qualities of a great man are often federative. If among thesecolossal spirits one has more talent than wit, his wit is still superiorto that of a man of whom it is simply stated that "he is witty. " Geniusalways presupposes moral insight. This insight may be applied to aspecial subject; but he who can see a flower must be able to see thesun. The man who on hearing a diplomate he has saved ask, "How is theEmperor?" could say, "The courtier is alive; the man will follow!"--thatman is not merely a surgeon or a physician, he is prodigiously wittyalso. Hence a patient and diligent student of human nature will admitDesplein's exorbitant pretensions, and believe--as he himself believed--that he might have been no less great as a minister than he was as asurgeon. 

Among the riddles which Desplein's life presents to many of hiscontemporaries, we have chosen one of the most interesting, because theanswer is to be found at the end of the narrative, and will avenge himfor some foolish charges. 

Of all the students in Desplein's hospital, Horace Bianchon was one ofthose to whom he most warmly attached himself. Before being a housesurgeon at the Hotel-Dieu, Horace Bianchon had been a medical studentlodging in a squalid boarding house in the _Quartier Latin_, known as theMaison Vauquer. This poor young man had felt there the gnawing of thatburning poverty which is a sort of crucible from which great talents areto emerge as pure and incorruptible as diamonds, which may be subjectedto any shock without being crushed. In the fierce fire of theirunbridled passions they acquire the most impeccable honesty, and getinto the habit of fighting the battles which await genius with theconstant work by which they coerce their cheated appetites. 

Horace was an upright young fellow, incapable of tergiversation on amatter of honor, going to the point without waste of words, and as readyto pledge his cloak for a friend as to give him his time and his nighthours. Horace, in short, was one of those friends who are never anxiousas to what they may get in return for what they give, feeling sure thatthey will in their turn get more than they give. Most of his friendsfelt for him that deeply-seated respect which is inspired byunostentatious virtue, and many of them dreaded his censure. But Horacemade no pedantic display of his qualities. He was neither a puritan nora preacher; he could swear with a grace as he gave his advice, and wasalways ready for a jollification when occasion offered. A jollycompanion, not more prudish than a trooper, as frank and outspoken--notas a sailor, for nowadays sailors are wily diplomates--but as an honestman who has nothing in his life to hide, he walked with his head erect, and a mind content. In short, to put the facts into a word, Horace wasthe Pylades of more than one Orestes--creditors being regarded as thenearest modern equivalent to the Furies of the ancients. 

He carried his poverty with the cheerfulness which is perhaps one of thechief elements of courage, and, like all people who have nothing, hemade very few debts. As sober as a camel and active as a stag, he wassteadfast in his ideas and his conduct. 

The happy phase of Bianchon's life began on the day when the famoussurgeon had proof of the qualities and the defects which, these no lessthan those, make Doctor Horace Bianchon doubly dear to his friends. Whena leading clinical practitioner takes a young man to his bosom, thatyoung man has, as they say, his foot in the stirrup. Desplein did notfail to take Bianchon as his assistant to wealthy houses, where somecomplimentary fee almost always found its way into the student's pocket, and where the mysteries of Paris life were insensibly revealed to theyoung provincial; he kept him at his side when a consultation was to beheld, and gave him occupation; sometimes he would send him to awatering-place with a rich patient; in fact, he was making a practicefor him. The consequence was that in the course of time the Tyrant ofsurgery had a devoted ally. These two men--one at the summit of honorand of his science, enjoying an immense fortune and an immensereputation; the other a humble Omega, having neither fortune nor fame--became intimate friends. 

The great Desplein told his house surgeon everything; the disciple knewwhether such or such a woman had sat on a chair near the master, or onthe famous couch in Desplein's surgery, on which he slept. Bianchon knewthe mysteries of that temperament, a compound of the lion and the bull, which at last expanded and enlarged beyond measure the great man'storso, and caused his death by degeneration of the heart. He studied theeccentricities of that busy life, the schemes of that sordid avarice, the hopes of the politician who lurked behind the man of science; he wasable to foresee the mortifications that awaited the only sentiment thatlay hid in a heart that was steeled, but not of steel. 

One day Bianchon spoke to Desplein of a poor water-carrier of theSaint-Jacques district, who had a horrible disease caused by fatigue andwant; this wretched Auvergnat had had nothing but potatoes to eat duringthe dreadful winter of 1821. Desplein left all his visits, and at therisk of killing his horse, he rushed off, followed by Bianchon, to thepoor man's dwelling, and saw, himself, to his being removed to a sickhouse, founded by the famous Dubois in the Faubourg Saint-Denis. Then hewent to attend the man, and when he had cured him he gave him thenecessary sum to buy a horse and a water-barrel. This Auvergnatdistinguished himself by an amusing action. One of his friends fell ill, and he took him at once to Desplein, saying to his benefactor, "I couldnot have borne to let him go to any one else!"

Rough customer as he was, Desplein grasped the water-carrier's hand, andsaid, "Bring them all to me. "

He got the native of Cantal into the Hotel-Dieu, where he took thegreatest care of him. Bianchon had already observed in his chief apredilection for Auvergnats, and especially for water carriers; but asDesplein took a sort of pride in his cures at the Hotel-Dieu, the pupilsaw nothing very strange in that. 

One day, as he crossed the Place Saint-Sulpice, Bianchon caught sight ofhis master going into the church at about nine in the morning. Desplein, who at that time never went a step without his cab, was on foot, andslipped in by the door in the Rue du Petit-Lion, as if he were stealinginto some house of ill fame. The house surgeon, naturally possessed bycuriosity, knowing his master's opinions, and being himself a rabidfollower of Cabanis (_Cabaniste en dyable_, with the _y_, which inRabelais seems to convey an intensity of devilry)--Bianchon stole into thechurch, and was not a little astonished to see the great Desplein, theatheist, who had no mercy on the angels--who give no work to the lancet, and cannot suffer from fistula or gastritis--in short, this audaciousscoffer kneeling humbly, and where? In the Lady Chapel, where heremained through the mass, giving alms for the expenses of the service, alms for the poor, and looking as serious as though he weresuperintending an operation. 

"He has certainly not come here to clear up the question of the Virgin'sdelivery, " said Bianchon to himself, astonished beyond measure. "If Ihad caught him holding one of the ropes of the canopy on Corpus Christiday, it would be a thing to laugh at; but at this hour, alone, with noone to see--it is surely a thing to marvel at!"

Bianchon did not wish to seem as though he were spying the head surgeonof the Hotel-Dieu; he went away. As it happened, Desplein asked him todine with him that day, not at his own house, but at a restaurant. Atdessert Bianchon skilfully contrived to talk of the mass, speaking of itas mummery and a farce. 

"A farce, " said Desplein, "which has cost Christendom more blood thanall Napoleon's battles and all Broussais' leeches. The mass is a papalinvention, not older than the sixth century, and based on the _Hoc estcorpus_. What floods of blood were shed to establish the Fete-Dieu, theFestival of Corpus Christi--the institution by which Rome establishedher triumph in the question of the Real Presence, a schism which rentthe Church during three centuries! The wars of the Count of Toulouseagainst the Albigenses were the tail end of that dispute. The Vaudoisand the Albigenses refused to recognize this innovation. "

In short, Desplein was delighted to disport himself in his mostatheistical vein; a flow of Voltairean satire, or, to be accurate, avile imitation of the _Citateur_. 

"Hallo! where is my worshiper of this morning?" said Bianchon tohimself. 

He said nothing; he began to doubt whether he had really seen his chiefat Saint-Sulpice. Desplein would not have troubled himself to tellBianchon a lie, they knew each other too well; they had alreadyexchanged thoughts on quite equally serious subjects, and discussedsystems de natura rerum, probing or dissecting them with the knife andscalpel of incredulity. 

Three months went by. Bianchon did not attempt to follow the matter up, though it remained stamped on his memory. One day that year, one of thephysicians of the Hotel-Dieu took Desplein by the arm, as if to questionhim, in Bianchon's presence. 

"What were you doing at Saint-Sulpice, my dear master?" said he. 

"I went to see a priest who has a diseased knee-bone, and to whom theDuchesse d'Angouleme did me the honor to recommend me, " said Desplein. 

The questioner took this defeat for an answer; not so Bianchon. 

"Oh, he goes to see damaged knees in church!--He went to mass, " said theyoung man to himself. 

Bianchon resolved to watch Desplein. He remembered the day and hour whenhe had detected him going into Saint-Sulpice, and resolved to be thereagain next year on the same day and at the same hour, to see if heshould find him there again. In that case the periodicity of hisdevotion would justify a scientific investigation; for in such a manthere ought to be no direct antagonism of thought and action. 

Next year, on the said day and hour, Bianchon, who had already ceased tobe Desplein's house surgeon, saw the great man's cab standing at thecorner of the Rue de Tournon and the Rue du Petit-Lion, whence hisfriend jesuitically crept along by the wall of Saint-Sulpice, and oncemore attended mass in front of the Virgin's altar. It was Desplein, sureenough! The master-surgeon, the atheist at heart, the worshiper bychance. The mystery was greater than ever; the regularity of thephenomenon complicated it. When Desplein had left, Bianchon went to thesacristan, who took charge of the chapel, and asked him whether thegentleman were a constant worshiper. 

"For twenty years that I have been here, " replied the man, "M. Despleinhas come four times a year to attend this mass. He founded it. "

"A mass founded by him!" said Bianchon, as he went away. "This is asgreat a mystery as the Immaculate Conception--an article which alone isenough to make a physician an unbeliever. "

Some time elapsed before Doctor Bianchon, though so much his friend, found an opportunity of speaking to Desplein of this incident of hislife. Though they met in consultation, or in society, it was difficultto find an hour of confidential solitude when, sitting with their feeton the fire-dogs and their head resting on the back of an armchair, twomen tell each other their secrets. At last, seven years later, after theRevolution of 1830, when the mob invaded the Archbishop's residence, when Republican agitators spurred them on to destroy the gilt crosseswhich flashed like streaks of lightning in the immensity of the ocean ofhouses; when Incredulity flaunted itself in the streets, side by sidewith Rebellion, Bianchon once more detected Desplein going intoSaint-Sulpice. The doctor followed him, and knelt down by him without theslightest notice or demonstration of surprise from his friend. They bothattended this mass of his founding. 

"Will you tell me, my dear fellow, " said Bianchon, as they left thechurch, "the reason for your fit of monkishness? I have caught you threetimes going to mass---- You! You must account to me for this mystery, explain such a flagrant disagreement between your opinions and yourconduct. You do not believe in God, and yet you attend mass? My dearmaster, you are bound to give me an answer. "

"I am like a great many devout people, men who on the surface are deeplyreligious, but quite as much atheists as you or I can be. "

And he poured out a torrent of epigrams on certain political personages, of whom the best known gives us, in this century, a new edition ofMoliere's _Tartufe_. 

"All that has nothing to do with my question, " retorted Bianchon. "Iwant to know the reason for what you have just been doing, and why youfounded this mass. "

"Faith! my dear boy, " said Desplein, "I am on the verge of the tomb; Imay safely tell you about the beginning of my life. "

At this moment Bianchon and the great man were in the Rue desQuatre-Vents, one of the worst streets in Paris. Desplein pointed tothe sixth floor of one of the houses looking like obelisks, of whichthe narrow door opens into a passage with a winding staircase at theend, with windows appropriately termed "borrowed lights"--or, in French, _jours de souffrance_. It was a greenish structure; the ground flooroccupied by a furniture-dealer, while each floor seemed to shelter adifferent and independent form of misery. Throwing up his arm with avehement gesture, Desplein exclaimed:

"I lived up there for two years. "

"I know; Arthez lived there; I went up there almost every day during myfirst youth; we used to call it then the pickle-jar of great men! Whatthen?"

"The mass I have just attended is connected with some events which tookplace at the time when I lived in the garret where you say Arthez lived;the one with the window where the clothes line is hanging with linenover a pot of flowers. My early life was so hard, my dear Bianchon, thatI may dispute the palm of Paris suffering with any man living. I haveendured everything: hunger and thirst, want of money, want of clothes, of shoes, of linen, every cruelty that penury can inflict. I have blownon my frozen fingers in that _pickle-jar of great men_, which I shouldlike to see again, now, with you. I worked through a whole winter, seeing my head steam, and perceiving the atmosphere of my own moistureas we see that of horses on a frosty day. I do not know where a manfinds the fulcrum that enables him to hold out against such a life. 

"I was alone, with no one to help me, no money to buy books or to paythe expenses of my medical training; I had not a friend; my irascible, touchy, restless temper was against me. No one understood that thisirritability was the distress and toil of a man who, at the bottom ofthe social scale, is struggling to reach the surface. Still, I had, as I may say to you, before whom I need wear no draperies, I had thatground-bed of good feeling and keen sensitiveness which must always bethe birthright of any man who is strong enough to climb to any heightwhatever, after having long trampled in the bogs of poverty. I couldobtain nothing from my family, nor from my home, beyond my inadequateallowance. In short, at that time, I breakfasted off a roll which thebaker in the Rue du Petit-Lion sold me cheap because it was left fromyesterday or the day before, and I crumbled it into milk; thus mymorning meal cost me but two sous. I dined only every other day in aboarding-house where the meal cost me sixteen sous. You know as well asI what care I must have taken of my clothes and shoes. I hardly knowwhether in later life we feel grief so deep when a colleague plays usfalse as we have known, you and I, on detecting the mocking smile of agaping seam in a shoe, or hearing the armhole of a coat split, I dranknothing but water; I regarded a cafe with distant respect. Zoppi'sseemed to me a promised land where none but the Lucullus of the _paysLatin_ had a right of entry. 'Shall I ever take a cup of coffee therewith milk in it?' said I to myself, 'or play a game of dominoes?'

"I threw into my work the fury I felt at my misery. I tried to masterpositive knowledge so as to acquire the greatest personal value, andmerit the position I should hold as soon as I could escape fromnothingness. I consumed more oil than bread; the light I burned duringthese endless nights cost me more than food. It was a long duel, obstinate, with no sort of consolation. I found no sympathy anywhere. Tohave friends, must we not form connections with young men, have a fewsous so as to be able to go tippling with them, and meet them wherestudents congregate? And I had nothing! And no one in Paris canunderstand that nothing means _nothing_. When I even thought of revealingmy beggary, I had that nervous contraction of the throat which makes asick man believe that a ball rises up from the oesophagus into thelarynx. 

"In later life I have met people born to wealth who, never having wantedfor anything, had never even heard this problem in the rule of three: Ayoung man is to crime as a five-franc piece is to X. --These gildedidiots say to me, 'Why did you get into debt? Why did you involveyourself in such onerous obligations?' They remind me of the princesswho, on hearing that the people lacked bread, said, 'Why do not they buycakes?' I should like to see one of these rich men, who complain that Icharge too much for an operation, --yes, I should like to see him alonein Paris without a sou, without a friend, without credit, and forced towork with his five fingers to live at all! What would he do? Where wouldhe go to satisfy his hunger?

"Bianchon, if you have sometimes seen me hard and bitter, it was becauseI was adding my early sufferings on to the insensibility, theselfishness of which I have seen thousands of instances in the highestcircles; or, perhaps, I was thinking of the obstacles which hatred, envy, jealousy, and calumny raised up between me and success. In Paris, when certain people see you ready to set your foot in the stirrup, somepull your coat-tails, others loosen the buckle of the strap that you mayfall and crack your skull; one wrenches off your horse's shoes, anothersteals your whip, and the least treacherous of them all is the man whomyou see coming to fire his pistol at you point blank. 

"You yourself, my dear boy, are clever enough to make acquaintancebefore long with the odious and incessant warfare waged by mediocrityagainst the superior man. If you should drop five-and-twenty louis oneday, you will be accused of gambling on the next, and your best friendswill report that you have lost twenty-five thousand. If you have aheadache, you will be considered mad. If you are a little hasty, no onecan live with you. If, to make a stand against this armament of pigmies, you collect your best powers, your best friends will cry out that youwant to have everything, that you aim at domineering, at tyranny. Inshort, your good points will become your faults, your faults will bevices, and your virtues crime. 

"If you save a man, you will be said to have killed him; if he reappearson the scene, it will be positive that you have secured the present atthe cost of the future. If he is not dead, he will die. Stumble, and youfall! Invent anything of any kind and claim your rights, you will becrotchety, cunning, ill-disposed to rising younger men. 

"So, you see, my dear fellow, if I do not believe in God, I believestill less in man. But do not you know in me another Desplein, altogether different from the Desplein whom every one abuses?--However, we will not stir that mud-heap. 

"Well, I was living in that house, I was working hard to pass my firstexamination, and I had no money at all. You know. I had come to one ofthose moments of extremity when a man says, 'I will enlist. ' I had onehope. I expected from my home a box full of linen, a present from one ofthose old aunts who, knowing nothing of Paris, think of your shirts, while they imagine that their nephew with thirty francs a month iseating ortolans. The box arrived while I was at the schools; it had costforty francs for carriage. The porter, a German shoemaker living in aloft, had paid the money and kept the box. I walked up and down the Ruedes Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres and the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecinewithout hitting on any scheme which would release my trunk without thepayment of the forty francs, which of course I could pay as soon as Ishould have sold the linen. My stupidity proved to me that surgery wasmy only vocation. My good fellow, refined souls, whose powers move in alofty atmosphere, have none of that spirit of intrigue that is fertilein resource and device; their good genius is chance; they do not invent, things come to them. 

"At night I went home, at the very moment when my fellow lodger alsocame in--a water-carrier named Bourgeat, a native of Saint-Flour. Weknew each other as two lodgers do who have rooms off the same landing, and who hear each other sleeping, coughing, dressing, and so at lastbecome used to one another. My neighbor informed me that the landlord, to whom I owed three quarters' rent, had turned me out; I must clear outnext morning. He himself was also turned out on account of hisoccupation. I spent the most miserable night of my life. Where was I toget a messenger who could carry my few chattels and my books? How couldI pay him and the porter? Where was I to go? I repeated theseunanswerable questions again and again, in tears, as madmen repeat theirtunes. I fell asleep; poverty has for its friends heavenly slumbers fullof beautiful dreams. 

"Next morning, just as I was swallowing my little bowl of bread soakedin milk, Bourgeat came in and said to me in his vile Auvergne accent:

"'_Mouchieur l'Etudiant_, I am a poor man, a foundling from the hospitalat Saint-Flour, without either father or mother, and not rich enough tomarry. You are not fertile in relations either, nor well supplied withthe ready? Listen, I have a hand-cart downstairs which I have hired fortwo sous an hour; it will hold all our goods; if you like, we will tryto find lodgings together, since we are both turned out of this. It isnot the earthly paradise, when all is said and done. '

"'I know that, my good Bourgeat, ' said I. 'But I am in a great fix. Ihave a trunk downstairs with a hundred francs' worth of linen in it, outof which I could pay the landlord and all I owe to the porter, and Ihave not a hundred sous. '

"'Pooh! I have a few dibs, ' replied Bourgeat joyfully, and he pulledout a greasy old leather purse. 'Keep your linen. '

"Bourgeat paid up my arrears and his own, and settled with the porter. Then he put our furniture and my box of linen in his cart, and pulled italong the street, stopping in front of every house where there was anotice board. I went up to see whether the rooms to let would suit us. At midday we were still wandering about the neighborhood without havingfound anything. The price was the great difficulty. Bourgeat proposedthat we should eat at a wine shop, leaving the cart at the door. Towardsevening I discovered, in the Cour de Rohan, Passage du Commerce, at thevery top of a house next the roof, two rooms with a staircase betweenthem. Each of us was to pay sixty francs a year. So there we werehoused, my humble friend and I. We dined together. Bourgeat, who earnedabout fifty sous a day, had saved a hundred crowns or so; he would soonbe able to gratify his ambition by buying a barrel and a horse. Onlearning of my situation--for he extracted my secrets with a quietcraftiness and good nature, of which the remembrance touches my heart tothis day, he gave up for a time the ambition of his whole life; fortwenty-two years he had been carrying water in the street, and he nowdevoted his hundred crowns to my future prospects. "

Desplein at these words clutched Bianchon's arm tightly. "He gave me themoney for my examination fees! That man, my friend, understood that Ihad a mission, that the needs of my intellect were greater than his. Helooked after me, he called me his boy, he lent me money to buy books, hewould come in softly sometimes to watch me at work, and took a mother'scare in seeing that I had wholesome and abundant food, instead of thebad and insufficient nourishment I had been condemned to. Bourgeat, aman of about forty, had a homely, mediaeval type of face, a prominentforehead, a head that a painter might have chosen as a model for that ofLycurgus. The poor man's heart was big with affections seeking anobject; he had never been loved but by a poodle that had died some timesince, of which he would talk to me, asking whether I thought the Churchwould allow masses to be said for the repose of its soul. His dog, saidhe, had been a good Christian, who for twelve years had accompanied himto church, never barking, listening to the organ without opening hismouth, and crouching beside him in a way that made it seem as though hewere praying too. 

"This man centered all his affections in me; he looked upon me as aforlorn and suffering creature, and he became, to me, the mostthoughtful mother, the most considerate benefactor, the ideal of thevirtue which rejoices in its own work. When I met him in the street, hewould throw me a glance of intelligence full of unutterable dignity; hewould affect to walk as though he carried no weight, and seemed happy inseeing me in good health and well dressed. It was, in fact, the devotedaffection of the lower classes, the love of a girl of the peopletransferred to a loftier level. Bourgeat did all my errands, woke me atnight at any fixed hour, trimmed my lamp, cleaned our landing; as goodas a servant as he was as a father, and as clean as an English girl. Hedid all the housework. Like Philopoemen, he sawed our wood, and gave toall he did the grace of simplicity while preserving his dignity, for heseemed to understand that the end ennobles every act. 

"When I left this good fellow, to be house surgeon at the Hotel-Dieu, Ifelt an indescribable, dull pain, knowing that he could no longer livewith me; but he comforted himself with the prospect of saving up moneyenough for me to take my degree, and he made me promise to go to see himwhenever I had a day out: Bourgeat was proud of me. He loved me for myown sake, and for his own. If you look up my thesis, you will see that Idedicated it to him. 

"During the last year of my residence as house surgeon I earned enoughto repay all I owed to this worthy Auvergnat by buying him a barrel anda horse. He was furious with rage at learning that I had been deprivingmyself of spending my money, and yet he was delighted to see his wishesfulfilled; he laughed and scolded, he looked at his barrel, at hishorse, and wiped away a tear, as he said, 'It is too bad. What asplendid barrel! You really ought not. Why, that horse is as strong asan Auvergnat!'

"I never saw a more touching scene. Bourgeat insisted on buying for methe case of instruments mounted in silver which you have seen in myroom, and which is to me the most precious thing there. Though enchantedwith my first success, never did the least sign, the least word, escapehim which might imply, 'This man owes all to me!' And yet, but for him, I should have died of want; he had eaten bread rubbed with garlic that Imight have coffee to enable me to sit up at night. 

"He fell ill. As you may suppose, I passed my nights by his bedside, andthe first time I pulled him through; but two years after he had arelapse; in spite of the utmost care, in spite of the greatest exertionsof science, he succumbed. No king was ever nursed as he was. Yes, Bianchon, to snatch that man from death I tried unheard-of things. Iwanted him to live long enough to show him his work accomplished, torealize all his hopes, to give expression to the only need for gratitudethat ever filled my heart, to quench a fire that burns in me to thisday. 

"Bourgeat, my second father, died in my arms, " Desplein went on, after apause, visibly moved. "He left me everything he possessed by a will hehad had made by a public scrivener, dating from the year when we hadgone to live in the Cour de Rohan. 

"This man's faith was perfect; he loved the Holy Virgin as he might haveloved his wife. He was an ardent Catholic, but never said a word to meabout my want of religion. When he was dying he entreated me to spare noexpense that he might have every possible benefit of clergy. I had amass said for him every day. Often, in the night, he would tell me ofhis fears as to his future fate; he feared his life had not been saintlyenough. Poor man! he was at work from morning till night. For whom, then, is Paradise--if there be a Paradise? He received the lastsacrament like the saint that he was, and his death was worthy of hislife. 

"I alone followed him to the grave. When I had laid my only benefactorto rest, I looked about to see how I could pay my debt to him; I foundhe had neither family nor friends, neither wife nor child. But hebelieved. He had a religious conviction; had I any right to dispute it?He had spoken to me timidly of masses said for the repose of the dead;he would not impress it on me as a duty, thinking that it would be aform of repayment for his services. As soon as I had money enough I paidto Saint-Sulpice the requisite sum for four masses every year. As theonly thing I can do for Bourgeat is thus to satisfy his pious wishes, onthe days when that mass is said, at the beginning of each season of theyear, I go for his sake and say the required prayers; and I say with thegood faith of a sceptic--'Great God, if there is a sphere which Thouhast appointed after death for those who have been perfect, remembergood Bourgeat; and if he should have anything to suffer, let me sufferit for him, that he may enter all the sooner into what is calledParadise. '

"That, my dear fellow, is as much as a man who holds my opinions canallow himself. But God must be a good fellow; He cannot owe me anygrudge. I swear to you, I would give my whole fortune if faith such asBourgeat's could enter my brain. "

Bianchon, who was with Desplein all through his last illness, dares notaffirm to this day that the great surgeon died an atheist. Will notthose who believe like to fancy that the humble Auvergnat came to openthe gate of Heaven to his friend, as he did that of the earthly templeon whose pediment we read the words--"A grateful country to its greatmen. "

PARIS, January 1836. 

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy. 

Bianchon, Horace Father Goriot Cesar Birotteau The Commission in Lunacy Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country ParsonIn addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La Grande Breteche

Desplein Cousin Pons Lost Illusions The Thirteen The Government Clerks Pierrette A Bachelor's Establishment The Seamy Side of History Modeste Mignon Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine