FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS

 BY

 HONORE DE BALZAC

 Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

PREPARER'S NOTE:

 Ferragus is the first part of a trilogy. Part two is entitled The Duchesse de Langeais and part three is The Girl with the Golden Eyes. The three stories are frequently combined under the title The Thirteen. 

 DEDICATION

 To Hector Berlioz. 

 PREFACE

Thirteen men were banded together in Paris under the Empire, allimbued with one and the same sentiment, all gifted with sufficientenergy to be faithful to the same thought, with sufficient honor amongthemselves never to betray one another even if their interestsclashed; and sufficiently wily and politic to conceal the sacred tiesthat united them, sufficiently strong to maintain themselves above thelaw, bold enough to undertake all things, and fortunate enough tosucceed, nearly always, in their undertakings; having run the greatestdangers, but keeping silence if defeated; inaccessible to fear;trembling neither before princes, nor executioners, not even beforeinnocence; accepting each other for such as they were, without socialprejudices, --criminals, no doubt, but certainly remarkable throughcertain of the qualities that make great men, and recruiting theirnumber only among men of mark. That nothing might be lacking to thesombre and mysterious poesy of their history, these Thirteen men haveremained to this day unknown; though all have realized the mostchimerical ideas that the fantastic power falsely attributed to theManfreds, the Fausts, and the Melmoths can suggest to the imagination. To-day, they are broken up, or, at least, dispersed; they havepeaceably put their necks once more under the yoke of civil law, justas Morgan, that Achilles among pirates, transformed himself from abuccaneering scourge to a quiet colonist, and spent, without remorse, around his domestic hearth the millions gathered in blood by the luridlight of flames and slaughter. 

Since the death of Napoleon, circumstances, about which the authormust keep silence, have still farther dissolved the original bond ofthis secret society, always extraordinary, sometimes sinister, asthough it lived in the blackest pages of Mrs. Radcliffe. A somewhatstrange permission to relate in his own way a few of the adventures ofthese men (while respecting certain susceptibilities) has onlyrecently been given to him by one of those anonymous heroes to whomall society was once occultly subjected. In this permission the writerfancied he detected a vague desire for personal celebrity. 

This man, apparently still young, with fair hair and blue eyes, whosesweet, clear voice seemed to denote a feminine soul, was pale of faceand mysterious in manner; he conversed affably, declared himself notmore than forty years of age, and apparently belonged to the veryhighest social classes. The name which he assumed must have beenfictitious; his person was unknown in society. Who was he? That, noone has ever known. 

Perhaps, in confiding to the author the extraordinary matters which herelated to him, this mysterious person may have wished to see them ina manner reproduced, and thus enjoy the emotions they were certain tobring to the hearts of the masses, --a feeling analogous to that ofMacpherson when the name of his creation Ossian was transcribed intoall languages. That was certainly, for the Scotch lawyer, one of thekeenest, or at any rate the rarest, sensations a man could givehimself. Is it not the incognito of genius? To write the "Itineraryfrom Paris to Jerusalem" is to take a share in the human glory of asingle epoch; but to endow his native land with another Homer, was notthat usurping the work of God?

The author knows too well the laws of narration to be ignorant of thepledges this short preface is contracting for him; but he also knowsenough of the history of the _Thirteen_ to be certain that his presenttale will never be thought below the interest inspired by thisprogramme. Dramas steeped in blood, comedies filled with terror, romantic tales through which rolled heads mysteriously decapitated, have been confided to him. If readers were not surfeited with horrorsserved up to them of late in cold blood, he might reveal the calmatrocities, the surpassing tragedies concealed under family life. Buthe chooses in preference gentler events, --those where scenes of puritysucceed the tempests of passion; where woman is radiant with virtueand beauty. To the honor of the _Thirteen_ be it said that there aresuch scenes in their history, which may have the honor of being someday published as a foil of tales to listeners, --that race apart fromothers, so curiously energetic, and so interesting in spite of itscrimes. 

An author ought to be above converting his tale, when the tale istrue, into a species of surprise-game, and of taking his readers, ascertain novellists do, through many volumes and from cellar to cellar, to show them the dry bones of a dead body, and tell them, by way ofconclusion, that _that_ is what has frightened them behind doors, hiddenin the arras, or in cellars where the dead man was buried andforgotten. In spite of his aversion for prefaces, the author feelsbound to place the following statement at the head of this narrative. Ferragus is a first episode which clings by invisible links to the"History of the _Thirteen_, " whose power, naturally acquired, can aloneexplain certain acts and agencies which would otherwise seemsupernatural. Although it is permissible in tellers of tales to have asort of literary coquetry in becoming historians, they ought torenounce the benefit that may accrue from an odd or fantastic title--on which certain slight successes have been won in the present day. Consequently, the author will now explain, succinctly, the reasonsthat obliged him to select a title to his book which seems at firstsight unnatural. 

_Ferragus_ is, according to ancient custom, a name taken by the chiefor Grand Master of the Devorants. On the day of their election thesechiefs continue whichever of the dynasties of their Order they aremost in sympathy with, precisely as the Popes do, on their accession, in connection with pontifical dynasties. Thus the Devorants have"Trempe-la Soupe IX. , " "Ferragus XXII. , " "Tutanus XIII. , " "Masche-FerIV. , " just as the Church has Clement XIV. , Gregory VII. , Julius II. , Alexander VI. , etc. 

Now, then, who are the Devorants? "Devorant" is the name of one ofthose tribes of "Companions" that issued in ancient times from thegreat mystical association formed among the workers of Christianity torebuild the temple at Jerusalem. Companionism (to coin a word) stillexists in France among the people. Its traditions, powerful over mindsthat are not enlightened, and over men not educated enough to castaside an oath, might serve the ends of formidable enterprises if somerough-hewn genius were to seize hold of these diverse associations. All the instruments of this Companionism are well-nigh blind. Fromtown to town there has existed from time immemorial, for the use ofCompanions, an "Obade, "--a sort of halting-place, kept by a "Mother, "an old woman, half-gypsy, with nothing to lose, knowing everythingthat happens in her neighborhood, and devoted, either from fear orhabit, to the tribe, whose straggling members she feeds and lodges. This people, ever moving and changing, though controlled by immutablecustoms, has its eyes everywhere, executes, without judging it, aWILL, --for the oldest Companion still belongs to an era when men hadfaith. Moreover, the whole body professes doctrines that aresufficiently true and sufficiently mysterious to electrify into a sortof tribal loyalty all adepts whenever they obtain even a slightdevelopment. The attachment of the Companions to their laws is sopassionate that the diverse tribes will fight sanguinary battles witheach other in defence of some question of principle. 

Happily for our present public safety, when a Devorant is ambitious, he builds houses, lays by his money, and leaves the Order. There ismany a curious thing to tell about the "Compagnons du Devoir"[Companions of the Duty], the rivals of the Devorants, and about thedifferent sects of working-men, their usages, their fraternity, andthe bond existing between them and the free-masons. But such detailswould be out of place here. The author must, however, add that underthe old monarchy it was not an unknown thing to find a"Trempe-la-Soupe" enslaved to the king sentenced for a hundred and oneyears to the galleys, but ruling his tribe from there, religiouslyconsulted by it, and when he escaped from his galley, certain of help, succor, and respect, wherever he might be. To see its grand master atthe galleys is, to the faithful tribe, only one of those misfortunesfor which providence is responsible, and which does not release theDevorants from obeying a power created by them to be above them. Itis but the passing exile of their legitimate king, always a king forthem. Thus we see the romantic prestige attaching to the name ofFerragus and to that of the Devorants completely dissipated. 

As for the _Thirteen_, they were all men of the stamp of Trelawney, LordByron's friend, who was, they say, the original of his "Corsair. " Theywere all fatalists, men of nerve and poesy, weary of leading flat andempty lives, driven toward Asiatic enjoyments by forces all the moreexcessive because, long dormant, they awoke furious. One of them, after re-reading "Venice Preserved, " and admiring the sublime union ofPierre and Jaffier, began to reflect on the virtues shown by men whoare outlawed by society, on the honesty of galley-slaves, thefaithfulness of thieves among each other, the privileges of exorbitantpower which such men know how to win by concentrating all ideas into asingle will. He saw that Man is greater than men. He concluded thatsociety ought to belong wholly to those distinguished beings who, tonatural intelligence, acquired wisdom, and fortune, add a fanaticismhot enough to fuse into one casting these different forces. That done, their occult power, vast in action and in intensity, against which thesocial order would be helpless, would cast down all obstacles, blastall other wills, and give to each the devilish power of all. Thisworld apart within the world, hostile to the world, admitting none ofthe world's ideas, not recognizing any law, not submitting to anyconscience but that of necessity, obedient to a devotion only, actingwith every faculty for a single associate when one of their numberasked for the assistance of all, --this life of filibusters in lemonkid gloves and cabriolets; this intimate union of superior beings, cold and sarcastic, smiling and cursing in the midst of a false andpuerile society; this certainty of forcing all things to serve an end, of plotting a vengeance that could not fail of living in thirteenhearts; this happiness of nurturing a secret hatred in the face ofmen, and of being always in arms against this; this ability towithdraw to the sanctuary of self with one idea more than even themost remarkable of men could have, --this religion of pleasure andegotism cast so strong a spell over Thirteen men that they revived thesociety of Jesuits to the profit of the devil. 

It was horrible and stupendous; but the compact was made, and itlasted precisely because it appeared to be so impossible. 

There was, therefore, in Paris a brotherhood of _Thirteen_, who belongedto each other absolutely, but ignored themselves as absolutely beforethe world. At night they met, like conspirators, hiding no thought, disposing each and all of a common fortune, like that of the Old Manof the Mountain; having their feet in all salons, their hands in allmoney-boxes, and making all things serve their purpose or their fancywithout scruple. No chief commanded them; no one member could arrogateto himself that power. The most eager passion, the most exactingcircumstance, alone had the right to pass first. They were Thirteenunknown kings, --but true kings, more than ordinary kings and judgesand executioners, --men who, having made themselves wings to roamthrough society from depth to height, disdained to be anything in thesocial sphere because they could be all. If the present writer everlearns the reasons of their abdication of this power, he will takeoccasion to tell them. [*]

[*] See Theophile Gautier's account of the society of the "Cheval Rouge. " Memoir of Balzac. Roberts Brothers, Boston. 

Now, with this brief explanation, he may be allowed to begin the taleof certain episodes in the history of the _Thirteen_, which have moreparticularly attracted him by the Parisian flavor of their details andthe whimsicality of their contrasts. 

 FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS

 CHAPTER I

 MADAME JULES

Certain streets in Paris are as degraded as a man covered with infamy;also, there are noble streets, streets simply respectable, youngstreets on the morality of which the public has not yet formed anopinion; also cut-throat streets, streets older than the age of theoldest dowagers, estimable streets, streets always clean, streetsalways dirty, working, laboring, and mercantile streets. In short, thestreets of Paris have every human quality, and impress us, by what wemust call their physiognomy, with certain ideas against which we aredefenceless. There are, for instance, streets of a bad neighborhood inwhich you could not be induced to live, and streets where you wouldwillingly take up your abode. Some streets, like the rue Montmartre, have a charming head, and end in a fish's tail. The rue de la Paix isa wide street, a fine street, yet it wakens none of those gracefullynoble thoughts which come to an impressible mind in the middle of therue Royale, and it certainly lacks the majesty which reigns in thePlace Vendome. 

If you walk the streets of the Ile Saint-Louis, do not seek the reasonof the nervous sadness that lays hold upon you save in the solitude ofthe spot, the gloomy look of the houses, and the great desertedmansions. This island, the ghost of _fermiers-generaux_, is the Veniceof Paris. The Place de la Bourse is voluble, busy, degraded; it isnever fine except by moonlight at two in the morning. By day it isParis epitomized; by night it is a dream of Greece. The rueTraversiere-Saint-Honore--is not that a villainous street? Look at thewretched little houses with two windows on a floor, where vice, crime, and misery abound. The narrow streets exposed to the north, where thesun never comes more than three or four times a year, are thecut-throat streets which murder with impunity; the authorities of thepresent day do not meddle with them; but in former times theParliament might perhaps have summoned the lieutenant of police andreprimanded him for the state of things; and it would, at least, haveissued some decree against such streets, as it once did against thewigs of the Chapter of Beauvais. And yet Monsieur Benoiston deChateauneuf has proved that the mortality of these streets is doublethat of others! To sum up such theories by a single example: is notthe rue Fromentin both murderous and profligate!

These observations, incomprehensible out of Paris, will doubtless beunderstood by musing men of thought and poesy and pleasure, who know, while rambling about Paris, how to harvest the mass of floatinginterests which may be gathered at all hours within her walls; to themParis is the most delightful and varied of monsters: here, a prettywoman; farther on, a haggard pauper; here, new as the coinage of a newreign; there, in this corner, elegant as a fashionable woman. Amonster, moreover, complete! Its garrets, as it were, a head full ofknowledge and genius; its first storeys stomachs repleted; its shops, actual feet, where the busy ambulating crowds are moving. Ah! what anever-active life the monster leads! Hardly has the last vibration ofthe last carriage coming from a ball ceased at its heart before itsarms are moving at the barriers and it shakes itself slowly intomotion. Doors open; turning on their hinges like the membrane of somehuge lobster, invisibly manipulated by thirty thousand men or women, of whom each individual occupies a space of six square feet, but has akitchen, a workshop, a bed, children, a garden, little light to seeby, but must see all. Imperceptibly, the articulations begin to crack;motion communicates itself; the street speaks. By mid-day, all isalive; the chimneys smoke, the monster eats; then he roars, and histhousand paws begin to ramp. Splendid spectacle! But, O Paris! he whohas not admired your gloomy passages, your gleams and flashes oflight, your deep and silent _cul-de-sacs_, who has not listened toyour murmurings between midnight and two in the morning, knows nothingas yet of your true poesy, nor of your broad and fantastic contrasts. 

There are a few amateurs who never go their way heedlessly; who savortheir Paris, so to speak; who know its physiognomy so well that theysee every wart, and pimple, and redness. To others, Paris is alwaysthat monstrous marvel, that amazing assemblage of activities, ofschemes, of thoughts; the city of a hundred thousand tales, the headof the universe. But to those few, Paris is sad or gay, ugly orbeautiful, living or dead; to them Paris is a creature; every man, every fraction of a house is a lobe of the cellular tissue of thatgreat courtesan whose head and heart and fantastic customs they knowso well. These men are lovers of Paris; they lift their noses at suchor such a corner of a street, certain that they can see the face of aclock; they tell a friend whose tobacco-pouch is empty, "Go down thatpassage and turn to the left; there's a tobacconist next door to aconfectioner, where there's a pretty girl. " Rambling about Paris is, to these poets, a costly luxury. How can they help spending preciousminutes before the dramas, disasters, faces, and picturesque eventswhich meet us everywhere amid this heaving queen of cities, clothed inposters, --who has, nevertheless, not a single clean corner, socomplying is she to the vices of the French nation! Who has notchanced to leave his home early in the morning, intending to go tosome extremity of Paris, and found himself unable to get away from thecentre of it by the dinner-hour? Such a man will know how to excusethis vagabondizing start upon our tale; which, however, we here sum upin an observation both useful and novel, as far as any observation canbe novel in Paris, where there is nothing new, --not even the statueerected yesterday, on which some young gamin has already scribbled hisname. 

Well, then! there are streets, or ends of streets, there are houses, unknown for the most part to persons of social distinction, to which awoman of that class cannot go without causing cruel and very woundingthings to be thought of her. Whether the woman be rich and has acarriage, whether she is on foot, or is disguised, if she enters oneof these Parisian defiles at any hour of the day, she compromises herreputation as a virtuous woman. If, by chance, she is there at nine inthe evening the conjectures that an observer permits himself to makeupon her may prove fearful in their consequences. But if the woman isyoung and pretty, if she enters a house in one of those streets, ifthe house has a long, dark, damp, and evil-smelling passage-way, atthe end of which flickers the pallid gleam of an oil lamp, and ifbeneath that gleam appears the horrid face of a withered old womanwith fleshless fingers, ah, then! and we say it in the interests ofyoung and pretty women, that woman is lost. She is at the mercy of thefirst man of her acquaintance who sees her in that Parisian slough. There is more than one street in Paris where such a meeting may leadto a frightful drama, a bloody drama of death and love, a drama of themodern school. 

Unhappily, this scene, this modern drama itself, will be comprehendedby only a small number of persons; and it is a pity to tell the taleto a public which cannot enter into its local merit. But who canflatter himself that he will ever be understood? We all die unknown--'tis the saying of women and of authors. 

At half-past eight o'clock one evening, in the rue Pagevin, in thedays when that street had no wall which did not echo some infamousword, and was, in the direction of the rue Soly, the narrowest andmost impassable street in Paris (not excepting the least frequentedcorner of the most deserted street), --at the beginning of the month ofFebruary about thirteen years ago, a young man, by one of thosechances which come but once in life, turned the corner of the ruePagevin to enter the rue des Vieux-Augustins, close to the rue Soly. There, this young man, who lived himself in the rue de Bourbon, saw ina woman near whom he had been unconsciously walking, a vagueresemblance to the prettiest woman in Paris; a chaste and delightfulperson, with whom he was secretly and passionately in love, --a lovewithout hope; she was married. In a moment his heart leaped, anintolerable heat surged from his centre and flowed through all hisveins; his back turned cold, the skin of his head crept. He loved, hewas young, he knew Paris; and his knowledge did not permit him to beignorant of all there was of possible infamy in an elegant, rich, young, and beautiful woman walking there, alone, with a furtivelycriminal step. _She_ in that mud! at that hour!

The love that this young man felt for that woman may seem romantic, and all the more so because he was an officer in the Royal Guard. Ifhe had been in the infantry, the affair might have seemed more likely;but, as an officer of rank in the cavalry, he belonged to that Frencharm which demands rapidity in its conquests and derives as much vanityfrom its amorous exploits as from its dashing uniform. But the passionof this officer was a true love, and many young hearts will think itnoble. He loved this woman because she was virtuous; he loved hervirtue, her modest grace, her imposing saintliness, as the dearesttreasures of his hidden passion. This woman was indeed worthy toinspire one of those platonic loves which are found, like flowers amidbloody ruins, in the history of the middle-ages; worthy to be thehidden principle of all the actions of a young man's life; a love ashigh, as pure as the skies when blue; a love without hope and to whichmen bind themselves because it can never deceive; a love that isprodigal of unchecked enjoyment, especially at an age when the heartis ardent, the imagination keen, and the eyes of a man see veryclearly. 

Strange, weird, inconceivable effects may be met with at night inParis. Only those who have amused themselves by watching those effectshave any idea how fantastic a woman may appear there at dusk. At timesthe creature whom you are following, by accident or design, seems toyou light and slender; the stockings, if they are white, make youfancy that the legs must be slim and elegant; the figure thoughwrapped in a shawl, or concealed by a pelisse, defines itselfgracefully and seductively among the shadows; anon, the uncertaingleam thrown from a shop-window or a street lamp bestows a fleetinglustre, nearly always deceptive, on the unknown woman, and fires theimagination, carrying it far beyond the truth. The senses then bestirthemselves; everything takes color and animation; the woman appears inan altogether novel aspect; her person becomes beautiful. Behold! sheis not a woman, she is a demon, a siren, who is drawing you bymagnetic attraction to some respectable house, where the worthy_bourgeoise_, frightened by your threatening step and the clack ofyour boots, shuts the door in your face without looking at you. 

A vacillating gleam, thrown from the shop-window of a shoemaker, suddenly illuminated from the waist down the figure of the woman whowas before the young man. Ah! surely, _she_ alone had that swayingfigure; she alone knew the secret of that chaste gait which innocentlyset into relief the many beauties of that attractive form. Yes, thatwas the shawl, and that the velvet bonnet which she wore in themornings. On her gray silk stockings not a spot, on her shoes not asplash. The shawl held tightly round the bust disclosed, vaguely, itscharming lines; and the young man, who had often seen those shouldersat a ball, knew well the treasures that the shawl concealed. By theway a Parisian woman wraps a shawl around her, and the way she liftsher feet in the street, a man of intelligence in such studies candivine the secret of her mysterious errand. There is something, I knownot what, of quivering buoyancy in the person, in the gait; the womanseems to weigh less; she steps, or rather, she glides like a star, andfloats onward led by a thought which exhales from the folds and motionof her dress. The young man hastened his step, passed the woman, andthen turned back to look at her. Pst! she had disappeared into apassage-way, the grated door of which and its bell still rattled andsounded. The young man walked back to the alley and saw the womanreach the farther end, where she began to mount--not without receivingthe obsequious bow of an old portress--a winding staircase, the lowersteps of which were strongly lighted; she went up buoyantly, eagerly, as though impatient. 

"Impatient for what?" said the young man to himself, drawing back tolean against a wooden railing on the other side of the street. Hegazed, unhappy man, at the different storeys of the house, with thekeen attention of a detective searching for a conspirator. 

It was one of those houses of which there are thousands in Paris, ignoble, vulgar, narrow, yellowish in tone, with four storeys andthree windows on each floor. The outer blinds of the first floor wereclosed. Where was she going? The young man fancied he heard the tinkleof a bell on the second floor. As if in answer to it, a light began tomove in a room with two windows strongly illuminated, which presentlylit up the third window, evidently that of a first room, either thesalon or the dining-room of the apartment. Instantly the outline of awoman's bonnet showed vaguely on the window, and a door between thetwo rooms must have closed, for the first was dark again, while thetwo other windows resumed their ruddy glow. At this moment a voicesaid, "Hi, there!" and the young man was conscious of a blow on hisshoulder. 

"Why don't you pay attention?" said the rough voice of a workman, carrying a plank on his shoulder. The man passed on. He was the voiceof Providence saying to the watcher: "What are you meddling with?Think of your own duty; and leave these Parisians to their ownaffairs. "

The young man crossed his arms; then, as no one beheld him, hesuffered tears of rage to flow down his cheeks unchecked. At last thesight of the shadows moving behind the lighted windows gave him suchpain that he looked elsewhere and noticed a hackney-coach, standingagainst a wall in the upper part of the rue des Vieux-Augustins, at aplace where there was neither the door of a house, nor the light of ashop-window. 

Was it she? Was it not she? Life or death to a lover! This loverwaited. He stood there during a century of twenty minutes. After thatthe woman came down, and he then recognized her as the one whom hesecretly loved. Nevertheless, he wanted still to doubt. She went tothe hackney-coach, and got into it. 

"The house will always be there and I can search it later, " thoughtthe young man, following the carriage at a run, to solve his lastdoubts; and soon he did so. 

The carriage stopped in the rue de Richelieu before a shop forartificial flowers, close to the rue de Menars. The lady got out, entered the shop, sent out the money to pay the coachman, andpresently left the shop herself, on foot, after buying a bunch ofmarabouts. Marabouts for her black hair! The officer beheld her, through the window-panes, placing the feathers to her head to see theeffect, and he fancied he could hear the conversation between herselfand the shop-woman. 

"Oh! madame, nothing is more suitable for brunettes: brunettes havesomething a little too strongly marked in their lines, and maraboutsgive them just that _flow_ which they lack. Madame la Duchesse deLangeais says they give a woman something vague, Ossianic, and veryhigh-bred. "

"Very good; send them to me at once. "

Then the lady turned quickly toward the rue de Menars, and entered herown house. When the door closed on her, the young lover, having losthis hopes, and worse, far worse, his dearest beliefs, walked throughthe streets like a drunken man, and presently found himself in his ownroom without knowing how he came there. He flung himself into anarm-chair, put his head in his hands and his feet on the andirons, drying his boots until he burned them. It was an awful moment, --one ofthose moments in human life when the character is moulded, and thefuture conduct of the best of men depends on the good or evil fortuneof his first action. Providence or fatality?--choose which you will. 

This young man belonged to a good family, whose nobility was not veryancient; but there are so few really old families in these days, thatall men of rank are ancient without dispute. His grandfather hadbought the office of counsellor to the Parliament of Paris, where heafterwards became president. His sons, each provided with a handsomefortune, entered the army, and through their marriages became attachedto the court. The Revolution swept the family away; but one olddowager, too obstinate to emigrate, was left; she was put in prison, threatened with death, but was saved by the 9th Thermidor andrecovered her property. When the proper time came, about the year1804, she recalled her grandson to France. Auguste de Maulincour, theonly scion of the Carbonnon de Maulincour, was brought up by the gooddowager with the triple care of a mother, a woman of rank, and anobstinate dowager. When the Restoration came, the young man, theneighteen years of age, entered the Maison-Rouge, followed the princesto Ghent, was made an officer in the body-guard, left it to serve inthe line, but was recalled later to the Royal Guard, where, attwenty-three years of age, he found himself major of a cavalry regiment, --a splendid position, due to his grandmother, who had played her cardswell to obtain it, in spite of his youth. This double biography is acompendium of the general and special history, barring variations, ofall the noble families who emigrated having debts and property, dowagers and tact. 

Madame la Baronne de Maulincour had a friend in the old Vidame dePamiers, formerly a commander of the Knights of Malta. This was one ofthose undying friendships founded on sexagenary ties which nothing canweaken, because at the bottom of such intimacies there are certainsecrets of the human heart, delightful to guess at when we have thetime, insipid to explain in twenty words, and which might make thetext of a work in four volumes as amusing as the Doyen de Killerine, --a work about which young men talk and judge without having read it. 

Auguste de Maulincour belonged therefore to the faubourg Saint-Germainthrough his grandmother and the vidame, and it sufficed him to dateback two centuries to take the tone and opinions of those who assumeto go back to Clovis. This young man, pale, slender, and delicate inappearance, a man of honor and true courage, who would fight a duelfor a yes or a no, had never yet fought upon a battle-field, though hewore in his button-hole the cross of the Legion of honor. He was, asyou perceive, one of the blunders of the Restoration, perhaps the mostexcusable of them. The youth of those days was the youth of no epoch. It came between the memories of the Empire and those of theEmigration, between the old traditions of the court and theconscientious education of the _bourgeoisie_; between religion andfancy-balls; between two political faiths, between Louis XVIII. , whosaw only the present, and Charles X. , who looked too far into thefuture; it was moreover bound to accept the will of the king, thoughthe king was deceiving and tricking it. This unfortunate youth, blindand yet clear-sighted, was counted as nothing by old men jealouslykeeping the reins of the State in their feeble hands, while themonarchy could have been saved by their retirement and the accessionof this Young France, which the old doctrinaires, the _emigres_ of theRestoration, still speak of slightingly. Auguste de Maulincour was avictim to the ideas which weighed in those days upon French youth, andwe must here explain why. 

The Vidame de Pamiers was still, at sixty-seven years of age, a verybrilliant man, having seen much and lived much; a good talker, a manof honor and a gallant man, but who held as to women the mostdetestable opinions; he loved them, and he despised them. _Their_honor! _their_ feelings! Ta-ra-ra, rubbish and shams! When he was withthem, he believed in them, the ci-devant "monstre"; he nevercontradicted them, and he made them shine. But among his male friends, when the topic of the sex came up, he laid down the principle that todeceive women, and to carry on several intrigues at once, should bethe occupation of those young men who were so misguided as to wish tomeddle in the affairs of the State. It is sad to have to sketch sohackneyed a portrait, for has it not figured everywhere and become, literally, as threadbare as that of a grenadier of the Empire? But thevidame had an influence on Monsieur de Maulincour's destiny whichobliges us to preserve his portrait; he lectured the young man afterhis fashion, and did his best to convert him to the doctrines of thegreat age of gallantry. 

The dowager, a tender-hearted, pious woman, sitting between God andher vidame, a model of grace and sweetness, but gifted with thatwell-bred persistency which triumphs in the long run, had longed topreserve for her grandson the beautiful illusions of life, and hadtherefore brought him up in the highest principles; she instilled intohim her own delicacy of feeling and made him, to outward appearance, atimid man, if not a fool. The sensibilities of the young fellow, preserved pure, were not worn by contact without; he remained sochaste, so scrupulous, that he was keenly offended by actions andmaxims to which the world attached no consequence. Ashamed of thissusceptibility, he forced himself to conceal it under a falsehardihood; but he suffered in secret, all the while scoffing withothers at the things he reverenced. 

It came to pass that he was deceived; because, in accordance with anot uncommon whim of destiny, he, a man of gentle melancholy, andspiritual in love, encountered in the object of his first passion awoman who held in horror all German sentimentalism. The young man, inconsequence, distrusted himself, became dreamy, absorbed in hisgriefs, complaining of not being understood. Then, as we desire allthe more violently the things we find difficult to obtain, hecontinued to adore women with that ingenuous tenderness and felinedelicacy the secret of which belongs to women themselves, who may, perhaps, prefer to keep the monopoly of it. In point of fact, thoughwomen of the world complain of the way men love them, they have littleliking themselves for those whose soul is half feminine. Their ownsuperiority consists in making men believe they are their inferiors inlove; therefore they will readily leave a lover if he is inexperiencedenough to rob them of those fears with which they seek to deckthemselves, those delightful tortures of feigned jealousy, thosetroubles of hope betrayed, those futile expectations, --in short, thewhole procession of their feminine miseries. They hold Sir CharlesGrandison in horror. What can be more contrary to their nature than atranquil, perfect love? They want emotions; happiness without stormsis not happiness to them. Women with souls that are strong enough tobring infinitude into love are angelic exceptions; they are amongwomen what noble geniuses are among men. Their great passions are rareas masterpieces. Below the level of such love come compromises, conventions, passing and contemptible irritations, as in all thingspetty and perishable. 

Amid the hidden disasters of his heart, and while he was still seekingthe woman who could comprehend him (a search which, let us remark inpassing, is one of the amorous follies of our epoch), Auguste met, inthe rank of society that was farthest from his own, in the secondarysphere of money, where banking holds the first place, a perfect being, one of those women who have I know not what about them that is saintlyand sacred, --women who inspire such reverence that love has need ofthe help of a long familiarity to declare itself. 

Auguste then gave himself up wholly to the delights of the deepest andmost moving of passions, to a love that was purely adoring. Innumerable repressed desires there were, shadows of passion so vagueyet so profound, so fugitive and yet so actual, that one scarcelyknows to what we may compare them. They are like perfumes, or clouds, or rays of the sun, or shadows, or whatever there is in nature thatshines for a moment and disappears, that springs to life and dies, leaving in the heart long echoes of emotion. When the soul is youngenough to nurture melancholy and far-off hope, to find in woman morethan a woman, is it not the greatest happiness that can befall a manwhen he loves enough to feel more joy in touching a gloved hand, or alock of hair, in listening to a word, in casting a single look, thanin all the ardor of possession given by happy love? Thus it is thatrejected persons, those rebuffed by fate, the ugly and unfortunate, lovers unrevealed, women and timid men, alone know the treasurescontained in the voice of the beloved. Taking their source and theirelement from the soul itself, the vibrations of the air, charged withpassion, put our hearts so powerfully into communion, carrying thoughtbetween them so lucidly, and being, above all, so incapable offalsehood, that a single inflection of a voice is often a revelation. What enchantments the intonations of a tender voice can bestow uponthe heart of a poet! What ideas they awaken! What freshness they shedthere! Love is in the voice before the glance avows it. Auguste, poetafter the manner of lovers (there are poets who feel, and poets whoexpress; the first are the happiest), Auguste had tasted all theseearly joys, so vast, so fecund. SHE possessed the most winning organthat the most artful woman of the world could have desired in order todeceive at her ease; _she_ had that silvery voice which is soft to theear, and ringing only for the heart which it stirs and troubles, caresses and subjugates. 

And this woman went by night to the rue Soly through the rue Pagevin!and her furtive apparition in an infamous house had just destroyed thegrandest of passions! The vidame's logic triumphed. 

"If she is betraying her husband we will avenge ourselves, " saidAuguste. 

There was still faith in that "if. " The philosophic doubt of Descartesis a politeness with which we should always honor virtue. Ten o'clocksounded. The Baron de Maulincour remembered that this woman was goingto a ball that evening at a house to which he had access. He dressed, went there, and searched for her through all the salons. The mistressof the house, Madame de Nucingen, seeing him thus occupied, said:--

"You are looking for Madame Jules; but she has not yet come. "

"Good evening, dear, " said a voice. 

Auguste and Madame de Nucingen turned round. Madame Jules had arrived, dressed in white, looking simple and noble, wearing in her hair themarabouts the young baron had seen her choose in the flower-shop. Thatvoice of love now pierced his heart. Had he won the slightest right tobe jealous of her he would have petrified her then and there by sayingthe words, "Rue Soly!" But if he, an alien to her life, had said thosewords in her ear a thousand times, Madame Jules would have asked himin astonishment what he meant. He looked at her stupidly. 

For those sarcastic persons who scoff at all things it may be a greatamusement to detect the secret of a woman, to know that her chastityis a lie, that her calm face hides some anxious thought, that underthat pure brow is a dreadful drama. But there are other souls to whomthe sight is saddening; and many of those who laugh in public, whenwithdrawn into themselves and alone with their conscience, curse theworld while they despise the woman. Such was the case with Auguste deMaulincour, as he stood there in presence of Madame Jules. Singularsituation! There was no other relation between them than that whichsocial life establishes between persons who exchange a few words sevenor eight times in the course of a winter, and yet he was calling herto account on behalf of a happiness unknown to her; he was judgingher, without letting her know of his accusation. 

Many young men find themselves thus in despair at having brokenforever with a woman adored in secret, condemned and despised insecret. There are many hidden monologues told to the walls of somesolitary lodging; storms roused and calmed without ever leaving thedepths of hearts; amazing scenes of the moral world, for which apainter is wanted. Madame Jules sat down, leaving her husband to makea turn around the salon. After she was seated she seemed uneasy, and, while talking with her neighbor, she kept a furtive eye on MonsieurJules Desmarets, her husband, a broker chiefly employed by the Baronde Nucingen. The following is the history of their home life. 

Monsieur Desmarets was, five years before his marriage, in a broker'soffice, with no other means than the meagre salary of a clerk. But hewas a man to whom misfortune had early taught the truths of life, andhe followed the strait path with the tenacity of an insect making forits nest; he was one of those dogged young men who feign death beforean obstacle and wear out everybody's patience with their ownbeetle-like perseverance. Thus, young as he was, he had all therepublican virtue of poor peoples; he was sober, saving of his time, an enemy to pleasure. He waited. Nature had given him the immenseadvantage of an agreeable exterior. His calm, pure brow, the shape ofhis placid, but expressive face, his simple manners, --all revealed inhim a laborious and resigned existence, that lofty personal dignitywhich is imposing to others, and the secret nobility of heart whichcan meet all events. His modesty inspired a sort of respect in thosewho knew him. Solitary in the midst of Paris, he knew the social worldonly by glimpses during the brief moments which he spent in hispatron's salon on holidays. 

There were passions in this young man, as in most of the men who livein that way, of amazing profundity, --passions too vast to be drawninto petty incidents. His want of means compelled him to lead anascetic life, and he conquered his fancies by hard work. After palingall day over figures, he found his recreation in striving obstinatelyto acquire that wide general knowledge so necessary in these days toevery man who wants to make his mark, whether in society, or incommerce, at the bar, or in politics or literature. The only perilthese fine souls have to fear comes from their own uprightness. Theysee some poor girl; they love her; they marry her, and wear out theirlives in a struggle between poverty and love. The noblest ambition isquenched perforce by the household account-book. Jules Desmarets wentheadlong into this peril. 

He met one evening at his patron's house a girl of the rarest beauty. Unfortunate men who are deprived of affection, and who consume thefinest hours of youth in work and study, alone know the rapid ravagesthat passion makes in their lonely, misconceived hearts. They are socertain of loving truly, all their forces are concentrated so quicklyon the object of their love, that they receive, while beside her, themost delightful sensations, when, as often happens, they inspire noneat all. Nothing is more flattering to a woman's egotism than to divinethis passion, apparently immovable, and these emotions so deep thatthey have needed a great length of time to reach the human surface. These poor men, anchorites in the midst of Paris, have all theenjoyments of anchorites; and may sometimes succumb to temptations. But, more often deceived, betrayed, and misunderstood, they are rarelyable to gather the sweet fruits of a love which, to them, is like aflower dropped from heaven. 

One smile from his wife, a single inflection of her voice sufficed tomake Jules Desmarets conceive a passion which was boundless. Happily, the concentrated fire of that secret passion revealed itself artlesslyto the woman who inspired it. These two beings then loved each otherreligiously. To express all in a word, they clasped hands withoutshame before the eyes of the world and went their way like twochildren, brother and sister, passing serenely through a crowd whereall made way for them and admired them. 

The young girl was in one of those unfortunate positions which humanselfishness entails upon children. She had no civil status; her nameof "Clemence" and her age were recorded only by a notary public. Asfor her fortune, that was small indeed. Jules Desmarets was a happyman on hearing these particulars. If Clemence had belonged to anopulent family, he might have despaired of obtaining her; but she wasonly the poor child of love, the fruit of some terrible adulterouspassion; and they were married. Then began for Jules Desmarets aseries of fortunate events. Every one envied his happiness; andhenceforth talked only of his luck, without recalling either hisvirtues or his courage. 

Some days after their marriage, the mother of Clemence, who passed insociety for her godmother, told Jules Desmarets to buy the office andgood-will of a broker, promising to provide him with the necessarycapital. In those days, such offices could still be bought at a modestprice. That evening, in the salon as it happened of his patron, awealthy capitalist proposed, on the recommendation of the mother, avery advantageous transaction for Jules Desmarets, and the next daythe happy clerk was able to buy out his patron. In four yearsDesmarets became one of the most prosperous men in his business; newclients increased the number his predecessor had left to him; heinspired confidence in all; and it was impossible for him not to feel, by the way business came to him, that some hidden influence, due tohis mother-in-law, or to Providence, was secretly protecting him. 

At the end of the third year Clemence lost her godmother. By that timeMonsieur Jules (so called to distinguish him from an elder brother, whom he had set up as a notary in Paris) possessed an income frominvested property of two hundred thousand francs. There was not in allParis another instance of the domestic happiness enjoyed by thiscouple. For five years their exceptional love had been troubled byonly one event, --a calumny for which Monsieur Jules exacted vengeance. One of his former comrades attributed to Madame Jules the fortune ofher husband, explaining that it came from a high protection dearlypaid for. The man who uttered the calumny was killed in the duel thatfollowed it. 

The profound passion of this couple, which survived marriage, obtaineda great success in society, though some women were annoyed by it. Thecharming household was respected; everybody feted it. Monsieur andMadame Jules were sincerely liked, perhaps because there is nothingmore delightful to see than happy people; but they never stayed longat any festivity. They slipped away early, as impatient to regaintheir nest as wandering pigeons. This nest was a large and beautifulmansion in the rue de Menars, where a true feeling for art temperedthe luxury which the financial world continues, traditionally, todisplay. Here the happy pair received their society magnificently, although the obligations of social life suited them but little. 

Nevertheless, Jules submitted to the demands of the world, knowingthat, sooner or later, a family has need of it; but he and his wifefelt themselves, in its midst, like green-house plants in a tempest. With a delicacy that was very natural, Jules had concealed from hiswife the calumny and the death of the calumniator. Madame Jules, herself, was inclined, through her sensitive and artistic nature, todesire luxury. In spite of the terrible lesson of the duel, someimprudent women whispered to each other that Madame Jules mustsometimes be pressed for money. They often found her more elegantlydressed in her own home than when she went into society. She loved toadorn herself to please her husband, wishing to show him that to herhe was more than any social life. A true love, a pure love, above all, a happy love! Jules, always a lover, and more in love as time went by, was happy in all things beside his wife, even in her caprices; infact, he would have been uneasy if she had none, thinking it a symptomof some illness. 

Auguste de Maulincour had the personal misfortune of running againstthis passion, and falling in love with the wife beyond recovery. Nevertheless, though he carried in his heart so intense a love, he wasnot ridiculous; he complied with all the demands of society, and ofmilitary manners and customs. And yet his face wore constantly, eventhough he might be drinking a glass of champagne, that dreamy look, that air of silently despising life, that nebulous expression whichbelongs, though for other reasons, to _blases_ men, --men dissatisfiedwith hollow lives. To love without hope, to be disgusted with life, constitute, in these days, a social position. The enterprise ofwinning the heart of a sovereign might give, perhaps, more hope than alove rashly conceived for a happy woman. Therefore Maulincour hadsufficient reason to be grave and gloomy. A queen has the vanity ofher power; the height of her elevation protects her. But a pious_bourgeoise_ is like a hedgehog, or an oyster, in its rough wrappings. 

At this moment the young officer was beside his unconscious mistress, who certainly was unaware that she was doubly faithless. Madame Juleswas seated, in a naive attitude, like the least artful woman inexistence, soft and gentle, full of a majestic serenity. What an abyssis human nature! Before beginning a conversation, the baron lookedalternately at the wife and at the husband. How many were thereflections he made! He recomposed the "Night Thoughts" of Young in asecond. And yet the music was sounding through the salons, the lightwas pouring from a thousand candles. It was a banker's ball, --one ofthose insolent festivals by means of which the world of solid goldendeavored to sneer at the gold-embossed salons where the faubourgSaint-Germain met and laughed, not foreseeing the day when the bankwould invade the Luxembourg and take its seat upon the throne. Theconspirators were now dancing, indifferent to coming bankruptcies, whether of Power or of the Bank. The gilded salons of the Baron deNucingen were gay with that peculiar animation that the world ofParis, apparently joyous at any rate, gives to its fetes. There, menof talent communicate their wit to fools, and fools communicate thatair of enjoyment that characterizes them. By means of this exchangeall is liveliness. But a ball in Paris always resembles fireworks to acertain extent; wit, coquetry, and pleasure sparkle and go out likerockets. The next day all present have forgotten their wit, theircoquetry, their pleasure. 

"Ah!" thought Auguste, by way of conclusion, "women are what thevidame says they are. Certainly all those dancing here are lessirreproachable actually than Madame Jules appears to be, and yetMadame Jules went to the rue Soly!"

The rue Soly was like an illness to him; the very word shrivelled hisheart. 

"Madame, do you ever dance?" he said to her. 

"This is the third time you have asked me that question this winter, "she answered, smiling. 

"But perhaps you have never answered it. "

"That is true. "

"I knew very well that you were false, like other women. "

Madame Jules continued to smile. 

"Listen, monsieur, " she said; "if I told you the real reason, youwould think it ridiculous. I do not think it false to abstain fromtelling things that the world would laugh at. "

"All secrets demand, in order to be told, a friendship of which I amno doubt unworthy, madame. But you cannot have any but noble secrets;do you think me capable of jesting on noble things?"

"Yes, " she said, "you, like all the rest, laugh at our purestsentiments; you calumniate them. Besides, I have no secrets. I havethe right to love my husband in the face of all the world, and I sayso, --I am proud of it; and if you laugh at me when I tell you that Idance only with him, I shall have a bad opinion of your heart. "

"Have you never danced since your marriage with any one but yourhusband?"

"Never. His arm is the only one on which I have leaned; I have neverfelt the touch of another man. "

"Has your physician never felt your pulse?"

"Now you are laughing at me. "

"No, madame, I admire you, because I comprehend you. But you let a manhear your voice, you let yourself be seen, you--in short, you permitour eyes to admire you--"

"Ah!" she said, interrupting him, "that is one of my griefs. Yes, Iwish it were possible for a married woman to live secluded with herhusband, as a mistress lives with her lover, for then--"

"Then why were you, two hours ago, on foot, disguised, in the rueSoly?"

"The rue Soly, where is that?"

And her pure voice gave no sign of any emotion; no feature of her facequivered; she did not blush; she remained calm. 

"What! you did not go up to the second floor of a house in the rue desVieux-Augustins at the corner of the rue Soly? You did not have ahackney-coach waiting near by? You did not return in it to theflower-shop in the rue Richelieu, where you bought the feathers thatare now in your hair?"

"I did not leave my house this evening. "

As she uttered that lie she was smiling and imperturbable; she playedwith her fan; but if any one had passed a hand down her back theywould, perhaps, have found it moist. At that instant Augusteremembered the instructions of the vidame. 

"Then it was some one who strangely resembled you, " he said, with acredulous air. 

"Monsieur, " she replied, "if you are capable of following a woman anddetecting her secrets, you will allow me to say that it is a wrong, avery wrong thing, and I do you the honor to say that I disbelieveyou. "

The baron turned away, placed himself before the fireplace and seemedthoughtful. He bent his head; but his eyes were covertly fixed onMadame Jules, who, not remembering the reflections in the mirror, casttwo or three glances at him that were full of terror. Presently shemade a sign to her husband and rising took his arm to walk about thesalon. As she passed before Monsieur de Maulincour, who at that momentwas speaking to a friend, he said in a loud voice, as if in reply to aremark: "That woman will certainly not sleep quietly this night. "Madame Jules stopped, gave him an imposing look which expressedcontempt, and continued her way, unaware that another look, ifsurprised by her husband, might endanger not only her happiness butthe lives of two men. Auguste, frantic with anger, which he tried tosmother in the depths of his soul, presently left the house, swearingto penetrate to the heart of the mystery. Before leaving, he soughtMadame Jules, to look at her again; but she had disappeared. 

What a drama cast into that young head so eminently romantic, like allwho have not known love in the wide extent which they give to it. Headored Madame Jules under a new aspect; he loved her now with the furyof jealousy and the frenzied anguish of hope. Unfaithful to herhusband, the woman became common. Auguste could now give himself up tothe joys of successful love, and his imagination opened to him acareer of pleasures. Yes, he had lost the angel, but he had found themost delightful of demons. He went to bed, building castles in theair, excusing Madame Jules by some romantic fiction in which he didnot believe. He resolved to devote himself wholly, from that dayforth, to a search for the causes, motives, and keynote of thismystery. It was a tale to read, or better still, a drama to be played, in which he had a part. 

 CHAPTER II

 FERRAGUS

A fine thing is the task of a spy, when performed for one's ownbenefit and in the interests of a passion. Is it not giving ourselvesthe pleasure of a thief and a rascal while continuing honest men? Butthere is another side to it; we must resign ourselves to boil withanger, to roar with impatience, to freeze our feet in the mud, to benumbed, and roasted, and torn by false hopes. We must go, on the faithof a mere indication, to a vague object, miss our end, curse our luck, improvise to ourselves elegies, dithyrambics, exclaim idioticallybefore inoffensive pedestrians who observe us, knock over oldapple-women and their baskets, run hither and thither, stand on guardbeneath a window, make a thousand suppositions. But, after all, it isa chase, a hunt; a hunt in Paris, a hunt with all its chances, minusdogs and guns and the tally-ho! Nothing compares with it but the lifeof gamblers. But it needs a heart big with love and vengeance toambush itself in Paris, like a tiger waiting to spring upon its prey, and to enjoy the chances and contingencies of Paris, by adding onespecial interest to the many that abound there. But for this we need amany-sided soul--for must we not live in a thousand passions, athousand sentiments?

Auguste de Maulincour flung himself into this ardent existencepassionately, for he felt all its pleasures and all its misery. Hewent disguised about Paris, watching at the corners of the rue Pagevinand the rue des Vieux-Augustins. He hurried like a hunter from the ruede Menars to the rue Soly, and back from the rue Soly to the rue deMenars, without obtaining either the vengeance or the knowledge whichwould punish or reward such cares, such efforts, such wiles. But hehad not yet reached that impatience which wrings our very entrails andmakes us sweat; he roamed in hope, believing that Madame Jules wouldonly refrain for a few days from revisiting the place where she knewshe had been detected. He devoted the first days therefore, to acareful study of the secrets of the street. A novice at such work, hedared not question either the porter or the shoemaker of the house towhich Madame Jules had gone; but he managed to obtain a post ofobservation in a house directly opposite to the mysterious apartment. He studied the ground, trying to reconcile the conflicting demands ofprudence, impatience, love, and secrecy. 

Early in the month of March, while busy with plans by which heexpected to strike a decisive blow, he left his post about four in theafternoon, after one of those patient watches from which he hadlearned nothing. He was on his way to his own house whither a matterrelating to his military service called him, when he was overtaken inthe rue Coquilliere by one of those heavy showers which instantlyflood the gutters, while each drop of rain rings loudly in the puddlesof the roadway. A pedestrian under these circumstances is forced tostop short and take refuge in a shop or cafe if he is rich enough topay for the forced hospitality, or, if in poorer circumstances, undera _porte-cochere_, that haven of paupers or shabbily dressed persons. Why have none of our painters ever attempted to reproduce thephysiognomies of a swarm of Parisians, grouped, under stress ofweather, in the damp _porte-cochere_ of a building? First, there's themusing philosophical pedestrian, who observes with interest all hesees, --whether it be the stripes made by the rain on the graybackground of the atmosphere (a species of chasing not unlike thecapricious threads of spun glass), or the whirl of white water whichthe wind is driving like a luminous dust along the roofs, or thefitful disgorgements of the gutter-pipes, sparkling and foaming; inshort, the thousand nothings to be admired and studied with delight byloungers, in spite of the porter's broom which pretends to be sweepingout the gateway. Then there's the talkative refugee, who complains andconverses with the porter while he rests on his broom like a grenadieron his musket; or the pauper wayfarer, curled against the wallindifferent to the condition of his rags, long used, alas, to contactwith the streets; or the learned pedestrian who studies, spells, andreads the posters on the walls without finishing them; or the smilingpedestrian who makes fun of others to whom some street fatality hashappened, who laughs at the muddy women, and makes grimaces at thoseof either sex who are looking from the windows; and the silent beingwho gazes from floor to floor; and the working-man, armed with asatchel or a paper bundle, who is estimating the rain as a profit orloss; and the good-natured fugitive, who arrives like a shotexclaiming, "Ah! what weather, messieurs, what weather!" and bows toevery one; and, finally, the true _bourgeois_ of Paris, with hisunfailing umbrella, an expert in showers, who foresaw this particularone, but would come out in spite of his wife; this one takes a seat inthe porter's chair. According to individual character, each member ofthis fortuitous society contemplates the skies, and departs, skippingto avoid the mud, --because he is in a hurry, or because he sees othercitizens walking along in spite of wind and slush, or because, thearchway being damp and mortally catarrhal, the bed's edge, as theproverb says, is better than the sheets. Each one has his motive. Noone is left but the prudent pedestrian, the man who, before he setsforth, makes sure of a scrap of blue sky through the rifting clouds. 

Monsieur de Maulincour took refuge, as we have said, with a wholefamily of fugitives, under the porch of an old house, the court-yardof which looked like the flue of a chimney. The sides of itsplastered, nitrified, and mouldy walls were so covered with pipes andconduits from all the many floors of its four elevations, that itmight have been said to resemble at that moment the _cascatelles_ ofSaint-Cloud. Water flowed everywhere; it boiled, it leaped, itmurmured; it was black, white, blue, and green; it shrieked, itbubbled under the broom of the portress, a toothless old woman used tostorms, who seemed to bless them as she swept into the street a massof scraps an intelligent inventory of which would have revealed thelives and habits of every dweller in the house, --bits of printedcottons, tea-leaves, artificial flower-petals faded and worthless, vegetable parings, papers, scraps of metal. At every sweep of herbroom the old woman bared the soul of the gutter, that black fissureon which a porter's mind is ever bent. The poor lover examined thisscene, like a thousand others which our heaving Paris presents daily;but he examined it mechanically, as a man absorbed in thought, when, happening to look up, he found himself all but nose to nose with a manwho had just entered the gateway. 

In appearance this man was a beggar, but not the Parisian beggar, --that creation without a name in human language; no, this man formedanother type, while presenting on the outside all the ideas suggestedby the word "beggar. " He was not marked by those original Parisiancharacteristics which strike us so forcibly in the paupers whomCharlet was fond of representing, with his rare luck in observation, --coarse faces reeking of mud, hoarse voices, reddened and bulbousnoses, mouths devoid of teeth but menacing; humble yet terriblebeings, in whom a profound intelligence shining in their eyes seemslike a contradiction. Some of these bold vagabonds have blotched, cracked, veiny skins; their foreheads are covered with wrinkles, theirhair scanty and dirty, like a wig thrown on a dust-heap. All are gayin their degradation, and degraded in their joys; all are marked withthe stamp of debauchery, casting their silence as a reproach; theirvery attitude revealing fearful thoughts. Placed between crime andbeggary they have no compunctions, and circle prudently around thescaffold without mounting it, innocent in the midst of crime, andvicious in their innocence. They often cause a laugh, but they alwayscause reflection. One represents to you civilization stunted, repressed; he comprehends everything, the honor of the galleys, patriotism, virtue, the malice of a vulgar crime, or the fineastuteness of elegant wickedness. Another is resigned, a perfectmimer, but stupid. All have slight yearnings after order and work, butthey are pushed back into their mire by society, which makes noinquiry as to what there may be of great men, poets, intrepid souls, and splendid organizations among these vagrants, these gypsies ofParis; a people eminently good and eminently evil--like all the masseswho suffer--accustomed to endure unspeakable woes, and whom a fatalpower holds ever down to the level of the mire. They all have a dream, a hope, a happiness, --cards, lottery, or wine. 

There was nothing of all this in the personage who now leanedcarelessly against the wall in front of Monsieur de Maulincour, likesome fantastic idea drawn by an artist on the back of a canvas thefront of which is turned to the wall. This tall, spare man, whoseleaden visage expressed some deep but chilling thought, dried up allpity in the hearts of those who looked at him by the scowling look andthe sarcastic attitude which announced an intention of treating everyman as an equal. His face was of a dirty white, and his wrinkledskull, denuded of hair, bore a vague resemblance to a block ofgranite. A few gray locks on either side of his head fell straight tothe collar of his greasy coat, which was buttoned to the chin. Heresembled both Voltaire and Don Quixote; he was, apparently, scoffingbut melancholy, full of disdain and philosophy, but half-crazy. Heseemed to have no shirt. His beard was long. A rusty black cravat, much worn and ragged, exposed a protuberant neck deeply furrowed, withveins as thick as cords. A large brown circle like a bruise wasstrongly marked beneath his eyes, He seemed to be at least sixty yearsold. His hands were white and clean. His boots were trodden down atthe heels, and full of holes. A pair of blue trousers, mended invarious places, were covered with a species of fluff which made themoffensive to the eye. Whether it was that his damp clothes exhaled afetid odor, or that he had in his normal condition the "poor smell"which belongs to Parisian tenements, just as offices, sacristies, andhospitals have their own peculiar and rancid fetidness, of which nowords can give the least idea, or whether some other reason affectedthem, those in the vicinity of this man immediately moved away andleft him alone. He cast upon them and also upon the officer a calm, expressionless look, the celebrated look of Monsieur de Talleyrand, adull, wan glance, without warmth, a species of impenetrable veil, beneath which a strong soul hides profound emotions and closeestimation of men and things and events. Not a fold of his facequivered. His mouth and forehead were impassible; but his eyes movedand lowered themselves with a noble, almost tragic slowness. Therewas, in fact, a whole drama in the motion of those withered eyelids. 

The aspect of this stoical figure gave rise in Monsieur de Maulincourto one of those vagabond reveries which begin with a common questionand end by comprising a world of thought. The storm was past. Monsieurde Maulincour presently saw no more of the man than the tail of hiscoat as it brushed the gate-post, but as he turned to leave his ownplace he noticed at his feet a letter which must have fallen from theunknown beggar when he took, as the baron had seen him take, ahandkerchief from his pocket. The young man picked it up, and read, involuntarily, the address: "To Monsieur Ferragusse, Rue desGrands-Augustains, corner of rue Soly. "

The letter bore no postmark, and the address prevented Monsieur deMaulincour from following the beggar and returning it; for there arefew passions that will not fail in rectitude in the long run. Thebaron had a presentiment of the opportunity afforded by this windfall. He determined to keep the letter, which would give him the right toenter the mysterious house to return it to the strange man, notdoubting that he lived there. Suspicions, vague as the first faintgleams of daylight, made him fancy relations between this man andMadame Jules. A jealous lover supposes everything; and it is bysupposing everything and selecting the most probable of theirconjectures that judges, spies, lovers, and observers get at the truththey are looking for. 

"Is the letter for him? Is it from Madame Jules?"

His restless imagination tossed a thousand such questions to him; butwhen he read the first words of the letter he smiled. Here it is, textually, in all the simplicity of its artless phrases and itsmiserable orthography, --a letter to which it would be impossible toadd anything, or to take anything away, unless it were the letteritself. But we have yielded to the necessity of punctuating it. In theoriginal there were neither commas nor stops of any kind, not evennotes of exclamation, --a fact which tends to undervalue the system ofnotes and dashes by which modern authors have endeavored to depict thegreat disasters of all the passions:--

 Henry, --Among the manny sacrifisis I imposed upon myself for your sake was that of not giving you anny news of me; but an iresistible voise now compells me to let you know the wrong you have done me. I know beforehand that your soul hardened in vise will not pitty me. Your heart is deaf to feeling. Is it deaf to the cries of nature? But what matter? I must tell you to what a dredful point you are gilty, and the horror of the position to which you have brought me. Henry, you knew what I sufered from my first wrong-doing, and yet you plunged me into the same misery, and then abbandoned me to my dispair and sufering. Yes, I will say it, the belif I had that you loved me and esteemed me gave me corage to bare my fate. But now, what have I left? Have you not made me loose all that was dear to me, all that held me to life; parents, frends, onor, reputation, --all, I have sacrifised all to you, and nothing is left me but shame, oprobrum, and--I say this without blushing--poverty. Nothing was wanting to my misfortunes but the sertainty of your contempt and hatred; and now I have them I find the corage that my project requires. My decision is made; the onor of my famly commands it. I must put an end to my suferins. Make no remarks upon my conduct, Henry; it is orful, I know, but my condition obliges me. Without help, without suport, without one frend to comfort me, can I live? No. Fate has desided for me. So in two days, Henry, two days, Ida will have seased to be worthy of your regard. Oh, Henry! oh, my frend! for I can never change to you, promise me to forgive me for what I am going to do. Do not forget that you have driven me to it; it is your work, and you must judge it. May heven not punish you for all your crimes. I ask your pardon on my knees, for I feel nothing is wanting to my misery but the sorow of knowing you unhappy. In spite of the poverty I am in I shall refuse all help from you. If you had loved me I would have taken all from your friendship; but a benfit given by pitty _my soul refussis_. I would be baser to take it than he who offered it. I have one favor to ask of you. I don't know how long I must stay at Madame Meynardie's; be genrous enough not to come there. Your last two vissits did me a harm I cannot get ofer. I cannot enter into particlers about that conduct of yours. You hate me, --you said so; that word is writen on my heart, and freeses it with fear. Alas! it is now, when I need all my corage, all my strength, that my faculties abandon me. Henry, my frend, before I put a barrier forever between us, give me a last pruf of your esteem. Write me, answer me, say you respect me still, though you have seased to love me. My eyes are worthy still to look into yours, but I do not ask an interfew; I fear my weakness and my love. But for pitty's sake write me a line at once; it will give me the corage I need to meet my trubbles. Farewell, orther of all my woes, but the only frend my heart has chosen and will never forget. 

Ida. 

This life of a young girl, with its love betrayed, its fatal joys, itspangs, its miseries, and its horrible resignation, summed up in a fewwords, this humble poem, essentially Parisian, written on dirty paper, influenced for a passing moment Monsieur de Maulincour. He askedhimself whether this Ida might not be some poor relation of MadameJules, and that strange rendezvous, which he had witnessed by chance, the mere necessity of a charitable effort. But could that old pauperhave seduced this Ida? There was something impossible in the veryidea. Wandering in this labyrinth of reflections, which crossed, recrossed, and obliterated one another, the baron reached the ruePagevin, and saw a hackney-coach standing at the end of the rue desVieux-Augustins where it enters the rue Montmartre. All waitinghackney-coaches now had an interest for him. 

"Can she be there?" he thought to himself, and his heart beat fastwith a hot and feverish throbbing. 

He pushed the little door with the bell, but he lowered his head as hedid so, obeying a sense of shame, for a voice said to him secretly:--

"Why are you putting your foot into this mystery?"

He went up a few steps, and found himself face to face with the oldportress. 

"Monsieur Ferragus?" he said. 

"Don't know him. "

"Doesn't Monsieur Ferragus live here?"

"Haven't such a name in the house. "

"But, my good woman--"

"I'm not your good woman, monsieur, I'm the portress. "

"But, madame, " persisted the baron, "I have a letter for MonsieurFerragus. "

"Ah! if monsieur has a letter, " she said, changing her tone, "that'sanother matter. Will you let me see it--that letter?"

Auguste showed the folded letter. The old woman shook her head with adoubtful air, hesitated, seemed to wish to leave the lodge and informthe mysterious Ferragus of his unexpected visitor, but finally said:--

"Very good; go up, monsieur. I suppose you know the way?"

Without replying to this remark, which he thought might be a trap, theyoung officer ran lightly up the stairway, and rang loudly at the doorof the second floor. His lover's instinct told him, "She is there. "

The beggar of the porch, Ferragus, the "orther" of Ida's woes, openedthe door himself. He appeared in a flowered dressing-gown, whiteflannel trousers, his feet in embroidered slippers, and his facewashed clean of stains. Madame Jules, whose head projected beyond thecasing of the door in the next room, turned pale and dropped into achair. 

"What is the matter, madame?" cried the officer, springing toward her. 

But Ferragus stretched forth an arm and flung the intruder back withso sharp a thrust that Auguste fancied he had received a blow with aniron bar full on his chest. 

"Back! monsieur, " said the man. "What do you want there? For five orsix days you have been roaming about the neighborhood. Are you a spy?"

"Are you Monsieur Ferragus?" said the baron. 

"No, monsieur. "

"Nevertheless, " continued Auguste, "it is to you that I must returnthis paper which you dropped in the gateway beneath which we both tookrefuge from the rain. "

While speaking and offering the letter to the man, Auguste did notrefrain from casting an eye around the room where Ferragus receivedhim. It was very well arranged, though simply. A fire burned on thehearth; and near it was a table with food upon it, which was servedmore sumptuously than agreed with the apparent conditions of the manand the poorness of his lodging. On a sofa in the next room, which hecould see through the doorway, lay a heap of gold, and he heard asound which could be no other than that of a woman weeping. 

"The paper belongs to me; I am much obliged to you, " said themysterious man, turning away as if to make the baron understand thathe must go. 

Too curious himself to take much note of the deep examination of whichhe was himself the object, Auguste did not see the half-magneticglance with which this strange being seemed to pierce him; had heencountered that basilisk eye he might have felt the danger thatencompassed him. Too passionately excited to think of himself, Augustebowed, went down the stairs, and returned home, striving to find ameaning in the connection of these three persons, --Ida, Ferragus, andMadame Jules; an occupation equivalent to that of trying to arrangethe many-cornered bits of a Chinese puzzle without possessing the keyto the game. But Madame Jules had seen him, Madame Jules went there, Madame Jules had lied to him. Maulincour determined to go and see herthe next day. She could not refuse his visit, for he was now heraccomplice; he was hands and feet in the mysterious affair, and sheknew it. Already he felt himself a sultan, and thought of demandingfrom Madame Jules, imperiously, all her secrets. 

In those days Paris was seized with a building-fever. If Paris is amonster, it is certainly a most mania-ridden monster. It becomesenamored of a thousand fancies: sometimes it has a mania for building, like a great seigneur who loves a trowel; soon it abandons the troweland becomes all military; it arrays itself from head to foot as anational guard, and drills and smokes; suddenly, it abandons militarymanoeuvres and flings away cigars; it is commercial, care-worn, fallsinto bankruptcy, sells its furniture on the place de Chatelet, filesits schedule; but a few days later, lo! it has arranged its affairsand is giving fetes and dances. One day it eats barley-sugar by themouthful, by the handful; yesterday it bought "papier Weymen"; to-daythe monster's teeth ache, and it applies to its walls analexipharmatic to mitigate their dampness; to-morrow it will lay in aprovision of pectoral paste. It has its manias for the month, for theseason, for the year, like its manias of a day. 

So, at the moment of which we speak, all the world was building orpulling down something, --people hardly knew what as yet. There werevery few streets in which high scaffoldings on long poles could not beseen, fastened from floor to floor with transverse blocks insertedinto holes in the walls on which the planks were laid, --a frailconstruction, shaken by the brick-layers, but held together by ropes, white with plaster, and insecurely protected from the wheels ofcarriages by the breastwork of planks which the law requires round allsuch buildings. There is something maritime in these masts, andladders, and cordage, even in the shouts of the masons. About a dozenyards from the hotel Maulincour, one of these ephemeral barriers waserected before a house which was then being built of blocks offree-stone. The day after the event we have just related, at themoment when the Baron de Maulincour was passing this scaffolding inhis cabriolet on his way to see Madame Jules, a stone, two feet square, which was being raised to the upper storey of this building, got loosefrom the ropes and fell, crushing the baron's servant who was behindthe cabriolet. A cry of horror shook both the scaffold and the masons;one of them, apparently unable to keep his grasp on a pole, was indanger of death, and seemed to have been touched by the stone as itpassed him. 

A crowd collected rapidly; the masons came down the ladders swearingand insisting that Monsieur de Maulincour's cabriolet had been drivenagainst the boarding and so had shaken their crane. Two inches moreand the stone would have fallen on the baron's head. The groom wasdead, the carriage shattered. 'Twas an event for the wholeneighborhood, the newspapers told of it. Monsieur de Maulincour, certain that he had not touched the boarding, complained; the casewent to court. Inquiry being made, it was shown that a small boy, armed with a lath, had mounted guard and called to all foot-passengersto keep away. The affair ended there. Monsieur de Maulincour obtainedno redress. He had lost his servant, and was confined to his bed forsome days, for the back of the carriage when shattered had bruised himseverely, and the nervous shock of the sudden surprise gave him afever. He did not, therefore, go to see Madame Jules. 

Ten days after this event, he left the house for the first time, inhis repaired cabriolet, when, as he drove down the rue de Bourgogneand was close to the sewer opposite to the Chamber of Deputies, theaxle-tree broke in two, and the baron was driving so rapidly that thebreakage would have caused the two wheels to come together with forceenough to break his head, had it not been for the resistance of theleather hood. Nevertheless, he was badly wounded in the side. For thesecond time in ten days he was carried home in a fainting condition tohis terrified grandmother. This second accident gave him a feeling ofdistrust; he thought, though vaguely, of Ferragus and Madame Jules. Tothrow light on these suspicions he had the broken axle brought to hisroom and sent for his carriage-maker. The man examined the axle andthe fracture, and proved two things: First, the axle was not made inhis workshop; he furnished none that did not bear the initials of hisname on the iron. But he could not explain by what means this axle hadbeen substituted for the other. Secondly, the breakage of thesuspicious axle was caused by a hollow space having been blown in itand a straw very cleverly inserted. 

"Eh! Monsieur le baron, whoever did that was malicious!" he said; "anyone would swear, to look at it, that the axle was sound. "

Monsieur de Maulincour begged the carriage-maker to say nothing of theaffair; but he felt himself warned. These two attempts at murder wereplanned with an ability which denoted the enmity of intelligent minds. 

"It is war to the death, " he said to himself, as he tossed in his bed, --"a war of savages, skulking in ambush, of trickery and treachery, declared in the name of Madame Jules. What sort of man is this to whomshe belongs? What species of power does this Ferragus wield?"

Monsieur de Maulincour, though a soldier and brave man, could notrepress a shudder. In the midst of many thoughts that now assailedhim, there was one against which he felt he had neither defence norcourage: might not poison be employed ere long by his secret enemies?Under the influence of fears, which his momentary weakness and feverand low diet increased, he sent for an old woman long attached to theservice of his grandmother, whose affection for himself was one ofthose semi-maternal sentiments which are the sublime of thecommonplace. Without confiding in her wholly, he charged her to buysecretly and daily, in different localities, the food he needed;telling her to keep it under lock and key and bring it to him herself, not allowing any one, no matter who, to approach her while preparingit. He took the most minute precautions to protect himself againstthat form of death. He was ill in his bed and alone, and he hadtherefore the leisure to think of his own security, --the one necessityclear-sighted enough to enable human egotism to forget nothing!

But the unfortunate man had poisoned his own life by this dread, and, in spite of himself, suspicion dyed all his hours with its gloomytints. These two lessons of attempted assassination did teach him, however, the value of one of the virtues most necessary to a publicman; he saw the wise dissimulation that must be practised in dealingwith the great interests of life. To be silent about our own secret isnothing; but to be silent from the start, to forget a fact as AliPacha did for thirty years in order to be sure of a vengeance waitedfor for thirty years, is a fine study in a land where there are fewmen who can keep their own counsel for thirty days. Monsieur deMaulincour literally lived only through Madame Jules. He wasperpetually absorbed in a sober examination into the means he ought toemploy to triumph in this mysterious struggle with these mysteriouspersons. His secret passion for that woman grew by reason of all theseobstacles. Madame Jules was ever there, erect, in the midst of histhoughts, in the centre of his heart, more seductive by her presumablevices than by the positive virtues for which he had made her his idol. 

At last, anxious to reconnoitre the position of the enemy, he thoughthe might without danger initiate the vidame into the secrets of hissituation. The old commander loved Auguste as a father loves hiswife's children; he was shrewd, dexterous, and very diplomatic. Helistened to the baron, shook his head, and they both held counsel. Theworthy vidame did not share his young friend's confidence when Augustedeclared that in the time in which they now lived, the police and thegovernment were able to lay bare all mysteries, and that if it wereabsolutely necessary to have recourse to those powers, he should findthem most powerful auxiliaries. 

The old man replied, gravely: "The police, my dear boy, is the mostincompetent thing on this earth, and government the feeblest in allmatters concerning individuals. Neither the police nor the governmentcan read hearts. What we might reasonably ask of them is to search forthe causes of an act. But the police and the government are botheminently unfitted for that; they lack, essentially, the personalinterest which reveals all to him who wants to know all. No humanpower can prevent an assassin or a poisoner from reaching the heart ofa prince or the stomach of an honest man. Passions are the bestpolice. "

The vidame strongly advised the baron to go to Italy, and from Italyto Greece, from Greece to Syria, from Syria to Asia, and not to returnuntil his secret enemies were convinced of his repentance, and wouldso make tacit peace with him. But if he did not take that course, thenthe vidame advised him to stay in the house, and even in his own room, where he would be safe from the attempts of this man Ferragus, and notto leave it until he could be certain of crushing him. 

"We should never touch an enemy until we can be sure of taking hishead off, " he said, gravely. 

The old man, however, promised his favorite to employ all theastuteness with which Heaven had provided him (without compromisingany one) in reconnoitring the enemy's ground, and laying his plans forfuture victory. The Commander had in his service a retired Figaro, thewiliest monkey that ever walked in human form; in earlier days asclever as a devil, working his body like a galley-slave, alert as athief, sly as a woman, but now fallen into the decadence of genius forwant of practice since the new constitution of Parisian society, whichhas reformed even the valets of comedy. This Scapin emeritus wasattached to his master as to a superior being; but the shrewd oldvidame added a good round sum yearly to the wages of his formerprovost of gallantry, which strengthened the ties of natural affectionby the bonds of self-interest, and obtained for the old gentleman asmuch care as the most loving mistress could bestow on a sick friend. It was this pearl of the old-fashioned comedy-valets, relic of thelast century, auxiliary incorruptible from lack of passions tosatisfy, on whom the old vidame and Monsieur de Maulincour now relied. 

"Monsieur le baron will spoil all, " said the great man in livery, whencalled into counsel. "Monsieur should eat, drink, and sleep in peace. I take the whole matter upon myself. "

Accordingly, eight days after the conference, when Monsieur deMaulincour, perfectly restored to health, was breakfasting with hisgrandmother and the vidame, Justin entered to make his report. As soonas the dowager had returned to her own apartments he said, with thatmock modesty which men of talent are so apt to affect:--

"Ferragus is not the name of the enemy who is pursuing Monsieur lebaron. This man--this devil, rather--is called Gratien, Henri, Victor, Jean-Joseph Bourignard. The Sieur Gratien Bourignard is a formership-builder, once very rich, and, above all, one of the handsomestmen of his day in Paris, --a Lovelace, capable of seducing Grandison. Myinformation stops short there. He has been a simple workman; and theCompanions of the Order of the Devorants did, at one time, elect himas their chief, under the title of Ferragus XXIII. The police ought toknow that, if the police were instituted to know anything. The man hasmoved from the rue des Vieux-Augustins, and now roosts rue Joquelet, where Madame Jules Desmarets goes frequently to see him; sometimes herhusband, on his way to the Bourse, drives her as far as the rueVivienne, or she drives her husband to the Bourse. Monsieur le vidameknows about these things too well to want me to tell him if it is thehusband who takes the wife, or the wife who takes the husband; butMadame Jules is so pretty, I'd bet on her. All that I have told you ispositive. Bourignard often plays at number 129. Saving your presence, monsieur, he's a rogue who loves women, and he has his little wayslike a man of condition. As for the rest, he wins sometimes, disguiseshimself like an actor, paints his face to look like anything hechooses, and lives, I may say, the most original life in the world. Idon't doubt he has a good many lodgings, for most of the time hemanages to evade what Monsieur le vidame calls 'parliamentaryinvestigations. ' If monsieur wishes, he could be disposed ofhonorably, seeing what his habits are. It is always easy to get rid ofa man who loves women. However, this capitalist talks about movingagain. Have Monsieur le vidame and Monsieur le baron any othercommands to give me?"

"Justin, I am satisfied with you; don't go any farther in the matterwithout my orders, but keep a close watch here, so that Monsieur lebaron may have nothing to fear. "

"My dear boy, " continued the vidame, when they were alone, "go back toyour old life, and forget Madame Jules. "

"No, no, " said Auguste; "I will never yield to Gratien Bourignard. Iwill have him bound hand and foot, and Madame Jules also. "

That evening the Baron Auguste de Maulincour, recently promoted tohigher rank in the company of the Body-Guard of the king, went to aball given by Madame la Duchesse de Berry at the Elysee-Bourbon. There, certainly, no danger could lurk for him; and yet, before heleft the palace, he had an affair of honor on his hands, --an affair itwas impossible to settle except by a duel. 

His adversary, the Marquis de Ronquerolles, considered that he hadstrong reasons to complain of Monsieur de Maulincour, who had givensome ground for it during his former intimacy with Monsieur deRonquerolles' sister, the Comtesse de Serizy. That lady, the one whodetested German sentimentality, was all the more exacting in thematter of prudery. By one of those inexplicable fatalities, Augustenow uttered a harmless jest which Madame de Serizy took amiss, and herbrother resented it. The discussion took place in the corner of aroom, in a low voice. In good society, adversaries never raise theirvoices. The next day the faubourg Saint-Germain and the Chateau talkedover the affair. Madame de Serizy was warmly defended, and all theblame was laid on Maulincour. August personages interfered. Seconds ofthe highest distinction were imposed on Messieurs de Maulincour and deRonquerolles and every precaution was taken on the ground that no oneshould be killed. 

When Auguste found himself face to face with his antagonist, a man ofpleasure, to whom no one could possibly deny sentiments of the highesthonor, he felt it was impossible to believe him the instrument ofFerragus, chief of the Devorants; and yet he was compelled, as itwere, by an inexplicable presentiment, to question the marquis. 

"Messieurs, " he said to the seconds, "I certainly do not refuse tomeet the fire of Monsieur de Ronquerolles; but before doing so, I heredeclare that I was to blame, and I offer him whatever excuses he maydesire, and publicly if he wishes it; because when the matter concernsa woman, nothing, I think, can degrade a man of honor. I thereforeappeal to his generosity and good sense; is there not something rathersilly in fighting without a cause?"

Monsieur de Ronquerolles would not allow of this way of ending theaffair, and then the baron, his suspicions revived, walked up to him. 

"Well, then! Monsieur le marquis, " he said, "pledge me, in presence ofthese gentlemen, your word as a gentleman that you have no otherreason for vengeance than that you have chosen to put forward. "

"Monsieur, that is a question you have no right to ask. "

So saying, Monsieur de Ronquerolles took his place. It was agreed, inadvance, that the adversaries were to be satisfied with one exchangeof shots. Monsieur de Ronquerolles, in spite of the great distancedetermined by the seconds, which seemed to make the death of eitherparty problematical, if not impossible, brought down the baron. Theball went through the latter's body just below the heart, butfortunately without doing vital injury. 

"You aimed too well, monsieur, " said the baron, "to be avenging only apaltry quarrel. "

And he fainted. Monsieur de Ronquerolles, who believed him to be adead man, smiled sardonically as he heard those words. 

After a fortnight, during which time the dowager and the vidame gavehim those cares of old age the secret of which is in the hands of longexperience only, the baron began to return to life. But one morninghis grandmother dealt him a crushing blow, by revealing anxieties towhich, in her last days, she was now subjected. She showed him aletter signed F, in which the history of her grandson's secretespionage was recounted step by step. The letter accused Monsieur deMaulincour of actions that were unworthy of a man of honor. He had, itsaid, placed an old woman at the stand of hackney-coaches in the ruede Menars; an old spy, who pretended to sell water from her cask tothe coachmen, but who was really there to watch the actions of MadameJules Desmarets. He had spied upon the daily life of a mostinoffensive man, in order to detect his secrets, --secrets on whichdepended the lives of three persons. He had brought upon himself arelentless struggle, in which, although he had escaped with life threetimes, he must inevitably succumb, because his death had been swornand would be compassed if all human means were employed upon it. Monsieur de Maulincour could no longer escape his fate by evenpromising to respect the mysterious life of these three persons, because it was impossible to believe the word of a gentleman who hadfallen to the level of a police-spy; and for what reason? Merely totrouble the respectable life of an innocent woman and a harmless oldman. 

The letter itself was nothing to Auguste in comparison to the tenderreproaches of his grandmother. To lack respect to a woman! to spy uponher actions without a right to do so! Ought a man ever to spy upon awoman whom he loved?--in short, she poured out a torrent of thoseexcellent reasons which prove nothing; and they put the young baron, for the first time in his life, into one of those great human furiesin which are born, and from which issue the most vital actions of aman's life. 

"Since it is war to the knife, " he said in conclusion, "I shall killmy enemy by any means that I can lay hold of. "

The vidame went immediately, at Auguste's request, to the chief of theprivate police of Paris, and without bringing Madame Jules' name orperson into the narrative, although they were really the gist of it, he made the official aware of the fears of the family of Maulincourabout this mysterious person who was bold enough to swear the death ofan officer of the Guards, in defiance of the law and the police. Thechief pushed up his green spectacles in amazement, blew his noseseveral times, and offered snuff to the vidame, who, to save hisdignity, pretended not to use tobacco, although his own nose wasdiscolored with it. Then the chief took notes and promised, Vidocq andhis spies aiding, to send in a report within a few days to theMaulincour family, assuring them meantime that there were no secretsfor the police of Paris. 

A few days after this the police official called to see the vidame atthe Hotel de Maulincour, where he found the young baron quiterecovered from his last wound. He gave them in bureaucratic style histhanks for the indications they had afforded him, and told them thatBourignard was a convict, condemned to twenty years' hard labor, whohad miraculously escaped from a gang which was being transported fromBicetre to Toulon. For thirteen years the police had been endeavoringto recapture him, knowing that he had boldly returned to Paris; but sofar this convict had escaped the most active search, although he wasknown to be mixed up in many nefarious deeds. However, the man, whoselife was full of very curious incidents, would certainly be capturednow in one or other of his several domiciles and delivered up tojustice. The bureaucrat ended his report by saying to Monsieur deMaulincour that if he attached enough importance to the matter to wishto witness the capture of Bourignard, he might come the next day ateight in the morning to a house in the rue Sainte-Foi, of which hegave him the number. Monsieur de Maulincour excused himself from goingpersonally in search of certainty, --trusting, with the sacred respectinspired by the police of Paris, in the capability of the authorities. 

Three days later, hearing nothing, and seeing nothing in thenewspapers about the projected arrest, which was certainly of enoughimportance to have furnished an article, Monsieur de Maulincour wasbeginning to feel anxieties which were presently allayed by thefollowing letter:--

 Monsieur le Baron, --I have the honor to announce to you that you need have no further uneasiness touching the affair in question. The man named Gratien Bourignard, otherwise called Ferragus, died yesterday, at his lodgings, rue Joquelet No. 7. The suspicions we naturally conceived as to the identity of the dead body have been completely set at rest by the facts. The physician of the Prefecture of police was despatched by us to assist the physician of the arrondissement, and the chief of the detective police made all the necessary verifications to obtain absolute certainty. Moreover, the character of the persons who signed the certificate of death, and the affidavits of those who took care of the said Bourignard in his last illness, among others that of the worthy vicar of the church of the Bonne-Nouvelle (to whom he made his last confession, for he died a Christian), do not permit us to entertain any sort of doubt. 

Accept, Monsieur le baron, etc. , etc. 

Monsieur de Maulincour, the dowager, and the vidame breathed againwith joy unspeakable. The good old woman kissed her grandson leaving atear upon his cheek, and went away to thank God in prayer. The dearsoul, who was making a novena for Auguste's safety, believed herprayers were answered. 

"Well, " said the vidame, "now you had better show yourself at the ballyou were speaking of. I oppose no further objections. "

 CHAPTER III

 THE WIFE ACCUSED

Monsieur de Maulincour was all the more anxious to go to this ballbecause he knew that Madame Jules would be present. The fete was givenby the Prefect of the Seine, in whose salons the two social worlds ofParis met as on neutral ground. Auguste passed through the roomswithout finding the woman who now exercised so mighty an influence onhis fate. He entered an empty boudoir where card-tables were placedawaiting players; and sitting down on a divan he gave himself up tothe most contradictory thoughts about her. A man presently took theyoung officer by the arm, and looking up the baron was stupefied tobehold the pauper of the rue Coquilliere, the Ferragus of Ida, thelodger in the rue Soly, the Bourignard of Justin, the convict of thepolice, and the dead man of the day before. 

"Monsieur, not a sound, not a word, " said Bourignard, whose voice herecognized. The man was elegantly dressed; he wore the order of theGolden-Fleece, and a medal on his coat. "Monsieur, " he continued, andhis voice was sibilant like that of a hyena, "you increase my effortsagainst you by having recourse to the police. You will perish, monsieur; it has now become necessary. Do you love Madame Jules? Areyou beloved by her? By what right do you trouble her peaceful life, and blacken her virtue?"

Some one entered the card-room. Ferragus rose to go. 

"Do you know this man?" asked Monsieur de Maulincour of the new-comer, seizing Ferragus by the collar. But Ferragus quickly disengagedhimself, took Monsieur de Maulincour by the hair, and shook his headrapidly. 

"Must you have lead in it to make it steady?" he said. 

"I do not know him personally, " replied Henri de Marsay, the spectatorof this scene, "but I know that he is Monsieur de Funcal, a richPortuguese. "

Monsieur de Funcal had disappeared. The baron followed but withoutbeing able to overtake him until he reached the peristyle, where hesaw Ferragus, who looked at him with a jeering laugh from a brilliantequipage which was driven away at high speed. 

"Monsieur, " said Auguste, re-entering the salon and addressing deMarsay, whom he knew, "I entreat you to tell me where Monsieur deFuncal lives. "

"I do not know; but some one here can no doubt tell you. "

The baron, having questioned the prefect, ascertained that the Comtede Funcal lived at the Portuguese embassy. At this moment, while hestill felt the icy fingers of that strange man in his hair, he sawMadame Jules in all her dazzling beauty, fresh, gracious, artless, resplendent with the sanctity of womanhood which had won his love. This creature, now infernal to him, excited no emotion in his soul butthat of hatred; and this hatred shone in a savage, terrible look fromhis eyes. He watched for a moment when he could speak to her unheard, and then he said:--

"Madame, your _bravi_ have missed me three times. "

"What do you mean, monsieur?" she said, flushing. "I know that youhave had several unfortunate accidents lately, which I have greatlyregretted; but how could I have had anything to do with them?"

"You knew that _bravi_ were employed against me by that man of the rueSoly?"

"Monsieur!"

"Madame, I now call you to account, not for my happiness only, but formy blood--"

At this instant Jules Desmarets approached them. 

"What are you saying to my wife, monsieur?"

"Make that inquiry at my own house, monsieur, if you are curious, "said Maulincour, moving away, and leaving Madame Jules in an almostfainting condition. 

There are few women who have not found themselves, once at least intheir lives, _a propos_ of some undeniable fact, confronted with adirect, sharp, uncompromising question, --one of those questionspitilessly asked by husbands, the mere apprehension of which gives achill, while the actual words enter the heart like the blade of adagger. It is from such crises that the maxim has come, "All womenlie. " Falsehood, kindly falsehood, venial falsehood, sublimefalsehood, horrible falsehood, --but always the necessity to lie. Thisnecessity admitted, ought they not to know how to lie well? Frenchwomen do it admirably. Our manners and customs teach them deception!Besides, women are so naively saucy, so pretty, graceful, and withalso true in lying, --they recognize so fully the utility of doing so inorder to avoid in social life the violent shocks which happiness mightnot resist, --that lying is seen to be as necessary to their lives asthe cotton-wool in which they put away their jewels. Falsehood becomesto them the foundation of speech; truth is exceptional; they tell it, if they are virtuous, by caprice or by calculation. According toindividual character, some women laugh when they lie; others weep;others are grave; some grow angry. After beginning life by feigningindifference to the homage that deeply flatters them, they often endby lying to themselves. Who has not admired their apparent superiorityto everything at the very moment when they are trembling for thesecret treasures of their love? Who has never studied their ease, their readiness, their freedom of mind in the greatest embarrassmentsof life? In them, nothing is put on. Deception comes as the snow fromheaven. And then, with what art they discover the truth in others!With what shrewdness they employ a direct logic in answer to somepassionate question which has revealed to them the secret of the heartof a man who was guileless enough to proceed by questioning! Toquestion a woman! why, that is delivering one's self up to her; doesshe not learn in that way all that we seek to hide from her? Does shenot know also how to be dumb, through speaking? What men are daringenough to struggle with the Parisian woman?--a woman who knows how tohold herself above all dagger thrusts, saying: "You are veryinquisitive; what is it to you? Why do you wish to know? Ah! you arejealous! And suppose I do not choose to answer you?"--in short, awoman who possesses the hundred and thirty-seven methods of saying_No_, and incommensurable variations of the word _Yes_. Is not atreatise on the words _yes_ and _no_, a fine diplomatic, philosophic, logographic, and moral work, still waiting to be written? But toaccomplish this work, which we may also call diabolic, isn't anandrogynous genius necessary? For that reason, probably, it will neverbe attempted. And besides, of all unpublished works isn't it the bestknown and the best practised among women? Have you studied thebehavior, the pose, the _disinvoltura_ of a falsehood? Examine it. 

Madame Desmarets was seated in the right-hand corner of her carriage, her husband in the left. Having forced herself to recover from heremotion in the ballroom, she now affected a calm demeanor. Her husbandhad then said nothing to her, and he still said nothing. Jules lookedout of the carriage window at the black walls of the silent housesbefore which they passed; but suddenly, as if driven by a determiningthought, when turning the corner of a street he examined his wife, whoappeared to be cold in spite of the fur-lined pelisse in which she waswrapped. He thought she seemed pensive, and perhaps she really was so. Of all communicable things, reflection and gravity are the mostcontagious. 

"What could Monsieur de Maulincour have said to affect you so keenly?"said Jules; "and why does he wish me to go to his house and find out?"

"He can tell you nothing in his house that I cannot tell you here, "she replied. 

Then, with that feminine craft which always slightly degrades virtue, Madame Jules waited for another question. Her husband turned his faceback to the houses, and continued his study of their walls. Anotherquestion would imply suspicion, distrust. To suspect a woman is acrime in love. Jules had already killed a man for doubting his wife. Clemence did not know all there was of true passion, of loyalreflection, in her husband's silence; just as Jules was ignorant ofthe generous drama that was wringing the heart of his Clemence. 

The carriage rolled on through a silent Paris, bearing the couple, --two lovers who adored each other, and who, gently leaning on thesame silken cushion, were being parted by an abyss. In these elegantcoupes returning from a ball between midnight and two in the morning, how many curious and singular scenes must pass, --meaning those coupeswith lanterns, which light both the street and the carriage, thosewith their windows unshaded; in short, legitimate coupes, in whichcouples can quarrel without caring for the eyes of pedestrians, because the civil code gives a right to provoke, or beat, or kiss, awife in a carriage or elsewhere, anywhere, everywhere! How manysecrets must be revealed in this way to nocturnal pedestrians, --tothose young fellows who have gone to a ball in a carriage, but areobliged, for whatever cause it may be, to return on foot. It was thefirst time that Jules and Clemence had been together thus, --each in acorner; usually the husband pressed close to his wife. 

"It is very cold, " remarked Madame Jules. 

But her husband did not hear her; he was studying the signs above theshop windows. 

"Clemence, " he said at last, "forgive me the question I am about toask you. "

He came closer, took her by the waist, and drew her to him. 

"My God, it is coming!" thought the poor woman. "Well, " she saidaloud, anticipating the question, "you want to know what Monsieur deMaulincour said to me. I will tell you, Jules; but not without fear. Good God! how is it possible that you and I should have secrets fromone another? For the last few moments I have seen you strugglingbetween a conviction of our love and vague fears. But that convictionis clear within us, is it not? And these doubts and fears, do they notseem to you dark and unnatural? Why not stay in that clear light oflove you cannot doubt? When I have told you all, you will still desireto know more; and yet I myself do not know what the extraordinarywords of that man meant. What I fear is that this may lead to somefatal affair between you. I would rather that we both forget thisunpleasant moment. But, in any case, swear to me that you will letthis singular adventure explain itself naturally. Here are the facts. Monsieur de Maulincour declared to me that the three accidents youhave heard mentioned--the falling of a stone on his servant, thebreaking down of his cabriolet, and his duel about Madame de Serizy--were the result of some plot I had laid against him. He alsothreatened to reveal to you the cause of my desire to destroy him. Canyou imagine what all this means? My emotion came from the sight of hisface convulsed with madness, his haggard eyes, and also his words, broken by some violent inward emotion. I thought him mad. That is allthat took place. Now, I should be less than a woman if I had notperceived that for over a year I have become, as they call it, thepassion of Monsieur de Maulincour. He has never seen me except at aball; and our intercourse has been most insignificant, --merely thatwhich every one shares at a ball. Perhaps he wants to disunite us, sothat he may find me at some future time alone and unprotected. There, see! already you are frowning! Oh, how cordially I hate society! Wewere so happy without him; why take any notice of him? Jules, Ientreat you, forget all this! To-morrow we shall, no doubt, hear thatMonsieur de Maulincour has gone mad. "

"What a singular affair!" thought Jules, as the carriage stopped underthe peristyle of their house. He gave his arm to his wife and togetherthey went up to their apartments. 

To develop this history in all its truth of detail, and to follow itscourse through many windings, it is necessary here to divulge some oflove's secrets, to glide beneath the ceilings of a marriage chamber, not shamelessly, but like Trilby, frightening neither Dougal norJeannie, alarming no one, --being as chaste as our noble Frenchlanguage requires, and as bold as the pencil of Gerard in his pictureof Daphnis and Chloe. 

The bedroom of Madame Jules was a sacred plot. Herself, her husband, and her maid alone entered it. Opulence has glorious privileges, andthe most enviable are those which enable the development of sentimentsto their fullest extent, --fertilizing them by the accomplishment ofeven their caprices, and surrounding them with a brilliancy thatenlarges them, with refinements that purify them, with a thousanddelicacies that make them still more alluring. If you hate dinners onthe grass, and meals ill-served, if you feel a pleasure in seeing adamask cloth that is dazzlingly white, a silver-gilt dinner service, and porcelain of exquisite purity, lighted by transparent candles, where miracles of cookery are served under silver covers bearing coatsof arms, you must, to be consistent, leave the garrets at the tops ofthe houses, and the grisettes in the streets, abandon garrets, grisettes, umbrellas, and overshoes to men who pay for their dinnerswith tickets; and you must also comprehend Love to be a principlewhich develops in all its grace only on Savonnerie carpets, beneaththe opal gleams of an alabaster lamp, between guarded walls silk-hung, before gilded hearths in chambers deadened to all outward sounds byshutters and billowy curtains. Mirrors must be there to show the playof form and repeat the woman we would multiply as love itselfmultiplies and magnifies her; next low divans, and a bed which, like asecret, is divined, not shown. In this coquettish chamber arefur-lined slippers for pretty feet, wax-candles under glass withmuslin draperies, by which to read at all hours of the night, andflowers, not those oppressive to the head, and linen, the fineness ofwhich might have satisfied Anne of Austria. 

Madame Jules had realized this charming programme, but that wasnothing. All women of taste can do as much, though there is always inthe arrangement of these details a stamp of personality which gives tothis decoration or that detail a character that cannot be imitated. To-day, more than ever, reigns the fanaticism of individuality. Themore our laws tend to an impossible equality, the more we shall getaway from it in our manners and customs. Thus, rich people arebeginning, in France, to become more exclusive in their tastes andtheir belongings, than they have been for the last thirty years. Madame Jules knew very well how to carry out this programme; andeverything about her was arranged in harmony with a luxury that suitsso well with love. Love in a cottage, or "Fifteen hundred francs andmy Sophy, " is the dream of starvelings to whom black bread suffices intheir present state; but when love really comes, they grow fastidiousand end by craving the luxuries of gastronomy. Love holds toil andpoverty in horror. It would rather die than merely live on from handto mouth. 

Many women, returning from a ball, impatient for their beds, throw offtheir gowns, their faded flowers, their bouquets, the fragrance ofwhich has now departed. They leave their little shoes beneath a chair, the white strings trailing; they take out their combs and let theirhair roll down as it will. Little they care if their husbands see thepuffs, the hairpins, the artful props which supported the elegantedifices of the hair, and the garlands or the jewels that adorned it. No more mysteries! all is over for the husband; no more painting ordecoration for him. The corset--half the time it is a corset of areparative kind--lies where it is thrown, if the maid is too sleepy totake it away with her. The whalebone bustle, the oiled-silkprotections round the sleeves, the pads, the hair bought from acoiffeur, all the false woman is there, scattered about in open sight. _Disjecta membra poetae_, the artificial poesy, so much admired bythose for whom it is conceived and elaborated, the fragments of apretty woman, litter every corner of the room. To the love of ayawning husband, the actual presents herself, also yawning, in adishabille without elegance, and a tumbled night-cap, that of lastnight and that of to-morrow night also, --"For really, monsieur, if youwant a pretty cap to rumple every night, increase my pin-money. "

There's life as it is! A woman makes herself old and unpleasing to herhusband; but dainty and elegant and adorned for others, for the rivalof all husbands, --for that world which calumniates and tears to shredsher sex. 

Inspired by true love, for Love has, like other creations, itsinstinct of preservation, Madame Jules did very differently; she foundin the constant blessing of her love the necessary impulse to fulfilall those minute personal cares which ought never to be relaxed, because they perpetuate love. Besides, such personal cares and dutiesproceed from a personal dignity which becomes all women, and are amongthe sweetest of flatteries, for is it not respecting in themselves theman they love?

So Madame Jules denied to her husband all access to her dressing-room, where she left the accessories of her toilet, and whence she issuedmysteriously adorned for the mysterious fetes of her heart. Enteringtheir chamber, which was always graceful and elegant, Jules found awoman coquettishly wrapped in a charming _peignoir_, her hair simplywound in heavy coils around her head; a woman always more simple, morebeautiful there than she was before the world; a woman just refreshedin water, whose only artifice consisted in being whiter than hermuslins, sweeter than all perfumes, more seductive than any siren, always loving and therefore always loved. This admirable understandingof a wife's business was the secret of Josephine's charm for Napoleon, as in former times it was that of Caesonia for Caius Caligula, ofDiane de Poitiers for Henri II. If it was largely productive to womenof seven or eight lustres what a weapon is it in the hands of youngwomen! A husband gathers with delight the rewards of his fidelity. 

Returning home after the conversation which had chilled her with fear, and still gave her the keenest anxiety, Madame Jules took particularpains with her toilet for the night. She wanted to make herself, andshe did make herself enchanting. She belted the cambric of herdressing-gown round her waist, defining the lines of her bust; sheallowed her hair to fall upon her beautifully modelled shoulders. Aperfumed bath had given her a delightful fragrance, and her littlebare feet were in velvet slippers. Strong in a sense of her advantagesshe came in stepping softly, and put her hands over her husband'seyes. She thought him pensive; he was standing in his dressing-gownbefore the fire, his elbow on the mantel and one foot on the fender. She said in his ear, warming it with her breath, and nibbling the tipof it with her teeth:--

"What are you thinking about, monsieur?"

Then she pressed him in her arms as if to tear him away from all evilthoughts. The woman who loves has a full knowledge of her power; themore virtuous she is, the more effectual her coquetry. 

"About you, " he answered. 

"Only about me?"

"Yes. "

"Ah! that's a very doubtful 'yes. '"

They went to bed. As she fell asleep, Madame Jules said to herself:--

"Monsieur de Maulincour will certainly cause some evil. Jules' mind ispreoccupied, disturbed; he is nursing thoughts he does not tell me. "

It was three in the morning when Madame Jules was awakened by apresentiment which struck her heart as she slept. She had a sense bothphysical and moral of her husband's absence. She did not feel the armJules passed beneath her head, --that arm in which she had slept, peacefully and happy, for five years; an arm she had never wearied. Avoice said to her, "Jules suffers, Jules is weeping. " She raised herhead, and then sat up; felt that her husband's place was cold, and sawhim sitting before the fire, his feet on the fender, his head restingagainst the back of an arm-chair. Tears were on his cheeks. The poorwoman threw herself hastily from her bed and sprang at a bound to herhusband's knees. 

"Jules! what is it? Are you ill? Speak, tell me! Speak to me, if youlove me!" and she poured out a hundred words expressing the deepesttenderness. 

Jules knelt at her feet, kissed her hands and knees, and answered withfresh tears:--

"Dear Clemence, I am most unhappy! It is not loving to distrust theone we love. I adore you and suspect you. The words that man said tome to-night have struck to my heart; they stay there in spite ofmyself, and confound me. There is some mystery here. In short, and Iblush to say it, your explanations do not satisfy me. My reason castsgleams into my soul which my love rejects. It is an awful combat. Could I stay there, holding your head, and suspecting thoughts withinit to me unknown? Oh! I believe in you, I believe in you!" he cried, seeing her smile sadly and open her mouth as if to speak. "Saynothing; do not reproach me. Besides, could you say anything I havenot said myself for the last three hours? Yes, for three hours, I havebeen here, watching you as you slept, so beautiful! admiring thatpure, peaceful brow. Yes, yes! you have always told me your thoughts, have you not? I alone am in that soul. While I look at you, while myeyes can plunge into yours I see all plainly. Your life is as pure asyour glance is clear. No, there is no secret behind those transparenteyes. " He rose and kissed their lids. "Let me avow to you, dearestsoul, " he said, "that for the last five years each day has increasedmy happiness, through the knowledge that you are all mine, and that nonatural affection even can take any of your love. Having no sister, nofather, no mother, no companion, I am neither above nor below anyliving being in your heart; I am alone there. Clemence, repeat to methose sweet things of the spirit you have so often said to me; do notblame me; comfort me, I am so unhappy. I have an odious suspicion onmy conscience, and you have nothing in your heart to sear it. Mybeloved, tell me, could I stay there beside you? Could two headsunited as ours have been lie on the same pillow when one was sufferingand the other tranquil? What are you thinking of?" he cried abruptly, observing that Clemence was anxious, confused, and seemed unable torestrain her tears. 

"I am thinking of my mother, " she answered, in a grave voice. "Youwill never know, Jules, what I suffer in remembering my mother's dyingfarewell, said in a voice sweeter than all music, and in feeling thesolemn touch of her icy hand at a moment when you overwhelm me withthose assurances of your precious love. "

She raised her husband, strained him to her with a nervous forcegreater than that of men, and kissed his hair, covering it with tears. 

"Ah! I would be hacked in pieces for you! Tell me that I make youhappy; that I am to you the most beautiful of women--a thousand womento you. Oh! you are loved as no other man ever was or will be. I don'tknow the meaning of those words 'duty, ' 'virtue. ' Jules, I love youfor yourself; I am happy in loving you; I shall love you more and moreto my dying day. I have pride in my love; I feel it is my destiny tohave one sole emotion in my life. What I shall tell you now isdreadful, I know--but I am glad to have no child; I do not wish forany. I feel I am more wife than mother. Well, then, can you fear?Listen to me, my own beloved, promise to forget, not this hour ofmingled tenderness and doubt, but the words of that madman. Jules, you_must_. Promise me not to see him, not to go to him. I have a deepconviction that if you set one foot in that maze we shall both rolldown a precipice where I shall perish--but with your name upon mylips, your heart in my heart. Why hold me so high in that heart andyet so low in reality? What! you who give credit to so many as tomoney, can you not give me the charity of faith? And on the firstoccasion in our lives when you might prove to me your boundless trust, do you cast me from my throne in your heart? Between a madman and me, it is the madman whom you choose to believe? oh, Jules!" She stopped, threw back the hair that fell about her brow and neck, and then, in aheart-rending tone, she added: "I have said too much; one word shouldsuffice. If your soul and your forehead still keep this cloud, howeverlight it be, I tell you now that I shall die of it. "

She could not repress a shudder, and turned pale. 

"Oh! I will kill that man, " thought Jules, as he lifted his wife inhis arms and carried her to her bed. 

"Let us sleep in peace, my angel, " he said. "I have forgotten all, Iswear it!"

Clemence fell asleep to the music of those sweet words, softlyrepeated. Jules, as he watched her sleeping, said in his heart:--

"She is right; when love is so pure, suspicion blights it. To thatyoung soul, that tender flower, a blight--yes, a blight means death. "

When a cloud comes between two beings filled with affection for eachother and whose lives are in absolute unison, that cloud, though itmay disperse, leaves in those souls a trace of its passage. Eitherlove gains a stronger life, as the earth after rain, or the shockstill echoes like distant thunder through a cloudless sky. It isimpossible to recover absolutely the former life; love will eitherincrease or diminish. 

At breakfast, Monsieur and Madame Jules showed to each other thoseparticular attentions in which there is always something ofaffectation. There were glances of forced gaiety, which seemed theefforts of persons endeavoring to deceive themselves. Jules hadinvoluntary doubts, his wife had positive fears. Still, sure of eachother, they had slept. Was this strained condition the effect of awant of faith, or was it only a memory of their nocturnal scene? Theydid not know themselves. But they loved each other so purely that theimpression of that scene, both cruel and beneficent, could not fail toleave its traces in their souls; both were eager to make those tracesdisappear, each striving to be the first to return to the other, andthus they could not fail to think of the cause of their firstvariance. To loving souls, this is not grief; pain is still far-off;but it is a sort of mourning, which is difficult to depict. If thereare, indeed, relations between colors and the emotions of the soul, if, as Locke's blind man said, scarlet produces on the sight theeffect produced upon the hearing by a blast of trumpets, it ispermissible to compare this reaction of melancholy to mourning tonesof gray. 

But even so, love saddened, love in which remains a true sentiment ofits happiness, momentarily troubled though it be, gives enjoymentsderived from pain and pleasure both, which are all novel. Julesstudied his wife's voice; he watched her glances with the freshness offeeling that inspired him in the earliest days of his passion for her. The memory of five absolutely happy years, her beauty, the candor ofher love, quickly effaced in her husband's mind the last vestiges ofan intolerable pain. 

The day was Sunday, --a day on which there was no Bourse and nobusiness to be done. The reunited pair passed the whole day together, getting farther into each other's hearts than they ever yet had done, like two children who in a moment of fear, hold each other closely andcling together, united by an instinct. There are in this life oftwo-in-one completely happy days, the gift of chance, ephemeralflowers, born neither of yesterday nor belonging to the morrow. Julesand Clemence now enjoyed this day as though they forboded it to be thelast of their loving life. What name shall we give to that mysteriouspower which hastens the steps of travellers before the storm isvisible; which makes the life and beauty of the dying so resplendent, and fills the parting soul with joyous projects for days before deathcomes; which tells the midnight student to fill his lamp when itshines brightest; and makes the mother fear the thoughtful look castupon her infant by an observing man? We all are affected by thisinfluence in the great catastrophes of life; but it has never yet beennamed or studied; it is something more than presentiment, but not asyet clear vision. 

All went well till the following day. On Monday, Jules Desmarets, obliged to go to the Bourse on his usual business, asked his wife, asusual, if she would take advantage of his carriage and let him driveher anywhere. 

"No, " she said, "the day is too unpleasant to go out. "

It was raining in torrents. At half-past two o'clock MonsieurDesmarets reached the Treasury. At four o'clock, as he left theBourse, he came face to face with Monsieur de Maulincour, who waswaiting for him with the nervous pertinacity of hatred and vengeance. 

"Monsieur, " he said, taking Monsieur Desmarets by the arm, "I haveimportant information to give you. Listen to me. I am too loyal a manto have recourse to anonymous letters with which to trouble your peaceof mind; I prefer to speak to you in person. Believe me, if my verylife were not concerned, I should not meddle with the private affairsof any household, even if I thought I had the right to do so. "

"If what you have to say to me concerns Madame Desmarets, " repliedJules, "I request you to be silent, monsieur. "

"If I am silent, monsieur, you may before long see Madame Jules on theprisoner's bench at the court of assizes beside a convict. Now, do youwish me to be silent?"

Jules turned pale; but his noble face instantly resumed its calmness, though it was now a false calmness. Drawing the baron under one of thetemporary sheds of the Bourse, near which they were standing, he saidto him in a voice which concealed his intense inward emotion:--

"Monsieur, I will listen to you; but there will be a duel to the deathbetween us if--"

"Oh, to that I consent!" cried Monsieur de Maulincour. "I have thegreatest esteem for your character. You speak of death. You areunaware that your wife may have assisted in poisoning me last Saturdaynight. Yes, monsieur, since then some extraordinary evil has developedin me. My hair appears to distil an inward fever and a deadly languorthrough my skull; I know who clutched my hair at that ball. "

Monsieur de Maulincour then related, without omitting a single fact, his platonic love for Madame Jules, and the details of the affair inthe rue Soly which began this narrative. Any one would have listenedto him with attention; but Madame Jules' husband had good reason to bemore amazed than any other human being. Here his character displayeditself; he was more amazed than overcome. Made a judge, and the judgeof an adored woman, he found in his soul the equity of a judge as wellas the inflexibility. A lover still, he thought less of his ownshattered life than of his wife's life; he listened, not to his ownanguish, but to some far-off voice that cried to him, "Clemence cannotlie! Why should she betray you?"

"Monsieur, " said the baron, as he ended, "being absolutely certain ofhaving recognized in Monsieur de Funcal the same Ferragus whom thepolice declared dead, I have put upon his traces an intelligent man. As I returned that night I remembered, by a fortunate chance, the nameof Madame Meynardie, mentioned in that letter of Ida, the presumedmistress of my persecutor. Supplied with this clue, my emissary willsoon get to the bottom of this horrible affair; for he is far moreable to discover the truth than the police themselves. "

"Monsieur, " replied Desmarets, "I know not how to thank you for thisconfidence. You say that you can obtain proofs and witnesses; I shallawait them. I shall seek the truth of this strange affaircourageously; but you must permit me to doubt everything until theevidence of the facts you state is proved to me. In any case you shallhave satisfaction, for, as you will certainly understand, we bothrequire it. "

Jules returned home. 

"What is the matter, Jules?" asked his wife, when she saw him. "Youlook so pale you frighten me!"

"The day is cold, " he answered, walking with slow steps across theroom where all things spoke to him of love and happiness, --that roomso calm and peaceful where a deadly storm was gathering. 

"Did you go out to-day?" he asked, as though mechanically. 

He was impelled to ask the question by the last of a myriad ofthoughts which had gathered themselves together into a lucidmeditation, though jealousy was actively prompting them. 

"No, " she answered, in a tone that was falsely candid. 

At that instant Jules saw through the open door of the dressing-roomthe velvet bonnet which his wife wore in the mornings; on it weredrops of rain. Jules was a passionate man, but he was also full ofdelicacy. It was repugnant to him to bring his wife face to face witha lie. When such a situation occurs, all has come to an end foreverbetween certain beings. And yet those drops of rain were like a flashtearing through his brain. 

He left the room, went down to the porter's lodge, and said to theporter, after making sure that they were alone:--

"Fouguereau, a hundred crowns if you tell me the truth; dismissal ifyou deceive me; and nothing at all if you ever speak of my questionand your answer. "

He stopped to examine the man's face, leading him under the window. Then he continued:--

"Did madame go out this morning?"

"Madame went out at a quarter to three, and I think I saw her come inabout half an hour ago. "

"That is true, upon your honor?"

"Yes, monsieur. "

"You will have the money; but if you speak of this, remember, you willlose all. "

Jules returned to his wife. 

"Clemence, " he said, "I find I must put my accounts in order. Do notbe offended at the inquiry I am going to make. Have I not given youforty thousand francs since the beginning of the year?"

"More, " she said, --"forty-seven. "

"Have you spent them?"

"Nearly, " she replied. "In the first place, I had to pay several ofour last year's bills--"

"I shall never find out anything in this way, " thought Jules. "I amnot taking the best course. "

At this moment Jules' own valet entered the room with a letter for hismaster, who opened it indifferently, but as soon as his eyes hadlighted on the signature he read it eagerly. The letter was asfollows:--

 Monsieur, --For the sake of your peace of mind as well as ours, I take the course of writing you this letter without possessing the advantage of being known to you; but my position, my age, and the fear of some misfortune compel me to entreat you to show indulgence in the trying circumstances under which our afflicted family is placed. Monsieur Auguste de Maulincour has for the last few days shown signs of mental derangement, and we fear that he may trouble your happiness by fancies which he confided to Monsieur le Vidame de Pamiers and myself during his first attack of frenzy. We think it right, therefore, to warn you of his malady, which is, we hope, curable; but it will have such serious and important effects on the honor of our family and the career of my grandson that we must rely, monsieur, on your entire discretion. 

 If Monsieur le Vidame or I could have gone to see you we would not have written. But I make no doubt that you will regard this prayer of a mother, who begs you to destroy this letter. 

 Accept the assurance of my perfect consideration. 

Baronne de Maulincour, _nee_ de Rieux. 

"Oh! what torture!" cried Jules. 

"What is it? what is in your mind?" asked his wife, exhibiting thedeepest anxiety. 

"I have come, " he answered, slowly, as he threw her the letter, "toask myself whether it can be you who have sent me that to avert mysuspicions. Judge, therefore, what I suffer. "

"Unhappy man!" said Madame Jules, letting fall the paper. "I pity him;though he has done me great harm. "

"Are you aware that he has spoken to me?"

"Oh! have you been to see him, in spite of your promise?" she cried interror. 

"Clemence, our love is in danger of perishing; we stand outside of theordinary rules of life; let us lay aside all petty considerations inpresence of this great peril. Explain to me why you went out thismorning. Women think they have the right to tell us little falsehoods. Sometimes they like to hide a pleasure they are preparing for us. Justnow you said a word to me, by mistake, no doubt, a no for a yes. "

He went into the dressing-room and brought out the bonnet. 

"See, " he said, "your bonnet has betrayed you; these spots areraindrops. You must, therefore, have gone out in a street cab, andthese drops fell upon it as you went to find one, or as you entered orleft the house where you went. But a woman can leave her own home formany innocent purposes, even after she has told her husband that shedid not mean to go out. There are so many reasons for changing ourplans! Caprices, whims, are they not your right? Women are notrequired to be consistent with themselves. You had forgottensomething, --a service to render, a visit, some kind action. Butnothing hinders a woman from telling her husband what she does. Can weever blush on the breast of a friend? It is not a jealous husband whospeaks to you, my Clemence; it is your lover, your friend, yourbrother. " He flung himself passionately at her feet. "Speak, not tojustify yourself, but to calm my horrible sufferings. I know that youwent out. Well--what did you do? where did you go?"

"Yes, I went out, Jules, " she answered in a strained voice, though herface was calm. "But ask me nothing more. Wait; have confidence;without which you will lay up for yourself terrible remorse. Jules, myJules, trust is the virtue of love. I owe to you that I am at thismoment too troubled to answer you: but I am not a false woman; I loveyou, and you know it. "

"In the midst of all that can shake the faith of man and rouse hisjealousy, for I see I am not first in your heart, I am no longer thineown self--well, Clemence, even so, I prefer to believe you, to believethat voice, to believe those eyes. If you deceive me, you deserve--"

"Ten thousand deaths!" she cried, interrupting him. 

"I have never hidden a thought from you, but you--"

"Hush!" she said, "our happiness depends upon our mutual silence. "

"Ha! I _will_ know all!" he exclaimed, with sudden violence. 

At that moment the cries of a woman were heard, --the yelping of ashrill little voice came from the antechamber. 

"I tell you I will go in!" it cried. "Yes, I shall go in; I will seeher! I shall see her!"

Jules and Clemence both ran to the salon as the door from theantechamber was violently burst open. A young woman entered hastily, followed by two servants, who said to their master:--

"Monsieur, this person would come in in spite of us. We told her thatmadame was not at home. She answered that she knew very well madamehad been out, but she saw her come in. She threatened to stay at thedoor of the house till she could speak to madame. "

"You can go, " said Monsieur Desmarets to the two men. "What do youwant, mademoiselle?" he added, turning to the strange woman. 

This "demoiselle" was the type of a woman who is never to be met withexcept in Paris. She is made in Paris, like the mud, like thepavement, like the water of the Seine, such as it becomes in Parisbefore human industry filters it ten times ere it enters the cut-glassdecanters and sparkles pure and bright from the filth it has been. Sheis therefore a being who is truly original. Depicted scores of timesby the painter's brush, the pencil of the caricaturist, the charcoalof the etcher, she still escapes analysis, because she cannot becaught and rendered in all her moods, like Nature, like this fantasticParis itself. She holds to vice by one thread only, and she breaksaway from it at a thousand other points of the social circumference. Besides, she lets only one trait of her character be known, and thatthe only one which renders her blamable; her noble virtues are hidden;she prefers to glory in her naive libertinism. Most incompletelyrendered in dramas and tales where she is put upon the scene with allher poesy, she is nowhere really true but in her garret; elsewhere sheis invariably calumniated or over-praised. Rich, she deteriorates;poor, she is misunderstood. She has too many vices, and too many goodqualities; she is too near to pathetic asphyxiation or to a dissolutelaugh; too beautiful and too hideous. She personifies Paris, to which, in the long run, she supplies the toothless portresses, washerwomen, street-sweepers, beggars, occasionally insolent countesses, admiredactresses, applauded singers; she has even given, in the olden time, two quasi-queens to the monarchy. Who can grasp such a Proteus? She isall woman, less than woman, more than woman. From this vast portraitthe painter of manners and morals can take but a feature here andthere; the _ensemble_ is infinite. 

She was a grisette of Paris; a grisette in all her glory; a grisettein a hackney-coach, --happy, young, handsome, fresh, but a grisette; agrisette with claws, scissors, impudent as a Spanish woman, snarlingas a prudish English woman proclaiming her conjugal rights, coquettishas a great lady, though more frank, and ready for everything; aperfect _lionne_ in her way; issuing from the little apartment ofwhich she had dreamed so often, with its red-calico curtains, itsUtrecht velvet furniture, its tea-table, the cabinet of china withpainted designs, the sofa, the little moquette carpet, the alabasterclock and candlesticks (under glass cases), the yellow bedroom, theeider-down quilt, --in short, all the domestic joys of a grisette'slife; and in addition, the woman-of-all-work (a former grisetteherself, now the owner of a moustache), theatre-parties, unlimitedbonbons, silk dresses, bonnets to spoil, --in fact, all the felicitiescoveted by the grisette heart except a carriage, which only enters herimagination as a marshal's baton into the dreams of a soldier. Yes, this grisette had all these things in return for a true affection, orin spite of a true affection, as some others obtain it for an hour aday, --a sort of tax carelessly paid under the claws of an old man. 

The young woman who now entered the presence of Monsieur and MadameJules had a pair of feet so little covered by her shoes that only aslim black line was visible between the carpet and her whitestockings. This peculiar foot-gear, which Parisian caricaturists havewell-rendered, is a special attribute of the grisette of Paris; butshe is even more distinctive to the eyes of an observer by the carewith which her garments are made to adhere to her form, which theyclearly define. On this occasion she was trigly dressed in a greengown, with a white chemisette, which allowed the beauty of her bust tobe seen; her shawl, of Ternaux cashmere, had fallen from hershoulders, and was held by its two corners, which were twisted roundher wrists. She had a delicate face, rosy cheeks, a white skin, sparkling gray eyes, a round, very promising forehead, hair carefullysmoothed beneath her little bonnet, and heavy curls upon her neck. 

"My name is Ida, " she said, "and if that's Madame Jules to whom I havethe advantage of speaking, I've come to tell her all I have in myheart against her. It is very wrong, when a woman is set up and in herfurniture, as you are here, to come and take from a poor girl a manwith whom I'm as good as married, morally, and who did talk of makingit right by marrying me before the municipality. There's plenty ofhandsome young men in the world--ain't there, monsieur?--to take yourfancy, without going after a man of middle age, who makes myhappiness. Yah! I haven't got a fine hotel like this, but I've got mylove, I have. I hate handsome men and money; I'm all heart, and--"

Madame Jules turned to her husband. 

"You will allow me, monsieur, to hear no more of all this, " she said, retreating to her bedroom. 

"If the lady lives with you, I've made a mess of it; but I can't helpthat, " resumed Ida. "Why does she come after Monsieur Ferragus everyday?"

"You are mistaken, mademoiselle, " said Jules, stupefied; "my wife isincapable--"

"Ha! so you're married, you two, " said the grisette showing somesurprise. "Then it's very wrong, monsieur, --isn't it?--for a woman whohas the happiness of being married in legal marriage to have relationswith a man like Henri--"

"Henri! who is Henri?" said Jules, taking Ida by the arm and pullingher into an adjoining room that his wife might hear no more. 

"Why, Monsieur Ferragus. "

"But he is dead, " said Jules. 

"Nonsense; I went to Franconi's with him last night, and he brought mehome--as he ought. Besides, your wife can tell you about him; didn'tshe go there this very afternoon at three o'clock? I know she did, forI waited in the street, and saw her, --all because that good-naturedfellow, Monsieur Justin, whom you know perhaps, --a little old man withjewelry who wears corsets, --told me that Madame Jules was my rival. That name, monsieur, sounds mighty like a feigned one; but if it isyours, excuse me. But this I say, if Madame Jules was a court duchess, Henri is rich enough to satisfy all her fancies, and it is my businessto protect my property; I've a right to, for I love him, that I do. Heis my _first_ inclination; my happiness and all my future fate dependson it. I fear nothing, monsieur; I am honest; I never lied, or stolethe property of any living soul, no matter who. If an empress was myrival, I'd go straight to her, empress as she was; because all prettywomen are equals, monsieur--"

"Enough! enough!" said Jules. "Where do you live?"

"Rue de la Corderie-du-Temple, number 14, monsieur, --Ida Gruget, corset-maker, at your service, --for we make lots of corsets for men. "

"Where does the man whom you call Ferragus live?"

"Monsieur, " she said, pursing up her lips, "in the first place, he'snot a man; he is a rich monsieur, much richer, perhaps, than you are. But why do you ask me his address when your wife knows it? He told menot to give it. Am I obliged to answer you? I'm not, thank God, in aconfessional or a police-court; I'm responsible only to myself. "

"If I were to offer you ten thousand francs to tell me where MonsieurFerragus lives, how then?"

"Ha! n, o, _no_, my little friend, and that ends the matter, " shesaid, emphasizing this singular reply with a popular gesture. "There'sno sum in the world could make me tell you. I have the honor to bidyou good-day. How do I get out of here?"

Jules, horror-struck, allowed her to go without further notice. Thewhole world seemed to crumble beneath his feet, and above him theheavens were falling with a crash. 

"Monsieur is served, " said his valet. 

The valet and the footman waited in the dining-room a quarter of anhour without seeing master or mistress. 

"Madame will not dine to-day, " said the waiting-maid, coming in. 

"What's the matter, Josephine?" asked the valet. 

"I don't know, " she answered. "Madame is crying, and is going to bed. Monsieur has no doubt got some love-affair on hand, and it has beendiscovered at a very bad time. I wouldn't answer for madame's life. Men are so clumsy; they'll make you scenes without any precaution. "

"That's not so, " said the valet, in a low voice. "On the contrary, madame is the one who--you understand? What times does monsieur haveto go after pleasures, he, who hasn't slept out of madame's room forfive years, who goes to his study at ten and never leaves it tillbreakfast, at twelve. His life is all known, it is regular; whereasmadame goes out nearly every day at three o'clock, Heaven knowswhere. "

"And monsieur too, " said the maid, taking her mistress's part. 

"Yes, but he goes straight to the Bourse. I told him three times thatdinner was ready, " continued the valet, after a pause. "You might aswell talk to a post. "

Monsieur Jules entered the dining-room. 

"Where is madame?" he said. 

"Madame is going to bed; her head aches, " replied the maid, assumingan air of importance. 

Monsieur Jules then said to the footmen composedly: "You can takeaway; I shall go and sit with madame. "

He went to his wife's room and found her weeping, but endeavoring tosmother her sobs with her handkerchief. 

"Why do you weep?" said Jules; "you need expect no violence and noreproaches from me. Why should I avenge myself? If you have not beenfaithful to my love, it is that you were never worthy of it. "

"Not worthy?" The words were repeated amid her sobs and the accent inwhich they were said would have moved any other man than Jules. 

"To kill you, I must love more than perhaps I do love you, " hecontinued. "But I should never have the courage; I would rather killmyself, leaving you to your--happiness, and with--whom!--"

He did not end his sentence. 

"Kill yourself!" she cried, flinging herself at his feet and claspingthem. 

But he, wishing to escape the embrace, tried to shake her off, dragging her in so doing toward the bed. 

"Let me alone, " he said. 

"No, no, Jules!" she cried. "If you love me no longer I shall die. Doyou wish to know all?"

"Yes. "

He took her, grasped her violently, and sat down on the edge of thebed, holding her between his legs. Then, looking at that beautifulface now red as fire and furrowed with tears, --

"Speak, " he said. 

Her sobs began again. 

"No; it is a secret of life and death. If I tell it, I--No, I cannot. Have mercy, Jules!"

"You have betrayed me--"

"Ah! Jules, you think so now, but soon you will know all. "

"But this Ferragus, this convict whom you go to see, a man enriched bycrime, if he does not belong to you, if you do not belong to him--"

"Oh, Jules!"

"Speak! Is he your mysterious benefactor?--the man to whom we owe ourfortune, as persons have said already?"

"Who said that?"

"A man whom I killed in a duel. "

"Oh, God! one death already!"

"If he is not your protector, if he does not give you money, if it isyou, on the contrary, who carry money to him, tell me, is he yourbrother?"

"What if he were?" she said. 

Monsieur Desmarets crossed his arms. 

"Why should that have been concealed from me?" he said. "Then you andyour mother have both deceived me? Besides, does a woman go to see herbrother every day, or nearly every day?"

His wife had fainted at his feet. 

"Dead, " he said. "And suppose I am mistaken?"

He sprang to the bell-rope; called Josephine, and lifted Clemence tothe bed. 

"I shall die of this, " said Madame Jules, recovering consciousness. 

"Josephine, " cried Monsieur Desmarets. "Send for Monsieur Desplein;send also to my brother and ask him to come here immediately. "

"Why your brother?" asked Clemence. 

But Jules had already left the room. 

 CHAPTER IV

 WHERE GO TO DIE?

For the first time in five years Madame Jules slept alone in her bed, and was compelled to admit a physician into that sacred chamber. Thesein themselves were two keen pangs. Desplein found Madame Jules veryill. Never was a violent emotion more untimely. He would say nothingdefinite, and postponed till the morrow giving any opinion, afterleaving a few directions, which were not executed, the emotions of theheart causing all bodily cares to be forgotten. 

When morning dawned, Clemence had not yet slept. Her mind was absorbedin the low murmur of a conversation which lasted several hours betweenthe brothers; but the thickness of the walls allowed no word whichcould betray the object of this long conference to reach her ears. Monsieur Desmarets, the notary, went away at last. The stillness ofthe night, and the singular activity of the senses given by powerfulemotion, enabled Clemence to distinguish the scratching of a pen andthe involuntary movements of a person engaged in writing. Those whoare habitually up at night, and who observe the different acousticeffects produced in absolute silence, know that a slight echo can bereadily perceived in the very places where louder but more equable andcontinued murmurs are not distinct. At four o'clock the sound ceased. Clemence rose, anxious and trembling. Then, with bare feet and withouta wrapper, forgetting her illness and her moist condition, the poorwoman opened the door softly without noise and looked into the nextroom. She saw her husband sitting, with a pen in his hand, asleep inhis arm-chair. The candles had burned to the sockets. She slowlyadvanced and read on an envelope, already sealed, the words, "This ismy will. "

She knelt down as if before an open grave and kissed her husband'shand. He woke instantly. 

"Jules, my friend, they grant some days to criminals condemned todeath, " she said, looking at him with eyes that blazed with fever andwith love. "Your innocent wife asks only two. Leave me free for twodays, and--wait! After that, I shall die happy--at least, you willregret me. "

"Clemence, I grant them. "

Then, as she kissed her husband's hands in the tender transport of herheart, Jules, under the spell of that cry of innocence, took her inhis arms and kissed her forehead, though ashamed to feel himself stillunder subjection to the power of that noble beauty. 

On the morrow, after taking a few hours' rest, Jules entered hiswife's room, obeying mechanically his invariable custom of not leavingthe house without a word to her. Clemence was sleeping. A ray of lightpassing through a chink in the upper blind of a window fell across theface of the dejected woman. Already suffering had impaired herforehead and the freshness of her lips. A lover's eye could not failto notice the appearance of dark blotches, and a sickly pallor inplace of the uniform tone of the cheeks and the pure ivory whitenessof the skin, --two points at which the sentiments of her noble soulwere artlessly wont to show themselves. 

"She suffers, " thought Jules. "Poor Clemence! May God protect us!"

He kissed her very softly on the forehead. She woke, saw her husband, and remembered all. Unable to speak, she took his hand, her eyesfilling with tears. 

"I am innocent, " she said, ending her dream. 

"You will not go out to-day, will you?" asked Jules. 

"No, I feel too weak to leave my bed. "

"If you should change your mind, wait till I return, " said Jules. 

Then he went down to the porter's lodge. 

"Fouguereau, you will watch the door yourself to-day. I wish to knowexactly who comes to the house, and who leaves it. "

Then he threw himself into a hackney-coach, and was driven to thehotel de Maulincour, where he asked for the baron. 

"Monsieur is ill, " they told him. 

Jules insisted on entering, and gave his name. If he could not see thebaron, he wished to see the vidame or the dowager. He waited some timein the salon, where Madame de Maulincour finally came to him and toldhim that her grandson was much too ill to receive him. 

"I know, madame, the nature of his illness from the letter you did methe honor to write, and I beg you to believe--"

"A letter to you, monsieur, written by me!" cried the dowager, interrupting him. "I have written you no letter. What was I made tosay in that letter, monsieur?"

"Madame, " replied Jules, "intending to see Monsieur de Maulincourto-day, I thought it best to preserve the letter in spite of itsinjunction to destroy it. There it is. "

Madame de Maulincour put on her spectacles, and the moment she casther eyes on the paper she showed the utmost surprise. 

"Monsieur, " she said, "my writing is so perfectly imitated that, ifthe matter were not so recent, I might be deceived myself. My grandsonis ill, it is true; but his reason has never for a moment beenaffected. We are the puppets of some evil-minded person or persons;and yet I cannot imagine the object of a trick like this. You shallsee my grandson, monsieur, and you will at once perceive that he isperfectly sound in mind. "

She rang the bell, and sent to ask if the baron felt able to receiveMonsieur Desmarets. The servant returned with an affirmative answer. Jules went to the baron's room, where he found him in an arm-chairnear the fire. Too feeble to move, the unfortunate man merely bowedhis head with a melancholy gesture. The Vidame de Pamiers was sittingwith him. 

"Monsieur le baron, " said Jules, "I have something to say which makesit desirable that I should see you alone. "

"Monsieur, " replied Auguste, "Monsieur le vidame knows about thisaffair; you can speak fearlessly before him. "

"Monsieur le baron, " said Jules, in a grave voice, "you have troubledand well-nigh destroyed my happiness without having any right to doso. Until the moment when we can see clearly which of us shoulddemand, or grant, reparation to the other, you are bound to help me infollowing the dark and mysterious path into which you have flung me. Ihave now come to ascertain from you the present residence of theextraordinary being who exercises such a baneful effect on your lifeand mine. On my return home yesterday, after listening to youravowals, I received that letter. "

Jules gave him the forged letter. 

"This Ferragus, this Bourignard, or this Monsieur de Funcal, is ademon!" cried Maulincour, after having read it. "Oh, what a frightfulmaze I put my foot into when I meddled in this matter! Where am Igoing? I did wrong, monsieur, " he continued, looking at Jules; "butdeath is the greatest of all expiations, and my death is nowapproaching. You can ask me whatever you like; I am at your orders. "

"Monsieur, you know, of course, where this man is living, and I mustknow it if it costs me all my fortune to penetrate this mystery. Inpresence of so cruel an enemy every moment is precious. "

"Justin shall tell you all, " replied the baron. 

At these words the vidame fidgeted on his chair. Auguste rang thebell. 

"Justin is not in the house!" cried the vidame, in a hasty manner thattold much. 

"Well, then, " said Auguste, excitedly, "the other servants must knowwhere he is; send a man on horseback to fetch him. Your valet is inParis, isn't he? He can be found. "

The vidame was visibly distressed. 

"Justin can't come, my dear boy, " said the old man; "he is dead. Iwanted to conceal the accident from you, but--"

"Dead!" cried Monsieur de Maulincour, --"dead! When and how?"

"Last night. He had been supping with some old friends, and, I daresay, was drunk; his friends--no doubt they were drunk, too--left himlying in the street, and a heavy vehicle ran over him. "

"The convict did not miss _him_; at the first stroke he killed, " saidAuguste. "He has had less luck with me; it has taken four blows to putme out of the way. "

Jules was gloomy and thoughtful. 

"Am I to know nothing, then?" he cried, after a long pause. "Yourvalet seems to have been justly punished. Did he not exceed yourorders in calumniating Madame Desmarets to a person named Ida, whosejealousy he roused in order to turn her vindictiveness upon us?"

"Ah, monsieur! in my anger I informed him about Madame Jules, " saidAuguste. 

"Monsieur!" cried the husband, keenly irritated. 

"Oh, monsieur!" replied the baron, claiming silence by a gesture, "Iam prepared for all. You cannot tell me anything my own conscience hasnot already told me. I am now expecting the most celebrated of allprofessors of toxicology, in order to learn my fate. If I am destinedto intolerable suffering, my resolution is taken. I shall blow mybrains out. "

"You talk like a child!" cried the vidame, horrified by the coolnesswith which the baron said these words. "Your grandmother would die ofgrief. "

"Then, monsieur, " said Jules, "am I to understand that there exist nomeans of discovering in what part of Paris this extraordinary manresides?"

"I think, monsieur, " said the old vidame, "from what I have heard poorJustin say, that Monsieur de Funcal lives at either the Portuguese orthe Brazilian embassy. Monsieur de Funcal is a nobleman belonging toboth those countries. As for the convict, he is dead and buried. Yourpersecutor, whoever he is, seems to me so powerful that it would bewell to take no decisive measures until you are sure of some way ofconfounding and crushing him. Act prudently and with caution, my dearmonsieur. Had Monsieur de Maulincour followed my advice, nothing ofall this would have happened. "

Jules coldly but politely withdrew. He was now at a total loss to knowhow to reach Ferragus. As he passed into his own house, the portertold him that Madame had just been out to throw a letter into the postbox at the head of the rue de Menars. Jules felt humiliated by thisproof of the insight with which the porter espoused his cause, and thecleverness by which he guessed the way to serve him. The eagerness ofservants, and their shrewdness in compromising masters who compromisedthemselves, was known to him, and he fully appreciated the danger ofhaving them as accomplices, no matter for what purpose. But he couldnot think of his personal dignity until the moment when he foundhimself thus suddenly degraded. What a triumph for the slave who couldnot raise himself to his master, to compel his master to come down tohis level! Jules was harsh and hard to him. Another fault. But hesuffered so deeply! His life till then so upright, so pure, wasbecoming crafty; he was to scheme and lie. Clemence was scheming andlying. This to him was a moment of horrible disgust. Lost in a floodof bitter feelings, Jules stood motionless at the door of his house. Yielding to despair, he thought of fleeing, of leaving France forever, carrying with him the illusions of uncertainty. Then, again, notdoubting that the letter Clemence had just posted was addressed toFerragus, his mind searched for a means of obtaining the answer thatmysterious being was certain to send. Then his thoughts began toanalyze the singular good fortune of his life since his marriage, andhe asked himself whether the calumny for which he had taken suchsignal vengeance was not a truth. Finally, reverting to the cominganswer, he said to himself:--

"But this man, so profoundly capable, so logical in his every act, whosees and foresees, who calculates, and even divines, our verythoughts, is he likely to make an answer? Will he not employ someother means more in keeping with his power? He may send his answer bysome beggar; or in a carton brought by an honest man, who does notsuspect what he brings; or in some parcel of shoes, which a shop-girlmay innocently deliver to my wife. If Clemence and he have agreed uponsuch means--"

He distrusted all things; his mind ran over vast tracts and shorelessoceans of conjecture. Then, after floating for a time among a thousandcontradictory ideas, he felt he was strongest in his own house, and heresolved to watch it as the ant-lion watches his sandy labyrinth. 

"Fouguereau, " he said to the porter, "I am not at home to any one whocomes to see me. If any one calls to see madame, or brings heranything, ring twice. Bring all letters addressed here to me, nomatter for whom they are intended. "

"Thus, " thought he, as he entered his study, which was in theentresol, "I forestall the schemes of this Ferragus. If he sends someone to ask for me so as to find out if Clemence is alone, at least Ishall not be tricked like a fool. "

He stood by the window of his study, which looked upon the street, andthen a final scheme, inspired by jealousy, came into his mind. Heresolved to send his head-clerk in his own carriage to the Bourse witha letter to another broker, explaining his sales and purchases andrequesting him to do his business for that day. He postponed his moredelicate transactions till the morrow, indifferent to the fall or riseof stocks or the debts of all Europe. High privilege of love!--itcrushes all things, all interests fall before it: altar, throne, consols!

At half-past three, just the hour at which the Bourse is in full blastof reports, monthly settlements, premiums, etc. , Fouguereau enteredthe study, quite radiant with his news. 

"Monsieur, an old woman has come, but very cautiously; I think she's asly one. She asked for monsieur, and seemed much annoyed when I toldher he was out; then she gave me a letter for madame, and here it is. "

Fevered with anxiety, Jules opened the letter; then he dropped into achair, exhausted. The letter was mere nonsense throughout, and neededa key. It was virtually in cipher. 

"Go away, Fouguereau. " The porter left him. "It is a mystery deeperthan the sea below the plummet line! Ah! it must be love; love only isso sagacious, so inventive as this. Ah! I shall kill her. "

At this moment an idea flashed through his brain with such force thathe felt almost physically illuminated by it. In the days of histoilsome poverty before his marriage, Jules had made for himself atrue friend. The extreme delicacy with which he had managed thesusceptibilities of a man both poor and modest; the respect with whichhe had surrounded him; the ingenious cleverness he had employed tonobly compel him to share his opulence without permitting it to makehim blush, increased their friendship. Jacquet continued faithful toDesmarets in spite of his wealth. 

Jacquet, a nobly upright man, a toiler, austere in his morals, hadslowly made his way in that particular ministry which develops bothhonesty and knavery at the same time. A clerk in the ministry ofForeign Affairs, he had charge of the most delicate division of itsarchives. Jacquet in that office was like a glow-worm, casting hislight upon those secret correspondences, deciphering and classifyingdespatches. Ranking higher than a mere _bourgeois_, his position atthe ministry was superior to that of the other subalterns. He livedobscurely, glad to feel that such obscurity sheltered him fromreverses and disappointments, and was satisfied to humbly pay in thelowest coin his debt to the country. Thanks to Jules, his position hadbeen much ameliorated by a worthy marriage. An unrecognized patriot, aminister in actual fact, he contented himself with groaning in hischimney-corner at the course of the government. In his own home, Jacquet was an easy-going king, --an umbrella-man, as they say, whohired a carriage for his wife which he never entered himself. Inshort, to end this sketch of a philosopher unknown to himself, he hadnever suspected and never in all his life would suspect the advantageshe might have drawn from his position, --that of having for hisintimate friend a broker, and of knowing every morning all the secretsof the State. This man, sublime after the manner of that namelesssoldier who died in saving Napoleon by a "qui vive, " lived at theministry. 

In ten minutes Jules was in his friend's office. Jacquet gave him achair, laid aside methodically his green silk eye-shade, rubbed hishands, picked up his snuff-box, rose, stretched himself till hisshoulder-blades cracked, swelled out his chest, and said:--

"What brings you here, Monsieur Desmarets? What do you want with me?"

"Jacquet, I want you to decipher a secret, --a secret of life anddeath. "

"It doesn't concern politics?"

"If it did, I shouldn't come to you for information, " said Jules. "No, it is a family matter, about which I require you to be absolutelysilent. "

"Claude-Joseph Jacquet, dumb by profession. Don't you know me by thistime?" he said, laughing. "Discretion is my lot. "

Jules showed him the letter. 

"You must read me this letter, addressed to my wife. "

"The deuce! the deuce! a bad business!" said Jacquet, examining theletter as a usurer examines a note to be negotiated. "Ha! that's agridiron letter! Wait a minute. "

He left Jules alone for a moment, but returned immediately. 

"Easy enough to read, my friend! It is written on the gridiron plan, used by the Portuguese minister under Monsieur de Choiseul, at thetime of the dismissal of the Jesuits. Here, see!"

Jacquet placed upon the writing a piece of paper cut out in regularsquares, like the paper laces which confectioners wrap round theirsugarplums; and Jules then read with perfect ease the words that werevisible in the interstices. They were as follows:--

 "Don't be uneasy, my dear Clemence; our happiness cannot again be troubled; and your husband will soon lay aside his suspicions. However ill you may be, you must have the courage to come here to-morrow; find strength in your love for me. Mine for you has induced me to submit to a cruel operation, and I cannot leave my bed. I have had the actual cautery applied to my back, and it was necessary to burn it in a long time; you understand me? But I thought of you, and I did not suffer. 

 "To baffle Maulincour (who will not persecute us much longer), I have left the protecting roof of the embassy, and am now safe from all inquiry in the rue des Enfants-Rouges, number 12, with an old woman, Madame Etienne Gruget, mother of that Ida, who shall pay dear for her folly. Come to-morrow, at nine in the morning. I am in a room which is reached only by an interior staircase. Ask for Monsieur Camuset. Adieu; I kiss your forehead, my darling. "

Jacquet looked at Jules with a sort of honest terror, the sign of atrue compassion, as he made his favorite exclamation in two separateand distinct tones, --

"The deuce! the deuce!"

"That seems clear to you, doesn't it?" said Jules. "Well, in thedepths of my heart there is a voice that pleads for my wife, and makesitself heard above the pangs of jealousy. I must endure the worst ofall agony until to-morrow; but to-morrow, between nine and ten I shallknow all; I shall be happy or wretched for all my life. Think of methen, Jacquet. "

"I shall be at your house to-morrow at eight o'clock. We will gotogether; I'll wait for you, if you like, in the street. You may runsome danger, and you ought to have near you some devoted person who'llunderstand a mere sign, and whom you can safely trust. Count on me. "

"Even to help me in killing some one?"

"The deuce! the deuce!" said Jacquet, repeating, as it were, the samemusical note. "I have two children and a wife. "

Jules pressed his friend's hand and went away; but returnedimmediately. 

"I forgot the letter, " he said. "But that's not all, I must resealit. "

"The deuce! the deuce! you opened it without saving the seal; however, it is still possible to restore it. Leave it with me and I'll bring itto you _secundum scripturam_. "

"At what time?"

"Half-past five. "

"If I am not yet in, give it to the porter and tell him to send it upto madame. "

"Do you want me to-morrow?"

"No. Adieu. "

Jules drove at once to the place de la Rotonde du Temple, where heleft his cabriolet and went on foot to the rue des Enfants-Rouges. Hefound the house of Madame Etienne Gruget and examined it. There, themystery on which depended the fate of so many persons would be clearedup; there, at this moment, was Ferragus, and to Ferragus all thethreads of this strange plot led. The Gordian knot of the drama, already so bloody, was surely in a meeting between Madame Jules, herhusband, and that man; and a blade able to cut the closest of suchknots would not be wanting. 

The house was one of those which belong to the class called_cabajoutis_. This significant name is given by the populace of Paristo houses which are built, as it were, piecemeal. They are nearlyalways composed of buildings originally separate but afterwards unitedaccording to the fancy of the various proprietors who successivelyenlarge them; or else they are houses begun, left unfinished, againbuilt upon, and completed, --unfortunate structures which have passed, like certain peoples, under many dynasties of capricious masters. Neither the floors nor the windows have an _ensemble_, --to borrow oneof the most picturesque terms of the art of painting; all is discord, even the external decoration. The _cabajoutis_ is to Parisianarchitecture what the _capharnaum_ is to the apartment, --a poke-hole, where the most heterogeneous articles are flung pell-mell. 

"Madame Etienne?" asked Jules of the portress. 

This portress had her lodge under the main entrance, in a sortof chicken coop, or wooden house on rollers, not unlike thosesentry-boxes which the police have lately set up by the standsof hackney-coaches. 

"Hein?" said the portress, without laying down the stocking she wasknitting. 

In Paris the various component parts which make up the physiognomy ofany given portion of the monstrous city, are admirably in keeping withits general character. Thus porter, concierge, or Suisse, whatevername may be given to that essential muscle of the Parisian monster, isalways in conformity with the neighborhood of which he is a part; infact, he is often an epitome of it. The lazy porter of the faubourgSaint-Germain, with lace on every seam of his coat, dabbles in stocks;he of the Chaussee d'Antin takes his ease, reads the money-articles inthe newspapers, and has a business of his own in the faubourgMontmartre. The portress in the quarter of prostitution was formerly aprostitute; in the Marais, she has morals, is cross-grained, and fullof crotchets. 

On seeing Monsieur Jules this particular portress, holding herknitting in one hand, took a knife and stirred the half-extinguishedpeat in her foot-warmer; then she said:--

"You want Madame Etienne; do you mean Madame Etienne Gruget?"

"Yes, " said Jules, assuming a vexed air. 

"Who makes trimmings?"

"Yes. "

"Well, then, monsieur, " she said, issuing from her cage, and layingher hand on Jules' arm and leading him to the end of a longpassage-way, vaulted like a cellar, "go up the second staircase atthe end of the court-yard--where you will see the windows with thepots of pinks; that's where Madame Etienne lives. "

"Thank you, madame. Do you think she is alone?"

"Why shouldn't she be alone? she's a widow. "

Jules hastened up a dark stairway, the steps of which were knobby withhardened mud left by the feet of those who came and went. On thesecond floor he saw three doors but no signs of pinks. Fortunately, onone of the doors, the oiliest and darkest of the three, he read thesewords, chalked on a panel: "Ida will come to-night at nine o'clock. "

"This is the place, " thought Jules. 

He pulled an old bellrope, black with age, and heard the smotheredsound of a cracked bell and the barking of an asthmatic little dog. Bythe way the sounds echoed from the interior he knew that the roomswere encumbered with articles which left no space for reverberation, --a characteristic feature of the homes of workmen and humblehouseholds, where space and air are always lacking. 

Jules looked out mechanically for the pinks, and found them on theouter sill of a sash window between two filthy drain-pipes. So herewere flowers; here, a garden, two yards long and six inches wide;here, a wheat-ear; here, a whole life epitomized; but here, too, allthe miseries of that life. A ray of light falling from heaven as if byspecial favor on those puny flowers and the vigorous wheat-ear broughtout in full relief the dust, the grease, and that nameless color, peculiar to Parisian squalor, made of dirt, which crusted and spottedthe damp walls, the worm-eaten balusters, the disjointedwindow-casings, and the door originally red. Presently the cough of anold woman, and a heavy female step, shuffling painfully in listslippers, announced the coming of the mother of Ida Gruget. Thecreature opened the door and came out upon the landing, looked up, andsaid:--

"Ah! is this Monsieur Bocquillon? Why, no? But perhaps you're hisbrother. What can I do for you? Come in, monsieur. "

Jules followed her into the first room, where he saw, huddledtogether, cages, household utensils, ovens, furniture, littleearthenware dishes full of food or water for the dog and the cats, awooden clock, bed-quilts, engravings of Eisen, heaps of old iron, allthese things mingled and massed together in a way that produced a mostgrotesque effect, --a true Parisian dusthole, in which were not lackinga few old numbers of the "Constitutionel. "

Jules, impelled by a sense of prudence, paid no attention to thewidow's invitation when she said civilly, showing him an inner room:--

"Come in here, monsieur, and warm yourself. "

Fearing to be overheard by Ferragus, Jules asked himself whether itwere not wisest to conclude the arrangement he had come to make withthe old woman in the crowded antechamber. A hen, which descendedcackling from a loft, roused him from this inward meditation. He cameto a resolution, and followed Ida's mother into the inner room, whither they were accompanied by the wheezy pug, a personage otherwisemute, who jumped upon a stool. Madame Gruget showed the assumption ofsemi-pauperism when she invited her visitor to warm himself. Herfire-pot contained, or rather concealed two bits of sticks, which layapart: the grating was on the ground, its handle in the ashes. Themantel-shelf, adorned with a little wax Jesus under a shade of squaresof glass held together with blue paper, was piled with wools, bobbins, and tools used in the making of gimps and trimmings. Jules examinedeverything in the room with a curiosity that was full of interest, andshowed, in spite of himself, an inward satisfaction. 

"Well, monsieur, tell me, do you want to buy any of my things?" saidthe old woman, seating herself in a cane arm-chair, which appeared tobe her headquarters. In it she kept her handkerchief, snuffbox, knitting, half-peeled vegetables, spectacles, calendar, a bit oflivery gold lace just begun, a greasy pack of cards, and two volumesof novels, all stuck into the hollow of the back. This article offurniture, in which the old creature was floating down the river oflife, was not unlike the encyclopedic bag which a woman carries withher when she travels; in which may be found a compendium of herhousehold belongings, from the portrait of her husband to _eau deMelisse_ for faintness, sugarplums for the children, and Englishcourt-plaster in case of cuts. 

Jules studied all. He looked attentively at Madame Gruget's yellowvisage, at her gray eyes without either brows or lashes, her toothlessmouth, her wrinkles marked in black, her rusty cap, her still morerusty ruffles, her cotton petticoat full of holes, her worn-outslippers, her disabled fire-pot, her table heaped with dishes andsilks and work begun or finished, in wool or cotton, in the midst ofwhich stood a bottle of wine. Then he said to himself: "This old womanhas some passion, some strong liking or vice; I can make her do mywill. "

"Madame, " he said aloud, with a private sign of intelligence, "I havecome to order some livery trimmings. " Then he lowered his voice. "Iknow, " he continued, "that you have a lodger who has taken the name ofCamuset. " The old woman looked at him suddenly, but without any signof astonishment. "Now, tell me, can we come to an understanding? Thisis a question which means fortune for you. "

"Monsieur, " she replied, "speak out, and don't be afraid. There's noone here. But if I had any one above, it would be impossible for himto hear you. "

"Ha! the sly old creature, she answers like a Norman, " thought Jules, "We shall agree. Do not give yourself the trouble to tell falsehoods, madame, " he resumed, "In the first place, let me tell you that I meanno harm either to you or to your lodger who is suffering from cautery, or to your daughter Ida, a stay-maker, the friend of Ferragus. Yousee, I know all your affairs. Do not be uneasy; I am not a detectivepoliceman, nor do I desire anything that can hurt your conscience. Ayoung lady will come here to-morrow-morning at half-past nine o'clock, to talk with this lover of your daughter. I want to be where I can seeall and hear all, without being seen or heard by them. If you willfurnish me with the means of doing so, I will reward that service withthe gift of two thousand francs and a yearly stipend of six hundred. My notary shall prepare a deed before you this evening, and I willgive him the money to hold; he will pay the two thousand to youto-morrow after the conference at which I desire to be present, as youwill then have given proofs of your good faith. "

"Will it injure my daughter, my good monsieur?" she asked, casting acat-like glance of doubt and uneasiness upon him. 

"In no way, madame. But, in any case, it seems to me that yourdaughter does not treat you well. A girl who is loved by so rich a manas Ferragus ought to make you more comfortable than you seem to be. "

"Ah, my dear monsieur, just think, not so much as one poor ticket tothe Ambigu, or the Gaiete, where she can go as much as she likes. It'sshameful! A girl for whom I sold my silver forks and spoons! and now Ieat, at my age, with German metal, --and all to pay for herapprenticeship, and give her a trade, where she could coin money ifshe chose. As for that, she's like me, clever as a witch; I must doher that justice. But, I will say, she might give me her old silkgowns, --I, who am so fond of wearing silk. But no! Monsieur, she dinesat the Cadran-Bleu at fifty francs a head, and rolls in her carriageas if she were a princess, and despises her mother for a Colin-Lampon. Heavens and earth! what heedless young ones we've brought into theworld; we have nothing to boast of there. A mother, monsieur, can't beanything else but a good mother; and I've concealed that girl's ways, and kept her in my bosom, to take the bread out of my mouth and crameverything into her own. Well, well! and now she comes and fondles onea little, and says, 'How d'ye do, mother?' And that's all the duty shethinks of paying. But she'll have children one of these days, and thenshe'll find out what it is to have such baggage, --which one can't helploving all the same. "

"Do you mean that she does nothing for you?"

"Ah, nothing? No, monsieur, I didn't say that; if she did nothing, that would be a little too much. She gives me my rent and thirty-sixfrancs a month. But, monsieur, at my age, --and I'm fifty-two yearsold, with eyes that feel the strain at night, --ought I to be workingin this way? Besides, why won't she have me to live with her? I shouldshame her, should I? Then let her say so. Faith, one ought to beburied out of the way of such dogs of children, who forget you beforethey've even shut the door. "

She pulled her handkerchief from her pocket, and with it a lotteryticket that dropped on the floor; but she hastily picked it up, saying, "Hi! that's the receipt for my taxes. "

Jules at once perceived the reason of the sagacious parsimony of whichthe mother complained; and he was the more certain that the widowGruget would agree to the proposed bargain. 

"Well, then, madame, " he said, "accept what I offer you. "

"Did you say two thousand francs in ready money, and six hundredannuity, monsieur?"

"Madame, I've changed my mind; I will promise you only three hundredannuity. This way seems more to my own interests. But I will give youfive thousand francs in ready money. Wouldn't you like that as well?"

"Bless me, yes, monsieur!"

"You'll get more comfort out of it; and you can go to the Ambigu andFranconi's at your ease in a coach. "

"As for Franconi, I don't like that, for they don't talk there. Monsieur, if I accept, it is because it will be very advantageous formy child. I sha'n't be a drag on her any longer. Poor little thing!I'm glad she has her pleasures, after all. Ah, monsieur, youth must beamused! And so, if you assure me that no harm will come to anybody--"

"Not to anybody, " replied Jules. "But now, how will you manage it?"

"Well, monsieur, if I give Monsieur Ferragus a little tea made ofpoppy-heads to-night, he'll sleep sound, the dear man; and he needsit, too, because of his sufferings, for he does suffer, I can tellyou, and more's the pity. But I'd like to know what a healthy man likehim wants to burn his back for, just to get rid of a tic douleureuxwhich troubles him once in two years. However, to come back to ourbusiness. I have my neighbor's key; her lodging is just above mine, and in it there's a room adjoining the one where Monsieur Ferragus is, with only a partition between them. My neighbor is away in the countryfor ten days. Therefore, if I make a hole to-night while MonsieurFerragus is sound asleep, you can see and hear them to-morrow at yourease. I'm on good terms with a locksmith, --a very friendly man, whotalks like an angel, and he'll do the work for me and say nothingabout it. "

"Then here's a hundred francs for him. Come to-night to MonsieurDesmaret's office; he's a notary, and here's his address. At nineo'clock the deed will be ready, but--silence!"

"Enough, monsieur; as you say--silence! Au revoir, monsieur. "

Jules went home, almost calmed by the certainty that he should knowthe truth on the morrow. As he entered the house, the porter gave himthe letter properly resealed. 

"How do you feel now?" he said to his wife, in spite of the coldnessthat separated them. 

"Pretty well, Jules, " she answered in a coaxing voice, "do come anddine beside me. "

"Very good, " he said, giving her the letter. "Here is somethingFouguereau gave me for you. "

Clemence, who was very pale, colored high when she saw the letter, andthat sudden redness was a fresh blow to her husband. 

"Is that joy, " he said, laughing, "or the effect of expectation?"

"Oh, of many things!" she said, examining the seal. 

"I leave you now for a few moments. "

He went down to his study, and wrote to his brother, giving himdirections about the payment to the widow Gruget. When he returned, hefound his dinner served on a little table by his wife's bedside, andJosephine ready to wait on him. 

"If I were up how I should like to serve you myself, " said Clemence, when Josephine had left them. "Oh, yes, on my knees!" she added, passing her white hands through her husband's hair. "Dear, nobleheart, you were very kind and gracious to me just now. You did me moregood by showing me such confidence than all the doctors on earth coulddo me with their prescriptions. That feminine delicacy of yours--foryou do know how to love like a woman--well, it has shed a balm into myheart which has almost cured me. There's truce between us, Jules;lower your head, that I may kiss it. "

Jules could not deny himself the pleasure of that embrace. But it wasnot without a feeling of remorse in his heart; he felt himself smallbefore this woman whom he was still tempted to think innocent. A sortof melancholy joy possessed him. A tender hope shone on her featuresin spite of their grieved expression. They both were equally unhappyin deceiving each other; another caress, and, unable to resist theirsuffering, all would then have been avowed. 

"To-morrow evening, Clemence. "

"No, no; to-morrow morning, by twelve o'clock, you will know all, andyou'll kneel down before your wife--Oh, no! you shall not behumiliated; you are all forgiven now; you have done no wrong. Listen, Jules; yesterday you did crush me--harshly; but perhaps my life wouldnot have been complete without that agony; it may be a shadow thatwill make our coming days celestial. "

"You lay a spell upon me, " cried Jules; "you fill me with remorse. "

"Poor love! destiny is stronger than we, and I am not the accompliceof mine. I shall go out to-morrow. "

"At what hour?" asked Jules. 

"At half-past nine. "

"Clemence, " he said, "take every precaution; consult Doctor Despleinand old Haudry. "

"I shall consult nothing but my heart and my courage. "

"I shall leave you free; you will not see me till twelve o'clock. "

"Won't you keep me company this evening? I feel so much better. "

After attending to some business, Jules returned to his wife, --recalled by her invincible attraction. His passion was strongerthan his anguish. 

The next day, at nine o'clock Jules left home, hurried to the rue desEnfants-Rouges, went upstairs, and rang the bell of the widow Gruget'slodgings. 

"Ah! you've kept your word, as true as the dawn. Come in, monsieur, "said the old woman when she saw him. "I've made you a cup of coffeewith cream, " she added, when the door was closed. "Oh! real cream; Isaw it milked myself at the dairy we have in this very street. "

"Thank you, no, madame, nothing. Take me at once--"

"Very good, monsieur. Follow me, this way. "

She led him up into the room above her own, where she showed him, triumphantly, an opening about the size of a two-franc piece, madeduring the night, in a place, which, in each room, was above awardrobe. In order to look through it, Jules was forced to maintainhimself in rather a fatiguing attitude, by standing on a step-ladderwhich the widow had been careful to place there. 

"There's a gentleman with him, " she whispered, as she retired. 

Jules then beheld a man employed in dressing a number of wounds on theshoulders of Ferragus, whose head he recognized from the descriptiongiven to him by Monsieur de Maulincour. 

"When do you think those wounds will heal?" asked Ferragus. 

"I don't know, " said the other man. "The doctors say those wounds willrequire seven or eight more dressings. "

"Well, then, good-bye until to-night, " said Ferragus, holding out hishand to the man, who had just replaced the bandage. 

"Yes, to-night, " said the other, pressing his hand cordially. "I wishI could see you past your sufferings. "

"To-morrow Monsieur de Funcal's papers will be delivered to us, andHenri Bourignard will be dead forever, " said Ferragus. "Those fatalmarks which have cost us so dear no longer exist. I shall become oncemore a social being, a man among men, and more of a man than thesailor whom the fishes are eating. God knows it is not for my own sakeI have made myself a Portuguese count!"

"Poor Gratien!--you, the wisest of us all, our beloved brother, theBenjamin of the band; as you very well know. "

"Adieu; keep an eye on Maulincour. "

"You can rest easy on that score. "

"Ho! stay, marquis, " cried the convict. 

"What is it?"

"Ida is capable of everything after the scene of last night. If sheshould throw herself into the river, I would not fish her out. Sheknows the secret of my name, and she'll keep it better there. Butstill, look after her; for she is, in her way, a good girl. "

"Very well. "

The stranger departed. Ten minutes later Jules heard, with a feverishshudder, the rustle of a silk gown, and almost recognized by theirsound the steps of his wife. 

"Well, father, " said Clemence, "my poor father, are you better? Whatcourage you have shown!"

"Come here, my child, " replied Ferragus, holding out his hand to her. 

Clemence held her forehead to him and he kissed it. 

"Now tell me, what is the matter, my little girl? What are these newtroubles?"

"Troubles, father! it concerns the life or death of the daughter youhave loved so much. Indeed you must, as I wrote you yesterday, you_must_ find a way to see my poor Jules to-day. If you knew how good hehas been to me, in spite of all suspicions apparently so legitimate. Father, my love is my very life. Would you see me die? Ah! I havesuffered so much that my life, I feel it! is in danger. "

"And all because of the curiosity of that miserable Parisian?" criedFerragus. "I'd burn Paris down if I lost you, my daughter. Ha! you mayknow what a lover is, but you don't yet know what a father can do. "

"Father, you frighten me when you look at me in that way. Don't weighsuch different feelings in the same scales. I had a husband before Iknew that my father was living--"

"If your husband was the first to lay kisses on your forehead, I wasthe first to drop tears upon it, " replied Ferragus. "But don't feelfrightened, Clemence, speak to me frankly. I love you enough torejoice in the knowledge that you are happy, though I, your father, may have little place in your heart, while you fill the whole ofmine. "

"Ah! what good such words do me! You make me love you more and more, though I seem to rob something from my Jules. But, my kind father, think what his sufferings are. What may I tell him to-day?"

"My child, do you think I waited for your letter to save you from thisthreatened danger? Do you know what will become of those who ventureto touch your happiness, or come between us? Have you never been awarethat a second providence was guarding your life? Twelve men of powerand intellect form a phalanx round your love and your existence, --ready to do all things to protect you. Think of your father, who hasrisked death to meet you in the public promenades, or see you asleepin your little bed in your mother's home, during the night-time. Couldsuch a father, to whom your innocent caresses give strength to livewhen a man of honor ought to have died to escape his infamy, could_I_, in short, I who breathe through your lips, and see with youreyes, and feel with your heart, could I fail to defend with the clawsof a lion and the soul of a father, my only blessing, my life, mydaughter? Since the death of that angel, your mother, I have dreamedbut of one thing, --the happiness of pressing you to my heart in theface of the whole earth, of burying the convict, --" He paused amoment, and then added: "--of giving you a father, a father who couldpress without shame your husband's hand, who could live without fearin both your hearts, who could say to all the world, 'This is mydaughter, '--in short, to be a happy father. "

"Oh, father! father!"

"After infinite difficulty, after searching the whole globe, "continued Ferragus, "my friends have found me the skin of a dead manin which to take my place once more in social life. A few days hence, I shall be Monsieur de Funcal, a Portuguese count. Ah! my dear child, there are few men of my age who would have had the patience to learnPortuguese and English, which were spoken fluently by that devil of asailor, who was drowned at sea. "

"But, my dear father--"

"All has been foreseen, and prepared. A few days hence, his MajestyJohn VI. , King of Portugal will be my accomplice. My child, you musthave a little patience where your father has had so much. But ah! whatwould I not do to reward your devotion for the last three years, --coming religiously to comfort your old father, at the risk of yourown peace!"

"Father!" cried Clemence, taking his hands and kissing them. 

"Come, my child, have courage still; keep my fatal secret a few dayslonger, till the end is reached. Jules is not an ordinary man, I know;but are we sure that his lofty character and his noble love may notimpel him to dislike the daughter of a--"

"Oh!" cried Clemence, "you have read my heart; I have no other fearthan that. The very thought turns me to ice, " she added, in aheart-rending tone. "But, father, think that I have promised him thetruth in two hours. "

"If so, my daughter, tell him to go to the Portuguese embassy and seethe Comte de Funcal, your father. I will be there. "

"But Monsieur de Maulincour has told him of Ferragus. Oh, father, whattorture, to deceive, deceive, deceive!"

"Need you say that to me? But only a few days more, and no living manwill be able to expose me. Besides, Monsieur de Maulincour is beyondthe faculty of remembering. Come, dry your tears, my silly child, andthink--"

At this instant a terrible cry rang from the room in which JulesDesmarets was stationed. 

The clamor was heard by Madame Jules and Ferragus through the openingof the wall, and struck them with terror. 

"Go and see what it means, Clemence, " said her father. 

Clemence ran rapidly down the little staircase, found the door intoMadame Gruget's apartment wide open, heard the cries which echoed fromthe upper floor, went up the stairs, guided by the noise of sobs, andcaught these words before she entered the fatal chamber:--

"You, monsieur, you, with your horrid inventions, --you are the causeof her death!"

"Hush, miserable woman!" replied Jules, putting his handkerchief onthe mouth of the old woman, who began at once to cry out, "Murder!help!"

At this instant Clemence entered, saw her husband, uttered a cry, andfled away. 

"Who will save my child?" cried the widow Gruget. "You have murderedher. "

"How?" asked Jules, mechanically, for he was horror-struck at beingseen by his wife. 

"Read that, " said the old woman, giving him a letter. "Can money orannuities console me for that?"

 Farewell, mother! I bequeeth you what I have. I beg your pardon for my forlts, and the last greef to which I put you by ending my life in the river. Henry, who I love more than myself, says I have made his misfortune, and as he has drifen me away, and I have lost all my hops of merrying him, I am going to droun myself. I shall go abov Neuilly, so that they can't put me in the Morg. If Henry does not hate me anny more after I am ded, ask him to berry a pore girl whose hart beet for him only, and to forgif me, for I did rong to meddle in what didn't consern me. Tak care of his wounds. How much he sufered, pore fellow! I shall have as much corage to kill myself as he had to burn his bak. Carry home the corsets I have finished. And pray God for your daughter. 

Ida. 

"Take this letter to Monsieur de Funcal, who is upstairs, " said Jules. "He alone can save your daughter, if there is still time. "

So saying he disappeared, running like a man who has committed acrime. His legs trembled. The hot blood poured into his swelling heartin torrents greater than at any other moment of his life, and left itagain with untold violence. Conflicting thoughts struggled in hismind, and yet one thought predominated, --he had not been loyal to thebeing he loved most. It was impossible for him to argue with hisconscience, whose voice, rising high with conviction, came like anecho of those inward cries of his love during the cruel hours of doubthe had lately lived through. 

He spent the greater part of the day wandering about Paris, for hedared not go home. This man of integrity and honor feared to meet thespotless brow of the woman he had misjudged. We estimate wrongdoing inproportion to the purity of our conscience; the deed which is scarcelya fault in some hearts, takes the proportions of a crime in certainunsullied souls. The slightest stain on the white garment of a virginmakes it a thing ignoble as the rags of a mendicant. Between the twothe difference lies in the misfortune of the one, the wrong-doing ofthe other. God never measures repentance; he never apportions it. Asmuch is needed to efface a spot as to obliterate the crimes of alifetime. These reflections fell with all their weight on Jules;passions, like human laws, will not pardon, and their reasoning ismore just; for are they not based upon a conscience of their own asinfallible as an instinct?

Jules finally came home pale, despondent, crushed beneath a sense ofhis wrong-doing, and yet expressing in spite of himself the joy hiswife's innocence had given him. He entered her room all throbbing withemotion; she was in bed with a high fever. He took her hand, kissedit, and covered it with tears. 

"Dear angel, " he said, when they were alone, "it is repentance. "

"And for what?" she answered. 

As she made that reply, she laid her head back upon the pillow, closedher eyes, and remained motionless, keeping the secret of hersufferings that she might not frighten her husband, --the tenderness ofa mother, the delicacy of an angel! All the woman was in her answer. 

The silence lasted long. Jules, thinking her asleep, went to questionJosephine as to her mistress's condition. 

"Madame came home half-dead, monsieur. We sent at once for MonsieurHaudry. "

"Did he come? What did he say?"

"He said nothing, monsieur. He did not seem satisfied; gave ordersthat no one should go near madame except the nurse, and said he shouldcome back this evening. "

Jules returned softly to his wife's room and sat down in a chairbefore the bed. There he remained, motionless, with his eyes fixed onthose of Clemence. When she raised her eyelids she saw him, andthrough those lids passed a tender glance, full of passionate love, free from reproach and bitterness, --a look which fell like a flame offire upon the heart of that husband, nobly absolved and forever lovedby the being whom he had killed. The presentiment of death struck boththeir minds with equal force. Their looks were blended in one anguish, as their hearts had long been blended in one love, felt equally byboth, and shared equally. No questions were uttered; a horriblecertainty was there, --in the wife an absolute generosity; in thehusband an awful remorse; then, in both souls the same vision of theend, the same conviction of fatality. 

There came a moment when, thinking his wife asleep, Jules kissed hersoftly on the forehead; then after long contemplation of thatcherished face, he said:--

"Oh God! leave me this angel still a little while that I may blot outmy wrong by love and adoration. As a daughter, she is sublime; as awife, what word can express her?"

Clemence raised her eyes; they were full of tears. 

"You pain me, " she said, in a feeble voice. 

It was getting late; Doctor Haudry came, and requested the husband towithdraw during his visit. When the doctor left the sick-room Julesasked him no question; one gesture was enough. 

"Call in consultation any physician in whom you place confidence; Imay be wrong. "

"Doctor, tell me the truth. I am a man, and I can bear it. Besides, Ihave the deepest interest in knowing it; I have certain affairs tosettle. "

"Madame Jules is dying, " said the physician. "There is some moralmalady which has made great progress, and it has complicated herphysical condition, which was already dangerous, and made still moreso by her great imprudence. To walk about barefooted at night! to goout when I forbade it! on foot yesterday in the rain, to-day in acarriage! She must have meant to kill herself. But still, my judgmentis not final; she has youth, and a most amazing nervous strength. Itmay be best to risk all to win all by employing some violent reagent. But I will not take upon myself to order it; nor will I advise it; inconsultation I shall oppose it. "

Jules returned to his wife. For eleven days and eleven nights heremained beside her bed, taking no sleep during the day when he laidhis head upon the foot of the bed. No man ever pushed the jealousy ofcare and the craving for devotion to such an extreme as he. He couldnot endure that the slightest service should be done by others for hiswife. There were days of uncertainty, false hopes, now a littlebetter, then a crisis, --in short, all the horrible mutations of deathas it wavers, hesitates, and finally strikes. Madame Jules alwaysfound strength to smile at her husband. She pitied him, knowing thatsoon he would be alone. It was a double death, --that of life, that oflove; but life grew feebler, and love grew mightier. One frightfulnight there was, when Clemence passed through that delirium whichprecedes the death of youth. She talked of her happy love, she talkedof her father; she related her mother's revelations on her death-bed, and the obligations that mother had laid upon her. She struggled, notfor life, but for her love which she could not leave. 

"Grant, O God!" she said, "that he may not know I want him to die withme. "

Jules, unable to bear the scene, was at that moment in the adjoiningroom, and did not hear the prayer, which he would doubtless havefulfilled. 

When this crisis was over, Madame Jules recovered some strength. Thenext day she was beautiful and tranquil; hope seemed to come to her;she adorned herself, as the dying often do. Then she asked to be aloneall day, and sent away her husband with one of those entreaties madeso earnestly that they are granted as we grant the prayer of a littlechild. 

Jules, indeed, had need of this day. He went to Monsieur de Maulincourto demand the satisfaction agreed upon between them. It was notwithout great difficulty that he succeeded in reaching the presence ofthe author of these misfortunes; but the vidame, when he learned thatthe visit related to an affair of honor, obeyed the precepts of hiswhole life, and himself took Jules into the baron's chamber. 

Monsieur Desmarets looked about him in search of his antagonist. 

"Yes! that is really he, " said the vidame, motioning to a man who wassitting in an arm-chair beside the fire. 

"Who is it? Jules?" said the dying man in a broken voice. 

Auguste had lost the only faculty that makes us live--memory. JulesDesmarets recoiled with horror at this sight. He could not evenrecognize the elegant young man in that thing without--as Bossuetsaid--a name in any language. It was, in truth, a corpse with whitenedhair, its bones scarce covered with a wrinkled, blighted, witheredskin, --a corpse with white eyes motionless, mouth hideously gaping, like those of idiots or vicious men killed by excesses. No trace ofintelligence remained upon that brow, nor in any feature; nor wasthere in that flabby flesh either color or the faintest appearance ofcirculating blood. Here was a shrunken, withered creature brought tothe state of those monsters we see preserved in museums, floating inalchohol. Jules fancied that he saw above that face the terrible headof Ferragus, and his own anger was silenced by such a vengeance. Thehusband found pity in his heart for the vacant wreck of what was oncea man. 

"The duel has taken place, " said the vidame. 

"But he has killed many, " answered Jules, sorrowfully. 

"And many dear ones, " added the old man. "His grandmother is dying;and I shall follow her soon into the grave. "

On the morrow of this day, Madame Jules grew worse from hour to hour. She used a moment's strength to take a letter from beneath her pillow, and gave it eagerly to her husband with a sign that was easy tounderstand, --she wished to give him, in a kiss, her last breath. Hetook it, and she died. Jules fell half-dead himself and was taken tohis brother's house. There, as he deplored in tears his absence of theday before, his brother told him that this separation was eagerlydesired by Clemence, who wished to spare him the sight of thereligious paraphernalia, so terrible to tender imaginations, which theChurch displays when conferring the last sacraments upon the dying. 

"You could not have borne it, " said his brother. "I could hardly bearthe sight myself, and all the servants wept. Clemence was like asaint. She gathered strength to bid us all good-bye, and that voice, heard for the last time, rent our hearts. When she asked pardon forthe pain she might unwillingly have caused her servants, there werecries and sobs and--"

"Enough! enough!" said Jules. 

He wanted to be alone, that he might read the last words of the womanwhom all had loved, and who had passed away like a flower. 

 "My beloved, this is my last will. Why should we not make wills for the treasures of our hearts, as for our worldly property? Was not my love my property, my all? I mean here to dispose of my love: it was the only fortune of your Clemence, and it is all that she can leave you in dying. Jules, you love me still, and I die happy. The doctors may explain my death as they think best; I alone know the true cause. I shall tell it to you, whatever pain it may cause you. I cannot carry with me, in a heart all yours, a secret which you do not share, although I die the victim of an enforced silence. 

 "Jules, I was nurtured and brought up in the deepest solitude, far from the vices and the falsehoods of the world, by the loving woman whom you knew. Society did justice to her conventional charm, for that is what pleases society; but I knew secretly her precious soul, I could cherish the mother who made my childhood a joy without bitterness, and I knew why I cherished her. Was not that to love doubly? Yes, I loved her, I feared her, I respected her; yet nothing oppressed my heart, neither fear nor respect. I was all in all to her; she was all in all to me. For nineteen happy years, without a care, my soul, solitary amid the world which muttered round me, reflected only her pure image; my heart beat for her and through her. I was scrupulously pious; I found pleasure in being innocent before God. My mother cultivated all noble and self-respecting sentiments in me. Ah! it gives me happiness to tell you, Jules, that I now know I was indeed a young girl, and that I came to you virgin in heart. 

 "When I left that absolute solitude, when, for the first time, I braided my hair and crowned it with almond blossoms, when I added, with delight, a few satin knots to my white dress, thinking of the world I was to see, and which I was curious to see--Jules, that innocent and modest coquetry was done for you! Yes, as I entered the world, I saw _you_ first of all. Your face, I remarked it; it stood out from the rest; your person pleased me; your voice, your manners all inspired me with pleasant presentiments. When you came up, when you spoke to me, the color on your forehead, the tremble in your voice, --that moment gave me memories with which I throb as I now write to you, as I now, for the last time, think of them. Our love was at first the keenest of sympathies, but it was soon discovered by each of us and then, as speedily, shared; just as, in after times, we have both equally felt and shared innumerable happinesses. From that moment my mother was only second in my heart. Next, I was yours, all yours. There is my life, and all my life, dear husband. 

 "And here is what remains for me to tell you. One evening, a few days before my mother's death, she revealed to me the secret of her life, --not without burning tears. I have loved you better since the day I learned from the priest as he absolved my mother that there are passions condemned by the world and by the Church. But surely God will not be severe when they are the sins of souls as tender as that of my mother; only, that dear woman could never bring herself to repent. She loved much, Jules; she was all love. So I have prayed daily for her, but never judged her. 

 "That night I learned the cause of her deep maternal tenderness; then I also learned that there was in Paris a man whose life and whose love centred on me; that your fortune was his doing, and that he loved you. I learned also that he was exiled from society and bore a tarnished name; but that he was more unhappy for me, for us, than for himself. My mother was all his comfort; she was dying, and I promised to take her place. With all the ardor of a soul whose feelings had never been perverted, I saw only the happiness of softening the bitterness of my mother's last moments, and I pledged myself to continue her work of secret charity, --the charity of the heart. The first time that I saw my father was beside the bed where my mother had just expired. When he raised his tearful eyes, it was to see in me a revival of his dead hopes. I had sworn, not to tell a lie, but to keep silence; and that silence what woman could have broken it?

 "There is my fault, Jules, --a fault which I expiate by death. I doubted you. But fear is so natural to a woman; above all, a woman who knows what it is that she may lose. I trembled for our love. My father's secret seemed to me the death of my happiness; and the more I loved, the more I feared. I dared not avow this feeling to my father; it would have wounded him, and in his situation a wound was agony. But, without a word from me, he shared my fears. That fatherly heart trembled for my happiness as much as I trembled for myself; but it dared not speak, obeying the same delicacy that kept me mute. Yes, Jules, I believed that you could not love the daughter of Gratien Bourignard as you loved your Clemence. Without that terror could I have kept back anything from you, --you who live in every fold of my heart?

 "The day when that odious, unfortunate young officer spoke to you, I was forced to lie. That day, for the second time in my life, I knew what pain was; that pain has steadily increased until this moment, when I speak with you for the last time. What matters now my father's position? You know all. I could, by the help of my love, have conquered my illness and borne its sufferings; but I cannot stifle the voice of doubt. Is it not probable that my origin would affect the purity of your love and weaken it, diminish it? That fear nothing has been able to quench in me. There, Jules, is the cause of my death. I cannot live fearing a word, a look, --a word you may never say, a look you may never give; but, I cannot help it, I fear them. I die beloved; there is my consolation. 

 "I have known, for the last three years, that my father and his friends have well-nigh moved the world to deceive the world. That I might have a station in life, they have bought a dead man, a reputation, a fortune, so that a living man might live again, restored; and all this for you, for us. We were never to have known of it. Well, my death will save my father from that falsehood, for he will not survive me. 

 "Farewell, Jules, my heart is all here. To show you my love in its agony of fear, is not that bequeathing my whole soul to you? I could never have the strength to speak to you; I have only enough to write. I have just confessed to God the sins of my life. I have promised to fill my mind with the King of Heaven only; but I must confess to him who is, for me, the whole of earth. Alas! shall I not be pardoned for this last sigh between the life that was and the life that shall be? Farewell, my Jules, my loved one! I go to God, with whom is Love without a cloud, to whom you will follow me. There, before his throne, united forever, we may love each other throughout the ages. This hope alone can comfort me. If I am worthy of being there at once, I will follow you through life. My soul shall bear your company; it will wrap you about, for _you_ must stay here still, --ah! here below. Lead a holy life that you may the more surely come to me. You can do such good upon this earth! Is it not an angel's mission for the suffering soul to shed happiness about him, --to give to others that which he has not? I bequeath you to the Unhappy. Their smiles, their tears, are the only ones of which I cannot be jealous. We shall find a charm in sweet beneficence. Can we not live together still if you would join my name--your Clemence--in these good works?

 "After loving as we have loved, there is naught but God, Jules. God does not lie; God never betrays. Adore him only, I charge you! Lead those who suffer up to him; comfort the sorrowing members of his Church. Farewell, dear soul that I have filled! I know you; you will never love again. I may die happy in the thought that makes all women happy. Yes, my grave will be your heart. After this childhood I have just related, has not my life flowed on within that heart? Dead, you will never drive me forth. I am proud of that rare life! You will know me only in the flower of my youth; I leave you regrets without disillusions. Jules, it is a happy death. 

 "You, who have so fully understood me, may I ask one thing more of you, --superfluous request, perhaps, the fulfilment of a woman's fancy, the prayer of a jealousy we all must feel, --I pray you to burn all that especially belonged to _us_, destroy our chamber, annihilate all that is a memory of our happiness. 

 "Once more, farewell, --the last farewell! It is all love, and so will be my parting thought, my parting breath. "

When Jules had read that letter there came into his heart one of thosewild frenzies of which it is impossible to describe the awful anguish. All sorrows are individual; their effects are not subjected to anyfixed rule. Certain men will stop their ears to hear nothing; somewomen close their eyes hoping never to see again; great and splendidsouls are met with who fling themselves into sorrow as into an abyss. In the matter of despair, all is true. 

 CHAPTER V

 CONCLUSION

Jules escaped from his brother's house and returned home, wishing topass the night beside his wife, and see till the last moment thatcelestial creature. As he walked along with an indifference to lifeknown only to those who have reached the last degree of wretchedness, he thought of how, in India, the law ordained that widows should die;he longed to die. He was not yet crushed; the fever of his grief wasstill upon him. He reached his home and went up into the sacredchamber; he saw his Clemence on the bed of death, beautiful, like asaint, her hair smoothly laid upon her forehead, her hands joined, herbody wrapped already in its shroud. Tapers were lighted, a priest waspraying, Josephine kneeling in a corner, wept, and, near the bed, weretwo men. One was Ferragus. He stood erect, motionless, gazing at hisdaughter with dry eyes; his head you might have taken for bronze: hedid not see Jules. 

The other man was Jacquet, --Jacquet, to whom Madame Jules had beenever kind. Jacquet felt for her one of those respectful friendshipswhich rejoice the untroubled heart; a gentle passion; love without itsdesires and its storms. He had come to pay his debt of tears, to bid along adieu to the wife of his friend, to kiss, for the first time, theicy brow of the woman he had tacitly made his sister. 

All was silence. Here death was neither terrible as in the churches, nor pompous as it makes its way along the streets; no, it was death inthe home, a tender death; here were pomps of the heart, tears drawnfrom the eyes of all. Jules sat down beside Jacquet and pressed hishand; then, without uttering a word, all these persons remained asthey were till morning. 

When daylight paled the tapers, Jacquet, foreseeing the painful sceneswhich would then take place, drew Jules away into another room. Atthis moment the husband looked at the father, and Ferragus looked atJules. The two sorrows arraigned each other, measured each other, andcomprehended each other in that look. A flash of fury shone for aninstant in the eyes of Ferragus. 

"You killed her, " thought he. 

"Why was I distrusted?" seemed the answer of the husband. 

The scene was one that might have passed between two tigersrecognizing the futility of a struggle and, after a moment'shesitation, turning away, without even a roar. 

"Jacquet, " said Jules, "have you attended to everything?"

"Yes, to everything, " replied his friend, "but a man had forestalledme who had ordered and paid for all. "

"He tears his daughter from me!" cried the husband, with the violenceof despair. 

Jules rushed back to his wife's room; but the father was there nolonger. Clemence had now been placed in a leaden coffin, and workmenwere employed in soldering the cover. Jules returned, horrified by thesight; the sound of the hammers the men were using made himmechanically burst into tears. 

"Jacquet, " he said, "out of this dreadful night one idea has come tome, only one, but one I must make a reality at any price. I cannot letClemence stay in any cemetery in Paris. I wish to burn her, --to gatherher ashes and keep her with me. Say nothing of this, but manage on mybehalf to have it done. I am going to _her_ chamber, where I shallstay until the time has come to go. You alone may come in there totell me what you have done. Go, and spare nothing. "

During the morning, Madame Jules, after lying in a mortuary chapel atthe door of her house, was taken to Saint-Roch. The church was hungwith black throughout. The sort of luxury thus displayed had drawn acrowd; for in Paris all things are sights, even true grief. There arepeople who stand at their windows to see how a son deplores a motheras he follows her body; there are others who hire commodious seats tosee how a head is made to fall. No people in the world have suchinsatiate eyes as the Parisians. On this occasion, inquisitive mindswere particularly surprised to see the six lateral chapels atSaint-Roch also hung in black. Two men in mourning were listening to amortuary mass said in each chapel. In the chancel no other persons butMonsieur Desmarets, the notary, and Jacquet were present; the servantsof the household were outside the screen. To church loungers there wassomething inexplicable in so much pomp and so few mourners. But Juleshad been determined that no indifferent persons should be present atthe ceremony. 

High mass was celebrated with the sombre magnificence of funeralservices. Beside the ministers in ordinary of Saint-Roch, thirteenpriests from other parishes were present. Perhaps never did the _Diesirae_ produce upon Christians, assembled by chance, by curiosity, andthirsting for emotions, an effect so profound, so nervously glacial asthat now caused by this hymn when the eight voices of the precentors, accompanied by the voices of the priests and the choir-boys, intonedit alternately. From the six lateral chapels twelve other childishvoices rose shrilly in grief, mingling with the choir voiceslamentably. From all parts of the church this mourning issued; criesof anguish responded to the cries of fear. That terrible music was thevoice of sorrows hidden from the world, of secret friendships weepingfor the dead. Never, in any human religion, have the terrors of thesoul, violently torn from the body and stormily shaken in presence ofthe fulminating majesty of God, been rendered with such force. Beforethat clamor of clamors all artists and their most passionatecompositions must bow humiliated. No, nothing can stand beside thathymn, which sums all human passions, gives them a galvanic life beyondthe coffin, and leaves them, palpitating still, before the living andavenging God. These cries of childhood, mingling with the tones ofolder voices, including thus in the Song of Death all human life andits developments, recalling the sufferings of the cradle, swelling tothe griefs of other ages in the stronger male voices and the quaveringof the priests, --all this strident harmony, big with lightning andthunderbolts, does it not speak with equal force to the daringimagination, the coldest heart, nay, to philosophers themselves? As wehear it, we think God speaks; the vaulted arches of no church are merematerial; they have a voice, they tremble, they scatter fear by themight of their echoes. We think we see unnumbered dead arising andholding out their hands. It is no more a father, a wife, a child, --humanity itself is rising from its dust. 

It is impossible to judge of the catholic, apostolic, and Roman faith, unless the soul has known that deepest grief of mourning for a lovedone lying beneath the pall; unless it has felt the emotions that fillthe heart, uttered by that Hymn of Despair, by those cries that crushthe mind, by that sacred fear augmenting strophe by strophe, ascendingheavenward, which terrifies, belittles, and elevates the soul, andleaves within our minds, as the last sound ceases, a consciousness ofimmortality. We have met and struggled with the vast idea of theInfinite. After that, all is silent in the church. No word is said;sceptics themselves _know not what they are feeling_. Spanish geniusalone was able to bring this untold majesty to untold griefs. 

When the solemn ceremony was over, twelve men came from the sixchapels and stood around the coffin to hear the song of hope which theChurch intones for the Christian soul before the human form is buried. Then, each man entered alone a mourning-coach; Jacquet and MonsieurDesmarets took the thirteenth; the servants followed on foot. An hourlater, they were at the summit of that cemetery popularly calledPere-Lachaise. The unknown twelve men stood in a circle round thegrave, where the coffin had been laid in presence of a crowd ofloiterers gathered from all parts of this public garden. After a fewshort prayers the priest threw a handful of earth on the remains ofthis woman, and the grave-diggers, having asked for their fee, madehaste to fill the grave in order to dig another. 

Here this history seems to end; but perhaps it would be incomplete if, after giving a rapid sketch of Parisian life, and following certain ofits capricious undulations, the effects of death were omitted. Deathin Paris is unlike death in any other capital; few persons know thetrials of true grief in its struggle with civilization, and thegovernment of Paris. Perhaps, also, Monsieur Jules and Ferragus XXIII. May have proved sufficiently interesting to make a few words on theirafter life not entirely out of place. Besides, some persons like to betold all, and wish, as one of our cleverest critics has remarked, toknow by what chemical process oil was made to burn in Aladdin's lamp. 

Jacquet, being a government employee, naturally applied to theauthorities for permission to exhume the body of Madame Jules and burnit. He went to see the prefect of police, under whose protection thedead sleep. That functionary demanded a petition. The blank wasbrought that gives to sorrow its proper administrative form; it wasnecessary to employ the bureaucratic jargon to express the wishes of aman so crushed that words, perhaps, were lacking to him, and it wasalso necessary to coldly and briefly repeat on the margin the natureof the request, which was done in these words: "The petitionerrespectfully asks for the incineration of his wife. "

When the official charged with making the report to the Councillor ofState and prefect of police read that marginal note, explaining theobject of the petition, and couched, as requested, in the plainestterms, he said:--

"This is a serious matter! my report cannot be ready under eightdays. "

Jules, to whom Jacquet was obliged to speak of this delay, comprehended the words that Ferragus had said in his hearing, "I'llburn Paris!" Nothing seemed to him now more natural than to annihilatethat receptacle of monstrous things. 

"But, " he said to Jacquet, "you must go to the minister of theInterior, and get your minister to speak to him. "

Jacquet went to the minister of the Interior, and asked an audience;it was granted, but the time appointed was two weeks later. Jacquetwas a persistent man. He travelled from bureau to bureau, and finallyreached the private secretary of the minister of the Interior, to whomhe had made the private secretary of his own minister say a word. These high protectors aiding, he obtained for the morrow a secondinterview, in which, being armed with a line from the autocrat ofForeign affairs to the pacha of the Interior, Jacquet hoped to carrythe matter by assault. He was ready with reasons, and answers toperemptory questions, --in short, he was armed at all points; but hefailed. 

"This matter does not concern me, " said the minister; "it belongs tothe prefect of police. Besides, there is no law giving a husband anylegal right to the body of his wife, nor to fathers those of theirchildren. The matter is serious. There are questions of public utilityinvolved which will have to be examined. The interests of the city ofParis might suffer. Therefore if the matter depended on me, which itdoes not, I could not decide _hic et nunc_; I should require areport. "

A _report_ is to the present system of administration what limbo orhades is to Christianity. Jacquet knew very well the mania for"reports"; he had not waited until this occasion to groan at thatbureaucratic absurdity. He knew that since the invasion into publicbusiness of the _Report_ (an administrative revolution consummated in1804) there was never known a single minister who would take uponhimself to have an opinion or to decide the slightest matter, unlessthat opinion or matter had been winnowed, sifted, and plucked to bitsby the paper-spoilers, quill-drivers, and splendid intellects of hisparticular bureau. Jacquet--he was one of those who are worthy ofPlutarch as biographer--saw that he had made a mistake in hismanagement of the affair, and had, in fact, rendered it impossible bytrying to proceed legally. The thing he should have done was to havetaken Madame Jules to one of Desmaret's estates in the country; andthere, under the good-natured authority of some village mayor to havegratified the sorrowful longing of his friend. Law, constitutional andadministrative, begets nothing; it is a barren monster for peoples, for kings, and for private interests. But the peoples decipher noprinciples but those that are writ in blood, and the evils of legalitywill always be pacific; it flattens a nation down, that is all. Jacquet, a man of modern liberty, returned home reflecting on thebenefits of arbitrary power. 

When he went with his report to Jules, he found it necessary todeceive him, for the unhappy man was in a high fever, unable to leavehis bed. The minister of the Interior mentioned, at a ministerialdinner that same evening, the singular fancy of a Parisian in wishingto burn his wife after the manner of the Romans. The clubs of Paristook up the subject, and talked for a while of the burials ofantiquity. Ancient things were just then becoming a fashion, and somepersons declared that it would be a fine thing to re-establish, fordistinguished persons, the funeral pyre. This opinion had itsdefenders and its detractors. Some said that there were too many suchpersonages, and the price of wood would be enormously increased bysuch a custom; moreover, it would be absurd to see our ancestors intheir urns in the procession at Longchamps. And if the urns werevaluable, they were likely some day to be sold at auction, full ofrespectable ashes, or seized by creditors, --a race of men whorespected nothing. The other side made answer that our ancestors weremuch safer in urns than at Pere-Lachaise, for before very long thecity of Paris would be compelled to order a Saint-Bartholomew againstits dead, who were invading the neighboring country, and threateningto invade the territory of Brie. It was, in short, one of those futilebut witty discussions which sometimes cause deep and painful wounds. Happily for Jules, he knew nothing of the conversations, the wittyspeeches, and arguments which his sorrow had furnished to the tonguesof Paris. 

The prefect of police was indignant that Monsieur Jacquet had appealedto a minister to avoid the wise delays of the commissioners of thepublic highways; for the exhumation of Madame Jules was a questionbelonging to that department. The police bureau was doing its best toreply promptly to the petition; one appeal was quite sufficient to setthe office in motion, and once in motion matters would go far. But asfor the administration, that might take the case before the Council ofstate, --a machine very difficult indeed to move. 

After the second day Jacquet was obliged to tell his friend that hemust renounce his desire, because, in a city where the number of tearsshed on black draperies is tariffed, where the laws recognize sevenclasses of funerals, where the scrap of ground to hold the dead issold at its weight in silver, where grief is worked for what it isworth, where the prayers of the Church are costly, and the vestryclaim payment for extra voices in the _Dies irae_, --all attempt to getout of the rut prescribed by the authorities for sorrow is useless andimpossible. 

"It would have been to me, " said Jules, "a comfort in my misery. Imeant to have died away from here, and I hoped to hold her in my armsin a distant grave. I did not know that bureaucracy could send itsclaws into our very coffins. "

He now wished to see if room had been left for him beside his wife. The two friends went to the cemetery. When they reached it they found(as at the doors of museums, galleries, and coach-offices) _ciceroni_, who proposed to guide them through the labyrinth of Pere-Lachaise. Neither Jules nor Jacquet could have found the spot where Clemencelay. Ah, frightful anguish! They went to the lodge to consult theporter of the cemetery. The dead have a porter, and there are hourswhen the dead are "not receiving. " It is necessary to upset all therules and regulations of the upper and lower police to obtainpermission to weep at night, in silence and solitude, over the gravewhere a loved one lies. There's a rule for summer and a rule forwinter about this. 

Certainly, of all the porters in Paris, the porter of Pere-Lachaise isthe luckiest. In the first place, he has no gate-cord to pull; then, instead of a lodge, he has a house, --an establishment which is notquite ministerial, although a vast number of persons come under hisadministration, and a good many employees. And this governor of thedead has a salary, with emoluments, and acts under powers of whichnone complain; he plays despot at his ease. His lodge is not a placeof business, though it has departments where the book-keeping ofreceipts, expenses, and profits, is carried on. The man is not a_suisse_, nor a concierge, nor actually a porter. The gate whichadmits the dead stands wide open; and though there are monuments andbuildings to be cared for, he is not a care-taker. In short, he is anindefinable anomaly, an authority which participates in all, and yetis nothing, --an authority placed, like the dead on whom it is based, outside of all. Nevertheless, this exceptional man grows out of thecity of Paris, --that chimerical creation like the ship which is itsemblem, that creature of reason moving on a thousand paws which areseldom unanimous in motion. 

This guardian of the cemetery may be called a concierge who hasreached the condition of a functionary, not soluble by dissolution!His place is far from being a sinecure. He does not allow any one tobe buried without a permit; he must count his dead. He points out toyou in this vast field the six feet square of earth where you will oneday put all you love, or all you hate, a mistress, or a cousin. Yes, remember this: all the feelings and emotions of Paris come to endhere, at this porter's lodge, where they are administrationized. Thisman has registers in which his dead are booked; they are in theirgraves, and also on his records. He has under him keepers, gardeners, grave-diggers, and their assistants. He is a personage. Mourninghearts do not speak to him at first. He does not appear at all exceptin serious cases, such as one corpse mistaken for another, a murderedbody, an exhumation, a dead man coming to life. The bust of thereigning king is in his hall; possibly he keeps the late royal, imperial, and quasi-royal busts in some cupboard, --a sort of littlePere-Lachaise all ready for revolutions. In short, he is a public man, an excellent man, good husband and good father, --epitaph apart. But somany diverse sentiments have passed before him on biers; he has seenso many tears, true and false; he has beheld sorrow under so manyaspects and on so many faces; he has heard such endless thousands ofeternal woes, --that to him sorrow has come to be nothing more than astone an inch thick, four feet long, and twenty-four inches wide. Asfor regrets, they are the annoyances of his office; he neitherbreakfasts nor dines without first wiping off the rain of aninconsolable affliction. He is kind and tender to other feelings; hewill weep over a stage-hero, over Monsieur Germeuil in the "Aubergedes Adrets, " the man with the butter-colored breeches, murdered byMacaire; but his heart is ossified in the matter of real dead men. Dead men are ciphers, numbers, to him; it is his business to organizedeath. Yet he does meet, three times in a century, perhaps, with anoccasion when his part becomes sublime, and then he _is_ sublimethrough every hour of his day, --in times of pestilence. 

When Jacquet approached him this absolute monarch was evidently out oftemper. 

"I told you, " he was saying, "to water the flowers from the rueMassena to the place Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angely. You paid noattention to me! _Sac-a-papier_! suppose the relations should take itinto their heads to come here to-day because the weather is fine, whatwould they say to me? They'd shriek as if they were burned; they'd sayhorrid things of us, and calumniate us--"

"Monsieur, " said Jacquet, "we want to know where Madame Jules isburied. "

"Madame Jules _who_?" he asked. "We've had three Madame Jules withinthe last week. Ah, " he said, interrupting himself, "here comes thefuneral of Monsieur le Baron de Maulincour! A fine procession, that!He has soon followed his grandmother. Some families, when they beginto go, rattle down like a wager. Lots of bad blood in Parisians. "

"Monsieur, " said Jacquet, touching him on the arm, "the person I spokeof is Madame Jules Desmarets, the wife of the broker of that name. "

"Ah, I know!" he replied, looking at Jacquet. "Wasn't it a funeralwith thirteen mourning coaches, and only one mourner in the twelvefirst? It was so droll we all noticed it--"

"Monsieur, take care, Monsieur Desmarets is with me; he might hearyou, and what you say is not seemly. "

"I beg pardon, monsieur! you are quite right. Excuse me, I took youfor heirs. Monsieur, " he continued, after consulting a plan of thecemetery, "Madame Jules is in the rue Marechal Lefebre, alley No. 4, between Mademoiselle Raucourt, of the Comedie-Francaise, and MonsieurMoreau-Malvin, a butcher, for whom a handsome tomb in white marble hasbeen ordered, which will be one of the finest in the cemetery--"

"Monsieur, " said Jacquet, interrupting him, "that does not help us. "

"True, " said the official, looking round him. "Jean, " he cried, to aman whom he saw at a little distance, "conduct these gentlemen to thegrave of Madame Jules Desmarets, the broker's wife. You know where itis, --near to Mademoiselle Raucourt, the tomb where there's a bust. "

The two friends followed the guide; but they did not reach the steeppath which leads to the upper part of the cemetery without having topass through a score of proposals and requests, made, with honiedsoftness, by the touts of marble-workers, iron-founders, andmonumental sculptors. 

"If monsieur would like to order _something_, we would do it on themost reasonable terms. "

Jacquet was fortunate enough to be able to spare his friend thehearing of these proposals so agonizing to bleeding hearts; andpresently they reached the resting-place. When Jules beheld the earthso recently dug, into which the masons had stuck stakes to mark theplace for the stone posts required to support the iron railing, heturned, and leaned upon Jacquet's shoulder, raising himself now andagain to cast long glances at the clay mound where he was forced toleave the remains of the being in and by whom he still lived. 

"How miserably she lies there!" he said. 

"But she is not there, " said Jacquet, "she is in your memory. Come, let us go; let us leave this odious cemetery, where the dead areadorned like women for a ball. "

"Suppose we take her away?"

"Can it be done?"

"All things can be done!" cried Jules. "So, I shall lie there, " headded, after a pause. "There is room enough. "

Jacquet finally succeeded in getting him to leave the great enclosure, divided like a chessboard by iron railings and elegant compartments, in which were tombs decorated with palms, inscriptions, and tears ascold as the stones on which sorrowing hearts had caused to be carvedtheir regrets and coats of arms. Many good words are there engraved inblack letters, epigrams reproving the curious, _concetti_, wittilyturned farewells, rendezvous given at which only one side appears, pretentious biographies, glitter, rubbish and tinsel. Here thefloriated thyrsus, there a lance-head, farther on Egyptian urns, nowand then a few cannon; on all sides the emblems of professions, andevery style of art, --Moorish, Greek, Gothic, --friezes, ovules, paintings, vases, guardian-angels, temples, together with innumerable_immortelles_, and dead rose-bushes. It is a forlorn comedy! It isanother Paris, with its streets, its signs, its industries, and itslodgings; but a Paris seen through the diminishing end of anopera-glass, a microscopic Paris reduced to the littleness of shadows, spectres, dead men, a human race which no longer has anything greatabout it, except its vanity. There Jules saw at his feet, in the longvalley of the Seine, between the slopes of Vaugirard and Meudon andthose of Belleville and Montmartre, the real Paris, wrapped in a mistyblue veil produced by smoke, which the sunlight tendered at thatmoment diaphanous. He glanced with a constrained eye at those fortythousand houses, and said, pointing to the space comprised between thecolumn of the Place Vendome and the gilded cupola of the Invalides:--

"She was wrenched from me there by the fatal curiosity of that worldwhich excites itself and meddles solely for excitement andoccupation. "

Twelve miles from where they were, on the banks of the Seine, in amodest village lying on the slope of a hill of that long hilly basinthe middle of which great Paris stirs like a child in its cradle, adeath scene was taking place, far indeed removed from Parisian pomps, with no accompaniment of torches or tapers or mourning-coaches, without prayers of the Church, in short, a death in all simplicity. Here are the facts: The body of a young girl was found early in themorning, stranded on the river-bank in the slime and reeds of theSeine. Men employed in dredging sand saw it as they were getting intotheir frail boat on their way to their work. 

"_Tiens_! fifty francs earned!" said one of them. 

"True, " said the other. 

They approached the body. 

"A handsome girl! We had better go and make our statement. "

And the two dredgers, after covering the body with their jackets, wentto the house of the village mayor, who was much embarrassed at havingto make out the legal papers necessitated by this discovery. 

The news of this event spread with the telegraphic rapidity peculiarto regions where social communications have no distractions, wheregossip, scandal, calumny, in short, the social tale which feasts theworld has no break of continuity from one boundary to another. Beforelong, persons arriving at the mayor's office released him from allembarrassment. They were able to convert the _proces-verbal_ into amere certificate of death, by recognizing the body as that of theDemoiselle Ida Gruget, corset-maker, living rue de laCorderie-du-Temple, number 14. The judiciary police of Paris arrived, and the mother, bearing her daughter's last letter. Amid the mother'smoans, a doctor certified to death by asphyxia, through the injectionof black blood into the pulmonary system, --which settled the matter. The inquest over, and the certificates signed, by six o'clock the sameevening authority was given to bury the grisette. The rector of theparish, however, refused to receive her into the church or to pray forher. Ida Gruget was therefore wrapped in a shroud by an oldpeasant-woman, put into a common pine-coffin, and carried to thevillage cemetery by four men, followed by a few inquisitivepeasant-women, who talked about the death with wonder mingled withsome pity. 

The widow Gruget was charitably taken in by an old lady who preventedher from following the sad procession of her daughter's funeral. A manof triple functions, the bell-ringer, beadle, and grave-digger of theparish, had dug a grave in the half-acre cemetery behind the church, --a church well known, a classic church, with a square tower andpointed roof covered with slate, supported on the outside by strongcorner buttresses. Behind the apse of the chancel, lay the cemetery, enclosed with a dilapidated wall, --a little field full of hillocks;no marble monuments, no visitors, but surely in every furrow, tearsand true regrets, which were lacking to Ida Gruget. She was cast intoa corner full of tall grass and brambles. After the coffin had beenlaid in this field, so poetic in its simplicity, the grave-diggerfound himself alone, for night was coming on. While filling the grave, he stopped now and then to gaze over the wall along the road. He wasstanding thus, resting on his spade, and looking at the Seine, whichhad brought him the body. 

"Poor girl!" cried the voice of a man who suddenly appeared. 

"How you made me jump, monsieur, " said the grave-digger. 

"Was any service held over the body you are burying?"

"No, monsieur. Monsieur le cure wasn't willing. This is the firstperson buried here who didn't belong to the parish. Everybody knowseverybody else in this place. Does monsieur--Why, he's gone!"

Some days had elapsed when a man dressed in black called at the houseof Monsieur Jules Desmarets, and without asking to see him carried upto the chamber of his wife a large porphyry vase, on which wereinscribed the words:--

 INVITA LEGE CONJUGI MOERENTI FILIOLAE CINERES RESTITUIT AMICIS XII. JUVANTIBUS MORIBUNDUS PATER. 

"What a man!" cried Jules, bursting into tears. 

Eight days sufficed the husband to obey all the wishes of his wife, and to arrange his own affairs. He sold his practice to a brother ofMartin Falleix, and left Paris while the authorities were stilldiscussing whether it was lawful for a citizen to dispose of the bodyof his wife. 

 * * * * *

Who has not encountered on the boulevards of Paris, at the turn of astreet, or beneath the arcades of the Palais-Royal, or in any part ofthe world where chance may offer him the sight, a being, man or woman, at whose aspect a thousand confused thoughts spring into his mind? Atthat sight we are suddenly interested, either by features of somefantastic conformation which reveal an agitated life, or by a singulareffect of the whole person, produced by gestures, air, gait, clothes;or by some deep, intense look; or by other inexpressible signs whichseize our minds suddenly and forcibly without our being able toexplain even to ourselves the cause of our emotion. The next day otherthoughts and other images have carried out of sight that passingdream. But if we meet the same personage again, either passing at somefixed hour, like the clerk of a mayor's office, or wandering about thepublic promenades, like those individuals who seem to be a sort offurniture of the streets of Paris, and who are always to be found inpublic places, at first representations or noted restaurants, --thenthis being fastens himself or herself on our memory, and remains therelike the first volume of a novel the end of which is lost. We aretempted to question this unknown person, and say, "Who are you?" "Whyare you lounging here?" "By what right do you wear that pleatedruffle, that faded waistcoat, and carry that cane with an ivory top;why those blue spectacles; for what reason do you cling to that cravatof a dead and gone fashion?" Among these wandering creations somebelong to the species of the Greek Hermae; they say nothing to thesoul; _they are there_, and that is all. Why? is known to none. Suchfigure are a type of those used by sculptors for the four Seasons, forCommerce, for Plenty, etc. Some others--former lawyers, old merchants, elderly generals--move and walk, and yet seem stationary. Like oldtrees that are half uprooted by the current of a river, they seemnever to take part in the torrent of Paris, with its youthful, activecrowd. It is impossible to know if their friends have forgotten tobury them, or whether they have escaped out of their coffins. At anyrate, they have reached the condition of semi-fossils. 

One of these Parisian Melmoths had come within a few days into aneighborhood of sober, quiet people, who, when the weather is fine, are invariably to be found in the space which lies between the southentrance of the Luxembourg and the north entrance of the Observatoire, --a space without a name, the neutral space of Paris. There, Paris isno longer; and there, Paris still lingers. The spot is a mingling ofstreet, square, boulevard, fortification, garden, avenue, high-road, province, and metropolis; certainly, all of that is to be found there, and yet the place is nothing of all that, --it is a desert. Around thisspot without a name stand the Foundling hospital, the Bourbe, theCochin hospital, the Capucines, the hospital La Rochefoucauld, theDeaf and Dumb Asylum, the hospital of the Val-de-Grace; in short, allthe vices and all the misfortunes of Paris find their asylum there. And (that nothing may lack in this philanthropic centre) Science therestudies the tides and longitudes, Monsieur de Chateaubriand haserected the Marie-Therese Infirmary, and the Carmelites have founded aconvent. The great events of life are represented by bells which ringincessantly through this desert, --for the mother giving birth, for thebabe that is born, for the vice that succumbs, for the toiler whodies, for the virgin who prays, for the old man shaking with cold, forgenius self-deluded. And a few steps off is the cemetery ofMont-Parnasse, where, hour after hour, the sorry funerals of thefaubourg Saint-Marceau wend their way. This esplanade, which commandsa view of Paris, has been taken possession of by bowl-players; it is, in fact, a sort of bowling green frequented by old gray faces, belonging to kindly, worthy men, who seem to continue the race of ourancestors, whose countenances must only be compared with those oftheir surroundings. 

The man who had become, during the last few days, an inhabitant ofthis desert region, proved an assiduous attendant at these games ofbowls; and must, undoubtedly, be considered the most striking creatureof these various groups, who (if it is permissible to liken Parisiansto the different orders of zoology) belonged to the genus mollusk. Thenew-comer kept sympathetic step with the _cochonnet_, --the little bowlwhich serves as a goal and on which the interest of the game mustcentre. He leaned against a tree when the _cochonnet_ stopped; then, with the same attention that a dog gives to his master's gestures, helooked at the other bowls flying through the air, or rolling along theground. You might have taken him for the weird and watchful genii ofthe _cochonnet_. He said nothing; and the bowl-players--the mostfanatic men that can be encountered among the sectarians of any faith--had never asked the reason of his dogged silence; in fact, the mostobserving of them thought him deaf and dumb. 

When it happened that the distances between the bowls and the_cochonnet_ had to be measured, the cane of this silent being was usedas a measure, the players coming up and taking it from the icy handsof the old man and returning it without a word or even a sign offriendliness. The loan of his cane seemed a servitude to which he hadnegatively consented. When a shower fell, he stayed near the_cochonnet_, the slave of the bowls, and the guardian of theunfinished game. Rain affected him no more than the fine weather did;he was, like the players themselves, an intermediary species between aParisian who has the lowest intellect of his kind and an animal whichhas the highest. 

In other respects, pallid and shrunken, indifferent to his own person, vacant in mind, he often came bareheaded, showing his sparse whitehair, and his square, yellow, bald skull, like the knee of a beggarseen through his tattered trousers. His mouth was half-open, no ideaswere in his glance, no precise object appeared in his movements; henever smiled; he never raised his eyes to heaven, but kept themhabitually on the ground, where he seemed to be looking for something. At four o'clock an old woman arrived, to take him Heaven knows where;which she did by towing him along by the arm, as a young girl drags awilful goat which still wants to browse by the wayside. This old manwas a horrible thing to see. 

In the afternoon of the day when Jules Desmarets left Paris, histravelling-carriage, in which he was alone, passed rapidly through therue de l'Est, and came out upon the esplanade of the Observatoire atthe moment when the old man, leaning against a tree, had allowed hiscane to be taken from his hand amid the noisy vociferations of theplayers, pacifically irritated. Jules, thinking that he recognizedthat face, felt an impulse to stop, and at the same instant thecarriage came to a standstill; for the postilion, hemmed in by somehandcarts, had too much respect for the game to call upon the playersto make way for him. 

"It is he!" said Jules, beholding in that human wreck, FerragusXXIII. , chief of the Devorants. Then, after a pause, he added, "How heloved her!--Go on, postilion. "

ADDENDUM

 Note: Ferragus is the first part of a trilogy. Part two is entitled The Duchesse de Langeais and part three is The Girl with the Golden Eyes. In other addendum references all three stories are usually combined under the title The Thirteen. 

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

Bourignard, Gratien-Henri-Victor-Jean-Joseph The Girl with the Golden Eyes

Desmartes, Jules Cesar Birotteau

Desmartes, Madame Jules Cesar Birotteau

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

Gruget, Madame Etienne The Government Clerks A Bachelor's Establishment

Haudry (doctor) Cesar Birotteau A Bachelor's Establishment The Seamy Side of History Cousin Pons

Langeais, Duchesse Antoinette de Father Goriot The Duchesse of Langeais

Marsay, Henri de The Duchesse of Langeais The Girl with the Golden Eyes The Unconscious Humorists Another Study of Woman The Lily of the Valley Father Goriot Jealousies of a Country Town Ursule Mirouet A Marriage Settlement Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Letters of Two Brides The Ball at Sceaux Modeste Mignon The Secrets of a Princess The Gondreville Mystery A Daughter of Eve

Maulincour, Baronne de A Marriage Settlement

Meynardie, Madame Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de Father Goriot Eugenie Grandet Cesar Birotteau Melmoth Reconciled Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Commission in Lunacy Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Modeste Mignon The Firm of Nucingen Another Study of Woman A Daughter of Eve The Member for Arcis

Pamiers, Vidame de The Duchesse of Langeais Jealousies of a Country Town

Ronquerolles, Marquis de The Imaginary Mistress The Duchess of Langeais The Girl with the Golden Eyes The Peasantry Ursule Mirouet A Woman of Thirty Another Study of Woman The Member for Arcis

Serizy, Comtesse de A Start in Life The Duchesse of Langeais Ursule Mirouet A Woman of Thirty Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Another Study of Woman The Imaginary Mistress