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The Brotherhood of Consolation

by Honoré de Balzac · English · Gutenberg #1967 · 444,802 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Brotherhood of Consolation

Author: Honoré de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley


        
Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #1967]
                Most recently updated: November 22, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1967

Credits: Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROTHERHOOD OF CONSOLATION ***




Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny





THE BROTHERHOOD OF CONSOLATION


By Honore De Balzac


Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley





FIRST EPISODE. MADAME DE LA CHANTERIE




I. THE MALADY OF THE AGE

On a fine evening in the month of September, 1836, a man about thirty
years of age was leaning on the parapet of that quay from which
a spectator can look up the Seine from the Jardin des Plantes to
Notre-Dame, and down, along the vast perspective of the river, to the
Louvre. There is not another point of view to compare with it in the
capital of ideas. We feel ourselves on the quarter-deck, as it were,
of a gigantic vessel. We dream of Paris from the days of the Romans
to those of the Franks, from the Normans to the Burgundians, the
Middle-Ages, the Valois, Henri IV., Louis XIV., Napoleon, and
Louis-Philippe. Vestiges are before us of all those sovereignties,
in monuments that recall their memory. The cupola of Sainte-Genevieve
towers above the Latin quarter. Behind us rises the noble apsis of the
cathedral. The Hotel de Ville tells of revolutions; the Hotel-Dieu, of
the miseries of Paris. After gazing at the splendors of the Louvre we
can, by taking two steps, look down upon the rags and tatters of that
ignoble nest of houses huddling between the quai de la Tournelle and the
Hotel-Dieu,--a foul spot, which a modern municipality is endeavoring at
the present moment to remove.

In 1836 this marvellous scene presented still another lesson to the eye:
between the Parisian leaning on the parapet and the cathedral lay the
“Terrain” (such was the ancient name of this barren spot), still strewn
with the ruins of the Archiepiscopal Palace. When we contemplate from
that quay so many commemorating scenes, when the soul has grasped the
past as it does the present of this city of Paris, then indeed Religion
seems to have alighted there as if to spread her hands above the sorrows
of both banks and extend her arms from the faubourg Saint-Antoine to
the faubourg Saint-Marceau. Let us hope that this sublime unity may be
completed by the erection of an episcopal palace of the Gothic order;
which shall replace the formless buildings now standing between the
“Terrain,” the rue d’Arcole, the cathedral, and the quai de la Cite.

This spot, the heart of ancient Paris, is the loneliest and most
melancholy of regions. The waters of the Seine break there noisily, the
cathedral casts its shadows at the setting of the sun. We can easily
believe that serious thoughts must have filled the mind of a man
afflicted with a moral malady as he leaned upon that parapet. Attracted
perhaps by the harmony between his thoughts and those to which these
diverse scenes gave birth, he rested his hands upon the coping and gave
way to a double contemplation,--of Paris, and of himself! The shadows
deepened, the lights shone out afar, but still he did not move, carried
along as he was on the current of a meditation, such as comes to many of
us, big with the future and rendered solemn by the past.

After a while he heard two persons coming towards him, whose voices had
caught his attention on the bridge which joins the Ile de la Cite with
the quai de la Tournelle. These persons no doubt thought themselves
alone, and therefore spoke louder than they would have done in more
frequented places. The voices betrayed a discussion which apparently,
from the few words that reached the ear of the involuntary listener,
related to a loan of money. Just as the pair approached the quay, one
of them, dressed like a working man, left the other with a despairing
gesture. The other stopped and called after him, saying:--

“You have not a sou to pay your way across the bridge. Take this,” he
added, giving the man a piece of money; “and remember, my friend,
that God Himself is speaking to us when a good thought comes into our
hearts.”

This last remark made the dreamer at the parapet quiver. The man who
made it little knew that, to use a proverbial expression, he was killing
two birds with one stone, addressing two miseries,--a working life
brought to despair, a suffering soul without a compass, the victim
of what Panurge’s sheep call progress, and what, in France, is called
equality. The words, simple in themselves, became sublime from the tone
of him who said them, in a voice that possesses a spell. Are there
not, in fact, some calm and tender voices that produce upon us the same
effect as a far horizon outlook?

By his dress the dreamer knew him to be a priest, and he saw by the last
gleams of the fading twilight a white, august, worn face. The sight of a
priest issuing from the beautiful cathedral of Saint-Etienne in Vienna,
bearing the Extreme Unction to a dying person, determined the celebrated
tragic author Werner to become a Catholic. Almost the same effect was
produced upon the dreamer when he looked upon the man who had, all
unknowing, given him comfort; on the threatening horizon of his future
he saw a luminous space where shone the blue of ether, and he followed
that light as the shepherds of the Gospel followed the voices that cried
to them: “Christ, the Lord, is born this day.”

The man who had said the beneficent words passed on by the wall of the
cathedral, taking, as a result of chance, which often leads to great
results, the direction of the street from which the dreamer came, and to
which he was now returning, led by the faults of his life.

This dreamer was named Godefroid. Whoever reads this history will
understand the reasons which lead the writer to use the Christian names
only of some who are mentioned in it. The motives which led Godefroid,
who lived in the quarter of the Chaussee-d’Antin, to the neighborhood of
Notre-Dame at such an hour were as follows:--

The son of a retail shopkeeper, whose economy enabled him to lay by a
sort of fortune, he was the sole object of ambition to his father and
mother, who dreamed of seeing him a notary in Paris. For this reason,
at the age of seven, he was sent to an institution, that of the Abbe
Liautard, to be thrown among children of distinguished families who,
during the Empire, chose this school for the education of their sons
in preference to the lyceums, where religion was too much overlooked.
Social inequalities were not noticeable among schoolmates; but in 1821,
his studies being ended, Godefroid, who was then with a notary, became
aware of the distance that separated him from those with whom he had
hitherto lived on familiar terms.

Obliged to go through the law school, he there found himself among a
crowd of the sons of the bourgeoisie, who, without fortunes to inherit
or hereditary distinctions, could look only to their own personal
merits or to persistent toil. The hopes that his father and mother, then
retired from business, placed upon him stimulated the youth’s vanity
without exciting his pride. His parents lived simply, like the thrifty
Dutch, spending only one fourth of an income of twelve thousand francs.
They intended their savings, together with half their capital, for the
purchase of a notary’s practice for their son. Subjected to the rule
of this domestic economy, Godefroid found his immediate state so
disproportioned to the visions of himself and his parents, that he
grew discouraged. In some feeble natures discouragement turns to envy;
others, in whom necessity, will, reflection, stand in place of talent,
march straight and resolutely in the path traced out for bourgeois
ambitions. Godefroid, on the contrary, revolted, wished to shine, tried
several brilliant ways, and blinded his eyes. He endeavored to succeed;
but all his efforts ended in proving the fact of his own impotence.
Admitting at last the inequality that existed between his desires
and his capacities, he began to hate all social supremacies, became
a Liberal, and attempted to reach celebrity by writing a book; but he
learned, to his cost, to regard talent as he did nobility. Having tried
the law, the notariat, and literature, without distinguishing himself in
any way, his mind now turned to the magistracy.

About this time his father died. His mother, who contented herself
in her old age with two thousand francs a year, gave the rest of the
fortune to Godefroid. Thus possessed, at the age of twenty-five, of ten
thousand francs a year, he felt himself rich; and he was so, relatively
to the past. Until then his life had been spent on acts without will, on
wishes that were impotent; now, to advance with the age, to act, to play
a part, he resolved to enter some career or find some connection that
should further his fortunes. He first thought of journalism, which
always opens its arms to any capital that may come in its way. To be the
owner of a newspaper is to become a personage at once; such a man works
intellect, and has all the gratifications of it and none of the labor.
Nothing is more tempting to inferior minds than to be able to rise in
this way on the talents of others. Paris has seen two or three parvenus
of this kind,--men whose success is a disgrace, both to the epoch and to
those who have lent them their shoulders.

In this sphere Godefroid was soon outdone by the brutal Machiavellianism
of some, or by the lavish prodigality of others; by the fortunes of
ambitious capitalists, or by the wit and shrewdness of editors. Meantime
he was drawn into all the dissipations that arise from literary
or political life, and he yielded to the temptations incurred by
journalists behind the scenes. He soon found himself in bad company; but
this experience taught him that his appearance was insignificant, that
he had one shoulder higher than the other, without the inequality being
redeemed by either malignancy or kindness of nature. Such were the
truths these artists made him feel.

Small, ill-made, without superiority of mind or settled purpose, what
chance was there for a man like that in an age when success in any
career demands that the highest qualities of the mind be furthered by
luck, or by tenacity of will which commands luck.

The revolution of 1830 stanched Godefroid’s wounds. He had the courage
of hope, which is equal to that of despair. He obtained an appointment,
like other obscure journalists, to a government situation in the
provinces, where his liberal ideas, conflicting with the necessities
of the new power, made him a troublesome instrument. Bitten with
liberalism, he did not know, as cleverer men did, how to steer a course.
Obedience to ministers he regarded as sacrificing his opinions. Besides,
the government seemed to him to be disobeying the laws of its own
origin. Godefroid declared for progress, where the object of the
government was to maintain the _statu quo_. He returned to Paris almost
poor, but faithful still to the doctrines of the Opposition.

Alarmed by the excesses of the press, more alarmed still by the
attempted outrages of the republican party, he sought in retirement
from the world the only life suitable for a being whose faculties were
incomplete, and without sufficient force to bear up against the rough
jostling of political life, the struggles and sufferings of which confer
no credit,--a being, too, who was wearied with his many miscarriages;
without friends, for friendship demands either striking merits or
striking defects, and yet possessing a sensibility of soul more dreamy
than profound. Surely a retired life was the course left for a young man
whom pleasure had more than once misled,--whose heart was already aged
by contact with a world as restless as it was disappointing.

His mother, who was dying in the peaceful village of Auteuil, recalled
her son to live with her, partly to have him near her, and partly to
put him in the way of finding an equable, tranquil happiness which might
satisfy a soul like his. She had ended by judging Godefroid, finding him
at twenty-eight with two-thirds of his fortune gone, his desires dulled,
his pretended capacities extinct, his activity dead, his ambition
humbled, and his hatred against all that reached legitimate success
increased by his own shortcomings.

She tried to marry him to an excellent young girl, the only daughter of
a retired merchant,--a woman well fitted to play the part of guardian
to the sickened soul of her son. But the father had the business
spirit which never abandons an old merchant, especially in matrimonial
negotiations, and after a year of attentions and neighborly intercourse,
Godefroid was not accepted. In the first place, his former career seemed
to these worthy people profoundly immoral; then, during this very year,
he had made still further inroads into his capital, as much to dazzle
the parents as to please the daughter. This vanity, excusable as it
was, caused his final rejection by the family, who held dissipation
of property in holy horror, and who now discovered that in six years
Godefroid had spent or lost a hundred and fifty thousand francs of his
capital.

This blow struck the young man’s already wounded heart the more deeply
because the girl herself had no personal beauty. But, guided by his
mother in judging her character, he had ended by recognizing in the
woman he sought the great value of an earnest soul, and the vast
advantages of a sound mind. He had grown accustomed to the face; he had
studied the countenance; he loved the voice, the manners, the glance of
that young girl. Having cast on this attachment the last stake of his
life, the disappointment he endured was the bitterest of all. His mother
died, and he found himself, he who had always desired luxury, with five
thousand francs a year for his whole fortune, and with the certainty
that never in his future life could he repair any loss whatsoever;
for he felt himself incapable of the effort expressed in that terrible
injunction, to _make his way_.

Weak, impatient grief cannot easily be shaken off. During his mourning,
Godefroid tried the various chances and distractions of Paris; he dined
at table-d’hotes; he made acquaintances heedlessly; he sought society,
with no result but that of increasing his expenditures. Walking along
the boulevards, he often suffered deeply at the sight of a mother
walking with a marriageable daughter,--a sight which caused him as
painful an emotion as he formerly felt when a young man passed him
riding to the Bois, or driving in an elegant equipage. The sense of
his impotence told him that he could never hope for the best of even
secondary positions, nor for any easily won career; and he had heart
enough to feel constantly wounded, mind enough to make in his own breast
the bitterest of elegies.

Unfitted to struggle against circumstances, having an inward
consciousness of superior faculties without the will that could put them
in action, feeling himself incomplete, without force to undertake any
great thing, without resistance against the tastes derived from his
earlier life, his education, and his indolence, he was the victim of
three maladies, any one of which would be enough to sicken of life a
young man long alienated from religious faith.

Thus it was that Godefroid presented, even to the eye, the face that we
meet so often in Paris that it might be called the type of the Parisian;
in it we may see ambitions deceived or dead, inward wretchedness, hatred
sleeping in the indolence of a life passed in watching the daily and
external life of Paris, apathy which seeks stimulation, lament without
talent, a mimicry of strength, the venom of past disappointments
which excites to cynicism, and spits upon all that enlarges and grows,
misconceives all necessary authority, rejoicing in its embarrassments,
and will not hold to any social form. This Parisian malady is to the
active and permanent impulse towards conspiracy in persons of energy
what the sapwood is to the sap of the trees; it preserves it, feeds it,
and conceals it.




II. OLD HOUSE, OLD PEOPLE, OLD CUSTOMS

Weary of himself, Godefroid attempted one day to give a meaning to his
life, after meeting a former comrade who had been the tortoise in the
fable, while he in earlier days had been the hare. In one of those
conversations which arise when schoolmates meet again in after years,--a
conversation held as they were walking together in the sunshine on the
boulevard des Italiens,--he was startled to learn the success of a
man endowed apparently with less gifts, less means, less fortune than
himself; but who had bent his will each morning to the purpose resolved
upon the night before. The sick soul then determined to imitate that
simple action.

“Social existence is like the soil,” his comrade had said to him; “it
makes us a return in proportion to our efforts.”

Godefroid was in debt. As a first test, a first task, he resolved to
live in some retired place, and pay his debts from his income. To a man
accustomed to spend six thousand francs when he had but five, it was
no small undertaking to bring himself to live on two thousand. Every
morning he studied advertisements, hoping to find the offer of some
asylum where his expenses could be fixed, where he might have the
solitude a man wants when he makes a return upon himself, examines
himself, and endeavors to give himself a vocation. The manners and
customs of bourgeois boarding-houses shocked his delicacy, sanitariums
seemed to him unhealthy, and he was about to fall back into the fatal
irresolution of persons without will, when the following advertisement
met his eye:--

  “To Let. A small lodging for seventy francs a month; suitable for
  an ecclesiastic. A quiet tenant desired. Board supplied; the rooms
  can be furnished at a moderate cost if mutually acceptable.

  “Inquire of M. Millet, grocer, rue Chanoinesse, near Notre-Dame,
  where all further information can be obtained.”

Attracted by a certain kindliness concealed beneath these words, and
the middle-class air which exhaled from them, Godefroid had, on the
afternoon when we found him on the quay, called at four o’clock on the
grocer, who told him that Madame de la Chanterie was then dining,
and did not receive any one when at her meals. The lady, he said, was
visible in the evening after seven o’clock, or in the morning between
ten and twelve. While speaking, Monsieur Millet examined Godefroid,
and made him submit to what magistrates call the “first degree of
interrogation.”

“Was monsieur unmarried? Madame wished a person of regular habits; the
gate was closed at eleven at the latest. Monsieur certainly seemed of an
age to suit Madame de la Chanterie.”

“How old do you think me?” asked Godefroid.

“About forty!” replied the grocer.

This ingenuous answer threw the young man into a state of misanthropic
gloom. He went off and dined at a restaurant on the quai de la
Tournelle, and afterwards went to the parapet to contemplate Notre-Dame
at the moment when the fires of the setting sun were rippling and
breaking about the manifold buttresses of the apsis.

The young man was floating between the promptings of despair and
the moving voice of religious harmonies sounding in the bell of the
cathedral when, amid the shadows, the silence, the half-veiled light
of the moon, he heard the words of the priest. Though, like most of the
sons of our century, he was far from religious, his sensibilities were
touched by those words, and he returned to the rue Chanoinesse, although
he had almost made up his mind not to do so.

The priest and Godefroid were both surprised when they entered together
the rue Massilon, which is opposite to the small north portal of the
cathedral, and turned together into the rue Chanoinesse, at the point
where, towards the rue de la Colombe, it becomes the rue des Marmousets.
When Godefroid stopped before the arched portal of Madame de la
Chanterie’s house, the priest turned towards him and examined him by the
light of the hanging street-lamp, probably one of the last to disappear
from the heart of old Paris.

“Have you come to see Madame de la Chanterie, monsieur?” said the
priest.

“Yes,” replied Godefroid. “The words I heard you say to that workman
show me that, if you live here, this house must be salutary for the
soul.”

“Then you were a witness of my defeat,” said the priest, raising the
knocker of the door, “for I did not succeed.”

“I thought, on the contrary, it was the workman who did not succeed; he
demanded money energetically.”

“Alas!” replied the priest, “one of the great evils of revolutions in
France is that each offers a fresh premium to the ambitions of the lower
classes. To get out of his condition, to make his fortune (which is
regarded to-day as the only social standard), the working-man throws
himself into some of those monstrous associations which, if they do not
succeed, ought to bring the speculators to account before human justice.
This is what trusts often lead to.”

The porter opened a heavy door. The priest said to Godefroid: “Monsieur
has perhaps come about the little suite of rooms?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

The priest and Godefroid then crossed a wide courtyard, at the farther
end of which loomed darkly a tall house flanked by a square tower which
rose above the roof, and appeared to be in a dilapidated condition.
Whoever knows the history of Paris, knows that the soil before and
around the cathedral has been so raised that there is not a vestige now
of the twelve steps which formerly led up to it. To-day the base of the
columns of the porch is on a level with the pavement; consequently what
was once the ground-floor of the house of which we speak is now its
cellar. A portico, reached by a few steps, leads to the entrance of the
tower, in which a spiral stairway winds up round a central shaft carved
with a grape-vine. This style, which recalls the stairways of Louis XII.
at the chateau of Blois, dates from the fourteenth century. Struck by
these and other evidences of antiquity, Godefroid could not help saying,
with a smile, to the priest: “This tower is not of yesterday.”

“It sustained, they say, an assault of the Normans, and probably formed
part of the first palace of the kings of Paris; but, according to actual
tradition, it was certainly the dwelling of the famous Canon Fulbert,
the uncle of Heloise.”

As he ended these words, the priest opened the door of the apartment
which appeared now to be the ground-floor of the house, but was in
reality towards both the front and back courtyard (for there was a small
interior court) on the first floor.

In the antechamber a maid-servant, wearing a cambric cap with fluted
frills for its sole decoration, was knitting by the light of a little
lamp. She stuck her needles into her hair, held her work in her hand,
and rose to open the door of a salon which looked out on the inner
court. The dress of the woman was somewhat like that of the Sisters of
Mercy.

“Madame, I bring you a tenant,” said the priest, ushering Godefroid into
the salon, where the latter saw three persons sitting in armchairs near
Madame de la Chanterie.

These three persons rose; the mistress of the house rose; then, when the
priest had drawn up another armchair for Godefroid, and when the future
tenant had seated himself in obedience to a gesture of Madame de
la Chanterie, accompanied by the old-fashioned words, “Be seated,
monsieur,” the man of the boulevards fancied himself at some enormous
distance from Paris,--in lower Brittany or the wilds of Canada.

Silence has perhaps its own degrees. Godefroid, already penetrated with
the silence of the rues Massillon and Chanoinesse, where two carriages
do not pass in a month, and grasped by the silence of the courtyard and
the tower, may have felt that he had reached the very heart of silence
in this still salon, guarded by so many old streets, old courts, old
walls.

This part of the Ile, which is called “the Cloister,” has preserved the
character of all cloisters; it is damp, cold, and monastically silent
even at the noisiest hours of the day. It will be remarked, also, that
this portion of the Cite, crowded between the flank of Notre-Dame
and the river, faces the north, and is always in the shadow of the
cathedral. The east winds swirl through it unopposed, and the fogs
of the Seine are caught and retained by the black walls of the
old metropolitan church. No one will therefore be surprised at the
sensations Godefroid felt when he found himself in this old dwelling, in
presence of four silent human beings, who seemed as solemn as the things
which surrounded them.

He did not look about him, being seized with curiosity as to Madame
de la Chanterie, whose name was already a puzzle to him. This lady was
evidently a person of another epoch, not to say of another world. Her
face was placid, its tones both soft and cold; the nose aquiline; the
forehead full of sweetness; the eyes brown; the chin double; and all
were framed in silvery white hair. Her gown could only be called by its
ancient name of “fourreau,” so tightly was she sheathed within it, after
the fashion of the eighteenth century. The material--a brown silk, with
very fine and multiplied green lines--seemed also of that period. The
bodice, which was one with the skirt, was partly hidden beneath a mantle
of _poult-de-soie_ edged with black lace, and fastened on the bosom by a
brooch enclosing a miniature. Her feet, in black velvet boots, rested
on a cushion. Madame de la Chanterie, like her maid, was knitting a
stocking, and she, too, had a needle stuck through her white curls
beneath the lace of her cap.

“Have you seen Monsieur Millet?” she said to Godefroid, in the head
voice peculiar to the dowagers of the faubourg Saint-Germain, observing
that her visitor seemed confused, and as if to put the words into his
mouth.

“Yes, madame.”

“I fear that the apartment will scarcely suit you,” she said, noticing
the elegance and newness of his clothes.

Godefroid was wearing polished leather boots, yellow gloves, handsome
studs, and a very pretty gold chain passed through the buttonhole of his
waistcoat of black silk with blue flowers. Madame de la Chanterie took
a little silver whistle from her pocket and blew it. The serving-woman
came.

“Manon, my child, show this gentleman the apartment. Would you, my dear
vicar, be so kind as to accompany him?” she said, addressing the priest.
“If by chance,” she added, rising and again looking at Godefroid, “the
apartment suits you, we will talk of the conditions.”

Godefroid bowed and went out. He heard the rattle of keys which Manon
took from a drawer, and he saw her light the candle in a large brass
candlestick. Manon went first, without uttering a word. When Godefroid
found himself again on the staircase, winding up two flights, he
doubted the reality of life, he dreamed awake, he saw with his eyes the
fantastic world of romances he had read in his idle hours. Any Parisian
leaving, as he did, the modern quarter, with its luxury of houses and
furniture, the glitter of its restaurants and theatres, the tumult and
movement of the heart of Paris, would have shared his feeling.

The candle carried by the woman feebly lighted the winding stair, where
spiders swung their draperies gray with dust. Manon wore a petticoat
with heavy plaits of a coarse woollen stuff; the bodice was square
before and square behind, and all her clothes seemed to hang together.
When she reached the second floor, which, it will be remembered, was
actually the third, Manon stopped, turned a key in an ancient lock, and
opened a door painted in a coarse imitation of mahogany.

“This is it,” she said, entering first.

Was it a miser, was it an artist dying in penury, was it a cynic to whom
the world was naught, or some religious soul detached from life, who had
occupied this apartment? That triple question might well be asked by one
who breathed the odor of that poverty, who saw the greasy spots upon the
papers yellow with smoke, the blackened ceilings, the dusty windows with
their casement panes, the discolored floor-bricks, the wainscots layered
with a sort of sticky glaze. A damp chill came from the chimneys with
their mantels of painted stone, surmounted by mirrors in panels of the
style of the seventeenth century. The apartment was square, like the
house, and looked out upon the inner court, which could not now be seen
because of the darkness.

“Who has lived here?” asked Godefroid of the priest.

“A former councillor of the parliament, a great-uncle of madame,
Monsieur de Boisfrelon. After the Revolution he fell into dotage; but
he did not die until 1832, at the age of ninety-six. Madame could not at
first make up her mind to let his rooms to a stranger, but she finds she
cannot afford to lose the rent.”

“Madame will have the apartment cleaned and furnished in a manner to
satisfy monsieur,” said Manon.

“That will depend on the arrangement you make with her,” said the
priest. “You have here a fine parlor, a large sleeping-room and closet,
and those little rooms in the angle will make an excellent study. It
is the same arrangement as in my apartment below, also in the one
overhead.”

“Yes,” said Manon, “Monsieur Alain’s apartment is just like this, only
his has a view of the tower.”

“I think I had better see the rooms by daylight,” said Godefroid,
timidly.

“Perhaps so,” said Manon.

The priest and Godefroid went downstairs, leaving the woman to lock the
doors. When they re-entered the salon, Godefroid, who was getting inured
to the surroundings, looked about him while discoursing with Madame de
la Chanterie, and examined the persons and things there present.

The salon had curtains at its windows of old red damask, with
lambrequins, tied back at the sides with silken cords. The red-tiled
floor showed at the edges of an old tapestry carpet too small to cover
the whole room. The woodwork was painted gray. The plastered ceiling,
divided in two parts by a heavy beam which started from the fireplace,
seemed a concession tardily made to luxury. Armchairs, with their
woodwork painted white, were covered with tapestry. A paltry clock,
between two copper-gilt candlesticks, decorated the mantel-shelf. Beside
Madame de la Chanterie was an ancient table with spindle legs, on which
lay her balls of worsted in a wicker basket. A hydrostatic lamp lighted
the scene. The four men, who were seated there, silent, immovable, like
bronze statues, had evidently stopped their conversation with Madame de
la Chanterie when they heard the stranger returning. They all had cold,
discreet faces, in keeping with the room, the house, the quarter of the
town.

Madame de la Chanterie admitted the justice of Godefroid’s observations;
but told him that she did not wish to make any change until she knew the
intentions of her lodger, or rather her boarder. If he would conform to
the customs of the house he could become her boarder; but these customs
were widely different from those of Paris. Life in the rue Chanoinesse
was like provincial life: the lodger must always be in by ten o’clock at
night; they disliked noise; and could have no women or children to break
up their customary habits. An ecclesiastic might conform to these ways.
Madame de la Chanterie desired, above all, some one of simple life,
who would not be exacting; she could afford to put only the strictest
necessaries into the apartment. Monsieur Alain (here she designated
one of the four men present) was satisfied, and she would do for a new
tenant just as she did for the others.

“I do not think,” said the priest, “that monsieur is inclined to enter
our convent.”

“Eh! why not?” said Monsieur Alain; “we are all well off here; we have
nothing to complain of.”

“Madame,” said Godefroid, rising, “I shall have the honor of calling
again to-morrow.”

Though he was a young man, the four old men and Madame de la Chanterie
rose, and the vicar accompanied him to the portico. A whistle sounded.
At that signal the porter came with a lantern, guided Godefroid to the
street, and closed behind him the enormous yellow door,--ponderous as
that of a prison, and decorated with arabesque ironwork of a remote
period that was difficult to determine.

Though Godefroid got into a cabriolet, and was soon rolling into the
living, lighted, glowing regions of Paris, what he had seen still
appeared to him a dream, and his impressions, as he made his way along
the boulevard des Italiens, had already the remoteness of a memory. He
asked himself, “Shall I to-morrow find those people there?”




III. THE HOUSE OF MONGENOD

The next day, as Godefroid rose amid the appointments of modern luxury
and the choice appliances of English “comfort,” he remembered the
details of his visit to that cloister of Notre-Dame, and the meaning of
the things he had seen there came into his mind. The three unknown and
silent men, whose dress, attitude, and stillness acted powerfully upon
him, were no doubt boarders like the priest. The solemnity of Madame de
la Chanterie now seemed to him a secret dignity with which she bore
some great misfortune. But still, in spite of the explanations which
Godefroid gave himself, he could not help fancying there was an air of
mystery about those sober figures.

He looked around him and selected the pieces of furniture that he would
keep, those that were indispensable to him; but when he transported them
in thought to the miserable lodging in the rue Chanoinesse, he began to
laugh at the contrast they would make there, resolving to sell all and
let Madame de la Chanterie furnish the rooms for him. He wanted a new
life, and the very sight of these objects would remind him of that which
he wished to forget. In his desire for transformation (for he belonged
to those characters who spring at a bound into the middle of a
situation, instead of advancing, as others do, step by step), he was
seized while he breakfasted with an idea,--he would turn his whole
property into money, pay his debts, and place the remainder of his
capital in the banking-house with which his father had done business.

This house was the firm of Mongenod and Company, established in 1816
or 1817, whose reputation for honesty and uprightness had never been
questioned in the midst of the commercial depravity which smirched,
more or less, all the banking-houses of Paris. In spite of their immense
wealth, the houses of Nucingen, du Tillet, the Keller Brothers, Palma
and Company, were each regarded, more or less, with secret disrespect,
although it is true this disrespect was only whispered. Evil means
had produced such fine results, such political successes, dynastic
principles covered so completely base workings, that no one in 1834
thought of the mud in which the roots of these fine trees, the mainstay
of the State, were plunged. Nevertheless there was not a single one of
those great bankers to whom the confidence expressed in the house of
Mongenod was not a wound. Like English houses, the Mongenods made no
external display of luxury. They lived in dignified stillness, satisfied
to do their business prudently, wisely, and with a stern uprightness
which enabled them to carry it from one end of the globe to the other.

The actual head of the house, Frederic Mongenod, is the brother-in-law
of the Vicomte de Fontaine; therefore, this numerous family is
allied through the Baron de Fontaine to Monsieur Grossetete, the
receiver-general, brother of the Grossetete and Company of Limoges,
to the Vandenesses, and to Planat de Baudry, another receiver-general.
These connections, having procured for the late Mongenod, father of the
present head of the house, many favors in the financial operations
under the Restoration, obtained for him also the confidence of the old
_noblesse_, whose property and whose savings, which were immense, were
deposited in this bank. Far from coveting a peerage, like the Kellers,
Nucingen, and du Tillet, the Mongenods kept away from politics, and only
knew as much about them as their banking interests demanded.

The house of Mongenod is established in a fine old mansion in the rue de
la Victoire, where Madame Mongenod, the mother, lived with her two sons,
all three being partners in the house,--the share of the Vicomtesse
de Fontaine having been bought out by them on the death of the elder
Mongenod in 1827.

Frederic Mongenod, a handsome young man about thirty-five years of
age, cold, silent, and reserved in manner like a Swiss, and neat as
an Englishman, had acquired by intercourse with his father all the
qualities necessary for his difficult profession. Better educated than
the generality of bankers, his studies had the breadth and universality
which characterize the polytechnic training; and he had, like most
bankers, predilections and tastes outside of his business,--he loved
mechanics and chemistry. The second brother, who was ten years younger
than Frederic, held the same position in the office of his elder brother
that a head clerk holds in that of a notary or lawyer. Frederic trained
him, as he had himself been trained by his father, in the variety of
knowledge necessary to a true banker, who is to money what a writer is
to ideas,--they must both know all of that with which they have to deal.

When Godefroid reached the banking house and gave his name, he saw
at once the estimation in which his father had been held; for he was
ushered through the offices without delay to the private counting-room
of the Mongenods. This counting-room was closed with a glass door, so
that Godefroid, without any desire to listen, overheard as he approached
it what was being said there.

“Madame, your account is balanced to sixteen hundred thousand francs,”
 said the younger Mongenod. “I do not know what my brother’s intentions
are; he alone can say whether an advance of a hundred thousand francs
can be made. You must have been imprudent. Sixteen hundred thousand
francs should not be entrusted to any business.”

“Do not speak so loud, Louis!” said a woman’s voice. “Your brother has
often told you to speak in a low voice. There may be some one in the
next room.”

At this moment Frederic Mongenod himself opened the door of
communication between his private house and the counting-room. He saw
Godefroid and crossed the room, bowing respectfully to the lady who was
conversing with his brother.

“To whom have I the honor of speaking?” he said to Godefroid.

As soon as Godefroid gave his name, Frederic begged him to be seated;
and as the banker opened the lid of his desk, Louis Mongenod and the
lady, who was no other than Madame de la Chanterie, rose and went up to
him. All three then moved into the embrasure of a window and talked in
a low voice with Madame Mongenod, the mother, who was sitting there, and
to whom all the affairs of the bank were confided. For over thirty years
this woman had given, to her husband first and then to her sons, such
proofs of business sagacity that she had long been a managing partner in
the firm and signed for it.

Godefroid, as he looked about him, noticed on a shelf certain boxes
ticketed with the words “De la Chanterie,” and numbered 1 to 7. When the
conference was ended by the banker saying to his brother, “Very good;
go down to the cashier,” Madame de la Chanterie turned round, saw
Godefroid, checked a gesture of surprise, and asked a few questions of
the banker in a low voice, to which he replied in a few words spoken
equally in a whisper.

Madame de la Chanterie now wore gray silk stockings and small prunella
shoes; her gown was the same as before, but she was wrapped in a
Venetian “mantua,”--a sort of cloak which was just then returning into
fashion. On her head was a drawn bonnet of green silk, lined with white
silk, of a style called _a la bonne femme_. Her face was framed by
a cloud of lace. She held herself very erect, in an attitude which
bespoke, if not noble birth, certainly the habits of an aristocratic
life. Without the extreme affability of her manner, she might have
seemed haughty; she was certainly imposing.

“It is the will of Providence rather than mere chance that has brought
us here together, monsieur,” she said to Godefroid; “for I had almost
decided to refuse a lodger whose ways of life seemed to me quite
antipathetic to those of my household; but Monsieur Mongenod has just
given me some information about your family which--”

“Ah, madame,--monsieur!” said Godefroid, addressing both Madame de la
Chanterie and the banker, “I have no longer a family; and I have come
here now to ask some financial advice of my father’s business advisers
as to the best method of adapting my means to a new way of life.”

Godefroid then succinctly, and in as few words as possible, related his
history, and expressed his desire to change his existence.

“Formerly,” he said, “a man in my position would have made himself a
monk; but there are no longer any religious orders.”

“Go and live with madame, if she is willing to take you,” said Frederic
Mongenod, after exchanging a glance with Madame de la Chanterie, “and
do not sell out your property; leave it in my hands. Give me the exact
amount of your debts; I will agree with your creditors for payment at
certain dates, and you can have for yourself about a hundred and fifty
francs a month. It will thus take two years to clear you. During those
two years, if you take those quiet lodgings, you will have time to think
of a career, especially among the persons with whom you will live, who
are all good counsellors.”

Here Louis Mongenod returned, bringing in his hand a hundred notes of a
thousand francs each, which he gave to Madame de la Chanterie. Godefroid
offered his arm to his future hostess, and took her down to the
hackney-coach which was waiting for her.

“I hope I shall see you soon, monsieur,” she said in a cordial tone of
voice.

“At what hour shall you be at home, madame?” he asked.

“At two o’clock.”

“I shall have time to sell my furniture,” he said, as he bowed to her.

During the short time that Madame de la Chanterie’s arm rested upon his
as they walked to the carriage, Godefroid could not escape the
glamour of the words: “Your account is for sixteen hundred thousand
francs!”--words said by Louis Mongenod to the woman whose life was spent
in the depths of the cloisters of Notre-Dame. The thought, “She must be
rich!” entirely changed his way of looking at the matter. “How old is
she?” he began to ask himself; and a vision of a romance in the rue
Chanoinesse came to him. “She certainly has an air of nobility! Can she
be concerned in some bank?” thought he.

In our day nine hundred and ninety-nine young men out of a thousand in
Godefroid’s position would have had the thought of marrying that woman.

A furniture dealer, who also had apartments to let, paid about three
thousand francs for the articles Godefroid was willing to sell, and
agreed to let him keep them during the few days that were needed to
prepare the shabby apartment in the rue Chanoinesse for this lodger with
a sick mind. Godefroid went there at once, and obtained from Madame de
la Chanterie the address of a painter who, for a moderate sum, agreed
to whiten the ceilings, clean the windows, paint the woodwork, and stain
the floors, within a week. Godefroid took the measure of the rooms,
intending to put the same carpet in all of them,--a green carpet of the
cheapest kind. He wished for the plainest uniformity in this retreat,
and Madame de la Chanterie approved of the idea. She calculated, with
Manon’s assistance, the number of yards of white calico required for
the window curtains, and also for those of the modest iron bed; and
she undertook to buy and have them made for a price so moderate as
to surprise Godefroid. Having brought with him a certain amount of
furniture, the whole cost of fitting up the rooms proved to be not over
six hundred francs.

“We lead here,” said Madame de la Chanterie, “a Christian life, which
does not, as you know, accord with many superfluities; I think you have
too many as it is.”

In giving this hint to her future lodger, she looked at a diamond which
gleamed in the ring through which Godefroid’s blue cravat was slipped.

“I only speak of this,” she added, “because of the intention you
expressed to abandon the frivolous life you complained of to Monsieur
Mongenod.”

Godefroid looked at Madame de la Chanterie as he listened to the
harmonies of her limpid voice; he examined that face so purely white,
resembling those of the cold, grave women of Holland whom the Flemish
painters have so wonderfully reproduced with their smooth skins, in
which a wrinkle is impossible.

“White and plump!” he said to himself, as he walked away; “but her hair
is white, too.”

Godefroid, like all weak natures, took readily to a new life, believing
it satisfactory; and he was now quite eager to take up his abode in the
rue Chanoinesse. Nevertheless, a prudent thought, or, if you prefer
to say so, a distrustful thought, occurred to him. Two days before his
installation, he went again to see Monsieur Mongenod to obtain some more
definite information about the house he was to enter.

During the few moments he had spent in his future lodgings overlooking
the changes that were being made in them, he had noticed the coming and
going of several persons whose appearance and behavior, without being
exactly mysterious, excited a belief that some secret occupation or
profession was being carried on in that house. At that particular period
there was much talk of attempts by the elder branch of the Bourbons to
recover the throne, and Godefroid suspected some conspiracy. When he
found himself in the banker’s counting-room held by the scrutinizing eye
of Frederic Mongenod while he made his inquiry, he felt ashamed as he
saw a derisive smile on the lips of the listener.

“Madame la Baronne de la Chanterie,” replied the banker, “is one of
the most obscure persons in Paris, but she is also one of the most
honorable. Have you any object in asking for information?”

Godefroid retreated into generalities: he was going to live among
strangers; he naturally wished to know something of those with whom he
should be intimately thrown. But the banker’s smile became more and more
sarcastic; and Godefroid, more and more embarrassed, was ashamed of the
step he had taken, and which bore no fruit, for he dared not continue
his questions about Madame de la Chanterie and her inmates.




IV. FAREWELL TO THE LIFE OF THE WORLD

Two days later, of a Monday evening, having dined for the last time
at the Cafe Anglais, and seen the two first pieces at the Varietes,
he went, at ten o’clock, to sleep for the first time in the rue
Chanoinesse, where Manon conducted him to his room.

Solitude has charms comparable only to those of savage life, which no
European has ever really abandoned after once tasting them. This may
seem strange at an epoch when every one lives so much to be seen
of others that all the world concern themselves in their neighbors’
affairs, and when private life will soon be a thing of the past, so
bold and so intrusive are the eyes of the press,--that modern Argus.
Nevertheless, it is a truth which rests on the authority of the first
six Christian centuries, during which no recluse ever returned to social
life. Few are the moral wounds that solitude will not heal.

So, at first, Godefroid was soothed by the deep peace and absolute
stillness of his new abode, as a weary traveller is relaxed by a bath.

The very day after his arrival at Madame de la Chanterie’s he was forced
to examine himself, under the sense that he was separated from all,
even from Paris, though he still lived in the shadow of its cathedral.
Stripped of his social vanities, he was about to have no other witnesses
of his acts than his own conscience and the inmates of that house. He
had quitted the great high-road of the world to enter an unknown path.
Where was that path to lead him to? to what occupation should he now be
drawn?

He had been for two hours absorbed in such reflections when Manon, the
only servant of the house, knocked at his door to tell him that the
second breakfast was served and the family were waiting for him. Twelve
o’clock was striking. The new lodger went down at once, stirred by a
wish to see and judge the five persons among whom his life was in future
to be spent.

When he entered the room he found all the inmates of the house standing;
they were dressed precisely as they were on the day when he came to make
his first inquiries.

“Did you sleep well?” asked Madame de la Chanterie.

“So well that I did not wake up till ten o’clock,” replied Godefroid,
bowing to the four men, who returned the bow with gravity.

“We thought so,” said an old man named Alain, smiling.

“Manon spoke of a second breakfast,” said Godefroid; “but I fear that I
have already broken some rule. At what hour do you rise?”

“Not quite so early as the old monks,” said Madame de la Chanterie,
courteously, “but as early as the working-men,--six in winter, half-past
three in summer. Our bed-time is ruled by that of the sun. We are always
asleep by nine in winter and eleven in summer. On rising, we all take a
little milk, which comes from our farm, after saying our prayers, except
the Abbe de Veze, who says the first mass, at six o’clock in summer
and seven o’clock in winter, at Notre-Dame, where these gentlemen are
present daily, as well as your humble servant.”

Madame de la Chanterie ended her explanation as the five lodgers took
their seats at table.

The dining-room, painted throughout in gray, the design of the woodwork
being in the style of Louis XIV., adjoined the sort of antechamber in
which Manon was usually stationed, and it seemed to be parallel with
Madame de la Chanterie’s bedroom, which also opened into the salon. This
room had no other ornament than a tall clock. The furniture consisted of
six chairs with oval backs covered with worsted-work, done probably
by Madame de la Chanterie’s own hand, two buffets and a table, all
of mahogany, on which Manon did not lay a cloth for breakfast. The
breakfast, of monastic frugality, was composed of a small turbot with
a white sauce, potatoes, a salad, and four dishes of fruit,--peaches,
grapes, strawberries, and fresh almonds; also, for relishes, honey
in the comb (as in Switzerland), radishes, cucumbers, sardines, and
butter,--the whole served in the well-known china with tiny blue flowers
and green leaves on a white ground, which was no doubt a luxury in the
days of Louis XIV., but had now, under the growing demands of luxury,
come to be regarded as common.

“We keep the fasts,” said Monsieur Alain. “As we go to mass every
morning, you will not be surprised to find us blindly following all the
customs of the Church, even the severest.”

“And you shall begin by imitating us,” said Madame de la Chanterie, with
a glance at Godefroid, whom she had placed beside her.

Of the five persons present Godefroid knew the names of three,--Madame
de la Chanterie, the Abbe de Veze, and Monsieur Alain. He wished to know
those of the other two; but they kept silence and ate their food with
the attention which recluses appear to give to every detail of a meal.

“Does this fine fruit come also from your farm, madame?” asked
Godefroid.

“Yes, monsieur,” she replied. “We have a little model farm, like the
government itself; we call it our country house; it is twelve miles from
here, on the road to Italy, near Villeneuve-Saint-Georges.”

“It is a property that belongs to us all, and is to go to the survivor,”
 said the goodman Alain.

“Oh, it is not very considerable!” added Madame de la Chanterie, rather
hastily, as if she feared that Godefroid might think these remarks a
bait.

“There are thirty acres of tilled land,” said one of the two personages
still unknown to Godefroid, “six of meadow, and an enclosure containing
four acres, in which our house, which adjoins the farmhouse, stands.”

“But such a property as that,” said Godefroid, “must be worth a hundred
thousand francs.”

“Oh, we don’t get anything out of it but our provisions!” said the same
personage.

He was a tall, grave, spare man, with all the appearance of having
served in the army. His white hair showed him to be past sixty, and his
face betrayed some violent grief controlled by religion.

The second unnamed person, who seemed to be something between a master
of rhetoric and a business agent, was of ordinary height, plump, but
active withal. His face had the jovial expression which characterizes
those of lawyers and notaries in Paris.

The dress of these four personages revealed a neatness due to the most
scrupulous personal care. The same hand, and it was that of Manon, could
be seen in every detail. Their coats were perhaps ten years old, but
they were preserved, like the coats of vicars, by the occult power of
the servant-woman, and the constant care with which they were worn.
These men seemed to wear on their backs the livery of a system of life;
they belonged to one thought, their looks said the same word, their
faces breathed a gentle resignation, a provoking quietude.

“Is it an indiscretion, madame,” said Godefroid, “to ask the names of
these gentlemen? I am ready to explain my life; can I know as much of
theirs as custom will allow?”

“That gentleman,” said Madame de la Chanterie, motioning to the tall,
thin man, “is Monsieur Nicolas; he is a colonel of gendarmerie, retired
with the rank of brigadier-general. And this,” she added, looking
towards the stout little man, “is a former councillor of the royal
courts of Paris, who retired from the magistracy in 1830. His name is
Monsieur Joseph. Though you have only been with us one day, I will tell
you that in the world Monsieur Nicolas once bore the name of the Marquis
de Montauran, and Monsieur Joseph that of Lecamus, Baron de Tresnes; but
for us, as for the world, those names no longer exist. These gentlemen
are without heirs; they only advance by a little the oblivion which
awaits their names; they are simply Monsieur Nicolas and Monsieur
Joseph, as you will be Monsieur Godefroid.”

As he heard those names,--one so celebrated in the annals of royalism
by the catastrophe which put an end to the uprising of the Chouans; the
other so revered in the halls of the old parliament of Paris,--Godefroid
could not repress a quiver. He looked at these relics of the grandest
things of the fallen monarchy,--the _noblesse_ and the law,--and he
could see no movement of the features, no change in the countenance,
that revealed the presence of a worldly thought. Those men no longer
remembered, or did not choose to remember, what they had been. This was
Godefroid’s first lesson.

“Each of your names, gentlemen, is a whole history in itself,” he said
respectfully.

“Yes, the history of my time,--ruins,” replied Monsieur Joseph.

“You are in good company,” said Monsieur Alain.

The latter can be described in a word: he was the small bourgeois of
Paris, the worthy middle-class being with a kindly face, relieved by
pure white hair, but made insipid by an eternal smile.

As for the priest, the Abbe de Veze, his presence said all. The priest
who fulfils his mission is known by the first glance he gives you, and
by the glance that others who know him give to him.

That which struck Godefroid most forcibly at first was the profound
respect which the four lodgers manifested for Madame de la Chanterie.
They all seemed, even the priest, in spite of the sacred character his
functions gave him, to regard her as a queen. Godefroid also noticed
their sobriety. Each seemed to eat only for nourishment. Madame de la
Chanterie took, as did the rest, a single peach and half a bunch of
grapes; but she told her new lodger, as she offered him the various
dishes, not to imitate such temperance.

Godefroid’s curiosity was excited to the highest degree by this
first entrance on his new life. When they returned to the salon after
breakfast, he was left alone; Madame de la Chanterie retired to the
embrasure of a window and held a little private council with her four
friends. This conference, entirely devoid of animation, lasted half an
hour. They spoke together in a low voice, exchanging words which each of
them appeared to have thought over. From time to time Monsieur Alain and
Monsieur Joseph consulted a note-book, turning over its leaves.

“See the faubourg,” said Madame de la Chanterie to Monsieur Joseph, who
left the house.

That was the only word Godefroid distinguished.

“And you the Saint-Marceau quarter,” she continued, addressing Monsieur
Nicolas. “Hunt through the faubourg Saint-Germain and see if you can
find what we want;” this to the Abbe de Veze, who went away immediately.
“And you, my dear Alain,” she added, smiling at the latter, “make an
examination. There, those important matters are all settled,” she said,
returning to Godefroid.

She seated herself in her armchair, took a little piece of linen from
the table before her, and began to sew as if she were employed to do so.

Godefroid, lost in conjecture, and still thinking of a royalist
conspiracy, took his landlady’s remark as an opening, and he began to
study her as he seated himself beside her. He was struck by the singular
dexterity with which she worked. Although everything about her bespoke
the great lady, she showed the dexterity of a workwoman; for every one
can see at a glance, by certain manipulations, the work of a workman or
an amateur.

“You do that,” said Godefroid, “as if you knew the trade.”

“Alas!” she answered, without raising her head, “I did know it once out
of necessity.”

Two large tears came into her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks to the
linen in her hand.

“Forgive me, madame!” cried Godefroid.

Madame de Chanterie looked at her new lodger, and saw such an expression
of genuine regret upon his face, that she made him a friendly sign.
After drying her eyes, she immediately recovered the calmness that
characterized her face, which was less cold than chastened.

“You are here, Monsieur Godefroid,--for you know already that we shall
call you by your baptized name,--you are here in the midst of ruins
caused by a great tempest. We have each been struck and wounded in our
hearts, our family interests, or our fortunes, by that whirlwind of
forty years, which overthrew religion and royalty, and dispersed the
elements of all that made old France. Words that seem quite harmless
do sometimes wound us all, and that is why we are so silent. We speak
rarely of ourselves; we forget ourselves, and we have found a way to
substitute another life for our lives. It is because, after hearing your
confidence at Monsieur Mongenod’s, I thought there seemed a likeness
between your situation and ours, that I induced my four friends to
receive you among us; besides, we wanted another monk in our convent.
But what are you going to do? No one can face solitude without some
moral resources.”

“Madame, I should be very glad, after hearing what you have said, if you
yourself would be the guide of my destiny.”

“You speak like a man of the world,” she answered, “and are trying to
flatter me,--a woman of sixty! My dear child,” she went on, “let me tell
you that you are here among persons who believe strongly in God; who
have all felt his hand, and have yielded themselves to him almost as
though they were Trappists. Have you ever remarked the profound sense of
safety in a true priest when he has given himself to the Lord, when he
listens to his voice, and strives to make himself a docile instrument in
the hand of Providence? He has no longer vanity or self-love,--nothing
of all that which wounds continually the hearts of the world. His
quietude is equal to that of the fatalist; his resignation does truly
enable him to bear all. The true priest, such a one as the Abbe de Veze,
lives like a child with its mother; for the Church, my dear Monsieur
Godefroid, is a good mother. Well, a man can be a priest without the
tonsure; all priests are not in orders. To vow one’s self to good, that
is imitating a true priest; it is obedience to God. I am not preaching
to you; I am not trying to convert you; I am explaining our lives to
you.”

“Instruct me, madame,” said Godefroid, deeply impressed, “so that I may
not fail in any of your rules.”

“That would be hard upon you; you will learn them by degrees. Never
speak here of your misfortunes; they are slight compared to the
catastrophes by which the lives of those you are now among were
blasted.”

While speaking thus, Madame de la Chanterie drew her needle and set her
stitches with unbroken regularity; but here she paused, raised her
head, and looked at Godefroid. She saw him charmed by the penetrating
sweetness of her voice, which possessed, let us say it here, an
apostolic unction. The sick soul contemplated with admiration the truly
extraordinary phenomenon presented by this woman, whose face was now
resplendent. Rosy tints were spreading on the waxen cheeks, her eyes
shone, the youthfulness of her soul changed the light wrinkles into
gracious lines, and all about her solicited affection. Godefroid in
that one moment measured the gulf that separated this woman from common
sentiments. He saw her inaccessible on a peak to which religion had led
her; and he was still too worldly not to be keenly piqued, and to long
to plunge through the gulf and up to the summit on which she stood, and
stand beside her. Giving himself up to this desire, he related to
her all the mistakes of his life, and much that he could not tell
at Mongenod’s, where his confidences had been confined to his actual
situation.

“Poor child!”

That exclamation, falling now and then from Madame de la Chanterie’s
lips as he went on, dropped like balm upon the heart of the sufferer.

“What can I substitute for so many hopes betrayed, so much affection
wasted?” he asked, looking at his hostess, who had now grown thoughtful.
“I came here,” he resumed, “to reflect and choose a course of action. I
have lost my mother; will you replace her?”

“Will you,” she said, “show a son’s obedience?”

“Yes, if you will have the tenderness that commands it.”

“I will try,” she said.

Godefroid put out his hand to take that of his hostess, who gave it to
him, guessing his intentions. He carried it respectfully to his lips.
Madame de la Chanterie’s hand was exquisitely beautiful,--without a
wrinkle; neither fat nor thin; white enough to be the envy of all young
women, and shapely enough for the model of a sculptor. Godefroid had
already admired those hands, conscious of their harmony with the spell
of her voice, and the celestial blue of her glance.

“Wait a moment,” said Madame de la Chanterie, rising and going into her
own room.

Godefroid was keenly excited; he did not know to what class of ideas her
movement was to be attributed. His perplexity did not last long, for she
presently returned with a book in her hand.

“Here, my dear child,” she said, “are the prescriptions of a great
physician of souls. When the things of ordinary life have not given
us the happiness we expected of them, we must seek for happiness in a
higher life. Here is the key of a new world. Read night and morning a
chapter of this book; but bring your full attention to bear upon what
you read; study the words as you would a foreign language. At the end of
a month you will be another man. It is now twenty years that I have read
a chapter every day; and my three friends, Messieurs Nicolas, Alain,
and Joseph, would no more fail in that practice than they would fail in
getting up and going to bed. Do as they do for love of God, for love of
me,” she said, with a divine serenity, an august confidence.

Godefroid turned over the book and read upon its back in gilt letters,
IMITATION OF JESUS CHRIST. The simplicity of this old woman, her
youthful candor, her certainty of doing a good deed, confounded the
ex-dandy. Madame de la Chanterie’s face wore a rapturous expression,
and her attitude was that of a woman who was offering a hundred thousand
francs to a merchant on the verge of bankruptcy.

“I have used that volume,” she said, “for twenty-six years. God grant
its touch may be contagious. Go now and buy me another copy; for this is
the hour when persons come here who must not be seen.”

Godefroid bowed and went to his room, where he flung the book upon the
table, exclaiming,--

“Poor, good woman! Well, so be it!”




V. THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS

The book, like all books frequently read, opened in a particular place.
Godefroid sat down as if to put his ideas in order, for he had gone
through more emotion during this one morning than he had often done in
the agitated months of his life; but above all, his curiosity was keenly
excited. Letting his eyes fall by chance, as people will when their
souls are launched in meditation, they rested mechanically on the two
open pages of the book; almost unconsciously he read the following
heading:--


  CHAPTER XII.

  THE ROYAL WAY OF THE HOLY CROSS

He took up the book; a sentence of that noble chapter caught his eye
like a flash of light:--

  “He has walked before thee, bearing his cross; he died for thee,
  that thou mightest bear thy cross, and be glad to die upon it.

  “Go where thou wilt, seek what thou wilt, never canst thou find a
  nobler, surer path than the royal way of the holy cross.

  “Dispose and order all things according to thy desires and thine
  own judgment and still thou shalt find trials to suffer, whether
  thou wilt or no; and so the cross is there; be it pain of body or
  pain of mind.

  “Sometimes God will seem to leave thee, sometimes men will harass
  thee. But, far worse, thou wilt find thyself a burden to thyself,
  and no remedy will deliver thee, no consolation comfort thee:
  until it pleases God to end thy trouble thou must bear it; for it
  is God’s will that we suffer without consolation, that we may go
  to him without one backward look, humble through tribulation.”

“What a strange book!” thought Godefroid, turning over the leaves. Then
his eyes lighted on the following words:--

  “When thou hast reached the height of finding all afflictions
  sweet, since they have made thee love the love of Jesus Christ,
  then know thyself happy; for thou hast found thy paradise in this
  world.”

Annoyed by this simplicity (the characteristic of strength), angry at
being foiled by a book, he closed the volume; but even then he saw, in
letters of gold on the green morocco cover, the words:--

  SEEK THAT WHICH IS ETERNAL, AND THAT ONLY.

“Have they found it here?” he asked himself.

He went out to buy the handsomest copy he could find of the “Imitation
of Jesus Christ” thinking that Madame de la Chanterie would wish to read
her chapter that night. When he reached the street he stood a moment
near the door, uncertain which way to take and debating in what
direction he was likely to find a bookseller. As he stood there he heard
the heavy sound of the massive porte-cochere closing.

Two men were leaving the hotel de la Chanterie. If the reader has fully
understood the character of this old house he will know that it was
one of the ancient mansions of the olden time. Manon, herself, when she
called Godefroid that morning, had asked him, smiling, how he had slept
in the hotel de la Chanterie.

Godefroid followed the two men without the slightest intention of
watching them; they took him for an accidental passer, and spoke in
tones which enabled him to hear distinctly in those lonely streets.

The two men passed along the rue Massillon beside the church and crossed
the open space in front of it.

“Well, you see, old man, it is easy enough to catch their sous. Say what
they want you to say, that’s all.”

“But we owe money.”

“To whom?”

“To that lady--”

“I’d like to see that old body try to get it; I’d--”

“You’d pay her.”

“Well, you’re right, for if I paid her I’d get more another time.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to do as they advise, and build up a good
business?”

“Pooh!”

“But she said she would get some one to lend us the money.”

“Then we should have to give up the life of--”

“Well, I’d rather; I’m sick of it; it isn’t being a man at all to be
drunk half one’s time.”

“Yes, but you know the abbe turned his back on old Marin the other day;
he refused him everything.”

“Because old Marin tried to swindle, and nobody can succeed in that but
millionnaires.”

Just then the two men, whose dress seemed to show that they were foremen
in some workshop, turned abruptly round towards the place Maubert by
the bridge of the Hotel-Dieu. Godefroid stepped aside to let them pass.
Seeing him so close behind them they looked rather anxiously at each
other, and their faces expressed a regret for having spoken.

Godefroid was the more interested by this conversation because it
reminded him of the scene between the Abbe de Veze and the workman the
day of his first visit.

Thinking over this circumstance, he went as far as a bookseller’s in the
rue Saint-Jacques, whence he returned with a very handsome copy of the
finest edition published in France of the “Imitation of Jesus Christ.”
 Walking slowly back, in order that he might arrive exactly at the dinner
hour, he recalled his own sensations during this morning and he was
conscious of a new impulse in his soul. He was seized by a sudden and
deep curiosity, but his curiosity paled before an inexplicable desire.
He was drawn to Madame de la Chanterie; he felt the keenest desire
to attach himself to her, to devote himself to her, to please her, to
deserve her praise: in short, he felt the first emotions of platonic
love; he saw glimpses of the untold grandeur of that soul, and he longed
to know it in its entirety. He grew impatient to enter the inner lives
of these pure Catholics. In that small company of faithful souls, the
majesty of practical religion was so thoroughly blended with all that
is most majestic in a French woman that Godefroid resolved to leave no
stone unturned to make himself accepted as a true member of the little
body. These feelings would have been unnaturally sudden in a busy
Parisian eagerly occupied with life, but Godefroid was, as we have seen,
in the position of a drowning man who catches at every floating branch
thinking it a solid stay, and his soul, ploughed and furrowed with
trial, was ready to receive all seed.

He found the four friends in the salon, and he presented the book to
Madame de la Chanterie, saying:

“I did not like to deprive you of it to-night.”

“God grant,” she said, smiling, as she looked at the magnificent volume,
“that this may be your last excess of elegance.”

Looking at the clothes of the four men present and observing how in
every particular they were reduced to mere utility and neatness, and
seeing, too, how rigorously the same principle was applied to all the
details of the house, Godefroid understood the value of the reproach so
courteously made to him.

“Madame,” he said, “the persons whom you obliged this morning are
scoundrels; I overheard, without intending it, what they said to each
other when they left the house; it was full of the basest ingratitude.”

“They were the two locksmiths of the rue Mouffetard,” said Madame de la
Chanterie to Monsieur Nicolas; “that is your affair.”

“The fish gets away more than once before it is caught,” said Monsieur
Alain, laughing.

The perfect indifference of Madame de la Chanterie on hearing of the
immediate ingratitude of persons to whom she had, no doubt, given money,
surprised Godefroid, who became thoughtful.

The dinner was enlivened by Monsieur Alain and Monsieur Joseph; but
Monsieur Nicolas remained quiet, sad, and cold; he bore on his features
the ineffaceable imprint of some bitter grief, some eternal sorrow.
Madame de la Chanterie paid equal attentions to all. Godefroid felt
himself observed by these persons, whose prudence equalled their piety;
his vanity led him to imitate their reserve, and he measured his words.

This first day was much more interesting than those which succeeded it.
Godefroid, who found himself set aside from all the serious conferences,
was obliged, during several hours in mornings and evenings when he was
left wholly to himself, to have recourse to the “Imitation of Jesus
Christ;” and he ended by studying that book as a man studies a book when
he has but one, or is a prisoner. A book is then like a woman with whom
we live in solitude; we must either hate or adore that woman, and, in
like manner, we must either enter into the soul of the author or not
read ten lines of his book.

Now, it is impossible not to be impressed by the “Imitation of Jesus
Christ,” which is to dogma what action is to thought. Catholicism
vibrates in it, pulses, breathes, and lives, body to body, with
human life. The book is a sure friend. It speaks to all passions, all
difficulties, even worldly ones; it solves all problems; it is more
eloquent than any preacher, for its voice is your own, it is the voice
within your soul, you hear it with your spirit. It is, in short, the
Gospel translated, adapted to all ages, the summit and crest of
all human situations. It is extraordinary that the Church has never
canonized John Gersen, for the Divine Spirit evidently inspired his pen.

For Godefroid, the hotel de la Chanterie now held a woman and a book;
day by day he loved the woman more; he discovered flowers buried beneath
the snows of winter in her heart; he had glimpses of the joys of a
sacred friendship which religion permits, on which the angels smile;
a friendship which here united these five persons and against which no
evil could prevail.

This is a sentiment higher than all others; a love of soul to soul,
resembling those rarest flowers born on the highest peaks of earth; a
love of which a few examples are offered to humanity from age to age,
by which lovers are sometimes bound together in one being, and which
explains those faithful attachments which are otherwise inexplicable
by the laws of the world. It is a bond without disappointment,
without misunderstanding, without vanity, without strife, without even
contradictions; so completely are the moral natures blended into one.

This sentiment, vast, infinite, born of Catholic charity, Godefroid
foresaw with all its joys. At times he could not believe the spectacle
before his eyes, and he sought for reasons to explain the sublime
friendship of these five persons, wondering in his heart to find true
Catholics, true Christians of the early Church, in the Paris of 1836.




VI. THE BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE OF CHANTERIE AND COMPANY

Within a week after his arrival Godefroid had seen such a concourse of
persons, he had overheard fragments of conversation relating to so many
serious topics, that he began to perceive an enormous activity in the
lives of the five inmates of the house. He noticed that none of them
slept more than five hours at the most.

They had all made, in some sort, a first day, before the second
breakfast. During that time strangers came and went, bringing or
carrying away money, sometimes in considerable sums. A messenger
from the Mongenod counting-room often came,--always very early in the
morning, so that his errand might not interfere with the business of the
bank.

One evening Monsieur Mongenod came himself, and Godefroid noticed that
he showed to Monsieur Alain a certain filial familiarity added to the
profound respect which he testified to the three other lodgers of Madame
de la Chanterie.

On that evening the banker merely put a few matter-of-fact questions to
Godefroid: “Was he comfortable? Did he intend to stay?” etc.,--at the
same time advising him to persevere in his plan.

“I need only one thing to make me contented,” said Godefroid.

“What is that?” asked the banker.

“An occupation.”

“An occupation!” remarked the Abbe de Veze. “Then you have changed your
mind? I thought you came to our cloister for rest.”

“Rest, without the prayers that enlivened monasteries, without the
meditation which peopled the Thebaids, becomes a disease,” said Monsieur
Joseph, sententiously.

“Learn book-keeping,” said Monsieur Mongenod, with a smile; “you might
become in a few months very useful to my friends here.”

“Oh! with pleasure,” cried Godefroid.

The next day was Sunday; Madame de la Chanterie requested him to give
her his arm to high mass.

“It is,” she said, “the only coercion I shall put upon you. Several
times during the past week I have wished to speak to you of religion,
but it did not seem to me that the time had come. You would find plenty
of occupation if you shared our beliefs, for then you would share our
labors as well.”

During mass Godefroid noticed the fervor of Messieurs Nicolas, Joseph,
and Alain; and as during the last few days he had also noticed their
superiority and intelligence, and the vast extent of their knowledge;
he concluded, when he saw how they humbled themselves, that the Catholic
religion had secrets which had hitherto escaped him.

“After all,” he said to himself, “it is the religion of Bossuet, Pascal,
Racine, Saint-Louis, Louis XIV., Raffaelle, Michel-Angelo, Ximenes,
Bayard, du Guesclin; and how could I, weakling that I am, compare myself
to those intellects, those statesmen, those poets, those heroes?”

If there were not some real instruction in these minor details it
would be imprudent to dwell upon them in these days; but they are
indispensable to the interests of this history, in which the present
public will be none too ready to believe, and which presents at the
outset a fact that is almost ridiculous,--namely, the empire which a
woman of sixty obtained over a young man disappointed with the world.

“You did not pray at all,” said Madame de la Chanterie to Godefroid as
they left the portal of Notre-Dame; “not for any one,--not even for the
soul of your mother.”

Godefroid colored and said nothing.

“Will you do me the favor,” continued Madame de la Chanterie, “to go to
your room and not come into the salon for an hour? You can meditate,
if you love me, on the first chapter in the third book of the
‘Imitation’--the one entitled: ‘Of inward communing.’”

Godefroid bowed stiffly and went to his room.

“The devil take them!” he exclaimed to himself, giving way to downright
anger. “What do they want with me here? What is all this traffic they
are carrying on? Pooh! all women, even pious ones, are up to the same
tricks. If Madame” (giving her the name by which her lodgers spoke of
her) “wants me out of the way it is probably because they are plotting
something against me.”

With that thought in his mind he tried to look from his window into that
of the salon; but the situation of the rooms did not allow it. He went
down one flight, and then returned,--reflecting that according to the
rigid principles of the house he should be dismissed if discovered
spying. To lose the respect of those five persons seemed to him as
serious as public dishonor.

He waited three quarters of an hour; then he resolved to surprise Madame
de la Chanterie and come upon her suddenly before she expected him. He
invented a lie to excuse himself, saying that his watch was wrong; for
which purpose he set it on twenty minutes. Then he went downstairs,
making no noise, reached the door of the salon, and opened it abruptly.

He saw a man, still young, but already celebrated, a poet, whom he had
frequently met in society, Victor de Vernisset, on his knees before
Madame de la Chanterie and kissing the hem of her dress. If the sky had
fallen, and shivered to atoms like glass, as the ancients thought it
was, Godefroid could not have been more astonished. Shocking thoughts
came into his mind, and then a reaction more terrible still when, before
the sarcasm he was about to utter had left his lips, he saw Monsieur
Alain in a corner of the room counting out bank-notes.

In an instant Vernisset was on his feet, and the worthy Alain looked
thunderstruck. Madame de la Chanterie, on her part, gave Godefroid a
look which petrified him; for the twofold expression on the face of the
visitor had not escaped him.

“Monsieur is one of us,” she said to the young poet, with a sign towards
Godefroid.

“Then you are a happy man, my dear fellow,” said Vernisset; “you are
saved! But, madame,” he added, turning to Madame de la Chanterie, “if
all Paris had seen me, I should rejoice in it. Nothing can ever mark my
gratitude to you. I am yours forever; I belong to you utterly. Command
me as you will and I obey. I owe you my life, and it is yours.”

“Well, well, young man!” said the kind Alain, “then be wise, be
virtuous,--only, _work_; but do not attack religion in your books.
Moreover, remember that you owe a debt.”

And he handed him an envelope thick with the bank-notes he had counted
out. The tears were in Victor de Vernisset’s eyes; he kissed Madame de
la Chanterie’s hand respectfully, and went away, after shaking hands
with Monsieur Alain and Godefroid.

“You have not obeyed madame,” said the goodman Alain solemnly, with a
sad expression on his face that Godefroid had never before seen there;
“and that is a great wrong; if it happens again we must part. This may
seem hard to you after we had begun to give you our confidence.”

“My dear Alain,” said Madame de la Chanterie, “have the kindness for my
sake to say no more about this piece of thoughtlessness. We ought not
to ask too much a new arrival, who has been spared great misfortunes
and knows nothing of religion; and who, moreover, has only an excessive
curiosity about our vocation, and does not yet believe in us.”

“Forgive me, madame,” said Godefroid; “I do desire, from this time
forth, to be worthy of you. I will submit to any trial you think
necessary before initiating me into the secrets of your work; and if the
Abbe de Veze will undertake to instruct me I will listen to him, soul
and mind.”

These words made Madame de la Chanterie so happy that a faint color
stole upon her cheeks. She took Godefroid’s hand and pressed it, then
she said, with strange emotion, “It is well.”

That evening, after dinner, visitors came in: a vicar-general of the
diocese of Paris, two canons, two former mayors of Paris, and one of
the ladies who distributed the charities of Notre-Dame. No cards were
played; but the conversation was gay, without being vapid.

A visit which surprised Godefroid greatly was that of the Comtesse de
Cinq-Cygne, one of the highest personages in aristocratic society, whose
salon was inaccessible to the bourgeoisie and to parvenus. The presence
of this great lady in Madame de la Chanterie’s salon was sufficiently
surprising; but the manner in which the two women met and treated
each other seemed to Godefroid inexplicable; for it showed the closest
intimacy and a constant intercourse which gave Madame de la Chanterie
an added value in his eyes. Madame de Cinq-Cygne was gracious and
affectionate in manner to the four friends of her friend, and showed the
utmost respect to Monsieur Nicolas.

We may see here how social vanities still governed Godefroid; for up to
this visit of Madame de Cinq-Cygne he was still undecided; but he now
resolved to give himself up, with or without conviction, to whatever
Madame de la Chanterie and her friends might exact of him, in order
to get affiliated with their order and initiated into their secrets,
assuring himself that in that way he should find a career.

The next day he went to a book-keeper whom Madame de la Chanterie
recommended, and arranged with him the hours at which they should work
together. His whole time was now employed. The Abbe de Veze instructed
him in the mornings; he was two hours a day with the book-keeper; and
he spent the rest of his time between breakfast and dinner in doing
imaginary commercial accounts which his master required him to write at
home.

Some time passed thus, during which Godefroid felt the charm of a life
in which each hour has its own employment. The recurrence of a settled
work at settled moments, regularity of action, is the secret of many a
happy life; and it proves how deeply the founders of religious orders
had meditated on the nature of man. Godefroid, who had made up his
mind to listen to the Abbe de Veze, began to have serious thoughts of
a future life, and to find how little he knew of the real gravity of
religious questions.

Moreover, from day to day Madame de la Chanterie, with whom he always
remained for an hour after the second breakfast, allowed him to discover
the treasures that were in her; he knew then that he never could have
imagined a loving-kindness so broad and so complete. A woman of Madame
de la Chanterie’s apparent age no longer has the pettiness of younger
women. She is a friend who offers you all feminine refinements, who
displays the graces, the choice attractions which nature inspires in a
woman for man; she gives them, and no longer sells them. Such a woman is
either detestable or perfect; for her gifts are either not of the flesh
or they are worthless. Madame de la Chanterie was perfect. She seemed
never to have had a youth; her glance never told of a past. Godefroid’s
curiosity was far from being appeased by a closer and more intimate
knowledge of this sublime nature; the discoveries of each succeeding day
only redoubled his desire to learn the anterior life of a woman whom he
now thought a saint. Had she ever loved? Had she been a wife,--a mother?
Nothing about her was characteristic of an old maid; she displayed all
the graces of a well-born woman; and an observer would perceive in
her robust health, in the extraordinary phenomena of her physical
preservation, a divine life, and a species of ignorance of the earthly
existence.

Except the gay and cheery goodman Alain, all these persons had suffered;
but Monsieur Nicolas himself seemed to give the palm of martyrdom to
Madame de la Chanterie. Nevertheless, the memory of her sorrows was so
restrained by religious resignation, by her secret avocations, that she
seemed to have been always happy.

“You are the life of your friends,” Godefroid said to her one day; “you
are the tie that unites them,--the house-mother, as it were, of some
great work; and, as we are all mortal, I ask myself sometimes what your
association would become without you.”

“That is what frightens the others; but Providence, to whom we owe our
new book-keeper,” she said, smiling, “will provide. Besides, I am on the
look-out.”

“Will your new book-keeper soon be allowed to work at your business?”
 asked Godefroid.

“That depends on himself,” she answered, smiling. “He must be sincerely
religious, truly pious, without the least self-interest, not concerned
about the riches of our house, able to rise above all petty social
considerations on the two wings which God has given us.”

“What are they?”

“Singleness of mind and purity,” replied Madame de la Chanterie. “Your
ignorance shows that you have neglected the reading of our book.”
 she added, laughing at the innocent trick she had played to know if
Godefroid had read the “Imitation of Jesus Christ.” “And, lastly,” she
went on, “fill your soul with Saint Paul’s epistle upon Charity. When
that is done,” she added, with a sublime look, “it will not be you who
belong to us, we shall belong to you, and you will be able to count up
greater riches than the sovereigns of this world possess; you will enjoy
as we enjoy; yes, let me tell you (if you remember the ‘Arabian Nights’)
that the treasures of Aladdin are nothing to those we possess. And so
for the last year we have not sufficed for our affairs, and we needed,
as you see, a book-keeper.”

While speaking, she studied Godefroid’s face; he, on his part, did not
know how to take this extraordinary confidence. But as the scene in the
counting-room at Mongenod’s came often to his mind, he hovered between
doubt and belief.

“Ah, you will be very happy!” she said.

Godefroid was so consumed with curiosity that from this moment he
determined to break through the reserve of one of the four friends
and question him. Now, the one to whom he felt the most drawn, and who
seemed naturally to excite the sympathies of all classes, was the kind,
gay, simple Monsieur Alain. By what strange path could Providence have
led a being so guileless into this monastery without a lock, where
recluses of both sexes lived beneath a rule in the midst of Paris,
in absolute freedom, as though they were guarded by the sternest of
superiors? What drama, what event, had made him leave his own road in
life, and take this path among the sorrows of the great city?

Godefroid resolved to ask.




VII. MONSIEUR ALAIN TELLS HIS SECRETS

One evening Godefroid determined to pay a visit to his neighbor on
the floor above him, with the intention of satisfying a curiosity
more excited by the apparent impossibility of a catastrophe in such an
existence than it would have been under the expectation of discovering
some terrible episode in the life of a corsair.

At the words “Come in!” given in answer to two raps struck discreetly
on the door, Godefroid turned the key which was in the lock and found
Monsieur Alain sitting by the fire reading, before he went to bed, his
accustomed chapter in the “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” by the light
of two wax-candles, each protected by a moveable green shade, such as
whist-players use.

The goodman wore trousers _a pied_ and his gray camlet dressing-gown.
His feet were at a level with the fire, resting on a cushion done in
worsted-work, as were his slippers, by Madame de la Chanterie. The fine
head of the old man, without other covering than its crown of white
hair, almost like that of a monk, stood out in clear relief against the
brown background of an enormous armchair.

Monsieur Alain gently laid his book, which was much worn at the corners,
on a little table with twisted legs, and signed to the young man to take
another chair, removing as he did so a pair of spectacles which were
hanging on the end of his nose.

“Are you ill, that you have left your room at this hour?” he asked.

“Dear Monsieur Alain,” said Godefroid, frankly, “I am tortured with
a curiosity which one word from you will make very harmless or very
indiscreet; and that explains clearly enough the spirit in which I shall
ask my question.”

“Oh! oh! and what is your question?” said the good soul, looking at the
young man with an eye that was half mischievous.

“What was it that brought you here to lead the life that you live here?
For, surely, to accept the doctrines of such total renunciation of all
personal interests, a man must have been disgusted with the world, or
else have injured others.”

“Eh! my dear lad,” replied the old man, letting a smile flicker on his
large lips, which gave to his rosy mouth the kindliest expression that
the genius of a painter ever imagined, “can we not be moved to the
deepest pity by the spectacle of human wretchedness which Paris holds
within her walls? Did Saint Vincent de Paul need the spur of remorse or
wounded vanity to make him devote himself to outcast children?”

“You close my mouth, for if ever a soul resembled that of the Christian
hero, it is yours,” said Godefroid.

In spite of the hardness which age had given to the wrinkled yellow skin
of his face, the old man blushed, for he seemed to have provoked that
comparison; though any one who knew his modesty would have been certain
he never dreamed of it. Godefroid was aware by this time that Madame
de la Chanterie’s inmates had no taste for that sort of incense.
Nevertheless, the extreme simplicity of the good old soul was more
disturbed by this idea than a young girl would have been by an improper
thought.

“Though I am very far indeed from Saint Vincent de Paul morally,” said
Monsieur Alain, “I think I do resemble him physically.”

Godefroid was about to speak, but was stopped by a gesture of the old
man, whose nose, it must be owned, had the tuberous appearance of
that of the Saint, and whose face, a good deal like that of an old
vine-dresser, was an exact duplicate of the broad, common face of the
founder of Foundling hospitals.

“As for me, you are right enough,” he went on; “my vocation for our work
was brought about by repentance, as the result of a--folly.”

“A folly,--you!” Godefroid exclaimed softly, the word entirely putting
out of his head what he meant to say.

“Ah! dear me, what I am going to tell you will seem, I dare say, a
trifle to you,--a mere bit of nonsense; but before the tribunal of
conscience it was another thing. If you persist in wishing to share our
work after hearing what I shall tell you, you will understand that the
power of a sentiment is according to the nature of souls, and that a
matter which would not in the least trouble a strong mind may very well
torment the conscience of a weak Christian.”

After a preface of this kind, the curiosity of the disciple of course
knew no bounds. What could be the crime of the worthy soul whom
Madame de la Chanterie called her _paschal lamb_? The thought crossed
Godefroid’s mind that a book might be written on it, called “The Sins of
a Sheep.” Sheep are sometimes quite ferocious towards grass and flowers.
One of the tenderest republicans of those days was heard to assert
that the best of human beings was cruel to something. But the kindly
Alain!--he, who like my uncle Toby, wouldn’t crush a gnat till it
had stung him twenty times,--that sweet soul to have been tortured by
repentance!

This reflection in Godefroid’s mind filled the pause made by the old man
after saying, “Now listen to me!”--a pause he filled himself by pushing
his cushion under Godefroid’s feet to share it with him.

“I was then about thirty years of age,” he said. “It was the year ‘98,
if I remember right,--a period when young men were forced to have the
experience of men of sixty. One morning, a little before my breakfast
hour, which was nine o’clock, my old housekeeper ushered in one of the
few friends remaining to me after the Revolution. My first word was to
ask him to breakfast. My friend--his name was Mongenod, a fellow about
twenty-eight years of age--accepted, but he did so in an awkward manner.
I had not seen him since 1793!”

“Mongenod!” cried Godefroid; “why, that is--”

“If you want to know the end before the beginning, how am I to tell you
my history?” said the old man, smiling.

Godefroid made a sign which promised absolute silence.

“When Mongenod sat down,” continued Monsieur Alain, “I noticed that his
shoes were worn out. His stockings had been washed so often that it
was difficult to say if they were silk or not. His breeches, of
apricot-colored cassimere, were so old that the color had disappeared
in spots; and the buckles, instead of being of steel, seemed to me to be
made of common iron. His white, flowered waistcoat, now yellow from
long wearing, also his shirt, the frill of which was frayed, betrayed
a horrible yet decent poverty. A mere glance at his coat was enough to
convince me that my friend had fallen into dire distress. That coat was
nut-brown in color, threadbare at the seams, carefully brushed, though
the collar was greasy from pomade or powder, and had the white metal
buttons now copper-colored. The whole was so shabby that I tried not to
look at it. The hat--an opera hat of a kind we then carried under the
arm, and not on the head--had seen many governments. Nevertheless,
my poor friend must have spent a few sous at the barber’s, for he was
neatly shaved; and his hair, gathered behind his head with a comb and
powdered carefully, smelt of pomade. I saw two chains hanging down on
his breeches,--two rusty steel chains,--but no appearance of a watch
in his pocket. I tell you all these details, as they come to me,” said
Monsieur Alain; “I seldom think of this matter now; but when I do, all
the particulars come vividly before me.”

He paused a moment and then resumed:--

“It was winter, and Mongenod evidently had no cloak; for I noticed that
several lumps of snow, which must have dropped from the roofs as he
walked along, were sticking to the collar of his coat. When he took off
his rabbit-skin gloves, and I saw his right hand, I noticed the signs
of labor, and toilsome labor, too. Now his father, the advocate of the
Grand Council, had left him some property,--about five or six thousand
francs a year. I saw at once that he had come to me to borrow money.
I had, in a secret hiding-place, two hundred louis d’or,--an enormous
hoard at that time; for they were worth I couldn’t now tell you how many
hundred thousand francs in assignats. Mongenod and I had studied at
the same collage,--that of Grassins,--and we had met again in the same
law-office,--that of Bordin,--a truly honest man. When you have spent
your boyhood and played your youthful pranks with the same comrade, the
sympathy between you and him has something sacred about it; his voice,
his glance, stir certain chords in your heart which only vibrate
under the memories that he brings back. Even if you have had cause of
complaint against such a comrade, the rights of the friendship between
you can never be effaced. But there had never been the slightest jar
between us two. At the death of his father, in 1787, Mongenod was left
richer than I. Though I had never borrowed money from him, I owed him
pleasures which my father’s economy denied me. Without my generous
comrade I should never had seen the first representation of the
‘Marriage of Figaro.’ Mongenod was what was called in those days a
charming cavalier; he was very gallant. Sometimes I blamed him for his
facile way of making intimacies and his too great amiability. His purse
opened freely; he lived in a free-handed way; he would serve a man as
second having only seen him twice. Good God! how you send me back to
the days and the ways of my youth!” said the worthy man, with his cheery
smile.

“Are you sorry?” said Godefroid.

“Oh, no! and you can judge by the minuteness with which I am telling you
all this how great a place this event has held in my life.

“Mongenod, endowed with an excellent heart and fine courage, a trifle
Voltairean, was inclined to play the nobleman,” went on Monsieur Alain.
“His education at Grassins, where there were many young nobles, and
his various gallantries, had given him the polished manners and ways of
people of condition, who were then called aristocrats. You can therefore
imagine how great was my surprise to see such symptoms of poverty in the
young and elegant Mongenod of 1787 when my eyes left his face and rested
on his garments. But as, at that unhappy period of our history, some
persons assumed a shabby exterior for safety, and as he might have had
some other and sufficient reasons for disguising himself, I awaited an
explanation, although I opened the way to it. ‘What a plight you are in,
my dear Mongenod!’ I said, accepting the pinch of snuff he offered me
from a copper and zinc snuff-box. ‘Sad indeed!’ he answered; ‘I have
but one friend left, and that is you. I have done all I could to avoid
appealing to you; but I must ask you for a hundred louis. The sum is
large, I know,’ he went on, seeing my surprise; ‘but if you gave me
fifty I should be unable ever to return them; whereas with one hundred
I can seek my fortune in better ways,--despair will inspire me to find
them.’ ‘Then you have nothing?’ I exclaimed. ‘I have,’ he said, brushing
away a tear, ‘five sous left of my last piece of money. To come here
to you I have had my boots blacked and my face shaved. I possess what
I have on my back. But,’ he added, with a gesture, ‘I owe my landlady
a thousand francs in assignats, and the man I buy cold victuals from
refused me credit yesterday. I am absolutely without resources.’ ‘What
do you think of doing?’ ‘Enlisting as a soldier if you cannot help me.’
‘You! a soldier, Mongenod?’ ‘I will get myself killed, or I will be
General Mongenod.’ ‘Well,’ I said, much moved, ‘eat your breakfast in
peace; I have a hundred louis.’

“At that point,” said the goodman, interrupting himself and looking at
Godefroid with a shrewd air, “I thought it best to tell him a bit of a
fib.”

“‘That is all I possess in the world,’ I said. ‘I have been waiting
for a fall in the Funds to invest that money; but I will put it in your
hands instead, and you shall consider me your partner; I will leave
to your conscience the duty of returning it to me in due time. The
conscience of an honest man,’ I said, ‘is a better security than the
Funds.’ Mongenod looked at me fixedly as I spoke, and seemed to be
inlaying my words upon his heart. He put out his right hand, I laid my
left into it, and we held them together,--I deeply moved, and he with
two big tears rolling down his cheeks. The sight of those tears wrung my
heart. I was more moved still when Mongenod pulled out a ragged foulard
handkerchief to wipe them away. ‘Wait here,’ I said; and I went to my
secret hiding-place with a heart as agitated as though I had heard a
woman say she loved me. I came back with two rolls of fifty louis each.
‘Here, count them.’ He would not count them; and he looked about him
for a desk on which to write, he said, a proper receipt. I positively
refused to take any paper. ‘If I should die,’ I said, ‘my heirs would
trouble you. This is to be between ourselves.’

“Well,” continued Monsieur Alain, smiling, “when Mongenod found me a
good friend he ceased to look as sad and anxious as when he entered; in
fact, he became quite gay. My housekeeper gave us some oysters, white
wine, and an omelet, with broiled kidneys, and the remains of a pate my
old mother had sent me; also some dessert, coffee, and liqueur of the
Iles. Mongenod, who had been starving for two days, was fed up. We were
so interested in talking about our life before the Revolution that we
sat at table till three in the afternoon. Mongenod told me how he had
lost his fortune. In the first place, his father having invested the
greater part of his capital in city loans, when they fell Mongenod lost
two thirds of all he had. Then, having sold his house in the rue de
Savoie, he was forced to receive the price in assignats. After that he
took into his head to found a newspaper, ‘La Sentinelle;’ that compelled
him to fly at the end of six months. His hopes, he said, were now fixed
on the success of a comic opera called ‘Les Peruviens.’ When he said
that I began to tremble. Mongenod turned author, wasting his money on
a newspaper, living no doubt in the theatres, connected with singers at
the Feydeau, with musicians, and all the queer people who lurk behind
the scenes,--to tell you the truth, he didn’t seem my Mongenod. I
trembled. But how could I take back the hundred louis? I saw each roll
in each pocket of his breeches like the barrels of two pistols.

“Then,” continued Monsieur Alain, and this time he sighed, “Mongenod
went away. When I was alone, and no longer in presence of hard and
cruel poverty, I began, in spite of myself, to reflect. I was sobered.
‘Mongenod,’ thought I, ‘is perhaps thoroughly depraved; he may have been
playing a comedy at my expense.’ His gaiety, the moment I had handed
over to him readily such a large sum of money, struck me then as being
too like the joy of the valets on the stage when they catch a Geronte.
I ended, where I ought to have begun, by resolving to make some
investigations as to my friend Mongenod, who had given me his
address,--written on the back of a playing card! I did not choose, as
a matter of delicacy, to go and see him the next day; he might have
thought there was distrust in such promptness, as, indeed, there would
have been. The second day I had certain matters to attend to which took
all my time, and it was only at the end of two weeks that, not seeing
or hearing of Mongenod, I went one morning from the Croix-Rouge, where I
was then living, to the rue des Moineaux, where he lived. I found he was
living in furnished lodgings of the lowest class; but the landlady was
a very worthy woman, the widow of a magistrate who had died on the
scaffold; she was utterly ruined by the Revolution, and had only a few
louis with which to begin the hazardous trade of taking lodgers.”

Here Monsieur Alain interrupted himself to explain. “I knew her later,”
 he said; “she then had seven houses in Saint-Roch, and was making quite
a little fortune.

“‘The citizen Mongenod is not at home,’ the landlady said to me; ‘but
there is some one there.’ This remark excited my curiosity. I went up to
the fifth story. A charming person opened the door,--oh, such a pretty
young woman! who looked at me rather suspiciously and kept the door half
closed. ‘I am Alain, a friend of Mongenod’s,’ I said. Instantly the door
opened wide, and I entered a miserable garret, which was, nevertheless,
kept with the utmost neatness. The pretty young woman offered me a chair
before a fireplace where were ashes but no fire, at the corner of which
I saw a common earthen foot-warmer. ‘It makes me very happy, monsieur,’
she said, taking my hand and pressing it affectionately, ‘to be able to
express to you my gratitude. You have indeed saved us. Were it not for
you I might never have seen Mongenod again. He might,--yes, he would
have thrown himself in the river. He was desperate when he left me to go
and see you.’ On examining this person I was surprised to see her head
tied up in a foulard, and along the temples a curious dark line; but I
presently saw that her head was shaved. ‘Have you been ill?’ I asked,
as I noticed this singularity. She cast a glance at a broken mirror in
a shabby frame and colored; then the tears came into her eyes. ‘Yes,
monsieur,’ she said, ‘I had horrible headaches, and I was obliged to
have my hair cut off; it came to my feet.’ ‘Am I speaking to Madame
Mongenod?’ I asked. ‘Yes, monsieur,’ she answered, giving me a truly
celestial look. I bowed to the poor little woman and went away,
intending to make the landlady tell me something about them; but she was
out. I was certain that poor young woman had sold her hair to buy bread.
I went from there to a wood merchant and ordered half a cord of wood,
telling the cartman and the sawyer to take the bill, which I made the
dealer receipt to the name of citizen Mongenod, and give it to the
little woman.

“There ends the period of what I long called _my foolishness_,” said
Monsieur Alain, clasping his hands and lifting them with a look of
repentance.

Godefroid could not help smiling. He was, as we shall see, greatly
mistaken in that smile.

“Two days later,” resumed the worthy man, “I met one of those men who
are neither friends nor strangers, with whom we have relations from
time to time, and call acquaintances,--a certain Monsieur Barillaud, who
remarked accidentally, _a propos_ of the ‘Peruviens,’ that the author
was a friend of his. ‘Then you know citizen Mongenod?’ I said.

“In those days we were obliged by law to call each other ‘citizen,’”
 said Monsieur Alain to Godefroid, by way of parenthesis. Then he
continued his narrative:--

“The citizen looked at me, exclaiming, ‘I wish I never had known him;
for he has several times borrowed money of me, and shown his friendship
by not returning it. He is a queer fellow,--good-hearted and all that,
but full of illusions! always an imagination on fire! I will do him this
justice,--he does not mean to deceive; but as he deceives himself about
everything, he manages to behave like a dishonest man.’ ‘How much does
he owe you?’ I asked. ‘Oh! a good many hundred francs. He’s a basket
with a hole in the bottom. Nobody knows where his money goes; perhaps
he doesn’t know himself.’ ‘Has he any resources?’ ‘Well, yes,’ said
Barillaud, laughing; ‘just now he is talking of buying land among
the savages in the United States.’ I carried away with me the drop of
vinegar which casual gossip thus put into my heart, and it soured all
my feelings. I went to see my old master, in whose office Mongenod and I
had studied law; he was now my counsel. When I told him about my loan to
Mongenod and the manner in which I had acted,--‘What!’ he cried, ‘one of
my old clerks to behave in that way! You ought to have put him off till
the next day and come to see me. You would then have found out that I
have forbidden my clerks to let Mongenod into this office. Within the
last year he has borrowed three hundred francs of me in silver,--an
enormous sum at present rates. Three days before he breakfasted with
you I met him on the street, and he gave such a piteous account of his
poverty that I let him have two louis.’ ‘If I have been the dupe of a
clever comedian,’ I said to Bordin, ‘so much the worse for him, not for
me. But tell me what to do.’ ‘You must try to get from him a written
acknowledgment; for a debtor, however, insolvent he may be, may become
solvent, and then he will pay.’ Thereupon Bordin took from a tin box a
case on which I saw the name of Mongenod; he showed me three receipts
of a hundred francs each. ‘The next time he comes I shall have him
admitted, and I shall make him add the interest and the two louis, and
give me a note for the whole. I shall, at any rate, have things properly
done, and be in a position to obtain payment.’ ‘Well,’ said I to Bordin,
‘can you have my matter set right so far, as well as yours? for I know
you are a good man, and what you do will be right.’ ‘I have remained
master of my ground,’ he said; ‘but when persons behave as you have done
they are at the mercy of a man who can snap his fingers at them. As for
me, I don’t choose that any man should get the better of me,--get the
better of a former attorney to the Chatelet!--ta-ra-ra! Every man to
whom a sum of money is lent as heedlessly as you lent yours to Mongenod,
ends, after a certain time, by thinking that money his own. It is no
longer your money, it is _his_ money; you become his creditor,--an
inconvenient, unpleasant person. A debtor will then try to get rid of
you by some juggling with his conscience, and out of one hundred men in
his position, seventy-five will do their best never to see or hear
of you again.’ ‘Then you think only twenty-five men in a hundred
are honest?’ ‘Did I say that?’ he replied, smiling maliciously. ‘The
estimate is too high?’”

Monsieur Alain paused to put the fire together; that done, he resumed:--

“Two weeks later I received a letter from Bordin asking me to go to his
office and get my receipt. I went. ‘I tried to get fifty of your louis
for you,’ he said, ‘but the birds had flown. Say good-by to your yellow
boys; those pretty canaries are off to other climes. You have had to do
with a sharper; that’s what he is. He declared to me that his wife and
father-in-law had gone to the United States with sixty of your louis
to buy land; that he intended to follow, for the purpose, he said, of
making a fortune and paying his debts; the amount of which, carefully
drawn up, he confided to me, requesting me to keep an eye on what
became of his creditors. Here is a list of the items,’ continued Bordin,
showing me a paper from which he read the total,--‘Seventeen thousand
francs in coin; a sum with which a house could be bought that would
bring in two thousand francs a year.’ After replacing the list in the
case, Bordin gave me a note for a sum equivalent to a hundred louis
in gold, with a letter in which Mongenod admitted having received my
hundred louis, on which he owed interest. ‘So now I am all right,’ I
said to Bordin. ‘He cannot deny the debt,’ replied my old master;
‘but where there are no funds, even the king--I should say the
Directory--can’t enforce rights.’ I went home. Believing that I had
been robbed in a way intentionally screened from the law, I withdrew my
esteem from Mongenod, and resigned myself philosophically.

“If I have dwelt on these details, which are so commonplace and seem so
slight,” said the worthy man, looking at Godefroid, “it is not without
good reason. I want to explain to you how I was led to act, as most
men act, in defiance of the rules which savages observe in the smallest
matters. Many persons would justify themselves by the opinion of
so excellent a man as Bordin; but to-day I know myself to have been
inexcusable. When it comes to condemning one of our fellows, and
withdrawing our esteem from him, we should act from our own convictions
only. But have we any right to make our heart a tribunal before which
we arraign our neighbor? Where is the law? what is our standard of
judgment? That which in us is weakness may be strength in our neighbor.
So many beings, so many different circumstances for every act; and there
are no two beings exactly alike in all humanity. Society alone has the
right over its members of repression; as for punishment, I deny it that
right. Repression suffices; and that, besides, brings with it punishment
enough.

“So,” resumed Monsieur Alain, continuing his history, having drawn from
it that noble teaching, “after listening to the gossip of the Parisian,
and relying on the wisdom of my old master, I condemned Mongenod. His
play, ‘Les Peruviens,’ was announced. I expected to receive a ticket
from Mongenod for the first representation; I established in my own mind
a sort of claim on him. It seemed to me that by reason of my loan my
friend was a sort of vassal of mine, who owed me a number of things
besides the interest on my money. We all think that. Mongenod not only
did not send me a ticket, but I saw him from a distance coming towards
me in that dark passage under the Theatre Feydeau, well dressed, almost
elegant; he pretended not to see me; then, after he had passed and I
turned to run after him, my debtor hastily escaped through a transverse
alley. This circumstance greatly irritated me; and the irritation,
instead of subsiding with time, only increased, and for the following
reason: Some days after this encounter, I wrote to Mongenod somewhat
in these terms: ‘My friend, you ought not to think me indifferent to
whatever happens to you of good or evil. Are you satisfied with the
success of ‘Les Peruviens’? You forgot me (of course it was your right
to do so) for the first representation, at which I should have applauded
you. But, nevertheless, I hope you found a Peru in your Peruvians, for I
have found a use for my funds, and shall look to you for the payment
of them when the note falls due. Your friend, Alain.’ After waiting two
weeks for an answer, I went to the rue des Moineaux. The landlady told
me that the little wife really did go away with her father at the time
when Mongenod told Bordin of their departure. Mongenod always left the
garret very early in the morning and did not return till late at night.
Another two weeks, I wrote again, thus: ‘My dear Mongenod, I cannot
find you, and you do not reply to my letters. I do not understand your
conduct. If I behaved thus to you, what would you think of me?’ I did
not subscribe the letter as before, ‘Your friend,’ I merely wrote, ‘Kind
regards.’

“Well, it was all of no use,” said Monsieur Alain. “A month went by
and I had no news of Mongenod. ‘Les Peruviens’ did not obtain the great
success on which he counted. I went to the twentieth representation,
thinking to find him and obtain my money. The house was less than half
full; but Madame Scio was very beautiful. They told me in the foyer that
the play would run a few nights longer. I went seven different times to
Mongenod’s lodging and did not find him; each time I left my name with
the landlady. At last I wrote again: ‘Monsieur, if you do not wish to
lose my respect, as you have my friendship, you will treat me now as a
stranger,--that is to say, with politeness; and you will tell me when
you will be ready to pay your note, which is now due. I shall act
according to your answer. Your obedient servant, Alain.’ No answer. We
were then in 1799; one year, all but two months, had expired. At the
end of those two months I went to Bordin. Bordin took the note, had
it protested, and sued Mongenod for me. Meantime the disasters of the
French armies had produced such depreciation of the Funds that investors
could buy a five-francs dividend on seven francs capital. Therefore,
for my hundred louis in gold, I might have bought myself fifteen hundred
francs of income. Every morning, as I took my coffee and read the paper,
I said to myself: ‘That cursed Mongenod! if it were not for him I
should have three thousand francs a year to live on.’ Mongenod became
my _bete-noire_; I inveighed against him even as I walked the streets.
‘Bordin is there,’ I thought to myself; ‘Bordin will put the screws on,
and a good thing, too.’ My feelings turned to hatred, and my hatred to
imprecations; I cursed the man, and I believed he had every vice. ‘Ah!
Monsieur Barillaud was very right,’ thought I, ‘in all he told me!’”

Monsieur Alain paused reflectively.

“Yes,” he said again, “I thought him very right in all he told me. At
last, one morning, in came my debtor, no more embarrassed than if he
didn’t owe me a sou. When I saw him I felt all the shame he ought to
have felt. I was like a criminal taken in the act; I was all upset.
The eighteenth Brumaire had just taken place. Public affairs were doing
well, the Funds had gone up. Bonaparte was off to fight the battle
of Marengo. ‘It is unfortunate, monsieur,’ I said, receiving Mongenod
standing, ‘that I owe your visit to a sheriff’s summons.’ Mongenod took
a chair and sat down. ‘I came to tell you,’ he said, ‘that I am totally
unable to pay you.’ ‘You made me miss a fine investment before the
election of the First Consul,--an investment which would have given me
a little fortune.’ ‘I know it, Alain,’ he said, ‘I know it. But what is
the good of suing me and crushing me with bills of costs? I have nothing
with which to pay anything. Lately I received letters from my wife and
father-in-law; they have bought land with the money you lent me, and
they send me a list of things they need to improve it. Now, unless some
one prevents it, I shall sail on a Dutch vessel from Flushing, whither I
have sent the few things I am taking out to them. Bonaparte has won the
battle of Marengo, peace will be signed, I may safely rejoin my family;
and I have need to, for my dear little wife is about to give birth to a
child.’ ‘And so you have sacrificed me to your own interests?’ said I.
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘for I believed you my friend.’ At that moment I
felt myself inferior to Mongenod, so sublime did he seem to me as he
said those grand words. ‘Did I not speak to you frankly,’ he said,
‘in this very room? I came to you, Alain, as the only person who would
really understand me. I told you that fifty louis would be lost, but a
hundred I could return to you. I did not bind myself by saying when; for
how could I know the time at which my long struggle with disaster would
end? You were my last friend. All others, even our old master Bordin,
despised me for the very reason that I borrowed money of them. Oh! you
do not know, Alain, the dreadful sensation which grips the heart of an
honest man when, in the throes of poverty, he goes to a friend and asks
him for succor,--and all that follows! I hope you never may know it;
it is far worse than the anguish of death. You have written me letters
which, if I had written them to you in a like situation, you would have
thought very odious. You expected of me that which it was out of my
power to do. But you are the only person to whom I shall try to justify
myself. In spite of your severity, and though from being a friend you
became a creditor on the day when Bordin asked for my note on your
behalf (thus abrogating the generous compact you had made with me there,
on that spot, when we clasped hands and mingled our tears),--well, in
spite of all that, I have remembered that day, and because of it I have
come here to say to you, You do not know misery, therefore do not judge
it. I have not had one moment when I could answer you. Would you have
wished me to come here and cajole you with words? I could not pay you;
I did not even have enough for the bare necessities of those whose lives
depended on me. My play brought little. A novice in theatrical ways, I
became a prey to musicians, actors, journalists, orchestras. To get
the means to leave Paris and join my family, and carry to them the few
things they need, I have sold “Les Peruviens” outright to the director,
with two other pieces which I had in my portfolio. I start for Holland
without a sou; I must reach Flushing as best I can; my voyage is paid,
that is all. Were it not for the pity of my landlady, who has confidence
in me, I should have to travel on foot, with my bag upon my back. But,
in spite of your doubts of me, I, remembering that without you I never
could have sent my wife and father-in-law to New York, am forever
grateful to you. No, Monsieur Alain, I shall not forget that the hundred
louis d’or you lent me would have yielded you to-day fifteen hundred
francs a year.’ ‘I desire to believe you, Mongenod,’ I said, shaken
by the tone in which he made this explanation. ‘Ah, you no longer say
_monsieur_ to me!’ he said quickly, with a tender glance. ‘My God! I
shall quit France with less regret if I can leave one man behind me in
whose eyes I am not half a swindler, nor a spendthrift, nor a man of
illusions! Alain, I have loved an angel in the midst of my misery. A man
who truly loves cannot be despicable.’ At those words I stretched out my
hand to him. He took it and wrung it. ‘May heaven protect you!’ I said.
‘Are we still friends?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It shall never
be that my childhood’s comrade and the friend of my youth left me for
America under the feeling that I was angry with him.’ Mongenod kissed
me, with tears in his eyes, and rushed away.”

Monsieur Alain stopped in his narrative for an instant and looked at
Godefroid. “I remember that day with some satisfaction,” he said. Then
he resumed:

“A week or so later I met Bordin and told him of that interview. He
smiled and said: ‘I hope it was not a pretty bit of comedy. Didn’t he
ask for anything?’ ‘No,’ I answered. ‘Well, he came to see me the same
day. I was almost as touched as you; and he asked me for means to get
food on his journey. Well, well, time will show!’ These remarks of
Bordin made me fear I had foolishly yielded to mistaken sensibility.
‘Nevertheless,’ I said to myself, ‘he, the old lawyer, did as I did.’
I do not think it necessary to explain to you how I lost all, or nearly
all, my property. I had placed a little in the Funds, which gave me five
hundred francs a year; all else was gone. I was then thirty-four years
old. I obtained, through the influence of Monsieur Bordin, a place as
clerk, with a salary of eight hundred francs, in a branch office of
the Mont-de-piete, rue des Augustins.[*] From that time I lived very
modestly. I found a small lodging in the rue des Marais, on the third
floor (two rooms and a closet), for two hundred and fifty francs a year.
I dined at a common boarding-house for forty francs a month. I copied
writings at night. Ugly as I was and poor, I had to renounce marriage.”

     [*] The Mont-de-Piete and its branches are pawn-shops under
     control of the government.--TR.

As Godefroid heard this judgment which the poor man passed upon himself
with beautiful simplicity and resignation, he made a movement which
proved, far more than any confidence in words could have done, the
resemblance of their destinies; and the goodman, in answer to that
eloquent gesture, seemed to expect the words that followed it.

“Have you never been loved?” asked Godefroid.

“Never!” he said; “except by Madame, who returns to us all the love we
have for her,--a love which I may call divine. You must be aware of it.
We live through her life as she lives through ours; we have but one soul
among us; and such pleasures, though they are not physical, are none the
less intense; we exist through our hearts. Ah, my child!” he continued,
“when women come to appreciate moral qualities, they are indifferent
to others; and they are then old--Oh! I have suffered deeply,--yes,
deeply!”

“And I, in the same way,” said Godefroid.

“Under the Empire,” said the worthy man, resuming his narrative, “the
Funds did not always pay their dividends regularly; it was necessary
to be prepared for suspensions of payment. From 1802 to 1814 there was
scarcely a week that I did not attribute my misfortune to Mongenod.
‘If it were not for Mongenod,’ I used to say to myself, ‘I might have
married. If I had never known him I should not be obliged to live in
such privation.’ But then, again, there were other times when I said,
‘Perhaps the unfortunate fellow has met with ill luck over there.’ In
1806, at a time when I found my life particularly hard to bear, I wrote
him a long letter, which I sent by way of Holland. I received no answer.
I waited three years, placing all my hopes on that answer. At last I
resigned myself to my life. To the five hundred francs I received from
the Funds I now added twelve hundred from the Mont-de-piete (for they
raised my salary), and five hundred which I obtained from Monsieur Cesar
Birotteau, perfumer, for keeping his books in the evening. Thus, not
only did I manage to get along comfortably, but I laid by eight hundred
francs a year. At the beginning of 1814 I invested nine thousand francs
of my savings at forty francs in the Funds, and thus I was sure of
sixteen hundred francs a year for my old age. By that time I had fifteen
hundred a year from the Mont-de-piete, six hundred for my book-keeping,
sixteen hundred from the Funds; in all, three thousand seven hundred
francs a year. I took a lodging in the rue de Seine, and lived a little
better. My place had brought me into relations with many unfortunates.
For the last twelve years I had known better than any man whatsoever the
misery of the poor. Once or twice I had been able to do a real service.
I felt a vivid pleasure when I found that out of ten persons relieved,
one or two households had been put on their feet. It came into my mind
that benevolence ought not to consist in throwing money to those who
suffered. ‘Doing charity,’ to use that common expression, seemed to me
too often a premium offered to crime. I began to study the question. I
was then fifty years of age, and my life was nearly over. ‘Of what good
am I?’ thought I. ‘To whom can I leave my savings? When I have furnished
my rooms handsomely, and found a good cook, and made my life suitable in
all respects, what then?--how shall I employ my time?’ Eleven years of
revolution, and fifteen years of poverty, had, as I may say, eaten up
the most precious parts of my life,--used it up in sterile toil for my
own individual preservation. No man at the age of fifty could spring
from that obscure, repressed condition to a brilliant future; but every
man could be of use. I understood by this time that watchful care and
wise counsels have tenfold greater value than money given; for the poor,
above all things, need a guide, if only in the labor they do for others,
for speculators are never lacking to take advantage of them. Here I saw
before me both an end and an occupation, not to speak of the exquisite
enjoyments obtained by playing in a miniature way the role of
Providence.”

“And to-day you play it in a grand way, do you not?” asked Godefroid,
eagerly.

“Ah! you want to know everything,” said the old man. “No, no! Would you
believe it,” he continued after this interruption, “the smallness of
my means to do the work I now desired to do brought back the thought
of Mongenod. ‘If it were not for Mongenod,’ I kept saying to myself, ‘I
could do so much more. If a dishonest man had not deprived me of fifteen
hundred francs a year I could save this or that poor family.’ Excusing
my own impotence by accusing another, I felt that the miseries of those
to whom I could offer nothing but words of consolation were a curse upon
Mongenod. That thought soothed my heart. One morning, in January, 1816,
my housekeeper announced,--whom do you suppose?--Mongenod! Monsieur
Mongenod! And whom do you think I saw enter my room? The beautiful young
woman I had once seen,--only now she was thirty-six years old,--followed
by her three children and Mongenod. He looked younger than when he went
away; for prosperity and happiness do shed a halo round their favorites.
Thin, pale, yellow, shrivelled, when I last saw him, he was now plump,
sleek, rosy as a prebendary, and well dressed. He flung himself into
my arms. Feeling, perhaps, that I received him coldly, his first words
were: ‘Friend, I could not come sooner. The ocean was not free to
passenger ships till 1815; then it took me a year to close up my
business and realize my property. I have succeeded, my friend. When I
received your letter in 1806, I started in a Dutch vessel to bring you
myself a little fortune; but the union of Holland with the French Empire
caused the vessel to be taken by the English and sent to Jamaica, from
which island I escaped by mere chance. When I reached New York I found
I was a victim to the bankruptcy of others. In my absence my poor
Charlotte had not been able to protect herself against schemers. I
was therefore forced to build up once more the edifice of my fortunes.
However, it is all done now, and here we are. By the way those children
are looking at you, you must be aware that we have often talked to
them of their father’s benefactor.’ ‘Oh, yes, yes, monsieur!’ said
the beautiful Mongenod, ‘we have never passed a single day without
remembering you. Your share has been set aside in all our affairs. We
have looked forward eagerly to the happiness we now have in returning
to you your fortune, not thinking for a moment that the payment of these
just dues can ever wipe out our debt of gratitude.’ With those words
Madame Mongenod held out to me that magnificent box you see over there,
in which were one hundred and fifty notes of a thousand francs each.”

The old man paused an instant as if to dwell on that moment; then he
went on:--

“Mongenod looked at me fixedly and said: ‘My poor Alain, you have
suffered, I know; but we did divine your sufferings; we did try every
means to send the money to you, and failed in every attempt. You told
me you could not marry,--that I had prevented it. But here is our eldest
daughter; she has been brought up in the thought of becoming your wife,
and she will have a dowry of five hundred thousand francs.’ ‘God forbid
that I should make her miserable!’ I cried hastily, looking at the girl,
who was as beautiful as her mother when I first saw her. I drew her to
me to kiss her brow. ‘Don’t be afraid, my beautiful child!’ I said. ‘A
man of fifty to a girl of seventeen?--never! and a man as plain and ugly
as I am?--never!’ I cried. ‘Monsieur,’ she said, ‘my father’s benefactor
could not be ugly for me.’ Those words, said spontaneously, with simple
candor, made me understand how true was all that Mongenod had said. I
then gave him my hand, and we embraced each other again. ‘My friend,’
I said, ‘I have done you wrong. I have often accused you, cursed
you.’ ‘You had the right to do so, Alain,’ he replied, blushing; ‘you
suffered, and through me.’ I took Mongenod’s note from my desk and
returned it to him. ‘You will all stay and breakfast with me, I hope?’ I
said to the family. ‘On condition that you dine with us,’ said Mongenod.
‘We arrived yesterday. We are going to buy a house; and I mean to open
a banking business between Paris and North America, so as to leave it to
this fellow here,’ he added, showing me his eldest son, who was fifteen
years old. We spent the rest of the day together and went to the play;
for Mongenod and his family were actually hungry for the theatre. The
next morning I placed the whole sum in the Funds, and I now had in all
about fifteen thousand francs a year. This fortune enabled me to give up
book-keeping at night, and also to resign my place at the Mont-de-piete,
to the great satisfaction of the underling who stepped into my shoes. My
friend died in 1827, at the age of sixty-three, after founding the great
banking-house of Mongenod and Company, which made enormous profits
from the first loans under the Restoration. His daughter, to whom he
subsequently gave a million in dowry, married the Vicomte de Fontaine.
The eldest son, whom you know, is not yet married; he lives with his
mother and brother. We obtain from them all the sums we need. Frederic
(his father gave him my name in America),--Frederic Mongenod is, at
thirty-seven years of age, one of the ablest, and most upright, bankers
in Paris. Not very long ago Madame Mongenod admitted to me that she had
sold her hair, as I suspected, for twelve francs to buy bread. She gives
me now twenty-four cords of wood a year for my poor people, in exchange
for the half cord which I once sent her.”

“This explains to me your relations with the house of Mongenod,” said
Godefroid,--“and your fortune.”

Again the goodman looked at Godefroid with a smile, and the same
expression of kindly mischief.

“Oh, go on!” said Godefroid, seeing from his manner that he had more to
tell.

“This conclusion, my dear Godefroid, made the deepest impression on me.
If the man who had suffered so much, if my friend forgave my injustice,
I could not forgive myself.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Godefroid.

“I resolved to devote all my superfluous means--about ten thousand
francs a year--to acts of intelligent benevolence,” continued Monsieur
Alain, tranquilly. “About this time it was that I made the acquaintance
of a judge of the Lower Civil Court of the Seine named Popinot, whom
we had the great grief of losing three years ago, and who practised for
fifteen years an active and most intelligent charity in the quartier
Saint-Marcel. It was he, with the venerable vicar of Notre-Dame and
Madame, who first thought of founding the work in which we are now
co-operating, and which, since 1825, has quietly done much good. This
work has found its soul in Madame de la Chanterie, for she is truly the
inspiration of this enterprise. The vicar has known how to make us more
religious than we were at first, by showing us the necessity of being
virtuous ourselves in order to inspire virtue; in short, to preach by
example. The farther we have advanced in our work, the happier we have
mutually found ourselves. And so, you see, it really was the repentance
I felt for misconceiving the heart of my friend which gave me the idea
of devoting to the poor, through my own hands, the fortune he returned
to me, and which I accepted without objecting to the immensity of the
sum returned in proportion to the sum lent. Its destination justified my
taking it.”

This narration, made quietly, without assumption, but with a gentle
kindliness in accent, look, and gesture, would have inspired Godefroid
to enter this noble and sacred association if his resolution had not
already been taken.

“You know the world very little,” he said, “if you have such scruples
about a matter that would not weigh on any other man’s conscience.”

“I know only the unfortunate,” said Monsieur Alain. “I do not desire to
know a world in which men are so little afraid of judging one another.
But see! it is almost midnight, and I still have my chapter of the
‘Imitation of Jesus Christ’ to meditate upon! Good-night!”

Godefroid took the old man’s hand and pressed it, with an expression of
admiration.

“Can you tell me Madame de la Chanterie’s history?”

“Impossible, without her consent,” replied Monsieur Alain; “for it is
connected with one of the most terrible events of Imperial policy. It
was through my friend Bordin that I first knew Madame. He had in his
possession all the secrets of that noble life; it was he who, if I may
say so, led me to this house.”

“I thank you,” said Godefroid, “for having told me your life; there are
many lessons in it for me.”

“Do you know what is the moral of it?”

“Tell me,” said Godefroid, “for perhaps I may see something different in
it from what you see.”

“Well, it is this: that pleasure is an accident in a Christian’s life;
it is not the aim of it; and this we learn too late.”

“What happens when we turn to Christianity?” asked Godefroid.

“See!” said the goodman.

He pointed with his finger to some letters of gold on a black ground
which the new lodger had not observed, for this was the first time he
had ever been in Monsieur Alain’s room. Godefroid turned and read the
words: TRANSIRE BENEFACIENDO.

“That is our motto. If you become one of us, that will be your only
commission. We read that commission, which we have given to ourselves,
at all times, in the morning when we rise, in the evening when we lie
down, and when we are dressing. Ah! if you did but know what immense
pleasures there are in accomplishing that motto!”

“Such as--?” said Godefroid, hoping for further revelations.

“I must tell you that we are as rich as Baron de Nucingen himself. But
the ‘Imitation of Jesus Christ’ forbids us to regard our wealth as our
own. We are only the spenders of it; and if we had any pride in
being that, we should not be worthy of dispensing it. It would not be
_transire benefaciendo_; it would be inward enjoyment. For if you say
to yourself with a swelling of the nostrils, ‘I play the part of
Providence!’ (as you might have thought if you had been in my place this
morning and saved the future lives of a whole family), you would become
a Sardanapalus,--an evil one! None of these gentlemen living here thinks
of himself when he does good. All vanity, all pride, all self-love, must
be stripped off, and that is hard to do,--yes, very hard.”

Godefroid bade him good-night, and returned to his own room, deeply
affected by this narrative. But his curiosity was more whetted than
satisfied, for the central figure of the picture was Madame de la
Chanterie. The history of the life of that woman became of the utmost
importance to him, so that he made the obtaining of it the object of
his stay in that house. He already perceived in this association of five
persons a vast enterprise of Charity; but he thought far less of that
than he did of its heroine.




VIII. WHO SHE WAS--WIFE AND MOTHER

The would-be disciple passed many days in observing more carefully than
he had hitherto done the rare persons among whom fate had brought
him; and he became the subject of a moral phenomenon which modern
philosophers have despised,--possibly out of ignorance.

The sphere in which he lived had a positive action upon Godefroid.
The laws which regulate the physical nature under relation to the
atmospheric environment in which it is developed, rule also in the
moral nature. Hence it follows that the assembling together of condemned
prisoners is one of the greatest of social crimes; and also that their
isolation is an experiment of doubtful success. Condemned criminals
ought to be in religious institutions, surrounded by prodigies of Good,
instead of being cast as they are into sight and knowledge of Evil only.
The Church can be expected to show an absolute devotion in this matter.
If it sends missionaries to heathen or savage nations, with how much
greater joy would it welcome the mission of redeeming the heathen of
civilization? for all criminals are atheists, and often without knowing
they are so.

Godefroid found these five associated persons endowed with the qualities
they required in him. They were all without pride, without vanity, truly
humble and pious; also without any of the pretension which constitutes
_devotion_, using that word in its worst sense. These virtues were
contagious; he was filled with a desire to imitate these hidden
heroes, and he ended by passionately studying the book he had begun by
despising. Within two weeks he reduced his views of life to its simplest
lines,--to what it really _is_ when we consider it from the higher point
of view to which the Divine spirit leads us. His curiosity--worldly at
first, and excited by many vulgar and material motives--purified itself;
if he did not renounce it altogether, the fault was not his; any one
would have found it difficult to resign an interest in Madame de la
Chanterie; but Godefroid showed, without intending it, a discretion
which was appreciated by these persons, in whom the divine Spirit had
developed a marvellous power of the faculties,--as, indeed, it often
does among recluses. The concentration of the moral forces, no matter
under what system it may be effected, increases the compass of them
tenfold.

“Our friend is not yet converted,” said the good Abbe de Veze, “but he
is seeking to be.”

An unforeseen circumstance brought about the revelation of Madame de la
Chanterie’s history to Godefroid; and so fully was this made to him
that the overpowering interest she excited in his soul was completely
satisfied.

The public mind was at that time much occupied by one of those horrible
criminal trials which mark the annals of our police-courts. This trial
had gathered its chief interest from the character of the criminals
themselves, whose audacity, superior intelligence in evil, and cynical
replies, had horrified the community. It is a matter worthy of remark
that no newspaper ever found its way into the hotel de la Chanterie, and
Godefroid only heard of the rejection of the criminals’ appeal from his
master in book-keeping; for the trial itself had taken place some time
before he came to live in his new abode.

“Do you ever encounter,” he said to his new friends, “such atrocious
villains as those men? and if you do encounter them, how do you manage
them?”

“In the first place,” said Monsieur Nicolas, “there are no atrocious
villains. There are diseased natures, to be cared for in asylums;
but outside of those rare medical cases, we find only persons who are
without religion, or who reason ill; and the mission of charity is to
teach them the right use of reason, to encourage the weak, and guide
aright those who go astray.”

“And,” said the Abbe de Veze, “all is possible to such teachers, for God
is with them.”

“If they were to send you those criminals, you could do nothing with
them, could you?” asked Godefroid.

“The time would be too short,” remarked Monsieur Alain.

“In general,” said Monsieur Nicolas, “persons turn over to religion
souls which have reached the last stages of evil, and leave it no time
to do its work. The criminals of whom you speak were men of remarkable
vigor; could they have been within our hands in time they might have
become distinguished men; but as soon as they committed a murder, it was
no longer possible to interfere; they then belonged to human justice.”

“That must mean,” said Godefroid, “that you are against the penalty of
death?”

Monsieur Nicolas rose hastily and left the room.

“Do not ever mention the penalty of death again before Monsieur
Nicolas,” said Monsieur Alain. “He recognized in a criminal at whose
execution he was officially present his natural son.”

“And the son was innocent!” added Monsieur Joseph.

Madame de la Chanterie, who had been absent for a while, returned to the
salon at this moment.

“But you must admit,” said Godefroid, addressing Monsieur Joseph, “that
society cannot exist without the death penalty, and that those persons
who to-morrow morning will have their heads cut--”

Godefroid felt his mouth suddenly closed by a vigorous hand, and he
saw the abbe leading away Madame de la Chanterie in an almost fainting
condition.

“What have you done?” Monsieur Joseph said to him. “Take him away,
Alain!” he added, removing the hand with which he had gagged Godefroid.
Then he followed the Abbe de Veze into Madame de la Chanterie’s room.

“Come!” said Monsieur Alain to Godefroid; “you have made it essential
that I should tell you the secrets of Madame’s life.”

They were presently sitting in the old man’s room.

“Well?” said Godefroid, whose face showed plainly his regret for having
been the cause of something which, in that peaceful home, might be
called a catastrophe.

“I am waiting till Manon comes to reassure us,” replied the goodman,
listening to the steps of the maid upon the staircase.

“Madame is better,” said Manon. “Monsieur l’abbe has deceived her as to
what was said.” And she looked at Godefroid angrily.

“Good God!” cried the poor fellow, in distress, the tears coming into
his eyes.

“Come, sit down,” said Monsieur Alain, sitting down himself. Then he
made a pause as if to gather up his ideas. “I don’t know,” he went on,
“if I have the talent to worthily relate a life so cruelly tried. You
must excuse me if the words of so poor a speaker as I are beneath the
level of its actions and catastrophes. Remember that it is long since
I left school, and that I am the child of a century in which men cared
more for thought than for effect,--a prosaic century which knew only how
to call things by their right names.”

Godefroid made an acquiescing gesture, with an expression of sincere
admiration, and said simply, “I am listening.”

“You have just had a proof, my young friend,” resumed the old man, “that
it is impossible you should remain among us without knowing at least
some of the terrible facts in the life of that saintly woman. There are
ideas and illusions and fatal words which are completely interdicted
in this house, lest they reopen wounds in Madame’s heart, and cause a
suffering which, if again renewed, might kill her.”

“Good God!” cried Godefroid, “what have I done?”

“If Monsieur Joseph had not stopped the words on your lips, you were
about to speak of that fatal instrument of death, and that would have
stricken down Madame de la Chanterie like a thunderbolt. It is time you
should know all, for you will really belong to us before long,--we all
think so. Here, then, is the history of her life:--

“Madame de la Chanterie,” he went on, after a pause, “comes from one of
the first families of Lower Normandy. Her maiden name was Mademoiselle
Barbe-Philiberte de Champignelles, of the younger branch of that house.
She was destined to take the veil unless she could make a marriage which
renounced on the husband’s side the dowry her family could not give her.
This was frequently the case in the families of poor nobles.

“A Sieur de la Chanterie, whose family had fallen into obscurity, though
it dates from the Crusade of Philip Augustus, was anxious to recover the
rank and position which this ancient lineage properly gave him in the
province of Normandy. This gentleman had doubly derogated from his
rightful station; for he had amassed a fortune of nearly a million of
francs as purveyor to the armies of the king at the time of the war in
Hanover. The old man had a son; and this son, presuming on his father’s
wealth (greatly exaggerated by rumor), was leading a life in Paris that
greatly disquieted his father.

“The word of Mademoiselle de Champignelle’s character was well known in
the Bessin,--that beautiful region of Lower Normandy near Bayeux, where
the family lived. The old man, whose little estate of la Chanterie was
between Caen and Saint-Lo, often heard regrets expressed before him
that so perfect a young girl, and one so capable of rendering a husband
happy, should be condemned to pass her life in a convent. When, on
reflection, he expressed a desire to know more of the young lady,
the hope was held out to him of obtaining the hand of Mademoiselle
Philiberte for his son, provided he would take her without dowry. He
went to Bayeux, had several interviews with the Champignelles’s family,
and was completely won by the noble qualities of the young girl.

“At sixteen years of age, Mademoiselle de Champignelles gave promise
of what she would ultimately become. It was easy to see in her a living
piety, an unalterable good sense, an inflexible uprightness, and one of
those souls which never detach themselves from an affection under any
compulsion. The old father, enriched by his extortions in the army,
recognized in this charming girl a woman who could restrain his son by
the power of virtue, and by the ascendancy of a nature that was firm
without rigidity.

“You have seen her,” said Monsieur Alain, pausing in his narrative, “and
you know that no one can be gentler than Madame de la Chanterie; and
also, I may tell you, that no one is more confiding. She has kept, even
to her declining years, the candor and simplicity of innocence; she has
never been willing to believe in evil, and the little mistrust you may
have noticed in her is due only to her terrible misfortunes.

“The old man,” said Monsieur Alain, continuing, “agreed with the
Champignelles family to give a receipt for the legal dower of
Mademoiselle Philiberte (this was necessary in those days); but
in return, the Champignelles, who were allied to many of the great
families, promised to obtain the erection of the little fief of la
Chanterie into a barony; and they kept their word. The aunt of the
future husband, Madame de Boisfrelon, the widow of a parliamentary
councillor, promised to bequeath her whole fortune to her nephew.

“When these arrangements had been completed by the two families, the
father sent for the son. At this time the latter was Master of petitions
to the Grand Council. He was twenty-five years of age, and had already
lived a life of folly with all the young seigneurs of the period; in
fact, the old purveyor had been forced more than once to pay his debts.
The poor father, foreseeing further follies, was only too glad to make a
settlement on his daughter-in-law of a certain sum; and he entailed the
estate of la Chanterie on the heirs male of the marriage.

“But the Revolution,” said Monsieur Alain in a parenthesis, “made that
last precaution useless.

“Gifted with the beauty of an angel,” he continued, “and with wonderful
grace and agility in all exercises of the body, the young Master of
petitions possessed the gift of _charm_. Mademoiselle de Champignelles
became, as you can readily believe, very much in love with her husband.
The old man, delighted with the outset of the marriage, and believing in
the reform of his son, sent the young couple to Paris. All this happened
about the beginning of the year 1788.

“Nearly a whole year of happiness followed. Madame de la Chanterie
enjoyed during that time the tenderest care and the most delicate
attentions that a man deeply in love can bestow upon a loving woman.
However short it may have been, the honeymoon did shine into the heart
of that noble and most unfortunate woman. You know that in those days
women nursed their children. Madame de la Chanterie had a daughter. That
period during which a woman ought to be the object of redoubled care and
tenderness proved, in this case, the beginning of untold miseries. The
Master of petitions was obliged to sell all the property he could lay
his hands on to pay former debts (which he had not acknowledged to his
father) and fresh losses at play. Then the National Assembly decreed
the dissolution of the Grand Council, the parliament, and all the law
offices so dearly bought.

“The young household, increased by a daughter, was soon without
other means than those settled upon Madame de la Chanterie by her
father-in-law. In twenty months that charming woman, now only seventeen
and a half years old, was obliged to live--she and the child she was
nursing--in an obscure quarter, and by the labor of her hands. She was
then entirely abandoned by her husband, who fell by degrees lower
and lower, into the society of women of the worst kind. Never did she
reproach her husband, never has she allowed herself to blame him. She
has sometimes told us how, during those wretched days, she would pray
for her ‘dear Henri.’

“That scamp was named Henri,” said the worthy man interrupting himself.
“We never mention that name here, nor that of Henriette. I resume:

“Never leaving her little room in the rue de la Corderie du Temple,
except to buy provisions or to fetch her work, Madame de la Chanterie
contrived to get along, thanks to a hundred francs which her
father-in-law, touched by her goodness, sent to her once a month.
Nevertheless, foreseeing that that resource might fail her, the poor
young woman had taken up the hard and toilsome work of corset-making in
the service of a celebrated dressmaker. This precaution proved a wise
one. The father died, and his property was obtained by the son (the
old monarchical laws of entail being then overthrown) and speedily
dissipated by him. The former Master of petitions was now one of the
most ferocious presidents of the Revolutionary tribunals of that period;
he became the terror of Normandy, and was able to satisfy all his
passions. Imprisoned in his turn after the fall of Robespierre, the
hatred of his department doomed him to certain death.

“Madame de la Chanterie heard of this through a letter of farewell which
her husband wrote to her. Instantly, giving her little girl to the care
of a neighbor, she went to the town where that wretch was imprisoned,
taking with her the few louis which were all that she owned. These louis
enabled her to make her way into the prison. She succeeded in saving her
husband by dressing him in her own clothes, under circumstances almost
identical with those which, sometime later, were so serviceable to
Madame de la Valette. She was condemned to death, but the government was
ashamed to carry out the sentence; and the Revolutionary tribunal
(the one over which her husband had formerly presided) connived at her
escape. She returned to Paris on foot, without means, sleeping in farm
buildings and fed by charity.”

“Good God!” cried Godefroid.

“Ah! wait,” said Monsieur Alain; “that is nothing. In eight years
the poor woman saw her husband three times. The first time he stayed
twenty-four hours in the humble lodging of his wife, and carried away
with him all her money; having showered her with marks of tenderness and
made her believe in his complete conversion. ‘I could not,’ she
said, ‘refuse a husband for whom I prayed daily and of whom I thought
exclusively.’ On the second occasion, Monsieur de la Chanterie arrived
almost dying, and with what an illness! She nursed him and saved his
life. Then she tried to bring him to better sentiments and a decent
life. After promising all that angel asked, the jacobin plunged back
into frightful profligacy, and finally escaped the hands of justice only
by again taking refuge with his wife, in whose care he died in safety.

“Oh! but that is nothing!” cried the goodman, seeing the pain on
Godefroid’s face. “No one, in the world in which he lived, had known
he was a married man. Two years after his death Madame de la Chanterie
discovered that a second Madame de la Chanterie existed, widowed like
herself, and, like her, ruined. That bigamist had found two angels
incapable of discarding him.

“Towards 1803,” resumed Alain after a pause, “Monsieur de Boisfrelon,
uncle of Madame de la Chanterie, came to Paris, his name having been
erased from the list of _emigres_, and brought Madame the sum of two
hundred thousand francs which her father-in-law, the old purveyor, had
formerly entrusted to him for the benefit of his son’s children. He
persuaded the widow to return to Normandy; where she completed the
education of her daughter and purchased on excellent terms and still by
the advice of her uncle, a patrimonial estate.”

“Ah!” cried Godefroid.

“All that is still nothing,” said Monsieur Alain; “we have not yet
reached the period of storms and darkness. I resume:

“In 1807, after four years of rest and peace, Madame de la Chanterie
married her daughter to a gentleman of rank, whose piety, antecedents,
and fortune offered every guarantee that could be given,--a man who,
to use a popular saying, ‘was after every one’s own heart,’ in the best
society of the provincial city where Madame and her daughter passed
their winters. I should tell you that this society was composed of
seven or eight families belonging to the highest nobility in France:
d’Esgrignon, Troisville, Casteran, Nouatre, etc. At the end of eighteen
months the baron deserted his wife, and disappeared in Paris, where he
changed his name.

“Madame de la Chanterie never knew the causes of this desertion until
the lightning of a dreadful storm revealed them. Her daughter, brought
up with anxious care and trained in the purest religious sentiments,
kept total silence as to her troubles. This lack of confidence in her
mother was a painful blow to Madame de la Chanterie. Already she had
several times noticed in her daughter indications of the reckless
disposition of the father, increased in the daughter by an almost virile
strength of will.

“The husband, however, abandoned his home of his own free will, leaving
his affairs in a pitiable condition. Madame de la Chanterie is, even to
this day, amazed at the catastrophe, which no human foresight could have
prevented. The persons she prudently consulted before the marriage had
assured her that the suitor’s fortune was clear and sound, and that
no mortgages were on his estate. Nevertheless it appeared, after the
husband’s departure, that for ten years his debts had exceeded the
entire value of his property. Everything was therefore sold, and the
poor young wife, now reduced to her own means, came back to her mother.
Madame de la Chanterie knew later that the most honorable persons of the
province had vouched for her son-in-law in their own interests; for he
owed them all large sums of money, and they looked upon his marriage
with Mademoiselle de la Chanterie as a means to recover them.

“There were, however, other reasons for this catastrophe, which you will
find later in a confidential paper written for the eyes of the Emperor.
Moreover, this man had long courted the good-will of the royalist
families by his devotion to the royal cause during the Revolution. He
was one of Louis XVIII.’s most active emissaries, and had taken part
after 1793 in all conspiracies,--escaping their penalties, however, with
such singular adroitness that he came, in the end, to be distrusted.
Thanked for his services by Louis XVIII., but completely set aside in
the royalist affairs, he had returned to live on his property, now much
encumbered with debt.

“These antecedents were then obscure (the persons initiated into
the secrets of the royal closet kept silence about so dangerous a
coadjutor), and he was therefore received with a species of reverence
in a city devoted to the Bourbons, where the cruellest deeds of the
Chouannerie were accepted as legitimate warfare. The d’Esgrignons,
Casterans, the Chevalier de Valois, in short, the whole aristocracy and
the Church opened their arms to this royalist diplomat and drew him
into their circle. Their protection was encouraged by the desire of his
creditors for the payment of his debts. For three years this man, who
was a villain at heart, a pendant to the late Baron de la Chanterie,
contrived to restrain his vices and assume the appearance of morality
and religion.

“During the first months of his marriage he exerted a sort of spell over
his wife; he tried to corrupt her mind by his doctrines (if it can be
said that atheism is a doctrine) and by the jesting tone in which he
spoke of sacred principles. From the time of his return to the provinces
this political manoeuvrer had an intimacy with a young man, overwhelmed
with debt like himself, but whose natural character was as frank and
courageous as the baron’s was hypocritical and base. This frequent
guest, whose accomplishments, strong character, and adventurous life
were calculated to influence a young girl’s mind, was an instrument in
the hands of the husband to bring the wife to adopt his theories. Never
did she let her mother know the abyss into which her fate had cast her.

“We may well distrust all human prudence when we think of the infinite
precautions taken by Madame de la Chanterie in marrying her only
daughter. The blow, when it came to a life so devoted, so pure, so truly
religious as that of a woman already tested by many trials, gave Madame
de la Chanterie a distrust of herself which served to isolate her from
her daughter; and all the more because her daughter, in compensation
for her misfortunes, exacted complete liberty, ruled her mother, and was
even, at times, unkind to her.

“Wounded thus in all her affections, mistaken in her devotion and
love for her husband, to whom she had sacrificed without a word
her happiness, her fortune, and her life; mistaken in the education
exclusively religious which she had given to her daughter; mistaken in
the confidence she had placed in others in the affair of her daughter’s
marriage; and obtaining no justice from the heart in which she had sown
none but noble sentiments, she united herself still more closely to God
as the hand of trouble lay heavy upon her. She was indeed almost a nun;
going daily to church, performing cloistral penances, and practising
economy that she might have means to help the poor.

“Could there be, up to this point, a saintlier life or one more tried
than that of this noble woman, so gentle under misfortune, so brave
in danger, and always Christian?” said Monsieur Alain, appealing to
Godefroid. “You know Madame now,--you know if she is wanting in sense,
judgment, reflection; in fact, she has those qualities to the highest
degree. Well! the misfortunes I have now told you, which might be said
to make her life surpass all others in adversity, are as nothing to
those that were still in store for this poor woman. But now let us
concern ourselves exclusively with Madame de la Chanterie’s daughter,”
 said the old man, resuming his narrative.

“At eighteen years of age, the period of her marriage, Mademoiselle de
la Chanterie was a young girl of delicate complexion, brown in tone with
a brilliant color, graceful in shape, and very pretty. Above a forehead
of great beauty was a mass of dark hair which harmonized with the brown
eyes and the general gaiety of her expression. A certain daintiness of
feature was misleading as to her true character and her almost virile
decision. She had small hands and small feet; in fact, there was
something fragile about her whole person which excluded the idea of
vigor and determination. Having always lived beside her mother, she had
a most perfect innocence of thought and behavior and a really remarkable
piety. This young girl, like her mother, was fanatically attached to
the Bourbons; she was therefore a bitter enemy to the Revolution, and
regarded the dominion of Napoleon as a curse inflicted by Providence
upon France in punishment of the crimes of 1793.

“The conformity of opinion on this subject between Madame de la
Chanterie and her daughter, and the daughter’s suitor, was one of the
determining reasons of the marriage.

“The friend of the husband had commanded a body of Chouans at the time
that hostilities were renewed in 1799; and it seems that the baron’s
object (Madame de la Chanterie’s son-in-law was a baron) in fostering
the intimacy between his wife and his friend was to obtain, through her
influence, certain succor from that friend.

“This requires a few words of explanation,” said Monsieur Alain,
interrupting his narrative, “about an association which in those days
made a great deal of noise. I mean the ‘Chauffeurs.’[*] Every province
in the west of France was at that time more or less overrun with these
‘brigands,’ whose object was far less pillage than a resurrection of the
royalist warfare. They profited, so it was said, by the great number of
‘refractories,’--the name applied to those who evaded the conscription,
which was at that time, as you probably know, enforced to actual abuse.

     [*] _Chauffeurs_. This name applies to royalists who robbed
     the mail-coaches conveying government funds, and levied
     tribute on those who bought the confiscated property of
     _emigres_ at the West. When the Thermidorian reaction began,
     after the fall of Robespierre, other companies of royalists,
     chiefly young nobles who had not emigrated, were formed at
     the South and East under various names, such as “The
     Avengers,” and “The Company of Jehu,” who stopped the
     diligences containing government money, which they
     transmitted to Brittany and La Vendee for the support of the
     royalist troops. They regarded this as legitimate warfare,
     and were scrupulous not to touch private property. When
     captured, however, they were tried and executed as
     highwaymen.--TR.

“Between Mortagne and Rennes, and even beyond, as far as the banks
of the Loire, nocturnal expeditions were organized, which attacked,
especially in Normandy, the holders of property bought from the National
domain.[*] These armed bands sent terror throughout those regions. I am
not misleading you when I ask you to observe that in certain departments
the action of the laws was for a long time paralyzed.

     [*] The National domain was the name given to the
     confiscated property of the _emigres_, which was sold from
     time to time at auction to the highest bidder.--TR.

“These last echoes of the civil war made much less noise than you would
imagine, accustomed as we are now to the frightful publicity given by
the press to every trial, even the least important, whether political
or individual. The system of the Imperial government was that of all
absolute governments. The censor allowed nothing to be published in the
matter of politics except accomplished facts, and those were travestied.
If you will take the trouble to look through files of the ‘Moniteur’ and
the other newspapers of that time, even those of the West, you will not
find a word about the four or five criminal trials which cost the lives
of sixty or eighty ‘brigands.’ The term _brigands_, applied during the
revolutionary period to the Vendeans, Chouans, and all those who took up
arms for the house of Bourbon, was afterwards continued judicially under
the Empire against all royalists accused of plots. To some ardent and
loyal natures the emperor and his government were the enemy; any form of
warfare against them was legitimate. I am only explaining to you these
opinions, not justifying them.

“Now,” he said, after one of those pauses which are necessary in such
long narratives, “if you realize how these royalists, ruined by the
civil war of 1793, were dominated by violent passions, and how some
exceptional natures (like that of Madame de la Chanterie’s son-in-law
and his friend) were eaten up with desires of all kinds, you may be
able to understand how it was that the acts of brigandage which their
political views justified when employed against the government in the
service of the good cause, might in some cases be committed for personal
ends.

“The younger of the two men had been for some time employed in
collecting the scattered fragments of Chouannerie, and was holding them
ready to act at an opportune moment. There came a terrible crisis in the
Emperor’s career when, shut up in the island of Lobau, he seemed about
to give way under the combined and simultaneous attack of England and
Austria. This was the moment for the Chouan uprising; but just as it was
about to take place, the victory of Wagram rendered the conspiracy in
the provinces powerless.

“This expectation of exciting civil war in Brittany, La Vendee, and
part of Normandy, coincided in time with the final wreck of the baron’s
fortune; and this wreck, coming at this time, led him to undertake an
expedition to capture funds of the government which he might apply to
the liquidation of the claims upon his property. But his wife and friend
refused to take part in applying to private interests the money taken
by armed force from the Receiver’s offices and the couriers and
post-carriages of the government,--money taken, as they thought,
justifiably by the rules of war to pay the regiments of ‘refractories’
and Chouans, and purchase the arms and ammunition with which to equip
them. At last, after an angry discussion in which the young leader,
supported by the wife, positively refused to hand over to the husband a
portion of the large sum of money which the young leader had seized for
the benefit of the royal armies from the treasury of the West, the baron
suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, to avoid arrest for debt, having
no means left by which to ward it off. Poor Madame de la Chanterie was
wholly ignorant of these facts; but even they are nothing to the plot
still hidden behind these preliminary facts.

“It is too late to-night,” said Monsieur Alain, looking at his little
clock, “to go on with my narrative, which would take me, in any case,
a long time to finish in my own words. Old Bordin, my friend, whose
management of the famous Simeuse case had won him much credit in the
royalist party, and who pleaded in the well-known criminal affair called
that of the Chauffeurs de Mortagne, gave me, after I was installed in
this house, two legal papers relating to the terrible history of Madame
de la Chanterie and her daughter. I kept them because Bordin died soon
after, before I had a chance to return them. You shall read them. You
will find the facts much more succinctly stated than I could state
them. Those facts are so numerous that I should only lose myself in the
details and confuse them, whereas in those papers you have them in a
legal summary. To-morrow, if you come to me, I will finish telling you
all that relates to Madame de la Chanterie; for you will then know the
general facts so thoroughly that I can end the whole story in a few
words.”




IX. THE LEGAL STATEMENT

Monsieur Alain placed the papers, yellowed by time, in Godefroid’s hand;
the latter, bidding the old man good-night, carried them off to his
room, where he read, before he slept, the following document:--

  THE INDICTMENT

  Court of Criminal and Special Justice for the Department of the Orne

  The attorney-general to the Imperial Court of Caen, appointed to
  fulfil his functions before the Special Criminal Court established
  by imperial decree under date September, 1809, and sitting at
  Alencon, states to the Imperial Court the following facts which
  have appeared under the above procedure.

  The plot of a company of brigands, evidently long planned with
  consummate care, and connected with a scheme for inciting the
  Western departments to revolt, has shown itself in certain
  attempts against the private property of citizens, but more
  especially in an armed attack and robbery committed on the
  mail-coach which transported, May --, 18--, the money in the treasury
  at Caen to the Treasury of France. This attack, which recalls the
  deplorable incidents of a civil war now happily extinguished,
  manifests a spirit of wickedness which the political passions of
  the present day do not justify.

  Let us pass to the facts. The plot is complicated, the details are
  numerous. The investigation has lasted one year; but the evidence,
  which has followed the crime step by step, has thrown the clearest
  light on its preparation, execution, and results.

  The conception of the plot was formed by one Charles-Amedee-Louis-Joseph
  Rifoel, calling himself Chevalier du Vissard, born at the Vissard,
  district of Saint-Mexme, near Ernee, and a former leader of the rebels.

  This criminal, whom H.M. the Emperor and King pardoned at the time
  of the general pacification, and who has profited by the
  sovereign’s magnanimity to commit other crimes, has already paid
  on the scaffold the penalty of his many misdeeds; but it is
  necessary to recall some of his actions, because his influence was
  great on the guilty persons now before the court, and he is
  closely connected with the facts of his case.

  This dangerous agitator, concealed, according to the usual custom
  of the rebels, under the name of Pierrot, went from place to place
  throughout the departments of the West gathering together the
  elements of rebellion; but his chief resort was the chateau of
  Saint-Savin, the residence of a Madame Lechantre and her daughter,
  a Madame Bryond, situated in the district of Saint-Savin,
  arrondissement of Mortagne. Several of the most horrible events of
  the rebellion of 1799 are connected with this strategic point.
  Here a bearer of despatches was murdered, his carriage pillaged by
  the brigands under command of a woman, assisted by the notorious
  Marche-a-Terre. Brigandage appeared to be endemic in that
  locality.

  An intimacy, which we shall not attempt to characterize, existed
  for more than a year between the woman Bryond and the said Rifoel.

  It was in this district that an interview took place, in April,
  1808, between Rifoel and a certain Boislaurier, a leader known by
  the name of August in the baneful rebellions of the West, who
  instigated the affair now before the court.

  The somewhat obscure point of the relations between these two
  leaders is cleared up by the testimony of numerous witnesses, and
  also by the judgment of the court which condemned Rifoel.

  From that time Boislaurier had an understanding with Rifoel, and
  they acted in concert.

  They communicated to each other, at first secretly, their infamous
  plans, encouraged by the absence of His Imperial and Royal Majesty
  with the armies in Spain. Their scheme was to obtain possession of
  the money of the Treasury as the fundamental basis of future
  operations.

  Some time after this, one named Dubut, of Caen, sent an emissary
  to the chateau of Saint-Savin named Hiley--commonly called “The
  Laborer,” long known as a highwayman, a robber of diligences--to
  give information as to the men who could safely be relied upon.

  It was thus by means of Hiley that the plotters obtained, from the
  beginning, the co-operation of one Herbomez, otherwise called
  General Hardi, a former rebel of the same stamp as Rifoel, and
  like him faithless to his pledges under the amnesty.

  Herbomez and Hiley recruited from the surrounding districts seven
  brigands whose names are:--

  1. Jean Cibot, called Pille-Miche, one of the boldest brigands of
  the corps formed by Montauran in the year VII., and a participator
  in the attack upon the courier of Mortagne and his murder.

  2. Francois Lisieux, called Grand-Fils, refractory of the
  department of the Mayenne.

  3. Charles Grenier, called Fleur-de-Genet, deserter from the 69th
  brigade.

  4. Gabriel Bruce, called Gros-Jean, one of the most ferocious
  Chouans of Fontaine’s division.

  5. Jacques Horeau, called Stuart, ex-lieutenant in the same
  brigade, one of the confederates of Tinteniac, well-known for his
  participation in the expedition to Quiberon.

  6. Marie-Anne Cabot, called Lajeunesse, former huntsman to the
  Sieur Carol of Alencon.

  7. Louis Minard, refractory.

  These confederates were lodged in three different districts, in
  the houses of the following named persons: Binet, Melin, and
  Laraviniere, innkeepers or publicans, and all devoted to Rifoel.

  The necessary arms were supplied by one Jean-Francois Leveille,
  notary; an incorrigible assistant of the brigands, and their
  go-between with certain hidden leaders; also by one Felix Courceuil,
  commonly called Confesseur, former surgeon of the rebel armies of
  La Vendee; both these men are from Alencon.

  Eleven muskets were hidden in a house belonging to the Sieur
  Bryond in the faubourg of Alencon, where they were placed without
  his knowledge.

  When the Sieur Bryond left his wife to pursue the fatal course she
  had chosen, these muskets, mysteriously taken from the said house,
  were transported by the woman Bryond in her own carriage to the
  chateau of Saint-Savin.

  It was then that the acts of brigandage in the department of the
  Orne and the adjacent departments took place,--acts that amazed
  both the authorities and the inhabitants of those regions, which
  had long been entirely pacificated; acts, moreover, which proved
  that these odious enemies of the government and the French Empire
  were in the secret of the coalition of 1809 through communication
  with the royalist party in foreign countries.

  The notary Leveille, the woman Bryond, Dubut of Caen, Herbomez of
  Mayenne, Boislaurier of Mans, and Rifoel, were therefore the heads
  of the association, which was composed of certain guilty persons
  already condemned to death and executed with Rifoel, certain
  others who are the accused persons at present under trial, and a
  number more who have escaped just punishment by flight or by the
  silence of their accomplices.

  It was Dubut who, living near Caen, notified the notary Leveille
  when the government money contained in the local tax-office would
  be despatched to the Treasury.

  We must remark here that after the time of the removal of the
  muskets, Leveille, who went to see Bruce, Grenier, and Cibot in
  the house of Melin, found them hiding the muskets in a shed on the
  premises, and himself assisted in the operation.

  A general rendezvous was arranged to take place at Mortagne, in
  the hotel de l’Ecu de France. All the accused persons were present
  under various disguises. It was then that Leveille, the woman
  Bryond, Dubut, Herbomez, Boislaurier and Hiley (the ablest of the
  secondary accomplices, as Cibot was the boldest) obtained the
  co-operation of one Vauthier, called Vieux-Chene, a former servant
  of the famous Longuy, and now hostler of the hotel. Vauthier
  agreed to notify the woman Bryond of the arrival and departure of
  the diligence bearing the government money, which always stopped
  for a time at the hotel.

  The woman Bryond collected the scattered brigands at the chateau
  de Saint-Savin, a few miles from Mortagne, where she had lived
  with her mother since the separation from her husband. The
  brigands, with Hiley at their head, stayed at the chateau for
  several days. The woman Bryond, assisted by her maid Godard,
  prepared with her own hands the food of these men. She had already
  filled a loft with hay, and there the provisions were taken to
  them. While awaiting the arrival of the government money these
  brigands made nightly sorties from Saint-Savin, and the whole
  region was alarmed by their depredations. There is no doubt that
  the outrages committed at la Sartiniere, at Vonay, and at the
  chateau of Saint-Seny, were committed by this band, whose boldness
  equals their criminality, though they were able to so terrify
  their victims that the latter have kept silence, and the
  authorities have been unable to obtain any testimony from them.

  While thus putting under contribution those persons in the
  neighborhood who had purchased lands of the National domain, these
  brigands carefully explored the forest of Chesnay which they
  selected as the theatre of their crime.

  Not far from this forest is the village of Louvigney. An inn is
  kept there by the brothers Chaussard, formerly game-keepers on the
  Troisville estate, which inn was made the final rendezvous of the
  brigands. These brothers knew beforehand the part they were to
  play in the affair. Courceuil and Boislaurier had long made
  overtures to them to revive their hatred against the government of
  our august Emperor, telling them that among the guests who would
  be sent to them would be certain men of their acquaintance, the
  dreaded Hiley and the not less dreaded Cibot.

  Accordingly, on the 6th, the seven bandits, under Hiley, arrived
  at the inn of the brothers Chaussard, and there they spent two
  days. On the 8th Hiley led off his men, saying they were going to
  a palace about nine miles distant, and asking the brothers to send
  provisions for them to a certain fork in the road not far distant
  from the village. Hiley himself returned and slept at the inn.

  Two persons on horseback, who were undoubtedly Rifoel and the
  woman Bryond (for it is stated that this woman accompanied Rifoel
  on these expeditions on horseback and dressed as a man), arrived
  during the evening and conversed with Hiley.

  The next day Hiley wrote a letter to the notary Leveille, which
  one of the Chaussard brothers took to the latter, bringing back
  his answer.

  Two hours later Rifoel and the woman Bryond returned and had an
  interview with Hiley.

  It was then found necessary to obtain an axe to open, as we shall
  see, the cases containing the money. The notary went with the
  woman Bryond to Saint-Savin, where they searched in vain for an
  axe. The notary returned alone; half way back he met Hiley, to
  whom he stated that they could not obtain an axe.

  Hiley returned to the inn, where he ordered supper for ten
  persons; seven of them being the brigands, who had now returned,
  fully armed. Hiley made them stack their arms in the military
  manner. They then sat down to table and supped in haste. Hiley
  ordered provisions prepared to take away with him. Then he took
  the elder Chaussard aside and asked him for an axe. The innkeeper
  who, if we believe him, was surprised, refused to give one.
  Courceuil and Boislaurier arrived; the night wore on; the three
  men walked the floor of their room discussing the plot. Courceuil,
  called “Confesseur,” the most wily of the party, obtained an axe;
  and about two in the morning they all went away by different
  paths.

  Every moment was of value; the execution of the crime was fixed
  for that night. Hiley, Courceuil, and Boislaurier led and placed
  their men. Hiley hid in ambush with Minard, Cabot, and Bruce at
  the right of the Chesnay forest; Boislaurier, Grenier, and Horeau
  took the centre; Courceuil, Herbomez, and Lisieux occupied the
  ravine to the left of the wood. All these positions are indicated
  on the ground-plan drawn by the engineer of the government
  survey-office, which is here subjoined.

  The diligence, which had left Mortagne about one in the morning,
  was driven by one Rousseau, whose conduct proved so suspicious
  that his arrest was judged necessary. The vehicle, driven slowly,
  would arrive about three o’clock in the forest of Chesnay.

  A single gendarme accompanied the diligence, which would stop for
  breakfast at Donnery. Three passengers only were making the trip,
  and were now walking up the hill with the gendarme.

  The driver, who had driven very slowly to the bridge of Chesnay at
  the entrance of the wood, now hastened his horses with a vigor and
  eagerness remarked by the passengers, and turned into a
  cross-road, called the road of Senzey. The carriage was thus out of
  sight; and the gendarme with the three young men were hurrying to
  overtake it when they heard a shout: “Halt!” and four shots were
  fired at them.

  The gendarme, who was not hit, drew his sabre and rushed in the
  direction of the vehicle. He was stopped by four armed men, who
  fired at him; his eagerness saved him, for he ran toward one of
  the three passengers to tell him to make for Chesnay and ring the
  tocsin. But two brigands followed him, and one of them, taking
  aim, sent a ball through his left shoulder, which broke his arm,
  and he fell helpless.

  The shouts and firing were heard in Donnery. A corporal stationed
  there and one gendarme ran toward the sounds. The firing of a
  squad of men took them to the opposite side of the wood to that
  where the pillage was taking place. The noise of the firing
  prevented the corporal from hearing the cries of the wounded
  gendarme; but he did distinguish a sound which proved to be that
  of an axe breaking and chopping into cases. He ran toward the
  sound. Meeting four armed bandits, he called out to them,
  “Surrender, villains!”

  They replied: “Stay where you are, or you are a dead man!” The
  corporal sprang forward; two shots were fired and one struck him;
  a ball went through his left leg and into the flank of his horse.
  The brave man, bathed in blood, was forced to give up the unequal
  fight; he shouted “Help! the brigands are at Chesnay!” but all in
  vain.

  The robbers, masters of the ground thanks to their numbers,
  ransacked the coach. They had gagged and bound the driver by way
  of deception. The cases were opened, the bags of money were thrown
  out; the horses were unharnessed and the silver and gold loaded on
  their backs. Three thousand francs in copper were rejected; but a
  sum in other coin of one hundred and three thousand francs was
  safely carried off on the four horses.

  The brigands took the road to the hamlet of Menneville, which is
  close to Saint-Savin. They stopped with their plunder at an
  isolated house belonging to the Chaussard brothers, where the
  Chaussards’ uncle, one Bourget, lived, who was knowing to the
  whole plot from its inception. This old man, aided by his wife,
  welcomed the brigands, charged them to make no noise, unloaded the
  bags of money, and gave the men something to drink. The wife
  performed the part of sentinel. The old man then took the horses
  through the wood, returned them to the driver, unbound the latter,
  and also the young men, who had been garotted. After resting for a
  time, Courceuil, Hiley, and Boislaurier paid their men a paltry
  sum for their trouble, and the whole band departed, leaving the
  plunder in charge of Bourget.

  When they reached a lonely place called Champ-Landry, these
  criminals, obeying the impulse which leads all malefactors into
  the blunders and miscalculations of crime, threw their guns into a
  wheat-field. This action, done by all of them, is a proof of their
  mutual understanding. Struck with terror at the boldness of their
  act, and even by its success, they dispersed.

  The robbery now having been committed, with the additional
  features of assault and assassination, other facts and other
  actors appear, all connected with the robbery itself and with the
  disposition of the plunder.

  Rifoel, concealed in Paris, whence he pulled every wire of the
  plot, transmits to Leveille an order to send him instantly fifty
  thousand francs.

  Courceuil, knowing to all the facts, sends Hiley to tell Leveille
  of the success of the attempt, and say that he will meet him at
  Mortagne. Leveille goes there.

  Vauthier, on whose fidelity they think they can rely, agrees to go
  to Bourget, the uncle of the Chaussards, in whose care the money
  was left, and ask for the booty. The old man tells Vauthier that
  he must go to his nephews, who have taken large sums to the woman
  Bryond. But he orders him to wait outside in the road, and brings
  him a bag containing the small sum of twelve hundred francs, which
  Vauthier delivers to the woman Lechantre for her daughter.

  At Leveille’s request, Vauthier returns to Bourget, who this time
  sends for his nephews. The elder Chaussard takes Vauthier to the
  wood, shows him a tree, and there they find a bag of one thousand
  francs buried in the earth. Leveille, Hiley, and Vauthier make
  other trips, obtaining only trifling sums compared with the large
  sum known to have been captured.

  The woman Lechantre receives these sums at Mortagne; and, on
  receipt of a letter from her daughter, removes them to
  Saint-Savin, where the woman Bryond now returns.

  This is not the moment to examine as to whether the woman
  Lechantre had any anterior knowledge of the plot.

  It suffices here to note that this woman left Mortagne to go to
  Saint-Savin the evening before the crime; that after the crime she
  met her daughter on the high-road, and they both returned to
  Mortagne; that on the following day Leveille, informed by Hiley of
  the success of the plot, goes from Alencon to Mortagne, and there
  visits the two women; later he persuades them to deposit the sums
  obtained with such difficulty from the Chaussards and Bourget in a
  house in Alencon, of which we shall speak presently,--that of the
  Sieur Pannier, merchant.

  The woman Lechantre writes to the bailiff at Saint-Savin to come
  and drive her and her daughter by the cross-roads towards Alencon.

  The funds now in their possession amount to twenty thousand
  francs; these the girl Godard puts into the carriage at night.

  The notary Leveille had given exact instructions. The two women
  reach Alencon and stop at the house of a confederate, one Louis
  Chargegrain, in the Littray district. Despite all the precautions
  of the notary, who came there to meet the women, witnesses were at
  hand who saw the portmanteaux and bags containing the money taken
  from the carriole.

  At the moment when Courceuil and Hiley, disguised as women, were
  consulting in the square at Alencon with the Sieur Pannier
  (treasurer of the rebels since 1794, and devoted to Rifoel) as to
  the best means of conveying to Rifoel the sum he asked for, the
  woman Lechantre became alarmed on hearing at the inn where she
  stopped of the suspicions and arrests already made. She fled
  during the night, taking her daughter with her through the byways
  and cross-roads to Saint-Savin, in order to take refuge, if
  necessary, in certain hiding-places prepared at the chateau de
  Saint-Savin. Courceuil, Boislaurier, and his relation Dubut,
  clandestinely changed two thousand francs in silver money for
  gold, and fled to Brittany and England.

  On arriving at Saint-Savin, the women Lechantre and Bryond heard
  of the arrest of Bourget, that of the driver of the diligence, and
  that of the two refractories.

  The magistrates and the gendarmerie struck such sure blows that it
  was thought advisable to place the woman Bryond beyond the reach
  of human justice; for she appears to have been an object of great
  devotion on the part of these criminals, who were captivated by
  her. She left Saint-Savin, and was hidden at first in Alencon,
  where her followers deliberated, and finally placed her in the
  cellar of Pannier’s house.

  Here new incidents develop themselves.

  After the arrest of Bourget and his wife, the Chaussards refuse to
  give up any more of the money, declaring themselves betrayed. This
  unexpected refusal was given at a moment when an urgent want of
  money was felt among the accomplices, if only for the purposes of
  escape. Rifoel was always clamorous for money. Hiley, Cibot, and
  Leveille began to suspect the Chaussards.

  Here comes in a new incident, which calls for the rigor of the
  law.

  Two gendarmes, detailed to discover the woman Bryond, succeeded in
  tracking her to Pannier’s. There a discussion is held; and these
  men, unworthy of the trust reposed in them, instead of arresting
  the woman Bryond, succumb to her seductions. These unworthy
  soldiers, named Ratel and Mallet, showed this woman the utmost
  interest and offered to take her to the Chaussards and force them
  to make restitution.

  The woman Bryond starts on horseback, disguised as a man,
  accompanied by Ratel, Mallet, and the girl Godard. She makes the
  journey by night. She has a conference alone with one of the
  brothers Chaussard, an excited conference. She is armed with a
  pistol, and threatens to blow out the brains of her accomplice if
  he refuses the money. Then he goes with her into the forest, and
  they return with a heavy bag of coin. In the bag are copper coins
  and twelve-sous silver pieces to the amount of fifteen hundred
  francs.

  When the woman Bryond returns to Alencon the accomplices propose
  to go in a body to the Chaussards’ house and torture them until
  they deliver up the whole sum.

  When Pannier hears of this failure he is furious. He threatens.
  The woman Bryond, though threatening him in return with Rifoel’s
  wrath, is forced to fly.

  These facts rest on the confession of Ratel.

  Mallet, pitying the woman Bryond’s position, offers her an asylum.
  Then Mallet and Ratel, accompanied by Hiley and Cibot, go at night
  to the brothers Chaussard; this time they find these brothers have
  left the place and have taken the rest of the money with them.

  This was the last effort of the accomplices to recover the
  proceeds of the robbery.

  It now becomes necessary to show the exact part taken by each of
  the actors in this crime.

  Dubut, Boislaurier, Herbomez, Courceuil, and Hiley were the
  ringleaders. Some deliberated and planned, others acted.

  Boislaurier, Dubut, and Courceuil, all three fugitives from
  justice and outlawed, are addicted to rebellion, fomenters of
  trouble, implacable enemies of Napoleon the Great, his victories,
  his dynasty, and his government, haters of our new laws and of the
  constitution of the Empire.

  Herbomez and Hiley audaciously executed that which the three
  former planned.

  The guilt of the seven instruments of the crime, namely, Cibot,
  Lisieux, Grenier, Bruce, Horeau, Cabot, and Minard, is evident; it
  appears from the confessions of those of them who are now in the
  hands of justice; Lisieux died during the investigation, and Bruce
  has fled the country.

  The conduct of Rousseau, who drove the coach, marks him as an
  accomplice. His slow method of driving, his haste at the entrance
  of the wood, his persistent declaration that his head was covered,
  whereas the passengers testify that the leader of the brigands
  told him to take the handkerchief off his head and recognize them;
  all these facts are strong presumptive evidence of collusion.

  As for the woman Bryond and the notary Leveille, could any
  co-operation be more connected, more continuous than theirs? They
  repeatedly furnished means for the crime; they were privy to it,
  and they abetted it. Leveille travelled constantly. The woman
  Bryond invented scheme after scheme; she risked all, even her
  life, to recover the plunder. She lent her house, her carriage;
  her hand is seen in the plot from the beginning; she did not
  dissuade the chief leader of all, Rifoel, since executed, although
  through her guilty influence upon him she might have done so. She
  made her waiting-woman, the girl Godard, an accomplice. As for
  Leveille, he took an active part in the actual perpetration of the
  crime by seeking the axe the brigands asked for.

  The woman Bourget, Vauthier, the Chaussards, Pannier, the woman
  Lechantre, Mallet and Ratel, all participated in the crime in
  their several degrees, as did the innkeepers Melin, Binet,
  Laraviniere, and Chargegrain.

  Bourget has died during the investigation, after making a
  confession which removes all doubt as to the part played by
  Vauthier and the woman Bryond; if he attempted to extenuate that
  of his wife and his nephews Chaussard, his motives are easy to
  understand.

  The Chaussards knowingly fed and lodged the brigands, they saw
  them armed, they witnessed all their arrangements and knew the
  object of them; and lastly, they received the plunder, which they
  hid, and as it appears, stole from their accomplices.

  Pannier, the former treasurer of the rebels, concealed the woman
  Bryond in his house; he is one of the most dangerous accomplices
  of this crime, which he knew from its inception. In him certain
  mysterious relations which are still obscure took their rise; the
  authorities now have these matters under investigation. Pannier
  was the right hand of Rifoel, the depositary of the secrets of the
  counter-revolutionary party of the West; he regretted that Rifoel
  introduced women into the plot and confided in them; it was he who
  received the stolen money from the woman Bryond and conveyed it to
  Rifoel.

  As for the conduct of the two gendarmes Ratel and Mallet, it
  deserves the severest penalty of the law. They betrayed their
  duty. One of them, foreseeing his fate, committed suicide, but not
  until he had made important revelations. The other, Mallet, denies
  nothing, his tacit admissions preclude all doubt, especially as to
  the guilt of the woman Bryond.

  The woman Lechantre, in spite of her constant denials, was privy
  to all. The hypocrisy of this woman, who attempts to shelter her
  assumed innocence under the mask of a false piety, has certain
  antecedents which prove her decision of character and her
  intrepidity in extreme cases. She alleges that she was misled by
  her daughter, and believed that the plundered money belonged to
  the Sieur Bryond,--a common excuse! If the Sieur Bryond had
  possessed any property, he would not have left the department on
  account of his debts. The woman Lechantre claims that she did not
  suspect a shameful theft, because she saw the proceedings approved
  by her ally, Boislaurier. But how does she explain the presence of
  Rifoel (already executed) at Saint-Savin; the journeys to and fro;
  the relations of that young man with her daughter; the stay of the
  brigands at Saint-Savin, where they were served by her daughter
  and the girl Godard? She alleges sleep; declares it to be her
  practice to go to bed at seven in the evening; and has no answer
  to make when the magistrate points out to her that if she rises,
  as she says she does, at dawn, she must have seen some signs of
  the plot, of the sojourn of so many persons, and of the nocturnal
  goings and comings of her daughter. To this she replies that she
  was occupied in prayer. This woman is a mass of hypocrisy. Lastly,
  her journey on the day of the crime, the care she takes to carry
  her daughter to Mortagne, her conduct about the money, her
  precipitate flight when all is discovered, the pains she is at to
  conceal herself, even the circumstances of her arrest, all go to
  prove a long-existing complicity. She has not acted like a mother
  who desires to save her daughter and withdraw her from danger, but
  like a trembling accomplice. And her complicity is not that of a
  misguided tenderness; it is the fruit of party spirit, the
  inspiration of a well-known hatred against the government of His
  Imperial and Royal Majesty. Misguided maternal tenderness, if that
  could be fairly alleged in her defence, would not, however, excuse
  it; and we must not forget that consentment, long-standing and
  premeditated, is the surest sign of guilt.

  Thus all the elements of the crime and the persons committing it
  are fully brought to light.

  We see the madness of faction combining with pillage and greed; we
  see assassination advised by party spirit, under whose aegis these
  criminals attempt to justify themselves for the basest crimes. The
  leaders give the signal for the pillage of the public money, which
  money is to be used for their ulterior crimes; vile stipendiaries
  do this work for a paltry price, not recoiling from murder; then
  the fomenters of rebellion, not less guilty because their own
  hands have neither robbed nor murdered, divide the booty and
  dispose of it. What community can tolerate such outrages? The law
  itself is scarcely rigorous enough to duly punish them.

  It is upon the above facts that this Court of Criminal and Special
  Justice is called upon to decide whether the prisoners Herbomez,
  Hiley, Cibot, Grenier, Horeau, Cabot, Minard, Melin, Binet,
  Laraviniere, Rousseau, the woman Bryond, Leveille, the woman
  Bourget, Vauthier, Chaussard the elder, Pannier, the widow
  Lechantre, Mallet, all herein named and described, and arraigned
  before this court; also Boislaurier, Dubut, Courceuil, Bruce, the
  younger Chaussard, Chargegrain, and the girl Godard,--these latter
  being absent and fugitives from justice,--are or are not guilty of
  the crimes charged in this indictment.

  Done at Caen, this 1st of December, 1

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