The Human Comedy - La Comédie humaine (Complete Edition). Honore de Balzac
of the future, some fears of hell, and some hopes of forgiveness if she should return in sincerity to a religious life. So on this solemn morning three ancient females had settled themselves in the drawing-room where Madame Crochard was “at home” every Tuesday. Each in turn left her armchair to go to the poor old woman’s bedside and sit with her, giving her the false hopes with which people delude the dying.
At the same time, when the end was drawing near, when the physician called in the day before would no longer answer for her life, the three dames took counsel together as to whether it would not be well to send word to Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille. Francoise having been duly informed, it was decided that a commissionaire should go to the Rue Taitbout to inform the young relation whose influence was so disquieting to the four women; still, they hoped that the Auvergnat would be too late in bringing back the person who so certainly held the first place in the widow Crochard’s affections. The widow, evidently in the enjoyment of a thousand crowns a year, would not have been so fondly cherished by this feminine trio, but that neither of them, nor Francoise herself knew of her having any heir. The wealth enjoyed by Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille, whom Madame Crochard, in obedience to the traditions of the older opera, never allowed herself to speak of by the affectionate name of daughter, almost justified the four women in their scheme of dividing among themselves the old woman’s “pickings.”
Presently the one of these three sibyls who kept guard over the sick woman came shaking her head at the other anxious two, and said:
“It is time we should be sending for the Abbe Fontanon. In another two hours she will neither have the wit nor the strength to write a line.”
Thereupon the toothless old cook went off, and returned with a man wearing a black gown. A low forehead showed a small mind in this priest, whose features were mean; his flabby, fat cheeks and double chin betrayed the easy-going egotist; his powdered hair gave him a pleasant look, till he raised his small, brown eyes, prominent under a flat forehead, and not unworthy to glitter under the brows of a Tartar.
“Monsieur l’Abbe,” said Francoise, “I thank you for all your advice; but believe me, I have taken the greatest care of the dear soul.”
But the servant, with her dragging step and woe-begone look, was silent when she saw that the door of the apartment was open, and that the most insinuating of the three dowagers was standing on the landing to be the first to speak with the confessor. When the priest had politely faced the honeyed and bigoted broadside of words fired off from the widow’s three friends, he went into the sickroom to sit by Madame Crochard. Decency, and some sense of reserve, compelled the three women and old Francoise to remain in the sitting-room, and to make such grimaces of grief as are possible in perfection only to such wrinkled faces.
“Oh, is it not ill-luck!” cried Francoise, heaving a sigh. “This is the fourth mistress I have buried. The first left me a hundred francs a year, the second a sum of fifty crowns, and the third a thousand crowns down. After thirty years’ service, that is all I have to call my own.”
The woman took advantage of her freedom to come and go, to slip into a cupboard, whence she could hear the priest.
“I see with pleasure, daughter,” said Fontanon, “that you have pious sentiments; you have a sacred relic round your neck.”
Madame Crochard, with a feeble vagueness which seemed to show that she had not all her wits about her, pulled out the Imperial Cross of the Legion of Honor. The priest started back at seeing the Emperor’s head; he went up to the penitent again, and she spoke to him, but in such a low tone that for some minutes Francoise could hear nothing.
“Woe upon me!” cried the old woman suddenly. “Do not desert me. What, Monsieur l’Abbe, do you think I shall be called to account for my daughter’s soul?”
The Abbe spoke too low, and the partition was too thick for Francoise to hear the reply.
“Alas!” sobbed the woman, “the wretch has left me nothing that I can bequeath. When he robbed me of my dear Caroline, he parted us, and only allowed me three thousand francs a year, of which the capital belongs to my daughter.”
“Madame has a daughter, and nothing to live on but an annuity,” shrieked Francoise, bursting into the drawing-room.
The three old crones looked at each other in dismay. One of them, whose nose and chin nearly met with an expression that betrayed a superior type of hypocrisy and cunning, winked her eyes; and as soon as Francoise’s back was turned, she gave her friends a nod, as much as to say, “That slut is too knowing by half; her name has figured in three wills already.”
So the three old dames sat on.
However, the Abbe presently came out, and at a word from him the witches scuttered down the stairs at his heels, leaving Francoise alone with her mistress. Madame Crochard, whose sufferings increased in severity, rang, but in vain, for this woman, who only called out, “Coming, coming—in a minute!” The doors of cupboards and wardrobes were slamming as though Francoise were hunting high and low for a lost lottery ticket.
Just as this crisis was at a climax, Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille came to stand by her mother’s bed, lavishing tender words on her.
“Oh my dear mother, how criminal I have been! You are ill, and I did not know it; my heart did not warn me. However, here I am—”
“Caroline—”
“What is it?”
“They fetched a priest—”
“But send for a doctor, bless me!” cried Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille. “Francoise, a doctor! How is it that these ladies never sent for a doctor?”
“They sent for a priest——” repeated the old woman with a gasp.
“She is so ill—and no soothing draught, nothing on her table!”
The mother made a vague sign, which Caroline’s watchful eye understood, for she was silent to let her mother speak.
“They brought a priest—to hear my confession, as they said.—Beware, Caroline!” cried the old woman with an effort, “the priest made me tell him your benefactor’s name.”
“But who can have told you, poor mother?”
The old woman died, trying to look knowingly cunning. If Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille had noted her mother’s face she might have seen what no one ever will see—Death laughing.
To enter into the interests that lay beneath this introduction to my tale, we must for a moment forget the actors in it, and look back at certain previous incidents, of which the last was closely concerned with the death of Madame Crochard. The two parts will then form a whole—a story which, by a law peculiar to life in Paris, was made up of two distinct sets of actions.
Towards the close of the month of November 1805, a young barrister, aged about six-and-twenty, was going down the stairs of the hotel where the High Chancellor of the Empire resided, at about three o’clock one morning. Having reached the courtyard in full evening dress, under a keen frost, he could not help giving vent to an exclamation of dismay—qualified, however, by the spirit which rarely deserts a Frenchman—at seeing no hackney coach waiting outside the gates, and hearing no noises such as arise from the wooden shoes or harsh voices of the hackney-coachmen of Paris. The occasional pawing of the horses of the Chief Justice’s carriage—the young man having left him still playing bouillote with Cambaceres—alone rang out in the paved court, which was scarcely lighted by the carriage lamps. Suddenly the young lawyer felt a friendly hand on his shoulder, and turning round, found himself face to face with the Judge, to whom he bowed. As the footman let down the steps of his carriage, the old gentleman, who had served the Convention, suspected the junior’s dilemma.
“All cats are gray in the dark,” said he good-humoredly. “The Chief Justice cannot compromise himself by putting a pleader in the right way! Especially,” he went on, “when the pleader is the nephew of an old colleague, one of the lights of the grand Council of State which gave France the Napoleonic Code.”
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