The Human Comedy - La Comédie humaine (Complete Edition). Honore de Balzac
make some good match. As to my sons, have they not succeeded? The Viscount was public prosecutor at Limoges, and is now President of the Court at Orleans; the younger is public prosecutor in Paris.—My children have their own cares, their own anxieties and business to attend to. If of all those hearts one had been devoted to me, if one had tried by entire affection to fill up the void I have here,” and he struck his breast, “well, that one would have failed in life, have sacrificed it to me. And why should he? Why? To bring sunshine into my few remaining years—and would he have succeeded? Might I not have accepted such generosity as a debt? But, doctor,” and the Count smiled with deep irony, “it is not for nothing that we teach them arithmetic and how to count. At this moment perhaps they are waiting for my money.”
“O Monsieur le Comte, how could such an idea enter your head—you who are kind, friendly, and humane! Indeed, if I were not myself a living proof of the benevolence you exercise so liberally and so nobly—”
“To please myself,” replied the Count. “I pay for a sensation, as I would to-morrow pay a pile of gold to recover the most childish illusion that would but make my heart glow.—I help my fellow-creatures for my own sake, just as I gamble; and I look for gratitude from none. I should see you die without blinking; and I beg of you to feel the same with regard to me. I tell you, young man, the events of life have swept over my heart like the lavas of Vesuvius over Herculaneum. The town is there—dead.”
“Those who have brought a soul as warm and as living as yours was to such a pitch of indifference are indeed guilty!”
“Say no more,” said the Count, with a shudder of aversion.
“You have a malady which you ought to allow me to treat,” said Bianchon in a tone of deep emotion.
“What, do you know of a cure for death?” cried the Count irritably.
“I undertake, Monsieur le Comte, to revive the heart you believe to be frozen.”
“Are you a match for Talma, then?” asked the Count satirically.
“No, Monsieur le Comte. But Nature is as far above Talma as Talma is superior to me.—Listen: the garret you are interested in is inhabited by a woman of about thirty, and in her love is carried to fanaticism. The object of her adoration is a young man of pleasing appearance but endowed by some malignant fairy with every conceivable vice. This fellow is a gambler, and it is hard to say which he is most addicted to—wine or women; he has, to my knowledge, committed acts deserving punishment by law. Well, and to him this unhappy woman sacrificed a life of ease, a man who worshiped her, and the father of her children.—But what is wrong, Monsieur le Comte?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“She has allowed him to squander a perfect fortune; she would, I believe, give him the world if she had it; she works night and day; and many a time she has, without a murmur, seen the wretch she adores rob her even of the money saved to buy the clothes the children need, and their food for the morrow. Only three days ago she sold her hair, the finest hair I ever saw; he came in, she could not hide the gold piece quickly enough, and he asked her for it. For a smile, for a kiss, she gave up the price of a fortnight’s life and peace. Is it not dreadful, and yet sublime?—But work is wearing her cheeks hollow. Her children’s crying has broken her heart; she is ill, and at this moment on her wretched bed. This evening they had nothing to eat; the children have not strength to cry, they were silent when I went up.”
Horace Bianchon stood still. Just then the Comte de Granville, in spite of himself, as it were, had put his hand into his waistcoat pocket.
“I can guess, my young friend, how it is that she is yet alive if you attend her,” said the elder man.
“O poor soul!” cried the doctor, “who could refuse to help her? I only wish I were richer, for I hope to cure her of her passion.”
“But how can you expect me to pity a form of misery of which the joys to me would seem cheaply purchased with my whole fortune!” exclaimed the Count, taking his hand out of his pocket empty of the notes which Bianchon had supposed his patron to be feeling for. “That woman feels, she is alive! Would not Louis XV. have given his kingdom to rise from the grave and have three days of youth and life! And is not that the history of thousands of dead men, thousands of sick men, thousands of old men?”
“Poor Caroline!” cried Bianchon.
As he heard the name the Count shuddered, and grasped the doctor’s arm with the grip of an iron vise, as it seemed to Bianchon.
“Her name is Caroline Crochard?” asked the President, in a voice that was evidently broken.
“Then you know her?” said the doctor, astonished.
“And the wretch’s name is Solvet.—Ay, you have kept your word!” exclaimed Granville; “you have roused my heart to the most terrible pain it can suffer till it is dust. That emotion, too, is a gift from hell, and I always know how to pay those debts.”
By this time the Count and the doctor had reached the corner of the Rue de la Chaussee d’Antin. One of those night-birds who wonder round with a basket on their back and crook in hand, and were, during the Revolution, facetiously called the Committee of Research, was standing by the curbstone where the two men now stopped. This scavenger had a shriveled face worthy of those immortalized by Charlet in his caricatures of the sweepers of Paris.
“Do you ever pick up a thousand-franc note?”
“Now and then, master.”
“And you restore them?”
“It depends on the reward offered.”
“You’re the man for me,” cried the Count, giving the man a thousand-franc note. “Take this, but, remember, I give it to you on condition of your spending it at the wineshop, of your getting drunk, fighting, beating your wife, blacking your friends’ eyes. That will give work to the watch, the surgeon, the druggist—perhaps to the police, the public prosecutor, the judge, and the prison warders. Do not try to do anything else, or the devil will be revenged on you sooner or later.”
A draughtsman would need at once the pencil of Charlet and of Callot, the brush of Teniers and of Rembrandt, to give a true notion of this night-scene.
“Now I have squared accounts with hell, and had some pleasure for my money,” said the Count in a deep voice, pointing out the indescribable physiognomy of the gaping scavenger to the doctor, who stood stupefied. “As for Caroline Crochard!—she may die of hunger and thirst, hearing the heartrending shrieks of her starving children, and convinced of the baseness of the man she loves. I will not give a sou to rescue her; and because you have helped her, I will see you no more——”
The Count left Bianchon standing like a statue, and walked as briskly as a young man to the Rue Saint-Lazare, soon reaching the little house where he resided, and where, to his surprise, he found a carriage waiting at the door.
“Monsieur, your son, the attorney-general, came about an hour since,” said the man-servant, “and is waiting for you in your bedroom.”
Granville signed to the man to leave him.
“What motive can be strong enough to require you to infringe the order I have given my children never to come to me unless I send for them?” asked the Count of his son as he went into the room.
“Father,” replied the younger man in a tremulous voice, and with great respect, “I venture to hope that you will forgive me when you have heard me.”
“Your reply is proper,” said the Count. “Sit down,” and he pointed to a chair, “But whether I walk up and down, or take a seat, speak without heeding me.”
“Father,” the son went on, “this afternoon, at four o’clock, a very young man who was arrested in the house of a friend of mine, whom he had robbed to a considerable extent, appealed to you.—He says he is your son.”
“His name?” asked the Count hoarsely.
“Charles