The Village Rector
by
Honore de Balzac

Part 1 out of 5








Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com





The Village Rector

by Honore de Balzac

Katharine Prescott Wormeley




DEDICATION

To Helene.

The tiniest boat is not launched upon the sea without the
protection of some living emblem or revered name, placed upon it
by the mariners. In accordance with this time-honored custom,
Madame, I pray you to be the protectress of this book now launched
upon our literary ocean; and may the Imperial name which the
Church has canonized and your devotion has doubly sanctified for
me guard it from perils.

De Balzac.




THE VILLAGE RECTOR



I

THE SAUVIATS

In the lower town of Limoges, at the corner of the rue de la Vieille-
Poste and the rue de la Cite might have been seen, a generation ago,
one of those shops which were scarcely changed from the period of the
middle-ages. Large tiles seamed with a thousand cracks lay on the soil
itself, which was damp in places, and would have tripped up those who
failed to observe the hollows and ridges of this singular flooring.
The dusty walls exhibited a curious mosaic of wood and brick, stones
and iron, welded together with a solidity due to time, possibly to
chance. For more than a hundred years the ceiling, formed of colossal
beams, bent beneath the weight of the upper stories, though it had
never given way under them. Built /en colombage/, that is to say, with
a wooden frontage, the whole facade was covered with slates, so put on
as to form geometrical figures,--thus preserving a naive image of the
burgher habitations of the olden time.

None of the windows, cased in wood and formerly adorned with carvings,
now destroyed by the action of the weather, had continued plumb; some
bobbed forward, others tipped backward, while a few seemed disposed to
fall apart; all had a compost of earth, brought from heaven knows
where, in the nooks and crannies hollowed by the rain, in which the
spring-tide brought forth fragile flowers, timid creeping plants, and
sparse herbage. Moss carpeted the roof and draped its supports. The
corner pillar, with its composite masonry of stone blocks mingled with
brick and pebbles, was alarming to the eye by reason of its curvature;
it seemed on the point of giving way under the weight of the house,
the gable of which overhung it by at least half a foot. The municipal
authorities and the commissioner of highways did, eventually, pull the
old building down, after buying it, to enlarge the square.

The pillar we have mentioned, placed at the angle of two streets, was
a treasure to the seekers for Limousin antiquities, on account of its
lovely sculptured niche in which was a Virgin, mutilated during the
Revolution. All visitors with archaeological proclivities found traces
of the stone sockets used to hold the candelabra in which public piety
lighted tapers or placed its /ex-votos/ and flowers.

At the farther end of the shop, a worm-eaten wooden staircase led to
the two upper floors which were in turn surmounted by an attic. The
house, backing against two adjoining houses, had no depth and derived
all its light from the front and side windows. Each floor had two
small chambers only, lighted by single windows, one looking out on the
rue de la Cite, the other on the rue de la Vieille-Poste.

In the middle-ages no artisan was better lodged. The house had
evidently belonged in those times to makers of halberds and battle-
axes, armorers in short, artificers whose work was not injured by
exposure to the open air; for it was impossible to see clearly within,
unless the iron shutters were raised from each side of the building;
where were also two doors, one on either side of the corner pillar, as
may be seen in many shops at the corners of streets. From the sill of
each door--of fine stone worn by the tread of centuries--a low wall
about three feet high began; in this wall was a groove or slot,
repeated above in the beam by which the wall of each facade was
supported. From time immemorial the heavy shutters had been rolled
along these grooves, held there by enormous iron bars, while the doors
were closed and secured in the same manner; so that these merchants
and artificers could bar themselves into their houses as into a
fortress.

Examining the interior, which, during the first twenty years of this
century, was encumbered with old iron and brass, tires of wheels,
springs, bells, anything in short which the destruction of buildings
afforded of old metals, persons interested in the relics of the old
town noticed signs of the flue of a forge, shown by a long trail of
soot,--a minor detail which confirmed the conjecture of archaeologists
as to the original use to which the building was put. On the first
floor (above the ground-floor) was one room and the kitchen; on the
floor above that were two bedrooms. The garret was used to put away
articles more choice and delicate than those that lay pell-mell about
the shop.

This house, hired in the first instance, was subsequently bought by a
man named Sauviat, a hawker or peddler who, from 1786 to 1793,
travelled the country over a radius of a hundred and fifty miles
around Auvergne, exchanging crockery of a common kind, plates, dishes,
glasses,--in short, the necessary articles of the poorest households,
--for old iron, brass, and lead, or any metal under any shape it might
lurk in. The Auvergnat would give, for instance, a brown earthenware
saucepan worth two sous for a pound of lead, two pounds of iron, a
broken spade or hoe or a cracked kettle; and being invariably the
judge of his own cause, he did the weighing.

At the close of his third year Sauviat added the hawking of tin and
copper ware to that of his pottery. In 1793 he was able to buy a
chateau sold as part of the National domain, which he at once pulled
to pieces. The profits were such that he repeated the process at
several points of the sphere in which he operated; later, these first
successful essays gave him the idea of proposing something of a like
nature on a larger scale to one of his compatriots who lived in Paris.
Thus it happened that the "Bande Noire," so celebrated for its
devastations, had its birth in the brain of old Sauviat, the peddler,
whom all Limoges afterward saw and knew for twenty-seven years in the
rickety old shop among his cracked bells and rusty bars, chains and
scales, his twisted leaden gutters, and metal rubbish of all kinds. We
must do him the justice to say that he knew nothing of the celebrity
or the extent of the association he originated; he profited by his own
idea only in proportion to the capital he entrusted to the since
famous firm of Bresac.

Tired of frequenting fairs and roaming the country, the Auvergnat
settled at Limoges, where he married, in 1797, the daughter of a
coppersmith, a widower, named Champagnac. When his father-in-law died
he bought the house in which he had been carrying on his trade of old-
iron dealer, after ceasing to roam the country as a peddler. Sauviat
was fifty years of age when he married old Champagnac's daughter, who
was herself not less than thirty. Neither handsome nor pretty, she was
nevertheless born in Auvergne, and the /patois/ seemed to be the
mutual attraction; also she had the sturdy frame which enables women
to bear hard work. In the first three years of their married life
Sauviat continued to do some peddling, and his wife accompanied him,
carrying iron or lead on her back, and leading the miserable horse and
cart full of crockery with which her husband plied a disguised usury.
Dark-skinned, high-colored, enjoying robust health, and showing when
she laughed a brilliant set of teeth, white, long, and broad as
almonds, Madame Sauviat had the hips and bosom of a woman made by
Nature expressly for maternity.

If this strong girl were not earlier married, the fault must be
attributed to the Harpagon "no dowry" her father practised, though he
never read Moliere. Sauviat was not deterred by the lack of dowry;
besides, a man of fifty can't make difficulties, not to speak of the
fact that such a wife would save him the cost of a servant. He added
nothing to the furniture of his bedroom where, from the day of his
wedding to the day he left the house, twenty years later, there was
never anything but a single four-post bed, with valance and curtains
of green serge, a chest, a bureau, four chairs, a table, and a
looking-glass, all collected from different localities. The chest
contained in its upper section pewter plates, dishes, etc., each
article dissimilar from the rest. The kitchen can be imagined from the
bedroom.

Neither husband nor wife knew how to read,--a slight defect of
education which did not prevent them from ciphering admirably and
doing a most flourishing business. Sauviat never bought any article
without the certainty of being able to sell it for one hundred per
cent profit. To relieve himself of the necessity of keeping books and
accounts, he bought and sold for cash only. He had, moreover, such a
perfect memory that the cost of any article, were it only a farthing,
remained in his mind year after year, together with its accrued
interest.

Except during the time required for her household duties, Madame
Sauviat was always seated in a rickety wooden chair placed against the
corner pillar of the building. There she knitted and looked at the
passers, watched over the old iron, sold and weighed it, and received
payment if Sauviat was away making purchases. When at home the husband
could be heard at daybreak pushing open his shutters; the household
dog rushed out into the street; and Madame Sauviat presently came out
to help her man in spreading upon the natural counter made by the low
walls on either side of the corner of the house on the two streets,
the multifarious collection of bells, springs, broken gunlocks, and
the other rubbish of their business, which gave a poverty-stricken
look to the establishment, though it usually contained as much as
twenty thousand francs' worth of lead, steel, iron, and other metals.

Never were the former peddler and his wife known to speak of their
fortune; they concealed its amount as carefully as a criminal hides a
crime; and for years they were suspected of shaving both gold and
silver coins. When Champagnac died the Sauviats made no inventory of
his property; but they rummaged, with the intelligence of rats, into
every nook and corner of the old man's house, left it as naked as a
corpse, and sold the wares it contained in their own shop.

Once a year, in December, Sauviat went to Paris in one of the public
conveyances. The gossips of the neighborhood concluded that in order
to conceal from others the amount of his fortune, he invested it
himself on these occasions. It was known later that, having been
connected in his youth with one of the most celebrated dealers in
metal, an Auvergnat like himself, who was living in Paris, Sauviat
placed his funds with the firm of Bresac, the mainspring and spine of
that famous association known by the name of the "Bande Noire," which,
as we have already said, took its rise from a suggestion made by
Sauviat himself.

Sauviat was a fat little man with a weary face, endowed by Nature with
a look of honesty which attracted customers and facilitated the sale
of goods. His straightforward assertions, and the perfect indifference
of his tone and manner, increased this impression. In person, his
naturally ruddy complexion was hardly perceptible under the black
metallic dust which powdered his curly black hair and the seams of a
face pitted with the small-pox. His forehead was not without dignity;
in fact, it resembled the well-known brow given by all painters to
Saint Peter, the man of the people, the roughest, but withal the
shrewdest, of the apostles. His hands were those of an indefatigable
worker,--large, thick, square, and wrinkled with deep furrows. His
chest was of seemingly indestructible muscularity. He never
relinquished his peddler's costume,--thick, hobnailed shoes; blue
stockings knit by his wife and hidden by leather gaiters; bottle-green
velveteen trousers; a checked waistcoat, from which depended the brass
key of his silver watch by an iron chain which long usage had polished
till it shone like steel; a jacket with short tails, also of
velveteen, like that of the trousers; and around his neck a printed
cotton cravat much frayed by the rubbing of his beard.

On Sundays and fete-days Sauviat wore a frock-coat of maroon cloth, so
well taken care of that two new ones were all he bought in twenty
years. The living of galley-slaves would be thought sumptuous in
comparison with that of the Sauviats, who never ate meat except on the
great festivals of the Church. Before paying out the money absolutely
needed for their daily subsistence, Madame Sauviat would feel in the
two pockets hidden between her gown and petticoat, and bring forth a
single well-scraped coin,--a crown of six francs, or perhaps a piece
of fifty-five sous,--which she would gaze at for a long time before
she could bring herself to change it. As a general thing the Sauviats
ate herrings, dried peas, cheese, hard eggs in salad, vegetables
seasoned in the cheapest manner. Never did they lay in provisions,
except perhaps a bunch of garlic or onions, which could not spoil and
cost but little. The small amount of wood they burned in winter they
bought of itinerant sellers day by day. By seven in winter, by nine in
summer, the household was in bed, and the shop was closed and guarded
by a huge dog, which got its living from the kitchens in the
neighborhood. Madame Sauviat used about three francs' worth of candles
in the course of the year.

The sober, toilsome life of these persons was brightened by one joy,
but that was a natural joy, and for it they made their only known
outlays. In May, 1802, Madame Sauviat gave birth to a daughter. She
was confined all alone, and went about her household work five days
later. She nursed her child in the open air, seated as usual in her
chair by the corner pillar, continuing to sell old iron while the
infant sucked. Her milk cost nothing, and she let her little daughter
feed on it for two years, neither of them being the worse for the long
nursing.

Veronique (that was the infant's name) became the handsomest child in
the Lower town, and every one who saw her stopped to look at her. The
neighbors then noticed for the first time a trace of feeling in the
old Sauviats, of which they had supposed them devoid. While the wife
cooked the dinner the husband held the little one, or rocked it to the
tune of an Auvergnat song. The workmen as they passed sometimes saw
him motionless gazing at Veronique asleep on her mother's knees. He
softened his harsh voice when he spoke to her, and wiped his hands on
his trousers before taking her up. When Veronique tried to walk, the
father bent his legs and stood at a little distance holding out his
arms and making little grimaces which contrasted funnily with the
rigid furrows of his stern, hard face. The man of iron, brass, and
lead became a being of flesh and blood and bones. If he happened to be
standing with his back against the corner pillar motionless, a cry
from Veronique would agitate him and send him flying over the mounds
of iron fragments to find her; for she spent her childhood playing
with the wreck of ancient castles heaped in the depths of that old
shop. There were other days on which she went to play in the street or
with the neighboring children; but even then her mother's eye was
always on her.

It is not unimportant to say here that the Sauviats were eminently
religious. At the very height of the Revolution they observed both
Sunday and fete-days. Twice Sauviat came near having his head cut off
for hearing mass from an unsworn priest. He was put in prison, being
justly accused of helping a bishop, whose life he saved, to fly the
country. Fortunately the old-iron dealer, who knew the ways of bolts
and bars, was able to escape; nevertheless he was condemned to death
by default, and as, by the bye, he never purged himself of that
contempt, he may be said to have died dead.

His wife shared his piety. The avariciousness of the household yielded
to the demands of religion. The old-iron dealers gave their alms
punctually at the sacrament and to all the collections in church. When
the vicar of Saint-Etienne called to ask help for his poor, Sauviat or
his wife fetched at once without reluctance or sour faces the sum they
thought their fair share of the parish duties. The mutilated Virgin on
their corner pillar never failed (after 1799) to be wreathed with
holly at Easter. In the summer season she was feted with bouquets kept
fresh in tumblers of blue glass; this was particularly the case after
the birth of Veronique. On the days of the processions the Sauviats
scrupulously hung their house with sheets covered with flowers, and
contributed money to the erection and adornment of the altar, which
was the pride and glory of the whole square.

Veronique Sauviat was, therefore, brought up in a Christian manner.
From the time she was seven years old she was taught by a Gray sister
from Auvergne to whom the Sauviats had done some kindness in former
times. Both husband and wife were obliging when the matter did not
affect their pockets or consume their time,--like all poor folk who
are cordially ready to be serviceable to others in their own way. The
Gray sister taught Veronique to read and write; she also taught her
the history of the people of God, the catechism, the Old and the New
Testaments, and a very little arithmetic. That was all; the worthy
sister thought it enough; it was in fact too much.

At nine years of age Veronique surprised the whole neighborhood with
her beauty. Every one admired her face, which promised much to the
pencil of artists who are always seeking a noble ideal. She was called
"the Little Virgin" and showed signs already of a fine figure and
great delicacy of complexion. Her Madonna-like face--for the popular
voice had well named her--was surrounded by a wealth of fair hair,
which brought out the purity of her features. Whoever has seen the
sublime Virgin of Titian in his great picture of the "Presentation" at
Venice, will know that Veronique was in her girlhood,--the same
ingenuous candor, the same seraphic astonishment in her eyes, the same
simple yet noble attitude, the same majesty of childhood in her
demeanor.

At eleven years of age she had the small-pox, and owed her life to the
care of Soeur Marthe. During the two months that their child was in
danger the Sauviats betrayed to the whole community the depth of their
tenderness. Sauviat no longer went about the country to sales; he
stayed in the shop, going upstairs and down to his daughter's room,
sitting up with her every night in company with his wife. His silent
anguish seemed so great that no one dared to speak to him; his
neighbors looked at him with compassion, but they only asked news of
Veronique from Soeur Marthe. During the days when the child's danger
reached a crisis, the neighbors and passers saw, for the first and
only time in Sauviat's life, tears in his eyes and rolling down his
hollow cheeks; he did not wipe them, but stood for hours as if
stupefied, not daring to go upstairs to his daughter's room, gazing
before him and seeing nothing, so oblivious of all things that any one
might have robbed him.

Veronique was saved, but her beauty perished. Her face, once
exquisitely colored with a tint in which brown and rose were
harmoniously mingled, came out from the disease with a myriad of pits
which thickened the skin, the flesh beneath it being deeply indented.
Even her forehead did not escape the ravages of the scourge; it turned
brown and looked as though it were hammered, like metal. Nothing can
be more discordant than brick tones of the skin surrounded by golden
hair; they destroy all harmony. These fissures in the tissues,
capriciously hollowed, injured the purity of the profile and the
delicacy of the lines of the face, especially that of the nose, the
Grecian form of which was lost, and that of the chin, once as
exquisitely rounded as a piece of white porcelain. The disease left
nothing unharmed except the parts it was unable to reach,--the eyes
and the teeth. She did not, however, lose the elegance and beauty of
her shape,--neither the fulness of its lines nor the grace and
suppleness of her waist. At fifteen Veronique was still a fine girl,
and to the great consolation of her father and mother, a good and
pious girl, busy, industrious, and domestic.

After her convalescence and after she had made her first communion,
her parents gave her the two chambers on the second floor for her own
particular dwelling. Sauviat, so course in his way of living for
himself and his wife, now had certain perceptions of what comfort
might be; a vague idea came to him of consoling his child for her
great loss, which, as yet, she did not comprehend. The deprivation of
that beauty which was once the pride and joy of those two beings made
Veronique the more dear and precious to them. Sauviat came home one
day, bearing a carpet he had chanced upon in some of his rounds, which
he nailed himself on Veronique's floor. For her he saved from the sale
of an old chateau the gorgeous bed of a fine lady, upholstered in red
silk damask, with curtains and chairs of the same rich stuff. He
furnished her two rooms with antique articles, of the true value of
which he was wholly ignorant. He bought mignonette and put the pots on
the ledge outside her window; and he returned from many of his trips
with rose trees, or pansies, or any kind of flower which gardeners or
tavern-keepers would give him.

If Veronique could have made comparisons and known the character, past
habits, and ignorance of her parents she would have seen how much
there was of affection in these little things; but as it was, she
simply loved them from her own sweet nature and without reflection.

The girl wore the finest linen her mother could find in the shops.
Madame Sauviat left her daughter at liberty to buy what materials she
liked for her gowns and other garments; and the father and mother were
proud of her choice, which was never extravagant. Veronique was
satisfied with a blue silk gown for Sundays and fete-days, and on
working-days she wore merino in winter and striped cotton dresses in
summer. On Sundays she went to church with her father and mother, and
took a walk after vespers along the banks of the Vienne or about the
environs. On other days she stayed at home, busy in filling worsted-
work patterns, the payment for which she gave to the poor,--a life of
simple, chaste, and exemplary principles and habits. She did some
reading together with her tapestry, but never in any books except
those lent to her by the vicar of Saint-Etienne, a priest whom Soeur
Marthe had first made known to her parents.

All the rules of the Sauviat's domestic economy were suspended in
favor of Veronique. Her mother delighted in giving her dainty things
to eat, and cooked her food separately. The father and mother still
ate their nuts and dry bread, their herrings and parched peas
fricasseed in salt butter, while for Veronique nothing was thought too
choice and good.

"Veronique must cost you a pretty penny," said a hatmaker who lived
opposite to the Sauviats and had designs on their daughter for his
son, estimating the fortune of the old-iron dealer at a hundred
thousand francs.

"Yes, neighbor, yes," Pere Sauviat would say; "if she asked me for ten
crowns I'd let her have them. She has all she wants; but she never
asks for anything; she is as gentle as a lamb."

Veronique was, as a matter of fact, absolutely ignorant of the value
of things. She had never wanted for anything; she never saw a piece of
gold till the day of her marriage; she had no money of her own; her
mother bought and gave her everything she needed and wished for; so
that even when she wanted to give alms to a beggar, the girl felt in
her mother's pocket for the coin.

"If that's so," remarked the hatmaker, "she can't cost you much."

"So you think, do you?" replied Sauviat. "You wouldn't get off under
forty crowns a year, I can tell you that. Why, her room, she has at
least a hundred crowns' worth of furniture in it! But when a man has
but one child, he doesn't mind. The little we own will all go to her."

"The little! Why, you must be rich, pere Sauviat! It is pretty nigh
forty years that you have been doing a business in which there are no
losses."

"Ha! I sha'n't go to the poorhouse for want of a thousand francs or
so!" replied the old-iron dealer.

From the day when Veronique lost the soft beauty which made her
girlish face the admiration of all who saw it, Pere Sauviat redoubled
in activity. His business became so prosperous that he now went to
Paris several times a year. Every one felt that he wanted to
compensate his daughter by force of money for what he called her "loss
of profit." When Veronique was fifteen years old a change was made in
the internal manners and customs of the household. The father and
mother went upstairs in the evenings to their daughter's apartment,
where Veronique would read to them, by the light of a lamp placed
behind a glass globe full of water, the "Vie des Saints," the "Lettres
Edifiantes," and other books lent by the vicar. Madame Sauviat knitted
stockings, feeling that she thus recouped herself for the cost of oil.
The neighbors could see through the window the old couple seated
motionless in their armchairs, like Chinese images, listening to their
daughter, and admiring her with all the powers of their contracted
minds, obtuse to everything that was not business or religious faith.



II

VERONIQUE

There are, no doubt, many young girls in the world as pure as
Veronique, but none purer or more modest. Her confessions might have
surprised the angels and rejoiced the Blessed Virgin.

At sixteen years of age she was fully developed, and appeared the
woman she was eventually to become. She was of medium height, neither
her father nor her mother being tall; but her figure was charming in
its graceful suppleness, and in the serpentine curves laboriously
sought by painters and sculptors,--curves which Nature herself draws
so delicately with her lissom outlines, revealed to the eye of artists
in spite of swathing linen and thick clothes, which mould themselves,
inevitably, upon the nude. Sincere, simple, and natural, Veronique set
these beauties of her form into relief by movements that were wholly
free from affectation. She brought out her "full and complete effect,"
if we may borrow that strong term from legal phraseology. She had the
plump arms of the Auvergnat women, the red and dimpled hand of a
barmaid, and her strong but well-shaped feet were in keeping with the
rest of her figure.

At times there seemed to pass within her a marvellous and delightful
phenomenon which promised to Love a woman concealed thus far from
every eye. This phenomenon was perhaps one cause of the admiration her
father and mother felt for her beauty, which they often declared to be
divine,--to the great astonishment of their neighbors. The first to
remark it were the priests of the cathedral and the worshippers with
her at the same altar. When a strong emotion took possession of
Veronique,--and the religious exaltation to which she yielded herself
on receiving the communion must be counted among the strongest
emotions of so pure and candid a young creature,--an inward light
seemed to efface for the moment all traces of the small-pox. The pure
and radiant face of her childhood reappeared in its pristine beauty.
Though slightly veiled by the thickened surface disease had laid
there, it shone with the mysterious brilliancy of a flower blooming
beneath the water of the sea when the sun is penetrating it. Veronique
was changed for a few moments; the Little Virgin reappeared and then
disappeared again, like a celestial vision. The pupils of her eyes,
gifted with the power of great expansion, widened until they covered
the whole surface of the blue iris except for a tiny circle. Thus the
metamorphose of the eye, which became as keen and vivid as that of an
eagle, completed the extraordinary change in the face. Was it the
storm of restrained passions; was it some power coming from the depths
of the soul, which enlarged the pupils in full daylight as they
sometimes in other eyes enlarge by night, darkening the azure of those
celestial orbs?

However that may be, it was impossible to look indifferently at
Veronique as she returned to her seat from the altar where she had
united herself with God,--a moment when she appeared to all the parish
in her primitive splendor. At such moments her beauty eclipsed that of
the most beautiful of women. What a charm was there for the man who
loved her, guarding jealously that veil of flesh which hid the woman's
soul from every eye,--a veil which the hand of love might lift for an
instant and then let drop over conjugal delights! Veronique's lips
were faultlessly curved and painted in the clear vermilion of her pure
warm blood. Her chin and the lower part of her face were a little
heavy, in the acceptation given by painters to that term,--a heaviness
which is, according to the relentless laws of physiognomy, the
indication of an almost morbid vehemence in passion. She had above her
brow, which was finely modelled and almost imperious, a magnificent
diadem of hair, voluminous, redundant, and now of a chestnut color.

From the age of sixteen to the day of her marriage Veronique's bearing
was always thoughtful, and sometimes melancholy. Living in such deep
solitude, she was forced, like other solitary persons, to examine and
consider the spectacle of that which went on within her,--the progress
of her thought, the variety of the images in her mind, and the scope
of feelings warmed and nurtured in a life so pure.

Those who looked up from their lower level as they passed along the
rue de la Cite might have seen, on all fine days, the daughter of the
Sauviats sitting at her open window, sewing, embroidering, or pricking
the needle through the canvas of her worsted-work, with a look that
was often dreamy. Her head was vividly defined among the flowers which
poetized the brown and crumbling sills of her casement windows with
their leaded panes. Sometimes the reflection of the red damask window-
curtains added to the effect of that head, already so highly colored;
like a crimson flower she glowed in the aerial garden so carefully
trained upon her window-sill.

The quaint old house possessed therefore something more quaint than
itself,--the portrait of a young girl worthy of Mieris, or Van Ostade,
or Terburg, or Gerard Douw, framed in one of those old, defaced, half
ruined windows the brushes of the old Dutch painters loved so well.
When some stranger, surprised or interested by the building, stopped
before it and gazed at the second story, old Sauviat would poke his
head beyond the overhanging projection, certain that he should see his
daughter at her window. Then he would retreat into the shop rubbing
his hands and saying to his wife in the Auvergne vernacular:--

"Hey! old woman; they're admiring your daughter!"

In 1820 an incident occurred in the simple uneventful life the girl
was leading, which might have had no importance in the life of any
other young woman, but which, in point of fact, did no doubt exercise
over Veronique's future a terrible influence.

On one of the suppressed church fete-days, when many persons went
about their daily labor, though the Sauviats scrupulously closed their
shop, attended mass, and took a walk, Veronique passed, on their way
to the fields, a bookseller's stall on which lay a copy of "Paul and
Virginia." She had a fancy to buy it for the sake of the engraving,
and her father paid a hundred sous for the fatal volume, which he put
into the pocket of his coat.

"Wouldn't it be well to show that book to Monsieur le vicaire before
you read it?" said her mother, to whom all printed books were a sealed
mystery.

"I thought of it," answered Veronique.

The girl passed the whole night reading the story,--one of the most
touching bits of writing in the French language. The picture of mutual
love, half Biblical and worthy of the earlier ages of the world,
ravaged her heart. A hand--was it divine or devilish?--raised the veil
which, till then, had hidden nature from her. The Little Virgin still
existing in the beautiful young girl thought on the morrow that her
flowers had never been so beautiful; she heard their symbolic
language, she looked into the depths of the azure sky with a fixedness
that was almost ecstasy, and tears without a cause rolled down her
cheeks.

In the life of all women there comes a moment when they comprehend
their destiny,--when their hitherto mute organization speaks
peremptorily. It is not always a man, chosen by some furtive
involuntary glance, who awakens their slumbering sixth sense; oftener
it is some unexpected sight, the aspect of scenery, the /coup d'oeil/
of religious pomp, the harmony of nature's perfumes, a rosy dawn
veiled in slight mists, the winning notes of some divinest music, or
indeed any unexpected motion within the soul or within the body. To
this lonely girl, buried in that old house, brought up by simple, half
rustic parents, who had never heard an unfit word, whose pure
unsullied mind had never known the slightest evil thought,--to the
angelic pupil of Soeur Marthe and the vicar of Saint-Etienne the
revelation of love, the life of womanhood, came from the hand of
genius through one sweet book. To any other mind the book would have
offered no danger; to her it was worse in its effects than an obscene
tale. Corruption is relative. There are chaste and virgin natures
which a single thought corrupts, doing all the more harm because no
thought of the duty of resistance has occurred.

The next day Veronique showed the book to the good priest, who
approved the purchase; for what could be more childlike and innocent
and pure than the history of Paul and Virginia? But the warmth of the
tropics, the beauty of the scenery, the almost puerile innocence of a
love that seemed so sacred had done their work on Veronique. She was
led by the sweet and noble achievement of its author to the worship of
the Ideal, that fatal human religion! She dreamed of a lover like
Paul. Her thoughts caressed the voluptuous image of that balmy isle.
Childlike, she named an island in the Vienne, below Limoges and nearly
opposite to the Faubourg Saint-Martial, the Ile de France. Her mind
lived there in the world of fancy all young girls construct,--a world
they enrich with their own perfections. She spent long hours at her
window, looking at the artisans or the mechanics who passed it, the
only men whom the modest position of her parents allowed her to think
of. Accustomed, of course, to the idea of eventually marrying a man of
the people, she now became aware of instincts within herself which
revolved from all coarseness.

In such a situation she naturally made many a romance such as young
girls are fond of weaving. She clasped the idea--perhaps with the
natural ardor of a noble and virgin imagination--of ennobling one of
those men, and of raising him to the height where her own dreams led
her. She may have made a Paul of some young man who caught her eye,
merely to fasten her wild ideas on an actual being, as the mists of a
damp atmosphere, touched by frost, crystallize on the branches of a
tree by the wayside. She must have flung herself deep into the abysses
of her dream, for though she often returned bearing on her brow, as if
from vast heights, some luminous reflections, oftener she seemed to
carry in her hand the flowers that grew beside a torrent she had
followed down a precipice.

On the warm summer evenings she would ask her father to take her on
his arm to the banks of the Vienne, where she went into ecstasies over
the beauties of the sky and fields, the glories of the setting sun, or
the infinite sweetness of the dewy evening. Her soul exhaled itself
thenceforth in a fragrance of natural poesy. Her hair, until then
simply wound about her head, she now curled and braided. Her dress
showed some research. The vine which was running wild and naturally
among the branches of the old elm, was transplanted, cut and trained
over a green and pretty trellis.

After the return of old Sauviat (then seventy years of age) from a
trip to Paris in December, 1822, the vicar came to see him one
evening, and after a few insignificant remarks he said suddenly:--

"You had better think of marrying your daughter, Sauviat. At your age
you ought not to put off the accomplishment of so important a duty."

"But is Veronique willing to be married?" asked the old man, startled.

"As you please, father," she said, lowering her eyes.

"Yes, we'll marry her!" cried stout Madame Sauviat, smiling.

"Why didn't you speak to me about it before I went to Paris, mother?"
said Sauviat. "I shall have to go back there."

Jerome-Baptiste Sauviat, a man in whose eyes money seemed to
constitute the whole of happiness, who knew nothing of love, and had
never seen in marriage anything but the means of transmitting property
to another self, had long sworn to marry Veronique to some rich
bourgeois,--so long, in fact, that the idea had assumed in his brain
the characteristics of a hobby. His neighbor, the hat-maker, who
possessed about two thousand francs a year, had already asked, on
behalf of his son, to whom he proposed to give up his hat-making
establishment, the hand of a girl so well known in the neighborhood
for her exemplary conduct and Christian principles. Sauviat had
politely refused, without saying anything to Veronique. The day after
the vicar--a very important personage in the eyes of the Sauviat
household--had mentioned the necessary of marrying Veronique, whose
confessor he was, the old man shaved and dressed himself as for a
fete-day, and went out without saying a word to his wife or daughter;
both knew very well, however, that the father was in search of a son-
in-law. Old Sauviat went to Monsieur Graslin.

Monsieur Graslin, a rich banker in Limoges, had, like Sauviat himself,
started from Auvergne without a penny; he came to Limoges to be a
porter, found a place as an office-boy in a financial house, and
there, like many other financiers, he made his way by dint of economy,
and also through fortunate circumstances. Cashier at twenty-five years
of age, partner ten years later, in the firm of Perret and Grossetete,
he ended by finding himself the head of the house, after buying out
the senior partners, both of whom retired into the country, leaving
him their funds to manage in the business at a low interest.

Pierre Graslin, then forty-seven years of age, was supposed to possess
about six hundred thousand francs. The estimate of his fortune had
lately increased throughout the department, in consequence of his
outlay in having built, in a new quarter of the town called the place
d'Arbres (thus assisting to give Limoges an improved aspect), a fine
house, the front of it being on a line with a public building with the
facade of which it corresponded. This house had now been finished six
months, but Pierre Graslin delayed furnishing it; it had cost him so
much that he shrank from the further expense of living in it. His
vanity had led him to transgress the wise laws by which he governed
his life. He felt, with the good sense of a business man, that the
interior of the house ought to correspond with the character of the
outside. The furniture, silver-ware, and other needful accessories to
the life he would have to lead in his new mansion would, he estimated,
cost him nearly as much as the original building. In spite, therefore,
of the gossip of tongues and the charitable suppositions of his
neighbors, he continued to live on in the damp, old, and dirty ground-
floor apartment in the rue Montantmanigne where his fortune had been
made. The public carped, but Graslin had the approval of his former
partners, who praised a resolution that was somewhat uncommon.

A fortune and a position like those of Pierre Graslin naturally
excited the greed of not a few in a small provincial city. During the
last ten years more than one proposition of marriage had been
intimated to Monsieur Graslin. But the bachelor state was so well
suited to a man who was busy from morning till night, overrun with
work, eager in the pursuit of money as a hunter for game, and always
tired out with his day's labor, that Graslin fell into none of the
traps laid for him by ambitious mothers who coveted so brilliant a
position for their daughters.

Graslin, another Sauviat in an upper sphere, did not spend more than
forty sous a day, and clothed himself no better than his under-clerk.
Two clerks and an office-boy sufficed him to carry on his business,
which was immense through the multiplicity of its details. One clerk
attended to the correspondence; the other had charge of the accounts;
but Pierre Graslin was himself the soul, and body too, of the whole
concern. His clerks, chosen from his own relations, were safe men,
intelligent and as well-trained in the work as himself. As for the
office-boy, he led the life of a truck horse,--up at five in the
morning at all seasons, and never getting to bed before eleven at
night.

Graslin employed a charwoman by the day, an old peasant from Auvergne,
who did his cooking. The brown earthenware off which he ate, and the
stout coarse linen which he used, were in keeping with the character
of his food. The old woman had strict orders never to spend more than
three francs daily for the total expenses of the household. The
office-boy was also man-of-all-work. The clerks took care of their own
rooms. The tables of blackened wood, the straw chairs half unseated,
the wretched beds, the counters and desks, in short, the whole
furniture of house and office was not worth more than a thousand
francs, including a colossal iron safe, built into the wall, before
which slept the man-of-all-work with two dogs at his feet.

Graslin did not often go into society, which, however, discussed him
constantly. Two or three times a year he dined with the receiver-
general, with whom his business brought him into occasional
intercourse. He also occasionally took a meal at the prefecture; for
he had been appointed, much to his regret, a member of the Council-
general of the department--"a waste of time," he remarked. Sometimes
his brother bankers with whom he had dealings kept him to breakfast or
dinner; and he was forced also to visit his former partners, who spent
their winters in Limoges. He cared so little to keep up his relations
to society that in twenty-five years Graslin had not offered so much
as a glass of water to any one. When he passed along the street
persons would nudge each other and say: "That's Monsieur Graslin";
meaning, "There's a man who came to Limoges without a penny and has
now acquired an enormous fortune." The Auvergnat banker was a model
which more than one father pointed out to his son, and wives had been
known to fling him in the faces of their husbands.

We can now understand the reasons that led a man who had become the
pivot of the financial machine of Limoges to repulse the various
propositions of marriage which parents never ceased to make to him.
The daughters of his partners, Messrs. Perret and Grossetete, were
married before Graslin was in a position to take a wife; but as each
of these ladies had young daughters, the wiseheads of the community
finally concluded that old Perret or old Grossetete had made an
arrangement with Graslin to wait for one of his granddaughters, and
thenceforth they left him alone.

Sauviat had watched the ascending career of his compatriot more
attentively and seriously than any one else. He had known him from the
time he first came to Limoges; but their respective positions had
changed so much, at least apparently, that their friendship, now
become merely superficial, was seldom freshened. Still, in his
relation as compatriot, Graslin never disdained to talk with Sauviat
when they chanced to meet. Both continued to keep up their early
/tutoiement/, but only in their native dialect. When the receiver-
general of Bourges, the youngest of the brothers Grossetete, married
his daughter in 1823 to the youngest son of Comte Fontaine, Sauviat
felt sure that the Grossetetes would never allow Graslin to enter
their family.

After his conference with the banker, Pere Sauviat returned home
joyously. He dined that night in his daughter's room, and after dinner
he said to his womenkind:--

"Veronique will be Madame Graslin."

"Madame Graslin!" exclaimed Mere Sauviat, astounded.

"Is it possible?" said Veronique, to whom Graslin was personally
unknown, and whose imagination regarded him very much as a Parisian
grisette would regard a Rothschild.

"Yes, it is settled," said old Sauviat solemnly. "Graslin will furnish
his house magnificently; he is to give our daughter a fine Parisian
carriage and the best horses to be found in the Limousin; he will buy
an estate worth five hundred thousand francs, and settle that and his
town-house upon her. Veronique will be the first lady in Limoges, the
richest in the department, and she can do what she pleases with
Graslin."

Veronique's education, her religious ideas, and her boundless
affection for her parents, prevented her from making a single
objection; it did not even cross her mind to think that she had been
disposed of without reference to her own will. On the morrow Sauviat
went to Paris, and was absent for nearly a week.

Pierre Graslin was, as can readily be imagined, not much of a talker;
he went straight and rapidly to deeds. A thing decided on was a thing
done. In February, 1822, a strange piece of news burst like a
thunderbolt on the town of Limoges. The hotel Graslin was being
handsomely furnished; carriers' carts came day after day from Paris,
and their contents were unpacked in the courtyard. Rumors flew about
the town as to the beauty and good taste of the modern or the antique
furniture as it was seen to arrive. The great firm of Odiot and
Company sent down a magnificent service of plate by the mail-coach.
Three carriages, a caleche, a coupe, and a cabriolet arrived, wrapped
in straw with as much care as if they were jewels.

"Monsieur Graslin is going to be married!"

These words were said by every pair of lips in Limoges in the course
of a single evening,--in the salons of the upper classes, in the
kitchens, in the shops, in the streets, in the suburbs, and before
long throughout the whole surrounding country. But to whom? No one
could answer. Limoges had a mystery.



III

MARRIAGE

On the return of old Sauviat Graslin paid his first evening visit at
half-past nine o'clock. Veronique was expecting him, dressed in her
blue silk gown and muslin guimpe, over which fell a collaret made of
lawn with a deep hem. Her hair was simply worn in two smooth bandeaus,
gathered into a Grecian knot at the back of her head. She was seated
on a tapestried chair beside her mother, who occupied a fine armchair
with a carved back, covered with red velvet (evidently the relic of
some old chateau), which stood beside the fireplace. A bright fire
blazed on the hearth. On the chimney-piece, at either side of an
antique clock, the value of which was wholly unknown to the Sauviats,
six wax candles in two brass sconces twisted like vine-shoots, lighted
the dark room and Veronique in all her budding prime. The old mother
was wearing her best gown.

From the silent street, at that tranquil hour, through the soft
shadows of the ancient stairway, Graslin appeared to the modest,
artless Veronique, her mind still dwelling on the sweet ideas which
Bernadin de Saint-Pierre had given her of love.

Graslin, who was short and thin, had thick black hair like the
bristles of a brush, which brought into vigorous relief a face as red
as that of a drunkard emeritus, and covered with suppurating pimples,
either bleeding or about to burst. Without being caused by eczema or
scrofula, these signs of a blood overheated by continual toil,
anxiety, and the lust of business, by wakeful nights, poor food, and a
sober life, seemed to partake of both these diseases. In spite of the
advice of his partners, his clerks, and his physician, the banker
would never compel himself to take the healthful precautions which
might have prevented, or would at least modify, this malady, which was
slight at first, but had greatly increased from year to year. He
wanted to cure it, and would sometimes take baths or drink some
prescribed potion; but, hurried along on the current of his business,
he soon neglected the care of his person. Sometimes he thought of
suspending work for a time, travelling about, and visiting the noted
baths for such diseases; but where is the hunter after millions who is
willing to stop short?

In that blazing furnace shone two gray eyes rayed with green lines
starting from the pupils, and speckled with brown spots,--two
implacable eyes, full of resolution, rectitude, and shrewd
calculation. Graslin's nose was short and turned up; he had a mouth
with thick lips, a prominent forehead, and high cheek-bones, coarse
ears with large edges discolored by the condition of his blood,--in
short, he was an ancient satyr in a black satin waistcoat, brown
frock-coat, and white cravat. His strong and vigorous shoulders, which
began life by bearing heavy burdens, were now rather bent; and beneath
this torso, unduly developed, came a pair of weak legs, rather badly
affixed to the short thighs. His thin and hairy hands had the crooked
fingers of those whose business it is to handle money. The habit of
quick decision could be seen in the way the eyebrows rose into a point
over each arch of the eye. Though the mouth was grave and pinched, its
expression was that of inward kindliness; it told of an excellent
nature, sunk in business, smothered possibly, though it might revive
by contact with a woman.

At this apparition Veronique's heart was violently agitated; blackness
came before her eyes; she thought she cried aloud; but she really sat
there mute, with fixed and staring gaze.

"Veronique, this is Monsieur Graslin," said old Sauviat.

Veronique rose, curtsied, dropped back into her chair, and looked at
her mother, who was smiling at the millionaire, seeming, as her father
did, so happy,--so happy that the poor girl found strength to hide her
surprise and her violent repulsion. During the conversation which then
took place something was said of Graslin's health. The banker looked
naively into the mirror, with bevelled edges in an ebony frame.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "I am not good-looking."

Thereupon he proceeded to explain the blotches on his face as the
result of his overworked life. He related how he had constantly
disobeyed his physician's advice; and remarked that he hoped to change
his appearance altogether when he had a wife to rule his household,
and take better care of him than he took of himself.

"Is a man married for his face, compatriot?" said Sauviat, giving the
other a hearty slap on the thigh.

Graslin's speech went straight to those natural feelings which, more
or less, fill the heart of every woman. The thought came into
Veronique's mind that her face, too, had been destroyed by a horrible
disease, and her Christian modesty rebuked her first impression.

Hearing a whistle in the street, Graslin went downstairs, followed by
Sauviat. They speedily returned. The office-boy had brought the first
bouquet, which was a little late in coming. When the banker exhibited
this mound of exotic flowers, the fragrance of which completely filled
the room, and offered it to his future wife, Veronique felt a rush of
conflicting emotions; she was suddenly plunged into the ideal and
fantastic world of tropical nature. Never before had she seen white
camelias, never had she smelt the fragrance of the Alpine cistus, the
Cape jessamine, the cedronella, the volcameria, the moss-rose, or any
of the divine perfumes which woo to love, and sing to the heart their
hymns of fragrance. Graslin left Veronique that night in the grasp of
such emotions.

From this time forth, as soon as all Limoges was sleeping, the banker
would slip along the walls to the Sauviats' house. There he would tap
gently on the window-shutter; the dog did not bark; old Sauviat came
down and let him in, and Graslin would then spend an hour or two with
Veronique in the brown room, where Madame Sauviat always served him a
true Auvergnat supper. Never did this singular lover arrive without a
bouquet made of the rarest flowers from the greenhouse of his old
partner, Monsieur Grossetete, the only person who as yet knew of the
approaching marriage. The man-of-all-work went every evening to fetch
the bunch, which Monsieur Grossetete made himself.

Graslin made about fifty such visits in two months; each time, besides
the flowers, he brought with him some rich present,--rings, a watch, a
gold chain, a work-box, etc. These inconceivable extravagances must be
explained, and a word suffices. Veronique's dowry, promised by her
father, consisted of nearly the whole of old Sauviat's property,
namely, seven hundred and fifty thousand francs. The old man retained
an income of eight thousand francs derived from the Funds, bought for
him originally for sixty thousand francs in assignats by his
correspondent Brezac, to whom, at the time of his imprisonment, he had
confided that sum, and who kept it for him safely. These sixty
thousand francs in assignats were the half of Sauviat's fortune at the
time he came so near being guillotined. Brezac was also, at the same
time, the faithful repository of the rest, namely, seven hundred louis
d'or (an enormous sum at that time in gold), with which old Sauviat
began his business once more as soon as he recovered his liberty. In
thirty years each of those louis d'or had been transformed into a
bank-note for a thousand francs, by means of the income from the
Funds, of Madame Sauviat's inheritance from her father, old
Champagnac, and of the profits accruing from the business and the
accumulated interest thereon in the hands of the Brezac firm. Brezac
himself had a loyal and honest friendship for Sauviat,--such as all
Auvergnats are apt to feel for one another.

So, whenever Sauviat passed the front of the Graslin mansion he had
said to himself, "Veronique shall live in that fine palace." He knew
very well that no girl in all the department would have seven hundred
and fifty thousand francs as a marriage portion, besides the
expectation of two hundred and fifty thousand more. Graslin, his
chosen son-in-law, would therefore infallibly marry Veronique; and so,
as we have seen, it came about.

Every evening Veronique had her fresh bunch of flowers, which on the
morrow decked her little salon and was carefully concealed from the
neighbors. She admired the beautiful jewels, the pearls and diamonds,
the bracelets, the rubies, gifts which assuredly gratify all the
daughters of Eve. She thought herself less plain when she wore them.
She saw her mother happy in the marriage, and she had no other point
of view from which to make comparisons. She was, moreover, totally
ignorant of the duties or the purpose of marriage. She heard the
solemn voice of the vicar of Saint-Etienne praising Graslin to her as
a man of honor, with whom she would lead an honorable life. Thus it
was that Veronique consented to receive Monsieur Graslin as her future
husband.

When it happens that in a life so withdrawn from the world, so
solitary as that of Veronique, a single person enters it every day,
that person cannot long remain indifferent; either he is hated, and
the aversion, justified by a deepening knowledge of his character,
renders him intolerable, or the habit of seeing bodily defects dims
the eye to them. The mind looks about for compensations; his
countenance awakens curiosity; its features brighten; fleeting
beauties appear in it. At last the inner, hidden beneath the outer,
shows itself. Then, when the first impressions are fairly overcome,
the attachment felt is all the stronger, because the soul clings to it
as its own creation. That is love. And here lies the reason of those
passions conceived by beautiful things for other beings apparently
ugly. The outward aspect, forgotten by affection, is no longer seen in
a creature whose soul is deeply valued. Besides this, beauty, so
necessary to a woman, takes many strange aspects in man; and there is
as much diversity of feeling among women about the beauty of men as
there is among men about the beauty of women. So, after deep
reflection and much debating with herself, Veronique gave her consent
to the publication of the banns.

From that moment all Limoges rang with this inexplicable affair,--
inexplicable because no one knew the secret of it, namely, the
immensity of the dowry. Had that dowry been known Veronique could have
chosen a husband where she pleased; but even so, she might have made a
mistake.

Graslin was thought to be much in love. Upholsterers came from Paris
to fit up the house. Nothing was talked of in Limoges but the profuse
expenditures of the banker. The value of the chandeliers was
calculated; the gilding of the walls, the figures on the clocks, all
were discussed; the jardinieres, the caloriferes, the objects of
luxury and novelty, nothing was left unnoticed. In the garden of the
hotel Graslin, above the icehouse, was an aviary, and all the
inhabitants of the town were presently surprised by the sight of rare
birds,--Chinese pheasants, mysterious breeds of ducks. Every one
flocked to see them. Monsieur and Madame Grossetete, an old couple who
were highly respected in Limoges, made several visits to the Sauviats,
accompanied by Graslin. Madame Grossetete, a most excellent woman,
congratulated Veronique on her happy marriage. Thus the Church, the
family, society, and all material things down to the most trivial,
made themselves accomplices to bring about this marriage.

In the month of April the formal invitations to the wedding were
issued to all Graslin's friends and acquaintance. On a fine spring
morning a caleche and a coupe, drawn by Limousin horses chosen by
Monsieur Grossetete, drew up at eleven o'clock before the shop of the
iron-dealer, bringing, to the great excitement of the neighborhood,
the former partners of the bridegroom and the latter's two clerks. The
street was lined with spectators, all anxious to see the Sauviats'
daughter, on whose beautiful hair the most renowned hairdresser in
Limoges had placed the bridal wreath and a costly veil of English
lace. Veronique wore a gown of simple white muslin. A rather imposing
assemblage of the most distinguished women in the society of the town
attended the wedding in the cathedral, where the bishop, knowing the
religious fervor of the Sauviats, deigned to marry Veronique himself.
The bride was very generally voted plain.

She entered her new house, and went from one surprise to another. A
grand dinner was to precede the ball, to which Graslin had invited
nearly all Limoges. The dinner, given to the bishop, the prefect, the
judge of the court, the attorney-general, the mayor, the general, and
Graslin's former partners with their wives, was a triumph for the
bride, who, like all other persons who are simple and natural, showed
charms that were not expected in her. Neither of the bridal pair could
dance; Veronique continued therefore to do the honors to her guests,
and to win the esteem and good graces of nearly all the persons who
were presented to her, asking Grossetete, who took an honest liking to
her, for information about the company. She made no mistakes and
committed no blunders. It was during this evening that the two former
partners of the banker announced the amount of the dowry (immense for
Limousin) given by the Sauviats to their daughter. At nine o'clock the
old iron-dealer returned home and went to bed, leaving his wife to
preside over the bride's retiring. It was said by everyone throughout
the town that Madame Graslin was very plain, though well made.

Old Sauviat now wound up his business and sold his house in town. He
bought a little country-place on the left bank of the Vienne between
Limoges and Cluzeau, ten minutes' walk from the suburb of Saint-
Martial, where he intended to finish his days tranquilly with his
wife. The old couple had an apartment in the hotel Graslin and always
dined once or twice a week with their daughter, who, as often, made
their house in the country the object of her walks.

This enforced rest almost killed old Sauviat. Happily, Graslin found a
means of occupying his father-in-law. In 1823 the banker was forced to
take possession of a porcelain manufactory, to the proprietors of
which he had advanced large sums, which they found themselves unable
to repay except by the sale of their factory, which they made to him.
By the help of his business connections and by investing a large
amount of property in the concern, Graslin made it one of the finest
manufactories of Limoges ware in the town. Afterwards he resold it at
a fine profit; meantime he placed it under the superintendence of his
father-in-law, who, in spite of his seventy-two years, counted for
much in the return of prosperity to the establishment, who himself
renewed his youth in the employment. Graslin was then able to attend
to his legitimate business of banking without anxiety as to the
manufactory.

Sauviat died in 1827 from an accident. While taking account of stock
he fell into a /charasse/,--a sort of crate with an open grating in
which the china was packed; his leg was slightly injured, so slightly
that he paid no attention to it; gangrene set in; he would not consent
to amputation, and therefore died. The widow gave up about two hundred
and fifty thousand francs which came to her from Sauviat's estate,
reserving only a stipend of two hundred francs a month, which amply
sufficed for her wants. Graslin bound himself to pay her that sum
duly. She kept her little house in the country, and lived there alone
without a servant and against the remonstrances of her daughter, who
could not induce her to alter this determination, to which she clung
with the obstinacy peculiar to old persons. Madame Sauviat came nearly
every day into Limoges to see her daughter, and the latter still
continued to make her mother's house, from which was a charming view
of the river, the object of her walks. From the road leading to it
could be seen that island long loved by Veronique and called by her
the Ile de France.

In order not to complicate our history of the Graslin household with
the foregoing incidents, we have thought it best to end that of the
Sauviats by anticipating events, which are moreover useful as
explaining the private and hidden life which Madame Graslin now led.
The old mother, noticing that Graslin's miserliness, which returned
upon him, might hamper her daughter, was for some time unwilling to
resign the property left to her by her husband. But Veronique, unable
to imagine a case in which a woman might desire the use of her own
property, urged it upon her mother with reasons of great generosity,
and out of gratitude to Graslin for restoring to her the liberty and
freedom of a young girl. But this is anticipating.

The unusual splendor which accompanied Graslin's marriage had
disturbed all his habits and constantly annoyed him. The mind of the
great financier was a very small one. Veronique had had no means of
judging the man with whom she was to pass her life. During his fifty-
five visits he had let her see nothing but the business man, the
indefatigable worker, who conceived and sustained great enterprises,
and analyzed public affairs, bringing them always to the crucial test
of the Bank. Fascinated by the million offered to him by Sauviat, he
showed himself generous by calculation. Carried away by the interests
of his marriage and by what he called his "folly," namely, the house
which still goes by the name of the hotel Graslin, he did things on a
large scale. Having bought horses, a caleche, and a coupe, he
naturally used them to return the wedding visits and go to those
dinners and balls, called the "retours de noces," which the heads of
the administration and the rich families of Limoges gave to the newly
married pair. Under this impulsion, which carried him entirely out of
his natural sphere, Graslin sent to Paris for a man-cook and took a
reception day. For a year he kept the pace of a man who possesses a
fortune of sixteen hundred thousand francs, and he became of course
the most noted personage in Limoges. During this year he generously
put into his wife's purse every month twenty-five gold pieces of
twenty francs each.

Society concerned itself much about Veronique from the day of her
marriage, for she was a boon to its curiosity, which has little to
feed on in the provinces. Veronique was all the more studied because
she had appeared in the social world like a phenomenon; but once
there, she remained always simple and modest, in the attitude of a
person who is observing habits, customs, manners, things unknown to
her, and endeavoring to conform to them. Already voted ugly but well-
shaped, she was now declared kindly but stupid. She was learning so
many things, she had so much to hear and to see that her looks and
speech did certainly give some reason for this judgment. She showed a
sort of torpor which resembled lack of mind. Marriage, that hard
calling, as she said, for which the Church, the Code, and her mother
exhorted her to resignation and obedience, under pain of transgressing
all human laws and causing irreparable evil, threw her into a dazed
and dizzy condition, which amounted sometimes to a species of inward
delirium.

Silent and self-contained, she listened as much to herself as she did
to others. Feeling within her the most violent "difficulty of
existing," to use an expression of Fontenelle's, which was constantly
increasing, she became terrified at herself. Nature resisted the
commands of the mind, the body denied the will. The poor creature,
caught in the net, wept on the breast of that great Mother of the poor
and the afflicted,--she went for comfort to the Church; her piety
redoubled, she confided the assaults of the demon to her confessor;
she prayed to heaven for succor. Never, at any period of her life, did
she fulfil her religious duties with such fervor. The despair of not
loving her husband flung her violently at the foot of the altar, where
divine and consolatory voices urged her to patience. She was patient,
she was gentle, and she continued to live on, hoping always for the
happiness of maternity.

"Did you notice Madame Graslin this morning?" the women would say to
each other. "Marriage doesn't agree with her; she is actually green."

"Yes," some of them would reply; "but would you give your daughter to
a man like Graslin? No woman could marry him with impunity."

Now that Graslin was married, all the mothers who had courted him for
ten years past pursued him with sarcasms.

Veronique grew visibly thinner and really ugly; her eyes looked weary,
her features coarsened, her manner was shy and awkward; she acquired
that air of cold and melancholy rigidity for which the ultra-pious are
so often blamed. Her skin took on a grayish tone; she dragged herself
languidly about during this first year of married life, ordinarily so
brilliant for a young wife. She tried to divert her mind by reading,
profiting by the liberty of married women to read what they please.
She read the novels of Walter Scott, the poems of Lord Byron, the
works of Schiller and of Goethe, and much else of modern and also
ancient literature. She learned to ride a horse, and to dance and to
draw. She painted water-colors and made sepia sketches, turning
ardently to all those resources which women employ to bear the
weariness of their solitude. She gave herself that second education
which most women derive from a man, but which she derived from herself
only.

The natural superiority of a free, sincere spirit, brought up, as it
were in a desert and strengthened by religion, had given her a sort of
untrammelled grandeur and certain needs, to which the provincial world
she lived in offered no sustenance. All books pictured Love to her,
and she sought for the evidence of its existence, but nowhere could
she see the passion of which she read. Love was in her heart, like
seeds in the earth, awaiting the action of the sun. Her deep
melancholy, caused by constant meditation on herself, brought her back
by hidden by-ways to the brilliant dreams of her girlish days. Many a
time she must have lived again that old romantic poem, making herself
both the actor and the subject of it. Again she saw that island bathed
in light, flowery, fragrant, caressing to her soul. Often her pallid
eyes wandered around a salon with piercing curiosity. The men were all
like Graslin. She studied them, and then she seemed to question their
wives; but nothing on the faces of those women revealed an inward
anguish like to hers, and she returned home sad and gloomy and
distressed about herself. The authors she had read in the morning
answered to the feelings in her soul; their thoughts pleased her; but
at night she heard only empty words, not even presented in a lively
way,--dull, empty, foolish conversations in petty local matters, or
personalities of no interest to her. She was often surprised at the
heat displayed in discussions which concerned no feeling or sentiment
--to her the essence of existence, the soul of life.

Often she was seen with fixed eyes, mentally absorbed, thinking no
doubt of the days of her youthful ignorance spent in that chamber full
of harmonies now forever passed away. She felt a horrible repugnance
against dropping into the gulf of pettiness in which the women among
whom she lived were floundering. This repugnance, stamped on her
forehead, on her lips, and ill-disguised, was taken for the insolence
of a parvenue. Madame Graslin began to observe on all faces a certain
coldness; she felt in all remarks an acrimony, the causes of which
were unknown to her, for she had no intimate friend to enlighten or
advise her. Injustice, which angers little minds, brings loftier souls
to question themselves, and communicates a species of humility to
them. Veronique condemned herself, endeavoring to see her own faults.
She tried to be affable; they called her false. She grew more gentle
still; they said she was a hypocrite, and her pious devotion helped on
the calumny. She spent money, gave dinners and balls, and they taxed
her with pride.

Unsuccessful in all these attempts, unjustly judged, rebuffed by the
petty and tormenting pride which characterizes provincial society,
where each individual is armed with pretensions and their attendant
uneasiness, Madame Graslin fell back into utter solitude. She returned
with eagerness to the arms of the Church. Her great soul, clothed with
so weak a flesh, showed her the multiplied commandments of Catholicism
as so many stones placed for protection along the precipices of life,
so many props brought by charitable hands to sustain human weakness on
its weary way; and she followed, with greater rigor than ever, even
the smallest religious practices.

On this the liberals of the town classed Madame Graslin among the
/devotes/, the ultras. To the different animosities Veronique had
innocently acquired, the virulence of party feeling now added its
periodical exasperation. But as this ostracism took nothing really
from her, she quietly left society and lived in books which offered
her such infinite resources. She meditated on what she read, she
compared systems, she widened immeasurably the horizons of her
intellect and the extent of her education; in this way she opened the
gates of her soul to curiosity.

During this period of resolute study, in which religion supported and
maintained her mind, she obtained the friendship of Monsieur
Grossetete, one of those old men whose mental superiority grows rusty
in provincial life, but who, when they come in contact with an eager
mind, recover something of their former brilliancy. The good man took
an earnest interest in Veronique, who, to reward him for the
flattering warmth of heart which old men show to those they like,
displayed before him, and for the first time in her life, the
treasures of her soul and the acquirements of her mind, cultivated so
secretly, and now full of blossom. An extract from a letter written by
her about this time to Monsieur Grossetete will show the condition of
the mind of a woman who was later to give signal proofs of a firm and
lofty nature:--

"The flowers you sent me for the ball were charming, but they
suggested harsh reflections. Those pretty creatures gathered by
you, and doomed to wilt upon my bosom to adorn a fete, made me
think of others that live and die unseen in the depths of your
woods, their fragrance never inhaled by any one. I asked myself
why I was dancing there, why I was decked with flowers, just as I
ask God why he has placed me to live in this world.

"You see, my friend, all is a snare to the unhappy; the smallest
matter brings the sick mind back to its woes; but the greatest
evil of certain woes is the persistency which makes them a fixed
idea pervading our lives. A constant sorrow ought rather to be a
divine inspiration. You love flowers for themselves, whereas I
love them as I love to listen to fine music. So, as I was saying,
the secret of a mass of things escapes me. You, my old friend, you
have a passion,--that of the horticulturist. When you return to
town inspire me with that taste, so that I may rush to my
greenhouse with eager feet, as you go to yours to watch the
development of your plants, to bud and bloom with them, to admire
what you create,--the new colors, the unexpected varieties, which
expand and grow beneath your eyes by the virtue of your care.

"My greenhouse, the one I watch, is filled with suffering souls.
The miseries I try to lessen sadden my heart; and when I take them
upon myself, when, after finding some young woman without clothing
for her babe, some old man wanting bread, I have supplied their
needs, the emotions their distress and its relief have caused me
do not suffice my soul. Ah, friend, I feel within me untold powers
--for evil, possibly,--which nothing can lower, which the sternest
commands of our religion are unable to abase! Sometimes, when I go
to see my mother, walking alone among the fields, I want to cry
aloud, and I do so. It seems to me that my body is a prison in
which some evil genius is holding a shuddering creature while
awaiting the mysterious words which are to burst its obstructive
form.

"But that comparison is not a just one. In me it seems to be the
body that seeks escape, if I may say so. Religion fills my soul,
books and their riches occupy my mind. Why, then, do I desire some
anguish which shall destroy the enervating peace of my existence?

"Oh, if some sentiment, some mania that I could cultivate, does
not come into my life, I feel I shall sink at last into the gulf
where all ideas are dulled, where character deteriorates, motives
slacken, virtues lose their backbone, and all the forces of the
soul are scattered,--a gulf in which I shall no longer be the
being Nature meant me to be!

"This is what my bitter complainings mean. But do not let them
hinder you from sending me those flowers. Your friendship is so
soothing and so full of loving kindness that it has for the last
few months almost reconciled me to myself. Yes, it makes me happy
to have you cast a glance upon my soul, at once so barren and so
full of bloom; and I am thankful for every gentle word you say to
one who rides the phantom steed of dreams, and returns worn-out."

At the end of the third year of his married life, Graslin, observing
that his wife no longer used her horses, and finding a good market for
them, sold them. He also sold the carriages, sent away the coachman,
let the bishop have his man-cook, and contented himself with a woman.
He no longer gave the monthly sum to his wife, telling her that he
would pay all bills. He thought himself the most fortunate of husbands
in meeting no opposition whatever to these proceedings from the woman
who had brought him a million of francs as a dowry. Madame Graslin,
brought up from childhood without ever seeing money, or being made to
feel that it was an indispensable element in life, deserved no praise
whatever for this apparent generosity. Graslin even noticed in a
corner of the secretary all the sums he had ever given her, less the
money she had bestowed in charity or spent upon her dress, the cost of
which was much lessened by the profusion of her wedding trousseau.

Graslin boasted of Veronique to all Limoges as being a model wife. He
next regretted the money spent on the house, and he ordered the
furniture to be all packed away or covered up. His wife's bedroom,
dressing-room, and boudoir were alone spared from these protective
measures; which protect nothing, for furniture is injured just as much
by being covered up as by being left uncovered. Graslin himself lived
almost entirely on the ground-floor of the house, where he had his
office, and resumed his old business habits with avidity. He thought
himself an excellent husband because he went upstairs to breakfast and
dined with his wife; but his unpunctuality was so great that it was
not more than ten times a month that he began a meal with he; he had
exacted, out of courtesy, that she should never wait for him.
Veronique did, however, always remain in the room while her husband
took his meals, serving him herself, that she might at least perform
voluntarily some of the visible obligations of a wife.

The banker, to whom the things of marriage were very indifferent, and
who had seen nothing in his wife but seven hundred and fifty thousand
francs, had never once perceived Veronique's repugnance to him. Little
by little he now abandoned Madame Graslin for his business. When he
wished to put a bed in the room adjoining his office on the ground-
floor, Veronique hastened to comply with the request. So that three
years after their marriage these two ill-assorted beings returned to
their original estate, each equally pleased and happy to do so. The
moneyed man, possessing eighteen hundred thousand francs, returned
with all the more eagerness to his old avaricious habits because he
had momentarily quitted them. His two clerks and the office-boy were
better lodged and rather better fed, and that was the only difference
between the present and the past. His wife had a cook and maid (two
indispensable servants); but except for the actual necessities of
life, not a penny left his coffers for his household.

Happy in the turn which things were now taking, Veronique saw in the
evident satisfaction of the banker the absolution for this separation
which she would never have asked for herself. She had no conception
that she was as disagreeable to Graslin as Graslin was repulsive to
her. This secret divorce made her both sad and joyful. She had always
looked to motherhood for an interest in life; but up to this time
(1828) the couple had had no prospect of a family.



IV

THE HISTORY OF MANY MARRIED WOMEN IN THE PROVINCES

So now, in her magnificent house and envied for her wealth by all the
town, Madame Graslin recovered the solitude of her early years in her
father's house, less the glow of hope and the youthful joys of
ignorance. She lived among the ruins of her castles in the air,
enlightened by sad experience, sustained by religious faith, occupied
by the care of the poor, whom she loaded with benefits. She made
clothes for the babies, gave mattresses and sheets to those who slept
on straw; she went among the poor herself, followed by her maid, a
girl from Auvergne whom her mother procured for her, and who attached
herself body and soul to her mistress. Veronique made an honorable spy
of her, sending her to discover the places where suffering could be
stilled, poverty softened.

This active benevolence, carried on with strict attention to religious
duties, was hidden in the deepest secrecy and directed by the various
rectors in the town, with whom Veronique had a full understanding in
all her charitable deeds, so as not to suffer the money so needed for
unmerited misfortunes to fall into the hands of vice. It was during
this period of her life that she won a friendship quite as strong and
quite as precious as that of old Grossetete. She became the beloved
lamb of a distinguished priest, who was persecuted for his true
merits, which were wholly misunderstood, one of the two grand-vicars
of the diocese, named the Abbe Dutheil.

This priest belonged to the portion of the French clergy who incline
toward certain concessions, who would be glad to associate the Church
with the people's interests, and so enable it to regain, through the
application of true evangelical doctrine, its former influence over
the masses, which it might then draw to closer relations with the
monarchy. Whether it was that the Abbe Dutheil recognized the
impossibility of enlightening the court of Rome and the higher clergy
on this point, or that he had consented to sacrifice his own opinions
to those of his superiors, it is certain that he remained within the
limits of the strictest orthodoxy, being very well aware that any
manifestation of his principles at the present time would deprive him
of all chance of the episcopate.

This eminent priest united in himself great Christian modesty and a
noble character. Without pride or ambition he remained at his post and
did his duty in the midst of perils. The liberals of the town were
ignorant of the motives of his conduct; they claimed him as being of
their opinions and considered him a patriot,--a word which meant
revolutionist in Catholic minds. Loved by his inferiors, who dared
not, however, proclaim his merits, feared by his equals who kept watch
upon him, he was a source of embarrassment to the bishop. His virtues
and his knowledge, envied, no doubt, prevented persecution; it was
impossible to complain of him, though he criticized frankly the
political blunders by which both the throne and the clergy mutually
compromised themselves. He often foretold results, but vainly,--like
poor Cassandra, who was equally cursed before and after the disaster
she predicted. Short of a revolution the Abbe Dutheil was likely to
remain as he was, one of those stones hidden in the foundation wall on
which the edifice rests. His utility was recognized and they left him
in his place, like many other solid minds whose rise to power is the
terror of mediocrities. If, like the Abbe de Lamennais, he had taken
up his pen he would doubtless, like him, have been blasted by the
court of Rome.

The Abbe Dutheil was imposing in appearance. His exterior revealed the
underlying of a profound nature always calm and equable on the
surface. His tall figure and its thinness did not detract from the
general effect of his lines, which recalled those by which the genius
of Spanish painters delights to represent the great monastic
meditators, and those selected at a later period by Thorwaldsen for
the Apostles. The long, almost rigid folds of the face, in harmony
with those of his vestment, had the charm which the middle-ages bring
into relief in the mystical statues placed beside the portals of their
churches. Gravity of thought, word, and accent, harmonized in this man
and became him well. Seeing his dark eyes hollowed by austerities and
surrounded by a brown circle; seeing, too, his forehead, yellow as
some old stone, his head and hands almost fleshless, men desired to
hear the voice and the instructions which issued from his lips. This
purely physical grandeur which accords with moral grandeur, gave this
priest a somewhat haughty and disdainful air, which was instantly
counteracted to an observer by his modesty and by his speech, though
it did not predispose others in his favor. In some more elevated
station these advantages would have obtained that necessary ascendancy
over the masses which the people willingly allow to men who are thus
endowed. But superiors will not forgive their inferiors for possessing
the externals of greatness, nor for displaying that majesty so prized
by the ancients but so often lacking to the administrators of modern
power.

By one of those strange freaks of circumstance which are never
accounted for, the other vicar-general, the Abbe de Grancour, a stout
little man with a rosy complexion and blue eyes, whose opinions were
diametrically opposed to those of the Abbe Dutheil, liked to be in the
latter's company, although he never testified this liking enough to
put himself out of the good graces of the bishop, to whom he would
have sacrificed everything. The Abbe de Grancour believed in the merit
of his colleague, recognized his talents, secretly accepted his
doctrines, and condemned them openly; for the little priest was one of
those men whom superiority attracts and intimidates,--who dislike it
and yet cultivate it. "He would embrace me and condemn me," the Abbe
Dutheil said of him. The Abbe de Grancour had neither friends nor
enemies; he was therefore likely to live and die a vicar-general. He
said he was drawn to visit Madame Graslin by the desire of counselling
so religious and benevolent a person; and the bishop approved of his
doing so,--Monsieur de Grancour's real object being to spend a few
evenings with the Abbe Dutheil in Veronique's salon.

The two priests now came pretty regularly to see Madame Graslin, and
make her a sort of report about her poor and discuss the best means of
succoring and improving them. But Monsieur Graslin had now begun to
tighten his purse-strings, having made the discovery, in spite of the
innocent deceptions of his wife and her maid, that the money he paid
did not go solely for household expenses and for dress. He was angry
when he found out how much money his wife's charities cost him; he
called the cook to account, inquired into all the details of the
housekeeping, and showed what a grand administrator he was by
practically proving that his house could be splendidly kept for three
thousand francs a year. Then he put his wife on an allowance of a
hundred francs a month, and boasted of his liberality in so doing. The
office-boy, who liked flowers, was made to take care of the garden on
Sundays. Having dismissed the gardener, Graslin used the greenhouse to
store articles conveyed to him as security for loans. He let the birds
in the aviary die for want of care, to avoid the cost of their food
and attendance. And he even took advantage of a winter when there was
no ice, to give up his icehouse and save the expense of filling it.

By 1828 there was not a single article of luxury in the house which he
had not in some way got rid of. Parsimony reigned unchecked in the
hotel Graslin. The master's face, greatly improved during the three
years spent with his wife (who induced him to follow his physician's
advice), now became redder, more fiery, more blotched than before.
Business had taken such proportions that it was necessary to promote
the boy-of-all-work to the position of cashier, and to find some stout
Auvergnat for the rougher service of the hotel Graslin.

Thus, four years after her marriage, this very rich woman could not
dispose of a single penny by her own will. The avarice of her husband
succeeded the avarice of her parents. Madame Graslin had never
understood the necessity of money until the time came when her
benevolence was checked.

By the beginning of the year 1828 Veronique had entirely recovered the
blooming health which had given such beauty to the innocent young girl
sitting at her window in the old house in the rue de la Cite; but by
this time she had acquired a fine literary education, and was fully
able to think and to speak. An excellent judgment gave real depth to
her words. Accustomed now to the little things of life, she wore the
fashions of the period with infinite grace. When she chanced about
this time to visit a salon she found herself--not without a certain
inward surprise--received by all with respectful esteem. These changed
feelings and this welcome were due to the two vicars-general and to
old Grossetete. Informed by them of her noble hidden life, and the
good deeds so constantly done in their midst, the bishop and a few
influential persons spoke of Madame Graslin as a flower of true piety,
a violet fragrant with virtues; in consequence of which, one of those
strong reactions set in, unknown to Veronique, which are none the less
solid and durable because they are long in coming. This change in
public opinion gave additional influence to Veronique's salon, which
was now visited by all the chief persons in the society of the town,
in consequence of certain circumstances we shall now relate.

Toward the close of this year the young Vicomte de Grandville was sent
as deputy solicitor to the courts of Limoges. He came preceded by a
reputation always given to Parisians in the provinces. A few days
after his arrival, during a soiree at the prefecture, he made answer
to a rather foolish question, that the most able, intelligent, and
distinguished woman he had met in the town was Madame Graslin.

"Perhaps you think her the handsomest also?" said the wife of the
receiver-general.

"I cannot think so in your presence, madame," he replied, "and
therefore I am in doubt. Madame Graslin possesses a beauty which need
inspire no jealousy, for it seldom shows itself: she is only beautiful
to those she loves; you are beautiful to all the world. When Madame
Graslin's soul is moved by true enthusiasm, it sheds an expression
upon her face which changes it completely. Her countenance is like a
landscape,--dull in winter, glorious in summer; but the world will
always see it in winter. When she talks with friends on some literary
or philosophical topic, or on certain religious questions which
interest her, she is roused into appearing suddenly an unknown woman
of marvellous beauty."

This declaration, which was caused by observing the phenomenon that
formerly made Veronique so beautiful on her return from the holy
table, made a great noise in Limoges, where for a time the young
deputy, to whom the place of the /procureur-general/ was said to be
promised, played a leading part. In all provincial towns a man who
rises a trifle above others becomes, for a period more or less
protracted, the object of a liking which resembles enthusiasm, and
which usually deceives the object of this ephemeral worship. It is to
this social caprice that we owe so many local geniuses, soon ignored
and their false reputations mortified. The men whom women make the
fashion in this way are oftener strangers than compatriots.

In this particular case the admirers of the Vicomte de Grandville were
not mistaken; he was in truth a superior man. Madame Graslin was the
only woman he found in Limoges with whom he could exchange ideas and
keep up a varied conversation. A few months after his arrival,
attracted by the increasing charm of Veronique's manners and
conversation, he proposed to the Abbe Dutheil, and a few other of the
remarkable men in Limoges, to meet in the evenings at Madame Graslin's
house and play whist. At this time Madame Graslin was at home five
evenings in the week to visitors, reserving two free days, as she
said, for herself.

When Madame Graslin had thus gathered about her the distinguished men
we have mentioned, others were not sorry to give themselves the
reputation of cleverness by seeking to join the same society.
Veronique also received three or four of the distinguished officers of
the garrison and staff; but the freedom of mind displayed by her
guests, and the tacit discretion enjoined by the manners of the best
society, made her extremely cautious as to the admission of those who
now vied with each other to obtain her invitations.

The other women in this provincial society were not without jealousy
in seeing Madame Graslin surrounded by the most agreeable and
distinguished men in the town; but by this time Veronique's social
power was all the stronger because it was exclusive; she accepted the
intimacy of four or five women only, and these were strangers in
Limoges who had come from Paris with their husbands, and who held in
horror the petty gossip of provincial life. If any one outside of this
little clique of superior persons came in to make a visit, the
conversation immediately changed, and the habitues of the house talked
commonplace.

The hotel Graslin thus became an oasis where intelligent minds found
relaxation and relief from the dulness of provincial life; where
persons connected with the government could express themselves freely
on politics without fear of having their words taken down and
repeated; where all could satirize that which provoked satire, and
where each individual abandoned his professional trammels and yielded
himself up to his natural self.

So, after being the most obscure young girl in all Limoges, considered
ugly, dull, and vacant, Madame Graslin, at the beginning of the year
1828, was regarded as one of the leading personages in the town, and
the most noted woman in society. No one went to see her in the
mornings, for all knew her habits of benevolence and the regularity of
her religious observances. She always went to early mass so as not to
delay her husband's breakfast, for which, however, there was no fixed
hour, though she never failed to be present and to serve it herself.
Graslin had trained his wife to this little ceremony. He continued to
praise her on all occasions; he thought her perfect; she never asked
him for anything; he could pile up louis upon louis, and spread his
investments over a wide field of enterprise through his relations with
the Brezacs; he sailed with a fair wind and well freighted over the
ocean of commerce,--his intense business interest keeping him in the
still, though half-intoxicated, frenzy of gamblers watching events on
the green table of speculation.

During this happy period, and until the beginning of the year 1829,
Madame Graslin attained, in the eyes of her friends, to a degree of
beauty that was really extraordinary, the reasons of which they were
unable to explain. The blue of the iris expanded like a flower,
diminishing the dark circle of the pupil, and seeming to float in a
liquid and languishing light that was full of love. Her forehead,
illumined by thoughts and memories of happiness, was seen to whiten
like the zenith before the dawn, and its lines were purified by an
inward fire. Her face lost those heated brown tones which betoken a
disturbance of the liver,--that malady of vigorous constitutions, or
of persons whose soul is distressed and whose affections are thwarted.
Her temples became adorably fresh and pure; gleams of the celestial
face of a Raffaelle showed themselves now and then in hers,--a face
hitherto obscured by the malady of grief, as the canvas of the great
master is encrusted by time. Her hands seemed whiter; her shoulders
took on an exquisite fulness; her graceful, animated movements gave to
her supple figure its utmost charm.

The Limoges women accused her of being in love with Monsieur de
Grandville, who certainly paid her assiduous attention, to which
Veronique opposed all the barriers of a conscientious resistance. The
viscount professed for her one of those respectful attachments which
did not blind the habitual visitors of her salon. The priests and men
of sense saw plainly that this affection, which was love on the part
of the young man, did not go beyond the permissible line in Madame
Graslin. Weary at last of a resistance based on religious principle,
the Vicomte de Grandville consoled himself (to the knowledge of his
intimates) with other and easier friendships; which did not, however,
lessen his constant admiration and worship of the beautiful Madame
Graslin,--such was the term by which she was designated in 1829.

The most clear-sighted among those who surrounded her attributed the
change which rendered Veronique increasingly charming to her friends
to the secret delight which all women, even the most religious, feel
when they see themselves courted; and to the satisfaction of living at
last in a circle congenial to her mind, where the pleasure of
exchanging ideas and the happiness of being surrounded by intelligent
and well-informed men and true friends, whose attachment deepened day
by day, had dispersed forever the weary dulness of her life.

Perhaps, however, closer, more perceptive or sceptical observers were
needed than those who frequented the hotel Graslin, to detect the
barbaric grandeur, the plebeian force of the People which lay deep-
hidden in her soul. If sometimes her friends surprised her in a torpor
of meditation either gloomy or merely pensive, they knew she bore upon
her heart the miseries of others, and had doubtless that morning been
initiated in some fresh sorrow, or had penetrated to some haunt where
vices terrify the soul with their candor.

The viscount, now promoted to be /procureur-general/, would
occasionally blame her for certain unintelligent acts of charity by
which, as he knew from his secret police-reports, she had given
encouragement to criminal schemes.

"If you ever want money for any of your paupers, let me be a sharer in
your good deeds," said old Grossetete, taking Veronique's hand.

"Ah!" she replied with a sigh, "it is impossible to make everybody
rich."

At the beginning of this year an event occurred which was destined to
change the whole interior life of this woman and to transform the
splendid expression of her countenance into something far more
interesting in the eyes of painters.

Becoming uneasy about his health, Graslin, to his wife's despair, no
longer desired to live on the ground-floor. He returned to the
conjugal chamber and allowed himself to be nursed. The news soon
spread throughout Limoges that Madame Graslin was pregnant. Her
sadness, mingled with joy, struck the minds of her friends, who then
for the first time perceived that in spite of her virtues she had been
happy in the fact of living separate from her husband. Perhaps she had
hoped for some better fate ever since the time when, as it was known,
the attorney-general had declined to marry the richest heiress in the
place, in order to keep his loyalty to her.

From this suggestion there grew up in the minds of the profound
politicians who played their whist at the hotel Graslin a belief that
the viscount and the young wife had based certain hopes on the ill-
health of the banker which were now frustrated. The great agitations
which marked this period of Veronique's life, the anxieties which a
first childbirth causes in every woman, and which, it is said,
threatens special danger when she is past her first youth, made her
friends more attentive than ever to her; they vied with each other in
showing her those little kindnesses which proved how warm and solid
their affection really was.



V

TASCHERON

It was in this year that Limoges witnessed a terrible event and the
singular drama of the Tascheron trial, in which the young Vicomte de
Grandville displayed the talents which afterwards made him /procureur-
general/.

An old man living in a lonely house in the suburb of Saint-Etienne was
murdered. A large fruit-garden lay between the road and the house,
which was also separated from the adjoining fields by a pleasure-
garden, at the farther end of which were several old and disused
greenhouses. In front of the house a rapid slope to the river bank
gave a view of the Vienne. The courtyard, which also sloped downward,
ended at a little wall, from which small columns rose at equal
distances united by a railing, more, however, for ornament than
protection, for the bars of the railing were of painted wood.

The old man, named Pingret, noted for his avarice, lived with a single
woman-servant, a country-girl who did all the work of the house. He
himself took care of his espaliers, trimmed his trees, gathered his
fruit, and sent it to Limoges for sale, together with early
vegetables, in the raising of which he excelled.

The niece of this old man, and his sole heiress, married to a
gentleman of small means living in Limoges, a Madame des Vanneaulx,
had again and again urged her uncle to hire a man to protect the
house, pointing out to him that he would thus obtain the profits of
certain uncultivated ground where he now grew nothing but clover. But
the old man steadily refused. More than once a discussion on the
subject had cut into the whist-playing of Limoges. A few shrewd heads
declared that the old miser buried his gold in that clover-field.

"If I were Madame des Vanneaulx," said a wit, "I shouldn't torment my
uncle about it; if somebody murders him, why, let him be murdered! I
should inherit the money."

Madame des Vanneaulx, however, wanted to keep her uncle, after the
manner of the managers of the Italian Opera, who entreat their popular
tenor to wrap up his throat, and give him their cloak if he happens to
have forgotten his own. She had sent old Pingret a fine English
mastiff, which Jeanne Malassis, the servant-woman brought back the
next day saying:--

"Your uncle doesn't want another mouth to feed."

The result proved how well-founded were the niece's fears. Pingret was
murdered on a dark night, in the middle of his clover-field, where he
may have been adding a few coins to a buried pot of gold. The servant-
woman, awakened by the struggle, had the courage to go to the
assistance of the old miser, and the murderer was under the necessity
of killing her to suppress her testimony. This necessity, which
frequently causes murderers to increase the number of their victims,
is an evil produced by the fear of the death penalty.

This double murder was attended by curious circumstances which told as
much for the prosecution as for the defence. After the neighbors had
missed seeing the little old Pingret and his maid for a whole morning
and had gazed at his house through the wooden railings as they passed
it, and seen that, contrary to custom, the doors and windows were
still closed, an excitement began in the Faubourg Saint-Etienne which
presently reached the rue de la Cloche, where Madame des Vanneaulx
resided.

The niece was always in expectation of some such catastrophe, and she
at once notified the officers of the law, who went to the house and
broke in the gate. They soon discovered in a clover patch four holes,
and near two of these holes lay the fragments of earthenware pots,
which had doubtless been full of gold the night before. In the other
two holes, scarcely covered up, were the bodies of old Pingret and
Jeanne Malassis, who had been buried with their clothes on. The poor
girl had run to her master's assistance in her night-gown, with bare
feet.

While the /procureur-du-roi/, the commissary of police, and the
examining magistrate were gathering all particulars for the basis of
their action, the luckless des Vanneaulx picked up the broken pots and
calculated from their capacity the sum lost. The magistrates admitted
the correctness of their calculations and entered the sum stolen on
their records as, in all probability, a thousand gold coins to each
pot. But were these coins forty-eight or forty, twenty-four or twenty
francs in value? All expectant heirs in Limoges sympathized with the
des Vanneaulx. The Limousin imagination was greatly stirred by the
spectacle of the broken pots. As for old Pingret, who often sold
vegetables himself in the market, lived on bread and onions, never
spent more than three hundred francs a year, obliged and disobliged no
one, and had never done one atom of good in the suburb of Saint-
Etienne where he lived, his death did not excite the slightest regret.
Poor Jeanne Malassis' heroism, which the old miser, had she saved him,
would certainly not have rewarded, was thought rash; the number of
souls who admired it was small in comparison with those who said: "For
my part, I should have stayed in my bed."

The police found neither pen nor ink wherewith to write their report
in the bare, dilapidated, cold, and dismal house. Observing persons
and the heir might then have noticed a curious inconsistency which may
be seen in certain misers. The dread the little old man had of the
slightest outlay showed itself in the non-repaired roof which opened
its sides to the light and the rain and snow; in the cracks of the
walls; in the rotten doors ready to fall at the slightest shock; in
the windows, where the broken glass was replaced by paper not even
oiled. All the windows were without curtains, the fireplaces without
mirrors or andirons; the hearth was garnished with one log of wood and
a few little sticks almost caked with the soot which had fallen down
the chimney. There were two rickety chairs, two thin couches, a few
cracked pots and mended plates, a one-armed armchair, a dilapidated
bed, the curtains of which time had embroidered with a bold hand, a
worm-eaten secretary where the miser kept his seeds, a pile of linen
thickened by many darns, and a heap of ragged garments, which existed
only by the will of their master; he being dead they dropped into
shreds, powder, chemical dissolution, in fact I know not into what
form of utter ruin, as soon as the heir or the officers of the law
laid rough hands upon them; they disappeared as if afraid of being
publicly sold.

The population at Limoges was much concerned for these worthy des
Vanneaulx, who had two children; and yet, no sooner did the law lay
hands upon the reputed doer of the crime than the guilty personage
absorbed attention, became a hero, and the des Vanneaulx were
relegated into a corner of the picture.

Toward the end of March Madame Graslin began to feel some of those
pains which precede a first confinement and cannot be concealed. The
inquiry as to the murder was then going on, but the murderer had not
as yet been arrested.

Veronique now received her friends in her bedroom, where they played
whist. For several days past Madame Graslin had not left the house,
and she seemed to be tormented by several of those caprices attributed
to women in her condition. Her mother came to see her almost every
day, and the two women remained for hours in consultation.

It was nine o'clock, and the card tables were still without players,
for every one was talking of the murder. Monsieur de Grandville
entered the room.

"We have arrested the murderer of old Pingret," he said, joyfully.

"Who is it?" was asked on all sides.

"A porcelain workman; a man whose character has always been excellent,
and who was in a fair way to make his fortune. He worked in your
husband's old factory," added Monsieur de Grandville, turning to
Madame Graslin.

"What is his name?" asked Veronique, in a weak voice.

"Jean-Francois Tascheron."

"Unhappy man!" she answered. "Yes, I have often seen him; my poor
father recommended him to my care as some one to be looked after."

"He left the factory before Sauviat's death," said her mother, "and
went to that of Messrs. Philippart, who offered him higher wages-- But
my daughter is scarcely well enough for this exciting conversation,"
she added, calling attention to Madame Graslin, whose face was as
white as her sheets.

After that evening Mere Sauviat gave up her own home, and came, in
spite of her sixty-six years, to stay with her daughter and nurse her
through her confinement. She never left the room; Madame Graslin's
friends found the old woman always at the bed's head busy with her
eternal knitting,--brooding over Veronique as she did when the girl
had the small-pox, answering questions for her and often refusing to
admit visitors. The maternal and filial love of mother and daughter
was so well known in Limoges that these actions of Madame Sauviat
caused no comment.

A few days later, when the viscount, thinking to amuse the invalid,
began to relate details which the whole town were eagerly demanding
about Jean-Francois Tascheron, Madame Sauviat again stopped him
hastily, declaring that he would give her daughter bad dreams.
Veronique, however, looking fixedly at Monsieur de Grandville, asked
him to finish what he was saying. Thus her friends, and she herself,
were the first to know the results of the preliminary inquiry, which
would soon be made public. The following is a brief epitome of the
facts on which the indictment found against the prisoner was based.

Jean-Francois Tascheron was the son of a small farmer burdened with a
family, who lived in the village of Montegnac.

Twenty years before this crime, which was famous throughout the
Limousin, the canton of Montegnac was known for its evil ways. The
saying was proverbial in Limoges that out of one hundred criminals in
the department fifty belonged to the arrondissement of Montegnac.
Since 1816, however, two years after a priest named Bonnet was sent
there as rector, it had lost its bad reputation, and the inhabitants
no longer sent their heavy contingent to the assizes. This change was
widely attributed to the influence acquired by the rector, Monsieur
Bonnet, over a community which had lately been a hotbed for evil-
minded persons whose actions dishonored the whole region. The crime of
Jean-Francois Tascheron brought back upon Montegnac its former ill-
savor.

By a curious trick of chance, the Tascherons were almost the only
family in this village community who had retained through its evil
period the old rigid morals and religious habits which are noticed by
the observers of to-day to be rapidly disappearing throughout the
country districts. This family had therefore formed a point of
reliance to the rector, who naturally bore it on his heart. The
Tascherons, remarkable for their uprightness, their union, their love
of work, had never given other than good examples to Jean-Francois.
Induced by the praiseworthy ambition of earning his living by a trade,
the lad had left his native village, to the regret of his parents and
friends, who greatly loved him, and had come to Limoges. During his
two years' apprenticeship in a porcelain factory, his conduct was
worthy of all praise; no apparent ill-conduct had led up to the
horrible crime which was now to end his life. On the contrary, Jean-
Francois Tascheron had given the time which other workmen were in the
habit of spending in wine-shops and debauchery to study and self-
improvement.

The most searching and minute inquiry on the part of the provincial
authorities (who have plenty of time on their hands) failed to throw
any light on the secrets of the young man's life. When the mistress of
the humble lodging-house in which he lived was questioned she said she
had never had a lodger whose moral conduct was as blameless. He was
naturally amiable and gentle, and sometimes gay. About a year before
the commission of the crime, his habits changed: he slept away from
home several times a month and often for consecutive nights; but where
she did not know, though she thought, from the state of his shoes when
he returned, that he must have been into the country. She noticed that
although he appeared to have left the town, he never wore his heavy
boots, but always a pair of light shoes. He shaved before starting,
and put on clean linen. Hearing this, the police turned their
attention to houses of ill-fame and questionable resorts; but Jean-
Francois Tascheron was found to be wholly unknown among them. The
authorities then made a search through the working-girl and /grisette/
class; but none of these women had had relations with the accused.

A crime without a motive is unheard of, especially in a young man
whose desire for education and whose laudable ambition gave him higher
ideas and a superior judgment to that of other workmen. The police and
the examining justice, finding themselves balked in the above
directions, attributed the murder to a passion for gambling; but after
the most searching inquiries it was proved that Tascheron never played
cards.

At first Jean-Francois entrenched himself in a system of flat denials,
which, of course, in presence of a jury, would fall before proof; they
seemed to show the collusion of some person either well versed in law
or gifted with an intelligent mind. The following are the chief proofs
the prosecution were prepared to present, and they are, as is
frequently the case in trials for murder, both important and trifling;
to wit:--

The absence of Tascheron during the night of the crime, and his
refusal to say where he was, for the accused did not offer to set up
an alibi; a fragment of his blouse, torn off by the servant-woman in
the struggle, found close by on a tree to which the wind had carried
it; his presence that evening near Pingret's house, which was noticed
by passers and by persons living in the neighborhood, though it might
not have been remembered unless for the crime; a false key made by
Tascheron which fitted the door opening to the fields; this key was
found carefully buried two feet below one of the miser's holes, where
Monsieur des Vanneaulx, digging deep to make sure there was not
another layer of treasure-pots, chanced to find it; the police, after
many researches, found the different persons who had furnished
Tascheron with the iron, loaned him the vice, and given him the file,
with which the key was presumably made.

The key was the first real clue. It put the police on the track of
Tascheron, whom they arrested on the frontiers of the department, in a
wood where he was awaiting the passage of a diligence. An hour later
he would have started for America.

Besides all this, and in spite of the care with which certain
footmarks in the ploughed field and on the mud of the road had been


 


Back to Full Books