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The Muse of the Department, a novel by Honore de Balzac |
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_ At bedtime council was held, one of those discussions which take place in the passages of old country-houses where the bachelors linger, candle in hand, for mysterious conversations. Monsieur Gravier was now informed of the object in view during this entertaining evening which had brought Madame de la Baudraye's innocence to light. "But, after all," said Lousteau, "our hostess' serenity may indicate deep depravity instead of the most child-like innocence. The Public Prosecutor looks to me quite capable of suggesting that little La Baudraye should be put in pickle----" "He is not to return till to-morrow; who knows what may happen in the course of the night?" said Gatien. "We will know!" cried Monsieur Gravier. In the life of a country house a number of practical jokes are considered admissible, some of them odiously treacherous. Monsieur Gravier, who had seen so much of the world, proposed setting seals on the door of Madame de la Baudraye and of the Public Prosecutor. The ducks that denounced the poet Ibycus are as nothing in comparison with the single hair that these country spies fasten across the opening of a door by means of two little flattened pills of wax, fixed so high up, or so low down, that the trick is never suspected. If the gallant comes out of his own door and opens the other, the broken hair tells the tale. When everybody was supposed to be asleep, the doctor, the journalist, the receiver of taxes, and Gatien came barefoot, like robbers, and silently fastened up the two doors, agreeing to come again at five in the morning to examine the state of the fastenings. Imagine their astonishment and Gatien's delight when all four, candle in hand, and with hardly any clothes on, came to look at the hairs, and found them in perfect preservation on both doors. "Is it the same wax?" asked Monsieur Gravier. "Are they the same hairs?" asked Lousteau. "Yes," replied Gatien. "This quite alters the matter!" cried Lousteau. "You have been beating the bush for a will-o'-the-wisp." Monsieur Gravier and Gatien exchanged questioning glances which were meant to convey, "Is there not something offensive to us in that speech? Ought we to laugh or to be angry?" "If Dinah is virtuous," said the journalist in a whisper to Bianchon, "she is worth an effort on my part to pluck the fruit of her first love." The idea of carrying by storm a fortress that had for nine years stood out against the besiegers of Sancerre smiled on Lousteau. With this notion in his head, he was the first to go down and into the garden, hoping to meet his hostess. And this chance fell out all the more easily because Madame de la Baudraye on her part wished to converse with her critic. Half such chances are planned. "You were out shooting yesterday, monsieur," said Madame de la Baudraye. "This morning I am rather puzzled as to how to find you any new amusement; unless you would like to come to La Baudraye, where you may study more of our provincial life than you can see here, for you have made but one mouthful of my absurdities. However, the saying about the handsomest girl in the world is not less true of the poor provincial woman!" "That little simpleton Gatien has, I suppose, related to you a speech I made simply to make him confess that he adored you," said Etienne. "Your silence, during dinner the day before yesterday and throughout the evening, was enough to betray one of those indiscretions which we never commit in Paris.--What can I say? I do not flatter myself that you will understand me. In fact, I laid a plot for the telling of all those stories yesterday solely to see whether I could rouse you and Monsieur de Clagny to a pang of remorse.--Oh! be quite easy; your innocence is fully proved. "If you had the slightest fancy for that estimable magistrate, you would have lost all your value in my eyes.--I love perfection. "You do not, you cannot love that cold, dried-up, taciturn little usurer on wine casks and land, who would leave any man in the lurch for twenty-five centimes on a renewal. Oh, I have fully recognized Monsieur de la Baudraye's similarity to a Parisian bill-discounter; their nature is identical.--At eight-and-twenty, handsome, well conducted, and childless--I assure you, madame, I never saw the problem of virtue more admirably expressed.--The author of _Paquita la Sevillane_ must have dreamed many dreams! "I can speak of such things without the hypocritical gloss lent them by young men, for I am old before my time. I have no illusions left. Can a man have any illusions in the trade I follow?" By opening the game in this tone, Lousteau cut out all excursions in the _Pays de Tendre_, where genuine passion beats the bush so long; he went straight to the point and placed himself in a position to force the offer of what women often make a man pray for, for years; witness the hapless Public Prosecutor, to whom the greatest favor had consisted in clasping Dinah's hand to his heart more tenderly than usual as they walked, happy man! And Madame de la Baudraye, to be true to her reputation as a Superior Woman, tried to console the Manfred of the Press by prophesying such a future of love as he had not had in his mind. "You have sought pleasure," said she, "but you have never loved. Believe me, true love often comes late in life. Remember Monsieur de Gentz, who fell in love in his old age with Fanny Ellsler, and left the Revolution of July to take its course while he attended the dancer's rehearsals." "It seems to me unlikely," replied Lousteau. "I can still believe in love, but I have ceased to believe in woman. There are in me, I suppose, certain defects which hinder me from being loved, for I have often been thrown over. Perhaps I have too strong a feeling for the ideal--like all men who have looked too closely into reality----" Madame de la Baudraye at last heard the mind of a man who, flung into the wittiest Parisian circles, represented to her its most daring axioms, its almost artless depravity, its advanced convictions; who, if he were not really superior, acted superiority extremely well. Etienne, performing before Dinah, had all the success of a first night. _Paquita_ of Sancerre scented the storms, the atmosphere of Paris. She spent one of the most delightful days of her life with Lousteau and Bianchon, who told her strange tales about the great men of the day, the anecdotes which will some day form the _Ana_ of our century; sayings and doings that were the common talk of Paris, but quite new to her. Of course, Lousteau spoke very ill of the great female celebrity of Le Berry, with the obvious intention of flattering Madame de la Baudraye and leading her into literary confidences, by suggesting that she could rival so great a writer. This praise intoxicated Madame de la Baudraye; and Monsieur de Clagny, Monsieur Gravier, and Gatien, all thought her warmer in her manner to Etienne than she had been on the previous day. Dinah's three _attaches_ greatly regretted having all gone to Sancerre to blow the trumpet in honor of the evening at Anzy; nothing, to hear them, had ever been so brilliant. The Hours had fled on feet so light that none had marked their pace. The two Parisians they spoke of as perfect prodigies. These exaggerated reports loudly proclaimed on the Mall brought sixteen persons to Anzy that evening, some in family coaches, some in wagonettes, and a few bachelors on hired saddle horses. By about seven o'clock this provincial company had made a more or less graceful entry into the huge Anzy drawing-room, which Dinah, warned of the invasion, had lighted up, giving it all the lustre it was capable of by taking the holland covers off the handsome furniture, for she regarded this assembly as one of her great triumphs. Lousteau, Bianchon, and Dinah exchanged meaning looks as they studied the attitudes and listened to the speeches of these visitors, attracted by curiosity. What invalided ribbons, what ancestral laces, what ancient flowers, more imaginative than imitative, were boldly displayed on some perennial caps! The Presidente Boirouge, Bianchon's cousin, exchanged a few words with the doctor, from whom she extracted some "advice gratis" by expatiating on certain pains in the chest, which she declared were nervous, but which he ascribed to chronic indigestion. "Simply drink a cup of tea every day an hour after dinner, as the English do, and you will get over it, for what you suffer from is an English malady," Bianchon replied very gravely. "He is certainly a great physician," said the Presidente, coming back to Madame de Clagny, Madame Popinot-Chandier, and Madame Gorju, the Mayor's wife. "They say," replied Madame de Clagny behind her fan, "that Dinah sent for him, not so much with a view to the elections as to ascertain why she has no children." In the first excitement of this success, Lousteau introduced the great doctor as the only possible candidate at the ensuing elections. But Bianchon, to the great satisfaction of the new Sous-prefet, remarked that it seemed to him almost impossible to give up science in favor of politics. "Only a physician without a practice," said he, "could care to be returned as a deputy. Nominate statesmen, thinkers, men whose knowledge is universal, and who are capable of placing themselves on the high level which a legislator should occupy. That is what is lacking in our Chambers, and what our country needs." Two or three young ladies, some of the younger men, and the elder women stared at Lousteau as if he were a mountebank. "Monsieur Gatien Boirouge declares that Monsieur Lousteau makes twenty thousand francs a year by his writings," observed the Mayor's wife to Madame de Clagny. "Can you believe it?" "Is it possible? Why, a Public Prosecutor gets but a thousand crowns!" "Monsieur Gatien," said Madame Chandier, "get Monsieur Lousteau to talk a little louder. I have not heard him yet." "What pretty boots he wears," said Mademoiselle Chandier to her brother, "and how they shine!" "Yes--patent leather." "Why haven't you the same?" Lousteau began to feel that he was too much on show, and saw in the manners of the good townsfolk indications of the desires that had brought them there. "What trick can I play them?" thought he. At this moment the footman, so called--a farm-servant put into livery --brought in the letters and papers, and among them a packet of proof, which the journalist left for Bianchon; for Madame de la Baudraye, on seeing the parcel, of which the form and string were obviously from the printers, exclaimed: "What, does literature pursue you even here?" "Not literature," replied he, "but a review in which I am now finishing a story to come out ten days hence. I have reached the stage of '_To be concluded in our next_,' so I was obliged to give my address to the printer. Oh, we eat very hard-earned bread at the hands of these speculators in black and white! I will give you a description of these editors of magazines." "When will the conversation begin?" Madame de Clagny asked of Dinah, as one might ask, "When do the fireworks go off?" "I fancied we should hear some amusing stories," said Madame Popinot to her cousin, the Presidente Boirouge. At this moment, when the good folks of Sancerre were beginning to murmur like an impatient pit, Lousteau observed that Bianchon was lost in meditation inspired by the wrapper round the proofs. "What is it?" asked Etienne. "Why, here is the most fascinating romance possible on some spoiled proof used to wrap yours in. Here, read it. _Olympia, or Roman Revenge_." "Let us see," said Lousteau, taking the sheet the doctor held out to him, and he read aloud as follows:-- cavern. Rinaldo, indignant at his "Then I go alone?" said he. He "My Captain," said Lamberti, "if "God protects me!" said Rinaldo, With these words he went out,
"He is reading his work to us," said Gatien to Madame Popinot-Chandier's son. "From the first word, ladies," said the journalist, jumping at an opportunity of mystifying the natives, "it is evident that the brigands are in a cave. But how careless romancers of that date were as to details which are nowadays so closely, so elaborately studied under the name of 'local color.' If the robbers were in a cavern, instead of pointing to the sky he ought to have pointed to the vault above him.--In spite of this inaccuracy, Rinaldo strikes me as a man of spirit, and his appeal to God is quite Italian. There must have been a touch of local color in this romance. Why, what with brigands, and a cavern, and one Lamberti who could foresee future possibilities --there is a whole melodrama in that page. Add to these elements a little intrigue, a peasant maiden with her hair dressed high, short skirts, and a hundred or so of bad couplets.--Oh! the public will crowd to see it! And then Rinaldo--how well the name suits Lafont! By giving him black whiskers, tightly-fitting trousers, a cloak, a moustache, a pistol, and a peaked hat--if the manager of the Vaudeville Theatre were but bold enough to pay for a few newspaper articles, that would secure fifty performances, and six thousand francs for the author's rights, if only I were to cry it up in my columns. OR ROMAN REVENGE The Duchess of Bracciano found
"Unless she may be classed between the oyster and head-clerk of an office, the two creatures nearest to marble in the zoological kingdom, it is impossible to discern in Olympia--" Bianchon began. "A woman of thirty," Madame de la Baudraye hastily interposed, fearing some all too medical term. "Then Adolphe must be two-and-twenty," the doctor went on, "for an Italian woman at thirty is equivalent to a Parisian of forty." "From these two facts, the romance may easily be reconstructed," said Lousteau. "And this Cavaliere Paluzzi--what a man!--The style is weak in these two passages; the author was perhaps a clerk in the Excise Office, and wrote the novel to pay his tailor!" "In his time," said Bianchon, "the censor flourished; you must show as much indulgence to a man who underwent the ordeal by scissors in 1805 as to those who went to the scaffold in 1793." "Do you understand in the least?" asked Madame Gorju timidly of Madame de Clagny. The Public Prosecutor's wife, who, to use a phrase of Monsieur Gravier's, might have put a Cossack to flight in 1814, straightened herself in her chair like a horseman in his stirrups, and made a face at her neighbor, conveying, "They are looking at us; we must smile as if we understood." "Charming!" said the Mayoress to Gatien. "Pray go on, Monsieur Lousteau." Lousteau looked at the two women, two Indian idols, and contrived to keep his countenance. He thought it desirable to say, "Attention!" before going on as follows:-- dress rustled in the silence. Sud- "His face was gloomy, his brow "Madame," said he, "you are under "I thank your Eminence for your
"For my part," said Dinah, who had some pity on the eighteen faces gazing up at Lousteau, "I see how the story is progressing. I know it all. I am in Rome; I can see the body of a murdered husband whose wife, as bold as she is wicked, has made her bed on the crater of a volcano. Every night, at every kiss, she says to herself, 'All will be discovered!'" "Can you see her," said Lousteau, "clasping Monsieur Adolphe in her arms, to her heart, throwing her whole life into a kiss?--Adolphe I see as a well-made young man, but not clever--the sort of man an Italian woman likes. Rinaldo hovers behind the scenes of a plot we do not know, but which must be as full of incident as a melodrama by Pixerecourt. Or we can imagine Rinaldo crossing the stage in the background like a figure in one of Victor Hugo's plays." "He, perhaps, is the husband," exclaimed Madame de la Baudraye. "Do you understand anything of it all?" Madame Piedefer asked of the Presidente. "Why, it is charming!" said Dinah to her mother. All the good folks of Sancerre sat with eyes as large as five-franc pieces. "Go on, I beg," said the hostess. Lousteau went on:-- "Your key----" "Have you lost it?" "It is in the arbor." "Let us hasten." "Can the Cardinal have taken it?" "No, here it is." "What danger we have escaped!" Olympia looked at the key, and "Guess!" cried Lousteau. "The corresponding page is not here. We must look to page 212 to relieve our anxiety." 212 OLYMPIA "If the key had been lost?" "He would now be a dead man." "Dead? But ought you not to "You do not know him." "But--" "Silence! I took you for my Adolphe was silent.
"Well, and then?" said such of the audience as understood. "That is the end of the chapter," said Lousteau. "The fact of this tailpiece changes my views as to the authorship. To have his book got up, under the Empire, with vignettes engraved on wood, the writer must have been a Councillor of State, or Madame Barthelemy-Hadot, or the late lamented Desforges, or Sewrin." "'Adolphe was silent.'--Ah!" cried Bianchon, "the Duchess must have been under thirty." "If there is no more, invent a conclusion," said Madame de la Baudraye. "You see," said Lousteau, "the waste sheet has been printed fair on one side only. In printer's lingo, it is a back sheet, or, to make it clearer, the other side which would have to be printed is covered all over with pages printed one above another, all experiments in making up. It would take too long to explain to you all the complications of a making-up sheet; but you may understand that it will show no more trace of the first twelve pages that were printed on it than you would in the least remember the first stroke of the bastinado if a Pasha condemned you to have fifty on the soles of your feet." "I am quite bewildered," said Madame Popinot-Chandier to Monsieur Gravier. "I am vainly trying to connect the Councillor of State, the Cardinal, the key, and the making-up----" "You have not the key to the jest," said Monsieur Gravier. "Well! no more have I, fair lady, if that can comfort you." "But here is another sheet," said Bianchon, hunting on the table where the proofs had been laid. "Capital!" said Lousteau, "and it is complete and uninjured. It is signed IV.; J, Second Edition. Ladies, the figure IV. means that this is part of the fourth volume. The letter J, the tenth letter of the alphabet, shows that this is the tenth sheet. And it is perfectly clear to me, that in spite of any publisher's tricks, this romance in four duodecimo volumes, had a great success, since it came to a second edition.--We will read on and find a clue to the mystery. corridor; but finding that he was
"But," said Madame de la Baudraye, "some important events have taken place between your waste sheet and this page." "This complete sheet, madame, this precious made-up sheet. But does the waste sheet in which the Duchess forgets her gloves in the arbor belong to the fourth volume? Well, deuce take it--to proceed.
"And Adolphe too!" said President Boirouge, who was considered rather free in his speech. "And the style!" said Bianchon.--"Rinaldo, who saw _no better refuge than to make for the cellar_." "It is quite clear that neither Maradan, nor Treuttel and Wurtz, nor Doguereau, were the printers," said Lousteau, "for they employed correctors who revised the proofs, a luxury in which our publishers might very well indulge, and the writers of the present day, would benefit greatly. Some scrubby pamphlet printer on the Quay--" "What quay?" a lady asked of her neighbor. "They spoke of baths--" "Pray go on," said Madame de la Baudraye. "At any rate, it is not by a councillor," said Bianchon. "It may be by Madame Hadot," replied Lousteau. "What has Madame Hadot of La Charite to do with it?" the Presidente asked of her son. "This Madame Hadot, my dear friend," the hostess answered, "was an authoress, who lived at the time of the Consulate." "What, did women write in the Emperor's time?" asked Madame Popinot-Chandier. "What of Madame de Genlis and Madame de Stael?" cried the Public Prosecutor, piqued on Dinah's account by this remark. "To be sure!" "I beg you to go on," said Madame de la Baudraye to Lousteau. Lousteau went on saying: "Page 218. and gave a shriek of despair when Then he gave a hollow roar like
"Make no more comments, monsieur," said Madame de la Baudraye. "There, you see!" cried Bianchon. "Interest, the romantic demon, has you by the collar, as he had me a while ago." "Read on," cried de Clagny, "I understand." "What a coxcomb!" said the Presiding Judge in a whisper to his neighbor the Sous-prefet. "He wants to please Madame de la Baudraye," replied the new Sous-prefet. "Well, then I will read straight on," said Lousteau solemnly. Everybody listened in dead silence. A deep groan answered Rinaldo's "Santa Maria!" said the voice. "If I stir from this spot I shall "Who is here?" asked the voice. "Hallo!" cried the brigand; "do "I am the Duke of Bracciano. OLYMPIA "I should have to know where to "I can see you, my friend, for my Rinaldo putting out his hands as "I am being deceived," cried the "No, you are touching my cage.
Sit down on a broken shaft of por- "How can the Duke of Bracciano "My friend, I have been here for "I am Rinaldo, prince of the Cam- "God be praised! I am saved.
deliverer, you must be armed to the "_E verissimo_" (most true). "Do you happen to have--" "Yes, files, pincers--_Corpo di "You will earn a handsome share "You surprise me, Eccellenza!" "Listen to me, Rinaldo. I will OR ROMAN REVENGE derstand me! Alas, my friend, my "You, her husband!" "Yes, I was wrong, no doubt." "It is not the correct thing, to be "My jealousy was roused by the
"Like a hair in a frost," said Monsieur de Clagny. "So those are the airs you affect?"[*] retorted Lousteau. [*] The rendering given above is only intended to link the various speeches into coherence; it has no resemblance with the French. In the original, "Font chatoyer les _mots_." "Et quelquefois les _morts_," dit Monsieur de Clagny. "Ah! Lousteau! vous vous donnez de ces R-la (airs-la)." Literally: "And sometimes the dead."--"Ah, are those the airs you assume?"--the play on the insertion of the letter R (_mots, morts_) has no meaning in English. "What can he mean?" asked Madame de Clagny, puzzled by this vile pun. "I seem to be walking in the dark," replied the Mayoress. "The jest would be lost in an explanation," remarked Gatien. "Nowadays," Lousteau went on, "a novelist draws characters, and instead of a 'simple outline,' he unveils the human heart and gives you some interest either in Lubin or in Toinette." "For my part, I am alarmed at the progress of public knowledge in the matter of literature," said Bianchon. "Like the Russians, beaten by Charles XII., who at least learned the art of war, the reader has learned the art of writing. Formerly all that was expected of a romance was that it should be interesting. As to style, no one cared for that, not even the author; as to ideas--zero; as to local color --_non est_. By degrees the reader has demanded style, interest, pathos, and complete information; he insists on the five literary senses--Invention, Style, Thought, Learning, and Feeling. Then some criticism commenting on everything. The critic, incapable of inventing anything but calumny, pronounces every work that proceeds from a not perfect brain to be deformed. Some magicians, as Walter Scott, for instance, having appeared in the world, who combined all the five literary senses, such writers as had but one--wit or learning, style or feeling --these cripples, these acephalous, maimed or purblind creatures --in a literary sense--have taken to shrieking that all is lost, and have preached a crusade against men who were spoiling the business, or have denounced their works." "The history of your last literary quarrel!" Dinah observed. "For pity's sake, come back to the Duke of Bracciano," cried Monsieur de Clagny. To the despair of all the company, Lousteau went on with the made-up sheet. I then wished to make sure of my OR ROMAN REVENGE darkness of this cellar, over which "Thus have I lived for thirty OLYMPIA poison I had prepared for her and "I have done well to eat and live; "Yes, Eccellenza, when those fools "Oh, Rinaldo, all I possess shall "Eccellenza, procure from the OR ROMAN REVENGE "What you will. Only file "Eccellenza," said Rinaldo, "I "You are a god!" "Your wife was at the fete given "Have you done?" "Yes." OLYMPIA "Your dagger?" said the Duke "Here it is." "Good. I hear the clatter of the "Do not forget me!" cried the "No more than my father," cried "Good-bye!" said Rinaldo. "Lord! OR ROMAN REVENGE had sworn a vow never to injure a But let us leave the robber for a
Never had the Duchess been more OLYMPIA Adolphe voluptuously reclining on "You are beautiful," said she. "And so are you, Olympia!" "And you still love me?" "More and more," said he. "Ah, none but a Frenchman "Yes." "Then come!" And with an impulse of love and
"I cannot make head or tail of it," said Gatien Boirouge, who was the first to break the silence of the party from Sancerre. "Nor I," replied Monsieur Gravier. "And yet it is a novel of the time of the Empire," said Lousteau. "By the way in which the brigand is made to speak," said Monsieur Gravier, "it is evident that the author knew nothing of Italy. Banditti do not allow themselves such graceful conceits." _ |