The Brotherhood of Consolation, Honoré de Balzac [robert munsch read aloud txt] 📗

the maid upon the staircase.

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

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

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

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

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

"Good God!" cried Godefroid, "what have I done?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good God!" cried Godefroid.

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

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

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

"Ah!" cried Godefroid.

"All that is still nothing," said Monsieur Alain; "we have not yet reached the period of storms and darkness.