The Thirteen, Honoré de Balzac [best books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

love-affair on hand, and it has been discovered at a very bad time. I wouldn't answer for madame's life. Men are so clumsy; they'll make you scenes without any precaution."

"That's not so," said the valet, in a low voice. "On the contrary, madame is the one who--you understand? What times does monsieur have to go after pleasures, he, who hasn't slept out of madame's room for five years, who goes to his study at ten and never leaves it till breakfast, at twelve. His life is all known, it is regular; whereas madame goes out nearly every day at three o'clock, Heaven knows where."

"And monsieur too," said the maid, taking her mistress's part.

"Yes, but he goes straight to the Bourse. I told him three times that dinner was ready," continued the valet, after a pause. "You might as well talk to a post."

Monsieur Jules entered the dining-room.

"Where is madame?" he said.

"Madame is going to bed; her head aches," replied the maid, assuming an air of importance.

Monsieur Jules then said to the footmen composedly: "You can take away; I shall go and sit with madame."

He went to his wife's room and found her weeping, but endeavoring to smother her sobs with her handkerchief.

"Why do you weep?" said Jules; "you need expect no violence and no reproaches from me. Why should I avenge myself? If you have not been faithful to my love, it is that you were never worthy of it."

"Not worthy?" The words were repeated amid her sobs and the accent in which they were said would have moved any other man than Jules.

"To kill you, I must love more than perhaps I do love you," he continued. "But I should never have the courage; I would rather kill myself, leaving you to your--happiness, and with--whom!--"

He did not end his sentence.

"Kill yourself!" she cried, flinging herself at his feet and clasping them.

But he, wishing to escape the embrace, tried to shake her off, dragging her in so doing toward the bed.

"Let me alone," he said.

"No, no, Jules!" she cried. "If you love me no longer I shall die. Do you wish to know all?"

"Yes."

He took her, grasped her violently, and sat down on the edge of the bed, holding her between his legs. Then, looking at that beautiful face now red as fire and furrowed with tears,--

"Speak," he said.

Her sobs began again.

"No; it is a secret of life and death. If I tell it, I--No, I cannot. Have mercy, Jules!"

"You have betrayed me--"

"Ah! Jules, you think so now, but soon you will know all."

"But this Ferragus, this convict whom you go to see, a man enriched by crime, if he does not belong to you, if you do not belong to him--"

"Oh, Jules!"

"Speak! Is he your mysterious benefactor?--the man to whom we owe our fortune, as persons have said already?"

"Who said that?"

"A man whom I killed in a duel."

"Oh, God! one death already!"

"If he is not your protector, if he does not give you money, if it is you, on the contrary, who carry money to him, tell me, is he your brother?"

"What if he were?" she said.

Monsieur Desmarets crossed his arms.

"Why should that have been concealed from me?" he said. "Then you and your mother have both deceived me? Besides, does a woman go to see her brother every day, or nearly every day?"

His wife had fainted at his feet.

"Dead," he said. "And suppose I am mistaken?"

He sprang to the bell-rope; called Josephine, and lifted Clemence to the bed.

"I shall die of this," said Madame Jules, recovering consciousness.

"Josephine," cried Monsieur Desmarets. "Send for Monsieur Desplein; send also to my brother and ask him to come here immediately."

"Why your brother?" asked Clemence.

But Jules had already left the room.


CHAPTER IV. WHERE GO TO DIE?

For the first time in five years Madame Jules slept alone in her bed, and was compelled to admit a physician into that sacred chamber. These in themselves were two keen pangs. Desplein found Madame Jules very ill. Never was a violent emotion more untimely. He would say nothing definite, and postponed till the morrow giving any opinion, after leaving a few directions, which were not executed, the emotions of the heart causing all bodily cares to be forgotten.

When morning dawned, Clemence had not yet slept. Her mind was absorbed in the low murmur of a conversation which lasted several hours between the brothers; but the thickness of the walls allowed no word which could betray the object of this long conference to reach her ears. Monsieur Desmarets, the notary, went away at last. The stillness of the night, and the singular activity of the senses given by powerful emotion, enabled Clemence to distinguish the scratching of a pen and the involuntary movements of a person engaged in writing. Those who are habitually up at night, and who observe the different acoustic effects produced in absolute silence, know that a slight echo can be readily perceived in the very places where louder but more equable and continued murmurs are not distinct. At four o'clock the sound ceased. Clemence rose, anxious and trembling. Then, with bare feet and without a wrapper, forgetting her illness and her moist condition, the poor woman opened the door softly without noise and looked into the next room. She saw her husband sitting, with a pen in his hand, asleep in his arm-chair. The candles had burned to the sockets. She slowly advanced and read on an envelope, already sealed, the words, "This is my will."

She knelt down as if before an open grave and kissed her husband's hand. He woke instantly.

"Jules, my friend, they grant some days to criminals condemned to death," she said, looking at him with eyes that blazed with fever and with love. "Your innocent wife asks only two. Leave me free for two days, and--wait! After that, I shall die happy--at least, you will regret me."

"Clemence, I grant them."

Then, as she kissed her husband's hands in the tender transport of her heart, Jules, under the spell of that cry of innocence, took her in his arms and kissed her forehead, though ashamed to feel himself still under subjection to the power of that noble beauty.

On the morrow, after taking a few hours' rest, Jules entered his wife's room, obeying mechanically his invariable custom of not leaving the house without a word to her. Clemence was sleeping. A ray of light passing through a chink in the upper blind of a window fell across the face of the dejected woman. Already suffering had impaired her forehead and the freshness of her lips. A lover's eye could not fail to notice the appearance of dark blotches, and a sickly pallor in place of the uniform tone of the cheeks and the pure ivory whiteness of the skin,--two points at which the sentiments of her noble soul were artlessly wont to show themselves.

"She suffers," thought Jules. "Poor Clemence! May God protect us!"

He kissed her very softly on the forehead. She woke, saw her husband, and remembered all. Unable to speak, she took his hand, her eyes filling with tears.

"I am innocent," she said, ending her dream.

"You will not go out to-day, will you?" asked Jules.

"No, I feel too weak to leave my bed."

"If you should change your mind, wait till I return," said Jules.

Then he went down to the porter's lodge.

"Fouguereau, you will watch the door yourself to-day. I wish to know exactly who comes to the house, and who leaves it."

Then he threw himself into a hackney-coach, and was driven to the hotel de Maulincour, where he asked for the baron.

"Monsieur is ill," they told him.

Jules insisted on entering, and gave his name. If he could not see the baron, he wished to see the vidame or the dowager. He waited some time in the salon, where Madame de Maulincour finally came to him and told him that her grandson was much too ill to receive him.

"I know, madame, the nature of his illness from the letter you did me the honor to write, and I beg you to believe--"

"A letter to you, monsieur, written by me!" cried the dowager, interrupting him. "I have written you no letter. What was I made to say in that letter, monsieur?"

"Madame," replied Jules, "intending to see Monsieur de Maulincour to-day, I thought it best to preserve the letter in spite of its injunction to destroy it. There it is."

Madame de Maulincour put on her spectacles, and the moment she cast her eyes on the paper she showed the utmost surprise.

"Monsieur," she said, "my writing is so perfectly imitated that, if the matter were not so recent, I might be deceived myself. My grandson is ill, it is true; but his reason has never for a moment been affected. We are the puppets of some evil-minded person or persons; and yet I cannot imagine the object of a trick like this. You shall see my grandson, monsieur, and you will at once perceive that he is perfectly sound in mind."

She rang the bell, and sent to ask if the baron felt able to receive Monsieur Desmarets. The servant returned with an affirmative answer. Jules went to the baron's room, where he found him in an arm-chair near the fire. Too feeble to move, the unfortunate man merely bowed his head with a melancholy gesture. The Vidame de Pamiers was sitting with him.

"Monsieur le baron," said Jules, "I have something to say which makes it desirable that I should see you alone."

"Monsieur," replied Auguste, "Monsieur le vidame knows about this affair; you can speak fearlessly before him."

"Monsieur le baron," said Jules, in a grave voice, "you have troubled and well-nigh destroyed my happiness without having any right to do so. Until the moment when we can see clearly which of us should demand, or grant, reparation to the other, you are bound to help me in following the dark and mysterious path into which you have flung me. I have now come to ascertain from you the present residence of the extraordinary being who exercises such a baneful effect on your life and mine. On my return home yesterday, after listening to your avowals, I received that letter."

Jules gave him the forged letter.

"This Ferragus, this Bourignard, or this Monsieur de Funcal, is a demon!" cried Maulincour, after having read it. "Oh, what a frightful maze I put my foot into when I meddled in this matter! Where am I going? I did wrong, monsieur," he continued, looking at Jules; "but death is the greatest of all expiations, and my death is now approaching. You can ask me whatever you like; I am at your orders."

"Monsieur, you know, of course, where this man is living, and I must know it if it costs me all my fortune to penetrate this mystery. In presence of so cruel an enemy every moment is precious."

"Justin shall tell you all," replied the baron.

At these words the vidame fidgeted on his chair. Auguste rang the bell.

"Justin is not in the house!" cried the vidame, in a hasty manner that told much.

"Well, then," said Auguste, excitedly, "the other servants must know where