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

wrong."

"Doctor, tell me the truth. I am a man, and I can bear it. Besides, I have the deepest interest in knowing it; I have certain affairs to settle."

"Madame Jules is dying," said the physician. "There is some moral malady which has made great progress, and it has complicated her physical condition, which was already dangerous, and made still more so by her great imprudence. To walk about barefooted at night! to go out when I forbade it! on foot yesterday in the rain, to-day in a carriage! She must have meant to kill herself. But still, my judgment is not final; she has youth, and a most amazing nervous strength. It may be best to risk all to win all by employing some violent reagent. But I will not take upon myself to order it; nor will I advise it; in consultation I shall oppose it."

Jules returned to his wife. For eleven days and eleven nights he remained beside her bed, taking no sleep during the day when he laid his head upon the foot of the bed. No man ever pushed the jealousy of care and the craving for devotion to such an extreme as he. He could not endure that the slightest service should be done by others for his wife. There were days of uncertainty, false hopes, now a little better, then a crisis,--in short, all the horrible mutations of death as it wavers, hesitates, and finally strikes. Madame Jules always found strength to smile at her husband. She pitied him, knowing that soon he would be alone. It was a double death,--that of life, that of love; but life grew feebler, and love grew mightier. One frightful night there was, when Clemence passed through that delirium which precedes the death of youth. She talked of her happy love, she talked of her father; she related her mother's revelations on her death-bed, and the obligations that mother had laid upon her. She struggled, not for life, but for her love which she could not leave.

"Grant, O God!" she said, "that he may not know I want him to die with me."

Jules, unable to bear the scene, was at that moment in the adjoining room, and did not hear the prayer, which he would doubtless have fulfilled.

When this crisis was over, Madame Jules recovered some strength. The next day she was beautiful and tranquil; hope seemed to come to her; she adorned herself, as the dying often do. Then she asked to be alone all day, and sent away her husband with one of those entreaties made so earnestly that they are granted as we grant the prayer of a little child.

Jules, indeed, had need of this day. He went to Monsieur de Maulincour to demand the satisfaction agreed upon between them. It was not without great difficulty that he succeeded in reaching the presence of the author of these misfortunes; but the vidame, when he learned that the visit related to an affair of honor, obeyed the precepts of his whole life, and himself took Jules into the baron's chamber.

Monsieur Desmarets looked about him in search of his antagonist.

"Yes! that is really he," said the vidame, motioning to a man who was sitting in an arm-chair beside the fire.

"Who is it? Jules?" said the dying man in a broken voice.

Auguste had lost the only faculty that makes us live--memory. Jules Desmarets recoiled with horror at this sight. He could not even recognize the elegant young man in that thing without--as Bossuet said--a name in any language. It was, in truth, a corpse with whitened hair, its bones scarce covered with a wrinkled, blighted, withered skin,--a corpse with white eyes motionless, mouth hideously gaping, like those of idiots or vicious men killed by excesses. No trace of intelligence remained upon that brow, nor in any feature; nor was there in that flabby flesh either color or the faintest appearance of circulating blood. Here was a shrunken, withered creature brought to the state of those monsters we see preserved in museums, floating in alchohol. Jules fancied that he saw above that face the terrible head of Ferragus, and his own anger was silenced by such a vengeance. The husband found pity in his heart for the vacant wreck of what was once a man.

"The duel has taken place," said the vidame.

"But he has killed many," answered Jules, sorrowfully.

"And many dear ones," added the old man. "His grandmother is dying; and I shall follow her soon into the grave."

On the morrow of this day, Madame Jules grew worse from hour to hour. She used a moment's strength to take a letter from beneath her pillow, and gave it eagerly to her husband with a sign that was easy to understand,--she wished to give him, in a kiss, her last breath. He took it, and she died. Jules fell half-dead himself and was taken to his brother's house. There, as he deplored in tears his absence of the day before, his brother told him that this separation was eagerly desired by Clemence, who wished to spare him the sight of the religious paraphernalia, so terrible to tender imaginations, which the Church displays when conferring the last sacraments upon the dying.

"You could not have borne it," said his brother. "I could hardly bear the sight myself, and all the servants wept. Clemence was like a saint. She gathered strength to bid us all good-bye, and that voice, heard for the last time, rent our hearts. When she asked pardon for the pain she might unwillingly have caused her servants, there were cries and sobs and--"

"Enough! enough!" said Jules.

He wanted to be alone, that he might read the last words of the woman whom all had loved, and who had passed away like a flower.

"My beloved, this is my last will. Why should we not make wills
for the treasures of our hearts, as for our worldly property? Was
not my love my property, my all? I mean here to dispose of my
love: it was the only fortune of your Clemence, and it is all that
she can leave you in dying. Jules, you love me still, and I die
happy. The doctors may explain my death as they think best; I
alone know the true cause. I shall tell it to you, whatever pain
it may cause you. I cannot carry with me, in a heart all yours, a
secret which you do not share, although I die the victim of an
enforced silence.

"Jules, I was nurtured and brought up in the deepest solitude, far
from the vices and the falsehoods of the world, by the loving
woman whom you knew. Society did justice to her conventional
charm, for that is what pleases society; but I knew secretly her
precious soul, I could cherish the mother who made my childhood a
joy without bitterness, and I knew why I cherished her. Was not
that to love doubly? Yes, I loved her, I feared her, I respected
her; yet nothing oppressed my heart, neither fear nor respect. I
was all in all to her; she was all in all to me. For nineteen
happy years, without a care, my soul, solitary amid the world
which muttered round me, reflected only her pure image; my heart
beat for her and through her. I was scrupulously pious; I found
pleasure in being innocent before God. My mother cultivated all
noble and self-respecting sentiments in me. Ah! it gives me
happiness to tell you, Jules, that I now know I was indeed a young
girl, and that I came to you virgin in heart.

"When I left that absolute solitude, when, for the first time, I
braided my hair and crowned it with almond blossoms, when I added,
with delight, a few satin knots to my white dress, thinking of the
world I was to see, and which I was curious to see--Jules, that
innocent and modest coquetry was done for you! Yes, as I entered
the world, I saw _you_ first of all. Your face, I remarked it; it
stood out from the rest; your person pleased me; your voice, your
manners all inspired me with pleasant presentiments. When you came
up, when you spoke to me, the color on your forehead, the tremble
in your voice,--that moment gave me memories with which I throb as
I now write to you, as I now, for the last time, think of them.
Our love was at first the keenest of sympathies, but it was soon
discovered by each of us and then, as speedily, shared; just as,
in after times, we have both equally felt and shared innumerable
happinesses. From that moment my mother was only second in my
heart. Next, I was yours, all yours. There is my life, and all my
life, dear husband.

"And here is what remains for me to tell you. One evening, a few
days before my mother's death, she revealed to me the secret of
her life,--not without burning tears. I have loved you better
since the day I learned from the priest as he absolved my mother
that there are passions condemned by the world and by the Church.
But surely God will not be severe when they are the sins of souls
as tender as that of my mother; only, that dear woman could never
bring herself to repent. She loved much, Jules; she was all love.
So I have prayed daily for her, but never judged her.

"That night I learned the cause of her deep maternal tenderness;
then I also learned that there was in Paris a man whose life and
whose love centred on me; that your fortune was his doing, and
that he loved you. I learned also that he was exiled from society
and bore a tarnished name; but that he was more unhappy for me,
for us, than for himself. My mother was all his comfort; she was
dying, and I promised to take her place. With all the ardor of a
soul whose feelings had never been perverted, I saw only the
happiness of softening the bitterness of my mother's last moments,
and I pledged myself to continue her work of secret charity,--the
charity of the heart. The first time that I saw my father was
beside the bed where my mother had just expired. When he raised
his tearful eyes, it was to see in me a revival of his dead hopes.
I had sworn, not to tell a lie, but to keep silence; and that
silence what woman could have broken it?

"There is my fault, Jules,--a fault which I expiate by death. I
doubted you. But fear is so natural to a woman; above all, a woman
who knows what it is that she may lose. I trembled for our love.
My father's secret seemed to me the death of my happiness; and