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

we were quite right in that conjecture. How do you expect to conceal any feeling from persons whose business it is to divine the most hidden motion of souls, the tricks of poverty, the calculations of indigence,--honest spies, the police of the good God; old judges, whose code contains nothing but absolutions; doctors of suffering, whose only remedy is oftentimes the wise application of money? But, you see, my child, we don't wish to quarrel with the motives which bring us a neophyte, provided he will really stay and become a brother of the order. We shall judge you by your work. There are two kinds of curiosity,--that of good and that of evil; just at this moment you have that of good. If you should work in our vineyard, the juice of our grapes will make you perpetually thirsty for the divine fruit. The initiation is, as in that of all natural knowledge, easy in appearance, difficult in reality. Benevolence is like poesy; nothing is easier than to catch the appearance of it. But here, as in Parnassus, nothing contents us but perfection. To become one to us, you must acquire a great knowledge of life. And what a life,--good God! Parisian life, which defies the sagacity of the minister of police and all his agents! We have to circumvent the perpetual conspiracy of Evil, master it in all its forms, while it changes so often as to seem infinite. Charity in Paris must know as much as vice, just as a policeman must know all the tricks of thieves. We must each be frank and each distrustful; we must have quick perception and a sure and rapid judgment. And then, my child, we are old and getting older; but we are so content with the results we have now obtained, that we do not want to die without leaving successors in the work. If you persist in your desire, you will be our first pupil, and all the dearer to us on that account. There is no risk for us, because God brought you to us. Yours is a good nature soured; since you have been here the evil leaven has weakened. The divine nature of Madame has acted upon yours. Yesterday we took counsel together; and inasmuch as I have your confidence, my good brothers resolved to give me to you as guardian and teacher. Does that please you?"

"Ah! my kind Monsieur Alain, your eloquence awakens--"

"No, my child, it is not I who speak well; it is things that are eloquent. We can be sure of being great, even sublime, in obeying God, in imitating Jesus Christ,--imitating him, I mean, as much as men are able to do so, aided by faith."

"This moment, then, decides my life!" cried Godefroid. "I feel within me the fervor of a neophyte; I wish to spend my life in doing good."

"That is the secret of remaining in God," replied Alain. "Have you studied our motto,--_Transire benefaciendo_? _Transire_ means to go beyond this world, leaving benefits on our way."

"Yes, I have understood it; I have put the motto of the order before my bed."

"That is well; it is a trifling action, but it counts for much in my eyes. And now I have your first affair, your first duel with misery, prepared for you; I'll put your foot in the stirrup. We are about to part. Yes, I myself am detached from the convent, to live for a time in the crater of a volcano. I am to be a clerk in a great manufactory, where the workmen are infected with communistic doctrines, and dream of social destruction, the abolishment of masters,--not knowing that that would be the death of industry, of commerce, of manufactures. I shall stay there goodness knows how long,--perhaps a year,--keeping the books and paying the wages. This will give me an entrance into a hundred or a hundred and twenty homes of working-men, misled, no doubt, by poverty, even before the pamphlets of the day misled them. But you and I can see each other on Sundays and fete-days. We shall be in the same quarter; and if you come to the church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas, you will find me there any day at half-past seven, when I hear mass. If you meet me elsewhere don't recognize me, unless you see me rub my hands like a man who is pleased at something. That is one of our signs. We have a language of signs, like the deaf and dumb; you'll soon find out the absolute necessity of it."

Godefroid made a gesture which the goodman Alain interpreted; for he laughed, and immediately went on to say:--

"Now for your affair. We do not practise either the benevolence or the philanthropy that you know about, which are really divided into several branches, all taken advantage of by sharpers in charity as a business. We practise charity as our great and sublime Saint Paul defines it; for, my dear lad, we think that charity, and charity alone, which is Love, can heal the wounds of Paris. In our eyes, misery, of whatever kind, poverty, suffering, misfortune, grief, evil, no matter how produced, or in what social class they show themselves, have equal rights. Whatever his opinions or beliefs, an unhappy man is, before all else, an unhappy man; and we ought not to attempt to turn his face to our holy mother Church until we have saved him from despair or hunger. Moreover, we ought to convert him to goodness more by example and by gentleness than by any other means; and we believe that God will specially help us in this. All constraint is bad. Of the manifold Parisian miseries, the most difficult to discover, and the bitterest, is that of worthy persons of the middle classes who have fallen into poverty; for they make concealment a point of honor. Those sorrows, my dear Godefroid, are to us the object of special solicitude. Such persons usually have intelligence and good hearts. They return to us, sometimes with usury, the sums that we lend them. Such restitutions recoup us in the long run for the losses we occasionally incur through impostors, shiftless creatures, or those whom misfortunes have rendered stupid. Through such persons we often obtain invaluable help in our investigations. Our work has now become so vast, its details are so multifarious, that we no longer suffice of ourselves to carry it on. So, for the last year we have a physician of our own in every arrondissement in Paris. Each of us takes general charge of four arrondissements. We pay each physician three thousand francs a year to take care of our poor. His time belongs to us in the first instance, but we do not prevent him from attending other sick persons if he can. Would you believe that for many months we were unable to find twelve really trustworthy, valuable men, in spite of all our own efforts and those of our friends? We could not employ any but men of absolute discreetness, pure lives, sound knowledge, experience, active men, and lovers of doing good. Now, although there are in Paris some ten thousand individuals, more or less, who would gladly do the work, we could not find twelve to meet our needs in a whole year."

"Our Saviour had difficulty in gathering his apostles, and even then a traitor and an unbeliever got among them," said Godefroid.

"However, within the last month all our arrondissements are provided with a Visitor--that is the name we give to our physicians. At the same time the business is increasing, and we have all redoubled our activity. If I confide to you these secrets of our system, it is that you must know the physician, that is, the Visitor of the arrondissement to which we are about to send you; from him, all original information about our cases comes. This Visitor is named Berton, Doctor Berton; he lives in the rue d'Enfer. And now here are the facts: Doctor Berton is attending a lady whose disease puzzles and defies science. That, of course, is not our concern, but that of the Faculty. Our business is to discover the condition of the family of this patient; Doctor Berton suspects that their poverty is frightful, and concealed with a pride and determination which demand our utmost care. Until now, my son, I should have found time for this case, but the work I am undertaking obliges me to find a helper in my four arrondissements, and you shall be that helper. This family lives in the rue Notre-Dame des Champs, in a house at the corner of the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse. You will find a room to let in the same house, where you can live for a time so as to discover the truth about these persons. Be sordid for yourself, but as for the money you may think needed for this case have no uneasiness. I will remit you such sums as we may judge necessary after ourselves considering all the circumstances. But remember that you must study the moral qualities of these unfortunates: their hearts, the honorableness of their feelings; those are our guarantees. Miserly we may be for ourselves, and generous to those who suffer, but we must be prudent and even calculating, for we are dealing with the money of the poor. So then, to-morrow morning you can start; think over the power we put in your hands: the brothers are with you in heart."

"Ah!" cried Godefroid, "you have given me such a pleasure in the opportunity of doing good and making myself worthy to belong to you some day, that I shall not sleep to-night."

"One more word, my child. I told you not to recognize me without the signal; the same rule applies to the other gentlemen and to Madame, and even to the people you see about this house. We are forced to keep up an absolute incognito in all we do; this is so necessary to our enterprises that we have made a rule about it. We seek to be ignored, lost in this great Paris. Remember also, my dear Godefroid, the spirit of our order; which is, never to appear as benefactors, to play an obscure part, that of intermediaries. We always present ourselves as the agent of a pious, saintly person (in fact, we are working for God), so that none of those we deal with may feel the obligation of gratitude towards any of us, or think we are wealthy persons. True, sincere humility, not the false humility of those who seek thereby to be set in the light, must inspire you and rule all your thoughts. You may indeed be glad when you succeed; but so long as you feel within you a sentiment of vanity or of pride, you are not worthy to do the work of the order. We have known two perfect men: one, who was one of our founders, Judge Popinot; the other is revealed by his works; he is a country doctor whose name is written on the annals of his canton. That man, my dear Godefroid, is one of the greatest men of our time; he brought a whole region out of wretchedness into prosperity, out of irreligion into Christianity, out of barbarism into civilization.[*] The names of those two men are graven on our hearts and we have taken them as our models. We should be happy indeed if we ourselves could some day acquire in Paris the influence that country doctor had in his canton. But here, the sore is vast, beyond our strength at present. May God preserve to us Madame, may he send us some young helpers like you, and perhaps we may yet leave behind us an institution worthy of his divine religion. And now