Sons of the Soil, Honoré de Balzac [epub read online books TXT] 📗

newspapers brings you to. Here am I writing a downright article. Does the mind have its ruts, like a road? I stop; for I rob the mail, and I rob myself, and you may be yawning--to be continued in our next; I hear the second bell, which summons me to one of those abundant breakfasts the fashion of which has long passed away, in the dining-rooms of Paris, be it understood.

Here's the history of my Arcadia. In 1815, there died at Les Aigues one of the famous wantons of the last century,--a singer, forgotten of the guillotine and the nobility, after preying upon exchequers, upon literature, upon aristocracy, and all but reaching the scaffold; forgotten, like so many fascinating old women who expiate their golden youth in country solitudes, and replace their lost loves by another,--man by Nature. Such women live with the flowers, with the woodland scents, with the sky, with the sunshine, with all that sings and skips and shines and sprouts,--the birds, the squirrels, the flowers, the grass; they know nothing about these things, they cannot explain them, but they love them; they love them so well that they forget dukes, marshals, rivalries, financiers, follies, luxuries, their paste jewels and their real diamonds, their heeled slippers and their rouge,--all, for the sweetness of country life.

I have gathered, my dear fellow, much precious information about the old age of Mademoiselle Laguerre; for, to tell you the truth, the after life of such women as Florine, Mariette, Suzanne de Val Noble, and Tullia has made me, every now and then, extremely inquisitive, as though I were a child inquiring what had become of the old moons.

In 1790 Mademoiselle Laguerre, alarmed at the turn of public affairs, came to settle at Les Aigues, bought and given to her by Bouret, who passed several summers with her at the chateau. Terrified at the fate of Madame du Barry, she buried her diamonds. At that time she was only fifty-three years of age, and according to her lady's-maid, afterwards married to a gendarme named Soudry, "Madame was more beautiful than ever." My dear Nathan, Nature has no doubt her private reasons for treating women of this sort like spoiled children; excesses, instead of killing them, fatten them, preserve them, renew their youth. Under a lymphatic appearance they have nerves which maintain their marvellous physique; they actually preserve their beauty for reasons which would make a virtuous woman haggard. No, upon my word, Nature is not moral!

Mademoiselle Laguerre lived an irreproachable life at Les Aigues, one might even call it a saintly one, after her famous adventure,--you remember it? One evening in a paroxysm of despairing love, she fled from the opera-house in her stage dress, rushed into the country, and passed the night weeping by the wayside. (Ah! how they have calumniated the love of Louis XV.'s time!) She was so unused to see the sunrise, that she hailed it with one of her finest songs. Her attitude, quite as much as her tinsel, drew the peasants about her; amazed at her gestures, her voice, her beauty, they took her for an angel, and dropped on their knees around her. If Voltaire had not existed we might have thought it a new miracle. I don't know if God gave her much credit for her tardy virtue, for love after all must be a sickening thing to a woman as weary of it as a wanton of the old Opera. Mademoiselle Laguerre was born in 1740, and her hey-day was in 1760, when Monsieur (I forget his name) was called the "ministre de la guerre," on account of his liaison with her. She abandoned that name, which was quite unknown down here, and called herself Madame des Aigues, as if to merge her identity in the estate, which she delighted to improve with a taste that was profoundly artistic. When Bonaparte became First Consul, she increased her property by the purchase of church lands, for which she used the proceeds of her diamonds. As an Opera divinity never knows how to take care of her money, she intrusted the management of the estate to a steward, occupying herself with her flowers and fruits and with the beautifying of the park.

After Mademoiselle was dead and buried at Blangy, the notary of Soulanges--that little town which lies between Ville-aux-Fayes and Blangy, the capital of the township--made an elaborate inventory, and sought out the heirs of the singer, who never knew she had any. Eleven families of poor laborers living near Amiens, and sleeping in cotton sheets, awoke one fine morning in golden ones. The property was sold at auction. Les Aigues was bought by Montcornet, who had laid by enough during his campaigns in Spain and Pomerania to make the purchase, which cost about eleven hundred thousand francs, including the furniture. The general, no doubt, felt the influence of these luxurious apartments; and I was arguing with the countess only yesterday that her marriage was a direct result of the purchase of Les Aigues.

To rightly understand the countess, my dear Nathan, you must know that the general is a violent man, red as fire, five feet nine inches tall, round as a tower, with a thick neck and the shoulders of a blacksmith, which must have amply filled his cuirass. Montcornet commanded the cuirassiers at the battle of Essling (called by the Austrians Gross-Aspern), and came near perishing when that noble corps was driven back on the Danube. He managed to cross the river astride a log of wood. The cuirassiers, finding the bridge down, took the glorious resolution, at Montcornet's command, to turn and resist the entire Austrian army, which carried off on the morrow over thirty wagon-loads of cuirasses. The Germans invented a name for their enemies on this occasion which means "men of iron."[*] Montcornet has the outer man of a hero of antiquity. His arms are stout and vigorous, his chest deep and broad; his head has a leonine aspect, his voice is of those that can order a charge in the thick of battle; but he has nothing more than the courage of a daring man; he lacks mind and breadth of view. Like other generals to whom military common-sense, the natural boldness of those who spend their lives in danger, and the habit of command gives an appearance of superiority, Montcornet has an imposing effect when you first meet him; he seems a Titan, but he contains a dwarf, like the pasteboard giant who saluted Queen Elizabeth at the gates of Kenilworth. Choleric though kind, and full of imperial hauteur, he has the caustic tongue of a soldier, and is quick at repartee, but quicker still with a blow. He may have been superb on a battle-field; in a household he is simply intolerable. He knows no love but barrack love,--the love which those clever myth-makers, the ancients, placed under the patronage of Eros, son of Mars and Venus. Those delightful chroniclers of the old religions provided themselves with a dozen different Loves. Study the fathers and the attributes of these Loves, and you will discover a complete social nomenclature,--and yet we fancy that we originate things! When the world turns upside down like an hour-glass, when the seas become continents, Frenchmen will find canons, steamboats, newspapers, and maps wrapped up in seaweed at the bottom of what is now our ocean.

[*] I do not, on principle, like foot-notes, and this is the
first I have ever allowed myself. Its historical interest
must be my excuse; it will prove, moreover, that
descriptions of battles should be something more than the
dry particulars of technical writers, who for the last three
thousand years have told us about left and right wings and
centres being broken or driven in, but never a word about
the soldier himself, his sufferings, and his heroism. The
conscientious care with which I prepared myself to write the
"Scenes from Military Life," led me to many a battle-field
once wet with the blood of France and her enemies. Among
them I went to Wagram. When I reached the shores of the
Danube, opposite Lobau, I noticed on the bank, which is
covered with turf, certain undulations that reminded me of
the furrows in a field of lucern. I asked the reason of it,
thinking I should hear of some new method of agriculture:
"There sleep the cavalry of the imperial guard," said the
peasant who served us as a guide; "those are their graves
you see there." The words made me shudder. Prince Frederic
Schwartzenburg, who translated them, added that the man had
himself driven one of the wagons laden with cuirasses. By
one of the strange chances of war our guide had served a
breakfast to Napoleon on the morning of the battle of
Wagram. Though poor, he had kept the double napoleon which
the Emperor gave him for his milk and his eggs. The curate
of Gross-Aspern took us to the famous cemetery where French
and Austrians struggled together knee-deep in blood, with a
courage and obstinacy glorious to each. There, while
explaining that a marble tablet (to which our attention had
been attracted, and on which were inscribed the names of the
owner of Gross-Aspern, who had been killed on the third day)
was the sole compensation ever given to the family, he said,
in a tone of deep sadness: "It was a time of great misery,
and of great hopes; but now are the days of forgetfulness."
The saying seemed to me sublime in its simplicity; but when
I came to reflect upon the matter, I felt there was some
justification for the apparent ingratitude of the House of
Austria. Neither nations nor kings are wealthy enough to
reward all the devotions to which these tragic struggles
give rise. Let those who serve a cause with a secret
expectation of recompense, set a price upon their blood and
become mercenaries. Those who wield either sword or pen for
their country's good ought to think of nothing but of _doing
their best_, as our fathers used to say, and expect nothing,
not even glory, except as a happy accident.

It was in rushing to retake this famous cemetery for the
third time that Massena, wounded and carried in the box of a
cabriolet, made this splendid harangue to his soldiers:
"What! you rascally curs, who have only five sous a day
while I have forty thousand, do you let me go ahead of you?"
All the world knows the order which the Emperor sent to his
lieutenant by M. de Sainte-Croix, who swam the Danube three
times: "Die or retake the village; it is a question of
saving the army; the bridges are destroyed."

The Author.

Now, I must tell you that the Comtesse de Montcornet is a fragile, timid, delicate little woman. What do you think of such a