The Village Rector, Honoré de Balzac [best historical biographies .txt] 📗

end to this fresh attack of dreadful depression, sent little Francis to fetch her. The child took his mother's hand and led her in. When she saw the rector she gave a start of surprise in which there seemed to be some fear. Monsieur Bonnet took her back to the terrace, saying:--

"Well, madame, what were you talking about with Farrabesche?"

In order not to speak falsely, Veronique evaded a reply; she questioned Monsieur Bonnet.

"That man was your first victory here, was he not?" she said.

"Yes," he answered; "his conversion would, I thought, give me all Montegnac--and I was not mistaken."

Veronique pressed Monsieur Bonnet's hand and said, with tears in her voice, "I am your penitent from this day forth, monsieur; I shall go to-morrow to the confessional."

Her last words showed a great internal effort, a terrible victory won over herself. The rector brought her back to the house without saying another word. After that he remained till dinner-time, talking about the proposed improvements at Montegnac.

"Agriculture is a question of time," he said; "the little that I know of it makes me understand what a gain it would be to get some good out of the winter. The rains are now beginning, and the mountains will soon be covered with snow; your operations cannot then be begun. Had you not better hasten Monsieur Grossetete?"

Insensibly, Monsieur Bonnet, who at first did all the talking, led Madame Graslin to join in the conversation and so distract her thoughts; in fact, he left her almost recovered from the emotions of the day. Madame Sauviat, however, thought her daughter too violently agitated to be left alone, and she spent the night in her room.


XVI. CONCERNS ONE OF THE BLUNDERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The following day an express, sent from Limoges by Monsieur Grossetete to Madame Graslin, brought her the following letter:--

To Madame Graslin:

My dear Child,--It was difficult to find horses, but I hope you
are satisfied with those I sent you. If you want work or draft
horses, you must look elsewhere. In any case, however, I advise
you to do your tilling and transportation with oxen. All the
countries where agriculture is carried on with horses lose capital
when the horse is past work; whereas cattle always return a profit
to those who use them.

I approve in every way of your enterprise, my child; you will thus
employ the passionate activity of your soul, which was turning
against yourself and thus injuring you.

Your second request, namely, for a man capable of understanding
and seconding your projects, requires me to find you a _rara avis_
such as we seldom raise in the provinces, where, if we do raise
them, we never keep them. The education of that high product is
too slow and too risky a speculation for country folks.

Besides, men of intellect alarm us; we call them "originals." The
men belonging to the scientific category from which you will have
to obtain your co-operator do not flourish here, and I was on the
point of writing to you that I despaired of fulfilling your
commission. You want a poet, a man of ideas,--in short, what we
should here call a fool, and all our fools go to Paris. I have
spoken of your plans to the young men employed in land surveying,
to contractors on the canals, and makers of the embankments, and
none of them see any "advantage" in what you propose.

But suddenly, as good luck would have it, chance has thrown in my
way the very man you want; a young man to whom I believe I render
a service in naming him to you. You will see by his letter,
herewith enclosed, that deeds of beneficence ought not to be done
hap-hazard. Nothing needs more reflection than a good action. We
never know whether that which seems best at one moment may not
prove an evil later. The exercise of beneficence, as I have lived
to discover, is to usurp the role of Destiny.

As she read that sentence Madame Graslin let fall the letter and was thoughtful for several minutes.

"My God!" she said at last, "when wilt thou cease to strike me down on all sides?"

Then she took up the letter and continued reading it:

Gerard seems to me to have a cool head and an ardent heart; that's
the sort of man you want. Paris is just now a hotbed of new
doctrines; I should be delighted to have the lad removed from the
traps which ambitious minds are setting for the generous youth of
France. While I do not altogether approve of the narrow and
stupefying life of the provinces, neither do I like the passionate
life of Paris, with its ardor of reformation, which is driving
youth into so many unknown ways. You alone know my opinions; to my
mind the moral world revolves upon its own axis, like the material
world. My poor protege demands (as you will see from his letter)
things impossible. No power can resist ambitions so violent, so
imperious, so absolute, as those of to-day. I am in favor of low
levels and slowness in political change; I dislike these social
overturns to which ambitious minds subject us.

To you I confide these principles of a monarchical and prejudiced
old man, because you are discreet. Here I hold my tongue in the
midst of worthy people, who the more they fail the more they
believe in progress; but I suffer deeply at the irreparable evils
already inflicted on our dear country.

I have replied to the enclosed letter, telling my young man that a
worthy task awaits him. He will go to see you, and though his
letter will enable you to judge of him, you had better study him
still further before committing yourself,--though you women
understand many things from the mere look of a man. However, all
the men whom you employ, even the most insignificant, ought to be
thoroughly satisfactory to you. If you don't like him don't take
him; but if he suits you, my dear child, I beg you to cure him of
his ill-disguised ambition. Make him take to a peaceful, happy,
rural life, where true beneficence is perpetually exercised; where
the capacities of great and strong souls find continual exercise,
and they themselves discover daily fresh sources of admiration in
the works of Nature, and in real ameliorations, real progress, an
occupation worthy of any man.

I am not oblivious of the fact that great ideas give birth to
great actions; but as those ideas are necessarily few and far
between, I think it may be said that usually things are more
useful than ideas. He who fertilizes a corner of the earth, who
brings to perfection a fruit-tree, who makes a turf on a thankless
soil, is far more useful in his generation than he who seeks new
theories for humanity. How, I ask you, has Newton's science
changed the condition of the country districts? Oh! my dear, I
have always loved you; but to-day I, who fully understand what you
are about to attempt, I adore you.

No one at Limoges forgets you; we all admire your grand resolution
to benefit Montegnac. Be a little grateful to us for having soul
enough to admire a noble action, and do not forget that the first
of your admirers is also your first friend.

F. Grossetete.

The enclosed letter was as follows:--

To Monsieur Grossetete:

Monsieur,--You have been to me a father when you might have been
only a mere protector, and therefore I venture to make you a
rather sad confidence. It is to you alone, you who have made me
what I am, that I can tell my troubles.

I am afflicted with a terrible malady, a cruel moral malady. In my
soul are feelings and in my mind convictions which make me utterly
unfit for what the State and society demand of me. This may seem
to you ingratitude; it is only the statement of a condition. When
I was twelve years old you, my generous god-father, saw in me, the
son of a mere workman, an aptitude for the exact sciences and a
precocious desire to rise in life. You favored my impulse toward
better things when my natural fate was to stay a carpenter like my
father, who, poor man, did not live long enough to enjoy my
advancement. Indeed, monsieur, you did a good thing, and there is
never a day that I do not bless you for it. It may be that I am
now to blame; but whether I am right or wrong it is very certain
that I suffer. In making my complaint to you I feel that I take
you as my judge like God Himself. Will you listen to my story and
grant me your indulgence?

Between sixteen and eighteen years of age I gave myself to the
study of the exact sciences with an ardor, you remember, that made
me ill. My future depended on my admission to the Ecole
Polytechnique. At that time my studies overworked my brain, and I
came near dying; I studied night and day; I did more than the
nature of my organs permitted. I wanted to pass such satisfying
examinations that my place in the Ecole would be not only secure,
but sufficiently advanced to release me from the cost of my
support, which I did not want you to pay any longer.

I triumphed! I tremble to-day as I think of the frightful
conscription (if I may so call it) of brains delivered over yearly
to the State by family ambition. By insisting on these severe
studies at the moment when a youth attains his various forms of
growth, the authorities produce secret evils and kill by midnight
study many precious faculties which later would have developed
both strength and grandeur. The laws of nature are relentless;
they do not yield in any particular to the enterprises or the
wishes of society. In the moral order as in the natural order all
abuses must be paid for; fruits forced in a hot-house are produced
at the tree's expense and often at the sacrifice of the goodness
of its product. La Quintinie killed the orange-trees to give Louis
XIV.