A Drama on the Seashore, Honoré de Balzac [guided reading books txt] 📗

told his wife to bring him his wedding-clothes, and ordered her to put on hers. He dressed himself. When dressed, he fetched his brother, and told him to watch before the door, and warn him of any noise on either of the beaches,--that of Croisic, or that of Guerande. Then he loaded a gun, and placed it at a corner of the fireplace. Jacques came home late; he had drunk and gambled till ten o'clock, and had to get back by way of the Carnouf point. His uncle heard his hail, and he went over and fetched him, but said nothing. When Jacques entered the house, his father said to him,--

"'Sit there,' pointing to the stool. 'You are,' he said, 'before your father and mother, whom you have offended, and who will now judge you.'

"At this Jacques began to howl, for his father's face was all distorted. His mother was rigid as an oar.

"'If you shout, if you stir, if you do not sit still on that stool,' said Pierre, aiming the gun at him, 'I will shoot you like a dog.'

"Jacques was mute as a fish. The mother said nothing.

"'Here,' said Pierre, 'is a piece of paper which wrapped a Spanish gold piece. That piece of gold was in your mother's bed; she alone knew where it was. I found that paper in the water when I landed here to-day. You gave a piece of Spanish gold this night to Mere Fleurant, and your mother's piece is no longer in her bed. Explain all this.'

"Jacques said he had not taken his mother's money, and that the gold piece was one he had brought from Nantes.

"'I am glad of it,' said Pierre; 'now prove it.'

"'I had it all along.'

"'You did not take the gold piece belonging to your mother?'

"'No.'

"'Will you swear it on your eternal life?'

"He was about to swear; his mother raised her eyes to him, and said:--

"'Jacques, my child, take care; do not swear if it is not true; you can repent, you can amend; there is still time.'

"And she wept.

"'You are a this and a that,' he said; 'you have always wanted to ruin me.'

"Cambremer turned white and said,--

"'Such language to your mother increases your crime. Come, to the point! Will you swear?'

"'Yes.'

"'Then,' Pierre said, 'was there upon your gold piece the little cross which the sardine merchant who paid it to me scratched on ours?'

"Jacques broke down and wept.

"'Enough,' said Pierre. 'I shall not speak to you of the crimes you have committed before this. I do not choose that a Cambremer should die on a scaffold. Say your prayers and make haste. A priest is coming to confess you.'

"The mother had left the room; she could not hear her son condemned. After she had gone, Joseph Cambremer, the uncle, brought in the rector of Piriac, to whom Jacques would say nothing. He was shrewd; he knew his father would not kill him until he had made his confession.

"'Thank you, and excuse us,' said Cambremer to the priest, when he saw Jacques' obstinacy. 'I wished to give a lesson to my son, and will ask you to say nothing about it. As for you,' he said to Jacques, 'if you do not amend, the next offence you commit will be your last; I shall end it without confession.'

"And he sent him to bed. The lad thought he could still get round his father. He slept. His father watched. When he saw that his son was soundly asleep, he covered his mouth with tow, blindfolded him tightly, bound him hand and foot--'He raged, he wept blood,' my mother heard Cambremer say to the lawyer. The mother threw herself at the father's feet.

"'He is judged and condemned,' replied Pierre; 'you must now help me carry him to the boat.'

"She refused; and Cambremer carried him alone; he laid him in the bottom of the boat, tied a stone to his neck, took the oars and rowed out of the cove to the open sea, till he came to the rock where he now is. When the poor mother, who had come up here with her brother-in-law, cried out, 'Mercy, mercy!' it was like throwing a stone at a wolf. There was a moon, and she saw the father casting her son into the water; her son, the child of her womb, and as there was no wind, she heard _blouf_! and then nothing--neither sound nor bubble. Ah! the sea is a fine keeper of what it gets. Rowing inshore to stop his wife's cries, Cambremer found her half-dead. The two brothers couldn't carry her the whole distance home, so they had to put her into the boat which had just served to kill her son, and they rowed back round the tower by the channel of Croisic. Well, well! the belle Brouin, as they called her, didn't last a week. She died begging her husband to burn that accursed boat. Oh, he did it! As for him, he became I don't know what; he staggered about like a man who can't carry his wine. Then he went away and was gone ten days, and after he returned he put himself where you saw him, and since he has been there he has never said one word."

The fisherman related this history rapidly and more simply than I can write it. The lower classes make few comments as they relate a thing; they tell the fact that strikes them, and present it as they felt it. This tale was made as sharply incisive as the blow of an axe.

"I shall not go to Batz," said Pauline, when we came to the upper shore of the lake.

We returned to Croisic by the salt marshes, through the labyrinth of which we were guided by our fisherman, now as silent as ourselves. The inclination of our souls was changed. We were both plunged into gloomy reflections, saddened by the recital of a drama which explained the sudden presentiment which had seized us on seeing Cambremer. Each of us had enough knowledge of life to divine all that our guide had not told of that triple existence. The anguish of those three beings rose up before us as if we had seen it in a drama, culminating in that of the father expiating his crime. We dared not look at the rock where sat the fatal man who held the whole countryside in awe. A few clouds dimmed the skies; mists were creeping up from the horizon. We walked through a landscape more bitterly gloomy than any our eyes had ever rested on, a nature that seemed sickly, suffering, covered with salty crust, the eczema, it might be called, of earth. Here, the soil was mapped out in squares of unequal size and shape, all encased with enormous ridges or embankments of gray earth and filled with water, to the surface of which the salt scum rises. These gullies, made by the hand of man, are again divided by causeways, along which the laborers pass, armed with long rakes, with which they drag this scum to the bank, heaping it on platforms placed at equal distances when the salt is fit to handle.

For two hours we skirted the edge of this melancholy checkerboard, where salt has stifled all forms of vegetation, and where no one ever comes but a few "paludiers," the local name given to the laborers of the salt marshes. These men, or rather this clan of Bretons, wear a special costume: a white jacket, something like that of brewers. They marry among themselves. There is no instance of a girl of the tribe having ever married any man who was not a paludier.

The horrible aspects of these marshes, these sloughs, the mud of which was systematically raked, the dull gray earth that the Breton flora held in horror, were in keeping with the gloom that filled our souls. When we reached a spot where we crossed an arm of the sea, which no doubt serves to feed the stagnant salt-pools, we noticed with relief the puny vegetation which sprouted through the sand of the beach. As we crossed, we saw the island on which the Cambremers had lived; but we turned away our heads.

Arriving at the hotel, we noticed a billiard-table, and finding that it was the only billiard-table in Croisic, we made our preparations to leave during the night. The next day we went to Guerande. Pauline was still sad, and I myself felt a return of that fever of the brain which will destroy me. I was so cruelly tortured by the visions that came to me of those three lives, that Pauline said at last,--

"Louis, write it all down; that will change the nature of the fever within you."

So I have written you this narrative, dear uncle; but the shock of such an event has made me lose the calmness I was beginning to gain from sea-bathing and our stay in this place.


ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Note: A Drama on the Seashore is also known as A Seaside Tragedy and is referred to by that title in other addendums.

Cambremer, Pierre
Beatrix

Lambert, Louis
Louis Lambert
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Lefebvre
Louis Lambert

Villenoix, Pauline Salomon de
Louis Lambert
The Vicar of Tours

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Publication Date: 07-19-2010

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