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The Vicar of Tours

by Honore de Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

June, 1998  [Etext #1345]


The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Vicar of Tours, by de Balzac
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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [e-mail].
Proofed by Dagny ([e-mail]).





THE VICAR OF TOURS

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC



Translated By
Katharine Prescott Wormeley




DEDICATION

To David, Sculptor:

The permanence of the work on which I inscribe your name--
twice made illustrious in this century--is very problematical;
whereas you have graven mine in bronze which survives nations
--if only in their coins. The day may come when numismatists,
discovering amid the ashes of Paris existences perpetuated by
you, will wonder at the number of heads crowned in your
atelier and endeavour to find in them new dynasties.

To you, this divine privilege; to me, gratitude.

De Balzac.




THE VICAR OF TOURS


I

Early in the autumn of 1826 the Abbe Birotteau, the principal
personage of this history, was overtaken by a shower of rain as he
returned home from a friend's house, where he had been passing the
evening. He therefore crossed, as quickly as his corpulence would
allow, the deserted little square called "The Cloister," which lies
directly behind the chancel of the cathedral of Saint-Gatien at Tours.

The Abbe Birotteau, a short little man, apoplectic in constitution and
about sixty years old, had already gone through several attacks of
gout. Now, among the petty miseries of human life the one for which
the worthy priest felt the deepest aversion was the sudden sprinkling
of his shoes, adorned with silver buckles, and the wetting of their
soles. Notwithstanding the woollen socks in which at all seasons he
enveloped his feet with the extreme care that ecclesiastics take of
themselves, he was apt at such times to get them a little damp, and
the next day gout was sure to give him certain infallible proofs of
constancy. Nevertheless, as the pavement of the Cloister was likely to
be dry, and as the abbe had won three francs ten sous in his rubber
with Madame de Listomere, he bore the rain resignedly from the middle
of the place de l'Archeveche, where it began to come down in earnest.
Besides, he was fondling his chimera,--a desire already twelve years
old, the desire of a priest, a desire formed anew every evening and
now, apparently, very near accomplishment; in short, he had wrapped
himself so completely in the fur cape of a canon that he did not feel
the inclemency of the weather. During the evening several of the
company who habitually gathered at Madame de Listomere's had almost
guaranteed to him his nomination to the office of canon (then vacant
in the metropolitan Chapter of Saint-Gatien), assuring him that no one
deserved such promotion as he, whose rights, long overlooked, were
indisputable.

If he had lost the rubber, if he had heard that his rival, the Abbe
Poirel, was named canon, the worthy man would have thought the rain
extremely chilling; he might even have thought ill of life. But it so
chanced that he was in one of those rare moments when happy inward
sensations make a man oblivious of discomfort. In hastening his steps
he obeyed a more mechanical impulse, and truth (so essential in a
history of manners and morals) compels us to say that he was thinking
of neither rain nor gout.

In former days there was in the Cloister, on the side towards the
Grand'Rue, a cluster of houses forming a Close and belonging to the
cathedral, where several of the dignitaries of the Chapter lived.
After the confiscation of ecclesiastical property the town had turned
the passage through this close into a narrow street, called the Rue de
la Psalette, by which pedestrians passed from the Cloister to the
Grand'Rue. The name of this street, proves clearly enough that the
precentor and his pupils and those connected with the choir formerly
lived there. The other side, the left side, of the street is occupied
by a single house, the walls of which are overshadowed by the
buttresses of Saint-Gatien, which have their base in the narrow little
garden of the house, leaving it doubtful whether the cathedral was
built before or after this venerable dwelling. An archaeologist
examining the arabesques, the shape of the windows, the arch of the
door, the whole exterior of the house, now mellow with age, would see
at once that it had always been a part of the magnificent edifice with
which it is blended.

An antiquary (had there been one at Tours,--one of the least literary
towns in all France) would even discover, where the narrow street
enters the Cloister, several vestiges of an old arcade, which formerly
made a portico to these ecclesiastical dwellings, and was, no doubt,
harmonious in style with the general character of the architecture.

The house of which we speak, standing on the north side of the
cathedral, was always in the shadow thrown by that vast edifice, on
which time had cast its dingy mantle, marked its furrows, and shed its
chill humidity, its lichen, mosses, and rank herbs. The darkened
dwelling was wrapped in silence, broken only by the bells, by the
chanting of the offices heard through the windows of the church, by
the call of the jackdaws nesting in the belfries. The region is a
desert of stones, a solitude with a character of its own, an arid
spot, which could only be inhabited by beings who had either attained
to absolute nullity, or were gifted with some abnormal strength of
soul. The house in question had always been occupied by abbes, and it
belonged to an old maid named Mademoiselle Gamard. Though the property
had been bought from the national domain under the Reign of Terror by
the father of Mademoiselle Gamard, no one objected under the
Restoration to the old maid's retaining it, because she took priests
to board and was very devout; it may be that religious persons gave
her credit for the intention of leaving the property to the Chapter.

The Abbe Birotteau was making his way to this house, where he had
lived for the last two years. His apartment had been (as was now the
canonry) an object of envy and his "hoc erat in votis" for a dozen
years. To be Mademoiselle Gamard's boarder and to become a canon were
the two great desires of his life; in fact they do present accurately
the ambition of a priest, who, considering himself on the highroad to
eternity, can wish for nothing in this world but good lodging, good
food, clean garments, shoes with silver buckles, a sufficiency of
things for the needs of the animal, and a canonry to satisfy self-
love, that inexpressible sentiment which follows us, they say, into
the presence of God,--for there are grades among the saints. But the
covetous desire for the apartment which the Abbe Birotteau was now
inhabiting (a very harmless desire in the eyes of worldly people) had
been to the abbe nothing less than a passion, a passion full of
obstacles, and, like more guilty passions, full of hopes, pleasures,
and remorse.

The interior arrangements of the house did not allow Mademoiselle
Gamard to take more than two lodgers. Now, for about twelve years
before the day when Birotteau went to live with her she had undertaken
to keep in health and contentment two priests; namely, Monsieur l'Abbe
Troubert and Monsieur l'Abbe Chapeloud. The Abbe Troubert still lived.
The Abbe Chapeloud was dead; and Birotteau had stepped into his place.

The late Abbe Chapeloud, in life a canon of Saint-Gatien, had been an
intimate friend of the Abbe Birotteau. Every time that the latter paid
a visit to the canon he had constantly admired the apartment, the
furniture and the library. Out of this admiration grew the desire to
possess these beautiful things. It had been impossible for the Abbe
Birotteau to stifle this desire; though it often made him suffer
terribly when he reflected that the death of his best friend could
alone satisfy his secret covetousness, which increased as time went
on. The Abbe Chapeloud and his friend Birotteau were not rich. Both
were sons of peasants; and their slender savings had been spent in the
mere costs of living during the disastrous years of the Revolution.
When Napoleon restored the Catholic worship the Abbe Chapeloud was
appointed canon of the cathedral and Birotteau was made vicar of it.
Chapeloud then went to board with Mademoiselle Gamard. When Birotteau
first came to visit his friend, he thought the arrangement of the
rooms excellent, but he noticed nothing more. The outset of this
concupiscence of chattels was very like that of a true passion, which
often begins, in a young man, with cold admiration for a woman whom he
ends in loving forever.

The apartment, reached by a stone staircase, was on the side of the
house that faced south. The Abbe Troubert occupied the ground-floor,
and Mademoiselle Gamard the first floor of the main building, looking
on the street. When Chapeloud took possession of his rooms they were
bare of furniture, and the ceilings were blackened with smoke. The
stone mantelpieces, which were very badly cut, had never been painted.
At first, the only furniture the poor canon could put in was a bed, a
table, a few chairs, and the books he possessed. The apartment was
like a beautiful woman in rags. But two or three years later, an old
lady having left the Abbe Chapeloud two thousand francs, he spent that
sum on the purchase of an oak bookcase, the relic of a chateau pulled
down by the Bande Noire, the carving of which deserved the admiration
of all artists. The abbe made the purchase less because it was very
cheap than because the dimensions of the bookcase exactly fitted the
space it was to fill in his gallery. His savings enabled him to
renovate the whole gallery, which up to this time had been neglected
and shabby. The floor was carefully waxed, the ceiling whitened, the
wood-work painted to resemble the grain and knots of oak. A long table
in ebony and two cabinets by Boulle completed the decoration, and gave
to this gallery a certain air that was full of character. In the
course of two years the liberality of devout persons, and legacies,
though small ones, from pious penitents, filled the shelves of the
bookcase, till then half empty. Moreover, Chapeloud's uncle, an old
Oratorian, had left him his collection in folio of the Fathers of the
Church, and several other important works that were precious to a
priest.

Birotteau, more and more surprised by the successive improvements of
the gallery, once so bare, came by degrees to a condition of
involuntary envy. He wished he could possess that apartment, so
thoroughly in keeping with the gravity of ecclestiastical life. The
passion increased from day to day. Working, sometimes for days
together, in this retreat, the vicar could appreciate the silence and
the peace that reigned there. During the following year the Abbe
Chapeloud turned a small room into an oratory, which his pious friends
took pleasure in beautifying. Still later, another lady gave the canon
a set of furniture for his bedroom, the covering of which she had
embroidered under the eyes of the worthy man without his ever
suspecting its destination. The bedroom then had the same effect upon
the vicar that the gallery had long had; it dazzled him. Lastly, about
three years before the Abbe Chapeloud's death, he completed the
comfort of his apartment by decorating the salon. Though the furniture
was plainly covered in red Utrecht velvet, it fascinated Birotteau.
From the day when the canon's friend first laid eyes on the red damask
curtains, the mahogany furniture, the Aubusson carpet which adorned
the vast room, then lately painted, his envy of Chapeloud's apartment
became a monomania hidden within his breast. To live there, to sleep
in that bed with the silk curtains where the canon slept, to have all
Chapeloud's comforts about him, would be, Birotteau felt, complete
happiness; he saw nothing beyond it. All the envy, all the ambition
which the things of this world give birth to in the hearts of other
men concentrated themelves for Birotteau in the deep and secret
longing he felt for an apartment like that which the Abbe Chapeloud
had created for himself. When his friend fell ill he went to him out
of true affection; but all the same, when he first heard of his
illness, and when he sat by his bed to keep him company, there arose
in the depths of his consciousness, in spite of himself, a crowd of
thoughts the simple formula of which was always, "If Chapeloud dies I
can have this apartment." And yet--Birotteau having an excellent
heart, contracted ideas, and a limited mind--he did not go so far as
to think of means by which to make his friend bequeath to him the
library and the furniture.

The Abbe Chapeloud, an amiable, indulgent egoist, fathomed his
friend's desires--not a difficult thing to do--and forgave them; which
may seem less easy to a priest; but it must be remembered that the
vicar, whose friendship was faithful, did not fail to take a daily
walk with his friend along their usual path in the Mail de Tours,
never once depriving him of an instant of the time devoted for over
twenty years to that exercise. Birotteau, who regarded his secret
wishes as crimes, would have been capable, out of contrition, of the
utmost devotion to his friend. The latter paid his debt of gratitude
for a friendship so ingenuously sincere by saying, a few days before
his death, as the vicar sat by him reading the "Quotidienne" aloud:
"This time you will certainly get the apartment. I feel it is all over
with me now."

Accordingly, it was found that the Abbe Chapeloud had left his library
and all his furniture to his friend Birotteau. The possession of these
things, so keenly desired, and the prospect of being taken to board by
Mademoiselle Gamard, certainly did allay the grief which Birotteau
felt at the death of his friend the canon. He might not have been
willing to resuscitate him; but he mourned him. For several days he
was like Gargantus, who, when his wife died in giving birth to
Pantagruel, did not know whether to rejoice at the birth of a son or
grieve at having buried his good Babette, and therefore cheated
himself by rejoicing at the death of his wife, and deploring the
advent of Pantagruel.

The Abbe Birotteau spent the first days of his mourning in verifying
the books in HIS library, in making use of HIS furniture, in examining
the whole of his inheritance, saying in a tone which, unfortunately,
was not noted at the time, "Poor Chapeloud!" His joy and his grief so
completely absorbed him that he felt no pain when he found that the
office of canon, in which the late Chapeloud had hoped his friend
Birotteau might succeed him, was given to another. Mademoiselle Gamard
having cheerfully agreed to take the vicar to board, the latter was
thenceforth a participator in all those felicities of material comfort
of which the deceased canon had been wont to boast.

Incalculable they were! According to the Abbe Chapeloud none of the
priests who inhabited the city of Tours, not even the archbishop, had
ever been the object of such minute and delicate attentions as those
bestowed by Mademoiselle Gamard on her two lodgers. The first words
the canon said to his friend when they met for their walk on the Mail
referred usually to the succulent dinner he had just eaten; and it was
a very rare thing if during the walks of each week he did not say at
least fourteen times, "That excellent spinster certainly has a
vocation for serving ecclesiastics."

"Just think," the canon would say to Birotteau, "that for twelve
consecutive years nothing has ever been amiss,--linen in perfect
order, bands, albs, surplices; I find everything in its place, always
in sufficient quantity, and smelling of orris-root. My furniture is
rubbed and kept so bright that I don't know when I have seen any dust
--did you ever see a speck of it in my rooms? Then the firewood is so
well selected. The least little things are excellent. In fact,
Mademoiselle Gamard keeps an incessant watch over my wants. I can't
remember having rung twice for anything--no matter what--in ten years.
That's what I call living! I never have to look for a single thing,
not even my slippers. Always a good fire, always a good dinner. Once
the bellows annoyed me, the nozzle was choked up; but I only mentioned
it once, and the next day Mademoiselle gave me a very pretty pair,
also those nice tongs you see me mend the fire with."

For all answer Birotteau would say, "Smelling of orris-root!" That
"smelling of orris-root" always affected him. The canon's remarks
revealed ideal joys to the poor vicar, whose bands and albs were the
plague of his life, for he was totally devoid of method and often
forgot to order his dinner. Therefore, if he saw Mademoiselle Gamard
at Saint-Gatien while saying mass or taking round the plate, he never
failed to give her a kindly and benevolent look,--such a look as Saint
Teresa might have cast to heaven.

Though the comforts which all creatures desire, and for which he had
so often longed, thus fell to his share, the Abbe Birotteau, like the
rest of the world, found it difficult, even for a priest, to live
without something to hanker for. Consequently, for the last eighteen
months he had replaced his two satisfied passions by an ardent longing
for a canonry. The title of Canon had become to him very much what a
peerage is to a plebeian minister. The prospect of an appointment,
hopes of which had just been held out to him at Madame de Listomere's,
so completely turned his head that he did not observe until he reached
his own door that he had left his umbrella behind him. Perhaps, even
then, if the rain were not falling in torrents he might not have
missed it, so absorbed was he in the pleasure of going over and over
in his mind what had been said to him on the subject of his promotion
by the company at Madame de Listomere's,--an old lady with whom he
spent every Wednesday evening.

The vicar rang loudly, as if to let the servant know she was not to
keep him waiting. Then he stood close to the door to avoid, if he
could, getting showered; but the drip from the roof fell precisely on
the toes of his shoes, and the wind blew gusts of rain into his face
that were much like a shower-bath. Having calculated the time necesary
for the woman to leave the kitchen and pull the string of the outer
door, he rang again, this time in a manner that resulted in a very
significant peal of the bell.

"They can't be out," he said to himself, not hearing any movement on
the premises.

Again he rang, producing a sound that echoed sharply through the house
and was taken up and repeated by all the echoes of the cathedral, so
that no one could avoid waking up at the remonstrating racket.
Accordingly, in a few moments, he heard, not without some pleasure in
his wrath, the wooden shoes of the servant-woman clacking along the
paved path which led to the outer door. But even then the discomforts
of the gouty old gentleman were not so quickly over as he hoped.
Instead of pulling the string, Marianne was obliged to turn the lock
of the door with its heavy key, and pull back all the bolts.

"Why did you let me ring three times in such weather?" said the vicar.

"But, monsieur, don't you see the door was locked? We have all been in
bed ever so long; it struck a quarter to eleven some time ago.
Mademoiselle must have thought you were in."

"You saw me go out, yourself. Besides, Mademoiselle knows very well I
always go to Madame de Listomere's on Wednesday evening."

"I only did as Mademoiselle told me, monsieur."

These words struck the vicar a blow, which he felt the more because
his late revery had made him completely happy. He said nothing and
followed Marianne towards the kitchen to get his candlestick, which he
supposed had been left there as usual. But instead of entering the
kitchen Marianne went on to his own apartments, and there the vicar
beheld his candlestick on a table close to the door of the red salon,
in a sort of antechamber formed by the landing of the staircase, which
the late canon had inclosed with a glass partition. Mute with
amazement, he entered his bedroom hastily, found no fire, and called
to Marianne, who had not had time to get downstairs.

"You have not lighted the fire!" he said.

"Beg pardon, Monsieur l'abbe, I did," she said; "it must have gone
out."

Birotteau looked again at the hearth, and felt convinced that the fire
had been out since morning.

"I must dry my feet," he said. "Make the fire."

Marianne obeyed with the haste of a person who wants to get back to
her night's rest. While looking about him for his slippers, which were
not in the middle of his bedside carpet as usual, the abbe took mental
notes of the state of Marianne's dress, which convinced him that she
had not got out of bed to open the door as she said she had. He then
recollected that for the last two weeks he had been deprived of
various little attentions which for eighteen months had made life
sweet to him. Now, as the nature of narrow minds induces them to study
trifles, Birotteau plunged suddenly into deep meditation on these four
circumstances, imperceptible in their meaning to others, but to him
indicative of four catastrophes. The total loss of his happiness was
evidently foreshadowed in the neglect to place his slipppers, in
Marianne's falsehood about the fire, in the unusual removal of his
candlestick to the table of the antechamber, and in the evident
intention to keep him waiting in the rain.

When the fire was burning on the hearth, and the lamp was lighted, and
Marianne had departed without saying, as usual, "Does Monsieur want
anything more?" the Abbe Birotteau let himself fall gently into the
wide and handsome easy-chair of his late friend; but there was
something mournful in the movement with which he dropped upon it. The
good soul was crushed by a presentiment of coming calamity. His eyes
roved successively to the handsome tall clock, the bureau, curtains,
chairs, carpets, to the stately bed, the basin of holy-water, the
crucifix, to a Virgin by Valentin, a Christ by Lebrun,--in short, to
all the accessories of this cherished room, while his face expressed
the anguish of the tenderest farewell that a lover ever took of his
first mistress, or an old man of his lately planted trees. The vicar
had just perceived, somewhat late it is true, the signs of a dumb
persecution instituted against him for the last three months by
Mademoiselle Gamard, whose evil intentions would doubtless have been
fathomed much sooner by a more intelligent man. Old maids have a
special talent for accentuating the words and actions which their
dislikes suggest to them. They scratch like cats. They not only wound
but they take pleasure in wounding, and in making their victim see
that he is wounded. A man of the world would never have allowed
himself to be scratched twice; the good abbe, on the contrary, had
taken several blows from those sharp claws before he could be brought
to believe in any evil intention.

But when he did perceive it, he set to work, with the inquisitorial
sagacity which priests acquire by directing consciences and burrowing
into the nothings of the confessional, to establish, as though it were
a matter of religious controversy, the following proposition:
"Admitting that Mademoiselle Gamard did not remember it was Madame de
Listomere's evening, and that Marianne did think I was home, and did
really forget to make my fire, it is impossible, inasmuch as I myself
took down my candlestick this morning, that Mademoiselle Gamard,
seeing it in her salon, could have supposed I had gone to bed. Ergo,
Mademoiselle Gamard intended that I should stand out in the rain, and,
by carrying my candlestick upstairs, she meant to make me understand
it. What does it all mean?" he said aloud, roused by the gravity of
these circumstances, and rising as he spoke to take off his damp
clothes, get into his dressing-gown, and do up his head for the night.
Then he returned from the bed to the fireplace, gesticulating, and
launching forth in various tones the following sentences, all of which
ended in a high falsetto key, like notes of interjection:

"What the deuce have I done to her? Why is she angry with me? Marianne
did NOT forget my fire! Mademoiselle told her not to light it! I must
be a child if I can't see, from the tone and manner she has been
taking to me, that I've done something to displease her. Nothing like
it ever happened to Chapeloud! I can't live in the midst of such
torments as--At my age--"

He went to bed hoping that the morrow might enlighten him on the
causes of the dislike which threatened to destroy forever the
happiness he had now enjoyed two years after wishing for it so long.
Alas! the secret reasons for the inimical feelings Mademoiselle Gamard
bore to the luckless abbe were fated to remain eternally unknown to
him,--not that they were difficult to fathom, but simply because he
lacked the good faith and candor by which great souls and scoundrels
look within and judge themselves. A man of genius or a trickster says
to himself, "I did wrong." Self-interest and native talent are the
only infallible and lucid guides. Now the Abbe Birotteau, whose
goodness amounted to stupidity, whose knowledge was only, as it were,
plastered on him by dint of study, who had no experience whatever of
the world and its ways, who lived between the mass and the
confessional, chiefly occupied in dealing the most trivial matters of
conscience in his capacity of confessor to all the schools in town and
to a few noble souls who rightly appreciated him,--the Abbe Birotteau
must be regarded as a great child, to whom most of the practices of
social life were utterly unknown. And yet, the natural selfishness of
all human beings, reinforced by the selfishness peculiar to the
priesthood and that of the narrow life of the provinces had
insensibly, and unknown to himself, developed within him. If any one
had felt enough interest in the good man to probe his spirit and prove
to him that in the numerous petty details of his life and in the
minute duties of his daily existence he was essentially lacking in the
self-sacrifice he professed, he would have punished and mortified
himself in good faith. But those whom we offend by such unconscious
selfishness pay little heed to our real innocence; what they want is
vengeance, and they take it. Thus it happened that Birotteau, weak
brother that he was, was made to undergo the decrees of that great
distributive Justice which goes about compelling the world to execute
its judgments,--called by ninnies "the misfortunes of life."

There was this difference between the late Chapeloud and the vicar,--
one was a shrewd and clever egoist, the other a simple-minded and
clumsy one. When the canon went to board with Mademoiselle Gamard he
knew exactly how to judge of his landlady's character. The
confessional had taught him to understand the bitterness that the
sense of being kept outside the social pale puts into the heart of an
old maid; he therefore calculated his own treatment of Mademoiselle
Gamard very wisely. She was then about thirty-eight years old, and
still retained a few pretensions, which, in well-behaved persons of
her condition, change, rather later, into strong personal self-esteem.
The canon saw plainly that to live comfortably with his landlady he
must pay her invariably the same attentions and be more infallible
than the pope himself. To compass this result, he allowed no points of
contact between himself and her except those that politeness demanded,
and those which necessarily exist between two persons living under the
same roof. Thus, though he and the Abbe Troubert took their regular
three meals a day, he avoided the family breakfast by inducing
Mademoiselle Gamard to send his coffee to his own room. He also
avoided the annoyance of supper by taking tea in the houses of friends
with whom he spent his evenings. In this way he seldom saw his
landlady except at dinner; but he always came down to that meal a few
minutes in advance of the hour. During this visit of courtesy, as it
may be called, he talked to her, for the twelve years he had lived
under her roof, on nearly the same topics, receiving from her the same
answers. How she had slept, her breakfast, the trivial domestic
events, her looks, her health, the weather, the time the church
services had lasted, the incidents of the mass, the health of such or
such a priest,--these were the subjects of their daily conversation.
During dinner he invariably paid her certain indirect compliments; the
fish had an excellent flavor; the seasoning of a sauce was delicious;
Mademoiselle Gamard's capacities and virtues as mistress of a
household were great. He was sure of flattering the old maid's vanity
by praising the skill with which she made or prepared her preserves
and pickles and pates and other gastronomical inventions. To cap all,
the wily canon never left his landlady's yellow salon after dinner
without remarking that there was no house in Tours where he could get
such good coffee as that he had just imbibed.

Thanks to this thorough understanding of Mademoiselle Gamard's
character, and to the science of existence which he had put in
practice for the last twelve years, no matter of discussion on the
internal arrangements of the household had ever come up between them.
The Abbe Chapeloud had taken note of the spinster's angles,
asperities, and crabbedness, and had so arranged his avoidance of her
that he obtained without the least difficulty all the concessions that
were necessary to the happiness and tranquility of his life. The
result was that Mademoiselle Gamard frequently remarked to her friends
and acquaintances that the Abbe Chapeloud was a very amiable man,
extremely easy to live with, and a fine mind.

As to her other lodger, the Abbe Troubert, she said absolutely nothing
about him. Completely involved in the round of her life, like a
satellite in the orbit of a planet, Troubert was to her a sort of
intermediary creature between the individuals of the human species and
those of the canine species; he was classed in her heart next, but
directly before, the place intended for friends but now occupied by a
fat and wheezy pug which she tenderly loved. She ruled Troubert
completely, and the intermingling of their interests was so obvious
that many persons of her social sphere believed that the Abbe Troubert
had designs on the old maid's property, and was binding her to him
unawares with infinite patience, and really directing her while he
seemed to be obeying without ever letting her percieve in him the
slightest wish on his part to govern her.

When the Abbe Chapeloud died, the old maid, who desired a lodger with
quiet ways, naturally thought of the vicar. Before the canon's will
was made known she had meditated offering his rooms to the Abbe
Troubert, who was not very comfortable on the ground-floor. But when
the Abbe Birotteau, on receiving his legacy, came to settle in writing
the terms of his board she saw he was so in love with the apartment,
for which he might now admit his long cherished desires, that she
dared not propose the exchange, and accordingly sacrificed her
sentiments of friendship to the demands of self-interest. But in order
to console her beloved canon, Mademoiselle took up the large white
Chateau-Renaud bricks that made the floors of his apartment and
replaced them by wooden floors laid in "point de Hongrie." She also
rebuilt a smoky chimney.

For twelve years the Abbe Birotteau had seen his friend Chapeloud in
that house without ever giving a thought to the motive of the canon's
extreme circumspection in his relations to Mademoiselle Gamard. When
he came himself to live with that saintly woman he was in the
condition of a lover on the point of being made happy. Even if he had
not been by nature purblind of intellect, his eyes were too dazzled by
his new happiness to allow him to judge of the landlady, or to reflect
on the limits which he ought to impose on their daily intercourse.
Mademoiselle Gamard, seen from afar and through the prism of those
material felicities which the vicar dreamed of enjoying in her house,
seemed to him a perfect being, a faultless Christian, essentially
charitable, the woman of the Gospel, the wise virgin, adorned by all
those humble and modest virtues which shed celestial fragrance upon
life.

So, with the enthusiasm of one who attains an object long desired,
with the candor of a child, and the blundering foolishness of an old
man utterly without worldly experience, he fell into the life of
Mademoiselle Gamard precisely as a fly is caught in a spider's web.
The first day that he went to dine and sleep at the house he was
detained in the salon after dinner, partly to make his landlady's
acquaintance, but chiefly by that inexplicable embarrassment which
often assails timid people and makes them fear to seem impolite by
breaking off a conversation in order to take leave. Consequently he
remained there the whole evening. Then a friend of his, a certain
Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix, came to see him, and this gave
Mademoiselle Gamard the happiness of forming a card-table; so that
when the vicar went to bed he felt that he had passed a very agreeable
evening. Knowing Mademoiselle Gamard and the Abbe Troubert but
slightly, he saw only the superficial aspects of their characters; few
persons bare their defects at once, they generally take on a becoming
veneer.

The worthy abbe was thus led to suggest to himself the charming plan
of devoting all his evenings to Mademoiselle Gamard, instead of
spending them, as Chapeloud had done, elsewhere. The old maid had for
years been possessed by a desire which grew stronger day by day. This
desire, often formed by old persons and even by pretty women, had
become in Mademoiselle Gamard's soul as ardent a longing as that of
Birotteau for Chapeloud's apartment; and it was strengthened by all
those feelings of pride, egotism, envy, and vanity which pre-exist in
the breasts of worldly people.

This history is of all time; it suffices to widen slightly the narrow
circle in which these personages are about to act to find the
coefficient reasons of events which take place in the very highest
spheres of social life.

Mademoiselle Gamard spent her evenings by rotation in six or eight
different houses. Whether it was that she disliked being obliged to go
out to seek society, and considered that at her age she had a right to
expect some return; or that her pride was wounded at receiving no
company in her house; or that her self-love craved the compliments she
saw her various hostesses receive,--certain it is that her whole
ambition was to make her salon a centre towards which a given number
of persons should nightly make their way with pleasure. One morning as
she left Saint-Gatien, after Birotteau and his friend Mademoiselle
Salomon had spent a few evenings with her and with the faithful and
patient Troubert, she said to certain of her good friends whom she met
at the church door, and whose slave she had hitherto considered
herself, that those who wished to see her could certainly come once a
week to her house, where she had friends enough to make a card-table;
she could not leave the Abbe Birotteau; Mademoiselle Salomon had not
missed a single evening that week; she was devoted to friends; and--et
cetera, et cetera. Her speech was all the more humbly haughty and
softly persuasive because Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix belonged
to the most aristocatic society in Tours. For though Mademoiselle
Salomon came to Mademoiselle Gamard's house solely out of friendship
for the vicar, the old maid triumphed in receiving her, and saw that,
thanks to Birotteau, she was on the point of succeeding in her great
desire to form a circle as numerous and as agreeable as those of
Madame de Listomere, Mademoiselle Merlin de la Blottiere, and other
devout ladies who were in the habit of receiving the pious and
ecclesiastical society of Tours.

But alas! the abbe Birotteau himself caused this cherished hope to
miscarry. Now if those persons who in the course of their lives have
attained to the enjoyment of a long desired happiness and have
therefore comprehended the joy of the vicar when he stepped into
Chapeloud's vacant place, they will also have gained some faint idea
of Mademoiselle Gamard's distress at the overthrow of her favorite
plan.

After accepting his happiness in the old maid's salon for six months
with tolerable patience, Birotteau deserted the house of an evening,
carrying with him Mademoiselle Salomon. In spite of her utmost efforts
the ambitious Gamard had recruited barely six visitors, whose faithful
attendance was more than problematical; and boston could not be played
night after night unless at least four persons were present. The
defection of her two principal guests obliged her therefore to make
suitable apologies and return to her evening visiting among former
friends; for old maids find their own company so distasteful that they
prefer to seek the doubtful pleasures of society.

The cause of this desertion is plain enough. Although the vicar was
one of those to whom heaven is hereafter to belong in virtue of the
decree "Blessed are the poor in spirit," he could not, like some
fools, endure the annoyance that other fools caused him. Persons
without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to
be amused by others, all the more because they are dull within. The
incarnation of ennui to which they are victims, joined to the need
they feel of getting a divorce from themselves, produces that passion
for moving about, for being somewhere else than where they are, which
distinguishes their species,--and also that of all beings devoid of
sensitiveness, and those who have missed their destiny, or who suffer
by their own fault.

Without really fathoming the vacuity and emptiness of Mademoiselle
Gamard's mind, or stating to himself the pettiness of her ideas, the
poor abbe perceived, unfortunately too late, the defects which she
shared with all old maids, and those which were peculiar to herself.
The bad points of others show out so strongly against the good that
they usually strike our eyes before they wound us. This moral
phenomenon might, at a pinch, be made to excuse the tendency we all
have, more or less, to gossip. It is so natural, socially speaking, to
laugh at the failings of others that we ought to forgive the ridicule
our own absurdities excite, and be annoyed only by calumny. But in
this instance the eyes of the good vicar never reached the optical
range which enables men of the world to see and evade their
neighbours' rough points. Before he could be brought to perceive the
faults of his landlady he was forced to undergo the warning which
Nature gives to all her creatures--pain.

Old maids who have never yielded in their habits of life or in their
characters to other lives and other characters, as the fate of woman
exacts, have, as a general thing, a mania for making others give way
to them. In Mademoiselle Gamard this sentiment had degenerated into
despotism, but a despotism that could only exercise itself on little
things. For instance (among a hundred other examples), the basket of
counters placed on the card-table for the Abbe Birotteau was to stand
exactly where she placed it; and the abbe annoyed her terribly by
moving it, which he did nearly every evening. How is this
sensitiveness stupidly spent on nothings to be accounted for? what is
the object of it? No one could have told in this case; Mademoiselle
Gamard herself knew no reason for it. The vicar, though a sheep by
nature, did not like, any more than other sheep, to feel the crook too
often, especially when it bristled with spikes. Not seeking to explain
to himself the patience of the Abbe Troubert, Birotteau simply
withdrew from the happiness which Mademoiselle Gamard believed that
she seasoned to his liking,--for she regarded happiness as a thing to
be made, like her preserves. But the luckless abbe made the break in a
clumsy way, the natural way of his own naive character, and it was not
carried out without much nagging and sharp-shooting, which the Abbe
Birotteau endeavored to bear as if he did not feel them.

By the end of the first year of his sojourn under Mademoiselle
Gamard's roof the vicar had resumed his former habits; spending two
evenings a week with Madame de Listomere, three with Mademoiselle
Salomon, and the other two with Mademoiselle Merlin de la Blottiere.
These ladies belonged to the aristocratic circles of Tourainean
society, to which Mademoiselle Gamard was not admitted. Therefore the
abbe's abandonment was the more insulting, because it made her feel
her want of social value; all choice implies contempt for the thing
rejected.

"Monsieur Birotteau does not find us agreeable enough," said the Abbe
Troubert to Mademoiselle Gamard's friends when she was forced to tell
them that her "evenings" must be given up. "He is a man of the world,
and a good liver! He wants fashion, luxury, witty conversation, and
the scandals of the town."

These words of course obliged Mademoiselle Gamard to defend herself at
Birotteau's expense.

"He is not much a man of the world," she said. "If it had not been for
the Abbe Chapeloud he would never have been received at Madame de
Listomere's. Oh, what didn't I lose in losing the Abbe Chapeloud! Such
an amiable man, and so easy to live with! In twelve whole years I
never had the slightest difficulty or disagreement with him."

Presented thus, the innocent abbe was considered by this bourgeois
society, which secretly hated the aristocratic society, as a man
essentially exacting and hard to get along with. For a week
Mademoiselle Gamard enjoyed the pleasure of being pitied by friends
who, without really thinking one word of what they said, kept
repeating to her: "How COULD he have turned against you?--so kind and
gentle as you are!" or, "Console yourself, dear Mademoiselle Gamard,
you are so well known that--" et cetera.

Nevertheless, these friends, enchanted to escape one evening a week in
the Cloister, the darkest, dreariest, and most out of the way corner
in Tours, blessed the poor vicar in their hearts.

Between persons who are perpetually in each other's company dislike or
love increases daily; every moment brings reasons to love or hate each
other more and more. The Abbe Birotteau soon became intolerable to
Mademoiselle Gamard. Eighteen months after she had taken him to board,
and at the moment when the worthy man was mistaking the silence of
hatred for the peacefulness of content, and applauding himself for
having, as he said, "managed matters so well with the old maid," he
was really the object of an underhand persecution and a vengeance
deliberately planned. The four marked circumstances of the locked
door, the forgotten slippers, the lack of fire, and the removal of the
candlestick, were the first signs that revealed to him a terrible
enmity, the final consequences of which were destined not to strike
him until the time came when they were irreparable.

As he went to bed the worthy vicar worked his brains--quite uselessly,
for he was soon at the end of them--to explain to himself the
extraordinarily discourteous conduct of Mademoiselle Gamard. The fact
was that, having all along acted logically in obeying the natural laws
of his own egotism, it was impossible that he should now perceive his
own faults towards his landlady.

Though the great things of life are simple to understand and easy to
express, the littlenesses require a vast number of details to explain
them. The foregoing events, which may be called a sort of prologue to
this bourgeois drama, in which we shall find passions as violent as
those excited by great interests, required this long introduction; and
it would have been difficult for any faithful historian to shorten the
account of these minute developments.


II

The next morning, on awaking, Birotteau thought so much of his
prospective canonry that he forgot the four circumstances in which he
had seen, the night before, such threatening prognostics of a future
full of misery. The vicar was not a man to get up without a fire. He
rang to let Marianne know that he was awake and that she must come to
him; then he remained, as his habit was, absorbed in somnolent
musings. The servant's custom was to make the fire and gently draw him
from his half sleep by the murmured sound of her movements,--a sort of
music which he loved. Twenty minutes passed and Marianne had not
appeared. The vicar, now half a canon, was about to ring again, when
he let go the bell-pull, hearing a man's step on the staircase. In a
minute more the Abbe Troubert, after discreetly knocking at the door,
obeyed Birotteau's invitation and entered the room. This visit, which
the two abbe's usually paid each other once a month, was no surprise
to the vicar. The canon at once exclaimed when he saw that Marianne
had not made the fire of his quasi-colleague. He opened the window and
called to her harshly, telling her to come at once to the abbe; then,
turning round to his ecclesiastical brother, he said, "If Mademoiselle
knew that you had no fire she would scold Marianne."

After this speech he inquired about Birotteau's health, and asked in a
gentle voice if he had had any recent news that gave him hopes of his
canonry. The vicar explained the steps he had taken, and told,
naively, the names of the persons with whom Madam de Listomere was
using her influence, quite unaware that Troubert had never forgiven
that lady for not admitting him--the Abbe Troubert, twice proposed by
the bishop as vicar-general!--to her house.

It would be impossible to find two figures which presented so many
contrasts to each other as those of the two abbes. Troubert, tall and
lean, was yellow and bilious, while the vicar was what we call,
familiarly, plump. Birotteau's face, round and ruddy, proclaimed a
kindly nature barren of ideas, while that of the Abbe Troubert, long
and ploughed by many wrinkles, took on at times an expression of
sarcasm, or else of contempt; but it was necessary to watch him very
closely before those sentiments could be detected. The canon's
habitual condition was perfect calmness, and his eyelids were usually
lowered over his orange-colored eyes, which could, however, give clear
and piercing glances when he liked. Reddish hair added to the gloomy
effect of this countenance, which was always obscured by the veil
which deep meditation drew across its features. Many persons at first
sight thought him absorbed in high and earnest ambitions; but those
who claimed to know him better denied that impression, insisting that
he was only stupidly dull under Mademoiselle Gamard's despotism, or
else worn out by too much fasting. He seldom spoke, and never laughed.
When it did so happen that he felt agreeably moved, a feeble smile
would flicker on his lips and lose itself in the wrinkles of his face.

Birotteau, on the other hand, was all expansion, all frankness; he
loved good things and was amused by trifles with the simplicity of a
man who knew no spite or malice. The Abbe Troubert roused, at first
sight, an involuntary feeling of fear, while the vicar's presence
brought a kindly smile to the lips of all who looked at him. When the
tall canon marched with solemn step through the naves and cloisters of
Saint-Gatien, his head bowed, his eye stern, respect followed him;
that bent face was in harmony with the yellowing arches of the
cathedral; the folds of his cassock fell in monumental lines that were
worthy of statuary. The good vicar, on the contrary, perambulated
about with no gravity at all. He trotted and ambled and seemed at
times to roll himself along. But with all this there was one point of
resemblance between the two men. For, precisely as Troubert's
ambitious air, which made him feared, had contributed probably to keep
him down to the insignificant position of a mere canon, so the
character and ways of Birotteau marked him out as perpetually the
vicar of the cathedral and nothing higher.

Yet the Abbe Troubert, now fifty years of age, had entirely removed,
partly by the circumspection of his conduct and the apparent lack of
all ambitions, and partly by his saintly life, the fears which his
suspected ability and his powerful presence had roused in the minds of
his superiors. His health having seriously failed him during the last
year, it seemed probable that he would soon be raised to the office of
vicar-general of the archbishopric. His competitors themselves desired
the appointment, so that their own plans might have time to mature
during the few remaining days which a malady, now become chronic,
might allow him. Far from offering the same hopes to rivals,
Birotteau's triple chin showed to all who wanted his coveted canonry
an evidence of the soundest health; even his gout seemed to them, in
accordance with the proverb, an assurance of longevity.

The Abbe Chapeloud, a man of great good sense, whose amiability had
made the leaders of the diocese and the members of the best society in
Tours seek his company, had steadily opposed, though secretly and with
much judgment, the elevation of the Abbe Troubert. He had even
adroitly managed to prevent his access to the salons of the best
society. Nevertheless, during Chapeloud's lifetime Troubert treated
him invariably with great respect, and showed him on all occasions the
utmost deference. This constant submission did not, however, change
the opinion of the late canon, who said to Birotteau during the last
walk they took together: "Distrust that lean stick of a Troubert,--
Sixtus the Fifth reduced to the limits of a bishopric!"

Such was the friend, the abiding guest of Mademoiselle Gamard, who now
came, the morning after the old maid had, as it were, declared war
against the poor vicar, to pay his brother a visit and show him marks
of friendship.

"You must excuse Marianne," said the canon, as the woman entered. "I
suppose she went first to my rooms. They are very damp, and I coughed
all night. You are most healthily situated here," he added, looking up
at the cornice.

"Yes; I am lodged like a canon," replied Birotteau.

"And I like a vicar," said the other, humbly.

"But you will soon be settled in the archbishop's palace," said the
kindly vicar, who wanted everybody to be happy.

"Yes, or in the cemetery, but God's will be done!" and Troubert raised
his eyes to heaven resignedly. "I came," he said, "to ask you to lend
me the 'Register of Bishops.' You are the only man in Tours I know who
has a copy."

"Take it out of my library," replied Birotteau, reminded by the
canon's words of the greatest happiness of his life.

The canon passed into the library and stayed there while the vicar
dressed. Presently the breakfast bell rang, and the gouty vicar
reflected that if it had not been for Troubert's visit he would have
had no fire to dress by. "He's a kind man," thought he.

The two priests went downstairs together, each armed with a huge folio
which they laid on one of the side tables in the dining-room.

"What's all that?" asked Mademoiselle Gamard, in a sharp voice,
addressing Birotteau. "I hope you are not going to litter up my
dining-room with your old books!"

"They are books I wanted," replied the Abbe Troubert. "Monsieur
Birotteau has been kind enough to lend them to me."

"I might have guessed it," she said, with a contemptuous smile.
"Monsieur Birotteau doesn't often read books of that size."

"How are you, mademoiselle?" said the vicar, in a mellifluous voice.

"Not very well," she replied, shortly. "You woke me up last night out
of my first sleep, and I was wakeful for the rest of the night." Then,
sitting down, she added, "Gentlemen, the milk is getting cold."

Stupefied at being so ill-naturedly received by his landlady, from
whom he half expected an apology, and yet alarmed, like all timid
people at the prospect of a discussion, especially if it relates to
themselves, the poor vicar took his seat in silence. Then, observing
in Mademoiselle Gamard's face the visible signs of ill-humour, he was
goaded into a struggle between his reason, which told him that he
ought not to submit to such discourtesy from a landlady, and his
natural character, which prompted him to avoid a quarrel.

Torn by this inward misery, Birotteau fell to examining attentively
the broad green lines painted on the oilcloth which, from custom
immemorial, Mademoiselle Gamard left on the table at breakfast-time,
without regard to the ragged edges or the various scars displayed on
its surface. The priests sat opposite to each other in cane-seated
arm-chairs on either side of the square table, the head of which was
taken by the landlady, who seemed to dominate the whole from a high
chair raised on casters, filled with cushions, and standing very near
to the dining-room stove. This room and the salon were on the ground-
floor beneath the salon and bedroom of the Abbe Birotteau.

When the vicar had received his cup of coffee, duly sugared, from
Mademoiselle Gamard, he felt chilled to the bone at the grim silence
in which he was forced to proceed with the usually gay function of
breakfast. He dared not look at Troubert's dried-up features, nor at
the threatening visage of the old maid; and he therefore turned, to
keep himself in countenance, to the plethoric pug which was lying on a
cushion near the stove,--a position that victim of obesity seldom
quitted, having a little plate of dainties always at his left side,
and a bowl of fresh water at his right.

"Well, my pretty," said the vicar, "are you waiting for your coffee?"

The personage thus addressed, one of the most important in the
household, though the least troublesome inasmuch as he had ceased to
bark and left the talking to his mistress, turned his little eyes,
sunk in rolls of fat, upon Birotteau. Then he closed them peevishly.
To explain the misery of the poor vicar it should be said that being
endowed by nature with an empty and sonorous loquacity, like the
resounding of a football, he was in the habit of asserting, without
any medical reason to back him, that speech favored digestion.
Mademoiselle Gamard, who believed in this hygienic doctrine, had not
as yet refrained, in spite of their coolness, from talking at meals;
though, for the last few mornings, the vicar had been forced to strain
his mind to find beguiling topics on which to loosen her tongue. If
the narrow limits of this history permitted us to report even one of
the conversations which often brought a bitter and sarcastic smile to
the lips of the Abbe Troubert, it would offer a finished picture of
the Boeotian life of the provinces. The singular revelations of the
Abbe Birotteau and Mademoiselle Gamard relating to their personal
opinions on politics, religion, and literature would delight observing
minds. It would be highly entertaining to transcribe the reasons on
which they mutually doubted the death of Napoleon in 1820, or the
conjectures by which they mutually believed that the Dauphin was
living,--rescued from the Temple in the hollow of a huge log of wood.
Who could have helped laughing to hear them assert and prove, by
reasons evidently their own, that the King of France alone imposed the
taxes, that the Chambers were convoked to destroy the clergy, that
thirteen hundred thousand persons had perished on the scaffold during
the Revolution? They frequently discussed the press, without either of
them having the faintest idea of what that modern engine really was.
Monsieur Birotteau listened with acceptance to Mademoiselle Gamard
when she told him that a man who ate an egg every morning would die in
a year, and that facts proved it; that a roll of light bread eaten
without drinking for several days together would cure sciatica; that
all the workmen who assisted in pulling down the Abbey Saint-Martin
had died in six months; that a certain prefect, under orders from
Bonaparte, had done his best to damage the towers of Saint-Gatien,--
with a hundred other absurd tales.

But on this occasion poor Birotteau felt he was tongue-tied, and he
resigned himself to eat a meal without engaging in conversation. After
a while, however, the thought crossed his mind that silence was
dangerous for his digestion, and he boldly remarked, "This coffee is
excellent."

That act of courage was completely wasted. Then, after looking at the
scrap of sky visible above the garden between the two buttresses of
Saint-Gatien, the vicar again summoned nerve to say, "It will be finer
weather to-day than it was yesterday."

At that remark Mademoiselle Gamard cast her most gracious look on the
Abbe Troubert, and immediately turned her eyes with terrible severity
on Birotteau, who fortunately by that time was looking on his plate.

No creature of the feminine gender was ever more capable of presenting
to the mind the elegaic nature of an old maid than Mademoiselle Sophie
Gamard. In order to describe a being whose character gives a momentous
interest to the petty events of the present drama and to the anterior
lives of the actors in it, it may be useful to give a summary of the
ideas which find expression in the being of an Old Maid,--remembering
always that the habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the
physical presence.

Though all things in society as well as in the universe are said to
have a purpose, there do exist here below certain beings whose purpose
and utility seem inexplicable. Moral philosophy and political economy
both condemn the individual who consumes without producing; who fills
a place on the earth but does not shed upon it either good or evil,--
for evil is sometimes good the meaning of which is not at once made
manifest. It is seldom that old maids of their own motion enter the
ranks of these unproductive beings. Now, if the consciousness of work
done gives to the workers a sense of satisfaction which helps them to
support life, the certainty of being a useless burden must, one would
think, produce a contrary effect, and fill the minds of such fruitless
beings with the same contempt for themselves which they inspire in
others. This harsh social reprobation is one of the causes which
contribute to fill the souls of old maids with the distress that
appears in their faces. Prejudice, in which there is truth, does cast,
throughout the world but especially in France, a great stigma on the
woman with whom no man has been willing to share the blessings or
endure the ills of life. Now, there comes to all unmarried women a
period when the world, be it right or wrong, condemns them on the fact
of this contempt, this rejection. If they are ugly, the goodness of
their characters ought to have compensated for their natural
imperfections; if, on the contrary, they are handsome, that fact
argues that their misfortune has some serious cause. It is impossible
to say which of the two classes is most deserving of rejection. If, on
the other hand, their celibacy is deliberate, if it proceeds from a
desire for independence, neither men nor mothers will forgive their
disloyalty to womanly devotion, evidenced in their refusal to feed
those passions which render their sex so affecting. To renounce the
pangs of womanhood is to abjure its poetry and cease to merit the
consolations to which mothers have inalienable rights.

Moreover, the generous sentiments, the exquisite qualities of a woman
will not develop unless by constant exercise. By remaining unmarried,
a creature of the female sex becomes void of meaning; selfish and
cold, she creates repulsion. This implacable judgment of the world is
unfortunately too just to leave old maids in ignorance of its causes.
Such ideas shoot up in their hearts as naturally as the effects of
their saddened lives appear upon their features. Consequently they
wither, because the constant expression of happiness which blooms on
the faces of other women and gives so soft a grace to their movements
has never existed for them. They grow sharp and peevish because all
human beings who miss their vocation are unhappy; they suffer, and
suffering gives birth to the bitterness of ill-will. In fact, before
an old maid blames herself for her isolation she blames others, and
there is but one step between reproach and the desire for revenge.

But more than this, the ill grace and want of charm noticeable in
these women are the necessary result of their lives. Never having felt
a desire to please, elegance and the refinements of good taste are
foreign to them. They see only themselves in themselves. This instinct
brings them, unconsciously, to choose the things that are most
convenient to themselves, at the sacrifice of those which might be
more agreeable to others. Without rendering account to their own minds
of the difference between themselves and other women, they end by
feeling that difference and suffering under it. Jealousy is an
indelible sentiment in the female breast. An old maid's soul is
jealous and yet void; for she knows but one side--the miserable side--
of the only passion men will allow (because it flatters them) to
women. Thus thwarted in all their hopes, forced to deny themselves the
natural development of their natures, old maids endure an inward
torment to which they never grow accustomed. It is hard at any age,
above all for a woman, to see a feeling of repulsion on the faces of
others, when her true destiny is to move all hearts about her to
emotions of grace and love. One result of this inward trouble is that
an old maid's glance is always oblique, less from modesty than from
fear and shame. Such beings never forgive society for their false
position because they never forgive themselves for it.

Now it is impossible for a woman who is perpetually at war with
herself and living in contradiction to her true life, to leave others
in peace or refrain from envying their happines. The whole range of
these sad truths could be read in the dulled gray eyes of Mademoiselle
Gamard; the dark circles that surrounded those eyes told of the inward
conflicts of her solitary life. All the wrinkles on her face were in
straight lines. The structure of her forehead and cheeks was rigid and
prominent. She allowed, with apparent indifference, certain scattered
hairs, once brown, to grow upon her chin. Her thin lips scarcely
covered teeth that were too long, though still quite white. Her
complexion was dark, and her hair, originally black, had turned gray
from frightful headaches,--a misfortune which obliged her to wear a
false front. Not knowing how to put it on so as to conceal the
junction between the real and the false, there were often little gaps
between the border of her cap and the black string with which this
semi-wig (always badly curled) was fastened to her head. Her gown,
silk in summer, merino in winter, and always brown in color, was
invariably rather tight for her angular figure and thin arms. Her
collar, limp and bent, exposed too much the red skin of a neck which
was ribbed like an oak-leaf in winter seen in the light. Her origin
explains to some extent the defects of her conformation. She was the
daughter of a wood-merchant, a peasant, who had risen from the ranks.
She might have been plump at eighteen, but no trace remained of the
fair complexion and pretty color of which she was wont to boast. The
tones of her flesh had taken the pallid tints so often seen in
"devotes." Her aquiline nose was the feature that chiefly proclaimed
the despotism of her nature, and the flat shape of her forehead the
narrowness of her mind. Her movements had an odd abruptness which
precluded all grace; the mere motion with which she twitched her
handkerchief from her bag and blew her nose with a loud noise would
have shown her character and habits to a keen observer. Being rather
tall, she held herself very erect, and justified the remark of a
naturalist who once explained the peculiar gait of old maids by
declaring that their joints were consolidating. When she walked her
movements were not equally distributed over her whole person, as they
are in other women, producing those graceful undulations which are so
attractive. She moved, so to speak, in a single block, seeming to
advance at each step like the statue of the Commendatore. When she
felt in good humour she was apt, like other old maids, to tell of the
chances she had had to marry, and of her fortunate discovery in time
of the want of means of her lovers,--proving, unconsciously, that her
worldly judgment was better than her heart.

This typical figure of the genus Old Maid was well framed by the
grotesque designs, representing Turkish landscapes, on a varnished
paper which decorated the walls of the dining-room. Mademoiselle
Gamard usually sat in this room, which boasted of two pier tables and
a barometer. Before the chair of each abbe was a little cushion
covered with worsted work, the colors of which were faded. The salon
in which she received company was worthy of its mistress. It will be
visible to the eye at once when we state that it went by the name of
the "yellow salon." The curtains were yellow, the furniture and walls
yellow; on the mantelpiece, surmounted by a mirror in a gilt frame,
the candlesticks and a clock all of crystal struck the eye with sharp
brilliancy. As to the private apartment of Mademoiselle Gamard, no one
had ever been permitted to look into it. Conjecture alone suggested
that it was full of odds and ends, worn-out furniture, and bits of
stuff and pieces dear to the hearts of all old maids.

Such was the woman destined to exert a vast influence on the last
years of the Abbe Birotteau.

For want of exercising in nature's own way the activity bestowed upon
women, and yet impelled to spend it in some way or other, Mademoiselle
Gamard had acquired the habit of using it in petty intrigues,
provincial cabals, and those self-seeking schemes which occupy, sooner
or later, the lives of all old maids. Birotteau, unhappily, had
developed in Sophie Gamard the only sentiments which it was possible
for that poor creature to feel,--those of hatred; a passion hitherto
latent under the calmness and monotony of provincial life, but which
was now to become the more intense because it was spent on petty
things and in the midst of a narrow sphere. Birotteau was one of those
beings who are predestined to suffer because, being unable to see
things, they cannot avoid them; to them the worst happens.

"Yes, it will be a fine day," replied the canon, after a pause,
apparently issuing from a revery and wishing to conform to the rules
of politeness.

Birotteau, frightened at the length of time which had elapsed between
the question and the answer,--for he had, for the first time in his
life, taken his coffee without uttering a word,--now left the dining-
room where his heart was squeezed as if in a vise. Feeling that the
coffee lay heavy on his stomach, he went to walk in a sad mood among
the narrow, box-edged garden paths which outlined a star in the little
garden. As he turned after making the first round, he saw Mademoiselle
Gamard and the Abbe Troubert standing stock-still and silent on the
threshold of the door,--he with his arms folded and motionless like a
statue on a tomb; she leaning against the blind door. Both seemed to
be gazing at him and counting his steps. Nothing is so embarrassing to
a creature naturally timid as to feel itself the object of a close
examination, and if that is made by the eyes of hatred, the sort of
suffering it causes is changed into intolerable martyrdom.

Presently Birotteau fancied he was preventing Mademoiselle Gamard and
the abbe from walking in the narrow path. That idea, inspired equally
by fear and kindness, became so strong that he left the garden and
went to the church, thinking no longer of his canonry, so absorbed was
he by the disheartening tyranny of the old maid. Luckily for him he
happened to find much to do at Saint-Gatien,--several funerals, a
marriage, and two baptisms. Thus employed he forgot his griefs. When
his stomach told him that dinner was ready he drew out his watch and
saw, not without alarm, that it was some minutes after four. Being
well aware of Mademoiselle Gamard's punctuality, he hurried back to
the house.

He saw at once on passing the kitchen door that the first course had
been removed. When he reached the dining-room the old maid said, with
a tone of voice in which were mingled sour rebuke and joy at being
able to blame him:--

"It is half-past four, Monsieur Birotteau. You know we are not to wait
for you."

The vicar looked at the clock in the dining-room, and saw at once, by
the way the gauze which protected it from dust had been moved, that
his landlady had opened the face of the dial and set the hands in
advance of the clock of the cathedral. He could make no remark. Had he
uttered his suspicion it would only have caused and apparently
justified one of those fierce and eloquent expositions to which
Mademoiselle Gamard, like other women of her class, knew very well how
to give vent in particular cases. The thousand and one annoyances
which a servant will sometimes make her master bear, or a woman her
husband, were instinctively divined by Mademoiselle Gamard and used
upon Birotteau. The way in which she delighted in plotting against the
poor vicar's domestic comfort bore all the marks of what we must call
a profoundly malignant genius. Yet she so managed that she was never,
so far as eye could see, in the wrong.


III

Eight days after the date on which this history began, the new
arrangements of the household and the relations which grew up between
the Abbe Birotteau and Mademoiselle Gamard revealed to the former the
existence of a plot which had been hatching for the last six months.

As long as the old maid exercised her vengeance in an underhand way,
and the vicar was able to shut his eyes to it and refuse to believe in
her malevolent intentions, the moral effect upon him was slight. But
since the affair of the candlestick and the altered clock, Birotteau
would doubt no longer that he was under an eye of hatred turned fully
upon him. From that moment he fell into despair, seeing everywhere the
skinny, clawlike fingers of Mademoiselle Gamard ready to hook into his
heart. The old maid, happy in a sentiment as fruitful of emotions as
that of vengeance, enjoyed circling and swooping above the vicar as a
bird of prey hovers and swoops above a field-mouse before pouncing
down upon it and devouring it. She had long since laid a plan which
the poor dumbfounded priest was quite incapable of imagining, and
which she now proceeded to unfold with that genius for little things
often shown by solitary persons, whose souls, incapable of feeling the
grandeur of true piety, fling themselves into the details of outward
devotion.

The petty nature of his troubles prevented Birotteau, always effusive
and liking to be pitied and consoled, from enjoying the soothing
pleasure of taking his friends into his confidence,--a last but cruel
aggravation of his misery. The little amount of tact which he derived
from his timidity made him fear to seem ridiculous in concerning
himself with such pettiness. And yet those petty things made up the
sum of his existence,--that cherished existence, full of busyness
about nothings, and of nothingness in its business; a colorless barren
life in which strong feelings were misfortunes, and the absence of
emotion happiness. The poor priest's paradise was changed, in a
moment, into hell. His sufferings became intolerable. The terror he
felt at the prospect of a discussion with Mademoiselle Gamard
increased day by day; the secret distress which blighted his life
began to injure his health. One morning, as he put on his mottled blue
stockings, he noticed a marked dimunition in the circumference of his
calves. Horrified by so cruel and undeniable a symptom, he resolved to
make an effort and appeal to the Abbe Troubert, requesting him to
intervene, officially, between Mademoiselle Gamard and himself.

When he found himself in presence of the imposing canon, who, in order
to receive his visitor in a bare and cheerless room, had hastily
quitted a study full of papers, where he worked incessantly, and where
no one was ever admitted, the vicar felt half ashamed at speaking of
Mademoiselle Gamard's provocations to a man who appeared to be so
gravely occupied. But after going through the agony of the mental
deliberations which all humble, undecided, and feeble persons endure
about things of even no importance, he decided, not without much
swelling and beating of the heart, to explain his position to the Abbe
Troubert.

The canon listened in a cold, grave manner, trying, but in vain, to
repress an occasional smile which to more intelligent eyes than those
of the vicar might have betrayed the emotions of a secret
satisfaction. A flame seemed to dart from his eyelids when Birotteau
pictured with the eloquence of genuine feeling the constant bitterness
he was made to swallow; but Troubert laid his hand above those lids
with a gesture very common to thinkers, maintaining the dignified
demeanor which was usual with him. When the vicar had ceased to speak
he would indeed have been puzzled had he sought on Troubert's face,
marbled with yellow blotches even more yellow than his usually bilious
skin, for any trace of the feelings he must have excited in that
mysterious priest.

After a moment's silence the canon made one of those answers which
required long study before their meaning could be thoroughly
perceived, though later they proved to reflecting persons the
astonishing depths of his spirit and the power of his mind. He simply
crushed Birotteau by telling him that "these things amazed him all the
more because he should never have suspected their existence were it
not for his brother's confession. He attributed such stupidity on his
part to the gravity of his occupations, his labors, the absorption in
which his mind was held by certain elevated thoughts which prevented
his taking due notice of the petty details of life." He made the vicar
observe, but without appearing to censure the conduct of a man whose
age and connections deserved all respect, that "in former days,
recluses thought little about their food and lodging in the solitude
of their retreats, where they were lost in holy contemplations," and
that "in our days, priests could make a retreat for themselves in the
solitude of their own hearts." Then, reverting to Birotteau's affairs,
he added that "such disagreements were a novelty to him. For twelve
years nothing of the kind had occurred between Mademoiselle Gamard and
the venerable Abbe Chapeloud. As for himself, he might, no doubt, be
an arbitrator between the vicar and their landlady, because his
friendship for that person had never gone beyond the limits imposed by
the Church on her faithful servants; but if so, justice demanded that
he should hear both sides. He certainly saw no change in Mademoiselle
Gamard, who seemed to him the same as ever; he had always submitted to
a few of her caprices, knowing that the excellent woman was kindness
and gentleness itself; the slight fluctuations of her temper should be
attributed, he thought, to sufferings caused by a pulmonary affection,
of which she said little, resigning herself to bear them in a truly
Christian spirit." He ended by assuring the vicar that "if he stayed a
few years longer in Mademoiselle Gamard's house he would learn to
understand her better and acknowledge the real value of her excellent
nature."

Birotteau left the room confounded. In the direful necessity of
consulting no one, he now judged Mademoiselle Gamard as he would
himself, and the poor man fancied that if he left her house for a few
days he might extinguish, for want of fuel, the dislike the old maid
felt for him. He accordingly resolved to spend, as he formerly did, a
week or so at a country-house where Madame de Listomere passed her
autumns, a season when the sky is usually pure and tender in Touraine.
Poor man! in so doing he did the thing that was most desired by his
terrible enemy, whose plans could only have been brought to nought by
the resistant patience of a monk. But the vicar, unable to divine
them, not understanding even his own affairs, was doomed to fall, like
a lamb, at the butcher's first blow.

Madame de Listomere's country-place, situated on the embankment which
lies between Tours and the heights of Saint-Georges, with a southern
exposure and surrounded by rocks, combined the charms of the country
with the pleasures of the town. It took but ten minutes from the
bridge of Tours to reach the house, which was called the "Alouette,"--
a great advantage in a region where no one will put himself out for
anything whatsoever, not even to seek a pleasure.

The Abbe Birotteau had been about ten days at the Alouette, when, one
morning while he was breakfasting, the porter came to say that
Monsieur Caron desired to speak with him. Monsieur Caron was
Mademoiselle Gamard's laywer, and had charge of her affairs.
Birotteau, not remembering this, and unable to think of any matter of
litigation between himself and others, left the table to see the
lawyer in a stage of great agitation. He found him modestly seated on
the balustrade of a terrace.

"Your intention of ceasing to reside in Mademoiselle Gamard's house
being made evident--" began the man of business.

"Eh! monsieur," cried the Abbe Birotteau, interrupting him, "I have
not the slightest intention of leaving it."

"Nevertheless, monsieur," replied the lawyer, "you must have had some
agreement in the matter with Mademoiselle, for she has sent me to ask
how long you intend to remain in the country. The event of a long
absence was not foreseen in the agreement, and may lead to a contest.
Now, Mademoiselle Gamard understanding that your board--"

"Monsieur," said Birotteau, amazed, and again interrupting the lawyer,
"I did not suppose it necessary to employ, as it were, legal means
to--"

"Mademoiselle Gamard, who is anxious to avoid all dispute," said
Monsieur Caron, "has sent me to come to an understanding with you."

"Well, if you will have the goodness to return to-morrow," said the
abbe, "I shall then have taken advice in the matter."

The quill-driver withdrew. The poor vicar, frightened at the
persistence with which Mademoiselle Gamard pursued him, returned to
the dining-room with his face so convulsed that everybody cried out
when they saw him: "What IS the matter, Monsieur Birotteau?"

The abbe, in despair, sat down without a word, so crushed was he by
the vague presence of approaching disaster. But after breakfast, when
his friends gathered round him before a comfortable fire, Birotteau
naively related the history of his troubles. His hearers, who were
beginning to weary of the monotony of a country-house, were keenly
interested in a plot so thoroughly in keeping with the life of the
provinces. They all took sides with the abbe against the old maid.

"Don't you see, my dear friend," said Madame de Listomere, "that the
Abbe Troubert wants your apartment?"

Here the historian ought to sketch this lady; but it occurs to him
that even those who are ignorant of Sterne's system of "cognomology,"
cannot pronounce the three words "Madame de Listomere" without
picturing her to themselves as noble and dignified, softening the
sternness of rigid devotion by the gracious elegance and the courteous
manners of the old monarchical regime; kind, but a little stiff;
slightly nasal in voice; allowing herself the perusal of "La Nouvelle
Heloise"; and still wearing her own hair.

"The Abbe Birotteau must not yield to that old vixen," cried Monsieur
de Listomere, a lieutenant in the navy who was spending a furlough
with his aunt. "If the vicar has pluck and will follow my suggestions
he will soon recover his tranquillity."

All present began to analyze the conduct of Mademoiselle Gamard with
the keen perceptions which characterize provincials, to whom no one
can deny the talent of knowing how to lay bare the most secret motives
of human actions.

"You don't see the whole thing yet," said an old landowner who knew
the region well. "There is something serious behind all this which I
can't yet make out. The Abbe Troubert is too deep to be fathomed at
once. Our dear Birotteau is at the beginning of his troubles. Besides,
would he be left in peace and comfort even if he did give up his
lodging to Troubert? I doubt it. If Caron came here to tell you that
you intended to leave Mademoiselle Gamard," he added, turning to the
bewildered priest, "no doubt Mademoiselle Gamard's intention is to
turn you out. Therefore you will have to go, whether you like it or
not. Her sort of people play a sure game, they risk nothing."

This old gentleman, Monsieur de Bourbonne, could sum up and estimate
provincial ideas as correctly as Voltaire summarized the spirit of his
times. He was thin and tall, and chose to exhibit in the matter of
clothes the quiet indifference of a landowner whose territorial value
is quoted in the department. His face, tanned by the Touraine sun, was
less intellectual than shrewd. Accustomed to weigh his words and
measure his actions, he concealed a profound vigilance behind a
misleading appearance of simplicity. A very slight observation of him
sufficed to show that, like a Norman peasant, he invariably held the
upper hand in business matters. He was an authority on wine-making,
the leading science of Touraine. He had managed to extend the meadow
lands of his domain by taking in a part of the alluvial soil of the
Loire without getting into difficulties with the State. This clever
proceeding gave him the reputation of a man of talent. If Monsieur de
Bourbonne's conversation pleased you and you were to ask who he was of
a Tourainean, "Ho! a sly old fox!" would be the answer of those who
were envious of him--and they were many. In Touraine, as in many of
the provinces, jealousy is the root of language.

Monsieur de Bourbonne's remark occasioned a momentary silence, during
which the persons who composed the little party seemed to be
reflecting. Meanwhile Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix was announced.
She came from Tours in the hope of being useful to the poor abbe, and
the news she brought completely changed the aspect of the affair. As
she entered, every one except Monsieur de Bourbonne was urging
Birotteau to hold his own against Troubert and Gamard, under the
auspices of the aristocractic society of the place, which would
certainly stand by him.

"The vicar-general, to whom the appointments to office are entrusted,
is very ill," said Mademoiselle Salomon, "and the archbishop has
delegated his powers to the Abbe Troubert provisionally. The canonry
will, of course, depend wholly upon him. Now last evening, at
Mademoiselle de la Blottiere's the Abbe Poirel talked about the
annoyances which the Abbe Birotteau had inflicted on Mademoiselle
Gamard, as though he were trying to cast all the blame on our good
abbe. 'The Abbe Birotteau,' he said, 'is a man to whom the Abbe
Chapeloud was absolutely necessary, and since the death of that
venerable man, he has shown'--and then came suggestions, calumnies!
you understand?"

"Troubert will be made vicar-general," said Monsieur de Bourbonne,
sententiously.

"Come!" cried Madame de Listomere, turning to Birotteau, "which do you
prefer, to be made a canon, or continue to live with Mademoiselle
Gamard?"

"To be a canon!" cried the whole company.

"Well, then," resumed Madame de Listomere, "you must let the Abbe
Troubert and Mademoiselle Gamard have things their own way. By sending
Caron here they mean to let you know indirectly that if you consent to
leave the house you shall be made canon,--one good turn deserves
another."

Every one present applauded Madame de Listomere's sagacity, except her
nephew the Baron de Listomere, who remarked in a comic tone to
Monsieur de Bourbonne, "I would like to have seen a fight between the
Gamard and the Birotteau."

But, unhappily for the vicar, forces were not equal between these
persons of the best society and the old maid supported by the Abbe
Troubert. The time soon came when the struggle developed openly, went
on increasing, and finally assumed immense proportions. By the advice
of Madame de Listomere and most of her friends, who were now eagerly
enlisted in a matter which threw such excitement into their vapid
provincial lives, a servant was sent to bring back Monsieur Caron. The
lawyer returned with surprising celerity, which alarmed no one but
Monsieur de Bourbonne.

"Let us postpone all decision until we are better informed," was the
advice of that Fabius in a dressing-gown, whose prudent reflections
revealed to him the meaning of these moves on the Tourainean chess-
board. He tried to enlighten Birotteau on the dangers of his position;
but the wisdom of the old "sly-boots" did not serve the passions of
the moment, and he obtained but little attention.

The conference between the lawyer and Birotteau was short. The vicar
came back quite terrified.

"He wants me to sign a paper stating my relinquishment of domicile."

"That's formidable language!" said the naval lieutenant.

"What does it mean?" asked Madame de Listomere.

"Merely that the abbe must declare in writing his intention of leaving
Mademoiselle Gamard's house," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, taking a
pinch of snuff.

"Is that all?" said Madame de Listomere. "Then sign it at once," she
added, turning to Birotteau. "If you positively decide to leave her
house, there can be no harm in declaring that such is your will."

Birotteau's will!

"That is true," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, closing his snuff-box with
a gesture the significance of which it is impossible to render, for it
was a language in itself. "But writing is always dangerous," he added,
putting his snuff-box on the mantelpiece with an air and manner that
alarmed the vicar.

Birotteau was so bewildered by the upsetting of all his ideas, by the
rapidity of events which found him defenceless, by the ease with which
his friends were settling the most cherished matters of his solitary
life, that he remained silent and motionless as if moonstruck,
thinking of nothing, though listening and striving to understand the
meaning of the rapid sentences the assembled company addressed to him.
He took the paper Monsieur Caron had given him and read it, as if he
were giving his mind to the lawyer's document, but the act was merely
mechanical. He signed the paper, by which he declared that he left
Mademoiselle Gamard's house of his own wish and will, and that he had
been fed and lodged while there according to the terms originally
agreed upon. When the vicar had signed the document, Monsieur Caron
took it and asked where his client was to send the things left by the
abbe in her house and belonging to him. Birotteau replied that they
could be sent to Madame de Listomere's,--that lady making him a sign
that she would receive him, never doubting that he would soon be a
canon. Monsieur de Bourbonne asked to see the paper, the deed of
relinquishment, which the abbe had just signed. Monsieur Caron gave it
to him.

"How is this?" he said to the vicar after reading it. "It appears that
written documents already exist between you and Mademoiselle Gamard.
Where are they? and what do they stipulate?"

"The deed is in my library," replied Birotteau.

"Do you know the tenor of it?" said Monsieur de Bourbonne to the
lawyer.

"No, monsieur," said Caron, stretching out his hand to regain the
fatal document.

"Ha!" thought the old man; "you know, my good friend, what that deed
contains, but you are not paid to tell us," and he returned the paper
to the lawyer.

"Where can I put my things?" cried Birotteau; "my books, my beautiful
book-shelves, and pictures, my red furniture, and all my treasures?"

The helpless despair of the poor man thus torn up as it were by the
roots was so artless, it showed so plainly the purity of his ways and
his ignorance of the things of life, that Madame de Listomere and
Mademoiselle de Salomon talked to him and consoled him in the tone
which mothers take when they promise a plaything to their children.

"Don't fret about such trifles," they said. "We will find you some
place less cold and dismal than Mademoiselle Gamard's gloomy house. If
we can't find anything you like, one or other of us will take you to
live with us. Come, let's play a game of backgammon. To-morrow you can
go and see the Abbe Troubert and ask him to push your claims to the
canonry, and you'll see how cordially he will receive you."

Feeble folk are as easily reassured as they are frightened. So the
poor abbe, dazzled at the prospect of living with Madame de Listomere,
forgot the destruction, now completed, of the happiness he had so long
desired, and so delightfully enjoyed. But at night before going to
sleep, the distress of a man to whom the fuss of moving and the
breaking up of all his habits was like the end of the world, came upon
him, and he racked his brains to imagine how he could ever find such a
good place for his book-case as the gallery in the old maid's house.
Fancying he saw his books scattered about, his furniture defaced, his
regular life turned topsy-turvy, he asked himself for the thousandth
time why the first year spent in Mademoiselle Gamard's house had been
so sweet, the second so cruel. His troubles were a pit in which his
reason floundered. The canonry seemed to him small compensation for so
much misery, and he compared his life to a stocking in which a single
dropped stitch resulted in destroying the whole fabric. Mademoiselle
Salomon remained to him. But, alas, in losing his old illusions the
poor priest dared not trust in any later friendship.

In the "citta dolente" of spinsterhood we often meet, especially in
France, with women whose lives are a sacrifice nobly and daily offered
to noble sentiments. Some remain proudly faithful to a heart which
death tore from them; martyrs of love, they learn the secrets of
womanhood only though their souls. Others obey some family pride
(which in our days, and to our shame, decreases steadily); these
devote themselves to the welfare of a brother, or to orphan nephews;
they are mothers while remaining virgins. Such old maids attain to the
highest heroism of their sex by consecrating all feminine feelings to
the help of sorrow. They idealize womanhood by renouncing the rewards
of woman's destiny, accepting its pains. They live surrounded by the
splendour of their devotion, and men respectfully bow the head before
their faded features. Mademoiselle de Sombreuil was neither wife nor
maid; she was and ever will be a living poem. Mademoiselle Salomon de
Villenoix belonged to the race of these heroic beings. Her devotion
was religiously sublime, inasmuch as it won her no glory after being,
for years, a daily agony. Beautiful and young, she loved and was
beloved; her lover lost his reason. For five years she gave herself,
with love's devotion, to the mere mechanical well-being of that
unhappy man, whose madness she so penetrated that she never believed
him mad. She was simple in manner, frank in speech, and her pallid
face was not lacking in strength and character, though its features
were regular. She never spoke of the events of her life. But at times
a sudden quiver passed over her as she listened to the story of some
sad or dreadful incident, thus betraying the emotions that great
sufferings had developed within her. She had come to live at Tours
after losing the companion of her life; but she was not appreciated
there at her true value and was thought to be merely an amiable woman.
She did much good, and attached herself, by preference, to feeble
beings. For that reason the poor vicar had naturally inspired her with
a deep interest.

Mademoiselle de Villenoix, who returned to Tours the next morning,
took Birotteau with her and set him down on the quay of the cathedral
leaving him to make his own way to the Cloister, where he was bent on
going, to save at least the canonry and to superintend the removal of
his furniture. He rang, not without violent palpitations of the heart,
at the door of the house whither, for fourteen years, he had come
daily, and where he had lived blissfully, and from which he was now
exiled forever, after dreaming that he should die there in peace like
his friend Chapeloud. Marianne was surprised at the vicar's visit. He
told her that he had come to see the Abbe Troubert, and turned towards
the ground-floor apartment where the canon lived; but Marianne called
to him:--

"Not there, monsieur le vicaire; the Abbe Troubert is in your old
apartment."

These words gave the vicar a frightful shock. He was forced to
comprehend both Troubert's character and the depths of the revenge so
slowly brought about when he found the canon settled in Chapeloud's
library, seated in Chapeloud's handsome armchair, sleeping, no doubt,
in Chapeloud's bed, and disinheriting at last the friend of Chapeloud,
the man who, for so many years, had confined him to Mademoiselle
Gamard's house, by preventing his advancement in the church, and
closing the best salons in Tours against him. By what magic wand had
the present transformation taken place? Surely these things belonged
to Birotteau? And yet, observing the sardonic air with which Troubert
glanced at that bookcase, the poor abbe knew that the future vicar-
general felt certain of possessing the spoils of those he had so
bitterly hated,--Chapeloud as an enemy, and Birotteau, in and through
whom Chapeloud still thwarted him. Ideas rose in the heart of the poor
man at the sight, and plunged him into a sort of vision. He stood
motionless, as though fascinated by Troubert's eyes which fixed
themselves upon him.

"I do not suppose, monsieur," said Birotteau at last, "that you intend
to deprive me of the things that belong to me. Mademoiselle may have
been impatient to give you better lodgings, but she ought to have been
sufficiently just to give me time to pack my books and remove my
furniture."

"Monsieur," said the Abbe Troubert, coldly, not permitting any sign of
emotion to appear on his face, "Mademoiselle Gamard told me yesterday
of your departure, the cause of which is still unknown to me. If she
installed me here at once, it was from necessity. The Abbe Poirel has
taken my apartment. I do not know if the furniture and things that are
in these rooms belong to you or to Mademoiselle; but if they are
yours, you know her scrupulous honesty; the sanctity of her life is
the guarantee of her rectitude. As for me, you are well aware of my
simple modes of living. I have slept for fifteen years in a bare room
without complaining of the dampness,--which, eventually will have
caused my death. Nevertheless, if you wish to return to this apartment
I will cede it to you willingly."

After hearing these terrible words, Birotteau forgot the canonry and
ran downstairs as quickly as a young man to find Mademoiselle Gamard.
He met her at the foot of the staircase, on the broad, tiled landing
which united the two wings of the house.

"Mademoiselle," he said, bowing to her without paying any attention to
the bitter and derisive smile that was on her lips, nor to the
extraordinary flame in her eyes which made them lucent as a tiger's,
"I cannot understand how it is that you have not waited until I
removed my furniture before--"

"What!" she said, interrupting him, "is it possible that your things
have not been left at Madame de Listomere's?"

"But my furniture?"

"Haven't you read your deed?" said the old maid, in a tone which would
have to be rendered in music before the shades of meaning that hatred
is able to put into the accent of every word could be fully shown.

Mademoiselle Gamard seemed to rise in stature, her eyes shone, her
face expanded, her whole person quivered with pleasure. The Abbe
Troubert opened a window to get a better light on the folio volume he
was reading. Birotteau stood as if a thunderbolt had stricken him.
Mademoiselle Gamard made his ears hum when she enunciated in a voice
as clear as a cornet the following sentence:--

"Was it not agreed that if you left my house your furniture should
belong to me, to indemnify me for the difference in the price of board
paid by you and that paid by the late venerable Abbe Chapeloud? Now,
as the Abbe Poirel has just been appointed canon--"

Hearing the last words Birotteau made a feeble bow as if to take leave
of the old maid, and left the house precipitately. He was afraid if he
stayed longer that he should break down utterly, and give too great a
triumph to his implacable enemies. Walking like a dunken man he at
last reached Madame de Listomere's house, where he found in one of the
lower rooms his linen, his clothing, and all his papers packed in a
trunk. When he eyes fell on these few remnants of his possessions the
unhappy priest sat down and hid his face in his hands to conceal his
tears from the sight of others. The Abbe Poirel was canon! He,
Birotteau, had neither home, nor means, nor furniture!

Fortunately Mademoiselle Salomon happened to drive past the house, and
the porter, who saw and comprehended the despair of the poor abbe,
made a sign to the coachman. After exchanging a few words with
Mademoiselle Salomon the porter persuaded the vicar to let himself be
placed, half dead as he was, in the carriage of his faithful friend,
to whom he was unable to speak connectedly. Mademoiselle Salomon,
alarmed at the momentary derangement of a head that was always feeble,
took him back at once to the Alouette, believing that this beginning
of mental alienation was an effect produced by the sudden news of Abbe
Poirel's nomination. She knew nothing, of course, of the fatal
agreement made by the abbe with Mademoiselle Gamard, for the excellent
reason that he did not know of it himself; and because it is in the
nature of things that the comical is often mingled with the pathetic,
the singular replies of the poor abbe made her smile.

"Chapeloud was right," he said; "he is a monster!"

"Who?" she asked.

"Chapeloud. He has taken all."

"You mean Poirel?"

"No, Troubert."

At last they reached the Alouette, where the priest's friends gave him
such tender care that towards evening he grew calmer and was able to
give them an account of what had happened during the morning.

The phlegmatic old fox asked to see the deed which, on thinking the
matter over, seemed to him to contain the solution of the enigma.
Birotteau drew the fatal stamped paper from his pocket and gave it to
Monsieur de Bourbonne, who read it rapidly and soon came upon the
following clause:--

"Whereas a difference exists of eight hundred francs yearly between
the price of board paid by the late Abbe Chapeloud and that at which
the said Sophie Gamard agrees to take into her house, on the above-
named stipulated condition, the said Francois Birotteau; and whereas
it is understood that the undersigned Francois Birotteau is not able
for some years to pay the full price charged to the other boarders of
Mademoiselle Gamard, more especially the Abbe Troubert; the said
Birotteau does hereby engage, in consideration of certain sums of
money advanced by the undersigned Sophie Gamard, to leave her, as
indemnity, all the household property of which he may die possessed,
or to transfer the same to her should he, for any reason whatever or
at any time, voluntarily give up the apartment now leased to him, and
thus derive no further profit from the above-named engagements made by
Mademoiselle Gamard for his benefit--"

"Confound her! what an agreement!" cried the old gentleman. "The said
Sophie Gamard is armed with claws."

Poor Birotteau never imagined in his childish brain that anything
could ever separate him from that house where he expected to live and
die with Mademoiselle Gamard. He had no remembrance whatever of that
clause, the terms of which he had not discussed, for they had seemed
quite just to him at a time when, in his great anxiety to enter the
old maid's house, he would readily have signed any and all legal
documents she had offered him. His simplicity was so guileless and
Mademoiselle Gamard's conduct so atrocious, the fate of the poor old
man seemed so deplorable, and his natural helplessness made him so
touching, that in the first glow of her indignation Madame de
Listomere exclaimed: "I made you put your signature to that document
which has ruined you; I am bound to give you back the happiness of
which I have deprived you."

"But," remarked Monsieur de Bourbonne, "that deed constitutes a fraud;
there may be ground for a lawsuit."

"Then Birotteau shall go to the law. If he loses at Tours he may win
at Orleans; if he loses at Orleans, he'll win in Paris," cried the
Baron de Listomere.

"But if he does go to law," continued Monsieur de Bourbonne, coldly,
"I should advise him to resign his vicariat."

"We will consult lawyers," said Madame de Listomere, "and go to law if
law is best. But this affair is so disgraceful for Mademoiselle
Gamard, and is likely to be so injurious to the Abbe Troubert, that I
think we can compromise."

After mature deliberation all present promised their assistance to the
Abbe Birotteau in the struggle which was now inevitable between the
poor priest and his antagonists and all their adherents. A true
presentiment, an infallible provincial instinct, led them to couple
the names of Gamard and Troubert. But none of the persons assembled on
this occasion in Madame de Listomere's salon, except the old fox, had
any real idea of the nature and importance of such a struggle.
Monsieur de Bourbonne took the poor abbe aside into a corner of the
room.

"Of the fourteen persons now present," he said, in a low voice, "not
one will stand by you a fortnight hence. If the time comes when you
need some one to support you you may find that I am the only person in
Tours bold enough to take up your defence; for I know the provinces
and men and things, and, better still, I know self-interests. But
these friends of yours, though full of the best intentions, are
leading you astray into a bad path, from which you won't be able to
extricate yourself. Take my advice; if you want to live in peace,
resign the vicariat of Saint-Gatien and leave Tours. Don't say where
you are going, but find some distant parish where Troubert cannot get
hold of you."

"Leave Tours!" exclaimed the vicar, with indescribable terror.

To him it was a kind of death; the tearing up of all the roots by
which he held to life. Celibates substitute habits for feelings; and
when to that moral system, which makes them pass through life instead
of really living it, is added a feeble character, external things
assume an extraordinary power over them. Birotteau was like certain
vegetables; transplant them, and you stop their ripening. Just as a
tree needs daily the same sustenance, and must always send its roots
into the same soil, so Birotteau needed to trot about Saint-Gatien,
and amble along the Mail where he took his daily walk, and saunter
through the streets, and visit the three salons where, night after
night, he played his whist or his backgammon.

"Ah! I did not think of it!" replied Monsieur de Bourbonne, gazing at
the priest with a sort of pity.

All Tours was soon aware that Madame la Baronne de Listomere, widow of
a lieutenant-general, had invited the Abbe Birotteau, vicar of Saint-
Gatien, to stay at her house. That act, which many persons questioned,
presented the matter sharply and divided the town into parties,
especially after Mademoiselle Salomon spoke openly of a fraud and a
lawsuit. With the subtle vanity which is common to old maids, and the
fanatic self-love which characterizes them, Mademoiselle Gamard was
deeply wounded by the course taken by Madame de Listomere. The
baroness was a woman of high rank, elegant in her habits and ways,
whose good taste, courteous manners, and true piety could not be
gainsaid. By receivng Birotteau as her guest she gave a formal denial
to all Mademoiselle Gamard's assertions, and indirectly censured her
conduct by maintaining the vicar's cause against his former landlady.

It is necessary for the full understanding of this history to explain
how the natural discernment and spirit of analysis which old women
bring to bear on the actions of others gave power to Mademoiselle
Gamard, and what were the resources on her side. Accompanied by the
taciturn Abbe Troubert she made a round of evening visits to five or
six houses, at each of which she met a circle of a dozen or more
persons, united by kindred tastes and the same general situation in
life. Among them were one or two men who were influenced by the gossip
and prejudices of their servants; five or six old maids who spent
their time in sifting the words and scrutinizing the actions of their
neighbours and others in the class below them; besides these, there
were several old women who busied themselves in retailing scandal,
keeping an exact account of each person's fortune, striving to control
or influence the actions of others, prognosticating marriages, and
blaming the conduct of friends as sharply as that of enemies. These
persons, spread about the town like the capillary fibres of a plant,
sucked in, with the thirst of a leaf for the dew, the news and the
secrets of each household, and transmitted them mechanically to the
Abbe Troubert, as the leaves convey to the branch the moisture they
absorb.

Accordingly, during every evening of the week, these good devotees,
excited by that need of emotion which exists in all of us, rendered an
exact account of the current condition of the town with a sagacity
worthy of the Council of Ten, and were, in fact, a species of police,
armed with the unerring gift of spying bestowed by passions. When they
had divined the secret meaning of some event their vanity led them to
appropriate to themselves the wisdom of their sanhedrim, and set the
tone to the gossip of their respective spheres. This idle but ever
busy fraternity, invisible, yet seeing all things, dumb, but
perpetually talking, possessed an influence which its nonentity seemed
to render harmless, though it was in fact terrible in its effects when
it concerned itself with serious interests. For a long time nothing
had entered the sphere of these existences so serious and so momentous
to each one of them as the struggle of Birotteau, supported by Madame
de Listomere, against Mademoiselle Gamard and the Abbe Troubert. The
three salons of Madame de Listomere and the Demoiselles Merlin de la
Blottiere and de Villenoix being considered as enemies by all the
salons which Mademoiselle Gamard frequented, there was at the bottom
of the quarrel a class sentiment with all its jealousies. It was the
old Roman struggle of people and senate in a molehill, a tempest in a
teacup, as Montesquieu remarked when speaking of the Republic of San
Marino, whose public offices are filled by the day only,--despotic
power being easily seized by any citizen.

But this tempest, petty as it seems, did develop in the souls of these
persons as many passions as would have been called forth by the
highest social interests. It is a mistake to think that none but souls
concerned in mighty projects, which stir their lives and set them
foaming, find time too fleeting. The hours of the Abbe Troubert fled
by as eagerly, laden with thoughts as anxious, harassed by despairs
and hopes as deep as the cruellest hours of the gambler, the lover, or
the statesman. God alone is in the secret of the energy we expend upon
our occult triumphs over man, over things, over ourselves. Though we
know not always whither we are going we know well what the journey
costs us. If it be permissible for the historian to turn aside for a
moment from the drama he is narrating and ask his readers to cast a
glance upon the lives of these old maids and abbes, and seek the cause
of the evil which vitiates them at their source, we may find it
demonstrated that man must experience certain passions before he can
develop within him those virtues which give grandeur to life by
widening his sphere and checking the selfishness which is inherent in
every created being.

Madame de Listomere returned to town without being aware that for the
previous week her friends had felt obliged to refute a rumour (at
which she would have laughed had she known if it) that her affection
for her nephew had an almost criminal motive. She took Birotteau to
her lawyer, who did not regard the case as an easy one. The vicar's
friends, inspired by the belief that justice was certain in so good a
cause, or inclined to procrastinate in a matter which did not concern
them personally, had put off bringing the suit until they returned to
Tours. Consequently the friends of Mademoiselle Gamard had taken the
initiative, and told the affair wherever they could to the injury of
Birotteau. The lawyer, whose practice was exclusively among the most
devout church people, amazed Madame de Listomere by advising her not
to embark on such a suit; he ended the consultation by saying that "he
himself would not be able to undertake it, for, according to the terms
of the deed, Mademoiselle Gamard had the law on her side, and in
equity, that is to say outside of strict legal justice, the Abbe
Birotteau would undoubtedly seem to the judges as well as to all
respectable laymen to have derogated from the peaceable, conciliatory,
and mild character hitherto attributed to him; that Mademoiselle
Gamard, known to be a kindly woman and easy to live with, had put
Birotteau under obligations to her by lending him the money he needed
to pay the legacy duties on Chapeloud's bequest without taking from
him a receipt; that Birotteau was not of an age or character to sign a
deed without knowing what it contained or understanding the importance
of it; that in leaving Mademoiselle Gamard's house at the end of two
years, when his friend Chapeloud had lived there twelve and Troubert
fifteen, he must have had some purpose known to himself only; and that
the lawsuit, if undertaken, would strike the public as an act of
ingratitude;" and so forth. Letting Birotteau go before them to the
staircase, the lawyer detained Madame de Listomere a moment to entreat
her, if she valued her own peace of mind, not to involve herself in
the matter.

But that evening the poor vicar, suffering the torments of a man under
sentence of death who awaits in the condemned cell at Bicetre the
result of his appeal for mercy, could not refrain from telling his
assembled friends the result of his visit to the lawyer.

"I don't know a single pettifogger in Tours," said Monsieur de
Bourbonne, "except that Radical lawyer, who would be willing to take
the case,--unless for the purpose of losing it; I don't advise you to
undertake it."

"Then it is infamous!" cried the navel lieutenant. "I myself will take
the abbe to the Radical--"

"Go at night," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, interrupting him.

"Why?"

"I have just learned that the Abbe Troubert is appointed vicar-general
in place of the other man, who died yesterday."

"I don't care a fig for the Abbe Troubert."

Unfortunately the Baron de Listomere (a man thirty-six years of age)
did not see the sign Monsieur de Bourbonne made him to be cautious in
what he said, motioning as he did so to a friend of Troubert, a
councillor of the Prefecture, who was present. The lieutenant
therefore continued:--

"If the Abbe Troubert is a scoundrel--"

"Oh," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, cutting him short, "why bring
Monsieur Troubert into a matter which doesn't concern him?"

"Not concern him?" cried the baron; "isn't he enjoying the use of the
Abbe Birotteau's household property? I remember that when I called on
the Abbe Chapeloud I noticed two valuable pictures. Say that they are
worth ten thousand francs; do you suppose that Monsieur Birotteau
meant to give ten thousand francs for living two years with that
Gamard woman,--not to speak of the library and furniture, which are
worth as much more?"

The Abbe Birotteau opened his eyes at hearing he had once possessed so
enormous a fortune.

The baron, getting warmer than ever, went on to say: "By Jove! there's
that Monsieur Salmon, formerly an expert at the Museum in Paris; he is
down here on a visit to his mother-in-law. I'll go and see him this
very evening with the Abbe Birotteau and ask him to look at those
pictures and estimate their value. From there I'll take the abbe to
the lawyer."

Two days after this conversation the suit was begun. This employment
of the Liberal laywer did harm to the vicar's cause. Those who were
opposed to the government, and all who were known to dislike the
priests, or religion (two things quite distinct which many persons
confound), got hold of the affair and the whole town talked of it. The
Museum expert estimated the Virgin of Valentin and the Christ of
Lebrun, two paintings of great beauty, at eleven thousand francs. As
to the bookshelves and the gothic furniture, the taste for such things
was increasing so rapidly in Paris that their immediate value was at
least twelve thousand. In short, the appraisal of the whole property
by the expert reached the sum of over thirty-six thousand francs. Now
it was very evident that Birotteau never intended to give Mademoiselle
Gamard such an enormous sum of money for the small amount he might owe
her under the terms of the deed; therefore he had, legally speaking,
equitable grounds on which to demand an amendment of the agreement; if
this were denied, Mademoiselle Gamard was plainly guilty of
intentional fraud. The Radical lawyer accordingly began the affair by
serving a writ on Mademoiselle Gamard. Though very harsh in language,
this document, strengthened by citations of precedents and supported
by certain clauses in the Code, was a masterpiece of legal argument,
and so evidently just in its condemnation of the old maid that thirty
or forty copies were made and maliciously distributed through the
town.


IV

A few days after this commencement of hostilities between Birotteau
and the old maid, the Baron de Listomere, who expected to be included
as captain of a corvette in a coming promotion lately announced by the
minister of the Navy, received a letter from one of his friends
warning him that there was some intention of putting him on the
retired list. Greatly astonished by this information he started for
Paris immediately, and went at once to the minister, who seemed to be
amazed himself, and even laughed at the baron's fears. The next day,
however, in spite of the minister's assurance, Monsieur de Listomere
made inquiries in the different offices. By an indiscretion (often
practised by heads of departments in favor of their friends) one of
the secretaries showed him a document confirming the fatal news, which
was only waiting the signature of the director, who was ill, to be
submitted to the minister.

The Baron de Listomere went immediately to an uncle of his, a deputy,
who could see the minister of the Navy at the chamber without loss of
time, and begged him to find out the real intentions of his Excellency
in a matter which threatened the loss of his whole future. He waited
in his uncle's carriage with the utmost anxiety for the end of the
session. His uncle came out before the Chamber rose, and said to him
at once as they drove away: "Why the devil have you meddled in a
priest's quarrel? The minister began by telling me you had put
yourself at the head of the Radicals in Tours; that your political
opinions were objectionable; you were not following in the lines of
the government,--with other remarks as much involved as if he were
addressing the Chamber. On that I said to him, 'Nonsense; let us come
to the point.' The end was that his Excellency told me frankly you
were in bad odor with the diocese. In short, I made a few inquiries
among my colleagues, and I find that you have been talking slightingly
of a certan Abbe Troubert, the vicar-general, but a very important
personage in the province, where he represents the Jesuits. I have
made myself responsible to the minister for your future conduct. My
good nephew, if you want to make your way be careful not to excite
ecclesiastical enmities. Go at once to Tours and try to make your
peace with that devil of a vicar-general; remember that such priests
are men with whom we absolutely MUST live in harmony. Good heavens!
when we are all striving and working to re-establish religion it is
actually stupid, in a lieutenant who wants to be made a captain, to
affront the priests. If you don't make up matters with that Abbe
Troubert you needn't count on me; I shall abandon you. The minister of
ecclesiastical affairs told me just now that Troubert was certain to
be made bishop before long; if he takes a dislike to our family he
could hinder me from being included in the next batch of peers. Don't
you understand?"

These words explained to the naval officer the nature of Troubert's
secret occupations, about which Birotteau often remarked in his silly
way: "I can't think what he does with himself,--sitting up all night."

The canon's position in the midst of his female senate, converted so
adroitly into provincial detectives, and his personal capacity, had
induced the Congregation of Jesus to select him out of all the
ecclesiastics in the town, as the secret proconsul of Touraine.
Archbishop, general, prefect, all men, great and small, were under his
occult dominion. The Baron de Listomere decided at once on his course.

"I shall take care," he said to his uncle, "not to get another round
shot below my water-line."

Three days after this diplomatic conference between the uncle and
nephew, the latter, returning hurriedly in a post-chaise, informed his
aunt, the very night of his arrival, of the dangers the family were
running if they peristed in supporting that "fool of a Birotteau." The
baron had detained Monsieur de Bourbonne as the old gentleman was
taking his hat and cane after the usual rubber of whist. The clear-
sightedness of that sly old fox seemed indispensable for an
understanding of the reefs among which the Listomere family suddenly
found themselves; and perhaps the action of taking his hat and cane
was only a ruse to have it whispered in his ear: "Stay after the
others; we want to talk to you."

The baron's sudden return, his apparent satisfaction, which was quite
out of keeping with a harrassed look that occasionally crossed his
face, informed Monsieur de Bourbonne vaguely that the lieutenant had
met with some check in his crusade against Gamard and Troubert. He
showed no surprise when the baron revealed the secret power of the
Jesuit vicar-general.

"I knew that," he said.

"Then why," cried the baroness, "did you not warn us?"

"Madame," he said, sharply, "forget that I was aware of the invisible
influence of that priest, and I will forget that you knew it equally
well. If we do not keep this secret now we shall be thought his
accomplices, and shall be more feared and hated than we are. Do as I
do; pretend to be duped; but look carefully where you set your feet. I
did warn you sufficiently, but you would not understand me, and I did
not choose to compromise myself."

"What must we do now?" said the baron.

The abandonment of Birotteau was not even made a question; it was a
first condition tactily accepted by the three deliberators.

"To beat a retreat with the honors of war has always been the triumph
of the ablest generals," replied Monsieur de Bourbonne. "Bow to
Troubert, and if his hatred is less strong than his vanity you will
make him your ally; but if you bow too low he will walk over you
rough-shod; make believe that you intend to leave the service, and
you'll escape him, Monsieur le baron. Send away Birotteau, madame, and
you will set things right with Mademoiselle Gamard. Ask the Abbe
Troubert, when you meet him at the archbishop's, if he can play whist.
He will say yes. Then invite him to your salon, where he wants to be
received; he'll be sure to come. You are a woman, and you can
certainly win a priest to your interests. When the baron is promoted,
his uncle peer of France, and Troubert a bishop, you can make
Birotteau a canon if you choose. Meantime yield,--but yield
gracefully, all the while with a slight menace. Your family can give
Troubert quite as much support as he can give you. You'll understand
each other perfectly on that score. As for you, sailor, carry your
deep-sea line about you."

"Poor Birotteau?" said the baroness.

"Oh, get rid of him at once," replied the old man, as he rose to take
leave. "If some clever Radical lays hold of that empty head of his, he
may cause you much trouble. After all, the court would certainly give
a verdict in his favour, and Troubert must fear that. He may forgive
you for beginning the struggle, but if they were defeated he would be
implacable. I have said my say."

He snapped his snuff-box, put on his overshoes, and departed.

The next day after breakfast the baroness took the vicar aside and
said to him, not without visible embarrassment:--

"My dear Monsieur Birotteau, you will think what I am about to ask of
you very unjust and very inconsistent; but it is necessary, both for
you and for us, that your lawsuit with Mademoiselle Gamard be
withdrawn by resigning your claims, and also that you should leave my
house."

As he heard these words the poor abbe turned pale.

"I am," she continued, "the innocent cause of your misfortunes, and,
moreover, if it had not been for my nephew you would never have begun
this lawsuit, which has now turned to your injury and to ours. But
listen to me."

She told him succinctly the immense ramifications of the affair, and
explained the serious nature of its consequences. Her own meditations
during the night had told her something of the probable antecedents of
Troubert's life; she was able, without misleading Birotteau, to show
him the net so ably woven round him by revenge, and to make him see
the power and great capacity of his enemy, whose hatred to Chapeloud,
under whom he had been forced to crouch for a dozen years, now found
vent in seizing Chapeloud's property and in persecuting Chapeloud in
the person of his friend. The harmless Birotteau clasped his hands as
if to pray, and wept with distress at the sight of human horrors that
his own pure soul was incapable of suspecting. As frightened as though
he had suddenly found himself at the edge of a precipice, he listened,
with fixed, moist eyes in which there was no expression, to the
revelations of his friend, who ended by saying: "I know the wrong I do
in abandoning your cause; but, my dear abbe, family duties must be
considered before those of friendship. Yield, as I do, to this storm,
and I will prove to you my gratitude. I am not talking of your worldly
interests, for those I take charge of. You shall be made free of all
such anxieties for the rest of your life. By means of Monsieur de
Bourbonne, who will know how to save appearances, I shall arrange
matters so that you shall lack nothing. My friend, grant me the right
to abandon you. I shall ever be your friend, though forced to conform
to the axioms of the world. You must decide."

The poor, bewildered abbe cried aloud: "Chapeloud was right when he
said that if Troubert could drag him by the feet out of his grave he
would do it! He sleeps in Chapeloud's bed!"

"There is no use in lamenting," said Madame de Listomere, "and we have
little time now left to us. How will you decide?"

Birotteau was too good and kind not to obey in a great crisis the
unreflecting impulse of the moment. Besides, his life was already in
the agony of what to him was death. He said, with a despairing look at
his protectress which cut her to the heart, "I trust myself to you--I
am but the stubble of the streets."

He used the Tourainean word "bourrier" which has no other meaning than
a "bit of straw." But there are pretty little straws, yellow,
polished, and shining, the delight of children, whereas the bourrier
is straw discolored, muddy, sodden in the puddles, whirled by the
tempest, crushed under feet of men.

"But, madame, I cannot let the Abbe Troubert keep Chapeloud's
portrait. It was painted for me, it belongs to me; obtain that for me,
and I will give up all the rest."

"Well," said Madame de Listomere. "I will go myself to Mademoiselle
Gamard." The words were said in a tone which plainly showed the
immense effort the Baronne de Listomere was making in lowering herself
to flatter the pride of the old maid. "I will see what can be done,"
she said; "I hardly dare hope anything. Go and consult Monsieur de
Bourbonne; ask him to put your renunciation into proper form, and
bring me the paper. I will see the archbishop, and with his help we
may be able to stop the matter here."

Birotteau left the house dismayed. Troubert assumed in his eyes the
dimensions of an Egyptian pyramid. The hands of that man were in
Paris, his elbows in the Cloister of Saint-Gatien.

"He!" said the victim to himself, "HE to prevent the Baron de
Listomere from becoming peer of France!--and, perhaps, 'by the help of
the archbishop we may be able to stop the matter here'!"

In presence of such great interests Birotteau felt he was a mere worm;
he judged himself harshly.

The news of Birotteau's removal from Madame de Listomere's house
seemed all the more amazing because the reason of it was wholly
impenetrable. Madame de Listomere said that her nephew was intending
to marry and leave the navy, and she wanted the vicar's apartment to
enlarge her own. Birotteau's relinquishment was still unknown. The
advice of Monsieur de Bourbonne was followed. Whenever the two facts
reached the ears of the vicar-general his self-love was certain to be
gratified by the assurance they gave that even if the Listomere family
did not capitulate they would at least remain neutral and tacitly
recognize the occult power of the Congregation,--to reconize it was,
in fact, to submit to it. But the lawsuit was still sub judice; his
opponents yielded and threatened at the same time.

The Listomeres had thus taken precisely the same attitude as the
vicar-general himself; they held themselves aloof, and yet were able
to direct others. But just at this crisis an event occurred which
complicated the plans laid by Monsieur de Bourbonne and the Listomeres
to quiet the Gamard and Troubert party, and made them more difficult
to carry out.

Mademoiselle Gamard took cold one evening in coming out of the
cathedral; the next day she was confined to her bed, and soon after
became dangerously ill. The whole town rang with pity and false
commiseration: "Mademoiselle Gamard's sensitive nature has not been
able to bear the scandal of this lawsuit. In spite of the justice of
her cause she was likely to die of grief. Birotteau has killed his
benefactress." Such were the speeches poured through the capillary
tubes of the great female conclave, and taken up and repeated by the
whole town of Tours.

Madame de Listomere went the day after Mademoiselle Gamard took cold
to pay the promised visit, and she had the mortification of that act
without obtaining any benefit from it, for the old maid was too ill to
see her. She then asked politely to speak to the vicar-general.

Gratified, no doubt, to receive in Chapeloud's library, at the corner
of the fireplace above which hung the two contested pictures, the
woman who had hitheto ignored him, Troubert kept the baroness waiting
a moment before he consented to admit her. No courtier and no
diplomatist ever put into a discussion of their personal interests or
into the management of some great national negotiation more
shrewdness, dissimulation, and ability than the baroness and the
priest displayed when they met face to face for the struggle.

Like the seconds or sponsors who in the Middle Age armed the champion,
and strengthened his valor by useful counsel until he entered the
lists, so the sly old fox had said to the baroness at the last moment:
"Don't forget your cue. You are a mediator, and not an interested
party. Troubert also is a mediator. Weigh your words; study the
inflection of the man's voice. If he strokes his chin you have got
him."

Some sketchers are fond of caricaturing the contrast often observable
between "what is said" and "what is thought" by the speaker. To catch
the full meaning of the duel of words which now took place between the
priest and the lady, it is necessary to unveil the thoughts that each
hid from the other under spoken sentences of apparent insignificance.
Madame de Listomere began by expressing the regret she had felt at
Birotteau's lawsuit; and then went on to speak of her desire to settle
the matter to the satisfaction of both parties.

"The harm is done, madame," said the priest, in a grave voice. "The
pious and excellent Mademoiselle Gamard is dying." ("I don't care a
fig for the old thing," thought he, "but I mean to put her death on
your shoulders and harass your conscience if you are such a fool as to
listen to it.")

"On hearing of her illness," replied the baroness, "I entreated
Monsieur Birotteau to relinquish his claims; I have brought the
document, intending to give it to that excellent woman." ("I see what
you mean, you wily scoundrel," thought she, "but we are safe now from
your calumnies. If you take this document you'll cut your own fingers
by admitting you are an accomplice.")

There was silence for a moment.

"Mademoiselle Gamard's temporal affairs do not concern me," said the
priest at last, lowering the large lids over his eagle eyes to veil
his emotions. ("Ho! ho!" thought he, "you can't compromise me. Thank
God, those damned lawyers won't dare to plead any cause that could
smirch me. What do these Listomeres expect to get by crouching in this
way?")

"Monsieur," replied the baroness, "Monsieur Birotteau's affairs are no
more mine than those of Mademoiselle Gamard are yours; but,
unfortunately, religion is injured by such a quarrel, and I come to
you as a mediator--just as I myself am seeking to make peace." ("We
are not decieving each other, Monsieur Troubert," thought she. "Don't
you feel the sarcasm of that answer?")

"Injury to religion, madame!" exclaimed the vicar-general. "Religion
is too lofty for the actions of men to injure." ("My religion is I,"
thought he.) "God makes no mistake in His judgments, madame; I
recognize no tribunal but His."

"Then, monsieur," she replied, "let us endeavor to bring the judgments
of men into harmony with the judgments of God." ("Yes, indeed, your
religion is you.")

The Abbe Troubert suddenly changed his tone.

"Your nephew has been to Paris, I believe." ("You found out about me
there," thought he; "you know now that I can crush you, you who dared
to slight me, and you have come to capitulate.")

"Yes, monsieur; thank you for the interest you take in him. He returns
to-night; the minister, who is very considerate of us, sent for him;
he does not want Monsieur de Listomere to leave the service."
("Jesuit, you can't crush us," thought she. "I understand your
civility.")

A moment's silence.

"I did not think my nephew's conduct in this affair quite the thing,"
she added; "but naval men must be excused; they know nothing of law."
("Come, we had better make peace," thought she; "we sha'n't gain
anything by battling in this way.")

A slight smile wandered over the priests face and was lost in its
wrinkles.

"He has done us the service of getting a proper estimate on the value
of those paintings," he said, looking up at the pictures. "They will
be a noble ornament to the chapel of the Virgin." ("You shot a sarcasm
at me," thought he, "and there's another in return; we are quits,
madame.")

"If you intend to give them to Saint-Gatien, allow me to offer frames
that will be more suitable and worthy of the place, and of the works
themselves." ("I wish I could force you to betray that you have taken
Birotteau's things for your own," thought she.)

"They do not belong to me," said the priest, on his guard.

"Here is the deed of relinquishment," said Madame de Listomere; "it
ends all discussion, and makes them over to Mademoiselle Gamard." She
laid the document on the table. ("See the confidence I place in you,"
thought she.) "It is worthy of you, monsieur," she added, "worthy of
your noble character, to reconcile two Christians,--though at present
I am not especially concerned for Monsieur Birotteau--"

"He is living in your house," said Troubert, interrupting her.

"No, monsieur, he is no longer there." ("That peerage and my nephew's
promotion force me to do base things," thought she.)

The priest remained impassible, but his calm exterior was an
indication of violent emotion. Monsieur Bourbonne alone had fathomed
the secret of that apparent tranquillity. The priest had triumphed!

"Why did you take upon yourself to bring that relinquishment," he
asked, with a feeling analogous to that which impels a woman to fish
for compliments.

"I could not avoid a feeling of compassion. Birotteau, whose feeble
nature must be well known to you, entreated me to see Madaemoiselle
Gamard and to obtain as the price of his renunciation--"

The priest frowned.

"of rights upheld by distinguished lawyers, the portrait of--"

Troubert looked fixedly at Madame de Listomere.

"the portrait of Chapeloud," she said, continuing: "I leave you to
judge of his claim." ("You will be certain to lose your case if we go
to law, and you know it," thought she.)

The tone of her voice as she said the words "distinguished lawyers"
showed the priest that she knew very well both the strength and
weakness of the enemy. She made her talent so plain to this
connoisseur emeritus in the course of a conversation which lasted a
long time in the tone here given, that Troubert finally went down to
Mademoiselle Gamard to obtain her answer to Birotteau's request for
the portrait.

He soon returned.

"Madame," he said, "I bring you the words of a dying woman. 'The Abbe
Chapeloud was so true a friend to me,' she said, 'that I cannot
consent to part with his picture.' As for me," added Troubert, "if it
were mine I would not yield it. My feelings to my late friend were so
faithful that I should feel my right to his portrait was above that of
others."

"Well, there's no need to quarrel over a bad picture." ("I care as
little about it as you do," thought she.) "Keep it, and I will have a
copy made of it. I take some credit to myself for having averted this
deplorable lawsuit; and I have gained, personally, the pleasure of
your acquaintance. I hear you have a great talent for whist. You will
forgive a woman for curiosity," she said, smiling. "If you will come
and play at my house sometimes you cannot doubt your welcome."

Troubert stroked his chin. ("Caught! Bourbonne was right!" thought
she; "he has his quantum of vanity!")

It was true. The vicar-general was feeling the delightful sensation
which Mirabeau was unable to subdue when in the days of his power he
found gates opening to his carriage which were barred to him in
earlier days.

"Madame," he replied, "my avocations prevent my going much into
society; but for you, what will not a man do?" ("The old maid is going
to die; I'll get a footing at the Listomere's, and serve them if they
serve me," thought he. "It is better to have them for friends than
enemies.")

Madame de Listomere went home, hoping that the archbishop would
complete the work of peace so auspiciously begun. But Birotteau was
fated to gain nothing by his relinquishment. Mademoiselle Gamard died
the next day. No one felt surprised when her will was opened to find
that she had left everything to the Abbe Troubert. Her fortune was
appraised at three hundred thousand francs. The vicar-general sent to
Madame de Listomere two notes of invitation for the services and for
the funeral procession of his friend; one for herself and one for her
nephew.

"We must go," she said.

"It can't be helped," said Monsieur de Bourbonne. "It is a test to
which Troubert puts you. Baron, you must go to the cemetery," he
added, turning to the lieutenant, who, unluckily for him, had not left
Tours.

The services took place, and were performed with unusual
ecclesiastical magnificence. Only one person wept, and that was
Birotteau, who, kneeling in a side chapel and seen by none, believed
himself guilty of the death and prayed sincerely for the soul of the
deceased, bitterly deploring that he was not able to obtain her
forgiveness before she died.

The Abbe Troubert followed the body of his friend to the grave; at the
verge of which he delivered a discourse in which, thanks to his
eloquence, the narrow life the old maid had lived was enlarged to
monumental proportions. Those present took particular note of the
following words in the peroration:--

"This life of days devoted to God and to His religion, a life adorned
with noble actions silently performed, and with modest and hidden
virtues, was crushed by a sorrow which we might call undeserved if we
could forget, here at the verge of this grave, that our afflictions
are sent by God. The numerous friends of this saintly woman, knowing
the innocence and nobility of her soul, foresaw that she would issue
safely from her trials in spite of the accusations which blasted her
life. It may be that Providence has called her to the bosom of God to
withdraw her from those trials. Happy they who can rest here below in
the peace of their own hearts as Sophie now is resting in her robe of
innocence among the blest."

"When he had ended his pompous discourse," said Monsieur de Bourbonne,
after relating the incidents of the internment to Madame de Listomere
when whist was over, the doors shut, and they were alone with the
baron, "this Louis XI. in a cassock--imagine him if you can!--gave a
last flourish to the sprinkler and aspersed the coffin with holy
water." Monsieur de Bourbonne picked up the tongs and imitated the
priest's gesture so satirically that the baron and his aunt could not
help laughing. "Not until then," continued the old gentleman, "did he
contradict himself. Up to that time his behavior had been perfect; but
it was no doubt impossible for him to put the old maid, whom he
despised so heartily and hated almost as much as he hated Chapeloud,
out of sight forever without allowing his joy to appear in that last
gesture."

The next day Mademoiselle Salomon came to breakfast with Madame de
Listomere, chiefly to say, with deep emotion: "Our poor Abbe Birotteau
has just received a frightful blow, which shows the most determined
hatred. He is appointed curate of Saint-Symphorien."

Saint-Symphorien is a suburb of Tours lying beyond the bridge. That
bridge, one of the finest monuments of French architecture, is
nineteen hundred feet long, and the two open squares which surround
each end are precisely alike.

"Don't you see the misery of it?" she said, after a pause, amazed at
the coldness with which Madame de Listomere received the news. "It is
just as if the abbe were a hundred miles from Tours, from his friends,
from everything! It is a frightful exile, and all the more cruel
because he is kept within sight of the town where he can hardly ever
come. Since his troubles he walks very feebly, yet he will have to
walk three miles to see his old friends. He has taken to his bed, just
now, with fever. The parsonage at Saint-Symphorien is very cold and
damp, and the parish is too poor to repair it. The poor old man will
be buried in a living tomb. Oh, it is an infamous plot!"

To end this history it will suffice to relate a few events in a simple
way, and to give one last picture of its chief personages.

Five months later the vicar-general was made Bishop of Troyes; and
Madame de Listomere was dead, leaving an annuity of fifteen hundred
francs to the Abbe Birotteau. The day on which the dispositions in her
will were made known Monseigneur Hyacinthe, Bishop of Troyes, was on
the point of leaving Tours to reside in his diocese, but he delayed
his departure on receiving the news. Furious at being foiled by a
woman to whom he had lately given his countenance while she had been
secretly holding the hand of a man whom he regarded as his enemy,
Troubert again threatened the baron's future career, and put in
jeopardy the peerage of his uncle. He made in the salon of the
archbishop, and before an assembled party, one of those priestly
speeches which are big with vengeance and soft with honied mildness.
The Baron de Listomere went the next day to see this implacable enemy,
who must have imposed sundry hard conditions on him, for the baron's
subsequent conduct showed the most entire submission to the will of
the terrible Jesuit.

The new bishop made over Mademoiselle Gamard's house by deed of gift
to the Chapter of the cathedral; he gave Chapeloud's books and
bookcases to the seminary; he presented the two disputed pictures to
the Chapel of the Virgin; but he kept Chapeloud's portrait. No one
knew how to explain this almost total renunciation of Mademoiselle
Gamard's bequest. Monsieur de Bourbonne supposed that the bishop had
secretly kept moneys that were invested, so as to support his rank
with dignity in Paris, where of course he would take his seat on the
Bishops' bench in the Upper Chamber. It was not until the night before
Monseigneur Troubert's departure from Tours that the sly old fox
unearthed the hidden reason of this strange action, the deathblow
given by the most persistent vengeance to the feeblest of victims.
Madame de Listomere's legacy to Birotteau was contested by the Baron
de Listomere under a pretence of undue influence!

A few days after the case was brought the baron was promoted to the
rank of captain. As a measure of ecclesiastical discipline, the curate
of Saint-Symphorien was suspended. His superiors judged him guilty.
The murderer of Sophie Gamard was also a swindler. If Monseigneur
Troubert had kept Mademoiselle Gamard's property he would have found
it difficult to make the ecclestiastical authorities censure
Birotteau.

At the moment when Monseigneur Hyacinthe, Bishop of Troyes, drove
along the quay Saint-Symphorien in a post-chaise on his way to Paris
poor Birotteau had been placed in an armchair in the sun on a terrace
above the road. The unhappy priest, smitten by the archbishop, was
pale and haggard. Grief, stamped on every feature, distorted the face
that was once so mildly gay. Illness had dimmed his eyes, formerly
brightened by the pleasures of good living and devoid of serious
ideas, with a veil which simulated thought. It was but the skeleton of
the old Birotteau who had rolled only one year earlier so vacuous but
so content along the Cloister. The bishop cast one look of pity and
contempt upon his victim; then he consented to forget him, and went
his way.

There is no doubt that Troubert would have been in other times a
Hildebrand or an Alexander the Sixth. In these days the Church is no
longer a political power, and does not absorb the whole strength of
her solitaries. Celibacy, however, presents the inherent vice of
concentating the faculties of man upon a single passion, egotism,
which renders celibates either useless or mischievous. We live at a
period when the defect of governments is to make Man for Society
rather than Society for Man. There is a perpetual struggle going on
between the Individual and the Social system which insists on using
him, while he is endeavoring to use it to his own profit; whereas, in
former days, man, really more free, was also more loyal to the public
weal. The round in which men struggle in these days has been
insensibly widened; the soul which can grasp it as a whole will ever
be a magnificent exception; for, as a general thing, in morals as in
physics, impulsion loses in intensity what it gains in extension.
Society can not be based on exceptions. Man in the first instance was
purely and simply, father; his heart beat warmly, concentrated in the
one ray of Family. Later, he lived for a clan, or a small community;
hence the great historical devotions of Greece and Rome. After that he
was a man of caste or of a religion, to maintain the greatness of
which he often proved himself sublime; but by that time the field of
his interests became enlarged by many intellectual regions. In our
day, his life is attached to that of a vast country; sooner or later
his family will be, it is predicted, the entire universe.

Will this moral cosmopolitanism, the hope of Christian Rome, prove to
be only a sublime error? It is so natural to believe in the
realization of a noble vision, in the Brotherhood of Man. But, alas!
the human machine does not have such divine proportions. Souls that
are vast enough to grasp a range of feelings bestowed on great men
only will never belong to either fathers of families or simple
citizens. Some physiologists have thought that as the brain enlarges
the heart narrows; but they are mistaken. The apparent egotism of men
who bear a science, a nation, a code of laws in their bosom is the
noblest of passions; it is, as one may say, the maternity of the
masses; to give birth to new peoples, to produce new ideas they must
unite within their mighty brains the breasts of woman and the force of
God. The history of such men as Innocent the Third and Peter the
Great, and all great leaders of their age and nation will show, if
need be, in the highest spheres the same vast thought of which
Troubert was made the representative in the quiet depths of the
Cloister of Saint-Gatien.



ADDENDUM

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

Birotteau, Abbe Francois                Troubert, Abbe Hyacinthe
     The Lily of the Valley                 The Member for Arcis
     Cesar Birotteau
                                        Villenoix, Pauline Salomon de
Bourbonne, De                                Louis Lambert
     Madame Firmiani                         A Seaside Tragedy

Listomere, Baronne de
     Cesar Birotteau
     The Muse of the Department





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Vicar of Tours, by de Balzac