The Muse of the Department

However, half-way through the evening, the Baroness was gracious to Lousteau again. Have you never observed what great meanness may be committed for small ends? Thus the haughty Dinah, who would not sacrifice herself for a fool, who in the depths of the country led such a wretched life of struggles, of suppressed rebellion, of unuttered poetry, who to get away from Lousteau had climbed the highest and steepest peak of her scorn, and who would not have come down if she had seen the sham Byron at her feet, suddenly stepped off it as she recollected her album.

Madame de la Baudraye had caught the mania for autographs; she possessed an oblong volume which deserved the name of album better than most, as two-thirds of the pages were still blank. The Baronne de Fontaine, who had kept it for three months, had with great difficulty obtained a line from Rossini, six bars written by Meyerbeer, the four lines that Victor Hugo writes in every album, a verse from Lamartine, a few words from Beranger, Calypso ne pouvait se consoler du depart d’Ulysse (the first words of Telemaque) written by George Sand, Scribe’s famous lines on the Umbrella, a sentence from Charles Nodier, an outline of distance by Jules Dupre, the signature of David d’Angers, and three notes written by Hector Berlioz. Monsieur de Clagny, during a visit to Paris, added a song by Lacenaire – a much coveted autograph, two lines from Fieschi, and an extremely short note from Napoleon, which were pasted on to pages of the album. Then Monsieur Gravier, in the course of a tour, had persuaded Mademoiselle Mars to write her name on this album, with Mademoiselles Georges, Taglioni, and Grisi, and some distinguished actors, such as Frederick Lemaitre, Monrose, Bouffe, Rubini, Lablache, Nourrit, and Arnal; for he knew a set of old fellows brought up in the seraglio, as they phrased it, who did him this favor.

This beginning of a collection was all the more precious to Dinah because she was the only person for ten leagues round who owned an album. Within the last two years, however, several young ladies had acquired such books, in which they made their friends and acquaintances write more or less absurd quotations or sentiments. You who spend your lives in collecting autographs, simple and happy souls, like Dutch tulip fanciers, you will excuse Dinah when, in her fear of not keeping her guests more than two days, she begged Bianchon to enrich the volume she handed to him with a few lines of his writing.

The doctor made Lousteau smile by showing him this sentence on the first page:

“What makes the populace dangerous is that it has in its pocket an absolution for every crime.

“J. B. DE CLAGNY.”

“We will second the man who is brave enough to plead in favor of the Monarchy,” Desplein’s great pupil whispered to Lousteau, and he wrote below:

“The distinction between Napoleon and a water-carrier is evident only to Society; Nature takes no account of it. Thus Democracy, which resists inequality, constantly appeals to Nature.

H. BIANCHON.”

“Ah!” cried Dinah, amazed, “you rich men take a gold piece out of your purse as poor men bring out a farthing… I do not know,” she went on, turning to Lousteau, “whether it is taking an unfair advantage of a guest to hope for a few lines – ”

“Nay, madame, you flatter me. Bianchon is a great man, but I am too insignificant! – Twenty years hence my name will be more difficult to identify than that of the Public Prosecutor whose axiom, written in your album, will designate him as an obscurer Montesquieu. And I should want at least twenty-four hours to improvise some sufficiently bitter reflections, for I could only describe what I feel.”

“I wish you needed a fortnight,” said Madame de la Baudraye graciously, as she handed him the book. “I should keep you here all the longer.”

At five next morning all the party in the Chateau d’Anzy were astir, little La Baudraye having arranged a day’s sport for the Parisians – less for their pleasure than to gratify his own conceit. He was delighted to make them walk over the twelve hundred acres of waste land that he was intending to reclaim, an undertaking that would cost some hundred thousand francs, but which might yield an increase of thirty to sixty thousand francs a year in the returns of the estate of Anzy.

“Do you know why the Public Prosecutor has not come out with us?” asked Gatien Boirouge of Monsieur Gravier.

“Why he told us that he was obliged to sit to-day; the minor cases are before the Court,” replied the other.

“And did you believe that?” cried Gatien. “Well, my papa said to me, ‘Monsieur Lebas will not join you early, for Monsieur de Clagny has begged him as his deputy to sit for him!’”

“Indeed!” said Gravier, changing countenance. “And Monsieur de la Baudraye is gone to La Charite!”

“But why do you meddle in such matters?” said Bianchon to Gatien.

“Horace is right,” said Lousteau. “I cannot imagine why you trouble your heads so much about each other; you waste your time in frivolities.”

Horace Bianchon looked at Etienne Lousteau, as much as to say that newspaper epigrams and the satire of the “funny column” were incomprehensible at Sancerre.

On reaching a copse, Monsieur Gravier left the two great men and Gatien, under the guidance of a keeper, to make their way through a little ravine.

“Well, we must wait for Monsieur Gravier,” said Bianchon, when they had reached a clearing.

“You may be a great physician,” said Gatien, “but you are ignorant of provincial life. You mean to wait for Monsieur Gravier? – By this time he is running like a hare, in spite of his little round stomach; he is within twenty minutes of Anzy by now – ” Gatien looked at his watch. “Good! he will be just in time.”

“Where?”

“At the chateau for breakfast,” replied Gatien. “Do you suppose I could rest easy if Madame de la Baudraye were alone with Monsieur de Clagny? There are two of them now; they will keep an eye on each other. Dinah will be well guarded.”

“Ah, ha! Then Madame de la Baudraye has not yet made up her mind?” said Lousteau.

“So mamma thinks. For my part, I am afraid that Monsieur de Clagny has at last succeeded in bewitching Madame de la Baudraye. If he has been able to show her that he had any chance of putting on the robes of the Keeper of the Seals, he may have hidden his moleskin complexion, his terrible eyes, his touzled mane, his voice like a hoarse crier’s, his bony figure, like that of a starveling poet, and have assumed all the charms of Adonis. If Dinah sees Monsieur de Clagny as Attorney-General, she may see him as a handsome youth. Eloquence has great privileges. – Besides, Madame de la Baudraye is full of ambition. She does not like Sancerre, and dreams of the glories of Paris.”

“But what interest have you in all this?” said Lousteau. “If she is in love with the Public Prosecutor! – Ah! you think she will not love him for long, and you hope to succeed him.”

“You who live in Paris,” said Gatien, “meet as many different women as there are days in the year. But at Sancerre, where there are not half a dozen, and where, of those six, five set up for the most extravagant virtue, when the handsomest of them all keeps you at an infinite distance by looks as scornful as though she were of the blood royal, a young man of two-and-twenty may surely be allowed to make a guess at her secrets, since she must then treat him with some consideration.”

“Consideration! So that is what you call it in these parts?” said the journalist with a smile.

“I should suppose Madame de la Baudraye to have too much good taste to trouble her head about that ugly ape,” said Bianchon.

“Horace,” said Lousteau, “look here, O learned interpreter of human nature, let us lay a trap for the Public Prosecutor; we shall be doing our friend Gatien a service, and get a laugh out of it. I do not love Public Prosecutors.”

“You have a keen intuition of destiny,” said Horace. “But what can we do?”

“Well, after dinner we will tell sundry little anecdotes of wives caught out by their husbands, killed, murdered under the most terrible circumstances. – Then we shall see the faces that Madame de la Baudraye and de Clagny will make.”

“Not amiss!” said Bianchon; “one or the other must surely, by look or gesture – ”

“I know a newspaper editor,” Lousteau went on, addressing Gatien, “who, anxious to forefend a grievous fate, will take no stories but such as tell the tale of lovers burned, hewn, pounded, or cut to pieces; of wives boiled, fried, or baked; he takes them to his wife to read, hoping that sheer fear will keep her faithful – satisfied with that humble alternative, poor man! ‘You see, my dear, to what the smallest error may lead you!’ says he, epitomizing Arnolfe’s address to Agnes.”

“Madame de la Baudraye is quite guiltless; this youth sees double,” said Bianchon. “Madame Piedefer seems to me far too pious to invite her daughter’s lover to the Chateau d’Anzy. Madame de la Baudraye would have to hoodwink her mother, her husband, her maid, and her mother’s maid; that is too much to do. I acquit her.”

“Well with more reason because her husband never ‘quits her,’” said Gatien, laughing at his own wit.

“We can easily remember two or three stories that will make Dinah quake,” said Lousteau. “Young man – and you too, Bianchon – let me beg you to maintain a stern demeanor; be thorough diplomatists, an easy manner without exaggeration, and watch the faces of the two criminals, you know, without seeming to do so – out of the corner of your eye, or in a glass, on the sly. This morning we will hunt the hare, this evening we will hunt the Public Prosecutor.”

The evening began with a triumph for Lousteau, who returned the album to the lady with this elegy written in it:

SPLEENYou ask for verse from me, the feeble preyOf this self-seeking world, a waif and strayWith none to whom to cling;From me – unhappy, purblind, hopeless devil!Who e’en in what is good see only evilIn any earthly thing!This page, the pastime of a dame so fair,May not reflect the shadow of my care,For all things have their place.Of love, to ladies bright, the poet sings,Of joy, and balls, and dress, and dainty things —Nay, or of God and Grace.It were a bitter jest to bid the penOf one so worn with life, so hating men,Depict a scene of joy.Would you exult in sight to one born blind,Or – cruel! of a mother’s love remindSome hapless orphan boy?When cold despair has gripped a heart still fond,When there is no young heart that will respondTo it in love, the future is a lie.If there is none to weep when he is sad,And share his woe, a man were better dead! —And so I soon must die.Give me your pity! often I blasphemeThe sacred name of God. Does it not seemThat I was born in vain?Why should I bless him? Or why thank Him, sinceHe might have made me handsome, rich, a prince —And I am poor and plain?

ETIENNE LOUSTEAU. September 1836, Chateau d’Anzy.

“And you have written those verses since yesterday?” cried Clagny in a suspicious tone.

“Dear me, yes, as I was following the game; it is only too evident! I would gladly have done something better for madame.”

“The verses are exquisite!” cried Dinah, casting up her eyes to heaven.

“They are, alas! the expression of a too genuine feeling,” replied Lousteau, in a tone of deep dejection.

The reader will, of course, have guessed that the journalist had stored these lines in his memory for ten years at least, for he had written them at the time of the Restoration in disgust at being unable to get on. Madame de la Baudraye gazed at him with such pity as the woes of genius inspire; and Monsieur de Clagny, who caught her expression, turned in hatred against this sham Jeune Malade (the name of an Elegy written by Millevoye). He sat down to backgammon with the cure of Sancerre. The Presiding Judge’s son was so extremely obliging as to place a lamp near the two players in such a way as that the light fell full on Madame de la Baudraye, who took up her work; she was embroidering in coarse wool a wicker-plait paper-basket. The three conspirators sat close at hand.

“For whom are you decorating that pretty basket, madame?” said Lousteau. “For some charity lottery, perhaps?”

“No,” she said, “I think there is too much display in charity done to the sound of a trumpet.”

“You are very indiscreet,” said Monsieur Gravier.

“Can there be any indiscretion,” said Lousteau, “in inquiring who the happy mortal may be in whose room that basket is to stand?”

“There is no happy mortal in the case,” said Dinah; “it is for Monsieur de la Baudraye.”

The Public Prosecutor looked slily at Madame de la Baudraye and her work, as if he had said to himself, “I have lost my paper-basket!”

“Why, madame, may we not think him happy in having a lovely wife, happy in her decorating his paper-baskets so charmingly? The colors are red and black, like Robin Goodfellow. If ever I marry, I only hope that twelve years after, my wife’s embroidered baskets may still be for me.”

“And why should they not be for you?” said the lady, fixing her fine gray eyes, full of invitation, on Etienne’s face.

“Parisians believe in nothing,” said the lawyer bitterly. “The virtue of women is doubted above all things with terrible insolence. Yes, for some time past the books you have written, you Paris authors, your farces, your dramas, all your atrocious literature, turn on adultery – ”

“Come, come, Monsieur the Public Prosecutor,” retorted Etienne, laughing, “I left you to play your game in peace, I did not attack you, and here you are bringing an indictment against me. On my honor as a journalist, I have launched above a hundred articles against the writers you speak of; but I confess that in attacking them it was to attempt something like criticism. Be just; if you condemn them, you must condemn Homer, whose Iliad turns on Helen of Troy; you must condemn Milton’s Paradise Lost. Eve and her serpent seem to me a pretty little case of symbolical adultery; you must suppress the Psalms of David, inspired by the highly adulterous love affairs of that Louis XIV. of Judah; you must make a bonfire of Mithridate, le Tartuffe, l’Ecole des Femmes, Phedre, Andromaque, le Mariage de Figaro, Dante’s Inferno, Petrarch’s Sonnets, all the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the romances of the Middle Ages, the History of France, and of Rome, etc., etc. Excepting Bossuet’s Histoire des Variations and Pascal’s Provinciales, I do not think there are many books left to read if you insist on eliminating all those in which illicit love is mentioned.”

“Much loss that would be!” said Monsieur de Clagny.

Etienne, nettled by the superior air assumed by Monsieur de Clagny, wanted to infuriate him by one of those cold-drawn jests which consist in defending an opinion in which we have no belief, simply to rouse the wrath of a poor man who argues in good faith; a regular journalist’s pleasantry.

“If we take up the political attitude into which you would force yourself,” he went on, without heeding the lawyer’s remark, “and assume the part of Public Prosecutor of all the ages – for every Government has its public ministry – well, the Catholic religion is infected at its fountain-head by a startling instance of illegal union. In the opinion of King Herod, and of Pilate as representing the Roman Empire, Joseph’s wife figured as an adulteress, since, by her avowal, Joseph was not the father of Jesus. The heathen judge could no more recognize the Immaculate Conception than you yourself would admit the possibility of such a miracle if a new religion should nowadays be preached as based on a similar mystery. Do you suppose that a judge and jury in a police court would give credence to the operation of the Holy Ghost! And yet who can venture to assert that God will never again redeem mankind? Is it any better now than it was under Tiberius?”

“Your argument is blasphemy,” said Monsieur de Clagny.

“I grant it,” said the journalist, “but not with malicious intent. You cannot suppress historical fact. In my opinion, Pilate, when he sentenced Jesus, and Anytus – who spoke for the aristocratic party at Athens – when he insisted on the death of Socrates, both represented established social interests which held themselves legitimate, invested with co-operative powers, and obliged to defend themselves. Pilate and Anytus in their time were not less logical than the public prosecutors who demanded the heads of the sergeants of La Rochelle; who, at this day, are guillotining the republicans who take up arms against the throne as established by the revolution of July, and the innovators who aim at upsetting society for their own advantage under pretence of organizing it on a better footing. In the eyes of the great families of Greece and Rome, Socrates and Jesus were criminals; to those ancient aristocracies their opinions were akin to those of the Mountain; and if their followers had been victorious, they would have produced a little ‘ninety-three’ in the Roman Empire or in Attica.”

“What are you trying to come to, monsieur?” asked the lawyer.

“To adultery! – For thus, monsieur, a Buddhist as he smokes his pipe may very well assert that the Christian religion is founded in adultery; as we believe that Mahomet is an impostor; that his Koran is an epitome of the Old Testament and the Gospels; and that God never had the least intention of constituting that camel-driver His Prophet.”

“If there were many men like you in France – and there are more than enough, unfortunately – all government would be impossible.”

“And there would be no religion at all,” said Madame Piedefer, who had been making strangely wry faces all through this discussion.

“You are paining them very much,” said Bianchon to Lousteau in an undertone. “Do not talk of religion; you are saying things that are enough to upset them.”

“If I were a writer or a romancer,” said Monsieur Gravier, “I should take the side of the luckless husbands. I, who have seen many things, and strange things too, know that among the ranks of deceived husbands there are some whose attitude is not devoid of energy, men who, at a crisis, can be very dramatic, to use one of your words, monsieur,” he said, addressing Etienne.

“You are very right, my dear Monsieur Gravier,” said Lousteau. “I never thought that deceived husbands were ridiculous; on the contrary, I think highly of them – ”

“Do you not think a husband’s confidence a sublime thing?” said Bianchon. “He believes in his wife, he does not suspect her, he trusts her implicitly. But if he is so weak as to trust her, you make game of him; if he is jealous and suspicious, you hate him; what, then, I ask you, is the happy medium for a man of spirit?”

“If Monsieur de Clagny had not just expressed such vehement disapproval of the immorality of stories in which the matrimonial compact is violated, I could tell you of a husband’s revenge,” said Lousteau.

Monsieur de Clagny threw the dice with a convulsive jerk, and dared not look up at the journalist.

“A story, from you!” cried Madame de la Baudraye. “I should hardly have dared to hope for such a treat – ”

“It is not my story, madame; I am not clever enough to invent such a tragedy. It was told me – and how delightfully! – by one of our greatest writers, the finest literary musician of our day, Charles Nodier.”

“Well, tell it,” said Dinah. “I never met Monsieur Nodier, so you have no comparison to fear.”

“Not long after the 18th Brumaire,” Etienne began, “there was, as you know, a call to arms in Brittany and la Vendee. The First Consul, anxious before all things for peace in France, opened negotiations with the rebel chiefs, and took energetic military measures; but, while combining his plans of campaign with the insinuating charm of Italian diplomacy, he also set the Machiavelian springs of the police in movement, Fouche then being at its head. And none of these means were superfluous to stifle the fire of war then blaring in the West.

“At this time a young man of the Maille family was despatched by the Chouans from Brittany to Saumur, to open communications between certain magnates of that town and its environs and the leaders of the Royalist party. The envoy was, in fact, arrested on the very day he landed – for he traveled by boat, disguised as a master mariner. However, as a man of practical intelligence, he had calculated all the risks of the undertaking; his passport and papers were all in order, and the men told off to take him were afraid of blundering.

“The Chevalier de Beauvoir – I now remember his name – had studied his part well; he appealed to the family whose name he had borrowed, persisted in his false address, and stood his examination so boldly that he would have been set at large but for the blind belief that the spies had in their instructions, which were unfortunately only too minute. In this dilemma the authorities were more ready to risk an arbitrary act than to let a man escape to whose capture the Minister attached great importance. In those days of liberty the agents of the powers in authority cared little enough for what we now regard as legal. The Chevalier was therefore imprisoned provisionally, until the superior officials should come to some decision as to his identity. He had not long to wait for it; orders were given to guard the prisoner closely in spite of his denials.

“The Chevalier de Beauvoir was next transferred, in obedience to further orders, to the Castle of l’Escarpe, a name which sufficiently indicates its situation. This fortress, perched on very high rocks, has precipices for its trenches; it is reached on all sides by steep and dangerous paths; and, like every ancient castle, its principal gate has a drawbridge over a wide moat. The commandant of this prison, delighted to have charge of a man of family whose manners were most agreeable, who expressed himself well, and seemed highly educated, received the Chevalier as a godsend; he offered him the freedom of the place on parole, that they might together the better defy its dulness. The prisoner was more than content.

“Beauvoir was a loyal gentleman, but, unfortunately, he was also a very handsome youth. He had attractive features, a dashing air, a pleasing address, and extraordinary strength. Well made, active, full of enterprise, and loving danger, he would have made an admirable leader of guerillas, and was the very man for the part. The commandant gave his prisoner the most comfortable room, entertained him at his table, and at first had nothing but praise for the Vendean. This officer was a Corsican and married; his wife was pretty and charming, and he thought her, perhaps, not to be trusted – at any rate, he was as jealous as a Corsican and a rather ill-looking soldier may be. The lady took a fancy to Beauvoir, and he found her very much to his taste; perhaps they loved! Love in a prison is quick work. Did they commit some imprudence? Was the sentiment they entertained something warmer than the superficial gallantry which is almost a duty of men towards women?

“Beauvoir never fully explained this rather obscure episode of the story; it is at least certain that the commandant thought himself justified in treating his prisoner with excessive severity. Beauvoir was placed in the dungeon, fed on black bread and cold water, and fettered in accordance with the time-honored traditions of the treatment lavished on captives. His cell, under the fortress-yard, was vaulted with hard stone, the walls were of desperate thickness; the tower overlooked the precipice.

“When the luckless man had convinced himself of the impossibility of escape, he fell into those day-dreams which are at once the comfort and the crowning despair of prisoners. He gave himself up to the trifles which in such cases seem so important; he counted the hours and the days; he studied the melancholy trade of being prisoner; he became absorbed in himself, and learned the value of air and sunshine; then, at the end of a fortnight, he was attacked by that terrible malady, that fever for liberty, which drives prisoners to those heroic efforts of which the prodigious achievements seem to us impossible, though true, and which my friend the doctor” (and he turned to Bianchon) “would perhaps ascribe to some unknown forces too recondite for his physiological analysis to detect, some mysteries of the human will of which the obscurity baffles science.”

Bianchon shook his head in negation.

“Beauvoir was eating his heart out, for death alone could set him free. One morning the turnkey, whose duty it was to bring him his food, instead of leaving him when he had given him his meagre pittance, stood with his arms folded, looking at him with strange meaning. Conversation between them was brief, and the warder never began it. The Chevalier was therefore greatly surprised when the man said to him: ‘Of course, monsieur, you know your own business when you insist on being always called Monsieur Lebrun, or citizen Lebrun. It is no concern of mine; ascertaining your name is no part of my duty. It is all the same to me whether you call yourself Peter or Paul. If every man minds his own business, the cows will not stray. At the same time, I know,’ said he, with a wink, ‘that you are Monsieur Charles-Felix-Theodore, Chevalier de Beauvoir, and cousin to Madame la Duchesse de Maille. – Heh?’ he added after a short silence, during which he looked at his prisoner.