The Celibates. Оноре де Бальзак

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СКАЧАТЬ out of his marriage. Repulsed by every one, filled with hatred for the family of his wife, for the government which denied him a place, for the social world of Provins, which refused to admit him, Vinet submitted to his fate; but his gall increased. He became a Liberal in the belief that his fortune might yet be made by the triumph of the opposition, and he lived in a miserable little house in the Upper town from which his wife seldom issued. Madame Vinet had found no one to defend her since her marriage except an old Madame de Chargeboeuf, a widow with one daughter, who lived at Troyes. The unfortunate young woman, destined for better things, was absolutely alone in her home with a single child.

      There are some kinds of poverty which may be nobly accepted and gaily borne; but Vinet, devoured by ambition, and feeling himself guilty towards his wife, was full of darkling rage; his conscience grew elastic; and he finally came to think any means of success permissible. His young face changed. Persons about the courts were sometimes frightened as they looked at his viperish, flat head, his slit mouth, his eyes gleaming through glasses, and heard his sharp, persistent voice which rasped their nerves. His muddy skin, with its sickly tones of green and yellow, expressed the jaundice of his balked ambition, his perpetual disappointments and his hidden wretchedness. He could talk and argue; he was well-informed and shrewd, and was not without smartness and metaphor. Accustomed to look at everything from the standpoint of his own success, he was well fitted for a politician. A man who shrinks from nothing so long as it is legal, is strong; and Vinet's strength lay there.

      This future athlete of parliamentary debate, who was destined to share in proclaiming the dynasty of the house of Orleans had a terrible influence on Pierrette's fate. At the present moment he was bent on making for himself a weapon by founding a newspaper at Provins. After studying the Rogrons at a distance (the colonel aiding him) he had come to the conclusion that the brother might be made useful. This time he was not mistaken; his days of poverty were over, after seven wretched years, when even his daily bread was sometimes lacking. The day when Gouraud told him in the little square that the Rogrons had finally quarrelled with the bourgeois aristocracy of the Upper town, he nudged the colonel in the ribs significantly, and said, with a knowing look:—

      "One woman or another—handsome or ugly—you don't care; marry Mademoiselle Rogron and we can organize something at once."

      "I have been thinking of it," replied Gouraud, "but the fact is they have sent for the daughter of Colonel Lorrain, and she's their next of kin."

      "You can get them to make a will in your favor. Ha! you would get a very comfortable house."

      "As for the little girl—well, well, let's see her," said the colonel, with a leering and thoroughly wicked look, which proved to a man of Vinet's quality how little respect the old trooper could feel for any girl.

IV

       Table of Contents

      PIERRETTE

      After her grandfather and grandmother entered the sort of hospital in which they sadly expected to end their days, Pierrette, being young and proud, suffered so terribly at living there on charity that she was thankful when she heard she had rich relations. When Brigaut, the son of her mother's friend the major, and the companion of her childhood, who was learning his trade as a cabinet-maker at Nantes, heard of her departure he offered her the money to pay her way to Paris in the diligence—sixty francs, the total of his pour-boires as an apprentice, slowly amassed, and accepted by Pierrette with the sublime indifference of true affection, showing that in a like case she herself would be affronted by thanks.

      Brigaut was in the habit of going every Sunday to Saint-Jacques to play with Pierrette and try to console her. The vigorous young workman knew the dear delight of bestowing a complete and devoted protection on an object involuntarily chosen by his heart. More than once he and Pierrette, sitting on Sundays in a corner of the garden, had embroidered the veil of the future with their youthful projects; the apprentice, armed with his plane, scoured the world to make their fortune, while Pierrette waited.

      In October, 1824, when the child had completed her eleventh year, she was entrusted by the two old people and by Brigaut, all three sorrowfully sad, to the conductor of the diligence from Nantes to Paris, with an entreaty to put her safely on the diligence from Paris to Provins and to take good care of her. Poor Brigaut! he ran like a dog after the coach looking at his dear Pierrette as long as he was able. In spite of her signs he ran over three miles, and when at last he was exhausted his eyes, wet with tears, still followed her. She, too, was crying when she saw him no longer running by her, and putting her head out of the window she watched him, standing stock-still and looking after her, as the lumbering vehicle disappeared.

      The Lorrains and Brigaut knew so little of life that the girl had not a penny when she arrived in Paris. The conductor, to whom she had mentioned her rich friends, paid her expenses at the hotel, and made the conductor of the Provins diligence pay him, telling him to take good care of the girl and to see that the charges were paid by the family, exactly as though she were a case of goods. Four days after her departure from Nantes, about nine o'clock of a Monday night, a kind old conductor of the Messageries-royales, took Pierrette by the hand, and while the porters were discharging in the Grand'Rue the packages and passengers for Provins, he led the little girl, whose only baggage was a bundle containing two dresses, two chemises, and two pairs of stockings, to Mademoiselle Rogron's house, which was pointed out to him by the director at the coach office.

      "Good-evening, mademoiselle and the rest of the company. I've brought you a cousin, and here she is; and a nice little girl too, upon my word. You have forty-seven francs to pay me, and sign my book."

      Mademoiselle Sylvie and her brother were dumb with pleasure and amazement.

      "Excuse me," said the conductor, "the coach is waiting. Sign my book and pay me forty-seven francs, sixty centimes, and whatever you please for myself and the conductor from Nantes; we've taken care of the little girl as if she were our own; and paid for her beds and her food, also her fare to Provins, and other little things."

      "Forty-seven francs, twelve sous!" said Sylvie.

      "You are not going to dispute it?" cried the man.

      "Where's the bill?" said Rogron.

      "Bill! look at the book."

      "Stop talking, and pay him," said Sylvie, "You see there's nothing else to be done."

      Rogron went to get the money, and gave the man forty-seven francs, twelve sous.

      "And nothing for my comrade and me?" said the conductor.

      Sylvie took two francs from the depths of the old velvet bag which held her keys.

      "Thank you, no," said the man; "keep 'em yourself. We would rather care for the little one for her own sake." He picked up his book and departed, saying to the servant-girl: "What a pair! it seems there are crocodiles out of Egypt!"

      "Such men are always brutal," said Sylvie, who overhead the words.

      "They took good care of the little girl, anyhow," said Adele with her hands on her hips.

      "We don't have to live with him," remarked Rogron.

      "Where's the little one to sleep?" asked Adele.

      Such was the arrival of Pierrette Lorrain in the home of her cousins, who gazed at her with stolid eyes; she was tossed to СКАЧАТЬ