Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

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SHORT-STORY
MASTERPIECES

VOLUME II--FRENCH

DONE INTO ENGLISH AND
WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY

J. BERG ESENWEIN
_EDITOR OF LIPPINCOTTS MAGAZINE_

THE HOME CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL
Springfield, Massachusetts
1912

Copyright 1911 and 1912--J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
Copyright 1912--THE HOME CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS
VOLUME II

PAGE

THE MANY-SIDED BALZAC 3

STORY: AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 27

LUDOVIC HALÉVY, PARISIAN 59

STORY: THE INSURGENT 71

ANDRÉ THEURIET, HUMANIST 79

STORY: LA BRETONNE 87

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER, LOVER OF BEAUTY 97

STORY: THE MUMMY’S FOOT 107

ANATOLE FRANCE, FORMER MAN AND NEW 129

STORY: JUGGLER TO OUR LADY 141

THE MANY-SIDED BALZAC

Honoré Balzac, or de Balzac, as he loved to call himself--though really there was no “noble” blood in his veins--was baptized under the name of Balssa. He was born on May 20, 1799, at Tours. His mother, Laure Sallambier, was a Parisian; his father, a provincial from Languedoc. After completing his studies in Paris, Honoré began the study of law at the age of seventeen, but after eighteen months’ apprenticeship to an attorney and a second year and a half’s service to a notary, his literary ambition began to turn him away from the law. Already at the age of twenty he had conceived the idea of a drama on Cromwell, but after fifteen months’ labor, he read it to a company of friends who received it coldly. In 1822, he made his first essay at the novel, under the title, _The Inheritress de Birague_. From this time on he labored incessantly in producing the gigantic works which have immortalized his name.

Debt was always threatening to overwhelm Balzac, for in the days of his largest income his free life and passion for luxuries kept him constantly in danger of going down in the flood. Once, in 1825, when his first novels produced but little return, he felt compelled to leave his vocation of letters to become bookseller, printer, and type-founder. But after three years of disaster, resulting in one hundred thousand francs of debt, he once more took up his pen, this time to succeed most splendidly--though it required ten years of strenuous, almost frenzied, production to clear him of his obligations.

The story of his loves is closely knit with his literary career, as are also the records of his minglings with the men of his day, but no such brief monograph as this can even refer adequately to the details of his personal life. Inspiration, observation, and labor were its dominant notes throughout. Two thousand distinct characters move as in life through his forty-seven volumes of more than sixteen thousand aggregate pages, all produced in twenty-five years of actual pen-craft. What a monument for the titan who in 1850 passed away in his prime!

* * * * *

There are two marked tendencies of extreme displayed by the short-story: The first, and the more modern, is a fondness for over-compression; that is, the practice of skeletonizing the story, of giving little more than a bare, swift outline of the action, and only so much accessory material as may be needed to round out a body decently clothed upon with flesh. The story is everything, the setting almost nothing. It scarcely need be said that this tendency comes perilously near to robbing the short-story of the literary qualities which it should rightly display. A few of Maupassant’s compact and abrupt shorter fictions may serve to illustrate this characteristic--not to mention unhappy examples all too prevalent to-day.

The second tendency is quite in the other extreme. I speak of it now because most of Balzac’s shorter stories are of this type,--which gives much space to detail, the development of setting, and the building up of a well-rounded and fully-garbed body to carry the soul of the story. If the scenario-story is likely to swing to an extreme of compression, the leisurely type is prone to over-leisureliness, as is often seen in the shorter work of Mr. James, and the later little fictions by Mr. Howells, wherein, and so far properly too, the story is not made to be everything, but wherein--not so wisely--circumstances and air are accorded even more than due value. The effect is to draw the narrative away from the unity and compression characteristic of the short-story type, and range it with those other fictional forms which, while cognate to, are really something different from the short-story.

Balzac’s short-stories--so to call them--were written from three to five years before Poe wrote “Berenice” (1835), which was his first short-story to anticipate and meet fully the requirements of the type as formulated by the author himself, in his criticism of Hawthorne’s “Tales,” in 1842. But Balzac drew more and more away from the impressionistic, unified, condensed short-story, for it was evidently not his ideal form, and took up the detailed psychological novel of manners. Even in the story given herewith in translation, we find a wealth of detail and an extent of time covered in the action which are not part and parcel of the true short-story, technically considered. But, lest these comments seem to cite these qualities in derogation of Balzac’s art be it noted that Balzac’s little fictions, with all their fullness, are greater than many technically perfect short-stories in their miraculous compression. Certainly it is only this dual element of fullness and consequent diffused final effect which prevented him from anticipating Poe as the first _conscious_ artist of the short-story--yet with this one reservation I reserve much, for compression and unity of final impression are the very twin arteries of this fictional form. Balzac’s short-stories approached technical perfection just as closely as did the short-stories of those two American forerunners of Poe--Irving and Hawthorne.

It is illuminating to observe that Balzac’s full-method of short-story art was not the reflex of the successful novelist who was sure of his public and for that reason dared the expansive treatment. The truth is that of his successful novels only _The Chouans_ had been written in 1829 before he began, in 1830, that brilliant series of shorter stories which place him among the masters.

The fictive art of Balzac is more clearly displayed in his short-stories than in his novels. By far the greater number of his novels are filled with a vast amount of contributory detail not always germane to the plot. As stories, they often mark time. The author’s great motive was to make faithful transcripts from life, to present realities, to penetrate into the deeps of the human soul and disclose its inner life, to delineate the high and the low places of the whole social system of his era. On this giant-journey he was often allured from the highway of his story by side-paths rich in interest, and the great realistic novelist did not any more hesitate to follow out these beckoning byways than did Victor Hugo in his equally great romances. The inevitable in each case was a far from unified type of fiction.

In Balzac’s short-stories, however, we discern but very little of this tendency, fully expanded though they are, and that is why I have ventured to assert their artistic superiority to his novels. True, the genius of this greatest of French novelists can be fully appreciated only by those who make a study of his longer works with their tremendous sweep of character presentment, minuteness of setting, and depth of psychological inquiry. But for approximate singleness of effect--a great factor in the consideration of fictional merit--we must turn to his short-stories.

This contrast in method is due not merely to Balzac’s fondness for making excursions in his novels, but it is largely attributable to the nature of the _nouvelle_, or expanded short-story form. Any short-story, being complete in itself and not one of a series, necessarily bears a much less close relation to any other of its kind than does any one of Balzac’s novels to his other novels. Each of these is an integrated part of a great life-record which he was engaged in completing--but which, unhappily, was never consummated.

The themes of all Balzac’s short-stories are consistent with the artistic requirements of the _nouvelle_; that is to say, they are transcriptions of _exceptional marginalia_ from common life, always dealing with the unusual, and occasionally with the unique. Because of this quality, it seems evident that, as Brunetière has pointed out, Balzac elected to develop these incidents in short-story form rather than expand them into novels. Treated in the short-story, they stand for what they are--extraordinary happenings in common life (as distinguished from impossible “incidents” which are told in fantastic and ultra-romantic short-stories); in the novel, they would have been enlarged out of their true focus, and so have seemed to bear a more important, a more typical, relation to life as a whole than any such exceptional incidents ever do. Hence, again, Balzac has used in his short-stories less the realistic method of narration than the romantic. Pure realism as a method is suited to the novel, where life shows whole; but the short-story, which presents a section, a phase, an incident of life, and by which we do not hope to gain a picture of an age, of a whole social system, or even of an entire individual life, is almost compelled to adopt the methods of romanticism even when laying its fictional foundations, as Balzac did, deep in the ground of reality.

In attempting to get a view of his broad genius we must remember our author’s versatility, not alone of gift but of temper; and since a consideration of his novels is not pertinent to this paper, let us see if the many-sided Balzac is not clearly revealed in a varied half-dozen of his greatest short-stories.

Picture this powerful worker spending endless days and nights, months on end, roaming the streets of Paris, haunting purlieu and boulevard, absorbing with the thirsty passion of a universal analyst the knowledge of what man is. But he is more than a terrifically industrious observer, he is sincere, and he codifies his observations as _The Connoisseur of Life_.

This first phase of our social psychologist--and as such he blazed new trails in French literature--is well illustrated in one of his greatest stories (it seems trite to aver that it must be read to be appreciated!) which is a romantic _nouvelle_ of about ten thousand words, “The Unknown Masterpiece.” It is well to note in this connection that the typical psychological-study differs from the character-study in that the former concerns itself with _workings_ of the inner life, while the latter notes the _effect_ of life on character, disposition, bearing, and conduct.

Nicolas Poussin, a poor and ambitious young artist, timidly visits François Porbus, another artist of ability, in his studio. There Master Frenhofer, an eccentric, wealthy old artist, is discoursing on his theories of art (set forth brilliantly and at length in the story, and illustrating the marvellous sweep of Balzac’s knowledge). Frenhofer is obsessed by the conviction that the artists of the day do not make their subjects live, and illustrates by criticising the painting, “St. Mary the Egyptian,” which Porbus has about completed. “Your saint is not badly put together, but she is not alive. Because you have copied nature, you imagine that you are painters, and that you have discovered God’s secret! Bah! To be a great poet, it is not enough to know syntax, and to avoid errors in grammar.” “The mission of art is not to copy nature, but to express it” (an illuminating passage when applied to Balzac’s own work). At length the old man seizes the brushes, and with a few strokes imparts vivacity to the figure, and makes the “Saint” stand out from the canvas.

Old Master Frenhofer himself has been laboring for ten years to perfect his painting of a woman, but despairs of adding the final touches, and determines to travel in search of a perfect model. In his enthusiasm for art, and hoping to gain Frenhofer’s secret, as well as instruction from the old painter, Nicolas asks his beautiful mistress and model, Gillette, to pose for the old man. A protracted struggle ensues between her abhorrence of the idea and her wish to serve her lover. At last, however, she yields.

When Nicolas and Porbus are permitted to view Frenhofer’s completed canvas, they discover that in his long effort to perfect his work the old painter has entirely covered the original picture, and that not more than a shadowy human foot is to be seen; only the imaginative eye of the artist himself is able to see the figure!

The dénouement is a double one: As she feared would be the case, Gillette loses her love for Nicolas, who could sacrifice the sacredness of her beauty in order to advance his own career by capturing the secrets of a great master; and the old artist, after burning all his paintings, dies in despair upon discovering the truth, for he has lived all these years with his painting as the well-loved companion of his labors and his dreams.

A great story, illustrating Balzac as a connoisseur--a knower of life.

* * * * *

A second phase of Balzac’s genius is that of _The Impressionistic Literary Artist_. In his inner life some pictures were born, others were caught on the retina from his attentive journeyings afield. To produce in the reader precisely the impression which the originator feels, is impressionism, and this transfusion of spirit, tone, and feeling, Balzac now and then accomplished, though not often.

One of the most striking of these impressionistic sketches, more atmospheric, more simply pictorial, than any of his others, is “A Passion in the Desert.”

A Provençal soldier of Napoleon tells the story over a bottle to a friend, and he retells it in a letter to a lady who had just seen a wonderful example of animal-training in a menagerie.

When General Desaix was in upper Egypt “a provincial soldier, having fallen into the hands of the Maugrabins, was taken by these Arabs into the deserts that lie beyond the cataracts of the Nile.” Freeing himself, he secures a carbine, a dagger, a horse, and some provisions, and makes away. But, eager to see camp once more, he rides his horse to death and finds himself alone in the desert.

At length he seeks shelter and sleep in a grotto, but awakens to find his asylum shared by a huge lioness. He considers well the possibilities while he waits for her to wake. When she opens her eyes her pretty, coquettish movements remind him of “a dainty woman.” The soldier expects immediate conflict and draws his dagger; but the lioness stares steadily at him for a moment, then walks slowly but confidently toward him. Forcing himself to smile into her face, he reaches out his hand caressingly, and she accepts these overtures with seeming pleasure, even purrs like a cat, but the sound is so loud that it is not unlike the dying notes of a church organ. Believing himself safe for the present, the man rises and leaves the grotto; she follows, rubbing against his legs and uttering a wild, peculiar cry, whereupon he again goes through the petting motions usual with domestic animals, at the same time weighing the chance of killing her with one blow of his weapon. On her side, the lioness scrutinizes him kindly, yet prudently--then she licks his shoes.

Visions of what may happen when his unwelcome companion is hungry bring a shudder to the soldier. He tries to come and go, as an experiment, but her eyes never leave him for the fraction of a minute. Near the spring he sees the remains of his horse partly consumed--and understands her forbearance thus far. He determines to try to tame her ladyship and to win her affection. In these endeavors the day wears on until she becomes responsive enough to his voice to turn to him when he calls “Mignonne.”

The Provençal is now relying on his nimble feet to take him out of danger so soon as the lioness is asleep, and when the right moment comes he walks quickly in the direction of the Nile. But he has gone only a short distance when he hears her in pursuit, uttering the same wild cry. Even in this extremity the Frenchman reflects humorously, “It may be that this young lioness has never met a man before; it is flattering to possess her first love!”

He accompanies his hostess back to the grotto, and from this moment feels that the desert has become friendly, human; and he sleeps. When he awakes he sees nothing of Mignonne until, upon ascending the hill, he discovers her bounding along in his direction. Her chops are bloody; but she manifests her pleasure in his society by beginning to play like a large puppy.

Several days go by filled with warring sensations for the Frenchman. Solitude reveals her mysteries, and he feels their charm. He studies the effects of the moon on the limitless sand; the wonderful light of the Orient; the terrifying spectacle of a storm on the plain where sand rises in death-dealing clouds. In the cool nights he imagines music in the heavens above. He ponders on his past life.

The magnetic will of the Provençal seems to control brute nature, or else she has not felt the pangs of hunger, for her amiability is unbroken, and he trusts her completely. Whatever she may be doing, she stops short at the word “Mignonne.” One day when he shows acute interest in a flying eagle, the lioness is evidently jealous, and the Provençal now declares that “she has a soul.”

Here the lady who received the Provençal’s letter about his adventure wants to know how it ended. He replies that “it ended as all great passions do, by a misunderstanding,” and goes on to explain that he must have unintentionally hurt the lioness’s feelings, as one day she turned and caught his thigh in her teeth. Fearing she meant to kill him, the soldier plunged his dagger into her throat, but his remorse was immediate; he felt that he had murdered a friend.

* * * * *

The brief outlines of two stories must suffice to illustrate a third and more characteristic phase of Balzac’s genius--his sternness as _The Recorder of Tragedy_. Both are romantic themes treated with relentless realism of detail.

The first story bears the Spanish title, _El Verdugo_ (“The Executioner”).

During the Napoleonic era, a certain Spanish town, Menda, is under French government. A suspicion that the Spanish Marquis de Légañès has made an attempt to raise the country in favor of Ferdinand VII has caused a battalion of French soldiers to be placed here, the garrison of occupation being in command of one Victor Marchand. On the night of the feast-day of St. James, the English capture the town, but Clara, the daughter of the old Spanish nobleman, had warned the young French Commandant, Marchand, with whom she was in love, and he had escaped. The English suspect her father of having made Marchand’s escape possible, so the entire family of the Marquis is condemned to be hanged. The old noble offers to the English general all that he has if he will spare the life of his youngest son, and allow the rest to be beheaded instead of ignominiously hanged. Both requests are granted. The Marquis then goes to his youngest son, Juanito, and commands him that for this day he shall be the executioner. After heart-breaking protests, the lad is compelled to yield. As his sister Clara places her head on the block, the young French officer, Victor, now friendly with the English, runs to her and tells her that if she will marry him her life will be saved. Her only reply is to her brother, “Now, Juanito,” and her head falls at the feet of her lover. When the day is done, the youngest son, Juanito, is alone. To save the family honor, he has been the executioner of the day.

Only a little less tragic is “The Conscript,” which is part sketch, part short-story.

Madame de Dey, aged thirty-eight, is the widow of a lieutenant-general. She is possessed of a great soul and an attractive personality. During the Reign of Terror she takes refuge in the village of Carentan. Motives of policy influence her to open her house every evening to the principal citizens, Revolutionary authorities, and the like. Her only relative in the world is her son, aged twenty, whom she adores. The Mayor, and others in authority in the town, aspire to marry her, but her heart is bound up in her boy. Suddenly her _salon_ is closed without explanation. Two nights pass, and gossip finds all sorts of reasons--she is hiding a lover; or her son; or a priest. The third day in the morning an old merchant insists upon seeing her. She shows him a letter written by her son in prison, saying he hopes to escape within three days and will come to her house. This is the third day, and she is greatly agitated. The merchant tells her that people are suspicious, and that she must surely receive as usual that night. Then he goes out and spreads plausible tales of her recent extreme illness and marvelous cure. That night many come to see for themselves, and, notwithstanding her terrible anxiety, she keeps up until they all go--except the Public Prosecutor, who is one of her suitors. He tells her he knows she is expecting her son Auguste, and that if he comes she must get him away early in the morning, as he, the Prosecutor, must come then with a “denunciation,” to search her house. While they talk, a young man arrives and is taken to the room prepared for Auguste. When she discovers him to be only a conscript sent there by the Mayor, her grief is great. After spending the night awake in her room, still listening for her boy’s arrival, she is found at daybreak dead--at the hour when, unknown to his mother, her son was shot at Morbihan.

* * * * *

No view of Balzac, the short-story writer, would be complete without considering him as _The Social Philosopher_--by far his preponderating character also as a novelist.

There are not lacking undiscerning folk who judge Balzac’s short-stories by the tone of his _Contes Drolatiques_. It is far from true, however, that Balzac preferred to deal with the corrupt side of life. In reality, he was a great moralist, with robust convictions of right and wrong, and a nicely balanced moral judgment. Yet this contradictory spirit did wallow in filthy imaginations all too often, committed personal follies, pictured the courtesan and the pander, marital infidelity and sordidness in countless manifestations. But let it be remembered that he chose to depict a society which was not only the product of his age, but the outcome of a national life. No one could be more fearless in exposing vice, and while it may be questioned whether the world greatly profits morally by such vivid picturings, it cannot be doubted that Balzac’s social philosophy was not that of the literary pander. His soul had altitude, as one has said, as well as latitude.

Balzac was keenly sensitive to criticism of his moral influence, and himself answered the charge of being a creator of vicious feminine types:

“The author cannot end these remarks without publishing here the result of a conscientious examination which his critics have forced him to make in relation to the number of virtuous women and criminal women whom he has placed on the literary stage. As soon as his first terror left him time to reflect, his first care was to collect his _corps d’armée_, in order to see if the balance which ought to be found between those two elements of his written world was exact, relatively to the measure of vice and virtue which enters into the composition of our present morals. He found himself rich by thirty-odd virtuous women against twenty-two criminal women, whom he here takes the liberty of ranging in order of battle, in order that the immense results already obtained may not be disputed. To this he adds that he has not counted-in a number of virtuous women whom he has left in the shade--where so many of them are in real life.” (Here followed tabulated lists of his prominent women characters, as arranged by himself).

In considering the big plot of the social study, _La Grande Brétêche_--not perfectly translated “The Great House”--we are interestingly reminded of the similar _motifs_ in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” and Mrs. Wharton’s “The Duchess at Prayer”--just as our author’s “A Seashore Drama” recalls the more artistic story of fatherly execution, “Mateo Falcone,” by Mèrimèe.

In _La Grande Brétêche_ a company of friends are spending an evening together and one is asked to tell a story--a conventional opening enough.

He describes a house which has been deserted, the large and once beautiful gardens overgrown with weeds. Neglect and decay are everywhere. The story of the house is this--told with much Balzacian preliminary circumstance:

Monsieur de Merret one night came home quite late, and as he was about to enter his wife’s apartments he heard a closet door, opening into her room, close very quietly. He thought it was his wife’s maid, but just then the maid entered the room from another door. The husband sent the maid away and asked his wife who had gone into the closet. She answered him that no one was there.

He said, “I believe you. I will not open it. But see, here is your crucifix--swear before God that there is no one in there. I will believe you--I will never open that door.”

Madame de Merret took up the crucifix and said, “I swear it.”

Monsieur de Merret sent away the servants--all but one trusted one. He then sent for a mason, and had the closet securely walled in. At dawn the work was completed, the mason had gone, and Monsieur, on some pretext, left the house. As soon as he was gone, Madame de Merret called her maid, and together they began to tear down the wall--hoping to replace the bricks before Monsieur returned. They had just begun the work when Monsieur entered the room. For twenty days he remained in his wife’s apartment, and when a noise was heard in the closet and she wished to intercede for the dying man, her husband would answer:

“You swore on the cross that there was no one there.”

No need even for a Balzac to read a moral!

A fifth side of Balzac’s genius is sweeter to contemplate--that of _The Idealistic Philosopher_. Take time to read _The Personal Opinions of Honoré de Balzac_, edited by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, you who would know how the man interpreted himself, and you will find idealism lifting its lily crest from the field of ooze.

Doubtless “A Legend of Jesus Christ in Flanders” is Balzac’s most ethically idealistic story--a true symbolical tale of Hawthorne’s legendary type.

Night was falling. The ferry-boat that carried passengers from the island of Cadzand to Ostend was ready to depart. Just then a man appeared who wished to enter the boat. It was already full. There was no place in the stern for the stranger, for the “aristocrats” of Flanders were seated there--a baroness, a cavalier, a young lady, a bishop, a rich merchant, and a doctor. So he made his way to the bow, where the more humble folk were seated. They at once made room for him.

As soon as the boat had moved out on the water, the skipper called to his rowers to pull with all their might, for they were in the face of a storm. All the while the tempest was growing more terrifying, and all the while the men and women in the boat questioned in their hearts who might the stranger be. On his face shone a light and a quiet peace they could not understand.

Finally, the boat was capsized. Then the stranger said to them, “Those who have faith shall be saved; let them follow me.” With a firm step he walked upon the waves, and those who followed him came safe to shore.

When they were all seated near the fire in a fisherman’s hut, they looked round for the man who had brought them safely out of the sea. But he was not there, having gone down to the water to rescue the skipper, who had been washed ashore. He carried him to the door of the hut, and when the door of the humble refuge was opened, the Saviour disappeared--for it was He.

And so on this spot the convent of Mercy was built, as a shelter for storm-beleaguered sailors, and it was said by humble folk that for many years the foot-prints of Jesus Christ could be seen there in the sands of Flanders.

* * * * *

There is little charm in Balzac’s work, much coarseness, much detail of vileness, much to cause the sensitive to shudder; but there is much, too, that causes the soul to judge itself honestly, and many a beauty-crowned peak rising nobly from the valley darkness.

In the story which here follows in full, in translation, appear all of Balzac’s characteristic traits. Happily, its theme leads us above the sordid and the filthy, up to the heights which he knew and sometimes extolled.

“An Episode Under the Terror,” which Ferdinand Brunetière has pronounced to be “in its artistic brevity one of Balzac’s most tragic and finished narratives,” was written in 1830 as an introduction to the fictitious Memoirs of Sanson, who is the Stranger referred to in the story.

AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR
(_UN ÉPISODE SOUS LA TERREUR_)

By Honoré de Balzac

_Done into English by the Editor_

On the twenty-second of January, 1793, about eight o’clock in the evening, an old lady was walking down the steep hill that ends in front of the church of Saint Laurent, in the Faubourg Saint Martin in Paris. It had snowed so much throughout the day that foot-falls could scarcely be heard. The streets were deserted. The very natural dread inspired by the silence was augmented by all the terror which at that time caused France to groan; then, too, the old lady had not as yet met any one; her sight had long been feeble, so for this and for other reasons she could not discern by the lights of the lanterns the few distant passers-by, who were scattered like phantoms on the broad highway of the quarter. She went on courageously alone through that solitude, as though her age were a talisman which would preserve her from all evil.

When she had passed the rue des Morts, she thought she could distinguish the heavy and resolute steps of a man walking behind her. She fancied that she had heard that sound before; she was frightened at having been followed, and tried to walk more rapidly in order to reach a brightly lighted shop, hoping to be able in the light to settle the suspicions that had seized her. As soon as she found herself within the direct rays of light which came from the shop, she quickly turned her head and glimpsed a human form in the haze; that indistinct vision sufficed. She faltered a moment under the weight of the terror which oppressed her, for she doubted no longer that she had been followed by the stranger from the first step that she had taken outside of her home, but the desire to escape from a spy lent her strength. Incapable of reasoning, she doubled her pace, as though she could escape from a man who was, necessarily, more agile than she. After running for several minutes she reached the shop of a pastry-cook, rushed in, and tumbled rather than sat down upon a chair in front of the counter.

The moment she rattled the door-latch, a young woman who was occupied in embroidering raised her eyes, recognized through the glass partition the old-fashioned mantle of violet silk in which the old lady was enveloped, and hastened to open a drawer, as though to take out something which she intended to give her. Not only did the young woman’s movement and expression indicate a wish to be rid promptly of the unknown, as if she were one of those persons whom one is not glad to see, but she even allowed an expression of impatience to escape her upon finding that the drawer was empty; then, without looking at the lady, she rushed from the counter, turned toward the back shop, and called her husband, who appeared immediately.

“Now, where did you put--,” she demanded of him, with a mysterious air, and designated the old lady by a turn of the eye, without finishing her sentence.

Although the pastry-cook could see only the immense black silk bonnet, surrounded by knots of violet ribbons, which formed the head-dress of the unknown, he turned away, after having given his wife a look which seemed to say, “Did you suppose that I would leave _that_ on your counter?” and quickly disappeared. Astounded by the old lady’s silence and immobility, the tradeswoman walked toward her, and as she examined her she was conscious of a feeling of compassion, and perhaps also of curiosity. Although the stranger’s complexion was naturally pallid, like that of a person vowed to secret austerities, it was easy to recognize that some recent emotion had given her an extraordinary pallor. Her head-dress was so disposed as to hide her hair--doubtless whitened by age, since the neatness of the collar of her dress proclaimed that she did not use hair-powder. That article of adornment lent to her figure a sort of religious severity. Her features were grave and dignified. Formerly the manners and the habitudes of people of quality were so different from those of people belonging to the other classes that one easily divined a person of the nobility. So the young woman was herself persuaded that the unknown was a member of the outlawed nobility, and that she had belonged to the court.

“Madame--” she said to her, involuntarily, and with respect, forgetting that this title was proscribed.

The old lady did not respond. She held her eyes fixed upon the window of the shop, as if some terrifying object had there been descried.

“What is the matter, Citizeness?” asked the proprietor of the shop who reappeared at that moment.

The citizen pastry-cook aroused the lady from her revery by handing to her a little pasteboard box, covered with blue paper.

“Nothing, nothing, my friends,” she replied in a mild voice.

She raised her eyes to the pastry-cook as though to cast upon him a glance of gratitude; but upon seeing him with a red bonnet upon his head, she allowed a cry to escape her:

“Ah! you have betrayed me!”

The young woman and her husband replied by a gesture of horror which caused the Unknown to blush--perhaps for having suspicion, perhaps from pleasure.

“Excuse me,” she said, with a childlike gentleness.

Then, taking a _louis d’or_ from her pocket, she presented it to the pastry-cook.

“Here is the price agreed upon,” she added.

There is an indigence which the poor know how to divine. The pastry-cook and his wife looked at each other and watched the old lady, while they exchanged the same thought. That _louis d’or_ seemed to be the last. The hands of the lady trembled in offering that piece, which she looked upon with sadness and without avarice, for she seemed to realize the full extent of the sacrifice. Fasting and misery were graven upon that face in lines quite as legible as those of fear and her habits of asceticism. There were in her garments some vestiges of magnificence: the silk was threadbare, the cloak neat though old-fashioned, the lace carefully mended--in short, the tatters of opulence! The tradespeople, placed between pity and self-interest, commenced to solace their consciences by words:

“But Citizeness, you seem very feeble--”

“Perhaps Madame would like to take some refreshment?” asked the woman, cutting the words of her husband short.

“We are not so black as we are painted!” cried the pastry-cook.

“It’s so cold! Madame was perhaps chilled by her walk? But you may rest here and warm yourself a little.”

Won by the tone of benevolence which animated the words of the charitable shopkeepers, the lady avowed that she had been followed by a stranger, and that she was afraid to return home alone.

“It is no more than that?” replied the man with the red hat. “Wait for me, Citizeness.”

He gave the _louis_ to his wife; then, moved by that species of restitution which glides into the conscience of a merchant when he has received an exorbitant price for merchandise of mediocre value, he went to put on his uniform of the National Guard, took his chapeau, thrust his sabre into his belt, and reappeared under arms; but his wife had had time to reflect. As in many other hearts, reflection closed the hand opened by beneficence. Disturbed, and fearing to see her husband in a bad affair, the pastry-cook’s wife essayed to stop him by tugging at the skirt of his coat. But, obedient to a sentiment of charity, the brave man offered to escort the old lady at once.

“It seems that the man who frightened the Citizeness is still prowling about the shop,” said the young woman nervously.

“I am afraid so,” artlessly replied the lady.

“If he should be a spy! If it should be a conspiracy! Don’t go; and take back from her the box.”

These words, breathed into the ear of the pastry-cook by his wife, froze the impromptu courage which had possessed him.

“Eh’ I’ll just go out and say two words to him, and rid you of him quickly,” cried the pastry-cook, opening the door and rushing out.

The old lady, passive as an infant, and almost dazed, reseated herself upon the chair. The honest merchant was not slow in reappearing; his face, naturally red, and still more flushed by the heat of his oven, had suddenly become livid; such a great fright agitated him that his legs trembled and his eyes looked like those of a drunken man.

“Do you wish to have our heads cut off, miserable aristocrat?” he shrieked at her with fury. “Just show us your heels, never come back here again, and don’t count any more on me to furnish you the stuff for conspiracy.”

As he ejaculated these words, the pastry-cook tried to take from the old lady the little box which she had put in one of her pockets. But scarcely had the bold hands of the pastry-cook touched her vestments than the Unknown, preferring to face the dangers of her way home without other defense than God, rather than to lose that which she had come to purchase, recovered the agility of her youth; she darted toward the door, opened it abruptly, and disappeared before the eyes of the stupefied and trembling woman and her husband.

As soon as the Unknown found herself outside, she began walking rapidly; but her strength soon failed her, for she heard the spy by whom she was pitilessly followed make the snow craunch under the pressure of his heavy steps. She was obliged to stop--he stopped. She dared neither to speak to him nor to look at him, whether on account of the fear with which she was seized or from lack of intelligence. She continued her way, walking slowly; thereupon the man slackened his steps so as to remain standing at a distance which permitted him to keep his eye upon her. He seemed to be the very shadow of that old woman. Nine o’clock was striking when the silent couple repassed in front of the church of Saint Laurent. It is in the nature of all souls, even the most infirm, that a feeling of calm should succeed one of violent agitation, for if our feelings are infinite, our organs are limited. And so the Unknown, not experiencing any harm from her supposed persecutor, chose to see in him a secret friend, eager to protect her. She reconstructed all the circumstances which had accompanied the Stranger’s appearances, as if to find plausible arguments for that consoling opinion, and she then took pleasure in recognizing in him good rather than evil intentions.

Forgetting the fright which that man had inspired in the pastry-cook, she advanced with a firm step into the higher regions of the Faubourg Saint-Martin. After a half-hour of walking, she reached a house situated near the junction formed by the main street of the Faubourg and that which leads to the Barrière de Pantin. Even to-day that spot is one of the most deserted of all Paris. The north wind, passing over the Buttes Chaumont and from Bellville, whistles athwart the houses, or rather the hovels, scattered about in that almost uninhabited valley where the dividing lines are walls made of earth and bones. That desolate place seemed to be the natural asylum of misery and despair. The man who had persisted in the pursuit of the poor creature who had the hardihood to traverse those silent streets at night seemed impressed by the spectacle presented to his eyes. He rested pensively, standing and in an attitude of hesitation, in the feeble light of a lantern whose uncertain rays with difficulty pierced the mist.

Fear gave eyes to the old woman, who fancied that she could perceive something sinister in the features of the Stranger. She felt her terrors reawake, and profited by the sort of uncertainty which had retarded the man’s advance to glide in the darkness toward the door of the lonely house. She pressed a spring, and disappeared like a ghost.

The Stranger, immobile, contemplated that house, which stood in some sort as the type of the miserable habitations of the quarter. That rickety hovel, built of rubble, was covered by a coat of yellow plaster, so deeply cracked that one thought to see it tumble before the least effort of the wind. The roof, of brown tiles and covered with moss, had so sunk in several places as to make it seem likely to give way under the weight of the snow. Each floor there had three windows, whose sashes, rotted by dampness and disjointed by the action of the sun, announced that the cold must penetrate into the room. That isolated house resembled an old tower which time had forgotten to destroy. A feeble light shone through the windows which irregularly cleft the mansard roof by which the poor edifice was crowned, while all the rest of the house was in complete obscurity. The old woman climbed, not without difficulty, the steep and rough staircase, whose length was supplied with a rope in the guise of a baluster. She knocked mysteriously at the door of the apartment which she found in the attic, and dropped hastily upon a chair which an old man offered her.

“Hide! hide yourself!” she said to him. “Although we go out very rarely, our movements are known, our footsteps are spied upon.”

“What is there new in that?” demanded another old lady, seated beside the fire.

“The man who has been prowling around the house since yesterday followed me to-night.”

At these words the three occupants of the attic regarded one another, allowing signs of profound terror to appear on their faces. The old man was the least agitated of the three, perhaps because he was in the greatest danger. Under the weight of a great calamity, or under the yoke of persecution, a courageous man begins, so to say, by making the sacrifice of himself; he looks upon his days as just so many victories won back from destiny. The looks of the two women, fastened upon this old man, made it easy to divine that he was the sole object of their intense solicitude.

“Why despair of God, my sisters?” said he in a voice low but impressive. “We sang His praises amid the cries which the assassins raised, and the groans of the dying at the Carmelite convent. If He decreed that I should be saved from that butchery, it was doubtless in order to reserve me for a destiny which I must accept without murmuring. God protects his own, He may dispose of them at His pleasure. It is of you, and not of me, that we must think.”

“No,” said one of the old ladies; “what are our lives in comparison with that of a priest?”

“When once I found myself outside of the Abbey of Chelles, I considered myself as dead,” said that one of the two nuns who had not gone out.

“Here,” replied the one who had come in, handing the priest the little box, “here are the wafers.... But,” she cried, “I hear some one mounting the stairs!”

All three thereupon listened intently. The sounds ceased.

“Do not be affrighted,” said the priest, “if some one should essay to enter. A person upon whose fidelity we can count has undoubtedly taken all needful measures to pass the frontier, and will come to seek the letters which I have written to the Duc de Langeais and to the Marquis de Beauséant, asking them to consider the means of rescuing you from this terrible country, from the death or the misery which awaits you here.”

“You do not mean to go with us, then?” cried the two nuns gently, manifesting a sort of despair.

“My place is where there are victims,” said the priest with simplicity.

They remained silent, and gazed at their companion with devout admiration.

“Sister Martha,” he said, addressing the nun who had gone to get the wafers, “that messenger I speak of will reply ‘_Fiat voluntas_’ to the word ‘_Hosanna_.’”

“There is some one on the stairs!” cried the other nun, opening the door of a hiding-place under the roof.

This time they could easily hear, amid the most profound silence, the footsteps of a man resounding upon the stairs, whose treads were covered with ridges made by the hardened mud. The priest crept with difficulty into a species of cupboard, and the nun threw over him some garments.

“You may close the door, Sister Agatha,” said he in a muffled voice.

The priest was scarcely hidden before three taps on the door gave a shock to the two saintly women, who consulted each other with their eyes, without daring to pronounce a single word. They each seemed to be about sixty years old. Separated from the world for forty years, they were like plants habituated to the air of a hothouse, which wilt if they are taken from it. Accustomed to the life of a convent, they were no longer able to conceive of any other. One morning, their grating having been shattered, they shuddered to find themselves free. One can easily imagine the species of artificial imbecility which the events of the Revolution had produced in their innocent hearts. Incapable of reconciling their conventual ideas with the difficulties of life, and not even comprehending their situation, they resembled those children who have been zealously cared for hitherto, and who, abandoned by their motherly protector, pray instead of weeping. And so, in face of the danger which they apprehended at that moment, they remained mute and passive, having no conception of any other defense than Christian resignation.

The man who desired to enter interpreted that silence in his own manner. He opened the door and appeared suddenly before them. The two nuns shuddered as they recognized the man who for some time had been prowling about their house and making inquiries about them. They remained stock-still, but gazed at him with anxious curiosity, after the manner of savage children, who examine strangers in silence.

The man was tall and large; but nothing in his demeanor, in his air, nor in his physiognomy indicated an evil man. He imitated the immobility of the nuns, and moved his eyes slowly about the room in which he found himself.

Two straw mats, laid upon boards, served the two nuns as beds. A single table was in the middle of the room and upon it they had placed a copper candlestick, a few plates, three knives, and a round loaf of bread. The fire on the hearth was meagre. A few sticks of wood piled in a corner attested the poverty of the two recluses. The walls, coated with an ancient layer of paint, proved the bad state of the roof, for stains like brown threads marked the infiltrations of the rainwater. A relic, rescued doubtless from the pillage of the Abbey of Chelles, adorned the chimney mantel. Three chairs, two coffers, and a wretched chest of drawers completed the furniture of the room. A door beside the chimney allowed one to conjecture the existence of a second chamber.

The inventory of the cell was speedily made by the person who had thrust himself under such alarming auspices into the midst of that group. A sentiment of commiseration painted itself upon his face, and he cast a benevolent glance upon the two women, at least as embarrassed as they. The singular silence preserved by all three lasted but a short time, for the Stranger at last divined the moral simplicity and the inexperience of the two poor creatures, and he said to them in a voice which he tried to soften: “I do not come here as an enemy, Citizenesses.”

He paused, and then resumed: “My sisters, if there should come to you any misfortune, believe that I have not contributed to it.... I have a favor to ask of you.”

They still maintained their silence.

“If I seem importunate, if ... I embarrass you, tell me so freely.... I will go; but understand that I am entirely devoted to you; that if there is any good office that I am able to render you, you may employ me without fear; and that I alone, perhaps, am above the law, since there is no longer a king.”

There was such an accent of truth in these words that Sister Agatha, the one of the two nuns who belonged to the family of Langeais, and whose manners seemed to say that she had formerly known the magnificence of fêtes and had breathed the air of the court, instantly pointed to one of the chairs, as if to ask their guest to be seated. The Stranger manifested a sort of joy mingled with sadness as he recognized that gesture; and he waited until the two venerable women were seated, before seating himself.

“You have given shelter,” he continued, “to a venerable unsworn priest, who has miraculously escaped the massacre at the Carmelites.”

“_Hosanna!_” said Sister Agatha, interrupting the Stranger, and gazing at him with anxious inquiry.

“I don’t think that is his name,” he replied.

“But, monsieur,” said Sister Martha hastily, “we haven’t any priest here, and----”

“In that case, you must be more careful and more prudent,” retorted the Stranger gently, reaching to the table and taking up a breviary. “I do not believe that you understand Latin, and----”

He did not continue, for the extraordinary emotion depicted on the faces of the two poor nuns made him feel that he had gone too far; they were trembling, and their eyes were filled with tears.

“Reassure yourselves,” he said to them in a cheery voice; “I know the name of your guest, and yours; and three days ago I was informed of your destination and of your devotion to the venerable Abbé of----”

“_Chut!_” said Sister Agatha naïvely, putting her finger to her lips.

“You see, my sisters, that if I had formed the horrible design of betraying you, I might already have accomplished it more than once.”

When he heard these words, the priest emerged from his prison and reappeared in the middle of the room.

“I cannot believe, monsieur,” he said to the Stranger, “that you can be one of our persecutors, and I have faith in you. What do you want of me?”

The saintlike confidence of the priest, the nobility that shone in all his features, would have disarmed assassins. The mysterious personage who had enlivened that scene of misery and resignation gazed for a moment at the group formed by these three; then he assumed a confidential tone, and addressed the priest in these words:

“Father, I have come to implore you to celebrate a mortuary mass for the repose of the soul of a--a consecrated person, whose body, however, will never repose in holy ground.”

The priest involuntarily shuddered. The two nuns, not understanding as yet of whom the Stranger was speaking, stood with necks outstretched, and faces turned towards the two speakers in an attitude of curiosity. The ecclesiastic scrutinized the Stranger; unfeigned anxiety was depicted upon his face, and his eyes expressed the most ardent supplication.