Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac (pdf e book reader TXT) 📖
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
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at our interview. Besides, I am informed through M. Delbecq that you
like to manage your own business without troubling the Count.”
“Then I will send for Delbecq,” said she.
“He would be of no use to you, clever as he is,” replied Derville.
“Listen to me, madame; one word will be enough to make you grave.
Colonel Chabert is alive!”
“Is it by telling me such nonsense as that that you think you can make
me grave?” said she with a shout of laughter. But she was suddenly
quelled by the singular penetration of the fixed gaze which Derville
turned on her, seeming to read to the bottom of her soul.
“Madame,” he said with cold and piercing solemnity, “you know not the
extent of the danger that threatens you. I need say nothing of the
indisputable authenticity of the evidence nor of the fulness of proof
which testifies to the identity of Comte Chabert. I am not, as you
know, the man to take up a bad cause. If you resist our proceedings to
show that the certificate of death was false, you will lose that first
case, and that matter once settled, we shall gain every point.”
“What, then, do you wish to discuss with me?”
“Neither the Colonel nor yourself. Nor need I allude to the briefs
which clever advocates may draw up when armed with the curious facts
of this case, or the advantage they may derive from the letters you
received from your first husband before your marriage to your second.”
“It is false,” she cried, with the violence of a spoilt woman. “I
never had a letter from Comte Chabert; and if some one is pretending
to be the Colonel, it is some swindler, some returned convict, like
Coignard perhaps. It makes me shudder only to think of it. Can the
Colonel rise from the dead, monsieur? Bonaparte sent an aide-de-camp
to inquire for me on his death, and to this day I draw the pension of
three thousand francs granted to this widow by the Government. I have
been perfectly in the right to turn away all the Chaberts who have
ever come, as I shall all who may come.”
“Happily we are alone, madame. We can tell lies at our ease,” said he
coolly, and finding it amusing to lash up the Countess’ rage so as to
lead her to betray herself, by tactics familiar to lawyers, who are
accustomed to keep cool when their opponents or their clients are in a
passion. “Well, then, we must fight it out,” thought he, instantly
hitting on a plan to entrap her and show her her weakness.
“The proof that you received the first letter, madame, is that it
contained some securities—”
“Oh, as to securities—that it certainly did not.”
“Then you received the letter,” said Derville, smiling. “You are
caught, madame, in the first snare laid for you by an attorney, and
you fancy you could fight against Justice–-”
The Countess colored, and then turned pale, hiding her face in her
hands. Then she shook off her shame, and retorted with the natural
impertinence of such women, “Since you are the so-called Chabert’s
attorney, be so good as to—”
“Madame,” said Derville, “I am at this moment as much your lawyer as I
am Colonel Chabert’s. Do you suppose I want to lose so valuable a
client as you are?—But you are not listening.”
“Nay, speak on, monsieur,” said she graciously.
“Your fortune came to you from M. le Comte Chabert, and you cast him
off. Your fortune is immense, and you leave him to beg. An advocate
can be very eloquent when a cause is eloquent in itself; there are
here circumstances which might turn public opinion strongly against
you.”
“But, monsieur,” said the Comtesse, provoked by the way in which
Derville turned and laid her on the gridiron, “even if I grant that
your M. Chabert is living, the law will uphold my second marriage on
account of the children, and I shall get off with the restitution of
two hundred and twenty-five thousand francs to M. Chabert.”
“It is impossible to foresee what view the Bench may take of the
question. If on one side we have a mother and children, on the other
we have an old man crushed by sorrows, made old by your refusals to
know him. Where is he to find a wife? Can the judges contravene the
law? Your marriage with Colonel Chabert has priority on its side and
every legal right. But if you appear under disgraceful colors, you
might have an unlooked-for adversary. That, madame, is the danger
against which I would warn you.”
“And who is he?”
“Comte Ferraud.”
“Monsieur Ferraud has too great an affection for me, too much respect
for the mother of his children—”
“Do not talk of such absurd things,” interrupted Derville, “to
lawyers, who are accustomed to read hearts to the bottom. At this
instant Monsieur Ferraud has not the slightest wish to annual your
union, and I am quite sure that he adores you; but if some one were to
tell him that his marriage is void, that his wife will be called
before the bar of public opinion as a criminal—”
“He would defend me, monsieur.”
“No, madame.”
“What reason could he have for deserting me, monsieur?”
“That he would be free to marry the only daughter of a peer of France,
whose title would be conferred on him by patent from the King.”
The Countess turned pale.
“A hit!” said Derville to himself. “I have you on the hip; the poor
Colonel’s case is won.”—“Besides, madame,” he went on aloud, “he
would feel all the less remorse because a man covered with glory—a
General, Count, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor—is not such a bad
alternative; and if that man insisted on his wife’s returning to
him—”
“Enough, enough, monsieur!” she exclaimed. “I will never have any
lawyer but you. What is to be done?”
“Compromise!” said Derville.
“Does he still love me?” she said.
“Well, I do not think he can do otherwise.”
The Countess raised her head at these words. A flash of hope shone in
her eyes; she thought perhaps that she could speculate on her first
husband’s affection to gain her cause by some feminine cunning.
“I shall await your orders, madame, to know whether I am to report our
proceedings to you, or if you will come to my office to agree to the
terms of a compromise,” said Derville, taking leave.
A week after Derville had paid these two visits, on a fine morning in
June, the husband and wife, who had been separated by an almost
supernatural chance, started from the opposite ends of Paris to meet
in the office of the lawyer who was engaged by both. The supplies
liberally advanced by Derville to Colonel Chabert had enabled him to
dress as suited his position in life, and the dead man arrived in a
very decent cab. He wore a wig suited to his face, was dressed in blue
cloth with white linen, and wore under his waistcoat the broad red
ribbon of the higher grade of the Legion of Honor. In resuming the
habits of wealth he had recovered his soldierly style. He held himself
up; his face, grave and mysterious-looking, reflected his happiness
and all his hopes, and seemed to have acquired youth and impasto, to
borrow a picturesque word from the painter’s art. He was no more like
the Chabert of the old box-coat than a cartwheel double sou is like a
newly coined forty-franc piece. The passer-by, only to see him, would
have recognized at once one of the noble wrecks of our old army, one
of the heroic men on whom our national glory is reflected, as a
splinter of ice on which the sun shines seems to reflect every beam.
These veterans are at once a picture and a book.
When the Count jumped out of his carriage to go into Derville’s
office, he did it as lightly as a young man. Hardly had his cab moved
off, when a smart brougham drove up, splendid with coats-of-arms.
Madame la Comtesse Ferraud stepped out in a dress which, though
simple, was cleverly designed to show how youthful her figure was. She
wore a pretty drawn bonnet lined with pink, which framed her face to
perfection, softening its outlines and making it look younger.
If the clients were rejuvenescent, the office was unaltered, and
presented the same picture as that described at the beginning of this
story. Simonnin was eating his breakfast, his shoulder leaning against
the window, which was then open, and he was staring up at the blue sky
in the opening of the courtyard enclosed by four gloomy houses.
“Ah, ha!” cried the little clerk, “who will bet an evening at the play
that Colonel Chabert is a General, and wears a red ribbon?”
“The chief is a great magician,” said Godeschal.
“Then there is no trick to play on him this time?” asked Desroches.
“His wife has taken that in hand, the Comtesse Ferraud,” said Boucard.
“What next?” said Godeschal. “Is Comtesse Ferraud required to belong
to two men?”
“Here she is,” answered Simonnin.
“So you are not deaf, you young rogue!” said Chabert, taking the
gutter-jumper by the ear and twisting it, to the delight of the other
clerks, who began to laugh, looking at the Colonel with the curious
attention due to so singular a personage.
Comte Chabert was in Derville’s private room at the moment when his
wife came in by the door of the office.
“I say, Boucard, there is going to be a queer scene in the chief’s
room! There is a woman who can spend her days alternately, the odd
with Comte Ferraud, and the even with Comte Chabert.”
“And in leap year,” said Godeschal, “they must settle the count
between them.”
“Silence, gentlemen, you can be heard!” said Boucard severely. “I
never was in an office where there was so much jesting as there is
here over the clients.”
Derville had made the Colonel retire to the bedroom when the Countess
was admitted.
“Madame,” he said, “not knowing whether it would be agreeable to you
to meet M. le Comte Chabert, I have placed you apart. If, however, you
should wish it—”
“It is an attention for which I am obliged to you.”
“I have drawn up the memorandum of an agreement of which you and M.
Chabert can discuss the conditions, here, and now. I will go
alternately to him and to you, and explain your views respectively.”
“Let me see, monsieur,” said the Countess impatiently.
Derville read aloud:
” ‘Between the undersigned:
” ‘M. Hyacinthe Chabert, Count, Marechal de Camp, and Grand Officer of
the Legion of Honor, living in Paris, Rue du Petit-Banquier, on the
one part;
” ‘And Madame Rose Chapotel, wife of the aforesaid M. le Comte
Chabert, nee—’ “
“Pass over the preliminaries,” said she. “Come to the conditions.”
“Madame,” said the lawyer, “the preamble briefly sets forth the
position in which you stand to each other. Then, by the first clause,
you acknowledge, in the presence of three witnesses, of whom two shall
be notaries, and one the dairyman with whom your husband has been
lodging, to all of whom your secret is known, and who will be
absolutely silent—you acknowledge, I say, that the individual
designated in the documents subjoined to the deed, and whose identity
is to be further proved by an act of recognition prepared by
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