Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac (pdf e book reader TXT) 📖

quite sure you would bring me here?”

 

“Yes,” replied she, “if I found Colonel Chabert in Derville’s client.”

 

The appearance of truth she contrived to give to this answer

dissipated the slight suspicions which the Colonel was ashamed to have

felt. For three days the Countess was quite charming to her first

husband. By tender attentions and unfailing sweetness she seemed

anxious to wipe out the memory of the sufferings he had endured, and

to earn forgiveness for the woes which, as she confessed, she had

innocently caused him. She delighted in displaying for him the charms

she knew he took pleasure in, while at the same time she assumed a

kind of melancholy; for men are more especially accessible to certain

ways, certain graces of the heart or of the mind which they cannot

resist. She aimed at interesting him in her position, and appealing to

his feelings so far as to take possession of his mind and control him

despotically.

 

Ready for anything to attain her ends, she did not yet know what she

was to do with this man; but at any rate she meant to annihilate him

socially. On the evening of the third day she felt that in spite of

her efforts she could not conceal her uneasiness as to the results of

her manoeuvres. To give herself a minute’s reprieve she went up to her

room, sat down before her writing-table, and laid aside the mask of

composure which she wore in Chabert’s presence, like an actress who,

returning to her dressing-room after a fatiguing fifth act, drops half

dead, leaving with the audience an image of herself which she no

longer resembles. She proceeded to finish a letter she had begun to

Delbecq, whom she desired to go in her name and demand of Derville the

deeds relating to Colonel Chabert, to copy them, and to come to her at

once to Groslay. She had hardly finished when she heard the Colonel’s

step in the passage; uneasy at her absence, he had come to look for

her.

 

“Alas!” she exclaimed, “I wish I were dead! My position is

intolerable …”

 

“Why, what is the matter?” asked the good man.

 

“Nothing, nothing!” she replied.

 

She rose, left the Colonel, and went down to speak privately to her

maid, whom she sent off to Paris, impressing on her that she was

herself to deliver to Delbecq the letter just written, and to bring it

back to the writer as soon as he had read it. Then the Countess went

out to sit on a bench sufficiently in sight for the Colonel to join

her as soon as he might choose. The Colonel, who was looking for her,

hastened up and sat down by her.

 

“Rosine,” said he, “what is the matter with you?”

 

She did not answer.

 

It was one of those glorious, calm evenings in the month of June,

whose secret harmonies infuse such sweetness into the sunset. The air

was clear, the stillness perfect, so that far away in the park they

could hear the voices of some children, which added a kind of melody

to the sublimity of the scene.

 

“You do not answer me?” the Colonel said to his wife.

 

“My husband–-” said the Countess, who broke off, started a little,

and with a blush stopped to ask him, “What am I to say when I speak of

M. Ferraud?”

 

“Call him your husband, my poor child,” replied the Colonel, in a kind

voice. “Is he not the father of your children?”

 

“Well, then,” she said, “if he should ask what I came here for, if he

finds out that I came here, alone, with a stranger, what am I to say

to him? Listen, monsieur,” she went on, assuming a dignified attitude,

“decide my fate, I am resigned to anything—”

 

“My dear,” said the Colonel, taking possession of his wife’s hands, “I

have made up my mind to sacrifice myself entirely for your

happiness—”

 

“That is impossible!” she exclaimed, with a sudden spasmodic movement.

“Remember that you would have to renounce your identity, and in an

authenticated form.”

 

“What?” said the Colonel. “Is not my word enough for you?”

 

The word “authenticated” fell on the old man’s heart, and roused

involuntary distrust. He looked at his wife in a way that made her

color, she cast down her eyes, and he feared that he might find

himself compelled to despise her. The Countess was afraid lest she had

scared the shy modesty, the stern honesty, of a man whose generous

temper and primitive virtues were known to her. Though these feelings

had brought the clouds to her brow, they immediately recovered their

harmony. This was the way of it. A child’s cry was heard in the

distance.

 

“Jules, leave your sister in peace,” the Countess called out.

 

“What, are your children here?” said Chabert.

 

“Yes, but I told them not to trouble you.”

 

The old soldier understood the delicacy, the womanly tact of so

gracious a precaution, and took the Countess’ hand to kiss it.

 

“But let them come,” said he.

 

The little girl ran up to complain of her brother.

 

“Mamma!”

 

“Mamma!”

 

“It was Jules—”

 

“It was her—”

 

Their little hands were held out to their mother, and the two childish

voices mingled; it was an unexpected and charming picture.

 

“Poor little things!” cried the Countess, no longer restraining her

tears, “I shall have to leave them. To whom will the law assign them?

A mother’s heart cannot be divided; I want them, I want them.”

 

“Are you making mamma cry?” said Jules, looking fiercely at the

Colonel.

 

“Silence, Jules!” said the mother in a decided tone.

 

The two children stood speechless, examining their mother and the

stranger with a curiosity which it is impossible to express in words.

 

“Oh yes!” she cried. “If I am separated from the Count, only leave me

my children, and I will submit to anything …”

 

This was the decisive speech which gained all that she had hoped from

it.

 

“Yes,” exclaimed the Colonel, as if he were ending a sentence already

begun in his mind, “I must return underground again. I had told myself

so already.”

 

“Can I accept such a sacrifice?” replied his wife. “If some men have

died to save a mistress’ honor, they gave their life but once. But in

this case you would be giving your life every day. No, no. It is

impossible. If it were only your life, it would be nothing; but to

sign a declaration that you are not Colonel Chabert, to acknowledge

yourself an imposter, to sacrifice your honor, and live a lie every

hour of the day! Human devotion cannot go so far. Only think!—No. But

for my poor children I would have fled with you by this time to the

other end of the world.”

 

“But,” said Chabert, “cannot I live here in your little lodge as one

of your relations? I am as worn out as a cracked cannon; I want

nothing but a little tobacco and the Constitutionnel.”

 

The Countess melted into tears. There was a contest of generosity

between the Comtesse Ferraud and Colonel Chabert, and the soldier came

out victorious. One evening, seeing this mother with her children, the

soldier was bewitched by the touching grace of a family picture in the

country, in the shade and the silence; he made a resolution to remain

dead, and, frightened no longer at the authentication of a deed, he

asked what he could do to secure beyond all risk the happiness of this

family.

 

“Do exactly as you like,” said the Countess. “I declare to you that I

will have nothing to do with this affair. I ought not.”

 

Delbecq had arrived some days before, and in obedience to the

Countess’ verbal instructions, the intendant had succeeded in gaining

the old soldier’s confidence. So on the following morning Colonel

Chabert went with the erewhile attorney to Saint-Leu-Taverny, where

Delbecq had caused the notary to draw up an affidavit in such terms

that, after hearing it read, the Colonel started up and walked out of

the office.

 

“Turf and thunder! What a fool you must think me! Why, I should make

myself out a swindler!” he exclaimed.

 

“Indeed, monsieur,” said Delbecq, “I should advise you not to sign in

haste. In your place I would get at least thirty thousand francs a

year out of the bargain. Madame would pay them.”

 

After annihilating this scoundrel emeritus by the lightning look of

an honest man insulted, the Colonel rushed off, carried away by a

thousand contrary emotions. He was suspicious, indignant, and calm

again by turns.

 

Finally he made his way back into the park of Groslay by a gap in a

fence, and slowly walked on to sit down and rest, and meditate at his

ease, in a little room under a gazebo, from which the road to Saint-Leu could be seen. The path being strewn with the yellowish sand which

is used instead of river-gravel, the Countess, who was sitting in the

upper room of this little summer-house, did not hear the Colonel’s

approach, for she was too much preoccupied with the success of her

business to pay the smallest attention to the slight noise made by her

husband. Nor did the old man notice that his wife was in the room over

him.

 

“Well, Monsieur Delbecq, has he signed?” the Countess asked her

secretary, whom she saw alone on the road beyond the hedge of a haha.

 

“No, madame. I do not even know what has become of our man. The old

horse reared.”

 

“Then we shall be obliged to put him into Charenton,” said she, “since

we have got him.”

 

The Colonel, who recovered the elasticity of youth to leap the haha,

in the twinkling of an eye was standing in front of Delbecq, on whom

he bestowed the two finest slaps that ever a scoundrel’s cheeks

received.

 

“And you may add that old horses can kick!” said he.

 

His rage spent, the Colonel no longer felt vigorous enough to leap the

ditch. He had seen the truth in all its nakedness. The Countess’

speech and Delbecq’s reply had revealed the conspiracy of which he was

to be the victim. The care taken of him was but a bait to entrap him

in a snare. That speech was like a drop of subtle poison, bringing on

in the old soldier a return of all his sufferings, physical and moral.

He came back to the summer-house through the park gate, walking slowly

like a broken man.

 

Then for him there was to be neither peace nor truce. From this moment

he must begin the odious warfare with this woman of which Derville had

spoken, enter on a life of litigation, feed on gall, drink every

morning of the cup of bitterness. And then—fearful thought!—where

was he to find the money needful to pay the cost of the first

proceedings? He felt such disgust of life, that if there had been any

water at hand he would have thrown himself into it; that if he had had

a pistol, he would have blown out his brains. Then he relapsed into

the indecision of mind which, since his conversation with Derville at

the dairyman’s had changed his character.

 

At last, having reached the kiosque, he went up to the gazebo, where

little rose-windows afforded a view over each lovely landscape of the

valley, and where he found his wife seated on a chair. The Countess

was gazing at the distance, and preserved a calm countenance, showing

that impenetrable face which women can assume when resolved