The Recruit by Honoré de Balzac (early readers txt) 📖

the point of departure for a vast array of suspicions. The old men who were taking their walks abroad, remarked a sort of concentrated activity about Madame de Dey's premises, shown by the very precautions which the servants took to conceal it. The foot-man was beating a carpet in the garden. The day before, no one would have noticed that fact; but the carpet now became a corner-stone on which the whole town built up its theories. Each individual had his or her surmise.

The second day, on learning that Madame de Dey declared herself ill, the principal personages of Carentan, assembled in the evening at the house of the mayor's brother, an old married merchant, a man of strict integrity, greatly respected, and for whom Madame de Dey had shown much esteem. There all the aspirants for the hand of the rich widow had a tale to tell that was more or less probable; and each expected to turn to his own profit the secret event which he thus recounted. The public prosecutor imagined a whole drama to result in the return by night of Madame de Dey's son, the emigre. The mayor was convinced that a priest who refused the oath had arrived from La Vendee and asked for asylum; but the day being Friday, the purchase of a hare embarrassed the good mayor not a little. The judge of the district court held firmly to the theory of a Chouan leader or a body of Vendeans hotly pursued. Others were convinced that the person thus harbored was a noble escaped from the Paris prisons. In short, they all suspected the countess of being guilty of one of those generosities, which the laws of the day called crimes, and punished on the scaffold. The public prosecutor remarked in a low voice that it would be best to say no more, but to do their best to save the poor woman from the abyss toward which she was hurrying.

"If you talk about this affair," he said, "I shall be obliged to take notice of it, and search her house, and _then_--"

He said no more, but all present understood what he meant.

The sincere friends of Madame de Dey were so alarmed about her, that on the morning of the third day, the procureur-syndic of the commune made his wife write her a letter, urging her to receive her visitors as usual that evening. Bolder still, the old merchant went himself in the morning to Madame de Dey's house, and, strong in the service he wanted to render her, he insisted on seeing her, and was amazed to find her in the garden gathering flowers for her vases.

"She must be protecting a lover," thought the old man, filled with sudden pity for the charming woman.

The singular expression on the countess's face strengthened this conjecture. Much moved at the thought of such devotion, for all men are flattered by the sacrifices a woman makes for one of them, the old man told the countess of the rumors that were floating about the town, and the dangers to which she was exposing herself.

"For," he said in conclusion, "though some of the authorities will readily pardon a heroism which protects a priest, none of them will spare you if they discover that you are sacrificing yourself to the interests of your heart."

At these words Madame de Dey looked at the old man with a wild and bewildered air, that made him shudder.

"Come," she said, taking him by the hand and leading him into her bedroom. After assuring herself that they were quite alone, she drew from her bosom a soiled and crumpled letter.

"Read that," she said, making a violent effort to say the words.

She fell into a chair, seemingly exhausted. While the old man searched for his spectacles and rubbed their glasses, she raised her eyes to him, and seemed to study him with curiosity; then she said in an altered voice, and very softly,--

"I trust you."

"I am here to share your crime," replied the good man, simply.

She quivered. For the first time in that little town, her soul sympathized with that of another. The old man now understood both the hopes and the fears of the poor woman. The letter was from her son. He had returned to France to share in Granville's expedition, and was taken prisoner. The letter was written from his cell, but it told her to hope. He did not doubt his means of escape, and he named to her three days, on one of which he expected to be with her in disguise. But in case he did not reach Carentan by the third day, she might know some fatal difficulty had occurred, and the letter contained his last wishes and a sad farewell. The paper trembled in the old man's hand.

"This is the third day," cried the countess, rising and walking hurriedly up and down.

"You have been very imprudent," said the merchant. "Why send Brigitte to buy those provisions?"

"But he may arrive half-dead with hunger, exhausted, and--"

She could say no more.

"I am sure of my brother the mayor," said the old man. "I will see him at once, and put him in your interests."

After talking with the mayor, the shrewd old man made visits on various pretexts to the principal families of Carentan, to all of whom he mentioned that Madame de Dey, in spite of her illness, would receive her friends that evening. Matching his own craft against those wily Norman minds, he replied to the questions put to him on the nature of Madame de Dey's illness in a manner that hoodwinked the community. He related to a gouty old dame, that Madame de Dey had almost died of a sudden attack of gout in the stomach, but had been relieved by a remedy which the famous doctor, Tronchin, had once recommended to her,--namely, to apply the skin of a freshly-flayed hare on the pit of the stomach, and to remain in bed without making the slightest movement for two days. This tale had prodigious success, and the doctor of Carentan, a royalist "in petto," increased its effect by the manner in which he discussed the remedy.

Nevertheless, suspicions had taken too strong a root in the minds of some obstinate persons, and a few philosophers, to be thus dispelled; so that all Madame de Dey's usual visitors came eagerly and early that evening to watch her countenance: some out of true friendship, but most of them to detect the secret of her seclusion.

They found the countess seated as usual, at the corner of the great fireplace in her salon, a room almost as unpretentious as the other salons in Carentan; for, in order not to wound the narrow view of her guests, she denied herself the luxuries to which she was accustomed. The floor of her reception room was not even waxed, the walls were still hung with dingy tapestries; she used the country furniture, burned tallow candles, and followed the customs of the town,--adopting provincial life, and not shrinking from its pettiness or its many disagreeable privations. Knowing, however, that her guests would pardon luxuries if provided for their own comfort, she neglected nothing which conduced to their personal enjoyment, and gave them, more especially, excellent dinners.

Toward seven o'clock on this memorable evening, her guests were all assembled in a wide circle around the fireplace. The mistress of the house, sustained in her part by the sympathizing glances of the old merchant, submitted with wonderful courage to the minute questioning and stupid, or frivolous, comments of her visitors. At every rap upon her door, every footfall echoing in the street, she hid her emotions by starting topics relating to the interests of the town, and she raised such a lively discussion on the quality of ciders, which was ably seconded by the old merchant, that the company almost forgot to watch her, finding her countenance quite natural, and her composure imperturbable. The public prosecutor and one of the judges of the revolutionary tribunal was taciturn, observing attentively every change in her face; every now and then they addressed her some embarrassing question, to which, however, the countess answered with admirable presence of mind. Mothers have such courage!

After Madame de Dey had arranged the card parties, placing some guests at the boston, and some at the whist tables, she stood talking to a number of young people with extreme ease and liveliness of manner, playing her part like a consummate actress. Presently she suggested a game of loto, and offered to find the box, on the ground that she alone knew where it was, and then she disappeared.

"I am suffocating, my poor Brigitte," she cried, wiping the tears that gushed from her eyes, now brilliant with fever, anxiety, and impatience. "He does not come," she moaned, looking round the room prepared for her son. "Here alone I can breathe, I can live! A few minutes more and he _must_ be here; for I know he is living. I am certain of it, my heart says so. Don't you hear something, Brigitte? I would give the rest of my life to know at this moment whether he were still in prison, or out in the free country. Oh! I wish I could stop thinking--"

She again examined the room to see if all were in order. A good fire burned on the hearth, the shutters were carefully closed, the furniture shone with rubbing; even the manner in which the bed was made showed that the countess had assisted Brigitte in every detail; her hopes were uttered in the delicate care given to that room where she expected to fold her son in her arms. A mother alone could have thought of all his wants; a choice repast, rare wine, fresh linen, slippers, in short, everything the tired man would need,--all were there that nothing might be lacking; the comforts of his home should reveal to him without words the tenderness of his mother!

"Brigitte!" said the countess, in a heart-rending tone, placing a chair before the table, as if to give a semblance of reality to her hopes, and so increase the strength of her illusions.

"Ah! madame, he will come. He is not far off. I haven't a doubt he is living, and on his way," replied Brigitte. "I put a key in the Bible, and I held it on my fingers while Cottin read a chapter in the gospel of Saint John; and, madame, the key never turned at all!"

"Is that a good sign?" asked the countess.

"Oh! madame, that's a well-known sign. I would wager my salvation, he still lives. God would not so deceive us."

"Ah! if he would only come--no matter for his danger here."

"Poor Monsieur Auguste!" cried Brigitte, "he must be toiling along the roads on foot."

"There's eight o'clock striking now," cried the countess, in terror.

She dared not stay away any longer from her guests; but before re-entering the salon, she paused a moment under the peristyle of the staircase, listening if any sound were breaking the silence of the street. She smiled at Brigitte's husband, who was standing sentinel at the door, and whose eyes seemed stupefied by the intensity of his attention to the murmurs of the street and night.

Madame de Dey re-entered her salon, affecting gaiety, and began to play loto with the young people; but after a while she complained of feeling ill, and returned to her chimney-corner.

Such was the situation of affairs, and of people's minds in the house of Madame de Dey, while along the road, between Paris