The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac (freenovel24 TXT) 📖
- Author: Honore de Balzac
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smiles and sympathetic pleasure, he yielded readily to the
irresistible grace of her manners. The vehement activity with which he
pursued his three avocations was a part of his natural character and
temperament. He was a fine stout man, ruddy, jovial, extravagant, and
full of ideas. In ten years there was never a quarrel in his
household. Among business men he was looked upon, in common with all
artists, as a scatter-brained fellow; and superficial persons thought
that the constant hurry of this hard worker was only the restless
coming and going of a busybody.
Colleville had the sense to seem stupid; he boasted of his family
happiness, and gave himself unheard-of trouble in making anagrams, in
order at times to seem absorbed in that passion. The government clerks
of his division at the ministry, the office directors, and even the
heads of divisions came to his concerts; now and then he quietly
bestowed upon them opera tickets, when he needed some extra indulgence
on account of his frequent absence. Rehearsals took half the time that
he ought to have been at his desk; but the musical knowledge his
father had bequeathed to him was sufficiently genuine and
well-grounded to excuse him from all but final rehearsals. Thanks to
Madame Colleville's intimacies, both the theatre and the ministry lent
themselves kindly to the needs of this industrious pluralist, who,
moreover, was bringing up, with great care, a youth, warmly
recommended to him by his wife, a future great musician, who sometimes
took his place in the orchestra with a promise of eventually
succeeding him. In fact, about the year 1827 this young man became the
first clarionet when Colleville resigned his position.
The usual comment on Flavie was, "That little slip of a coquette,
Madame Colleville." The eldest of the Colleville children, born in
1816, was the living image of Colleville himself. In 1818, Madame
Colleville held the cavalry in high estimation, above even art; and
she distinguished more particularly a sub-lieutenant in the dragoons
of Saint-Chamans, the young and rich Charles de Gondreville, who
afterwards died in the Spanish campaign. By that time Flavie had had a
second son, whom she henceforth dedicated to a military career. In
1820 she considered banking the nursing mother of trade, the supporter
of Nations, and she made the great Keller, that famous banker and
orator, her idol. She then had another son, whom she named Francois,
resolving to make him a merchant,--feeling sure that Keller's
influence would never fail him. About the close of the year 1820,
Thuillier, the intimate friend of Monsieur and Madame Colleville, felt
the need of pouring his sorrows into the bosom of this excellent
woman, and to her he related his conjugal miseries. For six years he
had longed to have children, but God did not bless him; although that
poor Madame Thuillier had made novenas, and had even gone, uselessly,
to Notra-Dame de Liesse! He depicted Celeste in various lights, which
brought the words "Poor Thuillier!" from Flavie's lips. She herself
was rather sad, having at the moment no dominant opinion. She poured
her own griefs into Thuillier's bosom. The great Keller, that hero of
the Left, was, in reality, extremely petty; she had learned to know
the other side of public fame, the follies of banking, the emptiness
of eloquence! The orator only spoke for show; to her he had behaved
extremely ill. Thuillier was indignant. "None but stupid fellows know
how to love," he said; "take me!" That handsome Thuillier was
henceforth supposed to be paying court to Madame Colleville, and was
rated as one of her "attentives,"--a word in vogue during the Empire.
"Ha! you are after my wife," said Colleville, laughing. "Take care;
she'll leave you in the lurch, like all the rest."
A rather clever speech, by which Colleville saved his marital dignity.
From 1820 to 1821, Thuillier, in virtue of his title as friend of the
family, helped Colleville, who had formerly helped him; so much so,
that in eighteen months he had lent nearly ten thousand francs to the
Colleville establishment, with no intention of ever claiming them. In
the spring of 1821, Madame Colleville gave birth to a charming little
girl, to whom Monsieur and Madame Thuillier were godfather and
godmother. The child was baptized Celeste-Louise-Caroline-Brigitte;
Mademoiselle Thuillier wishing that her name should be given among
others to the little angel. The name of Caroline was a graceful
attention paid to Colleville. Old mother Lemprun assumed the care of
putting the baby to nurse under her own eyes at Auteuil, where Celeste
and her sister-in-law Brigitte, paid it regularly a semi-weekly visit.
As soon as Madame Colleville recovered she said to Thuillier, frankly,
in a very serious tone:--
"My dear friend, if we are all to remain good friends, you must be our
friend only. Colleville is attached to you; well, that's enough for
you in this household."
"Explain to me," said the handsome Thuillier to Tullia after this
remark, "why women are never attached to me. I am not the Apollo
Belvidere, but for all that I'm not a Vulcan; I am passably
good-looking, I have sense, I am faithful--"
"Do you want me to tell you the truth?" replied Tullia.
"Yes," said Thuillier.
"Well, though we can, sometimes, love a stupid fellow, we never love a
silly one."
Those words killed Thuillier; he never got over them; henceforth he
was a prey to melancholy and accused all women of caprice.
The secretary-general of the ministry, des Lupeaulx, whose influence
Madame Colleville thought greater than it was, and of whom she said,
later, "That was one of my mistakes," became for a time the great man
of the Colleville salon; but as Flavie found he had no power to
promote Colleville into the upper division, she had the good sense to
resent des Lupeaulx's attentions to Madame Rabourdin (whom she called
a minx), to whose house she had never been invited, and who had twice
had the impertinence not to come to the Colleville concerts.
Madame Colleville was deeply affected by the death of young
Gondreville; she felt, she said, the finger of God. In 1824 she turned
over a new leaf, talked of economy, stopped her receptions, busied
herself with her children, determined to become a good mother of a
family; no favorite friend was seen at her house. She went to church,
reformed her dress, wore gray, and talked Catholicism, mysticism, and
so forth. All this produced, in 1825, another little son, whom she
named Theodore. Soon after, in 1826, Colleville was appointed
sub-director of the Clergeot division, and later, in 1828, collector
of taxes in a Paris arrondissement. He also received the cross of the
Legion of honor, to enable him to put his daughter at the royal school
of Saint-Denis. The half-scholarship obtained by Keller for the eldest
boy, Charles, was transferred to the second in 1830, when Charles
entered the school of Saint-Louis on a full scholarship. The third
son, taken under the protection of Madame la Dauphine, was provided
with a three-quarter scholarship in the Henri IV. school.
In 1830 Colleville, who had the good fortune not to lose a child, was
obliged, owing to his well-known attachment to the fallen royal
family, to send in his resignation; but he was clever enough to make a
bargain for it,--obtaining in exchange a pension of two thousand four
hundred francs, based on his period of service, and ten thousand
francs indemnity paid by his successor; he also received the rank of
officer of the Legion of honor. Nevertheless, he found himself in
rather a cramped condition when Mademoiselle Thuillier, in 1832,
advised him to come and live near them; pointing out to him the
possibility of obtaining some position in the mayor's office, which,
in fact, he did obtain a few weeks later, at a salary of three
thousand francs. Thus Thuillier and Colleville were destined to end
their days together. In 1833 Madame Colleville, then thirty-five years
old, settled herself in the rue d'Enfer, at the corner of the rue des
Deux-Eglises with Celeste and little Theodore, the other boys being at
their several schools. Colleville was equidistant between the mayor's
office and the rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer. Thus the household, after
a brilliant, gay, headlong, reformed, and calmed existence, subsided
finally into bourgeois obscurity with five thousand four hundred
francs a year for its sole dependence.
Celeste was by this time twelve years of age, and she promised to be
pretty. She needed masters, and her education ought to cost not less
than two thousand francs a year. The mother felt the necessity of
keeping her under the eye of her godfather and godmother. She
therefore very willingly adopted the proposal of Mademoiselle
Thuillier, who, without committing herself to any engagement, allowed
Madame Colleville to understand that the fortunes of her brother, his
wife, and herself would go, ultimately, to the little Celeste. The
child had been left at Auteuil until she was seven years of age,
adored by the good old Madame Lemprun, who died in 1829, leaving
twenty thousand francs, and a house which was sold for the enormous
sum of twenty-eight thousand. The lively little girl had seen very
little of her mother, but very much of Mademoiselle and Madame
Thuillier when she first returned to the paternal mansion in 1829; but
in 1833 she fell under the dominion of Flavie, who was then, as we
have said, endeavoring to do her duty, which, like other women
instigated by remorse, she exaggerated. Without being an unkind
mother, Flavie was very stern with her daughter. She remembered her
own bringing-up, and swore within herself to make Celeste a virtuous
woman. She took her to mass, and had her prepared for her first
communion by a rector who has since become a bishop. Celeste was all
the more readily pious, because her godmother, Madame Thuillier, was a
saint, and the child adored her; she felt that the poor neglected
woman loved her better than her own mother.
From 1833 to 1840 she received a brilliant education according to the
ideas of the bourgeoisie. The best music-masters made her a fair
musician; she could paint a water-color properly; she danced extremely
well; and she had studied the French language, history, geography,
English, Italian,--in short, all that constitutes the education of a
well-brought-up young lady. Of medium height, rather plump,
unfortunately near-sighted, she was neither plain nor pretty; not
without delicacy or even brilliancy of complexion, it is true, but
totally devoid of all distinction of manner. She had a great fund of
reserved sensibility, and her godfather and godmother, Mademoiselle
Thuillier and Colleville, were unanimous on one point,--the great
resource of mothers--namely, that Celeste was capable of attachment.
One of her beauties was a magnificent head of very fine blond hair;
but her hands and feet showed her bourgeois origin.
Celeste endeared herself by precious qualities; she was kind, simple,
without gall of any kind; she loved her father and mother, and would
willingly sacrifice herself for their sake. Brought up to the deepest
admiration for her godfather by Brigitte (who taught her to say "Aunt
Brigitte"), and by Madame Thuillier and her own mother, Celeste
imbibed the highest idea of the ex-beau of the Empire. The house in
the rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer produced upon her very much the effect
of the Chateau des Tuileries on a courtier of the new dynasty.
Thuillier had not escaped the action of the administrative rolling-pin
which thins the mind as it spreads it out. Exhausted by irksome toil,
as much as by his life of gallantry, the ex-sub-director had well-nigh
lost all his faculties by the time he came to live in the rue
Saint-Dominique. But his weary face, on which there still reigned an
air of imperial haughtiness, mingled with a certain contentment, the
conceit of an upper official, made a deep impression upon Celeste. She
alone adored that haggard face. The girl, moreover, felt herself to be
the happiness of the Thuillier household.
CHAPTER IV (THE CIRCLE OF MONSIEUR AND MADAME THUILLIER)The Collevilles and their children became, naturally, the nucleus of
the circle which Mademoiselle Thuillier had the ambition to group
around her brother. A former clerk in the Billardiere division of the
ministry, named
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