Colonel Chabert - Honoré de Balzac (free books to read txt) 📗

be present

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