The Village Rector - Honoré de Balzac (free e books to read .TXT) 📗

is your good woman now?"

The great vision of death hovered over the land, and dominated that rural picture. Afar, in the fields, more than one reaper sharpening his scythe, more than one young girl, her arms resting on her fork, more than one farmer stacking his hay, seeing Madame Graslin, stood mute and thoughtful, examining that noble woman, the blessing of the Correze, seeking some favorable sign or merely looking to admire her, impelled by a feeling that arrested their work.

"She is out walking; therefore she must be better."

These simple words were on every lip.

Madame Graslin's mother, seated on the iron bench which Veronique had formerly placed at the end of the terrace, studied every movement of her daughter; she watched her step in walking, and a few tears rolled from her eyes. Aware of the secret efforts of that superhuman courage, she knew that Veronique at that moment was suffering the tortures of a horrible agony, and only maintained herself erect by the exercise of her heroic will. The tears--they seemed almost red--which forced their way from those aged eyes, and furrowed that wrinkled face, the parchment of which seemed incapable of softening under any emotion, excited those of young Graslin, whom Monsieur Ruffin had between his knees.

"What is the matter, my boy?" said the tutor, anxiously.

"My grandmother is crying," he answered.

Monsieur Ruffin, whose eyes were on Madame Graslin as she came toward them, now looked at Madame Sauviat, and was powerfully struck by the aspect of that old head, like that of a Roman matron, petrified with grief and moistened with tears.

"Madame, why did you not prevent her from coming out?" said the tutor to the old mother, august and sacred in her silent grief.

As Veronique advanced majestically with her naturally fine and graceful step, Madame Sauviat, driven by despair at the thought of surviving her daughter, allowed the secret of many things that awakened curiosity to escape her.

"How can she walk like that," she cried, "wearing a horrible horsehair shirt, which pricks into her skin perpetually?"

The words horrified the young man, who was not insensible to the exquisite grace of Veronique's movements; he shuddered as he thought of the constant and terrific struggle of the soul to maintain its empire thus over the body.

"She has worn it thirteen years,--ever since she ceased to nurse the boy," said the old woman. "She has done miracles here, but if her whole life were known they ought to canonize her. Since she came to Montegnac no one has ever seen her eat, and do you know why? Aline serves her three times a day a piece of dry bread, and vegetables boiled in water, without salt, on a common plate of red earth like those they feed the dogs on. Yes, that's how the woman lives who has given new life to this whole canton. She kneels to say her prayers on the edge of that hair-shirt. She says she could not have that smiling air you know she always has unless she practised these austerities. I tell you this," added the old woman, sinking her voice, "so that you may repeat it to the doctor that Monsieur Roubaud has gone to fetch. If they could prevent my daughter from continuing these penances, perhaps they might still save her, though death has laid its hand upon her head. See for yourself! Ah! I must be strong indeed to have borne so many things these fifteen years."

The old woman took her grandson's hand and passed it over her forehead and cheeks as if the child's touch shed a healing balm there; then she kissed it with an affection the secret of which belongs to grandmothers as much as it belongs to mothers.

Veronique was now only a few feet from the bench, in company with Clousier, the rector, and Gerard. Illuminated by the glow of the setting sun, she shone with a dreadful beauty. Her yellow forehead, furrowed with long wrinkles massed one above the other like layers of clouds, revealed a fixed thought in the midst of inward troubles. Her face, devoid of all color, entirely white with the dead, greenish whiteness of plants without light, was thin, though not withered, and bore the signs of terrible physical sufferings produced by mental anguish. She fought her soul with her body, and _vice versa_. She was so completely destroyed that she no more resembled herself than an old woman resembles her portrait as a girl. The ardent expression of her eyes declared the despotic empire exercised by a devout will over a body reduced to what religion requires it to be. In this woman the soul dragged the flesh as the Achilles of profane story dragged Hector; for fifteen years she dragged it victoriously along the stony paths of life around the celestial Jerusalem she hoped to enter, not by a vile deception, but with acclamation. No solitary that ever lived in the dry and arid deserts of Africa was ever more master of his senses than was Veronique in her magnificent chateau, among the soft, voluptuous scenery of that opulent land, beneath the protecting mantle of that rich forest, whence science, the heir of Moses' wand, had called forth plenty, prosperity, and happiness for a whole region. She contemplated the results of twelve years' patience, a work which might have made the fame of many a superior man, with a gentle modesty such as Pontorno has painted in the sublime face of his "Christian Chastity caressing the Celestial Unicorn." The mistress of the manor, whose silence was respected by her companions when they saw that her eyes were roving over those vast plains, once arid, and now fertile by her will, walked on, her arms folded, with a distant look, as if to some far horizon, on her face.


XX. THE LAST STRUGGLE

Suddenly she stopped, a few feet from her mother, who looked at her as the mother of Christ must have looked at her son upon the cross. She raised her hand, and pointing to the spot where the road to Montegnac branched from the highway, she said, smiling:--

"See that carriage with the post-horses; Monsieur Roubaud is returning to us. We shall now know how many hours I have to live."

"Hours?" said Gerard.

"Did I not tell you I was taking my last walk?" she replied. "I have come here to see for the last time this glorious scene in all its splendor!" She pointed first to the village where the whole population seemed to be collected in the church square, and then to the beautiful meadows glowing in the last rays of the setting sun. "Ah!" she said, "let me see the benediction of God in the strange atmospheric condition to which we owe the safety of our harvest. Around us, on all sides, tempests, hail, lightning, have struck incessantly and pitilessly. The common people think thus, why not I? I do so need to see in this a happy augury for what awaits me after death!"

The child stood up and took his mother's hand and laid it on his head. Veronique, deeply affected by the action, so full of eloquence, took up her son with supernatural strength, seating him on her left arm as though he were still an infant at her breast, saying, as she kissed him:--

"Do you see that land, my son? When you are a man, continue there your mother's work."

"Madame," said the rector, in a grave voice, "a few strong and privileged beings are able to contemplate their coming death face to face, to fight, as it were, a duel with it, and to display a courage and an ability which challenge admiration. You show us this terrible spectacle; but perhaps you have too little pity for us; leave us at least the hope that you may be mistaken, and that God will allow you to finish that which you have begun."

"All I have done is through you, my friends," she said. "I have been useful, I can be so no longer. All is fruitful around us now; nothing is barren and desolated here except my heart. You well know, my dear rector, that I can only find peace and pardon _there_."

She stretched her hand toward the cemetery. Never had she said as much since the day of her arrival, when she was taken with sudden illness at the same spot. The rector looked attentively at his penitent, and the habit of penetration he had long acquired made him see that in those simple words he had won another triumph. Veronique must have made a mighty effort over herself to break her twelve years' silence with a speech that said so much. The rector clasped his hands with a fervent gesture that was natural to him as he looked with deep emotion at the members of this family whose secrets had passed into his heart.

Gerard, to whom the words "peace and pardon" must have seemed strange, was bewildered. Monsieur Ruffin, with his eyes fixed on Veronique, was stupefied. At this instant the carriage came rapidly up the avenue.

"There are five of them!" cried the rector, who could see and count the travellers.

"Five!" exclaimed Gerard. "Can five know more than two?"

"Ah," cried Madame Graslin suddenly, grasping the rector's arm, "the _procureur-general_ is among them! What is he doing here?"

"And papa Grossetete, too!" cried Francis.

"Madame," said the rector, supporting Veronique, and leading her apart a few steps, "show courage; be worthy of yourself."

"But what can he want?" she replied, leaning on the balustrade. "Mother!" (the old woman ran to her daughter with an activity that belied her years.) "I shall see him again," she said.

"As he comes with Monsieur Grossetete," said the rector, "he can have none but good intentions."

"Ah! monsieur, my child will die!" cried Madame Sauviat, seeing the effect of the rector's words on her daughter's face. "How can her heart survive such emotions? Monsieur Grossetete has always hitherto prevented that man from seeing Veronique."

Madame Graslin's face was on fire.

"Do you hate him so much?" said the Abbe Bonnet.

"She left Limoges to escape the sight of him, and to escape letting the whole town into her secrets," said Madame Sauviat, terrified at the change she saw on Madame Graslin's features.

"Do you not see that he will poison my few remaining hours? When I ought to be thinking of heaven he will nail me to earth," cried Veronique.

The rector took her arm and constrained her to walk aside with him. When they were alone he stopped and gave her one of those angelic looks with which he was able to calm the violent convulsions of the soul.

"If it is really so," he said, "as your confessor, I order you to receive him, to be kind and affectionate to him, to quit that garment of wrath, and forgive him as God will forgive you. Can there still be the remains of passion of a soul I believed to be purified. Burn this last incense on the altar of your penitence, or else your repentance is a lie."

"There was still that effort to make--and it is made," she answered, wiping her eyes. "The devil lurked in that last fold of my heart, and God, no doubt, put into Monsieur de Grandville's mind the thought that brings him here. Ah! how many times must God strike me?" she cried.

She stopped, as if to say a mental prayer; then she returned to Madame Sauviat and said in a low voice:

"My dear mother, be kind and gentle