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

Emperor! Ah! if he were but here, the dear

man! If he could see his Chabert, as he used to call me, in the

state in which I am now, he would be in a rage! What is to be done?

Our sun is set, and we are all out in the cold now. After all,

political events might account for my wife’s silence!

 

“Boutin set out. He was a lucky fellow! He had two bears, admirably

trained, which brought him in a living. I could not go with him; the

pain I suffered forbade my walking long stages. I wept, monsieur, when

we parted, after I had gone as far as my state allowed in company with

him and his bears. At Carlsruhe I had an attack of neuralgia in the

head, and lay for six weeks on straw in an inn. I should never have

ended if I were to tell you all the distresses of my life as a beggar.

Moral suffering, before which physical suffering pales, nevertheless

excites less pity, because it is not seen. I remember shedding tears,

as I stood in front of a fine house in Strassburg where once I had

given an entertainment, and where nothing was given me, not even a

piece of bread. Having agreed with Boutin on the road I was to take, I

went to every post-office to ask if there were a letter or some money

for me. I arrived at Paris without having found either. What despair I

had been forced to endure! ‘Boutin must be dead! I told myself, and in

fact the poor fellow was killed at Waterloo. I heard of his death

later, and by mere chance. His errand to my wife had, of course, been

fruitless.

 

“At last I entered Paris—with the Cossacks. To me this was grief on

grief. On seeing the Russians in France, I quite forgot that I had no

shoes on my feet nor money in my pocket. Yes, monsieur, my clothes

were in tatters. The evening before I reached Paris I was obliged to

bivouac in the woods of Claye. The chill of the night air no doubt

brought on an attack of some nameless complaint which seized me as I

was crossing the Faubourg Saint-Martin. I dropped almost senseless at

the door of an ironmonger’s shop. When I recovered I was in a bed in

the Hotel-Dieu. There I stayed very contentedly for about a month. I

was then turned out; I had no money, but I was well, and my feet were

on the good stones of Paris. With what delight and haste did I make my

way to the Rue du Mont-Blanc, where my wife should be living in a

house belonging to me! Bah! the Rue du Mont-Blanc was now the Rue de

la Chausee d’Antin; I could not find my house; it had been sold and

pulled down. Speculators had built several houses over my gardens. Not

knowing that my wife had married M. Ferraud, I could obtain no

information.

 

“At last I went to the house of an old lawyer who had been in charge

of my affairs. This worthy man was dead, after selling his connection

to a younger man. This gentleman informed me, to my great surprise, of

the administration of my estate, the settlement of the moneys, of my

wife’s marriage, and the birth of her two children. When I told him

that I was Colonel Chabert, he laughed so heartily that I left him

without saying another word. My detention at Stuttgart had suggested

possibilities of Charenton, and I determined to act with caution.

Then, monsieur, knowing where my wife lived, I went to her house, my

heart high with hope.—Well,” said the Colonel, with a gesture of

concentrated fury, “when I called under an assumed name I was not

admitted, and on the day when I used my own I was turned out of doors.

 

“To see the Countess come home from a ball or the play in the early

morning, I have sat whole nights through, crouching close to the wall

of her gateway. My eyes pierced the depths of the carriage, which

flashed past me with the swiftness of lightning, and I caught a

glimpse of the woman who is my wife and no longer mine. Oh, from that

day I have lived for vengeance!” cried the old man in a hollow voice,

and suddenly standing up in front of Derville. “She knows that I am

alive; since my return she has had two letters written with my own

hand. She loves me no more!—I—I know not whether I love or hate her.

I long for her and curse her by turns. To me she owes all her fortune,

all her happiness; well, she has not sent me the very smallest

pittance. Sometimes I do not know what will become of me!”

 

With these words the veteran dropped on to his chair again and

remained motionless. Derville sat in silence, studying his client.

 

“It is a serious business,” he said at length, mechanically. “Even

granting the genuineness of the documents to be procured from

Heilsberg, it is not proved to me that we can at once win our case. It

must go before three tribunals in succession. I must think such a

matter over with a clear head; it is quite exceptional.”

 

“Oh,” said the Colonel, coldly, with a haughty jerk of his head, “if I

fail, I can die—but not alone.”

 

The feeble old man had vanished. The eyes were those of a man of

energy, lighted up with the spark of desire and revenge.

 

“We must perhaps compromise,” said the lawyer.

 

“Compromise!” echoed Colonel Chabert. “Am I dead, or am I alive?”

 

“I hope, monsieur,” the attorney went on, “that you will follow my

advice. Your cause is mine. You will soon perceive the interest I take

in your situation, almost unexampled in judicial records. For the

moment I will give you a letter to my notary, who will pay to your

order fifty francs every ten days. It would be unbecoming for you to

come here to receive alms. If you are Colonel Chabert, you ought to be

at no man’s mercy. I shall record these advances as a loan; you have

estates to recover; you are rich.”

 

This delicate compassion brought tears to the old man’s eyes. Derville

rose hastily, for it was perhaps not correct for a lawyer to show

emotion; he went into the adjoining room, and came back with an

unsealed letter, which he gave to the Colonel. When the poor man held

it in his hand, he felt through the paper two gold pieces.

 

“Will you be good enough to describe the documents, and tell me the

name of the town, and in what kingdom?” said the lawyer.

 

The Colonel dictated the information, and verified the spelling of the

names of places; then he took his hat in one hand, looked at Derville,

and held out the other—a horny hand, saying with much simplicity:

 

“On my honor, sir, after the Emperor, you are the man to whom I shall

owe most. You are a splendid fellow!”

 

The attorney clapped his hand into the Colonel’s, saw him to the

stairs, and held a light for him.

 

“Boucard,” said Derville to his head clerk, “I have just listened to a

tale that may cost me five and twenty louis. If I am robbed, I shall

not regret the money, for I shall have seen the most consummate actor

of the day.”

 

When the Colonel was in the street and close to a lamp, he took the

two twenty-franc pieces out of the letter and looked at them for a

moment under the light. It was the first gold he had seen for nine

years.

 

“I may smoke cigars!” he said to himself.

 

About three months after this interview, at night, in Derville’s room,

the notary commissioned to advance the half-pay on Derville’s account

to his eccentric client, came to consult the attorney on a serious

matter, and began by begging him to refund the six hundred francs that

the old soldier had received.

 

“Are you amusing yourself with pensioning the old army?” said the

notary, laughing—a young man named Crottat, who had just bought up

the office in which he had been head clerk, his chief having fled in

consequence of a disastrous bankruptcy.

 

“I have to thank you, my dear sir, for reminding me of that affair,”

replied Derville. “My philanthropy will not carry me beyond twenty-five louis; I have, I fear, already been the dupe of my patriotism.”

 

As Derville finished the sentence, he saw on his desk the papers his

head clerk had laid out for him. His eye was struck by the appearance

of the stamps—long, square, and triangular, in red and blue ink,

which distinguished a letter that had come through the Prussian,

Austrian, Bavarian, and French post-offices.

 

“Ah ha!” said he with a laugh, “here is the last act of the comedy;

now we shall see if I have been taken in!”

 

He took up the letter and opened it; but he could not read it; it was

written in German.

 

“Boucard, go yourself and have this letter translated, and bring it

back immediately,” said Derville, half opening his study door, and

giving the letter to the head clerk.

 

The notary at Berlin, to whom the lawyer had written, informed him

that the documents he had been requested to forward would arrive

within a few days of this note announcing them. They were, he said,

all perfectly regular and duly witnessed, and legally stamped to serve

as evidence in law. He also informed him that almost all the witnesses

to the facts recorded under these affidavits were still to be found at

Eylau, in Prussia, and that the woman to whom M. le Comte Chabert owed

his life was still living in a suburb of Heilsberg.

 

“This looks like business,” cried Derville, when Boucard had given him

the substance of the letter. “But look here, my boy,” he went on,

addressing the notary, “I shall want some information which ought to

exist in your office. Was it not that old rascal Roguin—?”

 

“We will say that unfortunate, that illused Roguin,” interrupted

Alexandre Crottat with a laugh.

 

“Well, was it not that illused man who has just carried off eight

hundred thousand francs of his clients’ money, and reduced several

families to despair, who effected the settlement of Chabert’s estate?

I fancy I have seen that in the documents in our case of Ferraud.”

 

“Yes,” said Crottat. “It was when I was third clerk; I copied the

papers and studied them thoroughly. Rose Chapotel, wife and widow of

Hyacinthe, called Chabert, Count of the Empire, grand officer of the

Legion of Honor. They had married without settlement; thus, they held

all the property in common. To the best of my recollections, the

personalty was about six hundred thousand francs. Before his marriage,

Colonel Chabert had made a will in favor of the hospitals of Paris, by

which he left them one-quarter of the fortune he might possess at the

time of his decease, the State to take the other quarter. The will was

contested, there was a forced sale, and then a division, for the

attorneys went at a pace. At the time of the settlement the monster

who was then governing France handed over to the widow, by special

decree, the portion bequeathed to the treasury.”

 

“So that Comte Chabert’s personal fortune was no more than three

hundred thousand francs?”

 

“Consequently so it was, old fellow!” said Crottat. “You lawyers

sometimes are very clear-headed, though you are accused of false

practices in pleading for one side or the