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

a

woman. Now, what frightens women most? A woman is afraid of nothing

but …”

 

And he set to work to study the Countess’ position, falling into one

of those brown studies to which great politicians give themselves up

when concocting their own plans and trying to guess the secrets of a

hostile Cabinet. Are not attorneys, in a way, statesmen in charge of

private affairs?

 

But a brief survey of the situation in which the Comte Ferraud and his

wife now found themselves is necessary for a comprehension of the

lawyer’s cleverness.

 

Monsieur le Comte Ferraud was the only son of a former Councillor in

the old Parlement of Paris, who had emigrated during the Reign of

Terror, and so, though he saved his head, lost his fortune. He came

back under the Consulate, and remained persistently faithful to the

cause of Louis XVIII., in whose circle his father had moved before the

Revolution. He thus was one of the party in the Faubourg Saint-Germain

which nobly stood out against Napoleon’s blandishments. The reputation

for capacity gained by the young Count—then simply called Monsieur

Ferraud—made him the object of the Emperor’s advances, for he was

often as well pleased at his conquests among the aristocracy as at

gaining a battle. The Count was promised the restitution of his title,

of such of his estates as had not been sold, and he was shown in

perspective a place in the ministry or as senator.

 

The Emperor fell.

 

At the time of Comte Chabert’s death, M. Ferraud was a young man of

six-and-twenty, without a fortune, of pleasing appearance, who had had

his successes, and whom the Faubourg Saint-Germain had adopted as

doing it credit; but Madame la Comtesse Chabert had managed to turn

her share of her husband’s fortune to such good account that, after

eighteen months of widowhood, she had about forty thousand francs a

year. Her marriage to the young Count was not regarded as news in the

circles of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Napoleon, approving of this

union, which carried out his idea of fusion, restored to Madame

Chabert the money falling to the Exchequer under her husband’s will;

but Napoleon’s hopes were again disappointed. Madame Ferraud was not

only in love with her lover; she had also been fascinated by the

notion of getting into the haughty society which, in spite of its

humiliation, was still predominant at the Imperial Court. By this

marriage all her vanities were as much gratified as her passions. She

was to become a real fine lady. When the Faubourg Saint-Germain

understood that the young Count’s marriage did not mean desertion, its

drawing-rooms were thrown open to his wife.

 

Then came the Restoration. The Count’s political advancement was not

rapid. He understood the exigencies of the situation in which Louis

XVIII. found himself; he was one of the inner circle who waited till

the “Gulf of Revolution should be closed”—for this phrase of the

King’s, at which the Liberals laughed so heartily, had a political

sense. The order quoted in the long lawyer’s preamble at the beginning

of this story had, however, put him in possession of two tracts of

forest, and of an estate which had considerably increased in value

during its sequestration. At the present moment, though Comte Ferraud

was a Councillor of State, and a Director-General, he regarded his

position as merely the first step of his political career.

 

Wholly occupied as he was by the anxieties of consuming ambition, he

had attached to himself, as secretary, a ruined attorney named

Delbecq, a more than clever man, versed in all the resources of the

law, to whom he left the conduct of his private affairs. This shrewd

practitioner had so well understood his position with the Count as to

be honest in his own interest. He hoped to get some place by his

master’s influence, and he made the Count’s fortune his first care.

His conduct so effectually gave the lie to his former life, that he

was regarded as a slandered man. The Countess, with the tact and

shrewdness of which most women have a share more or less, understood

the man’s motives, watched him quietly, and managed him so well, that

she had made good use of him for the augmentation of her private

fortune. She had contrived to make Delbecq believe that she ruled her

husband, and had promised to get him appointed President of an

inferior court in some important provincial town, if he devoted

himself entirely to her interests.

 

The promise of a place, not dependent on changes of ministry, which

would allow of his marrying advantageously, and rising subsequently to

a high political position, by being chosen Depute, made Delbecq the

Countess’ abject slave. He had never allowed her to miss one of those

favorable chances which the fluctuations of the Bourse and the

increased value of property afforded to clever financiers in Paris

during the first three years after the Restoration. He had trebled his

protectress’ capital, and all the more easily because the Countess had

no scruples as to the means which might make her an enormous fortune

as quickly as possible. The emoluments derived by the Count from the

places he held she spent on the housekeeping, so as to reinvest her

dividends; and Delbecq lent himself to these calculations of avarice

without trying to account for her motives. People of that sort never

trouble themselves about any secrets of which the discovery is not

necessary to their own interests. And, indeed, he naturally found the

reason in the thirst for money, which taints almost every Parisian

woman; and as a fine fortune was needed to support the pretensions of

Comte Ferraud, the secretary sometimes fancied that he saw in the

Countess’ greed a consequence of her devotion to a husband with whom

she still was in love. The Countess buried the secrets of her conduct

at the bottom of her heart. There lay the secrets of life and death to

her, there lay the turning-point of this history.

 

At the beginning of the year 1818 the Restoration was settled on an

apparently immovable foundation; its doctrines of government, as

understood by lofty minds, seemed calculated to bring to France an era

of renewed prosperity, and Parisian society changed its aspect. Madame

la Comtesse Ferraud found that by chance she had achieved for love a

marriage that had brought her fortune and gratified ambition. Still

young and handsome, Madame Ferraud played the part of a woman of

fashion, and lived in the atmosphere of the Court. Rich herself, with

a rich husband who was cried up as one of the ablest men of the

royalist party, and, as a friend of the King, certain to be made

Minister, she belonged to the aristocracy, and shared its

magnificence. In the midst of this triumph she was attacked by a moral

canker. There are feelings which women guess in spite of the care men

take to bury them. On the first return of the King, Comte Ferraud had

begun to regret his marriage. Colonel Chabert’s widow had not been the

means of allying him to anybody; he was alone and unsupported in

steering his way in a course full of shoals and beset by enemies.

Also, perhaps, when he came to judge his wife coolly, he may have

discerned in her certain vices of education which made her unfit to

second him in his schemes.

 

A speech he made, a propos of Talleyrand’s marriage, enlightened the

Countess, to whom it proved that if he had still been a free man she

would never have been Madame Ferraud. What woman could forgive this

repentance? Does it not include the germs of every insult, every

crime, every form of repudiation? But what a wound must it have left

in the Countess’ heart, supposing that she lived in the dread of her

first husband’s return? She had known that he still lived, and she had

ignored him. Then during the time when she had heard no more of him,

she had chosen to believe that he had fallen at Waterloo with the

Imperial Eagle, at the same time as Boutin. She resolved,

nevertheless, to bind the Count to her by the strongest of all ties,

by a chain of gold, and vowed to be so rich that her fortune might

make her second marriage dissoluble, if by chance Colonel Chabert

should ever reappear. And he had reappeared; and she could not explain

to herself why the struggle she had dreaded had not already begun.

Suffering, sickness, had perhaps delivered her from that man. Perhaps

he was half mad, and Charenton might yet do her justice. She had not

chosen to take either Delbecq or the police into her confidence, for

fear of putting herself in their power, or of hastening the

catastrophe. There are in Paris many women who, like the Countess

Ferraud, live with an unknown moral monster, or on the brink of an

abyss; a callus forms over the spot that tortures them, and they can

still laugh and enjoy themselves.

 

“There is something very strange in Comte Ferraud’s position,” said

Derville to himself, on emerging from his long reverie, as his cab

stopped at the door of the Hotel Ferraud in the Rue de Varennes. “How

is it that he, so rich as he is, and such a favorite with the King, is

not yet a peer of France? It may, to be sure, be true that the King,

as Mme. de Grandlieu was telling me, desires to keep up the value of

the pairie by not bestowing it right and left. And, after all, the

son of a Councillor of the Parlement is not a Crillon nor a Rohan. A

Comte Ferraud can only get into the Upper Chamber surreptitiously. But

if his marriage were annulled, could he not get the dignity of some

old peer who has only daughters transferred to himself, to the King’s

great satisfaction? At any rate this will be a good bogey to put

forward and frighten the Countess,” thought he as he went up the

steps.

 

Derville had without knowing it laid his finger on the hidden wound,

put his hand on the canker that consumed Madame Ferraud.

 

She received him in a pretty winter dining-room, where she was at

breakfast, while playing with a monkey tethered by a chain to a little

pole with climbing bars of iron. The Countess was in an elegant

wrapper; the curls of her hair, carelessly pinned up, escaped from a

cap, giving her an arch look. She was fresh and smiling. Silver,

gilding, and mother-of-pearl shone on the table, and all about the

room were rare plants growing in magnificent china jars. As he saw

Colonel Chabert’s wife, rich with his spoil, in the lap of luxury and

the height of fashion, while he, poor wretch, was living with a poor

dairyman among the beasts, the lawyer said to himself:

 

“The moral of all this is that a pretty woman will never acknowledge

as her husband, nor even as a lover, a man in an old box-coat, a tow

wig, and boots with holes in them.”

 

A mischievous and bitter smile expressed the feelings, half

philosophical and half satirical, which such a man was certain to

experience—a man well situated to know the truth of things in spite

of the lies behind which most families in Paris hide their mode of

life.

 

“Good-morning, Monsieur Derville,” said she, giving the monkey some

coffee to drink.

 

“Madame,” said he, a little sharply, for the light tone in which she

spoke jarred on him. “I have come to speak with you on a very serious

matter.”

 

“I am so grieved, M. le Comte is away—”

 

“I, madame, am delighted. It would be grievous if he could