Droll Stories, Volume 3

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DROLL STORIES

COLLECTED FROM THE ABBEYS OF TOURAINE

VOLUME III
THE THIRD TEN TALES

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC




CONTENTS

THE THIRD TEN TALES

PROLOGUE
PERSEVERANCE IN LOVE
CONCERNING A PROVOST WHO DID NOT RECOGNISE THINGS
ABOUT THE MONK AMADOR, WHO WAS A GLORIOUS ABBOT OF TURPENAY
BERTHA THE PENITENT
HOW THE PRETTY MAID OF PORTILLON CONVINCED HER JUDGE
IN WHICH IT IS DEMONSTRATED THAT FORTUNE IS ALWAYS FEMININE
CONCERNING A POOR MAN WHO WAS CALLED LE VIEUX PAR-CHEMINS
ODD SAYINGS OF THREE PILGRIMS
INNOCENCE
THE FAIR IMPERIA MARRIED
EPILOGUE




THIRD TEN TALES



PROLOGUE

Certain persons have interrogated the author as to why there was such
a demand for these tales that no year passes without his giving an
instalment of them, and why he has lately taken to writing commas
mixed up with bad syllables, at which the ladies publicly knit their
brows, and have put to him other questions of a like character.

The author declares that these treacherous words, cast like pebbles in
his path, have touched him in the very depths of his heart, and he is
sufficiently cognisant of his duty not to fail to give to his special
audience in this prologue certain reasons other than the preceding
ones, because it is always necessary to reason with children until
they are grown up, understand things, and hold their tongues; and
because he perceives many mischievous fellows among the crowd of noisy
people, who ignore at pleasure the real object of these volumes.

In the first place know, that if certain virtuous ladies--I say
virtuous because common and low class women do not read these stories,
preferring those that are never published; on the contrary, other
citizens' wives and ladies, of high respectability and godliness,
although doubtless disgusted with the subject-matter, read them
piously to satisfy an evil spirit, and thus keep themselves virtuous.
Do you understand, my good reapers of horns? It is better to be
deceived by the tale of a book than cuckolded through the story of a
gentleman. You are saved the damage by this, poor fools! besides
which, often your lady becomes enamoured, is seized with fecund
agitations to your advantage, raised in her by the present book.
Therefore do these volumes assist to populate the land and maintain it
in mirth, honour and health. I say mirth, because much is to be
derived from these tales. I say honour, because you save your nest
from the claws of that youthful demon named cuckoldom in the language
of the Celts. I say health, because this book incites that which was
prescribed by the Church of Salerno, for the avoidance of cerebral
plethora. Can you derive a like proof in any other typographically
blackened portfolios? Ha! ha! where are the books that make children?
Think! Nowhere. But you will find a glut of children making books
which beget nothing but weariness.

But to continue. Now be it known that when ladies, of a virtuous
nature and a talkative turn of mind, converse publicly on the subject
of these volumes, a great number of them, far from reprimanding the
author, confess that they like him very much, esteem him a valiant
man, worthy to be a monk in the Abbey of Theleme. For as many reasons
as there are stars in the heavens, he does not drop the style which he
has adopted in these said tales, but lets himself be vituperated, and
keeps steadily on his way, because noble France is a woman who refuses
to yield, crying, twisting about, and saying,

"No, no, never! Oh, sir, what are you going to do? I won't let you;
you'd rumple me."

And when the volume is done and finished, all smiles, she exclaims,

"Oh, master, are there any more to come?"

You may take it for granted that the author is a merry fellow, who
troubles himself little about the cries, tears and tricks of the lady
you call glory, fashion, or public favour, for he knows her to be a
wanton who would put up with any violence. He knows that in France her
war-cry is _Mount Joy_! A fine cry indeed, but one which certain
writers have disfigured, and which signifies, "Joy it is not of the
earth, it is there; seize it, otherwise good-bye." The author has this
interpretation from Rabelais, who told it to him. If you search
history, has France ever breathed a word when she was joyous mounted,
bravely mounted, passionately mounted, mounted and out of breath? She
goes furiously at everything, and likes this exercise better than
drinking. Now, do you not see that these volumes are French, joyfully
French, wildly French, French before, French behind, French to the
backbone. Back then, curs! strike up the music; silence, bigots!
advance my merry wags, my little pages, put your soft hands into the
ladies' hands and tickle them in the middle--of the hand of course.
Ha! ha! these are high sounding and peripatetic reasons, or the author
knows nothing of sound and the philosophy of Aristotle. He has on his
side the crown of France and the oriflamme of the king and Monsieur
St. Denis, who, having lost his head, said "Mount-my-Joy!" Do you mean
to say, you quadrupeds, that the word is wrong? No. It was certainly
heard by a great many people at the time; but in these days of deep
wretchedness you believe nothing concerning the good old saints.

The author has not finished yet. Know all ye who read these tales with
eye and hand, feel them in the head alone, and love them for the joy
they bring you, and which goes to your heart, know that the author
having in an evil hour let his ideas, _id est_, his inheritance, go
astray, and being unable to get them together again, found himself in
a state of mental nudity. Then he cried like the woodcutter in the
prologue of the book of his dear master Rabelais, in order to make
himself heard by the gentleman on high, Lord Paramount of all things,
and obtain from Him fresh ideas. This said Most High, still busy with
the congress of the time, threw to him through Mercury an inkstand
with two cups, on which was engraved, after the manner of a motto,
these three letters, _Ave_. Then the poor fellow, perceiving no other
help, took great care to turn over this said inkstand to find out the
hidden meaning of it, thinking over the mysterious words and trying to
find a key to them. First, he saw that God was polite, like the great
Lord as He is, because the world is His, and He holds the title of it
from no one. But since, in thinking over the days of his youth, he
remembered no great service rendered to God, the author was in doubt
concerning this hollow civility, and pondered long without finding out
the real substance of the celestial utensil. By reason of turning it
and twisting it about, studying it, looking at it, feeling it,
emptying it, knocking it in an interrogatory manner, smacking it down,
standing it up straight, standing it on one side, and turning it
upside down, he read backwards _Eva_. Who is _Eva_, if not all women
in one? Therefore by the Voice Divine was it said to the author:

Think of women; woman will heal thy wound, stop the waste-hole in thy
bag of tricks. Woman is thy wealth; have but one woman, dress,
undress, and fondle that women, make use of the woman--woman is
everything--woman has an inkstand of her own; dip thy pen in that
bottomless inkpot. Women like love; make love to her with the pen
only, tickle her phantasies, and sketch merrily for her a thousand
pictures of love in a thousand pretty ways. Woman is generous, and all
for one, or one for all, must pay the painter, and furnish the hairs
of the brush. Now, muse upon that which is written here. _Ave_, Hail,
_Eva_, woman; or _Eva_, woman, _Ave_, Hail. Yes, she makes and
unmakes. Heigh, then, for the inkstand! What does woman like best?
What does she desire? All the special things of love; and woman is
right. To have children, to produce an imitation, of nature, which is
always in labour. Come to me, then, woman!--come to me, Eva!

With this the author began to dip into that fertile inkpot, where
there was a brain-fluid, concocted by virtues from on high in a
talismanic fashion. From one cup there came serious things, which
wrote themselves in brown ink; and from the other trifling things,
which merely gave a roseate hue to the pages of the manuscript. The
poor author has often, from carelessness, mixed the inks, now here,
now there; but as soon as the heavy sentences, difficult to smooth,
polish, and brighten up, of some work suitable to the taste of the day
are finished, the author, eager to amuse himself, in spite of the
small amount of merry ink remaining in the left cup, steals and bears
eagerly therefrom a few penfuls with great delight. These said penfuls
are, indeed, these same Droll Tales, the authority on which is above
suspicion, because it flows from a divine source, as is shown in this
the author's naive confession.

Certain evil-disposed people will still cry out at this; but can you
find a man perfectly contented on this lump of mud? Is it not a shame?
In this the author has wisely comported himself in imitation of a
higher power; and he proves it by _atqui_. Listen. Is it not most
clearly demonstrated to the learned that the sovereign Lord of worlds
has made an infinite number of heavy, weighty, and serious machines
with great wheels, large chains, terrible notches, and frightfully
complicated screws and weights like the roasting jack, but also has
amused Himself with little trifles and grotesque things light as
zephyrs, and has made also naive and pleasant creations, at which you
laugh directly you see them? Is it not so? Then in all eccentric
works, such as the very spacious edifice undertaken by the author, in
order to model himself upon the laws of the above-named Lord, it is
necessary to fashion certain delicate flowers, pleasant insects, fine
dragons well twisted, imbricated, and coloured--nay, even gilt,
although he is often short of gold--and throw them at the feet of his
snow-clad mountains, piles of rocks, and other cloud-capped
philosophers, long and terrible works, marble columns, real thoughts
carved in porphyry.

Ah! unclean beasts, who despise and repudiate the figures, phantasies,
harmonies, and roulades of the fair muse of drollery, will you not
pare your claws, so that you may never again scratch her white skin,
all azure with veins, her amorous reins, her flanks of surpassing
elegance, her feet that stay modestly in bed, her satin face, her
lustrous features, her heart devoid of bitterness? Ah! wooden-heads,
what will you say when you find that this merry lass springs from the
heart of France, agrees with all that is womanly in nature, has been
saluted with a polite _Ave_! by the angels in the person of their
spokesman, Mercury, and finally, is the clearest quintessence of Art.
In this work are to be met with necessity, virtue, whim, the desire of
a woman, the votive offering of a stout Pantagruelist, all are here.
Hold your peace, then, drink to the author, and let his inkstand with
the double cup endow the Gay Science with a hundred glorious Droll
Tales.

Stand back then, curs; strike up the music! Silence, bigots; out of
the way, dunces! step forward my merry wags!--my little pages! give
your soft hand to the ladies, and tickle theirs in the centre in a
pretty manner, saying to them, "Read to laugh." Afterwards you can
tell them some mere jest to make them roar, since when they are
laughing their lips are apart, and they make but a faint resistance to
love.



PERSEVERANCE IN LOVE

During the first years of the thirteenth century after the coming of
our Divine Saviour there happened in the City of Paris an amorous
adventure, through the deed of a man of Tours, of which the town and
even the king's court was never tired of speaking. As to the clergy,
you will see by that which is related the part they played in this
history, the testimony of which was by them preserved. This said man,
called the Touranian by the common people, because he had been born in
our merry Touraine, had for his true name that of Anseau. In his
latter days the good man returned into his own country and was mayor
of St. Martin, according to the chronicles of the abbey of that town;
but at Paris he was a great silversmith.

But now in his prime, by his great honesty, his labours, and so forth,
he became a citizen of Paris and subject of the king, whose protection
he bought, according to the custom of the period. He had a house built
for him free of all quit-rent, close the Church of St. Leu, in the Rue
St. Denis, where his forge was well-known by those in want of fine
jewels. Although he was a Touranian, and had plenty of spirit and
animation, he kept himself virtuous as a true saint, in spite of the
blandishments of the city, and had passed the days of his green season
without once dragging his good name through the mire. Many will say
this passes the bounds of that faculty of belief which God has placed
in us to aid that faith due to the mysteries of our holy religion; so
it is needful to demonstrate abundantly the secret cause of this
silversmith's chastity. And, first remember that he came into the town
on foot, poor as Job, according to the old saying; and unlike all the
inhabitants of our part of the country, who have but one passion, he
had a character of iron, and persevered in the path he had chosen as
steadily as a monk in vengeance. As a workman, he laboured from morn
to night; become a master, he laboured still, always learning new
secrets, seeking new receipts, and in seeking, meeting with inventions
of all kinds. Late idlers, watchmen, and vagrants saw always a modest
lamp shining through the silversmith's window, and the good man
tapping, sculpting, rounding, distilling, modeling, and finishing,
with his apprentices, his door closed and his ears open. Poverty
engendered hard work, hard work engendered his wonderful virtue, and
his virtue engendered his great wealth. Take this to heart, ye
children of Cain who eat doubloons and micturate water. If the good
silversmith felt himself possessed with wild desires, which now in one
way, now another, seize upon an unhappy bachelor when the devil tries
to get hold of him, making the sign of the cross, the Touranian
hammered away at his metal, drove out the rebellious spirits from his
brain by bending down over the exquisite works of art, little
engravings, figures of gold and silver forms, with which he appeased
the anger of his Venus. Add to this that this Touranian was an artless
man, of simple understanding, fearing God above all things, then
robbers, next to that of nobles, and more than all, a disturbance.
Although if he had two hands, he never did more than one thing at a
time. His voice was as gentle as that of a bridegroom before marriage.
Although the clergy, the military, and others gave him no reputation
for knowledge, he knew well his mother's Latin, and spoke it correctly
without waiting to be asked. Latterly the Parisians had taught him to
walk uprightly, not to beat the bush for others, to measure his
passions by the rule of his revenues, not to let them take his leather
to make other's shoes, to trust no one farther then he could see them,
never to say what he did, and always to do what he said; never to
spill anything but water; to have a better memory than flies usually
have; to keep his hands to himself, to do the same with his purse; to
avoid a crowd at the corner of a street, and sell his jewels for more
than they cost him; all things, the sage observance of which gave him
as much wisdom as he had need of to do business comfortably and
pleasantly. And so he did, without troubling anyone else. And watching
this good little man unobserved, many said,

"By my faith, I should like to be this jeweller, even were I obliged
to splash myself up to the eyes with the mud of Paris during a hundred
years for it."

They might just as well have wished to be king of France, seeing that
the silversmith had great powerful nervous arms, so wonderfully strong
that when he closed his fist the cleverest trick of the roughest
fellow could not open it; from which you may be sure that whatever he
got hold of he stuck to. More than this, he had teeth fit to masticate
iron, a stomach to dissolve it, a duodenum to digest it, a sphincter
to let it out again without tearing, and shoulders that would bear a
universe upon them, like that pagan gentleman to whom the job was
confided, and whom the timely arrival of Jesus Christ discharged from
the duty. He was, in fact, a man made with one stroke, and they are
the best, for those who have to be touched are worth nothing, being
patched up and finished at odd times. In short, Master Anseau was a
thorough man, with a lion's face, and under his eyebrows a glance that
would melt his gold if the fire of his forge had gone out, but a
limpid water placed in his eyes by the great Moderator of all things
tempered this great ardour, without which he would have burnt up
everything. Was he not a splendid specimen of a man?

With such a sample of his cardinal virtues, some persist in asking why
the good silversmith remained as unmarried as an oyster, seeing that
these properties of nature are of good use in all places. But these
opinionated critics, do they know what it is to love? Ho! Ho! Easy!
The vocation of a lover is to go, to come, to listen, to watch, to
hold his tongue, to talk, to stick in a corner, to make himself big,
to make himself little, to agree, to play music, to drudge, to go to
the devil wherever he may be, to count the gray peas in the dovecote,
to find flowers under the snow, to say paternosters to the moon, to
pat the cat and pat the dog, to salute the friends, to flatter the
gout, or the cold of the aunt, to say to her at opportune moments "You
have good looks, and will yet write the epitaph of the human race." To
please all the relations, to tread on no one's corns, to break no
glasses, to waste no breath, to talk nonsense, to hold ice in his
hand, to say, "This is good!" or, "Really, madam, you are very
beautiful so." And to vary that in a hundred different ways. To keep
himself cool, to bear himself like a nobleman, to have a free tongue
and a modest one, to endure with a smile all the evils the devil may
invent on his behalf, to smother his anger, to hold nature in control,
to have the finger of God, and the tail of the devil, to reward the
mother, the cousin, the servant; in fact, to put a good face on
everything. In default of which the female escapes and leaves you in a
fix, without giving a single Christian reason. In fact, the lover of
the most gentle maid that God ever created in a good-tempered moment,
had he talked like a book, jumped like a flea, turned about like dice,
played like King David, and built for the aforesaid woman the
Corinthian order of the columns of the devil, if he failed in the
essential and hidden thing which pleases his lady above all others,
which often she does not know herself and which he has need to know,
the lass leaves him like a red leper. She is quite right. No one can
blame her for so doing. When this happens some men become
ill-tempered, cross, and more wretched than you can possibly imagine.
Have not many of them killed themselves through this petticoat tyranny?
In this matter the man distinguishes himself from the beast, seeing that
no animal ever yet lost his senses through blighted love, which proves
abundantly that animals have no souls. The employment of a lover is
that of a mountebank, of a soldier, of a quack, of a buffoon, of a
prince, of a ninny, of a king, of an idler, of a monk, of a dupe, of a
blackguard, of a liar, of a braggart, of a sycophant, of a numskull,
of a frivolous fool, of a blockhead, of a know-nothing, of a knave. An
employment from which Jesus abstained, in imitation of whom folks of
great understanding likewise disdain it; it is a vocation in which a
man of worth is required to spend above all things, his time, his
life, his blood, his best words, besides his heart, his soul, and his
brain; things to which the women are cruelly partial, because directly
their tongues begin to go, they say among themselves that if they have
not the whole of a man they have none of him. Be sure, also, that
there are cats, who, knitting their eyebrows, complain that a man does
but a hundred things for them, for the purpose of finding out if there
be a hundred, at first seeing that in everything they desire the most
thorough spirit of conquest and tyranny. And this high jurisprudence
has always flourished among the customs of Paris, where the women
receive more wit at their baptism than in any other place in the
world, and thus are mischievous by birth.

But our silversmith, always busy at his work, burnishing gold and
melting silver, had no time to warm his love or to burnish and make
shine his fantasies, nor to show off, gad about, waste his time in
mischief, or to run after she-males. Now seeing that in Paris virgins
do not fall into the beds of young men any more than roast pheasants
into the streets, not even when the young men are royal silversmiths,
the Touranian had the advantage of having, as I have before observed,
a continent member in his shirt. However, the good man could not close
his eyes to the advantage of nature with which were so amply furnished
the ladies with whom he dilated upon the value of his jewels. So it
was that, after listening to the gentle discourse of the ladies, who
tried to wheedle and to fondle him to obtain a favour from him, the
good Touranian would return to his home, dreamy as a poet, wretched as
a restless cuckoo, and would say to himself, "I must take to myself a
wife. She would keep the house tidy, keep the plates hot for me, fold
the clothes for me, sew my buttons on, sing merrily about the house,
tease me to do everything according to her taste, would say to me as
they all say to their husbands when they want a jewel, 'Oh, my own
pet, look at this, is it not pretty?' And every one in the quarter
will think of my wife and then of me, and say 'There's a happy man.'
Then the getting married, the bridal festivities, to fondle Madame
Silversmith, to dress her superbly, give her a fine gold chain, to
worship her from crown to toe, to give her the whole management of the
house, except the cash, to give her a nice little room upstairs, with
good windows, pretty, and hung around with tapestry, with a wonderful
chest in it and a fine large bed, with twisted columns and curtains of
yellow silk. He would buy her beautiful mirrors, and there would
always be a dozen or so of children, his and hers, when he came home
to greet him." Then wife and children would vanish into the clouds. He
transferred his melancholy imaginings to fantastic designs, fashioned
his amorous thoughts into grotesque jewels that pleased their buyers
well, they not knowing how many wives and children were lost in the
productions of the good man, who, the more talent he threw into his
art, the more disordered he became. Now if God had not had pity upon
him, he would have quitted this world without knowing what love was,
but would have known it in the other without that metamorphosis of the
flesh which spares it, according to Monsieur Plato, a man of some
authority, but who, not being a Christian, was wrong. But, there!
these preparatory digressions are the idle digressions and fastidious
commentaries which certain unbelievers compel a man to wind about a
tale, swaddling clothes about an infant when it should run about stark
naked. May the great devil give them a clyster with his red-hot
three-pronged fork. I am going on with my story now without further
circumlocution.

This is what happened to the silversmith in the one-and-fortieth year
of his age. One Sabbath-day while walking on the left bank of the
Seine, led by an idle fancy, he ventured as far as that meadow which
has since been called the Pre-aux-Clercs and which at that time was in
the domain of the abbey of St. Germain, and not in that of the
University. There, still strolling on the Touranian found himself in
the open fields, and there met a poor young girl who, seeing that he
was well-dressed, curtsied to him, saying "Heaven preserve you,
monseigneur." In saying this her voice had such sympathetic sweetness
that the silversmith felt his soul ravished by this feminine melody,
and conceived an affection for the girl, the more so as, tormented
with ideas of marriage as he was, everything was favourable thereto.
Nevertheless, as he had passed the wench by he dared not go back,
because he was as timid as a young maid who would die in her
petticoats rather than raise them for her pleasure. But when he was a
bowshot off he bethought him that he was a man who for ten years had
been a master silversmith, had become a citizen, and was a man of
mark, and could look a woman in the face if his fancy so led him, the
more so as his imagination had great power over him. So he turned
suddenly back, as if he had changed the direction of his stroll, and
came upon the girl, who held by an old cord her poor cow, who was
munching grass that had grown on the border of a ditch at the side of
the road.