An Historical Mystery

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AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY
(The Gondreville Mystery)

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC



Translated By
Katharine Prescott Wormeley




DEDICATION

To Monsieur de Margone.

In grateful remembrance, from his guest at the Chateau de Sache.

De Balzac.




AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY




PART I



CHAPTER I

JUDAS

The autumn of the year 1803 was one of the finest in the early part of
that period of the present century which we now call "Empire." Rain
had refreshed the earth during the month of October, so that the trees
were still green and leafy in November. The French people were
beginning to put faith in a secret understanding between the skies and
Bonaparte, then declared Consul for life,--a belief in which that man
owes part of his prestige; strange to say, on the day the sun failed
him, in 1812, his luck ceased!

About four in the afternoon on the fifteenth of November, 1803, the
sun was casting what looked like scarlet dust upon the venerable tops
of four rows of elms in a long baronial avenue, and sparkling on the
sand and grassy places of an immense _rond-point_, such as we often
see in the country where land is cheap enough to be sacrificed to
ornament. The air was so pure, the atmosphere so tempered that a
family was sitting out of doors as if it were summer. A man dressed in
a hunting-jacket of green drilling with green buttons, and breeches of
the same stuff, and wearing shoes with thin soles and gaiters to the
knee, was cleaning a gun with the minute care a skilful huntsman gives
to the work in his leisure hours. This man had neither game nor
game-bag, nor any of the accoutrements which denote either departure for
a hunt or the return from it; and two women sitting near were looking at
him as though beset by a terror they could ill-conceal. Any one
observing the scene taking place in this leafy nook would have
shuddered, as the old mother-in-law and the wife of the man we speak
of were now shuddering. A huntsman does not take such minute
precautions with his weapon to kill small game, neither does he use,
in the department of the Aube, a heavy rifled carbine.

"Shall you kill a roe-buck, Michu?" said his handsome young wife,
trying to assume a laughing air.

Before replying, Michu looked at his dog, which had been lying in the
sun, its paws stretched out and its nose on its paws, in the charming
attitude of a trained hunter. The animal had just raised its head and
was snuffing the air, first down the avenue nearly a mile long which
stretched before them, and then up the cross road where it entered the
_rond-point_ to the left.

"No," answered Michu, "but a brute I do not wish to miss, a lynx."

The dog, a magnificent spaniel, white with brown spots, growled.

"Hah!" said Michu, talking to himself, "spies! the country swarms with
them."

Madame Michu looked appealingly to heaven. A beautiful fair woman with
blue eyes, composed and thoughtful in expression and made like an
antique statue, she seemed to be a prey to some dark and bitter grief.
The husband's appearance may explain to a certain extent the evident
fear of the two women. The laws of physiognomy are precise, not only
in their application to character, but also in relation to the
destinies of life. There is such a thing as prophetic physiognomy. If
it were possible (and such a vital statistic would be of value to
society) to obtain exact likenesses of those who perish on the
scaffold, the science of Lavatar and also that of Gall would prove
unmistakably that the heads of all such persons, even those who are
innocent, show prophetic signs. Yes, fate sets its mark on the faces
of those who are doomed to die a violent death of any kind. Now, this
sign, this seal, visible to the eye of an observer, was imprinted on
the expressive face of the man with the rifled carbine. Short and
stout, abrupt and active in his motions as a monkey, though calm in
temperament, Michu had a white face injected with blood, and features
set close together like those of a Tartar,--a likeness to which his
crinkled red hair conveyed a sinister expression. His eyes, clear and
yellow as those of a tiger, showed depths behind them in which the
glance of whoever examined the man might lose itself and never find
either warmth or motion. Fixed, luminous, and rigid, those eyes
terrified whoever gazed into them. The singular contrast between the
immobility of the eyes and the activity of the body increased the
chilling impression conveyed by a first sight of Michu. Action, always
prompt in this man, was the outcome of a single thought; just as the
life of animals is, without reflection, the outcome of instinct. Since
1793 he had trimmed his red beard to the shape of a fan. Even if he
had not been (as he was during the Terror) president of a club of
Jacobins, this peculiarity of his head would in itself have made him
terrible to behold. His Socratic face with its blunt nose was
surmounted by a fine forehead, so projecting, however, that it
overhung the rest of the features. The ears, well detached from the
head, had the sort of mobility which we find in those of wild animals,
which are ever on the qui-vive. The mouth, half-open, as the custom
usually is among country-people, showed teeth that were strong and
white as almonds, but irregular. Gleaming red whiskers framed this
face, which was white and yet mottled in spots. The hair, cropped
close in front and allowed to grow long at the sides and on the back
of the head, brought into relief, by its savage redness, all the
strange and fateful peculiarities of this singular face. The neck
which was short and thick, seemed to tempt the axe.

At this moment the sunbeams, falling in long lines athwart the group,
lighted up the three heads at which the dog from time to time glanced
up. The spot on which this scene took place was magnificently fine.
The _rond-point_ is at the entrance of the park of Gondreville, one of
the finest estates in France, and by far the finest in the departments
of the Aube; it boasts of long avenues of elms, a castle built from
designs by Mansart, a park of fifteen hundred acres enclosed by a
stone wall, nine large farms, a forest, mills, and meadows. This
almost regal property belonged before the Revolution to the family of
Simeuse. Ximeuse was a feudal estate in Lorraine; the name was
pronounced Simeuse, and in course of time it came to be written as
pronounced.

The great fortune of the Simeuse family, adherents of the House of
Burgundy, dates from the time when the Guises were in conflict with
the Valois. Richelieu first, and afterwards Louis XIV. remembered
their devotion to the factious house of Lorraine, and rebuffed them.
Then the Marquis de Simeuse, an old Burgundian, old Guiser, old
leaguer, old _frondeur_ (he inherited the four great rancors of the
nobility against royalty), came to live at Cinq-Cygne. The former
courtier, rejected at the Louvre, married the widow of the Comte de
Cinq-Cygne, younger branch of the famous family of Chargeboeuf, one of
the most illustrious names in Champagne, and now as celebrated and
opulent as the elder. The marquis, among the richest men of his day,
instead of wasting his substance at court, built the chateau of
Gondreville, enlarged the estate by the purchase of others, and united
the several domains, solely for the purposes of a hunting-ground. He
also built the Simeuse mansion at Troyes, not far from that of the
Cinq-Cygnes. These two old houses and the bishop's palace were long
the only stone mansions at Troyes. The marquis sold Simeuse to the Duc
de Lorraine. His son wasted the father's savings and some part of his
great fortune under the reign of Louis XV., but he subsequently
entered the navy, became a vice-admiral, and redeemed the follies of
his youth by brilliant services. The Marquis de Simeuse, son of this
naval worthy, perished with his wife on the scaffold at Troyes,
leaving twin sons, who emigrated and were, at the time our history
opens, still in foreign parts following the fortunes of the house of
Conde.

The _rond-point_ was the scene of the meet in the time of the "Grand
Marquis"--a name given in the family to the Simeuse who built
Gondreville. Since 1789 Michu lived in the hunting lodge at the
entrance to the park, built in the reign of Louis XIV., and called the
pavilion of Cinq-Cygne. The village of Cinq-Cygne is at the end of the
forest of Nodesme (a corruption of Notre-Dame) which was reached
through the fine avenue of four rows of elms where Michu's dog was now
suspecting spies. After the death of the Grand Marquis this pavilion
fell into disuse. The vice-admiral preferred the court and the sea to
Champagne, and his son gave the dilapidated building to Michu for a
dwelling.

This noble structure is of brick, with vermiculated stone-work at the
angles and on the casings of the doors and windows. On either side is
a gateway of finely wrought iron, eaten with rust and connected by a
railing, beyond which is a wide and deep ha-ha, full of vigorous
trees, its parapets bristling with iron arabesques, the innumerable
sharp points of which are a warning to evil-doers.

The park walls begin on each side of the circumference of the
_rond-point_; on the one hand the fine semi-circle is defined by slopes
planted with elms; on the other, within the park, a corresponding
half-circle is formed by groups of rare trees. The pavilion,
therefore, stands at the centre of this round open space, which
extends before it and behind it in the shape of two horseshoes. Michu
had turned the rooms on the lower floor into a stable, a kitchen, and
a wood-shed. The only trace remaining of their ancient splendor was an
antechamber paved with marble in squares of black and white, which was
entered on the park side through a door with small leaded panes, such
as might still be seen at Versailles before Louis-Philippe turned that
Chateau into an asylum for the glories of France. The pavilion is
divided inside by an old staircase of worm-eaten wood, full of
character, which leads to the first story. Above that is an immense
garret. This venerable edifice is covered by one of those vast roofs
with four sides, a ridgepole decorated with leaden ornaments, and a
round projecting window on each side, such as Mansart very justly
delighted in; for in France, the Italian attics and flat roofs are a
folly against which our climate protests. Michu kept his fodder in
this garret. That portion of the park which surrounds the old pavilion
is English in style. A hundred feet from the house a former lake, now
a mere pond well stocked with fish, makes known its vicinity as much
by a thin mist rising above the tree-tops as by the croaking of a
thousand frogs, toads, and other amphibious gossips who discourse at
sunset. The time-worn look of everything, the deep silence of the
woods, the long perspective of the avenue, the forest in the distance,
the rusty iron-work, the masses of stone draped with velvet mosses,
all made poetry of this old structure, which still exists.

At the moment when our history begins Michu was leaning against a
mossy parapet on which he had laid his powder-horn, cap, handkerchief,
screw-driver, and rags,--in fact, all the utensils needed for his
suspicious occupation. His wife's chair was against the wall beside
the outer door of the house, above which could still be seen the arms
of the Simeuse family, richly carved, with their noble motto, "Cy
meurs." The old mother, in peasant dress, had moved her chair in front
of Madame Michu, so that the latter might put her feet upon the rungs
and keep them from dampness.

"Where's the boy?" said Michu to his wife.

"Round the pond; he is crazy about the frogs and the insects,"
answered the mother.

Michu whistled in a way that made his hearers tremble. The rapidity
with which his son ran up to him proved plainly enough the despotic
power of the bailiff of Gondreville. Since 1789, but more especially
since 1793, Michu had been well-nigh master of the property. The
terror he inspired in his wife, his mother-in-law, a servant-lad named
Gaucher, and the cook named Marianne, was shared throughout a
neighborhood of twenty miles in circumference. It may be well to give,
without further delay, the reasons for this fear,--all the more
because an account of them will complete the moral portrait of the
man.

The old Marquis de Simeuse transferred the greater part of his
property in 1790; but, overtaken by circumstances, he had not been
able to put the estate of Gondreville into sure hands. Accused of
corresponding with the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince of Cobourg,
the marquis and his wife were thrust into prison and condemned to
death by the revolutionary tribunal of Troyes, of which Madame Michu's
father was then president. The fine domain of Gondreville was sold as
national property. The head-keeper, to the horror of many, was present
at the execution of the marquis and his wife in his capacity as
president of the club of Jacobins at Arcis. Michu, the orphan son of a
peasant, showered with benefactions by the marquise, who brought him
up in her own home and gave him his place as keeper, was regarded as a
Brutus by excited demagogues; but the people of the neighborhood
ceased to recognize him after this act of base ingratitude. The
purchaser of the estate was a man from Arcis named Marion, grandson of
a former bailiff in the Simeuse family. This man, a lawyer before and
after the Revolution, was afraid of the keeper; he made him his
bailiff with a salary of three thousand francs, and gave him an
interest in the sales of timber; Michu, who was thought to have some
ten thousand francs of his own laid by, married the daughter of a
tanner at Troyes, an apostle of the Revolution in that town, where he
was president of the revolutionary tribunal. This tanner, a man of
profound convictions, who resembled Saint-Just as to character, was
afterwards mixed up in Baboeuf's conspiracy and killed himself to
escape execution. Marthe was the handsomest girl in Troyes. In spite
of her shrinking modesty she had been forced by her formidable father
to play the part of Goddess of Liberty in some republican ceremony.

The new proprietor came only three times to Gondreville in the course
of seven years. His grandfather had been bailiff of the estate under
the Simeuse family, and all Arcis took for granted that the citizen
Marion was the secret representative of the present Marquis and his
twin brother. As long as the Terror lasted, Michu, still bailiff of
Gondreville, a devoted patriot, son-in-law of the president of the
revolutionary tribunal of Troyes and flattered by Malin,
representative from the department of the Aube, was the object of a
certain sort of respect. But when the Mountain was overthrown and
after his father-in-law committed suicide, he found himself a
scape-goat; everybody hastened to accuse him, in common with his
father-in-law, of acts to which, so far as he was concerned, he was a
total stranger. The bailiff resented the injustice of the community;
he stiffened his back and took an attitude of hostility. He talked
boldly. But after the 18th Brumaire he maintained an unbroken silence,
the philosophy of the strong; he struggled no longer against public
opinion, and contented himself with attending to his own affairs,
--wise conduct, which led his neighbors to pronounce him sly, for he
owned, it was said, a fortune of not less than a hundred thousand
francs in landed property. In the first place, he spent nothing; next,
this property was legitimately acquired, partly from the inheritance
of his father-in-law's estate, and partly from the savings of
six-thousand francs a year, the salary he derived from his place with
its profits and emoluments. He had been bailiff of Gondreville for the
last twelve years and every one had estimated the probable amount of
his savings, so that when, after the Consulate was proclaimed, he
bought a farm for fifty thousand francs, the suspicions attaching to
his former opinions lessened, and the community of Arcis gave him
credit for intending to recover himself in public estimation.
Unfortunately, at the very moment when public opinion was condoning
his past a foolish affair, envenomed by the gossip of the
country-side, revived the latent and very general belief in the
ferocity of his character.

One evening, coming away from Troyes in company with several peasants,
among whom was the farmer at Cinq-Cygne, he let fall a paper on the
main road; the farmer, who was walking behind him, stooped and picked
it up. Michu turned round, saw the paper in the man's hands, pulled a
pistol from his belt and threatened the farmer (who knew how to read)
to blow his brains out if he opened the paper. Michu's action was so
sudden and violent, the tone of his voice so alarming, his eyes blazed
so savagely, that the men about him turned cold with fear. The farmer
of Cinq-Cygne was already his enemy. Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, the
man's employer, was a cousin of the Simeuse brothers; she had only one
farm left for her maintenance and was now residing at her chateau of
Cinq-Cygne. She lived for her cousins the twins, with whom she had
played in childhood at Troyes and at Gondreville. Her only brother,
Jules de Cinq-Cygne, who emigrated before the twins, died at Mayence,
but by a privilege which was somewhat rare and will be mentioned
later, the name of Cinq-Cygne was not to perish through lack of male
heirs.

This affair between Michu and the farmer made a great noise in the
arrondissement and darkened the already mysterious shadows which
seemed to veil him. Nor was it the only circumstance which made him
feared. A few months after this scene the citizen Marion, present
owner of the Gondreville estate, came to inspect it with the citizen
Malin. Rumor said that Marion was about to sell the property to his
companion, who had profited by political events and had just been
appointed on the Council of State by the First Consul, in return for
his services on the 18th Brumaire. The shrewd heads of the little town
of Arcis now perceived that Marion had been the agent of Malin in the
purchase of the property, and not of the brothers Simeuse, as was
first supposed. The all-powerful Councillor of State was the most
important personage in Arcis. He had obtained for one of his political
friends the prefecture of Troyes, and for a farmer at Gondreville the
exemption of his son from the draft; in fact, he had done services to
many. Consequently, the sale met with no opposition in the
neighborhood where Malin then reigned, and where he still reigns
supreme.

The Empire was just dawning. Those who in these days read the
histories of the French Revolution can form no conception of the vast
spaces which public thought traversed between events which now seem to
have been so near together. The strong need of peace and tranquillity
which every one felt after the violent tumults of the Revolution
brought about a complete forgetfulness of important anterior facts.
History matured rapidly under the advance of new and eager interests.
No one, therefore, except Michu, looked into the past of this affair,
which the community accepted as a simple matter. Marion, who had
bought Gondreville for six hundred thousand francs in assignats, sold
it for the value of a couple of million in coin; but the only payments
actually made by Malin were for the costs of registration. Grevin, a
seminary comrade of Malin, assisted the transaction, and the
Councillor rewarded his help with the office of notary at Arcis. When
the news of the sale reached the pavilion, brought there by a farmer
whose farm, at Grouage, was situated between the forest and the park
on the left of the noble avenue, Michu turned pale and left the house.
He lay in wait for Marion, and finally met him alone in one of the
shrubberies of the park.

"Is monsieur about to sell Gondreville?" asked the bailiff.

"Yes, Michu, yes. You will have a man of powerful influence for your
master. He is the friend of the First Consul, and very intimate with
all the ministers; he will protect you."

"Then you were holding the estate for him?"

"I don't say that," replied Marion. "At the time I bought it I was
looking for a place to put my money, and I invested in national
property as the best security. But it doesn't suit me to keep an
estate once belonging to a family in which my father was--"

"--a servant," said Michu, violently. "But you shall not sell it! I
want it; and I can pay for it."

"You?"

"Yes, I; seriously, in good gold,--eight hundred thousand francs."

"Eight hundred thousand francs!" exclaimed Marion. "Where did you get
them?"

"That's none of your business," replied Michu; then, softening his
tone, he added in a low voice: "My father-in-law saved the lives of
many persons."

"You are too late, Michu; the sale is made."

"You must put it off, monsieur!" cried the bailiff, seizing his master
by the hand which he held as in a vice. "I am hated, but I choose to
be rich and powerful, and I must have Gondreville. Listen to me; I
don't cling to life; sell me that place or I'll blow your brains
out!--"

"But do give me time to get off my bargain with Malin; he's
troublesome to deal with."

"I'll give you twenty-four hours. If you say a word about this matter
I'll chop your head off as I would chop a turnip."

Marion and Malin left the chateau in the course of the night. Marion
was frightened; he told Malin of the meeting and begged him to keep an
eye on the bailiff. It was impossible for Marion to avoid delivering
the property to the man who had been the real purchaser, and Michu did
not seem likely to admit any such reason. Moreover, this service done
by Marion to Malin was to be, and in fact ended by being, the origin
of the former's political fortune, and also that of his brother. In
1806 Malin had him appointed chief justice of an imperial court, and
after the creation of tax-collectors his brother obtained the post of
receiver-general for the department of the Aube. The State Councillor
told Marion to stay in Paris, and he warned the minister of police,
who gave orders that Michu should be secretly watched. Not wishing to
push the man to extremes, Malin kept him on as bailiff, under the iron
rule of Grevin the notary of Arcis.

From that moment Michu became more absorbed and taciturn than ever,
and obtained the reputation of a man who was capable of committing a
crime. Malin, the Councillor of State (a function which the First
Consul raised to the level of a ministry), and a maker of the Code,
played a great part in Paris, where he bought one of the finest
mansions in the Faubuorg Saint-Germain after marrying the only
daughter of a rich contractor named Sibuelle. He never came to
Gondreville; leaving all matters concerning the property to the
management of Grevin, the Arcis notary. After all, what had he to
fear?--he, a former representative of the Aube, and president of a
club of Jacobins. And yet, the unfavorable opinion of Michu held by
the lower classes was shared by the bourgeoisie, and Marion, Grevin,
and Malin, without giving any reason or compromising themselves on the
subject, showed that they regarded him as an extremely dangerous man.
The authorities, who were under instructions from the minister of
police to watch the bailiff, did not of course lessen this belief. The
neighborhood wondered that he kept his place, but supposed it was in
consequence of the terror he inspired. It is easy now, after these
explanations, to understand the anxiety and sadness expressed in the
face of Michu's wife.

In the first place, Marthe had been piously brought up by her mother.
Both, being good Catholics, had suffered much from the opinions and
behavior of the tanner. Marthe could never think without a blush of
having marched through the street of Troyes in the garb of a goddess.
Her father had forced her to marry Michu, whose bad reputation was
then increasing, and she feared him too much to be able to judge him.
Nevertheless, she knew that he loved her, and at the bottom of her
heart lay the truest affection for this awe-inspiring man; she had
never known him to do anything that was not just; never did he say a
brutal word, to her at least; in fact, he endeavored to forestall her
every wish. The poor pariah, believing himself disagreeable to his
wife, spent most of his time out of doors. Marthe and Michu,
distrustful of each other, lived in what is called in these days an
"armed peace." Marthe, who saw no one, suffered keenly from the
ostracism which for the last seven years had surrounded her as the
daughter of a revolutionary butcher, and the wife of a so-called
traitor. More than once she had overheard the laborers of the
adjoining farm (held by a man named Beauvisage, greatly attached to
the Simeuse family) say as they passed the pavilion, "That's where
Judas lives!" The singular resemblance between the bailiff's head and
that of the thirteenth apostle, which his conduct appeared to carry
out, won him that odious nickname throughout the neighborhood. It was
this distress of mind, added to vague but constant fears for the
future, which gave Marthe her thoughtful and subdued air. Nothing
saddens so deeply as unmerited degradation from which there seems no
escape. A painter could have made a fine picture of this family of
pariahs in the bosom of their pretty nook in Champagne, where the
landscape is generally sad.