Colonel Chabert

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Colonel Chabert


"Yes, sir," said Chabert, rising.

"If you are an honest man," Derville went on in an undertone, "how
could you remain in my debt?"

The old soldier blushed as a young girl might when accused by her
mother of a clandestine love affair.

"What! Madame Ferraud has not paid you?" cried he in a loud voice.

"Paid me?" said Derville. "She wrote to me that you were a swindler."

The Colonel cast up his eyes in a sublime impulse of horror and
imprecation, as if to call heaven to witness to this fresh subterfuge.

"Monsieur," said he, in a voice that was calm by sheer huskiness, "get
the gendarmes to allow me to go into the lock-up, and I will sign an
order which will certainly be honored."

At a word from Derville to the sergeant he was allowed to take his
client into the room, where Hyacinthe wrote a few lines, and addressed
them to the Comtesse Ferraud.

"Send her that," said the soldier, "and you will be paid your costs
and the money you advanced. Believe me, monsieur, if I have not shown
you the gratitude I owe you for your kind offices, it is not the less
there," and he laid his hand on his heart. "Yes, it is there, deep and
sincere. But what can the unfortunate do? They live, and that is all."

"What!" said Derville. "Did you not stipulate for an allowance?"

"Do not speak of it!" cried the old man. "You cannot conceive how deep
my contempt is for the outside life to which most men cling. I was
suddenly attacked by a sickness--disgust of humanity. When I think
that Napoleon is at Saint-Helena, everything on earth is a matter of
indifference to me. I can no longer be a soldier; that is my only real
grief. After all," he added with a gesture of childish simplicity, "it
is better to enjoy luxury of feeling than of dress. For my part, I
fear nobody's contempt."

And the Colonel sat down on his bench again.

Derville went away. On returning to his office, he sent Godeschal, at
that time his second clerk, to the Comtesse Ferraud, who, on reading
the note, at once paid the sum due to Comte Chabert's lawyer.



In 1840, towards the end of June, Godeschal, now himself an attorney,
went to Ris with Derville, to whom he had succeeded. When they reached
the avenue leading from the highroad to Bicetre, they saw, under one
of the elm-trees by the wayside, one of those old, broken, and hoary
paupers who have earned the Marshal's staff among beggars by living on
at Bicetre as poor women live on at la Salpetriere. This man, one of
the two thousand poor creatures who are lodged in the infirmary for
the aged, was seated on a corner-stone, and seemed to have
concentrated all his intelligence on an operation well known to these
pensioners, which consists in drying their snuffy pocket-handkerchiefs
in the sun, perhaps to save washing them. This old man had an
attractive countenance. He was dressed in a reddish cloth wrapper-coat
which the work-house affords to its inmates, a sort of horrible
livery.

"I say, Derville," said Godeschal to his traveling companion, "look at
that old fellow. Isn't he like those grotesque carved figures we get
from Germany? And it is alive, perhaps it is happy."

Derville looked at the poor man through his eyeglass, and with a
little exclamation of surprise he said:

"That old man, my dear fellow, is a whole poem, or, as the romantics
say, a drama.--Did you ever meet the Comtesse Ferraud?"

"Yes; she is a clever woman, and agreeable; but rather too pious,"
said Godeschal.

"That old Bicetre pauper is her lawful husband, Comte Chabert, the old
Colonel. She has had him sent here, no doubt. And if he is in this
workhouse instead of living in a mansion, it is solely because he
reminded the pretty Countess that he had taken her, like a hackney
cab, on the street. I can remember now the tiger's glare she shot at
him at that moment."

This opening having excited Godeschal's curiosity, Derville related
the story here told.

Two days later, on Monday morning, as they returned to Paris, the two
friends looked again at Bicetre, and Derville proposed that they
should call on Colonel Chabert. Halfway up the avenue they found the
old man sitting on the trunk of a felled tree. With his stick in one
hand, he was amusing himself with drawing lines in the sand. On
looking at him narrowly, they perceived that he had been breakfasting
elsewhere than at Bicetre.

"Good-morning, Colonel Chabert," said Derville.

"Not Chabert! not Chabert! My name is Hyacinthe," replied the veteran.
"I am no longer a man, I am No. 164, Room 7," he added, looking at
Derville with timid anxiety, the fear of an old man and a child.--"Are
you going to visit the man condemned to death?" he asked after a
moment's silence. "He is not married! He is very lucky!"

"Poor fellow!" said Godeschal. "Would you like something to buy
snuff?"

With all the simplicity of a street Arab, the Colonel eagerly held out
his hand to the two strangers, who each gave him a twenty-franc piece;
he thanked them with a puzzled look, saying:

"Brave troopers!"

He ported arms, pretended to take aim at them, and shouted with a
smile:

"Fire! both arms! /Vive Napoleon/!" And he drew a flourish in the air
with his stick.

"The nature of his wound has no doubt made him childish," said
Derville.

"Childish! he?" said another old pauper, who was looking on. "Why,
there are days when you had better not tread on his corns. He is an
old rogue, full of philosophy and imagination. But to-day, what can
you expect! He has had his Monday treat.--He was here, monsieur, so
long ago as 1820. At that time a Prussian officer, whose chaise was
crawling up the hill of Villejuif, came by on foot. We two were
together, Hyacinthe and I, by the roadside. The officer, as he walked,
was talking to another, a Russian, or some animal of the same species,
and when the Prussian saw the old boy, just to make fun, he said to
him, 'Here is an old cavalry man who must have been at Rossbach.'--'I
was too young to be there,' said Hyacinthe. 'But I was at Jena.' And
the Prussian made off pretty quick, without asking any more
questions."

"What a destiny!" exclaimed Derville. "Taken out of the Foundling
Hospital to die in the Infirmary for the Aged, after helping Napoleon
between whiles to conquer Egypt and Europe.--Do you know, my dear
fellow," Derville went on after a pause, "there are in modern society
three men who can never think well of the world--the priest, the
doctor, and the man of law? And they wear black robes, perhaps because
they are in mourning for every virtue and every illusion. The most
hapless of the three is the lawyer. When a man comes in search of the
priest, he is prompted by repentance, by remorse, by beliefs which
make him interesting, which elevate him and comfort the soul of the
intercessor whose task will bring him a sort of gladness; he purifies,
repairs and reconciles. But we lawyers, we see the same evil feelings
repeated again and again, nothing can correct them; our offices are
sewers which can never be cleansed.

"How many things have I learned in the exercise of my profession! I
have seen a father die in a garret, deserted by two daughters, to whom
he had given forty thousand francs a year! I have known wills burned;
I have seen mothers robbing their children, wives killing their
husbands, and working on the love they could inspire to make the men
idiotic or mad, that they might live in peace with a lover. I have
seen women teaching the child of their marriage such tastes as must
bring it to the grave in order to benefit the child of an illicit
affection. I could not tell you all I have seen, for I have seen
crimes against which justice is impotent. In short, all the horrors
that romancers suppose they have invented are still below the truth.
You will know something of these pretty things; as for me, I am going
to live in the country with my wife. I have a horror of Paris."

"I have seen plenty of them already in Desroches' office," replied
Godeschal.



PARIS, February-March 1832.




ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Bonaparte, Napoleon
The Vendetta
The Gondreville Mystery
Domestic Peace
The Seamy Side of History
A Woman of Thirty

Crottat, Alexandre
Cesar Birotteau
A Start in Life
A Woman of Thirty
Cousin Pons

Derville
Gobseck
A Start in Life
The Gondreville Mystery
Father Goriot
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Desroches (son)
A Bachelor's Establishment
A Start in Life
A Woman of Thirty
The Commission in Lunacy
The Government Clerks
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Firm of Nucingen
A Man of Business
The Middle Classes

Ferraud, Comtesse
The Government Clerks

Godeschal, Francois-Claude-Marie
A Bachelor's Establishment
A Start in Life
The Commission in Lunacy
The Middle Classes
Cousin Pons

Grandlieu, Vicomtesse de
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Gobseck

Louis XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier
The Chouans
The Seamy Side of History
The Gondreville Mystery
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Ball at Sceaux
The Lily of the Valley
The Government Clerks

Murat, Joachim, Prince
The Vendetta
The Gondreville Mystery
Domestic Peace
The Country Doctor

Navarreins, Duc de
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Muse of the Department
The Thirteen
Jealousies of a Country Town
The Peasantry
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Country Parson
The Magic Skin
The Gondreville Mystery
The Secrets of a Princess
Cousin Betty

Vergniaud, Louis
The Vendetta