Juana

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Juana


In the long run, however, Juana's indifference to her husband wore
itself away; it even changed to a species of fear. She understood at
last how the conduct of a father might long weigh on the future of her
children, and her motherly solicitude brought her many, though
incomplete, revelations of the truth. From day to day the dread of
some unknown but inevitable evil in the shadow of which she lived
became more and more keen and terrible. Therefore, during the rare
moments when Diard and Juana met she would cast upon his hollow face,
wan from nights of gambling and furrowed by emotions, a piercing look,
the penetration of which made Diard shudder. At such times the assumed
gaiety of her husband alarmed Juana more than his gloomiest
expressions of anxiety when, by chance, he forgot that assumption of
joy. Diard feared his wife as a criminal fears the executioner. In
him, Juana saw her children's shame; and in her Diard dreaded a calm
vengeance, the judgment of that serene brow, an arm raised, a weapon
ready.

After fifteen years of marriage Diard found himself without resources.
He owed three hundred thousand francs and he could scarcely muster one
hundred thousand. The house, his only visible possession, was
mortgaged to its fullest selling value. A few days more, and the sort
of prestige with which opulence had invested him would vanish. Not a
hand would be offered, not a purse would be open to him. Unless some
favorable event occurred he would fall into a slough of contempt,
deeper perhaps than he deserved, precisely because he had mounted to a
height he could not maintain. At this juncture he happened to hear
that a number of strangers of distinction, diplomats and others, were
assembled at the watering-places in the Pyrenees, where they gambled
for enormous sums, and were doubtless well supplied with money.

He determined to go at once to the Pyrenees; but he would not leave
his wife in Paris, lest some importunate creditor might reveal to her
the secret of his horrible position. He therefore took her and the two
children with him, refusing to allow her to take the tutor and
scarcely permitting her to take a maid. His tone was curt and
imperious; he seemed to have recovered some energy. This sudden
journey, the cause of which escaped her penetration, alarmed Juana
secretly. Her husband made it gaily. Obliged to occupy the same
carriage, he showed himself day by day more attentive to the children
and more amiable to their mother. Nevertheless, each day brought Juana
dark presentiments, the presentiments of mothers who tremble without
apparent reason, but who are seldom mistaken when they tremble thus.
For them the veil of the future seems thinner than for others.

At Bordeaux, Diard hired in a quiet street a quiet little house,
neatly furnished, and in it he established his wife. The house was at
the corner of two streets, and had a garden. Joined to the neighboring
house on one side only, it was open to view and accessible on the
other three sides. Diard paid the rent in advance, and left Juana
barely enough money for the necessary expenses of three months, a sum
not exceeding a thousand francs. Madame Diard made no observation on
this unusual meanness. When her husband told her that he was going to
the watering-places and that she would stay at Bordeaux, Juana offered
no difficulty, and at once formed a plan to teach the children Spanish
and Italian, and to make them read the two masterpieces of the two
languages. She was glad to lead a retired life, simply and naturally
economical. To spare herself the troubles of material life, she
arranged with a "traiteur" the day after Diard's departure to send in
their meals. Her maid then sufficed for the service of the house, and
she thus found herself without money, but her wants all provided for
until her husband's return. Her pleasures consisted in taking walks
with the children. She was then thirty-three years old. Her beauty,
greatly developed, was in all its lustre. Therefore as soon as she
appeared, much talk was made in Bordeaux about the beautiful Spanish
stranger. At the first advances made to her Juana ceased to walk
abroad, and confined herself wholly to her own large garden.

Diard at first made a fortune at the baths. In two months he won three
hundred thousand dollars, but it never occurred to him to send any
money to his wife; he kept it all, expecting to make some great stroke
of fortune on a vast stake. Towards the end of the second month the
Marquis de Montefiore appeared at the same baths. The marquis was at
this time celebrated for his wealth, his handsome face, his fortunate
marriage with an Englishwoman, and more especially for his love of
play. Diard, his former companion, encountered him, and desired to add
his spoils to those of others. A gambler with four hundred thousand
francs in hand is always in a position to do as he pleases. Diard,
confident in his luck, renewed acquaintance with Montefiore. The
latter received him very coldly, but nevertheless they played
together, and Diard lost every penny that he possessed, and more.

"My dear Montefiore," said the ex-quartermaster, after making a tour
of the salon, "I owe you a hundred thousand francs; but my money is in
Bordeaux, where I have left my wife."

Diard had the money in bank-bills in his pocket; but with the
self-possession and rapid bird's-eye view of a man accustomed to catch
at all resources, he still hoped to recover himself by some one of the
endless caprices of play. Montefiore had already mentioned his
intention of visiting Bordeaux. Had he paid his debt on the spot,
Diard would have been left without the power to take his revenge; a
revenge at cards often exceeds the amount of all preceding losses. But
these burning expectations depended on the marquis's reply.

"Wait, my dear fellow," said Montefiore, "and we will go together to
Bordeaux. In all conscience, I am rich enough to-day not to wish to
take the money of an old comrade."

Three days later Diard and Montefiore were in Bordeaux at a gambling
table. Diard, having won enough to pay his hundred thousand francs,
went on until he had lost two hundred thousand more on his word. He
was gay as a man who swam in gold. Eleven o'clock sounded; the night
was superb. Montefiore may have felt, like Diard, a desire to breathe
the open air and recover from such emotions in a walk. The latter
proposed to the marquis to come home with him to take a cup of tea and
get his money.

"But Madame Diard?" said Montefiore.

"Bah!" exclaimed the husband.

They went down-stairs; but before taking his hat Diard entered the
dining-room of the establishment and asked for a glass of water. While
it was being brought, he walked up and down the room, and was able,
without being noticed, to pick up one of those small sharp-pointed
steel knives with pearl handles which are used for cutting fruit at
dessert.

"Where do you live?" said Montefiore, in the courtyard, "for I want to
send a carriage there to fetch me."

Diard told him the exact address.

"You see," said Montefiore, in a low voice, taking Diard's arm, "that
as long as I am with you I have nothing to fear; but if I came home
alone and a scoundrel were to follow me, I should be profitable to
kill."

"Have you much with you?"

"No, not much," said the wary Italian, "only my winnings. But they
would make a pretty fortune for a beggar and turn him into an honest
man for the rest of his life."

Diard led the marquis along a lonely street where he remembered to
have seen a house, the door of which was at the end of an avenue of
trees with high and gloomy walls on either side of it. When they
reached this spot he coolly invited the marquis to precede him; but as
if the latter understood him he preferred to keep at his side. Then,
no sooner were they fairly in the avenue, then Diard, with the agility
of a tiger, tripped up the marquis with a kick behind the knees, and
putting a foot on his neck stabbed him again and again to the heart
till the blade of the knife broke in it. Then he searched Montefiore's
pockets, took his wallet, money, everything. But though he had taken
the Italian unawares, and had done the deed with lucid mind and the
quickness of a pickpocket, Montefiore had time to cry "Murder! Help!"
in a shrill and piercing voice which was fit to rouse every sleeper in
the neighborhood. His last sighs were given in those horrible shrieks.

Diard was not aware that at the moment when they entered the avenue a
crowd just issuing from a theatre was passing at the upper end of the
street. The cries of the dying man reached them, though Diard did his
best to stifle the noise by setting his foot firmly on Montefiore's
neck. The crowd began to run towards the avenue, the high walls of
which appeared to echo back the cries, directing them to the very spot
where the crime was committed. The sound of their coming steps seemed
to beat on Diard's brain. But not losing his head as yet, the murderer
left the avenue and came boldly into the street, walking very gently,
like a spectator who sees the inutility of trying to give help. He
even turned round once or twice to judge of the distance between
himself and the crowd, and he saw them rushing up the avenue, with the
exception of one man, who, with a natural sense of caution, began to
watch Diard.

"There he is! there he is!" cried the people, who had entered the
avenue as soon as they saw Montefiore stretched out near the door of
the empty house.

As soon as that clamor rose, Diard, feeling himself well in the
advance, began to run or rather to fly, with the vigor of a lion and
the bounds of a deer. At the other end of the street he saw, or
fancied he saw, a mass of persons, and he dashed down a cross street
to avoid them. But already every window was open, and heads were
thrust forth right and left, while from every door came shouts and
gleams of light. Diard kept on, going straight before him, through the
lights and the noise; and his legs were so actively agile that he soon
left the tumult behind him, though without being able to escape some
eyes which took in the extent of his course more rapidly than he could
cover it. Inhabitants, soldiers, gendarmes, every one, seemed afoot in
the twinkling of an eye. Some men awoke the commissaries of police,
others stayed by the body to guard it. The pursuit kept on in the
direction of the fugitive, who dragged it after him like the flame of
a conflagration.

Diard, as he ran, had all the sensations of a dream when he heard a
whole city howling, running, panting after him. Nevertheless, he kept
his ideas and his presence of mind. Presently he reached the wall of
the garden of his house. The place was perfectly silent, and he
thought he had foiled his pursuers, though a distant murmur of the
tumult came to his ears like the roaring of the sea. He dipped some
water from a brook and drank it. Then, observing a pile of stones on
the road, he hid his treasure in it; obeying one of those vague
thoughts which come to criminals at a moment when the faculty to judge
their actions under all bearings deserts them, and they think to
establish their innocence by want of proof of their guilt.

That done, he endeavored to assume a placid countenance; he even tried
to smile as he rapped softly on the door of his house, hoping that no
one saw him. He raised his eyes, and through the outer blinds of one
window came a gleam of light from his wife's room. Then, in the midst
of his trouble, visions of her gentle life, spent with her children,
beat upon his brain with the force of a hammer. The maid opened the
door, which Diard hastily closed behind him with a kick. For a moment
he breathed freely; then, noticing that he was bathed in perspiration,
he sent the servant back to Juana and stayed in the darkness of the
passage, where he wiped his face with his handkerchief and put his
clothes in order, like a dandy about to pay a visit to a pretty woman.
After that he walked into a track of the moonlight to examine his
hands. A quiver of joy passed over him as he saw that no blood stains
were on them; the hemorrhage from his victim's body was no doubt
inward.

But all this took time. When at last he mounted the stairs to Juana's
room he was calm and collected, and able to reflect on his position,
which resolved itself into two ideas: to leave the house, and get to
the wharves. He did not _think_ these ideas, he _saw_ them written in
fiery letters on the darkness. Once at the wharves he could hide all
day, return at night for his treasure, then conceal himself, like a
rat, in the hold of some vessel and escape without any one suspecting
his whereabouts. But to do all this, money, gold, was his first
necessity,--and he did not possess one penny.

The maid brought a light to show him up.

"Felicie," he said, "don't you hear a noise in the street, shouts,
cries? Go and see what it means, and come and tell me."

His wife, in her white dressing-gown, was sitting at a table, reading
aloud to Francisque and Juan from a Spanish Cervantes, while the boys
followed her pronunciation of the words from the text. They all three
stopped and looked at Diard, who stood in the doorway with his hands
in his pockets; overcome, perhaps, by finding himself in this calm
scene, so softly lighted, so beautiful with the faces of his wife and
children. It was a living picture of the Virgin between her son and
John.

"Juana, I have something to say to you."

"What has happened?" she asked, instantly perceiving from the livid
paleness of her husband that the misfortune she had daily expected was
upon them.

"Oh, nothing; but I want to speak to you--to you, alone."

And he glanced at his sons.

"My dears, go to your room, and go to bed," said Juana; "say your
prayers without me."

The boys left the room in silence, with the incurious obedience of
well-trained children.

"My dear Juana," said Diard, in a coaxing voice, "I left you with very
little money, and I regret it now. Listen to me; since I relieved you
of the care of our income by giving you an allowance, have you not,
like other women, laid something by?"

"No," replied Juana, "I have nothing. In making that allowance you did
not reckon the costs of the children's education. I don't say that to
reproach you, my friend, only to explain my want of money. All that
you gave me went to pay masters and--"

"Enough!" cried Diard, violently. "Thunder of heaven! every instant is
precious! Where are your jewels?"

"You know very well I have never worn any."

"Then there's not a sou to be had here!" cried Diard, frantically.

"Why do you shout in that way?" she asked.

"Juana," he replied, "I have killed a man."

Juana sprang to the door of her children's room and closed it; then
she returned.

"Your sons must hear nothing," she said. "With whom have you fought?"

"Montefiore," he replied.

"Ah!" she said with a sigh, "the only man you had the right to kill."

"There were many reasons why he should die by my hand. But I can't
lose time--Money, money! for God's sake, money! I may be pursued. We
did not fight. I--I killed him."

"Killed him!" she cried, "how?"

"Why, as one kills anything. He stole my whole fortune and I took it
back, that's all. Juana, now that everything is quiet you must go down
to that heap of stones--you know the heap by the garden wall--and get
that money, since you haven't any in the house."

"The money that you stole?" said Juana.

"What does that matter to you? Have you any money to give me? I tell
you I must get away. They are on my traces."

"Who?"

"The people, the police."

Juana left the room, but returned immediately.

"Here," she said, holding out to him at arm's length a jewel, "that is
Dona Lagounia's cross. There are four rubies in it, of great value, I
have been told. Take it and go--go!"

"Felicie hasn't come back," he cried, with a sudden thought. "Can she
have been arrested?"

Juana laid the cross on the table, and sprang to the windows that
looked on the street. There she saw, in the moonlight, a file of
soldiers posting themselves in deepest silence along the wall of the
house. She turned, affecting to be calm, and said to her husband:--

"You have not a minute to lose; you must escape through the garden.
Here is the key of the little gate."

As a precaution she turned to the other windows, looking on the
garden. In the shadow of the trees she saw the gleam of the silver
lace on the hats of a body of gendarmes; and she heard the distant
mutterings of a crowd of persons whom sentinels were holding back at
the end of the streets up which curiosity had drawn them. Diard had,
in truth, been seen to enter his house by persons at their windows,
and on their information and that of the frightened maid-servant, who
was arrested, the troops and the people had blocked the two streets
which led to the house. A dozen gendarmes, returning from the theatre,
had climbed the walls of the garden, and guarded all exit in that
direction.

"Monsieur," said Juana, "you cannot escape. The whole town is here."

Diard ran from window to window with the useless activity of a captive
bird striking against the panes to escape. Juana stood silent and
thoughtful.

"Juana, dear Juana, help me! give me, for pity's sake, some advice."

"Yes," said Juana, "I will; and I will save you."

"Ah! you are always my good angel."

Juana left the room and returned immediately, holding out to Diard,
with averted head, one of his own pistols. Diard did not take it.
Juana heard the entrance of the soldiers into the courtyard, where
they laid down the body of the murdered man to confront the assassin
with the sight of it. She turned round and saw Diard white and livid.
The man was nearly fainting, and tried to sit down.

"Your children implore you," she said, putting the pistol beneath his
hand.

"But--my good Juana, my little Juana, do you think--Juana! is it so
pressing?--I want to kiss you."

The gendarmes were mounting the staircase. Juana grasped the pistol,
aimed it at Diard, holding him, in spite of his cries, by the throat;
then she blew his brains out and flung the weapon on the ground.

At that instant the door was opened violently. The public prosecutor,
followed by an examining judge, a doctor, a sheriff, and a posse of
gendarmes, all the representatives, in short, of human justice,
entered the room.

"What do you want?" asked Juana.

"Is that Monsieur Diard?" said the prosecutor, pointing to the dead
body bent double on the floor.

"Yes, monsieur."

"Your gown is covered with blood, madame."

"Do you not see why?" replied Juana.

She went to the little table and sat down, taking up the volume of
Cervantes; she was pale, with a nervous agitation which she
nevertheless controlled, keeping it wholly inward.

"Leave the room," said the prosecutor to the gendarmes.

Then he signed to the examining judge and the doctor to remain.

"Madame, under the circumstances, we can only congratulate you on the
death of your husband," he said. "At least he has died as a soldier
should, whatever crime his passions may have led him to commit. His
act renders negatory that of justice. But however we may desire to
spare you at such a moment, the law requires that we should make an
exact report of all violent deaths. You will permit us to do our
duty?"

"May I go and change my dress?" she asked, laying down the volume.

"Yes, madame; but you must bring it back to us. The doctor may need
it."

"It would be too painful for madame to see me operate," said the
doctor, understanding the suspicions of the prosecutor. "Messieurs,"
he added, "I hope you will allow her to remain in the next room."

The magistrates approved the request of the merciful physician, and
Felicie was permitted to attend her mistress. The judge and the
prosecutor talked together in a low voice. Officers of the law are
very unfortunate in being forced to suspect all, and to imagine evil
everywhere. By dint of supposing wicked intentions, and of
comprehending them, in order to reach the truth hidden under so many
contradictory actions, it is impossible that the exercise of their
dreadful functions should not, in the long run, dry up at their source
the generous emotions they are constrained to repress. If the
sensibilities of the surgeon who probes into the mysteries of the
human body end by growing callous, what becomes of those of the judge
who is incessantly compelled to search the inner folds of the soul?
Martyrs to their mission, magistrates are all their lives in mourning
for their lost illusions; crime weighs no less heavily on them than on
the criminal. An old man seated on the bench is venerable, but a young
judge makes a thoughtful person shudder. The examining judge in this
case was young, and he felt obliged to say to the public prosecutor,--

"Do you think that woman was her husband's accomplice? Ought we to
take her into custody? Is it best to question her?"

The prosecutor replied, with a careless shrug of his shoulders,--

"Montefiore and Diard were two well-known scoundrels. The maid
evidently knew nothing of the crime. Better let the thing rest there."

The doctor performed the autopsy, and dictated his report to the
sheriff. Suddenly he stopped, and hastily entered the next room.

"Madame--" he said.

Juana, who had removed her bloody gown, came towards him.

"It was you," he whispered, stooping to her ear, "who killed your
husband."

"Yes, monsieur," she replied.

The doctor returned and continued his dictation as follows,--

"And, from the above assemblage of facts, it appears evident that the
said Diard killed himself voluntarily and by his own hand."

"Have you finished?" he said to the sheriff after a pause.

"Yes," replied the writer.

The doctor signed the report. Juana, who had followed him into the
room, gave him one glance, repressing with difficulty the tears which
for an instant rose into her eyes and moistened them.

"Messieurs," she said to the public prosecutor and the judge, "I am a
stranger here, and a Spaniard. I am ignorant of the laws, and I know
no one in Bordeaux. I ask of you one kindness: enable me to obtain a
passport for Spain."

"One moment!" cried the examining judge. "Madame, what has become of
the money stolen from the Marquis de Montefiore?"

"Monsieur Diard," she replied, "said something to me vaguely about a
heap of stones, under which he must have hidden it."

"Where?"

"In the street."

The two magistrates looked at each other. Juana made a noble gesture
and motioned to the doctor.

"Monsieur," she said in his ear, "can I be suspected of some infamous
action? I! The pile of stones must be close to the wall of my garden.
Go yourself, I implore you. Look, search, find that money."

The doctor went out, taking with him the examining judge, and together
they found Montefiore's treasure.

Within two days Juana had sold her cross to pay the costs of a
journey. On her way with her two children to take the diligence which
would carry her to the frontiers of Spain, she heard herself being
called in the street. Her dying mother was being carried to a
hospital, and through the curtains of her litter she had seen her
daughter. Juana made the bearers enter a porte-cochere that was near
them, and there the last interview between the mother and the daughter
took place. Though the two spoke to each other in a low voice, Juan
heard these parting words,--

"Mother, die in peace; I have suffered for you all."