Maitre Cornelius

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MAITRE CORNELIUS

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC



Translated By
Katharine Prescott Wormeley



DEDICATION

To Monsieur le Comte Georges Mniszech:

Some envious being may think on seeing this page illustrated by
one of the most illustrious of Sarmatian names, that I am
striving, as the goldsmiths do, to enhance a modern work with an
ancient jewel,--a fancy of the fashions of the day,--but you and a
few others, dear count, will know that I am only seeking to pay my
debt to Talent, Memory, and Friendship.



MAITRE CORNELIUS



CHAPTER I

A CHURCH SCENE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

In 1479, on All Saints' day, the moment at which this history begins,
vespers were ending in the cathedral of Tours. The archbishop Helie de
Bourdeilles was rising from his seat to give the benediction himself
to the faithful. The sermon had been long; darkness had fallen during
the service, and in certain parts of the noble church (the towers of
which were not yet finished) the deepest obscurity prevailed.
Nevertheless a goodly number of tapers were burning in honor of the
saints on the triangular candle-trays destined to receive such pious
offerings, the merit and signification of which have never been
sufficiently explained. The lights on each altar and all the
candelabra in the choir were burning. Irregularly shed among a forest
of columns and arcades which supported the three naves of the
cathedral, the gleam of these masses of candles barely lighted the
immense building, because the strong shadows of the columns, projected
among the galleries, produced fantastic forms which increased the
darkness that already wrapped in gloom the arches, the vaulted
ceilings, and the lateral chapels, always sombre, even at mid-day.

The crowd presented effects that were no less picturesque. Certain
figures were so vaguely defined in the "chiaroscuro" that they seemed
like phantoms; whereas others, standing in a full gleam of the
scattered light, attracted attention like the principal heads in a
picture. Some statues seemed animated, some men seemed petrified. Here
and there eyes shone in the flutings of the columns, the floor
reflected looks, the marbles spoke, the vaults re-echoed sighs, the
edifice itself seemed endowed with life.

The existence of Peoples has no more solemn scenes, no moments more
majestic. To mankind in the mass, movement is needed to make it
poetical; but in these hours of religious thought, when human riches
unite themselves with celestial grandeur, incredible sublimities are
felt in the silence; there is fear in the bended knee, hope in the
clasping hands. The concert of feelings in which all souls are rising
heavenward produces an inexplicable phenomenon of spirituality. The
mystical exaltation of the faithful reacts upon each of them; the
feebler are no doubt borne upward by the waves of this ocean of faith
and love. Prayer, a power electrical, draws our nature above itself.
This involuntary union of all wills, equally prostrate on the earth,
equally risen into heaven, contains, no doubt, the secret of the magic
influences wielded by the chants of the priests, the harmonies of the
organ, the perfumes and the pomps of the altar, the voices of the
crowd and its silent contemplations. Consequently, we need not be
surprised to see in the middle-ages so many tender passions begun in
churches after long ecstasies,--passions ending often in little
sanctity, and for which women, as usual, were the ones to do penance.
Religious sentiment certainly had, in those days, an affinity with
love; it was either the motive or the end of it. Love was still a
religion, with its fine fanaticism, its naive superstitions, its
sublime devotions, which sympathized with those of Christianity.

The manners of that period will also serve to explain this alliance
between religion and love. In the first place society had no
meeting-place except before the altar. Lords and vassals, men and
women were equals nowhere else. There alone could lovers see each
other and communicate. The festivals of the Church were the theatre of
former times; the soul of woman was more keenly stirred in a cathedral
than it is at a ball or the opera in our day; and do not strong
emotions invariably bring women back to love? By dint of mingling with
life and grasping it in all its acts and interests, religion had made
itself a sharer of all virtues, the accomplice of all vices. Religion
had passed into science, into politics, into eloquence, into crimes,
into the flesh of the sick man and the poor man; it mounted thrones;
it was everywhere. These semi-learned observations will serve, perhaps,
to vindicate the truth of this study, certain details of which may
frighten the perfected morals of our age, which are, as everybody
knows, a trifle straitlaced.

At the moment when the chanting ceased and the last notes of the
organ, mingling with the vibrations of the loud "A-men" as it issued
from the strong chests of the intoning clergy, sent a murmuring echo
through the distant arches, and the hushed assembly were awaiting the
beneficent words of the archbishop, a burgher, impatient to get home,
or fearing for his purse in the tumult of the crowd when the
worshippers dispersed, slipped quietly away, at the risk of being
called a bad Catholic. On which, a nobleman, leaning against one of
the enormous columns that surround the choir, hastened to take
possession of the seat abandoned by the worthy Tourainean. Having done
so, he quickly hid his face among the plumes of his tall gray cap,
kneeling upon the chair with an air of contrition that even an
inquisitor would have trusted.

Observing the new-comer attentively, his immediate neighbors seemed to
recognize him; after which they returned to their prayers with a
certain gesture by which they all expressed the same thought,--a
caustic, jeering thought, a silent slander. Two old women shook their
heads, and gave each other a glance that seemed to dive into futurity.

The chair into which the young man had slipped was close to a chapel
placed between two columns and closed by an iron railing. It was
customary for the chapter to lease at a handsome price to seignorial
families, and even to rich burghers, the right to be present at the
services, themselves and their servants exclusively, in the various
lateral chapels of the long side-aisles of the cathedral. This simony
is in practice to the present day. A woman had her chapel as she now
has her opera-box. The families who hired these privileged places were
required to decorate the altar of the chapel thus conceded to them,
and each made it their pride to adorn their own sumptuously,--a vanity
which the Church did not rebuke. In this particular chapel a lady was
kneeling close to the railing on a handsome rug of red velvet with
gold tassels, precisely opposite to the seat vacated of the burgher. A
silver-gilt lamp, hanging from the vaulted ceiling of the chapel
before an altar magnificently decorated, cast its pale light upon a
prayer-book held by the lady. The book trembled violently in her hand
when the young man approached her.

"A-men!"

To that response, sung in a sweet low voice which was painfully
agitated, though happily lost in the general clamor, she added rapidly
in a whisper:--

"You will ruin me."

The words were said in a tone of innocence which a man of any delicacy
ought to have obeyed; they went to the heart and pierced it. But the
stranger, carried away, no doubt, by one of those paroxysms of passion
which stifle conscience, remained in his chair and raised his head
slightly that he might look into the chapel.

"He sleeps!" he replied, in so low a voice that the words could be
heard by the young woman only, as sound is heard in its echo.

The lady turned pale; her furtive glance left for a moment the vellum
page of the prayer-book and turned to the old man whom the young man
had designated. What terrible complicity was in that glance? When the
young woman had cautiously examined the old seigneur, she drew a long
breath and raised her forehead, adorned with a precious jewel, toward
a picture of the Virgin; that simple movement, that attitude, the
moistened glance, revealed her life with imprudent naivete; had she
been wicked, she would certainly have dissimulated. The personage who
thus alarmed the lovers was a little old man, hunchbacked, nearly
bald, savage in expression, and wearing a long and discolored white
beard cut in a fan-tail. The cross of Saint-Michel glittered on his
breast; his coarse, strong hands, covered with gray hairs, which had
been clasped, had now dropped slightly apart in the slumber to which
he had imprudently yielded. The right hand seemed about to fall upon
his dagger, the hilt of which was in the form of an iron shell. By the
manner in which he had placed the weapon, this hilt was directly under
his hand; if, unfortunately, the hand touched the iron, he would wake,
no doubt, instantly, and glance at his wife. His sardonic lips, his
pointed chin aggressively pushed forward, presented the characteristic
signs of a malignant spirit, a sagacity coldly cruel, that would
surely enable him to divine all because he suspected everything. His
yellow forehead was wrinkled like those of men whose habit it is to
believe nothing, to weigh all things, and who, like misers chinking
their gold, search out the meaning and the value of human actions. His
bodily frame, though deformed, was bony and solid, and seemed both
vigorous and excitable; in short, you might have thought him a stunted
ogre. Consequently, an inevitable danger awaited the young lady
whenever this terrible seigneur woke. That jealous husband would
surely not fail to see the difference between a worthy old burgher who
gave him no umbrage, and the new-comer, young, slender, and elegant.

"Libera nos a malo," she said, endeavoring to make the young man
comprehend her fears.

The latter raised his head and looked at her. Tears were in his eyes;
tears of love and of despair. At sight of them the lady trembled and
betrayed herself. Both had, no doubt, long resisted and could resist
no longer a love increasing day by day through invincible obstacles,
nurtured by terror, strengthened by youth. The lady was moderately
handsome; but her pallid skin told of secret sufferings that made her
interesting. She had, moreover, an elegant figure, and the finest hair
in the world. Guarded by a tiger, she risked her life in whispering a
word, accepting a look, and permitting a mere pressure of the hand.
Love may never have been more deeply felt than in those hearts, never
more delightfully enjoyed, but certainly no passion was ever more
perilous. It was easy to divine that to these two beings air, sound,
foot-falls, etc., things indifferent to other men, presented hidden
qualities, peculiar properties which they distinguished. Perhaps their
love made them find faithful interpreters in the icy hands of the old
priest to whom they confessed their sins, and from whom they received
the Host at the holy table. Love profound! love gashed into the soul
like a scar upon the body which we carry through life! When these two
young people looked at each other, the woman seemed to say to her
lover, "Let us love each other and die!" To which the young knight
answered, "Let us love each other and not die." In reply, she showed
him a sign her old duenna and two pages. The duenna slept; the pages
were young and seemingly careless of what might happen, either of good
or evil, to their masters.

"Do not be frightened as you leave the church; let yourself be
managed."

The young nobleman had scarcely said these words in a low voice, when
the hand of the old seigneur dropped upon the hilt of his dagger.
Feeling the cold iron he woke, and his yellow eyes fixed themselves
instantly on his wife. By a privilege seldom granted even to men of
genius, he awoke with his mind as clear, his ideas as lucid as though
he had not slept at all. The man had the mania of jealousy. The lover,
with one eye on his mistress, had watched the husband with the other,
and he now rose quickly, effacing himself behind a column at the
moment when the hand of the old man fell; after which he disappeared,
swiftly as a bird. The lady lowered her eyes to her book and tried to
seem calm; but she could not prevent her face from blushing and her
heart from beating with unnatural violence. The old lord saw the
unusual crimson on the cheeks, forehead, even the eyelids of his wife.
He looked about him cautiously, but seeing no one to distrust, he said
to his wife:--

"What are you thinking of, my dear?"

"The smell of the incense turns me sick," she replied.

"It is particularly bad to-day?" he asked.

In spite of this sarcastic query, the wily old man pretended to
believe in this excuse; but he suspected some treachery and he
resolved to watch his treasure more carefully than before.

The benediction was given. Without waiting for the end of the "Soecula
soeculorum," the crowd rushed like a torrent to the doors of the
church. Following his usual custom, the old seigneur waited till the
general hurry was over; after which he left his chapel, placing the
duenna and the youngest page, carrying a lantern, before him; then he
gave his arm to his wife and told the other page to follow them.

As he made his way to the lateral door which opened on the west side
of the cloister, through which it was his custom to pass, a stream of
persons detached itself from the flood which obstructed the great
portals, and poured through the side aisle around the old lord and his
party. The mass was too compact to allow him to retrace his steps, and
he and his wife were therefore pushed onward to the door by the
pressure of the multitude behind them. The husband tried to pass out
first, dragging the lady by the arm, but at that instant he was pulled
vigorously into the street, and his wife was torn from him by a
stranger. The terrible hunchback saw at once that he had fallen into a
trap that was cleverly prepared. Repenting himself for having slept,
he collected his whole strength, seized his wife once more by the
sleeve of her gown, and strove with his other hand to cling to the
gate of the church; but the ardor of love carried the day against
jealous fury. The young man took his mistress round the waist, and
carried her off so rapidly, with the strength of despair, that the
brocaded stuff of silk and gold tore noisily apart, and the sleeve
alone remained in the hand of the old man. A roar like that of a lion
rose louder than the shouts of the multitude, and a terrible voice
howled out the words:--

"To me, Poitiers! Servants of the Comte de Saint-Vallier, here! Help!
help!"

And the Comte Aymar de Poitiers, sire de Saint-Vallier, attempted to
draw his sword and clear a space around him. But he found himself
surrounded and pressed upon by forty or fifty gentlemen whom it would
be dangerous to wound. Several among them, especially those of the
highest rank, answered him with jests as they dragged him along the
cloisters.

With the rapidity of lightning the abductor carried the countess into
an open chapel and seated her behind the confessional on a wooden
bench. By the light of the tapers burning before the saint to whom the
chapel was dedicated, they looked at each other for a moment in
silence, clasping hands, and amazed at their own audacity. The
countess had not the cruel courage to reproach the young man for the
boldness to which they owed this perilous and only instant of
happiness.

"Will you fly with me into the adjoining States?" said the young man,
eagerly. "Two English horses are awaiting us close by, able to do
thirty leagues at a stretch."

"Ah!" she cried, softly, "in what corner of the world could you hide a
daughter of King Louis XI.?"

"True," replied the young man, silenced by a difficulty he had not
foreseen.

"Why did you tear me from my husband?" she asked in a sort of terror.

"Alas!" said her lover, "I did not reckon on the trouble I should feel
in being near you, in hearing you speak to me. I have made plans,--two
or three plans,--and now that I see you all seems accomplished."

"But I am lost!" said the countess.

"We are saved!" the young man cried in the blind enthusiasm of his
love. "Listen to me carefully!"

"This will cost me my life!" she said, letting the tears that rolled
in her eyes flow down her cheeks. "The count will kill me,--to-night,
perhaps! But go to the king; tell him the tortures that his daughter
has endured these five years. He loved me well when I was little; he
called me 'Marie-full-of-grace,' because I was ugly. Ah! if he knew
the man to whom he gave me, his anger would be terrible. I have not
dared complain, out of pity for the count. Besides, how could I reach
the king? My confessor himself is a spy of Saint-Vallier. That is why
I have consented to this guilty meeting, to obtain a defender,--some
one to tell the truth to the king. Can I rely on-- Oh!" she cried,
turning pale and interrupting herself, "here comes the page!"

The poor countess put her hands before her face as if to veil it.

"Fear nothing," said the young seigneur, "he is won! You can safely
trust him; he belongs to me. When the count contrives to return for
you he will warn us of his coming. In the confessional," he added, in
a low voice, "is a priest, a friend of mine, who will tell him that he
drew you for safety out of the crowd, and placed you under his own
protection in this chapel. Therefore, everything is arranged to
deceive him."

At these words the tears of the poor woman stopped, but an expression
of sadness settled down on her face.

"No one can deceive him," she said. "To-night he will know all. Save
me from his blows! Go to Plessis, see the king, tell him--" she
hesitated; then, some dreadful recollection giving her courage to
confess the secrets of her marriage, she added: "Yes, tell him that to
master me the count bleeds me in both arms--to exhaust me. Tell him
that my husband drags me about by the hair of my head. Say that I am a
prisoner; that--"

Her heart swelled, sobs choked her throat, tears fell from her eyes.
In her agitation she allowed the young man, who was muttering broken
words, to kiss her hands.

"Poor darling! no one can speak to the king. Though my uncle is
grand-master of his archers, I could not gain admission to Plessis. My
dear lady! my beautiful sovereign! oh, how she has suffered! Marie,
let yourself say but two words, or we are lost!"

"What will become of us?" she murmured. Then, seeing on the dark wall
a picture of the Virgin, on which the light from the lamp was falling,
she cried out:--

"Holy Mother of God, give us counsel!"

"To-night," said the young man, "I shall be with you in your room."

"How?" she asked naively.

They were in such great peril that their tenderest words were devoid
of love.

"This evening," he replied, "I shall offer myself as apprentice to
Maitre Cornelius, the king's silversmith. I have obtained a letter of
recommendation to him which will make him receive me. His house is
next to yours. Once under the roof of that old thief, I can soon find
my way to your apartment by the help of a silken ladder."

"Oh!" she said, petrified with horror, "if you love me don't go to
Maitre Cornelius."

"Ah!" he cried, pressing her to his heart with all the force of his
youth, "you do indeed love me!"

"Yes," she said; "are you not my hope? You are a gentleman, and I
confide to you my honor. Besides," she added, looking at him with
dignity, "I am so unhappy that you would never betray my trust. But
what is the good of all this? Go, let me die, sooner than that you
should enter that house of Maitre Cornelius. Do you not know that all
his apprentices--"

"Have been hanged," said the young man, laughing.

"Oh, don't go; you will be made the victim of some sorcery."

"I cannot pay too dearly for the joy of serving you," he said, with a
look that made her drop her eyes.

"But my husband?" she said.

"Here is something to put him to sleep," replied her lover, drawing
from his belt a little vial.

"Not for always?" said the countess, trembling.

For all answer the young seigneur made a gesture of horror.

"I would long ago have defied him to mortal combat if he were not so
old," he said. "God preserve me from ridding you of him in any other
way."

"Forgive me," said the countess, blushing. "I am cruelly punished for
my sins. In a moment of despair I thought of killing him, and I feared
you might have the same desire. My sorrow is great that I have never
yet been able to confess that wicked thought; but I fear it would be
repeated to him and he would avenge it. I have shamed you," she
continued, distressed by his silence, "I deserve your blame."

And she broke the vial by flinging it on the floor violently.

"Do not come," she said, "my husband sleeps lightly; my duty is to
wait for the help of Heaven--that will I do!"

She tried to leave the chapel.

"Ah!" cried the young man, "order me to do so and I will kill him. You
will see me to-night."

"I was wise to destroy that drug," she said in a voice that was faint
with the pleasure of finding herself so loved. "The fear of awakening
my husband will save us from ourselves."

"I pledge you my life," said the young man, pressing her hand.

"If the king is willing, the pope can annul my marriage. We will then
be united," she said, giving him a look that was full of delightful
hopes.

"Monseigneur comes!" cried the page, rushing in.

Instantly the young nobleman, surprised at the short time he had
gained with his mistress and wondering at the celerity of the count,
snatched a kiss, which was not refused.

"To-night!" he said, slipping hastily from the chapel.

Thanks to the darkness, he reached the great portal safely, gliding
from column to column in the long shadows which they cast athwart the
nave. An old canon suddenly issued from the confessional, came to the
side of the countess and closed the iron railing before which the page
was marching gravely up and down with the air of a watchman.

A strong light now announced the coming of the count. Accompanied by
several friends and by servants bearing torches, he hurried forward, a
naked sword in hand. His gloomy eyes seemed to pierce the shadows and
to rake even the darkest corners of the cathedral.

"Monseigneur, madame is there," said the page, going forward to meet
him.

The Comte de Saint-Vallier found his wife kneeling on the steps of the
alter, the old priest standing beside her and reading his breviary. At
that sight the count shook the iron railing violently as if to give
vent to his rage.

"What do you want here, with a drawn sword in a church?" asked the
priest.

"Father, that is my husband," said the countess.

The priest took a key from his sleeve, and unlocked the railed door of
the chapel. The count, almost in spite of himself, cast a look into
the confessional, then he entered the chapel, and seemed to be
listening attentively to the sounds in the cathedral.

"Monsieur," said his wife, "you owe many thanks to this venerable
canon, who gave me a refuge here."

The count turned pale with anger; he dared not look at his friends,
who had come there more to laugh at him than to help him. Then he
answered curtly:

"Thank God, father, I shall find some way to repay you."

He took his wife by the arm and, without allowing her to finish her
curtsey to the canon, he signed to his servants and left the church
without a word to the others who had accompanied him. His silence had
something savage and sullen about it. Impatient to reach his home and
preoccupied in searching for means to discover the truth, he took his
way through the tortuous streets which at that time separated the
cathedral from the Chancellerie, a fine building recently erected by
the Chancellor Juvenal des Ursins, on the site of an old fortification
given by Charles VII. to that faithful servant as a reward for his
glorious labors.

The count reached at last the rue du Murier, in which his dwelling,
called the hotel de Poitiers, was situated. When his escort of
servants had entered the courtyard and the heavy gates were closed, a
deep silence fell on the narrow street, where other great seigneurs
had their houses, for this new quarter of the town was near to
Plessis, the usual residence of the king, to whom the courtiers, if
sent for, could go in a moment. The last house in this street was also
the last in the town. It belonged to Maitre Cornelius Hoogworst, an
old Brabantian merchant, to whom King Louis XI. gave his utmost
confidence in those financial transactions which his crafty policy
induced him to undertake outside of his own kingdom.

Observing the outline of the houses occupied respectively by Maitre
Cornelius and by the Comte de Poitiers, it was easy to believe that
the same architect had built them both and destined them for the use
of tyrants. Each was sinister in aspect, resembling a small fortress,
and both could be well defended against an angry populace. Their
corners were upheld by towers like those which lovers of antiquities
remark in towns where the hammer of the iconoclast has not yet
prevailed. The bays, which had little depth, gave a great power of
resistance to the iron shutters of the windows and doors. The riots
and the civil wars so frequent in those tumultuous times were ample
justification for these precautions.