Modeste Mignon

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MODESTE MIGNON

By

HONORE DE BALZAC



Translated by
Katharine Prescott Wormeley



DEDICATION

To a Polish Lady.

Daughter of an enslaved land, angel through love, witch through
fancy, child by faith, aged by experience, man in brain, woman in
heart, giant by hope, mother through sorrows, poet in thy dreams,
--to _thee_ belongs this book, in which thy love, thy fancy, thy
experience, thy sorrow, thy hope, thy dreams, are the warp through
which is shot a woof less brilliant than the poesy of thy soul,
whose expression, when it shines upon thy countenance, is, to
those who love thee, what the characters of a lost language are to
scholars.

De Balzac.




MODESTE MIGNON



CHAPTER I

THE CHALET

At the beginning of October, 1829, Monsieur Simon Babylas Latournelle,
notary, was walking up from Havre to Ingouville, arm in arm with his
son and accompanied by his wife, at whose side the head clerk of the
lawyer's office, a little hunchback named Jean Butscha, trotted along
like a page. When these four personages (two of whom came the same way
every evening) reached the elbow of the road where it turns back upon
itself like those called in Italy "cornice," the notary looked about
to see if any one could overhear him either from the terrace above or
the path beneath, and when he spoke he lowered his voice as a further
precaution.

"Exupere," he said to his son, "you must try to carry out
intelligently a little manoeuvre which I shall explain to you, but you
are not to ask the meaning of it; and if you guess the meaning I
command you to toss it into that Styx which every lawyer and every man
who expects to have a hand in the government of his country is bound
to keep within him for the secrets of others. After you have paid your
respects and compliments to Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon, to
Monsieur and Madame Dumay, and to Monsieur Gobenheim if he is at the
Chalet, and as soon as quiet is restored, Monsieur Dumay will take you
aside; you are then to look attentively at Mademoiselle Modeste (yes,
I am willing to allow it) during the whole time he is speaking to you.
My worthy friend will ask you to go out and take a walk; at the end of
an hour, that is, about nine o'clock, you are to come back in a great
hurry; try to puff as if you were out of breath, and whisper in
Monsieur Dumay's ear, quite low, but so that Mademoiselle Modeste is
sure to overhear you, these words: 'The young man has come.'"

Exupere was to start the next morning for Paris to begin the study of
law. This impending departure had induced Latournelle to propose him
to his friend Dumay as an accomplice in the important conspiracy which
these directions indicate.

"Is Mademoiselle Modeste suspected of having a lover?" asked Butscha
in a timid voice of Madame Latournelle.

"Hush, Butscha," she replied, taking her husband's arm.

Madame Latournelle, the daughter of a clerk of the supreme court,
feels that her birth authorizes her to claim issue from a
parliamentary family. This conviction explains why the lady, who is
somewhat blotched as to complexion, endeavors to assume in her own
person the majesty of a court whose decrees are recorded in her
father's pothooks. She takes snuff, holds herself as stiff as a
ramrod, poses for a person of consideration, and resembles nothing so
much as a mummy brought momentarily to life by galvanism. She tries to
give high-bred tones to her sharp voice, and succeeds no better in
doing that than in hiding her general lack of breeding. Her social
usefulness seems, however, incontestable when we glance at the
flower-bedecked cap she wears, at the false front frizzling around
her forehead, at the gowns of her choice; for how could shopkeepers
dispose of those products if there were no Madame Latournelle? All
these absurdities of the worthy woman, who is truly pious and
charitable, might have passed unnoticed, if nature, amusing herself as
she often does by turning out these ludicrous creations, had not
endowed her with the height of a drum-major, and thus held up to view
the comicalities of her provincial nature. She has never been out of
Havre; she believes in the infallibility of Havre; she proclaims
herself Norman to the very tips of her fingers; she venerates her
father, and adores her husband.

Little Latournelle was bold enough to marry this lady after she had
attained the anti-matrimonial age of thirty-three, and what is more,
he had a son by her. As he could have got the sixty thousand francs of
her "dot" in several other ways, the public assigned his uncommon
intrepidity to a desire to escape an invasion of the Minotaur, against
whom his personal qualifications would have insufficiently protected
him had he rashly dared his fate by bringing home a young and pretty
wife. The fact was, however, that the notary recognized the really
fine qualities of Mademoiselle Agnes (she was called Agnes) and
reflected to himself that a woman's beauty is soon past and gone to a
husband. As to the insignificant youth on whom the clerk of the court
bestowed in baptism his Norman name of "Exupere," Madame Latournelle
is still so surprised at becoming his mother, at the age of
thirty-five years and seven months, that she would still provide him,
if it were necessary, with her breast and her milk,--an hyperbole which
alone can fully express her impassioned maternity. "How handsome he
is, that son of mine!" she says to her little friend Modeste, as they
walk to church, with the beautiful Exupere in front of them. "He is
like you," Modeste Mignon answers, very much as she might have said,
"What horrid weather!" This silhouette of Madame Latournelle is quite
important as an accessory, inasmuch as for three years she has been
the chaperone of the young girl against whom the notary and his friend
Dumay are now plotting to set up what we have called, in the
"Physiologie du Mariage," a "mouse-trap."

As for Latournelle, imagine a worthy little fellow as sly as the
purest honor and uprightness would allow him to be,--a man whom any
stranger would take for a rascal at sight of his queer physiognomy, to
which, however, the inhabitants of Havre were well accustomed. His
eyesight, said to be weak, obliged the worthy man to wear green
goggles for the protection of his eyes, which were constantly
inflamed. The arch of each eyebrow, defined by a thin down of hair,
surrounded the tortoise-shell rim of the glasses and made a couple of
circles as it were, slightly apart. If you have never observed on the
human face the effect produced by these circumferences placed one
within the other, and separated by a hollow space or line, you can
hardly imagine how perplexing such a face will be to you, especially
if pale, hollow-cheeked, and terminating in a pointed chin like that
of Mephistopheles,--a type which painters give to cats. This double
resemblance was observable on the face of Babylas Latournelle. Above
the atrocious green spectacles rose a bald crown, all the more crafty
in expression because a wig, seemingly endowed with motion, let the
white hairs show on all sides of it as it meandered crookedly across
the forehead. An observer taking note of this excellent Norman,
clothed in black and mounted on his two legs like a beetle on a couple
of pins, and knowing him to be one of the most trustworthy of men,
would have sought, without finding it, for the reason of such physical
misrepresentation.

Jean Butscha, a natural son abandoned by his parents and taken care of
by the clerk of the court and his daughter, and now, through sheer
hard work, head-clerk to the notary, fed and lodged by his master, who
gave him a salary of nine hundred francs, almost a dwarf, and with no
semblance of youth,--Jean Butscha made Modeste his idol, and would
willingly have given his life for hers. The poor fellow, whose eyes
were hollowed beneath their heavy lids like the touch-holes of a
cannon, whose head overweighted his body, with its shock of crisp
hair, and whose face was pock-marked, had lived under pitying eyes
from the time he was seven years of age. Is not that enough to explain
his whole being? Silent, self-contained, pious, exemplary in conduct,
he went his way over that vast tract of country named on the map of
the heart Love-without-Hope, the sublime and arid steppes of Desire.
Modeste had christened this grotesque little being her "Black Dwarf."
The nickname sent him to the pages of Walter Scott's novel, and he one
day said to Modeste: "Will you accept a rose against the evil day from
your mysterious dwarf?" Modeste instantly sent the soul of her adorer
to its humble mud-cabin with a terrible glance, such as young girls
bestow on the men who cannot please them. Butscha's conception of
himself was lowly, and, like the wife of his master, he had never been
out of Havre.

Perhaps it will be well, for the sake of those who have never seen
that city, to say a few words as to the present destination of the
Latournelle family,--the head clerk being included in the latter term.
Ingouville is to Havre what Montmartre is to Paris,--a high hill at
the foot of which the city lies; with this difference, that the hill
and the city are surrounded by the sea and the Seine, that Havre is
helplessly circumscribed by enclosing fortifications, and, in short,
that the mouth of the river, the harbor, and the docks present a very
different aspect from the fifty thousand houses of Paris. At the foot
of Montmartre an ocean of slate roofs lies in motionless blue billows;
at Ingouville the sea is like the same roofs stirred by the wind. This
eminence, or line of hills, which coasts the Seine from Rouen to the
seashore, leaving a margin of valley land more or less narrow between
itself and the river, and containing in its cities, its ravines, its
vales, its meadows, veritable treasures of the picturesque, became of
enormous value in and about Ingouville, after the year 1816, the
period at which the prosperity of Havre began. This township has
become since that time the Auteuil, the Ville-d'Avray, the
Montmorency, in short, the suburban residence of the merchants of
Havre. Here they build their houses on terraces around its ampitheatre
of hills, and breathe the sea air laden with the fragrance of their
splendid gardens. Here these bold speculators cast off the burden of
their counting-rooms and the atmosphere of their city houses, which
are built closely together without open spaces, often without
court-yards,--a vice of construction with the increasing population of
Havre, the inflexible line of the fortifications, and the enlargement
of the docks has forced upon them. The result is, weariness of heart
in Havre, cheerfulness and joy at Ingouville. The law of social
development has forced up the suburb of Graville like a mushroom. It
is to-day more extensive than Havre itself, which lies at the foot of
its slopes like a serpent.

At the crest of the hill Ingouville has but one street, and (as in all
such situations) the houses which overlook the river have an immense
advantage over those on the other side of the road, whose view they
obstruct, and which present the effect of standing on tip-toe to look
over the opposing roofs. However, there exist here, as elsewhere,
certain servitudes. Some houses standing at the summit have a finer
position or possess legal rights of view which compel their opposite
neighbors to keep their buildings down to a required height. Moreover,
the openings cut in the capricious rock by roads which follow its
declensions and make the ampitheatre habitable, give vistas through
which some estates can see the city, or the river, or the sea. Instead
of rising to an actual peak, the hill ends abruptly in a cliff. At the
end of the street which follows the line of the summit, ravines appear
in which a few villages are clustered (Sainte-Adresse and two or three
other Saint-somethings) together with several creeks which murmur and
flow with the tides of the sea. These half-deserted slopes of
Ingouville form a striking contrast to the terraces of fine villas
which overlook the valley of the Seine. Is the wind on this side too
strong for vegetation? Do the merchants shrink from the cost of
terracing it? However this may be, the traveller approaching Havre on
a steamer is surprised to find a barren coast and tangled gorges to
the west of Ingouville, like a beggar in rags beside a perfumed and
sumptuously apparelled rich man.

In 1829 one of the last houses looking toward the sea, and which in
all probability stands about the centre of the Ingouville to-day, was
called, and perhaps is still called, "the Chalet." Originally it was a
porter's lodge with a trim little garden in front of it. The owner of
the villa to which it belonged,--a mansion with park, gardens,
aviaries, hot-houses, and lawns--took a fancy to put the little
dwelling more in keeping with the splendor of his own abode, and he
reconstructed it on the model of an ornamental cottage. He divided
this cottage from his own lawn, which was bordered and set with
flower-beds and formed the terrace of his villa, by a low wall along
which he planted a concealing hedge. Behind the cottage (called, in
spite of all his efforts to prevent it, the Chalet) were the orchards
and kitchen gardens of the villa. The Chalet, without cows or dairy,
is separated from the roadway by a wooden fence whose palings are
hidden under a luxuriant hedge. On the other side of the road the
opposite house, subject to a legal privilege, has a similar hedge and
paling, so as to leave an unobstructed view of Havre to the Chalet.

This little dwelling was the torment of the present proprietor of the
villa, Monsieur Vilquin; and here is the why and the wherefore. The
original creator of the villa, whose sumptuous details cry aloud,
"Behold our millions!" extended his park far into the country for the
purpose, as he averred, of getting his gardeners out of his pockets;
and so, when the Chalet was finished, none but a friend could be
allowed to inhabit it. Monsieur Mignon, the next owner of the
property, was very much attached to his cashier, Dumay, and the
following history will prove that the attachment was mutual; to him
therefore he offered the little dwelling. Dumay, a stickler for legal
methods, insisted on signing a lease for three hundred francs for
twelve years, and Monsieur Mignon willingly agreed, remarking,--

"My dear Dumay, remember, you have now bound yourself to live with me
for twelve years."

In consequence of certain events which will presently be related, the
estates of Monsieur Mignon, formerly the richest merchant in Havre,
were sold to Vilquin, one of his business competitors. In his joy at
getting possession of the celebrated villa Mignon, the latter forgot
to demand the cancelling of the lease. Dumay, anxious not to hinder
the sale, would have signed anything Vilquin required, but the sale
once made, he held to his lease like a vengeance. And there he
remained, in Vilquin's pocket as it were; at the heart of Vilquin's
family life, observing Vilquin, irritating Vilquin,--in short, the
gadfly of all the Vilquins. Every morning, when he looked out of his
window, Vilquin felt a violent shock of annoyance as his eye lighted
on the little gem of a building, the Chalet, which had cost sixty
thousand francs and sparkled like a ruby in the sun. That comparison
is very nearly exact. The architect has constructed the cottage of
brilliant red brick pointed with white. The window-frames are painted
of a lively green, the woodwork is brown verging on yellow. The roof
overhangs by several feet. A pretty gallery, with open-worked
balustrade, surmounts the lower floor and projects at the centre of
the facade into a veranda with glass sides. The ground-floor has a
charming salon and a dining-room, separated from each other by the
landing of a staircase built of wood, designed and decorated with
elegant simplicity. The kitchen is behind the dining-room, and the
corresponding room back of the salon, formerly a study, is now the
bedroom of Monsieur and Madame Dumay. On the upper floor the architect
has managed to get two large bedrooms, each with a dressing-room, to
which the veranda serves as a salon; and above this floor, under the
eaves, which are tipped together like a couple of cards, are two
servants' rooms with mansard roofs, each lighted by a circular window
and tolerably spacious.

Vilquin has been petty enough to build a high wall on the side toward
the orchard and kitchen garden; and in consequence of this piece of
spite, the few square feet which the lease secured to the Chalet
resembled a Parisian garden. The out-buildings, painted in keeping
with the cottage, stood with their backs to the wall of the adjoining
property.

The interior of this charming dwelling harmonized with its exterior.
The salon, floored entirely with iron-wood, was painted in a style
that suggested the beauties of Chinese lacquer. On black panels edged
with gold, birds of every color, foliage of impossible greens, and
fantastic oriental designs glowed and shimmered. The dining-room was
entirely sheathed in Northern woods carved and cut in open-work like
the beautiful Russian chalets. The little antechamber formed by the
landing and the well of the staircase was painted in old oak to
represent Gothic ornament. The bedrooms, hung with chintz, were
charming in their costly simplicity. The study, where the cashier and
his wife now slept, was panelled from top to bottom, on the walls and
ceiling, like the cabin of a steamboat. These luxuries of his
predecessor excited Vilquin's wrath. He would fain have lodged his
daughter and her husband in the cottage. This desire, well known to
Dumay, will presently serve to illustrate the Breton obstinacy of the
latter.

The entrance to the Chalet is by a little trellised iron door, the
uprights of which, ending in lance-heads, show for a few inches above
the fence and its hedge. The little garden, about as wide as the more
pretentious lawn, was just now filled with flowers, roses, and dahlias
of the choicest kind, and many rare products of the hot-houses, for
(another Vilquinard grievance) the elegant little hot-house, a very
whim of a hot-house, a hot-house representing dignity and style,
belonged to the Chalet, and separated, or if you prefer, united it to
the villa Vilquin. Dumay consoled himself for the toils of business in
taking care of this hot-house, whose exotic treasures were one of
Modeste's joys. The billiard-room of the villa Vilquin, a species of
gallery, formerly communicated through an immense aviary with this
hot-house. But after the building of the wall which deprived him of a
view into the orchards, Dumay bricked up the door of communication.
"Wall for wall!" he said.

In 1827 Vilquin offered Dumay a salary of six thousand francs, and ten
thousand more as indemnity, if he would give up the lease. The cashier
refused; though he had but three thousand francs from Gobenheim, a
former clerk of his master. Dumay was a Breton transplanted by fate
into Normandy. Imagine therefore the hatred conceived for the tenants
of the Chalet by the Norman Vilquin, a man worth three millions! What
criminal leze-million on the part of a cashier, to hold up to the eyes
of such a man the impotence of his wealth! Vilquin, whose desperation
in the matter made him the talk of Havre, had just proposed to give
Dumay a pretty house of his own, and had again been refused. Havre
itself began to grow uneasy at the man's obstinacy, and a good many
persons explained it by the phrase, "Dumay is a Breton." As for the
cashier, he thought Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon would be ill-lodged
elsewhere. His two idols now inhabited a temple worthy of them; the
sumptuous little cottage gave them a home, where these dethroned
royalties could keep the semblance of majesty about them,--a species
of dignity usually denied to those who have seen better days.

Perhaps as the story goes on, the reader will not regret having
learned in advance a few particulars as to the home and the habitual
companions of Modeste Mignon, for, at her age, people and things have
as much influence upon the future life as a person's own character,
--indeed, character often receives ineffaceable impressions from its
surroundings.



CHAPTER II

A PORTRAIT FROM LIFE

From the manner with which the Latournelles entered the Chalet a
stranger would readily have guessed that they came there every
evening.

"Ah, you are here already," said the notary, perceiving the young
banker Gobenheim, a connection of Gobenheim-Keller, the head of the
great banking house in Paris.

This young man with a livid face--a blonde of the type with black
eyes, whose immovable glance has an indescribable fascination, sober
in speech as in conduct, dressed in black, lean as a consumptive, but
nevertheless vigorously framed--visited the family of his former
master and the house of his cashier less from affection than from
self-interest. Here they played whist at two sous a point; a
dress-coat was not required; he accepted no refreshment except "eau
sucree," and consequently had no civilities to return. This apparent
devotion to the Mignon family allowed it to be supposed that Gobenheim
had a heart; it also released him from the necessity of going into the
society of Havre and incurring useless expenses, thus upsetting the
orderly economy of his domestic life. This disciple of the golden calf
went to bed at half-past ten o'clock and got up at five in the
morning. Moreover, being perfectly sure of Latournelle's and Butscha's
discretion, he could talk over difficult business matters, obtain the
advice of the notary gratis, and get an inkling of the real truth of
the gossip of the street. This stolid gold-glutton (the epithet is
Butscha's) belonged by nature to the class of substances which
chemistry terms absorbents. Ever since the catastrophe of the house of
Mignon, where the Kellers had placed him to learn the principles of
maritime commerce, no one at the Chalet had ever asked him to do the
smallest thing, no matter what; his reply was too well known. The
young fellow looked at Modeste precisely as he would have looked at a
cheap lithograph.

"He's one of the pistons of the big engine called 'Commerce,'" said
poor Butscha, whose clever mind made itself felt occasionally by such
little sayings timidly jerked out.

The four Latournelles bowed with the most respectful deference to an
old lady dressed in black velvet, who did not rise from the armchair
in which she was seated, for the reason that both eyes were covered
with the yellow film produced by cataract. Madame Mignon may be
sketched in one sentence. Her august countenance of the mother of a
family attracted instant notice as that of one whose irreproachable
life defies the assaults of destiny, which nevertheless makes her the
target of its arrows and a member of the unnumbered tribe of Niobes.
Her blonde wig, carefully curled and well arranged upon her head,
became the cold white face which resembled that of some burgomaster's
wife painted by Hals or Mirevelt. The extreme neatness of her dress,
the velvet boots, the lace collar, the shawl evenly folded and put on,
all bore testimony to the solicitous care which Modeste bestowed upon
her mother.

When silence was, as the notary had predicted, restored in the pretty
salon, Modeste, sitting beside her mother, for whom she was
embroidering a kerchief, became for an instant the centre of
observation. This curiosity, barely veiled by the commonplace
salutations and inquiries of the visitors, would have revealed even to
an indifferent person the existence of the domestic plot to which
Modeste was expected to fall a victim; but Gobenheim, more than
indifferent, noticed nothing, and proceeded to light the candles on
the card-table. The behavior of Dumay made the whole scene terrifying
to Butscha, to the Latournelles, and above all to Madame Dumay, who
knew her husband to be capable of firing a pistol at Modeste's lover
as coolly as though he were a mad dog.

After dinner that day the cashier had gone to walk followed by two
magnificent Pyrenees hounds, whom he suspected of betraying him, and
therefore left in charge of a farmer, a former tenant of Monsieur
Mignon. On his return, just before the arrival of the Latournelles, he
had taken his pistols from his bed's head and placed them on the
chimney-piece, concealing this action from Modeste. The young girl
took no notice whatever of these preparations, singular as they were.

Though short, thick-set, pockmarked, and speaking always in a low
voice as if listening to himself, this Breton, a former lieutenant in
the Guard, showed the evidence of such resolution, such sang-froid on
his face that throughout life, even in the army, no one had ever
ventured to trifle with him. His little eyes, of a calm blue, were
like bits of steel. His ways, the look on his face, his speech, his
carriage, were all in keeping with the short name of Dumay. His
physical strength, well-known to every one, put him above all danger
of attack. He was able to kill a man with a blow of his fist, and had
performed that feat at Bautzen, where he found himself, unarmed, face
to face with a Saxon at the rear of his company. At the present moment
the usually firm yet gentle expression of the man's face had risen to
a sort of tragic sublimity; his lips were pale as the rest of his
face, indicating a tumult within him mastered by his Breton will; a
slight sweat, which every one noticed and guessed to be cold,
moistened his brow. The notary knew but too well that these signs
might result in a drama before the criminal courts. In fact the
cashier was playing a part in connection with Modeste Mignon, which
involved to his mind sentiments of honor and loyalty of far greater
importance than mere social laws; and his present conduct proceeded
from one of those compacts which, in case disaster came of it, could
be judged only in a higher court than one of earth. The majority of
dramas lie really in the ideas which we make to ourselves about
things. Events which seem to us dramatic are nothing more than
subjects which our souls convert into tragedy or comedy according to
the bent of our characters.