Sons of the Soil

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Sons of the Soil


Mademoiselle Laguerre lived an irreproachable life at Les Aigues, one
might even call it a saintly one, after her famous adventure,--you
remember it? One evening in a paroxysm of despairing love, she fled
from the opera-house in her stage dress, rushed into the country, and
passed the night weeping by the wayside. (Ah! how they have
calumniated the love of Louis XV.'s time!) She was so unused to see
the sunrise, that she hailed it with one of her finest songs. Her
attitude, quite as much as her tinsel, drew the peasants about her;
amazed at her gestures, her voice, her beauty, they took her for an
angel, and dropped on their knees around her. If Voltaire had not
existed we might have thought it a new miracle. I don't know if God
gave her much credit for her tardy virtue, for love after all must be
a sickening thing to a woman as weary of it as a wanton of the old
Opera. Mademoiselle Laguerre was born in 1740, and her hey-day was in
1760, when Monsieur (I forget his name) was called the "ministre de la
guerre," on account of his liaison with her. She abandoned that name,
which was quite unknown down here, and called herself Madame des
Aigues, as if to merge her identity in the estate, which she delighted
to improve with a taste that was profoundly artistic. When Bonaparte
became First Consul, she increased her property by the purchase of
church lands, for which she used the proceeds of her diamonds. As an
Opera divinity never knows how to take care of her money, she
intrusted the management of the estate to a steward, occupying herself
with her flowers and fruits and with the beautifying of the park.

After Mademoiselle was dead and buried at Blangy, the notary of
Soulanges--that little town which lies between Ville-aux-Fayes and
Blangy, the capital of the township--made an elaborate inventory, and
sought out the heirs of the singer, who never knew she had any. Eleven
families of poor laborers living near Amiens, and sleeping in cotton
sheets, awoke one fine morning in golden ones. The property was sold
at auction. Les Aigues was bought by Montcornet, who had laid by
enough during his campaigns in Spain and Pomerania to make the
purchase, which cost about eleven hundred thousand francs, including
the furniture. The general, no doubt, felt the influence of these
luxurious apartments; and I was arguing with the countess only
yesterday that her marriage was a direct result of the purchase of Les
Aigues.

To rightly understand the countess, my dear Nathan, you must know that
the general is a violent man, red as fire, five feet nine inches tall,
round as a tower, with a thick neck and the shoulders of a blacksmith,
which must have amply filled his cuirass. Montcornet commanded the
cuirassiers at the battle of Essling (called by the Austrians
Gross-Aspern), and came near perishing when that noble corps was driven
back on the Danube. He managed to cross the river astride a log of wood.
The cuirassiers, finding the bridge down, took the glorious
resolution, at Montcornet's command, to turn and resist the entire
Austrian army, which carried off on the morrow over thirty wagon-loads
of cuirasses. The Germans invented a name for their enemies on this
occasion which means "men of iron."[*] Montcornet has the outer man of
a hero of antiquity. His arms are stout and vigorous, his chest deep
and broad; his head has a leonine aspect, his voice is of those that
can order a charge in the thick of battle; but he has nothing more
than the courage of a daring man; he lacks mind and breadth of view.
Like other generals to whom military common-sense, the natural
boldness of those who spend their lives in danger, and the habit of
command gives an appearance of superiority, Montcornet has an imposing
effect when you first meet him; he seems a Titan, but he contains a
dwarf, like the pasteboard giant who saluted Queen Elizabeth at the
gates of Kenilworth. Choleric though kind, and full of imperial
hauteur, he has the caustic tongue of a soldier, and is quick at
repartee, but quicker still with a blow. He may have been superb on a
battle-field; in a household he is simply intolerable. He knows no
love but barrack love,--the love which those clever myth-makers, the
ancients, placed under the patronage of Eros, son of Mars and Venus.
Those delightful chroniclers of the old religions provided themselves
with a dozen different Loves. Study the fathers and the attributes of
these Loves, and you will discover a complete social nomenclature,
--and yet we fancy that we originate things! When the world turns
upside down like an hour-glass, when the seas become continents,
Frenchmen will find canons, steamboats, newspapers, and maps wrapped
up in seaweed at the bottom of what is now our ocean.

[*] I do not, on principle, like foot-notes, and this is the first I
have ever allowed myself. Its historical interest must be my
excuse; it will prove, moreover, that descriptions of battles
should be something more than the dry particulars of technical
writers, who for the last three thousand years have told us about
left and right wings and centres being broken or driven in, but
never a word about the soldier himself, his sufferings, and his
heroism. The conscientious care with which I prepared myself to
write the "Scenes from Military Life," led me to many a battle-field
once wet with the blood of France and her enemies. Among them I
went to Wagram. When I reached the shores of the Danube, opposite
Lobau, I noticed on the bank, which is covered with turf, certain
undulations that reminded me of the furrows in a field of
lucern. I asked the reason of it, thinking I should hear of some
new method of agriculture: "There sleep the cavalry of the
imperial guard," said the peasant who served us as a guide; "those
are their graves you see there." The words made me shudder. Prince
Frederic Schwartzenburg, who translated them, added that the man
had himself driven one of the wagons laden with cuirasses. By one
of the strange chances of war our guide had served a breakfast to
Napoleon on the morning of the battle of Wagram. Though poor, he
had kept the double napoleon which the Emperor gave him for his
milk and his eggs. The curate of Gross-Aspern took us to the
famous cemetery where French and Austrians struggled together
knee-deep in blood, with a courage and obstinacy glorious to each.
There, while explaining that a marble tablet (to which our
attention had been attracted, and on which were inscribed the
names of the owner of Gross-Aspern, who had been killed on the
third day) was the sole compensation ever given to the family, he
said, in a tone of deep sadness: "It was a time of great misery,
and of great hopes; but now are the days of forgetfulness." The
saying seemed to me sublime in its simplicity; but when I came to
reflect upon the matter, I felt there was some justification for
the apparent ingratitude of the House of Austria. Neither nations
nor kings are wealthy enough to reward all the devotions to which
these tragic struggles give rise. Let those who serve a cause with
a secret expectation of recompense, set a price upon their blood
and become mercenaries. Those who wield either sword or pen for
their country's good ought to think of nothing but of _doing their
best_, as our fathers used to say, and expect nothing, not even
glory, except as a happy accident.

It was in rushing to retake this famous cemetery for the third
time that Massena, wounded and carried in the box of a cabriolet,
made this splendid harangue to his soldiers: "What! you rascally
curs, who have only five sous a day while I have forty thousand,
do you let me go ahead of you?" All the world knows the order
which the Emperor sent to his lieutenant by M. de Sainte-Croix,
who swam the Danube three times: "Die or retake the village; it is
a question of saving the army; the bridges are destroyed."

The Author.


Now, I must tell you that the Comtesse de Montcornet is a fragile,
timid, delicate little woman. What do you think of such a marriage as
that? To those who know society such things are common enough; a
well-assorted marriage is the exception. Nevertheless, I have come to
see how it is that this slender little creature handles her bobbins
in a way to lead this heavy, solid, stolid general precisely as he
himself used to lead his cuirassiers.

If Montcornet begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a
finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his
cigars in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before
he returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, he turns to her,
like a bear drunk on grapes, and says, when anything is proposed, "If
Madame approves." When he comes to his wife's room, with that heavy
step which makes the tiles creak as though they were boards, and she,
not wanting him, calls out: "Don't come in!" he performs a military
volte-face and says humbly: "You will let me know when I can see you?"
--in the very tones with which he shouted to his cuirassiers on the
banks of the Danube: "Men, we must die, and die well, since there's
nothing else we can do!" I have heard him say, speaking of his wife,
"Not only do I love her, but I venerate her." When he flies into a
passion which defies all restraint and bursts all bonds, the little
woman retires into her own room and leaves him to shout. But four or
five hours later she will say: "Don't get into a passion, my dear, you
might break a blood-vessel; and besides, you hurt me." Then the lion
of Essling retreats out of sight to wipe his eyes. Sometimes he comes
into the salon when she and I are talking, and if she says: "Don't
disturb us, he is reading to me," he leaves us without a word.

It is only strong men, choleric and powerful, thunder-bolts of war,
diplomats with olympian heads, or men of genius, who can show this
utter confidence, this generous devotion to weakness, this constant
protection, this love without jealousy, this easy good humor with a
woman. Good heavens! I place the science of the countess's management
of her husband as far above the peevish, arid virtues as the satin of
a causeuse is superior to the Utrecht velvet of a dirty bourgeois
sofa.

My dear fellow, I have spent six days in this delightful
country-house, and I never tire of admiring the beauties of the park,
surrounded by forests where pretty wood-paths lead beside the brooks.
Nature and its silence, these tranquil pleasures, this placid life to
which she woos me,--all attract. Ah! here is true literature; no fault
of style among the meadows. Happiness forgets all things here,--even
the Debats! It has rained all the morning; while the countess slept
and Montcornet tramped over his domain, I have compelled myself to
keep my rash, imprudent promise to write to you.

Until now, though I was born at Alencon, of an old judge and a
prefect, so they say, and though I know something of agriculture, I
supposed the tale of estates bringing in four or five thousand francs
a month to be a fable. Money, to me, meant a couple of dreadful
things,--work and a publisher, journalism and politics. When shall we
poor fellows come upon a land where gold springs up with the grass?
That is what I desire for you and for me and the rest of us in the
name of the theatre, and of the press, and of book-making! Amen!

Will Florine be jealous of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre? Our modern
Bourets have no French nobles now to show them how to live; they hire
one opera-box among three of them; they subscribe for their pleasures;
they no longer cut down magnificently bound quartos to match the
octavos in their library; in fact, they scarcely buy even stitched
paper books. What is to become of us?


Adieu; continue to care for
Your Blondet.


If this letter, dashed off by the idlest pen of the century, had not
by some lucky chance been preserved, it would have been almost
impossible to describe Les Aigues; and without this description the
history of the horrible events that occurred there would certainly be
less interesting.

After that remark some persons will expect to see the flashing of the
cuirass of the former colonel of the guard, and the raging of his
anger as he falls like a waterspout upon his little wife; so that the
end of this present history may be like the end of all modern dramas,
--a tragedy of the bed-chamber. Perhaps the fatal scene will take
place in that charming room with the blue monochromes, where beautiful
ideal birds are painted on the ceilings and the shutters, where
Chinese monsters laugh with open jaws on the mantle-shelf, and
dragons, green and gold, twist their tails in curious convolutions
around rich vases, and Japanese fantasy embroiders its designs of many
colors; where sofas and reclining-chairs and consoles and what-nots
invite to that contemplative idleness which forbids all action.

No; the drama here to be developed is not one of private life; it
concerns things higher, or lower. Expect no scenes of passion; the
truth of this history is only too dramatic. And remember, the
historian should never forget that his mission is to do justice to
all; the poor and the prosperous are equals before his pen; to him the
peasant appears in the grandeur of his misery, and the rich in the
pettiness of his folly. Moreover, the rich man has passions, the
peasant only wants. The peasant is therefore doubly poor; and if,
politically, his aggressions must be pitilessly repressed, to the eyes
of humanity and religion he is sacred.



CHAPTER II

A BUCOLIC OVERLOOKED BY VIRGIL

When a Parisian drops into the country he is cut off from all his
usual habits, and soon feels the dragging hours, no matter how
attentive his friends may be to him. Therefore, because it is so
impossible to prolong in a tete-a-tete conversations that are soon
exhausted, the master and mistress of a country-house are apt to say,
calmly, "You will be terribly bored here." It is true that to
understand the delights of country life one must have something to do,
some interests in it; one must know the nature of the work to be done,
and the alternating harmony of toil and pleasure,--eternal symbol of
human life.

When a Parisian has recovered his powers of sleeping, shaken off the
fatigues of his journey, and accustomed himself to country habits, the
hardest period of the day (if he wears thin boots and is neither a
sportsman nor an agriculturalist) is the early morning. Between the
hours of waking and breakfasting, the women of the family are sleeping
or dressing, and therefore unapproachable; the master of the house is
out and about on his own affairs; a Parisian is therefore compelled to
be alone from eight to eleven o'clock, the hour chosen in all
country-houses for breakfast. Now, having got what amusement he can out
of carefully dressing himself, he has soon exhausted that resource.
Then, perhaps, he has brought with him some work, which he finds it
impossible to do, and which goes back untouched, after he sees the
difficulties of doing it, into his valise; a writer is then obliged to
wander about the park and gape at nothing or count the big trees. The
easier the life, the more irksome such occupations are,--unless,
indeed, one belongs to the sect of shaking quakers or to the honorable
guild of carpenters or taxidermists. If one really had, like the
owners of estates, to live in the country, it would be well to supply
one's self with a geological, mineralogical, entomological, or
botanical hobby; but a sensible man doesn't give himself a vice merely
to kill time for a fortnight. The noblest estate, and the finest
chateaux soon pall on those who possess nothing but the sight of them.
The beauties of nature seem rather squalid compared to the
representation of them at the opera. Paris, by retrospection, shines
from all its facets. Unless some particular interest attaches us, as
it did in Blondet's case, to scenes honored by the steps and lighted
by the eyes of a certain person, one would envy the birds their wings
and long to get back to the endless, exciting scenes of Paris and its
harrowing strifes.

The long letter of the young journalist must make most intelligent
minds suppose that he had reached, morally and physically, that
particular phase of satisfied passions and comfortable happiness which
certain winged creatures fed in Strasbourg so perfectly represent
when, with their heads sunk behind their protruding gizzards, they
neither see nor wish to see the most appetizing food. So, when the
formidable letter was finished, the writer felt the need of getting
away from the gardens of Armida and doing something to enliven the
deadly void of the morning hours; for the hours between breakfast and
dinner belonged to the mistress of the house, who knew very well how
to make them pass quickly. To keep, as Madame de Montcornet did, a man
of talent in the country without ever seeing on his face the false
smile of satiety, or detecting the yawn of a weariness that cannot be
concealed, is a great triumph for a woman. The affection which is
equal to such a test certainly ought to be eternal. It is to be
wondered at that women do not oftener employ it to judge of their
lovers; a fool, an egoist, or a petty nature could never stand it.
Philip the Second himself, the Alexander of dissimulation, would have
told his secrets if condemned to a month's tete-a-tete in the country.
Perhaps this is why kings seek to live in perpetual motion, and allow
no one to see them more than fifteen minutes at a time.

Notwithstanding that he had received the delicate attentions of one of
the most charming women in Paris, Emile Blondet was able to feel once
more the long forgotten delights of a truant schoolboy; and on the
morning of the day after his letter was written he had himself called
by Francois, the head valet, who was specially appointed to wait on
him, for the purpose of exploring the valley of the Avonne.

The Avonne is a little river which, being swollen above Conches by
numerous rivulets, some of which rise in Les Aigues, falls at
Ville-aux-Fayes into one of the large affluents of the Seine. The
geographical position of the Avonne, navigable for over twelve miles,
had, ever since Jean Bouvet invented rafts, given full money value to
the forests of Les Aigues, Soulanges, and Ronquerolles, standing on
the crest of the hills between which this charming river flows. The
park of Les Aigues covers the greater part of the valley, between the
river (bordered on both sides by the forest called des Aigues) and the
royal mail road, defined by a line of old elms in the distance along
the slopes of the Avonne mountains, which are in fact the foot-hills
of that magnificent ampitheatre called the Morvan.

However vulgar the comparison may be, the park, lying thus at the
bottom of the valley, is like an enormous fish with its head at
Conches and its tail in the village of Blangy; for it widens in the
middle to nearly three hundred acres, while towards Conches it counts
less than fifty, and sixty at Blangy. The position of this estate,
between three villages, and only three miles from the little town of
Soulanges, from which the descent is rapid, may perhaps have led to
the strife and caused the excesses which are the chief interest
attaching to the place. If, when seen from the mail road or from the
uplands beyond Ville-aux-Fayes, the paradise of Les Aigues induces
mere passing travellers to commit the mortal sin of envy, why should
the rich burghers of Soulanges and Ville-aux-Fayes who had it before
their eyes and admired it every day of their lives, have been more
virtuous?

This last topographical detail was needed to explain the site, also
the use of the four gates by which alone the park of Les Aigues was
entered; for it was completely surrounded by walls, except where
nature had provided a fine view, and at such points sunk fences or
ha-has had been placed. The four gates, called the gate of Conches, the
gate of Avonne, the gate of Blangy, and the gate of the Avenue, showed
the styles of the different periods at which they were constructed so
admirably that a brief description, in the interest of archaeologists,
will presently be given, as brief as the one Blondet has already
written about the gate of the Avenue.

After eight days of strolling about with the countess, the illustrious
editor of the "Journal des Debats" knew by heart the Chinese kiosk,
the bridges, the isles, the hermitage, the dairy, the ruined temple,
the Babylonian ice-house, and all the other delusions invented by
landscape architects which some nine hundred acres of land can be made
to serve. He now wished to find the sources of the Avonne, which the
general and the countess daily extolled in the evening, making plans
to visit them which were daily forgotten the next morning. Above Les
Aigues the Avonne really had the appearance of an alpine torrent.
Sometimes it hollowed a bed among the rocks, sometimes it went
underground; on this side the brooks came down in cascades, there they
flowed like the Loire on sandy shallows where rafts could not pass on
account of the shifting channels. Blondet took a short cut through the
labyrinths of the park to reach the gate of Conches. This gate demands
a few words, which give, moreover, certain historical details about
the property.

The original founder of Les Aigues was a younger son of the Soulanges
family, enriched by marriage, whose chief ambition was to make his
elder brother jealous,--a sentiment, by the bye, to which we owe the
fairy-land of Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore. In the middle ages the
castle of Les Aigues stood on the banks of the Avonne. Of this old
building nothing remains but the gateway, which has a porch like the
entrance to a fortified town, flanked by two round towers with conical
roofs. Above the arch of the porch are heavy stone courses, now draped
with vegetation, showing three large windows with cross-bar sashes. A
winding stairway in one of the towers leads to two chambers, and a
kitchen occupies the other tower. The roof of the porch, of pointed
shape like all old timber-work, is noticeable for two weathercocks
perched at each end of a ridge-pole ornamented with fantastic iron-work.
Many an important place cannot boast of so fine a town hall. On the
outside of this gateway, the keystone of the arch still bears the
arms of Soulanges, preserved by the hardness of the stone on which the
chisel of the artist carved them, as follows: Azure, on a pale,
argent, three pilgrim's staff's sable; a fess bronchant, gules,
charged with four grosses patee, fitched, or; with the heraldic form
of a shield awarded to younger sons. Blondet deciphered the motto, "Je
soule agir,"--one of those puns that crusaders delighted to make upon
their names, and which brings to mind a fine political maxim, which,
as we shall see later, was unfortunately forgotten by Montcornet. The
gate, which was opened for Blondet by a very pretty girl, was of
time-worn wood clamped with iron. The keeper, wakened by the creaking
of the hinges, put his nose out of the window and showed himself in his
night-shirt.

"So our keepers sleep till this time of day!" thought the Parisian,
who thought himself very knowing in rural customs.

After a walk of about quarter of an hour, he reached the sources of
the river above Conches, where his ravished eyes beheld one of those
landscapes that ought to be described, like the history of France, in
a thousand volumes or in only one. We must here content ourselves with
two paragraphs.

A projecting rock, covered with dwarf trees and abraded at its base by
the Avonne, to which circumstance it owes a slight resemblance to an
enormous turtle lying across the river, forms an arch through which
the eye takes in a little sheet of water, clear as a mirror, where the
stream seems to sleep until it reaches in the distance a series of
cascades falling among huge rocks, where little weeping willows with
elastic motion sway back and forth to the flow of waters.

Beyond these cascades is the hillside, rising sheer, like a Rhine rock
clothed with moss and heather, gullied like it, again, by sharp ridges
of schist and mica sending down, here and there, white foaming
rivulets to which a little meadow, always watered and always green,
serves as a cup; farther on, beyond the picturesque chaos and in
contrast to this wild, solitary nature, the gardens of Conches are
seen, with the village roofs and the clock-tower and the outlying
fields.

There are the two paragraphs, but the rising sun, the purity of the
air, the dewy sheen, the melody of woods and waters--imagine them!

"Almost as charming as at the Opera," thought Blondet, making his way
along the banks of the unnavigable portion of the Avonne, whose
caprices contrast with the straight and deep and silent stream of the
lower river, flowing between the tall trees of the forest of Les
Aigues.