The Collection of Antiquities

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"And take her where you may find her," said the Duchess.

"A second mesalliance!" exclaimed Mlle. Armande.

The Duchess began to laugh.

"It is better to marry than to die," she said. As she spoke she drew
from her waistcoat pocket a tiny crystal phial that came from the
court apothecary.

Mlle. Armande shrank away in horror. Old Chesnel took the fair
Maufrigneuse's hand, and kissed it without permission.

"Are you all out of your minds here?" continued the Duchess. "Do you
really expect to live in the fifteenth century when the rest of the
world has reached the nineteenth? My dear children, there is no
noblesse nowadays; there is no aristocracy left! Napoleon's Code Civil
made an end of the parchments, exactly as cannon made an end of feudal
castles. When you have some money, you will be very much more of
nobles than you are now. Marry anybody you please, Victurnien, you
will raise your wife to your rank; that is the most substantial
privilege left to the French noblesse. Did not M. de Talleyrand marry
Mme. Grandt without compromising his position? Remember that Louis
XIV. took the Widow Scarron for his wife."

"He did not marry her for her money," interposed Mlle. Armande.

"If the Comtesse d'Esgrignon were one du Croisier's niece, for
instance, would you receive her?" asked Chesnel.

"Perhaps," replied the Duchess; "but the King, beyond all doubt, would
be very glad to see her.--So you do not know what is going on in the
world?" continued she, seeing the amazement in their faces.
"Victurnien has been in Paris; he knows how things go there. We had
more influence under Napoleon. Marry Mlle. Duval, Victurnien; she will
be just as much Marquise d'Esgrignon as I am Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse."

"All is lost--even honor!" said the Chevalier, with a wave of the
hand.

"Good-bye, Victurnien," said the Duchess, kissing her lover on the
forehead; "we shall not see each other again. Live on your lands; that
is the best thing for you to do; the air of Paris is not at all good
for you."

"Diane!" the young Count cried despairingly.

"Monsieur, you forget yourself strangely," the Duchess retorted
coolly, as she laid aside her role of man and mistress, and became not
merely an angel again, but a duchess, and not only a duchess, but
Moliere's Celimene.

The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse made a stately bow to these four
personages, and drew from the Chevalier his last tear of admiration at
the service of le beau sexe.

"How like she is to the Princess Goritza!" he exclaimed in a low
voice.

Diane had disappeared. The crack of the postilion's whip told
Victurnien that the fair romance of his first love was over. While
peril lasted, Diane could still see her lover in the young Count; but
out of danger, she despised him for the weakling that he was.



Six months afterwards, Camusot received the appointment of assistant
judge at Paris, and later he became an examining magistrate. Goodman
Blondet was made a councillor to the Royal-Court; he held the post
just long enough to secure a retiring pension, and then went back to
live in his pretty little house. Joseph Blondet sat in his father's
seat at the court till the end of his days; there was not the faintest
chance of promotion for him, but he became Mlle. Blandereau's husband;
and she, no doubt, is leading to-day, in the little flower-covered
brick house, as dull a life as any carp in a marble basin. Michu and
Camusot also received the Cross of the Legion of Honor, while Blondet
became an Officer. As for M. Sauvager, deputy public prosecutor, he
was sent to Corsica, to du Croisier's great relief; he had decidedly
no mind to bestow his niece upon that functionary.

Du Croisier himself, urged by President du Ronceret, appealed from the
finding of the Tribunal to the Court-Royal, and lost his cause. The
Liberals throughout the department held that little d'Esgrignon was
guilty; while the Royalists, on the other hand, told frightful stories
of plots woven by "that abominable du Croisier" to compass his
revenge. A duel was fought indeed; the hazard of arms favored du
Croisier, the young Count was dangerously wounded, and his antagonist
maintained his words. This affair embittered the strife between the
two parties; the Liberals brought it forward on all occasions.
Meanwhile du Croisier never could carry his election, and saw no hope
of marrying his niece to the Count, especially after the duel.

A month after the decision of the Tribunal was confirmed in the
Court-Royal, Chesnel died, exhausted by the dreadful strain, which had
weakened and shaken him mentally and physically. He died in the hour
of victory, like some old faithful hound that has brought the boar to
bay, and gets his death on the tusks. He died as happily as might be,
seeing that he left the great House all but ruined, and the heir in
penury, bored to death by an idle life, and without a hope of
establishing himself. That bitter thought and his own exhaustion, no
doubt, hastened the old man's end. One great comfort came to him as he
lay amid the wreck of so many hopes, sinking under the burden of so
many cares--the old Marquis, at his sister's entreaty, gave him back
all the old friendship. The great lord came to the little house in the
Rue du Bercail, and sat by his old servant's bedside, all unaware how
much that servant had done and sacrificed for him. Chesnel sat
upright, and repeated Simeon's cry.--The Marquis allowed them to bury
Chesnel in the castle chapel; they laid him crosswise at the foot of
the tomb which was waiting for the Marquis himself, the last, in a
sense, of the d'Esgrignons.

And so died one of the last representatives of that great and
beautiful thing, Service; giving to that often discredited word its
original meaning, the relation between feudal lord and servitor. That
relation, only to be found in some out-of-the-way province, or among a
few old servants of the King, did honor alike to a noblesse that could
call forth such affection, and to a bourgeoisie that could conceive
it. Such noble and magnificent devotion is no longer possible among
us. Noble houses have no servitors left; even as France has no longer
a King, nor an hereditary peerage, nor lands that are bound
irrevocably to an historic house, that the glorious names of the
nation may be perpetuated. Chesnel was not merely one of the obscure
great men of private life; he was something more--he was a great fact.
In his sustained self-devotion is there not something indefinably
solemn and sublime, something that rises above the one beneficent
deed, or the heroic height which is reached by a moment's supreme
effort? Chesnel's virtues belong essentially to the classes which
stand between the poverty of the people on the one hand, and the
greatness of the aristocracy on the other; for these can combine
homely burgher virtues with the heroic ideals of the noble,
enlightening both by a solid education.

Victurnien was not well looked upon at Court; there was no more chance
of a great match for him, nor a place. His Majesty steadily refused to
raise the d'Esgrignons to the peerage, the one royal favor which could
rescue Victurnien from his wretched position. It was impossible that
he should marry a bourgeoise heiress in his father's lifetime, so he
was bound to live on shabbily under the paternal roof with memories of
his two years of splendor in Paris, and the lost love of a great lady
to bear him company. He grew moody and depressed, vegetating at home
with a careworn aunt and a half heart-broken father, who attributed
his son's condition to a wasting malady. Chesnel was no longer there.

The Marquis died in 1830. The great d'Esgrignon, with a following of
all the less infirm noblesse from the Collection of Antiquities, went
to wait upon Charles X. at Nonancourt; he paid his respects to his
sovereign, and swelled the meagre train of the fallen king. It was an
act of courage which seems simple enough to-day, but, in that time of
enthusiastic revolt, it was heroism.

"The Gaul has conquered!" These were the Marquis' last words.

By that time du Croisier's victory was complete. The new Marquis
d'Esgrignon accepted Mlle. Duval as his wife a week after his old
father's death. His bride brought him three millions of francs for du
Croisier and his wife settled the reversion of their fortunes upon her
in the marriage-contract. Du Croisier took occasion to say during the
ceremony that the d'Esgrignon family was the most honorable of all the
ancient houses in France.

Some day the present Marquis d'Esgrignon will have an income of more
than a hundred thousand crowns. You may see him in Paris, for he comes
to town every winter and leads a jolly bachelor life, while he treats
his wife with something more than the indifference of the grand
seigneur of olden times; he takes no thought whatever for her.

"As for Mlle. d'Esgrignon," said Emile Blondet, to whom all the detail
of the story is due, "if she is no longer like the divinely fair woman
whom I saw by glimpses in my childhood, she is decidedly, at the age
of sixty-seven, the most pathetic and interesting figure in the
Collection of Antiquities. She queens it among them still. I saw her
when I made my last journey to my native place in search of the
necessary papers for my marriage. When my father knew who it was that
I had married, he was struck dumb with amazement; he had not a word to
say until I told him that I was a prefect.

"'You were born to it,' he said, with a smile.

"As I took a walk around the town, I met Mlle. Armande. She looked
taller than ever. I looked at her, and thought of Marius among the
ruins of Carthage. Had she not outlived her creed, and the beliefs
that had been destroyed? She is a sad and silent woman, with nothing
of her old beauty left except the eyes, that shine with an unearthly
light. I watched her on her way to mass, with her book in her hand,
and could not help thinking that she prayed to God to take her out of
the world."



LES JARDIES, July 1837.




ADDENDUM

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

Note: The Old Maid is a companion piece to The Collection of
Antiquities. In other Addendum appearances they are combined under the
title of The Jealousies of a Country Town.

Blondet (Judge)
Beatrix

Blondet, Emile
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Modeste Mignon
Another Study of Woman
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
The Firm of Nucingen
The Peasantry

Blondet, Virginie
The Secrets of a Princess
The Peasantry
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Another Study of Woman
The Member for Arcis
A Daughter of Eve

Bousquier, Du (or Du Croisier or Du Bourguier)
The Old Maid
The Middle Classes

Bousquier, Madame du (or du Croisier)
The Old Maid

Camusot de Marville
Cousin Pons
The Commission in Lunacy
Scenes from a Cuortesan's Life

Camusot de Marville, Madame
The Vendetta
Cesar Birotteau
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Cousin Pons

Cardot (Parisian notary)
The Muse of the Department
A Man of Business
Pierre Grassou
The Middle Classes
Cousin Pons

Casteran, De
The Chouans
The Seamy Side of History
The Old Maid
Beatrix
The Peasantry

Chesnel (or Choisnel)
The Seamy Side of History
The Old Maid

Coudrai, Du
The Old Maid

Esgrignon, Charles-Marie-Victor-Ange-Carol, Marquis d' (or Des Grignons)
The Chouans
The Old Maid

Esgrignon, Victurnien, Comte (then Marquis d')
Letters of Two Brides
A Man of Business
The Secrets of a Princess
Cousin Betty

Esgrignon, Marie-Armande-Claire d'
The Old Maid

Herouville, Duc d'
The Hated Son
Modeste Mignon
Cousin Betty

Lenoncourt, Duc de
The Lily of the Valley
Cesar Birotteau
The Old Maid
The Gondreville Mystery
Beatrix

Leroi, Pierre
The Chouans
The Seamy Side of History

Marsay, Henri de
The Thirteen
The Unconscious Humorists
Another Study of Woman
The Lily of the Valley
Father Goriot
Ursule Mirouet
A Marriage Settlement
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Letters of Two Brides
The Ball at Sceaux
Modest Mignon
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve

Maufrigneuse, Duchesse de
The Secrets of a Princess
Modeste Mignon
The Muse of the Department
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Letters of Two Brides
Another Study of Woman
The Gondreville Mystery
The Member for Arcis

Michu, Francois
The Gondreville Mystery
The Member for Arcis

Pamiers, Vidame de
The Thirteen

Ronceret, Du
The Old Maid
Beatrix

Ronceret, Madame du
The Old Maid

Ronceret, Fabien-Felicien du (or Duronceret)
Beatrix
Gaudissart II

Scherbelloff, Princesse (or Scherbellof or Sherbelloff)
The Peasantry

Thirion
The Vendetta
Cesar Birotteau

Troisville, Guibelin, Vicomte de
The Seamy Side of History
The Chouans
The Old Maid
The Peasantry

Valois, Chevalier de
The Chouans
The Old Maid

Verneuil, Duc de
The Chouans
The Old Maid