The Country Doctor

H >> Honore de Balzac >> The Country Doctor


"I do not know whether you noticed the effect of the sunset light on
the cottage where little Jacques lives? Everything shone so brightly
in the fiery rays of the sun, and then all at once the whole landscape
grew dark and dreary. That sudden change was like the change in my own
life at this time. I received from her the first, the sole and sublime
token of love that an innocent girl may give; the more secretly it is
given, the closer is the bond it forms, the sweet promise of love, a
fragment of the language spoken in a fairer world than this. Sure,
therefore, of being beloved, I vowed that I would confess everything
at once, that I would have no secrets from her; I felt ashamed that I
had so long delayed to tell her about the sorrows that I had brought
upon myself.

"Unluckily, with the morrow of this happy day a letter came from my
son's tutor, the life of the child so dear to me was in danger. I went
away without confiding my secret to Evelina, merely telling her family
that I was urgently required in Paris. Her parents took alarm during
my absence. They feared that there I was entangled in some way, and
wrote to Paris to make inquiries about me. It was scarcely consistent
with their religious principles; but they suspected me, and did not
even give me an opportunity of clearing myself.

"One of their friends, without my knowledge, gave them the whole
history of my youth, blackening my errors, laying stress upon the
existence of my child, which (said they) I intended to conceal. I
wrote to my future parents, but I received no answers to my letters;
and when they came back to Paris, and I called at their house, I was
not admitted. Much alarmed, I sent to my old friend to learn the
reason of this conduct on their part, which I did not in the least
understand. As soon as the good soul knew the real cause of it all, he
sacrificed himself generously, took upon himself all the blame of my
reserve, and tried to exculpate me, but all to no purpose. Questions
of interest and morality were regarded so seriously by the family,
their prejudices were so firmly and deeply rooted, that they never
swerved from their resolution. My despair was overwhelming. At first I
tried to deprecate their wrath, but my letters were sent back to me
unopened. When every possible means had been tried in vain; when her
father and mother had plainly told my old friend (the cause of my
misfortune) that they would never consent to their daughter's marriage
with a man who had upon his conscience the death of a woman and the
life of a natural son, even though Evelina herself should implore them
upon her knees; then, sir, there only remained to me one last hope, a
hope as slender and fragile as the willow-branch at which a drowning
wretch catches to save himself.

"I ventured to think that Evelina's love would be stronger than her
father's scruples, that her inflexible parents might yield to her
entreaties. Perhaps, who knows, her father had kept from her the
reasons of the refusal, which was so fatal to our love. I determined
to acquaint her with all the circumstances, and to make a final appeal
to her; and in fear and trembling, in grief and tears, my first and
last love-letter was written. To-day I can only dimly remember the
words dictated to me by my despair; but I must have told Evelina that
if she had dealt sincerely with me she could not and ought not to love
another, or how could her whole life be anything but a lie? she must
be false either to her future husband or to me. Could she refuse to
the lover, who had been so misjudged and hardly entreated, the
devotion which she would have shown him as her husband, if the
marriage which had already taken place in our hearts had been
outwardly solemnized? Was not this to fall from the ideal of womanly
virtue? What woman would not love to feel that the promises of the
heart were more sacred and binding than the chains forged by the law?
I defended my errors; and in my appeal to the purity of innocence, I
left nothing unsaid that could touch a noble and generous nature. But
as I am telling you everything, I will look for her answer and my
farewell letter," said Benassis, and he went up to his room in search
of it.

He returned in a few moments with a worn pocketbook; his hands
trembled with emotion as he drew from it some loose sheets.

"Here is the fatal letter," he said. "The girl who wrote those lines
little knew the value that I should set upon the scrap of paper that
holds her thoughts. This is the last cry that pain wrung from me," he
added, taking up a second letter; "I will lay it before you directly.
My old friend was the bearer of my letter of entreaty; he gave it to
her without her parents' knowledge, humbling his white hair to implore
Evelina to read and to reply to my appeal. This was her answer:


"'Monsieur . . .' But lately I had been her 'beloved,' the innocent
name she had found by which to express her innocent love, and now she
called me /Monsieur/! . . . That one word told me everything. But listen
to the rest of the letter:

"'Treachery on the part of one to whom her life was to be intrusted
is a bitter thing for a girl to discover; and yet I could not but
excuse you, we are so weak! Your letter touched me, but you must not
write to me again, the sight of your handwriting gives me such
unbearable pain. We are parted for ever. I was carried away by your
reasoning; it extinguished all the harsh feelings that had risen up
against you in my soul. I had been so proud of your truth! But both of
us have found my father's reasoning irresistible. Yes, monsieur, I
ventured to plead for you. I did for you what I have never done
before, I overcame the greatest fears that I have ever known, and
acted almost against my nature. Even now I am yielding to your
entreaties, and doing wrong for your sake, in writing to you without
my father's knowledge. My mother knows that I am writing to you; her
indulgence in leaving me at liberty to be alone with you for a moment
has taught me the depth of her love for me, and strengthened my
determination to bow to the decree of my family, against which I had
almost rebelled. So I am writing to you, monsieur, for the first and
last time. You have my full and entire forgiveness for the troubles
that you have brought into my life. Yes, you are right; a first love
can never be forgotten. I am no longer an innocent girl; and, as an
honest woman, I can never marry another. What my future will be, I
know not therefore. Only you see, monsieur, that echoes of this year
that you have filled will never die away in my life. But I am in no
way accusing you. . . . "I shall always be beloved!" Why did you write
those words? Can they bring peace to the troubled soul of a lonely and
unhappy girl? Have you not already laid waste my future, giving me
memories which will never cease to revisit me? Henceforth I can only
give myself to God, but will He accept a broken heart? He has had some
purpose to fulfil in sending these afflictions to me; doubtless it was
His will that I should turn to Him, my only refuge here below. Nothing
remains to me here upon this earth. You have all a man's ambitions
wherewith to beguile your sorrows. I do not say this as a reproach; it
is a sort of religious consolation. If we both bear a grievous burden
at this moment, I think that my share of it is the heavier. He in whom
I have put my trust, and of whom you can feel no jealousy, has joined
our lives together, and He puts them asunder according to His will. I
have seen that your religious beliefs were not founded upon the pure
and living faith which alone enables us to bear our woes here below.
Monsieur, if God will vouchsafe to hear my fervent and ceaseless
prayers, He will cause His light to shine in your soul. Farewell, you
who should have been my guide, you whom once I had the right to call
"my beloved," no one can reproach me if I pray for you still. God
orders our days as it pleases Him. Perhaps you may be the first whom
He will call to himself; but if I am left alone in the world, then,
monsieur, intrust the care of the child to me.'



"This letter, so full of generous sentiments, disappointed my hopes,"
Benassis resumed, "so that at first I could think of nothing but my
misery; afterwards I welcomed the balm which, in her forgetfulness of
self, she had tried to pour into my wounds, but in my first despair I
wrote to her somewhat bitterly:

"Mademoiselle--that word alone will tell you that at your bidding I
renounce you. There is something indescribably sweet in obeying one we
love, who puts us to the torture. You are right. I acquiesce in my
condemnation. Once I slighted a girl's devotion; it is fitting,
therefore, that my love should be rejected to-day. But I little
thought that my punishment was to be dealt to me by the woman at whose
feet I had laid my life. I never expected that such harshness, perhaps
I should say, such rigid virtue, lurked in a heart that seemed to be
so loving and so tender. At this moment the full strength of my love
is revealed to me; it has survived the most terrible of all trials,
the scorn you have shown for me by severing without regret the ties
that bound us. Farewell for ever. There still remains to me the proud
humility of repentance; I will find some sphere of life where I can
expiate the errors to which you, the mediator between Heaven and me,
have shown no mercy. Perhaps God may be less inexorable. My
sufferings, sufferings full of the thought of you, shall be the
penance of a heart which will never be healed, which will bleed in
solitude. For a wounded heart--shadow and silence.

"'No other image of love shall be engraven on my heart. Though I am
not a woman, I feel as you felt that when I said "I love you," it was
a vow for life. Yes, the words then spoken in the ear of "my beloved"
were not a lie; you would have a right to scorn me if I could change.
I shall never cease to worship you in my solitude. In spite of the
gulf set between us, you will still be the mainspring of all my
actions, and all the virtues are inspired by penitence and love.
Though you have filled my heart with bitterness, I shall never have
bitter thoughts of you; would it not be an ill beginning of the new
tasks that I have set myself if I did not purge out all the evil
leaven from my soul? Farewell, then, to the one heart that I love in
the world, a heart from which I am cast out. Never has more feeling
and more tenderness been expressed in a farewell, for is it not
fraught with the life and soul of one who can never hope again, and
must be henceforth as one dead? . . . Farewell. May peace be with you,
and may all the sorrow of our lot fall to me!'"



Benassis and Genestas looked at each other for a moment after reading
the two letters, each full of sad thoughts, of which neither spoke.

"As you see, this is only a rough copy of my last letter," said
Benassis; "it is all that remains to me to-day of my blighted hopes.
When I had sent the letter, I fell into an indescribable state of
depression. All the ties that hold one to life were bound together in
the hope of wedded happiness, which was henceforth lost to me for
ever. I had to bid farewell to the joys of a permitted and
acknowledged love, to all the generous ideas that had thronged up from
the depths of my heart. The prayers of a penitent soul that thirsted
for righteousness and for all things lovely and of good report, had
been rejected by these religious people. At first, the wildest
resolutions and most frantic thoughts surged through my mind, but
happily for me the sight of my son brought self-control. I felt all
the more strongly drawn towards him for the misfortunes of which he
was the innocent cause, and for which I had in reality only myself to
blame. In him I found all my consolation.

"At the age of thirty-four I might still hope to do my country noble
service. I determined to make a name for myself, a name so illustrious
that no one should remember the stain on the birth of my son. How many
noble thoughts I owe to him! How full a life I led in those days while
I was absorbed in planning out his future! I feel stifled," cried
Benassis. "All this happened eleven years ago, and yet to this day, I
cannot bear to think of that fatal year. . . . My child died, sir; I
lost him!"

The doctor was silent, and hid his face in his hands; when he was
somewhat calmer he raised his head again, and Genestas saw that his
eyes were full of tears.

"At first it seemed as if this thunderbolt had uprooted me," Benassis
resumed. "It was a blow from which I could only expect to recover
after I had been transplanted into a different soil from that of the
social world in which I lived. It was not till some time afterwards
that I saw the finger of God in my misfortunes, and later still that I
learned to submit to His will and to hearken to His voice. It was
impossible that resignation should come to me all at once. My
impetuous and fiery nature broke out in a final storm of rebellion.

"It was long before I brought myself to take the only step befitting a
Catholic; indeed, my thoughts ran on suicide. This succession of
misfortunes had contributed to develop melancholy feelings in me, and
I deliberately determined to take my own life. It seemed to me that it
was permissible to take leave of life when life was ebbing fast. There
was nothing unnatural, I thought about suicide. The ravages of mental
distress affected the soul of man in the same way that acute physical
anguish affected the body; and an intelligent being, suffering from a
moral malady, had surely a right to destroy himself, a right he shares
with the sheep, that, fallen a victim to the 'staggers,' beats its
head against a tree. Were the soul's diseases in truth more readily
cured than those of the body? I scarcely think so, to this day. Nor do
I know which is the more craven soul--he who hopes even when hope is
no longer possible, or he who despairs. Death is the natural
termination of a physical malady, and it seemed to me that suicide was
the final crisis in the sufferings of a mind diseased, for it was in
the power of the will to end them when reason showed that death was
preferable to life. So it is not the pistol, but a thought that puts
an end to our existence. Again, when fate may suddenly lay us low in
the midst of a happy life, can we be blamed for ourselves refusing to
bear a life of misery?

"But my reflections during that time of mourning turned on loftier
themes. The grandeur of pagan philosophy attracted me, and for a while
I became a convert. In my efforts to discover new rights for man, I
thought that with the aid of modern thought I could penetrate further
into the questions to which those old-world systems of philosophy had
furnished solutions.

"Epicurus permitted suicide. Was it not the natural outcome of his
system of ethics? The gratification of the senses was to be obtained
at any cost; and when this became impossible, the easiest and best
course was for the animate being to return to the repose of inanimate
nature. Happiness, or the hope of happiness, was the one end for which
man existed, for one who suffered, and who suffered without hope,
death ceased to be an evil, and became a good, and suicide became a
final act of wisdom. This act Epicurus neither blamed nor praised; he
was content to say as he poured a libation to Bacchus, '/As for death,
there is nothing in death to move our laughter or our tears./'

"With a loftier morality than that of the Epicureans, and a sterner
sense of man's duties, Zeno and the Stoic philosophers prescribed
suicide in certain cases to their followers. They reasoned thus: Man
differs from the brute in that he has the sovereign right to dispose
of his person; take away this power of life and death over himself and
he becomes the plaything of fate, the slave of other men. Rightly
understood, this power of life and death is a sufficient counterpoise
for all the ills of life; the same power when conferred upon another,
upon his fellow-man, leads to tyranny of every kind. Man has no power
whatever unless he has unlimited freedom of action. Suppose that he
has been guilty of some irreparable error, from the shameful
consequences of which there is no escape; a sordid nature swallows
down the disgrace and survives it, the wise man drinks the hemlock and
dies. Suppose that the remainder of life is to be one constant
struggle with the gout which racks our bones, or with a gnawing and
disfiguring cancer, the wise man dismisses quacks, and at the proper
moment bids a last farewell to the friends whom he only saddens by his
presence. Or another perhaps has fallen alive into the hands of the
tyrant against whom he fought. What shall he do? The oath of
allegiance is tendered to him; he must either subscribe or stretch out
his neck to the executioner; the fool takes the latter course, the
coward subscribes, the wise man strikes a last blow for liberty--in
his own heart. 'You who are free,' the Stoic was wont to say, 'know
then how to preserve your freedom! Find freedom from your own passions
by sacrificing them to duty, freedom from the tyranny of mankind by
pointing to the sword or the poison which will put you beyond their
reach, freedom from the bondage of fate by determining the point
beyond which you will endure it no longer, freedom from physical fear
by learning how to subdue the gross instinct which causes so many
wretches to cling to life.'

"After I had unearthed this reasoning from among a heap of ancient
philosophical writings, I sought to reconcile it with Christian
teachings. God has bestowed free-will upon us in order to require of
us an account hereafter before the Throne of Judgment. 'I will plead
my cause there!' I said to myself. But such thoughts as these led me
to think of a life after death, and my old shaken beliefs rose up
before me. Human life grows solemn when all eternity hangs upon the
slightest of our decisions. When the full meaning of this thought is
realized, the soul becomes conscious of something vast and mysterious
within itself, by which it is drawn towards the Infinite; the aspect
of all things alters strangely. From this point of view life is
something infinitely great and infinitely little. The consciousness of
my sins had never made me think of heaven so long as hope remained to
me on earth, so long as I could find a relief for my woes in work and
in the society of other men. I had meant to make the happiness of a
woman's life, to love, to be the head of a family, and in this way my
need of expiation would have been satisfied to the full. This design
had been thwarted, but yet another way had remained to me,--I would
devote myself henceforward to my child. But after these two efforts
had failed, and scorn and death had darkened my soul for ever, when
all my feelings had been wounded and nothing was left to me here on
earth, I raised my eyes to heaven, and beheld God.

"Yet still I tried to obtain the sanction of religion for my death. I
went carefully through the Gospels, and found no passage in which
suicide was forbidden; but during the reading, the divine thought of
Christ, the Saviour of men dawned in me. Certainly He had said nothing
about the immortality of the soul, but He had spoken of the glorious
kingdom of His Father; He had nowhere forbidden parricide, but He
condemned all that was evil. The glory of His evangelists, and the
proof of their divine mission, is not so much that they made laws for
the world, but that they spread a new spirit abroad, and the new laws
were filled with this new spirit. The very courage which a man
displays in taking his own life seemed to me to be his condemnation;
so long as he felt that he had within himself sufficient strength to
die by his own hands, he ought to have had strength enough to continue
the struggle. To refuse to suffer is a sign of weakness rather than of
courage, and, moreover, was it not a sort of recusance to take leave
of life in despondency, an abjuration of the Christian faith which is
based upon the sublime words of Jesus Christ: 'Blessed are they that
mourn.'

"So, in any case, suicide seemed to me to be an unpardonable error,
even in the man who, through a false conception of greatness of soul,
takes his life a few moments before the executioner's axe falls. In
humbling himself to the death of the cross, did not Jesus Christ set
for us an example of obedience to all human laws, even when carried
out unjustly? The word /resignation/ engraved upon the cross, so clear
to the eyes of those who can read the sacred characters in which it is
traced, shone for me with divine brightness.



"I still had eighty thousand francs in my possession, and at first I
meant to live a remote and solitary life, to vegetate in some country
district for the rest of my days; but misanthropy is no Catholic
virtue, and there is a certain vanity lurking beneath the hedgehog's
skin of the misanthrope. His heart does not bleed, it shrivels, and my
heart bled from every vein. I thought of the discipline of the Church,
the refuge that she affords to sorrowing souls, understood at last the
beauty of a life of prayer in solitude, and was fully determined to
'enter religion,' in the grand old phrase. So far my intentions were
firmly fixed, but I had not yet decided on the best means of carrying
them out. I realized the remains of my fortune, and set forth on my
journey with an almost tranquil mind. /Peace in God/ was a hope that
could never fail me.

"I felt drawn to the rule of Saint Bruno, and made the journey to the
Grande Chartreuse on foot, absorbed in solemn thoughts. That was a
memorable day. I was not prepared for the grandeur of the scenery; the
workings of an unknown Power greater than that of man were visible at
every step; the overhanging crags, the precipices on either hand, the
stillness only broken by the voices of the mountain streams, the
sternness and wildness of the landscape, relieved here and there by
Nature's fairest creations, pine trees that have stood for centuries
and delicate rock plants at their feet, all combine to produce sober
musings. There seemed to be no end to this waste solitude, shut in by
its lofty mountain barriers. The idle curiosity of man could scarcely
penetrate there. It would be difficult to cross this melancholy desert
of Saint Bruno's with a light heart.

"I saw the Grand Chartreuse. I walked beneath the vaulted roofs of the
ancient cloisters, and heard in the silence the sound of the water
from the spring, falling drop by drop. I entered a cell that I might
the better realize my own utter nothingness, something of the peace
that my predecessor had found there seemed to pass into my soul. An
inscription, which in accordance with the custom of the monastery he
had written above his door, impressed and touched me; all the precepts
of the life that I had meant to lead were there, summed up in three
Latin words--/Fuge, late, tace/."

Genestas bent his head as if he understood.

"My decision was made," Benassis resumed. "The cell with its deal
wainscot, the hard bed, the solitude, all appealed to my soul. The
Carthusians were in the chapel, I went thither to join in their
prayers, and there my resolutions vanished. I do not wish to criticise
the Catholic Church, I am perfectly orthodox, I believe in its laws
and in the works it prescribes. But when I heard the chanting and the
prayers of those old men, dead to the world and forgotten by the
world, I discerned an undercurrent of sublime egoism in the life of
the cloister. This withdrawal from the world could only benefit the
individual soul, and after all what was it but a protracted suicide? I
do not condemn it. The Church has opened these tombs in which life is
buried; no doubt they are needful for those few Christians who are
absolutely useless to the world; but for me, it would be better, I
thought, to live among my fellows, to devote my life of expiation to
their service.

"As I returned I thought long and carefully over the various ways in
which I could carry out my vow of renunciation. Already I began, in
fancy, to lead the life of a common sailor, condemning myself to serve
our country in the lowest ranks, and giving up all my intellectual
ambitions; but though it was a life of toil and of self-abnegation, it
seemed to me that I ought to do more than this. Should I not thwart
the designs of God by leading such a life? If He had given me
intellectual ability, was it not my duty to employ it for the good of
my fellow-men? Then, besides, if I am to speak frankly, I felt within
me a need of my fellow-men, an indescribable wish to help them. The
round of mechanical duties and the routine tasks of the sailor
afforded no scope for this desire, which is as much an outcome of my
nature as the characteristic scent that a flower breathes forth.

"I was obliged to spend the night here, as I have already told you.
The wretched condition of the countryside had filled me with pity, and
during the night it seemed as if these thoughts had been sent to me by
God, and that thus He had revealed His will to me. I had known
something of the joys that pierce the heart, the happiness and the
sorrow of motherhood; I determined that henceforth my life should be
filled with these, but that mine should be a wider sphere than a
mother's. I would expend her care and kindness on the whole district;
I would be a sister of charity, and bind the wounds of all the
suffering poor in a countryside. It seemed to me that the finger of
God unmistakably pointed out my destiny; and when I remembered that my
first serious thoughts in youth had inclined me to the study of
medicine, I resolved to settle here as a doctor. Besides, I had
another reason. /For a wounded heart--shadow and silence/; so I had
written in my letter; and I meant to fulfil the vow which I had made
to myself.