The Vicar of Tours

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THE VICAR OF TOURS

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC



Translated by

Katharine Prescott Wormeley




DEDICATION

To David, Sculptor:

The permanence of the work on which I inscribe your name
--twice made illustrious in this century--is very problematical;
whereas you have graven mine in bronze which survives nations
--if only in their coins. The day may come when numismatists,
discovering amid the ashes of Paris existences perpetuated by
you, will wonder at the number of heads crowned in your
atelier and endeavour to find in them new dynasties.

To you, this divine privilege; to me, gratitude.

De Balzac.




THE VICAR OF TOURS



I

Early in the autumn of 1826 the Abbe Birotteau, the principal
personage of this history, was overtaken by a shower of rain as he
returned home from a friend's house, where he had been passing the
evening. He therefore crossed, as quickly as his corpulence would
allow, the deserted little square called "The Cloister," which lies
directly behind the chancel of the cathedral of Saint-Gatien at Tours.

The Abbe Birotteau, a short little man, apoplectic in constitution and
about sixty years old, had already gone through several attacks of
gout. Now, among the petty miseries of human life the one for which
the worthy priest felt the deepest aversion was the sudden sprinkling
of his shoes, adorned with silver buckles, and the wetting of their
soles. Notwithstanding the woollen socks in which at all seasons he
enveloped his feet with the extreme care that ecclesiastics take of
themselves, he was apt at such times to get them a little damp, and
the next day gout was sure to give him certain infallible proofs of
constancy. Nevertheless, as the pavement of the Cloister was likely to
be dry, and as the abbe had won three francs ten sous in his rubber
with Madame de Listomere, he bore the rain resignedly from the middle
of the place de l'Archeveche, where it began to come down in earnest.
Besides, he was fondling his chimera,--a desire already twelve years
old, the desire of a priest, a desire formed anew every evening and
now, apparently, very near accomplishment; in short, he had wrapped
himself so completely in the fur cape of a canon that he did not feel
the inclemency of the weather. During the evening several of the
company who habitually gathered at Madame de Listomere's had almost
guaranteed to him his nomination to the office of canon (then vacant
in the metropolitan Chapter of Saint-Gatien), assuring him that no one
deserved such promotion as he, whose rights, long overlooked, were
indisputable.

If he had lost the rubber, if he had heard that his rival, the Abbe
Poirel, was named canon, the worthy man would have thought the rain
extremely chilling; he might even have thought ill of life. But it so
chanced that he was in one of those rare moments when happy inward
sensations make a man oblivious of discomfort. In hastening his steps
he obeyed a more mechanical impulse, and truth (so essential in a
history of manners and morals) compels us to say that he was thinking
of neither rain nor gout.

In former days there was in the Cloister, on the side towards the
Grand'Rue, a cluster of houses forming a Close and belonging to the
cathedral, where several of the dignitaries of the Chapter lived.
After the confiscation of ecclesiastical property the town had turned
the passage through this close into a narrow street, called the Rue de
la Psalette, by which pedestrians passed from the Cloister to the
Grand'Rue. The name of this street, proves clearly enough that the
precentor and his pupils and those connected with the choir formerly
lived there. The other side, the left side, of the street is occupied
by a single house, the walls of which are overshadowed by the
buttresses of Saint-Gatien, which have their base in the narrow little
garden of the house, leaving it doubtful whether the cathedral was
built before or after this venerable dwelling. An archaeologist
examining the arabesques, the shape of the windows, the arch of the
door, the whole exterior of the house, now mellow with age, would see
at once that it had always been a part of the magnificent edifice with
which it is blended.

An antiquary (had there been one at Tours,--one of the least literary
towns in all France) would even discover, where the narrow street
enters the Cloister, several vestiges of an old arcade, which formerly
made a portico to these ecclesiastical dwellings, and was, no doubt,
harmonious in style with the general character of the architecture.

The house of which we speak, standing on the north side of the
cathedral, was always in the shadow thrown by that vast edifice, on
which time had cast its dingy mantle, marked its furrows, and shed its
chill humidity, its lichen, mosses, and rank herbs. The darkened
dwelling was wrapped in silence, broken only by the bells, by the
chanting of the offices heard through the windows of the church, by
the call of the jackdaws nesting in the belfries. The region is a
desert of stones, a solitude with a character of its own, an arid
spot, which could only be inhabited by beings who had either attained
to absolute nullity, or were gifted with some abnormal strength of
soul. The house in question had always been occupied by abbes, and it
belonged to an old maid named Mademoiselle Gamard. Though the property
had been bought from the national domain under the Reign of Terror by
the father of Mademoiselle Gamard, no one objected under the
Restoration to the old maid's retaining it, because she took priests
to board and was very devout; it may be that religious persons gave
her credit for the intention of leaving the property to the Chapter.

The Abbe Birotteau was making his way to this house, where he had
lived for the last two years. His apartment had been (as was now the
canonry) an object of envy and his "hoc erat in votis" for a dozen
years. To be Mademoiselle Gamard's boarder and to become a canon were
the two great desires of his life; in fact they do present accurately
the ambition of a priest, who, considering himself on the highroad to
eternity, can wish for nothing in this world but good lodging, good
food, clean garments, shoes with silver buckles, a sufficiency of
things for the needs of the animal, and a canonry to satisfy
self-love, that inexpressible sentiment which follows us, they say,
into the presence of God,--for there are grades among the saints. But
the covetous desire for the apartment which the Abbe Birotteau was now
inhabiting (a very harmless desire in the eyes of worldly people) had
been to the abbe nothing less than a passion, a passion full of
obstacles, and, like more guilty passions, full of hopes, pleasures,
and remorse.

The interior arrangements of the house did not allow Mademoiselle
Gamard to take more than two lodgers. Now, for about twelve years
before the day when Birotteau went to live with her she had undertaken
to keep in health and contentment two priests; namely, Monsieur l'Abbe
Troubert and Monsieur l'Abbe Chapeloud. The Abbe Troubert still lived.
The Abbe Chapeloud was dead; and Birotteau had stepped into his place.

The late Abbe Chapeloud, in life a canon of Saint-Gatien, had been an
intimate friend of the Abbe Birotteau. Every time that the latter paid
a visit to the canon he had constantly admired the apartment, the
furniture and the library. Out of this admiration grew the desire to
possess these beautiful things. It had been impossible for the Abbe
Birotteau to stifle this desire; though it often made him suffer
terribly when he reflected that the death of his best friend could
alone satisfy his secret covetousness, which increased as time went
on. The Abbe Chapeloud and his friend Birotteau were not rich. Both
were sons of peasants; and their slender savings had been spent in the
mere costs of living during the disastrous years of the Revolution.
When Napoleon restored the Catholic worship the Abbe Chapeloud was
appointed canon of the cathedral and Birotteau was made vicar of it.
Chapeloud then went to board with Mademoiselle Gamard. When Birotteau
first came to visit his friend, he thought the arrangement of the
rooms excellent, but he noticed nothing more. The outset of this
concupiscence of chattels was very like that of a true passion, which
often begins, in a young man, with cold admiration for a woman whom he
ends in loving forever.

The apartment, reached by a stone staircase, was on the side of the
house that faced south. The Abbe Troubert occupied the ground-floor,
and Mademoiselle Gamard the first floor of the main building, looking
on the street. When Chapeloud took possession of his rooms they were
bare of furniture, and the ceilings were blackened with smoke. The
stone mantelpieces, which were very badly cut, had never been painted.
At first, the only furniture the poor canon could put in was a bed, a
table, a few chairs, and the books he possessed. The apartment was
like a beautiful woman in rags. But two or three years later, an old
lady having left the Abbe Chapeloud two thousand francs, he spent that
sum on the purchase of an oak bookcase, the relic of a chateau pulled
down by the Bande Noire, the carving of which deserved the admiration
of all artists. The abbe made the purchase less because it was very
cheap than because the dimensions of the bookcase exactly fitted the
space it was to fill in his gallery. His savings enabled him to
renovate the whole gallery, which up to this time had been neglected
and shabby. The floor was carefully waxed, the ceiling whitened, the
wood-work painted to resemble the grain and knots of oak. A long table
in ebony and two cabinets by Boulle completed the decoration, and gave
to this gallery a certain air that was full of character. In the
course of two years the liberality of devout persons, and legacies,
though small ones, from pious penitents, filled the shelves of the
bookcase, till then half empty. Moreover, Chapeloud's uncle, an old
Oratorian, had left him his collection in folio of the Fathers of the
Church, and several other important works that were precious to a
priest.

Birotteau, more and more surprised by the successive improvements of
the gallery, once so bare, came by degrees to a condition of
involuntary envy. He wished he could possess that apartment, so
thoroughly in keeping with the gravity of ecclestiastical life. The
passion increased from day to day. Working, sometimes for days
together, in this retreat, the vicar could appreciate the silence and
the peace that reigned there. During the following year the Abbe
Chapeloud turned a small room into an oratory, which his pious friends
took pleasure in beautifying. Still later, another lady gave the canon
a set of furniture for his bedroom, the covering of which she had
embroidered under the eyes of the worthy man without his ever
suspecting its destination. The bedroom then had the same effect upon
the vicar that the gallery had long had; it dazzled him. Lastly, about
three years before the Abbe Chapeloud's death, he completed the
comfort of his apartment by decorating the salon. Though the furniture
was plainly covered in red Utrecht velvet, it fascinated Birotteau.
From the day when the canon's friend first laid eyes on the red damask
curtains, the mahogany furniture, the Aubusson carpet which adorned
the vast room, then lately painted, his envy of Chapeloud's apartment
became a monomania hidden within his breast. To live there, to sleep
in that bed with the silk curtains where the canon slept, to have all
Chapeloud's comforts about him, would be, Birotteau felt, complete
happiness; he saw nothing beyond it. All the envy, all the ambition
which the things of this world give birth to in the hearts of other
men concentrated themelves for Birotteau in the deep and secret
longing he felt for an apartment like that which the Abbe Chapeloud
had created for himself. When his friend fell ill he went to him out
of true affection; but all the same, when he first heard of his
illness, and when he sat by his bed to keep him company, there arose
in the depths of his consciousness, in spite of himself, a crowd of
thoughts the simple formula of which was always, "If Chapeloud dies I
can have this apartment." And yet--Birotteau having an excellent
heart, contracted ideas, and a limited mind--he did not go so far as
to think of means by which to make his friend bequeath to him the
library and the furniture.

The Abbe Chapeloud, an amiable, indulgent egoist, fathomed his
friend's desires--not a difficult thing to do--and forgave them; which
may seem less easy to a priest; but it must be remembered that the
vicar, whose friendship was faithful, did not fail to take a daily
walk with his friend along their usual path in the Mail de Tours,
never once depriving him of an instant of the time devoted for over
twenty years to that exercise. Birotteau, who regarded his secret
wishes as crimes, would have been capable, out of contrition, of the
utmost devotion to his friend. The latter paid his debt of gratitude
for a friendship so ingenuously sincere by saying, a few days before
his death, as the vicar sat by him reading the "Quotidienne" aloud:
"This time you will certainly get the apartment. I feel it is all over
with me now."

Accordingly, it was found that the Abbe Chapeloud had left his library
and all his furniture to his friend Birotteau. The possession of these
things, so keenly desired, and the prospect of being taken to board by
Mademoiselle Gamard, certainly did allay the grief which Birotteau
felt at the death of his friend the canon. He might not have been
willing to resuscitate him; but he mourned him. For several days he
was like Gargantus, who, when his wife died in giving birth to
Pantagruel, did not know whether to rejoice at the birth of a son or
grieve at having buried his good Babette, and therefore cheated
himself by rejoicing at the death of his wife, and deploring the
advent of Pantagruel.

The Abbe Birotteau spent the first days of his mourning in verifying
the books in _his_ library, in making use of _his_ furniture, in
examining the whole of his inheritance, saying in a tone which,
unfortunately, was not noted at the time, "Poor Chapeloud!" His joy
and his grief so completely absorbed him that he felt no pain when he
found that the office of canon, in which the late Chapeloud had hoped
his friend Birotteau might succeed him, was given to another.
Mademoiselle Gamard having cheerfully agreed to take the vicar to
board, the latter was thenceforth a participator in all those
felicities of material comfort of which the deceased canon had been
wont to boast.

Incalculable they were! According to the Abbe Chapeloud none of the
priests who inhabited the city of Tours, not even the archbishop, had
ever been the object of such minute and delicate attentions as those
bestowed by Mademoiselle Gamard on her two lodgers. The first words
the canon said to his friend when they met for their walk on the Mail
referred usually to the succulent dinner he had just eaten; and it was
a very rare thing if during the walks of each week he did not say at
least fourteen times, "That excellent spinster certainly has a
vocation for serving ecclesiastics."

"Just think," the canon would say to Birotteau, "that for twelve
consecutive years nothing has ever been amiss,--linen in perfect
order, bands, albs, surplices; I find everything in its place, always
in sufficient quantity, and smelling of orris-root. My furniture is
rubbed and kept so bright that I don't know when I have seen any dust
--did you ever see a speck of it in my rooms? Then the firewood is so
well selected. The least little things are excellent. In fact,
Mademoiselle Gamard keeps an incessant watch over my wants. I can't
remember having rung twice for anything--no matter what--in ten years.
That's what I call living! I never have to look for a single thing,
not even my slippers. Always a good fire, always a good dinner. Once
the bellows annoyed me, the nozzle was choked up; but I only mentioned
it once, and the next day Mademoiselle gave me a very pretty pair,
also those nice tongs you see me mend the fire with."

For all answer Birotteau would say, "Smelling of orris-root!" That
"smelling of orris-root" always affected him. The canon's remarks
revealed ideal joys to the poor vicar, whose bands and albs were the
plague of his life, for he was totally devoid of method and often
forgot to order his dinner. Therefore, if he saw Mademoiselle Gamard
at Saint-Gatien while saying mass or taking round the plate, he never
failed to give her a kindly and benevolent look,--such a look as Saint
Teresa might have cast to heaven.

Though the comforts which all creatures desire, and for which he had
so often longed, thus fell to his share, the Abbe Birotteau, like the
rest of the world, found it difficult, even for a priest, to live
without something to hanker for. Consequently, for the last eighteen
months he had replaced his two satisfied passions by an ardent longing
for a canonry. The title of Canon had become to him very much what a
peerage is to a plebeian minister. The prospect of an appointment,
hopes of which had just been held out to him at Madame de Listomere's,
so completely turned his head that he did not observe until he reached
his own door that he had left his umbrella behind him. Perhaps, even
then, if the rain were not falling in torrents he might not have
missed it, so absorbed was he in the pleasure of going over and over
in his mind what had been said to him on the subject of his promotion
by the company at Madame de Listomere's,--an old lady with whom he
spent every Wednesday evening.

The vicar rang loudly, as if to let the servant know she was not to
keep him waiting. Then he stood close to the door to avoid, if he
could, getting showered; but the drip from the roof fell precisely on
the toes of his shoes, and the wind blew gusts of rain into his face
that were much like a shower-bath. Having calculated the time necesary
for the woman to leave the kitchen and pull the string of the outer
door, he rang again, this time in a manner that resulted in a very
significant peal of the bell.

"They can't be out," he said to himself, not hearing any movement on
the premises.

Again he rang, producing a sound that echoed sharply through the house
and was taken up and repeated by all the echoes of the cathedral, so
that no one could avoid waking up at the remonstrating racket.
Accordingly, in a few moments, he heard, not without some pleasure in
his wrath, the wooden shoes of the servant-woman clacking along the
paved path which led to the outer door. But even then the discomforts
of the gouty old gentleman were not so quickly over as he hoped.
Instead of pulling the string, Marianne was obliged to turn the lock
of the door with its heavy key, and pull back all the bolts.

"Why did you let me ring three times in such weather?" said the vicar.

"But, monsieur, don't you see the door was locked? We have all been in
bed ever so long; it struck a quarter to eleven some time ago.
Mademoiselle must have thought you were in."

"You saw me go out, yourself. Besides, Mademoiselle knows very well I
always go to Madame de Listomere's on Wednesday evening."

"I only did as Mademoiselle told me, monsieur."

These words struck the vicar a blow, which he felt the more because
his late revery had made him completely happy. He said nothing and
followed Marianne towards the kitchen to get his candlestick, which he
supposed had been left there as usual. But instead of entering the
kitchen Marianne went on to his own apartments, and there the vicar
beheld his candlestick on a table close to the door of the red salon,
in a sort of antechamber formed by the landing of the staircase, which
the late canon had inclosed with a glass partition. Mute with
amazement, he entered his bedroom hastily, found no fire, and called
to Marianne, who had not had time to get downstairs.

"You have not lighted the fire!" he said.

"Beg pardon, Monsieur l'abbe, I did," she said; "it must have gone
out."

Birotteau looked again at the hearth, and felt convinced that the fire
had been out since morning.

"I must dry my feet," he said. "Make the fire."

Marianne obeyed with the haste of a person who wants to get back to
her night's rest. While looking about him for his slippers, which were
not in the middle of his bedside carpet as usual, the abbe took mental
notes of the state of Marianne's dress, which convinced him that she
had not got out of bed to open the door as she said she had. He then
recollected that for the last two weeks he had been deprived of
various little attentions which for eighteen months had made life
sweet to him. Now, as the nature of narrow minds induces them to study
trifles, Birotteau plunged suddenly into deep meditation on these four
circumstances, imperceptible in their meaning to others, but to him
indicative of four catastrophes. The total loss of his happiness was
evidently foreshadowed in the neglect to place his slipppers, in
Marianne's falsehood about the fire, in the unusual removal of his
candlestick to the table of the antechamber, and in the evident
intention to keep him waiting in the rain.

When the fire was burning on the hearth, and the lamp was lighted, and
Marianne had departed without saying, as usual, "Does Monsieur want
anything more?" the Abbe Birotteau let himself fall gently into the
wide and handsome easy-chair of his late friend; but there was
something mournful in the movement with which he dropped upon it. The
good soul was crushed by a presentiment of coming calamity. His eyes
roved successively to the handsome tall clock, the bureau, curtains,
chairs, carpets, to the stately bed, the basin of holy-water, the
crucifix, to a Virgin by Valentin, a Christ by Lebrun,--in short, to
all the accessories of this cherished room, while his face expressed
the anguish of the tenderest farewell that a lover ever took of his
first mistress, or an old man of his lately planted trees. The vicar
had just perceived, somewhat late it is true, the signs of a dumb
persecution instituted against him for the last three months by
Mademoiselle Gamard, whose evil intentions would doubtless have been
fathomed much sooner by a more intelligent man. Old maids have a
special talent for accentuating the words and actions which their
dislikes suggest to them. They scratch like cats. They not only wound
but they take pleasure in wounding, and in making their victim see
that he is wounded. A man of the world would never have allowed
himself to be scratched twice; the good abbe, on the contrary, had
taken several blows from those sharp claws before he could be brought
to believe in any evil intention.

But when he did perceive it, he set to work, with the inquisitorial
sagacity which priests acquire by directing consciences and burrowing
into the nothings of the confessional, to establish, as though it were
a matter of religious controversy, the following proposition:
"Admitting that Mademoiselle Gamard did not remember it was Madame de
Listomere's evening, and that Marianne did think I was home, and did
really forget to make my fire, it is impossible, inasmuch as I myself
took down my candlestick this morning, that Mademoiselle Gamard,
seeing it in her salon, could have supposed I had gone to bed. Ergo,
Mademoiselle Gamard intended that I should stand out in the rain, and,
by carrying my candlestick upstairs, she meant to make me understand
it. What does it all mean?" he said aloud, roused by the gravity of
these circumstances, and rising as he spoke to take off his damp
clothes, get into his dressing-gown, and do up his head for the night.
Then he returned from the bed to the fireplace, gesticulating, and
launching forth in various tones the following sentences, all of which
ended in a high falsetto key, like notes of interjection:

"What the deuce have I done to her? Why is she angry with me? Marianne
did _not_ forget my fire! Mademoiselle told her not to light it! I must
be a child if I can't see, from the tone and manner she has been
taking to me, that I've done something to displease her. Nothing like
it ever happened to Chapeloud! I can't live in the midst of such
torments as--At my age--"

He went to bed hoping that the morrow might enlighten him on the
causes of the dislike which threatened to destroy forever the
happiness he had now enjoyed two years after wishing for it so long.
Alas! the secret reasons for the inimical feelings Mademoiselle Gamard
bore to the luckless abbe were fated to remain eternally unknown to
him,--not that they were difficult to fathom, but simply because he
lacked the good faith and candor by which great souls and scoundrels
look within and judge themselves. A man of genius or a trickster says
to himself, "I did wrong." Self-interest and native talent are the
only infallible and lucid guides. Now the Abbe Birotteau, whose
goodness amounted to stupidity, whose knowledge was only, as it were,
plastered on him by dint of study, who had no experience whatever of
the world and its ways, who lived between the mass and the
confessional, chiefly occupied in dealing the most trivial matters of
conscience in his capacity of confessor to all the schools in town and
to a few noble souls who rightly appreciated him,--the Abbe Birotteau
must be regarded as a great child, to whom most of the practices of
social life were utterly unknown. And yet, the natural selfishness of
all human beings, reinforced by the selfishness peculiar to the
priesthood and that of the narrow life of the provinces had
insensibly, and unknown to himself, developed within him. If any one
had felt enough interest in the good man to probe his spirit and prove
to him that in the numerous petty details of his life and in the
minute duties of his daily existence he was essentially lacking in the
self-sacrifice he professed, he would have punished and mortified
himself in good faith. But those whom we offend by such unconscious
selfishness pay little heed to our real innocence; what they want is
vengeance, and they take it. Thus it happened that Birotteau, weak
brother that he was, was made to undergo the decrees of that great
distributive Justice which goes about compelling the world to execute
its judgments,--called by ninnies "the misfortunes of life."