The Village Rector

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THE VILLAGE RECTOR

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC




Translated by
Katharine Prescott Wormeley




DEDICATION

To Helene.

The tiniest boat is not launched upon the sea without the
protection of some living emblem or revered name, placed upon it
by the mariners. In accordance with this time-honored custom,
Madame, I pray you to be the protectress of this book now launched
upon our literary ocean; and may the Imperial name which the
Church has canonized and your devotion has doubly sanctified for
me guard it from perils.

De Balzac.




THE VILLAGE RECTOR



I

THE SAUVIATS

In the lower town of Limoges, at the corner of the rue de la
Vieille-Poste and the rue de la Cite might have been seen, a generation
ago, one of those shops which were scarcely changed from the period of
the middle-ages. Large tiles seamed with a thousand cracks lay on the
soil itself, which was damp in places, and would have tripped up those
who failed to observe the hollows and ridges of this singular flooring.
The dusty walls exhibited a curious mosaic of wood and brick, stones
and iron, welded together with a solidity due to time, possibly to
chance. For more than a hundred years the ceiling, formed of colossal
beams, bent beneath the weight of the upper stories, though it had
never given way under them. Built _en colombage_, that is to say, with
a wooden frontage, the whole facade was covered with slates, so put on
as to form geometrical figures,--thus preserving a naive image of the
burgher habitations of the olden time.

None of the windows, cased in wood and formerly adorned with carvings,
now destroyed by the action of the weather, had continued plumb; some
bobbed forward, others tipped backward, while a few seemed disposed to
fall apart; all had a compost of earth, brought from heaven knows
where, in the nooks and crannies hollowed by the rain, in which the
spring-tide brought forth fragile flowers, timid creeping plants, and
sparse herbage. Moss carpeted the roof and draped its supports. The
corner pillar, with its composite masonry of stone blocks mingled with
brick and pebbles, was alarming to the eye by reason of its curvature;
it seemed on the point of giving way under the weight of the house,
the gable of which overhung it by at least half a foot. The municipal
authorities and the commissioner of highways did, eventually, pull the
old building down, after buying it, to enlarge the square.

The pillar we have mentioned, placed at the angle of two streets, was
a treasure to the seekers for Limousin antiquities, on account of its
lovely sculptured niche in which was a Virgin, mutilated during the
Revolution. All visitors with archaeological proclivities found traces
of the stone sockets used to hold the candelabra in which public piety
lighted tapers or placed its _ex-votos_ and flowers.

At the farther end of the shop, a worm-eaten wooden staircase led to
the two upper floors which were in turn surmounted by an attic. The
house, backing against two adjoining houses, had no depth and derived
all its light from the front and side windows. Each floor had two
small chambers only, lighted by single windows, one looking out on the
rue de la Cite, the other on the rue de la Vieille-Poste.

In the middle-ages no artisan was better lodged. The house had
evidently belonged in those times to makers of halberds and battle-axes,
armorers in short, artificers whose work was not injured by exposure
to the open air; for it was impossible to see clearly within, unless
the iron shutters were raised from each side of the building; where
were also two doors, one on either side of the corner pillar, as may
be seen in many shops at the corners of streets. From the sill of
each door--of fine stone worn by the tread of centuries--a low wall
about three feet high began; in this wall was a groove or slot,
repeated above in the beam by which the wall of each facade was
supported. From time immemorial the heavy shutters had been rolled
along these grooves, held there by enormous iron bars, while the doors
were closed and secured in the same manner; so that these merchants
and artificers could bar themselves into their houses as into a
fortress.

Examining the interior, which, during the first twenty years of this
century, was encumbered with old iron and brass, tires of wheels,
springs, bells, anything in short which the destruction of buildings
afforded of old metals, persons interested in the relics of the old
town noticed signs of the flue of a forge, shown by a long trail of
soot,--a minor detail which confirmed the conjecture of archaeologists
as to the original use to which the building was put. On the first
floor (above the ground-floor) was one room and the kitchen; on the
floor above that were two bedrooms. The garret was used to put away
articles more choice and delicate than those that lay pell-mell about
the shop.

This house, hired in the first instance, was subsequently bought by a
man named Sauviat, a hawker or peddler who, from 1786 to 1793,
travelled the country over a radius of a hundred and fifty miles
around Auvergne, exchanging crockery of a common kind, plates, dishes,
glasses,--in short, the necessary articles of the poorest households,
--for old iron, brass, and lead, or any metal under any shape it might
lurk in. The Auvergnat would give, for instance, a brown earthenware
saucepan worth two sous for a pound of lead, two pounds of iron, a
broken spade or hoe or a cracked kettle; and being invariably the
judge of his own cause, he did the weighing.

At the close of his third year Sauviat added the hawking of tin and
copper ware to that of his pottery. In 1793 he was able to buy a
chateau sold as part of the National domain, which he at once pulled
to pieces. The profits were such that he repeated the process at
several points of the sphere in which he operated; later, these first
successful essays gave him the idea of proposing something of a like
nature on a larger scale to one of his compatriots who lived in Paris.
Thus it happened that the "Bande Noire," so celebrated for its
devastations, had its birth in the brain of old Sauviat, the peddler,
whom all Limoges afterward saw and knew for twenty-seven years in the
rickety old shop among his cracked bells and rusty bars, chains and
scales, his twisted leaden gutters, and metal rubbish of all kinds. We
must do him the justice to say that he knew nothing of the celebrity
or the extent of the association he originated; he profited by his own
idea only in proportion to the capital he entrusted to the since
famous firm of Bresac.

Tired of frequenting fairs and roaming the country, the Auvergnat
settled at Limoges, where he married, in 1797, the daughter of a
coppersmith, a widower, named Champagnac. When his father-in-law died
he bought the house in which he had been carrying on his trade of
old-iron dealer, after ceasing to roam the country as a peddler. Sauviat
was fifty years of age when he married old Champagnac's daughter, who
was herself not less than thirty. Neither handsome nor pretty, she was
nevertheless born in Auvergne, and the _patois_ seemed to be the
mutual attraction; also she had the sturdy frame which enables women
to bear hard work. In the first three years of their married life
Sauviat continued to do some peddling, and his wife accompanied him,
carrying iron or lead on her back, and leading the miserable horse and
cart full of crockery with which her husband plied a disguised usury.
Dark-skinned, high-colored, enjoying robust health, and showing when
she laughed a brilliant set of teeth, white, long, and broad as
almonds, Madame Sauviat had the hips and bosom of a woman made by
Nature expressly for maternity.

If this strong girl were not earlier married, the fault must be
attributed to the Harpagon "no dowry" her father practised, though he
never read Moliere. Sauviat was not deterred by the lack of dowry;
besides, a man of fifty can't make difficulties, not to speak of the
fact that such a wife would save him the cost of a servant. He added
nothing to the furniture of his bedroom where, from the day of his
wedding to the day he left the house, twenty years later, there was
never anything but a single four-post bed, with valance and curtains
of green serge, a chest, a bureau, four chairs, a table, and a
looking-glass, all collected from different localities. The chest
contained in its upper section pewter plates, dishes, etc., each
article dissimilar from the rest. The kitchen can be imagined from the
bedroom.

Neither husband nor wife knew how to read,--a slight defect of
education which did not prevent them from ciphering admirably and
doing a most flourishing business. Sauviat never bought any article
without the certainty of being able to sell it for one hundred per
cent profit. To relieve himself of the necessity of keeping books and
accounts, he bought and sold for cash only. He had, moreover, such a
perfect memory that the cost of any article, were it only a farthing,
remained in his mind year after year, together with its accrued
interest.

Except during the time required for her household duties, Madame
Sauviat was always seated in a rickety wooden chair placed against the
corner pillar of the building. There she knitted and looked at the
passers, watched over the old iron, sold and weighed it, and received
payment if Sauviat was away making purchases. When at home the husband
could be heard at daybreak pushing open his shutters; the household
dog rushed out into the street; and Madame Sauviat presently came out
to help her man in spreading upon the natural counter made by the low
walls on either side of the corner of the house on the two streets,
the multifarious collection of bells, springs, broken gunlocks, and
the other rubbish of their business, which gave a poverty-stricken
look to the establishment, though it usually contained as much as
twenty thousand francs' worth of lead, steel, iron, and other metals.

Never were the former peddler and his wife known to speak of their
fortune; they concealed its amount as carefully as a criminal hides a
crime; and for years they were suspected of shaving both gold and
silver coins. When Champagnac died the Sauviats made no inventory of
his property; but they rummaged, with the intelligence of rats, into
every nook and corner of the old man's house, left it as naked as a
corpse, and sold the wares it contained in their own shop.

Once a year, in December, Sauviat went to Paris in one of the public
conveyances. The gossips of the neighborhood concluded that in order
to conceal from others the amount of his fortune, he invested it
himself on these occasions. It was known later that, having been
connected in his youth with one of the most celebrated dealers in
metal, an Auvergnat like himself, who was living in Paris, Sauviat
placed his funds with the firm of Bresac, the mainspring and spine of
that famous association known by the name of the "Bande Noire," which,
as we have already said, took its rise from a suggestion made by
Sauviat himself.

Sauviat was a fat little man with a weary face, endowed by Nature with
a look of honesty which attracted customers and facilitated the sale
of goods. His straightforward assertions, and the perfect indifference
of his tone and manner, increased this impression. In person, his
naturally ruddy complexion was hardly perceptible under the black
metallic dust which powdered his curly black hair and the seams of a
face pitted with the small-pox. His forehead was not without dignity;
in fact, it resembled the well-known brow given by all painters to
Saint Peter, the man of the people, the roughest, but withal the
shrewdest, of the apostles. His hands were those of an indefatigable
worker,--large, thick, square, and wrinkled with deep furrows. His
chest was of seemingly indestructible muscularity. He never
relinquished his peddler's costume,--thick, hobnailed shoes; blue
stockings knit by his wife and hidden by leather gaiters; bottle-green
velveteen trousers; a checked waistcoat, from which depended the brass
key of his silver watch by an iron chain which long usage had polished
till it shone like steel; a jacket with short tails, also of
velveteen, like that of the trousers; and around his neck a printed
cotton cravat much frayed by the rubbing of his beard.

On Sundays and fete-days Sauviat wore a frock-coat of maroon cloth, so
well taken care of that two new ones were all he bought in twenty
years. The living of galley-slaves would be thought sumptuous in
comparison with that of the Sauviats, who never ate meat except on the
great festivals of the Church. Before paying out the money absolutely
needed for their daily subsistence, Madame Sauviat would feel in the
two pockets hidden between her gown and petticoat, and bring forth a
single well-scraped coin,--a crown of six francs, or perhaps a piece
of fifty-five sous,--which she would gaze at for a long time before
she could bring herself to change it. As a general thing the Sauviats
ate herrings, dried peas, cheese, hard eggs in salad, vegetables
seasoned in the cheapest manner. Never did they lay in provisions,
except perhaps a bunch of garlic or onions, which could not spoil and
cost but little. The small amount of wood they burned in winter they
bought of itinerant sellers day by day. By seven in winter, by nine in
summer, the household was in bed, and the shop was closed and guarded
by a huge dog, which got its living from the kitchens in the
neighborhood. Madame Sauviat used about three francs' worth of candles
in the course of the year.

The sober, toilsome life of these persons was brightened by one joy,
but that was a natural joy, and for it they made their only known
outlays. In May, 1802, Madame Sauviat gave birth to a daughter. She
was confined all alone, and went about her household work five days
later. She nursed her child in the open air, seated as usual in her
chair by the corner pillar, continuing to sell old iron while the
infant sucked. Her milk cost nothing, and she let her little daughter
feed on it for two years, neither of them being the worse for the long
nursing.

Veronique (that was the infant's name) became the handsomest child in
the Lower town, and every one who saw her stopped to look at her. The
neighbors then noticed for the first time a trace of feeling in the
old Sauviats, of which they had supposed them devoid. While the wife
cooked the dinner the husband held the little one, or rocked it to the
tune of an Auvergnat song. The workmen as they passed sometimes saw
him motionless gazing at Veronique asleep on her mother's knees. He
softened his harsh voice when he spoke to her, and wiped his hands on
his trousers before taking her up. When Veronique tried to walk, the
father bent his legs and stood at a little distance holding out his
arms and making little grimaces which contrasted funnily with the
rigid furrows of his stern, hard face. The man of iron, brass, and
lead became a being of flesh and blood and bones. If he happened to be
standing with his back against the corner pillar motionless, a cry
from Veronique would agitate him and send him flying over the mounds
of iron fragments to find her; for she spent her childhood playing
with the wreck of ancient castles heaped in the depths of that old
shop. There were other days on which she went to play in the street or
with the neighboring children; but even then her mother's eye was
always on her.

It is not unimportant to say here that the Sauviats were eminently
religious. At the very height of the Revolution they observed both
Sunday and fete-days. Twice Sauviat came near having his head cut off
for hearing mass from an unsworn priest. He was put in prison, being
justly accused of helping a bishop, whose life he saved, to fly the
country. Fortunately the old-iron dealer, who knew the ways of bolts
and bars, was able to escape; nevertheless he was condemned to death
by default, and as, by the bye, he never purged himself of that
contempt, he may be said to have died dead.

His wife shared his piety. The avariciousness of the household yielded
to the demands of religion. The old-iron dealers gave their alms
punctually at the sacrament and to all the collections in church. When
the vicar of Saint-Etienne called to ask help for his poor, Sauviat or
his wife fetched at once without reluctance or sour faces the sum they
thought their fair share of the parish duties. The mutilated Virgin on
their corner pillar never failed (after 1799) to be wreathed with
holly at Easter. In the summer season she was feted with bouquets kept
fresh in tumblers of blue glass; this was particularly the case after
the birth of Veronique. On the days of the processions the Sauviats
scrupulously hung their house with sheets covered with flowers, and
contributed money to the erection and adornment of the altar, which
was the pride and glory of the whole square.

Veronique Sauviat was, therefore, brought up in a Christian manner.
From the time she was seven years old she was taught by a Gray sister
from Auvergne to whom the Sauviats had done some kindness in former
times. Both husband and wife were obliging when the matter did not
affect their pockets or consume their time,--like all poor folk who
are cordially ready to be serviceable to others in their own way. The
Gray sister taught Veronique to read and write; she also taught her
the history of the people of God, the catechism, the Old and the New
Testaments, and a very little arithmetic. That was all; the worthy
sister thought it enough; it was in fact too much.

At nine years of age Veronique surprised the whole neighborhood with
her beauty. Every one admired her face, which promised much to the
pencil of artists who are always seeking a noble ideal. She was called
"the Little Virgin" and showed signs already of a fine figure and
great delicacy of complexion. Her Madonna-like face--for the popular
voice had well named her--was surrounded by a wealth of fair hair,
which brought out the purity of her features. Whoever has seen the
sublime Virgin of Titian in his great picture of the "Presentation" at
Venice, will know that Veronique was in her girlhood,--the same
ingenuous candor, the same seraphic astonishment in her eyes, the same
simple yet noble attitude, the same majesty of childhood in her
demeanor.

At eleven years of age she had the small-pox, and owed her life to the
care of Soeur Marthe. During the two months that their child was in
danger the Sauviats betrayed to the whole community the depth of their
tenderness. Sauviat no longer went about the country to sales; he
stayed in the shop, going upstairs and down to his daughter's room,
sitting up with her every night in company with his wife. His silent
anguish seemed so great that no one dared to speak to him; his
neighbors looked at him with compassion, but they only asked news of
Veronique from Soeur Marthe. During the days when the child's danger
reached a crisis, the neighbors and passers saw, for the first and
only time in Sauviat's life, tears in his eyes and rolling down his
hollow cheeks; he did not wipe them, but stood for hours as if
stupefied, not daring to go upstairs to his daughter's room, gazing
before him and seeing nothing, so oblivious of all things that any one
might have robbed him.

Veronique was saved, but her beauty perished. Her face, once
exquisitely colored with a tint in which brown and rose were
harmoniously mingled, came out from the disease with a myriad of pits
which thickened the skin, the flesh beneath it being deeply indented.
Even her forehead did not escape the ravages of the scourge; it turned
brown and looked as though it were hammered, like metal. Nothing can
be more discordant than brick tones of the skin surrounded by golden
hair; they destroy all harmony. These fissures in the tissues,
capriciously hollowed, injured the purity of the profile and the
delicacy of the lines of the face, especially that of the nose, the
Grecian form of which was lost, and that of the chin, once as
exquisitely rounded as a piece of white porcelain. The disease left
nothing unharmed except the parts it was unable to reach,--the eyes
and the teeth. She did not, however, lose the elegance and beauty of
her shape,--neither the fulness of its lines nor the grace and
suppleness of her waist. At fifteen Veronique was still a fine girl,
and to the great consolation of her father and mother, a good and
pious girl, busy, industrious, and domestic.

After her convalescence and after she had made her first communion,
her parents gave her the two chambers on the second floor for her own
particular dwelling. Sauviat, so course in his way of living for
himself and his wife, now had certain perceptions of what comfort
might be; a vague idea came to him of consoling his child for her
great loss, which, as yet, she did not comprehend. The deprivation of
that beauty which was once the pride and joy of those two beings made
Veronique the more dear and precious to them. Sauviat came home one
day, bearing a carpet he had chanced upon in some of his rounds, which
he nailed himself on Veronique's floor. For her he saved from the sale
of an old chateau the gorgeous bed of a fine lady, upholstered in red
silk damask, with curtains and chairs of the same rich stuff. He
furnished her two rooms with antique articles, of the true value of
which he was wholly ignorant. He bought mignonette and put the pots on
the ledge outside her window; and he returned from many of his trips
with rose trees, or pansies, or any kind of flower which gardeners or
tavern-keepers would give him.

If Veronique could have made comparisons and known the character, past
habits, and ignorance of her parents she would have seen how much
there was of affection in these little things; but as it was, she
simply loved them from her own sweet nature and without reflection.

The girl wore the finest linen her mother could find in the shops.
Madame Sauviat left her daughter at liberty to buy what materials she
liked for her gowns and other garments; and the father and mother were
proud of her choice, which was never extravagant. Veronique was
satisfied with a blue silk gown for Sundays and fete-days, and on
working-days she wore merino in winter and striped cotton dresses in
summer. On Sundays she went to church with her father and mother, and
took a walk after vespers along the banks of the Vienne or about the
environs. On other days she stayed at home, busy in filling worsted-work
patterns, the payment for which she gave to the poor,--a life of
simple, chaste, and exemplary principles and habits. She did some
reading together with her tapestry, but never in any books except
those lent to her by the vicar of Saint-Etienne, a priest whom Soeur
Marthe had first made known to her parents.

All the rules of the Sauviat's domestic economy were suspended in
favor of Veronique. Her mother delighted in giving her dainty things
to eat, and cooked her food separately. The father and mother still
ate their nuts and dry bread, their herrings and parched peas
fricasseed in salt butter, while for Veronique nothing was thought too
choice and good.

"Veronique must cost you a pretty penny," said a hatmaker who lived
opposite to the Sauviats and had designs on their daughter for his
son, estimating the fortune of the old-iron dealer at a hundred
thousand francs.

"Yes, neighbor, yes," Pere Sauviat would say; "if she asked me for ten
crowns I'd let her have them. She has all she wants; but she never
asks for anything; she is as gentle as a lamb."

Veronique was, as a matter of fact, absolutely ignorant of the value
of things. She had never wanted for anything; she never saw a piece of
gold till the day of her marriage; she had no money of her own; her
mother bought and gave her everything she needed and wished for; so
that even when she wanted to give alms to a beggar, the girl felt in
her mother's pocket for the coin.

"If that's so," remarked the hatmaker, "she can't cost you much."

"So you think, do you?" replied Sauviat. "You wouldn't get off under
forty crowns a year, I can tell you that. Why, her room, she has at
least a hundred crowns' worth of furniture in it! But when a man has
but one child, he doesn't mind. The little we own will all go to her."

"The little! Why, you must be rich, pere Sauviat! It is pretty nigh
forty years that you have been doing a business in which there are no
losses."

"Ha! I sha'n't go to the poorhouse for want of a thousand francs or
so!" replied the old-iron dealer.

From the day when Veronique lost the soft beauty which made her
girlish face the admiration of all who saw it, Pere Sauviat redoubled
in activity. His business became so prosperous that he now went to
Paris several times a year. Every one felt that he wanted to
compensate his daughter by force of money for what he called her "loss
of profit." When Veronique was fifteen years old a change was made in
the internal manners and customs of the household. The father and
mother went upstairs in the evenings to their daughter's apartment,
where Veronique would read to them, by the light of a lamp placed
behind a glass globe full of water, the "Vie des Saints," the "Lettres
Edifiantes," and other books lent by the vicar. Madame Sauviat knitted
stockings, feeling that she thus recouped herself for the cost of oil.
The neighbors could see through the window the old couple seated
motionless in their armchairs, like Chinese images, listening to their
daughter, and admiring her with all the powers of their contracted
minds, obtuse to everything that was not business or religious faith.