The Village Rector

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II

VERONIQUE

There are, no doubt, many young girls in the world as pure as
Veronique, but none purer or more modest. Her confessions might have
surprised the angels and rejoiced the Blessed Virgin.

At sixteen years of age she was fully developed, and appeared the
woman she was eventually to become. She was of medium height, neither
her father nor her mother being tall; but her figure was charming in
its graceful suppleness, and in the serpentine curves laboriously
sought by painters and sculptors,--curves which Nature herself draws
so delicately with her lissom outlines, revealed to the eye of artists
in spite of swathing linen and thick clothes, which mould themselves,
inevitably, upon the nude. Sincere, simple, and natural, Veronique set
these beauties of her form into relief by movements that were wholly
free from affectation. She brought out her "full and complete effect,"
if we may borrow that strong term from legal phraseology. She had the
plump arms of the Auvergnat women, the red and dimpled hand of a
barmaid, and her strong but well-shaped feet were in keeping with the
rest of her figure.

At times there seemed to pass within her a marvellous and delightful
phenomenon which promised to Love a woman concealed thus far from
every eye. This phenomenon was perhaps one cause of the admiration her
father and mother felt for her beauty, which they often declared to be
divine,--to the great astonishment of their neighbors. The first to
remark it were the priests of the cathedral and the worshippers with
her at the same altar. When a strong emotion took possession of
Veronique,--and the religious exaltation to which she yielded herself
on receiving the communion must be counted among the strongest
emotions of so pure and candid a young creature,--an inward light
seemed to efface for the moment all traces of the small-pox. The pure
and radiant face of her childhood reappeared in its pristine beauty.
Though slightly veiled by the thickened surface disease had laid
there, it shone with the mysterious brilliancy of a flower blooming
beneath the water of the sea when the sun is penetrating it. Veronique
was changed for a few moments; the Little Virgin reappeared and then
disappeared again, like a celestial vision. The pupils of her eyes,
gifted with the power of great expansion, widened until they covered
the whole surface of the blue iris except for a tiny circle. Thus the
metamorphose of the eye, which became as keen and vivid as that of an
eagle, completed the extraordinary change in the face. Was it the
storm of restrained passions; was it some power coming from the depths
of the soul, which enlarged the pupils in full daylight as they
sometimes in other eyes enlarge by night, darkening the azure of those
celestial orbs?

However that may be, it was impossible to look indifferently at
Veronique as she returned to her seat from the altar where she had
united herself with God,--a moment when she appeared to all the parish
in her primitive splendor. At such moments her beauty eclipsed that of
the most beautiful of women. What a charm was there for the man who
loved her, guarding jealously that veil of flesh which hid the woman's
soul from every eye,--a veil which the hand of love might lift for an
instant and then let drop over conjugal delights! Veronique's lips
were faultlessly curved and painted in the clear vermilion of her pure
warm blood. Her chin and the lower part of her face were a little
heavy, in the acceptation given by painters to that term,--a heaviness
which is, according to the relentless laws of physiognomy, the
indication of an almost morbid vehemence in passion. She had above her
brow, which was finely modelled and almost imperious, a magnificent
diadem of hair, voluminous, redundant, and now of a chestnut color.

From the age of sixteen to the day of her marriage Veronique's bearing
was always thoughtful, and sometimes melancholy. Living in such deep
solitude, she was forced, like other solitary persons, to examine and
consider the spectacle of that which went on within her,--the progress
of her thought, the variety of the images in her mind, and the scope
of feelings warmed and nurtured in a life so pure.

Those who looked up from their lower level as they passed along the
rue de la Cite might have seen, on all fine days, the daughter of the
Sauviats sitting at her open window, sewing, embroidering, or pricking
the needle through the canvas of her worsted-work, with a look that
was often dreamy. Her head was vividly defined among the flowers which
poetized the brown and crumbling sills of her casement windows with
their leaded panes. Sometimes the reflection of the red damask
window-curtains added to the effect of that head, already so highly
colored; like a crimson flower she glowed in the aerial garden so
carefully trained upon her window-sill.

The quaint old house possessed therefore something more quaint than
itself,--the portrait of a young girl worthy of Mieris, or Van Ostade,
or Terburg, or Gerard Douw, framed in one of those old, defaced, half
ruined windows the brushes of the old Dutch painters loved so well.
When some stranger, surprised or interested by the building, stopped
before it and gazed at the second story, old Sauviat would poke his
head beyond the overhanging projection, certain that he should see his
daughter at her window. Then he would retreat into the shop rubbing
his hands and saying to his wife in the Auvergne vernacular:--

"Hey! old woman; they're admiring your daughter!"

In 1820 an incident occurred in the simple uneventful life the girl
was leading, which might have had no importance in the life of any
other young woman, but which, in point of fact, did no doubt exercise
over Veronique's future a terrible influence.

On one of the suppressed church fete-days, when many persons went
about their daily labor, though the Sauviats scrupulously closed their
shop, attended mass, and took a walk, Veronique passed, on their way
to the fields, a bookseller's stall on which lay a copy of "Paul and
Virginia." She had a fancy to buy it for the sake of the engraving,
and her father paid a hundred sous for the fatal volume, which he put
into the pocket of his coat.

"Wouldn't it be well to show that book to Monsieur le vicaire before
you read it?" said her mother, to whom all printed books were a sealed
mystery.

"I thought of it," answered Veronique.

The girl passed the whole night reading the story,--one of the most
touching bits of writing in the French language. The picture of mutual
love, half Biblical and worthy of the earlier ages of the world,
ravaged her heart. A hand--was it divine or devilish?--raised the veil
which, till then, had hidden nature from her. The Little Virgin still
existing in the beautiful young girl thought on the morrow that her
flowers had never been so beautiful; she heard their symbolic
language, she looked into the depths of the azure sky with a fixedness
that was almost ecstasy, and tears without a cause rolled down her
cheeks.

In the life of all women there comes a moment when they comprehend
their destiny,--when their hitherto mute organization speaks
peremptorily. It is not always a man, chosen by some furtive
involuntary glance, who awakens their slumbering sixth sense; oftener
it is some unexpected sight, the aspect of scenery, the _coup d'oeil_
of religious pomp, the harmony of nature's perfumes, a rosy dawn
veiled in slight mists, the winning notes of some divinest music, or
indeed any unexpected motion within the soul or within the body. To
this lonely girl, buried in that old house, brought up by simple, half
rustic parents, who had never heard an unfit word, whose pure
unsullied mind had never known the slightest evil thought,--to the
angelic pupil of Soeur Marthe and the vicar of Saint-Etienne the
revelation of love, the life of womanhood, came from the hand of
genius through one sweet book. To any other mind the book would have
offered no danger; to her it was worse in its effects than an obscene
tale. Corruption is relative. There are chaste and virgin natures
which a single thought corrupts, doing all the more harm because no
thought of the duty of resistance has occurred.

The next day Veronique showed the book to the good priest, who
approved the purchase; for what could be more childlike and innocent
and pure than the history of Paul and Virginia? But the warmth of the
tropics, the beauty of the scenery, the almost puerile innocence of a
love that seemed so sacred had done their work on Veronique. She was
led by the sweet and noble achievement of its author to the worship of
the Ideal, that fatal human religion! She dreamed of a lover like
Paul. Her thoughts caressed the voluptuous image of that balmy isle.
Childlike, she named an island in the Vienne, below Limoges and nearly
opposite to the Faubourg Saint-Martial, the Ile de France. Her mind
lived there in the world of fancy all young girls construct,--a world
they enrich with their own perfections. She spent long hours at her
window, looking at the artisans or the mechanics who passed it, the
only men whom the modest position of her parents allowed her to think
of. Accustomed, of course, to the idea of eventually marrying a man of
the people, she now became aware of instincts within herself which
revolved from all coarseness.

In such a situation she naturally made many a romance such as young
girls are fond of weaving. She clasped the idea--perhaps with the
natural ardor of a noble and virgin imagination--of ennobling one of
those men, and of raising him to the height where her own dreams led
her. She may have made a Paul of some young man who caught her eye,
merely to fasten her wild ideas on an actual being, as the mists of a
damp atmosphere, touched by frost, crystallize on the branches of a
tree by the wayside. She must have flung herself deep into the abysses
of her dream, for though she often returned bearing on her brow, as if
from vast heights, some luminous reflections, oftener she seemed to
carry in her hand the flowers that grew beside a torrent she had
followed down a precipice.

On the warm summer evenings she would ask her father to take her on
his arm to the banks of the Vienne, where she went into ecstasies over
the beauties of the sky and fields, the glories of the setting sun, or
the infinite sweetness of the dewy evening. Her soul exhaled itself
thenceforth in a fragrance of natural poesy. Her hair, until then
simply wound about her head, she now curled and braided. Her dress
showed some research. The vine which was running wild and naturally
among the branches of the old elm, was transplanted, cut and trained
over a green and pretty trellis.

After the return of old Sauviat (then seventy years of age) from a
trip to Paris in December, 1822, the vicar came to see him one
evening, and after a few insignificant remarks he said suddenly:--

"You had better think of marrying your daughter, Sauviat. At your age
you ought not to put off the accomplishment of so important a duty."

"But is Veronique willing to be married?" asked the old man, startled.

"As you please, father," she said, lowering her eyes.

"Yes, we'll marry her!" cried stout Madame Sauviat, smiling.

"Why didn't you speak to me about it before I went to Paris, mother?"
said Sauviat. "I shall have to go back there."

Jerome-Baptiste Sauviat, a man in whose eyes money seemed to
constitute the whole of happiness, who knew nothing of love, and had
never seen in marriage anything but the means of transmitting property
to another self, had long sworn to marry Veronique to some rich
bourgeois,--so long, in fact, that the idea had assumed in his brain
the characteristics of a hobby. His neighbor, the hat-maker, who
possessed about two thousand francs a year, had already asked, on
behalf of his son, to whom he proposed to give up his hat-making
establishment, the hand of a girl so well known in the neighborhood
for her exemplary conduct and Christian principles. Sauviat had
politely refused, without saying anything to Veronique. The day after
the vicar--a very important personage in the eyes of the Sauviat
household--had mentioned the necessary of marrying Veronique, whose
confessor he was, the old man shaved and dressed himself as for a
fete-day, and went out without saying a word to his wife or daughter;
both knew very well, however, that the father was in search of a
son-in-law. Old Sauviat went to Monsieur Graslin.

Monsieur Graslin, a rich banker in Limoges, had, like Sauviat himself,
started from Auvergne without a penny; he came to Limoges to be a
porter, found a place as an office-boy in a financial house, and
there, like many other financiers, he made his way by dint of economy,
and also through fortunate circumstances. Cashier at twenty-five years
of age, partner ten years later, in the firm of Perret and Grossetete,
he ended by finding himself the head of the house, after buying out
the senior partners, both of whom retired into the country, leaving
him their funds to manage in the business at a low interest.

Pierre Graslin, then forty-seven years of age, was supposed to possess
about six hundred thousand francs. The estimate of his fortune had
lately increased throughout the department, in consequence of his
outlay in having built, in a new quarter of the town called the place
d'Arbres (thus assisting to give Limoges an improved aspect), a fine
house, the front of it being on a line with a public building with the
facade of which it corresponded. This house had now been finished six
months, but Pierre Graslin delayed furnishing it; it had cost him so
much that he shrank from the further expense of living in it. His
vanity had led him to transgress the wise laws by which he governed
his life. He felt, with the good sense of a business man, that the
interior of the house ought to correspond with the character of the
outside. The furniture, silver-ware, and other needful accessories to
the life he would have to lead in his new mansion would, he estimated,
cost him nearly as much as the original building. In spite, therefore,
of the gossip of tongues and the charitable suppositions of his
neighbors, he continued to live on in the damp, old, and dirty
ground-floor apartment in the rue Montantmanigne where his fortune had
been made. The public carped, but Graslin had the approval of his
former partners, who praised a resolution that was somewhat uncommon.

A fortune and a position like those of Pierre Graslin naturally
excited the greed of not a few in a small provincial city. During the
last ten years more than one proposition of marriage had been
intimated to Monsieur Graslin. But the bachelor state was so well
suited to a man who was busy from morning till night, overrun with
work, eager in the pursuit of money as a hunter for game, and always
tired out with his day's labor, that Graslin fell into none of the
traps laid for him by ambitious mothers who coveted so brilliant a
position for their daughters.

Graslin, another Sauviat in an upper sphere, did not spend more than
forty sous a day, and clothed himself no better than his under-clerk.
Two clerks and an office-boy sufficed him to carry on his business,
which was immense through the multiplicity of its details. One clerk
attended to the correspondence; the other had charge of the accounts;
but Pierre Graslin was himself the soul, and body too, of the whole
concern. His clerks, chosen from his own relations, were safe men,
intelligent and as well-trained in the work as himself. As for the
office-boy, he led the life of a truck horse,--up at five in the
morning at all seasons, and never getting to bed before eleven at
night.

Graslin employed a charwoman by the day, an old peasant from Auvergne,
who did his cooking. The brown earthenware off which he ate, and the
stout coarse linen which he used, were in keeping with the character
of his food. The old woman had strict orders never to spend more than
three francs daily for the total expenses of the household. The
office-boy was also man-of-all-work. The clerks took care of their own
rooms. The tables of blackened wood, the straw chairs half unseated,
the wretched beds, the counters and desks, in short, the whole
furniture of house and office was not worth more than a thousand
francs, including a colossal iron safe, built into the wall, before
which slept the man-of-all-work with two dogs at his feet.

Graslin did not often go into society, which, however, discussed
him constantly. Two or three times a year he dined with the
receiver-general, with whom his business brought him into occasional
intercourse. He also occasionally took a meal at the prefecture; for
he had been appointed, much to his regret, a member of the
Council-general of the department--"a waste of time," he remarked.
Sometimes his brother bankers with whom he had dealings kept him to
breakfast or dinner; and he was forced also to visit his former
partners, who spent their winters in Limoges. He cared so little to
keep up his relations to society that in twenty-five years Graslin had
not offered so much as a glass of water to any one. When he passed
along the street persons would nudge each other and say: "That's
Monsieur Graslin"; meaning, "There's a man who came to Limoges without
a penny and has now acquired an enormous fortune." The Auvergnat
banker was a model which more than one father pointed out to his son,
and wives had been known to fling him in the faces of their husbands.

We can now understand the reasons that led a man who had become the
pivot of the financial machine of Limoges to repulse the various
propositions of marriage which parents never ceased to make to him.
The daughters of his partners, Messrs. Perret and Grossetete, were
married before Graslin was in a position to take a wife; but as each
of these ladies had young daughters, the wiseheads of the community
finally concluded that old Perret or old Grossetete had made an
arrangement with Graslin to wait for one of his granddaughters, and
thenceforth they left him alone.

Sauviat had watched the ascending career of his compatriot more
attentively and seriously than any one else. He had known him from the
time he first came to Limoges; but their respective positions had
changed so much, at least apparently, that their friendship, now
become merely superficial, was seldom freshened. Still, in his
relation as compatriot, Graslin never disdained to talk with Sauviat
when they chanced to meet. Both continued to keep up their early
_tutoiement_, but only in their native dialect. When the
receiver-general of Bourges, the youngest of the brothers Grossetete,
married his daughter in 1823 to the youngest son of Comte Fontaine,
Sauviat felt sure that the Grossetetes would never allow Graslin to
enter their family.

After his conference with the banker, Pere Sauviat returned home
joyously. He dined that night in his daughter's room, and after dinner
he said to his womenkind:--

"Veronique will be Madame Graslin."

"Madame Graslin!" exclaimed Mere Sauviat, astounded.

"Is it possible?" said Veronique, to whom Graslin was personally
unknown, and whose imagination regarded him very much as a Parisian
grisette would regard a Rothschild.

"Yes, it is settled," said old Sauviat solemnly. "Graslin will furnish
his house magnificently; he is to give our daughter a fine Parisian
carriage and the best horses to be found in the Limousin; he will buy
an estate worth five hundred thousand francs, and settle that and his
town-house upon her. Veronique will be the first lady in Limoges, the
richest in the department, and she can do what she pleases with
Graslin."

Veronique's education, her religious ideas, and her boundless
affection for her parents, prevented her from making a single
objection; it did not even cross her mind to think that she had been
disposed of without reference to her own will. On the morrow Sauviat
went to Paris, and was absent for nearly a week.

Pierre Graslin was, as can readily be imagined, not much of a talker;
he went straight and rapidly to deeds. A thing decided on was a thing
done. In February, 1822, a strange piece of news burst like a
thunderbolt on the town of Limoges. The hotel Graslin was being
handsomely furnished; carriers' carts came day after day from Paris,
and their contents were unpacked in the courtyard. Rumors flew about
the town as to the beauty and good taste of the modern or the antique
furniture as it was seen to arrive. The great firm of Odiot and
Company sent down a magnificent service of plate by the mail-coach.
Three carriages, a caleche, a coupe, and a cabriolet arrived, wrapped
in straw with as much care as if they were jewels.

"Monsieur Graslin is going to be married!"

These words were said by every pair of lips in Limoges in the course
of a single evening,--in the salons of the upper classes, in the
kitchens, in the shops, in the streets, in the suburbs, and before
long throughout the whole surrounding country. But to whom? No one
could answer. Limoges had a mystery.



III

MARRIAGE

On the return of old Sauviat Graslin paid his first evening visit at
half-past nine o'clock. Veronique was expecting him, dressed in her
blue silk gown and muslin guimpe, over which fell a collaret made of
lawn with a deep hem. Her hair was simply worn in two smooth bandeaus,
gathered into a Grecian knot at the back of her head. She was seated
on a tapestried chair beside her mother, who occupied a fine armchair
with a carved back, covered with red velvet (evidently the relic of
some old chateau), which stood beside the fireplace. A bright fire
blazed on the hearth. On the chimney-piece, at either side of an
antique clock, the value of which was wholly unknown to the Sauviats,
six wax candles in two brass sconces twisted like vine-shoots, lighted
the dark room and Veronique in all her budding prime. The old mother
was wearing her best gown.

From the silent street, at that tranquil hour, through the soft
shadows of the ancient stairway, Graslin appeared to the modest,
artless Veronique, her mind still dwelling on the sweet ideas which
Bernadin de Saint-Pierre had given her of love.

Graslin, who was short and thin, had thick black hair like the
bristles of a brush, which brought into vigorous relief a face as red
as that of a drunkard emeritus, and covered with suppurating pimples,
either bleeding or about to burst. Without being caused by eczema or
scrofula, these signs of a blood overheated by continual toil,
anxiety, and the lust of business, by wakeful nights, poor food, and a
sober life, seemed to partake of both these diseases. In spite of the
advice of his partners, his clerks, and his physician, the banker
would never compel himself to take the healthful precautions which
might have prevented, or would at least modify, this malady, which was
slight at first, but had greatly increased from year to year. He
wanted to cure it, and would sometimes take baths or drink some
prescribed potion; but, hurried along on the current of his business,
he soon neglected the care of his person. Sometimes he thought of
suspending work for a time, travelling about, and visiting the noted
baths for such diseases; but where is the hunter after millions who is
willing to stop short?

In that blazing furnace shone two gray eyes rayed with green lines
starting from the pupils, and speckled with brown spots,--two
implacable eyes, full of resolution, rectitude, and shrewd
calculation. Graslin's nose was short and turned up; he had a mouth
with thick lips, a prominent forehead, and high cheek-bones, coarse
ears with large edges discolored by the condition of his blood,--in
short, he was an ancient satyr in a black satin waistcoat, brown
frock-coat, and white cravat. His strong and vigorous shoulders, which
began life by bearing heavy burdens, were now rather bent; and beneath
this torso, unduly developed, came a pair of weak legs, rather badly
affixed to the short thighs. His thin and hairy hands had the crooked
fingers of those whose business it is to handle money. The habit of
quick decision could be seen in the way the eyebrows rose into a point
over each arch of the eye. Though the mouth was grave and pinched, its
expression was that of inward kindliness; it told of an excellent
nature, sunk in business, smothered possibly, though it might revive
by contact with a woman.

At this apparition Veronique's heart was violently agitated; blackness
came before her eyes; she thought she cried aloud; but she really sat
there mute, with fixed and staring gaze.

"Veronique, this is Monsieur Graslin," said old Sauviat.

Veronique rose, curtsied, dropped back into her chair, and looked at
her mother, who was smiling at the millionaire, seeming, as her father
did, so happy,--so happy that the poor girl found strength to hide her
surprise and her violent repulsion. During the conversation which then
took place something was said of Graslin's health. The banker looked
naively into the mirror, with bevelled edges in an ebony frame.