Ursula

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Ursula


"How is that you all manage?" asked Savinien one day, at the end of a
gay breakfast with a knot of young dandies, with whom he was intimate
as the young men of the present day are intimate with each other, all
aiming for the same thing and all claiming an impossible equality.
"You were no richer than I and yet you get along without anxiety; you
contrive to maintain yourselves, while as for me I make nothing but
debts."

"We all began that way," answered Rastignac, laughing, and the laugh
was echoed by Lucien de Rubempre, Maxime de Trailles, Emile Blondet,
and others of the fashionable young men of the day.

"Though de Marsay was rich when he started in life he was an
exception," said the host, a parvenu named Finot, ambitious of seeming
intimate with these young men. "Any one but he," added Finot bowing to
that personage, "would have been ruined by it."

"A true remark," said Maxime de Trailles.

"And a true idea," added Rastignac.

"My dear fellow," said de Marsay, gravely, to Savinien; "debts are the
capital stock of experience. A good university education with tutors
for all branches, who don't teach you anything, costs sixty thousand
francs. If the education of the world does cost double, at least it
teaches you to understand life, politics, men,--and sometimes women."

Blondet concluded the lesson by a paraphrase from La Fontaine: "The
world sells dearly what we think it gives."

Instead of laying to heart the sensible advice which the cleverest
pilots of the Parisian archipelago gave him, Savinien took it all as a
joke.

"Take care, my dear fellow," said de Marsay one day. "You have a great
name; if you don't obtain the fortune that name requires you'll end
your days in the uniform of a cavalry-sergeant. 'We have seen the fall
of nobler heads,'" he added, declaiming the line of Corneille as he
took Savinien's arm. "About six years ago," he continued, "a young
Comte d'Esgrignon came among us; but he did not stay two years in the
paradise of the great world. Alas! he lived and moved like a rocket.
He rose to the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and fell to his native town,
where he is now expiating his faults with a wheezy old father and a
game of whist at two sous a point. Tell Madame de Serizy your
situation, candidly, without shame; she will understand it and be very
useful to you. Whereas, if you play the charade of first love with her
she will pose as a Raffaelle Madonna, practice all the little games of
innocence upon you, and take you journeying at enormous cost through
the Land of Sentiment."

Savinien, still too young and too pure in honor, dared not confess his
position as to money to Madame de Serizy. At a moment when he knew not
which way to turn he had written his mother an appealing letter, to
which she replied by sending him the sum of twenty thousand francs,
which was all she possessed. This assistance brought him to the close
of the first year. During the second, being harnessed to the chariot
of Madame de Serizy, who was seriously taken with him, and who was, as
the saying is, forming him, he had recourse to the dangerous expedient
of borrowing. One of his friends, a deputy and the friend of his
cousin the Comte de Portenduere, advised him in his distress to go to
Gobseck or Gigonnet or Palma, who, if duly informed as to his mother's
means, would give him an easy discount. Usury and the deceptive help
of renewals enabled him to lead a happy life for nearly eighteen
months. Without daring to leave Madame de Serizy the poor boy had
fallen madly in love with the beautiful Comtesse de Kergarouet, a
prude after the fashion of young women who are awaiting the death of
an old husband and making capital of their virtue in the interests of
a second marriage. Quite incapable of understanding that calculating
virtue is invulnerable, Savinien paid court to Emilie de Kergarouet in
all the splendor of a rich man. He never missed either ball or theater
at which she was present.

"You haven't powder enough, my boy, to blow up that rock," said de
Marsay, laughing.

That young king of fashion, who did, out of commiseration for the lad,
endeavor to explain to him the nature of Emilie de Fontaine, merely
wasted his words; the gloomy lights of misfortune and the twilight of
a prison were needed to convince Savinien.

A note, imprudently given to a jeweler in collusion with the
money-lenders, who did not wish to have the odium of arresting the
young man, was the means of sending Savinien de Portenduere, in default
of one hundred and seventeen thousand francs and without the knowledge
of his friends, to the debtor's prison at Sainte-Pelagie. So soon as
the fact was known Rastignac, de Marsay, and Lucien de Rubempre went to
see him, and each offered him a banknote of a thousand francs when
they found how really destitute he was. Everything belonging to him
had been seized except the clothes and the few jewels he wore. The
three young men (who brought an excellent dinner with them) discussed
Savinien's situation while drinking de Marsay's wine, ostensibly to
arrange for his future but really, no doubt, to judge of him.

"When a man is named Savinien de Portenduere," cried Rastignac, "and
has a future peer of France for a cousin and Admiral Kergarouet for a
great-uncle, and commits the enormous blunder of allowing himself to
be put in Sainte-Pelagie, it is very certain that he must not stay
there, my good fellow."

"Why didn't you tell me?" cried de Marsay. "You could have had my
traveling-carriage, ten thousand francs, and letters of introduction
for Germany. We know Gobseck and Gigonnet and the other crocodiles; we
could have made them capitulate. But tell me, in the first place, what
ass ever led you to drink of that cursed spring."

"Des Lupeaulx."

The three young men looked at each other with one and the same thought
and suspicion, but they did not utter it.

"Explain all your resources; show us your hand," said de Marsay.

When Savinien had told of his mother and her old-fashioned ways, and
the little house with three windows in the Rue des Bourgeois, without
other grounds than a court for the well and a shed for the wood; when
he had valued the house, built of sandstone and pointed in reddish
cement, and put a price on the farm at Bordieres, the three dandies
looked at each other, and all three said with a solemn air the word of
the abbe in Alfred de Musset's "Marrons du feu" (which had then just
appeared),--"Sad!"

"Your mother will pay if you write a clever letter," said Rastignac.

"Yes, but afterwards?" cried de Marsay.

"If you had merely been put in the fiacre," said Lucien, "the
government would find you a place in diplomacy, but Saint-Pelagie
isn't the antechamber of an embassy."

"You are not strong enough for Parisian life," said Rastignac.

"Let us consider the matter," said de Marsay, looking Savinien over as
a jockey examines a horse. "You have fine blue eyes, well opened, a
white forehead well shaped, magnificent black hair, a little moustache
which suits those pale cheeks, and a slim figure; you've a foot that
tells race, shoulders and chest not quite those of a porter, but
solid. You are what I call an elegant male brunette. Your face is of
the style Louis XII., hardly any color, well-formed nose; and you have
the thing that pleases women, a something, I don't know what it is,
which men take no account of themselves; it is in the air, the manner,
the tone of the voice, the dart of the eye, the gesture,--in short, in
a number of little things which women see and to which they attach a
meaning which escapes us. You don't know your merits, my dear fellow.
Take a certain tone and style and in six months you'll captivate an
English-woman with a hundred thousand pounds; but you must call
yourself viscount, a title which belongs to you. My charming
step-mother, Lady Dudley, who has not her equal for matching two hearts,
will find you some such woman in the fens of Great Britain. What you
must now do is to get the payment of your debts postponed for ninety
days. Why didn't you tell us about them? The money-lenders at Baden
would have spared you--served you perhaps; but now, after you have
once been in prison, they'll despise you. A money-lender is, like
society, like the masses, down on his knees before the man who is
strong enough to trick him, and pitiless to the lambs. To the eyes of
some persons Sainte-Pelagie is a she-devil who burns the souls of
young men. Do you want my candid advice? I shall tell you as I told
that little d'Esgrignon: 'Arrange to pay your debts leisurely; keep
enough to live on for three years, and marry some girl in the
provinces who can bring you an income of thirty thousand francs.' In
the course of three years you can surely find some virtuous heiress
who is willing to call herself Madame la Vicomtesse de Portenduere.
Such is virtue,--let's drink to it. I give you a toast: 'The girl with
money!"

The young men did not leave their ex-friend till the official hour for
parting. The gate was no sooner closed behind them than they said to
each other: "He's not strong enough!" "He's quite crushed." "I don't
believe he'll pull through it?"

The next day Savinien wrote his mother a confession in twenty-two
pages. Madame de Portenduere, after weeping for one whole day, wrote
first to her son, promising to get him out of prison, and then to the
Comte de Portenduere and to Admiral Kergarouet.

The letters the abbe had just read and which the poor mother was
holding in her hand and moistening with tears, were the answers to her
appeal, which had arrived that morning, and had almost broken her
heart.


Paris, September, 1829.

To Madame de Portenduere:

Madame,--You cannot doubt the interest which the admiral and I
both feel in your troubles. What you ask of Monsieur de
Kergarouet grieves me all the more because our house was a home to
your son; we were proud of him. If Savinien had had more
confidence in the admiral we could have taken him to live with us,
and he would already have obtained some good situation. But,
unfortunately, he told us nothing; he ran into debt of his own
accord, and even involved himself for me, who knew nothing of his
pecuniary position. It is all the more to be regretted because
Savinien has, for the moment, tied our hands by allowing the
authorities to arrest him.

If my nephew had not shown a foolish passion for me and sacrificed
our relationship to the vanity of a lover, we could have sent him
to travel in Germany while his affairs were being settled here.
Monsieur de Kergarouet intended to get him a place in the War
office; but this imprisonment for debt will paralyze such efforts.
You must pay his debts; let him enter the navy; he will make his
way like the true Portenduere that he is; he has the fire of the
family in his beautiful black eyes, and we will all help him.

Do not be disheartened, madame; you have many friends, among whom
I beg you to consider me as one of the most sincere; I send you our
best wishes, with the respects of

Your very affectionate servant,
Emilie de Kergarouet.


The second letter was as follows:--


Portenduere, August, 1829.

To Madame de Portenduere:

My dear aunt,--I am more annoyed than surprised at Savinien's
pranks. As I am married and the father of two sons and one
daughter, my fortune, already too small for my position and
prospects, cannot be lessened to ransom a Portenduere from the
hands of the Jews. Sell your farm, pay his debts, and come and
live with us at Portenduere. You shall receive the welcome we owe
you, even though our views may not be entirely in accordance with
yours. You shall be made happy, and we will manage to marry
Savinien, whom my wife thinks charming. This little outbreak is
nothing; do not make yourself unhappy; it will never be known in
this part of the country, where there are a number of rich girls
who would be delighted to enter our family.

My wife joins me in assuring you of the happiness you would give
us, and I beg you to accept her wishes for the realization of this
plan, together with my affectionate respects.

Luc-Savinien, Comte de Portenduere.


"What letters for a Kergarouet to receive!" cried the old Breton lady,
wiping her eyes.

"The admiral does not know his nephew is in prison," said the Abbe
Chaperon at last; "the countess alone read your letter, and has
answered it for him. But you must decide at once on some course," he
added after a pause, "and this is what I have the honor to advise. Do
not sell your farm. The lease is just out, having lasted twenty-four
years; in a few months you can raise the rent to six thousand francs
and get a premium for double that amount. Borrow what you need of some
honest man,--not from the townspeople who make a business of
mortgages. Your neighbour here is a most worthy man; a man of good
society, who knew it as it was before the Revolution, who was once an
atheist, and is now an earnest Catholic. Do not let your feelings
debar you from going to his house this very evening; he will fully
understand the step you take; forget for a moment that you are a
Kergarouet."

"Never!" said the old mother, in a sharp voice.

"Well, then, be an amiable Kergarouet; come when he is alone. He will
lend you the money at three and a half per cent, perhaps even at three
per cent, and will do you this service delicately; you will be pleased
with him. He can go to Paris and release Savinien himself,--for he
will have to go there to sell out his funds,--and he can bring the lad
back to you."

"Are you speaking of that little Minoret?"

"That little Minoret is eighty-three years old," said the abbe,
smiling. "My dear lady, do have a little Christian charity; don't
wound him,--he might be useful to you in other ways."

"What ways?"

"He has an angel in his house; a precious young girl--"

"Oh! that little Ursula. What of that?"

The poor abbe did not pursue the subject after these significant
words, the laconic sharpness of which cut through the proposition he
was about to make.

"I think Doctor Minoret is very rich," he said.

"So much the better for him."

"You have indirectly caused your son's misfortunes by refusing to give
him a profession; beware for the future," said the abbe sternly. "Am I
to tell Doctor Minoret that you are coming?"

"Why cannot he come to me if he knows I want him?" she replied.

"Ah, madame, if you go to him you will pay him three per cent; if he
comes to you you will pay him five," said the abbe, inventing this
reason to influence the old lady. "And if you are forced to sell your
farm by Dionis the notary, or by Massin the clerk (who would refuse to
lend you the money, knowing it was more their interest to buy), you
would lose half its value. I have not the slightest influence on the
Dionis, Massins, or Levraults, or any of those rich men who covet your
farm and know that your son is in prison."

"They know it! oh, do they know it?" she exclaimed, throwing up her
arms. "There! my poor abbe, you have let your coffee get cold!
Tiennette, Tiennette!"

Tiennette, an old Breton servant sixty years of age, wearing a short
gown and a Breton cap, came quickly in and took the abbe's coffee to
warm it.

"Let be, Monsieur le recteur," she said, seeing that the abbe meant to
drink it, "I'll just put it into the bain-marie, it won't spoil it."

"Well," said the abbe to Madame de Portenduere in his most insinuating
voice, "I shall go and tell the doctor of your visit, and you will
come--"

The old mother did not yield till after an hour's discussion, during
which the abbe was forced to repeat his arguments at least ten times.
And even then the proud Kergarouet was not vanquished until he used
the words, "Savinien would go."

"It is better that I should go than he," she said.



CHAPTER XI

SAVINIEN SAVED

The clock was striking nine when the little door made in the large
door of Madame de Portenduere's house closed on the abbe, who
immediately crossed the road and hastily rang the bell at the doctor's
gate. He fell from Tiennette to La Bougival; the one said to him, "Why
do you come so late, Monsieur l'abbe?" as the other had said, "Why do
you leave Madame so early when she is in trouble?"

The abbe found a numerous company assembled in the green and brown
salon; for Dionis had stopped at Massin's on his way home to re-assure
the heirs by repeating their uncle's words.

"I believe Ursula has a love-affair," said he, "which will be nothing
but pain and trouble to her; she seems romantic" (extreme sensibility
is so called by notaries), "and, you'll see, she won't marry soon.
Therefore, don't show her any distrust; be very attentive to her and
very respectful to your uncle, for he is slyer than fifty Goupils,"
added the notary--without being aware that Goupil is a corruption of
the word vulpes, a fox.

So Mesdames Massin and Cremiere with their husbands, the post master
and Desire, together with the Nemours doctor and Bongrand, made an
unusual and noisy party in the doctor's salon. As the abbe entered he
heard the sound of the piano. Poor Ursula was just finishing a sonata
of Beethoven's. With girlish mischief she had chosen that grand music,
which must be studied to be understood, for the purpose of disgusting
these women with the thing they coveted. The finer the music the less
ignorant persons like it. So, when the door opened and the abbe's
venerable head appeared they all cried out: "Ah! here's Monsieur
l'abbe!" in a tone of relief, delighted to jump up and put an end to
their torture.

The exclamation was echoed at the card-table, where Bongrand, the
Nemours doctor, and old Minoret were victims to the presumption with
which the collector, in order to propitiate his great-uncle, had
proposed to take the fourth hand at whist. Ursula left the piano. The
doctor rose as if to receive the abbe, but really to put an end to the
game. After many compliments to their uncle on the wonderful
proficiency of his goddaughter, the heirs made their bow and retired.

"Good-night, my friends," cried the doctor as the iron gate clanged.

"Ah! that's where the money goes," said Madame Cremiere to Madame
Massin, as they walked on.

"God forbid that I should spend money to teach my little Aline to make
such a din as that!" cried Madame Massin.

"She said it was Beethoven, who is thought to be fine musician," said
the collector; "he has quite a reputation."

"Not in Nemours, I'm sure of that," said Madame Cremiere.

"I believe uncle made her play it expressly to drive us away," said
Massin; "for I saw him give that little minx a wink as she opened the
music-book."

"If that's the sort of charivari they like," said the post master,
"they are quite right to keep it to themselves."

"Monsieur Bongrand must be fond of whist to stand such a dreadful
racket," said Madame Cremiere.

"I shall never be able to play before persons who don't understand
music," Ursula was saying as she sat down beside the whist-table.

"In natures richly organized," said the abbe, "sentiments can be
developed only in a congenial atmosphere. Just as a priest is unable
to give the blessing in presence of an evil spirit, or as a
chestnut-tree dies in a clay soil, so a musician's genius has a mental
eclipse when he is surrounded by ignorant persons. In all the arts we
must receive from the souls who make the environment of our souls as
much intensity as we convey to them. This axiom, which rules the human
mind, has been made into proverbs: 'Howl with the wolves'; 'Like meets
like.' But the suffering you felt, Ursula, affects delicate and tender
natures only."

"And so, friends," said the doctor, "a thing which would merely give
pain to most women might kill my Ursula. Ah! when I am no longer here,
I charge you to see that the hedge of which Catullus spoke,--'Ut
flos,' etc.,--a protecting hedge is raised between this cherished
flower and the world."

"And yet those ladies flattered you, Ursula," said Monsieur Bongrand,
smiling.

"Flattered her grossly," remarked the Nemours doctor.

"I have always noticed how vulgar forced flattery is," said old
Minoret. "Why is that?"

"A true thought has its own delicacy," said the abbe.

"Did you dine with Madame de Portenduere?" asked Ursula, with a look
of anxious curiosity.

"Yes; the poor lady is terribly distressed. It is possible she may
come to see you this evening, Monsieur Minoret."

Ursula pressed her godfather's hand under the table.

"Her son," said Bongrand, "was rather too simple-minded to live in
Paris without a mentor. When I heard that inquiries were being made
here about the property of the old lady I feared he was discounting
her death."

"Is it possible you think him capable of it?" said Ursula, with such a
terrible glance at Monsieur Bongrand that he said to himself rather
sadly, "Alas! yes, she loves him."

"Yes and no," said the Nemours doctor, replying to Ursula's question.
"There is a great deal of good in Savinien, and that is why he is now
in prison; a scamp wouldn't have got there."

"Don't let us talk about it any more," said old Minoret. "The poor
mother must not be allowed to weep if there's a way to dry her tears."

The four friends rose and went out; Ursula accompanied them to the
gate, saw her godfather and the abbe knock at the opposite door, and
as soon as Tiennette admitted them she sat down on the outer wall with
La Bougival beside her.

"Madame la vicomtesse," said the abbe, who entered first into the
little salon, "Monsieur le docteur Minoret was not willing that you
should have the trouble of coming to him--"

"I am too much of the old school, madame," interrupted the doctor,
"not to know what a man owes to a woman of your rank, and I am very
glad to be able, as Monsieur l'abbe tells me, to be of service to
you."

Madame de Portenduere, who disliked the step the abbe had advised so
much that she had almost decided, after he left her, to apply to the
notary instead, was surprised by Minoret's attention to such a degree
that she rose to receive him and signed to him to take a chair.

"Be seated, monsieur," she said with a regal air. "Our dear abbe has
told you that the viscount is in prison on account of some youthful
debts,--a hundred thousand francs or so. If you could lend them to him
I would secure you on my farm at Bordieres."

"We will talk of that, madame, when I have brought your son back to
you--if you will allow me to be your emissary in the matter."

"Very good, monsieur," she said, bowing her head and looking at the
abbe as if to say, "You were right; he really is a man of good
society."

"You see, madame," said the abbe, "that my friend the doctor is full
of devotion to your family."

"We shall be grateful, monsieur," said Madame de Portenduere, making a
visible effort; "a journey to Paris, at your age, in quest of a
prodigal, is--"

"Madame, I had the honor to meet, in '65, the illustrious Admiral de
Portenduere in the house of that excellent Monsieur de Malesherbes,
and also in that of Monsieur le Comte de Buffon, who was anxious to
question him on some curious results of his voyages. Possibly Monsieur
de Portenduere, your late husband, was present. Those were the
glorious days of the French navy; it bore comparison with that of
Great Britain, and its officers had their full quota of courage. With
what impatience we awaited in '83 and '84 the news from St. Roch. I
came very near serving as surgeon in the king's service. Your
great-uncle, who is still living, Admiral Kergarouet, fought his
splendid battle at that time in the 'Belle-Poule.'"

"Ah! if he did but know his great-nephew is in prison!"

"He would not leave him there a day," said old Minoret, rising.

He held out his hand to take that of the old lady, which she allowed
him to do; then he kissed it respectfully, bowed profoundly, and left
the room; but returned immediately to say:--

"My dear abbe, may I ask you to engage a place in the diligence for me
to-morrow?"

The abbe stayed behind for half an hour to sing the praises of his
friend, who meant to win and had succeeded in winning the good graces
of the old lady.

"He is an astonishing man for his age," she said. "He talks of going
to Paris and attending to my son's affairs as if he were only
twenty-five. He has certainly seen good society."

"The very best, madame; and to-day more than one son of a peer of
France would be glad to marry his goddaughter with a million. Ah! if
that idea should come into Savinien's head!--times are so changed that
the objections would not come from your side, especially after his
late conduct--"

The amazement into which the speech threw the old lady alone enabled
him to finish it.

"You have lost your senses," she said at last.

"Think it over, madame; God grant that your son may conduct himself in
future in a manner to win that old man's respect."

"If it were not you, Monsieur l'abbe," said Madame de Portenduere, "if
it were any one else who spoke to me in that way--"

"You would not see him again," said the abbe, smiling. "Let us hope
that your dear son will enlighten you as to what occurs in Paris in
these days as to marriages. You will think only of Savinien's good; as
you really have helped to compromise his future you will not stand in
the way of his making himself another position."