The Purse

THE PURSE

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Clara Bell

To Sofka

“Have you observed, mademoiselle, that the painters and

sculptors of the Middle Ages, when they placed two figures in

adoration, one on each side of a fair Saint, never failed to

give them a family likeness? When you here see your name among

those that are dear to me, and under whose auspices I place my

works, remember that touching harmony, and you will see in

this not so much an act of homage as an expression of the

brotherly affection of your devoted servant,

“DE BALZAC.”

THE PURSE

For souls to whom effusiveness is easy there is a delicious hour that

falls when it is not yet night, but is no longer day; the twilight

gleam throws softened lights or tricksy reflections on every object, and

favors a dreamy mood which vaguely weds itself to the play of light

and shade. The silence which generally prevails at that time makes it

particularly dear to artists, who grow contemplative, stand a few

paces back from the pictures on which they can no longer work, and pass

judgement on them, rapt by the subject whose most recondite meaning then

flashes on the inner eye of genius. He who has never stood pensive by a

friend’s side in such an hour of poetic dreaming can hardly understand

its inexpressible soothingness. Favored by the clear-obscure, the

material skill employed by art to produce illusion entirely disappears.

If the work is a picture, the figures represented seem to speak and

walk; the shade is shadow, the light is day; the flesh lives, eyes

move, blood flows in their veins, and stuffs have a changing sheen.

Imagination helps the realism of every detail, and only sees the

beauties of the work. At that hour illusion reigns despotically; perhaps

it wakes at nightfall! Is not illusion a sort of night to the mind,

which we people with dreams? Illusion then unfolds its wings, it bears

the soul aloft to the world of fancies, a world full of voluptuous

imaginings, where the artist forgets the real world, yesterday and the

morrow, the future--everything down to its miseries, the good and the

evil alike.

At this magic hour a young painter, a man of talent, who saw in art

nothing but Art itself, was perched on a step-ladder which helped him to

work at a large high painting, now nearly finished. Criticising himself,

honestly admiring himself, floating on the current of his thoughts,

he then lost himself in one of those meditative moods which ravish and

elevate the soul, soothe it, and comfort it. His reverie had no doubt

lasted a long time. Night fell. Whether he meant to come down from his

perch, or whether he made some ill-judged movement, believing himself to

be on the floor--the event did not allow of his remembering exactly the

cause of his accident--he fell, his head struck a footstool, he lost

consciousness and lay motionless during a space of time of which he knew

not the length.

A sweet voice roused him from the stunned condition into which he had

sunk. When he opened his eyes the flash of a bright light made him close

them again immediately; but through the mist that veiled his senses he

heard the whispering of two women, and felt two young, two timid hands

on which his head was resting. He soon recovered consciousness, and by

the light of an old-fashioned Argand lamp he could make out the most

charming girl’s face he had ever seen, one of those heads which are

often supposed to be a freak of the brush, but which to him suddenly

realized the theories of the ideal beauty which every artist creates

for himself and whence his art proceeds. The features of the unknown

belonged, so to say, to the refined and delicate type of Prudhon’s

school, but had also the poetic sentiment which Girodet gave to the

inventions of his phantasy. The freshness of the temples, the regular

arch of the eyebrows, the purity of outline, the virginal innocence so

plainly stamped on every feature of her countenance, made the girl a

perfect creature. Her figure was slight and graceful, and frail in form.

Her dress, though simple and neat, revealed neither wealth nor penury.

As he recovered his senses, the painter gave expression to his

admiration by a look of surprise, and stammered some confused thanks.

He found a handkerchief pressed to his forehead, and above the smell

peculiar to a studio, he recognized the strong odor of ether, applied no

doubt to revive him from his fainting fit. Finally he saw an old woman,

looking like a marquise of the old school, who held the lamp and was

advising the young girl.

“Monsieur,” said the younger woman in reply to one of the questions

put by the painter during the few minutes when he was still under the

influence of the vagueness that the shock had produced in his ideas, “my

mother and I heard the noise of your fall on the floor, and we fancied

we heard a groan. The silence following on the crash alarmed us, and we

hurried up. Finding the key in the latch, we happily took the liberty

of entering, and we found you lying motionless on the ground. My mother

went to fetch what was needed to bathe your head and revive you. You

have cut your forehead--there. Do you feel it?”

“Yes, I do now,” he replied.

“Oh, it will be nothing,” said the old mother. “Happily your head rested

against this lay-figure.”

“I feel infinitely better,” replied the painter. “I need nothing further

but a hackney cab to take me home. The porter’s wife will go for one.”

He tried to repeat his thanks to the two strangers; but at each sentence

the elder lady interrupted him, saying, “Tomorrow, monsieur, pray

be careful to put on leeches, or to be bled, and drink a few cups of

something healing. A fall may be dangerous.”

The young girl stole a look at the painter and at the pictures in the

studio. Her expression and her glances revealed perfect propriety; her

curiosity seemed rather absence of mind, and her eyes seemed to speak

the interest which women feel, with the most engaging spontaneity, in

everything which causes us suffering. The two strangers seemed to forget

the painter’s works in the painter’s mishap. When he had reassured them

as to his condition they left, looking at him with an anxiety that was

equally free from insistence and from familiarity, without asking any

indiscreet questions, or trying to incite him to any wish to visit them.

Their proceedings all bore the hall-mark of natural refinement and good

taste. Their noble and simple manners at first made no great impression

on the painter, but subsequently, as he recalled all the details of the

incident, he was greatly struck by them.

When they reached the floor beneath that occupied by the painter’s

studio, the old lady gently observed, “Adelaide, you left the door

open.”

“That was to come to my assistance,” said the painter, with a grateful

smile.

“You came down just now, mother,” replied the young girl, with a blush.

“Would you like us to accompany you all the way downstairs?” asked the

mother. “The stairs are dark.”

“No, thank you, indeed, madame; I am much better.”

“Hold tightly by the rail.”

The two women remained on the landing to light the young man, listening

to the sound of his steps.

In order to set forth clearly all the exciting and unexpected interest

this scene might have for the young painter, it must be told that he

had only a few days since established his studio in the attics of this

house, situated in the darkest and, therefore, the most muddy part of

the Rue de Suresnes, almost opposite the Church of the Madeleine, and

quite close to his rooms in the Rue des Champs-Elysees. The fame his

talent had won him having made him one of the artists most dear to his

country, he was beginning to feel free from want, and to use his own

expression, was enjoying his last privations. Instead of going to his

work in one of the studios near the city gates, where the moderate rents

had hitherto been in proportion to his humble earnings, he had gratified

a wish that was new every morning, by sparing himself a long walk, and

the loss of much time, now more valuable than ever.

No man in the world would have inspired feelings of greater interest

than Hippolyte Schinner if he would ever have consented to make

acquaintance; but he did not lightly entrust to others the secrets of

his life. He was the idol of a necessitous mother, who had brought him

up at the cost of the severest privations. Mademoiselle Schinner, the

daughter of an Alsatian farmer, had never been married. Her tender soul

had been cruelly crushed, long ago, by a rich man, who did not pride

himself on any great delicacy in his love affairs. The day when, as a

young girl, in all the radiance of her beauty and all the triumph of her

life, she suffered, at the cost of her heart and her sweet illusions,

the disenchantment which falls on us so slowly and yet so quickly--for

we try to postpone as long as possible our belief in evil, and it seems

to come too soon--that day was a whole age of reflection, and it was

also a day of religious thought and resignation. She refused the alms of

the man who had betrayed her, renounced the world, and made a glory of

her shame. She gave herself up entirely to her motherly love, seeking

in it all her joys in exchange for the social pleasures to which she bid

farewell. She lived by work, saving up a treasure for her son. And,

in after years, a day, an hour repaid her amply for the long and weary

sacrifices of her indigence.

At the last exhibition her son had received the Cross of the Legion of

Honor. The newspapers, unanimous in hailing an unknown genius, still

rang with sincere praises. Artists themselves acknowledged Schinner as

a master, and dealers covered his canvases with gold pieces. At

five-and-twenty Hippolyte Schinner, to whom his mother had transmitted

her woman’s soul, understood more clearly than ever his position in the

world. Anxious to restore to his mother the pleasures of which society

had so long robbed her, he lived for her, hoping by the aid of fame and

fortune to see her one day happy, rich, respected, and surrounded by

men of mark. Schinner had therefore chosen his friends among the most

honorable and distinguished men. Fastidious in the selection of his

intimates, he desired to raise still further a position which his talent

had placed high. The work to which he had devoted himself from

boyhood, by compelling him to dwell in solitude--the mother of great

thoughts--had left him the beautiful beliefs which grace the early

days of life. His adolescent soul was not closed to any of the thousand

bashful emotions by which a young man is a being apart, whose heart

abounds in joys, in poetry, in virginal hopes, puerile in the eyes of

men of the world, but deep because they are single-hearted.

He was endowed with the gentle and polite manners which speak to the

soul, and fascinate even those who do not understand them. He was well

made. His voice, coming from his heart, stirred that of others to

noble sentiments, and bore witness to his true modesty by a certain

ingenuousness of tone. Those who saw him felt drawn to him by that

attraction of the moral nature which men of science are happily unable

to analyze; they would detect in it some phenomenon of galvanism, or

the current of I know not what fluid, and express our sentiments in a

formula of ratios of oxygen and electricity.

These details will perhaps explain to strong-minded persons and to men

of fashion why, in the absence of the porter whom he had sent to the end

of the Rue de la Madeleine to call him a coach, Hippolyte Schinner did

not ask the man’s wife any questions concerning the two women whose

kindness of heart had shown itself in his behalf. But though he replied

Yes or No to the inquiries, natural under the circumstances, which the

good woman made as to his accident, and the friendly intervention of

the tenants occupying the fourth floor, he could not hinder her from

following the instinct of her kind; she mentioned the two strangers,

speaking of them as prompted by the interests of her policy and the

subterranean opinions of the porter’s lodge.

“Ah,” said she, “they were, no doubt, Mademoiselle Leseigneur and her

mother, who have lived here these four years. We do not know exactly

what these ladies do; in the morning, only till the hour of noon, an old

woman who is half deaf, and who never speaks any more than a wall, comes

in to help them; in the evening, two or three old gentlemen, with loops

of ribbon, like you, monsieur, come to see them, and often stay very

late. One of them comes in a carriage with servants, and is said to have

sixty thousand francs a year. However, they are very quiet tenants, as

you are, monsieur; and economical! they live on nothing, and as soon as

a letter is brought they pay for it. It is a queer thing, monsieur, the

mother’s name is not the same as the daughter’s. Ah, but when they go

for a walk in the Tuileries, mademoiselle is very smart, and she never

goes out but she is followed by a lot of young men; but she shuts the

door in their face, and she is quite right. The proprietor would never

allow----”

The coach having come, Hippolyte heard no more, and went home. His

mother, to whom he related his adventure, dressed his wound afresh, and

would not allow him to go to the studio next day. After taking advice,

various treatments were prescribed, and Hippolyte remained at home three

days. During this retirement his idle fancy recalled vividly, bit by

bit, the details of the scene that had ensued on his fainting fit. The

young girl’s profile was clearly projected against the darkness of his

inward vision; he saw once more the mother’s faded features, or he felt

the touch of Adelaide’s hands. He remembered some gesture which at first

had not greatly struck him, but whose exquisite grace was thrown into

relief by memory; then an attitude, or the tones of a melodious voice,

enhanced by the distance of remembrance, suddenly rose before him, as

objects plunging to the bottom of deep waters come back to the surface.

So, on the day when he could resume work, he went early to his studio;

but the visit he undoubtedly had a right to pay to his neighbors was the

true cause of his haste; he had already forgotten the pictures he had

begun. At the moment when a passion throws off its swaddling clothes,

inexplicable pleasures are felt, known to those who have loved. So some

readers will understand why the painter mounted the stairs to the fourth

floor but slowly, and will be in the secret of the throbs that followed

each other so rapidly in his heart at the moment when he saw the humble

brown door of the rooms inhabited by Mademoiselle Leseigneur. This

girl, whose name was not the same as her mother’s, had aroused the young

painter’s deepest sympathies; he chose to fancy some similarity between

himself and her as to their position, and attributed to her misfortunes

of birth akin to his own. All the time he worked Hippolyte gave himself

very willingly to thoughts of love, and made a great deal of noise to

compel the two ladies to think of him, as he was thinking of them. He

stayed late at the studio and dined there; then, at about seven o’clock,

he went down to call on his neighbors.

No painter of manners has ventured to initiate us--perhaps out of

modesty--into the really curious privacy of certain Parisian existences,

into the secret of the dwellings whence emerge such fresh and elegant

toilets, such brilliant women, who rich on the surface, allow the signs

of very doubtful comfort to peep out in every part of their home. If,

here, the picture is too boldly drawn, if you find it tedious in places,

do not blame the description, which is, indeed, part and parcel of my

story; for the appearance of the rooms inhabited by his two neighbors

had a great influence on the feelings and hopes of Hippolyte Schinner.

The house belonged to one of those proprietors in whom there is a

foregone and profound horror of repairs and decoration, one of the men

who regard their position as Paris house-owners as a business. In the

vast chain of moral species, these people hold a middle place between

the miser and the usurer. Optimists in their own interests, they are all

faithful to the Austrian status quo. If you speak of moving a cupboard

or a door, of opening the most indispensable air-hole, their eyes flash,

their bile rises, they rear like a frightened horse. When the wind blows

down a few chimney-pots they are quite ill, and deprive themselves of an

evening at the Gymnase or the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, “on account

of repairs.” Hippolyte, who had seen the performance gratis of a comical

scene with Monsieur Molineux as concerning certain decorative repairs

in his studio, was not surprised to see the dark greasy paint, the

oily stains, spots, and other disagreeable accessories that varied the

woodwork. And these stigmata of poverty are not altogether devoid of

poetry in an artist’s eyes.

Mademoiselle Leseigneur herself opened the door. On recognizing the

young artist she bowed, and at the same time, with Parisian adroitness,

and with the presence of mind that pride can lend, she turned round to

shut the door in a glass partition through which Hippolyte might have

caught sight of some linen hung by lines over patent ironing stoves, an

old camp-bed, some wood-embers, charcoal, irons, a filter, the household

crockery, and all the utensils familiar to a small household. Muslin

curtains, fairly white, carefully screened this lumber-room--a

_capharnaum_, as the French call such a domestic laboratory,--which was

lighted by windows looking out on a neighboring yard.

Hippolyte, with the quick eye of an artist, saw the uses, the furniture,

the general effect and condition of this first room, thus cut in half.

The more honorable half, which served both as ante-room and dining-room,

was hung with an old salmon-rose-colored paper, with a flock border,

the manufacture of Reveillon, no doubt; the holes and spots had been

carefully touched over with wafers. Prints representing the battles

of Alexander, by Lebrun, in frames with the gilding rubbed off were

symmetrically arranged on the walls. In the middle stood a massive

mahogany table, old-fashioned in shape, and worn at the edges. A small

stove, whose thin straight pipe was scarcely visible, stood in front

of the chimney-place, but the hearth was occupied by a cupboard. By a

strange contrast the chairs showed some remains of former splendor; they

were of carved mahogany, but the red morocco seats, the gilt nails and

reeded backs, showed as many scars as an old sergeant of the Imperial

Guard.

This room did duty as a museum of certain objects, such as are never

seen but in this kind of amphibious household; nameless objects with the

stamp at once of luxury and penury. Among other curiosities Hippolyte

noticed a splendidly finished telescope, hanging over the small

discolored glass that decorated the chimney. To harmonize with this

strange collection of furniture, there was, between the chimney and

the partition, a wretched sideboard of painted wood, pretending to be

mahogany, of all woods the most impossible to imitate. But the slippery

red quarries, the shabby little rugs in front of the chairs, and all

the furniture, shone with the hard rubbing cleanliness which lends a

treacherous lustre to old things by making their defects, their age,

and their long service still more conspicuous. An indescribable odor

pervaded the room, a mingled smell of the exhalations from the lumber

room, and the vapors of the dining-room, with those from the stairs,

though the window was partly open. The air from the street fluttered the

dusty curtains, which were carefully drawn so as to hide the window

bay, where former tenants had testified to their presence by various

ornamental additions--a sort of domestic fresco.

Adelaide hastened to open the door of the inner room, where she

announced the painter with evident pleasure. Hippolyte, who, of yore,

had seen the same signs of poverty in his mother’s home, noted them with

the singular vividness of impression which characterizes the earliest

acquisitions of memory, and entered into the details of this existence

better than any one else would have done. As he recognized the facts

of his life as a child, the kind young fellow felt neither scorn for

disguised misfortune nor pride in the luxury he had lately conquered for

his mother.

“Well, monsieur, I hope you no longer feel the effects of your fall,”

said the old lady, rising from an antique armchair that stood by the

chimney, and offering him a seat.

“No, madame. I have come to thank you for the kind care you gave me, and

above all mademoiselle, who heard me fall.”

As he uttered this speech, stamped with the exquisite stupidity given to

the mind by the first disturbing symptoms of true love, Hippolyte looked

at the young girl. Adelaide was lighting the Argand lamp, no doubt

that she might get rid of a tallow candle fixed in a large copper

flat candlestick, and graced with a heavy fluting of grease from its

guttering. She answered with a slight bow, carried the flat candlestick

into the ante-room, came back, and after placing the lamp on the chimney

shelf, seated herself by her mother, a little behind the painter, so as

to be able to look at him at her ease, while apparently much interested

in the burning of the lamp; the flame, checked by the damp in a dingy

chimney, sputtered as it struggled with a charred and badly-trimmed

wick. Hippolyte, seeing the large mirror that decorated the

chimney-piece, immediately fixed his eyes on it to admire Adelaide. Thus

the girl’s little stratagem only served to embarrass them both.

While talking with Madame Leseigneur, for Hippolyte called her so, on

the chance of being right, he examined the room, but unobtrusively and

by stealth.

The Egyptian figures on the iron fire-dogs were scarcely visible, the

hearth was so heaped with cinders; two brands tried to meet in front

of a sham log of fire-brick, as carefully buried as a miser’s treasure

could ever be. An old Aubusson carpet, very much faded, very much

mended, and as worn as a pensioner’s coat, did not cover the whole of

the tiled floor, and the cold struck to his feet. The walls were hung

with a reddish paper, imitating figured silk with a yellow pattern. In

the middle of the wall opposite the windows the painter saw a crack, and

the outline marked on the paper of double-doors, shutting off a recess

where Madame Leseigneur slept no doubt, a fact ill disguised by a sofa

in front of the door. Facing the chimney, above a mahogany chest of

drawers of handsome and tasteful design, was the portrait of an officer

of rank, which the dim light did not allow him to see well; but from

what he could make out he thought that the fearful daub must have been

painted in China. The window-curtains of red silk were as much faded

as the furniture, in red and yellow worsted work, [as] if this room

“contrived a double debt to pay.” On the marble top of the chest

of drawers was a costly malachite tray, with a dozen coffee cups

magnificently painted and made, no doubt, at Sevres. On the chimney

shelf stood the omnipresent Empire clock: a warrior driving the four

horses of a chariot, whose wheel bore the numbers of the hours on its

spokes. The tapers in the tall candlesticks were yellow with smoke,

and at each corner of the shelf stood a porcelain vase crowned with

artificial flowers full of dust and stuck into moss.

In the middle of the room Hippolyte remarked a card-table ready for

play, with new packs of cards. For an observer there was something

heartrending in the sight of this misery painted up like an old woman

who wants to falsify her face. At such a sight every man of sense must

at once have stated to himself this obvious dilemma--either these two

women are honesty itself, or they live by intrigue and gambling. But

on looking at Adelaide, a man so pure-minded as Schinner could not but

believe in her perfect innocence, and ascribe the incoherence of the

furniture to honorable causes.

“My dear,” said the old lady to the young one, “I am cold; make a little

fire, and give me my shawl.”

Adelaide went into a room next the drawing-room, where she no doubt

slept, and returned bringing her mother a cashmere shawl, which when

new must have been very costly; the pattern was Indian; but it was old,

faded and full of darns, and matched the furniture. Madame Leseigneur

wrapped herself in it very artistically, and with the readiness of an

old woman who wishes to make her words seem truth. The young girl ran

lightly off to the lumber-room and reappeared with a bundle of small

wood, which she gallantly threw on the fire to revive it.

It would be rather difficult to reproduce the conversation which

followed among these three persons. Hippolyte, guided by the tact which

is almost always the outcome of misfortune suffered in early youth,

dared not allow himself to make the least remark as to his neighbors’

situation, as he saw all about him the signs of ill-disguised poverty.

The simplest question would have been an indiscretion, and could only be

ventured on by old friendship. The painter was nevertheless absorbed in

the thought of this concealed penury, it pained his generous soul; but

knowing how offensive every kind of pity may be, even the friendliest,

the disparity between his thoughts and his words made him feel

uncomfortable.

The two ladies at first talked of painting, for women easily guess the

secret embarrassment of a first call; they themselves feel it perhaps,

and the nature of their mind supplies them with a thousand devices

to put an end to it. By questioning the young man as to the material

exercise of his art, and as to his studies, Adelaide and her mother

emboldened him to talk. The indefinable nothings of their chat, animated

by kind feeling, naturally led Hippolyte to flash forth remarks or

reflections which showed the character of his habits and of his mind.

Trouble had prematurely faded the old lady’s face, formerly handsome, no

doubt; nothing was left but the more prominent features, the outline,

in a word, the skeleton of a countenance of which the whole effect

indicated great shrewdness with much grace in the play of the eyes, in

which could be discerned the expression peculiar to women of the old

Court; an expression that cannot be defined in words. Those fine and

mobile features might quite as well indicate bad feelings, and suggest

astuteness and womanly artifice carried to a high pitch of wickedness,

as reveal the refined delicacy of a beautiful soul.

Indeed, the face of a woman has this element of mystery to puzzle the

ordinary observer, that the difference between frankness and duplicity,

the genius for intrigue and the genius of the heart, is there

inscrutable. A man gifted with the penetrating eye can read the

intangible shade of difference produced by a more or less curved line,

a more or less deep dimple, a more or less prominent feature. The

appreciation of these indications lies entirely in the domain of

intuition; this alone can lead to the discovery of what everyone is

interested in concealing. The old lady’s face was like the room she

inhabited; it seemed as difficult to detect whether this squalor covered

vice or the highest virtue, as to decide whether Adelaide’s mother was

an old coquette accustomed to weigh, to calculate, to sell everything,

or a loving woman, full of noble feeling and amiable qualities. But at

Schinner’s age the first impulse of the heart is to believe in goodness.

And indeed, as he studied Adelaide’s noble and almost haughty brow, as

he looked into her eyes full of soul and thought, he breathed, so to

speak, the sweet and modest fragrance of virtue. In the course of

the conversation he seized an opportunity of discussing portraits in

general, to give himself a pretext for examining the frightful _pastel_,

of which the color had flown, and the chalk in many places fallen away.

“You are attached to that picture for the sake of the likeness, no

doubt, mesdames, for the drawing is dreadful?” he said, looking at

Adelaide.

“It was done at Calcutta, in great haste,” replied the mother in an

agitated voice.

She gazed at the formless sketch with the deep absorption which memories

of happiness produce when they are roused and fall on the heart like a

beneficent dew to whose refreshing touch we love to yield ourselves up;

but in the expression of the old lady’s face there were traces too

of perennial regret. At least, it was thus that the painter chose to

interpret her attitude and countenance, and he presently sat down again

by her side.

“Madame,” he said, “in a very short time the colors of that pastel will

have disappeared. The portrait will only survive in your memory. Where

you will still see the face that is dear to you, others will see nothing

at all. Will you allow me to reproduce the likeness on canvas? It will

be more permanently recorded then than on that sheet of paper. Grant me,

I beg, as a neighborly favor, the pleasure of doing you this service.

There are times when an artist is glad of a respite from his greater

undertakings by doing work of less lofty pretensions, so it will be a

recreation for me to paint that head.”

The old lady flushed as she heard the painter’s words, and Adelaide shot

one of those glances of deep feeling which seem to flash from the soul.

Hippolyte wanted to feel some tie linking him with his two neighbors, to

conquer a right to mingle in their life. His offer, appealing as it

did to the liveliest affections of the heart, was the only one he could

possibly make; it gratified his pride as an artist, and could not

hurt the feelings of the ladies. Madame Leseigneur accepted, without

eagerness or reluctance, but with the self-possession of a noble soul,

fully aware of the character of bonds formed by such an obligation,

while, at the same time, they are its highest glory as a proof of

esteem.

“I fancy,” said the painter, “that the uniform is that of a naval

officer.”

“Yes,” she said, “that of a captain in command of a vessel. Monsieur de

Rouville--my husband--died at Batavia in consequence of a wound received

in a fight with an English ship they fell in with off the Asiatic coast.

He commanded a frigate of fifty-six guns and the _Revenge_ carried

ninety-six. The struggle was very unequal, but he defended his ship so

bravely that he held out till nightfall and got away. When I came back

to France Bonaparte was not yet in power, and I was refused a pension.

When I applied again for it, quite lately, I was sternly informed that

if the Baron de Rouville had emigrated I should not have lost him; that

by this time he would have been a rear-admiral; finally, his Excellency

quoted I know not what degree of forfeiture. I took this step, to which

I was urged by my friends, only for the sake of my poor Adelaide. I have

always hated the idea of holding out my hand as a beggar in the name of

a grief which deprives a woman of voice and strength. I do not like this

money valuation for blood irreparably spilt----”

“Dear mother, this subject always does you harm.”

In response to this remark from Adelaide, the Baronne Leseigneur bowed,

and was silent.

“Monsieur,” said the young girl to Hippolyte, “I had supposed that a

painter’s work was generally fairly quiet?”

At this question Schinner colored, remembering the noise he had made.

Adelaide said no more, and spared him a falsehood by rising at the sound

of a carriage stopping at the door. She went into her own room, and

returned carrying a pair of tall gilt candlesticks with partly burnt wax

candles, which she quickly lighted, and without waiting for the bell

to ring, she opened the door of the outer room, where she set the

lamp down. The sound of a kiss given and received found an echo in

Hippolyte’s heart. The young man’s impatience to see the man who treated

Adelaide with so much familiarity was not immediately gratified;

the newcomers had a conversation, which he thought very long, in an

undertone, with the young girl.

At last Mademoiselle de Rouville returned, followed by two men, whose

costume, countenance, and appearance are a long story.

The first, a man of about sixty, wore one of the coats invented,

I believe, for Louis XVIII., then on the throne, in which the most

difficult problem of the sartorial art had been solved by a tailor

who ought to be immortal. That artist certainly understood the art

of compromise, which was the moving genius of that period of shifting

politics. Is it not a rare merit to be able to take the measure of the

time? This coat, which the young men of the present day may conceive to

be fabulous, was neither civil nor military, and might pass for civil or

military by turns. Fleurs-de-lis were embroidered on the lapels of the

back skirts. The gilt buttons also bore fleurs-de-lis; on the shoulders

a pair of straps cried out for useless epaulettes; these military

appendages were there like a petition without a recommendation. This

old gentleman’s coat was of dark blue cloth, and the buttonhole had

blossomed into many colored ribbons. He, no doubt, always carried his

hat in his hand--a three cornered cocked hat, with a gold cord--for the

snowy wings of his powdered hair showed not a trace of its pressure. He

might have been taken for not more than fifty years of age, and seemed

to enjoy robust health. While wearing the frank and loyal expression

of the old emigres, his countenance also hinted at the easy habits of a

libertine, at the light and reckless passions of the Musketeers formerly

so famous in the annals of gallantry. His gestures, his attitude, and

his manner proclaimed that he had no intention of correcting himself of

his royalism, of his religion, or of his love affairs.

A really fantastic figure came in behind this specimen of “Louis XIV.’s

light infantry”--a nickname given by the Bonapartists to these venerable

survivors of the Monarchy. To do it justice it ought to be made the

principal object in the picture, and it is but an accessory. Imagine

a lean, dry man, dressed like the former, but seeming to be only his

reflection, or his shadow, if you will. The coat, new on the first, on

the second was old; the powder in his hair looked less white, the gold

of the fleurs-de-lis less bright, the shoulder straps more hopeless and

dog’s eared; his intellect seemed more feeble, his life nearer the fatal

term than in the former. In short, he realized Rivarol’s witticism on

Champcenetz, “He is the moonlight of me.” He was simply his double, a

paler and poorer double, for there was between them all the difference

that lies between the first and last impressions of a lithograph.

This speechless old man was a mystery to the painter, and always

remained a mystery. The Chevalier, for he was a Chevalier, did not

speak, nobody spoke to him. Was he a friend, a poor relation, a man who

followed at the old gallant’s heels as a lady companion does at an

old lady’s? Did he fill a place midway between a dog, a parrot, and a

friend? Had he saved his patron’s fortune, or only his life? Was he

the Trim to another Captain Toby? Elsewhere, as at the Baronne de

Rouville’s, he always piqued curiosity without satisfying it. Who,

after the Restoration, could remember the attachment which, before the

Revolution, had bound this man to his friend’s wife, dead now these

twenty year?

The leader, who appeared the least dilapidated of these wrecks, came

gallantly up to Madame de Rouville, kissed her hand, and sat down by

her. The other bowed and placed himself not far from his model, at

a distance represented by two chairs. Adelaide came behind the old

gentleman’s armchair and leaned her elbows on the back, unconsciously

imitating the attitude given to Dido’s sister by Guerin in his famous

picture.

Though the gentleman’s familiarity was that of a father, his freedom

seemed at the moment to annoy the young girl.

“What, are you sulky with me?” he said.

Then he shot at Schinner one of those side-looks full of shrewdness

and cunning, diplomatic looks, whose expression betrays the discreet

uneasiness, the polite curiosity of well-bred people, and seems to ask,

when they see a stranger, “Is he one of us?”

“This is our neighbor,” said the old lady, pointing to Hippolyte.

“Monsieur is a celebrated painter, whose name must be known to you in

spite of your indifference to the arts.”

The old man saw his friend’s mischievous intent in suppressing the name,

and bowed to the young man.

“Certainly,” said he. “I heard a great deal about his pictures at the

last Salon. Talent has immense privileges.” he added, observing the

artist’s red ribbon. “That distinction, which we must earn at the cost

of our blood and long service, you win in your youth; but all glory

is of the same kindred,” he said, laying his hand on his Cross of

Saint-Louis.

Hippolyte murmured a few words of acknowledgment, and was silent again,

satisfied to admire with growing enthusiasm the beautiful girl’s head

that charmed him so much. He was soon lost in contemplation, completely

forgetting the extreme misery of the dwelling. To him Adelaide’s face

stood out against a luminous atmosphere. He replied briefly to the

questions addressed to him, which, by good luck, he heard, thanks to

a singular faculty of the soul which sometimes seems to have a double

consciousness. Who has not known what it is to sit lost in sad or

delicious meditation, listening to its voice within, while attending to

a conversation or to reading? An admirable duality which often helps us

to tolerate a bore! Hope, prolific and smiling, poured out before him a

thousand visions of happiness; and he refused to consider what was going

on around him. As confiding as a child, it seemed to him base to analyze

a pleasure.

After a short lapse of time he perceived that the old lady and her

daughter were playing cards with the old gentleman. As to the satellite,

faithful to his function as a shadow, he stood behind his friend’s chair

watching his game, and answering the player’s mute inquiries by

little approving nods, repeating the questioning gestures of the other

countenance.

“Du Halga, I always lose,” said the gentleman.

“You discard badly,” replied the Baronne de Rouville.

“For three months now I have never won a single game,” said he.

“Have you the aces?” asked the old lady.

“Yes, one more to mark,” said he.

“Shall I come and advise you?” said Adelaide.

“No, no. Stay where I can see you. By Gad, it would be losing too much

not to have you to look at!”

At last the game was over. The gentleman pulled out his purse, and,

throwing two louis d’or on the table, not without temper--

“Forty francs,” he exclaimed, “the exact sum.--Deuce take it! It is

eleven o’clock.”

“It is eleven o’clock,” repeated the silent figure, looking at the

painter.

The young man, hearing these words rather more distinctly than all the

others, thought it time to retire. Coming back to the world of ordinary

ideas, he found a few commonplace remarks to make, took leave of the

Baroness, her daughter, and the two strangers, and went away, wholly

possessed by the first raptures of true love, without attempting to

analyze the little incidents of the evening.

On the morrow the young painter felt the most ardent desire to see

Adelaide once more. If he had followed the call of his passion, he would

have gone to his neighbor’s door at six in the morning, when he went

to his studio. However, he still was reasonable enough to wait till the

afternoon. But as soon as he thought he could present himself to Madame

de Rouville, he went downstairs, rang, blushing like a girl, shyly asked

Mademoiselle Leseigneur, who came to let him in, to let him have the

portrait of the Baron.

“But come in,” said Adelaide, who had no doubt heard him come down from

the studio.

The painter followed, bashful and out of countenance, not knowing what

to say, happiness had so dulled his wit. To see Adelaide, to hear the

rustle of her skirt, after longing for a whole morning to be near her,

after starting up a hundred time--“I will go down now”--and not to have

gone; this was to him life so rich that such sensations, too greatly

prolonged, would have worn out his spirit. The heart has the singular

power of giving extraordinary value to mere nothings. What joy it is to

a traveler to treasure a blade of grass, an unfamiliar leaf, if he has

risked his life to pluck it! It is the same with the trifles of love.

The old lady was not in the drawing-room. When the young girl found

herself there, alone with the painter, she brought a chair to stand on,

to take down the picture; but perceiving that she could not unhook

it without setting her foot on the chest of drawers, she turned to

Hippolyte, and said with a blush:

“I am not tall enough. Will you get it down?”

A feeling of modesty, betrayed in the expression of her face and the

tones of her voice, was the real motive of her request; and the young

man, understanding this, gave her one of those glances of intelligence

which are the sweetest language of love. Seeing that the painter had

read her soul, Adelaide cast down her eyes with the instinct of reserve

which is the secret of a maiden’s heart. Hippolyte, finding nothing

to say, and feeling almost timid, took down the picture, examined it

gravely, carrying it to the light of the window, and then went away,

without saying a word to Mademoiselle Leseigneur but, “I will return it

soon.”

During this brief moment they both went through one of those storms of

agitation of which the effects in the soul may be compared to those of a

stone flung into a deep lake. The most delightful waves of thought rise

and follow each other, indescribable, repeated, and aimless, tossing the

heart like the circular ripples, which for a long time fret the waters,

starting from the point where the stone fell.

Hippolyte returned to the studio bearing the portrait. His easel was

ready with a fresh canvas, and his palette set, his brushes cleaned, the

spot and the light carefully chosen. And till the dinner hour he worked

at the painting with the ardor artists throw into their whims. He went

again that evening to the Baronne de Rouville’s, and remained from

nine till eleven. Excepting the different topics of conversation, this

evening was exactly like the last. The two old men arrived at the same

hour, the same game of piquet was played, the same speeches made by the

players, the sum lost by Adelaide’s friend was not less considerable

than on the previous evening; only Hippolyte, a little bolder, ventured

to chat with the young girl.

A week passed thus, and in the course of it the painter’s feelings and

Adelaide’s underwent the slow and delightful transformations which bring

two souls to a perfect understanding. Every day the look with which the

girl welcomed her friend grew more intimate, more confiding, gayer, and

more open; her voice and manner became more eager and more familiar.

They laughed and talked together, telling each other their thoughts,

speaking of themselves with the simplicity of two children who have made

friends in a day, as much as if they had met constantly for three years.

Schinner wished to be taught piquet. Being ignorant and a novice, he, of

course, made blunder after blunder, and like the old man, he lost almost

every game. Without having spoken a word of love the lovers knew that

they were all in all to one another. Hippolyte enjoyed exerting his

power over his gentle little friend, and many concessions were made to

him by Adelaide, who, timid and devoted to him, was quite deceived by

the assumed fits of temper, such as the least skilled lover and the most

guileless girl can affect; and which they constantly play off, as spoilt

children abuse the power they owe to their mother’s affection. Thus all

familiarity between the girl and the old Count was soon put a stop to.

She understood the painter’s melancholy, and the thoughts hidden in the

furrows on his brow, from the abrupt tone of the few words he spoke when

the old man unceremoniously kissed Adelaide’s hands or throat.

Mademoiselle Leseigneur, on her part, soon expected her lover to give a

short account of all his actions; she was so unhappy, so restless when

Hippolyte did not come, she scolded him so effectually for his absence,

that the painter had to give up seeing his other friends, and now went

nowhere. Adelaide allowed the natural jealousy of women to be perceived

when she heard that sometimes at eleven o’clock, on quitting the house,

the painter still had visits to pay, and was to be seen in the most

brilliant drawing-rooms of Paris. This mode of life, she assured him,

was bad for his health; then, with the intense conviction to which the

accent, the emphasis and the look of one we love lend so much weight,

she asserted that a man who was obliged to expend his time and the

charms of his wit on several women at once could not be the object

of any very warm affection. Thus the painter was led, as much by the

tyranny of his passion as by the exactions of a girl in love, to live

exclusively in the little apartment where everything attracted him.

And never was there a purer or more ardent love. On both sides the same

trustfulness, the same delicacy, gave their passion increase without

the aid of those sacrifices by which many persons try to prove their

affection. Between these two there was such a constant interchange of

sweet emotion that they knew not which gave or received the most.

A spontaneous affinity made the union of their souls a close one. The

progress of this true feeling was so rapid that two months after the

accident to which the painter owed the happiness of knowing Adelaide,

their lives were one life. From early morning the young girl, hearing

footsteps overhead, could say to herself, “He is there.” When Hippolyte

went home to his mother at the dinner hour he never failed to look in on

his neighbors, and in the evening he flew there at the accustomed hour

with a lover’s punctuality. Thus the most tyrannical woman or the most

ambitious in the matter of love could not have found the smallest fault

with the young painter. And Adelaide tasted of unmixed and unbounded

happiness as she saw the fullest realization of the ideal of which, at

her age, it is so natural to dream.

The old gentleman now came more rarely; Hippolyte, who had been jealous,

had taken his place at the green table, and shared his constant ill-luck

at cards. And sometimes, in the midst of his happiness, as he considered

Madame de Rouville’s disastrous position--for he had had more than one

proof of her extreme poverty--an importunate thought would haunt him.

Several times he had said to himself as he went home, “Strange! twenty

francs every evening?” and he dared not confess to himself his odious

suspicions.

He spent two months over the portrait, and when it was finished,

varnished, and framed, he looked upon it as one of his best works.

Madame la Baronne de Rouville had never spoken of it again. Was this

from indifference or pride? The painter would not allow himself to

account for this silence. He joyfully plotted with Adelaide to hang the

picture in its place when Madame de Rouville should be out. So one day,

during the walk her mother usually took in the Tuileries, Adelaide for

the first time went up to Hippolyte’s studio, on the pretext of seeing

the portrait in the good light in which it had been painted. She stood

speechless and motionless, but in ecstatic contemplation, in which all

a woman’s feelings were merged. For are they not all comprehended in

boundless admiration for the man she loves? When the painter, uneasy

at her silence, leaned forward to look at her, she held out her hand,

unable to speak a word, but two tears fell from her eyes. Hippolyte took

her hand and covered it with kisses; for a minute they looked at each

other in silence, both longing to confess their love, and not daring.

The painter kept her hand in his, and the same glow, the same throb,

told them that their hearts were both beating wildly. The young girl,

too greatly agitated, gently drew away from Hippolyte, and said, with a

look of the utmost simplicity:

“You will make my mother very happy.”

“What, only your mother?” he asked.

“Oh, I am too happy.”

The painter bent his head and remained silent, frightened at the

vehemence of the feelings which her tones stirred in his heart. Then,

both understanding the perils of the situation, they went downstairs

and hung up the picture in its place. Hippolyte dined for the first time

with the Baroness, who, greatly overcome, and drowned in tears, must

needs embrace him.

In the evening the old emigre, the Baron de Rouville’s old comrade, paid

the ladies a visit to announce that he had just been promoted to the

rank of vice-admiral. His voyages by land over Germany and Russia had

been counted as naval campaigns. On seeing the portrait he cordially

shook the painter’s hand, and exclaimed, “By Gad! though my old hulk

does not deserve to be perpetuated, I would gladly give five hundred

pistoles to see myself as like as that is to my dear old Rouville.”

At this hint the Baroness looked at her young friend and smiled, while

her face lighted up with an expression of sudden gratitude. Hippolyte

suspected that the old admiral wished to offer him the price of both

portraits while paying for his own. His pride as an artist, no less than

his jealousy perhaps, took offence at the thought, and he replied:

“Monsieur, if I were a portrait-painter I should not have done this

one.”

The admiral bit his lip, and sat down to cards.

The painter remained near Adelaide, who proposed a dozen hands of

piquet, to which he agreed. As he played he observed in Madame de

Rouville an excitement over her game which surprised him. Never before

had the old Baroness manifested so ardent a desire to win, or so keen

a joy in fingering the old gentleman’s gold pieces. During the evening

evil suspicions troubled Hippolyte’s happiness, and filled him with

distrust. Could it be that Madame de Rouville lived by gambling? Was she

playing at this moment to pay off some debt, or under the pressure of

necessity? Perhaps she had not paid her rent. The old man seemed shrewd

enough not to allow his money to be taken with impunity. What interest

attracted him to this poverty-stricken house, he who was rich? Why,

when he had formerly been so familiar with Adelaide, had he given up the

rights he had acquired, and which were perhaps his due?

These involuntary reflections prompted him to watch the old man and

the Baroness, whose meaning looks and certain sidelong glances cast

at Adelaide displeased him. “Am I being duped?” was Hippolyte’s last

idea--horrible, scathing, for he believed it just enough to be tortured

by it. He determined to stay after the departure of the two old men,

to confirm or dissipate his suspicions. He drew out his purse to pay

Adelaide; but carried away by his poignant thoughts, he laid it on the

table, falling into a reverie of brief duration; then, ashamed of his

silence, he rose, answered some commonplace question from Madame de

Rouville, and went close up to her to examine the withered features

while he was talking to her.

He went away, racked by a thousand doubts. He had gone down but a few

steps when he turned back to fetch the forgotten purse.

“I left my purse here!” he said to the young girl.

“No,” she said, reddening.

“I thought it was there,” and he pointed to the card-table. Not finding

it, in his shame for Adelaide and the Baroness, he looked at them with

a blank amazement that made them laugh, turned pale, felt his waistcoat,

and said, “I must have made a mistake. I have it somewhere no doubt.”

In one end of the purse there were fifteen louis d’or, and in the other

some small change. The theft was so flagrant, and denied with such

effrontery, that Hippolyte no longer felt a doubt as to his neighbors’

morals. He stood still on the stairs, and got down with some difficulty;

his knees shook, he felt dizzy, he was in a cold sweat, he shivered, and

found himself unable to walk, struggling, as he was, with the agonizing

shock caused by the destruction of all his hopes. And at this moment

he found lurking in his memory a number of observations, trifling in

themselves, but which corroborated his frightful suspicions, and which,

by proving the certainty of this last incident, opened his eyes as to

the character and life of these two women.

Had they really waited till the portrait was given them before robbing

him of his purse? In such a combination the theft was even more

odious. The painter recollected that for the last two or three

evenings Adelaide, while seeming to examine with a girl’s curiosity the

particular stitch of the worn silk netting, was probably counting the

coins in the purse, while making some light jests, quite innocent in

appearance, but no doubt with the object of watching for a moment when

the sum was worth stealing.

“The old admiral has perhaps good reasons for not marrying Adelaide, and

so the Baroness has tried----”

But at this hypothesis he checked himself, not finishing his thought,

which was contradicted by a very just reflection, “If the Baroness

hopes to get me to marry her daughter,” thought he, “they would not have

robbed me.”

Then, clinging to his illusions, to the love that already had taken such

deep root, he tried to find a justification in some accident. “The purse

must have fallen on the floor,” said he to himself, “or I left it lying

on my chair. Or perhaps I have it about me--I am so absent-minded!”

He searched himself with hurried movements, but did not find the

ill-starred purse. His memory cruelly retraced the fatal truth, minute

by minute. He distinctly saw the purse lying on the green cloth; but

then, doubtful no longer, he excused Adelaide, telling himself that

persons in misfortune should not be so hastily condemned. There was, of

course, some secret behind this apparently degrading action. He would

not admit that that proud and noble face was a lie.

At the same time the wretched rooms rose before him, denuded of the

poetry of love which beautifies everything; he saw them dirty and faded,

regarding them as emblematic of an inner life devoid of honor, idle and

vicious. Are not our feelings written, as it were, on the things about

us?

Next morning he rose, not having slept. The heartache, that terrible

malady of the soul, had made rapid inroads. To lose the bliss we dreamed

of, to renounce our whole future, is a keener pang than that caused by

the loss of known happiness, however complete it may have been; for

is not Hope better than Memory? The thoughts into which our spirit is

suddenly plunged are like a shoreless sea, in which we may swim for

a moment, but where our love is doomed to drown and die. And it is a

frightful death. Are not our feelings the most glorious part of our

life? It is this partial death which, in certain delicate or powerful

natures, leads to the terrible ruin produced by disenchantment, by hopes

and passions betrayed. Thus it was with the young painter. He went out

at a very early hour to walk under the fresh shade of the Tuileries,

absorbed in his thoughts, forgetting everything in the world.

There by chance he met one of his most intimate friends, a school-fellow

and studio-mate, with whom he had lived on better terms than with a

brother.

“Why, Hippolyte, what ails you?” asked Francois Souchet, the young

sculptor who had just won the first prize, and was soon to set out for

Italy.

“I am most unhappy,” replied Hippolyte gravely.

“Nothing but a love affair can cause you grief. Money, glory,

respect--you lack nothing.”

Insensibly the painter was led into confidences, and confessed his love.

The moment he mentioned the Rue de Suresnes, and a young girl living on

the fourth floor, “Stop, stop,” cried Souchet lightly. “A little girl I

see every morning at the Church of the Assumption, and with whom I have

a flirtation. But, my dear fellow, we all know her. The mother is a

Baroness. Do you really believe in a Baroness living up four flights

of stairs? Brrr! Why, you are a relic of the golden age! We see the old

mother here, in this avenue, every day; why, her face, her appearance,

tell everything. What, have you not known her for what she is by the way

she holds her bag?”

The two friends walked up and down for some time, and several young men

who knew Souchet or Schinner joined them. The painter’s adventure, which

the sculptor regarded as unimportant, was repeated by him.

“So he, too, has seen that young lady!” said Souchet.

And then there were comments, laughter, innocent mockery, full of the

liveliness familiar to artists, but which pained Hippolyte frightfully.

A certain native reticence made him uncomfortable as he saw his heart’s

secret so carelessly handled, his passion rent, torn to tatters, a

young and unknown girl, whose life seemed to be so modest, the victim

of condemnation, right or wrong, but pronounced with such reckless

indifference. He pretended to be moved by a spirit of contradiction,

asking each for proofs of his assertions, and their jests began again.

“But, my dear boy, have you seen the Baroness’ shawl?” asked Souchet.

“Have you ever followed the girl when she patters off to church in the

morning?” said Joseph Bridau, a young dauber in Gros’ studio.

“Oh, the mother has among other virtues a certain gray gown, which I

regard as typical,” said Bixiou, the caricaturist.

“Listen, Hippolyte,” the sculptor went on. “Come here at about four

o’clock, and just study the walk of both mother and daughter. If after

that you still have doubts! well, no one can ever make anything of you;

you would be capable of marrying your porter’s daughter.”

Torn by the most conflicting feelings, the painter parted from his

friends. It seemed to him that Adelaide and her mother must be superior

to these accusations, and at the bottom of his heart he was filled with

remorse for having suspected the purity of this beautiful and simple

girl. He went to his studio, passing the door of the rooms where

Adelaide was, and conscious of a pain at his heart which no man can

misapprehend. He loved Mademoiselle de Rouville so passionately that,

in spite of the theft of the purse, he still worshiped her. His love was

that of the Chevalier des Grieux admiring his mistress, and holding her

as pure, even on the cart which carries such lost creatures to prison.

“Why should not my love keep her the purest of women? Why abandon her to

evil and to vice without holding out a rescuing hand to her?”

The idea of this mission pleased him. Love makes a gain of everything.

Nothing tempts a young man more than to play the part of a good

genius to a woman. There is something inexplicably romantic in such an

enterprise which appeals to a highly-strung soul. Is it not the utmost

stretch of devotion under the loftiest and most engaging aspect? Is

there not something grand in the thought that we love enough still to

love on when the love of others dwindles and dies?

Hippolyte sat down in his studio, gazed at his picture without doing

anything to it, seeing the figures through tears that swelled in his

eyes, holding his brush in his hand, going up to the canvas as if to

soften down an effect, but not touching it. Night fell, and he was still

in this attitude. Roused from his moodiness by the darkness, he went

downstairs, met the old admiral on the way, looked darkly at him as he

bowed, and fled.

He had intended going in to see the ladies, but the sight of Adelaide’s

protector froze his heart and dispelled his purpose. For the hundredth

time he wondered what interest could bring this old prodigal, with his

eighty thousand francs a year, to this fourth story, where he lost about

forty francs every evening; and he thought he could guess what it was.

The next and following days Hippolyte threw himself into his work, and

to try to conquer his passion by the swift rush of ideas and the ardor

of composition. He half succeeded. Study consoled him, though it could

not smother the memories of so many tender hours spent with Adelaide.

One evening, as he left his studio, he saw the door of the ladies’ rooms

half open. Somebody was standing in the recess of the window, and the

position of the door and the staircase made it impossible that the

painter should pass without seeing Adelaide. He bowed coldly, with a

glance of supreme indifference; but judging of the girl’s suffering by

his own, he felt an inward shudder as he reflected on the bitterness

which that look and that coldness must produce in a loving heart. To

crown the most delightful feast which ever brought joy to two pure

souls, by eight days of disdain, of the deepest and most utter

contempt!--A frightful conclusion. And perhaps the purse had been found,

perhaps Adelaide had looked for her friend every evening.

This simple and natural idea filled the lover with fresh remorse; he

asked himself whether the proofs of attachment given him by the young

girl, the delightful talks, full of the love that had so charmed

him, did not deserve at least an inquiry; were not worthy of some

justification. Ashamed of having resisted the promptings of his heart

for a whole week, and feeling himself almost a criminal in this mental

struggle, he called the same evening on Madame de Rouville.

All his suspicions, all his evil thoughts vanished at the sight of the

young girl, who had grown pale and thin.

“Good heavens! what is the matter?” he asked her, after greeting the

Baroness.

Adelaide made no reply, but she gave him a look of deep melancholy, a

sad, dejected look, which pained him.

“You have, no doubt, been working hard,” said the old lady. “You are

altered. We are the cause of your seclusion. That portrait had delayed

some pictures essential to your reputation.”

Hippolyte was glad to find so good an excuse for his rudeness.

“Yes,” he said, “I have been very busy, but I have been suffering----”

At these words Adelaide raised her head, looked at her lover, and her

anxious eyes had now no hint of reproach.

“You must have thought us quite indifferent to any good or ill that may

befall you?” said the old lady.

“I was wrong,” he replied. “Still, there are forms of pain which we know

not how to confide to any one, even to a friendship of older date than

that with which you honor me.”

“The sincerity and strength of friendship are not to be measured

by time. I have seen old friends who had not a tear to bestow on

misfortune,” said the Baroness, nodding sadly.

“But you--what ails you?” the young man asked Adelaide.

“Oh, nothing,” replied the Baroness. “Adelaide has sat up late for some

nights to finish some little piece of woman’s work, and would not listen

to me when I told her that a day more or less did not matter----”

Hippolyte was not listening. As he looked at these two noble, calm

faces, he blushed for his suspicions, and ascribed the loss of his purse

to some unknown accident.

This was a delicious evening to him, and perhaps to her too. There are

some secrets which young souls understand so well. Adelaide could read

Hippolyte’s thoughts. Though he could not confess his misdeeds, the

painter knew them, and he had come back to his mistress more in love,

and more affectionate, trying thus to purchase her tacit forgiveness.

Adelaide was enjoying such perfect, such sweet happiness, that she did

not think she had paid too dear for it with all the grief that had so

cruelly crushed her soul. And yet, this true concord of hearts, this

understanding so full of magic charm, was disturbed by a little speech

of Madame de Rouville’s.

“Let us have our little game,” she said, “for my old friend Kergarouet

will not let me off.”

These words revived all the young painter’s fears; he colored as he

looked at Adelaide’s mother, but he saw nothing in her countenance but

the expression of the frankest good-nature; no double meaning marred its

charm; its keenness was not perifidious, its humor seemed kindly, and no

trace of remorse disturbed its equanimity.

He sat down to the card-table. Adelaide took side with the painter,

saying that he did not know piquet, and needed a partner.

All through the game Madame de Rouville and her daughter exchanged looks

of intelligence, which alarmed Hippolyte all the more because he was

winning; but at last a final hand left the lovers in the old lady’s

debt.

To feel for some money in his pocket the painter took his hands off the

table, and he then saw before him a purse which Adelaide had slipped in

front of him without his noticing it; the poor child had the old one

in her hand, and, to keep her countenance, was looking into it for the

money to pay her mother. The blood rushed to Hippolyte’s heart with such

force that he was near fainting.

The new purse, substituted for his own, and which contained his fifteen

gold louis, was worked with gilt beads. The rings and tassels bore

witness to Adelaide’s good taste, and she had no doubt spent all her

little hoard in ornamenting this pretty piece of work. It was impossible

to say with greater delicacy that the painter’s gift could only be

repaid by some proof of affection.

Hippolyte, overcome with happiness, turned to look at Adelaide and her

mother, and saw that they were tremulous with pleasure and delight at

their little trick. He felt himself mean, sordid, a fool; he longed to

punish himself, to rend his heart. A few tears rose to his eyes; by an

irresistible impulse he sprang up, clasped Adelaide in his arms, pressed

her to his heart, and stole a kiss; then with the simple heartiness of

an artist, “I ask for her for my wife!” he exclaimed, looking at the

Baroness.

Adelaide looked at him with half-wrathful eyes, and Madame de Rouville,

somewhat astonished, was considering her reply, when the scene was

interrupted by a ring at the bell. The old vice-admiral came in,

followed by his shadow, and Madame Schinner. Having guessed the cause of

the grief her son vainly endeavored to conceal, Hippolyte’s mother

had made inquiries among her friends concerning Adelaide. Very justly

alarmed by the calumnies which weighed on the young girl, unknown to the

Comte de Kergarouet, whose name she learned from the porter’s wife, she

went to report them to the vice-admiral; and he, in his rage, declared

“he would crop all the scoundrels’ ears for them.”

Then, prompted by his wrath, he went on to explain to Madame Schinner

the secret of his losing intentionally at cards, because the Baronne’s

pride left him none but these ingenious means of assisting her.

When Madame Schinner had paid her respects to Madame de Rouville,

the Baroness looked at the Comte de Kergarouet, at the Chevalier du

Halga--the friend of the departed Comtesse de Kergarouet--at Hippolyte,

and Adelaide, and said, with the grace that comes from the heart, “So we

are a family party this evening.”

PARIS, May 1832

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Bixiou, Jean-Jacques

A Bachelor’s Establishment

The Government Clerks

Modeste Mignon

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

The Firm of Nucingen

The Muse of the Department

Cousin Betty

The Member for Arcis

Beatrix

A Man of Business

Gaudissart II.

The Unconscious Humorists

Cousin Pons

Bridau, Joseph

A Bachelor’s Establishment

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Start in Life

Modeste Mignon

Another Study of Woman

Pierre Grassou

Letters of Two Brides

Cousin Betty

The Member for Arcis

Halga, Chevalier du

Beatrix

Kergarouet, Comte de

The Ball at Sceaux

Ursule Mirouet

Molineux, Jean-Baptiste

A Second Home

Cesar Birotteau

Schinner, Hippolyte

A Bachelor’s Establishment

Pierre Grassou

A Start in Life

Albert Savarus

The Government Clerks

Modeste Mignon

The Imaginary Mistress

The Unconscious Humorists

Souchet, Francois

The Imaginary Mistress

A Daughter of Eve