Kabanata Kabanata 31 · THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY

. THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY

O rus quando ego te aspiciam?--_Horace_

"You've no doubt come to wait for the Paris mail, Monsieur," said the

host of an inn where he had stopped to breakfast.

"To-day or to-morrow, it matters little," said Julien.

The mail arrived while he was still posing as indifferent. There were

two free places.

"Why! it's you my poor Falcoz," said the traveller who was coming from

the Geneva side to the one who was getting in at the same time as

Julien.

"I thought you were settled in the outskirts of Lyons," said Falcoz,

"in a delicious valley near the Rhône."

"Nicely settled! I am running away."

"What! you are running away? you Saint Giraud! Have you, who look so

virtuous, committed some crime?" said Falcoz with a smile.

"On my faith it comes to the same thing. I am running away from the

abominable life which one leads in the provinces. I like the freshness

of the woods and the country tranquillity, as you know. You have often

accused me of being romantic. I don't want to hear politics talked as

long as I live, and politics are hounding me out."

"But what party do you belong to?"

"To none and that's what ruins me. That's all there is to be said

about my political life--I like music and painting. A good book is

an event for me. I am going to be forty-four. How much longer have I

got to live? Fifteen--twenty--thirty years at the outside. Well, I

want the ministers in thirty years' time to be a little cleverer than

those of to-day but quite as honest. The history of England serves as

a mirror for our own future. There will always be a king who will try

to increase his prerogative. The ambition of becoming a deputy, the

fame of Mirabeau and the hundreds of thousand francs which he won for

himself will always prevent the rich people in the province from going

to sleep: they will call that being Liberal and loving the people. The

desire of becoming a peer or a gentleman of the chamber will always win

over the ultras. On the ship of state every one is anxious to take over

the steering because it is well paid. Will there be never a poor little

place for the simple passenger?"

"Is it the last elections which are forcing you out of the province?"

"My misfortune goes further back. Four years ago I was forty and

possessed 500,000 francs. I am four years older to-day and probably

50,000 francs to the bad, as I shall lose that sum on the sale of my

château of Monfleury in a superb position near the Rhône.

"At Paris I was tired of that perpetual comedy which is rendered

obligatory by what you call nineteenth-century civilisation. I thirsted

for good nature and simplicity. I bought an estate in the mountains

near the Rhine, there was no more beautiful place under the heavens.

"The village clergyman and the gentry of the locality pay me court for

six months; I invite them to dinner; I have left Paris, I tell them, so

as to avoid talking politics or hearing politics talked for the rest of

my life. As you know I do not subscribe to any paper, the less letters

the postman brought me the happier I was.

"That did not suit the vicar's book. I was soon the victim of a

thousand unreasonable requests, annoyances, etc. I wished to give two

or three hundred francs a year to the poor, I was asked to give it

to the Paris associations, that of Saint Joseph, that of the Virgin,

etc. I refused. I was then insulted in a hundred ways. I was foolish

enough to be upset by it. I could not go out in the morning to enjoy

the beauty of our mountain without finding some annoyance which

distracted me from my reveries and recalled unpleasantly both men and

their wickedness. On the Rogation processions, for instance whose

chanting I enjoy (it is probably a Greek melody) they will not bless

my fields because, says the clergyman, they belong to an infidel. A

cow dies belonging to a devout old peasant woman. She says the reason

is the neighbourhood of a pond which belongs to my infidel self, a

philosopher coming from Paris, and eight days afterwards I find my

fish in agonies poisoned by lime. Intrigue in all its forms envelops

me. The justice of the peace, who is an honest man, but frightened of

losing his place, always decides against me. The peace of the country

proved a hell for me. Once they saw that I was abandoned by the vicar,

the head of the village congregation, and that I was not supported by

the retired captain who was the head of the Liberals they all fell upon

me, down to the mason whom I had supported for a year, down to the very

wheel-wright who wanted to cheat me with impunity over the repairing of

my ploughs.

"In order to find some support, and to win at any rate some of my law

suits I became a Liberal, but, as you say, those damned elections come

along. They asked me for my vote."

"For an unknown man?"

"Not at all, for a man whom I knew only too well. I refused. It was

terribly imprudent. From that moment I had the Liberals on my hands as

well, and my position became intolerable. I believe that if the vicar

had got it into his head to accuse me of assassinating my servant,

there would be twenty witnesses of the two parties who would swear that

they had seen me committing the crime."

"You mean to say you want to live in the country without pandering

to the passions of your neighbours, without even listening to their

gossip. What a mistake!"

"It is rectified at last. Monfleury is for sale. I will lose 50,000

francs if necessary, but I am over-joyed I am leaving that hell of

hypocrisy and annoyance. I am going to look for solitude and rustic

peace in the only place where those things are to be found in France,

on a fourth storey looking on to the Champs-Elysées; and, moreover, I

am actually deliberating if I shall not commence my political career by

giving consecrated bread to the parish in the Roule quarter."

"All this would not have happened under Bonaparte," said Falcoz with

eyes shining with rage and sorrow.

"Very good, but why didn't your Bonaparte manage to keep his position?

Everything which I suffer to-day is his work."

At this point Julien's attention was redoubled. He had realised from

the first word that the Bonapartist Falcoz was the old boyhood friend

of M. de Rênal, who had been repudiated by him in 1816, and that the

philosopher Saint-Giraud must be the brother of that chief of the

prefecture of----who managed to get the houses of the municipality

knocked down to him at a cheap price.

"And all this is the work of your Bonaparte. An honest man, aged forty,

and possessed of five hundred thousand francs however inoffensive he

is, cannot settle in the provinces and find peace there; those priests

and nobles of his will turn him out."

"Oh don't talk evil of him," exclaimed Falcoz. "France was never so

high in the esteem of the nations as during the thirteen years of his

reign; then every single act was great."

"Your emperor, devil take him," replied the man of forty-four, "was

only great on his battle fields and when he reorganised the finances

about 1802. What is the meaning of all his conduct since then? What

with his chamberlains, his pomp, and his receptions in the Tuileries,

he has simply provided a new edition of all the monarchical tomfoolery.

It was a revised edition and might possibly have lasted for a century

or two. The nobles and the priests wish to go back to the old one, but

they did not have the iron hand necessary to impose it on the public."

"Yes, that's just how an old printer would talk."

"Who has turned me out of my estate?" continued the printer, angrily.

"The priests, whom Napoleon called back by his Concordat instead

of treating them like the State treats doctors, barristers, and

astronomers, simply seeing in them ordinary citizens, and not bothering

about the particular calling by which they are trying to earn their

livelihood. Should we be saddled with these insolent gentlemen today,

if your Bonaparte had not created barons and counts? No, they were out

of fashion. Next to the priests, it's the little country nobility who

have annoyed me the most, and compelled me to become a Liberal."

The conversation was endless. The theme will occupy France for another

half-century. As Saint-Giraud kept always repeating that it was

impossible to live in the provinces, Julien timidly suggested the case

of M. de Rênal.

"Zounds, young man, you're a nice one," exclaimed Falcoz. "He turned

spider so as not to be fly, and a terrible spider into the bargain.

But I see that he is beaten by that man Valenod. Do you know that

scoundrel? He's the villain of the piece. What will your M. de Rênal

say if he sees himself turned out one of these fine days, and Valenod

put in his place?"

"He will be left to brood over his crimes," said Saint-Giraud. "Do

you know Verrières, young man? Well, Bonaparte, heaven confound him!

Bonaparte and his monarchical tomfoolery rendered possible the reign

of the Rênals and the Chélans, which brought about the reign of the

Valenods and the Maslons."

This conversation, with its gloomy politics, astonished Julien and

distracted him from his delicious reveries.

He appreciated but little the first sight of Paris as perceived in the

distance. The castles in the air he had built about his future had to

struggle with the still present memory of the twenty-four hours that

he had just passed in Verrières. He vowed that he would never abandon

his mistress's children, and that he would leave everything in order

to protect them, if the impertinence of the priests brought about a

republic and the persecution of the nobles.

What would have happened on the night of his arrival in Verrières if,

at the moment when he had leant his ladder against the casement of

Madame de Rênal's bedroom he had found that room occupied by a stranger

or by M. de Rênal?

But how delicious, too, had been those first two hours when his

sweetheart had been sincerely anxious to send him away and he had

pleaded his cause, sitting down by her in the darkness! A soul like

Julien's is haunted by such memories for a lifetime. The rest of the

interview was already becoming merged in the first period of their

love, fourteen months previous.

Julien was awakened from his deep meditation by the stopping of the

coach. They had just entered the courtyard of the Post in the Rue

Rousseau. "I want to go to La Malmaison," he said to a cabriolet which

approached.

"At this time, Monsieur--what for?"

"What's that got to do with you? Get on."

Every real passion only thinks about itself. That is why, in my view,

passions are ridiculous at Paris, where one's neighbour always insists

on one's considering him a great deal. I shall refrain from recounting

Julien's ecstasy at La Malmaison. He wept. What! in spite of those

wretched white walls, built this very year, which cut the path up into

bits? Yes, monsieur, for Julien, as for posterity, there was nothing to

choose between Arcole, Saint Helena, and La Malmaison.

In the evening, Julien hesitated a great deal before going to the

theatre. He had strange ideas about that place of perdition.

A deep distrust prevented him from admiring actual Paris. He was only

affected by the monuments left behind by his hero.

"So here I am in the centre of intrigue and hypocrisy. Here reign the

protectors of the abbé de Frilair." On the evening of the third day

his curiosity got the better of his plan of seeing everything before

presenting himself to the abbé Pirard. The abbé explained to him coldly

the kind of life which he was to expect at M. de la Mole's.

"If you do not prove useful to him at the end of some months you will

go back to the seminary, but not in disgrace. You will live in the

house of the marquis, who is one of the greatest seigneurs of France.

You will wear black, but like a man who is in mourning, and not like

an ecclesiastic. I insist on your following your theological studies

three days a week in a seminary where I will introduce you. Every day

at twelve o'clock you will establish yourself in the marquis's library;

he counts on making use of you in drafting letters concerning his

lawsuits and other matters. The marquis will scribble on the margin

of each letter he gets the kind of answer which is required. I have

assured him that at the end of three months you will be so competent to

draft the answers, that out of every dozen you hand to the marquis for

signature, he will be able to sign eight or nine. In the evening, at

eight o'clock, you will tidy up his bureau, and at ten you will be free.

"It may be," continued the abbé Pirard, "that some old lady or some

smooth-voiced man will hint at immense advantages, or will crudely

offer you gold, to show him the letters which the marquis has received."

"Ah, monsieur," exclaimed Julien, blushing.

"It is singular," said the abbé with a bitter smile, "that poor as

you are, and after a year at a seminary, you still have any of this

virtuous indignation left. You must have been very blind."

"Can it be that blood will tell," muttered the abbé in a whisper, as

though speaking to himself. "The singular thing is," he added, looking

at Julien, "that the marquis knows you--I don't know how. He will give

you a salary of a hundred louis to commence with. He is a man who only

acts by his whim. That is his weakness. He will quarrel with you about

the most childish matters. If he is satisfied, your wages may rise in

consequence up to eight thousand francs.

"But you realise," went on the abbé, sourly, "that he is not giving

you all this money simply on account of your personal charm. The thing

is to prove yourself useful. If I were in your place I would talk very

little, and I would never talk about what I know nothing about.

"Oh, yes," said the abbé, "I have made some enquiries for you. I was

forgetting M. de la Mole's family. He has two children--a daughter and

a son of nineteen, eminently elegant--the kind of madman who never

knows to-day what he will do to-morrow. He has spirit and valour; he

has been through the Spanish war. The marquis hopes, I don't know why,

that you will become a friend of the young count Norbert. I told him

that you were a great classic, and possibly he reckons on your teaching

his son some ready-made phrases about Cicero and Virgil.

"If I were you, I should never allow that handsome young man to make

fun of me, and before I accepted his advances, which you will find

perfectly polite but a little ironical, I would make him repeat them

more than once.

"I will not hide from you the fact that the young count de La Mole is

bound to despise you at first, because you are nothing more than a

little bourgeois. His grandfather belonged to the court, and had the

honour of having his head cut off in the Place de Grève on the 26th

April, 1574, on account of a political intrigue.

"As for you, you are the son of a carpenter of Verrières, and what

is more, in receipt of his father's wages. Ponder well over these

differences, and look up the family history in Moreri. All the

flatterers who dine at their house make from time to time what they

call delicate allusions to it.

"Be careful of how you answer the pleasantries of M. the count de La

Mole, chief of a squadron of hussars, and a future peer of France, and

don't come and complain to me later on."

"It seems to me," said Julien, blushing violently, "that I ought not

even to answer a man who despises me."

"You have no idea of his contempt. It will only manifest itself by

inflated compliments. If you were a fool, you might be taken in by it.

If you want to make your fortune, you ought to let yourself be taken in

by it."

"Shall I be looked upon as ungrateful," said Julien, "if I return to my

little cell Number 108 when I find that all this no longer suits me?"

"All the toadies of the house will no doubt calumniate you," said the

abbé, "but I myself will come to the rescue. Adsum qui feci. I will say

that I am responsible for that resolution."

Julien was overwhelmed by the bitter and almost vindictive tone which

he noticed in M. Pirard; that tone completely infected his last answer.

The fact is that the abbé had a conscientious scruple about loving

Julien, and it was with a kind of religious fear that he took so direct

a part in another's life.

"You will also see," he added with the same bad grace, as though

accomplishing a painful duty, "you also will see Madame the marquise

de La Mole. She is a big blonde woman about forty, devout, perfectly

polite, and even more insignificant. She is the daughter of the old

Duke de Chaulnes so well known for his aristocratic prejudices. This

great lady is a kind of synopsis in high relief of all the fundamental

characteristics of women of her rank. She does not conceal for her own

part that the possession of ancestors who went through the crusades

is the sole advantage which she respects. Money only comes a long way

afterwards. Does that astonish you? We are no longer in the provinces,

my friend.

"You will see many great lords in her salon talk about our princes in

a tone of singular flippancy. As for Madame de la Mole, she lowers her

voice out of respect every time she mentions the name of a Prince, and

above all the name of a Princess. I would not advise you to say in her

hearing that Philip II. or Henry VII. were monsters. They were kings, a

fact which gives them indisputable rights to the respect of creatures

without birth like you and me. Nevertheless," added M. Pirard, "we are

priests, for she will take you for one; that being our capacity, she

considers us as spiritual valets necessary for her salvation."

"Monsieur," said Julien, "I do not think I shall be long at Paris."

"Good, but remember that no man of our class can make his fortune

except through the great lords. With that indefinable element in your

character, at any rate I think it is, you will be persecuted if you

do not make your fortune. There is no middle course for you, make no

mistake about it; people see that they do not give you pleasure when

they speak to you; in a social country like this you are condemned to

unhappiness if you do not succeed in winning respect."

"What would have become of you at Besançon without this whim of the

marquis de la Mole? One day you will realise the extraordinary extent

of what he has done for you, and if you are not a monster you will be

eternally grateful to him and his family. How many poor abbés more

learned than you have lived years at Paris on the fifteen sous they

got for their mass and their ten sous they got for their dissertations

in the Sorbonne. Remember what I told you last winter about the first

years of that bad man Cardinal Dubois. Are you proud enough by chance

to think yourself more talented than he was?

"Take, for instance, a quiet and average man like myself; I reckoned

on dying in my seminary. I was childish enough to get attached to

it. Well I was on the point of being turned out, when I handed in

my resignation. You know what my fortune consisted of. I had five

hundred and twenty francs capital neither more nor less, not a friend,

scarcely two or three acquaintances. M. de la Mole, whom I had never

seen, extricated me from that quandary. He only had to say the word

and I was given a living where the parishioners are well-to-do people

above all crude vices, and where the income puts me to shame, it is so

disproportionate to my work. I refrained from talking to you all this

time simply to enable you to find your level a bit.

"One word more, I have the misfortune to be irritable. It is possible

that you and I will cease to be on speaking terms.

"If the airs of the marquise or the spiteful pleasantries of her son

make the house absolutely intolerable for you I advise you to finish

your studies in some seminary thirty leagues from Paris and rather

north than south. There is more civilisation in the north, and, he

added lowering his voice, I must admit that the nearness of the Paris

papers puts fear into our petty tyrants.

"If we continue to find pleasure in each other's society and if the

marquis's house does not suit you, I will offer you the post of my

curate, and will go equal shares with you in what I get from the

living. I owe you that and even more, he added interrupting Julien's

thanks, for the extraordinary offer which you made me at Besançon. If

instead of having five hundred and twenty francs I had had nothing you

would have saved me."

The abbé's voice had lost its tone of cruelty, Julien was ashamed to

feel tears in his eyes. He was desperately anxious to throw himself

into his friend's arms. He could not help saying to him in the most

manly manner he could assume:

"I was hated by my father from the cradle; it was one of my great

misfortunes, but I shall no longer complain of my luck, I have found

another father in you, monsieur."

"That is good, that is good," said the embarrassed abbé, then suddenly

remembering quite appropriately a seminary platitude "you must never

say luck, my child, always say providence."

The fiacre stopped. The coachman lifted up the bronze knocker of an

immense door. It was the Hôtel de la Mole, and to prevent the passers

by having any doubt on the subject these words could be read in black

marble over the door.

This affectation displeased Julien. "They are so frightened of the

Jacobins. They see a Robespierre and his tumbril behind every head.

Their panic is often gloriously grotesque and they advertise their

house like this so that in the event of a rising the rabble can

recognise it and loot it." He communicated his thought to the abbé

Pirard.

"Yes, poor child, you will soon be my curate. What a dreadful idea you

have got into your head."

"Nothing could be simpler," said Julien.

The gravity of the porter, and above all, the cleanness of the the

court, struck him with admiration. It was fine sunshine. "What

magnificent architecture," he said to his friend. The hotel in question

was one of those buildings of the Faubourg Saint-Germain with a flat

façade built about the time of Voltaire's death. At no other period had

fashion and beauty been so far from one another.