Farewell
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Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnypg@yahoo.com
and John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
FAREWELL
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By
Ellen Marriage
DEDICATION
To Prince Friedrich von Schwarzenberg
FAREWELL
"Come, Deputy of the Centre, come along! We shall have to mend our
pace if we mean to sit down to dinner when every one else does, and
that's a fact! Hurry up! Jump, Marquis! That's it! Well done! You are
bounding over the furrows just like a stag!"
These words were uttered by a sportsman seated much at his ease on the
outskirts of the Foret de l'Isle-Adam; he had just finished a Havana
cigar, which he had smoked while he waited for his companion, who had
evidently been straying about for some time among the forest
undergrowth. Four panting dogs by the speaker's side likewise watched
the progress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were made.
To make their sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that
the second sportsman was both short and stout; his ample girth
indicated a truly magisterial corpulence, and in consequence his
progress across the furrows was by no means easy. He was striding over
a vast field of stubble; the dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a
little to the difficulties of his passage, and to add to his
discomforts, the genial influence of the sun that slanted into his
eyes brought great drops of perspiration into his face. The uppermost
thought in his mind being a strong desire to keep his balance, he
lurched to and fro like a coach jolted over an atrocious road.
It was one of those September days of almost tropical heat that
finishes the work of summer and ripens the grapes. Such heat forebodes
a coming storm; and though as yet there were wide patches of blue
between the dark rain-clouds low down on the horizon, pale golden
masses were rising and scattering with ominous swiftness from west to
east, and drawing a shadowy veil across the sky. The wind was still,
save in the upper regions of the air, so that the weight of the
atmosphere seemed to compress the steamy heat of the earth into the
forest glades. The tall forest trees shut out every breath of air so
completely that the little valley across which the sportsman was
making his way was as hot as a furnace; the silent forest seemed
parched with the fiery heat. Birds and insects were mute; the topmost
twigs of the trees swayed with scarcely perceptible motion. Any one
who retains some recollection of the summer of 1819 must surely
compassionate the plight of the hapless supporter of the ministry who
toiled and sweated over the stubble to rejoin his satirical comrade.
That gentleman, as he smoked his cigar, had arrived, by a process of
calculation based on the altitude of the sun, to the conclusion that
it must be about five o'clock.
"Where the devil are we?" asked the stout sportsman. He wiped his brow
as he spoke, and propped himself against a tree in the field opposite
his companion, feeling quite unequal to clearing the broad ditch that
lay between them.
"And you ask that question of /me/!" retorted the other, laughing from
his bed of tall brown grasses on the top of the bank. He flung the end
of his cigar into the ditch, exclaiming, "I swear by Saint Hubert that
no one shall catch me risking myself again in a country that I don't
know with a magistrate, even if, like you, my dear d'Albon, he happens
to be an old schoolfellow."
"Why, Philip, have you really forgotten your own language? You surely
must have left your wits behind you in Siberia," said the stouter of
the two, with a glance half-comic, half-pathetic at the guide-post
distant about a hundred paces from them.
"I understand," replied the one addressed as Philip. He snatched up
his rifle, suddenly sprang to his feet, made but one jump of it into
the field, and rushed off to the guide-post. "This way, d'Albon, here
you are! left about!" he shouted, gesticulating in the direction of
the highroad. "/To Baillet and l'Isle-Adam!/" he went on; "so if we go
along here, we shall be sure to come upon the cross-road to Cassan."
"Quite right, Colonel," said M. d'Albon, putting the cap with which he
had been fanning himself back on his head.
"Then /forward/! highly respected Councillor," returned Colonel
Philip, whistling to the dogs, that seemed already to obey him rather
than the magistrate their owner.
"Are you aware, my lord Marquis, that two leagues yet remain before
us?" inquired the malicious soldier. "That village down yonder must be
Baillet."
"Great heavens!" cried the Marquis d'Albon. "Go on to Cassan by all
means, if you like; but if you do, you will go alone. I prefer to wait
here, storm or no storm; you can send a horse for me from the chateau.
You have been making game of me, Sucy. We were to have a nice day's
sport by ourselves; we were not to go very far from Cassan, and go
over ground that I knew. Pooh! instead of a day's fun, you have kept
me running like a greyhound since four o'clock this morning, and
nothing but a cup or two of milk by way of breakfast. Oh! if ever you
find yourself in a court of law, I will take care that the day goes
against you if you were in the right a hundred times over."
The dejected sportsman sat himself down on one of the stumps at the
foot of the guide-post, disencumbered himself of his rifle and empty
game-bag, and heaved a prolonged sigh.
"Oh, France, behold thy Deputies!" laughed Colonel de Sucy. "Poor old
d'Albon; if you had spent six months at the other end of Siberia as I
did . . ."
He broke off, and his eyes sought the sky, as if the story of his
troubles was a secret between himself and God.
"Come, march!" he added. "If you once sit down, it is all over with
you."
"I can't help it, Philip! It is such an old habit in a magistrate! I
am dead beat, upon my honor. If I had only bagged one hare though!"
Two men more different are seldom seen together. The civilian, a man
of forty-two, seemed scarcely more than thirty; while the soldier, at
thirty years of age, looked to be forty at the least. Both wore the
red rosette that proclaimed them to be officers of the Legion of
Honor. A few locks of hair, mingled white and black, like a magpie's
wing, had strayed from beneath the Colonel's cap; while thick, fair
curls clustered about the magistrate's temples. The Colonel was tall,
spare, dried up, but muscular; the lines in his pale face told a tale
of vehement passions or of terrible sorrows; but his comrade's jolly
countenance beamed with health, and would have done credit to an
Epicurean. Both men were deeply sunburnt. Their high gaiters of brown
leather carried souvenirs of every ditch and swamp that they crossed
that day.
"Come, come," cried M. de Sucy, "forward! One short hour's march, and
we shall be at Cassan with a good dinner before us."
"You never were in love, that is positive," returned the Councillor,
with a comically piteous expression. "You are as inexorable as Article
304 of the Penal Code!"
Philip de Sucy shuddered violently. Deep lines appeared in his broad
forehead, his face was overcast like the sky above them; but though
his features seemed to contract with the pain of an intolerably bitter
memory, no tears came to his eyes. Like all men of strong character,
he possessed the power of forcing his emotions down into some inner
depth, and, perhaps, like many reserved natures, he shrank from laying
bare a wound too deep for any words of human speech, and winced at the
thought of ridicule from those who do not care to understand. M.
d'Albon was one of those who are keenly sensitive by nature to the
distress of others, who feel at once the pain they have unwillingly
given by some blunder. He respected his friend's mood, rose to his
feet, forgot his weariness, and followed in silence, thoroughly
annoyed with himself for having touched on a wound that seemed not yet
healed.
"Some day I will tell you my story," Philip said at last, wringing his
friend's hand, while he acknowledged his dumb repentance with a heart-
rending glance. "To-day I cannot."
They walked on in silence. As the Colonel's distress passed off the
Councillor's fatigue returned. Instinctively, or rather urged by
weariness, his eyes explored the depths of the forest around them; he
looked high and low among the trees, and gazed along the avenues,
hoping to discover some dwelling where he might ask for hospitality.
They reached a place where several roads met; and the Councillor,
fancying that he saw a thin film of smoke rising through the trees,
made a stand and looked sharply about him. He caught a glimpse of the
dark green branches of some firs among the other forest trees, and
finally, "A house! a house!" he shouted. No sailor could have raised a
cry of "Land ahead!" more joyfully than he.
He plunged at once into undergrowth, somewhat of the thickest; and the
Colonel, who had fallen into deep musings, followed him unheedingly.
"I would rather have an omelette here and home-made bread, and a chair
to sit down in, than go further for a sofa, truffles, and Bordeaux
wine at Cassan."
This outburst of enthusiasm on the Councillor's part was caused by the
sight of the whitened wall of a house in the distance, standing out in
strong contrast against the brown masses of knotted tree-trunks in the
forest.
"Aha! This used to be a priory, I should say," the Marquis d'Albon
cried once more, as they stood before a grim old gateway. Through the
grating they could see the house itself standing in the midst of some
considerable extent of park land; from the style of the architecture
it appeared to have been a monastery once upon a time.
"Those knowing rascals of monks knew how to choose a site!"
This last exclamation was caused by the magistrate's amazement at the
romantic hermitage before his eyes. The house had been built on a spot
half-way up the hillside on the slope below the village of Nerville,
which crowned the summit. A huge circle of great oak-trees, hundreds
of years old, guarded the solitary place from intrusion. There
appeared to be about forty acres of the park. The main building of the
monastery faced the south, and stood in a space of green meadow,
picturesquely intersected by several tiny clear streams, and by larger
sheets of water so disposed as to have a natural effect. Shapely trees
with contrasting foliage grew here and there. Grottos had been
ingeniously contrived; and broad terraced walks, now in ruin, though
the steps were broken and the balustrades eaten through with rust,
gave to this sylvan Thebaid a certain character of its own. The art of
man and the picturesqueness of nature had wrought together to produce
a charming effect. Human passions surely could not cross that boundary
of tall oak-trees which shut out the sounds of the outer world, and
screened the fierce heat of the sun from this forest sanctuary.
"What neglect!" said M. d'Albon to himself, after the first sense of
delight in the melancholy aspect of the ruins in the landscape, which
seemed blighted by a curse.
It was like some haunted spot, shunned of men. The twisted ivy stems
clambered everywhere, hiding everything away beneath a luxuriant green
mantle. Moss and lichens, brown and gray, yellow and red, covered the
trees with fantastic patches of color, grew upon the benches in the
garden, overran the roof and the walls of the house. The window-sashes
were weather-worn and warped with age, the balconies were dropping to
pieces, the terraces in ruins. Here and there the folding shutters
hung by a single hinge. The crazy doors would have given way at the
first attempt to force an entrance.
Out in the orchard the neglected fruit-trees were running to wood, the
rambling branches bore no fruit save the glistening mistletoe berries,
and tall plants were growing in the garden walks. All this forlornness
shed a charm across the picture that wrought on the spectator's mind
with an influence like that of some enchanting poem, filling his soul
with dreamy fancies. A poet must have lingered there in deep and
melancholy musings, marveling at the harmony of this wilderness, where
decay had a certain grace of its own.
In a moment a few gleams of sunlight struggled through a rift in the
clouds, and a shower of colored light fell over the wild garden. The
brown tiles of the roof glowed in the light, the mosses took bright
hues, strange shadows played over the grass beneath the trees; the
dead autumn tints grew vivid, bright unexpected contrasts were evoked
by the light, every leaf stood out sharply in the clear, thin air.
Then all at once the sunlight died away, and the landscape that seemed
to have spoken grew silent and gloomy again, or rather, it took gray
soft tones like the tenderest hues of autumn dusk.
"It is the palace of the Sleeping Beauty," the Councillor said to
himself (he had already begun to look at the place from the point of
view of an owner of property). "Whom can the place belong to, I
wonder. He must be a great fool not to live on such a charming little
estate!"
Just at that moment, a woman sprang out from under a walnut tree on
the right-hand side of the gateway, and passed before the Councillor
as noiselessly and swiftly as the shadow of a cloud. This apparition
struck him dumb with amazement.
"Hallo, d'Albon, what is the matter?" asked the Colonel.
"I am rubbing my eyes to find out whether I am awake or asleep,"
answered the magistrate, whose countenance was pressed against the
grating in the hope of catching a second glimpse of the ghost.
"In all probability she is under that fig-tree," he went on,
indicating, for Philip's benefit, some branches that over-topped the
wall on the left-hand side of the gateway.
"She? Who?"
"Eh! how should I know?" answered M. d'Albon. "A strange-looking woman
sprang up there under my very eyes just now," he added, in a low
voice; "she looked to me more like a ghost than a living being. She
was so slender, light and shadowy that she might be transparent. Her
face was as white as milk, her hair, her eyes, and her dress were
black. She gave me a glance as she flitted by. I am not easily
frightened, but that cold stony stare of hers froze the blood in my
veins."
"Was she pretty?" inquired Philip.
"I don't know. I saw nothing but those eyes in her head."
"The devil take dinner at Cassan!" exclaimed the Colonel; "let us stay
here. I am as eager as a boy to see the inside of this queer place.
The window-sashes are painted red, do you see? There is a red line
round the panels of the doors and the edges of the shutters. It might
be the devil's own dwelling; perhaps he took it over when the monks
went out. Now, then, let us give chase to the black and white lady;
come along!" cried Philip, with forced gaiety.
He had scarcely finished speaking when the two sportsmen heard a cry
as if some bird had been taken in a snare. They listened. There was a
sound like the murmur of rippling water, as something forced its way
through the bushes; but diligently as they lent their ears, there was
no footfall on the path, the earth kept the secret of the mysterious
woman's passage, if indeed she had moved from her hiding-place.
"This is very strange!" cried Philip.
Following the wall of the path, the two friends reached before long a
forest road leading to the village of Chauvry; they went along this
track in the direction of the highway to Paris, and reached another
large gateway. Through the railings they had a complete view of the
facade of the mysterious house. From this point of view, the
dilapidation was still more apparent. Huge cracks had riven the walls
of the main body of the house built round three sides of a square.
Evidently the place was allowed to fall to ruin; there were holes in
the roof, broken slates and tiles lay about below. Fallen fruit from
the orchard trees was left to rot on the ground; a cow was grazing
over the bowling-green and trampling the flowers in the garden beds; a
goat browsed on the green grapes and young vine-shoots on the trellis.
"It is all of a piece," remarked the Colonel. "The neglect is in a
fashion systematic." He laid his hand on the chain of the bell-pull,
but the bell had lost its clapper. The two friends heard no sound save
the peculiar grating creak of the rusty spring. A little door in the
wall beside the gateway, though ruinous, held good against all their
efforts to force it open.
"Oho! all this is growing very interesting," Philip said to his
companion.
"If I were not a magistrate," returned M. d'Albon, "I should think
that the woman in black is a witch."
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the cow came up to the
railings and held out her warm damp nose, as if she were glad of human
society. Then a woman, if so indescribable a being could be called a
woman, sprang up from the bushes, and pulled at the cord about the
cow's neck. From beneath the crimson handkerchief about the woman's
head, fair matted hair escaped, something as tow hangs about a
spindle. She wore no kerchief at the throat. A coarse black-and-gray
striped woolen petticoat, too short by several inches, left her legs
bare. She might have belonged to some tribe of Redskins in Fenimore
Cooper's novels; for her neck, arms, and ankles looked as if they had
been painted brick-red. There was no spark of intelligence in her
featureless face; her pale, bluish eyes looked out dull and
expressionless from beneath the eyebrows with one or two straggling
white hairs on them. Her teeth were prominent and uneven, but white as
a dog's.
"Hallo, good woman," called M. de Sucy.
She came slowly up to the railing, and stared at the two sportsmen
with a contorted smile painful to see.
"Where are we? What is the name of the house yonder? Whom does it
belong to? Who are you? Do you come from hereabouts?"
To these questions, and to a host of others poured out in succession
upon her by the two friends, she made no answer save gurgling sounds
in the throat, more like animal sounds than anything uttered by a
human voice.
"Don't you see that she is deaf and dumb?" said M. d'Albon.
"/Minorites/!" the peasant woman said at last.
"Ah! she is right. The house looks as though it might once have been a
Minorite convent," he went on.
Again they plied the peasant woman with questions, but, like a wayward
child, she colored up, fidgeted with her sabot, twisted the rope by
which she held the cow that had fallen to grazing again, stared at the
sportsmen, and scrutinized every article of clothing upon them; she
gibbered, grunted, and clucked, but no articulate word did she utter.
"Your name?" asked Philip, fixing her with his eyes as if he were
trying to bewitch the woman.
"Genevieve," she answered, with an empty laugh.
"The cow is the most intelligent creature we have seen so far,"
exclaimed the magistrate. "I shall fire a shot, that ought to bring
somebody out."
D'Albon had just taken up his rifle when the Colonel put out a hand to
stop him, and pointed out the mysterious woman who had aroused such
lively curiosity in them. She seemed to be absorbed in deep thought,
as she went along a green alley some little distance away, so slowly
that the friends had time to take a good look at her. She wore a
threadbare black satin gown, her long hair curled thickly over her
forehead, and fell like a shawl about her shoulders below her waist.
Doubtless she was accustomed to the dishevelment of her locks, for she
seldom put back the hair on either side of her brows; but when she did
so, she shook her head with a sudden jerk that had not to be repeated
to shake away the thick veil from her eyes or forehead. In everything
that she did, moreover, there was a wonderful certainty in the working
of the mechanism, an unerring swiftness and precision, like that of an
animal, well-nigh marvelous in a woman.
The two sportsmen were amazed to see her spring up into an apple-tree
and cling to a bough lightly as a bird. She snatched at the fruit, ate
it, and dropped to the ground with the same supple grace that charms
us in a squirrel. The elasticity of her limbs took all appearance of
awkwardness or effort from her movements. She played about upon the
grass, rolling in it as a young child might have done; then, on a
sudden, she lay still and stretched out her feet and hands, with the
languid natural grace of a kitten dozing in the sun.
There was a threatening growl of thunder far away, and at this she
started up on all fours and listened, like a dog who hears a strange
footstep. One result of this strange attitude was to separate her
thick black hair into two masses, that fell away on either side of her
face and left her shoulders bare; the two witnesses of this singular
scene wondered at the whiteness of the skin that shone like a meadow
daisy, and at the neck that indicated the perfection of the rest of
her form.
A wailing cry broke from her; she rose to her feet, and stood upright.
Every successive movement was made so lightly, so gracefully, so
easily, that she seemed to be no human being, but one of Ossian's
maids of the mist. She went across the grass to one of the pools of
water, deftly shook off her shoe, and seemed to enjoy dipping her
foot, white as marble, in the spring; doubtless it pleased her to make
the circling ripples, and watch them glitter like gems. She knelt down
by the brink, and played there like a child, dabbling her long tresses
in the water, and flinging them loose again to see the water drip from
the ends, like a string of pearls in the sunless light.
"She is mad!" cried the Councillor.
A hoarse cry rang through the air; it came from Genevieve, and seemed
to be meant for the mysterious woman. She rose to her feet in a
moment, flinging back the hair from her face, and then the Colonel and
d'Albon could see her features distinctly. As soon as she saw the two
friends she bounded to the railings with the swiftness of a fawn.
"/Farewell/!" she said in low, musical tones, but they could not
discover the least trace of feeling, the least idea in the sweet
sounds that they had awaited impatiently.
M. d'Albon admired the long lashes, the thick, dark eyebrows, the
dazzling fairness of skin untinged by any trace of red. Only the
delicate blue veins contrasted with that uniform whiteness.
But when the Marquis turned to communicate his surprise at the sight
of so strange an apparition, he saw the Colonel stretched on the grass
like one dead. M. d'Albon fired his gun into the air, shouted for
help, and tried to raise his friend. At the sound of the shot, the
strange lady, who had stood motionless by the gate, fled away, crying
out like a wounded wild creature, circling round and round in the
meadow, with every sign of unspeakable terror.
M. d'Albon heard a carriage rolling along the road to l'Isle-Adam, and
waved his handkerchief to implore help. The carriage immediately came
towards the Minorite convent, and M. d'Albon recognized neighbors, M.
and Mme. de Grandville, who hastened to alight and put their carriage
at his disposal. Colonel de Sucy inhaled the salts which Mme. de
Grandville happened to have with her; he opened his eyes, looked
towards the mysterious figure that still fled wailing through the
meadow, and a faint cry of horror broke from him; he closed his eyes
again, with a dumb gesture of entreaty to his friends to take him away
from this scene. M. and Mme. de Grandville begged the Councillor to
make use of their carriage, adding very obligingly that they
themselves would walk.
"Who can the lady be?" inquired the magistrate, looking towards the
strange figure.
"People think that she comes from Moulins," answered M. de Grandville.
"She is a Comtesse de Vandieres; she is said to be mad; but as she has
only been here for two months, I cannot vouch for the truth of all
this hearsay talk."
M. d'Albon thanked M. and Mme. de Grandville, and they set out for
Cassan.
"It is she!" cried Philip, coming to himself.
"She? who?" asked d'Albon.
"Stephanie. . . . Ah! dead and yet living still; still alive, but her
mind is gone! I thought the sight would kill me."
The prudent magistrate, recognizing the gravity of the crisis through
which his friend was passing, refrained from asking questions or
exciting him further, and grew impatient of the length of the way to
the chateau, for the change wrought in the Colonel's face alarmed him.
He feared lest the Countess' terrible disease had communicated itself
to Philip's brain. When they reached the avenue at l'Isle-Adam,
d'Albon sent the servant for the local doctor, so that the Colonel had
scarcely been laid in bed before the surgeon was beside him.
"If Monsieur le Colonel had not been fasting, the shock must have
killed him," pronounced the leech. "He was over-tired, and that saved
him," and with a few directions as to the patient's treatment, he went
to prepare a composing draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the next
morning, but the doctor had insisted on sitting up all night with him.