Array The griffin classics - The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac

At this moment they went into church, and each of them, instead of reading the order of Mass, fell into her own train of thought.

“Dear, dear, how many sins are there in all that?” thought Mariette.

Rosalie, whose soul, brain, and heart were completely upset by reading the story, by this time regarded it as history, written for her rival. By dint of thinking of nothing else, like a child, she ended by believing that the Eastern Review was no doubt forwarded to Albert’s lady-love.

“Oh!” said she to herself, her head buried in her hands in the attitude of a person lost in prayer; “oh! how can I get my father to look through the list of people to whom the Review is sent?”

After breakfast she took a turn in the garden with her father, coaxing and cajoling him, and brought him to the kiosk.

“Do you suppose, my dear little papa, that our Review is ever read abroad?”

“It is but just started — ”

“Well, I will wager that it is.”

“It is hardly possible.”

“Just go and find out, and note the names of any subscribers out of France.”

Two hours later Monsieur de Watteville said to his daughter:

“I was right; there is not one foreign subscriber as yet. They hope to get some at Neufchatel, at Berne, and at Geneva. One copy, is in fact, sent to Italy, but it is not paid for — to a Milanese lady at her country house at Belgirate, on Lago Maggiore.

“What is her name?”

“The Duchesse d’Argaiolo.”

“Do you know her, papa?”

“I have heard about her. She was by birth a Princess Soderini, a Florentine, a very great lady, and quite as rich as her husband, who has one of the largest fortunes in Lombardy. Their villa on the Lago Maggiore is one of the sights of Italy.”

Two days after, Mariette placed the following letter in Mademoiselle de Watteville’s hand: —

Albert Savaron to Leopold Hannequin.

“Yes, ‘tis so, my dear friend; I am at Besancon, while you thought

I was traveling. I would not tell you anything till success should

begin, and now it is dawning. Yes, my dear Leopold, after so many

abortive undertakings, over which I have shed the best of my

blood, have wasted so many efforts, spent so much courage, I have

made up my mind to do as you have done — to start on a beaten path,

on the highroad, as the longest but the safest. I can see you jump

with surprise in your lawyer’s chair!

“But do not suppose that anything is changed in my personal life,

of which you alone in the world know the secret, and that under

the reservations she insists on. I did not tell you, my friend;

but I was horribly weary of Paris. The outcome of the first

enterprise, on which I had founded all my hopes, and which came to

a bad end in consequence of the utter rascality of my two

partners, who combined to cheat and fleece me — me, though

everything was done by my energy — made me give up the pursuit of a

fortune after the loss of three years of my life. One of these

years was spent in the law courts, and perhaps I should have come

worse out of the scrape if I had not been made to study law when I

was twenty.

“I made up my mind to go into politics solely, to the end that I

may some day find my name on a list for promotion to the Senate

under the title of Comte Albert Savaron de Savarus, and so revive

in France a good name now extinct in Belgium — though indeed I am

neither legitimate nor legitimized.”

“Ah! I knew it! He is of noble birth!” exclaimed Rosalie, dropping the letter.

“You know how conscientiously I studied, how faithful and useful I

was as an obscure journalist, and how excellent a secretary to the

statesman who, on his part, was true to me in 1829. Flung to the

depths once more by the revolution of July just when my name was

becoming known, at the very moment when, as Master of Appeals, I

was about to find my place as a necessary wheel in the political

machine, I committed the blunder of remaining faithful to the

fallen, and fighting for them, without them. Oh! why was I but

three-and-thirty, and why did I not apply to you to make me

eligible? I concealed from you all my devotedness and my dangers.

What would you have? I was full of faith. We should not have

agreed.

“Ten months ago, when you saw me so gay and contented, writing my

political articles, I was in despair; I foresaw my fate, at the

age of thirty-seven, with two thousand francs for my whole

fortune, without the smallest fame, just having failed in a noble

undertaking, the founding, namely, of a daily paper answering only

to a need of the future instead of appealing to the passions of

the moment. I did not know which way to turn, and I felt my own

value! I wandered about, gloomy and hurt, through the lonely

places of Paris — Paris which had slipped through my fingers

— thinking of my crushed ambitions, but never giving them up. Oh,

what frantic letters I wrote at that time to her , my second

conscience, my other self! Sometimes I would say to myself, ‘Why

did I sketch so vast a programme of life? Why demand everything?

Why not wait for happiness while devoting myself to some

mechanical employment.’

“I then looked about me for some modest appointment by which I

might live. I was about to get the editorship of a paper under a

manager who did not know much about it, a man of wealth and

ambition, when I took fright. ‘Would she ever accept as her

husband a man who had stooped so low?’ I wondered.

“This reflection made me two-and-twenty again. But, oh, my dear

Leopold, how the soul is worn by these perplexities! What must not

the caged eagles suffer, and imprisoned lions! — They suffer what

Napoleon suffered, not at Saint Helena, but on the Quay of the

Tuileries, on the 10th of August, when he saw Louis XVI. defending

himself so badly while he could have quelled the insurrection; as

he actually did, on the same spot, a little later, in Vendemiaire.

Well, my life has been a torment of that kind, extending over four

years. How many a speech to the Chamber have I not delivered in

the deserted alleys of the Bois de Boulogne! These wasted

harangues have at any rate sharpened my tongue and accustomed my

mind to formulate its ideas in words. And while I was undergoing

this secret torture, you were getting married, you had paid for

your business, you were made law-clerk to the Maire of your

district, after gaining a cross for a wound at Saint-Merri.

“Now, listen. When I was a small boy and tortured cock-chafers,

the poor insects had one form of struggle which used almost to put

me in a fever. It was when I saw them making repeated efforts to

fly but without getting away, though they could spread their

wings. We used to say, ‘They are marking time.’ Now was this

sympathy? Was it a vision of my own future? — Oh! to spread my

wings and yet be unable to fly! That has been my predicament since

that fine undertaking by which I was disgusted, but which has now

made four families rich.

“At last, seven months ago, I determined to make myself a name at

the Paris Bar, seeing how many vacancies had been left by the

promotion of several lawyers to eminent positions. But when I

remembered the rivalry I had seen among men of the press, and how

difficult it is to achieve anything of any kind in Paris, the

arena where so many champions meet, I came to a determination

painful to myself, but certain in its results, and perhaps quicker