Honoré Balzac - 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.