Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (61 page)

‘If only we had known what a fellow-traveller chance had given us!’ said the Comtesse. ‘Climb up with us, Monsieur.’

Lucien coldly saluted the couple with a look which was both humble and menacing, and plunged into a by-road ahead of Mansle, in order to reach a farm where he might make a breakfast of bread and milk, rest and have a quiet think about his future. He had three francs left. The author of
Les Marguerites
sped on feverishly for a long time, following the river downstream and examining the lay-out of the country which was becoming more and more picturesque. About midday he reached a spot where the wide stream, banked with willows, formed a kind of lake. He paused to contemplate the pastoral grace of this fresh, leafy grove, and was much moved. A house adjoining a mill astride a branch of the river showed amid the tree-tops its thatched roof grown over with house-leeks. The front of this simple dwelling had no other ornament than a few clumps of jasmine, honeysuckle and hops, and all around was a blaze of phlox in bloom and luxuriant thick-leaved plants. On the stone-work, supported by rough piles, which kept the causeway above the highest floods, he saw nets spread out in the sun. Ducks were swimming in the clear pool beyond the mill between two currents roaring over the sluice-gates. The mill was giving forth its grating rumble. On a rustic bench the poet perceived a good, fat housewife knitting and watching over a child who was teasing the hens.

‘Good lady,’ said Lucien, stepping forward. ‘I am very tired, I have a fever, and only three francs. Will you put me up for a week? I can feed on brown bread and milk and sleep on straw. That will give me time to write to my relations so that they can send me money or come here to fetch me.’

‘Willingly,’ she said, ‘so long as my husband agrees. – What do you say, goodman?’

The miller emerged, looked at Lucien and took his pipe from his mouth to say: ‘Three francs for a week? Might as well take nothing.’

‘Perhaps I shall end up as a miller’s lad,’ the poet thought as he gazed at the delightful landscape before lying down in the bed the miller’s wife made for him. He slept so soundly in it that his hosts grew alarmed.

‘Courtois, just go and see if the young man is alive or dead,’ said the miller’s wife at about noon next day. ‘He’s been lying there for fourteen hours and I daren’t go myself.’

‘I believe,’ the miller answered as he finished spreading out his nets and fishing tackle, ‘that this nicer-looking young man might well be some little sprig of a strolling-player without a penny to bless himself with.’

‘What makes you think that, husband?’ she asked.

‘Well, he’s no prince, or minister, or deputy or bishop, and yet he’s got white hands like a man who doesn’t work.’

‘I’m very surprised then that hunger doesn’t wake him up,’ said the miller’s wife, who had been getting a meal ready for the guest chance had sent them the previous day. ‘– An actor?’ she continued. ‘Where would he be going? It’s too early for the Angoulême fair.’

Neither the miller nor his wife had any idea that, besides actors, princes and bishops, there exists a kind of man who is both prince and actor, a man who discharges a splendid sacerdotal function: the Poet, who seems to be doing nothing but nevertheless reigns over Humanity once he has learnt how to depict it.

‘What
can
he be then?’ Courtois asked his wife.

‘Could it be risky to take him in?’ asked the miller’s wife.

‘No fear! Thieves have more go in them. He’d have already robbed us by now.’

‘I’m neither prince, nor robber, nor bishop, nor actor,’ said Lucien sadly, suddenly showing himself – no doubt he had heard the colloquy between man and wife through the casement. ‘I’m a poor tired young man who has walked all the way from Paris. My name is Lucien de Rubempré, and I’m the son of Monsieur Chardon, who owned the chemist’s shop in L’Houmeau before Postel. My sister married David Séchard, the printer in the Place du Mûrier in Angoulême.’

‘Let’s see,’ said the miller. ‘Isn’t that printer the son of the old fox who’s running a vineyard at Marsac?’

‘The very man,’ Lucien answered.

‘Well now,’ Courtois went on. ‘He’s a funny sort of father. They say he’s making his son sell up, and he owns more than two hundred thousand francs’ worth of land, without counting what he keeps in his crock.’

When body and soul have been broken in a long and painful struggle, the hour at which a man’s strength reaches exhaustion is followed either by death or by a state of annihilation similar to death; but at that juncture constitutions capable of resistance find their strength renewed. Lucien, assailed by a crisis of this sort, looked as if he were about to expire at the moment when he learned, though in vague terms, of the catastrophe which had befallen David Séchard, his brother-in-law.

‘Oh! my sister!’ he cried. ‘My God, what have I done? I’m an infamous wretch.’

Then he collapsed on to a wooden bench, as pallid and prostrate as a dying man. The miller’s wife hurried to him with a bowl of milk which she forced him to drink; but he begged the miller to help him back to his bed, asking his forgiveness for the embarrassment his death would cause, for he thought his last hour had come. Faced with the spectre of death, the handsome poet was seized with religious ideas. He asked to see a priest, make his confession and receive the Sacraments. Such a plaintive request, made in a failing voice by a young man with such grace of features and figure, went straight to Madame Courtois’s heart.

‘Look now, husband, take the mare and find Monsieur Marron, the doctor at Marsac. He’ll see what’s wrong with this young man, who looks very poorly to me. Fetch the Curé too. Maybe they’ll know better than you how things stand with the printer in the Place du Mûrier – Postel is Monsieur Marron’s son-in-law.’

When Courtois had gone, his wife, imbued like all country folk with the notion that sick people must have food, administered refreshment to Lucien, who took what he was given, now abandoning himself to violent remorse which, acting like a poultice on a sore, produced a revulsion and saved him from total apathy.

Courtois’s mill was two or three miles away from Marsac,
the chief town in the canton, half-way between Mansle and Angoulême. So the good miller was not slow in bringing back the doctor and the parish priest of Marsac. Both of them had heard of Lucien’s liaison with Madame de Bargeton, and since everybody in the Charente valley was at that time gossiping about that lady’s marriage and her return to Angoulême with the new Prefect, the Comte Sixte du Châtelet, when they learned that Lucien was staying at the mill, both doctor and priest were intensely curious to know what had prevented Monsieur de Bargeton’s widow from marrying the young poet with whom she had eloped, and also to find out if his motive for coming home was to rescue his brother-in-law. And so both curiosity and humane feelings brought prompt help to the moribund poet. Consequently, two hours after Courtois’s departure, Lucien heard the country doctor’s rickety gig clattering along the stony roadway leading’ to the mill. The two Marrons – they were uncle and nephew – came in immediately. Thus, at that moment, Lucien met two people who were as closely connected with David Séchard’s father as neighbours in a little vine-growing hamlet can be. When the doctor had examined the sick man, felt his pulse and inspected his tongue, he looked towards the miller’s wife with a smile calculated to dissipate any anxiety.

‘Madame Courtois,’ he said. ‘If, as I don’t doubt, you’ve a good bottle of wine in your cellar and a nice eel in your tank, serve them both to your sick man. He’s suffering from stiffness, that’s all. If you do that, our great man will be on his legs again in no time!’

‘Ah, Monsieur,’ said Lucien. ‘I’m suffering from a spiritual, not a physical ailment, and these good people have dealt me a mortal blow by telling me of the disasters which have befallen my sister, Madame Séchard. In Heaven’s name, you who have, according to Madame Courtois, married your daughter to Postel must know something about David Séchard’s affairs!’

‘He’s probably in prison,’ the doctor replied. ‘His father refused to help him…’

‘In prison!’ Lucien repeated. ‘But why?’

‘Why? For drafts issued from Paris which no doubt had slipped his memory – he doesn’t seem to know very well what he’s doing.’

‘I beg you to leave me with Monsieur le Curé,’ said the poet, whose countenance had become very grave.

The doctor, the miller and his wife went out. When Lucien was alone with the old priest, he exclaimed: ‘Monsieur le Curé, I deserve the death which I feel to be approaching. I am the greatest of sinners and nothing is left to me but to throw myself into the arms of the Church. It is I, father, who have brought this affliction on my sister and brother – for David Séchard is a true brother to me. I drew some bills which David has not been able to meet… I have ruined him. The abject misery I was in made me forget this crime. The suit to which these bills gave rise in Paris was settled through the intervention of a millionaire and I thought he had paid them off. But he can’t have done so.’

Thereupon Lucien told the priest of all his misfortunes. When he had finished this tragic story, a feverish narration truly worthy of a poet, he entreated the priest to go to Angoulême to enquire of Eve, his sister, and Madame Chardon, his mother, how things really stood, so that he might know if he still might make amends.

‘Until your return, Monsieur le Curé,’ he said, weeping bitterly, ‘I may live on. If my mother, my sister and David don’t cast me out, I shall not die!’

Lucien’s eloquence, the tears he shed during his lamentable confession, the sight of such a handsome young man, pale and half-dead with despair, this tale of mishaps putting too great a strain on human endurance, all excited interest and pity in the clergyman.

‘In the provinces, Monsieur, as in Paris,’ the Curé replied, ‘one must believe only half of what one is told. Don’t be alarmed about a rumour which, half a dozen miles away from Angoulême, is probably quite false. Old Séchard, our neighbour, left Marsac a few days ago, and so he may be busy settling his son’s affairs. I will go to Angoulême, and when I come back, I shall be able to tell you if you can return to
your family. Your confession and your repentance will help me to plead your cause with them.’

The Curé did not know that, during the last eighteen months, Lucien had repented so many times that his repentance, however heart-felt it seemed, had no other value than that of a well-enacted scene – and yet one enacted in good faith!

After the priest, the doctor had his turn. Diagnosing an attack of nerves whose danger was receding, the nephew was as consoling as the uncle had been: his final recommendation was that his patient should take plenty of nourishment.

‘Have you had lunch? Would you like something? We weren’t expecting you, what a pleasant surprise!’

They showered questions on him. Madame Postel was certainly cut out to be the wife of a L’Houmeau chemist. Small in stature like Postel, she had the rubicund face of a country-bred girl. Her figure was common enough, and all her beauty consisted in the freshness of her complexion. Her red hair, falling very low over her forehead, her manners and style of speech, well suited to the simplicity engraved in every feature of her round face, her pale-brown eyes, everything
about her in fact announced that she had been married only for her expectations. And so, after a year as housewife, she already ruled the roost and seemed to have gained complete control of Postel, who was only too happy to have married an heiress. Madame Léonie Postel, née Marron, was breastfeeding her son, whom the old priest, the doctor and Postel adored – an unattractive infant who took after both his father and his mother.

‘Well now, Uncle,’ said Léonie. ‘What can you be doing in Angoulême, since you won’t take anything and talk of leaving no sooner than you have got here?’

As soon as the worthy priest had uttered the names of Eve and David Séchard, Postel turned red, and Léonie treated the little man to the glance of obligatory jealousy which a woman entirely in command of her husband never fails to throw back upon his past in the interest of her own future.

‘But what have those people done for you, Uncle, that you should be bothering about their affairs?’ Léonie asked with visible tartness.

‘They are in misfortune, my daughter,’ he answered, and he described to Postel the state in which he had found Lucien at the Courtois’s mill.

‘Ah! So that’s the plight he’s in on his return from Paris!’ cried Postel. ‘Poor lad! And yet he had his wits about him, and he was ambitious! He went after the wheat and comes back without even the chaff. But what’s he here for? His sister’s living in appalling poverty, for all these men of genius, David no less than Lucien, are hopeless when business is concerned. We discussed his case at the Tribunal of Commerce and, as one of its members, I had to sign the judgement against him…! It went to my heart! I’m not sure whether, in the present circumstances, Lucien can go to his sister’s house; but in any case the little room he lived in here is unoccupied, and I’m ready to offer it to him.’

‘Very good, Postel,’ said the priest, putting on his three-cornered hat and preparing to leave the shop after kissing the child who was asleep in Léonie’s arms.

‘You will surely dine with us, Uncle,’ said Madame Postel.
‘It will take you a long time if you want to sort out these people’s troubles. My husband will take you back home in his pony and trap.’

Husband and wife watched their precious uncle as he departed for Angoulême.

‘He’s pretty spry for his age,’ the apothecary remarked.

While our venerable cleric climbs the slope towards Angoulême, it will not be irrelevant to unravel the skein of interests in which he was about to get involved.