Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac
When the Spaniard climbed back into his barouche, he whispered to the postilion: ‘You must go as fast as the mail-coach: three francs for you if you make good speed.’
As Lucien was hesitating to climb in, the priest said: ‘Come along.’ Lucien got in on the pretext of trying an argumentum ad hominem on him.
‘Father,’ he said. ‘A man who has just, in the coolest way in the world, reeled off maxims which most middle-class people would regard as profoundly immoral…’
‘They are immoral,’ said the priest. ‘That, my son, is what Jesus Christ said: “It must needs be that offences come.” And that is why society shows such great horror at them.’
‘A man of your calibre will not be astonished at the question I am going to put.’
‘Go ahead, my son!’ said Carlos Herrera. ‘You don’t know me. Do you think I would take a secretary before I knew that he was principled enough not to rob me? I’m quite happy about you. You still have all the innocence of a man who’s capable of committing suicide at twenty. What’s your question?’
‘Why are you interested in me? What price are you asking for my obedience? Why are you offering me so much? What do you expect to get out of it?’
The Spaniard looked at Lucien and began to smile.
‘Let’s wait until we get to a hill. We’ll walk up it and talk in the open. In this carriage we might be overheard.’
Silence reigned for some time between the two travellers, and the speed at which they tore along contributed to what we might call Lucien’s moral intoxication.
‘Father, here’s a hill,’ said Lucien, awakening as from a dream.
‘Right! Let’s walk,’ said the priest, shouting to the postilion to halt.
And they both of them jumped down.
35. Why criminality and corruption go hand in hand
‘MY child,’ said the Spaniard, taking Lucien by the arm. ‘Have you pondered over Otway’s Venice preserved? Have you understood the deep friendship between man and man which binds Pierre to Jaffeir, makes them indifferent about women and alters all social relationships for them?… I’m putting that question to the poet in you.’
‘The Canon knows something about drama too,’ Lucien thought to himself. ‘Have you read Voltaire?’ he asked.
‘I’ve done better than that,’ said the Canon. ‘I put him into practice.’
‘Don’t you believe in God?…’
‘So now I’m the atheist!’ said the priest with a smile. ‘Let’s get down to facts, my boy,’ he went on, putting his arm round Lucien’s waist. ‘I’m forty-six. I’m a nobleman’s natural child, and so I have no family; and yet I have a heart. But learn this, write it down in your impressionable brain: man is terrified of solitude. And of all solitudes, moral solitude is what terrifies him most. The early anchorites lived with God and were inhabitants of the most populous world of all, the spiritual world. Misers live in a world of fantasy and self-gratification. A miser stores everything, even his sex, in his brain. Man’s first thought, whether he’s a leper or a convict, infamous or diseased, is to have someone whose destinies are wrapped up in his. To satisfy this urge, a vital one, he brings all his strength, all his might, all his energy into play. Without this over-ruling desire, would Satan have found any companions? – One might write a whole poem which would be a curtain-raiser to Paradise Lost, itself an apologia for rebellion.’
‘Such a poem would be the Iliad of corruption,’ said Lucien.
‘Well now, I am alone and I live alone. Though I wear the habit I have not the heart of a priest. My weakness is self-devotion. I live by self-devotion, and that’s why I’m a priest. I’m not afraid of ingratitude, but I myself am a grateful man. The Church means nothing to me: it’s just an idea. I have devoted myself to the King of Spain; but one cannot love the King of Spain: he’s my protector and lives on a higher plane. I want to love a creation of my own, shape it, mould it to my purposes so that I may love it as a father loves his progeny. I shall ride about in your two-wheeler, my boy, I shall enjoy your successes with women, I shall say: “This handsome young man is myself! This Marquis de Rubempré, I made him and set him in the aristocratic world. His greatness is my work; he speaks or keeps silent at my prompting and consults me on every matter.” That is what the Abbé de Vermont was for Marie-Antoinette.’
‘He brought her to the scaffold!’
‘That’s because he didn’t love the Queen!’ the priest retorted. ‘He only loved the Abbé de Vermont.’
‘Must I leave a trail of desolation behind me?’ said Lucien.
‘I have plenty of money. You can draw on it.’
‘Just now I would do much in order to extricate Séchard,’ Lucien replied in a voice which no longer suggested suicidal intentions.
‘Say one word, my son, and tomorrow he’ll get the money needed to set him free.’
‘What! You would give me twelve thousand francs?’
‘Child that you are! Don’t you see that we’re doing ten miles an hour? We shall dine in Poitiers. There, if you are willing to make this pact with me, to give me one single proof of obedience – I admit it’s asking a lot – well, the stage-coach to Bordeaux will take fifteen thousand francs to your sister.’
‘Where are these fifteen thousand francs?’
The Spanish priest gave no answer, and Lucien thought: ‘I’ve got him there! He was making fun of me.’
A minute later, the Spaniard and Lucien had silently climbed back into the carriage. Silently the priest put his hand into the pocket of his carriage, and drew out of it a leather bag, resembling a game-bag, of the kind divided into three compartments with which travellers are familiar. He pulled out a hundred Portuguese sovereigns, plunging his broad hand into it three times and each time bringing it out filled with gold coins.
‘Father, I’m yours!’ said Lucien, dazzled at the sight of this torrent of gold.
‘Child!’ said the priest, tenderly kissing Lucien on the forehead. ‘That’s only a third part of the money contained in this bag – thirty thousand francs, apart from travelling expenses.’
‘And you travel alone?’
‘What does that matter?’ said the Spaniard. ‘I have drafts on Paris for more than three hundred thousand francs. A diplomat without money is like what you were not so long ago: a poet with no will-power.’
36. On the brink of surrender
WHILE Lucien was stepping into the carriage of the self-styled Spanish diplomat, Eve was getting up to feed her son. She found the fatal letter and read it. A cold perspiration broke out on her face still moist with morning sleep. She turned dizzy and called for Marion and Kolb.
To her question: ‘Has my brother gone out?’ Kolb replied: ‘Yes, Matame, pefore it vass taylight.’
‘Keep absolutely quiet about what I am telling you,’ said Eve to the two servants. ‘My brother has no doubt gone out to put an end to his life. Hurry off both of you, make cautious enquiries and look along the river bank.’
Eve remained alone, in a state of terrible stupefaction.
She was still in the same mental turmoil when Petit-Claud made his appearance, at about seven o’clock, to talk business with her. At such moments as these, one is ready to listen to anybody.
‘Madame,’ said the solicitor, ‘our poor David is in prison and he is coming to the predicament I foresaw at the beginning of this affair. I advised him then to go into partnership with his competitors the Cointets for the exploitation of his invention, since the Cointets are in a position to provide the means for carrying out an enterprise which, as far as your husband is concerned, is only a project as yet. And so, yesterday evening, as soon as I heard of your husband’s arrest, what did I do? I went to Messrs Cointet with the intention of obtaining concessions from them which you would find satisfactory. If you try to safeguard your invention, your life will go on as it is now: nothing but legal wrangles. You’ll lose your battle and in the end, worn-out and disappointed, you’ll come to an arrangement with some moneyed man
‘You thus become, Madame, owner of the printing-office plant, which no doubt you will sell. It will certainly fetch twenty thousand francs: I can guarantee to find you a purchaser at that price. If by your deed of partnership with the Cointets you acquire fifteen thousand francs, your assets will come to thirty-five thousand francs, and at the present rate of interest that would bring you an income of two thousand francs a year. One can live on that in the provinces. And note also, Madame, that you would still have possible future returns from the partnership in question. I say “possible”, for the venture might fail. Well then, this is what I am able to obtain: firstly, David’s complete deliverance, secondly fifteen thousand francs as an indemnification for his researches without the Cointets being able to make any sort of counterclaim even if the invention were unproductive, and thirdly a company formed by David and the Cointets for the exploitation of a patent which would be taken out after experiments had been made – jointly and in secret – on his process of manufacture. And it would be formed on the following basis: the Cointet brothers will incur all the expenses, David’s capital contribution will be the purchase of the patent, and he will have one quarter of the profits. You are a woman of good judgement and sound sense – not a usual thing with very beautiful women like you. Think over these proposals and you will find them very acceptable…’
‘Oh, Monsieur!’ poor Eve cried out in desperation, melting into tears. ‘Why did you not come to me yesterday evening to propose this compromise? We should have avoided dishonour and… something much worse besides.’
‘My discussion with the Cointets who, as you must have suspected, are hiding behind Métivier, only ended at midnight. But what then has happened since yesterday evening that could be worse than our poor David’s arrest?’
‘This, is the appalling news I discovered when I got up,’ she replied, holding out Lucien’s letter to Petit-Claud. ‘You are now proving to me that you take an interest in us, that you are a friend to David and Lucien. I’ve no need to ask you to keep this secret.’
‘Don’t worry in the slightest,’ said Petit-Claud, reading and returning the letter. ‘Lucien won’t kill himself. After being the cause of his brother-in-law’s arrest, he had to have some reason for leaving you, and this strikes me as being merely an exit speech in theatrical style.’
The Cointets had achieved their ends. After persecuting the inventor and his family, they were seizing the moment when lassitude resulting from such persecution brings a longing for repose. Not all researchers have the tenacity of the bull-dog who dies with his prey between his teeth, and the Cointets had methodically studied the characters of their victims. For tall Cointet David’s arrest was the final scene in the first act of this drama. The second act had begun with the proposition that Petit-Claud had just made. Like a skilful player in a game of chess, the solicitor regarded Lucien’s impulsive move as one of those unhoped-for chances which decide the issue. He saw that Eve was so completely put in check by this event that he resolved to make use of it to win her confidence, for now he fully realized the influence she had over her husband. Therefore, instead of plunging Madame Séchard into still deeper despair, he tried to reassure her, and he was clever enough to steer her towards the prison while she was in her present state of mind, believing that, once there, she would persuade David to agree to the partnership with the Cointets.
‘David told me, Madame, that he only wanted to make money for you and your brother, but it must be clear to you now that it would be madness to try and enrich Lucien. That young man would devour three fortunes.’
Eve’s attitude showed plainly enough that the last of her illusions about her brother had vanished, and so the solicitor made a pause in order to convert his client’s silence into a kind of assent.
‘Thus, in this question,’ he resumed, ‘you and your child are alone concerned. It’s for you to decide if an income of two thousand francs is enough to make you happy, without counting what you will inherit from old Séchard. Your father-in-law has long since been piling up an income of seven or eight thousand francs irrespective of the interest he draws from his capital. So after all you have a fine future before you. Why worry?’
The solicitor left Madame Séchard to reflect on this prospect, one which, on the previous evening, tall Cointet had quite skilfully prepared. ‘Go and dangle before their eyes the possibility of laying hands on a sum of money,’ the shark of Angoulême had said to the solicitor when he had come to tell him of David’s arrest. ‘When they have got used to the idea of pocketing some money, we shall have them. We’ll do some bargaining, and bit by bit we’ll bring them down to the price we’re ready to pay for the invention.’ This remark to some extent conveys the gist of the second act in this financial drama.
When Madame Séchard, broken-hearted through her apprehensions over her brother’s fate, had dressed and gone downstairs to visit her husband in prison, she was full of anguish at the thought of passing through the streets of Angoulême by herself. Though he felt no concern for his client’s distress, Petit-Claud returned to the house to offer his arm: he had been brought back by a somewhat Machiavellian motive, that of winning credit for a tactful gesture which Eve very much appreciated. He accepted her thanks without undeceiving her. This little attention, coming from so hard and unyielding a man, and at such a moment, modified the judgements that Madame Séchard had made on Petit-Claud hitherto.
‘I’m taking you the longest way round,’ he said, ‘so that we shall not meet anybody.’
‘This is the first time, Monsieur, that I have not had the right to hold my head up as I walk along. That fact was harshly brought home to me yesterday…’
‘It’s the first and last time.’
‘Oh! I shall certainly not stay in this town.’
‘If your husband were to agree to the proposals which I have practically settled with the Cointets,’ Petit-Claud said to Eve as they arrived at the prison gate, ‘let me know. I should immediately come with Cachan’s authorization for David’s release. It’s not likely that he would have to go back to prison.’
This remark made in front of the gaol was what the Italians call a combinazione. This word expresses the indefinable act whose ingredients are a modicum of perfidy with a blend of legality, the choice of an opportune moment for a permissible fraud, a virtually lawful and well-planned piece of knavery. According to the Italians, the Saint Bartholomew massacre was a political ‘combinazione’.
37. The effect of a night in gaol
FOR the reasons set forth above, detention for debt is so rare a judicial fact in the provinces that most French towns have no debtors’ prison. When that is so the debtor is shut up in the same prison as people held on suspicion, people accused of minor or major offences and those who have already received sentence – such being the various legal stages by which those who are popularly known as criminals are brought to book. So David was temporarily lodged in one of the lower cells in the Angoulême gaol. Once his name had been entered with a statement of the sum which the law allows for the prisoner’s monthly food bill, David found himself in front of a stout man, the man who holds more power over those incarcerated than the King himself, namely the gaoler. In the provinces, one never meets with a gaoler who is thin. To begin with, his post is almost a sinecure. Secondly, a gaoler is like an innkeeper who has no overhead charges; he feeds himself well by feeding his prisoners very badly – moreover he lodges them, as an i
The prison at Angoulême dates from the Middle Ages and has not gone through any more changes than the Cathedral. Still called the House of Justice, it is backed by the magistrates’ court. It has the standard type of entrance: a door studded with nails, solid-looking, well-worn, low, and so much the more cyclopean in its construction for having one eye in the middle – the spy-hole through which the gaoler takes stock of the inmates before opening the door. A corridor runs along the front on the ground-floor, and on to this corridor a number of cells open, having high canopied windows which draw their light from the prison yard. The gaoler occupies a lodging separated from the cells by a vault which divides the ground-floor into two halves; and at the end of it one can see, once one is through the wicket, a grill shutting off the prison-yard. The gaoler led David into a cell close to the vault whose door stood opposite his lodging. He wanted to be near a man who, in view of his special situation, might be company to him.
‘It’s the best cell,’ he said when he saw that David was stupefied at the sight of this den.
Its walls were of stone and somewhat damp. There were iron bars at the very lofty windows. An icy chill struck up from the flag-stones. David could hear the rhythmic steps of the warder on sentry-go as he paced up and down the corridor. This sound, as monotonous as the boom of the tide, dins into one every minute the thought: ‘There’s a guard outside! I’m no longer free!’ All such details have a prodigious cumulative effect on the morale of honest people. David saw that the bed was execrable; but incarcerated people feel so violently upset during their first night that they do not notice how hard their couch is until the following night. The gaoler was gracious and in a natural tone proposed that David should walk about the prison-yard until night-time. His torture was only to begin when he went to bed. Prisoners were allowed no light, and a permit from the Public Attorney was needed to exempt a prisoner for debt from this regulation, which evidently only applied to those in the hands of criminal justice. The gaoler was kind enough to admit David to his fire-side, but he had to be shut up at last, at bed-time.