At the Sign of the Cat and Racket Honoré de Balzac 26793 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of At the Sign of the Cat and
Racket
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will
have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

Title: At the Sign of the Cat and Racket

Author: Honoré de Balzac

Translator: Clara Bell

Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #1680]
Most recently updated: January 27, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1680

Credits: Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny, and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT THE SIGN
OF THE CAT AND RACKET ***

AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND
RACKET

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Clara Bell

DEDICATION

To Mademoiselle Marie de Montheau

AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET

ADDENDUM

AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET

Half-way down the Rue Saint-Denis, almost at the corner of the Rue du
Petit-Lion, there stood formerly one of those delightful houses which enable
historians to reconstruct old Paris by analogy. The threatening walls of this
tumbledown abode seemed to have been decorated with hieroglyphics. For
what other name could the passer-by give to the Xs and Vs which the
horizontal or diagonal timbers traced on the front, outlined by little parallel
cracks in the plaster? It was evident that every beam quivered in its
mortices at the passing of the lightest vehicle. This venerable structure was
crowned by a triangular roof of which no example will, ere long, be seen in
Paris. This covering, warped by the extremes of the Paris climate, projected
three feet over the roadway, as much to protect the threshold from the
rainfall as to shelter the wall of a loft and its sill-less dormer-window. This
upper story was built of planks, overlapping each other like slates, in order,
no doubt, not to overweight the frail house.
One rainy morning in the month of March, a young man, carefully
wrapped in his cloak, stood under the awning of a shop opposite this old
house, which he was studying with the enthusiasm of an antiquary. In point
of fact, this relic of the civic life of the sixteenth century offered more than
one problem to the consideration of an observer. Each story presented some
singularity; on the first floor four tall, narrow windows, close together, were
filled as to the lower panes with boards, so as to produce the doubtful light
by which a clever salesman can ascribe to his goods the color his customers
inquire for. The young man seemed very scornful of this part of the house;
his eyes had not yet rested on it. The windows of the second floor, where
the Venetian blinds were drawn up, revealing little dingy muslin curtains
behind the large Bohemian glass panes, did not interest him either. His
attention was attracted to the third floor, to the modest sash-frames of wood,
so clumsily wrought that they might have found a place in the Museum of
Arts and Crafts to illustrate the early efforts of French carpentry. These
windows were glazed with small squares of glass so green that, but for his
good eyes, the young man could not have seen the blue-checked cotton

curtains which screened the mysteries of the room from profane eyes. Now
and then the watcher, weary of his fruitless contemplation, or of the silence
in which the house was buried, like the whole neighborhood, dropped his
eyes towards the lower regions. An involuntary smile parted his lips each
time he looked at the shop, where, in fact, there were some laughable
details.
A formidable wooden beam, resting on four pillars, which appeared to
have bent under the weight of the decrepit house, had been encrusted with
as many coats of different paint as there are of rouge on an old duchess’
cheek. In the middle of this broad and fantastically carved joist there was an
old painting representing a cat playing rackets. This picture was what
moved the young man to mirth. But it must be said that the wittiest of
modern painters could not invent so comical a caricature. The animal held
in one of its forepaws a racket as big as itself, and stood on its hind legs to
aim at hitting an enormous ball, returned by a man in a fine embroidered
coat. Drawing, color, and accessories, all were treated in such a way as to
suggest that the artist had meant to make game of the shop-owner and of the
passing observer. Time, while impairing this artless painting, had made it
yet more grotesque by introducing some uncertain features which must
have puzzled the conscientious idler. For instance, the cat’s tail had been
eaten into in such a way that it might now have been taken for the figure of
a spectator—so long, and thick, and furry were the tails of our forefathers’
cats. To the right of the picture, on an azure field which ill-disguised the
decay of the wood, might be read the name “Guillaume,” and to the left,
“Successor to Master Chevrel.” Sun and rain had worn away most of the
gilding parsimoniously applied to the letters of this superscription, in which
the Us and Vs had changed places in obedience to the laws of old-world
orthography.
To quench the pride of those who believe that the world is growing
cleverer day by day, and that modern humbug surpasses everything, it may
be observed that these signs, of which the origin seems so whimsical to
many Paris merchants, are the dead pictures of once living pictures by
which our roguish ancestors contrived to tempt customers into their houses.
Thus the Spinning Sow, the Green Monkey, and others, were animals in
cages whose skills astonished the passer-by, and whose accomplishments
prove the patience of the fifteenth-century artisan. Such curiosities did more
to enrich their fortunate owners than the signs of “Providence,” “Good-

faith,” “Grace of God,” and “Decapitation of John the Baptist,” which may
still be seen in the Rue Saint-Denis.
However, our stranger was certainly not standing there to admire the cat,
which a minute’s attention sufficed to stamp on his memory. The young
man himself had his peculiarities. His cloak, folded after the manner of an
antique drapery, showed a smart pair of shoes, all the more remarkable in
the midst of the Paris mud, because he wore white silk stockings, on which
the splashes betrayed his impatience. He had just come, no doubt, from a
wedding or a ball; for at this early hour he had in his hand a pair of white
gloves, and his black hair, now out of curl, and flowing over his shoulders,
showed that it had been dressed a la Caracalla, a fashion introduced as
much by David’s school of painting as by the mania for Greek and Roman
styles which characterized the early years of this century.
In spite of the noise made by a few market gardeners, who, being late,
rattled past towards the great market-place at a gallop, the busy street lay in
a stillness of which the magic charm is known only to those who have
wandered through deserted Paris at the hours when its roar, hushed for a
moment, rises and spreads in the distance like the great voice of the sea.
This strange young man must have seemed as curious to the shopkeeping
folk of the “Cat and Racket” as the “Cat and Racket” was to him. A
dazzlingly white cravat made his anxious face look even paler than it really
was. The fire that flashed in his black eyes, gloomy and sparkling by turns,
was in harmony with the singular outline of his features, with his wide,
flexible mouth, hardened into a smile. His forehead, knit with violent
annoyance, had a stamp of doom. Is not the forehead the most prophetic
feature of a man? When the stranger’s brow expressed passion the furrows
formed in it were terrible in their strength and energy; but when he
recovered his calmness, so easily upset, it beamed with a luminous grace
which gave great attractiveness to a countenance in which joy, grief, love,
anger, or scorn blazed out so contagiously that the coldest man could not
fail to be impressed.
He was so thoroughly vexed by the time when the dormer-window of the
loft was suddenly flung open, that he did not observe the apparition of three
laughing faces, pink and white and chubby, but as vulgar as the face of
Commerce as it is seen in sculpture on certain monuments. These three
faces, framed by the window, recalled the puffy cherubs floating among the

clouds that surround God the Father. The apprentices snuffed up the
exhalations of the street with an eagerness that showed how hot and
poisonous the atmosphere of their garret must be. After pointing to the
singular sentinel, the most jovial, as he seemed, of the apprentices retired
and came back holding an instrument whose hard metal pipe is now
superseded by a leather tube; and they all grinned with mischief as they
looked down on the loiterer, and sprinkled him with a fine white shower of
which the scent proved that three chins had just been shaved. Standing on
tiptoe, in the farthest corner of their loft, to enjoy their victim’s rage, the
lads ceased laughing on seeing the haughty indifference with which the
young man shook his cloak, and the intense contempt expressed by his face
as he glanced up at the empty window-frame.
At this moment a slender white hand threw up the lower half of one of
the clumsy windows on the third floor by the aid of the sash runners, of
which the pulley so often suddenly gives way and releases the heavy panes
it ought to hold up. The watcher was then rewarded for his long waiting.
The face of a young girl appeared, as fresh as one of the white cups that
bloom on the bosom of the waters, crowned by a frill of tumbled muslin,
which gave her head a look of exquisite innocence. Though wrapped in
brown stuff, her neck and shoulders gleamed here and there through little
openings left by her movements in sleep. No expression of embarrassment
detracted from the candor of her face, or the calm look of eyes
immortalized long since in the sublime works of Raphael; here were the
same grace, the same repose as in those Virgins, and now proverbial. There
was a delightful contrast between the cheeks of that face on which sleep
had, as it were, given high relief to a superabundance of life, and the
antiquity of the heavy window with its clumsy shape and black sill. Like
those day-blowing flowers, which in the early morning have not yet
unfurled their cups, twisted by the chills of night, the girl, as yet hardly
awake, let her blue eyes wander beyond the neighboring roofs to look at the
sky; then, from habit, she cast them down on the gloomy depths of the
street, where they immediately met those of her adorer. Vanity, no doubt,
distressed her at being seen in undress; she started back, the worn pulley
gave way, and the sash fell with the rapid run, which in our day has earned
for this artless invention of our forefathers an odious name, Fenetre a la
Guillotine. The vision had disappeared. To the young man the most radiant
star of morning seemed to be hidden by a cloud.

During these little incidents the heavy inside shutters that protected the
slight windows of the shop of the “Cat and Racket” had been removed as if
by magic. The old door with its knocker was opened back against the wall
of the entry by a man-servant, apparently coeval with the sign, who, with a
shaking hand, hung upon it a square of cloth, on which were embroidered in
yellow silk the words: “Guillaume, successor to Chevrel.” Many a passer-
by would have found it difficult to guess the class of trade carried on by
Monsieur Guillaume. Between the strong iron bars which protected his shop
windows on the outside, certain packages, wrapped in brown linen, were
hardly visible, though as numerous as herrings swimming in a shoal.
Notwithstanding the primitive aspect of the Gothic front, Monsieur
Guillaume, of all the merchant clothiers in Paris, was the one whose stores
were always the best provided, whose connections were the most extensive,
and whose commercial honesty never lay under the slightest suspicion. If
some of his brethren in business made a contract with the Government, and
had not the required quantity of cloth, he was always ready to deliver it,
however large the number of pieces tendered for. The wily dealer knew a
thousand ways of extracting the largest profits without being obliged, like
them, to court patrons, cringing to them, or making them costly presents.
When his fellow-tradesmen could only pay in good bills of long date, he
would mention his notary as an accommodating man, and managed to get a
second profit out of the bargain, thanks to this arrangement, which had
made it a proverb among the traders of the Rue Saint-Denis: “Heaven
preserve you from Monsieur Guillaume’s notary!” to signify a heavy
discount.
The old merchant was to be seen standing on the threshold of his shop, as
if by a miracle, the instant the servant withdrew. Monsieur Guillaume
looked at the Rue Saint-Denis, at the neighboring shops, and at the weather,
like a man disembarking at Havre, and seeing France once more after a long
voyage. Having convinced himself that nothing had changed while he was
asleep, he presently perceived the stranger on guard, and he, on his part,
gazed at the patriarchal draper as Humboldt may have scrutinized the first
electric eel he saw in America. Monsieur Guillaume wore loose black
velvet breeches, pepper-and-salt stockings, and square toed shoes with
silver buckles. His coat, with square-cut fronts, square-cut tails, and square-
cut collar clothed his slightly bent figure in greenish cloth, finished with
white metal buttons, tawny from wear. His gray hair was so accurately

combed and flattened over his yellow pate that it made it look like a
furrowed field. His little green eyes, that might have been pierced with a
gimlet, flashed beneath arches faintly tinged with red in the place of
eyebrows. Anxieties had wrinkled his forehead with as many horizontal
lines as there were creases in his coat. This colorless face expressed
patience, commercial shrewdness, and the sort of wily cupidity which is
needful in business. At that time these old families were less rare than they
are now, in which the characteristic habits and costume of their calling,
surviving in the midst of more recent civilization, were preserved as
cherished traditions, like the antediluvian remains found by Cuvier in the
quarries.
The head of the Guillaume family was a notable upholder of ancient
practices; he might be heard to regret the Provost of Merchants, and never
did he mention a decision of the Tribunal of Commerce without calling it
the Sentence of the Consuls. Up and dressed the first of the household, in
obedience, no doubt, to these old customs, he stood sternly awaiting the
appearance of his three assistants, ready to scold them in case they were
late. These young disciples of Mercury knew nothing more terrible than the
wordless assiduity with which the master scrutinized their faces and their
movements on Monday in search of evidence or traces of their pranks. But
at this moment the old clothier paid no heed to his apprentices; he was
absorbed in trying to divine the motive of the anxious looks which the
young man in silk stockings and a cloak cast alternately at his signboard
and into the depths of his shop. The daylight was now brighter, and enabled
the stranger to discern the cashier’s corner enclosed by a railing and
screened by old green silk curtains, where were kept the immense ledgers,
the silent oracles of the house. The too inquisitive gazer seemed to covet
this little nook, and to be taking the plan of a dining-room at one side,
lighted by a skylight, whence the family at meals could easily see the
smallest incident that might occur at the shop-door. So much affection for
his dwelling seemed suspicious to a trader who had lived long enough to
remember the law of maximum prices; Monsieur Guillaume naturally
thought that this sinister personage had an eye to the till of the Cat and
Racket. After quietly observing the mute duel which was going on between
his master and the stranger, the eldest of the apprentices, having seen that
the young man was stealthily watching the windows of the third floor,
ventured to place himself on the stone flag where Monsieur Guillaume was

standing. He took two steps out into the street, raised his head, and fancied
that he caught sight of Mademoiselle Augustine Guillaume in hasty retreat.
The draper, annoyed by his assistant’s perspicacity, shot a side glance at
him; but the draper and his amorous apprentice were suddenly relieved
from the fears which the young man’s presence had excited in their minds.
He hailed a hackney cab on its way to a neighboring stand, and jumped into
it with an air of affected indifference. This departure was a balm to the
hearts of the other two lads, who had been somewhat uneasy as to meeting
the victim of their practical joke.
“Well, gentlemen, what ails you that you are standing there with your
arms folded?” said Monsieur Guillaume to his three neophytes. “In former
days, bless you, when I was in Master Chevrel’s service, I should have
overhauled more than two pieces of cloth by this time.”
“Then it was daylight earlier,” said the second assistant, whose duty this
was.
The old shopkeeper could not help smiling. Though two of these young
fellows, who were confided to his care by their fathers, rich manufacturers
at Louviers and at Sedan, had only to ask and to have a hundred thousand
francs the day when they were old enough to settle in life, Guillaume
regarded it as his duty to keep them under the rod of an old-world
despotism, unknown nowadays in the showy modern shops, where the
apprentices expect to be rich men at thirty. He made them work like
Negroes. These three assistants were equal to a business which would harry
ten such clerks as those whose sybaritical tastes now swell the columns of
the budget. Not a sound disturbed the peace of this solemn house, where the
hinges were always oiled, and where the meanest article of furniture
showed the respectable cleanliness which reveals strict order and economy.
The most waggish of the three youths often amused himself by writing the
date of its first appearance on the Gruyere cheese which was left to their
tender mercies at breakfast, and which it was their pleasure to leave
untouched. This bit of mischief, and a few others of the same stamp, would
sometimes bring a smile on the face of the younger of Guillaume’s
daughters, the pretty maiden who has just now appeared to the bewitched
man in the street.
Though each of these apprentices, even the eldest, paid a round sum for
his board, not one of them would have been bold enough to remain at the

master’s table when dessert was served. When Madame Guillaume talked
of dressing the salad, the hapless youths trembled as they thought of the
thrift with which her prudent hand dispensed the oil. They could never think
of spending a night away from the house without having given, long before,
a plausible reason for such an irregularity. Every Sunday, each in his turn,
two of them accompanied the Guillaume family to Mass at Saint-Leu, and
to vespers. Mesdemoiselles Virginie and Augustine, simply attired in cotton
print, each took the arm of an apprentice and walked in front, under the
piercing eye of their mother, who closed the little family procession with
her husband, accustomed by her to carry two large prayer-books, bound in
black morocco. The second apprentice received no salary. As for the eldest,
whose twelve years of perseverance and discretion had initiated him into
the secrets of the house, he was paid eight hundred francs a year as the
reward of his labors. On certain family festivals he received as a gratuity
some little gift, to which Madame Guillaume’s dry and wrinkled hand alone
gave value—netted purses, which she took care to stuff with cotton wool, to
show off the fancy stitches, braces of the strongest make, or heavy silk
stockings. Sometimes, but rarely, this prime minister was admitted to share
the pleasures of the family when they went into the country, or when, after
waiting for months, they made up their mind to exert the right acquired by
taking a box at the theatre to command a piece which Paris had already
forgotten.
As to the other assistants, the barrier of respect which formerly divided a
master draper from his apprentices was that they would have been more
likely to steal a piece of cloth than to infringe this time-honored etiquette.
Such reserve may now appear ridiculous; but these old houses were a
school of honesty and sound morals. The masters adopted their apprentices.
The young man’s linen was cared for, mended, and often replaced by the
mistress of the house. If an apprentice fell ill, he was the object of truly
maternal attention. In a case of danger the master lavished his money in
calling in the most celebrated physicians, for he was not answerable to their
parents merely for the good conduct and training of the lads. If one of them,
whose character was unimpeachable, suffered misfortune, these old
tradesmen knew how to value the intelligence he had displayed, and they
did not hesitate to entrust the happiness of their daughters to men whom
they had long trusted with their fortunes. Guillaume was one of these men
of the old school, and if he had their ridiculous side, he had all their good

qualities; and Joseph Lebas, the chief assistant, an orphan without any
fortune, was in his mind destined to be the husband of Virginie, his elder
daughter. But Joseph did not share the symmetrical ideas of his master, who
would not for an empire have given his second daughter in marriage before
the elder. The unhappy assistant felt that his heart was wholly given to
Mademoiselle Augustine, the younger. In order to justify this passion,
which had grown up in secret, it is necessary to inquire a little further into
the springs of the absolute government which ruled the old cloth-merchant’s
household.
Guillaume had two daughters. The elder, Mademoiselle Virginie, was the
very image of her mother. Madame Guillaume, daughter of the Sieur
Chevrel, sat so upright in the stool behind her desk, that more than once she
had heard some wag bet that she was a stuffed figure. Her long, thin face
betrayed exaggerated piety. Devoid of attractions or of amiable manners,
Madame Guillaume commonly decorated her head—that of a woman near
on sixty—with a cap of a particular and unvarying shape, with long lappets,
like that of a widow. In all the neighborhood she was known as the
“portress nun.” Her speech was curt, and her movements had the stiff
precision of a semaphore. Her eye, with a gleam in it like a cat’s, seemed to
spite the world because she was so ugly. Mademoiselle Virginie, brought
up, like her younger sister, under the domestic rule of her mother, had
reached the age of eight-and-twenty. Youth mitigated the graceless effect
which her likeness to her mother sometimes gave to her features, but
maternal austerity had endowed her with two great qualities which made up
for everything. She was patient and gentle. Mademoiselle Augustine, who
was but just eighteen, was not like either her father or her mother. She was
one of those daughters whose total absence of any physical affinity with
their parents makes one believe in the adage: “God gives children.”
Augustine was little, or, to describe her more truly, delicately made. Full of
gracious candor, a man of the world could have found no fault in the
charming girl beyond a certain meanness of gesture or vulgarity of attitude,
and sometimes a want of ease. Her silent and placid face was full of the
transient melancholy which comes over all young girls who are too weak to
dare to resist their mother’s will.
The two sisters, always plainly dressed, could not gratify the innate
vanity of womanhood but by a luxury of cleanliness which became them
wonderfully, and made them harmonize with the polished counters and the

shining shelves, on which the old man-servant never left a speck of dust,
and with the old-world simplicity of all they saw about them. As their style
of living compelled them to find the elements of happiness in persistent
work, Augustine and Virginie had hitherto always satisfied their mother,
who secretly prided herself on the perfect characters of her two daughters. It
is easy to imagine the results of the training they had received. Brought up
to a commercial life, accustomed to hear nothing but dreary arguments and
calculations about trade, having studied nothing but grammar, book-
keeping, a little Bible-history, and the history of France in Le Ragois, and
never reading any book but what their mother would sanction, their ideas
had not acquired much scope. They knew perfectly how to keep house; they
were familiar with the prices of things; they understood the difficulty of
amassing money; they were economical, and had a great respect for the
qualities that make a man of business. Although their father was rich, they
were as skilled in darning as in embroidery; their mother often talked of
having them taught to cook, so that they might know how to order a dinner
and scold a cook with due knowledge. They knew nothing of the pleasures
of the world; and, seeing how their parents spent their exemplary lives, they
very rarely suffered their eyes to wander beyond the walls of their
hereditary home, which to their mother was the whole universe. The
meetings to which family anniversaries gave rise filled in the future of
earthly joy to them.
When the great drawing-room on the second floor was to be prepared to
receive company—Madame Roguin, a Demoiselle Chevrel, fifteen months
younger than her cousin, and bedecked with diamonds; young Rabourdin,
employed in the Finance Office; Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, the rich
perfumer, and his wife, known as Madame Cesar; Monsieur Camusot, the
richest silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, with his father-in-law,
Monsieur Cardot, two or three old bankers, and some immaculate ladies—
the arrangements, made necessary by the way in which everything was
packed away—the plate, the Dresden china, the candlesticks, and the glass
—made a variety in the monotonous lives of the three women, who came
and went and exerted themselves as nuns would to receive their bishop.
Then, in the evening, when all three were tired out with having wiped,
rubbed, unpacked, and arranged all the gauds of the festival, as the girls
helped their mother to undress, Madame Guillaume would say to them,
“Children, we have done nothing today.”

When, on very great occasions, “the portress nun” allowed dancing,
restricting the games of boston, whist, and backgammon within the limits of
her bedroom, such a concession was accounted as the most unhoped
felicity, and made them happier than going to the great balls, to two or three
of which Guillaume would take the girls at the time of the Carnival.
And once a year the worthy draper gave an entertainment, when he
spared no expense. However rich and fashionable the persons invited might
be, they were careful not to be absent; for the most important houses on the
exchange had recourse to the immense credit, the fortune, or the time-
honored experience of Monsieur Guillaume. Still, the excellent merchant’s
daughters did not benefit as much as might be supposed by the lessons the
world has to offer to young spirits. At these parties, which were indeed set
down in the ledger to the credit of the house, they wore dresses the
shabbiness of which made them blush. Their style of dancing was not in any
way remarkable, and their mother’s surveillance did not allow of their
holding any conversation with their partners beyond Yes and No. Also, the
law of the old sign of the Cat and Racket commanded that they should be
home by eleven o’clock, the hour when balls and fetes begin to be lively.
Thus their pleasures, which seemed to conform very fairly to their father’s
position, were often made insipid by circumstances which were part of the
family habits and principles.
As to their usual life, one remark will sufficiently paint it. Madame
Guillaume required her daughters to be dressed very early in the morning,
to come down every day at the same hour, and she ordered their
employments with monastic regularity. Augustine, however, had been gifted
by chance with a spirit lofty enough to feel the emptiness of such a life. Her
blue eyes would sometimes be raised as if to pierce the depths of that
gloomy staircase and those damp store-rooms. After sounding the profound
cloistral silence, she seemed to be listening to remote, inarticulate
revelations of the life of passion, which accounts feelings as of higher value
than things. And at such moments her cheek would flush, her idle hands
would lay the muslin sewing on the polished oak counter, and presently her
mother would say in a voice, of which even the softest tones were sour,
“Augustine, my treasure, what are you thinking about?” It is possible that
two romances discovered by Augustine in the cupboard of a cook Madame
Guillaume had lately discharged—Hippolyte Comte de Douglas and Le
Comte de Comminges—may have contributed to develop the ideas of the

young girl, who had devoured them in secret, during the long nights of the
past winter.
And so Augustine’s expression of vague longing, her gentle voice, her
jasmine skin, and her blue eyes had lighted in poor Lebas’ soul a flame as
ardent as it was reverent. From an easily understood caprice, Augustine felt
no affection for the orphan; perhaps she did not know that he loved her. On
the other hand, the senior apprentice, with his long legs, his chestnut hair,
his big hands and powerful frame, had found a secret admirer in
Mademoiselle Virginie, who, in spite of her dower of fifty thousand crowns,
had as yet no suitor. Nothing could be more natural than these two passions
at cross-purposes, born in the silence of the dingy shop, as violets bloom in
the depths of a wood. The mute and constant looks which made the young
people’s eyes meet by sheer need of change in the midst of persistent work
and cloistered peace, was sure, sooner or later, to give rise to feelings of
love. The habit of seeing always the same face leads insensibly to our
reading there the qualities of the soul, and at last effaces all its defects.
“At the pace at which that man goes, our girls will soon have to go on
their knees to a suitor!” said Monsieur Guillaume to himself, as he read the
first decree by which Napoleon drew in advance on the conscript classes.
From that day the old merchant, grieved at seeing his eldest daughter
fade, remembered how he had married Mademoiselle Chevrel under much
the same circumstances as those of Joseph Lebas and Virginie. A good bit of
business, to marry off his daughter, and discharge a sacred debt by repaying
to an orphan the benefit he had formerly received from his predecessor
under similar conditions! Joseph Lebas, who was now three-and-thirty, was
aware of the obstacle which a difference of fifteen years placed between
Augustine and himself. Being also too clear-sighted not to understand
Monsieur Guillaume’s purpose, he knew his inexorable principles well
enough to feel sure that the second would never marry before the elder. So
the hapless assistant, whose heart was as warm as his legs were long and his
chest deep, suffered in silence.
This was the state of the affairs in the tiny republic which, in the heart of
the Rue Saint-Denis, was not unlike a dependency of La Trappe. But to give
a full account of events as well as of feelings, it is needful to go back to
some months before the scene with which this story opens. At dusk one
evening, a young man passing the darkened shop of the Cat and Racket, had

paused for a moment to gaze at a picture which might have arrested every
painter in the world. The shop was not yet lighted, and was as a dark cave
beyond which the dining-room was visible. A hanging lamp shed the yellow
light which lends such charm to pictures of the Dutch school. The white
linen, the silver, the cut glass, were brilliant accessories, and made more
picturesque by strong contrasts of light and shade. The figures of the head
of the family and his wife, the faces of the apprentices, and the pure form of
Augustine, near whom a fat chubby-cheeked maid was standing, composed
so strange a group; the heads were so singular, and every face had so candid
an expression; it was so easy to read the peace, the silence, the modest way
of life in this family, that to an artist accustomed to render nature, there was
something hopeless in any attempt to depict this scene, come upon by
chance. The stranger was a young painter, who, seven years before, had
gained the first prize for painting. He had now just come back from Rome.
His soul, full-fed with poetry; his eyes, satiated with Raphael and Michael
Angelo, thirsted for real nature after long dwelling in the pompous land
where art has everywhere left something grandiose. Right or wrong, this
was his personal feeling. His heart, which had long been a prey to the fire of
Italian passion, craved one of those modest and meditative maidens whom
in Rome he had unfortunately seen only in painting. From the enthusiasm
produced in his excited fancy by the living picture before him, he naturally
passed to a profound admiration for the principal figure; Augustine seemed
to be pensive, and did not eat; by the arrangement of the lamp the light fell
full on her face, and her bust seemed to move in a circle of fire, which
threw up the shape of her head and illuminated it with almost supernatural
effect. The artist involuntarily compared her to an exiled angel dreaming of
heaven. An almost unknown emotion, a limpid, seething love flooded his
heart. After remaining a minute, overwhelmed by the weight of his ideas, he
tore himself from his bliss, went home, ate nothing, and could not sleep.
The next day he went to his studio, and did not come out of it till he had
placed on canvas the magic of the scene of which the memory had, in a
sense, made him a devotee; his happiness was incomplete till he should
possess a faithful portrait of his idol. He went many times past the house of
the Cat and Racket; he even ventured in once or twice, under a disguise, to
get a closer view of the bewitching creature that Madame Guillaume
covered with her wing. For eight whole months, devoted to his love and to
his brush, he was lost to the sight of his most intimate friends forgetting the

world, the theatre, poetry, music, and all his dearest habits. One morning
Girodet broke through all the barriers with which artists are familiar, and
which they know how to evade, went into his room, and woke him by
asking, “What are you going to send to the Salon?” The artist grasped his
friend’s hand, dragged him off to the studio, uncovered a small easel picture
and a portrait. After a long and eager study of the two masterpieces, Girodet
threw himself on his comrade’s neck and hugged him, without speaking a
word. His feelings could only be expressed as he felt them—soul to soul.
“You are in love?” said Girodet.
They both knew that the finest portraits by Titian, Raphael, and Leonardo
da Vinci, were the outcome of the enthusiastic sentiments by which, indeed,
under various conditions, every masterpiece is engendered. The artist only
bent his head in reply.
“How happy are you to be able to be in love, here, after coming back
from Italy! But I do not advise you to send such works as these to the
Salon,” the great painter went on. “You see, these two works will not be
appreciated. Such true coloring, such prodigious work, cannot yet be
understood; the public is not accustomed to such depths. The pictures we
paint, my dear fellow, are mere screens. We should do better to turn rhymes,
and translate the antique poets! There is more glory to be looked for there
than from our luckless canvases!”
Notwithstanding this charitable advice, the two pictures were exhibited.
The Interior made a revolution in painting. It gave birth to the pictures of
genre which pour into all our exhibitions in such prodigious quantity that
they might be supposed to be produced by machinery. As to the portrait,
few artists have forgotten that lifelike work; and the public, which as a body
is sometimes discerning, awarded it the crown which Girodet himself had
hung over it. The two pictures were surrounded by a vast throng. They
fought for places, as women say. Speculators and moneyed men would have
covered the canvas with double napoleons, but the artist obstinately refused
to sell or to make replicas. An enormous sum was offered him for the right
of engraving them, and the print-sellers were not more favored than the
amateurs.
Though these incidents occupied the world, they were not of a nature to
penetrate the recesses of the monastic solitude in the Rue Saint-Denis.
However, when paying a visit to Madame Guillaume, the notary’s wife

spoke of the exhibition before Augustine, of whom she was very fond, and
explained its purpose. Madame Roguin’s gossip naturally inspired
Augustine with a wish to see the pictures, and with courage enough to ask
her cousin secretly to take her to the Louvre. Her cousin succeeded in the
negotiations she opened with Madame Guillaume for permission to release
the young girl for two hours from her dull labors. Augustine was thus able
to make her way through the crowd to see the crowned work. A fit of
trembling shook her like an aspen leaf as she recognized herself. She was
terrified, and looked about her to find Madame Roguin, from whom she had
been separated by a tide of people. At that moment her frightened eyes fell
on the impassioned face of the young painter. She at once recalled the
figure of a loiterer whom, being curious, she had frequently observed,
believing him to be a new neighbor.
“You see how love has inspired me,” said the artist in the timid creature’s
ear, and she stood in dismay at the words.
She found supernatural courage to enable her to push through the crowd
and join her cousin, who was still struggling with the mass of people that
hindered her from getting to the picture.
“You will be stifled!” cried Augustine. “Let us go.”
But there are moments, at the Salon, when two women are not always
free to direct their steps through the galleries. By the irregular course to
which they were compelled by the press, Mademoiselle Guillaume and her
cousin were pushed to within a few steps of the second picture. Chance thus
brought them, both together, to where they could easily see the canvas made
famous by fashion, for once in agreement with talent. Madame Roguin’s
exclamation of surprise was lost in the hubbub and buzz of the crowd;
Augustine involuntarily shed tears at the sight of this wonderful study.
Then, by an almost unaccountable impulse, she laid her finger on her lips,
as she perceived quite near her the ecstatic face of the young painter. The
stranger replied by a nod, and pointed to Madame Roguin, as a spoil-sport,
to show Augustine that he had understood. This pantomime struck the
young girl like hot coals on her flesh; she felt quite guilty as she perceived
that there was a compact between herself and the artist. The suffocating
heat, the dazzling sight of beautiful dresses, the bewilderment produced in
Augustine’s brain by the truth of coloring, the multitude of living or painted
figures, the profusion of gilt frames, gave her a sense of intoxication which

doubled her alarms. She would perhaps have fainted if an unknown rapture
had not surged up in her heart to vivify her whole being, in spite of this
chaos of sensations. She nevertheless believed herself to be under the power
of the Devil, of whose awful snares she had been warned of by the
thundering words of preachers. This moment was to her like a moment of
madness. She found herself accompanied to her cousin’s carriage by the
young man, radiant with joy and love. Augustine, a prey to an agitation new
to her experience, an intoxication which seemed to abandon her to nature,
listened to the eloquent voice of her heart, and looked again and again at the
young painter, betraying the emotion that came over her. Never had the
bright rose of her cheeks shown in stronger contrast with the whiteness of
her skin. The artist saw her beauty in all its bloom, her maiden modesty in
all its glory. She herself felt a sort of rapture mingled with terror at thinking
that her presence had brought happiness to him whose name was on every
lip, and whose talent lent immortality to transient scenes. She was loved! It
was impossible to doubt it. When she no longer saw the artist, these simple
words still echoed in her ear, “You see how love has inspired me!” And the
throbs of her heart, as they grew deeper, seemed a pain, her heated blood
revealed so many unknown forces in her being. She affected a severe
headache to avoid replying to her cousin’s questions concerning the
pictures; but on their return Madame Roguin could not forbear from
speaking to Madame Guillaume of the fame that had fallen on the house of
the Cat and Racket, and Augustine quaked in every limb as she heard her
mother say that she should go to the Salon to see her house there. The
young girl again declared herself suffering, and obtained leave to go to bed.
“That is what comes of sight-seeing,” exclaimed Monsieur Guillaume
—“a headache. And is it so very amusing to see in a picture what you can
see any day in your own street? Don’t talk to me of your artists! Like
writers, they are a starveling crew. Why the devil need they choose my
house to flout it in their pictures?”
“It may help to sell a few ells more of cloth,” said Joseph Lebas.
This remark did not protect art and thought from being condemned once
again before the judgment-seat of trade. As may be supposed, these
speeches did not infuse much hope into Augustine, who, during the night,
gave herself up to the first meditations of love. The events of the day were
like a dream, which it was a joy to recall to her mind. She was initiated into

the fears, the hopes, the remorse, all the ebb and flow of feeling which
could not fail to toss a heart so simple and timid as hers. What a void she
perceived in this gloomy house! What a treasure she found in her soul! To
be the wife of a genius, to share his glory! What ravages must such a vision
make in the heart of a girl brought up among such a family! What hopes
must it raise in a young creature who, in the midst of sordid elements, had
pined for a life of elegance! A sunbeam had fallen into the prison.
Augustine was suddenly in love. So many of her feelings were soothed that
she succumbed without reflection. At eighteen does not love hold a prism
between the world and the eyes of a young girl? She was incapable of
suspecting the hard facts which result from the union of a loving woman
with a man of imagination, and she believed herself called to make him
happy, not seeing any disparity between herself and him. To her the future
would be as the present. When, next day, her father and mother returned
from the Salon, their dejected faces proclaimed some disappointment. In the
first place, the painter had removed the two pictures; and then Madame
Guillaume had lost her cashmere shawl. But the news that the pictures had
disappeared from the walls since her visit revealed to Augustine a delicacy
of sentiment which a woman can always appreciate, even by instinct.
On the morning when, on his way home from a ball, Theodore de
Sommervieux—for this was the name which fame had stamped on
Augustine’s heart—had been squirted on by the apprentices while awaiting
the appearance of his artless little friend, who certainly did not know that he
was there, the lovers had seen each other for the fourth time only since their
meeting at the Salon. The difficulties which the rule of the house placed in
the way of the painter’s ardent nature gave added violence to his passion for
Augustine.
How could he get near to a young girl seated in a counting-house
between two such women as Mademoiselle Virginie and Madame
Guillaume? How could he correspond with her when her mother never left
her side? Ingenious, as lovers are, to imagine woes, Theodore saw a rival in
one of the assistants, to whose interests he supposed the others to be
devoted. If he should evade these sons of Argus, he would yet be wrecked
under the stern eye of the old draper or of Madame Guillaume. The very
vehemence of his passion hindered the young painter from hitting on the
ingenious expedients which, in prisoners and in lovers, seem to be the last
effort of intelligence spurred by a wild craving for liberty, or by the fire of

love. Theodore wandered about the neighborhood with the restlessness of a
madman, as though movement might inspire him with some device. After
racking his imagination, it occurred to him to bribe the blowsy waiting-
maid with gold. Thus a few notes were exchanged at long intervals during
the fortnight following the ill-starred morning when Monsieur Guillaume
and Theodore had so scrutinized one another. At the present moment the
young couple had agreed to see each other at a certain hour of the day, and
on Sunday, at Saint-Leu, during Mass and vespers. Augustine had sent her
dear Theodore a list of the relations and friends of the family, to whom the
young painter tried to get access, in the hope of interesting, if it were
possible, in his love affairs, one of these souls absorbed in money and trade,
to whom a genuine passion must appear a quite monstrous speculation, a
thing unheard-of. Nothing meanwhile, was altered at the sign of the Cat and
Racket. If Augustine was absent-minded, if, against all obedience to the
domestic code, she stole up to her room to make signals by means of a jar
of flowers, if she sighed, if she were lost in thought, no one observed it, not
even her mother. This will cause some surprise to those who have entered
into the spirit of the household, where an idea tainted with poetry would be
in startling contrast to persons and things, where no one could venture on a
gesture or a look which would not be seen and analyzed. Nothing, however,
could be more natural: the quiet barque that navigated the stormy waters of
the Paris Exchange, under the flag of the Cat and Racket, was just now in
the toils of one of these tempests which, returning periodically, might be
termed equinoctial. For the last fortnight the five men forming the crew,
with Madame Guillaume and Mademoiselle Virginie, had been devoting
themselves to the hard labor, known as stock-taking.
Every bale was turned over, and the length verified to ascertain the exact
value of the remnant. The ticket attached to each parcel was carefully
examined to see at what time the piece had been bought. The retail price
was fixed. Monsieur Guillaume, always on his feet, his pen behind his ear,
was like a captain commanding the working of the ship. His sharp tones,
spoken through a trap-door, to inquire into the depths of the hold in the
cellar-store, gave utterance to the barbarous formulas of trade-jargon, which
find expression only in cipher. “How much H. N. Z.?”—“All
sold.”—“What is left of Q. X.?”—“Two ells.”—“At what price?”—“Fifty-
five three.”—“Set down A. at three, with all of J. J., all of M. P., and what is
left of V. D. O.”—A hundred other injunctions equally intelligible were

spouted over the counters like verses of modern poetry, quoted by romantic
spirits, to excite each other’s enthusiasm for one of their poets. In the
evening Guillaume, shut up with his assistant and his wife, balanced his
accounts, carried on the balance, wrote to debtors in arrears, and made out
bills. All three were busy over this enormous labor, of which the result
could be stated on a sheet of foolscap, proving to the head of the house that
there was so much to the good in hard cash, so much in goods, so much in
bills and notes; that he did not owe a sou; that a hundred or two hundred
thousand francs were owing to him; that the capital had been increased; that
the farmlands, the houses, or the investments were extended, or repaired, or
doubled. Whence it became necessary to begin again with increased ardor,
to accumulate more crown-pieces, without its ever entering the brain of
these laborious ants to ask—“To what end?”
Favored by this annual turmoil, the happy Augustine escaped the
investigations of her Argus-eyed relations. At last, one Saturday evening,
the stock-taking was finished. The figures of the sum-total showed a row of
0”s long enough to allow Guillaume for once to relax the stern rule as to
dessert which reigned throughout the year. The shrewd old draper rubbed
his hands, and allowed his assistants to remain at table. The members of the
crew had hardly swallowed their thimbleful of some home-made liqueur,
when the rumble of a carriage was heard. The family party were going to
see Cendrillon at the Varietes, while the two younger apprentices each
received a crown of six francs, with permission to go wherever they chose,
provided they were in by midnight.
Notwithstanding this debauch, the old cloth-merchant was shaving
himself at six next morning, put on his maroon-colored coat, of which the
glowing lights afforded him perennial enjoyment, fastened a pair of gold
buckles on the knee-straps of his ample satin breeches; and then, at about
seven o’clock, while all were still sleeping in the house, he made his way to
the little office adjoining the shop on the first floor. Daylight came in
through a window, fortified by iron bars, and looking out on a small yard
surrounded by such black walls that it was very like a well. The old
merchant opened the iron-lined shutters, which were so familiar to him, and
threw up the lower half of the sash window. The icy air of the courtyard
came in to cool the hot atmosphere of the little room, full of the odor
peculiar to offices.

The merchant remained standing, his hand resting on the greasy arm of a
large cane chair lined with morocco, of which the original hue had
disappeared; he seemed to hesitate as to seating himself. He looked with
affection at the double desk, where his wife’s seat, opposite his own, was
fitted into a little niche in the wall. He contemplated the numbered boxes,
the files, the implements, the cash box—objects all of immemorial origin,
and fancied himself in the room with the shade of Master Chevrel. He even
pulled out the high stool on which he had once sat in the presence of his
departed master. This stool, covered with black leather, the horse-hair
showing at every corner—as it had long done, without, however, coming
out—he placed with a shaking hand on the very spot where his predecessor
had put it, and then, with an emotion difficult to describe, he pulled a bell,
which rang at the head of Joseph Lebas’ bed. When this decisive blow had
been struck, the old man, for whom, no doubt, these reminiscences were too
much, took up three or four bills of exchange, and looked at them without
seeing them.
Suddenly Joseph Lebas stood before him.
“Sit down there,” said Guillaume, pointing to the stool.
As the old master draper had never yet bid his assistant be seated in his
presence, Joseph Lebas was startled.
“What do you think of these notes?” asked Guillaume.
“They will never be paid.”
“Why?”
“Well, I heard the day before yesterday Etienne and Co. had made their
payments in gold.”
“Oh, oh!” said the draper. “Well, one must be very ill to show one’s bile.
Let us speak of something else.—Joseph, the stock-taking is done.”
“Yes, monsieur, and the dividend is one of the best you have ever made.”
“Do not use new-fangled words. Say the profits, Joseph. Do you know,
my boy, that this result is partly owing to you? And I do not intend to pay
you a salary any longer. Madame Guillaume has suggested to me to take
you into partnership.—‘Guillaume and Lebas;’ will not that make a good
business name? We might add, ‘and Co.’ to round off the firm’s signature.”
Tears rose to the eyes of Joseph Lebas, who tried to hide them.

“Oh, Monsieur Guillaume, how have I deserved such kindness? I only do
my duty. It was so much already that you should take an interest in a poor
orph——”
He was brushing the cuff of his left sleeve with his right hand, and dared
not look at the old man, who smiled as he thought that this modest young
fellow no doubt needed, as he had needed once on a time, some
encouragement to complete his explanation.
“To be sure,” said Virginie’s father, “you do not altogether deserve this
favor, Joseph. You have not so much confidence in me as I have in you.”
(The young man looked up quickly.) “You know all the secrets of the cash-
box. For the last two years I have told you almost all my concerns. I have
sent you to travel in our goods. In short, I have nothing on my conscience as
regards you. But you—you have a soft place, and you have never breathed a
word of it.” Joseph Lebas blushed. “Ah, ha!” cried Guillaume, “so you
thought you could deceive an old fox like me? When you knew that I had
scented the Lecocq bankruptcy?”
“What, monsieur?” replied Joseph Lebas, looking at his master as keenly
as his master looked at him, “you knew that I was in love?”
“I know everything, you rascal,” said the worthy and cunning old
merchant, pulling the assistant’s ear. “And I forgive you—I did the same
myself.”
“And you will give her to me?”
“Yes—with fifty thousand crowns; and I will leave you as much by will,
and we will start on our new career under the name of a new firm. We will
do good business yet, my boy!” added the old man, getting up and
flourishing his arms. “I tell you, son-in-law, there is nothing like trade.
Those who ask what pleasure is to be found in it are simpletons. To be on
the scent of a good bargain, to hold your own on ‘Change, to watch as
anxiously as at the gaming-table whether Etienne and Co. will fail or no, to
see a regiment of Guards march past all dressed in your cloth, to trip your
neighbor up—honestly of course!—to make the goods cheaper than others
can; then to carry out an undertaking which you have planned, which
begins, grows, totters, and succeeds! to know the workings of every house
of business as well as a minister of police, so as never to make a mistake; to
hold up your head in the midst of wrecks, to have friends by
correspondence in every manufacturing town; is not that a perpetual game,

Joseph? That is life, that is! I shall die in that harness, like old Chevrel, but
taking it easy now, all the same.”
In the heat of his eager rhetoric, old Guillaume had scarcely looked at his
assistant, who was weeping copiously. “Why, Joseph, my poor boy, what is
the matter?”
“Oh, I love her so! Monsieur Guillaume, that my heart fails me; I believe
——”
“Well, well, boy,” said the old man, touched, “you are happier than you
know, by God! For she loves you. I know it.”
And he blinked his little green eyes as he looked at the young man.
“Mademoiselle Augustine! Mademoiselle Augustine!” exclaimed Joseph
Lebas in his rapture.
He was about to rush out of the room when he felt himself clutched by a
hand of iron, and his astonished master spun him round in front of him once
more.
“What has Augustine to do with this matter?” he asked, in a voice which
instantly froze the luckless Joseph.
“Is it not she that—that—I love?” stammered the assistant.
Much put out by his own want of perspicacity, Guillaume sat down
again, and rested his long head in his hands to consider the perplexing
situation in which he found himself. Joseph Lebas, shamefaced and in
despair, remained standing.
“Joseph,” the draper said with frigid dignity, “I was speaking of Virginie.
Love cannot be made to order, I know. I know, too, that you can be trusted.
We will forget all this. I will not let Augustine marry before Virginie.—Your
interest will be ten per cent.”
The young man, to whom love gave I know not what power of courage
and eloquence, clasped his hand, and spoke in his turn—spoke for a quarter
of an hour, with so much warmth and feeling, that he altered the situation. If
the question had been a matter of business the old tradesman would have
had fixed principles to guide his decision; but, tossed a thousand miles from
commerce, on the ocean of sentiment, without a compass, he floated, as he
told himself, undecided in the face of such an unexpected event. Carried
away by his fatherly kindness, he began to beat about the bush.

“Deuce take it, Joseph, you must know that there are ten years between
my two children. Mademoiselle Chevrel was no beauty, still she has had
nothing to complain of in me. Do as I did. Come, come, don’t cry. Can you
be so silly? What is to be done? It can be managed perhaps. There is always
some way out of a scrape. And we men are not always devoted Celadons to
our wives—you understand? Madame Guillaume is very pious. ... Come.
By Gad, boy, give your arm to Augustine this morning as we go to Mass.”
These were the phrases spoken at random by the old draper, and their
conclusion made the lover happy. He was already thinking of a friend of his
as a match for Mademoiselle Virginie, as he went out of the smoky office,
pressing his future father-in-law’s hand, after saying with a knowing look
that all would turn out for the best.
“What will Madame Guillaume say to it?” was the idea that greatly
troubled the worthy merchant when he found himself alone.
At breakfast Madame Guillaume and Virginie, to whom the draper had
not yet confided his disappointment, cast meaning glances at Joseph Lebas,
who was extremely embarrassed. The young assistant’s bashfulness
commended him to his mother-in-law’s good graces. The matron became so
cheerful that she smiled as she looked at her husband, and allowed herself
some little pleasantries of time-honored acceptance in such simple families.
She wondered whether Joseph or Virginie were the taller, to ask them to
compare their height. This preliminary fooling brought a cloud to the
master’s brow, and he even made such a point of decorum that he desired
Augustine to take the assistant’s arm on their way to Saint-Leu. Madame
Guillaume, surprised at this manly delicacy, honored her husband with a
nod of approval. So the procession left the house in such order as to suggest
no suspicious meaning to the neighbors.
“Does it not seem to you, Mademoiselle Augustine,” said the assistant,
and he trembled, “that the wife of a merchant whose credit is as good as
Monsieur Guillaume’s, for instance, might enjoy herself a little more than
Madame your mother does? Might wear diamonds—or keep a carriage? For
my part, if I were to marry, I should be glad to take all the work, and see my
wife happy. I would not put her into the counting-house. In the drapery
business, you see, a woman is not so necessary now as formerly. Monsieur
Guillaume was quite right to act as he did—and besides, his wife liked it.
But so long as a woman knows how to turn her hand to the book-keeping,

the correspondence, the retail business, the orders, and her housekeeping, so
as not to sit idle, that is enough. At seven o’clock, when the shop is shut, I
shall take my pleasures, go to the play, and into company.—But you are not
listening to me.”
“Yes, indeed, Monsieur Joseph. What do you think of painting? That is a
fine calling.”
“Yes. I know a master house-painter, Monsieur Lourdois. He is well-to-
do.”
Thus conversing, the family reached the Church of Saint-Leu. There
Madame Guillaume reasserted her rights, and, for the first time, placed
Augustine next herself, Virginie taking her place on the fourth chair, next to
Lebas. During the sermon all went well between Augustine and Theodore,
who, standing behind a pillar, worshiped his Madonna with fervent
devotion; but at the elevation of the Host, Madame Guillaume discovered,
rather late, that her daughter Augustine was holding her prayer-book upside
down. She was about to speak to her strongly, when, lowering her veil, she
interrupted her own devotions to look in the direction where her daughter’s
eyes found attraction. By the help of her spectacles she saw the young artist,
whose fashionable elegance seemed to proclaim him a cavalry officer on
leave rather than a tradesman of the neighborhood. It is difficult to conceive
of the state of violent agitation in which Madame Guillaume found herself
—she, who flattered herself on having brought up her daughters to
perfection—on discovering in Augustine a clandestine passion of which her
prudery and ignorance exaggerated the perils. She believed her daughter to
be cankered to the core.
“Hold your book right way up, miss,” she muttered in a low voice,
tremulous with wrath. She snatched away the tell-tale prayer-book and
returned it with the letter-press right way up. “Do not allow your eyes to
look anywhere but at your prayers,” she added, “or I shall have something
to say to you. Your father and I will talk to you after church.”
These words came like a thunderbolt on poor Augustine. She felt faint;
but, torn between the distress she felt and the dread of causing a commotion
in church she bravely concealed her anguish. It was, however, easy to
discern the stormy state of her soul from the trembling of her prayer-book,
and the tears which dropped on every page she turned. From the furious
glare shot at him by Madame Guillaume the artist saw the peril into which

his love affair had fallen; he went out, with a raging soul, determined to
venture all.
“Go to your room, miss!” said Madame Guillaume, on their return home;
“we will send for you, but take care not to quit it.”
The conference between the husband and wife was conducted so secretly
that at first nothing was heard of it. Virginie, however, who had tried to give
her sister courage by a variety of gentle remonstrances, carried her good
nature so far as to listen at the door of her mother’s bedroom where the
discussion was held, to catch a word or two. The first time she went down
to the lower floor she heard her father exclaim, “Then, madame, do you
wish to kill your daughter?”
“My poor dear!” said Virginie, in tears, “papa takes your part.”
“And what do they want to do to Theodore?” asked the innocent girl.
Virginie, inquisitive, went down again; but this time she stayed longer;
she learned that Joseph Lebas loved Augustine. It was written that on this
memorable day, this house, generally so peaceful, should be a hell.
Monsieur Guillaume brought Joseph Lebas to despair by telling him of
Augustine’s love for a stranger. Lebas, who had advised his friend to
become a suitor for Mademoiselle Virginie, saw all his hopes wrecked.
Mademoiselle Virginie, overcome by hearing that Joseph had, in a way,
refused her, had a sick headache. The dispute that had arisen from the
discussion between Monsieur and Madame Guillaume, when, for the third
time in their lives, they had been of antagonistic opinions, had shown itself
in a terrible form. Finally, at half-past four in the afternoon, Augustine, pale,
trembling, and with red eyes, was haled before her father and mother. The
poor child artlessly related the too brief tale of her love. Reassured by a
speech from her father, who promised to listen to her in silence, she
gathered courage as she pronounced to her parents the name of Theodore de
Sommervieux, with a mischievous little emphasis on the aristocratic de.
And yielding to the unknown charm of talking of her feelings, she was
brave enough to declare with innocent decision that she loved Monsieur de
Sommervieux, that she had written to him, and she added, with tears in her
eyes: “To sacrifice me to another man would make me wretched.”
“But, Augustine, you cannot surely know what a painter is?” cried her
mother with horror.

“Madame Guillaume!” said the old man, compelling her to silence.
—“Augustine,” he went on, “artists are generally little better than beggars.
They are too extravagant not to be always a bad sort. I served the late
Monsieur Joseph Vernet, the late Monsieur Lekain, and the late Monsieur
Noverre. Oh, if you could only know the tricks played on poor Father
Chevrel by that Monsieur Noverre, by the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and
especially by Monsieur Philidor! They are a set of rascals; I know them
well! They all have a gab and nice manners. Ah, your Monsieur Sumer—,
Somm——”
“De Sommervieux, papa.”
“Well, well, de Sommervieux, well and good. He can never have been
half so sweet to you as Monsieur le Chevalier de Saint-Georges was to me
the day I got a verdict of the consuls against him. And in those days they
were gentlemen of quality.”
“But, father, Monsieur Theodore is of good family, and he wrote me that
he is rich; his father was called Chevalier de Sommervieux before the
Revolution.”
At these words Monsieur Guillaume looked at his terrible better half,
who, like an angry woman, sat tapping the floor with her foot while keeping
sullen silence; she avoided even casting wrathful looks at Augustine,
appearing to leave to Monsieur Guillaume the whole responsibility in so
grave a matter, since her opinion was not listened to. Nevertheless, in spite
of her apparent self-control, when she saw her husband giving way so
mildly under a catastrophe which had no concern with business, she
exclaimed:
“Really, monsieur, you are so weak with your daughters! However——”
The sound of a carriage, which stopped at the door, interrupted the rating
which the old draper already quaked at. In a minute Madame Roguin was
standing in the middle of the room, and looking at the actors in this
domestic scene: “I know all, my dear cousin,” said she, with a patronizing
air.
Madame Roguin made the great mistake of supposing that a Paris
notary’s wife could play the part of a favorite of fashion.
“I know all,” she repeated, “and I have come into Noah’s Ark, like the
dove, with the olive-branch. I read that allegory in the Genie du

Christianisme,” she added, turning to Madame Guillaume; “the allusion
ought to please you, cousin. Do you know,” she went on, smiling at
Augustine, “that Monsieur de Sommervieux is a charming man? He gave
me my portrait this morning, painted by a master’s hand. It is worth at least
six thousand francs.” And at these words she patted Monsieur Guillaume on
the arm. The old draper could not help making a grimace with his lips,
which was peculiar to him.
“I know Monsieur de Sommervieux very well,” the Dove ran on. “He has
come to my evenings this fortnight past, and made them delightful. He has
told me all his woes, and commissioned me to plead for him. I know since
this morning that he adores Augustine, and he shall have her. Ah, cousin, do
not shake your head in refusal. He will be created Baron, I can tell you, and
has just been made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, by the Emperor
himself, at the Salon. Roguin is now his lawyer, and knows all his affairs.
Well! Monsieur de Sommervieux has twelve thousand francs a year in good
landed estate. Do you know that the father-in-law of such a man may get a
rise in life—be mayor of his arrondissement, for instance. Have we not seen
Monsieur Dupont become a Count of the Empire, and a senator, all because
he went as mayor to congratulate the Emperor on his entry into Vienna? Oh,
this marriage must take place! For my part, I adore the dear young man. His
behavior to Augustine is only met with in romances. Be easy, little one, you
shall be happy, and every girl will wish she were in your place. Madame la
Duchesse de Carigliano, who comes to my ‘At Homes,’ raves about
Monsieur de Sommervieux. Some spiteful people say she only comes to me
to meet him; as if a duchesse of yesterday was doing too much honor to a
Chevrel, whose family have been respected citizens these hundred years!
“Augustine,” Madame Roguin went on, after a short pause, “I have seen
the portrait. Heavens! How lovely it is! Do you know that the Emperor
wanted to have it? He laughed, and said to the Deputy High Constable that
if there were many women like that in his court while all the kings visited
it, he should have no difficulty about preserving the peace of Europe. Is not
that a compliment?”
The tempests with which the day had begun were to resemble those of
nature, by ending in clear and serene weather. Madame Roguin displayed so
much address in her harangue, she was able to touch so many strings in the
dry hearts of Monsieur and Madame Guillaume, that at last she hit on one

which she could work upon. At this strange period commerce and finance
were more than ever possessed by the crazy mania for seeking alliance with
rank; and the generals of the Empire took full advantage of this desire.
Monsieur Guillaume, as a singular exception, opposed this deplorable
craving. His favorite axioms were that, to secure happiness, a woman must
marry a man of her own class; that every one was punished sooner or later
for having climbed too high; that love could so little endure under the
worries of a household, that both husband and wife needed sound good
qualities to be happy, that it would not do for one to be far in advance of the
other, because, above everything, they must understand each other; if a man
spoke Greek and his wife Latin, they might come to die of hunger. He had
himself invented this sort of adage. And he compared such marriages to old-
fashioned materials of mixed silk and wool. Still, there is so much vanity at
the bottom of man’s heart that the prudence of the pilot who steered the Cat
and Racket so wisely gave way before Madame Roguin’s aggressive
volubility. Austere Madame Guillaume was the first to see in her daughter’s
affection a reason for abdicating her principles and for consenting to receive
Monsieur de Sommervieux, whom she promised herself she would put
under severe inquisition.
The old draper went to look for Joseph Lebas, and inform him of the state
of affairs. At half-past six, the dining-room immortalized by the artist saw,
united under its skylight, Monsieur and Madame Roguin, the young painter
and his charming Augustine, Joseph Lebas, who found his happiness in
patience, and Mademoiselle Virginie, convalescent from her headache.
Monsieur and Madame Guillaume saw in perspective both their children
married, and the fortunes of the Cat and Racket once more in skilful hands.
Their satisfaction was at its height when, at dessert, Theodore made them a
present of the wonderful picture which they had failed to see, representing
the interior of the old shop, and to which they all owed so much happiness.
“Isn’t it pretty!” cried Guillaume. “And to think that any one would pay
thirty thousand francs for that!”
“Because you can see my lappets in it,” said Madame Guillaume.
“And the cloth unrolled!” added Lebas; “you might take it up in your
hand.”
“Drapery always comes out well,” replied the painter. “We should be
only too happy, we modern artists, if we could touch the perfection of

antique drapery.”
“So you like drapery!” cried old Guillaume. “Well, then, by Gad! shake
hands on that, my young friend. Since you can respect trade, we shall
understand each other. And why should it be despised? The world began
with trade, since Adam sold Paradise for an apple. He did not strike a good
bargain though!” And the old man roared with honest laughter, encouraged
by the champagne, which he sent round with a liberal hand. The band that
covered the young artist’s eyes was so thick that he thought his future
parents amiable. He was not above enlivening them by a few jests in the
best taste. So he too pleased every one. In the evening, when the drawing-
room, furnished with what Madame Guillaume called “everything
handsome,” was deserted, and while she flitted from the table to the
chimney-piece, from the candelabra to the tall candlesticks, hastily blowing
out the wax-lights, the worthy draper, who was always clear-sighted when
money was in question, called Augustine to him, and seating her on his
knee, spoke as follows:—
“My dear child, you shall marry your Sommervieux since you insist; you
may, if you like, risk your capital in happiness. But I am not going to be
hoodwinked by the thirty thousand francs to be made by spoiling good
canvas. Money that is lightly earned is lightly spent. Did I not hear that
hare-brained youngster declare this evening that money was made round
that it might roll. If it is round for spendthrifts, it is flat for saving folks who
pile it up. Now, my child, that fine gentleman talks of giving you carriages
and diamonds! He has money, let him spend it on you; so be it. It is no
concern of mine. But as to what I can give you, I will not have the crown-
pieces I have picked up with so much toil wasted in carriages and frippery.
Those who spend too fast never grow rich. A hundred thousand crowns,
which is your fortune, will not buy up Paris. It is all very well to look
forward to a few hundred thousand francs to be yours some day; I shall
keep you waiting for them as long as possible, by Gad! So I took your lover
aside, and a man who managed the Lecocq bankruptcy had not much
difficulty in persuading the artist to marry under a settlement of his wife’s
money on herself. I will keep an eye on the marriage contract to see that
what he is to settle on you is safely tied up. So now, my child, I hope to be a
grandfather, by Gad! I will begin at once to lay up for my grandchildren;
but swear to me, here and now, never to sign any papers relating to money

without my advice; and if I go soon to join old Father Chevrel, promise to
consult young Lebas, your brother-in-law.”
“Yes, father, I swear it.”
At these words, spoken in a gentle voice, the old man kissed his daughter
on both cheeks. That night the lovers slept as soundly as Monsieur and
Madame Guillaume.
Some few months after this memorable Sunday the high altar of Saint-
Leu was the scene of two very different weddings. Augustine and Theodore
appeared in all the radiance of happiness, their eyes beaming with love,
dressed with elegance, while a fine carriage waited for them. Virginie, who
had come in a good hired fly with the rest of the family, humbly followed
her younger sister, dressed in the simplest fashion like a shadow necessary
to the harmony of the picture. Monsieur Guillaume had exerted himself to
the utmost in the church to get Virginie married before Augustine, but the
priests, high and low, persisted in addressing the more elegant of the two
brides. He heard some of his neighbors highly approving the good sense of
Mademoiselle Virginie, who was making, as they said, the more substantial
match, and remaining faithful to the neighborhood; while they fired a few
taunts, prompted by envy of Augustine, who was marrying an artist and a
man of rank; adding, with a sort of dismay, that if the Guillaumes were
ambitious, there was an end to the business. An old fan-maker having
remarked that such a prodigal would soon bring his wife to beggary, father
Guillaume prided himself in petto for his prudence in the matter of marriage
settlements. In the evening, after a splendid ball, followed by one of those
substantial suppers of which the memory is dying out in the present
generation, Monsieur and Madame Guillaume remained in a fine house
belonging to them in the Rue du Colombier, where the wedding had been
held; Monsieur and Madame Lebas returned in their fly to the old home in
the Rue Saint-Denis, to steer the good ship Cat and Racket. The artist,
intoxicated with happiness, carried off his beloved Augustine, and eagerly
lifting her out of their carriage when it reached the Rue des Trois-Freres, led
her to an apartment embellished by all the arts.
The fever of passion which possessed Theodore made a year fly over the
young couple without a single cloud to dim the blue sky under which they
lived. Life did not hang heavy on the lovers’ hands. Theodore lavished on
every day inexhaustible fioriture of enjoyment, and he delighted to vary the

transports of passion by the soft languor of those hours of repose when
souls soar so high that they seem to have forgotten all bodily union.
Augustine was too happy for reflection; she floated on an undulating tide of
rapture; she thought she could not do enough by abandoning herself to
sanctioned and sacred married love; simple and artless, she had no coquetry,
no reserves, none of the dominion which a worldly-minded girl acquires
over her husband by ingenious caprice; she loved too well to calculate for
the future, and never imagined that so exquisite a life could come to an end.
Happy in being her husband’s sole delight, she believed that her
inextinguishable love would always be her greatest grace in his eyes, as her
devotion and obedience would be a perennial charm. And, indeed, the
ecstasy of love had made her so brilliantly lovely that her beauty filled her
with pride, and gave her confidence that she could always reign over a man
so easy to kindle as Monsieur de Sommervieux. Thus her position as a wife
brought her no knowledge but the lessons of love.
In the midst of her happiness, she was still the simple child who had lived
in obscurity in the Rue Saint-Denis, and who never thought of acquiring the
manners, the information, the tone of the world she had to live in. Her
words being the words of love, she revealed in them, no doubt, a certain
pliancy of mind and a certain refinement of speech; but she used the
language common to all women when they find themselves plunged in
passion, which seems to be their element. When, by chance, Augustine
expressed an idea that did not harmonize with Theodore’s, the young artist
laughed, as we laugh at the first mistakes of a foreigner, though they end by
annoying us if they are not corrected.
In spite of all this love-making, by the end of this year, as delightful as it
was swift, Sommervieux felt one morning the need for resuming his work
and his old habits. His wife was expecting their first child. He saw some
friends again. During the tedious discomforts of the year when a young wife
is nursing an infant for the first time, he worked, no doubt, with zeal, but he
occasionally sought diversion in the fashionable world. The house which he
was best pleased to frequent was that of the Duchesse de Carigliano, who
had at last attracted the celebrated artist to her parties. When Augustine was
quite well again, and her boy no longer required the assiduous care which
debars a mother from social pleasures, Theodore had come to the stage of
wishing to know the joys of satisfied vanity to be found in society by a man

who shows himself with a handsome woman, the object of envy and
admiration.
To figure in drawing-rooms with the reflected lustre of her husband’s
fame, and to find other women envious of her, was to Augustine a new
harvest of pleasures; but it was the last gleam of conjugal happiness. She
first wounded her husband’s vanity when, in spite of vain efforts, she
betrayed her ignorance, the inelegance of her language, and the narrowness
of her ideas. Sommervieux’s nature, subjugated for nearly two years and a
half by the first transports of love, now, in the calm of less new possession,
recovered its bent and habits, for a while diverted from their channel.
Poetry, painting, and the subtle joys of imagination have inalienable rights
over a lofty spirit. These cravings of a powerful soul had not been starved in
Theodore during these two years; they had only found fresh pasture. As
soon as the meadows of love had been ransacked, and the artist had
gathered roses and cornflowers as the children do, so greedily that he did
not see that his hands could hold no more, the scene changed. When the
painter showed his wife the sketches for his finest compositions he heard
her exclaim, as her father had done, “How pretty!” This tepid admiration
was not the outcome of conscientious feeling, but of her faith on the
strength of love.
Augustine cared more for a look than for the finest picture. The only
sublime she knew was that of the heart. At last Theodore could not resist the
evidence of the cruel fact—his wife was insensible to poetry, she did not
dwell in his sphere, she could not follow him in all his vagaries, his
inventions, his joys and his sorrows; she walked groveling in the world of
reality, while his head was in the skies. Common minds cannot appreciate
the perennial sufferings of a being who, while bound to another by the most
intimate affections, is obliged constantly to suppress the dearest flights of
his soul, and to thrust down into the void those images which a magic
power compels him to create. To him the torture is all the more intolerable
because his feeling towards his companion enjoins, as its first law, that they
should have no concealments, but mingle the aspirations of their thought as
perfectly as the effusions of their soul. The demands of nature are not to be
cheated. She is as inexorable as necessity, which is, indeed, a sort of social
nature. Sommervieux took refuge in the peace and silence of his studio,
hoping that the habit of living with artists might mould his wife and develop
in her the dormant germs of lofty intelligence which some superior minds

suppose must exist in every being. But Augustine was too sincerely
religious not to take fright at the tone of artists. At the first dinner Theodore
gave, she heard a young painter say, with the childlike lightness, which to
her was unintelligible, and which redeems a jest from the taint of profanity,
“But, madame, your Paradise cannot be more beautiful than Raphael’s
Transfiguration!—Well, and I got tired of looking at that.”
Thus Augustine came among this sparkling set in a spirit of distrust
which no one could fail to see. She was a restraint on their freedom. Now
an artist who feels restraint is pitiless; he stays away, or laughs it to scorn.
Madame Guillaume, among other absurdities, had an excessive notion of
the dignity she considered the prerogative of a married woman; and
Augustine, though she had often made fun of it, could not help a slight
imitation of her mother’s primness. This extreme propriety, which virtuous
wives do not always avoid, suggested a few epigrams in the form of
sketches, in which the harmless jest was in such good taste that
Sommervieux could not take offence; and even if they had been more
severe, these pleasantries were after all only reprisals from his friends. Still,
nothing could seem a trifle to a spirit so open as Theodore’s to impressions
from without. A coldness insensibly crept over him, and inevitably spread.
To attain conjugal happiness we must climb a hill whose summit is a
narrow ridge, close to a steep and slippery descent: the painter’s love was
falling down it. He regarded his wife as incapable of appreciating the moral
considerations which justified him in his own eyes for his singular behavior
to her, and believed himself quite innocent in hiding from her thoughts she
could not enter into, and peccadilloes outside the jurisdiction of a bourgeois
conscience. Augustine wrapped herself in sullen and silent grief. These
unconfessed feelings placed a shroud between the husband and wife which
could not fail to grow thicker day by day. Though her husband never failed
in consideration for her, Augustine could not help trembling as she saw that
he kept for the outer world those treasures of wit and grace that he formerly
would lay at her feet. She soon began to find sinister meaning in the jocular
speeches that are current in the world as to the inconstancy of men. She
made no complaints, but her demeanor conveyed reproach.
Three years after her marriage this pretty young woman, who dashed past
in her handsome carriage, and lived in a sphere of glory and riches to the
envy of heedless folk incapable of taking a just view of the situations of
life, was a prey to intense grief. She lost her color; she reflected; she made

comparisons; then sorrow unfolded to her the first lessons of experience.
She determined to restrict herself bravely within the round of duty, hoping
that by this generous conduct she might sooner or later win back her
husband’s love. But it was not so. When Sommervieux, fired with work,
came in from his studio, Augustine did not put away her work so quickly
but that the painter might find his wife mending the household linen, and
his own, with all the care of a good housewife. She supplied generously and
without a murmur the money needed for his lavishness; but in her anxiety to
husband her dear Theodore’s fortune, she was strictly economical for
herself and in certain details of domestic management. Such conduct is
incompatible with the easy-going habits of artists, who, at the end of their
life, have enjoyed it so keenly that they never inquire into the causes of
their ruin.
It is useless to note every tint of shadow by which the brilliant hues of
their honeymoon were overcast till they were lost in utter blackness. One
evening poor Augustine, who had for some time heard her husband speak
with enthusiasm of the Duchesse de Carigliano, received from a friend
certain malignantly charitable warnings as to the nature of the attachment
which Sommervieux had formed for this celebrated flirt of the Imperial
Court. At one-and-twenty, in all the splendor of youth and beauty,
Augustine saw herself deserted for a woman of six-and-thirty. Feeling
herself so wretched in the midst of a world of festivity which to her was a
blank, the poor little thing could no longer understand the admiration she
excited, or the envy of which she was the object. Her face assumed a
different expression. Melancholy, tinged her features with the sweetness of
resignation and the pallor of scorned love. Ere long she too was courted by
the most fascinating men; but she remained lonely and virtuous. Some
contemptuous words which escaped her husband filled her with incredible
despair. A sinister flash showed her the breaches which, as a result of her
sordid education, hindered the perfect union of her soul with Theodore’s;
she loved him well enough to absolve him and condemn herself. She shed
tears of blood, and perceived, too late, that there are mesalliances of the
spirit as well as of rank and habits. As she recalled the early raptures of
their union, she understood the full extent of that lost happiness, and
accepted the conclusion that so rich a harvest of love was in itself a whole
life, which only sorrow could pay for. At the same time, she loved too truly
to lose all hope. At one-and-twenty she dared undertake to educate herself,

and make her imagination, at least, worthy of that she admired. “If I am not
a poet,” thought she, “at any rate, I will understand poetry.”
Then, with all the strength of will, all the energy which every woman can
display when she loves, Madame de Sommervieux tried to alter her
character, her manners, and her habits; but by dint of devouring books and
learning undauntedly, she only succeeded in becoming less ignorant.
Lightness of wit and the graces of conversation are a gift of nature, or the
fruit of education begun in the cradle. She could appreciate music and enjoy
it, but she could not sing with taste. She understood literature and the
beauties of poetry, but it was too late to cultivate her refractory memory.
She listened with pleasure to social conversation, but she could contribute
nothing brilliant. Her religious notions and home-grown prejudices were
antagonistic to the complete emancipation of her intelligence. Finally, a
foregone conclusion against her had stolen into Theodore’s mind, and this
she could not conquer. The artist would laugh, at those who flattered him
about his wife, and his irony had some foundation; he so overawed the
pathetic young creature that, in his presence, or alone with him, she
trembled. Hampered by her too eager desire to please, her wits and her
knowledge vanished in one absorbing feeling. Even her fidelity vexed the
unfaithful husband, who seemed to bid her do wrong by stigmatizing her
virtue as insensibility. Augustine tried in vain to abdicate her reason, to
yield to her husband’s caprices and whims, to devote herself to the
selfishness of his vanity. Her sacrifices bore no fruit. Perhaps they had both
let the moment slip when souls may meet in comprehension. One day the
young wife’s too sensitive heart received one of those blows which so strain
the bonds of feeling that they seem to be broken. She withdrew into
solitude. But before long a fatal idea suggested to her to seek counsel and
comfort in the bosom of her family.
So one morning she made her way towards the grotesque facade of the
humble, silent home where she had spent her childhood. She sighed as she
looked up at the sash-window, whence one day she had sent her first kiss to
him who now shed as much sorrow as glory on her life. Nothing was
changed in the cavern, where the drapery business had, however, started on
a new life. Augustine’s sister filled her mother’s old place at the desk. The
unhappy young woman met her brother-in-law with his pen behind his ear;
he hardly listened to her, he was so full of business. The formidable
symptoms of stock-taking were visible all round him; he begged her to

excuse him. She was received coldly enough by her sister, who owed her a
grudge. In fact, Augustine, in her finery, and stepping out of a handsome
carriage, had never been to see her but when passing by. The wife of the
prudent Lebas, imagining that want of money was the prime cause of this
early call, tried to keep up a tone of reserve which more than once made
Augustine smile. The painter’s wife perceived that, apart from the cap and
lappets, her mother had found in Virginie a successor who could uphold the
ancient honor of the Cat and Racket. At breakfast she observed certain
changes in the management of the house which did honor to Lebas’ good
sense; the assistants did not rise before dessert; they were allowed to talk,
and the abundant meal spoke of ease without luxury. The fashionable
woman found some tickets for a box at the Francais, where she remembered
having seen her sister from time to time. Madame Lebas had a cashmere
shawl over her shoulders, of which the value bore witness to her husband’s
generosity to her. In short, the couple were keeping pace with the times.
During the two-thirds of the day she spent there, Augustine was touched to
the heart by the equable happiness, devoid, to be sure, of all emotion, but
equally free from storms, enjoyed by this well-matched couple. They had
accepted life as a commercial enterprise, in which, above all, they must do
credit to the business. Not finding any great love in her husband, Virginie
had set to work to create it. Having by degrees learned to esteem and care
for his wife, the time that his happiness had taken to germinate was to
Joseph Lebas a guarantee of its durability. Hence, when Augustine
plaintively set forth her painful position, she had to face the deluge of
commonplace morality which the traditions of the Rue Saint-Denis
furnished to her sister.
“The mischief is done, wife,” said Joseph Lebas; “we must try to give our
sister good advice.” Then the clever tradesman ponderously analyzed the
resources which law and custom might offer Augustine as a means of
escape at this crisis; he ticketed every argument, so to speak, and arranged
them in their degrees of weight under various categories, as though they
were articles of merchandise of different qualities; then he put them in the
scale, weighed them, and ended by showing the necessity for his sister-in-
law’s taking violent steps which could not satisfy the love she still had for
her husband; and, indeed, the feeling had revived in all its strength when
she heard Joseph Lebas speak of legal proceedings. Augustine thanked
them, and returned home even more undecided than she had been before

consulting them. She now ventured to go to the house in the Rue du
Colombier, intending to confide her troubles to her father and mother; for
she was like a sick man who, in his desperate plight, tries every
prescription, and even puts faith in old wives’ remedies.
The old people received their daughter with an effusiveness that touched
her deeply. Her visit brought them some little change, and that to them was
worth a fortune. For the last four years they had gone their way like
navigators without a goal or a compass. Sitting by the chimney corner, they
would talk over their disasters under the old law of maximum, of their great
investments in cloth, of the way they had weathered bankruptcies, and,
above all, the famous failure of Lecocq, Monsieur Guillaume’s battle of
Marengo. Then, when they had exhausted the tale of lawsuits, they
recapitulated the sum total of their most profitable stock-takings, and told
each other old stories of the Saint-Denis quarter. At two o’clock old
Guillaume went to cast an eye on the business at the Cat and Racket; on his
way back he called at all the shops, formerly the rivals of his own, where
the young proprietors hoped to inveigle the old draper into some risky
discount, which, as was his wont, he never refused point-blank. Two good
Normandy horses were dying of their own fat in the stables of the big
house; Madame Guillaume never used them but to drag her on Sundays to
high Mass at the parish church. Three times a week the worthy couple kept
open house. By the influence of his son-in-law Sommervieux, Monsieur
Guillaume had been named a member of the consulting board for the
clothing of the Army. Since her husband had stood so high in office,
Madame Guillaume had decided that she must receive; her rooms were so
crammed with gold and silver ornaments, and furniture, tasteless but of
undoubted value, that the simplest room in the house looked like a chapel.
Economy and expense seemed to be struggling for the upper hand in every
accessory. It was as though Monsieur Guillaume had looked to a good
investment, even in the purchase of a candlestick. In the midst of this
bazaar, where splendor revealed the owner’s want of occupation,
Sommervieux’s famous picture filled the place of honor, and in it Monsieur
and Madame Guillaume found their chief consolation, turning their eyes,
harnessed with eye-glasses, twenty times a day on this presentment of their
past life, to them so active and amusing. The appearance of this mansion
and these rooms, where everything had an aroma of staleness and
mediocrity, the spectacle offered by these two beings, cast away, as it were,

on a rock far from the world and the ideas which are life, startled
Augustine; she could here contemplate the sequel of the scene of which the
first part had struck her at the house of Lebas—a life of stir without
movement, a mechanical and instinctive existence like that of the beaver;
and then she felt an indefinable pride in her troubles, as she reflected that
they had their source in eighteen months of such happiness as, in her eyes,
was worth a thousand lives like this; its vacuity seemed to her horrible.
However, she concealed this not very charitable feeling, and displayed for
her parents her newly-acquired accomplishments of mind, and the
ingratiating tenderness that love had revealed to her, disposing them to
listen to her matrimonial grievances. Old people have a weakness for this
kind of confidence. Madame Guillaume wanted to know the most trivial
details of that alien life, which to her seemed almost fabulous. The travels
of Baron da la Houtan, which she began again and again and never finished,
told her nothing more unheard-of concerning the Canadian savages.
“What, child, your husband shuts himself into a room with naked
women! And you are so simple as to believe that he draws them?”
As she uttered this exclamation, the grandmother laid her spectacles on a
little work-table, shook her skirts, and clasped her hands on her knees,
raised by a foot-warmer, her favorite pedestal.
“But, mother, all artists are obliged to have models.”
“He took good care not to tell us that when he asked leave to marry you.
If I had known it, I would never had given my daughter to a man who
followed such a trade. Religion forbids such horrors; they are immoral. And
at what time of night do you say he comes home?”
“At one o’clock—two——”
The old folks looked at each other in utter amazement.
“Then he gambles?” said Monsieur Guillaume. “In my day only gamblers
stayed out so late.”
Augustine made a face that scorned the accusation.
“He must keep you up through dreadful nights waiting for him,” said
Madame Guillaume. “But you go to bed, don’t you? And when he has lost,
the wretch wakes you.”
“No, mamma, on the contrary, he is sometimes in very good spirits. Not
unfrequently, indeed, when it is fine, he suggests that I should get up and go

into the woods.”
“The woods! At that hour? Then have you such a small set of rooms that
his bedroom and his sitting-room are not enough, and that he must run
about? But it is just to give you cold that the wretch proposes such
expeditions. He wants to get rid of you. Did one ever hear of a man settled
in life, a well-behaved, quiet man galloping about like a warlock?”
“But, my dear mother, you do not understand that he must have
excitement to fire his genius. He is fond of scenes which——”
“I would make scenes for him, fine scenes!” cried Madame Guillaume,
interrupting her daughter. “How can you show any consideration to such a
man? In the first place, I don’t like his drinking water only; it is not
wholesome. Why does he object to see a woman eating? What queer notion
is that! But he is mad. All you tell us about him is impossible. A man cannot
leave his home without a word, and never come back for ten days. And then
he tells you he has been to Dieppe to paint the sea. As if any one painted the
sea! He crams you with a pack of tales that are too absurd.”
Augustine opened her lips to defend her husband; but Madame
Guillaume enjoined silence with a wave of her hand, which she obeyed by a
survival of habit, and her mother went on in harsh tones: “Don’t talk to me
about the man! He never set foot in church excepting to see you and to be
married. People without religion are capable of anything. Did Guillaume
ever dream of hiding anything from me, of spending three days without
saying a word to me, and of chattering afterwards like a blind magpie?”
“My dear mother, you judge superior people too severely. If their ideas
were the same as other folks’, they would not be men of genius.”
“Very well, then let men of genius stop at home and not get married.
What! A man of genius is to make his wife miserable? And because he is a
genius it is all right! Genius, genius! It is not so very clever to say black one
minute and white the next, as he does, to interrupt other people, to dance
such rigs at home, never to let you know which foot you are to stand on, to
compel his wife never to be amused unless my lord is in gay spirits, and to
be dull when he is dull.”
“But, mother, the very nature of such imaginations——”
“What are such ‘imaginations’?” Madame Guillaume went on,
interrupting her daughter again. “Fine ones his are, my word! What

possesses a man that all on a sudden, without consulting a doctor, he takes it
into his head to eat nothing but vegetables? If indeed it were from religious
motives, it might do him some good—but he has no more religion than a
Huguenot. Was there ever a man known who, like him, loved horses better
than his fellow-creatures, had his hair curled like a heathen, laid statues
under muslin coverlets, shut his shutters in broad day to work by lamp-
light? There, get along; if he were not so grossly immoral, he would be fit
to shut up in a lunatic asylum. Consult Monsieur Loraux, the priest at Saint
Sulpice, ask his opinion about it all, and he will tell you that your husband,
does not behave like a Christian.”
“Oh, mother, can you believe——?”
“Yes, I do believe. You loved him, and you can see none of these things.
But I can remember in the early days after your marriage. I met him in the
Champs-Elysees. He was on horseback. Well, at one minute he was
galloping as hard as he could tear, and then pulled up to a walk. I said to
myself at that moment, ‘There is a man devoid of judgement.’”
“Ah, ha!” cried Monsieur Guillaume, “how wise I was to have your
money settled on yourself with such a queer fellow for a husband!”
When Augustine was so imprudent as to set forth her serious grievances
against her husband, the two old people were speechless with indignation.
But the word “divorce” was ere long spoken by Madame Guillaume. At the
sound of the word divorce the apathetic old draper seemed to wake up.
Prompted by his love for his daughter, and also by the excitement which the
proceedings would bring into his uneventful life, father Guillaume took up
the matter. He made himself the leader of the application for a divorce, laid
down the lines of it, almost argued the case; he offered to be at all the
charges, to see the lawyers, the pleaders, the judges, to move heaven and
earth. Madame de Sommervieux was frightened, she refused her father’s
services, said she would not be separated from her husband even if she were
ten times as unhappy, and talked no more about her sorrows. After being
overwhelmed by her parents with all the little wordless and consoling
kindnesses by which the old couple tried in vain to make up to her for her
distress of heart, Augustine went away, feeling the impossibility of making
a superior mind intelligible to weak intellects. She had learned that a wife
must hide from every one, even from her parents, woes for which it is so
difficult to find sympathy. The storms and sufferings of the upper spheres

are appreciated only by the lofty spirits who inhabit there. In any
circumstance we can only be judged by our equals.
Thus poor Augustine found herself thrown back on the horror of her
meditations, in the cold atmosphere of her home. Study was indifferent to
her, since study had not brought her back her husband’s heart. Initiated into
the secret of these souls of fire, but bereft of their resources, she was
compelled to share their sorrows without sharing their pleasures. She was
disgusted with the world, which to her seemed mean and small as compared
with the incidents of passion. In short, her life was a failure.
One evening an idea flashed upon her that lighted up her dark grief like a
beam from heaven. Such an idea could never have smiled on a heart less
pure, less virtuous than hers. She determined to go to the Duchesse de
Carigliano, not to ask her to give her back her husband’s heart, but to learn
the arts by which it had been captured; to engage the interest of this haughty
fine lady for the mother of her lover’s children; to appeal to her and make
her the instrument of her future happiness, since she was the cause of her
present wretchedness.
So one day Augustine, timid as she was, but armed with supernatural
courage, got into her carriage at two in the afternoon to try for admittance to
the boudoir of the famous coquette, who was never visible till that hour.
Madame de Sommervieux had not yet seen any of the ancient and
magnificent mansions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. As she made her
way through the stately corridors, the handsome staircases, the vast
drawing-rooms—full of flowers, though it was in the depth of winter, and
decorated with the taste peculiar to women born to opulence or to the
elegant habits of the aristocracy, Augustine felt a terrible clutch at her heart;
she coveted the secrets of an elegance of which she had never had an idea;
she breathed in an air of grandeur which explained the attraction of the
house for her husband. When she reached the private rooms of the Duchess
she was filled with jealousy and a sort of despair, as she admired the
luxurious arrangement of the furniture, the draperies and the hangings. Here
disorder was a grace, here luxury affected a certain contempt of splendor.
The fragrance that floated in the warm air flattered the sense of smell
without offending it. The accessories of the rooms were in harmony with a
view, through plate-glass windows, of the lawns in a garden planted with
evergreen trees. It was all bewitching, and the art of it was not perceptible.

The whole spirit of the mistress of these rooms pervaded the drawing-room
where Augustine awaited her. She tried to divine her rival’s character from
the aspect of the scattered objects; but there was here something as
impenetrable in the disorder as in the symmetry, and to the simple-minded
young wife all was a sealed letter. All that she could discern was that, as a
woman, the Duchess was a superior person. Then a painful thought came
over her.
“Alas! And is it true,” she wondered, “that a simple and loving heart is
not all-sufficient to an artist; that to balance the weight of these powerful
souls they need a union with feminine souls of a strength equal to their
own? If I had been brought up like this siren, our weapons at least might
have been equal in the hour of struggle.”
“But I am not at home!” The sharp, harsh words, though spoken in an
undertone in the adjoining boudoir, were heard by Augustine, and her heart
beat violently.
“The lady is in there,” replied the maid.
“You are an idiot! Show her in,” replied the Duchess, whose voice was
sweeter, and had assumed the dulcet tones of politeness. She evidently now
meant to be heard.
Augustine shyly entered the room. At the end of the dainty boudoir she
saw the Duchess lounging luxuriously on an ottoman covered with brown
velvet and placed in the centre of a sort of apse outlined by soft folds of
white muslin over a yellow lining. Ornaments of gilt bronze, arranged with
exquisite taste, enhanced this sort of dais, under which the Duchess reclined
like a Greek statue. The dark hue of the velvet gave relief to every
fascinating charm. A subdued light, friendly to her beauty, fell like a
reflection rather than a direct illumination. A few rare flowers raised their
perfumed heads from costly Sevres vases. At the moment when this picture
was presented to Augustine’s astonished eyes, she was approaching so
noiselessly that she caught a glance from those of the enchantress. This look
seemed to say to some one whom Augustine did not at first perceive, “Stay;
you will see a pretty woman, and make her visit seem less of a bore.”
On seeing Augustine, the Duchess rose and made her sit down by her.
“And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, madame?” she said with
a most gracious smile.

“Why all the falseness?” thought Augustine, replying only with a bow.
Her silence was compulsory. The young woman saw before her a
superfluous witness of the scene. This personage was, of all the Colonels in
the army, the youngest, the most fashionable, and the finest man. His face,
full of life and youth, but already expressive, was further enhanced by a
small moustache twirled up into points, and as black as jet, by a full
imperial, by whiskers carefully combed, and a forest of black hair in some
disorder. He was whisking a riding whip with an air of ease and freedom
which suited his self-satisfied expression and the elegance of his dress; the
ribbons attached to his button-hole were carelessly tied, and he seemed to
pride himself much more on his smart appearance than on his courage.
Augustine looked at the Duchesse de Carigliano, and indicated the Colonel
by a sidelong glance. All its mute appeal was understood.
“Good-bye, then, Monsieur d’Aiglemont, we shall meet in the Bois de
Boulogne.”
These words were spoken by the siren as though they were the result of
an agreement made before Augustine’s arrival, and she winged them with a
threatening look that the officer deserved perhaps for the admiration he
showed in gazing at the modest flower, which contrasted so well with the
haughty Duchess. The young fop bowed in silence, turned on the heels of
his boots, and gracefully quitted the boudoir. At this instant, Augustine,
watching her rival, whose eyes seemed to follow the brilliant officer,
detected in that glance a sentiment of which the transient expression is
known to every woman. She perceived with the deepest anguish that her
visit would be useless; this lady, full of artifice, was too greedy of homage
not to have a ruthless heart.
“Madame,” said Augustine in a broken voice, “the step I am about to take
will seem to you very strange; but there is a madness of despair which
ought to excuse anything. I understand only too well why Theodore prefers
your house to any other, and why your mind has so much power over his.
Alas! I have only to look into myself to find more than ample reasons. But I
am devoted to my husband, madame. Two years of tears have not effaced
his image from my heart, though I have lost his. In my folly I dared to
dream of a contest with you; and I have come to you to ask you by what
means I may triumph over yourself. Oh, madame,” cried the young wife,
ardently seizing the hand which her rival allowed her to hold, “I will never

pray to God for my own happiness with so much fervor as I will beseech
Him for yours, if you will help me to win back Sommervieux’s regard—I
will not say his love. I have no hope but in you. Ah! tell me how you could
please him, and make him forget the first days——” At these words
Augustine broke down, suffocated with sobs she could not suppress.
Ashamed of her weakness, she hid her face in her handkerchief, which she
bathed with tears.
“What a child you are, my dear little beauty!” said the Duchess, carried
away by the novelty of such a scene, and touched, in spite of herself, at
receiving such homage from the most perfect virtue perhaps in Paris. She
took the young wife’s handkerchief, and herself wiped the tears from her
eyes, soothing her by a few monosyllables murmured with gracious
compassion. After a moment’s silence the Duchess, grasping poor
Augustine’s hands in both her own—hands that had a rare character of
dignity and powerful beauty—said in a gentle and friendly voice: “My first
warning is to advise you not to weep so bitterly; tears are disfiguring. We
must learn to deal firmly with the sorrows that make us ill, for love does not
linger long by a sick-bed. Melancholy, at first, no doubt, lends a certain
attractive grace, but it ends by dragging the features and blighting the
loveliest face. And besides, our tyrants are so vain as to insist that their
slaves should be always cheerful.”
“But, madame, it is not in my power not to feel. How is it possible,
without suffering a thousand deaths, to see the face which once beamed
with love and gladness turn chill, colorless, and indifferent? I cannot control
my heart!”
“So much the worse, sweet child. But I fancy I know all your story. In the
first place, if your husband is unfaithful to you, understand clearly that I am
not his accomplice. If I was anxious to have him in my drawing-room, it
was, I own, out of vanity; he was famous, and he went nowhere. I like you
too much already to tell you all the mad things he has done for my sake. I
will only reveal one, because it may perhaps help us to bring him back to
you, and to punish him for the audacity of his behavior to me. He will end
by compromising me. I know the world too well, my dear, to abandon
myself to the discretion of a too superior man. You should know that one
may allow them to court one, but marry them—that is a mistake! We
women ought to admire men of genius, and delight in them as a spectacle,

but as to living with them? Never.—No, no. It is like wanting to find
pleasure in inspecting the machinery of the opera instead of sitting in a box
to enjoy its brilliant illusions. But this misfortune has fallen on you, my
poor child, has it not? Well, then, you must try to arm yourself against
tyranny.”
“Ah, madame, before coming in here, only seeing you as I came in, I
already detected some arts of which I had no suspicion.”
“Well, come and see me sometimes, and it will not be long before you
have mastered the knowledge of these trifles, important, too, in their way.
Outward things are, to fools, half of life; and in that matter more than one
clever man is a fool, in spite of all his talent. But I dare wager you never
could refuse your Theodore anything!”
“How refuse anything, madame, if one loves a man?”
“Poor innocent, I could adore you for your simplicity. You should know
that the more we love the less we should allow a man, above all, a husband,
to see the whole extent of our passion. The one who loves most is
tyrannized over, and, which is worse, is sooner or later neglected. The one
who wishes to rule should——”
“What, madame, must I then dissimulate, calculate, become false, form
an artificial character, and live in it? How is it possible to live in such a
way? Can you——” she hesitated; the Duchess smiled.
“My dear child,” the great lady went on in a serious tone, “conjugal
happiness has in all times been a speculation, a business demanding
particular attention. If you persist in talking passion while I am talking
marriage, we shall soon cease to understand each other. Listen to me,” she
went on, assuming a confidential tone. “I have been in the way of seeing
some of the superior men of our day. Those who have married have for the
most part chosen quite insignificant wives. Well, those wives governed
them, as the Emperor governs us; and if they were not loved, they were at
least respected. I like secrets—especially those which concern women—
well enough to have amused myself by seeking the clue to the riddle. Well,
my sweet child, those worthy women had the gift of analyzing their
husbands’ nature; instead of taking fright, like you, at their superiority, they
very acutely noted the qualities they lacked, and either by possessing those
qualities, or by feigning to possess them, they found means of making such
a handsome display of them in their husbands’ eyes that in the end they

impressed them. Also, I must tell you, all these souls which appear so lofty
have just a speck of madness in them, which we ought to know how to take
advantage of. By firmly resolving to have the upper hand and never
deviating from that aim, by bringing all our actions to bear on it, all our
ideas, our cajolery, we subjugate these eminently capricious natures, which,
by the very mutability of their thoughts, lend us the means of influencing
them.”
“Good heavens!” cried the young wife in dismay. “And this is life. It is a
warfare——”
“In which we must always threaten,” said the Duchess, laughing. “Our
power is wholly factitious. And we must never allow a man to despise us; it
is impossible to recover from such a descent but by odious manoeuvring.
Come,” she added, “I will give you a means of bringing your husband to his
senses.”
She rose with a smile to guide the young and guileless apprentice to
conjugal arts through the labyrinth of her palace. They came to a back-
staircase, which led up to the reception rooms. As Madame de Carigliano
pressed the secret springlock of the door she stopped, looking at Augustine
with an inimitable gleam of shrewdness and grace. “The Duc de Carigliano
adores me,” said she. “Well, he dare not enter by this door without my
leave. And he is a man in the habit of commanding thousands of soldiers.
He knows how to face a battery, but before me,—he is afraid!”
Augustine sighed. They entered a sumptuous gallery, where the painter’s
wife was led by the Duchess up to the portrait painted by Theodore of
Mademoiselle Guillaume. On seeing it, Augustine uttered a cry.
“I knew it was no longer in my house,” she said, “but—here!——”
“My dear child, I asked for it merely to see what pitch of idiocy a man of
genius may attain to. Sooner or later I should have returned it to you, for I
never expected the pleasure of seeing the original here face to face with the
copy. While we finish our conversation I will have it carried down to your
carriage. And if, armed with such a talisman, you are not your husband’s
mistress for a hundred years, you are not a woman, and you deserve your
fate.”
Augustine kissed the Duchess’ hand, and the lady clasped her to her
heart, with all the more tenderness because she would forget her by the
morrow. This scene might perhaps have destroyed for ever the candor and

purity of a less virtuous woman than Augustine, for the astute politics of the
higher social spheres were no more consonant to Augustine than the narrow
reasoning of Joseph Lebas, or Madame Guillaume’s vapid morality. Strange
are the results of the false positions into which we may be brought by the
slightest mistake in the conduct of life! Augustine was like an Alpine
cowherd surprised by an avalanche; if he hesitates, if he listens to the shouts
of his comrades, he is almost certainly lost. In such a crisis the heart steels
itself or breaks.
Madame de Sommervieux returned home a prey to such agitation as it is
difficult to describe. Her conversation with the Duchesse de Carigliano had
roused in her mind a crowd of contradictory thoughts. Like the sheep in the
fable, full of courage in the wolf’s absence, she preached to herself, and laid
down admirable plans of conduct; she devised a thousand coquettish
stratagems; she even talked to her husband, finding, away from him, all the
springs of true eloquence which never desert a woman; then, as she pictured
to herself Theodore’s clear and steadfast gaze, she began to quake. When
she asked whether monsieur were at home her voice shook. On learning that
he would not be in to dinner, she felt an unaccountable thrill of joy. Like a
criminal who has appealed against sentence of death, a respite, however
short, seemed to her a lifetime. She placed the portrait in her room, and
waited for her husband in all the agonies of hope. That this venture must
decide her future life, she felt too keenly not to shiver at every sound, even
the low ticking of the clock, which seemed to aggravate her terrors by
doling them out to her. She tried to cheat time by various devices. The idea
struck her of dressing in a way which would make her exactly like the
portrait. Then, knowing her husband’s restless temper, she had her room
lighted up with unusual brightness, feeling sure that when he came in
curiosity would bring him there at once. Midnight had struck when, at the
call of the groom, the street gate was opened, and the artist’s carriage
rumbled in over the stones of the silent courtyard.
“What is the meaning of this illumination?” asked Theodore in glad
tones, as he came into her room.
Augustine skilfully seized the auspicious moment; she threw herself into
her husband’s arms, and pointed to the portrait. The artist stood rigid as a
rock, and his eyes turned alternately on Augustine, on the accusing dress.
The frightened wife, half-dead, as she watched her husband’s changeful

brow—that terrible brow—saw the expressive furrows gathering like
clouds; then she felt her blood curdling in her veins when, with a glaring
look, and in a deep hollow voice, he began to question her:
“Where did you find that picture?”
“The Duchess de Carigliano returned it to me.”
“You asked her for it?”
“I did not know that she had it.”
The gentleness, or rather the exquisite sweetness of this angel’s voice,
might have touched a cannibal, but not an artist in the clutches of wounded
vanity.
“It is worthy of her!” exclaimed the painter in a voice of thunder. “I will
be avenged!” he cried, striding up and down the room. “She shall die of
shame; I will paint her! Yes, I will paint her as Messalina stealing out at
night from the palace of Claudius.”
“Theodore!” said a faint voice.
“I will kill her!”
“My dear——”
“She is in love with that little cavalry colonel, because he rides well
——”
“Theodore!”
“Let me be!” said the painter in a tone almost like a roar.
It would be odious to describe the whole scene. In the end the frenzy of
passion prompted the artist to acts and words which any woman not so
young as Augustine would have ascribed to madness.
At eight o’clock next morning Madame Guillaume, surprising her
daughter, found her pale, with red eyes, her hair in disorder, holding a
handkerchief soaked with tears, while she gazed at the floor strewn with the
torn fragments of a dress and the broken fragments of a large gilt picture-
frame. Augustine, almost senseless with grief, pointed to the wreck with a
gesture of deep despair.
“I don’t know that the loss is very great!” cried the old mistress of the
Cat and Racket. “It was like you, no doubt; but I am told that there is a man
on the boulevard who paints lovely portraits for fifty crowns.”
“Oh, mother!”

“Poor child, you are quite right,” replied Madame Guillaume, who
misinterpreted the expression of her daughter’s glance at her. “True, my
child, no one ever can love you as fondly as a mother. My darling, I guess it
all; but confide your sorrows to me, and I will comfort you. Did I not tell
you long ago that the man was mad! Your maid has told me pretty stories.
Why, he must be a perfect monster!”
Augustine laid a finger on her white lips, as if to implore a moment’s
silence. During this dreadful night misery had led her to that patient
resignation which in mothers and loving wives transcends in its effects all
human energy, and perhaps reveals in the heart of women the existence of
certain chords which God has withheld from men.
An inscription engraved on a broken column in the cemetery at
Montmartre states that Madame de Sommervieux died at the age of twenty-
seven. In the simple words of this epitaph one of the timid creature’s friends
can read the last scene of a tragedy. Every year, on the second of November,
the solemn day of the dead, he never passes this youthful monument
without wondering whether it does not need a stronger woman than
Augustine to endure the violent embrace of genius?
“The humble and modest flowers that bloom in the valley,” he reflects,
“perish perhaps when they are transplanted too near the skies, to the region
where storms gather and the sun is scorching.”

ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human
Comedy.

Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d’
The Firm of Nucingen
A Woman of Thirty

Birotteau, Cesar
Cesar Birotteau
A Bachelor’s Establishment

Camusot
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Cousin Pons
The Muse of the Department
Cesar Birotteau

Cardot, Jean-Jerome-Severin
A Start in Life
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Cesar Birotteau

Carigliano, Marechal, Duc de
Father Goriot
Sarrasine

Carigliano, Duchesse de
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
The Peasantry
The Member for Arcis

Guillaume
Cesar Birotteau

Lebas, Joseph
Cesar Birotteau
Cousin Betty

Lebas, Madame Joseph (Virginie)
Cesar Birotteau
Cousin Betty

Lourdois
Cesar Birotteau

Rabourdin, Xavier
The Government Clerks

Cesar Birotteau
The Middle Classes

Roguin, Madame
Cesar Birotteau
Pierrette
A Second Home
A Daughter of Eve

Sommervieux, Theodore de
The Government Clerks
Modeste Mignon

Sommervieux, Madame Theodore de (Augustine)
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
Cesar Birotteau

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT THE SIGN OF
THE CAT AND RACKET ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be
renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law
means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the
Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States
without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying
and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a
registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook,
except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying
royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge
anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg
eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do
practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by
U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license,
especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any
other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you
agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License
available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing
Project Gutenberg electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work,
you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the
terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright)
agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement,
you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg
electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy
of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to
be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on
or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be
bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can
do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works even without complying
with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a
lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg electronic works if you
follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to
Project Gutenberg electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual
work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are

located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are
removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg
mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing
Project Gutenberg works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for
keeping the Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can
easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when you
share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a
constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the
laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before
downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating
derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg work.
The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status
of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work on which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied
or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the
United States and most other parts of the world at no
cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You
may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not
located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is derived from
texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice
indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the
work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without
paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a
work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on
the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs
1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted with the
permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply
with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed
by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project
Gutenberg License for all works posted with the permission of the
copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg License
terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any
other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently
displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or
immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format other than “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the
official Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no
additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of
exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work
in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format
must include the full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph
1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing,
copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works unless you comply
with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to
or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the
use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the
owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has agreed to donate
royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days
following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to
prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly
marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about
donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does
not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You
must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works
possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all
access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution
of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in
this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project

Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works
not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and
the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as,
but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription
errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or
damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that
damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except
for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to
you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE
THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT
EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE
THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you
discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you
can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the
defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund.
If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to

you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work
electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you
may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the
problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in
paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR
FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or
limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable
to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum
disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity
or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that
arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause
to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg work, (b)
alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg
work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project
Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic
works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including
obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the

efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of
life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance
they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s goals and ensuring
that the Project Gutenberg collection will remain freely available for
generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for
Project Gutenberg and future generations. To learn more about the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations
can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)
(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of
Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service.
The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541.
Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax
deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s
laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516,
Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and
official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the
number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment

including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are
particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States.
Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort,
much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these
requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not
received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or
determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have
not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against
accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us
with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any
statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the
United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods
and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including
checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit:
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg
electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with
anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg
eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions,
all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a

copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in
compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility:
www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg, including how
to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,
how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email
newsletter to hear about new eBooks.