The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac (best ereader for graphic novels TXT) 📕

her best friend. Always received by her with affectionate

smiles and sympathetic pleasure, he yielded readily to the

irresistible grace of her manners. The vehement activity with which he

pursued his three avocations was a part of his natural character and

temperament. He was a fine stout man, ruddy, jovial, extravagant, and

full of ideas. In ten years there was never a quarrel in his

household. Among business men he was looked upon, in common with all

artists, as a scatter-brained fellow; and superficial persons thought

that the constant hurry of this hard worker was only the restless

coming and going of a busybody.

 

Colleville had the sense to seem stupid; he boasted of his family

happiness, and gave himself unheard-of trouble in making anagrams, in

order at times to seem absorbed in that passion. The government clerks

of his division at the ministry, the office directors, and even the

heads of divisions came to his concerts; now and then he quietly

bestowed upon them opera tickets, when he needed some extra indulgence

on account of his frequent absence. Rehearsals took half the time that

he ought to have been at his desk; but the musical knowledge his

father had bequeathed to him was sufficiently genuine and

well-grounded to excuse him from all but final rehearsals. Thanks to

Madame Colleville's intimacies, both the theatre and the ministry lent

themselves kindly to the needs of this industrious pluralist, who,

moreover, was bringing up, with great care, a youth, warmly

recommended to him by his wife, a future great musician, who sometimes

took his place in the orchestra with a promise of eventually

succeeding him. In fact, about the year 1827 this young man became the

first clarionet when Colleville resigned his position.

 

The usual comment on Flavie was, "That little slip of a coquette,

Madame Colleville." The eldest of the Colleville children, born in

1816, was the living image of Colleville himself. In 1818, Madame

Colleville held the cavalry in high estimation, above even art; and

she distinguished more particularly a sub-lieutenant in the dragoons

of Saint-Chamans, the young and rich Charles de Gondreville, who

afterwards died in the Spanish campaign. By that time Flavie had had a

second son, whom she henceforth dedicated to a military career. In

1820 she considered banking the nursing mother of trade, the supporter

of Nations, and she made the great Keller, that famous banker and

orator, her idol. She then had another son, whom she named Francois,

resolving to make him a merchant,--feeling sure that Keller's

influence would never fail him. About the close of the year 1820,

Thuillier, the intimate friend of Monsieur and Madame Colleville, felt

the need of pouring his sorrows into the bosom of this excellent

woman, and to her he related his conjugal miseries. For six years he

had longed to have children, but God did not bless him; although that

poor Madame Thuillier had made novenas, and had even gone, uselessly,

to Notra-Dame de Liesse! He depicted Celeste in various lights, which

brought the words "Poor Thuillier!" from Flavie's lips. She herself

was rather sad, having at the moment no dominant opinion. She poured

her own griefs into Thuillier's bosom. The great Keller, that hero of

the Left, was, in reality, extremely petty; she had learned to know

the other side of public fame, the follies of banking, the emptiness

of eloquence! The orator only spoke for show; to her he had behaved

extremely ill. Thuillier was indignant. "None but stupid fellows know

how to love," he said; "take me!" That handsome Thuillier was

henceforth supposed to be paying court to Madame Colleville, and was

rated as one of her "attentives,"--a word in vogue during the Empire.

 

"Ha! you are after my wife," said Colleville, laughing. "Take care;

she'll leave you in the lurch, like all the rest."

 

A rather clever speech, by which Colleville saved his marital dignity.

From 1820 to 1821, Thuillier, in virtue of his title as friend of the

family, helped Colleville, who had formerly helped him; so much so,

that in eighteen months he had lent nearly ten thousand francs to the

Colleville establishment, with no intention of ever claiming them. In

the spring of 1821, Madame Colleville gave birth to a charming little

girl, to whom Monsieur and Madame Thuillier were godfather and

godmother. The child was baptized Celeste-Louise-Caroline-Brigitte;

Mademoiselle Thuillier wishing that her name should be given among

others to the little angel. The name of Caroline was a graceful

attention paid to Colleville. Old mother Lemprun assumed the care of

putting the baby to nurse under her own eyes at Auteuil, where Celeste

and her sister-in-law Brigitte, paid it regularly a semi-weekly visit.

 

As soon as Madame Colleville recovered she said to Thuillier, frankly,

in a very serious tone:--

 

"My dear friend, if we are all to remain good friends, you must be our

friend only. Colleville is attached to you; well, that's enough for

you in this household."

 

"Explain to me," said the handsome Thuillier to Tullia after this

remark, "why women are never attached to me. I am not the Apollo

Belvidere, but for all that I'm not a Vulcan; I am passably

good-looking, I have sense, I am faithful--"

 

"Do you want me to tell you the truth?" replied Tullia.

 

"Yes," said Thuillier.

 

"Well, though we can, sometimes, love a stupid fellow, we never love a

silly one."

 

Those words killed Thuillier; he never got over them; henceforth he

was a prey to melancholy and accused all women of caprice.

 

The secretary-general of the ministry, des Lupeaulx, whose influence

Madame Colleville thought greater than it was, and of whom she said,

later, "That was one of my mistakes," became for a time the great man

of the Colleville salon; but as Flavie found he had no power to

promote Colleville into the upper division, she had the good sense to

resent des Lupeaulx's attentions to Madame Rabourdin (whom she called

a minx), to whose house she had never been invited, and who had twice

had the impertinence not to come to the Colleville concerts.

 

Madame Colleville was deeply affected by the death of young

Gondreville; she felt, she said, the finger of God. In 1824 she turned

over a new leaf, talked of economy, stopped her receptions, busied

herself with her children, determined to become a good mother of a

family; no favorite friend was seen at her house. She went to church,

reformed her dress, wore gray, and talked Catholicism, mysticism, and

so forth. All this produced, in 1825, another little son, whom she

named Theodore. Soon after, in 1826, Colleville was appointed

sub-director of the Clergeot division, and later, in 1828, collector

of taxes in a Paris arrondissement. He also received the cross of the

Legion of honor, to enable him to put his daughter at the royal school

of Saint-Denis. The half-scholarship obtained by Keller for the eldest

boy, Charles, was transferred to the second in 1830, when Charles

entered the school of Saint-Louis on a full scholarship. The third

son, taken under the protection of Madame la Dauphine, was provided

with a three-quarter scholarship in the Henri IV. school.

 

In 1830 Colleville, who had the good fortune not to lose a child, was

obliged, owing to his well-known attachment to the fallen royal

family, to send in his resignation; but he was clever enough to make a

bargain for it,--obtaining in exchange a pension of two thousand four

hundred francs, based on his period of service, and ten thousand

francs indemnity paid by his successor; he also received the rank of

officer of the Legion of honor. Nevertheless, he found himself in

rather a cramped condition when Mademoiselle Thuillier, in 1832,

advised him to come and live near them; pointing out to him the

possibility of obtaining some position in the mayor's office, which,

in fact, he did obtain a few weeks later, at a salary of three

thousand francs. Thus Thuillier and Colleville were destined to end

their days together. In 1833 Madame Colleville, then thirty-five years

old, settled herself in the rue d'Enfer, at the corner of the rue des

Deux-Eglises with Celeste and little Theodore, the other boys being at

their several schools. Colleville was equidistant between the mayor's

office and the rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer. Thus the household, after

a brilliant, gay, headlong, reformed, and calmed existence, subsided

finally into bourgeois obscurity with five thousand four hundred

francs a year for its sole dependence.

 

Celeste was by this time twelve years of age, and she promised to be

pretty. She needed masters, and her education ought to cost not less

than two thousand francs a year. The mother felt the necessity of

keeping her under the eye of her godfather and godmother. She

therefore very willingly adopted the proposal of Mademoiselle

Thuillier, who, without committing herself to any engagement, allowed

Madame Colleville to understand that the fortunes of her brother, his

wife, and herself would go, ultimately, to the little Celeste. The

child had been left at Auteuil until she was seven years of age,

adored by the good old Madame Lemprun, who died in 1829, leaving

twenty thousand francs, and a house which was sold for the enormous

sum of twenty-eight thousand. The lively little girl had seen very

little of her mother, but very much of Mademoiselle and Madame

Thuillier when she first returned to the paternal mansion in 1829; but

in 1833 she fell under the dominion of Flavie, who was then, as we

have said, endeavoring to do her duty, which, like other women

instigated by remorse, she exaggerated. Without being an unkind

mother, Flavie was very stern with her daughter. She remembered her

own bringing-up, and swore within herself to make Celeste a virtuous

woman. She took her to mass, and had her prepared for her first

communion by a rector who has since become a bishop. Celeste was all

the more readily pious, because her godmother, Madame Thuillier, was a

saint, and the child adored her; she felt that the poor neglected

woman loved her better than her own mother.

 

From 1833 to 1840 she received a brilliant education according to the

ideas of the bourgeoisie. The best music-masters made her a fair

musician; she could paint a water-color properly; she danced extremely

well; and she had studied the French language, history, geography,

English, Italian,--in short, all that constitutes the education of a

well-brought-up young lady. Of medium height, rather plump,

unfortunately near-sighted, she was neither plain nor pretty; not

without delicacy or even brilliancy of complexion, it is true, but

totally devoid of all distinction of manner. She had a great fund of

reserved sensibility, and her godfather and godmother, Mademoiselle

Thuillier and Colleville, were unanimous on one point,--the great

resource of mothers--namely, that Celeste was capable of attachment.

One of her beauties was a magnificent head of very fine blond hair;

but her hands and feet showed her bourgeois origin.

 

Celeste endeared herself by precious qualities; she was kind, simple,

without gall of any kind; she loved her father and mother, and would

willingly sacrifice herself for their sake. Brought up to the deepest

admiration for her godfather by Brigitte (who taught her to say "Aunt

Brigitte"), and by Madame Thuillier and her own mother, Celeste

imbibed the highest idea of the ex-beau of the Empire. The house in

the rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer produced upon her very much the effect

of the Chateau des Tuileries on a courtier of the new dynasty.

 

Thuillier had not escaped the action of the administrative rolling-pin

which thins the mind as it spreads it out. Exhausted by irksome toil,

as much as by his life of gallantry, the ex-sub-director had well-nigh

lost all his faculties by the time he came to live in the rue

Saint-Dominique. But his weary face, on which there still reigned an

air of imperial haughtiness, mingled with a certain contentment, the

conceit of an upper official, made a deep impression upon Celeste. She

alone adored that haggard face. The girl, moreover, felt herself to be

the happiness of the Thuillier household. 

CHAPTER IV (THE CIRCLE OF MONSIEUR AND MADAME THUILLIER)

The Collevilles and their children became, naturally, the nucleus of

the circle which Mademoiselle Thuillier had the ambition to group

around her brother. A former clerk in the Billardiere division of the

ministry, named