Honore de Balzac (29 page)

"Sire," she said, looking at him with as firm an eye, "I am Mademoiselle
de Cinq-Cygne."

"Well?" he replied, in an angry voice, thinking her look braved him.

"Do you not understand? I am the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, come to ask
mercy," she said, falling on her knees and holding out to him the
petition drawn up by Talleyrand, endorsed by the Empress, by Cambaceres
and by Malin.

The Emperor raised her graciously, and said with a keen look: "Have you
come to your senses? Do you now understand what the French Empire is and
must be?"

"Ah! at this moment I understand only the Emperor," she said, vanquished
by the kindly manner with which the man of destiny had said the words
that foretold to her ears success.

"Are they innocent?" asked the Emperor.

"Yes, all of them," she said with enthusiasm.

"All? No, that bailiff is a dangerous man, who would have killed my
senator without taking your advice."

"Ah, Sire," she said, "if you had a friend devoted to you, would you
abandon him? Would you not rather—"

"You are a woman," he said, interrupting her in a faint tone of
ridicule.

"And you, a man of iron!" she replied with a passionate sternness which
pleased him.

"That man has been condemned to death by the laws of his country," he
continued.

"But he is innocent!"

"Child!" he said.

He took Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne by the hand and led her from the hut
to the plateau.

"See," he continued, with that eloquence of his which changed even
cowards to brave men, "see those three hundred thousand men—all
innocent. And yet to-morrow thirty thousand of them will be lying dead,
dead for their country! Among those Prussians there is, perhaps, some
great mathematician, a man of genius, an idealist, who will be mown
down. On our side we shall assuredly lose many a great man never known
to fame. Perhaps even I shall see my best friend die. Shall I blame God?
No. I shall bear it silently. Learn from this, mademoiselle, that a
man must die for the laws of his country just as men die here for her
glory." So saying, he led her back into the hut. "Return to France," he
said, looking at the marquis; "my orders shall follow you."

Laurence believed in a commutation of Michu's punishment, and in her
gratitude she knelt again before the Emperor and kissed his hand.

"You are the Marquis de Chargeboeuf?" said Napoleon, addressing the
marquis.

"Yes, Sire."

"You have children?"

"Many children."

"Why not give me one of your grandsons? he shall be my page."

"Ah!" thought Laurence, "there's the sub-lieutenant after all; he wants
to be paid for his mercy."

The marquis bowed without replying. Happily at this moment General Rapp
rushed into the hut.

"Sire, the cavalry of the Guard, and that of the Grand-duc de Berg
cannot be set up before midday to-morrow."

"Never mind," said Napoleon, turning to Berthier, "we, too, get our
reprieves; let us profit by them."

At a sign of his hand the marquis and Laurence retired and again entered
their carriage; the corporal showed them their road and accompanied them
to a village where they passed the night. The next day they left
the field of battle behind them, followed by the thunder of the
cannon,—eight hundred pieces,—which pursued them for ten hours. While
still on their way they learned of the amazing victory of Jena.

Eight days later, they were driving through the faubourg of Troyes,
where they learned that an order of the chief justice, transmitted
through the
procureur imperial
of Troyes, commanded the release of
the four gentlemen on bail during the Emperor's pleasure. But Michu's
sentence was confirmed, and the warrant for his execution had been
forwarded from the ministry of police. These orders had reached Troyes
that very morning. Laurence went at once to the prison, though it was
two in the morning, and obtained permission to stay with Michu, who was
about to undergo the melancholy ceremony called "the toilet." The good
abbe, who had asked permission to accompany him to the scaffold, had
just given absolution to the man, whose only distress in dying was his
uncertainty as to the fate of his young masters. When Laurence entered
his cell he uttered a cry of joy.

"I can die now," he said.

"They are pardoned," she said; "I do not know on what conditions, but
they are pardoned. I did all I could for you, dear friend—against the
advice of others. I thought I had saved you; but the Emperor deceived me
with his graciousness."

"It was written above," said Michu, "that the watch-dog should be killed
on the spot where his old masters died."

The last hour passed rapidly. Michu, at the moment of parting, asked
to kiss her hand, but Laurence held her cheek to the lips of the noble
victim that he might sacredly kiss it. Michu refused to mount the cart.

"Innocent men should go afoot," he said.

He would not let the abbe give him his arm; resolutely and with dignity
he walked alone to the scaffold. As he laid his head on the plank he
said to the executioner, after asking him to turn down the collar of his
coat, "My clothes belong to you; try not to spot them."

The four gentlemen had hardly time to even see Mademoiselle de
Cinq-Cygne. An orderly of the general commanding the division to which
they were assigned, brought them their commissions as sub-lieutenants in
the same regiment of cavalry, with orders to proceed at once to Bayonne,
the base of supplies for its particular army-corps. After a scene of
heart-rending farewells, for they all foreboded what the future should
bring forth, Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne returned to her desolate home.

The two brothers were killed together under the eyes of the Emperor at
Sommo-Sierra, the one defending the other, both being already in command
of their troop. The last words of each were, "Laurence,
cy meurs
!"

The elder d'Hauteserre died a colonel at the attack on the redoubt at
Moscow, where his brother took his place.

Adrien d'Hauteserre, appointed brigadier-general at the battle of
Dresden, was dangerously wounded there and was sent to Cinq-Cygne
for proper nursing. While endeavoring to save this relic of the four
gentlemen who for a few brief months had been so happy around her,
Laurence, then thirty-two years of age, married him. She offered him a
withered heart, but he accepted it; those who truly love doubt nothing
or doubt all.

The Restoration found Laurence without enthusiasm. The Bourbons returned
too late for her. Nevertheless, she had no cause for complaint. Her
husband, made peer of France with the title of Marquis de Cinq-Cygne,
became lieutenant-general in 1816, and was rewarded with the blue ribbon
for the eminent services which he then performed.

Michu's son, of whom Laurence took care as though he were her own child,
was admitted to the bar in 1817. After practising two years he was
made assistant-judge at the court of Alencon, and from there he became
procureur-du-roi
at Arcis in 1827. Laurence, who had also taken
charge of Michu's property, made over to the young man on the day of his
majority an investment in the public Funds which yielded him an income
of twelve thousand francs a year. Later, she arranged a marriage for him
with Mademoiselle Girel, an heiress at Troyes.

The Marquis de Cinq-Cygne died in 1829, in the arms of his wife,
surrounded by his father and mother, and his children who adored him.
At the time of his death no one had ever fathomed the mystery of the
senator's abduction. Louis XVIII. did not neglect to repair, as far as
possible, the wrongs done by that affair; but he was silent as to the
causes of the disaster. From that time forth the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne
believed him to have been an accomplice in the catastrophe.

The late Marquis de Cinq-Cygne had used his savings, as well as those
of his father and mother, in the purchase of a fine house in the rue
de Faubourg-du-Roule, entailing it on heirs male for the support of
the title. The sordid economy of the marquis and his parents, which had
often troubled Laurence, was then explained. After this purchase the
marquise, who lived at Cinq-Cygne and economized on her own account
for her children, spent her winters in Paris,—all the more willingly
because her daughter Berthe and her son Paul were now of an age when
their education required the resources of Paris.

Madame de Cinq-Cygne went but little into society. Her husband could not
be ignorant of the regrets which lay in her tender heart; but he showed
her always the most exquisite delicacy, and died having loved no other
woman. This noble soul, not fully understood for a period of time but
to which the generous daughter of the Cinq-Cygnes returned in his last
years as true a love as that he gave to her, was completely happy in
his married life. Laurence lived for the joys of home. No woman has ever
been more cherished by her friends or more respected. To be received in
her house is an honor. Gentle, indulgent, intellectual, above all things
simple and natural, she pleases choice souls and draws them to her in
spite of her saddened aspect; each longs to protect this woman, inwardly
so strong, and that sentiment of secret protection counts for much in
the wondrous charm of her friendship. Her life, so painful during her
youth, is beautiful and serene towards evening. Her sufferings are
known, and no one asks who was the original of that portrait by Lefebvre
which is the chief and sacred ornament of her salon. Her face has the
maturity of fruits that have ripened slowly; a hallowed pride dignifies
that long-tried brow.

At the period when the marquise came to Paris to open the new house, her
fortune, increased by the law of indemnities, gave her some two hundred
thousand francs a year, not counting her husband's salary; besides this,
Laurence had inherited the money guarded by Michu for his young masters.
From that time forth she made a practice of spending half her income and
of laying by the rest for her daughter Berthe.

Berthe is the living image of her mother, but without her warrior nerve;
she is her mother in delicacy, in intellect,—"more a woman," Laurence
says, sadly. The marquise was not willing to marry her daughter until
she was twenty years of age. Her savings, judiciously invested in the
Funds by old Monsieur d'Hauteserre at the moment when consols fell in
1830, gave Berthe a dowry of eighty thousand francs a year in 1833, when
she was twenty.

About that time the Princesse de Cadignan, who was seeking to marry her
son, the Duc de Maufrigneuse, brought him into intimate relations with
Madame de Cinq-Cygne. Georges de Maufrigneuse dined with the marquise
three times a week, accompanied the mother and daughter to the Opera,
and curvetted in the Bois around their carriage when they drove out. It
was evident to all the world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain that Georges
loved Berthe. But no one could discover to a certainty whether Madame
de Cinq-Cygne was desirous of making her daughter a duchess, to become a
princess later, or whether it was only the princess who coveted for
her son the splendid dowry. Did the celebrated Diane court the noble
provincial house? and was the daughter of the Cinq-Cygnes frightened
by the celebrity of Madame de Cadignan, her tastes and her ruinous
extravagance? In her strong desire not to injure her son's prospects the
princess grew devout, shut the door on her former life, and spent the
summer season at Geneva in a villa on the lake.

One evening there were present in the salon of the Princesse de
Cadignan, the Marquise d'Espard, and de Marsay, then president of the
Council (on this occasion the princess saw her former lover for the
last time, for he died the following year), Eugene de Rastignac,
under-secretary of State attached to de Marsay's ministry, two
ambassadors, two celebrated orators from the Chamber of Peers, the old
dukes of Lenoncourt and de Navarreins, the Comte de Vandenesse and his
young wife, and d'Arthez,—who formed a rather singular circle, the
composition of which can be thus explained. The princess was anxious to
obtain from the prime minister of the crown a permit for the return
of the Prince de Cadignan. De Marsay, who did not choose to take upon
himself the responsibility of granting it came to tell the princess the
matter had been entrusted to safe hands, and that a certain political
manager had promised to bring her the result in the course of that
evening.

Madame and Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne were announced. Laurence, whose
principles were unyielding, was not only surprised but shocked to see
the most illustrious representatives of Legitimacy talking and laughing
in a friendly manner with the prime minister of the man whom she never
called anything but Monsieur le Duc d'Orleans. De Marsay, like an
expiring lamp, shone with a last brilliancy. He laid aside for the
moment his political anxieties, and Madame de Cinq-Cygne endured him, as
they say the Court of Austria endured de Saint-Aulaire; the man of the
world effaced the minister of the citizen-king. But she rose to her feet
as though her chair were of red-hot iron when the name was announced of
"Monsieur le Comte de Gondreville."

"Adieu, madame," she said to the princess in a curt tone.

She left the room with Berthe, measuring her steps to avoid encountering
that fatal being.

"You may have caused the loss of Georges' marriage," said the princess
to de Marsay, in a low voice. "Why did you not tell me your agent's
name?"

The former clerk of Arcis, former Conventional, former Thermidorien,
tribune, Councillor of State, count of the Empire and senator, peer of
the Restoration, and now peer of the monarchy of July, made a servile
bow to the princess.

"Fear nothing, madame," he said; "we have ceased to make war on princes.
I bring you an assurance of the permit," he added, seating himself
beside her.