THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
Ire 33al?ac
LA COMEDIE HUMAINE
VOLUME XXXIX
EDITION DEFINITIVE
OF WHICH THERE ARE PRINTED ON IMPERIAL JAPAN
PAPER ONE THOUSAND COPIES
NO. 333
VOLUME II
*****
SVS
PUBLIC CONFESSION OF MADAME
GRASLIN
The dying woman appeared, *****
She knelt upon a cushion, clasped her hands,
and ivas silent for a few moments, as if collecting
strength to speak from some spring supplied by
Heaven. At that moment there was something
indefinably terrifying in the silence.
*****
PUBLIC CONFESSION OF MADAME
GRASLIN
The dying woman appeared, *****
She knelt upon a cushion, clasped her hands,
and ivas silent for a few moments, as if collecting
strengtli to speak from some spring supplied by
Heaven. At that moment there was something
indefinably terrifying in the silence.
tie ISaljac NOW FOR THE
FIRST TIME COMPLETELY
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
THE VILLAGE CURE BY G. BURN-
HAM IVES
'WITH EIGHT ETCHINGS BY CHARLES GIROUX, AFTER
PAINTINGS BY DANIEL HERNANDEZ
IN ONE VOLUME
PRINTED ONLY FOR SUBSCRIBERS BY
GEORGE BARRIE & SON
PHILADELPHIA
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY GEORGE BARRIE A SON
V.
THE VILLAGE CURE
VERONIQUE
In Lower Limoges, at the corner of Rue de la
Vieille-Poste and Rue de la Cite, there stood, thirty
years ago, one of those shops in which nothing
seems to have been changed since the Middle Ages.
Huge flagstones, broken in a thousand places, laid
upon the ground which showed damp in spots, would
have caused the fall of anybody who had failed to
notice the depressions and elevations of that strange
flooring. The dusty walls exhibited a curious mix-
ture of wood and brick, stone and iron, thrown to-
gether with a solidity due to age, perhaps to chance.
For more than a hundred years, the ceiling, consist-
ing of enormous timbers, had bent without breaking
beneath the weight of the upper floors. Those floors,
built en colombage, were covered on the outside with
slates nailed in such way as to represent geomet-
rical figures, and presented an ingenuous type of the
bourgeois structures of the olden time. Of the
windows, set in wooden frames and once embel-
lished with carvings, long since destroyed by the
vagaries of the weather, not one was perpendicular;
some bulged out, others retreated, others seemed to
(3)
4 THE VILLAGE CURE
be falling apart; all of them had in their yawning
cracks dirt brought thither by the rain, Heaven
knows how, and in the spring a few sickly flowers
grew there, shrinking plants and slender grasses.
The roof and window-sills were velvety with moss.
The pillar at the corner, although built of composite
masonry, that is to say, of bricks mixed with stones
and flint, alarmed one by its curvature: it seemed
that it must give way some day under the weight of
the house, the gable of which overhung about six
inches. So that the municipal authorities, the de-
partments of streets and buildings, purchased the
building and pulled it down, in order to enlarge the
square. This pillar, situated at the junction of the
two streets, commended itself to persons interested
in the antiquities of Limoges by reason of a pretty
little carved niche, in which stood a Virgin, mutilated
during the Revolution. Bourgeois with archaeologi-
cal leanings discovered traces of the stone ledge in-
tended to hold the candelabra in which the public
piety placed its lighted tapers, its votive offerings
and flowers.
At the rear of the shop there was a decayed
wooden staircase leading to the two upper floors and
the garret above them. The house, which adjoined
the houses on each side, had no depth, and received
no light except through the windows. Each floor
contained only two small rooms, lighted each by one
window, which in one case looked on Rue de la
Cite and in the other on Rue de la Vieille-Poste. In
the Middle Ages no mechanic had a more comfortable
THE VILLAGE CURE 5
dwelling than that. It had evidently once belonged
to smiths, armorers, cutlers, to some masters whose
occupation did not dislike the open air; it was im-
possible to see there, unless the iron-bound shutters
were removed from both fronts, there being a door
on each side of the pillar, as in many shops located
at the corner of two streets. At each door, just in-
side the fine stone threshold, worn smooth by cen-
turies, began a low wall, breast-high, on top of which
was a groove, corresponding to a groove in the
timber above, upon which the upper walls rested.
From time immemorial, there had been heavy
shutters to slide in those grooves; they were
fastened, when closed, by enormous bands of iron
bolted on; and, when the doors were closed and
secured by similar means, the house was trans-
formed into a fortress. Upon examining the interior,
which, during the first twenty years of this century,
the people of Limoges were accustomed to see filled
with old iron, copper, springs, wheel-tires, bells, and
metal of all sorts from demolished buildings, those
persons who were interested in this relic of the old
city noticed the location of a forge flue, indicated by
a long streak of soot, a detail which confirmed the
conjectures of antiquarians as to the original destina-
tion of the shop. On the first floor were a bedroom
and the kitchen; the second had two bedrooms; the
garret was used as a store-room for more delicate
objects than those tossed pell-mell about the shop.
This house was at first rented, then sold to one
Sauviat, a travelling peddler, who, from 1792 to
6 THE VILLAGE CURE
1796, covered the country within a radius of fifty
leagues about Auvergne, exchanging pottery, plat-
ters, plates, glasses, in a word, household articles
required by the poorest families, for old iron, copper,
lead, metal of any sort, whatever disguise it might
have assumed. The Auvergnat gave an earthen-
ware saucepan worth two sous for a pound of lead,
or for two pounds of iron, a broken spade, a broken
hoe, or an old cracked kettle; and, being always the
judge in his own cause, he weighed his junk himself.
After the third year, Sauviat added the trade of cop-
persmith to his other trade. In 1793 he was able to
purchase a chateau sold as national property, and
pulled it to pieces; the profit he made by that trans-
action he duplicated doubtless at several points in his
sphere of operations; later, these first essays sug-
gested to him the idea of proposing to one of his
fellow-provincials in Paris a similar business on a
grand scale. Thus, the Black Band, so famous by
reason of its demolitions, originated in the brain of
old Sauviat the peddler, whom all Limoges saw for
twenty-seven years in that poor shop, among his
cracked bells, his balances, his chains, his iron rods,
his twisted leaden gutters, his old metal of all sorts;
we must do him the justice to say that he never
knew of the celebrity or the extensive operations of
that association; he profited by it only in proportion
to the funds entrusted by him to the famous house
of Brezac.
Tired of travelling about from fair to fair and
village to village, the Auvergnat settled down in
THE VILLAGE CURE 7
Limoges, where, in 1797, he married the daughter
of a widowed coppersmith named Champagnac.
When his father-in-law died, he bought the house
in which he had established himself permanently as
a dealer in junk, after carrying on the trade for
three years longer in the country, in company with
his wife. Sauviat was approaching his fiftieth year
when he married old Champagnac's daughter, who
was not less than thirty. Although she was not
beautiful, nor even pretty, La Champagnac was
born in Auvergne, and the patois was a mutual
attraction; then, too, she had the stout frame that
enables women to endure the severest toil, and she
accompanied Sauviat in his wanderings. She carried
iron or lead on her back, and drew the wretched cart
full of pottery with which her husband plied his
disguised usury. Of dark, swarthy complexion, in
perfect health, La Champagnac showed, when she
laughed, white teeth as broad and long as almonds;
she had, too, the bust and hips of those women
whom nature has formed for mothers. The failure
of that stout, healthy creature to be married earlier
in life must be attributed to the No dowry! of Har-
pagon, which her father practised, although he had
never read Moliere. Sauviat did not take fright at
the No dowry; a man of fifty was not likely to raise
questions of that sort, and then, his wife would save
him the expense of a servant. He made no addi-
tion to the furniture of his bedroom, where, from
the day of his wedding to the day he moved out,
there was never anything more than a four-poster
8 THE VILLAGE CURE
bed with a fluted valance and curtains of green
serge, a chest, a commode, four armchairs, a table,
and a mirror, all brought from different localities.
The upper part of the chest contained a service of
pewter-plate of which no two pieces were alike.
Everyone can imagine the aspect of the kitchen
which adjoined the bedroom.
Neither husband nor wife knew how to read, a
trifling defect in their education, which did not
prevent their being wonderfully clever at figures,
and carrying on the most flourishing trade imagin-
able. Sauviat purchased nothing which he was not
certain of being able to dispose of at a profit of a
hundred per cent. To obviate the necessity of keep-
ing books and an office, he bought and sold exclu-
sively for cash. He had, moreover, such an accurate
memory that, if an object remained in his shop
five years, he, and his wife too, could give you,
almost to a sou, the price he paid for it, with
interest added each year. Except while she was
attending to her housekeeping duties, La Sauviat
was always seated on a rickety wooden chair with
her back against the corner pillar; there she
would sit and knit, watching the passers-by, keep-
ing an eye on her old junk, selling it, weighing
it, and delivering it herself, if Sauviat were away
upon a purchasing trip. At dawn the junk-dealer
would be heard working at his shutters; the dog
would run into the street, and soon La Sauviat
would appear and assist her man to place upon
the natural shelves formed by the low walls in
THE VILLAGE CURE 9
Rue de la Vieille-Poste and Rue de la Cite, bells
large and small, old springs, broken gun-barrels, the
small trash of their trade, which served as a sign
and gave a paltry aspect enough to that shop in
which there frequently was twenty thousand francs'
worth of lead, steel, and bell-metal.
The quondam peddler and his wife never spoke of
their wealth; they concealed it as a malefactor con-
ceals a crime; they were long suspected of clipping
louis d'or and silver crowns. When Champagnac
died, the Sauviats returned no inventory; they
searched, with the cunning of rats, every corner of
his house, left it as bare as a corpse, and sold
the coppersmith's stock in their own shop. Once
a year, in December, Sauviat went to Paris, always
by the public conveyance. So that his inquisitive
neighbors concluded that the junk-dealer made his
own investments in Paris, in order to conceal the
amount of his fortune. It was known later that, by
the advice of one of the most eminent dealers in
metals, an Auvergnat like himself, with whom he
had been very intimate in his youth, he placed his
funds advantageously with the house of Brezac,
the corner-stone of that famous association known
as the Black Band, which was formed, as we have
said, at Sauviat's suggestion, and of which he was
one of the founders.
Sauviat was a short, fat man, with a careworn
face, endowed by nature with an honest expres-
sion which charmed the customer, and which was
of great assistance to him in selling his wares
10 THE VILLAGE CURE
to advantage. The lack of warmth in his asser-
tions, and the utter indifference of his bearing,
materially assisted his pretensions. His ruddy
complexion could hardly be distinguished beneath
the black metallic dust with which his pock-marked
face and his curly hair were covered. His fore-
head did not lack distinction, it resembled the clas-
sic forehead imputed by all painters to Saint Peter,
the least refined, the most plebeian, and also the
shrewdest of the apostles. His hands were those of
the untiring worker, large and thick and square-
fingered, and seamed by deep cracks. His chest
was a solid mass of muscle. He never laid aside
his peddler's costume: heavy hobnailed shoes, blue
stockings, knitted by his wife, and concealed be-
neath leather gaiters; bottle-green velvet breeches,
plaid waistcoat, from which depended the copper
key of his silver watch attached to an iron chain,
which use made as shiny and polished as steel,
a jacket with short skirts made of velvet like that
of the breeches, and around his neck a necktie of
figured cotton, frayed by the rubbing of his beard.
On Sundays and holidays Sauviat wore a frock-coat
of wine-colored cloth, so well cared for that he pur-
chased a new one only twice in twenty years.
The life of a galley-slave may be considered
luxurious compared with that of the Sauviats; they
ate meat only on church festival days. Before
giving up the money necessary for their daily sub-
sistence, La Sauviat would fumble in the two pockets
hidden between her skirt and her petticoat, and she
THE VILLAGE CURE II
never produced aught but worn, clipped coins,
crowns of six francs or of fifty sous, which she gazed
at despairingly before changing one of them. Most
of the time the Sauviats contented themselves with
herring, red peas, cheese, hard-boiled eggs mixed
with lettuce, and vegetables cooked in the least
expensive way. They never laid in a supply of
anything, except a few bunches of garlic or onions,
which nothing could spoil and which cost almost
nothing. The little wood which they used in winter
La Sauviat bought from the itinerant dealers who
passed the door, a day's supply at once. At seven
o'clock in the winter, at nine in summer, the house-
hold was in bed, the shop closed, and guarded by a
huge dog, who stole his living in the kitchens of the
neighborhood. Mere Sauviat did not spend three
francs for candles in a year.
The sober, toilsome life of these people was
enlivened by a single joy, a joy that came to
them in due course of nature, and for which they
were guilty of their only known extravagance.
In May, 1802, La Sauviat had a daughter. She
brought the child into the world unaided, and at-
tended to her household duties five days later. She
nursed the child, sitting in her chair, in the open air,
and selling old iron with the little one at her breast.
As her milk cost nothing, the child was not weaned
for two years, and was the better for it. Veronique
became the loveliest child in all the lower town, the
passers-by stopped to look at her. Thereupon the
neighbors began to detect some traces of natural
12 THE VILLAGE CURE
feeling in old Sauviat, whom they had supposed to
be entirely devoid of anything of the sort. While
his wife was preparing dinner, the junk-dealer would
hold the little one in his arms, and rock it, singing
snatches of Auvergnat ditties. Sometimes the work-
men noticed him standing perfectly motionless,
gazing at Veronique, asleep on her mother's lap.
For his daughter he softened his harsh voice, and
he wiped his hands on his breeches before taking
her. When Veronique tried to walk, her father
would stoop and station himself four or five steps
away from her, holding out his hands and making
grimaces that imparted a joyous expression to the
deep, metallic folds of his stern and forbidding
features. That man of lead and iron and copper
became a man of flesh and blood and bones once
more. If he were sitting with his back against his
pillar, motionless as a statue, a cry from Veronique
would make him start; he would rush through the
heaps of old iron to find her, for she passed her
childhood playing with the debris of demolished
chateaux piled in the dark recesses of that vast shop,
without ever injuring herself; she also went out to
play in the street or at the neighbors' houses, but
her mother never lost sight of her.
It may be as well to state that the Sauviats were
eminently religious. When the Revolution was at
its height, Sauviat observed Sundays and festivals.
On two occasions he nearly lost his head for going
to hear mass said by a priest who had not taken the
oath. At last he was imprisoned, justly accused of
THE VILLAGE CURE 13
forwarding the flight of a bishop whose life he had
saved. Luckily, the travelling junk-dealer knew all
about files and iron bars, so that he was able to
escape; but he was condemned to death by default,
and, we may say parenthetically, he never appeared
to purge himself of the default, but died in his bed.
His wife shared his pious sentiments. The family
avarice yielded only to the voice of religion. The
old junk-dealers provided the consecrated bread with
scrupulous exactness, and contributed to the offer-
tory. If the vicar of Saint-Etienne came to them to
ask alms, Sauviat or his wife would go at once,
without discussion or wry faces, to fetch what they
considered their proper contribution for the poor of
the parish. The mutilated Virgin on their pillar was
always, after 1799, decorated with box at Easter.
In the flower season, those who passed the shop
would see her decked with fresh nosegays, in blue-
glass vessels, especially after Veronique was born.
On the days of religious processions, the Sauviats
were careful to have their house draped with black
cloth and flowers, and they contributed to the erec-
tion and decoration of the street altar, the pride of
their corner.
Veronique Sauviat therefore received the educa-
tion of a Christian. From the age of seven she
had for her teacher an Auvergnat Gray Nun, to
whom the Sauviats had rendered some trifling ser-
vices. Both of them, being very ready to oblige so
long as nothing but their personal efforts or their
time was concerned, were excellent neighbors, after
14 THE VILLAGE CURE
the manner of poor people, who generally give their
services with much warmth. The Gray Nun taught
Veronique to read and write, she instructed her in
the history of God's people, the catechism, the Old
and New Testament, and the rudiments of arith-
metic. That was all; the sister thought that it
would be enough, but it was too much.
At nine years of age, Veronique's beauty was a
source of amazement throughout the quarter. Every-
one admired a face which might some day be a wor-
thy subject for the brush of painters who were most
earnest in their quest of ideal beauty. She was
nicknamed the Little Virgin, and she promised to
be well-made and fair. Her madonna-like face
for the popular voice had well named her was com-
plemented by an abundance of fine light hair, which
set off the purity of her features. Whoever has
seen Titian's sublime little Virgin in his great picture
of the Presentation at the Temple, will understand
what Veronique was in her childhood: the same art-
less innocence, the same seraphic astonishment in
her eyes, the same noble yet simple manner, the
same infantile carriage. At the age of eleven she
had the small-pox, and owed her life solely to the
care of Sister Marthe. During the two months that
their child was in danger, the Sauviats allowed the
whole quarter to judge of the depth of their affec-
tion for her. Sauviat ceased to attend sales, he
passed all his time in the shop, going up to his
daughter's room and down again every moment,
and sitting up with her all night, in company with
THE VILLAGE CURE 15
his wife. His silent grief seemed so intense that no
one dared speak to him; the neighbors gazed com-
passionately at him, but confined their inquiries for
news to Sister Marthe. During the days when the
disease was at its height, the passers-by and the
neighbors saw, for the first and only time in Sauviat's
life, tears glistening for a long time between his eye-
lids and rolling down his hollow cheeks. He did not
wipe them away, he would sit for hours like one
dazed, afraid to go up to his daughter's room, looking
without seeing; he could easily have been robbed!
Veronique was saved, but her beauty died. That
face, with its smooth, harmoniously blended brown
and red complexion, was marked with innumerable
pits, which roughened the skin, playing havoc with
its fair, smooth surface. The brow could not escape
the ravages of the scourge, it became discolored, and
looked as if it had been dented with a hammer.
Nothing can be more discordant than that brick-red
skin against fair hair, it puts an end to pre-existing
harmony. Those deep, capricious ruptures of the
tissue marred the purity of the profile, the delicate
outline of the face, of the nose, whose Grecian shape
could hardly be distinguished, and of the chin, once as
delicate as the rim of a porcelain vase. The disease
respected only what it could not reach, the eyes and
the teeth. Nor did Veronique lose her bodily grace
and beauty, the rounded fulness of her outlines, or
the fine shape of her waist. She was, at fifteen, a
comely young woman, and a consideration that
comforted the Sauviats for the loss of her loveliness
16 THE VILLAGE CURE
a devout, virtuous girl, active, hard-working, and
domestic in her tastes.
During her convalescence and after her first com-
munion, her father and mother gave her the two
rooms on the second floor for her private apart-
ments. At that period, Sauviat, harsh as he was to
himself and his wife, began to form some suspicions
of comfortable living; he conceived a vague idea of
consoling his daughter for a loss of which she as
yet knew nothing. The passing of the beauty that
was the pride of those two creatures made Vero-
nique even dearer and more precious to them. One
day Sauviat brought home a second-hand carpet on
his back, and nailed it on Veronique's floor with his
own hand. He laid aside for her, at the sale of a
chateau, a great lady's red damask bed, and the
curtains, armchairs, and common chairs covered
with the same material. He furnished the two
rooms occupied by his daughter with old articles of
furniture of whose value she had no idea. He
placed jars of mignonette on her window-sill, and
brought back with him from his trips sometimes
rose-bushes, sometimes pinks, flowers of all sorts,
given him in all probability by gardeners or inn-
keepers. If Veronique had been able to make
comparisons, and had realized the characters, the
manners, the ignorance of her parents, she would
have understood how much affection there was in
these trivial incidents; but she loved them with
charming naturalness and without reflection. Vero-
nique had the finest linen that her mother could find
THE VILLAGE CURE 17
at the drapers'. La Sauviat gave her daughter per-
mission to buy whatever materials she desired for
her dresses. Both father and mother were delighted
by the modesty of their daughter, who had no extrav-
agant tastes. Veronique contented herself with a
blue silk dress for fete-days, and wore, on working-
days, a coarse merino in winter and a striped calico in
summer. On Sundays she attended divine service
with her father and mother, and after vespers walked
along the Vienne or in the suburbs. On ordinary
days she remained in her room, occupied with tap-
estry, the price of which belonged to the poor; thus
it will be seen that her manners were of the simplest,
the most chaste, and most exemplary. Sometimes
she made linen for the hospital. She interspersed her
work with reading, and read only such books as were
lent her by the vicar of Saint-Etienne, a priest who
had been introduced to the Sauviats by Sister Marthe.
So far as Veronique was concerned, the laws of
domestic economy were entirely suspended. Her
mother took delight in serving her with choice food,
and cooked for her separately. The father and
mother continued to eat their nuts, their dry bread,
their herrings, their fricasseed peas with salted
butter, whereas nothing was fresh enough or good
enough for Veronique.
"Veronique must cost you a great deal," said a
hatmaker one day, whose shop was opposite the
Sauviats, and who had designs upon Veronique in
his son's behalf, estimating the old junk-dealer's
fortune at a hundred thousand francs.
2
18 THE VILLAGE CURE
" Yes, neighbor, yes, neighbor, yes!" replied old
Sauviat; " if she was to ask me for ten crowns, I'd
give 'em to her all the same. She has all she
wants, but she never asks for anything. She's as
gentle as a lamb!"