Adieu

by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To Prince Frederic Schwartzenburg.

ADIEU
CHAPTER I

AN OLD MONASTERY
"Come, deputy of the Centre, forward! Quick step! march! if we want to

be in time to dine with the others. Jump, marquis! there, that's
right! why, you can skip across a stubble-field like a deer!"

These words were said by a huntsmanpeacefully seated at the edge of
the forest of Ile-Adam, who was finishing an Havana cigar while

waiting for his companion, who had lost his way in the tangled
underbrush of the wood. At his side four panting dogs were watching,

as he did, the personage he addressed. To understand how sarcastic
were these exhortations, repeated at intervals, we should state that

the approaching huntsman was a stout little man whose protuberant
stomach was the evidence of a truly ministerial "embonpoint." He was

struggling painfully across the furrows of a vast wheat-field recently
harvested, the stubble of which considerably impeded him; while to add

to his other miseries the sun's rays, striking obliquely on his face,
collected an abundance of drops of perspiration. Absorbed in the

effort to maintain his equilibrium, he leaned, now forward, now back,
in close imitation of the pitching of a carriage when violently

jolted. The weather looked threatening. Though several spaces of blue
sky still parted the thick black clouds toward the horizon, a flock of

fleecy vapors were advancing with great rapidity and drawing a light
gray curtain from east to west. As the wind was acting only on the

upper region of the air, the atmosphere below it pressed down the hot
vapors of the earth. Surrounded by masses of tall trees, the valley

through which the hunter struggled felt like a furnace. Parched and
silent, the forest seemed thirsty. The birds, even the insects, were

voiceless; the tree-tops scarcely waved. Those persons who may still
remember the summer of 1819 can imagine the woes of the poor deputy,

who was struggling along, drenched in sweat, to regain his mocking
friend. The latter, while smoking his cigar, had calculated from the

position of the sun that it must be about five in the afternoon.
"Where the devil are we?" said the stout huntsman, mopping his

forehead and leaning against the trunk of a tree nearly opposite to
his companion, for he felt unequal to the effort of leaping the ditch

between them.
"That's for me to ask you," said the other, laughing, as he lay among

the tall brown brake which crowned the bank. Then, throwing the end of
his cigar into the ditch, he cried out vehemently: "I swear by Saint

Hubert that never again will I trust myself in unknown territory with
a statesman, though he be, like you, my dear d'Albon, a college mate."

"But, Philippe, have you forgotten your French? Or have you left your
wits in Siberia?" replied the stout man, casting a sorrowfully comic

look at a sign-post about a hundred feet away.
"True, true," cried Philippe, seizing his gun and springing with a

bound into the field and thence to the post. "This way, d'Albon, this
way," he called back to his friend, pointing to a broad paved path and

reading aloud the sign: "'From Baillet to Ile-Adam.' We shall
certainly find the path to Cassan, which must branch from this one

between here and Ile-Adam."
"You are right, colonel," said Monsieur d'Albon, replacing upon his

head the cap with which he had been fanning himself.
"Forward then, my respectable privy councillor," replied Colonel

Philippe, whistling to the dogs, who seemed more willing to obey him
than the public functionary to whom they belonged.

"Are you aware, marquis," said the jeering soldier, "that we still
have six miles to go? That village over there must be Baillet."

"Good heavens!" cried the marquis, "go to Cassan if you must, but
you'll go alone. I prefer to stay here, in spite of the coming storm,

and wait for the horse you can send me from the chateau. You've played
me a trick, Sucy. We were to have had a nice little hunt not far from

Cassan, and beaten the coverts I know. Instead of that, you have kept
me running like a hare since four o'clock this morning, and all I've

had for breakfast is a cup of milk. Now, if you ever have a petition
before the Court, I'll make you lose it, however just your claim."

The poor discouraged huntsman sat down on a stone that supported the
signpost, relieved himself of his gun and his gamebag, and heaved a

long sigh.
"France! such are thy deputies!" exclaimed Colonel de Sucy, laughing.

"Ah! my poor d'Albon, if you had been like me six years in the wilds
of Siberia--"

He said no more, but he raised his eyes to heaven as if that anguish
were between himself and God.

"Come, march on!" he added. "If you sit still you are lost."
"How can I, Philippe? It is an old magisterial habit to sit still. On

my honor! I'm tired out-- If I had only killed a hare!"
The two men presented a rather rare contrast: the public functionary

was forty-two years of age and seemed no more than thirty, whereas the
soldier was thirty, and seemed forty at the least. Both wore the red

rosette of the officers of the Legion of honor. A few spare locks of
black hair mixed with white, like the wing of a magpie, escaped from

the colonel's cap, while handsome brown curls adorned the brow of the
statesman. One was tall, gallant, high-strung, and the lines of his

pallid face showed terrible passions or frightful griefs. The other
had a face that was brilliant with health, and jovially worth of an

epicurean. Both were deeply sun-burned, and their high gaiters of
tanned leather showed signs of the bogs and the thickets they had just

come through.
"Come," said Monsieur de Sucy, "let us get on. A short hour's march,

and we shall reach Cassan in time for a good dinner."
"It is easy to see you have never loved," replied the councillor, with

a look that was pitifully comic; "you are as relentless as article 304
of the penal code."

Philippe de Sucy quivered; his broad brow contracted; his face became
as sombre as the skies above them. Some memory of awful bitterness

distorted for a moment his features, but he said nothing. Like all
strong men, he drove down his emotions to the depths of his heart;

thinking perhaps, as simple characters are apt to think, that there
was something immodest in unveiling griefs when human language cannot

render their depths and may only rouse the mockery of those who do not
comprehend them. Monsieur d'Albon had one of those delicate natures

which divine sorrows, and are instantly" target="_blank" title="ad.立即，立刻">instantlysympathetic to the emotion
they have involuntarily aroused. He respected his friend's silence,

rose, forgot his fatigue, and followed him silently, grieved to have
touched a wound that was evidently not healed.

"Some day, my friend," said Philippe, pressing his hand, and thanking
him for his mute repentance by a heart-rending look, "I will relate to

you my life. To-day I cannot."
They continued their way in silence. When the colonel's pain seemed

soothed, the marquis resumed his fatigue; and with the instinct, or
rather the will, of a wearied man his eye took in the very depths of

the forest; he questioned the tree-tops and examined the branching
paths, hoping to discover some dwelling where he could ask

hospitality. Arriving at a cross-ways, he thought he noticed a slight
smoke rising among the trees; he stopped, looked more attentively, and

saw, in the midst of a vast copse, the dark-green branches of several
pine-trees.

"A house! a house!" he cried, with the joy the sailor feels in crying
"Land!"

Then he sprang quickly into the copse, and the colonel, who had fallen
into a deep reverie, followed him mechanically.

"I'd rather get an omelet, some cottage bread, and a chair here," he
said, "than go to Cassan for sofas, truffles, and Bordeaux."

These words were an exclamation of enthusiasm, elicited from the
councillor on catching sight of a wall, the white towers of which

glimmered in the distance through the brown masses of the tree trunks.
"Ha! ha! this looks to me as if it had once been a priory," cried the

marquis, as they reached a very old and blackened gate, through which