Maitre Cornelius

by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To Monsieur le Comte Georges Mniszech:

Some envious being may think on seeing this page illustrated by
one of the most illustrious of Sarmatian names, that I am

striving, as the goldsmiths do, to enhance a modern work with an
ancient jewel,--a fancy of the fashions of the day,--but you and a

few others, dear count, will know that I am only seeking to pay my
debt to Talent, Memory, and Friendship.

MAITRE CORNELIUS
CHAPTER I

A CHURCH SCENE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
In 1479, on All Saints' day, the moment at which this history begins,

vespers were ending in the cathedral of Tours. The archbishop Helie de
Bourdeilles was rising from his seat to give the benediction himself

to the faithful. The sermon had been long; darkness had fallen during
the service, and in certain parts of the noble church (the towers of

which were not yet finished) the deepest obscurity prevailed.
Nevertheless a goodly number of tapers were burning in honor of the

saints on the triangular candle-trays destined to receive such pious
offerings, the merit and signification of which have never been

sufficiently explained. The lights on each altar and all the
candelabra in the choir were burning. Irregularly shed among a forest

of columns and arcades which supported the three naves of the
cathedral, the gleam of these masses of candles barely lighted the

immense building, because the strong shadows of the columns, projected
among the galleries, produced fantastic forms which increased the

darkness that already wrapped in gloom the arches, the vaulted
ceilings, and the lateralchapels, always sombre, even at mid-day.

The crowd presented effects that were no less picturesque. Certain
figures were so vaguely defined in the "chiaroscuro" that they seemed

like phantoms; whereas others, standing in a full gleam of the
scattered light, attracted attention like the principal heads in a

picture. Some statues seemed animated, some men seemed petrified. Here
and there eyes shone in the flutings of the columns, the floor

reflected looks, the marbles spoke, the vaults re-echoed sighs, the
edifice itself seemed endowed with life.

The existence of Peoples has no more solemn scenes, no moments more
majestic. To mankind in the mass, movement is needed to make it

poetical; but in these hours of religious thought, when human riches
unite themselves with celestialgrandeur, incredible sublimities are

felt in the silence; there is fear in the bended knee, hope in the
clasping hands. The concert of feelings in which all souls are rising

heavenward produces an inexplicablephenomenon of spirituality. The
mystical exaltation of the faithful reacts upon each of them; the

feebler are no doubt borne upward by the waves of this ocean of faith
and love. Prayer, a power electrical, draws our nature above itself.

This involuntary union of all wills, equallyprostrate on the earth,
equally risen into heaven, contains, no doubt, the secret of the magic

influences wielded by the chants of the priests, the harmonies of the
organ, the perfumes and the pomps of the altar, the voices of the

crowd and its silent contemplations. Consequently, we need not be
surprised to see in the middle-ages so many tender passions begun in

churches after long ecstasies,--passions ending often in little
sanctity, and for which women, as usual, were the ones to do penance.

Religious sentiment certainly had, in those days, an affinity with
love; it was either the motive or the end of it. Love was still a

religion, with its fine fanaticism, its naive superstitions, its
sublime devotions, which sympathized with those of Christianity.

The manners of that period will also serve to explain this alliance
between religion and love. In the first place society had no meeting-

place except before the altar. Lords and vassals, men and women were
equals nowhere else. There alone could lovers see each other and

communicate. The festivals of the Church were the theatre of former
times; the soul of woman was more keenly stirred in a cathedral than

it is at a ball or the opera in our day; and do not strong emotions
invariably bring women back to love? By dint of mingling with life and

grasping it in all its acts and interests, religion had made itself a
sharer of all virtues, the accomplice of all vices. Religion had

passed into science, into politics, into eloquence, into crimes, into
the flesh of the sick man and the poor man; it mounted thrones; it was

everywhere. These semi-learned observations will serve, perhaps, to
vindicate the truth of this study, certain details of which may

frighten the perfected morals of our age, which are, as everybody
knows, a trifle straitlaced.

At the moment when the chanting ceased and the last notes of the
organ, mingling with the vibrations of the loud "A-men" as it issued

from the strong chests of the intoning clergy, sent a murmuring echo
through the distant arches, and the hushed assembly were awaiting the

beneficent words of the archbishop, a burgher, impatient to get home,
or fearing for his purse in the tumult of the crowd when the

worshippers dispersed, slipped quietly away, at the risk of being
called a bad Catholic. On which, a nobleman, leaning against one of

the enormouscolumns that surround the choir, hastened to take
possession of the seat abandoned by the worthy Tourainean. Having done

so, he quickly hid his face among the plumes of his tall gray cap,
kneeling upon the chair with an air of contrition that even an

inquisitor would have trusted.
Observing the new-comer attentively, his immediate neighbors seemed to

recognize him; after which they returned to their prayers with a
certain gesture by which they all expressed the same thought,--a

caustic, jeering thought, a silent slander. Two old women shook their
heads, and gave each other a glance that seemed to dive into futurity.

The chair into which the young man had slipped was close to a chapel
placed between two columns and closed by an iron railing. It was

customary for the chapter to lease at a handsome price to seignorial
families, and even to rich burghers, the right to be present at the

services, themselves and their servants exclusively, in the various
lateralchapels of the long side-aisles of the cathedral. This simony

is in practice to the present day. A woman had her chapel as she now
has her opera-box. The families who hired these privileged" target="_blank" title="a.有特权的；特许的">privileged places were

required to decorate the altar of the chapel thus conceded to them,
and each made it their pride to adorn their own sumptuously,--a vanity

which the Church did not rebuke. In this particular chapel a lady was
kneeling close to the railing on a handsome rug of red velvet with

gold tassels, precisely opposite to the seat vacated of the burgher. A
silver-gilt lamp, hanging from the vaulted ceiling of the chapel

before an altar magnificently decorated, cast its pale light upon a
prayer-book held by the lady. The book trembled violently in her hand

when the young man approached her.
"A-men!"

To that response, sung in a sweet low voice which was painfully
agitated, though happily lost in the general clamor, she added rapidly

in a whisper:--
"You will ruin me."

The words were said in a tone of innocence which a man of any delicacy
ought to have obeyed; they went to the heart and pierced it. But the

stranger, carried away, no doubt, by one of those paroxysms of passion
which stifleconscience, remained in his chair and raised his head

slightly that he might look into the chapel.
"He sleeps!" he replied, in so low a voice that the words could be

heard by the young woman only, as sound is heard in its echo.
The lady turned pale; her furtive glance left for a moment the vellum

page of the prayer-book and turned to the old man whom the young man
had designated. What terrible complicity was in that glance? When the

young woman had cautiously examined the old seigneur, she drew a long
breath and raised her forehead, adorned with a precious jewel, toward

a picture of the Virgin; that simple movement, that attitude, the
moistened glance, revealed her life with imprudent naivete; had she

been wicked, she would certainly have dissimulated. The personage who
thus alarmed the lovers was a little old man, hunchbacked, nearly

bald, savage in expression, and wearing a long and discolored white
beard cut in a fan-tail. The cross of Saint-Michel glittered on his

breast; his coarse, strong hands, covered with gray hairs, which had
been clasped, had now dropped slightly apart in the slumber to which

he had imprudently yielded. The right hand seemed about to fall upon
his dagger, the hilt of which was in the form of an iron shell. By the

manner in which he had placed the weapon, this hilt was directly under