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Adieu-Part5_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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the frail construction with sufficient impetus to force its way

through corpses and ice-floes to the other shore.



"Thunder of heaven! I'll sweep you into the water if you don't take

the major and his two companions," cried the stalwart grenadier, who



swung his sabre, stopped the departure, and forced the men to stand

closer in spite of furious outcries.



"I shall fall,"--"I am falling,"--"Push off! push off!--Forward!"

resounded on all sides.



The major looked with haggard eyes at Stephanie, who lifted hers to

heaven with a feeling of sublimeresignation.



"To die with thee!" she said.

There was something even comical in the position of the men in



possession of the raft. Though they were uttering awful groans and

imprecations, they dared not resist the grenadier, for in truth they



were so closely packed together, that a push to one man might send

half of them overboard. This danger was so pressing that a cavalry



captain endeavored to get rid of the grenadier; but the latter, seeing

the hostilemovement of the officer, seized him round the waist and



flung him into the water, crying out,--

"Ha! ha! my duck, do you want to drink? Well, then, drink!-- Here are



two places," he cried. "Come, major, toss me the little woman and

follow yourself. Leave that old fossil, who'll be dead by to-morrow."



"Make haste!" cried the voice of all, as one man.

"Come, major, they are grumbling, and they have a right to do so."



The Comte de Vandieres threw off his wrappings and showed himself in

his general's uniform.



"Let us save the count," said Philippe.

Stephanie pressed his hand, and throwing herself on his breast, she



clasped him tightly.

"Adieu!" she said.



They had understood each other.

The Comte de Vandieres recovered sufficient strength and presence of



mind to spring upon the raft, whither Stephanie followed him, after

turning a last look to Philippe.



"Major! will you take my place? I don't care a fig for life," cried

the grenadier. "I've neither wife nor child nor mother."



"I confide them to your care," said the major, pointing to the count

and his wife.



"Then be easy; I'll care for them, as though they were my very eyes."

The raft was now sent off with so much violence toward the opposite



side of the river, that as it touched ground, the shock was felt by

all. The count, who was at the edge of it, lost his balance and fell



into the river; as he fell, a cake of sharp ice caught him, and cut

off his head, flinging it to a great distance.



"See there! major!" cried the grenadier.

"Adieu!" said a woman's voice.



Philippe de Sucy fell to the ground, overcome with horror and fatigue.

CHAPTER III



THE CURE

"My poor niece became insane," continued the physician, after a few



moment's silence. "Ah! monsieur," he said, seizing the marquis's hand,

"life has been awful indeed for that poor little woman, so young, so



delicate! After being, by dreadful fatality, separated from the

grenadier, whose name was Fleuriot, she was dragged about for two



years at the heels of the army, the plaything of a crowd of wretches.

She was often, they tell me, barefooted, and scarcely clothed; for



months together, she had no care, no food but what she could pick up;

sometimes kept in hospitals, sometimes driven away like an animal, God



alone knows the horrors that poor unfortunate creature has survived.

She was locked up in a madhouse, in a little town in Germany, at the



time her relatives, thinking her dead, divided her property. In 1816,

the grenadier Fleuriot was at an inn in Strasburg, where she went



after making her escape from the madhouse. Several peasants told the

grenadier that she had lived for a whole month in the forest, where



they had tracked her in vain, trying to catch her, but she had always

escaped them. I was then staying a few miles from Strasburg. Hearing



much talk of a wild woman caught in the woods, I felt a desire to

ascertain the truth of the ridiculous stories which were current about



her. What were my feelings on beholding my own niece! Fleuriot told me

all he knew of her dreadful history. I took the poor man with my niece



back to my home in Auvergne, where, unfortunately, I lost him some

months later. He had some slight control over Madame de Vandieres; he



alone could induce her to wear clothing. 'Adieu,' that word, which is

her only language, she seldom uttered at that time. Fleuriot had



endeavored to awaken in her a few ideas, a few memories of the past;

but he failed; all that he gained was to make her say that melancholy






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