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The Hated Son-Part6_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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thus imposed upon him; she used this enforced vocation to prepare him

for a noble life of study and science, and she brought to the chateau



Pierre de Sebonde as tutor to the future priest. Nevertheless, in

spite of the tonsure imposed by the will of the father, she was



determined that Etienne's education should not be wholly

ecclesiastical, and took pains to secularize it. She employed



Beauvouloir to teach him the mysteries of natural science; she herself

superintended his studies, regulating them according to her child's



strength, and enlivening them by teaching him Italian, and revealing

to him little by little the poetic beauties of that language. While



the duke rode off with Maximilien to the forest and the wild-boars at

the risk of his life, Jeanne wandered with Etienne in the milky way of



Petrarch's sonnets, or the mightylabyrinth of the Divina Comedia.

Nature had endowed the youth, in compensation for his infirmities,



with so melodious a voice that to hear him sing was a constant

delight; his mother taught him music, and their tender, melancholy



songs, accompanied by a mandolin, were the favorite recreation

promised as a reward for some more arduous study required by the Abbe



de Sebonde. Etienne listened to his mother with a passionate

admiration she had never seen except in the eyes of Georges de



Chaverny. The first time the poor woman found a memory of her girlhood

in the long, slow look of her child, she covered him with kisses; and



she blushed when Etienne asked her why she seemed to love him better

at that moment than ever before. She answered that every hour made him



dearer to her. She found in the training of his soul, and in the

culture of his mind, pleasures akin to those she had tasted in feeding



him with her milk. She put all her pride and self-love into making him

superior to herself, and not in ruling him. Hearts without tenderness



covet dominion, but a true love treasures abnegation, that virtue of

strength. When Etienne could not at first comprehend a demonstration,



a theme, a theory, the poor mother, who was present at the lessons,

seemed to long to infuse knowledge, as formerly she had given



nourishment at the child's least cry. And then, what joy suffused her

eyes when Etienne's mind seized the true sense of things and



appropriated it. She proved, as Pierre de Sebonde said, that a mother

is a dual being whose sensations cover two existences.



"Ah, if some woman as loving as I could infuse into him hereafter the

life of love, how happy he might be!" she often thought.



But the fatal interests which consigned Etienne to the priesthood

returned to her mind, and she kissed the hair that the scissors of the



Church were to shear, leaving her tears upon them. Still, in spite of

the unjustcompact she had made with the duke, she could not see



Etienne in her visions of the future as priest or cardinal; and the

absolute forgetfulness of the father as to his first-born, enabled her



to postpone the moment of putting him into Holy Orders.

"There is time enough," she said to herself.



The day came when all her cares, inspired by a sentiment which seemed

to enter into the flesh of her son and give it life, had their reward.



Beauvouloir--that blessed man whose teachings had proved so precious

to the child, and whose anxious glance at that frail idol had so often



made the duchess tremble--declared that Etienne was now in a condition

to live long years, provided no violentemotion came to convulse his



delicate body. Etienne was then sixteen.

At that age he was just five feet, a height he never passed. His skin,



as transparent and satiny as that of a little girl, showed a delicate

tracery of blue veins; its whiteness was that of porcelain. His eyes,



which were light blue and ineffably gentle, implored the protection of

men and women; that beseeching look fascinated before the melody of



his voice was heard to complete the charm. True modesty was in every

feature. Long chestnut hair, smooth and very fine, was parted in the



middle of his head into two bandeaus which curled at their extremity.

His pale and hollow cheeks, his pure brow, lined with a few furrows,



expressed a condition of suffering which was painful to witness. His

mouth, always gracious, and adorned with very white teeth, wore the



sort of fixed smile which we often see on the lips of the dying. His




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