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The Two Brothers-Part47_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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damask, the colonel laughed.

"What the devil do you want me to do there?" he cried. "The only



service the poor woman can render me is to die as soon as she can; she

would be rather a sorry figure at my marriage with Mademoiselle de



Soulanges. The less my family is seen, the better my position. You can

easily understand that I should like to bury the name of Bridau under



all the monuments in Pere-Lachaise. My brother irritates me by

bringing the name into publicity. You are too knowing not to see the



situation as I do. Look at it as if it were your own: if you were a

deputy, with a tongue like yours, you would be as much feared as



Chauvelin; you would be made Comte Bixiou, and director of the Beaux-

Arts. Once there, how should you like it if your grandmother Descoings



were to turn up? Would you want that worthy woman, who looked like a

Madame Saint-Leon, to be hanging on to you? Would you give her an arm



in the Tuileries, and present her to the noble family you were trying

to enter? Damn it, you'd wish her six feet under ground, in a leaden



night-gown. Come, breakfast with me, and let us talk of something

else. I am a parvenu, my dear fellow, and I know it. I don't choose



that my swaddling-clothes shall be seen. My son will be more fortunate

than I; he will be a great lord. The scamp will wish me dead; I expect



it,--or he won't be my son."

He rang the bell, and ordered the servant to serve breakfast.



"The fashionable world wouldn't see you in your mother's bedroom,"

said Bixiou. "What would it cost you to seem to love that poor woman



for a few hours?"

"Whew!" cried Philippe, winking. "So you come from them, do you? I'm



an old camel, who knows all about genuflections. My mother makes the

excuse of her last illness to get something out of me for Joseph. No,



thank you!"

When Bixiou related this scene to Joseph, the poor painter was chilled



to the very soul.

"Does Philippe know I am ill?" asked Agathe in a piteous tone, the day



after Bixiou had rendered an account of his fruitless errand.

Joseph left the room, suffocating with emotion. The Abbe Loraux, who



was sitting by the bedside of his penitent, took her hand and pressed

it, and then he answered, "Alas! my child, you have never had but one



son."

The words, which Agathe understood but too well, conveyed a shock



which was the beginning of the end. She died twenty hours later.

In the delirium which preceded death, the words, "Whom does Philippe



take after?" escaped her.

Joseph followed his mother to the grave alone. Philippe had gone, on



business it was said, to Orleans; in reality, he was driven from Paris

by the following letter, which Joseph wrote to him a moment after



their mother had breathed her last sigh:--

Monster! my poor mother has died of the shock your letter caused



her. Wear mourning, but pretendillness; I will not suffer her

assassin to stand at my side before her coffin.



Joseph B.

The painter, who no longer had the heart to paint, though his bitter



grief sorely needed the mechanical distraction which labor is wont to

give, was surrounded by friends who agreed with one another never to



leave him entirely alone. Thus it happened that Bixiou, who loved

Joseph as much as a satirist can love any one, was sitting in the



atelier with a group of other friends about two weeks after Agathe's

funeral. The servant entered with a letter, brought by an old woman,



she said, who was waiting below for the answer.

Monsieur,--To you, whom I scarcely dare to call my brother, I am



forced to address myself, if only on account of the name I bear.--

Joseph turned the page and read the signature. The name "Comtesse



Flore de Brambourg" made him shudder. He foresaw some new atrocity on

the part of his brother.



"That brigand," he cried, "is the devil's own. And he calls himself a

man of honor! And he wears a lot of crosses on his breast! And he



struts about at court instead of being bastinadoed! And the scoundrel

is called Monsieur le Comte!"



"There are many like him," said Bixiou.

"After all," said Joseph, "the Rabouilleuse deserves her fate,



whatever it is. She is not worth pitying; she'd have had my neck wrung

like a chicken's without so much as saying, 'He's innocent.'"



Joseph flung away the letter, but Bixiou caught it in the air, and

read it aloud, as follows:--






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