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The Vicar of Tours-Part2_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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roved successively to the handsome tall clock, the bureau, curtains,

chairs, carpets, to the stately bed, the basin of holy-water, the



crucifix, to a Virgin by Valentin, a Christ by Lebrun,--in short, to

all the accessories of this cherished room, while his face expressed



the anguish of the tenderest farewell that a lover ever took of his

first mistress, or an old man of his lately planted trees. The vicar



had just perceived, somewhat late it is true, the signs of a dumb

persecution instituted against him for the last three months by



Mademoiselle Gamard, whose evil intentions would doubtless have been

fathomed much sooner by a more intelligent man. Old maids have a



special talent for accentuating the words and actions which their

dislikes suggest to them. They scratch like cats. They not only wound



but they take pleasure in wounding, and in making their victim see

that he is wounded. A man of the world would never have allowed



himself to be scratched twice; the good abbe, on the contrary, had

taken several blows from those sharp claws before he could be brought



to believe in any evil intention.

But when he did perceive it, he set to work, with the inquisitorial



sagacity which priests acquire by directing consciences and burrowing

into the nothings of the confessional, to establish, as though it were



a matter of religious controversy, the following proposition:

"Admitting that Mademoiselle Gamard did not remember it was Madame de



Listomere's evening, and that Marianne did think I was home, and did

really forget to make my fire, it is impossible, inasmuch as I myself



took down my candlestick this morning, that Mademoiselle Gamard,

seeing it in her salon, could have supposed I had gone to bed. Ergo,



Mademoiselle Gamard intended that I should stand out in the rain, and,

by carrying my candlestickupstairs, she meant to make me understand



it. What does it all mean?" he said aloud, roused by the gravity of

these circumstances, and rising as he spoke to take off his damp



clothes, get into his dressing-gown, and do up his head for the night.

Then he returned from the bed to the fireplace, gesticulating, and



launching forth in various tones the following sentences, all of which

ended in a high falsetto key, like notes of interjection:



"What the deuce have I done to her? Why is she angry with me? Marianne

did NOT forget my fire! Mademoiselle told her not to light it! I must



be a child if I can't see, from the tone and manner she has been

taking to me, that I've done something to displease her. Nothing like



it ever happened to Chapeloud! I can't live in the midst of such

torments as--At my age--"



He went to bed hoping that the morrow might enlighten him on the

causes of the dislike which threatened to destroy forever the



happiness he had now enjoyed two years after wishing for it so long.

Alas! the secret reasons for the inimical feelings Mademoiselle Gamard



bore to the luckless abbe were fated to remain eternally unknown to

him,--not that they were difficult to fathom, but simply because he



lacked the good faith and candor by which great souls and scoundrels

look within and judge themselves. A man of genius or a trickster says



to himself, "I did wrong." Self-interest and native talent are the

only infallible and lucid guides. Now the Abbe Birotteau, whose



goodness amounted to stupidity, whose knowledge was only, as it were,

plastered on him by dint of study, who had no experience whatever of



the world and its ways, who lived between the mass and the

confessional, chiefly occupied in dealing the most trivial matters of



conscience in his capacity of confessor to all the schools in town and

to a few noble souls who rightly appreciated him,--the Abbe Birotteau



must be regarded as a great child, to whom most of the practices of

social life were utterly unknown. And yet, the natural selfishness of



all human beings, reinforced by the selfishnesspeculiar to the

priesthood and that of the narrow life of the provinces had



insensibly, and unknown to himself, developed within him. If any one

had felt enough interest in the good man to probe his spirit and prove



to him that in the numerous petty details of his life and in the

minute duties of his daily existence he was essentiallylacking in the



self-sacrifice he professed, he would have punished and mortified




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