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The Vicar of Tours-Part3_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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softly persuasive because Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix belonged

to the most aristocatic society in Tours. For though Mademoiselle



Salomon came to Mademoiselle Gamard's house solely out of friendship

for the vicar, the old maid triumphed in receiving her, and saw that,



thanks to Birotteau, she was on the point of succeeding in her great

desire to form a circle as numerous and as agreeable as those of



Madame de Listomere, Mademoiselle Merlin de la Blottiere, and other

devout ladies who were in the habit of receiving the pious and



ecclesiastical society of Tours.

But alas! the abbe Birotteau himself caused this cherished hope to



miscarry. Now if those persons who in the course of their lives have

attained to the enjoyment of a long desired happiness and have



therefore comprehended the joy of the vicar when he stepped into

Chapeloud's vacant place, they will also have gained some faint idea



of Mademoiselle Gamard's distress at the overthrow of her favorite

plan.



After accepting his happiness in the old maid's salon for six months

with tolerable patience, Birotteau deserted the house of an evening,



carrying with him Mademoiselle Salomon. In spite of her utmost efforts

the ambitious Gamard had recruited barely six visitors, whose faithful



attendance was more than problematical; and boston could not be played

night after night unless at least four persons were present. The



defection of her two principal guests obliged her therefore to make

suitable apologies and return to her evening visiting among former



friends; for old maids find their own company so distasteful that they

prefer to seek the doubtful pleasures of society.



The cause of this desertion is plain enough. Although the vicar was

one of those to whom heaven is hereafter to belong in virtue of the



decree "Blessed are the poor in spirit," he could not, like some

fools, endure the annoyance that other fools caused him. Persons



without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to

be amused by others, all the more because they are dull within. The



incarnation of ennui to which they are victims, joined to the need

they feel of getting a divorce from themselves, produces that passion



for moving about, for being somewhere else than where they are, which

distinguishes their species,--and also that of all beings devoid of



sensitiveness, and those who have missed their destiny, or who suffer

by their own fault.



Without really fathoming the vacuity and emptiness of Mademoiselle

Gamard's mind, or stating to himself the pettiness of her ideas, the



poor abbe perceived, unfortunately too late, the defects which she

shared with all old maids, and those which were peculiar to herself.



The bad points of others show out so strongly against the good that

they usually strike our eyes before they wound us. This moral



phenomenon might, at a pinch, be made to excuse the tendency we all

have, more or less, to gossip. It is so natural, sociallyspeaking, to



laugh at the failings of others that we ought to forgive the ridicule

our own absurdities excite, and be annoyed only by calumny. But in



this instance the eyes of the good vicar never reached the optical

range which enables men of the world to see and evade their



neighbours' rough points. Before he could be brought to perceive the

faults of his landlady he was forced to undergo the warning which



Nature gives to all her creatures--pain.

Old maids who have never yielded in their habits of life or in their



characters to other lives and other characters, as the fate of woman

exacts, have, as a general thing, a mania for making others give way



to them. In Mademoiselle Gamard this sentiment had degenerated into

despotism, but a despotism that could only exercise itself on little



things. For instance (among a hundred other examples), the basket of

counters placed on the card-table for the Abbe Birotteau was to stand






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