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The Vicar of Tours-Part7_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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"How is this?" he said to the vicar after reading it. "It appears that



written documents already exist between you and Mademoiselle Gamard.

Where are they? and what do they stipulate?"



"The deed is in my library," replied Birotteau.

"Do you know the tenor of it?" said Monsieur de Bourbonne to the



lawyer.

"No, monsieur," said Caron, stretching out his hand to regain the



fatal document.

"Ha!" thought the old man; "you know, my good friend, what that deed



contains, but you are not paid to tell us," and he returned the paper

to the lawyer.



"Where can I put my things?" cried Birotteau; "my books, my beautiful

book-shelves, and pictures, my red furniture, and all my treasures?"



The helplessdespair of the poor man thus torn up as it were by the

roots was so artless, it showed so plainly the purity of his ways and



his ignorance of the things of life, that Madame de Listomere and

Mademoiselle de Salomon talked to him and consoled him in the tone



which mothers take when they promise a plaything to their children.

"Don't fret about such trifles," they said. "We will find you some



place less cold and dismal than Mademoiselle Gamard's gloomy house. If

we can't find anything you like, one or other of us will take you to



live with us. Come, let's play a game of backgammon. To-morrow you can

go and see the Abbe Troubert and ask him to push your claims to the



canonry, and you'll see how cordially he will receive you."

Feeble folk are as easily reassured as they are frightened. So the



poor abbe, dazzled at the prospect of living with Madame de Listomere,

forgot the destruction, now completed, of the happiness he had so long



desired, and so delightfully enjoyed. But at night before going to

sleep, the distress of a man to whom the fuss of moving and the



breaking up of all his habits was like the end of the world, came upon

him, and he racked his brains to imagine how he could ever find such a



good place for his book-case as the gallery in the old maid's house.

Fancying he saw his books scattered about, his furniture defaced, his



regular life turned topsy-turvy, he asked himself for the thousandth

time why the first year spent in Mademoiselle Gamard's house had been



so sweet, the second so cruel. His troubles were a pit in which his

reason floundered. The canonry seemed to him small compensation for so



much misery, and he compared his life to a stocking in which a single

dropped stitch resulted in destroying the whole fabric. Mademoiselle



Salomon remained to him. But, alas, in losing his old illusions the

poor priest dared not trust in any later friendship.



In the "citta dolente" of spinsterhood we often meet, especially in

France, with women whose lives are a sacrifice nobly and daily offered



to noble sentiments. Some remain proudlyfaithful to a heart which

death tore from them; martyrs of love, they learn the secrets of



womanhood only though their souls. Others obey some family pride

(which in our days, and to our shame, decreases steadily); these



devote themselves to the welfare of a brother, or to orphan nephews;

they are mothers while remaining virgins. Such old maids attain to the



highest heroism of their sex by consecrating all feminine feelings to

the help of sorrow. They idealize womanhood by renouncing the rewards



of woman's destiny, accepting its pains. They live surrounded by the

splendour of their devotion, and men respectfully bow the head before



their faded features. Mademoiselle de Sombreuil was neither wife nor

maid; she was and ever will be a living poem. Mademoiselle Salomon de



Villenoix belonged to the race of these heroic beings. Her devotion

was religiously sublime, inasmuch as it won her no glory after being,



for years, a daily agony. Beautiful and young, she loved and was

beloved; her lover lost his reason. For five years she gave herself,



with love's devotion, to the mere mechanicalwell-being of that

unhappy man, whose madness she so penetrated that she never believed



him mad. She was simple in manner, frank in speech, and her pallid

face was not lacking in strength and character, though its features






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