The Writings of Prosper Mérimée/Volume 1/Arsène Guillot/Chapter 1
ARSÈNE GUILLOT
Σε Πἀρις καὶ Φοιβος Απόλλων
Ἐσθλὸν εοντ’, ολεσωσιν ενὶ Σκαιῇσι πόλησιν.[1]
I
THE last mass had been said at Saint Roch, and the beadle was making his rounds to close the deserted chapels. He was about to draw the grille to one of those aristocratic sanctuaries where certain devotees purchase permission to worship God, apart from the rest of the faithful, when he observed that a woman was there still, apparently absorbed in meditation and prayer. "It is Madame de Piennes," he said to himself, pausing at the door of the chapel. Madame de Piennes was well known to the beadle. At that epoch, a woman of the world, young, rich and pretty, who gave the consecrated bread, donated the altar cloths, and made large contributions to charity through the agency of her curate, deserved some credit for being devout, when she had not a husband in the employ of the government, and had nothing to gain by frequenting the churches, aside from her salvation. Such was Madame de Piennes.
The beadle wished to go to his dinner, for people of his class dine at one o'clock, but he dared not disturb the devotions of a person so distinguished in the parish of Saint-Roch. He walked away therefore, making his worn shoes resound upon the flags, hoping to find the chapel empty upon his return after finishing the rounds of the church.
He had gained the other side of the choir when a young woman entered the church and began walking up and down a side aisle, looking curiously at her surroundings. Reredos, stations, holy-water fonts appeared as strange to her, as would appear to you, madam, the sacred niche or the inscriptions of a mosque in Cairo. She was about twenty-five years old, though to a casual observer she would have appeared much older. Although very brilliant, her black eyes were sunken, and encircled by dark rings; her sallow complexion and discoloured lips were indicative of suffering, and yet a certain air of audacity and gaiety in her bearing contrasted strangely with her sickly appearance. In her dress you would have remarked a grotesque mingling of carelessness and studied elegance. Her rose-coloured bonnet, adorned with artificial flowers, would have been more in keeping with an evening toilet. Beneath a long cashmere shawl, of which the experienced eye of a woman would have discerned she was not the original owner, was hidden a cheap cotton frock, a little the worse for wear. Finally, only a man would have admired her feet, incased as they were in worn stockings, and felt shoes which bore the marks of long contact with the pavements—you will recall, madam, that asphalt had not yet been invented.
That woman, whose social position you have already divined, approached the chapel still occupied by Madame de Piennes, and regarding her a moment with a troubled and embarrassed air, she accosted her when she saw that she had arisen and was about to depart.
"Can you tell me, madam," she demanded in a low voice, and with a smile of timidity, "can you tell me to whom I should address myself in order to offer a wax taper?"
The language was so strange to the ears of Madame de Piennes that she did not understand at first. She repeated the question to herself.
"Yes, I wish very much to offer a wax taper to Saint Roch; but I know not to whom I should give the money."
Madame de Piennes was too enlightened to believe in the popular superstitions. Nevertheless she respected them; for there is something touching in all forms of worship, however crude they may be. Persuaded that it was a question pertaining to a vow, or something of that nature, and too charitable to draw from the costume of the young woman in rose-coloured bonnet, conclusions which you perhaps have not scrupled to form, she referred her to the beadle who was coming toward them. The stranger thanked her, and hastening to meet that man, she repeated to him her wish, which he seemed to understand at half a word. While Madame de Piennes was gathering up her prayer-book and adjusting her veil, she saw the lady of the taper draw a small purse from her pocket, select a single five-franc piece from many smaller coins, and give it to the beadle, whispering meanwhile, minute instructions to which he gave smiling attention.
The two women left the church at the same time, but she of the taper walked very fast, and Madame de Piennes soon lost sight of her, although her path lay in the same direction. At the corner of the street where she resided she again encountered her. Beneath her cashmere shawl, the stranger endeavoured to hide a loaf of bread which she had just purchased at a neighbouring bakery. When she saw Madame de Piennes she dropped her head, smiled involuntarily, and hastened her footsteps. Her smile seemed to say: "How can I help it? I am poor. Laugh at me if you choose. I am aware that one does not buy bread in a rose-coloured bonnet and cashmere shawl." This mingling of bashfulness, resignation, and good humour did not escape the notice of Madame de Piennes. She thought of the probable position of that young girl with sadness. "Her piety," she said to herself, "is more meritorious than mine. Assuredly her offering of a five-franc piece is a much greater sacrifice than the superfluity which I donate to charity, without imposing the least privation upon myself." Then she remembered the widow's mite, more acceptable to God than the ostentatious alms-giving of the rich. "I do not do enough good," she thought; "I do not do all that I should." While thus addressing to herself mentally the reproaches which she was far from meriting, she reached her own door. The wax taper, the penny loaf, and specially the offering of her only five-franc piece, had impressed upon the memory of Madame de Piennes the face of the young woman whom she regarded as a model of piety.
She frequently saw her afterward in the street leading to the church, but never at the service. Whenever the stranger passed Madame de Piennes she dropped her head and smiled faintly. That humble smile pleased Madame de Piennes. She would have been glad of an occasion to befriend the poor girl, who at first had aroused her interest, and who now excited her pity; for she noticed that the rose-coloured bonnet was fading and that the cashmere shawl had disappeared. Doubtless it had been returned to the pawnbroker.
It was evident that Saint Roch had not repaid a hundredfold the offering which had been made to him.
One day Madame de Piennes saw a coffin borne into the church, followed by a poorly clad man, with not even a band of crape upon his hat; he was evidently a porter. For more than a month she had not met the young woman of the taper, and the idea came to her that she was assisting at her burial. Nothing was more probable, pale and emaciated as she was the last time that Madame de Piennes had seen her. The beadle being questioned, he interrogated in turn the man who followed the coffin. He replied that he was the porter of a house in Louis le Grand Street; that a tenant had died, one Madame Guillot, who had neither relatives nor friends, with the exception of one daughter, and that out of the pure kindness of his heart he, the porter, was attending the funeral of a person who was nothing to him. Madame de Piennes imagined at once that her stranger had died in her misery, leaving a motherless child without care, and promised herself to send a priest, whom she usually employed in dispensing her charities, to inquire into the case.
Three days later, as she was going for a drive, a cart crosswise of the street arrested her carriage for a few moments. In looking carelessly out of the carriage door she saw, sitting in the cart, the young girl whom she had believed to be dead. She readily recognised her, although she was more pale and emaciated than ever, dressed in mourning, though poorly so, with neither gloves nor hat. She had a strange expression. Instead of her accustomed smile, all of her features were drawn; her great black eyes were haggard; she turned them toward Madame de Piennes, but without recognition, for she saw nothing. Her countenance was expressive of a fierce determination rather than sorrow. The cart turned aside, and the carriage of Madame de Piennes rolled rapidly away; but the picture of the young girl and her expression of despair haunted her for several hours.
Upon her return she saw a great crowd of people in her street. All the portresses were at their street doors, telling some story, to which their neighbours listened with a lively interest. The mob was especially dense in front of a house near to the one inhabited by Madame de Piennes herself. All eyes were turned toward an open window at the third story, and in each little group one or two arms were raised to point it out to public notice; then suddenly the arms dropped, and all eyes followed the movement. Some extraordinary thing had happened.
Passing through her antechamber, Madame de Piennes found her frightened servants, each one pressing toward her, eager to relate the exciting news of the neighbourhood. But before she could ask a single question her maid cried:
"Oh! madam!—if madam knew!" And opening the doors with incredible swiftness, she followed her mistress into the holy of holies—in other words, her dressing-room, which was inaccessible to the rest of the household.
"Ah! madam," said Mademoiselle Josephine, as she was removing the shawl of Madame de Piennes, "my blood runs cold. Never have I seen anything so terrible; that is to say, I have not seen it, although I reached the spot immediately after. But, for all that"
"What has happened? Speak quickly, mademoiselle."
"Well, madam, it is that, three doors from here, a poor unfortunate young girl threw herself from a window, not three minutes ago; if madam had arrived a minute sooner she would have heard the crash."
"Merciful Heaven! And the poor creature killed herself?"
"Madam, it is horrible. Baptiste, who has been to the war, says that he has never seen anything equal to it. From the third story, madam."
"Was she killed instantly?"
"Oh! madam, she was still alive, she even spoke. 'I wish some one would put me out of my misery,' she said. Her bones were in pulp. Madam can imagine what a terrible fall she had."
"But that poor soul—has any one gone to her? Did any one send for a doctor, a priest?"
"For a priest—madam knows better than I, of course. But if I were a priest— A creature so abandoned as to kill herself! Besides, this one was so bad—one could see that readily enough. She belonged to the opera, I was told. All of those creatures come to some bad end. She placed herself before the window, tied her skirts about her with a rose-coloured ribbon, and"
"It is that poor girl in mourning!" cried Madame de Piennes, speaking to herself.
"Yes, madam, her mother died three or four days ago. Her head may have been turned with grief. With all that, perhaps her lover left her in the lurch—and then the end came— No money; such people don't know how to work— Bad heads! By-and-by misfortune comes"
Mademoiselle Josephine continued in this strain for some time, unheeded by Madame de Piennes. She seemed to be thinking sadly over the story she had just heard. Suddenly she demanded of Mademoiselle Josephine:
"Does any one know if that poor girl has what she needs in her present condition—linen, pillows? I wish to know immediately."
"I will go and make inquiries for madam, if madam wishes," cried the maid, delighted at the chance of seeing at close range a woman who had wished to kill herself. Then, reflecting:
"But," she added, "I do not know as I would have the strength to see that—a woman who has fallen from the third story! When they bled Baptiste it made me quite ill. Even that was too much for me."
"Very well, send Baptiste," cried Madame de Piennes; "but let me know at once how that poor child is." Fortunately her own physician. Dr. K, arrived as she was giving that order. He came to dine with her, as was his custom every Tuesday, the day of Italian opera.
"Hurry, doctor," she cried to him, without giving him time to put down his walking-stick or lay aside his wadded greatcoat; "Baptiste will lead you two steps from here. A poor young girl has thrown herself out of a window, and is without assistance."
"Out of a window? " said the doctor. "If it was high, probably there is nothing for me to do."
The doctor would have preferred to dine rather than perform an operation, but Madame de Piennes insisted, and upon her promise that the dinner should be delayed he consented to follow Baptiste.
The latter returned in a few minutes in quest of linen, pillows, etc. At the same time he brought the opinion of the doctor.
"It is nothing serious. She will recover, if she doesn't die of—I don't remember what he said she might die of, but it ended in us."
"Of tetanus!" exclaimed Madame de Piennes.
"Precisely, madam; but it was very fortunate that the doctor arrived as he did, for there was already a quack doctor there, the same one that treated little Berthelot for the measles, and she was dead at his third visit."
At the end of an hour the doctor reappeared, his hair slightly unpowdered and his beautiful cambric frill in disorder.
"These would-be suicides are born to good luck," he said. "The other day a woman was brought to my hospital who had shot herself in the mouth with a pistol. A bad way of attempting it! She broke three teeth, made a hole in her left cheek. She will be a little plainer-looking for it, and that is all. This one throws herself from a third story. A poor devil of an honest man would fall accidentally from the first and break his neck. This girl breaks a leg. Two ribs were driven in, add a few contusions and all is said. A lean-to was opportunely there, which broke the force of her fall. It is the third case of the kind which I have seen since my return to Paris. She fell upon her feet. The tibia and fibula will unite again. What is worse is that the sauce for the turbot is completely dried up. I have fears for the roast, and we shall miss the first act of 'Othello.'"
"And that poor girl, did she tell you what drove her to"
"Oh! I never listen to those stories, madam. I ask them: 'When did you eat last, etc., etc.?'—because that is important for the treatment. Zounds! when one kills himself it is for some bad reason. A lover leaves you, a landlord turns you out of doors; one jumps from the window to be revenged. But one is no sooner in the air than he repents of it."
"She is repentant, I hope, the poor child?"
"Doubtless, doubtless. She wept and made noise enough to deafen me. Baptiste is a famous assistant, madam; he was much better than a medical student who was there, and who scratched his head, not knowing where to begin. The saddest thing in her case is that she escapes death by suicide only to die of consumption; for that she is a consumptive I would take my oath. I did not auscultate, but the facies never deceives me. To be in such haste, when one has only to wait so short a time!"
"You will see her to-morrow, doctor, will you not?"
"Certainly, if you wish me to. I assured her that you would do something for her. The best thing would be to send her to a hospital. There she would be furnished, gratis, an appliance for the reduction of her leg. But at the word 'hospital' she cried that that would finish her, and all the old gossips joined in chorus. However, when one hasn't a penny"
"I will bear the small expense necessary, doctor. I confess that that word terrifies me also, in spite of myself, like the gossips of whom you speak. Moreover, to remove her to a hospital, now that she is in such a horrible condition, would be the death of her."
"Prejudice! pure prejudice on the part of the public. One is nowhere as well off as in a hospital, and when my time comes to be ferried over the Styx, it is from there that I wish to embark in Charon's boat; I shall bequeath my body to the students—thirty or forty years hence, of course. Seriously, my dear, consider well: I am not sure that your protégée is worthy of your interest. She appears to me like some ballet girl—it requires the legs of a ballet dancer to make a leap like that so happily"
"But I have seen her at the church—and, well, doctor, you know my weakness; I construct a complete story upon a face, a glance. Laugh as much as you please, I am rarely deceived. That poor girl has made recently a votive offering for her mother, who was ill. Her mother died. Then she lost her reason. Despair and misery drove her to that terrible deed."
"Very well! Yes, in fact, she has upon the top of her head a protuberance which indicates exaggeration. All that you say is quite probable. You remind me that there was a palm-branch above her cot-bed. That is proof of her piety, is it not?"
"A cot-bed! Ah! how pitiful! Poor girl! But, doctor, you have that wicked little smile that I know so well. I am not speaking of the devoutness which she has or has not. That which especially impels me to interest myself in that girl is that I have to reproach myself on her account"
"To reproach yourself? I have it. Doubtless you should have ordered cushions placed in the street to receive her?"
"Yes, to reproach myself. I noticed her destitution, I ought to have sent her assistance; but poor Father Dubignon was ill, and"
"You must indeed suffer from remorse, madam, if you think it is not doing enough to give, as is your custom, to all who beg openly; it is incumbent upon you also to seek out those who are too proud to beg. But, madam, let us talk no more of broken legs—or rather, three words more. If you are going to take my new patient under your protection, order for her a better bed, a nurse to-morrow—the gossips will do well enough for to-day—broths, cough mixtures, etc. And it would not be a bad idea to send to her some kind-hearted priest, who will comfort her and mend her morals, as I have mended her leg. That young woman is nervous; we may have to meet sudden complications. You would be—yes, now that I think of it, you would be the very best comforter; but you have to adapt your sermons better. I am done. It is half after eight; for the love of God, go and get ready for the opera. Baptiste will bring me some coffee and the daily paper. I have been too busy to-day to learn what is going on in the world."
Several days passed, and the invalid was a little better. The doctor only complained that the moral excitement did not diminish.
"I have no great faith in any of your abbés," he said to Madame de Piennes. "If the sight of human suffering were not too repulsive to you, and I know that you have the courage, you could soothe the mind of that poor child better than any preacher of Saint Roch."
Madame de Piennes asked nothing better, and proposed to go with him at once. They climbed the stairs to the chamber of the sick girl.
In a chamber furnished with three rush-bottomed chairs and a small table she was stretched upon a comfortable bed, the gift of Madame de Piennes. The fine linen sheets, thick mattress, and a pile of large pillows indicated a thoughtful attention, the author of which you will readily guess. The young girl, horribly pale, with burning eyes, had one arm outside of the coverlet, and that portion of the arm below the sleeve was livid and bruised, indicating the condition of the rest of her body. When she saw Madame de Piennes she raised her head, and with a smile, sweet and sad:
"I knew very well that it was you who have had pity upon me, madam," she said. "They told me your name, and I was sure that it was the lady whom I had seen at Saint Roch."
It seems to me that I have already said to you that Madame de Piennes made some pretensions of divining people by their appearance. She was delighted to discover a similar talent in her protégée, and that discovery interested her still further in her favour.
"This room is not very cheerful, my poor child!" she said, casting a glance over the sombre furnishings of the chamber. "Why have they not sent you some curtains? You must ask Baptiste for any little articles which you need."
"You are very kind, madam. But what more do I need? Nothing. This is the end. A little better or a little worse, what does it matter?"
And, turning her head, she began to weep.
"Do you suffer much, my poor child?" inquired Madame de Piennes, seating herself beside the bed.
"No, not much, only I have always in my ears the rushing sound as of wind when I fell, and then the noise—crack! when I struck the pavement."
"You were mad then, my dear; you are sorry for it now, are you not?"
"Yes; but when people are unhappy, they are no longer in their right mind."
"I deeply regret that I did not know your position sooner. But, my child, under no circumstances ought we to abandon ourselves to despair."
"That is easy enough for you to say," said the doctor, who was writing a prescription at the little table. "You do not know what it means to lose a fine, mustachioed young man. But, zounds! it is not necessary to jump out of the window in order to run after him."
"For shame, doctor!" said Madame de Piennes; "the poor girl doubtless had other motives for"
"Ah! I don't know what I had," cried the sick girl; "a hundred reasons in one. In the first place, when mamma died it was a terrible blow. Then I felt myself abandoned—nobody left to care for me! Finally, somebody who was more to me than all the world—Madam, to forget even my name! yes, my name is Arsène Guillot—G, U, I, two L's; he spelled it with a Y."
"Just as I said, a faithless lover!" cried the doctor. "That is always the case. Tut, tut, my beauty, forget him. A man without a memory is unworthy of a thought." He looked at his watch. "Four o'clock?" he said, arising; "I am late for my consultation. Madam, I beg ten thousand pardons, but I must leave you; I haven't even the time to escort you home. Good-bye, my child. Calm yourself, that will amount to nothing. You will be able to dance just as well on that foot as the other. And you, nurse, have this prescription filled, and continue the same treatment as yesterday."
The doctor and the nurse had gone out. Madame de Piennes remained alone with the sick girl, a little alarmed at finding a love affair in a history which she had arranged quite otherwise in her imagination.
"So somebody deceived you, unhappy child!" she resumed after a brief silence.
"Me! no. How deceive a miserable girl like me? Simply he no longer cared for me. He was right; I am not what he needs. He has always been good and generous. I had written to him to tell him where I was, and if he wished me to come to him. Then he wrote me—things which gave me much pain. The other day, when I returned home, I let fall a mirror which he had given me, a Venetian mirror he said. The mirror was broken. I said to myself: 'This is the last stroke!' It is a sign that all is at an end between us—I had nothing left of his. I had placed all the jewels in pawn— And then I said to myself, that if I were to take my life, that would be a grief to him, and I should be revenged. The window was open, and I threw myself out."
"But, miserable girl, the motive was as frivolous as the act was criminal."
"Well and good! But how can it be helped? When one is sorrowful, one does not reflect. It is very easy for happy people to say: 'Be reasonable.'"
"Yes, I know. Misfortune is a bad counsellor. But even in the midst of the greatest trials there are things that one should not forget. I saw you perform an act of piety at Saint Roch but recently. You have the support which comes from Christian faith. Religion, my dear, should prevent you from abandoning yourself to despair. The good God has given you your life; it does not belong to you. But I am doing wrong to scold you now, my dear. You repent, you suffer, God will have mercy upon you."
Arsène bowed her head and her eyes were bathed in tears.
"Alas! madam," she said, sighing deeply, "you believe me to be better than I am. You believe me to be pious, but I am not very. I have never been taught, and if you saw me at the church, offering a wax-taper, it was because I didn't know which way to turn."
"Well, my dear, it was a happy thought. When trouble comes, always go to God for comfort."
"Somebody told me—that if I were to offer a wax-taper to Saint Roch—but no, madam, I ought not to tell you that. A lady like you does not know what people do when they have spent their last penny."
"It is courage above all things that one should ask of God."
"After all, madam, I do not wish you to think me better than I am, and it is robbing you to profit by the charities which you do without knowing me. I am an unfortunate girl—but in this world one lives as he can. To have done, madam, I offered the taper because my mother said that when one offers a taper to Saint Roch one never fails to find a lover within the week. But I have lost my good looks, I look like a mummy. Nobody cares for me any more. Ah, well, there is nothing left but to die. Already it is half accomplished."
All that was said very rapidly, in a voice broken by sobs, and with an accent so frenzied that Madame de Piennes was more inspired with fright than with horror. Involuntarily she drew away from the bedside of the invalid. Perhaps she would have left the chamber if her humanity had not been stronger than her disgust for that lost creature, and prevented her from leaving her alone at a moment when she was a prey to the most violent despair. There was a moment of silence; then Madame de Piennes, with drooping eyelids, murmured faintly:
"Your mother! Unhappy girl! What dare you to say?"
"Oh, my mother was like all mothers, all mothers of our class. She provided for her mother, I supported her in turn. Fortunately, I have no child. I see, madam, that I frighten you, but how could it be helped? You have been delicately reared. You have never endured suffering. When one is rich it is easy to be virtuous. I, too, would have been virtuous if I had had the means. I have had many lovers. I never loved but one man. He has brought me to this. If I had been rich we would have married. We would have reared a virtuous family. Think of it, madam. I talk to you like that, so frankly, although I can see what you think of me, and you are right. But you are the only virtuous woman to whom I have ever spoken in my life, and you appear to be so kind, so good!—that I said to myself: 'Even when she knows me she will pity me.' I am going to die. I request but one thing of you. That is, when I am dead, to have one mass said for me, in the church where I saw you for the first time. Only one prayer, and I thank you from the bottom of my hear"
"No, you will not die!" cried Madame de Piennes, greatly moved. "God will have mercy upon you, poor sinner. You will repent of your misdemeanours, and He will pardon you. If my prayers can do aught for your salvation they will not be wanting. They who have reared you are more guilty than you. Only have courage and hope. Try to be more calm, my poor child. It is necessary to heal the body; the soul is sick also, but I charge myself with its healing."
She arose as she said that, and folding a little roll of gold pieces:
"Take this," she said; "if you have a wish for anything"
And she slipped her little present under the pillow.
"No, madam," cried Arsène, impetuously thrusting the paper aside, "I wish nothing of you but what you have promised. Farewell, we shall never meet again. Have me taken to a hospital, that I may die without troubling any one. You would never be able to make anything of me. A great lady like you will have prayed for me; I am content. Farewell."
And turning herself as well as she was able, she hid her head in the pillow in order to see nothing more.
"Listen, Arsène," said Madame de Piennes in a serious tone. "I have plans concerning you. I wish to make of you a good woman. I am sure that you are repentant. I am coming to see you often. I am going to take care of you. Some day you will owe to me your proper self-respect."
And she took her hand and pressed it gently.
"You have touched me!" cried the poor girl, "you have pressed my hand."
And before Madame de Piennes could draw her hand away she had seized it, and had covered it with her kisses and her tears.
"Calm yourself, calm yourself, my dear," said Madame de Piennes, "tell me nothing more. Now I know all about it and I know you better than you know yourself. It is I who am the doctor for your head—your poor, disordered head. I shall require you to obey me, just as you do your other doctor. I will send you one of my friends who is a preacher, you will listen to him. I will select some good books for you to read. We will have some little tall^s, you and I, and then, when you are better, we will make plans for your future."
The nurse came back from the drug store with the bottle of medicine. Arsène continued to weep. Madame de Piennes pressed her hand once more, placed the roll of gold pieces upon the little table and departed, more kindly disposed toward her penitent, perhaps, than before she had heard her strange confession.
Why is it, madam, that one always loves the erring ones? From the prodigal son to your dog Diamond, who snaps at everybody, and is the very worst little beast that I know. One is the most interested in those who deserve it the least. Vanity! pure vanity, madam, that sentiment there! pride over a difficulty conquered! The father of the prodigal son conquered the devil and robbed him of his prey; you subdued the viciousness of Diamond by coaxing him with tid-bits. Madame de Piennes was proud to have conquered the perversity of a courtesan, to have destroyed by her eloquence, barriers which twenty years of vice had builded around a poor abandoned soul. And then, perhaps, shall I say it? to the pride of that victory, to the pleasure of having done a good deed, there was added the sentiment of curiosity which many virtuous women have to know a woman of the other sort. When a public singer enters a drawing-room I have remarked the looks of curiosity turned toward her. It is not the men who observe her the most closely. You, yourself, madam, the other evening at the theatre, did you not look with all your eyes at that variety actress who was pointed out to you in the dressing-room? How can one he like that? How often one asks himself that question?
Thus, madam, Madame de Piennes thought much about Mademoiselle Arsène Guillot, and said to herself: "I will rescue her."
She sent her a priest, who exhorted her to repentance. Repentance was not difficult for poor Arsène, who, with the exception of a few brief hours of pleasure, had known only the miseries of life.
Say to one who is unhappy: "It is your fault," and he is only half convinced, but if at the same time you soften your reproach with a little consolation, he will bless you, and promise everything for the future. A Greek has said somewhere, or rather Amyot puts it into his mouth:
The day that sets a man free of his chains,
Strips him of half of his virtue and pains.
Which returns in simple prose to this aphorism: Misfortune makes us as gentle as lambs. The priest said to Madame de Piennes that while Mademoiselle Guillot was very ignorant, she was not bad at heart, and that he had great hopes of her salvation.
In truth, Arsène listened to him with respectful attention. She read the passages marked for her perusal in the books chosen for her, as scrupulous to obey Madame de Piennes, as to follow the prescriptions of the doctor. But that which most won the heart of the good preacher, and appeared to her protectress the strongest evidence of moral healing, was the use made by Arsène Guillot of a portion of the little sum which had been placed in her hands. She had requested that a solemn mass be said at Saint Roch, for the soul of Pamela Guillot, her dead mother. Assuredly, never had soul greater need of the prayers of the Church
- ↑ Paris and Phœbus Apollo shall destroy thee, even although thou art worthy, beside the Skœan gate.—Homer, ii, xxii, 360.