Works of Honore De Balzac, page 788
“I!” said the vaudevillist, “what should I do there? My face doesn’t lend itself to condolences. And it is very vulgar in these days to go and see people who are down.”
CHAPTER IX. THE RESIGNATION
By midnight Madame Rabourdin’s salon was deserted; only two or three guests remained with des Lupeaulx and the master and mistress of the house. When Schinner and Monsieur and Madame de Camps had likewise departed, des Lupeaulx rose with a mysterious air, stood with his back to the fireplace and looked alternately at the husband and wife.
“My friends,” he said, “nothing is really lost, for the minister and I are faithful to you. Dutocq simply chose between two powers the one he thought strongest. He has served the court and the Grand Almoner; he has betrayed me. But that is in the order of things; a politician never complains of treachery. Nevertheless, Baudoyer will be dismissed as incapable in a few months; no doubt his protectors will find him a place, — in the prefecture of police, perhaps, — for the clergy will not desert him.”
From this point des Lupeaulx went on with a long tirade about the Grand Almoner and the dangers the government ran in relying upon the church and upon the Jesuits. We need not, we think, point out to the intelligent reader that the court and the Grand Almoner, to whom the liberal journals attributed an enormous influence under the administration, had little really to do with Monsieur Baudoyer’s appointment. Such petty intrigues die in the upper sphere of great self-interests. If a few words in favor of Baudoyer were obtained by the importunity of the curate of Saint-Paul’s and the Abbe Gaudron, they would have been withdrawn immediately at a suggestion from the minister. The occult power of the Congregation of Jesus (admissible certainly as confronting the bold society of the “Doctrine,” entitled “Help yourself and heaven will help you,”) was formidable only through the imaginary force conferred on it by subordinate powers who perpetually threatened each other with its evils. The liberal scandal-mongers delighted in representing the Grand Almoner and the whole Jesuitical Chapter as political, administrative, civil, and military giants. Fear creates bugbears. At this crisis Baudoyer firmly believed in the said Chapter, little aware that the only Jesuits who had put him where he now was sat by his own fireside, and in the Cafe Themis playing dominoes.
At certain epochs in history certain powers appear, to whom all evils are attributed, though at the same time their genius is denied; they form an efficient argument in the mouth of fools. Just as Monsieur de Talleyrand was supposed to hail all events of whatever kind with a bon mot, so in these days of the Restoration the clerical party had the credit of doing and undoing everything. Unfortunately, it did and undid nothing. Its influence was not wielded by a Cardinal Richelieu or a Cardinal Mazarin; it was in the hands of a species of Cardinal de Fleury, who, timid for over five years, turned bold for one day, injudiciously bold. Later on, the “Doctrine” did more, with impunity, at Saint-Merri, than Charles X. pretended to do in July, 1830. If the section on the censorship so foolishly introduced into the new charter had been omitted, journalism also would have had its Saint-Merri. The younger Branch could have legally carried out Charles X.’s plan.
“Remain where you are, head of a bureau under Baudoyer,” went on des Lupeaulx. “Have the nerve to do this; make yourself a true politician; put ideas and generous impulses aside; attend only to your functions; don’t say a word to your new director; don’t help him with a suggestion; and do nothing yourself without his order. In three months Baudoyer will be out of the ministry, either dismissed, or stranded on some other administrative shore. They may attach him to the king’s household. Twice in my life I have been set aside as you are, and overwhelmed by an avalanche of folly; I have quietly waited and let it pass.”
“Yes,” said Rabourdin, “but you were not calumniated; your honor was not assailed, compromised — ”
“Ha, ha, ha!” cried des Lupeaulx, interrupting him with a burst of Homeric laughter. “Why, that’s the daily bread of every remarkable man in this glorious kingdom of France! And there are but two ways to meet such calumny, — either yield to it, pack up, and go plant cabbages in the country; or else rise above it, march on, fearless, and don’t turn your head.”
“For me, there is but one way of untying the noose which treachery and the work of spies have fastened round my throat,” replied Rabourdin. “I must explain the matter at once to his Excellency, and if you are as sincerely attached to me as you say you are, you will put me face to face with him to-morrow.”
“You mean that you wish to explain to him your plan for the reform of the service?”
Rabourdin bowed.
“Well, then, trust the papers with me, — your memoranda, all the documents. I promise you that he shall sit up all night and examine them.”
“Let us go to him, then!” cried Rabourdin, eagerly; “six years’ toil certainly deserves two or three hours attention from the king’s minister, who will be forced to recognize, if he does not applaud, such perseverance.”
Compelled by Rabourdin’s tenacity to take a straightforward path, without ambush or angle where his treachery could hide itself, des Lupeaulx hesitated for a single instant, and looked at Madame Rabourdin, while he inwardly asked himself, “Which shall I permit to triumph, my hatred for him, or my fancy for her?”
“You have no confidence in my honor,” he said, after a pause. “I see that you will always be to me the author of your /secret analysis/. Adieu, madame.”
Madame Rabourdin bowed coldly. Celestine and Xavier returned at once to their own rooms without a word; both were overcome by their misfortune. The wife thought of the dreadful situation in which she stood toward her husband. The husband, resolving slowly not to remain at the ministry but to send in his resignation at once, was lost in a sea of reflections; the crisis for him meant a total change of life and the necessity of starting on a new career. All night he sat before his fire, taking no notice of Celestine, who came in several times on tiptoe, in her night-dress.
“I must go once more to the ministry, to bring away my papers, and show Baudoyer the routine of the business,” he said to himself at last. “I had better write my resignation now.”
He turned to his table and began to write, thinking over each clause of the letter, which was as follows: —
Monseigneur, — I have the honor to inclose to your Excellency my
resignation. I venture to hope that you still remember hearing me
say that I left my honor in your hands, and that everything, for
me, depended on my being able to give you an immediate
explanation.
This explanation I have vainly sought to give. To-day it would,
perhaps, be useless; for a fragment of my work relating to the
administration, stolen and misused, has gone the rounds of the
offices and is misinterpreted by hatred; in consequence, I find
myself compelled to resign, under the tacit condemnation of my
superiors.
Your Excellency may have thought, on the morning when I first
sought to speak with you, that my purpose was to ask for my
promotion, when, in fact, I was thinking only of the glory and
usefulness of your ministry and of the public good. It is
all-important, I think, to correct that impression.
Then followed the usual epistolary formulas.
It was half-past seven in the morning when the man consummated the sacrifice of his ideas; he burned everything, the toil of years. Fatigued by the pressure of thought, overcome by mental suffering, he fell asleep with his head on the back of his armchair. He was wakened by a curious sensation, and found his hands covered with his wife’s tears and saw her kneeling before him. Celestine had read the resignation. She could measure the depth of his fall. They were now to be reduced to live on four thousand francs a year; and that day she had counted up her debts, — they amounted to something like thirty-two thousand francs! The most ignoble of all wretchedness had come upon them. And that noble man who had trusted her was ignorant that she had abused the fortune he had confided to her care. She was sobbing at his feet, beautiful as the Magdalen.
“My cup is full,” cried Xavier, in terror. “I am dishonored at the ministry, and dishonored — ”
The light of her pure honor flashed from Celestine’s eyes; she sprang up like a startled horse and cast a fulminating glance at Rabourdin.
“I! I!” she said, on two sublime tones. “Am I a base wife? If I were, you would have been appointed. But,” she added mournfully, “it is easier to believe that than to believe what is the truth.”
“Then what is it?” said Rabourdin.
“All in three words,” she said; “I owe thirty thousand francs.”
Rabourdin caught his wife to his heart with a gesture of almost frantic joy, and seated her on his knee.
“Take comfort, dear,” he said, in a tone of voice so adorably kind that the bitterness of her grief was changed to something inexpressibly tender. “I too have made mistakes; I have worked uselessly for my country when I thought I was being useful to her. But now I mean to take another path. If I had sold groceries we should now be millionaires. Well, let us be grocers. You are only twenty-eight, dear angel; in ten years you shall recover the luxury that you love, which we must needs renounce for a short time. I, too, dear heart, am not a base or common husband. We will sell our farm; its value has increased of late. That and the sale of our furniture will pay my debts.”
/My/ debts! Celestine embraced her husband a thousand times in the single kiss with which she thanked him for that generous word.
“We shall still have a hundred thousand francs to put into business. Before the month is out I shall find some favorable opening. If luck gave a Martin Falleix to a Saillard, why should we despair? Wait breakfast for me. I am going now to the ministry, but I shall come back with my neck free of the yoke.”
Celestine clasped her husband in her arms with a force men do not possess, even in their passionate moments; for women are stronger through emotion than men through power. She wept and laughed and sobbed in turns.
When Rabourdin left the house at eight o’clock, the porter gave him the satirical cards suggested by Bixiou. Nevertheless, he went to the ministry, where he found Sebastien waiting near the door to entreat him not to enter any of the bureaus, because an infamous caricature of him was making the round of the offices.
“If you wish to soften the pain of my downfall,” he said to the lad, “bring me that drawing; I am now taking my resignation to Ernest de la Briere myself, that it may not be altered or distorted while passing through the routine channels. I have my own reasons for wishing to see that caricature.”
When Rabourdin came back to the courtyard, after making sure that his letter would go straight into the minister’s hands, he found Sebastien in tears, with a copy of the lithograph, which the lad reluctantly handed over to him.
“It is very clever,” said Rabourdin, showing a serene brow to his companion, though the crown of thorns was on it all the same.
He entered the bureaus with a calm air, and went at once into Baudoyer’s section to ask him to come to the office of the head of the division and receive instructions as to the business which that incapable being was henceforth to direct.
“Tell Monsieur Baudoyer that there must be no delay,” he added, in the hearing of all the clerks; “my resignation is already in the minister’s hands, and I do not wish to stay here longer than is necessary.”
Seeing Bixiou, Rabourdin went straight up to him, showed him the lithograph, and said, to the great astonishment of all present, —
“Was I not right in saying you were an artist? Still, it is a pity you directed the point of your pencil against a man who cannot be judged in this way, nor indeed by the bureaus at all; — but everything is laughed at in France, even God.”
Then he took Baudoyer into the office of the late La Billardiere. At the door he found Phellion and Sebastien, the only two who, under his great disaster, dared to remain openly faithful to the fallen man. Rabourdin noticed that Phellion’s eyes were moist, and he could not refrain from wringing his hand.
“Monsieur,” said the good man, “if we can serve you in any way, make use of us.”
Monsieur Rabourdin shut himself up in the late chief’s office with Monsieur Baudoyer, and Phellion helped him to show the new incumbent all the administrative difficulties of his new position. At each separate affair which Rabourdin carefully explained, Baudoyer’s little eyes grew big as saucers.
“Farewell, monsieur,” said Rabourdin at last, with a manner that was half-solemn, half-satirical.
Sebastien meanwhile had made up a package of papers and letters belonging to his chief and had carried them away in a hackney coach. Rabourdin passed through the grand courtyard, while all the clerks were watching from the windows, and waited there a moment to see if the minister would send him any message. His Excellency was dumb. Phellion courageously escorted the fallen man to his home, expressing his feelings of respectful admiration; then he returned to the office, and took up his work, satisfied with his own conduct in rendering these funeral honors to the neglected and misjudged administrative talent.
Bixiou [seeing Phellion re-enter]. “Victrix cause diis placuit, sed victa Catoni.”
Phellion. “Yes, monsieur.”
Poiret. “What does that mean?”
Fleury. “That priests rejoice, and Monsieur Rabourdin has the respect of men of honor.”
Dutocq [annoyed]. “You didn’t say that yesterday.”
Fleury. “If you address me you’ll have my hand in your face. It is known for certain that you filched those papers from Monsieur Rabourdin.” [Dutocq leaves the office.] “Oh, yes, go and complain to your Monsieur des Lupeaulx, spy!”
Bixiou [laughing and grimacing like a monkey]. “I am curious to know how the division will get along. Monsieur Rabourdin is so remarkable a man that he must have had some special views in that work of his. Well, the minister loses a fine mind.” [Rubs his hands.]
Laurent [entering]. “Monsieur Fleury is requested to go to the secretary’s office.”
All the clerks. “Done for!”
Fleury [leaving the room]. “I don’t care; I am offered a place as responsible editor. I shall have all my time to myself to lounge the streets or do amusing work in a newspaper office.”
Bixiou. “Dutocq has already made them cut off the head of that poor Desroys.”
Colleville [entering joyously]. “Gentlemen, I am appointed head of this bureau.”
Thuillier. “Ah, my friend, if it were I myself, I couldn’t be better pleased.”
Bixiou. “His wife has managed it.” [Laughter.]
Poiret. “Will any one tell me the meaning of all that is happening here to-day?”
Bixiou. “Do you really want to know? Then listen. The antechamber of the administration is henceforth a chamber, the court is a boudoir, the best way to get in is through the cellar, and the bed is more than ever a cross-cut.”
Poiret. “Monsieur Bixiou, may I entreat you, explain?”
Bixiou. “I’ll paraphrase my opinion. To be anything at all you must begin by being everything. It is quite certain that a reform of this service is needed; for on my word of honor, the State robs the poor officials as much as the officials rob the State in the matter of hours. But why is it that we idle as we do? because they pay us too little; and the reason of that is we are too many for the work, and your late chief, the virtuous Rabourdin, saw all this plainly. That great administrator, — for he was that, gentlemen, — saw what the thing is coming to, the thing that these idiots call the ‘working of our admirable institutions.’ The chamber will want before long to administrate, and the administrators will want to legislate. The government will try to administrate and the administrators will want to govern, and so it will go on. Laws will come to be mere regulations, and ordinances will be thought laws. God made this epoch of the world for those who like to laugh. I live in a state of jovial admiration of the spectacle which the greatest joker of modern times, Louis XVIII., bequeathed to us” [general stupefaction]. “Gentlemen, if France, the country with the best civil service in Europe, is managed thus, what do you suppose the other nations are like? Poor unhappy nations! I ask myself how they can possibly get along without two Chambers, without the liberty of the press, without reports, without circulars even, without an army of clerks? Dear, dear, how do you suppose they have armies and navies? how can they exist at all without political discussions? Can they even be called nations, or governments? It is said (mere traveller’s tales) that these strange peoples claim to have a policy, to wield a certain influence; but that’s absurd! how can they when they haven’t ‘progress’ or ‘new lights’? They can’t stir up ideas, they haven’t an independent forum; they are still in the twilight of barbarism. There are no people in the world but the French people who have ideas. Can you understand, Monsieur Poiret,” [Poiret jumped as if he had been shot] “how a nation can do without heads of divisions, general-secretaries and directors, and all this splendid array of officials, the glory of France and of the Emperor Napoleon, — who had his own good reasons for creating a myriad of offices? I don’t see how those nations have the audacity to live at all. There’s Austria, which has less than a hundred clerks in her war ministry, while the salaries and pensions of ours amount to a third of our whole budget, a thing that was unheard of before the Revolution. I sum up all I’ve been saying in one single remark, namely, that the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres, which seems to have very little to do, had better offer a prize for the ablest answer to the following question: Which is the best organized State; the one that does many things with few officials, or the one that does next to nothing with an army of them?”
Poiret. “Is that your last word?”
