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THE BROTHERHOOD OF CONSOLATION
THE BROTHERHOOD OF CONSOLATION HONORE DE BALZAC Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
November 1999 [Etext #1967]
FIRST EPISODE
MADAME DE LA CHANTERIE
I
THE MALADY OF THE AGE
On a fine evening in the month of September 1836 a man about thirty
years of age was leaning on the parapet of that quay from which a
spectator can look up the Seine from the Jardin des Plantes to Notre-
Dame and down along the vast perspective of the river to the
Louvre. There is not another point of view to compare with it in the
capital of ideas. We feel ourselves on the quarter-deck as it were
of a gigantic vessel. We dream of Paris from the days of the Romans to
those of the Franks from the Normans to the Burgundians the Middle-
Ages the Valois Henri IV. Louis XIV. Napoleon and Louis-Philippe.
Vestiges are before us of all those sovereignties in monuments that
recall their memory. The cupola of Sainte-Genevieve towers above the
Latin quarter. Behind us rises the noble apsis of the cathedral. The
Hotel de Ville tells of revolutions; the Hotel-Dieu of the miseries
of Paris. After gazing at the splendors of the Louvre we can by
taking two steps look down upon the rags and tatters of that ignoble
nest of houses huddling between the quai de la Tournelle and the
Hotel-Dieu--a foul spot which a modern municipality is endeavoring
at the present moment to remove.
In 1836 this marvellous scene presented still another lesson to the
eye: between the Parisian leaning on the parapet and the cathedral lay
the "Terrain" (such was the ancient name of this barren spot) still
strewn with the ruins of the Archiepiscopal Palace. When we
contemplate from that quay so many commemorating scenes when the soul
has grasped the past as it does the present of this city of Paris
then indeed Religion seems to have alighted there as if to spread her
hands above the sorrows of both banks and extend her arms from the
faubourg Saint-Antoine to the faubourg Saint-Marceau. Let us hope that
this sublime unity may be completed by the erection of an episcopal
palace of the Gothic order; which shall replace the formless buildings
now standing between the "Terrain" the rue d'Arcole the cathedral
and the quai de la Cite.
This spot the heart of ancient Paris is the loneliest and most
melancholy of regions. The waters of the Seine break there noisily
the cathedral casts its shadows at the setting of the sun. We can
easily believe that serious thoughts must have filled the mind of a
man afflicted with a moral malady as he leaned upon that parapet.
Attracted perhaps by the harmony between his thoughts and those to
which these diverse scenes gave birth he rested his hands upon the
coping and gave way to a double contemplation--of Paris and of
himself! The shadows deepened the lights shone out afar but still he
did not move carried along as he was on the current of a meditation
such as comes to many of us big with the future and rendered solemn
by the past.
After a while he heard two persons coming towards him whose voices
had caught his attention on the bridge which joins the Ile de la Cite
with the quai de la Tournelle. These persons no doubt thought
themselves alone and therefore spoke louder than they would have done
in more frequented places. The voices betrayed a discussion which
apparently from the few words that reached the ear of the involuntary
listener related to a loan of money. Just as the pair approached the
quay one of them dressed like a working man left the other with a
despairing gesture. The other stopped and called after him saying:--
"You have not a sou to pay your way across the bridge. Take this" he
added giving the man a piece of money; "and remember my friend that
God Himself is speaking to us when a good thought comes into our
hearts."
This last remark made the dreamer at the parapet quiver. The man who
made it little knew that to use a proverbial expression he was
killing two birds with one stone addressing two miseries--a working
life brought to despair a suffering soul without a compass the
victim of what Panurge's sheep call progress and what in France is
called equality. The words simple in themselves became sublime from
the tone of him who said them in a voice that possesses a spell. Are
there not in fact some calm and tender voices that produce upon us
the same effect as a far horizon outlook?
By his dress the dreamer knew him to be a priest and he saw by the
last gleams of the fading twilight a white august worn face. The
sight of a priest issuing from the beautiful cathedral of Saint-
Etienne in Vienna bearing the Extreme Unction to a dying person
determined the celebrated tragic author Werner to become a Catholic.
Almost the same effect was produced upon the dreamer when he looked
upon the man who had all unknowing given him comfort; on the
threatening horizon of his future he saw a luminous space where shone
the blue of ether and he followed that light as the shepherds of the
Gospel followed the voices that cried to them: "Christ the Lord is
born this day."
The man who had said the beneficent words passed on by the wall of the
cathedral taking as a result of chance which often leads to great
results the direction of the street from which the dreamer came and
to which he was now returning led by the faults of his life.
This dreamer was named Godefroid. Whoever reads this history will
understand the reasons which lead the writer to use the Christian
names only of some who are mentioned in it. The motives which led
Godefroid who lived in the quarter of the Chaussee-d'Antin to the
neighborhood of Notre-Dame at such an hour were as follows:--
The son of a retail shopkeeper whose economy enabled him to lay by a
sort of fortune he was the sole object of ambition to his father and
mother who dreamed of seeing him a notary in Paris. For this reason
at the age of seven he was sent to an institution that of the Abbe
Liautard to be thrown among children of distinguished families who
during the Empire chose this school for the education of their sons
in preference to the lyceums where religion was too much overlooked.
Social inequalities were not noticeable among schoolmates; but in
1821 his studies being ended Godefroid who was then with a notary
became aware of the distance that separated him from those with whom
he had hitherto lived on familiar terms.
Obliged to go through the law school he there found himself among a
crowd of the sons of the bourgeoisie who without fortunes to inherit
or hereditary distinctions could look only to their own personal
merits or to persistent toil. The hopes that his father and mother
then retired from business placed upon him stimulated the youth's
vanity without exciting his pride. His parents lived simply like the
thrifty Dutch spending only one fourth of an income of twelve
thousand francs. They intended their savings together with half their
capital for the purchase of a notary's practice for their son.
Subjected to the rule of this domestic economy Godefroid found his
immediate state so disproportioned to the visions of himself and his
parents that he grew discouraged. In some feeble natures
discouragement turns to envy; others in whom necessity will
reflection stand in place of talent march straight and resolutely in
the path traced out for bourgeois ambitions. Godefroid on the
contrary revolted wished to shine tried several brilliant ways and
blinded his eyes. He endeavored to succeed; but all his efforts ended
in proving the fact of his own impotence. Admitting at last the
inequality that existed between his desires and his capacities he
began to hate all social supremacies became a Liberal and attempted
to reach celebrity by writing a book; but he learned to his cost to
regard talent as he did nobility. Having tried the law the notariat
and literature without distinguishing himself in any way his mind
now turned to the magistracy.
About this time his father died. His mother who contented herself in
her old age with two thousand francs a year gave the rest of the
fortune to Godefroid. Thus possessed at the age of twenty-five of
ten thousand francs a year he felt himself rich; and he was so
relatively to the past. Until then his life had been spent on acts
without will on wishes that were impotent; now to advance with the
age to act to play a part he resolved to enter some career or find
some connection that should further his fortunes. He first thought of
journalism which always opens its arms to any capital that may come
in its way. To be the owner of a newspaper is to become a personage at
once; such a man works intellect and has all the gratifications of it
and none of the labor. Nothing is more tempting to inferior minds than
to be able to rise in this way on the talents of others. Paris has
seen two or three parvenus of this kind--men whose success is a
disgrace both to the epoch and to those who have lent them their
shoulders.
In this sphere Godefroid was soon outdone by the brutal
Machiavellianism of some or by the lavish prodigality of others; by
the fortunes of ambitious capitalists or by the wit and shrewdness of
editors. Meantime he was drawn into all the dissipations that arise
from literary or political life and he yielded to the temptations
incurred by journalists behind the scenes. He soon found himself in
bad company; but this experience taught him that his appearance was
insignificant that he had one shoulder higher than the other without
the inequality being redeemed by either malignancy or kindness of
nature. Such were the truths these artists made him feel.
Small ill-made without superiority of mind or settled purpose what
chance was there for a man like that in an age when success in any
career demands that the highest qualities of the mind be furthered by
luck or by tenacity of will which commands luck.
The revolution of 1830 stanched Godefroid's wounds. He had the courage
of hope which is equal to that of despair. He obtained an
appointment like other obscure journalists to a government situation
in the provinces where his liberal ideas conflicting with the
necessities of the new power made him a troublesome instrument.
Bitten with liberalism he did not know as cleverer men did how to
steer a course. Obedience to ministers he regarded as sacrificing his
opinions. Besides the government seemed to him to be disobeying the
laws of its own origin. Godefroid declared for progress where the
object of the government was to maintain the /statu quo/. He returned
to Paris almost poor but faithful still to the doctrines of the
Opposition.
Alarmed by the excesses of the press more alarmed still by the
attempted outrages of the republican party he sought in retirement
from the world the only life suitable for a being whose faculties were
incomplete and without sufficient force to bear up against the rough
jostling of political life the struggles and sufferings of which
confer no credit--a being too who was wearied with his many
miscarriages; without friends for friendship demands either striking
merits or striking defects and yet possessing a sensibility of soul
more dreamy than profound. Surely a retired life was the course left
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