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AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY
AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY HONORE DE BALZAC PART I
CHAPTER I
JUDAS
The autumn of the year 1803 was one of the finest in the early part of
that period of the present century which we now call "Empire." Rain
had refreshed the earth during the month of October so that the trees
were still green and leafy in November. The French people were
beginning to put faith in a secret understanding between the skies and
Bonaparte then declared Consul for life--a belief in which that man
owes part of his prestige; strange to say on the day the sun failed
him in 1812 his luck ceased!
About four in the afternoon on the fifteenth of November 1803 the
sun was casting what looked like scarlet dust upon the venerable tops
of four rows of elms in a long baronial avenue and sparkling on the
sand and grassy places of an immense /rond-point/ such as we often
see in the country where land is cheap enough to be sacrificed to
ornament. The air was so pure the atmosphere so tempered that a
family was sitting out of doors as if it were summer. A man dressed in
a hunting-jacket of green drilling with green buttons and breeches of
the same stuff and wearing shoes with thin soles and gaiters to the
knee was cleaning a gun with the minute care a skilful huntsman gives
to the work in his leisure hours. This man had neither game nor game-
bag nor any of the accoutrements which denote either departure for a
hunt or the return from it; and two women sitting near were looking at
him as though beset by a terror they could ill-conceal. Any one
observing the scene taking place in this leafy nook would have
shuddered as the old mother-in-law and the wife of the man we speak
of were now shuddering. A huntsman does not take such minute
precautions with his weapon to kill small game neither does he use
in the department of the Aube a heavy rifled carbine.
"Shall you kill a roe-buck Michu?" said his handsome young wife
trying to assume a laughing air.
Before replying Michu looked at his dog which had been lying in the
sun its paws stretched out and its nose on its paws in the charming
attitude of a trained hunter. The animal had just raised its head and
was snuffing the air first down the avenue nearly a mile long which
stretched before them and then up the cross road where it entered the
/rond-point/ to the left.
"No" answered Michu "but a brute I do not wish to miss a lynx."
The dog a magnificent spaniel white with brown spots growled.
"Hah!" said Michu talking to himself "spies! the country swarms with
them."
Madame Michu looked appealingly to heaven. A beautiful fair woman with
blue eyes composed and thoughtful in expression and made like an
antique statue she seemed to be a prey to some dark and bitter grief.
The husband's appearance may explain to a certain extent the evident
fear of the two women. The laws of physiognomy are precise not only
in their application to character but also in relation to the
destinies of life. There is such a thing as prophetic physiognomy. If
it were possible (and such a vital statistic would be of value to
society) to obtain exact likenesses of those who perish on the
scaffold the science of Lavatar and also that of Gall would prove
unmistakably that the heads of all such persons even those who are
innocent show prophetic signs. Yes fate sets its mark on the faces
of those who are doomed to die a violent death of any kind. Now this
sign this seal visible to the eye of an observer was imprinted on
the expressive face of the man with the rifled carbine. Short and
stout abrupt and active in his motions as a monkey though calm in
temperament Michu had a white face injected with blood and features
set close together like those of a Tartar--a likeness to which his
crinkled red hair conveyed a sinister expression. His eyes clear and
yellow as those of a tiger showed depths behind them in which the
glance of whoever examined the man might lose itself and never find
either warmth or motion. Fixed luminous and rigid those eyes
terrified whoever gazed into them. The singular contrast between the
immobility of the eyes and the activity of the body increased the
chilling impression conveyed by a first sight of Michu. Action always
prompt in this man was the outcome of a single thought; just as the
life of animals is without reflection the outcome of instinct. Since
1793 he had trimmed his red beard to the shape of a fan. Even if he
had not been (as he was during the Terror) president of a club of
Jacobins this peculiarity of his head would in itself have made him
terrible to behold. His Socratic face with its blunt nose was
surmounted by a fine forehead so projecting however that it
overhung the rest of the features. The ears well detached from the
head had the sort of mobility which we find in those of wild animals
which are ever on the qui-vive. The mouth half-open as the custom
usually is among country-people showed teeth that were strong and
white as almonds but irregular. Gleaming red whiskers framed this
face which was white and yet mottled in spots. The hair cropped
close in front and allowed to grow long at the sides and on the back
of the head brought into relief by its savage redness all the
strange and fateful peculiarities of this singular face. The neck
which was short and thick seemed to tempt the axe.
At this moment the sunbeams falling in long lines athwart the group
lighted up the three heads at which the dog from time to time glanced
up. The spot on which this scene took place was magnificently fine.
The /rond-point/ is at the entrance of the park of Gondreville one of
the finest estates in France and by far the finest in the departments
of the Aube; it boasts of long avenues of elms a castle built from
designs by Mansart a park of fifteen hundred acres enclosed by a
stone wall nine large farms a forest mills and meadows. This
almost regal property belonged before the Revolution to the family of
Simeuse. Ximeuse was a feudal estate in Lorraine; the name was
pronounced Simeuse and in course of time it came to be written as
pronounced.
The great fortune of the Simeuse family adherents of the House of
Burgundy dates from the time when the Guises were in conflict with
the Valois. Richelieu first and afterwards Louis XIV. remembered
their devotion to the factious house of Lorraine and rebuffed them.
Then the Marquis de Simeuse an old Burgundian old Guiser old
leaguer old /frondeur/ (he inherited the four great rancors of the
nobility against royalty) came to live at Cinq-Cygne. The former
courtier rejected at the Louvre married the widow of the Comte de
Cinq-Cygne younger branch of the famous family of Chargeboeuf one of
the most illustrious names in Champagne and now as celebrated and
opulent as the elder. The marquis among the richest men of his day
instead of wasting his substance at court built the chateau of
Gondreville enlarged the estate by the purchase of others and united
the several domains solely for the purposes of a hunting-ground. He
also built the Simeuse mansion at Troyes not far from that of the
Cinq-Cygnes. These two old houses and the bishop's palace were long
the only stone mansions at Troyes. The marquis sold Simeuse to the Duc
de Lorraine. His son wasted the father's savings and some part of his
great fortune under the reign of Louis XV. but he subsequently
entered the navy became a vice-admiral and redeemed the follies of
his youth by brilliant services. The Marquis de Simeuse son of this
naval worthy perished with his wife on the scaffold at Troyes
leaving twin sons who emigrated and were at the time our history
opens still in foreign parts following the fortunes of the house of
Conde.
The /rond-point/ was the scene of the meet in the time of the "Grand
Marquis"--a name given in the family to the Simeuse who built
Gondreville. Since 1789 Michu lived in the hunting lodge at the
entrance to the park built in the reign of Louis XIV. and called the
pavilion of Cinq-Cygne. The village of Cinq-Cygne is at the end of the
forest of Nodesme (a corruption of Notre-Dame) which was reached
through the fine avenue of four rows of elms where Michu's dog was now
suspecting spies. After the death of the Grand Marquis this pavilion
fell into disuse. The vice-admiral preferred the court and the sea to
Champagne and his son gave the dilapidated building to Michu for a
dwelling.
This noble structure is of brick with vermiculated stone-work at the
angles and on the casings of the doors and windows. On either side is
a gateway of finely wrought iron eaten with rust and connected by a
railing beyond which is a wide and deep ha-ha full of vigorous
trees its parapets bristling with iron arabesques the innumerable
sharp points of which are a warning to evil-doers.
The park walls begin on each side of the circumference of the /rond-
point/; on the one hand the fine semi-circle is defined by slopes
planted with elms; on the other within the park a corresponding
half-circle is formed by groups of rare trees. The pavilion
therefore stands at the centre of this round open space which
extends before it and behind it in the shape of two horseshoes. Michu
had turned the rooms on the lower floor into a stable a kitchen and
a wood-shed. The only trace remaining of their ancient splendor was an
antechamber paved with marble in squares of black and white which was
entered on the park side through a door with small leaded panes such
as might still be seen at Versailles before Louis-Philippe turned that
Chateau into an asylum for the glories of France. The pavilion is
divided inside by an old staircase of worm-eaten wood full of
character which leads to the first story. Above that is an immense
garret. This venerable edifice is covered by one of those vast roofs
with four sides a ridgepole decorated with leaden ornaments and a
round projecting window on each side such as Mansart very justly
delighted in; for in France the Italian attics and flat roofs are a
folly against which our climate protests. Michu kept his fodder in
this garret. That portion of the park which surrounds the old pavilion
is English in style. A hundred feet from the house a former lake now
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