The Prime Minister invited Monsieur and Madame Ceres to spend a couple of
weeks of the holidays in a little villa that he had taken in the mountains,
and in which he lived alone. The deplorable health of Madame Paul Visire did
not allow her to accompany her husband, and she remained with her relatives in
one of the southern provinces.
The villa had belonged to the mistress of one of the last Kings of Alca: the
drawing-room retained its old furniture, and in it was still to be found the
Sofa of the Favourite. The country was charming; a pretty blue stream, the
Aiselle, flowed at the foot of the hill that dominated the villa. Hippolyte
Ceres loved fishing; when engaged at this monotonous occupation he often
formed his best Parliamentary combinations, and his happiest oratorical
inspirations. Trout swarmed in the Aiselle; he fished it from morning till
evening in a boat that the Prime Minister readily placed at is disposal.
In the mean time, Eveline and Paul Visire sometimes took a turn together in
the garden, or had a little chat in the drawing-room. Eveline, although she
recognised the attraction that Visire had for women, had hitherto displayed
towards him only an intermittent and superficial coquetry, without any deep
intentions or settled design. He was a connoisseur and saw that she was
pretty. The House and the Opera had deprived him of all leisure, but, in a
little villa, the grey eyes and rounded figure of Eveline took on a value in
his eyes. One day as Hippolyte Ceres was fishing in the Aiselle, he made her
sit beside him on the Sofa of the Favourite. Long rays of gold struck Eveline
like arrows from a hidden Cupid through the chinks of the curtains which
protected her from the heat and glare of a brilliant day. Beneath her white
muslin dress her rounded yet slender form was outlined in its grace and youth.
Her skin was cool and fresh, and had the fragrance of freshly mown hay. Paul
Visire behaved as the occasion warranted, and for her part, she was opposed
neither to the games of chance or of society. She believed it would be nothing
or a trifle; she was mistaken.
"There was," says the famous German ballad, "on the sunny side of the town
square, beside a wall whereon the creeper grew, a pretty little letter-box, as
blue as the corn-flowers, smiling and tranquil.
"All day long there came to it, in their heavy shoes, small shop-keepers, rich
farmers, citizens, the tax-collector and the policeman, and they put into it
their business letters, their invoices, their summonses their notices to pay
taxes, the judges' returns, and orders for the recruits to assemble. It
remained smiling and tranquil.
"With joy, or in anxiety, there advanced towards it workmen and farm servants,
maids and nursemaids, accountants, clerks, and women carrying their little
children in their arms; they put into it notifications of births. marriages,
and deaths, letters between engaged couples, between husbands and wives, from
mothers to their sons, and from sons to their mothers. It remained smiling and
tranquil.
"At twilight, young lads and young girls slipped furtively to it, and put in
love-letters, some moistened with tears that blotted the ink, others with a
little circle to show the place to kiss, all of them very long. It remained
smiling and tranquil.
"Rich merchants came themselves through excess of carefulness at the hour of
daybreak, and put into it registered letters, and letters with five red seals,
full of bank notes or cheques on the great financial establishments of the
Empire. It remained smiling and tranquil.
"But one day, Gaspar, whom it had never seen, and whom it did not know from
Adam, came to put in a letter, of which nothing is known but that it was
folded like a little hat. Immediately the pretty letter-box fell into a swoon.
Henceforth it remains no longer in its place; it runs through streets, fields,
and woods, girdled with ivy, and crowned with roses. It keeps running up hill
and down dale; the country policeman surprises it sometimes, amidst the corn,
in Gaspar's arms kissing him upon the mouth."
Paul Visire had recovered all his customary nonchalance. Eveline remained
stretched on the Divan of the Favourite in an attitude of delicious
astonishment.
The Reverend Father Douillard, an excellent moral theologian, and a man who in
the decadence of the Church has preserved his principles, was very right to
teach, in conformity with the doctrine of the Fathers, that while a woman
commits a great sin by giving herself for money, she commits a much greater
one by giving herself for nothing. For, in the first case she acts to support
her life, and that is sometimes not merely excusable but pardonable, and even
worthy of the Divine Grace, for God forbids suicide, and is unwilling that his
creatures should destroy themselves. Besides, in giving herself in order to
live, she remains humble, and derives no pleasure from it a thing which
diminishes the sin. But a woman who gives herself for nothing sins with
pleasure and exults in her fault. The pride and delight with which she burdens
her crime increase its load of moral guilt.
Madame Hippolyte Ceres' example shows the profundity of these moral truths.
She perceived that she had senses. A second was enough to bring about this
discovery, to change her soul, to alter her whole life. To have learned to
know herself was at first a delight. The {greek here} of the ancient
philosophy is not a precept the moral fulfilment of which procures any
pleasure, since one enjoys little satisfaction from knowing one's soul. It is
not the same with the flesh, for in it sources of pleasure may be revealed to
us. Eveline immediately felt an obligation to her revealer equal to the
benefit she had received, and she imagined that he who had discovered these
heavenly depths was the sole possessor of the key to them. Was this an error,
and might she not be able to find others who also had the golden key? It is
difficult to decide; and Professor Haddock, when the facts were divulged
(which happened without much delay as we shall see), treated the matter from
an experimental point of view, in a scientific review, and concluded that the
chances Madame C-- would have of finding the exact equivalent of M. V-- were
in the proportion of 305 to 975008. This is as much as to say that she would
never find it. Doubtless her instinct told her the same, for she attached
herself distractedly to him.
I have related these facts with all the circumstances which seemed to me
worthy of attracting the attention of meditative and philosophic minds. The
Sofa of the Favourite is worthy of the majesty of history; on it were decided
the destinies of a great people; nay, on it was accomplished an act whose
renown was to extend over the neighbouring nations both friendly and hostile,
and even over all humanity. Too often events of this nature escape the
superficial minds and shallow spirits who inconsiderately assume the task of
writing history. Thus the secret springs of events remain hidden from us. The
fall of Empires and the transmission of dominions astonish us and remain
incomprehensible to us, because we have not discovered the imperceptible
point, or touched the secret spring which when put in movement has destroyed
and overthrown everything. The author of this great history knows better than
anyone else his faults and his weaknesses, but he can do himself this
justice--that he has always kept the moderation, the seriousness, the
austerity, which an account of affairs of State demands, and that he has never
departed from the gravity which is suitable to a recital of human actions.
Read next: BOOK VII - MODERN TIMES#CHAPTER VII - THE FIRST CONSEQUENCES
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