The Brotherhood of Consolation. Honore de Balzac

his intentions. He carried it respectfully to his lips. Madame de la Chanterie’s hand was exquisitely beautiful, – without a wrinkle; neither fat nor thin; white enough to be the envy of all young women, and shapely enough for the model of a sculptor. Godefroid had already admired those hands, conscious of their harmony with the spell of her voice, and the celestial blue of her glance.

      “Wait a moment,” said Madame de la Chanterie, rising and going into her own room.

      Godefroid was keenly excited; he did not know to what class of ideas her movement was to be attributed. His perplexity did not last long, for she presently returned with a book in her hand.

      “Here, my dear child,” she said, “are the prescriptions of a great physician of souls. When the things of ordinary life have not given us the happiness we expected of them, we must seek for happiness in a higher life. Here is the key of a new world. Read night and morning a chapter of this book; but bring your full attention to bear upon what you read; study the words as you would a foreign language. At the end of a month you will be another man. It is now twenty years that I have read a chapter every day; and my three friends, Messieurs Nicolas, Alain, and Joseph, would no more fail in that practice than they would fail in getting up and going to bed. Do as they do for love of God, for love of me,” she said, with a divine serenity, an august confidence.

      Godefroid turned over the book and read upon its back in gilt letters, IMITATION OF JESUS CHRIST. The simplicity of this old woman, her youthful candor, her certainty of doing a good deed, confounded the ex-dandy. Madame de la Chanterie’s face wore a rapturous expression, and her attitude was that of a woman who was offering a hundred thousand francs to a merchant on the verge of bankruptcy.

      “I have used that volume,” she said, “for twenty-six years. God grant its touch may be contagious. Go now and buy me another copy; for this is the hour when persons come here who must not be seen.”

      Godefroid bowed and went to his room, where he flung the book upon the table, exclaiming, —

      “Poor, good woman! Well, so be it!”

      V. THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS

      The book, like all books frequently read, opened in a particular place. Godefroid sat down as if to put his ideas in order, for he had gone through more emotion during this one morning than he had often done in the agitated months of his life; but above all, his curiosity was keenly excited. Letting his eyes fall by chance, as people will when their souls are launched in meditation, they rested mechanically on the two open pages of the book; almost unconsciously he read the following heading: —

      CHAPTER XII.

      THE ROYAL WAY OF THE HOLY CROSS

      He took up the book; a sentence of that noble chapter caught his eye like a flash of light: —

      “He has walked before thee, bearing his cross; he died for thee, that thou mightest bear thy cross, and be glad to die upon it.

      “Go where thou wilt, seek what thou wilt, never canst thou find a nobler, surer path than the royal way of the holy cross.

      “Dispose and order all things according to thy desires and thine own judgment and still thou shalt find trials to suffer, whether thou wilt or no; and so the cross is there; be it pain of body or pain of mind.

      “Sometimes God will seem to leave thee, sometimes men will harass thee. But, far worse, thou wilt find thyself a burden to thyself, and no remedy will deliver thee, no consolation comfort thee: until it pleases God to end thy trouble thou must bear it; for it is God’s will that we suffer without consolation, that we may go to him without one backward look, humble through tribulation.”

      “What a strange book!” thought Godefroid, turning over the leaves. Then his eyes lighted on the following words: —

      “When thou hast reached the height of finding all afflictions sweet, since they have made thee love the love of Jesus Christ, then know thyself happy; for thou hast found thy paradise in this world.”

      Annoyed by this simplicity (the characteristic of strength), angry at being foiled by a book, he closed the volume; but even then he saw, in letters of gold on the green morocco cover, the words: —

      SEEK THAT WHICH IS ETERNAL, AND THAT ONLY.

      “Have they found it here?” he asked himself.

      He went out to buy the handsomest copy he could find of the “Imitation of Jesus Christ” thinking that Madame de la Chanterie would wish to read her chapter that night. When he reached the street he stood a moment near the door, uncertain which way to take and debating in what direction he was likely to find a bookseller. As he stood there he heard the heavy sound of the massive porte-cochere closing.

      Two men were leaving the hotel de la Chanterie. If the reader has fully understood the character of this old house he will know that it was one of the ancient mansions of the olden time. Manon, herself, when she called Godefroid that morning, had asked him, smiling, how he had slept in the hotel de la Chanterie.

      Godefroid followed the two men without the slightest intention of watching them; they took him for an accidental passer, and spoke in tones which enabled him to hear distinctly in those lonely streets.

      The two men passed along the rue Massillon beside the church and crossed the open space in front of it.

      “Well, you see, old man, it is easy enough to catch their sous. Say what they want you to say, that’s all.”

      “But we owe money.”

      “To whom?”

      “To that lady – ”

      “I’d like to see that old body try to get it; I’d – ”

      “You’d pay her.”

      “Well, you’re right, for if I paid her I’d get more another time.”

      “Wouldn’t it be better to do as they advise, and build up a good business?”

      “Pooh!”

      “But she said she would get some one to lend us the money.”

      “Then we should have to give up the life of – ”

      “Well, I’d rather; I’m sick of it; it isn’t being a man at all to be drunk half one’s time.”

      “Yes, but you know the abbe turned his back on old Marin the other day; he refused him everything.”

      “Because old Marin tried to swindle, and nobody can succeed in that but millionnaires.”

      Just then the two men, whose dress seemed to show that they were foremen in some workshop, turned abruptly round towards the place Maubert by the bridge of the Hotel-Dieu. Godefroid stepped aside to let them pass. Seeing him so close behind them they looked rather anxiously at each other, and their faces expressed a regret for having spoken.

      Godefroid was the more interested by this conversation because it reminded him of the scene between the Abbe de Veze and the workman the day of his first visit.

      Thinking over this circumstance, he went as far as a bookseller’s in the rue Saint-Jacques, whence he returned with a very handsome copy of the finest edition published in France of the “Imitation of Jesus Christ.” Walking slowly back, in order that he might arrive exactly at the dinner hour, he recalled his own sensations during this morning and he was conscious of a new impulse in his soul. He was seized by a sudden and deep curiosity, but his curiosity paled before an inexplicable desire. He was drawn to Madame de la Chanterie; he felt the keenest desire to attach himself to her, to devote himself to her, to please her, to deserve her praise: in short, he felt the first emotions of platonic love; he saw glimpses of the untold grandeur of that soul, and he longed to know it in its entirety. He grew impatient to enter the inner lives of these pure Catholics. In that small company of faithful souls, the majesty of practical religion was so thoroughly blended with all that is most majestic in a French woman that Godefroid resolved to leave no stone unturned to make himself accepted as a true member of the little body. These feelings would have been unnaturally sudden in a busy Parisian eagerly occupied with life,