Have not all old maids a certain talent for emphasizing the acts and words suggested to them by hatred? They scratch as cats do. And not only do they hurt, but they take pleasure in hurting, and in making their victim see that they can hurt. While a man of the world would not have allowed himself to be clawed a second time, the worthy Birotteau had taken several scratches in the face before he had conceived of malignant purpose.
Immediately, with the inquisitorial shrewdness acquired by priests, accustomed as they are to direct consciences and to investigate trifles from the shades of the confessional, the Abbé Birotteau set to work to formulate the following proposition—as though it were the basis of a religious controversy.—Granting that Mademoiselle Gamard may have forgotten Madame de Listomère’s evening—that Marianne had neglected to light my fire—that they thought I was at home; as it is certain that I, myself, must have taken my candlestick downstairs this morning!!!—it is impossible that Mademoiselle Gamard, seeing it in her sitting-room, could have supposed I had gone to bed. Ergo, Mademoiselle Gamard left me at the door in the rain on purpose; and by having the candlestick carried up to my rooms she meant me to know it.—“What does it mean?” he said aloud, carried away by the gravity of the case, as he rose to take off his wet clothes, and put on his dressing-gown and his nightcap. Then he went from the bed to the fire gesticulating and jerking out such comments as these, in various tones of voice, all ended in a falsetto pitch as though to represent points of interrogation.
“What the deuce have I done? Why does she owe me a grudge?—Marianne cannot have forgotten my fire; Mademoiselle must have told her not to light it! I should be childish not to see from the tone and manner she assumes towards me that I have been so unfortunate as to displease her. Nothing of the kind ever happened to Chapeloud!—It will be impossible for me to live in the midst of the annoyances that … At my age too!”
He went to bed, hoping to clear up on the morrow the cause of the hatred which was destroying forever the happiness he had enjoyed for two years after wishing for it so long. Alas! the secret motives of Mademoiselle Gamard’s feeling against him were destined to remain forever unknown to him; not because they were difficult to guess, but because the poor man had not the simple candor which enables great minds and thorough scoundrels to recognize and judge themselves. Only a man of genius or a master of intrigue ever says to himself, “I was to blame.” Interest and talent are the only conscientious and lucid counselors.
Now, the Abbé Birotteau, whose kindliness went to the pitch of silliness, whose knowledge was a sort of veneer laid on by patient work, who had no experience whatever of the world and its ways, and who lived between the altar and the confessional, chiefly engaged in deciding trivial cases of conscience in his capacity of confessor to the schools of the town and to some noble souls who appreciated him—the Abbé Birotteau was, in short, to be regarded as a big baby to whom the greater part of social customs were absolutely unknown. At the same time, the selfishness natural to all human beings, reinforced by the egoism peculiar to a priest, and by that of the narrow life of a provincial town, had insensibly grown strong in him without his suspecting it. If anyone had taken enough interest in searching the good man’s soul to show him that, in the infinitely small details of his existence and the trivial duties of his private life, he failed essentially in the self-sacrifice he professed, he would have punished and mortified himself in all sincerity.
But those whom we offend, even unwittingly, reck not of our innocence; they desire and achieve revenge. Thus Birotteau, weak as he was, was doomed to suffer under the hand of that great distributive Justice which always trusts the world to carry out its sentences, known to many simpletons as the misfortunes of life.
There was this difference between Canon Chapeloud and the Abbé: one was a witty and ingenious egotist, the other an honest and clumsy one. When Monsieur Chapeloud had come to board with Mademoiselle Gamard, he could perfectly well gauge his landlady’s character. The confessional had enlightened him as to the bitterness infused into an old maid’s heart by the misfortune of finding herself outside society; his behavior to Mademoiselle Gamard was shrewdly calculated. The lady being no more than eight-and-thirty, still had those little pretensions which, in such discreet persons, turn in later years into a high opinion of themselves.
The Canon understood that, to live comfortably with Mademoiselle Gamard, he must always show her the same respect and attention, and be more infallible than the Pope. To attain this end he established no points of contact between himself and her beyond what the strictest politeness required, and those necessarily subsisting between two persons living under the same roof. Thus, though he and the Abbé Troubert regularly took their three meals a day, he had never appeared at breakfast, but had accustomed Mademoiselle
