The Celibates

what dangers are involved in unbridled self-interest. It is to be hoped that a society based solely on the power of money may tremble when it sees the impotence of Justice over the complications of a system which deifies success and condones every means to achieve it: That it may have prompt recourse to the Catholic Church for purification of the masses by religious feeling, and by some education other than that of a lay University! Enough fine characters, enough instances of great and noble devotion will have been seen in my Scenes of Military Life; so I may be allowed here to show what depravity results from the exigencies of war in certain minds which dare to act in private life as they would on the field of battle.

You have studied our times with a sagacious eye, and your philosophy betrays itself by more than one bitter reflection in the course of your elegant pages; you, better than anyone, have appreciated the mischief done to the spirit of our nation by four different political systems.

I could not, therefore, place this narrative under the protection of a more competent authority. Your name, perhaps, may defend this world against the outcry it is sure to raise. Where is there a sufferer who keeps silence when the surgeon uncovers his most burning wounds? The pleasure of dedicating this drama to you is enhanced by my pride in betraying your goodwill for him who here signs himself one of your sincere admirers,

De Balzac.

A Bachelor’s Establishment

In 1792 the citizens of Issoudun rejoiced in a doctor named Rouget, who was regarded as a very deep fox. Some bold folks asserted that he made his wife very unhappy, though she was the handsomest woman in the town. Perhaps this wife was rather a simpleton. In spite of the inquisitiveness of friends, the gossip of outsiders, and the evil-speaking of the envious, the circumstances of the household were little known. Doctor Rouget was one of the men of whom it is commonly said that “they are not easy to get on with.” And so, as long as he lived, little was said about him, and he was treated civilly.

His wife, a Demoiselle Descoings, somewhat sickly as a girl⁠—one reason, it was said, why the doctor married her⁠—had first a son, and then a daughter, born as it happened ten years after her brother, and not expected by the doctor, it was always reported, though he was a medical man. This late-born daughter was named Agathe.

These facts are so simple and commonplace that the historian hardly seems justified in placing them in the forefront of his narrative; but if they remained unknown, a man of Doctor Rouget’s temper would be condemned as a monster, as an unnatural father, whereas he simply obeyed certain evil promptings which many persons defend under the terrible axiom: A man must know his own mind. This masculine motto has wrought misery for many wives. The Descoings, the doctor’s father and mother-in-law, wool-brokers, undertook alike the sale for landowners, or the purchase for wool-merchants of the golden fleeces of le Berry, and took commission from both parties. They grew rich over this business, and then avaricious⁠—the moral of many lives.

Their son, Descoings junior, a younger brother of Madame Rouget’s, did not like Issoudun. He went to seek his fortune in Paris, and set up as a grocer in the Rue Saint-Honoré. This was his ruin. But what is to be said? A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists. The social forces which make for this or that vocation have been insufficiently studied. It would be curious to know what leads a man to become a stationer rather than a baker, when he is no longer compelled, as among the Egyptians, to succeed to his father’s craft. Love had helped to form Descoings’ vocation. He had said to himself, “And I, too, will be a grocer!” when he had also said something else on seeing his master’s wife, a beautiful creature, with whom he fell over head and ears in love. With no auxiliary but patience and a little money sent him by his father and mother, he married the widow of the worthy Master Bixiou, his predecessor. In 1792 Descoings was regarded as a prosperous man.

At that time the parents Descoings were still living. They had retired from wool, and invested their wealth in buying government stock⁠—another Golden Fleece. Their son-in-law, almost sure ere long to be in mourning for his wife, sent his daughter to his brother-in-law’s house in Paris, partly that she might see the capital, but also with a crafty purpose. Descoings had no children. Madame Descoings, twelve years older than her husband, was in excellent health, but she was as fat as a thrush after the vintage; and the wily Rouget had enough medical skill to foresee that Monsieur and Madame Descoings, in contradiction to the philosophy of fairytales, would live happy and have no children. The couple might become devoted to Agathe. Now Doctor Rouget wanted to disinherit his daughter, and flattered himself it might be done if he transplanted her from home.

This young person, at that time the handsomest girl in Issoudun, was not in the least like either her father or her mother. Her birth had been the occasion of a mortal feud between Doctor Rouget and his intimate friend, Monsieur Lousteau, formerly a sub-delegate, who had just left Issoudun. When a family migrates, the natives of a place so delightful as Issoudun have a right to inquire into the reasons of so unheard-of a step. To believe some sharp tongues. Monsieur Rouget, a vindictive man, had sworn that Lousteau should die by his hand alone. From a doctor the speech seemed as deadly as a cannonball. When the National Assembly abolished delegates, Lousteau left, and never returned to Issoudun. After the removal of this family, Madame Rouget