The Brotherhood of Consolation

“Well, be at her house Monday next at three o’clock,” said Halpersohn, taking out a note-book in which he wrote a few words. “You will give me then two hundred francs; and if I promise to cure the patient you will give me three thousand. I am told,” he added, “that the lady has shrunk to almost nothing.”

“Monsieur, if the most celebrated doctors in Paris are to be believed, it is a neurotic case of so extraordinary a nature that they denied the possibility of its symptoms until they saw them.”

“Ah! yes, I remember now what the young lad told me. To-morrow, monsieur.”

Godefroid withdrew, after bowing to the man who seemed to him as odd as he was extraordinary. Nothing about him indicated a physician, not even the study, in which the most notable object was the iron safe, made by Huret or Fichet.

Godefroid had just time to get to the passage Vivienne before the shops closed for the day, and there he bought a superb accordion, which he ordered sent at once to Monsieur Bernard, giving the address.

XVI. A LESSON IN CHARITY

From the doctor’s house Godefroid made his way to the rue Chanoinesse, passing along the quai des Augustins, where he hoped to find one of the shops of the commission-publishers open. He was fortunate enough to do so, and had a long talk with a young clerk on books of jurisprudence.

When he reached the rue Chanoinesse, he found Madame de la Chanterie and her friends just returning from high mass; in reply to the look she gave him Godefroid made her a significant sign with his head.

“Isn’t our dear father Alain here to-day?” he said.

“No,” she replied, “not this Sunday; you will not see him till a week from to-day – unless you go where he gave you rendezvous.”

“Madame,” said Godefroid in a low voice, “you know he doesn’t intimidate me as these gentlemen do; I wanted to make my report to him – ”

“And I?”

“Oh you! I can tell you all; and I have a great deal to tell. For my first essay I have found a most extraordinary misfortune; a cruel mingling of pauperism and the need for luxuries; also scenes of a sublimity which surpasses all the inventions of our great novelists.”

“Nature, especially moral nature, is always greater than art, just as God is greater than his creatures. But come,” said madame de la Chanterie, “tell me the particulars of your first trip into worlds unknown to you.”

Monsieur Nicolas and Monsieur Joseph (for the Abbe de Veze had remained a few moments in Notre-Dame) left Madame de la Chanterie alone with Godefroid, who, being still under the influence of the emotions he had gone through the night before, related even the smallest details of his story with the force and ardor and action of a first experience of such a spectacle and its attendant persons and things. His narrative had a great success; for the calm and gentle Madame de la Chanterie wept, accustomed as she was to sound the depths of sorrows.

“You did quite right to send the accordion,” she said.

“I would like to do a great deal more,” said Godefroid; “inasmuch as this family is the first that has shown me the pleasures of charity, I should like to obtain for that splendid old man a full return for his great book. I don’t know if you have confidence enough in my capacity to give me the means of undertaking such an affair. From information I have obtained, it will cost nine thousand francs to manufacture an edition of fifteen hundred copies, and their selling value will be twenty-four thousand francs. But as we should have to pay off the three thousand and some hundred francs due to Barbet, it would be an outlay of twelve thousand francs to risk. Oh! madame, if you only knew what bitter regrets I feel for having dissipated my little fortune! The spirit of charity has appeared to me; it fills me with the ardor of an initiate. I wish to renounce the world, I long to embrace the life of these gentlemen and be worthy of you. Many a time during the last two days I have blessed the chance that brought me to this house. I will obey you in all things until you judge me fit to be one of yours.”

“Then,” said Madame de la Chanterie, after reflecting for a time, “listen to me, for I have important things to tell. You have been allured, my child, by the poesy of misfortune. Yes, misfortunes are often poetical; for, as I think, poesy is a certain effect on the sensibilities, and sorrows affect the sensibilities, – life is so intense in grief!”

“Yes, madame, I know that I have been gripped by the demon of curiosity. But how could I help it? I have not yet acquired the habit of penetrating to the heart of these great misfortunes; I cannot go among them with the calmness of your three soldiers of the Lord. But, let me tell you, it is since I have recovered from that first excitement that I have chiefly longed to devote myself to your work.”

“Listen to me, my dear angel!” said Madame de la Chanterie, who uttered the last three words with a gentle solemnity that touched the young man strangely. “We have forbidden ourselves absolutely, – and we do not trifle with words here; what is forbidden no longer occupies our minds, – we have forbidden ourselves to enter into any speculations. To print a book for sale on the chance of profit is a matter of business, and any operation of that kind would throw us into all the entanglements of commerce. Certainly your scheme seems to me feasible, – even necessary. But do you think it is the first that has offered itself? A score of times, a hundred times, we have come upon just such ways of saving families, or firms. What would have become of us if we had taken part in such affairs? We should be merchants. No, our true partnership with misfortune is not to take the work into our own hands, but to help the unfortunate to work themselves. Before long you will meet with misfortunes more bitter still than these. Would you then do the same thing, – that is, take the burdens of those unfortunates wholly on yourself? You would soon be overwhelmed. Reflect, too, my dear child, that for the last year even the Messieurs Mongenod find our accounts too heavy for them. Half your time would be taken up in merely keeping our books. We have to-day over two thousand debtors in Paris, and we must keep the record of their debts. Not that we ask for payment; we simply wait. We calculate that if half the money we expect is lost, the other half comes back to us, sometimes doubled. Now, suppose your Monsieur Bernard dies, the twelve thousand francs are probably lost. But if you cure his daughter, if his grandson is put in the way of succeeding, if he comes, some day, a magistrate, then, when the family is prosperous, they will remember the debt, and return the money of the poor with usury. Do you know that more than one family whom we have rescued from poverty, and put upon their feet on the road to prosperity by loans of money without interest, have laid aside a portion for the poor, and have returned to us the money loaned doubled, and sometimes tripled? Those are our only speculations. Moreover, reflect that what is now interesting you so deeply (and you ought to be interested in it), namely, the sale of this lawyer’s book, depends on the value of the work. Have you read it? Besides, though the book may be an excellent one, how many excellent books remain one, two, three years without obtaining the success they deserve. Alas! how many crowns of fame are laid upon a grave! I know that publishers have ways of negotiating and realizing profits which make their business the most hazardous to do with, and the most difficult to unravel, of all the trades of Paris. Monsieur Joseph can tell you of these difficulties, inherent in the making of books. Thus, you see, we are sensible; we have experience of all miseries, also of all trades, for we have studied Paris for many years. The Mongenods have helped us in this; they have been like torches to us. It is through them that we know how the Bank of France holds the publishing business under constant suspicion; although it is one of the most profitable trades, it is unsound. As for the four thousand francs necessary to save this noble family from the horrors of penury, – for that poor boy and his grandfather must be fed and clothed properly, – I will give them to you at once. There are sufferings, miseries, wants, which we immediately relieve, without hesitation, without even asking whom we help; religion, honor, character, are all indifferent to us; but when it comes to lending money to the poor to assist them in any active form of industry or commerce, then we require guarantees, with all the sternness of usurers. So you must, my dear child, limit your enthusiasm for this unhappy family to finding for the father an honest publisher. This concerns Monsieur Joseph. He knows lawyers, professors, authors of works on jurisprudence; I will speak to him, and next Sunday he will be sure to have some good advice to give you. Don’t feel uneasy; some way will certainly be found to solve the difficulty. Perhaps it would be well, however, if Monsieur Joseph were to read the lawyer’s book. If you think it can be done, you had better obtain the manuscript.”

Godefroid was amazed at the good sense of this woman, whom he had thought controlled by the spirit of charity only. He took her beautiful hand and kissed it, saying: —

“You are good sense and judgment too!”

“We must be all that in our business,” she replied, with the soft gaiety of a real saint.

There was a moment’s silence, and then Godefroid exclaimed: —

“Two thousand debtors! did you say that, madame? two thousand accounts to keep! why, it is immense!”

“Oh! I meant two thousand accounts which rely for liquidation, as I told you, on the delicacy and good feeling of our debtors; but there are fully three thousand other families whom we help who make us no other return than thanks to God. This is why we feel, as I told you, the necessity of keeping books ourselves. If you prove to us your discretion and capacity you shall be, if you like, our accountant. We keep a day-book, a ledger, a book of current accounts, and a bank-book. We have many notes, but we lose a great deal of time in looking them up. Ah! here are the gentlemen,” she added.

Godefroid, grave and thoughtful, took little part in the general conversation which now followed. He was stunned by the communication Madame de la Chanterie had just made to him, in a tone which implied that she wished to reward his ardor.

“Five thousand families assisted!” he kept repeating to himself. “If they were to cost what I am to spend on Monsieur Bernard, we must have millions scattered through Paris.”

This thought was the last expiring movement of the spirit of the world, which had slowly and insensibly become extinguished in Godefroid. On reflection he saw that the united fortunes of Madame de la Chanterie, Messieurs Alain, Nicolas, Joseph, and that of Judge Popinot, the gifts obtained through the Abbe de Veze, and the assistance lent by the firm of Mongenod must produce a large capital; and that this capital, increased during the last dozen years by grateful returns from those assisted, must have grown like a snowball, inasmuch as the charitable stewards of it spent so little on themselves. Little by little he began to see clearly into this vast work, and his desire to co-operate in it increased.

He was preparing at nine o’clock to return on foot to the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse; but Madame de la Chanterie, fearing the solitude of that neighborhood at a late hour, made him take a cab. When he reached the house Godefroid heard the sound of an instrument, though the shutters were so carefully closed that not a ray of light issued through them. As soon as he reached the landing, Auguste, who was probably on the watch for him, opened the door of Monsieur Bernard’s apartment and said: —

“Mamma would like to see you, and my grandfather offers you a cup of tea.”

When Godefroid entered, the patient seemed to him transfigured by the pleasure she felt in making music; her face was radiant, her eyes were sparkling like diamonds.

“I ought to have waited to let you hear the first sounds,” she said to Godefroid, “but I flung myself upon the little organ as a starving man flings himself on food. You have a soul that comprehends me, and I know you will forgive.”

Vanda made a sign to her son, who placed himself in such a way as to press with his foot the pedal which filled the bellows; and then the invalid, whose fingers had for the time recovered all their strength and agility, raising her eyes to heaven like Saint Cecilia, played the “Prayer of Moses in Egypt,” which her son had bought for her and which she had learned by heart in a few hours. Godefroid recognized in her playing the same quality as in Chopin’s. The soul was satisfied by divine sounds of which the dominant note was that of tender melancholy. Monsieur Bernard had received Godefroid with a look that was long a stranger to his eyes. If tears were not forever dried at their source, withered by such scorching sorrows, that look would have been tearful.

The old man sat playing with his snuff-box and looking at his daughter in silent ecstasy.

“To-morrow, madame,” said Godefroid, when the music ceased; “to-morrow your fate will be decided. I bring you good news. The celebrated Halpersohn is coming to see you at three o’clock in the afternoon. He has promised,” added Godefroid in a low voice to Monsieur Bernard, “to tell me the exact truth.”

The old man rose, and grasping Godefroid’s hand, drew him to a corner of the room beside the fireplace.

“Ah! what a night I shall pass! a definitive decision! My daughter cured or doomed!”

“Courage!” said Godefroid; “after tea come out with me.”

“My child, my child, don’t play any more,” said the old man; “you will bring on an attack; such a strain upon your strength must end in reaction.”

He made Auguste take away the instrument and offered a cup of tea to his daughter with the coaxing manner of a nurse quieting the petulance of a child.

“What is the doctor like?” she asked, her mind already distracted by the prospect of seeing a new person.

Vanda, like all prisoners, was full of eager curiosity. When the physical phenomena of her malady ceased, they seemed to betake themselves to the moral nature; she conceived the strangest fancies, the most violent caprices; she insisted on seeing Rossini, and wept when her father, whom she believed to be all powerful, refused to fetch him.

Godefroid now gave her a minute account of the Jewish doctor and his study; of which she knew nothing, for Monsieur Bernard had cautioned Auguste not to tell his mother of his visits to Halpersohn, so much had he feared to rouse hopes in her mind which might not be realized.

Vanda hung upon Godefroid’s words like one fascinated; and she fell into a sort of ecstasy in her passionate desire to see this strange Polish doctor.

“Poland has produced many singular, mysterious beings,” said Monsieur Bernard. “To-day, for instance, besides this extraordinary doctor, we have Hoene Wronski, the enlightened mathematician, the poet Mickievicz, Towianksi the mystic, and Chopin, whose talent is supernatural. Great national convulsions always produce various species of dwarfed giants.”

“Oh! dear papa; what a man you are! If you would only write down what we hear you say merely to amuse me you would make your reputation. Fancy, monsieur, my dear old father invents wonderful stories when I have no novels to read; he often puts me to sleep in that way. His voice lulls me, and he quiets my mind with his wit. Who can ever reward him? Auguste, my child, you ought for my sake, to kiss the print of your grandfather’s footsteps.”

The young man raised his beautiful moist eyes to his mother, and the look he gave her, full of a long-repressed compassion, was a poem. Godefroid rose, took the lad’s hand, and pressed it.

“God has placed two angels beside you, madame,” he said.

“Yes, I know that. And for that reason I often reproach myself for harassing them. Come, my dear Auguste, and kiss your mother. He is a child, monsieur, of whom all mothers might be proud; pure as gold, frank and honest, a soul without sin – but too passionate a soul, alas! like that of his poor mother. Perhaps God has fastened me in this bed to keep me from the follies of women – who have too much heart,” she added, smiling.