The Brotherhood of Consolation

by Honoré de Balzac

X. PRAY FOR THOSE WHO DESPITEFULLY USE YOU AND PERSECUTE YOU

This legal paper, much shorter and more imperative than such indictments are these days, when they are far more detailed and more precise, especially as to the antecedent life of accused persons, affected Godefroid deeply. The dryness of the statement in which the official pen narrated in red ink the principal details of the affair stirred his imagination. Concise, abbreviated narratives are to some minds texts into the hidden meaning of which they love to burrow.

In the middle of the night, aided by the silence, by the darkness, by the terrible relation intimated by the worthy Alain between the facts of that document and Madame de la Chanterie, Godefroid applied all the forces of his intellect to decipher the dreadful theme.

Evidently the name Lechantre stood for la Chanterie; in all probably the aristocracy of the name was intentionally thus concealed during the Revolution and under the Empire.

Godefroid saw, in imagination, the landscape and the scenes where this drama had taken place. The forms and faces of the accomplices passed before his eyes. He pictured to himself not “one Rifoel” but a Chevalier du Vissard, a young man something like the Fergus of Walter Scott, a French Jacobite. He developed the romance of an ardent young girl grossly deceived by an infamous husband (a style of romance then much the fashion); loving the young and gallant leader of a rebellion against the Empire; giving herself, body and soul, like another Diana Vernon, to the conspiracy, and then, once launched on that fatal incline, unable to stop herself. Had she rolled to the scaffold?

The young man saw in his own mind a whole world, and he peopled it. He wandered in the shade of those Norman groves; he saw the Breton hero and Madame Bryond among the gorse and shrubbery; he inhabited the old chateau of Saint-Savin; he shared in the diverse acts of all those many personages, picturing to himself the notary, the merchant, and those bold Chouans. His mind conceived the state of that wild country where lingered still the memory of the Comtes de Bauvan, de Longuy, the exploits of Marche-a-Terre, the massacre at La Vivetiere, the death of the Marquis de Montauran—of whose prowess Madame de la Chanterie had told him.

This sort of vision of things, of men, of places was rapid. When he remembered that this drama must relate to the dignified, noble, deeply religious old woman whose virtue was acting upon him so powerfully as to be upon the point of metamorphosing him, Godefroid was seized with a sort of terror, and turned hastily to the second document which Monsieur Alain had given him. This was entitled:—

Summary on behalf of Madame Henriette Bryond des Tours-Minieres,
nee Lechantre de la Chanterie.

“No longer any doubt!” murmured Godefroid.

We are condemned and guilty; but if ever the Sovereign had reason
to exercise his right of clemency it is surely in a case like
this.
Here is a young woman, about to become a mother, and condemned to
death.
From a prison cell, with the scaffold before her, this woman will
tell the truth.
The trial before the Criminal Court of Alencon had, as in all
cases where there are many accused persons in a conspiracy
inspired by party-spirit, certain portions which were seriously
obscure.
The Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty knows now the
truth about the mysterious personage named Le Marchand, whose
presence in the department of the Orne was not denied by the
government during the trial, but whom the prosecution did not
think proper to call as witness, and whom the defence had neither
the power nor the opportunity to find.
That personage is, as the prosecuting officer, the police of
Paris, and the Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty well
know, the Sieur Bernard-Polydor Bryond des Tours-Minieres, the
correspondent, since 1794, of the Comte de Lille,—known elsewhere
as the Baron des Tours-Minieres, and on records of the Parisian
police under the name of Contenson.
He is notorious. His youth and name were degraded by vices so
imperative, an immorality so profound, conduct so criminal, that
his infamous life must have ended on the scaffold if he had not
possessed the ability to play a double part, as indicated by his
names. Hereafter, as his passions rule him more and more, he will
end by falling to the depths of infamy in spite of his
incontestable ability and a remarkable mind.
When the Comte de Lille became aware of this man’s character he no
longer permitted him to take part in the royalist councils or to
handle the money sent to France; he thus lost the resources
derived from these masters, whose service had been profitable to
him.
It was then that he returned to his country home, crippled with
debt.
His traitorous connection with the intrigues of England and the
Comte de Lille, won him the confidence of the old families
attached to the cause now vanquished by the genius of our immortal
Emperor. He there met one of the former leaders of the rebellion,
with whom at the time of the expedition to Quberon, and later, at
the time of the last uprising of the Chouans, he had held certain
relations as an envoy from England. He encouraged the schemes of
this young agitator, Rifoel, who has since paid with his life on
the scaffold for his plots against the State. Through him Bryond
was able to penetrate once more into the secrets of that party
which has misunderstood both the glory of H.M. the Emperor
Napoleon I. and the true interests of the nation united in his
august person.
At the age of thirty-five, this man, then known under his true
name of des Tours-Minieres, affecting a sincere piety, professing
the utmost devotion to the interests of the Comte de Lille and a
reverence for the memory of the insurgents who lost their lives at
the West, disguising with great ability the secrets of his
exhausted youth, and powerfully protected by the silence of
creditors, and by the spirit of caste which exists among all
country ci-devants,—this man, truly a whited sepulchre, was
introduced, as possessing every claim for consideration, to Madame
Lechantre, who was supposed to be the possessor of a large
fortune.
All parties conspired to promote a marriage between the young
Henriette, only daughter of Madame Lechantre, and this protege of
the ci-devants. Priests, nobles, creditors, each with a
different interest, loyal in some, selfish in others, blind for
the most part, all united in furthering the union of Bernard
Bryond des Tours-Minieres with Henriette Lechantre.
The good sense of the notary who had charge of Madame Lechantre’s
affairs, and perhaps his distrust, were the actual cause of the
disaster of this young girl. The Sieur Chesnel, notary at Alencon,
put the estate of Saint-Savin, the sole property of the bride,
under the dower system, reserving the right of habitation and a
modest income to the mother.
The creditors, who supposed, from Madame Lechantre’s orderly and
frugal way of living, that she had capital laid by, were deceived
in their expectations, and they then began suits which revealed
the precarious financial condition of Bryond.
Serious differences now arose between the newly married pair, and
the young wife had occasion to know the depraved habits, the
political and religious atheism and—shall I say the word?—the
infamy of the man to whom her life had been so fatally united.
Bryond, forced to let his wife into the secret of the royalist
plots, gave a home in his house to their chief agent, Rifoel du
Vissard.
The character of Rifoel, adventurous, brave, generous, exercised a
charm on all who came in contact with him, as was abundantly
proved during his trials before three successive criminal courts.
The irresistible influence, the absolute empire he acquired over
the mind of a young woman who saw herself suddenly cast into the
abyss of a fatal marriage, is but too visible in this catastrophe
which now brings her a suppliant to the foot of the Throne. But
that which the Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty can
easily verify is the infamous encouragement given by Bryond to
this intimacy. Far from fulfilling his duty as guide and
counsellor to a child whose poor deceived mother had trusted her
to him, he took pleasure in drawing closer still the bonds that
united the young Henriette to the rebel leader.
The plan of this odious being, who takes pride in despising all
things and considers nothing but the satisfaction of his passions,
admitting none of the restraints imposed by civil or religious
morality, was as follows:—
We must first remark, however, that such plotting was familiar to
a man who, ever since 1794 has played a double part, who for eight
years deceived the Comte de Lille and his adherents, and probably
deceived at the same time the police of the Republic and the
Empire: such men belong only to those who pay them most.
Bryond pushed Rifoel to crime; he instigated the attacks of armed
men upon the mail-coaches bearing the moneys of the government,
and the levying of a heavy tribute from the purchasers of the
National domain; a tax he enforced by means of tortures invented
by him which carried terror through five departments. He then
demanded that a sum of three hundred thousand francs derived from
these plunderings be paid to him for the liquidation of his debts.
When he met with resistance on the part of his wife and Rifoel,
and saw the contempt his proposal inspired in upright minds who
were acting only from party spirit, he determined to bring them
both under the rigor of the law in the next occasion of their
committing a crime.
He disappeared, and returned to Paris, taking with him all
information as to the then condition of the departments of the
West.
The brothers Chaussard and Vauthier were, as the chancellor knows,
Bryond’s correspondents.
As soon as the attack was made on the diligence from Caen, Bryond
returned secretly and in disguise, under the name of Le Marchand.
He put himself into secret communication with the prefect and the
magistrates. What was the result? Never was any conspiracy, in
which a great number of persons took part, so rapidly discovered
and dealt with. Within six days after the committal of the crime
all the guilty persons were followed and watched with an
intelligence which showed the most accurate knowledge of the
plans, and of the individuals concerned in them. The immediate
arrest, trial, and execution of Rifoel and his accomplices are the
proof of this. We repeat, the chancellor knows even more than we
do on this subject.
If ever a condemned person had a right to appeal to the
Sovereign’s mercy it is Henriette Lechantre.
Though led astray by love, by ideas of rebellion which she sucked
in with the milk that fed her, she is, most certainly, inexcusable
in the eyes of the law; but in the eyes of the most magnanimous of
emperors, will not her misfortunes, the infamous betrayal of her
husband, and a rash enthusiasm plead for her?
The greatest of all captains, the immortal genius which pardoned
the Prince of Hatzfeldt and is able to divine the reasons of the
heart, will he not admit the fatal power of love, invincible in
youth, which extenuates this crime, great as it was?
Twenty-two heads have fallen under the blade of the law; only one
of the guilty persons is now left, and she is a young woman, a
minor, not twenty years of age. Will not the Emperor Napoleon the
Great grant her life, and give her time in which to repent? Is not
that to share the part of God?
For Henriette Lechantre, wife of Bryond des Tour-Minieres,—