The Celibates quotes

And this was a maid—and an old maid. When she had thrown open her shutters with the action of a bat, she looked about her on all sides, and faintly heard Brigaut’s steps as he made his escape.

Is there on earth anything more hideous than the matutinal apparition of an ugly old maid at her window?

Of all the grotesque spectacles that are the amusement of travelers as they go through little towns, is it not the most unpleasing? It is too depressing, too repulsive to be laughed at.

The shutters were closed again, and the silence of the Square was no more disturbed but by peasants coming into the town, or early risers.

When there is an old maid in the house a watchdog is not needed; not the smallest event occurs without her seeing it, commenting on it, and deducing every possible consequence.

Thus this incident was destined to give rise to serious inferences, and to be the opening of one of those obscure dramas which are played out in the family, but which are none the less terrible for being unseen—if indeed the name of drama may …

Pierrette did not get into bed again. To her Brigaut’s arrival was an event of immense importance.

During the night⁠—the Eden of the wretched⁠—she escaped from the annoyances and faultfinding she had to endure all day.

Like the hero of some German or Russian ballad, to her sleep seemed a happy life, and the day a bad dream. This morning, for the first time in three years, she had had a happy waking.

If a man were to undertake what the Post has accomplished, he would have spent ten thousand francs in traveling, in time and in money, to recover twelve sous.

The Post certainly has more intelligence than it conveys.

The letter written by the Lorrains to Monsieur Rogron, who had been dead a year, was transmitted by the Post to Monsieur Rogron, his son, a haberdasher in the Rue Saint-Denis, Paris. This is where the genius of the Post-Office shines.

His sister had always hindered his marrying, fearing perhaps that she might lose her influence in the house, and seeing a source of expense and ruin in a wife certainly younger, and probably less hideous, than herself.

Stupidity may betray itself in two ways⁠—it is talkative or it is mute.

Mute stupidity may be endured; but Rogron’s was talkative.

Sometimes people on their way home, after spending the evening out, as they crossed the little Place, heard sounds in the Rogrons’ house as if the brother were murdering the sister; they recognized them as the terrific yawns of a haberdasher driven to bay.

The two machines had nothing to grind with their rusty wheels, so they creaked.

The brother talked of marrying, but with a sense of despair. He felt himself old and worn; a wife terrified him.

“She has been nicely brought up!” cried Rogron. “Do you know nothing, child?”

Pierrette, who only knew how to love, answered but by a pretty childish shrug.

“What did you do all day in Brittany?” asked Rogron.

she is only hard when driven to extremities, and when the child is in the wrong; but in this great clothes question, the cousins’ money was the first consideration; that was the real point, and not Pierrette.

Children have a doglike instinct for discerning injustice in those who rule them; they feel without fail whether they are tolerated or loved.

Innocent hearts are more alive to shades than to contrasts; a child that does not yet understand evil knows when you offend the sense of beauty bestowed on it by nature.

After being used to domineer, to make remarks, to give orders, to scold their clerks sharply, Rogron and his sister were perishing for lack of victims.

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.

Now narrow minds can develop as well through persecution as through benevolence; they can assure themselves of their power by tyrannizing cruelly or beneficently over others; they go the way their nature guides them.

The Colonel and Vinet exchanged covert glances.

“I would rather be robbed and loved,” said Pierrette.

“Very well, you shall be sent back to the place you came from.”

If she tried to soften these two savage natures by her pretty ways, she was accused of expressing her tenderness out of self-interest. “Tell me plainly what you want,” Rogron would exclaim roughly; “you are certainly not coaxing me for nothing.”

Neither the sister nor the brother recognized affection, and Pierrette was all affection.

Colonel Gouraud, anxious to please Mademoiselle Rogron, declared her right in all that concerned Pierrette. Vinet no less supported the old cousins in their abuse of Pierrette;

The old maid, devoured by jealousy and curiosity, was trying intimidation. Pierrette did as all people must who are enduring beyond their strength—she kept silence.

Silence is to all creatures thus attacked the only means of salvation; it fatigues the Cossack charges of the envious, the enemy’s savage rushes; it results in a crushing and complete victory.

What is more complete than silence? It is final. Is it not one of the modes of the Infinite?

He might certainly become a delightful public prosecutor, with an elastic, dangerous, and deadly flow of eloquence, or an orator, with all the subtlety of Benjamin Constant. The acrimony and hatred which had formerly animated him had turned to perfidious softness.

The poison had become medicine.

“Good evening, my dear, how are you?” said Madame de Chargeboeuf to Sylvie.

… come near the gentle cruelty, the poisoned sweetness, the savage scorn of young ladies to each other when certain of them think themselves superior to others in birth, fortune, or grace, and when marriage is in question, or precedence, or, in short, any feminine rivalry.

The “Thank you, mademoiselle,” spoken by Bathilde to Pierrette, was a poem in twelve cantos.

Her name was Bathilde, the other’s was Pierrette; she was a Chargeboeuf, the other a Lorrain! Pierrette was undersized and fragile, Bathilde was tall and full of vitality! Pierrette was fed by charity, Bathilde and her mother lived on their own money!

Bathilde would get married, Pierrette would die a maid! Bathilde was worshiped, Pierrette had no one to love her! Bathilde had her hair dressed—she had taste, Pierrette hid her hair under a little cap, and knew nothing of the fashions! Epilogue—

Bathilde was everything, Pierrette was nothing.

The proud little Bretonne perfectly understood this cruel poem.

The chimney fronts, clumsily carved in stone, had never been painted. All the furniture the poor canon could at first put in consisted of a bed, a table, some chairs, and his few books.

The apartment was like a fine woman in rags.

But two or three years later, an old lady having left the Abbé Chapeloud two thousand francs, he laid out the money in the purchase of an oak bookcase, saved from the destruction of an old château pulled down by the Bande noire (a company …

The Abbé had just detected—a little late, it is true—the symptoms of a covert persecution to which he had for about three months been subjected by Mademoiselle Gamard, whose ill-will would no doubt have been suspected sooner by a man of keener intelligence.

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.

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 …

these, till now latent, as a result of the calm monotony of a country-town life, whose horizon was to her more especially narrow, were presently to become all the more intense for being wreaked on small things, and in a narrow sphere of activity.

Birotteau was one of those men who are predestined to suffer everything, because, as they never foresee anything, they can avoid nothing; everything falls on them.

“Yes, it will be fine,” the Canon replied after a pause, seeming to come out of his meditations and to wish to fulfil the laws of good manners.

If, charmed by Monsieur de Bourbonne’s conversation, you had asked his biography of one of his fellow-provincials, “Oh! he is a cunning old fox,” would have been the proverbial reply of all who envied him, and they were many.

In Touraine, as in most provinces, jealousy lies at the base of the tongue.

Monsieur de Bourbonne’s remark caused a brief silence, during which the members of this little committee seemed lost in thought.

Come, play a hit at backgammon. You can call on the Abbé Troubert tomorrow to ask his support, and you will see how well he will receive you.”

Weak-minded persons are reassured as easily as they are frightened.

So poor Birotteau, dazzled by the prospect of living with Madame de Listomère, forgot the ruin, now irremediably complete, of the happiness he had so long sighed for, and so thoroughly reveled in.

It was to him a form of death. Was it not tearing up all the roots by which he held to the world?

Celibates make habits take the place of feelings.

And when to this system of ideas, by which they go through life rather than live, they add a weak nature, external things have an astonishing dominion over them. Birotteau had really become a sort of vegetable;

Birotteau was too kindhearted not to submit in any great crisis to the impulsive self-sacrifice of the first moment. But, in any case, his life already was but one long martyrdom. He answered with a heartbroken look at his protectress, which wrung her soul:

“I am in your hands. I am no more than a straw in the street!”

The local word he used, bourrier, is peculiar to Touraine, and its only liberal rendering is a straw. But there are pretty little straws, yellow, shiny, and smart, the delight of children;

for they have always had, and will always have, their private relations. Descoings’ execution made a far greater sensation than André de Chénier’s. Thirty years elapsed before it was recognized that France had lost more by Chénier’s death than by that of Descoings.

Robespierre’s sentence had this good result⁠—until 1830 grocers were still afraid of meddling in politics.

Descoings’ shop was not more than-a hundred yards from Robespierre’s lodgings. The grocer’s successor failed in business; Cesar Birotteau, the famous perfumer, established himself in the house.

we are always on our guard against what appears extraordinary; and so we see that men of great experience, lawyers, judges, physicians, and priests attach immense importance to such simple matters; and they are thought captious.

The serpent under flowers is one of the finest emblems bequeathed to us by the ancients as a warning for our conduct.

How often does a simpleton exclaim, as an excuse in his own eyes and those of others, “It was such a simple matter, that anyone would have been caught!”

but though she seemed devoted to the kitchen, she was also very fond of the theatre, and, moreover, she indulged a vice which she wrapped in the deepest mystery—she put into the lottery.

Is not the lottery, perhaps, the gulf which mythology has figured under the bottomless vat of the Danaids?

This woman—we may speak so of one who gambles in the lottery—spent rather too much in dress, no doubt, like all women who are so lucky as to remain youthful in advancing years;

Agathe cared for nothing on earth but her children, and would live only for them; she refused to marry again, alike from good sense and from faithful attachment.

But a woman finds it easier to be a good wife than to be a good mother.

A widow has two duties of a contradictory nature—she is a mother, and she ought to exert a father’s power. Few women are strong enough to understand and play this double part.

she cared for nothing; she ceased to dress. Nothing could be more unaffected or more complete than this surrender of married happiness and personal care.

Some souls are endowed by love with the power of merging their individuality in another; and when the other is gone, life is no longer possible.

Agathe, who could henceforth live only for her children, felt the deepest grief at seeing how many privations they must suffer in consequence of her ruin.

no sooner was he in the house than he wanted to be out of it; he never could rest, he never would learn. All I pray Heaven is that I may die without seeing him disgrace my name!—

Those who have no children miss many pleasures, but they also escape many troubles.

”

“Oh! if it were Philippe, I should have no fears. You do not know what goes on in those studios. They actually have naked women there!”

“But they have a fire, I hope,” said Madame Descoings.

A few days later news came of the disastrous rout at Moscow. Napoleon was returning to organize fresh armies and call on France for further sacrifices. Now the poor mother was tortured by very different alarms.

The poor boy did not yet know that really first-rate military men are as gentle and polite as other superior persons.

Genius is everywhere true to itself.

“Poor child!” Philippe would say to his mother. “Don’t tease him; let him amuse himself.” And this contempt was in his mother’s eyes an evidence of brotherly affection.

he seemed as guileless as a child; but having no one to think of but himself, he never did anything without carefully considering what he had best do, much as a wily prosecutor considers every twist and turn of a tricky rogue.

Words cost him nothing, and he would give you as many as you chose to believe.

If a man should, unluckily, be so rash as to take exception to the explanations by which he would justify the discrepancies between his conduct and his speech, the Colonel, who was a first-rate shot, who could challenge the most skilful swordsman, and who had …

All passions lead to excess. I have something of the kind in my life for which I blame myself, and yet I think myself an honest woman.

One fault does not constitute a vice!

Besides, after all, only those who do nothing at all never make any mistakes.”

All passions lead to excess. I have something of the kind in my life for which I blame myself, and yet I think myself an honest woman. One fault does not constitute a vice!

Besides, after all, only those who do nothing at all never make any mistakes.

”

“My child, do not tempt me,” she said; “I should only lose it.

The lottery is a fool’s game!

”

“Yes; her numbers were drawn in the lottery, and you stole the money she would have staked.”

“Oh, if she is dying of a lost chance, then it is not I who am killing her,” retorted the drunkard.

“Go, I say,” said Agathe; “you fill me with horror. You have every vice! Good God, and is this my son?”

“I have very clearly seen that neither you nor my brother love me in the least. I am alone in the world now! Well, I prefer it so.”

“Prove yourself worthy to be loved,” replied the poor mother, wounded to the quick, “and we shall love you again.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said he, interrupting her.

Many sons would have given an impatient shrug or smiled in pity; but Joseph, who was alone with her in the coupé of the diligence, threw his arms round her, and pressed her to his heart, saying,

“Oh, mother! you are a mother as Raphael was a painter! And you always will be a dear goose of a mother!”

Aroused from her troubles by the amusement of the journey, Madame Bridau was presently obliged to think of the purpose of her visit. Of course, she reread Madame Hochon’s letter, which had so strongly excited Desroches.

He proved to him that by substituting a certain proportion of meat he would be nourished better and cheaper, he would do more work, and waste his capital of strength more slowly. The man of Berry admitted the accuracy of the calculation.—

“But only consider the jaw, sir,” said he.

—“The jaw?”—“Why, yes, sir; how people would tattle!”

If by chance an ambitious outsider is appointed to such a place, he is soon swamped by the power of inertia, and tunes himself to the pitch of the dreadful provincial life.

Issoudun would have benumbed Napoleon.

As a result of this state of things, the district of Issoudun, in 1822, was under the administration of men all natives of le Berry.

The Knights of Idlesse, all young—the eldest was not five-and-twenty—admired Maxence. Some of them, far from sharing the rigid prudery of their families with regard to Max, envied him greatly, and thought him a very fortunate man.

Under such a leader the Order did wonders.

From the month of January 1817 not a week passed but the town was in a pother over some fresh prank. Max, as a point of honor, imposed certain conditions on the Knights; bylaws were drawn up.

One very cold night these demons incarnate carried a large stove out into the courtyard of a house, and stoked it so effectually that the fire lasted till morning.

Then it was rumored in the town that Monsieur So-and-so (a noted miser!) had been trying to warm his yard.

Sometimes they lay in ambush in the High Street, or the Rue Basse, the two arteries, as it were, of the town, into which run a great number of smaller cross streets.

Mademoiselle Fichet was the richest heiress of Issoudun; and the daughter’s hand formed a large item in young Goddet’s passion for her mother.

Plain speaking is so precious, that the eleven Knights rose as one man.

“You are of the right sort, Max!”

It is not easy for the population of a town to disentangle the truth from a thousand conjectures in the midst of contradictory comments, and among all the hypotheses to which a single fact gives rise.

In the provinces, as formerly among the politicians of la petite Provence at the Tuileries, everything must be accounted for, and at last everybody knows everything.

But each individual clings to the view of affairs that he prefers; that is the only true one, he can prove it, and believes his own version exclusively.

Halting between two equal forces, he did not know what to say, and dreaded to be asked a question, so terrified was he at having to reply.

Desire, which generally loosens a man’s tongue, froze his.

So Jean-Jacques lived solitary and sought solitude, not finding it irksome. The doctor saw, too late to remedy them, the disastrous results of this temperament and character. He would gladly have seen his son married;

without knowing it, she afforded him the only pleasures that gilded his youth. Far from being jealous of his father, he was delighted by the education he bestowed on Flore; was not the wife he needed an approachable woman who would need no courting?

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

In the least human soul we always find the animal instinct which, in its persistency, is like a thought.

For the last six month she had, without betraying it, been studying the culinary arts which made Fanchette a cordon bleu worthy to cater for a doctor. As epicures, doctors may rank with bishops. Doctor Rouget had perfected Fanchette.

In the country the lack of occupation, and the monotony of life, are apt to turn an active mind to cooking.

Dinners are not so luxurious as in Paris, but they are better; the dishes are studied and thought out.

The state into which Jean-Jacques collapsed when he saw Flore clouded by some little annoyance betrayed to the woman the extent of her power; and she, to secure it, would try to exert it.

In women of that kind use always means abuse.

La Rabouilleuse, no doubt, made her master play his part in some of the scenes that lie buried in the mystery of private life, and of which Otway has shown a specimen in the midst of his tragedy of Venice Preserved between the Senator and …

“We wanted to do you a service,” said Max haughtily. “To save your damned cart I ran the risk of going down on the top of it, and this is how you thank me. What country do you come from, pray?”

“From a country where we do not forgive an injury,” replied Fario, quivering with rage.

“My cart may serve you a turn to take you to the Devil! Unless,” he added, as mild as a lamb, “you like to replace it by a new one?”

“He looks ill,” cried Madame Hochon; “he is not like you—”

“No, madame,” said Joseph, with the rough simplicity of an artist, “I am like my father, only uglier!”

Madame Hochon pressed Agathe’s hand, which she was holding, and gave her a look. That grasp, that glance were meant to convey:

The result of these opinions, sown broadcast in the town as if by the winds, was a devouring curiosity. All who had a right to call on the Hochons promised themselves that they would do so that evening, to inspect the Parisians.

The arrival of these two persons in a stagnant town like Issoudun was as startling as the fall of the Log among the Frogs.

After placing his mother’s luggage and his own in the two attic rooms, and looking round them, Joseph studied the silent house, where the stairs, walls, and panels, bare of adornment, shed a chill, and there was not a thing beyond what was strictly necessary.

“But how is it that you are still alive?” said the painter artlessly, with the lightheartedness that never deserts a French artist.

“Ah, indeed,” said she. “I pray.”

Joseph felt a thrill as he heard these words, which gave the old woman such dignity in his eyes that he drew back two or three steps to look in her face;

“I will paint your portrait—”

“No, no,” said she. “I have hated life on earth too much to wish to remain on it in a picture.”

As she spoke the sad words in a light tone, she took from a cupboard a flask containing black-currant brandy, a household liqueur prepared by herself, for she had had the recipe from the famous Sisterhood who also created the Issoudun cakes, one of the …

“You who are so pious, godmother, tell me my faults,” said she. “Tell me what it is that God is punishing me for.”

“He prepares us, my child,” replied the old lady as midnight struck.

At midnight the Knights of Idlesse were making their way, one by one, like shades, to meet under the trees of the Boulevard Baron, and walked to and fro, talking in low whispers.

“No, no,” said Joseph honestly. “Four thousand francs and the pictures is too much; for the pictures, you see, are of value.”

“Why, accept it, booby,” said Flore, “since he is your uncle⁠ ⁠…”

“Very well, I accept it,” said Joseph, quite bewildered, for he had recognized one picture as by Perugino.

“Well, indeed! Did those Parisians imagine that we are all idiots, and that they had only to hold out a hat for fortunes to pour into it.”

“They came in search of wool, and they have gone away shorn, for the nephew is not to his uncle’s taste.”

“And they had the advice of a Paris lawyer, if you please—”

“That one!” retorted Max.

“He is a mangy dog⁠—but he would like a bone,”

he added, addressing old Rouget. “If his uncle will trust my opinion, he will get rid of him with a present; he will not leave you in peace, Papa Rouget.”

“Come to no decision without consulting me. I know what women are. I paid for one more dearly than Flore will ever cost you. And she taught me how to manage the fair sex for the rest of my days.

Women are just naughty children; they are inferior animals to men; we must make them afraid of us, for our worst fate is to be led by the nose by those little brutes!

”

Knowing Max’s life to be imperiled, Flore was sweeter to old Rouget than even in the early days of their housekeeping.

Alas! in love affairs, interested fraud overrides sincerity, and that is why so many men pay clever beguilers so dear.

La Rabouilleuse remained invisible next morning till breakfast time, when she came down, giving her arm to Père Rouget. The tears rose to her eyes as she saw in Max’s seat the terrible veteran with his gloomy blue eye and ominously calm face.

I shall seem magnanimous by proposing it—for I shall try to make him insult me, and I will make short work of him. Decidedly that is the best thing to do. Be easy; we shall be masters again the day after tomorrow.”

Thus with Max a foolish point of honor outweighed rational policy.

Flore was at home by one o’clock, and shut herself into her room to cry at her ease. All that day gossip wagged its tongue freely in Issoudun, for a duel between Maxence and Philippe was considered inevitable.

“Certainly,” replied Mignonnet drily. “

When an act of folly fails, it becomes a crime.

”