The Mystery of Orcival quotes

He persisted, besides, in living alone, despite the urging of M. Courtois; pretending that society fatigued him, and that an unhappy man is a bore in company.

Misfortune, which modifies characters, for good or bad, had made him, apparently, a great egotist.

He declared that he was only interested in the affairs of life as a critic tired of its active scenes.

Drops of perspiration overspread the poor mayor’s forehead. He too was terrified, and could hardly keep on his feet.

Alas, authority brings with it terrible obligations!

The brigadier, an old soldier of the Crimea, visibly moved, hesitated.

Well, yes; it’s true, I’m a debauchee, a gambler, a drunkard, an idler, but what of it? It’s true I have been before the police court, and condemned for night poaching—what does that prove?

I have wasted my life, but whom have I wronged if not myself?

My past! Have I not sufficiently expiated it?”

“No; you wouldn’t believe me,” he repeated, his eyes glistening with anger. “

Do men like you believe men like me?

I have a past, you know, of antecedents, as you would say. The past! They throw that in my face, as if, the future depended on the past. Well, yes; it’s true, I’m a debauchee, a gambler, a drunkard, an idler, but what of it?

To make it up, the coverings must be taken off, and the mattresses turned. To disarrange it, one must actually lie down in it, and warm it with the body.

A bed is one of those terrible witnesses which never misguide, and against which no counter testimony can be given.

Nobody has gone to bed in this—”

The bourgeois goes on, proud and content; his business prospers; he possesses the esteem and friendship of his own class; all this while, he is vilified by the lower classes, his name dragged in the dust, soiled by suppositions the most mischievous.

Envy, Monsieur, respects nothing, no one.

”

The doctor and M. Plantat heard no more, but hurried in; M. Lecoq followed, having confided his nightgown to Baptiste, with, “Carry that to M. Plantat’s—quick!”

Misfortune, when it enters a house, seems to leave its fatal imprint on the very threshold.

Perhaps it is not really so, but it is the feeling which those who are summoned to it experience. As the physician and the justice of the peace traversed the courtyard, this house, usually so gay and hospitable, presented a mournful aspect.

You feared my anger, as if a father would ever cease to love his child. Lost, degraded, fallen to the ranks of the vilest, I would still love thee. Were you not my own? Alas! you knew not a father’s heart.

A father does not pardon; he forgets.

You might still have been happy, my lost love.”

“And I will prove it, parbleu,” cried M. Lecoq, eagerly. “The affair is complicated and difficult—so much the better. Eh! If it were simple, I would go back to Paris instanter, and tomorrow I would send you one of my men.

I leave easy riddles to infants. What I want is the inexplicable enigmas, so as to unravel it; a struggle, to show my strength; obstacles, to conquer them.

”

I should frighten you if I were to tell you half of what I imagined in those days. If many thieves of my calibre existed, you’d have to blot the word ‘property’ out of the dictionary. Precautions, as well as safes, would be useless.

Happily for men of property, criminals are idiots.

”

Having, however, been born an honest lad—a mere chance—and being determined to use the talents which nature had given me, eight days afterward I bid my astronomer good morning, and went to the prefecture.

My fear of being a burglar drove me into the police.

”

On great occasions, he borrowed from Louis XIV the epigram:

The deluge came in his lifetime.

One April morning, his valet, a villainous fellow, drilled and dressed up by the count—woke him at nine o’clock with this speech:

But he did not fire.

There are two kinds of courage. One, false courage, is that meant for the public eye, which needs the excitement of the struggle, the stimulus of rage, and the applause of lookers-on.

The other, true courage, despises public opinion, obeys conscience, not passion; success does not sway it, it does its work noiselessly.

He suddenly discovered all about him a crowd of pleasures each more enviable than the others, which he had never tasted. He who flattered himself that he had squeezed life to press out its pleasures, had not really lived.

He had had all that is to be bought or sold, nothing of what is given or achieved.

He already not only regretted giving the ten thousand francs to Jenny, but the two hundred francs to the servants—nay the six sous given to the waiter at the restaurant, even the money he had spent on the bunch of violets.

The bouquet still hung in his buttonhole, faded and shrivelled. What good did it do him? While the sous which he had paid for it—!

He did not think of his wasted millions, but could not drive away the thought of that wasted franc!

True, he might, if he chose, find plenty of money still, and easily. He had only to return quietly to his house, to discharge the bailiffs, and to resume the possession of his remaining effects.

She knew herself, and confessed to herself that had Sauvresy wished, she would have been his without being his wife. She was so lonely at her father’s, so wretched in her poverty, that she would have fled from her home, even for this.

And she despised her husband because he had not despised her enough!

People were always telling her that she was the happiest of women. Happy! And there were days when she wept when she thought that she was married. Happy!

On going to bed, that night, the count was less enchanted than ever with the devotion of his friend Sauvresy.

There is not a diamond on which a spot cannot be found with a microscope.

“Here he is,” thought he, “abusing his privileges as the saver of my life. Can’t a man do you a service, without continually making you feel it?

“Have I run after his wife?” said he to himself, trying to impose silence on his conscience. “She comes to me of her own will, herself, without the least temptation from me. I should be a fool if I repelled her.”

Conceit has irresistible arguments.

Hector, when he entered the house, had made up his mind. He did not fly. Yet he had the excuse neither of passion nor of temptation; he did not love her, and his infamy was deliberate, coldly premeditated.

She was thunderstruck at this response. Till then, she had a glimmer of hope. She thought that he would at least try to reassure her, to deceive her.

There are times when a falsehood is the highest homage.

But no—he avowed it. She was speechless; words failed her.

I was stupid enough to think him dead, and to cry about it. He, kill himself? Why, he’s too much of a coward to hurt himself! Yes, I love him, but I don’t esteem him.

That’s our fate, you see, only to love the men we despise.

”

Then, why “he,” instead of, “Clement?” This word was striking. “He”—that is, the dear one, or else, the master that one hates. There is no medium—’tis the husband, or the lover. “He,” is never an indifferent person.

A husband is lost when his wife, in speaking of him, says, “He.”

But when had Bertha written these few lines? Doubtless some evening after they had retired to their room. He had said to her, “I’m going tomorrow to Melun,” and then she had hastily scratched off this note and given it, in a book, to Hector.

“I have never loved her, and never shall.” He thought that he would thus secure his peace until the wedding-day; once married, he cared not what would happen. What cared he for Sauvresy?

Life is only a succession of broken friendships.

What is a friend, after all? One who can and ought to serve you. Ability consists in breaking with people, when they cease to be useful to you.

She hastened to bring him a glass of wine, which he emptied and handed back to her.

“There wasn’t any poison in it, was there?” he asked.

This ghastly question and the smile which accompanied it, melted Bertha’s callousness; remorse had already taken possession of her, as her disgust of Trémorel increased.

Ah, you ask how I could have done all this without your suspecting it, or without being seen by any of the servants.

Know that hate is stronger than love, be sure that I have left nothing to chance, nor have I forgotten anything.

”

It would be foolish to base a theory upon a prisoner’s bearing. He who talked about ‘the cry of innocence’ was an idiot, just as the man was who prated about the ‘pale stupor’ of guilt.

Neither crime nor virtue have, unhappily, any especial countenance.

The Simon girl, who was accused of having killed her father, absolutely refused to answer any questions for twenty-two days; on the twenty-third, the murderer was caught. As to the Sylvain affair—”

cried M. Lecoq angrily. “I begin to think you are a rascal too. A decent fellow would see that we wanted to get him out of a scrape, and he’d tell us the truth. You are prolonging your imprisonment by your own will.

You’d better learn that the greatest shrewdness consists in telling the truth.

A last time, will you answer?”

“

Perhaps so; but it is mine.

All Paris is under the eye of the police, just as an ant is under that of the naturalist with his microscope. How is it, you may ask, that Paris still holds so many professional rogues?

Does the warrant give me the right to search any house in which I may have reason to suppose he is hiding himself? No. If I should go to the house of one of Hector’s old friends he would kick me out of doors.

You must know that in France the police have to contend not only with the rogues, but also with the honest people.

”

it was like a long-smothered fire which suddenly breaks forth and devours everything. To be old, and to love a child! I thought I was going crazy; I tried to reason, to upbraid myself, but it was of no avail.

What can reason or irony do against passion?

I kept silent and suffered. To crown all, Laurence selected me as her confidant—what torture! She came to me to talk of Hector; she admired in him all that seemed to her superior to other men, so that none could be compared with him.

And still, the first man who should come along tomorrow—a defaulting banker, a ruined merchant, a notary who has gambled on ’Change—would feel himself compromised by walking up the boulevard with me!

A policeman⁠—fie! But old Tabaret used to say to me, that the contempt of such people was only one form of fear.

”