Colonel Chabert — Part 2

This scene is typical of the thousand delights which, when we look back on our youth, make us say, “Those were good times.

” At about one in the morning Colonel Chabert, self-styled, knocked at the door of Maitre Derville, attorney to the Court of First Instance in the Department of the Seine.

The porter told him that Monsieur Derville had not yet come in.

The old man said he had an appointment, and was shown upstairs to the rooms occupied by the famous lawyer, who, notwithstanding his youth, was considered to have one of the longest heads in Paris.

Having rung, the distrustful applicant was not a little astonished at finding the head clerk busily arranging in a convenient order on his master’s dining-room table the papers relating to the cases to be tried on the morrow.

The clerk, not less astonished, bowed to the Colonel and begged him to take a seat, which the client did.

“On my word, monsieur, I thought you were joking yesterday when you named such an hour for an interview,” said the old man, with the forced mirth of a ruined man, who does his best to smile.

“The clerks were joking, but they were speaking the truth too,” replied the man, going on with his work.

“M. Derville chooses this hour for studying his cases, taking stock of their possibilities, arranging how to conduct them, deciding on the line of defence.

His prodigious intellect is freer at this hour--the only time when he can have the silence and quiet needed for the conception of good ideas.

Since he entered the profession, you are the third person to come to him for a consultation at this midnight hour.

After coming in the chief will discuss each case, read everything, spend four or five hours perhaps over the business, then he will ring for me and explain to me his intentions.

In the morning from ten to two he hears what his clients have to say, then he spends the rest of his day in appointments.

In the evening he goes into society to keep up his connections.

So he has only the night for undermining his cases, ransacking the arsenal of the code, and laying his plan of battle.

He is determined never to lose a case;

he loves his art.

He will not undertake every case, as his brethren do.

That is his life, an exceptionally active one.

And he makes a great deal of money.

” As he listened to this explanation, the old man sat silent, and his strange face assumed an expression so bereft of intelligence, that the clerk, after looking at him, thought no more about him.

A few minutes later Derville came in, in evening dress; his head clerk opened the door to him, and went back to finish arranging the papers.

The young lawyer paused for a moment in amazement on seeing in the dim light the strange client who awaited him.

Colonel Chabert was as absolutely immovable as one of the wax figures in Curtius’ collection to which Godeschal had proposed to treat his fellow-clerks.

This quiescence would not have been a subject for astonishment if it had not completed the supernatural aspect of the man’s whole person.

The old soldier was dry and lean.

His forehead, intentionally hidden under a smoothly combed wig, gave him a look of mystery.

His eyes seemed shrouded in a transparent film; you would have compared them to dingy mother-of-pearl with a blue iridescence changing in the gleam of the wax lights.

His face, pale, livid, and as thin as a knife, if I may use such a vulgar expression, was as the face of the dead.

Round his neck was a tight black silk stock.

Below the dark line of this rag the body was so completely hidden in shadow that a man of imagination might have supposed the old head was due to some chance play of light and shade, or have taken it for a portrait by Rembrandt, without a frame.

The brim of the hat which covered the old man’s brow cast a black line of shadow on the upper part of the face.

This grotesque effect, though natural, threw into relief by contrast the white furrows, the cold wrinkles, the colorless tone of the corpse-like countenance.

And the absence of all movement in the figure, of all fire in the eye, were in harmony with a certain look of melancholy madness, and the deteriorating symptoms characteristic of senility, giving the face an indescribably ill-starred look which no human words could render.

But an observer, especially a lawyer, could also have read in this stricken man the signs of deep sorrow, the traces of grief which had worn into this face, as drops of water from the sky falling on fine marble at last destroy its beauty.

A physician, an author, or a judge might have discerned a whole drama at the sight of its sublime horror, while the least charm was its resemblance to the grotesques which artists amuse themselves by sketching on a corner of the lithographic stone while chatting with a friend.

On seeing the attorney, the stranger started, with the convulsive thrill that comes over a poet when a sudden noise rouses him from a fruitful reverie in silence and at night.

The old man hastily removed his hat and rose to bow to the young man; the leather lining of his hat was doubtless very greasy; his wig stuck to it without his noticing it, and left his head bare, showing his skull horribly disfigured by a scar beginning at the nape of the neck and ending over the right eye, a prominent seam all across his head.

The sudden removal of the dirty wig which the poor man wore to hide this gash gave the two lawyers no inclination to laugh, so horrible to behold was this riven skull.

The first idea suggested by the sight of this old wound was, “His intelligence must have escaped through that cut.

” “If this is not Colonel Chabert, he is some thorough-going trooper!

” thought Boucard.

“Monsieur,” said Derville, “to whom have I the honor of speaking?

” “To Colonel Chabert.

” “Which?

” “He who was killed at Eylau,” replied the old man.

On hearing this strange speech, the lawyer and his clerk glanced at each other, as much as to say, “He is mad.

” “Monsieur,” the Colonel went on, “I wish to confide to you the secret of my position.

” A thing worthy of note is the natural intrepidity of lawyers.

Whether from the habit of receiving a great many persons, or from the deep sense of the protection conferred on them by the law, or from confidence in their missions, they enter everywhere, fearing nothing, like priests and physicians.

Derville signed to Boucard, who vanished.

“During the day, sir,” said the attorney, “I am not so miserly of my time, but at night every minute is precious.

So be brief and concise.

Go to the facts without digression.

I will ask for any explanations I may consider necessary.

Speak.

” Having bid his strange client to be seated, the young man sat down at the table; but while he gave his attention to the deceased Colonel, he turned over the bundles of papers.

“You know, perhaps,” said the dead man, “that I commanded a cavalry regiment at Eylau.

I was of important service to the success of Murat’s famous charge which decided the victory.

Unhappily for me, my death is a historical fact, recorded in _Victoires et Conquetes_, where it is related in full detail.

We cut through the three Russian lines, which at once closed up and formed again, so that we had to repeat the movement back again.

At the moment when we were nearing the Emperor, after having scattered the Russians, I came against a squadron of the enemy’s cavalry.

I rushed at the obstinate brutes.

Two Russian officers, perfect giants, attacked me both at once.

One of them gave me a cut across the head that crashed through everything, even a black silk cap I wore next my head, and cut deep into the skull.

I fell from my horse.

Murat came up to support me.

He rode over my body, he and all his men, fifteen hundred of them--there might have been more!

My death was announced to the Emperor, who as a precaution--for he was fond of me, was the master--wished to know if there were no hope of saving the man he had to thank for such a vigorous attack.

He sent two surgeons to identify me and bring me into Hospital, saying, perhaps too carelessly, for he was very busy, ‘Go and see whether by any chance poor Chabert is still alive.

’ These rascally saw-bones, who had just seen me lying under the hoofs of the horses of two regiments, no doubt did not trouble themselves to feel my pulse, and reported that I was quite dead.

The certificate of death was probably made out in accordance with the rules of military jurisprudence.

” As he heard his visitor express himself with complete lucidity, and relate a story so probable though so strange, the young lawyer ceased fingering the papers, rested his left elbow on the table, and with his head on his hand looked steadily at the Colonel.

“Do you know, monsieur, that I am lawyer to the Countess Ferraud,” he said, interrupting the speaker, “Colonel Chabert’s widow?

” “My wife--yes monsieur.

Therefore, after a hundred fruitless attempts to interest lawyers, who have all thought me mad, I made up my mind to come to you.

I will tell you of my misfortunes afterwards; for the present, allow me to prove the facts, explaining rather how things must have fallen out rather than how they did occur.

Certain circumstances, known, I suppose to no one but the Almighty, compel me to speak of some things as hypothetical.

The wounds I had received must presumably have produced tetanus, or have thrown me into a state analogous to that of a disease called, I believe, catalepsy.

Otherwise how is it conceivable that I should have been stripped, as is the custom in time of the war, and thrown into the common grave by the men ordered to bury the dead?

“Allow me here to refer to a detail of which I could know nothing till after the event, which, after all, I must speak of as my death.

At Stuttgart, in 1814, I met an old quartermaster of my regiment.

This dear fellow, the only man who chose to recognize me, and of whom I will tell you more later, explained the marvel of my preservation, by telling me that my horse was shot in the flank at the moment when I was wounded.

Man and beast went down together, like a monk cut out of card-paper.

As I fell, to the right or to the left, I was no doubt covered by the body of my horse, which protected me from being trampled to death or hit by a ball.

“When I came to myself, monsieur, I was in a position and an atmosphere of which I could give you no idea if I talked till to-morrow.

The little air there was to breathe was foul.

I wanted to move, and found no room.

I opened my eyes, and saw nothing.

The most alarming circumstance was the lack of air, and this enlightened me as to my situation.

I

understood that no fresh air could penetrate to me, and that I must die.

This thought took off the sense of intolerable pain which had aroused me.

There was a violent singing in my ears.

I heard--or I thought I heard, I will assert nothing--groans from the world of dead among whom I was lying.

Some nights I still think I hear those stifled moans;

though the remembrance of that time is very obscure, and my memory very indistinct, in spite of my impressions of far more acute suffering I was fated to go through, and which have confused my ideas.

“But there was something more awful than cries; there was a silence such as I have never known elsewhere--literally, the silence of the grave.

At last, by raising my hands and feeling the dead, I discerned a vacant space between my head and the human carrion above.

I could thus measure the space, granted by a chance of which I knew not the cause.

It would seem that, thanks to the carelessness and the haste with which we had been pitched into the trench, two dead bodies had leaned across and against each other, forming an angle like that made by two cards when a child is building a card castle.

Feeling about me at once, for there was no time for play, I happily felt an arm lying detached, the arm of a Hercules!

A stout bone, to which I owed my rescue.

But for this unhoped-for help, I must have perished.

But with a fury you may imagine, I began to work my way through the bodies which separated me from the layer of earth which had no doubt been thrown over us--I say us, as if there had been others living!

I worked with a will, monsieur, for here I am!

But to this day I do not know how I succeeded in getting through the pile of flesh which formed a barrier between me and life.

You will say I had three arms.

This crowbar, which I used cleverly enough, opened out a little air between the bodies I moved, and I economized my breath.

At last I saw daylight, but through snow!

“At that moment I perceived that my head was cut open.

Happily my blood, or that of my comrades, or perhaps the torn skin of my horse, who knows, had in coagulating formed a sort of natural plaster.

But, in spite of it, I fainted away when my head came into contact with the snow.

However, the little warmth left in me melted the snow about me; and when I recovered consciousness, I found myself in the middle of a round hole, where I stood shouting as long as I could.

But the sun was rising, so I had very little chance of being heard.

Was there any one in the fields yet?

I pulled myself up, using my feet as a spring, resting on one of the dead, whose ribs were firm.

You may suppose that this was not the moment for saying, ‘Respect courage in misfortune!

’ In short, monsieur, after enduring the anguish, if the word is strong enough for my frenzy, of seeing for a long time, yes, quite a long time, those cursed Germans flying from a voice they heard where they could see no one, I was dug out by a woman, who was brave or curious enough to come close to my head, which must have looked as though it had sprouted from the ground like a mushroom.

This woman went to fetch her husband, and between them they got me to their poor hovel.

“It would seem that I must have again fallen into a catalepsy--allow me to use the word to describe a state of which I have no idea, but which, from the account given by my hosts, I suppose to have been the effect of that malady.

I remained for six months between life and death; not speaking, or, if I spoke, talking in delirium.

At last, my hosts got me admitted to the hospital at Heilsberg.

“You will understand, Monsieur, that I came out of the womb of the grave as naked as I came from my mother’s; so that six months afterwards, when I remembered, one fine morning, that I had been Colonel Chabert, and when, on recovering my wits, I tried to exact from my nurse rather more respect than she paid to any poor devil, all my companions in the ward began to laugh.

Luckily for me, the surgeon, out of professional pride, had answered for my cure, and was naturally interested in his patient.

When I told him coherently about my former life, this good man, named Sparchmann, signed a deposition, drawn up in the legal form of his country, giving an account of the miraculous way in which I had escaped from the trench dug for the dead, the day and hour when I had been found by my benefactress and her husband, the nature and exact spot of my injuries, adding to these documents a description of my person.

“Well, monsieur, I have neither these important pieces of evidence, nor the declaration I made before a notary at Heilsberg, with a view to establishing my identity.

From the day when I was turned out of that town by the events of the war, I have wandered about like a vagabond, begging my bread, treated as a madman when I have told my story, without ever having found or earned a sou to enable me to recover the deeds which would prove my statements, and restore me to society.

My sufferings have often kept me for six months at a time in some little town, where every care was taken of the invalid Frenchman, but where he was laughed at to his face as soon as he said he was Colonel Chabert.

For a long time that laughter, those doubts, used to put me into rages which did me harm, and which even led to my being locked up at Stuttgart as a madman.

And indeed, as you may judge from my story, there was ample reason for shutting a man up.

“At the end of two years’ detention, which I was compelled to submit to, after hearing my keepers say a thousand times, ‘Here is a poor man who thinks he is Colonel Chabert’ to people who would reply, ‘Poor fellow!

’ I became convinced of the impossibility of my own adventure.

I grew melancholy, resigned, and quiet, and gave up calling myself Colonel Chabert, in order to get out of my prison, and see France once more.

Oh, monsieur!

To see Paris again was a delirium which I----” Without finishing his sentence, Colonel Chabert fell into a deep study, which Derville respected.

“One fine day,” his visitor resumed, “one spring day, they gave me the key of the fields, as we say, and ten thalers, admitting that I talked quite sensibly on all subjects, and no longer called myself Colonel Chabert.

On my honor, at that time, and even to this day, sometimes I hate my name.

I wish I were not myself.

The sense of my rights kills me.

If my illness had but deprived me of all memory of my past life, I could be happy.

I should have entered the service again under any name, no matter what, and should, perhaps, have been made Field-Marshal in Austria or Russia.

Who knows?

” “Monsieur,” said the attorney, “you have upset all my ideas.

I feel as if I heard you in a dream.

Pause for a moment, I beg of you.

” “You are the only person,” said the Colonel, with a melancholy look, “who ever listened to me so patiently.

No lawyer has been willing to lend me ten napoleons to enable me to procure from Germany the necessary documents to begin my lawsuit--” “What lawsuit?

” said the attorney, who had forgotten his client’s painful position in listening to the narrative of his past sufferings.

“Why, monsieur, is not the Comtesse Ferraud my wife?

She has thirty thousand francs a year, which belong to me, and she will not give me a son.

When I tell lawyers these things--men of sense; when I propose--I, a beggar--to bring action against a Count and Countess; when I--a dead man--bring up as against a certificate of death a certificate of marriage and registers of births, they show me out, either with the air of cold politeness, which you all know how to assume to rid yourself of a hapless wretch, or brutally, like men who think they have to deal with a swindler or a madman--it depends on their nature.

I have been buried under the dead; but now I am buried under the living, under papers, under facts, under the whole of society, which wants to shove me underground again!

” “Pray resume your narrative,” said Derville.

“‘Pray resume it!

’” cried the hapless old man, taking the young lawyer’s hand.

“That is the first polite word I have heard since----” The Colonel wept.

Gratitude choked his voice.

The appealing and unutterable eloquence that lies in the eyes, in a gesture, even in silence, entirely convinced Derville, and touched him deeply.

“Listen, monsieur,” said he; “I have this evening won three hundred francs at cards.

I may very well lay out half that sum in making a man happy.

I will begin the inquiries and researches necessary to obtain the documents of which you speak, and until they arrive I will give you five francs a day.

If you are Colonel Chabert, you will pardon the smallness of the loan as it is coming from a young man who has his fortune to make.

Proceed.

”