Farewell

Farewell

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Title: Farewell
Author: Honore de Balzac
Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5873] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 15,
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Etext prepared by Dagny, [email protected] and John Bickers,
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FAREWELL
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By Ellen Marriage

DEDICATION
To Prince Friedrich von Schwarzenberg

FAREWELL

"Come, Deputy of the Centre, come along! We shall have to mend our
pace if we mean to sit down to dinner when every one else does, and
that's a fact! Hurry up! Jump, Marquis! That's it! Well done! You are
bounding over the furrows just like a stag!"
These words were uttered by a sportsman seated much at his ease on
the outskirts of the Foret de l'Isle-Adam; he had just finished a Havana
cigar, which he had smoked while he waited for his companion, who
had evidently been straying about for some time among the forest
undergrowth. Four panting dogs by the speaker's side likewise watched
the progress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were made.
To make their sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that the
second sportsman was both short and stout; his ample girth indicated a
truly magisterial corpulence, and in consequence his progress across

the furrows was by no means easy. He was striding over a vast field of
stubble; the dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a little to the
difficulties of his passage, and to add to his discomforts, the genial
influence of the sun that slanted into his eyes brought great drops of
perspiration into his face. The uppermost thought in his mind being a
strong desire to keep his balance, he lurched to and fro like a coach
jolted over an atrocious road.
It was one of those September days of almost tropical heat that finishes
the work of summer and ripens the grapes. Such heat forebodes a
coming storm; and though as yet there were wide patches of blue
between the dark rain-clouds low down on the horizon, pale golden
masses were rising and scattering with ominous swiftness from west to
east, and drawing a shadowy veil across the sky. The wind was still,
save in the upper regions of the air, so that the weight of the
atmosphere seemed to compress the steamy heat of the earth into the
forest glades. The tall forest trees shut out every breath of air so
completely that the little valley across which the sportsman was making
his way was as hot as a furnace; the silent forest seemed parched with
the fiery heat. Birds and insects were mute; the topmost twigs of the
trees swayed with scarcely perceptible motion. Any one who retains
some recollection of the summer of 1819 must surely compassionate
the plight of the hapless supporter of the ministry who toiled and
sweated over the stubble to rejoin his satirical comrade. That gentleman,
as he smoked his cigar, had arrived, by a process of calculation based
on the altitude of the sun, to the conclusion that it must be about five
o'clock.
"Where the devil are we?" asked the stout sportsman. He wiped his
brow as he spoke, and propped himself against a tree in the field
opposite his companion, feeling quite unequal to clearing the broad
ditch that lay between them.
"And you ask that question of /me/!" retorted the other, laughing from
his bed of tall brown grasses on the top of the bank. He flung the end of
his cigar into the ditch, exclaiming, "I swear by Saint Hubert that no
one shall catch me risking myself again in a country that I don't know
with a magistrate, even if, like you, my