The Recruit

Recruit, The

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Title: The Recruit
Author: Honore de Balzac
Release Date: July 14, 2005 [EBook #1426]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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RECRUIT ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

THE RECRUIT
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To my dear Albert Marchand de la Ribellerie.

THE RECRUIT

At times they saw him, by a phenomenon of vision or locomotion,
abolish space in its two forms of Time and Distance; the former being
intellectual space, the other physical space.
Intellectual History of Louis Lambert.

On an evening in the month of November, 1793, the principal persons
of Carentan were assembled in the salon of Madame de Dey, where
they met daily. Several circumstances which would never have
attracted attention in a large town, though they greatly preoccupied the
little one, gave to this habitual rendezvous an unusual interest. For the
two preceding evenings Madame de Dey had closed her doors to the
little company, on the ground that she was ill. Such an event would, in
ordinary times, have produced as much effect as the closing of the
theatres in Paris; life under those circumstances seems merely
incomplete. But in 1793, Madame de Dey's action was likely to have
fatal results. The slightest departure from a usual custom became,
almost invariably for the nobles, a matter of life or death. To fully
understand the eager curiosity and searching inquiry which animated on
this occasion the Norman countenances of all these rejected visitors,
but more especially to enter into Madame de Dey's secret anxieties, it is
necessary to explain the role she played at Carentan. The critical
position in which she stood at this moment being that of many others
during the Revolution the sympathies and recollections of more than
one reader will help to give color to this narrative.

Madame de Dey, widow of a lieutenant-general, chevalier of the Orders,
had left the court at the time of the emigration. Possessing a good deal
of property in the neighborhood of Carentan, she took refuge in that
town, hoping that the influence of the Terror would be little felt there.
This expectation, based on a knowledge of the region, was
well-founded. The Revolution committed but few ravages in Lower
Normandy. Though Madame de Dey had known none but the nobles of
her own caste when she visited her property in former years, she now
felt it advisable to open her house to the principle bourgeois of the
town, and to the new governmental authorities; trying to make them
pleased at obtaining her society, without arousing either hatred or
jealousy. Gracious and kind, gifted by nature with that inexpressible
charm which can please without having recourse to subserviency or to
making overtures, she succeeded in winning general esteem by an
exquisite tact; the sensitive warnings of which enabled her to follow the
delicate line along which she might satisfy the exactions of this mixed
society, without humiliating the touchy pride of the parvenus, or
shocking that of her own friends.
Then about thirty-eight years of age, she still preserved, not the fresh
plump beauty which distinguishes the daughters of Lower Normandy,
but a fragile and, so to speak, aristocratic beauty. Her features were
delicate and refined, her figure supple and easy. When she spoke, her
pale face lighted and seemed to acquire fresh life. Her large dark eyes
were full of affability and kindness, and yet their calm, religious
expression seemed to say that the springs of her existence were no
longer in her.
Married in the flower of her age to an old and jealous soldier, the
falseness of her position in the midst of a court noted for its gallantry
contributed much, no doubt, to draw a veil of melancholy over a face
where the charms and the vivacity of love must have shone in earlier
days. Obliged to repress the naive impulses and emotions of a woman
when she simply feels them instead of reflecting about them, passion
was still virgin in the depths of her heart. Her principal attraction came,
in fact, from this innate youth, which sometimes, however, played her
false, and gave to her ideas an innocent expression of desire. Her

manner and appearance commanded respect, but there was always in
her bearing, in her voice, a sort of looking forward to some unknown
future, as in girlhood. The most insensible man would find himself