The Village Rector | Page 3

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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] and
Dagny, [email protected]

The Village Rector
by Honore de Balzac
Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To Helene.
The tiniest boat is not launched upon the sea without the protection of
some living emblem or revered name, placed upon it by the mariners.
In accordance with this time-honored custom, Madame, I pray you to
be the protectress of this book now launched upon our literary ocean;
and may the Imperial name which the Church has canonized and your
devotion has doubly sanctified for me guard it from perils.
De Balzac.

THE VILLAGE RECTOR

I
THE SAUVIATS
In the lower town of Limoges, at the corner of the rue de la Vieille-
Poste and the rue de la Cite might have been seen, a generation ago,
one of those shops which were scarcely changed from the period of the
middle-ages. Large tiles seamed with a thousand cracks lay on the soil
itself, which was damp in places, and would have tripped up those who
failed to observe the hollows and ridges of this singular flooring. The
dusty walls exhibited a curious mosaic of wood and brick, stones and
iron, welded together with a solidity due to time, possibly to chance.

For more than a hundred years the ceiling, formed of colossal beams,
bent beneath the weight of the upper stories, though it had never given
way under them. Built /en colombage/, that is to say, with a wooden
frontage, the whole facade was covered with slates, so put on as to form
geometrical figures,--thus preserving a naive image of the burgher
habitations of the olden time.
None of the windows, cased in wood and formerly adorned with
carvings, now destroyed by the action of the weather, had continued
plumb; some bobbed forward, others tipped backward, while a few
seemed disposed to fall apart; all had a compost of earth, brought from
heaven knows where, in the nooks and crannies hollowed by the rain,
in which the spring-tide brought forth fragile flowers, timid creeping
plants, and sparse herbage. Moss carpeted the roof and draped its
supports. The corner pillar, with its composite masonry of stone blocks
mingled with brick and pebbles, was alarming to the eye by reason of
its curvature; it seemed on the point of giving way under the weight of
the house, the gable of which overhung it by at least half a foot. The
municipal authorities and the commissioner of highways did,
eventually, pull the old building down, after buying it, to enlarge the
square.
The pillar we have mentioned, placed at the angle of two streets, was a
treasure to the seekers for Limousin antiquities, on account of its lovely
sculptured niche in which was a Virgin, mutilated during the
Revolution. All visitors with archaeological proclivities found traces of
the stone sockets used to hold the candelabra in which public piety
lighted tapers or placed its /ex-votos/ and flowers.
At the farther end of the