THE COUNTRY DOCTOR
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By
Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell
"For a wounded heart--shadow and silence."
To my Mother.
CHAPTER I
THE COUNTRYSIDE AND THE MAN
On a lovely spring morning in the year 1829, a man of fifty or
thereabouts was wending his way on horseback along the mountain road
that leads to a large village near the Grande Chartreuse. This village
is the market town of a populous canton that lies within the limits of
a valley of some considerable length. The melting of the snows had
filled the boulder-strewn bed of the torrent (often dry) that flows
through this valley, which is closely shut in between two parallel
mountain barriers, above which the peaks of Savoy and of Dauphine
tower on every side.
All the scenery of the country that lies between the chain of the two
Mauriennes is very much alike; yet here in the district through which
the stranger was traveling there are soft undulations of the land, and
varying effects of light which might be sought for elsewhere in vain.
Sometimes the valley, suddenly widening, spreads out a soft
irregularly-shaped carpet of grass before the eyes; a meadow
constantly watered by the mountain streams that keep it fresh and
green at all seasons of the year. Sometimes a roughly-built sawmill
appears in a picturesque position, with its stacks of long pine trunks
with the bark peeled off, and its mill stream, brought from the bed of
the torrent in great square wooden pipes, with masses of dripping
filament issuing from every crack. Little cottages, scattered here and
there, with their gardens full of blossoming fruit trees, call up the
ideas that are aroused by the sight of industrious poverty; while the
thought of ease, secured after long years of toil, is suggested by
some larger houses farther on, with their red roofs of flat round
tiles, shaped like the scales of a fish. There is no door, moreover,
that does not duly exhibit a basket in which the cheeses are hung up
to dry. Every roadside and every croft is adorned with vines; which
here, as in Italy, they train to grow about dwarf elm trees, whose
leaves are stripped off to feed the cattle.
Nature, in her caprice, has brought the sloping hills on either side
so near together in some places, that there is no room for fields, or
buildings, or peasants'' huts. Nothing lies between them but the
torrent, roaring over its waterfalls between two lofty walls of
granite that rise above it, their sides covered with the leafage of
tall beeches and dark fir trees to the height of a hundred feet. The
trees, with their different kinds of foliage, rise up straight and
tall, fantastically colored by patches of lichen, forming magnificent
colonnades, with a line of straggling hedgerow of guelder rose, briar
rose, box and arbutus above and below the roadway at their feet. The
subtle perfume of this undergrowth was mingled just then with scents
from the wild mountain region and with the aromatic fragrance of young
larch shoots, budding poplars, and resinous pines.
Here and there a wreath of mist about the heights sometimes hid and
sometimes gave glimpses of the gray crags, that seemed as dim and
vague as the soft flecks of cloud dispersed among them. The whole face
of the country changed every moment with the changing light in the
sky; the hues of the mountains, the soft shades of their lower slopes,
the very shape of the valleys seemed to vary continually. A ray of
sunlight through the tree-stems, a clear space made by nature in the
woods, or a landslip here and there, coming as a surprise to make a
contrast in the foreground, made up an endless series of pictures
delightful to see amid the silence, at the time of year when all
things grow young, and when the sun fills a cloudless heaven with a
blaze of light. In short, it was a fair land--it was the land of
France!
The traveler was a tall man, dressed from head to foot in a suit of
blue cloth, which must have been brushed just as carefully every
morning as the glossy coat of his horse. He held himself firm and
erect in the saddle like an old cavalry officer. Even if his black
cravat and doeskin gloves, the pistols that filled his holsters, and
the valise securely fastened to the crupper behind him had not
combined to mark him out as a soldier, the air of unconcern that sat
on his face, his regular features (scarred though they were with the
smallpox), his determined manner, self-reliant expression, and the way
he held his head, all revealed the habits acquired through military
discipline, of which a soldier can never quite divest himself, even
after he has retired from service into private life.
Any other traveler would have been filled with wonder at the
loveliness of this Alpine region, which grows so bright and smiling as
it becomes merged in the great valley systems of southern France; but
the officer, who no doubt had previously traversed a country across
which the French armies had been drafted in the course of Napoleon''s
wars, enjoyed the view before him without appearing to be surprised by
the many changes that swept across it. It would seem that Napoleon has
extinguished in his soldiers the sensation of wonder; for an impassive
face is a sure token by which you may know the men who served erewhile
under the short-lived yet deathless Eagles of the great Emperor. The
traveler was, in fact, one of those soldiers (seldom met with
nowadays) whom shot and shell have respected, although they have borne
their part on every battlefield where Napoleon commanded.
There had been nothing unusual in his life. He had fought valiantly in
the ranks as a simple and loyal soldier, doing his duty as faithfully
by night as by day, and whether in or out of his officer''s sight. He
had never dealt a sabre stroke in vain, and was incapable of giving
one too many. If he wore at his buttonhole the rosette of an officer
of the Legion of Honor, it was because the unanimous voice of his
regiment had singled him out as the man who best deserved to receive
it after the battle of Borodino.
He belonged to that small minority of undemonstrative retiring
natures, who are always at peace with themselves, and who are
conscious of a feeling of humiliation at the mere thought of making a
request, no matter what its nature may be. So promotion had come to
him tardily, and by virtue of the slowly-working laws of seniority. He
had been made a sub-lieutenant in 1802, but it was not until 1829 that
he became a major, in spite of the grayness of his moustaches. His
life had been so blameless that no man in the army, not even the
general himself, could approach him without an involuntary feeling of
respect. It is possible that he was not forgiven for this indisputable
superiority by those who ranked above him; but, on the other hand,
there was not one of his men that did not feel for him something of
the affection of children for a good mother. For them he knew how to
be at once indulgent and severe. He himself had also once served in
the ranks, and knew the sorry joys and gaily-endured hardships of the
soldier''s lot. He knew the errors that may be passed over and the
faults that must be punished in his men--"his children," as he always
called them--and when on campaign he readily gave them leave to forage
for provision for man and horse among the wealthier classes.
His own personal history lay buried beneath the deepest reserve. Like
almost every military man in Europe, he had only seen the world
through cannon smoke, or in the brief intervals of peace that occurred
so seldom during the Emperor''s continual wars with the rest of Europe.
Had he or had he not thought of marriage? The question remained
unsettled. Although no one doubted that Commandant Genestas had made
conquests during his sojourn in town after town and country after
country where he had taken part in the festivities given and received
by the officers, yet no one knew this for a certainty. There was no
prudery about him; he would not decline to join a pleasure party; he
in no way offended against military standards; but when questioned as
to his affairs of the heart, he either kept silence or answered with a
jest. To the words, "How are you, commandant?" addressed to him by an
officer over the wine, his reply was, "Pass the bottle, gentlemen."
M. Pierre Joseph Genestas was an unostentatious kind of Bayard. There
was nothing romantic nor picturesque about him--he was ...
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