Doomed to Live.

By HONORÉ DE BALZAC.

The great fame of Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) will of course always rest upon the wonderful series of novels which he linked together in the scores of volumes which make up his "Human Comedy." In this, with a genius which rivals that of Shakespeare, he attempted to give a complete picture of human society on all its sides—"to do for human nature what has been done for zoology"—to demonstrate that society is a unity in its composition diversified by evolution in different directions. He called himself "the secretary of society," and sought to write a history of manners, in which he should shrink from nothing, and should range from virtue and religion to the most frightful forms of vice and passion.

Balzac's "Human Comedy," which Zola compared to a palace reared by giants, is so often praised as to make one sometimes lose sight of Balzac's supreme art in the composition of short stories. Some of these, however, are classics in themselves, and show the power of a master exercised in his idle moments. The example here republished is an excellent illustration of his ability to produce within a small compass those effects of breathless interest, suspense, and horror which he exhibits on a gigantic scale in his novels.

The story entitled "Doomed to Live" shows admirably the interplay of love and hatred, of military ferocity, of filial affection, and of that haughty Spanish pride which sacrifices the individual to the claims of high descent. The story is said to have been founded upon fact—on one of the extraordinary episodes which occurred during the time when Napoleon's troops overran and dominated, but failed to conquer, Spain.

The clock of the little town of Menda had just struck midnight. At this moment a young French officer was leaning on the parapet of a long terrace which bounded the gardens of the castle. He seemed plunged in the deepest thought—a circumstance unusual amid the thoughtlessness of military life; but it must be owned that never were the hour, the night, and the place more propitious for meditation.

The beautiful Spanish sky stretched out its azure dome above his head. The glittering stars and the soft moonlight lit up a charming valley that unfolded all its beauties at his feet. Leaning against a blossoming orange-tree he could see, a hundred feet below him, the town of Menda, which seemed to have been placed for shelter from the north winds at the foot of the rock on which the castle was built.

As he turned his head he could see the sea, framing the landscape with a broad silver sheet of glistening water. The castle was a blaze of light. The mirth and movement of a ball, the music of the orchestra, the laughter of the officers and their partners in the dance, were borne to him mingled with the distant murmur of the waves. The freshness of the night imparted a sort of energy to his limbs, weary with the heat of the day.

Above all, the gardens were planted with trees so aromatic, and flowers so fragrant, that the young man stood plunged, as it were, in a bath of perfumes.

The castle of Menda belonged to a Spanish grandee, then living there with his family. During the whole of the evening his eldest daughter had looked at the officer with an interest so tinged with sadness that the sentiment of compassion thus expressed by the Spaniard might well call up a reverie in the Frenchman's mind.

Clara was beautiful, and although she had three brothers and a sister, the wealth of the Marquis de Leganes seemed great enough for Victor Marchand to believe that the young lady would have a rich dowry. But how dare he hope that the most bigoted old hidalgo in all Spain would ever give his daughter to the son of a Parisian grocer?

Besides, the French were hated. The Marquis was suspected by General Gautier, who governed the province, of planning a revolt in favor of Ferdinand VII. For this reason the battalion commanded by Victor Marchand had been cantonned in the little town of Menda, to hold the neighboring hamlets, which were dependent on the Marquis, in check.

Recent despatches from Marshal Ney had given ground for fear that the English would shortly land on the coast, and had indicated the Marquis as a man who carried on communication with the cabinet of London.

In spite, therefore, of the welcome which the Spaniard had given him and his soldiers, the young officer, Victor Marchand, remained constantly on his guard. As he was directing his steps toward the terrace, whither he had come to examine the state of the town and the country districts entrusted to his care, he debated how he ought to interpret the friendliness which the Marquis had unceasingly shown him, and how the tranquillity of the country could be reconciled with his general's uneasiness. But in one moment these thoughts were driven from his mind by a feeling of caution and well-grounded curiosity.

He had just perceived a considerable number of lights in the town. In spite of the day being the Feast of St. James, he had given orders, that very morning, that all lights should be extinguished at the hour prescribed by his regulations; the castle alone being excepted from this order.

He could plainly see, here and there, the gleam of his soldiers' bayonets at their accustomed posts; but there was a solemnity in the silence, and nothing to suggest that the Spaniards were a prey to the excitement of a festival.

After having sought to explain the offense of which the inhabitants were guilty, the mystery appeared all the more unaccountable to him, because he had left officers in charge of the night police and the rounds. With all the impetuosity of youth, he was just about to leap through a breach and descend the rocks in haste, and thus arrive more quickly than by the ordinary road at a small outpost placed at the entrance of the town nearest to the castle, when a faint sound stopped him.

He thought he heard the light footfall of a woman upon the gravel walk. He turned his head and saw nothing; but his gaze was arrested by the extraordinary brightness of the sea. All of a sudden he beheld a sight so portentous that he stood dumfounded; he thought that his senses deceived him. In the far distance he could distinguish sails gleaming white in the moonlight.

He trembled and tried to convince himself that this vision was an optical illusion, merely the fantastic effect of the moon on the waves.

At this moment a hoarse voice pronounced his name.

He looked toward the breach, and saw slowly rising above it the head of the soldier whom he had ordered to accompany him to the castle.

"Is that you, commandant?"

"Yes; what do you want?" replied the young man in a low voice. A sort of presentiment warned him to be cautious.

"Those rascals down there are stirring like worms. I have hurried, with your leave, to tell you of my own little observations."

"Go on," said Victor Marchand.

"I have just followed a man from the castle who came in this direction with a lantern in his hand. A lantern's a frightfully suspicious thing. I don't fancy it was tapers my fine Catholic was going to light at this time of night. 'They want to eat us body and bones!' says I to myself; so I went on his track to reconnoiter. There, on a ledge of rock, not three paces from here, I discovered a great heap of fagots."

Suddenly a terrible shriek rang through the town and cut the soldier short. At the same instant a gleam of light flashed before the commandant. The poor grenadier received a ball in the head and fell. A fire of straw and dry wood burst into flame like a house on fire, not ten paces from the young man.

The sound of the instruments and the laughter ceased in the ballroom. The silence of death, broken only by groans, had suddenly succeeded to the noises and music of the feast. The fire of a cannon roared over the surface of the sea.

Cold sweat trickled down the young officer's forehead; he had no sword. He understood that his men had been slaughtered, and the English were about to disembark.

If he lived he saw himself dishonored, summoned before a council of war. Then he measured with his eyes the depth of the valley. He sprang forward, when just at that moment his hand was seized by the hand of Clara.

"Fly!" said she; "my brothers are following to kill you. Down yonder at the foot of the rock you will find Juanito's horse. Quick!"

The young man looked at her for a moment, stupefied. She pushed him on; then, obeying the instinct of self-preservation, which never forsakes even the bravest man, he rushed down the park in the direction she had indicated. He leapt from rock to rock, where only the goats had ever trod before; he heard Clara crying out to her brothers to pursue him; he heard the footsteps of the assassins; he heard the balls of several discharges whistle about his ears; but he reached the valley, he found the horse, mounted, and disappeared swift as lightning.

In a few hours he arrived at the quarters occupied by General Gautier. He found him at dinner with his staff.

"I bring you my life in my hand!" cried the commandant, his face pale and haggard.

He sat down and related the horrible disaster. A dreadful silence greeted his story.

"You appear to me to be more unfortunate than criminal," said the terrible general at last. "You are not accountable for the crime of the Spaniards, and unless the marshal decides otherwise, I acquit you."

These words could give the unfortunate officer but slight consolation.

"But when the Emperor hears of it!" he exclaimed.

"He will want to have you shot," said the general. "However——But we will talk no more about it," he added severely, "except how we are to take such a revenge as will strike wholesome fear upon this country, where they carry on war like savages."

One hour afterward, a whole regiment, a detachment of cavalry, and a convoy of artillery were on the road. The general and Victor marched at the head of the column. The soldiers, informed of the massacre of their comrades, were filled with extraordinary fury.

The distance which separated the town of Menda from the general quarters was passed with marvelous rapidity. On the road the general found whole villages under arms. Each of these wretched townships was surrounded and their inhabitants decimated.

By some inexplicable fatality, the English ships stood off instead of advancing. It was known afterward that these vessels had outstripped the rest of the transports and only carried artillery. Thus the town of Menda, deprived of the defenders she was expecting, and which the sight of the English vessels had seemed to assure, was surrounded by the French troops almost without striking a blow. The inhabitants, seized with terror, offered to surrender at discretion.

Then followed one of those instances of devotion not rare in the Peninsula. The assassins of the French, foreseeing, from the cruelty of the general, that Menda would probably be given over to the flames and the whole population put to the sword, offered to denounce themselves. The general accepted this offer, inserting as a condition that the inhabitants of the castle, from the lowest valet to the Marquis himself, should be placed in his hands.

This capitulation agreed upon, the general promised to pardon the rest of the population and to prevent his soldiers from pillaging or setting fire to the town. An enormous contribution was exacted, and the richest inhabitants gave themselves up as hostages to guarantee the payment, which was to be accomplished within twenty-four hours.

The general took all precautions necessary for the safety of his troops, provided for the defense of the country, and refused to lodge his men in the houses. After having formed a camp, he went up and took military possession of the castle. The members of the family of Leganes and the servants were gagged, and shut up in the great hall where the ball had taken place, and closely watched.

The windows of the apartment afforded a full view of the terrace which commanded the town. The staff was established in a neighboring gallery, and the general proceeded at once to hold a council of war on the measures to be taken for opposing the debarkation.

After having despatched an aide-de-camp to Marshal Ney, with orders to plant batteries along the coast, the general and his staff turned their attention to the prisoners. Two hundred Spaniards, whom the inhabitants had surrendered, were shot down upon the terrace.

After this military execution, the general ordered as many gallows to be erected on the terrace as there were prisoners in the hall of the castle, and the town executioner to be brought. Victor Marchand made use of the time from then until dinner to go and visit the prisoners. He soon returned to the general.

"I have come," said he, in a voice broken with emotion, "to ask you a favor."

"You?" said the general, in a tone of bitter irony.

"Alas!" replied Victor, "it is but a melancholy errand that I am come on. The Marquis has seen the gallows being erected, and expresses a hope that you will change the mode of execution for his family; he entreats you to have the nobles beheaded."

"So be it!" said the general.

"They further ask you to allow them the last consolations of religion, and to take off their bonds; they promise not to attempt to escape."

"I consent," said the general; "but you must be answerable for them."

"The old man also offers you the whole of his fortune if you will pardon his young son."

"Really!" said the general. "His goods already belong to King Joseph; he is under arrest." His brow contracted scornfully, then he added: "I will go beyond what they ask. I understand now the importance of the last request. Well, let him buy the eternity of his name, but Spain shall remember forever his treachery and its punishment. I give up the fortune and his life to whichever of his sons will fulfil the office of executioner. Go, and do not speak to me of it again."

Dinner was ready, and the officers sat down to table to satisfy appetites sharpened by fatigue.

One of them only, Victor Marchand, was not present at the banquet. He hesitated for a long time before he entered the room. The haughty family of Leganes were in their agony.

He glanced sadly at the scene before him; in this very room, only the night before, he had watched the fair heads of those two young girls and those three youths as they circled in the excitement of the dance. He shuddered when he thought how soon they must fall, struck off by the sword of the headsman. Fastened to their gilded chairs, the father and mother, their three sons and their two young daughters, sat absolutely motionless.

Eight serving-men stood upright before them, their hands bound behind their backs. These fifteen persons looked at one another gravely, their eyes scarcely betraying the thoughts that surged within them. Only profound resignation and regret for the failure of their enterprise left any mark upon the features of some of them.

The soldiers stood likewise motionless, looking at them, and respecting the affliction of their cruel enemies. An expression of curiosity lit up their faces when Victor appeared. He gave the order to unbind the condemned, and went himself to loose the cords which fastened Clara to her chair. She smiled sadly. He could not refrain from touching her arm, and looking with admiring eyes at her black locks and graceful figure. She was a true Spaniard; she had the Spanish complexion and the Spanish eyes, with their long curled lashes and pupils blacker than the raven's wing.

"Have you been successful?" she said, smiling upon him mournfully.

Victor could not suppress a groan. He looked, one after the other, at Clara and her three brothers. One, the eldest, was aged thirty; he was small, even somewhat ill made, with a proud, disdainful look, but there was a certain nobleness in his bearing; he seemed no stranger to that delicacy of feeling which elsewhere has rendered the chivalry of Spain so famous. His name was Juanito. The second, Felipe, aged about twenty; he was like Clara. The youngest was eight, Manuel; a painter would have found in his features a trace of that Roman steadfastness which David has given to children's faces in his episodes of the republic. The old Marquis, his head still covered with white locks, seemed to have come forth from a picture of Murillo.

The young officer shook his head. When he looked at them, he was hopeless that he would ever see the bargain proposed by the general accepted by any of the four; nevertheless, he ventured to impart it to Clara.

At first she shuddered, Spaniard though she was; then, immediately recovering her calm demeanor, she went and knelt down before her father.

"Father," she said, "make Juanito swear to obey faithfully any orders that you give him, and we shall be content."

The Marquise trembled with hope; but when she leant toward her husband, and heard—she who was a mother—the horrible confidence whispered by Clara, she swooned away. Juanito understood all; he leapt up like a lion in its cage. After obtaining an assurance of perfect submission from the Marquis, Victor took upon himself to send away the soldiers. The servants were led out, handed over to the executioner, and hanged. When the family had no guard but Victor to watch them, the old father rose, and said, "Juanito."

Juanito made no answer except by a movement of the head, equivalent to a refusal; then he fell back in his seat, and stared at his parents with eyes dry and terrible to look upon. Clara went and sat on his knee, put her arm round his neck, and kissed his eyelids.

"My dear Juanito," she said gaily, "if thou didst only know how sweet death would be to me if it were given by thee, I should not have to endure the odious touch of the headsman's hands. Thou wilt cure me of the woes that were in store for me—and, dear Juanito, thou couldst not bear to see me belong to another, well——" Her soft eyes cast one look of fire at Victor, as if to awaken in Juanito's heart his horror of the French.

"Have courage," said his brother Felipe, "or our race, that has almost given kings to Spain, will be extinct."

Suddenly Clara rose, the group which had formed round Juanito separated, and this son, dutiful in his disobedience, saw his aged father standing before him, and heard him cry, in a solemn voice, "Juanito, I command thee."

The young count remained motionless. His father fell on his knees before him; Clara, Manuel, and Felipe did the same instinctively. They all stretched out their hands to him as to one who was to save their family from oblivion; they seemed to repeat their father's words—"My son, hast thou lost the energy, the true chivalry of Spain? How long wilt thou leave thy father on his knees? What right hast thou to think of thine own life and its suffering? Madame, is this a son of mine?" continued the old man, turning to his wife.

"He consents," cried she in despair. She saw a movement in Juanito's eyelids, and she alone understood its meaning.

Mariquita, the second daughter, still knelt on her knees, and clasped her mother in her fragile arms; her little brother Manuel, seeing her weeping hot tears, began to chide her. At this moment the almoner of the castle came in; he was immediately surrounded by the rest of the family and brought to Juanito.

Victor could bear this scene no longer; he made a sign to Clara, and hastened away to make one last effort with the general. He found him in high good humor in the middle of the banquet drinking with his officers; they were beginning to make merry.

An hour later a hundred of the principal inhabitants of Menda came up to the terrace, in obedience to the general's orders, to witness the execution of the family of Leganes. A detachment of soldiers was drawn up to keep back these Spanish burghers who were ranged under the gallows on which the servants of the Marquis still hung. The feet of these martyrs almost touched their heads. Thirty yards from them a block had been set up, and by it gleamed a scimitar. The headsman also was present, in case of Juanito's refusal.

Presently, in the midst of the profoundest silence, the Spaniards heard the footsteps of several persons approaching, the measured tread of a company of soldiers, and the faint clinking of their muskets. These diverse sounds were mingled with the merriment of the officers' banquet; just as before it was the music of the dance which had concealed preparations for a treacherous massacre.

All eyes were turned toward the castle; the noble family was seen advancing with incredible dignity. Every face was calm and serene; one man only leant, pale and haggard, on the arm of the priest. Upon this man he lavished all the consolations of religion—upon the only one of them doomed to live. The executioner understood, as did all the rest, that for that day Juanito had undertaken the office himself.

The aged Marquis and his wife, Clara, Mariquita, and their two brothers, came and knelt down a few steps from the fatal spot. Juanito was led thither by the priest. As he approached the block the executioner touched him by the sleeve and drew him aside, probably to give him certain instructions.

The confessor placed the victims in such a position that they could not see the executioner; but like true Spaniards, they knelt erect with no sign of emotion.

Clara was the first to spring forward to her brother. "Juanito," she said, "have pity on my faint-heartedness; begin with me."

At that moment they heard the footsteps of a man running at full speed, and Victor arrived on the tragic scene. Clara was already on her knees, already her white neck seemed to invite the edge of the scimitar. A deadly pallor fell upon the officer, but he still found strength to run on.

"The general grants thee thy life if thou wilt marry me," he said to her in a low voice.

The Spaniard cast a look of proud disdain on the officer.

"Strike, Juanito," she said, in a voice of profound meaning.

Her head rolled at Victor's feet. When the Marquise heard the sound, a convulsive start escaped her; this was the only sign of her affliction.

"Ah, thou weepest, Mariquita!" said Juanito to his sister.

"Yes," answered the girl; "I was thinking of thee, my poor Juanito; thou wilt be so unhappy without us."

At length the noble figure of the Marquis appeared. He looked at the blood of his children; then he turned to the spectators, who stood mute and motionless before him. He stretched out his hands to Juanito and said, in a firm voice:

"Spaniards, I give my son a father's blessing. Now, Marquis, strike without fear, as thou art without fault."

But when Juanito saw his mother approach, supported by the confessor, he groaned aloud, "She fed me at her own breast." His cry seemed to tear a shout of horror from the lips of the crowd. At this terrible sound the noise of the banquet and the laughter and the merrymaking of the officers died away.

The Marquise comprehended that Juanito's courage was exhausted. With one leap she had thrown herself over the balustrade, and her head was dashed to pieces against the rocks below. A shout of admiration burst forth. Juanito fell to the ground in a swoon.

"Marchand has been telling me about this execution," said a half-drunken officer. "I'll warrant, gentlemen, it wasn't by our orders that——"

"Have you forgotten, Messieurs," cried General Gautier, "that during the next month there will be five hundred French families in tears—that we are in Spain? Do you wish to leave your bones here?"

After this speech there was not a man, not even a sub-lieutenant, who dared to empty his glass.

In spite of the respect with which he is surrounded—in spite of the title of El Verdugo (the executioner), bestowed upon him as a title of nobility by the King of Spain—the Marquis de Leganes is a prey to melancholy. He lives in solitude, and is rarely seen.

Overwhelmed with the load of his glorious crime, he seems only to await the birth of a second son, impatient to seek again the company of those Shades who are about his path continually.