The Two Brothers Honore de Balzac Author

In 1792 the townspeople of Issoudun enjoyed the services of a physician named Rouget, whomthey held to be a man of consummate malignity. Were we to believe certain bold tongues, he madehis wife extremely unhappy, although she was the most beautiful w... Read more

In 1792 the townspeople of Issoudun enjoyed the services of a physician named Rouget, whomthey held to be a man of consummate malignity. Were we to believe certain bold tongues, he madehis wife extremely unhappy, although she was the most beautiful woman of the neighborhood.Perhaps, indeed, she was rather silly. But the prying of friends, the slander of enemies, and thegossip of acquaintances, had never succeeded in laying bare the interior of that household. DoctorRouget was a man of whom we say in common parlance, He is not pleasant to deal with.Consequently, during his lifetime, his townsmen kept silence about him and treated him civilly. Hiswife, a demoiselle Descoings, feeble in health during her girlhood (which was said to be a reasonwhy the doctor married her), gave birth to a son, and also to a daughter who arrived, unexpectedly,ten years after her brother, and whose birth took the husband, doctor though he were, by surprise.This late-comer was named Agathe.These little facts are so simple, so commonplace, that a writer seems scarcely justified in placingthem in the fore-front of his history; yet if they are not known, a man of Doctor Rouget's stampwould be thought a monster, an unnatural father, when, in point of fact, he was only following outthe evil tendencies which many people shelter under the terrible axiom that men should havestrength of character,-a masculine phrase that has caused many a woman's misery. Less