You will find it difficult to believe perhaps that Monsieur de Ramière,
a young man of brilliant intellect, considerable talents and many
estimable qualities, accustomed to salon triumphs and to adventures in
perfumed boudoirs, had conceived a very durable passion for the
housekeeper in the household of a small manufacturer in Brie. And yet
Monsieur de Ramière was neither fop nor libertine. We have said that he
was intelligent--that is to say, he appreciated the advantages of birth
at their real value. He was a man of high principle when he argued with
himself; but vehement passions often carried him beyond the bounds of
his theories. At such times he was incapable of reflection, or he
avoided appearing before the tribunal of his conscience: he went astray,
as if without his own knowledge, and the man of yesterday strove to
deceive him of to-morrow. Unfortunately the most salient feature in his
character was not his principles, which he possessed in common with many
other white-gloved philosophers and which no more preserved him from
inconsistency than they preserve them; but his passions, which no
principles could stifle, and which made of him a man apart in that
degenerate society where it is so difficult to depart from the beaten
path without appearing ridiculous. Raymon had the art of being often
culpable without arousing hatred, often eccentric without being
offensive; indeed he sometimes succeeded in arousing the pity of people
who had the most reason to complain of him. There are men who are
humored thus by every one who approaches them. Sometimes an attractive
face and animated speech make up the sum total of their sensibility. We
do not presume to judge Monsieur Raymon de Ramière so harshly, nor to
draw his portrait before exhibiting him in action. We are examining him
now at a distance, like the multitude who pass him in the street.
Monsieur de Ramière was in love with the young creole with the great
black eyes, who had aroused the admiration of the whole province at the
fête of Rubelles; but he was in love and nothing more. He had made her
acquaintance because he had nothing else to do, perhaps, and success had
kindled his desires; he had obtained more than he asked, and on the day
that he triumphed over that easily vanquished heart he returned home
dismayed by his victory, and said to himself, striking his forehead:
"God grant that she doesn't love me!"
Thus it was not until after he had accepted all the proofs of her love
that he began to suspect the existence of that love. Then he repented,
but it was too late; he must either resign himself to what the future
might have in store, or retreat like a coward toward the past. Raymon
did not hesitate; he allowed himself to be loved, he loved in return for
gratitude; he scaled the walls of the Delmare estate from love of
danger; he had a terrible fall from awkwardness; and he was so touched
by his lovely young mistress's grief that he deemed himself justified
thenceforth in his own eyes in continuing to dig the pit into which she
was destined to fall.
When he had recovered, winter had no storms, darkness no perils, remorse
no stings which could deter him from passing through the corner of the
forest to meet the young creole and swear to her that he had never loved
any other woman; that he preferred her to the queens of society, and a
thousand other exaggerations which will always be fashionable with poor
and credulous maidens. In January Madame Delmare went to Paris with her
husband; Sir Ralph Brown, their excellent neighbor, betook himself to
his own estate, and Noun, being left in charge of her master's country
house, was able to absent herself on various pretexts. It was
unfortunate for her, and this facility of intercourse with her lover
greatly abridged the ephemeral happiness which she was destined to
enjoy. The forest with its poetic shadows, its arabesques of hoar-frost,
its moonlight effects, the mysterious going and coming by the little
gate, the furtive departure in the morning when Noun's little feet, as
she accompanied him to the gate, left their prints on the snow in the
park--all these accessories of an amorous intrigue served to prolong
Monsieur de Ramière's intoxication. Noun, in white _déshablilé_, with
her long black hair for ornament, was a lady, a queen, a fairy; when he
saw her come forth from that red brick castle, a heavy, square structure
of the time of the Regency, with a semi-feudal aspect, he could easily
fancy her a châtelaine of the Middle Ages, and in the summerhouse
filled with rare flowers, where she made him drunk with the seductions
of youth and passion, he readily forgot all that he was destined to
remember later.
But when Noun, disdaining precautions and defying danger in her turn,
came to him at his home, with her white apron and neckerchief
coquettishly arranged according to the fashion of her country, she was
nothing more than a maid and a maid in the service of a pretty woman--a
circumstance that always makes a soubrette seem like a makeshift. And
yet Noun was very lovely, it was in that dress that he had first seen
her at that village fête where he had forced his way through the crowd
of curious bystanders, and had enjoyed the petty triumph of carrying her
off from a score of rivals. Noun would lovingly remind him of that day;
she did not know, poor child, that Raymon's love did not date back so
far, and that her day of pride had been only a day of vanity to him. And
then the courage with which she sacrificed her reputation to him--that
courage which should have made him love her all the more--displeased
Monsieur de Ramière. The wife of a peer of France who should sacrifice
herself so recklessly would be a priceless conquest; but a lady's maid!
That which is heroism in the one becomes brazen-faced effrontery in the
other. With the one a world of jealous rivals envies you; with the other
a rabble of scandalized flunkeys condemns you. The lady of quality
sacrifices twenty previous lovers to you; the lady's maid sacrifices
only a husband that she might have had.
What can you expect? Raymon was a man of fashionable morals, of elegant
manners, of poetic passion. In his eyes a grisette was not a woman, and
Noun, by virtue of a beauty of the first order, had taken him by
surprise on a day of popular merrymaking. All this was not Raymon's
fault; he had been reared to shine in society, all his thoughts had been
directed toward an exalted goal, all his faculties had been moulded to
enjoy princely good fortune, and the ardor of his blood had led him into
bourgeois amours against his will. He had done all that he possibly
could do to prolong his enjoyment, but he had failed; what was he to do
now? Ideas extravagant in generosity had passed through his brain; on
the days when he was most in love with his mistress he had thought
seriously of raising her to his level, of legitimizing their union. Yes,
upon my honor, he had thought of it; but love, which legitimizes
everything, was growing weaker now; it was passing away with the perils
of the intrigue and the piquant charm of mystery. Marriage was no longer
possible; and note this: Raymon reasoned very cogently and altogether in
his mistress's favor.
If he had really loved her, he could, by sacrificing to her his future,
his family and his reputation, still have found happiness, and,
consequently, have made her happy; for love is a contract no less than
marriage. But, his ardor having cooled as he felt that it had, what
future could he create for her? Should he marry her and display day
after day a gloomy face, a cold heart, a comfortless home? Should he
marry her and make her odious to her family, contemptible in the eyes of
her equals, and a laughing-stock to her servants; take the risk of
introducing her in a social circle where she would feel that she was out
of place; where humiliation would kill her; and, lastly, overwhelm her
with remorse by forcing her to realize all the trials she had brought
upon her lover?
No, you will agree with him that it was impossible, that it would not
have been generous, that a man cannot contend thus with society, and
that such heroic virtue resembles Don Quixote breaking his lance against
a windmill; an iron courage which a breath of wind scatters; the
chivalry of another age which arouses the pitying contempt of this age.
Having thus weighed all the arguments, Monsieur de Ramière concluded
that it would be better to break that unfortunate bond. Noun's visits
were beginning to be painful to him. His mother, who had gone to Paris
for the winter, would not fail to hear of the little scandal before
long. Even now she was surprised at his frequent visits to Cercy, their
country estate, and at his passing whole weeks there. He had, to be
sure, alleged as a pretext, an important piece of work which he was
finishing away from the noise of the city; but that pretext was
beginning to be worn out. It grieved Raymon to deceive so kind a mother,
to deprive her for so long a time of his filial attentions; and--how
shall I tell you?--he left Cercy and did not return.
Noun wept and waited, and as the days and weeks passed, unhappy creature
that she was, she ventured so far as to write. Poor girl! that was the
last stroke. A letter from a lady's maid! Yet she had taken
satin-finished paper and perfumed wax from Madame Delmare's desk, and
her style from her heart. But the spelling! Do you know how much energy
a syllable more or less adds to or detracts from the sentiments? Alas!
the poor half-civilized girl from Ile Bourbon did not know even that
there were rules for the use of language. She believed that she wrote
and spoke as correctly as her mistress, and when she found that Raymon
did not return she said to herself:
"And yet my letter was well adapted to bring him."
That letter Raymon lacked courage to read to the end. It was a
masterpiece of ingenuous and graceful passion; it is doubtful if
Virginia wrote Paul a more charming one after she left her native land.
But Monsieur de Ramière made haste to throw it in the fire, fearful
lest he should blush for himself. Once more, what do you expect? This is
a prejudice of education, and self-love is a part of love just as
self-interest is a part of friendship.
Monsieur de Ramière's absence had been noticed in society; that is much
to say of a man, in respect to this society of ours where all men
resemble one another. One may be a man of intelligence and still care
for society, just as one may be a fool and despise it. Raymon liked it,
and he was justified in his liking, for he was a favorite and was much
sought after; and that multitude of indifferent or sneering masks
assumed for him attentive and interested smiles. Unfortunate men may be
misanthropes, but those persons of whom one is fond are rarely
ungrateful; at least so Raymon thought. He was grateful for the
slightest manifestations of attachment, desirous of universal esteem,
proud of having a large number of friends.
In this society, whose prejudices are absolute, everything had succeeded
in his case, even his faults; and when he sought the cause of this
universal affection which had always encompassed him, he found it in
himself, in his longing to obtain it, in the joy it caused him, in the
hearty kindliness which he dealt out lavishly without exhausting it.
He owed it in some measure to his mother too, whose superior
intelligence, sparkling conversation and private virtues made her an
exceptional woman. It was from her that he inherited those excellent
principles which always led him back to the right path and prevented
him, despite the impetuosity of his twenty-five years, from ever
forfeiting his claim to public esteem. Moreover, people were more
indulgent to him than to others because his mother had the knack of
apologizing for him while blaming him, of commanding indulgence when she
seemed to implore it. She was one of those women who had lived through
different epochs so utterly dissimilar that their minds become as
flexible as their destinies; who have grown rich on experience of
misfortune; who have escaped the scaffolds of '93, the vices of the
Directory, the vanities of the Empire and the enmities of the
Restoration; rare women, whose kind is dying out.
It was at a ball at the Spanish ambassador's that Raymon reappeared in
society.
"Monsieur de Ramière, if I am not mistaken," said a pretty woman to her
neighbor.
"He is a comet who appears at irregular intervals," was the reply. "It
is centuries since any one heard of the pretty fellow."
The lady who spoke thus was a middle-aged foreigner. Her companion
blushed slightly.
"He's very good-looking, is he not, madame?" she said.
"Charming, on my word," replied the old Sicilian.
"You are talking about the hero of the eclectic salons, the dark-eyed
Raymon, I'll be bound," said a dashing colonel of the guard.
"He has a fine head to study," rejoined the younger woman.
"And what pleases you even more, I dare say," said the colonel, "a
wicked head."
The young woman was his wife.
"Why a wicked head?" queried the Sicilian.
"Full of genuine Southern passions, madame, worthy of the bright
sunlight of Palermo."
Two or three young women put forward their flower-laden heads to hear
what the colonel was saying.
"He made ravages in the garrison last year, I promise you," he
continued. "We fellows shall be obliged to pick a quarrel with him, in
order to get rid of him."
"If he's a Lovelace, so much the worse for him," said a young lady with
a satirical cast of countenance; "I can't endure men whom everybody
loves."
The ultramontane countess waited until the colonel had walked away, when
she tapped Mademoiselle de Nangy's fingers lightly with her fan and
said:
"Don't speak so; you don't know here what to think of a man who wants to
be liked."
"Do you think, pray, that all they have to do is to want it?" said the
damsel with the long sardonic eyes.
"Mademoiselle," said the colonel, coming up again to invite her to
dance; "take care that the charming Raymon does not overhear you."
Mademoiselle de Nangy laughed; but during the rest of the evening the
pretty group of which she was one dared not mention Monsieur de
Ramière's name again.
V
Monsieur de Ramière wandered amid the undulating waves of that
gayly-dressed crowd without distaste and without ennui.
Nevertheless, he was fighting against a feeling of chagrin. On returning
to his own sphere he had a species of remorse, of shame for all the wild
ideas which a misplaced attachment had suggested to him. He looked at
the women so brilliantly beautiful in the bright light; he listened to
their refined and clever conversation; he heard their talents highly
praised; and in those marvellous specimens of their sex, those almost
royal costumes, those exquisitely appropriate remarks, he found on all
sides an implied reproach for having been untrue to his destiny. But,
despite this species of mental bewilderment, Raymon suffered from more
genuine remorse; for his intentions were always kind and considerate to
the last degree, and a woman's tears broke his heart, hardened as it
was.
The honors of the evening were universally accorded to a young woman
whose name no one knew, and who enjoyed the privilege of monopolizing
attention because her appearance in society was a novelty. The
simplicity of her costume alone would have sufficed to make her a
distinguished figure amid the diamonds, feathers and flowers in which
the other women were arrayed. Strings of pearls woven into her black
hair were her only jewels. The lustreless white of her necklace, her
crêpe dress and her bare shoulders blended at a little distance, and
the heated atmosphere of the apartments had barely succeeded in bringing
to her cheeks a faint flush of as delicate a shade as that of a Bengal
rose blooming on the snow. She was a tiny, dainty, slender creature; a
salon type of beauty to which the bright light of the candles gave a
fairylike touch, and which a sunbeam would have dimmed. When she danced
she was so light that a breath would have whisked her away; but in her
lightness there was no animation, no pleasure. When she was seated she
bent forward as if her too flexible body lacked strength to support
itself, and when she spoke she smiled sadly. Fantastic tales were at the
very height of their vogue at this period. Accordingly, those who were
learned in that line compared this young woman to a fascinating
apparition evoked by sorcery, which would fade away and vanish like a
dream when the first flush of dawn appeared on the horizon.
Meanwhile they crowded about her to invite her to dance.
"Make haste," said a dandy of a romantic turn to one of his friends;
"the cock will crow soon, and even now your partner's feet have ceased
to touch the floor. I'll wager that you can't feel her hand in yours."
"Pray look at Monsieur de Ramière's dark, strongly-marked face," said
an _artistic_ lady to her neighbor. "Contrast him with that pale,
slender young woman, and see if the _solid_ tone of the one doesn't make
an admirable foil for the _delicate_ tone of the other."
"That young woman," said a woman who knew everybody and who played the
part of an almanac at social functions, "is the daughter of that old
fool, De Carvajal, who tried to play Joséphin, and who died ruined at
Ile Bourbon. This lovely exotic flower has made a foolish marriage, I
believe; but her aunt stands well at court."
Raymon had drawn near the fair Indian. A peculiar emotion seized him
every time that he looked at her; he had seen that pale, sad face;
perhaps in some dream, but at all events he had seen it, and his eyes
rested upon it with the delight we all feel on seeing once more a
charming vision which we thought that we had lost forever.
Raymon's gaze disturbed her who was the object of it; she was awkward
and shy, like a person unaccustomed to society, and the sensation that
she caused seemed to embarrass rather than to please her. Raymon made
the circuit of the salon, succeeded finally in learning that her name
was Madame Delmare, and went and asked her to dance.
"You do not remember me," he said, when they were alone in the midst of
the crowd; "but I have not been able to forget you, madame. And yet I
saw you for an instant only, through a cloud; but in that instant you
seemed so kind, so compassionate."
Madame Delmare started.
"Oh! yes, monsieur," she said quickly, "it is you! I recognized you,
too."
Then she blushed and seemed to fear that she had offended the
proprieties. She looked around as if to see whether anyone had heard
her. Her timidity enhanced her natural charm, and Raymon was touched to
the heart by the tone of that creole voice, slightly husky, but so sweet
that it seemed made to pray or to bless.
"I was afraid," he said, "that I should never have an opportunity to
thank you. I could not call upon you and I knew that you went but little
into society. I feared, also, that if I made your acquaintance I should
come in contact with Monsieur Delmare, and our previous relations could
not fail to make that contact disagreeable. How glad I am for this
moment, which enables me to pay the debt of my heart!"
"It would be much pleasanter for me," said she, "if Monsieur Delmare
also could enjoy it; and if you knew him better you would know that he
is as kind as he is brusque. You would forgive him for having been your
involuntary assailant, for his heart certainly bled more freely than
your wound."
"Let us not talk of Monsieur Delmare, madame; I forgive him with all my
heart. I injured him and he took the law into his own hands. I have
nothing more to do but to forget; but as to you, madame, who lavished
such delicate and generous attentions upon me, I choose to remember all
my life your treatment of me, your pure features, your angelic
gentleness, and these hands which poured balm upon my wounds and which I
dared not kiss."
While he spoke Raymon held Madame Delmare's hand, to be prepared to walk
through their figure in the contradance. He pressed that hand gently in
his, and all the young woman's blood rushed to her heart.
When he led Madame Delmare back to her seat, her aunt, Madame de
Carvajal, had gone; the crowd was thinning. Raymon sat down beside her.
He had that ease of manner which a wide experience in affairs of the
heart imparts; it is the violence of our desires, the precipitate haste
of our love, that makes us stupid when we are with women. The man who
has rubbed the edge off his emotions a little is more anxious to please
than to love. Nevertheless Monsieur de Ramière felt more deeply moved
in the presence of that simple, unspoiled woman than he had ever been.
Perhaps this swift impression was due to his memory of the night he had
passed at her house; but it is certain that, while he talked to her with
animation, his heart did not lead his mouth astray. However, the habit
he had acquired with other women gave to his words a power of persuasion
to which the untutored Indiana yielded, not understanding that it had
not all been invented expressly for her.
In general--and women are well aware of it--a man who talks wittily of
love is only moderately in love. Raymon was an exception; he expressed
passion artistically and felt it ardently. But it was not passion that
rendered him eloquent, it was eloquence that made him passionate. He
knew that he had a weakness for women, and he would become eloquent in
order to seduce a woman and fall in love with her while seducing her. It
was sentiment of the sort dealt in by advocates and preachers, who weep
hot tears when they perspire freely. He sometimes fell in with women who
were shrewd enough to distrust these heated improvisations; but he had
committed what are called follies for love's sake: he had run away with
a girl of noble birth; he had compromised women of very high station; he
had had three sensational duels; he had displayed to a crowded evening
party, to a whole theatre full of spectators, the bewilderment of his
heart and the disarray of his thoughts. A man who does all this without
fear of ridicule or of curses, and who succeeds in avoiding both, is
safe from all assault; he can take any risk and hope for anything. Thus
the most skilfully constructed defences yielded to the consideration
that Raymon was madly in love when he meddled with love at all. A man
capable of making a fool of himself for love is a rare prodigy in
society, and one that women do not disdain.
I do not know how it happened, but when he escorted Madame de Carvajal
and Madame Delmare to their carriage he succeeded in putting Indiana's
little hand to his lips. Never before had a man's furtive, burning kiss
breathed upon that woman's fingers, although she was born in a fiery
climate and was nineteen years old; nineteen years of Ile Bourbon, which
are equivalent to twenty-five in our country.
Ill and nervous as she was, that kiss almost extorted a shriek from her,
and she had to be assisted into the carriage. Raymon had never come in
contact with such a delicate organization. Noun, the creole, was in
robust health, and Parisian women do not faint when their hands are
kissed.
"If I should see her twice," he said to himself as he walked away, "I
should lose my head over her."
The next morning he had completely forgotten Noun.
All that he knew about her was that she belonged to Madame Delmare. The
pale-faced Indiana engrossed all his thoughts, filled all his dreams.
When Raymon began to feel the shafts of love he was in the habit of
seeking to distract his thoughts, not in order to stifle the budding
passion, but, on the contrary, to drive away the reasoning power that
urged him to weigh its consequences. Of an ardent temperament, he
pursued his object hotly. He had not the power to quell the tempests
which arose in his bosom, nor to rekindle them when he felt that they
were dying away and vanishing.
He succeeded the next day in learning that Monsieur Delmare had gone to
Brussels on a business trip, and had left his wife in charge of Madame
de Carvajal, of whom he was not at all fond, but who was Madame
Delmare's only relative. He, an upstart soldier, belonged to a poor and
obscure family, of which he seemed to be ashamed, simply because he
repeated so often that he was not ashamed of it. But, although he passed
his life reproaching his wife for alleged scorn of him which she did not
entertain, he was conscious that he ought not to compel her to live on
terms of intimacy with his uneducated kindred. Moreover, despite his
dislike for Madame de Carvajal, he could not refuse to treat her with
great deference for these reasons.
Madame de Carvajal, who was descended from a noble Spanish family, was
one of those women who cannot make up their minds to be of no account in
the world. In the days when Napoleon ruled Europe she had burned incense
to the glory of Napoleon, and with her husband and brother-in-law had
joined the party of the Joséphinos; but her husband had lost his life
at the fall of the conqueror's short-lived dynasty, and Indiana's father
had taken refuge in the French colonies. Thereupon Madame de Carvajal,
being a clever and active person, had repaired to Paris, and there, by
some fortunate speculations on the Bourse, had built up for herself a
new competence on the ruins of her past splendors. By dint of shrewd
wit, intrigues and piety she had also obtained some favor at Court, and
her establishment, while it was by no means brilliant, was one of the
most respectable of all those presided over by protégés of the Civil
List.
When Indiana arrived in France after her father's death, as the bride of
Colonel Delmare, Madame de Carvajal was but moderately pleased by so
paltry an alliance. Nevertheless she saw that Monsieur Delmare, whose
good sense and activity in business were worth a dowry, prospered with
his slender capital; and she purchased for Indiana the little château
of Lagny and the factory connected with it. In two years, thanks to
Monsieur Delmare's technical knowledge and certain funds advanced by Sir
Rodolphe Brown, his wife's cousin by marriage, the colonel's affairs
took a fortunate turn; he began to pay off his debts, and Madame de
Carvajal, in whose eyes fortune was the first recommendation, manifested
much affection for her niece and promised her the remnant of her wealth.
Indiana, who was devoid of ambition, was devotedly kind and attentive to
her aunt from gratitude, not from self-interest; but there was at least
as much of one as of the other in the colonel's manœuvres. He was a man
of iron in the matter of his political opinions; he would listen to no
argument concerning the unassailable glory of his great emperor, and he
upheld that glory with the blind obstinacy of a child of sixty years. He
was obliged therefore to put forth all his patience to refrain from
breaking out again and again in Madame de Carjaval's salon, where the
Restoration was lauded to the skies. What Delmare suffered at the hands
of five or six pious old women is beyond description. His vexation on
this account was in part the cause of his frequent ill-humor against his
wife.
So much for Madame de Carvajal; we return now to Monsieur de Ramière.
At the end of three days he had learned all these domestic details, so
actively had he followed up everything likely to put him in the way of
an intimate acquaintance with the Delmare family. He learned that by
acquiring Madame de Carvajal's favor he could obtain opportunities of
meeting Indiana. On the evening of the third day he procured an
introduction to the aunt.
In her salon there were four or five barbarians solemnly playing
_reversi_, and two or three young men of family, as utterly vapid as it
is allowable for a man to be who has sixteen quarterings of nobility.
Indiana was at work patiently filling in the background of a piece of
embroidery on her aunt's frame. She was leaning over her work,
apparently absorbed by that mechanical operation, and, it may be, well
pleased to escape in this way the dull chatter of her neighbors. For
aught I know, behind the long black hair that fell over the flowers of
her embroidery, she was reviewing in her mind the emotions of that
fleeting instant which had opened the door of a new life to her, when
the servant's voice, announcing several new arrivals, made it necessary
for her to rise. She did so mechanically, for she had paid no heed to
the names, and barely lifted her eyes from her embroidery; but a voice
at her side made her start as if she had received an electric shock, and
she was obliged to lean on her work-table to avoid falling.