Saint-Germain under the Restoration, to which, if there is any truth in
the above reflections, they failed to give stability, the most perfect
type of the aristocratic caste in its weakness and strength, its
greatness and littleness, might have been found for a brief space in a
young married woman who belonged to it. This was a woman artificially
educated, but in reality ignorant; a woman whose instincts and feelings
were lofty while the thought which should have controlled them was
wanting. She squandered the wealth of her nature in obedience to social
conventions; she was ready to brave society, yet she hesitated till her
scruples degenerated into artifice. With more wilfulness than real force
of character, impressionable rather than enthusiastic, gifted with more
brain than heart; she was supremely a woman, supremely a coquette,
and above all things a Parisienne, loving a brilliant life and gaiety,
reflecting never, or too late; imprudent to the verge of poetry, and
humble in the depths of her heart, in spite of her charming insolence.
Like some straight-growing reed, she made a show of independence; yet,
like the reed, she was ready to bend to a strong hand. She talked much
of religion, and had it not at heart, though she was prepared to find in
it a solution of her life. How explain a creature so complex? Capable
of heroism, yet sinking unconsciously from heroic heights to utter a
spiteful word; young and sweet-natured, not so much old at heart as
aged by the maxims of those about her; versed in a selfish philosophy in
which she was all unpractised, she had all the vices of a courtier, all
the nobleness of developing womanhood. She trusted nothing and no one,
yet there were times when she quitted her sceptical attitude for a
submissive credulity.
How should any portrait be anything but incomplete of her, in whom the
play of swiftly-changing colour made discord only to produce a poetic
confusion? For in her there shone a divine brightness, a radiance of
youth that blended all her bewildering characteristics in a certain
completeness and unity informed by her charm. Nothing was feigned. The
passion or semi-passion, the ineffectual high aspirations, the actual
pettiness, the coolness of sentiment and warmth of impulse, were all
spontaneous and unaffected, and as much the outcome of her own position
as of the position of the aristocracy to which she belonged. She was
wholly self-contained; she put herself proudly above the world and
beneath the shelter of her name. There was something of the egoism of
Medea in her life, as in the life of the aristocracy that lay a-dying,
and would not so much as raise itself or stretch out a hand to any
political physician; so well aware of its feebleness, or so conscious
that it was already dust, that it refused to touch or be touched.
The Duchesse de Langeais (for that was her name) had been married for
about four years when the Restoration was finally consummated, which is
to say, in 1816. By that time the revolution of the Hundred Days had let
in the light on the mind of Louis XVIII. In spite of his surroundings,
he comprehended the situation and the age in which he was living; and it
was only later, when this Louis XI, without the axe, lay stricken down
by disease, that those about him got the upper hand. The Duchesse de
Langeais, a Navarreins by birth, came of a ducal house which had made
a point of never marrying below its rank since the reign of Louis XIV.
Every daughter of the house must sooner or later take a _tabouret_ at
Court. So, Antoinette de Navarreins, at the age of eighteen, came out of
the profound solitude in which her girlhood had been spent to marry the
Duc de Langeais’ eldest son. The two families at that time were living
quite out of the world; but after the invasion of France, the return
of the Bourbons seemed to every Royalist mind the only possible way of
putting an end to the miseries of the war.
The Ducs de Navarreins and de Langeais had been faithful throughout to
the exiled Princes, nobly resisting all the temptations of glory under
the Empire. Under the circumstances they naturally followed out the old
family policy; and Mlle Antoinette, a beautiful and portionless girl,
was married to M. le Marquis de Langeais only a few months before the
death of the Duke his father.
After the return of the Bourbons, the families resumed their rank,
offices, and dignity at Court; once more they entered public life, from
which hitherto they held aloof, and took their place high on the sunlit
summits of the new political world. In that time of general baseness and
sham political conversions, the public conscience was glad to recognise
the unstained loyalty of the two houses, and a consistency in political
and private life for which all parties involuntarily respected them.
But, unfortunately, as so often happens in a time of transition, the
most disinterested persons, the men whose loftiness of view and wise
principles would have gained the confidence of the French nation and led
them to believe in the generosity of a novel and spirited policy--these
men, to repeat, were taken out of affairs, and public business was
allowed to fall into the hands of others, who found it to their interest
to push principles to their extreme consequences by way of proving their
devotion.
The families of Langeais and Navarreins remained about the Court,
condemned to perform the duties required by Court ceremonial amid the
reproaches and sneers of the Liberal party. They were accused of gorging
themselves with riches and honours, and all the while their family
estates were no larger than before, and liberal allowances from the
civil list were wholly expended in keeping up the state necessary for
any European government, even if it be a Republic.
In 1818, M. le Duc de Langeais commanded a division of the army, and the
Duchess held a post about one of the Princesses, in virtue of which she
was free to live in Paris and apart from her husband without scandal.
The Duke, moreover, besides his military duties, had a place at Court,
to which he came during his term of waiting, leaving his major-general
in command. The Duke and Duchess were leading lives entirely apart, the
world none the wiser. Their marriage of convention shared the fate
of nearly all family arrangements of the kind. Two more antipathetic
dispositions could not well have been found; they were brought together;
they jarred upon each other; there was soreness on either side; then
they were divided once for all. Then they went their separate ways,
with a due regard for appearances. The Duc de Langeais, by nature
as methodical as the Chevalier de Folard himself, gave himself up
methodically to his own tastes and amusements, and left his wife at
liberty to do as she pleased so soon as he felt sure of her character.
He recognised in her a spirit pre-eminently proud, a cold heart, a
profound submissiveness to the usages of the world, and a youthful
loyalty. Under the eyes of great relations, with the light of a prudish
and bigoted Court turned full upon the Duchess, his honour was safe.
So the Duke calmly did as the _grands seigneurs_ of the eighteenth
century did before him, and left a young wife of two-and-twenty to her
own devices. He had deeply offended that wife, and in her nature there
was one appalling characteristic--she would never forgive an offence
when woman’s vanity and self-love, with all that was best in her nature
perhaps, had been slighted, wounded in secret. Insult and injury in the
face of the world a woman loves to forget; there is a way open to her of
showing herself great; she is a woman in her forgiveness; but a secret
offence women never pardon; for secret baseness, as for hidden virtues
and hidden love, they have no kindness.
This was Mme la Duchesse de Langeais’ real position, unknown to the
world. She herself did not reflect upon it. It was the time of the
rejoicings over the Duc de Berri’s marriage. The Court and the Faubourg
roused itself from its listlessness and reserve. This was the real
beginning of that unheard-of splendour which the Government of the
Restoration carried too far. At that time the Duchess, whether for
reasons of her own, or from vanity, never appeared in public without a
following of women equally distinguished by name and fortune. As queen
of fashion she had her _dames d’atours_, her ladies, who modeled their
manner and their wit on hers. They had been cleverly chosen. None of her
satellites belonged to the inmost Court circle, nor to the highest
level of the Faubourg Saint-Germain; but they had set their minds upon
admission to those inner sanctuaries. Being as yet simple denominations,
they wished to rise to the neighbourhood of the throne, and mingle with
the seraphic powers in the high sphere known as _le petit chateau_. Thus
surrounded, the Duchess’s position was stronger and more commanding and
secure. Her “ladies” defended her character and helped her to play her
detestable part of a woman of fashion. She could laugh at men at her
ease, play with fire, receive the homage on which the feminine nature is
nourished, and remain mistress of herself.
At Paris, in the highest society of all, a woman is a woman still; she
lives on incense, adulation, and honours. No beauty, however undoubted,
no face, however fair, is anything without admiration. Flattery and
a lover are proofs of power. And what is power without recognition?
Nothing. If the prettiest of women were left alone in a corner of a
drawing-room, she would droop. Put her in the very centre and summit of
social grandeur, she will at once aspire to reign over all hearts--often
because it is out of her power to be the happy queen of one. Dress and
manner and coquetry are all meant to please one of the poorest creatures
extant--the brainless coxcomb, whose handsome face is his sole merit;
it was for such as these that women threw themselves away. The gilded
wooden idols of the Restoration, for they were neither more nor less,
had neither the antecedents of the _petits maitres_ of the time of the
Fronde, nor the rough sterling worth of Napoleon’s heroes, not the wit
and fine manners of their grandsires; but something of all three they
meant to be without any trouble to themselves. Brave they were, like
all young Frenchmen; ability they possessed, no doubt, if they had had
a chance of proving it, but their places were filled up by the old
worn-out men, who kept them in leading strings. It was a day of
small things, a cold prosaic era. Perhaps it takes a long time for a
Restoration to become a Monarchy.
For the past eighteen months the Duchesse de Langeais had been leading
this empty life, filled with balls and subsequent visits, objectless
triumphs, and the transient loves that spring up and die in an evening’s
space. All eyes were turned on her when she entered a room; she reaped
her harvest of flatteries and some few words of warmer admiration, which
she encouraged by a gesture or a glance, but never suffered to penetrate
deeper than the skin. Her tone and bearing and everything else about her
imposed her will upon others. Her life was a sort of fever of vanity
and perpetual enjoyment, which turned her head. She was daring enough in
conversation; she would listen to anything, corrupting the surface, as
it were, of her heart. Yet when she returned home, she often blushed at
the story that had made her laugh; at the scandalous tale that supplied
the details, on the strength of which she analyzed the love that she had
never known, and marked the subtle distinctions of modern passion, not
with comment on the part of complacent hypocrites. For women know how
to say everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined by each
other than corrupted by men.
There came a moment when she discerned that not until a woman is loved
will the world fully recognise her beauty and her wit. What does a
husband prove? Simply that a girl or woman was endowed with wealth, or
well brought up; that her mother managed cleverly that in some way she
satisfied a man’s ambitions. A lover constantly bears witness to her
personal perfections. Then followed the discovery still in Mme de
Langeais’ early womanhood, that it was possible to be loved without
committing herself, without permission, without vouchsafing any
satisfaction beyond the most meagre dues. There was more than one demure
feminine hypocrite to instruct her in the art of playing such dangerous
comedies.
So the Duchess had her court, and the number of her adorers and
courtiers guaranteed her virtue. She was amiable and fascinating; she
flirted till the ball or the evening’s gaiety was at an end. Then the
curtain dropped. She was cold, indifferent, self-contained again till
the next day brought its renewed sensations, superficial as before. Two
or three men were completely deceived, and fell in love in earnest.
She laughed at them, she was utterly insensible. “I am loved!” she told
herself. “He loves me!” The certainty sufficed her. It is enough for the
miser to know that his every whim might be fulfilled if he chose; so it
was with the Duchess, and perhaps she did not even go so far as to form
a wish.
One evening she chanced to be at the house of an intimate friend Mme la
Vicomtesse de Fontaine, one of the humble rivals who cordially detested
her, and went with her everywhere. In a “friendship” of this sort both
sides are on their guard, and never lay their armor aside; confidences
are ingeniously indiscreet, and not unfrequently treacherous. Mme de
Langeais had distributed her little patronizing, friendly, or freezing
bows, with the air natural to a woman who knows the worth of her smiles,
when her eyes fell upon a total stranger. Something in the man’s large
gravity of aspect startled her, and, with a feeling almost like dread,
she turned to Mme de Maufrigneuse with, “Who is the newcomer, dear?”
“Someone that you have heard of, no doubt. The Marquis de Montriveau.”
“Oh! is it he?”
She took up her eyeglass and submitted him to a very insolent scrutiny,
as if he had been a picture meant to receive glances, not to return
them.
“Do introduce him; he ought to be interesting.”
“Nobody more tiresome and dull, dear. But he is the fashion.”
M. Armand de Montriveau, at that moment all unwittingly the object of
general curiosity, better deserved attention than any of the idols that
Paris needs must set up to worship for a brief space, for the city is
vexed by periodical fits of craving, a passion for _engouement_ and sham
enthusiasm, which must be satisfied. The Marquis was the only son of
General de Montriveau, one of the _ci-devants_ who served the Republic
nobly, and fell by Joubert’s side at Novi. Bonaparte had placed his son
at the school at Chalons, with the orphans of other generals who fell
on the battlefield, leaving their children under the protection of the
Republic. Armand de Montriveau left school with his way to make, entered
the artillery, and had only reached a major’s rank at the time of the
Fontainebleau disaster. In his section of the service the chances of
advancement were not many. There are fewer officers, in the first place,
among the gunners than in any other corps; and in the second place, the
feeling in the artillery was decidedly Liberal, not to say Republican;
and the Emperor, feeling little confidence in a body of highly educated
men who were apt to think for themselves, gave promotion grudgingly in
the service. In the artillery, accordingly, the general rule of the
army did not apply; the commanding officers were not invariably the most
remarkable men in their department, because there was less to be feared
from mediocrities. The artillery was a separate corps in those days, and
only came under Napoleon in action.
Besides these general causes, other reasons, inherent in Armand de
Montriveau’s character, were sufficient in themselves to account for his
tardy promotion. He was alone in the world. He had been thrown at
the age of twenty into the whirlwind of men directed by Napoleon; his
interests were bounded by himself, any day he might lose his life; it
became a habit of mind with him to live by his own self-respect and
the consciousness that he had done his duty. Like all shy men, he was
habitually silent; but his shyness sprang by no means from timidity;
it was a kind of modesty in him; he found any demonstration of vanity
intolerable. There was no sort of swagger about his fearlessness in
action; nothing escaped his eyes; he could give sensible advice to his
chums with unshaken coolness; he could go under fire, and duck upon
occasion to avoid bullets. He was kindly; but his expression was haughty
and stern, and his face gained him this character. In everything he was
rigorous as arithmetic; he never permitted the slightest deviation from
duty on any plausible pretext, nor blinked the consequences of a fact.
He would lend himself to nothing of which he was ashamed; he never asked
anything for himself; in short, Armand de Montriveau was one of many
great men unknown to fame, and philosophical enough to despise it;
living without attaching themselves to life, because they have not found
their opportunity of developing to the full their power to do and feel.
People were afraid of Montriveau; they respected him, but he was not
very popular. Men may indeed allow you to rise above them, but to
decline to descend as low as they can do is the one unpardonable sin.
In their feeling towards loftier natures, there is a trace of hate and
fear. Too much honour with them implies censure of themselves, a thing
forgiven neither to the living nor to the dead.
After the Emperor’s farewells at Fontainebleau, Montriveau, noble though
he was, was put on half-pay. Perhaps the heads of the War Office took
fright at uncompromising uprightness worthy of antiquity, or perhaps it
was known that he felt bound by his oath to the Imperial Eagle. During
the Hundred Days he was made a Colonel of the Guard, and left on the
field of Waterloo. His wounds kept him in Belgium he was not present
at the disbanding of the Army of the Loire, but the King’s government
declined to recognise promotion made during the Hundred Days, and Armand
de Montriveau left France.
An adventurous spirit, a loftiness of thought hitherto satisfied by
the hazards of war, drove him on an exploring expedition through Upper
Egypt; his sanity or impulse directed his enthusiasm to a project of
great importance, he turned his attention to that unexplored Central
Africa which occupies the learned of today. The scientific expedition
was long and unfortunate. He had made a valuable collection of notes
bearing on various geographical and commercial problems, of which
solutions are still eagerly sought; and succeeded, after surmounting
many obstacles, in reaching the heart of the continent, when he was
betrayed into the hands of a hostile native tribe. Then, stripped of all
that he had, for two years he led a wandering life in the desert,
the slave of savages, threatened with death at every moment, and more
cruelly treated than a dumb animal in the power of pitiless children.
Physical strength, and a mind braced to endurance, enabled him to
survive the horrors of that captivity; but his miraculous escape
well-nigh exhausted his energies. When he reached the French colony at
Senegal, a half-dead fugitive covered with rags, his memories of his
former life were dim and shapeless. The great sacrifices made in his
travels were all forgotten like his studies of African dialects, his
discoveries, and observations. One story will give an idea of all that
he passed through. Once for several days the children of the sheikh of
the tribe amused themselves by putting him up for a mark and flinging
horses’ knuckle-bones at his head.
Montriveau came back to Paris in 1818 a ruined man. He had no interest,
and wished for none. He would have died twenty times over sooner than
ask a favour of anyone; he would not even press the recognition of his
claims. Adversity and hardship had developed his energy even in trifles,
while the habit of preserving his self-respect before that spiritual
self which we call conscience led him to attach consequence to the most
apparently trivial actions. His merits and adventures became known,
however, through his acquaintances, among the principal men of science
in Paris, and some few well-read military men. The incidents of his
slavery and subsequent escape bore witness to a courage, intelligence,
and coolness which won him celebrity without his knowledge, and that
transient fame of which Paris salons are lavish, though the artist that
fain would keep it must make untold efforts.
Montriveau’s position suddenly changed towards the end of that year. He
had been a poor man, he was now rich; or, externally at any rate, he had
all the advantages of wealth. The King’s government, trying to attach
capable men to itself and to strengthen the army, made concessions
about that time to Napoleon’s old officers if their known loyalty and
character offered guarantees of fidelity. M. de Montriveau’s name once
more appeared in the army list with the rank of colonel; he received his
arrears of pay and passed into the Guards. All these favours, one
after another, came to seek the Marquis de Montriveau; he had asked
for nothing however small. Friends had taken the steps for him which he
would have refused to take for himself.
After this, his habits were modified all at once; contrary to his
custom, he went into society. He was well received, everywhere he met
with great deference and respect. He seemed to have found some end
in life; but everything passed within the man, there were no external
signs; in society he was silent and cold, and wore a grave, reserved
face. His social success was great, precisely because he stood out in
such strong contrast to the conventional faces which line the walls
of Paris salons. He was, indeed, something quite new there. Terse
of speech, like a hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be
haughtiness, and people were greatly taken with it. He was something
strange and great. Women generally were so much the more smitten
with this original person because he was not to be caught by their
flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they circumvent
the strongest men and corrode the steel temper. Their Parisian’s
grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau; his nature only responded to
the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and feeling. And he would very
promptly have been dropped but for the romance that hung about his
adventures and his life; but for the men who cried him up behind his
back; but for a woman who looked for a triumph for her vanity, the woman
who was to fill his thoughts.
For these reasons the Duchesse de Langeais’ curiosity was no less lively
than natural. Chance had so ordered it that her interest in the man
before her had been aroused only the day before, when she heard the
story of one of M. de Montriveau’s adventures, a story calculated to
make the strongest impression upon a woman’s ever-changing fancy.
During M. de Montriveau’s voyage of discovery to the sources of the
Nile, he had had an argument with one of his guides, surely the most
extraordinary debate in the annals of travel. The district that he
wished to explore could only be reached on foot across a tract of
desert. Only one of his guides knew the way; no traveller had penetrated
before into that part of the country, where the undaunted officer hoped
to find a solution of several scientific problems. In spite of the
representations made to him by the guide and the older men of the place,
he started upon the formidable journey. Summoning up courage, already
highly strung by the prospect of dreadful difficulties, he set out in
the morning.
The loose sand shifted under his feet at every step; and when, at the
end of a long day’s march, he lay down to sleep on the ground, he had
never been so tired in his life. He knew, however, that he must be up
and on his way before dawn next day, and his guide assured him that they
should reach the end of their journey towards noon. That promise kept
up his courage and gave him new strength. In spite of his sufferings,
he continued his march, with some blasphemings against science; he was
ashamed to complain to his guide, and kept his pain to himself. After
marching for a third of the day, he felt his strength failing, his feet
were bleeding, he asked if they should reach the place soon. “In an
hour’s time,” said the guide. Armand braced himself for another hour’s
march, and they went on.
The hour slipped by; he could not so much as see against the sky the
palm-trees and crests of hill that should tell of the end of the journey
near at hand; the horizon line of sand was vast as the circle of the
open sea.
He came to a stand, refused to go farther, and threatened the guide--he
had deceived him, murdered him; tears of rage and weariness flowed over
his fevered cheeks; he was bowed down with fatigue upon fatigue, his
throat seemed to be glued by the desert thirst. The guide meanwhile
stood motionless, listening to these complaints with an ironical
expression, studying the while, with the apparent indifference of an
Oriental, the scarcely perceptible indications in the lie of the sands,
which looked almost black, like burnished gold.