track, it is so long since I came this way; we are surely on it now, but
we must push on for two hours.”
“The man is right,” thought M. de Montriveau.
So he went on again, struggling to follow the pitiless native. It seemed
as if he were bound to his guide by some thread like the invisible tie
between the condemned man and the headsman. But the two hours went by,
Montriveau had spent his last drops of energy, and the skyline was a
blank, there were no palm-trees, no hills. He could neither cry out
nor groan, he lay down on the sand to die, but his eyes would have
frightened the boldest; something in his face seemed to say that he
would not die alone. His guide, like a very fiend, gave him back a cool
glance like a man that knows his power, left him to lie there, and kept
at a safe distance out of reach of his desperate victim. At last M.
Montriveau recovered strength enough for a last curse. The guide came
nearer, silenced him with a steady look, and said, “Was it not your own
will to go where I am taking you, in spite of us all? You say that I
have lied to you. If I had not, you would not be even here. Do you want
the truth? Here it is. _We have still another five hours’ march before
us, and we cannot go back_. Sound yourself; if you have not courage
enough, here is my dagger.”
Startled by this dreadful knowledge of pain and human strength, M.
de Montriveau would not be behind a savage; he drew a fresh stock of
courage from his pride as a European, rose to his feet, and followed
his guide. The five hours were at an end, and still M. de Montriveau
saw nothing, he turned his failing eyes upon his guide; but the Nubian
hoisted him on his shoulders, and showed him a wide pool of water with
greenness all about it, and a noble forest lighted up by the sunset. It
lay only a hundred paces away; a vast ledge of granite hid the glorious
landscape. It seemed to Armand that he had taken a new lease of life.
His guide, that giant in courage and intelligence, finished his work of
devotion by carrying him across the hot, slippery, scarcely discernible
track on the granite. Behind him lay the hell of burning sand, before
him the earthly paradise of the most beautiful oasis in the desert.
The Duchess, struck from the first by the appearance of this romantic
figure, was even more impressed when she learned that this was that
Marquis de Montriveau of whom she had dreamed during the night. She had
been with him among the hot desert sands, he had been the companion of
her nightmare wanderings; for such a woman was not this a delightful
presage of a new interest in her life? And never was a man’s exterior
a better exponent of his character; never were curious glances so well
justified. The principal characteristic of his great, square-hewn head
was the thick, luxuriant black hair which framed his face, and gave him
a strikingly close resemblance to General Kleber; and the likeness still
held good in the vigorous forehead, in the outlines of his face, the
quiet fearlessness of his eyes, and a kind of fiery vehemence expressed
by strongly marked features. He was short, deep-chested, and muscular
as a lion. There was something of the despot about him, and an
indescribable suggestion of the security of strength in his gait,
bearing, and slightest movements. He seemed to know that his will was
irresistible, perhaps because he wished for nothing unjust. And yet,
like all really strong men, he was mild of speech, simple in his
manners, and kindly natured; although it seemed as if, in the stress of
a great crisis, all these finer qualities must disappear, and the man
would show himself implacable, unshaken in his resolve, terrific in
action. There was a certain drawing in of the inner line of the lips
which, to a close observer, indicated an ironical bent.
The Duchesse de Langeais, realising that a fleeting glory was to be
won by such a conquest, made up her mind to gain a lover in Armand de
Montriveau during the brief interval before the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse
brought him to be introduced. She would prefer him above the others; she
would attach him to herself, display all her powers of coquetry for him.
It was a fancy, such a merest Duchess’s whim as furnished a Lope or a
Calderon with the plot of the _Dog in the Manger_. She would not suffer
another woman to engross him; but she had not the remotest intention of
being his.
Nature had given the Duchess every qualification for the part of
coquette, and education had perfected her. Women envied her, and men
fell in love with her, not without reason. Nothing that can inspire
love, justify it, and give it lasting empire was wanting in her. Her
style of beauty, her manner, her voice, her bearing, all combined to
give her that instinctive coquetry which seems to be the consciousness
of power. Her shape was graceful; perhaps there was a trace of
self-consciousness in her changes of movement, the one affectation that
could be laid to her charge; but everything about her was a part of her
personality, from her least little gesture to the peculiar turn of her
phrases, the demure glance of her eyes. Her great lady’s grace, her
most striking characteristic, had not destroyed the very French quick
mobility of her person. There was an extraordinary fascination in her
swift, incessant changes of attitude. She seemed as if she surely would
be a most delicious mistress when her corset and the encumbering costume
of her part were laid aside. All the rapture of love surely was latent
in the freedom of her expressive glances, in her caressing tones, in the
charm of her words. She gave glimpses of the high-born courtesan within
her, vainly protesting against the creeds of the duchess.
You might sit near her through an evening, she would be gay and
melancholy in turn, and her gaiety, like her sadness, seemed
spontaneous. She could be gracious, disdainful, insolent, or confiding
at will. Her apparent good nature was real; she had no temptation to
descend to malignity. But at each moment her mood changed; she was full
of confidence or craft; her moving tenderness would give place to a
heart-breaking hardness and insensibility. Yet how paint her as she
was, without bringing together all the extremes of feminine nature? In
a word, the Duchess was anything that she wished to be or to seem.
Her face was slightly too long. There was a grace in it, and a certain
thinness and fineness that recalled the portraits of the Middle Ages.
Her skin was white, with a faint rose tint. Everything about her erred,
as it were, by an excess of delicacy.
M. de Montriveau willingly consented to be introduced to the Duchesse
de Langeais; and she, after the manner of persons whose sensitive taste
leads them to avoid banalities, refrained from overwhelming him with
questions and compliments. She received him with a gracious deference
which could not fail to flatter a man of more than ordinary powers,
for the fact that a man rises above the ordinary level implies that
he possesses something of that tact which makes women quick to read
feeling. If the Duchess showed any curiosity, it was by her glances;
her compliments were conveyed in her manner; there was a winning grace
displayed in her words, a subtle suggestion of a desire to please which
she of all women knew the art of manifesting. Yet her whole conversation
was but, in a manner, the body of the letter; the postscript with the
principal thought in it was still to come. After half an hour spent in
ordinary talk, in which the words gained all their value from her tone
and smiles, M. de Montriveau was about to retire discreetly, when the
Duchess stopped him with an expressive gesture.
“I do not know, monsieur, whether these few minutes during which I have
had the pleasure of talking to you proved so sufficiently attractive,
that I may venture to ask you to call upon me; I am afraid that it may
be very selfish of me to wish to have you all to myself. If I should
be so fortunate as to find that my house is agreeable to you, you will
always find me at home in the evening until ten o’clock.”
The invitation was given with such irresistible grace, that M. de
Montriveau could not refuse to accept it. When he fell back again among
the groups of men gathered at a distance from the women, his
friends congratulated him, half laughingly, half in earnest, on the
extraordinary reception vouchsafed him by the Duchesse de Langeais. The
difficult and brilliant conquest had been made beyond a doubt, and the
glory of it was reserved for the Artillery of the Guard. It is easy to
imagine the jests, good and bad, when this topic had once been started;
the world of Paris salons is so eager for amusement, and a joke lasts
for such a short time, that everyone is eager to make the most of it
while it is fresh.
All unconsciously, the General felt flattered by this nonsense. From his
place where he had taken his stand, his eyes were drawn again and again
to the Duchess by countless wavering reflections. He could not help
admitting to himself that of all the women whose beauty had captivated
his eyes, not one had seemed to be a more exquisite embodiment of faults
and fair qualities blended in a completeness that might realise the
dreams of earliest manhood. Is there a man in any rank of life that has
not felt indefinable rapture in his secret soul over the woman singled
out (if only in his dreams) to be his own; when she, in body, soul, and
social aspects, satisfies his every requirement, a thrice perfect woman?
And if this threefold perfection that flatters his pride is no argument
for loving her, it is beyond cavil one of the great inducements to the
sentiment. Love would soon be convalescent, as the eighteenth century
moralist remarked, were it not for vanity. And it is certainly true
that for everyone, man or woman, there is a wealth of pleasure in
the superiority of the beloved. Is she set so high by birth that a
contemptuous glance can never wound her? is she wealthy enough to
surround herself with state which falls nothing short of royalty, of
kings, of finance during their short reign of splendour? is she so
ready-witted that a keen-edged jest never brings her into confusion?
beautiful enough to rival any woman?--Is it such a small thing to know
that your self-love will never suffer through her? A man makes these
reflections in the twinkling of an eye. And how if, in the future opened
out by early ripened passion, he catches glimpses of the changeful
delight of her charm, the frank innocence of a maiden soul, the perils
of love’s voyage, the thousand folds of the veil of coquetry? Is not
this enough to move the coldest man’s heart?
This, therefore, was M. de Montriveau’s position with regard to woman;
his past life in some measure explaining the extraordinary fact. He
had been thrown, when little more than a boy, into the hurricane of
Napoleon’s wars; his life had been spent on fields of battle. Of women
he knew just so much as a traveller knows of a country when he travels
across it in haste from one inn to another. The verdict which Voltaire
passed upon his eighty years of life might, perhaps, have been applied
by Montriveau to his own thirty-seven years of existence; had he not
thirty-seven follies with which to reproach himself? At his age he was
as much a novice in love as the lad that has just been furtively reading
_Faublas_. Of women he had nothing to learn; of love he knew nothing;
and thus, desires, quite unknown before, sprang from this virginity of
feeling.
There are men here and there as much engrossed in the work demanded of
them by poverty or ambition, art or science, as M. de Montriveau by war
and a life of adventure--these know what it is to be in this unusual
position if they very seldom confess to it. Every man in Paris is
supposed to have been in love. No woman in Paris cares to take what
other women have passed over. The dread of being taken for a fool is the
source of the coxcomb’s bragging so common in France; for in France to
have the reputation of a fool is to be a foreigner in one’s own country.
Vehement desire seized on M. de Montriveau, desire that had gathered
strength from the heat of the desert and the first stirrings of a heart
unknown as yet in its suppressed turbulence.
A strong man, and violent as he was strong, he could keep mastery over
himself; but as he talked of indifferent things, he retired within
himself, and swore to possess this woman, for through that thought lay
the only way to love for him. Desire became a solemn compact made with
himself, an oath after the manner of the Arabs among whom he had lived;
for among them a vow is a kind of contract made with Destiny a man’s
whole future is solemnly pledged to fulfil it, and everything even his
own death, is regarded simply as a means to the one end.
A younger man would have said to himself, “I should very much like to
have the Duchess for my mistress!” or, “If the Duchesse de Langeais
cared for a man, he would be a very lucky rascal!” But the General said,
“I will have Mme de Langeais for my mistress.” And if a man takes such
an idea into his head when his heart has never been touched before, and
love begins to be a kind of religion with him, he little knows in what a
hell he has set his foot.
Armand de Montriveau suddenly took flight and went home in the first hot
fever-fit of the first love that he had known. When a man has kept all
his boyish beliefs, illusions, frankness, and impetuosity into middle
age, his first impulse is, as it were, to stretch out a hand to take the
thing that he desires; a little later he realizes that there is a gulf
set between them, and that it is all but impossible to cross it. A sort
of childish impatience seizes him, he wants the thing the more,
and trembles or cries. Wherefore, the next day, after the stormiest
reflections that had yet perturbed his mind, Armand de Montriveau
discovered that he was under the yoke of the senses, and his bondage
made the heavier by his love.
The woman so cavalierly treated in his thoughts of yesterday had become
a most sacred and dreadful power. She was to be his world, his life,
from this time forth. The greatest joy, the keenest anguish, that he
had yet known grew colorless before the bare recollection of the least
sensation stirred in him by her. The swiftest revolutions in a man’s
outward life only touch his interests, while passion brings a complete
revulsion of feeling. And so in those who live by feeling, rather than
by self-interest, the doers rather than the reasoners, the sanguine
rather than the lymphatic temperaments, love works a complete
revolution. In a flash, with one single reflection, Armand de Montriveau
wiped out his whole past life.
A score of times he asked himself, like a boy, “Shall I go, or shall I
not?” and then at last he dressed, came to the Hotel de Langeais
towards eight o’clock that evening, and was admitted. He was to see the
woman--ah! not the woman--the idol that he had seen yesterday, among
lights, a fresh innocent girl in gauze and silken lace and veiling.
He burst in upon her to declare his love, as if it were a question of
firing the first shot on a field of battle.
Poor novice! He found his ethereal sylphide shrouded in a brown cashmere
dressing-gown ingeniously befrilled, lying languidly stretched out upon
a sofa in a dimly lighted boudoir. Mme de Langeais did not so much as
rise, nothing was visible of her but her face, her hair was loose but
confined by a scarf. A hand indicated a seat, a hand that seemed white
as marble to Montriveau by the flickering light of a single candle at
the further side of the room, and a voice as soft as the light said:
“If it had been anyone else, M. le Marquis, a friend with whom I could
dispense with ceremony, or a mere acquaintance in whom I felt but slight
interest, I should have closed my door. I am exceedingly unwell.”
“I will go,” Armand said to himself.
“But I do not know how it is,” she continued (and the simple warrior
attributed the shining of her eyes to fever), “perhaps it was a
presentiment of your kind visit (and no one can be more sensible of the
prompt attention than I), but the vapors have left my head.”
“Then may I stay?”
“Oh, I should be very sorry to allow you to go. I told myself this
morning that it was impossible that I should have made the slightest
impression on your mind, and that in all probability you took my request
for one of the commonplaces of which Parisians are lavish on every
occasion. And I forgave your ingratitude in advance. An explorer
from the deserts is not supposed to know how exclusive we are in our
friendships in the Faubourg.”
The gracious, half-murmured words dropped one by one, as if they had
been weighted with the gladness that apparently brought them to her
lips. The Duchess meant to have the full benefit of her headache, and
her speculation was fully successful. The General, poor man, was really
distressed by the lady’s simulated distress. Like Crillon listening to
the story of the Crucifixion, he was ready to draw his sword against the
vapors. How could a man dare to speak just then to this suffering woman
of the love that she inspired? Armand had already felt that it would be
absurd to fire off a declaration of love point-blank at one so far above
other women. With a single thought came understanding of the delicacies
of feeling, of the soul’s requirements. To love: what was that but to
know how to plead, to beg for alms, to wait? And as for the love that
he felt, must he not prove it? His tongue was mute, it was frozen by the
conventions of the noble Faubourg, the majesty of a sick headache, the
bashfulness of love. But no power on earth could veil his glances; the
heat and the Infinite of the desert blazed in eyes calm as a panther’s,
beneath the lids that fell so seldom. The Duchess enjoyed the steady
gaze that enveloped her in light and warmth.
“Mme la Duchesse,” he answered, “I am afraid I express my gratitude for
your goodness very badly. At this moment I have but one desire--I wish
it were in my power to cure the pain.”
“Permit me to throw this off, I feel too warm now,” she said, gracefully
tossing aside a cushion that covered her feet.
“Madame, in Asia your feet would be worth some ten thousand sequins.
“A traveler’s compliment!” smiled she.
It pleased the sprightly lady to involve a rough soldier in a labyrinth
of nonsense, commonplaces, and meaningless talk, in which he manoeuvred,
in military language, as Prince Charles might have done at close
quarters with Napoleon. She took a mischievous amusement in
reconnoitring the extent of his infatuation by the number of foolish
speeches extracted from a novice whom she led step by step into a
hopeless maze, meaning to leave him there in confusion. She began by
laughing at him, but nevertheless it pleased her to make him forget how
time went.
The length of a first visit is frequently a compliment, but Armand was
innocent of any such intent. The famous explorer spent an hour in chat
on all sorts of subjects, said nothing that he meant to say, and was
feeling that he was only an instrument on whom this woman played, when
she rose, sat upright, drew the scarf from her hair, and wrapped it
about her throat, leant her elbow on the cushions, did him the honour
of a complete cure, and rang for lights. The most graceful movement
succeeded to complete repose. She turned to M. de Montriveau, from whom
she had just extracted a confidence which seemed to interest her deeply,
and said:
“You wish to make game of me by trying to make me believe that you
have never loved. It is a man’s great pretension with us. And we always
believe it! Out of pure politeness. Do we not know what to expect
from it for ourselves? Where is the man that has found but a single
opportunity of losing his heart? But you love to deceive us, and we
submit to be deceived, poor foolish creatures that we are; for your
hypocrisy is, after all, a homage paid to the superiority of our
sentiments, which are all purity.”
The last words were spoken with a disdainful pride that made the novice
in love feel like a worthless bale flung into the deep, while the
Duchess was an angel soaring back to her particular heaven.
“Confound it!” thought Armand de Montriveau, “how am I to tell this wild
thing that I love her?”
He had told her already a score of times; or rather, the Duchess had
a score of times read his secret in his eyes; and the passion in this
unmistakably great man promised her amusement, and an interest in her
empty life. So she prepared with no little dexterity to raise a certain
number of redoubts for him to carry by storm before he should gain an
entrance into her heart. Montriveau should overleap one difficulty after
another; he should be a plaything for her caprice, just as an insect
teased by children is made to jump from one finger to another, and in
spite of all its pains is kept in the same place by its mischievous
tormentor. And yet it gave the Duchess inexpressible happiness to see
that this strong man had told her the truth. Armand had never loved, as
he had said. He was about to go, in a bad humour with himself, and still
more out of humour with her; but it delighted her to see a sullenness
that she could conjure away with a word, a glance, or a gesture.
“Will you come tomorrow evening?” she asked. “I am going to a ball, but
I shall stay at home for you until ten o’clock.”
Montriveau spent most of the next day in smoking an indeterminate
quantity of cigars in his study window, and so got through the hours
till he could dress and go to the Hotel de Langeais. To anyone who had
known the magnificent worth of the man, it would have been grievous to
see him grown so small, so distrustful of himself; the mind that might
have shed light over undiscovered worlds shrunk to the proportions of
a she-coxcomb’s boudoir. Even he himself felt that he had fallen so low
already in his happiness that to save his life he could not have told
his love to one of his closest friends. Is there not always a trace
of shame in the lover’s bashfulness, and perhaps in woman a certain
exultation over diminished masculine stature? Indeed, but for a host of
motives of this kind, how explain why women are nearly always the first
to betray the secret?--a secret of which, perhaps, they soon weary.
“Mme la Duchesse cannot see visitors, monsieur,” said the man; “she is
dressing, she begs you to wait for her here.”
Armand walked up and down the drawing-room, studying her taste in the
least details. He admired Mme de Langeais herself in the objects of her
choosing; they revealed her life before he could grasp her personality
and ideas. About an hour later the Duchess came noiselessly out of her
chamber. Montriveau turned, saw her flit like a shadow across the room,
and trembled. She came up to him, not with a bourgeoise’s enquiry, “How
do I look?” She was sure of herself; her steady eyes said plainly, “I am
adorned to please you.”
No one surely, save the old fairy godmother of some princess in
disguise, could have wound a cloud of gauze about the dainty throat, so
that the dazzling satin skin beneath should gleam through the gleaming
folds. The Duchess was dazzling. The pale blue colour of her gown,
repeated in the flowers in her hair, appeared by the richness of its hue
to lend substance to a fragile form grown too wholly ethereal; for as
she glided towards Armand, the loose ends of her scarf floated about
her, putting that valiant warrior in mind of the bright damosel flies
that hover now over water, now over the flowers with which they seem to
mingle and blend.
“I have kept you waiting,” she said, with the tone that a woman can
always bring into her voice for the man whom she wishes to please.
“I would wait patiently through an eternity,” said he, “if I were sure
of finding a divinity so fair; but it is no compliment to speak of your
beauty to you; nothing save worship could touch you. Suffer me only to
kiss your scarf.”
“Oh, fie!” she said, with a commanding gesture, “I esteem you enough to
give you my hand.”
She held it out for his kiss. A woman’s hand, still moist from the
scented bath, has a soft freshness, a velvet smoothness that sends a
tingling thrill from the lips to the soul. And if a man is attracted to
a woman, and his senses are as quick to feel pleasure as his heart is
full of love, such a kiss, though chaste in appearance, may conjure up a
terrific storm.