some nobler way for a man to confirm the gift of his heart than by the
manifestation of prodigiously vulgar desires. We become bond-slaves
when we give ourselves body and soul, but a man is bound to nothing by
accepting the gift. Who will assure me that love will last? The very
love that I might show for you at every moment, the better to keep your
love, might serve you as a reason for deserting me. I have no wish to be
a second edition of Mme de Beauseant. Who can ever know what it is that
keeps you beside us? Our persistent coldness of heart is the cause of
an unfailing passion in some of you; other men ask for an untiring
devotion, to be idolized at every moment; some for gentleness, others
for tyranny. No woman in this world as yet has really read the riddle of
man’s heart.”
There was a pause. When she spoke again it was in a different tone.
“After all, my friend, you cannot prevent a woman from trembling at the
question, ‘Will this love last always?’ Hard though my words may be,
the dread of losing you puts them into my mouth. Oh, me! it is not I
who speaks, dear, it is reason; and how should anyone so mad as I be
reasonable? In truth, I am nothing of the sort.”
The poignant irony of her answer had changed before the end into the
most musical accents in which a woman could find utterance for ingenuous
love. To listen to her words was to pass in a moment from martyrdom to
heaven. Montriveau grew pale; and for the first time in his life, he
fell on his knees before a woman. He kissed the Duchess’s skirt hem, her
knees, her feet; but for the credit of the Faubourg Saint-Germain it is
necessary to respect the mysteries of its boudoirs, where many are fain
to take the utmost that Love can give without giving proof of love in
return.
The Duchess thought herself generous when she suffered herself to be
adored. But Montriveau was in a wild frenzy of joy over her complete
surrender of the position.
“Dear Antoinette,” he cried. “Yes, you are right; I will not have you
doubt any longer. I too am trembling at this moment--lest the angel of
my life should leave me; I wish I could invent some tie that might bind
us to each other irrevocably.”
“Ah!” she said, under her breath, “so I was right, you see.”
“Let me say all that I have to say; I will scatter all your fears with
a word. Listen! if I deserted you, I should deserve to die a thousand
deaths. Be wholly mine, and I will give you the right to kill me if I
am false. I myself will write a letter explaining certain reasons for
taking my own life; I will make my final arrangements, in short. You
shall have the letter in your keeping; in the eye of the law it will be
a sufficient explanation of my death. You can avenge yourself, and fear
nothing from God or men.”
“What good would the letter be to me? What would life be if I had lost
your love? If I wished to kill you, should I not be ready to follow? No;
thank you for the thought, but I do not want the letter. Should I not
begin to dread that you were faithful to me through fear? And if a man
knows that he must risk his life for a stolen pleasure, might it not
seem more tempting? Armand, the thing I ask of you is the one hard thing
to do.”
“Then what is it that you wish?”
“Your obedience and my liberty.”
“Ah, God!” cried he, “I am a child.”
“A wayward, much spoilt child,” she said, stroking the thick hair,
for his head still lay on her knee. “Ah! and loved far more than he
believes, and yet he is very disobedient. Why not stay as we are? Why
not sacrifice to me the desires that hurt me? Why not take what I can
give, when it is all that I can honestly grant? Are you not happy?”
“Oh yes, I am happy when I have not a doubt left. Antoinette, doubt in
love is a kind of death, is it not?”
In a moment he showed himself as he was, as all men are under the
influence of that hot fever; he grew eloquent, insinuating. And the
Duchess tasted the pleasures which she reconciled with her conscience
by some private, Jesuitical ukase of her own; Armand’s love gave her a
thrill of cerebral excitement which custom made as necessary to her as
society, or the Opera. To feel that she was adored by this man, who rose
above other men, whose character frightened her; to treat him like a
child; to play with him as Poppaea played with Nero--many women, like
the wives of King Henry VIII, have paid for such a perilous delight with
all the blood in their veins. Grim presentiment! Even as she surrendered
the delicate, pale, gold curls to his touch, and felt the close pressure
of his hand, the little hand of a man whose greatness she could not
mistake; even as she herself played with his dark, thick locks, in that
boudoir where she reigned a queen, the Duchess would say to herself:
“This man is capable of killing me if he once finds out that I am
playing with him.”
Armand de Montriveau stayed with her till two o’clock in the morning.
From that moment this woman, whom he loved, was neither a duchess nor a
Navarreins; Antoinette, in her disguises, had gone so far as to appear
to be a woman. On that most blissful evening, the sweetest prelude ever
played by a Parisienne to what the world calls “a slip”; in spite of all
her affectations of a coyness which she did not feel, the General saw
all maidenly beauty in her. He had some excuse for believing that so
many storms of caprice had been but clouds covering a heavenly soul;
that these must be lifted one by one like the veils that hid her divine
loveliness. The Duchess became, for him, the most simple and girlish
mistress; she was the one woman in the world for him; and he went away
quite happy in that at last he had brought her to give him such pledges
of love, that it seemed to him impossible but that he should be but her
husband henceforth in secret, her choice sanctioned by Heaven.
Armand went slowly home, turning this thought in his mind with the
impartiality of a man who is conscious of all the responsibilities that
love lays on him while he tastes the sweetness of its joys. He went
along the Quais to see the widest possible space of sky; his heart had
grown in him; he would fain have had the bounds of the firmament and of
earth enlarged. It seemed to him that his lungs drew an ampler breath.
In the course of his self-examination, as he walked, he vowed to love
this woman so devoutly, that every day of her life she should find
absolution for her sins against society in unfailing happiness. Sweet
stirrings of life when life is at the full! The man that is strong
enough to steep his soul in the colour of one emotion, feels infinite
joy as glimpses open out for him of an ardent lifetime that knows no
diminution of passion to the end; even so it is permitted to certain
mystics, in ecstasy, to behold the Light of God. Love would be naught
without the belief that it would last forever; love grows great
through constancy. It was thus that, wholly absorbed by his happiness,
Montriveau understood passion.
“We belong to each other forever!”
The thought was like a talisman fulfilling the wishes of his life. He
did not ask whether the Duchess might not change, whether her love might
not last. No, for he had faith. Without that virtue there is no future
for Christianity, and perhaps it is even more necessary to society.
A conception of life as feeling occurred to him for the first time;
hitherto he had lived by action, the most strenuous exertion of human
energies, the physical devotion, as it may be called, of the soldier.
Next day M. de Montriveau went early in the direction of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain. He had made an appointment at a house not far from the
Hotel de Langeais; and the business over, he went thither as if to his
own home. The General’s companion chanced to be a man for whom he felt
a kind of repulsion whenever he met him in other houses. This was the
Marquis de Ronquerolles, whose reputation had grown so great in Paris
boudoirs. He was witty, clever, and what was more--courageous; he set
the fashion to all the young men in Paris. As a man of gallantry, his
success and experience were equally matters of envy; and neither fortune
nor birth was wanting in his case, qualifications which add such lustre
in Paris to a reputation as a leader of fashion.
“Where are you going?” asked M. de Ronquerolles.
“To Mme de Langeais’.”
“Ah, true. I forgot that you had allowed her to lime(sp) you. You are
wasting your affections on her when they might be much better employed
elsewhere. I could have told you of half a score of women in the
financial world, any one of them a thousand times better worth your
while than that titled courtesan, who does with her brains what less
artificial women do with----”
“What is this, my dear fellow?” Armand broke in. “The Duchess is an
angel of innocence.”
Ronquerolles began to laugh.
“Things being thus, dear boy,” said he, “it is my duty to enlighten you.
Just a word; there is no harm in it between ourselves. Has the Duchess
surrendered? If so, I have nothing more to say. Come, give me your
confidence. There is no occasion to waste your time in grafting
your great nature on that unthankful stock, when all your hopes and
cultivation will come to nothing.”
Armand ingenuously made a kind of general report of his position,
enumerating with much minuteness the slender rights so hardly won.
Ronquerolles burst into a peal of laughter so heartless, that it would
have cost any other man his life. But from their manner of speaking and
looking at each other during that colloquy beneath the wall, in a corner
almost as remote from intrusion as the desert itself, it was easy to
imagine the friendship between the two men knew no bounds, and that no
power on earth could estrange them.
“My dear Armand, why did you not tell me that the Duchess was a puzzle
to you? I would have given you a little advice which might have brought
your flirtation properly through. You must know, to begin with, that the
women of our Faubourg, like any other women, love to steep themselves in
love; but they have a mind to possess and not to be possessed. They have
made a sort of compromise with human nature. The code of their parish
gives them a pretty wide latitude short of the last transgression. The
sweets enjoyed by this fair Duchess of yours are so many venial sins
to be washed away in the waters of penitence. But if you had the
impertinence to ask in earnest for the moral sin to which naturally
you are sure to attach the highest importance, you would see the deep
disdain with which the door of the boudoir and the house would be
incontinently shut upon you. The tender Antoinette would dismiss
everything from her memory; you would be less than a cipher for her.
She would wipe away your kisses, my dear friend, as indifferently as she
would perform her ablutions. She would sponge love from her cheeks as
she washes off rouge. We know women of that sort--the thorough-bred
Parisienne. Have you ever noticed a grisette tripping along the street?
Her face is as good as a picture. A pretty cap, fresh cheeks, trim hair,
a guileful smile, and the rest of her almost neglected. Is not this true
to the life? Well, that is the Parisienne. She knows that her face is
all that will be seen, so she devotes all her care, finery, and vanity
to her head. The Duchess is the same; the head is everything with her.
She can only feel through her intellect, her heart lies in her brain,
she is a sort of intellectual epicure, she has a head-voice. We call
that kind of poor creature a Lais of the intellect. You have been taken
in like a boy. If you doubt it, you can have proof of it tonight, this
morning, this instant. Go up to her, try the demand as an experiment,
insist peremptorily if it is refused. You might set about it like the
late Marechal de Richelieu, and get nothing for your pains.”
Armand was dumb with amazement.
“Has your desire reached the point of infatuation?”
“I want her at any cost!” Montriveau cried out despairingly.
“Very well. Now, look here. Be as inexorable as she is herself. Try to
humiliate her, to sting her vanity. Do _not_ try to move her heart,
nor her soul, but the woman’s nerves and temperament, for she is both
nervous and lymphatic. If you can once awaken desire in her, you are
safe. But you must drop these romantic boyish notions of yours. If when
once you have her in your eagle’s talons you yield a point or draw back,
if you so much as stir an eyelid, if she thinks that she can regain her
ascendancy over you, she will slip out of your clutches like a fish, and
you will never catch her again. Be as inflexible as law. Show no more
charity than the headsman. Hit hard, and then hit again. Strike and keep
on striking as if you were giving her the knout. Duchesses are made of
hard stuff, my dear Armand; there is a sort of feminine nature that is
only softened by repeated blows; and as suffering develops a heart in
women of that sort, so it is a work of charity not to spare the rod.
Do you persevere. Ah! when pain has thoroughly relaxed those nerves and
softened the fibres that you take to be so pliant and yielding; when
a shriveled heart has learned to expand and contract and to beat under
this discipline; when the brain has capitulated--then, perhaps, passion
may enter among the steel springs of this machinery that turns out tears
and affectations and languors and melting phrases; then you shall see a
most magnificent conflagration (always supposing that the chimney takes
fire). The steel feminine system will glow red-hot like iron in the
forge; that kind of heat lasts longer than any other, and the glow of it
may possibly turn to love.
“Still,” he continued, “I have my doubts. And, after all, is it worth
while to take so much trouble with the Duchess? Between ourselves a man
of my stamp ought first to take her in hand and break her in; I would
make a charming woman of her; she is a thoroughbred; whereas, you two
left to yourselves will never get beyond the A B C. But you are in love
with her, and just now you might not perhaps share my views on this
subject----. A pleasant time to you, my children,” added Ronquerolles,
after a pause. Then with a laugh: “I have decided myself for facile
beauties; they are tender, at any rate, the natural woman appears in
their love without any of your social seasonings. A woman that haggles
over herself, my poor boy, and only means to inspire love! Well, have
her like an extra horse--for show. The match between the sofa and
confessional, black and white, queen and knight, conscientious scruples
and pleasure, is an uncommonly amusing game of chess. And if a man knows
the game, let him be never so little of a rake, he wins in three moves.
Now, if I undertook a woman of that sort, I should start with the
deliberate purpose of----” His voice sank to a whisper over the last
words in Armand’s ear, and he went before there was time to reply.
As for Montriveau, he sprang at a bound across the courtyard of the
Hotel de Langeais, went unannounced up the stairs straight to the
Duchess’s bedroom.
“This is an unheard-of thing,” she said, hastily wrapping her
dressing-gown about her. “Armand! this is abominable of you! Come, leave
the room, I beg. Just go out of the room, and go at once. Wait for me in
the drawing-room.--Come now!”
“Dear angel, has a plighted lover no privilege whatsoever?”
“But, monsieur, it is in the worst possible taste of a plighted lover or
a wedded husband to break in like this upon his wife.”
He came up to the Duchess, took her in his arms, and held her tightly to
him.
“Forgive, dear Antoinette; but a host of horrid doubts are fermenting in
my heart.”
“_Doubts_? Fie!--Oh, fie on you!”
“Doubts all but justified. If you loved me, would you make this quarrel?
Would you not be glad to see me? Would you not have felt a something
stir in your heart? For I, that am not a woman, feel a thrill in my
inmost self at the mere sound of your voice. Often in a ballroom a
longing has come upon me to spring to your side and put my arms about
your neck.”
“Oh! if you have doubts of me so long as I am not ready to spring to
your arms before all the world, I shall be doubted all my life long, I
suppose. Why, Othello was a mere child compared with you!”
“Ah!” he cried despairingly, “you have no love for me----”
“Admit, at any rate, that at this moment you are not lovable.”
“Then I have still to find favour in your sight?”
“Oh, I should think so. Come,” added she, “with a little imperious air,
go out of the room, leave me. I am not like you; I wish always to find
favour in your eyes.”
Never woman better understood the art of putting charm into insolence,
and does not the charm double the effect? is it not enough to infuriate
the coolest of men? There was a sort of untrammeled freedom about Mme
de Langeais; a something in her eyes, her voice, her attitude, which is
never seen in a woman who loves when she stands face to face with him at
the mere sight of whom her heart must needs begin to beat. The Marquis
de Ronquerolles’ counsels had cured Armand of sheepishness; and further,
there came to his aid that rapid power of intuition which passion will
develop at moments in the least wise among mortals, while a great man
at such a time possesses it to the full. He guessed the terrible truth
revealed by the Duchess’s nonchalance, and his heart swelled with the
storm like a lake rising in flood.
“If you told me the truth yesterday, be mine, dear Antoinette,” he
cried; “you shall----”
“In the first place,” said she composedly, thrusting him back as he
came nearer--“in the first place, you are not to compromise me. My woman
might overhear you. Respect me, I beg of you. Your familiarity is all
very well in my boudoir in an evening; here it is quite different.
Besides, what may your ‘you shall’ mean? ‘You shall.’ No one as yet
has ever used that word to me. It is quite ridiculous, it seems to me,
absolutely ridiculous.
“Will you surrender nothing to me on this point?”
“Oh! do you call a woman’s right to dispose of herself a ‘point?’ A
capital point indeed; you will permit me to be entirely my own mistress
on that ‘point.’”
“And how if, believing in your promises to me, I should absolutely
require it?”
“Oh! then you would prove that I made the greatest possible mistake when
I made you a promise of any kind; and I should beg you to leave me in
peace.”
The General’s face grew white; he was about to spring to her side, when
Mme de Langeais rang the bell, the maid appeared, and, smiling with a
mocking grace, the Duchess added, “Be so good as to return when I am
visible.”
Then Montriveau felt the hardness of a woman as cold and keen as a steel
blade; she was crushing in her scorn. In one moment she had snapped
the bonds which held firm only for her lover. She had read Armand’s
intention in his face, and held that the moment had come for teaching
the Imperial soldier his lesson. He was to be made to feel that though
duchesses may lend themselves to love, they do not give themselves, and
that the conquest of one of them would prove a harder matter than the
conquest of Europe.
“Madame,” returned Armand, “I have not time to wait. I am a spoilt
child, as you told me yourself. When I seriously resolve to have that of
which we have been speaking, I shall have it.”
“You will have it?” queried she, and there was a trace of surprise in
her loftiness.
“I shall have it.”
“Oh! you would do me a great pleasure by ‘resolving’ to have it. For
curiosity’s sake, I should be delighted to know how you would set about
it----”
“I am delighted to put a new interest into your life,” interrupted
Montriveau, breaking into a laugh which dismayed the Duchess. “Will you
permit me to take you to the ball tonight?”
“A thousand thanks. M. de Marsay has been beforehand with you. I gave
him my promise.”
Montriveau bowed gravely and went.
“So Ronquerolles was right,” thought he, “and now for a game of chess.”
Thenceforward he hid his agitation by complete composure. No man is
strong enough to bear such sudden alternations from the height of
happiness to the depths of wretchedness. So he had caught a glimpse of
happy life the better to feel the emptiness of his previous existence?
There was a terrible storm within him; but he had learned to endure,
and bore the shock of tumultuous thoughts as a granite cliff stands out
against the surge of an angry sea.
“I could say nothing. When I am with her my wits desert me. She does not
know how vile and contemptible she is. Nobody has ventured to bring her
face to face with herself. She has played with many a man, no doubt; I
will avenge them all.”
For the first time, it may be, in a man’s heart, revenge and love were
blended so equally that Montriveau himself could not know whether love
or revenge would carry all before it. That very evening he went to the
ball at which he was sure of seeing the Duchesse de Langeais, and almost
despaired of reaching her heart. He inclined to think that there was
something diabolical about this woman, who was gracious to him and
radiant with charming smiles; probably because she had no wish to
allow the world to think that she had compromised herself with M. de
Montriveau. Coolness on both sides is a sign of love; but so long as
the Duchess was the same as ever, while the Marquis looked sullen and
morose, was it not plain that she had conceded nothing? Onlookers know
the rejected lover by various signs and tokens; they never mistake the
genuine symptoms for a coolness such as some women command their adorers
to feign, in the hope of concealing their love. Everyone laughed at
Montriveau; and he, having omitted to consult his cornac, was abstracted
and ill at ease. M. de Ronquerolles would very likely have bidden him
compromise the Duchess by responding to her show of friendliness by
passionate demonstrations; but as it was, Armand de Montriveau came away
from the ball, loathing human nature, and even then scarcely ready to
believe in such complete depravity.
“If there is no executioner for such crimes,” he said, as he looked up
at the lighted windows of the ballroom where the most enchanting women
in Paris were dancing, laughing, and chatting, “I will take you by the
nape of the neck, Mme la Duchesse, and make you feel something that
bites more deeply than the knife in the Place de la Greve. Steel against
steel; we shall see which heart will leave the deeper mark.”
For a week or so Mme de Langeais hoped to see the Marquis de Montriveau
again; but he contented himself with sending his card every morning to
the Hotel de Langeais. The Duchess could not help shuddering each time
that the card was brought in, and a dim foreboding crossed her mind, but
the thought was vague as a presentiment of disaster. When her eyes fell
on the name, it seemed to her that she felt the touch of the implacable
man’s strong hand in her hair; sometimes the words seemed like a
prognostication of a vengeance which her lively intellect invented in
the most shocking forms. She had studied him too well not to dread him.
Would he murder her, she wondered? Would that bull-necked man dash out
her vitals by flinging her over his head? Would he trample her body
under his feet? When, where, and how would he get her into his power?
Would he make her suffer very much, and what kind of pain would he
inflict? She repented of her conduct. There were hours when, if he had
come, she would have gone to his arms in complete self-surrender.
Every night before she slept she saw Montriveau’s face; every night it
wore a different aspect. Sometimes she saw his bitter smile, sometimes
the Jovelike knitting of the brows; or his leonine look, or some
disdainful movement of the shoulders made him terrible for her. Next day
the card seemed stained with blood. The name of Montriveau stirred her
now as the presence of the fiery, stubborn, exacting lover had never
done. Her apprehensions gathered strength in the silence. She was
forced, without aid from without, to face the thought of a hideous duel
of which she could not speak. Her proud hard nature was more responsive
to thrills of hate than it had ever been to the caresses of love. Ah! if
the General could but have seen her, as she sat with her forehead
drawn into folds between her brows; immersed in bitter thoughts in that
boudoir where he had enjoyed such happy moments, he might perhaps
have conceived high hopes. Of all human passions, is not pride alone
incapable of engendering anything base? Mme de Langeais kept her
thoughts to herself, but is it not permissible to suppose that M. de
Montriveau was no longer indifferent to her? And has not a man gained
ground immensely when a woman thinks about him? He is bound to make
progress with her either one way or the other afterwards.
Put any feminine creature under the feet of a furious horse or other
fearsome beast; she will certainly drop on her knees and look for death;
but if the brute shows a milder mood and does not utterly slay her,
she will love the horse, lion, bull, or what not, and will speak of him
quite at her ease. The Duchess felt that she was under the lion’s paws;
she quaked, but she did not hate him.