calumniated than God and the eighteenth century; for as I look back over
my own young days, I do not recollect that a single duchess trampled the
proprieties underfoot as you have just done. Novelists and scribblers
brought the reign of Louis XV into disrepute. Do not believe them. The
du Barry, my dear, was quite as good as the Widow Scarron, and the more
agreeable woman of the two. In my time a woman could keep her dignity
among her gallantries. Indiscretion was the ruin of us, and the
beginning of all the mischief. The philosophists--the nobodies whom we
admitted into our salons--had no more gratitude or sense of decency than
to make an inventory of our hearts, to traduce us one and all, and to
rail against the age by way of a return for our kindness. The people are
not in a position to judge of anything whatsoever; they looked at the
facts, not at the form. But the men and women of those times, my heart,
were quite as remarkable as at any other period of the Monarchy. Not one
of your Werthers, none of your notabilities, as they are called, never
a one of your men in yellow kid gloves and trousers that disguise the
poverty of their legs, would cross Europe in the dress of a travelling
hawker to brave the daggers of a Duke of Modena, and to shut himself up
in the dressing-room of the Regent’s daughter at the risk of his life.
Not one of your little consumptive patients with their tortoiseshell
eyeglasses would hide himself in a closet for six weeks, like Lauzun,
to keep up his mistress’s courage while she was lying in of her child.
There was more passion in M. de Jaucourt’s little finger than in
your whole race of higglers that leave a woman to better themselves
elsewhere! Just tell me where to find the page that would be cut in
pieces and buried under the floorboards for one kiss on the Konigsmark’s
gloved finger!
“Really, it would seem today that the roles are exchanged, and women
are expected to show their devotion for men. These modern gentlemen are
worth less, and think more of themselves. Believe me, my dear, all these
adventures that have been made public, and now are turned against our
good Louis XV, were kept quite secret at first. If it had not been for
a pack of poetasters, scribblers, and moralists, who hung about our
waiting-women, and took down their slanders, our epoch would have
appeared in literature as a well-conducted age. I am justifying the
century and not its fringe. Perhaps a hundred women of quality were
lost; but for every one, the rogues set down ten, like the gazettes
after a battle when they count up the losses of the beaten side. And in
any case I do not know that the Revolution and the Empire can reproach
us; they were coarse, dull, licentious times. Faugh! it is revolting.
Those are the brothels of French history.
“This preamble, my dear child,” she continued after a pause, “brings
me to the thing that I have to say. If you care for Montriveau, you are
quite at liberty to love him at your ease, and as much as you can. I
know by experience that, unless you are locked up (but locking people
up is out of fashion now), you will do as you please; I should have done
the same at your age. Only, sweetheart, I should not have given up my
right to be the mother of future Ducs de Langeais. So mind appearances.
The Vidame is right. No man is worth a single one of the sacrifices
which we are foolish enough to make for their love. Put yourself in
such a position that you may still be M. de Langeais’ wife, in case you
should have the misfortune to repent. When you are an old woman, you
will be very glad to hear mass said at Court, and not in some provincial
convent. Therein lies the whole question. A single imprudence means an
allowance and a wandering life; it means that you are at the mercy of
your lover; it means that you must put up with insolence from women
that are not so honest, precisely because they have been very vulgarly
sharp-witted. It would be a hundred times better to go to Montriveau’s
at night in a cab, and disguised, instead of sending your carriage in
broad daylight. You are a little fool, my dear child! Your carriage
flattered his vanity; your person would have ensnared his heart. All
this that I have said is just and true; but, for my own part, I do not
blame you. You are two centuries behind the times with your false ideas
of greatness. There, leave us to arrange your affairs, and say that
Montriveau made your servants drunk to gratify his vanity and to
compromise you----”
The Duchess rose to her feet with a spring. “In Heaven’s name, aunt, do
not slander him!”
The old Princess’s eyes flashed.
“Dear child,” she said, “I should have liked to spare such of your
illusions as were not fatal. But there must be an end of all illusions
now. You would soften me if I were not so old. Come, now, do not vex
him, or us, or anyone else. I will undertake to satisfy everybody; but
promise me not to permit yourself a single step henceforth until you
have consulted me. Tell me all, and perhaps I may bring it all right
again.”
“Aunt, I promise----”
“To tell me everything?”
“Yes, everything. Everything that can be told.”
“But, my sweetheart, it is precisely what cannot be told that I want
to know. Let us understand each other thoroughly. Come, let me put my
withered old lips on your beautiful forehead. No; let me do as I wish. I
forbid you to kiss my bones. Old people have a courtesy of their own....
There, take me down to my carriage,” she added, when she had kissed her
niece.
“Then may I go to him in disguise, dear aunt?”
“Why--yes. The story can always be denied,” said the old Princess.
This was the one idea which the Duchess had clearly grasped in the
sermon. When Mme de Chauvry was seated in the corner of her carriage,
Mme de Langeais bade her a graceful adieu and went up to her room. She
was quite happy again.
“My person would have snared his heart; my aunt is right; a man cannot
surely refuse a pretty woman when she understands how to offer herself.”
That evening, at the Elysee-Bourbon, the Duc de Navarreins, M. de
Pamiers, M. de Marsay, M. de Grandlieu, and the Duc de Maufrigneuse
triumphantly refuted the scandals that were circulating with regard to
the Duchesse de Langeais. So many officers and other persons had seen
Montriveau walking in the Tuileries that morning, that the silly story
was set down to chance, which takes all that is offered. And so,
in spite of the fact that the Duchess’s carriage had waited before
Montriveau’s door, her character became as clear and as spotless as
Membrino’s sword after Sancho had polished it up.
But, at two o’clock, M. de Ronquerolles passed Montriveau in a deserted
alley, and said with a smile, “She is coming on, is your Duchess. Go on,
keep it up!” he added, and gave a significant cut of the riding whip to
his mare, who sped off like a bullet down the avenue.
Two days after the fruitless scandal, Mme de Langeais wrote to M. de
Montriveau. That letter, like the preceding ones, remained unanswered.
This time she took her own measures, and bribed M. de Montriveau’s man,
Auguste. And so at eight o’clock that evening she was introduced into
Armand’s apartment. It was not the room in which that secret scene had
passed; it was entirely different. The Duchess was told that the General
would not be at home that night. Had he two houses? The man would give
no answer. Mme de Langeais had bought the key of the room, but not the
man’s whole loyalty.
When she was left alone she saw her fourteen letters lying on an
old-fashioned stand, all of them uncreased and unopened. He had not
read them. She sank into an easy-chair, and for a while she lost
consciousness. When she came to herself, Auguste was holding vinegar for
her to inhale.
“A carriage; quick!” she ordered.
The carriage came. She hastened downstairs with convulsive speed, and
left orders that no one was to be admitted. For twenty-four hours she
lay in bed, and would have no one near her but her woman, who brought
her a cup of orange-flower water from time to time. Suzette heard
her mistress moan once or twice, and caught a glimpse of tears in the
brilliant eyes, now circled with dark shadows.
The next day, amid despairing tears, Mme de Langeais took her
resolution. Her man of business came for an interview, and no doubt
received instructions of some kind. Afterwards she sent for the
Vidame de Pamiers; and while she waited, she wrote a letter to M.
de Montriveau. The Vidame punctually came towards two o’clock that
afternoon, to find his young cousin looking white and worn, but
resigned; never had her divine loveliness been more poetic than now in
the languor of her agony.
“You owe this assignation to your eighty-four years, dear cousin,” she
said. “Ah! do not smile, I beg of you, when an unhappy woman has reached
the lowest depths of wretchedness. You are a gentleman, and after the
adventures of your youth you must feel some indulgence for women.”
“None whatever,” said he.
“Indeed!”
“Everything is in their favour.”
“Ah! Well, you are one of the inner family circle; possibly you will be
the last relative, the last friend whose hand I shall press, so I can
ask your good offices. Will you, dear Vidame, do me a service which I
could not ask of my own father, nor of my uncle Grandlieu, nor of any
woman? You cannot fail to understand. I beg of you to do my bidding, and
then to forget what you have done, whatever may come of it. It is this:
Will you take this letter and go to M. de Montriveau? will you see him
yourself, give it into his hands, and ask him, as you men can ask things
between yourselves--for you have a code of honour between man and man
which you do not use with us, and a different way of regarding things
between yourselves--ask him if he will read this letter? Not in
your presence. Certain feelings men hide from each other. I give you
authority to say, if you think it necessary to bring him, that it is a
question of life or death for me. If he deigns----”
“_Deigns_!” repeated the Vidame.
“If he deigns to read it,” the Duchess continued with dignity, “say one
thing more. You will go to see him about five o’clock, for I know that
he will dine at home today at that time. Very good. By way of answer he
must come to see me. If, three hours afterwards, by eight o’clock, he
does not leave his house, all will be over. The Duchesse de Langeais
will have vanished from the world. I shall not be dead, dear friend, no,
but no human power will ever find me again on this earth. Come and dine
with me; I shall at least have one friend with me in the last agony.
Yes, dear cousin, tonight will decide my fate; and whatever happens to
me, I pass through an ordeal by fire. There! not a word. I will hear
nothing of the nature of comment or advice----Let us chat and laugh
together,” she added, holding out a hand, which he kissed. “We will be
like two grey-headed philosophers who have learned how to enjoy life to
the last moment. I will look my best; I will be very enchanting for
you. You perhaps will be the last man to set eyes on the Duchesse de
Langeais.”
The Vicomte bowed, took the letter, and went without a word. At five
o’clock he returned. His cousin had studied to please him, and she
looked lovely indeed. The room was gay with flowers as if for a
festivity; the dinner was exquisite. For the grey-headed Vidame the
Duchess displayed all the brilliancy of her wit; she was more charming
than she had ever been before. At first the Vidame tried to look on
all these preparations as a young woman’s jest; but now and again the
attempted illusion faded, the spell of his fair cousin’s charm was
broken. He detected a shudder caused by some kind of sudden dread, and
once she seemed to listen during a pause.
“What is the matter?” he asked.
“Hush!” she said.
At seven o’clock the Duchess left him for a few minutes. When she came
back again she was dressed as her maid might have dressed for a journey.
She asked her guest to be her escort, took his arm, sprang into a
hackney coach, and by a quarter to eight they stood outside M. de
Montriveau’s door.
Armand meantime had been reading the following letter:--
“MY FRIEND,--I went to your rooms for a few minutes without your
knowledge; I found my letters there, and took them away. This cannot
be indifference, Armand, between us; and hatred would show itself quite
differently. If you love me, make an end of this cruel play, or you will
kill me, and afterwards, learning how much you were loved, you might be
in despair. If I have not rightly understood you, if you have no feeling
towards me but aversion, which implies both contempt and disgust, then
I give up all hope. A man never recovers from those feelings. You will
have no regrets. Dreadful though that thought may be, it will comfort me
in my long sorrow. Regrets? Oh, my Armand, may I never know of them; if
I thought that I had caused you a single regret----But, no, I will not
tell you what desolation I should feel. I should be living still, and I
could not be your wife; it would be too late!
“Now that I have given myself wholly to you in thought, to whom else
should I give myself?--to God. The eyes that you loved for a little
while shall never look on another man’s face; and may the glory of God
blind them to all besides. I shall never hear human voices more since I
heard yours--so gentle at the first, so terrible yesterday; for it seems
to me that I am still only on the morrow of your vengeance. And now
may the will of God consume me. Between His wrath and yours, my friend,
there will be nothing left for me but a little space for tears and
prayers.
“Perhaps you wonder why I write to you? Ah! do not think ill of me if I
keep a gleam of hope, and give one last sigh to happy life before I take
leave of it forever. I am in a hideous position. I feel all the inward
serenity that comes when a great resolution has been taken, even while I
hear the last growlings of the storm. When you went out on that terrible
adventure which so drew me to you, Armand, you went from the desert to
the oasis with a good guide to show you the way. Well, I am going out of
the oasis into the desert, and you are a pitiless guide to me. And yet
you only, my friend, can understand how melancholy it is to look back
for the last time on happiness--to you, and you only, I can make moan
without a blush. If you grant my entreaty, I shall be happy; if you are
inexorable, I shall expiate the wrong that I have done. After all, it is
natural, is it not, that a woman should wish to live, invested with all
noble feelings, in her friend’s memory? Oh! my one and only love, let
her to whom you gave life go down into the tomb in the belief that she
is great in your eyes. Your harshness led me to reflect; and now that I
love you so, it seems to me that I am less guilty than you think. Listen
to my justification, I owe it to you; and you that are all the world to
me, owe me at least a moment’s justice.
“I have learned by my own anguish all that I made you suffer by my
coquetry; but in those days I was utterly ignorant of love. _You_ know
what the torture is, and you mete it out to me! During those first eight
months that you gave me you never roused any feeling of love in me. Do
you ask why this was so, my friend? I can no more explain it than I can
tell you why I love you now. Oh! certainly it flattered my vanity that I
should be the subject of your passionate talk, and receive those burning
glances of yours; but you left me cold. No, I was not a woman; I had
no conception of womanly devotion and happiness. Who was to blame? You
would have despised me, would you not, if I had given myself without
the impulse of passion? Perhaps it is the highest height to which we
can rise--to give all and receive no joy; perhaps there is no merit in
yielding oneself to bliss that is foreseen and ardently desired. Alas,
my friend, I can say this now; these thoughts came to me when I played
with you; and you seemed to me so great even then that I would not have
you owe the gift to pity----What is this that I have written?
“I have taken back all my letters; I am flinging them one by one on the
fire; they are burning. You will never know what they confessed--all the
love and the passion and the madness----
“I will say no more, Armand; I will stop. I will not say another word of
my feelings. If my prayers have not echoed from my soul through yours,
I also, woman that I am, decline to owe your love to your pity. It is my
wish to be loved, because you cannot choose but love me, or else to
be left without mercy. If you refuse to read this letter, it shall be
burnt. If, after you have read it, you do not come to me within three
hours, to be henceforth forever my husband, the one man in the world for
me; then I shall never blush to know that this letter is in your hands,
the pride of my despair will protect my memory from all insult, and my
end shall be worthy of my love. When you see me no more on earth, albeit
I shall still be alive, you yourself will not think without a shudder
of the woman who, in three hours’ time, will live only to overwhelm
you with her tenderness; a woman consumed by a hopeless love, and
faithful--not to memories of past joys--but to a love that was slighted.
“The Duchesse de la Valliere wept for lost happiness and vanished power;
but the Duchesse de Langeais will be happy that she may weep and be a
power for you still. Yes, you will regret me. I see clearly that I was
not of this world, and I thank you for making it clear to me.
“Farewell; you will never touch _my_ axe. Yours was the executioner’s
axe, mine is God’s; yours kills, mine saves. Your love was but mortal,
it could not endure disdain or ridicule; mine can endure all things
without growing weaker, it will last eternally. Ah! I feel a sombre joy
in crushing you that believe yourself so great; in humbling you with the
calm, indulgent smile of one of the least among the angels that lie at
the feet of God, for to them is given the right and the power to protect
and watch over men in His name. You have but felt fleeting desires,
while the poor nun will shed the light of her ceaseless and ardent
prayer about you, she will shelter you all your life long beneath the
wings of a love that has nothing of earth in it.
“I have a presentiment of your answer; our trysting place shall be--in
heaven. Strength and weakness can both enter there, dear Armand; the
strong and the weak are bound to suffer. This thought soothes the
anguish of my final ordeal. So calm am I that I should fear that I had
ceased to love you if I were not about to leave the world for your sake.
“ANTOINETTE.”
“Dear Vidame,” said the Duchess as they reached Montriveau’s house, “do
me the kindness to ask at the door whether he is at home.” The Vidame,
obedient after the manner of the eighteenth century to a woman’s wish,
got out, and came back to bring his cousin an affirmative answer that
sent a shudder through her. She grasped his hand tightly in hers,
suffered him to kiss her on either cheek, and begged him to go at once.
He must not watch her movements nor try to protect her. “But the people
passing in the street,” he objected.
“No one can fail in respect to me,” she said. It was the last word
spoken by the Duchess and the woman of fashion.
The Vidame went. Mme de Langeais wrapped herself about in her cloak,
and stood on the doorstep until the clocks struck eight. The last stroke
died away. The unhappy woman waited ten, fifteen minutes; to the last
she tried to see a fresh humiliation in the delay, then her faith ebbed.
She turned to leave the fatal threshold.
“Oh, God!” the cry broke from her in spite of herself; it was the first
word spoken by the Carmelite.
Montriveau and some of his friends were talking together. He tried to
hasten them to a conclusion, but his clock was slow, and by the time he
started out for the Hotel de Langeais the Duchess was hurrying on foot
through the streets of Paris, goaded by the dull rage in her heart. She
reached the Boulevard d’Enfer, and looked out for the last time through
falling tears on the noisy, smoky city that lay below in a red mist,
lighted up by its own lamps. Then she hailed a cab, and drove away,
never to return. When the Marquis de Montriveau reached the Hotel de
Langeais, and found no trace of his mistress, he thought that he had
been duped. He hurried away at once to the Vidame, and found that worthy
gentleman in the act of slipping on his flowered dressing-gown, thinking
the while of his fair cousin’s happiness.
Montriveau gave him one of the terrific glances that produced the effect
of an electric shock on men and women alike.
“Is it possible that you have lent yourself to some cruel hoax,
monsieur?” Montriveau exclaimed. “I have just come from Mme de Langeais’
house; the servants say that she is out.”
“Then a great misfortune has happened, no doubt,” returned the Vidame,
“and through your fault. I left the Duchess at your door----”
“When?”
“At a quarter to eight.”
“Good evening,” returned Montriveau, and he hurried home to ask the
porter whether he had seen a lady standing on the doorstep that evening.
“Yes, my Lord Marquis, a handsome woman, who seemed very much put out.
She was crying like a Magdalen, but she never made a sound, and stood
as upright as a post. Then at last she went, and my wife and I that were
watching her while she could not see us, heard her say, ‘Oh, God!’ so
that it went to our hearts, asking your pardon, to hear her say it.”
Montriveau, in spite of all his firmness, turned pale at those few
words. He wrote a few lines to Ronquerolles, sent off the message at
once, and went up to his rooms. Ronquerolles came just about midnight.
Armand gave him the Duchess’s letter to read.
“Well?” asked Ronquerolles.
“She was here at my door at eight o’clock; at a quarter-past eight she
had gone. I have lost her, and I love her. Oh! if my life were my own, I
could blow my brains out.”
“Pooh, pooh! Keep cool,” said Ronquerolles. “Duchesses do not fly off
like wagtails. She cannot travel faster than three leagues an hour, and
tomorrow we will ride six.--Confound it! Mme de Langeais is no ordinary
woman,” he continued. “Tomorrow we will all of us mount and ride.
The police will put us on her track during the day. She must have a
carriage; angels of that sort have no wings. We shall find her whether
she is on the road or hidden in Paris. There is the semaphore. We can
stop her. You shall be happy. But, my dear fellow, you have made a
blunder, of which men of your energy are very often guilty. They judge
others by themselves, and do not know the point when human nature gives
way if you strain the cords too tightly. Why did you not say a word
to me sooner? I would have told you to be punctual. Good-bye till
tomorrow,” he added, as Montriveau said nothing. “Sleep if you can,” he
added, with a grasp of the hand.
But the greatest resources which society has ever placed at the disposal
of statesmen, kings, ministers, bankers, or any human power, in fact,
were all exhausted in vain. Neither Montriveau nor his friends could
find any trace of the Duchess. It was clear that she had entered a
convent. Montriveau determined to search, or to institute a search, for
her through every convent in the world. He must have her, even at the
cost of all the lives in a town. And in justice to this extraordinary
man, it must be said that his frenzied passion awoke to the same
ardour daily and lasted through five years. Only in 1829 did the Duc de
Navarreins hear by chance that his daughter had travelled to Spain as
Lady Julia Hopwood’s maid, that she had left her service at Cadiz, and
that Lady Julia never discovered that Mlle Caroline was the illustrious
duchess whose sudden disappearance filled the minds of the highest
society of Paris.
The feelings of the two lovers when they met again on either side of the
grating in the Carmelite convent should now be comprehended to the full,
and the violence of the passion awakened in either soul will doubtless
explain the catastrophe of the story.
In 1823 the Duc de Langeais was dead, and his wife was free. Antoinette
de Navarreins was living, consumed by love, on a ledge of rock in
the Mediterranean; but it was in the Pope’s power to dissolve Sister
Theresa’s vows. The happiness bought by so much love might yet bloom
for the two lovers. These thoughts sent Montriveau flying from Cadiz to
Marseilles, and from Marseilles to Paris.
A few months after his return to France, a merchant brig, fitted out and
munitioned for active service, set sail from the port of Marseilles for
Spain. The vessel had been chartered by several distinguished men, most
of them Frenchmen, who, smitten with a romantic passion for the East,
wished to make a journey to those lands. Montriveau’s familiar knowledge
of Eastern customs made him an invaluable travelling companion, and at
the entreaty of the rest he had joined the expedition; the Minister
of War appointed him lieutenant-general, and put him on the Artillery
Commission to facilitate his departure.