enjoined silence with a wave of her hand, which she obeyed by a survival
of habit, and her mother went on in harsh tones: “Don’t talk to me about
the man! He never set foot in church excepting to see you and to be
married. People without religion are capable of anything. Did Guillaume
ever dream of hiding anything from me, of spending three days without
saying a word to me, and of chattering afterwards like a blind magpie?”
“My dear mother, you judge superior people too severely. If their ideas
were the same as other folks’, they would not be men of genius.”
“Very well, then let men of genius stop at home and not get married.
What! A man of genius is to make his wife miserable? And because he is a
genius it is all right! Genius, genius! It is not so very clever to
say black one minute and white the next, as he does, to interrupt other
people, to dance such rigs at home, never to let you know which foot you
are to stand on, to compel his wife never to be amused unless my lord is
in gay spirits, and to be dull when he is dull.”
“But, mother, the very nature of such imaginations----”
“What are such ‘imaginations’?” Madame Guillaume went on, interrupting
her daughter again. “Fine ones his are, my word! What possesses a man
that all on a sudden, without consulting a doctor, he takes it into his
head to eat nothing but vegetables? If indeed it were from religious
motives, it might do him some good--but he has no more religion than a
Huguenot. Was there ever a man known who, like him, loved horses better
than his fellow-creatures, had his hair curled like a heathen, laid
statues under muslin coverlets, shut his shutters in broad day to work
by lamp-light? There, get along; if he were not so grossly immoral, he
would be fit to shut up in a lunatic asylum. Consult Monsieur Loraux,
the priest at Saint Sulpice, ask his opinion about it all, and he will
tell you that your husband, does not behave like a Christian.”
“Oh, mother, can you believe----?”
“Yes, I do believe. You loved him, and you can see none of these things.
But I can remember in the early days after your marriage. I met him
in the Champs-Elysees. He was on horseback. Well, at one minute he was
galloping as hard as he could tear, and then pulled up to a walk. I said
to myself at that moment, ‘There is a man devoid of judgement.’”
“Ah, ha!” cried Monsieur Guillaume, “how wise I was to have your money
settled on yourself with such a queer fellow for a husband!”
When Augustine was so imprudent as to set forth her serious grievances
against her husband, the two old people were speechless with
indignation. But the word “divorce” was ere long spoken by Madame
Guillaume. At the sound of the word divorce the apathetic old draper
seemed to wake up. Prompted by his love for his daughter, and also by
the excitement which the proceedings would bring into his uneventful
life, father Guillaume took up the matter. He made himself the leader of
the application for a divorce, laid down the lines of it, almost argued
the case; he offered to be at all the charges, to see the lawyers, the
pleaders, the judges, to move heaven and earth. Madame de Sommervieux
was frightened, she refused her father’s services, said she would not
be separated from her husband even if she were ten times as unhappy, and
talked no more about her sorrows. After being overwhelmed by her parents
with all the little wordless and consoling kindnesses by which the
old couple tried in vain to make up to her for her distress of heart,
Augustine went away, feeling the impossibility of making a superior mind
intelligible to weak intellects. She had learned that a wife must hide
from every one, even from her parents, woes for which it is so difficult
to find sympathy. The storms and sufferings of the upper spheres
are appreciated only by the lofty spirits who inhabit there. In any
circumstance we can only be judged by our equals.
Thus poor Augustine found herself thrown back on the horror of her
meditations, in the cold atmosphere of her home. Study was indifferent
to her, since study had not brought her back her husband’s heart.
Initiated into the secret of these souls of fire, but bereft of their
resources, she was compelled to share their sorrows without sharing
their pleasures. She was disgusted with the world, which to her seemed
mean and small as compared with the incidents of passion. In short, her
life was a failure.
One evening an idea flashed upon her that lighted up her dark grief like
a beam from heaven. Such an idea could never have smiled on a heart less
pure, less virtuous than hers. She determined to go to the Duchesse de
Carigliano, not to ask her to give her back her husband’s heart, but to
learn the arts by which it had been captured; to engage the interest of
this haughty fine lady for the mother of her lover’s children; to appeal
to her and make her the instrument of her future happiness, since she
was the cause of her present wretchedness.
So one day Augustine, timid as she was, but armed with supernatural
courage, got into her carriage at two in the afternoon to try for
admittance to the boudoir of the famous coquette, who was never visible
till that hour. Madame de Sommervieux had not yet seen any of the
ancient and magnificent mansions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. As she
made her way through the stately corridors, the handsome staircases,
the vast drawing-rooms--full of flowers, though it was in the depth of
winter, and decorated with the taste peculiar to women born to opulence
or to the elegant habits of the aristocracy, Augustine felt a terrible
clutch at her heart; she coveted the secrets of an elegance of which
she had never had an idea; she breathed in an air of grandeur which
explained the attraction of the house for her husband. When she reached
the private rooms of the Duchess she was filled with jealousy and a sort
of despair, as she admired the luxurious arrangement of the furniture,
the draperies and the hangings. Here disorder was a grace, here luxury
affected a certain contempt of splendor. The fragrance that floated
in the warm air flattered the sense of smell without offending it.
The accessories of the rooms were in harmony with a view, through
plate-glass windows, of the lawns in a garden planted with evergreen
trees. It was all bewitching, and the art of it was not perceptible. The
whole spirit of the mistress of these rooms pervaded the drawing-room
where Augustine awaited her. She tried to divine her rival’s character
from the aspect of the scattered objects; but there was here something
as impenetrable in the disorder as in the symmetry, and to the
simple-minded young wife all was a sealed letter. All that she could
discern was that, as a woman, the Duchess was a superior person. Then a
painful thought came over her.
“Alas! And is it true,” she wondered, “that a simple and loving heart
is not all-sufficient to an artist; that to balance the weight of these
powerful souls they need a union with feminine souls of a strength equal
to their own? If I had been brought up like this siren, our weapons at
least might have been equal in the hour of struggle.”
“But I am not at home!” The sharp, harsh words, though spoken in an
undertone in the adjoining boudoir, were heard by Augustine, and her
heart beat violently.
“The lady is in there,” replied the maid.
“You are an idiot! Show her in,” replied the Duchess, whose voice was
sweeter, and had assumed the dulcet tones of politeness. She evidently
now meant to be heard.
Augustine shyly entered the room. At the end of the dainty boudoir she
saw the Duchess lounging luxuriously on an ottoman covered with brown
velvet and placed in the centre of a sort of apse outlined by soft folds
of white muslin over a yellow lining. Ornaments of gilt bronze, arranged
with exquisite taste, enhanced this sort of dais, under which the
Duchess reclined like a Greek statue. The dark hue of the velvet gave
relief to every fascinating charm. A subdued light, friendly to her
beauty, fell like a reflection rather than a direct illumination. A few
rare flowers raised their perfumed heads from costly Sevres vases. At
the moment when this picture was presented to Augustine’s astonished
eyes, she was approaching so noiselessly that she caught a glance from
those of the enchantress. This look seemed to say to some one whom
Augustine did not at first perceive, “Stay; you will see a pretty woman,
and make her visit seem less of a bore.”
On seeing Augustine, the Duchess rose and made her sit down by her.
“And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, madame?” she said with
a most gracious smile.
“Why all the falseness?” thought Augustine, replying only with a bow.
Her silence was compulsory. The young woman saw before her a superfluous
witness of the scene. This personage was, of all the Colonels in the
army, the youngest, the most fashionable, and the finest man. His face,
full of life and youth, but already expressive, was further enhanced by
a small moustache twirled up into points, and as black as jet, by a full
imperial, by whiskers carefully combed, and a forest of black hair in
some disorder. He was whisking a riding whip with an air of ease and
freedom which suited his self-satisfied expression and the elegance of
his dress; the ribbons attached to his button-hole were carelessly tied,
and he seemed to pride himself much more on his smart appearance than
on his courage. Augustine looked at the Duchesse de Carigliano, and
indicated the Colonel by a sidelong glance. All its mute appeal was
understood.
“Good-bye, then, Monsieur d’Aiglemont, we shall meet in the Bois de
Boulogne.”
These words were spoken by the siren as though they were the result of
an agreement made before Augustine’s arrival, and she winged them with a
threatening look that the officer deserved perhaps for the admiration he
showed in gazing at the modest flower, which contrasted so well with the
haughty Duchess. The young fop bowed in silence, turned on the heels
of his boots, and gracefully quitted the boudoir. At this instant,
Augustine, watching her rival, whose eyes seemed to follow the brilliant
officer, detected in that glance a sentiment of which the transient
expression is known to every woman. She perceived with the deepest
anguish that her visit would be useless; this lady, full of artifice,
was too greedy of homage not to have a ruthless heart.
“Madame,” said Augustine in a broken voice, “the step I am about to take
will seem to you very strange; but there is a madness of despair which
ought to excuse anything. I understand only too well why Theodore
prefers your house to any other, and why your mind has so much power
over his. Alas! I have only to look into myself to find more than ample
reasons. But I am devoted to my husband, madame. Two years of tears have
not effaced his image from my heart, though I have lost his. In my folly
I dared to dream of a contest with you; and I have come to you to ask
you by what means I may triumph over yourself. Oh, madame,” cried the
young wife, ardently seizing the hand which her rival allowed her to
hold, “I will never pray to God for my own happiness with so much
fervor as I will beseech Him for yours, if you will help me to win back
Sommervieux’s regard--I will not say his love. I have no hope but in
you. Ah! tell me how you could please him, and make him forget the first
days----” At these words Augustine broke down, suffocated with sobs she
could not suppress. Ashamed of her weakness, she hid her face in her
handkerchief, which she bathed with tears.
“What a child you are, my dear little beauty!” said the Duchess, carried
away by the novelty of such a scene, and touched, in spite of herself,
at receiving such homage from the most perfect virtue perhaps in Paris.
She took the young wife’s handkerchief, and herself wiped the tears from
her eyes, soothing her by a few monosyllables murmured with gracious
compassion. After a moment’s silence the Duchess, grasping poor
Augustine’s hands in both her own--hands that had a rare character of
dignity and powerful beauty--said in a gentle and friendly voice:
“My first warning is to advise you not to weep so bitterly; tears are
disfiguring. We must learn to deal firmly with the sorrows that make us
ill, for love does not linger long by a sick-bed. Melancholy, at first,
no doubt, lends a certain attractive grace, but it ends by dragging the
features and blighting the loveliest face. And besides, our tyrants are
so vain as to insist that their slaves should be always cheerful.”
“But, madame, it is not in my power not to feel. How is it possible,
without suffering a thousand deaths, to see the face which once beamed
with love and gladness turn chill, colorless, and indifferent? I cannot
control my heart!”
“So much the worse, sweet child. But I fancy I know all your story.
In the first place, if your husband is unfaithful to you, understand
clearly that I am not his accomplice. If I was anxious to have him in my
drawing-room, it was, I own, out of vanity; he was famous, and he went
nowhere. I like you too much already to tell you all the mad things he
has done for my sake. I will only reveal one, because it may perhaps
help us to bring him back to you, and to punish him for the audacity of
his behavior to me. He will end by compromising me. I know the world
too well, my dear, to abandon myself to the discretion of a too superior
man. You should know that one may allow them to court one, but marry
them--that is a mistake! We women ought to admire men of genius, and
delight in them as a spectacle, but as to living with them? Never.--No,
no. It is like wanting to find pleasure in inspecting the machinery of
the opera instead of sitting in a box to enjoy its brilliant illusions.
But this misfortune has fallen on you, my poor child, has it not? Well,
then, you must try to arm yourself against tyranny.”
“Ah, madame, before coming in here, only seeing you as I came in, I
already detected some arts of which I had no suspicion.”
“Well, come and see me sometimes, and it will not be long before you
have mastered the knowledge of these trifles, important, too, in their
way. Outward things are, to fools, half of life; and in that matter more
than one clever man is a fool, in spite of all his talent. But I dare
wager you never could refuse your Theodore anything!”
“How refuse anything, madame, if one loves a man?”
“Poor innocent, I could adore you for your simplicity. You should know
that the more we love the less we should allow a man, above all, a
husband, to see the whole extent of our passion. The one who loves most
is tyrannized over, and, which is worse, is sooner or later neglected.
The one who wishes to rule should----”
“What, madame, must I then dissimulate, calculate, become false, form an
artificial character, and live in it? How is it possible to live in such
a way? Can you----” she hesitated; the Duchess smiled.
“My dear child,” the great lady went on in a serious tone, “conjugal
happiness has in all times been a speculation, a business demanding
particular attention. If you persist in talking passion while I am
talking marriage, we shall soon cease to understand each other. Listen
to me,” she went on, assuming a confidential tone. “I have been in
the way of seeing some of the superior men of our day. Those who have
married have for the most part chosen quite insignificant wives. Well,
those wives governed them, as the Emperor governs us; and if they were
not loved, they were at least respected. I like secrets--especially
those which concern women--well enough to have amused myself by seeking
the clue to the riddle. Well, my sweet child, those worthy women had the
gift of analyzing their husbands’ nature; instead of taking fright, like
you, at their superiority, they very acutely noted the qualities they
lacked, and either by possessing those qualities, or by feigning to
possess them, they found means of making such a handsome display of them
in their husbands’ eyes that in the end they impressed them. Also, I
must tell you, all these souls which appear so lofty have just a speck
of madness in them, which we ought to know how to take advantage of. By
firmly resolving to have the upper hand and never deviating from that
aim, by bringing all our actions to bear on it, all our ideas, our
cajolery, we subjugate these eminently capricious natures, which, by
the very mutability of their thoughts, lend us the means of influencing
them.”
“Good heavens!” cried the young wife in dismay. “And this is life. It is
a warfare----”
“In which we must always threaten,” said the Duchess, laughing. “Our
power is wholly factitious. And we must never allow a man to despise
us; it is impossible to recover from such a descent but by odious
manoeuvring. Come,” she added, “I will give you a means of bringing your
husband to his senses.”
She rose with a smile to guide the young and guileless apprentice
to conjugal arts through the labyrinth of her palace. They came to
a back-staircase, which led up to the reception rooms. As Madame de
Carigliano pressed the secret springlock of the door she stopped,
looking at Augustine with an inimitable gleam of shrewdness and grace.
“The Duc de Carigliano adores me,” said she. “Well, he dare not enter by
this door without my leave. And he is a man in the habit of commanding
thousands of soldiers. He knows how to face a battery, but before
me,--he is afraid!”
Augustine sighed. They entered a sumptuous gallery, where the painter’s
wife was led by the Duchess up to the portrait painted by Theodore of
Mademoiselle Guillaume. On seeing it, Augustine uttered a cry.
“I knew it was no longer in my house,” she said, “but--here!----”
“My dear child, I asked for it merely to see what pitch of idiocy a man
of genius may attain to. Sooner or later I should have returned it to
you, for I never expected the pleasure of seeing the original here face
to face with the copy. While we finish our conversation I will have it
carried down to your carriage. And if, armed with such a talisman,
you are not your husband’s mistress for a hundred years, you are not a
woman, and you deserve your fate.”
Augustine kissed the Duchess’ hand, and the lady clasped her to her
heart, with all the more tenderness because she would forget her by the
morrow. This scene might perhaps have destroyed for ever the candor and
purity of a less virtuous woman than Augustine, for the astute politics
of the higher social spheres were no more consonant to Augustine than
the narrow reasoning of Joseph Lebas, or Madame Guillaume’s vapid
morality. Strange are the results of the false positions into which
we may be brought by the slightest mistake in the conduct of life!
Augustine was like an Alpine cowherd surprised by an avalanche; if he
hesitates, if he listens to the shouts of his comrades, he is almost
certainly lost. In such a crisis the heart steels itself or breaks.
Madame de Sommervieux returned home a prey to such agitation as it is
difficult to describe. Her conversation with the Duchesse de Carigliano
had roused in her mind a crowd of contradictory thoughts. Like the sheep
in the fable, full of courage in the wolf’s absence, she preached
to herself, and laid down admirable plans of conduct; she devised a
thousand coquettish stratagems; she even talked to her husband, finding,
away from him, all the springs of true eloquence which never desert a
woman; then, as she pictured to herself Theodore’s clear and steadfast
gaze, she began to quake. When she asked whether monsieur were at home
her voice shook. On learning that he would not be in to dinner, she felt
an unaccountable thrill of joy. Like a criminal who has appealed against
sentence of death, a respite, however short, seemed to her a lifetime.
She placed the portrait in her room, and waited for her husband in all
the agonies of hope. That this venture must decide her future life, she
felt too keenly not to shiver at every sound, even the low ticking of
the clock, which seemed to aggravate her terrors by doling them out to
her. She tried to cheat time by various devices. The idea struck her of
dressing in a way which would make her exactly like the portrait. Then,
knowing her husband’s restless temper, she had her room lighted up with
unusual brightness, feeling sure that when he came in curiosity would
bring him there at once. Midnight had struck when, at the call of the
groom, the street gate was opened, and the artist’s carriage rumbled in
over the stones of the silent courtyard.
“What is the meaning of this illumination?” asked Theodore in glad
tones, as he came into her room.
Augustine skilfully seized the auspicious moment; she threw herself into
her husband’s arms, and pointed to the portrait. The artist stood rigid
as a rock, and his eyes turned alternately on Augustine, on the accusing
dress. The frightened wife, half-dead, as she watched her husband’s
changeful brow--that terrible brow--saw the expressive furrows gathering
like clouds; then she felt her blood curdling in her veins when, with a
glaring look, and in a deep hollow voice, he began to question her:
“Where did you find that picture?”
“The Duchess de Carigliano returned it to me.”
“You asked her for it?”
“I did not know that she had it.”
The gentleness, or rather the exquisite sweetness of this angel’s voice,
might have touched a cannibal, but not an artist in the clutches of
wounded vanity.
“It is worthy of her!” exclaimed the painter in a voice of thunder. “I
will be avenged!” he cried, striding up and down the room. “She shall
die of shame; I will paint her! Yes, I will paint her as Messalina
stealing out at night from the palace of Claudius.”
“Theodore!” said a faint voice.
“I will kill her!”
“My dear----”
“She is in love with that little cavalry colonel, because he rides
well----”
“Theodore!”
“Let me be!” said the painter in a tone almost like a roar.
It would be odious to describe the whole scene. In the end the frenzy
of passion prompted the artist to acts and words which any woman not so
young as Augustine would have ascribed to madness.
At eight o’clock next morning Madame Guillaume, surprising her
daughter, found her pale, with red eyes, her hair in disorder, holding a
handkerchief soaked with tears, while she gazed at the floor strewn with
the torn fragments of a dress and the broken fragments of a large gilt
picture-frame. Augustine, almost senseless with grief, pointed to the
wreck with a gesture of deep despair.
“I don’t know that the loss is very great!” cried the old mistress of
the Cat and Racket. “It was like you, no doubt; but I am told that there
is a man on the boulevard who paints lovely portraits for fifty crowns.”
“Oh, mother!”
“Poor child, you are quite right,” replied Madame Guillaume, who
misinterpreted the expression of her daughter’s glance at her. “True,
my child, no one ever can love you as fondly as a mother. My darling,
I guess it all; but confide your sorrows to me, and I will comfort you.
Did I not tell you long ago that the man was mad! Your maid has told me
pretty stories. Why, he must be a perfect monster!”
Augustine laid a finger on her white lips, as if to implore a moment’s
silence. During this dreadful night misery had led her to that patient
resignation which in mothers and loving wives transcends in its
effects all human energy, and perhaps reveals in the heart of women the
existence of certain chords which God has withheld from men.
An inscription engraved on a broken column in the cemetery at Montmartre
states that Madame de Sommervieux died at the age of twenty-seven. In
the simple words of this epitaph one of the timid creature’s friends can
read the last scene of a tragedy. Every year, on the second of November,
the solemn day of the dead, he never passes this youthful monument
without wondering whether it does not need a stronger woman than
Augustine to endure the violent embrace of genius?
“The humble and modest flowers that bloom in the valley,” he reflects,
“perish perhaps when they are transplanted too near the skies, to the
region where storms gather and the sun is scorching.”
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d’
The Firm of Nucingen
A Woman of Thirty
Birotteau, Cesar
Cesar Birotteau
A Bachelor’s Establishment