The town of Guerande, which for two months past had seen Calyste, its
flower and pride, going, morning or evening, often morning and evening,
to Les Touches, concluded that Mademoiselle Felicite des Touches was
passionately in love with the beautiful youth, and that she practised
upon him all kinds of sorceries. More than one young girl and wife asked
herself by what right an old woman exercised so absolute an empire over
that angel. When Calyste passed along the Grand Rue to the Croisic gate
many a regretful eye was fastened on him.
It now became necessary to explain the rumors which hovered about the
person whom Calyste was on his way to see. These rumors, swelled by
Breton gossip, envenomed by public ignorance, had reached the rector.
The receiver of taxes, the _juge de paix_, the head of the Saint-Nazaire
custom-house and other lettered persons had not reassured the abbe by
relating to him the strange and fantastic life of the female writer who
concealed herself under the masculine name of Camille Maupin. She did
not as yet eat little children, nor kill her slaves like Cleopatra, nor
throw men into the river as the heroine of the Tour de Nesle was falsely
accused of doing; but to the Abbe Grimont this monstrous creature, a
cross between a siren and an atheist, was an immoral combination of
woman and philosopher who violated every social law invented to restrain
or utilize the infirmities of womankind.
Just as Clara Gazul is the female pseudonym of a distinguished male
writer, George Sand the masculine pseudonym of a woman of genius, so
Camille Maupin was the mask behind which was long hidden a charming
young woman, very well-born, a Breton, named Felicite des Touches, the
person who was now causing such lively anxiety to the Baronne du Guenic
and the excellent rector of Guerande. The Breton des Touches family has
no connection with the family of the same name in Touraine, to which
belongs the ambassador of the Regent, even more famous to-day for his
writings than for his diplomatic talents.
Camille Maupin, one of the few celebrated women of the nineteenth
century, was long supposed to be a man, on account of the virility of
her first writings. All the world now knows the two volumes of plays,
not intended for representation on the stage, written after the manner
of Shakespeare or Lopez de Vega, published in 1822, which made a sort
of literary revolution when the great question of the classics and the
romanticists palpitated on all sides,--in the newspapers, at the clubs,
at the Academy, everywhere. Since then, Camille Maupin has written
several plays and a novel, which have not belied the success obtained by
her first publication--now, perhaps, too much forgotten. To explain by
what net-work of circumstances the masculine incarnation of a young girl
was brought about, why Felicite des Touches became a man and an author,
and why, more fortunate than Madame de Stael, she kept her freedom and
was thus more excusable for her celebrity, would be to satisfy many
curiosities and do justice to one of those abnormal beings who rise in
humanity like monuments, and whose fame is promoted by its rarity,--for
in twenty centuries we can count, at most, twenty famous women.
Therefore, although in these pages she stands as a secondary character,
in consideration of the fact that she plays a great part in the literary
history of our epoch, and that her influence over Calyste was great, no
one, we think, will regret being made to pause before that figure rather
longer than modern art permits.
Mademoiselle Felicite des Touches became an orphan in 1793. Her property
escaped confiscation by reason of the deaths of her father and brother.
The first was killed on the 10th of August, at the threshold of the
palace, among the defenders of the king, near whose person his rank as
major of the guards of the gate had placed him. Her brother, one of the
body-guard, was massacred at Les Carmes. Mademoiselle des Touches was
two years old when her mother died, killed by grief, a few days after
this second catastrophe. When dying, Madame des Touches confided her
daughter to her sister, a nun of Chelles. Madame de Faucombe, the nun,
prudently took the orphan to Faucombe, a good-sized estate near Nantes,
belonging to Madame des Touches, and there she settled with the little
girl and three sisters of her convent. The populace of Nantes, during
the last days of the Terror, tore down the chateau, seized the nuns and
Mademoiselle des Touches, and threw them into prison on a false charge
of receiving emissaries of Pitt and Coburg. The 9th Thermidor released
them. Felicite’s aunt died of fear. Two of the sisters left France, and
the third confided the little girl to her nearest relation, Monsieur de
Faucombe, her maternal great-uncle, who lived in Nantes.
Monsieur de Faucombe, an old man sixty years of age, had married a young
woman to whom he left the management of his affairs. He busied himself
in archaeology,--a passion, or to speak more correctly, one of those
manias which enable old men to fancy themselves still living. The
education of his ward was therefore left to chance. Little cared-for by
her uncle’s wife, a young woman given over to the social pleasures
of the imperial epoch, Felicite brought herself up as a boy. She
kept company with Monsieur de Faucombe in his library; where she read
everything it pleased her to read. She thus obtained a knowledge of life
in theory, and had no innocence of mind, though virgin personally. Her
intellect floated on the impurities of knowledge while her heart was
pure. Her learning became extraordinary, the result of a passion for
reading, sustained by a powerful memory. At eighteen years of age she
was as well-informed on all topics as a young man entering a literary
career has need to be in our day. Her prodigious reading controlled her
passions far more than conventual life would have done; for there the
imaginations of young girls run riot. A brain crammed with knowledge
that was neither digested nor classed governed the heart and soul of the
child. This depravity of the intellect, without action upon the chastity
of the body, would have amazed philosophers and observers, had any one
in Nantes even suspected the powers of Mademoiselle des Touches.
The result of all this was in a contrary direction to the cause.
Felicite had no inclinations toward evil; she conceived everything by
thought, but abstained from deed. Old Faucombe was enchanted with her,
and she helped him in his work,--writing three of his books, which the
worthy old gentleman believed were his own; for his spiritual paternity
was blind. Such mental labor, not agreeing with the developments of
girlhood, had its effect. Felicite fell ill; her blood was overheated,
and her chest seemed threatened with inflammation. The doctors ordered
horseback exercise and the amusements of society. Mademoiselle des
Touches became, in consequence, an admirable horsewoman, and recovered
her health in a few months.
At the age of eighteen she appeared in the world, where she produced so
great a sensation that no one in Nantes called her anything else than
“the beautiful Mademoiselle des Touches.” Led to enter society by one
of the imperishable sentiments in the heart of a woman, however superior
she may be, the worship she inspired found her cold and unresponsive.
Hurt by her aunt and her cousins, who ridiculed her studies and teased
her about her unwillingness for society, which they attributed to a
lack of the power of pleasing, Felicite resolved on making herself
coquettish, gay, volatile,--a woman, in short. But she expected in
return an exchange of ideas, seductions, and pleasures in harmony with
the elevation of her own mind and the extent of its knowledge.
Instead of that, she was filled with disgust for the commonplaces of
conversation, the silliness of gallantry; and more especially was she
shocked by the supremacy of military men, to whom society made
obeisance at that period. She had, not unnaturally, neglected the minor
accomplishments. Finding herself inferior to the pretty dolls who played
on the piano and made themselves agreeable by singing ballads, she
determined to be a musician. Retiring into her former solitude she set
to work resolvedly, under the direction of the best master in the town.
She was rich, and she sent for Steibelt when the time came to perfect
herself. The astonished town still talks of this princely conduct. The
stay of that master cost her twelve thousand francs. Later, when she
went to Paris, she studied harmony and thorough-bass, and composed the
music of two operas which have had great success, though the public has
never been admitted to the secret of their authorship. Ostensibly these
operas are by Conti, one of the most eminent musicians of our day;
but this circumstance belongs to the history of her heart, and will be
mentioned later on.
The mediocrity of the society of a provincial town wearied her so
excessively, her imagination was so filled with grandiose ideas that
although she returned to the salons to eclipse other women once more by
her beauty, and enjoy her new triumph as a musician, she again deserted
them; and having proved her power to her cousins, and driven two
lovers to despair, she returned to her books, her piano, the works of
Beethoven, and her old friend Faucombe. In 1812, when she was twenty-one
years of age, the old archaeologist handed over to her his guardianship
accounts. From that year, she took control of her fortune, which
consisted of fifteen thousand francs a year, derived from Les Touches,
the property of her father; twelve thousand a year from Faucombe (which,
however, she increased one-third on renewing the leases); and a capital
of three hundred thousand francs laid by during her minority by her
guardians.
Felicite acquired from her experience of provincial life, an
understanding of money, and that strong tendency to administrative
wisdom which enables the provinces to hold their own under the
ascensional movement of capital towards Paris. She drew her three
hundred thousand francs from the house of business where her guardian
had placed them, and invested them on the Grand-livre at the very moment
of the disasters of the retreat from Moscow. In this way, she increased
her income by thirty thousand francs. All expenses paid, she found
herself with fifty thousand francs a year to invest. At twenty-one years
of age a girl with such force of will is the equal of a man of thirty.
Her mind had taken a wide range; habits of criticism enabled her
to judge soberly of men, and art, and things, and public questions.
Henceforth she resolved to leave Nantes; but old Faucombe falling ill
with his last illness, she, who had been both wife and daughter to
him, remained to nurse him, with the devotion of an angel, for eighteen
months, closing his eyes at the moment when Napoleon was struggling with
all Europe on the corpse of France. Her removal to Paris was therefore
still further postponed until the close of that crisis.
As a Royalist, she hastened to be present at the return of the Bourbons
to Paris. There the Grandlieus, to whom she was related, received her as
their guest; but the catastrophes of March 20 intervened, and her future
was vague and uncertain. She was thus enabled to see with her own eyes
that last image of the Empire, and behold the Grand Army when it came to
the Champ de Mars, as to a Roman circus, to salute its Caesar before it
went to its death at Waterloo. The great and noble soul of Felicite was
stirred by that magic spectacle. The political commotions, the glamour
of that theatrical play of three months which history has called the
Hundred Days, occupied her mind and preserved her from all personal
emotions in the midst of a convulsion which dispersed the royalist
society among whom she had intended to reside. The Grandlieus followed
the Bourbons to Ghent, leaving their house to Mademoiselle des Touches.
Felicite, who did not choose to take a subordinate position, purchased
for one hundred and thirty thousand francs one of the finest houses in
the rue Mont Blanc, where she installed herself on the return of the
Bourbons in 1815. The garden of this house is to-day worth two millions.
Accustomed to control her own life, Felicite soon familiarized herself
with the ways of thought and action which are held to be exclusively the
province of man. In 1816 she was twenty-five years old. She knew nothing
of marriage; her conception of it was wholly that of thought; she judged
it in its causes instead of its effect, and saw only its objectionable
side. Her superior mind refused to make the abdication by which
a married woman begins that life; she keenly felt the value of
independence, and was conscious of disgust for the duties of maternity.
It is necessary to give these details to explain the anomalies presented
by the life of Camille Maupin. She had known neither father nor mother;
she had been her own mistress from childhood; her guardian was an old
archaeologist. Chance had flung her into the regions of knowledge and of
imagination, into the world of literature, instead of holding her within
the rigid circle defined by the futile education given to women, and
by maternal instructions as to dress, hypocritical propriety, and the
hunting graces of their sex. Thus, long before she became celebrated, a
glance might have told an observer that she had never played with dolls.
Toward the close of the year 1817 Felicite des Touches began to
perceive, not the fading of her beauty, but the beginning of a certain
lassitude of body. She saw that a change would presently take place in
her person as the result of her obstinate celibacy. She wanted to retain
her youth and beauty, to which at that time she clung. Science warned
her of the sentence pronounced by Nature upon all her creations, which
perish as much by the misconception of her laws as by the abuse of
them. The macerated face of her aunt returned to her memory and made her
shudder. Placed between marriage and love, her desire was to keep
her freedom; but she was now no longer indifferent to homage and the
admiration that surrounded her. She was, at the moment when this history
begins, almost exactly what she was in 1817. Eighteen years had passed
over her head and respected it. At forty she might have been thought no
more than twenty-five.
Therefore to describe her in 1836 is to picture her as she was in 1817.
Women who know the conditions of temperament and happiness in which a
woman should live to resist the ravages of time will understand how and
why Felicite des Touches enjoyed this great privilege as they study
a portrait for which were reserved the brightest tints of Nature’s
palette, and the richest setting.
Brittany presents a curious problem to be solved in the predominance
of dark hair, brown eyes, and swarthy complexions in a region so near
England that the atmospheric effects are almost identical. Does this
problem belong to the great question of races? to hitherto unobserved
physical influences? Science may some day find the reason of this
peculiarity, which ceases in the adjoining province of Normandy. Waiting
its solution, this odd fact is there before our eyes; fair complexions
are rare in Brittany, where the women’s eyes are as black and lively as
those of Southern women; but instead of possessing the tall figures and
swaying lines of Italy and Spain, they are usually short, close-knit,
well set-up and firm, except in the higher classes which are crossed by
their alliances.
Mademoiselle des Touches, a true Breton, is of medium height, though
she looks taller than she really is. This effect is produced by the
character of her face, which gives height to her form. She has that
skin, olive by day and dazzling by candlelight, which distinguishes a
beautiful Italian; you might, if you pleased, call it animated ivory.
The light glides along a skin of that texture as on a polished surface;
it shines; a violent emotion is necessary to bring the faintest color
to the centre of the cheeks, where it goes away almost immediately. This
peculiarity gives to her face the calm impassibility of the savage. The
face, more long than oval, resembles that of some beautiful Isis in
the Egyptian bas-reliefs; it has the purity of the heads of sphinxes,
polished by the fire of the desert, kissed by a Coptic sun. The tones
of the skin are in harmony with the faultless modelling of the head. The
black and abundant hair descends in heavy masses beside the throat, like
the coif of the statues at Memphis, and carries out magnificently the
general severity of form. The forehead is full, broad, and swelling
about the temples, illuminated by surfaces which catch the light, and
modelled like the brow of the hunting Diana, a powerful and determined
brow, silent and self-contained. The arch of the eye-brows, vigorously
drawn, surmounts a pair of eyes whose flame scintillates at times like
that of a fixed star. The white of the eye is neither bluish, nor strewn
with scarlet threads, nor is it purely white; it has the texture of
horn, but the tone is warm. The pupil is surrounded by an orange circle;
it is of bronze set in gold, but vivid gold and animated bronze. This
pupil has depth; it is not underlaid, as in certain eyes, by a species
of foil, which sends back the light and makes such eyes resemble those
of cats or tigers; it has not that terrible inflexibility which makes
a sensitive person shudder; but this depth has in it something of
the infinite, just as the external radiance of the eyes suggests the
absolute. The glance of an observer may be lost in that soul, which
gathers itself up and retires with as much rapidity as it gushed for a
second into those velvet eyes. In moments of passion the eyes of Camille
Maupin are sublime; the gold of her glance illuminates them and they
flame. But in repose they are dull; the torpor of meditation often lends
them an appearance of stupidity[*]; in like manner, when the glow of the
soul is absent the lines of the face are sad.
[*] George Sand says of herself, in “L’Histoire de Ma Vie,”
published long after the above was written: “The habit of
meditation gave me _l’air bete_ (a stupid air). I say the
word frankly, for all my life I have been told this, and
therefore it must be true.”--TR.
The lashes of the eyelids are short, but thick and black as the tip of
an ermine’s tail; the eyelids are brown and strewn with red fibrils,
which give them grace and strength,--two qualities which are seldom
united in a woman. The circle round the eyes shows not the slightest
blemish nor the smallest wrinkle. There, again, we find the granite
of an Egyptian statue softened by the ages. But the line of the
cheek-bones, though soft, is more pronounced than in other women and
completes the character of strength which the face expresses. The nose,
thin and straight, parts into two oblique nostrils, passionately dilated
at times, and showing the transparent pink of their delicate lining.
This nose is an admirable continuation of the forehead, with which it
blends in a most delicious line. It is perfectly white from its spring
to its tip, and the tip is endowed with a sort of mobility which does
marvels if Camille is indignant, or angry, or rebellious. There, above
all, as Talma once remarked, is seen depicted the anger or the irony
of great minds. The immobility of the human nostril indicates a
certain narrowness of soul; never did the nose of a miser oscillate; it
contracts like the lips; he locks up his face as he does his money.
Camille’s mouth, arching at the corners, is of a vivid red; blood
abounds there, and supplies the living, thinking oxide which gives such
seduction to the lips, reassuring the lover whom the gravity of that
majestic face may have dismayed. The upper lip is thin, the furrow
which unites it with the nose comes low, giving it a centre curve which
emphasizes its natural disdain. Camille has little to do to express
anger. This beautiful lip is supported by the strong red breadth of its
lower mate, adorable in kindness, swelling with love, a lip like the
outer petal of a pomegranate such as Phidias might have carved, and
the color of which it has. The chin is firm and rather full; but it
expresses resolution and fitly ends this profile, royal if not divine.
It is necessary to add that the upper lip beneath the nose is lightly
shaded by a charming down. Nature would have made a blunder had she
not cast that tender mist upon the face. The ears are delicately
convoluted,--a sign of secret refinement. The bust is large, the waist
slim and sufficiently rounded. The hips are not prominent, but very
graceful; the line of the thighs is magnificent, recalling Bacchus
rather than the Venus Callipyge. There we may see the shadowy line of
demarcation which separates nearly every woman of genius from her sex;
there such women are found to have a certain vague similitude to man;
they have neither the suppleness nor the soft abandonment of those whom
Nature destines for maternity; their gait is not broken by faltering
motions. This observation may be called bi-lateral; it has its
counterpart in men, whose thighs are those of women when they are sly,
cunning, false, and cowardly. Camille’s neck, instead of curving inward
at the nape, curves out in a line that unites the head to the shoulders
without sinuosity, a most signal characteristic of force. The neck
itself presents at certain moments an athletic magnificence. The spring
of the arms from the shoulders, superb in outline, seems to belong to
a colossal woman. The arms are vigorously modelled, ending in wrists of
English delicacy and charming hands, plump, dimpled, and adorned with
rosy, almond-shaped nails; these hands are of a whiteness which
reveals that the body, so round, so firm, so well set-up, is of another
complexion altogether than the face. The firm, cold carriage of the head
is corrected by the mobility of the lips, their changing expression, and
the artistic play of the nostrils.
And yet, in spite of all these promises--hidden, perhaps, from the
profane--the calm of that countenance has something, I know not what,
that is vexatious. More sad, more serious than gracious, that face
is marked by the melancholy of constant meditation. For this reason
Mademoiselle des Touches listens more than she talks. She startles
by her silence and by that deep-reaching glance of intense fixity. No
educated person could see her without thinking of Cleopatra, that dark
little woman who almost changed the face of the world. But in Camille
the natural animal is so complete, so self-sufficing, of a nature so
leonine, that a man, however little of a Turk he may be, regrets the
presence of so great a mind in such a body, and could wish that she were
wholly woman. He fears to find the strange distortion of an abnormal
soul. Do not cold analysis and matter-of-fact theory point to passions
in such a woman? Does she judge, and not feel? Or, phenomenon more
terrible, does she not feel and judge at one and the same time? Able for
all things through her brain, ought her course to be circumscribed by
the limitations of other women? Has that intellectual strength weakened
her heart? Has she no charm? Can she descend to those tender nothings
by which a woman occupies, and soothes and interests the man she loves?
Will she not cast aside a sentiment when it no longer responds to some
vision of infinitude which she grasps and contemplates in her soul? Who
can scale the heights to which her eyes have risen? Yes, a man fears
to find in such a woman something unattainable, unpossessable,
unconquerable. The woman of strong mind should remain a symbol; as a
reality she must be feared. Camille Maupin is in some ways the living
image of Schiller’s Isis, seated in the darkness of the temple, at
whose feet her priests find the dead bodies of the daring men who have
consulted her.
The adventures of her life declared to be true by the world, and which
Camille has never disavowed, enforce the questions suggested by her
personal appearance. Perhaps she likes those calumnies.
The nature of her beauty has not been without its influence on her fame;
it has served it, just as her fortune and position have maintained her
in society. If a sculptor desires to make a statue of Brittany let him
take Mademoiselle des Touches for his model. That full-blooded, powerful
temperament is the only nature capable of repelling the action of time.
The constant nourishment of the pulp, so to speak, of that polished skin
is an arm given to women by Nature to resist the invasion of wrinkles;
in Camille’s case it was aided by the calm impassibility of her
features.
In 1817 this charming young woman opened her house to artists, authors
of renown, learned and scientific men, and publicists,--a society toward
which her tastes led her. Her salon resembled that of Baron Gerard,
where men of rank mingled with men of distinction of all kinds, and the
elite of Parisian women came. The parentage of Mademoiselle des Touches,
and her fortune, increased by that of her aunt the nun, protected her
in the attempt, always very difficult in Paris, to create a society. Her
worldly independence was one reason of her success. Various ambitious
mothers indulged in the hope of inducing her to marry their sons, whose
fortunes were out of proportion to the age of their escutcheons. Several
peers of France, allured by the prospect of eighty thousand francs a
year and a house magnificently appointed, took their womenkind, even
the most fastidious and intractable, to visit her. The diplomatic world,
always in search of amusements of the intellect, came there and found
enjoyment. Thus Mademoiselle des Touches, surrounded by so many forms
of individual interests, was able to study the different comedies
which passion, covetousness, and ambition make the generality of men
perform,--even those who are highest in the social scale. She saw, early
in life, the world as it is; and she was fortunate enough not to fall
early into absorbing love, which warps the mind and faculties of a woman
and prevents her from judging soberly.
Ordinarily a woman feels, enjoys, and judges, successively; hence three
distinct ages, the last of which coincides with the mournful period of
old age. In Mademoiselle des Touches this order was reversed. Her youth
was wrapped in the snows of knowledge and the ice of reflection. This
transposition is, in truth, an additional explanation of the strangeness
of her life and the nature of her talent. She observed men at an age
when most women can only see one man; she despised what other women
admired; she detected falsehood in the flatteries they accept as truths;
she laughed at things that made them serious. This contradiction of her
life with that of others lasted long; but it came to a terrible end; she
was destined to find in her soul a first love, young and fresh, at an
age when women are summoned by Nature to renounce all love.
Meantime, a first affair in which she was involved has always remained
a secret from the world. Felicite, like other women, was induced to
believe that beauty of body was that of soul. She fell in love with a
face, and learned, to her cost, the folly of a man of gallantry, who saw
nothing in her but a mere woman. It was some time before she recovered
from the disgust she felt at this episode. Her distress was perceived by
a friend, a man, who consoled her without personal after-thought, or,
at any rate, he concealed any such motive if he had it. In him Felicite
believed she found the heart and mind which were lacking to her former
lover. He did, in truth, possess one of the most original minds of our
age. He, too, wrote under a pseudonym, and his first publications were
those of an adorer of Italy. Travel was the one form of education which
Felicite lacked. A man of genius, a poet and a critic, he took Felicite
to Italy in order to make known to her that country of all Art. This
celebrated man, who is nameless, may be regarded as the master and maker
of “Camille Maupin.” He bought into order and shape the vast amount of
knowledge already acquired by Felicite; increased it by study of the
masterpieces with which Italy teems; gave her the frankness, freedom,
and grace, epigrammatic, and intense, which is the character of his own
talent (always rather fanciful as to form) which Camille Maupin modified
by delicacy of sentiment and the softer terms of thought that are
natural to a woman. He also roused in her a taste for German and English
literature and made her learn both languages while travelling. In Rome,
in 1820, Felicite was deserted for an Italian. Without that misery she
might never have been celebrated. Napoleon called misfortune the midwife
of genius. This event filled Mademoiselle des Touches, and forever, with
that contempt for men which later was to make her so strong. Felicite
died, Camille Maupin was born.
She returned to Paris with Conti, the great musician, for whom she wrote
the librettos of two operas. But she had no more illusions, and she
became, at heart, unknown to the world, a sort of female Don Juan,
without debts and without conquests. Encouraged by success, she
published the two volumes of plays which at once placed the name of
Camille Maupin in the list of illustrious anonymas. Next, she related
her betrayed and deluded love in a short novel, one of the masterpieces
of that period. This book, of a dangerous example, was classed with
“Adolphe,” a dreadful lamentation, the counterpart of which is found
in Camille’s work. The true secret of her literary metamorphosis and
pseudonym has never been fully understood. Some delicate minds have
thought it lay in a feminine desire to escape fame and remain obscure,
while offering a man’s name and work to criticism.
In spite of any such desire, if she had it, her celebrity increased
daily, partly through the influence of her salon, partly from her
own wit, the correctness of her judgments, and the solid worth of her
acquirements. She became an authority; her sayings were quoted; she
could no longer lay aside at will the functions with which Parisian
society invested her. She came to be an acknowledged exception. The
world bowed before the genius and position of this strange woman; it
recognized and sanctioned her independence; women admired her mind, men
her beauty. Her conduct was regulated by all social conventions. Her
friendships seemed purely platonic. There was, moreover, nothing of the
female author about her. Mademoiselle des Touches is charming as a woman
of the world,--languid when she pleases, indolent, coquettish, concerned
about her toilet, pleased with the airy nothings so seductive to women
and to poets. She understands very well that after Madame de Stael there
is no place in this century for a Sappho, and that Ninon could not exist
in Paris without _grands seigneurs_ and a voluptuous court. She is the
Ninon of the intellect; she adores Art and artists; she goes from the
poet to the musician, from the sculptor to the prose-writer. Her heart
is noble, endowed with a generosity that makes her a dupe; so filled is
she with pity for sorrow,--filled also with contempt for the prosperous.
She has lived since 1830, the centre of a choice circle, surrounded by
tried friends who love her tenderly and esteem each other. Far from the
noisy fuss of Madame de Stael, far from political strifes, she jokes
about Camille Maupin, that junior of George Sand (whom she calls her
brother Cain), whose recent fame has now eclipsed her own. Mademoiselle
des Touches admires her fortunate rival with angelic composure, feeling
no jealousy and no secret vexation.
Until the period when this history begins, she had led as happy a life
as a woman strong enough to protect herself can be supposed to live.
From 1817 to 1834 she had come some five or six times to Les Touches.
Her first stay was after her first disillusion in 1818. The house was
uninhabitable, and she sent her man of business to Guerande and took a
lodging for herself in the village. At that time she had no suspicion of
her coming fame; she was sad, she saw no one; she wanted, as it were, to
contemplate herself after her great disaster. She wrote to Paris to have
the furniture necessary for a residence at Les Touches sent down to her.
It came by a vessel to Nantes, thence by small boats to Croisic, from
which little place it was transported, not without difficulty, over the
sands to Les Touches. Workmen came down from Paris, and before long
she occupied Les Touches, which pleased her immensely. She wanted to
meditate over the events of her life, like a cloistered nun.
At the beginning of the winter she returned to Paris. The little town of
Guerande was by this time roused to diabolical curiosity; its whole talk
was of the Asiatic luxury displayed at Les Touches. Her man of business
gave orders after her departure that visitors should be admitted to view
the house. They flocked from the village of Batz, from Croisic, and from
Savenay, as well as from Guerande. This public curiosity brought in an
enormous sum to the family of the porter and gardener, not less, in two
years, than seventeen francs.
After this, Mademoiselle des Touches did not revisit Les Touches for two
years, not until her return from Italy. On that occasion she came by
way of Croisic and was accompanied by Conti. It was some time before
Guerande became aware of her presence. Her subsequent apparitions at Les
Touches excited comparatively little interest. Her Parisian fame did not
precede her; her man of business alone knew the secret of her writings
and of her connection with the celebrity of Camille Maupin. But at the
period of which we are now writing the contagion of the new ideas had
made some progress in Guerande, and several persons knew of the dual
form of Mademoiselle des Touches’ existence. Letters came to the
post-office, directed to Camille Maupin at Les Touches. In short, the
veil was rent away. In a region so essentially Catholic, archaic, and
full of prejudice, the singular life of this illustrious woman would
of course cause rumors, some of which, as we have seen, had reached the
ears of the Abbe Grimont and alarmed him; such a life could never be
comprehended in Guerande; in fact, to every mind, it seemed unnatural
and improper.
Felicite, during her present stay, was not alone in Les Touches. She had
a guest. That guest was Claude Vignon, a scornful and powerful writer
who, though doing criticism only, has found means to give the public
and literature the impression of a certain superiority. Mademoiselle des
Touches had received this writer for the last seven years, as she had so
many other authors, journalists, artists, and men of the world. She knew
his nerveless nature, his laziness, his utter penury, his indifference
and disgust for all things, and yet by the way she was now conducting
herself she seemed inclined to marry him. She explained her conduct,
incomprehensible to her friends, in various ways,--by ambition, by the
dread she felt of a lonely old age; she wanted to confide her future to
a superior man, to whom her fortune would be a stepping-stone, and thus
increase her own importance in the literary world.
With these apparent intentions she had brought Claude Vignon from Paris
to Les Touches, as an eagle bears away a kid in its talons,--to study
him, and decide upon some positive course. But, in truth, she was
misleading both Calyste and Claude; she was not even thinking of
marriage; her heart was in the throes of the most violent convulsion
that could agitate a soul as strong as hers. She found herself the
dupe of her own mind; too late she saw life lighted by the sun of love,
shining as love shines in a heart of twenty.
Let us now see Camille’s convent where this was happening.