Madame Granson, widow of a lieutenant-colonel of artillery killed at
Jena, possessed, as her whole means of livelihood, a meagre pension of
nine hundred francs a year, and three hundred francs from property of
her own, plus a son whose support and education had eaten up all her
savings. She occupied, in the rue du Bercail, one of those melancholy
ground-floor apartments which a traveller passing along the principal
street of a little provincial town can look through at a glance. The
street door opened at the top of three steep steps; a passage led to an
interior courtyard, at the end of which was the staircase covered by a
wooden gallery. On one side of the passage was the dining-room and the
kitchen; on the other side, a salon put to many uses, and the widow’s
bedchamber.
Athanase Granson, a young man twenty-three years of age, who slept in an
attic room above the second floor of the house, added six hundred francs
to the income of his poor mother, by the salary of a little place which
the influence of his relation, Mademoiselle Cormon, had obtained for him
in the mayor’s office, where he was placed in charge of the archives.
From these indications it is easy to imagine Madame Granson in her
cold salon with its yellow curtains and Utrecht velvet furniture, also
yellow, as she straightened the round straw mats which were placed
before each chair, that visitors might not soil the red-tiled floor
while they sat there; after which she returned to her cushioned
armchair and little work-table placed beneath the portrait of the
lieutenant-colonel of artillery between two windows,--a point from which
her eye could rake the rue du Bercail and see all comers. She was a good
woman, dressed with bourgeois simplicity in keeping with her wan face
furrowed by grief. The rigorous humbleness of poverty made itself felt
in all the accessories of this household, the very air of which was
charged with the stern and upright morals of the provinces. At this
moment the son and mother were together in the dining-room, where
they were breakfasting with a cup of coffee, with bread and butter and
radishes. To make the pleasure which Suzanne’s visit was to give to
Madame Granson intelligible, we must explain certain secret interests of
the mother and son.
Athanase Granson was a thin and pale young man, of medium height, with
a hollow face in which his two black eyes, sparkling with thoughts, gave
the effect of bits of coal. The rather irregular lines of his face, the
curve of his lips, a prominent chin, the fine modelling of his forehead,
his melancholy countenance, caused by a sense of his poverty warring
with the powers that he felt within him, were all indications of
repressed and imprisoned talent. In any other place than the town of
Alencon the mere aspect of his person would have won him the assistance
of superior men, or of women who are able to recognize genius in
obscurity. If his was not genius, it was at any rate the form and aspect
of it; if he had not the actual force of a great heart, the glow of such
a heart was in his glance. Although he was capable of expressing the
highest feeling, a casing of timidity destroyed all the graces of his
youth, just as the ice of poverty kept him from daring to put forth all
his powers. Provincial life, without an opening, without appreciation,
without encouragement, described a circle about him in which languished
and died the power of thought,--a power which as yet had scarcely
reached its dawn. Moreover, Athanase possessed that savage pride which
poverty intensifies in noble minds, exalting them in their struggle with
men and things; although at their start in life it is an obstacle to
their advancement. Genius proceeds in two ways: either it takes its
opportunity--like Napoleon, like Moliere--the moment that it sees it,
or it waits to be sought when it has patiently revealed itself. Young
Granson belonged to that class of men of talent who distrust themselves
and are easily discouraged. His soul was contemplative. He lived more
by thought than by action. Perhaps he might have seemed deficient or
incomplete to those who cannot conceive of genius without the sparkle
of French passion; but he was powerful in the world of mind, and he was
liable to reach, through a series of emotions imperceptible to common
souls, those sudden determinations which make fools say of a man, “He is
mad.”
The contempt which the world pours out on poverty was death to Athanase;
the enervating heat of solitude, without a breath or current of air,
relaxed the bow which ever strove to tighten itself; his soul grew weary
in this painful effort without results. Athanase was a man who might
have taken his place among the glories of France; but, eagle as he was,
cooped in a cage without his proper nourishment, he was about to die of
hunger after contemplating with an ardent eye the fields of air and
the mountain heights where genius soars. His work in the city library
escaped attention, and he buried in his soul his thoughts of fame,
fearing that they might injure him; but deeper than all lay buried
within him the secret of his heart,--a passion which hollowed his
cheeks and yellowed his brow. He loved his distant cousin, this very
Mademoiselle Cormon whom the Chevalier de Valois and du Bousquier,
his hidden rivals, were stalking. This love had had its origin in
calculation. Mademoiselle Cormon was thought to be one of the richest
persons in the town: the poor lad had therefore been led to love her by
desires for material happiness, by the hope, long indulged, of gilding
with comfort his mother’s last years, by eager longing for the ease of
life so needful to men who live by thought; but this most innocent point
of departure degraded his passion in his own eyes. Moreover, he feared
the ridicule the world would cast upon the love of a young man of
twenty-three for an old maid of forty.
And yet his passion was real; whatever may seem false about such a love
elsewhere, it can be realized as a fact in the provinces, where, manners
and morals being without change or chance or movement or mystery,
marriage becomes a necessity of life. No family will accept a young man
of dissolute habits. However natural the liaison of a young man, like
Athanase, with a handsome girl, like Suzanne, for instance, might seem
in a capital, it alarms provincial parents, and destroys the hopes of
marriage of a poor young man when possibly the fortune of a rich one
might cause such an unfortunate antecedent to be overlooked. Between the
depravity of certain liaisons and a sincere love, a man of honor and no
fortune will not hesitate: he prefers the misfortunes of virtue to the
evils of vice. But in the provinces women with whom a young man call
fall in love are rare. A rich young girl he cannot obtain in a region
where all is calculation; a poor young girl he is prevented from loving;
it would be, as provincials say, marrying hunger and thirst. Such
monkish solitude is, however, dangerous to youth.
These reflections explain why provincial life is so firmly based on
marriage. Thus we find that ardent and vigorous genius, forced to rely
on the independence of its own poverty, quits these cold regions where
thought is persecuted by brutal indifference, where no woman is willing
to be a sister of charity to a man of talent, of art, of science.
Who will really understand Athanase Granson’s love for Mademoiselle
Cormon? Certainly neither rich men--those sultans of society who fill
their harems--nor middle-class men, who follow the well-beaten high-road
of prejudices; nor women who, not choosing to understand the passions of
artists, impose the yoke of their virtues upon men of genius, imagining
that the two sexes are governed by the same laws.
Here, perhaps, we should appeal to those young men who suffer from the
repression of their first desires at the moment when all their forces
are developing; to artists sick of their own genius smothering under the
pressure of poverty; to men of talent, persecuted and without influence,
often without friends at the start, who have ended by triumphing over
that double anguish, equally agonizing, of soul and body. Such men
will well understand the lancinating pains of the cancer which was
now consuming Athanase; they have gone through those long and bitter
deliberations made in presence of some grandiose purpose they had not
the means to carry out; they have endured those secret miscarriages in
which the fructifying seed of genius falls on arid soil. Such men know
that the grandeur of desires is in proportion to the height and breadth
of the imagination. The higher they spring, the lower they fall; and how
can it be that ties and bonds should not be broken by such a fall?
Their piercing eye has seen--as did Athanase--the brilliant future which
awaited them, and from which they fancied that only a thin gauze parted
them; but that gauze through which their eyes could see is changed by
Society into a wall of iron. Impelled by a vocation, by a sentiment of
art, they endeavor again and again to live by sentiments which society
as incessantly materializes. Alas! the provinces calculate and arrange
marriage with the one view of material comfort, and a poor artist or man
of science is forbidden to double its purpose and make it the saviour of
his genius by securing to him the means of subsistence!
Moved by such ideas, Athanase Granson first thought of marriage with
Mademoiselle Cormon as a means of obtaining a livelihood which would
be permanent. Thence he could rise to fame, and make his mother happy,
knowing at the same time that he was capable of faithfully loving his
wife. But soon his own will created, although he did not know it, a
genuine passion. He began to study the old maid, and, by dint of the
charm which habit gives, he ended by seeing only her beauties and
ignoring her defects.
In a young man of twenty-three the senses count for much in love; their
fire produces a sort of prism between his eyes and the woman. From
this point of view the clasp with which Beaumarchis’ Cherubin seizes
Marceline is a stroke of genius. But when we reflect that in the utter
isolation to which poverty condemned poor Athanase, Mademoiselle Cormon
was the only figure presented to his gaze, that she attracted his eye
incessantly, that all the light he had was concentrated on her, surely
his love may be considered natural.
This sentiment, so carefully hidden, increased from day to day. Desires,
sufferings, hopes, and meditations swelled in quietness and silence the
lake widening ever in the young man’s breast, as hour by hour added its
drop of water to the volume. And the wider this inward circle, drawn
by the imagination, aided by the senses, grew, the more imposing
Mademoiselle Cormon appeared to Athanase, and the more his own timidity
increased.
The mother had divined the truth. Like all provincial mothers, she
calculated candidly in her own mind the advantages of the match. She
told herself that Mademoiselle Cormon would be very lucky to secure a
husband in a young man of twenty-three, full of talent, who would always
be an honor to his family and the neighborhood; at the same time the
obstacles which her son’s want of fortune and Mademoiselle Cormon’s age
presented to the marriage seemed to her almost insurmountable; she could
think of nothing but patience as being able to vanquish them. Like du
Bousquier, like the Chevalier de Valois, she had a policy of her own;
she was on the watch for circumstances, awaiting the propitious moment
for a move with the shrewdness of maternal instinct. Madame Granson
had no fears at all as to the chevalier, but she did suppose that du
Bousquier, although refused, retained certain hopes. As an able and
underhand enemy to the latter, she did him much secret harm in the
interests of her son; from whom, by the bye, she carefully concealed all
such proceedings.
After this explanation it is easy to understand the importance which
Suzanne’s lie, confided to Madame Granson, was about to acquire. What a
weapon put into the hands of this charitable lady, the treasurer of the
Maternity Society! How she would gently and demurely spread the news
while collecting assistance for the chaste Suzanne!
At the present moment Athanase, leaning pensively on his elbow at
the breakfast table, was twirling his spoon in his empty cup and
contemplating with a preoccupied eye the poor room with its red brick
floor, its straw chairs, its painted wooden buffet, its pink and white
curtains chequered like a backgammon board, which communicated with the
kitchen through a glass door. As his back was to the chimney which his
mother faced, and as the chimney was opposite to the door, his pallid
face, strongly lighted from the window, framed in beautiful black hair,
the eyes gleaming with despair and fiery with morning thoughts, was the
first object which met the eyes of the incoming Suzanne. The grisette,
who belonged to a class which certainly has the instinct of misery and
the sufferings of the heart, suddenly felt that electric spark, darting
from Heaven knows where, which can never be explained, which some strong
minds deny, but the sympathetic stroke of which has been felt by many
men and many women. It is at once a light which lightens the darkness
of the future, a presentiment of the sacred joys of a shared love, the
certainty of mutual comprehension. Above all, it is like the touch of
a firm and able hand on the keyboard of the senses. The eyes are
fascinated by an irresistible attraction; the heart is stirred; the
melodies of happiness echo in the soul and in the ears; a voice cries
out, “It is he!” Often reflection casts a douche of cold water on this
boiling emotion, and all is over.
In a moment, as rapid as the flash of the lightning, Suzanne received
the broadside of this emotion in her heart. The flame of a real love
burned up the evil weeds fostered by a libertine and dissipated life.
She saw how much she was losing of decency and value by accusing herself
falsely. What had seemed to her a joke the night before became to her
eyes a serious charge against herself. She recoiled at her own success.
But the impossibility of any result; the poverty of the young man; a
vague hope of enriching herself, of going to Paris, and returning with
full hands to say, “I love you! here are the means of happiness!”
or mere fate, if you will have it so, dried up the next moment this
beneficent dew.
The ambitious grisette asked with a timid air for a moment’s interview
with Madame Granson, who took her at once into her bedchamber. When
Suzanne came out she looked again at Athanase; he was still in the same
position, and the tears came into her eyes. As for Madame Granson, she
was radiant with joy. At last she had a weapon, and a terrible one,
against du Bousquier; she could now deal him a mortal blow. She had
of course promised the poor seduced girl the support of all charitable
ladies and that of the members of the Maternity Society in particular;
she foresaw a dozen visits which would occupy her whole day, and brew up
a frightful storm on the head of the guilty du Bousquier. The Chevalier
de Valois, while foreseeing the turn the affair would take, had really
no idea of the scandal which would result from his own action.
“My dear child,” said Madame Granson to her son, “we are to dine,
you know, with Mademoiselle Cormon; do take a little pains with your
appearance. You are wrong to neglect your dress as you do. Put on that
handsome frilled shirt and your green coat of Elbeuf cloth. I have my
reasons,” she added slyly. “Besides, Mademoiselle Cormon is going to
Prebaudet, and many persons will doubtless call to bid her good-bye.
When a young man is marriageable he ought to take every means to make
himself agreeable. If girls would only tell the truth, heavens! my
dear boy, you’d be astonished at what makes them fall in love. Often
it suffices for a man to ride past them at the head of a company of
artillery, or show himself at a ball in tight clothes. Sometimes a mere
turn of the head, a melancholy attitude, makes them suppose a man’s
whole life; they’ll invent a romance to match the hero--who is often
a mere brute, but the marriage is made. Watch the Chevalier de Valois:
study him; copy his manners; see with what ease he presents himself;
he never puts on a stiff air, as you do. Talk a little more; one would
really think you didn’t know anything,--you, who know Hebrew by heart.”
Athanase listened to his mother with a surprised but submissive air;
then he rose, took his cap, and went off to the mayor’s office, saying
to himself, “Can my mother suspect my secret?”
He passed through the rue du Val-Noble, where Mademoiselle Cormon
lived,--a little pleasure which he gave himself every morning, thinking,
as usual, a variety of fanciful things:--
“How little she knows that a young man is passing before her house who
loves her well, who would be faithful to her, who would never cause
her any grief; who would leave her the entire management of her fortune
without interference. Good God! what fatality! here, side by side, in
the same town, are two persons in our mutual condition, and yet nothing
can bring them together. Suppose I were to speak to her this evening?”
During this time Suzanne had returned to her mother’s house thinking of
Athanase; and, like many other women who have longed to help an adored
man beyond the limit of human powers, she felt herself capable of making
her body a stepping-stone on which he could rise to attain his throne.
It is now necessary to enter the house of this old maid toward whom so
many interests are converging, where the actors in this scene, with
the exception of Suzanne, were all to meet this very evening. As for
Suzanne, that handsome individual bold enough to burn her ships like
Alexander at her start in life, and to begin the battle by a falsehood,
she disappears from the stage, having introduced upon it a violent
element of interest. Her utmost wishes were gratified. She quitted her
native town a few days later, well supplied with money and good clothes,
among which was a fine dress of green reps and a charming green bonnet
lined with pink, the gift of Monsieur de Valois,--a present which she
preferred to all the rest, even the money. If the chevalier had gone
to Paris in the days of her future brilliancy, she would certainly have
left every one for him. Like the chaste Susannah of the Bible, whom the
Elders hardly saw, she established herself joyously and full of hope in
Paris, while all Alencon was deploring her misfortunes, for which the
ladies of two Societies (Charity and Maternity) manifested the liveliest
sympathy. Though Suzanne is a fair specimen of those handsome Norman
women whom a learned physician reckons as comprising one third of her
fallen class whom our monstrous Paris absorbs, it must be stated that
she remained in the upper and more decent regions of gallantry. At an
epoch when, as Monsieur de Valois said, Woman no longer existed, she was
simply “Madame du Val-Noble”; in other days she would have rivalled
the Rhodopes, the Imperias, the Ninons of the past. One of the most
distinguished writers of the Restoration has taken her under his
protection; perhaps he may marry her. He is a journalist, and
consequently above public opinion, inasmuch as he manufactures it afresh
every year or two.