The disasters of 1814 afflict every species of existence. After
brilliant days of conquest, after the period during which obstacles
change to triumphs, and the slightest check becomes a piece of good
fortune, there comes a time when the happiest ideas turn out blunders,
when courage leads to destruction, and when your very fortifications
are a stumbling-block. Conjugal love, which, according to authors, is
a peculiar phase of love, has, more than anything else, its French
Campaign, its fatal 1814. The devil especially loves to dangle his
tail in the affairs of poor desolate women, and to this Caroline has
come.
Caroline is trying to think of some means of bringing her husband
back. She spends many solitary hours at home, and during this time her
imagination works. She goes and comes, she gets up, and often stands
pensively at the window, looking at the street and seeing nothing, her
face glued to the panes, and feeling as if in a desert, in the midst
of her friends, in the bosom of her luxuriously furnished apartments.
Now, in Paris, unless a person occupy a house of his own, enclosed
between a court and a garden, all life is double. At every story, a
family sees another family in the opposite house. Everybody plunges
his gaze at will into his neighbor's domains. There is a necessity for
mutual observation, a common right of search from which none can
escape. At a given time, in the morning, you get up early, the servant
opposite is dusting the parlor, she has left the windows open and has
put the rugs on the railing; you divine a multitude of things, and
vice-versa. Thus, in a given time, you are acquainted with the habits
of the pretty, the old, the young, the coquettish, the virtuous woman
opposite, or the caprices of the coxcomb, the inventions of the old
bachelor, the color of the furniture, and the cat of the two pair
front. Everything furnishes a hint, and becomes matter for divination.
At the fourth story, a grisette, taken by surprise, finds herself--too
late, like the chaste Susanne,--the prey of the delighted lorgnette of
an aged clerk, who earns eighteen hundred francs a year, and who
becomes criminal gratis. On the other hand, a handsome young
gentleman, who, for the present, works without wages, and is only
nineteen years old, appears before the sight of a pious old lady, in
the simple apparel of a man engaged in shaving. The watch thus kept up
is never relaxed, while prudence, on the contrary, has its moments of
forgetfulness. Curtains are not always let down in time. A woman, just
before dark, approaches the window to thread her needle, and the
married man opposite may then admire a head that Raphael might have
painted, and one that he considers worthy of himself--a National Guard
truly imposing when under arms. Oh, sacred private life, where art
thou! Paris is a city ever ready to exhibit itself half naked, a city
essentially libertine and devoid of modesty. For a person's life to be
decorous in it, the said person should have a hundred thousand a year.
Virtues are dearer than vices in Paris.
Caroline, whose gaze sometimes steals between the protecting muslins
which hide her domestic life from the five stories opposite, at last
discovers a young couple plunged in the delights of the honey-moon,
and newly established in the first story directly in view of her
window. She spends her time in the most exciting observations. The
blinds are closed early, and opened late. One day, Caroline, who has
arisen at eight o'clock notices, by accident, of course, the maid
preparing a bath or a morning dress, a delicious deshabille. Caroline
sighs. She lies in ambush like a hunter at the cover; she surprises
the young woman, her face actually illuminated with happiness.
Finally, by dint of watching the charming couple, she sees the
gentleman and lady open the window, and lean gently one against the
other, as, supported by the railing, they breathe the evening air.
Caroline gives herself a nervous headache, by endeavoring to interpret
the phantasmagorias, some of them having an explanation and others
not, made by the shadows of these two young people on the curtains,
one night when they have forgotten to close the shutters. The young
woman is often seated, melancholy and pensive, waiting for her absent
husband; she hears the tread of a horse, or the rumble of a cab at the
street corner; she starts from the sofa, and from her movements, it is
easy for Caroline to see that she exclaims: "'Tis he!"
"How they love each other!" says Caroline to herself.
By dint of nervous headache, Caroline conceives an exceedingly
ingenious plan: this plan consists in using the conjugal bliss of the
opposite neighbors as a tonic to stimulate Adolphe. The idea is not
without depravity, but then Caroline's intention sanctifies the means!
"Adolphe," she says, "we have a neighbor opposite, the loveliest
woman, a brunette--"
"Oh, yes," returns Adolphe, "I know her. She is a friend of Madame de
Fischtaminel's: Madame Foullepointe, the wife of a broker, a charming
man and a good fellow, very fond of his wife: he's crazy about her.
His office and rooms are here, in the court, while those on the street
are madame's. I know of no happier household. Foullepointe talks about
his happiness everywhere, even at the Exchange; he's really quite
tiresome."
"Well, then, be good enough to present Monsieur and Madame
Foullepointe to me. I should be delighted to learn how she manages to
make her husband love her so much: have they been married long?"
"Five years, just like us."
"O Adolphe, dear, I am dying to know her: make us intimately
acquainted. Am I as pretty as she?"
"Well, if I were to meet you at an opera ball, and if you weren't my
wife, I declare, I shouldn't know which--"
"You are real sweet to-day. Don't forget to invite them to dinner
Saturday."
"I'll do it to-night. Foullepointe and I often meet on 'Change."
"Now," says Caroline, "this young woman will doubtless tell me what
her method of action is."
Caroline resumes her post of observation. At about three she looks
through the flowers which form as it were a bower at the window, and
exclaims, "Two perfect doves!"
For the Saturday in question, Caroline invites Monsieur and Madame
Deschars, the worthy Monsieur Fischtaminel, in short, the most
virtuous couples of her society. She has brought out all her
resources: she has ordered the most sumptuous dinner, she has taken
the silver out of the chest: she means to do all honor to the model of
wives.
"My dear, you will see to-night," she says to Madame Deschars, at the
moment when all the women are looking at each other in silence, "the
most admirable young couple in the world, our opposite neighbors: a
young man of fair complexion, so graceful and with _such_ manners! His
head is like Lord Byron's, and he's a real Don Juan, only faithful:
he's discovered the secret of making love eternal: I shall perhaps
obtain a second crop of it from her example. Adolphe, when he sees
them, will blush at his conduct, and--"