Thuillier had entered the ministry of finance as supernumerary at the
same time as Colleville, who has been mentioned already as his intimate
friend. In opposition to the well-regulated, gloomy household of
Thuillier, social nature had provided that of Colleville; and if it
is impossible not to remark that this fortuitous contrast was scarcely
moral, we must add that, before deciding that point, it would be well
to wait for the end of this drama, unfortunately too true, for which the
present historian is not responsible.
Colleville was the only son of a talented musician, formerly first
violin at the Opera under Francoeur and Rebel, who related, at least
six times a month during his lifetime, anecdotes concerning the
representations of the “Village Seer”; and mimicked Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, taking him off to perfection. Colleville and Thuillier were
inseparable friends; they had no secrets from each other, and their
friendship, begun at fifteen years of age, had never known a cloud up to
the year 1839. The former was one of those employees who are called,
in the government offices, pluralists. These clerks are remarkable
for their industry. Colleville, a good musician, owed to the name
and influence of his father a situation as first clarionet at the
Opera-Comique, and so long as he was a bachelor, Colleville, who was
rather richer than Thuillier, shared his means with his friend. But,
unlike Thuillier, Colleville married for love a Mademoiselle Flavie,
the natural daughter of a celebrated danseuse at the Opera; her reputed
father being a certain du Bourguier, one of the richest contractors
of the day. In style and origin, Flavie was apparently destined for
a melancholy career, when Colleville, often sent to her mother’s
apartments, fell in love with her and married her. Prince Galathionne,
who at that time was “protecting” the danseuse, then approaching the end
of her brilliant career, gave Flavie a “dot” of twenty thousand francs,
to which her mother added a magnificent trousseau. Other friends and
opera-comrades sent jewels and silver-ware, so that the Colleville
household was far richer in superfluities than in capital. Flavie,
brought up in opulence, began her married life in a charming apartment,
furnished by her mother’s upholsterer, where the young wife, who was
full of taste for art and for artists, and possessed a certain elegance,
ruled, a queen.
Madame Colleville was pretty and piquant, clever, gay, and graceful;
to express her in one sentence,--a charming creature. Her mother, the
danseuse, now forty-three years old, retired from the stage and went
to live in the country,--thus depriving her daughter of the resources
derived from her wasteful extravagance. Madame Colleville kept a very
agreeable but extremely free and easy household. From 1816 to 1826 she
had five children. Colleville, a musician in the evening, kept the books
of a merchant from seven to nine in the morning, and by ten o’clock he
was at his ministry. Thus, by blowing into a bit of wood by night, and
writing double-entry accounts in the early morning, he managed to eke
out his earnings to seven or eight thousand francs a year.
Madame Colleville played the part of a “comme il faut” woman; she
received on Wednesdays, gave a concert once a month and a dinner every
fortnight. She never saw Colleville except at dinner and at night, when
he returned about twelve o’clock, at which hour she was frequently not
at home herself. She went to the theatres, where boxes were sometimes
given to her; and she would send word to Colleville to come and fetch
her from such or such a house, where she was supping and dancing. At her
own house, guests found excellent cheer, and her society, though rather
mixed, was very amusing; she received and welcomed actresses, artists,
men of letters, and a few rich men. Madame Colleville’s elegance was on
a par with that of Tullia, the leading prima-donna, with whom she was
intimate; but though the Collevilles encroached on their capital and
were often in difficulty by the end of the month, Flavie was never in
debt.
Colleville was very happy; he still loved his wife, and he made himself
her best friend. Always received by her with affectionate smiles and
sympathetic pleasure, he yielded readily to the irresistible grace
of her manners. The vehement activity with which he pursued his three
avocations was a part of his natural character and temperament. He was
a fine stout man, ruddy, jovial, extravagant, and full of ideas. In ten
years there was never a quarrel in his household. Among business men
he was looked upon, in common with all artists, as a scatter-brained
fellow; and superficial persons thought that the constant hurry of this
hard worker was only the restless coming and going of a busybody.
Colleville had the sense to seem stupid; he boasted of his family
happiness, and gave himself unheard-of trouble in making anagrams, in
order at times to seem absorbed in that passion. The government clerks
of his division at the ministry, the office directors, and even the
heads of divisions came to his concerts; now and then he quietly
bestowed upon them opera tickets, when he needed some extra indulgence
on account of his frequent absence. Rehearsals took half the time that
he ought to have been at his desk; but the musical knowledge his father
had bequeathed to him was sufficiently genuine and well-grounded to
excuse him from all but final rehearsals. Thanks to Madame Colleville’s
intimacies, both the theatre and the ministry lent themselves kindly to
the needs of this industrious pluralist, who, moreover, was bringing
up, with great care, a youth, warmly recommended to him by his wife,
a future great musician, who sometimes took his place in the orchestra
with a promise of eventually succeeding him. In fact, about the year
1827 this young man became the first clarionet when Colleville resigned
his position.
The usual comment on Flavie was, “That little slip of a coquette, Madame
Colleville.” The eldest of the Colleville children, born in 1816, was
the living image of Colleville himself. In 1818, Madame Colleville held
the cavalry in high estimation, above even art; and she distinguished
more particularly a sub-lieutenant in the dragoons of Saint-Chamans,
the young and rich Charles de Gondreville, who afterwards died in the
Spanish campaign. By that time Flavie had had a second son, whom she
henceforth dedicated to a military career. In 1820 she considered
banking the nursing mother of trade, the supporter of Nations, and she
made the great Keller, that famous banker and orator, her idol. She
then had another son, whom she named Francois, resolving to make him a
merchant,--feeling sure that Keller’s influence would never fail him.
About the close of the year 1820, Thuillier, the intimate friend of
Monsieur and Madame Colleville, felt the need of pouring his sorrows
into the bosom of this excellent woman, and to her he related his
conjugal miseries. For six years he had longed to have children, but God
did not bless him; although that poor Madame Thuillier had made novenas,
and had even gone, uselessly, to Notra-Dame de Liesse! He depicted
Celeste in various lights, which brought the words “Poor Thuillier!”
from Flavie’s lips. She herself was rather sad, having at the moment no
dominant opinion. She poured her own griefs into Thuillier’s bosom. The
great Keller, that hero of the Left, was, in reality, extremely petty;
she had learned to know the other side of public fame, the follies of
banking, the emptiness of eloquence! The orator only spoke for show;
to her he had behaved extremely ill. Thuillier was indignant. “None
but stupid fellows know how to love,” he said; “take me!” That
handsome Thuillier was henceforth supposed to be paying court to Madame
Colleville, and was rated as one of her “attentives,”--a word in vogue
during the Empire.
“Ha! you are after my wife,” said Colleville, laughing. “Take care;
she’ll leave you in the lurch, like all the rest.”
A rather clever speech, by which Colleville saved his marital dignity.
From 1820 to 1821, Thuillier, in virtue of his title as friend of the
family, helped Colleville, who had formerly helped him; so much so,
that in eighteen months he had lent nearly ten thousand francs to the
Colleville establishment, with no intention of ever claiming them. In
the spring of 1821, Madame Colleville gave birth to a charming
little girl, to whom Monsieur and Madame Thuillier were godfather and
godmother. The child was baptized Celeste-Louise-Caroline-Brigitte;
Mademoiselle Thuillier wishing that her name should be given among
others to the little angel. The name of Caroline was a graceful
attention paid to Colleville. Old mother Lemprun assumed the care of
putting the baby to nurse under her own eyes at Auteuil, where Celeste
and her sister-in-law Brigitte, paid it regularly a semi-weekly visit.
As soon as Madame Colleville recovered she said to Thuillier, frankly,
in a very serious tone:--
“My dear friend, if we are all to remain good friends, you must be our
friend only. Colleville is attached to you; well, that’s enough for you
in this household.”
“Explain to me,” said the handsome Thuillier to Tullia after this
remark, “why women are never attached to me. I am not the Apollo
Belvidere, but for all that I’m not a Vulcan; I am passably
good-looking, I have sense, I am faithful--”
“Do you want me to tell you the truth?” replied Tullia.
“Yes,” said Thuillier.
“Well, though we can, sometimes, love a stupid fellow, we never love a
silly one.”
Those words killed Thuillier; he never got over them; henceforth he was
a prey to melancholy and accused all women of caprice.
The secretary-general of the ministry, des Lupeaulx, whose influence
Madame Colleville thought greater than it was, and of whom she said,
later, “That was one of my mistakes,” became for a time the great man
of the Colleville salon; but as Flavie found he had no power to promote
Colleville into the upper division, she had the good sense to resent des
Lupeaulx’s attentions to Madame Rabourdin (whom she called a minx),
to whose house she had never been invited, and who had twice had the
impertinence not to come to the Colleville concerts.
Madame Colleville was deeply affected by the death of young Gondreville;
she felt, she said, the finger of God. In 1824 she turned over a new
leaf, talked of economy, stopped her receptions, busied herself with her
children, determined to become a good mother of a family; no favorite
friend was seen at her house. She went to church, reformed her dress,
wore gray, and talked Catholicism, mysticism, and so forth. All this
produced, in 1825, another little son, whom she named Theodore. Soon
after, in 1826, Colleville was appointed sub-director of the
Clergeot division, and later, in 1828, collector of taxes in a Paris
arrondissement. He also received the cross of the Legion of honor, to
enable him to put his daughter at the royal school of Saint-Denis. The
half-scholarship obtained by Keller for the eldest boy, Charles, was
transferred to the second in 1830, when Charles entered the school
of Saint-Louis on a full scholarship. The third son, taken under the
protection of Madame la Dauphine, was provided with a three-quarter
scholarship in the Henri IV. school.
In 1830 Colleville, who had the good fortune not to lose a child, was
obliged, owing to his well-known attachment to the fallen royal family,
to send in his resignation; but he was clever enough to make a bargain
for it,--obtaining in exchange a pension of two thousand four hundred
francs, based on his period of service, and ten thousand francs
indemnity paid by his successor; he also received the rank of officer of
the Legion of honor. Nevertheless, he found himself in rather a cramped
condition when Mademoiselle Thuillier, in 1832, advised him to come and
live near them; pointing out to him the possibility of obtaining some
position in the mayor’s office, which, in fact, he did obtain a few
weeks later, at a salary of three thousand francs. Thus Thuillier and
Colleville were destined to end their days together. In 1833 Madame
Colleville, then thirty-five years old, settled herself in the rue
d’Enfer, at the corner of the rue des Deux-Eglises with Celeste
and little Theodore, the other boys being at their several schools.
Colleville was equidistant between the mayor’s office and the rue
Saint-Dominique d’Enfer. Thus the household, after a brilliant,
gay, headlong, reformed, and calmed existence, subsided finally into
bourgeois obscurity with five thousand four hundred francs a year for
its sole dependence.
Celeste was by this time twelve years of age, and she promised to be
pretty. She needed masters, and her education ought to cost not less
than two thousand francs a year. The mother felt the necessity of
keeping her under the eye of her godfather and godmother. She therefore
very willingly adopted the proposal of Mademoiselle Thuillier, who,
without committing herself to any engagement, allowed Madame Colleville
to understand that the fortunes of her brother, his wife, and herself
would go, ultimately, to the little Celeste. The child had been left at
Auteuil until she was seven years of age, adored by the good old Madame
Lemprun, who died in 1829, leaving twenty thousand francs, and a house
which was sold for the enormous sum of twenty-eight thousand. The
lively little girl had seen very little of her mother, but very much
of Mademoiselle and Madame Thuillier when she first returned to the
paternal mansion in 1829; but in 1833 she fell under the dominion of
Flavie, who was then, as we have said, endeavoring to do her duty,
which, like other women instigated by remorse, she exaggerated. Without
being an unkind mother, Flavie was very stern with her daughter. She
remembered her own bringing-up, and swore within herself to make Celeste
a virtuous woman. She took her to mass, and had her prepared for her
first communion by a rector who has since become a bishop. Celeste was
all the more readily pious, because her godmother, Madame Thuillier,
was a saint, and the child adored her; she felt that the poor neglected
woman loved her better than her own mother.
From 1833 to 1840 she received a brilliant education according to
the ideas of the bourgeoisie. The best music-masters made her a fair
musician; she could paint a water-color properly; she danced extremely
well; and she had studied the French language, history, geography,
English, Italian,--in short, all that constitutes the education of
a well-brought-up young lady. Of medium height, rather plump,
unfortunately near-sighted, she was neither plain nor pretty; not
without delicacy or even brilliancy of complexion, it is true, but
totally devoid of all distinction of manner. She had a great fund of
reserved sensibility, and her godfather and godmother, Mademoiselle
Thuillier and Colleville, were unanimous on one point,--the great
resource of mothers--namely, that Celeste was capable of attachment. One
of her beauties was a magnificent head of very fine blond hair; but her
hands and feet showed her bourgeois origin.
Celeste endeared herself by precious qualities; she was kind, simple,
without gall of any kind; she loved her father and mother, and would
willingly sacrifice herself for their sake. Brought up to the deepest
admiration for her godfather by Brigitte (who taught her to say “Aunt
Brigitte”), and by Madame Thuillier and her own mother, Celeste imbibed
the highest idea of the ex-beau of the Empire. The house in the rue
Saint-Dominique d’Enfer produced upon her very much the effect of the
Chateau des Tuileries on a courtier of the new dynasty.
Thuillier had not escaped the action of the administrative rolling-pin
which thins the mind as it spreads it out. Exhausted by irksome toil, as
much as by his life of gallantry, the ex-sub-director had well-nigh
lost all his faculties by the time he came to live in the rue
Saint-Dominique. But his weary face, on which there still reigned an air
of imperial haughtiness, mingled with a certain contentment, the conceit
of an upper official, made a deep impression upon Celeste. She alone
adored that haggard face. The girl, moreover, felt herself to be the
happiness of the Thuillier household.