Eugénie and her cousin Charles disclosed their touching episodes. The
same instinct of comedy which had guided me in my false confidence made
me throw into every phrase the intonation which I thought would please
her most.
I certainly enjoyed this book, although I preferred ten other of
Balzac’s works, such, for example, as the “Curé de Tours,” which are
veritable literary compendiums, each phrase of which contains more
philosophy than a scholium of Spinoza.
I forced myself to appear touched by the misfortunes of the miser’s
daughter, in my most secret fibres; and my voice grew pitiful over the
sweet recluse of Saumur.
Here, as before, I gave myself useless trouble. There was no need of an
art so complicated. In the crisis of imaginative sensibility through
which Charlotte was passing, any romance of love was a peril.
If the father and mother had possessed, even in a feeble degree, that
spirit of observation which parents ought to exercise without ceasing,
they would have divined this peril of their daughter, more and more
captivated during the three evenings that this reading lasted. The
marquise simply remarked that characters so black as father Grandet and
the cousin did not exist. As for the marquis, he knew too much of the
world to proffer any such opinion, he formulated the cause of his ennui
during the reading.
“It is decidedly overdrawn. These unfinished descriptions, these
analyses, these numerical calculations! They are all very good, I do
not say they are not. But when I read a romance I wish to be amused.”
And he concluded that he must send to the Library of Clermont
immediately for the comedies of Labiche. I was in despair at this new
fancy. I would again be powerless to act upon the imagination of the
young girl, just at the moment when I could feel success probable.
This showed that I did not know the need which this soul, already
touched, felt, unknown to herself, the need of drawing near to me, of
comprehending me and making herself comprehended by me, of living in
contact with my mind.
The next day after that on which the marquis had issued the decree of
proscription against analytical romances, Mlle. de Jussat entered the
library at the hour I was there with her brother. She came to replace
the volume of the Encyclopedia; and with a half-embarrassed smile:
“I would like to ask a favor of you,” she said timidly. “I have a great
deal of time here, with which I do not know very well what to do. I
would like to have your advice in regard to my reading. The book which
you chose the other day gave me a great deal of pleasure.” She added:
“Ordinarily romances weary me, but that one was very interesting.”
I felt, at hearing her speak in that way, the joy which Count André
must have tasted when he saw the enemy whom he killed during the war
put his inquisitive head above the wall. It seemed to me as if I, too,
held my human game at the end of my gun.
The response to this request appeared to me so important that I feigned
to be very much embarrassed. In thanking her for her confidence I said
to her that she had charged me with a very delicate mission for which
I felt myself incapable. In brief, I made believe to decline a favor,
which I was charmed to intoxication to have obtained. She insisted, and
I promised to give her the next day a list of books.
I passed the evening and a part of the night in taking and rejecting
in my mind hundreds of volumes. At last I repeated aloud my father’s
favorite formula: “Let us proceed methodically,” and I asked myself how
books had acted on my imagination, in my adolescence, and what books?
I stated that I had been attracted most of all toward literature by
the unknown of sentimental experience. It was the desire to assimilate
unexperienced emotions which had bewitched me. I concluded that this
was the general law of literary intoxication. I must then choose for
this girl some books which should awake in her the same ideas while
taking into account the difference of our characters.
Charlotte was refined, pure and tender. She must be led into the
dangerous road of romantic curiosity by descriptions of sentiments
analogous to her own heart. I judged that the “Dominique” of
Fromentin, the “Princesse de Clèves,” “Valérie,” “Julia de Trécœur,”
the “Lys dans la vallée,” the “Reisebilder” of Heine, certain comedies
of Musset, in particular “On ne badine pas avec l’amour,” the first
poetry of Sully Prudhomme and that of Vigny, would best serve my
purpose.
I took the trouble to write out this list, accompanying it with a
tempting commentary, in which I indicated in my best manner the shade
of delicacy proper to each of these writers. That is the letter which
the poor child had kept, and of which the magistrates said it seemed
like the beginning of courtship. Ah! the strange courtship, and so
different from the vulgar ambition of the marriage with which these
gross minds have stupidly reproached me! If I had not a reason of pride
for refusing to defend myself which I will give you at the end of this
memoir, I would be silent from disgust of these low intelligences,
of which not one would be able to comprehend an action dictated by
pure reason. If they had only made you, my dear master, and the other
princes of modern thought, my judges! Then I would speak, as I am
speaking now to you.
The works thus designated arrived from Clermont. They were the object
of no remark on the part of the marquis. It is necessary to have
another reach of mind than that of this poor man to comprehend that
there are no bad books. There are bad moments in which to read the
best of books. You have a comparison so just in your chapter on “L’âme
littéraire,” when you liken the sore opened in certain imaginations
by certain readings to the well-known phenomenon produced on the body
poisoned by diabetes. The most inoffensive prick becomes envenomed with
gangrene.
If there were need of a proof of this theory of “the preliminary
state,” as you say again, I should find it in the fact that Mlle. de
Jussat sought in these books for things so diverse, for information
about me, my manner of feeling, of thinking, of understanding life and
character.
Every chapter, every page of these dangerous volumes became an occasion
for questioning me long, passionately, and ingenuously. I am certain
that she was sincere, and that she did not imagine she was doing
anything wrong when she came to talk with me apropos of such or such
a phrase about Dominique or Julia, Félix de Vandenesse or Perdican.
I remember the horror which she felt for the young man, the most
captivating and the most guilty of Musset’s heroes, and the heat with
which I stigmatized his duplicity of heart between Camille and Rosette.
Now, there was no personage in any book, who pleased me to the same
degree as this lover at once traitorous and sincere, disloyal and
loving, _ingénu_ and _roué_, who achieved, in his way, his
experience of sentimental vivisection upon his pretty and proud cousin.
I have cited this example, among twenty others, to give you an idea of
the conversations which we had now in this château in which we were so
strangely isolated. No one watched us. The dissimulation in which I had
masked myself on my arrival continued to cover me.
The marquis and the marquise had formed from the first an image
entirely different from my real nature. They took no pains to verify
whether this first impression were exact or false.
The good Mlle. Largeyx, installed in the comfort of her complacent
parasitism, was much too innocent to suspect the thoughts of depravity
perfectly intellectual which were revolving in my mind.
The Abbé Bartholomew and Sister Anaclet, whom a secret rivalry
separated, concealed under the form of an amiability quite
ecclesiastic, had only one care, that of pleasing the master and
mistress of the château, the priest for the benefit of his church, and
the _religieuse_ for that of her order.
Lucien was too young, and, as for the domestics, I had not yet learned
what perfidy was veiled under the impassibility of their smooth faces
and the irreproachable appearance of their brown livery with its gold
buttons.
We were then free, Charlotte and I, to talk the whole day. She appeared
first in the morning, in the dining-room where my pupil and I took our
tea, and there, under the pretext of breakfasting together, we talked
at one corner of the table, she in all the perfumed freshness of her
bath, with her hair hanging down in a heavy plait, and the suppleness
of her lovely form visible under the material of her half-fitting
morning dress.
I saw her again in the library where she always had some excuse for
coming; and by this time her hair was dressed, and she had assumed the
toilette of the day. We met again in the drawing-room before the second
breakfast and still again; and she waited upon us with her customary
grace, distributing the coffee a little hurriedly that she might linger
near me whom she served last, which permitted us to talk in an angle of
the window.
When the weather would permit we went out, the governess, Charlotte,
my pupil, and I, in the afternoon. At five-o’clock tea we were again
together, then at dinner, when I sat near her, and in the evening we
conversed almost as if we were really alone.
I mentally compared the phenomena which were taking place in this
girl, to that which I had observed several times in taming animals. At
one time I had written some chapters on animal psychology. A theorem
of Spinoza had served me for a starting point. I cannot now recall the
text, but this is the sense: to reproduce a movement, you must do it
yourself. That is true of man, and it is true of the animal. A savant
of rare merit and whom you know well, M. Espinas, has explained that
all society is founded on resemblance. I have concluded that for a man
to tame an animal, to bring it to live in his society, he must, in his
relations with this animal, make only those movements which the animal
can reproduce, that is to resemble him.
I have verified this law in establishing the species of analogy of
expression between a hunter and his dog, for example. I found--and this
was the sign that Mlle. de Jussat was becoming a little tamer each
day--that we began to employ analogous expressions, turns of thought
almost the same. I found myself accenting my words as she did hers, and
I observed in her gestures which resembled mine. In fine, I became a
part of her life, without her perceiving it, so careful was I not to
startle this soul just ready to be taken by a word that would cause her
to feel her danger.
This life of watchful diplomacy, to which I was condemned during
nearly two months that these simply intellectual relations lasted, did
not pass without almost daily internal struggles. To interest this
mind, to invade this imagination little by little, was not all of my
programme. I wished to be loved, and I knew that this moral interest
was only the beginning of passion. This beginning ought to lead in
order not to remain useless to something more than a sentimental
intimacy.
There is in your “Theory of the Passions,” my dear master, a note
which I read so much at that time that I know the text by heart: “A
well-prepared study of the lives of professional libertines,” say you,
“would throw a definite light upon the problem of the birth of love.
But the documents are lacking. These men have nearly all been men of
action, and who, in consequence, did not know how to relate. However,
some works of a superior psychological interest, the “Memoires” of
Casanova, the “Private Life of Marshal de Richelieu,” the chapter of
Saint-Simon on Lauzun, authorize us to say that nineteen times out
of twenty audacity and physical familiarity are the surest means of
creating love. This hypothesis confirms our doctrine on the animal
origin of this passion.”
Sometimes when we were alone together, and she moved, and her feet
approached mine, and when she breathed and I felt that she was a living
creature, the feverish wave of intoxication ran through my veins, and
I was obliged to turn my eyes away, for their expression would have
made her afraid. Often also, when I was away from her, it seemed to me
that audacity would be much more easy as it would be more complete.
I resolved then to clasp her in my arms, to press my lips to hers.
I saw her feeling badly at my caress, overcome, confounded by this
revelation of my ardor. What would happen then? My heart beat at this
idea. It was not the fear of being driven from the château that held
me back. It was more shameful to my pride not to dare. And I did not
dare. The inability to act is a trait of my character, but only when I
am not sustained by an idea. Let the idea be there and it infuses an
invincible energy into my being. To go to my death would be easy. You
will see that, if I am condemned. No, what paralyzed me near Mlle. de
Jussat as by a magnetic influence was _her purity_! At least I
have felt, with singular force, this recoil before innocence.
Often when I felt this invisible barrier between Charlotte and myself,
I have recalled the legends of guardian angels, and comprehended the
birth of this poetic conceit of Catholicism.
Reduced to reality by analysis, this phenomenon simply proves that in
the relations between two beings, there is a reciprocity of action
of one upon the other unknown to either. If by calculation I forced
myself to resemble this girl in order to tame her, I experienced
without calculation the species of moral suggestion which all true
character imposes upon us. The extreme simplicity of her mind triumphed
at times over my ideas, my remembrances, and my desires.
Finally, although judging this weakness to be unworthy of a brain like
mine, I respected her, as if I had not known the value of this word
respect, and that it represents the most stupid of all our ignorances.
Do we respect the player who ten times in succession strikes the rouge
or the noir? Well, in this hazardous lottery of the universe, virtue
and vice are the rouge and noir. An honest woman and a lucky player
have equal merit.
The spring arrived in the midst of these agitating alternations of
audacious projects, stupid timidity, contradictory reasonings, wise
combinations and ingenuous ardors. And such a spring! One must have
experienced the severity of winter among these mountains, then the
sudden sweetness of the renewal of nature, to appreciate the charm of
life which floats in this atmosphere when April and May bring back the
sacred season.
It comes first across the meadows in an awaking of the water which
shudders under the thin ice; it bursts through and then runs singing
on, light, transparent and free.
It comes through the woods in a continuous murmur of snow which
detaches itself piece by piece and falls upon the evergreen branches of
the pines and the yellow and dried leaves of the oaks. The lake freed
from its ice takes to shivering under the wind which sweeps away the
clouds, and the azure appears, the azure of a mountain sky, clearer,
deeper than that of the plain; and in some days the uniform color of
the landscape is tinted with colors tender and young.
The delicate buds begin to appear on the naked branches. The greenish
aments of hazels alternate with the yellowish catkins of the willows.
Even the black lava of the Cheyre appears to be animated. The velvety
fructifications of the mosses mingle with the whitening spots of the
lichens. The craters of the Puy de la Vache and of the Puy de Lassolas
disclose little by little the splendor of their red gravel. The silvery
trunks of the birches and the changeable trunks of the beeches shine in
the sun with a lively splendor.
In the thickets, the beautiful flowers which I had formerly picked with
my father, and whose corollas looked at me as if they were eyes, and
whose aroma followed me like a breath, began to bloom. The periwinkle,
the primrose, and the violet appeared first, then in succession the
cuckoo-flower with its shade of lilac, the daphne which bears its pink
flowers before it has any leaves, the white anemone, the two-leaved
harebell, with its odor of hyacinth, Solomon’s seal with its white
bells and its mysterious root which walks under the ground, the
lily-of-the-valley in the hollows, and the eglantine along the hedges.
The breeze which came from the white domes of the mountain passed over
these flowers. It brought with it perfumes something of the sun and
the snow, so caressing and so fresh, that only to breathe was to be
intoxicated with youth, was to participate in the renewal of the vast
world; and I, fixed as I was in my doctrines and my theories, felt the
puberty of all nature. The ice of abstract ideas in which my soul was
imprisoned melted.
When I read over the pages of my journal, now destroyed, in which I had
noted my sensations, I am astonished to see with what force the sources
of ingenuousness were reopened in me under this influence, and with
what a rushing flood they inundated my heart. I am vexed with myself
for thinking of it in this cowardly spirit. However, I experience a
pleasure in remembering that at this period I sincerely loved her who
is now no more. I repeat it with a real relief, that at least on the
day that I dared to tell her of my love--fatal day which marked the
beginning of our separation--I was the sincere dupe of my own words.
The declaration on which I had deliberated so much was, however, simply
the effect of chance. It was the 12th of May. Ah! it is less than a
year ago! In the morning the weather had been even more than usually
fine, and in the afternoon Mlle. Largeyx, Lucien, Charlotte and I
started to go to the village of Saint-Saturnin through a wood of oaks,
of birches and hazels which separated this village from the ruined
château of Montredon, and which is called the Pradat wood. We had taken
the little English cart which could hold four if necessary.
Never was a day more warm, a sky more blue, never was the odor of
spring borne by the wind more exhilarating.
We had not walked a league when Mlle. Largeyx, fatigued by the sun,
took her seat in the cart which was driven by the second coachman. The
rogue has sworn cruelly against me, and has recalled all that he knew
or guessed of what I myself am going to relate to you. Lucien also soon
declared himself tired, and joined the governess, so that I was left to
walk alone with Mlle. de Jussat.
She had taken it into her head to make a bouquet of
lilies-of-the-valley, and I helped her in this work. We were busy under
the branches, which were covered with a sort of delicate green cloud
of the scarcely opened foliage. She walked ahead, drawn far from the
edge of the wood in her search for the flowers. We found ourselves at
last in a clearing, and so far away that we could not see the group
made by the cart and the three persons. Charlotte first perceived our
solitude. She listened, and not hearing the noise of the horse’s feet
on the road, she cried out with the laughter of a child:
“We are lost. Fortunately the road is not hard to _rembourser_, as
poor Sister Anaclet says. Will you wait until I arrange my bouquet? It
would be a pity to have these beautiful flowers spoil.”
She sat down on a rock which was bathed in sunlight, and spread the
flowers on her lap, taking up the sprays of lilies one by one. I
inhaled the musky perfume of these pale racemes, seated on the other
extremity of the stone. Never had this creature, toward whom all my
thoughts had tended for months, appeared so adorably delicate and
refined as at this moment with her face daintily colored by the fresh
air, with the deep red of her lips which were bent in a half-smile,
with the clear limpidity of her gray eyes, with the symmetry of her
entire being.
She harmonized in a manner almost supernatural with the country about
us by the charm of youth which emanated from her person. The longer I
looked at her the more I was convinced that if I did not seize this
occasion to tell her what I had wished to declare for so long a time, I
should never again find another opportunity so propitious.
This idea grew in my mind, mingled with the remorse of seeing her, so
confident, so unsuspicious of the patient work by which, abusing our
daily intimacy, I had brought her to treat me with a gentleness almost
fraternal.
My heart beat violently. The magic of her presence excited my entire
being. Unfortunately she turned toward me for a moment, to show me
the bouquet which was nearly finished. No doubt she saw in my face
the trace of the emotion which my pride of thought raised in me, for
her face which had been so joyous, so frank, suddenly grew anxious.
I ought to say that during our conversations of these two months we
had avoided, she from delicacy, I from shrewdness, any allusion to
the romance of deception by which I had tried to excite her pity. I
understood how thoroughly she had believed in this romance and that
she had not ceased to think of it, when she said with an involuntary
melancholy in her eyes:
“Why do you spoil this beautiful day by sad remembrances? I thought you
had become more reasonable.”
“No!” I responded; “you do not know what makes me sad. Ah! it is not
remembrances. You refer to my former griefs. You are mistaken. There is
no more place in my mind for memories than there is on these branches
for last year’s leaves.”
I heard my voice as if it had been that of some one else, at the same
time I read in her eyes that, in spite of the poetical comparison by
which I had concealed the direct meaning of this phrase, she understood
me.
How was it that what had been so impossible now seemed easy? How was
it that I dared to do what I had believed I should never dare to do? I
took her hand which trembled in mine as if the child were seized with
a frightful terror. She rose to go away, but her knees trembled so
that I had no difficulty in constraining her to sit down again. I was
so overcome by my own audacity that I could not control myself, and I
began to tell her my feelings for her in words which I cannot recall
now.
All the emotions through which I had passed, since my arrival at the
château, yes all, even from the most detestable, those of my envy of
Count André, to the best, my remorse at abusing the confidence of
a young girl, were dissolved in an adoration almost mystical, and
half-mad, for this trembling, agitated, and beautiful creature. I
saw her while I was speaking grow as pale as the flowers which were
scattered in her lap. I remember that words came to me which were
excited to madness, wild to imprudence, and that I ended by repeating:
“How I love you! Ah! How I love you!”
Clasping her hand in mine and drawing her nearer and nearer to me. I
passed my free arm around her waist without even thinking, in my own
agitation, of kissing her. This gesture, by alarming her, gave her the
energy to rise and disengage herself. She moaned rather than said:
“Leave me, leave me.”
And stepping backward, her hands held out in front of her as if to
defend herself, she went to the trunk of a birch tree. There she
leaned, panting with emotion, while the big tears rolled down her
cheeks. There was so much of wounded modesty in these tears, so painful
a revulsion, in the tremulousness of her half-open lips, that I
remained where I was muttering:
“Pardon.”
“Be still,” said she, making a motion with her hand.
We remained thus opposite one another and silent for a time which must
have been very short, but which seemed an eternity to me. All at once
a cry crossed the wood, at first distant, then nearer, that of a voice
imitating the cry of the cuckoo. They had grown uneasy at our absence,
and it was Lucien who gave the usual signal for rallying.
At this simple reminder of reality Charlotte shivered. The blood
came back to her cheeks. She looked at me with eyes in which pride
had driven away fear. She looked like one who had just awaked from
a horrible sleep. She looked at her hands, which still shook, and,
without another word, she took up her gloves and her flowers, and began
to run, yes, to run like a pursued animal, in the direction of the
voice. Ten minutes after we were again on the road.
“I do not feel very well,” she said to her governess, as if to
anticipate the question which her disturbed face would provoke; “will
you give me a place in the carriage? We are going home.”
“It is the heat which has made you feel badly,” replied the old
demoiselle.