Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
PREPARER’S NOTE:
Ferragus is the first part of a trilogy. Part two is entitled
The Duchesse de Langeais and part three is The Girl with the
Golden Eyes. The three stories are frequently combined under
the title The Thirteen.
DEDICATION
To Hector Berlioz.
PREFACE
Thirteen men were banded together in Paris under the Empire, all imbued
with one and the same sentiment, all gifted with sufficient energy to
be faithful to the same thought, with sufficient honor among themselves
never to betray one another even if their interests clashed; and
sufficiently wily and politic to conceal the sacred ties that united
them, sufficiently strong to maintain themselves above the law, bold
enough to undertake all things, and fortunate enough to succeed, nearly
always, in their undertakings; having run the greatest dangers, but
keeping silence if defeated; inaccessible to fear; trembling neither
before princes, nor executioners, not even before innocence; accepting
each other for such as they were, without social prejudices,--criminals,
no doubt, but certainly remarkable through certain of the qualities that
make great men, and recruiting their number only among men of mark. That
nothing might be lacking to the sombre and mysterious poesy of their
history, these Thirteen men have remained to this day unknown; though
all have realized the most chimerical ideas that the fantastic power
falsely attributed to the Manfreds, the Fausts, and the Melmoths can
suggest to the imagination. To-day, they are broken up, or, at least,
dispersed; they have peaceably put their necks once more under the yoke
of civil law, just as Morgan, that Achilles among pirates, transformed
himself from a buccaneering scourge to a quiet colonist, and spent,
without remorse, around his domestic hearth the millions gathered in
blood by the lurid light of flames and slaughter.
Since the death of Napoleon, circumstances, about which the author must
keep silence, have still farther dissolved the original bond of this
secret society, always extraordinary, sometimes sinister, as though
it lived in the blackest pages of Mrs. Radcliffe. A somewhat strange
permission to relate in his own way a few of the adventures of these men
(while respecting certain susceptibilities) has only recently been given
to him by one of those anonymous heroes to whom all society was once
occultly subjected. In this permission the writer fancied he detected a
vague desire for personal celebrity.
This man, apparently still young, with fair hair and blue eyes, whose
sweet, clear voice seemed to denote a feminine soul, was pale of face
and mysterious in manner; he conversed affably, declared himself not
more than forty years of age, and apparently belonged to the very
highest social classes. The name which he assumed must have been
fictitious; his person was unknown in society. Who was he? That, no one
has ever known.
Perhaps, in confiding to the author the extraordinary matters which he
related to him, this mysterious person may have wished to see them in
a manner reproduced, and thus enjoy the emotions they were certain
to bring to the hearts of the masses,--a feeling analogous to that of
Macpherson when the name of his creation Ossian was transcribed into
all languages. That was certainly, for the Scotch lawyer, one of the
keenest, or at any rate the rarest, sensations a man could give himself.
Is it not the incognito of genius? To write the “Itinerary from Paris to
Jerusalem” is to take a share in the human glory of a single epoch; but
to endow his native land with another Homer, was not that usurping the
work of God?
The author knows too well the laws of narration to be ignorant of the
pledges this short preface is contracting for him; but he also knows
enough of the history of the _Thirteen_ to be certain that his
present tale will never be thought below the interest inspired by
this programme. Dramas steeped in blood, comedies filled with terror,
romantic tales through which rolled heads mysteriously decapitated, have
been confided to him. If readers were not surfeited with horrors served
up to them of late in cold blood, he might reveal the calm atrocities,
the surpassing tragedies concealed under family life. But he chooses
in preference gentler events,--those where scenes of purity succeed the
tempests of passion; where woman is radiant with virtue and beauty. To
the honor of the _Thirteen_ be it said that there are such scenes in
their history, which may have the honor of being some day published as
a foil of tales to listeners,--that race apart from others, so curiously
energetic, and so interesting in spite of its crimes.
An author ought to be above converting his tale, when the tale is true,
into a species of surprise-game, and of taking his readers, as certain
novellists do, through many volumes and from cellar to cellar, to show
them the dry bones of a dead body, and tell them, by way of conclusion,
that _that_ is what has frightened them behind doors, hidden in the
arras, or in cellars where the dead man was buried and forgotten. In
spite of his aversion for prefaces, the author feels bound to place the
following statement at the head of this narrative. Ferragus is a
first episode which clings by invisible links to the “History of the
_Thirteen_,” whose power, naturally acquired, can alone explain certain
acts and agencies which would otherwise seem supernatural. Although it
is permissible in tellers of tales to have a sort of literary coquetry
in becoming historians, they ought to renounce the benefit that may
accrue from an odd or fantastic title--on which certain slight successes
have been won in the present day. Consequently, the author will now
explain, succinctly, the reasons that obliged him to select a title to
his book which seems at first sight unnatural.
_Ferragus_ is, according to ancient custom, a name taken by the chief or
Grand Master of the Devorants. On the day of their election these chiefs
continue whichever of the dynasties of their Order they are most
in sympathy with, precisely as the Popes do, on their accession, in
connection with pontifical dynasties. Thus the Devorants have “Trempe-la
Soupe IX.,” “Ferragus XXII.,” “Tutanus XIII.,” “Masche-Fer IV.,” just
as the Church has Clement XIV., Gregory VII., Julius II., Alexander VI.,
etc.
Now, then, who are the Devorants? “Devorant” is the name of one of
those tribes of “Companions” that issued in ancient times from the great
mystical association formed among the workers of Christianity to rebuild
the temple at Jerusalem. Companionism (to coin a word) still exists in
France among the people. Its traditions, powerful over minds that are
not enlightened, and over men not educated enough to cast aside an oath,
might serve the ends of formidable enterprises if some rough-hewn genius
were to seize hold of these diverse associations. All the instruments
of this Companionism are well-nigh blind. From town to town there has
existed from time immemorial, for the use of Companions, an “Obade,”--a
sort of halting-place, kept by a “Mother,” an old woman, half-gypsy,
with nothing to lose, knowing everything that happens in her
neighborhood, and devoted, either from fear or habit, to the tribe,
whose straggling members she feeds and lodges. This people, ever moving
and changing, though controlled by immutable customs, has its eyes
everywhere, executes, without judging it, a WILL,--for the oldest
Companion still belongs to an era when men had faith. Moreover,
the whole body professes doctrines that are sufficiently true and
sufficiently mysterious to electrify into a sort of tribal loyalty all
adepts whenever they obtain even a slight development. The attachment
of the Companions to their laws is so passionate that the diverse
tribes will fight sanguinary battles with each other in defence of some
question of principle.
Happily for our present public safety, when a Devorant is ambitious, he
builds houses, lays by his money, and leaves the Order. There is many
a curious thing to tell about the “Compagnons du Devoir” [Companions of
the Duty], the rivals of the Devorants, and about the different sects
of working-men, their usages, their fraternity, and the bond existing
between them and the free-masons. But such details would be out of place
here. The author must, however, add that under the old monarchy it was
not an unknown thing to find a “Trempe-la-Soupe” enslaved to the king
sentenced for a hundred and one years to the galleys, but ruling his
tribe from there, religiously consulted by it, and when he escaped from
his galley, certain of help, succor, and respect, wherever he might be.
To see its grand master at the galleys is, to the faithful tribe, only
one of those misfortunes for which providence is responsible, and which
does not release the Devorants from obeying a power created by them to
be above them. It is but the passing exile of their legitimate king,
always a king for them. Thus we see the romantic prestige attaching to
the name of Ferragus and to that of the Devorants completely dissipated.
As for the _Thirteen_, they were all men of the stamp of Trelawney, Lord
Byron’s friend, who was, they say, the original of his “Corsair.” They
were all fatalists, men of nerve and poesy, weary of leading flat and
empty lives, driven toward Asiatic enjoyments by forces all the more
excessive because, long dormant, they awoke furious. One of them, after
re-reading “Venice Preserved,” and admiring the sublime union of Pierre
and Jaffier, began to reflect on the virtues shown by men who are
outlawed by society, on the honesty of galley-slaves, the faithfulness
of thieves among each other, the privileges of exorbitant power which
such men know how to win by concentrating all ideas into a single will.
He saw that Man is greater than men. He concluded that society ought
to belong wholly to those distinguished beings who, to natural
intelligence, acquired wisdom, and fortune, add a fanaticism hot enough
to fuse into one casting these different forces. That done, their occult
power, vast in action and in intensity, against which the social order
would be helpless, would cast down all obstacles, blast all other wills,
and give to each the devilish power of all. This world apart within the
world, hostile to the world, admitting none of the world’s ideas,
not recognizing any law, not submitting to any conscience but that of
necessity, obedient to a devotion only, acting with every faculty for
a single associate when one of their number asked for the assistance of
all,--this life of filibusters in lemon kid gloves and cabriolets;
this intimate union of superior beings, cold and sarcastic, smiling and
cursing in the midst of a false and puerile society; this certainty of
forcing all things to serve an end, of plotting a vengeance that could
not fail of living in thirteen hearts; this happiness of nurturing a
secret hatred in the face of men, and of being always in arms against
this; this ability to withdraw to the sanctuary of self with one idea
more than even the most remarkable of men could have,--this religion of
pleasure and egotism cast so strong a spell over Thirteen men that they
revived the society of Jesuits to the profit of the devil.
It was horrible and stupendous; but the compact was made, and it lasted
precisely because it appeared to be so impossible.
There was, therefore, in Paris a brotherhood of _Thirteen_, who belonged
to each other absolutely, but ignored themselves as absolutely before
the world. At night they met, like conspirators, hiding no thought,
disposing each and all of a common fortune, like that of the Old Man
of the Mountain; having their feet in all salons, their hands in all
money-boxes, and making all things serve their purpose or their fancy
without scruple. No chief commanded them; no one member could arrogate
to himself that power. The most eager passion, the most exacting
circumstance, alone had the right to pass first. They were Thirteen
unknown kings,--but true kings, more than ordinary kings and judges and
executioners,--men who, having made themselves wings to roam through
society from depth to height, disdained to be anything in the social
sphere because they could be all. If the present writer ever learns the
reasons of their abdication of this power, he will take occasion to tell
them.[*]
[*] See Theophile Gautier’s account of the society of the
“Cheval Rouge.” Memoir of Balzac. Roberts Brothers, Boston.
Now, with this brief explanation, he may be allowed to begin the tale
of certain episodes in the history of the _Thirteen_, which have more
particularly attracted him by the Parisian flavor of their details and
the whimsicality of their contrasts.
FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS
CHAPTER I. MADAME JULES
Certain streets in Paris are as degraded as a man covered with infamy;
also, there are noble streets, streets simply respectable, young streets
on the morality of which the public has not yet formed an opinion; also
cut-throat streets, streets older than the age of the oldest dowagers,
estimable streets, streets always clean, streets always dirty, working,
laboring, and mercantile streets. In short, the streets of Paris
have every human quality, and impress us, by what we must call their
physiognomy, with certain ideas against which we are defenceless. There
are, for instance, streets of a bad neighborhood in which you could not
be induced to live, and streets where you would willingly take up your
abode. Some streets, like the rue Montmartre, have a charming head,
and end in a fish’s tail. The rue de la Paix is a wide street, a fine
street, yet it wakens none of those gracefully noble thoughts which come
to an impressible mind in the middle of the rue Royale, and it certainly
lacks the majesty which reigns in the Place Vendome.
If you walk the streets of the Ile Saint-Louis, do not seek the reason
of the nervous sadness that lays hold upon you save in the solitude
of the spot, the gloomy look of the houses, and the great deserted
mansions. This island, the ghost of _fermiers-generaux_, is the Venice
of Paris. The Place de la Bourse is voluble, busy, degraded; it is
never fine except by moonlight at two in the morning. By day it is
Paris epitomized; by night it is a dream of Greece. The rue
Traversiere-Saint-Honore--is not that a villainous street? Look at the
wretched little houses with two windows on a floor, where vice, crime,
and misery abound. The narrow streets exposed to the north, where the
sun never comes more than three or four times a year, are the cut-throat
streets which murder with impunity; the authorities of the present
day do not meddle with them; but in former times the Parliament might
perhaps have summoned the lieutenant of police and reprimanded him for
the state of things; and it would, at least, have issued some decree
against such streets, as it once did against the wigs of the Chapter of
Beauvais. And yet Monsieur Benoiston de Chateauneuf has proved that
the mortality of these streets is double that of others! To sum up such
theories by a single example: is not the rue Fromentin both murderous
and profligate!
These observations, incomprehensible out of Paris, will doubtless be
understood by musing men of thought and poesy and pleasure, who
know, while rambling about Paris, how to harvest the mass of floating
interests which may be gathered at all hours within her walls; to them
Paris is the most delightful and varied of monsters: here, a pretty
woman; farther on, a haggard pauper; here, new as the coinage of a new
reign; there, in this corner, elegant as a fashionable woman. A monster,
moreover, complete! Its garrets, as it were, a head full of knowledge
and genius; its first storeys stomachs repleted; its shops, actual feet,
where the busy ambulating crowds are moving. Ah! what an ever-active
life the monster leads! Hardly has the last vibration of the last
carriage coming from a ball ceased at its heart before its arms are
moving at the barriers and it shakes itself slowly into motion. Doors
open; turning on their hinges like the membrane of some huge lobster,
invisibly manipulated by thirty thousand men or women, of whom each
individual occupies a space of six square feet, but has a kitchen, a
workshop, a bed, children, a garden, little light to see by, but
must see all. Imperceptibly, the articulations begin to crack; motion
communicates itself; the street speaks. By mid-day, all is alive; the
chimneys smoke, the monster eats; then he roars, and his thousand paws
begin to ramp. Splendid spectacle! But, O Paris! he who has not admired
your gloomy passages, your gleams and flashes of light, your deep and
silent _cul-de-sacs_, who has not listened to your murmurings between
midnight and two in the morning, knows nothing as yet of your true
poesy, nor of your broad and fantastic contrasts.
There are a few amateurs who never go their way heedlessly; who savor
their Paris, so to speak; who know its physiognomy so well that they
see every wart, and pimple, and redness. To others, Paris is always that
monstrous marvel, that amazing assemblage of activities, of schemes,
of thoughts; the city of a hundred thousand tales, the head of the
universe. But to those few, Paris is sad or gay, ugly or beautiful,
living or dead; to them Paris is a creature; every man, every fraction
of a house is a lobe of the cellular tissue of that great courtesan
whose head and heart and fantastic customs they know so well. These men
are lovers of Paris; they lift their noses at such or such a corner of
a street, certain that they can see the face of a clock; they tell a
friend whose tobacco-pouch is empty, “Go down that passage and turn
to the left; there’s a tobacconist next door to a confectioner, where
there’s a pretty girl.” Rambling about Paris is, to these poets, a
costly luxury. How can they help spending precious minutes before
the dramas, disasters, faces, and picturesque events which meet us
everywhere amid this heaving queen of cities, clothed in posters,--who
has, nevertheless, not a single clean corner, so complying is she to the
vices of the French nation! Who has not chanced to leave his home early
in the morning, intending to go to some extremity of Paris, and found
himself unable to get away from the centre of it by the dinner-hour?
Such a man will know how to excuse this vagabondizing start upon our
tale; which, however, we here sum up in an observation both useful and
novel, as far as any observation can be novel in Paris, where there is
nothing new,--not even the statue erected yesterday, on which some young
gamin has already scribbled his name.
Well, then! there are streets, or ends of streets, there are houses,
unknown for the most part to persons of social distinction, to which a
woman of that class cannot go without causing cruel and very wounding
things to be thought of her. Whether the woman be rich and has a
carriage, whether she is on foot, or is disguised, if she enters one
of these Parisian defiles at any hour of the day, she compromises her
reputation as a virtuous woman. If, by chance, she is there at nine in
the evening the conjectures that an observer permits himself to make
upon her may prove fearful in their consequences. But if the woman is
young and pretty, if she enters a house in one of those streets, if the
house has a long, dark, damp, and evil-smelling passage-way, at the end
of which flickers the pallid gleam of an oil lamp, and if beneath that
gleam appears the horrid face of a withered old woman with fleshless
fingers, ah, then! and we say it in the interests of young and pretty
women, that woman is lost. She is at the mercy of the first man of her
acquaintance who sees her in that Parisian slough. There is more than
one street in Paris where such a meeting may lead to a frightful drama,
a bloody drama of death and love, a drama of the modern school.
Unhappily, this scene, this modern drama itself, will be comprehended by
only a small number of persons; and it is a pity to tell the tale to
a public which cannot enter into its local merit. But who can flatter
himself that he will ever be understood? We all die unknown--‘tis the
saying of women and of authors.
At half-past eight o’clock one evening, in the rue Pagevin, in the days
when that street had no wall which did not echo some infamous word, and
was, in the direction of the rue Soly, the narrowest and most impassable
street in Paris (not excepting the least frequented corner of the most
deserted street),--at the beginning of the month of February about
thirteen years ago, a young man, by one of those chances which come but
once in life, turned the corner of the rue Pagevin to enter the rue des
Vieux-Augustins, close to the rue Soly. There, this young man, who lived
himself in the rue de Bourbon, saw in a woman near whom he had been
unconsciously walking, a vague resemblance to the prettiest woman in
Paris; a chaste and delightful person, with whom he was secretly and
passionately in love,--a love without hope; she was married. In a moment
his heart leaped, an intolerable heat surged from his centre and flowed
through all his veins; his back turned cold, the skin of his head crept.
He loved, he was young, he knew Paris; and his knowledge did not permit
him to be ignorant of all there was of possible infamy in an elegant,
rich, young, and beautiful woman walking there, alone, with a furtively
criminal step. _She_ in that mud! at that hour!
The love that this young man felt for that woman may seem romantic, and
all the more so because he was an officer in the Royal Guard. If he had
been in the infantry, the affair might have seemed more likely; but, as
an officer of rank in the cavalry, he belonged to that French arm which
demands rapidity in its conquests and derives as much vanity from its
amorous exploits as from its dashing uniform. But the passion of this
officer was a true love, and many young hearts will think it noble.
He loved this woman because she was virtuous; he loved her virtue, her
modest grace, her imposing saintliness, as the dearest treasures of his
hidden passion. This woman was indeed worthy to inspire one of those
platonic loves which are found, like flowers amid bloody ruins, in the
history of the middle-ages; worthy to be the hidden principle of all the
actions of a young man’s life; a love as high, as pure as the skies when
blue; a love without hope and to which men bind themselves because
it can never deceive; a love that is prodigal of unchecked enjoyment,
especially at an age when the heart is ardent, the imagination keen, and
the eyes of a man see very clearly.
Strange, weird, inconceivable effects may be met with at night in Paris.
Only those who have amused themselves by watching those effects have
any idea how fantastic a woman may appear there at dusk. At times the
creature whom you are following, by accident or design, seems to you
light and slender; the stockings, if they are white, make you fancy that
the legs must be slim and elegant; the figure though wrapped in a shawl,
or concealed by a pelisse, defines itself gracefully and seductively
among the shadows; anon, the uncertain gleam thrown from a shop-window
or a street lamp bestows a fleeting lustre, nearly always deceptive, on
the unknown woman, and fires the imagination, carrying it far beyond
the truth. The senses then bestir themselves; everything takes color and
animation; the woman appears in an altogether novel aspect; her person
becomes beautiful. Behold! she is not a woman, she is a demon, a siren,
who is drawing you by magnetic attraction to some respectable house,
where the worthy _bourgeoise_, frightened by your threatening step and
the clack of your boots, shuts the door in your face without looking at
you.
A vacillating gleam, thrown from the shop-window of a shoemaker,
suddenly illuminated from the waist down the figure of the woman who was
before the young man. Ah! surely, _she_ alone had that swaying figure;
she alone knew the secret of that chaste gait which innocently set into
relief the many beauties of that attractive form. Yes, that was the
shawl, and that the velvet bonnet which she wore in the mornings. On
her gray silk stockings not a spot, on her shoes not a splash. The shawl
held tightly round the bust disclosed, vaguely, its charming lines; and
the young man, who had often seen those shoulders at a ball, knew well
the treasures that the shawl concealed. By the way a Parisian woman
wraps a shawl around her, and the way she lifts her feet in the street,
a man of intelligence in such studies can divine the secret of her
mysterious errand. There is something, I know not what, of quivering
buoyancy in the person, in the gait; the woman seems to weigh less; she
steps, or rather, she glides like a star, and floats onward led by a
thought which exhales from the folds and motion of her dress. The young
man hastened his step, passed the woman, and then turned back to look
at her. Pst! she had disappeared into a passage-way, the grated door of
which and its bell still rattled and sounded. The young man walked back
to the alley and saw the woman reach the farther end, where she began
to mount--not without receiving the obsequious bow of an old portress--a
winding staircase, the lower steps of which were strongly lighted; she
went up buoyantly, eagerly, as though impatient.
“Impatient for what?” said the young man to himself, drawing back to
lean against a wooden railing on the other side of the street. He
gazed, unhappy man, at the different storeys of the house, with the keen
attention of a detective searching for a conspirator.
It was one of those houses of which there are thousands in Paris,
ignoble, vulgar, narrow, yellowish in tone, with four storeys and three
windows on each floor. The outer blinds of the first floor were closed.
Where was she going? The young man fancied he heard the tinkle of a bell
on the second floor. As if in answer to it, a light began to move in a
room with two windows strongly illuminated, which presently lit up the
third window, evidently that of a first room, either the salon or the
dining-room of the apartment. Instantly the outline of a woman’s bonnet
showed vaguely on the window, and a door between the two rooms must
have closed, for the first was dark again, while the two other windows
resumed their ruddy glow. At this moment a voice said, “Hi, there!” and
the young man was conscious of a blow on his shoulder.
“Why don’t you pay attention?” said the rough voice of a workman,
carrying a plank on his shoulder. The man passed on. He was the voice of
Providence saying to the watcher: “What are you meddling with? Think of
your own duty; and leave these Parisians to their own affairs.”
The young man crossed his arms; then, as no one beheld him, he suffered
tears of rage to flow down his cheeks unchecked. At last the sight of
the shadows moving behind the lighted windows gave him such pain that he
looked elsewhere and noticed a hackney-coach, standing against a wall
in the upper part of the rue des Vieux-Augustins, at a place where there
was neither the door of a house, nor the light of a shop-window.
Was it she? Was it not she? Life or death to a lover! This lover waited.
He stood there during a century of twenty minutes. After that the woman
came down, and he then recognized her as the one whom he secretly loved.
Nevertheless, he wanted still to doubt. She went to the hackney-coach,
and got into it.
“The house will always be there and I can search it later,” thought the
young man, following the carriage at a run, to solve his last doubts;
and soon he did so.
The carriage stopped in the rue de Richelieu before a shop for
artificial flowers, close to the rue de Menars. The lady got out,
entered the shop, sent out the money to pay the coachman, and presently
left the shop herself, on foot, after buying a bunch of marabouts.
Marabouts for her black hair! The officer beheld her, through the
window-panes, placing the feathers to her head to see the effect, and
he fancied he could hear the conversation between herself and the
shop-woman.
“Oh! madame, nothing is more suitable for brunettes: brunettes have
something a little too strongly marked in their lines, and marabouts
give them just that _flow_ which they lack. Madame la Duchesse de
Langeais says they give a woman something vague, Ossianic, and very
high-bred.”
“Very good; send them to me at once.”
Then the lady turned quickly toward the rue de Menars, and entered her
own house. When the door closed on her, the young lover, having lost
his hopes, and worse, far worse, his dearest beliefs, walked through the
streets like a drunken man, and presently found himself in his own room
without knowing how he came there. He flung himself into an arm-chair,
put his head in his hands and his feet on the andirons, drying his boots
until he burned them. It was an awful moment,--one of those moments in
human life when the character is moulded, and the future conduct of the
best of men depends on the good or evil fortune of his first action.
Providence or fatality?--choose which you will.
This young man belonged to a good family, whose nobility was not very
ancient; but there are so few really old families in these days, that
all men of rank are ancient without dispute. His grandfather had bought
the office of counsellor to the Parliament of Paris, where he afterwards
became president. His sons, each provided with a handsome fortune,
entered the army, and through their marriages became attached to the
court. The Revolution swept the family away; but one old dowager, too
obstinate to emigrate, was left; she was put in prison, threatened with
death, but was saved by the 9th Thermidor and recovered her property.
When the proper time came, about the year 1804, she recalled her
grandson to France. Auguste de Maulincour, the only scion of the
Carbonnon de Maulincour, was brought up by the good dowager with the
triple care of a mother, a woman of rank, and an obstinate dowager. When
the Restoration came, the young man, then eighteen years of age, entered
the Maison-Rouge, followed the princes to Ghent, was made an officer in
the body-guard, left it to serve in the line, but was recalled later to
the Royal Guard, where, at twenty-three years of age, he found
himself major of a cavalry regiment,--a splendid position, due to his
grandmother, who had played her cards well to obtain it, in spite of his
youth. This double biography is a compendium of the general and special
history, barring variations, of all the noble families who emigrated
having debts and property, dowagers and tact.
Madame la Baronne de Maulincour had a friend in the old Vidame de
Pamiers, formerly a commander of the Knights of Malta. This was one of
those undying friendships founded on sexagenary ties which nothing
can weaken, because at the bottom of such intimacies there are certain
secrets of the human heart, delightful to guess at when we have the
time, insipid to explain in twenty words, and which might make the text
of a work in four volumes as amusing as the Doyen de Killerine,--a work
about which young men talk and judge without having read it.
Auguste de Maulincour belonged therefore to the faubourg Saint-Germain
through his grandmother and the vidame, and it sufficed him to date back
two centuries to take the tone and opinions of those who assume to
go back to Clovis. This young man, pale, slender, and delicate in
appearance, a man of honor and true courage, who would fight a duel for
a yes or a no, had never yet fought upon a battle-field, though he wore
in his button-hole the cross of the Legion of honor. He was, as you
perceive, one of the blunders of the Restoration, perhaps the most
excusable of them. The youth of those days was the youth of no epoch.
It came between the memories of the Empire and those of the Emigration,
between the old traditions of the court and the conscientious education
of the _bourgeoisie_; between religion and fancy-balls; between two
political faiths, between Louis XVIII., who saw only the present, and
Charles X., who looked too far into the future; it was moreover bound to
accept the will of the king, though the king was deceiving and tricking
it. This unfortunate youth, blind and yet clear-sighted, was counted
as nothing by old men jealously keeping the reins of the State in
their feeble hands, while the monarchy could have been saved by their
retirement and the accession of this Young France, which the old
doctrinaires, the _emigres_ of the Restoration, still speak of
slightingly. Auguste de Maulincour was a victim to the ideas which
weighed in those days upon French youth, and we must here explain why.
The Vidame de Pamiers was still, at sixty-seven years of age, a very
brilliant man, having seen much and lived much; a good talker, a man of
honor and a gallant man, but who held as to women the most detestable
opinions; he loved them, and he despised them. _Their_ honor! _their_
feelings! Ta-ra-ra, rubbish and shams! When he was with them, he
believed in them, the ci-devant “monstre”; he never contradicted them,
and he made them shine. But among his male friends, when the topic of
the sex came up, he laid down the principle that to deceive women, and
to carry on several intrigues at once, should be the occupation of those
young men who were so misguided as to wish to meddle in the affairs of
the State. It is sad to have to sketch so hackneyed a portrait, for has
it not figured everywhere and become, literally, as threadbare as
that of a grenadier of the Empire? But the vidame had an influence
on Monsieur de Maulincour’s destiny which obliges us to preserve his
portrait; he lectured the young man after his fashion, and did his best
to convert him to the doctrines of the great age of gallantry.
The dowager, a tender-hearted, pious woman, sitting between God and her
vidame, a model of grace and sweetness, but gifted with that well-bred
persistency which triumphs in the long run, had longed to preserve for
her grandson the beautiful illusions of life, and had therefore brought
him up in the highest principles; she instilled into him her own
delicacy of feeling and made him, to outward appearance, a timid man, if
not a fool. The sensibilities of the young fellow, preserved pure, were
not worn by contact without; he remained so chaste, so scrupulous, that
he was keenly offended by actions and maxims to which the world attached
no consequence. Ashamed of this susceptibility, he forced himself to
conceal it under a false hardihood; but he suffered in secret, all the
while scoffing with others at the things he reverenced.
It came to pass that he was deceived; because, in accordance with a not
uncommon whim of destiny, he, a man of gentle melancholy, and spiritual
in love, encountered in the object of his first passion a woman who
held in horror all German sentimentalism. The young man, in consequence,
distrusted himself, became dreamy, absorbed in his griefs, complaining
of not being understood. Then, as we desire all the more violently the
things we find difficult to obtain, he continued to adore women with
that ingenuous tenderness and feline delicacy the secret of which
belongs to women themselves, who may, perhaps, prefer to keep the
monopoly of it. In point of fact, though women of the world complain
of the way men love them, they have little liking themselves for those
whose soul is half feminine. Their own superiority consists in making
men believe they are their inferiors in love; therefore they will
readily leave a lover if he is inexperienced enough to rob them of those
fears with which they seek to deck themselves, those delightful tortures
of feigned jealousy, those troubles of hope betrayed, those futile
expectations,--in short, the whole procession of their feminine
miseries. They hold Sir Charles Grandison in horror. What can be more
contrary to their nature than a tranquil, perfect love? They want
emotions; happiness without storms is not happiness to them. Women with
souls that are strong enough to bring infinitude into love are angelic
exceptions; they are among women what noble geniuses are among men.
Their great passions are rare as masterpieces. Below the level of
such love come compromises, conventions, passing and contemptible
irritations, as in all things petty and perishable.
Amid the hidden disasters of his heart, and while he was still seeking
the woman who could comprehend him (a search which, let us remark in
passing, is one of the amorous follies of our epoch), Auguste met, in
the rank of society that was farthest from his own, in the secondary
sphere of money, where banking holds the first place, a perfect being,
one of those women who have I know not what about them that is saintly
and sacred,--women who inspire such reverence that love has need of the
help of a long familiarity to declare itself.
Auguste then gave himself up wholly to the delights of the deepest and
most moving of passions, to a love that was purely adoring. Innumerable
repressed desires there were, shadows of passion so vague yet so
profound, so fugitive and yet so actual, that one scarcely knows to what
we may compare them. They are like perfumes, or clouds, or rays of the
sun, or shadows, or whatever there is in nature that shines for a moment
and disappears, that springs to life and dies, leaving in the heart long
echoes of emotion. When the soul is young enough to nurture melancholy
and far-off hope, to find in woman more than a woman, is it not the
greatest happiness that can befall a man when he loves enough to feel
more joy in touching a gloved hand, or a lock of hair, in listening to
a word, in casting a single look, than in all the ardor of possession
given by happy love? Thus it is that rejected persons, those rebuffed by
fate, the ugly and unfortunate, lovers unrevealed, women and timid men,
alone know the treasures contained in the voice of the beloved. Taking
their source and their element from the soul itself, the vibrations
of the air, charged with passion, put our hearts so powerfully into
communion, carrying thought between them so lucidly, and being, above
all, so incapable of falsehood, that a single inflection of a voice is
often a revelation. What enchantments the intonations of a tender
voice can bestow upon the heart of a poet! What ideas they awaken! What
freshness they shed there! Love is in the voice before the glance avows
it. Auguste, poet after the manner of lovers (there are poets who feel,
and poets who express; the first are the happiest), Auguste had tasted
all these early joys, so vast, so fecund. SHE possessed the most winning
organ that the most artful woman of the world could have desired in
order to deceive at her ease; _she_ had that silvery voice which is soft
to the ear, and ringing only for the heart which it stirs and troubles,
caresses and subjugates.
And this woman went by night to the rue Soly through the rue Pagevin!
and her furtive apparition in an infamous house had just destroyed the
grandest of passions! The vidame’s logic triumphed.
“If she is betraying her husband we will avenge ourselves,” said
Auguste.
There was still faith in that “if.” The philosophic doubt of Descartes
is a politeness with which we should always honor virtue. Ten o’clock
sounded. The Baron de Maulincour remembered that this woman was going to
a ball that evening at a house to which he had access. He dressed, went
there, and searched for her through all the salons. The mistress of the
house, Madame de Nucingen, seeing him thus occupied, said:--
“You are looking for Madame Jules; but she has not yet come.”
“Good evening, dear,” said a voice.
Auguste and Madame de Nucingen turned round. Madame Jules had arrived,
dressed in white, looking simple and noble, wearing in her hair the
marabouts the young baron had seen her choose in the flower-shop. That
voice of love now pierced his heart. Had he won the slightest right to
be jealous of her he would have petrified her then and there by saying
the words, “Rue Soly!” But if he, an alien to her life, had said those
words in her ear a thousand times, Madame Jules would have asked him in
astonishment what he meant. He looked at her stupidly.
For those sarcastic persons who scoff at all things it may be a great
amusement to detect the secret of a woman, to know that her chastity is
a lie, that her calm face hides some anxious thought, that under that
pure brow is a dreadful drama. But there are other souls to whom
the sight is saddening; and many of those who laugh in public, when
withdrawn into themselves and alone with their conscience, curse the
world while they despise the woman. Such was the case with Auguste de
Maulincour, as he stood there in presence of Madame Jules. Singular
situation! There was no other relation between them than that which
social life establishes between persons who exchange a few words seven
or eight times in the course of a winter, and yet he was calling her
to account on behalf of a happiness unknown to her; he was judging her,
without letting her know of his accusation.
Many young men find themselves thus in despair at having broken forever
with a woman adored in secret, condemned and despised in secret. There
are many hidden monologues told to the walls of some solitary lodging;
storms roused and calmed without ever leaving the depths of hearts;
amazing scenes of the moral world, for which a painter is wanted. Madame
Jules sat down, leaving her husband to make a turn around the salon.
After she was seated she seemed uneasy, and, while talking with her
neighbor, she kept a furtive eye on Monsieur Jules Desmarets, her
husband, a broker chiefly employed by the Baron de Nucingen. The
following is the history of their home life.
Monsieur Desmarets was, five years before his marriage, in a broker’s
office, with no other means than the meagre salary of a clerk. But he
was a man to whom misfortune had early taught the truths of life, and he
followed the strait path with the tenacity of an insect making for its
nest; he was one of those dogged young men who feign death before an
obstacle and wear out everybody’s patience with their own beetle-like
perseverance. Thus, young as he was, he had all the republican virtue of
poor peoples; he was sober, saving of his time, an enemy to pleasure.
He waited. Nature had given him the immense advantage of an agreeable
exterior. His calm, pure brow, the shape of his placid, but expressive
face, his simple manners,--all revealed in him a laborious and resigned
existence, that lofty personal dignity which is imposing to others,
and the secret nobility of heart which can meet all events. His modesty
inspired a sort of respect in those who knew him. Solitary in the midst
of Paris, he knew the social world only by glimpses during the brief
moments which he spent in his patron’s salon on holidays.
There were passions in this young man, as in most of the men who live
in that way, of amazing profundity,--passions too vast to be drawn into
petty incidents. His want of means compelled him to lead an ascetic
life, and he conquered his fancies by hard work. After paling all day
over figures, he found his recreation in striving obstinately to acquire
that wide general knowledge so necessary in these days to every man who
wants to make his mark, whether in society, or in commerce, at the bar,
or in politics or literature. The only peril these fine souls have to
fear comes from their own uprightness. They see some poor girl; they
love her; they marry her, and wear out their lives in a struggle between
poverty and love. The noblest ambition is quenched perforce by the
household account-book. Jules Desmarets went headlong into this peril.
He met one evening at his patron’s house a girl of the rarest beauty.
Unfortunate men who are deprived of affection, and who consume the
finest hours of youth in work and study, alone know the rapid ravages
that passion makes in their lonely, misconceived hearts. They are so
certain of loving truly, all their forces are concentrated so quickly on
the object of their love, that they receive, while beside her, the most
delightful sensations, when, as often happens, they inspire none at
all. Nothing is more flattering to a woman’s egotism than to divine this
passion, apparently immovable, and these emotions so deep that they have
needed a great length of time to reach the human surface. These poor
men, anchorites in the midst of Paris, have all the enjoyments of
anchorites; and may sometimes succumb to temptations. But, more often
deceived, betrayed, and misunderstood, they are rarely able to gather
the sweet fruits of a love which, to them, is like a flower dropped from
heaven.
One smile from his wife, a single inflection of her voice sufficed to
make Jules Desmarets conceive a passion which was boundless. Happily,
the concentrated fire of that secret passion revealed itself artlessly
to the woman who inspired it. These two beings then loved each other
religiously. To express all in a word, they clasped hands without shame
before the eyes of the world and went their way like two children,
brother and sister, passing serenely through a crowd where all made way
for them and admired them.
The young girl was in one of those unfortunate positions which human
selfishness entails upon children. She had no civil status; her name of
“Clemence” and her age were recorded only by a notary public. As for
her fortune, that was small indeed. Jules Desmarets was a happy man
on hearing these particulars. If Clemence had belonged to an opulent
family, he might have despaired of obtaining her; but she was only the
poor child of love, the fruit of some terrible adulterous passion; and
they were married. Then began for Jules Desmarets a series of fortunate
events. Every one envied his happiness; and henceforth talked only of
his luck, without recalling either his virtues or his courage.
Some days after their marriage, the mother of Clemence, who passed in
society for her godmother, told Jules Desmarets to buy the office and
good-will of a broker, promising to provide him with the necessary
capital. In those days, such offices could still be bought at a modest
price. That evening, in the salon as it happened of his patron, a
wealthy capitalist proposed, on the recommendation of the mother, a very
advantageous transaction for Jules Desmarets, and the next day the happy
clerk was able to buy out his patron. In four years Desmarets became one
of the most prosperous men in his business; new clients increased the
number his predecessor had left to him; he inspired confidence in all;
and it was impossible for him not to feel, by the way business came
to him, that some hidden influence, due to his mother-in-law, or to
Providence, was secretly protecting him.
At the end of the third year Clemence lost her godmother. By that time
Monsieur Jules (so called to distinguish him from an elder brother, whom
he had set up as a notary in Paris) possessed an income from invested
property of two hundred thousand francs. There was not in all Paris
another instance of the domestic happiness enjoyed by this couple.
For five years their exceptional love had been troubled by only one
event,--a calumny for which Monsieur Jules exacted vengeance. One of his
former comrades attributed to Madame Jules the fortune of her husband,
explaining that it came from a high protection dearly paid for. The man
who uttered the calumny was killed in the duel that followed it.
The profound passion of this couple, which survived marriage, obtained
a great success in society, though some women were annoyed by it. The
charming household was respected; everybody feted it. Monsieur and
Madame Jules were sincerely liked, perhaps because there is nothing more
delightful to see than happy people; but they never stayed long at any
festivity. They slipped away early, as impatient to regain their nest
as wandering pigeons. This nest was a large and beautiful mansion in the
rue de Menars, where a true feeling for art tempered the luxury which
the financial world continues, traditionally, to display. Here the happy
pair received their society magnificently, although the obligations of
social life suited them but little.
Nevertheless, Jules submitted to the demands of the world, knowing
that, sooner or later, a family has need of it; but he and his wife felt
themselves, in its midst, like green-house plants in a tempest. With a
delicacy that was very natural, Jules had concealed from his wife the
calumny and the death of the calumniator. Madame Jules, herself, was
inclined, through her sensitive and artistic nature, to desire luxury.
In spite of the terrible lesson of the duel, some imprudent women
whispered to each other that Madame Jules must sometimes be pressed for
money. They often found her more elegantly dressed in her own home than
when she went into society. She loved to adorn herself to please her
husband, wishing to show him that to her he was more than any social
life. A true love, a pure love, above all, a happy love! Jules, always a
lover, and more in love as time went by, was happy in all things beside
his wife, even in her caprices; in fact, he would have been uneasy if
she had none, thinking it a symptom of some illness.
Auguste de Maulincour had the personal misfortune of running against
this passion, and falling in love with the wife beyond recovery.
Nevertheless, though he carried in his heart so intense a love, he was
not ridiculous; he complied with all the demands of society, and of
military manners and customs. And yet his face wore constantly, even
though he might be drinking a glass of champagne, that dreamy look, that
air of silently despising life, that nebulous expression which belongs,
though for other reasons, to _blases_ men,--men dissatisfied with hollow
lives. To love without hope, to be disgusted with life, constitute, in
these days, a social position. The enterprise of winning the heart of
a sovereign might give, perhaps, more hope than a love rashly conceived
for a happy woman. Therefore Maulincour had sufficient reason to be
grave and gloomy. A queen has the vanity of her power; the height of her
elevation protects her. But a pious _bourgeoise_ is like a hedgehog, or
an oyster, in its rough wrappings.
At this moment the young officer was beside his unconscious mistress,
who certainly was unaware that she was doubly faithless. Madame
Jules was seated, in a naive attitude, like the least artful woman in
existence, soft and gentle, full of a majestic serenity. What an abyss
is human nature! Before beginning a conversation, the baron looked
alternately at the wife and at the husband. How many were the
reflections he made! He recomposed the “Night Thoughts” of Young in a
second. And yet the music was sounding through the salons, the light was
pouring from a thousand candles. It was a banker’s ball,--one of those
insolent festivals by means of which the world of solid gold endeavored
to sneer at the gold-embossed salons where the faubourg Saint-Germain
met and laughed, not foreseeing the day when the bank would invade the
Luxembourg and take its seat upon the throne. The conspirators were now
dancing, indifferent to coming bankruptcies, whether of Power or of
the Bank. The gilded salons of the Baron de Nucingen were gay with that
peculiar animation that the world of Paris, apparently joyous at any
rate, gives to its fetes. There, men of talent communicate their wit to
fools, and fools communicate that air of enjoyment that characterizes
them. By means of this exchange all is liveliness. But a ball in Paris
always resembles fireworks to a certain extent; wit, coquetry, and
pleasure sparkle and go out like rockets. The next day all present have
forgotten their wit, their coquetry, their pleasure.
“Ah!” thought Auguste, by way of conclusion, “women are what the vidame
says they are. Certainly all those dancing here are less irreproachable
actually than Madame Jules appears to be, and yet Madame Jules went to
the rue Soly!”
The rue Soly was like an illness to him; the very word shrivelled his
heart.
“Madame, do you ever dance?” he said to her.
“This is the third time you have asked me that question this winter,”
she answered, smiling.
“But perhaps you have never answered it.”
“That is true.”
“I knew very well that you were false, like other women.”
Madame Jules continued to smile.
“Listen, monsieur,” she said; “if I told you the real reason, you would
think it ridiculous. I do not think it false to abstain from telling
things that the world would laugh at.”
“All secrets demand, in order to be told, a friendship of which I am no
doubt unworthy, madame. But you cannot have any but noble secrets; do
you think me capable of jesting on noble things?”
“Yes,” she said, “you, like all the rest, laugh at our purest
sentiments; you calumniate them. Besides, I have no secrets. I have the
right to love my husband in the face of all the world, and I say so,--I
am proud of it; and if you laugh at me when I tell you that I dance only
with him, I shall have a bad opinion of your heart.”
“Have you never danced since your marriage with any one but your
husband?”
“Never. His arm is the only one on which I have leaned; I have never
felt the touch of another man.”
“Has your physician never felt your pulse?”
“Now you are laughing at me.”
“No, madame, I admire you, because I comprehend you. But you let a man
hear your voice, you let yourself be seen, you--in short, you permit our
eyes to admire you--”
“Ah!” she said, interrupting him, “that is one of my griefs. Yes, I wish
it were possible for a married woman to live secluded with her husband,
as a mistress lives with her lover, for then--”
“Then why were you, two hours ago, on foot, disguised, in the rue Soly?”
“The rue Soly, where is that?”
And her pure voice gave no sign of any emotion; no feature of her face
quivered; she did not blush; she remained calm.
“What! you did not go up to the second floor of a house in the rue
des Vieux-Augustins at the corner of the rue Soly? You did not have
a hackney-coach waiting near by? You did not return in it to the
flower-shop in the rue Richelieu, where you bought the feathers that are
now in your hair?”
“I did not leave my house this evening.”
As she uttered that lie she was smiling and imperturbable; she played
with her fan; but if any one had passed a hand down her back they would,
perhaps, have found it moist. At that instant Auguste remembered the
instructions of the vidame.
“Then it was some one who strangely resembled you,” he said, with a
credulous air.
“Monsieur,” she replied, “if you are capable of following a woman and
detecting her secrets, you will allow me to say that it is a wrong, a
very wrong thing, and I do you the honor to say that I disbelieve you.”
The baron turned away, placed himself before the fireplace and seemed
thoughtful. He bent his head; but his eyes were covertly fixed on Madame
Jules, who, not remembering the reflections in the mirror, cast two or
three glances at him that were full of terror. Presently she made a sign
to her husband and rising took his arm to walk about the salon. As she
passed before Monsieur de Maulincour, who at that moment was speaking
to a friend, he said in a loud voice, as if in reply to a remark:
“That woman will certainly not sleep quietly this night.” Madame
Jules stopped, gave him an imposing look which expressed contempt,
and continued her way, unaware that another look, if surprised by her
husband, might endanger not only her happiness but the lives of two men.
Auguste, frantic with anger, which he tried to smother in the depths of
his soul, presently left the house, swearing to penetrate to the heart
of the mystery. Before leaving, he sought Madame Jules, to look at her
again; but she had disappeared.
What a drama cast into that young head so eminently romantic, like all
who have not known love in the wide extent which they give to it. He
adored Madame Jules under a new aspect; he loved her now with the fury
of jealousy and the frenzied anguish of hope. Unfaithful to her husband,
the woman became common. Auguste could now give himself up to the
joys of successful love, and his imagination opened to him a career
of pleasures. Yes, he had lost the angel, but he had found the most
delightful of demons. He went to bed, building castles in the air,
excusing Madame Jules by some romantic fiction in which he did not
believe. He resolved to devote himself wholly, from that day forth, to
a search for the causes, motives, and keynote of this mystery. It was a
tale to read, or better still, a drama to be played, in which he had a
part.