LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. =1044=
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Another Study
of Woman
Honoré de Balzac
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1926,
Haldeman-Julius Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN
TO LEON GOZLAN
AS A TESTIMONY TO GOOD LITERARY
BROTHERHOOD
ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN[1]
THE SALON OF MADEMOISELLE DES TOUCHES
In Parisian society you will almost always find two very different
evenings in the balls and social affairs. First, the official evening,
at which all the invited guests are present--a gay world bored with
itself and others. Each person poses for his neighbor. The majority of
the young women have come there to meet only one person. When each is
satisfied that she is the handsomest woman present in the eyes of that
person, and that his opinion is probably shared by some others, she
is ready to leave--after the exchange of a few trivial speeches, such
as “Shall you go early to La Crampade?”--“Madame de Portenduère sang
very well, I think.”--“Who is that little woman over there, weighted
down with diamonds?” Or, perhaps, after throwing out a few epigrams,
which give passing pleasure and permanent wounds, the groups begin to
disperse, mere acquaintances take leave, and then the mistress of the
house stops her personal friends and a few artists and lively fellows,
saying in a whisper: “Don’t go, we shall have supper presently.”
The company then gathers in a little salon. The second, the real
evening begins--an evening like those of the old régime, when everybody
understands what is talked about, conversation is general, and each
person present is expected to show his wit and to contribute to the
general entertainment. The scene has changed: frank laughter succeeds
the stiff artificial air which dulls the prettiest faces in society.
In short, pleasure begins as the social time ends. The ball, that cold
review of luxury, the parade of self-loves in full costume, is one of
those English inventions which tend to turn all other nations into
mere machines. England seems desirous that all the world should be
as much and as often bored as herself. This second party succeeding
the first is therefore in some French houses a lively protest of the
former spirits of our joyous land. But, unfortunately, few houses thus
protest; and the reason is plain: if suppers are no longer in vogue it
is because at no time, under any régime, were there ever so few persons
in France with settled positions, surroundings, fortunes, families, and
names as under the reign of Louis Philippe, in which the Revolution
was begun again legally. All the world is marching toward some end, or
it is trotting after wealth. Time has become the most costly of all
chattels; no one can allow himself the great indulgence of coming home
late and sleeping late the next morning. The second party is therefore
only found among women rich enough really to entertain; and since July,
1830, such women may be counted on one’s fingers.
In spite of the mute opposition of the faubourg Saint-Germain, two or
three women, among them the Marquise d’Espard and Mademoiselle des
Touches, refused to renounce the influence they had held up to that
time over Paris, and did not close their salons.
The salon of Mademoiselle des Touches, which was very celebrated in
Paris, was the last asylum of the true French wit of other days, with
its hidden profundity, its thousand casuistries, and its exquisite
politeness. There you might observe the grace of manner which underlay
the conventions of politeness; the easy flow of conversation in spite
of the natural reserve of well-bred persons; and, above all, generosity
and tolerance of ideas. There, no one dreamed of reserving his thought
for a drama; no one had in mind a book to be made out of a narrative.
In short, the hideous skeleton of literature in want did not rise and
show itself in the face of some piquant sally or some interesting topic.
During the evening which I shall now describe, chance had collected
in the salon of Mademoiselle des Touches a number of persons whose
undeniable merits had won for them European reputations. This is not
flattery of France, for several foreigners were among us. The men
who shone most brilliantly were by no means the most distinguished.
Ingenious repartees, shrewd observations, excellent satires,
descriptions given with brilliant clearness, sparkled and flowed
extemporaneously, lavished themselves without reserve as without
assumption, and were delightfully felt and delicately enjoyed. The men
of the world were particularly noticeable for a grace, warmth of fancy
that was wholly artistic. You will meet elsewhere in Europe elegant
manners, cordiality, good-fellowship and knowledge, but in Paris
only, in this salon and those I have just mentioned, will be found
in perfection that particular form of intellect which gives to these
social qualities an agreeable and varied harmony, a flowing motion by
which this wealth of thoughts, of formulas, or narratives, of history
itself, meanders easily along.
Paris, the capital of taste, alone knows the science which changes
conversation to a tournament in which the quality of each mind is
condensed into a flash, where each tilter says his word and casts his
experience into it, where all are amused, refreshed, and have their
faculties exercised. There alone you can exchange ideas; there you
do not carry, like the dolphin in the fable, a monkey on your back;
there you are understood, and you run no risk of staking your gold
against counterfeit coin or copper. There, in short, talk, light and
deep, floats, undulates, and turns, changing aspect and color at every
sentence; there, too, secrets are well betrayed. Lively criticism
and pithy narrative lead each other on. Eyes are listening as well
as ears; gestures put questions to which faces reply. There all is,
in a word, thought and wit. Never had the oral phenomenon--which, if
well studied and well-managed, makes the power of the orator and the
narrator--so completely bewitched me.
I was not the only one sensitive to these influences, and we passed
a delightful evening. The conversation finally turned to narrative,
and led, in its rapid course, to curious confidences, striking
portraits, and a multitude of fancies, which render that delightful
improvisation altogether untransferable to paper. But, by leaving to a
few things their pungency, their abrupt naturalness, their sophistical
sinuosities, perhaps you will understand the charm of a true French
soirée, taken at the moment when the pleasantest familiarity has made
everyone forget his self-interests, self-loves, or, if you prefer so to
call them, pretensions and affectations.
At about two in the morning, when supper was over, none but a few
intimates, all proved friends, tried by an intercourse of fifteen
years, and certain men of the world, well-bred and gifted with taste,
remained around the table. A tone of absolute equality held sway among
them; and yet there was no one present who did not feel proud of being
himself.
Mademoiselle des Touches always obliged her guests to remain at table
until they took their leave, having many times noticed the total change
that takes place in the minds of those present by removal to another
room. On the way between a dining-room and a salon the charm snaps.
According to Sterne, the ideas of an author are different after he
has shaved from what they were before. If Sterne is right, we may
boldly assert that the inclinations of people still seated around a
dinner-table are not those of the same persons when returned to the
salon. The atmosphere is heavier, the eye is no longer enlivened by
the delightful disorder of the dessert; they have lost the benefits
of that softening of the spirit, that kindliness and good-will which
pervaded their being in the pleasant state of mind of those who have
eaten well, and are sitting at their ease on chairs as comfortable as
they can be made. Perhaps we talk more willingly in presence of the
dessert and in company with choice wines, during the delightful moment
when we rest our elbows on the table and lean our heads on our hands.
Certain it is that people not only like to talk at such times, but
they like to listen. Digestion, nearly always attentive, is, according
to characters, either talkative or silent. Each person present then
follows his inclination.
This preamble was needed to introduce you to the charms of a
confidential narrative in which a celebrated man, now dead, depicted
the innocent jesuitism of a woman with the crafty shrewdness of a man
who has seen much of the world--a quality which makes public men the
most delightful narrators when, like Talleyrand and Metternich, they
condescend to tell a tale.
De Marsay, who had been prime minister for more than six months, had
already given proofs of superior capacity. Though friends who had long
known him were not surprised to see him display both the talents and
aptitudes of a statesman, they were still asking themselves whether
he felt within himself a great political strength, or whether he had
simply developed in the heat of circumstances. This question had just
been put to him, with an evidently philosophical intention, by a man of
intellect and observation whom he had made a prefect--a man who was a
journalist for a long time, and who admired the prime minister without
mingling his admiration with that touch of sour criticism by which, in
Paris, one superior man excuses himself for admiring another.
“Has there been in your earlier life any fact, thought, or desire,
which made you foresee your vocation?” asked Emile Blondet, “for we all
have, like Newton, our particular apple which falls, and takes us to
the surroundings in which our faculties can develop.”
“Yes,” replied de Marsay, “and I’ll tell you about it.”
Pretty women, political dandies, artists, old men, all de Marsay’s
intimates, settled themselves comfortably, each in his own way, and
looked at the prime minister. Is it necessary to say that the servants
had left the dining-room, that the doors were closed and the portières
drawn? The silence which now fell was so deep that the murmur of the
coachmen’s voices and the subdued stamping of the horses impatient for
their stable came up from the courtyard.
“A statesman, my friends, exists through one quality only,” said the
minister, playing with his pearl-handled and gold dessert-knife.
“To know how at all moments to be master of himself; to be able, on
all occasions, to meet the crisis of events, however unexpected and
accidental it may be; in short, to have, in his inner self, a cool,
detached being, which looks on as a spectator at all the movements of
our life, our passions, our sentiments, and which inspires us apropos
of all things, with the decision of a kind of ready-reckoner.”
“You are explaining to us why statesmen are so rare in France,” said
old Lord Dudley.
“From a sentimental point of view it is certainly horrible,” said
the minister, “and therefore when this phenomenon appears in a young
man--Richelieu, warned of Concini’s danger by a letter over-night,
slept till midday, when he knew his benefactor would be killed at ten
o’clock--that young man, be he Pitt, or Napoleon if you like, is a
monstrosity. I became that monster very early in life, thanks to a
woman.”
“I thought,” said Madame de Montcornet (Virginie Blondet), smiling,
“that we unmade more statesmen than we make.”
“The monster of whom I speak is only a monster inasmuch as he resists
your sex,” said the narrator, with an ironical bow.
“If this tale relates to a love-affair,” said the Baronne de Nucingen,
“I request that it may not be interrupted by reflections.”
“Reflection being so contrary to love,” remarked Joseph Bridau.
“I was nineteen years of age,” resumed de Marsay; “the Restoration was
becoming re-established--my oldest friends know how impetuous and fiery
I then was. I was in love for the first time, and I may, at this late
day, be permitted to say that I was one of the handsomest young men in
Paris. I had youth and beauty, two advantages due to chance, of which
we are as proud as if we had won them. I say nothing about the rest.
Like all young men, I was in love with a woman about six years older
than myself. Only one of you,” he said, looking round the table, “will
guess her name or recognize her. Ronquerolles was the only one in those
days who guessed my secret, and he kept it carefully. I might fear
_his_ smile, but he seems to be gone,” said the minister, again
looking about him.
“He would not stay to supper,” said his sister, Madame de Sérizy.
“For six months possessed by this love, but incapable of suspecting
that it mastered me,” continued the minister, “I gave myself up to that
adorable worship which is both the triumph and the fragile happiness
of youth. I treasured _her_ glove, I drank infusions of the
flowers _she_ had worn, I rose from my bed to go to stand beneath
_her_ windows. All my blood rushed to my heart as I breathed the
perfume that _she_ preferred. I was then a thousand leagues from
suspecting that women are furnaces without and marble within.”
“Oh, spare us those horrible sentiments,” said Madame de Camps,
laughing.
“I would then have blasted with contempt the philosopher who published
to the world that terrible opinion, so profoundly true,” replied de
Marsay. “You are all too wise and witty to need me to say more on that
point; but perhaps the rest that I have to tell may recall to you your
own follies. Well--a great lady, if ever there was one, a widow without
children (oh! she had every advantage), my idol went so far as to shut
herself up to mark my handkerchiefs with her own hair; in short, she
responded to my follies with follies of her own. How is it possible
not to believe in a passion when it is guaranteed by folly? We had
put, each of us, all our wits into concealing so complete and glorious
a love from the eyes of the world; and we succeeded. Of her, I shall
tell you nothing; perfect in those days, she was considered until quite
recently one of the handsomest women in Paris; at the time of which I
speak men would have risked death to secure her favor. She was left
comfortably as to fortune, for a woman who loved and was beloved; but
the Restoration, to which she was indebted for higher honors, made her
wealth insufficient to meet the requirements of her name and rank. As
for me, I had the self-conceit that conceives no suspicions. Although
my natural jealousy had in those days a hundred-and-twenty-Othello
power, that terrible sentiment slumbered in my breast like gold in
its bed of ore. I would have made my valet flog me had I felt the
baseness to doubt the purity and fidelity of that angel, so frail, so
strong, so fair, so naive, so pure, so candid, whose blue eyes let me
penetrate with adorable submission to the bottom of her heart. Never
the least hesitation in pose, or look, or word; always white and fresh
and tender to her beloved as the eastern lily of the Song of Songs. Ah,
my friends!” cried the minister, sorrowfully, becoming for the moment
a young man, “we must knock our heads very hard against the marble to
dispel that poetry.”
This cry of nature, which found its echo among the guests, piqued their
curiosity, already so cleverly excited.
“Every morning, mounted on that splendid Sultan you sent me from
England,” he said to Lord Dudley, “I rode past her _calèche_ and
read my orders for the day in her bouquet, prepared in case we were
unable to exchange a few words. Though we saw each other nearly every
evening in society, and she wrote to me every day, we had invented,
in order to deceive the world and baffle observation, a system of
behavior. Not to look at each other, to avoid ever being together,
to speak slightingly of each other’s qualities, all those well-worn
maneuvers were of little value compared with our device of a mutual
false devotion to an indifferent person, and an air of indifference to
the true idol. If two lovers will play that game they can always dupe
society, but they must be very sure of each other. Her substitute was
a man high in court favor, cold and devout, whom she did not receive
in her own house. Our comedy was only played for the benefit of fools
in salons. The question of marriage had not been discussed between us;
six years’ difference in our ages might cause her to reflect. She knew
nothing of the amount of my fortune, which, on principle, I have always
concealed. As for me, charmed by her mind, her manners, the extent of
her information and her knowledge of the world, I would have married
her without reflection. And yet her reserve pleased me. Had she been
the first to speak to me of marriage, I might have found something
vulgar in that accomplished soul. Six full and perfect months! a
diamond of the purest water! That was my allowance of love in this low
world. One morning, being attacked by one of those bone-fevers which
begin a severe cold, I wrote her a note putting off the happiness of a
meeting for another day. No sooner was the letter gone than I regretted
it. ‘She certainly will not believe that I am ill,’ I said to myself;
for she was fond of seeming jealous and suspicious. When jealousy is
real,” said de Marsay, interrupting himself, “it is the evident sign of
a single-minded love.”
“Why?” asked the Princesse de Cadignan, eagerly.
“A true and single-minded love,” said de Marsay, “produces a sort of
bodily apathy in harmony with the contemplation into which the person
falls. The mind then complicates all things; it works upon itself, it
sets up fantasies in place of realities, which only torture it; but
this jealousy is as fascinating as it is embarrassing.”
A foreign minister smiled, recognizing by the light of memory the truth
of this remark.
“‘Besides,’ I said to myself, ‘why lose a happy day?’” continued de
Marsay, resuming his narrative. “Wasn’t it better to go, ill as I was?
For if she thought me ill I believed her capable of coming to see me
and so compromising herself. I made an effort; I wrote a second letter,
and as my confidential man was not on hand, I took it myself. The river
lay between us; I had all Paris to cross. When I came within suitable
distance of her house I called a porter and told him to deliver the
letter immediately. Then the fine idea came into my head of driving
past the house in a hackney-coach to see if the letter was delivered
promptly. Just as I passed in front of it, about two o’clock in the
afternoon, the great gate opened to admit the carriage of--whom do
you suppose? The substitute! It is fifteen years since that happened;
well! as I tell you of it, this exhausted orator, this minister dried
to the core by contact with public business, still feels the boiling of
something in his heart and a fire in his diaphragm. At the end of an
hour I passed again--the carriage was still in the courtyard; my note
had doubtless not been taken up to her. At last, at half-past three
o’clock, the carriage drove away and I was able to study the face of my
rival. He was grave, he did not smile; but he was certainly in love,
and no doubt some plan was in the wind. At the appointed hour I kept
my tryst; the queen of my soul was calm and serene. Here I must tell
you that I have always thought Othello not only stupid, but guilty of
very bad taste. No man but one who was half a Negro would have behaved
as he did. Shakespeare felt that when he called his play the Moor of
Venice. The mere sight of the beloved woman has something so healing to
the heart, that it dissipates all vexations, doubts, sorrows; my wrath
subsided and I smiled again. This, at my present age, would have been
horribly dissimulating, but then it was simply the result of my youth
and love. My jealousy thus buried, I had the power to observe. I was
visibly ill; the horrible doubts which had tortured me increased the
appearance of illness, and she showed me the most tender solicitude.
I found occasion, however, to slip in the words: ‘Had you any visitor
this morning?’ explaining that I had wondered how she would amuse
herself after receiving my first note.
“‘I?’ she said, ‘how could I think of any amusement after hearing of
your illness? Until your second note came I was planning how to go to
you.’
“‘Then you were quite alone?’
“‘Quite,’ she answered, looking at me with so perfect an expression
of innocence that it rivaled that which drove the Moor to kill his
Desdemona. As she alone occupied her house, that word was a shocking
falsehood. A single lie destroys that absolute confidence which, for
certain souls, is itself the basis of love. To express to you what went
on inside of me at that moment, it is necessary to admit that we have
an inner being of which the visible man is the scabbard, and that that
being, brilliant as light itself, is as delicate as a vapor. Well, that
glorious inward _I_ was thenceforth and forever clothed in crêpe.
Yes, I felt a cold and fleshless hand placing upon me the shroud of
experience, imposing upon my soul the eternal mourning which follows a
first betrayal. Lowering my eyes not to let her see my dazed condition,
a proud thought came into my mind which restored to me some strength:
‘If she deceives you she is unworthy of you.’ I excused the flush in
my face, and a few tears that came into my eyes, on the ground of
increased illness, and the gentle creature insisted on taking me home
in her carriage. On the way she was tenderness itself; her solicitude
would have deceived the same Moor of Venice whom I take for my point of
comparison. In fact, if that big child had hesitated two seconds longer
he would, as any intelligent spectator divines, have asked pardon of
Desdemona. Therefore, to kill a woman is the act of a child. She wept
as she left me at my own door, so unhappy was she at not being able
to nurse me herself! She wished she were my valet, she was jealous of
his cares! All this was written to me the next day as a happy Clarissa
might have written it. There is always the soul of a monkey in the
sweetest and most angelic of women!”
At these words the women present lowered their eyes as if wounded by a
cruel truth so brutally stated.
“I tell you nothing of the night, nor of the week that I passed,”
continued de Marsay, “but it was then that I saw myself a statesman.”
Those words were so finely uttered that, one and all, we made a gesture
of admiration.
“While reflecting, with an infernal spirit, on all the forms of cruel
vengeance to which we can subject a woman,” continued de Marsay--“and
there were many and irreparable ones in this case--I suddenly despised
myself; I felt that I was commonplace, and I formulated, insensibly, a
dreadful code, that of Indulgence. To take revenge upon a woman--does
not such an act admit that there is but one woman in the world for us,
and that we cannot live without her? If so, is vengeance a means to
recover her? But if she is not indispensable to us, if there are others
for us, why not allow her the same right to change that we claim for
ourselves? This, you must fully understand, applies only to passion;
otherwise it would be anti-social; nothing proves the necessity of
indissoluble marriage more than the instability of passion. The two
sexes need to be chained together like the wild beasts that they
are, in laws as mute and unchangeable as fate. Suppress revenge, and
betrayal becomes nothing in love, its teeth are drawn. Those who think
that there exists but one woman in the world for them, _they_
may take to vengeance, and then there is but one form for it--that of
Othello. Mine was different; it was this--”
The last three words produced among us that imperceptible movement
which journalists describe in parliamentary debates as “profound
sensation.”
“Cured of my cold and of pure, absolute, divinest love, I let myself go
into an adventure with another heroine, who was charming, of a style
of beauty exactly opposite to that of my deceiving angel. I took good
care, however, not to break with that very clever creature and good
comedian, for I don’t know whether a true love can of itself give more
graceful enjoyments than accomplished treachery. Such hypocrisy equals
virtue. I don’t say this for you Englishmen,” added the minister,
gently, addressing Lady Marimore, daughter of Lord Dudley. “Well, I
even tried to fall in love. It happened that I wanted for this new
angel a little gift done with my own hair, and I went to a certain
artist in hair, much in vogue in those days, who lived in the rue
Boucher. This man had a monopoly of gifts done in hair, and I give his
address for the benefit of those who haven’t much hair of their own; he
keeps locks of all kinds and all colors. After receiving my order, he
showed me his work. I then saw products of patients surpassing those of
fairy tales and even of convicts; and he put me up to all the caprices
and fashions which reigned in the realm of hair.
“‘For the last year,’ he said to me, ‘there has been a rage for marking
linen with hair; happily, I had a fine collection on hand and excellent
work-women.’
“Hearing these words, a suspicion crossed my mind. I drew out my
handkerchief and said to him:
“‘Probably this was done at your place, with false hair?’
“He looked attentively at the handkerchief and said:
“‘That lady was very difficult to suit; she insisted on matching the
very shade of her hair. My wife marked those handkerchiefs herself.
You have there, monsieur, one of the finest things of the kind ever
executed.’
“Before this last flash of light I might still have believed in
something; I could still have given some attention to a woman’s word.
I left that shop having faith in pleasure, but, in the matter of love,
as much of an atheist as a mathematician. Two months later I was seated
beside my angelic deceiver on a sofa in her boudoir. I was holding one
of her hands, which were very beautiful, and together we were climbing
the Alps of sentiment, gathering flowers by the way, plucking the
petals from the daisies (there is always a moment in life when we pluck
out the daisy petals, though it may be in a salon where there are no
daisies). At the moment of deepest tenderness, when we seem to love the
most, love is so conscious of its lack of duration that one feels an
invincible need to ask: ‘Do you love me?’--‘Will you love me always?’
I seized that lyrical moment, so warm, so flowery, so expansive, to
make her tell her finest lies, with the ravishing exaggerations of that
Gascon poetry peculiar to love. Charlotte then displayed the choicest
flowers of her deception: she could not live without me; I was the
only man in all the world to her; yet she feared to weary me, for in my
presence her mind forsook her; near me her faculties became all love;
she was too loving not to have many fears; of late she had sought a
means to attach me forever to her side; but God alone could do that.”
The women who were listening to de Marsay seemed offended by his
mimicry; for he accompanied these words with pantomime, poses of the
head, and affectations of manner, which conveyed the scene.
“At the moment when I was expected to believe these adorable
falsehoods, I said to her, still holding her right hand in mine:
“‘When do you marry the duke?’
“The thrust was so direct, my glance met hers so straight, that the
quiver of her hand lying softly in mine, slight as it was, could not
be completely concealed. Her eyes fell before mine, and a slight flush
came into her cheeks.
“‘The duke!’ she said, feigning the utmost astonishment. ‘What can you
mean?’
“‘I know all,’ I replied. ‘In my opinion you had better not delay the
marriage. He is rich, he is a duke; but also, he is religious--more
than that, he is a bigot! You don’t seem aware how urgent it is that
you should make him commit himself in his own eyes and before God; if
you don’t do this soon you will never gain your end.’
“‘Is this a dream?’ she said, pushing up her hair from her forehead
with Malibran’s celebrated gesture, fifteen years before Malibran ever
made it.
“‘Come, don’t play the babe unborn, my angel,’ I said, trying to take
both her hands. But she crossed them in front of her with an angry and
prudish little air. ‘Marry him, I am willing,’ I continued. ‘In fact, I
strongly advise it.’
“‘But,’ she said, falling at my feet, ‘there’s some horrible mistake
here; I love no man but you in this world; you can ask me for any proof
you like.’
“‘Rise, my dear,’ I said, ‘and do me the honor to be frank.’
“‘Yes, before Heaven.’
“‘Do you doubt my love?’
“‘No.’
“‘My fidelity?’
“‘No.’
“‘Well, then, I have committed the greatest of crimes,’ I went on. ‘I
have doubted your love and your fidelity; and I have looked at the
matter calmly--’
“‘Calmly!’ she cried, sighing. ‘Enough, Henri, I see that you no longer
love me.’
“You observe that she was quick to seize that way of escape. In such
scenes an adverb is often very dangerous. But luckily curiosity induced
her to add:
“‘What have you seen or heard? Have I ever spoken to the duke except
in society? Have you ever noticed in my eyes--’
“‘No,’ I said, ‘but I have in his. You have made me go eight times to
Saint-Thomas d’Aquin to see you both hearing mass together.’
“‘Ah!’ she cried, ‘at last I have made you jealous!’
“‘I wish I could be,’ I replied, admiring the suppleness of that quick
mind, and the acrobatic feats by which she strove to blind me. ‘But,
by dint of going to church, I have become an unbeliever. The day of
my first cold and your first deception you received the duke when you
thought me safe in bed, and you told me you had seen no man.’
“‘Do you know that your conduct is infamous?’
“‘How so? I think your marriage with the duke an excellent affair; he
gives you a fine name, the only position that is really suited to you,
an honorable and brilliant future. You will be one of the queens of
Paris. I should do you a great wrong if I placed any obstacles in the
way of this arrangement, this honorable life, this superb alliance.
Ah! some day, Charlotte, you will do me justice by discovering how
different my character is from that of other young men. You are on the
point of being forced to break with me, and yet you would have found it
very difficult to do so. The duke is watching you; his virtue is very
stern, and it is high time that you and I should part. You will have to
be a prude, I warn you of that. The duke is a vain man, and he wants
to be proud of his wife.’
“‘Ah!’ she said, bursting into tears, ‘Henri, if you had only spoken!’
(you see she was determined to put the blame on me)--‘yes, if you had
wished it we could have lived all our lives together, married, happy
before the world, or in some quiet corner of it.’
“‘Well, it is too late now,’ I said, kissing her hands and assuming the
air of a victim.
“‘But I can undo it all,’ she said.
“‘No, you have gone too far with the duke. I shall even make a journey,
to separate us from each other more completely. We should each have to
fear the love of our own hearts.’
“‘Do you think, Henri, that the duke has any suspicions?’
“‘I think not,’ I replied, ‘but he is watching you. Make yourself
_dévote_, attend to your religious duties, for the duke is seeking
proof; he is hesitating, and you ought to make him come to a decision.’
“She rose, walked about the boudoir in a state of agitation either
feigned or real; then she found a pose and a glance which she no doubt
felt to be in harmony with the situation; for she stopped before me,
held out her hand, and said in a voice full of emotion:
“‘Henri, you are a loyal, noble, charming man, and I shall never forget
you.’
“This was excellent strategy. She was enchanting in this attitude,
which was necessary to the situation in which she wanted to stand
toward me. I assumed the manner of a man so distressed that she took me
by the hand and led me--almost threw me, though gently--on the sofa,
saying, after a moment’s silence: ‘I am deeply grieved, my friend. You
love me truly?’
“‘Oh, yes.’
“‘Then what will become of you?’”
Here all the women present exchanged glances.
“I have suffered once more in thus recalling her treachery, but at
any rate I still laugh at the air of conviction and soft inward
satisfaction which she felt, if not at my death, at least at my eternal
unhappiness,” continued de Marsay. “Oh! you needn’t laugh yet,” he
said to the guests; “the best is still to come. I looked at her very
tenderly, after a pause, and said:
“‘Yes, that is what I have asked myself.’
“‘What will you do?’
“‘I asked myself that question the morning after the cold I told you
of.’
“‘And?--’ she said, with visible uneasiness.
“‘I began to pay court to that little lady whom I had for my
substitute.’
“Charlotte sprang up from the sofa like a frightened doe; she trembled
like a leaf, as she cast upon me one of those looks in which a woman
forgets her dignity, her modesty, her craftiness, even her grace--the
glittering glance of a hunted serpent, forced to its hole--and said:
“‘I, who loved him! I, who struggled! I, who--’
“On that third idea, which I leave you to guess, she made the finest
organ pause ears ever listened to.
“‘Good heavens!’ she cried, ‘how wretched women are! We are never truly
loved. There is nothing genuine to men in the purest sentiments. But,
let me tell you, though you trick us, you are still our dupes.’
“‘So I see,’ I said with a contrite air. ‘You have too much wit in your
anger for your heart to suffer much.’
“This modest sarcasm redoubled her wrath; she now wept tears of rage.
“‘You have degraded life and the world in my eyes,’ she said; ‘you have
torn away all my illusions, you have debased my heart--’
“In short, she said to me all that I had the right to say to her, with
an unconcealed simplicity, a naive effrontery, which would certainly
have got the better of any man but me.
“‘What will become of us, poor hapless women, in the social life which
Louis XVIII’s Charter has created for us? Yes, we were born to suffer.
As for love, we are always above you, and you are always below us, in
loyalty. None of you have honesty in your hearts. For you, love is a
game in which you think it fair to cheat.’
“‘Dear,’ I said, ‘to take things seriously in our present social life
would be to play at perfect love with an actress.’
“‘What infamous treachery!’ she cried. ‘So this has all been reasoned
out?’
“‘No; it is simply reasonable.’
“‘Farewell, Monsieur de Marsay,’ she said; ‘you have deceived me
shamefully.’
“‘Will Madame la duchesse,’ I asked in a submissive manner, ‘remember
Charlotte’s wrongs?’
“‘Assuredly,’ she said in a bitter tone.
“‘So then, you detest me?’
“She inclined her head; and I left her to a sentiment which allowed her
to think that she had something to avenge. My friends, I have deeply
studied the lives of men who have had success with women; and I feel
sure that neither the Maréchal de Richelieu, nor Lauzun, nor Louis de
Valois ever made, for the first time, so able a retreat. As for my own
heart and mind, they were formed then and forever; and the control I
gained over the unreflecting impulses which cause us to commit so many
follies gave me the coolness and self-possession which you know of.”
“How I pity the second woman!” said the Baronne de Nucingen.
An almost imperceptible smile which flickered for a moment on de
Marsay’s pale lips made Delphine de Nucingen color.
“How people forget!” cried the Baron de Nucingen.
The naiveté of the celebrated banker had such success that his wife,
who had been that “second” of de Marsay’s, could not help laughing with
the rest of the company.
“You are all disposed to condemn that woman,” said Lady Dudley, “but I
can understand why she should not consider her marriage in the light
of an inconstancy. Men never will distinguish between constancy and
fidelity. I knew the woman whose history Monsieur de Marsay has just
related; she was one of the last of your great ladies.”
“Alas! you are right there,” said de Marsay. “For the last fifty
years we have been taking part in the steady destruction of all
social distinctions. We ought to have saved women from the great
shipwreck, but the Civil Code has passed its level over their heads.
However terrible the words may be, they must be said; the duchess is
disappearing, and so is the marquise. As for baronesses (I ask pardon
of Madame de Nucingen, who will make herself a true countess when
her husband becomes peer of France), the baronesses have never been
regarded seriously.”
“Aristocracy begins with the viscountess,” remarked Blondet, smiling.
“Countesses will remain,” said de Marsay. “An elegant woman will
always be more or less a countess--countess of the Empire, or of
yesterday, countess of the _vieille roche_, or, as they say in
Italy, countess of civility. But as for the _great lady_, she is
dead--dead with the grandiose surroundings of the last century; dead
with her powder, _mouches_, and high-heeled slippers, and her
busked corset adorned with its triangle of flowing ribbons. Duchesses
in the present day can pass through ordinary doors that are not widened
to admit a hoop. The Empire saw the last of the gowns with trains.
Napoleon little imagined the effects of the Code of which he was so
proud. That man, by creating his _duchesses_, generated the race
of _comme il faut_[2] women whom we see today--the resulting
product of his legislation.”
“Thought, used as a hammer by the lad leaving school and the nameless
journalist, has demolished the splendors of the social state,” said the
Comte de Vandenesse. “Today, any absurd fellow who can hold his head
above a collar, cover his manly breast with half a yard of satin in the
form of a waistcoat, present a brow shining with future genius under
his frizzed hair, and blunder along in varnished pumps and silk socks
costing half a dozen francs, now wears a glass in the arch of one eye
by squeezing his cheek against it and--whether he’s a lawyer’s clerk,
the son of a contractor, or a banker’s bastard--ogles impertinently the
prettiest duchess, rates her charms as she comes down the staircase of
a theater, and says to his friend (clothed by Buisson, like the rest of
us), ‘There, my dear fellow, is a _comme il faut_ woman.’”
“You have never made yourselves,” said Lord Dudley, “into a party;
it will be long now before you have any place politically. A great
deal has been said in France about organizing labor, but property has
never yet organized. Here is what is happening to you: A duke, no
matter who (there were still a few under Louis XVIII and Charles X
who possessed two hundred thousand francs a year, a splendid mansion
and a retinue of servants),--that duke could still behave like a
great seigneur. The last of these great French lords is the Prince de
Talleyrand. This duke dies, and, let us suppose, leaves four children,
two of whom are daughters. Each of these heirs, supposing that he has
managed to marry them well, will inherit, at most, sixty to eighty
thousand francs a year; each is father or mother of several children,
consequently obliged to live on one floor, probably the ground-floor,
of a house, with the strictest economy--it may be that they are even
obliged to borrow money. The wife of the eldest son, who is a duchess
in name only, has neither carriage, nor servants, nor opera-box, nor
time of her own; she hasn’t even her own suite of rooms in a family
mansion, nor her own fortune, nor her personal baubles. She is buried
in marriage as a wife of the rue Saint Denis is buried in commerce; she
buys the socks of her dear babes, feeds and teaches her daughters, whom
she no longer puts to school in a convent. Your women of rank simply
sit upon their nests.”
“Alas, yes!” said Joseph Bridau. “Our epoch no longer possesses those
exquisite feminine flowers which adorned the great centuries of the
French monarchy. The fan of the great lady is broken. Woman no longer
blushes, whispers sly malice, hides her face behind her fan only to
show it--the fan serves merely to fan her! When a thing is no longer
anything but what it _is_, it is too useful to belong to luxury.”
“Everything in France has assisted in producing the _comme il
faut_ woman,” said Daniel d’Arthèz. “The aristocracy has consented
to this state of things by retreating to its estates to hide and
die--emigrating to the interior before ideas as formerly it emigrated
to foreign parts before the populace. Women who could have established
European salons, controlled opinion and turned it like a glove, who
should have ruled the world by guiding the men of art and thought who
outwardly ruled it, have committed the fatal blunder of abandoning
their ground, ashamed to have to struggle with a bourgeoisie
intoxicated by power and making its début on the world’s stage only,
perhaps, to be hacked in pieces by the barbarians who are at its
heels. Where the bourgeois affects to see princesses, there are none
but so-called fashionable women. Princes no longer find great ladies
to distinguish; they cannot even render famous a woman taken from the
ranks. The Duc de Bourbon was the last prince to use that privilege.”
“And Heaven knows what it cost him!” said Lord Dudley.
“The press follows suit,” remarked Rastignac. “Women no longer have
the charm of spoken _feuilletons_, delightful satires uttered in
choicest language. In like manner we nowadays read _feuilletons_
written in a _patois_ which changes every three years, and ‘little
journals,’ as lively as undertakers, and as light as the lead of their
own type. French conversation is now carried on in revolutionary
Iroquois from end to end of France, where the long printed columns of
the newspapers take the place in ancient mansions of those brilliant
coteries of men and women who _conversed_ there in former days.”
“The knell of Great Society has sounded, do you know it?” said a
Russian prince; “and the first stroke of its iron tongue is your modern
French term: _femme comme il faut_.”
“You are right prince,” said de Marsay. “That woman, issuing from
the ranks of the nobility, or growing from the bourgeoisie, coming
from any and every region, even the provinces, is the expression of
the spirit of our day--a last image of good taste, wit, intellect,
grace, and distinction united, but all diminishing. We shall see no
more _grandes dames_ in France, but for a long time still to come
there will be _comme il faut_ women, sent by public opinion to
the Upper Feminine Chamber--women who will be to the fair sex what the
‘gentleman’ is among his fellows in England.”
“And they call that progress!” said Mademoiselle des Touches. “I would
like to know what progress is.”
“_This_,” said Madame de Nucingen: “Formerly a woman might have
the voice of a fish-wife, the walk of a grenadier, the forehead of the
boldest hussy, a fat foot, a thick hand, but nevertheless that woman
was a ‘great lady’; but now, be she a Montmorency--if the Demoiselles
de Montmorency could ever have such attributes--she would _not_ be
a woman _comme il faut_.”
“What is meant by a woman _comme il faut_?” asked Comte Adam
Laginski, naively.
“She’s a modern creation, a deplorable triumph of the elective system
applied to the fair sex,” said de Marsay. “Every revolution has its
term, or saying, in which it is summed up and described. Our social
revolution has ended in the _comme il faut_ woman.”
“You are right,” said the Russian prince, who had come to Paris to make
himself a literary reputation. “To explain certain terms or sayings
added century by century to your noble language, would be to write a
glorious history. _Organize_, for instance, is the word of the
Empire; it contains Napoleon--the whole of him.”
“But all that is not telling us what you mean by the woman _comme il
faut_,” cried the young Pole, with some impatience.
“I’ll explain her to you,” said Emile Blondet. “On a fine morning you
are lounging about Paris. It is more than two o’clock, but not yet
five. You see a woman coming toward you; the first glance you cast
upon her is like the preface to a fine book; it makes you anticipate
a world of refined and elegant things. Like the botanist crossing
hill and valley as he searches for specimens, among all varieties of
Parisian commonness you have found a rare flower. Either this woman
is accompanied by two very distinguished-looking men, one of whom is
decorated, or by a footman in undress livery who follows her at a
little distance. She wears neither startling colors, nor open-worked
stockings, nor over-ornamental buckles, nor drawers with embroidered
frills visible at her ankles. You notice that her shoes are either
prunella, with strings crossed on the instep over thread stockings of
extreme fineness, or gray silk stockings that are perfectly plain; or
else she wears dainty little boots of exquisite simplicity. Some pretty
and inexpensive stuff makes you notice her gown, the shape of which
surprises the bourgeois, it is almost always a pelisse, fastened by
knots of ribbon and delicately edged with a silken cord or an almost
imperceptible binding. The lady has an art of her own in putting on
a shawl or a mantle; she knows how to wrap it from her waist to her
throat, forming a sort of carapace which would make a bourgeoise
look like a tortoise, but under which the _comme il faut_ woman
contrives to suggest a beautiful figure while concealing it. How? by
what means? That is a secret which she keeps, without the protection
of any patent. She walks with a certain concentric and harmonious
motion, which makes her sweet alluring figure quiver under the stuffs
as an adder at midday makes the green grass-tops above him move.
Does she owe to angel or devil that graceful undulation which plays
beneath the black silk mantle, sways the lace of its border, and sheds
a balmy air which I shall venture to call the breeze-Parisian? You
remark upon her arms, about her waist, around her neck, a science of
folds draping even a restive stuff, which reminds you of the ancient
Mnemosyne. Ah! how well she understands--forgive me the expression--the
technique of walking. Examine well the way in which she puts her
foot forward, moulding an outline beneath her gown with a decent
precision which excites the admiration, restrained by respect, of
those who pass her. If an Englishwoman tried that walk she would look
like a grenadier marching to the assault of a redoubt. To the woman
of Paris belongs the genius of gait. The municipality has long owed
her our coming asphalt pavements. You will observe that this lady
jostles no one. In order to pass, she stands still, waiting with proud
modesty until a way is made for her. Her attitude, both tranquil and
disdainful, obliges the most insolent dandy to step aside. Her bonnet,
of remarkable simplicity, has fresh strings. Possibly, there may be
flowers upon it; but the cleverest of these women wear only ribbons.
Feathers require a carriage, flowers attract the eye. Beneath the
bonnet you see the cool and restful face of a woman who is sure of
herself, but without self-conceit; who looks at nothing, but sees all;
and whose vanity, lulled by continual gratification, gives to her
countenance an expression of indifference which piques curiosity. She
knows she is being studied; she is well aware that nearly everyone,
even women, turn round to look at her. She passes through Paris like
a film of gossamer, as white and as pearly. This beautiful specimen
of her sex prefers the warmest latitudes and the cleanest longitudes
in Paris; you will therefore find her between the 10th and the 110th
arcade of the rue de Rivoli, along the line of the boulevards, from
the equator of the Panorama, where the productions of the Indies
flourish and the finest creations of industry are blooming, to the cape
of the Madeleine; you will find her also in the least muddy regions
of the bourgeoisie, between number 30 and number 150 of the rue du
Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. During the winter she takes her pleasure on
the terrace of the Feuillants, and not upon the bituminous pavements
which skirt it. According to weather, she glides through the alleys
of the Champs Elysées. Never will you meet this charming variety of
woman in the hyperboreal regions of the rue Saint-Denis, never in the
Kamchatka of muddy streets small and commercial, and never anywhere
in rainy weather. These flowers of Paris, opening to the sun, perfume
the promenades and fold their leaves by five in the afternoon like a
convolvulus. The women whom you will see later having slightly the same
air and trying to imitate them are of another race. This fair unknown,
the Beatrice of our day, is the _comme il faut_ woman.