“PARIS, 183-
“You ask me, dear mother, whether I am happy with my husband. Certainly
Monsieur de Fischtaminel was not the ideal of my dreams. I submitted to
your will, as you know. His fortune, that supreme consideration, spoke,
indeed, sufficiently loud. With these arguments, —a marriage, without
stooping, with the Count de Fischtaminel, his having thirty thousand a
year, and a home at Paris—you were strongly armed against your poor
daughter. Besides, Monsieur de Fischtaminel is good looking for a man
of thirty-six years; he received the cross of the Legion of Honor from
Napoleon upon the field of battle, he is an ex-colonel, and had it not
been for the Restoration, which put him upon half-pay, he would be a
general. These are certainly extenuating circumstances.
“Many women consider that I have made a good match, and I am bound to
confess that there is every appearance of happiness,—for the public,
that is. But you will acknowledge that if you had known of the return
of my Uncle Cyrus and of his intention to leave me his money, you would
have given me the privilege of choosing for myself.
“I have nothing to say against Monsieur de Fischtaminel: he does not
gamble, he is indifferent to women, he doesn’t like wine, and he has no
expensive fancies: he possesses, as you said, all the negative
qualities which make husbands passable. Then, what is the matter with
him? Well, mother, he has nothing to do. We are together the whole
blessed day! Would you believe that it is during the night, when we are
the most closely united, that I am the most alone? His sleep is my
asylum, my liberty begins when he slumbers. This state of siege will
yet make me sick: I am never alone. If Monsieur de Fischtaminel were
jealous, I should have a resource. There would then be a struggle, a
comedy: but how could the aconite of jealousy have taken root in his
soul? He has never left me since our marriage. He feels no shame in
stretching himself out upon a sofa and remaining there for hours
together.
“Two felons pinioned to the same chain do not find time hang heavy: for
they have their escape to think of. But we have no subject of
conversation; we have long since talked ourselves out. A little while
ago he was so far reduced as to talk politics. But even politics are
exhausted, Napoleon, unfortunately for me, having died at St. Helena,
as is well known.
“Monsieur de Fischtaminel abhors reading. If he sees me with a book, he
comes and says a dozen times an hour—‘Nina, dear, haven’t you finished
yet?’
“I endeavored to persuade this innocent persecutor to ride out every
day on horseback, and I alleged a consideration usually conclusive with
men of forty years,—his health! But he said that after having been
twelve years on horseback, he felt the need of repose.
“My husband, dear mother, is a man who absorbs you, he uses up the
vital fluid of his neighbor, his ennui is gluttonous: he likes to be
amused by those who call upon us, and, after five years of wedlock, no
one ever comes: none visit us but those whose intentions are evidently
dishonorable for him, and who endeavor, unsuccessfully, to amuse him,
in order to earn the right to weary his wife.
“Monsieur de Fischtaminel, mother, opens the door of my chamber, or of
the room to which I have flown for refuge, five or six times an hour,
and comes up to me in an excited way, and says, ‘Well, what are you
doing, my belle?’ (the expression in fashion during the Empire) without
perceiving that he is constantly repeating the same phrase, which is to
me like the one pint too much that the executioner formerly poured into
the torture by water.
“Then there’s another bore! We can’t go to walk any more. A promenade
without conversation, without interest, is impossible. My husband walks
with me for the walk, as if he were alone. I have the fatigue without
the pleasure.
“The interval between getting up and breakfast is employed in my
toilet, in my household duties; and I manage to get through with this
part of the day. But between breakfast and dinner, there is a whole
desert to plough, a waste to traverse. My husband’s want of occupation
does not leave me a moment of repose, he overpowers me by his
uselessness; his idle life positively wears me out. His two eyes always
open and gazing at mine compel me to keep them lowered. Then his
monotonous remarks:
“‘What o’clock is it, love? What are you doing now? What are you
thinking of? What do you mean to do? Where shall we go this evening?
Anything new? What weather! I don’t feel well, etc., etc.’
“All these variations upon the same theme—the interrogation point
—which compose Fischtaminel’s repertory, will drive me mad. Add to
these leaden arrows everlastingly shot off at me, one last trait which
will complete the description of my happiness, and you will understand
my life.
“Monsieur de Fischtaminel, who went away in 1809, with the rank of
sub-lieutenant, at the age of eighteen, has had no other education than
that due to discipline, to the natural sense of honor of a noble and a
soldier: but though he possesses tact, the sentiment of probity, and a
proper subordination, his ignorance is gross, he knows absolutely
nothing, and he has a horror of learning anything. Oh, dear mother,
what an accomplished door-keeper this colonel would have made, had he
been born in indigence! I don’t think a bit the better of him for his
bravery, for he did not fight against the Russians, the Austrians, or
the Prussians: he fought against ennui. When he rushed upon the enemy,
Captain Fischtaminel’s purpose was to get away from himself. He married
because he had nothing else to do.
“We have another slight difficulty to content with: my husband harasses
the servants to such a degree that we change them every six months.
“I so ardently desire, dear mother, to remain a virtuous woman, that I
am going to try the effect of traveling for half the year. During the
winter, I shall go every evening to the Italian or the French opera, or
to parties: but I don’t know whether our fortune will permit such an
expenditure. Uncle Cyrus ought to come to Paris—I would take care of
him as I would of an inheritance.
“If you discover a cure for my woes, let your daughter know of it —your
daughter who loves you as much as she deplores her misfortunes, and who
would have been glad to call herself by some other name than that of
“NINA FISCHTAMINEL.”
Besides the necessity of describing this petty trouble, which could
only be described by the pen of a woman,—and what a woman she was! —it
was necessary to make you acquainted with a character whom you saw only
in profile in the first half of this book, the queen of the particular
set in which Caroline lived,—a woman both envied and adroit, who
succeeded in conciliating, at an early date, what she owed to the world
with the requirements of the heart. This letter is her absolution.