CHAPTER I. TWO CHILDHOODS

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

THE LILY OF THE VALLEY

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To Monsieur J. B. Nacquart,

Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine.

Dear Doctor--Here is one of the most carefully hewn stones in the

second course of the foundation of a literary edifice which I have

slowly and laboriously constructed. I wish to inscribe your name

upon it, as much to thank the man whose science once saved me as

to honor the friend of my daily life.

De Balzac.

THE LILY OF THE VALLEY

ENVOI

Felix de Vandenesse to Madame la Comtesse Natalie de Manerville:

I yield to your wishes. It is the privilege of the women whom we

love more than they love us to make the men who love them ignore

the ordinary rules of common-sense. To smooth the frown upon their

brow, to soften the pout upon their lips, what obstacles we

miraculously overcome! We shed our blood, we risk our future!

You exact the history of my past life; here it is. But remember

this, Natalie; in obeying you I crush under foot a reluctance

hitherto unconquerable. Why are you jealous of the sudden reveries

which overtake me in the midst of our happiness? Why show the

pretty anger of a petted woman when silence grasps me? Could you

not play upon the contradictions of my character without inquiring

into the causes of them? Are there secrets in your heart which

seek absolution through a knowledge of mine? Ah! Natalie, you have

guessed mine; and it is better you should know the whole truth.

Yes, my life is shadowed by a phantom; a word evokes it; it hovers

vaguely above me and about me; within my soul are solemn memories,

buried in its depths like those marine productions seen in calmest

weather and which the storms of ocean cast in fragments on the

shore.

The mental labor which the expression of ideas necessitates has

revived the old, old feelings which give me so much pain when they

come suddenly; and if in this confession of my past they break

forth in a way that wounds you, remember that you threatened to

punish me if I did not obey your wishes, and do not, therefore,

punish my obedience. I would that this, my confidence, might

increase your love.

Until we meet,

Felix.

CHAPTER I. TWO CHILDHOODS

To what genius fed on tears shall we some day owe that most touching of

all elegies,--the tale of tortures borne silently by souls whose tender

roots find stony ground in the domestic soil, whose earliest buds are

torn apart by rancorous hands, whose flowers are touched by frost at the

moment of their blossoming? What poet will sing the sorrows of the child

whose lips must suck a bitter breast, whose smiles are checked by the

cruel fire of a stern eye? The tale that tells of such poor hearts,

oppressed by beings placed about them to promote the development of

their natures, would contain the true history of my childhood.

What vanity could I have wounded,--I a child new-born? What moral or

physical infirmity caused by mother’s coldness? Was I the child of

duty, whose birth is a mere chance, or was I one whose very life was

a reproach? Put to nurse in the country and forgotten by my family for

over three years, I was treated with such indifference on my return to

the parental roof that even the servants pitied me. I do not know to

what feeling or happy accident I owed my rescue from this first neglect;

as a child I was ignorant of it, as a man I have not discovered it. Far

from easing my lot, my brother and my two sisters found amusement in

making me suffer. The compact in virtue of which children hide each

other’s peccadilloes, and which early teaches them the principles

of honor, was null and void in my case; more than that, I was often

punished for my brother’s faults, without being allowed to prove the

injustice. The fawning spirit which seems instinctive in children

taught my brother and sisters to join in the persecutions to which I was

subjected, and thus keep in the good graces of a mother whom they

feared as much as I. Was this partly the effect of a childish love of

imitation; was it from a need of testing their powers; or was it simply

through lack of pity? Perhaps these causes united to deprive me of the

sweets of fraternal intercourse.

Disinherited of all affection, I could love nothing; yet nature had made

me loving. Is there an angel who garners the sighs of feeling hearts

rebuffed incessantly? If in many such hearts the crushed feelings turn

to hatred, in mine they condensed and hollowed a depth from which, in

after years, they gushed forth upon my life. In many characters the

habit of trembling relaxes the fibres and begets fear, and fear ends

in submission; hence, a weakness which emasculates a man, and makes him

more or less a slave. But in my case these perpetual tortures led to the

development of a certain strength, which increased through exercise

and predisposed my spirit to the habit of moral resistance. Always

in expectation of some new grief--as the martyrs expected some fresh

blow--my whole being expressed, I doubt not, a sullen resignation which

smothered the grace and gaiety of childhood, and gave me an appearance

of idiocy which seemed to justify my mother’s threatening prophecies.

The certainty of injustice prematurely roused my pride--that fruit

of reason--and thus, no doubt, checked the evil tendencies which an

education like mine encouraged.

Though my mother neglected me I was sometimes the object of her

solicitude; she occasionally spoke of my education and seemed desirous

of attending to it herself. Cold chills ran through me at such times

when I thought of the torture a daily intercourse with her would inflict

upon me. I blessed the neglect in which I lived, and rejoiced that I

could stay alone in the garden and play with the pebbles and watch the

insects and gaze into the blueness of the sky. Though my loneliness

naturally led me to reverie, my liking for contemplation was first

aroused by an incident which will give you an idea of my early troubles.

So little notice was taken of me that the governess occasionally forgot

to send me to bed. One evening I was peacefully crouching under a

fig-tree, watching a star with that passion of curiosity which takes

possession of a child’s mind, and to which my precocious melancholy

gave a sort of sentimental intuition. My sisters were playing about

and laughing; I heard their distant chatter like an accompaniment to my

thoughts. After a while the noise ceased and darkness fell. My mother

happened to notice my absence. To escape blame, our governess, a

terrible Mademoiselle Caroline, worked upon my mother’s fears,--told her

I had a horror of my home and would long ago have run away if she had

not watched me; that I was not stupid but sullen; and that in all her

experience of children she had never known one of so bad a disposition

as mine. She pretended to search for me. I answered as soon as I was

called, and she came to the fig-tree, where she very well knew I was.

“What are you doing there?” she asked. “Watching a star.” “You were

not watching a star,” said my mother, who was listening on her balcony;

“children of your age know nothing of astronomy.” “Ah, madame,” cried

Mademoiselle Caroline, “he has opened the faucet of the reservoir; the

garden is inundated!” Then there was a general excitement. The fact was

that my sisters had amused themselves by turning the cock to see the

water flow, but a sudden spurt wet them all over and frightened them

so much that they ran away without closing it. Accused and convicted

of this piece of mischief and told that I lied when I denied it, I was

severely punished. Worse than all, I was jeered at for my pretended love

of the stars and forbidden to stay in the garden after dark.

Such tyrannical restrains intensify a passion in the hearts of children

even more than in those of men; children think of nothing but the

forbidden thing, which then becomes irresistibly attractive to them. I

was often whipped for my star. Unable to confide in my kind, I told it

all my troubles in that delicious inward prattle with which we stammer

our first ideas, just as once we stammered our first words. At twelve

years of age, long after I was at school, I still watched that star

with indescribable delight,--so deep and lasting are the impressions we

receive in the dawn of life.

My brother Charles, five years older than I and as handsome a boy as he

now is a man, was the favorite of my father, the idol of my mother, and

consequently the sovereign of the house. He was robust and well-made,

and had a tutor. I, puny and even sickly, was sent at five years of age

as day pupil to a school in the town; taken in the morning and brought

back at night by my father’s valet. I was sent with a scanty lunch,

while my school-fellows brought plenty of good food. This trifling

contrast between my privations and their prosperity made me suffer

deeply. The famous potted pork prepared at Tours and called “rillettes”

and “rillons” was the chief feature of their mid-day meal, between

the early breakfast and the parent’s dinner, which was ready when we

returned from school. This preparation of meat, much prized by certain

gourmands, is seldom seen at Tours on aristocratic tables; if I had

ever heard of it before I went to school, I certainly had never had

the happiness of seeing that brown mess spread on slices of bread and

butter. Nevertheless, my desire for those “rillons” was so great that it

grew to be a fixed idea, like the longing of an elegant Parisian duchess

for the stews cooked by a porter’s wife,--longings which, being a woman,

she found means to satisfy. Children guess each other’s covetousness,

just as you are able to read a man’s love, by the look in the eyes;

consequently I became an admirable butt for ridicule. My comrades,

nearly all belonging to the lower bourgeoisie, would show me their

“rillons” and ask if I knew how they were made and where they were sold,

and why it was that I never had any. They licked their lips as they

talked of them--scraps of pork pressed in their own fat and looking like

cooked truffles; they inspected my lunch-basket, and finding nothing

better than Olivet cheese or dried fruits, they plagued me

with questions: “Is that all you have? have you really nothing

else?”--speeches which made me realize the difference between my brother

and myself.

This contrast between my own abandonment and the happiness of others

nipped the roses of my childhood and blighted my budding youth. The

first time that I, mistaking my comrades’ actions for generosity, put

forth my hand to take the dainty I had so long coveted and which was now

hypocritically held out to me, my tormentor pulled back his slice to the

great delight of his comrades who were expecting that result. If noble

and distinguished minds are, as we often find them, capable of vanity,

can we blame the child who weeps when despised and jeered at? Under such

a trial many boys would have turned into gluttons and cringing beggars.

I fought to escape my persecutors. The courage of despair made me

formidable; but I was hated, and thus had no protection against

treachery. One evening as I left school I was struck in the back by

a handful of small stones tied in a handkerchief. When the valet, who

punished the perpetrator, told this to my mother she exclaimed: “That

dreadful child! he will always be a torment to us.”

Finding that I inspired in my schoolmates the same repulsion that was

felt for me by my family, I sank into a horrible distrust of myself. A

second fall of snow checked the seeds that were germinating in my soul.

The boys whom I most liked were notorious scamps; this fact roused my

pride and I held aloof. Again I was shut up within myself and had no

vent for the feelings with which my heart was full. The master of the

school, observing that I was gloomy, disliked by my comrades, and always

alone, confirmed the family verdict as to my sulky temper. As soon as I

could read and write, my mother transferred me to Pont-le-Voy, a school

in charge of Oratorians who took boys of my age into a form called the

“class of the Latin steps” where dull lads with torpid brains were apt

to linger.

There I remained eight years without seeing my family; living the life

of a pariah,--partly for the following reason. I received but three

francs a month pocket-money, a sum barely sufficient to buy the pens,

ink, paper, knives, and rules which we were forced to supply ourselves.

Unable to buy stilts or skipping-ropes, or any of the things that were

used in the playground, I was driven out of the games; to gain admission

on suffrage I should have had to toady the rich and flatter the strong

of my division. My heart rose against either of these meannesses, which,

however, most children readily employ. I lived under a tree, lost in

dejected thought, or reading the books distributed to us monthly by the

librarian. How many griefs were in the shadow of that solitude; what

genuine anguish filled my neglected life! Imagine what my sore heart

felt when, at the first distribution of prizes,--of which I obtained

the two most valued, namely, for theme and for translation,--neither my

father nor my mother was present in the theatre when I came forward to

receive the awards amid general acclamations, although the building was

filled with the relatives of all my comrades. Instead of kissing the

distributor, according to custom, I burst into tears and threw myself on

his breast. That night I burned my crowns in the stove. The parents of

the other boys were in town for a whole week preceding the distribution

of the prizes, and my comrades departed joyfully the next day; while I,

whose father and mother were only a few miles distant, remained at the

school with the “outremers,”--a name given to scholars whose families

were in the colonies or in foreign countries.

You will notice throughout how my unhappiness increased in proportion as

the social spheres on which I entered widened. God knows what efforts I

made to weaken the decree which condemned me to live within myself! What

hopes, long cherished with eagerness of soul, were doomed to perish in

a day! To persuade my parents to come and see me, I wrote them letters

full of feeling, too emphatically worded, it may be; but surely such

letters ought not to have drawn upon me my mother’s reprimand, coupled

with ironical reproaches for my style. Not discouraged even then,

I implored the help of my sisters, to whom I always wrote on their

birthdays and fete-days with the persistence of a neglected child; but

it was all in vain. As the day for the distribution of prizes approached

I redoubled my entreaties, and told of my expected triumphs. Misled by

my parents’ silence, I expected them with a beating heart. I told my

schoolfellows they were coming; and then, when the old porter’s step

sounded in the corridors as he called my happy comrades one by one to

receive their friends, I was sick with expectation. Never did that old

man call my name!

One day, when I accused myself to my confessor of having cursed my life,

he pointed to the skies, where grew, he said, the promised palm for the

“Beati qui lugent” of the Saviour. From the period of my first communion

I flung myself into the mysterious depths of prayer, attracted to

religious ideas whose moral fairyland so fascinates young spirits.

Burning with ardent faith, I prayed to God to renew in my behalf the

miracles I had read of in martyrology. At five years of age I fled to

my star; at twelve I took refuge in the sanctuary. My ecstasy

brought dreams unspeakable, which fed my imagination, fostered my

susceptibilities, and strengthened my thinking powers. I have often

attributed those sublime visions to the guardian angel charged with

moulding my spirit to its divine destiny; they endowed my soul with the

faculty of seeing the inner soul of things; they prepared my heart for

the magic craft which makes a man a poet when the fatal power is his to

compare what he feels within him with reality,--the great things aimed

for with the small things gained. Those visions wrote upon my brain a

book in which I read that which I must voice; they laid upon my lips the

coal of utterance.

My father having conceived some doubts as to the tendency of the

Oratorian teachings, took me from Pont-le-Voy, and sent me to Paris to

an institution in the Marais. I was then fifteen. When examined as to

my capacity, I, who was in the rhetoric class at Pont-le-Voy, was

pronounced worthy of the third class. The sufferings I had endured in my

family and in school were continued under another form during my stay

at the Lepitre Academy. My father gave me no money; I was to be fed,

clothed, and stuffed with Latin and Greek, for a sum agreed on. During

my school life I came in contact with over a thousand comrades; but I

never met with such an instance of neglect and indifference as mine.

Monsieur Lepitre, who was fanatically attached to the Bourbons, had had

relations with my father at the time when all devoted royalists were

endeavoring to bring about the escape of Marie Antoinette from the

Temple. They had lately renewed acquaintance; and Monsieur Lepitre

thought himself obliged to repair my father’s oversight, and to give me

a small sum monthly. But not being authorized to do so, the amount was

small indeed.

The Lepitre establishment was in the old Joyeuse mansion where, as in

all seignorial houses, there was a porter’s lodge. During a recess,

which preceded the hour when the man-of-all-work took us to the

Charlemagne Lyceum, the well-to-do pupils used to breakfast with the

porter, named Doisy. Monsieur Lepitre was either ignorant of the fact or

he connived at this arrangement with Doisy, a regular smuggler whom it

was the pupils’ interest to protect,--he being the secret guardian

of their pranks, the safe confidant of their late returns and their

intermediary for obtaining forbidden books. Breakfast on a cup of

“cafe-au-lait” is an aristocratic habit, explained by the high prices

to which colonial products rose under Napoleon. If the use of sugar

and coffee was a luxury to our parents, with us it was the sign of

self-conscious superiority. Doisy gave credit, for he reckoned on the

sisters and aunts of the pupils, who made it a point of honor to pay

their debts. I resisted the blandishments of his place for a long time.

If my judges knew the strength of its seduction, the heroic efforts I

made after stoicism, the repressed desires of my long resistance, they

would pardon my final overthrow. But, child as I was, could I have the

grandeur of soul that scorns the scorn of others? Moreover, I may have

felt the promptings of several social vices whose power was increased by

my longings.

About the end of the second year my father and mother came to Paris. My

brother had written me the day of their arrival. He lived in Paris, but

had never been to see me. My sisters, he said, were of the party; we

were all to see Paris together. The first day we were to dine in the

Palais-Royal, so as to be near the Theatre-Francais. In spite of the

intoxication such a programme of unhoped-for delights excited, my joy

was dampened by the wind of a coming storm, which those who are used

to unhappiness apprehend instinctively. I was forced to own a debt of

a hundred francs to the Sieur Doisy, who threatened to ask my parents

himself for the money. I bethought me of making my brother the emissary

of Doisy, the mouth-piece of my repentance and the mediator of pardon.

My father inclined to forgiveness, but my mother was pitiless; her dark

blue eye froze me; she fulminated cruel prophecies: “What should I

be later if at seventeen years of age I committed such follies? Was I

really a son of hers? Did I mean to ruin my family? Did I think myself

the only child of the house? My brother Charles’s career, already begun,

required large outlay, amply deserved by his conduct which did honor to

the family, while mine would always disgrace it. Did I know nothing of

the value of money, and what I cost them? Of what use were coffee and

sugar to my education? Such conduct was the first step into all the

vices.”

After enduring the shock of this torrent which rasped my soul, I was

sent back to school in charge of my brother. I lost the dinner at the

Freres Provencaux, and was deprived of seeing Talma in Britannicus.

Such was my first interview with my mother after a separation of twelve

years.

When I had finished school my father left me under the guardianship of

Monsieur Lepitre. I was to study the higher mathematics, follow a course

of law for one year, and begin philosophy. Allowed to study in my own

room and released from the classes, I expected a truce with trouble.

But, in spite of my nineteen years, perhaps because of them, my father

persisted in the system which had sent me to school without food, to an

academy without pocket-money, and had driven me into debt to Doisy. Very

little money was allowed to me, and what can you do in Paris without

money? Moreover, my freedom was carefully chained up. Monsieur Lepitre

sent me to the law school accompanied by a man-of-all-work who handed me

over to the professor and fetched me home again. A young girl would have

been treated with less precaution than my mother’s fears insisted on for

me. Paris alarmed my parents, and justly. Students are secretly engaged

in the same occupation which fills the minds of young ladies in their

boarding-schools. Do what you will, nothing can prevent the latter from

talking of lovers, or the former of women. But in Paris, and especially

at this particular time, such talk among young lads was influenced by

the oriental and sultanic atmosphere and customs of the Palais-Royal.

The Palais-Royal was an Eldorado of love where the ingots melted away in

coin; there virgin doubts were over; there curiosity was appeased. The

Palais-Royal and I were two asymptotes bearing one towards the other,

yet unable to meet. Fate miscarried all my attempts. My father had

presented me to one of my aunts who lived in the Ile St. Louis. With her

I was to dine on Sundays and Thursdays, escorted to the house by either

Monsieur or Madame Lepitre, who went out themselves on those days and

were to call for me on their way home. Singular amusement for a

young lad! My aunt, the Marquise de Listomere, was a great lady, of

ceremonious habits, who would never have dreamed of offering me money.

Old as a cathedral, painted like a miniature, sumptuous in dress, she

lived in her great house as though Louis XV. were not dead, and saw none

but old women and men of a past day,--a fossil society which made me

think I was in a graveyard. No one spoke to me and I had not the courage

to speak first. Cold and alien looks made me ashamed of my youth,

which seemed to annoy them. I counted on this indifference to aid me in

certain plans; I was resolved to escape some day directly after dinner

and rush to the Palais-Royal. Once seated at whist my aunt would pay no

attention to me. Jean, the footman, cared little for Monsieur Lepitre

and would have aided me; but on the day I chose for my adventure that

luckless dinner was longer than usual,--either because the jaws employed

were worn out or the false teeth more imperfect. At last, between eight

and nine o’clock, I reached the staircase, my heart beating like that of

Bianca Capello on the day of her flight; but when the porter pulled the

cord I beheld in the street before me Monsieur Lepitre’s hackney-coach,

and I heard his pursy voice demanding me!

Three times did fate interpose between the hell of the Palais-Royal and

the heaven of my youth. On the day when I, ashamed at twenty years of

age of my own ignorance, determined to risk all dangers to put an end

to it, at the very moment when I was about to run away from Monsieur

Lepitre as he got into the coach,--a difficult process, for he was

as fat as Louis XVIII. and club-footed,--well, can you believe it, my

mother arrived in a post-chaise! Her glance arrested me; I stood

still, like a bird before a snake. What fate had brought her there? The

simplest thing in the world. Napoleon was then making his last efforts.

My father, who foresaw the return of the Bourbons, had come to Paris

with my mother to advise my brother, who was employed in the imperial

diplomatic service. My mother was to take me back with her, out of the

way of dangers which seemed, to those who followed the march of events

intelligently, to threaten the capital. In a few minutes, as it were, I

was taken out of Paris, at the very moment when my life there was about

to become fatal to me.

The tortures of imagination excited by repressed desires, the weariness

of a life depressed by constant privations had driven me to study, just

as men, weary of fate, confine themselves in a cloister. To me,

study had become a passion, which might even be fatal to my health by

imprisoning me at a period of life when young men ought to yield to the

bewitching activities of their springtide youth.

This slight sketch of my boyhood, in which you, Natalie, can readily

perceive innumerable songs of woe, was needful to explain to you its

influence on my future life. At twenty years of age, and affected by

many morbid elements, I was still small and thin and pale. My soul,

filled with the will to do, struggled with a body that seemed weakly,

but which, in the words of an old physician at Tours, was undergoing its

final fusion into a temperament of iron. Child in body and old in mind,

I had read and thought so much that I knew life metaphysically at its

highest reaches at the moment when I was about to enter the tortuous

difficulties of its defiles and the sandy roads of its plains. A strange

chance had held me long in that delightful period when the soul awakes

to its first tumults, to its desires for joy, and the savor of life

is fresh. I stood in the period between puberty and manhood,--the one

prolonged by my excessive study, the other tardily developing its living

shoots. No young man was ever more thoroughly prepared to feel and to

love. To understand my history, let your mind dwell on that pure time

of youth when the mouth is innocent of falsehood; when the glance of

the eye is honest, though veiled by lids which droop from timidity

contradicting desire; when the soul bends not to worldly Jesuitism,

and the heart throbs as violently from trepidation as from the generous

impulses of young emotion.

I need say nothing of the journey I made with my mother from Paris to

Tours. The coldness of her behavior repressed me. At each relay I tried

to speak; but a look, a word from her frightened away the speeches I had

been meditating. At Orleans, where we had passed the night, my mother

complained of my silence. I threw myself at her feet and clasped her

knees; with tears I opened my heart. I tried to touch hers by the

eloquence of my hungry love in accents that might have moved a

stepmother. She replied that I was playing comedy. I complained that she

had abandoned me. She called me an unnatural child. My whole nature was

so wrung that at Blois I went upon the bridge to drown myself in the

Loire. The height of the parapet prevented my suicide.

When I reached home, my two sisters, who did not know me, showed

more surprise than tenderness. Afterwards, however, they seemed, by

comparison, to be full of kindness towards me. I was given a room on the

third story. You will understand the extent of my hardships when I tell

you that my mother left me, a young man of twenty, without other linen

than my miserable school outfit, or any other outside clothes than those

I had long worn in Paris. If I ran from one end of the room to the other

to pick up her handkerchief, she took it with the cold thanks a lady

gives to her footman. Driven to watch her to find if there were any soft

spot where I could fasten the rootlets of affection, I came to see

her as she was,--a tall, spare woman, given to cards, egotistical and

insolent, like all the Listomeres, who count insolence as part of their

dowry. She saw nothing in life except duties to be fulfilled. All

cold women whom I have known made, as she did, a religion of duty; she

received our homage as a priest receives the incense of the mass. My

elder brother appeared to absorb the trifling sentiment of maternity

which was in her nature. She stabbed us constantly with her sharp

irony,--the weapon of those who have no heart,--and which she used

against us, who could make her no reply.

Notwithstanding these thorny hindrances, the instinctive sentiments

have so many roots, the religious fear inspired by a mother whom it

is dangerous to displease holds by so many threads, that the sublime

mistake--if I may so call it--of our love for our mother lasted until

the day, much later in our lives, when we judged her finally. This

terrible despotism drove from my mind all thoughts of the voluptuous

enjoyments I had dreamed of finding at Tours. In despair I took refuge

in my father’s library, where I set myself to read every book I did not

know. These long periods of hard study saved me from contact with my

mother; but they aggravated the dangers of my moral condition. Sometimes

my eldest sister--she who afterwards married our cousin, the Marquis de

Listomere--tried to comfort me, without, however, being able to calm the

irritation to which I was a victim. I desired to die.

Great events, of which I knew nothing, were then in preparation. The Duc

d’Angouleme, who had left Bordeaux to join Louis XVIII. in Paris, was

received in every town through which he passed with ovations inspired by

the enthusiasm felt throughout old France at the return of the Bourbons.

Touraine was aroused for its legitimate princes; the town itself was

in a flutter, every window decorated, the inhabitants in their Sunday

clothes, a festival in preparation, and that nameless excitement in the

air which intoxicates, and which gave me a strong desire to be present

at the ball given by the duke. When I summoned courage to make this

request of my mother, who was too ill to go herself, she became

extremely angry. “Had I come from Congo?” she inquired. “How could I

suppose that our family would not be represented at the ball? In

the absence of my father and brother, of course it was my duty to be

present. Had I no mother? Was she not always thinking of the welfare of

her children?”

In a moment the semi-disinherited son had become a personage! I was more

dumfounded by my importance than by the deluge of ironical reasoning

with which my mother received my request. I questioned my sisters, and

then discovered that my mother, who liked such theatrical plots,

was already attending to my clothes. The tailors in Tours were fully

occupied by the sudden demands of their regular customers, and my mother

was forced to employ her usual seamstress, who--according to provincial

custom--could do all kinds of sewing. A bottle-blue coat had been

secretly made for me, after a fashion, and silk stockings and pumps

provided; waistcoats were then worn short, so that I could wear one

of my father’s; and for the first time in my life I had a shirt with a

frill, the pleatings of which puffed out my chest and were gathered

in to the knot of my cravat. When dressed in this apparel I looked so

little like myself that my sister’s compliments nerved me to face

all Touraine at the ball. But it was a bold enterprise. Thanks to my

slimness I slipped into a tent set up in the gardens of the Papion

house, and found a place close to the armchair in which the duke was

seated. Instantly I was suffocated by the heat, and dazzled by the

lights, the scarlet draperies, the gilded ornaments, the dresses, and

the diamonds of the first public ball I had ever witnessed. I was pushed

hither and thither by a mass of men and women, who hustled each other in

a cloud of dust. The brazen clash of military music was drowned in the

hurrahs and acclamations of “Long live the Duc d’Angouleme! Long live

the King! Long live the Bourbons!” The ball was an outburst of pent-up

enthusiasm, where each man endeavored to outdo the rest in his fierce

haste to worship the rising sun,--an exhibition of partisan greed which

left me unmoved, or rather, it disgusted me and drove me back within

myself.

Swept onward like a straw in the whirlwind, I was seized with a childish

desire to be the Duc d’Angouleme himself, to be one of these princes

parading before an awed assemblage. This silly fancy of a Tourangean lad

roused an ambition to which my nature and the surrounding circumstances

lent dignity. Who would not envy such worship?--a magnificent repetition

of which I saw a few months later, when all Paris rushed to the feet

of the Emperor on his return from Elba. The sense of this dominion

exercised over the masses, whose feelings and whose very life are thus

merged into one soul, dedicated me then and thenceforth to glory, that

priestess who slaughters the Frenchmen of to-day as the Druidess once

sacrificed the Gauls.

Suddenly I met the woman who was destined to spur these ambitious

desires and to crown them by sending me into the heart of royalty.

Too timid to ask any one to dance,--fearing, moreover, to confuse the

figures,--I naturally became very awkward, and did not know what to

do with my arms and legs. Just as I was suffering severely from the

pressure of the crowd an officer stepped on my feet, swollen by the new

leather of my shoes as well as by the heat. This disgusted me with the

whole affair. It was impossible to get away; but I took refuge in a

corner of a room at the end of an empty bench, where I sat with

fixed eyes, motionless and sullen. Misled by my puny appearance, a

woman--taking me for a sleepy child--slid softly into the place beside

me, with the motion of a bird as she drops upon her nest. Instantly I

breathed the woman-atmosphere, which irradiated my soul as, in after

days, oriental poesy has shone there. I looked at my neighbor, and was

more dazzled by that vision than I had been by the scene of the fete.

If you have understood this history of my early life you will guess

the feelings which now welled up within me. My eyes rested suddenly

on white, rounded shoulders where I would fain have laid my

head,--shoulders faintly rosy, which seemed to blush as if uncovered for

the first time; modest shoulders, that possessed a soul, and reflected

light from their satin surface as from a silken texture. These shoulders

were parted by a line along which my eyes wandered. I raised myself to

see the bust and was spell-bound by the beauty of the bosom, chastely

covered with gauze, where blue-veined globes of perfect outline were

softly hidden in waves of lace. The slightest details of the head were

each and all enchantments which awakened infinite delights within

me; the brilliancy of the hair laid smoothly above a neck as soft

and velvety as a child’s, the white lines drawn by the comb where my

imagination ran as along a dewy path,--all these things put me, as it

were, beside myself. Glancing round to be sure that no one saw me, I

threw myself upon those shoulders as a child upon the breast of its

mother, kissing them as I laid my head there. The woman uttered a

piercing cry, which the noise of the music drowned; she turned, saw

me, and exclaimed, “Monsieur!” Ah! had she said, “My little lad, what

possesses you?” I might have killed her; but at the word “Monsieur!” hot

tears fell from my eyes. I was petrified by a glance of saintly anger,

by a noble face crowned with a diadem of golden hair in harmony with

the shoulders I adored. The crimson of offended modesty glowed on her

cheeks, though already it was appeased by the pardoning instinct of

a woman who comprehends a frenzy which she inspires, and divines the

infinite adoration of those repentant tears. She moved away with the

step and carriage of a queen.

I then felt the ridicule of my position; for the first time I realized

that I was dressed like the monkey of a barrel organ. I was ashamed.

There I stood, stupefied,--tasting the fruit that I had stolen,

conscious of the warmth upon my lips, repenting not, and following with

my eyes the woman who had come down to me from heaven. Sick with the

first fever of the heart I wandered through the rooms, unable to find

mine Unknown, until at last I went home to bed, another man.

A new soul, a soul with rainbow wings, had burst its chrysalis.

Descending from the azure wastes where I had long admired her, my star

had come to me a woman, with undiminished lustre and purity. I loved,

knowing naught of love. How strange a thing, this first irruption of the

keenest human emotion in the heart of a man! I had seen pretty women in

other places, but none had made the slightest impression upon me.

Can there be an appointed hour, a conjunction of stars, a union of

circumstances, a certain woman among all others to awaken an exclusive

passion at the period of life when love includes the whole sex?

The thought that my Elect lived in Touraine made the air I breathed

delicious; the blue of the sky seemed bluer than I had ever yet seen it.

I raved internally, but externally I was seriously ill, and my mother

had fears, not unmingled with remorse. Like animals who know when danger

is near, I hid myself away in the garden to think of the kiss that I

had stolen. A few days after this memorable ball my mother attributed my

neglect of study, my indifference to her tyrannical looks and sarcasms,

and my gloomy behavior to the condition of my health. The country, that

perpetual remedy for ills that doctors cannot cure, seemed to her the

best means of bringing me out of my apathy. She decided that I should

spend a few weeks at Frapesle, a chateau on the Indre midway between

Montbazon and Azay-le-Rideau, which belonged to a friend of hers, to

whom, no doubt, she gave private instructions.

By the day when I thus for the first time gained my liberty I had swum

so vigorously in Love’s ocean that I had well-nigh crossed it. I knew

nothing of mine unknown lady, neither her name, nor where to find

her; to whom, indeed, could I speak of her? My sensitive nature so

exaggerated the inexplicable fears which beset all youthful hearts at

the first approach of love that I began with the melancholy which often

ends a hopeless passion. I asked nothing better than to roam about the

country, to come and go and live in the fields. With the courage of

a child that fears no failure, in which there is something really

chivalrous, I determined to search every chateau in Touraine, travelling

on foot, and saying to myself as each old tower came in sight, “She is

there!”

Accordingly, of a Thursday morning I left Tours by the barrier of

Saint-Eloy, crossed the bridges of Saint-Sauveur, reached Poncher whose

every house I examined, and took the road to Chinon. For the first

time in my life I could sit down under a tree or walk fast or slow as

I pleased without being dictated to by any one. To a poor lad crushed

under all sorts of despotism (which more or less does weigh upon all

youth) the first employment of freedom, even though it be expended upon

nothing, lifts the soul with irrepressible buoyancy. Several reasons

combined to make that day one of enchantment. During my school years I

had never been taken to walk more than two or three miles from a city;

yet there remained in my mind among the earliest recollections of my

childhood that feeling for the beautiful which the scenery about Tours

inspires. Though quite untaught as to the poetry of such a landscape,

I was, unknown to myself, critical upon it, like those who imagine the

ideal of art without knowing anything of its practice.

To reach the chateau of Frapesle, foot-passengers, or those

on horseback, shorten the way by crossing the Charlemagne

moors,--uncultivated tracts of land lying on the summit of the plateau

which separates the valley of the Cher from that of the Indre, and over

which there is a cross-road leading to Champy. These moors are flat and

sandy, and for more than three miles are dreary enough until you reach,

through a clump of woods, the road to Sache, the name of the township

in which Frapesle stands. This road, which joins that of Chinon beyond

Ballan, skirts an undulating plain to the little hamlet of Artanne. Here

we come upon a valley, which begins at Montbazon, ends at the Loire,

and seems to rise and fall,--to bound, as it were,--beneath the chateaus

placed on its double hillsides,--a splendid emerald cup, in the depths

of which flow the serpentine lines of the river Indre. I gazed at this

scene with ineffable delight, for which the gloomy moor-land and the

fatigue of the sandy walk had prepared me.

“If that woman, the flower of her sex, does indeed inhabit this earth,

she is here, on this spot.”

Thus musing, I leaned against a walnut-tree, beneath which I have rested

from that day to this whenever I return to my dear valley. Beneath that

tree, the confidant of my thoughts, I ask myself what changes there are

in me since last I stood there.

My heart deceived me not--she lived there; the first castle that I saw

on the slope of a hill was the dwelling that held her. As I sat beneath

my nut-tree, the mid-day sun was sparkling on the slates of her roof and

the panes of her windows. Her cambric dress made the white line which I

saw among the vines of an arbor. She was, as you know already without

as yet knowing anything, the Lily of this valley, where she grew for

heaven, filling it with the fragrance of her virtues. Love, infinite

love, without other sustenance than the vision, dimly seen, of which my

soul was full, was there, expressed to me by that long ribbon of water

flowing in the sunshine between the grass-green banks, by the lines of

the poplars adorning with their mobile laces that vale of love, by the

oak-woods coming down between the vineyards to the shore, which the

river curved and rounded as it chose, and by those dim varying horizons

as they fled confusedly away.

If you would see nature beautiful and virgin as a bride, go there of a

spring morning. If you would still the bleeding wounds of your heart,

return in the last days of autumn. In the spring, Love beats his wings

beneath the broad blue sky; in the autumn, we think of those who are no

more. The lungs diseased breathe in a blessed purity; the eyes will rest

on golden copses which impart to the soul their peaceful stillness. At

this moment, when I stood there for the first time, the mills upon

the brooksides gave a voice to the quivering valley; the poplars were

laughing as they swayed; not a cloud was in the sky; the birds sang,

the crickets chirped,--all was melody. Do not ask me again why I love

Touraine. I love it, not as we love our cradle, not as we love the oasis

in a desert; I love it as an artist loves art; I love it less than I

love you; but without Touraine, perhaps I might not now be living.

Without knowing why, my eyes reverted ever to that white spot, to the

woman who shone in that garden as the bell of a convolvulus shines amid

the underbrush, and wilts if touched. Moved to the soul, I descended

the slope and soon saw a village, which the superabounding poetry that

filled my heart made me fancy without an equal. Imagine three mills

placed among islands of graceful outline crowned with groves of trees

and rising from a field of water,--for what other name can I give to

that aquatic vegetation, so verdant, so finely colored, which carpeted

the river, rose above its surface and undulated upon it, yielding to its

caprices and swaying to the turmoil of the water when the mill-wheels

lashed it. Here and there were mounds of gravel, against which the

wavelets broke in fringes that shimmered in the sunlight. Amaryllis,

water-lilies, reeds, and phloxes decorated the banks with their glorious

tapestry. A trembling bridge of rotten planks, the abutments swathed

with flowers, and the hand-rails green with perennials and velvet

mosses drooping to the river but not falling to it; mouldering boats,

fishing-nets; the monotonous sing-song of a shepherd; ducks paddling

among the islands or preening on the “jard,”--a name given to the coarse

sand which the Loire brings down; the millers, with their caps over

one ear, busily loading their mules,--all these details made the scene

before me one of primitive simplicity. Imagine, also, beyond the bridge

two or three farm-houses, a dove-cote, turtle-doves, thirty or more

dilapidated cottages, separated by gardens, by hedges of honeysuckle,

clematis, and jasmine; a dunghill beside each door, and cocks and hens

about the road. Such is the village of Pont-de-Ruan, a picturesque

little hamlet leading up to an old church full of character, a church

of the days of the Crusades, such a one as painters desire for their

pictures. Surround this scene with ancient walnut-trees and slim young

poplars with their pale-gold leaves; dot graceful buildings here and

there along the grassy slopes where sight is lost beneath the vaporous,

warm sky, and you will have some idea of one of the points of view of

this most lovely region.

I followed the road to Sache along the left bank of the river, noticing

carefully the details of the hills on the opposite shore. At length I

reached a park embellished with centennial trees, which I knew to be

that of Frapesle. I arrived just as the bell was ringing for breakfast.

After the meal, my host, who little suspected that I had walked from

Tours, carried me over his estate, from the borders of which I saw the

valley on all sides under its many aspects,--here through a vista, there

to its broad extent; often my eyes were drawn to the horizon along the

golden blade of the Loire, where the sails made fantastic figures among

the currents as they flew before the wind. As we mounted a crest I

came in sight of the chateau d’Azay, like a diamond of many facets in

a setting of the Indre, standing on wooden piles concealed by flowers.

Farther on, in a hollow, I saw the romantic masses of the chateau

of Sache, a sad retreat though full of harmony; too sad for the

superficial, but dear to a poet with a soul in pain. I, too, came to

love its silence, its great gnarled trees, and the nameless mysterious

influence of its solitary valley. But now, each time that we reached

an opening towards the neighboring slope which gave to view the pretty

castle I had first noticed in the morning, I stopped to look at it with

pleasure.

“Hey!” said my host, reading in my eyes the sparkling desires which

youth so ingenuously betrays, “so you scent from afar a pretty woman as

a dog scents game!”

I did not like the speech, but I asked the name of the castle and of its

owner.

“It is Clochegourde,” he replied; “a pretty house belonging to the Comte

de Mortsauf, the head of an historic family in Touraine, whose fortune

dates from the days of Louis XI., and whose name tells the story to

which they owe their arms and their distinction. Monsieur de Mortsauf

is descended from a man who survived the gallows. The family bear: Or,

a cross potent and counter-potent sable, charged with a fleur-de-lis or;

and ‘Dieu saulve le Roi notre Sire,’ for motto. The count settled here

after the return of the emigration. The estate belongs to his wife, a

demoiselle de Lenoncourt, of the house of Lenoncourt-Givry which is now

dying out. Madame de Mortsauf is an only daughter. The limited fortune

of the family contrasts strangely with the distinction of their names;

either from pride, or, possibly, from necessity, they never leave

Clochegourde and see no company. Until now their attachment to the

Bourbons explained this retirement, but the return of the king has not

changed their way of living. When I came to reside here last year I paid

them a visit of courtesy; they returned it and invited us to dinner; the

winter separated us for some months, and political events kept me away

from Frapesle until recently. Madame de Mortsauf is a woman who would

hold the highest position wherever she might be.”

“Does she often come to Tours?”

“She never goes there. However,” he added, correcting himself, “she did

go there lately to the ball given to the Duc d’Angouleme, who was very

gracious to her husband.”

“It was she!” I exclaimed.

“She! who?”

“A woman with beautiful shoulders.”

“You will meet a great many women with beautiful shoulders in Touraine,”

he said, laughing. “But if you are not tired we can cross the river

and call at Clochegourde and you shall renew acquaintance with those

particular shoulders.”

I agreed, not without a blush of shame and pleasure. About four o’clock

we reached the little chateau on which my eyes had fastened from the

first. The building, which is finely effective in the landscape, is in

reality very modest. It has five windows on the front; those at each

end of the facade, looking south, project about twelve feet,--an

architectural device which gives the idea of two towers and adds grace

to the structure. The middle window serves as a door from which you

descend through a double portico into a terraced garden which joins the

narrow strip of grass-land that skirts the Indre along its whole course.

Though this meadow is separated from the lower terrace, which is shaded

by a double line of acacias and Japanese ailanthus, by the country road,

it nevertheless appears from the house to be a part of the garden, for

the road is sunken and hemmed in on one side by the terrace, on the

other side by a Norman hedge. The terraces being very well managed

put enough distance between the house and the river to avoid the

inconvenience of too great proximity to water, without losing the charms

of it. Below the house are the stables, coach-house, green-houses,

and kitchen, the various openings to which form an arcade. The roof is

charmingly rounded at the angles, and bears mansarde windows with carved

mullions and leaden finials on their gables. This roof, no doubt much

neglected during the Revolution, is stained by a sort of mildew produced

by lichens and the reddish moss which grows on houses exposed to the

sun. The glass door of the portico is surmounted by a little tower

which holds the bell, and on which is carved the escutcheon of the

Blamont-Chauvry family, to which Madame de Mortsauf belonged, as

follows: Gules, a pale vair, flanked quarterly by two hands clasped or,

and two lances in chevron sable. The motto, “Voyez tous, nul ne touche!”

struck me greatly. The supporters, a griffin and dragon gules, enchained

or, made a pretty effect in the carving. The Revolution has damaged the

ducal crown and the crest, which was a palm-tree vert with fruit or.

Senart, the secretary of the committee of public safety was bailiff of

Sache before 1781, which explains this destruction.

These arrangements give an elegant air to the little castle, dainty as

a flower, which seems to scarcely rest upon the earth. Seen from the

valley the ground-floor appears to be the first story; but on the

other side it is on a level with a broad gravelled path leading to a

grass-plot, on which are several flower-beds. To right and left are

vineyards, orchards, and a few acres of tilled land planted with

chestnut-trees which surround the house, the ground falling rapidly to

the Indre, where other groups of trees of variegated shades of green,

chosen by Nature herself, are spread along the shore. I admired these

groups, so charmingly disposed, as we mounted the hilly road which

borders Clochegourde; I breathed an atmosphere of happiness. Has

the moral nature, like the physical nature, its own electrical

communications and its rapid changes of temperature? My heart was

beating at the approach of events then unrevealed which were to change

it forever, just as animals grow livelier when foreseeing fine weather.

This day, so marked in my life, lacked no circumstance that was needed

to solemnize it. Nature was adorned like a woman to meet her lover.

My soul heard her voice for the first time; my eyes worshipped her,

as fruitful, as varied as my imagination had pictured her in those

school-dreams the influence of which I have tried in a few unskilful

words to explain to you, for they were to me an Apocalypse in which my

life was figuratively foretold; each event, fortunate or unfortunate,

being mated to some one of these strange visions by ties known only to

the soul.

We crossed a court-yard surrounded by buildings necessary for the farm

work,--a barn, a wine-press, cow-sheds, and stables. Warned by the

barking of the watch-dog, a servant came to meet us, saying that

Monsieur le comte had gone to Azay in the morning but would soon return,

and that Madame la comtesse was at home. My companion looked at me. I

fairly trembled lest he should decline to see Madame de Mortsauf in

her husband’s absence; but he told the man to announce us. With the

eagerness of a child I rushed into the long antechamber which crosses

the whole house.

“Come in, gentlemen,” said a golden voice.

Though Madame de Mortsauf had spoken only one word at the ball, I

recognized her voice, which entered my soul and filled it as a ray of

sunshine fills and gilds a prisoner’s dungeon. Thinking, suddenly, that

she might remember my face, my first impulse was to fly; but it was too

late,--she appeared in the doorway, and our eyes met. I know not which

of us blushed deepest. Too much confused for immediate speech she

returned to her seat at an embroidery frame while the servant placed two

chairs, then she drew out her needle and counted some stitches, as if

to explain her silence; after which she raised her head, gently yet

proudly, in the direction of Monsieur de Chessel as she asked to what

fortunate circumstance she owed his visit. Though curious to know the

secret of my unexpected appearance, she looked at neither of us,--her

eyes were fixed on the river; and yet you could have told by the way she

listened that she was able to recognize, as the blind do, the agitations

of a neighboring soul by the imperceptible inflexions of the voice.

Monsieur de Chessel gave my name and biography. I had lately arrived

at Tours, where my parents had recalled me when the armies threatened

Paris. A son of Touraine to whom Touraine was as yet unknown, she would

find me a young man weakened by excessive study and sent to Frapesle to

amuse himself; he had already shown me his estate, which I saw for

the first time. I had just told him that I had walked from Tours to

Frapesle, and fearing for my health--which was really delicate--he had

stopped at Clochegourde to ask her to allow me to rest there. Monsieur

de Chessel told the truth; but the accident seemed so forced that Madame

de Mortsauf distrusted us. She gave me a cold, severe glance, under

which my own eyelids fell, as much from a sense of humiliation as

to hide the tears that rose beneath them. She saw the moisture on my

forehead, and perhaps she guessed the tears; for she offered me the

restoratives I needed, with a few kind and consoling words, which gave

me back the power of speech. I blushed like a young girl, and in a voice

as tremulous as that of an old man I thanked her and declined.

“All I ask,” I said, raising my eyes to hers, which mine now met for the

second time in a glance as rapid as lightning,--“is to rest here. I am

so crippled with fatigue I really cannot walk farther.”

“You must not doubt the hospitality of our beautiful Touraine,” she

said; then, turning to my companion, she added: “You will give us the

pleasure of your dining at Clochegourde?”

I threw such a look of entreaty at Monsieur de Chessel that he began

the preliminaries of accepting the invitation, though it was given in

a manner that seemed to expect a refusal. As a man of the world,

he recognized these shades of meaning; but I, a young man without

experience, believed so implicitly in the sincerity between word and

thought of this beautiful woman that I was wholly astonished when my

host said to me, after we reached home that evening, “I stayed because I

saw you were dying to do so; but if you do not succeed in making it

all right, I may find myself on bad terms with my neighbors.” That

expression, “if you do not make it all right,” made me ponder the matter

deeply. In other words, if I pleased Madame de Mortsauf, she would

not be displeased with the man who introduced me to her. He evidently

thought I had the power to please her; this in itself gave me that

power, and corroborated my inward hope at a moment when it needed some

outward succor.

“I am afraid it will be difficult,” he began; “Madame de Chessel expects

us.”

“She has you every day,” replied the countess; “besides, we can send her

word. Is she alone?”

“No, the Abbe de Quelus is there.”

“Well, then,” she said, rising to ring the bell, “you really must dine

with us.”

This time Monsieur de Chessel thought her in earnest, and gave me a

congratulatory look. As soon as I was sure of passing a whole evening

under that roof I seemed to have eternity before me. For many miserable

beings to-morrow is a word without meaning, and I was of the number who

had no faith in it; when I was certain of a few hours of happiness I

made them contain a whole lifetime of delight.

Madame de Mortsauf talked about local affairs, the harvest, the vintage,

and other matters to which I was a total stranger. This usually argues

either a want of breeding or great contempt for the stranger present

who is thus shut out from the conversation, but in this case it was

embarrassment. Though at first I thought she treated me as a child and

I envied the man of thirty to whom she talked of serious matters which

I could not comprehend, I came, a few months later, to understand how

significant a woman’s silence often is, and how many thoughts a voluble

conversation masks. At first I attempted to be at my ease and take part

in it, then I perceived the advantages of my situation and gave myself

up to the charm of listening to Madame de Mortsauf’s voice. The breath

of her soul rose and fell among the syllables as sound is divided by the

notes of a flute; it died away to the ear as it quickened the pulsation

of the blood. Her way of uttering the terminations in “i” was like a

bird’s song; the “ch” as she said it was a kiss, but the “t’s” were

an echo of her heart’s despotism. She thus extended, without herself

knowing that she did so, the meaning of her words, leading the soul of

the listener into regions above this earth. Many a time I have continued

a discussion I could easily have ended, many a time I have allowed

myself to be unjustly scolded that I might listen to those harmonies of

the human voice, that I might breathe the air of her soul as it left

her lips, and strain to my soul that spoken light as I would fain have

strained the speaker to my breast. A swallow’s song of joy it was when

she was gay!--but when she spoke of her griefs, a swan’s voice calling

to its mates!

Madame de Mortsauf’s inattention to my presence enabled me to examine

her. My eyes rejoiced as they glided over the sweet speaker; they kissed

her feet, they clasped her waist, they played with the ringlets of her

hair. And yet I was a prey to terror, as all who, once in their lives,

have experienced the illimitable joys of a true passion will understand.

I feared she would detect me if I let my eyes rest upon the shoulder I

had kissed, and the fear sharpened the temptation. I yielded, I looked,

my eyes tore away the covering; I saw the mole which lay where the

pretty line between the shoulders started, and which, ever since the

ball, had sparkled in that twilight which seems the region of the sleep

of youths whose imagination is ardent and whose life is chaste.

I can sketch for you the leading features which all eyes saw in Madame

de Mortsauf; but no drawing, however correct, no color, however warm,

can represent her to you. Her face was of those that require the

unattainable artist, whose hand can paint the reflection of inward

fires and render that luminous vapor which defies science and is not

revealable by language--but which a lover sees. Her soft, fair hair

often caused her much suffering, no doubt through sudden rushes of blood

to the head. Her brow, round and prominent like that of Joconda, teemed

with unuttered thoughts, restrained feelings--flowers drowning in bitter

waters. The eyes, of a green tinge flecked with brown, were always wan;

but if her children were in question, or if some keen condition of joy

or suffering (rare in the lives of all resigned women) seized her, those

eyes sent forth a subtile gleam as if from fires that were consuming

her,--the gleam that wrung the tears from mine when she covered me with

her contempt, and which sufficed to lower the boldest eyelid. A Grecian

nose, designed it might be by Phidias, and united by its double arch to

lips that were gracefully curved, spiritualized the face, which was

oval with a skin of the texture of a white camellia colored with soft

rose-tints upon the cheeks. Her plumpness did not detract from the

grace of her figure nor from the rounded outlines which made her shape

beautiful though well developed. You will understand the character of

this perfection when I say that where the dazzling treasures which

had so fascinated me joined the arm there was no crease or wrinkle. No

hollow disfigured the base of her head, like those which make the necks

of some women resemble trunks of trees; her muscles were not harshly

defined, and everywhere the lines were rounded into curves as fugitive

to the eye as to the pencil. A soft down faintly showed upon her cheeks

and on the outline of her throat, catching the light which made it

silken. Her little ears, perfect in shape, were, as she said herself,

the ears of a mother and a slave. In after days, when our hearts were

one, she would say to me, “Here comes Monsieur de Mortsauf”; and she was

right, though I, whose hearing is remarkably acute, could hear nothing.

Her arms were beautiful. The curved fingers of the hand were long, and

the flesh projected at the side beyond the finger-nails, like those

of antique statues. I should displease you, I know, if you were not

yourself an exception to my rule, when I say that flat waists should

have the preference over round ones. The round waist is a sign of

strength; but women thus formed are imperious, self-willed, and more

voluptuous than tender. On the other hand, women with flat waists are

devoted in soul, delicately perceptive, inclined to sadness, more truly

woman than the other class. The flat waist is supple and yielding; the

round waist is inflexible and jealous.

You now know how she was made. She had the foot of a well-bred

woman,--the foot that walks little, is quickly tired, and delights the

eye when it peeps beneath the dress. Though she was the mother of two

children, I have never met any woman so truly a young girl as she. Her

whole air was one of simplicity, joined to a certain bashful dreaminess

which attracted others, just as a painter arrests our steps before a

figure into which his genius has conveyed a world of sentiment. If you

recall the pure, wild fragrance of the heath we gathered on our return

from the Villa Diodati, the flower whose tints of black and rose you

praised so warmly, you can fancy how this woman could be elegant though

remote from the social world, natural in expression, fastidious in

all things which became part of herself,--in short, like the heath of

mingled colors. Her body had the freshness we admire in the unfolding

leaf; her spirit the clear conciseness of the aboriginal mind; she was a

child by feeling, grave through suffering, the mistress of a household,

yet a maiden too. Therefore she charmed artlessly and unconsciously,

by her way of sitting down or rising, of throwing in a word or keeping

silence. Though habitually collected, watchful as the sentinel on

whom the safety of others depends and who looks for danger, there were

moments when smiles would wreathe her lips and betray the happy nature

buried beneath the saddened bearing that was the outcome of her life.

Her gift of attraction was mysterious. Instead of inspiring the gallant

attentions which other women seek, she made men dream, letting them see

her virginal nature of pure flame, her celestial visions, as we see the

azure heavens through rifts in the clouds. This involuntary revelation

of her being made others thoughtful. The rarity of her gestures, above

all, the rarity of her glances--for, excepting her children, she seldom

looked at any one--gave a strange solemnity to all she said and did when

her words or actions seemed to her to compromise her dignity.

On this particular morning Madame de Mortsauf wore a rose-colored gown

patterned in tiny stripes, a collar with a wide hem, a black belt, and

little boots of the same hue. Her hair was simply twisted round her

head, and held in place by a tortoise-shell comb. Such, my dear Natalie,

is the imperfect sketch I promised you. But the constant emanation of

her soul upon her family, that nurturing essence shed in floods around

her as the sun emits its light, her inward nature, her cheerfulness on

days serene, her resignation on stormy ones,--all those variations of

expression by which character is displayed depend, like the effects

in the sky, on unexpected and fugitive circumstances, which have no

connection with each other except the background against which they

rest, though all are necessarily mingled with the events of this

history,--truly a household epic, as great to the eyes of a wise man as

a tragedy to the eyes of the crowd, an epic in which you will feel an

interest, not only for the part I took in it, but for the likeness that

it bears to the destinies of so vast a number of women.

Everything at Clochegourde bore signs of a truly English cleanliness.

The room in which the countess received us was panelled throughout and

painted in two shades of gray. The mantelpiece was ornamented with a

clock inserted in a block of mahogany and surmounted with a tazza, and

two large vases of white porcelain with gold lines, which held bunches

of Cape heather. A lamp was on a pier-table, and a backgammon board on

legs before the fireplace. Two wide bands of cotton held back the white

cambric curtains, which had no fringe. The furniture was covered with

gray cotton bound with a green braid, and the tapestry on the countess’s

frame told why the upholstery was thus covered. Such simplicity rose to

grandeur. No apartment, among all that I have seen since, has given me

such fertile, such teeming impressions as those that filled my mind

in that salon of Clochegourde, calm and composed as the life of its

mistress, where the conventual regularity of her occupations made itself

felt. The greater part of my ideas in science or politics, even the

boldest of them, were born in that room, as perfumes emanate from

flowers; there grew the mysterious plant that cast upon my soul its

fructifying pollen; there glowed the solar warmth which developed my

good and shrivelled my evil qualities. Through the windows the eye took

in the valley from the heights of Pont-de-Ruan to the chateau d’Azay,

following the windings of the further shore, picturesquely varied by the

towers of Frapesle, the church, the village, and the old manor-house of

Sache, whose venerable pile looked down upon the meadows.

In harmony with this reposeful life, and without other excitements to

emotion than those arising in the family, this scene conveyed to the

soul its own serenity. If I had met her there for the first time,

between the count and her two children, instead of seeing her

resplendent in a ball dress, I should not have ravished that delirious

kiss, which now filled me with remorse and with the fear of having lost

the future of my love. No; in the gloom of my unhappy life I should have

bent my knee and kissed the hem of her garment, wetting it with tears,

and then I might have flung myself into the Indre. But having breathed

the jasmine perfume of her skin and drunk the milk of that cup of love,

my soul had acquired the knowledge and the hope of human joys; I would

live and await the coming of happiness as the savage awaits his hour of

vengeance; I longed to climb those trees, to creep among the vines, to

float in the river; I wanted the companionship of night and its silence,

I needed lassitude of body, I craved the heat of the sun to make the

eating of the delicious apple into which I had bitten perfect. Had she

asked of me the singing flower, the riches buried by the comrades of

Morgan the destroyer, I would have sought them, to obtain those other

riches and that mute flower for which I longed.

When my dream, the dream into which this first contemplation of my

idol plunged me, came to an end and I heard her speaking of Monsieur de

Mortsauf, the thought came that a woman must belong to her husband, and

a raging curiosity possessed me to see the owner of this treasure. Two

emotions filled my mind, hatred and fear,--hatred which allowed of no

obstacles and measured all without shrinking, and a vague, but real fear

of the struggle, of its issue, and above all of _her_.

“Here is Monsieur de Mortsauf,” she said.

I sprang to my feet like a startled horse. Though the movement was seen

by Monsieur de Chessel and the countess, neither made any observation,

for a diversion was effected at this moment by the entrance of a little

girl, whom I took to be about six years old, who came in exclaiming,

“Here’s papa!”

“Madeleine?” said her mother, gently.

The child at once held out her hand to Monsieur de Chessel, and looked

attentively at me after making a little bow with an air of astonishment.

“Are you more satisfied about her health?” asked Monsieur de Chessel.

“She is better,” replied the countess, caressing the little head which

was already nestling in her lap.

The next question of Monsieur de Chessel let me know that Madeleine

was nine years old; I showed great surprise, and immediately the clouds

gathered on the mother’s brow. My companion threw me a significant

look,--one of those which form the education of men of the world. I had

stumbled no doubt upon some maternal wound the covering of which should

have been respected. The sickly child, whose eyes were pallid and

whose skin was white as a porcelain vase with a light within it, would

probably not have lived in the atmosphere of a city. Country air and her

mother’s brooding care had kept the life in that frail body, delicate

as a hot-house plant growing in a harsh and foreign climate. Though in

nothing did she remind me of her mother, Madeleine seemed to have her

soul, and that soul held her up. Her hair was scanty and black, her eyes

and cheeks hollow, her arms thin, her chest narrow, showing a battle

between life and death, a duel without truce in which the mother had

so far been victorious. The child willed to live,--perhaps to spare her

mother, for at times, when not observed, she fell into the attitude of

a weeping-willow. You might have thought her a little gypsy dying of

hunger, begging her way, exhausted but always brave and dressed up to

play her part.

“Where have you left Jacques?” asked the countess, kissing the white

line which parted the child’s hair into two bands that looked like a

crow’s wings.

“He is coming with papa.”

Just then the count entered, holding his son by the hand. Jacques, the

image of his sister, showed the same signs of weakness. Seeing these

sickly children beside a mother so magnificently healthy it was

impossible not to guess at the causes of the grief which clouded her

brow and kept her silent on a subject she could take to God only. As

he bowed, Monsieur de Mortsauf gave me a glance that was less observing

than awkwardly uneasy,--the glance of a man whose distrust grows out

of his inability to analyze. After explaining the circumstances of our

visit, and naming me to him, the countess gave him her place and left

the room. The children, whose eyes were on those of their mother as if

they drew the light of theirs from hers, tried to follow her; but she

said, with a finger on her lips, “Stay dears!” and they obeyed, but

their eyes filled. Ah! to hear that one word “dears” what tasks they

would have undertaken!

Like the children, I felt less warm when she had left us. My name seemed

to change the count’s feeling toward me. Cold and supercilious in his

first glance, he became at once, if not affectionate, at least politely

attentive, showing me every consideration and seeming pleased to receive

me as a guest. My father had formerly done devoted service to the

Bourbons, and had played an important and perilous, though secret part.

When their cause was lost by the elevation of Napoleon, he took

refuge in the quietude of the country and domestic life, accepting the

unmerited accusations that followed him as the inevitable reward of

those who risk all to win all, and who succumb after serving as pivot to

the political machine. Knowing nothing of the fortunes, nor of the past,

nor of the future of my family, I was unaware of this devoted service

which the Comte de Mortsauf well remembered. Moreover, the antiquity of

our name, the most precious quality of a man in his eyes, added to the

warmth of his greeting. I knew nothing of these reasons until later; for

the time being the sudden transition to cordiality put me at my ease.

When the two children saw that we were all three fairly engaged in

conversation, Madeleine slipped her head from her father’s hand, glanced

at the open door, and glided away like an eel, Jacques following

her. They rejoined their mother, and I heard their voices and their

movements, sounding in the distance like the murmur of bees about a

hive.

I watched the count, trying to guess his character, but I became so

interested in certain leading traits that I got no further than

a superficial examination of his personality. Though he was only

forty-five years old, he seemed nearer sixty, so much had the great

shipwreck at the close of the eighteenth century aged him. The crescent

of hair which monastically fringed the back of his head, otherwise

completely bald, ended at the ears in little tufts of gray mingled with

black. His face bore a vague resemblance to that of a white wolf with

blood about its muzzle, for his nose was inflamed and gave signs of a

life poisoned at its springs and vitiated by diseases of long standing.

His flat forehead, too broad for the face beneath it, which ended in a

point, and transversely wrinkled in crooked lines, gave signs of a life

in the open air, but not of any mental activity; it also showed the

burden of constant misfortunes, but not of any efforts made to surmount

them. His cheekbones, which were brown and prominent amid the general

pallor of his skin, showed a physical structure which was likely to

ensure him a long life. His hard, light-yellow eye fell upon mine like

a ray of wintry sun, bright without warmth, anxious without thought,

distrustful without conscious cause. His mouth was violent and

domineering, his chin flat and long. Thin and very tall, he had the

bearing of a gentleman who relies upon the conventional value of his

caste, who knows himself above others by right, and beneath them in

fact. The carelessness of country life had made him neglect his external

appearance. His dress was that of a country-man whom peasants and

neighbors no longer considered except for his territorial worth. His

brown and wiry hands showed that he wore no gloves unless he mounted a

horse, or went to church, and his shoes were thick and common.

Though ten years of emigration and ten years more of farm-life had

changed his physical condition, he still retained certain vestiges of

nobility. The bitterest liberal (a term not then in circulation)

would readily have admitted his chivalric loyalty and the imperishable

convictions of one who puts his faith to the “Quotidienne”; he would

have felt respect for the man religiously devoted to a cause, honest

in his political antipathies, incapable of serving his party but very

capable of injuring it, and without the slightest real knowledge of the

affairs of France. The count was in fact one of those upright men who

are available for nothing, but stand obstinately in the way of all;

ready to die under arms at the post assigned to them, but preferring to

give their life rather than to give their money.

During dinner I detected, in the hanging of his flaccid cheeks and the

covert glances he cast now and then upon his children, the traces

of some wearing thought which showed for a moment upon the surface.

Watching him, who could fail to understand him? Who would not have seen

that he had fatally transmitted to his children those weakly bodies in

which the principle of life was lacking. But if he blamed himself he

denied to others the right to judge him. Harsh as one who knows himself

in fault, yet without greatness of soul or charm to compensate for the

weight of misery he had thrown into the balance, his private life was

no doubt the scene of irascibilities that were plainly revealed in his

angular features and by the incessant restlessness of his eye. When his

wife returned, followed by the children who seemed fastened to her side,

I felt the presence of unhappiness, just as in walking over the roof

of a vault the feet become in some way conscious of the depths below.

Seeing these four human beings together, holding them all as it were in

one glance, letting my eye pass from one to the other, studying their

countenances and their respective attitudes, thoughts steeped in sadness

fell upon my heart as a fine gray rain dims a charming landscape after

the sun has risen clear.

When the immediate subject of conversation was exhausted the count told

his wife who I was, and related certain circumstances connected with my

family that were wholly unknown to me. He asked me my age. When I told

it, the countess echoed my own exclamation of surprise at her daughter’s

age. Perhaps she had thought me fifteen. Later on, I discovered that

this was still another tie which bound her strongly to me. Even then I

read her soul. Her motherhood quivered with a tardy ray of hope.

Seeing me at over twenty years of age so slight and delicate and yet so

nervously strong, a voice cried to her, “They too will live!” She looked

at me searchingly, and in that moment I felt the barriers of ice melting

between us. She seemed to have many questions to ask, but uttered none.

“If study has made you ill,” she said, “the air of our valley will soon

restore you.”

“Modern education is fatal to children,” remarked the count. “We stuff

them with mathematics and ruin their health with sciences, and make them

old before their time. You must stay and rest here,” he added, turning

to me. “You are crushed by the avalanche of ideas that have rolled down

upon you. What sort of future will this universal education bring upon

us unless we prevent its evils by replacing public education in the

hands of the religious bodies?”

These words were in harmony with a speech he afterwards made at the

elections when he refused his support to a man whose gifts would have

done good service to the royalist cause. “I shall always distrust men of

talent,” he said.

Presently the count proposed that we should make the tour of the

gardens.

“Monsieur--” said his wife.

“Well, what, my dear?” he said, turning to her with an arrogant

harshness which showed plainly enough how absolute he chose to be in his

own home.

“Monsieur de Vandenesse walked from Tours this morning and Monsieur de

Chessel, not aware of it, has already taken him on foot over Frapesle.”

“Very imprudent of you,” the count said, turning to me; “but at your

age--” and he shook his head in sign of regret.

The conversation was resumed. I soon saw how intractable his royalism

was, and how much care was needed to swim safely in his waters. The

man-servant, who had now put on his livery, announced dinner. Monsieur

de Chessel gave his arm to Madame de Mortsauf, and the count gaily

seized mine to lead me into the dining-room, which was on the

ground-floor facing the salon.