Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, and was so lucky as to find a vacant seat in
the diligence then starting for Caen.
It was not without deep emotion that the young lawyer saw once more the
spires of the cathedral at Bayeux. As yet no hope of his life had been
cheated, and his heart swelled with the generous feelings that expand in
the youthful soul.
After the too lengthy feast of welcome prepared by his father, who
awaited him with some friends, the impatient youth was conducted to a
house, long familiar to him, standing in the Rue Teinture. His heart
beat high when his father--still known in the town of Bayeux as the
Comte de Granville--knocked loudly at a carriage gate off which the
green paint was dropping in scales. It was about four in the afternoon.
A young maid-servant, in a cotton cap, dropped a short curtsey to the
two gentlemen, and said that the ladies would soon be home from vespers.
The Count and his son were shown into a low room used as a drawing-room,
but more like a convent parlor. Polished panels of dark walnut made
it gloomy enough, and around it some old-fashioned chairs covered with
worsted work and stiff armchairs were symmetrically arranged. The stone
chimney-shelf had no ornament but a discolored mirror, and on each side
of it were the twisted branches of a pair of candle-brackets, such as
were made at the time of the Peace of Utrecht. Against a panel opposite,
young Granville saw an enormous crucifix of ebony and ivory surrounded
by a wreath of box that had been blessed. Though there were three
windows to the room, looking out on a country-town garden, laid out
in formal square beds edged with box, the room was so dark that it was
difficult to discern, on the wall opposite the windows, three pictures
of sacred subjects painted by a skilled hand, and purchased, no doubt,
during the Revolution by old Bontems, who, as governor of the district,
had never neglected his opportunities. From the carefully polished floor
to the green checked holland curtains everything shone with conventual
cleanliness.
The young man’s heart felt an involuntary chill in this silent retreat
where Angelique dwelt. The habit of frequenting the glittering Paris
drawing-rooms, and the constant whirl of society, had effaced from his
memory the dull and peaceful surroundings of a country life, and the
contrast was so startling as to give him a sort of internal shiver. To
have just left a party at the house of Cambaceres, where life was so
large, where minds could expand, where the splendor of the Imperial
Court was so vividly reflected, and to be dropped suddenly into a
sphere of squalidly narrow ideas--was it not like a leap from Italy into
Greenland?--“Living here is not life!” said he to himself, as he looked
round the Methodistical room. The old Count, seeing his son’s dismay,
went up to him, and taking his hand, led him to a window, where there
was still a gleam of daylight, and while the maid was lighting the
yellow tapers in the candle branches he tried to clear away the clouds
that the dreary place had brought to his brow.
“Listen, my boy,” said he. “Old Bontems’ widow is a frenzied bigot.
‘When the devil is old--’ you know! I see that the place goes
against the grain. Well, this is the whole truth; the old woman is
priest-ridden; they have persuaded her that it was high time to make
sure of heaven, and the better to secure Saint Peter and his keys she
pays before-hand. She goes to Mass every day, attends every service,
takes the communion every Sunday God has made, and amuses herself
by restoring chapels. She had given so many ornaments, and albs, and
chasubles, she has crowned the canopy with so many feathers, that on
the occasion of the last Corpus Christi procession as great a crowd came
together as to see a man hanged, just to stare at the priests in their
splendid dresses and all the vessels regilt. This house too is a sort of
Holy Land. It was I who hindered her from giving those three pictures to
the Church--a Domenichino, a Correggio, and an Andrea del Sarto--worth a
good deal of money.”
“But Angelique?” asked the young man.
“If you do not marry her, Angelique is done for,” said the Count. “Our
holy apostles counsel her to live a virgin martyr. I have had the utmost
difficulty in stirring up her little heart, since she has been the only
child, by talking to her of you; but, as you will easily understand,
as soon as she is married you will carry her off to Paris. There,
festivities, married life, the theatres, and the rush of Parisian
society, will soon make her forget confessionals, and fasting, and
hair shirts, and Masses, which are the exclusive nourishment of such
creatures.”
“But the fifty thousand francs a year derived from Church property? Will
not all that return--”
“That is the point!” exclaimed the Count, with a cunning glance. “In
consideration of this marriage--for Madame Bontems’ vanity is not
a little flattered by the notion of grafting the Bontems on to the
genealogical tree of the Granvilles--the aforenamed mother agrees
to settle her fortune absolutely on the girl, reserving only a
life-interest. The priesthood, therefore, are set against the marriage;
but I have had the banns published, everything is ready, and in a week
you will be out of the clutches of the mother and her Abbes. You will
have the prettiest girl in Bayeux, a good little soul who will give you
no trouble, because she has sound principles. She has been mortified, as
they say in their jargon, by fasting and prayer--and,” he added in a low
voice, “by her mother.”
A modest tap at the door silenced the Count, who expected to see the two
ladies appear. A little page came in, evidently in a great hurry;
but, abashed by the presence of the two gentlemen, he beckoned to a
housekeeper, who followed him. Dressed in a blue cloth jacket with
short tails, and blue-and-white striped trousers, his hair cut short all
round, the boy’s expression was that of a chorister, so strongly was
it stamped with the compulsory propriety that marks every member of a
bigoted household.
“Mademoiselle Gatienne,” said he, “do you know where the books are for
the offices of the Virgin? The ladies of the Congregation of the Sacred
Heart are going in procession this evening round the church.”
Gatienne went in search of the books.
“Will they go on much longer, my little man?” asked the Count.
“Oh, half an hour at most.”
“Let us go to look on,” said the father to his son. “There will be some
pretty women there, and a visit to the Cathedral can do us no harm.”
The young lawyer followed him with a doubtful expression.
“What is the matter?” asked the Count.
“The matter, father, is that I am sure I am right.”
“But you have said nothing.”
“No; but I have been thinking that you have still ten thousand francs a
year left of your original fortune. You will leave them to me--as long
a time hence as possible, I hope. But if you are ready to give me a
hundred thousand francs to make a foolish match, you will surely allow
me to ask you for only fifty thousand to save me from such a misfortune,
and enjoy as a bachelor a fortune equal to what your Mademoiselle
Bontems would bring me.”
“Are you crazy?”
“No, father. These are the facts. The Chief Justice promised me
yesterday that I should have a seat on the Bench. Fifty thousand francs
added to what I have, and to the pay of my appointment, will give me an
income of twelve thousand francs a year. And I then shall most certainly
have a chance of marrying a fortune, better than this alliance, which
will be poor in happiness if rich in goods.”
“It is very clear,” said his father, “that you were not brought up under
the old _regime_. Does a man of our rank ever allow his wife to be in
his way?”
“But, my dear father, in these days marriage is--”
“Bless me!” cried the Count, interrupting his son, “then what my old
_emigre_ friends tell me is true, I suppose. The Revolution has left
us habits devoid of pleasure, and has infected all the young men with
vulgar principles. You, like my Jacobin brother-in-law, will
harangue me, I suppose, on the Nation, Public Morals, and
Disinterestedness!--Good Heavens! But for the Emperor’s sisters, where
should we be?”
The still hale old man, whom the peasants on the estate persisted in
calling the Signeur de Granville, ended his speech as they entered the
Cathedral porch. In spite of the sanctity of the place, and even as he
dipped his fingers in the holy water, he hummed an air from the opera of
_Rose et Colas_, and then led the way down the side aisles, stopping
by each pillar to survey the rows of heads, all in lines like ranks of
soldiers on parade.
The special service of the Sacred Heart was about to begin. The ladies
affiliated to that congregation were in front near the choir, so the
Count and his son made their way to that part of the nave, and stood
leaning against one of the columns where there was least light, whence
they could command a view of this mass of faces, looking like a meadow
full of flowers. Suddenly, close to young Granville, a voice, sweeter
than it seemed possible to ascribe to a human being, broke into song,
like the first nightingale when winter is past. Though it mingled with
the voices of a thousand other women and the notes of the organ, that
voice stirred his nerves as though they vibrated to the too full and too
piercing sounds of a harmonium. The Parisian turned round, and, seeing
a young figure, though, the head being bent, her face was entirely
concealed by a large white bonnet, concluded that the voice was hers. He
fancied that he recognized Angelique in spite of a brown merino pelisse
that wrapped her, and he nudged his father’s elbow.
“Yes, there she is,” said the Count, after looking where his son
pointed, and then, by an expressive glance, he directed his attention
to the pale face of an elderly woman who had already detected the
strangers, though her false eyes, deep set in dark circles, did not seem
to have strayed from the prayer-book she held.
Angelique raised her face, gazing at the altar as if to inhale the heavy
scent of the incense that came wafted in clouds over the two women. And
then, in the doubtful light that the tapers shed down the nave, with
that of a central lamp and of some lights round the pillars, the young
man beheld a face which shook his determination. A white watered-silk
bonnet closely framed features of perfect regularity, the oval being
completed by the satin ribbon tie that fastened it under her dimpled
chin. Over her forehead, very sweet though low, hair of a pale gold
color parted in two bands and fell over her cheeks, like the shadow
of leaves on a flower. The arches of her eyebrows were drawn with the
accuracy we admire in the best Chinese paintings. Her nose, almost
aquiline in profile, was exceptionally firmly cut, and her lips were
like two rose lines lovingly traced with a delicate brush. Her eyes, of
a light blue, were expressive of innocence.
Though Granville discerned a sort of rigid reserve in this girlish face,
he could ascribe it to the devotion in which Angelique was rapt. The
solemn words of prayer, visible in the cold, came from between rows of
pearls, like a fragrant mist, as it were. The young man involuntarily
bent over her a little to breathe this diviner air. This movement
attracted the girl’s notice; her gaze, raised to the altar, was diverted
to Granville, whom she could see but dimly in the gloom; but she
recognized him as the companion of her youth, and a memory more vivid
than prayer brought a supernatural glow to her face; she blushed. The
young lawyer was thrilled with joy at seeing the hopes of another life
overpowered by those of love, and the glory of the sanctuary eclipsed by
earthly reminiscences; but his triumph was brief. Angelique dropped her
veil, assumed a calm demeanor, and went on singing without letting her
voice betray the least emotion.
Granville was a prey to one single wish, and every thought of prudence
vanished. By the time the service was ended, his impatience was so great
that he could not leave the ladies to go home alone, but came at once to
make his bow to “his little wife.” They bashfully greeted each other in
the Cathedral porch in the presence of the congregation. Madame Bontems
was tremulous with pride as she took the Comte de Granville’s arm,
though he, forced to offer it in the presence of all the world was vexed
enough with his son for his ill-advised impatience.
For about a fortnight, between the official announcement of the intended
marriage of the Vicomte de Granville to Mademoiselle Bontems and the
solemn day of the wedding, he came assiduously to visit his lady-love in
the dismal drawing-room, to which he became accustomed. His long calls
were devoted to watching Angelique’s character; for his prudence,
happily, had made itself heard again in the day after their first
meeting. He always found her seated at a little table of some West
Indian wood, and engaged in marking the linen of her trousseau.
Angelique never spoke first on the subject of religion. If the young
lawyer amused himself with fingering the handsome rosary that she kept
in a little green velvet bag, if he laughed as he looked at a relic such
as usually is attached to this means of grace, Angelique would gently
take the rosary out of his hands and replace it in the bag without a
word, putting it away at once. When, now and then, Granville was so bold
as to make mischievous remarks as to certain religious practices, the
pretty girl listened to him with the obstinate smile of assurance.
“You must either believe nothing, or believe everything the Church
teaches,” she would say. “Would you wish to have a woman without a
religion as the mother of your children?--No.--What man may dare judge
as between disbelievers and God? And how can I then blame what the
Church allows?”
Angelique appeared to be animated by such fervent charity, the young man
saw her look at him with such perfect conviction, that he sometimes felt
tempted to embrace her religious views; her firm belief that she was in
the only right road aroused doubts in his mind, which she tried to turn
to account.
But then Granville committed the fatal blunder of mistaking the
enchantment of desire for that of love. Angelique was so happy in
reconciling the voice of her heart with that of duty, by giving way to
a liking that had grown up with her from childhood, that the deluded man
could not discern which of the two spoke the louder. Are not all young
men ready to trust the promise of a pretty face and to infer beauty
of soul from beauty of feature? An indefinable impulse leads them to
believe that moral perfection must co-exist with physical perfection. If
Angelique had not been at liberty to give vent to her sentiments, they
would soon have dried up in her heart like a plant watered with some
deadly acid. How should a lover be aware of bigotry so well hidden?
This was the course of young Granville’s feelings during that fortnight,
devoured by him like a book of which the end is absorbing. Angelique,
carefully watched by him, seemed the gentlest of creatures, and he even
caught himself feeling grateful to Madame Bontems, who, by implanting so
deeply the principles of religion, had in some degree inured her to meet
the troubles of life.
On the day named for signing the inevitable contract, Madame Bontems
made her son-in-law pledge himself solemnly to respect her daughter’s
religious practices, to allow her entire liberty of conscience, to
permit her to go to communion, to church, to confession as often as she
pleased, and never to control her choice of priestly advisers. At this
critical moment Angelique looked at her future husband with such pure
and innocent eyes, that Granville did not hesitate to give his word. A
smile puckered the lips of the Abbe Fontanon, a pale man, who directed
the consciences of this household. Mademoiselle Bontems, by a slight
nod, seemed to promise that she would never take an unfair advantage of
this freedom. As to the old Count, he gently whistled the tune of an
old song, _Va-t-en-voir s’ils viennent_ (“Go and see if they are coming
on!”)
A few days after the wedding festivities of which so much is thought in
the provinces, Granville and his wife went to Paris, whither the young
man was recalled by his appointment as public prosecutor to the Supreme
Court of the Seine circuit.
When the young couple set out to find a residence, Angelique used the
influence that the honeymoon gives to every wife in persuading her
husband to take a large apartment in the ground-floor of a house at the
corner of the Vieille Rue du Temple and the Rue Nueve Saint-Francois.
Her chief reason for this choice was that the house was close to the Rue
d’Orleans, where there was a church, and not far from a small chapel in
the Rue Saint-Louis.
“A good housewife provides for everything,” said her husband, laughing.
Angelique pointed out to him that this part of Paris, known as the
Marais, was within easy reach of the Palais de Justice, and that the
lawyers they knew lived in the neighborhood. A fairly large garden
made the apartment particularly advantageous to a young couple; the
children--if Heaven should send them any--could play in the open air;
the courtyard was spacious, and there were good stables.
The lawyer wished to live in the Chaussee d’Antin, where everything is
fresh and bright, where the fashions may be seen while still new, where
a well-dressed crowd throngs the Boulevards, and the distance is less to
the theatres or places of amusement; but he was obliged to give way to
the coaxing ways of a young wife, who asked this as his first favor; so,
to please her, he settled in the Marais. Granville’s duties required him
to work hard--all the more, because they were new to him--so he devoted
himself in the first place to furnishing his private study and arranging
his books. He was soon established in a room crammed with papers, and
left the decoration of the house to his wife. He was all the better
pleased to plunge Angelique into the bustle of buying furniture and
fittings, the source of so much pleasure and of so many associations to
most young women, because he was rather ashamed of depriving her of his
company more often than the usages of early married life require. As
soon as his work was fairly under way, he gladly allowed his wife
to tempt him out of his study to consider the effect of furniture or
hangings, which he had before only seen piecemeal or unfinished.
If the old adage is true that says a woman may be judged of from her
front door, her rooms must express her mind with even greater fidelity.
Madame de Granville had perhaps stamped the various things she had
ordered with the seal of her own character; the young lawyer was
certainly startled by the cold, arid solemnity that reigned in these
rooms; he found nothing to charm his taste; everything was discordant,
nothing gratified the eye. The rigid mannerism that prevailed in the
sitting-room at Bayeux had invaded his home; the broad panels were
hollowed in circles, and decorated with those arabesques of which
the long, monotonous mouldings are in such bad taste. Anxious to find
excuses for his wife, the young husband began again, looking first at
the long and lofty ante-room through which the apartment was entered.
The color of the panels, as ordered by his wife, was too heavy, and the
very dark green velvet used to cover the benches added to the gloom of
this entrance--not, to be sure, an important room, but giving a first
impression--just as we measure a man’s intelligence by his first
address. An ante-room is a kind of preface which announces what is to
follow, but promises nothing.
The young husband wondered whether his wife could really have chosen the
lamp of an antique pattern, which hung in the centre of this bare hall,
the pavement of black and white marble, and the paper in imitation of
blocks of stone, with green moss on them in places. A handsome, but
not new, barometer hung on the middle of one of the walls, as if to
accentuate the void. At the sight of it all, he looked round at his
wife; he saw her so much pleased by the red braid binding to the cotton
curtains, so satisfied with the barometer and the strictly decent statue
that ornamented a large Gothic stove, that he had not the barbarous
courage to overthrow such deep convictions. Instead of blaming his wife,
Granville blamed himself, accusing himself of having failed in his duty
of guiding the first steps in Paris of a girl brought up at Bayeux.
From this specimen, what might not be expected of the other rooms? What
was to be looked for from a woman who took fright at the bare legs of
a Caryatid, and who would not look at a chandelier or a candle-stick if
she saw on it the nude outlines of an Egyptian bust? At this date the
school of David was at the height of its glory; all the art of France
bore the stamp of his correct design and his love of antique types,
which indeed gave his pictures the character of colored sculpture. But
none of these devices of Imperial luxury found civic rights under Madame
de Granville’s roof. The spacious, square drawing-room remained as it
had been left from the time of Louis XV., in white and tarnished gold,
lavishly adorned by the architect with checkered lattice-work and the
hideous garlands due to the uninventive designers of the time. Still, if
harmony at least had prevailed, if the furniture of modern mahogany had
but assumed the twisted forms of which Boucher’s corrupt taste first set
the fashion, Angelique’s room would only have suggested the fantastic
contrast of a young couple in the nineteenth century living as though
they were in the eighteenth; but a number of details were in ridiculous
discord. The consoles, the clocks, the candelabra, were decorated with
the military trophies which the wars of the Empire commended to the
affections of the Parisians; and the Greek helmets, the Roman crossed
daggers, and the shields so dear to military enthusiasm that they were
introduced on furniture of the most peaceful uses, had no fitness side
by side with the delicate and profuse arabesques that delighted Madame
de Pompadour.
Bigotry tends to an indescribably tiresome kind of humility which
does not exclude pride. Whether from modesty or by choice, Madame de
Granville seemed to have a horror of light and cheerful colors; perhaps,
too, she imagined that brown and purple beseemed the dignity of a
magistrate. How could a girl accustomed to an austere life have admitted
the luxurious divans that may suggest evil thoughts, the elegant and
tempting boudoirs where naughtiness may be imagined?
The poor husband was in despair. From the tone in which he approved,
only seconding the praises she bestowed on herself, Angelique understood
that nothing really pleased him; and she expressed so much regret at her
want of success, that Granville, who was very much in love, regarded her
disappointment as a proof of her affection instead of resentment for
an offence to her self-conceit. After all, could he expect a girl just
snatched from the humdrum of country notions, with no experience of the
niceties and grace of Paris life, to know or do any better? Rather would
he believe that his wife’s choice had been overruled by the tradesmen
than allow himself to own the truth. If he had been less in love, he
would have understood that the dealers, always quick to discern their
customers’ ideas, had blessed Heaven for sending them a tasteless little
bigot, who would take their old-fashioned goods off their hands. So he
comforted the pretty provincial.
“Happiness, dear Angelique, does not depend on a more or less elegant
piece of furniture; it depends on the wife’s sweetness, gentleness, and
love.”
“Why, it is my duty to love you,” said Angelique mildly, “and I can have
no more delightful duty to carry out.”