Louise de L-----, daughter of an officer killed at Wagram, had been
the object of Napoleon’s special protection. She left Ecouen to marry a
commissary general, the Baron de V-----, who is very rich.
Louise was eighteen and the baron forty. She was ordinary in face and
her complexion could not be called white, but she had a charming
figure, good eyes, a small foot, a pretty hand, good taste and abundant
intelligence. The baron, worn out by the fatigues of war and still more
by the excesses of a stormy youth, had one of those faces upon which the
Republic, the Directory, the Consulate and the Empire seemed to have set
their impress.
He became so deeply in love with his wife, that he asked and obtained
from the Emperor a post at Paris, in order that he might be enabled to
watch over his treasure. He was as jealous as Count Almaviva, still more
from vanity than from love. The young orphan had married her husband
from necessity, and, flattered by the ascendancy she wielded over a man
much older than herself, waited upon his wishes and his needs; but
her delicacy was offended from the first days of their marriage by the
habits and ideas of a man whose manners were tinged with republican
license. He was a predestined.
I do not know exactly how long the baron made his honeymoon last, nor
when war was declared in his household; but I believe it happened in
1816, at a very brilliant ball given by Monsieur D-----, a commissariat
officer, that the commissary general, who had been promoted head of the
department, admired the beautiful Madame B-----, the wife of a banker,
and looked at her much more amorously than a married man should have
allowed himself to do.
At two o’clock in the morning it happened that the banker, tired of
waiting any longer, went home leaving his wife at the ball.
“We are going to take you home to your house,” said the baroness to
Madame B-----. “Monsieur de V-----, offer your arm to Emilie!”
And now the baron is seated in his carriage next to a woman who,
during the whole evening, had been offered and had refused a thousand
attentions, and from whom he had hoped in vain to win a single look.
There she was, in all the lustre of her youth and beauty, displaying
the whitest shoulders and the most ravishing lines of beauty. Her face,
which still reflected the pleasures of the evening, seemed to vie with
the brilliancy of her satin gown; her eyes to rival the blaze of her
diamonds; and her skin to cope with the soft whiteness of the marabouts
which tied in her hair, set off the ebon tresses and the ringlets
dangling from her headdress. Her tender voice would stir the chords of
the most insensible hearts; in a word, so powerfully did she wake up
love in the human breast that Robert d’Abrissel himself would perhaps
have yielded to her.
The baron glanced at his wife, who, overcome with fatigue, had sunk to
sleep in a corner of the carriage. He compared, in spite of himself, the
toilette of Louise and that of Emilie. Now on occasions of this kind the
presence of a wife is singularly calculated to sharpen the unquenchable
desires of a forbidden love. Moreover, the glances of the baron,
directed alternately to his wife and to her friend, were easy to
interpret, and Madame B----- interpreted them.
“Poor Louise,” she said, “she is overtired. Going out does not suit her,
her tastes are so simple. At Ecouen she was always reading--”
“And you, what used you to do?”
“I, sir? Oh, I thought about nothing but acting comely. It was my
passion!”
“But why do you so rarely visit Madame de V-----? We have a country
house at Saint-Prix, where we could have a comedy acted, in a little
theatre which I have built there.”
“If I have not visited Madame de V-----, whose fault is it?” she
replied. “You are so jealous that you will not allow her either to visit
her friends or to receive them.”
“I jealous!” cried Monsieur de V-----, “after four years of marriage,
and after having had three children!”
“Hush,” said Emilie, striking the fingers of the baron with her fan,
“Louise is not asleep!”
The carriage stopped, and the baron offered his hand to his wife’s fair
friend and helped her to get out.
“I hope,” said Madame B-----, “that you will not prevent Louise from
coming to the ball which I am giving this week.”
The baron made her a respectful bow.
This ball was a triumph of Madame B-----‘s and the ruin of the husband
of Louise; for he became desperately enamored of Emilie, to whom he
would have sacrificed a hundred lawful wives.
Some months after that evening on which the baron gained some hopes of
succeeding with his wife’s friend, he found himself one morning at the
house of Madame B-----, when the maid came to announce the Baroness de
V-----.
“Ah!” cried Emilie, “if Louise were to see you with me at such an hour
as this, she would be capable of compromising me. Go into that closet
and don’t make the least noise.”
The husband, caught like a mouse in a trap, concealed himself in the
closet.
“Good-day, my dear!” said the two women, kissing each other.
“Why are you come so early?” asked Emilie.
“Oh! my dear, cannot you guess? I came to have an understanding with
you!”
“What, a duel?”
“Precisely, my dear. I am not like you, not I! I love my husband and am
jealous of him. You! you are beautiful, charming, you have the right to
be a coquette, you can very well make fun of B-----, to whom your virtue
seems to be of little importance. But as you have plenty of lovers in
society, I beg you that you will leave me my husband. He is always
at your house, and he certainly would not come unless you were the
attraction.”
“What a very pretty jacket you have on.”
“Do you think so? My maid made it.”
“Then I shall get Anastasia to take a lesson from Flore--”
“So, then, my dear, I count on your friendship to refrain from bringing
trouble in my house.”
“But, my child, I do not know how you can conceive that I should fall in
love with your husband; he is coarse and fat as a deputy of the centre.
He is short and ugly--Ah! I will allow that he is generous, but that is
all you can say for him, and this is a quality which is all in all only
to opera girls; so that you can understand, my dear, that if I were
choosing a lover, as you seem to suppose I am, I wouldn’t choose an old
man like your baron. If I have given him any hopes, if I have received
him, it was certainly for the purpose of amusing myself, and of giving
you liberty; for I believed you had a weakness for young Rostanges.”
“I?” exclaimed Louise, “God preserve me from it, my dear; he is the most
intolerable coxcomb in the world. No, I assure you, I love my husband!
You may laugh as you choose; it is true. I know it may seem ridiculous,
but consider, he has made my fortune, he is no miser, and he is
everything to me, for it has been my unhappy lot to be left an orphan.
Now even if I did not love him, I ought to try to preserve his esteem.
Have I a family who will some day give me shelter?”
“Come, my darling, let us speak no more about it,” said Emilie,
interrupting her friend, “for it tires me to death.”
After a few trifling remarks the baroness left.
“How is this, monsieur?” cried Madame B-----, opening the door of the
closet where the baron was frozen with cold, for this incident took
place in winter; “how is this? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for not
adoring a little wife who is so interesting? Don’t speak to me of love;
you may idolize me, as you say you do, for a certain time, but you will
never love me as you love Louise. I can see that in your heart I shall
never outweigh the interest inspired by a virtuous wife, children, and
a family circle. I should one day be deserted and become the object of
your bitter reflections. You would coldly say of me ‘I have had that
woman!’ That phrase I have heard pronounced by men with the most
insulting indifference. You see, monsieur, that I reason in cold blood,
and that I do not love you, because you never would be able to love me.”
“What must I do then to convince you of my love?” cried the baron,
fixing his gaze on the young woman.
She had never appeared to him so ravishingly beautiful as at that
moment, when her soft voice poured forth a torrent of words whose
sternness was belied by the grace of her gestures, by the pose of her
head and by her coquettish attitude.
“Oh, when I see Louise in possession of a lover,” she replied, “when I
know that I am taking nothing away from her, and that she has nothing to
regret in losing your affection; when I am quite sure that you love her
no longer, and have obtained certain proof of your indifference towards
her--Oh, then I may listen to you!--These words must seem odious to
you,” she continued in an earnest voice; “and so indeed they are, but
do not think that they have been pronounced by me. I am the rigorous
mathematician who makes his deductions from a preliminary proposition.
You are married, and do you deliberately set about making love to some
one else? I should be mad to give any encouragement to a man who cannot
be mine eternally.”
“Demon!” exclaimed the husband. “Yes, you are a demon, and not a woman!”
“Come now, you are really amusing!” said the young woman as she seized
the bell-rope.
“Oh! no, Emilie,” continued the lover of forty, in a calmer voice. “Do
not ring; stop, forgive me! I will sacrifice everything for you.”
“But I do not promise you anything!” she answered quickly with a laugh.
“My God! How you make me suffer!” he exclaimed.
“Well, and have not you in your life caused the unhappiness of more than
one person?” she asked. “Remember all the tears which have been shed
through you and for you! Oh, your passion does not inspire me with the
least pity. If you do not wish to make me laugh, make me share your
feelings.”
“Adieu, madame, there is a certain clemency in your sternness. I
appreciate the lesson you have taught me. Yes, I have many faults to
expiate.”
“Well then, go and repent of them,” she said with a mocking smile; “in
making Louise happy you will perform the rudest penance in your power.”
They parted. But the love of the baron was too violent to allow of
Madame B-----‘s harshness failing to accomplish her end, namely, the
separation of the married couple.
At the end of some months the Baron de V----- and his wife lived apart,
though they lived in the same mansion. The baroness was the object of
universal pity, for in public she always did justice to her husband
and her resignation seemed wonderful. The most prudish women of society
found nothing to blame in the friendship which united Louise to the
young Rostanges. And all was laid to the charge of Monsieur de V-----‘s
folly.
When this last had made all the sacrifices that a man could make for
Madame B-----, his perfidious mistress started for the waters of Mount
Dore, for Switzerland and for Italy, on the pretext of seeking the
restoration of her health.
The baron died of inflammation of the liver, being attended during his
sickness by the most touching ministrations which his wife could lavish
upon him; and judging from the grief which he manifested at having
deserted her, he seemed never to have suspected her participation in the
plan which had been his ruin.
This anecdote, which we have chosen from a thousand others, exemplifies
the services which two women can render each other.
From the words--“Let me have the pleasure of bringing my husband” up to
the conception of the drama, whose denouement was inflammation of the
liver, every female perfidy was assembled to work out the end. Certain
incidents will, of course, be met with which diversify more or less
the typical example which we have given, but the march of the drama is
almost always the same. Moreover a husband ought always to distrust the
woman friends of his wife. The subtle artifices of these lying creatures
rarely fail of their effect, for they are seconded by two enemies, who
always keep close to a man--and these are vanity and desire.