Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
THE DESERTED WOMAN
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by Ellen Marriage
DEDICATION
To Her Grace the Duchesse d’Abrantes,
from her devoted servant,
Honore de Balzac.
PARIS, August 1835.
THE DESERTED WOMAN
In the early spring of 1822, the Paris doctors sent to Lower Normandy a
young man just recovering from an inflammatory complaint, brought on by
overstudy, or perhaps by excess of some other kind. His convalescence
demanded complete rest, a light diet, bracing air, and freedom from
excitement of every kind, and the fat lands of Bessin seemed to offer
all these conditions of recovery. To Bayeux, a picturesque place about
six miles from the sea, the patient therefore betook himself, and was
received with the cordiality characteristic of relatives who lead very
retired lives, and regard a new arrival as a godsend.
All little towns are alike, save for a few local customs. When M. le
Baron Gaston de Nueil, the young Parisian in question, had spent two or
three evenings in his cousin’s house, or with the friends who made up
Mme. de Sainte-Severe’s circle, he very soon had made the acquaintance
of the persons whom this exclusive society considered to be “the
whole town.” Gaston de Nueil recognized in them the invariable stock
characters which every observer finds in every one of the many capitals
of the little States which made up the France of an older day.
First of all comes the family whose claims to nobility are regarded as
incontestable, and of the highest antiquity in the department, though no
one has so much as heard of them a bare fifty leagues away. This
species of royal family on a small scale is distantly, but unmistakably,
connected with the Navarreins and the Grandlieu family, and related to
the Cadignans, and the Blamont-Chauvrys. The head of the illustrious
house is invariably a determined sportsman. He has no manners, crushes
everybody else with his nominal superiority, tolerates the sub-prefect
much as he submits to the taxes, and declines to acknowledge any of the
novel powers created by the nineteenth century, pointing out to you as
a political monstrosity the fact that the prime minister is a man of no
birth. His wife takes a decided tone, and talks in a loud voice. She has
had adorers in her time, but takes the sacrament regularly at Easter.
She brings up her daughters badly, and is of the opinion that they will
always be rich enough with their name.
Neither husband nor wife has the remotest idea of modern luxury. They
retain a livery only seen elsewhere on the stage, and cling to old
fashions in plate, furniture, and equipages, as in language and manner
of life. This is a kind of ancient state, moreover, that suits passably
well with provincial thrift. The good folk are, in fact, the lords of
the manor of a bygone age, _minus_ the quitrents and heriots, the pack
of hounds and the laced coats; full of honor among themselves, and one
and all loyally devoted to princes whom they only see at a distance.
The historical house _incognito_ is as quaint a survival as a piece of
ancient tapestry. Vegetating somewhere among them there is sure to be
an uncle or a brother, a lieutenant-general, an old courtier of the
Kings’s, who wears the red ribbon of the order of Saint-Louis, and went
to Hanover with the Marechal de Richelieu: and here you will find him
like a stray leaf out of some old pamphlet of the time of Louis Quinze.
This fossil greatness finds a rival in another house, wealthier, though
of less ancient lineage. Husband and wife spend a couple of months of
every winter in Paris, bringing back with them its frivolous tone and
short-lived contemporary crazes. Madame is a woman of fashion, though
she looks rather conscious of her clothes, and is always behind the
mode. She scoffs, however, at the ignorance affected by her neighbors.
_Her_ plate is of modern fashion; she has “grooms,” Negroes, a
valet-de-chambre, and what-not. Her oldest son drives a tilbury, and
does nothing (the estate is entailed upon him), his younger brother is
auditor to a Council of State. The father is well posted up in official
scandals, and tells you anecdotes of Louis XVIII. and Madame du Cayla.
He invests his money in the five per cents, and is careful to avoid the
topic of cider, but has been known occasionally to fall a victim to the
craze for rectifying the conjectural sums-total of the various fortunes
of the department. He is a member of the Departmental Council, has
his clothes from Paris, and wears the Cross of the Legion of Honor. In
short, he is a country gentleman who has fully grasped the significance
of the Restoration, and is coining money at the Chamber, but his
Royalism is less pure than that of the rival house; he takes
the _Gazette_ and the _Debats_, the other family only read the
_Quotidienne_.
His lordship the Bishop, a sometime Vicar-General, fluctuates between
the two powers, who pay him the respect due to religion, but at times
they bring home to him the moral appended by the worthy Lafontaine
to the fable of the _Ass laden with Relics_. The good man’s origin is
distinctly plebeian.
Then come stars of the second magnitude, men of family with ten or
twelve hundred livres a year, captains in the navy or cavalry regiments,
or nothing at all. Out on the roads, on horseback, they rank half-way
between the cure bearing the sacraments and the tax collector on his
rounds. Pretty nearly all of them have been in the Pages or in
the Household Troops, and now are peaceably ending their days in a
_faisance-valoir_, more interested in felling timber and the cider
prospects than in the Monarchy.
Still they talk of the Charter and the Liberals while the cards are
making, or over a game at backgammon, when they have exhausted the
usual stock of _dots_, and have married everybody off according to the
genealogies which they all know by heart. Their womenkind are haughty
dames, who assume the airs of Court ladies in their basket chaises. They
huddle themselves up in shawls and caps by way of full dress; and twice
a year, after ripe deliberation, have a new bonnet from Paris, brought
as opportunity offers. Exemplary wives are they for the most part, and
garrulous.
These are the principal elements of aristocratic gentility, with a
few outlying old maids of good family, spinsters who have solved the
problem: given a human being, to remain absolutely stationary. They
might be sealed up in the houses where you see them; their faces and
their dresses are literally part of the fixtures of the town, and the
province in which they dwell. They are its tradition, its memory, its
quintessence, the _genius loci_ incarnate. There is something frigid and
monumental about these ladies; they know exactly when to laugh and when
to shake their heads, and every now and then give out some utterance
which passes current as a witticism.
A few rich townspeople have crept into the miniature Faubourg
Saint-Germain, thanks to their money or their aristocratic leanings.
But despite their forty years, the circle still say of them, “Young
So-and-so has sound opinions,” and of such do they make deputies. As a
rule, the elderly spinsters are their patronesses, not without comment.
Finally, in this exclusive little set include two or three
ecclesiastics, admitted for the sake of their cloth, or for their wit;
for these great nobles find their own society rather dull, and introduce
the bourgeois element into their drawing-rooms, as a baker puts leaven
into his dough.
The sum-total contained by all heads put together consists of a certain
quantity of antiquated notions; a few new inflections brewed in company
of an evening being added from time to time to the common stock. Like
sea-water in a little creek, the phrases which represent these ideas
surge up daily, punctually obeying the tidal laws of conversation in
their flow and ebb; you hear the hollow echo of yesterday, to-day,
to-morrow, a year hence, and for evermore. On all things here below they
pass immutable judgments, which go to make up a body of tradition into
which no power of mortal man can infuse one drop of wit or sense. The
lives of these persons revolve with the regularity of clockwork in an
orbit of use and wont which admits of no more deviation or change than
their opinions on matters religious, political, moral, or literary.
If a stranger is admitted to the _cenacle_, every member of it in
turn will say (not without a trace of irony), “You will not find the
brilliancy of your Parisian society here,” and proceed forthwith to
criticise the life led by his neighbors, as if he himself were an
exception who had striven, and vainly striven, to enlighten the rest.
But any stranger so ill advised as to concur in any of their freely
expressed criticism of each other, is pronounced at once to be an
ill-natured person, a heathen, an outlaw, a reprobate Parisian “as
Parisians mostly are.”
Before Gaston de Nueil made his appearance in this little world of
strictly observed etiquette, where every detail of life is an integrant
part of a whole, and everything is known; where the values of personalty
and real estate is quoted like stocks on the vast sheet of the
newspaper--before his arrival he had been weighed in the unerring scales
of Bayeusaine judgment.
His cousin, Mme. de Sainte-Severe, had already given out the amount of
his fortune, and the sum of his expectations, had produced the family
tree, and expatiated on the talents, breeding, and modesty of this
particular branch. So he received the precise amount of attentions
to which he was entitled; he was accepted as a worthy scion of a good
stock; and, for he was but twenty-three, was made welcome without
ceremony, though certain young ladies and mothers of daughters looked
not unkindly upon him.
He had an income of eighteen thousand livres from land in the valley of
the Auge; and sooner or later his father, as in duty bound, would leave
him the chateau of Manerville, with the lands thereunto belonging.
As for his education, political career, personal qualities, and
qualifications--no one so much as thought of raising the questions. His
land was undeniable, his rentals steady; excellent plantations had been
made; the tenants paid for repairs, rates, and taxes; the apple-trees
were thirty-eight years old; and, to crown all, his father was in treaty
for two hundred acres of woodland just outside the paternal park, which
he intended to enclose with walls. No hopes of a political career, no
fame on earth, can compare with such advantages as these.
Whether out of malice or design, Mme. de Sainte-Severe omitted to
mention that Gaston had an elder brother; nor did Gaston himself say a
word about him. But, at the same time, it is true that the brother
was consumptive, and to all appearance would shortly be laid in earth,
lamented and forgotten.
At first Gaston de Nueil amused himself at the expense of the circle. He
drew, as it were, for his mental album, a series of portraits of these
folk, with their angular, wrinkled faces, and hooked noses, their
crotchets and ludicrous eccentricities of dress, portraits which
possessed all the racy flavor of truth. He delighted in their
“Normanisms,” in the primitive quaintness of their ideas and characters.
For a short time he flung himself into their squirrel’s life of busy
gyrations in a cage. Then he began to feel the want of variety, and grew
tired of it. It was like the life of the cloister, cut short before it
had well begun. He drifted on till he reached a crisis, which is neither
spleen nor disgust, but combines all the symptoms of both. When a human
being is transplanted into an uncongenial soil, to lead a starved,
stunted existence, there is always a little discomfort over the
transition. Then, gradually, if nothing removes him from his
surroundings, he grows accustomed to them, and adapts himself to the
vacuity which grows upon him and renders him powerless. Even now,
Gaston’s lungs were accustomed to the air; and he was willing to discern
a kind of vegetable happiness in days that brought no mental exertion
and no responsibilities. The constant stirring of the sap of life, the
fertilizing influences of mind on mind, after which he had sought so
eagerly in Paris, were beginning to fade from his memory, and he was in
a fair way of becoming a fossil with these fossils, and ending his
days among them, content, like the companions of Ulysses, in his gross
envelope.
One evening Gaston de Nueil was seated between a dowager and one of the
vicars-general of the diocese, in a gray-paneled drawing-room, floored
with large white tiles. The family portraits which adorned the walls
looked down upon four card-tables, and some sixteen persons gathered
about them, chattering over their whist. Gaston, thinking of nothing,
digesting one of those exquisite dinners to which the provincial looks
forward all through the day, found himself justifying the customs of the
country.
He began to understand why these good folk continued to play with
yesterday’s pack of cards and shuffle them on a threadbare tablecloth,
and how it was that they had ceased to dress for themselves or others.
He saw the glimmerings of something like a philosophy in the even tenor
of their perpetual round, in the calm of their methodical monotony, in
their ignorance of the refinements of luxury. Indeed, he almost came
to think that luxury profited nothing; and even now, the city of Paris,
with its passions, storms, and pleasures, was scarcely more than a
memory of childhood.
He admired in all sincerity the red hands, and shy, bashful manner
of some young lady who at first struck him as an awkward simpleton,
unattractive to the last degree, and surprisingly ridiculous. His doom
was sealed. He had gone from the provinces to Paris; he had led the
feverish life of Paris; and now he would have sunk back into the
lifeless life of the provinces, but for a chance remark which reached
his ear--a few words that called up a swift rush of such emotion as
he might have felt when a strain of really good music mingles with the
accompaniment of some tedious opera.
“You went to call on Mme. de Beauseant yesterday, did you not?” The
speaker was an elderly lady, and she addressed the head of the local
royal family.
“I went this morning. She was so poorly and depressed, that I could not
persuade her to dine with us to-morrow.”
“With Mme. de Champignelles?” exclaimed the dowager with something like
astonishment in her manner.
“With my wife,” calmly assented the noble. “Mme. de Beauseant is
descended from the House of Burgundy, on the spindle side, ‘tis true,
but the name atones for everything. My wife is very much attached to
the Vicomtesse, and the poor lady has lived alone for such a long while,
that----”
The Marquis de Champignelles looked round about him while he spoke with
an air of cool unconcern, so that it was almost impossible to guess
whether he made a concession to Mme. de Beauseant’s misfortunes, or paid
homage to her noble birth; whether he felt flattered to receive her in
his house, or, on the contrary, sheer pride was the motive that led him
to try to force the country families to meet the Vicomtesse.
The women appeared to take counsel of each other by a glance; there was
a sudden silence in the room, and it was felt that their attitude was
one of disapproval.
“Does this Mme. de Beauseant happen to be the lady whose adventure with
M. d’Ajuda-Pinto made so much noise?” asked Gaston of his neighbor.
“The very same,” he was told. “She came to Courcelles after the marriage
of the Marquis d’Ajuda; nobody visits her. She has, besides, too much
sense not to see that she is in a false position, so she has made no
attempt to see any one. M. de Champignelles and a few gentlemen went to
call upon her, but she would see no one but M. de Champignelles, perhaps
because he is a connection of the family. They are related through
the Beauseants; the father of the present Vicomte married a Mlle.
de Champignelles of the older branch. But though the Vicomtesse de
Beauseant is supposed to be a descendant of the House of Burgundy, you
can understand that we could not admit a wife separated from her husband
into our society here. We are foolish enough still to cling to these
old-fashioned ideas. There was the less excuse for the Vicomtesse,
because M. de Beauseant is a well-bred man of the world, who would have
been quite ready to listen to reason. But his wife is quite mad----” and
so forth and so forth.
M. de Nueil, still listening to the speaker’s voice, gathered nothing of
the sense of the words; his brain was too full of thick-coming fancies.
Fancies? What other name can you give to the alluring charms of an
adventure that tempts the imagination and sets vague hopes springing up
in the soul; to the sense of coming events and mysterious felicity and
fear at hand, while as yet there is no substance of fact on which these
phantoms of caprice can fix and feed? Over these fancies thought hovers,
conceiving impossible projects, giving in the germ all the joys of love.
Perhaps, indeed, all passion is contained in that thought-germ, as the
beauty, and fragrance, and rich color of the flower is all packed in the
seed.
M. de Nueil did not know that Mme. de Beauseant had taken refuge in
Normandy, after a notoriety which women for the most part envy and
condemn, especially when youth and beauty in some sort excuse the
transgression. Any sort of celebrity bestows an inconceivable prestige.
Apparently for women, as for families, the glory of the crime effaces
the stain; and if such and such a noble house is proud of its tale of
heads that have fallen on the scaffold, a young and pretty woman becomes
more interesting for the dubious renown of a happy love or a scandalous
desertion, and the more she is to be pitied, the more she excites our
sympathies. We are only pitiless to the commonplace. If, moreover, we
attract all eyes, we are to all intents and purposes great; how, indeed,
are we to be seen unless we raise ourselves above other people’s heads?
The common herd of humanity feels an involuntary respect for any person
who can rise above it, and is not over-particular as to the means by
which they rise.
It may have been that some such motives influenced Gaston de Nueil at
unawares, or perhaps it was curiosity, or a craving for some interest in
his life, or, in a word, that crowd of inexplicable impulses which, for
want of a better name, we are wont to call “fatality,” that drew him to
Mme. de Beauseant.
The figure of the Vicomtesse de Beauseant rose up suddenly before him
with gracious thronging associations. She was a new world for him,
a world of fears and hopes, a world to fight for and to conquer.
Inevitably he felt the contrast between this vision and the human beings
in the shabby room; and then, in truth, she was a woman; what woman had
he seen so far in this dull, little world, where calculation replaced
thought and feeling, where courtesy was a cut-and-dried formality, and
ideas of the very simplest were too alarming to be received or to pass
current? The sound of Mme. de Beauseant’s name revived a young man’s
dreams and wakened urgent desires that had lain dormant for a little.
Gaston de Nueil was absent-minded and preoccupied for the rest of the
evening. He was pondering how he might gain access to Mme. de Beauseant,
and truly it was no very easy matter. She was believed to be extremely
clever. But if men and women of parts may be captivated by something
subtle or eccentric, they are also exacting, and can read all that lies
below the surface; and after the first step has been taken, the chances
of failure and success in the difficult task of pleasing them are about
even. In this particular case, moreover, the Vicomtesse, besides the
pride of her position, had all the dignity of her name. Her utter
seclusion was the least of the barriers raised between her and the
world. For which reasons it was well-nigh impossible that a stranger,
however well born, could hope for admittance; and yet, the next
morning found M. de Nueil taking his walks abroad in the direction of
Courcelles, a dupe of illusions natural at his age. Several times he
made the circuit of the garden walls, looking earnestly through every
gap at the closed shutters or open windows, hoping for some romantic
chance, on which he founded schemes for introducing himself into this
unknown lady’s presence, without a thought of their impracticability.
Morning after morning was spent in this way to mighty purpose; but with
each day’s walk, that vision of a woman living apart from the world, of
love’s martyr buried in solitude, loomed larger in his thoughts, and
was enshrined in his soul. So Gaston de Nueil walked under the walls
of Courcelles, and some gardener’s heavy footstep would set his heart
beating high with hope.
He thought of writing to Mme. de Beauseant, but on mature consideration,
what can you say to a woman whom you have never seen, a complete
stranger? And Gaston had little self-confidence. Like most young persons
with a plentiful crop of illusions still standing, he dreaded the
mortifying contempt of silence more than death itself, and shuddered at
the thought of sending his first tender epistle forth to face so many
chances of being thrown on the fire. He was distracted by innumerable
conflicting ideas. But by dint of inventing chimeras, weaving romances,
and cudgeling his brains, he hit at last upon one of the hopeful
stratagems that are sure to occur to your mind if you persevere long
enough, a stratagem which must make clear to the most inexperienced
woman that here was a man who took a fervent interest in her. The
caprice of social conventions puts as many barriers between lovers as
any Oriental imagination can devise in the most delightfully fantastic
tale; indeed, the most extravagant pictures are seldom exaggerations. In
real life, as in the fairy tales, the woman belongs to him who can reach
her and set her free from the position in which she languishes. The
poorest of calenders that ever fell in love with the daughter of the
Khalif is in truth scarcely further from his lady than Gaston de Nueil
from Mme. de Beauseant. The Vicomtesse knew absolutely nothing of M. de
Nueil’s wanderings round her house; Gaston de Nueil’s love grew to the
height of the obstacles to overleap; and the distance set between him
and his extemporized lady-love produced the usual effect of distance, in
lending enchantment.
One day, confident in his inspiration, he hoped everything from the love
that must pour forth from his eyes. Spoken words, in his opinion, were
more eloquent than the most passionate letter; and, besides, he would
engage feminine curiosity to plead for him. He went, therefore, to M. de
Champignelles, proposing to employ that gentleman for the better success
of his enterprise. He informed the Marquis that he had been entrusted
with a delicate and important commission which concerned the Vicomtesse
de Beauseant, that he felt doubtful whether she would read a letter
written in an unknown handwriting, or put confidence in a stranger.
Would M. de Champignelles, on his next visit, ask the Vicomtesse if
she would consent to receive him--Gaston de Nueil? While he asked the
Marquis to keep his secret in case of a refusal, he very ingeniously
insinuated sufficient reasons for his own admittance, to be duly passed
on to the Vicomtesse. Was not M. de Champignelles a man of honor, a
loyal gentleman incapable of lending himself to any transaction in bad
taste, nay, the merest suspicion of bad taste! Love lends a young man
all the self-possession and astute craft of an old ambassador; all the
Marquis’ harmless vanities were gratified, and the haughty grandee
was completely duped. He tried hard to fathom Gaston’s secret; but the
latter, who would have been greatly perplexed to tell it, turned off M.
de Champignelles’ adroit questioning with a Norman’s shrewdness, till
the Marquis, as a gallant Frenchman, complimented his young visitor upon
his discretion.
M. de Champignelles hurried off at once to Courcelles, with that
eagerness to serve a pretty woman which belongs to his time of life.
In the Vicomtesse de Beauseant’s position, such a message was likely to
arouse keen curiosity; so, although her memory supplied no reason at all
that could bring M. de Nueil to her house, she saw no objection to his
visit--after some prudent inquiries as to his family and condition. At
the same time, she began by a refusal. Then she discussed the propriety
of the matter with M. de Champignelles, directing her questions so as
to discover, if possible, whether he knew the motives for the visit, and
finally revoked her negative answer. The discussion and the discretion
shown perforce by the Marquis had piqued her curiosity.
M. de Champignelles had no mind to cut a ridiculous figure. He
said, with the air of a man who can keep another’s counsel, that the
Vicomtesse must know the purpose of this visit perfectly well; while the
Vicomtesse, in all sincerity, had no notion what it could be. Mme. de
Beauseant, in perplexity, connected Gaston with people whom he had never
met, went astray after various wild conjectures, and asked herself if
she had seen this M. de Nueil before. In truth, no love-letter, however
sincere or skilfully indited, could have produced so much effect as this
riddle. Again and again Mme. de Beauseant puzzled over it.
When Gaston heard that he might call upon the Vicomtesse, his rapture at
so soon obtaining the ardently longed-for good fortune was mingled with
singular embarrassment. How was he to contrive a suitable sequel to this
stratagem?
“Bah! I shall see _her_,” he said over and over again to himself as he
dressed. “See her, and that is everything!”
He fell to hoping that once across the threshold of Courcelles he should
find an expedient for unfastening this Gordian knot of his own tying.
There are believers in the omnipotence of necessity who never turn back;
the close presence of danger is an inspiration that calls out all their
powers for victory. Gaston de Nueil was one of these.
He took particular pains with his dress, imagining, as youth is apt to
imagine, that success or failure hangs on the position of a curl, and
ignorant of the fact that anything is charming in youth. And, in any
case, such women as Mme. de Beauseant are only attracted by the charms
of wit or character of an unusual order. Greatness of character flatters
their vanity, promises a great passion, seems to imply a comprehension
of the requirements of their hearts. Wit amuses them, responds to the
subtlety of their natures, and they think that they are understood. And
what do all women wish but to be amused, understood, or adored? It is
only after much reflection on the things of life that we understand
the consummate coquetry of neglect of dress and reserve at a first
interview; and by the time we have gained sufficient astuteness for
successful strategy, we are too old to profit by our experience.
While Gaston’s lack of confidence in his mental equipment drove him
to borrow charms from his clothes, Madame de Beauseant herself was
instinctively giving more attention to her toilette.
“I would rather not frighten people, at all events,” she said to herself
as she arranged her hair.
In M. de Nueil’s character, person, and manner there was that touch of
unconscious originality which gives a kind of flavor to things that any
one might say or do, and absolves everything that they may choose to
do or say. He was highly cultivated, he had a keen brain, and a face,
mobile as his own nature, which won the goodwill of others. The promise
of passion and tenderness in the bright eyes was fulfilled by an
essentially kindly heart. The resolution which he made as he entered
the house at Courcelles was in keeping with his frank nature and ardent
imagination. But, bold has he was with love, his heart beat violently
when he had crossed the great court, laid out like an English garden,
and the man-servant, who had taken his name to the Vicomtesse, returned
to say that she would receive him.
“M. le Baron de Nueil.”
Gaston came in slowly, but with sufficient ease of manner; and it is a
more difficult thing, be it said, to enter a room where there is but one
woman, than a room that holds a score.
A great fire was burning on the hearth in spite of the mild weather,
and by the soft light of the candles in the sconces he saw a young woman
sitting on a high-backed _bergere_ in the angle by the hearth. The seat
was so low that she could move her head freely; every turn of it was
full of grace and delicate charm, whether she bent, leaning forward,
or raised and held it erect, slowly and languidly, as though it were a
heavy burden, so low that she could cross her feet and let them appear,
or draw them back under the folds of a long black dress.
The Vicomtesse made as if she would lay the book that she was reading on
a small, round stand; but as she did so, she turned towards M. de
Nueil, and the volume, insecurely laid upon the edge, fell to the ground
between the stand and the sofa. This did not seem to disconcert her.
She looked up, bowing almost imperceptibly in response to his greeting,
without rising from the depths of the low chair in which she lay.
Bending forwards, she stirred the fire briskly, and stooped to pick up a
fallen glove, drawing it mechanically over her left hand, while her
eyes wandered in search of its fellow. The glance was instantly checked,
however, for she stretched out a thin, white, all-but-transparent
right hand, with flawless ovals of rose-colored nail at the tips of the
slender, ringless fingers, and pointed to a chair as if to bid Gaston be
seated. He sat down, and she turned her face questioningly towards him.
Words cannot describe the subtlety of the winning charm and inquiry in
that gesture; deliberate in its kindliness, gracious yet accurate in
expression, it was the outcome of early education and of a constant use
and wont of the graciousness of life. These movements of hers, so
swift, so deft, succeeded each other by the blending of a pretty woman’s
fastidious carelessness with the high-bred manner of a great lady.
Mme. de Beauseant stood out in such strong contrast against the
automatons among whom he had spent two months of exile in that
out-of-the-world district of Normandy, that he could not but find in her
the realization of his romantic dreams; and, on the other hand, he
could not compare her perfections with those of other women whom he
had formerly admired. Here in her presence, in a drawing-room like some
salon in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, full of costly trifles lying about
upon the tables, and flowers and books, he felt as if he were back in
Paris. It was a real Parisian carpet beneath his feet, he saw once more
the high-bred type of Parisienne, the fragile outlines of her form, her
exquisite charm, her disdain of the studied effects which did so much to
spoil provincial women.
Mme. de Beauseant had fair hair and dark eyes, and the pale complexion
that belongs to fair hair. She held up her brow nobly like some fallen
angel, grown proud through the fall, disdainful of pardon. Her way of
gathering her thick hair into a crown of plaits above the broad, curving
lines of the bandeaux upon her forehead, added to the queenliness of her
face. Imagination could discover the ducal coronet of Burgundy in the
spiral threads of her golden hair; all the courage of her house seemed
to gleam from the great lady’s brilliant eyes, such courage as women
use to repel audacity or scorn, for they were full of tenderness for
gentleness. The outline of that little head, so admirably poised above
the long, white throat, the delicate, fine features, the subtle curves
of the lips, the mobile face itself, wore an expression of delicate
discretion, a faint semblance of irony suggestive of craft and
insolence. Yet it would have been difficult to refuse forgiveness to
those two feminine failings in her; for the lines that came out in her
forehead whenever her face was not in repose, like her upward glances
(that pathetic trick of manner), told unmistakably of unhappiness, of
a passion that had all but cost her her life. A woman, sitting in the
great, silent salon, a woman cut off from the rest of the world in this
remote little valley, alone, with the memories of her brilliant, happy,
and impassioned youth, of continual gaiety and homage paid on all sides,
now replaced by the horrors of the void--was there not something in the
sight to strike awe that deepened with reflection? Consciousness of her
own value lurked in her smile. She was neither wife nor mother, she was
an outlaw; she had lost the one heart that could set her pulses beating
without shame; she had nothing from without to support her reeling soul;
she must even look for strength from within, live her own life, cherish
no hope save that of forsaken love, which looks forward to Death’s
coming, and hastens his lagging footsteps. And this while life was in
its prime. Oh! to feel destined for happiness and to die--never having
given nor received it! A woman too! What pain was this! These thoughts
flashing across M. de Nueil’s mind like lightning, left him very humble
in the presence of the greatest charm with which woman can be invested.
The triple aureole of beauty, nobleness, and misfortune dazzled him; he
stood in dreamy, almost open-mouthed admiration of the Vicomtesse. But
he found nothing to say to her.
Mme. de Beauseant, by no means displeased, no doubt, by his surprise,
held out her hand with a kindly but imperious gesture; then, summoning a
smile to her pale lips, as if obeying, even yet, the woman’s impulse to
be gracious:
“I have heard from M. de Champignelles of a message which you have
kindly undertaken to deliver, monsieur,” she said. “Can it be from----”
With that terrible phrase Gaston understood, even more clearly than
before, his own ridiculous position, the bad taste and bad faith of his
behavior towards a woman so noble and so unfortunate. He reddened. The
thoughts that crowded in upon him could be read in his troubled eyes;
but suddenly, with the courage which youth draws from a sense of its own
wrongdoing, he gained confidence, and very humbly interrupted Mme. de
Beauseant.
“Madame,” he faltered out, “I do not deserve the happiness of seeing
you. I have deceived you basely. However strong the motive may have
been, it can never excuse the pitiful subterfuge which I used to gain my
end. But, madame, if your goodness will permit me to tell you----”
The Vicomtesse glanced at M. de Nueil, haughty disdain in her whole
manner. She stretched her hand to the bell and rang it.
“Jacques,” she said, “light this gentleman to the door,” and she looked
with dignity at the visitor.
She rose proudly, bowed to Gaston, and then stooped for the fallen
volume. If all her movements on his entrance had been caressingly dainty
and gracious, her every gesture now was no less severely frigid. M. de
Nueil rose to his feet, but he stood waiting. Mme. de Beauseant flung
another glance at him. “Well, why do you not go?” she seemed to say.
There was such cutting irony in that glance that Gaston grew white as if
he were about to faint. Tears came into his eyes, but he would not let
them fall, and scorching shame and despair dried them. He looked back
at Madame de Beauseant, and a certain pride and consciousness of his
own worth was mingled with his humility; the Vicomtesse had a right to
punish him, but ought she to use her right? Then he went out.
As he crossed the ante-chamber, a clear head, and wits sharpened by
passion, were not slow to grasp the danger of his situation.
“If I leave this house, I can never come back to it again,” he said
to himself. “The Vicomtesse will always think of me as a fool. It is
impossible that a woman, and such a woman, should not guess the
love that she has called forth. Perhaps she feels a little, vague,
involuntary regret for dismissing me so abruptly.--But she could not
do otherwise, and she cannot recall her sentence. It rests with me to
understand her.”
At that thought Gaston stopped short on the flight of steps with an
exclamation; he turned sharply, saying, “I have forgotten something,”
and went back to the salon. The lackey, all respect for a baron and the
rights of property, was completely deceived by the natural utterance,
and followed him. Gaston returned quietly and unannounced. The
Vicomtesse, thinking that the intruder was the servant, looked up and
beheld M. de Nueil.
“Jacques lighted me to the door,” he said, with a half-sad smile which
dispelled any suspicion of jest in those words, while the tone in which
they were spoken went to the heart. Mme. de Beauseant was disarmed.
“Very well, take a seat,” she said.
Gaston eagerly took possession of a chair. His eyes were shining with
happiness; the Vicomtesse, unable to endure the brilliant light in
them, looked down at the book. She was enjoying a delicious, ever new
sensation; the sense of a man’s delight in her presence is an unfailing
feminine instinct. And then, besides, he had divined her, and a woman is
so grateful to the man who has mastered the apparently capricious, yet
logical, reasoning of her heart; who can track her thought through the
seemingly contradictory workings of her mind, and read the sensations,
shy or bold, written in fleeting red, a bewildering maze of coquetry and
self-revelation.
“Madame,” Gaston exclaimed in a low voice, “my blunder you know, but
you do not know how much I am to blame. If you only knew what joy it was
to----”
“Ah! take care,” she said, holding up one finger with an air of mystery,
as she put out her hand towards the bell.
The charming gesture, the gracious threat, no doubt called up some sad
thought, some memory of the old happy time when she could be wholly
charming and gentle without an afterthought; when the gladness of her
heart justified every caprice, and put charm into every least movement.
The lines in her forehead gathered between her brows, and the expression
of her face grew dark in the soft candle-light. Then looking across at
M. de Nueil gravely but not unkindly, she spoke like a woman who deeply
feels the meaning of every word.
“This is all very ridiculous! Once upon a time, monsieur, when
thoughtless high spirits were my privilege, I should have laughed
fearlessly over your visit with you. But now my life is very much
changed. I cannot do as I like, I am obliged to think. What brings you
here? Is it curiosity? In that case I am paying dearly for a little
fleeting pleasure. Have you fallen _passionately_ in love already with a
woman whom you have never seen, a woman with whose name slander has, of
course, been busy? If so, your motive in making this visit is based on
disrespect, on an error which accident brought into notoriety.”
She flung her book down scornfully upon the table, then, with a terrible
look at Gaston, she went on: “Because I once was weak, must it be
supposed that I am always weak? This is horrible, degrading. Or have you
come here to pity me? You are very young to offer sympathy with heart
troubles. Understand this clearly, sir, that I would rather have scorn
than pity. I will not endure compassion from any one.”
There was a brief pause.
“Well, sir,” she continued (and the face that she turned to him was
gentle and sad), “whatever motive induced this rash intrusion upon my
solitude, it is very painful to me, you see. You are too young to be
totally without good feeling, so surely you will feel that this behavior
of yours is improper. I forgive you for it, and, as you see, I am
speaking of it to you without bitterness. You will not come here again,
will you? I am entreating when I might command. If you come to see me
again, neither you nor I can prevent the whole place from believing that
you are my lover, and you would cause me great additional annoyance. You
do not mean to do that, I think.”
She said no more, but looked at him with a great dignity which abashed
him.
“I have done wrong, madame,” he said, with deep feeling in his voice,
“but it was through enthusiasm and thoughtlessness and eager desire of
happiness, the qualities and defects of my age. Now, I understand that
I ought not to have tried to see you,” he added; “but, at the same time,
the desire was a very natural one”--and, making an appeal to feeling
rather than to the intellect, he described the weariness of his enforced
exile. He drew a portrait of a young man in whom the fires of life were
burning themselves out, conveying the impression that here was a heart
worthy of tender love, a heart which, notwithstanding, had never known
the joys of love for a young and beautiful woman of refinement and
taste. He explained, without attempting to justify, his unusual conduct.
He flattered Mme. de Beauseant by showing that she had realized for him
the ideal lady of a young man’s dream, the ideal sought by so many,
and so often sought in vain. Then he touched upon his morning prowlings
under the walls of Courcelles, and his wild thoughts at the first sight
of the house, till he excited that vague feeling of indulgence which a
woman can find in her heart for the follies committed for her sake.
An impassioned voice was speaking in the chill solitude; the speaker
brought with him a warm breath of youth and the charms of a carefully
cultivated mind. It was so long since Mme. de Beauseant had felt stirred
by real feeling delicately expressed, that it affected her very strongly
now. In spite of herself, she watched M. de Nueil’s expressive face, and
admired the noble countenance of a soul, unbroken as yet by the cruel
discipline of the life of the world, unfretted by continual scheming to
gratify personal ambition and vanity. Gaston was in the flower of his
youth, he impressed her as a man with something in him, unaware as
yet of the great career that lay before him. So both these two made
reflections most dangerous for their peace of mind, and both strove to
conceal their thoughts. M. de Nueil saw in the Vicomtesse a rare type of
woman, always the victim of her perfections and tenderness; her graceful
beauty is the least of her charms for those who are privileged to know
the infinite of feeling and thought and goodness in the soul within;
a woman whose instinctive feeling for beauty runs through all the most
varied expressions of love, purifying its transports, turning them to
something almost holy; wonderful secret of womanhood, the exquisite
gift that Nature so seldom bestows. And the Vicomtesse, on her side,
listening to the ring of sincerity in Gaston’s voice, while he told of
his youthful troubles, began to understand all that grown children of
five-and-twenty suffer from diffidence, when hard work has kept them
alike from corrupting influences and intercourse with men and women of
the world whose sophistical reasoning and experience destroys the
fair qualities of youth. Here was the ideal of a woman’s dreams, a man
unspoiled as yet by the egoism of family or success, or by that narrow
selfishness which blights the first impulses of honor, devotion,
self-sacrifice, and high demands of self; all the flowers so soon wither
that enrich at first the life of delicate but strong emotions, and keep
alive the loyalty of the heart.
But these two, once launched forth into the vast of sentiment, went
far indeed in theory, sounding the depths in either soul, testing the
sincerity of their expressions; only, whereas Gaston’s experiments were
made unconsciously, Mme. de Beauseant had a purpose in all that she
said. Bringing her natural and acquired subtlety to the work, she sought
to learn M. de Nueil’s opinions by advancing, as far as she could do
so, views diametrically opposed to her own. So witty and so gracious was
she, so much herself with this stranger, with whom she felt completely
at ease, because she felt sure that they should never meet again, that,
after some delicious epigram of hers, Gaston exclaimed unthinkingly:
“Oh! madame, how could any man have left you?”
The Vicomtesse was silent. Gaston reddened, he thought that he had
offended her; but she was not angry. The first deep thrill of delight
since the day of her calamity had taken her by surprise. The skill of
the cleverest _roue_ could not have made the impression that M. de Nueil
made with that cry from the heart. That verdict wrung from a young man’s
candor gave her back innocence in her own eyes, condemned the world,
laid the blame upon the lover who had left her, and justified her
subsequent solitary drooping life. The world’s absolution, the heartfelt
sympathy, the social esteem so longed for, and so harshly refused, nay,
all her secret desires were given her to the full in that exclamation,
made fairer yet by the heart’s sweetest flatteries and the admiration
that women always relish eagerly. He understood her, understood all, and
he had given her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the
opportunity of rising higher through her fall. She looked at the clock.
“Ah! madame, do not punish me for my heedlessness. If you grant me but
one evening, vouchsafe not to shorten it.”
She smiled at the pretty speech.
“Well, as we must never meet again,” she said, “what signifies a moment
more or less? If you were to care for me, it would be a pity.”
“It is too late now,” he said.
“Do not tell me that,” she answered gravely. “Under any other
circumstances I should be very glad to see you. I will speak frankly,
and you will understand how it is that I do not choose to see you again,
and ought not to do so. You have too much magnanimity not to feel that
if I were so much as suspected of a second trespass, every one would
think of me as a contemptible and vulgar woman; I should be like other
women. A pure and blameless life will bring my character into relief.
I am too proud not to endeavor to live like one apart in the world, a
victim of the law through my marriage, man’s victim through my love. If
I were not faithful to the position which I have taken up, then I should
deserve all the reproach that is heaped upon me; I should be lowered in
my own eyes. I had not enough lofty social virtue to remain with a man
whom I did not love. I have snapped the bonds of marriage in spite of
the law; it was wrong, it was a crime, it was anything you like, but
for me the bonds meant death. I meant to live. Perhaps if I had been
a mother I could have endured the torture of a forced marriage of
suitability. At eighteen we scarcely know what is done with us, poor
girls that we are! I have broken the laws of the world, and the world
has punished me; we both did rightly. I sought happiness. Is it not a
law of our nature to seek for happiness? I was young, I was beautiful...
I thought that I had found a nature as loving, as apparently passionate.
I was loved indeed; for a little while...”
She paused.
“I used to think,” she said, “that no one could leave a woman in such
a position as mine. I have been forsaken; I must have offended in
some way. Yes, in some way, no doubt, I failed to keep some law of our
nature, was too loving, too devoted, too exacting--I do not know. Evil
days have brought light with them! For a long while I blamed another,
now I am content to bear the whole blame. At my own expense, I have
absolved that other of whom I once thought I had a right to complain. I
had not the art to keep him; fate has punished me heavily for my lack
of skill. I only knew how to love; how can one keep oneself in mind when
one loves? So I was a slave when I should have sought to be a tyrant.
Those who know me may condemn me, but they will respect me too. Pain
has taught me that I must not lay myself open to this a second time. I
cannot understand how it is that I am living yet, after the anguish of
that first week of the most fearful crisis in a woman’s life. Only from
three years of loneliness would it be possible to draw strength to speak
of that time as I am speaking now. Such agony, monsieur, usually ends in
death; but this--well, it was the agony of death with no tomb to end it.
Oh! I have known pain indeed!”
The Vicomtesse raised her beautiful eyes to the ceiling; and the
cornice, no doubt, received all the confidences which a stranger might
not hear. When a woman is afraid to look at her interlocutor, there
is in truth no gentler, meeker, more accommodating confidant than the
cornice. The cornice is quite an institution in the boudoir; what is it
but the confessional, _minus_ the priest?