Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by Clara Bell and others
DEDICATION
To Henri Heine.
I inscribe this to you, my dear Heine, to you that represent in
Paris the ideas and poetry of Germany, in Germany the lively and
witty criticism of France; for you better than any other will know
whatsoever this Study may contain of criticism and of jest, of
love and truth.
DE BALZAC.
A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA
“My dear friend,” said Mme. de la Baudraye, drawing a pile of manuscript
from beneath her sofa cushion, “will you pardon me in our present
straits for making a short story of something which you told me a few
weeks ago?”
“Anything is fair in these times. Have you not seen writers serving up
their own hearts to the public, or very often their mistress’ hearts
when invention fails? We are coming to this, dear; we shall go in quest
of adventures, not so much for the pleasure of them as for the sake of
having the story to tell afterwards.”
“After all, you and the Marquise de Rochefide have paid the rent, and
I do not think, from the way things are going here, that I ever pay
yours.”
“Who knows? Perhaps the same good luck that befell Mme. de Rochefide may
come to you.”
“Do you call it good luck to go back to one’s husband?”
“No; only great luck. Come, I am listening.”
And Mme. de la Baudraye read as follows:
“Scene--a splendid salon in the Rue de Chartres-du-Roule. One
of the most famous writers of the day discovered sitting on a
settee beside a very illustrious Marquise, with whom he is on
such terms of intimacy, as a man has a right to claim when a
woman singles him out and keeps him at her side as a complacent
_souffre-douleur_ rather than a makeshift.”
“Well,” says she, “have you found those letters of which you spoke
yesterday? You said that you could not tell me all about _him_ without
them?”
“Yes, I have them.”
“It is your turn to speak; I am listening like a child when his mother
begins the tale of _Le Grand Serpentin Vert_.”
“I count the young man in question in that group of our acquaintances
which we are wont to style our friends. He comes of a good family; he is
a man of infinite parts and ill-luck, full of excellent dispositions and
most charming conversation; young as he is, he is seen much, and while
awaiting better things, he dwells in Bohemia. Bohemianism, which by
rights should be called the doctrine of the Boulevard des Italiens,
finds its recruits among young men between twenty and thirty, all of
them men of genius in their way, little known, it is true, as yet,
but sure of recognition one day, and when that day comes, of great
distinction. They are distinguished as it is at carnival time, when
their exuberant wit, repressed for the rest of the year, finds a vent in
more or less ingenious buffoonery.
“What times we live in! What an irrational central power which allows
such tremendous energies to run to waste! There are diplomatists in
Bohemia quite capable of overturning Russia’s designs, if they but felt
the power of France at their backs. There are writers, administrators,
soldiers, and artists in Bohemia; every faculty, every kind of brain is
represented there. Bohemia is a microcosm. If the Czar would buy Bohemia
for a score of millions and set its population down in Odessa--always
supposing that they consented to leave the asphalt of the
boulevards--Odessa would be Paris with the year. In Bohemia, you find
the flower doomed to wither and come to nothing; the flower of the
wonderful young manhood of France, so sought after by Napoleon and Louis
XIV., so neglected for the last thirty years by the modern Gerontocracy
that is blighting everything else--that splendid young manhood of whom
a witness so little prejudiced as Professor Tissot wrote, ‘On all sides
the Emperor employed a younger generation in every way worthy of him; in
his councils, in the general administration, in negotiations bristling
with difficulties or full of danger, in the government of conquered
countries; and in all places Youth responded to his demands upon it.
Young men were for Napoleon the _missi hominici_ of Charlemagne.’
“The word Bohemia tells you everything. Bohemia has nothing and lives
upon what it has. Hope is its religion; faith (in oneself) its creed;
and charity is supposed to be its budget. All these young men are
greater than their misfortune; they are under the feet of Fortune, yet
more than equal to Fate. Always ready to mount and ride an _if_, witty
as a _feuilleton_, blithe as only those can be that are deep in debt
and drink deep to match, and finally--for here I come to my point--hot
lovers and what lovers! Picture to yourself Lovelace, and Henri Quatre,
and the Regent, and Werther, and Saint-Preux, and Rene, and the Marechal
de Richelieu--think of all these in a single man, and you will have some
idea of their way of love. What lovers! Eclectic of all things in love,
they will serve up a passion to a woman’s order; their hearts are like
a bill of fare in a restaurant. Perhaps they have never read Stendhal’s
_De l’Amour_, but unconsciously they put it in practice. They have
by heart their chapters--Love-Taste, Love-Passion, Love-Caprice,
Love-Crystalized, and more than all, Love-Transient. All is good in
their eyes. They invented the burlesque axiom, ‘In the sight of man, all
women are equal.’ The actual text is more vigorously worded, but as in
my opinion the spirit is false, I do not stand nice upon the letter.
“My friend, madame, is named Gabriel Jean Anne Victor Benjamin
George Ferdinand Charles Edward Rusticoli, Comte de la Palferine. The
Rusticolis came to France with Catherine de Medici, having been ousted
about that time from their infinitesimal Tuscan sovereignty. They are
distantly related to the house of Este, and connected by marriage to
the Guises. On the day of Saint-Bartholomew they slew a goodly number
of Protestants, and Charles IX. bestowed the hand of the heiress of
the Comte de la Palferine upon the Rusticoli of that time. The Comte,
however, being a part of the confiscated lands of the Duke of Savoy,
was repurchased by Henri IV. when that great king so far blundered as
to restore the fief; and in exchange, the Rusticoli--who had borne arms
long before the Medici bore them to-wit, _argent_ a cross flory _azure_
(the cross flower-de-luced by letters patent granted by Charles IX.),
and a count’s coronet, with two peasants for supporters with the motto
IN HOC SIGNO VINCIMUS--the Rusticoli, I repeat, retained their title,
and received a couple of offices under the crown with the government of
a province.
“From the time of the Valois till the reign of Richelieu, as it may be
called, the Rusticoli played a most illustrious part; under Louis XIV.
their glory waned somewhat, under Louis XV. it went out altogether.
My friend’s grandfather wasted all that was left to the once brilliant
house with Mlle. Laguerre, whom he first discovered, and brought into
fashion before Bouret’s time. Charles Edward’s own father was an officer
without any fortune in 1789. The Revolution came to his assistance; he
had the sense to drop his title, and became plain Rusticoli. Among other
deeds, M. Rusticoli married a wife during the war in Italy, a Capponi,
a goddaughter of the Countess of Albany (hence La Palferine’s final
names). Rusticoli was one of the best colonels in the army. The Emperor
made him a commander of the Legion of Honor and a count. His spine was
slightly curved, and his son was wont to say of him laughingly that he
was _un comte refait (contrefait)_.
“General Count Rusticoli, for he became a brigadier-general at Ratisbon
and a general of the division on the field of Wagram, died at Vienna
almost immediately after his promotion, or his name and ability
would sooner or later have brought him the marshal’s baton. Under the
Restoration he would certainly have repaired the fortunes of a great
and noble family so brilliant even as far back as 1100, centuries before
they took the French title--for the Rusticoli had given a pope to the
church and twice revolutionized the kingdom of Naples--so illustrious
again under the Valois; so dexterous in the days of the Fronde, that
obstinate Frondeurs though they were, they still existed through the
reign of Louis XIV. Mazarin favored them; there was the Tuscan strain in
them still, and he recognized it.
“Today, when Charles Edward de la Palferine’s name is mentioned, not
three persons in a hundred know the history of his house. But the
Bourbons have actually left a Foix-Grailly to live by his easel.
“Ah, if you but knew how brilliantly Charles Edward accepts his obscure
position! how he scoffs at the bourgeois of 1830! What Attic salt in his
wit! He would be the king of Bohemia, if Bohemia would endure a king.
His _verve_ is inexhaustible. To him we owe a map of the country and the
names of the seven castles which Nodier could not discover.”
“The one thing wanting in one of the cleverest skits of our time,” said
the Marquise.
“You can form your own opinion of La Palferine from a few characteristic
touches,” continued Nathan. “He once came upon a friend of his, a
fellow-Bohemian, involved in a dispute on the boulevard with a bourgeois
who chose to consider himself affronted. To the modern powers that
be, Bohemia is insolent in the extreme. There was talk of calling one
another out.
“‘One moment,’ interposed La Palferine, as much Lauzun for the occasion
as Lauzun himself could have been. ‘One moment. Monsieur was born, I
suppose?’
“‘What, sir?’
“‘Yes, are you born? What is your name?’
“‘Godin.’
“‘Godin, eh!’ exclaimed La Palferine’s friend.
“‘One moment, my dear fellow,’ interrupted La Palferine. ‘There are the
Trigaudins. Are you one of them?’
“Astonishment.
“‘No? Then you are one of the new dukes of Gaeta, I suppose, of imperial
creation? No? Oh, well, how can you expect my friend to cross swords
with you when he will be secretary of an embassy and ambassador _some
day_, and you will owe him respect? _Godin!_ the thing is non-existent!
You are a nonentity, Godin. My friend cannot be expected to beat the
air! When one is somebody, one cannot fight with a nobody! Come, my dear
fellow--good-day.’
“‘My respects to madame,’ added the friend.
“Another day La Palferine was walking with a friend who flung his cigar
end in the face of a passer-by. The recipient had the bad taste to
resent this.
“‘You have stood your antagonist’s fire,’ said the young Count, ‘the
witnesses declare that honor is satisfied.’
“La Palferine owed his tailor a thousand francs, and the man instead
of going himself sent his assistant to ask for the money. The assistant
found the unfortunate debtor up six pairs of stairs at the back of
a yard at the further end of the Faubourg du Roule. The room was
unfurnished save for a bed (such a bed!), a table, and such a table!
La Palferine heard the preposterous demand--‘A demand which I should
qualify as illegal,’ he said when he told us the story, ‘made, as it
was, at seven o’clock in the morning.’
“‘Go,’ he answered, with the gesture and attitude of a Mirabeau, ‘tell
your master in what condition you find me.’
“The assistant apologized and withdrew. La Palferine, seeing the
young man on the landing, rose in the attire celebrated in verse in
_Britannicus_ to add, ‘Remark the stairs! Pay particular attention to
the stairs; do not forget to tell him about the stairs!’
“In every position into which chance has thrown La Palferine, he has
never failed to rise to the occasion. All that he does is witty and
never in bad taste; always and in everything he displays the genius of
Rivarol, the polished subtlety of the old French noble. It was he who
told that delicious anecdote of a friend of Laffitte the banker. A
national fund had been started to give back to Laffitte the mansion in
which the Revolution of 1830 was brewed, and this friend appeared at the
offices of the fund with, ‘Here are five francs, give me a hundred
sous change!’--A caricature was made of it.--It was once La Palferine’s
misfortune, in judicial style, to make a young girl a mother. The girl,
not a very simple innocent, confessed all to her mother, a respectable
matron, who hurried forthwith to La Palferine and asked what he meant to
do.
“‘Why, madame,’ said he, ‘I am neither a surgeon nor a midwife.’
“She collapsed, but three or four years later she returned to the
charge, still persisting in her inquiry, ‘What did La Palferine mean to
do?’
“‘Well, madame,’ returned he, ‘when the child is seven years old, an
age at which a boy ought to pass out of women’s hands’--an indication
of entire agreement on the mother’s part--‘if the child is really
mine’--another gesture of assent--‘if there is a striking likeness, if
he bids fair to be a gentleman, if I can recognize in him my turn of
mind, and more particularly the Rusticoli air; then, oh--ah!’--a new
movement from the matron--‘on my word and honor, I will make him a
cornet of--sugar-plums!’
“All this, if you will permit me to make use of the phraseology employed
by M. Sainte-Beuve for his biographies of obscurities--all this, I
repeat, is the playful and sprightly yet already somewhat decadent side
of a strong race. It smacks rather of the Parc-aux-Cerfs than of the
Hotel de Rambouillet. It is a race of the strong rather than of the
sweet; I incline to lay a little debauchery to its charge, and more than
I should wish in brilliant and generous natures; it is gallantry after
the fashion of the Marechal de Richelieu, high spirits and frolic
carried rather too far; perhaps we may see in it the _outrances_ of
another age, the Eighteenth Century pushed to extremes; it harks back
to the Musketeers; it is an exploit stolen from Champcenetz; nay, such
light-hearted inconstancy takes us back to the festooned and ornate
period of the old court of the Valois. In an age as moral as the
present, we are bound to regard audacity of this kind sternly; still, at
the same time that ‘cornet of sugar-plums’ may serve to warn young girls
of the perils of lingering where fancies, more charming than chastened,
come thickly from the first; on the rosy flowery unguarded slopes, where
trespasses ripen into errors full of equivocal effervescence, into too
palpitating issues. The anecdote puts La Palferine’s genius before you
in all its vivacity and completeness. He realizes Pascal’s _entre-deux_,
he comprehends the whole scale between tenderness and pitilessness, and,
like Epaminondas, he is equally great in extremes. And not merely so,
his epigram stamps the epoch; the _accoucheur_ is a modern innovation.
All the refinements of modern civilization are summed up in the phrase.
It is monumental.”
“Look here, my dear Nathan, what farrago of nonsense is this?” asked the
Marquise in bewilderment.
“Madame la Marquise,” returned Nathan, “you do not know the value of
these ‘precious’ phrases; I am talking Sainte-Beuve, the new kind of
French.--I resume. Walking one day arm in arm with a friend along the
boulevard, he was accosted by a ferocious creditor, who inquired:
“‘Are you thinking of me, sir?’
“‘Not the least in the world,’ answered the Count.
“Remark the difficulty of the position. Talleyrand, in similar
circumstances, had already replied, ‘You are very inquisitive, my
dear fellow!’ To imitate the inimitable great man was out of the
question.--La Palferine, generous as Buckingham, could not bear to
be caught empty-handed. One day when he had nothing to give a little
Savoyard chimney-sweeper, he dipped a hand into a barrel of grapes in a
grocer’s doorway and filled the child’s cap from it. The little one ate
away at his grapes; the grocer began by laughing, and ended by holding
out his hand.
“‘Oh, fie! monsieur,’ said La Palferine, ‘your left hand ought not to
know what my right hand doth.’
“With his adventurous courage, he never refuses any odds, but there is
wit in his bravado. In the Passage de l’Opera he chanced to meet a man
who had spoken slightingly of him, elbowed him as he passed, and then
turned and jostled him a second time.
“‘You are very clumsy!’
“‘On the contrary; I did it on purpose.’
“The young man pulled out his card. La Palferine dropped it. ‘It has
been carried too long in the pocket. Be good enough to give me another.’
“On the ground he received a thrust; blood was drawn; his antagonist
wished to stop.
“‘You are wounded, monsieur!’
“‘I disallow the _botte_,’ said La Palferine, as coolly as if he had
been in the fencing-saloon; then as he riposted (sending the point home
this time), he added, ‘There is the right thrust, monsieur!’
“His antagonist kept his bed for six months.
“This, still following on M. Sainte-Beuve’s tracks, recalls the
_raffines_, the fine-edged raillery of the best days of the monarchy.
In this speech you discern an untrammeled but drifting life; a gaiety of
imagination that deserts us when our first youth is past. The prime of
the blossom is over, but there remains the dry compact seed with the
germs of life in it, ready against the coming winter. Do you not see
that these things are symptoms of something unsatisfied, of an unrest
impossible to analyze, still less to describe, yet not incomprehensible;
a something ready to break out if occasion calls into flying upleaping
flame? It is the _accidia_ of the cloister; a trace of sourness, of
ferment engendered by the enforced stagnation of youthful energies, a
vague, obscure melancholy.”
“That will do,” said the Marquise; “you are giving me a mental shower
bath.”
“It is the early afternoon languor. If a man has nothing to do, he will
sooner get into mischief than do nothing at all; this invariably happens
in France. Youth at present day has two sides to it; the studious or
unappreciated, and the ardent or _passionne_.”
“That will do!” repeated Mme. de Rochefide, with an authoritative
gesture. “You are setting my nerves on edge.”
“To finish my portrait of La Palferine, I hasten to make the plunge into
the gallant regions of his character, or you will not understand the
peculiar genius of an admirable representative of a certain section
of mischievous youth--youth strong enough, be it said, to laugh at the
position in which it is put by those in power; shrewd enough to do no
work, since work profiteth nothing; yet so full of life that it fastens
upon pleasure--the one thing that cannot be taken away. And meanwhile a
bourgeois, mercantile, and bigoted policy continues to cut off all the
sluices through which so much aptitude and ability would find an outlet.
Poets and men of science are not wanted.
“To give you an idea of the stupidity of the new court, I will tell
you of something which happened to La Palferine. There is a sort of
relieving officer on the civil list. This functionary one day discovered
that La Palferine was in dire distress, drew up a report, no doubt, and
brought the descendant of the Rusticolis fifty francs by way of alms.
La Palferine received the visitor with perfect courtesy, and talked of
various persons at court.
“‘Is it true,’ he asked, ‘that Mlle. d’Orleans contributes such and such
a sum to this benevolent scheme started by her nephew? If so, it is very
gracious of her.’
“Now La Palferine had a servant, a little Savoyard, aged ten, who waited
on him without wages. La Palferine called him Father Anchises, and used
to say, ‘I have never seen such a mixture of besotted foolishness
with great intelligence; he would go through fire and water for me; he
understands everything--and yet he cannot grasp the fact that I can do
nothing for him.’
“Anchises was despatched to a livery stable with instructions to hire
a handsome brougham with a man in livery behind it. By the time
the carriage arrived below, La Palferine had skilfully piloted the
conversation to the subject of the functions of his visitor, whom he has
since called ‘the unmitigated misery man,’ and learned the nature of his
duties and his stipend.
“‘Do they allow you a carriage to go about the town in this way?’
“‘Oh! no.’
“At that La Palferine and a friend who happened to be with him went
downstairs with the poor soul, and insisted on putting him into the
carriage. It was raining in torrents. La Palferine had thought of
everything. He offered to drive the official to the next house on
his list; and when the almoner came down again, he found the carriage
waiting for him at the door. The man in livery handed him a note written
in pencil:
“‘The carriage has been engaged for three days. Count Rusticoli
de la Palferine is too happy to associate himself with Court
charities by lending wings to Royal beneficence.’
“La Palferine now calls the civil list the uncivil list.
“He was once passionately loved by a lady of somewhat light conduct.
Antonia lived in the Rue du Helder; she had seen and been seen to some
extent, but at the time of her acquaintance with La Palferine she had
not yet ‘an establishment.’ Antonia was not wanting in the insolence of
old days, now degenerating into rudeness among women of her class. After
a fortnight of unmixed bliss, she was compelled, in the interest of
her civil list, to return to a less exclusive system; and La Palferine,
discovering a certain lack of sincerity in her dealings with him, sent
Madame Antonia a note which made her famous.
“‘MADAME,--Your conduct causes me much surprise and no less
distress. Not content with rending my heart with your disdain, you
have been so little thoughtful as to retain a toothbrush, which my
means will not permit me to replace, my estates being mortgaged
beyond their value.
“‘Adieu, too fair and too ungrateful friend! May we meet again in
a better world.
“‘CHARLES EDWARD.’”
“Assuredly (to avail ourselves yet further of Sainte-Beuve’s Babylonish
dialect), this far outpasses the raillery of Sterne’s _Sentimental
Journey_; it might be Scarron without his grossness. Nay, I do not know
but that Moliere in his lighter mood would not have said of it, as of
Cyrano de Bergerac’s best--‘This is mine.’ Richelieu himself was not
more complete when he wrote to the princess waiting for him in the
Palais Royal--‘Stay there, my queen, to charm the scullion lads.’ At
the same time, Charles Edward’s humor is less biting. I am not sure that
this kind of wit was known among the Greeks and Romans. Plato, possibly,
upon a closer inspection approaches it, but from the austere and musical
side--”
“No more of that jargon,” the Marquise broke in, “in print it may be
endurable; but to have it grating upon my ears is a punishment which I
do not in the least deserve.”
“He first met Claudine on this wise,” continued Nathan. “It was one of
the unfilled days, when Youth is a burden to itself; days when youth,
reduced by the overweening presumption of Age to a condition of
potential energy and dejection, emerges therefrom (like Blondet under
the Restoration), either to get into mischief or to set about some
colossal piece of buffoonery, half excused by the very audacity of its
conception. La Palferine was sauntering, cane in hand, up and down the
pavement between the Rue de Grammont and the Rue de Richelieu, when in
the distance he descried a woman too elegantly dressed, covered, as he
phrased it, with a great deal of portable property, too expensive and
too carelessly worn for its owner to be other than a princess of the
court or of the stage, it was not easy at first to say which. But after
July 1830, in his opinion, there is no mistaking the indications--the
princess can only be a princess of the stage.
“The Count came up and walked by her side as if she had given him an
assignation. He followed her with a courteous persistence, a persistence
in good taste, giving the lady from time to time, and always at the
right moment, an authoritative glance, which compelled her to submit
to his escort. Anybody but La Palferine would have been frozen by his
reception, and disconcerted by the lady’s first efforts to rid herself
of her cavalier, by her chilly air, her curt speeches; but no gravity,
with all the will in the world, could hold out long against La
Palferine’s jesting replies. The fair stranger went into her milliner’s
shop. Charles Edward followed, took a seat, and gave his opinions and
advice like a man that meant to pay. This coolness disturbed the lady.
She went out.
“On the stairs she spoke to her persecutor.
“‘Monsieur, I am about to call upon one of my husband’s relatives, an
elderly lady, Mme. de Bonfalot--’
“‘Ah! Mme. de Bonfalot, charmed, I am sure. I am going there.’
“The pair accordingly went. Charles Edward came in with the lady, every
one believed that she had brought him with her. He took part in the
conversation, was lavish of his polished and brilliant wit. The visit
lengthened out. That was not what he wanted.
“‘Madame,’ he said, addressing the fair stranger, ‘do not forget that
your husband is waiting for us, and only allowed us a quarter of an
hour.’
“Taken aback by such boldness (which, as you know, is never displeasing
to you women), led captive by the conqueror’s glance, by the astute yet
candid air which Charles Edward can assume when he chooses, the lady
rose, took the arm of her self-constituted escort, and went downstairs,
but on the threshold she stopped to speak to him.
“‘Monsieur, I like a joke----’
“‘And so do I.’
“She laughed.
“‘But this may turn to earnest,’ he added; ‘it only rests with you. I am
the Comte de la Palferine, and I am delighted that it is in my power to
lay my heart and my fortune at your feet.’
“La Palferine was at that time twenty-two years old. (This happened
in 1834.) Luckily for him, he was fashionably dressed. I can paint his
portrait for you in a few words. He was the living image of Louis XIII.,
with the same white forehead and gracious outline of the temples, the
same olive skin (that Italian olive tint which turns white where the
light falls on it), the brown hair worn rather long, the black ‘royale,’
the grave and melancholy expression, for La Palferine’s character and
exterior were amazingly at variance.
“At the sound of the name, and the sight of its owner, something like
a quiver thrilled through Claudine. La Palferine saw the vibration, and
shot a glance at her out of the dark depths of almond-shaped eyes with
purpled lids, and those faint lines about them which tell of pleasures
as costly as painful fatigue. With those eyes upon her, she said--‘Your
address?’
“‘What want of address!’
“‘Oh, pshaw!’ she said, smiling. ‘A bird on the bough?’
“‘Good-bye, madame, you are such a woman as I seek, but my fortune is
far from equaling my desire----’
“He bowed, and there and then left her. Two days later, by one of the
strange chances that can only happen in Paris, he had betaken himself to
a money-lending wardrobe dealer to sell such of his clothing as he could
spare. He was just receiving the price with an uneasy air, after long
chaffering, when the stranger lady passed and recognized him.
“‘Once for all,’ cried he to the bewildered wardrobe dealer, ‘I tell you
I am not going to take your trumpet!’
“He pointed to a huge, much-dinted musical instrument, hanging up
outside against a background of uniforms, civil and military. Then,
proudly and impetuously, he followed the lady.
“From that great day of the trumpet these two understood one another to
admiration. Charles Edward’s ideas on the subject of love are as sound
as possible. According to him, a man cannot love twice, there is but one
love in his lifetime, but that love is a deep and shoreless sea. It may
break in upon him at any time, as the grace of God found St. Paul; and a
man may live sixty years and never know love. Perhaps, to quote Heine’s
superb phrase, it is ‘the secret malady of the heart’--a sense of the
Infinite that there is within us, together with the revelation of the
ideal Beauty in its visible form. This love, in short, comprehends both
the creature and creation. But so long as there is no question of this
great poetical conception, the loves that cannot last can only be taken
lightly, as if they were in a manner snatches of song compared with Love
the epic.
“To Charles Edward the adventure brought neither the thunderbolt signal
of love’s coming, nor yet that gradual revelation of an inward fairness
which draws two natures by degrees more and more strongly each to each.
For there are but two ways of love--love at first sight, doubtless akin
to the Highland ‘second-sight,’ and that slow fusion of two natures
which realizes Plato’s ‘man-woman.’ But if Charles Edward did not love,
he was loved to distraction. Claudine found love made complete, body
and soul; in her, in short, La Palferine awakened the one passion of
her life; while for him Claudine was only a most charming mistress. The
Devil himself, a most potent magician certainly, with all hell at his
back, could never have changed the natures of these two unequal fires. I
dare affirm that Claudine not unfrequently bored Charles Edward.
“‘Stale fish and the woman you do not love are only fit to fling out of
the window after three days,’ he used to say.
“In Bohemia there is little secrecy observed over these affairs. La
Palferine used to talk a good deal of Claudine; but, at the same time,
none of us saw her, nor so much as knew her name. For us Claudine
was almost a mythical personage. All of us acted in the same way,
reconciling the requirements of our common life with the rules of good
taste. Claudine, Hortense, the Baroness, the Bourgeoise, the Empress,
the Spaniard, the Lioness,--these were cryptic titles which permitted
us to pour out our joys, our cares, vexations, and hopes, and to
communicate our discoveries. Further, none of us went. It has been
shown, in Bohemia, that chance discovered the identity of the fair
unknown; and at once, as by tacit convention, not one of us spoke of
her again. This fact may show how far youth possesses a sense of true
delicacy. How admirably certain natures of a finer clay know the limit
line where jest must end, and all that host of things French covered by
the slang word _blague_, a word which will shortly be cast out of the
language (let us hope), and yet it is the only one which conveys an idea
of the spirit of Bohemia.
“So we often used to joke about Claudine and the Count--‘_Toujours
Claudine?_’ sung to the air of _Toujours Gessle_.--‘What are you making
of Claudine?’--‘How is Claudine?’
“‘I wish you all such a mistress, for all the harm I wish you,’ La
Palferine began one day. ‘No greyhound, no basset-dog, no poodle can
match her in gentleness, submissiveness, and complete tenderness. There
are times when I reproach myself, when I take myself to task for my hard
heart. Claudine obeys with saintly sweetness. She comes to me, I tell
her to go, she goes, she does not even cry till she is out in the
courtyard. I refuse to see her for a whole week at a time. I tell her
to come at such an hour on Tuesday; and be it midnight or six o’clock in
the morning, ten o’clock, five o’clock, breakfast time, dinner time,
bed time, any particularly inconvenient hour in the day--she will come,
punctual to the minute, beautiful, beautifully dressed, and enchanting.
And she is a married woman, with all the complications and duties of a
household. The fibs that she must invent, the reasons she must find
for conforming to my whims would tax the ingenuity of some of us!...
Claudine never wearies; you can always count upon her. It is not love,
I tell her, it is infatuation. She writes to me every day; I do not read
her letters; she found that out, but still she writes. See here; there
are two hundred letters in this casket. She begs me to wipe my razors
on one of her letters every day, and I punctually do so. She thinks, and
rightly, that the sight of her handwriting will put me in mind of her.’
“La Palferine was dressing as he told us this. I took up the letter
which he was about to put to this use, read it, and kept it, as he did
not ask to have it back. Here it is. I looked for it, and found it as I
promised.
“_Monday (Midnight)._
“‘Well, my dear, are you satisfied with me? I did not even ask
for your hand, yet you might easily have given it to me, and I
longed so much to hold it to my heart, to my lips. No, I did not
ask, I am so afraid of displeasing you. Do you know one thing?
Though I am cruelly sure that anything I do is a matter of perfect
indifference to you, I am none the less extremely timid in my
conduct: the woman that belongs to you, whatever her title to call
herself yours, must not incur so much as the shadow of blame. In
so far as love comes from the angels in heaven, from whom are no
secrets hid, my love is as pure as the purest; wherever I am I
feel that I am in your presence, and I try to do you honor.
“‘All that you said about my manner of dress impressed me very
much; I began to understand how far above others are those that
come of a noble race. There was still something of the opera girl
in my gowns, in my way of dressing my hair. In a moment I saw the
distance between me and good taste. Next time you will receive a
duchess, you shall not know me again! Ah! how good you have been
to your Claudine! How many and many a time I have thanked you for
telling me those things! What interest lay in those few words! You
have taken thought for that thing belonging to you called
Claudine? _This_ imbecile would never have opened my eyes; he
thinks that everything I do is right; and besides, he is much too
humdrum, too matter-of-fact to have any feeling for the beautiful.
“‘Tuesday is very slow of coming for my impatient mind! On
Tuesday I shall be with you for several hours. Ah! when it comes I
will try to think that the hours are months, that it will be so
always. I am living in hope of that morning now, as I shall live
upon the memory of it afterwards. Hope is memory that craves; and
recollection, memory sated. What a beautiful life within life
thought makes for us in this way!
“‘Sometimes I dream of inventing new ways of tenderness all my
own, a secret which no other woman shall guess. A cold sweat
breaks out over me at the thought that something may happen to
prevent this morning. Oh, I would break with _him_ for good, if
need was, but nothing here could possibly interfere; it would be
from your side. Perhaps you may decide to go out, perhaps to go to
see some other woman. Oh! spare me this Tuesday for pity’s sake.
If you take it from me, Charles, you do not know what _he_ will
suffer; I should drive him wild. But even if you do not want me,
or you are going out, let me come, all the same, to be with you
while you dress; only to see you, I ask no more than that; only to
show you that I love you without a thought of self.
“‘Since you gave me leave to love you, for you gave me leave,
since I am yours; since that day I loved and love you with the
whole strength of my soul; and I shall love you for ever, for once
having loved _you_, no one could, no one ought to love another.
And, you see, when those eyes that ask nothing but to see you are
upon you, you will feel that in your Claudine there is a something
divine, called into existence by you.
“‘Alas! with you I can never play the coquette. I am like a
mother with her child; I endure anything from you; I, that was
once so imperious and proud. I have made dukes and princes fetch
and carry for me; aides-de-camp, worth more than all the court of
Charles X. put together, have done my errands, yet I am treating
you as my spoilt child. But where is the use of coquetry? It would
be pure waste. And yet, monsieur, for want of coquetry I shall
never inspire love in you. I know it; I feel it; yet I do as
before, feeling a power that I cannot withstand, thinking that
this utter self-surrender will win me the sentiment innate in all
men (so _he_ tells me) for the thing that belongs to them.
“_Wednesday_.
“‘Ah! how darkly sadness entered my heart yesterday when I found
that I must give up the joy of seeing you. One single thought held
me back from the arms of Death!--It was thy will! To stay away was
to do thy will, to obey an order from thee. Oh! Charles, I was so
pretty; I looked a lovelier woman for you than that beautiful
German princess whom you gave me for an example, whom I have
studied at the Opera. And yet--you might have thought that I had
overstepped the limits of my nature. You have left me no
confidence in myself; perhaps I am plain after all. Oh! I loathe
myself, I dream of my radiant Charles Edward, and my brain turns.
I shall go mad, I know I shall. Do not laugh, do not talk to me of
the fickleness of women. If we are inconstant, _you_ are strangely
capricious. You take away the hours of love that made a poor
creature’s happiness for ten whole days; the hours on which she
drew to be charming and kind to all that came to see her! After
all, you were the source of my kindness to _him_; you do not know
what pain you give him. I wonder what I must do to keep you, or
simply to keep the right to be yours sometimes.... When I think
that you never would come here to me!... With what delicious
emotion I would wait upon you!--There are other women more favored
than I. There are women to whom you say, ‘I love you.’ To me you
have never said more than ‘You are a good girl.’ Certain speeches
of yours, though you do not know it, gnaw at my heart. Clever men
sometimes ask me what I am thinking.... I am thinking of my
self-abasement--the prostration of the poorest outcast in the
presence of the Saviour.
“There are still three more pages, you see. La Palferine allowed me to
take the letter, with the traces of tears that still seemed hot upon it!
Here was proof of the truth of his story. Marcas, a shy man enough with
women, was in ecstacies over a second which he read in his corner before
lighting his pipe with it.
“‘Why, any woman in love will write that sort of thing!’ cried La
Palferine. ‘Love gives all women intelligence and style, which proves
that here in France style proceeds from the matter and not from the
words. See now how well this is thought out, how clear-headed sentiment
is’--and with that he reads us another letter, far superior to the
artificial and labored productions which we novelists write.
“One day poor Claudine heard that La Palferine was in a critical
position; it was a question of meeting a bill of exchange. An unlucky
idea occurred to her; she put a tolerably large sum in gold into an
exquisitely embroidered purse and went to him.
“‘Who has taught you as to be so bold as to meddle with my household
affairs?’ La Palferine cried angrily. ‘Mend my socks and work slippers
for me, if it amuses you. So!--you will play the duchess, and you turn
the story of Danae against the aristocracy.’
“He emptied the purse into his hand as he spoke, and made as though
he would fling the money in her face. Claudine, in her terror, did not
guess that he was joking; she shrank back, stumbled over a chair, and
fell with her head against the corner of the marble chimney-piece. She
thought she should have died. When she could speak, poor woman, as she
lay on the bed, all that she said was, ‘I deserved it, Charles!’
“For a moment La Palferine was in despair; his anguish revived Claudine.
She rejoiced in the mishap; she took advantage of her suffering to
compel La Palferine to take the money and release him from an awkward
position. Then followed a variation on La Fontaine’s fable, in which a
man blesses the thieves that brought him a sudden impulse of tenderness
from his wife. And while we are upon this subject, another saying will
paint the man for you.
“Claudine went home again, made up some kind of tale as best she could
to account for her bruised forehead, and fell dangerously ill. An
abscess formed in the head. The doctor--Bianchon, I believe--yes, it was
Bianchon--wanted to cut off her hair. The Duchesse de Berri’s hair is
not more beautiful than Claudine’s; she would not hear of it, she told
Bianchon in confidence that she could not allow it to be cut without
leave from the Comte de Palferine. Bianchon went to Charles Edward.
Charles Edward heard him with much seriousness. The doctor had explained
the case at length, and showed that it was absolutely necessary to
sacrifice the hair to insure the success of the operation.
“‘Cut off Claudine’s hair!’ cried he in peremptory tones. ‘No. I would
sooner lose her.’
“Even now, after a lapse of four years, Bianchon still quotes that
speech; we have laughed over it for half an hour together. Claudine,
informed of the verdict, saw in it a proof of affections; she felt sure
that she was loved. In the face of her weeping family, with her husband
on his knees, she was inexorable. She kept the hair. The strength that
came with the belief that she was loved came to her aid, the operation
succeeded perfectly. There are stirrings of the inner life which throw
all the calculations of surgery into disorder and baffle the laws of
medical science.
“Claudine wrote a delicious letter to La Palferine, a letter in which
the orthography was doubtful and the punctuation all to seek, to tell
him of the happy result of the operation, and to add that Love was wiser
than all the sciences.
“‘Now,’ said La Palferine one day, ‘what am I to do to get rid of
Claudine?’
“‘Why, she is not at all troublesome; she leaves you master of your
actions,’ objected we.
“‘That is true,’ returned La Palferine, ‘but I do not choose that
anything shall slip into my life without my consent.’
“From that day he set himself to torment Claudine. It seemed that he
held the bourgeoise, the nobody, in utter horror; nothing would satisfy
him but a woman with a title. Claudine, it was true, had made progress;
she had learned to dress as well as the best-dressed woman of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain; she had freed her bearing of the unhallowed
traces; she walked with a chastened, inimitable grace; but this was not
enough. This praise of her enabled Claudine to swallow down the rest.
“But one day La Palferine said, ‘If you wish to be the mistress of one
La Palferine, poor, penniless, and without prospects as he is, you
ought at least to represent him worthily. You should have a carriage and
liveried servants and a title. Give me all the gratifications of vanity
that will never be mine in my own person. The woman whom I honor with
my regard ought never to go on foot; if she is bespattered with mud, I
suffer. That is how I am made. If she is mine, she must be admired
of all Paris. All Paris shall envy me my good fortune. If some little
whipper-snapper seeing a brilliant countess pass in her brilliant
carriage shall say to himself, “Who can call such a divinity his?” and
grow thoughtful--why, it will double my pleasure.’
“La Palferine owned to us that he flung this programme at Claudine’s
head simply to rid himself of her. As a result he was stupefied with
astonishment for the first and probably the only time in his life.
“‘Dear,’ she said, and there was a ring in her voice that betrayed the
great agitation which shook her whole being, ‘it is well. All this shall
be done, or I will die.’
“She let fall a few happy tears on his hand as she kissed it.
“‘You have told me what I must do to be your mistress still,’ she added;
‘I am glad.’
“‘And then’ (La Palferine told us) ‘she went out with a little
coquettish gesture like a woman that has had her way. As she stood in my
garrett doorway, tall and proud, she seemed to reach the stature of an
antique sibyl.’
“All this should sufficiently explain the manners and customs of the
Bohemia in which the young _condottiere_ is one of the most brilliant
figures,” Nathan continued after a pause. “Now it so happened that I
discovered Claudine’s identity, and could understand the appalling truth
of one line which you perhaps overlooked in that letter of hers. It was
on this wise.”
The Marquise, too thoughtful now for laughter, bade Nathan “Go on,” in
a tone that told him plainly how deeply she had been impressed by these
strange things, and even more plainly how much she was interested in La
Palferine.
“In 1829, one of the most influential, steady, and clever of dramatic
writers was du Bruel. His real name is unknown to the public, on the
play-bills he is de Cursy. Under the Restoration he had a place in the
Civil Service; and being really attached to the elder branch, he sent
in his resignation bravely in 1830, and ever since has written twice as
many plays to fill the deficit in his budget made by his noble conduct.
At that time du Bruel was forty years old; you know the story of his
life. Like many of his brethren, he bore a stage dancer an affection
hard to explain, but well known in the whole world of letters. The
woman, as you know, was Tullia, one of the _premiers sujets_ of the
Academie Royale de Musique. Tullia is merely a pseudonym like du Bruel’s
name of de Cursy.
“For the ten years between 1817 and 1827 Tullia was in her glory on the
heights of the stage of the Opera. With more beauty than education, a
mediocre dancer with rather more sense than most of her class, she took
no part in the virtuous reforms which ruined the corps de ballet; she
continued the Guimard dynasty. She owed her ascendency, moreover,
to various well-known protectors, to the Duc de Rhetore (the Due de
Chaulieu’s eldest son), to the influence of a famous Superintendent
of Fine Arts, and sundry diplomatists and rich foreigners. During her
apogee she had a neat little house in the Rue Chauchat, and lived as
Opera nymphs used to live in the old days. Du Bruel was smitten with
her about the time when the Duke’s fancy came to an end in 1823. Being
a mere subordinate in the Civil Service, du Bruel tolerated the
Superintendent of Fine Arts, believing that he himself was really
preferred. After six years this connection was almost a marriage. Tullia
has always been very careful to say nothing of her family; we have a
vague idea that she comes from Nanterre. One of her uncles, formerly
a simple bricklayer or carpenter, is now, it is said, a very rich
contractor, thanks to her influence and generous loans. This fact leaked
out through du Bruel. He happened to say that Tullia would inherit a
fine fortune sooner or later. The contractor was a bachelor; he had a
weakness for the niece to whom he is indebted.
“‘He is not clever enough to be ungrateful,’ said she.
“In 1829 Tullia retired from the stage of her own accord. At the age of
thirty she saw that she was growing somewhat stouter, and she had tried
pantomime without success. Her whole art consisted in the trick of
raising her skirts, after Noblet’s manner, in a pirouette which inflated
them balloon-fashion and exhibited the smallest possible quantity of
clothing to the pit. The aged Vestris had told her at the very beginning
that this _temps_, well executed by a fine woman, is worth all the art
imaginable. It is the chest-note C of dancing. For which reason, he
said, the very greatest dancers--Camargo, Guimard, and Taglioni, all of
them thin, brown, and plain--could only redeem their physical defects by
their genius. Tullia, still in the height of her glory, retired before
younger and cleverer dancers; she did wisely. She was an aristocrat; she
had scarcely stooped below the noblesse in her _liaisons_; she declined
to dip her ankles in the troubled waters of July. Insolent and beautiful
as she was, Claudine possessed handsome souvenirs, but very little ready
money; still, her jewels were magnificent, and she had as fine furniture
as any one in Paris.
“On quitting the stage when she, forgotten to-day, was yet in the height
of her fame, one thought possessed her--she meant du Bruel to marry her;
and at the time of this story, you must understand that the marriage had
taken place, but was kept a secret. How do women of her class contrive
to make a man marry them after seven or eight years of intimacy? What
springs do they touch? What machinery do they set in motion? But,
however comical such domestic dramas may be, we are not now concerned
with them. Du Bruel was secretly married; the thing was done.
“Cursy before his marriage was supposed to be a jolly companion; now
and again he stayed out all night, and to some extent led the life of
a Bohemian; he would unbend at a supper-party. He went out to all
appearance to a rehearsal at the Opera-Comique, and found himself in
some unaccountable way at Dieppe, or Baden, or Saint-Germain; he gave
dinners, led the Titanic thriftless life of artists, journalists, and
writers; levied his tribute on all the greenrooms of Paris; and, in
short, was one of us. Finot, Lousteau, du Tillet, Desroches, Bixiou,
Blondet, Couture, and des Lupeaulx tolerated him in spite of his
pedantic manner and ponderous official attitude. But once married,
Tullia made a slave of du Bruel. There was no help for it. He was in
love with Tullia, poor devil.