good and charming wife.’ And somehow Tullia managed to induce the most
Puritanical members of du Bruel’s family to accept her. From the very
first, before any one suspected her motives, she assiduously visited old
Mme. de Bonfalot, who bored her horribly; she made handsome presents to
mean old Mme. de Chisse, du Bruel’s great-aunt; she spent a summer
with the latter lady, and never missed a single mass. She even went to
confession, received absolution, and took the sacrament; but this, you
must remember, was in the country, and under the aunt’s eyes.
“‘I shall have real aunts now, do you understand?’ she said to us when
she came back in the winter.
“She was so delighted with her respectability, so glad to renounce her
independence, that she found means to compass her end. She flattered the
old people. She went on foot every day to sit for a couple of hours with
Mme. du Bruel the elder while that lady was ill--a Maintenon’s stratagem
which amazed du Bruel. And he admired his wife without criticism; he was
so fast in the toils already that he did not feel his bonds.
“Claudine succeeded in making him understand that only under the elastic
system of a bourgeois government, only at the bourgeois court of the
Citizen-King, could a Tullia, now metamorphosed into a Mme. du Bruel,
be accepted in the society which her good sense prevented her from
attempting to enter. Mme. de Bonfalot, Mme. de Chisse, and Mme. du
Bruel received her; she was satisfied. She took up the position of
a well-conducted, simple, and virtuous woman, and never acted out of
character. In three years’ time she was introduced to the friends of
these ladies.
“‘And still I cannot persuade myself that young Mme. du Bruel used to
display her ankles, and the rest, to all Paris, with the light of
a hundred gas-jets pouring upon her,’ Mme. Anselme Popinot remarked
naively.
“From this point of view, July 1830 inaugurated an era not unlike the
time of the Empire, when a waiting woman was received at Court in the
person of Mme. Garat, a chief-justice’s ‘lady.’ Tullia had completely
broken, as you may guess, with all her old associates; of her former
acquaintances, she only recognized those who could not compromise her.
At the time of her marriage she had taken a very charming little
hotel between a court and a garden, lavishing money on it with wild
extravagance and putting the best part of her furniture and du Bruel’s
into it. Everything that she thought common or ordinary was sold. To
find anything comparable to her sparkling splendor, you could only look
back to the days when Sophie Arnould, a Guimard, or a Duthe, in all her
glory, squandered the fortunes of princes.
“How far did this sumptuous existence affect du Bruel? It is a delicate
question to ask, and a still more delicate one to answer. A single
incident will suffice to give you an idea of Tullia’s crotchets. Her
bed-spread of Brussels lace was worth ten thousand francs. A famous
actress had another like it. As soon as Claudine heard this, she allowed
her cat, a splendid Angora, to sleep on the bed. That trait gives you
the woman. Du Bruel dared not say a word; he was ordered to spread
abroad that challenge in luxury, so that it might reach the other.
Tullia was very fond of this gift from the Duc de Rhetore; but one day,
five years after her marriage, she played with her cat to such purpose
that the coverlet--furbelows, flounces, and all--was torn to shreds,
and replaced by a sensible quilt, a quilt that was a quilt, and not a
symptom of the peculiar form of insanity which drives these women to
make up by an insensate luxury for the childish days when they lived on
raw apples, to quote the expression of a journalist. The day when the
bed-spread was torn to tatters marked a new epoch in her married life.
“Cursy was remarkable for his ferocious industry. Nobody suspects the
source to which Paris owes the patch-and-powder eighteenth century
vaudevilles that flooded the stage. Those thousand-and-one vaudevilles,
which raised such an outcry among the _feuilletonistes_, were written
at Mme. du Bruel’s express desire. She insisted that her husband should
purchase the hotel on which she had spent so much, where she had housed
five hundred thousand francs’ worth of furniture. Wherefore Tullia never
enters into explanations; she understands the sovereign woman’s reason
to admiration.
“‘People made a good deal of fun of Cursy,’ said she; ‘but, as a matter
of fact, he found this house in the eighteenth century rouge-box,
powder, puffs, and spangles. He would never have thought of it but for
me,’ she added, burying herself in the cushions in her fireside corner.
“She delivered herself thus on her return from a first night. Du Bruel’s
piece had succeeded, and she foresaw an avalanche of criticisms. Tullia
had her At Homes. Every Monday she gave a tea-party; her society was as
select as might be, and she neglected nothing that could make her house
pleasant. There was a bouillotte in one room, conversation in another,
and sometimes a concert (always short) in the large drawing-room. None
but the most eminent artists performed in the house. Tullia had so much
good sense, that she attained to the most exquisite tact, and herein, in
all probability, lay the secret of her ascendency over du Bruel; at
any rate, he loved her with the love which use and wont at length makes
indispensable to life. Every day adds another thread to the strong,
irresistible, intangible web, which enmeshes the most delicate fancies,
takes captive every most transient mood, and binding them together,
holds a man captive hand and foot, heart and head.
“Tullia knew Cursy well; she knew every weak point in his armor, knew
also how to heal his wounds.
“A passion of this kind is inscrutable for any observer, even for a man
who prides himself, as I do, on a certain expertness. It is everywhere
unfathomable; the dark depths in it are darker than in any other
mystery; the colors confused even in the highest lights.
“Cursy was an old playwright, jaded by the life of the theatrical world.
He liked comfort; he liked a luxurious, affluent, easy existence; he
enjoyed being a king in his own house; he liked to be host to a party of
men of letters in a hotel resplendent with royal luxury, with carefully
chosen works of art shining in the setting. Tullia allowed du Bruel to
enthrone himself amid the tribe; there were plenty of journalists whom
it was easy enough to catch and ensnare; and, thanks to her evening
parties and a well-timed loan here and there, Cursy was not attacked
too seriously--his plays succeeded. For these reasons he would not have
separated from Tullia for an empire. If she had been unfaithful, he
would probably have passed it over, on condition that none of his
accustomed joys should be retrenched; yet, strange to say, Tullia caused
him no twinges on this account. No fancy was laid to her charge; if
there had been any, she certainly had been very careful of appearances.
“‘My dear fellow,’ du Bruel would say, laying down the law to us on the
boulevard, ‘there is nothing like one of these women who have sown their
wild oats and got over their passions. Such women as Claudine have lived
their bachelor life; they have been over head and ears in pleasure, and
make the most adorable wives that could be wished; they have nothing to
learn, they are formed, they are not in the least prudish; they are well
broken in, and indulgent. So I strongly recommend everybody to take the
“remains of a racer.” I am the most fortunate man on earth.’
“Du Bruel said this to me himself with Bixiou there to hear it.
“‘My dear fellow,’ said the caricaturist, ‘perhaps he is right to be in
the wrong.’
“About a week afterwards, du Bruel asked us to dine with him one
Tuesday. That morning I went to see him on a piece of theatrical
business, a case submitted to us for arbitration by the commission of
dramatic authors. We were obliged to go out again; but before we started
he went to Claudine’s room, knocked, as he always does, and asked for
leave to enter.
“‘We live in grand style,’ said he, smiling; ‘we are free. Each is
independent.’
“We were admitted. Du Bruel spoke to Claudine. ‘I have asked a few
people to dinner to-day--”
“‘Just like you!’ cried she. ‘You ask people without speaking to me; I
count for nothing here.--Now’ (taking me as arbitrator by a glance) ‘I
ask you yourself. When a man has been so foolish as to live with a woman
of my sort; for, after all, I was an opera dancer--yes, I ought always
to remember that, if other people are to forget it--well, under those
circumstances, a clever man seeking to raise his wife in public opinion
would do his best to impose her upon the world as a remarkable woman, to
justify the step he had taken by acknowledging that in some ways she was
something more than ordinary women. The best way of compelling respect
from others is to pay respect to her at home, and to leave her absolute
mistress of the house. Well, and yet it is enough to awaken one’s vanity
to see how frightened he is of seeming to listen to me. I must be in the
right ten times over if he concedes a single point.’
“(Emphatic negative gestures from du Bruel at every other word.)
“‘Oh, yes, yes,’ she continued quickly, in answer to this mute dissent.
‘I know all about it, du Bruel, my dear, I that have been like a queen
in my house all my life till I married you. My wishes were guessed,
fulfilled, and more than fulfilled. After all, I am thirty-five, and at
five-and-thirty a woman cannot expect to be loved. Ah, if I were a girl
of sixteen, if I had not lost something that is dearly bought at the
Opera, what attention you would pay me, M. du Bruel! I feel the most
supreme contempt for men who boast that they can love and grow careless
and neglectful in little things as time grows on. You are short and
insignificant, you see, du Bruel; you love to torment a woman; it is
your only way of showing your strength. A Napoleon is ready to be swayed
by the woman he loves; he loses nothing by it; but as for such as you,
you believe that you are nothing apparently, you do not wish to be
ruled.--Five-and-thirty, my dear boy,’ she continued, turning to me,
‘that is the clue to the riddle.--“No,” does he say again?--You know
quite well that I am thirty-seven. I am very sorry, but just ask your
friends to dine at the _Rocher de Cancale_. I _could_ have them here,
but I will not; they shall not come. And then perhaps my poor little
monologue may engrave that salutary maxim, “Each is master at home,”
upon your memory. That is our character,’ she added, laughing, with a
return of the opera girl’s giddiness and caprice.
“‘Well, well, my dear little puss; there, there, never mind. We can
manage to get on together,’ said du Bruel, and he kissed her hands, and
we came away. But he was very wroth.
“The whole way from the Rue de la Victoire to the boulevard a perfect
torrent of venomous words poured from his mouth like a waterfall in
flood; but as the shocking language which he used on occasion was quite
unfit to print, the report is necessarily inadequate.
“‘My dear fellow, I will leave that vile, shameless opera dancer, a
worn-out jade that has been set spinning like a top to every operatic
air; a foul hussy, an organ-grinder’s monkey! Oh, my dear boy, you have
taken up with an actress; may the notion of marrying your mistress never
get a hold on you. It is a torment omitted from the hell of Dante, you
see. Look here! I will beat her; I will give her a thrashing; I will
give it to her! Poison of my life, she sent me off like a running
footman.’
“By this time we had reached the boulevard, and he had worked himself up
to such a pitch of fury that the words stuck in his throat.
“‘I will kick the stuffing out of her!’
“‘And why?’
“‘My dear fellow, you will never know the thousand-and-one fancies that
slut takes into her head. When I want to stay at home, she, forsooth,
must go out; when I want to go out, she wants me to stop at home; and
she spouts out arguments and accusations and reasoning and talks and
talks till she drives you crazy. Right means any whim that they happen
to take into their heads, and wrong means our notion. Overwhelm them
with something that cuts their arguments to pieces--they hold their
tongues and look at you as if you were a dead dog. My happiness
indeed! I lead the life of a yard-dog; I am a perfect slave. The little
happiness that I have with her costs me dear. Confound it all. I will
leave her everything and take myself off to a garret. Yes, a garret and
liberty. I have not dared to have my own way once in these five years.’
“But instead of going to his guests, Cursy strode up and down the
boulevard between the Rue de Richelieu and the Rue du Mont Blanc,
indulging in the most fearful imprecations, his unbounded language was
most comical to hear. His paroxysm of fury in the street contrasted
oddly with his peaceable demeanor in the house. Exercise assisted him to
work off his nervous agitation and inward tempest. About two o’clock, on
a sudden frantic impulse, he exclaimed:
“‘These damned females never know what they want. I will wager my head
now that if I go home and tell her that I have sent to ask my friends
to dine with me at the _Rocher de Cancale_, she will not be satisfied
though she made the arrangement herself.--But she will have gone off
somewhere or other. I wonder whether there is something at the bottom of
all this, an assignation with some goat? No. In the bottom of her heart
she loves me!’”
The Marquise could not help smiling.
“Ah, madame,” said Nathan, looking keenly at her, “only women and
prophets know how to turn faith to account.--Du Bruel would have me go
home with him,” he continued, “and we went slowly back. It was three
o’clock. Before he appeared, he heard a stir in the kitchen, saw
preparations going forward, and glanced at me as he asked the cook the
reason of this.
“‘Madame ordered dinner,’ said the woman. ‘Madame dressed and ordered a
cab, and then she changed her mind and ordered it again for the theatre
this evening.’
“‘Good,’ exclaimed du Bruel, ‘what did I tell you?’
“We entered the house stealthily. No one was there. We went from room to
room until we reached a little boudoir, and came upon Tullia in tears.
She dried her eyes without affectation, and spoke to du Bruel.
“‘Send a note to the _Rocher de Cancale_,’ she said, ‘and ask your
guests to dine here.’
“She was dressed as only women of the theatre can dress, in a
simply-made gown of some dainty material, neither too costly nor too
common, graceful and harmonious in outline and coloring; there was
nothing conspicuous about her, nothing exaggerated--a word now dropping
out of use, to be replaced by the word ‘artistic,’ used by fools
as current coin. In short, Tullia looked like a gentlewoman. At
thirty-seven she had reached the prime of a Frenchwoman’s beauty. At
this moment the celebrated oval of her face was divinely pale; she had
laid her hat aside; I could see a faint down like the bloom of fruit
softening the silken contours of a cheek itself so delicate. There was a
pathetic charm about her face with its double cluster of fair hair; her
brilliant gray eyes were veiled by a mist of tears; her nose, delicately
carved as a Roman cameo, with its quivering nostrils; her little
mouth, like a child’s even now; her long queenly throat, with the veins
standing out upon it; her chin, flushed for the moment by some secret
despair; the pink tips of her ears, the hands that trembled under her
gloves, everything about her told of violent feeling. The feverish
twitching of her eyebrows betrayed her pain. She looked sublime.
“Her first words had crushed du Bruel. She looked at us both, with that
penetrating, impenetrable cat-like glance which only actresses and great
ladies can use. Then she held out her hand to her husband.
“‘Poor dear, you had scarcely gone before I blamed myself a thousand
times over. It seemed to me that I had been horribly ungrateful. I told
myself that I had been unkind.--Was I very unkind?’ she asked, turning
to me.--‘Why not receive your friends? Is it not your house? Do you want
to know the reason of it all? Well, I was afraid that I was not loved;
and indeed I was half-way between repentance and the shame of going
back. I read the newspapers, and saw that there was a first night at
the Varietes, and I thought you had meant to give the dinner to a
collaborator. Left to myself, I gave way, I dressed to hurry out after
you--poor pet.’
“Du Bruel looked at me triumphantly, not a vestige of a recollection of
his orations _contra Tullia_ in his mind.
“‘Well, dearest, I have not spoken to any one of them,’ he said.
“‘How well we understand each other!’ quoth she.
“Even as she uttered those bewildering sweet words, I caught sight of
something in her belt, the corner of a little note thrust sidewise
into it; but I did not need that indication to tell me that Tullia’s
fantastic conduct was referable to occult causes. Woman, in my opinion,
is the most logical of created beings, the child alone excepted. In both
we behold a sublime phenomenon, the unvarying triumph of one dominant,
all-excluding thought. The child’s thought changes every moment; but
while it possesses him, he acts upon it with such ardor that others give
way before him, fascinated by the ingenuity, the persistence of a strong
desire. Woman is less changeable, but to call her capricious is a stupid
insult. Whenever she acts, she is always swayed by one dominant passion;
and wonderful it is to see how she makes that passion the very centre of
her world.
“Tullia was irresistible; she twisted du Bruel round her fingers, the
sky grew blue again, the evening was glorious. And ingenious writer
of plays as he is, he never so much as saw that his wife had buried a
trouble out of sight.
“‘Such is life, my dear fellow,’ he said to me, ‘ups and downs and
contrasts.’
“‘Especially life off the stage,’ I put in.
“‘That is just what I mean,’ he continued. ‘Why, but for these violent
emotions, one would be bored to death! Ah! that woman has the gift of
rousing me.’
“We went to the Varietes after dinner; but before we left the house
I slipped into du Bruel’s room, and on a shelf among a pile of waste
papers found the copy of the _Petites-Affiches_, in which, agreeably to
the reformed law, notice of the purchase of the house was inserted. The
words stared me in the face--‘At the request of Jean Francois du Bruel
and Claudine Chaffaroux, his wife----’ _Here_ was the explanation of the
whole matter. I offered my arm to Claudine, and allowed the guests to
descend the stairs in front of us. When we were alone--‘If I were La
Palferine,’ I said, ‘I would not break an appointment.’
“Gravely she laid her finger on her lips. She leant on my arm as we went
downstairs, and looked at me with almost something like happiness in
her eyes because I knew La Palferine. Can you see the first idea that
occurred to her? She thought of making a spy of me, but I turned her off
with the light jesting talk of Bohemia.
“A month later, after a first performance of one of du Bruel’s plays,
we met in the vestibule of the theatre. It was raining; I went to call
a cab. We had been delayed for a few minutes, so that there were no cabs
in sight. Claudine scolded du Bruel soundly; and as we rolled through
the streets (for she set me down at Florine’s), she continued the
quarrel with a series of most mortifying remarks.
“‘What is this about?’ I inquired.
“‘Oh, my dear fellow, she blames me for allowing you to run out for a
cab, and thereupon proceeds to wish for a carriage.’
“‘As a dancer,’ said she, ‘I have never been accustomed to use my feet
except on the boards. If you have any spirit, you will turn out four
more plays or so in a year; you will make up your mind that succeed they
must, when you think of the end in view, and that your wife will not
walk in the mud. It is a shame that I should have to ask for it. You
ought to have guessed my continual discomfort during the five years
since I married you.’
“‘I am quite willing,’ returned du Bruel. ‘But we shall ruin ourselves.’
“‘If you run into debt,’ she said, ‘my uncle’s money will clear it off
some day.’
“‘You are quite capable of leaving me the debts and taking the
property.’
“‘Oh! is that the way you take it?’ retorted she. ‘I have nothing more
to say to you; such a speech stops my mouth.’
“Whereupon du Bruel poured out his soul in excuses and protestations of
love. Not a word did she say. He took her hands, she allowed him to take
them; they were like ice, like a dead woman’s hands. Tullia, you can
understand, was playing to admiration the part of corpse that women
can play to show you that they refuse their consent to anything and
everything; that for you they are suppressing soul, spirit, and life,
and regard themselves as beasts of burden. Nothing so provokes a man
with a heart as this strategy. Women can only use it with those who
worship them.
“She turned to me. ‘Do you suppose,’ she said scornfully, ‘that a Count
would have uttered such an insult even if the thought had entered his
mind? For my misfortune I have lived with dukes, ambassadors, and great
lords, and I know their ways. How intolerable it makes bourgeois life!
After all, a playwright is not a Rastignac nor a Rhetore----’
“Du Bruel looked ghastly at this. Two days afterwards we met in the
_foyer_ at the Opera, and took a few turns together. The conversation
fell on Tullia.
“‘Do not take my ravings on the boulevard too seriously,’ said he; ‘I
have a violent temper.’
“For two winters I was a tolerably frequent visitor at du Bruel’s house,
and I followed Claudine’s tactics closely. She had a splendid carriage.
Du Bruel entered public life; she made him abjure his Royalist opinions.
He rallied himself; he took his place again in the administration; the
National Guard was discreetly canvassed, du Bruel was elected major, and
behaved so valorously in a street riot, that he was decorated with the
rosette of an officer of the Legion of Honor. He was appointed Master
of Requests and head of a department. Uncle Chaffaroux died and left his
niece forty thousand francs per annum, three-fourths of his fortune.
Du Bruel became a deputy; but beforehand, to save the necessity of
re-election, he secured his nomination to the Council of State. He
reprinted divers archaeological treatises, a couple of political
pamphlets, and a statistical work, by way of pretext for his appointment
to one of the obliging academies of the Institut. At this moment he is
a Commander of the Legion, and (after fishing in the troubled waters of
political intrigue) has quite recently been made a peer of France and a
count. As yet our friend does not venture to bear his honors; his wife
merely puts ‘La Comtesse du Bruel’ on her cards. The sometime
playwright has the Order of Leopold, the Order of Isabella, the cross of
Saint-Vladimir, second class, the Order of Civil Merit of Bavaria,
the Papal Order of the Golden Spur,--all the lesser orders, in short,
besides the Grand Cross.
“Three months ago Claudine drove to La Palferine’s door in her splendid
carriage with its armorial bearings. Du Bruel’s grandfather was a farmer
of taxes ennobled towards the end of Louis Quatorze’s reign. Cherin
composed his coat-of-arms for him, so the Count’s coronet looks not
amiss above a scutcheon innocent of Imperial absurdities. In this
way, in the short space of three years, Claudine had carried out the
programme laid down for her by the charming, light-hearted La Palferine.
“One day, just above a month ago, she climbed the miserable staircase to
her lover’s lodging; climbed in her glory, dressed like a real countess
of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, to our friend’s garret. La Palferine,
seeing her, said, ‘You have made a peeress of yourself I know. But it
is too late, Claudine; every one is talking just now about the Southern
Cross, I should like it see it!’
“‘I will get it for you.’
“La Palferine burst into a peal of Homeric laughter.
“‘Most distinctly,’ he returned, ‘I do _not_ wish to have a woman as
ignorant as a carp for my mistress, a woman that springs like a flying
fish from the green-room of the Opera to Court, for I should like to see
you at the Court of the Citizen King.’
“She turned to me.
“‘What is the Southern Cross?’ she asked, in a sad, downcast voice.