Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat country,
skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontainebleau, and marked out
as to its southern limits by the towns of Moret, Montereau, and Nemours.
It is a dreary country; little knolls of hills appear only at rare
intervals, and a coppice here and there among the fields affords
for game; and beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or
yellowish horizon peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri.
In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from Moret and
Montereau, the traveler passes the old chateau of Saint-Lange, standing
amid surroundings which lack neither dignity nor stateliness. There are
magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by the moat,
and a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile which represents
the profits of the _maltôte_, the gains of farmers-general, legalized
malversation, or the vast fortunes of great houses now brought low
beneath the hammer of the Civil Code.
Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads
full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place
against intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic
old place was set down in a savanna of corn-land, a desert of chalk,
and sand, and marl, where gaiety dies away, and melancholy is a natural
product of the soil. The voiceless solitude, the monotonous horizon line
which weigh upon the spirits are negative beauties, which only suit with
sorrow that refuses to be comforted.
Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well
known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the
immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of
high rank and corresponding fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange.
From time immemorial, farmers and laborers had seen no gentry at the
chateau. The estate, considerable though it was, had been left in charge
of a land-steward and the house to the old servants. Wherefore the
appearance of the lady of the manor caused a kind of sensation in the
district.
A group had gathered in the yard of the wretched little wineshop at the
end of the village (where the road forks to Nemours and Moret) to see
the carriage pass. It went by slowly, for the Marquise had come
from Paris with her own horses, and those on the lookout had ample
opportunity of observing a waiting-maid, who sat with her back to the
horses holding a little girl, with a somewhat dreamy look, upon her
knee. The child’s mother lay back in the carriage; she looked like
a dying woman sent out into the country air by her doctors as a last
resource. Village politicians were by no means pleased to see the
young, delicate, downcast face; they had hoped that the new arrival at
Saint-Lange would bring some life and stir into the neighborhood,
and clearly any sort of stir or movement must be distasteful to the
suffering invalid in the traveling carriage.
That evening, when the notables of Saint-Lange were drinking in the
private room of the wineshop, the longest head among them declared that
such depression could admit of but one construction--the Marquise
was ruined. His lordship the Marquis was away in Spain with the Duc
d’Angoulême (so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her
ladyship had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill-luck on
the Bourse. The Marquis was one of the greatest gamblers on the face of
the globe. Perhaps the estate would be cut up and sold in little lots.
There would be some good strokes of business to be made in that case,
and it behooved everybody to count up his cash, unearth his savings
and to see how he stood, so as to secure his share of the spoil of
Saint-Lange.
So fair did this future seem, that the village worthies, dying to know
whether it was founded on fact, began to think of ways of getting at the
truth through the servants at the chateau. None of these, however, could
throw any light on the calamity which had brought their mistress into
the country at the beginning of winter, and to the old chateau of
Saint-Lange of all places, when she might have taken her choice of
cheerful country-houses famous for their beautiful gardens.
His worship the mayor called to pay his respects; but he did not see the
lady. Then the land-steward tried with no better success.
Madame la Marquise kept her room, only leaving it, while it was set
in order, for the small adjoining drawing-room, where she dined; if,
indeed, to sit down to a table, to look with disgust at the dishes, and
take the precise amount of nourishment required to prevent death from
sheer starvation, can be called dining. The meal over, she returned
at once to the old-fashioned low chair, in which she had sat since the
morning, in the embrasure of the one window that lighted her room.
Her little girl she only saw for a few minutes daily, during the dismal
dinner, and even for a short time she seemed scarcely able to bear the
child’s presence. Surely nothing but the most unheard-of anguish could
have extinguished a mother’s love so early.
None of the servants were suffered to come near, her own woman was
the one creature whom she liked to have about her; the chateau must be
perfectly quiet, the child must play at the other end of the house. The
slightest sound had grown so intolerable, that any human voice, even the
voice of her own child, jarred upon her.
At first the whole countryside was deeply interested in these
eccentricities; but time passed on, every possible hypothesis had been
advanced to account for them and the peasants and dwellers in the little
country towns thought no more of the invalid lady.
So the Marquise was left to herself. She might live on, perfectly
silent, amid the silence which she herself had created; there was
nothing to draw her forth from the tapestried chamber where her
grandmother died, whither she herself had come that she might die,
gently, without witnesses, without importunate solicitude, without
suffering from the insincere demonstrations of egoism masquerading as
affection, which double the agony of death in great cities.
She was twenty-six years old. At that age, with plenty of romantic
illusions still left, the mind loves to dwell on the thought of death
when death seems to come as a friend. But with youth, death is coy,
coming up close only to go away, showing himself and hiding again, till
youth has time to fall out of love with him during this dalliance. There
is that uncertainty too that hangs over death’s to-morrow. Youth plunges
back into the world of living men, there to find the pain more pitiless
than death, that does not wait to strike.
This woman who refused to live was to know the bitterness of these
reprieves in the depths of her loneliness; in moral agony, which death
would not come to end, she was to serve a terrible apprenticeship to the
egoism which must take the bloom from her heart and break her in to the
life of the world.
This harsh and sorry teaching is the usual outcome of our early sorrows.
For the first, and perhaps for the last time in her life, the Marquise
d’Aiglemont was in very truth suffering. And, indeed, would it not be an
error to suppose that the same sentiment can be reproduced in us? Once
develop the power to feel, is it not always there in the depths of our
nature? The accidents of life may lull or awaken it, but there it is, of
necessity modifying the self, its abiding place. Hence, every sensation
should have its great day once and for all, its first day of storm,
be it long or short. Hence, likewise, pain, the most abiding of our
sensations, could be keenly felt only at its first irruption, its
intensity diminishing with every subsequent paroxysm, either because we
grow accustomed to these crises, or perhaps because a natural instinct
of self-preservation asserts itself, and opposes to the destroying force
of anguish an equal but passive force of inertia.
Yet of all kinds of suffering, to which does the name of anguish belong?
For the loss of parents, Nature has in a manner prepared us; physical
suffering, again, is an evil which passes over us and is gone; it lays
no hold upon the soul; if it persists, it ceases to be an evil, it is
death. The young mother loses her firstborn, but wedded love ere long
gives her a successor. This grief, too, is transient. After all, these,
and many other troubles like unto them, are in some sort wounds and
bruises; they do not sap the springs of vitality, and only a succession
of such blows can crush in us the instinct that seeks happiness. Great
pain, therefore, pain that arises to anguish, should be suffering so
deadly, that past, present, and future are alike included in its grip,
and no part of life is left sound and whole. Never afterwards can
we think the same thoughts as before. Anguish engraves itself in
ineffaceable characters on mouth and brow; it passes through us,
destroying or relaxing the springs that vibrate to enjoyment, leaving
behind in the soul the seeds of a disgust for all things in this world.
Yet, again, to be measureless, to weigh like this upon body and soul,
the trouble should befall when soul and body have just come to their
full strength, and smite down a heart that beats high with life. Then it
is that great scars are made. Terrible is the anguish. None, it may
be, can issue from this soul-sickness without undergoing some dramatic
change. Those who survive it, those who remain on earth, return to the
world to wear an actor’s countenance and to play an actor’s part. They
know the side-scenes where actors may retire to calculate chances, shed
their tears, or pass their jests. Life holds no inscrutable dark places
for those who have passed through this ordeal; their judgments are
Rhadamanthine.
For young women of the Marquise d’Aiglemont’s age, this first, this most
poignant pain of all, is always referable to the same cause. A woman,
especially if she is a young woman, greatly beautiful, and by nature
great, never fails to stake her whole life as instinct and sentiment and
society all unite to bid her. Suppose that that life fails her, suppose
that she still lives on, she cannot but endure the most cruel pangs,
inasmuch as a first love is the loveliest of all. How comes it that this
catastrophe has found no painter, no poet? And yet, can it be painted?
Can it be sung? No; for the anguish arising from it eludes analysis
and defies the colors of art. And more than this, such pain is never
confessed. To console the sufferer, you must be able to divine the past
which she hugs in bitterness to her soul like a remorse; it is like an
avalanche in a valley; it laid all waste before it found a permanent
resting-place.
The Marquise was suffering from this anguish, which will for long remain
unknown, because the whole world condemns it, while sentiment cherishes
it, and the conscience of a true woman justifies her in it. It is with
such pain as with children steadily disowned of life, and therefore
bound more closely to the mother’s heart than other children more
bounteously endowed. Never, perhaps, was the awful catastrophe in which
the whole world without dies for us, so deadly, so complete, so cruelly
aggravated by circumstance as it had been for the Marquise. The man whom
she had loved was young and generous; in obedience to the laws of the
world, she had refused herself to his love, and he had died to save a
woman’s honor, as the world calls it. To whom could she speak of her
misery? Her tears would be an offence against her husband, the origin
of the tragedy. By all laws written and unwritten she was bound over to
silence. A woman would have enjoyed the story; a man would have schemed
for his own benefit. No; such grief as hers can only weep freely in
solitude and in loneliness; she must consume her pain or be consumed by
it; die or kill something within her--her conscience, it may be.
Day after day she sat gazing at the flat horizon. It lay out before her
like her own life to come. There was nothing to discover, nothing to
hope. The whole of it could be seen at a glance. It was the visible
presentment in the outward world of the chill sense of desolation which
was gnawing restlessly at her heart. The misty mornings, the pale,
bright sky, the low clouds scudding under the gray dome of heaven,
fitted with the moods of her soul-sickness. Her heart did not contract,
was neither more nor less seared, rather it seemed as if her youth, in
its full blossom, was slowly turned to stone by an anguish intolerable
because it was barren. She suffered through herself and for herself. How
could it end save in self-absorption? Ugly torturing thoughts probed
her conscience. Candid self-examination pronounced that she was double,
there were two selves within her; a woman who felt and a woman who
thought; a self that suffered and a self that could fain suffer no
longer. Her mind traveled back to the joys of childish days; they had
gone by, and she had never known how happy they were. Scenes crowded up
in her memory as in a bright mirror glass, to demonstrate the deception
of a marriage which, all that it should be in the eyes of the world, was
in reality wretched. What had the delicate pride of young womanhood
done for her--the bliss foregone, the sacrifices made to the world?
Everything in her expressed love, awaited love; her movements still were
full of perfect grace; her smile, her charm, were hers as before; why?
she asked herself. The sense of her own youth and physical loveliness
no more affected her than some meaningless reiterated sound. Her very
beauty had grown intolerable to her as a useless thing. She shrank
aghast from the thought that through the rest of life she must remain an
incomplete creature; had not the inner self lost its power of receiving
impressions with that zest, that exquisite sense of freshness which is
the spring of so much of life’s gladness? The impressions of the future
would for the most part be effaced as soon as received, and many of the
thoughts which once would have moved her now would move her no more.
After the childhood of the creature dawns the childhood of the heart;
but this second infancy was over, her lover had taken it down with him
into the grave. The longings of youth remained; she was young yet; but
the completeness of youth was gone, and with that lost completeness the
whole value and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Should she not
always bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, ready to
grow up and rob emotion of its springtide of fervor? Conscious she must
always be that nothing could give her now the happiness so longed for,
that seemed so fair in her dreams. The fire from heaven that sheds
abroad its light in the heart, in the dawn of love, had been quenched
in tears, the first real tears which she had shed; henceforth she must
always suffer, because it was no longer in her power to be what once
she might have been. This is a belief which turns us in aversion and
bitterness of spirit from any proffered new delight.
Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of age about to
die. Young though she felt, the heavy weight of joyless days had fallen
upon her, and left her broken-spirited and old before her time. With a
despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in exchange
for the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked herself whether
in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will had not been more
criminal than her deeds, and chose to believe herself guilty; partly
to affront the world, partly for her own consolation, in that she had
missed the close union of body and soul, which diminishes the pain of
the one who is left behind by the knowledge that once it has known and
given joy to the full, and retains within itself the impress of that
which is no more.
Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of her part
mingled with the pain which thrilled through every fibre of her heart
and brain. Her nature had been thwarted, her vanity wounded, her woman’s
generosity cheated of self-sacrifice. Then, when she had raised all
these questions, set vibrating all the springs in those different
phases of being which we distinguish as social, moral, and physical,
her energies were so far exhausted and relaxed that she was powerless to
grasp a single thought amid the chase of conflicting ideas.
Sometimes as the mists fell, she would throw her window open, and would
stay there, motionless, breathing in unheedingly the damp earthly scent
in the air, her mind to all appearance an unintelligent blank, for the
ceaseless burden of sorrow humming in her brain left her deaf to earth’s
harmonies and insensible to the delights of thought.
One day, towards noon, when the sun shone out for a little, her maid
came in without a summons.
“This is the fourth time that M. le Curé has come to see Mme. la
Marquise; to-day he is so determined about it, that we did not know what
to tell him.”
“He has come to ask for some money for the poor, no doubt; take him
twenty-five louis from me.”
The woman went only to return.
“M. le Cure will not take the money, my lady; he wants to speak to you.”
“Then let him come!” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, with an involuntary shrug
which augured ill for the priest’s reception. Evidently the lady meant
to put a stop to persecution by a short and sharp method.
Mme. d’Aiglemont had lost her mother in her early childhood; and as a
natural consequence in her bringing-up, she had felt the influence of
the relaxed notions which loosened the hold of religion upon France
during the Revolution. Piety is a womanly virtue which women alone can
really instil; and the Marquise, a child of the eighteenth century, had
adopted her father’s creed of philosophism, and practised no religious
observances. A priest, to her way of thinking, was a civil servant of
very doubtful utility. In her present position, the teaching of religion
could only poison her wounds; she had, moreover, but scanty faith in the
lights of country cures, and made up her mind to put this one gently but
firmly in his place, and to rid herself of him, after the manner of the
rich, by bestowing a benefit.
At first sight of the curé the Marquise felt no inclination to change
her mind. She saw before her a stout, rotund little man, with a ruddy,
wrinkled, elderly face, which awkwardly and unsuccessfully tried to
smile. His bald, quadrant-shaped forehead, furrowed by intersecting
lines, was too heavy for the rest of his face, which seemed to be
dwarfed by it. A fringe of scanty white hair encircled the back of his
head, and almost reached his ears. Yet the priest looked as if by nature
he had a genial disposition; his thick lips, his slightly curved nose,
his chin, which vanished in a double fold of wrinkles,--all marked him
out as a man who took cheerful views of life.
At first the Marquise saw nothing but these salient characteristics,
but at the first word she was struck by the sweetness of the speaker’s
voice. Looking at him more closely, she saw that the eyes under the
grizzled eyebrows had shed tears, and his face, turned in profile, wore
so sublime an impress of sorrow, that the Marquise recognized the man in
the curé.
“Madame la Marquise, the rich only come within our province when
they are in trouble. It is easy to see that the troubles of a young,
beautiful, and wealthy woman, who has lost neither children nor
relatives, are caused by wounds whose pangs religion alone can soothe.
Your soul is in danger, madame. I am not speaking now of the hereafter
which awaits us. No, I am not in the confessional. But it is my duty,
is it not, to open your eyes to your future life here on earth? You
will pardon an old man, will you not, for importunity which has your own
happiness for its object?”
“There is no more happiness for me, monsieur. I shall soon be, as you
say, in your province; but it will be for ever.”
“Nay, madame. You will not die of this pain which lies heavy upon you,
and can be read in your face. If you had been destined to die of it, you
would not be here at Saint-Lange. A definite regret is not so deadly
as hope deferred. I have known others pass through more intolerable and
more awful anguish, and yet they live.”
The Marquise looked incredulous.
“Madame, I know a man whose affliction was so sore that your trouble
would seem to you to be light compared with his.”
Perhaps the long solitary hours had begun to hang heavily; perhaps in
the recesses of the Marquise’s mind lay the thought that here was a
friendly heart to whom she might be able to pour out her troubles.
However, it was, she gave the cure a questioning glance which could not
be mistaken.
“Madame,” he continued, “the man of whom I tell you had but three
children left of a once large family circle. He lost his parents, his
daughter, and his wife, whom he dearly loved. He was left alone at last
on the little farm where he had lived so happily for so long. His three
sons were in the army, and each of the lads had risen in proportion to
his time of service. During the Hundred Days, the oldest went into
the Guard with a colonel’s commission; the second was a major in the
artillery; the youngest a major in a regiment of dragoons. Madame, those
three boys loved their father as much as he loved them. If you but knew
how careless young fellows grow of home ties when they are carried
away by the current of their own lives, you would realize from this one
little thing how warmly they loved the lonely old father, who only lived
in and for them--never a week passed without a letter from one of the
boys. But then he on his side had never been weakly indulgent, to lessen
their respect for him; nor unjustly severe, to thwart their affection;
or apt to grudge sacrifices, the thing that estranges children’s hearts.
He had been more than a father; he had been a brother to them, and their
friend.
“At last he went to Paris to bid them good-bye before they set out for
Belgium; he wished to see that they had good horses and all that they
needed. And so they went, and the father returned to his home again.
Then the war began. He had letters from Fleurus, and again from Ligny.
All went well. Then came the battle of Waterloo, and you know the rest.
France was plunged into mourning; every family waited in intense anxiety
for news. You may imagine, madame, how the old man waited for tidings,
in anxiety that knew no peace nor rest. He used to read the gazettes;
he went to the coach office every day. One evening he was told that the
colonel’s servant had come. The man was riding his master’s horse--what
need was there to ask any questions?--the colonel was dead, cut in
two by a shell. Before the evening was out the youngest son’s servant
arrived--the youngest had died on the eve of the battle. At midnight
came a gunner with tidings of the death of the last; upon whom, in those
few hours, the poor father had centered all his life. Madame, they all
had fallen.”
After a pause the good man controlled his feelings, and added gently:
“And their father is still living, madame. He realized that if God had
left him on earth, he was bound to live on and suffer on earth; but he
took refuge in the sanctuary. What could he be?”
The Marquise looked up and saw the curé’s face, grown sublime in its
sorrow and resignation, and waited for him to speak. When the words
came, tears broke from her.
“A priest, madame; consecrated by his own tears previously shed at the
foot of the altar.”
Silence prevailed for a little. The Marquise and the curé looked out at
the foggy landscape, as if they could see the figures of those who were
no more.
“Not a priest in a city, but a simple country curé,” added he.
“At Saint-Lange,” she said, drying her eyes.
“Yes, madame.”
Never had the majesty of grief seemed so great to Julie. The two words
sank straight into her heart with the weight of infinite sorrow. The
gentle, sonorous tones troubled her heart. Ah! that full, deep voice,
charged with plangent vibration, was the voice of one who had suffered
indeed.
“And if I do not die, monsieur, what will become of me?” The Marquise
spoke almost reverently.
“Have you not a child, madame?”
“Yes,” she said stiffly.
The curé gave her such a glance as a doctor gives a patient whose life
is in danger. Then he determined to do all that in him lay to combat the
evil spirit into whose clutches she had fallen.
“We must live on with our sorrows--you see it yourself, madame, and
religion alone offers us real consolation. Will you permit me to come
again?--to speak to you as a man who can sympathize with every trouble,
a man about whom there is nothing very alarming, I think?”
“Yes, monsieur, come back again. Thank you for your thought of me.”
“Very well, madame; then I shall return very shortly.”
This visit relaxed the tension of soul, as it were; the heavy strain
of grief and loneliness had been almost too much for the Marquise’s
strength. The priest’s visit had left a soothing balm in her heart, his
words thrilled through her with healing influence. She began to feel
something of a prisoner’s satisfaction, when, after he has had time
to feel his utter loneliness and the weight of his chains, he hears a
neighbor knocking on the wall, and welcomes the sound which brings a
sense of human friendship. Here was an unhoped-for confidant. But
this feeling did not last for long. Soon she sank back into the old
bitterness of spirit, saying to herself, as the prisoner might say, that
a companion in misfortune could neither lighten her own bondage nor her
future.
In the first visit the curé had feared to alarm the susceptibilities
of self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he hoped to make some
progress towards religion. He came back again two days later, and from
the Marquise’s welcome it was plain that she had looked forward to the
visit.
“Well, Mme. la Marquise, have you given a little thought to the great
mass of human suffering? Have you raised your eyes above our earth and
seen the immensity of the universe?--the worlds beyond worlds which
crush our vanity into insignificance, and with our vanity reduce our
sorrows?”
“No, monsieur,” she said; “I cannot rise to such heights, our social
laws lie too heavily upon me, and rend my heart with a too poignant
anguish. And laws perhaps are less cruel than the usages of the world.
Ah! the world!”
“Madame, we must obey both. Law is the doctrine, and custom the practice
of society.”
“Obey society?” cried the Marquise, with an involuntary shudder. “Eh!
monsieur, it is the source of all our woes. God laid down no law to
make us miserable; but mankind, uniting together in social life, have
perverted God’s work. Civilization deals harder measure to us women than
nature does. Nature imposes upon us physical suffering which you have
not alleviated; civilization has developed in us thoughts and feelings
which you cheat continually. Nature exterminates the weak; you condemn
them to live, and by so doing, consign them to a life of misery. The
whole weight of the burden of marriage, an institution on which society
is based, falls upon us; for the man liberty, duties for the woman. We
must give up our whole lives to you, you are only bound to give us a
few moments of yours. A man, in fact, makes a choice, while we blindly
submit. Oh, monsieur, to you I can speak freely. Marriage, in these
days, seems to me to be legalized prostitution. This is the cause of my
wretchedness. But among so many miserable creatures so unhappily yoked,
I alone am bound to be silent, I alone am to blame for my misery. My
marriage was my own doing.”
She stopped short, and bitter tears fell in the silence.
“In the depths of my wretchedness, in the midst of this sea of
distress,” she went on, “I found some sands on which to set foot and
suffer at leisure. A great tempest swept everything away. And here am I,
helpless and alone, too weak to cope with storms.”
“We are never weak while God is with us,” said the priest. “And if your
cravings for affection cannot be satisfied here on earth, have you no
duties to perform?”
“Duties continually!” she exclaimed, with something of impatience in
her tone. “But where for me are the sentiments which give us strength
to perform them? Nothing from nothing, nothing for nothing,--this,
monsieur, is one of the most inexorable laws of nature, physical or
spiritual. Would you have these trees break into leaf without the sap
which swells the buds? It is the same with our human nature; and in me
the sap is dried up at its source.”
“I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments of which
resignation is born,” said the curé, “but of motherhood, madame,
surely--”
“Stop, monsieur!” said the Marquise, “with you I will be sincere. Alas!
in future I can be sincere with no one; I am condemned to falsehood.
The world requires continual grimaces, and we are bidden to obey
its conventions if we would escape reproach. There are two kinds of
motherhood, monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but I
know them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it were better for
me if I had not been a mother at all. Helene is not _his_ child! Oh! do
not start. At Saint-Lange there are volcanic depths whence come lurid
gleams of light and earthquake shocks to shake the fragile edifices of
laws not based on nature. I have borne a child, that is enough, I am a
mother in the eyes of the law. But you, monsieur, with your delicately
compassionate soul, can perhaps understand this cry from an unhappy
woman who has suffered no lying illusions to enter her heart. God will
judge me, but surely I have only obeyed His laws by giving way to the
affections which He Himself set in me, and this I have learned from my
own soul.--What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the
fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended? Unless it is owned by
every fibre of the body, as by every chord of tenderness in the heart;
unless it recalls the bliss of love, the hours, the places where two
creatures were happy, their words that overflowed with the music of
humanity, and their sweet imaginings, that child is an incomplete
creation. Yes, those two should find the poetic dreams of their intimate
double life realized in their child as in an exquisite miniature; it
should be for them a never-failing spring of emotion, implying their
whole past and their whole future.
“My poor little Helene is her father’s child, the offspring of duty and
of chance. In me she finds nothing but the affection of instinct, the
woman’s natural compassion for the child of her womb. Socially speaking,
I am above reproach. Have I not sacrificed my life and my happiness to
my child? Her cries go to my heart; if she were to fall into the water,
I should spring to save her, but she is not in my heart.
“Ah! love set me dreaming of a motherhood far greater and more complete.
In a vanished dream I held in my arms a child conceived in desire before
it was begotten, the exquisite flower of life that blossoms in the soul
before it sees the light of day. I am Helene’s mother only in the sense
that I brought her forth. When she needs me no longer, there will be an
end of my motherhood; with the extinction of the cause, the effects will
cease. If it is a woman’s adorable prerogative that her motherhood
may last through her child’s life, surely that divine persistence of
sentiment is due to the far-reaching glory of the conception of the
soul? Unless a child has lain wrapped about from life’s first beginnings
by the mother’s soul, the instinct of motherhood dies in her as in the
animals. This is true; I feel that it is true. As my poor little one
grows older, my heart closes. My sacrifices have driven us apart. And
yet I know, monsieur, that to another child my heart would have gone
out in inexhaustible love; for that other I should not have known what
sacrifice meant, all had been delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts
are stronger than reason, stronger than religion or all else in me. Does
the woman who is neither wife nor mother sin in wishing to die when, for
her misfortune, she has caught a glimpse of the infinite beauty of love,
the limitless joy of motherhood? What can become of her? _I_ can tell
you what she feels. I cannot put that memory from me so resolutely but
that a hundred times, night and day, visions of a happiness, greater
it may be than the reality, rise before me, followed by a shudder which
shakes brain and heart and body. Before these cruel visions, my feelings
and thoughts grow colorless, and I ask myself, ‘What would my life have
been _if_----?’”
She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
“There you see the depths of my heart!” she continued. “For _his_
child I could have acquiesced in any lot however dreadful. He who died,
bearing the burden of the sins of the world will forgive this thought
of which I am dying; but the world, I know, is merciless. In its ears
my words are blasphemies; I am outraging all its codes. Oh! that I could
wage war against this world and break down and refashion its laws
and traditions! Has it not turned all my thoughts, and feelings, and
longings, and hopes, and every fibre in me into so many sources of pain?
Spoiled my future, present, and past? For me the daylight is full of
gloom, my thoughts pierce me like a sword, my child is and is not.
“Oh, when Helene speaks to me, I wish that her voice were different,
when she looks into my face I wish that she had other eyes. She
constantly keeps me in mind of all that should have been and is not. I
cannot bear to have her near me. I smile at her, I try to make up to
her for the real affection of which she is defrauded. I am wretched,
monsieur, too wretched to live. And I am supposed to be a pattern wife.
And I have committed no sins. And I am respected! I have fought down
forbidden love which sprang up at unawares within me; but if I have kept
the letter of the law, have I kept it in my heart? There has never been
but one here,” she said, laying her right hand on her breast, “one and
no other; and my child feels it. Certain looks and tones and gestures
mould a child’s nature, and my poor little one feels no thrill in the
arm I put about her, no tremor comes into my voice, no softness into my
eyes when I speak to her or take her up. She looks at me, and I cannot
endure the reproach in her eyes. There are times when I shudder to think
that some day she may be my judge and condemn her mother unheard. Heaven
grant that hate may not grow up between us! Ah! God in heaven,
rather let the tomb open for me, rather let me end my days here at
Saint-Lange!--I want to go back to the world where I shall find my other
soul and become wholly a mother. Ah! forgive me, sir, I am mad. Those
words were choking me; now they are spoken. Ah! you are weeping too! You
will not despise me--”
She heard the child come in from a walk. “Helene, my child, come here!”
she called. The words sounded like a cry of despair.
The little girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to see a
butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of that mother’s tears
she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, and received a kiss on
her forehead.
“She will be very beautiful some day,” said the priest.
“She is her father’s child,” said the Marquise, kissing the little one
with eager warmth, as if she meant to pay a debt of affection or to
extinguish some feeling of remorse.
“How hot you are, mamma!”
“There, go away, my angel,” said the Marquise.
The child went. She did not seem at all sorry to go; she did not
look back; glad perhaps to escape from a sad face, and instinctively
comprehending already an antagonism of feeling in its expression. A
mother’s love finds language in smiles, they are a part of the divine
right of motherhood. The Marquise could not smile. She flushed red as
she felt the curé’s eyes. She had hoped to act a mother’s part before
him, but neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, indeed, when
a woman loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives there is a divine honey;
it is as if a soul were breathed forth in the caress, a subtle flame
of fire which brings warmth to the heart; the kiss that lacks this
delicious unction is meagre and formal. The priest had felt the
difference. He could fathom the depths that lie between the motherhood
of the flesh and the motherhood of the heart. He gave the Marquise a
keen, scrutinizing glance, then he said:
“You are right, madame; it would be better for you if you were dead----”
“Ah!” she cried, “then you know all my misery; I see you do if,
Christian priest as you are, you can guess my determination to die and
sanction it. Yes, I meant to die, but I have lacked the courage. The
spirit was strong, but the flesh was weak, and when my hand did not
tremble, the spirit within me wavered.
“I do not know the reason of these inner struggles, and alternations. I
am very pitiably a woman no doubt, weak in my will, strong only to love.
Oh, I despise myself. At night, when all my household was asleep, I
would go out bravely as far as the lake; but when I stood on the brink,
my cowardice shrank from self-destruction. To you I will confess my
weakness. When I lay in my bed, again, shame would come over me, and
courage would come back. Once I took a dose of laudanum; I was ill, but
I did not die. I thought I had emptied the phial, but I had only taken
half the dose.”
“You are lost, madame,” the curé said gravely, with tears in his voice.
“You will go back into the world, and you will deceive the world. You
will seek and find a compensation (as you imagine it to be) for your
woes; then will come a day of reckoning for your pleasures--”
“Do you think,” she cried, “that _I_ shall bestow the last, the most
precious treasures of my heart upon the first base impostor who can
play the comedy of passion? That I would pollute my life for a moment
of doubtful pleasure? No; the flame which shall consume my soul shall be
love, and nothing but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of
their sex, but not all have the man’s soul which satisfies all the
requirements of our nature, drawing out the melodious harmony which
never breaks forth save in response to the pressure of feeling. Such a
soul is not found twice in our lifetime. The future that lies before
me is hideous; I know it. A woman is nothing without love; beauty is
nothing without pleasure. And even if happiness were offered to me a
second time, would not the world frown upon it? I owe my daughter an
honored mother. Oh! I am condemned to live in an iron circle, from which
there is but one shameful way of escape. The round of family duties, a
thankless and irksome task, is in store for me. I shall curse life; but
my child shall have at least a fair semblance of a mother. I will give
her treasures of virtue for the treasures of love of which I defraud
her.
“I have not even the mother’s desire to live to enjoy her child’s
happiness. I have no belief in happiness. What will Helene’s fate be?
My own, beyond doubt. How can a mother ensure that the man to whom she
gives her daughter will be the husband of her heart? You pour scorn
on the miserable creatures who sell themselves for a few coins to any
passer-by, though want and hunger absolve the brief union; while another
union, horrible for quite other reasons, is tolerated, nay encouraged,
by society, and a young and innocent girl is married to a man whom she
has only met occasionally during the previous three months. She is sold
for her whole lifetime. It is true that the price is high! If you allow
her no compensation for her sorrows, you might at least respect her; but
no, the most virtuous of women cannot escape calumny. This is our fate
in its double aspect. Open prostitution and shame; secret prostitution
and unhappiness. As for the poor, portionless girls, they may die or go
mad, without a soul to pity them. Beauty and virtue are not marketable
in the bazaar where souls and bodies are bought and sold--in the den of
selfishness which you call society. Why not disinherit daughters? Then,
at least, you might fulfil one of the laws of nature, and guided by your
own inclinations, choose your companions.”
“Madame, from your talk it is clear to me that neither the spirit of
family nor the sense of religion appeals to you. Why should you hesitate
between the claims of the social selfishness which irritates you, and
the purely personal selfishness which craves satisfactions--”
“The family, monsieur--does such a thing exist? I decline to recognize
as a family a knot of individuals bidden by society to divide the
property after the death of father and mother, and to go their separate
ways. A family means a temporary association of persons brought together
by no will of their own, dissolved at once by death. Our laws have
broken up homes and estates, and the old family tradition handed down
from generation to generation. I see nothing but wreck and ruin about
me.”
“Madame, you will only return to God when His hand has been heavy upon
you, and I pray that you have time enough given to you in which to make
your peace with Him. Instead of looking to heaven for comfort, you
are fixing your eyes on earth. Philosophism and personal interest
have invaded your heart; like the children of the sceptical eighteenth
century, you are deaf to the voice of religion. The pleasures of this
life bring nothing but misery. You are about to make an exchange of
sorrows, that is all.”
She smiled bitterly.
“I will falsify your predictions,” she said. “I shall be faithful to him
who died for me.”
“Sorrow,” he answered, “is not likely to live long save in souls
disciplined by religion,” and he lowered his eyes respectfully lest the
Marquise should read his doubts in them. The energy of her outburst had
grieved him. He had seen the self that lurked beneath so many forms,
and despaired of softening a heart which affliction seemed to sear. The
divine Sower’s seed could not take root in such a soil, and His gentle
voice was drowned by the clamorous outcry of self-pity. Yet the good man
returned again and again with an apostle’s earnest persistence, brought
back by a hope of leading so noble and proud a soul to God; until the
day when he made the discovery that the Marquise only cared to talk with
him because it was sweet to speak of him who was no more. He would
not lower his ministry by condoning her passion, and confined the
conversation more and more to generalities and commonplaces.
Spring came, and with the spring the Marquise found distraction from her
deep melancholy. She busied herself for lack of other occupation with
her estate, making improvements for amusement.
In October she left the old chateau. In the life of leisure at
Saint-Lange she had recovered from her grief and grown fair and fresh.
Her grief had been violent at first in its course, as the quoit hurled
forth with all the player’s strength, and like the quoit after many
oscillations, each feebler than the last, it had slackened into
melancholy. Melancholy is made up of a succession of such oscillations,
the first touching upon despair, the last on the border between pain
and pleasure; in youth, it is the twilight of dawn; in age, the dusk of
night.
As the Marquise drove through the village in her traveling carriage, she
met the curé on his way back from the church. She bowed in response to
his farewell greeting, but it was with lowered eyes and averted face.
She did not wish to see him again. The village curé had judged this poor
Diana of Ephesus only too well.