Madame Firmiani was giving a ball. M. Charles de Vandenesse, a young man
of great promise, the bearer of one of those historic names which, in
spite of the efforts of legislation, are always associated with the
glory of France, had received letters of introduction to some of the
great lady’s friends in Naples, and had come to thank the hostess and to
take his leave.
Vandenesse had already acquitted himself creditably on several
diplomatic missions; and now that he had received an appointment as
attache to a plenipotentiary at the Congress of Laybach, he wished to
take advantage of the opportunity to make some study of Italy on the
way. This ball was a sort of farewell to Paris and its amusements and
its rapid whirl of life, to the great eddying intellectual centre and
maelstrom of pleasure; and a pleasant thing it is to be borne along
by the current of this sufficiently slandered great city of Paris. Yet
Charles de Vandenesse had little to regret, accustomed as he had been
for the past three years to salute European capitals and turn his back
upon them at the capricious bidding of a diplomatist’s destiny. Women
no longer made any impression upon him; perhaps he thought that a real
passion would play too large a part in a diplomatist’s life; or perhaps
that the paltry amusements of frivolity were too empty for a man
of strong character. We all of us have huge claims to strength of
character. There is no man in France, be he ever so ordinary a member of
the rank and file of humanity, that will waive pretensions to something
beyond mere cleverness.
Charles, young though he was--he was scarcely turned thirty--looked at
life with a philosophic mind, concerning himself with theories and
means and ends, while other men of his age were thinking of pleasure,
sentiments, and the like illusions. He forced back into some inner depth
the generosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was generous.
He tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund of wealth
which chanced to be in his nature into gracious manners, and courtesy,
and attractive arts; ‘tis the proper task of an ambitious man, to play a
sorry part to gain “a good position,” as we call it in modern days.
He had been dancing, and now he gave a farewell glance over the rooms,
to carry away a distinct impression of the ball, moved, doubtless, to
some extent by the feeling which prompts a theatre-goer to stay in
his box to see the final tableau before the curtain falls. But M. de
Vandenesse had another reason for his survey. He gazed curiously at the
scene before him, so French in character and in movement, seeking to
carry away a picture of the light and laughter and the faces at
this Parisian fete, to compare with the novel faces and picturesque
surroundings awaiting him at Naples, where he meant to spend a few
days before presenting himself at his post. He seemed to be drawing the
comparison now between this France so variable, changing even as you
study her, with the manners and aspects of that other land known to him
as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel, for the
most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical cast, albeit
hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his brain, in response
to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was hardly conscious, a
desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather than jaded, vacant
rather than seared.
“These are the wealthiest and most fashionable women and the greatest
ladies in Paris,” he said to himself. “These are the great men of the
day, great orators and men of letters, great names and titles; artists
and men in power; and yet in it all it seems to me as if there were
nothing but petty intrigues and still-born loves, meaningless smiles
and causeless scorn, eyes lighted by no flame within, brain-power in
abundance running aimlessly to waste. All those pink-and-white faces are
here not so much for enjoyment, as to escape from dulness. None of the
emotion is genuine. If you ask for nothing but court feathers properly
adjusted, fresh gauzes and pretty toilettes and fragile, fair women, if
you desire simply to skim the surface of life, here is your world for
you. Be content with meaningless phrases and fascinating simpers, and do
not ask for real feeling. For my own part, I abhor the stale intrigues
which end in sub-prefectures and receiver-generals’ places and
marriages; or, if love comes into the question, in stealthy compromises,
so ashamed are we of the mere semblance of passion. Not a single one of
all these eloquent faces tells you of a soul, a soul wholly absorbed by
one idea as by remorse. Regrets and misfortune go about shame-facedly
clad in jests. There is not one woman here whose resistance I should
care to overcome, not one who could drag you down to the pit. Where will
you find energy in Paris? A poniard here is a curious toy to hang from a
gilt nail, in a picturesque sheath to match. The women, the brains, and
hearts of Paris are all on a par. There is no passion left, because
we have no individuality. High birth and intellect and fortune are all
reduced to one level; we all have taken to the uniform black coat by way
of mourning for a dead France. There is no love between equals. Between
two lovers there should be differences to efface, wide gulfs to fill.
The charm of love fled from us in 1789. Our dulness and our humdrum
lives are the outcome of the political system. Italy at any rate is the
land of sharp contrasts. Woman there is a malevolent animal, a dangerous
unreasoning siren, guided only by her tastes and appetites, a creature
no more to be trusted than a tiger--”
Mme. Firmiani here came up to interrupt this soliloquy made up of vague,
conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts which cannot be reproduced in
words. The whole charm of such musing lies in its vagueness--what is it
but a sort of mental haze?
“I want to introduce you to some one who has the greatest wish to make
your acquaintance, after all that she has heard of you,” said the lady,
taking his arm.
She brought him into the next room, and with such a smile and glance
as a Parisienne alone can give, she indicated a woman sitting by the
hearth.
“Who is she?” the Comte de Vandenesse asked quickly.
“You have heard her name more than once coupled with praise or blame.
She is a woman who lives in seclusion--a perfect mystery.”
“Oh! if ever you have been merciful in your life, for pity’s sake tell
me her name.”
“She is the Marquise d’Aiglemont.”
“I will take lessons from her; she had managed to make a peer of France
of that eminently ordinary person her husband, and a dullard into a
power in the land. But, pray tell me this, did Lord Grenville die for
her sake, do you think, as some women say?”
“Possibly. Since that adventure, real or imaginary, she is very much
changed, poor thing! She has not gone into society since. Four years of
constancy--that is something in Paris. If she is here to-night----”
Here Mme. Firmiani broke off, adding with a mysterious expression, “I am
forgetting that I must say nothing. Go and talk with her.”
For a moment Charles stood motionless, leaning lightly against the
frame of the doorway, wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of a woman who had
become famous, no one exactly knew how or why. Such curious anomalies
are frequent enough in the world. Mme. d’Aiglemont’s reputation was
certainly no more extraordinary than plenty of other great reputations.
There are men who are always in travail of some great work which never
sees the light, statisticians held to be profound on the score of
calculations which they take very good care not to publish, politicians
who live on a newspaper article, men of letters and artists whose
performances are never given to the world, men of science, much as
Sganarelle is a Latinist for those who know no Latin; there are the men
who are allowed by general consent to possess a peculiar capacity for
some one thing, be it for the direction of arts, or for the conduct
of an important mission. The admirable phrase, “A man with a special
subject,” might have been invented on purpose for these acephalous
species in the domain of literature and politics.
Charles gazed longer than he intended. He was vexed with himself for
feeling so strongly interested; it is true, however, that the lady’s
appearance was a refutation of the young man’s ballroom generalizations.
The Marquise had reached her thirtieth year. She was beautiful in spite
of her fragile form and extremely delicate look. Her greatest charm lay
in her still face, revealing unfathomed depths of soul. Some haunting,
ever-present thought veiled, as it were, the full brilliance of eyes
which told of a fevered life and boundless resignation. So seldom
did she raise the eyelids soberly downcast, and so listless were her
glances, that it almost seemed as if the fire in her eyes were reserved
for some occult contemplation. Any man of genius and feeling must have
felt strangely attracted by her gentleness and silence. If the mind
sought to explain the mysterious problem of a constant inward turning
from the present to the past, the soul was no less interested in
initiating itself into the secrets of a heart proud in some sort of
its anguish. Everything about her, moreover, was in keeping with these
thoughts which she inspired. Like almost all women who have very long
hair, she was very pale and perfectly white. The marvelous fineness of
her skin (that almost unerring sign) indicated a quick sensibility which
could be seen yet more unmistakably in her features; there was the same
minute and wonderful delicacy of finish in them that the Chinese artist
gives to his fantastic figures. Perhaps her neck was rather too long,
but such necks belong to the most graceful type, and suggest vague
affinities between a woman’s head and the magnetic curves of the
serpent. Leave not a single one of the thousand signs and tokens by
which the most inscrutable character betrays itself to an observer of
human nature, he has but to watch carefully the little movements of a
woman’s head, the ever-varying expressive turns and curves of her neck
and throat, to read her nature.
Mme. d’Aiglemont’s dress harmonized with the haunting thought that
informed the whole woman. Her hair was gathered up into a tall coronet
of broad plaits, without ornament of any kind; she seemed to have bidden
farewell for ever to elaborate toilettes. Nor were any of the small arts
of coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in her. Perhaps
her bodice, modest though it was, did not altogether conceal the dainty
grace of her figure, perhaps, too, her gown looked rich from the
extreme distinction of its fashion, and if it is permissible to look for
expression in the arrangement of stuffs, surely those numerous straight
folds invested her with a great dignity. There may have been some
lingering trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care
bestowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen
with some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of a rival to
discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural did they seem, so
much a part of old childish habit, that her careless grace absolved this
vestige of vanity.
All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which combine to
make up the sum of a woman’s prettiness or ugliness, her charm or lack
of charm, can only be indicated, when, as with Mme. d’Aiglemont, a
personality dominates and gives coherence to the details, informing
them, blending them all in an exquisite whole. Her manner was perfectly
in accord with her style of beauty and her dress. Only to certain women
at a certain age is it given to put language into their attitude. Is it
joy or is it sorrow that teaches a woman of thirty the secret of that
eloquence of carriage, so that she must always remain an enigma which
each interprets by the aid of his hopes, desires, or theories?
The way in which the Marquise leaned both elbows on the arm of her
chair, the toying of her interclasped fingers, the curve of her throat,
the indolent lines of her languid but lissome body as she lay back in
graceful exhaustion, as it were; her indolent limbs, her unstudied pose,
the utter lassitude of her movements,--all suggested that this was a
woman for whom life had lost its interest, a woman who had known
the joys of love only in dreams, a woman bowed down by the burden of
memories of the past, a woman who had long since despaired of the future
and despaired of herself, an unoccupied woman who took the emptiness of
her own life for the nothingness of life.
Charles de Vandenesse saw and admired the beautiful picture before
him, as a kind of artistic success beyond an ordinary woman’s powers of
attainment. He was acquainted with d’Aiglemont; and now, at the first
sight of d’Aiglemont’s wife, the young diplomatist saw at a glance a
disproportionate marriage, an incompatibility (to use the legal jargon)
so great that it was impossible that the Marquise should love her
husband. And yet--the Marquise d’Aiglemont’s life was above reproach,
and for any observer the mystery about her was the more interesting on
this account. The first impulse of surprise over, Vandenesse cast
about for the best way of approaching Mme. d’Aiglemont. He would try a
commonplace piece of diplomacy, he thought; he would disconcert her by a
piece of clumsiness and see how she would receive it.
“Madame,” he said, seating himself near her, “through a fortunate
indiscretion I have learned that, for some reason unknown to me, I have
had the good fortune to attract your notice. I owe you the more thanks
because I have never been so honored before. At the same time, you are
responsible for one of my faults, for I mean never to be modest again--”
“You will make a mistake, monsieur,” she laughed; “vanity should be left
to those who have nothing else to recommend them.”
The conversation thus opened ranged at large, in the usual way, over a
multitude of topics--art and literature, politics, men and things--till
insensibly they fell to talking of the eternal theme in France and all
the world over--love, sentiment, and women.
“We are bond-slaves.”
“You are queens.”
This was the gist and substance of all the more or less ingenious
discourse between Charles and the Marquise, as of all such
discourses--past, present, and to come. Allow a certain space of time,
and the two formulas shall begin to mean “Love me,” and “I will love
you.”
“Madame,” Charles de Vandenesse exclaimed under his breath, “you have
made me bitterly regret that I am leaving Paris. In Italy I certainly
shall not pass hours in intellectual enjoyment such as this has been.”
“Perhaps, monsieur, you will find happiness, and happiness is worth
more than all the brilliant things, true and false, that are said every
evening in Paris.”
Before Charles took leave, he asked permission to pay a farewell call
on the Marquise d’Aiglemont, and very lucky did he feel himself when
the form of words in which he expressed himself for once was used in all
sincerity; and that night, and all day long on the morrow, he could not
put the thought of the Marquise out of his mind.
At times he wondered why she had singled him out, what she had
meant when she asked him to come to see her, and thought supplied an
inexhaustible commentary. Again it seemed to him that he had discovered
the motives of her curiosity, and he grew intoxicated with hope or
frigidly sober with each new construction put upon that piece of
commonplace civility. Sometimes it meant everything, sometimes nothing.
He made up his mind at last that he would not yield to this inclination,
and--went to call on Mme. d’Aiglemont.
There are thoughts which determine our conduct, while we do not so much
as suspect their existence. If at first sight this assertion appears to
be less a truth than a paradox, let any candid inquirer look into his
own life and he shall find abundant confirmation therein. Charles went
to Mme. d’Aiglemont, and so obeyed one of these latent, pre-existent
germs of thought, of which our experience and our intellectual gains and
achievements are but later and tangible developments.
For a young man a woman of thirty has irresistible attractions. There
is nothing more natural, nothing better established, no human tie of
stouter tissue than the heart-deep attachment between such a woman as
the Marquise d’Aiglemont and such a man as Charles de Vandenesse. You
can see examples of it every day in the world. A girl, as a matter
of fact, has too many young illusions, she is too inexperienced, the
instinct of sex counts for too much in her love for a young man to feel
flattered by it. A woman of thirty knows all that is involved in
the self-surrender to be made. Among the impulses of the first, put
curiosity and other motives than love; the second acts with integrity of
sentiment. The first yields; the second makes deliberate choice. Is
not that choice in itself an immense flattery? A woman armed with
experience, forewarned by knowledge, almost always dearly bought, seems
to give more than herself; while the inexperienced and credulous girl,
unable to draw comparisons for lack of knowledge, can appreciate
nothing at its just worth. She accepts love and ponders it. A woman is a
counselor and a guide at an age when we love to be guided and obedience
is delight; while a girl would fain learn all things, meeting us with a
girl’s _naivete_ instead of a woman’s tenderness. She affords a single
triumph; with a woman there is resistance upon resistance to overcome;
she has but joy and tears, a woman has rapture and remorse.
A girl cannot play the part of a mistress unless she is so corrupt
that we turn from her with loathing; a woman has a thousand ways of
preserving her power and her dignity; she has risked so much for love,
that she must bid him pass through his myriad transformations, while her
too submissive rival gives a sense of too serene security which palls.
If the one sacrifices her maidenly pride, the other immolates the honor
of a whole family. A girl’s coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that
all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman’s coquetry is endless,
she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of
man’s vanity, the novice responds but to one.
And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations--trouble and storm in the
love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl’s
love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem
she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are
full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it
glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in
pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can
only make moan. And with all the advantages of her position, the woman
of thirty can be a girl again, for she can play all parts, assume a
girl’s bashfulness, and grow the fairer even for a mischance.
Between these two feminine types lies the immeasurable difference which
separates the foreseen from the unforeseen, strength from weakness. The
woman of thirty satisfies every requirement; the young girl must satisfy
none, under penalty of ceasing to be a young girl. Such ideas as these,
developing in a young man’s mind, help to strengthen the strongest of
all passions, a passion in which all spontaneous and natural feeling is
blended with the artificial sentiment created by conventional manners.
The most important and decisive step in a woman’s life is the very
one that she invariably regards as the most insignificant. After her
marriage she is no longer her own mistress, she is the queen and
the bond-slave of the domestic hearth. The sanctity of womanhood is
incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman
emancipation means corruption. If you give a stranger the right of entry
into the sanctuary of home, do you not put yourself at his mercy? How
then if she herself bids him enter it? Is not this an offence, or, to
speak more accurately, a first step towards an offence? You must
either accept this theory with all its consequences, or absolve illicit
passion. French society hitherto has chosen the third and middle course
of looking on and laughing when offences come, apparently upon the
Spartan principle of condoning the theft and punishing clumsiness.
And this system, it may be, is a very wise one. ‘Tis a most appalling
punishment to have all your neighbors pointing the finger of scorn
at you, a punishment that a woman feels in her very heart. Women are
tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without
esteem they cannot exist, esteem is the first demand that they make
of love. The most corrupt among them feels that she must, in the first
place, pledge the future to buy absolution for the past, and strives
to make her lover understand that only for irresistible bliss can she
barter the respect which the world henceforth will refuse to her.
Some such reflections cross the mind of any woman who for the first time
and alone receives a visit from a young man; and this especially when,
like Charles de Vandenesse, the visitor is handsome or clever. And
similarly there are not many young men who would fail to base some
secret wish on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the
instinct that attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman
like the Marquise d’Aiglemont.
Mme. d’Aiglemont, therefore, felt troubled when M. de Vandenesse was
announced; and as for him, he was almost confused in spite of the
assurance which is like a matter of costume for a diplomatist. But not
for long. The Marquise took refuge at once in the friendliness of manner
which women use as a defence against the misinterpretations of fatuity,
a manner which admits of no afterthought, while it paves the way to
sentiment (to make use of a figure of speech), tempering the transition
through the ordinary forms of politeness. In this ambiguous position,
where the four roads leading respectively to Indifference, Respect,
Wonder, and Passion meet, a woman may stay as long as she pleases, but
only at thirty years does she understand all the possibilities of the
situation. Laughter, tenderness, and jest are all permitted to her at
the crossing of the ways; she has acquired the tact by which she finds
all the responsive chords in a man’s nature, and skill in judging the
sounds which she draws forth. Her silence is as dangerous as her speech.
You will never read her at that age, nor discover if she is frank or
false, nor how far she is serious in her admissions or merely laughing
at you. She gives you the right to engage in a game of fence with her,
and suddenly by a glance, a gesture of proved potency, she closes the
combat and turns from you with your secret in her keeping, free to offer
you up in a jest, free to interest herself in you, safe alike in her
weakness and your strength.
Although the Marquise d’Aiglemont took up her position upon this neutral
ground during the first interview, she knew how to preserve a high
womanly dignity. The sorrows of which she never spoke seemed to hang
over her assumed gaiety like a light cloud obscuring the sun. When
Vandenesse went out, after a conversation which he had enjoyed more than
he had thought possible, he carried with him the conviction that this
was like to be too costly a conquest for his aspirations.
“It would mean sentiment from here to yonder,” he thought, “and
correspondence enough to wear out a deputy second-clerk on his
promotion. And yet if I really cared----”
Luckless phrase that has been the ruin of many an infatuated mortal. In
France the way to love lies through self-love. Charles went back to Mme.
d’Aiglemont, and imagined that she showed symptoms of pleasure in his
conversion. And then, instead of giving himself up like a boy to the joy
of falling in love, he tried to play a double role. He did his best
to act passion and to keep cool enough to analyze the progress of this
flirtation, to be lover and diplomatist at once; but youth and hot blood
and analysis could only end in one way, over head and ears in love; for,
natural or artificial, the Marquise was more than his match. Each time
he went out from Mme. d’Aiglemont, he strenuously held himself to his
distrust, and submitted the progressive situations of his case to a
rigorous scrutiny fatal to his own emotions.
“To-day she gave me to understand that she has been very unhappy and
lonely,” said he to himself, after the third visit, “and that but for
her little girl she would have longed for death. She was perfectly
resigned. Now as I am neither her brother nor her spiritual director,
why should she confide her troubles to _me_? She loves me.”
Two days later he came away apostrophizing modern manners.
“Love takes on the hue of every age. In 1822 love is a doctrinaire.
Instead of proving love by deeds, as in times past, we have taken to
argument and rhetoric and debate. Women’s tactics are reduced to three
shifts. In the first place, they declare that we cannot love as they
love. (Coquetry! the Marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge,
this evening!) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our natural
generosity or self-love; for does it not flatter a young man’s vanity to
console a woman for a great calamity? And lastly, they have a craze for
virginity. She must have thought that I thought her very innocent. My
good faith is like to become an excellent speculation.”
But a day came when every suspicious idea was exhausted. He asked
himself whether the Marquise was not sincere; whether so much suffering
could be feigned, and why she should act the part of resignation? She
lived in complete seclusion; she drank in silence of a cup of sorrow
scarcely to be guessed unless from the accent of some chance exclamation
in a voice always well under control. From that moment Charles felt a
keen interest in Mme. d’Aiglemont. And yet, though his visits had come
to be a recognized thing, and in some sort a necessity to them both,
and though the hour was kept free by tacit agreement, Vandenesse still
thought that this woman with whom he was in love was more clever than
sincere. “Decidedly, she is an uncommonly clever woman,” he used to say
to himself as he went away.
When he came into the room, there was the Marquise in her favorite
attitude, melancholy expressed in her whole form. She made no movement
when he entered, only raised her eyes and looked full at him, but the
glance that she gave him was like a smile. Mme. d’Aiglemont’s manner
meant confidence and sincere friendship, but of love there was no trace.
Charles sat down and found nothing to say. A sensation for which no
language exists troubled him.
“What is the matter with you?” she asked in a softened voice.
“Nothing.... Yes; I am thinking of something of which, as yet, you have
not thought at all.”
“What is it?”
“Why--the Congress is over.”
“Well,” she said, “and ought you to have been at the Congress?”
A direct answer would have been the most eloquent and delicate
declaration of love; but Charles did not make it. Before the candid
friendship in Mme. d’Aiglemont’s face all the calculations of vanity,
the hopes of love, and the diplomatist’s doubts died away. She did not
suspect, or she seemed not to suspect, his love for her; and Charles,
in utter confusion turning upon himself, was forced to admit that he had
said and done nothing which could warrant such a belief on her part. For
M. de Vandenesse that evening, the Marquise was, as she had always been,
simple and friendly, sincere in her sorrow, glad to have a friend, proud
to find a nature responsive to her own--nothing more. It had not entered
her mind that a woman could yield twice; she had known love--love lay
bleeding still in the depths of her heart, but she did not imagine that
bliss could bring her its rapture twice, for she believed not merely
in the intellect, but in the soul; and for her love was no simple
attraction; it drew her with all noble attractions.
In a moment Charles became a young man again, enthralled by the splendor
of a nature so lofty. He wished for a fuller initiation into the secret
history of a life blighted rather by fate than by her own fault. Mme.
d’Aiglemont heard him ask the cause of the overwhelming sorrow which had
blended all the harmonies of sadness with her beauty; she gave him one
glance, but that searching look was like a seal set upon some solemn
compact.
“Ask no more such questions of me,” she said. “Four years ago, on
this very day, the man who loved me, for whom I would have given up
everything, even my own self-respect, died, and died to save my name.
That love was still young and pure and full of illusions when it came to
an end. Before I gave way to passion--and never was a woman so urged by
fate--I had been drawn into the mistake that ruins many a girl’s life,
a marriage with a man whose agreeable manners concealed his emptiness.
Marriage plucked my hopes away one by one. And now, to-day, I have
forfeited happiness through marriage, as well as the happiness styled
criminal, and I have known no happiness. Nothing is left to me. If I
could not die, at least I ought to be faithful to my memories.”
No tears came with the words. Her eyes fell, and there was a slight
twisting of the fingers interclasped, according to her wont. It was
simply said, but in her voice there was a note of despair, deep as
her love seemed to have been, which left Charles without a hope. The
dreadful story of a life told in three sentences, with that twisting of
the fingers for all comment, the might of anguish in a fragile woman,
the dark depths masked by a fair face, the tears of four years of
mourning fascinated Vandenesse; he sat silent and diminished in the
presence of her woman’s greatness and nobleness, seeing not the physical
beauty so exquisite, so perfectly complete, but the soul so great in
its power to feel. He had found, at last, the ideal of his fantastic
imaginings, the ideal so vigorously invoked by all who look on life as
the raw material of a passion for which many a one seeks ardently, and
dies before he has grasped the whole of the dreamed-of treasure.
With those words of hers in his ears, in the presence of her sublime
beauty, his own thoughts seemed poor and narrow. Powerless as he felt
himself to find words of his own, simple enough and lofty enough to
scale the heights of this exaltation, he took refuge in platitudes as to
the destiny of women.
“Madame, we must either forget our pain, or hollow out a tomb for
ourselves.”
But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being
essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the
other is infinite. To set to work to reason where you are required to
feel, is the mark of a limited nature. Vandenesse therefore held his
peace, sat awhile with his eyes fixed upon her, then came away. A prey
to novel thoughts which exalted woman for him, he was in something the
same position as a painter who has taken the vulgar studio model for
a type of womanhood, and suddenly confronts the _Mnemosyne_ of the
Musee--that noblest and least appreciated of antique statues.
Charles de Vandenesse was deeply in love. He loved Mme. d’Aiglemont with
the loyalty of youth, with the fervor that communicates such ineffable
charm to a first passion, with a simplicity of heart of which a man only
recovers some fragments when he loves again at a later day. Delicious
first passion of youth, almost always deliciously savored by the woman
who calls it forth; for at the golden prime of thirty, from the poetic
summit of a woman’s life, she can look out over the whole course of
love--backwards into the past, forwards into the future--and, knowing
all the price to be paid for love, enjoys her bliss with the dread of
losing it ever present with her. Her soul is still fair with her waning
youth, and passion daily gathers strength from the dismaying prospect of
the coming days.
“This is love,” Vandenesse said to himself this time as he left the
Marquise, “and for my misfortune I love a woman wedded to her memories.
It is hard work to struggle against a dead rival, never present to
make blunders and fall out of favor, nothing of him left but his better
qualities. What is it but a sort of high treason against the Ideal to
attempt to break the charm of memory, to destroy the hopes that survive
a lost lover, precisely because he only awakened longings, and all that
is loveliest and most enchanting in love?”
These sober reflections, due to the discouragement and dread of failure
with which love begins in earnest, were the last expiring effort of
diplomatic reasoning. Thenceforward he knew no afterthoughts, he was the
plaything of his love, and lost himself in the nothings of that strange
inexplicable happiness which is full fed by a chance word, by silence,
or a vague hope. He tried to love Platonically, came daily to breathe
the air that she breathed, became almost a part of her house, and went
everywhere with her, slave as he was of a tyrannous passion compounded
of egoism and devotion of the completest. Love has its own instinct,
finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way
to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay or turn aside. If
feeling is sincere, its destiny is not doubtful. Let a woman begin to
think that her life depends on the sincerity or fervor or earnestness
which her lover shall put into his longings, and is there not sufficient
in the thought to put her through all the tortures of dread? It is
impossible for a woman, be she wife or mother, to be secure from a young
man’s love. One thing it is within her power to do--to refuse to see him
as soon as she learns a secret which she never fails to guess. But
this is too decided a step to take at an age when marriage has become a
prosaic and tiresome yoke, and conjugal affection is something less than
tepid (if indeed her husband has not already begun to neglect her). Is a
woman plain? she is flattered by a love which gives her fairness. Is she
young and charming? She is only to be won by a fascination as great
as her own power to charm, that is to say, a fascination well-nigh
irresistible. Is she virtuous? There is a love sublime in its
earthliness which leads her to find something like absolution in the
very greatness of the surrender and glory in a hard struggle. Everything
is a snare. No lesson, therefore, is too severe where the temptation is
so strong. The seclusion in which the Greeks and Orientals kept and keep
their women, an example more and more followed in modern England, is the
only safeguard of domestic morality; but under this system there is
an end of all the charm of social intercourse; and society, and good
breeding, and refinement of manners become impossible. The nations must
take their choice.
So a few months went by, and Mme. d’Aiglemont discovered that her life
was closely bound with this young man’s life, without overmuch confusion
in her surprise, and felt with something almost like pleasure that she
shared his tastes and his thoughts. Had she adopted Vandenesse’s ideas?
Or was it Vandenesse who had made her lightest whims his own? She was
not careful to inquire. She had been swept out already into the current
of passion, and yet this adorable woman told herself with the confident
reiteration of misgiving;
“Ah! no. I will be faithful to him who died for me.”
Pascal said that “the doubt of God implies belief in God.” And similarly
it may be said that a woman only parleys when she has surrendered. A day
came when the Marquise admitted to herself that she was loved, and
with that admission came a time of wavering among countless conflicting
thoughts and feelings. The superstitions of experience spoke their
language. Should she be happy? Was it possible that she should find
happiness outside the limits of the laws which society rightly or
wrongly has set up for humanity to live by? Hitherto her cup of life had
been full of bitterness. Was there any happy issue possible for the
ties which united two human beings held apart by social conventions? And
might not happiness be bought too dear? Still, this so ardently desired
happiness, for which it is so natural to seek, might perhaps be found
after all. Curiosity is always retained on the lover’s side in the suit.
The secret tribunal was still sitting when Vandenesse appeared, and his
presence put the metaphysical spectre, reason, to flight.
If such are the successive transformations through which a sentiment,
transient though it be, passes in a young man and a woman of thirty,
there comes a moment of time when the shades of difference blend into
each other, when all reasonings end in a single and final reflection
which is lost and absorbed in the desire which it confirms. Then the
longer the resistance, the mightier the voice of love. And here endeth
this lesson, or rather this study made from the _écorché_, to borrow a
most graphic term from the studio, for in this history it is not so much
intended to portray love as to lay bare its mechanism and its dangers.
From this moment every day adds color to these dry bones, clothes them
again with living flesh and blood and the charm of youth, and puts
vitality into their movements; till they glow once more with the beauty,
the persuasive grace of sentiment, the loveliness of life.
Charles found Mme. d’Aiglemont absorbed in thought, and to his “What is
it?” spoken in thrilling tones grown persuasive with the heart’s soft
magic, she was careful not to reply. The delicious question bore witness
to the perfect unity of their spirits; and the Marquise felt, with a
woman’s wonderful intuition, that to give any expression to the sorrow
in her heart would be to make an advance. If, even now, each one
of those words was fraught with significance for them both, in what
fathomless depths might she not plunge at the first step? She read
herself with a clear and lucid glance. She was silent, and Vandenesse
followed her example.
“I am not feeling well,” she said at last, taking alarm at the pause
fraught with such great moment for them both, when the language of the
eyes completely filled the blank left by the helplessness of speech.
“Madame,” said Charles, and his voice was tender but unsteady with
strong feeling, “soul and body are both dependent on each other. If you
were happy, you would be young and fresh. Why do you refuse to ask of
love all that love has taken from you? You think that your life is over
when it is only just beginning. Trust yourself to a friend’s care. It is
so sweet to be loved.”
“I am old already,” she said; “there is no reason why I should not
continue to suffer as in the past. And ‘one must love,’ do you say?
Well, I must not, and I cannot. Your friendship has put some sweetness
into my life, but beside you I care for no one, no one could efface my
memories. A friend I accept; I should fly from a lover. Besides, would
it be a very generous thing to do, to exchange a withered heart for a
young heart; to smile upon illusions which now I cannot share, to cause
happiness in which I should either have no belief, or tremble to lose?
I should perhaps respond to his devotion with egoism, should weigh and
deliberate while he felt; my memory would resent the poignancy of his
happiness. No, if you love once, that love is never replaced, you see.
Indeed, who would have my heart at this price?”
There was a tinge of heartless coquetry in the words, the last effort of
discretion.
“If he loses courage, well and good, I shall live alone and faithful.”
The thought came from the very depths of the woman, for her it was the
too slender willow twig caught in vain by a swimmer swept out by the
current.
Vandenesse’s involuntary shudder at her dictum plead more eloquently for
him than all his past assiduity. Nothing moves a woman so much as the
discovery of a gracious delicacy in us, such a refinement of sentiment
as her own, for a woman the grace and delicacy are sure tokens of truth.
Charles’ start revealed the sincerity of his love. Mme. d’Aiglemont
learned the strength of his affection from the intensity of his pain.
“Perhaps you are right,” he said coldly. “New love, new vexation of
spirit.”
Then he changed the subject, and spoke of indifferent matters; but he
was visibly moved, and he concentrated his gaze on Mme. d’Aiglemont as
if he were seeing her for the last time.
“Adieu, madame,” he said, with emotion in his voice.
“_Au revoir_,” said she, with that subtle coquetry, the secret of a very
few among women.
He made no answer and went.
When Charles was no longer there, when his empty chair spoke for him,
regrets flocked in upon her, and she found fault with herself. Passion
makes an immense advance as soon as a woman persuades herself that she
has failed somewhat in generosity or hurt a noble nature. In love there
is never any need to be on our guard against the worst in us; that is
a safeguard; a woman only surrenders at the summons of a virtue. “The
floor of hell is paved with good intentions,”--it is no preacher’s
paradox.
Vandenesse stopped away for several days. Every evening at the
accustomed hour the Marquise sat expectant in remorseful impatience.
She could not write--that would be a declaration, and, moreover, her
instinct told her that he would come back. On the sixth day he was
announced, and never had she heard the name with such delight. Her joy
frightened her.
“You have punished me well,” she said, addressing him.
Vandenesse gazed at her in astonishment.
“Punished?” he echoed. “And for what?” He understood her quite well,
but he meant to be avenged for all that he had suffered as soon as she
suspected it.
“Why have you not come to see me?” she demanded with a smile.
“Then you have seen no visitors?” asked he, parrying the question.
“Yes. M. de Ronquerolles and M. de Marsay and young d’Escrignon came
and stayed for nearly two hours, the first two yesterday, the last this
morning. And besides, I have had a call, I believe, from Mme. Firmiani
and from your sister, Mme. de Listomère.”
Here was a new infliction, torture which none can comprehend unless they
know love as a fierce and all-invading tyrant whose mildest symptom is
a monstrous jealousy, a perpetual desire to snatch away the beloved from
every other influence.
“What!” thought he to himself, “she has seen visitors, she has been
with happy creatures, and talking to them, while I was unhappy and all
alone.”
He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to the depths of
his heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts were of the kind that
never find expression in words; they pass through the mind swiftly as
a deadly acid, that poisons as it evaporates and vanishes. His brow,
however, was over-clouded; and Mme. d’Aiglemont, guided by her woman’s
instinct, shared his sadness without understanding it. She had hurt him,
unwittingly, as Vandenesse knew. He talked over his position with her,
as if his jealousy were one of those hypothetical cases which lovers
love to discuss. Then the Marquise understood it all. She was so deeply
moved, that she could not keep back the tears--and so these lovers
entered the heaven of love.
Heaven and Hell are two great imaginative conceptions formulating our
ideas of Joy and Sorrow--those two poles about which human existence
revolves. Is not heaven a figure of speech covering now and for
evermore an infinite of human feeling impossible to express save in its
accidents--since that Joy is one? And what is Hell but the symbol of
our infinite power to suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain it is
possible to fashion works of art, for no two human sorrows are alike?
One evening the two lovers sat alone and side by side, silently watching
one of the fairest transformations of the sky, a cloudless heaven taking
hues of pale gold and purple from the last rays of the sunset. With the
slow fading of the daylight, sweet thoughts seem to awaken, and soft
stirrings of passion, and a mysterious sense of trouble in the midst of
calm. Nature sets before us vague images of bliss, bidding us enjoy
the happiness within our reach, or lament it when it has fled. In those
moments fraught with enchantment, when the tender light in the canopy
of the sky blends in harmony with the spells working within, it is
difficult to resist the heart’s desires grown so magically potent. Cares
are blunted, joy becomes ecstasy; pain, intolerable anguish. The pomp
of sunset gives the signal for confessions and draws them forth. Silence
grows more dangerous than speech for it gives to eyes all the power of
the infinite of the heavens reflected in them. And for speech, the least
word has irresistible might. Is not the light infused into the voice and
purple into the glances? Is not heaven within us, or do we feel that we
are in the heavens?
Vandenesse and Julie--for so she had allowed herself to be called
for the past few days by him whom she loved to speak of as
Charles--Vandenesse and Julie were talking together, but they had
drifted very far from their original subject; and if their spoken words
had grown meaningless they listened in delight to the unspoken thoughts
that lurked in the sounds. Her hand lay in his. She had abandoned it to
him without a thought that she had granted a proof of love.
Together they leaned forward to look out upon a majestic cloud country,
full of snows and glaciers and fantastic mountain peaks with gray stains
of shadow on their sides, a picture composed of sharp contrasts between
fiery red and the shadows of darkness, filling the skies with a fleeting
vision of glory which cannot be reproduced--magnificent swaddling-bands
of sunrise, bright shrouds of the dying sun. As they leaned Julie’s hair
brushed lightly against Vandenesse’s cheek. She felt that light contact,
and shuddered violently, and he even more, for imperceptibly they both
had reached one of those inexplicable crises when quiet has wrought
upon the senses until every faculty of perception is so keen that the
slightest shock fills the heart lost in melancholy with sadness that
overflows in tears; or raises joy to ecstasy in a heart that is lost
in the vertigo of love. Almost involuntarily Julie pressed her lover’s
hand. That wooing pressure gave courage to his timidity. All the joy of
the present, all the hopes of the future were blended in the emotion
of a first caress, the bashful trembling kiss that Mme. d’Aiglemont
received upon her cheek. The slighter the concession, the more dangerous
and insinuating it was. For their double misfortune it was only too
sincere a revelation. Two noble natures had met and blended, drawn
each to each by every law of natural attraction, held apart by every
ordinance.
General d’Aiglemont came in at that very moment.
“The Ministry has gone out,” he said. “Your uncle will be in the
new cabinet. So you stand an uncommonly good chance of an embassy,
Vandenesse.”
Charles and Julie looked at each other and flushed red. That blush was
one more tie to unite them; there was one thought and one remorse in
either mind; between two lovers guilty of a kiss there is a bond quite
as strong and terrible as the bond between two robbers who have murdered
a man. Something had to be said by way of reply.
“I do not care to leave Paris now,” Charles said.
“We know why,” said the General, with the knowing air of a man who
discovers a secret. “You do not like to leave your uncle, because you do
not wish to lose your chance of succeeding to the title.”
The Marquise took refuge in her room, and in her mind passed a pitiless
verdict upon her husband.
“His stupidity is really beyond anything!”