This introduction will, doubtless, impress you with the idea that I
wander about Paris with dejected visage and neglected dress. Undeceive
yourself. It is one of my principles never to expose my sacred griefs to
the gaze of an unsympathetic world, that only looks to laugh.
Pity I regard as an insult to my pride: the comforter humiliates the
inconsolable mourner; besides, there are sorrows that all pretend to
understand, but which none really appreciate. It is useless, then, to
enumerate one's maladies to a would-be physician; and the world is
filled with those who delight in the miseries of others; who follow the
sittings of courts and luxuriate in heart-rending pictures of man's
injustice to his fellow.
I do not care to serve as a relaxation to this class of mankind, who,
since the abolition of the circus and amphitheatre, are compelled to
pick up their pleasure wherever they can find it; seeking the best
places to witness the struggle of Christian fortitude with adversity.
But every civilized age has its savage manners, and, knowing this, I
resemble in public the favorite of fortune. I simulate content, and my
face is radiant with deceit.
The idle and curious of the Boulevard Italien, the benches of the circus
would hardly recognise me as the gladiator struggling with an
iron-clawed monster--they are all deceived.
I feel a repugnance, dear Edgar, to entertaining you with a recital of
my mysterious sorrow. I would prefer to leave you in ignorance, or let
you divine them, but I explain to prevent your friendship imagining
afflictions that are not mine.
In the first place, to reassure you, my fortune has not suffered during
my absence. On my return to Paris, my agent dazzled me with the picture
of my wealth.
"Happy man!" said he; "a great name, a large fortune, health that has
defied the fires of the tropics, the ice of the poles,--and only
thirty!" The notary reasoned well from a notary's stand-point. If I were
to reduce my possessions to ingots, they would certainly balance a
notary's estimate of happiness; therefore, fear nothing for my fortune.
Nor must you imagine that I grieve over my political and military
prospects that were lost in the royal storm of '30, when plebeian cannon
riddled the Tuilleries and shattered a senile crown. I was only sixteen,
and hardly understood the lamentations of my father, whose daily refrain
was, "My child, your future is destroyed."
A man's future lies in any honorable career. If I have left the
epaulettes of my ancestors reposing in their domestic shrine, I can
bequeath to my children other decorations.
I have just returned from a ten years' campaign against all nations,
bringing back a marvellous quantity of trophies, but without causing one
mother to mourn. In the light of a conqueror, Caesar, Alexander, and
Hannibal pale in comparison, and yet to a certainty my military future
could not have gained me the epaulettes of these illustrious commanders.
You would not, my dear Edgar, suppose, from the gaiety of this letter,
that I had passed a frightful night.
You shall see what becomes of life when not taken care of; when there is
an unguarded moment in the incessant duel that, forced by nature, we
wage with her from the cradle to the grave.
What a long and glorious voyage I had just accomplished! What dangers I
escaped! The treacherous sea defeated by a motion of the helm! The
sirens to whom I turned a deaf ear. The Circes deserted under a baleful
moon, ere the brutalizing change had come!
I returned to Paris, a man with soul so dead that his country was not
dear to him--I felt guilty of an unknown crime, but reflection reduced
the enormity of the offence. Long voyages impart to us a nameless
virtue--or vice, made up of tolerance, stoicism and disdain. After
having trodden over the graveyards of all nations, it seems as if we had
assisted at the funeral ceremonies of the world, and they who survive on
its surface seem like a band of adroit fugitives who have discovered the
secret of prolonging to-day's agony until to-morrow.
I walked upon the Boulevard Italien without wonder, hatred, love, joy or
sorrow. On consulting my inmost thoughts I found there an unimpassioned
serenity, a something akin to ennui; I scarcely heard the noise of the
wheels, the horses--the crowd that surrounded me.
Habituated to the turmoil of those grand dead nations near the vast
ruins of the desert, this little hubbub of wearied citizens scarcely
attracted my attention.
My face must have reflected the disdainful quietude of my soul.
By contemplative communion with the mute, motionless colossal faces of
Egypt's and Persia's monuments, I felt that unwittingly my countenance
typified the cold imperturbable tranquillity of their granite brows.
That evening La Favorita was played at the opera. Charming work! full of
grace, passion, love. Reaching the end of Le Pelletier street, my walk
was blocked by a line of carriages coming down Provence street; not
having the patience to wait the passage of this string of vehicles, nor
being very dainty in my distinction between pavement and street, I
followed in the wake of the carriages, and as they did not conceal the
façade of the opera at the end of the court, I saw it, and said "I will
go in."
I took a box below, because my family-box had changed hands, hangings
and keys at least five times in ten years, and seated myself in the
background to avoid recognition, and leave undisturbed friends who would
feel in duty bound to pay fashionable court to a traveller due ten
years. I was not familiar with La Favorita, and my ear took in the new
music slowly. Great scores require of the indolent auditor a long
novitiate.
While I listened indolently to the orchestra and the singers, I examined
the boxes with considerable interest, to discover what little
revolutions a decade could bring about in the aristocratic personnel of
the opera. A confused noise of words and some distinct sentences reached
my ear from the neighboring boxes when the orchestra was silent. I
listened involuntarily; the occupants were not talking secrets, their
conversation was in the domain of idle chat, that divides with the
libretto the attention of the habitues of the opera.
They said, "I could distinguish her in a thousand, I mistrust my sight a
little, but my glass is infallible; it is certainly Mlle. de
Bressuire--a superb figure, but she spoils her beauty by affectation."
"Your glass deceives you, my dear sir, we know Mlle. de Bressuire."
"Madame is right; it is not Mlle. That young lady at whom everybody is
gazing, and who to-night is the favorite--excuse the pun--of the opera,
is a Spaniard; I saw her at the Bois de Boulogne in M. Martinez de la
Hosa's carriage. They told me her name, but I have forgotten. I never
could remember names."
"Ladies," said a young man, who noisily entered the box, "we are at last
enlightened. I have just questioned the box-keeper--she is a maid of
honor to the Queen of Belgium."
"And her name?" demanded five voices.
"She has a Belgian name, unpronounceable by the box-keeper; something
like Wallen, or Meulen."
"We are very much wiser."
From the general commotion it was easy to perceive that the same subject
was being discussed by the whole house, and doubtless in the same
terms; for people do not vary their formulas much on such occasions.
A strain of music recalled to the stage every eye that during the
intermission had been fastened upon one woman. I confess that I felt
some interest in the episode, but, owing to my habitual reserve, barely
discovered by random and careless glances the young girl thus handed
over to the curious glances of the fashionable world. She was in a box
of the first tier, and the native grace of her attitude first riveted my
attention. The cynosure of all eyes, she bore her triumph with the ease
of a woman accustomed to admiration.
To appear unconscious she assumed with charming cleverness a pose of
artistic contemplation. One would have said that she was really absorbed
in the music, or that she was following the advice of the Tuscan poet:
"Bel ange, descendu d'un monde aérien,
Laisse-toi regarder et ne regarde rien."
From my position I could only distinguish the outline of her figure,
except by staring through my glasses, which I regard as a polite
rudeness, but she seemed to merit the homage that all eyes looked and
all voices sang.
Once she appeared in the full blaze of the gas as she leaned forward
from her box, and it seemed as if an apparition by some theatro-optical
delusion approached and dazzled me.
The rapt attention of the audience, the mellow tones of the singer, the
orchestral accompaniment full of mysterious harmony, seemed to awaken
the ineffable joy that love implants in the human heart. How much
weakness there is in the strength of man!
To travel for years over oceans, through deserts, among all varieties of
peoples and sects; shipwrecked, to cling with bleeding hands to
sea-beaten rocks; to laugh at the storm and brave the tiger in his lair;
to be bronzed in torrid climes; to subject one's digestion to the
baleful influences of the salt seas; to study wisdom before the ruins of
every portico where rhetoricians have for three thousand years
paraphrased in ten tongues the words of Solomon, "All is vanity;" to
return to one's native shores a used-up man, persuaded of the emptiness
of all things save the overhanging firmament and the never-fading stars;
to scatter the fancies of too credulous youth by a contemptuous smile,
or a lesson of bitter experience, and yet, while boasting a victory over
all human fallacies and weaknesses, to be enslaved by the melody of a
song, the smile of a woman.
Life is full of hidden mysteries. I looked upon the stranger's face with
a sense of danger, so antagonistic to my previous tranquillity that I
felt humiliated.
By the side of the beautiful unknown, I saw a large fan open and shut
with a certain affectation, but not until its tenth movement did I
glance at its possessor. She was my nearest relative, the Duchess de
Langeac.
The situation now began to be interesting. In a moment the interlude
would procure for me a position to be envied by every one in the house.
At the end of the act I left my box and made a rapid tour of the lobby
before presenting myself. The Duchess dispelled my embarrassment by a
cordial welcome. Women have a keen and supernatural perception about
everything concerning love, that is alarming.
The Duchess carelessly pronounced Mlle. de Chateaudun's name and mine,
as if to be rid of the ceremonies of introduction as soon as possible,
and touching a sofa with the end of her fan, said:
"My dear Roger, it is quite evident that you have come from everywhere
except from the civilized world. I bowed to you twenty times, and you
declined me the honor of a recognition. Absorbed in the music, I
suppose. La Favorita is not performed among the savages, so they remain
savages. How do you like our barytone? He has sung his aria with
delicious feeling."
While the Duchess was indulging her unmeaning questions and comments, a
rapid and careless glance at Mlle. de Chateaudun explained the
admiration that she commanded from the crowded house. Were I to tell you
that this young creature was a pretty, a beautiful woman, I would
feebly express my meaning, such phrases mean nothing. It would require a
master hand to paint a peerless woman, and I could not make the attempt
when the bright image of Irene is now surrounded by the gloomy shadows
of an afflicted heart.
After the first exchange of insignificant words, the skirmish of a
conversation, we talk as all talk who are anxious to appear ignorant of
the fact that they are gazed upon by a whole assembly.
Concealing my agitation under a strain of light conversation,
"Mademoiselle," I said, in answer to a question, "music is to-day the
necessity of the universe. France is commissioned to amuse the world.
Suppress our theatre, opera, Paris, and a settled melancholy pervades
the human family. You have no idea of the ennui that desolates the
hemispheres.
"Occasionally Paris enlivens the two Indias by dethroning a king. Once
Calcutta was _in extremis_, it was dying of the blues; the East India
company was rich but not amusing; with all its treasure it could not buy
one smile for Calcutta, so Paris sent Robert le Diable, La Muette de
Portici, a drama or two of Hugo and Dumas. Calcutta became convalescent
and recovered. Its neighbor, Chandernagore, scarcely existed then, but
in 1842, when I left the Isle de Bourbon, La Favorita was announced; it
planted roses in the cheeks of the jaundiced inhabitants, and Madras,
possessed by the spleen, was exorcised by William Tell.
"Whenever a tropical city is conscious of approaching decline, she
always stretches her hands beseechingly to Paris, who responds with
music, books, newspapers; and her patient springs into new life.
"Paris does not seem to be aware of her influences. She detracts from
herself; says she is not the Paris of yesterday, the Paris of the great
century; that her influence is gone, she is in the condition of the
Lower Empire.
"She builds eighty leagues of fortifications to sustain the siege of
Mahomet II. She weeps over her downfall and accuses Heaven of denying
to her children of '44 the genius and talents that characterized the
statesmen and poets of her past.
"But happily the universe does not coincide with Paris; go ask it;
having just come from there, I know it."
Indulging my traveller's extravagancies laughingly, to the amusement of
my fair companion, she said:
"Truly your philosophy is of the happy school, and the burden of life
must be very light when it is so lightly borne."
"You must know, my dear Roger," said the Duchess, feigning
commiseration, "that my young cousin, Mlle. de Chateaudun, is pitiably
unhappy, and you and I can weep over her lot in chorus with orchestral
accompaniment; poor child! she is the richest heiress in Paris."
"How wide you are from the mark!" said Irene, with a charming look of
annoyance in the brightest eye that ever dazzled the sober senses of
man; "it is not an axiom that wealth is happiness. The poor spread such
a report, but the rich know it to be false."
Here the curtain arose, and my return to my box explained my character
as the casual visitor and not the lover. And what intentions could I
have had at that moment? I cannot say.
I was attracted by the loveliness of Mlle. Chateaudun; chance gave the
opportunity for studying her charms, the fair unknown improved on
acquaintance. Hers was the exquisite grace of face and feature and
winningness of manner which attracts, retains and is never to be
forgotten.
From the superb tranquillity of her attitude, the intelligence of her
eyes, it was easy to infer that a wider field would bring into action
the hidden treasures of a gifted nature. Over the dazzling halo that
surrounded the fair one, which left me the alternative of admiring
silence or heedless vagrancy of speech, one cloud lowered, eclipsing all
her charms and bringing down my divinity from her pedestal--Irene was an
heiress!
The Duchess had clipped the wings of the angel with the phrase of a
marriage-broker. An heiress! the idea of a beautiful woman, full of
poetry and love, inseparately linked to pounds, shillings and pence!
It was a day of amnesty to men, a fête day in Paradise, when God gave to
this young girl that crown of golden hair, that seraphic brow, those
eyes that purified the moral miasma of earth. The ideal of poetry, the
reality of my love!
Think of this living master-piece of the divine studio as the theme of
money-changers, the prize of the highest bidder!
Of course, my dear Edgar, I saw Mlle. de Chateaudun again and again
after this memorable evening; thanks to the facilities afforded me by my
manoeuvring kinswoman, the Duchess, who worshipped the heiress as I
worshipped the woman, I could Add a useless volume of romantic details
leading you to the denouement, which you have already guessed, for you
must see in me the lover of Mlle. de Chateaudun.
I wished to give you the beginning and end of my story; what do you care
for the rest, since it is but the wearisome calendar of all lovers?--The
journal of a thousand incidents as interesting and important to two
people as they are stupid and ridiculous to every one else. Each day was
one of progress; finally, we loved each other. Excuse the homely
platitude in this avowal.
Irene seemed perfect; her only fault, being an heiress, was lost in the
intoxication of my love; everything was arranged, and in spite of her
money I was to marry her.
I was delirious with joy, my feet spurned the earth. My bliss was the
ecstasy of the blest. My delight seemed to color the contentment of
other men with gloom, and I felt like begging pardon for being so happy.
It seemed that this valley of tears, astonished that any one should from
a terrestrial paradise gaze upon its afflictions and still be happy,
would revolt against me!
My dear Edgar, the smoke of hell has darkened my vision--I grope in the
gloom of a terrible mystery--Vainly do I strive to solve it, and I turn
to you for aid.
Irene has left Paris! Home, street, city, all deserted! A damp, dark
nothingness surrounds me!