Towards the end of August, 1812, on a Sunday evening after vespers, a
woman was sitting in a deep armchair placed before one of the windows
looking out upon the garden. The sun’s rays fell obliquely upon the
house and athwart the parlor, breaking into fantastic lights on the
carved panellings of the wall, and wrapping the woman in a crimson halo
projected through the damask curtains which draped the window. Even an
ordinary painter, had he sketched this woman at this particular moment,
would assuredly have produced a striking picture of a head that was full
of pain and melancholy. The attitude of the body, and that of the
feet stretched out before her, showed the prostration of one who loses
consciousness of physical being in the concentration of powers absorbed
in a fixed idea: she was following its gleams in the far future, just as
sometimes on the shores of the sea, we gaze at a ray of sunlight which
pierces the clouds and draws a luminous line to the horizon.
The hands of this woman hung nerveless outside the arms of her chair,
and her head, as if too heavy to hold up, lay back upon its cushions. A
dress of white cambric, very full and flowing, hindered any judgment
as to the proportions of her figure, and the bust was concealed by the
folds of a scarf crossed on the bosom and negligently knotted. If the
light had not thrown into relief her face, which she seemed to show
in preference to the rest of her person, it would still have been
impossible to escape riveting the attention exclusively upon it. Its
expression of stupefaction, which was cold and rigid despite hot tears
that were rolling from her eyes, would have struck the most thoughtless
mind. Nothing is more terrible to behold than excessive grief that is
rarely allowed to break forth, of which traces were left on this woman’s
face like lava congealed about a crater. She might have been a
dying mother compelled to leave her children in abysmal depths of
wretchedness, unable to bequeath them to any human protector.
The countenance of this lady, then about forty years of age and not
nearly so far from handsome as she had been in her youth, bore none of
the characteristics of a Flemish woman. Her thick black hair fell in
heavy curls upon her shoulders and about her cheeks. The forehead, very
prominent, and narrow at the temples, was yellow in tint, but beneath it
sparkled two black eyes that were capable of emitting flames. Her face,
altogether Spanish, dark skinned, with little color and pitted by the
small-pox, attracted the eye by the beauty of its oval, whose outline,
though slightly impaired by time, preserved a finished elegance and
dignity, and regained at times its full perfection when some effort of
the soul restored its pristine purity. The most noticeable feature in
this strong face was the nose, aquiline as the beak of an eagle, and
so sharply curved at the middle as to give the idea of an interior
malformation; yet there was an air of indescribable delicacy about it,
and the partition between the nostrils was so thin that a rosy light
shone through it. Though the lips, which were large and curved, betrayed
the pride of noble birth, their expression was one of kindliness and
natural courtesy.
The beauty of this vigorous yet feminine face might indeed be
questioned, but the face itself commanded attention. Short, deformed,
and lame, this woman remained all the longer unmarried because the world
obstinately refused to credit her with gifts of mind. Yet there were
men who were deeply stirred by the passionate ardor of that face and its
tokens of ineffable tenderness, and who remained under a charm that was
seemingly irreconcilable with such personal defects.
She was very like her grandfather, the Duke of Casa-Real, a grandee of
Spain. At this moment, when we first see her, the charm which in earlier
days despotically grasped the soul of poets and lovers of poesy now
emanated from that head with greater vigor than at any former period of
her life, spending itself, as it were, upon the void, and expressing a
nature of all-powerful fascination over men, though it was at the same
time powerless over destiny.
When her eyes turned from the glass globes, where they were gazing at
the fish they saw not, she raised them with a despairing action, as if
to invoke the skies. Her sufferings seemed of a kind that are told to
God alone. The silence was unbroken save for the chirp of crickets and
the shrill whirr of a few locusts, coming from the little garden then
hotter than an oven, and the dull sound of silver and plates, and the
moving of chairs in the adjoining room, where a servant was preparing to
serve the dinner.
At this moment, the distressed woman roused herself from her abstraction
and listened attentively; she took her handkerchief, wiped away her
tears, attempted to smile, and so resolutely effaced the expression of
pain that was stamped on every feature that she presently seemed in the
state of happy indifference which comes with a life exempt from
care. Whether it were that the habit of living in this house to which
infirmities confined her enabled her to perceive certain natural effects
that are imperceptible to the senses of others, but which persons under
the influence of excessive feeling are keen to discover, or whether
Nature, in compensation for her physical defects, had given her more
delicate sensations than better organized beings,--it is certain that
this woman had heard the steps of a man in a gallery built above the
kitchens and the servants’ hall, by which the front house communicated
with the “back-quarter.” The steps grew more distinct. Soon, without
possessing the power of this ardent creature to abolish space and meet
her other self, even a stranger would have heard the foot-fall of a man
upon the staircase which led down from the gallery to the parlor.
The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being into
thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly. A precipitate, headlong
step produces fear. When a man springs forward and cries, “Fire!” his
feet speak as loudly as his voice. If this be so, then a contrary
gait ought not to cause less powerful emotion. The slow approach, the
dragging step of the coming man might have irritated an unreflecting
spectator; but an observer, or a nervous person, would undoubtedly have
felt something akin to terror at the measured tread of feet that seemed
devoid of life, and under which the stairs creaked loudly, as though two
iron weights were striking them alternately. The mind recognized at once
either the heavy, undecided step of an old man or the majestic tread of
a great thinker bearing the worlds with him.
When the man had reached the lowest stair, and had planted both feet
upon the tiled floor with a hesitating, uncertain movement, he stood
still for a moment on the wide landing which led on one side to the
servants’ hall, and on the other to the parlor through a door concealed
in the panelling of that room,--as was another door, leading from the
parlor to the dining-room. At this moment a slight shudder, like the
sensation caused by an electric spark, shook the woman seated in the
armchair; then a soft smile brightened her lips, and her face, moved by
the expectation of a pleasure, shone like that of an Italian Madonna.
She suddenly gained strength to drive her terrors back into the depths
of her heart. Then she turned her face to the panel of the wall which
she knew was about to open, and which in fact was now pushed in with
such brusque violence that the poor woman herself seemed jarred by the
shock.
Balthazar Claes suddenly appeared, made a few steps forward, did not
look at the woman, or if he looked at her did not see her, and stood
erect in the middle of the parlor, leaning his half-bowed head on his
right hand. A sharp pang to which the woman could not accustom herself,
although it was daily renewed, wrung her heart, dispelled her smile,
contracted the sallow forehead between the eyebrows, indenting that line
which the frequent expression of excessive feeling scores so deeply;
her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them quickly as she looked at
Balthazar.
It was impossible not to be deeply impressed by this head of the family
of Claes. When young, he must have resembled the noble family martyr who
had threatened to be another Artevelde to Charles V.; but as he stood
there at this moment, he seemed over sixty years of age, though he
was only fifty; and this premature old age had destroyed the honorable
likeness. His tall figure was slightly bent,--either because his labors,
whatever they were, obliged him to stoop, or that the spinal column
was curved by the weight of his head. He had a broad chest and square
shoulders, but the lower parts of his body were lank and wasted, though
nervous; and this discrepancy in a physical organization evidently once
perfect puzzled the mind which endeavored to explain this anomalous
figure by some possible singularities of the man’s life.
His thick blond hair, ill cared-for, fell over his shoulders in the
Dutch fashion, and its very disorder was in keeping with the general
eccentricity of his person. His broad brow showed certain protuberances
which Gall identifies with poetic genius. His clear and full blue eyes
had the brusque vivacity which may be noticed in searchers for occult
causes. The nose, probably perfect in early life, was now elongated, and
the nostrils seemed to have gradually opened wider from an involuntary
tension of the olfactory muscles. The cheek-bones were very prominent,
which made the cheeks themselves, already withered, seem more sunken;
his mouth, full of sweetness, was squeezed in between the nose and a
short chin, which projected sharply. The shape of the face, however, was
long rather than oval, and the scientific doctrine which sees in every
human face a likeness to an animal would have found its confirmation in
that of Balthazar Claes, which bore a strong resemblance to a horse’s
head. The skin clung closely to the bones, as though some inward fire
were incessantly drying its juices. Sometimes, when he gazed into space,
as if to see the realization of his hopes, it almost seemed as though
the flames that devoured his soul were issuing from his nostrils.
The inspired feelings that animate great men shone forth on the pale
face furrowed with wrinkles, on the brow haggard with care like that of
an old monarch, but above all they gleamed in the sparkling eye, whose
fires were fed by chastity imposed by the tyranny of ideas and by the
inward consecration of a great intellect. The cavernous eyes seemed
to have sunk in their orbits through midnight vigils and the terrible
reaction of hopes destroyed, yet ceaselessly reborn. The zealous
fanaticism inspired by an art or a science was evident in this man;
it betrayed itself in the strange, persistent abstraction of his mind
expressed by his dress and bearing, which were in keeping with the
anomalous peculiarities of his person.
His large, hairy hands were dirty, and the nails, which were very long,
had deep black lines at their extremities. His shoes were not cleaned
and the shoe-strings were missing. Of all that Flemish household, the
master alone took the strange liberty of being slovenly. His black cloth
trousers were covered with stains, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, his
cravat awry, his greenish coat ripped at the seams,--completing an array
of signs, great and small, which in any other man would have betokened
a poverty begotten of vice, but which in Balthazar Claes was the
negligence of genius.
Vice and Genius too often produce the same effects; and this misleads
the common mind. What is genius but a long excess which squanders time
and wealth and physical powers, and leads more rapidly to a hospital
than the worst of passions? Men even seem to have more respect for vices
than for genius, since to the latter they refuse credit. The profits
accruing from the hidden labors of the brain are so remote that the
social world fears to square accounts with the man of learning in his
lifetime, preferring to get rid of its obligations by not forgiving his
misfortunes or his poverty.
If, in spite of this inveterate forgetfulness of the present, Balthazar
Claes had abandoned his mysterious abstractions, if some sweet and
companionable meaning had revisited that thoughtful countenance, if the
fixed eyes had lost their rigid strain and shone with feeling, if he had
ever looked humanly about him and returned to the real life of common
things, it would indeed have been difficult not to do involuntary homage
to the winning beauty of his face and the gracious soul that would then
have shone from it. As it was, all who looked at him regretted that the
man belonged no more to the world at large, and said to one another: “He
must have been very handsome in his youth.” A vulgar error! Never was
Balthazar Claes’s appearance more poetic than at this moment. Lavater,
had he seen him, would fain have studied that head so full of patience,
of Flemish loyalty, and pure morality,--where all was broad and noble,
and passion seemed calm because it was strong.
The conduct of this man could not be otherwise than pure; his word
was sacred, his friendships seemed undeviating, his self-devotedness
complete: and yet the will to employ those qualities in patriotic
service, for the world or for the family, was directed, fatally,
elsewhere. This citizen, bound to guard the welfare of a household,
to manage property, to guide his children towards a noble future, was
living outside the line of his duty and his affections, in communion
with an attendant spirit. A priest might have thought him inspired by
the word of God; an artist would have hailed him as a great master; an
enthusiast would have taken him for a seer of the Swedenborgian faith.
At the present moment, the dilapidated, uncouth, and ruined clothes that
he wore contrasted strangely with the graceful elegance of the woman who
was sadly admiring him. Deformed persons who have intellect, or nobility
of soul, show an exquisite taste in their apparel. Either they dress
simply, convinced that their charm is wholly moral, or they make others
forget their imperfections by an elegance of detail which diverts the
eye and occupies the mind. Not only did this woman possess a noble soul,
but she loved Balthazar Claes with that instinct of the woman which
gives a foretaste of the communion of angels. Brought up in one of the
most illustrious families of Belgium, she would have learned good taste
had she not possessed it; and now, taught by the desire of constantly
pleasing the man she loved, she knew how to clothe herself admirably,
and without producing incongruity between her elegance and the defects
of her conformation. The bust, however, was defective in the shoulders
only, one of which was noticeably much larger than the other.
She looked out of the window into the court-yard, then towards the
garden, as if to make sure she was alone with Balthazar, and presently
said, in a gentle voice and with a look full of a Flemish woman’s
submissiveness,--for between these two love had long since driven out
the pride of her Spanish nature:--
“Balthazar, are you so very busy? this is the thirty-third Sunday since
you have been to mass or vespers.”
Claes did not answer; his wife bowed her head, clasped her hands,
and waited: she knew that his silence meant neither contempt nor
indifference, only a tyrannous preoccupation. Balthazar was one of those
beings who preserve deep in their souls and after long years all their
youthful delicacy of feeling; he would have thought it criminal to
wound by so much as a word a woman weighed down by the sense of physical
disfigurement. No man knew better than he that a look, a word, suffices
to blot out years of happiness, and is the more cruel because it
contrasts with the unfailing tenderness of the past: our nature leads us
to suffer more from one discord in our happiness than pleasure coming in
the midst of trouble can bring us joy.
Presently Balthazar appeared to waken; he looked quickly about him, and
said,--
“Vespers? Ah, yes! the children are at vespers.”
He made a few steps forward, and looked into the garden, where
magnificent tulips were growing on all sides; then he suddenly stopped
short as if brought up against a wall, and cried out,--
“Why should they not combine within a given time?”
“Is he going mad?” thought the wife, much terrified.
To give greater interest to the present scene, which was called forth
by the situation of their affairs, it is absolutely necessary to glance
back at the past lives of Balthazar Claes and the granddaughter of the
Duke of Casa-Real.
Towards the year 1783, Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina de Nourho, then
twenty-two years of age, was what is called in France a fine man. He
came to finish his education in Paris, where he acquired excellent
manners in the society of Madame d’Egmont, Count Horn, the Prince
of Aremberg, the Spanish ambassador, Helvetius, and other Frenchmen
originally from Belgium, or coming lately thence, whose birth or wealth
won them admittance among the great seigneurs who at that time gave the
tone to social life. Young Claes found several relations and friends
ready to launch him into the great world at the very moment when that
world was about to fall. Like other young men, he was at first more
attracted by glory and science than by the vanities of life. He
frequented the society of scientific men, particularly Lavoisier, who
at that time was better known to the world for his enormous fortune as
a “fermier-general” than for his discoveries in chemistry,--though later
the great chemist was to eclipse the man of wealth.
Balthazar grew enamored of the science which Lavoisier cultivated,
and became his devoted disciple; but he was young, and handsome as
Helvetius, and before long the Parisian women taught him to distil wit
and love exclusively. Though he had studied chemistry with such ardor
that Lavoisier commended him, he deserted science and his master for
those mistresses of fashion and good taste from whom young men take
finishing lessons in knowledge of life, and learn the usages of good
society, which in Europe forms, as it were, one family.
The intoxicating dream of social success lasted but a short time.
Balthazar left Paris, weary of a hollow existence which suited neither
his ardent soul nor his loving heart. Domestic life, so calm, so tender,
which the very name of Flanders recalled to him, seemed far more fitted
to his character and to the aspirations of his heart. No gilded Parisian
salon had effaced from his mind the harmonies of the panelled parlor and
the little garden where his happy childhood had slipped away. A man
must needs be without a home to remain in Paris,--Paris, the city of
cosmopolitans, of men who wed the world, and clasp her with the arms of
Science, Art, or Power.
The son of Flanders came back to Douai, like La Fontaine’s pigeon to
its nest; he wept with joy as he re-entered the town on the day of the
Gayant procession,--Gayant, the superstitious luck of Douai, the glory
of Flemish traditions, introduced there at the time the Claes family
had emigrated from Ghent. The death of Balthazar’s father and mother had
left the old mansion deserted, and the young man was occupied for a time
in settling its affairs. His first grief over, he wished to marry; he
needed the domestic happiness whose every religious aspect had fastened
upon his mind. He even followed the family custom of seeking a wife in
Ghent, or at Bruges, or Antwerp; but it happened that no woman whom he
met there suited him. Undoubtedly, he had certain peculiar ideas as
to marriage; from his youth he had been accused of never following the
beaten track.
One day, at the house of a relation in Ghent, he heard a young lady,
then living in Brussels, spoken of in a manner which gave rise to a long
discussion. Some said that the beauty of Mademoiselle de Temninck was
destroyed by the imperfections of her figure; others declared that she
was perfect in spite of her defects. Balthazar’s old cousin, at whose
house the discussion took place, assured his guests that, handsome or
not, she had a soul that would make him marry her were he a marrying
man; and he told how she had lately renounced her share of her parents’
property to enable her brother to make a marriage worthy of his name;
thus preferring his happiness to her own, and sacrificing her future
to his interests,--for it was not to be supposed that Mademoiselle de
Temninck would marry late in life and without property when, young and
wealthy, she had met with no aspirant.
A few days later, Balthazar Claes made the acquaintance of Mademoiselle
de Temninck; with whom he fell deeply in love. At first, Josephine de
Temninck thought herself the object of a mere caprice, and refused to
listen to Monsieur Claes; but passion is contagious; and to a poor girl
who was lame and ill-made, the sense of inspiring love in a young and
handsome man carries with it such strong seduction that she finally
consented to allow him to woo her.
It would need a volume to paint the love of a young girl humbly
submissive to the verdict of a world that calls her plain, while she
feels within herself the irresistible charm which comes of sensibility
and true feeling. It involves fierce jealousy of happiness, freaks of
cruel vengeance against some fancied rival who wins a glance,--emotions,
terrors, unknown to the majority of women, and which ought, therefore,
to be more than indicated. The doubt, the dramatic doubt of love, is the
keynote of this analysis, where certain souls will find once more the
lost, but unforgotten, poetry of their early struggles; the passionate
exaltations of the heart which the face must not betray; the fear
that we may not be understood, and the boundless joy of being so; the
hesitations of the soul which recoils upon itself, and the magnetic
propulsions which give to the eyes an infinitude of shades; the
promptings to suicide caused by a word, dispelled by an intonation;
trembling glances which veil an inward daring; sudden desires to speak
and act that are paralyzed by their own violence; the secret eloquence
of common phrases spoken in a quivering voice; the mysterious workings
of that pristine modesty of soul and that divine discernment which
lead to hidden generosities, and give so exquisite a flavor to silent
devotion; in short, all the loveliness of young love, and the weaknesses
of its power.
Mademoiselle Josephine de Temninck was coquettish from nobility of soul.
The sense of her obvious imperfections made her as difficult to win as
the handsomest of women. The fear of some day displeasing the eye roused
her pride, destroyed her trustfulness, and gave her the courage to hide
in the depths of her heart that dawning happiness which other women
delight in making known by their manners,--wearing it proudly, like a
coronet. The more love urged her towards Balthazar, the less she dared
to express her feelings. The glance, the gesture, the question and
answer as it were of a pretty woman, so flattering to the man she loves,
would they not be in her case mere humiliating speculation? A beautiful
woman can be her natural self,--the world overlooks her little follies
or her clumsiness; whereas a single criticising glance checks the
noblest expression on the lips of an ugly woman, adds to the ill-grace
of her gesture, gives timidity to her eyes and awkwardness to her whole
bearing. She knows too well that to her alone the world condones no
faults; she is denied the right to repair them; indeed, the chance to do
so is never given. This necessity of being perfect and on her guard at
every moment, must surely chill her faculties and numb their exercise?
Such a woman can exist only in an atmosphere of angelic forbearance.
Where are the hearts from which forbearance comes with no alloy of
bitter and stinging pity.
These thoughts, to which the codes of social life had accustomed her,
and the sort of consideration more wounding than insult shown to her by
the world,--a consideration which increases a misfortune by making it
apparent,--oppressed Mademoiselle de Temninck with a constant sense of
embarrassment, which drove back into her soul its happiest expression,
and chilled and stiffened her attitudes, her speech, her looks. Loving
and beloved, she dared to be eloquent or beautiful only when alone.
Unhappy and oppressed in the broad daylight of life, she might have been
enchanting could she have expanded in the shadow. Often, to test the
love thus offered to her, and at the risk of losing it, she refused to
wear the draperies that concealed some portion of her defects, and her
Spanish eyes grew entrancing when they saw that Balthazar thought her
beautiful as before.
Nevertheless, even so, distrust soiled the rare moments when she yielded
herself to happiness. She asked herself if Claes were not seeking a
domestic slave,--one who would necessarily keep the house? whether he
had himself no secret imperfection which obliged him to be satisfied
with a poor, deformed girl? Such perpetual misgivings gave a priceless
value to the few short hours during which she trusted the sincerity and
the permanence of a love which was to avenge her on the world. Sometimes
she provoked hazardous discussions, and probed the inner consciousness
of her lover by exaggerating her defects. At such times she often wrung
from Balthazar truths that were far from flattering; but she loved the
embarrassment into which he fell when she had led him to say that what
he loved in a woman was a noble soul and the devotion which made each
day of life a constant happiness; and that after a few years of married
life the handsomest of women was no more to a husband than the ugliest.
After gathering up what there was of truth in all such paradoxes tending
to reduce the value of beauty, Balthazar would suddenly perceive the
ungraciousness of his remarks, and show the goodness of his heart by the
delicate transitions of thought with which he proved to Mademoiselle de
Temninck that she was perfect in his eyes.
The spirit of devotion which, it may be, is the crown of love in a
woman, was not lacking in this young girl, who had always despaired of
being loved; at first, the prospect of a struggle in which feeling
and sentiment would triumph over actual beauty tempted her; then, she
fancied a grandeur in giving herself to a man in whose love she did not
believe; finally, she was forced to admit that happiness, however short
its duration might be, was too precious to resign.
Such hesitations, such struggles, giving the charm and the
unexpectedness of passion to this noble creature, inspired Balthazar
with a love that was well-nigh chivalric.