The marriage took place at the beginning of the year 1795. Husband and
wife came to Douai that the first days of their union might be spent
in the patriarchal house of the Claes,--the treasures of which were
increased by those of Mademoiselle de Temninck, who brought with her
several fine pictures of Murillo and Velasquez, the diamonds of her
mother, and the magnificent wedding-gifts, made to her by her brother,
the Duke of Casa-Real.
Few women were ever happier than Madame Claes. Her happiness lasted for
fifteen years without a cloud, diffusing itself like a vivid light
into every nook and detail of her life. Most men have inequalities of
character which produce discord, and deprive their households of the
harmony which is the ideal of a home; the majority are blemished with
some littleness or meanness, and meanness of any kind begets bickering.
One man is honorable and diligent, but hard and crabbed; another kindly,
but obstinate; this one loves his wife, yet his will is arbitrary and
uncertain; that other, preoccupied by ambition, pays off his affections
as he would a debt, bestows the luxuries of wealth but deprives the
daily life of happiness,--in short, the average man of social life is
essentially incomplete, without being signally to blame. Men of talent
are as variable as barometers; genius alone is intrinsically good.
For this reason unalloyed happiness is found at the two extremes of
the moral scale. The good-natured fool and the man of genius alone
are capable--the one through weakness, the other by strength--of that
equanimity of temper, that unvarying gentleness, which soften the
asperities of daily life. In the one, it is indifference or stolidity;
in the other, indulgence and a portion of the divine thought of which he
is the interpreter, and which needs to be consistent alike in principle
and application. Both natures are equally simple; but in one there is
vacancy, in the other depth. This is why clever women are disposed to
take dull men as the small change for great ones.
Balthazar Claes carried his greatness into the lesser things of life. He
delighted in considering conjugal love as a magnificent work; and like
all men of lofty aims who can bear nothing imperfect, he wished to
develop all its beauties. His powers of mind enlivened the calm of
happiness, his noble nature marked his attentions with the charm of
grace. Though he shared the philosophical tenets of the eighteenth
century, he installed a chaplain in his home until 1801 (in spite of the
risk he ran from the revolutionary decrees), so that he might not thwart
the Spanish fanaticism which his wife had sucked in with her mother’s
milk: later, when public worship was restored in France, he accompanied
her to mass every Sunday. His passion never ceased to be that of
a lover. The protecting power, which women like so much, was never
exercised by this husband, lest to that wife it might seem pity. He
treated her with exquisite flattery as an equal, and sometimes mutinied
against her, as men will, as though to brave the supremacy of a pretty
woman. His lips wore a smile of happiness, his speech was ever tender;
he loved his Josephine for herself and for himself, with an ardor that
crowned with perpetual praise the qualities and the loveliness of a
wife.
Fidelity, often the result of social principle, religious duty, or
self-interest on the part of a husband, was in this case involuntary,
and not without the sweet flatteries of the spring-time of love. Duty
was the only marriage obligation unknown to these lovers, whose love was
equal; for Balthazar Claes found the complete and lasting realization of
his hopes in Mademoiselle de Temninck; his heart was satisfied but not
wearied, the man within him was ever happy.
Not only did the daughter of Casa-Real derive from her Spanish blood the
intuition of that science which varies pleasure and makes it infinite,
but she possessed the spirit of unbounded self-devotion, which is the
genius of her sex as grace is that of beauty. Her love was a blind
fanaticism which, at a nod, would have sent her joyously to her death.
Balthazar’s own delicacy had exalted the generous emotions of his
wife, and inspired her with an imperious need of giving more than she
received. This mutual exchange of happiness which each lavished upon
the other, put the mainspring of her life visibly outside of her
personality, and filled her words, her looks, her actions, with an
ever-growing love. Gratitude fertilized and varied the life of each
heart; and the certainty of being all in all to one another excluded the
paltry things of existence, while it magnified the smallest accessories.
The deformed woman whom her husband thinks straight, the lame woman whom
he would not have otherwise, the old woman who seems ever young--are
they not the happiest creatures of the feminine world? Can human passion
go beyond it? The glory of a woman is to be adored for a defect. To
forget that a lame woman does not walk straight may be the glamour of
a moment, but to love her because she is lame is the deification of
her defects. In the gospel of womanhood it is written: “Blessed are the
imperfect, for theirs is the kingdom of Love.” If this be so, surely
beauty is a misfortune; that fugitive flower counts for too much in
the feeling that a woman inspires; often she is loved for her beauty as
another is married for her money. But the love inspired or bestowed by a
woman disinherited of the frail advantages pursued by the sons of Adam,
is true love, the mysterious passion, the ardent embrace of souls, a
sentiment for which the day of disenchantment never comes. That woman
has charms unknown to the world, from whose jurisdiction she withdraws
herself: she is beautiful with a meaning; her glory lies in making her
imperfections forgotten, and thus she constantly succeeds in doing so.
The celebrated attachments of history were nearly all inspired by women
in whom the vulgar mind would have found defects,--Cleopatra, Jeanne
de Naples, Diane de Poitiers, Mademoiselle de la Valliere, Madame de
Pompadour; in fact, the majority of the women whom love has rendered
famous were not without infirmities and imperfections, while the greater
number of those whose beauty is cited as perfect came to some tragic end
of love.
This apparent singularity must have a cause. It may be that man lives
more by sentiment than by sense; perhaps the physical charm of beauty is
limited, while the moral charm of a woman without beauty is infinite. Is
not this the moral of the fable on which the Arabian Nights are based?
An ugly wife of Henry VIII. might have defied the axe, and subdued to
herself the inconstancy of her master.
By a strange chance, not inexplicable, however, in a girl of Spanish
origin, Madame Claes was uneducated. She knew how to read and write, but
up to the age of twenty, at which time her parents withdrew her from a
convent, she had read none but ascetic books. On her first entrance into
the world, she was eager for pleasure and learned only the flimsy art of
dress; she was, moreover, so deeply conscious of her ignorance that she
dared not join in conversation; for which reason she was supposed to
have little mind. Yet, the mystical education of a convent had one good
result; it left her feelings in full force and her natural powers of
mind uninjured. Stupid and plain as an heiress in the eyes of the world,
she became intellectual and beautiful to her husband. During the first
years of their married life, Balthazar endeavored to give her at least
the knowledge that she needed to appear to advantage in good society:
but he was doubtless too late, she had no memory but that of the
heart. Josephine never forgot anything that Claes told her relating
to themselves; she remembered the most trifling circumstances of their
happy life; but of her evening studies nothing remained to her on the
morrow.
This ignorance might have caused much discord between husband and wife,
but Madame Claes’s understanding of the passion of love was so simple
and ingenuous, she loved her husband so religiously, so sacredly, and
the thought of preserving her happiness made her so adroit, that she
managed always to seem to understand him, and it was seldom indeed that
her ignorance was evident. Moreover, when two persons love one another
so well that each day seems for them the beginning of their passion,
phenomena arise out of this teeming happiness which change all the
conditions of life. It resembles childhood, careless of all that is not
laughter, joy, and merriment. Then, when life is in full activity, when
its hearths glow, man lets the fire burn without thought or discussion,
without considering either the means or the end.
No daughter of Eve ever more truly understood the calling of a wife than
Madame Claes. She had all the submission of a Flemish woman, but her
Spanish pride gave it a higher flavor. Her bearing was imposing; she
knew how to command respect by a look which expressed her sense of birth
and dignity: but she trembled before Claes; she held him so high, so
near to God, carrying to him every act of her life, every thought of
her heart, that her love was not without a certain respectful fear
which made it keener. She proudly assumed all the habits of a Flemish
bourgeoisie, and put her self-love into making the home life liberally
happy,--preserving every detail of the house in scrupulous cleanliness,
possessing nothing that did not serve the purposes of true comfort,
supplying her table with the choicest food, and putting everything
within those walls into harmony with the life of her heart.
The pair had two sons and two daughters. The eldest, Marguerite, was
born in 1796. The last child was a boy, now three years old, named
Jean-Balthazar. The maternal sentiment in Madame Claes was almost equal
to her love for her husband; and there rose in her soul, especially
during the last days of her life, a terrible struggle between those
nearly balanced feelings, of which the one became, as it were, an enemy
of the other. The tears and the terror that marked her face at the
moment when this tale of a domestic drama then lowering over the quiet
house begins, were caused by the fear of having sacrificed her children
to her husband.
In 1805, Madame Claes’s brother died without children. The Spanish law
does not allow a sister to succeed to territorial possessions, which
follow the title; but the duke had left her in his will about sixty
thousand ducats, and this sum the heirs of the collateral branch did not
seek to retain. Though the feeling which united her to Balthazar Claes
was such that no thought of personal interest could ever sully it,
Josephine felt a certain pleasure in possessing a fortune equal to that
of her husband, and was happy in giving something to one who had so
nobly given everything to her. Thus, a mere chance turned a marriage
which worldly minds had declared foolish, into an excellent alliance,
seen from the standpoint of material interests. The use to which this
sum of money should be put became, however, somewhat difficult to
determine.
The House of Claes was so richly supplied with furniture, pictures, and
objects of art of priceless value, that it was difficult to add anything
worthy of what was already there. The tastes of the family through long
periods of time had accumulated these treasures. One generation
followed the quest of noble pictures, leaving behind it the necessity
of completing a collection still unfinished; and thus the taste became
hereditary in the family. The hundred pictures which adorned the gallery
leading from the family building to the reception-rooms on the first
floor of the front house, as well as some fifty others placed about the
salons, were the product of the patient researches of three centuries.
Among them were choice specimens of Rubens, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Terburg,
Gerard Dow, Teniers, Mieris, Paul Potter, Wouvermans, Rembrandt,
Hobbema, Cranach, and Holbein. French and Italian pictures were in a
minority, but all were authentic and masterly.
Another generation had fancied Chinese and Japanese porcelains: this
Claes was eager after rare furniture, that one for silver-ware; in fact,
each and all had their mania, their passion,--a trait which belongs in
a striking degree to the Flemish character. The father of Balthazar, a
last relic of the once famous Dutch society, left behind him the finest
known collection of tulips.
Besides these hereditary riches, which represented an enormous capital,
and were the choice ornament of the venerable house,--a house that was
simple as a shell outside but, like a shell, adorned within by pearls
of price and glowing with rich color,--Balthazar Claes possessed a
country-house on the plain of Orchies, not far from Douai. Instead of
basing his expenses, as Frenchmen do, upon his revenues, he followed the
old Dutch custom of spending only a fourth of his income. Twelve hundred
ducats a year put his costs of living at a level with those of the
richest men of the place. The promulgation of the Civil Code proved
the wisdom of this course. Compelling, as it did, the equal division of
property, the Title of Succession would some day leave each child with
limited means, and disperse the treasures of the Claes collection.
Balthazar, therefore, in concert with Madame Claes, invested his wife’s
property so as to secure to each child a fortune eventually equal to his
own. The house of Claes still maintained its moderate scale of living,
and bought woodlands somewhat the worse for wars that had laid waste the
country, but which in ten years’ time, if well-preserved, would return
an enormous value.
The upper ranks of society in Douai, which Monsieur Claes frequented,
appreciated so justly the noble character and qualities of his wife
that, by tacit consent she was released from those social duties to
which the provinces cling so tenaciously. During the winter season, when
she lived in town, she seldom went into society; society came to her.
She received every Wednesday, and gave three grand dinners every month.
Her friends felt that she was more at ease in her own house; where,
indeed, her passion for her husband and the care she bestowed on the
education of her children tended to keep her.
Such had been, up to the year 1809, the general course of this
household, which had nothing in common with the ordinary run of
conventional ideas, though the outward life of these two persons,
secretly full of love and joy, was like that of other people. Balthazar
Claes’s passion for his wife, which she had known how to perpetuate,
seemed, to use his own expression, to spend its inborn vigor and
fidelity on the cultivation of happiness, which was far better than the
cultivation of tulips (though to that he had always had a leaning), and
dispensed him from the duty of following a mania like his ancestors.
At the close of this year, the mind and the manners of Balthazar Claes
underwent a fatal change,--a change which began so gradually that at
first Madame Claes did not think it necessary to inquire the cause. One
night her husband went to bed with a mind so preoccupied that she felt
it incumbent on her to respect his mood. Her womanly delicacy and her
submissive habits always led her to wait for Balthazar’s confidence;
which, indeed, was assured to her by so constant an affection that she
had never had the slightest opening for jealousy. Though certain of
obtaining an answer whenever she should make the inquiry, she still
retained enough of the earlier impressions of her life to dread a
refusal. Besides, the moral malady of her husband had its phases, and
only came by slow degrees to the intolerable point at which it destroyed
the happiness of the family.
However occupied Balthazar Claes might be, he continued for several
months cheerful, affectionate, and ready to talk; the change in his
character showed itself only by frequent periods of absent-mindedness.
Madame Claes long hoped to hear from her husband himself the nature of
the secret employment in which he was engaged; perhaps, she thought, he
would reveal it when it developed some useful result; many men are led
by pride to conceal the nature of their efforts, and only make them
known at the moment of success. When the day of triumph came, surely
domestic happiness would return, more vivid than ever when Balthazar
became aware of this chasm in the life of love, which his heart would
surely disavow. Josephine knew her husband well enough to be certain
that he would never forgive himself for having made his Pepita less than
happy during several months.
She kept silence therefore, and felt a sort of joy in thus suffering by
him for him: her passion had a tinge of that Spanish piety which allows
no separation between religion and love, and believes in no sentiment
without suffering. She waited for the return of her husband’s affection,
saying daily to herself, “To-morrow it may come,”--treating her
happiness as though it were an absent friend.
During this stage of her secret distress, she conceived her last child.
Horrible crisis, which revealed a future of anguish! In the midst of
her husband’s abstractions love showed itself on this occasion an
abstraction even greater than the rest. Her woman’s pride, hurt for
the first time, made her sound the depths of the unknown abyss which
separated her from the Claes of earlier days. From that time Balthazar’s
condition grew rapidly worse. The man formerly so wrapped up in his
domestic happiness, who played for hours with his children on the parlor
carpet or round the garden paths, who seemed able to exist only in the
light of his Pepita’s dark eyes, did not even perceive her pregnancy,
seldom shared the family life, and even forgot his own.
The longer Madame Claes postponed inquiring into the cause of his
preoccupation the less she dared to do so. At the very idea, her blood
ran cold and her voice grew faint. At last the thought occurred to
her that she had ceased to please her husband, and then indeed she was
seriously alarmed. That fear now filled her mind, drove her to despair,
then to feverish excitement, and became the text of many an hour of
melancholy reverie. She defended Balthazar at her own expense, calling
herself old and ugly; then she imagined a generous though humiliating
consideration for her in this secret occupation by which he secured
to her a negative fidelity; and she resolved to give him back his
independence by allowing one of those unspoken divorces which make the
happiness of many a marriage.
Before bidding farewell to conjugal life, Madame Claes made some attempt
to read her husband’s heart, and found it closed. Little by little,
she saw him become indifferent to all that he had formerly loved; he
neglected his tulips, he cared no longer for his children. There could
be no doubt that he was given over to some passion that was not of the
heart, but which, to a woman’s mind, is not less withering. His love
was dormant, not lost: this might be a consolation, but the misfortune
remained the same.
The continuance of such a state of things is explained by one
word,--hope, the secret of all conjugal situations. It so happened
that whenever the poor woman reached a depth of despair which gave her
courage to question her husband, she met with a few brief moments of
happiness when she was able to feel that if Balthazar was indeed in the
clutch of some devilish power, he was permitted, sometimes at least, to
return to himself. At such moments, when her heaven brightened, she
was too eager to enjoy its happiness to trouble him with importunate
questions: later, when she endeavored to speak to him, he would suddenly
escape, leave her abruptly, or drop into the gulf of meditation from
which no word of hers could drag him.
Before long the reaction of the moral upon the physical condition began
its ravages,--at first imperceptibly, except to the eyes of a loving
woman following the secret thought of a husband through all its
manifestations. Often she could scarcely restrain her tears when she saw
him, after dinner, sink into an armchair by the corner of the fireplace,
and remain there, gloomy and abstracted. She noted with terror the slow
changes which deteriorated that face, once, to her eyes, sublime
through love: the life of the soul was retreating from it; the structure
remained, but the spirit was gone. Sometimes the eyes were glassy, and
seemed as if they had turned their gaze and were looking inward. When
the children had gone to bed, and the silence and solitude oppressed
her, Pepita would say, “My friend, are you ill?” and Balthazar would
make no answer; or if he answered, he would come to himself with a
quiver, like a man snatched suddenly from sleep, and utter a “No” so
harsh and grating that it fell like a stone on the palpitating heart of
his wife.
Though she tried to hide this strange state of things from her friends,
Madame Claes was obliged sometimes to allude to it. The social world
of Douai, in accordance with the custom of provincial towns, had made
Balthazar’s aberrations a topic of conversation, and many persons
were aware of certain details that were still unknown to Madame Claes.
Disregarding the reticence which politeness demanded, a few friends
expressed to her so much anxiety on the subject that she found herself
compelled to defend her husband’s peculiarities.
“Monsieur Claes,” she said, “has undertaken a work which wholly absorbs
him; its success will eventually redound not only to the honor of the
family but to that of his country.”
This mysterious explanation was too flattering to the ambition of a
town whose local patriotism and desire for glory exceed those of other
places, not to be readily accepted, and it produced on all minds a
reaction in favor of Balthazar.
The supposition of his wife was, to a certain extent, well-founded.
Several artificers of various trades had long been at work in the garret
of the front house, where Balthazar went early every morning. After
remaining, at first, for several hours, an absence to which his wife and
household grew gradually accustomed, he ended by being there all day.
But--unexpected shock!--Madame Claes learned through the humiliating
medium of some women friends, who showed surprise at her ignorance,
that her husband constantly imported instruments of physical science,
valuable materials, books, machinery, etc., from Paris, and was on the
highroad to ruin in search of the Philosopher’s Stone. She ought, so her
kind friends added, to think of her children, and her own future; it was
criminal not to use her influence to draw Monsieur Claes from the fatal
path on which he had entered.
Though Madame Claes, with the tone and manner of a great lady, silenced
these absurd speeches, she was inwardly terrified in spite of her
apparent confidence, and she resolved to break through her present
system of silence and resignation. She brought about one of those little
scenes in which husband and wife are on an equal footing; less timid at
such a moment, she dared to ask Balthazar the reason for his change,
the motive of his constant seclusion. The Flemish husband frowned, and
replied:--
“My dear, you could not understand it.”
Soon after, however, Josephine insisted on being told the secret, gently
complaining that she was not allowed to share all the thoughts of one
whose life she shared.
“Very well, since it interests you so much,” said Balthazar, taking his
wife upon his knee and caressing her black hair, “I will tell you that
I have returned to the study of chemistry, and I am the happiest man on
earth.”