At nine o'clock this morning, sweetheart, my father was announced in my
rooms. I was up and dressed. I found him solemnly seated beside the fire
in the drawing-room, looking more thoughtful than usual. He pointed to
the armchair opposite to him. Divining his meaning, I sank into it
with a gravity, which so well aped his, that he could not refrain from
smiling, though the smile was dashed with melancholy.
"You are quite a match for your grandmother in quick-wittedness," he
said.
"Come, father, don't play the courtier here," I replied; "you want
something from me."
He rose, visibly agitated, and talked to me for half an hour. This
conversation, dear, really ought to be preserved. As soon as he had
gone, I sat down to my table and tried to recall his words. This is the
first time that I have seen my father revealing his inner thoughts.
He began by flattering me, and he did not do it badly. I was bound to be
grateful to him for having understood and appreciated me.
"Armande," he said, "I was quite mistaken in you, and you have agreeably
surprised me. When you arrived from the convent, I took you for an
average young girl, ignorant and not particularly intelligent, easily
to be bought off with gewgaws and ornaments, and with little turn for
reflection."
"You are complimentary to young girls, father."
"Oh! there is no such thing as youth nowadays," he said, with the air
of a diplomat. "Your mind is amazingly open. You take everything at
its proper worth; your clear-sightedness is extraordinary, there is no
hoodwinking you. You pass for being blind, and all the time you have
laid your hand on causes, while other people are still puzzling over
effects. In short, you are a minister in petticoats, the only person
here capable of understanding me. It follows, then, that if I have any
sacrifice to ask from you, it is only to yourself I can turn for help in
persuading you.
"I am therefore going to explain to you, quite frankly, my former plans,
to which I still adhere. In order to recommend them to you, I must show
that they are connected with feelings of a very high order, and I
shall thus be obliged to enter into political questions of the greatest
importance to the kingdom, which might be wearisome to any one less
intelligent than you are. When you have heard me, I hope you will take
time for consideration, six months if necessary. You are entirely your
own mistress; and if you decline to make the sacrifice I ask, I shall
bow to your decision and trouble you no further."
This preface, my sweetheart, made me really serious, and I said:
"Speak, father."
Here, then, is the deliverance of the statesman:
"My child, France is in a very critical position, which is understood
only by the King and a few superior minds. But the King is a head
without arms; the great nobles, who are in the secret of the danger,
have no authority over the men whose co-operation is needful in order
to bring about a happy result. These men, cast up by popular election,
refuse to lend themselves as instruments. Even the able men among them
carry on the work of pulling down society, instead of helping us to
strengthen the edifice.
"In a word, there are only two parties--the party of Marius and the
party of Sulla. I am for Sulla against Marius. This, roughly speaking,
is our position. To go more into details: the Revolution is still
active; it is embedded in the law and written on the soil; it fills
people's minds. The danger is all the greater because the greater number
of the King's counselors, seeing it destitute of armed forces and of
money, believe it completely vanquished. The King is an able man, and
not easily blinded; but from day to day he is won over by his brother's
partisans, who want to hurry things on. He has not two years to live,
and thinks more of a peaceful deathbed than of anything else.
"Shall I tell you, my child, which is the most destructive of all the
consequences entailed by the Revolution? You would never guess. In Louis
XVI. the Revolution has decapitated every head of a family. The family
has ceased to exist; we have only individuals. In their desire to become
a nation, Frenchmen have abandoned the idea of empire; in proclaiming
the equal rights of all children to their father's inheritance, they
have killed the family spirit and created the State treasury. But all
this has paved the way for weakened authority, for the blind force
of the masses, for the decay of art and the supremacy of individual
interests, and has left the road open to the foreign invader.
"We stand between two policies--either to found the State on the basis
of the family, or to rest it on individual interest--in other words,
between democracy and aristocracy, between free discussion and
obedience, between Catholicism and religious indifference. I am among
the few who are resolved to oppose what is called the people, and
that in the people's true interest. It is not now a question of feudal
rights, as fools are told, nor of rank; it is a question of the State
and of the existence of France. The country which does not rest on the
foundation of paternal authority cannot be stable. That is the foot of
the ladder of responsibility and subordination, which has for its summit
the King.
"The King stands for us all. To die for the King is to die for oneself,
for one's family, which, like the kingdom, cannot die. All animals have
certain instincts; the instinct of man is for family life. A country
is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is
interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of
scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven
or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot
of land, blind, in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is
coming when this too will be torn from them.
"Terrible calamities are in store for us, in case our party fails.
Nothing will be left but penal or fiscal laws--your money or your life.
The most generous nation on the earth will have ceased to obey the
call of noble instincts. Wounds past curing will have been fostered and
aggravated, an all pervading jealousy being the first. Then the upper
classes will be submerged; equality of desire will be taken for equality
of strength; true distinction, even when proved and recognized, will
be threatened by the advancing tide of middle-class prejudice. It
was possible to choose one man out of a thousand, but, amongst three
millions, discrimination becomes impossible, when all are moved by
the same ambitions and attired in the same livery of mediocrity. No
foresight will warn this victorious horde of that other terrible horde,
soon to be arrayed against them in the peasant proprietors; in other
words, twenty million acres of land, alive, stirring, arguing, deaf to
reason, insatiable of appetite, obstructing progress, masters in their
brute force----"
"But," said I, interrupting my father, "what can I do to help the State.
I feel no vocation for playing Joan of Arc in the interests of the
family, or for finding a martyr's block in the convent."
"You are a little hussy," cried my father. "If I speak sensibly to you,
you are full of jokes; when I jest, you talk like an ambassadress."
"Love lives on contrasts," was my reply.
And he laughed till the tears stood in his eyes.
"You will reflect on what I have told you; you will do justice to the
large and confiding spirit in which I have broached the matter, and
possibly events may assist my plans. I know that, so far as you are
concerned, they are injurious and unfair, and this is the reason why I
appeal for your sanction of them less to your heart and your imagination
than to your reason. I have found more judgment and commonsense in you
than in any one I know----"
"You flatter yourself," I said, with a smile, "for I am every inch your
child!"
"In short," he went on, "one must be logical. You can't have the end
without the means, and it is our duty to set an example to others. From
all this I deduce that you ought not to have money of your own till your
younger brother is provided for, and I want to employ the whole of your
inheritance in purchasing an estate for him to go with the title."
"But," I said, "you won't interfere with my living in my own fashion and
enjoying life if I leave you my fortune?"
"Provided," he replied, "that your view of life does not conflict with
the family honor, reputation, and, I may add, glory."
"Come, come," I cried, "what has become of my excellent judgment?"
"There is not in all France," he said with bitterness, "a man who would
take for wife a daughter of one of our noblest families without a dowry
and bestow one on her. If such a husband could be found, it would
be among the class of rich _parvenus_; on this point I belong to the
eleventh century."
"And I also," I said. "But why despair? Are there no aged peers?"
"You are an apt scholar, Louise!" he exclaimed.
Then he left me, smiling and kissing my hand.
I received your letter this very morning, and it led me to contemplate
that abyss into which you say that I may fall. A voice within seemed
to utter the same warning. So I took my precautions. Henarez, my dear,
dares to look at me, and his eyes are disquieting. They inspire me with
what I can only call an unreasoning dread. Such a man ought no more to
be looked at than a frog; he is ugly and fascinating.
For two days I have been hesitating whether to tell my father
point-blank that I want no more Spanish lessons and have Henarez sent
about his business. But in spite of all my brave resolutions, I feel
that the horrible sensation which comes over me when I see that man has
become necessary to me. I say to myself, "Once more, and then I will
speak."
His voice, my dear, is sweetly thrilling; his speaking is just like la
Fodor's singing. His manners are simple, entirely free from affectation.
And what teeth!
Just now, as he was leaving, he seemed to divine the interest I take
in him, and made a gesture--oh! most respectfully--as though to take my
hand and kiss it; then checked himself, apparently terrified at his own
boldness and the chasm he had been on the point of bridging. There was
the merest suggestion of all this, but I understood it and smiled, for
nothing is more pathetic than to see the frank impulse of an inferior
checking itself abashed. The love of a plebeian for a girl of noble
birth implies such courage!
My smile emboldened him. The poor fellow looked blindly about for his
hat; he seemed determined not to find it, and I handed it to him with
perfect gravity. His eyes were wet with unshed tears. It was a mere
passing moment, yet a world of facts and ideas were contained in it. We
understood each other so well that, on a sudden, I held out my hand for
him to kiss.
Possibly this was equivalent to telling him that love might bridge
the interval between us. Well, I cannot tell what moved me to do it.
Griffith had her back turned as I proudly extended my little white paw.
I felt the fire of his lips, tempered by two big tears. Oh! my love, I
lay in my armchair, nerveless, dreamy. I was happy, and I cannot
explain to you how or why. What I felt only a poet could express.
My condescension, which fills me with shame now, seemed to me then
something to be proud of; he had fascinated me, that is my one excuse.
Friday.
This man is really very handsome. He talks admirably, and has remarkable
intellectual power. My dear, he is a very Bossuet in force and
persuasiveness when he explains the mechanism, not only of the Spanish
tongue, but also of human thought and of all language. His mother tongue
seems to be French. When I expressed surprise at this, he replied that
he came to France when quite a boy, following the King of Spain to
Valencay.
What has passed within this enigmatic being? He is no longer the same
man. He came, dressed quite simply, but just as any gentleman would for
a morning walk. He put forth all his eloquence, and flashed wit, like
rays from a beacon, all through the lesson. Like a man roused from
lethargy, he revealed to me a new world of thoughts. He told me the
story of some poor devil of a valet who gave up his life for a single
glance from a queen of Spain.
"What could he do but die?" I exclaimed.
This delighted him, and he looked at me in a way which was truly
alarming.
In the evening I went to a ball at the Duchesse de Lenoncourt's. The
Prince de Talleyrand happened to be there; and I got M. de Vandenesse,
a charming young man, to ask him whether, among the guests at his
country-place in 1809, he remembered any one of the name of Henarez.
Vandenesse reported the Prince's reply, word for word, as follows:
"Henarez is the Moorish name of the Soria family, who are, they say,
descendants of the Abencerrages, converted to Christianity. The old Duke
and his two sons were with the King. The eldest, the present Duke de
Soria, has just had all his property, titles, and dignities confiscated
by King Ferdinand, who in this way avenges a long-standing feud. The
Duke made a huge mistake in consenting to form a constitutional ministry
with Valdez. Happily, he escaped from Cadiz before the arrival of the
Duc d'Angouleme, who, with the best will in the world, could not have
saved him from the King's wrath."
This information gave me much food for reflection. I cannot describe to
you the suspense in which I passed the time till my next lesson, which
took place this morning.
During the first quarter of an hour I examined him closely, debating
inwardly whether he were duke or commoner, without being able to come to
any conclusion. He seemed to read my fancies as they arose and to take
pleasure in thwarting them. At last I could endure it no longer. Putting
down my book suddenly, I broke off the translation I was making of it
aloud, and said to him in Spanish:
"You are deceiving us. You are no poor middle-class Liberal. You are the
Duke de Soria!"
"Mademoiselle," he replied, with a gesture of sorrow, "unhappily, I am
not the Duc de Soria."
I felt all the despair with which he uttered the word "unhappily." Ah!
my dear, never should I have conceived it possible to throw so much
meaning and passion into a single word. His eyes had dropped, and he
dared no longer look at me.
"M. de Talleyrand," I said, "in whose house you spent your years of
exile, declares that any one bearing the name of Henarez must either be
the late Duc de Soria or a lacquey."
He looked at me with eyes like two black burning coals, at once blazing
and ashamed. The man might have been in the torture-chamber. All he said
was:
"My father was in truth the servant of the King of Spain."
Griffith could make nothing of this sort of lesson. An awkward silence
followed each question and answer.
"In one word," I said, "are you a nobleman or not?"
"You know that in Spain even beggars are noble."
This reticence provoked me. Since the last lesson I had given play to my
imagination in a little practical joke. I had drawn an ideal portrait
of the man whom I should wish for my lover in a letter which I designed
giving to him to translate. So far, I had only put Spanish into French,
not French into Spanish; I pointed this out to him, and begged Griffith
to bring me the last letter I had received from a friend of mine.
"I shall find out," I thought, from the effect my sketch has on him,
"what sort of blood runs in his veins."