Produced by John Bickers, Bonnie Sala, and Dagny
THE THIRTEEN
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley and Ellen Marriage
DEDICATION
To Hector Berlioz.
INTRODUCTION
The _Histoire des Treize_ consists--or rather is built up--of three
stories: _Ferragus_ or the _Rue Soly_, _La Duchesse de Langeais_ or _Ne
touchez-paz a la hache_, and _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or_.
To tell the truth, there is more power than taste throughout the
_Histoire des Treize_, and perhaps not very much less unreality than
power. Balzac is very much better than Eugene Sue, though Eugene Sue
also is better than it is the fashion to think him just now. But he is
here, to a certain extent competing with Sue on the latter’s own ground.
The notion of the “Devorants”--of a secret society of men devoted to
each other’s interests, entirely free from any moral or legal scruple,
possessed of considerable means in wealth, ability, and position, all
working together, by fair means or foul, for good ends or bad--is,
no doubt, rather seducing to the imagination at all times; and it so
happened that it was particularly seducing to the imagination of
that time. And its example has been powerful since; it gave us Mr.
Stevenson’s _New Arabian Nights_ only, as it were, the other day.
But there is something a little schoolboyish in it; and I do not know
that Balzac has succeeded entirely in eliminating this something. The
pathos of the death, under persecution, of the innocent Clemence does
not entirely make up for the unreasonableness of the whole situation.
Nobody can say that the abominable misconduct of Maulincour--who is a
hopeless “cad”--is too much punished, though an Englishman may think
that Dr. Johnson’s receipt of three or four footmen with cudgels,
applied repeatedly and unsparingly, would have been better than
elaborately prepared accidents and duels, which were too honorable for a
Peeping Tom of this kind; and poisonings, which reduced the avengers to
the level of their victim. But the imbroglio is of itself stupid; these
fathers who cannot be made known to husbands are mere stage properties,
and should never be fetched out of the theatrical lumber-room by
literature.
_La Duchesse de Langeais_ is, I think, a better story, with more
romantic attraction, free from the objections just made to _Ferragus_,
and furnished with a powerful, if slightly theatrical catastrophe. It
is as good as anything that its author has done of the kind, subject
to those general considerations of probability and otherwise which
have been already hinted at. For those who are not troubled by any such
critical reflections, both, no doubt, will be highly satisfactory.
The third of the series, _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or_, in some respects one
of Balzac’s most brilliant effects, has been looked at askance by many
of his English readers. At one time he had the audacity to think of
calling it _La Femme aux Yeux Rouges_. To those who consider the story
morbid or, one may say, _bizarre_, one word of justification, hardly of
apology, may be offered. It was in the scheme of the _Comedie Humaine_
to survey social life in its entirety by a minute analysis of its most
diverse constituents. It included all the pursuits and passions, was
large and patient, and unafraid. And the patience, the curiosity, of the
artist which made Cesar Birotteau and his bankrupt ledgers matters of
high import to us, which did not shrink from creating a Vautrin and a
Lucien de Rubempre, would have been incomplete had it stopped short of a
Marquise de San-Real, of a Paquita Valdes. And in the great mass of the
_Comedie Humaine_, with its largeness and reality of life, as in life
itself; the figure of Paquita justifies its presence.
Considering the _Histoire des Treize_ as a whole, it is of engrossing
interest. And I must confess I should not think much of any boy who,
beginning Balzac with this series, failed to go rather mad over it. I
know there was a time when I used to like it best of all, and thought
not merely _Eugenie Grandet_, but _Le Pere Goriot_ (though not the _Peau
de Chagrin_), dull in comparison. Some attention, however, must be paid
to two remarkable characters, on whom it is quite clear that Balzac
expended a great deal of pains, and one of whom he seems to have
“caressed,” as the French say, with a curious admixture of dislike and
admiration.
The first, Bourignard or Ferragus, is, of course, another, though a
somewhat minor example--Collin or Vautrin being the chief--of that
strange tendency to take intense interest in criminals, which seems to
be a pretty constant eccentricity of many human minds, and which laid an
extraordinary grasp on the great French writers of Balzac’s time. I must
confess, though it may sink me very low in some eyes, that I have never
been able to fully appreciate the attractions of crime and criminals,
fictitious or real. Certain pleasant and profitable things, no doubt,
retain their pleasure and their profit, to some extent, when they are
done in the manner which is technically called criminal; but they seem
to me to acquire no additional interest by being so. As the criminal of
fact is, in the vast majority of cases, an exceedingly commonplace and
dull person, the criminal of fiction seems to me only, or usually, to
escape these curses by being absolutely improbable and unreal. But I
know this is a terrible heresy.
Henri de Marsay is a much more ambitious and a much more interesting
figure. In him are combined the attractions of criminality, beauty,
brains, success, and, last of all, dandyism. It is a well-known and
delightful fact that the most Anglophobe Frenchmen--and Balzac might
fairly be classed among them--have always regarded the English dandy
with half-jealous, half-awful admiration. Indeed, our novelist, it will
be seen, found it necessary to give Marsay English blood. But there is
a tradition that this young Don Juan--not such a good fellow as Byron’s,
nor such a _grand seigneur_ as Moliere’s--was partly intended to
represent Charles de Remusat, who is best known to this generation
by very sober and serious philosophical works, and by his part in
his mother’s correspondence. I do not know that there ever were any
imputation on M. de Remusat’s morals; but in memoirs of the time, he
is, I think, accused of a certain selfishness and _hauteur_, and he
certainly made his way, partly by journalism, partly by society, to
power very much as Marsay did. But Marsay would certainly not have
written _Abelard_ and the rest, or have returned to Ministerial rank in
our own time. Marsay, in fact, more fortunate than Rubempre, and of a
higher stamp and flight than Rastignac, makes with them Balzac’s trinity
of sketches of the kind of personage whose part, in his day and since,
every young Frenchman has aspired to play, and some have played. It
cannot be said that “a moral man is Marsay”; it cannot be said that he
has the element of good-nature which redeems Rastignac. But he bears
a blame and a burden for which we Britons are responsible in part--the
Byronic ideal of the guilty hero coming to cross and blacken the old
French model of unscrupulous good humor. It is not a very pretty mixture
or a very worthy ideal; but I am not so sure that it is not still a
pretty common one.
The association of the three stories forming the _Histoire des Treize_
is, in book form, original, inasmuch as they filled three out of the
four volumes of _Etudes des Moeurs_ published in 1834-35, and themselves
forming part of the first collection of _Scenes de la Vie Parisienne_.
But _Ferragus_ had appeared in parts (with titles to each) in the
_Revue de Paris_ for March and April 1833, and part of _La Duchesse de
Langeais_ in the _Echo de la Jeune France_ almost contemporaneously.
There are divisions in this also. _Ferragus_ and _La Duchesse_ also
appeared without _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or_ in 1839, published in one
volume by Charpentier, before their absorption at the usual time in the
_Comedie_.
George Saintsbury
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
In the Paris of the Empire there were found Thirteen men equally
impressed with the same idea, equally endowed with energy enough to keep
them true to it, while among themselves they were loyal enough to keep
faith even when their interests seemed to clash. They were strong
enough to set themselves above all laws; bold enough to shrink from no
enterprise; and lucky enough to succeed in nearly everything that they
undertook. So profoundly politic were they, that they could dissemble
the tie which bound them together. They ran the greatest risks, and
kept their failures to themselves. Fear never entered into their
calculations; not one of them had trembled before princes, before the
executioner’s axe, before innocence. They had taken each other as they
were, regardless of social prejudices. Criminals they doubtless were,
yet none the less were they all remarkable for some one of the virtues
which go to the making of great men, and their numbers were filled up
only from among picked recruits. Finally, that nothing should be lacking
to complete the dark, mysterious romance of their history, nobody to
this day knows who they were. The Thirteen once realized all the wildest
ideas conjured up by tales of the occult powers of a Manfred, a
Faust, or a Melmoth; and to-day the band is broken up or, at any rate,
dispersed. Its members have quietly returned beneath the yoke of the
Civil Code; much as Morgan, the Achilles of piracy, gave up buccaneering
to be a peaceable planter; and, untroubled by qualms of conscience, sat
himself down by the fireside to dispose of blood-stained booty acquired
by the red light of blazing towns.
After Napoleon’s death, the band was dissolved by a chance event which
the author is bound for the present to pass over in silence, and its
mysterious existence, as curious, it may be, as the darkest novel by
Mrs. Radcliffe, came to an end.
It was only lately that the present writer, detecting, as he fancied,
a faint desire for celebrity in one of the anonymous heroes to whom
the whole band once owed an occult allegiance, received the somewhat
singular permission to make public certain of the adventures which
befell that band, provided that, while telling the story in his own
fashion, he observed certain limits.
The aforesaid leader was still an apparently young man with fair hair
and blue eyes, and a soft, thin voice which might seem to indicate a
feminine temperament. His face was pale, his ways mysterious. He chatted
pleasantly, and told me that he was only just turned of forty. He might
have belonged to any one of the upper classes. The name which he gave
was probably assumed, and no one answering to his description was known
in society. Who is he, do you ask? No one knows.
Perhaps when he made his extraordinary disclosures to the present
writer, he wished to see them in some sort reproduced; to enjoy the
effect of the sensation on the multitude; to feel as Macpherson might
have felt when the name of Ossian, his creation, passed into all
languages. And, in truth, that Scottish advocate knew one of the
keenest, or, at any rate, one of the rarest sensations in human
experience. What was this but the incognito of genius? To write an
_Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem_ is to take one’s share in the glory
of a century, but to give a Homer to one’s country--this surely is a
usurpation of the rights of God.
The writer is too well acquainted with the laws of narration to be
unaware of the nature of the pledge given by this brief preface; but,
at the same time, he knows enough of the history of the Thirteen to feel
confident that he shall not disappoint any expectations raised by the
programme. Tragedies dripping with gore, comedies piled up with horrors,
tales of heads taken off in secret have been confided to him. If any
reader has not had enough of the ghastly tales served up to the public
for some time past, he has only to express his wish; the author is in
a position to reveal cold-blooded atrocities and family secrets of a
gloomy and astonishing nature. But in preference he has chosen those
pleasanter stories in which stormy passions are succeeded by purer
scenes, where the beauty and goodness of woman shine out the brighter
for the darkness. And, to the honor of the Thirteen, such episodes as
these are not wanting. Some day perhaps it may be thought worth while
to give their whole history to the world; in which case it might form a
pendant to the history of the buccaneers--that race apart so curiously
energetic, so attractive in spite of their crimes.
When a writer has a true story to tell, he should scorn to turn it into
a sort of puzzle toy, after the manner of those novelists who take
their reader for a walk through one cavern after another to show him a
dried-up corpse at the end of the fourth volume, and inform him, by way
of conclusion, that he has been frightened all along by a door hidden
somewhere or other behind some tapestry; or a dead body, left by
inadvertence, under the floor. So the present chronicler, in spite of
his objection to prefaces, felt bound to introduce his fragment by a few
remarks.
_Ferragus_, the first episode, is connected by invisible links with the
history of the Thirteen, for the power which they acquired in a natural
manner provides the apparently supernatural machinery.
Again, although a certain literary coquetry may be permissible to
retailers of the marvelous, the sober chronicler is bound to forego
such advantage as he may reap from an odd-sounding name, on which many
ephemeral successes are founded in these days. Wherefore the present
writer gives the following succinct statement of the reasons which
induced him to adopt the unlikely sounding title and sub-title.
In accordance with old-established custom, _Ferragus_ is a name taken by
the head of a guild of _Devorants_, _id est Devoirants_ or journeymen.
Every chief on the day of his election chooses a pseudonym and continues
a dynasty of _Devorants_ precisely as a pope changes his name on his
accession to the triple tiara; and as the Church has its Clement XIV.,
Gregory XII., Julius II., or Alexander VI., so the workmen have their
Trempe-la-Soupe IX., Ferragus XXII., Tutanus XIII., or Masche-Fer IV.
Who are the _Devorants_, do you ask?
The _Devorants_ are one among many tribes of _compagnons_ whose origin
can be traced to a great mystical association formed among the
workmen of Christendom for the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem.
_Compagnonnage_ is still a popular institution in France. Its traditions
still exert a power over little enlightened minds, over men so
uneducated that they have not learned to break their oaths; and the
various organizations might be turned to formidable account even yet
if any rough-hewn man of genius arose to make use of them, for his
instruments would be, for the most part, almost blind.
Wherever journeymen travel, they find a hostel for _compagnons_ which
has been in existence in the town from time immemorial. The _obade_,
as they call it, is a kind of lodge with a “Mother” in charge, an old,
half-gypsy wife who has nothing to lose. She hears all that goes on in
the countryside; and, either from fear or from long habit, is devoted to
the interests of the tribe boarded and lodged by her. And as a result,
this shifting population, subject as it is to an unalterable law of
custom, has eyes in every place, and will carry out an order anywhere
without asking questions; for the oldest journeyman is still at an age
when a man has some beliefs left. What is more, the whole fraternity
professes doctrines which, if unfolded never so little, are both
true enough and mysterious enough to electrify all the adepts with
patriotism; and the _compagnons_ are so attached to their rules, that
there have been bloody battles between different fraternities on a
question of principle. Fortunately, however, for peace and public order;
if a _Devorant_ is ambitious, he takes to building houses, makes a
fortune, and leaves the guild.
A great many curious things might be told of their rivals, the
_Compagnons du Devior_, of all the different sects of workmen, their
manners and customs and brotherhoods, and of the resemblances between
them and the Freemasons; but there, these particulars would be out
of place. The author will merely add, that before the Revolution a
Trempe-la-Soupe had been known in the King’s service, which is to say,
that he had the tenure of a place in His Majesty’s galleys for one
hundred and one years; but even thence he ruled his guild, and was
religiously consulted on all matters, and if he escaped from the hulks
he met with help, succor, and respect wherever he went. To have a
chief in the hulks is one of those misfortunes for which Providence is
responsible; but a faithful lodge of _devorants_ is bound, as before, to
obey a power created by and set above themselves. Their lawful sovereign
is in exile for the time being, but none the less is he their king.
And now any romantic mystery hanging about the words _Ferragus_ and the
_devorants_ is completely dispelled.
As for the Thirteen, the author feels that, on the strength of the
details of this almost fantastic story, he can afford to give away yet
another prerogative, though it is one of the greatest on record, and
would possibly fetch a high price if brought into a literary auction
mart; for the owner might inflict as many volumes on the public as La
Contemporaine.[*]
[*] A long series of so-called Memoirs, which appeared about 1830.
The Thirteen were all of them men tempered like Byron’s friend
Trelawney, the original (so it is said) of _The Corsair_. All of them
were fatalists, men of spirit and poetic temperament; all of them were
tired of the commonplace life which they led; all felt attracted towards
Asiatic pleasures by all the vehement strength of newly awakened
and long dormant forces. One of these, chancing to take up _Venice
Preserved_ for the second time, admired the sublime friendship between
Pierre and Jaffir, and fell to musing on the virtues of outlaws, the
loyalty of the hulks, the honor of thieves, and the immense power that
a few men can wield if they bring their whole minds to bear upon the
carrying out of a single will. It struck him that the individual man
rose higher than men. Then he began to think that if a few picked men
should band themselves together; and if, to natural wit, and education,
and money, they could join a fanaticism hot enough to fuse, as it were,
all those separate forces into a single one, then the whole world would
be at their feet. From that time forth, with a tremendous power of
concentration, they could wield an occult power against which the
organization of society would be helpless; a power which would push
obstacles aside and defeat the will of others; and the diabolical power
of all would be at the service of each. A hostile world apart within the
world, admitting none of the ideas, recognizing none of the laws of the
world; submitting only to the sense of necessity, obedient only from
devotion; acting all as one man in the interests of the comrade who
should claim the aid of the rest; a band of buccaneers with carriages
and yellow kid gloves; a close confederacy of men of extraordinary
power, of amused and cool spectators of an artificial and petty world
which they cursed with smiling lips; conscious as they were that they
could make all things bend to their caprice, weave ingenious schemes of
revenge, and live with the life in thirteen hearts, to say nothing
of the unfailing pleasure of facing the world of men with a hidden
misanthropy, a sense that they were armed against their kind, and could
retire into themselves with one idea which the most remarkable men had
not,--all this constituted a religion of pleasure and egoism which
made fanatics of the Thirteen. The history of the Society of Jesus was
repeated for the Devil’s benefit. It was hideous and sublime.
The pact was made; and it lasted, precisely because it seemed
impossible. And so it came to pass that in Paris there was a fraternity
of thirteen men, each one bound, body and soul, to the rest, and all
of them strangers to each other in the sight of the world. But evening
found them gathered together like conspirators, and then they had no
thoughts apart; riches, like the wealth of the Old Man of the Mountain,
they possessed in common; they had their feet in every salon, their
hands in every strong box, their elbows in the streets, their heads upon
all pillows, they did not scruple to help themselves at their pleasure.
No chief commanded them, nobody was strong enough. The liveliest
passion, the most urgent need took precedence--that was all. They were
thirteen unknown kings; unknown, but with all the power and more than
the power of kings; for they were both judges and executioners, they had
taken wings that they might traverse the heights and depths of society,
scorning to take any place in it, since all was theirs. If the author
learns the reason of their abdication, he will communicate it.
And now the author is free to give those episodes in the History of the
Thirteen which, by reason of the Parisian flavor of the details or the
strangeness of the contrasts, possessed a peculiar attraction for him.
Paris
THE THIRTEEN
I. FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS
CHAPTER I. MADAME JULES
Certain streets in Paris are as degraded as a man covered with infamy;
also, there are noble streets, streets simply respectable, young streets
on the morality of which the public has not yet formed an opinion; also
cut-throat streets, streets older than the age of the oldest dowagers,
estimable streets, streets always clean, streets always dirty, working,
laboring, and mercantile streets. In short, the streets of Paris
have every human quality, and impress us, by what we must call their
physiognomy, with certain ideas against which we are defenceless. There
are, for instance, streets of a bad neighborhood in which you could not
be induced to live, and streets where you would willingly take up your
abode. Some streets, like the rue Montmartre, have a charming head,
and end in a fish’s tail. The rue de la Paix is a wide street, a fine
street, yet it wakens none of those gracefully noble thoughts which come
to an impressible mind in the middle of the rue Royale, and it certainly
lacks the majesty which reigns in the Place Vendome.
If you walk the streets of the Ile Saint-Louis, do not seek the reason
of the nervous sadness that lays hold upon you save in the solitude
of the spot, the gloomy look of the houses, and the great deserted
mansions. This island, the ghost of _fermiers-generaux_, is the Venice
of Paris. The Place de la Bourse is voluble, busy, degraded; it is
never fine except by moonlight at two in the morning. By day it is
Paris epitomized; by night it is a dream of Greece. The rue
Traversiere-Saint-Honore--is not that a villainous street? Look at the
wretched little houses with two windows on a floor, where vice, crime,
and misery abound. The narrow streets exposed to the north, where the
sun never comes more than three or four times a year, are the cut-throat
streets which murder with impunity; the authorities of the present
day do not meddle with them; but in former times the Parliament might
perhaps have summoned the lieutenant of police and reprimanded him for
the state of things; and it would, at least, have issued some decree
against such streets, as it once did against the wigs of the Chapter of
Beauvais. And yet Monsieur Benoiston de Chateauneuf has proved that
the mortality of these streets is double that of others! To sum up such
theories by a single example: is not the rue Fromentin both murderous
and profligate!
These observations, incomprehensible out of Paris, will doubtless be
understood by musing men of thought and poesy and pleasure, who
know, while rambling about Paris, how to harvest the mass of floating
interests which may be gathered at all hours within her walls; to them
Paris is the most delightful and varied of monsters: here, a pretty
woman; farther on, a haggard pauper; here, new as the coinage of a new
reign; there, in this corner, elegant as a fashionable woman. A monster,
moreover, complete! Its garrets, as it were, a head full of knowledge
and genius; its first storeys stomachs repleted; its shops, actual feet,
where the busy ambulating crowds are moving. Ah! what an ever-active
life the monster leads! Hardly has the last vibration of the last
carriage coming from a ball ceased at its heart before its arms are
moving at the barriers and it shakes itself slowly into motion. Doors
open; turning on their hinges like the membrane of some huge lobster,
invisibly manipulated by thirty thousand men or women, of whom each
individual occupies a space of six square feet, but has a kitchen, a
workshop, a bed, children, a garden, little light to see by, but
must see all. Imperceptibly, the articulations begin to crack; motion
communicates itself; the street speaks. By mid-day, all is alive; the
chimneys smoke, the monster eats; then he roars, and his thousand paws
begin to ramp. Splendid spectacle! But, O Paris! he who has not admired
your gloomy passages, your gleams and flashes of light, your deep and
silent _cul-de-sacs_, who has not listened to your murmurings between
midnight and two in the morning, knows nothing as yet of your true
poesy, nor of your broad and fantastic contrasts.
There are a few amateurs who never go their way heedlessly; who savor
their Paris, so to speak; who know its physiognomy so well that they
see every wart, and pimple, and redness. To others, Paris is always that
monstrous marvel, that amazing assemblage of activities, of schemes,
of thoughts; the city of a hundred thousand tales, the head of the
universe. But to those few, Paris is sad or gay, ugly or beautiful,
living or dead; to them Paris is a creature; every man, every fraction
of a house is a lobe of the cellular tissue of that great courtesan
whose head and heart and fantastic customs they know so well. These men
are lovers of Paris; they lift their noses at such or such a corner of
a street, certain that they can see the face of a clock; they tell a
friend whose tobacco-pouch is empty, “Go down that passage and turn
to the left; there’s a tobacconist next door to a confectioner, where
there’s a pretty girl.” Rambling about Paris is, to these poets, a
costly luxury. How can they help spending precious minutes before
the dramas, disasters, faces, and picturesque events which meet us
everywhere amid this heaving queen of cities, clothed in posters,--who
has, nevertheless, not a single clean corner, so complying is she to the
vices of the French nation! Who has not chanced to leave his home early
in the morning, intending to go to some extremity of Paris, and found
himself unable to get away from the centre of it by the dinner-hour?
Such a man will know how to excuse this vagabondizing start upon our
tale; which, however, we here sum up in an observation both useful and
novel, as far as any observation can be novel in Paris, where there is
nothing new,--not even the statue erected yesterday, on which some young
gamin has already scribbled his name.
Well, then! there are streets, or ends of streets, there are houses,
unknown for the most part to persons of social distinction, to which a
woman of that class cannot go without causing cruel and very wounding
things to be thought of her. Whether the woman be rich and has a
carriage, whether she is on foot, or is disguised, if she enters one
of these Parisian defiles at any hour of the day, she compromises her
reputation as a virtuous woman. If, by chance, she is there at nine in
the evening the conjectures that an observer permits himself to make
upon her may prove fearful in their consequences. But if the woman is
young and pretty, if she enters a house in one of those streets, if the
house has a long, dark, damp, and evil-smelling passage-way, at the end
of which flickers the pallid gleam of an oil lamp, and if beneath that
gleam appears the horrid face of a withered old woman with fleshless
fingers, ah, then! and we say it in the interests of young and pretty
women, that woman is lost. She is at the mercy of the first man of her
acquaintance who sees her in that Parisian slough. There is more than
one street in Paris where such a meeting may lead to a frightful drama,
a bloody drama of death and love, a drama of the modern school.
Unhappily, this scene, this modern drama itself, will be comprehended by
only a small number of persons; and it is a pity to tell the tale to
a public which cannot enter into its local merit. But who can flatter
himself that he will ever be understood? We all die unknown--‘tis the
saying of women and of authors.
At half-past eight o’clock one evening, in the rue Pagevin, in the days
when that street had no wall which did not echo some infamous word, and
was, in the direction of the rue Soly, the narrowest and most impassable
street in Paris (not excepting the least frequented corner of the most
deserted street),--at the beginning of the month of February about
thirteen years ago, a young man, by one of those chances which come but
once in life, turned the corner of the rue Pagevin to enter the rue des
Vieux-Augustins, close to the rue Soly. There, this young man, who lived
himself in the rue de Bourbon, saw in a woman near whom he had been
unconsciously walking, a vague resemblance to the prettiest woman in
Paris; a chaste and delightful person, with whom he was secretly and
passionately in love,--a love without hope; she was married. In a moment
his heart leaped, an intolerable heat surged from his centre and flowed
through all his veins; his back turned cold, the skin of his head crept.
He loved, he was young, he knew Paris; and his knowledge did not permit
him to be ignorant of all there was of possible infamy in an elegant,
rich, young, and beautiful woman walking there, alone, with a furtively
criminal step. _She_ in that mud! at that hour!
The love that this young man felt for that woman may seem romantic, and
all the more so because he was an officer in the Royal Guard. If he had
been in the infantry, the affair might have seemed more likely; but, as
an officer of rank in the cavalry, he belonged to that French arm which
demands rapidity in its conquests and derives as much vanity from its
amorous exploits as from its dashing uniform. But the passion of this
officer was a true love, and many young hearts will think it noble.
He loved this woman because she was virtuous; he loved her virtue, her
modest grace, her imposing saintliness, as the dearest treasures of his
hidden passion. This woman was indeed worthy to inspire one of those
platonic loves which are found, like flowers amid bloody ruins, in the
history of the middle-ages; worthy to be the hidden principle of all the
actions of a young man’s life; a love as high, as pure as the skies when
blue; a love without hope and to which men bind themselves because
it can never deceive; a love that is prodigal of unchecked enjoyment,
especially at an age when the heart is ardent, the imagination keen, and
the eyes of a man see very clearly.
Strange, weird, inconceivable effects may be met with at night in Paris.
Only those who have amused themselves by watching those effects have
any idea how fantastic a woman may appear there at dusk. At times the
creature whom you are following, by accident or design, seems to you
light and slender; the stockings, if they are white, make you fancy that
the legs must be slim and elegant; the figure though wrapped in a shawl,
or concealed by a pelisse, defines itself gracefully and seductively
among the shadows; anon, the uncertain gleam thrown from a shop-window
or a street lamp bestows a fleeting lustre, nearly always deceptive, on
the unknown woman, and fires the imagination, carrying it far beyond
the truth. The senses then bestir themselves; everything takes color and
animation; the woman appears in an altogether novel aspect; her person
becomes beautiful. Behold! she is not a woman, she is a demon, a siren,
who is drawing you by magnetic attraction to some respectable house,
where the worthy _bourgeoise_, frightened by your threatening step and
the clack of your boots, shuts the door in your face without looking at
you.
A vacillating gleam, thrown from the shop-window of a shoemaker,
suddenly illuminated from the waist down the figure of the woman who was
before the young man. Ah! surely, _she_ alone had that swaying figure;
she alone knew the secret of that chaste gait which innocently set into
relief the many beauties of that attractive form. Yes, that was the
shawl, and that the velvet bonnet which she wore in the mornings. On
her gray silk stockings not a spot, on her shoes not a splash. The shawl
held tightly round the bust disclosed, vaguely, its charming lines; and
the young man, who had often seen those shoulders at a ball, knew well
the treasures that the shawl concealed. By the way a Parisian woman
wraps a shawl around her, and the way she lifts her feet in the street,
a man of intelligence in such studies can divine the secret of her
mysterious errand. There is something, I know not what, of quivering
buoyancy in the person, in the gait; the woman seems to weigh less; she
steps, or rather, she glides like a star, and floats onward led by a
thought which exhales from the folds and motion of her dress. The young
man hastened his step, passed the woman, and then turned back to look
at her. Pst! she had disappeared into a passage-way, the grated door of
which and its bell still rattled and sounded. The young man walked back
to the alley and saw the woman reach the farther end, where she began
to mount--not without receiving the obsequious bow of an old portress--a
winding staircase, the lower steps of which were strongly lighted; she
went up buoyantly, eagerly, as though impatient.
“Impatient for what?” said the young man to himself, drawing back to
lean against a wooden railing on the other side of the street. He
gazed, unhappy man, at the different storeys of the house, with the keen
attention of a detective searching for a conspirator.
It was one of those houses of which there are thousands in Paris,
ignoble, vulgar, narrow, yellowish in tone, with four storeys and three
windows on each floor. The outer blinds of the first floor were closed.
Where was she going? The young man fancied he heard the tinkle of a bell
on the second floor. As if in answer to it, a light began to move in a
room with two windows strongly illuminated, which presently lit up the
third window, evidently that of a first room, either the salon or the
dining-room of the apartment. Instantly the outline of a woman’s bonnet
showed vaguely on the window, and a door between the two rooms must
have closed, for the first was dark again, while the two other windows
resumed their ruddy glow. At this moment a voice said, “Hi, there!” and
the young man was conscious of a blow on his shoulder.
“Why don’t you pay attention?” said the rough voice of a workman,
carrying a plank on his shoulder. The man passed on. He was the voice of
Providence saying to the watcher: “What are you meddling with? Think of
your own duty; and leave these Parisians to their own affairs.”
The young man crossed his arms; then, as no one beheld him, he suffered
tears of rage to flow down his cheeks unchecked. At last the sight of
the shadows moving behind the lighted windows gave him such pain that he
looked elsewhere and noticed a hackney-coach, standing against a wall
in the upper part of the rue des Vieux-Augustins, at a place where there
was neither the door of a house, nor the light of a shop-window.
Was it she? Was it not she? Life or death to a lover! This lover waited.
He stood there during a century of twenty minutes. After that the woman
came down, and he then recognized her as the one whom he secretly loved.
Nevertheless, he wanted still to doubt. She went to the hackney-coach,
and got into it.
“The house will always be there and I can search it later,” thought the
young man, following the carriage at a run, to solve his last doubts;
and soon he did so.
The carriage stopped in the rue de Richelieu before a shop for
artificial flowers, close to the rue de Menars. The lady got out,
entered the shop, sent out the money to pay the coachman, and presently
left the shop herself, on foot, after buying a bunch of marabouts.
Marabouts for her black hair! The officer beheld her, through the
window-panes, placing the feathers to her head to see the effect, and
he fancied he could hear the conversation between herself and the
shop-woman.
“Oh! madame, nothing is more suitable for brunettes: brunettes have
something a little too strongly marked in their lines, and marabouts
give them just that _flow_ which they lack. Madame la Duchesse de
Langeais says they give a woman something vague, Ossianic, and very
high-bred.”
“Very good; send them to me at once.”
Then the lady turned quickly toward the rue de Menars, and entered her
own house. When the door closed on her, the young lover, having lost
his hopes, and worse, far worse, his dearest beliefs, walked through the
streets like a drunken man, and presently found himself in his own room
without knowing how he came there. He flung himself into an arm-chair,
put his head in his hands and his feet on the andirons, drying his boots
until he burned them. It was an awful moment,--one of those moments in
human life when the character is moulded, and the future conduct of the
best of men depends on the good or evil fortune of his first action.
Providence or fatality?--choose which you will.
This young man belonged to a good family, whose nobility was not very
ancient; but there are so few really old families in these days, that
all men of rank are ancient without dispute. His grandfather had bought
the office of counsellor to the Parliament of Paris, where he afterwards
became president. His sons, each provided with a handsome fortune,
entered the army, and through their marriages became attached to the
court. The Revolution swept the family away; but one old dowager, too
obstinate to emigrate, was left; she was put in prison, threatened with
death, but was saved by the 9th Thermidor and recovered her property.
When the proper time came, about the year 1804, she recalled her
grandson to France. Auguste de Maulincour, the only scion of the
Carbonnon de Maulincour, was brought up by the good dowager with the
triple care of a mother, a woman of rank, and an obstinate dowager. When
the Restoration came, the young man, then eighteen years of age, entered
the Maison-Rouge, followed the princes to Ghent, was made an officer in
the body-guard, left it to serve in the line, but was recalled later to
the Royal Guard, where, at twenty-three years of age, he found
himself major of a cavalry regiment,--a splendid position, due to his
grandmother, who had played her cards well to obtain it, in spite of his
youth. This double biography is a compendium of the general and special
history, barring variations, of all the noble families who emigrated
having debts and property, dowagers and tact.
Madame la Baronne de Maulincour had a friend in the old Vidame de
Pamiers, formerly a commander of the Knights of Malta. This was one of
those undying friendships founded on sexagenary ties which nothing
can weaken, because at the bottom of such intimacies there are certain
secrets of the human heart, delightful to guess at when we have the
time, insipid to explain in twenty words, and which might make the text
of a work in four volumes as amusing as the Doyen de Killerine,--a work
about which young men talk and judge without having read it.
Auguste de Maulincour belonged therefore to the faubourg Saint-Germain
through his grandmother and the vidame, and it sufficed him to date back
two centuries to take the tone and opinions of those who assume to
go back to Clovis. This young man, pale, slender, and delicate in
appearance, a man of honor and true courage, who would fight a duel for
a yes or a no, had never yet fought upon a battle-field, though he wore
in his button-hole the cross of the Legion of honor. He was, as you
perceive, one of the blunders of the Restoration, perhaps the most
excusable of them. The youth of those days was the youth of no epoch.
It came between the memories of the Empire and those of the Emigration,
between the old traditions of the court and the conscientious education
of the _bourgeoisie_; between religion and fancy-balls; between two
political faiths, between Louis XVIII., who saw only the present, and
Charles X., who looked too far into the future; it was moreover bound to
accept the will of the king, though the king was deceiving and tricking
it. This unfortunate youth, blind and yet clear-sighted, was counted
as nothing by old men jealously keeping the reins of the State in
their feeble hands, while the monarchy could have been saved by their
retirement and the accession of this Young France, which the old
doctrinaires, the _emigres_ of the Restoration, still speak of
slightingly. Auguste de Maulincour was a victim to the ideas which
weighed in those days upon French youth, and we must here explain why.
The Vidame de Pamiers was still, at sixty-seven years of age, a very
brilliant man, having seen much and lived much; a good talker, a man of
honor and a gallant man, but who held as to women the most detestable
opinions; he loved them, and he despised them. _Their_ honor! _their_
feelings! Ta-ra-ra, rubbish and shams! When he was with them, he
believed in them, the ci-devant “monstre”; he never contradicted them,
and he made them shine. But among his male friends, when the topic of
the sex came up, he laid down the principle that to deceive women, and
to carry on several intrigues at once, should be the occupation of those
young men who were so misguided as to wish to meddle in the affairs of
the State. It is sad to have to sketch so hackneyed a portrait, for has
it not figured everywhere and become, literally, as threadbare as
that of a grenadier of the Empire? But the vidame had an influence
on Monsieur de Maulincour’s destiny which obliges us to preserve his
portrait; he lectured the young man after his fashion, and did his best
to convert him to the doctrines of the great age of gallantry.
The dowager, a tender-hearted, pious woman, sitting between God and her
vidame, a model of grace and sweetness, but gifted with that well-bred
persistency which triumphs in the long run, had longed to preserve for
her grandson the beautiful illusions of life, and had therefore brought
him up in the highest principles; she instilled into him her own
delicacy of feeling and made him, to outward appearance, a timid man, if
not a fool. The sensibilities of the young fellow, preserved pure, were
not worn by contact without; he remained so chaste, so scrupulous, that
he was keenly offended by actions and maxims to which the world attached
no consequence. Ashamed of this susceptibility, he forced himself to
conceal it under a false hardihood; but he suffered in secret, all the
while scoffing with others at the things he reverenced.
It came to pass that he was deceived; because, in accordance with a not
uncommon whim of destiny, he, a man of gentle melancholy, and spiritual
in love, encountered in the object of his first passion a woman who
held in horror all German sentimentalism. The young man, in consequence,
distrusted himself, became dreamy, absorbed in his griefs, complaining
of not being understood. Then, as we desire all the more violently the
things we find difficult to obtain, he continued to adore women with
that ingenuous tenderness and feline delicacy the secret of which
belongs to women themselves, who may, perhaps, prefer to keep the
monopoly of it. In point of fact, though women of the world complain
of the way men love them, they have little liking themselves for those
whose soul is half feminine. Their own superiority consists in making
men believe they are their inferiors in love; therefore they will
readily leave a lover if he is inexperienced enough to rob them of those
fears with which they seek to deck themselves, those delightful tortures
of feigned jealousy, those troubles of hope betrayed, those futile
expectations,--in short, the whole procession of their feminine
miseries. They hold Sir Charles Grandison in horror. What can be more
contrary to their nature than a tranquil, perfect love? They want
emotions; happiness without storms is not happiness to them. Women with
souls that are strong enough to bring infinitude into love are angelic
exceptions; they are among women what noble geniuses are among men.
Their great passions are rare as masterpieces. Below the level of
such love come compromises, conventions, passing and contemptible
irritations, as in all things petty and perishable.
Amid the hidden disasters of his heart, and while he was still seeking
the woman who could comprehend him (a search which, let us remark in
passing, is one of the amorous follies of our epoch), Auguste met, in
the rank of society that was farthest from his own, in the secondary
sphere of money, where banking holds the first place, a perfect being,
one of those women who have I know not what about them that is saintly
and sacred,--women who inspire such reverence that love has need of the
help of a long familiarity to declare itself.
Auguste then gave himself up wholly to the delights of the deepest and
most moving of passions, to a love that was purely adoring. Innumerable
repressed desires there were, shadows of passion so vague yet so
profound, so fugitive and yet so actual, that one scarcely knows to what
we may compare them. They are like perfumes, or clouds, or rays of the
sun, or shadows, or whatever there is in nature that shines for a moment
and disappears, that springs to life and dies, leaving in the heart long
echoes of emotion. When the soul is young enough to nurture melancholy
and far-off hope, to find in woman more than a woman, is it not the
greatest happiness that can befall a man when he loves enough to feel
more joy in touching a gloved hand, or a lock of hair, in listening to
a word, in casting a single look, than in all the ardor of possession
given by happy love? Thus it is that rejected persons, those rebuffed by
fate, the ugly and unfortunate, lovers unrevealed, women and timid men,
alone know the treasures contained in the voice of the beloved. Taking
their source and their element from the soul itself, the vibrations
of the air, charged with passion, put our hearts so powerfully into
communion, carrying thought between them so lucidly, and being, above
all, so incapable of falsehood, that a single inflection of a voice is
often a revelation. What enchantments the intonations of a tender
voice can bestow upon the heart of a poet! What ideas they awaken! What
freshness they shed there! Love is in the voice before the glance avows
it. Auguste, poet after the manner of lovers (there are poets who feel,
and poets who express; the first are the happiest), Auguste had tasted
all these early joys, so vast, so fecund. SHE possessed the most winning
organ that the most artful woman of the world could have desired in
order to deceive at her ease; _she_ had that silvery voice which is soft
to the ear, and ringing only for the heart which it stirs and troubles,
caresses and subjugates.
And this woman went by night to the rue Soly through the rue Pagevin!
and her furtive apparition in an infamous house had just destroyed the
grandest of passions! The vidame’s logic triumphed.
“If she is betraying her husband we will avenge ourselves,” said
Auguste.
There was still faith in that “if”. The philosophic doubt of Descartes
is a politeness with which we should always honor virtue. Ten o’clock
sounded. The Baron de Maulincour remembered that this woman was going to
a ball that evening at a house to which he had access. He dressed, went
there, and searched for her through all the salons. The mistress of the
house, Madame de Nucingen, seeing him thus occupied, said:--
“You are looking for Madame Jules; but she has not yet come.”
“Good evening, dear,” said a voice.
Auguste and Madame de Nucingen turned round. Madame Jules had arrived,
dressed in white, looking simple and noble, wearing in her hair the
marabouts the young baron had seen her choose in the flower-shop. That
voice of love now pierced his heart. Had he won the slightest right to
be jealous of her he would have petrified her then and there by saying
the words, “Rue Soly!” But if he, an alien to her life, had said those
words in her ear a thousand times, Madame Jules would have asked him in
astonishment what he meant. He looked at her stupidly.
For those sarcastic persons who scoff at all things it may be a great
amusement to detect the secret of a woman, to know that her chastity is
a lie, that her calm face hides some anxious thought, that under that
pure brow is a dreadful drama. But there are other souls to whom
the sight is saddening; and many of those who laugh in public, when
withdrawn into themselves and alone with their conscience, curse the
world while they despise the woman. Such was the case with Auguste de
Maulincour, as he stood there in presence of Madame Jules. Singular
situation! There was no other relation between them than that which
social life establishes between persons who exchange a few words seven
or eight times in the course of a winter, and yet he was calling her
to account on behalf of a happiness unknown to her; he was judging her,
without letting her know of his accusation.
Many young men find themselves thus in despair at having broken forever
with a woman adored in secret, condemned and despised in secret. There
are many hidden monologues told to the walls of some solitary lodging;
storms roused and calmed without ever leaving the depths of hearts;
amazing scenes of the moral world, for which a painter is wanted. Madame
Jules sat down, leaving her husband to make a turn around the salon.
After she was seated she seemed uneasy, and, while talking with her
neighbor, she kept a furtive eye on Monsieur Jules Desmarets, her
husband, a broker chiefly employed by the Baron de Nucingen. The
following is the history of their home life.
Monsieur Desmarets was, five years before his marriage, in a broker’s
office, with no other means than the meagre salary of a clerk. But he
was a man to whom misfortune had early taught the truths of life, and he
followed the strait path with the tenacity of an insect making for its
nest; he was one of those dogged young men who feign death before an
obstacle and wear out everybody’s patience with their own beetle-like
perseverance. Thus, young as he was, he had all the republican virtue of
poor peoples; he was sober, saving of his time, an enemy to pleasure.
He waited. Nature had given him the immense advantage of an agreeable
exterior. His calm, pure brow, the shape of his placid, but expressive
face, his simple manners,--all revealed in him a laborious and resigned
existence, that lofty personal dignity which is imposing to others,
and the secret nobility of heart which can meet all events. His modesty
inspired a sort of respect in those who knew him. Solitary in the midst
of Paris, he knew the social world only by glimpses during the brief
moments which he spent in his patron’s salon on holidays.
There were passions in this young man, as in most of the men who live
in that way, of amazing profundity,--passions too vast to be drawn into
petty incidents. His want of means compelled him to lead an ascetic
life, and he conquered his fancies by hard work. After paling all day
over figures, he found his recreation in striving obstinately to acquire
that wide general knowledge so necessary in these days to every man who
wants to make his mark, whether in society, or in commerce, at the bar,
or in politics or literature. The only peril these fine souls have to
fear comes from their own uprightness. They see some poor girl; they
love her; they marry her, and wear out their lives in a struggle between
poverty and love. The noblest ambition is quenched perforce by the
household account-book. Jules Desmarets went headlong into this peril.
He met one evening at his patron’s house a girl of the rarest beauty.
Unfortunate men who are deprived of affection, and who consume the
finest hours of youth in work and study, alone know the rapid ravages
that passion makes in their lonely, misconceived hearts. They are so
certain of loving truly, all their forces are concentrated so quickly on
the object of their love, that they receive, while beside her, the most
delightful sensations, when, as often happens, they inspire none at
all. Nothing is more flattering to a woman’s egotism than to divine this
passion, apparently immovable, and these emotions so deep that they have
needed a great length of time to reach the human surface. These poor
men, anchorites in the midst of Paris, have all the enjoyments of
anchorites; and may sometimes succumb to temptations. But, more often
deceived, betrayed, and misunderstood, they are rarely able to gather
the sweet fruits of a love which, to them, is like a flower dropped from
heaven.
One smile from his wife, a single inflection of her voice sufficed to
make Jules Desmarets conceive a passion which was boundless. Happily,
the concentrated fire of that secret passion revealed itself artlessly
to the woman who inspired it. These two beings then loved each other
religiously. To express all in a word, they clasped hands without shame
before the eyes of the world and went their way like two children,
brother and sister, passing serenely through a crowd where all made way
for them and admired them.
The young girl was in one of those unfortunate positions which human
selfishness entails upon children. She had no civil status; her name of
“Clemence” and her age were recorded only by a notary public. As for
her fortune, that was small indeed. Jules Desmarets was a happy man
on hearing these particulars. If Clemence had belonged to an opulent
family, he might have despaired of obtaining her; but she was only the
poor child of love, the fruit of some terrible adulterous passion; and
they were married. Then began for Jules Desmarets a series of fortunate
events. Every one envied his happiness; and henceforth talked only of
his luck, without recalling either his virtues or his courage.
Some days after their marriage, the mother of Clemence, who passed in
society for her godmother, told Jules Desmarets to buy the office and
good-will of a broker, promising to provide him with the necessary
capital. In those days, such offices could still be bought at a modest
price. That evening, in the salon as it happened of his patron, a
wealthy capitalist proposed, on the recommendation of the mother, a very
advantageous transaction for Jules Desmarets, and the next day the happy
clerk was able to buy out his patron. In four years Desmarets became one
of the most prosperous men in his business; new clients increased the
number his predecessor had left to him; he inspired confidence in all;
and it was impossible for him not to feel, by the way business came
to him, that some hidden influence, due to his mother-in-law, or to
Providence, was secretly protecting him.
At the end of the third year Clemence lost her godmother. By that time
Monsieur Jules (so called to distinguish him from an elder brother, whom
he had set up as a notary in Paris) possessed an income from invested
property of two hundred thousand francs. There was not in all Paris
another instance of the domestic happiness enjoyed by this couple.
For five years their exceptional love had been troubled by only one
event,--a calumny for which Monsieur Jules exacted vengeance. One of his
former comrades attributed to Madame Jules the fortune of her husband,
explaining that it came from a high protection dearly paid for. The man
who uttered the calumny was killed in the duel that followed it.
The profound passion of this couple, which survived marriage, obtained
a great success in society, though some women were annoyed by it. The
charming household was respected; everybody feted it. Monsieur and
Madame Jules were sincerely liked, perhaps because there is nothing more
delightful to see than happy people; but they never stayed long at any
festivity. They slipped away early, as impatient to regain their nest
as wandering pigeons. This nest was a large and beautiful mansion in the
rue de Menars, where a true feeling for art tempered the luxury which
the financial world continues, traditionally, to display. Here the happy
pair received their society magnificently, although the obligations of
social life suited them but little.
Nevertheless, Jules submitted to the demands of the world, knowing
that, sooner or later, a family has need of it; but he and his wife felt
themselves, in its midst, like green-house plants in a tempest. With a
delicacy that was very natural, Jules had concealed from his wife the
calumny and the death of the calumniator. Madame Jules, herself, was
inclined, through her sensitive and artistic nature, to desire luxury.
In spite of the terrible lesson of the duel, some imprudent women
whispered to each other that Madame Jules must sometimes be pressed for
money. They often found her more elegantly dressed in her own home than
when she went into society. She loved to adorn herself to please her
husband, wishing to show him that to her he was more than any social
life. A true love, a pure love, above all, a happy love! Jules, always a
lover, and more in love as time went by, was happy in all things beside
his wife, even in her caprices; in fact, he would have been uneasy if
she had none, thinking it a symptom of some illness.
Auguste de Maulincour had the personal misfortune of running against
this passion, and falling in love with the wife beyond recovery.
Nevertheless, though he carried in his heart so intense a love, he was
not ridiculous; he complied with all the demands of society, and of
military manners and customs. And yet his face wore constantly, even
though he might be drinking a glass of champagne, that dreamy look, that
air of silently despising life, that nebulous expression which belongs,
though for other reasons, to _blases_ men,--men dissatisfied with hollow
lives. To love without hope, to be disgusted with life, constitute, in
these days, a social position. The enterprise of winning the heart of
a sovereign might give, perhaps, more hope than a love rashly conceived
for a happy woman. Therefore Maulincour had sufficient reason to be
grave and gloomy. A queen has the vanity of her power; the height of her
elevation protects her. But a pious _bourgeoise_ is like a hedgehog, or
an oyster, in its rough wrappings.
At this moment the young officer was beside his unconscious mistress,
who certainly was unaware that she was doubly faithless. Madame
Jules was seated, in a naive attitude, like the least artful woman in
existence, soft and gentle, full of a majestic serenity. What an abyss
is human nature! Before beginning a conversation, the baron looked
alternately at the wife and at the husband. How many were the
reflections he made! He recomposed the “Night Thoughts” of Young in a
second. And yet the music was sounding through the salons, the light was
pouring from a thousand candles. It was a banker’s ball,--one of those
insolent festivals by means of which the world of solid gold endeavored
to sneer at the gold-embossed salons where the faubourg Saint-Germain
met and laughed, not foreseeing the day when the bank would invade the
Luxembourg and take its seat upon the throne. The conspirators were now
dancing, indifferent to coming bankruptcies, whether of Power or of
the Bank. The gilded salons of the Baron de Nucingen were gay with that
peculiar animation that the world of Paris, apparently joyous at any
rate, gives to its fetes. There, men of talent communicate their wit to
fools, and fools communicate that air of enjoyment that characterizes
them. By means of this exchange all is liveliness. But a ball in Paris
always resembles fireworks to a certain extent; wit, coquetry, and
pleasure sparkle and go out like rockets. The next day all present have
forgotten their wit, their coquetry, their pleasure.
“Ah!” thought Auguste, by way of conclusion, “women are what the vidame
says they are. Certainly all those dancing here are less irreproachable
actually than Madame Jules appears to be, and yet Madame Jules went to
the rue Soly!”
The rue Soly was like an illness to him; the very word shrivelled his
heart.
“Madame, do you ever dance?” he said to her.
“This is the third time you have asked me that question this winter,”
she answered, smiling.
“But perhaps you have never answered it.”
“That is true.”
“I knew very well that you were false, like other women.”
Madame Jules continued to smile.
“Listen, monsieur,” she said; “if I told you the real reason, you would
think it ridiculous. I do not think it false to abstain from telling
things that the world would laugh at.”
“All secrets demand, in order to be told, a friendship of which I am no
doubt unworthy, madame. But you cannot have any but noble secrets; do
you think me capable of jesting on noble things?”
“Yes,” she said, “you, like all the rest, laugh at our purest
sentiments; you calumniate them. Besides, I have no secrets. I have the
right to love my husband in the face of all the world, and I say so,--I
am proud of it; and if you laugh at me when I tell you that I dance only
with him, I shall have a bad opinion of your heart.”
“Have you never danced since your marriage with any one but your
husband?”
“Never. His arm is the only one on which I have leaned; I have never
felt the touch of another man.”
“Has your physician never felt your pulse?”
“Now you are laughing at me.”
“No, madame, I admire you, because I comprehend you. But you let a man
hear your voice, you let yourself be seen, you--in short, you permit our
eyes to admire you--”
“Ah!” she said, interrupting him, “that is one of my griefs. Yes, I wish
it were possible for a married woman to live secluded with her husband,
as a mistress lives with her lover, for then--”
“Then why were you, two hours ago, on foot, disguised, in the rue Soly?”
“The rue Soly, where is that?”
And her pure voice gave no sign of any emotion; no feature of her face
quivered; she did not blush; she remained calm.
“What! you did not go up to the second floor of a house in the rue
des Vieux-Augustins at the corner of the rue Soly? You did not have
a hackney-coach waiting near by? You did not return in it to the
flower-shop in the rue Richelieu, where you bought the feathers that are
now in your hair?”
“I did not leave my house this evening.”
As she uttered that lie she was smiling and imperturbable; she played
with her fan; but if any one had passed a hand down her back they would,
perhaps, have found it moist. At that instant Auguste remembered the
instructions of the vidame.
“Then it was some one who strangely resembled you,” he said, with a
credulous air.
“Monsieur,” she replied, “if you are capable of following a woman and
detecting her secrets, you will allow me to say that it is a wrong, a
very wrong thing, and I do you the honor to say that I disbelieve you.”
The baron turned away, placed himself before the fireplace and seemed
thoughtful. He bent his head; but his eyes were covertly fixed on Madame
Jules, who, not remembering the reflections in the mirror, cast two or
three glances at him that were full of terror. Presently she made a sign
to her husband and rising took his arm to walk about the salon. As she
passed before Monsieur de Maulincour, who at that moment was speaking
to a friend, he said in a loud voice, as if in reply to a remark:
“That woman will certainly not sleep quietly this night.” Madame
Jules stopped, gave him an imposing look which expressed contempt,
and continued her way, unaware that another look, if surprised by her
husband, might endanger not only her happiness but the lives of two men.
Auguste, frantic with anger, which he tried to smother in the depths of
his soul, presently left the house, swearing to penetrate to the heart
of the mystery. Before leaving, he sought Madame Jules, to look at her
again; but she had disappeared.
What a drama cast into that young head so eminently romantic, like all
who have not known love in the wide extent which they give to it. He
adored Madame Jules under a new aspect; he loved her now with the fury
of jealousy and the frenzied anguish of hope. Unfaithful to her husband,
the woman became common. Auguste could now give himself up to the
joys of successful love, and his imagination opened to him a career
of pleasures. Yes, he had lost the angel, but he had found the most
delightful of demons. He went to bed, building castles in the air,
excusing Madame Jules by some romantic fiction in which he did not
believe. He resolved to devote himself wholly, from that day forth, to
a search for the causes, motives, and keynote of this mystery. It was a
tale to read, or better still, a drama to be played, in which he had a
part.