real information, politicians to whom business gives both consummate
experience and the practice of speech, are admirable story-tellers, when
they tell stories. With them there is no medium; they are either heavy,
or they are sublime. In this delightful sport Prince Metternich is as
good as Charles Nodier. The fun of a statesman, cut in facets like a
diamond, is sharp, sparkling, and full of sense. Being sure that the
proprieties would be observed by these three superior men, my uncle
allowed his wit full play, a refined wit, gentle, penetrating, and
elegant, like that of all men who are accustomed to conceal their
thoughts under the black robe. And you may rely upon it, there was
nothing vulgar nor idle in this light talk, which I would compare, for
its effect on the soul, to Rossini’s music.
“The Abbe Gaudron was, as M. de Grandville said, a Saint Peter rather
than a Saint Paul, a peasant full of faith, as square on his feet as he
was tall, a sacerdotal of whose ignorance in matters of the world and
of literature enlivened the conversation by guileless amazement and
unexpected questions. They came to talking of one of the plague spots
of social life, of which we were just now speaking--adultery. My uncle
remarked on the contradiction which the legislators of the Code, still
feeling the blows of the revolutionary storm, had established between
civil and religious law, and which he said was at the root of all the
mischief.
“‘In the eyes of the Church,’ said he, ‘adultery is a crime; in those of
your tribunals it is a misdemeanor. Adultery drives to the police court
in a carriage instead of standing at the bar to be tried. Napoleon’s
Council of State, touched with tenderness towards erring women, was
quite inefficient. Ought they not in this case to have harmonized the
civil and the religious law, and have sent the guilty wife to a convent,
as of old?’
“‘To a convent!’ said M. de Serizy. ‘They must first have created
convents, and in those days monasteries were being turned into barracks.
Besides, think of what you say, M. l’Abbe--give to God what society
would have none of?’
“‘Oh!’ said the Comte de Grandville, ‘you do not know France. They were
obliged to leave the husband free to take proceedings: well, there are
not ten cases of adultery brought up in a year.’
“‘M. l’Abbe preaches for his own saint, for it was Jesus Christ who
invented adultery,’ said Comte Octave. ‘In the East, the cradle of
the human race, woman was merely a luxury, and there was regarded as a
chattel; no virtues were demanded of her but obedience and beauty.
By exalting the soul above the body, the modern family in Europe--a
daughter of Christ--invented indissoluble marriage, and made it a
sacrament.’
“‘Ah! the Church saw the difficulties,’ exclaimed M. de Grandville.
“‘This institution has given rise to a new world,’ the Count went on
with a smile. ‘But the practices of that world will never be that of
a climate where women are marriageable at seven years of age, and more
than old at five-and-twenty. The Catholic Church overlooked the needs of
half the globe.--So let us discuss Europe only.
“‘Is woman our superior or our inferior? That is the real question so
far as we are concerned. If woman is our inferior, by placing her on so
high a level as the Church does, fearful punishments for adultery were
needful. And formerly that was what was done. The cloister or death sums
up early legislation. But since then practice has modified the law, as
is always the case. The throne served as a hotbed for adultery, and the
increase of this inviting crime marks the decline of the dogmas of the
Catholic Church. In these days, in cases where the Church now exacts no
more than sincere repentance from the erring wife, society is satisfied
with a brand-mark instead of an execution. The law still condemns
the guilty, but it no longer terrifies them. In short, there are two
standards of morals: that of the world, and that of the Code. Where the
Code is weak, as I admit with our dear Abbe, the world is audacious and
satirical. There are so few judges who would not gladly have committed
the fault against which they hurl the rather stolid thunders of their
“Inasmuch.” The world, which gives the lie to the law alike in its
rejoicings, in its habits, and in its pleasures, is severer than the
Code and the Church; the world punishes a blunder after encouraging
hypocrisy. The whole economy of the law on marriage seems to me to
require reconstruction from the bottom to the top. The French law would
be perfect perhaps if it excluded daughters from inheriting.’
“‘We three among us know the question very thoroughly,’ said the Comte
de Grandville with a laugh. ‘I have a wife I cannot live with. Serizy
has a wife who will not live with him. As for you, Octave, yours
ran away from you. So we three represent every case of the conjugal
conscience, and, no doubt, if ever divorce is brought in again, we shall
form the committee.’
“Octave’s fork dropped on his glass, broke it, and broke his plate. He
had turned as pale as death, and flashed a thunderous glare at M. de
Grandville, by which he hinted at my presence, and which I caught.
“‘Forgive me, my dear fellow. I did not see Maurice,’ the President went
on. ‘Serizy and I, after being the witnesses to your marriage, became
your accomplices; I did not think I was committing an indiscretion in
the presence of these two venerable priests.’
“M. de Serizy changed the subject by relating all he had done to please
his wife without ever succeeding. The old man concluded that it was
impossible to regulate human sympathies and antipathies; he maintained
that social law was never more perfect than when it was nearest to
natural law. Now Nature takes no account of the affinities of souls; her
aim is fulfilled by the propagation of the species. Hence, the Code,
in its present form, was wise in leaving a wide latitude to chance. The
incapacity of daughters to inherit so long as there were male heirs was
an excellent provision, whether to hinder the degeneration of the race,
or to make households happier by abolishing scandalous unions and giving
the sole preference to moral qualities and beauty.
“‘But then,’ he exclaimed, lifting his hand with a gesture of disgust,
‘how are we to perfect legislation in a country which insists on
bringing together seven or eight hundred legislators!--After all, if I
am sacrificed,’ he added, ‘I have a child to succeed me.’
“‘Setting aside all the religious question,’ my uncle said, ‘I would
remark to your Excellency that Nature only owes us life, and that it is
society that owes us happiness. Are you a father?’ asked my uncle.
“‘And I--have I any children?’ said Comte Octave in a hollow voice, and
his tone made such an impression that there was no more talk of wives or
marriage.
“When coffee had been served, the two Counts and the two priests stole
away, seeing that poor Octave had fallen into a fit of melancholy which
prevented his noticing their disappearance. My patron was sitting in an
armchair by the fire, in the attitude of a man crushed.
“‘You now know the secret of my life, said he to me on noticing that we
were alone. ‘After three years of married life, one evening when I came
in I found a letter in which the Countess announced her flight. The
letter did not lack dignity, for it is in the nature of women to
preserve some virtues even when committing that horrible sin.--The
story is now that my wife went abroad in a ship that was wrecked; she
is supposed to be dead. I have lived alone for seven years!--Enough for
this evening, Maurice. We will talk of my situation when I have grown
used to the idea of speaking of it to you. When we suffer from a
chronic disease, it needs time to become accustomed to improvement. That
improvement often seems to be merely another aspect of the complaint.’
“I went to bed greatly agitated; for the mystery, far from being
explained, seemed to me more obscure than ever. I foresaw some strange
drama indeed, for I understood that there could be no vulgar difference
between the woman that Count could choose and such a character as his.
The events which had driven the Countess to leave a man so noble, so
amiable, so perfect, so loving, so worthy to be loved, must have been
singular, to say the least. M. de Grandville’s remark had been like a
torch flung into the caverns over which I had so long been walking; and
though the flame lighted them but dimly, my eyes could perceive their
wide extent! I could imagine the Count’s sufferings without knowing
their depths or their bitterness. That sallow face, those parched
temples, those overwhelming studies, those moments of absentmindedness,
the smallest details of the life of this married bachelor, all stood out
in luminous relief during the hour of mental questioning, which is,
as it were, the twilight before sleep, and to which any man would have
given himself up, as I did.
“Oh! how I loved my poor master! He seemed to me sublime. I read a poem
of melancholy, I saw perpetual activity in the heart I had accused of
being torpid. Must not supreme grief always come at last to stagnation?
Had this judge, who had so much in his power, ever revenged himself? Was
he feeding himself on her long agony? Is it not a remarkable thing in
Paris to keep anger always seething for ten years? What had Octave done
since this great misfortune--for the separation of husband and wife is
a great misfortune in our day, when domestic life has become a social
question, which it never was of old?
“We allowed a few days to pass on the watch, for great sorrows have a
diffidence of their own; but at last, one evening, the Count said in a
grave voice:
“‘Stay.’
“This, as nearly as may be, is his story.
“‘My father had a ward, rich and lovely, who was sixteen at the time
when I came back from college to live in this old house. Honorine, who
had been brought up by my mother, was just awakening to life. Full of
grace and of childish ways, she dreamed of happiness as she would have
dreamed of jewels; perhaps happiness seemed to her the jewel of the
soul. Her piety was not free from puerile pleasures; for everything,
even religion, was poetry to her ingenuous heart. She looked to the
future as a perpetual fete. Innocent and pure, no delirium had disturbed
her dream. Shame and grief had never tinged her cheek nor moistened
her eye. She did not even inquire into the secret of her involuntary
emotions on a fine spring day. And then, she felt that she was weak and
destined to obedience, and she awaited marriage without wishing for
it. Her smiling imagination knew nothing of the corruption--necessary
perhaps--which literature imparts by depicting the passions; she knew
nothing of the world, and was ignorant of all the dangers of society.
The dear child had suffered so little that she had not even developed
her courage. In short, her guilelessness would have led her to walk
fearless among serpents, like the ideal figure of Innocence a painter
once created. We lived together like two brothers.
“‘At the end of a year I said to her one day, in the garden of this
house, by the basin, as we stood throwing crumbs to the fish:
“‘“Would you like that we should be married? With me you could do
whatever you please, while another man would make you unhappy.”
“‘“Mamma,” said she to my mother, who came out to join us, “Octave and I
have agreed to be married----”
“‘“What! at seventeen?” said my mother. “No, you must wait eighteen
months; and if eighteen months hence you like each other, well, your
birth and fortunes are equal, you can make a marriage which is suitable,
as well as being a love match.”
“‘When I was six-and-twenty, and Honorine nineteen, we were married.
Our respect for my father and mother, old folks of the Bourbon Court,
hindered us from making this house fashionable, or renewing the
furniture; we lived on, as we had done in the past, as children.
However, I went into society; I initiated my wife into the world of
fashion; and I regarded it as one of my duties to instruct her.
“‘I recognized afterwards that marriages contracted under such
circumstances as ours bear in themselves a rock against which many
affections are wrecked, many prudent calculations, many lives. The
husband becomes a pedagogue, or, if you like, a professor, and love
perishes under the rod which, sooner or later, gives pain; for a young
and handsome wife, at once discreet and laughter-loving, will not accept
any superiority above that with which she is endowed by nature. Perhaps
I was in the wrong? During the difficult beginnings of a household I,
perhaps, assumed a magisterial tone? On the other hand, I may have made
the mistake of trusting too entirely to that artless nature; I kept no
watch over the Countess, in whom revolt seemed to me impossible? Alas!
neither in politics nor in domestic life has it yet been ascertained
whether empires and happiness are wrecked by too much confidence or too
much severity! Perhaps again, the husband failed to realize Honorine’s
girlish dreams? Who can tell, while happy days last, what precepts he
has neglected?’
“I remember only the broad outlines of the reproaches the Count
addressed to himself, with all the good faith of an anatomist seeking
the cause of a disease which might be overlooked by his brethren; but
his merciful indulgence struck me then as really worthy of that of Jesus
Christ when He rescued the woman taken in adultery.
“‘It was eighteen months after my father’s death--my mother followed him
to the tomb in a few months--when the fearful night came which surprised
me by Honorine’s farewell letter. What poetic delusion had seduced my
wife? Was it through her senses? Was it the magnetism of misfortune
or of genius? Which of these powers had taken her by storm or misled
her?--I would not know. The blow was so terrible, that for a month I
remained stunned. Afterwards, reflection counseled me to continue in
ignorance, and Honorine’s misfortunes have since taught me too much
about all these things.--So far, Maurice, the story is commonplace
enough; but one word will change it all: I love Honorine, I have never
ceased to worship her. From the day when she left me I have lived on
memory; one by one I recall the pleasures for which Honorine no doubt
had no taste.
“‘Oh!’ said he, seeing the amazement in my eyes, ‘do not make a hero of
me, do not think me such a fool, as the Colonel of the Empire would say,
as to have sought no diversion. Alas, my boy! I was either too young or
too much in love; I have not in the whole world met with another woman.
After frightful struggles with myself, I tried to forget; money in hand,
I stood on the very threshold of infidelity, but there the memory of
Honorine rose before me like a white statue. As I recalled the infinite
delicacy of that exquisite skin, through which the blood might be seen
coursing and the nerves quivering; as I saw in fancy that ingenuous
face, as guileless on the eve of my sorrows as on the day when I said
to her, “Shall we marry?” as I remembered a heavenly fragrance, the
very odor of virtue, and the light in her eyes, the prettiness of her
movements, I fled like a man preparing to violate a tomb, who sees
emerging from it the transfigured soul of the dead. At consultations,
in Court, by night, I dream so incessantly of Honorine that only by
excessive strength of mind do I succeed in attending to what I am doing
and saying. This is the secret of my labors.
“‘Well, I felt no more anger with her than a father can feel on seeing
his beloved child in some danger it has imprudently rushed into. I
understood that I had made a poem of my wife--a poem I delighted in
with such intoxication, that I fancied she shared the intoxication. Ah!
Maurice, an indiscriminating passion in a husband is a mistake that may
lead to any crime in a wife. I had no doubt left all the faculties of
this child, loved as a child, entirely unemployed; I had perhaps wearied
her with my love before the hour of loving had struck for her! Too young
to understand that in the constancy of the wife lies the germ of the
mother’s devotion, she mistook this first test of marriage for life
itself, and the refractory child cursed life, unknown to me, nor daring
to complain to me, out of sheer modesty perhaps! In so cruel a position
she would be defenceless against any man who stirred her deeply.--And
I, so wise a judge as they say--I, who have a kind heart, but whose mind
was absorbed--I understood too late these unwritten laws of the woman’s
code, I read them by the light of the fire that wrecked my roof. Then I
constituted my heart a tribunal by virtue of the law, for the law makes
the husband a judge: I acquitted my wife, and I condemned myself. But
love took possession of me as a passion, the mean, despotic passion
which comes over some old men. At this day I love the absent Honorine as
a man of sixty loves a woman whom he must possess at any cost, and yet
I feel the strength of a young man. I have the insolence of the old man
and the reserve of a boy.--My dear fellow, society only laughs at such
a desperate conjugal predicament. Where it pities a lover, it regards a
husband as ridiculously inept; it makes sport of those who cannot keep
the woman they have secured under the canopy of the Church, and before
the Maire’s scarf of office. And I had to keep silence.
“‘Serizy is happy. His indulgence allows him to see his wife; he can
protect and defend her; and, as he adores her, he knows all the perfect
joys of a benefactor whom nothing can disturb, not even ridicule, for he
pours it himself on his fatherly pleasures. “I remain married only for
my wife’s sake,” he said to me one day on coming out of court.
“‘But I--I have nothing; I have not even to face ridicule, I who live
solely on a love which is starving! I who can never find a word to say
to a woman of the world! I who loathe prostitution! I who am faithful
under a spell!--But for my religious faith, I should have killed myself.
I have defied the gulf of hard work; I have thrown myself into it, and
come out again alive, fevered, burning, bereft of sleep!----’
“I cannot remember all the words of this eloquent man, to whom passion
gave an eloquence indeed so far above that of the pleader that, as I
listened to him, I, like him, felt my cheeks wet with tears. You may
conceive of my feelings when, after a pause, during which we dried them
away, he finished his story with this revelation:--
“‘This is the drama of my soul, but it is not the actual living drama
which is at this moment being acted in Paris! The interior drama
interests nobody. I know it; and you will one day admit that it is so,
you, who at this moment shed tears with me; no one can burden his heart
or his skin with another’s pain. The measure of our sufferings is in
ourselves.--You even understand my sorrows only by very vague analogy.
Could you see me calming the most violent frenzy of despair by the
contemplation of a miniature in which I can see and kiss her brow, the
smile on her lips, the shape of her face, can breathe the whiteness of
her skin; which enables me almost to feel, to play with the black masses
of her curling hair?--Could you see me when I leap with hope--when I
writhe under the myriad darts of despair--when I tramp through the mire
of Paris to quell my irritation by fatigue? I have fits of collapse
comparable to those of a consumptive patient, moods of wild hilarity,
terrors as of a murderer who meets a sergeant of police. In short, my
life is a continual paroxysm of fears, joy, and dejection.
“‘As to the drama--it is this. You imagine that I am occupied with the
Council of State, the Chamber, the Courts, Politics.--Why, dear me,
seven hours at night are enough for all that, so much are my faculties
overwrought by the life I lead! Honorine is my real concern. To
recover my wife is my only study; to guard her in her cage, without her
suspecting that she is in my power; to satisfy her needs, to supply the
little pleasure she allows herself, to be always about her like a sylph
without allowing her to see or to suspect me, for if she did, the future
would be lost,--that is my life, my true life.--For seven years I
have never gone to bed without going first to see the light of her
night-lamp, or her shadow on the window curtains.
“‘She left my house, choosing to take nothing but the dress she wore
that day. The child carried her magnanimity to the point of folly!
Consequently, eighteen months after her flight she was deserted by her
lover, who was appalled by the cold, cruel, sinister, and revolting
aspect of poverty--the coward! The man had, no doubt, counted on the
easy and luxurious life in Switzerland or Italy which fine ladies
indulge in when they leave their husbands. Honorine has sixty thousand
francs a year of her own. The wretch left the dear creature expecting an
infant, and without a penny. In the month of November 1820 I found means
to persuade the best _accoucheur_ in Paris to play the part of a humble
suburban apothecary. I induced the priest of the parish in which the
Countess was living to supply her needs as though he were performing an
act of charity. Then to hide my wife, to secure her against discovery,
to find her a housekeeper who would be devoted to me and be my
intelligent confidante--it was a task worthy of Figaro! You may suppose
that to discover where my wife had taken refuge I had only to make up my
mind to it.
“‘After three months of desperation rather than despair, the idea of
devoting myself to Honorine with God only in my secret, was one of those
poems which occur only to the heart of a lover through life and death!
Love must have its daily food. And ought I not to protect this child,
whose guilt was the outcome of my imprudence, against fresh disaster--to
fulfil my part, in short, as a guardian angel?--At the age of seven
months her infant died, happily for her and for me. For nine months more
my wife lay between life and death, deserted at the time when she most
needed a manly arm; but this arm,’ said he, holding out his own with a
gesture of angelic dignity, ‘was extended over her head. Honorine was
nursed as she would have been in her own home. When, on her recovery,
she asked how and by whom she had been assisted, she was told--“By the
Sisters of Charity in the neighborhood--by the Maternity Society--by the
parish priest, who took an interest in her.”
“‘This woman, whose pride amounts to a vice, has shown a power of
resistance in misfortune, which on some evenings I call the obstinacy of
a mule. Honorine was bent on earning her living. My wife works! For five
years past I have lodged her in the Rue Saint-Maur, in a charming little
house, where she makes artificial flowers and articles of fashion. She
believes that she sells the product of her elegant fancywork to a shop,
where she is so well paid that she makes twenty francs a day, and in
these six years she had never had a moment’s suspicion. She pays for
everything she needs at about the third of its value, so that on six
thousand francs a year she lives as if she had fifteen thousand. She is
devoted to flowers, and pays a hundred crowns to a gardener, who costs
me twelve hundred in wages, and sends me in a bill for two thousand
francs every three months. I have promised the man a market-garden with
a house on it close to the porter’s lodge in the Rue Saint-Maur. I
hold this ground in the name of a clerk of the law courts. The smallest
indiscretion would ruin the gardener’s prospects. Honorine has her
little house, a garden, and a splendid hothouse, for a rent of
five hundred francs a year. There she lives under the name of her
housekeeper, Madame Gobain, the old woman of impeccable discretion whom
I was so lucky as to find, and whose affection Honorine has won. But her
zeal, like that of the gardener, is kept hot by the promise of reward at
the moment of success. The porter and his wife cost me dreadfully dear
for the same reasons. However, for three years Honorine has been happy,
believing that she owes to her own toil all the luxury of flowers,
dress, and comfort.