red lips of this pale woman, it would have been possible to believe that
this violet buried in her thicket of flowers was happy. In a few days
we had reached a certain degree of intimacy, the result of our close
neighborhood and of the Countess’ conviction that I was indifferent to
women. A look would have spoilt all, and I never allowed a thought of
her to be seen in my eyes. Honorine chose to regard me as an old friend.
Her manner to me was the outcome of a kind of pity. Her looks, her
voice, her words, all showed that she was a hundred miles away from the
coquettish airs which the strictest virtue might have allowed under such
circumstances. She soon gave me the right to go into the pretty workshop
where she made her flowers, a retreat full of books and curiosities, as
smart as a boudoir where elegance emphasized the vulgarity of the tools
of her trade. The Countess had in the course of time poetized, as I may
say, a thing which is at the antipodes to poetry--a manufacture.
“Perhaps of all the work a woman can do, the making of artificial
flowers is that of which the details allow her to display most grace.
For coloring prints she must sit bent over a table and devote herself,
with some attention, to this half painting. Embroidering tapestry, as
diligently as a woman must who is to earn her living by it, entails
consumption or curvature of the spine. Engraving music is one of the
most laborious, by the care, the minute exactitude, and the intelligence
it demands. Sewing and white embroidery do not earn thirty sous a day.
But the making of flowers and light articles of wear necessitates a
variety of movements, gestures, ideas even, which do not take a pretty
woman out of her sphere; she is still herself; she may chat, laugh,
sing, or think.
“There was certainly a feeling for art in the way in which the Countess
arranged on a long deal table the myriad-colored petals which were used
in composing the flowers she was to produce. The saucers of color were
of white china, and always clean, arranged in such order that the eye
could at once see the required shade in the scale of tints. Thus the
aristocratic artist saved time. A pretty little cabinet with a hundred
tiny drawers, of ebony inlaid with ivory, contained the little steel
moulds in which she shaped the leaves and some forms of petals. A fine
Japanese bowl held the paste, which was never allowed to turn sour, and
it had a fitted cover with a hinge so easy that she could lift it with
a finger-tip. The wire, of iron and brass, lurked in a little drawer of
the table before her.
“Under her eyes, in a Venetian glass, shaped like a flower-cup on its
stem, was the living model she strove to imitate. She had a passion for
achievement; she attempted the most difficult things, close racemes,
the tiniest corollas, heaths, nectaries of the most variegated hues. Her
hands, as swift as her thoughts, went from the table to the flower she
was making, as those of an accomplished pianist fly over the keys. Her
fingers seemed to be fairies, to use Perrault’s expression, so infinite
were the different actions of twisting, fitting, and pressure needed
for the work, all hidden under grace of movement, while she adapted each
motion to the result with the lucidity of instinct.
“I could not tire of admiring her as she shaped a flower from the
materials sorted before her, padding the wire stem and adjusting the
leaves. She displayed the genius of a painter in her bold attempts;
she copied faded flowers and yellowing leaves; she struggled even with
wildflowers, the most artless of all, and the most elaborate in their
simplicity.
“‘This art,’ she would say, ‘is in its infancy. If the women of Paris
had a little of the genius which the slavery of the harem brings out in
Oriental women, they would lend a complete language of flowers to the
wreaths they wear on their head. To please my own taste as an artist I
have made drooping flowers with leaves of the hue of Florentine bronze,
such as are found before or after the winter. Would not such a crown
on the head of a young woman whose life is a failure have a certain
poetical fitness? How many things a woman might express by her
head-dress! Are there not flowers for drunken Bacchantes, flowers
for gloomy and stern bigots, pensive flowers for women who are bored?
Botany, I believe, may be made to express every sensation and thought of
the soul, even the most subtle.’
“She would employ me to stamp out the leaves, cut up material, and
prepare wires for the stems. My affected desire for occupation made me
soon skilful. We talked as we worked. When I had nothing to do, I read
new books to her, for I had my part to keep up as a man weary of life,
worn out with griefs, gloomy, sceptical, and soured. My person led to
adorable banter as to my purely physical resemblance--with the exception
of his club foot--to Lord Byron. It was tacitly acknowledged that
her own troubles, as to which she kept the most profound silence, far
outweighed mine, though the causes I assigned for my misanthropy might
have satisfied Young or Job.
“I will say nothing of the feelings of shame which tormented me as I
inflicted on my heart, like the beggars in the street, false wounds to
excite the compassion of that enchanting woman. I soon appreciated the
extent of my devotedness by learning to estimate the baseness of a spy.
The expressions of sympathy bestowed on me would have comforted the
greatest grief. This charming creature, weaned from the world, and for
so many years alone, having, besides love, treasures of kindliness
to bestow, offered these to me with childlike effusiveness and
such compassion as would inevitably have filled with bitterness any
profligate who should have fallen in love with her; for, alas, it was
all charity, all sheer pity. Her renunciation of love, her dread of what
is called happiness for women, she proclaimed with equal vehemence and
candor. These happy days proved to me that a woman’s friendship is far
superior to her love.
“I suffered the revelations of my sorrows to be dragged from me with as
many grimaces as a young lady allows herself before sitting down to the
piano, so conscious are they of the annoyance that will follow. As
you may imagine, the necessity for overcoming my dislike to speak had
induced the Countess to strengthen the bonds of our intimacy; but she
found in me so exact a counterpart of her own antipathy to love, that
I fancied she was well content with the chance which had brought to her
desert island a sort of Man Friday. Solitude was perhaps beginning to
weigh on her. At the same time, there was nothing of the coquette in
her; nothing survived of the woman; she did not feel that she had a
heart, she told me, excepting in the ideal world where she found refuge.
I involuntarily compared these two lives--hers and the Count’s:--his,
all activity, agitation, and emotion; hers, all inaction, quiescence,
and stagnation. The woman and the man were admirably obedient to their
nature. My misanthropy allowed me to utter cynical sallies against men
and women both, and I indulged in them, hoping to bring Honorine to
the confidential point; but she was not to be caught in any trap, and I
began to understand that mulish obstinacy which is commoner among women
than is generally supposed.
“‘The Orientals are right,’ I said to her one evening, ‘when they shut
you up and regard you merely as the playthings of their pleasure. Europe
has been well punished for having admitted you to form an element of
society and for accepting you on an equal footing. In my opinion, woman
is the most dishonorable and cowardly being to be found. Nay, and that
is where her charm lies. Where would be the pleasure of hunting a tame
thing? When once a woman has inspired a man’s passion, she is to him
for ever sacred; in his eyes she is hedged round by an imprescriptible
prerogative. In men gratitude for past delights is eternal. Though he
should find his mistress grown old or unworthy, the woman still has
rights over his heart; but to you women the man you have loved is as
nothing to you; nay, more, he is unpardonable in one thing--he lives on!
You dare not own it, but you all have in your hearts the feeling which
that popular calumny called tradition ascribes to the Lady of the Tour
de Nesle: “What a pity it is that we cannot live on love as we live on
fruit, and that when we have had our fill, nothing should survive but
the remembrance of pleasure!”’
“‘God has, no doubt, reserved such perfect bliss for Paradise,’ said
she. ‘But,’ she added, ‘if your argument seems to you very witty, to me
it has the disadvantage of being false. What can those women be who give
themselves up to a succession of loves?’ she asked, looking at me as the
Virgin in Ingres’ picture looks at Louis XIII. offering her his kingdom.
“‘You are an actress in good faith,’ said I, ‘for you gave me a look
just now which would make the fame of an actress. Still, lovely as you
are, you have loved; _ergo_, you forget.’
“‘I!’ she exclaimed, evading my question, ‘I am not a woman. I am a nun,
and seventy-two years old!’
“‘Then, how can you so positively assert that you feel more keenly than
I? Sorrow has but one form for women. The only misfortunes they regard
are disappointments of the heart.’
“She looked at me sweetly, and, like all women when stuck between the
issues of a dilemma, or held in the clutches of truth, she persisted,
nevertheless, in her wilfulness.
“‘I am a nun,’ she said, ‘and you talk to me of the world where I shall
never again set foot.’
“‘Not even in thought?’ said I.
“‘Is the world so much to be desired?’ she replied. ‘Oh! when my mind
wanders, it goes higher. The angel of perfection, the beautiful angel
Gabriel, often sings in my heart. If I were rich, I should work, all the
same, to keep me from soaring too often on the many-tinted wings of the
angel, and wandering in the world of fancy. There are meditations which
are the ruin of us women! I owe much peace of mind to my flowers, though
sometimes they fail to occupy me. On some days I find my soul invaded
by a purposeless expectancy; I cannot banish some idea which takes
possession of me, which seems to make my fingers clumsy. I feel that
some great event is impending, that my life is about to change; I listen
vaguely, I stare into the darkness, I have no liking for my work, and
after a thousand fatigues I find life once more--everyday life. Is this
a warning from heaven? I ask myself----’
“After three months of this struggle between two diplomates, concealed
under the semblance of youthful melancholy, and a woman whose disgust of
life made her invulnerable, I told the Count that it was impossible
to drag this tortoise out of her shell; it must be broken. The evening
before, in our last quite friendly discussion, the Countess had
exclaimed:
“‘Lucretia’s dagger wrote in letters of blood the watchword of woman’s
charter: _Liberty!_’
“From that moment the Count left me free to act.
“‘I have been paid a hundred francs for the flowers and caps I made this
week!’ Honorine exclaimed gleefully one Saturday evening when I went
to visit her in the little sitting-room on the ground floor, which the
unavowed proprietor had had regilt.
“It was ten o’clock. The twilight of July and a glorious moon lent
us their misty light. Gusts of mingled perfumes soothed the soul; the
Countess was clinking in her hand the five gold pieces given to her by
a supposititious dealer in fashionable frippery, another of Octave’s
accomplices found for him by a judge, M. Popinot.
“‘I earn my living by amusing myself,’ said she; ‘I am free, when
men, armed with their laws, have tried to make us slaves. Oh, I have
transports of pride every Saturday! In short, I like M. Gaudissart’s
gold pieces as much as Lord Byron, your double, liked Mr. Murray’s.’
“‘This is not becoming in a woman,’ said I.
“‘Pooh! Am I a woman? I am a boy gifted with a soft soul, that is all; a
boy whom no woman can torture----’
“‘Your life is the negation of your whole being,’ I replied. ‘What? You,
on whom God has lavished His choicest treasures of love and beauty, do
you never wish----’
“‘For what?’ said she, somewhat disturbed by a speech which, for the
first time, gave the lie to the part I had assumed.
“‘For a pretty little child, with curling hair, running, playing among
the flowers, like a flower itself of life and love, and calling you
mother!’
“I waited for an answer. A too prolonged silence led me to perceive the
terrible effect of my words, though the darkness at first concealed it.
Leaning on her sofa, the Countess had not indeed fainted, but frozen
under a nervous attack of which the first chill, as gentle as everything
that was part of her, felt, as she afterwards said, like the influence
of a most insidious poison. I called Madame Gobain, who came and led
away her mistress, laid her on her bed, unlaced her, undressed her, and
restored her, not to life, it is true, but to the consciousness of some
dreadful suffering. I meanwhile walked up and down the path behind the
house, weeping, and doubting my success. I only wished to give up this
part of the bird-catcher which I had so rashly assumed. Madame Gobain,
who came down and found me with my face wet with tears, hastily went up
again to say to the Countess:
“‘What has happened, madame? Monsieur Maurice is crying like a child.’
“Roused to action by the evil interpretation that might be put on our
mutual behavior, she summoned superhuman strength to put on a wrapper
and come down to me.
“‘You are not the cause of this attack,’ said she. ‘I am subject to
these spasms, a sort of cramp of the heart----’
“‘And will you not tell me of your troubles?’ said I, in a voice which
cannot be affected, as I wiped away my tears. ‘Have you not just now
told me that you have been a mother, and have been so unhappy as to lose
your child?’
“‘Marie!’ she called as she rang the bell. Gobain came in.
“‘Bring lights and some tea,’ said she, with the calm decision of a
Mylady clothed in the armor of pride by the dreadful English training
which you know too well.
“When the housekeeper had lighted the tapers and closed the shutters,
the Countess showed me a mute countenance; her indomitable pride and
gravity, worthy of a savage, had already reasserted their mastery. She
said:
“‘Do you know why I like Lord Byron so much? It is because he suffered
as animals do. Of what use are complaints when they are not an elegy
like Manfred’s, nor bitter mockery like Don Juan’s, nor a reverie like
Childe Harold’s? Nothing shall be known of me. My heart is a poem that I
lay before God.’
“‘If I chose----’ said I.
“‘If?’ she repeated.
“‘I have no interest in anything,’ I replied, ‘so I cannot be
inquisitive; but, if I chose, I could know all your secrets by
to-morrow.’
“‘I defy you!’ she exclaimed, with ill-disguised uneasiness.
“‘Seriously?’
“‘Certainly,’ said she, tossing her head. ‘If such a crime is possible,
I ought to know it.’
“‘In the first place, madame,’ I went on, pointing to her hands,
‘those pretty fingers, which are enough to show that you are not a mere
girl--were they made for toil? Then you call yourself Madame Gobain,
you, who, in my presence the other day on receiving a letter, said to
Marie: “Here, this is for you?” Marie is the real Madame Gobain; so
you conceal your name behind that of your housekeeper.--Fear nothing,
madame, from me. You have in me the most devoted friend you will ever
have: Friend, do you understand me? I give this word its sacred and
pathetic meaning, so profaned in France, where we apply it to our
enemies. And your friend, who will defend you against everything, only
wishes that you should be as happy as such a woman ought to be. Who
can tell whether the pain I have involuntarily caused you was not a
voluntary act?’
“‘Yes,’ replied she with threatening audacity, ‘I insist on it. Be
curious, and tell me all that you can find out about me; but,’ and she
held up her finger, ‘you must also tell me by what means you obtain
your information. The preservation of the small happiness I enjoy here
depends on the steps you take.’
“‘That means that you will fly----’
“‘On wings!’ she cried, ‘to the New World----’
“‘Where you will be at the mercy of the brutal passions you will
inspire,’ said I, interrupting her. ‘Is it not the very essence of
genius and beauty to shine, to attract men’s gaze, to excite desires and
evil thoughts? Paris is a desert with Bedouins; Paris is the only place
in the world where those who must work for their livelihood can hide
their life. What have you to complain of? Who am I? An additional
servant--M. Gobain, that is all. If you have to fight a duel, you may
need a second.’
“‘Never mind; find out who I am. I have already said that I insist. Now,
I beg that you will,’ she went on, with the grace which you ladies have
at command,” said the Consul, looking at the ladies.
“‘Well, then, to-morrow, at the same hour, I will tell you what I may
have discovered,’ replied I. ‘But do not therefore hate me! Will you
behave like other women?’
“‘What do other women do?’
“‘They lay upon us immense sacrifices, and when we have made them, they
reproach us for it some time later as if it were an injury.’
“‘They are right if the thing required appears to be a sacrifice!’
replied she pointedly.
“‘Instead of sacrifices, say efforts and----’
“‘It would be an impertinence,’ said she.
“‘Forgive me,’ said I. ‘I forget that woman and the Pope are
infallible.’
“‘Good heavens!’ said she after a long pause, ‘only two words would be
enough to destroy the peace so dearly bought, and which I enjoy like a
fraud----’
“She rose and paid no further heed to me.
“‘Where can I go?’ she said. ‘What is to become of me?--Must I leave
this quiet retreat, that I had arranged with such care to end my days
in?’
“‘To end your days!’ exclaimed I with visible alarm. ‘Has it never
struck you that a time would come when you could no longer work,
when competition will lower the price of flowers and articles of
fashion----?’
“‘I have already saved a thousand crowns,’ she said.
“‘Heavens! what privations such a sum must represent!’ I exclaimed.
“‘Leave me,’ said she, ‘till to-morrow. This evening I am not myself; I
must be alone. Must I not save my strength in case of disaster? For,
if you should learn anything, others besides you would be informed, and
then--Good-night,’ she added shortly, dismissing me with an imperious
gesture.
“‘The battle is to-morrow, then,’ I replied with a smile, to keep up the
appearance of indifference I had given to the scene. But as I went down
the avenue I repeated the words:
“‘The battle is to-morrow.’
“Octave’s anxiety was equal to Honorine’s. The Count and I remained
together till two in the morning, walking to and fro by the trenches of
the Bastille, like two generals who, on the eve of a battle, calculate
all the chances, examine the ground, and perceive that the victory must
depend on an opportunity to be seized half-way through the fight. These
two divided beings would each lie awake, one in the hope, the other
in agonizing dread of reunion. The real dramas of life are not in
circumstances, but in feelings; they are played in the heart, or, if you
please, in that vast realm which we ought to call the Spiritual World.
Octave and Honorine moved and lived altogether in the world of lofty
spirits.
“I was punctual. At ten next evening I was, for the first time, shown
into a charming bedroom furnished with white and blue--the nest of this
wounded dove. The Countess looked at me, and was about to speak, but was
stricken dumb by my respectful demeanor.
“‘Madame la Comtesse,’ said I with a grave smile.
“The poor woman, who had risen, dropped back into her chair and remained
there, sunk in an attitude of grief, which I should have liked to see
perpetuated by a great painter.
“‘You are,’ I went on, ‘the wife of the noblest and most highly
respected of men; of a man who is acknowledged to be great, but who is
far greater in his conduct to you than he is in the eyes of the world.
You and he are two lofty natures.--Where do you suppose yourself to be
living?’ I asked her.
“‘In my own house,’ she replied, opening her eyes with a wide stare of
astonishment.
“‘In Count Octave’s,’ I replied. ‘You have been tricked. M. Lenormand,
the usher of the Court, is not the real owner; he is only a screen for
your husband. The delightful seclusion you enjoy is the Count’s work,
the money you earn is paid by him, and his protection extends to the
most trivial details of your existence. Your husband has saved you
in the eyes of the world; he has assigned plausible reasons for your
disappearance; he professes to hope that you were not lost in the wreck
of the _Cecile_, the ship in which you sailed for Havana to secure the
fortune to be left to you by an old aunt, who might have forgotten
you; you embarked, escorted by two ladies of her family and an old
man-servant. The Count says that he has sent agents to various spots,
and received letters which give him great hopes. He takes as many
precautions to hide you from all eyes as you take yourself. In short, he
obeys you...’
“‘That is enough,’ she said. ‘I want to know but one thing more. From
whom have you obtained all these details?’
“‘Well, madame, my uncle got a place for a penniless youth as secretary
to the Commissary of police in this part of Paris. That young man told
me everything. If you leave this house this evening, however stealthily,
your husband will know where you are gone, and his care will follow
you everywhere.--How could a woman so clever as you are believe that
shopkeepers buy flowers and caps as dear as they sell them? Ask
a thousand crowns for a bouquet, and you will get it. No mother’s
tenderness was ever more ingenious than your husband’s! I have learned
from the porter of this house that the Count often comes behind the
fence when all are asleep, to see the glimmer of your nightlight! Your
large cashmere shawl cost six thousand francs--your old-clothes-seller
brings you, as second hand, things fresh from the best makers. In short,
you are living here like Venus in the toils of Vulcan; but you are alone
in your prison by the devices of a sublime magnanimity, sublime for
seven years past, and at every hour.’
“The Countess was trembling as a trapped swallow trembles while, as you
hold it in your hand, it strains its neck to look about it with wild
eyes. She shook with a nervous spasm, studying me with a defiant look.
Her dry eyes glittered with a light that was almost hot: still, she
was a woman! The moment came when her tears forced their way, and she
wept--not because she was touched, but because she was helpless; they
were tears of desperation. She had believed herself independent and
free; marriage weighed on her as the prison cell does on the captive.
“‘I will go!’ she cried through her tears. ‘He forces me to it; I will
go where no one certainly will come after me.’
“‘What,’ I said, ‘you would kill yourself?--Madame, you must have some
very powerful reasons for not wishing to return to Comte Octave.’
“‘Certainly I have!’
“‘Well, then, tell them to me; tell them to my uncle. In us you will
find two devoted advisers. Though in the confessional my uncle is a
priest, he never is one in a drawing-room. We will hear you; we will try
to find a solution of the problems you may lay before us; and if you are
the dupe or the victim of some misapprehension, perhaps we can clear the
matter up. Your soul, I believe, is pure; but if you have done wrong,
your fault is fully expiated.... At any rate, remember that in me you
have a most sincere friend. If you should wish to evade the Count’s
tyranny, I will find you the means; he shall never find you.’
“‘Oh! there is always a convent!’ said she.
“‘Yes. But the Count, as Minister of State, can procure your rejection
by every convent in the world. Even though he is powerful, I will save
you from him--; but--only when you have demonstrated to me that you
cannot and ought not to return to him. Oh! do not fear that you would
escape his power only to fall into mine,’ I added, noticing a glance of
horrible suspicion, full of exaggerated dignity. ‘You shall have peace,
solitude, and independence; in short, you shall be as free and as little
annoyed as if you were an ugly, cross old maid. I myself would never be
able to see you without your consent.’
“‘And how? By what means?’
“‘That is my secret. I am not deceiving you, of that you may be
sure. Prove to me that this is the only life you can lead, that it is
preferable to that of the Comtesse Octave, rich, admired, in one of the
finest houses in Paris, beloved by her husband, a happy mother... and I
will decide in your favor.’
“‘But,’ said she, ‘will there never be a man who understands me?’
“‘No. And that is why I appeal to religion to decide between us. The
Cure of the White Friars is a saint, seventy-five years of age. My uncle
is not a Grand Inquisitor, he is Saint John; but for you he will be
Fenelon--the Fenelon who said to the Duc de Bourgogne: ‘Eat a calf on a
Friday by all means, monseigneur. But be a Christian.’