There is none but God who can understand me. No man, not Saint Augustine
himself, the tenderest of the Fathers of the Church, could enter into
the scruples of my conscience, which are to me as the circles of Dante’s
hell, whence there is no escape. Another than my husband, a different
man, however unworthy of the offering, has had all my love. No, he has
not had it, for he did not take it; I gave it him as a mother gives her
child a wonderful toy, which it breaks. For me there never could be two
loves. In some natures love can never be on trial; it is, or it is not.
When it comes, when it rises up, it is complete.--Well, that life of
eighteen months was to me a life of eighteen years; I threw into it
all the faculties of my being, which were not impoverished by their
effusiveness; they were exhausted by that delusive intimacy in which
I alone was genuine. For me the cup of happiness is not drained, nor
empty; and nothing can refill it, for it is broken. I am out of the
fray; I have no weapons left. Having thus utterly abandoned myself,
what am I?--the leavings of a feast. I had but one name bestowed on
me, Honorine, as I had but one heart. My husband had the young girl, a
worthless lover had the woman--there is nothing left!--Then let myself
be loved! that is the great idea you mean to utter to me. Oh! but I
still am something, and I rebel at the idea of being a prostitute! Yes,
by the light of the conflagration I saw clearly; and I tell you--well, I
could imagine surrendering to another man’s love, but to Octave’s?--No,
never.’
“‘Ah! you love him,’ I said.
“‘I esteem him, respect him, venerate him; he never has done me the
smallest hurt; he is kind, he is tender; but I can never more love him.
However,’ she went on, ‘let us talk no more of this. Discussion makes
everything small. I will express my notions on this subject in writing
to you, for at this moment they are suffocating me; I am feverish, my
feet are standing in the ashes of my Paraclete. All that I see, these
things which I believed I had earned by my labor, now remind me of
everything I wish to forget. Ah! I must fly from hence as I fled from my
home.’
“‘Where will you go?’ I asked. ‘Can a woman exist unprotected? At
thirty, in all the glory of your beauty, rich in powers of which you
have no suspicion, full of tenderness to be bestowed, are you prepared
to live in the wilderness where I could hide you?--Be quite easy. The
Count, who for nine years has never allowed himself to be seen here,
will never go there without your permission. You have his sublime
devotion of nine years as a guarantee for your tranquillity. You may
therefore discuss the future in perfect confidence with my uncle and
me. My uncle has as much influence as a Minister of State. So compose
yourself; do not exaggerate your misfortune. A priest whose hair has
grown white in the exercise of his functions is not a boy; you will be
understood by him to whom every passion has been confided for nearly
fifty years now, and who weighs in his hands the ponderous heart of
kings and princes. If he is stern under his stole, in the presence of
your flowers he will be as tender as they are, and as indulgent as his
Divine Master.’
“I left the Countess at midnight; she was apparently calm, but
depressed, and had some secret purpose which no perspicacity could
guess. I found the Count a few paces off, in the Rue Saint-Maur. Drawn
by an irresistible attraction, he had quitted the spot on the Boulevards
where we had agreed to meet.
“‘What a night my poor child will go through!’ he exclaimed, when I had
finished my account of the scene that had just taken place. ‘Supposing I
were to go to her!’ he added; ‘supposing she were to see me suddenly?’
“‘At this moment she is capable of throwing herself out of the window,’
I replied. ‘The Countess is one of those Lucretias who could not survive
any violence, even if it were done by a man into whose arms she could
throw herself.’
“‘You are young,’ he answered; ‘you do not know that in a soul tossed by
such dreadful alternatives the will is like waters of a lake lashed by a
tempest; the wind changes every instant, and the waves are driven now to
one shore, now to the other. During this night the chances are quite
as great that on seeing me Honorine might rush into my arms as that she
would throw herself out of the window.’
“‘And you would accept the equal chances,’ said I.
“‘Well, come,’ said he, ‘I have at home, to enable me to wait till
to-morrow, a dose of opium which Desplein prepared for me to send me to
sleep without any risk!’
“Next day at noon Gobain brought me a letter, telling me that the
Countess had gone to bed at six, worn out with fatigue, and that, having
taken a soothing draught prepared by the chemist, she had now fallen
asleep.
“This is her letter, of which I kept a copy--for you, mademoiselle,”
said the Consul, addressing Camille, “know all the resources of art, the
tricks of style, and the efforts made in their compositions by writers
who do not lack skill; but you will acknowledge that literature could
never find such language in its assumed pathos; there is nothing so
terrible as truth. Here is the letter written by this woman, or rather
by this anguish:--
“‘MONSIEUR MAURICE,--
“‘I know all your uncle would say to me; he is not better informed than
my own conscience. Conscience is the interpreter of God to man. I know
that if I am not reconciled to Octave, I shall be damned; that is the
sentence of religious law. Civil law condemns me to obey, cost what it
may. If my husband does not reject me, the world will regard me as pure,
as virtuous, whatever I may have done. Yes, that much is sublime in
marriage; society ratifies the husband’s forgiveness; but it forgets
that the forgiveness must be accepted. Legally, religiously, and from
the world’s point of view I ought to go back to Octave. Keeping only
to the human aspect of the question, is it not cruel to refuse him
happiness, to deprive him of children, to wipe his name out of the
Golden Book and the list of peers? My sufferings, my repugnance, my
feelings, all my egoism--for I know that I am an egoist--ought to be
sacrificed to the family. I shall be a mother; the caresses of my child
will wipe away many tears! I shall be very happy; I certainly shall
be much looked up to. I shall ride, haughty and wealthy, in a handsome
carriage! I shall have servants and a fine house, and be the queen of as
many parties as there are weeks in the year. The world will receive
me handsomely. I shall not have to climb up again to the heaven of
aristocracy, I shall never have come down from it. So God, the law,
society are all in accord.
“‘“What are you rebelling against?” I am asked from the height of
heaven, from the pulpit, from the judge’s bench, and from the throne,
whose august intervention may at need be invoked by the Count. Your
uncle, indeed, at need, would speak to me of a certain celestial grace
which will flood my heart when I know the pleasure of doing my duty.
“‘God, the law, the world, and Octave all wish me to live, no doubt.
Well, if there is no other difficulty, my reply cuts the knot: I will
not live. I will become white and innocent again; for I will lie in my
shroud, white with the blameless pallor of death. This is not in the
least “mulish obstinacy.” That mulish obstinacy of which you jestingly
accused me is in a woman the result of confidence, of a vision of the
future. Though my husband, sublimely generous, may forget all, I
shall not forget. Does forgetfulness depend on our will? When a widow
re-marries, love makes a girl of her; she marries a man she loves. But I
cannot love the Count. It all lies in that, do not you see?
“‘Every time my eyes met his I should see my sin in them, even when his
were full of love. The greatness of his generosity would be the measure
of the greatness of my crime. My eyes, always uneasy, would be for ever
reading an invisible condemnation. My heart would be full of confused
and struggling memories; marriage can never move me to the cruel
rapture, the mortal delirium of passion. I should kill my husband by
my coldness, by comparisons which he would guess, though hidden in the
depths of my conscience. Oh! on the day when I should read a trace of
involuntary, even of suppressed reproach in a furrow on his brow, in a
saddened look, in some imperceptible gesture, nothing could hold me: I
should be lying with a fractured skull on the pavement, and find that
less hard than my husband. It might be my own over-susceptibility that
would lead me to this horrible but welcome death; I might die the victim
of an impatient mood in Octave caused by some matter of business, or be
deceived by some unjust suspicion. Alas! I might even mistake some proof
of love for a sign of contempt!
“‘What torture on both sides! Octave would be always doubting me, I
doubting him. I, quite involuntarily, should give him a rival wholly
unworthy of him, a man whom I despise, but with whom I have known
raptures branded on me with fire, which are my shame, but which I cannot
forget.
“‘Have I shown you enough of my heart? No one, monsieur, can convince
me that love may be renewed, for I neither can nor will accept love from
any one. A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is
like a flower that had been walked over. You, who are a florist, you
know whether it is ever possible to restore the broken stem, to revive
the faded colors, to make the sap flow again in the tender vessels of
which the whole vegetative function lies in their perfect rigidity. If
some botanist should attempt the operation, could his genius smooth out
the folds of the bruised corolla? If he could remake a flower, he
would be God! God alone can remake me! I am drinking the bitter cup
of expiation; but as I drink it I painfully spell out this sentence:
Expiation is not annihilation.
“‘In my little house, alone, I eat my bread soaked in tears; but no one
sees me eat nor sees me weep. If I go back to Octave, I must give up
my tears--they would offend him. Oh! monsieur, how many virtues must a
woman tread under foot, not to give herself, but to restore herself to a
betrayed husband? Who could count them? God alone; for He alone can know
and encourage the horrible refinements at which the angels must turn
pale. Nay, I will go further. A woman has courage in the presence of her
husband if he knows nothing; she shows a sort of fierce strength in her
hypocrisy; she deceives him to secure him double happiness. But common
knowledge is surely degrading. Supposing I could exchange humiliation
for ecstasy? Would not Octave at last feel that my consent was sheer
depravity? Marriage is based on esteem, on sacrifices on both sides; but
neither Octave nor I could esteem each other the day after our reunion.
He would have disgraced me by a love like that of an old man for a
courtesan, and I should for ever feel the shame of being a chattel
instead of a lady. I should represent pleasure, and not virtue, in his
house. These are the bitter fruits of such a sin. I have made myself a
bed where I can only toss on burning coals, a sleepless pillow.
“‘Here, when I suffer, I bless my sufferings; I say to God, “I thank
Thee!” But in my husband’s house I should be full of terror, tasting
joys to which I have no right.
“‘All this, monsieur, is not argument; it is the feeling of a soul made
vast and hollow by seven years of suffering. Finally, must I make a
horrible confession? I shall always feel at my bosom the lips of a child
conceived in rapture and joy, and in the belief in happiness, of a child
I nursed for seven months, that I shall bear in my womb all the days of
my life. If other children should draw their nourishment from me, they
would drink in tears mingling with the milk, and turning it sour. I
seem a light thing, you regard me as a child--Ah yes! I have a child’s
memory, the memory which returns to us on the verge of the tomb. So, you
see, there is not a situation in that beautiful life to which the world
and my husband’s love want to recall me, which is not a false position,
which does not cover a snare or reveal a precipice down which I must
fall, torn by pitiless rocks. For five years now I have been wandering
in the sandy desert of the future without finding a place convenient to
repent in, because my soul is possessed by true repentance.
“‘Religion has its answers ready to all this, and I know them by heart.
This suffering, these difficulties, are my punishment, she says, and God
will give me strength to endure them. This, monsieur, is an argument to
certain pious souls gifted with an energy which I have not. I have made
my choice between this hell, where God does not forbid my blessing Him,
and the hell that awaits me under Count Octave’s roof.
“‘One word more. If I were still a girl, with the experience I now have,
my husband is the man I should choose; but that is the very reason of
my refusal. I could not bear to blush before that man. What! I should
be always on my knees, he always standing upright; and if we were to
exchange positions, I should scorn him! I will not be better treated
by him in consequence of my sin. The angel who might venture under such
circumstances on certain liberties which are permissible when both are
equally blameless, is not on earth; he dwells in heaven! Octave is
full of delicate feeling, I know; but even in his soul (which, however
generous, is a man’s soul after all) there is no guarantee for the new
life I should lead with him.
“‘Come then, and tell me where I may find the solitude, the peace, the
silence, so kindly to irreparable woes, which you promised me.’
“After making this copy of the letter to preserve it complete, I went
to the Rue Payenne. Anxiety had conquered the power of opium. Octave was
walking up and down his garden like a madman.
“‘Answer that!’ said I, giving him his wife’s letter. ‘Try to reassure
the modesty of experience. It is rather more difficult than conquering
the modesty of ignorance, which curiosity helps to betray.’
“‘She is mine!’ cried the Count, whose face expressed joy as he went on
reading the letter.
“He signed to me with his hand to leave him to himself. I understood
that extreme happiness and extreme pain obey the same laws; I went in
to receive Madame de Courteville and Amelie, who were to dine with the
Count that day. However handsome Mademoiselle de Courteville might be, I
felt, on seeing her once more, that love has three aspects, and that
the women who can inspire us with perfect love are very rare. As I
involuntarily compared Amelie with Honorine, I found the erring wife
more attractive than the pure girl. To Honorine’s heart fidelity had not
been a duty, but the inevitable; while Amelie would serenely pronounce
the most solemn promises without knowing their purport or to what they
bound her. The crushed, the dead woman, so to speak, the sinner to be
reinstated, seemed to me sublime; she incited the special generosities
of a man’s nature; she demanded all the treasures of the heart, all
the resources of strength; she filled his life and gave the zest of
a conflict to happiness; whereas Amelie, chaste and confiding,
would settle down into the sphere of peaceful motherhood, where the
commonplace must be its poetry, and where my mind would find no struggle
and no victory.
“Of the plains of Champagne and the snowy, storm-beaten but sublime
Alps, what young man would choose the chalky, monotonous level? No; such
comparisons are fatal and wrong on the threshold of the Mairie. Alas!
only the experience of life can teach us that marriage excludes passion,
that a family cannot have its foundation on the tempests of love. After
having dreamed of impossible love, with its infinite caprices, after
having tasted the tormenting delights of the ideal, I saw before me
modest reality. Pity me, for what could be expected! At five-and-twenty
I did not trust myself; but I took a manful resolution.
“I went back to the Count to announce the arrival of his relations, and
I saw him grown young again in the reflected light of hope.
“‘What ails you, Maurice?’ said he, struck by my changed expression.
“‘Monsieur le Comte----’
“‘No longer Octave? You, to whom I shall owe my life, my happiness----’
“‘My dear Octave, if you should succeed in bringing the Countess back
to her duty, I have studied her well’--(he looked at me as Othello must
have looked at Iago when Iago first contrived to insinuate a suspicion
into the Moor’s mind)--‘she must never see me again; she must never know
that Maurice was your secretary. Never mention my name to her, or
all will be undone.... You have got me an appointment as Maitre
des Requetes--well, get me instead some diplomatic post abroad, a
consulship, and do not think of my marrying Amelie.--Oh! do not be
uneasy,’ I added, seeing him draw himself up, ‘I will play my part to
the end.’
“‘Poor boy!’ said he, taking my hand, which he pressed, while he kept
back the tears that were starting to his eyes.
“‘You gave me the gloves,’ I said, laughing, ‘but I have not put them
on; that is all.’
“We then agreed as to what I was to do that evening at Honorine’s house,
whither I presently returned. It was now August; the day had been hot
and stormy, but the storm hung overhead, the sky was like copper; the
scent of the flowers was heavy, I felt as if I were in an oven, and
caught myself wishing that the Countess might have set out for the
Indies; but she was sitting on a wooden bench shaped like a sofa, under
an arbor, in a loose dress of white muslin fastened with blue bows,
her hair unadorned in waving bands over her cheeks, her feet on a small
wooden stool, and showing a little way beyond her skirt. She did not
rise; she showed me with her hand to the seat by her side, saying:
“‘Now, is not life at a deadlock for me?’
“‘Life as you have made it, I replied. ‘But not the life I propose to
make for you; for, if you choose, you may be very happy....’
“‘How?’ said she; her whole person was a question.
“‘Your letter is in the Count’s hands.’
“Honorine started like a frightened doe, sprang to a few paces off,
walked down the garden, turned about, remained standing for some
minutes, and finally went in to sit alone in the drawing-room, where I
joined her, after giving her time to get accustomed to the pain of this
poniard thrust.
“‘You--a friend? Say rather a traitor! A spy, perhaps, sent by my
husband.’
“Instinct in women is as strong as the perspicacity of great men.
“‘You wanted an answer to your letter, did you not? And there was but
one man in the world who could write it. You must read the reply, my
dear Countess; and if after reading it you still find that your life is
a deadlock, the spy will prove himself a friend; I will place you in
a convent whence the Count’s power cannot drag you. But, before going
there, let us consider the other side of the question. There is a law,
alike divine and human, which even hatred affects to obey, and which
commands us not to condemn the accused without hearing his defence.
Till now you have passed condemnation, as children do, with your ears
stopped. The devotion of seven years has its claims. So you must read
the answer your husband will send you. I have forwarded to him, through
my uncle, a copy of your letter, and my uncle asked him what his reply
would be if his wife wrote him a letter in such terms. Thus you are not
compromised. He will himself bring the Count’s answer. In the presence
of that saintly man, and in mine, out of respect for your own dignity,
you must read it, or you will be no better than a wilful, passionate
child. You must make this sacrifice to the world, to the law, and to
God.’
“As she saw in this concession no attack on her womanly resolve, she
consented. All the labor or four or five months had been building up to
this moment. But do not the Pyramids end in a point on which a bird may
perch? The Count had set all his hopes on this supreme instant, and he
had reached it.
“In all my life I remember nothing more formidable than my uncle’s
entrance into that little Pompadour drawing-room, at ten that evening.
The fine head, with its silver hair thrown into relief by the entirely
black dress, and the divinely calm face, had a magical effect on the
Comtesse Honorine; she had the feeling of cool balm on her wounds, and
beamed in the reflection of that virtue which gave light without knowing
it.
“‘Monsieur the Cure of the White Friars,’ said old Gobain.
“‘Are you come, uncle, with a message of happiness and peace?’ said I.
“‘Happiness and peace are always to be found in obedience to the
precepts of the Church,’ replied my uncle, and he handed the Countess
the following letter:--
“‘MY DEAR HONORINE,--
“‘If you had but done me the favor of trusting me, if you had read the
letter I wrote to you five years since, you would have spared yourself
five years of useless labor, and of privations which have grieved me
deeply. In it I proposed an arrangement of which the stipulations will
relieve all your fears, and make our domestic life possible. I have much
to reproach myself with, and in seven years of sorrow I have discovered
all my errors. I misunderstood marriage. I failed to scent danger when
it threatened you. An angel was in the house. The Lord bid me guard it
well! The Lord has punished me for my audacious confidence.
“‘You cannot give yourself a single lash without striking me. Have mercy
on me, my dear Honorine. I so fully appreciated your susceptibilities
that I would not bring you back to the old house in the Rue Payenne,
where I can live without you, but which I could not bear to see again
with you. I am decorating, with great pleasure, another house, in the
Faubourg Saint-Honore, to which, in hope, I conduct not a wife whom I
owe to her ignorance of life, and secured to me by law, but a sister
who will allow me to press on her brow such a kiss as a father gives the
daughter he blesses every day.
“‘Will you bereave me of the right I have conquered from your
despair--that of watching more closely over your needs, your pleasures,
your life even? Women have one heart always on their side, always
abounding in excuses--their mother’s; you never knew any mother but my
mother, who would have brought you back to me. But how is it that you
never guessed that I had for you the heart of a mother, both of my
mother and of your own? Yes, dear, my affection is neither mean nor
grasping; it is one of those which will never let any annoyance last
long enough to pucker the brow of the child it worships. What can you
think of the companion of your childhood, Honorine, if you believe
him capable of accepting kisses given in trembling, of living between
delight and anxiety? Do not fear that you will be exposed to the laments
of a suppliant passion; I would not want you back until I felt certain
of my own strength to leave you in perfect freedom.
“‘Your solitary pride has exaggerated the difficulties. You may, if you
will, look on at the life of a brother, or of a father, without either
suffering or joy; but you will find neither mockery nor indifference,
nor have any doubt as to his intentions. The warmth of the atmosphere
in which you live will be always equable and genial, without tempests,
without a possible squall. If, later, when you feel secure that you
are as much at home as in your own little house, you desire to try some
other elements of happiness, pleasures, or amusements, you can expand
their circle at your will. The tenderness of a mother knows neither
contempt nor pity. What is it? Love without desire. Well, in me
admiration shall hide every sentiment in which you might see an offence.
“‘Thus, living side by side, we may both be magnanimous. In you the
kindness of a sister, the affectionate thoughtfulness of a friend, will
satisfy the ambition of him who wishes to be your life’s companion; and
you may measure his tenderness by the care he will take to conceal
it. Neither you nor I will be jealous of the past, for we may each
acknowledge that the other has sense enough to look only straight
forward.