Rue Saint-Maur; unapproachable, alone, occupied as you please, living by
your own law; but having in addition the legitimate protection, of
which you are now exacting the most chivalrous labors of love, with the
consideration which lends so much lustre to a woman, and the fortune
which will allow of your doing many good works. Honorine, when you long
for an unnecessary absolution, you have only to ask for it; it will not
be forced upon you by the Church or by the Law; it will wait on your
pride, on your own impulsion. My wife might indeed have to fear all the
things you dread; but not my friend and sister, towards whom I am bound
to show every form and refinement of politeness. To see you happy is
enough happiness for me; I have proved this for the seven years past.
The guarantee for this, Honorine, is to be seen in all the flowers made
by you, carefully preserved, and watered by my tears. Like the _quipos_,
the tally cords of the Peruvians, they are the record of our sorrows.
“‘If this secret compact does not suit you, my child, I have begged
the saintly man who takes charge of this letter not to say a word in
my behalf. I will not owe your return to the terrors threatened by the
Church, nor to the bidding of the Law. I will not accept the simple and
quiet happiness that I ask from any one but yourself. If you persist
in condemning me to the lonely life, bereft even of a fraternal smile,
which I have led for nine years, if you remain in your solitude and show
no sign, my will yields to yours. Understand me perfectly: you shall be
no more troubled than you have been until this day. I will get rid
of the crazy fellow who has meddled in your concerns, and has perhaps
caused you some annoyance...’
“‘Monsieur,’ said Honorine, folding up the letter, which she placed in
her bosom, and looking at my uncle, ‘thank you very much. I will avail
myself of Monsieur le Comte’s permission to remain here----’
“‘Ah!’ I exclaimed.
“This exclamation made my uncle look at me uneasily, and won from the
Countess a mischievous glance, which enlightened me as to her motives.
“Honorine had wanted to ascertain whether I were an actor, a bird
snarer; and I had the melancholy satisfaction of deceiving her by my
exclamation, which was one of those cries from the heart which women
understand so well.
“‘Ah, Maurice,’ said she, ‘you know how to love.’
“The light that flashed in my eyes was another reply which would have
dissipated the Countess’ uneasiness if she still had any. Thus the Count
found me useful to the very last.
“Honorine then took out the Count’s letter again to finish reading it.
My uncle signed to me, and I rose.
“‘Let us leave the Countess,’ said he.
“‘You are going already Maurice?’ she said, without looking at me.
“She rose, and still reading, followed us to the door. On the threshold
she took my hand, pressed it very affectionately, and said, ‘We shall
meet again...’
“‘No,’ I replied, wringing her hand, so that she cried out. ‘You love
your husband. I leave to-morrow.’
“And I rushed away, leaving my uncle, to whom she said:
“‘Why, what is the matter with your nephew?’
“The good Abbe completed my work by pointing to his head and heart, as
much as to say, ‘He is mad, madame; you must forgive him!’ and with all
the more truth, because he really thought it.
“Six days after, I set out with an appointment as vice-consul in Spain,
in a large commercial town, where I could quickly qualify to rise in the
career of a consul, to which I now restricted my ambition. After I had
established myself there, I received this letter from the Count:--
“‘MY DEAR MAURICE,--
“‘If I were happy, I should not write to you, but I have entered on a
new life of suffering. I have grown young again in my desires, with all
the impatience of a man of forty, and the prudence of a diplomatist, who
has learned to moderate his passion. When you left I had not yet been
admitted to the _pavillon_ in the Rue Saint-Maur, but a letter had
promised me that I should have permission--the mild and melancholy
letter of a woman who dreaded the agitations of a meeting. After waiting
for more than a month, I made bold to call, and desired Gobain to
inquire whether I could be received. I sat down in a chair in the avenue
near the lodge, my head buried in my hands, and there I remained for
almost an hour.
“‘“Madame had to dress,” said Gobain, to hide Honorine’s hesitancy under
a pride of appearance which was flattering to me.
“‘During a long quarter of an hour we both of us were possessed by an
involuntary nervous trembling as great as that which seizes a speaker on
the platform, and we spoke to each other sacred phrases, like those of
persons taken by surprise who “make believe” a conversation.
“‘“You see, Honorine,” said I, my eyes full of tears, “the ice is
broken, and I am so tremulous with happiness that you must forgive the
incoherency of my language. It will be so for a long time yet.”
“‘“There is no crime in being in love with your wife,” said she with a
forced smile.
“‘“Do me the favor,” said I, “no longer to work as you do. I have heard
from Madame Gobain that for three weeks you have been living on your
savings; you have sixty thousand francs a year of your own, and if you
cannot give me back your heart, at least do not abandon your fortune to
me.”
“‘“I have long known your kindness,” said she.
“‘“Though you should prefer to remain here,” said I, “and to preserve
your independence; though the most ardent love should find no favor in
your eyes, still, do not toil.”
“‘I gave her three certificates for twelve thousand francs a year each;
she took them, opened them languidly, and after reading them through she
gave me only a look as my reward. She fully understood that I was not
offering her money, but freedom.
“‘“I am conquered,” said she, holding out her hand, which I kissed.
“Come and see me as often as you like.”
“‘So she had done herself a violence in receiving me. Next day I found
her armed with affected high spirits, and it took two months of habit
before I saw her in her true character. But then it was like a delicious
May, a springtime of love that gave me ineffable bliss; she was no
longer afraid; she was studying me. Alas! when I proposed that she
should go to England to return ostensibly to me, to our home, that she
should resume her rank and live in our new residence, she was seized
with alarm.
“‘“Why not live always as we are?” she said.
“‘I submitted without saying a word.
“‘“Is she making an experiment?” I asked myself as I left her. On my way
from my own house to the Rue Saint-Maur thoughts of love had swelled in
my heart, and I had said to myself, like a young man, “This evening she
will yield.”
“‘All my real or affected force was blown to the winds by a smile, by a
command from those proud, calm eyes, untouched by passion. I remembered
the terrible words you once quoted to me, “Lucretia’s dagger wrote in
letters of blood the watchword of woman’s charter--Liberty!” and
they froze me. I felt imperatively how necessary to me was Honorine’s
consent, and how impossible it was to wring it from her. Could she guess
the storms that distracted me when I left as when I came?
“‘At last I painted my situation in a letter to her, giving up the
attempt to speak of it. Honorine made no answer, and she was so sad that
I made as though I had not written. I was deeply grieved by the idea
that I could have distressed her; she read my heart and forgave me. And
this was how. Three days ago she received me, for the first time, in
her own blue-and-white room. It was bright with flowers, dressed, and
lighted up. Honorine was in a dress that made her bewitching. Her hair
framed that face that you know in its light curls; and in it were some
sprays of Cape heath; she wore a white muslin gown, a white sash with
long floating ends. You know what she is in such simplicity, but that
day she was a bride, the Honorine of long past days. My joy was chilled
at once, for her face was terribly grave; there were fires beneath the
ice.
“‘“Octave,” she said, “I will return as your wife when you will. But
understand clearly that this submission has its dangers. I can be
resigned----”
“‘I made a movement.
“‘“Yes,” she went on, “I understand: resignation offends you, and you
want what I cannot give--Love. Religion and pity led me to renounce my
vow of solitude; you are here!” She paused.
“‘“At first,” she went on, “you asked no more. Now you demand your wife.
Well, here I give you Honorine, such as she is, without deceiving you as
to what she will be.--What shall I be? A mother? I hope it. Believe
me, I hope it eagerly. Try to change me; you have my consent; but if
I should die, my dear, do not curse my memory, and do not set down to
obstinacy what I should call the worship of the Ideal, if it were not
more natural to call the indefinable feeling which must kill me the
worship of the Divine! The future will be nothing to me; it will be your
concern; consult your own mind.”
“‘And she sat down in the calm attitude you used to admire, and watched
me turning pale with the pain she had inflicted. My blood ran cold. On
seeing the effect of her words she took both my hands, and, holding them
in her own, she said:
“‘“Octave, I do love you, but not in the way you wish to be loved. I
love your soul.... Still, understand that I love you enough to die in
your service like an Eastern slave, and without a regret. It will be my
expiation.”
“‘She did more; she knelt before me on a cushion, and in a spirit of
sublime charity she said:
“‘“And perhaps I shall not die!”
“‘For two months now I have been struggling with myself. What shall I
do? My heart is too full; I therefore seek a friend, and send out this
cry, “What shall I do?”’
“I did not answer this letter. Two months later the newspapers announced
the return on board an English vessel of the Comtesse Octave, restored
to her family after adventures by land and sea, invented with sufficient
probability to arouse no contradiction.
“When I moved to Genoa I received a formal announcement of the happy
event of the birth of a son to the Count and Countess. I held that
letter in my hand for two hours, sitting on this terrace--on this bench.
Two months after, urged by Octave, by M. de Grandville, and Monsieur de
Serizy, my kind friends, and broken by the death of my uncle, I agreed
to take a wife.
“Six months after the revolution of July I received this letter, which
concludes the story of this couple:--
“‘MONSIEUR MAURICE,--I am dying though I am a mother--perhaps because
I am a mother. I have played my part as a wife well; I have deceived my
husband. I have had happiness not less genuine than the tears shed by
actresses on the stage. I am dying for society, for the family, for
marriage, as the early Christians died for God! I know not of what I am
dying, and I am honestly trying to find out, for I am not perverse; but
I am bent on explaining my malady to you--you who brought that heavenly
physician your uncle, at whose word I surrendered. He was my director;
I nursed him in his last illness, and he showed me the way to heaven,
bidding me persevere in my duty.
“‘And I have done my duty.
“‘I do not blame those who forget. I admire them as strong and necessary
natures; but I have the malady of memory! I have not been able twice to
feel that love of the heart which identifies a woman with the man she
loves. To the last moment, as you know, I cried to your heart, in the
confessional, and to my husband, “Have mercy!” But there was no mercy.
Well, and I am dying, dying with stupendous courage. No courtesan was
ever more gay than I. My poor Octave is happy; I let his love feed on
the illusions of my heart. I throw all my powers into this terrible
masquerade; the actress is applauded, feasted, smothered in flowers; but
the invisible rival comes every day to seek its prey--a fragment of
my life. I am rent and I smile. I smile on two children, but it is the
elder, the dead one, that will triumph! I told you so before. The dead
child calls me, and I am going to him.
“‘The intimacy of marriage without love is a position in which my soul
feels degraded every hour. I can never weep or give myself up to dreams
but when I am alone. The exigencies of society, the care of my child,
and that of Octave’s happiness never leave me a moment to refresh
myself, to renew my strength, as I could in my solitude. The incessant
need for watchfulness startles my heart with constant alarms. I have not
succeeded in implanting in my soul the sharp-eared vigilance that lies
with facility, and has the eyes of a lynx. It is not the lip of one I
love that drinks my tears and kisses them; my burning eyes are cooled
with water, and not with tender lips. It is my soul that acts a part,
and that perhaps is why I am dying! I lock up my griefs with so much
care that nothing is to be seen of it; it must eat into something, and
it has attacked my life.
“‘I said to the doctors, who discovered my secret, “Make me die of some
plausible complaint, or I shall drag my husband with me.”
“‘So it is quite understood by M. Desplein, Bianchon, and myself that
I am dying of the softening of some bone which science has fully
described. Octave believes that I adore him, do you understand? So I am
afraid lest he should follow me. I now write to beg you in that case
to be the little Count’s guardian. You will find with this a codicil in
which I have expressed my wish; but do not produce it excepting in case
of need, for perhaps I am fatuously vain. My devotion may perhaps leave
Octave inconsolable but willing to live.--Poor Octave! I wish him a
better wife than I am, for he deserves to be well loved.
“‘Since my spiritual spy is married, I bid him remember what the florist
of the Rue Saint-Maur hereby bequeaths to him as a lesson: May your wife
soon be a mother! Fling her into the vulgarest materialism of household
life; hinder her from cherishing in her heart the mysterious flower
of the Ideal--of that heavenly perfection in which I believed, that
enchanted blossom with glorious colors, and whose perfume disgusts us
with reality. I am a Saint-Theresa who has not been suffered to live on
ecstasy in the depths of a convent, with the Holy Infant, and a spotless
winged angel to come and go as she wished.
“‘You saw me happy among my beloved flowers. I did not tell you all: I
saw love budding under your affected madness, and I concealed from you
my thoughts, my poetry; I did not admit you to my kingdom of beauty.
Well, well; you will love my child for love of me if he should one day
lose his poor father. Keep my secrets as the grave will keep them. Do
not mourn for me; I have been dead this many a day, if Saint Bernard
was right in saying that where there is no more love there is no more
life.’”
“And the Countess died,” said the Consul, putting away the letters and
locking the pocket-book.
“Is the Count still living?” asked the Ambassador, “for since the
revolution of July he has disappeared from the political stage.”
“Do you remember, Monsieur de Lora,” said the Consul-General, “having
seen me going to the steamboat with----”
“A white-haired man! an old man?” said the painter.
“An old man of forty-five, going in search of health and amusement in
Southern Italy. That old man was my poor friend, my patron, passing
through Genoa to take leave of me and place his will in my hands.
He appoints me his son’s guardian. I had no occasion to tell him of
Honorine’s wishes.”
“Does he suspect himself of murder?” said Mademoiselle des Touches to
the Baron de l’Hostal.
“He suspects the truth,” replied the Consul, “and that is what is
killing him. I remained on board the steam packet that was to take him
to Naples till it was out of the roadstead; a small boat brought me
back. We sat for some little time taking leave of each other--for ever,
I fear. God only knows how much we love the confidant of our love when
she who inspired it is no more.
“‘That man,’ said Octave, ‘holds a charm and wears an aureole.’ the
Count went to the prow and looked down on the Mediterranean. It happened
to be fine, and, moved no doubt by the spectacle, he spoke these last
words: ‘Ought we not, in the interests of human nature, to inquire
what is the irresistible power which leads us to sacrifice an exquisite
creature to the most fugitive of all pleasures, and in spite of our
reason? In my conscience I heard cries. Honorine was not alone in her
anguish. And yet I would have it!... I am consumed by remorse. In the
Rue Payenne I was dying of the joys I had not; now I shall die in Italy
of the joys I have had.... Wherein lay the discord between two natures,
equally noble, I dare assert?’”
For some minutes profound silence reigned on the terrace.
Then the Consul, turning to the two women, asked, “Was she virtuous?”
Mademoiselle des Touches rose, took the Consul’s arm, went a few steps
away, and said to him:
“Are not men wrong too when they come to us and make a young girl a wife
while cherishing at the bottom of their heart some angelic image, and
comparing us to those unknown rivals, to perfections often borrowed from
a remembrance, and always finding us wanting?”
“Mademoiselle, you would be right if marriage were based on passion; and
that was the mistake of those two, who will soon be no more. Marriage
with heart-deep love on both sides would be Paradise.”
Mademoiselle des Touches turned from the Consul, and was immediately
joined by Claude Vignon, who said in her ear:
“A bit of a coxcomb is M. de l’Hostal.”
“No,” replied she, whispering to Claude these words: “for he has not yet
guessed that Honorine would have loved him.--Oh!” she exclaimed, seeing
the Consul’s wife approaching, “his wife was listening! Unhappy man!”
Eleven was striking by all the clocks, and the guests went home on foot
along the seashore.
“Still, that is not life,” said Mademoiselle des Touches. “That woman
was one of the rarest, and perhaps the most extraordinary exceptions in
intellect--a pearl! Life is made up of various incidents, of pain and
pleasure alternately. The Paradise of Dante, that sublime expression of
the ideal, that perpetual blue, is to be found only in the soul; to ask
it of the facts of life is a luxury against which nature protests every
hour. To such souls as those the six feet of a cell, and the kneeling
chair are all they need.”
“You are right,” said Leon de Lora; “but good-for-nothing as I may be, I
cannot help admiring a woman who is capable, as that one was, of living
by the side of a studio, under a painter’s roof, and never coming down,
nor seeing the world, nor dipping her feet in the street mud.”
“Such a thing has been known--for a few months,” said Claude Vignon,
with deep irony.
“Comtesse Honorine is not unique of her kind,” replied the Ambassador
to Mademoiselle des Touches. “A man, nay, and a politician, a bitter
writer, was the object of such a passion; and the pistol shot which
killed him hit not him alone; the woman who loved lived like a nun ever
after.”
“Then there are yet some great souls in this age!” said Camille Maupin,
and she stood for some minutes pensively leaning on the balustrade of
the quay.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Bauvan, Comte Octave de
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Bianchon, Horace
Father Goriot
The Atheist’s Mass
Cesar Birotteau
The Commission in Lunacy
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor’s Establishment
The Secrets of a Princess
The Government Clerks
Pierrette
A Study of Woman
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
The Seamy Side of History
The Magic Skin
A Second Home
A Prince of Bohemia
Letters of Two Brides
The Muse of the Department
The Imaginary Mistress
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty
The Country Parson
In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
Another Study of Woman
La Grande Breteche
Desplein
The Atheist’s Mass
Cousin Pons
Lost Illusions
The Thirteen
The Government Clerks
Pierrette
A Bachelor’s Establishment
The Seamy Side of History
Modeste Mignon
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Fontanon, Abbe
A Second Home
The Government Clerks
The Member for Arcis
Gaudissart, Felix
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Cousin Pons
Cesar Birotteau
Gaudissart the Great
Gaudron, Abbe
The Government Clerks
A Start in Life
Granville, Vicomte de (later Comte)
The Gondreville Mystery
A Second Home
Farewell (Adieu)
Cesar Birotteau
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
A Daughter of Eve
Cousin Pons
Lora, Leon de
The Unconscious Humorists
A Bachelor’s Establishment
A Start in Life
Pierre Grassou
Cousin Betty
Beatrix
Loraux, Abbe
A Start in Life
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Cesar Birotteau
Popinot, Jean-Jules
Cesar Birotteau
The Commission in Lunacy
The Seamy Side of History
The Middle Classes
Serizy, Comte Hugret de
A Start in Life
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Modeste Mignon
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Touches, Mademoiselle Felicite des
Beatrix
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Another Study of Woman
A Daughter of Eve
Beatrix
The Muse of the Department
Vignon, Claude
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Daughter of Eve
Honorine
Beatrix
Cousin Betty
The Unconscious Humorists