Produced by John Bickers, Dagny, and David Widger
ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN
By Honoré De Balzac
Translated by Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell
DEDICATION
To Leon Gozlan as a Token of Literary Good-fellowship.
ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN
At Paris there are almost always two separate parties going on at
every ball and rout. First, an official party, composed of the persons
invited, a fashionable and much-bored circle. Each one grimaces for his
neighbor’s eye; most of the younger women are there for one person
only; when each woman has assured herself that for that one she is the
handsomest woman in the room, and that the opinion is perhaps shared
by a few others, a few insignificant phrases are exchanged, as: “Do
you think of going away soon to La Crampade?” “How well Madame de
Portenduère sang!” “Who is that little woman with such a load of
diamonds?” Or, after firing off some smart epigrams, which give
transient pleasure, and leave wounds that rankle long, the groups thin
out, the mere lookers on go away, and the waxlights burn down to the
sconces.
The mistress of the house then waylays a few artists, amusing people
or intimate friends, saying, “Do not go yet; we will have a snug little
supper.” These collect in some small room. The second, the real party,
now begins; a party where, as of old, every one can hear what is said,
conversation is general, each one is bound to be witty and to contribute
to the amusement of all. Everything is made to tell, honest laughter
takes the place of the gloom which in company saddens the prettiest
faces. In short, where the rout ends pleasure begins.
The Rout, a cold display of luxury, a review of self-conceits in full
dress, is one of those English inventions which tend to mechanize other
nations. England seems bent on seeing the whole world as dull as itself,
and dull in the same way. So this second party is, in some French
houses, a happy protest on the part of the old spirit of our
light-hearted people. Only, unfortunately, so few houses protest; and
the reason is a simple one. If we no longer have many suppers nowadays,
it is because never, under any rule, have there been fewer men placed,
established, and successful than under the reign of Louis Philippe, when
the Revolution began again, lawfully. Everybody is on the march some
whither, or trotting at the heels of Fortune. Time has become the
costliest commodity, so no one can afford the lavish extravagance of
going home to-morrow morning and getting up late. Hence, there is no
second soiree now but at the houses of women rich enough to entertain,
and since July 1830 such women may be counted in Paris.
In spite of the covert opposition of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, two or
three women, among them Madame d’Espard and Mademoiselle des Touches,
have not chosen to give up the share of influence they exercised in
Paris, and have not closed their houses.
The salon of Mademoiselle des Touches is noted in Paris as being the
last refuge where the old French wit has found a home, with its reserved
depths, its myriad subtle byways, and its exquisite politeness. You will
there still find grace of manner notwithstanding the conventionalities
of courtesy, perfect freedom of talk notwithstanding the reserve which
is natural to persons of breeding, and, above all, a liberal flow of
ideas. No one there thinks of keeping his thought for a play; and no one
regards a story as material for a book. In short, the hideous skeleton
of literature at bay never stalks there, on the prowl for a clever sally
or an interesting subject.
The memory of one of these evenings especially dwells with me, less by
reason of a confidence in which the illustrious de Marsay opened up
one of the deepest recesses of woman’s heart, than on account of the
reflections to which his narrative gave rise, as to the changes that
have taken place in the French woman since the fateful revolution of
July.
On that evening chance had brought together several persons, whose
indisputable merits have won them European reputations. This is not
a piece of flattery addressed to France, for there were a good many
foreigners present. And, indeed, the men who most shone were not the
most famous. Ingenious repartee, acute remarks, admirable banter,
pictures sketched with brilliant precision, all sparkled and flowed
without elaboration, were poured out without disdain, but without
effort, and were exquisitely expressed and delicately appreciated. The
men of the world especially were conspicuous for their really artistic
grace and spirit.
Elsewhere in Europe you will find elegant manners, cordiality, genial
fellowship, and knowledge; but only in Paris, in this drawing-room,
and those to which I have alluded, does the particular wit abound which
gives an agreeable and changeful unity to all these social qualities,
an indescribable river-like flow which makes this profusion of ideas, of
definitions, of anecdotes, of historical incidents, meander with ease.
Paris, the capital of taste, alone possesses the science which makes
conversation a tourney in which each type of wit is condensed into a
shaft, each speaker utters his phrase and casts his experience in a
word, in which every one finds amusement, relaxation, and exercise.
Here, then, alone, will you exchange ideas; here you need not, like the
dolphin in the fable, carry a monkey on your shoulders; here you will
be understood, and will not risk staking your gold pieces against base
metal.
Here, again, secrets neatly betrayed, and talk, light or deep, play and
eddy, changing their aspect and hue at every phrase. Eager criticism and
crisp anecdotes lead on from one to the next. All eyes are listening,
a gesture asks a question, and an expressive look gives the answer. In
short, and in a word, everything is wit and mind.
The phenomenon of speech, which, when duly studied and well handled,
is the power of the actor and the story-teller, had never so completely
bewitched me. Nor was I alone under the influence of its spell; we all
spent a delightful evening. The conversation had drifted into anecdote,
and brought out in its rushing course some curious confessions,
several portraits, and a thousand follies, which make this enchanting
improvisation impossible to record; still, by setting these things
down in all their natural freshness and abruptness, their elusive
divarications, you may perhaps feel the charm of a real French evening,
taken at the moment when the most engaging familiarity makes each one
forget his own interests, his personal conceit, or, if you like, his
pretensions.
At about two in the morning, as supper ended, no one was left sitting
round the table but intimate friends, proved by intercourse of fifteen
years, and some persons of great taste and good breeding, who knew the
world. By tacit agreement, perfectly carried out, at supper every one
renounced his pretensions to importance. Perfect equality set the tone.
But indeed there was no one present who was not very proud of being
himself.
Mademoiselle des Touches always insists on her guests remaining at table
till they leave, having frequently remarked the change which a move
produces in the spirit of a party. Between the dining-room and the
drawing-room the charm is destroyed. According to Sterne, the ideas
of an author after shaving are different from those he had before. If
Sterne is right, may it not be boldly asserted that the frame of mind of
a party at table is not the same as that of the same persons returned
to the drawing-room? The atmosphere is not heady, the eye no longer
contemplates the brilliant disorder of the dessert, lost are the happy
effects of that laxness of mood, that benevolence which comes over us
while we remain in the humor peculiar to the well-filled man, settled
comfortably on one of the springy chairs which are made in these days.
Perhaps we are not more ready to talk face to face with the dessert and
in the society of good wine, during the delightful interval when every
one may sit with an elbow on the table and his head resting on his
hand. Not only does every one like to talk then, but also to listen.
Digestion, which is almost always attent, is loquacious or silent, as
characters differ. Then every one finds his opportunity.
Was not this preamble necessary to make you know the charm of the
narrative, by which a celebrated man, now dead, depicted the innocent
jesuistry of women, painting it with the subtlety peculiar to persons
who have seen much of the world, and which makes statesmen such
delightful storytellers when, like Prince Talleyrand and Prince
Metternich, they vouchsafe to tell a story?
De Marsay, prime minister for some six months, had already given proofs
of superior capabilities. Those who had known him long were not indeed
surprised to see him display all the talents and various aptitudes of a
statesman; still it might yet be a question whether he would prove to
be a solid politician, or had merely been moulded in the fire of
circumstance. This question had just been asked by a man whom he had
made a préfet, a man of wit and observation, who had for a long time
been a journalist, and who admired de Marsay without infusing into his
admiration that dash of acrid criticism by which, in Paris, one superior
man excuses himself from admiring another.
“Was there ever,” said he, “in your former life, any event, any thought
or wish which told you what your vocation was?” asked Émile Blondet;
“for we all, like Newton, have our apple, which falls and leads us to
the spot where our faculties develop——”
“Yes,” said de Marsay; “I will tell you about it.”
Pretty women, political dandies, artists, old men, de Marsay’s intimate
friends,—all settled themselves comfortably, each in his favorite
attitude, to look at the Minister. Need it be said that the servants had
left, that the doors were shut, and the curtains drawn over them? The
silence was so complete that the murmurs of the coachmen’s voices could
be heard from the courtyard, and the pawing and champing made by horses
when asking to be taken back to their stable.
“The statesman, my friends, exists by one single quality,” said the
Minister, playing with his gold and mother-of-pearl dessert knife. “To
wit: the power of always being master of himself; of profiting more or
less, under all circumstances, by every event, however fortuitous; in
short, of having within himself a cold and disinterested other self, who
looks on as a spectator at all the changes of life, noting our passions
and our sentiments, and whispering to us in every case the judgment of a
sort of moral ready-reckoner.”
“That explains why a statesman is so rare a thing in France,” said old
Lord Dudley.
“From a sentimental point of view, this is horrible,” the Minister went
on. “Hence, when such a phenomenon is seen in a young man—Richelieu,
who, when warned overnight by a letter of Concini’s peril, slept till
midday, when his benefactor was killed at ten o’clock—or say Pitt, or
Napoleon, he was a monster. I became such a monster at a very early age,
thanks to a woman.”
“I fancied,” said Madame de Montcornet with a smile, “that more
politicians were undone by us than we could make.”
“The monster of which I speak is a monster just because he withstands
you,” replied de Marsay, with a little ironical bow.
“If this is a love-story,” the Baronne de Nucingen interposed, “I
request that it may not be interrupted by any reflections.”
“Reflection is so antipathetic to it!” cried Joseph Bridau.
“I was seventeen,” de Marsay went on; “the Restoration was being
consolidated; my old friends know how impetuous and fervid I was then.
I was in love for the first time, and I was—I may say so now—one of
the handsomest young fellows in Paris. I had youth and good looks, two
advantages due to good fortune, but of which we are all as proud as of
a conquest. I must be silent as to the rest.—Like all youths, I was in
love with a woman six years older than myself. No one of you here,”
said he, looking carefully round the table, “can suspect her name or
recognize her. Ronquerolles alone, at the time, ever guessed my secret.
He had kept it well, but I should have feared his smile. However, he is
gone,” said the Minister, looking round.
“He would not stay to supper,” said Madame de Nucingen.
“For six months, possessed by my passion,” de Marsay went on, “but
incapable of suspecting that it had overmastered me, I had abandoned
myself to that rapturous idolatry which is at once the triumph and the
frail joy of the young. I treasured her old gloves; I drank an infusion
of the flowers she had worn; I got out of bed at night to go and gaze at
her window. All my blood rushed to my heart when I inhaled the perfume
she used. I was miles away from knowing that woman is a stove with a
marble casing.”
“Oh! spare us your terrible verdicts,” cried Madame de Montcornet with a
smile.
“I believe I should have crushed with my scorn the philosopher who first
uttered this terrible but profoundly true thought,” said de Marsay. “You
are all far too keen-sighted for me to say any more on that point. These
few words will remind you of your own follies.
“A great lady if ever there was one, a widow without children—oh! all
was perfect—my idol would shut herself up to mark my linen with her
hair; in short, she responded to my madness by her own. And how can we
fail to believe in passion when it has the guarantee of madness?
“We each devoted all our minds to concealing a love so perfect and so
beautiful from the eyes of the world; and we succeeded. And what charm
we found in our escapades! Of her I will say nothing. She was perfection
then, and to this day is considered one of the most beautiful women in
Paris; but at that time a man would have endured death to win one of her
glances. She had been left with an amount of fortune sufficient for a
woman who had loved and was adored; but the Restoration, to which she
owed renewed lustre, made it seem inadequate in comparison with her
name. In my position I was so fatuous as never to dream of a
suspicion. Though my jealousy would have been of a hundred and twenty
Othello-power, that terrible passion slumbered in me as gold in the
nugget. I would have ordered my servant to thrash me if I had been so
base as ever to doubt the purity of that angel—so fragile and so strong,
so fair, so artless, pure, spotless, and whose blue eyes allowed my
gaze to sound it to the very depths of her heart with adorable
submissiveness. Never was there the slightest hesitancy in her attitude,
her look, or word; always white and fresh, and ready for the Beloved
like the Oriental Lily of the ‘Song of Songs!’ Ah! my friends!” sadly
exclaimed the Minister, grown young again, “a man must hit his head very
hard on the marble to dispel that poem!”
This cry of nature, finding an echo in the listeners, spurred the
curiosity he had excited in them with so much skill.
“Every morning, riding Sultan—the fine horse you sent me from England,”
de Marsay went on, addressing Lord Dudley, “I rode past her open
carriage, the horses’ pace being intentionally reduced to a walk, and
read the order of the day signaled to me by the flowers of her bouquet
in case we were unable to exchange a few words. Though we saw each
other almost every evening in society, and she wrote to me every day, to
deceive the curious and mislead the observant we had adopted a scheme of
conduct: never to look at each other; to avoid meeting; to speak ill
of each other. Self-admiration, swagger, or playing the disdained
swain,—all these old manoeuvres are not to compare on either part with
a false passion professed for an indifferent person and an air of
indifference towards the true idol. If two lovers will only play that
game, the world will always be deceived; but then they must be very
secure of each other.
“Her stalking-horse was a man in high favor, a courtier, cold and
sanctimonious, whom she never received at her own house. This little
comedy was performed for the benefit of simpletons and drawing-room
circles, who laughed at it. Marriage was never spoken of between us; six
years’ difference of age might give her pause; she knew nothing of my
fortune, of which, on principle, I have always kept the secret. I, on my
part, fascinated by her wit and manners, by the extent of her knowledge
and her experience of the world, would have married her without a
thought. At the same time, her reserve charmed me. If she had been the
first to speak of marriage in a certain tone, I might perhaps have noted
it as vulgar in that accomplished soul.
“Six months, full and perfect—a diamond of the purest water! That has
been my portion of love in this base world.
“One morning, attacked by the feverish stiffness which marks the
beginning of a cold, I wrote her a line to put off one of those secret
festivals which are buried under the roofs of Paris like pearls in the
sea. No sooner was the letter sent than remorse seized me: she will not
believe that I am ill! thought I. She was wont to affect jealousy and
suspiciousness.—When jealousy is genuine,” said de Marsay, interrupting
himself, “it is the visible sign of an unique passion.”
“Why?” asked the Princesse de Cadignan eagerly.
“Unique and true love,” said de Marsay, “produces a sort of corporeal
apathy attuned to the contemplation into which one falls. Then the mind
complicates everything; it works on itself, pictures its fancies, turns
them into reality and torment; and such jealousy is as delightful as it
is distressing.”
A foreign minister smiled as, by the light of memory, he felt the truth
of this remark.
“Besides,” de Marsay went on, “I said to myself, why miss a happy hour?
Was it not better to go, even though feverish? And, then, if she learns
that I am ill, I believe her capable of hurrying here and compromising
herself. I made an effort; I wrote a second letter, and carried it
myself, for my confidential servant was now gone. The river lay between
us. I had to cross Paris; but at last, within a suitable distance of
her house, I caught sight of a messenger; I charged him to have the note
sent up to her at once, and I had the happy idea of driving past her
door in a hackney cab to see whether she might not by chance receive the
two letters together. At the moment when I arrived it was two
o’clock; the great gate opened to admit a carriage. Whose?—That of the
stalking-horse!
“It is fifteen years since—well, even while I tell the tale, I, the
exhausted orator, the Minister dried up by the friction of public
business, I still feel a surging in my heart and the hot blood about my
diaphragm. At the end of an hour I passed once more; the carriage was
still in the courtyard! My note no doubt was in the porter’s hands. At
last, at half-past three, the carriage drove out. I could observe my
rival’s expression; he was grave, and did not smile; but he was in love,
and no doubt there was business in hand.
“I went to keep my appointment; the queen of my heart met me; I saw her
calm, pure, serene. And here I must confess that I have always thought
that Othello was not only stupid, but showed very bad taste. Only a man
who is half a Negro could behave so: indeed Shakespeare felt this when
he called his play ‘The Moor of Venice.’ The sight of the woman we love
is such a balm to the heart that it must dispel anguish, doubt,
and sorrow. All my rage vanished. I could smile again. Hence this
cheerfulness, which at my age now would be the most atrocious
dissimulation, was the result of my youth and my love. My jealousy once
buried, I had the power of observation. My ailing condition was evident;
the horrible doubts that had fermented in me increased it. At last I
found an opening for putting in these words: ‘You have had no one with
you this morning?’ making a pretext of the uneasiness I had felt in the
fear lest she should have disposed of her time after receiving my first
note.—‘Ah!’ she exclaimed, ‘only a man could have such ideas! As if
I could think of anything but your suffering. Till the moment when I
received your second note I could think only of how I could contrive to
see you.’—‘And you were alone?’—‘Alone,’ said she, looking at me with a
face of innocence so perfect that it must have been his distrust of such
a look as that which made the Moor kill Desdemona. As she lived alone
in the house, the word was a fearful lie. One single lie destroys
the absolute confidence which to some souls is the very foundation of
happiness.
“To explain to you what passed in me at that moment it must be assumed
that we have an internal self of which the exterior I is but the husk;
that this self, as brilliant as light, is as fragile as a shade—well,
that beautiful self was in me thenceforth for ever shrouded in crape.
Yes; I felt a cold and fleshless hand cast over me the winding-sheet
of experience, dooming me to the eternal mourning into which the first
betrayal plunges the soul. As I cast my eyes down that she might not
observe my dizziness, this proud thought somewhat restored my strength:
‘If she is deceiving you, she is unworthy of you!’
“I ascribed my sudden reddening and the tears which started to my eyes
to an attack of pain, and the sweet creature insisted on driving me
home with the blinds of the cab drawn. On the way she was full of a
solicitude and tenderness that might have deceived the Moor of Venice
whom I have taken as a standard of comparison. Indeed, if that great
child were to hesitate two seconds longer, every intelligent spectator
feels that he would ask Desdemona’s forgiveness. Thus, killing the woman
is the act of a boy.—She wept as we parted, so much was she distressed
at being unable to nurse me herself. She wished she were my valet, in
whose happiness she found a cause of envy, and all this was as elegantly
expressed, oh! as Clarissa might have written in her happiness. There is
always a precious ape in the prettiest and most angelic woman!”
At these words all the women looked down, as if hurt by this brutal
truth so brutally stated.
“I will say nothing of the night, nor of the week I spent,” de Marsay
went on. “I discovered that I was a statesman.”
It was so well said that we all uttered an admiring exclamation.
“As I thought over the really cruel vengeance to be taken on a woman,”
said de Marsay, continuing his story, “with infernal ingenuity—for, as
we had loved each other, some terrible and irreparable revenges were
possible—I despised myself, I felt how common I was, I insensibly
formulated a horrible code—that of Indulgence. In taking vengeance on
a woman, do we not in fact admit that there is but one for us, that we
cannot do without her? And, then, is revenge the way to win her back? If
she is not indispensable, if there are other women in the world, why not
grant her the right to change which we assume?
“This, of course, applies only to passion; in any other sense it
would be socially wrong. Nothing more clearly proves the necessity for
indissoluble marriage than the instability of passion. The two sexes
must be chained up, like wild beasts as they are, by inevitable law,
deaf and mute. Eliminate revenge, and infidelity in love is nothing.
Those who believe that for them there is but one woman in the world must
be in favor of vengeance, and then there is but one form of it—that of
Othello.
“Mine was different.”
The words produced in each of us the imperceptible movement which
newspaper writers represent in Parliamentary reports by the words: great
sensation.
“Cured of my cold, and of my pure, absolute, divine love, I flung myself
into an adventure, of which the heroine was charming, and of a style of
beauty utterly opposed to that of my deceiving angel. I took care not to
quarrel with this clever woman, who was so good an actress, for I doubt
whether true love can give such gracious delights as those lavished by
such a dexterous fraud. Such refined hypocrisy is as good as virtue.—I
am not speaking to you Englishwomen, my lady,” said the Minister,
suavely, addressing Lady Barimore, Lord Dudley’s daughter. “I tried to
be the same lover.
“I wished to have some of my hair worked up for my new angel, and I went
to a skilled artist who at that time dwelt in the Rue Boucher. The man
had a monopoly of capillary keepsakes, and I mention his address for the
benefit of those who have not much hair; he has plenty of every kind and
every color. After I had explained my order, he showed me his work. I
then saw achievements of patience surpassing those which the story books
ascribe to fairies, or which are executed by prisoners. He brought me up
to date as to the caprices and fashions governing the use of hair. ‘For
the last year,’ said he, ‘there has been a rage for marking linen
with hair; happily I had a fine collection of hair and skilled
needlewomen,’—on hearing this a suspicion flashed upon me; I took out
my handkerchief and said, ‘So this was done in your shop, with false
hair?’—He looked at the handkerchief, and said, ‘Ay! that lady was very
particular, she insisted on verifying the tint of the hair. My wife
herself marked those handkerchiefs. You have there, sir, one of the
finest pieces of work we have ever executed.’ Before this last ray of
light I might have believed something—might have taken a woman’s word.
I left the shop still having faith in pleasure, but where love was
concerned I was as atheistical as a mathematician.
“Two months later I was sitting by the side of the ethereal being in
her boudoir, on her sofa; I was holding one of her hands—they were very
beautiful—and we scaled the Alps of sentiment, culling their sweetest
flowers, and pulling off the daisy-petals; there is always a moment when
one pulls daisies to pieces, even if it is in a drawing-room and there
are no daisies. At the intensest moment of tenderness, and when we are
most in love, love is so well aware of its own short duration that
we are irresistibly urged to ask, ‘Do you love me? Will you love
me always?’ I seized the elegiac moment, so warm, so flowery, so
full-blown, to lead her to tell her most delightful lies, in the
enchanting language of love. Charlotte displayed her choicest
allurements: She could not live without me; I was to her the only man in
the world; she feared to weary me, because my presence bereft her of all
her wits; with me, all her faculties were lost in love; she was indeed
too tender to escape alarms; for the last six months she had been
seeking some way to bind me to her eternally, and God alone knew that
secret; in short, I was her god!”
The women who heard de Marsay seemed offended by seeing themselves so
well acted, for he seconded the words by airs, and sidelong attitudes,
and mincing grimaces which were quite illusory.
“At the very moment when I might have believed these adorable
falsehoods, as I still held her right hand in mine, I said to her, ‘When
are you to marry the Duke?’
“The thrust was so direct, my gaze met hers so boldly, and her hand
lay so tightly in mine, that her start, slight as it was, could not
be disguised; her eyes fell before mine, and a faint blush colored
her cheeks.—‘The Duke! What do you mean?’ she said, affecting great
astonishment.—‘I know everything,’ replied I; ‘and in my opinion, you
should delay no longer; he is rich; he is a duke; but he is more than
devout, he is religious! I am sure, therefore, that you have been
faithful to me, thanks to his scruples. You cannot imagine how urgently
necessary it is that you should compromise him with himself and with
God; short of that you will never bring him to the point.’—‘Is this
a dream?’ said she, pushing her hair from her forehead, fifteen
years before Malibran, with the gesture which Malibran has made so
famous.—‘Come, do not be childish, my angel,’ said I, trying to take
her hands; but she folded them before her with a little prudish and
indignant mein.—‘Marry him, you have my permission,’ said I, replying to
this gesture by using the formal vous instead of tu. ‘Nay, better, I
beg you to do so.’—‘But,’ cried she, falling at my knees, ‘there is some
horrible mistake; I love no one in the world but you; you may demand
any proofs you please.’—‘Rise, my dear,’ said I, ‘and do me the honor of
being truthful.’—‘As before God.’—‘Do you doubt my love?’—‘No.’—‘Nor my
fidelity?’—‘No.’—‘Well, I have committed the greatest crime,’ I went on.
‘I have doubted your love and your fidelity. Between two intoxications
I looked calmly about me.’—‘Calmly!’ sighed she. ‘That is enough, Henri;
you no longer love me.’
“She had at once found, you perceive, a loophole for escape. In scenes
like these an adverb is dangerous. But, happily, curiosity made her
add: ‘And what did you see? Have I ever spoken of the Duke excepting in
public? Have you detected in my eyes——?’—‘No,’ said I, ‘but in his.
And you have eight times made me go to Saint-Thomas d’Aquin to see you
listening to the same mass as he.’—‘Ah!’ she exclaimed, ‘then I have
made you jealous!’—Oh! I only wish I could be!’ said I, admiring the
pliancy of her quick intelligence, and these acrobatic feats which can
only be successful in the eyes of the blind. ‘But by dint of going to
church I have become very incredulous. On the day of my first cold, and
your first treachery, when you thought I was in bed, you received the
Duke, and you told me you had seen no one.’—‘Do you know that your
conduct is infamous?’—‘In what respect? I consider your marriage to the
Duke an excellent arrangement; he gives you a great name, the only rank
that suits you, a brilliant and distinguished position. You will be one
of the queens of Paris. I should be doing you a wrong if I placed any
obstacle in the way of this prospect, this distinguished life, this
splendid alliance. Ah! Charlotte, some day you will do me justice by
discovering how unlike my character is to that of other young men. You
would have been compelled to deceive me; yes, you would have found it
very difficult to break with me, for he watches you. It is time that we
should part, for the Duke is rigidly virtuous. You must turn prude;
I advise you to do so. The Duke is vain; he will be proud of his
wife.’—‘Oh!’ cried she, bursting into tears, ‘Henri, if only you
had spoken! Yes, if you had chosen’—it was I who was to blame, you
understand—‘we would have gone to live all our days in a corner,
married, happy, and defied the world.’—‘Well, it is too late now,’ said
I, kissing her hands, and putting on a victimized air.—‘Good God! But I
can undo it all!’ said she.—‘No, you have gone too far with the Duke. I
ought indeed to go a journey to part us more effectually. We should both
have reason to fear our own affection——’—‘Henri, do you think the
Duke has any suspicions?’ I was still ‘Henri,’ but the tu was lost for
ever.—‘I do not think so,’ I replied, assuming the manner of a friend;
‘but be as devout as possible, reconcile yourself to God, for the Duke
waits for proofs; he hesitates, you must bring him to the point.’
“She rose, and walked twice round the boudoir in real or affected
agitation; then she no doubt found an attitude and a look beseeming the
new state of affairs, for she stopped in front of me, held out her hand,
and said in a voice broken by emotion, ‘Well, Henri, you are loyal,
noble, and a charming man; I shall never forget you.’
“These were admirable tactics. She was bewitching in this transition
of feeling, indispensable to the situation in which she wished to place
herself in regard to me. I fell into the attitude, the manners, and the
look of a man so deeply distressed, that I saw her too newly assumed
dignity giving way; she looked at me, took my hand, drew me along
almost, threw me on the sofa, but quite gently, and said after a
moment’s silence, ‘I am dreadfully unhappy, my dear fellow. Do you love
me?’—‘Oh! yes.’—‘Well, then, what will become of you?’”
At this point the women all looked at each other.
“Though I can still suffer when I recall her perfidy, I still laugh at
her expression of entire conviction and sweet satisfaction that I must
die, or at any rate sink into perpetual melancholy,” de Marsay went on.
“Oh! do not laugh yet!” he said to his listeners; “there is better to
come. I looked at her very tenderly after a pause, and said to her,
‘Yes, that is what I have been wondering.’—‘Well, what will you do?’—‘I
asked myself that the day after my cold.’—‘And——?’ she asked with eager
anxiety.—‘And I have made advances to the little lady to whom I was
supposed to be attached.’
“Charlotte started up from the sofa like a frightened doe, trembling
like a leaf, gave me one of those looks in which women forgo all their
dignity, all their modesty, their refinement, and even their grace, the
sparkling glitter of a hunted viper’s eye when driven into a corner, and
said, ‘And I have loved this man! I have struggled! I have——’ On this
last thought, which I leave you to guess, she made the most impressive
pause I ever heard.—‘Good God!’ she cried, ‘how unhappy are we women!
we never can be loved. To you there is nothing serious in the purest
feelings. But never mind; when you cheat us you still are our dupes!’—‘I
see that plainly,’ said I, with a stricken air; ‘you have far too much
wit in your anger for your heart to suffer from it.’—This modest epigram
increased her rage; she found some tears of vexation. ‘You disgust
me with the world and with life.’ she said; ‘you snatch away all my
illusions; you deprave my heart.’
“She said to me all that I had a right to say to her, and with a simple
effrontery, an artless audacity, which would certainly have nailed any
man but me on the spot.—‘What is to become of us poor women in a state
of society such as Louis XVIII.’s charter made it?’—(Imagine how her
words had run away with her.)—‘Yes, indeed, we are born to suffer. In
matters of passion we are always superior to you, and you are beneath
all loyalty. There is no honesty in your hearts. To you love is a game
in which you always cheat.’—‘My dear,’ said I, ‘to take anything
serious in society nowadays would be like making romantic love to an
actress.’—‘What a shameless betrayal! It was deliberately planned!’—‘No,
only a rational issue.’—‘Good-bye, Monsieur de Marsay,’ said she; ‘you
have deceived me horribly.’—‘Surely,’ I replied, taking up a
submissive attitude, ‘Madame la Duchesse will not remember Charlotte’s
grievances?’—‘Certainly,’ she answered bitterly.—‘Then, in fact, you
hate me?’—She bowed, and I said to myself, ‘There is something still
left!’
“The feeling she had when I parted from her allowed her to believe that
she still had something to avenge. Well, my friends, I have carefully
studied the lives of men who have had great success with women, but I
do not believe that the Maréchal de Richelieu, or Lauzun, or Louis de
Valois ever effected a more judicious retreat at the first attempt. As
to my mind and heart, they were cast in a mould then and there, once
for all, and the power of control I thus acquired over the thoughtless
impulses which make us commit so many follies gained me the admirable
presence of mind you all know.”
“How deeply I pity the second!” exclaimed the Baronne de Nucingen.
A scarcely perceptible smile on de Marsay’s pale lips made Delphine de
Nucingen color.
“How we do forget!” said the Baron de Nucingen.
The great banker’s simplicity was so extremely droll, that his wife, who
was de Marsay’s “second,” could not help laughing like every one else.
“You are all ready to condemn the woman,” said Lady Dudley. “Well,
I quite understand that she did not regard her marriage as an act
of inconstancy. Men will never distinguish between constancy and
fidelity.—I know the woman whose story Monsieur de Marsay has told us,
and she is one of the last of your truly great ladies.”
“Alas! my lady, you are right,” replied de Marsay. “For very nearly
fifty years we have been looking on at the progressive ruin of all
social distinctions. We ought to have saved our women from this great
wreck, but the Civil Code has swept its leveling influence over their
heads. However terrible the words, they must be spoken: Duchesses are
vanishing, and marquises too! As to the baronesses—I must apologize to
Madame de Nucingen, who will become a countess when her husband is made
a peer of France—baronesses have never succeeded in getting people to
take them seriously.”
“Aristocracy begins with the viscountess,” said Blondet with a smile.
“Countesses will survive,” said de Marsay. “An elegant woman will be
more or less of a countess—a countess of the Empire or of yesterday,
a countess of the old block, or, as they say in Italy, a countess by
courtesy. But as to the great lady, she died out with the dignified
splendor of the last century, with powder, patches, high-heeled
slippers, and stiff bodices with a delta stomacher of bows. Duchesses
in these days can pass through a door without any need to widen it for
their hoops. The Empire saw the last of gowns with trains! I am still
puzzled to understand how a sovereign who wished to see his drawing-room
swept by ducal satin and velvet did not make indestructible laws.
Napoleon never guessed the results of the Code he was so proud of.
That man, by creating duchesses, founded the race of our ‘ladies’ of
to-day—the indirect offspring of his legislation.”
“It was logic, handled as a hammer by boys just out of school and
by obscure journalists, which demolished the splendors of the social
state,” said the Comte de Vandenesse. “In these days every rogue who can
hold his head straight in his collar, cover his manly bosom with half an
ell of satin by way of a cuirass, display a brow where apocryphal genius
gleams under curling locks, and strut in a pair of patent-leather pumps
graced by silk socks which cost six francs, screws his eye-glass into
one of his eye-sockets by puckering up his cheek, and whether he be an
attorney’s clerk, a contractor’s son, or a banker’s bastard, he stares
impertinently at the prettiest duchess, appraises her as she walks
downstairs, and says to his friend—dressed by Buisson, as we all are,
and mounted in patent-leather like any duke himself—‘There, my boy, that
is a perfect lady.’”
“You have not known how to form a party,” said Lord Dudley; “it will
be a long time yet before you have a policy. You talk a great deal in
France about organizing labor, and you have not yet organized property.
So this is what happens: Any duke—and even in the time of Louis XVIII.
and Charles X. there were some left who had two hundred thousand francs
a year, a magnificent residence, and a sumptuous train of servants—well,
such a duke could live like a great lord. The last of these great
gentlemen in France was the Prince de Talleyrand.—This duke leaves four
children, two of them girls. Granting that he has great luck in marrying
them all well, each of these descendants will have but sixty or eighty
thousand francs a year now; each is the father or mother of children,
and consequently obliged to live with the strictest economy in a flat on
the ground floor or first floor of a large house. Who knows if they
may not even be hunting a fortune? Henceforth the eldest son’s wife, a
duchess in name only, has no carriage, no people, no opera-box, no time
to herself. She has not her own rooms in the family mansion, nor her
fortune, nor her pretty toys; she is buried in trade; she buys socks for
her dear little children, nurses them herself, and keeps an eye on
her girls, whom she no longer sends to school at a convent. Thus your
noblest dames have been turned into worthy brood-hens.”
“Alas! it is true,” said Joseph Bridau. “In our day we cannot show
those beautiful flowers of womanhood which graced the golden ages of the
French Monarchy. The great lady’s fan is broken. A woman has nothing now
to blush for; she need not slander or whisper, hide her face or reveal
it. A fan is of no use now but for fanning herself. When once a thing is
no more than what it is, it is too useful to be a form of luxury.”
“Everything in France has aided and abetted the ‘perfect lady,’” said
Daniel d’Arthez. “The aristocracy has acknowledged her by retreating
to the recesses of its landed estates, where it has hidden itself to
die—emigrating inland before the march of ideas, as of old to foreign
lands before that of the masses. The women who could have founded
European salons, could have guided opinion and turned it inside out
like a glove, could have ruled the world by ruling the men of art or
of intellect who ought to have ruled it, have committed the blunder of
abandoning their ground; they were ashamed of having to fight against
the citizen class drunk with power, and rushing out on to the stage of
the world, there to be cut to pieces perhaps by the barbarians who are
at its heels. Hence, where the middle class insist on seeing princesses,
these are really only ladylike young women. In these days princes can
find no great ladies whom they may compromise; they cannot even confer
honor on a woman taken up at random. The Duc de Bourbon was the last
prince to avail himself of this privilege.”
“And God alone knows how dearly he paid for it,” said Lord Dudley.
“Nowadays princes have lady-like wives, obliged to share their opera-box
with other ladies; royal favor could not raise them higher by a hair’s
breadth; they glide unremarkable between the waters of the citizen
class and those of the nobility—not altogether noble nor altogether
bourgeoises,” said the Marquise de Rochegude acridly.
“The press has fallen heir to the Woman,” exclaimed Rastignac. “She
no longer has the quality of a spoken feuilleton—delightful calumnies
graced by elegant language. We read feuilletons written in a dialect
which changes every three years, society papers about as mirthful as
an undertaker’s mute, and as light as the lead of their type. French
conversation is carried on from one end of the country to the other in
a revolutionary jargon, through long columns of type printed in old
mansions where a press groans in the place where formerly elegant
company used to meet.”
“The knell of the highest society is tolling,” said a Russian Prince.
“Do you hear it? And the first stroke is your modern word lady.”
“You are right, Prince,” said de Marsay. “The ‘perfect lady,’ issuing
from the ranks of the nobility, or sprouting from the citizen class, and
the product of every soil, even of the provinces is the expression of
these times, a last remaining embodiment of good taste, grace, wit,
and distinction, all combined, but dwarfed. We shall see no more great
ladies in France, but there will be ‘ladies’ for a long time, elected by
public opinion to form an upper chamber of women, and who will be among
the fair sex what a ‘gentleman’ is in England.”
“And that they call progress!” exclaimed Mademoiselle des Touches. “I
should like to know where the progress lies?”
“Why, in this,” said Madame de Nucingen. “Formerly a woman might have
the voice of a fish-seller, the walk of a grenadier, the face of an
impudent courtesan, her hair too high on her forehead, a large foot, a
thick hand—she was a great lady in spite of it all; but in these days,
even if she were a Montmorency—if a Montmorency would ever be such a
creature—she would not be a lady.”
“But what do you mean by a ‘perfect lady’?” asked Count Adam Laginski.
“She is a modern product, a deplorable triumph of the elective system
as applied to the fair sex,” said the Minister. “Every revolution has a
word of its own which epitomizes and depicts it.”
“You are right,” said the Russian, who had come to make a literary
reputation in Paris. “The explanation of certain words added from time
to time to your beautiful language would make a magnificent history.
Organize, for instance, is the word of the Empire, and sums up Napoleon
completely.”
“But all that does not explain what is meant by a lady!” the young Pole
exclaimed, with some impatience.
“Well, I will tell you,” said Émile Blondet to Count Adam. “One fine
morning you go for a saunter in Paris. It is past two, but five has not
yet struck. You see a woman coming towards you; your first glance at her
is like the preface to a good book, it leads you to expect a world
of elegance and refinement. Like a botanist over hill and dale in his
pursuit of plants, among the vulgarities of Paris life you have at
last found a rare flower. This woman is attended by two very
distinguished-looking men, of whom one, at any rate, wears an order; or
else a servant out of livery follows her at a distance of ten yards. She
displays no gaudy colors, no open-worked stockings, no over-elaborate
waist-buckle, no embroidered frills to her drawers fussing round her
ankles. You will see that she is shod with prunella shoes, with sandals
crossed over extremely fine cotton stockings, or plain gray silk
stockings; or perhaps she wears boots of the most exquisite simplicity.
You notice that her gown is made of a neat and inexpensive material, but
made in a way that surprises more than one woman of the middle class;
it is almost always a long pelisse, with bows to fasten it, and neatly
bound with fine cord or an imperceptible braid. The Unknown has a way of
her own in wrapping herself in her shawl or mantilla; she knows how to
draw it round her from her hips to her neck, outlining a carapace, as it
were, which would make an ordinary woman look like a turtle, but which
in her sets off the most beautiful forms while concealing them. How does
she do it? This secret she keeps, though unguarded by any patent.
“As she walks she gives herself a little concentric and harmonious
twist, which makes her supple or dangerous slenderness writhe under the
stuff, as a snake does under the green gauze of trembling grass. Is it
to an angel or a devil that she owes the graceful undulation which plays
under her long black silk cape, stirs its lace frill, sheds an airy
balm, and what I should like to call the breeze of a Parisienne? You may
recognize over her arms, round her waist, about her throat, a science of
drapery recalling the antique Mnemosyne.
“Oh! how thoroughly she understands the cut of her gait—forgive the
expression. Study the way she puts her foot forward moulding her
skirt with such a decent preciseness that the passer-by is filled with
admiration, mingled with desire, but subdued by deep respect. When an
Englishwoman attempts this step, she looks like a grenadier marching
forward to attack a redoubt. The women of Paris have a genius for
walking. The municipality really owed them asphalt footwalks.
“Our Unknown jostles no one. If she wants to pass, she waits with
proud humility till some one makes way. The distinction peculiar to
a well-bred woman betrays itself, especially in the way she holds her
shawl or cloak crossed over her bosom. Even as she walks she has a
little air of serene dignity, like Raphael’s Madonnas in their frames.
Her aspect, at once quiet and disdainful, makes the most insolent dandy
step aside for her.
“Her bonnet, remarkable for its simplicity, is trimmed with crisp
ribbons; there may be flowers in it, but the cleverest of such women
wear only bows. Feathers demand a carriage; flowers are too showy.
Beneath it you see the fresh unworn face of a woman who, without
conceit, is sure of herself; who looks at nothing, and sees everything;
whose vanity, satiated by being constantly gratified, stamps her face
with an indifference which piques your curiosity. She knows that she is
looked at, she knows that everybody, even women, turn round to see her
again. And she threads her way through Paris like a gossamer, spotless
and pure.