and gyrated for a while about his fair cousin, Mme. d’Aiglemont,
not perceiving that she had already danced the waltz in Faust with
a diplomatist. The year ‘25 went by, spent in tentatives, in futile
flirtations, and an unsuccessful quest. The loving object of which he
was in search did not appear. Passion is extremely rare; and in our
time as many barriers have been raised against passion in social life
as barricades in the streets. In truth, my brothers, the ‘improper’ is
gaining upon us, I tell you!
“As we may incur reproach for following on the heels of portrait
painters, auctioneers, and fashionable dressmakers, I will not inflict
any description upon you of _her_ in whom Godefroid recognized the
female of his species. Age, nineteen; height, four feet eleven inches;
fair hair, eyebrows _idem_, blue eyes, forehead neither high nor
low, curved nose, little mouth, short turned-up chin, oval face;
distinguishing signs--none. Such was the description on the passport
of the beloved object. You will not ask more than the police, or their
worships the mayors, of all the towns and communes of France, the
gendarmes and the rest of the powers that be? In other respects--I give
you my word for it--she was a rough sketch of a Venus dei Medici.
“The first time that Godefroid went to one of the balls for which Mme.
de Nucingen enjoyed a certain not undeserved reputation, he caught a
glimpse of his future lady-love in a quadrille, and was set marveling
by that height of four feet eleven inches. The fair hair rippled in a
shower of curls about the little girlish head, she looked as fresh as a
naiad peeping out through the crystal pane of her stream to take a look
at the spring flowers. (This is quite in the modern style, strings of
phrases as endless as the macaroni on the table a while ago.) On that
‘eyebrows _idem_’ (no offence to the prefect of police) Parny, that
writer of light and playful verse, would have hung half-a-dozen
couplets, comparing them very agreeably to Cupid’s bow, at the same time
bidding us to observe that the dart was beneath; the said dart,
however, was neither very potent nor very penetrating, for as yet it
was controlled by the namby-pamby sweetness of a Mlle. de la Valliere
as depicted on fire-screens, at the moment when she solemnizes her
betrothal in the sight of heaven, any solemnization before the registrar
being quite out to the question.
“You know the effect of fair hair and blue eyes in the soft, voluptuous
decorous dance? Such a girl does not knock audaciously at your heart,
like the dark-haired damsels that seem to say after the fashion of
Spanish beggars, ‘Your money or your life; give me five francs or take
my contempt!’ These insolent and somewhat dangerous beauties may find
favor in the sight of many men, but to my thinking the blonde that has
the good fortune to look extremely tender and yielding, while foregoing
none of her rights to scold, to tease, to use unmeasured language, to
be jealous without grounds, to do anything, in short, that makes woman
adorable,--the fair-haired girl, I say, will always be more sure to
marry than the ardent brunette. Firewood is dear, you see.
“Isaure, white as an Alsacienne (she first saw the light at Strasbourg,
and spoke German with a slight and very agreeable French accent), danced
to admiration. Her feet, omitted on the passport, though they really
might have found a place there under the heading Distinguishing Signs,
were remarkable for their small size, and for that particular something
which old-fashioned dancing masters used to call flic-flac, a something
that put you in mind of Mlle. Mars’ agreeable delivery, for all the
Muses are sisters, and the dancer and poet alike have their feet upon
the earth. Isaure’s feet spoke lightly and swiftly with a clearness
and precision which augured well for things of the heart. ‘_Elle a duc
flic-flac_,’ was old Marcel’s highest word of praise, and old Marcel was
the dancing master that deserved the epithet of ‘the Great.’ People used
to say ‘the Great Marcel,’ as they said ‘Frederick the Great,’ and in
Frederick’s time.”
“Did Marcel compose any ballets?” inquired Finot.
“Yes, something in the style of _Les Quatre Elements_ and _L’Europe
galante_.”
“What times they were, when great nobles dressed the dancers!” said
Finot.
“Improper!” said Bixiou. “Isaure did not raise herself on the tips of
her toes, she stayed on the ground, she swayed in the dance without
jerks, and neither more nor less voluptuously than a young lady ought
to do. There was a profound philosophy in Marcel’s remark that every
age and condition had its dance; a married woman should not dance like
a young girl, nor a little jackanapes like a capitalist, nor a soldier
like a page; he even went so far as to say that the infantry ought not
to dance like the cavalry, and from this point he proceeded to classify
the world at large. All these fine distinctions seem very far away.”
“Ah!” said Blondet, “you have set your finger on a great calamity. If
Marcel had been properly understood, there would have been no French
Revolution.”
“It had been Godefroid’s privilege to run over Europe,” resumed Bixiou,
“nor had he neglected his opportunities of making a thorough comparative
study of European dancing. Perhaps but for profound diligence in the
pursuit of what is usually held to be useless knowledge, he would never
have fallen in love with this young lady; as it was, out of the three
hundred guests that crowded the handsome rooms in the Rue Saint-Lazare,
he alone comprehended the unpublished romance revealed by a garrulous
quadrille. People certainly noticed Isaure d’Aldrigger’s dancing; but in
this present century the cry is ‘Skim lightly over the surface, do not
lean your weight on it;’ so one said (he was a notary’s clerk), ‘There
is a girl that dances uncommonly well;’ another (a lady in a turban),
‘There is a young lady that dances enchantingly;’ and a third (a woman
of thirty), ‘That little thing is not dancing badly.’--But to return to
the great Marcel, let us parody his best known saying with, ‘How much
there is in an _avant-deux_.’”
“And let us get on a little faster,” said Blondet; “you are maundering.”
“Isaure,” continued Bixiou, looking askance at Blondet, “wore a simple
white crepe dress with green ribbons; she had a camellia in her hair,
a camellia at her waist, another camellia at her skirt-hem, and a
camellia----”
“Come, now! here comes Sancho’s three hundred goats.”
“Therein lies all literature, dear boy. _Clarissa_ is a masterpiece,
there are fourteen volumes of her, and the most wooden-headed playwright
would give you the whole of _Clarissa_ in a single act. So long as I
amuse you, what have you to complain of? That costume was positively
lovely. Don’t you like camillias? Would you rather have dahlias? No?
Very good, chestnuts then, here’s for you.” (And probably Bixiou flung a
chestnut across the table, for we heard something drop on a plate.)
“I was wrong, I acknowledge it. Go on,” said Blondet.
“I resume. ‘Pretty enough to marry, isn’t she?’ said Rastignac, coming
up to Godefroid de Beaudenord, and indicating the little one with the
spotless white camellias, every petal intact.
“Rastignac being an intimate friend, Godefroid answered in a low
voice, ‘Well, so I was thinking. I was saying to myself that instead of
enjoying my happiness with fear and trembling at every moment; instead
of taking a world of trouble to whisper a word in an inattentive ear,
of looking over the house at the Italiens to see if some one wears a red
flower or a white in her hair, or watching along the Corso for a gloved
hand on a carriage door, as we used to do at Milan; instead of snatching
a mouthful of baba like a lackey finishing off a bottle behind a door,
or wearing out one’s wits with giving and receiving letters like a
postman--letters that consist not of a mere couple of tender lines, but
expand to five folio volumes to-day and contract to a couple of sheets
to-morrow (a tiresome practice); instead of dragging along over the
ruts and dodging behind hedges--it would be better to give way to the
adorable passion that Jean-Jacques Rousseau envied, to fall frankly in
love with a girl like Isaure, with a view to making her my wife, if upon
exchange of sentiments our hearts respond to each other; to be Werther,
in short, with a happy ending.’
“‘Which is a common weakness,’ returned Rastignac without laughing.
‘Possibly in your place I might plunge into the unspeakable delights of
that ascetic course; it possesses the merits of novelty and originality,
and it is not very expensive. Your Monna Lisa is sweet, but inane as
music for the ballet; I give you warning.’
“Rastignac made this last remark in a way which set Beaudenord thinking
that his friend had his own motives for disenchanting him; Beaudenord
had not been a diplomatist for nothing; he fancied that Rastignac wanted
to cut him out. If a man mistakes his vocation, the false start none the
less influences him for the rest of his life. Godefroid was so evidently
smitten with Mlle. Isaure d’Aldrigger, that Rastignac went off to a tall
girl chatting in the card-room.--‘Malvina,’ he said, lowering his voice,
‘your sister has just netted a fish worth eighteen thousand francs a
year. He has a name, a manner, and a certain position in the world;
keep an eye on them; be careful to gain Isaure’s confidence; and if
they philander, do not let her send word to him unless you have seen it
first----’
“Towards two o’clock in the morning, Isaure was standing beside a
diminutive Shepherdess of the Alps, a little woman of forty, coquettish
as a Zerlina. A footman announced that ‘Mme. la Baronne’s carriage stops
the way,’ and Godefroid forthwith saw his beautiful maiden out of a
German song draw her fantastical mother into the cloakroom, whither
Malvina followed them; and (boy that he was) he must needs go to
discover into what pot of preserves the infant Joby had fallen, and
had the pleasure of watching Isaure and Malvina coaxing that sparkling
person, their mamma, into her pelisse, with all the little tender
precautions required for a night journey in Paris. Of course, the girls
on their side watched Beaudenord out of the corners of their eyes, as
well-taught kittens watch a mouse, without seeming to see it at all.
With a certain satisfaction Beaudenord noted the bearing, manner, and
appearance, of the tall well-gloved Alsacien servant in livery who
brought three pairs of fur-lined overshoes for his mistresses.
“Never were two sisters more unlike than Isaure and Malvina. Malvina
the elder was tall and dark-haired, Isaure was short and fair, and
her features were finely and delicately cut, while her sister’s were
vigorous and striking. Isaure was one of those women who reign like
queens through their weakness, such a woman as a schoolboy would feel it
incumbent upon him to protect; Malvina was the _Andalouse_ of Musset’s
poem. As the sisters stood together, Isaure looked like a miniature
beside a portrait in oils.
“‘She is rich!’ exclaimed Godefroid, going back to Rastignac in the
ballroom.
“‘Who?’
“‘That young lady.’
“‘Oh, Isaure d’Aldrigger? Why, yes. The mother is a widow; Nucingen was
once a clerk in her husband’s bank at Strasbourg. Do you want to see
them again? Just turn off a compliment for Mme. de Restaud; she is
giving a ball the day after to-morrow; the Baroness d’Aldrigger and her
two daughters will be there. You will have an invitation.’
“For three days Godefroid beheld Isaure in the camera obscura of his
brain--_his_ Isaure with her white camellias and the little ways she
had with her head--saw her as you see the bright thing on which you have
been gazing after your eyes are shut, a picture grown somewhat
smaller; a radiant, brightly-colored vision flashing out of a vortex of
darkness.”
“Bixiou, you are dropping into phenomena, block us out our pictures,”
put in Couture.
“Here you are, gentlemen! Here is the picture you ordered!” (from the
tones of Bixiou’s voice, he evidently was posing as a waiter.) “Finot,
attention, one has to pull at your mouth as a jarvie pulls at his
jade. In Madame Theodora Marguerite Wilhelmine Adolphus (of the firm of
Adolphus and Company, Manheim), relict of the late Baron d’Aldrigger,
you might expect to find a stout, comfortable German, compact and
prudent, with a fair complexion mellowed to the tint of the foam on
a pot of beer; and as to virtues, rich in all the patriarchal good
qualities that Germany possesses--in romances, that is to say. Well
there was not a gray hair in the frisky ringlets that she wore on either
side of her face; she was still as fresh and as brightly colored on
the cheek-bone as a Nuremberg doll; her eyes were lively and bright; a
closely-fitting bodice set off the slenderness of her waist. Her brow
and temples were furrowed by a few involuntary wrinkles which, like
Ninon, she would fain have banished from her head to her heel, but they
persisted in tracing their zigzags in the more conspicuous place. The
outlines of the nose had somewhat fallen away, and the tip had reddened,
and this was the more awkward because it matched the color on the
cheek-bones.
“An only daughter and an heiress, spoilt by her father and mother,
spoilt by her husband and the city of Strasbourg, spoilt still by two
daughters who worshiped their mother, the Baroness d’Aldrigger indulged
a taste for rose color, short petticoats, and a knot of ribbon at the
point of the tightly-fitting corselet bodice. Any Parisian meeting the
Baroness on the boulevard would smile and condemn her outright; he does
not admit any plea of extenuating circumstances, like a modern jury on a
case of fratricide. A scoffer is always superficial, and in consequence
cruel; the rascal never thinks of throwing the proper share of ridicule
on society that made the individual what he is; for Nature only makes
dull animals of us, we owe the fool to artificial conditions.”
“The thing that I admire about Bixiou is his completeness,” said
Blondet; “whenever he is not gibing at others, he is laughing at
himself.”
“I will be even with you for that, Blondet,” returned Bixiou in a
significant tone. “If the little Baroness was giddy, careless, selfish,
and incapable in practical matters, she was not accountable for her
sins; the responsibility is divided between the firm of Adolphus and
Company of Manheim and Baron d’Aldrigger with his blind love for his
wife. The Baroness was a gentle as a lamb; she had a soft heart that was
very readily moved; unluckily, the emotion never lasted long, but it was
all the more frequently renewed.
“When the Baron died, for instance, the Shepherdess all but followed
him to the tomb, so violent and sincere was her grief, but--next morning
there was green peas at lunch, she was fond of green peas, the delicious
green peas calmed the crisis. Her daughters and her servants loved her
so blindly that the whole household rejoiced over a circumstance that
enabled them to hide the dolorous spectacle of the funeral from the
sorrowing Baroness. Isaure and Malvina would not allow their idolized
mother to see their tears.
“While the Requiem was chanted, they diverted her thoughts to the choice
of mourning dresses. While the coffin was placed in the huge, black and
white, wax-besprinkled catafalque that does duty for some three
thousand dead in the course of its career--so I was informed by a
philosophically-minded mute whom I once consulted on a point over a
couple of glasses of _petit blanc_--while an indifferent priest mumbling
the office for the dead, do you know what the friends of the departed
were saying as, all dressed in black from head to foot, they sat or
stood in the church? (Here is the picture you ordered.) Stay, do you see
them?
“‘How much do you suppose old d’Aldrigger will leave?’ Desroches asked
of Taillefer.--You remember Taillefer that gave us the finest orgy ever
known not long before he died?”
“He was in treaty for practice in 1822,” said Couture. “It was a bold
thing to do, for he was the son of a poor clerk who never made more than
eighteen hundred francs a year, and his mother sold stamped paper. But
he worked very hard from 1818 to 1822. He was Derville’s fourth clerk
when he came; and in 1819 he was second!”
“Desroches?”
“Yes. Desroches, like the rest of us, once groveled in the poverty of
Job. He grew so tired of wearing coats too tight and sleeves too short
for him, that he swallowed down the law in desperation and had just
bought a bare license. He was a licensed attorney, without a penny, or a
client, or any friends beyond our set; and he was bound to pay interest
on the purchase-money and the cautionary deposit besides.”
“He used to make me feel as if I had met a tiger escaped from the Jardin
des Plantes,” said Couture. “He was lean and red-haired, his eyes were
the color of Spanish snuff, and his complexion was harsh. He looked cold
and phlegmatic. He was hard upon the widow, pitiless to the orphan,
and a terror to his clerks; they were not allowed to waste a minute.
Learned, crafty, double-faced, honey-tongued, never flying into a
passion, rancorous in his judicial way.”
“But there is goodness in him,” cried Finot; “he is devoted to his
friends. The first thing he did was to take Godeschal, Mariette’s
brother, as his head-clerk.”
“At Paris,” said Blondet, “there are attorneys of two shades. There
is the honest man attorney; he abides within the province of the law,
pushes on his cases, neglects no one, never runs after business, gives
his clients his honest opinion, and makes them compromise on doubtful
points--he is a Derville, in short. Then there is the starveling
attorney, to whom anything seems good provided that he is sure of
expenses; he will set, not mountains fighting, for he sells them, but
planets; he will work to make the worse appear the better cause, and
take advantage of a technical error to win the day for a rogue. If one
of these fellows tries one of Maitre Gonin’s tricks once too often,
the guild forces him to sell his connection. Desroches, our friend
Desroches, understood the full resources of a trade carried on in a
beggarly way enough by poor devils; he would buy up causes of men
who feared to lose the day; he plunged into chicanery with a fixed
determination to make money by it. He was right; he did his business
very honestly. He found influence among men in public life by getting
them out of awkward complications; there was our dear les Lupeaulx, for
instance, whose position was so deeply compromised. And Desroches stood
in need of influence; for when he began, he was anything but well looked
on at the court, and he who took so much trouble to rectify the errors
of his clients was often in trouble himself. See now, Bixiou, to go back
to the subject--How came Desroches to be in the church?”
“‘D’Aldrigger is leaving seven or eight hundred thousand francs,’
Taillefer answered, addressing Desroches.
“‘Oh, pooh, there is only one man who knows how much _they_ are worth,’
put in Werbrust, a friend of the deceased.
“‘Who?’
“‘That fat rogue Nucingen; he will go as far as the cemetery;
d’Aldrigger was his master once, and out of gratitude he put the old
man’s capital into his business.’
“‘The widow will soon feel a great difference.’
“‘What do you mean?’
“‘Well, d’Aldrigger was so fond of his wife. Now, don’t laugh, people
are looking at us.’
“‘Look here comes du Tillet; he is very late. The epistle is just
beginning.’
“‘He will marry the eldest girl in all probability.’
“‘Is it possible?’ asked Desroches; ‘why, he is tied more than ever to
Mme. Roguin.’
“‘_Tied_--he?--You do not know him.’
“‘Do you know how Nucingen and du Tillet stand?’ asked Desroches.
“‘Like this,’ said Taillefer; ‘Nucingen is just the man to swallow down
his old master’s capital, and then to disgorge it.’
“‘Ugh! ugh!’ coughed Werbrust, ‘these churches are confoundedly damp;
ugh! ugh! What do you mean by “disgorge it”’?
“‘Well, Nucingen knows that du Tillet has a lot of money; he wants to
marry him to Malvina; but du Tillet is shy of Nucingen. To a looker-on,
the game is good fun.’
“‘What!’ exclaimed Werbrust, ‘is she old enough to marry? How quickly we
grow old!’
“‘Malvina d’Aldrigger is quite twenty years old, my dear fellow. Old
d’Aldrigger was married in 1800. He gave some rather fine entertainments
in Strasbourg at the time of his wedding, and afterwards when Malvina
was born. That was in 1801 at the peace of Amiens, and here are we in
the year 1823, Daddy Werbrust! In those days everything was Ossianized;
he called his daughter Malvina. Six years afterwards there was a rage
for chivalry, _Partant pour la Syrie_--a pack of nonsense--and he
christened his second daughter Isaure. She is seventeen. So there are
two daughters to marry.’
“‘The women will not have a penny left in ten years’ time,’ said
Werbrust, speaking to Desroches in a confidential tone.
“‘There is d’Aldrigger’s man-servant, the old fellow bellowing away at
the back of the church; he has been with them since the two young ladies
were children, and he is capable of anything to keep enough together for
them to live upon,’ said Taillefer.
“_Dies iroe_! (from the minor cannons). _Dies illa_! (from the
choristers).
“‘Good-day, Werbrust (from Taillefer), the _Dies iroe_ puts me too much
in mind of my poor boy.’
“‘I shall go too; it is too damp in here,’ said Werbrust.
“_In favilla_.
“‘A few halfpence, kind gentlemen!’ (from the beggars at the door).
“‘For the expenses of the church!’ (from the beadle, with a rattling
clatter of the money-box).
“‘_Amen_’ (from the choristers).
“‘What did he die of?’ (from a friend).
“‘He broke a blood-vessel in the heel’ (from an inquisitive wag).
“‘Who is dead?’ (from a passer-by).
“‘The President de Montesquieu!’ (from a relative).
“The sacristan to the poor, ‘Get away, all of you; the money for you has
been given to us; don’t ask for any more.’”
“Done to the life!” cried Couture. And indeed it seemed to us that we
heard all that went on in the church. Bixiou imitated everything, even
the shuffling sound of the feet of the men that carried the coffin over
the stone floor.
“There are poets and romancers and writers that say many fine things
abut Parisian manners,” continued Bixiou, “but that is what really
happens at a funeral. Ninety-nine out of a hundred that come to pay
their respects to some poor devil departed, get together and talk
business or pleasure in the middle of the church. To see some poor
little touch of real sorrow, you need an impossible combination of
circumstances. And, after all, is there such a thing as grief without a
thought of self in it?”
“Ugh!” said Blondet. “Nothing is less respected than death; is it that
there is nothing less respectable?”
“It is so common!” resumed Bixiou. “When the service was over Nucingen
and du Tillet went to the graveside. The old man-servant walked;
Nucingen and du Tillet were put at the head of the procession of
mourning coaches.--‘Goot, mein goot friend,’ said Nucingen as they
turned into the boulevard. ‘It ees a goot time to marry Malfina; you
vill be der brodector off that boor family vat ess in tears; you
vill haf ein family, a home off your own; you vill haf a house ready
vurnished, und Malfina is truly ein dreashure.’”
“I seem to hear that old Robert Macaire of a Nucingen himself,” said
Finot.
“‘A charming girl,’ said Ferdinand du Tillet in a cool, unenthusiastic
tone,” Bixiou continued.
“Just du Tillet himself summed up in a word!” cried Couture.
“‘Those that do not know her may think her plain,’ pursued du Tillet,
‘but she has character, I admit.’
“‘Und ein herz, dot is the pest of die pizness, mein der poy; she vould
make you an indelligent und defoted vife. In our beastly pizness, nopody
cares to know who lifs or dies; it is a crate plessing gif a mann kann
put drust in his vife’s heart. Mein Telvine prouht me more as a million,
as you know, but I should gladly gif her for Malfina dot haf not so pig
a _dot_.’
“‘But how much has she?’
“‘I do not know precisely; boot she haf somdings.’
“‘Yes, she has a mother with a great liking for rose-color.’ said du
Tillet; and with that epigram he cut Nucingen’s diplomatic efforts
short.