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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Juana, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Juana
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: August, 1998  [Etext #1437]
+Posting Date: February 25, 2010
+Last Updated: November 22, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUANA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+JUANA
+
+
+BY HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                  To Madame la Comtesse Merlin.
+
+
+
+
+JUANA
+
+(THE MARANAS)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. EXPOSITION
+
+Notwithstanding the discipline which Marechal Suchet had introduced into
+his army corps, he was unable to prevent a short period of trouble and
+disorder at the taking of Tarragona. According to certain fair-minded
+military men, this intoxication of victory bore a striking resemblance
+to pillage, though the marechal promptly suppressed it. Order being
+re-established, each regiment quartered in its respective lines, and
+the commandant of the city appointed, military administration began. The
+place assumed a mongrel aspect. Though all things were organized on a
+French system, the Spaniards were left free to follow “in petto” their
+national tastes.
+
+This period of pillage (it is difficult to determine how long it lasted)
+had, like all other sublunary effects, a cause, not so difficult
+to discover. In the marechal’s army was a regiment, composed almost
+entirely of Italians and commanded by a certain Colonel Eugene, a man
+of remarkable bravery, a second Murat, who, having entered the military
+service too late, obtained neither a Grand Duchy of Berg nor a Kingdom
+of Naples, nor balls at the Pizzo. But if he won no crown he had ample
+opportunity to obtain wounds, and it was not surprising that he met with
+several. His regiment was composed of the scattered fragments of the
+Italian legion. This legion was to Italy what the colonial battalions
+are to France. Its permanent cantonments, established on the island of
+Elba, served as an honorable place of exile for the troublesome sons of
+good families and for those great men who have just missed greatness,
+whom society brands with a hot iron and designates by the term “mauvais
+sujets”; men who are for the most part misunderstood; whose existence
+may become either noble through the smile of a woman lifting them out
+of their rut, or shocking at the close of an orgy under the influence of
+some damnable reflection dropped by a drunken comrade.
+
+Napoleon had incorporated these vigorous beings in the sixth of the
+line, hoping to metamorphose them finally into generals,--barring those
+whom the bullets might take off. But the emperor’s calculation was
+scarcely fulfilled, except in the matter of the bullets. This regiment,
+often decimated but always the same in character, acquired a great
+reputation for valor in the field and for wickedness in private life.
+At the siege of Tarragona it lost its celebrated hero, Bianchi, the man
+who, during the campaign, had wagered that he would eat the heart of a
+Spanish sentinel, and did eat it. Though Bianchi was the prince of the
+devils incarnate to whom the regiment owed its dual reputation, he had,
+nevertheless, that sort of chivalrous honor which excuses, in the army,
+the worst excesses. In a word, he would have been, at an earlier period,
+an admirable pirate. A few days before his death he distinguished
+himself by a daring action which the marechal wished to reward. Bianchi
+refused rank, pension, and additional decoration, asking, for sole
+recompense, the favor of being the first to mount the breach at the
+assault on Tarragona. The marechal granted the request and then forgot
+his promise; but Bianchi forced him to remember Bianchi. The enraged
+hero was the first to plant our flag on the wall, where he was shot by a
+monk.
+
+This historical digression was necessary, in order to explain how it was
+that the 6th of the line was the regiment to enter Tarragona, and why
+the disorder and confusion, natural enough in a city taken by storm,
+degenerated for a time into a slight pillage.
+
+This regiment possessed two officers, not at all remarkable among these
+men of iron, who played, nevertheless, in the history we shall now
+relate, a somewhat important part.
+
+The first, a captain in the quartermaster’s department, an officer half
+civil, half military, was considered, in soldier phrase, to be fighting
+his own battle. He pretended bravery, boasted loudly of belonging to
+the 6th of the line, twirled his moustache with the air of a man who was
+ready to demolish everything; but his brother officers did not esteem
+him. The fortune he possessed made him cautious. He was nicknamed, for
+two reasons, “captain of crows.” In the first place, he could smell
+powder a league off, and took wing at the sound of a musket; secondly,
+the nickname was based on an innocent military pun, which his position
+in the regiment warranted. Captain Montefiore, of the illustrious
+Montefiore family of Milan (though the laws of the Kingdom of Italy
+forbade him to bear his title in the French service) was one of the
+handsomest men in the army. This beauty may have been among the secret
+causes of his prudence on fighting days. A wound which might have
+injured his nose, cleft his forehead, or scarred his cheek, would have
+destroyed one of the most beautiful Italian faces which a woman ever
+dreamed of in all its delicate proportions. This face, not unlike the
+type which Girodet has given to the dying young Turk, in the “Revolt at
+Cairo,” was instinct with that melancholy by which all women are more or
+less duped.
+
+The Marquis de Montefiore possessed an entailed property, but his income
+was mortgaged for a number of years to pay off the costs of certain
+Italian escapades which are inconceivable in Paris. He had ruined
+himself in supporting a theatre at Milan in order to force upon a public
+a very inferior prima donna, whom he was said to love madly. A fine
+future was therefore before him, and he did not care to risk it for the
+paltry distinction of a bit of red ribbon. He was not a brave man, but
+he was certainly a philosopher; and he had precedents, if we may use so
+parliamentary an expression. Did not Philip the Second register a vow
+after the battle of Saint Quentin that never again would he put himself
+under fire? And did not the Duke of Alba encourage him in thinking that
+the worst trade in the world was the involuntary exchange of a crown
+for a bullet? Hence, Montefiore was Philippiste in his capacity of rich
+marquis and handsome man; and in other respects also he was quite as
+profound a politician as Philip the Second himself. He consoled himself
+for his nickname, and for the disesteem of the regiment by thinking
+that his comrades were blackguards, whose opinion would never be of any
+consequence to him if by chance they survived the present war, which
+seemed to be one of extermination. He relied on his face to win him
+promotion; he saw himself made colonel by feminine influence and a
+carefully managed transition from captain of equipment to orderly
+officer, and from orderly officer to aide-de-camp on the staff of some
+easy-going marshal. By that time, he reflected, he should come into his
+property of a hundred thousand scudi a year, some journal would speak of
+him as “the brave Montefiore,” he would marry a girl of rank, and no one
+would dare to dispute his courage or verify his wounds.
+
+Captain Montefiore had one friend in the person of the quartermaster,
+--a Provencal, born in the neighborhood of Nice, whose name was Diard.
+A friend, whether at the galleys or in the garret of an artist, consoles
+for many troubles. Now Montefiore and Diard were two philosophers, who
+consoled each other for their present lives by the study of vice,
+as artists soothe the immediate disappointment of their hopes by the
+expectation of future fame. Both regarded the war in its results, not
+its action; they simply considered those who died for glory fools.
+Chance had made soldiers of them; whereas their natural proclivities
+would have seated them at the green table of a congress. Nature had
+poured Montefiore into the mould of a Rizzio, and Diard into that of
+a diplomatist. Both were endowed with that nervous, feverish,
+half-feminine organization, which is equally strong for good or evil,
+and from which may emanate, according to the impulse of these singular
+temperaments, a crime or a generous action, a noble deed or a base one.
+The fate of such natures depends at any moment on the pressure, more
+or less powerful, produced on their nervous systems by violent and
+transitory passions.
+
+Diard was considered a good accountant, but no soldier would have
+trusted him with his purse or his will, possibly because of the
+antipathy felt by all real soldiers against the bureaucrats. The
+quartermaster was not without courage and a certain juvenile generosity,
+sentiments which many men give up as they grow older, by dint of
+reasoning or calculating. Variable as the beauty of a fair woman, Diard
+was a great boaster and a great talker, talking of everything. He said
+he was artistic, and he made prizes (like two celebrated generals) of
+works of art, solely, he declared, to preserve them for posterity.
+His military comrades would have been puzzled indeed to form a correct
+judgment of him. Many of them, accustomed to draw upon his funds when
+occasion obliged them, thought him rich; but in truth, he was a gambler,
+and gamblers may be said to have nothing of their own. Montefiore was
+also a gambler, and all the officers of the regiment played with the
+pair; for, to the shame of men be it said, it is not a rare thing to
+see persons gambling together around a green table who, when the game is
+finished, will not bow to their companions, feeling no respect for them.
+Montefiore was the man with whom Bianchi made his bet about the heart of
+the Spanish sentinel.
+
+Montefiore and Diard were among the last to mount the breach at
+Tarragona, but the first in the heart of the town as soon as it was
+taken. Accidents of this sort happen in all attacks, but with this pair
+of friends they were customary. Supporting each other, they made their
+way bravely through a labyrinth of narrow and gloomy little streets in
+quest of their personal objects; one seeking for painted madonnas, the
+other for madonnas of flesh and blood.
+
+In what part of Tarragona it happened I cannot say, but Diard presently
+recognized by its architecture the portal of a convent, the gate of
+which was already battered in. Springing into the cloister to put a
+stop to the fury of the soldiers, he arrived just in time to prevent two
+Parisians from shooting a Virgin by Albano. In spite of the moustache
+with which in their military fanaticism they had decorated her face, he
+bought the picture. Montefiore, left alone during this episode, noticed,
+nearly opposite the convent, the house and shop of a draper, from which
+a shot was fired at him at the moment when his eyes caught a flaming
+glance from those of an inquisitive young girl, whose head was advanced
+under the shelter of a blind. Tarragona taken by assault, Tarragona
+furious, firing from every window, Tarragona violated, with dishevelled
+hair, and half-naked, was indeed an object of curiosity,--the curiosity
+of a daring Spanish woman. It was a magnified bull-fight.
+
+Montefiore forgot the pillage, and heard, for the moment, neither the
+cries, nor the musketry, nor the growling of the artillery. The profile
+of that Spanish girl was the most divinely delicious thing which he,
+an Italian libertine, weary of Italian beauty, and dreaming of an
+impossible woman because he was tired of all women, had ever seen.
+He could still quiver, he, who had wasted his fortune on a thousand
+follies, the thousand passions of a young and blase man--the most
+abominable monster that society generates. An idea came into his head,
+suggested perhaps by the shot of the draper-patriot, namely,--to set
+fire to the house. But he was now alone, and without any means of
+action; the fighting was centred in the market-place, where a few
+obstinate beings were still defending the town. A better idea then
+occurred to him. Diard came out of the convent, but Montefiore said not
+a word of his discovery; on the contrary, he accompanied him on a series
+of rambles about the streets. But the next day, the Italian had obtained
+his military billet in the house of the draper,--an appropriate lodging
+for an equipment captain!
+
+The house of the worthy Spaniard consisted, on the ground-floor, of a
+vast and gloomy shop, externally fortified with stout iron bars, such
+as we see in the old storehouses of the rue des Lombards. This shop
+communicated with a parlor lighted from an interior courtyard, a large
+room breathing the very spirit of the middle-ages, with smoky old
+pictures, old tapestries, antique “brazero,” a plumed hat hanging to
+a nail, the musket of the guerrillas, and the cloak of Bartholo. The
+kitchen adjoined this unique living-room, where the inmates took their
+meals and warmed themselves over the dull glow of the brazier, smoking
+cigars and discoursing bitterly to animate all hearts with hatred
+against the French. Silver pitchers and precious dishes of plate and
+porcelain adorned a buttery shelf of the old fashion. But the light,
+sparsely admitted, allowed these dazzling objects to show but slightly;
+all things, as in pictures of the Dutch school, looked brown, even the
+faces. Between the shop and this living-room, so fine in color and
+in its tone of patriarchal life, was a dark staircase leading to
+a ware-room where the light, carefully distributed, permitted the
+examination of goods. Above this were the apartments of the merchant and
+his wife. Rooms for an apprentice and a servant-woman were in a garret
+under the roof, which projected over the street and was supported by
+buttresses, giving a somewhat fantastic appearance to the exterior of
+the building. These chambers were now taken by the merchant and his
+wife who gave up their own rooms to the officer who was billeted upon
+them,--probably because they wished to avoid all quarrelling.
+
+Montefiore gave himself out as a former Spanish subject, persecuted by
+Napoleon, whom he was serving against his will; and these semi-lies
+had the success he expected. He was invited to share the meals of the
+family, and was treated with the respect due to his name, his birth,
+and his title. He had his reasons for capturing the good-will of the
+merchant and his wife; he scented his madonna as the ogre scented
+the youthful flesh of Tom Thumb and his brothers. But in spite of
+the confidence he managed to inspire in the worthy pair the latter
+maintained the most profound silence as to the said madonna; and not
+only did the captain see no trace of the young girl during the first day
+he spent under the roof of the honest Spaniard, but he heard no sound
+and came upon no indication which revealed her presence in that ancient
+building. Supposing that she was the only daughter of the old couple,
+Montefiore concluded they had consigned her to the garret, where, for
+the time being, they made their home.
+
+But no revelation came to betray the hiding-place of that precious
+treasure. The marquis glued his face to the lozenge-shaped leaded panes
+which looked upon the black-walled enclosure of the inner courtyard;
+but in vain; he saw no gleam of light except from the windows of the old
+couple, whom he could see and hear as they went and came and talked and
+coughed. Of the young girl, not a shadow!
+
+Montefiore was far too wary to risk the future of his passion by
+exploring the house nocturnally, or by tapping softly on the doors.
+Discovery by that hot patriot, the mercer, suspicious as a Spaniard
+must be, meant ruin infallibly. The captain therefore resolved to wait
+patiently, resting his faith on time and the imperfection of men, which
+always results--even with scoundrels, and how much more with honest
+men!--in the neglect of precautions.
+
+The next day he discovered a hammock in the kitchen, showing plainly
+where the servant-woman slept. As for the apprentice, his bed was
+evidently made on the shop counter. During supper on the second day
+Montefiore succeeded, by cursing Napoleon, in smoothing the anxious
+forehead of the merchant, a grave, black-visaged Spaniard, much like the
+faces formerly carved on the handles of Moorish lutes; even the wife let
+a gay smile of hatred appear in the folds of her elderly face. The lamp
+and the reflections of the brazier illumined fantastically the shadows
+of the noble room. The mistress of the house offered a “cigarrito” to
+their semi-compatriot. At this moment the rustle of a dress and the fall
+of a chair behind the tapestry were plainly heard.
+
+“Ah!” cried the wife, turning pale, “may the saints assist us! God grant
+no harm has happened!”
+
+“You have some one in the next room, have you not?” said Montefiore,
+giving no sign of emotion.
+
+The draper dropped a word of imprecation against the girls. Evidently
+alarmed, the wife opened a secret door, and led in, half fainting, the
+Italian’s madonna, to whom he was careful to pay no attention; only,
+to avoid a too-studied indifference, he glanced at the girl before he
+turned to his host and said in his own language:--
+
+“Is that your daughter, signore?”
+
+Perez de Lagounia (such was the merchant’s name) had large commercial
+relations with Genoa, Florence, and Livorno; he knew Italian, and
+replied in the same language:--
+
+“No; if she were my daughter I should take less precautions. The child
+is confided to our care, and I would rather die than see any evil happen
+to her. But how is it possible to put sense into a girl of eighteen?”
+
+“She is very handsome,” said Montefiore, coldly, not looking at her face
+again.
+
+“Her mother’s beauty is celebrated,” replied the merchant, briefly.
+
+They continued to smoke, watching each other. Though Montefiore
+compelled himself not to give the slightest look which might contradict
+his apparent coldness, he could not refrain, at a moment when Perez
+turned his head to expectorate, from casting a rapid glance at the young
+girl, whose sparkling eyes met his. Then, with that science of vision
+which gives to a libertine, as it does to a sculptor, the fatal power of
+disrobing, if we may so express it, a woman, and divining her shape by
+inductions both rapid and sagacious, he beheld one of those masterpieces
+of Nature whose creation appears to demand as its right all the
+happiness of love. Here was a fair young face, on which the sun of Spain
+had cast faint tones of bistre which added to its expression of seraphic
+calmness a passionate pride, like a flash of light infused beneath
+that diaphanous complexion,--due, perhaps, to the Moorish blood which
+vivified and colored it. Her hair, raised to the top of her head, fell
+thence with black reflections round the delicate transparent ears and
+defined the outlines of a blue-veined throat. These luxuriant locks
+brought into strong relief the dazzling eyes and the scarlet lips of
+a well-arched mouth. The bodice of the country set off the lines of
+a figure that swayed as easily as a branch of willow. She was not the
+Virgin of Italy, but the Virgin of Spain, of Murillo, the only artist
+daring enough to have painted the Mother of God intoxicated with the joy
+of conceiving the Christ,--the glowing imagination of the boldest and
+also the warmest of painters.
+
+In this young girl three things were united, a single one of which would
+have sufficed for the glory of a woman: the purity of the pearl in the
+depths of ocean; the sublime exaltation of the Spanish Saint Teresa; and
+a passion of love which was ignorant of itself. The presence of such a
+woman has the virtue of a talisman. Montefiore no longer felt worn and
+jaded. That young girl brought back his youthful freshness.
+
+But, though the apparition was delightful, it did not last. The girl was
+taken back to the secret chamber, where the servant-woman carried to her
+openly both light and food.
+
+“You do right to hide her,” said Montefiore in Italian. “I will keep
+your secret. The devil! we have generals in our army who are capable of
+abducting her.”
+
+Montefiore’s infatuation went so far as to suggest to him the idea of
+marrying her. He accordingly asked her history, and Perez very willingly
+told him the circumstances under which she had become his ward. The
+prudent Spaniard was led to make this confidence because he had heard of
+Montefiore in Italy, and knowing his reputation was desirous to let him
+see how strong were the barriers which protected the young girl from the
+possibility of seduction. Though the good-man was gifted with a certain
+patriarchal eloquence, in keeping with his simple life and customs, his
+tale will be improved by abridgment.
+
+At the period when the French Revolution changed the manners and
+morals of every country which served as the scene of its wars, a street
+prostitute came to Tarragona, driven from Venice at the time of its
+fall. The life of this woman had been a tissue of romantic adventures
+and strange vicissitudes. To her, oftener than to any other woman of her
+class, it had happened, thanks to the caprice of great lords struck with
+her extraordinary beauty, to be literally gorged with gold and jewels
+and all the delights of excessive wealth,--flowers, carriages, pages,
+maids, palaces, pictures, journeys (like those of Catherine II.); in
+short, the life of a queen, despotic in her caprices and obeyed, often
+beyond her own imaginings. Then, without herself, or any one, chemist,
+physician, or man of science, being able to discover how her gold
+evaporated, she would find herself back in the streets, poor, denuded of
+everything, preserving nothing but her all-powerful beauty, yet living
+on without thought or care of the past, the present, or the future.
+Cast, in her poverty, into the hands of some poor gambling officer, she
+attached herself to him as a dog to its master, sharing the discomforts
+of the military life, which indeed she comforted, as content under the
+roof of a garret as beneath the silken hangings of opulence. Italian and
+Spanish both, she fulfilled very scrupulously the duties of religion,
+and more than once she had said to love:--
+
+“Return to-morrow; to-day I belong to God.”
+
+But this slime permeated with gold and perfumes, this careless
+indifference to all things, these unbridled passions, these religious
+beliefs cast into that heart like diamonds into mire, this life begun,
+and ended, in a hospital, these gambling chances transferred to the
+soul, to the very existence,--in short, this great alchemy, for which
+vice lit the fire beneath the crucible in which fortunes were melted
+up and the gold of ancestors and the honor of great names evaporated,
+proceeded from a _cause_, a particular heredity, faithfully transmitted
+from mother to daughter since the middle ages. The name of this woman
+was La Marana. In her family, existing solely in the female line, the
+idea, person, name and power of a father had been completely unknown
+since the thirteenth century. The name Marana was to her what the
+designation of Stuart is to the celebrated royal race of Scotland, a
+name of distinction substituted for the patronymic name by the constant
+heredity of the same office devolving on the family.
+
+Formerly, in France, Spain, and Italy, when those three countries had,
+in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, mutual interests which united
+and disunited them by perpetual warfare, the name Marana served to
+express in its general sense, a prostitute. In those days women of that
+sort had a certain rank in the world of which nothing in our day can
+give an idea. Ninon de l’Enclos and Marian Delorme have alone played,
+in France, the role of the Imperias, Catalinas, and Maranas who, in
+preceding centuries, gathered around them the cassock, gown, and
+sword. An Imperia built I forget which church in Rome in a frenzy of
+repentance, as Rhodope built, in earlier times, a pyramid in Egypt. The
+name Marana, inflicted at first as a disgrace upon the singular family
+with which we are now concerned, had ended by becoming its veritable
+name and by ennobling its vice by incontestable antiquity.
+
+One day, a day of opulence or of penury I know not which, for this event
+was a secret between herself and God, but assuredly it was in a moment
+of repentance and melancholy, this Marana of the nineteenth century
+stood with her feet in the slime and her head raised to heaven. She
+cursed the blood in her veins, she cursed herself, she trembled lest she
+should have a daughter, and she swore, as such women swear, on the honor
+and with the will of the galleys--the firmest will, the most scrupulous
+honor that there is on earth--she swore, before an altar, and believing
+in that altar, to make her daughter a virtuous creature, a saint, and
+thus to gain, after that long line of lost women, criminals in love, an
+angel in heaven for them all.
+
+The vow once made, the blood of the Maranas spoke; the courtesan
+returned to her reckless life, a thought the more within her heart. At
+last she loved, with the violent love of such women, as Henrietta Wilson
+loved Lord Ponsonby, as Mademoiselle Dupuis loved Bolingbroke, as the
+Marchesa Pescara loved her husband--but no, she did not love, she adored
+one of those fair men, half women, to whom she gave the virtues which
+she had not, striving to keep for herself all that there was of vice
+between them. It was from that weak man, that senseless marriage
+unblessed by God or man which happiness is thought to justify, but which
+no happiness absolves, and for which men blush at last, that she had a
+daughter, a daughter to save, a daughter for whom to desire a noble life
+and the chastity she had not. Henceforth, happy or not happy, opulent or
+beggared, she had in her heart a pure, untainted sentiment, the highest
+of all human feelings because the most disinterested. Love has its
+egotism, but motherhood has none. La Marana was a mother like none
+other; for, in her total, her eternal shipwreck, motherhood might still
+redeem her. To accomplish sacredly through life the task of sending
+a pure soul to heaven, was not that a better thing than a tardy
+repentance? was it not, in truth, the only spotless prayer which she
+could lift to God?
+
+So, when this daughter, when her Marie-Juana-Pepita (she would fain have
+given her all the saints in the calendar as guardians), when this dear
+little creature was granted to her, she became possessed of so high an
+idea of the dignity of motherhood that she entreated vice to grant her a
+respite. She made herself virtuous and lived in solitude. No more fetes,
+no more orgies, no more love. All joys, all fortunes were centred now
+in the cradle of her child. The tones of that infant voice made an oasis
+for her soul in the burning sands of her existence. That sentiment could
+not be measured or estimated by any other. Did it not, in fact, comprise
+all human sentiments, all heavenly hopes? La Marana was so resolved not
+to soil her daughter with any stain other than that of birth, that she
+sought to invest her with social virtues; she even obliged the young
+father to settle a handsome patrimony upon the child and to give her
+his name. Thus the girl was not know as Juana Marana, but as Juana di
+Mancini.
+
+Then, after seven years of joy, and kisses, and intoxicating happiness,
+the time came when the poor Marana deprived herself of her idol. That
+Juana might never bow her head under their hereditary shame, the mother
+had the courage to renounce her child for her child’s sake, and to seek,
+not without horrible suffering, for another mother, another home, other
+principles to follow, other and saintlier examples to imitate. The
+abdication of a mother is either a revolting act or a sublime one; in
+this case, was it not sublime?
+
+At Tarragona a lucky accident threw the Lagounias in her way, under
+circumstances which enabled her to recognize the integrity of the
+Spaniard and the noble virtue of his wife. She came to them at a time
+when her proposal seemed that of a liberating angel. The fortune and
+honor of the merchant, momentarily compromised, required a prompt and
+secret succor. La Marana made over to the husband the whole sum she
+had obtained of the father for Juana’s “dot,” requiring neither
+acknowledgment nor interest. According to her own code of honor, a
+contract, a trust, was a thing of the heart, and God its supreme
+judge. After stating the miseries of her position to Dona Lagounia, she
+confided her daughter and her daughter’s fortune to the fine old Spanish
+honor, pure and spotless, which filled the precincts of that ancient
+house. Dona Lagounia had no child, and she was only too happy to obtain
+one to nurture. The mother then parted from her Juana, convinced that
+the child’s future was safe, and certain of having found her a mother, a
+mother who would bring her up as a Mancini, and not as a Marana.
+
+Leaving her child in the simple modest house of the merchant where the
+burgher virtues reigned, where religion and sacred sentiments and honor
+filled the air, the poor prostitute, the disinherited mother was enabled
+to bear her trial by visions of Juana, virgin, wife, and mother, a
+mother throughout her life. On the threshold of that house Marana left a
+tear such as the angels garner up.
+
+Since that day of mourning and hope the mother, drawn by some invincible
+presentiment, had thrice returned to see her daughter. Once when Juana
+fell ill with a dangerous complaint:
+
+“I knew it,” she said to Perez when she reached the house.
+
+Asleep, she had seen her Juana dying. She nursed her and watched her,
+until one morning, sure of the girl’s convalescence, she kissed her,
+still asleep, on the forehead and left her without betraying whom she
+was. A second time the Marana came to the church where Juana made her
+first communion. Simply dressed, concealing herself behind a column, the
+exiled mother recognized herself in her daughter such as she once had
+been, pure as the snow fresh-fallen on the Alps. A courtesan even
+in maternity, the Marana felt in the depths of her soul a jealous
+sentiment, stronger for the moment than that of love, and she left
+the church, incapable of resisting any longer the desire to kill Dona
+Lagounia, as she sat there, with radiant face, too much the mother of
+her child. A third and last meeting had taken place between mother and
+daughter in the streets of Milan, to which city the merchant and his
+wife had paid a visit. The Marana drove through the Corso in all
+the splendor of a sovereign; she passed her daughter like a flash of
+lightning and was not recognized. Horrible anguish! To this Marana,
+surfeited with kisses, one was lacking, a single one, for which she
+would have bartered all the others: the joyous, girlish kiss of a
+daughter to a mother, an honored mother, a mother in whom shone all the
+domestic virtues. Juana living was dead to her. One thought revived the
+soul of the courtesan--a precious thought! Juana was henceforth safe.
+She might be the humblest of women, but at least she was not what her
+mother was--an infamous courtesan.
+
+The merchant and his wife had fulfilled their trust with scrupulous
+integrity. Juana’s fortune, managed by them, had increased tenfold.
+Perez de Lagounia, now the richest merchant in the provinces, felt for
+the young girl a sentiment that was semi-superstitious. Her money had
+preserved his ancient house from dishonorable ruin, and the presence of
+so precious a treasure had brought him untold prosperity. His wife, a
+heart of gold, and full of delicacy, had made the child religious, and
+as pure as she was beautiful. Juana might well become the wife of either
+a great seigneur or a wealthy merchant; she lacked no virtue necessary
+to the highest destiny. Perez had intended taking her to Madrid and
+marrying her to some grandee, but the events of the present war delayed
+the fulfilment of this project.
+
+“I don’t know where the Marana now is,” said Perez, ending the above
+history, “but in whatever quarter of the world she may be living, when
+she hears of the occupation of our province by your armies, and of the
+siege of Tarragona, she will assuredly set out at once to come here and
+see to her daughter’s safety.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. AUCTION
+
+
+The foregoing narrative changed the intentions of the Italian captain;
+no longer did he think of making a Marchesa di Montefiore of Juana di
+Mancini. He recognized the blood of the Maranas in the glance the girl
+had given from behind the blinds, in the trick she had just played to
+satisfy her curiosity, and also in the parting look she had cast upon
+him. The libertine wanted a virtuous woman for a wife.
+
+The adventure was full of danger, but danger of a kind that never
+daunts the least courageous man, for love and pleasure followed it. The
+apprentice sleeping in the shop, the cook bivouacking in the kitchen,
+Perez and his wife sleeping, no doubt, the wakeful sleep of the aged,
+the echoing sonority of the old mansion, the close surveillance of the
+girl in the day-time,--all these things were obstacles, and made success
+a thing well-nigh impossible. But Montefiore had in his favor against
+all impossibilities the blood of the Maranas which gushed in the heart
+of that inquisitive girl, Italian by birth, Spanish in principles,
+virgin indeed, but impatient to love. Passion, the girl, and Montefiore
+were ready and able to defy the whole universe.
+
+Montefiore, impelled as much by the instinct of a man of gallantry as
+by those vague hopes which cannot be explained, and to which we give
+the name of presentiments (a word of astonishing verbal accuracy),
+Montefiore spent the first hours of the night at his window, endeavoring
+to look below him to the secret apartment where, undoubtedly, the
+merchant and his wife had hidden the love and joyfulness of their old
+age. The ware-room of the “entresol” separated him from the rooms on the
+ground-floor. The captain therefore could not have recourse to noises
+significantly made from one floor to the other, an artificial language
+which all lovers know well how to create. But chance, or it may have
+been the young girl herself, came to his assistance. At the moment when
+he stationed himself at his window, he saw, on the black wall of the
+courtyard, a circle of light, in the centre of which the silhouette of
+Juana was clearly defined; the consecutive movement of the arms, and the
+attitude, gave evidence that she was arranging her hair for the night.
+
+“Is she alone?” Montefiore asked himself; “could I, without danger,
+lower a letter filled with coin and strike it against that circular
+window in her hiding-place?”
+
+At once he wrote a note, the note of a man exiled by his family to Elba,
+the note of a degraded marquis now a mere captain of equipment. Then he
+made a cord of whatever he could find that was capable of being turned
+into string, filled the note with a few silver crowns, and lowered it in
+the deepest silence to the centre of that spherical gleam.
+
+“The shadows will show if her mother or the servant is with her,”
+ thought Montefiore. “If she is not alone, I can pull up the string at
+once.”
+
+But, after succeeding with infinite trouble in striking the glass, a
+single form, the little figure of Juana, appeared upon the wall. The
+young girl opened her window cautiously, saw the note, took it, and
+stood before the window while she read it. In it, Montefiore had given
+his name and asked for an interview, offering, after the style of the
+old romances, his heart and hand to the Signorina Juana di Mancini--a
+common trick, the success of which is nearly always certain. At Juana’s
+age, nobility of soul increases the dangers which surround youth. A poet
+of our day has said: “Woman succumbs only to her own nobility. The lover
+pretends to doubt the love he inspires at the moment when he is most
+beloved; the young girl, confident and proud, longs to make sacrifices
+to prove her love, and knows the world and men too little to continue
+calm in the midst of her rising emotions and repel with contempt the man
+who accepts a life offered in expiation of a false reproach.”
+
+Ever since the constitution of societies the young girl finds herself
+torn by a struggle between the caution of prudent virtue and the evils
+of wrong-doing. Often she loses a love, delightful in prospect, and the
+first, if she resists; on the other hand, she loses a marriage if she
+is imprudent. Casting a glance over the vicissitudes of social life
+in Paris, it is impossible to doubt the necessity of religion; and
+yet Paris is situated in the forty-eighth degree of latitude, while
+Tarragona is in the forty-first. The old question of climates is still
+useful to narrators to explain the sudden denouements, the imprudences,
+or the resistances of love.
+
+Montefiore kept his eyes fixed on the exquisite black profile projected
+by the gleam upon the wall. Neither he nor Juana could see each other;
+a troublesome cornice, vexatiously placed, deprived them of the mute
+correspondence which may be established between a pair of lovers as they
+bend to each other from their windows. Thus the mind and the attention
+of the captain were concentrated on that luminous circle where, without
+perhaps knowing it herself, the young girl would, he thought, innocently
+reveal her thoughts by a series of gestures. But no! The singular
+motions she proceeded to make gave not a particle of hope to the
+expectant lover. Juana was amusing herself by cutting up his missive.
+But virtue and innocence sometimes imitate the clever proceedings
+inspired by jealousy to the Bartholos of comedy. Juana, without
+pens, ink, or paper, was replying by snip of scissors. Presently she
+refastened the note to the string; the officer drew it up, opened it,
+and read by the light of his lamp one word, carefully cut out of the
+paper: COME.
+
+“Come!” he said to himself; “but what of poison? or the dagger or
+carbine of Perez? And that apprentice not yet asleep, perhaps, in the
+shop? and the servant in her hammock? Besides, this old house echoes the
+slightest sound; I can hear old Perez snoring even here. Come, indeed!
+She can have nothing more to lose.”
+
+Bitter reflection! rakes alone are logical and will punish a woman for
+devotion. Man created Satan and Lovelace; but a virgin is an angel
+on whom he can bestow naught but his own vices. She is so grand, so
+beautiful, that he cannot magnify or embellish her; he has only the
+fatal power to blast her and drag her down into his own mire.
+
+Montefiore waited for a later and more somnolent hour of the night;
+then, in spite of his reflections, he descended the stairs without
+boots, armed with his pistols, moving step by step, stopping to question
+the silence, putting forth his hands, measuring the stairs, peering into
+the darkness, and ready at the slightest incident to fly back into his
+room. The Italian had put on his handsomest uniform; he had perfumed his
+black hair, and now shone with the particular brilliancy which dress and
+toilet bestow upon natural beauty. Under such circumstances most men are
+as feminine as a woman.
+
+The marquis arrived without hindrance before the secret door of the room
+in which the girl was hidden, a sort of cell made in the angle of the
+house and belonging exclusively to Juana, who had remained there hidden
+during the day from every eye while the siege lasted. Up to the present
+time she had slept in the room of her adopted mother, but the limited
+space in the garret where the merchant and his wife had gone to make
+room for the officer who was billeted upon them, did not allow of her
+going with them. Dona Lagounia had therefore left the young girl to the
+guardianship of lock and key, under the protection of religious ideas,
+all the more efficacious because they were partly superstitious, and
+also under the shield of a native pride and sensitive modesty which made
+the young Mancini in sort an exception among her sex. Juana possessed
+in an equal degree the most attaching virtues and the most passionate
+impulses; she had needed the modesty and sanctity of this monotonous
+life to calm and cool the tumultuous blood of the Maranas which bounded
+in her heart, the desires of which her adopted mother told her were an
+instigation of the devil.
+
+A faint ray of light traced along the sill of the secret door guided
+Montefiore to the place; he scratched the panel softly and Juana opened
+to him. Montefiore entered, palpitating, but he recognized in the
+expression of the girl’s face complete ignorance of her peril, a sort of
+naive curiosity, and an innocent admiration. He stopped short, arrested
+for a moment by the sacredness of the picture which met his eyes.
+
+He saw before him a tapestry on the walls with a gray ground sprinkled
+with violets, a little coffer of ebony, an antique mirror, an immense
+and very old arm chair also in ebony and covered with tapestry, a table
+with twisted legs, a pretty carpet on the floor, near the table a
+single chair; and that was all. On the table, however, were flowers and
+embroidery; in a recess at the farther end of the room was the narrow
+little bed where Juana dreamed. Above the bed were three pictures;
+and near the pillow a crucifix, with a holy water basin and a prayer,
+printed in letters of gold and framed. Flowers exhaled their perfume
+faintly; the candles cast a tender light; all was calm and pure and
+sacred. The dreamy thoughts of Juana, but above all Juana herself, had
+communicated to all things her own peculiar charm; her soul appeared
+to shine there, like the pearl in its matrix. Juana, dressed in white,
+beautiful with naught but her own beauty, laying down her rosary to
+answer love, might have inspired respect, even in a Montefiore, if
+the silence, if the night, if Juana herself had not seemed so amorous.
+Montefiore stood still, intoxicated with an unknown happiness, possibly
+that of Satan beholding heaven through a rift of the clouds which form
+its enclosure.
+
+“As soon as I saw you,” he said in pure Tuscan, and in the modest tone
+of voice so peculiarly Italian, “I loved you. My soul and my life are
+now in you, and in you they will be forever, if you will have it so.”
+
+Juana listened, inhaling from the atmosphere the sound of these words
+which the accents of love made magnificent.
+
+“Poor child! how have you breathed so long the air of this dismal house
+without dying of it? You, made to reign in the world, to inhabit the
+palace of a prince, to live in the midst of fetes, to feel the joys
+which love bestows, to see the world at your feet, to efface all other
+beauty by your own which can have no rival--you, to live here, solitary,
+with those two shopkeepers!”
+
+Adroit question! He wished to know if Juana had a lover.
+
+“True,” she replied. “But who can have told you my secret thoughts? For
+the last few months I have nearly died of sadness. Yes, I would _rather_
+die than stay longer in this house. Look at that embroidery; there is
+not a stitch there which I did not set with dreadful thoughts. How many
+times I have thought of escaping to fling myself into the sea! Why? I
+don’t know why,--little childish troubles, but very keen, though they
+are so silly. Often I have kissed my mother at night as one would kiss
+a mother for the last time, saying in my heart: ‘To-morrow I will kill
+myself.’ But I do not die. Suicides go to hell, you know, and I am so
+afraid of hell that I resign myself to live, to get up in the morning
+and go to bed at night, and work the same hours, and do the same things.
+I am not so weary of it, but I suffer--And yet, my father and mother
+adore me. Oh! I am bad, I am bad; I say so to my confessor.”
+
+“Do you always live here alone, without amusement, without pleasures?”
+
+“Oh! I have not always been like this. Till I was fifteen the festivals
+of the church, the chants, the music gave me pleasure. I was happy,
+feeling myself like the angels without sin and able to communicate every
+week--I loved God then. But for the last three years, from day to day,
+all things have changed. First, I wanted flowers here--and I have them,
+lovely flowers! Then I wanted--but I want nothing now,” she added, after
+a pause, smiling at Montefiore. “Have you not said that you would love
+me always?”
+
+“Yes, my Juana,” cried Montefiore, softly, taking her round the waist
+and pressing her to his heart, “yes. But let me speak to you as you
+speak to God. Are you not as beautiful as Mary in heaven? Listen. I
+swear to you,” he continued, kissing her hair, “I swear to take that
+forehead for my altar, to make you my idol, to lay at your feet all the
+luxuries of the world. For you, my palace at Milan; for you my horses,
+my jewels, the diamonds of my ancient family; for you, each day, fresh
+jewels, a thousand pleasures, and all the joys of earth!”
+
+“Yes,” she said reflectively, “I would like that; but I feel within my
+soul that I would like better than all the world my husband. Mio caro
+sposo!” she said, as if it were impossible to give in any other language
+the infinite tenderness, the loving elegance with which the Italian
+tongue and accent clothe those delightful words. Besides, Italian was
+Juana’s maternal language.
+
+“I should find,” she continued, with a glance at Montefiore in which
+shone the purity of the cherubim, “I should find in _him_ my dear
+religion, him and God--God and him. Is he to be you?” she said. “Yes,
+surely it will be you,” she cried, after a pause. “Come, and see the
+picture my father brought me from Italy.”
+
+She took a candle, made a sign to Montefiore, and showed him at the foot
+of her bed a Saint Michael overthrowing the demon.
+
+“Look!” she said, “has he not your eyes? When I saw you from my window
+in the street, our meeting seemed to me a sign from heaven. Every day
+during my morning meditation, while waiting for my mother to call me to
+prayer, I have so gazed at that picture, that angel, that I have ended
+by thinking him my husband--oh! heavens, I speak to you as though you
+were myself. I must seem crazy to you; but if you only knew how a poor
+captive wants to tell the thoughts that choke her! When alone, I talk to
+my flowers, to my tapestry; they can understand me better, I think, than
+my father and mother, who are so grave.”
+
+“Juana,” said Montefiore, taking her hands and kissing them with the
+passion that gushed in his eyes, in his gestures, in the tones of his
+voice, “speak to me as your husband, as yourself. I have suffered all
+that you have suffered. Between us two few words are needed to make
+us comprehend our past, but there will never be enough to express our
+coming happiness. Lay your hand upon my heart. Feel how it beats. Let us
+promise before God, who sees and hears us, to be faithful to each other
+throughout our lives. Here, take my ring--and give me yours.”
+
+“Give you my ring!” she said in terror.
+
+“Why not?” asked Montefiore, uneasy at such artlessness.
+
+“But our holy father the Pope has blessed it; it was put upon my finger
+in childhood by a beautiful lady who took care of me, and who told me
+never to part with it.”
+
+“Juana, you cannot love me!”
+
+“Ah!” she said, “here it is; take it. You, are you not another myself?”
+
+She held out the ring with a trembling hand, holding it tightly as she
+looked at Montefiore with a clear and penetrating eye that questioned
+him. That ring! all of herself was in it; but she gave it to him.
+
+“Oh, my Juana!” said Montefiore, again pressing her in his arms. “I
+should be a monster indeed if I deceived you. I will love you forever.”
+
+Juana was thoughtful. Montefiore, reflecting that in this first
+interview he ought to venture upon nothing that might frighten a young
+girl so ignorantly pure, so imprudent by virtue rather than from desire,
+postponed all further action to the future, relying on his beauty, of
+which he knew the power, and on this innocent ring-marriage, the hymen
+of the heart, the lightest, yet the strongest of all ceremonies. For the
+rest of that night, and throughout the next day, Juana’s imagination was
+the accomplice of her passion.
+
+On this first evening Montefiore forced himself to be as respectful as
+he was tender. With that intention, in the interests of his passion and
+the desires with which Juana inspired him, he was caressing and unctuous
+in language; he launched the young creature into plans for a new
+existence, described to her the world under glowing colors, talked to
+her of household details always attractive to the mind of girls, giving
+her a sense of the rights and realities of love. Then, having agreed
+upon the hour for their future nocturnal interviews, he left her happy,
+but changed; the pure and pious Juana existed no longer; in the last
+glance she gave him, in the pretty movement by which she brought her
+forehead to his lips, there was already more of passion than a girl
+should feel. Solitude, weariness of employments contrary to her nature
+had brought this about. To make the daughter of the Maranas truly
+virtuous, she ought to have been habituated, little by little, to the
+world, or else to have been wholly withdrawn from it.
+
+“The day, to-morrow, will seem very long to me,” she said, receiving his
+kisses on her forehead. “But stay in the salon, and speak loud, that I
+may hear your voice; it fills my soul.”
+
+Montefiore, clever enough to imagine the girl’s life, was all the more
+satisfied with himself for restraining his desires because he saw
+that it would lead to his greater contentment. He returned to his room
+without accident.
+
+Ten days went by without any event occurring to trouble the peace and
+solitude of the house. Montefiore employed his Italian cajolery on old
+Perez, on Dona Lagounia, on the apprentice, even on the cook, and they
+all liked him; but, in spite of the confidence he now inspired in them,
+he never asked to see Juana, or to have the door of her mysterious
+hiding-place opened to him. The young girl, hungry to see her lover,
+implored him to do so; but he always refused her from an instinct of
+prudence. Besides, he had used his best powers and fascinations to lull
+the suspicions of the old couple, and had now accustomed them to see
+him, a soldier, stay in bed till midday on pretence that he was ill.
+Thus the lovers lived only in the night-time, when the rest of
+the household were asleep. If Montefiore had not been one of those
+libertines whom the habit of gallantry enables to retain their
+self-possession under all circumstances, he might have been lost a dozen
+times during those ten days. A young lover, in the simplicity of a
+first love, would have committed the enchanting imprudences which are
+so difficult to resist. But he did resist even Juana herself, Juana
+pouting, Juana making her long hair a chain which she wound about his
+neck when caution told him he must go.
+
+The most suspicious of guardians would however have been puzzled to
+detect the secret of their nightly meetings. It is to be supposed
+that, sure of success, the Italian marquis gave himself the ineffable
+pleasures of a slow seduction, step by step, leading gradually to the
+fire which should end the affair in a conflagration. On the eleventh
+day, at the dinner-table, he thought it wise to inform old Perez, under
+seal of secrecy, that the reason of his separation from his family was
+an ill-assorted marriage. This false revelation was an infamous thing
+in view of the nocturnal drama which was being played under that roof.
+Montefiore, an experienced rake, was preparing for the finale of that
+drama which he foresaw and enjoyed as an artist who loves his art. He
+expected to leave before long, and without regret, the house and his
+love. It would happen, he thought, in this way: Juana, after waiting for
+him in vain for several nights, would risk her life, perhaps, in asking
+Perez what had become of his guest; and Perez would reply, not aware of
+the importance of his answer,--
+
+“The Marquis de Montefiore is reconciled to his family, who consent to
+receive his wife; he has gone to Italy to present her to them.”
+
+And Juana?--The marquis never asked himself what would become of Juana;
+but he had studied her character, its nobility, candor, and strength,
+and he knew he might be sure of her silence.
+
+He obtained a mission from one of the generals. Three days later, on the
+night preceding his intended departure, Montefiore, instead of returning
+to his own room after dinner, contrived to enter unseen that of Juana,
+to make that farewell night the longer. Juana, true Spaniard and true
+Italian, was enchanted with such boldness; it argued ardor! For herself
+she did not fear discovery. To find in the pure love of marriage the
+excitements of intrigue, to hide her husband behind the curtains of her
+bed, and say to her adopted father and mother, in case of detection: “I
+am the Marquise de Montefiore!”--was to an ignorant and romantic young
+girl, who for three years past had dreamed of love without dreaming of
+its dangers, delightful. The door closed on this last evening upon her
+folly, her happiness, like a veil, which it is useless here to raise.
+
+It was nine o’clock; the merchant and his wife were reading their
+evening prayers; suddenly the noise of a carriage drawn by several
+horses resounded in the street; loud and hasty raps echoed from the
+shop where the servant hurried to open the door, and into that venerable
+salon rushed a woman, magnificently dressed in spite of the mud upon the
+wheels of her travelling-carriage, which had just crossed Italy, France,
+and Spain. It was, of course, the Marana,--the Marana who, in spite
+of her thirty-six years, was still in all the glory of her ravishing
+beauty; the Marana who, being at that time the mistress of a king, had
+left Naples, the fetes, the skies of Naples, the climax of her life of
+luxury, on hearing from her royal lover of the events in Spain and the
+siege of Tarragona.
+
+“Tarragona! I must get to Tarragona before the town is taken!” she
+cried. “Ten days to reach Tarragona!”
+
+Then without caring for crown or court, she arrived in Tarragona,
+furnished with an almost imperial safe-conduct; furnished too with gold
+which enabled her to cross France with the velocity of a rocket.
+
+“My daughter! my daughter!” cried the Marana.
+
+At this voice, and the abrupt invasion of their solitude, the
+prayer-book fell from the hands of the old couple.
+
+“She is there,” replied the merchant, calmly, after a pause during which
+he recovered from the emotion caused by the abrupt entrance, and the
+look and voice of the mother. “She is there,” he repeated, pointing to
+the door of the little chamber.
+
+“Yes, but has any harm come to her; is she still--”
+
+“Perfectly well,” said Dona Lagounia.
+
+“O God! send me to hell if it so pleases thee!” cried the Marana,
+dropping, exhausted and half dead, into a chair.
+
+The flush in her cheeks, due to anxiety, paled suddenly; she had
+strength to endure suffering, but none to bear this joy. Joy was more
+violent in her soul than suffering, for it contained the echoes of her
+pain and the agonies of its own emotion.
+
+“But,” she said, “how have you kept her safe? Tarragona is taken.”
+
+“Yes,” said Perez, “but since you see me living why do you ask that
+question? Should I not have died before harm could have come to Juana?”
+
+At that answer, the Marana seized the calloused hand of the old man, and
+kissed it, wetting it with the tears that flowed from her eyes--she who
+never wept! those tears were all she had most precious under heaven.
+
+“My good Perez!” she said at last. “But have you had no soldiers
+quartered in your house?”
+
+“Only one,” replied the Spaniard. “Fortunately for us the most loyal
+of men; a Spaniard by birth, but now an Italian who hates Bonaparte; a
+married man. He is ill, and gets up late and goes to bed early.”
+
+“An Italian! What is his name?”
+
+“Montefiore.”
+
+“Can it be the Marquis de Montefiore--”
+
+“Yes, Senora, he himself.”
+
+“Has he seen Juana?”
+
+“No,” said Dona Lagounia.
+
+“You are mistaken, wife,” said Perez. “The marquis must have seen her
+for a moment, a short moment, it is true; but I think he looked at her
+that evening she came in here during supper.”
+
+“Ah, let me see my daughter!”
+
+“Nothing easier,” said Perez; “she is now asleep. If she has left the
+key in the lock we must waken her.”
+
+As he rose to take the duplicate key of Juana’s door his eyes fell by
+chance on the circular gleam of light upon the black wall of the inner
+courtyard. Within that circle he saw the shadow of a group such as
+Canova alone has attempted to render. The Spaniard turned back.
+
+“I do not know,” he said to the Marana, “where to find the key.”
+
+“You are very pale,” she said.
+
+“And I will show you why,” he cried, seizing his dagger and rapping its
+hilt violently on Juana’s door as he shouted,--
+
+“Open! open! open! Juana!”
+
+Juana did not open, for she needed time to conceal Montefiore. She knew
+nothing of what was passing in the salon; the double portieres of thick
+tapestry deadened all sounds.
+
+“Madame, I lied to you in saying I could not find the key. Here it is,”
+ added Perez, taking it from a sideboard. “But it is useless. Juana’s key
+is in the lock; her door is barricaded. We have been deceived, my wife!”
+ he added, turning to Dona Lagounia. “There is a man in Juana’s room.”
+
+“Impossible! By my eternal salvation I say it is impossible!” said his
+wife.
+
+“Do not swear, Dona Lagounia. Our honor is dead, and this woman--”
+ He pointed to the Marana, who had risen and was standing motionless,
+blasted by his words, “this woman has the right to despise us. She saved
+our life, our fortune, and our honor, and we have saved nothing for her
+but her money--Juana!” he cried again, “open, or I will burst in your
+door.”
+
+His voice, rising in violence, echoed through the garrets in the roof.
+He was cold and calm. The life of Montefiore was in his hands; he would
+wash away his remorse in the blood of that Italian.
+
+“Out, out, out! out, all of you!” cried the Marana, springing like
+a tigress on the dagger, which she wrenched from the hand of the
+astonished Perez. “Out, Perez,” she continued more calmly, “out, you and
+your wife and servants! There will be murder here. You might be shot by
+the French. Have nothing to do with this; it is my affair, mine only.
+Between my daughter and me there is none but God. As for the man, he
+belongs to _me_. The whole earth could not tear him from my grasp. Go,
+go! I forgive you. I see plainly that the girl is a Marana. You, your
+religion, your virtue, were too weak to fight against my blood.”
+
+She gave a dreadful sigh, turning her dry eyes on them. She had lost
+all, but she knew how to suffer,--a true courtesan.
+
+The door opened. The Marana forgot all else, and Perez, making a sign to
+his wife, remained at his post. With his old invincible Spanish honor he
+was determined to share the vengeance of the betrayed mother. Juana, all
+in white, and softly lighted by the wax candles, was standing calmly in
+the centre of her chamber.
+
+“What do you want with me?” she said.
+
+The Marana could not repress a passing shudder.
+
+“Perez,” she asked, “has this room another issue?”
+
+Perez made a negative gesture; confiding in that gesture, the mother
+entered the room.
+
+“Juana,” she said, “I am your mother, your judge; you have placed
+yourself in the only situation in which I could reveal myself to you.
+You have come down to me, you, whom I thought in heaven. Ah! you have
+fallen low indeed. You have a lover in this room.”
+
+“Madame, there is and can be no one but my husband,” answered the girl.
+“I am the Marquise de Montefiore.”
+
+“Then there are two,” said Perez, in a grave voice. “He told me he was
+married.”
+
+“Montefiore, my love!” cried the girl, tearing aside the curtain and
+revealing the officer. “Come! they are slandering you.”
+
+The Italian appeared, pale and speechless; he saw the dagger in the
+Marana’s hand, and he knew her well. With one bound he sprang from the
+room, crying out in a thundering voice,--
+
+“Help! help! they are murdering a Frenchman. Soldiers of the 6th of the
+line, rush for Captain Diard! Help, help!”
+
+Perez had gripped the man and was trying to gag him with his large hand,
+but the Marana stopped him, saying,--
+
+“Bind him fast, but let him shout. Open the doors, leave them open,
+and go, go, as I told you; go, all of you.--As for you,” she said,
+addressing Montefiore, “shout, call for help if you choose; by the
+time your soldiers get here this blade will be in your heart. Are you
+married? Answer.”
+
+Montefiore, who had fallen on the threshold of the door, scarcely a step
+from Juana, saw nothing but the blade of the dagger, the gleam of which
+blinded him.
+
+“Has he deceived me?” said Juana, slowly. “He told me he was free.”
+
+“He told me that he was married,” repeated Perez, in his solemn voice.
+
+“Holy Virgin!” murmured Dona Lagounia.
+
+“Answer, soul of corruption,” said the Marana, in a low voice, bending
+to the ear of the marquis.
+
+“Your daughter--” began Montefiore.
+
+“The daughter that was mine is dead or dying,” interrupted the Marana.
+“I have no daughter; do not utter that word. Answer, are you married?”
+
+“No, madame,” said Montefiore, at last, striving to gain time, “I desire
+to marry your daughter.”
+
+“My noble Montefiore!” said Juana, drawing a deep breath.
+
+“Then why did you attempt to fly and cry for help?” asked Perez.
+
+Terrible, revealing light!
+
+Juana said nothing, but she wrung her hands and went to her arm-chair
+and sat down.
+
+At that moment a tumult rose in the street which was plainly heard in
+the silence of the room. A soldier of the 6th, hearing Montefiore’s cry
+for help, had summoned Diard. The quartermaster, who was fortunately in
+his bivouac, came, accompanied by friends.
+
+“Why did I fly?” said Montefiore, hearing the voice of his friend.
+“Because I told you the truth; I am married--Diard! Diard!” he shouted
+in a piercing voice.
+
+But, at a word from Perez, the apprentice closed and bolted the doors,
+so that the soldiers were delayed by battering them in. Before they
+could enter, the Marana had time to strike her dagger into the guilty
+man; but anger hindered her aim, the blade slipped upon the Italian’s
+epaulet, though she struck her blow with such force that he fell at the
+very feet of Juana, who took no notice of him. The Marana sprang upon
+him, and this time, resolved not to miss her prey, she caught him by the
+throat.
+
+“I am free and I will marry her! I swear it, by God, by my mother, by
+all there is most sacred in the world; I am a bachelor; I will marry
+her, on my honor!”
+
+And he bit the arm of the courtesan.
+
+“Mother,” said Juana, “kill him. He is so base that I will not have him
+for my husband, were he ten times as beautiful.”
+
+“Ah! I recognize my daughter!” cried the mother.
+
+“What is all this?” demanded the quartermaster, entering the room.
+
+“They are murdering me,” cried Montefiore, “on account of this girl; she
+says I am her lover. She inveigled me into a trap, and they are forcing
+me to marry her--”
+
+“And you reject her?” cried Diard, struck with the splendid beauty which
+contempt, hatred, and indignation had given to the girl, already so
+beautiful. “Then you are hard to please. If she wants a husband I am
+ready to marry her. Put up your weapons; there is no trouble here.”
+
+The Marana pulled the Italian to the side of her daughter’s bed and said
+to him, in a low voice,--
+
+“If I spare you, give thanks for the rest of your life; but, remember
+this, if your tongue ever injures my daughter you will see me again.
+Go!--How much ‘dot’ do you give her?” she continued, going up to Perez.
+
+“She has two hundred thousand gold piastres,” replied the Spaniard.
+
+“And that is not all, monsieur,” said the Marana, turning to Diard. “Who
+are you?--Go!” she repeated to Montefiore.
+
+The marquis, hearing this statement of gold piastres, came forward once
+more, saying,--
+
+“I am really free--”
+
+A glance from Juana silenced him.
+
+“You are really free to go,” she said.
+
+And he went immediately.
+
+“Alas! monsieur,” said the girl, turning to Diard, “I thank you with
+admiration. But my husband is in heaven. To-morrow I shall enter a
+convent--”
+
+“Juana, my Juana, hush!” cried the mother, clasping her in her arms.
+Then she whispered in the girl’s ear. “You _must_ have another husband.”
+
+Juana turned pale. She freed herself from her mother and sat down once
+more in her arm-chair.
+
+“Who are you, monsieur?” repeated the Marana, addressing Diard.
+
+“Madame, I am at present only the quartermaster of the 6th of the line.
+But for such a wife I have the heart to make myself a marshal of France.
+My name is Pierre-Francois Diard. My father was provost of merchants. I
+am not--”
+
+“But, at least, you are an honest man, are you not?” cried the Marana,
+interrupting him. “If you please the Signorina Juana di Mancini, you can
+marry her and be happy together.--Juana,” she continued in a grave tone,
+“in becoming the wife of a brave and worthy man remember that you will
+also be a mother. I have sworn that you shall kiss your children without
+a blush upon your face” (her voice faltered slightly). “I have sworn
+that you shall live a virtuous life; expect, therefore, many troubles.
+But, whatever happens, continue pure, and be faithful to your husband.
+Sacrifice all things to him, for he will be the father of your
+children--the father of your children! If you take a lover, I, your
+mother, will stand between you and him. Do you see that dagger? It is in
+your ‘dot,’” she continued, throwing the weapon on Juana’s bed. “I leave
+it there as the guarantee of your honor so long as my eyes are open and
+my arm free. Farewell,” she said, restraining her tears. “God grant that
+we may never meet again.”
+
+At that idea, her tears began to flow.
+
+“Poor child!” she added, “you have been happier than you knew in this
+dull home.--Do not allow her to regret it,” she said, turning to Diard.
+
+The foregoing rapid narrative is not the principal subject of this
+Study, for the understanding of which it was necessary to explain how
+it happened that the quartermaster Diard married Juana di Mancini, that
+Montefiore and Diard were intimately known to each other, and to show
+plainly what blood and what passions were in Madame Diard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE HISTORY OF MADAME DIARD
+
+
+By the time that the quartermaster had fulfilled all the long and
+dilatory formalities without which no French soldier can be married, he
+was passionately in love with Juana di Mancini, and Juana had had time
+to think of her coming destiny.
+
+An awful destiny! Juana, who felt neither esteem nor love for Diard,
+was bound to him forever, by a rash but necessary promise. The man was
+neither handsome nor well-made. His manners, devoid of all distinction,
+were a mixture of the worst army tone, the habits of his province, and
+his own insufficient education. How could she love Diard, she, a young
+girl all grace and elegance, born with an invincible instinct for luxury
+and good taste, her very nature tending toward the sphere of the higher
+social classes? As for esteeming him, she rejected the very thought
+precisely because he had married her. This repulsion was natural. Woman
+is a saintly and noble creature, but almost always misunderstood, and
+nearly always misjudged because she is misunderstood. If Juana had loved
+Diard she would have esteemed him. Love creates in a wife a new woman;
+the woman of the day before no longer exists on the morrow. Putting on
+the nuptial robe of a passion in which life itself is concerned, the
+woman wraps herself in purity and whiteness. Reborn into virtue and
+chastity, there is no past for her; she is all future, and should forget
+the things behind her to relearn life. In this sense the famous words
+which a modern poet has put into the lips of Marion Delorme is infused
+with truth,--
+
+“And Love remade me virgin.”
+
+That line seems like a reminiscence of a tragedy of Corneille, so
+truly does it recall the energetic diction of the father of our modern
+theatre. Yet the poet was forced to sacrifice it to the essentially
+vaudevillist spirit of the pit.
+
+So Juana loveless was doomed to be Juana humiliated, degraded, hopeless.
+She could not honor the man who took her thus. She felt, in all
+the conscientious purity of her youth, that distinction, subtle in
+appearance but sacredly true, legal with the heart’s legality, which
+women apply instinctively to all their feelings, even the least
+reflective. Juana became profoundly sad as she saw the nature and the
+extent of the life before her. Often she turned her eyes, brimming
+with tears proudly repressed, upon Perez and Dona Lagounia, who fully
+comprehended, both of them, the bitter thoughts those tears contained.
+But they were silent: of what good were reproaches now; why look for
+consolations? The deeper they were, the more they enlarged the wound.
+
+One evening, Juana, stupid with grief, heard through the open door of
+her little room, which the old couple had thought shut, a pitying moan
+from her adopted mother.
+
+“The child will die of grief.”
+
+“Yes,” said Perez, in a shaking voice, “but what can we do? I cannot now
+boast of her beauty and her chastity to Comte d’Arcos, to whom I hoped
+to marry her.”
+
+“But a single fault is not vice,” said the old woman, pitying as the
+angels.
+
+“Her mother gave her to this man,” said Perez.
+
+“Yes, in a moment; without consulting the poor child!” cried Dona
+Lagounia.
+
+“She knew what she was doing.”
+
+“But oh! into what hands our pearl is going!”
+
+“Say no more, or I shall seek a quarrel with that Diard.”
+
+“And that would only lead to other miseries.”
+
+Hearing these dreadful words Juana saw the happy future she had lost by
+her own wrongdoing. The pure and simple years of her quiet life would
+have been rewarded by a brilliant existence such as she had fondly
+dreamed,--dreams which had caused her ruin. To fall from the height of
+Greatness to Monsieur Diard! She wept. At times she went nearly mad.
+She floated for a while between vice and religion. Vice was a speedy
+solution, religion a lifetime of suffering. The meditation was stormy
+and solemn. The next day was the fatal day, the day for the marriage.
+But Juana could still remain free. Free, she knew how far her misery
+would go; married, she was ignorant of where it went or what it might
+bring her.
+
+Religion triumphed. Dona Lagounia stayed beside her child and prayed and
+watched as she would have prayed and watched beside the dying.
+
+“God wills it,” she said to Juana.
+
+Nature gives to woman alternately a strength which enables her to suffer
+and a weakness which leads her to resignation. Juana resigned herself;
+and without restriction. She determined to obey her mother’s prayer,
+and cross the desert of life to reach God’s heaven, knowing well that no
+flowers grew for her along the way of that painful journey.
+
+She married Diard. As for the quartermaster, though he had no grace in
+Juana’s eyes, we may well absolve him. He loved her distractedly. The
+Marana, so keen to know the signs of love, had recognized in that man
+the accents of passion and the brusque nature, the generous impulses,
+that are common to Southerners. In the paroxysm of her anger and her
+distress she had thought such qualities enough for her daughter’s
+happiness.
+
+The first days of this marriage were apparently happy; or, to express
+one of those latent facts, the miseries of which are buried by women
+in the depths of their souls, Juana would not cast down her husband’s
+joy,--a double role, dreadful to play, but to which, sooner or later,
+all women unhappily married come. This is a history impossible to
+recount in its full truth. Juana, struggling hourly against her nature,
+a nature both Spanish and Italian, having dried up the source of her
+tears by dint of weeping, was a human type, destined to represent
+woman’s misery in its utmost expression, namely, sorrow undyingly
+active; the description of which would need such minute observations
+that to persons eager for dramatic emotions they would seem insipid.
+This analysis, in which every wife would find some one of her own
+sufferings, would require a volume to express them all; a fruitless,
+hopeless volume by its very nature, the merit of which would consist in
+faintest tints and delicate shadings which critics would declare to be
+effeminate and diffuse. Besides, what man could rightly approach,
+unless he bore another heart within his heart, those solemn and touching
+elegies which certain women carry with them to their tomb; melancholies,
+misunderstood even by those who cause them; sighs unheeded, devotions
+unrewarded,--on earth at least,--splendid silences misconstrued;
+vengeances withheld, disdained; generosities perpetually bestowed and
+wasted; pleasures longed for and denied; angelic charities secretly
+accomplished,--in short, all the religions of womanhood and its
+inextinguishable love.
+
+Juana knew that life; fate spared her nought. She was wholly a wife,
+but a sorrowful and suffering wife; a wife incessantly wounded, yet
+forgiving always; a wife pure as a flawless diamond,--she who had the
+beauty and the glow of the diamond, and in that beauty, that glow, a
+vengeance in her hand; for she was certainly not a woman to fear the
+dagger added to her “dot.”
+
+At first, inspired by a real love, by one of those passions which for
+the time being change even odious characters and bring to light all that
+may be noble in a soul, Diard behaved like a man of honor. He forced
+Montefiore to leave the regiment and even the army corps, so that his
+wife might never meet him during the time they remained in Spain.
+Next, he petitioned for his own removal, and succeeded in entering the
+Imperial Guard. He desired at any price to obtain a title, honors, and
+consideration in keeping with his present wealth. With this idea in
+his mind, he behaved courageously in one of the most bloody battles in
+Germany, but, unfortunately, he was too severely wounded to remain in
+the service. Threatened with the loss of a leg, he was forced to retire
+on a pension, without the title of baron, without those rewards he hoped
+to win, and would have won had he not been Diard.
+
+This event, this wound, and his thwarted hopes contributed to change his
+character. His Provencal energy, roused for a time, sank down. At first
+he was sustained by his wife, in whom his efforts, his courage, his
+ambition had induced some belief in his nature, and who showed herself,
+what women are, tender and consoling in the troubles of life. Inspired
+by a few words from Juana, the retired soldier came to Paris, resolved
+to win in an administrative career a position to command respect, bury
+in oblivion the quartermaster of the 6th of the line, and secure for
+Madame Diard a noble title. His passion for that seductive creature
+enabled him to divine her most secret wishes. Juana expressed nothing,
+but he understood her. He was not loved as a lover dreams of being
+loved; he knew this, and he strove to make himself respected, loved, and
+cherished. He foresaw a coming happiness, poor man, in the patience and
+gentleness shown on all occasions by his wife; but that patience, that
+gentleness, were only the outward signs of the resignation which had
+made her his wife. Resignation, religion, were they love? Often Diard
+wished for refusal where he met with chaste obedience; often he would
+have given his eternal life that Juana might have wept upon his bosom
+and not disguised her secret thoughts behind a smiling face which lied
+to him nobly. Many young men--for after a certain age men no longer
+struggle--persist in the effort to triumph over an evil fate, the
+thunder of which they hear, from time to time, on the horizon of their
+lives; and when at last they succumb and roll down the precipice
+of evil, we ought to do them justice and acknowledge these inward
+struggles.
+
+Like many men Diard tried all things, and all things were hostile to
+him. His wealth enabled him to surround his wife with the enjoyments of
+Parisian luxury. She lived in a fine house, with noble rooms, where she
+maintained a salon, in which abounded artists (by nature no judges
+of men), men of pleasure ready to amuse themselves anywhere, a few
+politicians who swelled the numbers, and certain men of fashion, all
+of whom admired Juana. Those who put themselves before the eyes of the
+public in Paris must either conquer Paris or be subject to it. Diard’s
+character was not sufficiently strong, compact, or persistent to
+command society at that epoch, because it was an epoch when all men were
+endeavoring to rise. Social classifications ready-made are perhaps a
+great boon even for the people. Napoleon has confided to us the pains
+he took to inspire respect in his court, where most of the courtiers had
+been his equals. But Napoleon was Corsican, and Diard Provencal. Given
+equal genius, an islander will always be more compact and rounded than
+the man of terra firma in the same latitude; the arm of the sea which
+separates Corsica from Provence is, in spite of human science, an ocean
+which has made two nations.
+
+Diard’s mongrel position, which he himself made still more questionable,
+brought him great troubles. Perhaps there is useful instruction to be
+derived from the almost imperceptible connection of acts which led to
+the finale of this history.
+
+In the first place, the sneerers of Paris did not see without malicious
+smiles and words the pictures with which the former quartermaster
+adorned his handsome mansion. Works of art purchased the night before
+were said to be spoils from Spain; and this accusation was the revenge
+of those who were jealous of his present fortune. Juana comprehended
+this reproach, and by her advice Diard sent back to Tarragona all the
+pictures he had brought from there. But the public, determined to see
+things in the worst light, only said, “That Diard is shrewd; he has
+sold his pictures.” Worthy people continued to think that those which
+remained in the Diard salons were not honorably acquired. Some jealous
+women asked how it was that a _Diard_ (!) had been able to marry so rich
+and beautiful a young girl. Hence comments and satires without end, such
+as Paris contributes. And yet, it must be said, that Juana met on
+all sides the respect inspired by her pure and religious life, which
+triumphed over everything, even Parisian calumny; but this respect
+stopped short with her, her husband received none of it. Juana’s
+feminine perception and her keen eye hovering over her salons, brought
+her nothing but pain.
+
+This lack of esteem was perfectly natural. Diard’s comrades, in spite of
+the virtues which our imaginations attribute to soldiers, never forgave
+the former quartermaster of the 6th of the line for becoming suddenly so
+rich and for attempting to cut a figure in Paris. Now in Paris, from
+the last house in the faubourg Saint-Germain to the last in the rue
+Saint-Lazare, between the heights of the Luxembourg and the heights of
+Montmartre, all that clothes itself and gabbles, clothes itself to
+go out and goes out to gabble. All that world of great and small
+pretensions, that world of insolence and humble desires, of envy and
+cringing, all that is gilded or tarnished, young or old, noble of
+yesterday or noble from the fourth century, all that sneers at a
+parvenu, all that fears to commit itself, all that wants to demolish
+power and worships power if it resists,--_all_ those ears hear, _all_
+those tongues say, _all_ those minds know, in a single evening, where
+the new-comer who aspires to honor among them was born and brought up,
+and what that interloper has done, or has not done, in the course of his
+life. There may be no court of assizes for the upper classes of society;
+but at any rate they have the most cruel of public prosecutors, an
+intangible moral being, both judge and executioner, who accuses and
+brands. Do not hope to hide anything from him; tell him all yourself;
+he wants to know all and he will know all. Do not ask what mysterious
+telegraph it was which conveyed to him in the twinkling of an eye, at
+any hour, in any place, that story, that bit of news, that scandal;
+do not ask what prompts him. That telegraph is a social mystery;
+no observer can report its effects. Of many extraordinary instances
+thereof, one may suffice: The assassination of the Duc de Berry, which
+occurred at the Opera-house, was related within ten minutes in the
+Ile-Saint-Louis. Thus the opinion of the 6th of the line as to its
+quartermaster filtered through society the night on which he gave his
+first ball.
+
+Diard was therefore debarred from succeeding in society. Henceforth his
+wife alone had the power to make anything of him. Miracle of our strange
+civilization! In Paris, if a man is incapable of being anything himself,
+his wife, when she is young and clever, may give him other chances
+for elevation. We sometimes meet with invalid women, feeble beings
+apparently, who, without rising from sofas or leaving their chambers,
+have ruled society, moved a thousand springs, and placed their husbands
+where their ambition or their vanity prompted. But Juana, whose
+childhood was passed in her retreat in Tarragona, knew nothing of the
+vices, the meannesses, or the resources of Parisian society; she looked
+at that society with the curiosity of a girl, but she learned from it
+only that which her sorrow and her wounded pride revealed to her.
+
+Juana had the tact of a virgin heart which receives impressions in
+advance of the event, after the manner of what are called “sensitives.”
+ The solitary young girl, so suddenly become a woman and a wife, saw
+plainly that were she to attempt to compel society to respect her
+husband, it must be after the manner of Spanish beggars, carbine in
+hand. Besides, the multiplicity of the precautions she would have to
+take, would they meet the necessity? Suddenly she divined society as,
+once before, she had divined life, and she saw nothing around her but
+the immense extent of an irreparable disaster. She had, moreover, the
+additional grief of tardily recognizing her husband’s peculiar form
+of incapacity; he was a man unfitted for any purpose that required
+continuity of ideas. He could not understand a consistent part, such as
+he ought to play in the world; he perceived it neither as a whole nor
+in its gradations, and its gradations were everything. He was in one of
+those positions where shrewdness and tact might have taken the place
+of strength; when shrewdness and tact succeed, they are, perhaps, the
+highest form of strength.
+
+Now Diard, far from arresting the spot of oil on his garments left by
+his antecedents, did his best to spread it. Incapable of studying the
+phase of the empire in the midst of which he came to live in Paris, he
+wanted to be made prefect. At that time every one believed in the genius
+of Napoleon; his favor enhanced the value of all offices. Prefectures,
+those miniature empires, could only be filled by men of great names, or
+chamberlains of H.M. the emperor and king. Already the prefects were
+a species of vizier. The myrmidons of the great man scoffed at Diard’s
+pretensions to a prefecture, whereupon he lowered his demand to a
+sub-prefecture. There was, of course, a ridiculous discrepancy between
+this latter demand and the magnitude of his fortune. To frequent the
+imperial salons and live with insolent luxury, and then to abandon that
+millionaire life and bury himself as sub-prefect at Issoudun or Savenay
+was certainly holding himself below his position. Juana, too late aware
+of our laws and habits and administrative customs, did not enlighten her
+husband soon enough. Diard, desperate, petitioned successively all the
+ministerial powers; repulsed everywhere, he found nothing open to him;
+and society then judged him as the government judged him and as he
+judged himself. Diard, grievously wounded on the battlefield, was
+nevertheless not decorated; the quartermaster, rich as he was, was
+allowed no place in public life, and society logically refused him that
+to which he pretended in its midst.
+
+Finally, to cap all, the luckless man felt in his own home the
+superiority of his wife. Though she used great tact--we might say velvet
+softness if the term were admissible--to disguise from her husband this
+supremacy, which surprised and humiliated herself, Diard ended by being
+affected by it.
+
+At a game of life like this men are either unmanned, or they grow the
+stronger, or they give themselves to evil. The courage or the ardor of
+this man lessened under the reiterated blows which his own faults dealt
+to his self-appreciation, and fault after fault he committed. In the
+first place he had to struggle against his own habits and character.
+A passionate Provencal, frank in his vices as in his virtues, this man
+whose fibres vibrated like the strings of a harp, was all heart to his
+former friends. He succored the shabby and spattered man as readily as
+the needy of rank; in short, he accepted everybody, and gave his hand in
+his gilded salons to many a poor devil. Observing this on one occasion,
+a general of the empire, a variety of the human species of which no
+type will presently remain, refused his hand to Diard, and called him,
+insolently, “my good fellow” when he met him. The few persons of really
+good society whom Diard knew, treated him with that elegant, polished
+contempt against which a new-made man has seldom any weapons. The
+manners, the semi-Italian gesticulations, the speech of Diard, his
+style of dress,--all contributed to repulse the respect which careful
+observation of matters of good taste and dignity might otherwise obtain
+for vulgar persons; the yoke of such conventionalities can only be cast
+off by great and unthinkable powers. So goes the world.
+
+These details but faintly picture the many tortures to which Juana was
+subjected; they came upon her one by one; each social nature pricked her
+with its own particular pin; and to a soul which preferred the thrust of
+a dagger, there could be no worse suffering than this struggle in which
+Diard received insults he did not feel and Juana felt those she did not
+receive. A moment came, an awful moment, when she gained a clear and
+lucid perception of society, and felt in one instant all the sorrows
+which were gathering themselves together to fall upon her head. She
+judged her husband incapable of rising to the honored ranks of the
+social order, and she felt that he would one day descend to where his
+instincts led him. Henceforth Juana felt pity for him.
+
+The future was very gloomy for this young woman. She lived in constant
+apprehension of some disaster. This presentiment was in her soul as
+a contagion is in the air, but she had strength of mind and will to
+disguise her anguish beneath a smile. Juana had ceased to think of
+herself. She used her influence to make Diard resign his various
+pretensions and to show him, as a haven, the peaceful and consoling life
+of home. Evils came from society--why not banish it? In his home Diard
+found peace and respect; he reigned there. She felt herself strong to
+accept the trying task of making him happy,--he, a man dissatisfied with
+himself. Her energy increased with the difficulties of life; she had all
+the secret heroism necessary to her position; religion inspired her with
+those desires which support the angel appointed to protect a Christian
+soul--occult poesy, allegorical image of our two natures!
+
+Diard abandoned his projects, closed his house to the world, and lived
+in his home. But here he found another reef. The poor soldier had one of
+those eccentric souls which need perpetual motion. Diard was one of
+the men who are instinctively compelled to start again the moment they
+arrive, and whose vital object seems to be to come and go incessantly,
+like the wheels mentioned in Holy Writ. Perhaps he felt the need of
+flying from himself. Without wearying of Juana, without blaming Juana,
+his passion for her, rendered tranquil by time, allowed his natural
+character to assert itself. Henceforth his days of gloom were more
+frequent, and he often gave way to southern excitement. The more
+virtuous a woman is and the more irreproachable, the more a man likes
+to find fault with her, if only to assert by that act his legal
+superiority. But if by chance she seems really imposing to him, he feels
+the need of foisting faults upon her. After that, between man and wife,
+trifles increase and grow till they swell to Alps.
+
+But Juana, patient and without pride, gentle and without that bitterness
+which women know so well how to cast into their submission, left Diard
+no chance for planned ill-humor. Besides, she was one of those noble
+creatures to whom it is impossible to speak disrespectfully; her glance,
+in which her life, saintly and pure, shone out, had the weight of a
+fascination. Diard, embarrassed at first, then annoyed, ended by feeling
+that such high virtue was a yoke upon him. The goodness of his wife gave
+him no violent emotions, and violent emotions were what he wanted. What
+myriads of scenes are played in the depths of his souls, beneath the
+cold exterior of lives that are, apparently, commonplace! Among these
+dramas, lasting each but a short time, though they influence life so
+powerfully and are frequently the forerunners of the great misfortune
+doomed to fall on so many marriages, it is difficult to choose an
+example. There was a scene, however, which particularly marked the
+moment when in the life of this husband and wife estrangement began.
+Perhaps it may also serve to explain the finale of this narrative.
+
+Juana had two children, happily for her, two sons. The first was born
+seven months after her marriage. He was called Juan, and he strongly
+resembled his mother. The second was born about two years after her
+arrival in Paris. The latter resembled both Diard and Juana, but more
+particularly Diard. His name was Francisque. For the last five years
+Francisque had been the object of Juana’s most tender and watchful care.
+The mother was constantly occupied with that child; to him her prettiest
+caresses; to him the toys, but to him, especially, the penetrating
+mother-looks. Juana had watched him from his cradle; she had studied his
+cries, his motions; she endeavored to discern his nature that she might
+educate him wisely. It seemed at times as if she had but that one child.
+Diard, seeing that the eldest, Juan, was in a way neglected, took him
+under his own protection; and without inquiring even of himself whether
+the boy was the fruit of that ephemeral love to which he owed his wife,
+he made him his Benjamin.
+
+Of all the sentiments transmitted to her through the blood of her
+grandmothers which consumed her, Madame Diard accepted one alone,
+--maternal love. But she loved her children doubly: first with the
+noble violence of which her mother the Marana had given her the example;
+secondly, with grace and purity, in the spirit of those social
+virtues the practice of which was the glory of her life and her inward
+recompense. The secret thought, the conscience of her motherhood, which
+gave to the Marana’s life its stamp of untaught poesy, was to Juana an
+acknowledged life, an open consolation at all hours. Her mother had
+been virtuous as other women are criminal,--in secret; she had stolen a
+fancied happiness, she had never really tasted it. But Juana, unhappy
+in her virtue as her mother was unhappy in her vice, could enjoy at all
+moments the ineffable delights which her mother had so craved and could
+not have. To her, as to her mother, maternity comprised all earthly
+sentiments. Each, from differing causes, had no other comfort in their
+misery. Juana’s maternal love may have been the strongest because,
+deprived of all other affections, she put the joys she lacked into the
+one joy of her children; and there are noble passions that resemble
+vice; the more they are satisfied the more they increase. Mothers and
+gamblers are alike insatiable.
+
+When Juana saw the generous pardon laid silently on the head of Juan by
+Diard’s fatherly affection, she was much moved, and from the day when
+the husband and wife changed parts she felt for him the true and deep
+interest she had hitherto shown to him as a matter of duty only. If that
+man had been more consistent in his life; if he had not destroyed
+by fitful inconstancy and restlessness the forces of a true though
+excitable sensibility, Juana would doubtless have loved him in the end.
+Unfortunately, he was a type of those southern natures which are keen in
+perceptions they cannot follow out; capable of great things over-night,
+and incapable the next morning; often the victim of their own virtues,
+and often lucky through their worst passions; admirable men in some
+respects, when their good qualities are kept to a steady energy by some
+outward bond. For two years after his retreat from active life Diard
+was held captive in his home by the softest chains. He lived, almost in
+spite of himself, under the influence of his wife, who made herself gay
+and amusing to cheer him, who used the resources of feminine genius
+to attract and seduce him to a love of virtue, but whose ability and
+cleverness did not go so far as to simulate love.
+
+At this time all Paris was talking of the affair of a captain in the
+army who in a paroxysm of libertine jealousy had killed a woman. Diard,
+on coming home to dinner, told his wife that the officer was dead. He
+had killed himself to avoid the dishonor of a trial and the shame of
+death upon the scaffold. Juana did not see at first the logic of
+such conduct, and her husband was obliged to explain to her the fine
+jurisprudence of French law, which does not prosecute the dead.
+
+“But, papa, didn’t you tell us the other day that the king could
+pardon?” asked Francisque.
+
+“The king can give nothing but life,” said Juan, half scornfully.
+
+Diard and Juana, the spectators of this little scene, were differently
+affected by it. The glance, moist with joy, which his wife cast upon her
+eldest child was a fatal revelation to the husband of the secrets of
+a heart hitherto impenetrable. That eldest child was all Juana; Juana
+comprehended him; she was sure of his heart, his future; she adored him,
+but her ardent love was a secret between herself, her child, and God.
+Juan instinctively enjoyed the seeming indifference of his mother in
+presence of his father and brother, for she pressed him to her heart
+when alone. Francisque was Diard, and Juana’s incessant care and
+watchfulness betrayed her desire to correct in the son the vices of the
+father and to encourage his better qualities. Juana, unaware that her
+glance had said too much and that her husband had rightly interpreted
+it, took Francisque in her lap and gave him, in a gentle voice still
+trembling with the pleasure that Juan’s answer had brought her, a lesson
+upon honor, simplified to his childish intelligence.
+
+“That boy’s character requires care,” said Diard.
+
+“Yes,” she replied simply.
+
+“How about Juan?”
+
+Madame Diard, struck by the tone in which the words were uttered, looked
+at her husband.
+
+“Juan was born perfect,” he added.
+
+Then he sat down gloomily, and reflected. Presently, as his wife
+continued silent, he added:--
+
+“You love one of _your_ children better than the other.”
+
+“You know that,” she said.
+
+“No,” said Diard, “I did not know until now which of them you
+preferred.”
+
+“But neither of them have ever given me a moment’s uneasiness,” she
+answered quickly.
+
+“But one of them gives you greater joys,” he said, more quickly still.
+
+“I never counted them,” she said.
+
+“How false you women are!” cried Diard. “Will you dare to say that Juan
+is not the child of your heart?”
+
+“If that were so,” she said, with dignity, “do you think it a
+misfortune?”
+
+“You have never loved me. If you had chosen, I would have conquered
+worlds for your sake. You know all that I have struggled to do in life,
+supported by the hope of pleasing you. Ah! if you had only loved me!”
+
+“A woman who loves,” said Juana, “likes to live in solitude, far from
+the world, and that is what we are doing.”
+
+“I know, Juana, that _you_ are never in the wrong.”
+
+The words were said bitterly, and cast, for the rest of their lives
+together, a coldness between them.
+
+On the morrow of that fatal day Diard went back to his old companions
+and found distractions for his mind in play. Unfortunately, he won
+much money, and continued playing. Little by little, he returned to the
+dissipated life he had formerly lived. Soon he ceased even to dine in
+his own home.
+
+Some months went by in the enjoyment of this new independence; he was
+determined to preserve it, and in order to do so he separated himself
+from his wife, giving her the large apartments and lodging himself in
+the entresol. By the end of the year Diard and Juana only saw each other
+in the morning at breakfast.
+
+Like all gamblers, he had his alternations of loss and gain. Not
+wishing to cut into the capital of his fortune, he felt the necessity
+of withdrawing from his wife the management of their income; and the day
+came when he took from her all she had hitherto freely disposed of
+for the household benefit, giving her instead a monthly stipend. The
+conversation they had on this subject was the last of their married
+intercourse. The silence that fell between them was a true divorce;
+Juana comprehended that from henceforth she was only a mother, and she
+was glad, not seeking for the causes of this evil. For such an event is
+a great evil. Children are conjointly one with husband and wife in the
+home, and the life of her husband could not be a source of grief and
+injury to Juana only.
+
+As for Diard, now emancipated, he speedily grew accustomed to win and
+lose enormous sums. A fine player and a heavy player, he soon became
+celebrated for his style of playing. The social consideration he had
+been unable to win under the Empire, he acquired under the Restoration
+by the rolling of his gold on the green cloth and by his talent for
+all games that were in vogue. Ambassadors, bankers, persons with
+newly-acquired large fortunes, and all those men who, having sucked life
+to the dregs, turn to gambling for its feverish joys, admired Diard at
+their clubs,--seldom in their own houses,--and they all gambled with
+him. He became the fashion. Two or three times during the winter he
+gave a fete as a matter of social pride in return for the civilities he
+received. At such times Juana once more caught a glimpse of the world of
+balls, festivities, luxury, and lights; but for her it was a sort of
+tax imposed upon the comfort of her solitude. She, the queen of these
+solemnities, appeared like a being fallen from some other planet. Her
+simplicity, which nothing had corrupted, her beautiful virginity of
+soul, which her peaceful life restored to her, her beauty and her
+true modesty, won her sincere homage. But observing how few women ever
+entered her salons, she came to understand that though her husband
+was following, without communicating its nature to her, a new line of
+conduct, he had gained nothing actually in the world’s esteem.
+
+Diard was not always lucky; far from it. In three years he had
+dissipated three fourths of his fortune, but his passion for play gave
+him the energy to continue it. He was intimate with a number of men,
+more particularly with the roues of the Bourse, men who, since the
+revolution, have set up the principle that robbery done on a large scale
+is only a _smirch_ to the reputation,--transferring thus to financial
+matters the loose principles of love in the eighteenth century. Diard
+now became a sort of business man, and concerned himself in several of
+those affairs which are called _shady_ in the slang of the law-courts.
+He practised the decent thievery by which so many men, cleverly
+masked, or hidden in the recesses of the political world, make their
+fortunes,--thievery which, if done in the streets by the light of an oil
+lamp, would see a poor devil to the galleys, but, under gilded ceilings
+and by the light of candelabra, is sanctioned. Diard brought up,
+monopolized, and sold sugars; he sold offices; he had the glory of
+inventing the “man of straw” for lucrative posts which it was necessary
+to keep in his own hands for a short time; he bought votes, receiving,
+on one occasion, so much per cent on the purchase of fifteen
+parliamentary votes which all passed on one division from the benches of
+the Left to the benches of the Right. Such actions are no longer crimes
+or thefts,--they are called governing, developing industry, becoming
+a financial power. Diard was placed by public opinion on the bench of
+infamy where many an able man was already seated. On that bench is the
+aristocracy of evil. It is the upper Chamber of scoundrels of high life.
+Diard was, therefore, not a mere commonplace gambler who is seen to be a
+blackguard, and ends by begging. That style of gambler is no longer
+seen in society of a certain topographical height. In these days bold
+scoundrels die brilliantly in the chariot of vice with the trappings of
+luxury. Diard, at least, did not buy his remorse at a low price; he made
+himself one of these privileged men. Having studied the machinery of
+government and learned all the secrets and the passions of the men in
+power, he was able to maintain himself in the fiery furnace into which
+he had sprung.
+
+Madame Diard knew nothing of her husband’s infernal life. Glad of his
+abandonment, she felt no curiosity about him, and all her hours were
+occupied. She devoted what money she had to the education of her
+children, wishing to make men of them, and giving them straight-forward
+reasons, without, however, taking the bloom from their young
+imaginations. Through them alone came her interests and her emotions;
+consequently, she suffered no longer from her blemished life. Her
+children were to her what they are to many mothers for a long period
+of time,--a sort of renewal of their own existence. Diard was now an
+accidental circumstance, not a participator in her life, and since he
+had ceased to be the father and the head of the family, Juana felt
+bound to him by no tie other than that imposed by conventional laws.
+Nevertheless, she brought up her children to the highest respect for
+paternal authority, however imaginary it was for them. In this she was
+greatly seconded by her husband’s continual absence. If he had been much
+in the home Diard would have neutralized his wife’s efforts. The boys
+had too much intelligence and shrewdness not to have judged their
+father; and to judge a father is moral parricide.
+
+In the long run, however, Juana’s indifference to her husband wore
+itself away; it even changed to a species of fear. She understood at
+last how the conduct of a father might long weigh on the future of
+her children, and her motherly solicitude brought her many, though
+incomplete, revelations of the truth. From day to day the dread of some
+unknown but inevitable evil in the shadow of which she lived became
+more and more keen and terrible. Therefore, during the rare moments when
+Diard and Juana met she would cast upon his hollow face, wan from nights
+of gambling and furrowed by emotions, a piercing look, the penetration
+of which made Diard shudder. At such times the assumed gaiety of her
+husband alarmed Juana more than his gloomiest expressions of anxiety
+when, by chance, he forgot that assumption of joy. Diard feared his wife
+as a criminal fears the executioner. In him, Juana saw her children’s
+shame; and in her Diard dreaded a calm vengeance, the judgment of that
+serene brow, an arm raised, a weapon ready.
+
+After fifteen years of marriage Diard found himself without resources.
+He owed three hundred thousand francs and he could scarcely muster one
+hundred thousand. The house, his only visible possession, was mortgaged
+to its fullest selling value. A few days more, and the sort of prestige
+with which opulence had invested him would vanish. Not a hand would be
+offered, not a purse would be open to him. Unless some favorable event
+occurred he would fall into a slough of contempt, deeper perhaps than
+he deserved, precisely because he had mounted to a height he could
+not maintain. At this juncture he happened to hear that a number of
+strangers of distinction, diplomats and others, were assembled at the
+watering-places in the Pyrenees, where they gambled for enormous sums,
+and were doubtless well supplied with money.
+
+He determined to go at once to the Pyrenees; but he would not leave his
+wife in Paris, lest some importunate creditor might reveal to her the
+secret of his horrible position. He therefore took her and the two
+children with him, refusing to allow her to take the tutor and scarcely
+permitting her to take a maid. His tone was curt and imperious; he
+seemed to have recovered some energy. This sudden journey, the cause of
+which escaped her penetration, alarmed Juana secretly. Her husband made
+it gaily. Obliged to occupy the same carriage, he showed himself day
+by day more attentive to the children and more amiable to their
+mother. Nevertheless, each day brought Juana dark presentiments, the
+presentiments of mothers who tremble without apparent reason, but who
+are seldom mistaken when they tremble thus. For them the veil of the
+future seems thinner than for others.
+
+At Bordeaux, Diard hired in a quiet street a quiet little house, neatly
+furnished, and in it he established his wife. The house was at the
+corner of two streets, and had a garden. Joined to the neighboring house
+on one side only, it was open to view and accessible on the other three
+sides. Diard paid the rent in advance, and left Juana barely enough
+money for the necessary expenses of three months, a sum not exceeding
+a thousand francs. Madame Diard made no observation on this unusual
+meanness. When her husband told her that he was going to the
+watering-places and that she would stay at Bordeaux, Juana offered no
+difficulty, and at once formed a plan to teach the children Spanish
+and Italian, and to make them read the two masterpieces of the two
+languages. She was glad to lead a retired life, simply and naturally
+economical. To spare herself the troubles of material life, she arranged
+with a “traiteur” the day after Diard’s departure to send in their
+meals. Her maid then sufficed for the service of the house, and she thus
+found herself without money, but her wants all provided for until her
+husband’s return. Her pleasures consisted in taking walks with the
+children. She was then thirty-three years old. Her beauty, greatly
+developed, was in all its lustre. Therefore as soon as she appeared,
+much talk was made in Bordeaux about the beautiful Spanish stranger. At
+the first advances made to her Juana ceased to walk abroad, and confined
+herself wholly to her own large garden.
+
+Diard at first made a fortune at the baths. In two months he won three
+hundred thousand dollars, but it never occurred to him to send any money
+to his wife; he kept it all, expecting to make some great stroke of
+fortune on a vast stake. Towards the end of the second month the Marquis
+de Montefiore appeared at the same baths. The marquis was at this time
+celebrated for his wealth, his handsome face, his fortunate marriage
+with an Englishwoman, and more especially for his love of play. Diard,
+his former companion, encountered him, and desired to add his spoils to
+those of others. A gambler with four hundred thousand francs in hand is
+always in a position to do as he pleases. Diard, confident in his luck,
+renewed acquaintance with Montefiore. The latter received him very
+coldly, but nevertheless they played together, and Diard lost every
+penny that he possessed, and more.
+
+“My dear Montefiore,” said the ex-quartermaster, after making a tour
+of the salon, “I owe you a hundred thousand francs; but my money is in
+Bordeaux, where I have left my wife.”
+
+Diard had the money in bank-bills in his pocket; but with the
+self-possession and rapid bird’s-eye view of a man accustomed to catch
+at all resources, he still hoped to recover himself by some one of the
+endless caprices of play. Montefiore had already mentioned his intention
+of visiting Bordeaux. Had he paid his debt on the spot, Diard would
+have been left without the power to take his revenge; a revenge at cards
+often exceeds the amount of all preceding losses. But these burning
+expectations depended on the marquis’s reply.
+
+“Wait, my dear fellow,” said Montefiore, “and we will go together to
+Bordeaux. In all conscience, I am rich enough to-day not to wish to take
+the money of an old comrade.”
+
+Three days later Diard and Montefiore were in Bordeaux at a gambling
+table. Diard, having won enough to pay his hundred thousand francs, went
+on until he had lost two hundred thousand more on his word. He was gay
+as a man who swam in gold. Eleven o’clock sounded; the night was superb.
+Montefiore may have felt, like Diard, a desire to breathe the open air
+and recover from such emotions in a walk. The latter proposed to the
+marquis to come home with him to take a cup of tea and get his money.
+
+“But Madame Diard?” said Montefiore.
+
+“Bah!” exclaimed the husband.
+
+They went down-stairs; but before taking his hat Diard entered the
+dining-room of the establishment and asked for a glass of water. While
+it was being brought, he walked up and down the room, and was able,
+without being noticed, to pick up one of those small sharp-pointed steel
+knives with pearl handles which are used for cutting fruit at dessert.
+
+“Where do you live?” said Montefiore, in the courtyard, “for I want to
+send a carriage there to fetch me.”
+
+Diard told him the exact address.
+
+“You see,” said Montefiore, in a low voice, taking Diard’s arm, “that as
+long as I am with you I have nothing to fear; but if I came home alone
+and a scoundrel were to follow me, I should be profitable to kill.”
+
+“Have you much with you?”
+
+“No, not much,” said the wary Italian, “only my winnings. But they would
+make a pretty fortune for a beggar and turn him into an honest man for
+the rest of his life.”
+
+Diard led the marquis along a lonely street where he remembered to have
+seen a house, the door of which was at the end of an avenue of trees
+with high and gloomy walls on either side of it. When they reached this
+spot he coolly invited the marquis to precede him; but as if the latter
+understood him he preferred to keep at his side. Then, no sooner were
+they fairly in the avenue, then Diard, with the agility of a tiger,
+tripped up the marquis with a kick behind the knees, and putting a foot
+on his neck stabbed him again and again to the heart till the blade of
+the knife broke in it. Then he searched Montefiore’s pockets, took his
+wallet, money, everything. But though he had taken the Italian unawares,
+and had done the deed with lucid mind and the quickness of a pickpocket,
+Montefiore had time to cry “Murder! Help!” in a shrill and piercing
+voice which was fit to rouse every sleeper in the neighborhood. His last
+sighs were given in those horrible shrieks.
+
+Diard was not aware that at the moment when they entered the avenue a
+crowd just issuing from a theatre was passing at the upper end of the
+street. The cries of the dying man reached them, though Diard did his
+best to stifle the noise by setting his foot firmly on Montefiore’s
+neck. The crowd began to run towards the avenue, the high walls of which
+appeared to echo back the cries, directing them to the very spot where
+the crime was committed. The sound of their coming steps seemed to beat
+on Diard’s brain. But not losing his head as yet, the murderer left
+the avenue and came boldly into the street, walking very gently, like a
+spectator who sees the inutility of trying to give help. He even turned
+round once or twice to judge of the distance between himself and the
+crowd, and he saw them rushing up the avenue, with the exception of one
+man, who, with a natural sense of caution, began to watch Diard.
+
+“There he is! there he is!” cried the people, who had entered the avenue
+as soon as they saw Montefiore stretched out near the door of the empty
+house.
+
+As soon as that clamor rose, Diard, feeling himself well in the advance,
+began to run or rather to fly, with the vigor of a lion and the bounds
+of a deer. At the other end of the street he saw, or fancied he saw, a
+mass of persons, and he dashed down a cross street to avoid them. But
+already every window was open, and heads were thrust forth right and
+left, while from every door came shouts and gleams of light. Diard kept
+on, going straight before him, through the lights and the noise; and
+his legs were so actively agile that he soon left the tumult behind him,
+though without being able to escape some eyes which took in the
+extent of his course more rapidly than he could cover it. Inhabitants,
+soldiers, gendarmes, every one, seemed afoot in the twinkling of an eye.
+Some men awoke the commissaries of police, others stayed by the body
+to guard it. The pursuit kept on in the direction of the fugitive, who
+dragged it after him like the flame of a conflagration.
+
+Diard, as he ran, had all the sensations of a dream when he heard a
+whole city howling, running, panting after him. Nevertheless, he kept
+his ideas and his presence of mind. Presently he reached the wall of the
+garden of his house. The place was perfectly silent, and he thought he
+had foiled his pursuers, though a distant murmur of the tumult came to
+his ears like the roaring of the sea. He dipped some water from a brook
+and drank it. Then, observing a pile of stones on the road, he hid
+his treasure in it; obeying one of those vague thoughts which come to
+criminals at a moment when the faculty to judge their actions under all
+bearings deserts them, and they think to establish their innocence by
+want of proof of their guilt.
+
+That done, he endeavored to assume a placid countenance; he even tried
+to smile as he rapped softly on the door of his house, hoping that no
+one saw him. He raised his eyes, and through the outer blinds of one
+window came a gleam of light from his wife’s room. Then, in the midst of
+his trouble, visions of her gentle life, spent with her children, beat
+upon his brain with the force of a hammer. The maid opened the door,
+which Diard hastily closed behind him with a kick. For a moment he
+breathed freely; then, noticing that he was bathed in perspiration,
+he sent the servant back to Juana and stayed in the darkness of the
+passage, where he wiped his face with his handkerchief and put his
+clothes in order, like a dandy about to pay a visit to a pretty woman.
+After that he walked into a track of the moonlight to examine his hands.
+A quiver of joy passed over him as he saw that no blood stains were on
+them; the hemorrhage from his victim’s body was no doubt inward.
+
+But all this took time. When at last he mounted the stairs to Juana’s
+room he was calm and collected, and able to reflect on his position,
+which resolved itself into two ideas: to leave the house, and get to the
+wharves. He did not _think_ these ideas, he _saw_ them written in fiery
+letters on the darkness. Once at the wharves he could hide all day,
+return at night for his treasure, then conceal himself, like a rat,
+in the hold of some vessel and escape without any one suspecting
+his whereabouts. But to do all this, money, gold, was his first
+necessity,--and he did not possess one penny.
+
+The maid brought a light to show him up.
+
+“Felicie,” he said, “don’t you hear a noise in the street, shouts,
+cries? Go and see what it means, and come and tell me.”
+
+His wife, in her white dressing-gown, was sitting at a table, reading
+aloud to Francisque and Juan from a Spanish Cervantes, while the boys
+followed her pronunciation of the words from the text. They all three
+stopped and looked at Diard, who stood in the doorway with his hands in
+his pockets; overcome, perhaps, by finding himself in this calm scene,
+so softly lighted, so beautiful with the faces of his wife and children.
+It was a living picture of the Virgin between her son and John.
+
+“Juana, I have something to say to you.”
+
+“What has happened?” she asked, instantly perceiving from the livid
+paleness of her husband that the misfortune she had daily expected was
+upon them.
+
+“Oh, nothing; but I want to speak to you--to you, alone.”
+
+And he glanced at his sons.
+
+“My dears, go to your room, and go to bed,” said Juana; “say your
+prayers without me.”
+
+The boys left the room in silence, with the incurious obedience of
+well-trained children.
+
+“My dear Juana,” said Diard, in a coaxing voice, “I left you with very
+little money, and I regret it now. Listen to me; since I relieved you
+of the care of our income by giving you an allowance, have you not, like
+other women, laid something by?”
+
+“No,” replied Juana, “I have nothing. In making that allowance you did
+not reckon the costs of the children’s education. I don’t say that to
+reproach you, my friend, only to explain my want of money. All that you
+gave me went to pay masters and--”
+
+“Enough!” cried Diard, violently. “Thunder of heaven! every instant is
+precious! Where are your jewels?”
+
+“You know very well I have never worn any.”
+
+“Then there’s not a sou to be had here!” cried Diard, frantically.
+
+“Why do you shout in that way?” she asked.
+
+“Juana,” he replied, “I have killed a man.”
+
+Juana sprang to the door of her children’s room and closed it; then she
+returned.
+
+“Your sons must hear nothing,” she said. “With whom have you fought?”
+
+“Montefiore,” he replied.
+
+“Ah!” she said with a sigh, “the only man you had the right to kill.”
+
+“There were many reasons why he should die by my hand. But I can’t lose
+time--Money, money! for God’s sake, money! I may be pursued. We did not
+fight. I--I killed him.”
+
+“Killed him!” she cried, “how?”
+
+“Why, as one kills anything. He stole my whole fortune and I took it
+back, that’s all. Juana, now that everything is quiet you must go down
+to that heap of stones--you know the heap by the garden wall--and get
+that money, since you haven’t any in the house.”
+
+“The money that you stole?” said Juana.
+
+“What does that matter to you? Have you any money to give me? I tell you
+I must get away. They are on my traces.”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“The people, the police.”
+
+Juana left the room, but returned immediately.
+
+“Here,” she said, holding out to him at arm’s length a jewel, “that is
+Dona Lagounia’s cross. There are four rubies in it, of great value, I
+have been told. Take it and go--go!”
+
+“Felicie hasn’t come back,” he cried, with a sudden thought. “Can she
+have been arrested?”
+
+Juana laid the cross on the table, and sprang to the windows that looked
+on the street. There she saw, in the moonlight, a file of soldiers
+posting themselves in deepest silence along the wall of the house. She
+turned, affecting to be calm, and said to her husband:--
+
+“You have not a minute to lose; you must escape through the garden. Here
+is the key of the little gate.”
+
+As a precaution she turned to the other windows, looking on the garden.
+In the shadow of the trees she saw the gleam of the silver lace on the
+hats of a body of gendarmes; and she heard the distant mutterings of
+a crowd of persons whom sentinels were holding back at the end of the
+streets up which curiosity had drawn them. Diard had, in truth, been
+seen to enter his house by persons at their windows, and on their
+information and that of the frightened maid-servant, who was arrested,
+the troops and the people had blocked the two streets which led to the
+house. A dozen gendarmes, returning from the theatre, had climbed the
+walls of the garden, and guarded all exit in that direction.
+
+“Monsieur,” said Juana, “you cannot escape. The whole town is here.”
+
+Diard ran from window to window with the useless activity of a captive
+bird striking against the panes to escape. Juana stood silent and
+thoughtful.
+
+“Juana, dear Juana, help me! give me, for pity’s sake, some advice.”
+
+“Yes,” said Juana, “I will; and I will save you.”
+
+“Ah! you are always my good angel.”
+
+Juana left the room and returned immediately, holding out to Diard, with
+averted head, one of his own pistols. Diard did not take it. Juana heard
+the entrance of the soldiers into the courtyard, where they laid down
+the body of the murdered man to confront the assassin with the sight of
+it. She turned round and saw Diard white and livid. The man was nearly
+fainting, and tried to sit down.
+
+“Your children implore you,” she said, putting the pistol beneath his
+hand.
+
+“But--my good Juana, my little Juana, do you think--Juana! is it so
+pressing?--I want to kiss you.”
+
+The gendarmes were mounting the staircase. Juana grasped the pistol,
+aimed it at Diard, holding him, in spite of his cries, by the throat;
+then she blew his brains out and flung the weapon on the ground.
+
+At that instant the door was opened violently. The public prosecutor,
+followed by an examining judge, a doctor, a sheriff, and a posse of
+gendarmes, all the representatives, in short, of human justice, entered
+the room.
+
+“What do you want?” asked Juana.
+
+“Is that Monsieur Diard?” said the prosecutor, pointing to the dead body
+bent double on the floor.
+
+“Yes, monsieur.”
+
+“Your gown is covered with blood, madame.”
+
+“Do you not see why?” replied Juana.
+
+She went to the little table and sat down, taking up the volume of
+Cervantes; she was pale, with a nervous agitation which she nevertheless
+controlled, keeping it wholly inward.
+
+“Leave the room,” said the prosecutor to the gendarmes.
+
+Then he signed to the examining judge and the doctor to remain.
+
+“Madame, under the circumstances, we can only congratulate you on the
+death of your husband,” he said. “At least he has died as a soldier
+should, whatever crime his passions may have led him to commit. His act
+renders negatory that of justice. But however we may desire to spare you
+at such a moment, the law requires that we should make an exact report
+of all violent deaths. You will permit us to do our duty?”
+
+“May I go and change my dress?” she asked, laying down the volume.
+
+“Yes, madame; but you must bring it back to us. The doctor may need it.”
+
+“It would be too painful for madame to see me operate,” said the doctor,
+understanding the suspicions of the prosecutor. “Messieurs,” he added,
+“I hope you will allow her to remain in the next room.”
+
+The magistrates approved the request of the merciful physician,
+and Felicie was permitted to attend her mistress. The judge and the
+prosecutor talked together in a low voice. Officers of the law are
+very unfortunate in being forced to suspect all, and to imagine evil
+everywhere. By dint of supposing wicked intentions, and of comprehending
+them, in order to reach the truth hidden under so many contradictory
+actions, it is impossible that the exercise of their dreadful functions
+should not, in the long run, dry up at their source the generous
+emotions they are constrained to repress. If the sensibilities of the
+surgeon who probes into the mysteries of the human body end by growing
+callous, what becomes of those of the judge who is incessantly compelled
+to search the inner folds of the soul? Martyrs to their mission,
+magistrates are all their lives in mourning for their lost illusions;
+crime weighs no less heavily on them than on the criminal. An old man
+seated on the bench is venerable, but a young judge makes a thoughtful
+person shudder. The examining judge in this case was young, and he felt
+obliged to say to the public prosecutor,--
+
+“Do you think that woman was her husband’s accomplice? Ought we to take
+her into custody? Is it best to question her?”
+
+The prosecutor replied, with a careless shrug of his shoulders,--
+
+“Montefiore and Diard were two well-known scoundrels. The maid evidently
+knew nothing of the crime. Better let the thing rest there.”
+
+The doctor performed the autopsy, and dictated his report to the
+sheriff. Suddenly he stopped, and hastily entered the next room.
+
+“Madame--” he said.
+
+Juana, who had removed her bloody gown, came towards him.
+
+“It was you,” he whispered, stooping to her ear, “who killed your
+husband.”
+
+“Yes, monsieur,” she replied.
+
+The doctor returned and continued his dictation as follows,--
+
+“And, from the above assemblage of facts, it appears evident that the
+said Diard killed himself voluntarily and by his own hand.”
+
+“Have you finished?” he said to the sheriff after a pause.
+
+“Yes,” replied the writer.
+
+The doctor signed the report. Juana, who had followed him into the room,
+gave him one glance, repressing with difficulty the tears which for an
+instant rose into her eyes and moistened them.
+
+“Messieurs,” she said to the public prosecutor and the judge, “I am a
+stranger here, and a Spaniard. I am ignorant of the laws, and I know
+no one in Bordeaux. I ask of you one kindness: enable me to obtain a
+passport for Spain.”
+
+“One moment!” cried the examining judge. “Madame, what has become of the
+money stolen from the Marquis de Montefiore?”
+
+“Monsieur Diard,” she replied, “said something to me vaguely about a
+heap of stones, under which he must have hidden it.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“In the street.”
+
+The two magistrates looked at each other. Juana made a noble gesture and
+motioned to the doctor.
+
+“Monsieur,” she said in his ear, “can I be suspected of some infamous
+action? I! The pile of stones must be close to the wall of my garden. Go
+yourself, I implore you. Look, search, find that money.”
+
+The doctor went out, taking with him the examining judge, and together
+they found Montefiore’s treasure.
+
+Within two days Juana had sold her cross to pay the costs of a journey.
+On her way with her two children to take the diligence which would carry
+her to the frontiers of Spain, she heard herself being called in the
+street. Her dying mother was being carried to a hospital, and through
+the curtains of her litter she had seen her daughter. Juana made the
+bearers enter a porte-cochere that was near them, and there the last
+interview between the mother and the daughter took place. Though the two
+spoke to each other in a low voice, Juan heard these parting words,--
+
+“Mother, die in peace; I have suffered for you all.”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Juana, by Honore de Balzac
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Juana, by Honore de Balzac
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Juana, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Juana
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: February 25, 2010 [EBook #1437]
+Last Updated: November 22, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUANA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      JUANA
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      BY HONORE DE BALZAC
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      DEDICATION<br /><br /> To Madame la Comtesse Merlin.<br />
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+    </h3>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <big><b>JUANA</b></big> </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. EXPOSITION </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. AUCTION </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. THE HISTORY OF MADAME DIARD
+            </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      JUANA
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      (THE MARANAS)
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. EXPOSITION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Notwithstanding the discipline which Marechal Suchet had introduced into
+      his army corps, he was unable to prevent a short period of trouble and
+      disorder at the taking of Tarragona. According to certain fair-minded
+      military men, this intoxication of victory bore a striking resemblance to
+      pillage, though the marechal promptly suppressed it. Order being
+      re-established, each regiment quartered in its respective lines, and the
+      commandant of the city appointed, military administration began. The place
+      assumed a mongrel aspect. Though all things were organized on a French
+      system, the Spaniards were left free to follow &ldquo;in petto&rdquo; their national
+      tastes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This period of pillage (it is difficult to determine how long it lasted)
+      had, like all other sublunary effects, a cause, not so difficult to
+      discover. In the marechal&rsquo;s army was a regiment, composed almost entirely
+      of Italians and commanded by a certain Colonel Eugene, a man of remarkable
+      bravery, a second Murat, who, having entered the military service too
+      late, obtained neither a Grand Duchy of Berg nor a Kingdom of Naples, nor
+      balls at the Pizzo. But if he won no crown he had ample opportunity to
+      obtain wounds, and it was not surprising that he met with several. His
+      regiment was composed of the scattered fragments of the Italian legion.
+      This legion was to Italy what the colonial battalions are to France. Its
+      permanent cantonments, established on the island of Elba, served as an
+      honorable place of exile for the troublesome sons of good families and for
+      those great men who have just missed greatness, whom society brands with a
+      hot iron and designates by the term &ldquo;mauvais sujets&rdquo;; men who are for the
+      most part misunderstood; whose existence may become either noble through
+      the smile of a woman lifting them out of their rut, or shocking at the
+      close of an orgy under the influence of some damnable reflection dropped
+      by a drunken comrade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Napoleon had incorporated these vigorous beings in the sixth of the line,
+      hoping to metamorphose them finally into generals,&mdash;barring those
+      whom the bullets might take off. But the emperor&rsquo;s calculation was
+      scarcely fulfilled, except in the matter of the bullets. This regiment,
+      often decimated but always the same in character, acquired a great
+      reputation for valor in the field and for wickedness in private life. At
+      the siege of Tarragona it lost its celebrated hero, Bianchi, the man who,
+      during the campaign, had wagered that he would eat the heart of a Spanish
+      sentinel, and did eat it. Though Bianchi was the prince of the devils
+      incarnate to whom the regiment owed its dual reputation, he had,
+      nevertheless, that sort of chivalrous honor which excuses, in the army,
+      the worst excesses. In a word, he would have been, at an earlier period,
+      an admirable pirate. A few days before his death he distinguished himself
+      by a daring action which the marechal wished to reward. Bianchi refused
+      rank, pension, and additional decoration, asking, for sole recompense, the
+      favor of being the first to mount the breach at the assault on Tarragona.
+      The marechal granted the request and then forgot his promise; but Bianchi
+      forced him to remember Bianchi. The enraged hero was the first to plant
+      our flag on the wall, where he was shot by a monk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This historical digression was necessary, in order to explain how it was
+      that the 6th of the line was the regiment to enter Tarragona, and why the
+      disorder and confusion, natural enough in a city taken by storm,
+      degenerated for a time into a slight pillage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This regiment possessed two officers, not at all remarkable among these
+      men of iron, who played, nevertheless, in the history we shall now relate,
+      a somewhat important part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first, a captain in the quartermaster&rsquo;s department, an officer half
+      civil, half military, was considered, in soldier phrase, to be fighting
+      his own battle. He pretended bravery, boasted loudly of belonging to the
+      6th of the line, twirled his moustache with the air of a man who was ready
+      to demolish everything; but his brother officers did not esteem him. The
+      fortune he possessed made him cautious. He was nicknamed, for two reasons,
+      &ldquo;captain of crows.&rdquo; In the first place, he could smell powder a league
+      off, and took wing at the sound of a musket; secondly, the nickname was
+      based on an innocent military pun, which his position in the regiment
+      warranted. Captain Montefiore, of the illustrious Montefiore family of
+      Milan (though the laws of the Kingdom of Italy forbade him to bear his
+      title in the French service) was one of the handsomest men in the army.
+      This beauty may have been among the secret causes of his prudence on
+      fighting days. A wound which might have injured his nose, cleft his
+      forehead, or scarred his cheek, would have destroyed one of the most
+      beautiful Italian faces which a woman ever dreamed of in all its delicate
+      proportions. This face, not unlike the type which Girodet has given to the
+      dying young Turk, in the &ldquo;Revolt at Cairo,&rdquo; was instinct with that
+      melancholy by which all women are more or less duped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis de Montefiore possessed an entailed property, but his income
+      was mortgaged for a number of years to pay off the costs of certain
+      Italian escapades which are inconceivable in Paris. He had ruined himself
+      in supporting a theatre at Milan in order to force upon a public a very
+      inferior prima donna, whom he was said to love madly. A fine future was
+      therefore before him, and he did not care to risk it for the paltry
+      distinction of a bit of red ribbon. He was not a brave man, but he was
+      certainly a philosopher; and he had precedents, if we may use so
+      parliamentary an expression. Did not Philip the Second register a vow
+      after the battle of Saint Quentin that never again would he put himself
+      under fire? And did not the Duke of Alba encourage him in thinking that
+      the worst trade in the world was the involuntary exchange of a crown for a
+      bullet? Hence, Montefiore was Philippiste in his capacity of rich marquis
+      and handsome man; and in other respects also he was quite as profound a
+      politician as Philip the Second himself. He consoled himself for his
+      nickname, and for the disesteem of the regiment by thinking that his
+      comrades were blackguards, whose opinion would never be of any consequence
+      to him if by chance they survived the present war, which seemed to be one
+      of extermination. He relied on his face to win him promotion; he saw
+      himself made colonel by feminine influence and a carefully managed
+      transition from captain of equipment to orderly officer, and from orderly
+      officer to aide-de-camp on the staff of some easy-going marshal. By that
+      time, he reflected, he should come into his property of a hundred thousand
+      scudi a year, some journal would speak of him as &ldquo;the brave Montefiore,&rdquo;
+       he would marry a girl of rank, and no one would dare to dispute his
+      courage or verify his wounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Montefiore had one friend in the person of the quartermaster,
+      &mdash;a Provencal, born in the neighborhood of Nice, whose name was
+      Diard. A friend, whether at the galleys or in the garret of an artist,
+      consoles for many troubles. Now Montefiore and Diard were two
+      philosophers, who consoled each other for their present lives by the study
+      of vice, as artists soothe the immediate disappointment of their hopes by
+      the expectation of future fame. Both regarded the war in its results, not
+      its action; they simply considered those who died for glory fools. Chance
+      had made soldiers of them; whereas their natural proclivities would have
+      seated them at the green table of a congress. Nature had poured Montefiore
+      into the mould of a Rizzio, and Diard into that of a diplomatist. Both
+      were endowed with that nervous, feverish, half-feminine organization,
+      which is equally strong for good or evil, and from which may emanate,
+      according to the impulse of these singular temperaments, a crime or a
+      generous action, a noble deed or a base one. The fate of such natures
+      depends at any moment on the pressure, more or less powerful, produced on
+      their nervous systems by violent and transitory passions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard was considered a good accountant, but no soldier would have trusted
+      him with his purse or his will, possibly because of the antipathy felt by
+      all real soldiers against the bureaucrats. The quartermaster was not
+      without courage and a certain juvenile generosity, sentiments which many
+      men give up as they grow older, by dint of reasoning or calculating.
+      Variable as the beauty of a fair woman, Diard was a great boaster and a
+      great talker, talking of everything. He said he was artistic, and he made
+      prizes (like two celebrated generals) of works of art, solely, he
+      declared, to preserve them for posterity. His military comrades would have
+      been puzzled indeed to form a correct judgment of him. Many of them,
+      accustomed to draw upon his funds when occasion obliged them, thought him
+      rich; but in truth, he was a gambler, and gamblers may be said to have
+      nothing of their own. Montefiore was also a gambler, and all the officers
+      of the regiment played with the pair; for, to the shame of men be it said,
+      it is not a rare thing to see persons gambling together around a green
+      table who, when the game is finished, will not bow to their companions,
+      feeling no respect for them. Montefiore was the man with whom Bianchi made
+      his bet about the heart of the Spanish sentinel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montefiore and Diard were among the last to mount the breach at Tarragona,
+      but the first in the heart of the town as soon as it was taken. Accidents
+      of this sort happen in all attacks, but with this pair of friends they
+      were customary. Supporting each other, they made their way bravely through
+      a labyrinth of narrow and gloomy little streets in quest of their personal
+      objects; one seeking for painted madonnas, the other for madonnas of flesh
+      and blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In what part of Tarragona it happened I cannot say, but Diard presently
+      recognized by its architecture the portal of a convent, the gate of which
+      was already battered in. Springing into the cloister to put a stop to the
+      fury of the soldiers, he arrived just in time to prevent two Parisians
+      from shooting a Virgin by Albano. In spite of the moustache with which in
+      their military fanaticism they had decorated her face, he bought the
+      picture. Montefiore, left alone during this episode, noticed, nearly
+      opposite the convent, the house and shop of a draper, from which a shot
+      was fired at him at the moment when his eyes caught a flaming glance from
+      those of an inquisitive young girl, whose head was advanced under the
+      shelter of a blind. Tarragona taken by assault, Tarragona furious, firing
+      from every window, Tarragona violated, with dishevelled hair, and
+      half-naked, was indeed an object of curiosity,&mdash;the curiosity of a
+      daring Spanish woman. It was a magnified bull-fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montefiore forgot the pillage, and heard, for the moment, neither the
+      cries, nor the musketry, nor the growling of the artillery. The profile of
+      that Spanish girl was the most divinely delicious thing which he, an
+      Italian libertine, weary of Italian beauty, and dreaming of an impossible
+      woman because he was tired of all women, had ever seen. He could still
+      quiver, he, who had wasted his fortune on a thousand follies, the thousand
+      passions of a young and blase man&mdash;the most abominable monster that
+      society generates. An idea came into his head, suggested perhaps by the
+      shot of the draper-patriot, namely,&mdash;to set fire to the house. But he
+      was now alone, and without any means of action; the fighting was centred
+      in the market-place, where a few obstinate beings were still defending the
+      town. A better idea then occurred to him. Diard came out of the convent,
+      but Montefiore said not a word of his discovery; on the contrary, he
+      accompanied him on a series of rambles about the streets. But the next
+      day, the Italian had obtained his military billet in the house of the
+      draper,&mdash;an appropriate lodging for an equipment captain!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house of the worthy Spaniard consisted, on the ground-floor, of a vast
+      and gloomy shop, externally fortified with stout iron bars, such as we see
+      in the old storehouses of the rue des Lombards. This shop communicated
+      with a parlor lighted from an interior courtyard, a large room breathing
+      the very spirit of the middle-ages, with smoky old pictures, old
+      tapestries, antique &ldquo;brazero,&rdquo; a plumed hat hanging to a nail, the musket
+      of the guerrillas, and the cloak of Bartholo. The kitchen adjoined this
+      unique living-room, where the inmates took their meals and warmed
+      themselves over the dull glow of the brazier, smoking cigars and
+      discoursing bitterly to animate all hearts with hatred against the French.
+      Silver pitchers and precious dishes of plate and porcelain adorned a
+      buttery shelf of the old fashion. But the light, sparsely admitted,
+      allowed these dazzling objects to show but slightly; all things, as in
+      pictures of the Dutch school, looked brown, even the faces. Between the
+      shop and this living-room, so fine in color and in its tone of patriarchal
+      life, was a dark staircase leading to a ware-room where the light,
+      carefully distributed, permitted the examination of goods. Above this were
+      the apartments of the merchant and his wife. Rooms for an apprentice and a
+      servant-woman were in a garret under the roof, which projected over the
+      street and was supported by buttresses, giving a somewhat fantastic
+      appearance to the exterior of the building. These chambers were now taken
+      by the merchant and his wife who gave up their own rooms to the officer
+      who was billeted upon them,&mdash;probably because they wished to avoid
+      all quarrelling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montefiore gave himself out as a former Spanish subject, persecuted by
+      Napoleon, whom he was serving against his will; and these semi-lies had
+      the success he expected. He was invited to share the meals of the family,
+      and was treated with the respect due to his name, his birth, and his
+      title. He had his reasons for capturing the good-will of the merchant and
+      his wife; he scented his madonna as the ogre scented the youthful flesh of
+      Tom Thumb and his brothers. But in spite of the confidence he managed to
+      inspire in the worthy pair the latter maintained the most profound silence
+      as to the said madonna; and not only did the captain see no trace of the
+      young girl during the first day he spent under the roof of the honest
+      Spaniard, but he heard no sound and came upon no indication which revealed
+      her presence in that ancient building. Supposing that she was the only
+      daughter of the old couple, Montefiore concluded they had consigned her to
+      the garret, where, for the time being, they made their home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no revelation came to betray the hiding-place of that precious
+      treasure. The marquis glued his face to the lozenge-shaped leaded panes
+      which looked upon the black-walled enclosure of the inner courtyard; but
+      in vain; he saw no gleam of light except from the windows of the old
+      couple, whom he could see and hear as they went and came and talked and
+      coughed. Of the young girl, not a shadow!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montefiore was far too wary to risk the future of his passion by exploring
+      the house nocturnally, or by tapping softly on the doors. Discovery by
+      that hot patriot, the mercer, suspicious as a Spaniard must be, meant ruin
+      infallibly. The captain therefore resolved to wait patiently, resting his
+      faith on time and the imperfection of men, which always results&mdash;even
+      with scoundrels, and how much more with honest men!&mdash;in the neglect
+      of precautions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day he discovered a hammock in the kitchen, showing plainly where
+      the servant-woman slept. As for the apprentice, his bed was evidently made
+      on the shop counter. During supper on the second day Montefiore succeeded,
+      by cursing Napoleon, in smoothing the anxious forehead of the merchant, a
+      grave, black-visaged Spaniard, much like the faces formerly carved on the
+      handles of Moorish lutes; even the wife let a gay smile of hatred appear
+      in the folds of her elderly face. The lamp and the reflections of the
+      brazier illumined fantastically the shadows of the noble room. The
+      mistress of the house offered a &ldquo;cigarrito&rdquo; to their semi-compatriot. At
+      this moment the rustle of a dress and the fall of a chair behind the
+      tapestry were plainly heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried the wife, turning pale, &ldquo;may the saints assist us! God grant
+      no harm has happened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have some one in the next room, have you not?&rdquo; said Montefiore,
+      giving no sign of emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The draper dropped a word of imprecation against the girls. Evidently
+      alarmed, the wife opened a secret door, and led in, half fainting, the
+      Italian&rsquo;s madonna, to whom he was careful to pay no attention; only, to
+      avoid a too-studied indifference, he glanced at the girl before he turned
+      to his host and said in his own language:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that your daughter, signore?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perez de Lagounia (such was the merchant&rsquo;s name) had large commercial
+      relations with Genoa, Florence, and Livorno; he knew Italian, and replied
+      in the same language:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; if she were my daughter I should take less precautions. The child is
+      confided to our care, and I would rather die than see any evil happen to
+      her. But how is it possible to put sense into a girl of eighteen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is very handsome,&rdquo; said Montefiore, coldly, not looking at her face
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her mother&rsquo;s beauty is celebrated,&rdquo; replied the merchant, briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They continued to smoke, watching each other. Though Montefiore compelled
+      himself not to give the slightest look which might contradict his apparent
+      coldness, he could not refrain, at a moment when Perez turned his head to
+      expectorate, from casting a rapid glance at the young girl, whose
+      sparkling eyes met his. Then, with that science of vision which gives to a
+      libertine, as it does to a sculptor, the fatal power of disrobing, if we
+      may so express it, a woman, and divining her shape by inductions both
+      rapid and sagacious, he beheld one of those masterpieces of Nature whose
+      creation appears to demand as its right all the happiness of love. Here
+      was a fair young face, on which the sun of Spain had cast faint tones of
+      bistre which added to its expression of seraphic calmness a passionate
+      pride, like a flash of light infused beneath that diaphanous complexion,&mdash;due,
+      perhaps, to the Moorish blood which vivified and colored it. Her hair,
+      raised to the top of her head, fell thence with black reflections round
+      the delicate transparent ears and defined the outlines of a blue-veined
+      throat. These luxuriant locks brought into strong relief the dazzling eyes
+      and the scarlet lips of a well-arched mouth. The bodice of the country set
+      off the lines of a figure that swayed as easily as a branch of willow. She
+      was not the Virgin of Italy, but the Virgin of Spain, of Murillo, the only
+      artist daring enough to have painted the Mother of God intoxicated with
+      the joy of conceiving the Christ,&mdash;the glowing imagination of the
+      boldest and also the warmest of painters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this young girl three things were united, a single one of which would
+      have sufficed for the glory of a woman: the purity of the pearl in the
+      depths of ocean; the sublime exaltation of the Spanish Saint Teresa; and a
+      passion of love which was ignorant of itself. The presence of such a woman
+      has the virtue of a talisman. Montefiore no longer felt worn and jaded.
+      That young girl brought back his youthful freshness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, though the apparition was delightful, it did not last. The girl was
+      taken back to the secret chamber, where the servant-woman carried to her
+      openly both light and food.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do right to hide her,&rdquo; said Montefiore in Italian. &ldquo;I will keep your
+      secret. The devil! we have generals in our army who are capable of
+      abducting her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Montefiore&rsquo;s infatuation went so far as to suggest to him the idea of
+      marrying her. He accordingly asked her history, and Perez very willingly
+      told him the circumstances under which she had become his ward. The
+      prudent Spaniard was led to make this confidence because he had heard of
+      Montefiore in Italy, and knowing his reputation was desirous to let him
+      see how strong were the barriers which protected the young girl from the
+      possibility of seduction. Though the good-man was gifted with a certain
+      patriarchal eloquence, in keeping with his simple life and customs, his
+      tale will be improved by abridgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the period when the French Revolution changed the manners and morals of
+      every country which served as the scene of its wars, a street prostitute
+      came to Tarragona, driven from Venice at the time of its fall. The life of
+      this woman had been a tissue of romantic adventures and strange
+      vicissitudes. To her, oftener than to any other woman of her class, it had
+      happened, thanks to the caprice of great lords struck with her
+      extraordinary beauty, to be literally gorged with gold and jewels and all
+      the delights of excessive wealth,&mdash;flowers, carriages, pages, maids,
+      palaces, pictures, journeys (like those of Catherine II.); in short, the
+      life of a queen, despotic in her caprices and obeyed, often beyond her own
+      imaginings. Then, without herself, or any one, chemist, physician, or man
+      of science, being able to discover how her gold evaporated, she would find
+      herself back in the streets, poor, denuded of everything, preserving
+      nothing but her all-powerful beauty, yet living on without thought or care
+      of the past, the present, or the future. Cast, in her poverty, into the
+      hands of some poor gambling officer, she attached herself to him as a dog
+      to its master, sharing the discomforts of the military life, which indeed
+      she comforted, as content under the roof of a garret as beneath the silken
+      hangings of opulence. Italian and Spanish both, she fulfilled very
+      scrupulously the duties of religion, and more than once she had said to
+      love:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Return to-morrow; to-day I belong to God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But this slime permeated with gold and perfumes, this careless
+      indifference to all things, these unbridled passions, these religious
+      beliefs cast into that heart like diamonds into mire, this life begun, and
+      ended, in a hospital, these gambling chances transferred to the soul, to
+      the very existence,&mdash;in short, this great alchemy, for which vice lit
+      the fire beneath the crucible in which fortunes were melted up and the
+      gold of ancestors and the honor of great names evaporated, proceeded from
+      a <i>cause</i>, a particular heredity, faithfully transmitted from mother
+      to daughter since the middle ages. The name of this woman was La Marana.
+      In her family, existing solely in the female line, the idea, person, name
+      and power of a father had been completely unknown since the thirteenth
+      century. The name Marana was to her what the designation of Stuart is to
+      the celebrated royal race of Scotland, a name of distinction substituted
+      for the patronymic name by the constant heredity of the same office
+      devolving on the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Formerly, in France, Spain, and Italy, when those three countries had, in
+      the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, mutual interests which united and
+      disunited them by perpetual warfare, the name Marana served to express in
+      its general sense, a prostitute. In those days women of that sort had a
+      certain rank in the world of which nothing in our day can give an idea.
+      Ninon de l&rsquo;Enclos and Marian Delorme have alone played, in France, the
+      role of the Imperias, Catalinas, and Maranas who, in preceding centuries,
+      gathered around them the cassock, gown, and sword. An Imperia built I
+      forget which church in Rome in a frenzy of repentance, as Rhodope built,
+      in earlier times, a pyramid in Egypt. The name Marana, inflicted at first
+      as a disgrace upon the singular family with which we are now concerned,
+      had ended by becoming its veritable name and by ennobling its vice by
+      incontestable antiquity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, a day of opulence or of penury I know not which, for this event
+      was a secret between herself and God, but assuredly it was in a moment of
+      repentance and melancholy, this Marana of the nineteenth century stood
+      with her feet in the slime and her head raised to heaven. She cursed the
+      blood in her veins, she cursed herself, she trembled lest she should have
+      a daughter, and she swore, as such women swear, on the honor and with the
+      will of the galleys&mdash;the firmest will, the most scrupulous honor that
+      there is on earth&mdash;she swore, before an altar, and believing in that
+      altar, to make her daughter a virtuous creature, a saint, and thus to
+      gain, after that long line of lost women, criminals in love, an angel in
+      heaven for them all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vow once made, the blood of the Maranas spoke; the courtesan returned
+      to her reckless life, a thought the more within her heart. At last she
+      loved, with the violent love of such women, as Henrietta Wilson loved Lord
+      Ponsonby, as Mademoiselle Dupuis loved Bolingbroke, as the Marchesa
+      Pescara loved her husband&mdash;but no, she did not love, she adored one
+      of those fair men, half women, to whom she gave the virtues which she had
+      not, striving to keep for herself all that there was of vice between them.
+      It was from that weak man, that senseless marriage unblessed by God or man
+      which happiness is thought to justify, but which no happiness absolves,
+      and for which men blush at last, that she had a daughter, a daughter to
+      save, a daughter for whom to desire a noble life and the chastity she had
+      not. Henceforth, happy or not happy, opulent or beggared, she had in her
+      heart a pure, untainted sentiment, the highest of all human feelings
+      because the most disinterested. Love has its egotism, but motherhood has
+      none. La Marana was a mother like none other; for, in her total, her
+      eternal shipwreck, motherhood might still redeem her. To accomplish
+      sacredly through life the task of sending a pure soul to heaven, was not
+      that a better thing than a tardy repentance? was it not, in truth, the
+      only spotless prayer which she could lift to God?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, when this daughter, when her Marie-Juana-Pepita (she would fain have
+      given her all the saints in the calendar as guardians), when this dear
+      little creature was granted to her, she became possessed of so high an
+      idea of the dignity of motherhood that she entreated vice to grant her a
+      respite. She made herself virtuous and lived in solitude. No more fetes,
+      no more orgies, no more love. All joys, all fortunes were centred now in
+      the cradle of her child. The tones of that infant voice made an oasis for
+      her soul in the burning sands of her existence. That sentiment could not
+      be measured or estimated by any other. Did it not, in fact, comprise all
+      human sentiments, all heavenly hopes? La Marana was so resolved not to
+      soil her daughter with any stain other than that of birth, that she sought
+      to invest her with social virtues; she even obliged the young father to
+      settle a handsome patrimony upon the child and to give her his name. Thus
+      the girl was not know as Juana Marana, but as Juana di Mancini.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, after seven years of joy, and kisses, and intoxicating happiness,
+      the time came when the poor Marana deprived herself of her idol. That
+      Juana might never bow her head under their hereditary shame, the mother
+      had the courage to renounce her child for her child&rsquo;s sake, and to seek,
+      not without horrible suffering, for another mother, another home, other
+      principles to follow, other and saintlier examples to imitate. The
+      abdication of a mother is either a revolting act or a sublime one; in this
+      case, was it not sublime?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Tarragona a lucky accident threw the Lagounias in her way, under
+      circumstances which enabled her to recognize the integrity of the Spaniard
+      and the noble virtue of his wife. She came to them at a time when her
+      proposal seemed that of a liberating angel. The fortune and honor of the
+      merchant, momentarily compromised, required a prompt and secret succor. La
+      Marana made over to the husband the whole sum she had obtained of the
+      father for Juana&rsquo;s &ldquo;dot,&rdquo; requiring neither acknowledgment nor interest.
+      According to her own code of honor, a contract, a trust, was a thing of
+      the heart, and God its supreme judge. After stating the miseries of her
+      position to Dona Lagounia, she confided her daughter and her daughter&rsquo;s
+      fortune to the fine old Spanish honor, pure and spotless, which filled the
+      precincts of that ancient house. Dona Lagounia had no child, and she was
+      only too happy to obtain one to nurture. The mother then parted from her
+      Juana, convinced that the child&rsquo;s future was safe, and certain of having
+      found her a mother, a mother who would bring her up as a Mancini, and not
+      as a Marana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving her child in the simple modest house of the merchant where the
+      burgher virtues reigned, where religion and sacred sentiments and honor
+      filled the air, the poor prostitute, the disinherited mother was enabled
+      to bear her trial by visions of Juana, virgin, wife, and mother, a mother
+      throughout her life. On the threshold of that house Marana left a tear
+      such as the angels garner up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since that day of mourning and hope the mother, drawn by some invincible
+      presentiment, had thrice returned to see her daughter. Once when Juana
+      fell ill with a dangerous complaint:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew it,&rdquo; she said to Perez when she reached the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asleep, she had seen her Juana dying. She nursed her and watched her,
+      until one morning, sure of the girl&rsquo;s convalescence, she kissed her, still
+      asleep, on the forehead and left her without betraying whom she was. A
+      second time the Marana came to the church where Juana made her first
+      communion. Simply dressed, concealing herself behind a column, the exiled
+      mother recognized herself in her daughter such as she once had been, pure
+      as the snow fresh-fallen on the Alps. A courtesan even in maternity, the
+      Marana felt in the depths of her soul a jealous sentiment, stronger for
+      the moment than that of love, and she left the church, incapable of
+      resisting any longer the desire to kill Dona Lagounia, as she sat there,
+      with radiant face, too much the mother of her child. A third and last
+      meeting had taken place between mother and daughter in the streets of
+      Milan, to which city the merchant and his wife had paid a visit. The
+      Marana drove through the Corso in all the splendor of a sovereign; she
+      passed her daughter like a flash of lightning and was not recognized.
+      Horrible anguish! To this Marana, surfeited with kisses, one was lacking,
+      a single one, for which she would have bartered all the others: the
+      joyous, girlish kiss of a daughter to a mother, an honored mother, a
+      mother in whom shone all the domestic virtues. Juana living was dead to
+      her. One thought revived the soul of the courtesan&mdash;a precious
+      thought! Juana was henceforth safe. She might be the humblest of women,
+      but at least she was not what her mother was&mdash;an infamous courtesan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The merchant and his wife had fulfilled their trust with scrupulous
+      integrity. Juana&rsquo;s fortune, managed by them, had increased tenfold. Perez
+      de Lagounia, now the richest merchant in the provinces, felt for the young
+      girl a sentiment that was semi-superstitious. Her money had preserved his
+      ancient house from dishonorable ruin, and the presence of so precious a
+      treasure had brought him untold prosperity. His wife, a heart of gold, and
+      full of delicacy, had made the child religious, and as pure as she was
+      beautiful. Juana might well become the wife of either a great seigneur or
+      a wealthy merchant; she lacked no virtue necessary to the highest destiny.
+      Perez had intended taking her to Madrid and marrying her to some grandee,
+      but the events of the present war delayed the fulfilment of this project.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know where the Marana now is,&rdquo; said Perez, ending the above
+      history, &ldquo;but in whatever quarter of the world she may be living, when she
+      hears of the occupation of our province by your armies, and of the siege
+      of Tarragona, she will assuredly set out at once to come here and see to
+      her daughter&rsquo;s safety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. AUCTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The foregoing narrative changed the intentions of the Italian captain; no
+      longer did he think of making a Marchesa di Montefiore of Juana di
+      Mancini. He recognized the blood of the Maranas in the glance the girl had
+      given from behind the blinds, in the trick she had just played to satisfy
+      her curiosity, and also in the parting look she had cast upon him. The
+      libertine wanted a virtuous woman for a wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The adventure was full of danger, but danger of a kind that never daunts
+      the least courageous man, for love and pleasure followed it. The
+      apprentice sleeping in the shop, the cook bivouacking in the kitchen,
+      Perez and his wife sleeping, no doubt, the wakeful sleep of the aged, the
+      echoing sonority of the old mansion, the close surveillance of the girl in
+      the day-time,&mdash;all these things were obstacles, and made success a
+      thing well-nigh impossible. But Montefiore had in his favor against all
+      impossibilities the blood of the Maranas which gushed in the heart of that
+      inquisitive girl, Italian by birth, Spanish in principles, virgin indeed,
+      but impatient to love. Passion, the girl, and Montefiore were ready and
+      able to defy the whole universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montefiore, impelled as much by the instinct of a man of gallantry as by
+      those vague hopes which cannot be explained, and to which we give the name
+      of presentiments (a word of astonishing verbal accuracy), Montefiore spent
+      the first hours of the night at his window, endeavoring to look below him
+      to the secret apartment where, undoubtedly, the merchant and his wife had
+      hidden the love and joyfulness of their old age. The ware-room of the
+      &ldquo;entresol&rdquo; separated him from the rooms on the ground-floor. The captain
+      therefore could not have recourse to noises significantly made from one
+      floor to the other, an artificial language which all lovers know well how
+      to create. But chance, or it may have been the young girl herself, came to
+      his assistance. At the moment when he stationed himself at his window, he
+      saw, on the black wall of the courtyard, a circle of light, in the centre
+      of which the silhouette of Juana was clearly defined; the consecutive
+      movement of the arms, and the attitude, gave evidence that she was
+      arranging her hair for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she alone?&rdquo; Montefiore asked himself; &ldquo;could I, without danger, lower
+      a letter filled with coin and strike it against that circular window in
+      her hiding-place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At once he wrote a note, the note of a man exiled by his family to Elba,
+      the note of a degraded marquis now a mere captain of equipment. Then he
+      made a cord of whatever he could find that was capable of being turned
+      into string, filled the note with a few silver crowns, and lowered it in
+      the deepest silence to the centre of that spherical gleam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The shadows will show if her mother or the servant is with her,&rdquo; thought
+      Montefiore. &ldquo;If she is not alone, I can pull up the string at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, after succeeding with infinite trouble in striking the glass, a
+      single form, the little figure of Juana, appeared upon the wall. The young
+      girl opened her window cautiously, saw the note, took it, and stood before
+      the window while she read it. In it, Montefiore had given his name and
+      asked for an interview, offering, after the style of the old romances, his
+      heart and hand to the Signorina Juana di Mancini&mdash;a common trick, the
+      success of which is nearly always certain. At Juana&rsquo;s age, nobility of
+      soul increases the dangers which surround youth. A poet of our day has
+      said: &ldquo;Woman succumbs only to her own nobility. The lover pretends to
+      doubt the love he inspires at the moment when he is most beloved; the
+      young girl, confident and proud, longs to make sacrifices to prove her
+      love, and knows the world and men too little to continue calm in the midst
+      of her rising emotions and repel with contempt the man who accepts a life
+      offered in expiation of a false reproach.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since the constitution of societies the young girl finds herself torn
+      by a struggle between the caution of prudent virtue and the evils of
+      wrong-doing. Often she loses a love, delightful in prospect, and the
+      first, if she resists; on the other hand, she loses a marriage if she is
+      imprudent. Casting a glance over the vicissitudes of social life in Paris,
+      it is impossible to doubt the necessity of religion; and yet Paris is
+      situated in the forty-eighth degree of latitude, while Tarragona is in the
+      forty-first. The old question of climates is still useful to narrators to
+      explain the sudden denouements, the imprudences, or the resistances of
+      love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montefiore kept his eyes fixed on the exquisite black profile projected by
+      the gleam upon the wall. Neither he nor Juana could see each other; a
+      troublesome cornice, vexatiously placed, deprived them of the mute
+      correspondence which may be established between a pair of lovers as they
+      bend to each other from their windows. Thus the mind and the attention of
+      the captain were concentrated on that luminous circle where, without
+      perhaps knowing it herself, the young girl would, he thought, innocently
+      reveal her thoughts by a series of gestures. But no! The singular motions
+      she proceeded to make gave not a particle of hope to the expectant lover.
+      Juana was amusing herself by cutting up his missive. But virtue and
+      innocence sometimes imitate the clever proceedings inspired by jealousy to
+      the Bartholos of comedy. Juana, without pens, ink, or paper, was replying
+      by snip of scissors. Presently she refastened the note to the string; the
+      officer drew it up, opened it, and read by the light of his lamp one word,
+      carefully cut out of the paper: COME.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; he said to himself; &ldquo;but what of poison? or the dagger or carbine
+      of Perez? And that apprentice not yet asleep, perhaps, in the shop? and
+      the servant in her hammock? Besides, this old house echoes the slightest
+      sound; I can hear old Perez snoring even here. Come, indeed! She can have
+      nothing more to lose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bitter reflection! rakes alone are logical and will punish a woman for
+      devotion. Man created Satan and Lovelace; but a virgin is an angel on whom
+      he can bestow naught but his own vices. She is so grand, so beautiful,
+      that he cannot magnify or embellish her; he has only the fatal power to
+      blast her and drag her down into his own mire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montefiore waited for a later and more somnolent hour of the night; then,
+      in spite of his reflections, he descended the stairs without boots, armed
+      with his pistols, moving step by step, stopping to question the silence,
+      putting forth his hands, measuring the stairs, peering into the darkness,
+      and ready at the slightest incident to fly back into his room. The Italian
+      had put on his handsomest uniform; he had perfumed his black hair, and now
+      shone with the particular brilliancy which dress and toilet bestow upon
+      natural beauty. Under such circumstances most men are as feminine as a
+      woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The marquis arrived without hindrance before the secret door of the room
+      in which the girl was hidden, a sort of cell made in the angle of the
+      house and belonging exclusively to Juana, who had remained there hidden
+      during the day from every eye while the siege lasted. Up to the present
+      time she had slept in the room of her adopted mother, but the limited
+      space in the garret where the merchant and his wife had gone to make room
+      for the officer who was billeted upon them, did not allow of her going
+      with them. Dona Lagounia had therefore left the young girl to the
+      guardianship of lock and key, under the protection of religious ideas, all
+      the more efficacious because they were partly superstitious, and also
+      under the shield of a native pride and sensitive modesty which made the
+      young Mancini in sort an exception among her sex. Juana possessed in an
+      equal degree the most attaching virtues and the most passionate impulses;
+      she had needed the modesty and sanctity of this monotonous life to calm
+      and cool the tumultuous blood of the Maranas which bounded in her heart,
+      the desires of which her adopted mother told her were an instigation of
+      the devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint ray of light traced along the sill of the secret door guided
+      Montefiore to the place; he scratched the panel softly and Juana opened to
+      him. Montefiore entered, palpitating, but he recognized in the expression
+      of the girl&rsquo;s face complete ignorance of her peril, a sort of naive
+      curiosity, and an innocent admiration. He stopped short, arrested for a
+      moment by the sacredness of the picture which met his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw before him a tapestry on the walls with a gray ground sprinkled
+      with violets, a little coffer of ebony, an antique mirror, an immense and
+      very old arm chair also in ebony and covered with tapestry, a table with
+      twisted legs, a pretty carpet on the floor, near the table a single chair;
+      and that was all. On the table, however, were flowers and embroidery; in a
+      recess at the farther end of the room was the narrow little bed where
+      Juana dreamed. Above the bed were three pictures; and near the pillow a
+      crucifix, with a holy water basin and a prayer, printed in letters of gold
+      and framed. Flowers exhaled their perfume faintly; the candles cast a
+      tender light; all was calm and pure and sacred. The dreamy thoughts of
+      Juana, but above all Juana herself, had communicated to all things her own
+      peculiar charm; her soul appeared to shine there, like the pearl in its
+      matrix. Juana, dressed in white, beautiful with naught but her own beauty,
+      laying down her rosary to answer love, might have inspired respect, even
+      in a Montefiore, if the silence, if the night, if Juana herself had not
+      seemed so amorous. Montefiore stood still, intoxicated with an unknown
+      happiness, possibly that of Satan beholding heaven through a rift of the
+      clouds which form its enclosure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As soon as I saw you,&rdquo; he said in pure Tuscan, and in the modest tone of
+      voice so peculiarly Italian, &ldquo;I loved you. My soul and my life are now in
+      you, and in you they will be forever, if you will have it so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana listened, inhaling from the atmosphere the sound of these words
+      which the accents of love made magnificent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor child! how have you breathed so long the air of this dismal house
+      without dying of it? You, made to reign in the world, to inhabit the
+      palace of a prince, to live in the midst of fetes, to feel the joys which
+      love bestows, to see the world at your feet, to efface all other beauty by
+      your own which can have no rival&mdash;you, to live here, solitary, with
+      those two shopkeepers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Adroit question! He wished to know if Juana had a lover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;But who can have told you my secret thoughts? For
+      the last few months I have nearly died of sadness. Yes, I would <i>rather</i>
+      die than stay longer in this house. Look at that embroidery; there is not
+      a stitch there which I did not set with dreadful thoughts. How many times
+      I have thought of escaping to fling myself into the sea! Why? I don&rsquo;t know
+      why,&mdash;little childish troubles, but very keen, though they are so
+      silly. Often I have kissed my mother at night as one would kiss a mother
+      for the last time, saying in my heart: &lsquo;To-morrow I will kill myself.&rsquo; But
+      I do not die. Suicides go to hell, you know, and I am so afraid of hell
+      that I resign myself to live, to get up in the morning and go to bed at
+      night, and work the same hours, and do the same things. I am not so weary
+      of it, but I suffer&mdash;And yet, my father and mother adore me. Oh! I am
+      bad, I am bad; I say so to my confessor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you always live here alone, without amusement, without pleasures?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I have not always been like this. Till I was fifteen the festivals of
+      the church, the chants, the music gave me pleasure. I was happy, feeling
+      myself like the angels without sin and able to communicate every week&mdash;I
+      loved God then. But for the last three years, from day to day, all things
+      have changed. First, I wanted flowers here&mdash;and I have them, lovely
+      flowers! Then I wanted&mdash;but I want nothing now,&rdquo; she added, after a
+      pause, smiling at Montefiore. &ldquo;Have you not said that you would love me
+      always?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my Juana,&rdquo; cried Montefiore, softly, taking her round the waist and
+      pressing her to his heart, &ldquo;yes. But let me speak to you as you speak to
+      God. Are you not as beautiful as Mary in heaven? Listen. I swear to you,&rdquo;
+       he continued, kissing her hair, &ldquo;I swear to take that forehead for my
+      altar, to make you my idol, to lay at your feet all the luxuries of the
+      world. For you, my palace at Milan; for you my horses, my jewels, the
+      diamonds of my ancient family; for you, each day, fresh jewels, a thousand
+      pleasures, and all the joys of earth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said reflectively, &ldquo;I would like that; but I feel within my
+      soul that I would like better than all the world my husband. Mio caro
+      sposo!&rdquo; she said, as if it were impossible to give in any other language
+      the infinite tenderness, the loving elegance with which the Italian tongue
+      and accent clothe those delightful words. Besides, Italian was Juana&rsquo;s
+      maternal language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should find,&rdquo; she continued, with a glance at Montefiore in which shone
+      the purity of the cherubim, &ldquo;I should find in <i>him</i> my dear religion,
+      him and God&mdash;God and him. Is he to be you?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Yes, surely it
+      will be you,&rdquo; she cried, after a pause. &ldquo;Come, and see the picture my
+      father brought me from Italy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took a candle, made a sign to Montefiore, and showed him at the foot
+      of her bed a Saint Michael overthrowing the demon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;has he not your eyes? When I saw you from my window in
+      the street, our meeting seemed to me a sign from heaven. Every day during
+      my morning meditation, while waiting for my mother to call me to prayer, I
+      have so gazed at that picture, that angel, that I have ended by thinking
+      him my husband&mdash;oh! heavens, I speak to you as though you were
+      myself. I must seem crazy to you; but if you only knew how a poor captive
+      wants to tell the thoughts that choke her! When alone, I talk to my
+      flowers, to my tapestry; they can understand me better, I think, than my
+      father and mother, who are so grave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Juana,&rdquo; said Montefiore, taking her hands and kissing them with the
+      passion that gushed in his eyes, in his gestures, in the tones of his
+      voice, &ldquo;speak to me as your husband, as yourself. I have suffered all that
+      you have suffered. Between us two few words are needed to make us
+      comprehend our past, but there will never be enough to express our coming
+      happiness. Lay your hand upon my heart. Feel how it beats. Let us promise
+      before God, who sees and hears us, to be faithful to each other throughout
+      our lives. Here, take my ring&mdash;and give me yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give you my ring!&rdquo; she said in terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; asked Montefiore, uneasy at such artlessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But our holy father the Pope has blessed it; it was put upon my finger in
+      childhood by a beautiful lady who took care of me, and who told me never
+      to part with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Juana, you cannot love me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;here it is; take it. You, are you not another myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out the ring with a trembling hand, holding it tightly as she
+      looked at Montefiore with a clear and penetrating eye that questioned him.
+      That ring! all of herself was in it; but she gave it to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my Juana!&rdquo; said Montefiore, again pressing her in his arms. &ldquo;I should
+      be a monster indeed if I deceived you. I will love you forever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana was thoughtful. Montefiore, reflecting that in this first interview
+      he ought to venture upon nothing that might frighten a young girl so
+      ignorantly pure, so imprudent by virtue rather than from desire, postponed
+      all further action to the future, relying on his beauty, of which he knew
+      the power, and on this innocent ring-marriage, the hymen of the heart, the
+      lightest, yet the strongest of all ceremonies. For the rest of that night,
+      and throughout the next day, Juana&rsquo;s imagination was the accomplice of her
+      passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this first evening Montefiore forced himself to be as respectful as he
+      was tender. With that intention, in the interests of his passion and the
+      desires with which Juana inspired him, he was caressing and unctuous in
+      language; he launched the young creature into plans for a new existence,
+      described to her the world under glowing colors, talked to her of
+      household details always attractive to the mind of girls, giving her a
+      sense of the rights and realities of love. Then, having agreed upon the
+      hour for their future nocturnal interviews, he left her happy, but
+      changed; the pure and pious Juana existed no longer; in the last glance
+      she gave him, in the pretty movement by which she brought her forehead to
+      his lips, there was already more of passion than a girl should feel.
+      Solitude, weariness of employments contrary to her nature had brought this
+      about. To make the daughter of the Maranas truly virtuous, she ought to
+      have been habituated, little by little, to the world, or else to have been
+      wholly withdrawn from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The day, to-morrow, will seem very long to me,&rdquo; she said, receiving his
+      kisses on her forehead. &ldquo;But stay in the salon, and speak loud, that I may
+      hear your voice; it fills my soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Montefiore, clever enough to imagine the girl&rsquo;s life, was all the more
+      satisfied with himself for restraining his desires because he saw that it
+      would lead to his greater contentment. He returned to his room without
+      accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten days went by without any event occurring to trouble the peace and
+      solitude of the house. Montefiore employed his Italian cajolery on old
+      Perez, on Dona Lagounia, on the apprentice, even on the cook, and they all
+      liked him; but, in spite of the confidence he now inspired in them, he
+      never asked to see Juana, or to have the door of her mysterious
+      hiding-place opened to him. The young girl, hungry to see her lover,
+      implored him to do so; but he always refused her from an instinct of
+      prudence. Besides, he had used his best powers and fascinations to lull
+      the suspicions of the old couple, and had now accustomed them to see him,
+      a soldier, stay in bed till midday on pretence that he was ill. Thus the
+      lovers lived only in the night-time, when the rest of the household were
+      asleep. If Montefiore had not been one of those libertines whom the habit
+      of gallantry enables to retain their self-possession under all
+      circumstances, he might have been lost a dozen times during those ten
+      days. A young lover, in the simplicity of a first love, would have
+      committed the enchanting imprudences which are so difficult to resist. But
+      he did resist even Juana herself, Juana pouting, Juana making her long
+      hair a chain which she wound about his neck when caution told him he must
+      go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most suspicious of guardians would however have been puzzled to detect
+      the secret of their nightly meetings. It is to be supposed that, sure of
+      success, the Italian marquis gave himself the ineffable pleasures of a
+      slow seduction, step by step, leading gradually to the fire which should
+      end the affair in a conflagration. On the eleventh day, at the
+      dinner-table, he thought it wise to inform old Perez, under seal of
+      secrecy, that the reason of his separation from his family was an
+      ill-assorted marriage. This false revelation was an infamous thing in view
+      of the nocturnal drama which was being played under that roof. Montefiore,
+      an experienced rake, was preparing for the finale of that drama which he
+      foresaw and enjoyed as an artist who loves his art. He expected to leave
+      before long, and without regret, the house and his love. It would happen,
+      he thought, in this way: Juana, after waiting for him in vain for several
+      nights, would risk her life, perhaps, in asking Perez what had become of
+      his guest; and Perez would reply, not aware of the importance of his
+      answer,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Marquis de Montefiore is reconciled to his family, who consent to
+      receive his wife; he has gone to Italy to present her to them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Juana?&mdash;The marquis never asked himself what would become of
+      Juana; but he had studied her character, its nobility, candor, and
+      strength, and he knew he might be sure of her silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He obtained a mission from one of the generals. Three days later, on the
+      night preceding his intended departure, Montefiore, instead of returning
+      to his own room after dinner, contrived to enter unseen that of Juana, to
+      make that farewell night the longer. Juana, true Spaniard and true
+      Italian, was enchanted with such boldness; it argued ardor! For herself
+      she did not fear discovery. To find in the pure love of marriage the
+      excitements of intrigue, to hide her husband behind the curtains of her
+      bed, and say to her adopted father and mother, in case of detection: &ldquo;I am
+      the Marquise de Montefiore!&rdquo;&mdash;was to an ignorant and romantic young
+      girl, who for three years past had dreamed of love without dreaming of its
+      dangers, delightful. The door closed on this last evening upon her folly,
+      her happiness, like a veil, which it is useless here to raise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nine o&rsquo;clock; the merchant and his wife were reading their evening
+      prayers; suddenly the noise of a carriage drawn by several horses
+      resounded in the street; loud and hasty raps echoed from the shop where
+      the servant hurried to open the door, and into that venerable salon rushed
+      a woman, magnificently dressed in spite of the mud upon the wheels of her
+      travelling-carriage, which had just crossed Italy, France, and Spain. It
+      was, of course, the Marana,&mdash;the Marana who, in spite of her
+      thirty-six years, was still in all the glory of her ravishing beauty; the
+      Marana who, being at that time the mistress of a king, had left Naples,
+      the fetes, the skies of Naples, the climax of her life of luxury, on
+      hearing from her royal lover of the events in Spain and the siege of
+      Tarragona.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tarragona! I must get to Tarragona before the town is taken!&rdquo; she cried.
+      &ldquo;Ten days to reach Tarragona!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then without caring for crown or court, she arrived in Tarragona,
+      furnished with an almost imperial safe-conduct; furnished too with gold
+      which enabled her to cross France with the velocity of a rocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter! my daughter!&rdquo; cried the Marana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this voice, and the abrupt invasion of their solitude, the prayer-book
+      fell from the hands of the old couple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is there,&rdquo; replied the merchant, calmly, after a pause during which
+      he recovered from the emotion caused by the abrupt entrance, and the look
+      and voice of the mother. &ldquo;She is there,&rdquo; he repeated, pointing to the door
+      of the little chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but has any harm come to her; is she still&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly well,&rdquo; said Dona Lagounia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O God! send me to hell if it so pleases thee!&rdquo; cried the Marana,
+      dropping, exhausted and half dead, into a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flush in her cheeks, due to anxiety, paled suddenly; she had strength
+      to endure suffering, but none to bear this joy. Joy was more violent in
+      her soul than suffering, for it contained the echoes of her pain and the
+      agonies of its own emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;how have you kept her safe? Tarragona is taken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Perez, &ldquo;but since you see me living why do you ask that
+      question? Should I not have died before harm could have come to Juana?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that answer, the Marana seized the calloused hand of the old man, and
+      kissed it, wetting it with the tears that flowed from her eyes&mdash;she
+      who never wept! those tears were all she had most precious under heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good Perez!&rdquo; she said at last. &ldquo;But have you had no soldiers quartered
+      in your house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only one,&rdquo; replied the Spaniard. &ldquo;Fortunately for us the most loyal of
+      men; a Spaniard by birth, but now an Italian who hates Bonaparte; a
+      married man. He is ill, and gets up late and goes to bed early.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An Italian! What is his name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Montefiore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can it be the Marquis de Montefiore&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Senora, he himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he seen Juana?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Dona Lagounia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are mistaken, wife,&rdquo; said Perez. &ldquo;The marquis must have seen her for
+      a moment, a short moment, it is true; but I think he looked at her that
+      evening she came in here during supper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, let me see my daughter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing easier,&rdquo; said Perez; &ldquo;she is now asleep. If she has left the key
+      in the lock we must waken her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he rose to take the duplicate key of Juana&rsquo;s door his eyes fell by
+      chance on the circular gleam of light upon the black wall of the inner
+      courtyard. Within that circle he saw the shadow of a group such as Canova
+      alone has attempted to render. The Spaniard turned back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; he said to the Marana, &ldquo;where to find the key.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very pale,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I will show you why,&rdquo; he cried, seizing his dagger and rapping its
+      hilt violently on Juana&rsquo;s door as he shouted,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open! open! open! Juana!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana did not open, for she needed time to conceal Montefiore. She knew
+      nothing of what was passing in the salon; the double portieres of thick
+      tapestry deadened all sounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, I lied to you in saying I could not find the key. Here it is,&rdquo;
+       added Perez, taking it from a sideboard. &ldquo;But it is useless. Juana&rsquo;s key
+      is in the lock; her door is barricaded. We have been deceived, my wife!&rdquo;
+       he added, turning to Dona Lagounia. &ldquo;There is a man in Juana&rsquo;s room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible! By my eternal salvation I say it is impossible!&rdquo; said his
+      wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not swear, Dona Lagounia. Our honor is dead, and this woman&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      pointed to the Marana, who had risen and was standing motionless, blasted
+      by his words, &ldquo;this woman has the right to despise us. She saved our life,
+      our fortune, and our honor, and we have saved nothing for her but her
+      money&mdash;Juana!&rdquo; he cried again, &ldquo;open, or I will burst in your door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice, rising in violence, echoed through the garrets in the roof. He
+      was cold and calm. The life of Montefiore was in his hands; he would wash
+      away his remorse in the blood of that Italian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out, out, out! out, all of you!&rdquo; cried the Marana, springing like a
+      tigress on the dagger, which she wrenched from the hand of the astonished
+      Perez. &ldquo;Out, Perez,&rdquo; she continued more calmly, &ldquo;out, you and your wife
+      and servants! There will be murder here. You might be shot by the French.
+      Have nothing to do with this; it is my affair, mine only. Between my
+      daughter and me there is none but God. As for the man, he belongs to <i>me</i>.
+      The whole earth could not tear him from my grasp. Go, go! I forgive you. I
+      see plainly that the girl is a Marana. You, your religion, your virtue,
+      were too weak to fight against my blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a dreadful sigh, turning her dry eyes on them. She had lost all,
+      but she knew how to suffer,&mdash;a true courtesan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened. The Marana forgot all else, and Perez, making a sign to
+      his wife, remained at his post. With his old invincible Spanish honor he
+      was determined to share the vengeance of the betrayed mother. Juana, all
+      in white, and softly lighted by the wax candles, was standing calmly in
+      the centre of her chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want with me?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marana could not repress a passing shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perez,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;has this room another issue?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perez made a negative gesture; confiding in that gesture, the mother
+      entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Juana,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I am your mother, your judge; you have placed yourself
+      in the only situation in which I could reveal myself to you. You have come
+      down to me, you, whom I thought in heaven. Ah! you have fallen low indeed.
+      You have a lover in this room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, there is and can be no one but my husband,&rdquo; answered the girl. &ldquo;I
+      am the Marquise de Montefiore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there are two,&rdquo; said Perez, in a grave voice. &ldquo;He told me he was
+      married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Montefiore, my love!&rdquo; cried the girl, tearing aside the curtain and
+      revealing the officer. &ldquo;Come! they are slandering you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Italian appeared, pale and speechless; he saw the dagger in the
+      Marana&rsquo;s hand, and he knew her well. With one bound he sprang from the
+      room, crying out in a thundering voice,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help! help! they are murdering a Frenchman. Soldiers of the 6th of the
+      line, rush for Captain Diard! Help, help!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perez had gripped the man and was trying to gag him with his large hand,
+      but the Marana stopped him, saying,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bind him fast, but let him shout. Open the doors, leave them open, and
+      go, go, as I told you; go, all of you.&mdash;As for you,&rdquo; she said,
+      addressing Montefiore, &ldquo;shout, call for help if you choose; by the time
+      your soldiers get here this blade will be in your heart. Are you married?
+      Answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Montefiore, who had fallen on the threshold of the door, scarcely a step
+      from Juana, saw nothing but the blade of the dagger, the gleam of which
+      blinded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he deceived me?&rdquo; said Juana, slowly. &ldquo;He told me he was free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told me that he was married,&rdquo; repeated Perez, in his solemn voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holy Virgin!&rdquo; murmured Dona Lagounia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Answer, soul of corruption,&rdquo; said the Marana, in a low voice, bending to
+      the ear of the marquis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your daughter&mdash;&rdquo; began Montefiore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The daughter that was mine is dead or dying,&rdquo; interrupted the Marana. &ldquo;I
+      have no daughter; do not utter that word. Answer, are you married?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, madame,&rdquo; said Montefiore, at last, striving to gain time, &ldquo;I desire
+      to marry your daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My noble Montefiore!&rdquo; said Juana, drawing a deep breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why did you attempt to fly and cry for help?&rdquo; asked Perez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Terrible, revealing light!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana said nothing, but she wrung her hands and went to her arm-chair and
+      sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment a tumult rose in the street which was plainly heard in the
+      silence of the room. A soldier of the 6th, hearing Montefiore&rsquo;s cry for
+      help, had summoned Diard. The quartermaster, who was fortunately in his
+      bivouac, came, accompanied by friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did I fly?&rdquo; said Montefiore, hearing the voice of his friend.
+      &ldquo;Because I told you the truth; I am married&mdash;Diard! Diard!&rdquo; he
+      shouted in a piercing voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, at a word from Perez, the apprentice closed and bolted the doors, so
+      that the soldiers were delayed by battering them in. Before they could
+      enter, the Marana had time to strike her dagger into the guilty man; but
+      anger hindered her aim, the blade slipped upon the Italian&rsquo;s epaulet,
+      though she struck her blow with such force that he fell at the very feet
+      of Juana, who took no notice of him. The Marana sprang upon him, and this
+      time, resolved not to miss her prey, she caught him by the throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am free and I will marry her! I swear it, by God, by my mother, by all
+      there is most sacred in the world; I am a bachelor; I will marry her, on
+      my honor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he bit the arm of the courtesan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother,&rdquo; said Juana, &ldquo;kill him. He is so base that I will not have him
+      for my husband, were he ten times as beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I recognize my daughter!&rdquo; cried the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is all this?&rdquo; demanded the quartermaster, entering the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are murdering me,&rdquo; cried Montefiore, &ldquo;on account of this girl; she
+      says I am her lover. She inveigled me into a trap, and they are forcing me
+      to marry her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you reject her?&rdquo; cried Diard, struck with the splendid beauty which
+      contempt, hatred, and indignation had given to the girl, already so
+      beautiful. &ldquo;Then you are hard to please. If she wants a husband I am ready
+      to marry her. Put up your weapons; there is no trouble here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marana pulled the Italian to the side of her daughter&rsquo;s bed and said
+      to him, in a low voice,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I spare you, give thanks for the rest of your life; but, remember
+      this, if your tongue ever injures my daughter you will see me again. Go!&mdash;How
+      much &lsquo;dot&rsquo; do you give her?&rdquo; she continued, going up to Perez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has two hundred thousand gold piastres,&rdquo; replied the Spaniard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that is not all, monsieur,&rdquo; said the Marana, turning to Diard. &ldquo;Who
+      are you?&mdash;Go!&rdquo; she repeated to Montefiore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The marquis, hearing this statement of gold piastres, came forward once
+      more, saying,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am really free&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A glance from Juana silenced him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are really free to go,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he went immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! monsieur,&rdquo; said the girl, turning to Diard, &ldquo;I thank you with
+      admiration. But my husband is in heaven. To-morrow I shall enter a convent&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Juana, my Juana, hush!&rdquo; cried the mother, clasping her in her arms. Then
+      she whispered in the girl&rsquo;s ear. &ldquo;You <i>must</i> have another husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana turned pale. She freed herself from her mother and sat down once
+      more in her arm-chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you, monsieur?&rdquo; repeated the Marana, addressing Diard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, I am at present only the quartermaster of the 6th of the line.
+      But for such a wife I have the heart to make myself a marshal of France.
+      My name is Pierre-Francois Diard. My father was provost of merchants. I am
+      not&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, at least, you are an honest man, are you not?&rdquo; cried the Marana,
+      interrupting him. &ldquo;If you please the Signorina Juana di Mancini, you can
+      marry her and be happy together.&mdash;Juana,&rdquo; she continued in a grave
+      tone, &ldquo;in becoming the wife of a brave and worthy man remember that you
+      will also be a mother. I have sworn that you shall kiss your children
+      without a blush upon your face&rdquo; (her voice faltered slightly). &ldquo;I have
+      sworn that you shall live a virtuous life; expect, therefore, many
+      troubles. But, whatever happens, continue pure, and be faithful to your
+      husband. Sacrifice all things to him, for he will be the father of your
+      children&mdash;the father of your children! If you take a lover, I, your
+      mother, will stand between you and him. Do you see that dagger? It is in
+      your &lsquo;dot,&rsquo;&rdquo; she continued, throwing the weapon on Juana&rsquo;s bed. &ldquo;I leave
+      it there as the guarantee of your honor so long as my eyes are open and my
+      arm free. Farewell,&rdquo; she said, restraining her tears. &ldquo;God grant that we
+      may never meet again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that idea, her tears began to flow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor child!&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;you have been happier than you knew in this dull
+      home.&mdash;Do not allow her to regret it,&rdquo; she said, turning to Diard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foregoing rapid narrative is not the principal subject of this Study,
+      for the understanding of which it was necessary to explain how it happened
+      that the quartermaster Diard married Juana di Mancini, that Montefiore and
+      Diard were intimately known to each other, and to show plainly what blood
+      and what passions were in Madame Diard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. THE HISTORY OF MADAME DIARD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      By the time that the quartermaster had fulfilled all the long and dilatory
+      formalities without which no French soldier can be married, he was
+      passionately in love with Juana di Mancini, and Juana had had time to
+      think of her coming destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An awful destiny! Juana, who felt neither esteem nor love for Diard, was
+      bound to him forever, by a rash but necessary promise. The man was neither
+      handsome nor well-made. His manners, devoid of all distinction, were a
+      mixture of the worst army tone, the habits of his province, and his own
+      insufficient education. How could she love Diard, she, a young girl all
+      grace and elegance, born with an invincible instinct for luxury and good
+      taste, her very nature tending toward the sphere of the higher social
+      classes? As for esteeming him, she rejected the very thought precisely
+      because he had married her. This repulsion was natural. Woman is a saintly
+      and noble creature, but almost always misunderstood, and nearly always
+      misjudged because she is misunderstood. If Juana had loved Diard she would
+      have esteemed him. Love creates in a wife a new woman; the woman of the
+      day before no longer exists on the morrow. Putting on the nuptial robe of
+      a passion in which life itself is concerned, the woman wraps herself in
+      purity and whiteness. Reborn into virtue and chastity, there is no past
+      for her; she is all future, and should forget the things behind her to
+      relearn life. In this sense the famous words which a modern poet has put
+      into the lips of Marion Delorme is infused with truth,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Love remade me virgin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That line seems like a reminiscence of a tragedy of Corneille, so truly
+      does it recall the energetic diction of the father of our modern theatre.
+      Yet the poet was forced to sacrifice it to the essentially vaudevillist
+      spirit of the pit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Juana loveless was doomed to be Juana humiliated, degraded, hopeless.
+      She could not honor the man who took her thus. She felt, in all the
+      conscientious purity of her youth, that distinction, subtle in appearance
+      but sacredly true, legal with the heart&rsquo;s legality, which women apply
+      instinctively to all their feelings, even the least reflective. Juana
+      became profoundly sad as she saw the nature and the extent of the life
+      before her. Often she turned her eyes, brimming with tears proudly
+      repressed, upon Perez and Dona Lagounia, who fully comprehended, both of
+      them, the bitter thoughts those tears contained. But they were silent: of
+      what good were reproaches now; why look for consolations? The deeper they
+      were, the more they enlarged the wound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, Juana, stupid with grief, heard through the open door of her
+      little room, which the old couple had thought shut, a pitying moan from
+      her adopted mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The child will die of grief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Perez, in a shaking voice, &ldquo;but what can we do? I cannot now
+      boast of her beauty and her chastity to Comte d&rsquo;Arcos, to whom I hoped to
+      marry her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a single fault is not vice,&rdquo; said the old woman, pitying as the
+      angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her mother gave her to this man,&rdquo; said Perez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, in a moment; without consulting the poor child!&rdquo; cried Dona
+      Lagounia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knew what she was doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But oh! into what hands our pearl is going!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say no more, or I shall seek a quarrel with that Diard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that would only lead to other miseries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing these dreadful words Juana saw the happy future she had lost by
+      her own wrongdoing. The pure and simple years of her quiet life would have
+      been rewarded by a brilliant existence such as she had fondly dreamed,&mdash;dreams
+      which had caused her ruin. To fall from the height of Greatness to
+      Monsieur Diard! She wept. At times she went nearly mad. She floated for a
+      while between vice and religion. Vice was a speedy solution, religion a
+      lifetime of suffering. The meditation was stormy and solemn. The next day
+      was the fatal day, the day for the marriage. But Juana could still remain
+      free. Free, she knew how far her misery would go; married, she was
+      ignorant of where it went or what it might bring her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Religion triumphed. Dona Lagounia stayed beside her child and prayed and
+      watched as she would have prayed and watched beside the dying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God wills it,&rdquo; she said to Juana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nature gives to woman alternately a strength which enables her to suffer
+      and a weakness which leads her to resignation. Juana resigned herself; and
+      without restriction. She determined to obey her mother&rsquo;s prayer, and cross
+      the desert of life to reach God&rsquo;s heaven, knowing well that no flowers
+      grew for her along the way of that painful journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She married Diard. As for the quartermaster, though he had no grace in
+      Juana&rsquo;s eyes, we may well absolve him. He loved her distractedly. The
+      Marana, so keen to know the signs of love, had recognized in that man the
+      accents of passion and the brusque nature, the generous impulses, that are
+      common to Southerners. In the paroxysm of her anger and her distress she
+      had thought such qualities enough for her daughter&rsquo;s happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first days of this marriage were apparently happy; or, to express one
+      of those latent facts, the miseries of which are buried by women in the
+      depths of their souls, Juana would not cast down her husband&rsquo;s joy,&mdash;a
+      double role, dreadful to play, but to which, sooner or later, all women
+      unhappily married come. This is a history impossible to recount in its
+      full truth. Juana, struggling hourly against her nature, a nature both
+      Spanish and Italian, having dried up the source of her tears by dint of
+      weeping, was a human type, destined to represent woman&rsquo;s misery in its
+      utmost expression, namely, sorrow undyingly active; the description of
+      which would need such minute observations that to persons eager for
+      dramatic emotions they would seem insipid. This analysis, in which every
+      wife would find some one of her own sufferings, would require a volume to
+      express them all; a fruitless, hopeless volume by its very nature, the
+      merit of which would consist in faintest tints and delicate shadings which
+      critics would declare to be effeminate and diffuse. Besides, what man
+      could rightly approach, unless he bore another heart within his heart,
+      those solemn and touching elegies which certain women carry with them to
+      their tomb; melancholies, misunderstood even by those who cause them;
+      sighs unheeded, devotions unrewarded,&mdash;on earth at least,&mdash;splendid
+      silences misconstrued; vengeances withheld, disdained; generosities
+      perpetually bestowed and wasted; pleasures longed for and denied; angelic
+      charities secretly accomplished,&mdash;in short, all the religions of
+      womanhood and its inextinguishable love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana knew that life; fate spared her nought. She was wholly a wife, but a
+      sorrowful and suffering wife; a wife incessantly wounded, yet forgiving
+      always; a wife pure as a flawless diamond,&mdash;she who had the beauty
+      and the glow of the diamond, and in that beauty, that glow, a vengeance in
+      her hand; for she was certainly not a woman to fear the dagger added to
+      her &ldquo;dot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At first, inspired by a real love, by one of those passions which for the
+      time being change even odious characters and bring to light all that may
+      be noble in a soul, Diard behaved like a man of honor. He forced
+      Montefiore to leave the regiment and even the army corps, so that his wife
+      might never meet him during the time they remained in Spain. Next, he
+      petitioned for his own removal, and succeeded in entering the Imperial
+      Guard. He desired at any price to obtain a title, honors, and
+      consideration in keeping with his present wealth. With this idea in his
+      mind, he behaved courageously in one of the most bloody battles in
+      Germany, but, unfortunately, he was too severely wounded to remain in the
+      service. Threatened with the loss of a leg, he was forced to retire on a
+      pension, without the title of baron, without those rewards he hoped to
+      win, and would have won had he not been Diard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This event, this wound, and his thwarted hopes contributed to change his
+      character. His Provencal energy, roused for a time, sank down. At first he
+      was sustained by his wife, in whom his efforts, his courage, his ambition
+      had induced some belief in his nature, and who showed herself, what women
+      are, tender and consoling in the troubles of life. Inspired by a few words
+      from Juana, the retired soldier came to Paris, resolved to win in an
+      administrative career a position to command respect, bury in oblivion the
+      quartermaster of the 6th of the line, and secure for Madame Diard a noble
+      title. His passion for that seductive creature enabled him to divine her
+      most secret wishes. Juana expressed nothing, but he understood her. He was
+      not loved as a lover dreams of being loved; he knew this, and he strove to
+      make himself respected, loved, and cherished. He foresaw a coming
+      happiness, poor man, in the patience and gentleness shown on all occasions
+      by his wife; but that patience, that gentleness, were only the outward
+      signs of the resignation which had made her his wife. Resignation,
+      religion, were they love? Often Diard wished for refusal where he met with
+      chaste obedience; often he would have given his eternal life that Juana
+      might have wept upon his bosom and not disguised her secret thoughts
+      behind a smiling face which lied to him nobly. Many young men&mdash;for
+      after a certain age men no longer struggle&mdash;persist in the effort to
+      triumph over an evil fate, the thunder of which they hear, from time to
+      time, on the horizon of their lives; and when at last they succumb and
+      roll down the precipice of evil, we ought to do them justice and
+      acknowledge these inward struggles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like many men Diard tried all things, and all things were hostile to him.
+      His wealth enabled him to surround his wife with the enjoyments of
+      Parisian luxury. She lived in a fine house, with noble rooms, where she
+      maintained a salon, in which abounded artists (by nature no judges of
+      men), men of pleasure ready to amuse themselves anywhere, a few
+      politicians who swelled the numbers, and certain men of fashion, all of
+      whom admired Juana. Those who put themselves before the eyes of the public
+      in Paris must either conquer Paris or be subject to it. Diard&rsquo;s character
+      was not sufficiently strong, compact, or persistent to command society at
+      that epoch, because it was an epoch when all men were endeavoring to rise.
+      Social classifications ready-made are perhaps a great boon even for the
+      people. Napoleon has confided to us the pains he took to inspire respect
+      in his court, where most of the courtiers had been his equals. But
+      Napoleon was Corsican, and Diard Provencal. Given equal genius, an
+      islander will always be more compact and rounded than the man of terra
+      firma in the same latitude; the arm of the sea which separates Corsica
+      from Provence is, in spite of human science, an ocean which has made two
+      nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard&rsquo;s mongrel position, which he himself made still more questionable,
+      brought him great troubles. Perhaps there is useful instruction to be
+      derived from the almost imperceptible connection of acts which led to the
+      finale of this history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first place, the sneerers of Paris did not see without malicious
+      smiles and words the pictures with which the former quartermaster adorned
+      his handsome mansion. Works of art purchased the night before were said to
+      be spoils from Spain; and this accusation was the revenge of those who
+      were jealous of his present fortune. Juana comprehended this reproach, and
+      by her advice Diard sent back to Tarragona all the pictures he had brought
+      from there. But the public, determined to see things in the worst light,
+      only said, &ldquo;That Diard is shrewd; he has sold his pictures.&rdquo; Worthy people
+      continued to think that those which remained in the Diard salons were not
+      honorably acquired. Some jealous women asked how it was that a <i>Diard</i>
+      (!) had been able to marry so rich and beautiful a young girl. Hence
+      comments and satires without end, such as Paris contributes. And yet, it
+      must be said, that Juana met on all sides the respect inspired by her pure
+      and religious life, which triumphed over everything, even Parisian
+      calumny; but this respect stopped short with her, her husband received
+      none of it. Juana&rsquo;s feminine perception and her keen eye hovering over her
+      salons, brought her nothing but pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This lack of esteem was perfectly natural. Diard&rsquo;s comrades, in spite of
+      the virtues which our imaginations attribute to soldiers, never forgave
+      the former quartermaster of the 6th of the line for becoming suddenly so
+      rich and for attempting to cut a figure in Paris. Now in Paris, from the
+      last house in the faubourg Saint-Germain to the last in the rue
+      Saint-Lazare, between the heights of the Luxembourg and the heights of
+      Montmartre, all that clothes itself and gabbles, clothes itself to go out
+      and goes out to gabble. All that world of great and small pretensions,
+      that world of insolence and humble desires, of envy and cringing, all that
+      is gilded or tarnished, young or old, noble of yesterday or noble from the
+      fourth century, all that sneers at a parvenu, all that fears to commit
+      itself, all that wants to demolish power and worships power if it resists,&mdash;<i>all</i>
+      those ears hear, <i>all</i> those tongues say, <i>all</i> those minds
+      know, in a single evening, where the new-comer who aspires to honor among
+      them was born and brought up, and what that interloper has done, or has
+      not done, in the course of his life. There may be no court of assizes for
+      the upper classes of society; but at any rate they have the most cruel of
+      public prosecutors, an intangible moral being, both judge and executioner,
+      who accuses and brands. Do not hope to hide anything from him; tell him
+      all yourself; he wants to know all and he will know all. Do not ask what
+      mysterious telegraph it was which conveyed to him in the twinkling of an
+      eye, at any hour, in any place, that story, that bit of news, that
+      scandal; do not ask what prompts him. That telegraph is a social mystery;
+      no observer can report its effects. Of many extraordinary instances
+      thereof, one may suffice: The assassination of the Duc de Berry, which
+      occurred at the Opera-house, was related within ten minutes in the
+      Ile-Saint-Louis. Thus the opinion of the 6th of the line as to its
+      quartermaster filtered through society the night on which he gave his
+      first ball.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard was therefore debarred from succeeding in society. Henceforth his
+      wife alone had the power to make anything of him. Miracle of our strange
+      civilization! In Paris, if a man is incapable of being anything himself,
+      his wife, when she is young and clever, may give him other chances for
+      elevation. We sometimes meet with invalid women, feeble beings apparently,
+      who, without rising from sofas or leaving their chambers, have ruled
+      society, moved a thousand springs, and placed their husbands where their
+      ambition or their vanity prompted. But Juana, whose childhood was passed
+      in her retreat in Tarragona, knew nothing of the vices, the meannesses, or
+      the resources of Parisian society; she looked at that society with the
+      curiosity of a girl, but she learned from it only that which her sorrow
+      and her wounded pride revealed to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana had the tact of a virgin heart which receives impressions in advance
+      of the event, after the manner of what are called &ldquo;sensitives.&rdquo; The
+      solitary young girl, so suddenly become a woman and a wife, saw plainly
+      that were she to attempt to compel society to respect her husband, it must
+      be after the manner of Spanish beggars, carbine in hand. Besides, the
+      multiplicity of the precautions she would have to take, would they meet
+      the necessity? Suddenly she divined society as, once before, she had
+      divined life, and she saw nothing around her but the immense extent of an
+      irreparable disaster. She had, moreover, the additional grief of tardily
+      recognizing her husband&rsquo;s peculiar form of incapacity; he was a man
+      unfitted for any purpose that required continuity of ideas. He could not
+      understand a consistent part, such as he ought to play in the world; he
+      perceived it neither as a whole nor in its gradations, and its gradations
+      were everything. He was in one of those positions where shrewdness and
+      tact might have taken the place of strength; when shrewdness and tact
+      succeed, they are, perhaps, the highest form of strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Diard, far from arresting the spot of oil on his garments left by his
+      antecedents, did his best to spread it. Incapable of studying the phase of
+      the empire in the midst of which he came to live in Paris, he wanted to be
+      made prefect. At that time every one believed in the genius of Napoleon;
+      his favor enhanced the value of all offices. Prefectures, those miniature
+      empires, could only be filled by men of great names, or chamberlains of
+      H.M. the emperor and king. Already the prefects were a species of vizier.
+      The myrmidons of the great man scoffed at Diard&rsquo;s pretensions to a
+      prefecture, whereupon he lowered his demand to a sub-prefecture. There
+      was, of course, a ridiculous discrepancy between this latter demand and
+      the magnitude of his fortune. To frequent the imperial salons and live
+      with insolent luxury, and then to abandon that millionaire life and bury
+      himself as sub-prefect at Issoudun or Savenay was certainly holding
+      himself below his position. Juana, too late aware of our laws and habits
+      and administrative customs, did not enlighten her husband soon enough.
+      Diard, desperate, petitioned successively all the ministerial powers;
+      repulsed everywhere, he found nothing open to him; and society then judged
+      him as the government judged him and as he judged himself. Diard,
+      grievously wounded on the battlefield, was nevertheless not decorated; the
+      quartermaster, rich as he was, was allowed no place in public life, and
+      society logically refused him that to which he pretended in its midst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, to cap all, the luckless man felt in his own home the superiority
+      of his wife. Though she used great tact&mdash;we might say velvet softness
+      if the term were admissible&mdash;to disguise from her husband this
+      supremacy, which surprised and humiliated herself, Diard ended by being
+      affected by it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a game of life like this men are either unmanned, or they grow the
+      stronger, or they give themselves to evil. The courage or the ardor of
+      this man lessened under the reiterated blows which his own faults dealt to
+      his self-appreciation, and fault after fault he committed. In the first
+      place he had to struggle against his own habits and character. A
+      passionate Provencal, frank in his vices as in his virtues, this man whose
+      fibres vibrated like the strings of a harp, was all heart to his former
+      friends. He succored the shabby and spattered man as readily as the needy
+      of rank; in short, he accepted everybody, and gave his hand in his gilded
+      salons to many a poor devil. Observing this on one occasion, a general of
+      the empire, a variety of the human species of which no type will presently
+      remain, refused his hand to Diard, and called him, insolently, &ldquo;my good
+      fellow&rdquo; when he met him. The few persons of really good society whom Diard
+      knew, treated him with that elegant, polished contempt against which a
+      new-made man has seldom any weapons. The manners, the semi-Italian
+      gesticulations, the speech of Diard, his style of dress,&mdash;all
+      contributed to repulse the respect which careful observation of matters of
+      good taste and dignity might otherwise obtain for vulgar persons; the yoke
+      of such conventionalities can only be cast off by great and unthinkable
+      powers. So goes the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These details but faintly picture the many tortures to which Juana was
+      subjected; they came upon her one by one; each social nature pricked her
+      with its own particular pin; and to a soul which preferred the thrust of a
+      dagger, there could be no worse suffering than this struggle in which
+      Diard received insults he did not feel and Juana felt those she did not
+      receive. A moment came, an awful moment, when she gained a clear and lucid
+      perception of society, and felt in one instant all the sorrows which were
+      gathering themselves together to fall upon her head. She judged her
+      husband incapable of rising to the honored ranks of the social order, and
+      she felt that he would one day descend to where his instincts led him.
+      Henceforth Juana felt pity for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The future was very gloomy for this young woman. She lived in constant
+      apprehension of some disaster. This presentiment was in her soul as a
+      contagion is in the air, but she had strength of mind and will to disguise
+      her anguish beneath a smile. Juana had ceased to think of herself. She
+      used her influence to make Diard resign his various pretensions and to
+      show him, as a haven, the peaceful and consoling life of home. Evils came
+      from society&mdash;why not banish it? In his home Diard found peace and
+      respect; he reigned there. She felt herself strong to accept the trying
+      task of making him happy,&mdash;he, a man dissatisfied with himself. Her
+      energy increased with the difficulties of life; she had all the secret
+      heroism necessary to her position; religion inspired her with those
+      desires which support the angel appointed to protect a Christian soul&mdash;occult
+      poesy, allegorical image of our two natures!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard abandoned his projects, closed his house to the world, and lived in
+      his home. But here he found another reef. The poor soldier had one of
+      those eccentric souls which need perpetual motion. Diard was one of the
+      men who are instinctively compelled to start again the moment they arrive,
+      and whose vital object seems to be to come and go incessantly, like the
+      wheels mentioned in Holy Writ. Perhaps he felt the need of flying from
+      himself. Without wearying of Juana, without blaming Juana, his passion for
+      her, rendered tranquil by time, allowed his natural character to assert
+      itself. Henceforth his days of gloom were more frequent, and he often gave
+      way to southern excitement. The more virtuous a woman is and the more
+      irreproachable, the more a man likes to find fault with her, if only to
+      assert by that act his legal superiority. But if by chance she seems
+      really imposing to him, he feels the need of foisting faults upon her.
+      After that, between man and wife, trifles increase and grow till they
+      swell to Alps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Juana, patient and without pride, gentle and without that bitterness
+      which women know so well how to cast into their submission, left Diard no
+      chance for planned ill-humor. Besides, she was one of those noble
+      creatures to whom it is impossible to speak disrespectfully; her glance,
+      in which her life, saintly and pure, shone out, had the weight of a
+      fascination. Diard, embarrassed at first, then annoyed, ended by feeling
+      that such high virtue was a yoke upon him. The goodness of his wife gave
+      him no violent emotions, and violent emotions were what he wanted. What
+      myriads of scenes are played in the depths of his souls, beneath the cold
+      exterior of lives that are, apparently, commonplace! Among these dramas,
+      lasting each but a short time, though they influence life so powerfully
+      and are frequently the forerunners of the great misfortune doomed to fall
+      on so many marriages, it is difficult to choose an example. There was a
+      scene, however, which particularly marked the moment when in the life of
+      this husband and wife estrangement began. Perhaps it may also serve to
+      explain the finale of this narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana had two children, happily for her, two sons. The first was born
+      seven months after her marriage. He was called Juan, and he strongly
+      resembled his mother. The second was born about two years after her
+      arrival in Paris. The latter resembled both Diard and Juana, but more
+      particularly Diard. His name was Francisque. For the last five years
+      Francisque had been the object of Juana&rsquo;s most tender and watchful care.
+      The mother was constantly occupied with that child; to him her prettiest
+      caresses; to him the toys, but to him, especially, the penetrating
+      mother-looks. Juana had watched him from his cradle; she had studied his
+      cries, his motions; she endeavored to discern his nature that she might
+      educate him wisely. It seemed at times as if she had but that one child.
+      Diard, seeing that the eldest, Juan, was in a way neglected, took him
+      under his own protection; and without inquiring even of himself whether
+      the boy was the fruit of that ephemeral love to which he owed his wife, he
+      made him his Benjamin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the sentiments transmitted to her through the blood of her
+      grandmothers which consumed her, Madame Diard accepted one alone, &mdash;maternal
+      love. But she loved her children doubly: first with the noble violence of
+      which her mother the Marana had given her the example; secondly, with
+      grace and purity, in the spirit of those social virtues the practice of
+      which was the glory of her life and her inward recompense. The secret
+      thought, the conscience of her motherhood, which gave to the Marana&rsquo;s life
+      its stamp of untaught poesy, was to Juana an acknowledged life, an open
+      consolation at all hours. Her mother had been virtuous as other women are
+      criminal,&mdash;in secret; she had stolen a fancied happiness, she had
+      never really tasted it. But Juana, unhappy in her virtue as her mother was
+      unhappy in her vice, could enjoy at all moments the ineffable delights
+      which her mother had so craved and could not have. To her, as to her
+      mother, maternity comprised all earthly sentiments. Each, from differing
+      causes, had no other comfort in their misery. Juana&rsquo;s maternal love may
+      have been the strongest because, deprived of all other affections, she put
+      the joys she lacked into the one joy of her children; and there are noble
+      passions that resemble vice; the more they are satisfied the more they
+      increase. Mothers and gamblers are alike insatiable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Juana saw the generous pardon laid silently on the head of Juan by
+      Diard&rsquo;s fatherly affection, she was much moved, and from the day when the
+      husband and wife changed parts she felt for him the true and deep interest
+      she had hitherto shown to him as a matter of duty only. If that man had
+      been more consistent in his life; if he had not destroyed by fitful
+      inconstancy and restlessness the forces of a true though excitable
+      sensibility, Juana would doubtless have loved him in the end.
+      Unfortunately, he was a type of those southern natures which are keen in
+      perceptions they cannot follow out; capable of great things over-night,
+      and incapable the next morning; often the victim of their own virtues, and
+      often lucky through their worst passions; admirable men in some respects,
+      when their good qualities are kept to a steady energy by some outward
+      bond. For two years after his retreat from active life Diard was held
+      captive in his home by the softest chains. He lived, almost in spite of
+      himself, under the influence of his wife, who made herself gay and amusing
+      to cheer him, who used the resources of feminine genius to attract and
+      seduce him to a love of virtue, but whose ability and cleverness did not
+      go so far as to simulate love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time all Paris was talking of the affair of a captain in the army
+      who in a paroxysm of libertine jealousy had killed a woman. Diard, on
+      coming home to dinner, told his wife that the officer was dead. He had
+      killed himself to avoid the dishonor of a trial and the shame of death
+      upon the scaffold. Juana did not see at first the logic of such conduct,
+      and her husband was obliged to explain to her the fine jurisprudence of
+      French law, which does not prosecute the dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, papa, didn&rsquo;t you tell us the other day that the king could pardon?&rdquo;
+       asked Francisque.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The king can give nothing but life,&rdquo; said Juan, half scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard and Juana, the spectators of this little scene, were differently
+      affected by it. The glance, moist with joy, which his wife cast upon her
+      eldest child was a fatal revelation to the husband of the secrets of a
+      heart hitherto impenetrable. That eldest child was all Juana; Juana
+      comprehended him; she was sure of his heart, his future; she adored him,
+      but her ardent love was a secret between herself, her child, and God. Juan
+      instinctively enjoyed the seeming indifference of his mother in presence
+      of his father and brother, for she pressed him to her heart when alone.
+      Francisque was Diard, and Juana&rsquo;s incessant care and watchfulness betrayed
+      her desire to correct in the son the vices of the father and to encourage
+      his better qualities. Juana, unaware that her glance had said too much and
+      that her husband had rightly interpreted it, took Francisque in her lap
+      and gave him, in a gentle voice still trembling with the pleasure that
+      Juan&rsquo;s answer had brought her, a lesson upon honor, simplified to his
+      childish intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That boy&rsquo;s character requires care,&rdquo; said Diard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she replied simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about Juan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Diard, struck by the tone in which the words were uttered, looked
+      at her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Juan was born perfect,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he sat down gloomily, and reflected. Presently, as his wife continued
+      silent, he added:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You love one of <i>your</i> children better than the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know that,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Diard, &ldquo;I did not know until now which of them you preferred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But neither of them have ever given me a moment&rsquo;s uneasiness,&rdquo; she
+      answered quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But one of them gives you greater joys,&rdquo; he said, more quickly still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never counted them,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How false you women are!&rdquo; cried Diard. &ldquo;Will you dare to say that Juan is
+      not the child of your heart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that were so,&rdquo; she said, with dignity, &ldquo;do you think it a misfortune?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have never loved me. If you had chosen, I would have conquered worlds
+      for your sake. You know all that I have struggled to do in life, supported
+      by the hope of pleasing you. Ah! if you had only loved me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman who loves,&rdquo; said Juana, &ldquo;likes to live in solitude, far from the
+      world, and that is what we are doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, Juana, that <i>you</i> are never in the wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were said bitterly, and cast, for the rest of their lives
+      together, a coldness between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morrow of that fatal day Diard went back to his old companions and
+      found distractions for his mind in play. Unfortunately, he won much money,
+      and continued playing. Little by little, he returned to the dissipated
+      life he had formerly lived. Soon he ceased even to dine in his own home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some months went by in the enjoyment of this new independence; he was
+      determined to preserve it, and in order to do so he separated himself from
+      his wife, giving her the large apartments and lodging himself in the
+      entresol. By the end of the year Diard and Juana only saw each other in
+      the morning at breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like all gamblers, he had his alternations of loss and gain. Not wishing
+      to cut into the capital of his fortune, he felt the necessity of
+      withdrawing from his wife the management of their income; and the day came
+      when he took from her all she had hitherto freely disposed of for the
+      household benefit, giving her instead a monthly stipend. The conversation
+      they had on this subject was the last of their married intercourse. The
+      silence that fell between them was a true divorce; Juana comprehended that
+      from henceforth she was only a mother, and she was glad, not seeking for
+      the causes of this evil. For such an event is a great evil. Children are
+      conjointly one with husband and wife in the home, and the life of her
+      husband could not be a source of grief and injury to Juana only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Diard, now emancipated, he speedily grew accustomed to win and lose
+      enormous sums. A fine player and a heavy player, he soon became celebrated
+      for his style of playing. The social consideration he had been unable to
+      win under the Empire, he acquired under the Restoration by the rolling of
+      his gold on the green cloth and by his talent for all games that were in
+      vogue. Ambassadors, bankers, persons with newly-acquired large fortunes,
+      and all those men who, having sucked life to the dregs, turn to gambling
+      for its feverish joys, admired Diard at their clubs,&mdash;seldom in their
+      own houses,&mdash;and they all gambled with him. He became the fashion.
+      Two or three times during the winter he gave a fete as a matter of social
+      pride in return for the civilities he received. At such times Juana once
+      more caught a glimpse of the world of balls, festivities, luxury, and
+      lights; but for her it was a sort of tax imposed upon the comfort of her
+      solitude. She, the queen of these solemnities, appeared like a being
+      fallen from some other planet. Her simplicity, which nothing had
+      corrupted, her beautiful virginity of soul, which her peaceful life
+      restored to her, her beauty and her true modesty, won her sincere homage.
+      But observing how few women ever entered her salons, she came to
+      understand that though her husband was following, without communicating
+      its nature to her, a new line of conduct, he had gained nothing actually
+      in the world&rsquo;s esteem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard was not always lucky; far from it. In three years he had dissipated
+      three fourths of his fortune, but his passion for play gave him the energy
+      to continue it. He was intimate with a number of men, more particularly
+      with the roues of the Bourse, men who, since the revolution, have set up
+      the principle that robbery done on a large scale is only a <i>smirch</i>
+      to the reputation,&mdash;transferring thus to financial matters the loose
+      principles of love in the eighteenth century. Diard now became a sort of
+      business man, and concerned himself in several of those affairs which are
+      called <i>shady</i> in the slang of the law-courts. He practised the
+      decent thievery by which so many men, cleverly masked, or hidden in the
+      recesses of the political world, make their fortunes,&mdash;thievery
+      which, if done in the streets by the light of an oil lamp, would see a
+      poor devil to the galleys, but, under gilded ceilings and by the light of
+      candelabra, is sanctioned. Diard brought up, monopolized, and sold sugars;
+      he sold offices; he had the glory of inventing the &ldquo;man of straw&rdquo; for
+      lucrative posts which it was necessary to keep in his own hands for a
+      short time; he bought votes, receiving, on one occasion, so much per cent
+      on the purchase of fifteen parliamentary votes which all passed on one
+      division from the benches of the Left to the benches of the Right. Such
+      actions are no longer crimes or thefts,&mdash;they are called governing,
+      developing industry, becoming a financial power. Diard was placed by
+      public opinion on the bench of infamy where many an able man was already
+      seated. On that bench is the aristocracy of evil. It is the upper Chamber
+      of scoundrels of high life. Diard was, therefore, not a mere commonplace
+      gambler who is seen to be a blackguard, and ends by begging. That style of
+      gambler is no longer seen in society of a certain topographical height. In
+      these days bold scoundrels die brilliantly in the chariot of vice with the
+      trappings of luxury. Diard, at least, did not buy his remorse at a low
+      price; he made himself one of these privileged men. Having studied the
+      machinery of government and learned all the secrets and the passions of
+      the men in power, he was able to maintain himself in the fiery furnace
+      into which he had sprung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Diard knew nothing of her husband&rsquo;s infernal life. Glad of his
+      abandonment, she felt no curiosity about him, and all her hours were
+      occupied. She devoted what money she had to the education of her children,
+      wishing to make men of them, and giving them straight-forward reasons,
+      without, however, taking the bloom from their young imaginations. Through
+      them alone came her interests and her emotions; consequently, she suffered
+      no longer from her blemished life. Her children were to her what they are
+      to many mothers for a long period of time,&mdash;a sort of renewal of
+      their own existence. Diard was now an accidental circumstance, not a
+      participator in her life, and since he had ceased to be the father and the
+      head of the family, Juana felt bound to him by no tie other than that
+      imposed by conventional laws. Nevertheless, she brought up her children to
+      the highest respect for paternal authority, however imaginary it was for
+      them. In this she was greatly seconded by her husband&rsquo;s continual absence.
+      If he had been much in the home Diard would have neutralized his wife&rsquo;s
+      efforts. The boys had too much intelligence and shrewdness not to have
+      judged their father; and to judge a father is moral parricide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the long run, however, Juana&rsquo;s indifference to her husband wore itself
+      away; it even changed to a species of fear. She understood at last how the
+      conduct of a father might long weigh on the future of her children, and
+      her motherly solicitude brought her many, though incomplete, revelations
+      of the truth. From day to day the dread of some unknown but inevitable
+      evil in the shadow of which she lived became more and more keen and
+      terrible. Therefore, during the rare moments when Diard and Juana met she
+      would cast upon his hollow face, wan from nights of gambling and furrowed
+      by emotions, a piercing look, the penetration of which made Diard shudder.
+      At such times the assumed gaiety of her husband alarmed Juana more than
+      his gloomiest expressions of anxiety when, by chance, he forgot that
+      assumption of joy. Diard feared his wife as a criminal fears the
+      executioner. In him, Juana saw her children&rsquo;s shame; and in her Diard
+      dreaded a calm vengeance, the judgment of that serene brow, an arm raised,
+      a weapon ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After fifteen years of marriage Diard found himself without resources. He
+      owed three hundred thousand francs and he could scarcely muster one
+      hundred thousand. The house, his only visible possession, was mortgaged to
+      its fullest selling value. A few days more, and the sort of prestige with
+      which opulence had invested him would vanish. Not a hand would be offered,
+      not a purse would be open to him. Unless some favorable event occurred he
+      would fall into a slough of contempt, deeper perhaps than he deserved,
+      precisely because he had mounted to a height he could not maintain. At
+      this juncture he happened to hear that a number of strangers of
+      distinction, diplomats and others, were assembled at the watering-places
+      in the Pyrenees, where they gambled for enormous sums, and were doubtless
+      well supplied with money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He determined to go at once to the Pyrenees; but he would not leave his
+      wife in Paris, lest some importunate creditor might reveal to her the
+      secret of his horrible position. He therefore took her and the two
+      children with him, refusing to allow her to take the tutor and scarcely
+      permitting her to take a maid. His tone was curt and imperious; he seemed
+      to have recovered some energy. This sudden journey, the cause of which
+      escaped her penetration, alarmed Juana secretly. Her husband made it
+      gaily. Obliged to occupy the same carriage, he showed himself day by day
+      more attentive to the children and more amiable to their mother.
+      Nevertheless, each day brought Juana dark presentiments, the presentiments
+      of mothers who tremble without apparent reason, but who are seldom
+      mistaken when they tremble thus. For them the veil of the future seems
+      thinner than for others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Bordeaux, Diard hired in a quiet street a quiet little house, neatly
+      furnished, and in it he established his wife. The house was at the corner
+      of two streets, and had a garden. Joined to the neighboring house on one
+      side only, it was open to view and accessible on the other three sides.
+      Diard paid the rent in advance, and left Juana barely enough money for the
+      necessary expenses of three months, a sum not exceeding a thousand francs.
+      Madame Diard made no observation on this unusual meanness. When her
+      husband told her that he was going to the watering-places and that she
+      would stay at Bordeaux, Juana offered no difficulty, and at once formed a
+      plan to teach the children Spanish and Italian, and to make them read the
+      two masterpieces of the two languages. She was glad to lead a retired
+      life, simply and naturally economical. To spare herself the troubles of
+      material life, she arranged with a &ldquo;traiteur&rdquo; the day after Diard&rsquo;s
+      departure to send in their meals. Her maid then sufficed for the service
+      of the house, and she thus found herself without money, but her wants all
+      provided for until her husband&rsquo;s return. Her pleasures consisted in taking
+      walks with the children. She was then thirty-three years old. Her beauty,
+      greatly developed, was in all its lustre. Therefore as soon as she
+      appeared, much talk was made in Bordeaux about the beautiful Spanish
+      stranger. At the first advances made to her Juana ceased to walk abroad,
+      and confined herself wholly to her own large garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard at first made a fortune at the baths. In two months he won three
+      hundred thousand dollars, but it never occurred to him to send any money
+      to his wife; he kept it all, expecting to make some great stroke of
+      fortune on a vast stake. Towards the end of the second month the Marquis
+      de Montefiore appeared at the same baths. The marquis was at this time
+      celebrated for his wealth, his handsome face, his fortunate marriage with
+      an Englishwoman, and more especially for his love of play. Diard, his
+      former companion, encountered him, and desired to add his spoils to those
+      of others. A gambler with four hundred thousand francs in hand is always
+      in a position to do as he pleases. Diard, confident in his luck, renewed
+      acquaintance with Montefiore. The latter received him very coldly, but
+      nevertheless they played together, and Diard lost every penny that he
+      possessed, and more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Montefiore,&rdquo; said the ex-quartermaster, after making a tour of
+      the salon, &ldquo;I owe you a hundred thousand francs; but my money is in
+      Bordeaux, where I have left my wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard had the money in bank-bills in his pocket; but with the
+      self-possession and rapid bird&rsquo;s-eye view of a man accustomed to catch at
+      all resources, he still hoped to recover himself by some one of the
+      endless caprices of play. Montefiore had already mentioned his intention
+      of visiting Bordeaux. Had he paid his debt on the spot, Diard would have
+      been left without the power to take his revenge; a revenge at cards often
+      exceeds the amount of all preceding losses. But these burning expectations
+      depended on the marquis&rsquo;s reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait, my dear fellow,&rdquo; said Montefiore, &ldquo;and we will go together to
+      Bordeaux. In all conscience, I am rich enough to-day not to wish to take
+      the money of an old comrade.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Three days later Diard and Montefiore were in Bordeaux at a gambling
+      table. Diard, having won enough to pay his hundred thousand francs, went
+      on until he had lost two hundred thousand more on his word. He was gay as
+      a man who swam in gold. Eleven o&rsquo;clock sounded; the night was superb.
+      Montefiore may have felt, like Diard, a desire to breathe the open air and
+      recover from such emotions in a walk. The latter proposed to the marquis
+      to come home with him to take a cup of tea and get his money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Madame Diard?&rdquo; said Montefiore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; exclaimed the husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went down-stairs; but before taking his hat Diard entered the
+      dining-room of the establishment and asked for a glass of water. While it
+      was being brought, he walked up and down the room, and was able, without
+      being noticed, to pick up one of those small sharp-pointed steel knives
+      with pearl handles which are used for cutting fruit at dessert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you live?&rdquo; said Montefiore, in the courtyard, &ldquo;for I want to
+      send a carriage there to fetch me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard told him the exact address.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said Montefiore, in a low voice, taking Diard&rsquo;s arm, &ldquo;that as
+      long as I am with you I have nothing to fear; but if I came home alone and
+      a scoundrel were to follow me, I should be profitable to kill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you much with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not much,&rdquo; said the wary Italian, &ldquo;only my winnings. But they would
+      make a pretty fortune for a beggar and turn him into an honest man for the
+      rest of his life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard led the marquis along a lonely street where he remembered to have
+      seen a house, the door of which was at the end of an avenue of trees with
+      high and gloomy walls on either side of it. When they reached this spot he
+      coolly invited the marquis to precede him; but as if the latter understood
+      him he preferred to keep at his side. Then, no sooner were they fairly in
+      the avenue, then Diard, with the agility of a tiger, tripped up the
+      marquis with a kick behind the knees, and putting a foot on his neck
+      stabbed him again and again to the heart till the blade of the knife broke
+      in it. Then he searched Montefiore&rsquo;s pockets, took his wallet, money,
+      everything. But though he had taken the Italian unawares, and had done the
+      deed with lucid mind and the quickness of a pickpocket, Montefiore had
+      time to cry &ldquo;Murder! Help!&rdquo; in a shrill and piercing voice which was fit
+      to rouse every sleeper in the neighborhood. His last sighs were given in
+      those horrible shrieks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard was not aware that at the moment when they entered the avenue a
+      crowd just issuing from a theatre was passing at the upper end of the
+      street. The cries of the dying man reached them, though Diard did his best
+      to stifle the noise by setting his foot firmly on Montefiore&rsquo;s neck. The
+      crowd began to run towards the avenue, the high walls of which appeared to
+      echo back the cries, directing them to the very spot where the crime was
+      committed. The sound of their coming steps seemed to beat on Diard&rsquo;s
+      brain. But not losing his head as yet, the murderer left the avenue and
+      came boldly into the street, walking very gently, like a spectator who
+      sees the inutility of trying to give help. He even turned round once or
+      twice to judge of the distance between himself and the crowd, and he saw
+      them rushing up the avenue, with the exception of one man, who, with a
+      natural sense of caution, began to watch Diard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There he is! there he is!&rdquo; cried the people, who had entered the avenue
+      as soon as they saw Montefiore stretched out near the door of the empty
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as that clamor rose, Diard, feeling himself well in the advance,
+      began to run or rather to fly, with the vigor of a lion and the bounds of
+      a deer. At the other end of the street he saw, or fancied he saw, a mass
+      of persons, and he dashed down a cross street to avoid them. But already
+      every window was open, and heads were thrust forth right and left, while
+      from every door came shouts and gleams of light. Diard kept on, going
+      straight before him, through the lights and the noise; and his legs were
+      so actively agile that he soon left the tumult behind him, though without
+      being able to escape some eyes which took in the extent of his course more
+      rapidly than he could cover it. Inhabitants, soldiers, gendarmes, every
+      one, seemed afoot in the twinkling of an eye. Some men awoke the
+      commissaries of police, others stayed by the body to guard it. The pursuit
+      kept on in the direction of the fugitive, who dragged it after him like
+      the flame of a conflagration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard, as he ran, had all the sensations of a dream when he heard a whole
+      city howling, running, panting after him. Nevertheless, he kept his ideas
+      and his presence of mind. Presently he reached the wall of the garden of
+      his house. The place was perfectly silent, and he thought he had foiled
+      his pursuers, though a distant murmur of the tumult came to his ears like
+      the roaring of the sea. He dipped some water from a brook and drank it.
+      Then, observing a pile of stones on the road, he hid his treasure in it;
+      obeying one of those vague thoughts which come to criminals at a moment
+      when the faculty to judge their actions under all bearings deserts them,
+      and they think to establish their innocence by want of proof of their
+      guilt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That done, he endeavored to assume a placid countenance; he even tried to
+      smile as he rapped softly on the door of his house, hoping that no one saw
+      him. He raised his eyes, and through the outer blinds of one window came a
+      gleam of light from his wife&rsquo;s room. Then, in the midst of his trouble,
+      visions of her gentle life, spent with her children, beat upon his brain
+      with the force of a hammer. The maid opened the door, which Diard hastily
+      closed behind him with a kick. For a moment he breathed freely; then,
+      noticing that he was bathed in perspiration, he sent the servant back to
+      Juana and stayed in the darkness of the passage, where he wiped his face
+      with his handkerchief and put his clothes in order, like a dandy about to
+      pay a visit to a pretty woman. After that he walked into a track of the
+      moonlight to examine his hands. A quiver of joy passed over him as he saw
+      that no blood stains were on them; the hemorrhage from his victim&rsquo;s body
+      was no doubt inward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But all this took time. When at last he mounted the stairs to Juana&rsquo;s room
+      he was calm and collected, and able to reflect on his position, which
+      resolved itself into two ideas: to leave the house, and get to the
+      wharves. He did not <i>think</i> these ideas, he <i>saw</i> them written
+      in fiery letters on the darkness. Once at the wharves he could hide all
+      day, return at night for his treasure, then conceal himself, like a rat,
+      in the hold of some vessel and escape without any one suspecting his
+      whereabouts. But to do all this, money, gold, was his first necessity,&mdash;and
+      he did not possess one penny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The maid brought a light to show him up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Felicie,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you hear a noise in the street, shouts, cries?
+      Go and see what it means, and come and tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife, in her white dressing-gown, was sitting at a table, reading
+      aloud to Francisque and Juan from a Spanish Cervantes, while the boys
+      followed her pronunciation of the words from the text. They all three
+      stopped and looked at Diard, who stood in the doorway with his hands in
+      his pockets; overcome, perhaps, by finding himself in this calm scene, so
+      softly lighted, so beautiful with the faces of his wife and children. It
+      was a living picture of the Virgin between her son and John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Juana, I have something to say to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened?&rdquo; she asked, instantly perceiving from the livid
+      paleness of her husband that the misfortune she had daily expected was
+      upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing; but I want to speak to you&mdash;to you, alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he glanced at his sons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dears, go to your room, and go to bed,&rdquo; said Juana; &ldquo;say your prayers
+      without me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys left the room in silence, with the incurious obedience of
+      well-trained children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Juana,&rdquo; said Diard, in a coaxing voice, &ldquo;I left you with very
+      little money, and I regret it now. Listen to me; since I relieved you of
+      the care of our income by giving you an allowance, have you not, like
+      other women, laid something by?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Juana, &ldquo;I have nothing. In making that allowance you did not
+      reckon the costs of the children&rsquo;s education. I don&rsquo;t say that to reproach
+      you, my friend, only to explain my want of money. All that you gave me
+      went to pay masters and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough!&rdquo; cried Diard, violently. &ldquo;Thunder of heaven! every instant is
+      precious! Where are your jewels?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know very well I have never worn any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there&rsquo;s not a sou to be had here!&rdquo; cried Diard, frantically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you shout in that way?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Juana,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;I have killed a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana sprang to the door of her children&rsquo;s room and closed it; then she
+      returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your sons must hear nothing,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;With whom have you fought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Montefiore,&rdquo; he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she said with a sigh, &ldquo;the only man you had the right to kill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There were many reasons why he should die by my hand. But I can&rsquo;t lose
+      time&mdash;Money, money! for God&rsquo;s sake, money! I may be pursued. We did
+      not fight. I&mdash;I killed him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Killed him!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;how?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, as one kills anything. He stole my whole fortune and I took it back,
+      that&rsquo;s all. Juana, now that everything is quiet you must go down to that
+      heap of stones&mdash;you know the heap by the garden wall&mdash;and get
+      that money, since you haven&rsquo;t any in the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The money that you stole?&rdquo; said Juana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does that matter to you? Have you any money to give me? I tell you I
+      must get away. They are on my traces.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people, the police.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana left the room, but returned immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; she said, holding out to him at arm&rsquo;s length a jewel, &ldquo;that is
+      Dona Lagounia&rsquo;s cross. There are four rubies in it, of great value, I have
+      been told. Take it and go&mdash;go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Felicie hasn&rsquo;t come back,&rdquo; he cried, with a sudden thought. &ldquo;Can she have
+      been arrested?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana laid the cross on the table, and sprang to the windows that looked
+      on the street. There she saw, in the moonlight, a file of soldiers posting
+      themselves in deepest silence along the wall of the house. She turned,
+      affecting to be calm, and said to her husband:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not a minute to lose; you must escape through the garden. Here
+      is the key of the little gate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As a precaution she turned to the other windows, looking on the garden. In
+      the shadow of the trees she saw the gleam of the silver lace on the hats
+      of a body of gendarmes; and she heard the distant mutterings of a crowd of
+      persons whom sentinels were holding back at the end of the streets up
+      which curiosity had drawn them. Diard had, in truth, been seen to enter
+      his house by persons at their windows, and on their information and that
+      of the frightened maid-servant, who was arrested, the troops and the
+      people had blocked the two streets which led to the house. A dozen
+      gendarmes, returning from the theatre, had climbed the walls of the
+      garden, and guarded all exit in that direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; said Juana, &ldquo;you cannot escape. The whole town is here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diard ran from window to window with the useless activity of a captive
+      bird striking against the panes to escape. Juana stood silent and
+      thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Juana, dear Juana, help me! give me, for pity&rsquo;s sake, some advice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Juana, &ldquo;I will; and I will save you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you are always my good angel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana left the room and returned immediately, holding out to Diard, with
+      averted head, one of his own pistols. Diard did not take it. Juana heard
+      the entrance of the soldiers into the courtyard, where they laid down the
+      body of the murdered man to confront the assassin with the sight of it.
+      She turned round and saw Diard white and livid. The man was nearly
+      fainting, and tried to sit down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your children implore you,&rdquo; she said, putting the pistol beneath his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;my good Juana, my little Juana, do you think&mdash;Juana! is it
+      so pressing?&mdash;I want to kiss you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gendarmes were mounting the staircase. Juana grasped the pistol, aimed
+      it at Diard, holding him, in spite of his cries, by the throat; then she
+      blew his brains out and flung the weapon on the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that instant the door was opened violently. The public prosecutor,
+      followed by an examining judge, a doctor, a sheriff, and a posse of
+      gendarmes, all the representatives, in short, of human justice, entered
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; asked Juana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that Monsieur Diard?&rdquo; said the prosecutor, pointing to the dead body
+      bent double on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, monsieur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your gown is covered with blood, madame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you not see why?&rdquo; replied Juana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to the little table and sat down, taking up the volume of
+      Cervantes; she was pale, with a nervous agitation which she nevertheless
+      controlled, keeping it wholly inward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave the room,&rdquo; said the prosecutor to the gendarmes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he signed to the examining judge and the doctor to remain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, under the circumstances, we can only congratulate you on the
+      death of your husband,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;At least he has died as a soldier
+      should, whatever crime his passions may have led him to commit. His act
+      renders negatory that of justice. But however we may desire to spare you
+      at such a moment, the law requires that we should make an exact report of
+      all violent deaths. You will permit us to do our duty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I go and change my dress?&rdquo; she asked, laying down the volume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, madame; but you must bring it back to us. The doctor may need it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be too painful for madame to see me operate,&rdquo; said the doctor,
+      understanding the suspicions of the prosecutor. &ldquo;Messieurs,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I
+      hope you will allow her to remain in the next room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The magistrates approved the request of the merciful physician, and
+      Felicie was permitted to attend her mistress. The judge and the prosecutor
+      talked together in a low voice. Officers of the law are very unfortunate
+      in being forced to suspect all, and to imagine evil everywhere. By dint of
+      supposing wicked intentions, and of comprehending them, in order to reach
+      the truth hidden under so many contradictory actions, it is impossible
+      that the exercise of their dreadful functions should not, in the long run,
+      dry up at their source the generous emotions they are constrained to
+      repress. If the sensibilities of the surgeon who probes into the mysteries
+      of the human body end by growing callous, what becomes of those of the
+      judge who is incessantly compelled to search the inner folds of the soul?
+      Martyrs to their mission, magistrates are all their lives in mourning for
+      their lost illusions; crime weighs no less heavily on them than on the
+      criminal. An old man seated on the bench is venerable, but a young judge
+      makes a thoughtful person shudder. The examining judge in this case was
+      young, and he felt obliged to say to the public prosecutor,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think that woman was her husband&rsquo;s accomplice? Ought we to take
+      her into custody? Is it best to question her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prosecutor replied, with a careless shrug of his shoulders,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Montefiore and Diard were two well-known scoundrels. The maid evidently
+      knew nothing of the crime. Better let the thing rest there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor performed the autopsy, and dictated his report to the sheriff.
+      Suddenly he stopped, and hastily entered the next room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame&mdash;&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juana, who had removed her bloody gown, came towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was you,&rdquo; he whispered, stooping to her ear, &ldquo;who killed your
+      husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, monsieur,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor returned and continued his dictation as follows,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, from the above assemblage of facts, it appears evident that the said
+      Diard killed himself voluntarily and by his own hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you finished?&rdquo; he said to the sheriff after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the writer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor signed the report. Juana, who had followed him into the room,
+      gave him one glance, repressing with difficulty the tears which for an
+      instant rose into her eyes and moistened them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Messieurs,&rdquo; she said to the public prosecutor and the judge, &ldquo;I am a
+      stranger here, and a Spaniard. I am ignorant of the laws, and I know no
+      one in Bordeaux. I ask of you one kindness: enable me to obtain a passport
+      for Spain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment!&rdquo; cried the examining judge. &ldquo;Madame, what has become of the
+      money stolen from the Marquis de Montefiore?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Diard,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;said something to me vaguely about a heap
+      of stones, under which he must have hidden it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two magistrates looked at each other. Juana made a noble gesture and
+      motioned to the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; she said in his ear, &ldquo;can I be suspected of some infamous
+      action? I! The pile of stones must be close to the wall of my garden. Go
+      yourself, I implore you. Look, search, find that money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor went out, taking with him the examining judge, and together
+      they found Montefiore&rsquo;s treasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within two days Juana had sold her cross to pay the costs of a journey. On
+      her way with her two children to take the diligence which would carry her
+      to the frontiers of Spain, she heard herself being called in the street.
+      Her dying mother was being carried to a hospital, and through the curtains
+      of her litter she had seen her daughter. Juana made the bearers enter a
+      porte-cochere that was near them, and there the last interview between the
+      mother and the daughter took place. Though the two spoke to each other in
+      a low voice, Juan heard these parting words,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother, die in peace; I have suffered for you all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
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+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Juana, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Juana
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: August, 1998  [Etext #1437]
+Posting Date: February 25, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUANA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+JUANA
+
+
+BY HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                  To Madame la Comtesse Merlin.
+
+
+
+
+JUANA
+
+(THE MARANAS)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. EXPOSITION
+
+Notwithstanding the discipline which Marechal Suchet had introduced into
+his army corps, he was unable to prevent a short period of trouble and
+disorder at the taking of Tarragona. According to certain fair-minded
+military men, this intoxication of victory bore a striking resemblance
+to pillage, though the marechal promptly suppressed it. Order being
+re-established, each regiment quartered in its respective lines, and
+the commandant of the city appointed, military administration began. The
+place assumed a mongrel aspect. Though all things were organized on a
+French system, the Spaniards were left free to follow "in petto" their
+national tastes.
+
+This period of pillage (it is difficult to determine how long it lasted)
+had, like all other sublunary effects, a cause, not so difficult
+to discover. In the marechal's army was a regiment, composed almost
+entirely of Italians and commanded by a certain Colonel Eugene, a man
+of remarkable bravery, a second Murat, who, having entered the military
+service too late, obtained neither a Grand Duchy of Berg nor a Kingdom
+of Naples, nor balls at the Pizzo. But if he won no crown he had ample
+opportunity to obtain wounds, and it was not surprising that he met with
+several. His regiment was composed of the scattered fragments of the
+Italian legion. This legion was to Italy what the colonial battalions
+are to France. Its permanent cantonments, established on the island of
+Elba, served as an honorable place of exile for the troublesome sons of
+good families and for those great men who have just missed greatness,
+whom society brands with a hot iron and designates by the term "mauvais
+sujets"; men who are for the most part misunderstood; whose existence
+may become either noble through the smile of a woman lifting them out
+of their rut, or shocking at the close of an orgy under the influence of
+some damnable reflection dropped by a drunken comrade.
+
+Napoleon had incorporated these vigorous beings in the sixth of the
+line, hoping to metamorphose them finally into generals,--barring those
+whom the bullets might take off. But the emperor's calculation was
+scarcely fulfilled, except in the matter of the bullets. This regiment,
+often decimated but always the same in character, acquired a great
+reputation for valor in the field and for wickedness in private life.
+At the siege of Tarragona it lost its celebrated hero, Bianchi, the man
+who, during the campaign, had wagered that he would eat the heart of a
+Spanish sentinel, and did eat it. Though Bianchi was the prince of the
+devils incarnate to whom the regiment owed its dual reputation, he had,
+nevertheless, that sort of chivalrous honor which excuses, in the army,
+the worst excesses. In a word, he would have been, at an earlier period,
+an admirable pirate. A few days before his death he distinguished
+himself by a daring action which the marechal wished to reward. Bianchi
+refused rank, pension, and additional decoration, asking, for sole
+recompense, the favor of being the first to mount the breach at the
+assault on Tarragona. The marechal granted the request and then forgot
+his promise; but Bianchi forced him to remember Bianchi. The enraged
+hero was the first to plant our flag on the wall, where he was shot by a
+monk.
+
+This historical digression was necessary, in order to explain how it was
+that the 6th of the line was the regiment to enter Tarragona, and why
+the disorder and confusion, natural enough in a city taken by storm,
+degenerated for a time into a slight pillage.
+
+This regiment possessed two officers, not at all remarkable among these
+men of iron, who played, nevertheless, in the history we shall now
+relate, a somewhat important part.
+
+The first, a captain in the quartermaster's department, an officer half
+civil, half military, was considered, in soldier phrase, to be fighting
+his own battle. He pretended bravery, boasted loudly of belonging to
+the 6th of the line, twirled his moustache with the air of a man who was
+ready to demolish everything; but his brother officers did not esteem
+him. The fortune he possessed made him cautious. He was nicknamed, for
+two reasons, "captain of crows." In the first place, he could smell
+powder a league off, and took wing at the sound of a musket; secondly,
+the nickname was based on an innocent military pun, which his position
+in the regiment warranted. Captain Montefiore, of the illustrious
+Montefiore family of Milan (though the laws of the Kingdom of Italy
+forbade him to bear his title in the French service) was one of the
+handsomest men in the army. This beauty may have been among the secret
+causes of his prudence on fighting days. A wound which might have
+injured his nose, cleft his forehead, or scarred his cheek, would have
+destroyed one of the most beautiful Italian faces which a woman ever
+dreamed of in all its delicate proportions. This face, not unlike the
+type which Girodet has given to the dying young Turk, in the "Revolt at
+Cairo," was instinct with that melancholy by which all women are more or
+less duped.
+
+The Marquis de Montefiore possessed an entailed property, but his income
+was mortgaged for a number of years to pay off the costs of certain
+Italian escapades which are inconceivable in Paris. He had ruined
+himself in supporting a theatre at Milan in order to force upon a public
+a very inferior prima donna, whom he was said to love madly. A fine
+future was therefore before him, and he did not care to risk it for the
+paltry distinction of a bit of red ribbon. He was not a brave man, but
+he was certainly a philosopher; and he had precedents, if we may use so
+parliamentary an expression. Did not Philip the Second register a vow
+after the battle of Saint Quentin that never again would he put himself
+under fire? And did not the Duke of Alba encourage him in thinking that
+the worst trade in the world was the involuntary exchange of a crown
+for a bullet? Hence, Montefiore was Philippiste in his capacity of rich
+marquis and handsome man; and in other respects also he was quite as
+profound a politician as Philip the Second himself. He consoled himself
+for his nickname, and for the disesteem of the regiment by thinking
+that his comrades were blackguards, whose opinion would never be of any
+consequence to him if by chance they survived the present war, which
+seemed to be one of extermination. He relied on his face to win him
+promotion; he saw himself made colonel by feminine influence and a
+carefully managed transition from captain of equipment to orderly
+officer, and from orderly officer to aide-de-camp on the staff of some
+easy-going marshal. By that time, he reflected, he should come into his
+property of a hundred thousand scudi a year, some journal would speak of
+him as "the brave Montefiore," he would marry a girl of rank, and no one
+would dare to dispute his courage or verify his wounds.
+
+Captain Montefiore had one friend in the person of the quartermaster,
+--a Provencal, born in the neighborhood of Nice, whose name was Diard.
+A friend, whether at the galleys or in the garret of an artist, consoles
+for many troubles. Now Montefiore and Diard were two philosophers, who
+consoled each other for their present lives by the study of vice,
+as artists soothe the immediate disappointment of their hopes by the
+expectation of future fame. Both regarded the war in its results, not
+its action; they simply considered those who died for glory fools.
+Chance had made soldiers of them; whereas their natural proclivities
+would have seated them at the green table of a congress. Nature had
+poured Montefiore into the mould of a Rizzio, and Diard into that of
+a diplomatist. Both were endowed with that nervous, feverish,
+half-feminine organization, which is equally strong for good or evil,
+and from which may emanate, according to the impulse of these singular
+temperaments, a crime or a generous action, a noble deed or a base one.
+The fate of such natures depends at any moment on the pressure, more
+or less powerful, produced on their nervous systems by violent and
+transitory passions.
+
+Diard was considered a good accountant, but no soldier would have
+trusted him with his purse or his will, possibly because of the
+antipathy felt by all real soldiers against the bureaucrats. The
+quartermaster was not without courage and a certain juvenile generosity,
+sentiments which many men give up as they grow older, by dint of
+reasoning or calculating. Variable as the beauty of a fair woman, Diard
+was a great boaster and a great talker, talking of everything. He said
+he was artistic, and he made prizes (like two celebrated generals) of
+works of art, solely, he declared, to preserve them for posterity.
+His military comrades would have been puzzled indeed to form a correct
+judgment of him. Many of them, accustomed to draw upon his funds when
+occasion obliged them, thought him rich; but in truth, he was a gambler,
+and gamblers may be said to have nothing of their own. Montefiore was
+also a gambler, and all the officers of the regiment played with the
+pair; for, to the shame of men be it said, it is not a rare thing to
+see persons gambling together around a green table who, when the game is
+finished, will not bow to their companions, feeling no respect for them.
+Montefiore was the man with whom Bianchi made his bet about the heart of
+the Spanish sentinel.
+
+Montefiore and Diard were among the last to mount the breach at
+Tarragona, but the first in the heart of the town as soon as it was
+taken. Accidents of this sort happen in all attacks, but with this pair
+of friends they were customary. Supporting each other, they made their
+way bravely through a labyrinth of narrow and gloomy little streets in
+quest of their personal objects; one seeking for painted madonnas, the
+other for madonnas of flesh and blood.
+
+In what part of Tarragona it happened I cannot say, but Diard presently
+recognized by its architecture the portal of a convent, the gate of
+which was already battered in. Springing into the cloister to put a
+stop to the fury of the soldiers, he arrived just in time to prevent two
+Parisians from shooting a Virgin by Albano. In spite of the moustache
+with which in their military fanaticism they had decorated her face, he
+bought the picture. Montefiore, left alone during this episode, noticed,
+nearly opposite the convent, the house and shop of a draper, from which
+a shot was fired at him at the moment when his eyes caught a flaming
+glance from those of an inquisitive young girl, whose head was advanced
+under the shelter of a blind. Tarragona taken by assault, Tarragona
+furious, firing from every window, Tarragona violated, with dishevelled
+hair, and half-naked, was indeed an object of curiosity,--the curiosity
+of a daring Spanish woman. It was a magnified bull-fight.
+
+Montefiore forgot the pillage, and heard, for the moment, neither the
+cries, nor the musketry, nor the growling of the artillery. The profile
+of that Spanish girl was the most divinely delicious thing which he,
+an Italian libertine, weary of Italian beauty, and dreaming of an
+impossible woman because he was tired of all women, had ever seen.
+He could still quiver, he, who had wasted his fortune on a thousand
+follies, the thousand passions of a young and blase man--the most
+abominable monster that society generates. An idea came into his head,
+suggested perhaps by the shot of the draper-patriot, namely,--to set
+fire to the house. But he was now alone, and without any means of
+action; the fighting was centred in the market-place, where a few
+obstinate beings were still defending the town. A better idea then
+occurred to him. Diard came out of the convent, but Montefiore said not
+a word of his discovery; on the contrary, he accompanied him on a series
+of rambles about the streets. But the next day, the Italian had obtained
+his military billet in the house of the draper,--an appropriate lodging
+for an equipment captain!
+
+The house of the worthy Spaniard consisted, on the ground-floor, of a
+vast and gloomy shop, externally fortified with stout iron bars, such
+as we see in the old storehouses of the rue des Lombards. This shop
+communicated with a parlor lighted from an interior courtyard, a large
+room breathing the very spirit of the middle-ages, with smoky old
+pictures, old tapestries, antique "brazero," a plumed hat hanging to
+a nail, the musket of the guerrillas, and the cloak of Bartholo. The
+kitchen adjoined this unique living-room, where the inmates took their
+meals and warmed themselves over the dull glow of the brazier, smoking
+cigars and discoursing bitterly to animate all hearts with hatred
+against the French. Silver pitchers and precious dishes of plate and
+porcelain adorned a buttery shelf of the old fashion. But the light,
+sparsely admitted, allowed these dazzling objects to show but slightly;
+all things, as in pictures of the Dutch school, looked brown, even the
+faces. Between the shop and this living-room, so fine in color and
+in its tone of patriarchal life, was a dark staircase leading to
+a ware-room where the light, carefully distributed, permitted the
+examination of goods. Above this were the apartments of the merchant and
+his wife. Rooms for an apprentice and a servant-woman were in a garret
+under the roof, which projected over the street and was supported by
+buttresses, giving a somewhat fantastic appearance to the exterior of
+the building. These chambers were now taken by the merchant and his
+wife who gave up their own rooms to the officer who was billeted upon
+them,--probably because they wished to avoid all quarrelling.
+
+Montefiore gave himself out as a former Spanish subject, persecuted by
+Napoleon, whom he was serving against his will; and these semi-lies
+had the success he expected. He was invited to share the meals of the
+family, and was treated with the respect due to his name, his birth,
+and his title. He had his reasons for capturing the good-will of the
+merchant and his wife; he scented his madonna as the ogre scented
+the youthful flesh of Tom Thumb and his brothers. But in spite of
+the confidence he managed to inspire in the worthy pair the latter
+maintained the most profound silence as to the said madonna; and not
+only did the captain see no trace of the young girl during the first day
+he spent under the roof of the honest Spaniard, but he heard no sound
+and came upon no indication which revealed her presence in that ancient
+building. Supposing that she was the only daughter of the old couple,
+Montefiore concluded they had consigned her to the garret, where, for
+the time being, they made their home.
+
+But no revelation came to betray the hiding-place of that precious
+treasure. The marquis glued his face to the lozenge-shaped leaded panes
+which looked upon the black-walled enclosure of the inner courtyard;
+but in vain; he saw no gleam of light except from the windows of the old
+couple, whom he could see and hear as they went and came and talked and
+coughed. Of the young girl, not a shadow!
+
+Montefiore was far too wary to risk the future of his passion by
+exploring the house nocturnally, or by tapping softly on the doors.
+Discovery by that hot patriot, the mercer, suspicious as a Spaniard
+must be, meant ruin infallibly. The captain therefore resolved to wait
+patiently, resting his faith on time and the imperfection of men, which
+always results--even with scoundrels, and how much more with honest
+men!--in the neglect of precautions.
+
+The next day he discovered a hammock in the kitchen, showing plainly
+where the servant-woman slept. As for the apprentice, his bed was
+evidently made on the shop counter. During supper on the second day
+Montefiore succeeded, by cursing Napoleon, in smoothing the anxious
+forehead of the merchant, a grave, black-visaged Spaniard, much like the
+faces formerly carved on the handles of Moorish lutes; even the wife let
+a gay smile of hatred appear in the folds of her elderly face. The lamp
+and the reflections of the brazier illumined fantastically the shadows
+of the noble room. The mistress of the house offered a "cigarrito" to
+their semi-compatriot. At this moment the rustle of a dress and the fall
+of a chair behind the tapestry were plainly heard.
+
+"Ah!" cried the wife, turning pale, "may the saints assist us! God grant
+no harm has happened!"
+
+"You have some one in the next room, have you not?" said Montefiore,
+giving no sign of emotion.
+
+The draper dropped a word of imprecation against the girls. Evidently
+alarmed, the wife opened a secret door, and led in, half fainting, the
+Italian's madonna, to whom he was careful to pay no attention; only,
+to avoid a too-studied indifference, he glanced at the girl before he
+turned to his host and said in his own language:--
+
+"Is that your daughter, signore?"
+
+Perez de Lagounia (such was the merchant's name) had large commercial
+relations with Genoa, Florence, and Livorno; he knew Italian, and
+replied in the same language:--
+
+"No; if she were my daughter I should take less precautions. The child
+is confided to our care, and I would rather die than see any evil happen
+to her. But how is it possible to put sense into a girl of eighteen?"
+
+"She is very handsome," said Montefiore, coldly, not looking at her face
+again.
+
+"Her mother's beauty is celebrated," replied the merchant, briefly.
+
+They continued to smoke, watching each other. Though Montefiore
+compelled himself not to give the slightest look which might contradict
+his apparent coldness, he could not refrain, at a moment when Perez
+turned his head to expectorate, from casting a rapid glance at the young
+girl, whose sparkling eyes met his. Then, with that science of vision
+which gives to a libertine, as it does to a sculptor, the fatal power of
+disrobing, if we may so express it, a woman, and divining her shape by
+inductions both rapid and sagacious, he beheld one of those masterpieces
+of Nature whose creation appears to demand as its right all the
+happiness of love. Here was a fair young face, on which the sun of Spain
+had cast faint tones of bistre which added to its expression of seraphic
+calmness a passionate pride, like a flash of light infused beneath
+that diaphanous complexion,--due, perhaps, to the Moorish blood which
+vivified and colored it. Her hair, raised to the top of her head, fell
+thence with black reflections round the delicate transparent ears and
+defined the outlines of a blue-veined throat. These luxuriant locks
+brought into strong relief the dazzling eyes and the scarlet lips of
+a well-arched mouth. The bodice of the country set off the lines of
+a figure that swayed as easily as a branch of willow. She was not the
+Virgin of Italy, but the Virgin of Spain, of Murillo, the only artist
+daring enough to have painted the Mother of God intoxicated with the joy
+of conceiving the Christ,--the glowing imagination of the boldest and
+also the warmest of painters.
+
+In this young girl three things were united, a single one of which would
+have sufficed for the glory of a woman: the purity of the pearl in the
+depths of ocean; the sublime exaltation of the Spanish Saint Teresa; and
+a passion of love which was ignorant of itself. The presence of such a
+woman has the virtue of a talisman. Montefiore no longer felt worn and
+jaded. That young girl brought back his youthful freshness.
+
+But, though the apparition was delightful, it did not last. The girl was
+taken back to the secret chamber, where the servant-woman carried to her
+openly both light and food.
+
+"You do right to hide her," said Montefiore in Italian. "I will keep
+your secret. The devil! we have generals in our army who are capable of
+abducting her."
+
+Montefiore's infatuation went so far as to suggest to him the idea of
+marrying her. He accordingly asked her history, and Perez very willingly
+told him the circumstances under which she had become his ward. The
+prudent Spaniard was led to make this confidence because he had heard of
+Montefiore in Italy, and knowing his reputation was desirous to let him
+see how strong were the barriers which protected the young girl from the
+possibility of seduction. Though the good-man was gifted with a certain
+patriarchal eloquence, in keeping with his simple life and customs, his
+tale will be improved by abridgment.
+
+At the period when the French Revolution changed the manners and
+morals of every country which served as the scene of its wars, a street
+prostitute came to Tarragona, driven from Venice at the time of its
+fall. The life of this woman had been a tissue of romantic adventures
+and strange vicissitudes. To her, oftener than to any other woman of her
+class, it had happened, thanks to the caprice of great lords struck with
+her extraordinary beauty, to be literally gorged with gold and jewels
+and all the delights of excessive wealth,--flowers, carriages, pages,
+maids, palaces, pictures, journeys (like those of Catherine II.); in
+short, the life of a queen, despotic in her caprices and obeyed, often
+beyond her own imaginings. Then, without herself, or any one, chemist,
+physician, or man of science, being able to discover how her gold
+evaporated, she would find herself back in the streets, poor, denuded of
+everything, preserving nothing but her all-powerful beauty, yet living
+on without thought or care of the past, the present, or the future.
+Cast, in her poverty, into the hands of some poor gambling officer, she
+attached herself to him as a dog to its master, sharing the discomforts
+of the military life, which indeed she comforted, as content under the
+roof of a garret as beneath the silken hangings of opulence. Italian and
+Spanish both, she fulfilled very scrupulously the duties of religion,
+and more than once she had said to love:--
+
+"Return to-morrow; to-day I belong to God."
+
+But this slime permeated with gold and perfumes, this careless
+indifference to all things, these unbridled passions, these religious
+beliefs cast into that heart like diamonds into mire, this life begun,
+and ended, in a hospital, these gambling chances transferred to the
+soul, to the very existence,--in short, this great alchemy, for which
+vice lit the fire beneath the crucible in which fortunes were melted
+up and the gold of ancestors and the honor of great names evaporated,
+proceeded from a _cause_, a particular heredity, faithfully transmitted
+from mother to daughter since the middle ages. The name of this woman
+was La Marana. In her family, existing solely in the female line, the
+idea, person, name and power of a father had been completely unknown
+since the thirteenth century. The name Marana was to her what the
+designation of Stuart is to the celebrated royal race of Scotland, a
+name of distinction substituted for the patronymic name by the constant
+heredity of the same office devolving on the family.
+
+Formerly, in France, Spain, and Italy, when those three countries had,
+in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, mutual interests which united
+and disunited them by perpetual warfare, the name Marana served to
+express in its general sense, a prostitute. In those days women of that
+sort had a certain rank in the world of which nothing in our day can
+give an idea. Ninon de l'Enclos and Marian Delorme have alone played,
+in France, the role of the Imperias, Catalinas, and Maranas who, in
+preceding centuries, gathered around them the cassock, gown, and
+sword. An Imperia built I forget which church in Rome in a frenzy of
+repentance, as Rhodope built, in earlier times, a pyramid in Egypt. The
+name Marana, inflicted at first as a disgrace upon the singular family
+with which we are now concerned, had ended by becoming its veritable
+name and by ennobling its vice by incontestable antiquity.
+
+One day, a day of opulence or of penury I know not which, for this event
+was a secret between herself and God, but assuredly it was in a moment
+of repentance and melancholy, this Marana of the nineteenth century
+stood with her feet in the slime and her head raised to heaven. She
+cursed the blood in her veins, she cursed herself, she trembled lest she
+should have a daughter, and she swore, as such women swear, on the honor
+and with the will of the galleys--the firmest will, the most scrupulous
+honor that there is on earth--she swore, before an altar, and believing
+in that altar, to make her daughter a virtuous creature, a saint, and
+thus to gain, after that long line of lost women, criminals in love, an
+angel in heaven for them all.
+
+The vow once made, the blood of the Maranas spoke; the courtesan
+returned to her reckless life, a thought the more within her heart. At
+last she loved, with the violent love of such women, as Henrietta Wilson
+loved Lord Ponsonby, as Mademoiselle Dupuis loved Bolingbroke, as the
+Marchesa Pescara loved her husband--but no, she did not love, she adored
+one of those fair men, half women, to whom she gave the virtues which
+she had not, striving to keep for herself all that there was of vice
+between them. It was from that weak man, that senseless marriage
+unblessed by God or man which happiness is thought to justify, but which
+no happiness absolves, and for which men blush at last, that she had a
+daughter, a daughter to save, a daughter for whom to desire a noble life
+and the chastity she had not. Henceforth, happy or not happy, opulent or
+beggared, she had in her heart a pure, untainted sentiment, the highest
+of all human feelings because the most disinterested. Love has its
+egotism, but motherhood has none. La Marana was a mother like none
+other; for, in her total, her eternal shipwreck, motherhood might still
+redeem her. To accomplish sacredly through life the task of sending
+a pure soul to heaven, was not that a better thing than a tardy
+repentance? was it not, in truth, the only spotless prayer which she
+could lift to God?
+
+So, when this daughter, when her Marie-Juana-Pepita (she would fain have
+given her all the saints in the calendar as guardians), when this dear
+little creature was granted to her, she became possessed of so high an
+idea of the dignity of motherhood that she entreated vice to grant her a
+respite. She made herself virtuous and lived in solitude. No more fetes,
+no more orgies, no more love. All joys, all fortunes were centred now
+in the cradle of her child. The tones of that infant voice made an oasis
+for her soul in the burning sands of her existence. That sentiment could
+not be measured or estimated by any other. Did it not, in fact, comprise
+all human sentiments, all heavenly hopes? La Marana was so resolved not
+to soil her daughter with any stain other than that of birth, that she
+sought to invest her with social virtues; she even obliged the young
+father to settle a handsome patrimony upon the child and to give her
+his name. Thus the girl was not know as Juana Marana, but as Juana di
+Mancini.
+
+Then, after seven years of joy, and kisses, and intoxicating happiness,
+the time came when the poor Marana deprived herself of her idol. That
+Juana might never bow her head under their hereditary shame, the mother
+had the courage to renounce her child for her child's sake, and to seek,
+not without horrible suffering, for another mother, another home, other
+principles to follow, other and saintlier examples to imitate. The
+abdication of a mother is either a revolting act or a sublime one; in
+this case, was it not sublime?
+
+At Tarragona a lucky accident threw the Lagounias in her way, under
+circumstances which enabled her to recognize the integrity of the
+Spaniard and the noble virtue of his wife. She came to them at a time
+when her proposal seemed that of a liberating angel. The fortune and
+honor of the merchant, momentarily compromised, required a prompt and
+secret succor. La Marana made over to the husband the whole sum she
+had obtained of the father for Juana's "dot," requiring neither
+acknowledgment nor interest. According to her own code of honor, a
+contract, a trust, was a thing of the heart, and God its supreme
+judge. After stating the miseries of her position to Dona Lagounia, she
+confided her daughter and her daughter's fortune to the fine old Spanish
+honor, pure and spotless, which filled the precincts of that ancient
+house. Dona Lagounia had no child, and she was only too happy to obtain
+one to nurture. The mother then parted from her Juana, convinced that
+the child's future was safe, and certain of having found her a mother, a
+mother who would bring her up as a Mancini, and not as a Marana.
+
+Leaving her child in the simple modest house of the merchant where the
+burgher virtues reigned, where religion and sacred sentiments and honor
+filled the air, the poor prostitute, the disinherited mother was enabled
+to bear her trial by visions of Juana, virgin, wife, and mother, a
+mother throughout her life. On the threshold of that house Marana left a
+tear such as the angels garner up.
+
+Since that day of mourning and hope the mother, drawn by some invincible
+presentiment, had thrice returned to see her daughter. Once when Juana
+fell ill with a dangerous complaint:
+
+"I knew it," she said to Perez when she reached the house.
+
+Asleep, she had seen her Juana dying. She nursed her and watched her,
+until one morning, sure of the girl's convalescence, she kissed her,
+still asleep, on the forehead and left her without betraying whom she
+was. A second time the Marana came to the church where Juana made her
+first communion. Simply dressed, concealing herself behind a column, the
+exiled mother recognized herself in her daughter such as she once had
+been, pure as the snow fresh-fallen on the Alps. A courtesan even
+in maternity, the Marana felt in the depths of her soul a jealous
+sentiment, stronger for the moment than that of love, and she left
+the church, incapable of resisting any longer the desire to kill Dona
+Lagounia, as she sat there, with radiant face, too much the mother of
+her child. A third and last meeting had taken place between mother and
+daughter in the streets of Milan, to which city the merchant and his
+wife had paid a visit. The Marana drove through the Corso in all
+the splendor of a sovereign; she passed her daughter like a flash of
+lightning and was not recognized. Horrible anguish! To this Marana,
+surfeited with kisses, one was lacking, a single one, for which she
+would have bartered all the others: the joyous, girlish kiss of a
+daughter to a mother, an honored mother, a mother in whom shone all the
+domestic virtues. Juana living was dead to her. One thought revived the
+soul of the courtesan--a precious thought! Juana was henceforth safe.
+She might be the humblest of women, but at least she was not what her
+mother was--an infamous courtesan.
+
+The merchant and his wife had fulfilled their trust with scrupulous
+integrity. Juana's fortune, managed by them, had increased tenfold.
+Perez de Lagounia, now the richest merchant in the provinces, felt for
+the young girl a sentiment that was semi-superstitious. Her money had
+preserved his ancient house from dishonorable ruin, and the presence of
+so precious a treasure had brought him untold prosperity. His wife, a
+heart of gold, and full of delicacy, had made the child religious, and
+as pure as she was beautiful. Juana might well become the wife of either
+a great seigneur or a wealthy merchant; she lacked no virtue necessary
+to the highest destiny. Perez had intended taking her to Madrid and
+marrying her to some grandee, but the events of the present war delayed
+the fulfilment of this project.
+
+"I don't know where the Marana now is," said Perez, ending the above
+history, "but in whatever quarter of the world she may be living, when
+she hears of the occupation of our province by your armies, and of the
+siege of Tarragona, she will assuredly set out at once to come here and
+see to her daughter's safety."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. AUCTION
+
+
+The foregoing narrative changed the intentions of the Italian captain;
+no longer did he think of making a Marchesa di Montefiore of Juana di
+Mancini. He recognized the blood of the Maranas in the glance the girl
+had given from behind the blinds, in the trick she had just played to
+satisfy her curiosity, and also in the parting look she had cast upon
+him. The libertine wanted a virtuous woman for a wife.
+
+The adventure was full of danger, but danger of a kind that never
+daunts the least courageous man, for love and pleasure followed it. The
+apprentice sleeping in the shop, the cook bivouacking in the kitchen,
+Perez and his wife sleeping, no doubt, the wakeful sleep of the aged,
+the echoing sonority of the old mansion, the close surveillance of the
+girl in the day-time,--all these things were obstacles, and made success
+a thing well-nigh impossible. But Montefiore had in his favor against
+all impossibilities the blood of the Maranas which gushed in the heart
+of that inquisitive girl, Italian by birth, Spanish in principles,
+virgin indeed, but impatient to love. Passion, the girl, and Montefiore
+were ready and able to defy the whole universe.
+
+Montefiore, impelled as much by the instinct of a man of gallantry as
+by those vague hopes which cannot be explained, and to which we give
+the name of presentiments (a word of astonishing verbal accuracy),
+Montefiore spent the first hours of the night at his window, endeavoring
+to look below him to the secret apartment where, undoubtedly, the
+merchant and his wife had hidden the love and joyfulness of their old
+age. The ware-room of the "entresol" separated him from the rooms on the
+ground-floor. The captain therefore could not have recourse to noises
+significantly made from one floor to the other, an artificial language
+which all lovers know well how to create. But chance, or it may have
+been the young girl herself, came to his assistance. At the moment when
+he stationed himself at his window, he saw, on the black wall of the
+courtyard, a circle of light, in the centre of which the silhouette of
+Juana was clearly defined; the consecutive movement of the arms, and the
+attitude, gave evidence that she was arranging her hair for the night.
+
+"Is she alone?" Montefiore asked himself; "could I, without danger,
+lower a letter filled with coin and strike it against that circular
+window in her hiding-place?"
+
+At once he wrote a note, the note of a man exiled by his family to Elba,
+the note of a degraded marquis now a mere captain of equipment. Then he
+made a cord of whatever he could find that was capable of being turned
+into string, filled the note with a few silver crowns, and lowered it in
+the deepest silence to the centre of that spherical gleam.
+
+"The shadows will show if her mother or the servant is with her,"
+thought Montefiore. "If she is not alone, I can pull up the string at
+once."
+
+But, after succeeding with infinite trouble in striking the glass, a
+single form, the little figure of Juana, appeared upon the wall. The
+young girl opened her window cautiously, saw the note, took it, and
+stood before the window while she read it. In it, Montefiore had given
+his name and asked for an interview, offering, after the style of the
+old romances, his heart and hand to the Signorina Juana di Mancini--a
+common trick, the success of which is nearly always certain. At Juana's
+age, nobility of soul increases the dangers which surround youth. A poet
+of our day has said: "Woman succumbs only to her own nobility. The lover
+pretends to doubt the love he inspires at the moment when he is most
+beloved; the young girl, confident and proud, longs to make sacrifices
+to prove her love, and knows the world and men too little to continue
+calm in the midst of her rising emotions and repel with contempt the man
+who accepts a life offered in expiation of a false reproach."
+
+Ever since the constitution of societies the young girl finds herself
+torn by a struggle between the caution of prudent virtue and the evils
+of wrong-doing. Often she loses a love, delightful in prospect, and the
+first, if she resists; on the other hand, she loses a marriage if she
+is imprudent. Casting a glance over the vicissitudes of social life
+in Paris, it is impossible to doubt the necessity of religion; and
+yet Paris is situated in the forty-eighth degree of latitude, while
+Tarragona is in the forty-first. The old question of climates is still
+useful to narrators to explain the sudden denouements, the imprudences,
+or the resistances of love.
+
+Montefiore kept his eyes fixed on the exquisite black profile projected
+by the gleam upon the wall. Neither he nor Juana could see each other;
+a troublesome cornice, vexatiously placed, deprived them of the mute
+correspondence which may be established between a pair of lovers as they
+bend to each other from their windows. Thus the mind and the attention
+of the captain were concentrated on that luminous circle where, without
+perhaps knowing it herself, the young girl would, he thought, innocently
+reveal her thoughts by a series of gestures. But no! The singular
+motions she proceeded to make gave not a particle of hope to the
+expectant lover. Juana was amusing herself by cutting up his missive.
+But virtue and innocence sometimes imitate the clever proceedings
+inspired by jealousy to the Bartholos of comedy. Juana, without
+pens, ink, or paper, was replying by snip of scissors. Presently she
+refastened the note to the string; the officer drew it up, opened it,
+and read by the light of his lamp one word, carefully cut out of the
+paper: COME.
+
+"Come!" he said to himself; "but what of poison? or the dagger or
+carbine of Perez? And that apprentice not yet asleep, perhaps, in the
+shop? and the servant in her hammock? Besides, this old house echoes the
+slightest sound; I can hear old Perez snoring even here. Come, indeed!
+She can have nothing more to lose."
+
+Bitter reflection! rakes alone are logical and will punish a woman for
+devotion. Man created Satan and Lovelace; but a virgin is an angel
+on whom he can bestow naught but his own vices. She is so grand, so
+beautiful, that he cannot magnify or embellish her; he has only the
+fatal power to blast her and drag her down into his own mire.
+
+Montefiore waited for a later and more somnolent hour of the night;
+then, in spite of his reflections, he descended the stairs without
+boots, armed with his pistols, moving step by step, stopping to question
+the silence, putting forth his hands, measuring the stairs, peering into
+the darkness, and ready at the slightest incident to fly back into his
+room. The Italian had put on his handsomest uniform; he had perfumed his
+black hair, and now shone with the particular brilliancy which dress and
+toilet bestow upon natural beauty. Under such circumstances most men are
+as feminine as a woman.
+
+The marquis arrived without hindrance before the secret door of the room
+in which the girl was hidden, a sort of cell made in the angle of the
+house and belonging exclusively to Juana, who had remained there hidden
+during the day from every eye while the siege lasted. Up to the present
+time she had slept in the room of her adopted mother, but the limited
+space in the garret where the merchant and his wife had gone to make
+room for the officer who was billeted upon them, did not allow of her
+going with them. Dona Lagounia had therefore left the young girl to the
+guardianship of lock and key, under the protection of religious ideas,
+all the more efficacious because they were partly superstitious, and
+also under the shield of a native pride and sensitive modesty which made
+the young Mancini in sort an exception among her sex. Juana possessed
+in an equal degree the most attaching virtues and the most passionate
+impulses; she had needed the modesty and sanctity of this monotonous
+life to calm and cool the tumultuous blood of the Maranas which bounded
+in her heart, the desires of which her adopted mother told her were an
+instigation of the devil.
+
+A faint ray of light traced along the sill of the secret door guided
+Montefiore to the place; he scratched the panel softly and Juana opened
+to him. Montefiore entered, palpitating, but he recognized in the
+expression of the girl's face complete ignorance of her peril, a sort of
+naive curiosity, and an innocent admiration. He stopped short, arrested
+for a moment by the sacredness of the picture which met his eyes.
+
+He saw before him a tapestry on the walls with a gray ground sprinkled
+with violets, a little coffer of ebony, an antique mirror, an immense
+and very old arm chair also in ebony and covered with tapestry, a table
+with twisted legs, a pretty carpet on the floor, near the table a
+single chair; and that was all. On the table, however, were flowers and
+embroidery; in a recess at the farther end of the room was the narrow
+little bed where Juana dreamed. Above the bed were three pictures;
+and near the pillow a crucifix, with a holy water basin and a prayer,
+printed in letters of gold and framed. Flowers exhaled their perfume
+faintly; the candles cast a tender light; all was calm and pure and
+sacred. The dreamy thoughts of Juana, but above all Juana herself, had
+communicated to all things her own peculiar charm; her soul appeared
+to shine there, like the pearl in its matrix. Juana, dressed in white,
+beautiful with naught but her own beauty, laying down her rosary to
+answer love, might have inspired respect, even in a Montefiore, if
+the silence, if the night, if Juana herself had not seemed so amorous.
+Montefiore stood still, intoxicated with an unknown happiness, possibly
+that of Satan beholding heaven through a rift of the clouds which form
+its enclosure.
+
+"As soon as I saw you," he said in pure Tuscan, and in the modest tone
+of voice so peculiarly Italian, "I loved you. My soul and my life are
+now in you, and in you they will be forever, if you will have it so."
+
+Juana listened, inhaling from the atmosphere the sound of these words
+which the accents of love made magnificent.
+
+"Poor child! how have you breathed so long the air of this dismal house
+without dying of it? You, made to reign in the world, to inhabit the
+palace of a prince, to live in the midst of fetes, to feel the joys
+which love bestows, to see the world at your feet, to efface all other
+beauty by your own which can have no rival--you, to live here, solitary,
+with those two shopkeepers!"
+
+Adroit question! He wished to know if Juana had a lover.
+
+"True," she replied. "But who can have told you my secret thoughts? For
+the last few months I have nearly died of sadness. Yes, I would _rather_
+die than stay longer in this house. Look at that embroidery; there is
+not a stitch there which I did not set with dreadful thoughts. How many
+times I have thought of escaping to fling myself into the sea! Why? I
+don't know why,--little childish troubles, but very keen, though they
+are so silly. Often I have kissed my mother at night as one would kiss
+a mother for the last time, saying in my heart: 'To-morrow I will kill
+myself.' But I do not die. Suicides go to hell, you know, and I am so
+afraid of hell that I resign myself to live, to get up in the morning
+and go to bed at night, and work the same hours, and do the same things.
+I am not so weary of it, but I suffer--And yet, my father and mother
+adore me. Oh! I am bad, I am bad; I say so to my confessor."
+
+"Do you always live here alone, without amusement, without pleasures?"
+
+"Oh! I have not always been like this. Till I was fifteen the festivals
+of the church, the chants, the music gave me pleasure. I was happy,
+feeling myself like the angels without sin and able to communicate every
+week--I loved God then. But for the last three years, from day to day,
+all things have changed. First, I wanted flowers here--and I have them,
+lovely flowers! Then I wanted--but I want nothing now," she added, after
+a pause, smiling at Montefiore. "Have you not said that you would love
+me always?"
+
+"Yes, my Juana," cried Montefiore, softly, taking her round the waist
+and pressing her to his heart, "yes. But let me speak to you as you
+speak to God. Are you not as beautiful as Mary in heaven? Listen. I
+swear to you," he continued, kissing her hair, "I swear to take that
+forehead for my altar, to make you my idol, to lay at your feet all the
+luxuries of the world. For you, my palace at Milan; for you my horses,
+my jewels, the diamonds of my ancient family; for you, each day, fresh
+jewels, a thousand pleasures, and all the joys of earth!"
+
+"Yes," she said reflectively, "I would like that; but I feel within my
+soul that I would like better than all the world my husband. Mio caro
+sposo!" she said, as if it were impossible to give in any other language
+the infinite tenderness, the loving elegance with which the Italian
+tongue and accent clothe those delightful words. Besides, Italian was
+Juana's maternal language.
+
+"I should find," she continued, with a glance at Montefiore in which
+shone the purity of the cherubim, "I should find in _him_ my dear
+religion, him and God--God and him. Is he to be you?" she said. "Yes,
+surely it will be you," she cried, after a pause. "Come, and see the
+picture my father brought me from Italy."
+
+She took a candle, made a sign to Montefiore, and showed him at the foot
+of her bed a Saint Michael overthrowing the demon.
+
+"Look!" she said, "has he not your eyes? When I saw you from my window
+in the street, our meeting seemed to me a sign from heaven. Every day
+during my morning meditation, while waiting for my mother to call me to
+prayer, I have so gazed at that picture, that angel, that I have ended
+by thinking him my husband--oh! heavens, I speak to you as though you
+were myself. I must seem crazy to you; but if you only knew how a poor
+captive wants to tell the thoughts that choke her! When alone, I talk to
+my flowers, to my tapestry; they can understand me better, I think, than
+my father and mother, who are so grave."
+
+"Juana," said Montefiore, taking her hands and kissing them with the
+passion that gushed in his eyes, in his gestures, in the tones of his
+voice, "speak to me as your husband, as yourself. I have suffered all
+that you have suffered. Between us two few words are needed to make
+us comprehend our past, but there will never be enough to express our
+coming happiness. Lay your hand upon my heart. Feel how it beats. Let us
+promise before God, who sees and hears us, to be faithful to each other
+throughout our lives. Here, take my ring--and give me yours."
+
+"Give you my ring!" she said in terror.
+
+"Why not?" asked Montefiore, uneasy at such artlessness.
+
+"But our holy father the Pope has blessed it; it was put upon my finger
+in childhood by a beautiful lady who took care of me, and who told me
+never to part with it."
+
+"Juana, you cannot love me!"
+
+"Ah!" she said, "here it is; take it. You, are you not another myself?"
+
+She held out the ring with a trembling hand, holding it tightly as she
+looked at Montefiore with a clear and penetrating eye that questioned
+him. That ring! all of herself was in it; but she gave it to him.
+
+"Oh, my Juana!" said Montefiore, again pressing her in his arms. "I
+should be a monster indeed if I deceived you. I will love you forever."
+
+Juana was thoughtful. Montefiore, reflecting that in this first
+interview he ought to venture upon nothing that might frighten a young
+girl so ignorantly pure, so imprudent by virtue rather than from desire,
+postponed all further action to the future, relying on his beauty, of
+which he knew the power, and on this innocent ring-marriage, the hymen
+of the heart, the lightest, yet the strongest of all ceremonies. For the
+rest of that night, and throughout the next day, Juana's imagination was
+the accomplice of her passion.
+
+On this first evening Montefiore forced himself to be as respectful as
+he was tender. With that intention, in the interests of his passion and
+the desires with which Juana inspired him, he was caressing and unctuous
+in language; he launched the young creature into plans for a new
+existence, described to her the world under glowing colors, talked to
+her of household details always attractive to the mind of girls, giving
+her a sense of the rights and realities of love. Then, having agreed
+upon the hour for their future nocturnal interviews, he left her happy,
+but changed; the pure and pious Juana existed no longer; in the last
+glance she gave him, in the pretty movement by which she brought her
+forehead to his lips, there was already more of passion than a girl
+should feel. Solitude, weariness of employments contrary to her nature
+had brought this about. To make the daughter of the Maranas truly
+virtuous, she ought to have been habituated, little by little, to the
+world, or else to have been wholly withdrawn from it.
+
+"The day, to-morrow, will seem very long to me," she said, receiving his
+kisses on her forehead. "But stay in the salon, and speak loud, that I
+may hear your voice; it fills my soul."
+
+Montefiore, clever enough to imagine the girl's life, was all the more
+satisfied with himself for restraining his desires because he saw
+that it would lead to his greater contentment. He returned to his room
+without accident.
+
+Ten days went by without any event occurring to trouble the peace and
+solitude of the house. Montefiore employed his Italian cajolery on old
+Perez, on Dona Lagounia, on the apprentice, even on the cook, and they
+all liked him; but, in spite of the confidence he now inspired in them,
+he never asked to see Juana, or to have the door of her mysterious
+hiding-place opened to him. The young girl, hungry to see her lover,
+implored him to do so; but he always refused her from an instinct of
+prudence. Besides, he had used his best powers and fascinations to lull
+the suspicions of the old couple, and had now accustomed them to see
+him, a soldier, stay in bed till midday on pretence that he was ill.
+Thus the lovers lived only in the night-time, when the rest of
+the household were asleep. If Montefiore had not been one of those
+libertines whom the habit of gallantry enables to retain their
+self-possession under all circumstances, he might have been lost a dozen
+times during those ten days. A young lover, in the simplicity of a
+first love, would have committed the enchanting imprudences which are
+so difficult to resist. But he did resist even Juana herself, Juana
+pouting, Juana making her long hair a chain which she wound about his
+neck when caution told him he must go.
+
+The most suspicious of guardians would however have been puzzled to
+detect the secret of their nightly meetings. It is to be supposed
+that, sure of success, the Italian marquis gave himself the ineffable
+pleasures of a slow seduction, step by step, leading gradually to the
+fire which should end the affair in a conflagration. On the eleventh
+day, at the dinner-table, he thought it wise to inform old Perez, under
+seal of secrecy, that the reason of his separation from his family was
+an ill-assorted marriage. This false revelation was an infamous thing
+in view of the nocturnal drama which was being played under that roof.
+Montefiore, an experienced rake, was preparing for the finale of that
+drama which he foresaw and enjoyed as an artist who loves his art. He
+expected to leave before long, and without regret, the house and his
+love. It would happen, he thought, in this way: Juana, after waiting for
+him in vain for several nights, would risk her life, perhaps, in asking
+Perez what had become of his guest; and Perez would reply, not aware of
+the importance of his answer,--
+
+"The Marquis de Montefiore is reconciled to his family, who consent to
+receive his wife; he has gone to Italy to present her to them."
+
+And Juana?--The marquis never asked himself what would become of Juana;
+but he had studied her character, its nobility, candor, and strength,
+and he knew he might be sure of her silence.
+
+He obtained a mission from one of the generals. Three days later, on the
+night preceding his intended departure, Montefiore, instead of returning
+to his own room after dinner, contrived to enter unseen that of Juana,
+to make that farewell night the longer. Juana, true Spaniard and true
+Italian, was enchanted with such boldness; it argued ardor! For herself
+she did not fear discovery. To find in the pure love of marriage the
+excitements of intrigue, to hide her husband behind the curtains of her
+bed, and say to her adopted father and mother, in case of detection: "I
+am the Marquise de Montefiore!"--was to an ignorant and romantic young
+girl, who for three years past had dreamed of love without dreaming of
+its dangers, delightful. The door closed on this last evening upon her
+folly, her happiness, like a veil, which it is useless here to raise.
+
+It was nine o'clock; the merchant and his wife were reading their
+evening prayers; suddenly the noise of a carriage drawn by several
+horses resounded in the street; loud and hasty raps echoed from the
+shop where the servant hurried to open the door, and into that venerable
+salon rushed a woman, magnificently dressed in spite of the mud upon the
+wheels of her travelling-carriage, which had just crossed Italy, France,
+and Spain. It was, of course, the Marana,--the Marana who, in spite
+of her thirty-six years, was still in all the glory of her ravishing
+beauty; the Marana who, being at that time the mistress of a king, had
+left Naples, the fetes, the skies of Naples, the climax of her life of
+luxury, on hearing from her royal lover of the events in Spain and the
+siege of Tarragona.
+
+"Tarragona! I must get to Tarragona before the town is taken!" she
+cried. "Ten days to reach Tarragona!"
+
+Then without caring for crown or court, she arrived in Tarragona,
+furnished with an almost imperial safe-conduct; furnished too with gold
+which enabled her to cross France with the velocity of a rocket.
+
+"My daughter! my daughter!" cried the Marana.
+
+At this voice, and the abrupt invasion of their solitude, the
+prayer-book fell from the hands of the old couple.
+
+"She is there," replied the merchant, calmly, after a pause during which
+he recovered from the emotion caused by the abrupt entrance, and the
+look and voice of the mother. "She is there," he repeated, pointing to
+the door of the little chamber.
+
+"Yes, but has any harm come to her; is she still--"
+
+"Perfectly well," said Dona Lagounia.
+
+"O God! send me to hell if it so pleases thee!" cried the Marana,
+dropping, exhausted and half dead, into a chair.
+
+The flush in her cheeks, due to anxiety, paled suddenly; she had
+strength to endure suffering, but none to bear this joy. Joy was more
+violent in her soul than suffering, for it contained the echoes of her
+pain and the agonies of its own emotion.
+
+"But," she said, "how have you kept her safe? Tarragona is taken."
+
+"Yes," said Perez, "but since you see me living why do you ask that
+question? Should I not have died before harm could have come to Juana?"
+
+At that answer, the Marana seized the calloused hand of the old man, and
+kissed it, wetting it with the tears that flowed from her eyes--she who
+never wept! those tears were all she had most precious under heaven.
+
+"My good Perez!" she said at last. "But have you had no soldiers
+quartered in your house?"
+
+"Only one," replied the Spaniard. "Fortunately for us the most loyal
+of men; a Spaniard by birth, but now an Italian who hates Bonaparte; a
+married man. He is ill, and gets up late and goes to bed early."
+
+"An Italian! What is his name?"
+
+"Montefiore."
+
+"Can it be the Marquis de Montefiore--"
+
+"Yes, Senora, he himself."
+
+"Has he seen Juana?"
+
+"No," said Dona Lagounia.
+
+"You are mistaken, wife," said Perez. "The marquis must have seen her
+for a moment, a short moment, it is true; but I think he looked at her
+that evening she came in here during supper."
+
+"Ah, let me see my daughter!"
+
+"Nothing easier," said Perez; "she is now asleep. If she has left the
+key in the lock we must waken her."
+
+As he rose to take the duplicate key of Juana's door his eyes fell by
+chance on the circular gleam of light upon the black wall of the inner
+courtyard. Within that circle he saw the shadow of a group such as
+Canova alone has attempted to render. The Spaniard turned back.
+
+"I do not know," he said to the Marana, "where to find the key."
+
+"You are very pale," she said.
+
+"And I will show you why," he cried, seizing his dagger and rapping its
+hilt violently on Juana's door as he shouted,--
+
+"Open! open! open! Juana!"
+
+Juana did not open, for she needed time to conceal Montefiore. She knew
+nothing of what was passing in the salon; the double portieres of thick
+tapestry deadened all sounds.
+
+"Madame, I lied to you in saying I could not find the key. Here it is,"
+added Perez, taking it from a sideboard. "But it is useless. Juana's key
+is in the lock; her door is barricaded. We have been deceived, my wife!"
+he added, turning to Dona Lagounia. "There is a man in Juana's room."
+
+"Impossible! By my eternal salvation I say it is impossible!" said his
+wife.
+
+"Do not swear, Dona Lagounia. Our honor is dead, and this woman--"
+He pointed to the Marana, who had risen and was standing motionless,
+blasted by his words, "this woman has the right to despise us. She saved
+our life, our fortune, and our honor, and we have saved nothing for her
+but her money--Juana!" he cried again, "open, or I will burst in your
+door."
+
+His voice, rising in violence, echoed through the garrets in the roof.
+He was cold and calm. The life of Montefiore was in his hands; he would
+wash away his remorse in the blood of that Italian.
+
+"Out, out, out! out, all of you!" cried the Marana, springing like
+a tigress on the dagger, which she wrenched from the hand of the
+astonished Perez. "Out, Perez," she continued more calmly, "out, you and
+your wife and servants! There will be murder here. You might be shot by
+the French. Have nothing to do with this; it is my affair, mine only.
+Between my daughter and me there is none but God. As for the man, he
+belongs to _me_. The whole earth could not tear him from my grasp. Go,
+go! I forgive you. I see plainly that the girl is a Marana. You, your
+religion, your virtue, were too weak to fight against my blood."
+
+She gave a dreadful sigh, turning her dry eyes on them. She had lost
+all, but she knew how to suffer,--a true courtesan.
+
+The door opened. The Marana forgot all else, and Perez, making a sign to
+his wife, remained at his post. With his old invincible Spanish honor he
+was determined to share the vengeance of the betrayed mother. Juana, all
+in white, and softly lighted by the wax candles, was standing calmly in
+the centre of her chamber.
+
+"What do you want with me?" she said.
+
+The Marana could not repress a passing shudder.
+
+"Perez," she asked, "has this room another issue?"
+
+Perez made a negative gesture; confiding in that gesture, the mother
+entered the room.
+
+"Juana," she said, "I am your mother, your judge; you have placed
+yourself in the only situation in which I could reveal myself to you.
+You have come down to me, you, whom I thought in heaven. Ah! you have
+fallen low indeed. You have a lover in this room."
+
+"Madame, there is and can be no one but my husband," answered the girl.
+"I am the Marquise de Montefiore."
+
+"Then there are two," said Perez, in a grave voice. "He told me he was
+married."
+
+"Montefiore, my love!" cried the girl, tearing aside the curtain and
+revealing the officer. "Come! they are slandering you."
+
+The Italian appeared, pale and speechless; he saw the dagger in the
+Marana's hand, and he knew her well. With one bound he sprang from the
+room, crying out in a thundering voice,--
+
+"Help! help! they are murdering a Frenchman. Soldiers of the 6th of the
+line, rush for Captain Diard! Help, help!"
+
+Perez had gripped the man and was trying to gag him with his large hand,
+but the Marana stopped him, saying,--
+
+"Bind him fast, but let him shout. Open the doors, leave them open,
+and go, go, as I told you; go, all of you.--As for you," she said,
+addressing Montefiore, "shout, call for help if you choose; by the
+time your soldiers get here this blade will be in your heart. Are you
+married? Answer."
+
+Montefiore, who had fallen on the threshold of the door, scarcely a step
+from Juana, saw nothing but the blade of the dagger, the gleam of which
+blinded him.
+
+"Has he deceived me?" said Juana, slowly. "He told me he was free."
+
+"He told me that he was married," repeated Perez, in his solemn voice.
+
+"Holy Virgin!" murmured Dona Lagounia.
+
+"Answer, soul of corruption," said the Marana, in a low voice, bending
+to the ear of the marquis.
+
+"Your daughter--" began Montefiore.
+
+"The daughter that was mine is dead or dying," interrupted the Marana.
+"I have no daughter; do not utter that word. Answer, are you married?"
+
+"No, madame," said Montefiore, at last, striving to gain time, "I desire
+to marry your daughter."
+
+"My noble Montefiore!" said Juana, drawing a deep breath.
+
+"Then why did you attempt to fly and cry for help?" asked Perez.
+
+Terrible, revealing light!
+
+Juana said nothing, but she wrung her hands and went to her arm-chair
+and sat down.
+
+At that moment a tumult rose in the street which was plainly heard in
+the silence of the room. A soldier of the 6th, hearing Montefiore's cry
+for help, had summoned Diard. The quartermaster, who was fortunately in
+his bivouac, came, accompanied by friends.
+
+"Why did I fly?" said Montefiore, hearing the voice of his friend.
+"Because I told you the truth; I am married--Diard! Diard!" he shouted
+in a piercing voice.
+
+But, at a word from Perez, the apprentice closed and bolted the doors,
+so that the soldiers were delayed by battering them in. Before they
+could enter, the Marana had time to strike her dagger into the guilty
+man; but anger hindered her aim, the blade slipped upon the Italian's
+epaulet, though she struck her blow with such force that he fell at the
+very feet of Juana, who took no notice of him. The Marana sprang upon
+him, and this time, resolved not to miss her prey, she caught him by the
+throat.
+
+"I am free and I will marry her! I swear it, by God, by my mother, by
+all there is most sacred in the world; I am a bachelor; I will marry
+her, on my honor!"
+
+And he bit the arm of the courtesan.
+
+"Mother," said Juana, "kill him. He is so base that I will not have him
+for my husband, were he ten times as beautiful."
+
+"Ah! I recognize my daughter!" cried the mother.
+
+"What is all this?" demanded the quartermaster, entering the room.
+
+"They are murdering me," cried Montefiore, "on account of this girl; she
+says I am her lover. She inveigled me into a trap, and they are forcing
+me to marry her--"
+
+"And you reject her?" cried Diard, struck with the splendid beauty which
+contempt, hatred, and indignation had given to the girl, already so
+beautiful. "Then you are hard to please. If she wants a husband I am
+ready to marry her. Put up your weapons; there is no trouble here."
+
+The Marana pulled the Italian to the side of her daughter's bed and said
+to him, in a low voice,--
+
+"If I spare you, give thanks for the rest of your life; but, remember
+this, if your tongue ever injures my daughter you will see me again.
+Go!--How much 'dot' do you give her?" she continued, going up to Perez.
+
+"She has two hundred thousand gold piastres," replied the Spaniard.
+
+"And that is not all, monsieur," said the Marana, turning to Diard. "Who
+are you?--Go!" she repeated to Montefiore.
+
+The marquis, hearing this statement of gold piastres, came forward once
+more, saying,--
+
+"I am really free--"
+
+A glance from Juana silenced him.
+
+"You are really free to go," she said.
+
+And he went immediately.
+
+"Alas! monsieur," said the girl, turning to Diard, "I thank you with
+admiration. But my husband is in heaven. To-morrow I shall enter a
+convent--"
+
+"Juana, my Juana, hush!" cried the mother, clasping her in her arms.
+Then she whispered in the girl's ear. "You _must_ have another husband."
+
+Juana turned pale. She freed herself from her mother and sat down once
+more in her arm-chair.
+
+"Who are you, monsieur?" repeated the Marana, addressing Diard.
+
+"Madame, I am at present only the quartermaster of the 6th of the line.
+But for such a wife I have the heart to make myself a marshal of France.
+My name is Pierre-Francois Diard. My father was provost of merchants. I
+am not--"
+
+"But, at least, you are an honest man, are you not?" cried the Marana,
+interrupting him. "If you please the Signorina Juana di Mancini, you can
+marry her and be happy together.--Juana," she continued in a grave tone,
+"in becoming the wife of a brave and worthy man remember that you will
+also be a mother. I have sworn that you shall kiss your children without
+a blush upon your face" (her voice faltered slightly). "I have sworn
+that you shall live a virtuous life; expect, therefore, many troubles.
+But, whatever happens, continue pure, and be faithful to your husband.
+Sacrifice all things to him, for he will be the father of your
+children--the father of your children! If you take a lover, I, your
+mother, will stand between you and him. Do you see that dagger? It is in
+your 'dot,'" she continued, throwing the weapon on Juana's bed. "I leave
+it there as the guarantee of your honor so long as my eyes are open and
+my arm free. Farewell," she said, restraining her tears. "God grant that
+we may never meet again."
+
+At that idea, her tears began to flow.
+
+"Poor child!" she added, "you have been happier than you knew in this
+dull home.--Do not allow her to regret it," she said, turning to Diard.
+
+The foregoing rapid narrative is not the principal subject of this
+Study, for the understanding of which it was necessary to explain how
+it happened that the quartermaster Diard married Juana di Mancini, that
+Montefiore and Diard were intimately known to each other, and to show
+plainly what blood and what passions were in Madame Diard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE HISTORY OF MADAME DIARD
+
+
+By the time that the quartermaster had fulfilled all the long and
+dilatory formalities without which no French soldier can be married, he
+was passionately in love with Juana di Mancini, and Juana had had time
+to think of her coming destiny.
+
+An awful destiny! Juana, who felt neither esteem nor love for Diard,
+was bound to him forever, by a rash but necessary promise. The man was
+neither handsome nor well-made. His manners, devoid of all distinction,
+were a mixture of the worst army tone, the habits of his province, and
+his own insufficient education. How could she love Diard, she, a young
+girl all grace and elegance, born with an invincible instinct for luxury
+and good taste, her very nature tending toward the sphere of the higher
+social classes? As for esteeming him, she rejected the very thought
+precisely because he had married her. This repulsion was natural. Woman
+is a saintly and noble creature, but almost always misunderstood, and
+nearly always misjudged because she is misunderstood. If Juana had loved
+Diard she would have esteemed him. Love creates in a wife a new woman;
+the woman of the day before no longer exists on the morrow. Putting on
+the nuptial robe of a passion in which life itself is concerned, the
+woman wraps herself in purity and whiteness. Reborn into virtue and
+chastity, there is no past for her; she is all future, and should forget
+the things behind her to relearn life. In this sense the famous words
+which a modern poet has put into the lips of Marion Delorme is infused
+with truth,--
+
+"And Love remade me virgin."
+
+That line seems like a reminiscence of a tragedy of Corneille, so
+truly does it recall the energetic diction of the father of our modern
+theatre. Yet the poet was forced to sacrifice it to the essentially
+vaudevillist spirit of the pit.
+
+So Juana loveless was doomed to be Juana humiliated, degraded, hopeless.
+She could not honor the man who took her thus. She felt, in all
+the conscientious purity of her youth, that distinction, subtle in
+appearance but sacredly true, legal with the heart's legality, which
+women apply instinctively to all their feelings, even the least
+reflective. Juana became profoundly sad as she saw the nature and the
+extent of the life before her. Often she turned her eyes, brimming
+with tears proudly repressed, upon Perez and Dona Lagounia, who fully
+comprehended, both of them, the bitter thoughts those tears contained.
+But they were silent: of what good were reproaches now; why look for
+consolations? The deeper they were, the more they enlarged the wound.
+
+One evening, Juana, stupid with grief, heard through the open door of
+her little room, which the old couple had thought shut, a pitying moan
+from her adopted mother.
+
+"The child will die of grief."
+
+"Yes," said Perez, in a shaking voice, "but what can we do? I cannot now
+boast of her beauty and her chastity to Comte d'Arcos, to whom I hoped
+to marry her."
+
+"But a single fault is not vice," said the old woman, pitying as the
+angels.
+
+"Her mother gave her to this man," said Perez.
+
+"Yes, in a moment; without consulting the poor child!" cried Dona
+Lagounia.
+
+"She knew what she was doing."
+
+"But oh! into what hands our pearl is going!"
+
+"Say no more, or I shall seek a quarrel with that Diard."
+
+"And that would only lead to other miseries."
+
+Hearing these dreadful words Juana saw the happy future she had lost by
+her own wrongdoing. The pure and simple years of her quiet life would
+have been rewarded by a brilliant existence such as she had fondly
+dreamed,--dreams which had caused her ruin. To fall from the height of
+Greatness to Monsieur Diard! She wept. At times she went nearly mad.
+She floated for a while between vice and religion. Vice was a speedy
+solution, religion a lifetime of suffering. The meditation was stormy
+and solemn. The next day was the fatal day, the day for the marriage.
+But Juana could still remain free. Free, she knew how far her misery
+would go; married, she was ignorant of where it went or what it might
+bring her.
+
+Religion triumphed. Dona Lagounia stayed beside her child and prayed and
+watched as she would have prayed and watched beside the dying.
+
+"God wills it," she said to Juana.
+
+Nature gives to woman alternately a strength which enables her to suffer
+and a weakness which leads her to resignation. Juana resigned herself;
+and without restriction. She determined to obey her mother's prayer,
+and cross the desert of life to reach God's heaven, knowing well that no
+flowers grew for her along the way of that painful journey.
+
+She married Diard. As for the quartermaster, though he had no grace in
+Juana's eyes, we may well absolve him. He loved her distractedly. The
+Marana, so keen to know the signs of love, had recognized in that man
+the accents of passion and the brusque nature, the generous impulses,
+that are common to Southerners. In the paroxysm of her anger and her
+distress she had thought such qualities enough for her daughter's
+happiness.
+
+The first days of this marriage were apparently happy; or, to express
+one of those latent facts, the miseries of which are buried by women
+in the depths of their souls, Juana would not cast down her husband's
+joy,--a double role, dreadful to play, but to which, sooner or later,
+all women unhappily married come. This is a history impossible to
+recount in its full truth. Juana, struggling hourly against her nature,
+a nature both Spanish and Italian, having dried up the source of her
+tears by dint of weeping, was a human type, destined to represent
+woman's misery in its utmost expression, namely, sorrow undyingly
+active; the description of which would need such minute observations
+that to persons eager for dramatic emotions they would seem insipid.
+This analysis, in which every wife would find some one of her own
+sufferings, would require a volume to express them all; a fruitless,
+hopeless volume by its very nature, the merit of which would consist in
+faintest tints and delicate shadings which critics would declare to be
+effeminate and diffuse. Besides, what man could rightly approach,
+unless he bore another heart within his heart, those solemn and touching
+elegies which certain women carry with them to their tomb; melancholies,
+misunderstood even by those who cause them; sighs unheeded, devotions
+unrewarded,--on earth at least,--splendid silences misconstrued;
+vengeances withheld, disdained; generosities perpetually bestowed and
+wasted; pleasures longed for and denied; angelic charities secretly
+accomplished,--in short, all the religions of womanhood and its
+inextinguishable love.
+
+Juana knew that life; fate spared her nought. She was wholly a wife,
+but a sorrowful and suffering wife; a wife incessantly wounded, yet
+forgiving always; a wife pure as a flawless diamond,--she who had the
+beauty and the glow of the diamond, and in that beauty, that glow, a
+vengeance in her hand; for she was certainly not a woman to fear the
+dagger added to her "dot."
+
+At first, inspired by a real love, by one of those passions which for
+the time being change even odious characters and bring to light all that
+may be noble in a soul, Diard behaved like a man of honor. He forced
+Montefiore to leave the regiment and even the army corps, so that his
+wife might never meet him during the time they remained in Spain.
+Next, he petitioned for his own removal, and succeeded in entering the
+Imperial Guard. He desired at any price to obtain a title, honors, and
+consideration in keeping with his present wealth. With this idea in
+his mind, he behaved courageously in one of the most bloody battles in
+Germany, but, unfortunately, he was too severely wounded to remain in
+the service. Threatened with the loss of a leg, he was forced to retire
+on a pension, without the title of baron, without those rewards he hoped
+to win, and would have won had he not been Diard.
+
+This event, this wound, and his thwarted hopes contributed to change his
+character. His Provencal energy, roused for a time, sank down. At first
+he was sustained by his wife, in whom his efforts, his courage, his
+ambition had induced some belief in his nature, and who showed herself,
+what women are, tender and consoling in the troubles of life. Inspired
+by a few words from Juana, the retired soldier came to Paris, resolved
+to win in an administrative career a position to command respect, bury
+in oblivion the quartermaster of the 6th of the line, and secure for
+Madame Diard a noble title. His passion for that seductive creature
+enabled him to divine her most secret wishes. Juana expressed nothing,
+but he understood her. He was not loved as a lover dreams of being
+loved; he knew this, and he strove to make himself respected, loved, and
+cherished. He foresaw a coming happiness, poor man, in the patience and
+gentleness shown on all occasions by his wife; but that patience, that
+gentleness, were only the outward signs of the resignation which had
+made her his wife. Resignation, religion, were they love? Often Diard
+wished for refusal where he met with chaste obedience; often he would
+have given his eternal life that Juana might have wept upon his bosom
+and not disguised her secret thoughts behind a smiling face which lied
+to him nobly. Many young men--for after a certain age men no longer
+struggle--persist in the effort to triumph over an evil fate, the
+thunder of which they hear, from time to time, on the horizon of their
+lives; and when at last they succumb and roll down the precipice
+of evil, we ought to do them justice and acknowledge these inward
+struggles.
+
+Like many men Diard tried all things, and all things were hostile to
+him. His wealth enabled him to surround his wife with the enjoyments of
+Parisian luxury. She lived in a fine house, with noble rooms, where she
+maintained a salon, in which abounded artists (by nature no judges
+of men), men of pleasure ready to amuse themselves anywhere, a few
+politicians who swelled the numbers, and certain men of fashion, all
+of whom admired Juana. Those who put themselves before the eyes of the
+public in Paris must either conquer Paris or be subject to it. Diard's
+character was not sufficiently strong, compact, or persistent to
+command society at that epoch, because it was an epoch when all men were
+endeavoring to rise. Social classifications ready-made are perhaps a
+great boon even for the people. Napoleon has confided to us the pains
+he took to inspire respect in his court, where most of the courtiers had
+been his equals. But Napoleon was Corsican, and Diard Provencal. Given
+equal genius, an islander will always be more compact and rounded than
+the man of terra firma in the same latitude; the arm of the sea which
+separates Corsica from Provence is, in spite of human science, an ocean
+which has made two nations.
+
+Diard's mongrel position, which he himself made still more questionable,
+brought him great troubles. Perhaps there is useful instruction to be
+derived from the almost imperceptible connection of acts which led to
+the finale of this history.
+
+In the first place, the sneerers of Paris did not see without malicious
+smiles and words the pictures with which the former quartermaster
+adorned his handsome mansion. Works of art purchased the night before
+were said to be spoils from Spain; and this accusation was the revenge
+of those who were jealous of his present fortune. Juana comprehended
+this reproach, and by her advice Diard sent back to Tarragona all the
+pictures he had brought from there. But the public, determined to see
+things in the worst light, only said, "That Diard is shrewd; he has
+sold his pictures." Worthy people continued to think that those which
+remained in the Diard salons were not honorably acquired. Some jealous
+women asked how it was that a _Diard_ (!) had been able to marry so rich
+and beautiful a young girl. Hence comments and satires without end, such
+as Paris contributes. And yet, it must be said, that Juana met on
+all sides the respect inspired by her pure and religious life, which
+triumphed over everything, even Parisian calumny; but this respect
+stopped short with her, her husband received none of it. Juana's
+feminine perception and her keen eye hovering over her salons, brought
+her nothing but pain.
+
+This lack of esteem was perfectly natural. Diard's comrades, in spite of
+the virtues which our imaginations attribute to soldiers, never forgave
+the former quartermaster of the 6th of the line for becoming suddenly so
+rich and for attempting to cut a figure in Paris. Now in Paris, from
+the last house in the faubourg Saint-Germain to the last in the rue
+Saint-Lazare, between the heights of the Luxembourg and the heights of
+Montmartre, all that clothes itself and gabbles, clothes itself to
+go out and goes out to gabble. All that world of great and small
+pretensions, that world of insolence and humble desires, of envy and
+cringing, all that is gilded or tarnished, young or old, noble of
+yesterday or noble from the fourth century, all that sneers at a
+parvenu, all that fears to commit itself, all that wants to demolish
+power and worships power if it resists,--_all_ those ears hear, _all_
+those tongues say, _all_ those minds know, in a single evening, where
+the new-comer who aspires to honor among them was born and brought up,
+and what that interloper has done, or has not done, in the course of his
+life. There may be no court of assizes for the upper classes of society;
+but at any rate they have the most cruel of public prosecutors, an
+intangible moral being, both judge and executioner, who accuses and
+brands. Do not hope to hide anything from him; tell him all yourself;
+he wants to know all and he will know all. Do not ask what mysterious
+telegraph it was which conveyed to him in the twinkling of an eye, at
+any hour, in any place, that story, that bit of news, that scandal;
+do not ask what prompts him. That telegraph is a social mystery;
+no observer can report its effects. Of many extraordinary instances
+thereof, one may suffice: The assassination of the Duc de Berry, which
+occurred at the Opera-house, was related within ten minutes in the
+Ile-Saint-Louis. Thus the opinion of the 6th of the line as to its
+quartermaster filtered through society the night on which he gave his
+first ball.
+
+Diard was therefore debarred from succeeding in society. Henceforth his
+wife alone had the power to make anything of him. Miracle of our strange
+civilization! In Paris, if a man is incapable of being anything himself,
+his wife, when she is young and clever, may give him other chances
+for elevation. We sometimes meet with invalid women, feeble beings
+apparently, who, without rising from sofas or leaving their chambers,
+have ruled society, moved a thousand springs, and placed their husbands
+where their ambition or their vanity prompted. But Juana, whose
+childhood was passed in her retreat in Tarragona, knew nothing of the
+vices, the meannesses, or the resources of Parisian society; she looked
+at that society with the curiosity of a girl, but she learned from it
+only that which her sorrow and her wounded pride revealed to her.
+
+Juana had the tact of a virgin heart which receives impressions in
+advance of the event, after the manner of what are called "sensitives."
+The solitary young girl, so suddenly become a woman and a wife, saw
+plainly that were she to attempt to compel society to respect her
+husband, it must be after the manner of Spanish beggars, carbine in
+hand. Besides, the multiplicity of the precautions she would have to
+take, would they meet the necessity? Suddenly she divined society as,
+once before, she had divined life, and she saw nothing around her but
+the immense extent of an irreparable disaster. She had, moreover, the
+additional grief of tardily recognizing her husband's peculiar form
+of incapacity; he was a man unfitted for any purpose that required
+continuity of ideas. He could not understand a consistent part, such as
+he ought to play in the world; he perceived it neither as a whole nor
+in its gradations, and its gradations were everything. He was in one of
+those positions where shrewdness and tact might have taken the place
+of strength; when shrewdness and tact succeed, they are, perhaps, the
+highest form of strength.
+
+Now Diard, far from arresting the spot of oil on his garments left by
+his antecedents, did his best to spread it. Incapable of studying the
+phase of the empire in the midst of which he came to live in Paris, he
+wanted to be made prefect. At that time every one believed in the genius
+of Napoleon; his favor enhanced the value of all offices. Prefectures,
+those miniature empires, could only be filled by men of great names, or
+chamberlains of H.M. the emperor and king. Already the prefects were
+a species of vizier. The myrmidons of the great man scoffed at Diard's
+pretensions to a prefecture, whereupon he lowered his demand to a
+sub-prefecture. There was, of course, a ridiculous discrepancy between
+this latter demand and the magnitude of his fortune. To frequent the
+imperial salons and live with insolent luxury, and then to abandon that
+millionaire life and bury himself as sub-prefect at Issoudun or Savenay
+was certainly holding himself below his position. Juana, too late aware
+of our laws and habits and administrative customs, did not enlighten her
+husband soon enough. Diard, desperate, petitioned successively all the
+ministerial powers; repulsed everywhere, he found nothing open to him;
+and society then judged him as the government judged him and as he
+judged himself. Diard, grievously wounded on the battlefield, was
+nevertheless not decorated; the quartermaster, rich as he was, was
+allowed no place in public life, and society logically refused him that
+to which he pretended in its midst.
+
+Finally, to cap all, the luckless man felt in his own home the
+superiority of his wife. Though she used great tact--we might say velvet
+softness if the term were admissible--to disguise from her husband this
+supremacy, which surprised and humiliated herself, Diard ended by being
+affected by it.
+
+At a game of life like this men are either unmanned, or they grow the
+stronger, or they give themselves to evil. The courage or the ardor of
+this man lessened under the reiterated blows which his own faults dealt
+to his self-appreciation, and fault after fault he committed. In the
+first place he had to struggle against his own habits and character.
+A passionate Provencal, frank in his vices as in his virtues, this man
+whose fibres vibrated like the strings of a harp, was all heart to his
+former friends. He succored the shabby and spattered man as readily as
+the needy of rank; in short, he accepted everybody, and gave his hand in
+his gilded salons to many a poor devil. Observing this on one occasion,
+a general of the empire, a variety of the human species of which no
+type will presently remain, refused his hand to Diard, and called him,
+insolently, "my good fellow" when he met him. The few persons of really
+good society whom Diard knew, treated him with that elegant, polished
+contempt against which a new-made man has seldom any weapons. The
+manners, the semi-Italian gesticulations, the speech of Diard, his
+style of dress,--all contributed to repulse the respect which careful
+observation of matters of good taste and dignity might otherwise obtain
+for vulgar persons; the yoke of such conventionalities can only be cast
+off by great and unthinkable powers. So goes the world.
+
+These details but faintly picture the many tortures to which Juana was
+subjected; they came upon her one by one; each social nature pricked her
+with its own particular pin; and to a soul which preferred the thrust of
+a dagger, there could be no worse suffering than this struggle in which
+Diard received insults he did not feel and Juana felt those she did not
+receive. A moment came, an awful moment, when she gained a clear and
+lucid perception of society, and felt in one instant all the sorrows
+which were gathering themselves together to fall upon her head. She
+judged her husband incapable of rising to the honored ranks of the
+social order, and she felt that he would one day descend to where his
+instincts led him. Henceforth Juana felt pity for him.
+
+The future was very gloomy for this young woman. She lived in constant
+apprehension of some disaster. This presentiment was in her soul as
+a contagion is in the air, but she had strength of mind and will to
+disguise her anguish beneath a smile. Juana had ceased to think of
+herself. She used her influence to make Diard resign his various
+pretensions and to show him, as a haven, the peaceful and consoling life
+of home. Evils came from society--why not banish it? In his home Diard
+found peace and respect; he reigned there. She felt herself strong to
+accept the trying task of making him happy,--he, a man dissatisfied with
+himself. Her energy increased with the difficulties of life; she had all
+the secret heroism necessary to her position; religion inspired her with
+those desires which support the angel appointed to protect a Christian
+soul--occult poesy, allegorical image of our two natures!
+
+Diard abandoned his projects, closed his house to the world, and lived
+in his home. But here he found another reef. The poor soldier had one of
+those eccentric souls which need perpetual motion. Diard was one of
+the men who are instinctively compelled to start again the moment they
+arrive, and whose vital object seems to be to come and go incessantly,
+like the wheels mentioned in Holy Writ. Perhaps he felt the need of
+flying from himself. Without wearying of Juana, without blaming Juana,
+his passion for her, rendered tranquil by time, allowed his natural
+character to assert itself. Henceforth his days of gloom were more
+frequent, and he often gave way to southern excitement. The more
+virtuous a woman is and the more irreproachable, the more a man likes
+to find fault with her, if only to assert by that act his legal
+superiority. But if by chance she seems really imposing to him, he feels
+the need of foisting faults upon her. After that, between man and wife,
+trifles increase and grow till they swell to Alps.
+
+But Juana, patient and without pride, gentle and without that bitterness
+which women know so well how to cast into their submission, left Diard
+no chance for planned ill-humor. Besides, she was one of those noble
+creatures to whom it is impossible to speak disrespectfully; her glance,
+in which her life, saintly and pure, shone out, had the weight of a
+fascination. Diard, embarrassed at first, then annoyed, ended by feeling
+that such high virtue was a yoke upon him. The goodness of his wife gave
+him no violent emotions, and violent emotions were what he wanted. What
+myriads of scenes are played in the depths of his souls, beneath the
+cold exterior of lives that are, apparently, commonplace! Among these
+dramas, lasting each but a short time, though they influence life so
+powerfully and are frequently the forerunners of the great misfortune
+doomed to fall on so many marriages, it is difficult to choose an
+example. There was a scene, however, which particularly marked the
+moment when in the life of this husband and wife estrangement began.
+Perhaps it may also serve to explain the finale of this narrative.
+
+Juana had two children, happily for her, two sons. The first was born
+seven months after her marriage. He was called Juan, and he strongly
+resembled his mother. The second was born about two years after her
+arrival in Paris. The latter resembled both Diard and Juana, but more
+particularly Diard. His name was Francisque. For the last five years
+Francisque had been the object of Juana's most tender and watchful care.
+The mother was constantly occupied with that child; to him her prettiest
+caresses; to him the toys, but to him, especially, the penetrating
+mother-looks. Juana had watched him from his cradle; she had studied his
+cries, his motions; she endeavored to discern his nature that she might
+educate him wisely. It seemed at times as if she had but that one child.
+Diard, seeing that the eldest, Juan, was in a way neglected, took him
+under his own protection; and without inquiring even of himself whether
+the boy was the fruit of that ephemeral love to which he owed his wife,
+he made him his Benjamin.
+
+Of all the sentiments transmitted to her through the blood of her
+grandmothers which consumed her, Madame Diard accepted one alone,
+--maternal love. But she loved her children doubly: first with the
+noble violence of which her mother the Marana had given her the example;
+secondly, with grace and purity, in the spirit of those social
+virtues the practice of which was the glory of her life and her inward
+recompense. The secret thought, the conscience of her motherhood, which
+gave to the Marana's life its stamp of untaught poesy, was to Juana an
+acknowledged life, an open consolation at all hours. Her mother had
+been virtuous as other women are criminal,--in secret; she had stolen a
+fancied happiness, she had never really tasted it. But Juana, unhappy
+in her virtue as her mother was unhappy in her vice, could enjoy at all
+moments the ineffable delights which her mother had so craved and could
+not have. To her, as to her mother, maternity comprised all earthly
+sentiments. Each, from differing causes, had no other comfort in their
+misery. Juana's maternal love may have been the strongest because,
+deprived of all other affections, she put the joys she lacked into the
+one joy of her children; and there are noble passions that resemble
+vice; the more they are satisfied the more they increase. Mothers and
+gamblers are alike insatiable.
+
+When Juana saw the generous pardon laid silently on the head of Juan by
+Diard's fatherly affection, she was much moved, and from the day when
+the husband and wife changed parts she felt for him the true and deep
+interest she had hitherto shown to him as a matter of duty only. If that
+man had been more consistent in his life; if he had not destroyed
+by fitful inconstancy and restlessness the forces of a true though
+excitable sensibility, Juana would doubtless have loved him in the end.
+Unfortunately, he was a type of those southern natures which are keen in
+perceptions they cannot follow out; capable of great things over-night,
+and incapable the next morning; often the victim of their own virtues,
+and often lucky through their worst passions; admirable men in some
+respects, when their good qualities are kept to a steady energy by some
+outward bond. For two years after his retreat from active life Diard
+was held captive in his home by the softest chains. He lived, almost in
+spite of himself, under the influence of his wife, who made herself gay
+and amusing to cheer him, who used the resources of feminine genius
+to attract and seduce him to a love of virtue, but whose ability and
+cleverness did not go so far as to simulate love.
+
+At this time all Paris was talking of the affair of a captain in the
+army who in a paroxysm of libertine jealousy had killed a woman. Diard,
+on coming home to dinner, told his wife that the officer was dead. He
+had killed himself to avoid the dishonor of a trial and the shame of
+death upon the scaffold. Juana did not see at first the logic of
+such conduct, and her husband was obliged to explain to her the fine
+jurisprudence of French law, which does not prosecute the dead.
+
+"But, papa, didn't you tell us the other day that the king could
+pardon?" asked Francisque.
+
+"The king can give nothing but life," said Juan, half scornfully.
+
+Diard and Juana, the spectators of this little scene, were differently
+affected by it. The glance, moist with joy, which his wife cast upon her
+eldest child was a fatal revelation to the husband of the secrets of
+a heart hitherto impenetrable. That eldest child was all Juana; Juana
+comprehended him; she was sure of his heart, his future; she adored him,
+but her ardent love was a secret between herself, her child, and God.
+Juan instinctively enjoyed the seeming indifference of his mother in
+presence of his father and brother, for she pressed him to her heart
+when alone. Francisque was Diard, and Juana's incessant care and
+watchfulness betrayed her desire to correct in the son the vices of the
+father and to encourage his better qualities. Juana, unaware that her
+glance had said too much and that her husband had rightly interpreted
+it, took Francisque in her lap and gave him, in a gentle voice still
+trembling with the pleasure that Juan's answer had brought her, a lesson
+upon honor, simplified to his childish intelligence.
+
+"That boy's character requires care," said Diard.
+
+"Yes," she replied simply.
+
+"How about Juan?"
+
+Madame Diard, struck by the tone in which the words were uttered, looked
+at her husband.
+
+"Juan was born perfect," he added.
+
+Then he sat down gloomily, and reflected. Presently, as his wife
+continued silent, he added:--
+
+"You love one of _your_ children better than the other."
+
+"You know that," she said.
+
+"No," said Diard, "I did not know until now which of them you
+preferred."
+
+"But neither of them have ever given me a moment's uneasiness," she
+answered quickly.
+
+"But one of them gives you greater joys," he said, more quickly still.
+
+"I never counted them," she said.
+
+"How false you women are!" cried Diard. "Will you dare to say that Juan
+is not the child of your heart?"
+
+"If that were so," she said, with dignity, "do you think it a
+misfortune?"
+
+"You have never loved me. If you had chosen, I would have conquered
+worlds for your sake. You know all that I have struggled to do in life,
+supported by the hope of pleasing you. Ah! if you had only loved me!"
+
+"A woman who loves," said Juana, "likes to live in solitude, far from
+the world, and that is what we are doing."
+
+"I know, Juana, that _you_ are never in the wrong."
+
+The words were said bitterly, and cast, for the rest of their lives
+together, a coldness between them.
+
+On the morrow of that fatal day Diard went back to his old companions
+and found distractions for his mind in play. Unfortunately, he won
+much money, and continued playing. Little by little, he returned to the
+dissipated life he had formerly lived. Soon he ceased even to dine in
+his own home.
+
+Some months went by in the enjoyment of this new independence; he was
+determined to preserve it, and in order to do so he separated himself
+from his wife, giving her the large apartments and lodging himself in
+the entresol. By the end of the year Diard and Juana only saw each other
+in the morning at breakfast.
+
+Like all gamblers, he had his alternations of loss and gain. Not
+wishing to cut into the capital of his fortune, he felt the necessity
+of withdrawing from his wife the management of their income; and the day
+came when he took from her all she had hitherto freely disposed of
+for the household benefit, giving her instead a monthly stipend. The
+conversation they had on this subject was the last of their married
+intercourse. The silence that fell between them was a true divorce;
+Juana comprehended that from henceforth she was only a mother, and she
+was glad, not seeking for the causes of this evil. For such an event is
+a great evil. Children are conjointly one with husband and wife in the
+home, and the life of her husband could not be a source of grief and
+injury to Juana only.
+
+As for Diard, now emancipated, he speedily grew accustomed to win and
+lose enormous sums. A fine player and a heavy player, he soon became
+celebrated for his style of playing. The social consideration he had
+been unable to win under the Empire, he acquired under the Restoration
+by the rolling of his gold on the green cloth and by his talent for
+all games that were in vogue. Ambassadors, bankers, persons with
+newly-acquired large fortunes, and all those men who, having sucked life
+to the dregs, turn to gambling for its feverish joys, admired Diard at
+their clubs,--seldom in their own houses,--and they all gambled with
+him. He became the fashion. Two or three times during the winter he
+gave a fete as a matter of social pride in return for the civilities he
+received. At such times Juana once more caught a glimpse of the world of
+balls, festivities, luxury, and lights; but for her it was a sort of
+tax imposed upon the comfort of her solitude. She, the queen of these
+solemnities, appeared like a being fallen from some other planet. Her
+simplicity, which nothing had corrupted, her beautiful virginity of
+soul, which her peaceful life restored to her, her beauty and her
+true modesty, won her sincere homage. But observing how few women ever
+entered her salons, she came to understand that though her husband
+was following, without communicating its nature to her, a new line of
+conduct, he had gained nothing actually in the world's esteem.
+
+Diard was not always lucky; far from it. In three years he had
+dissipated three fourths of his fortune, but his passion for play gave
+him the energy to continue it. He was intimate with a number of men,
+more particularly with the roues of the Bourse, men who, since the
+revolution, have set up the principle that robbery done on a large scale
+is only a _smirch_ to the reputation,--transferring thus to financial
+matters the loose principles of love in the eighteenth century. Diard
+now became a sort of business man, and concerned himself in several of
+those affairs which are called _shady_ in the slang of the law-courts.
+He practised the decent thievery by which so many men, cleverly
+masked, or hidden in the recesses of the political world, make their
+fortunes,--thievery which, if done in the streets by the light of an oil
+lamp, would see a poor devil to the galleys, but, under gilded ceilings
+and by the light of candelabra, is sanctioned. Diard brought up,
+monopolized, and sold sugars; he sold offices; he had the glory of
+inventing the "man of straw" for lucrative posts which it was necessary
+to keep in his own hands for a short time; he bought votes, receiving,
+on one occasion, so much per cent on the purchase of fifteen
+parliamentary votes which all passed on one division from the benches of
+the Left to the benches of the Right. Such actions are no longer crimes
+or thefts,--they are called governing, developing industry, becoming
+a financial power. Diard was placed by public opinion on the bench of
+infamy where many an able man was already seated. On that bench is the
+aristocracy of evil. It is the upper Chamber of scoundrels of high life.
+Diard was, therefore, not a mere commonplace gambler who is seen to be a
+blackguard, and ends by begging. That style of gambler is no longer
+seen in society of a certain topographical height. In these days bold
+scoundrels die brilliantly in the chariot of vice with the trappings of
+luxury. Diard, at least, did not buy his remorse at a low price; he made
+himself one of these privileged men. Having studied the machinery of
+government and learned all the secrets and the passions of the men in
+power, he was able to maintain himself in the fiery furnace into which
+he had sprung.
+
+Madame Diard knew nothing of her husband's infernal life. Glad of his
+abandonment, she felt no curiosity about him, and all her hours were
+occupied. She devoted what money she had to the education of her
+children, wishing to make men of them, and giving them straight-forward
+reasons, without, however, taking the bloom from their young
+imaginations. Through them alone came her interests and her emotions;
+consequently, she suffered no longer from her blemished life. Her
+children were to her what they are to many mothers for a long period
+of time,--a sort of renewal of their own existence. Diard was now an
+accidental circumstance, not a participator in her life, and since he
+had ceased to be the father and the head of the family, Juana felt
+bound to him by no tie other than that imposed by conventional laws.
+Nevertheless, she brought up her children to the highest respect for
+paternal authority, however imaginary it was for them. In this she was
+greatly seconded by her husband's continual absence. If he had been much
+in the home Diard would have neutralized his wife's efforts. The boys
+had too much intelligence and shrewdness not to have judged their
+father; and to judge a father is moral parricide.
+
+In the long run, however, Juana's indifference to her husband wore
+itself away; it even changed to a species of fear. She understood at
+last how the conduct of a father might long weigh on the future of
+her children, and her motherly solicitude brought her many, though
+incomplete, revelations of the truth. From day to day the dread of some
+unknown but inevitable evil in the shadow of which she lived became
+more and more keen and terrible. Therefore, during the rare moments when
+Diard and Juana met she would cast upon his hollow face, wan from nights
+of gambling and furrowed by emotions, a piercing look, the penetration
+of which made Diard shudder. At such times the assumed gaiety of her
+husband alarmed Juana more than his gloomiest expressions of anxiety
+when, by chance, he forgot that assumption of joy. Diard feared his wife
+as a criminal fears the executioner. In him, Juana saw her children's
+shame; and in her Diard dreaded a calm vengeance, the judgment of that
+serene brow, an arm raised, a weapon ready.
+
+After fifteen years of marriage Diard found himself without resources.
+He owed three hundred thousand francs and he could scarcely muster one
+hundred thousand. The house, his only visible possession, was mortgaged
+to its fullest selling value. A few days more, and the sort of prestige
+with which opulence had invested him would vanish. Not a hand would be
+offered, not a purse would be open to him. Unless some favorable event
+occurred he would fall into a slough of contempt, deeper perhaps than
+he deserved, precisely because he had mounted to a height he could
+not maintain. At this juncture he happened to hear that a number of
+strangers of distinction, diplomats and others, were assembled at the
+watering-places in the Pyrenees, where they gambled for enormous sums,
+and were doubtless well supplied with money.
+
+He determined to go at once to the Pyrenees; but he would not leave his
+wife in Paris, lest some importunate creditor might reveal to her the
+secret of his horrible position. He therefore took her and the two
+children with him, refusing to allow her to take the tutor and scarcely
+permitting her to take a maid. His tone was curt and imperious; he
+seemed to have recovered some energy. This sudden journey, the cause of
+which escaped her penetration, alarmed Juana secretly. Her husband made
+it gaily. Obliged to occupy the same carriage, he showed himself day
+by day more attentive to the children and more amiable to their
+mother. Nevertheless, each day brought Juana dark presentiments, the
+presentiments of mothers who tremble without apparent reason, but who
+are seldom mistaken when they tremble thus. For them the veil of the
+future seems thinner than for others.
+
+At Bordeaux, Diard hired in a quiet street a quiet little house, neatly
+furnished, and in it he established his wife. The house was at the
+corner of two streets, and had a garden. Joined to the neighboring house
+on one side only, it was open to view and accessible on the other three
+sides. Diard paid the rent in advance, and left Juana barely enough
+money for the necessary expenses of three months, a sum not exceeding
+a thousand francs. Madame Diard made no observation on this unusual
+meanness. When her husband told her that he was going to the
+watering-places and that she would stay at Bordeaux, Juana offered no
+difficulty, and at once formed a plan to teach the children Spanish
+and Italian, and to make them read the two masterpieces of the two
+languages. She was glad to lead a retired life, simply and naturally
+economical. To spare herself the troubles of material life, she arranged
+with a "traiteur" the day after Diard's departure to send in their
+meals. Her maid then sufficed for the service of the house, and she thus
+found herself without money, but her wants all provided for until her
+husband's return. Her pleasures consisted in taking walks with the
+children. She was then thirty-three years old. Her beauty, greatly
+developed, was in all its lustre. Therefore as soon as she appeared,
+much talk was made in Bordeaux about the beautiful Spanish stranger. At
+the first advances made to her Juana ceased to walk abroad, and confined
+herself wholly to her own large garden.
+
+Diard at first made a fortune at the baths. In two months he won three
+hundred thousand dollars, but it never occurred to him to send any money
+to his wife; he kept it all, expecting to make some great stroke of
+fortune on a vast stake. Towards the end of the second month the Marquis
+de Montefiore appeared at the same baths. The marquis was at this time
+celebrated for his wealth, his handsome face, his fortunate marriage
+with an Englishwoman, and more especially for his love of play. Diard,
+his former companion, encountered him, and desired to add his spoils to
+those of others. A gambler with four hundred thousand francs in hand is
+always in a position to do as he pleases. Diard, confident in his luck,
+renewed acquaintance with Montefiore. The latter received him very
+coldly, but nevertheless they played together, and Diard lost every
+penny that he possessed, and more.
+
+"My dear Montefiore," said the ex-quartermaster, after making a tour
+of the salon, "I owe you a hundred thousand francs; but my money is in
+Bordeaux, where I have left my wife."
+
+Diard had the money in bank-bills in his pocket; but with the
+self-possession and rapid bird's-eye view of a man accustomed to catch
+at all resources, he still hoped to recover himself by some one of the
+endless caprices of play. Montefiore had already mentioned his intention
+of visiting Bordeaux. Had he paid his debt on the spot, Diard would
+have been left without the power to take his revenge; a revenge at cards
+often exceeds the amount of all preceding losses. But these burning
+expectations depended on the marquis's reply.
+
+"Wait, my dear fellow," said Montefiore, "and we will go together to
+Bordeaux. In all conscience, I am rich enough to-day not to wish to take
+the money of an old comrade."
+
+Three days later Diard and Montefiore were in Bordeaux at a gambling
+table. Diard, having won enough to pay his hundred thousand francs, went
+on until he had lost two hundred thousand more on his word. He was gay
+as a man who swam in gold. Eleven o'clock sounded; the night was superb.
+Montefiore may have felt, like Diard, a desire to breathe the open air
+and recover from such emotions in a walk. The latter proposed to the
+marquis to come home with him to take a cup of tea and get his money.
+
+"But Madame Diard?" said Montefiore.
+
+"Bah!" exclaimed the husband.
+
+They went down-stairs; but before taking his hat Diard entered the
+dining-room of the establishment and asked for a glass of water. While
+it was being brought, he walked up and down the room, and was able,
+without being noticed, to pick up one of those small sharp-pointed steel
+knives with pearl handles which are used for cutting fruit at dessert.
+
+"Where do you live?" said Montefiore, in the courtyard, "for I want to
+send a carriage there to fetch me."
+
+Diard told him the exact address.
+
+"You see," said Montefiore, in a low voice, taking Diard's arm, "that as
+long as I am with you I have nothing to fear; but if I came home alone
+and a scoundrel were to follow me, I should be profitable to kill."
+
+"Have you much with you?"
+
+"No, not much," said the wary Italian, "only my winnings. But they would
+make a pretty fortune for a beggar and turn him into an honest man for
+the rest of his life."
+
+Diard led the marquis along a lonely street where he remembered to have
+seen a house, the door of which was at the end of an avenue of trees
+with high and gloomy walls on either side of it. When they reached this
+spot he coolly invited the marquis to precede him; but as if the latter
+understood him he preferred to keep at his side. Then, no sooner were
+they fairly in the avenue, then Diard, with the agility of a tiger,
+tripped up the marquis with a kick behind the knees, and putting a foot
+on his neck stabbed him again and again to the heart till the blade of
+the knife broke in it. Then he searched Montefiore's pockets, took his
+wallet, money, everything. But though he had taken the Italian unawares,
+and had done the deed with lucid mind and the quickness of a pickpocket,
+Montefiore had time to cry "Murder! Help!" in a shrill and piercing
+voice which was fit to rouse every sleeper in the neighborhood. His last
+sighs were given in those horrible shrieks.
+
+Diard was not aware that at the moment when they entered the avenue a
+crowd just issuing from a theatre was passing at the upper end of the
+street. The cries of the dying man reached them, though Diard did his
+best to stifle the noise by setting his foot firmly on Montefiore's
+neck. The crowd began to run towards the avenue, the high walls of which
+appeared to echo back the cries, directing them to the very spot where
+the crime was committed. The sound of their coming steps seemed to beat
+on Diard's brain. But not losing his head as yet, the murderer left
+the avenue and came boldly into the street, walking very gently, like a
+spectator who sees the inutility of trying to give help. He even turned
+round once or twice to judge of the distance between himself and the
+crowd, and he saw them rushing up the avenue, with the exception of one
+man, who, with a natural sense of caution, began to watch Diard.
+
+"There he is! there he is!" cried the people, who had entered the avenue
+as soon as they saw Montefiore stretched out near the door of the empty
+house.
+
+As soon as that clamor rose, Diard, feeling himself well in the advance,
+began to run or rather to fly, with the vigor of a lion and the bounds
+of a deer. At the other end of the street he saw, or fancied he saw, a
+mass of persons, and he dashed down a cross street to avoid them. But
+already every window was open, and heads were thrust forth right and
+left, while from every door came shouts and gleams of light. Diard kept
+on, going straight before him, through the lights and the noise; and
+his legs were so actively agile that he soon left the tumult behind him,
+though without being able to escape some eyes which took in the
+extent of his course more rapidly than he could cover it. Inhabitants,
+soldiers, gendarmes, every one, seemed afoot in the twinkling of an eye.
+Some men awoke the commissaries of police, others stayed by the body
+to guard it. The pursuit kept on in the direction of the fugitive, who
+dragged it after him like the flame of a conflagration.
+
+Diard, as he ran, had all the sensations of a dream when he heard a
+whole city howling, running, panting after him. Nevertheless, he kept
+his ideas and his presence of mind. Presently he reached the wall of the
+garden of his house. The place was perfectly silent, and he thought he
+had foiled his pursuers, though a distant murmur of the tumult came to
+his ears like the roaring of the sea. He dipped some water from a brook
+and drank it. Then, observing a pile of stones on the road, he hid
+his treasure in it; obeying one of those vague thoughts which come to
+criminals at a moment when the faculty to judge their actions under all
+bearings deserts them, and they think to establish their innocence by
+want of proof of their guilt.
+
+That done, he endeavored to assume a placid countenance; he even tried
+to smile as he rapped softly on the door of his house, hoping that no
+one saw him. He raised his eyes, and through the outer blinds of one
+window came a gleam of light from his wife's room. Then, in the midst of
+his trouble, visions of her gentle life, spent with her children, beat
+upon his brain with the force of a hammer. The maid opened the door,
+which Diard hastily closed behind him with a kick. For a moment he
+breathed freely; then, noticing that he was bathed in perspiration,
+he sent the servant back to Juana and stayed in the darkness of the
+passage, where he wiped his face with his handkerchief and put his
+clothes in order, like a dandy about to pay a visit to a pretty woman.
+After that he walked into a track of the moonlight to examine his hands.
+A quiver of joy passed over him as he saw that no blood stains were on
+them; the hemorrhage from his victim's body was no doubt inward.
+
+But all this took time. When at last he mounted the stairs to Juana's
+room he was calm and collected, and able to reflect on his position,
+which resolved itself into two ideas: to leave the house, and get to the
+wharves. He did not _think_ these ideas, he _saw_ them written in fiery
+letters on the darkness. Once at the wharves he could hide all day,
+return at night for his treasure, then conceal himself, like a rat,
+in the hold of some vessel and escape without any one suspecting
+his whereabouts. But to do all this, money, gold, was his first
+necessity,--and he did not possess one penny.
+
+The maid brought a light to show him up.
+
+"Felicie," he said, "don't you hear a noise in the street, shouts,
+cries? Go and see what it means, and come and tell me."
+
+His wife, in her white dressing-gown, was sitting at a table, reading
+aloud to Francisque and Juan from a Spanish Cervantes, while the boys
+followed her pronunciation of the words from the text. They all three
+stopped and looked at Diard, who stood in the doorway with his hands in
+his pockets; overcome, perhaps, by finding himself in this calm scene,
+so softly lighted, so beautiful with the faces of his wife and children.
+It was a living picture of the Virgin between her son and John.
+
+"Juana, I have something to say to you."
+
+"What has happened?" she asked, instantly perceiving from the livid
+paleness of her husband that the misfortune she had daily expected was
+upon them.
+
+"Oh, nothing; but I want to speak to you--to you, alone."
+
+And he glanced at his sons.
+
+"My dears, go to your room, and go to bed," said Juana; "say your
+prayers without me."
+
+The boys left the room in silence, with the incurious obedience of
+well-trained children.
+
+"My dear Juana," said Diard, in a coaxing voice, "I left you with very
+little money, and I regret it now. Listen to me; since I relieved you
+of the care of our income by giving you an allowance, have you not, like
+other women, laid something by?"
+
+"No," replied Juana, "I have nothing. In making that allowance you did
+not reckon the costs of the children's education. I don't say that to
+reproach you, my friend, only to explain my want of money. All that you
+gave me went to pay masters and--"
+
+"Enough!" cried Diard, violently. "Thunder of heaven! every instant is
+precious! Where are your jewels?"
+
+"You know very well I have never worn any."
+
+"Then there's not a sou to be had here!" cried Diard, frantically.
+
+"Why do you shout in that way?" she asked.
+
+"Juana," he replied, "I have killed a man."
+
+Juana sprang to the door of her children's room and closed it; then she
+returned.
+
+"Your sons must hear nothing," she said. "With whom have you fought?"
+
+"Montefiore," he replied.
+
+"Ah!" she said with a sigh, "the only man you had the right to kill."
+
+"There were many reasons why he should die by my hand. But I can't lose
+time--Money, money! for God's sake, money! I may be pursued. We did not
+fight. I--I killed him."
+
+"Killed him!" she cried, "how?"
+
+"Why, as one kills anything. He stole my whole fortune and I took it
+back, that's all. Juana, now that everything is quiet you must go down
+to that heap of stones--you know the heap by the garden wall--and get
+that money, since you haven't any in the house."
+
+"The money that you stole?" said Juana.
+
+"What does that matter to you? Have you any money to give me? I tell you
+I must get away. They are on my traces."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The people, the police."
+
+Juana left the room, but returned immediately.
+
+"Here," she said, holding out to him at arm's length a jewel, "that is
+Dona Lagounia's cross. There are four rubies in it, of great value, I
+have been told. Take it and go--go!"
+
+"Felicie hasn't come back," he cried, with a sudden thought. "Can she
+have been arrested?"
+
+Juana laid the cross on the table, and sprang to the windows that looked
+on the street. There she saw, in the moonlight, a file of soldiers
+posting themselves in deepest silence along the wall of the house. She
+turned, affecting to be calm, and said to her husband:--
+
+"You have not a minute to lose; you must escape through the garden. Here
+is the key of the little gate."
+
+As a precaution she turned to the other windows, looking on the garden.
+In the shadow of the trees she saw the gleam of the silver lace on the
+hats of a body of gendarmes; and she heard the distant mutterings of
+a crowd of persons whom sentinels were holding back at the end of the
+streets up which curiosity had drawn them. Diard had, in truth, been
+seen to enter his house by persons at their windows, and on their
+information and that of the frightened maid-servant, who was arrested,
+the troops and the people had blocked the two streets which led to the
+house. A dozen gendarmes, returning from the theatre, had climbed the
+walls of the garden, and guarded all exit in that direction.
+
+"Monsieur," said Juana, "you cannot escape. The whole town is here."
+
+Diard ran from window to window with the useless activity of a captive
+bird striking against the panes to escape. Juana stood silent and
+thoughtful.
+
+"Juana, dear Juana, help me! give me, for pity's sake, some advice."
+
+"Yes," said Juana, "I will; and I will save you."
+
+"Ah! you are always my good angel."
+
+Juana left the room and returned immediately, holding out to Diard, with
+averted head, one of his own pistols. Diard did not take it. Juana heard
+the entrance of the soldiers into the courtyard, where they laid down
+the body of the murdered man to confront the assassin with the sight of
+it. She turned round and saw Diard white and livid. The man was nearly
+fainting, and tried to sit down.
+
+"Your children implore you," she said, putting the pistol beneath his
+hand.
+
+"But--my good Juana, my little Juana, do you think--Juana! is it so
+pressing?--I want to kiss you."
+
+The gendarmes were mounting the staircase. Juana grasped the pistol,
+aimed it at Diard, holding him, in spite of his cries, by the throat;
+then she blew his brains out and flung the weapon on the ground.
+
+At that instant the door was opened violently. The public prosecutor,
+followed by an examining judge, a doctor, a sheriff, and a posse of
+gendarmes, all the representatives, in short, of human justice, entered
+the room.
+
+"What do you want?" asked Juana.
+
+"Is that Monsieur Diard?" said the prosecutor, pointing to the dead body
+bent double on the floor.
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Your gown is covered with blood, madame."
+
+"Do you not see why?" replied Juana.
+
+She went to the little table and sat down, taking up the volume of
+Cervantes; she was pale, with a nervous agitation which she nevertheless
+controlled, keeping it wholly inward.
+
+"Leave the room," said the prosecutor to the gendarmes.
+
+Then he signed to the examining judge and the doctor to remain.
+
+"Madame, under the circumstances, we can only congratulate you on the
+death of your husband," he said. "At least he has died as a soldier
+should, whatever crime his passions may have led him to commit. His act
+renders negatory that of justice. But however we may desire to spare you
+at such a moment, the law requires that we should make an exact report
+of all violent deaths. You will permit us to do our duty?"
+
+"May I go and change my dress?" she asked, laying down the volume.
+
+"Yes, madame; but you must bring it back to us. The doctor may need it."
+
+"It would be too painful for madame to see me operate," said the doctor,
+understanding the suspicions of the prosecutor. "Messieurs," he added,
+"I hope you will allow her to remain in the next room."
+
+The magistrates approved the request of the merciful physician,
+and Felicie was permitted to attend her mistress. The judge and the
+prosecutor talked together in a low voice. Officers of the law are
+very unfortunate in being forced to suspect all, and to imagine evil
+everywhere. By dint of supposing wicked intentions, and of comprehending
+them, in order to reach the truth hidden under so many contradictory
+actions, it is impossible that the exercise of their dreadful functions
+should not, in the long run, dry up at their source the generous
+emotions they are constrained to repress. If the sensibilities of the
+surgeon who probes into the mysteries of the human body end by growing
+callous, what becomes of those of the judge who is incessantly compelled
+to search the inner folds of the soul? Martyrs to their mission,
+magistrates are all their lives in mourning for their lost illusions;
+crime weighs no less heavily on them than on the criminal. An old man
+seated on the bench is venerable, but a young judge makes a thoughtful
+person shudder. The examining judge in this case was young, and he felt
+obliged to say to the public prosecutor,--
+
+"Do you think that woman was her husband's accomplice? Ought we to take
+her into custody? Is it best to question her?"
+
+The prosecutor replied, with a careless shrug of his shoulders,--
+
+"Montefiore and Diard were two well-known scoundrels. The maid evidently
+knew nothing of the crime. Better let the thing rest there."
+
+The doctor performed the autopsy, and dictated his report to the
+sheriff. Suddenly he stopped, and hastily entered the next room.
+
+"Madame--" he said.
+
+Juana, who had removed her bloody gown, came towards him.
+
+"It was you," he whispered, stooping to her ear, "who killed your
+husband."
+
+"Yes, monsieur," she replied.
+
+The doctor returned and continued his dictation as follows,--
+
+"And, from the above assemblage of facts, it appears evident that the
+said Diard killed himself voluntarily and by his own hand."
+
+"Have you finished?" he said to the sheriff after a pause.
+
+"Yes," replied the writer.
+
+The doctor signed the report. Juana, who had followed him into the room,
+gave him one glance, repressing with difficulty the tears which for an
+instant rose into her eyes and moistened them.
+
+"Messieurs," she said to the public prosecutor and the judge, "I am a
+stranger here, and a Spaniard. I am ignorant of the laws, and I know
+no one in Bordeaux. I ask of you one kindness: enable me to obtain a
+passport for Spain."
+
+"One moment!" cried the examining judge. "Madame, what has become of the
+money stolen from the Marquis de Montefiore?"
+
+"Monsieur Diard," she replied, "said something to me vaguely about a
+heap of stones, under which he must have hidden it."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the street."
+
+The two magistrates looked at each other. Juana made a noble gesture and
+motioned to the doctor.
+
+"Monsieur," she said in his ear, "can I be suspected of some infamous
+action? I! The pile of stones must be close to the wall of my garden. Go
+yourself, I implore you. Look, search, find that money."
+
+The doctor went out, taking with him the examining judge, and together
+they found Montefiore's treasure.
+
+Within two days Juana had sold her cross to pay the costs of a journey.
+On her way with her two children to take the diligence which would carry
+her to the frontiers of Spain, she heard herself being called in the
+street. Her dying mother was being carried to a hospital, and through
+the curtains of her litter she had seen her daughter. Juana made the
+bearers enter a porte-cochere that was near them, and there the last
+interview between the mother and the daughter took place. Though the two
+spoke to each other in a low voice, Juan heard these parting words,--
+
+"Mother, die in peace; I have suffered for you all."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Juana, by Honore de Balzac
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Juana, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Juana
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2004 [EBook #1437]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUANA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+                               JUANA
+
+                                 BY
+
+                          HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+                           Translated By
+                    Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                  To Madame la Comtesse Merlin.
+
+
+
+                               JUANA
+                           (THE MARANAS)
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER I
+
+                            EXPOSITION
+
+Notwithstanding the discipline which Marechal Suchet had introduced
+into his army corps, he was unable to prevent a short period of
+trouble and disorder at the taking of Tarragona. According to certain
+fair-minded military men, this intoxication of victory bore a striking
+resemblance to pillage, though the marechal promptly suppressed it.
+Order being re-established, each regiment quartered in its respective
+lines, and the commandant of the city appointed, military
+administration began. The place assumed a mongrel aspect. Though all
+things were organized on a French system, the Spaniards were left free
+to follow "in petto" their national tastes.
+
+This period of pillage (it is difficult to determine how long it
+lasted) had, like all other sublunary effects, a cause, not so
+difficult to discover. In the marechal's army was a regiment, composed
+almost entirely of Italians and commanded by a certain Colonel Eugene,
+a man of remarkable bravery, a second Murat, who, having entered the
+military service too late, obtained neither a Grand Duchy of Berg nor
+a Kingdom of Naples, nor balls at the Pizzo. But if he won no crown he
+had ample opportunity to obtain wounds, and it was not surprising that
+he met with several. His regiment was composed of the scattered
+fragments of the Italian legion. This legion was to Italy what the
+colonial battalions are to France. Its permanent cantonments,
+established on the island of Elba, served as an honorable place of
+exile for the troublesome sons of good families and for those great
+men who have just missed greatness, whom society brands with a hot
+iron and designates by the term "mauvais sujets"; men who are for the
+most part misunderstood; whose existence may become either noble
+through the smile of a woman lifting them out of their rut, or
+shocking at the close of an orgy under the influence of some damnable
+reflection dropped by a drunken comrade.
+
+Napoleon had incorporated these vigorous beings in the sixth of the
+line, hoping to metamorphose them finally into generals,--barring
+those whom the bullets might take off. But the emperor's calculation
+was scarcely fulfilled, except in the matter of the bullets. This
+regiment, often decimated but always the same in character, acquired a
+great reputation for valor in the field and for wickedness in private
+life. At the siege of Tarragona it lost its celebrated hero, Bianchi,
+the man who, during the campaign, had wagered that he would eat the
+heart of a Spanish sentinel, and did eat it. Though Bianchi was the
+prince of the devils incarnate to whom the regiment owed its dual
+reputation, he had, nevertheless, that sort of chivalrous honor which
+excuses, in the army, the worst excesses. In a word, he would have
+been, at an earlier period, an admirable pirate. A few days before his
+death he distinguished himself by a daring action which the marechal
+wished to reward. Bianchi refused rank, pension, and additional
+decoration, asking, for sole recompense, the favor of being the first
+to mount the breach at the assault on Tarragona. The marechal granted
+the request and then forgot his promise; but Bianchi forced him to
+remember Bianchi. The enraged hero was the first to plant our flag on
+the wall, where he was shot by a monk.
+
+This historical digression was necessary, in order to explain how it
+was that the 6th of the line was the regiment to enter Tarragona, and
+why the disorder and confusion, natural enough in a city taken by
+storm, degenerated for a time into a slight pillage.
+
+This regiment possessed two officers, not at all remarkable among
+these men of iron, who played, nevertheless, in the history we shall
+now relate, a somewhat important part.
+
+The first, a captain in the quartermaster's department, an officer
+half civil, half military, was considered, in soldier phrase, to be
+fighting his own battle. He pretended bravery, boasted loudly of
+belonging to the 6th of the line, twirled his moustache with the air
+of a man who was ready to demolish everything; but his brother
+officers did not esteem him. The fortune he possessed made him
+cautious. He was nicknamed, for two reasons, "captain of crows." In
+the first place, he could smell powder a league off, and took wing at
+the sound of a musket; secondly, the nickname was based on an innocent
+military pun, which his position in the regiment warranted. Captain
+Montefiore, of the illustrious Montefiore family of Milan (though the
+laws of the Kingdom of Italy forbade him to bear his title in the
+French service) was one of the handsomest men in the army. This beauty
+may have been among the secret causes of his prudence on fighting
+days. A wound which might have injured his nose, cleft his forehead,
+or scarred his cheek, would have destroyed one of the most beautiful
+Italian faces which a woman ever dreamed of in all its delicate
+proportions. This face, not unlike the type which Girodet has given to
+the dying young Turk, in the "Revolt at Cairo," was instinct with that
+melancholy by which all women are more or less duped.
+
+The Marquis de Montefiore possessed an entailed property, but his
+income was mortgaged for a number of years to pay off the costs of
+certain Italian escapades which are inconceivable in Paris. He had
+ruined himself in supporting a theatre at Milan in order to force upon
+a public a very inferior prima donna, whom he was said to love madly.
+A fine future was therefore before him, and he did not care to risk it
+for the paltry distinction of a bit of red ribbon. He was not a brave
+man, but he was certainly a philosopher; and he had precedents, if we
+may use so parliamentary an expression. Did not Philip the Second
+register a vow after the battle of Saint Quentin that never again
+would he put himself under fire? And did not the Duke of Alba
+encourage him in thinking that the worst trade in the world was the
+involuntary exchange of a crown for a bullet? Hence, Montefiore was
+Philippiste in his capacity of rich marquis and handsome man; and in
+other respects also he was quite as profound a politician as Philip
+the Second himself. He consoled himself for his nickname, and for the
+disesteem of the regiment by thinking that his comrades were
+blackguards, whose opinion would never be of any consequence to him if
+by chance they survived the present war, which seemed to be one of
+extermination. He relied on his face to win him promotion; he saw
+himself made colonel by feminine influence and a carefully managed
+transition from captain of equipment to orderly officer, and from
+orderly officer to aide-de-camp on the staff of some easy-going
+marshal. By that time, he reflected, he should come into his property
+of a hundred thousand scudi a year, some journal would speak of him as
+"the brave Montefiore," he would marry a girl of rank, and no one
+would dare to dispute his courage or verify his wounds.
+
+Captain Montefiore had one friend in the person of the quartermaster,
+--a Provencal, born in the neighborhood of Nice, whose name was Diard.
+A friend, whether at the galleys or in the garret of an artist,
+consoles for many troubles. Now Montefiore and Diard were two
+philosophers, who consoled each other for their present lives by the
+study of vice, as artists soothe the immediate disappointment of their
+hopes by the expectation of future fame. Both regarded the war in its
+results, not its action; they simply considered those who died for
+glory fools. Chance had made soldiers of them; whereas their natural
+proclivities would have seated them at the green table of a congress.
+Nature had poured Montefiore into the mould of a Rizzio, and Diard
+into that of a diplomatist. Both were endowed with that nervous,
+feverish, half-feminine organization, which is equally strong for good
+or evil, and from which may emanate, according to the impulse of these
+singular temperaments, a crime or a generous action, a noble deed or a
+base one. The fate of such natures depends at any moment on the
+pressure, more or less powerful, produced on their nervous systems by
+violent and transitory passions.
+
+Diard was considered a good accountant, but no soldier would have
+trusted him with his purse or his will, possibly because of the
+antipathy felt by all real soldiers against the bureaucrats. The
+quartermaster was not without courage and a certain juvenile
+generosity, sentiments which many men give up as they grow older, by
+dint of reasoning or calculating. Variable as the beauty of a fair
+woman, Diard was a great boaster and a great talker, talking of
+everything. He said he was artistic, and he made prizes (like two
+celebrated generals) of works of art, solely, he declared, to preserve
+them for posterity. His military comrades would have been puzzled
+indeed to form a correct judgment of him. Many of them, accustomed to
+draw upon his funds when occasion obliged them, thought him rich; but
+in truth, he was a gambler, and gamblers may be said to have nothing
+of their own. Montefiore was also a gambler, and all the officers of
+the regiment played with the pair; for, to the shame of men be it
+said, it is not a rare thing to see persons gambling together around a
+green table who, when the game is finished, will not bow to their
+companions, feeling no respect for them. Montefiore was the man with
+whom Bianchi made his bet about the heart of the Spanish sentinel.
+
+Montefiore and Diard were among the last to mount the breach at
+Tarragona, but the first in the heart of the town as soon as it was
+taken. Accidents of this sort happen in all attacks, but with this
+pair of friends they were customary. Supporting each other, they made
+their way bravely through a labyrinth of narrow and gloomy little
+streets in quest of their personal objects; one seeking for painted
+madonnas, the other for madonnas of flesh and blood.
+
+In what part of Tarragona it happened I cannot say, but Diard
+presently recognized by its architecture the portal of a convent, the
+gate of which was already battered in. Springing into the cloister to
+put a stop to the fury of the soldiers, he arrived just in time to
+prevent two Parisians from shooting a Virgin by Albano. In spite of
+the moustache with which in their military fanaticism they had
+decorated her face, he bought the picture. Montefiore, left alone
+during this episode, noticed, nearly opposite the convent, the house
+and shop of a draper, from which a shot was fired at him at the moment
+when his eyes caught a flaming glance from those of an inquisitive
+young girl, whose head was advanced under the shelter of a blind.
+Tarragona taken by assault, Tarragona furious, firing from every
+window, Tarragona violated, with dishevelled hair, and half-naked, was
+indeed an object of curiosity,--the curiosity of a daring Spanish
+woman. It was a magnified bull-fight.
+
+Montefiore forgot the pillage, and heard, for the moment, neither the
+cries, nor the musketry, nor the growling of the artillery. The
+profile of that Spanish girl was the most divinely delicious thing
+which he, an Italian libertine, weary of Italian beauty, and dreaming
+of an impossible woman because he was tired of all women, had ever
+seen. He could still quiver, he, who had wasted his fortune on a
+thousand follies, the thousand passions of a young and blase man--the
+most abominable monster that society generates. An idea came into his
+head, suggested perhaps by the shot of the draper-patriot, namely,--to
+set fire to the house. But he was now alone, and without any means of
+action; the fighting was centred in the market-place, where a few
+obstinate beings were still defending the town. A better idea then
+occurred to him. Diard came out of the convent, but Montefiore said
+not a word of his discovery; on the contrary, he accompanied him on a
+series of rambles about the streets. But the next day, the Italian had
+obtained his military billet in the house of the draper,--an
+appropriate lodging for an equipment captain!
+
+The house of the worthy Spaniard consisted, on the ground-floor, of a
+vast and gloomy shop, externally fortified with stout iron bars, such
+as we see in the old storehouses of the rue des Lombards. This shop
+communicated with a parlor lighted from an interior courtyard, a large
+room breathing the very spirit of the middle-ages, with smoky old
+pictures, old tapestries, antique "brazero," a plumed hat hanging to a
+nail, the musket of the guerrillas, and the cloak of Bartholo. The
+kitchen adjoined this unique living-room, where the inmates took their
+meals and warmed themselves over the dull glow of the brazier, smoking
+cigars and discoursing bitterly to animate all hearts with hatred
+against the French. Silver pitchers and precious dishes of plate and
+porcelain adorned a buttery shelf of the old fashion. But the light,
+sparsely admitted, allowed these dazzling objects to show but
+slightly; all things, as in pictures of the Dutch school, looked
+brown, even the faces. Between the shop and this living-room, so fine
+in color and in its tone of patriarchal life, was a dark staircase
+leading to a ware-room where the light, carefully distributed,
+permitted the examination of goods. Above this were the apartments of
+the merchant and his wife. Rooms for an apprentice and a servant-woman
+were in a garret under the roof, which projected over the street and
+was supported by buttresses, giving a somewhat fantastic appearance to
+the exterior of the building. These chambers were now taken by the
+merchant and his wife who gave up their own rooms to the officer who
+was billeted upon them,--probably because they wished to avoid all
+quarrelling.
+
+Montefiore gave himself out as a former Spanish subject, persecuted by
+Napoleon, whom he was serving against his will; and these semi-lies
+had the success he expected. He was invited to share the meals of the
+family, and was treated with the respect due to his name, his birth,
+and his title. He had his reasons for capturing the good-will of the
+merchant and his wife; he scented his madonna as the ogre scented the
+youthful flesh of Tom Thumb and his brothers. But in spite of the
+confidence he managed to inspire in the worthy pair the latter
+maintained the most profound silence as to the said madonna; and not
+only did the captain see no trace of the young girl during the first
+day he spent under the roof of the honest Spaniard, but he heard no
+sound and came upon no indication which revealed her presence in that
+ancient building. Supposing that she was the only daughter of the old
+couple, Montefiore concluded they had consigned her to the garret,
+where, for the time being, they made their home.
+
+But no revelation came to betray the hiding-place of that precious
+treasure. The marquis glued his face to the lozenge-shaped leaded
+panes which looked upon the black-walled enclosure of the inner
+courtyard; but in vain; he saw no gleam of light except from the
+windows of the old couple, whom he could see and hear as they went and
+came and talked and coughed. Of the young girl, not a shadow!
+
+Montefiore was far too wary to risk the future of his passion by
+exploring the house nocturnally, or by tapping softly on the doors.
+Discovery by that hot patriot, the mercer, suspicious as a Spaniard
+must be, meant ruin infallibly. The captain therefore resolved to wait
+patiently, resting his faith on time and the imperfection of men,
+which always results--even with scoundrels, and how much more with
+honest men!--in the neglect of precautions.
+
+The next day he discovered a hammock in the kitchen, showing plainly
+where the servant-woman slept. As for the apprentice, his bed was
+evidently made on the shop counter. During supper on the second day
+Montefiore succeeded, by cursing Napoleon, in smoothing the anxious
+forehead of the merchant, a grave, black-visaged Spaniard, much like
+the faces formerly carved on the handles of Moorish lutes; even the
+wife let a gay smile of hatred appear in the folds of her elderly
+face. The lamp and the reflections of the brazier illumined
+fantastically the shadows of the noble room. The mistress of the house
+offered a "cigarrito" to their semi-compatriot. At this moment the
+rustle of a dress and the fall of a chair behind the tapestry were
+plainly heard.
+
+"Ah!" cried the wife, turning pale, "may the saints assist us! God
+grant no harm has happened!"
+
+"You have some one in the next room, have you not?" said Montefiore,
+giving no sign of emotion.
+
+The draper dropped a word of imprecation against the girls. Evidently
+alarmed, the wife opened a secret door, and led in, half fainting, the
+Italian's madonna, to whom he was careful to pay no attention; only,
+to avoid a too-studied indifference, he glanced at the girl before he
+turned to his host and said in his own language:--
+
+"Is that your daughter, signore?"
+
+Perez de Lagounia (such was the merchant's name) had large commercial
+relations with Genoa, Florence, and Livorno; he knew Italian, and
+replied in the same language:--
+
+"No; if she were my daughter I should take less precautions. The child
+is confided to our care, and I would rather die than see any evil
+happen to her. But how is it possible to put sense into a girl of
+eighteen?"
+
+"She is very handsome," said Montefiore, coldly, not looking at her
+face again.
+
+"Her mother's beauty is celebrated," replied the merchant, briefly.
+
+They continued to smoke, watching each other. Though Montefiore
+compelled himself not to give the slightest look which might
+contradict his apparent coldness, he could not refrain, at a moment
+when Perez turned his head to expectorate, from casting a rapid glance
+at the young girl, whose sparkling eyes met his. Then, with that
+science of vision which gives to a libertine, as it does to a
+sculptor, the fatal power of disrobing, if we may so express it, a
+woman, and divining her shape by inductions both rapid and sagacious,
+he beheld one of those masterpieces of Nature whose creation appears
+to demand as its right all the happiness of love. Here was a fair
+young face, on which the sun of Spain had cast faint tones of bistre
+which added to its expression of seraphic calmness a passionate pride,
+like a flash of light infused beneath that diaphanous complexion,
+--due, perhaps, to the Moorish blood which vivified and colored it.
+Her hair, raised to the top of her head, fell thence with black
+reflections round the delicate transparent ears and defined the
+outlines of a blue-veined throat. These luxuriant locks brought into
+strong relief the dazzling eyes and the scarlet lips of a well-arched
+mouth. The bodice of the country set off the lines of a figure that
+swayed as easily as a branch of willow. She was not the Virgin of
+Italy, but the Virgin of Spain, of Murillo, the only artist daring
+enough to have painted the Mother of God intoxicated with the joy of
+conceiving the Christ,--the glowing imagination of the boldest and
+also the warmest of painters.
+
+In this young girl three things were united, a single one of which
+would have sufficed for the glory of a woman: the purity of the pearl
+in the depths of ocean; the sublime exaltation of the Spanish Saint
+Teresa; and a passion of love which was ignorant of itself. The
+presence of such a woman has the virtue of a talisman. Montefiore no
+longer felt worn and jaded. That young girl brought back his youthful
+freshness.
+
+But, though the apparition was delightful, it did not last. The girl
+was taken back to the secret chamber, where the servant-woman carried
+to her openly both light and food.
+
+"You do right to hide her," said Montefiore in Italian. "I will keep
+your secret. The devil! we have generals in our army who are capable
+of abducting her."
+
+Montefiore's infatuation went so far as to suggest to him the idea of
+marrying her. He accordingly asked her history, and Perez very
+willingly told him the circumstances under which she had become his
+ward. The prudent Spaniard was led to make this confidence because he
+had heard of Montefiore in Italy, and knowing his reputation was
+desirous to let him see how strong were the barriers which protected
+the young girl from the possibility of seduction. Though the good-man
+was gifted with a certain patriarchal eloquence, in keeping with his
+simple life and customs, his tale will be improved by abridgment.
+
+At the period when the French Revolution changed the manners and
+morals of every country which served as the scene of its wars, a
+street prostitute came to Tarragona, driven from Venice at the time of
+its fall. The life of this woman had been a tissue of romantic
+adventures and strange vicissitudes. To her, oftener than to any other
+woman of her class, it had happened, thanks to the caprice of great
+lords struck with her extraordinary beauty, to be literally gorged
+with gold and jewels and all the delights of excessive wealth,
+--flowers, carriages, pages, maids, palaces, pictures, journeys (like
+those of Catherine II.); in short, the life of a queen, despotic in
+her caprices and obeyed, often beyond her own imaginings. Then,
+without herself, or any one, chemist, physician, or man of science,
+being able to discover how her gold evaporated, she would find herself
+back in the streets, poor, denuded of everything, preserving nothing
+but her all-powerful beauty, yet living on without thought or care of
+the past, the present, or the future. Cast, in her poverty, into the
+hands of some poor gambling officer, she attached herself to him as a
+dog to its master, sharing the discomforts of the military life, which
+indeed she comforted, as content under the roof of a garret as beneath
+the silken hangings of opulence. Italian and Spanish both, she
+fulfilled very scrupulously the duties of religion, and more than once
+she had said to love:--
+
+"Return to-morrow; to-day I belong to God."
+
+But this slime permeated with gold and perfumes, this careless
+indifference to all things, these unbridled passions, these religious
+beliefs cast into that heart like diamonds into mire, this life begun,
+and ended, in a hospital, these gambling chances transferred to the
+soul, to the very existence,--in short, this great alchemy, for which
+vice lit the fire beneath the crucible in which fortunes were melted
+up and the gold of ancestors and the honor of great names evaporated,
+proceeded from a _cause_, a particular heredity, faithfully transmitted
+from mother to daughter since the middle ages. The name of this woman
+was La Marana. In her family, existing solely in the female line, the
+idea, person, name and power of a father had been completely unknown
+since the thirteenth century. The name Marana was to her what the
+designation of Stuart is to the celebrated royal race of Scotland, a
+name of distinction substituted for the patronymic name by the
+constant heredity of the same office devolving on the family.
+
+Formerly, in France, Spain, and Italy, when those three countries had,
+in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, mutual interests which
+united and disunited them by perpetual warfare, the name Marana served
+to express in its general sense, a prostitute. In those days women of
+that sort had a certain rank in the world of which nothing in our day
+can give an idea. Ninon de l'Enclos and Marian Delorme have alone
+played, in France, the role of the Imperias, Catalinas, and Maranas
+who, in preceding centuries, gathered around them the cassock, gown,
+and sword. An Imperia built I forget which church in Rome in a frenzy
+of repentance, as Rhodope built, in earlier times, a pyramid in Egypt.
+The name Marana, inflicted at first as a disgrace upon the singular
+family with which we are now concerned, had ended by becoming its
+veritable name and by ennobling its vice by incontestable antiquity.
+
+One day, a day of opulence or of penury I know not which, for this
+event was a secret between herself and God, but assuredly it was in a
+moment of repentance and melancholy, this Marana of the nineteenth
+century stood with her feet in the slime and her head raised to
+heaven. She cursed the blood in her veins, she cursed herself, she
+trembled lest she should have a daughter, and she swore, as such women
+swear, on the honor and with the will of the galleys--the firmest
+will, the most scrupulous honor that there is on earth--she swore,
+before an altar, and believing in that altar, to make her daughter a
+virtuous creature, a saint, and thus to gain, after that long line of
+lost women, criminals in love, an angel in heaven for them all.
+
+The vow once made, the blood of the Maranas spoke; the courtesan
+returned to her reckless life, a thought the more within her heart. At
+last she loved, with the violent love of such women, as Henrietta
+Wilson loved Lord Ponsonby, as Mademoiselle Dupuis loved Bolingbroke,
+as the Marchesa Pescara loved her husband--but no, she did not love,
+she adored one of those fair men, half women, to whom she gave the
+virtues which she had not, striving to keep for herself all that there
+was of vice between them. It was from that weak man, that senseless
+marriage unblessed by God or man which happiness is thought to
+justify, but which no happiness absolves, and for which men blush at
+last, that she had a daughter, a daughter to save, a daughter for whom
+to desire a noble life and the chastity she had not. Henceforth, happy
+or not happy, opulent or beggared, she had in her heart a pure,
+untainted sentiment, the highest of all human feelings because the
+most disinterested. Love has its egotism, but motherhood has none. La
+Marana was a mother like none other; for, in her total, her eternal
+shipwreck, motherhood might still redeem her. To accomplish sacredly
+through life the task of sending a pure soul to heaven, was not that a
+better thing than a tardy repentance? was it not, in truth, the only
+spotless prayer which she could lift to God?
+
+So, when this daughter, when her Marie-Juana-Pepita (she would fain
+have given her all the saints in the calendar as guardians), when this
+dear little creature was granted to her, she became possessed of so
+high an idea of the dignity of motherhood that she entreated vice to
+grant her a respite. She made herself virtuous and lived in solitude.
+No more fetes, no more orgies, no more love. All joys, all fortunes
+were centred now in the cradle of her child. The tones of that infant
+voice made an oasis for her soul in the burning sands of her
+existence. That sentiment could not be measured or estimated by any
+other. Did it not, in fact, comprise all human sentiments, all
+heavenly hopes? La Marana was so resolved not to soil her daughter
+with any stain other than that of birth, that she sought to invest her
+with social virtues; she even obliged the young father to settle a
+handsome patrimony upon the child and to give her his name. Thus the
+girl was not know as Juana Marana, but as Juana di Mancini.
+
+Then, after seven years of joy, and kisses, and intoxicating
+happiness, the time came when the poor Marana deprived herself of her
+idol. That Juana might never bow her head under their hereditary
+shame, the mother had the courage to renounce her child for her
+child's sake, and to seek, not without horrible suffering, for another
+mother, another home, other principles to follow, other and saintlier
+examples to imitate. The abdication of a mother is either a revolting
+act or a sublime one; in this case, was it not sublime?
+
+At Tarragona a lucky accident threw the Lagounias in her way, under
+circumstances which enabled her to recognize the integrity of the
+Spaniard and the noble virtue of his wife. She came to them at a time
+when her proposal seemed that of a liberating angel. The fortune and
+honor of the merchant, momentarily compromised, required a prompt and
+secret succor. La Marana made over to the husband the whole sum she
+had obtained of the father for Juana's "dot," requiring neither
+acknowledgment nor interest. According to her own code of honor, a
+contract, a trust, was a thing of the heart, and God its supreme
+judge. After stating the miseries of her position to Dona Lagounia,
+she confided her daughter and her daughter's fortune to the fine old
+Spanish honor, pure and spotless, which filled the precincts of that
+ancient house. Dona Lagounia had no child, and she was only too happy
+to obtain one to nurture. The mother then parted from her Juana,
+convinced that the child's future was safe, and certain of having
+found her a mother, a mother who would bring her up as a Mancini, and
+not as a Marana.
+
+Leaving her child in the simple modest house of the merchant where the
+burgher virtues reigned, where religion and sacred sentiments and
+honor filled the air, the poor prostitute, the disinherited mother was
+enabled to bear her trial by visions of Juana, virgin, wife, and
+mother, a mother throughout her life. On the threshold of that house
+Marana left a tear such as the angels garner up.
+
+Since that day of mourning and hope the mother, drawn by some
+invincible presentiment, had thrice returned to see her daughter. Once
+when Juana fell ill with a dangerous complaint:
+
+"I knew it," she said to Perez when she reached the house.
+
+Asleep, she had seen her Juana dying. She nursed her and watched her,
+until one morning, sure of the girl's convalescence, she kissed her,
+still asleep, on the forehead and left her without betraying whom she
+was. A second time the Marana came to the church where Juana made her
+first communion. Simply dressed, concealing herself behind a column,
+the exiled mother recognized herself in her daughter such as she once
+had been, pure as the snow fresh-fallen on the Alps. A courtesan even
+in maternity, the Marana felt in the depths of her soul a jealous
+sentiment, stronger for the moment than that of love, and she left the
+church, incapable of resisting any longer the desire to kill Dona
+Lagounia, as she sat there, with radiant face, too much the mother of
+her child. A third and last meeting had taken place between mother and
+daughter in the streets of Milan, to which city the merchant and his
+wife had paid a visit. The Marana drove through the Corso in all the
+splendor of a sovereign; she passed her daughter like a flash of
+lightning and was not recognized. Horrible anguish! To this Marana,
+surfeited with kisses, one was lacking, a single one, for which she
+would have bartered all the others: the joyous, girlish kiss of a
+daughter to a mother, an honored mother, a mother in whom shone all
+the domestic virtues. Juana living was dead to her. One thought
+revived the soul of the courtesan--a precious thought! Juana was
+henceforth safe. She might be the humblest of women, but at least she
+was not what her mother was--an infamous courtesan.
+
+The merchant and his wife had fulfilled their trust with scrupulous
+integrity. Juana's fortune, managed by them, had increased tenfold.
+Perez de Lagounia, now the richest merchant in the provinces, felt for
+the young girl a sentiment that was semi-superstitious. Her money had
+preserved his ancient house from dishonorable ruin, and the presence
+of so precious a treasure had brought him untold prosperity. His wife,
+a heart of gold, and full of delicacy, had made the child religious,
+and as pure as she was beautiful. Juana might well become the wife of
+either a great seigneur or a wealthy merchant; she lacked no virtue
+necessary to the highest destiny. Perez had intended taking her to
+Madrid and marrying her to some grandee, but the events of the present
+war delayed the fulfilment of this project.
+
+"I don't know where the Marana now is," said Perez, ending the above
+history, "but in whatever quarter of the world she may be living, when
+she hears of the occupation of our province by your armies, and of the
+siege of Tarragona, she will assuredly set out at once to come here
+and see to her daughter's safety."
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II
+
+                              AUCTION
+
+The foregoing narrative changed the intentions of the Italian captain;
+no longer did he think of making a Marchesa di Montefiore of Juana di
+Mancini. He recognized the blood of the Maranas in the glance the girl
+had given from behind the blinds, in the trick she had just played to
+satisfy her curiosity, and also in the parting look she had cast upon
+him. The libertine wanted a virtuous woman for a wife.
+
+The adventure was full of danger, but danger of a kind that never
+daunts the least courageous man, for love and pleasure followed it.
+The apprentice sleeping in the shop, the cook bivouacking in the
+kitchen, Perez and his wife sleeping, no doubt, the wakeful sleep of
+the aged, the echoing sonority of the old mansion, the close
+surveillance of the girl in the day-time,--all these things were
+obstacles, and made success a thing well-nigh impossible. But
+Montefiore had in his favor against all impossibilities the blood of
+the Maranas which gushed in the heart of that inquisitive girl,
+Italian by birth, Spanish in principles, virgin indeed, but impatient
+to love. Passion, the girl, and Montefiore were ready and able to defy
+the whole universe.
+
+Montefiore, impelled as much by the instinct of a man of gallantry as
+by those vague hopes which cannot be explained, and to which we give
+the name of presentiments (a word of astonishing verbal accuracy),
+Montefiore spent the first hours of the night at his window,
+endeavoring to look below him to the secret apartment where,
+undoubtedly, the merchant and his wife had hidden the love and
+joyfulness of their old age. The ware-room of the "entresol" separated
+him from the rooms on the ground-floor. The captain therefore could
+not have recourse to noises significantly made from one floor to the
+other, an artificial language which all lovers know well how to
+create. But chance, or it may have been the young girl herself, came
+to his assistance. At the moment when he stationed himself at his
+window, he saw, on the black wall of the courtyard, a circle of light,
+in the centre of which the silhouette of Juana was clearly defined;
+the consecutive movement of the arms, and the attitude, gave evidence
+that she was arranging her hair for the night.
+
+"Is she alone?" Montefiore asked himself; "could I, without danger,
+lower a letter filled with coin and strike it against that circular
+window in her hiding-place?"
+
+At once he wrote a note, the note of a man exiled by his family to
+Elba, the note of a degraded marquis now a mere captain of equipment.
+Then he made a cord of whatever he could find that was capable of
+being turned into string, filled the note with a few silver crowns,
+and lowered it in the deepest silence to the centre of that spherical
+gleam.
+
+"The shadows will show if her mother or the servant is with her,"
+thought Montefiore. "If she is not alone, I can pull up the string at
+once."
+
+But, after succeeding with infinite trouble in striking the glass, a
+single form, the little figure of Juana, appeared upon the wall. The
+young girl opened her window cautiously, saw the note, took it, and
+stood before the window while she read it. In it, Montefiore had given
+his name and asked for an interview, offering, after the style of the
+old romances, his heart and hand to the Signorina Juana di Mancini--a
+common trick, the success of which is nearly always certain. At
+Juana's age, nobility of soul increases the dangers which surround
+youth. A poet of our day has said: "Woman succumbs only to her own
+nobility. The lover pretends to doubt the love he inspires at the
+moment when he is most beloved; the young girl, confident and proud,
+longs to make sacrifices to prove her love, and knows the world and
+men too little to continue calm in the midst of her rising emotions
+and repel with contempt the man who accepts a life offered in
+expiation of a false reproach."
+
+Ever since the constitution of societies the young girl finds herself
+torn by a struggle between the caution of prudent virtue and the evils
+of wrong-doing. Often she loses a love, delightful in prospect, and
+the first, if she resists; on the other hand, she loses a marriage if
+she is imprudent. Casting a glance over the vicissitudes of social
+life in Paris, it is impossible to doubt the necessity of religion;
+and yet Paris is situated in the forty-eighth degree of latitude,
+while Tarragona is in the forty-first. The old question of climates is
+still useful to narrators to explain the sudden denouements, the
+imprudences, or the resistances of love.
+
+Montefiore kept his eyes fixed on the exquisite black profile
+projected by the gleam upon the wall. Neither he nor Juana could see
+each other; a troublesome cornice, vexatiously placed, deprived them
+of the mute correspondence which may be established between a pair of
+lovers as they bend to each other from their windows. Thus the mind
+and the attention of the captain were concentrated on that luminous
+circle where, without perhaps knowing it herself, the young girl
+would, he thought, innocently reveal her thoughts by a series of
+gestures. But no! The singular motions she proceeded to make gave not
+a particle of hope to the expectant lover. Juana was amusing herself
+by cutting up his missive. But virtue and innocence sometimes imitate
+the clever proceedings inspired by jealousy to the Bartholos of
+comedy. Juana, without pens, ink, or paper, was replying by snip of
+scissors. Presently she refastened the note to the string; the officer
+drew it up, opened it, and read by the light of his lamp one word,
+carefully cut out of the paper: COME.
+
+"Come!" he said to himself; "but what of poison? or the dagger or
+carbine of Perez? And that apprentice not yet asleep, perhaps, in the
+shop? and the servant in her hammock? Besides, this old house echoes
+the slightest sound; I can hear old Perez snoring even here. Come,
+indeed! She can have nothing more to lose."
+
+Bitter reflection! rakes alone are logical and will punish a woman for
+devotion. Man created Satan and Lovelace; but a virgin is an angel on
+whom he can bestow naught but his own vices. She is so grand, so
+beautiful, that he cannot magnify or embellish her; he has only the
+fatal power to blast her and drag her down into his own mire.
+
+Montefiore waited for a later and more somnolent hour of the night;
+then, in spite of his reflections, he descended the stairs without
+boots, armed with his pistols, moving step by step, stopping to
+question the silence, putting forth his hands, measuring the stairs,
+peering into the darkness, and ready at the slightest incident to fly
+back into his room. The Italian had put on his handsomest uniform; he
+had perfumed his black hair, and now shone with the particular
+brilliancy which dress and toilet bestow upon natural beauty. Under
+such circumstances most men are as feminine as a woman.
+
+The marquis arrived without hindrance before the secret door of the
+room in which the girl was hidden, a sort of cell made in the angle of
+the house and belonging exclusively to Juana, who had remained there
+hidden during the day from every eye while the siege lasted. Up to the
+present time she had slept in the room of her adopted mother, but the
+limited space in the garret where the merchant and his wife had gone
+to make room for the officer who was billeted upon them, did not allow
+of her going with them. Dona Lagounia had therefore left the young
+girl to the guardianship of lock and key, under the protection of
+religious ideas, all the more efficacious because they were partly
+superstitious, and also under the shield of a native pride and
+sensitive modesty which made the young Mancini in sort an exception
+among her sex. Juana possessed in an equal degree the most attaching
+virtues and the most passionate impulses; she had needed the modesty
+and sanctity of this monotonous life to calm and cool the tumultuous
+blood of the Maranas which bounded in her heart, the desires of which
+her adopted mother told her were an instigation of the devil.
+
+A faint ray of light traced along the sill of the secret door guided
+Montefiore to the place; he scratched the panel softly and Juana
+opened to him. Montefiore entered, palpitating, but he recognized in
+the expression of the girl's face complete ignorance of her peril, a
+sort of naive curiosity, and an innocent admiration. He stopped short,
+arrested for a moment by the sacredness of the picture which met his
+eyes.
+
+He saw before him a tapestry on the walls with a gray ground sprinkled
+with violets, a little coffer of ebony, an antique mirror, an immense
+and very old arm chair also in ebony and covered with tapestry, a
+table with twisted legs, a pretty carpet on the floor, near the table
+a single chair; and that was all. On the table, however, were flowers
+and embroidery; in a recess at the farther end of the room was the
+narrow little bed where Juana dreamed. Above the bed were three
+pictures; and near the pillow a crucifix, with a holy water basin and
+a prayer, printed in letters of gold and framed. Flowers exhaled their
+perfume faintly; the candles cast a tender light; all was calm and
+pure and sacred. The dreamy thoughts of Juana, but above all Juana
+herself, had communicated to all things her own peculiar charm; her
+soul appeared to shine there, like the pearl in its matrix. Juana,
+dressed in white, beautiful with naught but her own beauty, laying
+down her rosary to answer love, might have inspired respect, even in a
+Montefiore, if the silence, if the night, if Juana herself had not
+seemed so amorous. Montefiore stood still, intoxicated with an unknown
+happiness, possibly that of Satan beholding heaven through a rift of
+the clouds which form its enclosure.
+
+"As soon as I saw you," he said in pure Tuscan, and in the modest tone
+of voice so peculiarly Italian, "I loved you. My soul and my life are
+now in you, and in you they will be forever, if you will have it so."
+
+Juana listened, inhaling from the atmosphere the sound of these words
+which the accents of love made magnificent.
+
+"Poor child! how have you breathed so long the air of this dismal
+house without dying of it? You, made to reign in the world, to inhabit
+the palace of a prince, to live in the midst of fetes, to feel the
+joys which love bestows, to see the world at your feet, to efface all
+other beauty by your own which can have no rival--you, to live here,
+solitary, with those two shopkeepers!"
+
+Adroit question! He wished to know if Juana had a lover.
+
+"True," she replied. "But who can have told you my secret thoughts?
+For the last few months I have nearly died of sadness. Yes, I would
+_rather_ die than stay longer in this house. Look at that embroidery;
+there is not a stitch there which I did not set with dreadful
+thoughts. How many times I have thought of escaping to fling myself
+into the sea! Why? I don't know why,--little childish troubles, but
+very keen, though they are so silly. Often I have kissed my mother at
+night as one would kiss a mother for the last time, saying in my
+heart: 'To-morrow I will kill myself.' But I do not die. Suicides go
+to hell, you know, and I am so afraid of hell that I resign myself to
+live, to get up in the morning and go to bed at night, and work the
+same hours, and do the same things. I am not so weary of it, but I
+suffer--And yet, my father and mother adore me. Oh! I am bad, I am
+bad; I say so to my confessor."
+
+"Do you always live here alone, without amusement, without pleasures?"
+
+"Oh! I have not always been like this. Till I was fifteen the
+festivals of the church, the chants, the music gave me pleasure. I was
+happy, feeling myself like the angels without sin and able to
+communicate every week--I loved God then. But for the last three
+years, from day to day, all things have changed. First, I wanted
+flowers here--and I have them, lovely flowers! Then I wanted--but I
+want nothing now," she added, after a pause, smiling at Montefiore.
+"Have you not said that you would love me always?"
+
+"Yes, my Juana," cried Montefiore, softly, taking her round the waist
+and pressing her to his heart, "yes. But let me speak to you as you
+speak to God. Are you not as beautiful as Mary in heaven? Listen. I
+swear to you," he continued, kissing her hair, "I swear to take that
+forehead for my altar, to make you my idol, to lay at your feet all
+the luxuries of the world. For you, my palace at Milan; for you my
+horses, my jewels, the diamonds of my ancient family; for you, each
+day, fresh jewels, a thousand pleasures, and all the joys of earth!"
+
+"Yes," she said reflectively, "I would like that; but I feel within my
+soul that I would like better than all the world my husband. Mio caro
+sposo!" she said, as if it were impossible to give in any other
+language the infinite tenderness, the loving elegance with which the
+Italian tongue and accent clothe those delightful words. Besides,
+Italian was Juana's maternal language.
+
+"I should find," she continued, with a glance at Montefiore in which
+shone the purity of the cherubim, "I should find in _him_ my dear
+religion, him and God--God and him. Is he to be you?" she said. "Yes,
+surely it will be you," she cried, after a pause. "Come, and see the
+picture my father brought me from Italy."
+
+She took a candle, made a sign to Montefiore, and showed him at the
+foot of her bed a Saint Michael overthrowing the demon.
+
+"Look!" she said, "has he not your eyes? When I saw you from my window
+in the street, our meeting seemed to me a sign from heaven. Every day
+during my morning meditation, while waiting for my mother to call me
+to prayer, I have so gazed at that picture, that angel, that I have
+ended by thinking him my husband--oh! heavens, I speak to you as
+though you were myself. I must seem crazy to you; but if you only knew
+how a poor captive wants to tell the thoughts that choke her! When
+alone, I talk to my flowers, to my tapestry; they can understand me
+better, I think, than my father and mother, who are so grave."
+
+"Juana," said Montefiore, taking her hands and kissing them with the
+passion that gushed in his eyes, in his gestures, in the tones of his
+voice, "speak to me as your husband, as yourself. I have suffered all
+that you have suffered. Between us two few words are needed to make us
+comprehend our past, but there will never be enough to express our
+coming happiness. Lay your hand upon my heart. Feel how it beats. Let
+us promise before God, who sees and hears us, to be faithful to each
+other throughout our lives. Here, take my ring--and give me yours."
+
+"Give you my ring!" she said in terror.
+
+"Why not?" asked Montefiore, uneasy at such artlessness.
+
+"But our holy father the Pope has blessed it; it was put upon my
+finger in childhood by a beautiful lady who took care of me, and who
+told me never to part with it."
+
+"Juana, you cannot love me!"
+
+"Ah!" she said, "here it is; take it. You, are you not another
+myself?"
+
+She held out the ring with a trembling hand, holding it tightly as she
+looked at Montefiore with a clear and penetrating eye that questioned
+him. That ring! all of herself was in it; but she gave it to him.
+
+"Oh, my Juana!" said Montefiore, again pressing her in his arms. "I
+should be a monster indeed if I deceived you. I will love you
+forever."
+
+Juana was thoughtful. Montefiore, reflecting that in this first
+interview he ought to venture upon nothing that might frighten a
+young girl so ignorantly pure, so imprudent by virtue rather than
+from desire, postponed all further action to the future, relying
+on his beauty, of which he knew the power, and on this innocent
+ring-marriage, the hymen of the heart, the lightest, yet the strongest
+of all ceremonies. For the rest of that night, and throughout the
+next day, Juana's imagination was the accomplice of her passion.
+
+On this first evening Montefiore forced himself to be as respectful as
+he was tender. With that intention, in the interests of his passion
+and the desires with which Juana inspired him, he was caressing and
+unctuous in language; he launched the young creature into plans for a
+new existence, described to her the world under glowing colors, talked
+to her of household details always attractive to the mind of girls,
+giving her a sense of the rights and realities of love. Then, having
+agreed upon the hour for their future nocturnal interviews, he left
+her happy, but changed; the pure and pious Juana existed no longer; in
+the last glance she gave him, in the pretty movement by which she
+brought her forehead to his lips, there was already more of passion
+than a girl should feel. Solitude, weariness of employments contrary
+to her nature had brought this about. To make the daughter of the
+Maranas truly virtuous, she ought to have been habituated, little by
+little, to the world, or else to have been wholly withdrawn from it.
+
+"The day, to-morrow, will seem very long to me," she said, receiving
+his kisses on her forehead. "But stay in the salon, and speak loud,
+that I may hear your voice; it fills my soul."
+
+Montefiore, clever enough to imagine the girl's life, was all the more
+satisfied with himself for restraining his desires because he saw that
+it would lead to his greater contentment. He returned to his room
+without accident.
+
+Ten days went by without any event occurring to trouble the peace and
+solitude of the house. Montefiore employed his Italian cajolery on old
+Perez, on Dona Lagounia, on the apprentice, even on the cook, and they
+all liked him; but, in spite of the confidence he now inspired in
+them, he never asked to see Juana, or to have the door of her
+mysterious hiding-place opened to him. The young girl, hungry to see
+her lover, implored him to do so; but he always refused her from an
+instinct of prudence. Besides, he had used his best powers and
+fascinations to lull the suspicions of the old couple, and had now
+accustomed them to see him, a soldier, stay in bed till midday on
+pretence that he was ill. Thus the lovers lived only in the
+night-time, when the rest of the household were asleep. If Montefiore
+had not been one of those libertines whom the habit of gallantry
+enables to retain their self-possession under all circumstances, he
+might have been lost a dozen times during those ten days. A young
+lover, in the simplicity of a first love, would have committed the
+enchanting imprudences which are so difficult to resist. But he did
+resist even Juana herself, Juana pouting, Juana making her long hair
+a chain which she wound about his neck when caution told him he must
+go.
+
+The most suspicious of guardians would however have been puzzled to
+detect the secret of their nightly meetings. It is to be supposed
+that, sure of success, the Italian marquis gave himself the ineffable
+pleasures of a slow seduction, step by step, leading gradually to the
+fire which should end the affair in a conflagration. On the eleventh
+day, at the dinner-table, he thought it wise to inform old Perez,
+under seal of secrecy, that the reason of his separation from his
+family was an ill-assorted marriage. This false revelation was an
+infamous thing in view of the nocturnal drama which was being played
+under that roof. Montefiore, an experienced rake, was preparing for
+the finale of that drama which he foresaw and enjoyed as an artist who
+loves his art. He expected to leave before long, and without regret,
+the house and his love. It would happen, he thought, in this way:
+Juana, after waiting for him in vain for several nights, would risk
+her life, perhaps, in asking Perez what had become of his guest; and
+Perez would reply, not aware of the importance of his answer,--
+
+"The Marquis de Montefiore is reconciled to his family, who consent to
+receive his wife; he has gone to Italy to present her to them."
+
+And Juana?--The marquis never asked himself what would become of
+Juana; but he had studied her character, its nobility, candor, and
+strength, and he knew he might be sure of her silence.
+
+He obtained a mission from one of the generals. Three days later, on
+the night preceding his intended departure, Montefiore, instead of
+returning to his own room after dinner, contrived to enter unseen that
+of Juana, to make that farewell night the longer. Juana, true Spaniard
+and true Italian, was enchanted with such boldness; it argued ardor!
+For herself she did not fear discovery. To find in the pure love of
+marriage the excitements of intrigue, to hide her husband behind the
+curtains of her bed, and say to her adopted father and mother, in case
+of detection: "I am the Marquise de Montefiore!"--was to an ignorant
+and romantic young girl, who for three years past had dreamed of love
+without dreaming of its dangers, delightful. The door closed on this
+last evening upon her folly, her happiness, like a veil, which it is
+useless here to raise.
+
+It was nine o'clock; the merchant and his wife were reading their
+evening prayers; suddenly the noise of a carriage drawn by several
+horses resounded in the street; loud and hasty raps echoed from the
+shop where the servant hurried to open the door, and into that
+venerable salon rushed a woman, magnificently dressed in spite of the
+mud upon the wheels of her travelling-carriage, which had just crossed
+Italy, France, and Spain. It was, of course, the Marana,--the Marana
+who, in spite of her thirty-six years, was still in all the glory of
+her ravishing beauty; the Marana who, being at that time the mistress
+of a king, had left Naples, the fetes, the skies of Naples, the climax
+of her life of luxury, on hearing from her royal lover of the events
+in Spain and the siege of Tarragona.
+
+"Tarragona! I must get to Tarragona before the town is taken!" she
+cried. "Ten days to reach Tarragona!"
+
+Then without caring for crown or court, she arrived in Tarragona,
+furnished with an almost imperial safe-conduct; furnished too with
+gold which enabled her to cross France with the velocity of a rocket.
+
+"My daughter! my daughter!" cried the Marana.
+
+At this voice, and the abrupt invasion of their solitude, the
+prayer-book fell from the hands of the old couple.
+
+"She is there," replied the merchant, calmly, after a pause during
+which he recovered from the emotion caused by the abrupt entrance, and
+the look and voice of the mother. "She is there," he repeated,
+pointing to the door of the little chamber.
+
+"Yes, but has any harm come to her; is she still--"
+
+"Perfectly well," said Dona Lagounia.
+
+"O God! send me to hell if it so pleases thee!" cried the Marana,
+dropping, exhausted and half dead, into a chair.
+
+The flush in her cheeks, due to anxiety, paled suddenly; she had
+strength to endure suffering, but none to bear this joy. Joy was more
+violent in her soul than suffering, for it contained the echoes of her
+pain and the agonies of its own emotion.
+
+"But," she said, "how have you kept her safe? Tarragona is taken."
+
+"Yes," said Perez, "but since you see me living why do you ask that
+question? Should I not have died before harm could have come to
+Juana?"
+
+At that answer, the Marana seized the calloused hand of the old man,
+and kissed it, wetting it with the tears that flowed from her eyes
+--she who never wept! those tears were all she had most precious
+under heaven.
+
+"My good Perez!" she said at last. "But have you had no soldiers
+quartered in your house?"
+
+"Only one," replied the Spaniard. "Fortunately for us the most loyal
+of men; a Spaniard by birth, but now an Italian who hates Bonaparte; a
+married man. He is ill, and gets up late and goes to bed early."
+
+"An Italian! What is his name?"
+
+"Montefiore."
+
+"Can it be the Marquis de Montefiore--"
+
+"Yes, Senora, he himself."
+
+"Has he seen Juana?"
+
+"No," said Dona Lagounia.
+
+"You are mistaken, wife," said Perez. "The marquis must have seen her
+for a moment, a short moment, it is true; but I think he looked at her
+that evening she came in here during supper."
+
+"Ah, let me see my daughter!"
+
+"Nothing easier," said Perez; "she is now asleep. If she has left the
+key in the lock we must waken her."
+
+As he rose to take the duplicate key of Juana's door his eyes fell by
+chance on the circular gleam of light upon the black wall of the inner
+courtyard. Within that circle he saw the shadow of a group such as
+Canova alone has attempted to render. The Spaniard turned back.
+
+"I do not know," he said to the Marana, "where to find the key."
+
+"You are very pale," she said.
+
+"And I will show you why," he cried, seizing his dagger and rapping
+its hilt violently on Juana's door as he shouted,--
+
+"Open! open! open! Juana!"
+
+Juana did not open, for she needed time to conceal Montefiore. She
+knew nothing of what was passing in the salon; the double portieres of
+thick tapestry deadened all sounds.
+
+"Madame, I lied to you in saying I could not find the key. Here it
+is," added Perez, taking it from a sideboard. "But it is useless.
+Juana's key is in the lock; her door is barricaded. We have been
+deceived, my wife!" he added, turning to Dona Lagounia. "There is a
+man in Juana's room."
+
+"Impossible! By my eternal salvation I say it is impossible!" said his
+wife.
+
+"Do not swear, Dona Lagounia. Our honor is dead, and this woman--" He
+pointed to the Marana, who had risen and was standing motionless,
+blasted by his words, "this woman has the right to despise us. She
+saved our life, our fortune, and our honor, and we have saved nothing
+for her but her money--Juana!" he cried again, "open, or I will burst
+in your door."
+
+His voice, rising in violence, echoed through the garrets in the roof.
+He was cold and calm. The life of Montefiore was in his hands; he
+would wash away his remorse in the blood of that Italian.
+
+"Out, out, out! out, all of you!" cried the Marana, springing like a
+tigress on the dagger, which she wrenched from the hand of the
+astonished Perez. "Out, Perez," she continued more calmly, "out, you
+and your wife and servants! There will be murder here. You might be
+shot by the French. Have nothing to do with this; it is my affair,
+mine only. Between my daughter and me there is none but God. As for
+the man, he belongs to _me_. The whole earth could not tear him from my
+grasp. Go, go! I forgive you. I see plainly that the girl is a Marana.
+You, your religion, your virtue, were too weak to fight against my
+blood."
+
+She gave a dreadful sigh, turning her dry eyes on them. She had lost
+all, but she knew how to suffer,--a true courtesan.
+
+The door opened. The Marana forgot all else, and Perez, making a sign
+to his wife, remained at his post. With his old invincible Spanish
+honor he was determined to share the vengeance of the betrayed mother.
+Juana, all in white, and softly lighted by the wax candles, was
+standing calmly in the centre of her chamber.
+
+"What do you want with me?" she said.
+
+The Marana could not repress a passing shudder.
+
+"Perez," she asked, "has this room another issue?"
+
+Perez made a negative gesture; confiding in that gesture, the mother
+entered the room.
+
+"Juana," she said, "I am your mother, your judge; you have placed
+yourself in the only situation in which I could reveal myself to you.
+You have come down to me, you, whom I thought in heaven. Ah! you have
+fallen low indeed. You have a lover in this room."
+
+"Madame, there is and can be no one but my husband," answered the
+girl. "I am the Marquise de Montefiore."
+
+"Then there are two," said Perez, in a grave voice. "He told me he was
+married."
+
+"Montefiore, my love!" cried the girl, tearing aside the curtain and
+revealing the officer. "Come! they are slandering you."
+
+The Italian appeared, pale and speechless; he saw the dagger in the
+Marana's hand, and he knew her well. With one bound he sprang from the
+room, crying out in a thundering voice,--
+
+"Help! help! they are murdering a Frenchman. Soldiers of the 6th of
+the line, rush for Captain Diard! Help, help!"
+
+Perez had gripped the man and was trying to gag him with his large
+hand, but the Marana stopped him, saying,--
+
+"Bind him fast, but let him shout. Open the doors, leave them open,
+and go, go, as I told you; go, all of you.--As for you," she said,
+addressing Montefiore, "shout, call for help if you choose; by the
+time your soldiers get here this blade will be in your heart. Are you
+married? Answer."
+
+Montefiore, who had fallen on the threshold of the door, scarcely a
+step from Juana, saw nothing but the blade of the dagger, the gleam of
+which blinded him.
+
+"Has he deceived me?" said Juana, slowly. "He told me he was free."
+
+"He told me that he was married," repeated Perez, in his solemn voice.
+
+"Holy Virgin!" murmured Dona Lagounia.
+
+"Answer, soul of corruption," said the Marana, in a low voice, bending
+to the ear of the marquis.
+
+"Your daughter--" began Montefiore.
+
+"The daughter that was mine is dead or dying," interrupted the Marana.
+"I have no daughter; do not utter that word. Answer, are you married?"
+
+"No, madame," said Montefiore, at last, striving to gain time, "I
+desire to marry your daughter."
+
+"My noble Montefiore!" said Juana, drawing a deep breath.
+
+"Then why did you attempt to fly and cry for help?" asked Perez.
+
+Terrible, revealing light!
+
+Juana said nothing, but she wrung her hands and went to her arm-chair
+and sat down.
+
+At that moment a tumult rose in the street which was plainly heard in
+the silence of the room. A soldier of the 6th, hearing Montefiore's
+cry for help, had summoned Diard. The quartermaster, who was
+fortunately in his bivouac, came, accompanied by friends.
+
+"Why did I fly?" said Montefiore, hearing the voice of his friend.
+"Because I told you the truth; I am married--Diard! Diard!" he shouted
+in a piercing voice.
+
+But, at a word from Perez, the apprentice closed and bolted the doors,
+so that the soldiers were delayed by battering them in. Before they
+could enter, the Marana had time to strike her dagger into the guilty
+man; but anger hindered her aim, the blade slipped upon the Italian's
+epaulet, though she struck her blow with such force that he fell at
+the very feet of Juana, who took no notice of him. The Marana sprang
+upon him, and this time, resolved not to miss her prey, she caught him
+by the throat.
+
+"I am free and I will marry her! I swear it, by God, by my mother, by
+all there is most sacred in the world; I am a bachelor; I will marry
+her, on my honor!"
+
+And he bit the arm of the courtesan.
+
+"Mother," said Juana, "kill him. He is so base that I will not have
+him for my husband, were he ten times as beautiful."
+
+"Ah! I recognize my daughter!" cried the mother.
+
+"What is all this?" demanded the quartermaster, entering the room.
+
+"They are murdering me," cried Montefiore, "on account of this girl;
+she says I am her lover. She inveigled me into a trap, and they are
+forcing me to marry her--"
+
+"And you reject her?" cried Diard, struck with the splendid beauty
+which contempt, hatred, and indignation had given to the girl, already
+so beautiful. "Then you are hard to please. If she wants a husband I
+am ready to marry her. Put up your weapons; there is no trouble here."
+
+The Marana pulled the Italian to the side of her daughter's bed and
+said to him, in a low voice,--
+
+"If I spare you, give thanks for the rest of your life; but, remember
+this, if your tongue ever injures my daughter you will see me again.
+Go!--How much 'dot' do you give her?" she continued, going up to
+Perez.
+
+"She has two hundred thousand gold piastres," replied the Spaniard.
+
+"And that is not all, monsieur," said the Marana, turning to Diard.
+"Who are you?--Go!" she repeated to Montefiore.
+
+The marquis, hearing this statement of gold piastres, came forward
+once more, saying,--
+
+"I am really free--"
+
+A glance from Juana silenced him.
+
+"You are really free to go," she said.
+
+And he went immediately.
+
+"Alas! monsieur," said the girl, turning to Diard, "I thank you with
+admiration. But my husband is in heaven. To-morrow I shall enter a
+convent--"
+
+"Juana, my Juana, hush!" cried the mother, clasping her in her arms.
+Then she whispered in the girl's ear. "You _must_ have another
+husband."
+
+Juana turned pale. She freed herself from her mother and sat down once
+more in her arm-chair.
+
+"Who are you, monsieur?" repeated the Marana, addressing Diard.
+
+"Madame, I am at present only the quartermaster of the 6th of the
+line. But for such a wife I have the heart to make myself a marshal of
+France. My name is Pierre-Francois Diard. My father was provost of
+merchants. I am not--"
+
+"But, at least, you are an honest man, are you not?" cried the Marana,
+interrupting him. "If you please the Signorina Juana di Mancini, you
+can marry her and be happy together.--Juana," she continued in a grave
+tone, "in becoming the wife of a brave and worthy man remember that
+you will also be a mother. I have sworn that you shall kiss your
+children without a blush upon your face" (her voice faltered
+slightly). "I have sworn that you shall live a virtuous life; expect,
+therefore, many troubles. But, whatever happens, continue pure, and be
+faithful to your husband. Sacrifice all things to him, for he will be
+the father of your children--the father of your children! If you take
+a lover, I, your mother, will stand between you and him. Do you see
+that dagger? It is in your 'dot,'" she continued, throwing the weapon
+on Juana's bed. "I leave it there as the guarantee of your honor so
+long as my eyes are open and my arm free. Farewell," she said,
+restraining her tears. "God grant that we may never meet again."
+
+At that idea, her tears began to flow.
+
+"Poor child!" she added, "you have been happier than you knew in this
+dull home.--Do not allow her to regret it," she said, turning to
+Diard.
+
+The foregoing rapid narrative is not the principal subject of this
+Study, for the understanding of which it was necessary to explain how
+it happened that the quartermaster Diard married Juana di Mancini,
+that Montefiore and Diard were intimately known to each other, and to
+show plainly what blood and what passions were in Madame Diard.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER III
+
+                    THE HISTORY OF MADAME DIARD
+
+By the time that the quartermaster had fulfilled all the long and
+dilatory formalities without which no French soldier can be married,
+he was passionately in love with Juana di Mancini, and Juana had had
+time to think of her coming destiny.
+
+An awful destiny! Juana, who felt neither esteem nor love for Diard,
+was bound to him forever, by a rash but necessary promise. The man was
+neither handsome nor well-made. His manners, devoid of all
+distinction, were a mixture of the worst army tone, the habits of his
+province, and his own insufficient education. How could she love
+Diard, she, a young girl all grace and elegance, born with an
+invincible instinct for luxury and good taste, her very nature tending
+toward the sphere of the higher social classes? As for esteeming him,
+she rejected the very thought precisely because he had married her.
+This repulsion was natural. Woman is a saintly and noble creature, but
+almost always misunderstood, and nearly always misjudged because she
+is misunderstood. If Juana had loved Diard she would have esteemed
+him. Love creates in a wife a new woman; the woman of the day before
+no longer exists on the morrow. Putting on the nuptial robe of a
+passion in which life itself is concerned, the woman wraps herself in
+purity and whiteness. Reborn into virtue and chastity, there is no
+past for her; she is all future, and should forget the things behind
+her to relearn life. In this sense the famous words which a modern
+poet has put into the lips of Marion Delorme is infused with truth,--
+
+"And Love remade me virgin."
+
+That line seems like a reminiscence of a tragedy of Corneille, so
+truly does it recall the energetic diction of the father of our modern
+theatre. Yet the poet was forced to sacrifice it to the essentially
+vaudevillist spirit of the pit.
+
+So Juana loveless was doomed to be Juana humiliated, degraded,
+hopeless. She could not honor the man who took her thus. She felt, in
+all the conscientious purity of her youth, that distinction, subtle in
+appearance but sacredly true, legal with the heart's legality, which
+women apply instinctively to all their feelings, even the least
+reflective. Juana became profoundly sad as she saw the nature and the
+extent of the life before her. Often she turned her eyes, brimming
+with tears proudly repressed, upon Perez and Dona Lagounia, who fully
+comprehended, both of them, the bitter thoughts those tears contained.
+But they were silent: of what good were reproaches now; why look for
+consolations? The deeper they were, the more they enlarged the wound.
+
+One evening, Juana, stupid with grief, heard through the open door of
+her little room, which the old couple had thought shut, a pitying moan
+from her adopted mother.
+
+"The child will die of grief."
+
+"Yes," said Perez, in a shaking voice, "but what can we do? I cannot
+now boast of her beauty and her chastity to Comte d'Arcos, to whom I
+hoped to marry her."
+
+"But a single fault is not vice," said the old woman, pitying as the
+angels.
+
+"Her mother gave her to this man," said Perez.
+
+"Yes, in a moment; without consulting the poor child!" cried Dona
+Lagounia.
+
+"She knew what she was doing."
+
+"But oh! into what hands our pearl is going!"
+
+"Say no more, or I shall seek a quarrel with that Diard."
+
+"And that would only lead to other miseries."
+
+Hearing these dreadful words Juana saw the happy future she had lost
+by her own wrongdoing. The pure and simple years of her quiet life
+would have been rewarded by a brilliant existence such as she had
+fondly dreamed,--dreams which had caused her ruin. To fall from the
+height of Greatness to Monsieur Diard! She wept. At times she went
+nearly mad. She floated for a while between vice and religion. Vice
+was a speedy solution, religion a lifetime of suffering. The
+meditation was stormy and solemn. The next day was the fatal day, the
+day for the marriage. But Juana could still remain free. Free, she
+knew how far her misery would go; married, she was ignorant of where
+it went or what it might bring her.
+
+Religion triumphed. Dona Lagounia stayed beside her child and prayed
+and watched as she would have prayed and watched beside the dying.
+
+"God wills it," she said to Juana.
+
+Nature gives to woman alternately a strength which enables her to
+suffer and a weakness which leads her to resignation. Juana resigned
+herself; and without restriction. She determined to obey her mother's
+prayer, and cross the desert of life to reach God's heaven, knowing
+well that no flowers grew for her along the way of that painful
+journey.
+
+She married Diard. As for the quartermaster, though he had no grace in
+Juana's eyes, we may well absolve him. He loved her distractedly. The
+Marana, so keen to know the signs of love, had recognized in that man
+the accents of passion and the brusque nature, the generous impulses,
+that are common to Southerners. In the paroxysm of her anger and her
+distress she had thought such qualities enough for her daughter's
+happiness.
+
+The first days of this marriage were apparently happy; or, to express
+one of those latent facts, the miseries of which are buried by women
+in the depths of their souls, Juana would not cast down her husband's
+joy,--a double role, dreadful to play, but to which, sooner or later,
+all women unhappily married come. This is a history impossible to
+recount in its full truth. Juana, struggling hourly against her
+nature, a nature both Spanish and Italian, having dried up the source
+of her tears by dint of weeping, was a human type, destined to
+represent woman's misery in its utmost expression, namely, sorrow
+undyingly active; the description of which would need such minute
+observations that to persons eager for dramatic emotions they would
+seem insipid. This analysis, in which every wife would find some one
+of her own sufferings, would require a volume to express them all; a
+fruitless, hopeless volume by its very nature, the merit of which
+would consist in faintest tints and delicate shadings which critics
+would declare to be effeminate and diffuse. Besides, what man could
+rightly approach, unless he bore another heart within his heart, those
+solemn and touching elegies which certain women carry with them to
+their tomb; melancholies, misunderstood even by those who cause them;
+sighs unheeded, devotions unrewarded,--on earth at least,--splendid
+silences misconstrued; vengeances withheld, disdained; generosities
+perpetually bestowed and wasted; pleasures longed for and denied;
+angelic charities secretly accomplished,--in short, all the religions
+of womanhood and its inextinguishable love.
+
+Juana knew that life; fate spared her nought. She was wholly a wife,
+but a sorrowful and suffering wife; a wife incessantly wounded, yet
+forgiving always; a wife pure as a flawless diamond,--she who had the
+beauty and the glow of the diamond, and in that beauty, that glow, a
+vengeance in her hand; for she was certainly not a woman to fear the
+dagger added to her "dot."
+
+At first, inspired by a real love, by one of those passions which for
+the time being change even odious characters and bring to light all
+that may be noble in a soul, Diard behaved like a man of honor. He
+forced Montefiore to leave the regiment and even the army corps, so
+that his wife might never meet him during the time they remained in
+Spain. Next, he petitioned for his own removal, and succeeded in
+entering the Imperial Guard. He desired at any price to obtain a
+title, honors, and consideration in keeping with his present wealth.
+With this idea in his mind, he behaved courageously in one of the most
+bloody battles in Germany, but, unfortunately, he was too severely
+wounded to remain in the service. Threatened with the loss of a leg,
+he was forced to retire on a pension, without the title of baron,
+without those rewards he hoped to win, and would have won had he not
+been Diard.
+
+This event, this wound, and his thwarted hopes contributed to change
+his character. His Provencal energy, roused for a time, sank down. At
+first he was sustained by his wife, in whom his efforts, his courage,
+his ambition had induced some belief in his nature, and who showed
+herself, what women are, tender and consoling in the troubles of life.
+Inspired by a few words from Juana, the retired soldier came to Paris,
+resolved to win in an administrative career a position to command
+respect, bury in oblivion the quartermaster of the 6th of the line,
+and secure for Madame Diard a noble title. His passion for that
+seductive creature enabled him to divine her most secret wishes. Juana
+expressed nothing, but he understood her. He was not loved as a lover
+dreams of being loved; he knew this, and he strove to make himself
+respected, loved, and cherished. He foresaw a coming happiness, poor
+man, in the patience and gentleness shown on all occasions by his
+wife; but that patience, that gentleness, were only the outward signs
+of the resignation which had made her his wife. Resignation, religion,
+were they love? Often Diard wished for refusal where he met with
+chaste obedience; often he would have given his eternal life that
+Juana might have wept upon his bosom and not disguised her secret
+thoughts behind a smiling face which lied to him nobly. Many young men
+--for after a certain age men no longer struggle--persist in the
+effort to triumph over an evil fate, the thunder of which they hear,
+from time to time, on the horizon of their lives; and when at last
+they succumb and roll down the precipice of evil, we ought to do them
+justice and acknowledge these inward struggles.
+
+Like many men Diard tried all things, and all things were hostile to
+him. His wealth enabled him to surround his wife with the enjoyments
+of Parisian luxury. She lived in a fine house, with noble rooms, where
+she maintained a salon, in which abounded artists (by nature no judges
+of men), men of pleasure ready to amuse themselves anywhere, a few
+politicians who swelled the numbers, and certain men of fashion, all
+of whom admired Juana. Those who put themselves before the eyes of the
+public in Paris must either conquer Paris or be subject to it. Diard's
+character was not sufficiently strong, compact, or persistent to
+command society at that epoch, because it was an epoch when all men
+were endeavoring to rise. Social classifications ready-made are
+perhaps a great boon even for the people. Napoleon has confided to us
+the pains he took to inspire respect in his court, where most of the
+courtiers had been his equals. But Napoleon was Corsican, and Diard
+Provencal. Given equal genius, an islander will always be more compact
+and rounded than the man of terra firma in the same latitude; the arm
+of the sea which separates Corsica from Provence is, in spite of human
+science, an ocean which has made two nations.
+
+Diard's mongrel position, which he himself made still more
+questionable, brought him great troubles. Perhaps there is useful
+instruction to be derived from the almost imperceptible connection of
+acts which led to the finale of this history.
+
+In the first place, the sneerers of Paris did not see without
+malicious smiles and words the pictures with which the former
+quartermaster adorned his handsome mansion. Works of art purchased the
+night before were said to be spoils from Spain; and this accusation
+was the revenge of those who were jealous of his present fortune.
+Juana comprehended this reproach, and by her advice Diard sent back to
+Tarragona all the pictures he had brought from there. But the public,
+determined to see things in the worst light, only said, "That Diard is
+shrewd; he has sold his pictures." Worthy people continued to think
+that those which remained in the Diard salons were not honorably
+acquired. Some jealous women asked how it was that a _Diard_ (!) had
+been able to marry so rich and beautiful a young girl. Hence comments
+and satires without end, such as Paris contributes. And yet, it must
+be said, that Juana met on all sides the respect inspired by her pure
+and religious life, which triumphed over everything, even Parisian
+calumny; but this respect stopped short with her, her husband received
+none of it. Juana's feminine perception and her keen eye hovering over
+her salons, brought her nothing but pain.
+
+This lack of esteem was perfectly natural. Diard's comrades, in spite
+of the virtues which our imaginations attribute to soldiers, never
+forgave the former quartermaster of the 6th of the line for becoming
+suddenly so rich and for attempting to cut a figure in Paris. Now in
+Paris, from the last house in the faubourg Saint-Germain to the last
+in the rue Saint-Lazare, between the heights of the Luxembourg and the
+heights of Montmartre, all that clothes itself and gabbles, clothes
+itself to go out and goes out to gabble. All that world of great and
+small pretensions, that world of insolence and humble desires, of envy
+and cringing, all that is gilded or tarnished, young or old, noble of
+yesterday or noble from the fourth century, all that sneers at a
+parvenu, all that fears to commit itself, all that wants to demolish
+power and worships power if it resists,--_all_ those ears hear, _all_
+those tongues say, _all_ those minds know, in a single evening, where
+the new-comer who aspires to honor among them was born and brought up,
+and what that interloper has done, or has not done, in the course of
+his life. There may be no court of assizes for the upper classes of
+society; but at any rate they have the most cruel of public
+prosecutors, an intangible moral being, both judge and executioner,
+who accuses and brands. Do not hope to hide anything from him; tell
+him all yourself; he wants to know all and he will know all. Do not
+ask what mysterious telegraph it was which conveyed to him in the
+twinkling of an eye, at any hour, in any place, that story, that bit
+of news, that scandal; do not ask what prompts him. That telegraph is
+a social mystery; no observer can report its effects. Of many
+extraordinary instances thereof, one may suffice: The assassination of
+the Duc de Berry, which occurred at the Opera-house, was related
+within ten minutes in the Ile-Saint-Louis. Thus the opinion of the 6th
+of the line as to its quartermaster filtered through society the night
+on which he gave his first ball.
+
+Diard was therefore debarred from succeeding in society. Henceforth
+his wife alone had the power to make anything of him. Miracle of our
+strange civilization! In Paris, if a man is incapable of being
+anything himself, his wife, when she is young and clever, may give him
+other chances for elevation. We sometimes meet with invalid women,
+feeble beings apparently, who, without rising from sofas or leaving
+their chambers, have ruled society, moved a thousand springs, and
+placed their husbands where their ambition or their vanity prompted.
+But Juana, whose childhood was passed in her retreat in Tarragona,
+knew nothing of the vices, the meannesses, or the resources of
+Parisian society; she looked at that society with the curiosity of a
+girl, but she learned from it only that which her sorrow and her
+wounded pride revealed to her.
+
+Juana had the tact of a virgin heart which receives impressions in
+advance of the event, after the manner of what are called
+"sensitives." The solitary young girl, so suddenly become a woman and
+a wife, saw plainly that were she to attempt to compel society to
+respect her husband, it must be after the manner of Spanish beggars,
+carbine in hand. Besides, the multiplicity of the precautions she
+would have to take, would they meet the necessity? Suddenly she
+divined society as, once before, she had divined life, and she saw
+nothing around her but the immense extent of an irreparable disaster.
+She had, moreover, the additional grief of tardily recognizing her
+husband's peculiar form of incapacity; he was a man unfitted for any
+purpose that required continuity of ideas. He could not understand a
+consistent part, such as he ought to play in the world; he perceived
+it neither as a whole nor in its gradations, and its gradations were
+everything. He was in one of those positions where shrewdness and tact
+might have taken the place of strength; when shrewdness and tact
+succeed, they are, perhaps, the highest form of strength.
+
+Now Diard, far from arresting the spot of oil on his garments left by
+his antecedents, did his best to spread it. Incapable of studying the
+phase of the empire in the midst of which he came to live in Paris, he
+wanted to be made prefect. At that time every one believed in the
+genius of Napoleon; his favor enhanced the value of all offices.
+Prefectures, those miniature empires, could only be filled by men of
+great names, or chamberlains of H.M. the emperor and king. Already the
+prefects were a species of vizier. The myrmidons of the great man
+scoffed at Diard's pretensions to a prefecture, whereupon he lowered
+his demand to a sub-prefecture. There was, of course, a ridiculous
+discrepancy between this latter demand and the magnitude of his
+fortune. To frequent the imperial salons and live with insolent
+luxury, and then to abandon that millionaire life and bury himself as
+sub-prefect at Issoudun or Savenay was certainly holding himself below
+his position. Juana, too late aware of our laws and habits and
+administrative customs, did not enlighten her husband soon enough.
+Diard, desperate, petitioned successively all the ministerial powers;
+repulsed everywhere, he found nothing open to him; and society then
+judged him as the government judged him and as he judged himself.
+Diard, grievously wounded on the battlefield, was nevertheless not
+decorated; the quartermaster, rich as he was, was allowed no place in
+public life, and society logically refused him that to which he
+pretended in its midst.
+
+Finally, to cap all, the luckless man felt in his own home the
+superiority of his wife. Though she used great tact--we might say
+velvet softness if the term were admissible--to disguise from her
+husband this supremacy, which surprised and humiliated herself, Diard
+ended by being affected by it.
+
+At a game of life like this men are either unmanned, or they grow the
+stronger, or they give themselves to evil. The courage or the ardor of
+this man lessened under the reiterated blows which his own faults
+dealt to his self-appreciation, and fault after fault he committed. In
+the first place he had to struggle against his own habits and
+character. A passionate Provencal, frank in his vices as in his
+virtues, this man whose fibres vibrated like the strings of a harp,
+was all heart to his former friends. He succored the shabby and
+spattered man as readily as the needy of rank; in short, he accepted
+everybody, and gave his hand in his gilded salons to many a poor
+devil. Observing this on one occasion, a general of the empire, a
+variety of the human species of which no type will presently remain,
+refused his hand to Diard, and called him, insolently, "my good
+fellow" when he met him. The few persons of really good society whom
+Diard knew, treated him with that elegant, polished contempt against
+which a new-made man has seldom any weapons. The manners, the
+semi-Italian gesticulations, the speech of Diard, his style of dress,
+--all contributed to repulse the respect which careful observation of
+matters of good taste and dignity might otherwise obtain for vulgar
+persons; the yoke of such conventionalities can only be cast off by
+great and unthinkable powers. So goes the world.
+
+These details but faintly picture the many tortures to which Juana was
+subjected; they came upon her one by one; each social nature pricked
+her with its own particular pin; and to a soul which preferred the
+thrust of a dagger, there could be no worse suffering than this
+struggle in which Diard received insults he did not feel and Juana
+felt those she did not receive. A moment came, an awful moment, when
+she gained a clear and lucid perception of society, and felt in one
+instant all the sorrows which were gathering themselves together to
+fall upon her head. She judged her husband incapable of rising to the
+honored ranks of the social order, and she felt that he would one day
+descend to where his instincts led him. Henceforth Juana felt pity for
+him.
+
+The future was very gloomy for this young woman. She lived in constant
+apprehension of some disaster. This presentiment was in her soul as a
+contagion is in the air, but she had strength of mind and will to
+disguise her anguish beneath a smile. Juana had ceased to think of
+herself. She used her influence to make Diard resign his various
+pretensions and to show him, as a haven, the peaceful and consoling
+life of home. Evils came from society--why not banish it? In his home
+Diard found peace and respect; he reigned there. She felt herself
+strong to accept the trying task of making him happy,--he, a man
+dissatisfied with himself. Her energy increased with the difficulties
+of life; she had all the secret heroism necessary to her position;
+religion inspired her with those desires which support the angel
+appointed to protect a Christian soul--occult poesy, allegorical image
+of our two natures!
+
+Diard abandoned his projects, closed his house to the world, and lived
+in his home. But here he found another reef. The poor soldier had one
+of those eccentric souls which need perpetual motion. Diard was one of
+the men who are instinctively compelled to start again the moment they
+arrive, and whose vital object seems to be to come and go incessantly,
+like the wheels mentioned in Holy Writ. Perhaps he felt the need of
+flying from himself. Without wearying of Juana, without blaming Juana,
+his passion for her, rendered tranquil by time, allowed his natural
+character to assert itself. Henceforth his days of gloom were more
+frequent, and he often gave way to southern excitement. The more
+virtuous a woman is and the more irreproachable, the more a man likes
+to find fault with her, if only to assert by that act his legal
+superiority. But if by chance she seems really imposing to him, he
+feels the need of foisting faults upon her. After that, between man
+and wife, trifles increase and grow till they swell to Alps.
+
+But Juana, patient and without pride, gentle and without that
+bitterness which women know so well how to cast into their submission,
+left Diard no chance for planned ill-humor. Besides, she was one of
+those noble creatures to whom it is impossible to speak
+disrespectfully; her glance, in which her life, saintly and pure,
+shone out, had the weight of a fascination. Diard, embarrassed at
+first, then annoyed, ended by feeling that such high virtue was a yoke
+upon him. The goodness of his wife gave him no violent emotions, and
+violent emotions were what he wanted. What myriads of scenes are
+played in the depths of his souls, beneath the cold exterior of lives
+that are, apparently, commonplace! Among these dramas, lasting each
+but a short time, though they influence life so powerfully and are
+frequently the forerunners of the great misfortune doomed to fall on
+so many marriages, it is difficult to choose an example. There was a
+scene, however, which particularly marked the moment when in the life
+of this husband and wife estrangement began. Perhaps it may also serve
+to explain the finale of this narrative.
+
+Juana had two children, happily for her, two sons. The first was born
+seven months after her marriage. He was called Juan, and he strongly
+resembled his mother. The second was born about two years after her
+arrival in Paris. The latter resembled both Diard and Juana, but more
+particularly Diard. His name was Francisque. For the last five years
+Francisque had been the object of Juana's most tender and watchful
+care. The mother was constantly occupied with that child; to him her
+prettiest caresses; to him the toys, but to him, especially, the
+penetrating mother-looks. Juana had watched him from his cradle; she
+had studied his cries, his motions; she endeavored to discern his
+nature that she might educate him wisely. It seemed at times as if she
+had but that one child. Diard, seeing that the eldest, Juan, was in a
+way neglected, took him under his own protection; and without
+inquiring even of himself whether the boy was the fruit of that
+ephemeral love to which he owed his wife, he made him his Benjamin.
+
+Of all the sentiments transmitted to her through the blood of her
+grandmothers which consumed her, Madame Diard accepted one alone,
+--maternal love. But she loved her children doubly: first with the
+noble violence of which her mother the Marana had given her the
+example; secondly, with grace and purity, in the spirit of those
+social virtues the practice of which was the glory of her life and
+her inward recompense. The secret thought, the conscience of her
+motherhood, which gave to the Marana's life its stamp of untaught
+poesy, was to Juana an acknowledged life, an open consolation at all
+hours. Her mother had been virtuous as other women are criminal,--in
+secret; she had stolen a fancied happiness, she had never really
+tasted it. But Juana, unhappy in her virtue as her mother was unhappy
+in her vice, could enjoy at all moments the ineffable delights which
+her mother had so craved and could not have. To her, as to her mother,
+maternity comprised all earthly sentiments. Each, from differing
+causes, had no other comfort in their misery. Juana's maternal love
+may have been the strongest because, deprived of all other affections,
+she put the joys she lacked into the one joy of her children; and
+there are noble passions that resemble vice; the more they are
+satisfied the more they increase. Mothers and gamblers are alike
+insatiable.
+
+When Juana saw the generous pardon laid silently on the head of Juan
+by Diard's fatherly affection, she was much moved, and from the day
+when the husband and wife changed parts she felt for him the true and
+deep interest she had hitherto shown to him as a matter of duty only.
+If that man had been more consistent in his life; if he had not
+destroyed by fitful inconstancy and restlessness the forces of a true
+though excitable sensibility, Juana would doubtless have loved him in
+the end. Unfortunately, he was a type of those southern natures which
+are keen in perceptions they cannot follow out; capable of great
+things over-night, and incapable the next morning; often the victim of
+their own virtues, and often lucky through their worst passions;
+admirable men in some respects, when their good qualities are kept to
+a steady energy by some outward bond. For two years after his retreat
+from active life Diard was held captive in his home by the softest
+chains. He lived, almost in spite of himself, under the influence of
+his wife, who made herself gay and amusing to cheer him, who used the
+resources of feminine genius to attract and seduce him to a love of
+virtue, but whose ability and cleverness did not go so far as to
+simulate love.
+
+At this time all Paris was talking of the affair of a captain in the
+army who in a paroxysm of libertine jealousy had killed a woman.
+Diard, on coming home to dinner, told his wife that the officer was
+dead. He had killed himself to avoid the dishonor of a trial and the
+shame of death upon the scaffold. Juana did not see at first the logic
+of such conduct, and her husband was obliged to explain to her the
+fine jurisprudence of French law, which does not prosecute the dead.
+
+"But, papa, didn't you tell us the other day that the king could
+pardon?" asked Francisque.
+
+"The king can give nothing but life," said Juan, half scornfully.
+
+Diard and Juana, the spectators of this little scene, were differently
+affected by it. The glance, moist with joy, which his wife cast upon
+her eldest child was a fatal revelation to the husband of the secrets
+of a heart hitherto impenetrable. That eldest child was all Juana;
+Juana comprehended him; she was sure of his heart, his future; she
+adored him, but her ardent love was a secret between herself, her
+child, and God. Juan instinctively enjoyed the seeming indifference of
+his mother in presence of his father and brother, for she pressed him
+to her heart when alone. Francisque was Diard, and Juana's incessant
+care and watchfulness betrayed her desire to correct in the son the
+vices of the father and to encourage his better qualities. Juana,
+unaware that her glance had said too much and that her husband had
+rightly interpreted it, took Francisque in her lap and gave him, in a
+gentle voice still trembling with the pleasure that Juan's answer had
+brought her, a lesson upon honor, simplified to his childish
+intelligence.
+
+"That boy's character requires care," said Diard.
+
+"Yes," she replied simply.
+
+"How about Juan?"
+
+Madame Diard, struck by the tone in which the words were uttered,
+looked at her husband.
+
+"Juan was born perfect," he added.
+
+Then he sat down gloomily, and reflected. Presently, as his wife
+continued silent, he added:--
+
+"You love one of _your_ children better than the other."
+
+"You know that," she said.
+
+"No," said Diard, "I did not know until now which of them you
+preferred."
+
+"But neither of them have ever given me a moment's uneasiness," she
+answered quickly.
+
+"But one of them gives you greater joys," he said, more quickly still.
+
+"I never counted them," she said.
+
+"How false you women are!" cried Diard. "Will you dare to say that
+Juan is not the child of your heart?"
+
+"If that were so," she said, with dignity, "do you think it a
+misfortune?"
+
+"You have never loved me. If you had chosen, I would have conquered
+worlds for your sake. You know all that I have struggled to do in
+life, supported by the hope of pleasing you. Ah! if you had only loved
+me!"
+
+"A woman who loves," said Juana, "likes to live in solitude, far from
+the world, and that is what we are doing."
+
+"I know, Juana, that _you_ are never in the wrong."
+
+The words were said bitterly, and cast, for the rest of their lives
+together, a coldness between them.
+
+On the morrow of that fatal day Diard went back to his old companions
+and found distractions for his mind in play. Unfortunately, he won
+much money, and continued playing. Little by little, he returned to
+the dissipated life he had formerly lived. Soon he ceased even to dine
+in his own home.
+
+Some months went by in the enjoyment of this new independence; he was
+determined to preserve it, and in order to do so he separated himself
+from his wife, giving her the large apartments and lodging himself in
+the entresol. By the end of the year Diard and Juana only saw each
+other in the morning at breakfast.
+
+Like all gamblers, he had his alternations of loss and gain. Not
+wishing to cut into the capital of his fortune, he felt the necessity
+of withdrawing from his wife the management of their income; and the
+day came when he took from her all she had hitherto freely disposed of
+for the household benefit, giving her instead a monthly stipend. The
+conversation they had on this subject was the last of their married
+intercourse. The silence that fell between them was a true divorce;
+Juana comprehended that from henceforth she was only a mother, and she
+was glad, not seeking for the causes of this evil. For such an event
+is a great evil. Children are conjointly one with husband and wife in
+the home, and the life of her husband could not be a source of grief
+and injury to Juana only.
+
+As for Diard, now emancipated, he speedily grew accustomed to win and
+lose enormous sums. A fine player and a heavy player, he soon became
+celebrated for his style of playing. The social consideration he had
+been unable to win under the Empire, he acquired under the Restoration
+by the rolling of his gold on the green cloth and by his talent for
+all games that were in vogue. Ambassadors, bankers, persons with
+newly-acquired large fortunes, and all those men who, having sucked
+life to the dregs, turn to gambling for its feverish joys, admired
+Diard at their clubs,--seldom in their own houses,--and they all
+gambled with him. He became the fashion. Two or three times during the
+winter he gave a fete as a matter of social pride in return for the
+civilities he received. At such times Juana once more caught a glimpse
+of the world of balls, festivities, luxury, and lights; but for her it
+was a sort of tax imposed upon the comfort of her solitude. She, the
+queen of these solemnities, appeared like a being fallen from some
+other planet. Her simplicity, which nothing had corrupted, her
+beautiful virginity of soul, which her peaceful life restored to her,
+her beauty and her true modesty, won her sincere homage. But observing
+how few women ever entered her salons, she came to understand that
+though her husband was following, without communicating its nature to
+her, a new line of conduct, he had gained nothing actually in the
+world's esteem.
+
+Diard was not always lucky; far from it. In three years he had
+dissipated three fourths of his fortune, but his passion for play gave
+him the energy to continue it. He was intimate with a number of men,
+more particularly with the roues of the Bourse, men who, since the
+revolution, have set up the principle that robbery done on a large
+scale is only a _smirch_ to the reputation,--transferring thus to
+financial matters the loose principles of love in the eighteenth
+century. Diard now became a sort of business man, and concerned
+himself in several of those affairs which are called _shady_ in the
+slang of the law-courts. He practised the decent thievery by which so
+many men, cleverly masked, or hidden in the recesses of the political
+world, make their fortunes,--thievery which, if done in the streets by
+the light of an oil lamp, would see a poor devil to the galleys, but,
+under gilded ceilings and by the light of candelabra, is sanctioned.
+Diard brought up, monopolized, and sold sugars; he sold offices; he
+had the glory of inventing the "man of straw" for lucrative posts
+which it was necessary to keep in his own hands for a short time; he
+bought votes, receiving, on one occasion, so much per cent on the
+purchase of fifteen parliamentary votes which all passed on one
+division from the benches of the Left to the benches of the Right.
+Such actions are no longer crimes or thefts,--they are called
+governing, developing industry, becoming a financial power. Diard was
+placed by public opinion on the bench of infamy where many an able man
+was already seated. On that bench is the aristocracy of evil. It is
+the upper Chamber of scoundrels of high life. Diard was, therefore,
+not a mere commonplace gambler who is seen to be a blackguard, and
+ends by begging. That style of gambler is no longer seen in society of
+a certain topographical height. In these days bold scoundrels die
+brilliantly in the chariot of vice with the trappings of luxury.
+Diard, at least, did not buy his remorse at a low price; he made
+himself one of these privileged men. Having studied the machinery of
+government and learned all the secrets and the passions of the men in
+power, he was able to maintain himself in the fiery furnace into which
+he had sprung.
+
+Madame Diard knew nothing of her husband's infernal life. Glad of
+his abandonment, she felt no curiosity about him, and all her hours
+were occupied. She devoted what money she had to the education of
+her children, wishing to make men of them, and giving them
+straight-forward reasons, without, however, taking the bloom from their
+young imaginations. Through them alone came her interests and her
+emotions; consequently, she suffered no longer from her blemished life.
+Her children were to her what they are to many mothers for a long period
+of time,--a sort of renewal of their own existence. Diard was now an
+accidental circumstance, not a participator in her life, and since he
+had ceased to be the father and the head of the family, Juana felt
+bound to him by no tie other than that imposed by conventional laws.
+Nevertheless, she brought up her children to the highest respect for
+paternal authority, however imaginary it was for them. In this she was
+greatly seconded by her husband's continual absence. If he had been
+much in the home Diard would have neutralized his wife's efforts. The
+boys had too much intelligence and shrewdness not to have judged their
+father; and to judge a father is moral parricide.
+
+In the long run, however, Juana's indifference to her husband wore
+itself away; it even changed to a species of fear. She understood at
+last how the conduct of a father might long weigh on the future of her
+children, and her motherly solicitude brought her many, though
+incomplete, revelations of the truth. From day to day the dread of
+some unknown but inevitable evil in the shadow of which she lived
+became more and more keen and terrible. Therefore, during the rare
+moments when Diard and Juana met she would cast upon his hollow face,
+wan from nights of gambling and furrowed by emotions, a piercing look,
+the penetration of which made Diard shudder. At such times the assumed
+gaiety of her husband alarmed Juana more than his gloomiest
+expressions of anxiety when, by chance, he forgot that assumption of
+joy. Diard feared his wife as a criminal fears the executioner. In
+him, Juana saw her children's shame; and in her Diard dreaded a calm
+vengeance, the judgment of that serene brow, an arm raised, a weapon
+ready.
+
+After fifteen years of marriage Diard found himself without resources.
+He owed three hundred thousand francs and he could scarcely muster one
+hundred thousand. The house, his only visible possession, was
+mortgaged to its fullest selling value. A few days more, and the sort
+of prestige with which opulence had invested him would vanish. Not a
+hand would be offered, not a purse would be open to him. Unless some
+favorable event occurred he would fall into a slough of contempt,
+deeper perhaps than he deserved, precisely because he had mounted to a
+height he could not maintain. At this juncture he happened to hear
+that a number of strangers of distinction, diplomats and others, were
+assembled at the watering-places in the Pyrenees, where they gambled
+for enormous sums, and were doubtless well supplied with money.
+
+He determined to go at once to the Pyrenees; but he would not leave
+his wife in Paris, lest some importunate creditor might reveal to her
+the secret of his horrible position. He therefore took her and the two
+children with him, refusing to allow her to take the tutor and
+scarcely permitting her to take a maid. His tone was curt and
+imperious; he seemed to have recovered some energy. This sudden
+journey, the cause of which escaped her penetration, alarmed Juana
+secretly. Her husband made it gaily. Obliged to occupy the same
+carriage, he showed himself day by day more attentive to the children
+and more amiable to their mother. Nevertheless, each day brought Juana
+dark presentiments, the presentiments of mothers who tremble without
+apparent reason, but who are seldom mistaken when they tremble thus.
+For them the veil of the future seems thinner than for others.
+
+At Bordeaux, Diard hired in a quiet street a quiet little house,
+neatly furnished, and in it he established his wife. The house was at
+the corner of two streets, and had a garden. Joined to the neighboring
+house on one side only, it was open to view and accessible on the
+other three sides. Diard paid the rent in advance, and left Juana
+barely enough money for the necessary expenses of three months, a sum
+not exceeding a thousand francs. Madame Diard made no observation on
+this unusual meanness. When her husband told her that he was going to
+the watering-places and that she would stay at Bordeaux, Juana offered
+no difficulty, and at once formed a plan to teach the children Spanish
+and Italian, and to make them read the two masterpieces of the two
+languages. She was glad to lead a retired life, simply and naturally
+economical. To spare herself the troubles of material life, she
+arranged with a "traiteur" the day after Diard's departure to send in
+their meals. Her maid then sufficed for the service of the house, and
+she thus found herself without money, but her wants all provided for
+until her husband's return. Her pleasures consisted in taking walks
+with the children. She was then thirty-three years old. Her beauty,
+greatly developed, was in all its lustre. Therefore as soon as she
+appeared, much talk was made in Bordeaux about the beautiful Spanish
+stranger. At the first advances made to her Juana ceased to walk
+abroad, and confined herself wholly to her own large garden.
+
+Diard at first made a fortune at the baths. In two months he won three
+hundred thousand dollars, but it never occurred to him to send any
+money to his wife; he kept it all, expecting to make some great stroke
+of fortune on a vast stake. Towards the end of the second month the
+Marquis de Montefiore appeared at the same baths. The marquis was at
+this time celebrated for his wealth, his handsome face, his fortunate
+marriage with an Englishwoman, and more especially for his love of
+play. Diard, his former companion, encountered him, and desired to add
+his spoils to those of others. A gambler with four hundred thousand
+francs in hand is always in a position to do as he pleases. Diard,
+confident in his luck, renewed acquaintance with Montefiore. The
+latter received him very coldly, but nevertheless they played
+together, and Diard lost every penny that he possessed, and more.
+
+"My dear Montefiore," said the ex-quartermaster, after making a tour
+of the salon, "I owe you a hundred thousand francs; but my money is in
+Bordeaux, where I have left my wife."
+
+Diard had the money in bank-bills in his pocket; but with the
+self-possession and rapid bird's-eye view of a man accustomed to catch
+at all resources, he still hoped to recover himself by some one of the
+endless caprices of play. Montefiore had already mentioned his
+intention of visiting Bordeaux. Had he paid his debt on the spot,
+Diard would have been left without the power to take his revenge; a
+revenge at cards often exceeds the amount of all preceding losses. But
+these burning expectations depended on the marquis's reply.
+
+"Wait, my dear fellow," said Montefiore, "and we will go together to
+Bordeaux. In all conscience, I am rich enough to-day not to wish to
+take the money of an old comrade."
+
+Three days later Diard and Montefiore were in Bordeaux at a gambling
+table. Diard, having won enough to pay his hundred thousand francs,
+went on until he had lost two hundred thousand more on his word. He
+was gay as a man who swam in gold. Eleven o'clock sounded; the night
+was superb. Montefiore may have felt, like Diard, a desire to breathe
+the open air and recover from such emotions in a walk. The latter
+proposed to the marquis to come home with him to take a cup of tea and
+get his money.
+
+"But Madame Diard?" said Montefiore.
+
+"Bah!" exclaimed the husband.
+
+They went down-stairs; but before taking his hat Diard entered the
+dining-room of the establishment and asked for a glass of water. While
+it was being brought, he walked up and down the room, and was able,
+without being noticed, to pick up one of those small sharp-pointed
+steel knives with pearl handles which are used for cutting fruit at
+dessert.
+
+"Where do you live?" said Montefiore, in the courtyard, "for I want to
+send a carriage there to fetch me."
+
+Diard told him the exact address.
+
+"You see," said Montefiore, in a low voice, taking Diard's arm, "that
+as long as I am with you I have nothing to fear; but if I came home
+alone and a scoundrel were to follow me, I should be profitable to
+kill."
+
+"Have you much with you?"
+
+"No, not much," said the wary Italian, "only my winnings. But they
+would make a pretty fortune for a beggar and turn him into an honest
+man for the rest of his life."
+
+Diard led the marquis along a lonely street where he remembered to
+have seen a house, the door of which was at the end of an avenue of
+trees with high and gloomy walls on either side of it. When they
+reached this spot he coolly invited the marquis to precede him; but as
+if the latter understood him he preferred to keep at his side. Then,
+no sooner were they fairly in the avenue, then Diard, with the agility
+of a tiger, tripped up the marquis with a kick behind the knees, and
+putting a foot on his neck stabbed him again and again to the heart
+till the blade of the knife broke in it. Then he searched Montefiore's
+pockets, took his wallet, money, everything. But though he had taken
+the Italian unawares, and had done the deed with lucid mind and the
+quickness of a pickpocket, Montefiore had time to cry "Murder! Help!"
+in a shrill and piercing voice which was fit to rouse every sleeper in
+the neighborhood. His last sighs were given in those horrible shrieks.
+
+Diard was not aware that at the moment when they entered the avenue a
+crowd just issuing from a theatre was passing at the upper end of the
+street. The cries of the dying man reached them, though Diard did his
+best to stifle the noise by setting his foot firmly on Montefiore's
+neck. The crowd began to run towards the avenue, the high walls of
+which appeared to echo back the cries, directing them to the very spot
+where the crime was committed. The sound of their coming steps seemed
+to beat on Diard's brain. But not losing his head as yet, the murderer
+left the avenue and came boldly into the street, walking very gently,
+like a spectator who sees the inutility of trying to give help. He
+even turned round once or twice to judge of the distance between
+himself and the crowd, and he saw them rushing up the avenue, with the
+exception of one man, who, with a natural sense of caution, began to
+watch Diard.
+
+"There he is! there he is!" cried the people, who had entered the
+avenue as soon as they saw Montefiore stretched out near the door of
+the empty house.
+
+As soon as that clamor rose, Diard, feeling himself well in the
+advance, began to run or rather to fly, with the vigor of a lion and
+the bounds of a deer. At the other end of the street he saw, or
+fancied he saw, a mass of persons, and he dashed down a cross street
+to avoid them. But already every window was open, and heads were
+thrust forth right and left, while from every door came shouts and
+gleams of light. Diard kept on, going straight before him, through the
+lights and the noise; and his legs were so actively agile that he soon
+left the tumult behind him, though without being able to escape some
+eyes which took in the extent of his course more rapidly than he could
+cover it. Inhabitants, soldiers, gendarmes, every one, seemed afoot in
+the twinkling of an eye. Some men awoke the commissaries of police,
+others stayed by the body to guard it. The pursuit kept on in the
+direction of the fugitive, who dragged it after him like the flame of
+a conflagration.
+
+Diard, as he ran, had all the sensations of a dream when he heard a
+whole city howling, running, panting after him. Nevertheless, he kept
+his ideas and his presence of mind. Presently he reached the wall of
+the garden of his house. The place was perfectly silent, and he
+thought he had foiled his pursuers, though a distant murmur of the
+tumult came to his ears like the roaring of the sea. He dipped some
+water from a brook and drank it. Then, observing a pile of stones on
+the road, he hid his treasure in it; obeying one of those vague
+thoughts which come to criminals at a moment when the faculty to judge
+their actions under all bearings deserts them, and they think to
+establish their innocence by want of proof of their guilt.
+
+That done, he endeavored to assume a placid countenance; he even tried
+to smile as he rapped softly on the door of his house, hoping that no
+one saw him. He raised his eyes, and through the outer blinds of one
+window came a gleam of light from his wife's room. Then, in the midst
+of his trouble, visions of her gentle life, spent with her children,
+beat upon his brain with the force of a hammer. The maid opened the
+door, which Diard hastily closed behind him with a kick. For a moment
+he breathed freely; then, noticing that he was bathed in perspiration,
+he sent the servant back to Juana and stayed in the darkness of the
+passage, where he wiped his face with his handkerchief and put his
+clothes in order, like a dandy about to pay a visit to a pretty woman.
+After that he walked into a track of the moonlight to examine his
+hands. A quiver of joy passed over him as he saw that no blood stains
+were on them; the hemorrhage from his victim's body was no doubt
+inward.
+
+But all this took time. When at last he mounted the stairs to Juana's
+room he was calm and collected, and able to reflect on his position,
+which resolved itself into two ideas: to leave the house, and get to
+the wharves. He did not _think_ these ideas, he _saw_ them written in
+fiery letters on the darkness. Once at the wharves he could hide all
+day, return at night for his treasure, then conceal himself, like a
+rat, in the hold of some vessel and escape without any one suspecting
+his whereabouts. But to do all this, money, gold, was his first
+necessity,--and he did not possess one penny.
+
+The maid brought a light to show him up.
+
+"Felicie," he said, "don't you hear a noise in the street, shouts,
+cries? Go and see what it means, and come and tell me."
+
+His wife, in her white dressing-gown, was sitting at a table, reading
+aloud to Francisque and Juan from a Spanish Cervantes, while the boys
+followed her pronunciation of the words from the text. They all three
+stopped and looked at Diard, who stood in the doorway with his hands
+in his pockets; overcome, perhaps, by finding himself in this calm
+scene, so softly lighted, so beautiful with the faces of his wife and
+children. It was a living picture of the Virgin between her son and
+John.
+
+"Juana, I have something to say to you."
+
+"What has happened?" she asked, instantly perceiving from the livid
+paleness of her husband that the misfortune she had daily expected was
+upon them.
+
+"Oh, nothing; but I want to speak to you--to you, alone."
+
+And he glanced at his sons.
+
+"My dears, go to your room, and go to bed," said Juana; "say your
+prayers without me."
+
+The boys left the room in silence, with the incurious obedience of
+well-trained children.
+
+"My dear Juana," said Diard, in a coaxing voice, "I left you with very
+little money, and I regret it now. Listen to me; since I relieved you
+of the care of our income by giving you an allowance, have you not,
+like other women, laid something by?"
+
+"No," replied Juana, "I have nothing. In making that allowance you did
+not reckon the costs of the children's education. I don't say that to
+reproach you, my friend, only to explain my want of money. All that
+you gave me went to pay masters and--"
+
+"Enough!" cried Diard, violently. "Thunder of heaven! every instant is
+precious! Where are your jewels?"
+
+"You know very well I have never worn any."
+
+"Then there's not a sou to be had here!" cried Diard, frantically.
+
+"Why do you shout in that way?" she asked.
+
+"Juana," he replied, "I have killed a man."
+
+Juana sprang to the door of her children's room and closed it; then
+she returned.
+
+"Your sons must hear nothing," she said. "With whom have you fought?"
+
+"Montefiore," he replied.
+
+"Ah!" she said with a sigh, "the only man you had the right to kill."
+
+"There were many reasons why he should die by my hand. But I can't
+lose time--Money, money! for God's sake, money! I may be pursued. We
+did not fight. I--I killed him."
+
+"Killed him!" she cried, "how?"
+
+"Why, as one kills anything. He stole my whole fortune and I took it
+back, that's all. Juana, now that everything is quiet you must go down
+to that heap of stones--you know the heap by the garden wall--and get
+that money, since you haven't any in the house."
+
+"The money that you stole?" said Juana.
+
+"What does that matter to you? Have you any money to give me? I tell
+you I must get away. They are on my traces."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The people, the police."
+
+Juana left the room, but returned immediately.
+
+"Here," she said, holding out to him at arm's length a jewel, "that is
+Dona Lagounia's cross. There are four rubies in it, of great value, I
+have been told. Take it and go--go!"
+
+"Felicie hasn't come back," he cried, with a sudden thought. "Can she
+have been arrested?"
+
+Juana laid the cross on the table, and sprang to the windows that
+looked on the street. There she saw, in the moonlight, a file of
+soldiers posting themselves in deepest silence along the wall of the
+house. She turned, affecting to be calm, and said to her husband:--
+
+"You have not a minute to lose; you must escape through the garden.
+Here is the key of the little gate."
+
+As a precaution she turned to the other windows, looking on the
+garden. In the shadow of the trees she saw the gleam of the silver
+lace on the hats of a body of gendarmes; and she heard the distant
+mutterings of a crowd of persons whom sentinels were holding back at
+the end of the streets up which curiosity had drawn them. Diard had,
+in truth, been seen to enter his house by persons at their windows,
+and on their information and that of the frightened maid-servant, who
+was arrested, the troops and the people had blocked the two streets
+which led to the house. A dozen gendarmes, returning from the theatre,
+had climbed the walls of the garden, and guarded all exit in that
+direction.
+
+"Monsieur," said Juana, "you cannot escape. The whole town is here."
+
+Diard ran from window to window with the useless activity of a captive
+bird striking against the panes to escape. Juana stood silent and
+thoughtful.
+
+"Juana, dear Juana, help me! give me, for pity's sake, some advice."
+
+"Yes," said Juana, "I will; and I will save you."
+
+"Ah! you are always my good angel."
+
+Juana left the room and returned immediately, holding out to Diard,
+with averted head, one of his own pistols. Diard did not take it.
+Juana heard the entrance of the soldiers into the courtyard, where
+they laid down the body of the murdered man to confront the assassin
+with the sight of it. She turned round and saw Diard white and livid.
+The man was nearly fainting, and tried to sit down.
+
+"Your children implore you," she said, putting the pistol beneath his
+hand.
+
+"But--my good Juana, my little Juana, do you think--Juana! is it so
+pressing?--I want to kiss you."
+
+The gendarmes were mounting the staircase. Juana grasped the pistol,
+aimed it at Diard, holding him, in spite of his cries, by the throat;
+then she blew his brains out and flung the weapon on the ground.
+
+At that instant the door was opened violently. The public prosecutor,
+followed by an examining judge, a doctor, a sheriff, and a posse of
+gendarmes, all the representatives, in short, of human justice,
+entered the room.
+
+"What do you want?" asked Juana.
+
+"Is that Monsieur Diard?" said the prosecutor, pointing to the dead
+body bent double on the floor.
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Your gown is covered with blood, madame."
+
+"Do you not see why?" replied Juana.
+
+She went to the little table and sat down, taking up the volume of
+Cervantes; she was pale, with a nervous agitation which she
+nevertheless controlled, keeping it wholly inward.
+
+"Leave the room," said the prosecutor to the gendarmes.
+
+Then he signed to the examining judge and the doctor to remain.
+
+"Madame, under the circumstances, we can only congratulate you on the
+death of your husband," he said. "At least he has died as a soldier
+should, whatever crime his passions may have led him to commit. His
+act renders negatory that of justice. But however we may desire to
+spare you at such a moment, the law requires that we should make an
+exact report of all violent deaths. You will permit us to do our
+duty?"
+
+"May I go and change my dress?" she asked, laying down the volume.
+
+"Yes, madame; but you must bring it back to us. The doctor may need
+it."
+
+"It would be too painful for madame to see me operate," said the
+doctor, understanding the suspicions of the prosecutor. "Messieurs,"
+he added, "I hope you will allow her to remain in the next room."
+
+The magistrates approved the request of the merciful physician, and
+Felicie was permitted to attend her mistress. The judge and the
+prosecutor talked together in a low voice. Officers of the law are
+very unfortunate in being forced to suspect all, and to imagine evil
+everywhere. By dint of supposing wicked intentions, and of
+comprehending them, in order to reach the truth hidden under so many
+contradictory actions, it is impossible that the exercise of their
+dreadful functions should not, in the long run, dry up at their source
+the generous emotions they are constrained to repress. If the
+sensibilities of the surgeon who probes into the mysteries of the
+human body end by growing callous, what becomes of those of the judge
+who is incessantly compelled to search the inner folds of the soul?
+Martyrs to their mission, magistrates are all their lives in mourning
+for their lost illusions; crime weighs no less heavily on them than on
+the criminal. An old man seated on the bench is venerable, but a young
+judge makes a thoughtful person shudder. The examining judge in this
+case was young, and he felt obliged to say to the public prosecutor,--
+
+"Do you think that woman was her husband's accomplice? Ought we to
+take her into custody? Is it best to question her?"
+
+The prosecutor replied, with a careless shrug of his shoulders,--
+
+"Montefiore and Diard were two well-known scoundrels. The maid
+evidently knew nothing of the crime. Better let the thing rest there."
+
+The doctor performed the autopsy, and dictated his report to the
+sheriff. Suddenly he stopped, and hastily entered the next room.
+
+"Madame--" he said.
+
+Juana, who had removed her bloody gown, came towards him.
+
+"It was you," he whispered, stooping to her ear, "who killed your
+husband."
+
+"Yes, monsieur," she replied.
+
+The doctor returned and continued his dictation as follows,--
+
+"And, from the above assemblage of facts, it appears evident that the
+said Diard killed himself voluntarily and by his own hand."
+
+"Have you finished?" he said to the sheriff after a pause.
+
+"Yes," replied the writer.
+
+The doctor signed the report. Juana, who had followed him into the
+room, gave him one glance, repressing with difficulty the tears which
+for an instant rose into her eyes and moistened them.
+
+"Messieurs," she said to the public prosecutor and the judge, "I am a
+stranger here, and a Spaniard. I am ignorant of the laws, and I know
+no one in Bordeaux. I ask of you one kindness: enable me to obtain a
+passport for Spain."
+
+"One moment!" cried the examining judge. "Madame, what has become of
+the money stolen from the Marquis de Montefiore?"
+
+"Monsieur Diard," she replied, "said something to me vaguely about a
+heap of stones, under which he must have hidden it."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the street."
+
+The two magistrates looked at each other. Juana made a noble gesture
+and motioned to the doctor.
+
+"Monsieur," she said in his ear, "can I be suspected of some infamous
+action? I! The pile of stones must be close to the wall of my garden.
+Go yourself, I implore you. Look, search, find that money."
+
+The doctor went out, taking with him the examining judge, and together
+they found Montefiore's treasure.
+
+Within two days Juana had sold her cross to pay the costs of a
+journey. On her way with her two children to take the diligence which
+would carry her to the frontiers of Spain, she heard herself being
+called in the street. Her dying mother was being carried to a
+hospital, and through the curtains of her litter she had seen her
+daughter. Juana made the bearers enter a porte-cochere that was near
+them, and there the last interview between the mother and the daughter
+took place. Though the two spoke to each other in a low voice, Juan
+heard these parting words,--
+
+"Mother, die in peace; I have suffered for you all."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Juana, by Honore de Balzac
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diff --git a/old/old/20041126-1437.zip b/old/old/20041126-1437.zip
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+***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Juana, by Honore de Balzac***
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+Juana
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+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley)
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
+and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+
+
+
+
+
+JUANA
+
+BY
+
+HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+Translated By
+Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+To Madame la Comtesse Merlin.
+
+
+
+
+JUANA
+(THE MARANAS)
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+EXPOSITION
+
+Notwithstanding the discipline which Marechal Suchet had introduced
+into his army corps, he was unable to prevent a short period of
+trouble and disorder at the taking of Tarragona. According to certain
+fair-minded military men, this intoxication of victory bore a striking
+resemblance to pillage, though the marechal promptly suppressed it.
+Order being re-established, each regiment quartered in its respective
+lines, and the commandant of the city appointed, military
+administration began. The place assumed a mongrel aspect. Though all
+things were organized on a French system, the Spaniards were left free
+to follow "in petto" their national tastes.
+
+This period of pillage (it is difficult to determine how long it
+lasted) had, like all other sublunary effects, a cause, not so
+difficult to discover. In the marechal's army was a regiment, composed
+almost entirely of Italians and commanded by a certain Colonel Eugene,
+a man of remarkable bravery, a second Murat, who, having entered the
+military service too late, obtained neither a Grand Duchy of Berg nor
+a Kingdom of Naples, nor balls at the Pizzo. But if he won no crown he
+had ample opportunity to obtain wounds, and it was not surprising that
+he met with several. His regiment was composed of the scattered
+fragments of the Italian legion. This legion was to Italy what the
+colonial battalions are to France. Its permanent cantonments,
+established on the island of Elba, served as an honorable place of
+exile for the troublesome sons of good families and for those great
+men who have just missed greatness, whom society brands with a hot
+iron and designates by the term "mauvais sujets"; men who are for the
+most part misunderstood; whose existence may become either noble
+through the smile of a woman lifting them out of their rut, or
+shocking at the close of an orgy under the influence of some damnable
+reflection dropped by a drunken comrade.
+
+Napoleon had incorporated these vigorous beings in the sixth of the
+line, hoping to metamorphose them finally into generals,--barring
+those whom the bullets might take off. But the emperor's calculation
+was scarcely fulfilled, except in the matter of the bullets. This
+regiment, often decimated but always the same in character, acquired a
+great reputation for valor in the field and for wickedness in private
+life. At the siege of Tarragona it lost its celebrated hero, Bianchi,
+the man who, during the campaign, had wagered that he would eat the
+heart of a Spanish sentinel, and did eat it. Though Bianchi was the
+prince of the devils incarnate to whom the regiment owed its dual
+reputation, he had, nevertheless, that sort of chivalrous honor which
+excuses, in the army, the worst excesses. In a word, he would have
+been, at an earlier period, an admirable pirate. A few days before his
+death he distinguished himself by a daring action which the marechal
+wished to reward. Bianchi refused rank, pension, and additional
+decoration, asking, for sole recompense, the favor of being the first
+to mount the breach at the assault on Tarragona. The marechal granted
+the request and then forgot his promise; but Bianchi forced him to
+remember Bianchi. The enraged hero was the first to plant our flag on
+the wall, where he was shot by a monk.
+
+This historical digression was necessary, in order to explain how it
+was that the 6th of the line was the regiment to enter Tarragona, and
+why the disorder and confusion, natural enough in a city taken by
+storm, degenerated for a time into a slight pillage.
+
+This regiment possessed two officers, not at all remarkable among
+these men of iron, who played, nevertheless, in the history we shall
+now relate, a somewhat important part.
+
+The first, a captain in the quartermaster's department, an officer
+half civil, half military, was considered, in soldier phrase, to be
+fighting his own battle. He pretended bravery, boasted loudly of
+belonging to the 6th of the line, twirled his moustache with the air
+of a man who was ready to demolish everything; but his brother
+officers did not esteem him. The fortune he possessed made him
+cautious. He was nicknamed, for two reasons, "captain of crows." In
+the first place, he could smell powder a league off, and took wing at
+the sound of a musket; secondly, the nickname was based on an innocent
+military pun, which his position in the regiment warranted. Captain
+Montefiore, of the illustrious Montefiore family of Milan (though the
+laws of the Kingdom of Italy forbade him to bear his title in the
+French service) was one of the handsomest men in the army. This beauty
+may have been among the secret causes of his prudence on fighting
+days. A wound which might have injured his nose, cleft his forehead,
+or scarred his cheek, would have destroyed one of the most beautiful
+Italian faces which a woman ever dreamed of in all its delicate
+proportions. This face, not unlike the type which Girodet has given to
+the dying young Turk, in the "Revolt at Cairo," was instinct with that
+melancholy by which all women are more or less duped.
+
+The Marquis de Montefiore possessed an entailed property, but his
+income was mortgaged for a number of years to pay off the costs of
+certain Italian escapades which are inconceivable in Paris. He had
+ruined himself in supporting a theatre at Milan in order to force upon
+a public a very inferior prima donna, whom he was said to love madly.
+A fine future was therefore before him, and he did not care to risk it
+for the paltry distinction of a bit of red ribbon. He was not a brave
+man, but he was certainly a philosopher; and he had precedents, if we
+may use so parliamentary an expression. Did not Philip the Second
+register a vow after the battle of Saint Quentin that never again
+would he put himself under fire? And did not the Duke of Alba
+encourage him in thinking that the worst trade in the world was the
+involuntary exchange of a crown for a bullet? Hence, Montefiore was
+Philippiste in his capacity of rich marquis and handsome man; and in
+other respects also he was quite as profound a politician as Philip
+the Second himself. He consoled himself for his nickname, and for the
+disesteem of the regiment by thinking that his comrades were
+blackguards, whose opinion would never be of any consequence to him if
+by chance they survived the present war, which seemed to be one of
+extermination. He relied on his face to win him promotion; he saw
+himself made colonel by feminine influence and a carefully managed
+transition from captain of equipment to orderly officer, and from
+orderly officer to aide-de-camp on the staff of some easy-going
+marshal. By that time, he reflected, he should come into his property
+of a hundred thousand scudi a year, some journal would speak of him as
+"the brave Montefiore," he would marry a girl of rank, and no one
+would dare to dispute his courage or verify his wounds.
+
+Captain Montefiore had one friend in the person of the quartermaster,
+--a Provencal, born in the neighborhood of Nice, whose name was Diard.
+A friend, whether at the galleys or in the garret of an artist,
+consoles for many troubles. Now Montefiore and Diard were two
+philosophers, who consoled each other for their present lives by the
+study of vice, as artists soothe the immediate disappointment of their
+hopes by the expectation of future fame. Both regarded the war in its
+results, not its action; they simply considered those who died for
+glory fools. Chance had made soldiers of them; whereas their natural
+proclivities would have seated them at the green table of a congress.
+Nature had poured Montefiore into the mould of a Rizzio, and Diard
+into that of a diplomatist. Both were endowed with that nervous,
+feverish, half-feminine organization, which is equally strong for good
+or evil, and from which may emanate, according to the impulse of these
+singular temperaments, a crime or a generous action, a noble deed or a
+base one. The fate of such natures depends at any moment on the
+pressure, more or less powerful, produced on their nervous systems by
+violent and transitory passions.
+
+Diard was considered a good accountant, but no soldier would have
+trusted him with his purse or his will, possibly because of the
+antipathy felt by all real soldiers against the bureaucrats. The
+quartermaster was not without courage and a certain juvenile
+generosity, sentiments which many men give up as they grow older, by
+dint of reasoning or calculating. Variable as the beauty of a fair
+woman, Diard was a great boaster and a great talker, talking of
+everything. He said he was artistic, and he made prizes (like two
+celebrated generals) of works of art, solely, he declared, to preserve
+them for posterity. His military comrades would have been puzzled
+indeed to form a correct judgment of him. Many of them, accustomed to
+draw upon his funds when occasion obliged them, thought him rich; but
+in truth, he was a gambler, and gamblers may be said to have nothing
+of their own. Montefiore was also a gambler, and all the officers of
+the regiment played with the pair; for, to the shame of men be it
+said, it is not a rare thing to see persons gambling together around a
+green table who, when the game is finished, will not bow to their
+companions, feeling no respect for them. Montefiore was the man with
+whom Bianchi made his bet about the heart of the Spanish sentinel.
+
+Montefiore and Diard were among the last to mount the breach at
+Tarragona, but the first in the heart of the town as soon as it was
+taken. Accidents of this sort happen in all attacks, but with this
+pair of friends they were customary. Supporting each other, they made
+their way bravely through a labyrinth of narrow and gloomy little
+streets in quest of their personal objects; one seeking for painted
+madonnas, the other for madonnas of flesh and blood.
+
+In what part of Tarragona it happened I cannot say, but Diard
+presently recognized by its architecture the portal of a convent, the
+gate of which was already battered in. Springing into the cloister to
+put a stop to the fury of the soldiers, he arrived just in time to
+prevent two Parisians from shooting a Virgin by Albano. In spite of
+the moustache with which in their military fanaticism they had
+decorated her face, he bought the picture. Montefiore, left alone
+during this episode, noticed, nearly opposite the convent, the house
+and shop of a draper, from which a shot was fired at him at the moment
+when his eyes caught a flaming glance from those of an inquisitive
+young girl, whose head was advanced under the shelter of a blind.
+Tarragona taken by assault, Tarragona furious, firing from every
+window, Tarragona violated, with dishevelled hair, and half-naked, was
+indeed an object of curiosity,--the curiosity of a daring Spanish
+woman. It was a magnified bull-fight.
+
+Montefiore forgot the pillage, and heard, for the moment, neither the
+cries, nor the musketry, nor the growling of the artillery. The
+profile of that Spanish girl was the most divinely delicious thing
+which he, an Italian libertine, weary of Italian beauty, and dreaming
+of an impossible woman because he was tired of all women, had ever
+seen. He could still quiver, he, who had wasted his fortune on a
+thousand follies, the thousand passions of a young and blase man--the
+most abominable monster that society generates. An idea came into his
+head, suggested perhaps by the shot of the draper-patriot, namely,--to
+set fire to the house. But he was now alone, and without any means of
+action; the fighting was centred in the market-place, where a few
+obstinate beings were still defending the town. A better idea then
+occurred to him. Diard came out of the convent, but Montefiore said
+not a word of his discovery; on the contrary, he accompanied him on a
+series of rambles about the streets. But the next day, the Italian had
+obtained his military billet in the house of the draper,--an
+appropriate lodging for an equipment captain!
+
+The house of the worthy Spaniard consisted, on the ground-floor, of a
+vast and gloomy shop, externally fortified with stout iron bars, such
+as we see in the old storehouses of the rue des Lombards. This shop
+communicated with a parlor lighted from an interior courtyard, a large
+room breathing the very spirit of the middle-ages, with smoky old
+pictures, old tapestries, antique "brazero," a plumed hat hanging to a
+nail, the musket of the guerrillas, and the cloak of Bartholo. The
+kitchen adjoined this unique living-room, where the inmates took their
+meals and warmed themselves over the dull glow of the brazier, smoking
+cigars and discoursing bitterly to animate all hearts with hatred
+against the French. Silver pitchers and precious dishes of plate and
+porcelain adorned a buttery shelf of the old fashion. But the light,
+sparsely admitted, allowed these dazzling objects to show but
+slightly; all things, as in pictures of the Dutch school, looked
+brown, even the faces. Between the shop and this living-room, so fine
+in color and in its tone of patriarchal life, was a dark staircase
+leading to a ware-room where the light, carefully distributed,
+permitted the examination of goods. Above this were the apartments of
+the merchant and his wife. Rooms for an apprentice and a servant-woman
+were in a garret under the roof, which projected over the street and
+was supported by buttresses, giving a somewhat fantastic appearance to
+the exterior of the building. These chambers were now taken by the
+merchant and his wife who gave up their own rooms to the officer who
+was billeted upon them,--probably because they wished to avoid all
+quarrelling.
+
+Montefiore gave himself out as a former Spanish subject, persecuted by
+Napoleon, whom he was serving against his will; and these semi-lies
+had the success he expected. He was invited to share the meals of the
+family, and was treated with the respect due to his name, his birth,
+and his title. He had his reasons for capturing the good-will of the
+merchant and his wife; he scented his madonna as the ogre scented the
+youthful flesh of Tom Thumb and his brothers. But in spite of the
+confidence he managed to inspire in the worthy pair the latter
+maintained the most profound silence as to the said madonna; and not
+only did the captain see no trace of the young girl during the first
+day he spent under the roof of the honest Spaniard, but he heard no
+sound and came upon no indication which revealed her presence in that
+ancient building. Supposing that she was the only daughter of the old
+couple, Montefiore concluded they had consigned her to the garret,
+where, for the time being, they made their home.
+
+But no revelation came to betray the hiding-place of that precious
+treasure. The marquis glued his face to the lozenge-shaped leaded
+panes which looked upon the black-walled enclosure of the inner
+courtyard; but in vain; he saw no gleam of light except from the
+windows of the old couple, whom he could see and hear as they went and
+came and talked and coughed. Of the young girl, not a shadow!
+
+Montefiore was far too wary to risk the future of his passion by
+exploring the house nocturnally, or by tapping softly on the doors.
+Discovery by that hot patriot, the mercer, suspicious as a Spaniard
+must be, meant ruin infallibly. The captain therefore resolved to wait
+patiently, resting his faith on time and the imperfection of men,
+which always results--even with scoundrels, and how much more with
+honest men!--in the neglect of precautions.
+
+The next day he discovered a hammock in the kitchen, showing plainly
+where the servant-woman slept. As for the apprentice, his bed was
+evidently made on the shop counter. During supper on the second day
+Montefiore succeeded, by cursing Napoleon, in smoothing the anxious
+forehead of the merchant, a grave, black-visaged Spaniard, much like
+the faces formerly carved on the handles of Moorish lutes; even the
+wife let a gay smile of hatred appear in the folds of her elderly
+face. The lamp and the reflections of the brazier illumined
+fantastically the shadows of the noble room. The mistress of the house
+offered a "cigarrito" to their semi-compatriot. At this moment the
+rustle of a dress and the fall of a chair behind the tapestry were
+plainly heard.
+
+"Ah!" cried the wife, turning pale, "may the saints assist us! God
+grant no harm has happened!"
+
+"You have some one in the next room, have you not?" said Montefiore,
+giving no sign of emotion.
+
+The draper dropped a word of imprecation against the girls. Evidently
+alarmed, the wife opened a secret door, and led in, half fainting, the
+Italian's madonna, to whom he was careful to pay no attention; only,
+to avoid a too-studied indifference, he glanced at the girl before he
+turned to his host and said in his own language:--
+
+"Is that your daughter, signore?"
+
+Perez de Lagounia (such was the merchant's name) had large commercial
+relations with Genoa, Florence, and Livorno; he knew Italian, and
+replied in the same language:--
+
+"No; if she were my daughter I should take less precautions. The child
+is confided to our care, and I would rather die than see any evil
+happen to her. But how is it possible to put sense into a girl of
+eighteen?"
+
+"She is very handsome," said Montefiore, coldly, not looking at her
+face again.
+
+"Her mother's beauty is celebrated," replied the merchant, briefly.
+
+They continued to smoke, watching each other. Though Montefiore
+compelled himself not to give the slightest look which might
+contradict his apparent coldness, he could not refrain, at a moment
+when Perez turned his head to expectorate, from casting a rapid glance
+at the young girl, whose sparkling eyes met his. Then, with that
+science of vision which gives to a libertine, as it does to a
+sculptor, the fatal power of disrobing, if we may so express it, a
+woman, and divining her shape by inductions both rapid and sagacious,
+he beheld one of those masterpieces of Nature whose creation appears
+to demand as its right all the happiness of love. Here was a fair
+young face, on which the sun of Spain had cast faint tones of bistre
+which added to its expression of seraphic calmness a passionate pride,
+like a flash of light infused beneath that diaphanous complexion,--
+due, perhaps, to the Moorish blood which vivified and colored it. Her
+hair, raised to the top of her head, fell thence with black
+reflections round the delicate transparent ears and defined the
+outlines of a blue-veined throat. These luxuriant locks brought into
+strong relief the dazzling eyes and the scarlet lips of a well-arched
+mouth. The bodice of the country set off the lines of a figure that
+swayed as easily as a branch of willow. She was not the Virgin of
+Italy, but the Virgin of Spain, of Murillo, the only artist daring
+enough to have painted the Mother of God intoxicated with the joy of
+conceiving the Christ,--the glowing imagination of the boldest and
+also the warmest of painters.
+
+In this young girl three things were united, a single one of which
+would have sufficed for the glory of a woman: the purity of the pearl
+in the depths of ocean; the sublime exaltation of the Spanish Saint
+Teresa; and a passion of love which was ignorant of itself. The
+presence of such a woman has the virtue of a talisman. Montefiore no
+longer felt worn and jaded. That young girl brought back his youthful
+freshness.
+
+But, though the apparition was delightful, it did not last. The girl
+was taken back to the secret chamber, where the servant-woman carried
+to her openly both light and food.
+
+"You do right to hide her," said Montefiore in Italian. "I will keep
+your secret. The devil! we have generals in our army who are capable
+of abducting her."
+
+Montefiore's infatuation went so far as to suggest to him the idea of
+marrying her. He accordingly asked her history, and Perez very
+willingly told him the circumstances under which she had become his
+ward. The prudent Spaniard was led to make this confidence because he
+had heard of Montefiore in Italy, and knowing his reputation was
+desirous to let him see how strong were the barriers which protected
+the young girl from the possibility of seduction. Though the good-man
+was gifted with a certain patriarchal eloquence, in keeping with his
+simple life and customs, his tale will be improved by abridgment.
+
+At the period when the French Revolution changed the manners and
+morals of every country which served as the scene of its wars, a
+street prostitute came to Tarragona, driven from Venice at the time of
+its fall. The life of this woman had been a tissue of romantic
+adventures and strange vicissitudes. To her, oftener than to any other
+woman of her class, it had happened, thanks to the caprice of great
+lords struck with her extraordinary beauty, to be literally gorged
+with gold and jewels and all the delights of excessive wealth,--
+flowers, carriages, pages, maids, palaces, pictures, journeys (like
+those of Catherine II.); in short, the life of a queen, despotic in
+her caprices and obeyed, often beyond her own imaginings. Then,
+without herself, or any one, chemist, physician, or man of science,
+being able to discover how her gold evaporated, she would find herself
+back in the streets, poor, denuded of everything, preserving nothing
+but her all-powerful beauty, yet living on without thought or care of
+the past, the present, or the future. Cast, in her poverty, into the
+hands of some poor gambling officer, she attached herself to him as a
+dog to its master, sharing the discomforts of the military life, which
+indeed she comforted, as content under the roof of a garret as beneath
+the silken hangings of opulence. Italian and Spanish both, she
+fulfilled very scrupulously the duties of religion, and more than once
+she had said to love:--
+
+"Return to-morrow; to-day I belong to God."
+
+But this slime permeated with gold and perfumes, this careless
+indifference to all things, these unbridled passions, these religious
+beliefs cast into that heart like diamonds into mire, this life begun,
+and ended, in a hospital, these gambling chances transferred to the
+soul, to the very existence,--in short, this great alchemy, for which
+vice lit the fire beneath the crucible in which fortunes were melted
+up and the gold of ancestors and the honor of great names evaporated,
+proceeded from a CAUSE, a particular heredity, faithfully transmitted
+from mother to daughter since the middle ages. The name of this woman
+was La Marana. In her family, existing solely in the female line, the
+idea, person, name and power of a father had been completely unknown
+since the thirteenth century. The name Marana was to her what the
+designation of Stuart is to the celebrated royal race of Scotland, a
+name of distinction substituted for the patronymic name by the
+constant heredity of the same office devolving on the family.
+
+Formerly, in France, Spain, and Italy, when those three countries had,
+in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, mutual interests which
+united and disunited them by perpetual warfare, the name Marana served
+to express in its general sense, a prostitute. In those days women of
+that sort had a certain rank in the world of which nothing in our day
+can give an idea. Ninon de l'Enclos and Marian Delorme have alone
+played, in France, the role of the Imperias, Catalinas, and Maranas
+who, in preceding centuries, gathered around them the cassock, gown,
+and sword. An Imperia built I forget which church in Rome in a frenzy
+of repentance, as Rhodope built, in earlier times, a pyramid in Egypt.
+The name Marana, inflicted at first as a disgrace upon the singular
+family with which we are now concerned, had ended by becoming its
+veritable name and by ennobling its vice by incontestable antiquity.
+
+One day, a day of opulence or of penury I know not which, for this
+event was a secret between herself and God, but assuredly it was in a
+moment of repentance and melancholy, this Marana of the nineteenth
+century stood with her feet in the slime and her head raised to
+heaven. She cursed the blood in her veins, she cursed herself, she
+trembled lest she should have a daughter, and she swore, as such women
+swear, on the honor and with the will of the galleys--the firmest
+will, the most scrupulous honor that there is on earth--she swore,
+before an altar, and believing in that altar, to make her daughter a
+virtuous creature, a saint, and thus to gain, after that long line of
+lost women, criminals in love, an angel in heaven for them all.
+
+The vow once made, the blood of the Maranas spoke; the courtesan
+returned to her reckless life, a thought the more within her heart. At
+last she loved, with the violent love of such women, as Henrietta
+Wilson loved Lord Ponsonby, as Mademoiselle Dupuis loved Bolingbroke,
+as the Marchesa Pescara loved her husband--but no, she did not love,
+she adored one of those fair men, half women, to whom she gave the
+virtues which she had not, striving to keep for herself all that there
+was of vice between them. It was from that weak man, that senseless
+marriage unblessed by God or man which happiness is thought to
+justify, but which no happiness absolves, and for which men blush at
+last, that she had a daughter, a daughter to save, a daughter for whom
+to desire a noble life and the chastity she had not. Henceforth, happy
+or not happy, opulent or beggared, she had in her heart a pure,
+untainted sentiment, the highest of all human feelings because the
+most disinterested. Love has its egotism, but motherhood has none. La
+Marana was a mother like none other; for, in her total, her eternal
+shipwreck, motherhood might still redeem her. To accomplish sacredly
+through life the task of sending a pure soul to heaven, was not that a
+better thing than a tardy repentance? was it not, in truth, the only
+spotless prayer which she could lift to God?
+
+So, when this daughter, when her Marie-Juana-Pepita (she would fain
+have given her all the saints in the calendar as guardians), when this
+dear little creature was granted to her, she became possessed of so
+high an idea of the dignity of motherhood that she entreated vice to
+grant her a respite. She made herself virtuous and lived in solitude.
+No more fetes, no more orgies, no more love. All joys, all fortunes
+were centred now in the cradle of her child. The tones of that infant
+voice made an oasis for her soul in the burning sands of her
+existence. That sentiment could not be measured or estimated by any
+other. Did it not, in fact, comprise all human sentiments, all
+heavenly hopes? La Marana was so resolved not to soil her daughter
+with any stain other than that of birth, that she sought to invest her
+with social virtues; she even obliged the young father to settle a
+handsome patrimony upon the child and to give her his name. Thus the
+girl was not know as Juana Marana, but as Juana di Mancini.
+
+Then, after seven years of joy, and kisses, and intoxicating
+happiness, the time came when the poor Marana deprived herself of her
+idol. That Juana might never bow her head under their hereditary
+shame, the mother had the courage to renounce her child for her
+child's sake, and to seek, not without horrible suffering, for another
+mother, another home, other principles to follow, other and saintlier
+examples to imitate. The abdication of a mother is either a revolting
+act or a sublime one; in this case, was it not sublime?
+
+At Tarragona a lucky accident threw the Lagounias in her way, under
+circumstances which enabled her to recognize the integrity of the
+Spaniard and the noble virtue of his wife. She came to them at a time
+when her proposal seemed that of a liberating angel. The fortune and
+honor of the merchant, momentarily compromised, required a prompt and
+secret succor. La Marana made over to the husband the whole sum she
+had obtained of the father for Juana's "dot," requiring neither
+acknowledgment nor interest. According to her own code of honor, a
+contract, a trust, was a thing of the heart, and God its supreme
+judge. After stating the miseries of her position to Dona Lagounia,
+she confided her daughter and her daughter's fortune to the fine old
+Spanish honor, pure and spotless, which filled the precincts of that
+ancient house. Dona Lagounia had no child, and she was only too happy
+to obtain one to nurture. The mother then parted from her Juana,
+convinced that the child's future was safe, and certain of having
+found her a mother, a mother who would bring her up as a Mancini, and
+not as a Marana.
+
+Leaving her child in the simple modest house of the merchant where the
+burgher virtues reigned, where religion and sacred sentiments and
+honor filled the air, the poor prostitute, the disinherited mother was
+enabled to bear her trial by visions of Juana, virgin, wife, and
+mother, a mother throughout her life. On the threshold of that house
+Marana left a tear such as the angels garner up.
+
+Since that day of mourning and hope the mother, drawn by some
+invincible presentiment, had thrice returned to see her daughter. Once
+when Juana fell ill with a dangerous complaint:
+
+"I knew it," she said to Perez when she reached the house.
+
+Asleep, she had seen her Juana dying. She nursed her and watched her,
+until one morning, sure of the girl's convalescence, she kissed her,
+still asleep, on the forehead and left her without betraying whom she
+was. A second time the Marana came to the church where Juana made her
+first communion. Simply dressed, concealing herself behind a column,
+the exiled mother recognized herself in her daughter such as she once
+had been, pure as the snow fresh-fallen on the Alps. A courtesan even
+in maternity, the Marana felt in the depths of her soul a jealous
+sentiment, stronger for the moment than that of love, and she left the
+church, incapable of resisting any longer the desire to kill Dona
+Lagounia, as she sat there, with radiant face, too much the mother of
+her child. A third and last meeting had taken place between mother and
+daughter in the streets of Milan, to which city the merchant and his
+wife had paid a visit. The Marana drove through the Corso in all the
+splendor of a sovereign; she passed her daughter like a flash of
+lightning and was not recognized. Horrible anguish! To this Marana,
+surfeited with kisses, one was lacking, a single one, for which she
+would have bartered all the others: the joyous, girlish kiss of a
+daughter to a mother, an honored mother, a mother in whom shone all
+the domestic virtues. Juana living was dead to her. One thought
+revived the soul of the courtesan--a precious thought! Juana was
+henceforth safe. She might be the humblest of women, but at least she
+was not what her mother was--an infamous courtesan.
+
+The merchant and his wife had fulfilled their trust with scrupulous
+integrity. Juana's fortune, managed by them, had increased tenfold.
+Perez de Lagounia, now the richest merchant in the provinces, felt for
+the young girl a sentiment that was semi-superstitious. Her money had
+preserved his ancient house from dishonorable ruin, and the presence
+of so precious a treasure had brought him untold prosperity. His wife,
+a heart of gold, and full of delicacy, had made the child religious,
+and as pure as she was beautiful. Juana might well become the wife of
+either a great seigneur or a wealthy merchant; she lacked no virtue
+necessary to the highest destiny. Perez had intended taking her to
+Madrid and marrying her to some grandee, but the events of the present
+war delayed the fulfilment of this project.
+
+"I don't know where the Marana now is," said Perez, ending the above
+history, "but in whatever quarter of the world she may be living, when
+she hears of the occupation of our province by your armies, and of the
+siege of Tarragona, she will assuredly set out at once to come here
+and see to her daughter's safety."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+AUCTION
+
+The foregoing narrative changed the intentions of the Italian captain;
+no longer did he think of making a Marchesa di Montefiore of Juana di
+Mancini. He recognized the blood of the Maranas in the glance the girl
+had given from behind the blinds, in the trick she had just played to
+satisfy her curiosity, and also in the parting look she had cast upon
+him. The libertine wanted a virtuous woman for a wife.
+
+The adventure was full of danger, but danger of a kind that never
+daunts the least courageous man, for love and pleasure followed it.
+The apprentice sleeping in the shop, the cook bivouacking in the
+kitchen, Perez and his wife sleeping, no doubt, the wakeful sleep of
+the aged, the echoing sonority of the old mansion, the close
+surveillance of the girl in the day-time,--all these things were
+obstacles, and made success a thing well-nigh impossible. But
+Montefiore had in his favor against all impossibilities the blood of
+the Maranas which gushed in the heart of that inquisitive girl,
+Italian by birth, Spanish in principles, virgin indeed, but impatient
+to love. Passion, the girl, and Montefiore were ready and able to defy
+the whole universe.
+
+Montefiore, impelled as much by the instinct of a man of gallantry as
+by those vague hopes which cannot be explained, and to which we give
+the name of presentiments (a word of astonishing verbal accuracy),
+Montefiore spent the first hours of the night at his window,
+endeavoring to look below him to the secret apartment where,
+undoubtedly, the merchant and his wife had hidden the love and
+joyfulness of their old age. The ware-room of the "entresol" separated
+him from the rooms on the ground-floor. The captain therefore could
+not have recourse to noises significantly made from one floor to the
+other, an artificial language which all lovers know well how to
+create. But chance, or it may have been the young girl herself, came
+to his assistance. At the moment when he stationed himself at his
+window, he saw, on the black wall of the courtyard, a circle of light,
+in the centre of which the silhouette of Juana was clearly defined;
+the consecutive movement of the arms, and the attitude, gave evidence
+that she was arranging her hair for the night.
+
+"Is she alone?" Montefiore asked himself; "could I, without danger,
+lower a letter filled with coin and strike it against that circular
+window in her hiding-place?"
+
+At once he wrote a note, the note of a man exiled by his family to
+Elba, the note of a degraded marquis now a mere captain of equipment.
+Then he made a cord of whatever he could find that was capable of
+being turned into string, filled the note with a few silver crowns,
+and lowered it in the deepest silence to the centre of that spherical
+gleam.
+
+"The shadows will show if her mother or the servant is with her,"
+thought Montefiore. "If she is not alone, I can pull up the string at
+once."
+
+But, after succeeding with infinite trouble in striking the glass, a
+single form, the little figure of Juana, appeared upon the wall. The
+young girl opened her window cautiously, saw the note, took it, and
+stood before the window while she read it. In it, Montefiore had given
+his name and asked for an interview, offering, after the style of the
+old romances, his heart and hand to the Signorina Juana di Mancini--a
+common trick, the success of which is nearly always certain. At
+Juana's age, nobility of soul increases the dangers which surround
+youth. A poet of our day has said: "Woman succumbs only to her own
+nobility. The lover pretends to doubt the love he inspires at the
+moment when he is most beloved; the young girl, confident and proud,
+longs to make sacrifices to prove her love, and knows the world and
+men too little to continue calm in the midst of her rising emotions
+and repel with contempt the man who accepts a life offered in
+expiation of a false reproach."
+
+Ever since the constitution of societies the young girl finds herself
+torn by a struggle between the caution of prudent virtue and the evils
+of wrong-doing. Often she loses a love, delightful in prospect, and
+the first, if she resists; on the other hand, she loses a marriage if
+she is imprudent. Casting a glance over the vicissitudes of social
+life in Paris, it is impossible to doubt the necessity of religion;
+and yet Paris is situated in the forty-eighth degree of latitude,
+while Tarragona is in the forty-first. The old question of climates is
+still useful to narrators to explain the sudden denouements, the
+imprudences, or the resistances of love.
+
+Montefiore kept his eyes fixed on the exquisite black profile
+projected by the gleam upon the wall. Neither he nor Juana could see
+each other; a troublesome cornice, vexatiously placed, deprived them
+of the mute correspondence which may be established between a pair of
+lovers as they bend to each other from their windows. Thus the mind
+and the attention of the captain were concentrated on that luminous
+circle where, without perhaps knowing it herself, the young girl
+would, he thought, innocently reveal her thoughts by a series of
+gestures. But no! The singular motions she proceeded to make gave not
+a particle of hope to the expectant lover. Juana was amusing herself
+by cutting up his missive. But virtue and innocence sometimes imitate
+the clever proceedings inspired by jealousy to the Bartholos of
+comedy. Juana, without pens, ink, or paper, was replying by snip of
+scissors. Presently she refastened the note to the string; the officer
+drew it up, opened it, and read by the light of his lamp one word,
+carefully cut out of the paper: COME.
+
+"Come!" he said to himself; "but what of poison? or the dagger or
+carbine of Perez? And that apprentice not yet asleep, perhaps, in the
+shop? and the servant in her hammock? Besides, this old house echoes
+the slightest sound; I can hear old Perez snoring even here. Come,
+indeed! She can have nothing more to lose."
+
+Bitter reflection! rakes alone are logical and will punish a woman for
+devotion. Man created Satan and Lovelace; but a virgin is an angel on
+whom he can bestow naught but his own vices. She is so grand, so
+beautiful, that he cannot magnify or embellish her; he has only the
+fatal power to blast her and drag her down into his own mire.
+
+Montefiore waited for a later and more somnolent hour of the night;
+then, in spite of his reflections, he descended the stairs without
+boots, armed with his pistols, moving step by step, stopping to
+question the silence, putting forth his hands, measuring the stairs,
+peering into the darkness, and ready at the slightest incident to fly
+back into his room. The Italian had put on his handsomest uniform; he
+had perfumed his black hair, and now shone with the particular
+brilliancy which dress and toilet bestow upon natural beauty. Under
+such circumstances most men are as feminine as a woman.
+
+The marquis arrived without hindrance before the secret door of the
+room in which the girl was hidden, a sort of cell made in the angle of
+the house and belonging exclusively to Juana, who had remained there
+hidden during the day from every eye while the siege lasted. Up to the
+present time she had slept in the room of her adopted mother, but the
+limited space in the garret where the merchant and his wife had gone
+to make room for the officer who was billeted upon them, did not allow
+of her going with them. Dona Lagounia had therefore left the young
+girl to the guardianship of lock and key, under the protection of
+religious ideas, all the more efficacious because they were partly
+superstitious, and also under the shield of a native pride and
+sensitive modesty which made the young Mancini in sort an exception
+among her sex. Juana possessed in an equal degree the most attaching
+virtues and the most passionate impulses; she had needed the modesty
+and sanctity of this monotonous life to calm and cool the tumultuous
+blood of the Maranas which bounded in her heart, the desires of which
+her adopted mother told her were an instigation of the devil.
+
+A faint ray of light traced along the sill of the secret door guided
+Montefiore to the place; he scratched the panel softly and Juana
+opened to him. Montefiore entered, palpitating, but he recognized in
+the expression of the girl's face complete ignorance of her peril, a
+sort of naive curiosity, and an innocent admiration. He stopped short,
+arrested for a moment by the sacredness of the picture which met his
+eyes.
+
+He saw before him a tapestry on the walls with a gray ground sprinkled
+with violets, a little coffer of ebony, an antique mirror, an immense
+and very old arm chair also in ebony and covered with tapestry, a
+table with twisted legs, a pretty carpet on the floor, near the table
+a single chair; and that was all. On the table, however, were flowers
+and embroidery; in a recess at the farther end of the room was the
+narrow little bed where Juana dreamed. Above the bed were three
+pictures; and near the pillow a crucifix, with a holy water basin and
+a prayer, printed in letters of gold and framed. Flowers exhaled their
+perfume faintly; the candles cast a tender light; all was calm and
+pure and sacred. The dreamy thoughts of Juana, but above all Juana
+herself, had communicated to all things her own peculiar charm; her
+soul appeared to shine there, like the pearl in its matrix. Juana,
+dressed in white, beautiful with naught but her own beauty, laying
+down her rosary to answer love, might have inspired respect, even in a
+Montefiore, if the silence, if the night, if Juana herself had not
+seemed so amorous. Montefiore stood still, intoxicated with an unknown
+happiness, possibly that of Satan beholding heaven through a rift of
+the clouds which form its enclosure.
+
+"As soon as I saw you," he said in pure Tuscan, and in the modest tone
+of voice so peculiarly Italian, "I loved you. My soul and my life are
+now in you, and in you they will be forever, if you will have it so."
+
+Juana listened, inhaling from the atmosphere the sound of these words
+which the accents of love made magnificent.
+
+"Poor child! how have you breathed so long the air of this dismal
+house without dying of it? You, made to reign in the world, to inhabit
+the palace of a prince, to live in the midst of fetes, to feel the
+joys which love bestows, to see the world at your feet, to efface all
+other beauty by your own which can have no rival--you, to live here,
+solitary, with those two shopkeepers!"
+
+Adroit question! He wished to know if Juana had a lover.
+
+"True," she replied. "But who can have told you my secret thoughts?
+For the last few months I have nearly died of sadness. Yes, I would
+RATHER die than stay longer in this house. Look at that embroidery;
+there is not a stitch there which I did not set with dreadful
+thoughts. How many times I have thought of escaping to fling myself
+into the sea! Why? I don't know why,--little childish troubles, but
+very keen, though they are so silly. Often I have kissed my mother at
+night as one would kiss a mother for the last time, saying in my
+heart: 'To-morrow I will kill myself.' But I do not die. Suicides go
+to hell, you know, and I am so afraid of hell that I resign myself to
+live, to get up in the morning and go to bed at night, and work the
+same hours, and do the same things. I am not so weary of it, but I
+suffer--And yet, my father and mother adore me. Oh! I am bad, I am
+bad; I say so to my confessor."
+
+"Do you always live here alone, without amusement, without pleasures?"
+
+"Oh! I have not always been like this. Till I was fifteen the
+festivals of the church, the chants, the music gave me pleasure. I was
+happy, feeling myself like the angels without sin and able to
+communicate every week--I loved God then. But for the last three
+years, from day to day, all things have changed. First, I wanted
+flowers here--and I have them, lovely flowers! Then I wanted--but I
+want nothing now," she added, after a pause, smiling at Montefiore.
+"Have you not said that you would love me always?"
+
+"Yes, my Juana," cried Montefiore, softly, taking her round the waist
+and pressing her to his heart, "yes. But let me speak to you as you
+speak to God. Are you not as beautiful as Mary in heaven? Listen. I
+swear to you," he continued, kissing her hair, "I swear to take that
+forehead for my altar, to make you my idol, to lay at your feet all
+the luxuries of the world. For you, my palace at Milan; for you my
+horses, my jewels, the diamonds of my ancient family; for you, each
+day, fresh jewels, a thousand pleasures, and all the joys of earth!"
+
+"Yes," she said reflectively, "I would like that; but I feel within my
+soul that I would like better than all the world my husband. Mio caro
+sposo!" she said, as if it were impossible to give in any other
+language the infinite tenderness, the loving elegance with which the
+Italian tongue and accent clothe those delightful words. Besides,
+Italian was Juana's maternal language.
+
+"I should find," she continued, with a glance at Montefiore in which
+shone the purity of the cherubim, "I should find in HIM my dear
+religion, him and God--God and him. Is he to be you?" she said. "Yes,
+surely it will be you," she cried, after a pause. "Come, and see the
+picture my father brought me from Italy."
+
+She took a candle, made a sign to Montefiore, and showed him at the
+foot of her bed a Saint Michael overthrowing the demon.
+
+"Look!" she said, "has he not your eyes? When I saw you from my window
+in the street, our meeting seemed to me a sign from heaven. Every day
+during my morning meditation, while waiting for my mother to call me
+to prayer, I have so gazed at that picture, that angel, that I have
+ended by thinking him my husband--oh! heavens, I speak to you as
+though you were myself. I must seem crazy to you; but if you only knew
+how a poor captive wants to tell the thoughts that choke her! When
+alone, I talk to my flowers, to my tapestry; they can understand me
+better, I think, than my father and mother, who are so grave."
+
+"Juana," said Montefiore, taking her hands and kissing them with the
+passion that gushed in his eyes, in his gestures, in the tones of his
+voice, "speak to me as your husband, as yourself. I have suffered all
+that you have suffered. Between us two few words are needed to make us
+comprehend our past, but there will never be enough to express our
+coming happiness. Lay your hand upon my heart. Feel how it beats. Let
+us promise before God, who sees and hears us, to be faithful to each
+other throughout our lives. Here, take my ring--and give me yours."
+
+"Give you my ring!" she said in terror.
+
+"Why not?" asked Montefiore, uneasy at such artlessness.
+
+"But our holy father the Pope has blessed it; it was put upon my
+finger in childhood by a beautiful lady who took care of me, and who
+told me never to part with it."
+
+"Juana, you cannot love me!"
+
+"Ah!" she said, "here it is; take it. You, are you not another
+myself?"
+
+She held out the ring with a trembling hand, holding it tightly as she
+looked at Montefiore with a clear and penetrating eye that questioned
+him. That ring! all of herself was in it; but she gave it to him.
+
+"Oh, my Juana!" said Montefiore, again pressing her in his arms. "I
+should be a monster indeed if I deceived you. I will love you
+forever."
+
+Juana was thoughtful. Montefiore, reflecting that in this first
+interview he ought to venture upon nothing that might frighten a young
+girl so ignorantly pure, so imprudent by virtue rather than from
+desire, postponed all further action to the future, relying on his
+beauty, of which he knew the power, and on this innocent ring-
+marriage, the hymen of the heart, the lightest, yet the strongest of
+all ceremonies. For the rest of that night, and throughout the next
+day, Juana's imagination was the accomplice of her passion.
+
+On this first evening Montefiore forced himself to be as respectful as
+he was tender. With that intention, in the interests of his passion
+and the desires with which Juana inspired him, he was caressing and
+unctuous in language; he launched the young creature into plans for a
+new existence, described to her the world under glowing colors, talked
+to her of household details always attractive to the mind of girls,
+giving her a sense of the rights and realities of love. Then, having
+agreed upon the hour for their future nocturnal interviews, he left
+her happy, but changed; the pure and pious Juana existed no longer; in
+the last glance she gave him, in the pretty movement by which she
+brought her forehead to his lips, there was already more of passion
+than a girl should feel. Solitude, weariness of employments contrary
+to her nature had brought this about. To make the daughter of the
+Maranas truly virtuous, she ought to have been habituated, little by
+little, to the world, or else to have been wholly withdrawn from it.
+
+"The day, to-morrow, will seem very long to me," she said, receiving
+his kisses on her forehead. "But stay in the salon, and speak loud,
+that I may hear your voice; it fills my soul."
+
+Montefiore, clever enough to imagine the girl's life, was all the more
+satisfied with himself for restraining his desires because he saw that
+it would lead to his greater contentment. He returned to his room
+without accident.
+
+Ten days went by without any event occurring to trouble the peace and
+solitude of the house. Montefiore employed his Italian cajolery on old
+Perez, on Dona Lagounia, on the apprentice, even on the cook, and they
+all liked him; but, in spite of the confidence he now inspired in
+them, he never asked to see Juana, or to have the door of her
+mysterious hiding-place opened to him. The young girl, hungry to see
+her lover, implored him to do so; but he always refused her from an
+instinct of prudence. Besides, he had used his best powers and
+fascinations to lull the suspicions of the old couple, and had now
+accustomed them to see him, a soldier, stay in bed till midday on
+pretence that he was ill. Thus the lovers lived only in the night-
+time, when the rest of the household were asleep. If Montefiore had
+not been one of those libertines whom the habit of gallantry enables
+to retain their self-possession under all circumstances, he might have
+been lost a dozen times during those ten days. A young lover, in the
+simplicity of a first love, would have committed the enchanting
+imprudences which are so difficult to resist. But he did resist even
+Juana herself, Juana pouting, Juana making her long hair a chain which
+she wound about his neck when caution told him he must go.
+
+The most suspicious of guardians would however have been puzzled to
+detect the secret of their nightly meetings. It is to be supposed
+that, sure of success, the Italian marquis gave himself the ineffable
+pleasures of a slow seduction, step by step, leading gradually to the
+fire which should end the affair in a conflagration. On the eleventh
+day, at the dinner-table, he thought it wise to inform old Perez,
+under seal of secrecy, that the reason of his separation from his
+family was an ill-assorted marriage. This false revelation was an
+infamous thing in view of the nocturnal drama which was being played
+under that roof. Montefiore, an experienced rake, was preparing for
+the finale of that drama which he foresaw and enjoyed as an artist who
+loves his art. He expected to leave before long, and without regret,
+the house and his love. It would happen, he thought, in this way:
+Juana, after waiting for him in vain for several nights, would risk
+her life, perhaps, in asking Perez what had become of his guest; and
+Perez would reply, not aware of the importance of his answer,--
+
+"The Marquis de Montefiore is reconciled to his family, who consent to
+receive his wife; he has gone to Italy to present her to them."
+
+And Juana?--The marquis never asked himself what would become of
+Juana; but he had studied her character, its nobility, candor, and
+strength, and he knew he might be sure of her silence.
+
+He obtained a mission from one of the generals. Three days later, on
+the night preceding his intended departure, Montefiore, instead of
+returning to his own room after dinner, contrived to enter unseen that
+of Juana, to make that farewell night the longer. Juana, true Spaniard
+and true Italian, was enchanted with such boldness; it argued ardor!
+For herself she did not fear discovery. To find in the pure love of
+marriage the excitements of intrigue, to hide her husband behind the
+curtains of her bed, and say to her adopted father and mother, in case
+of detection: "I am the Marquise de Montefiore!"--was to an ignorant
+and romantic young girl, who for three years past had dreamed of love
+without dreaming of its dangers, delightful. The door closed on this
+last evening upon her folly, her happiness, like a veil, which it is
+useless here to raise.
+
+It was nine o'clock; the merchant and his wife were reading their
+evening prayers; suddenly the noise of a carriage drawn by several
+horses resounded in the street; loud and hasty raps echoed from the
+shop where the servant hurried to open the door, and into that
+venerable salon rushed a woman, magnificently dressed in spite of the
+mud upon the wheels of her travelling-carriage, which had just crossed
+Italy, France, and Spain. It was, of course, the Marana,--the Marana
+who, in spite of her thirty-six years, was still in all the glory of
+her ravishing beauty; the Marana who, being at that time the mistress
+of a king, had left Naples, the fetes, the skies of Naples, the climax
+of her life of luxury, on hearing from her royal lover of the events
+in Spain and the siege of Tarragona.
+
+"Tarragona! I must get to Tarragona before the town is taken!" she
+cried. "Ten days to reach Tarragona!"
+
+Then without caring for crown or court, she arrived in Tarragona,
+furnished with an almost imperial safe-conduct; furnished too with
+gold which enabled her to cross France with the velocity of a rocket.
+
+"My daughter! my daughter!" cried the Marana.
+
+At this voice, and the abrupt invasion of their solitude, the prayer-
+book fell from the hands of the old couple.
+
+"She is there," replied the merchant, calmly, after a pause during
+which he recovered from the emotion caused by the abrupt entrance, and
+the look and voice of the mother. "She is there," he repeated,
+pointing to the door of the little chamber.
+
+"Yes, but has any harm come to her; is she still--"
+
+"Perfectly well," said Dona Lagounia.
+
+"O God! send me to hell if it so pleases thee!" cried the Marana,
+dropping, exhausted and half dead, into a chair.
+
+The flush in her cheeks, due to anxiety, paled suddenly; she had
+strength to endure suffering, but none to bear this joy. Joy was more
+violent in her soul than suffering, for it contained the echoes of her
+pain and the agonies of its own emotion.
+
+"But," she said, "how have you kept her safe? Tarragona is taken."
+
+"Yes," said Perez, "but since you see me living why do you ask that
+question? Should I not have died before harm could have come to
+Juana?"
+
+At that answer, the Marana seized the calloused hand of the old man,
+and kissed it, wetting it with the tears that flowed from her eyes--
+she who never wept! those tears were all she had most precious under
+heaven.
+
+"My good Perez!" she said at last. "But have you had no soldiers
+quartered in your house?"
+
+"Only one," replied the Spaniard. "Fortunately for us the most loyal
+of men; a Spaniard by birth, but now an Italian who hates Bonaparte; a
+married man. He is ill, and gets up late and goes to bed early."
+
+"An Italian! What is his name?"
+
+"Montefiore."
+
+"Can it be the Marquis de Montefiore--"
+
+"Yes, Senora, he himself."
+
+"Has he seen Juana?"
+
+"No," said Dona Lagounia.
+
+"You are mistaken, wife," said Perez. "The marquis must have seen her
+for a moment, a short moment, it is true; but I think he looked at her
+that evening she came in here during supper."
+
+"Ah, let me see my daughter!"
+
+"Nothing easier," said Perez; "she is now asleep. If she has left the
+key in the lock we must waken her."
+
+As he rose to take the duplicate key of Juana's door his eyes fell by
+chance on the circular gleam of light upon the black wall of the inner
+courtyard. Within that circle he saw the shadow of a group such as
+Canova alone has attempted to render. The Spaniard turned back.
+
+"I do not know," he said to the Marana, "where to find the key."
+
+"You are very pale," she said.
+
+"And I will show you why," he cried, seizing his dagger and rapping
+its hilt violently on Juana's door as he shouted,--
+
+"Open! open! open! Juana!"
+
+Juana did not open, for she needed time to conceal Montefiore. She
+knew nothing of what was passing in the salon; the double portieres of
+thick tapestry deadened all sounds.
+
+"Madame, I lied to you in saying I could not find the key. Here it
+is," added Perez, taking it from a sideboard. "But it is useless.
+Juana's key is in the lock; her door is barricaded. We have been
+deceived, my wife!" he added, turning to Dona Lagounia. "There is a
+man in Juana's room."
+
+"Impossible! By my eternal salvation I say it is impossible!" said his
+wife.
+
+"Do not swear, Dona Lagounia. Our honor is dead, and this woman--" He
+pointed to the Marana, who had risen and was standing motionless,
+blasted by his words, "this woman has the right to despise us. She
+saved our life, our fortune, and our honor, and we have saved nothing
+for her but her money--Juana!" he cried again, "open, or I will burst
+in your door."
+
+His voice, rising in violence, echoed through the garrets in the roof.
+He was cold and calm. The life of Montefiore was in his hands; he
+would wash away his remorse in the blood of that Italian.
+
+"Out, out, out! out, all of you!" cried the Marana, springing like a
+tigress on the dagger, which she wrenched from the hand of the
+astonished Perez. "Out, Perez," she continued more calmly, "out, you
+and your wife and servants! There will be murder here. You might be
+shot by the French. Have nothing to do with this; it is my affair,
+mine only. Between my daughter and me there is none but God. As for
+the man, he belongs to ME. The whole earth could not tear him from my
+grasp. Go, go! I forgive you. I see plainly that the girl is a Marana.
+You, your religion, your virtue, were too weak to fight against my
+blood."
+
+She gave a dreadful sigh, turning her dry eyes on them. She had lost
+all, but she knew how to suffer,--a true courtesan.
+
+The door opened. The Marana forgot all else, and Perez, making a sign
+to his wife, remained at his post. With his old invincible Spanish
+honor he was determined to share the vengeance of the betrayed mother.
+Juana, all in white, and softly lighted by the wax candles, was
+standing calmly in the centre of her chamber.
+
+"What do you want with me?" she said.
+
+The Marana could not repress a passing shudder.
+
+"Perez," she asked, "has this room another issue?"
+
+Perez made a negative gesture; confiding in that gesture, the mother
+entered the room.
+
+"Juana," she said, "I am your mother, your judge; you have placed
+yourself in the only situation in which I could reveal myself to you.
+You have come down to me, you, whom I thought in heaven. Ah! you have
+fallen low indeed. You have a lover in this room."
+
+"Madame, there is and can be no one but my husband," answered the
+girl. "I am the Marquise de Montefiore."
+
+"Then there are two," said Perez, in a grave voice. "He told me he was
+married."
+
+"Montefiore, my love!" cried the girl, tearing aside the curtain and
+revealing the officer. "Come! they are slandering you."
+
+The Italian appeared, pale and speechless; he saw the dagger in the
+Marana's hand, and he knew her well. With one bound he sprang from the
+room, crying out in a thundering voice,--
+
+"Help! help! they are murdering a Frenchman. Soldiers of the 6th of
+the line, rush for Captain Diard! Help, help!"
+
+Perez had gripped the man and was trying to gag him with his large
+hand, but the Marana stopped him, saying,--
+
+"Bind him fast, but let him shout. Open the doors, leave them open,
+and go, go, as I told you; go, all of you.--As for you," she said,
+addressing Montefiore, "shout, call for help if you choose; by the
+time your soldiers get here this blade will be in your heart. Are you
+married? Answer."
+
+Montefiore, who had fallen on the threshold of the door, scarcely a
+step from Juana, saw nothing but the blade of the dagger, the gleam of
+which blinded him.
+
+"Has he deceived me?" said Juana, slowly. "He told me he was free."
+
+"He told me that he was married," repeated Perez, in his solemn voice.
+
+"Holy Virgin!" murmured Dona Lagounia.
+
+"Answer, soul of corruption," said the Marana, in a low voice, bending
+to the ear of the marquis.
+
+"Your daughter--" began Montefiore.
+
+"The daughter that was mine is dead or dying," interrupted the Marana.
+"I have no daughter; do not utter that word. Answer, are you married?"
+
+"No, madame," said Montefiore, at last, striving to gain time, "I
+desire to marry your daughter."
+
+"My noble Montefiore!" said Juana, drawing a deep breath.
+
+"Then why did you attempt to fly and cry for help?" asked Perez.
+
+Terrible, revealing light!
+
+Juana said nothing, but she wrung her hands and went to her arm-chair
+and sat down.
+
+At that moment a tumult rose in the street which was plainly heard in
+the silence of the room. A soldier of the 6th, hearing Montefiore's
+cry for help, had summoned Diard. The quartermaster, who was
+fortunately in his bivouac, came, accompanied by friends.
+
+"Why did I fly?" said Montefiore, hearing the voice of his friend.
+"Because I told you the truth; I am married--Diard! Diard!" he shouted
+in a piercing voice.
+
+But, at a word from Perez, the apprentice closed and bolted the doors,
+so that the soldiers were delayed by battering them in. Before they
+could enter, the Marana had time to strike her dagger into the guilty
+man; but anger hindered her aim, the blade slipped upon the Italian's
+epaulet, though she struck her blow with such force that he fell at
+the very feet of Juana, who took no notice of him. The Marana sprang
+upon him, and this time, resolved not to miss her prey, she caught him
+by the throat.
+
+"I am free and I will marry her! I swear it, by God, by my mother, by
+all there is most sacred in the world; I am a bachelor; I will marry
+her, on my honor!"
+
+And he bit the arm of the courtesan.
+
+"Mother," said Juana, "kill him. He is so base that I will not have
+him for my husband, were he ten times as beautiful."
+
+"Ah! I recognize my daughter!" cried the mother.
+
+"What is all this?" demanded the quartermaster, entering the room.
+
+"They are murdering me," cried Montefiore, "on account of this girl;
+she says I am her lover. She inveigled me into a trap, and they are
+forcing me to marry her--"
+
+"And you reject her?" cried Diard, struck with the splendid beauty
+which contempt, hatred, and indignation had given to the girl, already
+so beautiful. "Then you are hard to please. If she wants a husband I
+am ready to marry her. Put up your weapons; there is no trouble here."
+
+The Marana pulled the Italian to the side of her daughter's bed and
+said to him, in a low voice,--
+
+"If I spare you, give thanks for the rest of your life; but, remember
+this, if your tongue ever injures my daughter you will see me again.
+Go!--How much 'dot' do you give her?" she continued, going up to
+Perez.
+
+"She has two hundred thousand gold piastres," replied the Spaniard.
+
+"And that is not all, monsieur," said the Marana, turning to Diard.
+"Who are you?--Go!" she repeated to Montefiore.
+
+The marquis, hearing this statement of gold piastres, came forward
+once more, saying,--
+
+"I am really free--"
+
+A glance from Juana silenced him.
+
+"You are really free to go," she said.
+
+And he went immediately.
+
+"Alas! monsieur," said the girl, turning to Diard, "I thank you with
+admiration. But my husband is in heaven. To-morrow I shall enter a
+convent--"
+
+"Juana, my Juana, hush!" cried the mother, clasping her in her arms.
+Then she whispered in the girl's ear. "You MUST have another husband."
+
+Juana turned pale. She freed herself from her mother and sat down once
+more in her arm-chair.
+
+"Who are you, monsieur?" repeated the Marana, addressing Diard.
+
+"Madame, I am at present only the quartermaster of the 6th of the
+line. But for such a wife I have the heart to make myself a marshal of
+France. My name is Pierre-Francois Diard. My father was provost of
+merchants. I am not--"
+
+"But, at least, you are an honest man, are you not?" cried the Marana,
+interrupting him. "If you please the Signorina Juana di Mancini, you
+can marry her and be happy together.--Juana," she continued in a grave
+tone, "in becoming the wife of a brave and worthy man remember that
+you will also be a mother. I have sworn that you shall kiss your
+children without a blush upon your face" (her voice faltered
+slightly). "I have sworn that you shall live a virtuous life; expect,
+therefore, many troubles. But, whatever happens, continue pure, and be
+faithful to your husband. Sacrifice all things to him, for he will be
+the father of your children--the father of your children! If you take
+a lover, I, your mother, will stand between you and him. Do you see
+that dagger? It is in your 'dot,'" she continued, throwing the weapon
+on Juana's bed. "I leave it there as the guarantee of your honor so
+long as my eyes are open and my arm free. Farewell," she said,
+restraining her tears. "God grant that we may never meet again."
+
+At that idea, her tears began to flow.
+
+"Poor child!" she added, "you have been happier than you knew in this
+dull home.--Do not allow her to regret it," she said, turning to
+Diard.
+
+The foregoing rapid narrative is not the principal subject of this
+Study, for the understanding of which it was necessary to explain how
+it happened that the quartermaster Diard married Juana di Mancini,
+that Montefiore and Diard were intimately known to each other, and to
+show plainly what blood and what passions were in Madame Diard.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE HISTORY OF MADAME DIARD
+
+By the time that the quartermaster had fulfilled all the long and
+dilatory formalities without which no French soldier can be married,
+he was passionately in love with Juana di Mancini, and Juana had had
+time to think of her coming destiny.
+
+An awful destiny! Juana, who felt neither esteem nor love for Diard,
+was bound to him forever, by a rash but necessary promise. The man was
+neither handsome nor well-made. His manners, devoid of all
+distinction, were a mixture of the worst army tone, the habits of his
+province, and his own insufficient education. How could she love
+Diard, she, a young girl all grace and elegance, born with an
+invincible instinct for luxury and good taste, her very nature tending
+toward the sphere of the higher social classes? As for esteeming him,
+she rejected the very thought precisely because he had married her.
+This repulsion was natural. Woman is a saintly and noble creature, but
+almost always misunderstood, and nearly always misjudged because she
+is misunderstood. If Juana had loved Diard she would have esteemed
+him. Love creates in a wife a new woman; the woman of the day before
+no longer exists on the morrow. Putting on the nuptial robe of a
+passion in which life itself is concerned, the woman wraps herself in
+purity and whiteness. Reborn into virtue and chastity, there is no
+past for her; she is all future, and should forget the things behind
+her to relearn life. In this sense the famous words which a modern
+poet has put into the lips of Marion Delorme is infused with truth,--
+
+"And Love remade me virgin."
+
+That line seems like a reminiscence of a tragedy of Corneille, so
+truly does it recall the energetic diction of the father of our modern
+theatre. Yet the poet was forced to sacrifice it to the essentially
+vaudevillist spirit of the pit.
+
+So Juana loveless was doomed to be Juana humiliated, degraded,
+hopeless. She could not honor the man who took her thus. She felt, in
+all the conscientious purity of her youth, that distinction, subtle in
+appearance but sacredly true, legal with the heart's legality, which
+women apply instinctively to all their feelings, even the least
+reflective. Juana became profoundly sad as she saw the nature and the
+extent of the life before her. Often she turned her eyes, brimming
+with tears proudly repressed, upon Perez and Dona Lagounia, who fully
+comprehended, both of them, the bitter thoughts those tears contained.
+But they were silent: of what good were reproaches now; why look for
+consolations? The deeper they were, the more they enlarged the wound.
+
+One evening, Juana, stupid with grief, heard through the open door of
+her little room, which the old couple had thought shut, a pitying moan
+from her adopted mother.
+
+"The child will die of grief."
+
+"Yes," said Perez, in a shaking voice, "but what can we do? I cannot
+now boast of her beauty and her chastity to Comte d'Arcos, to whom I
+hoped to marry her."
+
+"But a single fault is not vice," said the old woman, pitying as the
+angels.
+
+"Her mother gave her to this man," said Perez.
+
+"Yes, in a moment; without consulting the poor child!" cried Dona
+Lagounia.
+
+"She knew what she was doing."
+
+"But oh! into what hands our pearl is going!"
+
+"Say no more, or I shall seek a quarrel with that Diard."
+
+"And that would only lead to other miseries."
+
+Hearing these dreadful words Juana saw the happy future she had lost
+by her own wrongdoing. The pure and simple years of her quiet life
+would have been rewarded by a brilliant existence such as she had
+fondly dreamed,--dreams which had caused her ruin. To fall from the
+height of Greatness to Monsieur Diard! She wept. At times she went
+nearly mad. She floated for a while between vice and religion. Vice
+was a speedy solution, religion a lifetime of suffering. The
+meditation was stormy and solemn. The next day was the fatal day, the
+day for the marriage. But Juana could still remain free. Free, she
+knew how far her misery would go; married, she was ignorant of where
+it went or what it might bring her.
+
+Religion triumphed. Dona Lagounia stayed beside her child and prayed
+and watched as she would have prayed and watched beside the dying.
+
+"God wills it," she said to Juana.
+
+Nature gives to woman alternately a strength which enables her to
+suffer and a weakness which leads her to resignation. Juana resigned
+herself; and without restriction. She determined to obey her mother's
+prayer, and cross the desert of life to reach God's heaven, knowing
+well that no flowers grew for her along the way of that painful
+journey.
+
+She married Diard. As for the quartermaster, though he had no grace in
+Juana's eyes, we may well absolve him. He loved her distractedly. The
+Marana, so keen to know the signs of love, had recognized in that man
+the accents of passion and the brusque nature, the generous impulses,
+that are common to Southerners. In the paroxysm of her anger and her
+distress she had thought such qualities enough for her daughter's
+happiness.
+
+The first days of this marriage were apparently happy; or, to express
+one of those latent facts, the miseries of which are buried by women
+in the depths of their souls, Juana would not cast down her husband's
+joy,--a double role, dreadful to play, but to which, sooner or later,
+all women unhappily married come. This is a history impossible to
+recount in its full truth. Juana, struggling hourly against her
+nature, a nature both Spanish and Italian, having dried up the source
+of her tears by dint of weeping, was a human type, destined to
+represent woman's misery in its utmost expression, namely, sorrow
+undyingly active; the description of which would need such minute
+observations that to persons eager for dramatic emotions they would
+seem insipid. This analysis, in which every wife would find some one
+of her own sufferings, would require a volume to express them all; a
+fruitless, hopeless volume by its very nature, the merit of which
+would consist in faintest tints and delicate shadings which critics
+would declare to be effeminate and diffuse. Besides, what man could
+rightly approach, unless he bore another heart within his heart, those
+solemn and touching elegies which certain women carry with them to
+their tomb; melancholies, misunderstood even by those who cause them;
+sighs unheeded, devotions unrewarded,--on earth at least,--splendid
+silences misconstrued; vengeances withheld, disdained; generosities
+perpetually bestowed and wasted; pleasures longed for and denied;
+angelic charities secretly accomplished,--in short, all the religions
+of womanhood and its inextinguishable love.
+
+Juana knew that life; fate spared her nought. She was wholly a wife,
+but a sorrowful and suffering wife; a wife incessantly wounded, yet
+forgiving always; a wife pure as a flawless diamond,--she who had the
+beauty and the glow of the diamond, and in that beauty, that glow, a
+vengeance in her hand; for she was certainly not a woman to fear the
+dagger added to her "dot."
+
+At first, inspired by a real love, by one of those passions which for
+the time being change even odious characters and bring to light all
+that may be noble in a soul, Diard behaved like a man of honor. He
+forced Montefiore to leave the regiment and even the army corps, so
+that his wife might never meet him during the time they remained in
+Spain. Next, he petitioned for his own removal, and succeeded in
+entering the Imperial Guard. He desired at any price to obtain a
+title, honors, and consideration in keeping with his present wealth.
+With this idea in his mind, he behaved courageously in one of the most
+bloody battles in Germany, but, unfortunately, he was too severely
+wounded to remain in the service. Threatened with the loss of a leg,
+he was forced to retire on a pension, without the title of baron,
+without those rewards he hoped to win, and would have won had he not
+been Diard.
+
+This event, this wound, and his thwarted hopes contributed to change
+his character. His Provencal energy, roused for a time, sank down. At
+first he was sustained by his wife, in whom his efforts, his courage,
+his ambition had induced some belief in his nature, and who showed
+herself, what women are, tender and consoling in the troubles of life.
+Inspired by a few words from Juana, the retired soldier came to Paris,
+resolved to win in an administrative career a position to command
+respect, bury in oblivion the quartermaster of the 6th of the line,
+and secure for Madame Diard a noble title. His passion for that
+seductive creature enabled him to divine her most secret wishes. Juana
+expressed nothing, but he understood her. He was not loved as a lover
+dreams of being loved; he knew this, and he strove to make himself
+respected, loved, and cherished. He foresaw a coming happiness, poor
+man, in the patience and gentleness shown on all occasions by his
+wife; but that patience, that gentleness, were only the outward signs
+of the resignation which had made her his wife. Resignation, religion,
+were they love? Often Diard wished for refusal where he met with
+chaste obedience; often he would have given his eternal life that
+Juana might have wept upon his bosom and not disguised her secret
+thoughts behind a smiling face which lied to him nobly. Many young men
+--for after a certain age men no longer struggle--persist in the
+effort to triumph over an evil fate, the thunder of which they hear,
+from time to time, on the horizon of their lives; and when at last
+they succumb and roll down the precipice of evil, we ought to do them
+justice and acknowledge these inward struggles.
+
+Like many men Diard tried all things, and all things were hostile to
+him. His wealth enabled him to surround his wife with the enjoyments
+of Parisian luxury. She lived in a fine house, with noble rooms, where
+she maintained a salon, in which abounded artists (by nature no judges
+of men), men of pleasure ready to amuse themselves anywhere, a few
+politicians who swelled the numbers, and certain men of fashion, all
+of whom admired Juana. Those who put themselves before the eyes of the
+public in Paris must either conquer Paris or be subject to it. Diard's
+character was not sufficiently strong, compact, or persistent to
+command society at that epoch, because it was an epoch when all men
+were endeavoring to rise. Social classifications ready-made are
+perhaps a great boon even for the people. Napoleon has confided to us
+the pains he took to inspire respect in his court, where most of the
+courtiers had been his equals. But Napoleon was Corsican, and Diard
+Provencal. Given equal genius, an islander will always be more compact
+and rounded than the man of terra firma in the same latitude; the arm
+of the sea which separates Corsica from Provence is, in spite of human
+science, an ocean which has made two nations.
+
+Diard's mongrel position, which he himself made still more
+questionable, brought him great troubles. Perhaps there is useful
+instruction to be derived from the almost imperceptible connection of
+acts which led to the finale of this history.
+
+In the first place, the sneerers of Paris did not see without
+malicious smiles and words the pictures with which the former
+quartermaster adorned his handsome mansion. Works of art purchased the
+night before were said to be spoils from Spain; and this accusation
+was the revenge of those who were jealous of his present fortune.
+Juana comprehended this reproach, and by her advice Diard sent back to
+Tarragona all the pictures he had brought from there. But the public,
+determined to see things in the worst light, only said, "That Diard is
+shrewd; he has sold his pictures." Worthy people continued to think
+that those which remained in the Diard salons were not honorably
+acquired. Some jealous women asked how it was that a DIARD (!) had
+been able to marry so rich and beautiful a young girl. Hence comments
+and satires without end, such as Paris contributes. And yet, it must
+be said, that Juana met on all sides the respect inspired by her pure
+and religious life, which triumphed over everything, even Parisian
+calumny; but this respect stopped short with her, her husband received
+none of it. Juana's feminine perception and her keen eye hovering over
+her salons, brought her nothing but pain.
+
+This lack of esteem was perfectly natural. Diard's comrades, in spite
+of the virtues which our imaginations attribute to soldiers, never
+forgave the former quartermaster of the 6th of the line for becoming
+suddenly so rich and for attempting to cut a figure in Paris. Now in
+Paris, from the last house in the faubourg Saint-Germain to the last
+in the rue Saint-Lazare, between the heights of the Luxembourg and the
+heights of Montmartre, all that clothes itself and gabbles, clothes
+itself to go out and goes out to gabble. All that world of great and
+small pretensions, that world of insolence and humble desires, of envy
+and cringing, all that is gilded or tarnished, young or old, noble of
+yesterday or noble from the fourth century, all that sneers at a
+parvenu, all that fears to commit itself, all that wants to demolish
+power and worships power if it resists,--ALL those ears hear, ALL
+those tongues say, ALL those minds know, in a single evening, where
+the new-comer who aspires to honor among them was born and brought up,
+and what that interloper has done, or has not done, in the course of
+his life. There may be no court of assizes for the upper classes of
+society; but at any rate they have the most cruel of public
+prosecutors, an intangible moral being, both judge and executioner,
+who accuses and brands. Do not hope to hide anything from him; tell
+him all yourself; he wants to know all and he will know all. Do not
+ask what mysterious telegraph it was which conveyed to him in the
+twinkling of an eye, at any hour, in any place, that story, that bit
+of news, that scandal; do not ask what prompts him. That telegraph is
+a social mystery; no observer can report its effects. Of many
+extraordinary instances thereof, one may suffice: The assassination of
+the Duc de Berry, which occurred at the Opera-house, was related
+within ten minutes in the Ile-Saint-Louis. Thus the opinion of the 6th
+of the line as to its quartermaster filtered through society the night
+on which he gave his first ball.
+
+Diard was therefore debarred from succeeding in society. Henceforth
+his wife alone had the power to make anything of him. Miracle of our
+strange civilization! In Paris, if a man is incapable of being
+anything himself, his wife, when she is young and clever, may give him
+other chances for elevation. We sometimes meet with invalid women,
+feeble beings apparently, who, without rising from sofas or leaving
+their chambers, have ruled society, moved a thousand springs, and
+placed their husbands where their ambition or their vanity prompted.
+But Juana, whose childhood was passed in her retreat in Tarragona,
+knew nothing of the vices, the meannesses, or the resources of
+Parisian society; she looked at that society with the curiosity of a
+girl, but she learned from it only that which her sorrow and her
+wounded pride revealed to her.
+
+Juana had the tact of a virgin heart which receives impressions in
+advance of the event, after the manner of what are called
+"sensitives." The solitary young girl, so suddenly become a woman and
+a wife, saw plainly that were she to attempt to compel society to
+respect her husband, it must be after the manner of Spanish beggars,
+carbine in hand. Besides, the multiplicity of the precautions she
+would have to take, would they meet the necessity? Suddenly she
+divined society as, once before, she had divined life, and she saw
+nothing around her but the immense extent of an irreparable disaster.
+She had, moreover, the additional grief of tardily recognizing her
+husband's peculiar form of incapacity; he was a man unfitted for any
+purpose that required continuity of ideas. He could not understand a
+consistent part, such as he ought to play in the world; he perceived
+it neither as a whole nor in its gradations, and its gradations were
+everything. He was in one of those positions where shrewdness and tact
+might have taken the place of strength; when shrewdness and tact
+succeed, they are, perhaps, the highest form of strength.
+
+Now Diard, far from arresting the spot of oil on his garments left by
+his antecedents, did his best to spread it. Incapable of studying the
+phase of the empire in the midst of which he came to live in Paris, he
+wanted to be made prefect. At that time every one believed in the
+genius of Napoleon; his favor enhanced the value of all offices.
+Prefectures, those miniature empires, could only be filled by men of
+great names, or chamberlains of H.M. the emperor and king. Already the
+prefects were a species of vizier. The myrmidons of the great man
+scoffed at Diard's pretensions to a prefecture, whereupon he lowered
+his demand to a sub-prefecture. There was, of course, a ridiculous
+discrepancy between this latter demand and the magnitude of his
+fortune. To frequent the imperial salons and live with insolent
+luxury, and then to abandon that millionaire life and bury himself as
+sub-prefect at Issoudun or Savenay was certainly holding himself below
+his position. Juana, too late aware of our laws and habits and
+administrative customs, did not enlighten her husband soon enough.
+Diard, desperate, petitioned successively all the ministerial powers;
+repulsed everywhere, he found nothing open to him; and society then
+judged him as the government judged him and as he judged himself.
+Diard, grievously wounded on the battlefield, was nevertheless not
+decorated; the quartermaster, rich as he was, was allowed no place in
+public life, and society logically refused him that to which he
+pretended in its midst.
+
+Finally, to cap all, the luckless man felt in his own home the
+superiority of his wife. Though she used great tact--we might say
+velvet softness if the term were admissible--to disguise from her
+husband this supremacy, which surprised and humiliated herself, Diard
+ended by being affected by it.
+
+At a game of life like this men are either unmanned, or they grow the
+stronger, or they give themselves to evil. The courage or the ardor of
+this man lessened under the reiterated blows which his own faults
+dealt to his self-appreciation, and fault after fault he committed. In
+the first place he had to struggle against his own habits and
+character. A passionate Provencal, frank in his vices as in his
+virtues, this man whose fibres vibrated like the strings of a harp,
+was all heart to his former friends. He succored the shabby and
+spattered man as readily as the needy of rank; in short, he accepted
+everybody, and gave his hand in his gilded salons to many a poor
+devil. Observing this on one occasion, a general of the empire, a
+variety of the human species of which no type will presently remain,
+refused his hand to Diard, and called him, insolently, "my good
+fellow" when he met him. The few persons of really good society whom
+Diard knew, treated him with that elegant, polished contempt against
+which a new-made man has seldom any weapons. The manners, the semi-
+Italian gesticulations, the speech of Diard, his style of dress,--all
+contributed to repulse the respect which careful observation of
+matters of good taste and dignity might otherwise obtain for vulgar
+persons; the yoke of such conventionalities can only be cast off by
+great and unthinkable powers. So goes the world.
+
+These details but faintly picture the many tortures to which Juana was
+subjected; they came upon her one by one; each social nature pricked
+her with its own particular pin; and to a soul which preferred the
+thrust of a dagger, there could be no worse suffering than this
+struggle in which Diard received insults he did not feel and Juana
+felt those she did not receive. A moment came, an awful moment, when
+she gained a clear and lucid perception of society, and felt in one
+instant all the sorrows which were gathering themselves together to
+fall upon her head. She judged her husband incapable of rising to the
+honored ranks of the social order, and she felt that he would one day
+descend to where his instincts led him. Henceforth Juana felt pity for
+him.
+
+The future was very gloomy for this young woman. She lived in constant
+apprehension of some disaster. This presentiment was in her soul as a
+contagion is in the air, but she had strength of mind and will to
+disguise her anguish beneath a smile. Juana had ceased to think of
+herself. She used her influence to make Diard resign his various
+pretensions and to show him, as a haven, the peaceful and consoling
+life of home. Evils came from society--why not banish it? In his home
+Diard found peace and respect; he reigned there. She felt herself
+strong to accept the trying task of making him happy,--he, a man
+dissatisfied with himself. Her energy increased with the difficulties
+of life; she had all the secret heroism necessary to her position;
+religion inspired her with those desires which support the angel
+appointed to protect a Christian soul--occult poesy, allegorical image
+of our two natures!
+
+Diard abandoned his projects, closed his house to the world, and lived
+in his home. But here he found another reef. The poor soldier had one
+of those eccentric souls which need perpetual motion. Diard was one of
+the men who are instinctively compelled to start again the moment they
+arrive, and whose vital object seems to be to come and go incessantly,
+like the wheels mentioned in Holy Writ. Perhaps he felt the need of
+flying from himself. Without wearying of Juana, without blaming Juana,
+his passion for her, rendered tranquil by time, allowed his natural
+character to assert itself. Henceforth his days of gloom were more
+frequent, and he often gave way to southern excitement. The more
+virtuous a woman is and the more irreproachable, the more a man likes
+to find fault with her, if only to assert by that act his legal
+superiority. But if by chance she seems really imposing to him, he
+feels the need of foisting faults upon her. After that, between man
+and wife, trifles increase and grow till they swell to Alps.
+
+But Juana, patient and without pride, gentle and without that
+bitterness which women know so well how to cast into their submission,
+left Diard no chance for planned ill-humor. Besides, she was one of
+those noble creatures to whom it is impossible to speak
+disrespectfully; her glance, in which her life, saintly and pure,
+shone out, had the weight of a fascination. Diard, embarrassed at
+first, then annoyed, ended by feeling that such high virtue was a yoke
+upon him. The goodness of his wife gave him no violent emotions, and
+violent emotions were what he wanted. What myriads of scenes are
+played in the depths of his souls, beneath the cold exterior of lives
+that are, apparently, commonplace! Among these dramas, lasting each
+but a short time, though they influence life so powerfully and are
+frequently the forerunners of the great misfortune doomed to fall on
+so many marriages, it is difficult to choose an example. There was a
+scene, however, which particularly marked the moment when in the life
+of this husband and wife estrangement began. Perhaps it may also serve
+to explain the finale of this narrative.
+
+Juana had two children, happily for her, two sons. The first was born
+seven months after her marriage. He was called Juan, and he strongly
+resembled his mother. The second was born about two years after her
+arrival in Paris. The latter resembled both Diard and Juana, but more
+particularly Diard. His name was Francisque. For the last five years
+Francisque had been the object of Juana's most tender and watchful
+care. The mother was constantly occupied with that child; to him her
+prettiest caresses; to him the toys, but to him, especially, the
+penetrating mother-looks. Juana had watched him from his cradle; she
+had studied his cries, his motions; she endeavored to discern his
+nature that she might educate him wisely. It seemed at times as if she
+had but that one child. Diard, seeing that the eldest, Juan, was in a
+way neglected, took him under his own protection; and without
+inquiring even of himself whether the boy was the fruit of that
+ephemeral love to which he owed his wife, he made him his Benjamin.
+
+Of all the sentiments transmitted to her through the blood of her
+grandmothers which consumed her, Madame Diard accepted one alone,--
+maternal love. But she loved her children doubly: first with the noble
+violence of which her mother the Marana had given her the example;
+secondly, with grace and purity, in the spirit of those social virtues
+the practice of which was the glory of her life and her inward
+recompense. The secret thought, the conscience of her motherhood,
+which gave to the Marana's life its stamp of untaught poesy, was to
+Juana an acknowledged life, an open consolation at all hours. Her
+mother had been virtuous as other women are criminal,--in secret; she
+had stolen a fancied happiness, she had never really tasted it. But
+Juana, unhappy in her virtue as her mother was unhappy in her vice,
+could enjoy at all moments the ineffable delights which her mother had
+so craved and could not have. To her, as to her mother, maternity
+comprised all earthly sentiments. Each, from differing causes, had no
+other comfort in their misery. Juana's maternal love may have been the
+strongest because, deprived of all other affections, she put the joys
+she lacked into the one joy of her children; and there are noble
+passions that resemble vice; the more they are satisfied the more they
+increase. Mothers and gamblers are alike insatiable.
+
+When Juana saw the generous pardon laid silently on the head of Juan
+by Diard's fatherly affection, she was much moved, and from the day
+when the husband and wife changed parts she felt for him the true and
+deep interest she had hitherto shown to him as a matter of duty only.
+If that man had been more consistent in his life; if he had not
+destroyed by fitful inconstancy and restlessness the forces of a true
+though excitable sensibility, Juana would doubtless have loved him in
+the end. Unfortunately, he was a type of those southern natures which
+are keen in perceptions they cannot follow out; capable of great
+things over-night, and incapable the next morning; often the victim of
+their own virtues, and often lucky through their worst passions;
+admirable men in some respects, when their good qualities are kept to
+a steady energy by some outward bond. For two years after his retreat
+from active life Diard was held captive in his home by the softest
+chains. He lived, almost in spite of himself, under the influence of
+his wife, who made herself gay and amusing to cheer him, who used the
+resources of feminine genius to attract and seduce him to a love of
+virtue, but whose ability and cleverness did not go so far as to
+simulate love.
+
+At this time all Paris was talking of the affair of a captain in the
+army who in a paroxysm of libertine jealousy had killed a woman.
+Diard, on coming home to dinner, told his wife that the officer was
+dead. He had killed himself to avoid the dishonor of a trial and the
+shame of death upon the scaffold. Juana did not see at first the logic
+of such conduct, and her husband was obliged to explain to her the
+fine jurisprudence of French law, which does not prosecute the dead.
+
+"But, papa, didn't you tell us the other day that the king could
+pardon?" asked Francisque.
+
+"The king can give nothing but life," said Juan, half scornfully.
+
+Diard and Juana, the spectators of this little scene, were differently
+affected by it. The glance, moist with joy, which his wife cast upon
+her eldest child was a fatal revelation to the husband of the secrets
+of a heart hitherto impenetrable. That eldest child was all Juana;
+Juana comprehended him; she was sure of his heart, his future; she
+adored him, but her ardent love was a secret between herself, her
+child, and God. Juan instinctively enjoyed the seeming indifference of
+his mother in presence of his father and brother, for she pressed him
+to her heart when alone. Francisque was Diard, and Juana's incessant
+care and watchfulness betrayed her desire to correct in the son the
+vices of the father and to encourage his better qualities. Juana,
+unaware that her glance had said too much and that her husband had
+rightly interpreted it, took Francisque in her lap and gave him, in a
+gentle voice still trembling with the pleasure that Juan's answer had
+brought her, a lesson upon honor, simplified to his childish
+intelligence.
+
+"That boy's character requires care," said Diard.
+
+"Yes," she replied simply.
+
+"How about Juan?"
+
+Madame Diard, struck by the tone in which the words were uttered,
+looked at her husband.
+
+"Juan was born perfect," he added.
+
+Then he sat down gloomily, and reflected. Presently, as his wife
+continued silent, he added:--
+
+"You love one of YOUR children better than the other."
+
+"You know that," she said.
+
+"No," said Diard, "I did not know until now which of them you
+preferred."
+
+"But neither of them have ever given me a moment's uneasiness," she
+answered quickly.
+
+"But one of them gives you greater joys," he said, more quickly still.
+
+"I never counted them," she said.
+
+"How false you women are!" cried Diard. "Will you dare to say that
+Juan is not the child of your heart?"
+
+"If that were so," she said, with dignity, "do you think it a
+misfortune?"
+
+"You have never loved me. If you had chosen, I would have conquered
+worlds for your sake. You know all that I have struggled to do in
+life, supported by the hope of pleasing you. Ah! if you had only loved
+me!"
+
+"A woman who loves," said Juana, "likes to live in solitude, far from
+the world, and that is what we are doing."
+
+"I know, Juana, that YOU are never in the wrong."
+
+The words were said bitterly, and cast, for the rest of their lives
+together, a coldness between them.
+
+On the morrow of that fatal day Diard went back to his old companions
+and found distractions for his mind in play. Unfortunately, he won
+much money, and continued playing. Little by little, he returned to
+the dissipated life he had formerly lived. Soon he ceased even to dine
+in his own home.
+
+Some months went by in the enjoyment of this new independence; he was
+determined to preserve it, and in order to do so he separated himself
+from his wife, giving her the large apartments and lodging himself in
+the entresol. By the end of the year Diard and Juana only saw each
+other in the morning at breakfast.
+
+Like all gamblers, he had his alternations of loss and gain. Not
+wishing to cut into the capital of his fortune, he felt the necessity
+of withdrawing from his wife the management of their income; and the
+day came when he took from her all she had hitherto freely disposed of
+for the household benefit, giving her instead a monthly stipend. The
+conversation they had on this subject was the last of their married
+intercourse. The silence that fell between them was a true divorce;
+Juana comprehended that from henceforth she was only a mother, and she
+was glad, not seeking for the causes of this evil. For such an event
+is a great evil. Children are conjointly one with husband and wife in
+the home, and the life of her husband could not be a source of grief
+and injury to Juana only.
+
+As for Diard, now emancipated, he speedily grew accustomed to win and
+lose enormous sums. A fine player and a heavy player, he soon became
+celebrated for his style of playing. The social consideration he had
+been unable to win under the Empire, he acquired under the Restoration
+by the rolling of his gold on the green cloth and by his talent for
+all games that were in vogue. Ambassadors, bankers, persons with
+newly-acquired large fortunes, and all those men who, having sucked
+life to the dregs, turn to gambling for its feverish joys, admired
+Diard at their clubs,--seldom in their own houses,--and they all
+gambled with him. He became the fashion. Two or three times during the
+winter he gave a fete as a matter of social pride in return for the
+civilities he received. At such times Juana once more caught a glimpse
+of the world of balls, festivities, luxury, and lights; but for her it
+was a sort of tax imposed upon the comfort of her solitude. She, the
+queen of these solemnities, appeared like a being fallen from some
+other planet. Her simplicity, which nothing had corrupted, her
+beautiful virginity of soul, which her peaceful life restored to her,
+her beauty and her true modesty, won her sincere homage. But observing
+how few women ever entered her salons, she came to understand that
+though her husband was following, without communicating its nature to
+her, a new line of conduct, he had gained nothing actually in the
+world's esteem.
+
+Diard was not always lucky; far from it. In three years he had
+dissipated three fourths of his fortune, but his passion for play gave
+him the energy to continue it. He was intimate with a number of men,
+more particularly with the roues of the Bourse, men who, since the
+revolution, have set up the principle that robbery done on a large
+scale is only a SMIRCH to the reputation,--transferring thus to
+financial matters the loose principles of love in the eighteenth
+century. Diard now became a sort of business man, and concerned
+himself in several of those affairs which are called SHADY in the
+slang of the law-courts. He practised the decent thievery by which so
+many men, cleverly masked, or hidden in the recesses of the political
+world, make their fortunes,--thievery which, if done in the streets by
+the light of an oil lamp, would see a poor devil to the galleys, but,
+under gilded ceilings and by the light of candelabra, is sanctioned.
+Diard brought up, monopolized, and sold sugars; he sold offices; he
+had the glory of inventing the "man of straw" for lucrative posts
+which it was necessary to keep in his own hands for a short time; he
+bought votes, receiving, on one occasion, so much per cent on the
+purchase of fifteen parliamentary votes which all passed on one
+division from the benches of the Left to the benches of the Right.
+Such actions are no longer crimes or thefts,--they are called
+governing, developing industry, becoming a financial power. Diard was
+placed by public opinion on the bench of infamy where many an able man
+was already seated. On that bench is the aristocracy of evil. It is
+the upper Chamber of scoundrels of high life. Diard was, therefore,
+not a mere commonplace gambler who is seen to be a blackguard, and
+ends by begging. That style of gambler is no longer seen in society of
+a certain topographical height. In these days bold scoundrels die
+brilliantly in the chariot of vice with the trappings of luxury.
+Diard, at least, did not buy his remorse at a low price; he made
+himself one of these privileged men. Having studied the machinery of
+government and learned all the secrets and the passions of the men in
+power, he was able to maintain himself in the fiery furnace into which
+he had sprung.
+
+Madame Diard knew nothing of her husband's infernal life. Glad of his
+abandonment, she felt no curiosity about him, and all her hours were
+occupied. She devoted what money she had to the education of her
+children, wishing to make men of them, and giving them straight-
+forward reasons, without, however, taking the bloom from their young
+imaginations. Through them alone came her interests and her emotions;
+consequently, she suffered no longer from her blemished life. Her
+children were to her what they are to many mothers for a long period
+of time,--a sort of renewal of their own existence. Diard was now an
+accidental circumstance, not a participator in her life, and since he
+had ceased to be the father and the head of the family, Juana felt
+bound to him by no tie other than that imposed by conventional laws.
+Nevertheless, she brought up her children to the highest respect for
+paternal authority, however imaginary it was for them. In this she was
+greatly seconded by her husband's continual absence. If he had been
+much in the home Diard would have neutralized his wife's efforts. The
+boys had too much intelligence and shrewdness not to have judged their
+father; and to judge a father is moral parricide.
+
+In the long run, however, Juana's indifference to her husband wore
+itself away; it even changed to a species of fear. She understood at
+last how the conduct of a father might long weigh on the future of her
+children, and her motherly solicitude brought her many, though
+incomplete, revelations of the truth. From day to day the dread of
+some unknown but inevitable evil in the shadow of which she lived
+became more and more keen and terrible. Therefore, during the rare
+moments when Diard and Juana met she would cast upon his hollow face,
+wan from nights of gambling and furrowed by emotions, a piercing look,
+the penetration of which made Diard shudder. At such times the assumed
+gaiety of her husband alarmed Juana more than his gloomiest
+expressions of anxiety when, by chance, he forgot that assumption of
+joy. Diard feared his wife as a criminal fears the executioner. In
+him, Juana saw her children's shame; and in her Diard dreaded a calm
+vengeance, the judgment of that serene brow, an arm raised, a weapon
+ready.
+
+After fifteen years of marriage Diard found himself without resources.
+He owed three hundred thousand francs and he could scarcely muster one
+hundred thousand. The house, his only visible possession, was
+mortgaged to its fullest selling value. A few days more, and the sort
+of prestige with which opulence had invested him would vanish. Not a
+hand would be offered, not a purse would be open to him. Unless some
+favorable event occurred he would fall into a slough of contempt,
+deeper perhaps than he deserved, precisely because he had mounted to a
+height he could not maintain. At this juncture he happened to hear
+that a number of strangers of distinction, diplomats and others, were
+assembled at the watering-places in the Pyrenees, where they gambled
+for enormous sums, and were doubtless well supplied with money.
+
+He determined to go at once to the Pyrenees; but he would not leave
+his wife in Paris, lest some importunate creditor might reveal to her
+the secret of his horrible position. He therefore took her and the two
+children with him, refusing to allow her to take the tutor and
+scarcely permitting her to take a maid. His tone was curt and
+imperious; he seemed to have recovered some energy. This sudden
+journey, the cause of which escaped her penetration, alarmed Juana
+secretly. Her husband made it gaily. Obliged to occupy the same
+carriage, he showed himself day by day more attentive to the children
+and more amiable to their mother. Nevertheless, each day brought Juana
+dark presentiments, the presentiments of mothers who tremble without
+apparent reason, but who are seldom mistaken when they tremble thus.
+For them the veil of the future seems thinner than for others.
+
+At Bordeaux, Diard hired in a quiet street a quiet little house,
+neatly furnished, and in it he established his wife. The house was at
+the corner of two streets, and had a garden. Joined to the neighboring
+house on one side only, it was open to view and accessible on the
+other three sides. Diard paid the rent in advance, and left Juana
+barely enough money for the necessary expenses of three months, a sum
+not exceeding a thousand francs. Madame Diard made no observation on
+this unusual meanness. When her husband told her that he was going to
+the watering-places and that she would stay at Bordeaux, Juana offered
+no difficulty, and at once formed a plan to teach the children Spanish
+and Italian, and to make them read the two masterpieces of the two
+languages. She was glad to lead a retired life, simply and naturally
+economical. To spare herself the troubles of material life, she
+arranged with a "traiteur" the day after Diard's departure to send in
+their meals. Her maid then sufficed for the service of the house, and
+she thus found herself without money, but her wants all provided for
+until her husband's return. Her pleasures consisted in taking walks
+with the children. She was then thirty-three years old. Her beauty,
+greatly developed, was in all its lustre. Therefore as soon as she
+appeared, much talk was made in Bordeaux about the beautiful Spanish
+stranger. At the first advances made to her Juana ceased to walk
+abroad, and confined herself wholly to her own large garden.
+
+Diard at first made a fortune at the baths. In two months he won three
+hundred thousand dollars, but it never occurred to him to send any
+money to his wife; he kept it all, expecting to make some great stroke
+of fortune on a vast stake. Towards the end of the second month the
+Marquis de Montefiore appeared at the same baths. The marquis was at
+this time celebrated for his wealth, his handsome face, his fortunate
+marriage with an Englishwoman, and more especially for his love of
+play. Diard, his former companion, encountered him, and desired to add
+his spoils to those of others. A gambler with four hundred thousand
+francs in hand is always in a position to do as he pleases. Diard,
+confident in his luck, renewed acquaintance with Montefiore. The
+latter received him very coldly, but nevertheless they played
+together, and Diard lost every penny that he possessed, and more.
+
+"My dear Montefiore," said the ex-quartermaster, after making a tour
+of the salon, "I owe you a hundred thousand francs; but my money is in
+Bordeaux, where I have left my wife."
+
+Diard had the money in bank-bills in his pocket; but with the self-
+possession and rapid bird's-eye view of a man accustomed to catch at
+all resources, he still hoped to recover himself by some one of the
+endless caprices of play. Montefiore had already mentioned his
+intention of visiting Bordeaux. Had he paid his debt on the spot,
+Diard would have been left without the power to take his revenge; a
+revenge at cards often exceeds the amount of all preceding losses. But
+these burning expectations depended on the marquis's reply.
+
+"Wait, my dear fellow," said Montefiore, "and we will go together to
+Bordeaux. In all conscience, I am rich enough to-day not to wish to
+take the money of an old comrade."
+
+Three days later Diard and Montefiore were in Bordeaux at a gambling
+table. Diard, having won enough to pay his hundred thousand francs,
+went on until he had lost two hundred thousand more on his word. He
+was gay as a man who swam in gold. Eleven o'clock sounded; the night
+was superb. Montefiore may have felt, like Diard, a desire to breathe
+the open air and recover from such emotions in a walk. The latter
+proposed to the marquis to come home with him to take a cup of tea and
+get his money.
+
+"But Madame Diard?" said Montefiore.
+
+"Bah!" exclaimed the husband.
+
+They went down-stairs; but before taking his hat Diard entered the
+dining-room of the establishment and asked for a glass of water. While
+it was being brought, he walked up and down the room, and was able,
+without being noticed, to pick up one of those small sharp-pointed
+steel knives with pearl handles which are used for cutting fruit at
+dessert.
+
+"Where do you live?" said Montefiore, in the courtyard, "for I want to
+send a carriage there to fetch me."
+
+Diard told him the exact address.
+
+"You see," said Montefiore, in a low voice, taking Diard's arm, "that
+as long as I am with you I have nothing to fear; but if I came home
+alone and a scoundrel were to follow me, I should be profitable to
+kill."
+
+"Have you much with you?"
+
+"No, not much," said the wary Italian, "only my winnings. But they
+would make a pretty fortune for a beggar and turn him into an honest
+man for the rest of his life."
+
+Diard led the marquis along a lonely street where he remembered to
+have seen a house, the door of which was at the end of an avenue of
+trees with high and gloomy walls on either side of it. When they
+reached this spot he coolly invited the marquis to precede him; but as
+if the latter understood him he preferred to keep at his side. Then,
+no sooner were they fairly in the avenue, then Diard, with the agility
+of a tiger, tripped up the marquis with a kick behind the knees, and
+putting a foot on his neck stabbed him again and again to the heart
+till the blade of the knife broke in it. Then he searched Montefiore's
+pockets, took his wallet, money, everything. But though he had taken
+the Italian unawares, and had done the deed with lucid mind and the
+quickness of a pickpocket, Montefiore had time to cry "Murder! Help!"
+in a shrill and piercing voice which was fit to rouse every sleeper in
+the neighborhood. His last sighs were given in those horrible shrieks.
+
+Diard was not aware that at the moment when they entered the avenue a
+crowd just issuing from a theatre was passing at the upper end of the
+street. The cries of the dying man reached them, though Diard did his
+best to stifle the noise by setting his foot firmly on Montefiore's
+neck. The crowd began to run towards the avenue, the high walls of
+which appeared to echo back the cries, directing them to the very spot
+where the crime was committed. The sound of their coming steps seemed
+to beat on Diard's brain. But not losing his head as yet, the murderer
+left the avenue and came boldly into the street, walking very gently,
+like a spectator who sees the inutility of trying to give help. He
+even turned round once or twice to judge of the distance between
+himself and the crowd, and he saw them rushing up the avenue, with the
+exception of one man, who, with a natural sense of caution, began to
+watch Diard.
+
+"There he is! there he is!" cried the people, who had entered the
+avenue as soon as they saw Montefiore stretched out near the door of
+the empty house.
+
+As soon as that clamor rose, Diard, feeling himself well in the
+advance, began to run or rather to fly, with the vigor of a lion and
+the bounds of a deer. At the other end of the street he saw, or
+fancied he saw, a mass of persons, and he dashed down a cross street
+to avoid them. But already every window was open, and heads were
+thrust forth right and left, while from every door came shouts and
+gleams of light. Diard kept on, going straight before him, through the
+lights and the noise; and his legs were so actively agile that he soon
+left the tumult behind him, though without being able to escape some
+eyes which took in the extent of his course more rapidly than he could
+cover it. Inhabitants, soldiers, gendarmes, every one, seemed afoot in
+the twinkling of an eye. Some men awoke the commissaries of police,
+others stayed by the body to guard it. The pursuit kept on in the
+direction of the fugitive, who dragged it after him like the flame of
+a conflagration.
+
+Diard, as he ran, had all the sensations of a dream when he heard a
+whole city howling, running, panting after him. Nevertheless, he kept
+his ideas and his presence of mind. Presently he reached the wall of
+the garden of his house. The place was perfectly silent, and he
+thought he had foiled his pursuers, though a distant murmur of the
+tumult came to his ears like the roaring of the sea. He dipped some
+water from a brook and drank it. Then, observing a pile of stones on
+the road, he hid his treasure in it; obeying one of those vague
+thoughts which come to criminals at a moment when the faculty to judge
+their actions under all bearings deserts them, and they think to
+establish their innocence by want of proof of their guilt.
+
+That done, he endeavored to assume a placid countenance; he even tried
+to smile as he rapped softly on the door of his house, hoping that no
+one saw him. He raised his eyes, and through the outer blinds of one
+window came a gleam of light from his wife's room. Then, in the midst
+of his trouble, visions of her gentle life, spent with her children,
+beat upon his brain with the force of a hammer. The maid opened the
+door, which Diard hastily closed behind him with a kick. For a moment
+he breathed freely; then, noticing that he was bathed in perspiration,
+he sent the servant back to Juana and stayed in the darkness of the
+passage, where he wiped his face with his handkerchief and put his
+clothes in order, like a dandy about to pay a visit to a pretty woman.
+After that he walked into a track of the moonlight to examine his
+hands. A quiver of joy passed over him as he saw that no blood stains
+were on them; the hemorrhage from his victim's body was no doubt
+inward.
+
+But all this took time. When at last he mounted the stairs to Juana's
+room he was calm and collected, and able to reflect on his position,
+which resolved itself into two ideas: to leave the house, and get to
+the wharves. He did not THINK these ideas, he SAW them written in
+fiery letters on the darkness. Once at the wharves he could hide all
+day, return at night for his treasure, then conceal himself, like a
+rat, in the hold of some vessel and escape without any one suspecting
+his whereabouts. But to do all this, money, gold, was his first
+necessity,--and he did not possess one penny.
+
+The maid brought a light to show him up.
+
+"Felicie," he said, "don't you hear a noise in the street, shouts,
+cries? Go and see what it means, and come and tell me."
+
+His wife, in her white dressing-gown, was sitting at a table, reading
+aloud to Francisque and Juan from a Spanish Cervantes, while the boys
+followed her pronunciation of the words from the text. They all three
+stopped and looked at Diard, who stood in the doorway with his hands
+in his pockets; overcome, perhaps, by finding himself in this calm
+scene, so softly lighted, so beautiful with the faces of his wife and
+children. It was a living picture of the Virgin between her son and
+John.
+
+"Juana, I have something to say to you."
+
+"What has happened?" she asked, instantly perceiving from the livid
+paleness of her husband that the misfortune she had daily expected was
+upon them.
+
+"Oh, nothing; but I want to speak to you--to you, alone."
+
+And he glanced at his sons.
+
+"My dears, go to your room, and go to bed," said Juana; "say your
+prayers without me."
+
+The boys left the room in silence, with the incurious obedience of
+well-trained children.
+
+"My dear Juana," said Diard, in a coaxing voice, "I left you with very
+little money, and I regret it now. Listen to me; since I relieved you
+of the care of our income by giving you an allowance, have you not,
+like other women, laid something by?"
+
+"No," replied Juana, "I have nothing. In making that allowance you did
+not reckon the costs of the children's education. I don't say that to
+reproach you, my friend, only to explain my want of money. All that
+you gave me went to pay masters and--"
+
+"Enough!" cried Diard, violently. "Thunder of heaven! every instant is
+precious! Where are your jewels?"
+
+"You know very well I have never worn any."
+
+"Then there's not a sou to be had here!" cried Diard, frantically.
+
+"Why do you shout in that way?" she asked.
+
+"Juana," he replied, "I have killed a man."
+
+Juana sprang to the door of her children's room and closed it; then
+she returned.
+
+"Your sons must hear nothing," she said. "With whom have you fought?"
+
+"Montefiore," he replied.
+
+"Ah!" she said with a sigh, "the only man you had the right to kill."
+
+"There were many reasons why he should die by my hand. But I can't
+lose time--Money, money! for God's sake, money! I may be pursued. We
+did not fight. I--I killed him."
+
+"Killed him!" she cried, "how?"
+
+"Why, as one kills anything. He stole my whole fortune and I took it
+back, that's all. Juana, now that everything is quiet you must go down
+to that heap of stones--you know the heap by the garden wall--and get
+that money, since you haven't any in the house."
+
+"The money that you stole?" said Juana.
+
+"What does that matter to you? Have you any money to give me? I tell
+you I must get away. They are on my traces."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The people, the police."
+
+Juana left the room, but returned immediately.
+
+"Here," she said, holding out to him at arm's length a jewel, "that is
+Dona Lagounia's cross. There are four rubies in it, of great value, I
+have been told. Take it and go--go!"
+
+"Felicie hasn't come back," he cried, with a sudden thought. "Can she
+have been arrested?"
+
+Juana laid the cross on the table, and sprang to the windows that
+looked on the street. There she saw, in the moonlight, a file of
+soldiers posting themselves in deepest silence along the wall of the
+house. She turned, affecting to be calm, and said to her husband:--
+
+"You have not a minute to lose; you must escape through the garden.
+Here is the key of the little gate."
+
+As a precaution she turned to the other windows, looking on the
+garden. In the shadow of the trees she saw the gleam of the silver
+lace on the hats of a body of gendarmes; and she heard the distant
+mutterings of a crowd of persons whom sentinels were holding back at
+the end of the streets up which curiosity had drawn them. Diard had,
+in truth, been seen to enter his house by persons at their windows,
+and on their information and that of the frightened maid-servant, who
+was arrested, the troops and the people had blocked the two streets
+which led to the house. A dozen gendarmes, returning from the theatre,
+had climbed the walls of the garden, and guarded all exit in that
+direction.
+
+"Monsieur," said Juana, "you cannot escape. The whole town is here."
+
+Diard ran from window to window with the useless activity of a captive
+bird striking against the panes to escape. Juana stood silent and
+thoughtful.
+
+"Juana, dear Juana, help me! give me, for pity's sake, some advice."
+
+"Yes," said Juana, "I will; and I will save you."
+
+"Ah! you are always my good angel."
+
+Juana left the room and returned immediately, holding out to Diard,
+with averted head, one of his own pistols. Diard did not take it.
+Juana heard the entrance of the soldiers into the courtyard, where
+they laid down the body of the murdered man to confront the assassin
+with the sight of it. She turned round and saw Diard white and livid.
+The man was nearly fainting, and tried to sit down.
+
+"Your children implore you," she said, putting the pistol beneath his
+hand.
+
+"But--my good Juana, my little Juana, do you think--Juana! is it so
+pressing?--I want to kiss you."
+
+The gendarmes were mounting the staircase. Juana grasped the pistol,
+aimed it at Diard, holding him, in spite of his cries, by the throat;
+then she blew his brains out and flung the weapon on the ground.
+
+At that instant the door was opened violently. The public prosecutor,
+followed by an examining judge, a doctor, a sheriff, and a posse of
+gendarmes, all the representatives, in short, of human justice,
+entered the room.
+
+"What do you want?" asked Juana.
+
+"Is that Monsieur Diard?" said the prosecutor, pointing to the dead
+body bent double on the floor.
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Your gown is covered with blood, madame."
+
+"Do you not see why?" replied Juana.
+
+She went to the little table and sat down, taking up the volume of
+Cervantes; she was pale, with a nervous agitation which she
+nevertheless controlled, keeping it wholly inward.
+
+"Leave the room," said the prosecutor to the gendarmes.
+
+Then he signed to the examining judge and the doctor to remain.
+
+"Madame, under the circumstances, we can only congratulate you on the
+death of your husband," he said. "At least he has died as a soldier
+should, whatever crime his passions may have led him to commit. His
+act renders negatory that of justice. But however we may desire to
+spare you at such a moment, the law requires that we should make an
+exact report of all violent deaths. You will permit us to do our
+duty?"
+
+"May I go and change my dress?" she asked, laying down the volume.
+
+"Yes, madame; but you must bring it back to us. The doctor may need
+it."
+
+"It would be too painful for madame to see me operate," said the
+doctor, understanding the suspicions of the prosecutor. "Messieurs,"
+he added, "I hope you will allow her to remain in the next room."
+
+The magistrates approved the request of the merciful physician, and
+Felicie was permitted to attend her mistress. The judge and the
+prosecutor talked together in a low voice. Officers of the law are
+very unfortunate in being forced to suspect all, and to imagine evil
+everywhere. By dint of supposing wicked intentions, and of
+comprehending them, in order to reach the truth hidden under so many
+contradictory actions, it is impossible that the exercise of their
+dreadful functions should not, in the long run, dry up at their source
+the generous emotions they are constrained to repress. If the
+sensibilities of the surgeon who probes into the mysteries of the
+human body end by growing callous, what becomes of those of the judge
+who is incessantly compelled to search the inner folds of the soul?
+Martyrs to their mission, magistrates are all their lives in mourning
+for their lost illusions; crime weighs no less heavily on them than on
+the criminal. An old man seated on the bench is venerable, but a young
+judge makes a thoughtful person shudder. The examining judge in this
+case was young, and he felt obliged to say to the public prosecutor,--
+
+"Do you think that woman was her husband's accomplice? Ought we to
+take her into custody? Is it best to question her?"
+
+The prosecutor replied, with a careless shrug of his shoulders,--
+
+"Montefiore and Diard were two well-known scoundrels. The maid
+evidently knew nothing of the crime. Better let the thing rest there."
+
+The doctor performed the autopsy, and dictated his report to the
+sheriff. Suddenly he stopped, and hastily entered the next room.
+
+"Madame--" he said.
+
+Juana, who had removed her bloody gown, came towards him.
+
+"It was you," he whispered, stooping to her ear, "who killed your
+husband."
+
+"Yes, monsieur," she replied.
+
+The doctor returned and continued his dictation as follows,--
+
+"And, from the above assemblage of facts, it appears evident that the
+said Diard killed himself voluntarily and by his own hand."
+
+"Have you finished?" he said to the sheriff after a pause.
+
+"Yes," replied the writer.
+
+The doctor signed the report. Juana, who had followed him into the
+room, gave him one glance, repressing with difficulty the tears which
+for an instant rose into her eyes and moistened them.
+
+"Messieurs," she said to the public prosecutor and the judge, "I am a
+stranger here, and a Spaniard. I am ignorant of the laws, and I know
+no one in Bordeaux. I ask of you one kindness: enable me to obtain a
+passport for Spain."
+
+"One moment!" cried the examining judge. "Madame, what has become of
+the money stolen from the Marquis de Montefiore?"
+
+"Monsieur Diard," she replied, "said something to me vaguely about a
+heap of stones, under which he must have hidden it."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the street."
+
+The two magistrates looked at each other. Juana made a noble gesture
+and motioned to the doctor.
+
+"Monsieur," she said in his ear, "can I be suspected of some infamous
+action? I! The pile of stones must be close to the wall of my garden.
+Go yourself, I implore you. Look, search, find that money."
+
+The doctor went out, taking with him the examining judge, and together
+they found Montefiore's treasure.
+
+Within two days Juana had sold her cross to pay the costs of a
+journey. On her way with her two children to take the diligence which
+would carry her to the frontiers of Spain, she heard herself being
+called in the street. Her dying mother was being carried to a
+hospital, and through the curtains of her litter she had seen her
+daughter. Juana made the bearers enter a porte-cochere that was near
+them, and there the last interview between the mother and the daughter
+took place. Though the two spoke to each other in a low voice, Juan
+heard these parting words,--
+
+"Mother, die in peace; I have suffered for you all."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Juana, by Honore de Balzac
+
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 05:17:10 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 05:17:10 -0700
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