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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Thirteen, 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: The Thirteen
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley and Ellen Marriage
+
+Release Date: Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7416]
+Posting Date: March 7, 2010
+Last Updated: November 23, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THIRTEEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, Bonnie Sala, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+THE THIRTEEN
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley and Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+
+     DEDICATION
+
+     To Hector Berlioz.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+The _Histoire des Treize_ consists--or rather is built up--of three
+stories: _Ferragus_ or the _Rue Soly_, _La Duchesse de Langeais_ or _Ne
+touchez-paz a la hache_, and _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or_.
+
+
+To tell the truth, there is more power than taste throughout the
+_Histoire des Treize_, and perhaps not very much less unreality than
+power. Balzac is very much better than Eugene Sue, though Eugene Sue
+also is better than it is the fashion to think him just now. But he is
+here, to a certain extent competing with Sue on the latter’s own ground.
+The notion of the “Devorants”--of a secret society of men devoted to
+each other’s interests, entirely free from any moral or legal scruple,
+possessed of considerable means in wealth, ability, and position, all
+working together, by fair means or foul, for good ends or bad--is,
+no doubt, rather seducing to the imagination at all times; and it so
+happened that it was particularly seducing to the imagination of
+that time. And its example has been powerful since; it gave us Mr.
+Stevenson’s _New Arabian Nights_ only, as it were, the other day.
+
+But there is something a little schoolboyish in it; and I do not know
+that Balzac has succeeded entirely in eliminating this something. The
+pathos of the death, under persecution, of the innocent Clemence does
+not entirely make up for the unreasonableness of the whole situation.
+Nobody can say that the abominable misconduct of Maulincour--who is a
+hopeless “cad”--is too much punished, though an Englishman may think
+that Dr. Johnson’s receipt of three or four footmen with cudgels,
+applied repeatedly and unsparingly, would have been better than
+elaborately prepared accidents and duels, which were too honorable for a
+Peeping Tom of this kind; and poisonings, which reduced the avengers to
+the level of their victim. But the imbroglio is of itself stupid; these
+fathers who cannot be made known to husbands are mere stage properties,
+and should never be fetched out of the theatrical lumber-room by
+literature.
+
+_La Duchesse de Langeais_ is, I think, a better story, with more
+romantic attraction, free from the objections just made to _Ferragus_,
+and furnished with a powerful, if slightly theatrical catastrophe. It
+is as good as anything that its author has done of the kind, subject
+to those general considerations of probability and otherwise which
+have been already hinted at. For those who are not troubled by any such
+critical reflections, both, no doubt, will be highly satisfactory.
+
+The third of the series, _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or_, in some respects one
+of Balzac’s most brilliant effects, has been looked at askance by many
+of his English readers. At one time he had the audacity to think of
+calling it _La Femme aux Yeux Rouges_. To those who consider the story
+morbid or, one may say, _bizarre_, one word of justification, hardly of
+apology, may be offered. It was in the scheme of the _Comedie Humaine_
+to survey social life in its entirety by a minute analysis of its most
+diverse constituents. It included all the pursuits and passions, was
+large and patient, and unafraid. And the patience, the curiosity, of the
+artist which made Cesar Birotteau and his bankrupt ledgers matters of
+high import to us, which did not shrink from creating a Vautrin and a
+Lucien de Rubempre, would have been incomplete had it stopped short of a
+Marquise de San-Real, of a Paquita Valdes. And in the great mass of the
+_Comedie Humaine_, with its largeness and reality of life, as in life
+itself; the figure of Paquita justifies its presence.
+
+Considering the _Histoire des Treize_ as a whole, it is of engrossing
+interest. And I must confess I should not think much of any boy who,
+beginning Balzac with this series, failed to go rather mad over it. I
+know there was a time when I used to like it best of all, and thought
+not merely _Eugenie Grandet_, but _Le Pere Goriot_ (though not the _Peau
+de Chagrin_), dull in comparison. Some attention, however, must be paid
+to two remarkable characters, on whom it is quite clear that Balzac
+expended a great deal of pains, and one of whom he seems to have
+“caressed,” as the French say, with a curious admixture of dislike and
+admiration.
+
+The first, Bourignard or Ferragus, is, of course, another, though a
+somewhat minor example--Collin or Vautrin being the chief--of that
+strange tendency to take intense interest in criminals, which seems to
+be a pretty constant eccentricity of many human minds, and which laid an
+extraordinary grasp on the great French writers of Balzac’s time. I must
+confess, though it may sink me very low in some eyes, that I have never
+been able to fully appreciate the attractions of crime and criminals,
+fictitious or real. Certain pleasant and profitable things, no doubt,
+retain their pleasure and their profit, to some extent, when they are
+done in the manner which is technically called criminal; but they seem
+to me to acquire no additional interest by being so. As the criminal of
+fact is, in the vast majority of cases, an exceedingly commonplace and
+dull person, the criminal of fiction seems to me only, or usually, to
+escape these curses by being absolutely improbable and unreal. But I
+know this is a terrible heresy.
+
+Henri de Marsay is a much more ambitious and a much more interesting
+figure. In him are combined the attractions of criminality, beauty,
+brains, success, and, last of all, dandyism. It is a well-known and
+delightful fact that the most Anglophobe Frenchmen--and Balzac might
+fairly be classed among them--have always regarded the English dandy
+with half-jealous, half-awful admiration. Indeed, our novelist, it will
+be seen, found it necessary to give Marsay English blood. But there is
+a tradition that this young Don Juan--not such a good fellow as Byron’s,
+nor such a _grand seigneur_ as Moliere’s--was partly intended to
+represent Charles de Remusat, who is best known to this generation
+by very sober and serious philosophical works, and by his part in
+his mother’s correspondence. I do not know that there ever were any
+imputation on M. de Remusat’s morals; but in memoirs of the time, he
+is, I think, accused of a certain selfishness and _hauteur_, and he
+certainly made his way, partly by journalism, partly by society, to
+power very much as Marsay did. But Marsay would certainly not have
+written _Abelard_ and the rest, or have returned to Ministerial rank in
+our own time. Marsay, in fact, more fortunate than Rubempre, and of a
+higher stamp and flight than Rastignac, makes with them Balzac’s trinity
+of sketches of the kind of personage whose part, in his day and since,
+every young Frenchman has aspired to play, and some have played. It
+cannot be said that “a moral man is Marsay”; it cannot be said that he
+has the element of good-nature which redeems Rastignac. But he bears
+a blame and a burden for which we Britons are responsible in part--the
+Byronic ideal of the guilty hero coming to cross and blacken the old
+French model of unscrupulous good humor. It is not a very pretty mixture
+or a very worthy ideal; but I am not so sure that it is not still a
+pretty common one.
+
+The association of the three stories forming the _Histoire des Treize_
+is, in book form, original, inasmuch as they filled three out of the
+four volumes of _Etudes des Moeurs_ published in 1834-35, and themselves
+forming part of the first collection of _Scenes de la Vie Parisienne_.
+But _Ferragus_ had appeared in parts (with titles to each) in the
+_Revue de Paris_ for March and April 1833, and part of _La Duchesse de
+Langeais_ in the _Echo de la Jeune France_ almost contemporaneously.
+There are divisions in this also. _Ferragus_ and _La Duchesse_ also
+appeared without _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or_ in 1839, published in one
+volume by Charpentier, before their absorption at the usual time in the
+_Comedie_.
+
+George Saintsbury
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR’S PREFACE
+
+In the Paris of the Empire there were found Thirteen men equally
+impressed with the same idea, equally endowed with energy enough to keep
+them true to it, while among themselves they were loyal enough to keep
+faith even when their interests seemed to clash. They were strong
+enough to set themselves above all laws; bold enough to shrink from no
+enterprise; and lucky enough to succeed in nearly everything that they
+undertook. So profoundly politic were they, that they could dissemble
+the tie which bound them together. They ran the greatest risks, and
+kept their failures to themselves. Fear never entered into their
+calculations; not one of them had trembled before princes, before the
+executioner’s axe, before innocence. They had taken each other as they
+were, regardless of social prejudices. Criminals they doubtless were,
+yet none the less were they all remarkable for some one of the virtues
+which go to the making of great men, and their numbers were filled up
+only from among picked recruits. Finally, that nothing should be lacking
+to complete the dark, mysterious romance of their history, nobody to
+this day knows who they were. The Thirteen once realized all the wildest
+ideas conjured up by tales of the occult powers of a Manfred, a
+Faust, or a Melmoth; and to-day the band is broken up or, at any rate,
+dispersed. Its members have quietly returned beneath the yoke of the
+Civil Code; much as Morgan, the Achilles of piracy, gave up buccaneering
+to be a peaceable planter; and, untroubled by qualms of conscience, sat
+himself down by the fireside to dispose of blood-stained booty acquired
+by the red light of blazing towns.
+
+After Napoleon’s death, the band was dissolved by a chance event which
+the author is bound for the present to pass over in silence, and its
+mysterious existence, as curious, it may be, as the darkest novel by
+Mrs. Radcliffe, came to an end.
+
+It was only lately that the present writer, detecting, as he fancied,
+a faint desire for celebrity in one of the anonymous heroes to whom
+the whole band once owed an occult allegiance, received the somewhat
+singular permission to make public certain of the adventures which
+befell that band, provided that, while telling the story in his own
+fashion, he observed certain limits.
+
+The aforesaid leader was still an apparently young man with fair hair
+and blue eyes, and a soft, thin voice which might seem to indicate a
+feminine temperament. His face was pale, his ways mysterious. He chatted
+pleasantly, and told me that he was only just turned of forty. He might
+have belonged to any one of the upper classes. The name which he gave
+was probably assumed, and no one answering to his description was known
+in society. Who is he, do you ask? No one knows.
+
+Perhaps when he made his extraordinary disclosures to the present
+writer, he wished to see them in some sort reproduced; to enjoy the
+effect of the sensation on the multitude; to feel as Macpherson might
+have felt when the name of Ossian, his creation, passed into all
+languages. And, in truth, that Scottish advocate knew one of the
+keenest, or, at any rate, one of the rarest sensations in human
+experience. What was this but the incognito of genius? To write an
+_Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem_ is to take one’s share in the glory
+of a century, but to give a Homer to one’s country--this surely is a
+usurpation of the rights of God.
+
+The writer is too well acquainted with the laws of narration to be
+unaware of the nature of the pledge given by this brief preface; but,
+at the same time, he knows enough of the history of the Thirteen to feel
+confident that he shall not disappoint any expectations raised by the
+programme. Tragedies dripping with gore, comedies piled up with horrors,
+tales of heads taken off in secret have been confided to him. If any
+reader has not had enough of the ghastly tales served up to the public
+for some time past, he has only to express his wish; the author is in
+a position to reveal cold-blooded atrocities and family secrets of a
+gloomy and astonishing nature. But in preference he has chosen those
+pleasanter stories in which stormy passions are succeeded by purer
+scenes, where the beauty and goodness of woman shine out the brighter
+for the darkness. And, to the honor of the Thirteen, such episodes as
+these are not wanting. Some day perhaps it may be thought worth while
+to give their whole history to the world; in which case it might form a
+pendant to the history of the buccaneers--that race apart so curiously
+energetic, so attractive in spite of their crimes.
+
+When a writer has a true story to tell, he should scorn to turn it into
+a sort of puzzle toy, after the manner of those novelists who take
+their reader for a walk through one cavern after another to show him a
+dried-up corpse at the end of the fourth volume, and inform him, by way
+of conclusion, that he has been frightened all along by a door hidden
+somewhere or other behind some tapestry; or a dead body, left by
+inadvertence, under the floor. So the present chronicler, in spite of
+his objection to prefaces, felt bound to introduce his fragment by a few
+remarks.
+
+_Ferragus_, the first episode, is connected by invisible links with the
+history of the Thirteen, for the power which they acquired in a natural
+manner provides the apparently supernatural machinery.
+
+Again, although a certain literary coquetry may be permissible to
+retailers of the marvelous, the sober chronicler is bound to forego
+such advantage as he may reap from an odd-sounding name, on which many
+ephemeral successes are founded in these days. Wherefore the present
+writer gives the following succinct statement of the reasons which
+induced him to adopt the unlikely sounding title and sub-title.
+
+In accordance with old-established custom, _Ferragus_ is a name taken by
+the head of a guild of _Devorants_, _id est Devoirants_ or journeymen.
+Every chief on the day of his election chooses a pseudonym and continues
+a dynasty of _Devorants_ precisely as a pope changes his name on his
+accession to the triple tiara; and as the Church has its Clement XIV.,
+Gregory XII., Julius II., or Alexander VI., so the workmen have their
+Trempe-la-Soupe IX., Ferragus XXII., Tutanus XIII., or Masche-Fer IV.
+Who are the _Devorants_, do you ask?
+
+The _Devorants_ are one among many tribes of _compagnons_ whose origin
+can be traced to a great mystical association formed among the
+workmen of Christendom for the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem.
+_Compagnonnage_ is still a popular institution in France. Its traditions
+still exert a power over little enlightened minds, over men so
+uneducated that they have not learned to break their oaths; and the
+various organizations might be turned to formidable account even yet
+if any rough-hewn man of genius arose to make use of them, for his
+instruments would be, for the most part, almost blind.
+
+Wherever journeymen travel, they find a hostel for _compagnons_ which
+has been in existence in the town from time immemorial. The _obade_,
+as they call it, is a kind of lodge with a “Mother” in charge, an old,
+half-gypsy wife who has nothing to lose. She hears all that goes on in
+the countryside; and, either from fear or from long habit, is devoted to
+the interests of the tribe boarded and lodged by her. And as a result,
+this shifting population, subject as it is to an unalterable law of
+custom, has eyes in every place, and will carry out an order anywhere
+without asking questions; for the oldest journeyman is still at an age
+when a man has some beliefs left. What is more, the whole fraternity
+professes doctrines which, if unfolded never so little, are both
+true enough and mysterious enough to electrify all the adepts with
+patriotism; and the _compagnons_ are so attached to their rules, that
+there have been bloody battles between different fraternities on a
+question of principle. Fortunately, however, for peace and public order;
+if a _Devorant_ is ambitious, he takes to building houses, makes a
+fortune, and leaves the guild.
+
+A great many curious things might be told of their rivals, the
+_Compagnons du Devior_, of all the different sects of workmen, their
+manners and customs and brotherhoods, and of the resemblances between
+them and the Freemasons; but there, these particulars would be out
+of place. The author will merely add, that before the Revolution a
+Trempe-la-Soupe had been known in the King’s service, which is to say,
+that he had the tenure of a place in His Majesty’s galleys for one
+hundred and one years; but even thence he ruled his guild, and was
+religiously consulted on all matters, and if he escaped from the hulks
+he met with help, succor, and respect wherever he went. To have a
+chief in the hulks is one of those misfortunes for which Providence is
+responsible; but a faithful lodge of _devorants_ is bound, as before, to
+obey a power created by and set above themselves. Their lawful sovereign
+is in exile for the time being, but none the less is he their king.
+And now any romantic mystery hanging about the words _Ferragus_ and the
+_devorants_ is completely dispelled.
+
+As for the Thirteen, the author feels that, on the strength of the
+details of this almost fantastic story, he can afford to give away yet
+another prerogative, though it is one of the greatest on record, and
+would possibly fetch a high price if brought into a literary auction
+mart; for the owner might inflict as many volumes on the public as La
+Contemporaine.[*]
+
+   [*] A long series of so-called Memoirs, which appeared about 1830.
+
+The Thirteen were all of them men tempered like Byron’s friend
+Trelawney, the original (so it is said) of _The Corsair_. All of them
+were fatalists, men of spirit and poetic temperament; all of them were
+tired of the commonplace life which they led; all felt attracted towards
+Asiatic pleasures by all the vehement strength of newly awakened
+and long dormant forces. One of these, chancing to take up _Venice
+Preserved_ for the second time, admired the sublime friendship between
+Pierre and Jaffir, and fell to musing on the virtues of outlaws, the
+loyalty of the hulks, the honor of thieves, and the immense power that
+a few men can wield if they bring their whole minds to bear upon the
+carrying out of a single will. It struck him that the individual man
+rose higher than men. Then he began to think that if a few picked men
+should band themselves together; and if, to natural wit, and education,
+and money, they could join a fanaticism hot enough to fuse, as it were,
+all those separate forces into a single one, then the whole world would
+be at their feet. From that time forth, with a tremendous power of
+concentration, they could wield an occult power against which the
+organization of society would be helpless; a power which would push
+obstacles aside and defeat the will of others; and the diabolical power
+of all would be at the service of each. A hostile world apart within the
+world, admitting none of the ideas, recognizing none of the laws of the
+world; submitting only to the sense of necessity, obedient only from
+devotion; acting all as one man in the interests of the comrade who
+should claim the aid of the rest; a band of buccaneers with carriages
+and yellow kid gloves; a close confederacy of men of extraordinary
+power, of amused and cool spectators of an artificial and petty world
+which they cursed with smiling lips; conscious as they were that they
+could make all things bend to their caprice, weave ingenious schemes of
+revenge, and live with the life in thirteen hearts, to say nothing
+of the unfailing pleasure of facing the world of men with a hidden
+misanthropy, a sense that they were armed against their kind, and could
+retire into themselves with one idea which the most remarkable men had
+not,--all this constituted a religion of pleasure and egoism which
+made fanatics of the Thirteen. The history of the Society of Jesus was
+repeated for the Devil’s benefit. It was hideous and sublime.
+
+The pact was made; and it lasted, precisely because it seemed
+impossible. And so it came to pass that in Paris there was a fraternity
+of thirteen men, each one bound, body and soul, to the rest, and all
+of them strangers to each other in the sight of the world. But evening
+found them gathered together like conspirators, and then they had no
+thoughts apart; riches, like the wealth of the Old Man of the Mountain,
+they possessed in common; they had their feet in every salon, their
+hands in every strong box, their elbows in the streets, their heads upon
+all pillows, they did not scruple to help themselves at their pleasure.
+No chief commanded them, nobody was strong enough. The liveliest
+passion, the most urgent need took precedence--that was all. They were
+thirteen unknown kings; unknown, but with all the power and more than
+the power of kings; for they were both judges and executioners, they had
+taken wings that they might traverse the heights and depths of society,
+scorning to take any place in it, since all was theirs. If the author
+learns the reason of their abdication, he will communicate it.
+
+And now the author is free to give those episodes in the History of the
+Thirteen which, by reason of the Parisian flavor of the details or the
+strangeness of the contrasts, possessed a peculiar attraction for him.
+
+Paris
+
+
+
+
+
+THE THIRTEEN
+
+
+
+
+I. FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. MADAME JULES
+
+Certain streets in Paris are as degraded as a man covered with infamy;
+also, there are noble streets, streets simply respectable, young streets
+on the morality of which the public has not yet formed an opinion; also
+cut-throat streets, streets older than the age of the oldest dowagers,
+estimable streets, streets always clean, streets always dirty, working,
+laboring, and mercantile streets. In short, the streets of Paris
+have every human quality, and impress us, by what we must call their
+physiognomy, with certain ideas against which we are defenceless. There
+are, for instance, streets of a bad neighborhood in which you could not
+be induced to live, and streets where you would willingly take up your
+abode. Some streets, like the rue Montmartre, have a charming head,
+and end in a fish’s tail. The rue de la Paix is a wide street, a fine
+street, yet it wakens none of those gracefully noble thoughts which come
+to an impressible mind in the middle of the rue Royale, and it certainly
+lacks the majesty which reigns in the Place Vendome.
+
+If you walk the streets of the Ile Saint-Louis, do not seek the reason
+of the nervous sadness that lays hold upon you save in the solitude
+of the spot, the gloomy look of the houses, and the great deserted
+mansions. This island, the ghost of _fermiers-generaux_, is the Venice
+of Paris. The Place de la Bourse is voluble, busy, degraded; it is
+never fine except by moonlight at two in the morning. By day it is
+Paris epitomized; by night it is a dream of Greece. The rue
+Traversiere-Saint-Honore--is not that a villainous street? Look at the
+wretched little houses with two windows on a floor, where vice, crime,
+and misery abound. The narrow streets exposed to the north, where the
+sun never comes more than three or four times a year, are the cut-throat
+streets which murder with impunity; the authorities of the present
+day do not meddle with them; but in former times the Parliament might
+perhaps have summoned the lieutenant of police and reprimanded him for
+the state of things; and it would, at least, have issued some decree
+against such streets, as it once did against the wigs of the Chapter of
+Beauvais. And yet Monsieur Benoiston de Chateauneuf has proved that
+the mortality of these streets is double that of others! To sum up such
+theories by a single example: is not the rue Fromentin both murderous
+and profligate!
+
+These observations, incomprehensible out of Paris, will doubtless be
+understood by musing men of thought and poesy and pleasure, who
+know, while rambling about Paris, how to harvest the mass of floating
+interests which may be gathered at all hours within her walls; to them
+Paris is the most delightful and varied of monsters: here, a pretty
+woman; farther on, a haggard pauper; here, new as the coinage of a new
+reign; there, in this corner, elegant as a fashionable woman. A monster,
+moreover, complete! Its garrets, as it were, a head full of knowledge
+and genius; its first storeys stomachs repleted; its shops, actual feet,
+where the busy ambulating crowds are moving. Ah! what an ever-active
+life the monster leads! Hardly has the last vibration of the last
+carriage coming from a ball ceased at its heart before its arms are
+moving at the barriers and it shakes itself slowly into motion. Doors
+open; turning on their hinges like the membrane of some huge lobster,
+invisibly manipulated by thirty thousand men or women, of whom each
+individual occupies a space of six square feet, but has a kitchen, a
+workshop, a bed, children, a garden, little light to see by, but
+must see all. Imperceptibly, the articulations begin to crack; motion
+communicates itself; the street speaks. By mid-day, all is alive; the
+chimneys smoke, the monster eats; then he roars, and his thousand paws
+begin to ramp. Splendid spectacle! But, O Paris! he who has not admired
+your gloomy passages, your gleams and flashes of light, your deep and
+silent _cul-de-sacs_, who has not listened to your murmurings between
+midnight and two in the morning, knows nothing as yet of your true
+poesy, nor of your broad and fantastic contrasts.
+
+There are a few amateurs who never go their way heedlessly; who savor
+their Paris, so to speak; who know its physiognomy so well that they
+see every wart, and pimple, and redness. To others, Paris is always that
+monstrous marvel, that amazing assemblage of activities, of schemes,
+of thoughts; the city of a hundred thousand tales, the head of the
+universe. But to those few, Paris is sad or gay, ugly or beautiful,
+living or dead; to them Paris is a creature; every man, every fraction
+of a house is a lobe of the cellular tissue of that great courtesan
+whose head and heart and fantastic customs they know so well. These men
+are lovers of Paris; they lift their noses at such or such a corner of
+a street, certain that they can see the face of a clock; they tell a
+friend whose tobacco-pouch is empty, “Go down that passage and turn
+to the left; there’s a tobacconist next door to a confectioner, where
+there’s a pretty girl.” Rambling about Paris is, to these poets, a
+costly luxury. How can they help spending precious minutes before
+the dramas, disasters, faces, and picturesque events which meet us
+everywhere amid this heaving queen of cities, clothed in posters,--who
+has, nevertheless, not a single clean corner, so complying is she to the
+vices of the French nation! Who has not chanced to leave his home early
+in the morning, intending to go to some extremity of Paris, and found
+himself unable to get away from the centre of it by the dinner-hour?
+Such a man will know how to excuse this vagabondizing start upon our
+tale; which, however, we here sum up in an observation both useful and
+novel, as far as any observation can be novel in Paris, where there is
+nothing new,--not even the statue erected yesterday, on which some young
+gamin has already scribbled his name.
+
+Well, then! there are streets, or ends of streets, there are houses,
+unknown for the most part to persons of social distinction, to which a
+woman of that class cannot go without causing cruel and very wounding
+things to be thought of her. Whether the woman be rich and has a
+carriage, whether she is on foot, or is disguised, if she enters one
+of these Parisian defiles at any hour of the day, she compromises her
+reputation as a virtuous woman. If, by chance, she is there at nine in
+the evening the conjectures that an observer permits himself to make
+upon her may prove fearful in their consequences. But if the woman is
+young and pretty, if she enters a house in one of those streets, if the
+house has a long, dark, damp, and evil-smelling passage-way, at the end
+of which flickers the pallid gleam of an oil lamp, and if beneath that
+gleam appears the horrid face of a withered old woman with fleshless
+fingers, ah, then! and we say it in the interests of young and pretty
+women, that woman is lost. She is at the mercy of the first man of her
+acquaintance who sees her in that Parisian slough. There is more than
+one street in Paris where such a meeting may lead to a frightful drama,
+a bloody drama of death and love, a drama of the modern school.
+
+Unhappily, this scene, this modern drama itself, will be comprehended by
+only a small number of persons; and it is a pity to tell the tale to
+a public which cannot enter into its local merit. But who can flatter
+himself that he will ever be understood? We all die unknown--‘tis the
+saying of women and of authors.
+
+At half-past eight o’clock one evening, in the rue Pagevin, in the days
+when that street had no wall which did not echo some infamous word, and
+was, in the direction of the rue Soly, the narrowest and most impassable
+street in Paris (not excepting the least frequented corner of the most
+deserted street),--at the beginning of the month of February about
+thirteen years ago, a young man, by one of those chances which come but
+once in life, turned the corner of the rue Pagevin to enter the rue des
+Vieux-Augustins, close to the rue Soly. There, this young man, who lived
+himself in the rue de Bourbon, saw in a woman near whom he had been
+unconsciously walking, a vague resemblance to the prettiest woman in
+Paris; a chaste and delightful person, with whom he was secretly and
+passionately in love,--a love without hope; she was married. In a moment
+his heart leaped, an intolerable heat surged from his centre and flowed
+through all his veins; his back turned cold, the skin of his head crept.
+He loved, he was young, he knew Paris; and his knowledge did not permit
+him to be ignorant of all there was of possible infamy in an elegant,
+rich, young, and beautiful woman walking there, alone, with a furtively
+criminal step. _She_ in that mud! at that hour!
+
+The love that this young man felt for that woman may seem romantic, and
+all the more so because he was an officer in the Royal Guard. If he had
+been in the infantry, the affair might have seemed more likely; but, as
+an officer of rank in the cavalry, he belonged to that French arm which
+demands rapidity in its conquests and derives as much vanity from its
+amorous exploits as from its dashing uniform. But the passion of this
+officer was a true love, and many young hearts will think it noble.
+He loved this woman because she was virtuous; he loved her virtue, her
+modest grace, her imposing saintliness, as the dearest treasures of his
+hidden passion. This woman was indeed worthy to inspire one of those
+platonic loves which are found, like flowers amid bloody ruins, in the
+history of the middle-ages; worthy to be the hidden principle of all the
+actions of a young man’s life; a love as high, as pure as the skies when
+blue; a love without hope and to which men bind themselves because
+it can never deceive; a love that is prodigal of unchecked enjoyment,
+especially at an age when the heart is ardent, the imagination keen, and
+the eyes of a man see very clearly.
+
+Strange, weird, inconceivable effects may be met with at night in Paris.
+Only those who have amused themselves by watching those effects have
+any idea how fantastic a woman may appear there at dusk. At times the
+creature whom you are following, by accident or design, seems to you
+light and slender; the stockings, if they are white, make you fancy that
+the legs must be slim and elegant; the figure though wrapped in a shawl,
+or concealed by a pelisse, defines itself gracefully and seductively
+among the shadows; anon, the uncertain gleam thrown from a shop-window
+or a street lamp bestows a fleeting lustre, nearly always deceptive, on
+the unknown woman, and fires the imagination, carrying it far beyond
+the truth. The senses then bestir themselves; everything takes color and
+animation; the woman appears in an altogether novel aspect; her person
+becomes beautiful. Behold! she is not a woman, she is a demon, a siren,
+who is drawing you by magnetic attraction to some respectable house,
+where the worthy _bourgeoise_, frightened by your threatening step and
+the clack of your boots, shuts the door in your face without looking at
+you.
+
+A vacillating gleam, thrown from the shop-window of a shoemaker,
+suddenly illuminated from the waist down the figure of the woman who was
+before the young man. Ah! surely, _she_ alone had that swaying figure;
+she alone knew the secret of that chaste gait which innocently set into
+relief the many beauties of that attractive form. Yes, that was the
+shawl, and that the velvet bonnet which she wore in the mornings. On
+her gray silk stockings not a spot, on her shoes not a splash. The shawl
+held tightly round the bust disclosed, vaguely, its charming lines; and
+the young man, who had often seen those shoulders at a ball, knew well
+the treasures that the shawl concealed. By the way a Parisian woman
+wraps a shawl around her, and the way she lifts her feet in the street,
+a man of intelligence in such studies can divine the secret of her
+mysterious errand. There is something, I know not what, of quivering
+buoyancy in the person, in the gait; the woman seems to weigh less; she
+steps, or rather, she glides like a star, and floats onward led by a
+thought which exhales from the folds and motion of her dress. The young
+man hastened his step, passed the woman, and then turned back to look
+at her. Pst! she had disappeared into a passage-way, the grated door of
+which and its bell still rattled and sounded. The young man walked back
+to the alley and saw the woman reach the farther end, where she began
+to mount--not without receiving the obsequious bow of an old portress--a
+winding staircase, the lower steps of which were strongly lighted; she
+went up buoyantly, eagerly, as though impatient.
+
+“Impatient for what?” said the young man to himself, drawing back to
+lean against a wooden railing on the other side of the street. He
+gazed, unhappy man, at the different storeys of the house, with the keen
+attention of a detective searching for a conspirator.
+
+It was one of those houses of which there are thousands in Paris,
+ignoble, vulgar, narrow, yellowish in tone, with four storeys and three
+windows on each floor. The outer blinds of the first floor were closed.
+Where was she going? The young man fancied he heard the tinkle of a bell
+on the second floor. As if in answer to it, a light began to move in a
+room with two windows strongly illuminated, which presently lit up the
+third window, evidently that of a first room, either the salon or the
+dining-room of the apartment. Instantly the outline of a woman’s bonnet
+showed vaguely on the window, and a door between the two rooms must
+have closed, for the first was dark again, while the two other windows
+resumed their ruddy glow. At this moment a voice said, “Hi, there!” and
+the young man was conscious of a blow on his shoulder.
+
+“Why don’t you pay attention?” said the rough voice of a workman,
+carrying a plank on his shoulder. The man passed on. He was the voice of
+Providence saying to the watcher: “What are you meddling with? Think of
+your own duty; and leave these Parisians to their own affairs.”
+
+The young man crossed his arms; then, as no one beheld him, he suffered
+tears of rage to flow down his cheeks unchecked. At last the sight of
+the shadows moving behind the lighted windows gave him such pain that he
+looked elsewhere and noticed a hackney-coach, standing against a wall
+in the upper part of the rue des Vieux-Augustins, at a place where there
+was neither the door of a house, nor the light of a shop-window.
+
+Was it she? Was it not she? Life or death to a lover! This lover waited.
+He stood there during a century of twenty minutes. After that the woman
+came down, and he then recognized her as the one whom he secretly loved.
+Nevertheless, he wanted still to doubt. She went to the hackney-coach,
+and got into it.
+
+“The house will always be there and I can search it later,” thought the
+young man, following the carriage at a run, to solve his last doubts;
+and soon he did so.
+
+The carriage stopped in the rue de Richelieu before a shop for
+artificial flowers, close to the rue de Menars. The lady got out,
+entered the shop, sent out the money to pay the coachman, and presently
+left the shop herself, on foot, after buying a bunch of marabouts.
+Marabouts for her black hair! The officer beheld her, through the
+window-panes, placing the feathers to her head to see the effect, and
+he fancied he could hear the conversation between herself and the
+shop-woman.
+
+“Oh! madame, nothing is more suitable for brunettes: brunettes have
+something a little too strongly marked in their lines, and marabouts
+give them just that _flow_ which they lack. Madame la Duchesse de
+Langeais says they give a woman something vague, Ossianic, and very
+high-bred.”
+
+“Very good; send them to me at once.”
+
+Then the lady turned quickly toward the rue de Menars, and entered her
+own house. When the door closed on her, the young lover, having lost
+his hopes, and worse, far worse, his dearest beliefs, walked through the
+streets like a drunken man, and presently found himself in his own room
+without knowing how he came there. He flung himself into an arm-chair,
+put his head in his hands and his feet on the andirons, drying his boots
+until he burned them. It was an awful moment,--one of those moments in
+human life when the character is moulded, and the future conduct of the
+best of men depends on the good or evil fortune of his first action.
+Providence or fatality?--choose which you will.
+
+This young man belonged to a good family, whose nobility was not very
+ancient; but there are so few really old families in these days, that
+all men of rank are ancient without dispute. His grandfather had bought
+the office of counsellor to the Parliament of Paris, where he afterwards
+became president. His sons, each provided with a handsome fortune,
+entered the army, and through their marriages became attached to the
+court. The Revolution swept the family away; but one old dowager, too
+obstinate to emigrate, was left; she was put in prison, threatened with
+death, but was saved by the 9th Thermidor and recovered her property.
+When the proper time came, about the year 1804, she recalled her
+grandson to France. Auguste de Maulincour, the only scion of the
+Carbonnon de Maulincour, was brought up by the good dowager with the
+triple care of a mother, a woman of rank, and an obstinate dowager. When
+the Restoration came, the young man, then eighteen years of age, entered
+the Maison-Rouge, followed the princes to Ghent, was made an officer in
+the body-guard, left it to serve in the line, but was recalled later to
+the Royal Guard, where, at twenty-three years of age, he found
+himself major of a cavalry regiment,--a splendid position, due to his
+grandmother, who had played her cards well to obtain it, in spite of his
+youth. This double biography is a compendium of the general and special
+history, barring variations, of all the noble families who emigrated
+having debts and property, dowagers and tact.
+
+Madame la Baronne de Maulincour had a friend in the old Vidame de
+Pamiers, formerly a commander of the Knights of Malta. This was one of
+those undying friendships founded on sexagenary ties which nothing
+can weaken, because at the bottom of such intimacies there are certain
+secrets of the human heart, delightful to guess at when we have the
+time, insipid to explain in twenty words, and which might make the text
+of a work in four volumes as amusing as the Doyen de Killerine,--a work
+about which young men talk and judge without having read it.
+
+Auguste de Maulincour belonged therefore to the faubourg Saint-Germain
+through his grandmother and the vidame, and it sufficed him to date back
+two centuries to take the tone and opinions of those who assume to
+go back to Clovis. This young man, pale, slender, and delicate in
+appearance, a man of honor and true courage, who would fight a duel for
+a yes or a no, had never yet fought upon a battle-field, though he wore
+in his button-hole the cross of the Legion of honor. He was, as you
+perceive, one of the blunders of the Restoration, perhaps the most
+excusable of them. The youth of those days was the youth of no epoch.
+It came between the memories of the Empire and those of the Emigration,
+between the old traditions of the court and the conscientious education
+of the _bourgeoisie_; between religion and fancy-balls; between two
+political faiths, between Louis XVIII., who saw only the present, and
+Charles X., who looked too far into the future; it was moreover bound to
+accept the will of the king, though the king was deceiving and tricking
+it. This unfortunate youth, blind and yet clear-sighted, was counted
+as nothing by old men jealously keeping the reins of the State in
+their feeble hands, while the monarchy could have been saved by their
+retirement and the accession of this Young France, which the old
+doctrinaires, the _emigres_ of the Restoration, still speak of
+slightingly. Auguste de Maulincour was a victim to the ideas which
+weighed in those days upon French youth, and we must here explain why.
+
+The Vidame de Pamiers was still, at sixty-seven years of age, a very
+brilliant man, having seen much and lived much; a good talker, a man of
+honor and a gallant man, but who held as to women the most detestable
+opinions; he loved them, and he despised them. _Their_ honor! _their_
+feelings! Ta-ra-ra, rubbish and shams! When he was with them, he
+believed in them, the ci-devant “monstre”; he never contradicted them,
+and he made them shine. But among his male friends, when the topic of
+the sex came up, he laid down the principle that to deceive women, and
+to carry on several intrigues at once, should be the occupation of those
+young men who were so misguided as to wish to meddle in the affairs of
+the State. It is sad to have to sketch so hackneyed a portrait, for has
+it not figured everywhere and become, literally, as threadbare as
+that of a grenadier of the Empire? But the vidame had an influence
+on Monsieur de Maulincour’s destiny which obliges us to preserve his
+portrait; he lectured the young man after his fashion, and did his best
+to convert him to the doctrines of the great age of gallantry.
+
+The dowager, a tender-hearted, pious woman, sitting between God and her
+vidame, a model of grace and sweetness, but gifted with that well-bred
+persistency which triumphs in the long run, had longed to preserve for
+her grandson the beautiful illusions of life, and had therefore brought
+him up in the highest principles; she instilled into him her own
+delicacy of feeling and made him, to outward appearance, a timid man, if
+not a fool. The sensibilities of the young fellow, preserved pure, were
+not worn by contact without; he remained so chaste, so scrupulous, that
+he was keenly offended by actions and maxims to which the world attached
+no consequence. Ashamed of this susceptibility, he forced himself to
+conceal it under a false hardihood; but he suffered in secret, all the
+while scoffing with others at the things he reverenced.
+
+It came to pass that he was deceived; because, in accordance with a not
+uncommon whim of destiny, he, a man of gentle melancholy, and spiritual
+in love, encountered in the object of his first passion a woman who
+held in horror all German sentimentalism. The young man, in consequence,
+distrusted himself, became dreamy, absorbed in his griefs, complaining
+of not being understood. Then, as we desire all the more violently the
+things we find difficult to obtain, he continued to adore women with
+that ingenuous tenderness and feline delicacy the secret of which
+belongs to women themselves, who may, perhaps, prefer to keep the
+monopoly of it. In point of fact, though women of the world complain
+of the way men love them, they have little liking themselves for those
+whose soul is half feminine. Their own superiority consists in making
+men believe they are their inferiors in love; therefore they will
+readily leave a lover if he is inexperienced enough to rob them of those
+fears with which they seek to deck themselves, those delightful tortures
+of feigned jealousy, those troubles of hope betrayed, those futile
+expectations,--in short, the whole procession of their feminine
+miseries. They hold Sir Charles Grandison in horror. What can be more
+contrary to their nature than a tranquil, perfect love? They want
+emotions; happiness without storms is not happiness to them. Women with
+souls that are strong enough to bring infinitude into love are angelic
+exceptions; they are among women what noble geniuses are among men.
+Their great passions are rare as masterpieces. Below the level of
+such love come compromises, conventions, passing and contemptible
+irritations, as in all things petty and perishable.
+
+Amid the hidden disasters of his heart, and while he was still seeking
+the woman who could comprehend him (a search which, let us remark in
+passing, is one of the amorous follies of our epoch), Auguste met, in
+the rank of society that was farthest from his own, in the secondary
+sphere of money, where banking holds the first place, a perfect being,
+one of those women who have I know not what about them that is saintly
+and sacred,--women who inspire such reverence that love has need of the
+help of a long familiarity to declare itself.
+
+Auguste then gave himself up wholly to the delights of the deepest and
+most moving of passions, to a love that was purely adoring. Innumerable
+repressed desires there were, shadows of passion so vague yet so
+profound, so fugitive and yet so actual, that one scarcely knows to what
+we may compare them. They are like perfumes, or clouds, or rays of the
+sun, or shadows, or whatever there is in nature that shines for a moment
+and disappears, that springs to life and dies, leaving in the heart long
+echoes of emotion. When the soul is young enough to nurture melancholy
+and far-off hope, to find in woman more than a woman, is it not the
+greatest happiness that can befall a man when he loves enough to feel
+more joy in touching a gloved hand, or a lock of hair, in listening to
+a word, in casting a single look, than in all the ardor of possession
+given by happy love? Thus it is that rejected persons, those rebuffed by
+fate, the ugly and unfortunate, lovers unrevealed, women and timid men,
+alone know the treasures contained in the voice of the beloved. Taking
+their source and their element from the soul itself, the vibrations
+of the air, charged with passion, put our hearts so powerfully into
+communion, carrying thought between them so lucidly, and being, above
+all, so incapable of falsehood, that a single inflection of a voice is
+often a revelation. What enchantments the intonations of a tender
+voice can bestow upon the heart of a poet! What ideas they awaken! What
+freshness they shed there! Love is in the voice before the glance avows
+it. Auguste, poet after the manner of lovers (there are poets who feel,
+and poets who express; the first are the happiest), Auguste had tasted
+all these early joys, so vast, so fecund. SHE possessed the most winning
+organ that the most artful woman of the world could have desired in
+order to deceive at her ease; _she_ had that silvery voice which is soft
+to the ear, and ringing only for the heart which it stirs and troubles,
+caresses and subjugates.
+
+And this woman went by night to the rue Soly through the rue Pagevin!
+and her furtive apparition in an infamous house had just destroyed the
+grandest of passions! The vidame’s logic triumphed.
+
+“If she is betraying her husband we will avenge ourselves,” said
+Auguste.
+
+There was still faith in that “if”. The philosophic doubt of Descartes
+is a politeness with which we should always honor virtue. Ten o’clock
+sounded. The Baron de Maulincour remembered that this woman was going to
+a ball that evening at a house to which he had access. He dressed, went
+there, and searched for her through all the salons. The mistress of the
+house, Madame de Nucingen, seeing him thus occupied, said:--
+
+“You are looking for Madame Jules; but she has not yet come.”
+
+“Good evening, dear,” said a voice.
+
+Auguste and Madame de Nucingen turned round. Madame Jules had arrived,
+dressed in white, looking simple and noble, wearing in her hair the
+marabouts the young baron had seen her choose in the flower-shop. That
+voice of love now pierced his heart. Had he won the slightest right to
+be jealous of her he would have petrified her then and there by saying
+the words, “Rue Soly!” But if he, an alien to her life, had said those
+words in her ear a thousand times, Madame Jules would have asked him in
+astonishment what he meant. He looked at her stupidly.
+
+For those sarcastic persons who scoff at all things it may be a great
+amusement to detect the secret of a woman, to know that her chastity is
+a lie, that her calm face hides some anxious thought, that under that
+pure brow is a dreadful drama. But there are other souls to whom
+the sight is saddening; and many of those who laugh in public, when
+withdrawn into themselves and alone with their conscience, curse the
+world while they despise the woman. Such was the case with Auguste de
+Maulincour, as he stood there in presence of Madame Jules. Singular
+situation! There was no other relation between them than that which
+social life establishes between persons who exchange a few words seven
+or eight times in the course of a winter, and yet he was calling her
+to account on behalf of a happiness unknown to her; he was judging her,
+without letting her know of his accusation.
+
+Many young men find themselves thus in despair at having broken forever
+with a woman adored in secret, condemned and despised in secret. There
+are many hidden monologues told to the walls of some solitary lodging;
+storms roused and calmed without ever leaving the depths of hearts;
+amazing scenes of the moral world, for which a painter is wanted. Madame
+Jules sat down, leaving her husband to make a turn around the salon.
+After she was seated she seemed uneasy, and, while talking with her
+neighbor, she kept a furtive eye on Monsieur Jules Desmarets, her
+husband, a broker chiefly employed by the Baron de Nucingen. The
+following is the history of their home life.
+
+Monsieur Desmarets was, five years before his marriage, in a broker’s
+office, with no other means than the meagre salary of a clerk. But he
+was a man to whom misfortune had early taught the truths of life, and he
+followed the strait path with the tenacity of an insect making for its
+nest; he was one of those dogged young men who feign death before an
+obstacle and wear out everybody’s patience with their own beetle-like
+perseverance. Thus, young as he was, he had all the republican virtue of
+poor peoples; he was sober, saving of his time, an enemy to pleasure.
+He waited. Nature had given him the immense advantage of an agreeable
+exterior. His calm, pure brow, the shape of his placid, but expressive
+face, his simple manners,--all revealed in him a laborious and resigned
+existence, that lofty personal dignity which is imposing to others,
+and the secret nobility of heart which can meet all events. His modesty
+inspired a sort of respect in those who knew him. Solitary in the midst
+of Paris, he knew the social world only by glimpses during the brief
+moments which he spent in his patron’s salon on holidays.
+
+There were passions in this young man, as in most of the men who live
+in that way, of amazing profundity,--passions too vast to be drawn into
+petty incidents. His want of means compelled him to lead an ascetic
+life, and he conquered his fancies by hard work. After paling all day
+over figures, he found his recreation in striving obstinately to acquire
+that wide general knowledge so necessary in these days to every man who
+wants to make his mark, whether in society, or in commerce, at the bar,
+or in politics or literature. The only peril these fine souls have to
+fear comes from their own uprightness. They see some poor girl; they
+love her; they marry her, and wear out their lives in a struggle between
+poverty and love. The noblest ambition is quenched perforce by the
+household account-book. Jules Desmarets went headlong into this peril.
+
+He met one evening at his patron’s house a girl of the rarest beauty.
+Unfortunate men who are deprived of affection, and who consume the
+finest hours of youth in work and study, alone know the rapid ravages
+that passion makes in their lonely, misconceived hearts. They are so
+certain of loving truly, all their forces are concentrated so quickly on
+the object of their love, that they receive, while beside her, the most
+delightful sensations, when, as often happens, they inspire none at
+all. Nothing is more flattering to a woman’s egotism than to divine this
+passion, apparently immovable, and these emotions so deep that they have
+needed a great length of time to reach the human surface. These poor
+men, anchorites in the midst of Paris, have all the enjoyments of
+anchorites; and may sometimes succumb to temptations. But, more often
+deceived, betrayed, and misunderstood, they are rarely able to gather
+the sweet fruits of a love which, to them, is like a flower dropped from
+heaven.
+
+One smile from his wife, a single inflection of her voice sufficed to
+make Jules Desmarets conceive a passion which was boundless. Happily,
+the concentrated fire of that secret passion revealed itself artlessly
+to the woman who inspired it. These two beings then loved each other
+religiously. To express all in a word, they clasped hands without shame
+before the eyes of the world and went their way like two children,
+brother and sister, passing serenely through a crowd where all made way
+for them and admired them.
+
+The young girl was in one of those unfortunate positions which human
+selfishness entails upon children. She had no civil status; her name of
+“Clemence” and her age were recorded only by a notary public. As for
+her fortune, that was small indeed. Jules Desmarets was a happy man
+on hearing these particulars. If Clemence had belonged to an opulent
+family, he might have despaired of obtaining her; but she was only the
+poor child of love, the fruit of some terrible adulterous passion; and
+they were married. Then began for Jules Desmarets a series of fortunate
+events. Every one envied his happiness; and henceforth talked only of
+his luck, without recalling either his virtues or his courage.
+
+Some days after their marriage, the mother of Clemence, who passed in
+society for her godmother, told Jules Desmarets to buy the office and
+good-will of a broker, promising to provide him with the necessary
+capital. In those days, such offices could still be bought at a modest
+price. That evening, in the salon as it happened of his patron, a
+wealthy capitalist proposed, on the recommendation of the mother, a very
+advantageous transaction for Jules Desmarets, and the next day the happy
+clerk was able to buy out his patron. In four years Desmarets became one
+of the most prosperous men in his business; new clients increased the
+number his predecessor had left to him; he inspired confidence in all;
+and it was impossible for him not to feel, by the way business came
+to him, that some hidden influence, due to his mother-in-law, or to
+Providence, was secretly protecting him.
+
+At the end of the third year Clemence lost her godmother. By that time
+Monsieur Jules (so called to distinguish him from an elder brother, whom
+he had set up as a notary in Paris) possessed an income from invested
+property of two hundred thousand francs. There was not in all Paris
+another instance of the domestic happiness enjoyed by this couple.
+For five years their exceptional love had been troubled by only one
+event,--a calumny for which Monsieur Jules exacted vengeance. One of his
+former comrades attributed to Madame Jules the fortune of her husband,
+explaining that it came from a high protection dearly paid for. The man
+who uttered the calumny was killed in the duel that followed it.
+
+The profound passion of this couple, which survived marriage, obtained
+a great success in society, though some women were annoyed by it. The
+charming household was respected; everybody feted it. Monsieur and
+Madame Jules were sincerely liked, perhaps because there is nothing more
+delightful to see than happy people; but they never stayed long at any
+festivity. They slipped away early, as impatient to regain their nest
+as wandering pigeons. This nest was a large and beautiful mansion in the
+rue de Menars, where a true feeling for art tempered the luxury which
+the financial world continues, traditionally, to display. Here the happy
+pair received their society magnificently, although the obligations of
+social life suited them but little.
+
+Nevertheless, Jules submitted to the demands of the world, knowing
+that, sooner or later, a family has need of it; but he and his wife felt
+themselves, in its midst, like green-house plants in a tempest. With a
+delicacy that was very natural, Jules had concealed from his wife the
+calumny and the death of the calumniator. Madame Jules, herself, was
+inclined, through her sensitive and artistic nature, to desire luxury.
+In spite of the terrible lesson of the duel, some imprudent women
+whispered to each other that Madame Jules must sometimes be pressed for
+money. They often found her more elegantly dressed in her own home than
+when she went into society. She loved to adorn herself to please her
+husband, wishing to show him that to her he was more than any social
+life. A true love, a pure love, above all, a happy love! Jules, always a
+lover, and more in love as time went by, was happy in all things beside
+his wife, even in her caprices; in fact, he would have been uneasy if
+she had none, thinking it a symptom of some illness.
+
+Auguste de Maulincour had the personal misfortune of running against
+this passion, and falling in love with the wife beyond recovery.
+Nevertheless, though he carried in his heart so intense a love, he was
+not ridiculous; he complied with all the demands of society, and of
+military manners and customs. And yet his face wore constantly, even
+though he might be drinking a glass of champagne, that dreamy look, that
+air of silently despising life, that nebulous expression which belongs,
+though for other reasons, to _blases_ men,--men dissatisfied with hollow
+lives. To love without hope, to be disgusted with life, constitute, in
+these days, a social position. The enterprise of winning the heart of
+a sovereign might give, perhaps, more hope than a love rashly conceived
+for a happy woman. Therefore Maulincour had sufficient reason to be
+grave and gloomy. A queen has the vanity of her power; the height of her
+elevation protects her. But a pious _bourgeoise_ is like a hedgehog, or
+an oyster, in its rough wrappings.
+
+At this moment the young officer was beside his unconscious mistress,
+who certainly was unaware that she was doubly faithless. Madame
+Jules was seated, in a naive attitude, like the least artful woman in
+existence, soft and gentle, full of a majestic serenity. What an abyss
+is human nature! Before beginning a conversation, the baron looked
+alternately at the wife and at the husband. How many were the
+reflections he made! He recomposed the “Night Thoughts” of Young in a
+second. And yet the music was sounding through the salons, the light was
+pouring from a thousand candles. It was a banker’s ball,--one of those
+insolent festivals by means of which the world of solid gold endeavored
+to sneer at the gold-embossed salons where the faubourg Saint-Germain
+met and laughed, not foreseeing the day when the bank would invade the
+Luxembourg and take its seat upon the throne. The conspirators were now
+dancing, indifferent to coming bankruptcies, whether of Power or of
+the Bank. The gilded salons of the Baron de Nucingen were gay with that
+peculiar animation that the world of Paris, apparently joyous at any
+rate, gives to its fetes. There, men of talent communicate their wit to
+fools, and fools communicate that air of enjoyment that characterizes
+them. By means of this exchange all is liveliness. But a ball in Paris
+always resembles fireworks to a certain extent; wit, coquetry, and
+pleasure sparkle and go out like rockets. The next day all present have
+forgotten their wit, their coquetry, their pleasure.
+
+“Ah!” thought Auguste, by way of conclusion, “women are what the vidame
+says they are. Certainly all those dancing here are less irreproachable
+actually than Madame Jules appears to be, and yet Madame Jules went to
+the rue Soly!”
+
+The rue Soly was like an illness to him; the very word shrivelled his
+heart.
+
+“Madame, do you ever dance?” he said to her.
+
+“This is the third time you have asked me that question this winter,”
+ she answered, smiling.
+
+“But perhaps you have never answered it.”
+
+“That is true.”
+
+“I knew very well that you were false, like other women.”
+
+Madame Jules continued to smile.
+
+“Listen, monsieur,” she said; “if I told you the real reason, you would
+think it ridiculous. I do not think it false to abstain from telling
+things that the world would laugh at.”
+
+“All secrets demand, in order to be told, a friendship of which I am no
+doubt unworthy, madame. But you cannot have any but noble secrets; do
+you think me capable of jesting on noble things?”
+
+“Yes,” she said, “you, like all the rest, laugh at our purest
+sentiments; you calumniate them. Besides, I have no secrets. I have the
+right to love my husband in the face of all the world, and I say so,--I
+am proud of it; and if you laugh at me when I tell you that I dance only
+with him, I shall have a bad opinion of your heart.”
+
+“Have you never danced since your marriage with any one but your
+husband?”
+
+“Never. His arm is the only one on which I have leaned; I have never
+felt the touch of another man.”
+
+“Has your physician never felt your pulse?”
+
+“Now you are laughing at me.”
+
+“No, madame, I admire you, because I comprehend you. But you let a man
+hear your voice, you let yourself be seen, you--in short, you permit our
+eyes to admire you--”
+
+“Ah!” she said, interrupting him, “that is one of my griefs. Yes, I wish
+it were possible for a married woman to live secluded with her husband,
+as a mistress lives with her lover, for then--”
+
+“Then why were you, two hours ago, on foot, disguised, in the rue Soly?”
+
+“The rue Soly, where is that?”
+
+And her pure voice gave no sign of any emotion; no feature of her face
+quivered; she did not blush; she remained calm.
+
+“What! you did not go up to the second floor of a house in the rue
+des Vieux-Augustins at the corner of the rue Soly? You did not have
+a hackney-coach waiting near by? You did not return in it to the
+flower-shop in the rue Richelieu, where you bought the feathers that are
+now in your hair?”
+
+“I did not leave my house this evening.”
+
+As she uttered that lie she was smiling and imperturbable; she played
+with her fan; but if any one had passed a hand down her back they would,
+perhaps, have found it moist. At that instant Auguste remembered the
+instructions of the vidame.
+
+“Then it was some one who strangely resembled you,” he said, with a
+credulous air.
+
+“Monsieur,” she replied, “if you are capable of following a woman and
+detecting her secrets, you will allow me to say that it is a wrong, a
+very wrong thing, and I do you the honor to say that I disbelieve you.”
+
+The baron turned away, placed himself before the fireplace and seemed
+thoughtful. He bent his head; but his eyes were covertly fixed on Madame
+Jules, who, not remembering the reflections in the mirror, cast two or
+three glances at him that were full of terror. Presently she made a sign
+to her husband and rising took his arm to walk about the salon. As she
+passed before Monsieur de Maulincour, who at that moment was speaking
+to a friend, he said in a loud voice, as if in reply to a remark:
+“That woman will certainly not sleep quietly this night.” Madame
+Jules stopped, gave him an imposing look which expressed contempt,
+and continued her way, unaware that another look, if surprised by her
+husband, might endanger not only her happiness but the lives of two men.
+Auguste, frantic with anger, which he tried to smother in the depths of
+his soul, presently left the house, swearing to penetrate to the heart
+of the mystery. Before leaving, he sought Madame Jules, to look at her
+again; but she had disappeared.
+
+What a drama cast into that young head so eminently romantic, like all
+who have not known love in the wide extent which they give to it. He
+adored Madame Jules under a new aspect; he loved her now with the fury
+of jealousy and the frenzied anguish of hope. Unfaithful to her husband,
+the woman became common. Auguste could now give himself up to the
+joys of successful love, and his imagination opened to him a career
+of pleasures. Yes, he had lost the angel, but he had found the most
+delightful of demons. He went to bed, building castles in the air,
+excusing Madame Jules by some romantic fiction in which he did not
+believe. He resolved to devote himself wholly, from that day forth, to
+a search for the causes, motives, and keynote of this mystery. It was a
+tale to read, or better still, a drama to be played, in which he had a
+part.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. FERRAGUS
+
+A fine thing is the task of a spy, when performed for one’s own benefit
+and in the interests of a passion. Is it not giving ourselves the
+pleasure of a thief and a rascal while continuing honest men? But there
+is another side to it; we must resign ourselves to boil with anger, to
+roar with impatience, to freeze our feet in the mud, to be numbed, and
+roasted, and torn by false hopes. We must go, on the faith of a mere
+indication, to a vague object, miss our end, curse our luck, improvise
+to ourselves elegies, dithyrambics, exclaim idiotically before
+inoffensive pedestrians who observe us, knock over old apple-women and
+their baskets, run hither and thither, stand on guard beneath a window,
+make a thousand suppositions. But, after all, it is a chase, a hunt; a
+hunt in Paris, a hunt with all its chances, minus dogs and guns and
+the tally-ho! Nothing compares with it but the life of gamblers. But
+it needs a heart big with love and vengeance to ambush itself in Paris,
+like a tiger waiting to spring upon its prey, and to enjoy the chances
+and contingencies of Paris, by adding one special interest to the many
+that abound there. But for this we need a many-sided soul--for must we
+not live in a thousand passions, a thousand sentiments?
+
+Auguste de Maulincour flung himself into this ardent existence
+passionately, for he felt all its pleasures and all its misery. He went
+disguised about Paris, watching at the corners of the rue Pagevin and
+the rue des Vieux-Augustins. He hurried like a hunter from the rue de
+Menars to the rue Soly, and back from the rue Soly to the rue de Menars,
+without obtaining either the vengeance or the knowledge which would
+punish or reward such cares, such efforts, such wiles. But he had not
+yet reached that impatience which wrings our very entrails and makes us
+sweat; he roamed in hope, believing that Madame Jules would only refrain
+for a few days from revisiting the place where she knew she had been
+detected. He devoted the first days therefore, to a careful study of
+the secrets of the street. A novice at such work, he dared not question
+either the porter or the shoemaker of the house to which Madame Jules
+had gone; but he managed to obtain a post of observation in a house
+directly opposite to the mysterious apartment. He studied the ground,
+trying to reconcile the conflicting demands of prudence, impatience,
+love, and secrecy.
+
+Early in the month of March, while busy with plans by which he expected
+to strike a decisive blow, he left his post about four in the afternoon,
+after one of those patient watches from which he had learned nothing.
+He was on his way to his own house whither a matter relating to
+his military service called him, when he was overtaken in the rue
+Coquilliere by one of those heavy showers which instantly flood the
+gutters, while each drop of rain rings loudly in the puddles of the
+roadway. A pedestrian under these circumstances is forced to stop short
+and take refuge in a shop or cafe if he is rich enough to pay for
+the forced hospitality, or, if in poorer circumstances, under a
+_porte-cochere_, that haven of paupers or shabbily dressed persons. Why
+have none of our painters ever attempted to reproduce the physiognomies
+of a swarm of Parisians, grouped, under stress of weather, in the damp
+_porte-cochere_ of a building? First, there’s the musing philosophical
+pedestrian, who observes with interest all he sees,--whether it be the
+stripes made by the rain on the gray background of the atmosphere (a
+species of chasing not unlike the capricious threads of spun glass), or
+the whirl of white water which the wind is driving like a luminous
+dust along the roofs, or the fitful disgorgements of the gutter-pipes,
+sparkling and foaming; in short, the thousand nothings to be admired and
+studied with delight by loungers, in spite of the porter’s broom which
+pretends to be sweeping out the gateway. Then there’s the talkative
+refugee, who complains and converses with the porter while he rests on
+his broom like a grenadier on his musket; or the pauper wayfarer, curled
+against the wall indifferent to the condition of his rags, long used,
+alas, to contact with the streets; or the learned pedestrian who
+studies, spells, and reads the posters on the walls without finishing
+them; or the smiling pedestrian who makes fun of others to whom some
+street fatality has happened, who laughs at the muddy women, and makes
+grimaces at those of either sex who are looking from the windows; and
+the silent being who gazes from floor to floor; and the working-man,
+armed with a satchel or a paper bundle, who is estimating the rain as a
+profit or loss; and the good-natured fugitive, who arrives like a shot
+exclaiming, “Ah! what weather, messieurs, what weather!” and bows
+to every one; and, finally, the true _bourgeois_ of Paris, with his
+unfailing umbrella, an expert in showers, who foresaw this particular
+one, but would come out in spite of his wife; this one takes a seat in
+the porter’s chair. According to individual character, each member of
+this fortuitous society contemplates the skies, and departs, skipping
+to avoid the mud,--because he is in a hurry, or because he sees other
+citizens walking along in spite of wind and slush, or because, the
+archway being damp and mortally catarrhal, the bed’s edge, as the
+proverb says, is better than the sheets. Each one has his motive. No one
+is left but the prudent pedestrian, the man who, before he sets forth,
+makes sure of a scrap of blue sky through the rifting clouds.
+
+Monsieur de Maulincour took refuge, as we have said, with a whole family
+of fugitives, under the porch of an old house, the court-yard of
+which looked like the flue of a chimney. The sides of its plastered,
+nitrified, and mouldy walls were so covered with pipes and conduits from
+all the many floors of its four elevations, that it might have been
+said to resemble at that moment the _cascatelles_ of Saint-Cloud. Water
+flowed everywhere; it boiled, it leaped, it murmured; it was black,
+white, blue, and green; it shrieked, it bubbled under the broom of the
+portress, a toothless old woman used to storms, who seemed to bless them
+as she swept into the street a mass of scraps an intelligent inventory
+of which would have revealed the lives and habits of every dweller
+in the house,--bits of printed cottons, tea-leaves, artificial
+flower-petals faded and worthless, vegetable parings, papers, scraps of
+metal. At every sweep of her broom the old woman bared the soul of the
+gutter, that black fissure on which a porter’s mind is ever bent. The
+poor lover examined this scene, like a thousand others which our heaving
+Paris presents daily; but he examined it mechanically, as a man absorbed
+in thought, when, happening to look up, he found himself all but nose to
+nose with a man who had just entered the gateway.
+
+In appearance this man was a beggar, but not the Parisian beggar,--that
+creation without a name in human language; no, this man formed another
+type, while presenting on the outside all the ideas suggested by
+the word “beggar.” He was not marked by those original Parisian
+characteristics which strike us so forcibly in the paupers whom Charlet
+was fond of representing, with his rare luck in observation,--coarse
+faces reeking of mud, hoarse voices, reddened and bulbous noses, mouths
+devoid of teeth but menacing; humble yet terrible beings, in whom a
+profound intelligence shining in their eyes seems like a contradiction.
+Some of these bold vagabonds have blotched, cracked, veiny skins; their
+foreheads are covered with wrinkles, their hair scanty and dirty, like
+a wig thrown on a dust-heap. All are gay in their degradation, and
+degraded in their joys; all are marked with the stamp of debauchery,
+casting their silence as a reproach; their very attitude revealing
+fearful thoughts. Placed between crime and beggary they have no
+compunctions, and circle prudently around the scaffold without mounting
+it, innocent in the midst of crime, and vicious in their innocence. They
+often cause a laugh, but they always cause reflection. One represents
+to you civilization stunted, repressed; he comprehends everything, the
+honor of the galleys, patriotism, virtue, the malice of a vulgar crime,
+or the fine astuteness of elegant wickedness. Another is resigned, a
+perfect mimer, but stupid. All have slight yearnings after order and
+work, but they are pushed back into their mire by society, which makes
+no inquiry as to what there may be of great men, poets, intrepid souls,
+and splendid organizations among these vagrants, these gypsies of Paris;
+a people eminently good and eminently evil--like all the masses who
+suffer--accustomed to endure unspeakable woes, and whom a fatal power
+holds ever down to the level of the mire. They all have a dream, a hope,
+a happiness,--cards, lottery, or wine.
+
+There was nothing of all this in the personage who now leaned carelessly
+against the wall in front of Monsieur de Maulincour, like some fantastic
+idea drawn by an artist on the back of a canvas the front of which is
+turned to the wall. This tall, spare man, whose leaden visage expressed
+some deep but chilling thought, dried up all pity in the hearts of those
+who looked at him by the scowling look and the sarcastic attitude which
+announced an intention of treating every man as an equal. His face was
+of a dirty white, and his wrinkled skull, denuded of hair, bore a vague
+resemblance to a block of granite. A few gray locks on either side
+of his head fell straight to the collar of his greasy coat, which was
+buttoned to the chin. He resembled both Voltaire and Don Quixote;
+he was, apparently, scoffing but melancholy, full of disdain and
+philosophy, but half-crazy. He seemed to have no shirt. His beard was
+long. A rusty black cravat, much worn and ragged, exposed a protuberant
+neck deeply furrowed, with veins as thick as cords. A large brown circle
+like a bruise was strongly marked beneath his eyes, He seemed to be at
+least sixty years old. His hands were white and clean. His boots were
+trodden down at the heels, and full of holes. A pair of blue trousers,
+mended in various places, were covered with a species of fluff which
+made them offensive to the eye. Whether it was that his damp clothes
+exhaled a fetid odor, or that he had in his normal condition the “poor
+smell” which belongs to Parisian tenements, just as offices, sacristies,
+and hospitals have their own peculiar and rancid fetidness, of which
+no words can give the least idea, or whether some other reason affected
+them, those in the vicinity of this man immediately moved away and
+left him alone. He cast upon them and also upon the officer a calm,
+expressionless look, the celebrated look of Monsieur de Talleyrand,
+a dull, wan glance, without warmth, a species of impenetrable veil,
+beneath which a strong soul hides profound emotions and close estimation
+of men and things and events. Not a fold of his face quivered. His mouth
+and forehead were impassible; but his eyes moved and lowered themselves
+with a noble, almost tragic slowness. There was, in fact, a whole drama
+in the motion of those withered eyelids.
+
+The aspect of this stoical figure gave rise in Monsieur de Maulincour
+to one of those vagabond reveries which begin with a common question and
+end by comprising a world of thought. The storm was past. Monsieur de
+Maulincour presently saw no more of the man than the tail of his coat
+as it brushed the gate-post, but as he turned to leave his own place
+he noticed at his feet a letter which must have fallen from the unknown
+beggar when he took, as the baron had seen him take, a handkerchief from
+his pocket. The young man picked it up, and read, involuntarily, the
+address: “To Monsieur Ferragusse, Rue des Grands-Augustains, corner of
+rue Soly.”
+
+The letter bore no postmark, and the address prevented Monsieur de
+Maulincour from following the beggar and returning it; for there are few
+passions that will not fail in rectitude in the long run. The baron
+had a presentiment of the opportunity afforded by this windfall. He
+determined to keep the letter, which would give him the right to enter
+the mysterious house to return it to the strange man, not doubting that
+he lived there. Suspicions, vague as the first faint gleams of daylight,
+made him fancy relations between this man and Madame Jules. A jealous
+lover supposes everything; and it is by supposing everything and
+selecting the most probable of their conjectures that judges, spies,
+lovers, and observers get at the truth they are looking for.
+
+“Is the letter for him? Is it from Madame Jules?”
+
+His restless imagination tossed a thousand such questions to him;
+but when he read the first words of the letter he smiled. Here it
+is, textually, in all the simplicity of its artless phrases and its
+miserable orthography,--a letter to which it would be impossible to add
+anything, or to take anything away, unless it were the letter itself.
+But we have yielded to the necessity of punctuating it. In the original
+there were neither commas nor stops of any kind, not even notes of
+exclamation,--a fact which tends to undervalue the system of notes
+and dashes by which modern authors have endeavored to depict the great
+disasters of all the passions:--
+
+
+  Henry,--Among the manny sacrifisis I imposed upon myself for your
+  sake was that of not giving you anny news of me; but an
+  iresistible voise now compells me to let you know the wrong you
+  have done me. I know beforehand that your soul hardened in vise
+  will not pitty me. Your heart is deaf to feeling. Is it deaf to
+  the cries of nature? But what matter? I must tell you to what a
+  dredful point you are gilty, and the horror of the position to
+  which you have brought me. Henry, you knew what I sufered from my
+  first wrong-doing, and yet you plunged me into the same misery,
+  and then abbandoned me to my dispair and sufering. Yes, I will say
+  it, the belif I had that you loved me and esteemed me gave me
+  corage to bare my fate. But now, what have I left? Have you not
+  made me loose all that was dear to me, all that held me to life;
+  parents, frends, onor, reputation,--all, I have sacrifised all to
+  you, and nothing is left me but shame, oprobrum, and--I say this
+  without blushing--poverty. Nothing was wanting to my misfortunes
+  but the sertainty of your contempt and hatred; and now I have them
+  I find the corage that my project requires. My decision is made;
+  the onor of my famly commands it. I must put an end to my
+  suferins. Make no remarks upon my conduct, Henry; it is orful, I
+  know, but my condition obliges me. Without help, without suport,
+  without one frend to comfort me, can I live? No. Fate has desided
+  for me. So in two days, Henry, two days, Ida will have seased to
+  be worthy of your regard. Oh, Henry! oh, my frend! for I can never
+  change to you, promise me to forgive me for what I am going to do.
+  Do not forget that you have driven me to it; it is your work, and
+  you must judge it. May heven not punish you for all your crimes. I
+  ask your pardon on my knees, for I feel nothing is wanting to my
+  misery but the sorow of knowing you unhappy. In spite of the
+  poverty I am in I shall refuse all help from you. If you had loved
+  me I would have taken all from your friendship; but a benfit given
+  by pitty _my soul refussis_. I would be baser to take it than he
+  who offered it. I have one favor to ask of you. I don’t know how
+  long I must stay at Madame Meynardie’s; be genrous enough not to
+  come there. Your last two vissits did me a harm I cannot get ofer.
+  I cannot enter into particlers about that conduct of yours. You
+  hate me,--you said so; that word is writen on my heart, and
+  freeses it with fear. Alas! it is now, when I need all my corage,
+  all my strength, that my faculties abandon me. Henry, my frend,
+  before I put a barrier forever between us, give me a last pruf of
+  your esteem. Write me, answer me, say you respect me still, though
+  you have seased to love me. My eyes are worthy still to look into
+  yours, but I do not ask an interfew; I fear my weakness and my
+  love. But for pitty’s sake write me a line at once; it will give
+  me the corage I need to meet my trubbles. Farewell, orther of all
+  my woes, but the only frend my heart has chosen and will never
+  forget.
+
+Ida.
+
+
+This life of a young girl, with its love betrayed, its fatal joys, its
+pangs, its miseries, and its horrible resignation, summed up in a few
+words, this humble poem, essentially Parisian, written on dirty paper,
+influenced for a passing moment Monsieur de Maulincour. He asked himself
+whether this Ida might not be some poor relation of Madame Jules, and
+that strange rendezvous, which he had witnessed by chance, the mere
+necessity of a charitable effort. But could that old pauper have seduced
+this Ida? There was something impossible in the very idea. Wandering in
+this labyrinth of reflections, which crossed, recrossed, and obliterated
+one another, the baron reached the rue Pagevin, and saw a hackney-coach
+standing at the end of the rue des Vieux-Augustins where it enters the
+rue Montmartre. All waiting hackney-coaches now had an interest for him.
+
+“Can she be there?” he thought to himself, and his heart beat fast with
+a hot and feverish throbbing.
+
+He pushed the little door with the bell, but he lowered his head as he
+did so, obeying a sense of shame, for a voice said to him secretly:--
+
+“Why are you putting your foot into this mystery?”
+
+He went up a few steps, and found himself face to face with the old
+portress.
+
+“Monsieur Ferragus?” he said.
+
+“Don’t know him.”
+
+“Doesn’t Monsieur Ferragus live here?”
+
+“Haven’t such a name in the house.”
+
+“But, my good woman--”
+
+“I’m not your good woman, monsieur, I’m the portress.”
+
+“But, madame,” persisted the baron, “I have a letter for Monsieur
+Ferragus.”
+
+“Ah! if monsieur has a letter,” she said, changing her tone, “that’s
+another matter. Will you let me see it--that letter?”
+
+Auguste showed the folded letter. The old woman shook her head with a
+doubtful air, hesitated, seemed to wish to leave the lodge and inform
+the mysterious Ferragus of his unexpected visitor, but finally said:--
+
+“Very good; go up, monsieur. I suppose you know the way?”
+
+Without replying to this remark, which he thought might be a trap, the
+young officer ran lightly up the stairway, and rang loudly at the door
+of the second floor. His lover’s instinct told him, “She is there.”
+
+The beggar of the porch, Ferragus, the “orther” of Ida’s woes, opened
+the door himself. He appeared in a flowered dressing-gown, white flannel
+trousers, his feet in embroidered slippers, and his face washed clean of
+stains. Madame Jules, whose head projected beyond the casing of the door
+in the next room, turned pale and dropped into a chair.
+
+“What is the matter, madame?” cried the officer, springing toward her.
+
+But Ferragus stretched forth an arm and flung the intruder back with so
+sharp a thrust that Auguste fancied he had received a blow with an iron
+bar full on his chest.
+
+“Back! monsieur,” said the man. “What do you want there? For five or six
+days you have been roaming about the neighborhood. Are you a spy?”
+
+“Are you Monsieur Ferragus?” said the baron.
+
+“No, monsieur.”
+
+“Nevertheless,” continued Auguste, “it is to you that I must return this
+paper which you dropped in the gateway beneath which we both took refuge
+from the rain.”
+
+While speaking and offering the letter to the man, Auguste did not
+refrain from casting an eye around the room where Ferragus received him.
+It was very well arranged, though simply. A fire burned on the hearth;
+and near it was a table with food upon it, which was served more
+sumptuously than agreed with the apparent conditions of the man and the
+poorness of his lodging. On a sofa in the next room, which he could
+see through the doorway, lay a heap of gold, and he heard a sound which
+could be no other than that of a woman weeping.
+
+“The paper belongs to me; I am much obliged to you,” said the mysterious
+man, turning away as if to make the baron understand that he must go.
+
+Too curious himself to take much note of the deep examination of which
+he was himself the object, Auguste did not see the half-magnetic glance
+with which this strange being seemed to pierce him; had he encountered
+that basilisk eye he might have felt the danger that encompassed him.
+Too passionately excited to think of himself, Auguste bowed, went
+down the stairs, and returned home, striving to find a meaning in the
+connection of these three persons,--Ida, Ferragus, and Madame Jules;
+an occupation equivalent to that of trying to arrange the many-cornered
+bits of a Chinese puzzle without possessing the key to the game. But
+Madame Jules had seen him, Madame Jules went there, Madame Jules had
+lied to him. Maulincour determined to go and see her the next day. She
+could not refuse his visit, for he was now her accomplice; he was hands
+and feet in the mysterious affair, and she knew it. Already he
+felt himself a sultan, and thought of demanding from Madame Jules,
+imperiously, all her secrets.
+
+In those days Paris was seized with a building-fever. If Paris is
+a monster, it is certainly a most mania-ridden monster. It becomes
+enamored of a thousand fancies: sometimes it has a mania for building,
+like a great seigneur who loves a trowel; soon it abandons the trowel
+and becomes all military; it arrays itself from head to foot as a
+national guard, and drills and smokes; suddenly, it abandons military
+manoeuvres and flings away cigars; it is commercial, care-worn, falls
+into bankruptcy, sells its furniture on the place de Chatelet, files its
+schedule; but a few days later, lo! it has arranged its affairs and is
+giving fetes and dances. One day it eats barley-sugar by the mouthful,
+by the handful; yesterday it bought “papier Weymen”; to-day the
+monster’s teeth ache, and it applies to its walls an alexipharmatic
+to mitigate their dampness; to-morrow it will lay in a provision of
+pectoral paste. It has its manias for the month, for the season, for the
+year, like its manias of a day.
+
+So, at the moment of which we speak, all the world was building or
+pulling down something,--people hardly knew what as yet. There were very
+few streets in which high scaffoldings on long poles could not be seen,
+fastened from floor to floor with transverse blocks inserted into holes
+in the walls on which the planks were laid,--a frail construction,
+shaken by the brick-layers, but held together by ropes, white with
+plaster, and insecurely protected from the wheels of carriages by the
+breastwork of planks which the law requires round all such buildings.
+There is something maritime in these masts, and ladders, and cordage,
+even in the shouts of the masons. About a dozen yards from the hotel
+Maulincour, one of these ephemeral barriers was erected before a house
+which was then being built of blocks of free-stone. The day after the
+event we have just related, at the moment when the Baron de Maulincour
+was passing this scaffolding in his cabriolet on his way to see Madame
+Jules, a stone, two feet square, which was being raised to the upper
+storey of this building, got loose from the ropes and fell, crushing the
+baron’s servant who was behind the cabriolet. A cry of horror shook both
+the scaffold and the masons; one of them, apparently unable to keep his
+grasp on a pole, was in danger of death, and seemed to have been touched
+by the stone as it passed him.
+
+A crowd collected rapidly; the masons came down the ladders swearing
+and insisting that Monsieur de Maulincour’s cabriolet had been driven
+against the boarding and so had shaken their crane. Two inches more and
+the stone would have fallen on the baron’s head. The groom was dead,
+the carriage shattered. ‘Twas an event for the whole neighborhood, the
+newspapers told of it. Monsieur de Maulincour, certain that he had not
+touched the boarding, complained; the case went to court. Inquiry being
+made, it was shown that a small boy, armed with a lath, had mounted
+guard and called to all foot-passengers to keep away. The affair ended
+there. Monsieur de Maulincour obtained no redress. He had lost his
+servant, and was confined to his bed for some days, for the back of the
+carriage when shattered had bruised him severely, and the nervous shock
+of the sudden surprise gave him a fever. He did not, therefore, go to
+see Madame Jules.
+
+Ten days after this event, he left the house for the first time, in his
+repaired cabriolet, when, as he drove down the rue de Bourgogne and was
+close to the sewer opposite to the Chamber of Deputies, the axle-tree
+broke in two, and the baron was driving so rapidly that the breakage
+would have caused the two wheels to come together with force enough to
+break his head, had it not been for the resistance of the leather hood.
+Nevertheless, he was badly wounded in the side. For the second time in
+ten days he was carried home in a fainting condition to his terrified
+grandmother. This second accident gave him a feeling of distrust; he
+thought, though vaguely, of Ferragus and Madame Jules. To throw light on
+these suspicions he had the broken axle brought to his room and sent
+for his carriage-maker. The man examined the axle and the fracture,
+and proved two things: First, the axle was not made in his workshop; he
+furnished none that did not bear the initials of his name on the iron.
+But he could not explain by what means this axle had been substituted
+for the other. Secondly, the breakage of the suspicious axle was caused
+by a hollow space having been blown in it and a straw very cleverly
+inserted.
+
+“Eh! Monsieur le baron, whoever did that was malicious!” he said; “any
+one would swear, to look at it, that the axle was sound.”
+
+Monsieur de Maulincour begged the carriage-maker to say nothing of the
+affair; but he felt himself warned. These two attempts at murder were
+planned with an ability which denoted the enmity of intelligent minds.
+
+“It is war to the death,” he said to himself, as he tossed in his
+bed,--“a war of savages, skulking in ambush, of trickery and treachery,
+declared in the name of Madame Jules. What sort of man is this to whom
+she belongs? What species of power does this Ferragus wield?”
+
+Monsieur de Maulincour, though a soldier and brave man, could not
+repress a shudder. In the midst of many thoughts that now assailed him,
+there was one against which he felt he had neither defence nor courage:
+might not poison be employed ere long by his secret enemies? Under the
+influence of fears, which his momentary weakness and fever and low diet
+increased, he sent for an old woman long attached to the service of his
+grandmother, whose affection for himself was one of those semi-maternal
+sentiments which are the sublime of the commonplace. Without confiding
+in her wholly, he charged her to buy secretly and daily, in different
+localities, the food he needed; telling her to keep it under lock and
+key and bring it to him herself, not allowing any one, no matter who, to
+approach her while preparing it. He took the most minute precautions to
+protect himself against that form of death. He was ill in his bed
+and alone, and he had therefore the leisure to think of his own
+security,--the one necessity clear-sighted enough to enable human
+egotism to forget nothing!
+
+But the unfortunate man had poisoned his own life by this dread, and,
+in spite of himself, suspicion dyed all his hours with its gloomy tints.
+These two lessons of attempted assassination did teach him, however, the
+value of one of the virtues most necessary to a public man; he saw the
+wise dissimulation that must be practised in dealing with the great
+interests of life. To be silent about our own secret is nothing; but to
+be silent from the start, to forget a fact as Ali Pacha did for thirty
+years in order to be sure of a vengeance waited for for thirty years,
+is a fine study in a land where there are few men who can keep their
+own counsel for thirty days. Monsieur de Maulincour literally lived only
+through Madame Jules. He was perpetually absorbed in a sober examination
+into the means he ought to employ to triumph in this mysterious struggle
+with these mysterious persons. His secret passion for that woman grew
+by reason of all these obstacles. Madame Jules was ever there, erect, in
+the midst of his thoughts, in the centre of his heart, more seductive by
+her presumable vices than by the positive virtues for which he had made
+her his idol.
+
+At last, anxious to reconnoitre the position of the enemy, he thought
+he might without danger initiate the vidame into the secrets of his
+situation. The old commander loved Auguste as a father loves his wife’s
+children; he was shrewd, dexterous, and very diplomatic. He listened to
+the baron, shook his head, and they both held counsel. The worthy vidame
+did not share his young friend’s confidence when Auguste declared that
+in the time in which they now lived, the police and the government were
+able to lay bare all mysteries, and that if it were absolutely necessary
+to have recourse to those powers, he should find them most powerful
+auxiliaries.
+
+The old man replied, gravely: “The police, my dear boy, is the most
+incompetent thing on this earth, and government the feeblest in all
+matters concerning individuals. Neither the police nor the government
+can read hearts. What we might reasonably ask of them is to search
+for the causes of an act. But the police and the government are both
+eminently unfitted for that; they lack, essentially, the personal
+interest which reveals all to him who wants to know all. No human power
+can prevent an assassin or a poisoner from reaching the heart of a
+prince or the stomach of an honest man. Passions are the best police.”
+
+The vidame strongly advised the baron to go to Italy, and from Italy
+to Greece, from Greece to Syria, from Syria to Asia, and not to return
+until his secret enemies were convinced of his repentance, and would so
+make tacit peace with him. But if he did not take that course, then the
+vidame advised him to stay in the house, and even in his own room, where
+he would be safe from the attempts of this man Ferragus, and not to
+leave it until he could be certain of crushing him.
+
+“We should never touch an enemy until we can be sure of taking his head
+off,” he said, gravely.
+
+The old man, however, promised his favorite to employ all the astuteness
+with which Heaven had provided him (without compromising any one)
+in reconnoitring the enemy’s ground, and laying his plans for future
+victory. The Commander had in his service a retired Figaro, the wiliest
+monkey that ever walked in human form; in earlier days as clever as a
+devil, working his body like a galley-slave, alert as a thief, sly as a
+woman, but now fallen into the decadence of genius for want of practice
+since the new constitution of Parisian society, which has reformed even
+the valets of comedy. This Scapin emeritus was attached to his master
+as to a superior being; but the shrewd old vidame added a good round
+sum yearly to the wages of his former provost of gallantry,
+which strengthened the ties of natural affection by the bonds of
+self-interest, and obtained for the old gentleman as much care as the
+most loving mistress could bestow on a sick friend. It was this pearl
+of the old-fashioned comedy-valets, relic of the last century, auxiliary
+incorruptible from lack of passions to satisfy, on whom the old vidame
+and Monsieur de Maulincour now relied.
+
+“Monsieur le baron will spoil all,” said the great man in livery, when
+called into counsel. “Monsieur should eat, drink, and sleep in peace. I
+take the whole matter upon myself.”
+
+Accordingly, eight days after the conference, when Monsieur de
+Maulincour, perfectly restored to health, was breakfasting with his
+grandmother and the vidame, Justin entered to make his report. As soon
+as the dowager had returned to her own apartments he said, with that
+mock modesty which men of talent are so apt to affect:--
+
+“Ferragus is not the name of the enemy who is pursuing Monsieur le
+baron. This man--this devil, rather--is called Gratien, Henri, Victor,
+Jean-Joseph Bourignard. The Sieur Gratien Bourignard is a former
+ship-builder, once very rich, and, above all, one of the handsomest
+men of his day in Paris,--a Lovelace, capable of seducing Grandison.
+My information stops short there. He has been a simple workman; and the
+Companions of the Order of the Devorants did, at one time, elect him as
+their chief, under the title of Ferragus XXIII. The police ought to know
+that, if the police were instituted to know anything. The man has moved
+from the rue des Vieux-Augustins, and now roosts rue Joquelet, where
+Madame Jules Desmarets goes frequently to see him; sometimes her
+husband, on his way to the Bourse, drives her as far as the rue
+Vivienne, or she drives her husband to the Bourse. Monsieur le vidame
+knows about these things too well to want me to tell him if it is the
+husband who takes the wife, or the wife who takes the husband; but
+Madame Jules is so pretty, I’d bet on her. All that I have told you is
+positive. Bourignard often plays at number 129. Saving your presence,
+monsieur, he’s a rogue who loves women, and he has his little ways
+like a man of condition. As for the rest, he wins sometimes, disguises
+himself like an actor, paints his face to look like anything he chooses,
+and lives, I may say, the most original life in the world. I don’t doubt
+he has a good many lodgings, for most of the time he manages to evade
+what Monsieur le vidame calls ‘parliamentary investigations.’ If
+monsieur wishes, he could be disposed of honorably, seeing what his
+habits are. It is always easy to get rid of a man who loves women.
+However, this capitalist talks about moving again. Have Monsieur le
+vidame and Monsieur le baron any other commands to give me?”
+
+“Justin, I am satisfied with you; don’t go any farther in the matter
+without my orders, but keep a close watch here, so that Monsieur le
+baron may have nothing to fear.”
+
+“My dear boy,” continued the vidame, when they were alone, “go back to
+your old life, and forget Madame Jules.”
+
+“No, no,” said Auguste; “I will never yield to Gratien Bourignard. I
+will have him bound hand and foot, and Madame Jules also.”
+
+That evening the Baron Auguste de Maulincour, recently promoted to
+higher rank in the company of the Body-Guard of the king, went to a
+ball given by Madame la Duchesse de Berry at the Elysee-Bourbon. There,
+certainly, no danger could lurk for him; and yet, before he left the
+palace, he had an affair of honor on his hands,--an affair it was
+impossible to settle except by a duel.
+
+His adversary, the Marquis de Ronquerolles, considered that he had
+strong reasons to complain of Monsieur de Maulincour, who had given some
+ground for it during his former intimacy with Monsieur de Ronquerolles’
+sister, the Comtesse de Serizy. That lady, the one who detested German
+sentimentality, was all the more exacting in the matter of prudery. By
+one of those inexplicable fatalities, Auguste now uttered a harmless
+jest which Madame de Serizy took amiss, and her brother resented it. The
+discussion took place in the corner of a room, in a low voice. In good
+society, adversaries never raise their voices. The next day the faubourg
+Saint-Germain and the Chateau talked over the affair. Madame de Serizy
+was warmly defended, and all the blame was laid on Maulincour. August
+personages interfered. Seconds of the highest distinction were imposed
+on Messieurs de Maulincour and de Ronquerolles and every precaution was
+taken on the ground that no one should be killed.
+
+When Auguste found himself face to face with his antagonist, a man of
+pleasure, to whom no one could possibly deny sentiments of the highest
+honor, he felt it was impossible to believe him the instrument of
+Ferragus, chief of the Devorants; and yet he was compelled, as it were,
+by an inexplicable presentiment, to question the marquis.
+
+“Messieurs,” he said to the seconds, “I certainly do not refuse to
+meet the fire of Monsieur de Ronquerolles; but before doing so, I here
+declare that I was to blame, and I offer him whatever excuses he may
+desire, and publicly if he wishes it; because when the matter concerns a
+woman, nothing, I think, can degrade a man of honor. I therefore appeal
+to his generosity and good sense; is there not something rather silly in
+fighting without a cause?”
+
+Monsieur de Ronquerolles would not allow of this way of ending the
+affair, and then the baron, his suspicions revived, walked up to him.
+
+“Well, then! Monsieur le marquis,” he said, “pledge me, in presence of
+these gentlemen, your word as a gentleman that you have no other reason
+for vengeance than that you have chosen to put forward.”
+
+“Monsieur, that is a question you have no right to ask.”
+
+So saying, Monsieur de Ronquerolles took his place. It was agreed, in
+advance, that the adversaries were to be satisfied with one exchange
+of shots. Monsieur de Ronquerolles, in spite of the great distance
+determined by the seconds, which seemed to make the death of either
+party problematical, if not impossible, brought down the baron. The ball
+went through the latter’s body just below the heart, but fortunately
+without doing vital injury.
+
+“You aimed too well, monsieur,” said the baron, “to be avenging only a
+paltry quarrel.”
+
+And he fainted. Monsieur de Ronquerolles, who believed him to be a dead
+man, smiled sardonically as he heard those words.
+
+After a fortnight, during which time the dowager and the vidame gave
+him those cares of old age the secret of which is in the hands of long
+experience only, the baron began to return to life. But one morning his
+grandmother dealt him a crushing blow, by revealing anxieties to which,
+in her last days, she was now subjected. She showed him a letter signed
+F, in which the history of her grandson’s secret espionage was recounted
+step by step. The letter accused Monsieur de Maulincour of actions that
+were unworthy of a man of honor. He had, it said, placed an old woman
+at the stand of hackney-coaches in the rue de Menars; an old spy, who
+pretended to sell water from her cask to the coachmen, but who was
+really there to watch the actions of Madame Jules Desmarets. He had
+spied upon the daily life of a most inoffensive man, in order to detect
+his secrets,--secrets on which depended the lives of three persons. He
+had brought upon himself a relentless struggle, in which, although he
+had escaped with life three times, he must inevitably succumb, because
+his death had been sworn and would be compassed if all human means were
+employed upon it. Monsieur de Maulincour could no longer escape his fate
+by even promising to respect the mysterious life of these three persons,
+because it was impossible to believe the word of a gentleman who had
+fallen to the level of a police-spy; and for what reason? Merely to
+trouble the respectable life of an innocent woman and a harmless old
+man.
+
+The letter itself was nothing to Auguste in comparison to the tender
+reproaches of his grandmother. To lack respect to a woman! to spy upon
+her actions without a right to do so! Ought a man ever to spy upon
+a woman whom he loved?--in short, she poured out a torrent of those
+excellent reasons which prove nothing; and they put the young baron,
+for the first time in his life, into one of those great human furies in
+which are born, and from which issue the most vital actions of a man’s
+life.
+
+“Since it is war to the knife,” he said in conclusion, “I shall kill my
+enemy by any means that I can lay hold of.”
+
+The vidame went immediately, at Auguste’s request, to the chief of the
+private police of Paris, and without bringing Madame Jules’ name or
+person into the narrative, although they were really the gist of it, he
+made the official aware of the fears of the family of Maulincour about
+this mysterious person who was bold enough to swear the death of an
+officer of the Guards, in defiance of the law and the police. The chief
+pushed up his green spectacles in amazement, blew his nose several
+times, and offered snuff to the vidame, who, to save his dignity,
+pretended not to use tobacco, although his own nose was discolored with
+it. Then the chief took notes and promised, Vidocq and his spies aiding,
+to send in a report within a few days to the Maulincour family, assuring
+them meantime that there were no secrets for the police of Paris.
+
+A few days after this the police official called to see the vidame at
+the Hotel de Maulincour, where he found the young baron quite recovered
+from his last wound. He gave them in bureaucratic style his thanks for
+the indications they had afforded him, and told them that Bourignard was
+a convict, condemned to twenty years’ hard labor, who had miraculously
+escaped from a gang which was being transported from Bicetre to Toulon.
+For thirteen years the police had been endeavoring to recapture him,
+knowing that he had boldly returned to Paris; but so far this convict
+had escaped the most active search, although he was known to be mixed up
+in many nefarious deeds. However, the man, whose life was full of very
+curious incidents, would certainly be captured now in one or other of
+his several domiciles and delivered up to justice. The bureaucrat ended
+his report by saying to Monsieur de Maulincour that if he attached
+enough importance to the matter to wish to witness the capture of
+Bourignard, he might come the next day at eight in the morning to a
+house in the rue Sainte-Foi, of which he gave him the number. Monsieur
+de Maulincour excused himself from going personally in search of
+certainty,--trusting, with the sacred respect inspired by the police of
+Paris, in the capability of the authorities.
+
+Three days later, hearing nothing, and seeing nothing in the newspapers
+about the projected arrest, which was certainly of enough importance to
+have furnished an article, Monsieur de Maulincour was beginning to feel
+anxieties which were presently allayed by the following letter:--
+
+
+  Monsieur le Baron,--I have the honor to announce to you that you
+  need have no further uneasiness touching the affair in question.
+  The man named Gratien Bourignard, otherwise called Ferragus, died
+  yesterday, at his lodgings, rue Joquelet No. 7. The suspicions we
+  naturally conceived as to the identity of the dead body have been
+  completely set at rest by the facts. The physician of the
+  Prefecture of police was despatched by us to assist the physician
+  of the arrondissement, and the chief of the detective police made
+  all the necessary verifications to obtain absolute certainty.
+  Moreover, the character of the persons who signed the certificate
+  of death, and the affidavits of those who took care of the said
+  Bourignard in his last illness, among others that of the worthy
+  vicar of the church of the Bonne-Nouvelle (to whom he made his
+  last confession, for he died a Christian), do not permit us to
+  entertain any sort of doubt.
+
+  Accept, Monsieur le baron, etc., etc.
+
+
+Monsieur de Maulincour, the dowager, and the vidame breathed again with
+joy unspeakable. The good old woman kissed her grandson leaving a tear
+upon his cheek, and went away to thank God in prayer. The dear soul,
+who was making a novena for Auguste’s safety, believed her prayers were
+answered.
+
+“Well,” said the vidame, “now you had better show yourself at the ball
+you were speaking of. I oppose no further objections.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE WIFE ACCUSED
+
+Monsieur de Maulincour was all the more anxious to go to this ball
+because he knew that Madame Jules would be present. The fete was given
+by the Prefect of the Seine, in whose salons the two social worlds of
+Paris met as on neutral ground. Auguste passed through the rooms without
+finding the woman who now exercised so mighty an influence on his fate.
+He entered an empty boudoir where card-tables were placed awaiting
+players; and sitting down on a divan he gave himself up to the most
+contradictory thoughts about her. A man presently took the young officer
+by the arm, and looking up the baron was stupefied to behold the pauper
+of the rue Coquilliere, the Ferragus of Ida, the lodger in the rue Soly,
+the Bourignard of Justin, the convict of the police, and the dead man of
+the day before.
+
+“Monsieur, not a sound, not a word,” said Bourignard, whose voice he
+recognized. The man was elegantly dressed; he wore the order of the
+Golden-Fleece, and a medal on his coat. “Monsieur,” he continued, and
+his voice was sibilant like that of a hyena, “you increase my efforts
+against you by having recourse to the police. You will perish, monsieur;
+it has now become necessary. Do you love Madame Jules? Are you beloved
+by her? By what right do you trouble her peaceful life, and blacken her
+virtue?”
+
+Some one entered the card-room. Ferragus rose to go.
+
+“Do you know this man?” asked Monsieur de Maulincour of the new-comer,
+seizing Ferragus by the collar. But Ferragus quickly disengaged himself,
+took Monsieur de Maulincour by the hair, and shook his head rapidly.
+
+“Must you have lead in it to make it steady?” he said.
+
+“I do not know him personally,” replied Henri de Marsay, the spectator
+of this scene, “but I know that he is Monsieur de Funcal, a rich
+Portuguese.”
+
+Monsieur de Funcal had disappeared. The baron followed but without
+being able to overtake him until he reached the peristyle, where he
+saw Ferragus, who looked at him with a jeering laugh from a brilliant
+equipage which was driven away at high speed.
+
+“Monsieur,” said Auguste, re-entering the salon and addressing de
+Marsay, whom he knew, “I entreat you to tell me where Monsieur de Funcal
+lives.”
+
+“I do not know; but some one here can no doubt tell you.”
+
+The baron, having questioned the prefect, ascertained that the Comte de
+Funcal lived at the Portuguese embassy. At this moment, while he still
+felt the icy fingers of that strange man in his hair, he saw Madame
+Jules in all her dazzling beauty, fresh, gracious, artless, resplendent
+with the sanctity of womanhood which had won his love. This creature,
+now infernal to him, excited no emotion in his soul but that of hatred;
+and this hatred shone in a savage, terrible look from his eyes. He
+watched for a moment when he could speak to her unheard, and then he
+said:--
+
+“Madame, your _bravi_ have missed me three times.”
+
+“What do you mean, monsieur?” she said, flushing. “I know that you
+have had several unfortunate accidents lately, which I have greatly
+regretted; but how could I have had anything to do with them?”
+
+“You knew that _bravi_ were employed against me by that man of the rue
+Soly?”
+
+“Monsieur!”
+
+“Madame, I now call you to account, not for my happiness only, but for
+my blood--”
+
+At this instant Jules Desmarets approached them.
+
+“What are you saying to my wife, monsieur?”
+
+“Make that inquiry at my own house, monsieur, if you are curious,” said
+Maulincour, moving away, and leaving Madame Jules in an almost fainting
+condition.
+
+There are few women who have not found themselves, once at least in
+their lives, _a propos_ of some undeniable fact, confronted with
+a direct, sharp, uncompromising question,--one of those questions
+pitilessly asked by husbands, the mere apprehension of which gives
+a chill, while the actual words enter the heart like the blade of a
+dagger. It is from such crises that the maxim has come, “All women
+lie.” Falsehood, kindly falsehood, venial falsehood, sublime falsehood,
+horrible falsehood,--but always the necessity to lie. This necessity
+admitted, ought they not to know how to lie well? French women do it
+admirably. Our manners and customs teach them deception! Besides,
+women are so naively saucy, so pretty, graceful, and withal so true
+in lying,--they recognize so fully the utility of doing so in order
+to avoid in social life the violent shocks which happiness might not
+resist,--that lying is seen to be as necessary to their lives as the
+cotton-wool in which they put away their jewels. Falsehood becomes to
+them the foundation of speech; truth is exceptional; they tell it, if
+they are virtuous, by caprice or by calculation. According to individual
+character, some women laugh when they lie; others weep; others are
+grave; some grow angry. After beginning life by feigning indifference
+to the homage that deeply flatters them, they often end by lying to
+themselves. Who has not admired their apparent superiority to everything
+at the very moment when they are trembling for the secret treasures of
+their love? Who has never studied their ease, their readiness, their
+freedom of mind in the greatest embarrassments of life? In them, nothing
+is put on. Deception comes as the snow from heaven. And then, with what
+art they discover the truth in others! With what shrewdness they employ
+a direct logic in answer to some passionate question which has revealed
+to them the secret of the heart of a man who was guileless enough to
+proceed by questioning! To question a woman! why, that is delivering
+one’s self up to her; does she not learn in that way all that we seek to
+hide from her? Does she not know also how to be dumb, through speaking?
+What men are daring enough to struggle with the Parisian woman?--a woman
+who knows how to hold herself above all dagger thrusts, saying: “You are
+very inquisitive; what is it to you? Why do you wish to know? Ah! you
+are jealous! And suppose I do not choose to answer you?”--in short, a
+woman who possesses the hundred and thirty-seven methods of saying _No_,
+and incommensurable variations of the word _Yes_. Is not a treatise on
+the words _yes_ and _no_, a fine diplomatic, philosophic, logographic,
+and moral work, still waiting to be written? But to accomplish this
+work, which we may also call diabolic, isn’t an androgynous genius
+necessary? For that reason, probably, it will never be attempted. And
+besides, of all unpublished works isn’t it the best known and the best
+practised among women? Have you studied the behavior, the pose, the
+_disinvoltura_ of a falsehood? Examine it.
+
+Madame Desmarets was seated in the right-hand corner of her carriage,
+her husband in the left. Having forced herself to recover from her
+emotion in the ballroom, she now affected a calm demeanor. Her husband
+had then said nothing to her, and he still said nothing. Jules looked
+out of the carriage window at the black walls of the silent houses
+before which they passed; but suddenly, as if driven by a determining
+thought, when turning the corner of a street he examined his wife, who
+appeared to be cold in spite of the fur-lined pelisse in which she was
+wrapped. He thought she seemed pensive, and perhaps she really was
+so. Of all communicable things, reflection and gravity are the most
+contagious.
+
+“What could Monsieur de Maulincour have said to affect you so keenly?”
+ said Jules; “and why does he wish me to go to his house and find out?”
+
+“He can tell you nothing in his house that I cannot tell you here,” she
+replied.
+
+Then, with that feminine craft which always slightly degrades virtue,
+Madame Jules waited for another question. Her husband turned his face
+back to the houses, and continued his study of their walls. Another
+question would imply suspicion, distrust. To suspect a woman is a crime
+in love. Jules had already killed a man for doubting his wife. Clemence
+did not know all there was of true passion, of loyal reflection, in her
+husband’s silence; just as Jules was ignorant of the generous drama that
+was wringing the heart of his Clemence.
+
+The carriage rolled on through a silent Paris, bearing the couple,--two
+lovers who adored each other, and who, gently leaning on the same
+silken cushion, were being parted by an abyss. In these elegant coupes
+returning from a ball between midnight and two in the morning, how
+many curious and singular scenes must pass,--meaning those coupes with
+lanterns, which light both the street and the carriage, those with their
+windows unshaded; in short, legitimate coupes, in which couples can
+quarrel without caring for the eyes of pedestrians, because the civil
+code gives a right to provoke, or beat, or kiss, a wife in a carriage
+or elsewhere, anywhere, everywhere! How many secrets must be revealed in
+this way to nocturnal pedestrians,--to those young fellows who have gone
+to a ball in a carriage, but are obliged, for whatever cause it may be,
+to return on foot. It was the first time that Jules and Clemence had
+been together thus,--each in a corner; usually the husband pressed close
+to his wife.
+
+“It is very cold,” remarked Madame Jules.
+
+But her husband did not hear her; he was studying the signs above the
+shop windows.
+
+“Clemence,” he said at last, “forgive me the question I am about to ask
+you.”
+
+He came closer, took her by the waist, and drew her to him.
+
+“My God, it is coming!” thought the poor woman. “Well,” she said aloud,
+anticipating the question, “you want to know what Monsieur de Maulincour
+said to me. I will tell you, Jules; but not without fear. Good God! how
+is it possible that you and I should have secrets from one another? For
+the last few moments I have seen you struggling between a conviction of
+our love and vague fears. But that conviction is clear within us, is
+it not? And these doubts and fears, do they not seem to you dark and
+unnatural? Why not stay in that clear light of love you cannot doubt?
+When I have told you all, you will still desire to know more; and yet I
+myself do not know what the extraordinary words of that man meant. What
+I fear is that this may lead to some fatal affair between you. I would
+rather that we both forget this unpleasant moment. But, in any case,
+swear to me that you will let this singular adventure explain itself
+naturally. Here are the facts. Monsieur de Maulincour declared to me
+that the three accidents you have heard mentioned--the falling of a
+stone on his servant, the breaking down of his cabriolet, and his duel
+about Madame de Serizy--were the result of some plot I had laid against
+him. He also threatened to reveal to you the cause of my desire to
+destroy him. Can you imagine what all this means? My emotion came from
+the sight of his face convulsed with madness, his haggard eyes, and also
+his words, broken by some violent inward emotion. I thought him mad.
+That is all that took place. Now, I should be less than a woman if I had
+not perceived that for over a year I have become, as they call it, the
+passion of Monsieur de Maulincour. He has never seen me except at a
+ball; and our intercourse has been most insignificant,--merely that
+which every one shares at a ball. Perhaps he wants to disunite us, so
+that he may find me at some future time alone and unprotected. There,
+see! already you are frowning! Oh, how cordially I hate society! We were
+so happy without him; why take any notice of him? Jules, I entreat you,
+forget all this! To-morrow we shall, no doubt, hear that Monsieur de
+Maulincour has gone mad.”
+
+“What a singular affair!” thought Jules, as the carriage stopped under
+the peristyle of their house. He gave his arm to his wife and together
+they went up to their apartments.
+
+To develop this history in all its truth of detail, and to follow its
+course through many windings, it is necessary here to divulge some of
+love’s secrets, to glide beneath the ceilings of a marriage chamber, not
+shamelessly, but like Trilby, frightening neither Dougal nor Jeannie,
+alarming no one,--being as chaste as our noble French language requires,
+and as bold as the pencil of Gerard in his picture of Daphnis and Chloe.
+
+The bedroom of Madame Jules was a sacred plot. Herself, her husband,
+and her maid alone entered it. Opulence has glorious privileges, and the
+most enviable are those which enable the development of sentiments to
+their fullest extent,--fertilizing them by the accomplishment of even
+their caprices, and surrounding them with a brilliancy that enlarges
+them, with refinements that purify them, with a thousand delicacies that
+make them still more alluring. If you hate dinners on the grass, and
+meals ill-served, if you feel a pleasure in seeing a damask cloth that
+is dazzlingly white, a silver-gilt dinner service, and porcelain of
+exquisite purity, lighted by transparent candles, where miracles of
+cookery are served under silver covers bearing coats of arms, you must,
+to be consistent, leave the garrets at the tops of the houses, and the
+grisettes in the streets, abandon garrets, grisettes, umbrellas, and
+overshoes to men who pay for their dinners with tickets; and you must
+also comprehend Love to be a principle which develops in all its grace
+only on Savonnerie carpets, beneath the opal gleams of an alabaster
+lamp, between guarded walls silk-hung, before gilded hearths in chambers
+deadened to all outward sounds by shutters and billowy curtains. Mirrors
+must be there to show the play of form and repeat the woman we would
+multiply as love itself multiplies and magnifies her; next low
+divans, and a bed which, like a secret, is divined, not shown. In this
+coquettish chamber are fur-lined slippers for pretty feet, wax-candles
+under glass with muslin draperies, by which to read at all hours of the
+night, and flowers, not those oppressive to the head, and linen, the
+fineness of which might have satisfied Anne of Austria.
+
+Madame Jules had realized this charming programme, but that was nothing.
+All women of taste can do as much, though there is always in the
+arrangement of these details a stamp of personality which gives to this
+decoration or that detail a character that cannot be imitated. To-day,
+more than ever, reigns the fanaticism of individuality. The more our
+laws tend to an impossible equality, the more we shall get away from it
+in our manners and customs. Thus, rich people are beginning, in France,
+to become more exclusive in their tastes and their belongings, than they
+have been for the last thirty years. Madame Jules knew very well how
+to carry out this programme; and everything about her was arranged in
+harmony with a luxury that suits so well with love. Love in a cottage,
+or “Fifteen hundred francs and my Sophy,” is the dream of starvelings to
+whom black bread suffices in their present state; but when love
+really comes, they grow fastidious and end by craving the luxuries of
+gastronomy. Love holds toil and poverty in horror. It would rather die
+than merely live on from hand to mouth.
+
+Many women, returning from a ball, impatient for their beds, throw off
+their gowns, their faded flowers, their bouquets, the fragrance of which
+has now departed. They leave their little shoes beneath a chair, the
+white strings trailing; they take out their combs and let their hair
+roll down as it will. Little they care if their husbands see the puffs,
+the hairpins, the artful props which supported the elegant edifices
+of the hair, and the garlands or the jewels that adorned it. No more
+mysteries! all is over for the husband; no more painting or decoration
+for him. The corset--half the time it is a corset of a reparative
+kind--lies where it is thrown, if the maid is too sleepy to take it away
+with her. The whalebone bustle, the oiled-silk protections round the
+sleeves, the pads, the hair bought from a coiffeur, all the false woman
+is there, scattered about in open sight. _Disjecta membra poetae_, the
+artificial poesy, so much admired by those for whom it is conceived and
+elaborated, the fragments of a pretty woman, litter every corner of the
+room. To the love of a yawning husband, the actual presents herself,
+also yawning, in a dishabille without elegance, and a tumbled night-cap,
+that of last night and that of to-morrow night also,--“For really,
+monsieur, if you want a pretty cap to rumple every night, increase my
+pin-money.”
+
+There’s life as it is! A woman makes herself old and unpleasing to her
+husband; but dainty and elegant and adorned for others, for the rival of
+all husbands,--for that world which calumniates and tears to shreds her
+sex.
+
+Inspired by true love, for Love has, like other creations, its instinct
+of preservation, Madame Jules did very differently; she found in the
+constant blessing of her love the necessary impulse to fulfil all those
+minute personal cares which ought never to be relaxed, because they
+perpetuate love. Besides, such personal cares and duties proceed from a
+personal dignity which becomes all women, and are among the sweetest of
+flatteries, for is it not respecting in themselves the man they love?
+
+So Madame Jules denied to her husband all access to her dressing-room,
+where she left the accessories of her toilet, and whence she issued
+mysteriously adorned for the mysterious fetes of her heart. Entering
+their chamber, which was always graceful and elegant, Jules found a
+woman coquettishly wrapped in a charming _peignoir_, her hair simply
+wound in heavy coils around her head; a woman always more simple, more
+beautiful there than she was before the world; a woman just refreshed in
+water, whose only artifice consisted in being whiter than her muslins,
+sweeter than all perfumes, more seductive than any siren, always loving
+and therefore always loved. This admirable understanding of a wife’s
+business was the secret of Josephine’s charm for Napoleon, as in former
+times it was that of Caesonia for Caius Caligula, of Diane de Poitiers
+for Henri II. If it was largely productive to women of seven or eight
+lustres what a weapon is it in the hands of young women! A husband
+gathers with delight the rewards of his fidelity.
+
+Returning home after the conversation which had chilled her with fear,
+and still gave her the keenest anxiety, Madame Jules took particular
+pains with her toilet for the night. She wanted to make herself, and she
+did make herself enchanting. She belted the cambric of her dressing-gown
+round her waist, defining the lines of her bust; she allowed her hair to
+fall upon her beautifully modelled shoulders. A perfumed bath had given
+her a delightful fragrance, and her little bare feet were in velvet
+slippers. Strong in a sense of her advantages she came in stepping
+softly, and put her hands over her husband’s eyes. She thought him
+pensive; he was standing in his dressing-gown before the fire, his elbow
+on the mantel and one foot on the fender. She said in his ear, warming
+it with her breath, and nibbling the tip of it with her teeth:--
+
+“What are you thinking about, monsieur?”
+
+Then she pressed him in her arms as if to tear him away from all evil
+thoughts. The woman who loves has a full knowledge of her power; the
+more virtuous she is, the more effectual her coquetry.
+
+“About you,” he answered.
+
+“Only about me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Ah! that’s a very doubtful ‘yes.’”
+
+They went to bed. As she fell asleep, Madame Jules said to herself:--
+
+“Monsieur de Maulincour will certainly cause some evil. Jules’ mind is
+preoccupied, disturbed; he is nursing thoughts he does not tell me.”
+
+It was three in the morning when Madame Jules was awakened by a
+presentiment which struck her heart as she slept. She had a sense both
+physical and moral of her husband’s absence. She did not feel the
+arm Jules passed beneath her head,--that arm in which she had slept,
+peacefully and happy, for five years; an arm she had never wearied. A
+voice said to her, “Jules suffers, Jules is weeping.” She raised her
+head, and then sat up; felt that her husband’s place was cold, and saw
+him sitting before the fire, his feet on the fender, his head resting
+against the back of an arm-chair. Tears were on his cheeks. The poor
+woman threw herself hastily from her bed and sprang at a bound to her
+husband’s knees.
+
+“Jules! what is it? Are you ill? Speak, tell me! Speak to me, if you
+love me!” and she poured out a hundred words expressing the deepest
+tenderness.
+
+Jules knelt at her feet, kissed her hands and knees, and answered with
+fresh tears:--
+
+“Dear Clemence, I am most unhappy! It is not loving to distrust the
+one we love. I adore you and suspect you. The words that man said to me
+to-night have struck to my heart; they stay there in spite of myself,
+and confound me. There is some mystery here. In short, and I blush to
+say it, your explanations do not satisfy me. My reason casts gleams
+into my soul which my love rejects. It is an awful combat. Could I
+stay there, holding your head, and suspecting thoughts within it to me
+unknown? Oh! I believe in you, I believe in you!” he cried, seeing her
+smile sadly and open her mouth as if to speak. “Say nothing; do not
+reproach me. Besides, could you say anything I have not said myself for
+the last three hours? Yes, for three hours, I have been here, watching
+you as you slept, so beautiful! admiring that pure, peaceful brow. Yes,
+yes! you have always told me your thoughts, have you not? I alone am in
+that soul. While I look at you, while my eyes can plunge into yours I
+see all plainly. Your life is as pure as your glance is clear. No, there
+is no secret behind those transparent eyes.” He rose and kissed their
+lids. “Let me avow to you, dearest soul,” he said, “that for the last
+five years each day has increased my happiness, through the knowledge
+that you are all mine, and that no natural affection even can take any
+of your love. Having no sister, no father, no mother, no companion, I
+am neither above nor below any living being in your heart; I am alone
+there. Clemence, repeat to me those sweet things of the spirit you have
+so often said to me; do not blame me; comfort me, I am so unhappy. I
+have an odious suspicion on my conscience, and you have nothing in your
+heart to sear it. My beloved, tell me, could I stay there beside you?
+Could two heads united as ours have been lie on the same pillow when
+one was suffering and the other tranquil? What are you thinking of?”
+ he cried abruptly, observing that Clemence was anxious, confused, and
+seemed unable to restrain her tears.
+
+“I am thinking of my mother,” she answered, in a grave voice. “You
+will never know, Jules, what I suffer in remembering my mother’s dying
+farewell, said in a voice sweeter than all music, and in feeling the
+solemn touch of her icy hand at a moment when you overwhelm me with
+those assurances of your precious love.”
+
+She raised her husband, strained him to her with a nervous force greater
+than that of men, and kissed his hair, covering it with tears.
+
+“Ah! I would be hacked in pieces for you! Tell me that I make you happy;
+that I am to you the most beautiful of women--a thousand women to you.
+Oh! you are loved as no other man ever was or will be. I don’t know the
+meaning of those words ‘duty,’ ‘virtue.’ Jules, I love you for yourself;
+I am happy in loving you; I shall love you more and more to my dying
+day. I have pride in my love; I feel it is my destiny to have one sole
+emotion in my life. What I shall tell you now is dreadful, I know--but
+I am glad to have no child; I do not wish for any. I feel I am more wife
+than mother. Well, then, can you fear? Listen to me, my own beloved,
+promise to forget, not this hour of mingled tenderness and doubt, but
+the words of that madman. Jules, you _must_. Promise me not to see him,
+not to go to him. I have a deep conviction that if you set one foot in
+that maze we shall both roll down a precipice where I shall perish--but
+with your name upon my lips, your heart in my heart. Why hold me so high
+in that heart and yet so low in reality? What! you who give credit to so
+many as to money, can you not give me the charity of faith? And on the
+first occasion in our lives when you might prove to me your boundless
+trust, do you cast me from my throne in your heart? Between a madman
+and me, it is the madman whom you choose to believe? oh, Jules!” She
+stopped, threw back the hair that fell about her brow and neck, and
+then, in a heart-rending tone, she added: “I have said too much; one
+word should suffice. If your soul and your forehead still keep this
+cloud, however light it be, I tell you now that I shall die of it.”
+
+She could not repress a shudder, and turned pale.
+
+“Oh! I will kill that man,” thought Jules, as he lifted his wife in his
+arms and carried her to her bed.
+
+“Let us sleep in peace, my angel,” he said. “I have forgotten all, I
+swear it!”
+
+Clemence fell asleep to the music of those sweet words, softly repeated.
+Jules, as he watched her sleeping, said in his heart:--
+
+“She is right; when love is so pure, suspicion blights it. To that young
+soul, that tender flower, a blight--yes, a blight means death.”
+
+When a cloud comes between two beings filled with affection for each
+other and whose lives are in absolute unison, that cloud, though it
+may disperse, leaves in those souls a trace of its passage. Either
+love gains a stronger life, as the earth after rain, or the shock still
+echoes like distant thunder through a cloudless sky. It is impossible
+to recover absolutely the former life; love will either increase or
+diminish.
+
+At breakfast, Monsieur and Madame Jules showed to each other those
+particular attentions in which there is always something of affectation.
+There were glances of forced gaiety, which seemed the efforts of persons
+endeavoring to deceive themselves. Jules had involuntary doubts, his
+wife had positive fears. Still, sure of each other, they had slept. Was
+this strained condition the effect of a want of faith, or was it only a
+memory of their nocturnal scene? They did not know themselves. But they
+loved each other so purely that the impression of that scene, both cruel
+and beneficent, could not fail to leave its traces in their souls; both
+were eager to make those traces disappear, each striving to be the first
+to return to the other, and thus they could not fail to think of the
+cause of their first variance. To loving souls, this is not grief; pain
+is still far-off; but it is a sort of mourning, which is difficult to
+depict. If there are, indeed, relations between colors and the emotions
+of the soul, if, as Locke’s blind man said, scarlet produces on the
+sight the effect produced upon the hearing by a blast of trumpets, it is
+permissible to compare this reaction of melancholy to mourning tones of
+gray.
+
+But even so, love saddened, love in which remains a true sentiment
+of its happiness, momentarily troubled though it be, gives enjoyments
+derived from pain and pleasure both, which are all novel. Jules studied
+his wife’s voice; he watched her glances with the freshness of feeling
+that inspired him in the earliest days of his passion for her. The
+memory of five absolutely happy years, her beauty, the candor of her
+love, quickly effaced in her husband’s mind the last vestiges of an
+intolerable pain.
+
+The day was Sunday,--a day on which there was no Bourse and no business
+to be done. The reunited pair passed the whole day together, getting
+farther into each other’s hearts than they ever yet had done, like two
+children who in a moment of fear, hold each other closely and cling
+together, united by an instinct. There are in this life of two-in-one
+completely happy days, the gift of chance, ephemeral flowers, born
+neither of yesterday nor belonging to the morrow. Jules and Clemence
+now enjoyed this day as though they forboded it to be the last of their
+loving life. What name shall we give to that mysterious power which
+hastens the steps of travellers before the storm is visible; which makes
+the life and beauty of the dying so resplendent, and fills the parting
+soul with joyous projects for days before death comes; which tells the
+midnight student to fill his lamp when it shines brightest; and makes
+the mother fear the thoughtful look cast upon her infant by an observing
+man? We all are affected by this influence in the great catastrophes of
+life; but it has never yet been named or studied; it is something more
+than presentiment, but not as yet clear vision.
+
+All went well till the following day. On Monday, Jules Desmarets,
+obliged to go to the Bourse on his usual business, asked his wife, as
+usual, if she would take advantage of his carriage and let him drive her
+anywhere.
+
+“No,” she said, “the day is too unpleasant to go out.”
+
+It was raining in torrents. At half-past two o’clock Monsieur Desmarets
+reached the Treasury. At four o’clock, as he left the Bourse, he came
+face to face with Monsieur de Maulincour, who was waiting for him with
+the nervous pertinacity of hatred and vengeance.
+
+“Monsieur,” he said, taking Monsieur Desmarets by the arm, “I have
+important information to give you. Listen to me. I am too loyal a man to
+have recourse to anonymous letters with which to trouble your peace of
+mind; I prefer to speak to you in person. Believe me, if my very life
+were not concerned, I should not meddle with the private affairs of any
+household, even if I thought I had the right to do so.”
+
+“If what you have to say to me concerns Madame Desmarets,” replied
+Jules, “I request you to be silent, monsieur.”
+
+“If I am silent, monsieur, you may before long see Madame Jules on the
+prisoner’s bench at the court of assizes beside a convict. Now, do you
+wish me to be silent?”
+
+Jules turned pale; but his noble face instantly resumed its calmness,
+though it was now a false calmness. Drawing the baron under one of the
+temporary sheds of the Bourse, near which they were standing, he said to
+him in a voice which concealed his intense inward emotion:--
+
+“Monsieur, I will listen to you; but there will be a duel to the death
+between us if--”
+
+“Oh, to that I consent!” cried Monsieur de Maulincour. “I have the
+greatest esteem for your character. You speak of death. You are unaware
+that your wife may have assisted in poisoning me last Saturday night.
+Yes, monsieur, since then some extraordinary evil has developed in me.
+My hair appears to distil an inward fever and a deadly languor through
+my skull; I know who clutched my hair at that ball.”
+
+Monsieur de Maulincour then related, without omitting a single fact, his
+platonic love for Madame Jules, and the details of the affair in the rue
+Soly which began this narrative. Any one would have listened to him with
+attention; but Madame Jules’ husband had good reason to be more amazed
+than any other human being. Here his character displayed itself; he
+was more amazed than overcome. Made a judge, and the judge of an
+adored woman, he found in his soul the equity of a judge as well as the
+inflexibility. A lover still, he thought less of his own shattered life
+than of his wife’s life; he listened, not to his own anguish, but to
+some far-off voice that cried to him, “Clemence cannot lie! Why should
+she betray you?”
+
+“Monsieur,” said the baron, as he ended, “being absolutely certain
+of having recognized in Monsieur de Funcal the same Ferragus whom the
+police declared dead, I have put upon his traces an intelligent man. As
+I returned that night I remembered, by a fortunate chance, the name of
+Madame Meynardie, mentioned in that letter of Ida, the presumed mistress
+of my persecutor. Supplied with this clue, my emissary will soon get to
+the bottom of this horrible affair; for he is far more able to discover
+the truth than the police themselves.”
+
+“Monsieur,” replied Desmarets, “I know not how to thank you for this
+confidence. You say that you can obtain proofs and witnesses; I shall
+await them. I shall seek the truth of this strange affair courageously;
+but you must permit me to doubt everything until the evidence of
+the facts you state is proved to me. In any case you shall have
+satisfaction, for, as you will certainly understand, we both require
+it.”
+
+Jules returned home.
+
+“What is the matter, Jules?” asked his wife, when she saw him. “You look
+so pale you frighten me!”
+
+“The day is cold,” he answered, walking with slow steps across the room
+where all things spoke to him of love and happiness,--that room so calm
+and peaceful where a deadly storm was gathering.
+
+“Did you go out to-day?” he asked, as though mechanically.
+
+He was impelled to ask the question by the last of a myriad of thoughts
+which had gathered themselves together into a lucid meditation, though
+jealousy was actively prompting them.
+
+“No,” she answered, in a tone that was falsely candid.
+
+At that instant Jules saw through the open door of the dressing-room the
+velvet bonnet which his wife wore in the mornings; on it were drops of
+rain. Jules was a passionate man, but he was also full of delicacy. It
+was repugnant to him to bring his wife face to face with a lie. When
+such a situation occurs, all has come to an end forever between certain
+beings. And yet those drops of rain were like a flash tearing through
+his brain.
+
+He left the room, went down to the porter’s lodge, and said to the
+porter, after making sure that they were alone:--
+
+“Fouguereau, a hundred crowns if you tell me the truth; dismissal if you
+deceive me; and nothing at all if you ever speak of my question and your
+answer.”
+
+He stopped to examine the man’s face, leading him under the window. Then
+he continued:--
+
+“Did madame go out this morning?”
+
+“Madame went out at a quarter to three, and I think I saw her come in
+about half an hour ago.”
+
+“That is true, upon your honor?”
+
+“Yes, monsieur.”
+
+“You will have the money; but if you speak of this, remember, you will
+lose all.”
+
+Jules returned to his wife.
+
+“Clemence,” he said, “I find I must put my accounts in order. Do not be
+offended at the inquiry I am going to make. Have I not given you forty
+thousand francs since the beginning of the year?”
+
+“More,” she said,--“forty-seven.”
+
+“Have you spent them?”
+
+“Nearly,” she replied. “In the first place, I had to pay several of our
+last year’s bills--”
+
+“I shall never find out anything in this way,” thought Jules. “I am not
+taking the best course.”
+
+At this moment Jules’ own valet entered the room with a letter for his
+master, who opened it indifferently, but as soon as his eyes had lighted
+on the signature he read it eagerly. The letter was as follows:--
+
+
+  Monsieur,--For the sake of your peace of mind as well as ours, I
+  take the course of writing you this letter without possessing the
+  advantage of being known to you; but my position, my age, and the
+  fear of some misfortune compel me to entreat you to show
+  indulgence in the trying circumstances under which our afflicted
+  family is placed. Monsieur Auguste de Maulincour has for the last
+  few days shown signs of mental derangement, and we fear that he
+  may trouble your happiness by fancies which he confided to
+  Monsieur le Vidame de Pamiers and myself during his first attack
+  of frenzy. We think it right, therefore, to warn you of his
+  malady, which is, we hope, curable; but it will have such serious
+  and important effects on the honor of our family and the career of
+  my grandson that we must rely, monsieur, on your entire
+  discretion.
+
+  If Monsieur le Vidame or I could have gone to see you we would not
+  have written. But I make no doubt that you will regard this prayer
+  of a mother, who begs you to destroy this letter.
+
+  Accept the assurance of my perfect consideration.
+
+Baronne de Maulincour, _nee_ de Rieux.
+
+
+“Oh! what torture!” cried Jules.
+
+“What is it? what is in your mind?” asked his wife, exhibiting the
+deepest anxiety.
+
+“I have come,” he answered, slowly, as he threw her the letter, “to
+ask myself whether it can be you who have sent me that to avert my
+suspicions. Judge, therefore, what I suffer.”
+
+“Unhappy man!” said Madame Jules, letting fall the paper. “I pity him;
+though he has done me great harm.”
+
+“Are you aware that he has spoken to me?”
+
+“Oh! have you been to see him, in spite of your promise?” she cried in
+terror.
+
+“Clemence, our love is in danger of perishing; we stand outside of the
+ordinary rules of life; let us lay aside all petty considerations
+in presence of this great peril. Explain to me why you went out this
+morning. Women think they have the right to tell us little falsehoods.
+Sometimes they like to hide a pleasure they are preparing for us. Just
+now you said a word to me, by mistake, no doubt, a no for a yes.”
+
+He went into the dressing-room and brought out the bonnet.
+
+“See,” he said, “your bonnet has betrayed you; these spots are
+raindrops. You must, therefore, have gone out in a street cab, and these
+drops fell upon it as you went to find one, or as you entered or left
+the house where you went. But a woman can leave her own home for many
+innocent purposes, even after she has told her husband that she did
+not mean to go out. There are so many reasons for changing our plans!
+Caprices, whims, are they not your right? Women are not required to be
+consistent with themselves. You had forgotten something,--a service
+to render, a visit, some kind action. But nothing hinders a woman from
+telling her husband what she does. Can we ever blush on the breast of a
+friend? It is not a jealous husband who speaks to you, my Clemence; it
+is your lover, your friend, your brother.” He flung himself passionately
+at her feet. “Speak, not to justify yourself, but to calm my horrible
+sufferings. I know that you went out. Well--what did you do? where did
+you go?”
+
+“Yes, I went out, Jules,” she answered in a strained voice, though her
+face was calm. “But ask me nothing more. Wait; have confidence; without
+which you will lay up for yourself terrible remorse. Jules, my Jules,
+trust is the virtue of love. I owe to you that I am at this moment too
+troubled to answer you: but I am not a false woman; I love you, and you
+know it.”
+
+“In the midst of all that can shake the faith of man and rouse his
+jealousy, for I see I am not first in your heart, I am no longer thine
+own self--well, Clemence, even so, I prefer to believe you, to believe
+that voice, to believe those eyes. If you deceive me, you deserve--”
+
+“Ten thousand deaths!” she cried, interrupting him.
+
+“I have never hidden a thought from you, but you--”
+
+“Hush!” she said, “our happiness depends upon our mutual silence.”
+
+“Ha! I _will_ know all!” he exclaimed, with sudden violence.
+
+At that moment the cries of a woman were heard,--the yelping of a shrill
+little voice came from the antechamber.
+
+“I tell you I will go in!” it cried. “Yes, I shall go in; I will see
+her! I shall see her!”
+
+Jules and Clemence both ran to the salon as the door from the
+antechamber was violently burst open. A young woman entered hastily,
+followed by two servants, who said to their master:--
+
+“Monsieur, this person would come in in spite of us. We told her that
+madame was not at home. She answered that she knew very well madame had
+been out, but she saw her come in. She threatened to stay at the door of
+the house till she could speak to madame.”
+
+“You can go,” said Monsieur Desmarets to the two men. “What do you want,
+mademoiselle?” he added, turning to the strange woman.
+
+This “demoiselle” was the type of a woman who is never to be met with
+except in Paris. She is made in Paris, like the mud, like the pavement,
+like the water of the Seine, such as it becomes in Paris before human
+industry filters it ten times ere it enters the cut-glass decanters and
+sparkles pure and bright from the filth it has been. She is therefore a
+being who is truly original. Depicted scores of times by the painter’s
+brush, the pencil of the caricaturist, the charcoal of the etcher, she
+still escapes analysis, because she cannot be caught and rendered in all
+her moods, like Nature, like this fantastic Paris itself. She holds to
+vice by one thread only, and she breaks away from it at a thousand other
+points of the social circumference. Besides, she lets only one trait
+of her character be known, and that the only one which renders her
+blamable; her noble virtues are hidden; she prefers to glory in her
+naive libertinism. Most incompletely rendered in dramas and tales where
+she is put upon the scene with all her poesy, she is nowhere really
+true but in her garret; elsewhere she is invariably calumniated or
+over-praised. Rich, she deteriorates; poor, she is misunderstood. She
+has too many vices, and too many good qualities; she is too near to
+pathetic asphyxiation or to a dissolute laugh; too beautiful and too
+hideous. She personifies Paris, to which, in the long run, she supplies
+the toothless portresses, washerwomen, street-sweepers, beggars,
+occasionally insolent countesses, admired actresses, applauded singers;
+she has even given, in the olden time, two quasi-queens to the monarchy.
+Who can grasp such a Proteus? She is all woman, less than woman, more
+than woman. From this vast portrait the painter of manners and morals
+can take but a feature here and there; the _ensemble_ is infinite.
+
+She was a grisette of Paris; a grisette in all her glory; a grisette
+in a hackney-coach,--happy, young, handsome, fresh, but a grisette; a
+grisette with claws, scissors, impudent as a Spanish woman, snarling as
+a prudish English woman proclaiming her conjugal rights, coquettish as
+a great lady, though more frank, and ready for everything; a perfect
+_lionne_ in her way; issuing from the little apartment of which she
+had dreamed so often, with its red-calico curtains, its Utrecht velvet
+furniture, its tea-table, the cabinet of china with painted designs, the
+sofa, the little moquette carpet, the alabaster clock and candlesticks
+(under glass cases), the yellow bedroom, the eider-down quilt,--in
+short, all the domestic joys of a grisette’s life; and in addition,
+the woman-of-all-work (a former grisette herself, now the owner of a
+moustache), theatre-parties, unlimited bonbons, silk dresses, bonnets to
+spoil,--in fact, all the felicities coveted by the grisette heart except
+a carriage, which only enters her imagination as a marshal’s baton into
+the dreams of a soldier. Yes, this grisette had all these things in
+return for a true affection, or in spite of a true affection, as some
+others obtain it for an hour a day,--a sort of tax carelessly paid under
+the claws of an old man.
+
+The young woman who now entered the presence of Monsieur and Madame
+Jules had a pair of feet so little covered by her shoes that only a slim
+black line was visible between the carpet and her white stockings. This
+peculiar foot-gear, which Parisian caricaturists have well-rendered,
+is a special attribute of the grisette of Paris; but she is even more
+distinctive to the eyes of an observer by the care with which her
+garments are made to adhere to her form, which they clearly define.
+On this occasion she was trigly dressed in a green gown, with a white
+chemisette, which allowed the beauty of her bust to be seen; her shawl,
+of Ternaux cashmere, had fallen from her shoulders, and was held by its
+two corners, which were twisted round her wrists. She had a delicate
+face, rosy cheeks, a white skin, sparkling gray eyes, a round, very
+promising forehead, hair carefully smoothed beneath her little bonnet,
+and heavy curls upon her neck.
+
+“My name is Ida,” she said, “and if that’s Madame Jules to whom I have
+the advantage of speaking, I’ve come to tell her all I have in my
+heart against her. It is very wrong, when a woman is set up and in her
+furniture, as you are here, to come and take from a poor girl a man
+with whom I’m as good as married, morally, and who did talk of making it
+right by marrying me before the municipality. There’s plenty of handsome
+young men in the world--ain’t there, monsieur?--to take your fancy,
+without going after a man of middle age, who makes my happiness. Yah! I
+haven’t got a fine hotel like this, but I’ve got my love, I have. I hate
+handsome men and money; I’m all heart, and--”
+
+Madame Jules turned to her husband.
+
+“You will allow me, monsieur, to hear no more of all this,” she said,
+retreating to her bedroom.
+
+“If the lady lives with you, I’ve made a mess of it; but I can’t help
+that,” resumed Ida. “Why does she come after Monsieur Ferragus every
+day?”
+
+“You are mistaken, mademoiselle,” said Jules, stupefied; “my wife is
+incapable--”
+
+“Ha! so you’re married, you two,” said the grisette showing some
+surprise. “Then it’s very wrong, monsieur,--isn’t it?--for a woman who
+has the happiness of being married in legal marriage to have relations
+with a man like Henri--”
+
+“Henri! who is Henri?” said Jules, taking Ida by the arm and pulling her
+into an adjoining room that his wife might hear no more.
+
+“Why, Monsieur Ferragus.”
+
+“But he is dead,” said Jules.
+
+“Nonsense; I went to Franconi’s with him last night, and he brought me
+home--as he ought. Besides, your wife can tell you about him; didn’t
+she go there this very afternoon at three o’clock? I know she did, for
+I waited in the street, and saw her,--all because that good-natured
+fellow, Monsieur Justin, whom you know perhaps,--a little old man with
+jewelry who wears corsets,--told me that Madame Jules was my rival. That
+name, monsieur, sounds mighty like a feigned one; but if it is yours,
+excuse me. But this I say, if Madame Jules was a court duchess, Henri is
+rich enough to satisfy all her fancies, and it is my business to protect
+my property; I’ve a right to, for I love him, that I do. He is my
+_first_ inclination; my happiness and all my future fate depends on
+it. I fear nothing, monsieur; I am honest; I never lied, or stole the
+property of any living soul, no matter who. If an empress was my rival,
+I’d go straight to her, empress as she was; because all pretty women are
+equals, monsieur--”
+
+“Enough! enough!” said Jules. “Where do you live?”
+
+“Rue de la Corderie-du-Temple, number 14, monsieur,--Ida Gruget,
+corset-maker, at your service,--for we make lots of corsets for men.”
+
+“Where does the man whom you call Ferragus live?”
+
+“Monsieur,” she said, pursing up her lips, “in the first place, he’s not
+a man; he is a rich monsieur, much richer, perhaps, than you are. But
+why do you ask me his address when your wife knows it? He told me not
+to give it. Am I obliged to answer you? I’m not, thank God, in a
+confessional or a police-court; I’m responsible only to myself.”
+
+“If I were to offer you ten thousand francs to tell me where Monsieur
+Ferragus lives, how then?”
+
+“Ha! n, o, _no_, my little friend, and that ends the matter,” she said,
+emphasizing this singular reply with a popular gesture. “There’s no
+sum in the world could make me tell you. I have the honor to bid you
+good-day. How do I get out of here?”
+
+Jules, horror-struck, allowed her to go without further notice. The
+whole world seemed to crumble beneath his feet, and above him the
+heavens were falling with a crash.
+
+“Monsieur is served,” said his valet.
+
+The valet and the footman waited in the dining-room a quarter of an hour
+without seeing master or mistress.
+
+“Madame will not dine to-day,” said the waiting-maid, coming in.
+
+“What’s the matter, Josephine?” asked the valet.
+
+“I don’t know,” she answered. “Madame is crying, and is going to bed.
+Monsieur has no doubt got some love-affair on hand, and it has been
+discovered at a very bad time. I wouldn’t answer for madame’s life. Men
+are so clumsy; they’ll make you scenes without any precaution.”
+
+“That’s not so,” said the valet, in a low voice. “On the contrary,
+madame is the one who--you understand? What times does monsieur have to
+go after pleasures, he, who hasn’t slept out of madame’s room for five
+years, who goes to his study at ten and never leaves it till breakfast,
+at twelve. His life is all known, it is regular; whereas madame goes out
+nearly every day at three o’clock, Heaven knows where.”
+
+“And monsieur too,” said the maid, taking her mistress’s part.
+
+“Yes, but he goes straight to the Bourse. I told him three times that
+dinner was ready,” continued the valet, after a pause. “You might as
+well talk to a post.”
+
+Monsieur Jules entered the dining-room.
+
+“Where is madame?” he said.
+
+“Madame is going to bed; her head aches,” replied the maid, assuming an
+air of importance.
+
+Monsieur Jules then said to the footmen composedly: “You can take away;
+I shall go and sit with madame.”
+
+He went to his wife’s room and found her weeping, but endeavoring to
+smother her sobs with her handkerchief.
+
+“Why do you weep?” said Jules; “you need expect no violence and no
+reproaches from me. Why should I avenge myself? If you have not been
+faithful to my love, it is that you were never worthy of it.”
+
+“Not worthy?” The words were repeated amid her sobs and the accent in
+which they were said would have moved any other man than Jules.
+
+“To kill you, I must love more than perhaps I do love you,” he
+continued. “But I should never have the courage; I would rather kill
+myself, leaving you to your--happiness, and with--whom!--”
+
+He did not end his sentence.
+
+“Kill yourself!” she cried, flinging herself at his feet and clasping
+them.
+
+But he, wishing to escape the embrace, tried to shake her off, dragging
+her in so doing toward the bed.
+
+“Let me alone,” he said.
+
+“No, no, Jules!” she cried. “If you love me no longer I shall die. Do
+you wish to know all?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He took her, grasped her violently, and sat down on the edge of the bed,
+holding her between his legs. Then, looking at that beautiful face now
+red as fire and furrowed with tears,--
+
+“Speak,” he said.
+
+Her sobs began again.
+
+“No; it is a secret of life and death. If I tell it, I--No, I cannot.
+Have mercy, Jules!”
+
+“You have betrayed me--”
+
+“Ah! Jules, you think so now, but soon you will know all.”
+
+“But this Ferragus, this convict whom you go to see, a man enriched by
+crime, if he does not belong to you, if you do not belong to him--”
+
+“Oh, Jules!”
+
+“Speak! Is he your mysterious benefactor?--the man to whom we owe our
+fortune, as persons have said already?”
+
+“Who said that?”
+
+“A man whom I killed in a duel.”
+
+“Oh, God! one death already!”
+
+“If he is not your protector, if he does not give you money, if it
+is you, on the contrary, who carry money to him, tell me, is he your
+brother?”
+
+“What if he were?” she said.
+
+Monsieur Desmarets crossed his arms.
+
+“Why should that have been concealed from me?” he said. “Then you and
+your mother have both deceived me? Besides, does a woman go to see her
+brother every day, or nearly every day?”
+
+His wife had fainted at his feet.
+
+“Dead,” he said. “And suppose I am mistaken?”
+
+He sprang to the bell-rope; called Josephine, and lifted Clemence to the
+bed.
+
+“I shall die of this,” said Madame Jules, recovering consciousness.
+
+“Josephine,” cried Monsieur Desmarets. “Send for Monsieur Desplein; send
+also to my brother and ask him to come here immediately.”
+
+“Why your brother?” asked Clemence.
+
+But Jules had already left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. WHERE GO TO DIE?
+
+For the first time in five years Madame Jules slept alone in her bed,
+and was compelled to admit a physician into that sacred chamber. These
+in themselves were two keen pangs. Desplein found Madame Jules very
+ill. Never was a violent emotion more untimely. He would say nothing
+definite, and postponed till the morrow giving any opinion, after
+leaving a few directions, which were not executed, the emotions of the
+heart causing all bodily cares to be forgotten.
+
+When morning dawned, Clemence had not yet slept. Her mind was absorbed
+in the low murmur of a conversation which lasted several hours between
+the brothers; but the thickness of the walls allowed no word which could
+betray the object of this long conference to reach her ears. Monsieur
+Desmarets, the notary, went away at last. The stillness of the night,
+and the singular activity of the senses given by powerful emotion,
+enabled Clemence to distinguish the scratching of a pen and the
+involuntary movements of a person engaged in writing. Those who are
+habitually up at night, and who observe the different acoustic effects
+produced in absolute silence, know that a slight echo can be readily
+perceived in the very places where louder but more equable and continued
+murmurs are not distinct. At four o’clock the sound ceased. Clemence
+rose, anxious and trembling. Then, with bare feet and without a wrapper,
+forgetting her illness and her moist condition, the poor woman opened
+the door softly without noise and looked into the next room. She saw her
+husband sitting, with a pen in his hand, asleep in his arm-chair. The
+candles had burned to the sockets. She slowly advanced and read on an
+envelope, already sealed, the words, “This is my will.”
+
+She knelt down as if before an open grave and kissed her husband’s hand.
+He woke instantly.
+
+“Jules, my friend, they grant some days to criminals condemned to
+death,” she said, looking at him with eyes that blazed with fever and
+with love. “Your innocent wife asks only two. Leave me free for two
+days, and--wait! After that, I shall die happy--at least, you will
+regret me.”
+
+“Clemence, I grant them.”
+
+Then, as she kissed her husband’s hands in the tender transport of her
+heart, Jules, under the spell of that cry of innocence, took her in his
+arms and kissed her forehead, though ashamed to feel himself still under
+subjection to the power of that noble beauty.
+
+On the morrow, after taking a few hours’ rest, Jules entered his wife’s
+room, obeying mechanically his invariable custom of not leaving the
+house without a word to her. Clemence was sleeping. A ray of light
+passing through a chink in the upper blind of a window fell across the
+face of the dejected woman. Already suffering had impaired her forehead
+and the freshness of her lips. A lover’s eye could not fail to notice
+the appearance of dark blotches, and a sickly pallor in place of
+the uniform tone of the cheeks and the pure ivory whiteness of the
+skin,--two points at which the sentiments of her noble soul were
+artlessly wont to show themselves.
+
+“She suffers,” thought Jules. “Poor Clemence! May God protect us!”
+
+He kissed her very softly on the forehead. She woke, saw her husband,
+and remembered all. Unable to speak, she took his hand, her eyes filling
+with tears.
+
+“I am innocent,” she said, ending her dream.
+
+“You will not go out to-day, will you?” asked Jules.
+
+“No, I feel too weak to leave my bed.”
+
+“If you should change your mind, wait till I return,” said Jules.
+
+Then he went down to the porter’s lodge.
+
+“Fouguereau, you will watch the door yourself to-day. I wish to know
+exactly who comes to the house, and who leaves it.”
+
+Then he threw himself into a hackney-coach, and was driven to the hotel
+de Maulincour, where he asked for the baron.
+
+“Monsieur is ill,” they told him.
+
+Jules insisted on entering, and gave his name. If he could not see the
+baron, he wished to see the vidame or the dowager. He waited some time
+in the salon, where Madame de Maulincour finally came to him and told
+him that her grandson was much too ill to receive him.
+
+“I know, madame, the nature of his illness from the letter you did me
+the honor to write, and I beg you to believe--”
+
+“A letter to you, monsieur, written by me!” cried the dowager,
+interrupting him. “I have written you no letter. What was I made to say
+in that letter, monsieur?”
+
+“Madame,” replied Jules, “intending to see Monsieur de Maulincour
+to-day, I thought it best to preserve the letter in spite of its
+injunction to destroy it. There it is.”
+
+Madame de Maulincour put on her spectacles, and the moment she cast her
+eyes on the paper she showed the utmost surprise.
+
+“Monsieur,” she said, “my writing is so perfectly imitated that, if the
+matter were not so recent, I might be deceived myself. My grandson is
+ill, it is true; but his reason has never for a moment been affected. We
+are the puppets of some evil-minded person or persons; and yet I cannot
+imagine the object of a trick like this. You shall see my grandson,
+monsieur, and you will at once perceive that he is perfectly sound in
+mind.”
+
+She rang the bell, and sent to ask if the baron felt able to receive
+Monsieur Desmarets. The servant returned with an affirmative answer.
+Jules went to the baron’s room, where he found him in an arm-chair near
+the fire. Too feeble to move, the unfortunate man merely bowed his head
+with a melancholy gesture. The Vidame de Pamiers was sitting with him.
+
+“Monsieur le baron,” said Jules, “I have something to say which makes it
+desirable that I should see you alone.”
+
+“Monsieur,” replied Auguste, “Monsieur le vidame knows about this
+affair; you can speak fearlessly before him.”
+
+“Monsieur le baron,” said Jules, in a grave voice, “you have troubled
+and well-nigh destroyed my happiness without having any right to do so.
+Until the moment when we can see clearly which of us should demand, or
+grant, reparation to the other, you are bound to help me in following
+the dark and mysterious path into which you have flung me. I have now
+come to ascertain from you the present residence of the extraordinary
+being who exercises such a baneful effect on your life and mine. On my
+return home yesterday, after listening to your avowals, I received that
+letter.”
+
+Jules gave him the forged letter.
+
+“This Ferragus, this Bourignard, or this Monsieur de Funcal, is a
+demon!” cried Maulincour, after having read it. “Oh, what a frightful
+maze I put my foot into when I meddled in this matter! Where am I going?
+I did wrong, monsieur,” he continued, looking at Jules; “but death is
+the greatest of all expiations, and my death is now approaching. You can
+ask me whatever you like; I am at your orders.”
+
+“Monsieur, you know, of course, where this man is living, and I must
+know it if it costs me all my fortune to penetrate this mystery. In
+presence of so cruel an enemy every moment is precious.”
+
+“Justin shall tell you all,” replied the baron.
+
+At these words the vidame fidgeted on his chair. Auguste rang the bell.
+
+“Justin is not in the house!” cried the vidame, in a hasty manner that
+told much.
+
+“Well, then,” said Auguste, excitedly, “the other servants must know
+where he is; send a man on horseback to fetch him. Your valet is in
+Paris, isn’t he? He can be found.”
+
+The vidame was visibly distressed.
+
+“Justin can’t come, my dear boy,” said the old man; “he is dead. I
+wanted to conceal the accident from you, but--”
+
+“Dead!” cried Monsieur de Maulincour,--“dead! When and how?”
+
+“Last night. He had been supping with some old friends, and, I dare say,
+was drunk; his friends--no doubt they were drunk, too--left him lying in
+the street, and a heavy vehicle ran over him.”
+
+“The convict did not miss _him_; at the first stroke he killed,” said
+Auguste. “He has had less luck with me; it has taken four blows to put
+me out of the way.”
+
+Jules was gloomy and thoughtful.
+
+“Am I to know nothing, then?” he cried, after a long pause. “Your valet
+seems to have been justly punished. Did he not exceed your orders in
+calumniating Madame Desmarets to a person named Ida, whose jealousy he
+roused in order to turn her vindictiveness upon us?”
+
+“Ah, monsieur! in my anger I informed him about Madame Jules,” said
+Auguste.
+
+“Monsieur!” cried the husband, keenly irritated.
+
+“Oh, monsieur!” replied the baron, claiming silence by a gesture, “I am
+prepared for all. You cannot tell me anything my own conscience has
+not already told me. I am now expecting the most celebrated of all
+professors of toxicology, in order to learn my fate. If I am destined
+to intolerable suffering, my resolution is taken. I shall blow my brains
+out.”
+
+“You talk like a child!” cried the vidame, horrified by the coolness
+with which the baron said these words. “Your grandmother would die of
+grief.”
+
+“Then, monsieur,” said Jules, “am I to understand that there exist
+no means of discovering in what part of Paris this extraordinary man
+resides?”
+
+“I think, monsieur,” said the old vidame, “from what I have heard poor
+Justin say, that Monsieur de Funcal lives at either the Portuguese or
+the Brazilian embassy. Monsieur de Funcal is a nobleman belonging to
+both those countries. As for the convict, he is dead and buried. Your
+persecutor, whoever he is, seems to me so powerful that it would be
+well to take no decisive measures until you are sure of some way of
+confounding and crushing him. Act prudently and with caution, my dear
+monsieur. Had Monsieur de Maulincour followed my advice, nothing of all
+this would have happened.”
+
+Jules coldly but politely withdrew. He was now at a total loss to know
+how to reach Ferragus. As he passed into his own house, the porter told
+him that Madame had just been out to throw a letter into the post box
+at the head of the rue de Menars. Jules felt humiliated by this proof of
+the insight with which the porter espoused his cause, and the cleverness
+by which he guessed the way to serve him. The eagerness of servants, and
+their shrewdness in compromising masters who compromised themselves,
+was known to him, and he fully appreciated the danger of having them as
+accomplices, no matter for what purpose. But he could not think of his
+personal dignity until the moment when he found himself thus suddenly
+degraded. What a triumph for the slave who could not raise himself to
+his master, to compel his master to come down to his level! Jules was
+harsh and hard to him. Another fault. But he suffered so deeply! His
+life till then so upright, so pure, was becoming crafty; he was to
+scheme and lie. Clemence was scheming and lying. This to him was a
+moment of horrible disgust. Lost in a flood of bitter feelings, Jules
+stood motionless at the door of his house. Yielding to despair, he
+thought of fleeing, of leaving France forever, carrying with him the
+illusions of uncertainty. Then, again, not doubting that the letter
+Clemence had just posted was addressed to Ferragus, his mind searched
+for a means of obtaining the answer that mysterious being was certain
+to send. Then his thoughts began to analyze the singular good fortune
+of his life since his marriage, and he asked himself whether the calumny
+for which he had taken such signal vengeance was not a truth. Finally,
+reverting to the coming answer, he said to himself:--
+
+“But this man, so profoundly capable, so logical in his every act, who
+sees and foresees, who calculates, and even divines, our very thoughts,
+is he likely to make an answer? Will he not employ some other means more
+in keeping with his power? He may send his answer by some beggar; or in
+a carton brought by an honest man, who does not suspect what he brings;
+or in some parcel of shoes, which a shop-girl may innocently deliver to
+my wife. If Clemence and he have agreed upon such means--”
+
+He distrusted all things; his mind ran over vast tracts and shoreless
+oceans of conjecture. Then, after floating for a time among a thousand
+contradictory ideas, he felt he was strongest in his own house, and he
+resolved to watch it as the ant-lion watches his sandy labyrinth.
+
+“Fouguereau,” he said to the porter, “I am not at home to any one who
+comes to see me. If any one calls to see madame, or brings her anything,
+ring twice. Bring all letters addressed here to me, no matter for whom
+they are intended.”
+
+“Thus,” thought he, as he entered his study, which was in the entresol,
+“I forestall the schemes of this Ferragus. If he sends some one to ask
+for me so as to find out if Clemence is alone, at least I shall not be
+tricked like a fool.”
+
+He stood by the window of his study, which looked upon the street,
+and then a final scheme, inspired by jealousy, came into his mind. He
+resolved to send his head-clerk in his own carriage to the Bourse with
+a letter to another broker, explaining his sales and purchases and
+requesting him to do his business for that day. He postponed his more
+delicate transactions till the morrow, indifferent to the fall or
+rise of stocks or the debts of all Europe. High privilege of love!--it
+crushes all things, all interests fall before it: altar, throne,
+consols!
+
+At half-past three, just the hour at which the Bourse is in full blast
+of reports, monthly settlements, premiums, etc., Fouguereau entered the
+study, quite radiant with his news.
+
+“Monsieur, an old woman has come, but very cautiously; I think she’s a
+sly one. She asked for monsieur, and seemed much annoyed when I told her
+he was out; then she gave me a letter for madame, and here it is.”
+
+Fevered with anxiety, Jules opened the letter; then he dropped into a
+chair, exhausted. The letter was mere nonsense throughout, and needed a
+key. It was virtually in cipher.
+
+“Go away, Fouguereau.” The porter left him. “It is a mystery deeper than
+the sea below the plummet line! Ah! it must be love; love only is so
+sagacious, so inventive as this. Ah! I shall kill her.”
+
+At this moment an idea flashed through his brain with such force that
+he felt almost physically illuminated by it. In the days of his toilsome
+poverty before his marriage, Jules had made for himself a true friend.
+The extreme delicacy with which he had managed the susceptibilities of a
+man both poor and modest; the respect with which he had surrounded him;
+the ingenious cleverness he had employed to nobly compel him to share
+his opulence without permitting it to make him blush, increased their
+friendship. Jacquet continued faithful to Desmarets in spite of his
+wealth.
+
+Jacquet, a nobly upright man, a toiler, austere in his morals, had
+slowly made his way in that particular ministry which develops both
+honesty and knavery at the same time. A clerk in the ministry of Foreign
+Affairs, he had charge of the most delicate division of its archives.
+Jacquet in that office was like a glow-worm, casting his light upon
+those secret correspondences, deciphering and classifying despatches.
+Ranking higher than a mere _bourgeois_, his position at the ministry was
+superior to that of the other subalterns. He lived obscurely, glad
+to feel that such obscurity sheltered him from reverses and
+disappointments, and was satisfied to humbly pay in the lowest coin
+his debt to the country. Thanks to Jules, his position had been much
+ameliorated by a worthy marriage. An unrecognized patriot, a minister in
+actual fact, he contented himself with groaning in his chimney-corner at
+the course of the government. In his own home, Jacquet was an easy-going
+king,--an umbrella-man, as they say, who hired a carriage for his
+wife which he never entered himself. In short, to end this sketch of a
+philosopher unknown to himself, he had never suspected and never in
+all his life would suspect the advantages he might have drawn from
+his position,--that of having for his intimate friend a broker, and of
+knowing every morning all the secrets of the State. This man, sublime
+after the manner of that nameless soldier who died in saving Napoleon by
+a “qui vive,” lived at the ministry.
+
+In ten minutes Jules was in his friend’s office. Jacquet gave him a
+chair, laid aside methodically his green silk eye-shade, rubbed his
+hands, picked up his snuff-box, rose, stretched himself till his
+shoulder-blades cracked, swelled out his chest, and said:--
+
+“What brings you here, Monsieur Desmarets? What do you want with me?”
+
+“Jacquet, I want you to decipher a secret,--a secret of life and death.”
+
+“It doesn’t concern politics?”
+
+“If it did, I shouldn’t come to you for information,” said Jules.
+“No, it is a family matter, about which I require you to be absolutely
+silent.”
+
+“Claude-Joseph Jacquet, dumb by profession. Don’t you know me by this
+time?” he said, laughing. “Discretion is my lot.”
+
+Jules showed him the letter.
+
+“You must read me this letter, addressed to my wife.”
+
+“The deuce! the deuce! a bad business!” said Jacquet, examining the
+letter as a usurer examines a note to be negotiated. “Ha! that’s a
+gridiron letter! Wait a minute.”
+
+He left Jules alone for a moment, but returned immediately.
+
+“Easy enough to read, my friend! It is written on the gridiron plan,
+used by the Portuguese minister under Monsieur de Choiseul, at the time
+of the dismissal of the Jesuits. Here, see!”
+
+Jacquet placed upon the writing a piece of paper cut out in regular
+squares, like the paper laces which confectioners wrap round their
+sugarplums; and Jules then read with perfect ease the words that were
+visible in the interstices. They were as follows:--
+
+  “Don’t be uneasy, my dear Clemence; our happiness cannot again be
+  troubled; and your husband will soon lay aside his suspicions.
+  However ill you may be, you must have the courage to come here
+  to-morrow; find strength in your love for me. Mine for you has
+  induced me to submit to a cruel operation, and I cannot leave my
+  bed. I have had the actual cautery applied to my back, and it was
+  necessary to burn it in a long time; you understand me? But I
+  thought of you, and I did not suffer.
+
+  “To baffle Maulincour (who will not persecute us much longer), I
+  have left the protecting roof of the embassy, and am now safe from
+  all inquiry in the rue des Enfants-Rouges, number 12, with an old
+  woman, Madame Etienne Gruget, mother of that Ida, who shall pay
+  dear for her folly. Come to-morrow, at nine in the morning. I am
+  in a room which is reached only by an interior staircase. Ask for
+  Monsieur Camuset. Adieu; I kiss your forehead, my darling.”
+
+Jacquet looked at Jules with a sort of honest terror, the sign of a
+true compassion, as he made his favorite exclamation in two separate and
+distinct tones,--
+
+“The deuce! the deuce!”
+
+“That seems clear to you, doesn’t it?” said Jules. “Well, in the depths
+of my heart there is a voice that pleads for my wife, and makes itself
+heard above the pangs of jealousy. I must endure the worst of all agony
+until to-morrow; but to-morrow, between nine and ten I shall know all; I
+shall be happy or wretched for all my life. Think of me then, Jacquet.”
+
+“I shall be at your house to-morrow at eight o’clock. We will go
+together; I’ll wait for you, if you like, in the street. You may run
+some danger, and you ought to have near you some devoted person who’ll
+understand a mere sign, and whom you can safely trust. Count on me.”
+
+“Even to help me in killing some one?”
+
+“The deuce! the deuce!” said Jacquet, repeating, as it were, the same
+musical note. “I have two children and a wife.”
+
+Jules pressed his friend’s hand and went away; but returned immediately.
+
+“I forgot the letter,” he said. “But that’s not all, I must reseal it.”
+
+“The deuce! the deuce! you opened it without saving the seal; however,
+it is still possible to restore it. Leave it with me and I’ll bring it
+to you _secundum scripturam_.”
+
+“At what time?”
+
+“Half-past five.”
+
+“If I am not yet in, give it to the porter and tell him to send it up to
+madame.”
+
+“Do you want me to-morrow?”
+
+“No. Adieu.”
+
+Jules drove at once to the place de la Rotonde du Temple, where he left
+his cabriolet and went on foot to the rue des Enfants-Rouges. He found
+the house of Madame Etienne Gruget and examined it. There, the mystery
+on which depended the fate of so many persons would be cleared up;
+there, at this moment, was Ferragus, and to Ferragus all the threads of
+this strange plot led. The Gordian knot of the drama, already so bloody,
+was surely in a meeting between Madame Jules, her husband, and that man;
+and a blade able to cut the closest of such knots would not be wanting.
+
+The house was one of those which belong to the class called
+_cabajoutis_. This significant name is given by the populace of Paris
+to houses which are built, as it were, piecemeal. They are nearly
+always composed of buildings originally separate but afterwards united
+according to the fancy of the various proprietors who successively
+enlarge them; or else they are houses begun, left unfinished, again
+built upon, and completed,--unfortunate structures which have passed,
+like certain peoples, under many dynasties of capricious masters.
+Neither the floors nor the windows have an _ensemble_,--to borrow one of
+the most picturesque terms of the art of painting; all is discord, even
+the external decoration. The _cabajoutis_ is to Parisian architecture
+what the _capharnaum_ is to the apartment,--a poke-hole, where the most
+heterogeneous articles are flung pell-mell.
+
+“Madame Etienne?” asked Jules of the portress.
+
+This portress had her lodge under the main entrance, in a sort of
+chicken coop, or wooden house on rollers, not unlike those sentry-boxes
+which the police have lately set up by the stands of hackney-coaches.
+
+“Hein?” said the portress, without laying down the stocking she was
+knitting.
+
+In Paris the various component parts which make up the physiognomy of
+any given portion of the monstrous city, are admirably in keeping with
+its general character. Thus porter, concierge, or Suisse, whatever name
+may be given to that essential muscle of the Parisian monster, is always
+in conformity with the neighborhood of which he is a part; in fact,
+he is often an epitome of it. The lazy porter of the faubourg
+Saint-Germain, with lace on every seam of his coat, dabbles in stocks;
+he of the Chaussee d’Antin takes his ease, reads the money-articles
+in the newspapers, and has a business of his own in the faubourg
+Montmartre. The portress in the quarter of prostitution was formerly a
+prostitute; in the Marais, she has morals, is cross-grained, and full of
+crotchets.
+
+On seeing Monsieur Jules this particular portress, holding her knitting
+in one hand, took a knife and stirred the half-extinguished peat in her
+foot-warmer; then she said:--
+
+“You want Madame Etienne; do you mean Madame Etienne Gruget?”
+
+“Yes,” said Jules, assuming a vexed air.
+
+“Who makes trimmings?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, then, monsieur,” she said, issuing from her cage, and laying her
+hand on Jules’ arm and leading him to the end of a long passage-way,
+vaulted like a cellar, “go up the second staircase at the end of the
+court-yard--where you will see the windows with the pots of pinks;
+that’s where Madame Etienne lives.”
+
+“Thank you, madame. Do you think she is alone?”
+
+“Why shouldn’t she be alone? she’s a widow.”
+
+Jules hastened up a dark stairway, the steps of which were knobby with
+hardened mud left by the feet of those who came and went. On the second
+floor he saw three doors but no signs of pinks. Fortunately, on one of
+the doors, the oiliest and darkest of the three, he read these words,
+chalked on a panel: “Ida will come to-night at nine o’clock.”
+
+“This is the place,” thought Jules.
+
+He pulled an old bellrope, black with age, and heard the smothered sound
+of a cracked bell and the barking of an asthmatic little dog. By the
+way the sounds echoed from the interior he knew that the rooms were
+encumbered with articles which left no space for reverberation,--a
+characteristic feature of the homes of workmen and humble households,
+where space and air are always lacking.
+
+Jules looked out mechanically for the pinks, and found them on the
+outer sill of a sash window between two filthy drain-pipes. So here were
+flowers; here, a garden, two yards long and six inches wide; here,
+a wheat-ear; here, a whole life epitomized; but here, too, all the
+miseries of that life. A ray of light falling from heaven as if by
+special favor on those puny flowers and the vigorous wheat-ear brought
+out in full relief the dust, the grease, and that nameless color,
+peculiar to Parisian squalor, made of dirt, which crusted and spotted
+the damp walls, the worm-eaten balusters, the disjointed window-casings,
+and the door originally red. Presently the cough of an old woman, and a
+heavy female step, shuffling painfully in list slippers, announced the
+coming of the mother of Ida Gruget. The creature opened the door and
+came out upon the landing, looked up, and said:--
+
+“Ah! is this Monsieur Bocquillon? Why, no? But perhaps you’re his
+brother. What can I do for you? Come in, monsieur.”
+
+Jules followed her into the first room, where he saw, huddled together,
+cages, household utensils, ovens, furniture, little earthenware
+dishes full of food or water for the dog and the cats, a wooden clock,
+bed-quilts, engravings of Eisen, heaps of old iron, all these things
+mingled and massed together in a way that produced a most grotesque
+effect,--a true Parisian dusthole, in which were not lacking a few old
+numbers of the “Constitutionel.”
+
+Jules, impelled by a sense of prudence, paid no attention to the widow’s
+invitation when she said civilly, showing him an inner room:--
+
+“Come in here, monsieur, and warm yourself.”
+
+Fearing to be overheard by Ferragus, Jules asked himself whether it were
+not wisest to conclude the arrangement he had come to make with the old
+woman in the crowded antechamber. A hen, which descended cackling from
+a loft, roused him from this inward meditation. He came to a resolution,
+and followed Ida’s mother into the inner room, whither they were
+accompanied by the wheezy pug, a personage otherwise mute, who jumped
+upon a stool. Madame Gruget showed the assumption of semi-pauperism
+when she invited her visitor to warm himself. Her fire-pot contained, or
+rather concealed two bits of sticks, which lay apart: the grating was
+on the ground, its handle in the ashes. The mantel-shelf, adorned with
+a little wax Jesus under a shade of squares of glass held together with
+blue paper, was piled with wools, bobbins, and tools used in the making
+of gimps and trimmings. Jules examined everything in the room with a
+curiosity that was full of interest, and showed, in spite of himself, an
+inward satisfaction.
+
+“Well, monsieur, tell me, do you want to buy any of my things?” said the
+old woman, seating herself in a cane arm-chair, which appeared to be
+her headquarters. In it she kept her handkerchief, snuffbox, knitting,
+half-peeled vegetables, spectacles, calendar, a bit of livery gold lace
+just begun, a greasy pack of cards, and two volumes of novels, all stuck
+into the hollow of the back. This article of furniture, in which the
+old creature was floating down the river of life, was not unlike the
+encyclopedic bag which a woman carries with her when she travels; in
+which may be found a compendium of her household belongings, from the
+portrait of her husband to _eau de Melisse_ for faintness, sugarplums
+for the children, and English court-plaster in case of cuts.
+
+Jules studied all. He looked attentively at Madame Gruget’s yellow
+visage, at her gray eyes without either brows or lashes, her toothless
+mouth, her wrinkles marked in black, her rusty cap, her still more rusty
+ruffles, her cotton petticoat full of holes, her worn-out slippers, her
+disabled fire-pot, her table heaped with dishes and silks and work begun
+or finished, in wool or cotton, in the midst of which stood a bottle of
+wine. Then he said to himself: “This old woman has some passion, some
+strong liking or vice; I can make her do my will.”
+
+“Madame,” he said aloud, with a private sign of intelligence, “I have
+come to order some livery trimmings.” Then he lowered his voice. “I
+know,” he continued, “that you have a lodger who has taken the name of
+Camuset.” The old woman looked at him suddenly, but without any sign of
+astonishment. “Now, tell me, can we come to an understanding? This is a
+question which means fortune for you.”
+
+“Monsieur,” she replied, “speak out, and don’t be afraid. There’s no one
+here. But if I had any one above, it would be impossible for him to hear
+you.”
+
+“Ha! the sly old creature, she answers like a Norman,” thought Jules,
+“We shall agree. Do not give yourself the trouble to tell falsehoods,
+madame,” he resumed, “In the first place, let me tell you that I mean no
+harm either to you or to your lodger who is suffering from cautery, or
+to your daughter Ida, a stay-maker, the friend of Ferragus. You see, I
+know all your affairs. Do not be uneasy; I am not a detective policeman,
+nor do I desire anything that can hurt your conscience. A young lady
+will come here to-morrow-morning at half-past nine o’clock, to talk with
+this lover of your daughter. I want to be where I can see all and hear
+all, without being seen or heard by them. If you will furnish me with
+the means of doing so, I will reward that service with the gift of two
+thousand francs and a yearly stipend of six hundred. My notary shall
+prepare a deed before you this evening, and I will give him the money to
+hold; he will pay the two thousand to you to-morrow after the conference
+at which I desire to be present, as you will then have given proofs of
+your good faith.”
+
+“Will it injure my daughter, my good monsieur?” she asked, casting a
+cat-like glance of doubt and uneasiness upon him.
+
+“In no way, madame. But, in any case, it seems to me that your daughter
+does not treat you well. A girl who is loved by so rich a man as
+Ferragus ought to make you more comfortable than you seem to be.”
+
+“Ah, my dear monsieur, just think, not so much as one poor ticket to
+the Ambigu, or the Gaiete, where she can go as much as she likes. It’s
+shameful! A girl for whom I sold my silver forks and spoons! and now
+I eat, at my age, with German metal,--and all to pay for her
+apprenticeship, and give her a trade, where she could coin money if she
+chose. As for that, she’s like me, clever as a witch; I must do her that
+justice. But, I will say, she might give me her old silk gowns,--I,
+who am so fond of wearing silk. But no! Monsieur, she dines at the
+Cadran-Bleu at fifty francs a head, and rolls in her carriage as if she
+were a princess, and despises her mother for a Colin-Lampon. Heavens and
+earth! what heedless young ones we’ve brought into the world; we have
+nothing to boast of there. A mother, monsieur, can’t be anything else
+but a good mother; and I’ve concealed that girl’s ways, and kept her in
+my bosom, to take the bread out of my mouth and cram everything into her
+own. Well, well! and now she comes and fondles one a little, and says,
+‘How d’ye do, mother?’ And that’s all the duty she thinks of paying. But
+she’ll have children one of these days, and then she’ll find out what it
+is to have such baggage,--which one can’t help loving all the same.”
+
+“Do you mean that she does nothing for you?”
+
+“Ah, nothing? No, monsieur, I didn’t say that; if she did nothing, that
+would be a little too much. She gives me my rent and thirty-six francs a
+month. But, monsieur, at my age,--and I’m fifty-two years old, with
+eyes that feel the strain at night,--ought I to be working in this way?
+Besides, why won’t she have me to live with her? I should shame her,
+should I? Then let her say so. Faith, one ought to be buried out of the
+way of such dogs of children, who forget you before they’ve even shut
+the door.”
+
+She pulled her handkerchief from her pocket, and with it a lottery
+ticket that dropped on the floor; but she hastily picked it up, saying,
+“Hi! that’s the receipt for my taxes.”
+
+Jules at once perceived the reason of the sagacious parsimony of which
+the mother complained; and he was the more certain that the widow Gruget
+would agree to the proposed bargain.
+
+“Well, then, madame,” he said, “accept what I offer you.”
+
+“Did you say two thousand francs in ready money, and six hundred
+annuity, monsieur?”
+
+“Madame, I’ve changed my mind; I will promise you only three hundred
+annuity. This way seems more to my own interests. But I will give you
+five thousand francs in ready money. Wouldn’t you like that as well?”
+
+“Bless me, yes, monsieur!”
+
+“You’ll get more comfort out of it; and you can go to the Ambigu and
+Franconi’s at your ease in a coach.”
+
+“As for Franconi, I don’t like that, for they don’t talk there.
+Monsieur, if I accept, it is because it will be very advantageous for
+my child. I sha’n’t be a drag on her any longer. Poor little thing!
+I’m glad she has her pleasures, after all. Ah, monsieur, youth must be
+amused! And so, if you assure me that no harm will come to anybody--”
+
+“Not to anybody,” replied Jules. “But now, how will you manage it?”
+
+“Well, monsieur, if I give Monsieur Ferragus a little tea made of
+poppy-heads to-night, he’ll sleep sound, the dear man; and he needs it,
+too, because of his sufferings, for he does suffer, I can tell you, and
+more’s the pity. But I’d like to know what a healthy man like him wants
+to burn his back for, just to get rid of a tic douleureux which troubles
+him once in two years. However, to come back to our business. I have my
+neighbor’s key; her lodging is just above mine, and in it there’s a
+room adjoining the one where Monsieur Ferragus is, with only a
+partition between them. My neighbor is away in the country for ten days.
+Therefore, if I make a hole to-night while Monsieur Ferragus is sound
+asleep, you can see and hear them to-morrow at your ease. I’m on good
+terms with a locksmith,--a very friendly man, who talks like an angel,
+and he’ll do the work for me and say nothing about it.”
+
+“Then here’s a hundred francs for him. Come to-night to Monsieur
+Desmaret’s office; he’s a notary, and here’s his address. At nine
+o’clock the deed will be ready, but--silence!”
+
+“Enough, monsieur; as you say--silence! Au revoir, monsieur.”
+
+Jules went home, almost calmed by the certainty that he should know the
+truth on the morrow. As he entered the house, the porter gave him the
+letter properly resealed.
+
+“How do you feel now?” he said to his wife, in spite of the coldness
+that separated them.
+
+“Pretty well, Jules,” she answered in a coaxing voice, “do come and dine
+beside me.”
+
+“Very good,” he said, giving her the letter. “Here is something
+Fouguereau gave me for you.”
+
+Clemence, who was very pale, colored high when she saw the letter, and
+that sudden redness was a fresh blow to her husband.
+
+“Is that joy,” he said, laughing, “or the effect of expectation?”
+
+“Oh, of many things!” she said, examining the seal.
+
+“I leave you now for a few moments.”
+
+He went down to his study, and wrote to his brother, giving him
+directions about the payment to the widow Gruget. When he returned, he
+found his dinner served on a little table by his wife’s bedside, and
+Josephine ready to wait on him.
+
+“If I were up how I should like to serve you myself,” said Clemence,
+when Josephine had left them. “Oh, yes, on my knees!” she added, passing
+her white hands through her husband’s hair. “Dear, noble heart, you were
+very kind and gracious to me just now. You did me more good by showing
+me such confidence than all the doctors on earth could do me with their
+prescriptions. That feminine delicacy of yours--for you do know how
+to love like a woman--well, it has shed a balm into my heart which has
+almost cured me. There’s truce between us, Jules; lower your head, that
+I may kiss it.”
+
+Jules could not deny himself the pleasure of that embrace. But it was
+not without a feeling of remorse in his heart; he felt himself small
+before this woman whom he was still tempted to think innocent. A sort
+of melancholy joy possessed him. A tender hope shone on her features
+in spite of their grieved expression. They both were equally unhappy
+in deceiving each other; another caress, and, unable to resist their
+suffering, all would then have been avowed.
+
+“To-morrow evening, Clemence.”
+
+“No, no; to-morrow morning, by twelve o’clock, you will know all, and
+you’ll kneel down before your wife--Oh, no! you shall not be humiliated;
+you are all forgiven now; you have done no wrong. Listen, Jules;
+yesterday you did crush me--harshly; but perhaps my life would not have
+been complete without that agony; it may be a shadow that will make our
+coming days celestial.”
+
+“You lay a spell upon me,” cried Jules; “you fill me with remorse.”
+
+“Poor love! destiny is stronger than we, and I am not the accomplice of
+mine. I shall go out to-morrow.”
+
+“At what hour?” asked Jules.
+
+“At half-past nine.”
+
+“Clemence,” he said, “take every precaution; consult Doctor Desplein and
+old Haudry.”
+
+“I shall consult nothing but my heart and my courage.”
+
+“I shall leave you free; you will not see me till twelve o’clock.”
+
+“Won’t you keep me company this evening? I feel so much better.”
+
+After attending to some business, Jules returned to his wife,--recalled
+by her invincible attraction. His passion was stronger than his anguish.
+
+The next day, at nine o’clock Jules left home, hurried to the rue des
+Enfants-Rouges, went upstairs, and rang the bell of the widow Gruget’s
+lodgings.
+
+“Ah! you’ve kept your word, as true as the dawn. Come in, monsieur,”
+ said the old woman when she saw him. “I’ve made you a cup of coffee with
+cream,” she added, when the door was closed. “Oh! real cream; I saw it
+milked myself at the dairy we have in this very street.”
+
+“Thank you, no, madame, nothing. Take me at once--”
+
+“Very good, monsieur. Follow me, this way.”
+
+She led him up into the room above her own, where she showed him,
+triumphantly, an opening about the size of a two-franc piece, made
+during the night, in a place, which, in each room, was above a wardrobe.
+In order to look through it, Jules was forced to maintain himself in
+rather a fatiguing attitude, by standing on a step-ladder which the
+widow had been careful to place there.
+
+“There’s a gentleman with him,” she whispered, as she retired.
+
+Jules then beheld a man employed in dressing a number of wounds on the
+shoulders of Ferragus, whose head he recognized from the description
+given to him by Monsieur de Maulincour.
+
+“When do you think those wounds will heal?” asked Ferragus.
+
+“I don’t know,” said the other man. “The doctors say those wounds will
+require seven or eight more dressings.”
+
+“Well, then, good-bye until to-night,” said Ferragus, holding out his
+hand to the man, who had just replaced the bandage.
+
+“Yes, to-night,” said the other, pressing his hand cordially. “I wish I
+could see you past your sufferings.”
+
+“To-morrow Monsieur de Funcal’s papers will be delivered to us, and
+Henri Bourignard will be dead forever,” said Ferragus. “Those fatal
+marks which have cost us so dear no longer exist. I shall become once
+more a social being, a man among men, and more of a man than the sailor
+whom the fishes are eating. God knows it is not for my own sake I have
+made myself a Portuguese count!”
+
+“Poor Gratien!--you, the wisest of us all, our beloved brother, the
+Benjamin of the band; as you very well know.”
+
+“Adieu; keep an eye on Maulincour.”
+
+“You can rest easy on that score.”
+
+“Ho! stay, marquis,” cried the convict.
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“Ida is capable of everything after the scene of last night. If she
+should throw herself into the river, I would not fish her out. She knows
+the secret of my name, and she’ll keep it better there. But still, look
+after her; for she is, in her way, a good girl.”
+
+“Very well.”
+
+The stranger departed. Ten minutes later Jules heard, with a feverish
+shudder, the rustle of a silk gown, and almost recognized by their sound
+the steps of his wife.
+
+“Well, father,” said Clemence, “my poor father, are you better? What
+courage you have shown!”
+
+“Come here, my child,” replied Ferragus, holding out his hand to her.
+
+Clemence held her forehead to him and he kissed it.
+
+“Now tell me, what is the matter, my little girl? What are these new
+troubles?”
+
+“Troubles, father! it concerns the life or death of the daughter you
+have loved so much. Indeed you must, as I wrote you yesterday, you
+_must_ find a way to see my poor Jules to-day. If you knew how good he
+has been to me, in spite of all suspicions apparently so legitimate.
+Father, my love is my very life. Would you see me die? Ah! I have
+suffered so much that my life, I feel it! is in danger.”
+
+“And all because of the curiosity of that miserable Parisian?” cried
+Ferragus. “I’d burn Paris down if I lost you, my daughter. Ha! you may
+know what a lover is, but you don’t yet know what a father can do.”
+
+“Father, you frighten me when you look at me in that way. Don’t weigh
+such different feelings in the same scales. I had a husband before I
+knew that my father was living--”
+
+“If your husband was the first to lay kisses on your forehead, I was
+the first to drop tears upon it,” replied Ferragus. “But don’t feel
+frightened, Clemence, speak to me frankly. I love you enough to rejoice
+in the knowledge that you are happy, though I, your father, may have
+little place in your heart, while you fill the whole of mine.”
+
+“Ah! what good such words do me! You make me love you more and more,
+though I seem to rob something from my Jules. But, my kind father, think
+what his sufferings are. What may I tell him to-day?”
+
+“My child, do you think I waited for your letter to save you from this
+threatened danger? Do you know what will become of those who venture to
+touch your happiness, or come between us? Have you never been aware
+that a second providence was guarding your life? Twelve men of power and
+intellect form a phalanx round your love and your existence,--ready to
+do all things to protect you. Think of your father, who has risked death
+to meet you in the public promenades, or see you asleep in your little
+bed in your mother’s home, during the night-time. Could such a father,
+to whom your innocent caresses give strength to live when a man of honor
+ought to have died to escape his infamy, could _I_, in short, I who
+breathe through your lips, and see with your eyes, and feel with your
+heart, could I fail to defend with the claws of a lion and the soul of a
+father, my only blessing, my life, my daughter? Since the death of that
+angel, your mother, I have dreamed but of one thing,--the happiness of
+pressing you to my heart in the face of the whole earth, of burying
+the convict,--” He paused a moment, and then added: “--of giving you a
+father, a father who could press without shame your husband’s hand, who
+could live without fear in both your hearts, who could say to all the
+world, ‘This is my daughter,’--in short, to be a happy father.”
+
+“Oh, father! father!”
+
+“After infinite difficulty, after searching the whole globe,” continued
+Ferragus, “my friends have found me the skin of a dead man in which to
+take my place once more in social life. A few days hence, I shall be
+Monsieur de Funcal, a Portuguese count. Ah! my dear child, there are few
+men of my age who would have had the patience to learn Portuguese and
+English, which were spoken fluently by that devil of a sailor, who was
+drowned at sea.”
+
+“But, my dear father--”
+
+“All has been foreseen, and prepared. A few days hence, his Majesty John
+VI., King of Portugal will be my accomplice. My child, you must have a
+little patience where your father has had so much. But ah! what would
+I not do to reward your devotion for the last three years,--coming
+religiously to comfort your old father, at the risk of your own peace!”
+
+“Father!” cried Clemence, taking his hands and kissing them.
+
+“Come, my child, have courage still; keep my fatal secret a few days
+longer, till the end is reached. Jules is not an ordinary man, I know;
+but are we sure that his lofty character and his noble love may not
+impel him to dislike the daughter of a--”
+
+“Oh!” cried Clemence, “you have read my heart; I have no other fear than
+that. The very thought turns me to ice,” she added, in a heart-rending
+tone. “But, father, think that I have promised him the truth in two
+hours.”
+
+“If so, my daughter, tell him to go to the Portuguese embassy and see
+the Comte de Funcal, your father. I will be there.”
+
+“But Monsieur de Maulincour has told him of Ferragus. Oh, father, what
+torture, to deceive, deceive, deceive!”
+
+“Need you say that to me? But only a few days more, and no living man
+will be able to expose me. Besides, Monsieur de Maulincour is beyond
+the faculty of remembering. Come, dry your tears, my silly child, and
+think--”
+
+At this instant a terrible cry rang from the room in which Jules
+Desmarets was stationed.
+
+The clamor was heard by Madame Jules and Ferragus through the opening of
+the wall, and struck them with terror.
+
+“Go and see what it means, Clemence,” said her father.
+
+Clemence ran rapidly down the little staircase, found the door into
+Madame Gruget’s apartment wide open, heard the cries which echoed from
+the upper floor, went up the stairs, guided by the noise of sobs, and
+caught these words before she entered the fatal chamber:--
+
+“You, monsieur, you, with your horrid inventions,--you are the cause of
+her death!”
+
+“Hush, miserable woman!” replied Jules, putting his handkerchief on the
+mouth of the old woman, who began at once to cry out, “Murder! help!”
+
+At this instant Clemence entered, saw her husband, uttered a cry, and
+fled away.
+
+“Who will save my child?” cried the widow Gruget. “You have murdered
+her.”
+
+“How?” asked Jules, mechanically, for he was horror-struck at being seen
+by his wife.
+
+“Read that,” said the old woman, giving him a letter. “Can money or
+annuities console me for that?”
+
+
+  Farewell, mother! I bequeeth you what I have. I beg your pardon
+  for my forlts, and the last greef to which I put you by ending my
+  life in the river. Henry, who I love more than myself, says I have
+  made his misfortune, and as he has drifen me away, and I have lost
+  all my hops of merrying him, I am going to droun myself. I shall
+  go abov Neuilly, so that they can’t put me in the Morg. If Henry
+  does not hate me anny more after I am ded, ask him to berry a pore
+  girl whose hart beet for him only, and to forgif me, for I did
+  rong to meddle in what didn’t consern me. Tak care of his wounds.
+  How much he sufered, pore fellow! I shall have as much corage to
+  kill myself as he had to burn his bak. Carry home the corsets I
+  have finished. And pray God for your daughter.
+
+Ida.
+
+
+“Take this letter to Monsieur de Funcal, who is upstairs,” said Jules.
+“He alone can save your daughter, if there is still time.”
+
+So saying he disappeared, running like a man who has committed a crime.
+His legs trembled. The hot blood poured into his swelling heart in
+torrents greater than at any other moment of his life, and left it again
+with untold violence. Conflicting thoughts struggled in his mind, and
+yet one thought predominated,--he had not been loyal to the being he
+loved most. It was impossible for him to argue with his conscience,
+whose voice, rising high with conviction, came like an echo of those
+inward cries of his love during the cruel hours of doubt he had lately
+lived through.
+
+He spent the greater part of the day wandering about Paris, for he dared
+not go home. This man of integrity and honor feared to meet the spotless
+brow of the woman he had misjudged. We estimate wrongdoing in proportion
+to the purity of our conscience; the deed which is scarcely a fault
+in some hearts, takes the proportions of a crime in certain unsullied
+souls. The slightest stain on the white garment of a virgin makes it a
+thing ignoble as the rags of a mendicant. Between the two the difference
+lies in the misfortune of the one, the wrong-doing of the other. God
+never measures repentance; he never apportions it. As much is needed
+to efface a spot as to obliterate the crimes of a lifetime. These
+reflections fell with all their weight on Jules; passions, like human
+laws, will not pardon, and their reasoning is more just; for are they
+not based upon a conscience of their own as infallible as an instinct?
+
+Jules finally came home pale, despondent, crushed beneath a sense of his
+wrong-doing, and yet expressing in spite of himself the joy his wife’s
+innocence had given him. He entered her room all throbbing with emotion;
+she was in bed with a high fever. He took her hand, kissed it, and
+covered it with tears.
+
+“Dear angel,” he said, when they were alone, “it is repentance.”
+
+“And for what?” she answered.
+
+As she made that reply, she laid her head back upon the pillow, closed
+her eyes, and remained motionless, keeping the secret of her sufferings
+that she might not frighten her husband,--the tenderness of a mother,
+the delicacy of an angel! All the woman was in her answer.
+
+The silence lasted long. Jules, thinking her asleep, went to question
+Josephine as to her mistress’s condition.
+
+“Madame came home half-dead, monsieur. We sent at once for Monsieur
+Haudry.”
+
+“Did he come? What did he say?”
+
+“He said nothing, monsieur. He did not seem satisfied; gave orders that
+no one should go near madame except the nurse, and said he should come
+back this evening.”
+
+Jules returned softly to his wife’s room and sat down in a chair before
+the bed. There he remained, motionless, with his eyes fixed on those
+of Clemence. When she raised her eyelids she saw him, and through those
+lids passed a tender glance, full of passionate love, free from reproach
+and bitterness,--a look which fell like a flame of fire upon the heart
+of that husband, nobly absolved and forever loved by the being whom he
+had killed. The presentiment of death struck both their minds with equal
+force. Their looks were blended in one anguish, as their hearts had long
+been blended in one love, felt equally by both, and shared equally. No
+questions were uttered; a horrible certainty was there,--in the wife
+an absolute generosity; in the husband an awful remorse; then, in both
+souls the same vision of the end, the same conviction of fatality.
+
+There came a moment when, thinking his wife asleep, Jules kissed her
+softly on the forehead; then after long contemplation of that cherished
+face, he said:--
+
+“Oh God! leave me this angel still a little while that I may blot out my
+wrong by love and adoration. As a daughter, she is sublime; as a wife,
+what word can express her?”
+
+Clemence raised her eyes; they were full of tears.
+
+“You pain me,” she said, in a feeble voice.
+
+It was getting late; Doctor Haudry came, and requested the husband to
+withdraw during his visit. When the doctor left the sick-room Jules
+asked him no question; one gesture was enough.
+
+“Call in consultation any physician in whom you place confidence; I may
+be wrong.”
+
+“Doctor, tell me the truth. I am a man, and I can bear it. Besides,
+I have the deepest interest in knowing it; I have certain affairs to
+settle.”
+
+“Madame Jules is dying,” said the physician. “There is some moral malady
+which has made great progress, and it has complicated her physical
+condition, which was already dangerous, and made still more so by her
+great imprudence. To walk about barefooted at night! to go out when I
+forbade it! on foot yesterday in the rain, to-day in a carriage! She
+must have meant to kill herself. But still, my judgment is not final;
+she has youth, and a most amazing nervous strength. It may be best to
+risk all to win all by employing some violent reagent. But I will not
+take upon myself to order it; nor will I advise it; in consultation I
+shall oppose it.”
+
+Jules returned to his wife. For eleven days and eleven nights he
+remained beside her bed, taking no sleep during the day when he laid his
+head upon the foot of the bed. No man ever pushed the jealousy of care
+and the craving for devotion to such an extreme as he. He could not
+endure that the slightest service should be done by others for his wife.
+There were days of uncertainty, false hopes, now a little better, then
+a crisis,--in short, all the horrible mutations of death as it wavers,
+hesitates, and finally strikes. Madame Jules always found strength to
+smile at her husband. She pitied him, knowing that soon he would be
+alone. It was a double death,--that of life, that of love; but life grew
+feebler, and love grew mightier. One frightful night there was, when
+Clemence passed through that delirium which precedes the death of youth.
+She talked of her happy love, she talked of her father; she related her
+mother’s revelations on her death-bed, and the obligations that mother
+had laid upon her. She struggled, not for life, but for her love which
+she could not leave.
+
+“Grant, O God!” she said, “that he may not know I want him to die with
+me.”
+
+Jules, unable to bear the scene, was at that moment in the adjoining
+room, and did not hear the prayer, which he would doubtless have
+fulfilled.
+
+When this crisis was over, Madame Jules recovered some strength. The
+next day she was beautiful and tranquil; hope seemed to come to her; she
+adorned herself, as the dying often do. Then she asked to be alone all
+day, and sent away her husband with one of those entreaties made so
+earnestly that they are granted as we grant the prayer of a little
+child.
+
+Jules, indeed, had need of this day. He went to Monsieur de Maulincour
+to demand the satisfaction agreed upon between them. It was not without
+great difficulty that he succeeded in reaching the presence of the
+author of these misfortunes; but the vidame, when he learned that the
+visit related to an affair of honor, obeyed the precepts of his whole
+life, and himself took Jules into the baron’s chamber.
+
+Monsieur Desmarets looked about him in search of his antagonist.
+
+“Yes! that is really he,” said the vidame, motioning to a man who was
+sitting in an arm-chair beside the fire.
+
+“Who is it? Jules?” said the dying man in a broken voice.
+
+Auguste had lost the only faculty that makes us live--memory. Jules
+Desmarets recoiled with horror at this sight. He could not even
+recognize the elegant young man in that thing without--as Bossuet
+said--a name in any language. It was, in truth, a corpse with whitened
+hair, its bones scarce covered with a wrinkled, blighted, withered
+skin,--a corpse with white eyes motionless, mouth hideously gaping,
+like those of idiots or vicious men killed by excesses. No trace of
+intelligence remained upon that brow, nor in any feature; nor was
+there in that flabby flesh either color or the faintest appearance of
+circulating blood. Here was a shrunken, withered creature brought to
+the state of those monsters we see preserved in museums, floating in
+alchohol. Jules fancied that he saw above that face the terrible head
+of Ferragus, and his own anger was silenced by such a vengeance. The
+husband found pity in his heart for the vacant wreck of what was once a
+man.
+
+“The duel has taken place,” said the vidame.
+
+“But he has killed many,” answered Jules, sorrowfully.
+
+“And many dear ones,” added the old man. “His grandmother is dying; and
+I shall follow her soon into the grave.”
+
+On the morrow of this day, Madame Jules grew worse from hour to hour.
+She used a moment’s strength to take a letter from beneath her pillow,
+and gave it eagerly to her husband with a sign that was easy to
+understand,--she wished to give him, in a kiss, her last breath. He
+took it, and she died. Jules fell half-dead himself and was taken to his
+brother’s house. There, as he deplored in tears his absence of the day
+before, his brother told him that this separation was eagerly desired
+by Clemence, who wished to spare him the sight of the religious
+paraphernalia, so terrible to tender imaginations, which the Church
+displays when conferring the last sacraments upon the dying.
+
+“You could not have borne it,” said his brother. “I could hardly bear
+the sight myself, and all the servants wept. Clemence was like a saint.
+She gathered strength to bid us all good-bye, and that voice, heard for
+the last time, rent our hearts. When she asked pardon for the pain she
+might unwillingly have caused her servants, there were cries and sobs
+and--”
+
+“Enough! enough!” said Jules.
+
+He wanted to be alone, that he might read the last words of the woman
+whom all had loved, and who had passed away like a flower.
+
+
+  “My beloved, this is my last will. Why should we not make wills
+  for the treasures of our hearts, as for our worldly property? Was
+  not my love my property, my all? I mean here to dispose of my
+  love: it was the only fortune of your Clemence, and it is all that
+  she can leave you in dying. Jules, you love me still, and I die
+  happy. The doctors may explain my death as they think best; I
+  alone know the true cause. I shall tell it to you, whatever pain
+  it may cause you. I cannot carry with me, in a heart all yours, a
+  secret which you do not share, although I die the victim of an
+  enforced silence.
+
+  “Jules, I was nurtured and brought up in the deepest solitude, far
+  from the vices and the falsehoods of the world, by the loving
+  woman whom you knew. Society did justice to her conventional
+  charm, for that is what pleases society; but I knew secretly her
+  precious soul, I could cherish the mother who made my childhood a
+  joy without bitterness, and I knew why I cherished her. Was not
+  that to love doubly? Yes, I loved her, I feared her, I respected
+  her; yet nothing oppressed my heart, neither fear nor respect. I
+  was all in all to her; she was all in all to me. For nineteen
+  happy years, without a care, my soul, solitary amid the world
+  which muttered round me, reflected only her pure image; my heart
+  beat for her and through her. I was scrupulously pious; I found
+  pleasure in being innocent before God. My mother cultivated all
+  noble and self-respecting sentiments in me. Ah! it gives me
+  happiness to tell you, Jules, that I now know I was indeed a young
+  girl, and that I came to you virgin in heart.
+
+  “When I left that absolute solitude, when, for the first time, I
+  braided my hair and crowned it with almond blossoms, when I added,
+  with delight, a few satin knots to my white dress, thinking of the
+  world I was to see, and which I was curious to see--Jules, that
+  innocent and modest coquetry was done for you! Yes, as I entered
+  the world, I saw _you_ first of all. Your face, I remarked it; it
+  stood out from the rest; your person pleased me; your voice, your
+  manners all inspired me with pleasant presentiments. When you came
+  up, when you spoke to me, the color on your forehead, the tremble
+  in your voice,--that moment gave me memories with which I throb as
+  I now write to you, as I now, for the last time, think of them.
+  Our love was at first the keenest of sympathies, but it was soon
+  discovered by each of us and then, as speedily, shared; just as,
+  in after times, we have both equally felt and shared innumerable
+  happinesses. From that moment my mother was only second in my
+  heart. Next, I was yours, all yours. There is my life, and all my
+  life, dear husband.
+
+  “And here is what remains for me to tell you. One evening, a few
+  days before my mother’s death, she revealed to me the secret of
+  her life,--not without burning tears. I have loved you better
+  since the day I learned from the priest as he absolved my mother
+  that there are passions condemned by the world and by the Church.
+  But surely God will not be severe when they are the sins of souls
+  as tender as that of my mother; only, that dear woman could never
+  bring herself to repent. She loved much, Jules; she was all love.
+  So I have prayed daily for her, but never judged her.
+
+  “That night I learned the cause of her deep maternal tenderness;
+  then I also learned that there was in Paris a man whose life and
+  whose love centred on me; that your fortune was his doing, and
+  that he loved you. I learned also that he was exiled from society
+  and bore a tarnished name; but that he was more unhappy for me,
+  for us, than for himself. My mother was all his comfort; she was
+  dying, and I promised to take her place. With all the ardor of a
+  soul whose feelings had never been perverted, I saw only the
+  happiness of softening the bitterness of my mother’s last moments,
+  and I pledged myself to continue her work of secret charity,--the
+  charity of the heart. The first time that I saw my father was
+  beside the bed where my mother had just expired. When he raised
+  his tearful eyes, it was to see in me a revival of his dead hopes.
+  I had sworn, not to tell a lie, but to keep silence; and that
+  silence what woman could have broken it?
+
+  “There is my fault, Jules,--a fault which I expiate by death. I
+  doubted you. But fear is so natural to a woman; above all, a woman
+  who knows what it is that she may lose. I trembled for our love.
+  My father’s secret seemed to me the death of my happiness; and the
+  more I loved, the more I feared. I dared not avow this feeling to
+  my father; it would have wounded him, and in his situation a wound
+  was agony. But, without a word from me, he shared my fears. That
+  fatherly heart trembled for my happiness as much as I trembled for
+  myself; but it dared not speak, obeying the same delicacy that
+  kept me mute. Yes, Jules, I believed that you could not love the
+  daughter of Gratien Bourignard as you loved your Clemence. Without
+  that terror could I have kept back anything from you,--you who
+  live in every fold of my heart?
+
+  “The day when that odious, unfortunate young officer spoke to you,
+  I was forced to lie. That day, for the second time in my life, I
+  knew what pain was; that pain has steadily increased until this
+  moment, when I speak with you for the last time. What matters now
+  my father’s position? You know all. I could, by the help of my
+  love, have conquered my illness and borne its sufferings; but I
+  cannot stifle the voice of doubt. Is it not probable that my
+  origin would affect the purity of your love and weaken it,
+  diminish it? That fear nothing has been able to quench in me.
+  There, Jules, is the cause of my death. I cannot live fearing a
+  word, a look,--a word you may never say, a look you may never
+  give; but, I cannot help it, I fear them. I die beloved; there is
+  my consolation.
+
+  “I have known, for the last three years, that my father and his
+  friends have well-nigh moved the world to deceive the world. That
+  I might have a station in life, they have bought a dead man, a
+  reputation, a fortune, so that a living man might live again,
+  restored; and all this for you, for us. We were never to have
+  known of it. Well, my death will save my father from that
+  falsehood, for he will not survive me.
+
+  “Farewell, Jules, my heart is all here. To show you my love in its
+  agony of fear, is not that bequeathing my whole soul to you? I
+  could never have the strength to speak to you; I have only enough
+  to write. I have just confessed to God the sins of my life. I have
+  promised to fill my mind with the King of Heaven only; but I must
+  confess to him who is, for me, the whole of earth. Alas! shall I
+  not be pardoned for this last sigh between the life that was and
+  the life that shall be? Farewell, my Jules, my loved one! I go to
+  God, with whom is Love without a cloud, to whom you will follow
+  me. There, before his throne, united forever, we may love each
+  other throughout the ages. This hope alone can comfort me. If I am
+  worthy of being there at once, I will follow you through life. My
+  soul shall bear your company; it will wrap you about, for _you_
+  must stay here still,--ah! here below. Lead a holy life that you
+  may the more surely come to me. You can do such good upon this
+  earth! Is it not an angel’s mission for the suffering soul to shed
+  happiness about him,--to give to others that which he has not? I
+  bequeath you to the Unhappy. Their smiles, their tears, are the
+  only ones of which I cannot be jealous. We shall find a charm in
+  sweet beneficence. Can we not live together still if you would
+  join my name--your Clemence--in these good works?
+
+  “After loving as we have loved, there is naught but God, Jules.
+  God does not lie; God never betrays. Adore him only, I charge you!
+  Lead those who suffer up to him; comfort the sorrowing members of
+  his Church. Farewell, dear soul that I have filled! I know you;
+  you will never love again. I may die happy in the thought that
+  makes all women happy. Yes, my grave will be your heart. After
+  this childhood I have just related, has not my life flowed on
+  within that heart? Dead, you will never drive me forth. I am proud
+  of that rare life! You will know me only in the flower of my
+  youth; I leave you regrets without disillusions. Jules, it is a
+  happy death.
+
+  “You, who have so fully understood me, may I ask one thing more of
+  you,--superfluous request, perhaps, the fulfilment of a woman’s
+  fancy, the prayer of a jealousy we all must feel,--I pray you to
+  burn all that especially belonged to _us_, destroy our chamber,
+  annihilate all that is a memory of our happiness.
+
+  “Once more, farewell,--the last farewell! It is all love, and so
+  will be my parting thought, my parting breath.”
+
+
+When Jules had read that letter there came into his heart one of those
+wild frenzies of which it is impossible to describe the awful anguish.
+All sorrows are individual; their effects are not subjected to any fixed
+rule. Certain men will stop their ears to hear nothing; some women close
+their eyes hoping never to see again; great and splendid souls are met
+with who fling themselves into sorrow as into an abyss. In the matter of
+despair, all is true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. CONCLUSION
+
+
+Jules escaped from his brother’s house and returned home, wishing
+to pass the night beside his wife, and see till the last moment that
+celestial creature. As he walked along with an indifference to life
+known only to those who have reached the last degree of wretchedness,
+he thought of how, in India, the law ordained that widows should die; he
+longed to die. He was not yet crushed; the fever of his grief was still
+upon him. He reached his home and went up into the sacred chamber; he
+saw his Clemence on the bed of death, beautiful, like a saint, her hair
+smoothly laid upon her forehead, her hands joined, her body wrapped
+already in its shroud. Tapers were lighted, a priest was praying,
+Josephine kneeling in a corner, wept, and, near the bed, were two men.
+One was Ferragus. He stood erect, motionless, gazing at his daughter
+with dry eyes; his head you might have taken for bronze: he did not see
+Jules.
+
+The other man was Jacquet,--Jacquet, to whom Madame Jules had been ever
+kind. Jacquet felt for her one of those respectful friendships which
+rejoice the untroubled heart; a gentle passion; love without its desires
+and its storms. He had come to pay his debt of tears, to bid a long
+adieu to the wife of his friend, to kiss, for the first time, the icy
+brow of the woman he had tacitly made his sister.
+
+All was silence. Here death was neither terrible as in the churches, nor
+pompous as it makes its way along the streets; no, it was death in the
+home, a tender death; here were pomps of the heart, tears drawn from the
+eyes of all. Jules sat down beside Jacquet and pressed his hand; then,
+without uttering a word, all these persons remained as they were till
+morning.
+
+When daylight paled the tapers, Jacquet, foreseeing the painful scenes
+which would then take place, drew Jules away into another room. At this
+moment the husband looked at the father, and Ferragus looked at
+Jules. The two sorrows arraigned each other, measured each other, and
+comprehended each other in that look. A flash of fury shone for an
+instant in the eyes of Ferragus.
+
+“You killed her,” thought he.
+
+“Why was I distrusted?” seemed the answer of the husband.
+
+The scene was one that might have passed between two tigers recognizing
+the futility of a struggle and, after a moment’s hesitation, turning
+away, without even a roar.
+
+“Jacquet,” said Jules, “have you attended to everything?”
+
+“Yes, to everything,” replied his friend, “but a man had forestalled me
+who had ordered and paid for all.”
+
+“He tears his daughter from me!” cried the husband, with the violence of
+despair.
+
+Jules rushed back to his wife’s room; but the father was there no
+longer. Clemence had now been placed in a leaden coffin, and workmen
+were employed in soldering the cover. Jules returned, horrified by the
+sight; the sound of the hammers the men were using made him mechanically
+burst into tears.
+
+“Jacquet,” he said, “out of this dreadful night one idea has come to
+me, only one, but one I must make a reality at any price. I cannot let
+Clemence stay in any cemetery in Paris. I wish to burn her,--to gather
+her ashes and keep her with me. Say nothing of this, but manage on my
+behalf to have it done. I am going to _her_ chamber, where I shall stay
+until the time has come to go. You alone may come in there to tell me
+what you have done. Go, and spare nothing.”
+
+During the morning, Madame Jules, after lying in a mortuary chapel at
+the door of her house, was taken to Saint-Roch. The church was hung with
+black throughout. The sort of luxury thus displayed had drawn a crowd;
+for in Paris all things are sights, even true grief. There are people
+who stand at their windows to see how a son deplores a mother as he
+follows her body; there are others who hire commodious seats to see how
+a head is made to fall. No people in the world have such insatiate eyes
+as the Parisians. On this occasion, inquisitive minds were particularly
+surprised to see the six lateral chapels at Saint-Roch also hung in
+black. Two men in mourning were listening to a mortuary mass said in
+each chapel. In the chancel no other persons but Monsieur Desmarets,
+the notary, and Jacquet were present; the servants of the household were
+outside the screen. To church loungers there was something inexplicable
+in so much pomp and so few mourners. But Jules had been determined that
+no indifferent persons should be present at the ceremony.
+
+High mass was celebrated with the sombre magnificence of funeral
+services. Beside the ministers in ordinary of Saint-Roch, thirteen
+priests from other parishes were present. Perhaps never did the _Dies
+irae_ produce upon Christians, assembled by chance, by curiosity, and
+thirsting for emotions, an effect so profound, so nervously glacial as
+that now caused by this hymn when the eight voices of the precentors,
+accompanied by the voices of the priests and the choir-boys, intoned it
+alternately. From the six lateral chapels twelve other childish voices
+rose shrilly in grief, mingling with the choir voices lamentably. From
+all parts of the church this mourning issued; cries of anguish responded
+to the cries of fear. That terrible music was the voice of sorrows
+hidden from the world, of secret friendships weeping for the dead.
+Never, in any human religion, have the terrors of the soul, violently
+torn from the body and stormily shaken in presence of the fulminating
+majesty of God, been rendered with such force. Before that clamor of
+clamors all artists and their most passionate compositions must bow
+humiliated. No, nothing can stand beside that hymn, which sums all human
+passions, gives them a galvanic life beyond the coffin, and leaves them,
+palpitating still, before the living and avenging God. These cries of
+childhood, mingling with the tones of older voices, including thus in
+the Song of Death all human life and its developments, recalling the
+sufferings of the cradle, swelling to the griefs of other ages in
+the stronger male voices and the quavering of the priests,--all this
+strident harmony, big with lightning and thunderbolts, does it not speak
+with equal force to the daring imagination, the coldest heart, nay, to
+philosophers themselves? As we hear it, we think God speaks; the vaulted
+arches of no church are mere material; they have a voice, they tremble,
+they scatter fear by the might of their echoes. We think we see
+unnumbered dead arising and holding out their hands. It is no more a
+father, a wife, a child,--humanity itself is rising from its dust.
+
+It is impossible to judge of the catholic, apostolic, and Roman faith,
+unless the soul has known that deepest grief of mourning for a loved one
+lying beneath the pall; unless it has felt the emotions that fill the
+heart, uttered by that Hymn of Despair, by those cries that crush the
+mind, by that sacred fear augmenting strophe by strophe, ascending
+heavenward, which terrifies, belittles, and elevates the soul, and
+leaves within our minds, as the last sound ceases, a consciousness
+of immortality. We have met and struggled with the vast idea of the
+Infinite. After that, all is silent in the church. No word is said;
+sceptics themselves _know not what they are feeling_. Spanish genius
+alone was able to bring this untold majesty to untold griefs.
+
+When the solemn ceremony was over, twelve men came from the six chapels
+and stood around the coffin to hear the song of hope which the Church
+intones for the Christian soul before the human form is buried. Then,
+each man entered alone a mourning-coach; Jacquet and Monsieur Desmarets
+took the thirteenth; the servants followed on foot. An hour later, they
+were at the summit of that cemetery popularly called Pere-Lachaise. The
+unknown twelve men stood in a circle round the grave, where the coffin
+had been laid in presence of a crowd of loiterers gathered from all
+parts of this public garden. After a few short prayers the priest threw
+a handful of earth on the remains of this woman, and the grave-diggers,
+having asked for their fee, made haste to fill the grave in order to dig
+another.
+
+Here this history seems to end; but perhaps it would be incomplete if,
+after giving a rapid sketch of Parisian life, and following certain of
+its capricious undulations, the effects of death were omitted. Death in
+Paris is unlike death in any other capital; few persons know the trials
+of true grief in its struggle with civilization, and the government of
+Paris. Perhaps, also, Monsieur Jules and Ferragus XXIII. may have proved
+sufficiently interesting to make a few words on their after life not
+entirely out of place. Besides, some persons like to be told all, and
+wish, as one of our cleverest critics has remarked, to know by what
+chemical process oil was made to burn in Aladdin’s lamp.
+
+Jacquet, being a government employee, naturally applied to the
+authorities for permission to exhume the body of Madame Jules and burn
+it. He went to see the prefect of police, under whose protection the
+dead sleep. That functionary demanded a petition. The blank was brought
+that gives to sorrow its proper administrative form; it was necessary to
+employ the bureaucratic jargon to express the wishes of a man so crushed
+that words, perhaps, were lacking to him, and it was also necessary to
+coldly and briefly repeat on the margin the nature of the request,
+which was done in these words: “The petitioner respectfully asks for the
+incineration of his wife.”
+
+When the official charged with making the report to the Councillor of
+State and prefect of police read that marginal note, explaining the
+object of the petition, and couched, as requested, in the plainest
+terms, he said:--
+
+“This is a serious matter! my report cannot be ready under eight days.”
+
+Jules, to whom Jacquet was obliged to speak of this delay, comprehended
+the words that Ferragus had said in his hearing, “I’ll burn Paris!”
+ Nothing seemed to him now more natural than to annihilate that
+receptacle of monstrous things.
+
+“But,” he said to Jacquet, “you must go to the minister of the Interior,
+and get your minister to speak to him.”
+
+Jacquet went to the minister of the Interior, and asked an audience; it
+was granted, but the time appointed was two weeks later. Jacquet was a
+persistent man. He travelled from bureau to bureau, and finally reached
+the private secretary of the minister of the Interior, to whom he had
+made the private secretary of his own minister say a word. These high
+protectors aiding, he obtained for the morrow a second interview, in
+which, being armed with a line from the autocrat of Foreign affairs to
+the pacha of the Interior, Jacquet hoped to carry the matter by assault.
+He was ready with reasons, and answers to peremptory questions,--in
+short, he was armed at all points; but he failed.
+
+“This matter does not concern me,” said the minister; “it belongs to the
+prefect of police. Besides, there is no law giving a husband any legal
+right to the body of his wife, nor to fathers those of their children.
+The matter is serious. There are questions of public utility involved
+which will have to be examined. The interests of the city of Paris might
+suffer. Therefore if the matter depended on me, which it does not, I
+could not decide _hic et nunc_; I should require a report.”
+
+A _report_ is to the present system of administration what limbo
+or hades is to Christianity. Jacquet knew very well the mania for
+“reports”; he had not waited until this occasion to groan at that
+bureaucratic absurdity. He knew that since the invasion into public
+business of the _Report_ (an administrative revolution consummated
+in 1804) there was never known a single minister who would take upon
+himself to have an opinion or to decide the slightest matter, unless
+that opinion or matter had been winnowed, sifted, and plucked to bits
+by the paper-spoilers, quill-drivers, and splendid intellects of his
+particular bureau. Jacquet--he was one of those who are worthy of
+Plutarch as biographer--saw that he had made a mistake in his management
+of the affair, and had, in fact, rendered it impossible by trying to
+proceed legally. The thing he should have done was to have taken Madame
+Jules to one of Desmaret’s estates in the country; and there, under
+the good-natured authority of some village mayor to have gratified the
+sorrowful longing of his friend. Law, constitutional and administrative,
+begets nothing; it is a barren monster for peoples, for kings, and for
+private interests. But the peoples decipher no principles but those that
+are writ in blood, and the evils of legality will always be pacific; it
+flattens a nation down, that is all. Jacquet, a man of modern liberty,
+returned home reflecting on the benefits of arbitrary power.
+
+When he went with his report to Jules, he found it necessary to deceive
+him, for the unhappy man was in a high fever, unable to leave his bed.
+The minister of the Interior mentioned, at a ministerial dinner that
+same evening, the singular fancy of a Parisian in wishing to burn his
+wife after the manner of the Romans. The clubs of Paris took up the
+subject, and talked for a while of the burials of antiquity. Ancient
+things were just then becoming a fashion, and some persons declared that
+it would be a fine thing to re-establish, for distinguished persons, the
+funeral pyre. This opinion had its defenders and its detractors. Some
+said that there were too many such personages, and the price of wood
+would be enormously increased by such a custom; moreover, it would
+be absurd to see our ancestors in their urns in the procession at
+Longchamps. And if the urns were valuable, they were likely some day
+to be sold at auction, full of respectable ashes, or seized by
+creditors,--a race of men who respected nothing. The other side made
+answer that our ancestors were much safer in urns than at Pere-Lachaise,
+for before very long the city of Paris would be compelled to order a
+Saint-Bartholomew against its dead, who were invading the neighboring
+country, and threatening to invade the territory of Brie. It was, in
+short, one of those futile but witty discussions which sometimes cause
+deep and painful wounds. Happily for Jules, he knew nothing of the
+conversations, the witty speeches, and arguments which his sorrow had
+furnished to the tongues of Paris.
+
+The prefect of police was indignant that Monsieur Jacquet had appealed
+to a minister to avoid the wise delays of the commissioners of the
+public highways; for the exhumation of Madame Jules was a question
+belonging to that department. The police bureau was doing its best to
+reply promptly to the petition; one appeal was quite sufficient to set
+the office in motion, and once in motion matters would go far. But as
+for the administration, that might take the case before the Council of
+state,--a machine very difficult indeed to move.
+
+After the second day Jacquet was obliged to tell his friend that he must
+renounce his desire, because, in a city where the number of tears shed
+on black draperies is tariffed, where the laws recognize seven classes
+of funerals, where the scrap of ground to hold the dead is sold at its
+weight in silver, where grief is worked for what it is worth, where the
+prayers of the Church are costly, and the vestry claim payment for extra
+voices in the _Dies irae_,--all attempt to get out of the rut prescribed
+by the authorities for sorrow is useless and impossible.
+
+“It would have been to me,” said Jules, “a comfort in my misery. I meant
+to have died away from here, and I hoped to hold her in my arms in a
+distant grave. I did not know that bureaucracy could send its claws into
+our very coffins.”
+
+He now wished to see if room had been left for him beside his wife. The
+two friends went to the cemetery. When they reached it they found (as
+at the doors of museums, galleries, and coach-offices) _ciceroni_, who
+proposed to guide them through the labyrinth of Pere-Lachaise. Neither
+Jules nor Jacquet could have found the spot where Clemence lay. Ah,
+frightful anguish! They went to the lodge to consult the porter of the
+cemetery. The dead have a porter, and there are hours when the dead are
+“not receiving.” It is necessary to upset all the rules and regulations
+of the upper and lower police to obtain permission to weep at night, in
+silence and solitude, over the grave where a loved one lies. There’s a
+rule for summer and a rule for winter about this.
+
+Certainly, of all the porters in Paris, the porter of Pere-Lachaise is
+the luckiest. In the first place, he has no gate-cord to pull; then,
+instead of a lodge, he has a house,--an establishment which is not
+quite ministerial, although a vast number of persons come under his
+administration, and a good many employees. And this governor of the
+dead has a salary, with emoluments, and acts under powers of which
+none complain; he plays despot at his ease. His lodge is not a place of
+business, though it has departments where the book-keeping of receipts,
+expenses, and profits, is carried on. The man is not a _suisse_, nor a
+concierge, nor actually a porter. The gate which admits the dead stands
+wide open; and though there are monuments and buildings to be cared
+for, he is not a care-taker. In short, he is an indefinable anomaly, an
+authority which participates in all, and yet is nothing,--an authority
+placed, like the dead on whom it is based, outside of all. Nevertheless,
+this exceptional man grows out of the city of Paris,--that chimerical
+creation like the ship which is its emblem, that creature of reason
+moving on a thousand paws which are seldom unanimous in motion.
+
+This guardian of the cemetery may be called a concierge who has reached
+the condition of a functionary, not soluble by dissolution! His place
+is far from being a sinecure. He does not allow any one to be buried
+without a permit; he must count his dead. He points out to you in this
+vast field the six feet square of earth where you will one day put all
+you love, or all you hate, a mistress, or a cousin. Yes, remember
+this: all the feelings and emotions of Paris come to end here, at
+this porter’s lodge, where they are administrationized. This man has
+registers in which his dead are booked; they are in their graves, and
+also on his records. He has under him keepers, gardeners, grave-diggers,
+and their assistants. He is a personage. Mourning hearts do not speak to
+him at first. He does not appear at all except in serious cases, such as
+one corpse mistaken for another, a murdered body, an exhumation, a
+dead man coming to life. The bust of the reigning king is in his hall;
+possibly he keeps the late royal, imperial, and quasi-royal busts
+in some cupboard,--a sort of little Pere-Lachaise all ready for
+revolutions. In short, he is a public man, an excellent man, good
+husband and good father,--epitaph apart. But so many diverse sentiments
+have passed before him on biers; he has seen so many tears, true and
+false; he has beheld sorrow under so many aspects and on so many faces;
+he has heard such endless thousands of eternal woes,--that to him sorrow
+has come to be nothing more than a stone an inch thick, four feet long,
+and twenty-four inches wide. As for regrets, they are the annoyances of
+his office; he neither breakfasts nor dines without first wiping off
+the rain of an inconsolable affliction. He is kind and tender to other
+feelings; he will weep over a stage-hero, over Monsieur Germeuil in the
+“Auberge des Adrets,” the man with the butter-colored breeches, murdered
+by Macaire; but his heart is ossified in the matter of real dead men.
+Dead men are ciphers, numbers, to him; it is his business to organize
+death. Yet he does meet, three times in a century, perhaps, with an
+occasion when his part becomes sublime, and then he _is_ sublime through
+every hour of his day,--in times of pestilence.
+
+When Jacquet approached him this absolute monarch was evidently out of
+temper.
+
+“I told you,” he was saying, “to water the flowers from the rue Massena
+to the place Regnault de Saint-Jean-d’Angely. You paid no attention
+to me! _Sac-a-papier_! suppose the relations should take it into their
+heads to come here to-day because the weather is fine, what would they
+say to me? They’d shriek as if they were burned; they’d say horrid
+things of us, and calumniate us--”
+
+“Monsieur,” said Jacquet, “we want to know where Madame Jules is
+buried.”
+
+“Madame Jules _who_?” he asked. “We’ve had three Madame Jules within the
+last week. Ah,” he said, interrupting himself, “here comes the funeral
+of Monsieur le Baron de Maulincour! A fine procession, that! He has soon
+followed his grandmother. Some families, when they begin to go, rattle
+down like a wager. Lots of bad blood in Parisians.”
+
+“Monsieur,” said Jacquet, touching him on the arm, “the person I spoke
+of is Madame Jules Desmarets, the wife of the broker of that name.”
+
+“Ah, I know!” he replied, looking at Jacquet. “Wasn’t it a funeral with
+thirteen mourning coaches, and only one mourner in the twelve first? It
+was so droll we all noticed it--”
+
+“Monsieur, take care, Monsieur Desmarets is with me; he might hear you,
+and what you say is not seemly.”
+
+“I beg pardon, monsieur! you are quite right. Excuse me, I took you for
+heirs. Monsieur,” he continued, after consulting a plan of the cemetery,
+“Madame Jules is in the rue Marechal Lefebre, alley No. 4, between
+Mademoiselle Raucourt, of the Comedie-Francaise, and Monsieur
+Moreau-Malvin, a butcher, for whom a handsome tomb in white marble has
+been ordered, which will be one of the finest in the cemetery--”
+
+“Monsieur,” said Jacquet, interrupting him, “that does not help us.”
+
+“True,” said the official, looking round him. “Jean,” he cried, to a man
+whom he saw at a little distance, “conduct these gentlemen to the
+grave of Madame Jules Desmarets, the broker’s wife. You know where it
+is,--near to Mademoiselle Raucourt, the tomb where there’s a bust.”
+
+The two friends followed the guide; but they did not reach the steep
+path which leads to the upper part of the cemetery without having
+to pass through a score of proposals and requests, made, with honied
+softness, by the touts of marble-workers, iron-founders, and monumental
+sculptors.
+
+“If monsieur would like to order _something_, we would do it on the most
+reasonable terms.”
+
+Jacquet was fortunate enough to be able to spare his friend the hearing
+of these proposals so agonizing to bleeding hearts; and presently they
+reached the resting-place. When Jules beheld the earth so recently dug,
+into which the masons had stuck stakes to mark the place for the stone
+posts required to support the iron railing, he turned, and leaned upon
+Jacquet’s shoulder, raising himself now and again to cast long glances
+at the clay mound where he was forced to leave the remains of the being
+in and by whom he still lived.
+
+“How miserably she lies there!” he said.
+
+“But she is not there,” said Jacquet, “she is in your memory. Come, let
+us go; let us leave this odious cemetery, where the dead are adorned
+like women for a ball.”
+
+“Suppose we take her away?”
+
+“Can it be done?”
+
+“All things can be done!” cried Jules. “So, I shall lie there,” he
+added, after a pause. “There is room enough.”
+
+Jacquet finally succeeded in getting him to leave the great enclosure,
+divided like a chessboard by iron railings and elegant compartments, in
+which were tombs decorated with palms, inscriptions, and tears as cold
+as the stones on which sorrowing hearts had caused to be carved their
+regrets and coats of arms. Many good words are there engraved in black
+letters, epigrams reproving the curious, _concetti_, wittily turned
+farewells, rendezvous given at which only one side appears, pretentious
+biographies, glitter, rubbish and tinsel. Here the floriated thyrsus,
+there a lance-head, farther on Egyptian urns, now and then a few
+cannon; on all sides the emblems of professions, and every style of
+art,--Moorish, Greek, Gothic,--friezes, ovules, paintings, vases,
+guardian-angels, temples, together with innumerable _immortelles_, and
+dead rose-bushes. It is a forlorn comedy! It is another Paris, with its
+streets, its signs, its industries, and its lodgings; but a Paris seen
+through the diminishing end of an opera-glass, a microscopic Paris
+reduced to the littleness of shadows, spectres, dead men, a human race
+which no longer has anything great about it, except its vanity. There
+Jules saw at his feet, in the long valley of the Seine, between the
+slopes of Vaugirard and Meudon and those of Belleville and Montmartre,
+the real Paris, wrapped in a misty blue veil produced by smoke, which
+the sunlight tendered at that moment diaphanous. He glanced with a
+constrained eye at those forty thousand houses, and said, pointing to
+the space comprised between the column of the Place Vendome and the
+gilded cupola of the Invalides:--
+
+“She was wrenched from me there by the fatal curiosity of that world
+which excites itself and meddles solely for excitement and occupation.”
+
+Twelve miles from where they were, on the banks of the Seine, in a
+modest village lying on the slope of a hill of that long hilly basin the
+middle of which great Paris stirs like a child in its cradle, a death
+scene was taking place, far indeed removed from Parisian pomps, with no
+accompaniment of torches or tapers or mourning-coaches, without prayers
+of the Church, in short, a death in all simplicity. Here are the facts:
+The body of a young girl was found early in the morning, stranded on the
+river-bank in the slime and reeds of the Seine. Men employed in dredging
+sand saw it as they were getting into their frail boat on their way to
+their work.
+
+“_Tiens_! fifty francs earned!” said one of them.
+
+“True,” said the other.
+
+They approached the body.
+
+“A handsome girl! We had better go and make our statement.”
+
+And the two dredgers, after covering the body with their jackets, went
+to the house of the village mayor, who was much embarrassed at having to
+make out the legal papers necessitated by this discovery.
+
+The news of this event spread with the telegraphic rapidity peculiar to
+regions where social communications have no distractions, where gossip,
+scandal, calumny, in short, the social tale which feasts the world
+has no break of continuity from one boundary to another. Before
+long, persons arriving at the mayor’s office released him from all
+embarrassment. They were able to convert the _proces-verbal_ into a mere
+certificate of death, by recognizing the body as that of the Demoiselle
+Ida Gruget, corset-maker, living rue de la Corderie-du-Temple, number
+14. The judiciary police of Paris arrived, and the mother, bearing her
+daughter’s last letter. Amid the mother’s moans, a doctor certified
+to death by asphyxia, through the injection of black blood into the
+pulmonary system,--which settled the matter. The inquest over, and the
+certificates signed, by six o’clock the same evening authority was given
+to bury the grisette. The rector of the parish, however, refused to
+receive her into the church or to pray for her. Ida Gruget was
+therefore wrapped in a shroud by an old peasant-woman, put into a common
+pine-coffin, and carried to the village cemetery by four men, followed
+by a few inquisitive peasant-women, who talked about the death with
+wonder mingled with some pity.
+
+The widow Gruget was charitably taken in by an old lady who prevented
+her from following the sad procession of her daughter’s funeral. A man
+of triple functions, the bell-ringer, beadle, and grave-digger of the
+parish, had dug a grave in the half-acre cemetery behind the church,--a
+church well known, a classic church, with a square tower and pointed
+roof covered with slate, supported on the outside by strong corner
+buttresses. Behind the apse of the chancel, lay the cemetery, enclosed
+with a dilapidated wall,--a little field full of hillocks; no marble
+monuments, no visitors, but surely in every furrow, tears and true
+regrets, which were lacking to Ida Gruget. She was cast into a corner
+full of tall grass and brambles. After the coffin had been laid in
+this field, so poetic in its simplicity, the grave-digger found himself
+alone, for night was coming on. While filling the grave, he stopped now
+and then to gaze over the wall along the road. He was standing thus,
+resting on his spade, and looking at the Seine, which had brought him
+the body.
+
+“Poor girl!” cried the voice of a man who suddenly appeared.
+
+“How you made me jump, monsieur,” said the grave-digger.
+
+“Was any service held over the body you are burying?”
+
+“No, monsieur. Monsieur le cure wasn’t willing. This is the first person
+buried here who didn’t belong to the parish. Everybody knows everybody
+else in this place. Does monsieur--Why, he’s gone!”
+
+Some days had elapsed when a man dressed in black called at the house
+of Monsieur Jules Desmarets, and without asking to see him carried up to
+the chamber of his wife a large porphyry vase, on which were inscribed
+the words:--
+
+
+                     INVITA LEGE
+                   CONJUGI MOERENTI
+                   FILIOLAE CINERES
+                      RESTITUIT
+                AMICIS XII. JUVANTIBUS
+                  MORIBUNDUS PATER.
+
+
+“What a man!” cried Jules, bursting into tears.
+
+Eight days sufficed the husband to obey all the wishes of his wife, and
+to arrange his own affairs. He sold his practice to a brother of Martin
+Falleix, and left Paris while the authorities were still discussing
+whether it was lawful for a citizen to dispose of the body of his wife.
+
+              *     *     *     *     *
+
+Who has not encountered on the boulevards of Paris, at the turn of a
+street, or beneath the arcades of the Palais-Royal, or in any part of
+the world where chance may offer him the sight, a being, man or woman,
+at whose aspect a thousand confused thoughts spring into his mind?
+At that sight we are suddenly interested, either by features of some
+fantastic conformation which reveal an agitated life, or by a singular
+effect of the whole person, produced by gestures, air, gait, clothes; or
+by some deep, intense look; or by other inexpressible signs which seize
+our minds suddenly and forcibly without our being able to explain even
+to ourselves the cause of our emotion. The next day other thoughts and
+other images have carried out of sight that passing dream. But if we
+meet the same personage again, either passing at some fixed hour, like
+the clerk of a mayor’s office, or wandering about the public promenades,
+like those individuals who seem to be a sort of furniture of the streets
+of Paris, and who are always to be found in public places, at first
+representations or noted restaurants,--then this being fastens himself
+or herself on our memory, and remains there like the first volume of a
+novel the end of which is lost. We are tempted to question this unknown
+person, and say, “Who are you?” “Why are you lounging here?” “By what
+right do you wear that pleated ruffle, that faded waistcoat, and carry
+that cane with an ivory top; why those blue spectacles; for what reason
+do you cling to that cravat of a dead and gone fashion?” Among these
+wandering creations some belong to the species of the Greek Hermae;
+they say nothing to the soul; _they are there_, and that is all. Why? is
+known to none. Such figure are a type of those used by sculptors for
+the four Seasons, for Commerce, for Plenty, etc. Some others--former
+lawyers, old merchants, elderly generals--move and walk, and yet seem
+stationary. Like old trees that are half uprooted by the current of a
+river, they seem never to take part in the torrent of Paris, with its
+youthful, active crowd. It is impossible to know if their friends
+have forgotten to bury them, or whether they have escaped out of their
+coffins. At any rate, they have reached the condition of semi-fossils.
+
+One of these Parisian Melmoths had come within a few days into a
+neighborhood of sober, quiet people, who, when the weather is fine,
+are invariably to be found in the space which lies between the
+south entrance of the Luxembourg and the north entrance of the
+Observatoire,--a space without a name, the neutral space of Paris.
+There, Paris is no longer; and there, Paris still lingers. The spot is
+a mingling of street, square, boulevard, fortification, garden, avenue,
+high-road, province, and metropolis; certainly, all of that is to be
+found there, and yet the place is nothing of all that,--it is a desert.
+Around this spot without a name stand the Foundling hospital,
+the Bourbe, the Cochin hospital, the Capucines, the hospital
+La Rochefoucauld, the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, the hospital of the
+Val-de-Grace; in short, all the vices and all the misfortunes of
+Paris find their asylum there. And (that nothing may lack in this
+philanthropic centre) Science there studies the tides and longitudes,
+Monsieur de Chateaubriand has erected the Marie-Therese Infirmary, and
+the Carmelites have founded a convent. The great events of life are
+represented by bells which ring incessantly through this desert,--for
+the mother giving birth, for the babe that is born, for the vice that
+succumbs, for the toiler who dies, for the virgin who prays, for the old
+man shaking with cold, for genius self-deluded. And a few steps off
+is the cemetery of Mont-Parnasse, where, hour after hour, the sorry
+funerals of the faubourg Saint-Marceau wend their way. This esplanade,
+which commands a view of Paris, has been taken possession of by
+bowl-players; it is, in fact, a sort of bowling green frequented by old
+gray faces, belonging to kindly, worthy men, who seem to continue the
+race of our ancestors, whose countenances must only be compared with
+those of their surroundings.
+
+The man who had become, during the last few days, an inhabitant of this
+desert region, proved an assiduous attendant at these games of bowls;
+and must, undoubtedly, be considered the most striking creature of these
+various groups, who (if it is permissible to liken Parisians to
+the different orders of zoology) belonged to the genus mollusk. The
+new-comer kept sympathetic step with the _cochonnet_,--the little
+bowl which serves as a goal and on which the interest of the game must
+centre. He leaned against a tree when the _cochonnet_ stopped; then,
+with the same attention that a dog gives to his master’s gestures, he
+looked at the other bowls flying through the air, or rolling along the
+ground. You might have taken him for the weird and watchful genii of the
+_cochonnet_. He said nothing; and the bowl-players--the most fanatic
+men that can be encountered among the sectarians of any faith--had never
+asked the reason of his dogged silence; in fact, the most observing of
+them thought him deaf and dumb.
+
+When it happened that the distances between the bowls and the
+_cochonnet_ had to be measured, the cane of this silent being was used
+as a measure, the players coming up and taking it from the icy hands
+of the old man and returning it without a word or even a sign of
+friendliness. The loan of his cane seemed a servitude to which he
+had negatively consented. When a shower fell, he stayed near the
+_cochonnet_, the slave of the bowls, and the guardian of the unfinished
+game. Rain affected him no more than the fine weather did; he was, like
+the players themselves, an intermediary species between a Parisian
+who has the lowest intellect of his kind and an animal which has the
+highest.
+
+In other respects, pallid and shrunken, indifferent to his own person,
+vacant in mind, he often came bareheaded, showing his sparse white
+hair, and his square, yellow, bald skull, like the knee of a beggar seen
+through his tattered trousers. His mouth was half-open, no ideas were
+in his glance, no precise object appeared in his movements; he never
+smiled; he never raised his eyes to heaven, but kept them habitually on
+the ground, where he seemed to be looking for something. At four o’clock
+an old woman arrived, to take him Heaven knows where; which she did by
+towing him along by the arm, as a young girl drags a wilful goat which
+still wants to browse by the wayside. This old man was a horrible thing
+to see.
+
+In the afternoon of the day when Jules Desmarets left Paris, his
+travelling-carriage, in which he was alone, passed rapidly through the
+rue de l’Est, and came out upon the esplanade of the Observatoire at the
+moment when the old man, leaning against a tree, had allowed his cane
+to be taken from his hand amid the noisy vociferations of the players,
+pacifically irritated. Jules, thinking that he recognized that face,
+felt an impulse to stop, and at the same instant the carriage came to a
+standstill; for the postilion, hemmed in by some handcarts, had too much
+respect for the game to call upon the players to make way for him.
+
+“It is he!” said Jules, beholding in that human wreck, Ferragus XXIII.,
+chief of the Devorants. Then, after a pause, he added, “How he loved
+her!--Go on, postilion.”
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+  Note: Ferragus is the first part of a trilogy. Part two is
+  entitled The Duchesse de Langeais and part three is The Girl with
+  the Golden Eyes. In other addendum references all three stories
+  are usually combined under the title The Thirteen.
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Bourignard, Gratien-Henri-Victor-Jean-Joseph  The Girl with the Golden Eyes
+
+Desmartes, Jules  Cesar Birotteau
+
+Desmartes, Madame Jules  Cesar Birotteau
+
+Desplein  The Atheist’s Mass
+  Cousin Pons
+  Lost Illusions
+  The Government Clerks
+  Pierrette
+  A Bachelor’s Establishment
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  Modeste Mignon
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+  Honorine
+
+Gruget, Madame Etienne  The Government Clerks
+  A Bachelor’s Establishment
+
+Haudry (doctor)  Cesar Birotteau
+  A Bachelor’s Establishment
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Langeais, Duchesse Antoinette de  Father Goriot
+  The Duchesse of Langeais
+
+Marsay, Henri de  The Duchesse of Langeais
+  The Girl with the Golden Eyes
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Lily of the Valley
+  Father Goriot
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  A Marriage Settlement
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Ball at Sceaux
+  Modeste Mignon
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+Maulincour, Baronne de  A Marriage Settlement
+
+Meynardie, Madame  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+
+Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de  Father Goriot
+  Eugenie Grandet
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Melmoth Reconciled
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+  Modeste Mignon
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  Another Study of Woman
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Pamiers, Vidame de  The Duchesse of Langeais
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+
+Ronquerolles, Marquis de  The Imaginary Mistress
+  The Duchess of Langeais
+  The Girl with the Golden Eyes
+  The Peasantry
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  A Woman of Thirty
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Serizy, Comtesse de  A Start in Life
+  The Duchesse of Langeais
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  A Woman of Thirty
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+
+
+
+
+
+II. THE DUCHESSE OF LANGEAIS
+
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+         To Franz Liszt
+
+
+
+In a Spanish city on an island in the Mediterranean, there stands a
+convent of the Order of Barefoot Carmelites, where the rule instituted
+by St. Theresa is still preserved with all the first rigor of the
+reformation brought about by that illustrious woman. Extraordinary as
+this may seem, it is none the less true. Almost every religious house
+in the Peninsula, or in Europe for that matter, was either destroyed or
+disorganized by the outbreak of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic
+wars; but as this island was protected through those times by the
+English fleet, its wealthy convent and peaceable inhabitants were secure
+from the general trouble and spoliation. The storms of many kinds which
+shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century spent their
+force before they reached those cliffs at so short a distance from the
+coast of Andalusia.
+
+If the rumour of the Emperor’s name so much as reached the shore of the
+island, it is doubtful whether the holy women kneeling in the cloisters
+grasped the reality of his dream-like progress of glory, or the majesty
+that blazed in flame across kingdom after kingdom during his meteor
+life.
+
+In the minds of the Roman Catholic world, the convent stood out
+pre-eminent for a stern discipline which nothing had changed; the purity
+of its rule had attracted unhappy women from the furthest parts of
+Europe, women deprived of all human ties, sighing after the long suicide
+accomplished in the breast of God. No convent, indeed, was so well
+fitted for that complete detachment of the soul from all earthly things,
+which is demanded by the religious life, albeit on the continent of
+Europe there are many convents magnificently adapted to the purpose
+of their existence. Buried away in the loneliest valleys, hanging
+in mid-air on the steepest mountainsides, set down on the brink
+of precipices, in every place man has sought for the poetry of the
+Infinite, the solemn awe of Silence; in every place man has striven to
+draw closer to God, seeking Him on mountain peaks, in the depths below
+the crags, at the cliff’s edge; and everywhere man has found God. But
+nowhere, save on this half-European, half-African ledge of rock could
+you find so many different harmonies, combining so to raise the soul,
+that the sharpest pain comes to be like other memories; the strongest
+impressions are dulled, till the sorrows of life are laid to rest in the
+depths.
+
+The convent stands on the highest point of the crags at the uttermost
+end of the island. On the side towards the sea the rock was once rent
+sheer away in some globe-cataclysm; it rises up a straight wall from
+the base where the waves gnaw at the stone below high-water mark. Any
+assault is made impossible by the dangerous reefs that stretch far out
+to sea, with the sparkling waves of the Mediterranean playing over them.
+So, only from the sea can you discern the square mass of the convent
+built conformably to the minute rules laid down as to the shape, height,
+doors, and windows of monastic buildings. From the side of the town, the
+church completely hides the solid structure of the cloisters and their
+roofs, covered with broad slabs of stone impervious to sun or storm or
+gales of wind.
+
+The church itself, built by the munificence of a Spanish family, is the
+crowning edifice of the town. Its fine, bold front gives an imposing
+and picturesque look to the little city in the sea. The sight of such
+a city, with its close-huddled roofs, arranged for the most part
+amphitheatre-wise above a picturesque harbour, and crowned by a glorious
+cathedral front with triple-arched Gothic doorways, belfry towers, and
+filigree spires, is a spectacle surely in every way the sublimest on
+earth. Religion towering above daily life, to put men continually
+in mind of the End and the way, is in truth a thoroughly Spanish
+conception. But now surround this picture by the Mediterranean, and a
+burning sky, imagine a few palms here and there, a few stunted evergreen
+trees mingling their waving leaves with the motionless flowers and
+foliage of carved stone; look out over the reef with its white fringes
+of foam in contrast to the sapphire sea; and then turn to the city, with
+its galleries and terraces whither the townsfolk come to take the air
+among their flowers of an evening, above the houses and the tops of the
+trees in their little gardens; add a few sails down in the harbour; and
+lastly, in the stillness of falling night, listen to the organ music,
+the chanting of the services, the wonderful sound of bells pealing out
+over the open sea. There is sound and silence everywhere; oftener still
+there is silence over all.
+
+The church is divided within into a sombre mysterious nave and narrow
+aisles. For some reason, probably because the winds are so high, the
+architect was unable to build the flying buttresses and intervening
+chapels which adorn almost all cathedrals, nor are there openings of any
+kind in the walls which support the weight of the roof. Outside there
+is simply the heavy wall structure, a solid mass of grey stone further
+strengthened by huge piers placed at intervals. Inside, the nave and its
+little side galleries are lighted entirely by the great stained-glass
+rose-window suspended by a miracle of art above the centre doorway; for
+upon that side the exposure permits of the display of lacework in stone
+and of other beauties peculiar to the style improperly called Gothic.
+
+The larger part of the nave and aisles was left for the townsfolk, who
+came and went and heard mass there. The choir was shut off from the
+rest of the church by a grating and thick folds of brown curtain, left
+slightly apart in the middle in such a way that nothing of the choir
+could be seen from the church except the high altar and the officiating
+priest. The grating itself was divided up by the pillars which supported
+the organ loft; and this part of the structure, with its carved wooden
+columns, completed the line of the arcading in the gallery carried by
+the shafts in the nave. If any inquisitive person, therefore, had been
+bold enough to climb upon the narrow balustrade in the gallery to look
+down into the choir, he could have seen nothing but the tall eight-sided
+windows of stained glass beyond the high altar.
+
+At the time of the French expedition into Spain to establish Ferdinand
+VII once more on the throne, a French general came to the island after
+the taking of Cadiz, ostensibly to require the recognition of the King’s
+Government, really to see the convent and to find some means of
+entering it. The undertaking was certainly a delicate one; but a man of
+passionate temper, whose life had been, as it were, but one series of
+poems in action, a man who all his life long had lived romances instead
+of writing them, a man pre-eminently a Doer, was sure to be tempted by a
+deed which seemed to be impossible.
+
+To open the doors of a convent of nuns by lawful means! The metropolitan
+or the Pope would scarcely have permitted it! And as for force or
+stratagem--might not any indiscretion cost him his position, his whole
+career as a soldier, and the end in view to boot? The Duc d’Angouleme
+was still in Spain; and of all the crimes which a man in favour with the
+Commander-in-Chief might commit, this one alone was certain to find him
+inexorable. The General had asked for the mission to gratify private
+motives of curiosity, though never was curiosity more hopeless. This
+final attempt was a matter of conscience. The Carmelite convent on the
+island was the only nunnery in Spain which had baffled his search.
+
+As he crossed from the mainland, scarcely an hour’s distance, he felt a
+presentiment that his hopes were to be fulfilled; and afterwards, when
+as yet he had seen nothing of the convent but its walls, and of the nuns
+not so much as their robes; while he had merely heard the chanting of
+the service, there were dim auguries under the walls and in the sound of
+the voices to justify his frail hope. And, indeed, however faint those
+so unaccountable presentiments might be, never was human passion more
+vehemently excited than the General’s curiosity at that moment. There
+are no small events for the heart; the heart exaggerates everything; the
+heart weighs the fall of a fourteen-year-old Empire and the dropping of
+a woman’s glove in the same scales, and the glove is nearly always
+the heavier of the two. So here are the facts in all their prosaic
+simplicity. The facts first, the emotions will follow.
+
+An hour after the General landed on the island, the royal authority was
+re-established there. Some few Constitutional Spaniards who had found
+their way thither after the fall of Cadiz were allowed to charter
+a vessel and sail for London. So there was neither resistance nor
+reaction. But the change of government could not be effected in the
+little town without a mass, at which the two divisions under the
+General’s command were obliged to be present. Now, it was upon this mass
+that the General had built his hopes of gaining some information as
+to the sisters in the convent; he was quite unaware how absolutely the
+Carmelites were cut off from the world; but he knew that there might be
+among them one whom he held dearer than life, dearer than honour.
+
+His hopes were cruelly dashed at once. Mass, it is true, was celebrated
+in state. In honour of such a solemnity, the curtains which always hid
+the choir were drawn back to display its riches, its valuable paintings
+and shrines so bright with gems that they eclipsed the glories of
+the ex-votos of gold and silver hung up by sailors of the port on
+the columns in the nave. But all the nuns had taken refuge in the
+organ-loft. And yet, in spite of this first check, during this very mass
+of thanksgiving, the most intimately thrilling drama that ever set a
+man’s heart beating opened out widely before him.
+
+The sister who played the organ aroused such intense enthusiasm, that
+not a single man regretted that he had come to the service. Even the men
+in the ranks were delighted, and the officers were in ecstasy. As for
+the General, he was seemingly calm and indifferent. The sensations
+stirred in him as the sister played one piece after another belong to
+the small number of things which it is not lawful to utter; words are
+powerless to express them; like death, God, eternity, they can only be
+realised through their one point of contact with humanity. Strangely
+enough, the organ music seemed to belong to the school of Rossini, the
+musician who brings most human passion into his art.
+
+Some day his works, by their number and extent, will receive the
+reverence due to the Homer of music. From among all the scores that we
+owe to his great genius, the nun seemed to have chosen _Moses in Egypt_
+for special study, doubtless because the spirit of sacred music finds
+therein its supreme expression. Perhaps the soul of the great musician,
+so gloriously known to Europe, and the soul of this unknown executant
+had met in the intuitive apprehension of the same poetry. So at least
+thought two dilettanti officers who must have missed the Theatre Favart
+in Spain.
+
+At last in the _Te Deum_ no one could fail to discern a French soul in
+the sudden change that came over the music. Joy for the victory of the
+Most Christian King evidently stirred this nun’s heart to the depths.
+She was a Frenchwoman beyond mistake. Soon the love of country shone
+out, breaking forth like shafts of light from the fugue, as the sister
+introduced variations with all a Parisienne’s fastidious taste, and
+blended vague suggestions of our grandest national airs with her music.
+A Spaniard’s fingers would not have brought this warmth into a
+graceful tribute paid to the victorious arms of France. The musician’s
+nationality was revealed.
+
+“We find France everywhere, it seems,” said one of the men.
+
+The General had left the church during the _Te Deum_; he could not
+listen any longer. The nun’s music had been a revelation of a woman
+loved to frenzy; a woman so carefully hidden from the world’s eyes,
+so deeply buried in the bosom of the Church, that hitherto the most
+ingenious and persistent efforts made by men who brought great influence
+and unusual powers to bear upon the search had failed to find her. The
+suspicion aroused in the General’s heart became all but a certainty with
+the vague reminiscence of a sad, delicious melody, the air of _Fleuve
+du Tage_. The woman he loved had played the prelude to the ballad in
+a boudoir in Paris, how often! and now this nun had chosen the song
+to express an exile’s longing, amid the joy of those that triumphed.
+Terrible sensation! To hope for the resurrection of a lost love, to find
+her only to know that she was lost, to catch a mysterious glimpse of her
+after five years--five years, in which the pent-up passion, chafing
+in an empty life, had grown the mightier for every fruitless effort to
+satisfy it!
+
+Who has not known, at least once in his life, what it is to lose some
+precious thing; and after hunting through his papers, ransacking his
+memory, and turning his house upside down; after one or two days spent
+in vain search, and hope, and despair; after a prodigious expenditure
+of the liveliest irritation of soul, who has not known the ineffable
+pleasure of finding that all-important nothing which had come to be a
+king of monomania? Very good. Now, spread that fury of search over five
+years; put a woman, put a heart, put love in the place of the trifle;
+transpose the monomania into the key of high passion; and, furthermore,
+let the seeker be a man of ardent temper, with a lion’s heart and a
+leonine head and mane, a man to inspire awe and fear in those who come
+in contact with him--realise this, and you may, perhaps, understand why
+the General walked abruptly out of the church when the first notes of
+a ballad, which he used to hear with a rapture of delight in a
+gilt-paneled boudoir, began to vibrate along the aisles of the church in
+the sea.
+
+The General walked away down the steep street which led to the port, and
+only stopped when he could not hear the deep notes of the organ. Unable
+to think of anything but the love which broke out in volcanic eruption,
+filling his heart with fire, he only knew that the _Te Deum_ was over
+when the Spanish congregation came pouring out of the church. Feeling
+that his behaviour and attitude might seem ridiculous, he went back to
+head the procession, telling the alcalde and the governor that, feeling
+suddenly faint, he had gone out into the air. Casting about for a plea
+for prolonging his stay, it at once occurred to him to make the most of
+this excuse, framed on the spur of the moment. He declined, on a plea of
+increasing indisposition, to preside at the banquet given by the town
+to the French officers, betook himself to his bed, and sent a message to
+the Major-General, to the effect that temporary illness obliged him
+to leave the Colonel in command of the troops for the time being.
+This commonplace but very plausible stratagem relieved him of all
+responsibility for the time necessary to carry out his plans. The
+General, nothing if not “catholic and monarchical,” took occasion to
+inform himself of the hours of the services, and manifested the greatest
+zeal for the performance of his religious duties, piety which caused no
+remark in Spain.
+
+The very next day, while the division was marching out of the town, the
+General went to the convent to be present at vespers. He found an empty
+church. The townsfolk, devout though they were, had all gone down to the
+quay to watch the embarkation of the troops. He felt glad to be the only
+man there. He tramped noisily up the nave, clanking his spurs till the
+vaulted roof rang with the sound; he coughed, he talked aloud to himself
+to let the nuns know, and more particularly to let the organist know
+that if the troops were gone, one Frenchman was left behind. Was this
+singular warning heard and understood? He thought so. It seemed to him
+that in the _Magnificat_ the organ made response which was borne to him
+on the vibrating air. The nun’s spirit found wings in music and fled
+towards him, throbbing with the rhythmical pulse of the sounds. Then, in
+all its might, the music burst forth and filled the church with warmth.
+The Song of Joy set apart in the sublime liturgy of Latin Christianity
+to express the exaltation of the soul in the presence of the glory of
+the ever-living God, became the utterance of a heart almost terrified by
+its gladness in the presence of the glory of a mortal love; a love that
+yet lived, a love that had risen to trouble her even beyond the grave in
+which the nun is laid, that she may rise again as the bride of Christ.
+
+The organ is in truth the grandest, the most daring, the most
+magnificent of all instruments invented by human genius. It is a whole
+orchestra in itself. It can express anything in response to a skilled
+touch. Surely it is in some sort a pedestal on which the soul poises for
+a flight forth into space, essaying on her course to draw picture after
+picture in an endless series, to paint human life, to cross the Infinite
+that separates heaven from earth? And the longer a dreamer listens to
+those giant harmonies, the better he realizes that nothing save this
+hundred-voiced choir on earth can fill all the space between kneeling
+men, and a God hidden by the blinding light of the Sanctuary. The music
+is the one interpreter strong enough to bear up the prayers of humanity
+to heaven, prayer in its omnipotent moods, prayer tinged by the
+melancholy of many different natures, coloured by meditative ecstasy,
+upspringing with the impulse of repentance--blended with the myriad
+fancies of every creed. Yes. In those long vaulted aisles the melodies
+inspired by the sense of things divine are blended with a grandeur
+unknown before, are decked with new glory and might. Out of the dim
+daylight, and the deep silence broken by the chanting of the choir in
+response to the thunder of the organ, a veil is woven for God, and the
+brightness of His attributes shines through it.
+
+And this wealth of holy things seemed to be flung down like a grain of
+incense upon the fragile altar raised to Love beneath the eternal throne
+of a jealous and avenging God. Indeed, in the joy of the nun there
+was little of that awe and gravity which should harmonize with the
+solemnities of the _Magnificat_. She had enriched the music with
+graceful variations, earthly gladness throbbing through the rhythm of
+each. In such brilliant quivering notes some great singer might strive
+to find a voice for her love, her melodies fluttered as a bird flutters
+about her mate. There were moments when she seemed to leap back into
+the past, to dally there now with laughter, now with tears. Her changing
+moods, as it were, ran riot. She was like a woman excited and happy over
+her lover’s return.
+
+But at length, after the swaying fugues of delirium, after the
+marvellous rendering of a vision of the past, a revulsion swept over the
+soul that thus found utterance for itself. With a swift transition from
+the major to the minor, the organist told her hearer of her present lot.
+She gave the story of long melancholy broodings, of the slow course
+of her moral malady. How day by day she deadened the senses, how every
+night cut off one more thought, how her heart was slowly reduced
+to ashes. The sadness deepened shade after shade through languid
+modulations, and in a little while the echoes were pouring out a torrent
+of grief. Then on a sudden, high notes rang out like the voices of
+angels singing together, as if to tell the lost but not forgotten lover
+that their spirits now could only meet in heaven. Pathetic hope! Then
+followed the _Amen_. No more joy, no more tears in the air, no sadness,
+no regrets. The _Amen_ was the return to God. The final chord was deep,
+solemn, even terrible; for the last rumblings of the bass sent a shiver
+through the audience that raised the hair on their heads; the nun shook
+out her veiling of crepe, and seemed to sink again into the grave from
+which she had risen for a moment. Slowly the reverberations died away;
+it seemed as if the church, but now so full of light, had returned to
+thick darkness.
+
+The General had been caught up and borne swiftly away by this
+strong-winged spirit; he had followed the course of its flight from
+beginning to end. He understood to the fullest extent the imagery of
+that burning symphony; for him the chords reached deep and far. For
+him, as for the sister, the poem meant future, present, and past. Is
+not music, and even opera music, a sort of text, which a susceptible
+or poetic temper, or a sore and stricken heart, may expand as memories
+shall determine? If a musician must needs have the heart of a poet, must
+not the listener too be in a manner a poet and a lover to hear all that
+lies in great music? Religion, love, and music--what are they but a
+threefold expression of the same fact, of that craving for expansion
+which stirs in every noble soul. And these three forms of poetry ascend
+to God, in whom all passion on earth finds its end. Wherefore the holy
+human trinity finds a place amid the infinite glories of God; of God,
+whom we always represent surrounded with the fires of love and seistrons
+of gold--music and light and harmony. Is not He the Cause and the End of
+all our strivings?
+
+The French General guessed rightly that here in the desert, on this bare
+rock in the sea, the nun had seized upon music as an outpouring of the
+passion that still consumed her. Was this her manner of offering up her
+love as a sacrifice to God? Or was it Love exultant in triumph over God?
+The questions were hard to answer. But one thing at least the General
+could not mistake--in this heart, dead to the world, the fire of passion
+burned as fiercely as in his own.
+
+Vespers over, he went back to the alcalde with whom he was staying.
+In the all-absorbing joy which comes in such full measure when a
+satisfaction sought long and painfully is attained at last, he could see
+nothing beyond this--he was still loved! In her heart love had grown
+in loneliness, even as his love had grown stronger as he surmounted one
+barrier after another which this woman had set between them! The glow of
+soul came to its natural end. There followed a longing to see her again,
+to contend with God for her, to snatch her away--a rash scheme, which
+appealed to a daring nature. He went to bed, when the meal was over, to
+avoid questions; to be alone and think at his ease; and he lay absorbed
+by deep thought till day broke.
+
+He rose only to go to mass. He went to the church and knelt close to
+the screen, with his forehead touching the curtain; he would have torn
+a hole in it if he had been alone, but his host had come with him out of
+politeness, and the least imprudence might compromise the whole future
+of his love, and ruin the new hopes.
+
+The organ sounded, but it was another player, and not the nun of the
+last two days whose hands touched the keys. It was all colorless and
+cold for the General. Was the woman he loved prostrated by emotion which
+well-nigh overcame a strong man’s heart? Had she so fully realised and
+shared an unchanged, longed-for love, that now she lay dying on her bed
+in her cell? While innumerable thoughts of this kind perplexed his mind,
+the voice of the woman he worshipped rang out close beside him; he knew
+its clear resonant soprano. It was her voice, with that faint tremor in
+it which gave it all the charm that shyness and diffidence gives to a
+young girl; her voice, distinct from the mass of singing as a _prima
+donna’s_ in the chorus of a finale. It was like a golden or silver
+thread in dark frieze.
+
+It was she! There could be no mistake. Parisienne now as ever, she had
+not laid coquetry aside when she threw off worldly adornments for the
+veil and the Carmelite’s coarse serge. She who had affirmed her love
+last evening in the praise sent up to God, seemed now to say to her
+lover, “Yes, it is I. I am here. My love is unchanged, but I am beyond
+the reach of love. You will hear my voice, my soul shall enfold you,
+and I shall abide here under the brown shroud in the choir from which no
+power on earth can tear me. You shall never see me more!”
+
+“It is she indeed!” the General said to himself, raising his head. He
+had leant his face on his hands, unable at first to bear the intolerable
+emotion that surged like a whirlpool in his heart, when that well-known
+voice vibrated under the arcading, with the sound of the sea for
+accompaniment.
+
+Storm was without, and calm within the sanctuary. Still that rich voice
+poured out all its caressing notes; it fell like balm on the lover’s
+burning heart; it blossomed upon the air--the air that a man would fain
+breathe more deeply to receive the effluence of a soul breathed forth
+with love in the words of the prayer. The alcalde coming to join
+his guest found him in tears during the elevation, while the nun was
+singing, and brought him back to his house. Surprised to find so much
+piety in a French military man, the worthy magistrate invited the
+confessor of the convent to meet his guest. Never had news given the
+General more pleasure; he paid the ecclesiastic a good deal of attention
+at supper, and confirmed his Spanish hosts in the high opinion they had
+formed of his piety by a not wholly disinterested respect.
+
+He inquired with gravity how many sisters there were in the convent, and
+asked for particulars of its endowment and revenues, as if from
+courtesy he wished to hear the good priest discourse on the subject most
+interesting to him. He informed himself as to the manner of life led by
+the holy women. Were they allowed to go out of the convent, or to see
+visitors?
+
+“Senor,” replied the venerable churchman, “the rule is strict. A woman
+cannot enter a monastery of the order of St. Bruno without a special
+permission from His Holiness, and the rule here is equally stringent.
+No man may enter a convent of Barefoot Carmelites unless he is a priest
+specially attached to the services of the house by the Archbishop. None
+of the nuns may leave the convent; though the great Saint, St. Theresa,
+often left her cell. The Visitor or the Mothers Superior can alone give
+permission, subject to an authorization from the Archbishop, for a nun
+to see a visitor, and then especially in a case of illness. Now we are
+one of the principal houses, and consequently we have a Mother Superior
+here. Among other foreign sisters there is one Frenchwoman, Sister
+Theresa; she it is who directs the music in the chapel.”
+
+“Oh!” said the General, with feigned surprise. “She must have rejoiced
+over the victory of the House of Bourbon.”
+
+“I told them the reason of the mass; they are always a little bit
+inquisitive.”
+
+“But Sister Theresa may have interests in France. Perhaps she would like
+to send some message or to hear news.”
+
+“I do not think so. She would have come to ask me.”
+
+“As a fellow-countryman, I should be quite curious to see her,” said the
+General. “If it is possible, if the Lady Superior consents, if----”
+
+“Even at the grating and in the Reverend Mother’s presence, an interview
+would be quite impossible for anybody whatsoever; but, strict as the
+Mother is, for a deliverer of our holy religion and the throne of his
+Catholic Majesty, the rule might be relaxed for a moment,” said the
+confessor, blinking. “I will speak about it.”
+
+“How old is Sister Theresa?” inquired the lover. He dared not ask any
+questions of the priest as to the nun’s beauty.
+
+“She does not reckon years now,” the good man answered, with a
+simplicity that made the General shudder.
+
+Next day before siesta, the confessor came to inform the French General
+that Sister Theresa and the Mother consented to receive him at the
+grating in the parlour before vespers. The General spent the siesta in
+pacing to and fro along the quay in the noonday heat. Thither the priest
+came to find him, and brought him to the convent by way of the gallery
+round the cemetery. Fountains, green trees, and rows of arcading
+maintained a cool freshness in keeping with the place.
+
+At the further end of the long gallery the priest led the way into a
+large room divided in two by a grating covered with a brown curtain. In
+the first, and in some sort of public half of the apartment, where the
+confessor left the newcomer, a wooden bench ran round the wall, and two
+or three chairs, also of wood, were placed near the grating. The ceiling
+consisted of bare unornamented joists and cross-beams of ilex wood. As
+the two windows were both on the inner side of the grating, and the dark
+surface of the wood was a bad reflector, the light in the place was so
+dim that you could scarcely see the great black crucifix, the portrait
+of Saint Theresa, and a picture of the Madonna which adorned the grey
+parlour walls. Tumultuous as the General’s feelings were, they took
+something of the melancholy of the place. He grew calm in that homely
+quiet. A sense of something vast as the tomb took possession of him
+beneath the chill unceiled roof. Here, as in the grave, was there not
+eternal silence, deep peace--the sense of the Infinite? And besides this
+there was the quiet and the fixed thought of the cloister--a thought
+which you felt like a subtle presence in the air, and in the dim dusk
+of the room; an all-pervasive thought nowhere definitely expressed, and
+looming the larger in the imagination; for in the cloister the great
+saying, “Peace in the Lord,” enters the least religious soul as a living
+force.
+
+The monk’s life is scarcely comprehensible. A man seems confessed a
+weakling in a monastery; he was born to act, to live out a life of work;
+he is evading a man’s destiny in his cell. But what man’s strength,
+blended with pathetic weakness, is implied by a woman’s choice of the
+convent life! A man may have any number of motives for burying himself
+in a monastery; for him it is the leap over the precipice. A woman
+has but one motive--she is a woman still; she betrothes herself to a
+Heavenly Bridegroom. Of the monk you may ask, “Why did you not fight
+your battle?” But if a woman immures herself in the cloister, is there
+not always a sublime battle fought first?
+
+At length it seemed to the General that that still room, and the lonely
+convent in the sea, were full of thoughts of him. Love seldom attains
+to solemnity; yet surely a love still faithful in the breast of God was
+something solemn, something more than a man had a right to look for
+as things are in this nineteenth century? The infinite grandeur of the
+situation might well produce an effect upon the General’s mind; he had
+precisely enough elevation of soul to forget politics, honours, Spain,
+and society in Paris, and to rise to the height of this lofty climax.
+And what in truth could be more tragic? How much must pass in the souls
+of these two lovers, brought together in a place of strangers, on
+a ledge of granite in the sea; yet held apart by an intangible,
+unsurmountable barrier! Try to imagine the man saying within himself,
+“Shall I triumph over God in her heart?” when a faint rustling sound
+made him quiver, and the curtain was drawn aside.
+
+Between him and the light stood a woman. Her face was hidden by the veil
+that drooped from the folds upon her head; she was dressed according
+to the rule of the order in a gown of the colour become proverbial. Her
+bare feet were hidden; if the General could have seen them, he would
+have known how appallingly thin she had grown; and yet in spite of the
+thick folds of her coarse gown, a mere covering and no ornament, he
+could guess how tears, and prayer, and passion, and loneliness had
+wasted the woman before him.
+
+An ice-cold hand, belonging, no doubt, to the Mother Superior, held back
+the curtain. The General gave the enforced witness of their interview a
+searching glance, and met the dark, inscrutable gaze of an aged recluse.
+The Mother might have been a century old, but the bright, youthful eyes
+belied the wrinkles that furrowed her pale face.
+
+“Mme la Duchesse,” he began, his voice shaken with emotion, “does your
+companion understand French?” The veiled figure bowed her head at the
+sound of his voice.
+
+“There is no duchess here,” she replied. “It is Sister Theresa whom you
+see before you. She whom you call my companion is my mother in God, my
+superior here on earth.”
+
+The words were so meekly spoken by the voice that sounded in other years
+amid harmonious surroundings of refined luxury, the voice of a queen of
+fashion in Paris. Such words from the lips that once spoke so lightly
+and flippantly struck the General dumb with amazement.
+
+“The Holy Mother only speaks Latin and Spanish,” she added.
+
+“I understand neither. Dear Antoinette, make my excuses to her.”
+
+The light fell full upon the nun’s figure; a thrill of deep emotion
+betrayed itself in a faint quiver of her veil as she heard her name
+softly spoken by the man who had been so hard in the past.
+
+“My brother,” she said, drawing her sleeve under her veil, perhaps to
+brush tears away, “I am Sister Theresa.”
+
+Then, turning to the Superior, she spoke in Spanish; the General knew
+enough of the language to understand what she said perfectly well;
+possibly he could have spoken it had he chosen to do so.
+
+“Dear Mother, the gentleman presents his respects to you, and begs you
+to pardon him if he cannot pay them himself, but he knows neither of the
+languages which you speak----”
+
+The aged nun bent her head slowly, with an expression of angelic
+sweetness, enhanced at the same time by the consciousness of her power
+and dignity.
+
+“Do you know this gentleman?” she asked, with a keen glance.
+
+“Yes, Mother.”
+
+“Go back to your cell, my daughter!” said the Mother imperiously.
+
+The General slipped aside behind the curtain lest the dreadful tumult
+within him should appear in his face; even in the shadow it seemed to
+him that he could still see the Superior’s piercing eyes. He was afraid
+of her; she held his little, frail, hardly-won happiness in her hands;
+and he, who had never quailed under a triple row of guns, now trembled
+before this nun. The Duchess went towards the door, but she turned back.
+
+“Mother,” she said, with dreadful calmness, “the Frenchman is one of my
+brothers.”
+
+“Then stay, my daughter,” said the Superior, after a pause.
+
+The piece of admirable Jesuitry told of such love and regret, that a man
+less strongly constituted might have broken down under the keen delight
+in the midst of a great and, for him, an entirely novel peril. Oh! how
+precious words, looks, and gestures became when love must baffle lynx
+eyes and tiger’s claws! Sister Theresa came back.
+
+“You see, my brother, what I have dared to do only to speak to you for
+a moment of your salvation and of the prayers that my soul puts up for
+your soul daily. I am committing mortal sin. I have told a lie. How many
+days of penance must expiate that lie! But I shall endure it for your
+sake. My brother, you do not know what happiness it is to love in
+heaven; to feel that you can confess love purified by religion, love
+transported into the highest heights of all, so that we are permitted
+to lose sight of all but the soul. If the doctrine and the spirit of
+the Saint to whom we owe this refuge had not raised me above earth’s
+anguish, and caught me up and set me, far indeed beneath the Sphere
+wherein she dwells, yet truly above this world, I should not have
+seen you again. But now I can see you, and hear your voice, and remain
+calm----”
+
+The General broke in, “But, Antoinette, let me see you, you whom I love
+passionately, desperately, as you could have wished me to love you.”
+
+“Do not call me Antoinette, I implore you. Memories of the past hurt me.
+You must see no one here but Sister Theresa, a creature who trusts in
+the Divine mercy.” She paused for a little, and then added, “You must
+control yourself, my brother. Our Mother would separate us without pity
+if there is any worldly passion in your face, or if you allow the tears
+to fall from your eyes.”
+
+The General bowed his head to regain self-control; when he looked up
+again he saw her face beyond the grating--the thin, white, but still
+impassioned face of the nun. All the magic charm of youth that once
+bloomed there, all the fair contrast of velvet whiteness and the colour
+of the Bengal rose, had given place to a burning glow, as of a porcelain
+jar with a faint light shining through it. The wonderful hair in which
+she took such pride had been shaven; there was a bandage round her
+forehead and about her face. An ascetic life had left dark traces about
+the eyes, which still sometimes shot out fevered glances; their ordinary
+calm expression was but a veil. In a few words, she was but the ghost of
+her former self.
+
+“Ah! you that have come to be my life, you must come out of this tomb!
+You were mine; you had no right to give yourself, even to God. Did you
+not promise me to give up all at the least command from me? You may
+perhaps think me worthy of that promise now when you hear what I have
+done for you. I have sought you all through the world. You have been in
+my thoughts at every moment for five years; my life has been given to
+you. My friends, very powerful friends, as you know, have helped with
+all their might to search every convent in France, Italy, Spain, Sicily,
+and America. Love burned more brightly for every vain search. Again and
+again I made long journeys with a false hope; I have wasted my life and
+the heaviest throbbings of my heart in vain under many a dark convent
+wall. I am not speaking of a faithfulness that knows no bounds, for what
+is it?--nothing compared with the infinite longings of my love. If your
+remorse long ago was sincere, you ought not to hesitate to follow me
+today.”
+
+“You forget that I am not free.”
+
+“The Duke is dead,” he answered quickly.
+
+Sister Theresa flushed red.
+
+“May heaven be open to him!” she cried with a quick rush of feeling. “He
+was generous to me.--But I did not mean such ties; it was one of my sins
+that I was ready to break them all without scruple--for you.”
+
+“Are you speaking of your vows?” the General asked, frowning. “I did not
+think that anything weighed heavier with your heart than love. But do
+not think twice of it, Antoinette; the Holy Father himself shall absolve
+you of your oath. I will surely go to Rome, I will entreat all the
+powers of earth; if God could come down from heaven, I would----”
+
+“Do not blaspheme.”
+
+“So do not fear the anger of God. Ah! I would far rather hear that
+you would leave your prison for me; that this very night you would let
+yourself down into a boat at the foot of the cliffs. And we would go
+away to be happy somewhere at the world’s end, I know not where. And
+with me at your side, you should come back to life and health under the
+wings of love.”
+
+“You must not talk like this,” said Sister Theresa; “you do not know
+what you are to me now. I love you far better than I ever loved you
+before. Every day I pray for you; I see you with other eyes. Armand, if
+you but knew the happiness of giving yourself up, without shame, to a
+pure friendship which God watches over! You do not know what joy it is
+to me to pray for heaven’s blessing on you. I never pray for myself: God
+will do with me according to His will; but, at the price of my soul, I
+wish I could be sure that you are happy here on earth, and that you
+will be happy hereafter throughout all ages. My eternal life is all that
+trouble has left me to offer up to you. I am old now with weeping; I am
+neither young nor fair; and in any case, you could not respect the
+nun who became a wife; no love, not even motherhood, could give me
+absolution.... What can you say to outweigh the uncounted thoughts that
+have gathered in my heart during the past five years, thoughts that have
+changed, and worn, and blighted it? I ought to have given a heart less
+sorrowful to God.”
+
+“What can I say? Dear Antoinette, I will say this, that I love you; that
+affection, love, a great love, the joy of living in another heart that
+is ours, utterly and wholly ours, is so rare a thing and so hard to
+find, that I doubted you, and put you to sharp proof; but now, today, I
+love you, Antoinette, with all my soul’s strength.... If you will follow
+me into solitude, I will hear no voice but yours, I will see no other
+face.”
+
+“Hush, Armand! You are shortening the little time that we may be
+together here on earth.”
+
+“Antoinette, will you come with me?”
+
+“I am never away from you. My life is in your heart, not through the
+selfish ties of earthly happiness, or vanity, or enjoyment; pale and
+withered as I am, I live here for you, in the breast of God. As God is
+just, you shall be happy----”
+
+“Words, words all of it! Pale and withered? How if I want you? How if I
+cannot be happy without you? Do you still think of nothing but duty with
+your lover before you? Is he never to come first and above all things
+else in your heart? In time past you put social success, yourself,
+heaven knows what, before him; now it is God, it is the welfare of my
+soul! In Sister Theresa I find the Duchess over again, ignorant of
+the happiness of love, insensible as ever, beneath the semblance of
+sensibility. You do not love me; you have never loved me----”
+
+“Oh, my brother----!”
+
+“You do not wish to leave this tomb. You love my soul, do you say?
+Very well, through you it will be lost forever. I shall make away with
+myself----”
+
+“Mother!” Sister Theresa called aloud in Spanish, “I have lied to you;
+this man is my lover!”
+
+The curtain fell at once. The General, in his stupor, scarcely heard the
+doors within as they clanged.
+
+“Ah! she loves me still!” he cried, understanding all the sublimity of
+that cry of hers. “She loves me still. She must be carried off....”
+
+
+
+The General left the island, returned to headquarters, pleaded
+ill-health, asked for leave of absence, and forthwith took his departure
+for France.
+
+And now for the incidents which brought the two personages in this Scene
+into their present relation to each other.
+
+
+
+The thing known in France as the Faubourg Saint-Germain is neither a
+Quarter, nor a sect, nor an institution, nor anything else that admits
+of a precise definition. There are great houses in the Place Royale, the
+Faubourg Saint-Honore, and the Chaussee d’Antin, in any one of which you
+may breathe the same atmosphere of Faubourg Saint-Germain. So, to begin
+with, the whole Faubourg is not within the Faubourg. There are men and
+women born far enough away from its influences who respond to them and
+take their place in the circle; and again there are others, born within
+its limits, who may yet be driven forth forever. For the last forty
+years the manners, and customs, and speech, in a word, the tradition of
+the Faubourg Saint-Germain, has been to Paris what the Court used to be
+in other times; it is what the Hotel Saint-Paul was to the fourteenth
+century; the Louvre to the fifteenth; the Palais, the Hotel Rambouillet,
+and the Place Royale to the sixteenth; and lastly, as Versailles was to
+the seventeenth and the eighteenth.
+
+Just as the ordinary workaday Paris will always centre about some point;
+so, through all periods of history, the Paris of the nobles and
+the upper classes converges towards some particular spot. It is a
+periodically recurrent phenomenon which presents ample matter for
+reflection to those who are fain to observe or describe the various
+social zones; and possibly an enquiry into the causes that bring about
+this centralization may do more than merely justify the probability of
+this episode; it may be of service to serious interests which some
+day will be more deeply rooted in the commonwealth, unless, indeed,
+experience is as meaningless for political parties as it is for youth.
+
+In every age the great nobles, and the rich who always ape the great
+nobles, build their houses as far as possible from crowded streets. When
+the Duc d’Uzes built his splendid hotel in the Rue Montmartre in
+the reign of Louis XIV, and set the fountain at his gates--for which
+beneficent action, to say nothing of his other virtues, he was held in
+such veneration that the whole quarter turned out in a body to follow
+his funeral--when the Duke, I say, chose this site for his house, he
+did so because that part of Paris was almost deserted in those days. But
+when the fortifications were pulled down, and the market gardens beyond
+the line of the boulevards began to fill with houses, then the d’Uzes
+family left their fine mansion, and in our time it was occupied by a
+banker. Later still, the noblesse began to find themselves out of their
+element among shopkeepers, left the Place Royale and the centre of
+Paris for good, and crossed the river to breathe freely in the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain, where palaces were reared already about the great
+hotel built by Louis XIV for the Duc de Maine--the Benjamin among his
+legitimated offspring. And indeed, for people accustomed to a stately
+life, can there be more unseemly surroundings than the bustle, the mud,
+the street cries, the bad smells, and narrow thoroughfares of a populous
+quarter? The very habits of life in a mercantile or manufacturing
+district are completely at variance with the lives of nobles. The
+shopkeeper and artisan are just going to bed when the great world is
+thinking of dinner; and the noisy stir of life begins among the former
+when the latter have gone to rest. Their day’s calculations never
+coincide; the one class represents the expenditure, the other the
+receipts. Consequently their manners and customs are diametrically
+opposed.
+
+Nothing contemptuous is intended by this statement. An aristocracy is in
+a manner the intellect of the social system, as the middle classes and
+the proletariat may be said to be its organizing and working power. It
+naturally follows that these forces are differently situated; and of
+their antagonism there is bred a seeming antipathy produced by the
+performance of different functions, all of them, however, existing for
+one common end.
+
+Such social dissonances are so inevitably the outcome of any charter
+of the constitution, that however much a Liberal may be disposed to
+complain of them, as of treason against those sublime ideas with which
+the ambitious plebeian is apt to cover his designs, he would none the
+less think it a preposterous notion that M. le Prince de Montmorency,
+for instance, should continue to live in the Rue Saint-Martin at the
+corner of the street which bears that nobleman’s name; or that M. le Duc
+de Fitz-James, descendant of the royal house of Scotland, should have
+his hotel at the angle of the Rue Marie Stuart and the Rue Montorgueil.
+_Sint ut sunt, aut non sint_, the grand words of the Jesuit, might be
+taken as a motto by the great in all countries. These social differences
+are patent in all ages; the fact is always accepted by the people; its
+“reasons of state” are self-evident; it is at once cause and effect, a
+principle and a law. The common sense of the masses never deserts them
+until demagogues stir them up to gain ends of their own; that common
+sense is based on the verities of social order; and the social order is
+the same everywhere, in Moscow as in London, in Geneva as in Calcutta.
+Given a certain number of families of unequal fortune in any given
+space, you will see an aristocracy forming under your eyes; there will
+be the patricians, the upper classes, and yet other ranks below them.
+Equality may be a _right_, but no power on earth can convert it into
+_fact_. It would be a good thing for France if this idea could be
+popularized. The benefits of political harmony are obvious to the least
+intelligent classes. Harmony is, as it were, the poetry of order, and
+order is a matter of vital importance to the working population. And
+what is order, reduced to its simplest expression, but the agreement
+of things among themselves--unity, in short? Architecture, music, and
+poetry, everything in France, and in France more than in any other
+country, is based upon this principle; it is written upon the very
+foundations of her clear accurate language, and a language must always
+be the most infallible index of national character. In the same way
+you may note that the French popular airs are those most calculated to
+strike the imagination, the best-modulated melodies are taken over by
+the people; clearness of thought, the intellectual simplicity of an idea
+attracts them; they like the incisive sayings that hold the greatest
+number of ideas. France is the one country in the world where a little
+phrase may bring about a great revolution. Whenever the masses have
+risen, it has been to bring men, affairs, and principles into agreement.
+No nation has a clearer conception of that idea of unity which should
+permeate the life of an aristocracy; possibly no other nation has so
+intelligent a comprehension of a political necessity; history will never
+find her behind the time. France has been led astray many a time, but
+she is deluded, woman-like, by generous ideas, by a glow of enthusiasm
+which at first outstrips sober reason.
+
+So, to begin with, the most striking characteristic of the Faubourg
+is the splendour of its great mansions, its great gardens, and a
+surrounding quiet in keeping with princely revenues drawn from great
+estates. And what is this distance set between a class and a whole
+metropolis but visible and outward expression of the widely different
+attitude of mind which must inevitably keep them apart? The position of
+the head is well defined in every organism. If by any chance a nation
+allows its head to fall at its feet, it is pretty sure sooner or later
+to discover that this is a suicidal measure; and since nations have no
+desire to perish, they set to work at once to grow a new head. If they
+lack the strength for this, they perish as Rome perished, and Venice,
+and so many other states.
+
+This distinction between the upper and lower spheres of social activity,
+emphasized by differences in their manner of living, necessarily
+implies that in the highest aristocracy there is real worth and some
+distinguishing merit. In any state, no matter what form of “government”
+ is affected, so soon as the patrician class fails to maintain that
+complete superiority which is the condition of its existence, it ceases
+to be a force, and is pulled down at once by the populace. The people
+always wish to see money, power, and initiative in their leaders, hands,
+hearts, and heads; they must be the spokesmen, they must represent the
+intelligence and the glory of the nation. Nations, like women, love
+strength in those who rule them; they cannot give love without respect;
+they refuse utterly to obey those of whom they do not stand in awe.
+An aristocracy fallen into contempt is a _roi faineant_, a husband in
+petticoats; first it ceases to be itself, and then it ceases to be.
+
+And in this way the isolation of the great, the sharply marked
+distinction in their manner of life, or in a word, the general custom
+of the patrician caste is at once the sign of a real power, and their
+destruction so soon as that power is lost. The Faubourg Saint-Germain
+failed to recognise the conditions of its being, while it would still
+have been easy to perpetuate its existence, and therefore was brought
+low for a time. The Faubourg should have looked the facts fairly in the
+face, as the English aristocracy did before them; they should have seen
+that every institution has its climacteric periods, when words lose
+their old meanings, and ideas reappear in a new guise, and the whole
+conditions of politics wear a changed aspect, while the underlying
+realities undergo no essential alteration.
+
+These ideas demand further development which form an essential part of
+this episode; they are given here both as a succinct statement of the
+causes, and an explanation of the things which happen in the course of
+the story.
+
+The stateliness of the castles and palaces where nobles dwell; the
+luxury of the details; the constantly maintained sumptuousness of the
+furniture; the “atmosphere” in which the fortunate owner of landed
+estates (a rich man before he was born) lives and moves easily and
+without friction; the habit of mind which never descends to calculate
+the petty workaday gains of existence; the leisure; the higher education
+attainable at a much earlier age; and lastly, the aristocratic tradition
+that makes of him a social force, for which his opponents, by dint
+of study and a strong will and tenacity of vocation, are scarcely a
+match-all these things should contribute to form a lofty spirit in a
+man, possessed of such privileges from his youth up; they should
+stamp his character with that high self-respect, of which the least
+consequence is a nobleness of heart in harmony with the noble name that
+he bears. And in some few families all this is realised. There are
+noble characters here and there in the Faubourg, but they are marked
+exceptions to a general rule of egoism which has been the ruin of this
+world within a world. The privileges above enumerated are the birthright
+of the French noblesse, as of every patrician efflorescence ever formed
+on the surface of a nation; and will continue to be theirs so long as
+their existence is based upon real estate, or money; _domaine-sol_ and
+_domaine-argent_ alike, the only solid bases of an organized society;
+but such privileges are held upon the understanding that the patricians
+must continue to justify their existence. There is a sort of moral
+_fief_ held on a tenure of service rendered to the sovereign, and here
+in France the people are undoubtedly the sovereigns nowadays. The times
+are changed, and so are the weapons. The knight-banneret of old wore
+a coat of chain armor and a hauberk; he could handle a lance well and
+display his pennon, and no more was required of him; today he is bound
+to give proof of his intelligence. A stout heart was enough in the days
+of old; in our days he is required to have a capacious brain-pan. Skill
+and knowledge and capital--these three points mark out a social triangle
+on which the scutcheon of power is blazoned; our modern aristocracy must
+take its stand on these.
+
+A fine theorem is as good as a great name. The Rothschilds, the Fuggers
+of the nineteenth century, are princes _de facto_. A great artist is in
+reality an oligarch; he represents a whole century, and almost always he
+is a law to others. And the art of words, the high pressure machinery
+of the writer, the poet’s genius, the merchant’s steady endurance,
+the strong will of the statesman who concentrates a thousand dazzling
+qualities in himself, the general’s sword--all these victories, in
+short, which a single individual will win, that he may tower above the
+rest of the world, the patrician class is now bound to win and keep
+exclusively. They must head the new forces as they once headed the
+material forces; how should they keep the position unless they are
+worthy of it? How, unless they are the soul and brain of a nation,
+shall they set its hands moving? How lead a people without the power of
+command? And what is the marshal’s baton without the innate power of
+the captain in the man who wields it? The Faubourg Saint-Germain took to
+playing with batons, and fancied that all the power was in its hands.
+It inverted the terms of the proposition which called it into existence.
+And instead of flinging away the insignia which offended the people,
+and quietly grasping the power, it allowed the bourgeoisie to seize the
+authority, clung with fatal obstinacy to its shadow, and over and over
+again forgot the laws which a minority must observe if it would live.
+When an aristocracy is scarce a thousandth part of the body social, it
+is bound today, as of old, to multiply its points of action, so as to
+counterbalance the weight of the masses in a great crisis. And in our
+days those means of action must be living forces, and not historical
+memories.
+
+In France, unluckily, the noblesse were still so puffed up with the
+notion of their vanished power, that it was difficult to contend against
+a kind of innate presumption in themselves. Perhaps this is a national
+defect. The Frenchman is less given than anyone else to undervalue
+himself; it comes natural to him to go from his degree to the one above
+it; and while it is a rare thing for him to pity the unfortunates
+over whose heads he rises, he always groans in spirit to see so many
+fortunate people above him. He is very far from heartless, but too
+often he prefers to listen to his intellect. The national instinct which
+brings the Frenchman to the front, the vanity that wastes his substance,
+is as much a dominant passion as thrift in the Dutch. For three
+centuries it swayed the noblesse, who, in this respect, were certainly
+pre-eminently French. The scion of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, beholding
+his material superiority, was fully persuaded of his intellectual
+superiority. And everything contributed to confirm him in his belief;
+for ever since the Faubourg Saint-Germain existed at all--which is
+to say, ever since Versailles ceased to be the royal residence--the
+Faubourg, with some few gaps in continuity, was always backed up by the
+central power, which in France seldom fails to support that side. Thence
+its downfall in 1830.
+
+At that time the party of the Faubourg Saint-Germain was rather like
+an army without a base of operation. It had utterly failed to take
+advantage of the peace to plant itself in the heart of the nation.
+It sinned for want of learning its lesson, and through an utter
+incapability of regarding its interests as a whole. A future certainty
+was sacrificed to a doubtful present gain. This blunder in policy may
+perhaps be attributed to the following cause.
+
+The class-isolation so strenuously kept up by the noblesse brought about
+fatal results during the last forty years; even caste-patriotism was
+extinguished by it, and rivalry fostered among themselves. When the
+French noblesse of other times were rich and powerful, the nobles
+(_gentilhommes_) could choose their chiefs and obey them in the hour
+of danger. As their power diminished, they grew less amenable to
+discipline; and as in the last days of the Byzantine Empire, everyone
+wished to be emperor. They mistook their uniform weakness for uniform
+strength.
+
+Each family ruined by the Revolution and the abolition of the law of
+primogeniture thought only of itself, and not at all of the great family
+of the noblesse. It seemed to them that as each individual grew rich,
+the party as a whole would gain in strength. And herein lay their
+mistake. Money, likewise, is only the outward and visible sign of
+power. All these families were made up of persons who preserved a high
+tradition of courtesy, of true graciousness of life, of refined speech,
+with a family pride, and a squeamish sense of _noblesse oblige_ which
+suited well with the kind of life they led; a life wholly filled with
+occupations which become contemptible so soon as they cease to be
+accessories and take the chief place in existence. There was a certain
+intrinsic merit in all these people, but the merit was on the surface,
+and none of them were worth their face-value.
+
+Not a single one among those families had courage to ask itself the
+question, “Are we strong enough for the responsibility of power?” They
+were cast on the top, like the lawyers of 1830; and instead of taking
+the patron’s place, like a great man, the Faubourg Saint-Germain showed
+itself greedy as an upstart. The most intelligent nation in the world
+perceived clearly that the restored nobles were organizing everything
+for their own particular benefit. From that day the noblesse was doomed.
+The Faubourg Saint-Germain tried to be an aristocracy when it could
+only be an oligarchy--two very different systems, as any man may see
+for himself if he gives an intelligent perusal to the list of the
+patronymics of the House of Peers.
+
+The King’s Government certainly meant well; but the maxim that the
+people must be made to _will_ everything, even their own welfare, was
+pretty constantly forgotten, nor did they bear in mind that La France is
+a woman and capricious, and must be happy or chastised at her own good
+pleasure. If there had been many dukes like the Duc de Laval, whose
+modesty made him worthy of the name he bore, the elder branch would have
+been as securely seated on the throne as the House of Hanover at this
+day.
+
+In 1814 the noblesse of France were called upon to assert their
+superiority over the most aristocratic bourgeoisie in the most feminine
+of all countries, to take the lead in the most highly educated epoch the
+world had yet seen. And this was even more notably the case in 1820. The
+Faubourg Saint-Germain might very easily have led and amused the middle
+classes in days when people’s heads were turned with distinctions, and
+art and science were all the rage. But the narrow-minded leaders of
+a time of great intellectual progress all of them detested art and
+science. They had not even the wit to present religion in attractive
+colours, though they needed its support. While Lamartine, Lamennais,
+Montalembert, and other writers were putting new life and elevation into
+men’s ideas of religion, and gilding it with poetry, these bunglers in
+the Government chose to make the harshness of their creed felt all over
+the country. Never was nation in a more tractable humour; La France,
+like a tired woman, was ready to agree to anything; never was
+mismanagement so clumsy; and La France, like a woman, would have
+forgiven wrongs more easily than bungling.
+
+If the noblesse meant to reinstate themselves, the better to found a
+strong oligarchy, they should have honestly and diligently searched
+their Houses for men of the stamp that Napoleon used; they should
+have turned themselves inside out to see if peradventure there was a
+Constitutionalist Richelieu lurking in the entrails of the Faubourg; and
+if that genius was not forthcoming from among them, they should have set
+out to find him, even in the fireless garret where he might happen to
+be perishing of cold; they should have assimilated him, as the English
+House of Lords continually assimilates aristocrats made by chance; and
+finally ordered him to be ruthless, to lop away the old wood, and cut
+the tree down to the living shoots. But, in the first place, the great
+system of English Toryism was far too large for narrow minds; the
+importation required time, and in France a tardy success is no better
+than a fiasco. So far, moreover, from adopting a policy of redemption,
+and looking for new forces where God puts them, these petty great folk
+took a dislike to any capacity that did not issue from their midst; and,
+lastly, instead of growing young again, the Faubourg Saint-Germain grew
+positively older.
+
+Etiquette, not an institution of primary necessity, might have been
+maintained if it had appeared only on state occasions, but as it was,
+there was a daily wrangle over precedence; it ceased to be a matter of
+art or court ceremonial, it became a question of power. And if from
+the outset the Crown lacked an adviser equal to so great a crisis, the
+aristocracy was still more lacking in a sense of its wider interests, an
+instinct which might have supplied the deficiency. They stood nice about
+M. de Talleyrand’s marriage, when M. de Talleyrand was the one man among
+them with the steel-encompassed brains that can forge a new political
+system and begin a new career of glory for a nation. The Faubourg
+scoffed at a minister if he was not gently born, and produced no one of
+gentle birth that was fit to be a minister. There were plenty of nobles
+fitted to serve their country by raising the dignity of justices of
+the peace, by improving the land, by opening out roads and canals, and
+taking an active and leading part as country gentlemen; but these had
+sold their estates to gamble on the Stock Exchange. Again the Faubourg
+might have absorbed the energetic men among the bourgeoisie, and opened
+their ranks to the ambition which was undermining authority; they
+preferred instead to fight, and to fight unarmed, for of all that
+they once possessed there was nothing left but tradition. For their
+misfortune there was just precisely enough of their former wealth left
+them as a class to keep up their bitter pride. They were content with
+their past. Not one of them seriously thought of bidding the son of the
+house take up arms from the pile of weapons which the nineteenth century
+flings down in the market-place. Young men, shut out from office, were
+dancing at Madame’s balls, while they should have been doing the
+work done under the Republic and the Empire by young, conscientious,
+harmlessly employed energies. It was their place to carry out at Paris
+the programme which their seniors should have been following in the
+country. The heads of houses might have won back recognition of their
+titles by unremitting attention to local interests, by falling in with
+the spirit of the age, by recasting their order to suit the taste of the
+times.
+
+But, pent up together in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where the spirit of
+the ancient court and traditions of bygone feuds between the nobles and
+the Crown still lingered on, the aristocracy was not whole-hearted in
+its allegiance to the Tuileries, and so much the more easily defeated
+because it was concentrated in the Chamber of Peers, and badly organized
+even there. If the noblesse had woven themselves into a network over
+the country, they could have held their own; but cooped up in their
+Faubourg, with their backs against the Chateau, or spread at full length
+over the Budget, a single blow cut the thread of a fast-expiring life,
+and a petty, smug-faced lawyer came forward with the axe. In spite of M.
+Royer-Collard’s admirable discourse, the hereditary peerage and law of
+entail fell before the lampoons of a man who made it a boast that he had
+adroitly argued some few heads out of the executioner’s clutches, and
+now forsooth must clumsily proceed to the slaying of old institutions.
+
+There are examples and lessons for the future in all this. For if there
+were not still a future before the French aristocracy, there would be
+no need to do more than find a suitable sarcophagus; it were something
+pitilessly cruel to burn the dead body of it with fire of Tophet. But
+though the surgeon’s scalpel is ruthless, it sometimes gives back life
+to a dying man; and the Faubourg Saint-Germain may wax more powerful
+under persecution than in its day of triumph, if it but chooses to
+organize itself under a leader.
+
+And now it is easy to give a summary of this semi-political survey. The
+wish to re-establish a large fortune was uppermost in everyone’s mind;
+a lack of broad views, and a mass of small defects, a real need of
+religion as a political factor, combined with a thirst for pleasure
+which damaged the cause of religion and necessitated a good deal of
+hypocrisy; a certain attitude of protest on the part of loftier and
+clearer-sighted men who set their faces against Court jealousies; and
+the disaffection of the provincial families, who often came of
+purer descent than the nobles of the Court which alienated them from
+itself--all these things combined to bring about a most discordant state
+of things in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was neither compact in its
+organisation, nor consequent in its action; neither completely moral,
+nor frankly dissolute; it did not corrupt, nor was it corrupted; it
+would neither wholly abandon the disputed points which damaged its
+cause, nor yet adopt the policy that might have saved it. In short,
+however effete individuals might be, the party as a whole was none
+the less armed with all the great principles which lie at the roots of
+national existence. What was there in the Faubourg that it should perish
+in its strength?
+
+It was very hard to please in the choice of candidates; the Faubourg
+had good taste, it was scornfully fastidious, yet there was nothing very
+glorious nor chivalrous truly about its fall.
+
+In the Emigration of 1789 there were some traces of a loftier feeling;
+but in the Emigration of 1830 from Paris into the country there was
+nothing discernible but self-interest. A few famous men of letters, a
+few oratorical triumphs in the Chambers, M. de Talleyrand’s attitude
+in the Congress, the taking of Algiers, and not a few names that found
+their way from the battlefield into the pages of history--all these
+things were so many examples set before the French noblesse to show that
+it was still open to them to take their part in the national existence,
+and to win recognition of their claims, if, indeed, they could
+condescend thus far. In every living organism the work of bringing
+the whole into harmony within itself is always going on. If a man is
+indolent, the indolence shows itself in everything that he does; and,
+in the same manner, the general spirit of a class is pretty plainly
+manifested in the face it turns on the world, and the soul informs the
+body.
+
+The women of the Restoration displayed neither the proud disregard
+of public opinion shown by the court ladies of olden time in their
+wantonness, nor yet the simple grandeur of the tardy virtues by which
+they expiated their sins and shed so bright a glory about their names.
+There was nothing either very frivolous or very serious about the woman
+of the Restoration. She was hypocritical as a rule in her passion, and
+compounded, so to speak, with its pleasures. Some few families led
+the domestic life of the Duchesse d’Orleans, whose connubial couch was
+exhibited so absurdly to visitors at the Palais Royal. Two or three kept
+up the traditions of the Regency, filling cleverer women with something
+like disgust. The great lady of the new school exercised no influence at
+all over the manners of the time; and yet she might have done much.
+She might, at worst, have presented as dignified a spectacle as
+English-women of the same rank. But she hesitated feebly among old
+precedents, became a bigot by force of circumstances, and allowed
+nothing of herself to appear, not even her better qualities.
+
+Not one among the Frenchwomen of that day had the ability to create a
+salon whither leaders of fashion might come to take lessons in taste and
+elegance. Their voices, which once laid down the law to literature, that
+living expression of a time, now counted absolutely for nought. Now
+when a literature lacks a general system, it fails to shape a body for
+itself, and dies out with its period.
+
+When in a nation at any time there is a people apart thus constituted,
+the historian is pretty certain to find some representative figure,
+some central personage who embodies the qualities and the defects of the
+whole party to which he belongs; there is Coligny, for instance, among
+the Huguenots, the Coadjuteur in the time of the Fronde, the Marechal de
+Richelieu under Louis XV, Danton during the Terror. It is in the nature
+of things that the man should be identified with the company in which
+history finds him. How is it possible to lead a party without conforming
+to its ideas? or to shine in any epoch unless a man represents the ideas
+of his time? The wise and prudent head of a party is continually obliged
+to bow to the prejudices and follies of its rear; and this is the
+cause of actions for which he is afterwards criticised by this or that
+historian sitting at a safer distance from terrific popular explosions,
+coolly judging the passion and ferment without which the great struggles
+of the world could not be carried on at all. And if this is true of
+the Historical Comedy of the Centuries, it is equally true in a more
+restricted sphere in the detached scenes of the national drama known as
+the _Manners of the Age_.
+
+
+
+At the beginning of that ephemeral life led by the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain under the Restoration, to which, if there is any truth in
+the above reflections, they failed to give stability, the most perfect
+type of the aristocratic caste in its weakness and strength, its
+greatness and littleness, might have been found for a brief space in a
+young married woman who belonged to it. This was a woman artificially
+educated, but in reality ignorant; a woman whose instincts and feelings
+were lofty while the thought which should have controlled them was
+wanting. She squandered the wealth of her nature in obedience to social
+conventions; she was ready to brave society, yet she hesitated till her
+scruples degenerated into artifice. With more wilfulness than real force
+of character, impressionable rather than enthusiastic, gifted with more
+brain than heart; she was supremely a woman, supremely a coquette,
+and above all things a Parisienne, loving a brilliant life and gaiety,
+reflecting never, or too late; imprudent to the verge of poetry, and
+humble in the depths of her heart, in spite of her charming insolence.
+Like some straight-growing reed, she made a show of independence; yet,
+like the reed, she was ready to bend to a strong hand. She talked much
+of religion, and had it not at heart, though she was prepared to find in
+it a solution of her life. How explain a creature so complex? Capable
+of heroism, yet sinking unconsciously from heroic heights to utter a
+spiteful word; young and sweet-natured, not so much old at heart as
+aged by the maxims of those about her; versed in a selfish philosophy in
+which she was all unpractised, she had all the vices of a courtier, all
+the nobleness of developing womanhood. She trusted nothing and no one,
+yet there were times when she quitted her sceptical attitude for a
+submissive credulity.
+
+How should any portrait be anything but incomplete of her, in whom the
+play of swiftly-changing colour made discord only to produce a poetic
+confusion? For in her there shone a divine brightness, a radiance of
+youth that blended all her bewildering characteristics in a certain
+completeness and unity informed by her charm. Nothing was feigned. The
+passion or semi-passion, the ineffectual high aspirations, the actual
+pettiness, the coolness of sentiment and warmth of impulse, were all
+spontaneous and unaffected, and as much the outcome of her own position
+as of the position of the aristocracy to which she belonged. She was
+wholly self-contained; she put herself proudly above the world and
+beneath the shelter of her name. There was something of the egoism of
+Medea in her life, as in the life of the aristocracy that lay a-dying,
+and would not so much as raise itself or stretch out a hand to any
+political physician; so well aware of its feebleness, or so conscious
+that it was already dust, that it refused to touch or be touched.
+
+The Duchesse de Langeais (for that was her name) had been married for
+about four years when the Restoration was finally consummated, which is
+to say, in 1816. By that time the revolution of the Hundred Days had let
+in the light on the mind of Louis XVIII. In spite of his surroundings,
+he comprehended the situation and the age in which he was living; and it
+was only later, when this Louis XI, without the axe, lay stricken down
+by disease, that those about him got the upper hand. The Duchesse de
+Langeais, a Navarreins by birth, came of a ducal house which had made
+a point of never marrying below its rank since the reign of Louis XIV.
+Every daughter of the house must sooner or later take a _tabouret_ at
+Court. So, Antoinette de Navarreins, at the age of eighteen, came out of
+the profound solitude in which her girlhood had been spent to marry the
+Duc de Langeais’ eldest son. The two families at that time were living
+quite out of the world; but after the invasion of France, the return
+of the Bourbons seemed to every Royalist mind the only possible way of
+putting an end to the miseries of the war.
+
+The Ducs de Navarreins and de Langeais had been faithful throughout to
+the exiled Princes, nobly resisting all the temptations of glory under
+the Empire. Under the circumstances they naturally followed out the old
+family policy; and Mlle Antoinette, a beautiful and portionless girl,
+was married to M. le Marquis de Langeais only a few months before the
+death of the Duke his father.
+
+After the return of the Bourbons, the families resumed their rank,
+offices, and dignity at Court; once more they entered public life, from
+which hitherto they held aloof, and took their place high on the sunlit
+summits of the new political world. In that time of general baseness and
+sham political conversions, the public conscience was glad to recognise
+the unstained loyalty of the two houses, and a consistency in political
+and private life for which all parties involuntarily respected them.
+But, unfortunately, as so often happens in a time of transition, the
+most disinterested persons, the men whose loftiness of view and wise
+principles would have gained the confidence of the French nation and led
+them to believe in the generosity of a novel and spirited policy--these
+men, to repeat, were taken out of affairs, and public business was
+allowed to fall into the hands of others, who found it to their interest
+to push principles to their extreme consequences by way of proving their
+devotion.
+
+The families of Langeais and Navarreins remained about the Court,
+condemned to perform the duties required by Court ceremonial amid the
+reproaches and sneers of the Liberal party. They were accused of gorging
+themselves with riches and honours, and all the while their family
+estates were no larger than before, and liberal allowances from the
+civil list were wholly expended in keeping up the state necessary for
+any European government, even if it be a Republic.
+
+In 1818, M. le Duc de Langeais commanded a division of the army, and the
+Duchess held a post about one of the Princesses, in virtue of which she
+was free to live in Paris and apart from her husband without scandal.
+The Duke, moreover, besides his military duties, had a place at Court,
+to which he came during his term of waiting, leaving his major-general
+in command. The Duke and Duchess were leading lives entirely apart, the
+world none the wiser. Their marriage of convention shared the fate
+of nearly all family arrangements of the kind. Two more antipathetic
+dispositions could not well have been found; they were brought together;
+they jarred upon each other; there was soreness on either side; then
+they were divided once for all. Then they went their separate ways,
+with a due regard for appearances. The Duc de Langeais, by nature
+as methodical as the Chevalier de Folard himself, gave himself up
+methodically to his own tastes and amusements, and left his wife at
+liberty to do as she pleased so soon as he felt sure of her character.
+He recognised in her a spirit pre-eminently proud, a cold heart, a
+profound submissiveness to the usages of the world, and a youthful
+loyalty. Under the eyes of great relations, with the light of a prudish
+and bigoted Court turned full upon the Duchess, his honour was safe.
+
+So the Duke calmly did as the _grands seigneurs_ of the eighteenth
+century did before him, and left a young wife of two-and-twenty to her
+own devices. He had deeply offended that wife, and in her nature there
+was one appalling characteristic--she would never forgive an offence
+when woman’s vanity and self-love, with all that was best in her nature
+perhaps, had been slighted, wounded in secret. Insult and injury in the
+face of the world a woman loves to forget; there is a way open to her of
+showing herself great; she is a woman in her forgiveness; but a secret
+offence women never pardon; for secret baseness, as for hidden virtues
+and hidden love, they have no kindness.
+
+This was Mme la Duchesse de Langeais’ real position, unknown to the
+world. She herself did not reflect upon it. It was the time of the
+rejoicings over the Duc de Berri’s marriage. The Court and the Faubourg
+roused itself from its listlessness and reserve. This was the real
+beginning of that unheard-of splendour which the Government of the
+Restoration carried too far. At that time the Duchess, whether for
+reasons of her own, or from vanity, never appeared in public without a
+following of women equally distinguished by name and fortune. As queen
+of fashion she had her _dames d’atours_, her ladies, who modeled their
+manner and their wit on hers. They had been cleverly chosen. None of her
+satellites belonged to the inmost Court circle, nor to the highest
+level of the Faubourg Saint-Germain; but they had set their minds upon
+admission to those inner sanctuaries. Being as yet simple denominations,
+they wished to rise to the neighbourhood of the throne, and mingle with
+the seraphic powers in the high sphere known as _le petit chateau_. Thus
+surrounded, the Duchess’s position was stronger and more commanding and
+secure. Her “ladies” defended her character and helped her to play her
+detestable part of a woman of fashion. She could laugh at men at her
+ease, play with fire, receive the homage on which the feminine nature is
+nourished, and remain mistress of herself.
+
+At Paris, in the highest society of all, a woman is a woman still; she
+lives on incense, adulation, and honours. No beauty, however undoubted,
+no face, however fair, is anything without admiration. Flattery and
+a lover are proofs of power. And what is power without recognition?
+Nothing. If the prettiest of women were left alone in a corner of a
+drawing-room, she would droop. Put her in the very centre and summit of
+social grandeur, she will at once aspire to reign over all hearts--often
+because it is out of her power to be the happy queen of one. Dress and
+manner and coquetry are all meant to please one of the poorest creatures
+extant--the brainless coxcomb, whose handsome face is his sole merit;
+it was for such as these that women threw themselves away. The gilded
+wooden idols of the Restoration, for they were neither more nor less,
+had neither the antecedents of the _petits maitres_ of the time of the
+Fronde, nor the rough sterling worth of Napoleon’s heroes, not the wit
+and fine manners of their grandsires; but something of all three they
+meant to be without any trouble to themselves. Brave they were, like
+all young Frenchmen; ability they possessed, no doubt, if they had had
+a chance of proving it, but their places were filled up by the old
+worn-out men, who kept them in leading strings. It was a day of
+small things, a cold prosaic era. Perhaps it takes a long time for a
+Restoration to become a Monarchy.
+
+For the past eighteen months the Duchesse de Langeais had been leading
+this empty life, filled with balls and subsequent visits, objectless
+triumphs, and the transient loves that spring up and die in an evening’s
+space. All eyes were turned on her when she entered a room; she reaped
+her harvest of flatteries and some few words of warmer admiration, which
+she encouraged by a gesture or a glance, but never suffered to penetrate
+deeper than the skin. Her tone and bearing and everything else about her
+imposed her will upon others. Her life was a sort of fever of vanity
+and perpetual enjoyment, which turned her head. She was daring enough in
+conversation; she would listen to anything, corrupting the surface, as
+it were, of her heart. Yet when she returned home, she often blushed at
+the story that had made her laugh; at the scandalous tale that supplied
+the details, on the strength of which she analyzed the love that she had
+never known, and marked the subtle distinctions of modern passion, not
+with comment on the part of complacent hypocrites. For women know how
+to say everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined by each
+other than corrupted by men.
+
+There came a moment when she discerned that not until a woman is loved
+will the world fully recognise her beauty and her wit. What does a
+husband prove? Simply that a girl or woman was endowed with wealth, or
+well brought up; that her mother managed cleverly that in some way she
+satisfied a man’s ambitions. A lover constantly bears witness to her
+personal perfections. Then followed the discovery still in Mme de
+Langeais’ early womanhood, that it was possible to be loved without
+committing herself, without permission, without vouchsafing any
+satisfaction beyond the most meagre dues. There was more than one demure
+feminine hypocrite to instruct her in the art of playing such dangerous
+comedies.
+
+So the Duchess had her court, and the number of her adorers and
+courtiers guaranteed her virtue. She was amiable and fascinating; she
+flirted till the ball or the evening’s gaiety was at an end. Then the
+curtain dropped. She was cold, indifferent, self-contained again till
+the next day brought its renewed sensations, superficial as before. Two
+or three men were completely deceived, and fell in love in earnest.
+She laughed at them, she was utterly insensible. “I am loved!” she told
+herself. “He loves me!” The certainty sufficed her. It is enough for the
+miser to know that his every whim might be fulfilled if he chose; so it
+was with the Duchess, and perhaps she did not even go so far as to form
+a wish.
+
+One evening she chanced to be at the house of an intimate friend Mme la
+Vicomtesse de Fontaine, one of the humble rivals who cordially detested
+her, and went with her everywhere. In a “friendship” of this sort both
+sides are on their guard, and never lay their armor aside; confidences
+are ingeniously indiscreet, and not unfrequently treacherous. Mme de
+Langeais had distributed her little patronizing, friendly, or freezing
+bows, with the air natural to a woman who knows the worth of her smiles,
+when her eyes fell upon a total stranger. Something in the man’s large
+gravity of aspect startled her, and, with a feeling almost like dread,
+she turned to Mme de Maufrigneuse with, “Who is the newcomer, dear?”
+
+“Someone that you have heard of, no doubt. The Marquis de Montriveau.”
+
+“Oh! is it he?”
+
+She took up her eyeglass and submitted him to a very insolent scrutiny,
+as if he had been a picture meant to receive glances, not to return
+them.
+
+“Do introduce him; he ought to be interesting.”
+
+“Nobody more tiresome and dull, dear. But he is the fashion.”
+
+M. Armand de Montriveau, at that moment all unwittingly the object of
+general curiosity, better deserved attention than any of the idols that
+Paris needs must set up to worship for a brief space, for the city is
+vexed by periodical fits of craving, a passion for _engouement_ and sham
+enthusiasm, which must be satisfied. The Marquis was the only son of
+General de Montriveau, one of the _ci-devants_ who served the Republic
+nobly, and fell by Joubert’s side at Novi. Bonaparte had placed his son
+at the school at Chalons, with the orphans of other generals who fell
+on the battlefield, leaving their children under the protection of the
+Republic. Armand de Montriveau left school with his way to make, entered
+the artillery, and had only reached a major’s rank at the time of the
+Fontainebleau disaster. In his section of the service the chances of
+advancement were not many. There are fewer officers, in the first place,
+among the gunners than in any other corps; and in the second place, the
+feeling in the artillery was decidedly Liberal, not to say Republican;
+and the Emperor, feeling little confidence in a body of highly educated
+men who were apt to think for themselves, gave promotion grudgingly in
+the service. In the artillery, accordingly, the general rule of the
+army did not apply; the commanding officers were not invariably the most
+remarkable men in their department, because there was less to be feared
+from mediocrities. The artillery was a separate corps in those days, and
+only came under Napoleon in action.
+
+Besides these general causes, other reasons, inherent in Armand de
+Montriveau’s character, were sufficient in themselves to account for his
+tardy promotion. He was alone in the world. He had been thrown at
+the age of twenty into the whirlwind of men directed by Napoleon; his
+interests were bounded by himself, any day he might lose his life; it
+became a habit of mind with him to live by his own self-respect and
+the consciousness that he had done his duty. Like all shy men, he was
+habitually silent; but his shyness sprang by no means from timidity;
+it was a kind of modesty in him; he found any demonstration of vanity
+intolerable. There was no sort of swagger about his fearlessness in
+action; nothing escaped his eyes; he could give sensible advice to his
+chums with unshaken coolness; he could go under fire, and duck upon
+occasion to avoid bullets. He was kindly; but his expression was haughty
+and stern, and his face gained him this character. In everything he was
+rigorous as arithmetic; he never permitted the slightest deviation from
+duty on any plausible pretext, nor blinked the consequences of a fact.
+He would lend himself to nothing of which he was ashamed; he never asked
+anything for himself; in short, Armand de Montriveau was one of many
+great men unknown to fame, and philosophical enough to despise it;
+living without attaching themselves to life, because they have not found
+their opportunity of developing to the full their power to do and feel.
+
+People were afraid of Montriveau; they respected him, but he was not
+very popular. Men may indeed allow you to rise above them, but to
+decline to descend as low as they can do is the one unpardonable sin.
+In their feeling towards loftier natures, there is a trace of hate and
+fear. Too much honour with them implies censure of themselves, a thing
+forgiven neither to the living nor to the dead.
+
+After the Emperor’s farewells at Fontainebleau, Montriveau, noble though
+he was, was put on half-pay. Perhaps the heads of the War Office took
+fright at uncompromising uprightness worthy of antiquity, or perhaps it
+was known that he felt bound by his oath to the Imperial Eagle. During
+the Hundred Days he was made a Colonel of the Guard, and left on the
+field of Waterloo. His wounds kept him in Belgium he was not present
+at the disbanding of the Army of the Loire, but the King’s government
+declined to recognise promotion made during the Hundred Days, and Armand
+de Montriveau left France.
+
+An adventurous spirit, a loftiness of thought hitherto satisfied by
+the hazards of war, drove him on an exploring expedition through Upper
+Egypt; his sanity or impulse directed his enthusiasm to a project of
+great importance, he turned his attention to that unexplored Central
+Africa which occupies the learned of today. The scientific expedition
+was long and unfortunate. He had made a valuable collection of notes
+bearing on various geographical and commercial problems, of which
+solutions are still eagerly sought; and succeeded, after surmounting
+many obstacles, in reaching the heart of the continent, when he was
+betrayed into the hands of a hostile native tribe. Then, stripped of all
+that he had, for two years he led a wandering life in the desert,
+the slave of savages, threatened with death at every moment, and more
+cruelly treated than a dumb animal in the power of pitiless children.
+Physical strength, and a mind braced to endurance, enabled him to
+survive the horrors of that captivity; but his miraculous escape
+well-nigh exhausted his energies. When he reached the French colony at
+Senegal, a half-dead fugitive covered with rags, his memories of his
+former life were dim and shapeless. The great sacrifices made in his
+travels were all forgotten like his studies of African dialects, his
+discoveries, and observations. One story will give an idea of all that
+he passed through. Once for several days the children of the sheikh of
+the tribe amused themselves by putting him up for a mark and flinging
+horses’ knuckle-bones at his head.
+
+Montriveau came back to Paris in 1818 a ruined man. He had no interest,
+and wished for none. He would have died twenty times over sooner than
+ask a favour of anyone; he would not even press the recognition of his
+claims. Adversity and hardship had developed his energy even in trifles,
+while the habit of preserving his self-respect before that spiritual
+self which we call conscience led him to attach consequence to the most
+apparently trivial actions. His merits and adventures became known,
+however, through his acquaintances, among the principal men of science
+in Paris, and some few well-read military men. The incidents of his
+slavery and subsequent escape bore witness to a courage, intelligence,
+and coolness which won him celebrity without his knowledge, and that
+transient fame of which Paris salons are lavish, though the artist that
+fain would keep it must make untold efforts.
+
+Montriveau’s position suddenly changed towards the end of that year. He
+had been a poor man, he was now rich; or, externally at any rate, he had
+all the advantages of wealth. The King’s government, trying to attach
+capable men to itself and to strengthen the army, made concessions
+about that time to Napoleon’s old officers if their known loyalty and
+character offered guarantees of fidelity. M. de Montriveau’s name once
+more appeared in the army list with the rank of colonel; he received his
+arrears of pay and passed into the Guards. All these favours, one
+after another, came to seek the Marquis de Montriveau; he had asked
+for nothing however small. Friends had taken the steps for him which he
+would have refused to take for himself.
+
+After this, his habits were modified all at once; contrary to his
+custom, he went into society. He was well received, everywhere he met
+with great deference and respect. He seemed to have found some end
+in life; but everything passed within the man, there were no external
+signs; in society he was silent and cold, and wore a grave, reserved
+face. His social success was great, precisely because he stood out in
+such strong contrast to the conventional faces which line the walls
+of Paris salons. He was, indeed, something quite new there. Terse
+of speech, like a hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be
+haughtiness, and people were greatly taken with it. He was something
+strange and great. Women generally were so much the more smitten
+with this original person because he was not to be caught by their
+flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they circumvent
+the strongest men and corrode the steel temper. Their Parisian’s
+grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau; his nature only responded to
+the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and feeling. And he would very
+promptly have been dropped but for the romance that hung about his
+adventures and his life; but for the men who cried him up behind his
+back; but for a woman who looked for a triumph for her vanity, the woman
+who was to fill his thoughts.
+
+For these reasons the Duchesse de Langeais’ curiosity was no less lively
+than natural. Chance had so ordered it that her interest in the man
+before her had been aroused only the day before, when she heard the
+story of one of M. de Montriveau’s adventures, a story calculated to
+make the strongest impression upon a woman’s ever-changing fancy.
+
+During M. de Montriveau’s voyage of discovery to the sources of the
+Nile, he had had an argument with one of his guides, surely the most
+extraordinary debate in the annals of travel. The district that he
+wished to explore could only be reached on foot across a tract of
+desert. Only one of his guides knew the way; no traveller had penetrated
+before into that part of the country, where the undaunted officer hoped
+to find a solution of several scientific problems. In spite of the
+representations made to him by the guide and the older men of the place,
+he started upon the formidable journey. Summoning up courage, already
+highly strung by the prospect of dreadful difficulties, he set out in
+the morning.
+
+The loose sand shifted under his feet at every step; and when, at the
+end of a long day’s march, he lay down to sleep on the ground, he had
+never been so tired in his life. He knew, however, that he must be up
+and on his way before dawn next day, and his guide assured him that they
+should reach the end of their journey towards noon. That promise kept
+up his courage and gave him new strength. In spite of his sufferings,
+he continued his march, with some blasphemings against science; he was
+ashamed to complain to his guide, and kept his pain to himself. After
+marching for a third of the day, he felt his strength failing, his feet
+were bleeding, he asked if they should reach the place soon. “In an
+hour’s time,” said the guide. Armand braced himself for another hour’s
+march, and they went on.
+
+The hour slipped by; he could not so much as see against the sky the
+palm-trees and crests of hill that should tell of the end of the journey
+near at hand; the horizon line of sand was vast as the circle of the
+open sea.
+
+He came to a stand, refused to go farther, and threatened the guide--he
+had deceived him, murdered him; tears of rage and weariness flowed over
+his fevered cheeks; he was bowed down with fatigue upon fatigue, his
+throat seemed to be glued by the desert thirst. The guide meanwhile
+stood motionless, listening to these complaints with an ironical
+expression, studying the while, with the apparent indifference of an
+Oriental, the scarcely perceptible indications in the lie of the sands,
+which looked almost black, like burnished gold.
+
+“I have made a mistake,” he remarked coolly. “I could not make out the
+track, it is so long since I came this way; we are surely on it now, but
+we must push on for two hours.”
+
+“The man is right,” thought M. de Montriveau.
+
+So he went on again, struggling to follow the pitiless native. It seemed
+as if he were bound to his guide by some thread like the invisible tie
+between the condemned man and the headsman. But the two hours went by,
+Montriveau had spent his last drops of energy, and the skyline was a
+blank, there were no palm-trees, no hills. He could neither cry out
+nor groan, he lay down on the sand to die, but his eyes would have
+frightened the boldest; something in his face seemed to say that he
+would not die alone. His guide, like a very fiend, gave him back a cool
+glance like a man that knows his power, left him to lie there, and kept
+at a safe distance out of reach of his desperate victim. At last M.
+Montriveau recovered strength enough for a last curse. The guide came
+nearer, silenced him with a steady look, and said, “Was it not your own
+will to go where I am taking you, in spite of us all? You say that I
+have lied to you. If I had not, you would not be even here. Do you want
+the truth? Here it is. _We have still another five hours’ march before
+us, and we cannot go back_. Sound yourself; if you have not courage
+enough, here is my dagger.”
+
+Startled by this dreadful knowledge of pain and human strength, M.
+de Montriveau would not be behind a savage; he drew a fresh stock of
+courage from his pride as a European, rose to his feet, and followed
+his guide. The five hours were at an end, and still M. de Montriveau
+saw nothing, he turned his failing eyes upon his guide; but the Nubian
+hoisted him on his shoulders, and showed him a wide pool of water with
+greenness all about it, and a noble forest lighted up by the sunset. It
+lay only a hundred paces away; a vast ledge of granite hid the glorious
+landscape. It seemed to Armand that he had taken a new lease of life.
+His guide, that giant in courage and intelligence, finished his work of
+devotion by carrying him across the hot, slippery, scarcely discernible
+track on the granite. Behind him lay the hell of burning sand, before
+him the earthly paradise of the most beautiful oasis in the desert.
+
+The Duchess, struck from the first by the appearance of this romantic
+figure, was even more impressed when she learned that this was that
+Marquis de Montriveau of whom she had dreamed during the night. She had
+been with him among the hot desert sands, he had been the companion of
+her nightmare wanderings; for such a woman was not this a delightful
+presage of a new interest in her life? And never was a man’s exterior
+a better exponent of his character; never were curious glances so well
+justified. The principal characteristic of his great, square-hewn head
+was the thick, luxuriant black hair which framed his face, and gave him
+a strikingly close resemblance to General Kleber; and the likeness still
+held good in the vigorous forehead, in the outlines of his face, the
+quiet fearlessness of his eyes, and a kind of fiery vehemence expressed
+by strongly marked features. He was short, deep-chested, and muscular
+as a lion. There was something of the despot about him, and an
+indescribable suggestion of the security of strength in his gait,
+bearing, and slightest movements. He seemed to know that his will was
+irresistible, perhaps because he wished for nothing unjust. And yet,
+like all really strong men, he was mild of speech, simple in his
+manners, and kindly natured; although it seemed as if, in the stress of
+a great crisis, all these finer qualities must disappear, and the man
+would show himself implacable, unshaken in his resolve, terrific in
+action. There was a certain drawing in of the inner line of the lips
+which, to a close observer, indicated an ironical bent.
+
+The Duchesse de Langeais, realising that a fleeting glory was to be
+won by such a conquest, made up her mind to gain a lover in Armand de
+Montriveau during the brief interval before the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse
+brought him to be introduced. She would prefer him above the others; she
+would attach him to herself, display all her powers of coquetry for him.
+It was a fancy, such a merest Duchess’s whim as furnished a Lope or a
+Calderon with the plot of the _Dog in the Manger_. She would not suffer
+another woman to engross him; but she had not the remotest intention of
+being his.
+
+Nature had given the Duchess every qualification for the part of
+coquette, and education had perfected her. Women envied her, and men
+fell in love with her, not without reason. Nothing that can inspire
+love, justify it, and give it lasting empire was wanting in her. Her
+style of beauty, her manner, her voice, her bearing, all combined to
+give her that instinctive coquetry which seems to be the consciousness
+of power. Her shape was graceful; perhaps there was a trace of
+self-consciousness in her changes of movement, the one affectation that
+could be laid to her charge; but everything about her was a part of her
+personality, from her least little gesture to the peculiar turn of her
+phrases, the demure glance of her eyes. Her great lady’s grace, her
+most striking characteristic, had not destroyed the very French quick
+mobility of her person. There was an extraordinary fascination in her
+swift, incessant changes of attitude. She seemed as if she surely would
+be a most delicious mistress when her corset and the encumbering costume
+of her part were laid aside. All the rapture of love surely was latent
+in the freedom of her expressive glances, in her caressing tones, in the
+charm of her words. She gave glimpses of the high-born courtesan within
+her, vainly protesting against the creeds of the duchess.
+
+You might sit near her through an evening, she would be gay and
+melancholy in turn, and her gaiety, like her sadness, seemed
+spontaneous. She could be gracious, disdainful, insolent, or confiding
+at will. Her apparent good nature was real; she had no temptation to
+descend to malignity. But at each moment her mood changed; she was full
+of confidence or craft; her moving tenderness would give place to a
+heart-breaking hardness and insensibility. Yet how paint her as she
+was, without bringing together all the extremes of feminine nature? In
+a word, the Duchess was anything that she wished to be or to seem.
+Her face was slightly too long. There was a grace in it, and a certain
+thinness and fineness that recalled the portraits of the Middle Ages.
+Her skin was white, with a faint rose tint. Everything about her erred,
+as it were, by an excess of delicacy.
+
+M. de Montriveau willingly consented to be introduced to the Duchesse
+de Langeais; and she, after the manner of persons whose sensitive taste
+leads them to avoid banalities, refrained from overwhelming him with
+questions and compliments. She received him with a gracious deference
+which could not fail to flatter a man of more than ordinary powers,
+for the fact that a man rises above the ordinary level implies that
+he possesses something of that tact which makes women quick to read
+feeling. If the Duchess showed any curiosity, it was by her glances;
+her compliments were conveyed in her manner; there was a winning grace
+displayed in her words, a subtle suggestion of a desire to please which
+she of all women knew the art of manifesting. Yet her whole conversation
+was but, in a manner, the body of the letter; the postscript with the
+principal thought in it was still to come. After half an hour spent in
+ordinary talk, in which the words gained all their value from her tone
+and smiles, M. de Montriveau was about to retire discreetly, when the
+Duchess stopped him with an expressive gesture.
+
+“I do not know, monsieur, whether these few minutes during which I have
+had the pleasure of talking to you proved so sufficiently attractive,
+that I may venture to ask you to call upon me; I am afraid that it may
+be very selfish of me to wish to have you all to myself. If I should
+be so fortunate as to find that my house is agreeable to you, you will
+always find me at home in the evening until ten o’clock.”
+
+The invitation was given with such irresistible grace, that M. de
+Montriveau could not refuse to accept it. When he fell back again among
+the groups of men gathered at a distance from the women, his
+friends congratulated him, half laughingly, half in earnest, on the
+extraordinary reception vouchsafed him by the Duchesse de Langeais. The
+difficult and brilliant conquest had been made beyond a doubt, and the
+glory of it was reserved for the Artillery of the Guard. It is easy to
+imagine the jests, good and bad, when this topic had once been started;
+the world of Paris salons is so eager for amusement, and a joke lasts
+for such a short time, that everyone is eager to make the most of it
+while it is fresh.
+
+All unconsciously, the General felt flattered by this nonsense. From his
+place where he had taken his stand, his eyes were drawn again and again
+to the Duchess by countless wavering reflections. He could not help
+admitting to himself that of all the women whose beauty had captivated
+his eyes, not one had seemed to be a more exquisite embodiment of faults
+and fair qualities blended in a completeness that might realise the
+dreams of earliest manhood. Is there a man in any rank of life that has
+not felt indefinable rapture in his secret soul over the woman singled
+out (if only in his dreams) to be his own; when she, in body, soul, and
+social aspects, satisfies his every requirement, a thrice perfect woman?
+And if this threefold perfection that flatters his pride is no argument
+for loving her, it is beyond cavil one of the great inducements to the
+sentiment. Love would soon be convalescent, as the eighteenth century
+moralist remarked, were it not for vanity. And it is certainly true
+that for everyone, man or woman, there is a wealth of pleasure in
+the superiority of the beloved. Is she set so high by birth that a
+contemptuous glance can never wound her? is she wealthy enough to
+surround herself with state which falls nothing short of royalty, of
+kings, of finance during their short reign of splendour? is she so
+ready-witted that a keen-edged jest never brings her into confusion?
+beautiful enough to rival any woman?--Is it such a small thing to know
+that your self-love will never suffer through her? A man makes these
+reflections in the twinkling of an eye. And how if, in the future opened
+out by early ripened passion, he catches glimpses of the changeful
+delight of her charm, the frank innocence of a maiden soul, the perils
+of love’s voyage, the thousand folds of the veil of coquetry? Is not
+this enough to move the coldest man’s heart?
+
+This, therefore, was M. de Montriveau’s position with regard to woman;
+his past life in some measure explaining the extraordinary fact. He
+had been thrown, when little more than a boy, into the hurricane of
+Napoleon’s wars; his life had been spent on fields of battle. Of women
+he knew just so much as a traveller knows of a country when he travels
+across it in haste from one inn to another. The verdict which Voltaire
+passed upon his eighty years of life might, perhaps, have been applied
+by Montriveau to his own thirty-seven years of existence; had he not
+thirty-seven follies with which to reproach himself? At his age he was
+as much a novice in love as the lad that has just been furtively reading
+_Faublas_. Of women he had nothing to learn; of love he knew nothing;
+and thus, desires, quite unknown before, sprang from this virginity of
+feeling.
+
+There are men here and there as much engrossed in the work demanded of
+them by poverty or ambition, art or science, as M. de Montriveau by war
+and a life of adventure--these know what it is to be in this unusual
+position if they very seldom confess to it. Every man in Paris is
+supposed to have been in love. No woman in Paris cares to take what
+other women have passed over. The dread of being taken for a fool is the
+source of the coxcomb’s bragging so common in France; for in France to
+have the reputation of a fool is to be a foreigner in one’s own country.
+Vehement desire seized on M. de Montriveau, desire that had gathered
+strength from the heat of the desert and the first stirrings of a heart
+unknown as yet in its suppressed turbulence.
+
+A strong man, and violent as he was strong, he could keep mastery over
+himself; but as he talked of indifferent things, he retired within
+himself, and swore to possess this woman, for through that thought lay
+the only way to love for him. Desire became a solemn compact made with
+himself, an oath after the manner of the Arabs among whom he had lived;
+for among them a vow is a kind of contract made with Destiny a man’s
+whole future is solemnly pledged to fulfil it, and everything even his
+own death, is regarded simply as a means to the one end.
+
+A younger man would have said to himself, “I should very much like to
+have the Duchess for my mistress!” or, “If the Duchesse de Langeais
+cared for a man, he would be a very lucky rascal!” But the General said,
+“I will have Mme de Langeais for my mistress.” And if a man takes such
+an idea into his head when his heart has never been touched before, and
+love begins to be a kind of religion with him, he little knows in what a
+hell he has set his foot.
+
+Armand de Montriveau suddenly took flight and went home in the first hot
+fever-fit of the first love that he had known. When a man has kept all
+his boyish beliefs, illusions, frankness, and impetuosity into middle
+age, his first impulse is, as it were, to stretch out a hand to take the
+thing that he desires; a little later he realizes that there is a gulf
+set between them, and that it is all but impossible to cross it. A sort
+of childish impatience seizes him, he wants the thing the more,
+and trembles or cries. Wherefore, the next day, after the stormiest
+reflections that had yet perturbed his mind, Armand de Montriveau
+discovered that he was under the yoke of the senses, and his bondage
+made the heavier by his love.
+
+The woman so cavalierly treated in his thoughts of yesterday had become
+a most sacred and dreadful power. She was to be his world, his life,
+from this time forth. The greatest joy, the keenest anguish, that he
+had yet known grew colorless before the bare recollection of the least
+sensation stirred in him by her. The swiftest revolutions in a man’s
+outward life only touch his interests, while passion brings a complete
+revulsion of feeling. And so in those who live by feeling, rather than
+by self-interest, the doers rather than the reasoners, the sanguine
+rather than the lymphatic temperaments, love works a complete
+revolution. In a flash, with one single reflection, Armand de Montriveau
+wiped out his whole past life.
+
+A score of times he asked himself, like a boy, “Shall I go, or shall I
+not?” and then at last he dressed, came to the Hotel de Langeais
+towards eight o’clock that evening, and was admitted. He was to see the
+woman--ah! not the woman--the idol that he had seen yesterday, among
+lights, a fresh innocent girl in gauze and silken lace and veiling.
+He burst in upon her to declare his love, as if it were a question of
+firing the first shot on a field of battle.
+
+Poor novice! He found his ethereal sylphide shrouded in a brown cashmere
+dressing-gown ingeniously befrilled, lying languidly stretched out upon
+a sofa in a dimly lighted boudoir. Mme de Langeais did not so much as
+rise, nothing was visible of her but her face, her hair was loose but
+confined by a scarf. A hand indicated a seat, a hand that seemed white
+as marble to Montriveau by the flickering light of a single candle at
+the further side of the room, and a voice as soft as the light said:
+
+“If it had been anyone else, M. le Marquis, a friend with whom I could
+dispense with ceremony, or a mere acquaintance in whom I felt but slight
+interest, I should have closed my door. I am exceedingly unwell.”
+
+“I will go,” Armand said to himself.
+
+“But I do not know how it is,” she continued (and the simple warrior
+attributed the shining of her eyes to fever), “perhaps it was a
+presentiment of your kind visit (and no one can be more sensible of the
+prompt attention than I), but the vapors have left my head.”
+
+“Then may I stay?”
+
+“Oh, I should be very sorry to allow you to go. I told myself this
+morning that it was impossible that I should have made the slightest
+impression on your mind, and that in all probability you took my request
+for one of the commonplaces of which Parisians are lavish on every
+occasion. And I forgave your ingratitude in advance. An explorer
+from the deserts is not supposed to know how exclusive we are in our
+friendships in the Faubourg.”
+
+The gracious, half-murmured words dropped one by one, as if they had
+been weighted with the gladness that apparently brought them to her
+lips. The Duchess meant to have the full benefit of her headache, and
+her speculation was fully successful. The General, poor man, was really
+distressed by the lady’s simulated distress. Like Crillon listening to
+the story of the Crucifixion, he was ready to draw his sword against the
+vapors. How could a man dare to speak just then to this suffering woman
+of the love that she inspired? Armand had already felt that it would be
+absurd to fire off a declaration of love point-blank at one so far above
+other women. With a single thought came understanding of the delicacies
+of feeling, of the soul’s requirements. To love: what was that but to
+know how to plead, to beg for alms, to wait? And as for the love that
+he felt, must he not prove it? His tongue was mute, it was frozen by the
+conventions of the noble Faubourg, the majesty of a sick headache, the
+bashfulness of love. But no power on earth could veil his glances; the
+heat and the Infinite of the desert blazed in eyes calm as a panther’s,
+beneath the lids that fell so seldom. The Duchess enjoyed the steady
+gaze that enveloped her in light and warmth.
+
+“Mme la Duchesse,” he answered, “I am afraid I express my gratitude for
+your goodness very badly. At this moment I have but one desire--I wish
+it were in my power to cure the pain.”
+
+“Permit me to throw this off, I feel too warm now,” she said, gracefully
+tossing aside a cushion that covered her feet.
+
+“Madame, in Asia your feet would be worth some ten thousand sequins.
+
+“A traveler’s compliment!” smiled she.
+
+It pleased the sprightly lady to involve a rough soldier in a labyrinth
+of nonsense, commonplaces, and meaningless talk, in which he manoeuvred,
+in military language, as Prince Charles might have done at close
+quarters with Napoleon. She took a mischievous amusement in
+reconnoitring the extent of his infatuation by the number of foolish
+speeches extracted from a novice whom she led step by step into a
+hopeless maze, meaning to leave him there in confusion. She began by
+laughing at him, but nevertheless it pleased her to make him forget how
+time went.
+
+The length of a first visit is frequently a compliment, but Armand was
+innocent of any such intent. The famous explorer spent an hour in chat
+on all sorts of subjects, said nothing that he meant to say, and was
+feeling that he was only an instrument on whom this woman played, when
+she rose, sat upright, drew the scarf from her hair, and wrapped it
+about her throat, leant her elbow on the cushions, did him the honour
+of a complete cure, and rang for lights. The most graceful movement
+succeeded to complete repose. She turned to M. de Montriveau, from whom
+she had just extracted a confidence which seemed to interest her deeply,
+and said:
+
+“You wish to make game of me by trying to make me believe that you
+have never loved. It is a man’s great pretension with us. And we always
+believe it! Out of pure politeness. Do we not know what to expect
+from it for ourselves? Where is the man that has found but a single
+opportunity of losing his heart? But you love to deceive us, and we
+submit to be deceived, poor foolish creatures that we are; for your
+hypocrisy is, after all, a homage paid to the superiority of our
+sentiments, which are all purity.”
+
+The last words were spoken with a disdainful pride that made the novice
+in love feel like a worthless bale flung into the deep, while the
+Duchess was an angel soaring back to her particular heaven.
+
+“Confound it!” thought Armand de Montriveau, “how am I to tell this wild
+thing that I love her?”
+
+He had told her already a score of times; or rather, the Duchess had
+a score of times read his secret in his eyes; and the passion in this
+unmistakably great man promised her amusement, and an interest in her
+empty life. So she prepared with no little dexterity to raise a certain
+number of redoubts for him to carry by storm before he should gain an
+entrance into her heart. Montriveau should overleap one difficulty after
+another; he should be a plaything for her caprice, just as an insect
+teased by children is made to jump from one finger to another, and in
+spite of all its pains is kept in the same place by its mischievous
+tormentor. And yet it gave the Duchess inexpressible happiness to see
+that this strong man had told her the truth. Armand had never loved, as
+he had said. He was about to go, in a bad humour with himself, and still
+more out of humour with her; but it delighted her to see a sullenness
+that she could conjure away with a word, a glance, or a gesture.
+
+“Will you come tomorrow evening?” she asked. “I am going to a ball, but
+I shall stay at home for you until ten o’clock.”
+
+Montriveau spent most of the next day in smoking an indeterminate
+quantity of cigars in his study window, and so got through the hours
+till he could dress and go to the Hotel de Langeais. To anyone who had
+known the magnificent worth of the man, it would have been grievous to
+see him grown so small, so distrustful of himself; the mind that might
+have shed light over undiscovered worlds shrunk to the proportions of
+a she-coxcomb’s boudoir. Even he himself felt that he had fallen so low
+already in his happiness that to save his life he could not have told
+his love to one of his closest friends. Is there not always a trace
+of shame in the lover’s bashfulness, and perhaps in woman a certain
+exultation over diminished masculine stature? Indeed, but for a host of
+motives of this kind, how explain why women are nearly always the first
+to betray the secret?--a secret of which, perhaps, they soon weary.
+
+“Mme la Duchesse cannot see visitors, monsieur,” said the man; “she is
+dressing, she begs you to wait for her here.”
+
+Armand walked up and down the drawing-room, studying her taste in the
+least details. He admired Mme de Langeais herself in the objects of her
+choosing; they revealed her life before he could grasp her personality
+and ideas. About an hour later the Duchess came noiselessly out of her
+chamber. Montriveau turned, saw her flit like a shadow across the room,
+and trembled. She came up to him, not with a bourgeoise’s enquiry, “How
+do I look?” She was sure of herself; her steady eyes said plainly, “I am
+adorned to please you.”
+
+No one surely, save the old fairy godmother of some princess in
+disguise, could have wound a cloud of gauze about the dainty throat, so
+that the dazzling satin skin beneath should gleam through the gleaming
+folds. The Duchess was dazzling. The pale blue colour of her gown,
+repeated in the flowers in her hair, appeared by the richness of its hue
+to lend substance to a fragile form grown too wholly ethereal; for as
+she glided towards Armand, the loose ends of her scarf floated about
+her, putting that valiant warrior in mind of the bright damosel flies
+that hover now over water, now over the flowers with which they seem to
+mingle and blend.
+
+“I have kept you waiting,” she said, with the tone that a woman can
+always bring into her voice for the man whom she wishes to please.
+
+“I would wait patiently through an eternity,” said he, “if I were sure
+of finding a divinity so fair; but it is no compliment to speak of your
+beauty to you; nothing save worship could touch you. Suffer me only to
+kiss your scarf.”
+
+“Oh, fie!” she said, with a commanding gesture, “I esteem you enough to
+give you my hand.”
+
+She held it out for his kiss. A woman’s hand, still moist from the
+scented bath, has a soft freshness, a velvet smoothness that sends a
+tingling thrill from the lips to the soul. And if a man is attracted to
+a woman, and his senses are as quick to feel pleasure as his heart is
+full of love, such a kiss, though chaste in appearance, may conjure up a
+terrific storm.
+
+“Will you always give it me like this?” the General asked humbly when he
+had pressed that dangerous hand respectfully to his lips.
+
+“Yes, but there we must stop,” she said, smiling. She sat down,
+and seemed very slow over putting on her gloves, trying to slip the
+unstretched kid over all her fingers at once, while she watched M.
+de Montriveau; and he was lost in admiration of the Duchess and those
+repeated graceful movements of hers.
+
+“Ah! you were punctual,” she said; “that is right. I like punctuality.
+It is the courtesy of kings, His Majesty says; but to my thinking, from
+you men it is the most respectful flattery of all. Now, is it not? Just
+tell me.”
+
+Again she gave him a side glance to express her insidious friendship,
+for he was dumb with happiness sheer happiness through such nothings
+as these! Oh, the Duchess understood _son metier de femme_--the art
+and mystery of being a woman--most marvelously well; she knew, to
+admiration, how to raise a man in his own esteem as he humbled himself
+to her; how to reward every step of the descent to sentimental folly
+with hollow flatteries.
+
+“You will never forget to come at nine o’clock.”
+
+“No; but are you going to a ball every night?”
+
+“Do I know?” she answered, with a little childlike shrug of the
+shoulders; the gesture was meant to say that she was nothing if not
+capricious, and that a lover must take her as she was.--“Besides,” she
+added, “what is that to you? You shall be my escort.”
+
+“That would be difficult tonight,” he objected; “I am not properly
+dressed.”
+
+“It seems to me,” she returned loftily, “that if anyone has a right
+to complain of your costume, it is I. Know, therefore, _monsieur le
+voyageur_, that if I accept a man’s arm, he is forthwith above the laws
+of fashion, nobody would venture to criticise him. You do not know the
+world, I see; I like you the better for it.”
+
+And even as she spoke she swept him into the pettiness of that world by
+the attempt to initiate him into the vanities of a woman of fashion.
+
+“If she chooses to do a foolish thing for me, I should be a simpleton to
+prevent her,” said Armand to himself. “She has a liking for me beyond a
+doubt; and as for the world, she cannot despise it more than I do. So,
+now for the ball if she likes.”
+
+The Duchess probably thought that if the General came with her and
+appeared in a ballroom in boots and a black tie, nobody would hesitate
+to believe that he was violently in love with her. And the General was
+well pleased that the queen of fashion should think of compromising
+herself for him; hope gave him wit. He had gained confidence, he brought
+out his thoughts and views; he felt nothing of the restraint that
+weighed on his spirits yesterday. His talk was interesting and animated,
+and full of those first confidences so sweet to make and to receive.
+
+Was Mme de Langeais really carried away by his talk, or had she
+devised this charming piece of coquetry? At any rate, she looked up
+mischievously as the clock struck twelve.
+
+“Ah! you have made me too late for the ball!” she exclaimed, surprised
+and vexed that she had forgotten how time was going.
+
+The next moment she approved the exchange of pleasures with a smile that
+made Armand’s heart give a sudden leap.
+
+“I certainly promised Mme de Beauseant,” she added. “They are all
+expecting me.”
+
+“Very well--go.”
+
+“No--go on. I will stay. Your Eastern adventures fascinate me. Tell
+me the whole story of your life. I love to share in a brave man’s
+hardships, and I feel them all, indeed I do!”
+
+She was playing with her scarf, twisting it and pulling it to
+pieces, with jerky, impatient movements that seemed to tell of inward
+dissatisfaction and deep reflection.
+
+“_We_ are fit for nothing,” she went on. “Ah! we are contemptible,
+selfish, frivolous creatures. We can bore ourselves with amusements,
+and that is all we can do. Not one of us that understands that she has
+a part to play in life. In old days in France, women were beneficent
+lights; they lived to comfort those that mourned, to encourage high
+virtues, to reward artists and stir new life with noble thoughts. If the
+world has grown so petty, ours is the fault. You make me loathe the ball
+and this world in which I live. No, I am not giving up much for you.”
+
+She had plucked her scarf to pieces, as a child plays with a flower,
+pulling away all the petals one by one; and now she crushed it into a
+ball, and flung it away. She could show her swan’s neck.
+
+She rang the bell. “I shall not go out tonight,” she told the footman.
+Her long, blue eyes turned timidly to Armand; and by the look of
+misgiving in them, he knew that he was meant to take the order for a
+confession, for a first and great favour. There was a pause, filled with
+many thoughts, before she spoke with that tenderness which is often in
+women’s voices, and not so often in their hearts. “You have had a hard
+life,” she said.
+
+“No,” returned Armand. “Until today I did not know what happiness was.”
+
+“Then you know it now?” she asked, looking at him with a demure, keen
+glance.
+
+“What is happiness for me henceforth but this--to see you, to hear
+you?... Until now I have only known privation; now I know that I can be
+unhappy----”
+
+“That will do, that will do,” she said. “You must go; it is past
+midnight. Let us regard appearances. People must not talk about us. I
+do not know quite what I shall say; but the headache is a good-natured
+friend, and tells no tales.”
+
+“Is there to be a ball tomorrow night?”
+
+“You would grow accustomed to the life, I think. Very well. Yes, we will
+go again tomorrow night.”
+
+There was not a happier man in the world than Armand when he went out
+from her. Every evening he came to Mme de Langeais’ at the hour kept for
+him by a tacit understanding.
+
+It would be tedious, and, for the many young men who carry a redundance
+of such sweet memories in their hearts, it were superfluous to follow
+the story step by step--the progress of a romance growing in those hours
+spent together, a romance controlled entirely by a woman’s will. If
+sentiment went too fast, she would raise a quarrel over a word, or when
+words flagged behind her thoughts, she appealed to the feelings. Perhaps
+the only way of following such Penelope’s progress is by marking its
+outward and visible signs.
+
+As, for instance, within a few days of their first meeting, the
+assiduous General had won and kept the right to kiss his lady’s
+insatiable hands. Wherever Mme de Langeais went, M. de Montriveau
+was certain to be seen, till people jokingly called him “Her Grace’s
+orderly.” And already he had made enemies; others were jealous, and
+envied him his position. Mme de Langeais had attained her end. The
+Marquis de Montriveau was among her numerous train of adorers, and a
+means of humiliating those who boasted of their progress in her good
+graces, for she publicly gave him preference over them all.
+
+“Decidedly, M. de Montriveau is the man for whom the Duchess shows a
+preference,” pronounced Mme de Serizy.
+
+And who in Paris does not know what it means when a woman “shows a
+preference?” All went on therefore according to prescribed rule. The
+anecdotes which people were pleased to circulate concerning the General
+put that warrior in so formidable a light, that the more adroit quietly
+dropped their pretensions to the Duchess, and remained in her train
+merely to turn the position to account, and to use her name and
+personality to make better terms for themselves with certain stars of
+the second magnitude. And those lesser powers were delighted to take a
+lover away from Mme de Langeais. The Duchess was keen-sighted enough to
+see these desertions and treaties with the enemy; and her pride would
+not suffer her to be the dupe of them. As M. de Talleyrand, one of her
+great admirers, said, she knew how to take a second edition of revenge,
+laying the two-edged blade of a sarcasm between the pairs in these
+“morganatic” unions. Her mocking disdain contributed not a little to
+increase her reputation as an extremely clever woman and a person to
+be feared. Her character for virtue was consolidated while she amused
+herself with other people’s secrets, and kept her own to herself. Yet,
+after two months of assiduities, she saw with a vague dread in the
+depths of her soul that M. de Montriveau understood nothing of the
+subtleties of flirtation after the manner of the Faubourg Saint-Germain;
+he was taking a Parisienne’s coquetry in earnest.
+
+“You will not tame _him_, dear Duchess,” the old Vidame de Pamiers had
+said. “‘Tis a first cousin to the eagle; he will carry you off to his
+eyrie if you do not take care.”
+
+Then Mme de Langeais felt afraid. The shrewd old noble’s words sounded
+like a prophecy. The next day she tried to turn love to hate. She was
+harsh, exacting, irritable, unbearable; Montriveau disarmed her with
+angelic sweetness. She so little knew the great generosity of a large
+nature, that the kindly jests with which her first complaints were met
+went to her heart. She sought a quarrel, and found proofs of affection.
+She persisted.
+
+“When a man idolizes you, how can he have vexed you?” asked Armand.
+
+“You do not vex me,” she answered, suddenly grown gentle and submissive.
+“But why do you wish to compromise me? For me you ought to be nothing
+but a _friend_. Do you not know it? I wish I could see that you had the
+instincts, the delicacy of real friendship, so that I might lose neither
+your respect nor the pleasure that your presence gives me.”
+
+“Nothing but your _friend_!” he cried out. The terrible word sent an
+electric shock through his brain. “On the faith of these happy hours
+that you grant me, I sleep and wake in your heart. And now today, for no
+reason, you are pleased to destroy all the secret hopes by which I live.
+You have required promises of such constancy in me, you have said so
+much of your horror of women made up of nothing but caprice; and now do
+you wish me to understand that, like other women here in Paris, you have
+passions, and know nothing of love? If so, why did you ask my life of
+me? why did you accept it?”
+
+“I was wrong, my friend. Oh, it is wrong of a woman to yield to such
+intoxication when she must not and cannot make any return.”
+
+“I understand. You have merely been coquetting with me, and----”
+
+“Coquetting?” she repeated. “I detest coquetry. A coquette Armand, makes
+promises to many, and gives herself to none; and a woman who keeps such
+promises is a libertine. This much I believed I had grasped of our code.
+But to be melancholy with humorists, gay with the frivolous, and politic
+with ambitious souls; to listen to a babbler with every appearance
+of admiration, to talk of war with a soldier, wax enthusiastic with
+philanthropists over the good of the nation, and to give to each one his
+little dole of flattery--it seems to me that this is as much a matter of
+necessity as dress, diamonds, and gloves, or flowers in one’s hair. Such
+talk is the moral counterpart of the toilette. You take it up and lay it
+aside with the plumed head-dress. Do you call this coquetry? Why, I have
+never treated you as I treat everyone else. With you, my friend, I am
+sincere. Have I not always shared your views, and when you convinced me
+after a discussion, was I not always perfectly glad? In short, I love
+you, but only as a devout and pure woman may love. I have thought it
+over. I am a married woman, Armand. My way of life with M. de Langeais
+gives me liberty to bestow my heart; but law and custom leave me no
+right to dispose of my person. If a woman loses her honour, she is
+an outcast in any rank of life; and I have yet to meet with a single
+example of a man that realizes all that our sacrifices demand of him in
+such a case. Quite otherwise. Anyone can foresee the rupture between Mme
+de Beauseant and M. d’Ajuda (for he is going to marry Mlle de Rochefide,
+it seems), that affair made it clear to my mind that these very
+sacrifices on the woman’s part are almost always the cause of the man’s
+desertion. If you had loved me sincerely, you would have kept away for a
+time.--Now, I will lay aside all vanity for you; is not that something?
+What will not people say of a woman to whom no man attaches himself?
+Oh, she is heartless, brainless, soulless; and what is more, devoid
+of charm! Coquettes will not spare me. They will rob me of the very
+qualities that mortify them. So long as my reputation is safe, what do I
+care if my rivals deny my merits? They certainly will not inherit them.
+Come, my friend; give up something for her who sacrifices so much for
+you. Do not come quite so often; I shall love you none the less.”
+
+“Ah!” said Armand, with the profound irony of a wounded heart in his
+words and tone. “Love, so the scribblers say, only feeds on illusions.
+Nothing could be truer, I see; I am expected to imagine that I am loved.
+But, there!--there are some thoughts like wounds, from which there is no
+recovery. My belief in you was one of the last left to me, and now I see
+that there is nothing left to believe in this earth.”
+
+She began to smile.
+
+“Yes,” Montriveau went on in an unsteady voice, “this Catholic faith to
+which you wish to convert me is a lie that men make for themselves; hope
+is a lie at the expense of the future; pride, a lie between us and our
+fellows; and pity, and prudence, and terror are cunning lies. And now
+my happiness is to be one more lying delusion; I am expected to delude
+myself, to be willing to give gold coin for silver to the end. If you
+can so easily dispense with my visits; if you can confess me neither
+as your friend nor your lover, you do not care for me! And I, poor fool
+that I am, tell myself this, and know it, and love you!”
+
+“But, dear me, poor Armand, you are flying into a passion!”
+
+“I flying into a passion?”
+
+“Yes. You think that the whole question is opened because I ask you to
+be careful.”
+
+In her heart of hearts she was delighted with the anger that leapt out
+in her lover’s eyes. Even as she tortured him, she was criticising
+him, watching every slightest change that passed over his face. If
+the General had been so unluckily inspired as to show himself generous
+without discussion (as happens occasionally with some artless souls),
+he would have been a banished man forever, accused and convicted of not
+knowing how to love. Most women are not displeased to have their code of
+right and wrong broken through. Do they not flatter themselves that they
+never yield except to force? But Armand was not learned enough in this
+kind of lore to see the snare ingeniously spread for him by the Duchess.
+So much of the child was there in the strong man in love.
+
+“If all you want is to preserve appearances,” he began in his
+simplicity, “I am willing to----”
+
+“Simply to preserve appearances!” the lady broke in; “why, what idea can
+you have of me? Have I given you the slightest reason to suppose that I
+can be yours?”
+
+“Why, what else are we talking about?” demanded Montriveau.
+
+“Monsieur, you frighten me!... No, pardon me. Thank you,” she added,
+coldly; “thank you, Armand. You have given me timely warning of
+imprudence; committed quite unconsciously, believe it, my friend. You
+know how to endure, you say. I also know how to endure. We will not
+see each other for a time; and then, when both of us have contrived to
+recover calmness to some extent, we will think about arrangements for
+a happiness sanctioned by the world. I am young, Armand; a man with no
+delicacy might tempt a woman of four-and-twenty to do many foolish, wild
+things for his sake. But _you_! You will be my friend, promise me that
+you will?”
+
+“The woman of four-and-twenty,” returned he, “knows what she is about.”
+
+He sat down on the sofa in the boudoir, and leant his head on his hands.
+
+“Do you love me, madame?” he asked at length, raising his head, and
+turning a face full of resolution upon her. “Say it straight out; Yes or
+No!”
+
+His direct question dismayed the Duchess more than a threat of suicide
+could have done; indeed, the woman of the nineteenth century is not to
+be frightened by that stale stratagem, the sword has ceased to be part
+of the masculine costume. But in the effect of eyelids and lashes, in
+the contraction of the gaze, in the twitching of the lips, is there not
+some influence that communicates the terror which they express with such
+vivid magnetic power?
+
+“Ah, if I were free, if----”
+
+“Oh! is it only your husband that stands in the way?” the General
+exclaimed joyfully, as he strode to and fro in the boudoir. “Dear
+Antoinette, I wield a more absolute power than the Autocrat of all the
+Russias. I have a compact with Fate; I can advance or retard destiny,
+so far as men are concerned, at my fancy, as you alter the hands of a
+watch. If you can direct the course of fate in our political machinery,
+it simply means (does it not?) that you understand the ins and outs of
+it. You shall be free before very long, and then you must remember your
+promise.”
+
+“Armand!” she cried. “What do you mean? Great heavens! Can you imagine
+that I am to be the prize of a crime? Do you want to kill me? Why! you
+cannot have any religion in you! For my own part, I fear God. M. de
+Langeais may have given me reason to hate him, but I wish him no manner
+of harm.”
+
+M. de Montriveau beat a tattoo on the marble chimney-piece, and only
+looked composedly at the lady.
+
+“Dear,” continued she, “respect him. He does not love me, he is not kind
+to me, but I have duties to fulfil with regard to him. What would I not
+do to avert the calamities with which you threaten him?--Listen,” she
+continued after a pause, “I will not say another word about separation;
+you shall come here as in the past, and I will still give you my
+forehead to kiss. If I refused once or twice, it was pure coquetry,
+indeed it was. But let us understand each other,” she added as he came
+closer. “You will permit me to add to the number of my satellites; to
+receive even more visitors in the morning than heretofore; I mean to be
+twice as frivolous; I mean to use you to all appearance very badly;
+to feign a rupture; you must come not quite so often, and then,
+afterwards----”
+
+While she spoke, she had allowed him to put an arm about her waist,
+Montriveau was holding her tightly to him, and she seemed to feel the
+exceeding pleasure that women usually feel in that close contact, an
+earnest of the bliss of a closer union. And then, doubtless she meant to
+elicit some confidence, for she raised herself on tiptoe, and laid her
+forehead against Armand’s burning lips.
+
+“And then,” Montriveau finished her sentence for her, “you shall not
+speak to me of your husband. You ought not to think of him again.”
+
+Mme de Langeais was silent awhile.
+
+“At least,” she said, after a significant pause, “at least you will do
+all that I wish without grumbling, you will not be naughty; tell me so,
+my friend? You wanted to frighten me, did you not? Come, now, confess
+it?... You are too good ever to think of crimes. But is it possible that
+you can have secrets that I do not know? How can you control Fate?”
+
+“Now, when you confirm the gift of the heart that you have already given
+me, I am far too happy to know exactly how to answer you. I can trust
+you, Antoinette; I shall have no suspicion, no unfounded jealousy of
+you. But if accident should set you free, we shall be one----”
+
+“Accident, Armand?” (With that little dainty turn of the head that seems
+to say so many things, a gesture that such women as the Duchess can use
+on light occasions, as a great singer can act with her voice.) “Pure
+accident,” she repeated. “Mind that. If anything should happen to M. de
+Langeais by your fault, I should never be yours.”
+
+And so they parted, mutually content. The Duchess had made a pact
+that left her free to prove to the world by words and deeds that M. de
+Montriveau was no lover of hers. And as for him, the wily Duchess
+vowed to tire him out. He should have nothing of her beyond the little
+concessions snatched in the course of contests that she could stop
+at her pleasure. She had so pretty an art of revoking the grant
+of yesterday, she was so much in earnest in her purpose to remain
+technically virtuous, that she felt that there was not the slightest
+danger for her in preliminaries fraught with peril for a woman less sure
+of her self-command. After all, the Duchess was practically separated
+from her husband; a marriage long since annulled was no great sacrifice
+to make to her love.
+
+Montriveau on his side was quite happy to win the vaguest promise, glad
+once for all to sweep aside, with all scruples of conjugal fidelity, her
+stock of excuses for refusing herself to his love. He had gained ground
+a little, and congratulated himself. And so for a time he took unfair
+advantage of the rights so hardly won. More a boy than he had ever been
+in his life, he gave himself up to all the childishness that makes first
+love the flower of life. He was a child again as he poured out all
+his soul, all the thwarted forces that passion had given him, upon her
+hands, upon the dazzling forehead that looked so pure to his eyes; upon
+her fair hair; on the tufted curls where his lips were pressed. And the
+Duchess, on whom his love was poured like a flood, was vanquished by
+the magnetic influence of her lover’s warmth; she hesitated to begin
+the quarrel that must part them forever. She was more a woman than she
+thought, this slight creature, in her effort to reconcile the demands
+of religion with the ever-new sensations of vanity, the semblance of
+pleasure which turns a Parisienne’s head. Every Sunday she went to Mass;
+she never missed a service; then, when evening came, she was steeped in
+the intoxicating bliss of repressed desire. Armand and Mme de Langeais,
+like Hindoo fakirs, found the reward of their continence in the
+temptations to which it gave rise. Possibly, the Duchess had ended by
+resolving love into fraternal caresses, harmless enough, as it might
+have seemed to the rest of the world, while they borrowed extremes
+of degradation from the license of her thoughts. How else explain the
+incomprehensible mystery of her continual fluctuations? Every morning
+she proposed to herself to shut her door on the Marquis de Montriveau;
+every evening, at the appointed hour, she fell under the charm of his
+presence. There was a languid defence; then she grew less unkind. Her
+words were sweet and soothing. They were lovers--lovers only could have
+been thus. For him the Duchess would display her most sparkling wit, her
+most captivating wiles; and when at last she had wrought upon his senses
+and his soul, she might submit herself passively to his fierce caresses,
+but she had her _nec plus ultra_ of passion; and when once it was
+reached, she grew angry if he lost the mastery of himself and made
+as though he would pass beyond. No woman on earth can brave the
+consequences of refusal without some motive; nothing is more natural
+than to yield to love; wherefore Mme de Langeais promptly raised a
+second line of fortification, a stronghold less easy to carry than
+the first. She evoked the terrors of religion. Never did Father of
+the Church, however eloquent, plead the cause of God better than the
+Duchess. Never was the wrath of the Most High better justified than
+by her voice. She used no preacher’s commonplaces, no rhetorical
+amplifications. No. She had a “pulpit-tremor” of her own. To Armand’s
+most passionate entreaty, she replied with a tearful gaze, and a gesture
+in which a terrible plenitude of emotion found expression. She stopped
+his mouth with an appeal for mercy. She would not hear another word; if
+she did, she must succumb; and better death than criminal happiness.
+
+“Is it nothing to disobey God?” she asked him, recovering a voice grown
+faint in the crises of inward struggles, through which the fair
+actress appeared to find it hard to preserve her self-control. “I would
+sacrifice society, I would give up the whole world for you, gladly; but
+it is very selfish of you to ask my whole after-life of me for a moment
+of pleasure. Come, now! are you not happy?” she added, holding out her
+hand; and certainly in her careless toilette the sight of her afforded
+consolations to her lover, who made the most of them.
+
+Sometimes from policy, to keep her hold on a man whose ardent passion
+gave her emotions unknown before, sometimes in weakness, she suffered
+him to snatch a swift kiss; and immediately, in feigned terror, she
+flushed red and exiled Armand from the sofa so soon as the sofa became
+dangerous ground.
+
+“Your joys are sins for me to expiate, Armand; they are paid for by
+penitence and remorse,” she cried.
+
+And Montriveau, now at two chairs’ distance from that aristocratic
+petticoat, betook himself to blasphemy and railed against Providence.
+The Duchess grew angry at such times.
+
+“My friend,” she said drily, “I do not understand why you decline to
+believe in God, for it is impossible to believe in man. Hush, do not
+talk like that. You have too great a nature to take up their Liberal
+nonsense with its pretension to abolish God.”
+
+Theological and political disputes acted like a cold douche on
+Montriveau; he calmed down; he could not return to love when the Duchess
+stirred up his wrath by suddenly setting him down a thousand miles away
+from the boudoir, discussing theories of absolute monarchy, which she
+defended to admiration. Few women venture to be democrats; the attitude
+of democratic champion is scarcely compatible with tyrannous feminine
+sway. But often, on the other hand, the General shook out his mane,
+dropped politics with a leonine growling and lashing of the flanks, and
+sprang upon his prey; he was no longer capable of carrying a heart and
+brain at such variance for very far; he came back, terrible with love,
+to his mistress. And she, if she felt the prick of fancy stimulated to
+a dangerous point, knew that it was time to leave her boudoir; she came
+out of the atmosphere surcharged with desires that she drew in with
+her breath, sat down to the piano, and sang the most exquisite songs
+of modern music, and so baffled the physical attraction which at times
+showed her no mercy, though she was strong enough to fight it down.
+
+At such times she was something sublime in Armand’s eyes; she was not
+acting, she was genuine; the unhappy lover was convinced that she loved
+him. Her egoistic resistance deluded him into a belief that she was a
+pure and sainted woman; he resigned himself; he talked of Platonic love,
+did this artillery officer!
+
+When Mme de Langeais had played with religion sufficiently to suit her
+own purposes, she played with it again for Armand’s benefit. She wanted
+to bring him back to a Christian frame of mind; she brought out her
+edition of _Le Genie du Christianisme_, adapted for the use of military
+men. Montriveau chafed; his yoke was heavy. Oh! at that, possessed by
+the spirit of contradiction, she dinned religion into his ears, to see
+whether God might not rid her of this suitor, for the man’s persistence
+was beginning to frighten her. And in any case she was glad to prolong
+any quarrel, if it bade fair to keep the dispute on moral grounds for
+an indefinite period; the material struggle which followed it was more
+dangerous.
+
+But if the time of her opposition on the ground of the marriage law
+might be said to be the _epoque civile_ of this sentimental warfare, the
+ensuing phase which might be taken to constitute the _epoque religieuse_
+had also its crisis and consequent decline of severity.
+
+Armand happening to come in very early one evening, found M. l’Abbe
+Gondrand, the Duchess’s spiritual director, established in an armchair
+by the fireside, looking as a spiritual director might be expected to
+look while digesting his dinner and the charming sins of his penitent.
+In the ecclesiastic’s bearing there was a stateliness befitting a
+dignitary of the Church; and the episcopal violet hue already appeared
+in his dress. At sight of his fresh, well-preserved complexion, smooth
+forehead, and ascetic’s mouth, Montriveau’s countenance grew uncommonly
+dark; he said not a word under the malicious scrutiny of the other’s
+gaze, and greeted neither the lady nor the priest. The lover apart,
+Montriveau was not wanting in tact; so a few glances exchanged with the
+bishop-designate told him that here was the real forger of the Duchess’s
+armory of scruples.
+
+That an ambitious abbe should control the happiness of a man of
+Montriveau’s temper, and by underhand ways! The thought burst in a
+furious tide over his face, clenched his fists, and set him chafing and
+pacing to and fro; but when he came back to his place intending to make
+a scene, a single look from the Duchess was enough. He was quiet.
+
+Any other woman would have been put out by her lover’s gloomy silence;
+it was quite otherwise with Mme de Langeais. She continued her
+conversation with M. de Gondrand on the necessity of re-establishing the
+Church in its ancient splendour. And she talked brilliantly.
+
+The Church, she maintained, ought to be a temporal as well as a
+spiritual power, stating her case better than the Abbe had done, and
+regretting that the Chamber of Peers, unlike the English House of Lords,
+had no bench of bishops. Nevertheless, the Abbe rose, yielded his place
+to the General, and took his leave, knowing that in Lent he could play a
+return game. As for the Duchess, Montriveau’s behaviour had excited
+her curiosity to such a pitch that she scarcely rose to return her
+director’s low bow.
+
+“What is the matter with you, my friend?”
+
+“Why, I cannot stomach that Abbe of yours.”
+
+“Why did you not take a book?” she asked, careless whether the Abbe,
+then closing the door, heard her or no.
+
+The General paused, for the gesture which accompanied the Duchess’s
+speech further increased the exceeding insolence of her words.
+
+“My dear Antoinette, thank you for giving love precedence of the Church;
+but, for pity’s sake, allow me to ask one question.”
+
+“Oh! you are questioning me! I am quite willing. You are my friend, are
+you not? I certainly can open the bottom of my heart to you; you will
+see only one image there.”
+
+“Do you talk about our love to that man?”
+
+“He is my confessor.”
+
+“Does he know that I love you?”
+
+“M. de Montriveau, you cannot claim, I think, to penetrate the secrets
+of the confessional?”
+
+“Does that man know all about our quarrels and my love for you?”
+
+“That man, monsieur; say God!”
+
+“God again! _I_ ought to be alone in your heart. But leave God alone
+where He is, for the love of God and me. Madame, you _shall not_ go to
+confession again, or----”
+
+“Or?” she repeated sweetly.
+
+“Or I will never come back here.”
+
+“Then go, Armand. Good-bye, good-bye forever.”
+
+She rose and went to her boudoir without so much as a glance at Armand,
+as he stood with his hand on the back of a chair. How long he stood
+there motionless he himself never knew. The soul within has the
+mysterious power of expanding as of contracting space.
+
+He opened the door of the boudoir. It was dark within. A faint voice was
+raised to say sharply:
+
+“I did not ring. What made you come in without orders? Go away,
+Suzette.”
+
+“Then you are ill,” exclaimed Montriveau.
+
+“Stand up, monsieur, and go out of the room for a minute at any rate,”
+ she said, ringing the bell.
+
+“Mme la Duchesse rang for lights?” said the footman, coming in with the
+candles. When the lovers were alone together, Mme de Langeais still lay
+on her couch; she was just as silent and motionless as if Montriveau had
+not been there.
+
+“Dear, I was wrong,” he began, a note of pain and a sublime kindness in
+his voice. “Indeed, I would not have you without religion----”
+
+“It is fortunate that you can recognise the necessity of a conscience,”
+ she said in a hard voice, without looking at him. “I thank you in God’s
+name.”
+
+The General was broken down by her harshness; this woman seemed as
+if she could be at will a sister or a stranger to him. He made one
+despairing stride towards the door. He would leave her forever without
+another word. He was wretched; and the Duchess was laughing within
+herself over mental anguish far more cruel than the old judicial
+torture. But as for going away, it was not in his power to do it. In any
+sort of crisis, a woman is, as it were, bursting with a certain quantity
+of things to say; so long as she has not delivered herself of them,
+she experiences the sensation which we are apt to feel at the sight of
+something incomplete. Mme de Langeais had not said all that was in her
+mind. She took up her parable and said:
+
+“We have not the same convictions, General, I am pained to think. It
+would be dreadful if a woman could not believe in a religion which
+permits us to love beyond the grave. I set Christian sentiments aside;
+you cannot understand them. Let me simply speak to you of expediency.
+Would you forbid a woman at court the table of the Lord when it is
+customary to take the sacrament at Easter? People must certainly do
+something for their party. The Liberals, whatever they may wish to do,
+will never destroy the religious instinct. Religion will always be
+a political necessity. Would you undertake to govern a nation of
+logic-choppers? Napoleon was afraid to try; he persecuted ideologists.
+If you want to keep people from reasoning, you must give them something
+to feel. So let us accept the Roman Catholic Church with all its
+consequences. And if we would have France go to mass, ought we not to
+begin by going ourselves? Religion, you see, Armand, is a bond uniting
+all the conservative principles which enable the rich to live in
+tranquillity. Religion and the rights of property are intimately
+connected. It is certainly a finer thing to lead a nation by ideas of
+morality than by fear of the scaffold, as in the time of the Terror--the
+one method by which your odious Revolution could enforce obedience.
+The priest and the king--that means you, and me, and the Princess
+my neighbour; and, in a word, the interests of all honest people
+personified. There, my friend, just be so good as to belong to your
+party, you that might be its Scylla if you had the slightest ambition
+that way. I know nothing about politics myself; I argue from my own
+feelings; but still I know enough to guess that society would
+be overturned if people were always calling its foundations in
+question----”
+
+“If that is how your Court and your Government think, I am sorry for
+you,” broke in Montriveau. “The Restoration, madam, ought to say, like
+Catherine de Medici, when she heard that the battle of Dreux was lost,
+‘Very well; now we will go to the meeting-house.’ Now 1815 was your
+battle of Dreux. Like the royal power of those days, you won in
+fact, while you lost in right. Political Protestantism has gained an
+ascendancy over people’s minds. If you have no mind to issue your Edict
+of Nantes; or if, when it is issued, you publish a Revocation; if you
+should one day be accused and convicted of repudiating the Charter,
+which is simply a pledge given to maintain the interests established
+under the Republic, then the Revolution will rise again, terrible in her
+strength, and strike but a single blow. It will not be the Revolution
+that will go into exile; she is the very soil of France. Men die, but
+people’s interests do not die. ... Eh, great Heavens! what are France
+and the crown and rightful sovereigns, and the whole world besides, to
+us? Idle words compared with my happiness. Let them reign or be hurled
+from the throne, little do I care. Where am I now?”
+
+“In the Duchesse de Langeais’ boudoir, my friend.”
+
+“No, no. No more of the Duchess, no more of Langeais; I am with my dear
+Antoinette.”
+
+“Will you do me the pleasure to stay where you are,” she said, laughing
+and pushing him back, gently however.
+
+“So you have never loved me,” he retorted, and anger flashed in
+lightning from his eyes.
+
+“No, dear”; but the “No” was equivalent to “Yes.”
+
+“I am a great ass,” he said, kissing her hands. The terrible queen was a
+woman once more.--“Antoinette,” he went on, laying his head on her feet,
+“you are too chastely tender to speak of our happiness to anyone in this
+world.”
+
+“Oh!” she cried, rising to her feet with a swift, graceful spring,
+“you are a great simpleton.” And without another word she fled into the
+drawing-room.
+
+“What is it now?” wondered the General, little knowing that the touch of
+his burning forehead had sent a swift electric thrill through her from
+foot to head.
+
+In hot wrath he followed her to the drawing-room, only to hear divinely
+sweet chords. The Duchess was at the piano. If the man of science or the
+poet can at once enjoy and comprehend, bringing his intelligence to bear
+upon his enjoyment without loss of delight, he is conscious that the
+alphabet and phraseology of music are but cunning instruments for
+the composer, like the wood and copper wire under the hands of the
+executant. For the poet and the man of science there is a music existing
+apart, underlying the double expression of this language of the spirit
+and senses. _Andiamo mio ben_ can draw tears of joy or pitying laughter
+at the will of the singer; and not unfrequently one here and there in
+the world, some girl unable to live and bear the heavy burden of an
+unguessed pain, some man whose soul vibrates with the throb of passion,
+may take up a musical theme, and lo! heaven is opened for them, or they
+find a language for themselves in some sublime melody, some song lost to
+the world.
+
+The General was listening now to such a song; a mysterious music unknown
+to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some mateless bird dying
+alone in a virgin forest.
+
+“Great Heavens! what are you playing there?” he asked in an unsteady
+voice.
+
+“The prelude of a ballad, called, I believe, _Fleuve du Tage_.”
+
+“I did not know that there was such music in a piano,” he returned.
+
+“Ah!” she said, and for the first time she looked at him as a woman
+looks at the man she loves, “nor do you know, my friend, that I love
+you, and that you cause me horrible suffering; and that I feel that I
+must utter my cry of pain without putting it too plainly into words. If
+I did not, I should yield----But you see nothing.”
+
+“And you will not make me happy!”
+
+“Armand, I should die of sorrow the next day.”
+
+The General turned abruptly from her and went. But out in the street he
+brushed away the tears that he would not let fall.
+
+The religious phase lasted for three months. At the end of that time the
+Duchess grew weary of vain repetitions; the Deity, bound hand and foot,
+was delivered up to her lover. Possibly she may have feared that by
+sheer dint of talking of eternity she might perpetuate his love in this
+world and the next. For her own sake, it must be believed that no man
+had touched her heart, or her conduct would be inexcusable. She was
+young; the time when men and women feel that they cannot afford to lose
+time or to quibble over their joys was still far off. She, no doubt, was
+on the verge not of first love, but of her first experience of the bliss
+of love. And from inexperience, for want of the painful lessons which
+would have taught her to value the treasure poured out at her feet, she
+was playing with it. Knowing nothing of the glory and rapture of the
+light, she was fain to stay in the shadow.
+
+Armand was just beginning to understand this strange situation; he put
+his hope in the first word spoken by nature. Every evening, as he came
+away from Mme de Langeais’, he told himself that no woman would accept
+the tenderest, most delicate proofs of a man’s love during seven months,
+nor yield passively to the slighter demands of passion, only to cheat
+love at the last. He was waiting patiently for the sun to gain power,
+not doubting but that he should receive the earliest fruits. The married
+woman’s hesitations and the religious scruples he could quite well
+understand. He even rejoiced over those battles. He mistook the
+Duchess’s heartless coquetry for modesty; and he would not have had her
+otherwise. So he had loved to see her devising obstacles; was he not
+gradually triumphing over them? Did not every victory won swell the
+meagre sum of lovers’ intimacies long denied, and at last conceded with
+every sign of love? Still, he had had such leisure to taste the full
+sweetness of every small successive conquest on which a lover feeds
+his love, that these had come to be matters of use and wont. So far as
+obstacles went, there were none now save his own awe of her; nothing
+else left between him and his desire save the whims of her who allowed
+him to call her Antoinette. So he made up his mind to demand more, to
+demand all. Embarrassed like a young lover who cannot dare to believe
+that his idol can stoop so low, he hesitated for a long time. He passed
+through the experience of terrible reactions within himself. A set
+purpose was annihilated by a word, and definite resolves died within him
+on the threshold. He despised himself for his weakness, and still his
+desire remained unuttered. Nevertheless, one evening, after sitting
+in gloomy melancholy, he brought out a fierce demand for his illegally
+legitimate rights. The Duchess had not to wait for her bond-slave’s
+request to guess his desire. When was a man’s desire a secret? And have
+not women an intuitive knowledge of the meaning of certain changes of
+countenance?
+
+“What! you wish to be my friend no longer?” she broke in at the first
+words, and a divine red surging like new blood under the transparent
+skin, lent brightness to her eyes. “As a reward for my generosity, you
+would dishonor me? Just reflect a little. I myself have thought much
+over this; and I think always for us _both_. There is such a thing as
+a woman’s loyalty, and we can no more fail in it than you can fail in
+honour. _I_ cannot blind myself. If I am yours, how, in any sense, can
+I be M. de Langeais’ wife? Can you require the sacrifice of my position,
+my rank, my whole life in return for a doubtful love that could not wait
+patiently for seven months? What! already you would rob me of my right
+to dispose of myself? No, no; you must not talk like this again. No, not
+another word. I will not, I cannot listen to you.”
+
+Mme de Langeais raised both hands to her head to push back the tufted
+curls from her hot forehead; she seemed very much excited.
+
+“You come to a weak woman with your purpose definitely planned out. You
+say--‘For a certain length of time she will talk to me of her husband,
+then of God, and then of the inevitable consequences. But I will use
+and abuse the ascendancy I shall gain over her; I will make myself
+indispensable; all the bonds of habit, all the misconstructions of
+outsiders, will make for me; and at length, when our _liaison_ is taken
+for granted by all the world, I shall be this woman’s master.’--Now, be
+frank; these are your thoughts! Oh! you calculate, and you say that you
+love. Shame on you! You are enamoured? Ah! that I well believe! You
+wish to possess me, to have me for your mistress, that is all! Very well
+then, No! The _Duchesse de Langeais_ will not descend so far. Simple
+_bourgeoises_ may be the victims of your treachery--I, never! Nothing
+gives me assurance of your love. You speak of my beauty; I may lose
+every trace of it in six months, like the dear Princess, my neighbour.
+You are captivated by my wit, my grace. Great Heavens! you would soon
+grow used to them and to the pleasures of possession. Have not the
+little concessions that I was weak enough to make come to be a matter of
+course in the last few months? Some day, when ruin comes, you will give
+me no reason for the change in you beyond a curt, ‘I have ceased to
+care for you.’--Then, rank and fortune and honour and all that was the
+Duchesse de Langeais will be swallowed up in one disappointed hope.
+I shall have children to bear witness to my shame, and----” With an
+involuntary gesture she interrupted herself, and continued: “But I am
+too good-natured to explain all this to you when you know it better than
+I. Come! let us stay as we are. I am only too fortunate in that I can
+still break these bonds which you think so strong. Is there anything so
+very heroic in coming to the Hotel de Langeais to spend an evening
+with a woman whose prattle amuses you?--a woman whom you take for a
+plaything? Why, half a dozen young coxcombs come here just as regularly
+every afternoon between three and five. They, too, are very generous, I
+am to suppose? I make fun of them; they stand my petulance and insolence
+pretty quietly, and make me laugh; but as for you, I give all the
+treasures of my soul to you, and you wish to ruin me, you try my
+patience in endless ways. Hush, that will do, that will do,” she
+continued, seeing that he was about to speak, “you have no heart,
+no soul, no delicacy. I know what you want to tell me. Very well,
+then--yes. I would rather you should take me for a cold, insensible
+woman, with no devotion in her composition, no heart even, than be
+taken by everybody else for a vulgar person, and be condemned to your
+so-called pleasures, of which you would most certainly tire, and to
+everlasting punishment for it afterwards. Your selfish love is not worth
+so many sacrifices....”
+
+The words give but a very inadequate idea of the discourse which the
+Duchess trilled out with the quick volubility of a bird-organ. Nor,
+truly, was there anything to prevent her from talking on for some time
+to come, for poor Armand’s only reply to the torrent of flute notes was
+a silence filled with cruelly painful thoughts. He was just beginning to
+see that this woman was playing with him; he divined instinctively
+that a devoted love, a responsive love, does not reason and count
+the consequences in this way. Then, as he heard her reproach him with
+detestable motives, he felt something like shame as he remembered that
+unconsciously he had made those very calculations. With angelic honesty
+of purpose, he looked within, and self-examination found nothing but
+selfishness in all his thoughts and motives, in the answers which he
+framed and could not utter. He was self-convicted. In his despair
+he longed to fling himself from the window. The egoism of it was
+intolerable.
+
+What indeed can a man say when a woman will not believe in love?--Let me
+prove how much I love you.--The _I_ is always there.
+
+The heroes of the boudoir, in such circumstances, can follow the example
+of the primitive logician who preceded the Pyrrhonists and denied
+movement. Montriveau was not equal to this feat. With all his audacity,
+he lacked this precise kind which never deserts an adept in the formulas
+of feminine algebra. If so many women, and even the best of women, fall
+a prey to a kind of expert to whom the vulgar give a grosser name, it is
+perhaps because the said experts are great _provers_, and love, in spite
+of its delicious poetry of sentiment, requires a little more geometry
+than people are wont to think.
+
+Now the Duchess and Montriveau were alike in this--they were both
+equally unversed in love lore. The lady’s knowledge of theory was but
+scanty; in practice she knew nothing whatever; she felt nothing, and
+reflected over everything. Montriveau had had but little experience, was
+absolutely ignorant of theory, and felt too much to reflect at all. Both
+therefore were enduring the consequences of the singular situation.
+At that supreme moment the myriad thoughts in his mind might have
+been reduced to the formula--“Submit to be mine----” words which seem
+horribly selfish to a woman for whom they awaken no memories, recall no
+ideas. Something nevertheless he must say. And what was more, though her
+barbed shafts had set his blood tingling, though the short phrases that
+she discharged at him one by one were very keen and sharp and cold, he
+must control himself lest he should lose all by an outbreak of anger.
+
+“Mme la Duchesse, I am in despair that God should have invented no way
+for a woman to confirm the gift of her heart save by adding the gift of
+her person. The high value which you yourself put upon the gift teaches
+me that I cannot attach less importance to it. If you have given me
+your inmost self and your whole heart, as you tell me, what can the rest
+matter? And besides, if my happiness means so painful a sacrifice, let
+us say no more about it. But you must pardon a man of spirit if he feels
+humiliated at being taken for a spaniel.”
+
+The tone in which the last remark was uttered might perhaps have
+frightened another woman; but when the wearer of a petticoat has allowed
+herself to be addressed as a Divinity, and thereby set herself above all
+other mortals, no power on earth can be so haughty.
+
+“M. le Marquis, I am in despair that God should not have invented
+some nobler way for a man to confirm the gift of his heart than by the
+manifestation of prodigiously vulgar desires. We become bond-slaves
+when we give ourselves body and soul, but a man is bound to nothing by
+accepting the gift. Who will assure me that love will last? The very
+love that I might show for you at every moment, the better to keep your
+love, might serve you as a reason for deserting me. I have no wish to be
+a second edition of Mme de Beauseant. Who can ever know what it is that
+keeps you beside us? Our persistent coldness of heart is the cause of
+an unfailing passion in some of you; other men ask for an untiring
+devotion, to be idolized at every moment; some for gentleness, others
+for tyranny. No woman in this world as yet has really read the riddle of
+man’s heart.”
+
+There was a pause. When she spoke again it was in a different tone.
+
+“After all, my friend, you cannot prevent a woman from trembling at the
+question, ‘Will this love last always?’ Hard though my words may be,
+the dread of losing you puts them into my mouth. Oh, me! it is not I
+who speaks, dear, it is reason; and how should anyone so mad as I be
+reasonable? In truth, I am nothing of the sort.”
+
+The poignant irony of her answer had changed before the end into the
+most musical accents in which a woman could find utterance for ingenuous
+love. To listen to her words was to pass in a moment from martyrdom to
+heaven. Montriveau grew pale; and for the first time in his life, he
+fell on his knees before a woman. He kissed the Duchess’s skirt hem, her
+knees, her feet; but for the credit of the Faubourg Saint-Germain it is
+necessary to respect the mysteries of its boudoirs, where many are fain
+to take the utmost that Love can give without giving proof of love in
+return.
+
+The Duchess thought herself generous when she suffered herself to be
+adored. But Montriveau was in a wild frenzy of joy over her complete
+surrender of the position.
+
+“Dear Antoinette,” he cried. “Yes, you are right; I will not have you
+doubt any longer. I too am trembling at this moment--lest the angel of
+my life should leave me; I wish I could invent some tie that might bind
+us to each other irrevocably.”
+
+“Ah!” she said, under her breath, “so I was right, you see.”
+
+“Let me say all that I have to say; I will scatter all your fears with
+a word. Listen! if I deserted you, I should deserve to die a thousand
+deaths. Be wholly mine, and I will give you the right to kill me if I
+am false. I myself will write a letter explaining certain reasons for
+taking my own life; I will make my final arrangements, in short. You
+shall have the letter in your keeping; in the eye of the law it will be
+a sufficient explanation of my death. You can avenge yourself, and fear
+nothing from God or men.”
+
+“What good would the letter be to me? What would life be if I had lost
+your love? If I wished to kill you, should I not be ready to follow? No;
+thank you for the thought, but I do not want the letter. Should I not
+begin to dread that you were faithful to me through fear? And if a man
+knows that he must risk his life for a stolen pleasure, might it not
+seem more tempting? Armand, the thing I ask of you is the one hard thing
+to do.”
+
+“Then what is it that you wish?”
+
+“Your obedience and my liberty.”
+
+“Ah, God!” cried he, “I am a child.”
+
+“A wayward, much spoilt child,” she said, stroking the thick hair,
+for his head still lay on her knee. “Ah! and loved far more than he
+believes, and yet he is very disobedient. Why not stay as we are? Why
+not sacrifice to me the desires that hurt me? Why not take what I can
+give, when it is all that I can honestly grant? Are you not happy?”
+
+“Oh yes, I am happy when I have not a doubt left. Antoinette, doubt in
+love is a kind of death, is it not?”
+
+In a moment he showed himself as he was, as all men are under the
+influence of that hot fever; he grew eloquent, insinuating. And the
+Duchess tasted the pleasures which she reconciled with her conscience
+by some private, Jesuitical ukase of her own; Armand’s love gave her a
+thrill of cerebral excitement which custom made as necessary to her as
+society, or the Opera. To feel that she was adored by this man, who rose
+above other men, whose character frightened her; to treat him like a
+child; to play with him as Poppaea played with Nero--many women, like
+the wives of King Henry VIII, have paid for such a perilous delight with
+all the blood in their veins. Grim presentiment! Even as she surrendered
+the delicate, pale, gold curls to his touch, and felt the close pressure
+of his hand, the little hand of a man whose greatness she could not
+mistake; even as she herself played with his dark, thick locks, in that
+boudoir where she reigned a queen, the Duchess would say to herself:
+
+“This man is capable of killing me if he once finds out that I am
+playing with him.”
+
+Armand de Montriveau stayed with her till two o’clock in the morning.
+From that moment this woman, whom he loved, was neither a duchess nor a
+Navarreins; Antoinette, in her disguises, had gone so far as to appear
+to be a woman. On that most blissful evening, the sweetest prelude ever
+played by a Parisienne to what the world calls “a slip”; in spite of all
+her affectations of a coyness which she did not feel, the General saw
+all maidenly beauty in her. He had some excuse for believing that so
+many storms of caprice had been but clouds covering a heavenly soul;
+that these must be lifted one by one like the veils that hid her divine
+loveliness. The Duchess became, for him, the most simple and girlish
+mistress; she was the one woman in the world for him; and he went away
+quite happy in that at last he had brought her to give him such pledges
+of love, that it seemed to him impossible but that he should be but her
+husband henceforth in secret, her choice sanctioned by Heaven.
+
+Armand went slowly home, turning this thought in his mind with the
+impartiality of a man who is conscious of all the responsibilities that
+love lays on him while he tastes the sweetness of its joys. He went
+along the Quais to see the widest possible space of sky; his heart had
+grown in him; he would fain have had the bounds of the firmament and of
+earth enlarged. It seemed to him that his lungs drew an ampler breath.
+In the course of his self-examination, as he walked, he vowed to love
+this woman so devoutly, that every day of her life she should find
+absolution for her sins against society in unfailing happiness. Sweet
+stirrings of life when life is at the full! The man that is strong
+enough to steep his soul in the colour of one emotion, feels infinite
+joy as glimpses open out for him of an ardent lifetime that knows no
+diminution of passion to the end; even so it is permitted to certain
+mystics, in ecstasy, to behold the Light of God. Love would be naught
+without the belief that it would last forever; love grows great
+through constancy. It was thus that, wholly absorbed by his happiness,
+Montriveau understood passion.
+
+“We belong to each other forever!”
+
+The thought was like a talisman fulfilling the wishes of his life. He
+did not ask whether the Duchess might not change, whether her love might
+not last. No, for he had faith. Without that virtue there is no future
+for Christianity, and perhaps it is even more necessary to society.
+A conception of life as feeling occurred to him for the first time;
+hitherto he had lived by action, the most strenuous exertion of human
+energies, the physical devotion, as it may be called, of the soldier.
+
+Next day M. de Montriveau went early in the direction of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain. He had made an appointment at a house not far from the
+Hotel de Langeais; and the business over, he went thither as if to his
+own home. The General’s companion chanced to be a man for whom he felt
+a kind of repulsion whenever he met him in other houses. This was the
+Marquis de Ronquerolles, whose reputation had grown so great in Paris
+boudoirs. He was witty, clever, and what was more--courageous; he set
+the fashion to all the young men in Paris. As a man of gallantry, his
+success and experience were equally matters of envy; and neither fortune
+nor birth was wanting in his case, qualifications which add such lustre
+in Paris to a reputation as a leader of fashion.
+
+“Where are you going?” asked M. de Ronquerolles.
+
+“To Mme de Langeais’.”
+
+“Ah, true. I forgot that you had allowed her to lime you. You are
+wasting your affections on her when they might be much better employed
+elsewhere. I could have told you of half a score of women in the
+financial world, any one of them a thousand times better worth your
+while than that titled courtesan, who does with her brains what less
+artificial women do with----”
+
+“What is this, my dear fellow?” Armand broke in. “The Duchess is an
+angel of innocence.”
+
+Ronquerolles began to laugh.
+
+“Things being thus, dear boy,” said he, “it is my duty to enlighten you.
+Just a word; there is no harm in it between ourselves. Has the Duchess
+surrendered? If so, I have nothing more to say. Come, give me your
+confidence. There is no occasion to waste your time in grafting
+your great nature on that unthankful stock, when all your hopes and
+cultivation will come to nothing.”
+
+Armand ingenuously made a kind of general report of his position,
+enumerating with much minuteness the slender rights so hardly won.
+Ronquerolles burst into a peal of laughter so heartless, that it would
+have cost any other man his life. But from their manner of speaking and
+looking at each other during that colloquy beneath the wall, in a corner
+almost as remote from intrusion as the desert itself, it was easy to
+imagine the friendship between the two men knew no bounds, and that no
+power on earth could estrange them.
+
+“My dear Armand, why did you not tell me that the Duchess was a puzzle
+to you? I would have given you a little advice which might have brought
+your flirtation properly through. You must know, to begin with, that the
+women of our Faubourg, like any other women, love to steep themselves in
+love; but they have a mind to possess and not to be possessed. They have
+made a sort of compromise with human nature. The code of their parish
+gives them a pretty wide latitude short of the last transgression. The
+sweets enjoyed by this fair Duchess of yours are so many venial sins
+to be washed away in the waters of penitence. But if you had the
+impertinence to ask in earnest for the moral sin to which naturally
+you are sure to attach the highest importance, you would see the deep
+disdain with which the door of the boudoir and the house would be
+incontinently shut upon you. The tender Antoinette would dismiss
+everything from her memory; you would be less than a cipher for her.
+She would wipe away your kisses, my dear friend, as indifferently as she
+would perform her ablutions. She would sponge love from her cheeks as
+she washes off rouge. We know women of that sort--the thorough-bred
+Parisienne. Have you ever noticed a grisette tripping along the street?
+Her face is as good as a picture. A pretty cap, fresh cheeks, trim hair,
+a guileful smile, and the rest of her almost neglected. Is not this true
+to the life? Well, that is the Parisienne. She knows that her face is
+all that will be seen, so she devotes all her care, finery, and vanity
+to her head. The Duchess is the same; the head is everything with her.
+She can only feel through her intellect, her heart lies in her brain,
+she is a sort of intellectual epicure, she has a head-voice. We call
+that kind of poor creature a Lais of the intellect. You have been taken
+in like a boy. If you doubt it, you can have proof of it tonight, this
+morning, this instant. Go up to her, try the demand as an experiment,
+insist peremptorily if it is refused. You might set about it like the
+late Marechal de Richelieu, and get nothing for your pains.”
+
+Armand was dumb with amazement.
+
+“Has your desire reached the point of infatuation?”
+
+“I want her at any cost!” Montriveau cried out despairingly.
+
+“Very well. Now, look here. Be as inexorable as she is herself. Try to
+humiliate her, to sting her vanity. Do _not_ try to move her heart,
+nor her soul, but the woman’s nerves and temperament, for she is both
+nervous and lymphatic. If you can once awaken desire in her, you are
+safe. But you must drop these romantic boyish notions of yours. If when
+once you have her in your eagle’s talons you yield a point or draw back,
+if you so much as stir an eyelid, if she thinks that she can regain her
+ascendancy over you, she will slip out of your clutches like a fish, and
+you will never catch her again. Be as inflexible as law. Show no more
+charity than the headsman. Hit hard, and then hit again. Strike and keep
+on striking as if you were giving her the knout. Duchesses are made of
+hard stuff, my dear Armand; there is a sort of feminine nature that is
+only softened by repeated blows; and as suffering develops a heart in
+women of that sort, so it is a work of charity not to spare the rod.
+Do you persevere. Ah! when pain has thoroughly relaxed those nerves and
+softened the fibres that you take to be so pliant and yielding; when
+a shriveled heart has learned to expand and contract and to beat under
+this discipline; when the brain has capitulated--then, perhaps, passion
+may enter among the steel springs of this machinery that turns out tears
+and affectations and languors and melting phrases; then you shall see a
+most magnificent conflagration (always supposing that the chimney takes
+fire). The steel feminine system will glow red-hot like iron in the
+forge; that kind of heat lasts longer than any other, and the glow of it
+may possibly turn to love.
+
+“Still,” he continued, “I have my doubts. And, after all, is it worth
+while to take so much trouble with the Duchess? Between ourselves a man
+of my stamp ought first to take her in hand and break her in; I would
+make a charming woman of her; she is a thoroughbred; whereas, you two
+left to yourselves will never get beyond the A B C. But you are in love
+with her, and just now you might not perhaps share my views on this
+subject----. A pleasant time to you, my children,” added Ronquerolles,
+after a pause. Then with a laugh: “I have decided myself for facile
+beauties; they are tender, at any rate, the natural woman appears in
+their love without any of your social seasonings. A woman that haggles
+over herself, my poor boy, and only means to inspire love! Well, have
+her like an extra horse--for show. The match between the sofa and
+confessional, black and white, queen and knight, conscientious scruples
+and pleasure, is an uncommonly amusing game of chess. And if a man knows
+the game, let him be never so little of a rake, he wins in three moves.
+Now, if I undertook a woman of that sort, I should start with the
+deliberate purpose of----” His voice sank to a whisper over the last
+words in Armand’s ear, and he went before there was time to reply.
+
+As for Montriveau, he sprang at a bound across the courtyard of the
+Hotel de Langeais, went unannounced up the stairs straight to the
+Duchess’s bedroom.
+
+“This is an unheard-of thing,” she said, hastily wrapping her
+dressing-gown about her. “Armand! this is abominable of you! Come, leave
+the room, I beg. Just go out of the room, and go at once. Wait for me in
+the drawing-room.--Come now!”
+
+“Dear angel, has a plighted lover no privilege whatsoever?”
+
+“But, monsieur, it is in the worst possible taste of a plighted lover or
+a wedded husband to break in like this upon his wife.”
+
+He came up to the Duchess, took her in his arms, and held her tightly to
+him.
+
+“Forgive, dear Antoinette; but a host of horrid doubts are fermenting in
+my heart.”
+
+“_Doubts_? Fie!--Oh, fie on you!”
+
+“Doubts all but justified. If you loved me, would you make this quarrel?
+Would you not be glad to see me? Would you not have felt a something
+stir in your heart? For I, that am not a woman, feel a thrill in my
+inmost self at the mere sound of your voice. Often in a ballroom a
+longing has come upon me to spring to your side and put my arms about
+your neck.”
+
+“Oh! if you have doubts of me so long as I am not ready to spring to
+your arms before all the world, I shall be doubted all my life long, I
+suppose. Why, Othello was a mere child compared with you!”
+
+“Ah!” he cried despairingly, “you have no love for me----”
+
+“Admit, at any rate, that at this moment you are not lovable.”
+
+“Then I have still to find favour in your sight?”
+
+“Oh, I should think so. Come,” added she, “with a little imperious air,
+go out of the room, leave me. I am not like you; I wish always to find
+favour in your eyes.”
+
+Never woman better understood the art of putting charm into insolence,
+and does not the charm double the effect? is it not enough to infuriate
+the coolest of men? There was a sort of untrammeled freedom about Mme
+de Langeais; a something in her eyes, her voice, her attitude, which is
+never seen in a woman who loves when she stands face to face with him at
+the mere sight of whom her heart must needs begin to beat. The Marquis
+de Ronquerolles’ counsels had cured Armand of sheepishness; and further,
+there came to his aid that rapid power of intuition which passion will
+develop at moments in the least wise among mortals, while a great man
+at such a time possesses it to the full. He guessed the terrible truth
+revealed by the Duchess’s nonchalance, and his heart swelled with the
+storm like a lake rising in flood.
+
+“If you told me the truth yesterday, be mine, dear Antoinette,” he
+cried; “you shall----”
+
+“In the first place,” said she composedly, thrusting him back as he
+came nearer--“in the first place, you are not to compromise me. My woman
+might overhear you. Respect me, I beg of you. Your familiarity is all
+very well in my boudoir in an evening; here it is quite different.
+Besides, what may your ‘you shall’ mean? ‘You shall.’ No one as yet
+has ever used that word to me. It is quite ridiculous, it seems to me,
+absolutely ridiculous.
+
+“Will you surrender nothing to me on this point?”
+
+“Oh! do you call a woman’s right to dispose of herself a ‘point?’ A
+capital point indeed; you will permit me to be entirely my own mistress
+on that ‘point.’”
+
+“And how if, believing in your promises to me, I should absolutely
+require it?”
+
+“Oh! then you would prove that I made the greatest possible mistake when
+I made you a promise of any kind; and I should beg you to leave me in
+peace.”
+
+The General’s face grew white; he was about to spring to her side, when
+Mme de Langeais rang the bell, the maid appeared, and, smiling with a
+mocking grace, the Duchess added, “Be so good as to return when I am
+visible.”
+
+Then Montriveau felt the hardness of a woman as cold and keen as a steel
+blade; she was crushing in her scorn. In one moment she had snapped
+the bonds which held firm only for her lover. She had read Armand’s
+intention in his face, and held that the moment had come for teaching
+the Imperial soldier his lesson. He was to be made to feel that though
+duchesses may lend themselves to love, they do not give themselves, and
+that the conquest of one of them would prove a harder matter than the
+conquest of Europe.
+
+“Madame,” returned Armand, “I have not time to wait. I am a spoilt
+child, as you told me yourself. When I seriously resolve to have that of
+which we have been speaking, I shall have it.”
+
+“You will have it?” queried she, and there was a trace of surprise in
+her loftiness.
+
+“I shall have it.”
+
+“Oh! you would do me a great pleasure by ‘resolving’ to have it. For
+curiosity’s sake, I should be delighted to know how you would set about
+it----”
+
+“I am delighted to put a new interest into your life,” interrupted
+Montriveau, breaking into a laugh which dismayed the Duchess. “Will you
+permit me to take you to the ball tonight?”
+
+“A thousand thanks. M. de Marsay has been beforehand with you. I gave
+him my promise.”
+
+Montriveau bowed gravely and went.
+
+“So Ronquerolles was right,” thought he, “and now for a game of chess.”
+
+Thenceforward he hid his agitation by complete composure. No man is
+strong enough to bear such sudden alternations from the height of
+happiness to the depths of wretchedness. So he had caught a glimpse of
+happy life the better to feel the emptiness of his previous existence?
+There was a terrible storm within him; but he had learned to endure,
+and bore the shock of tumultuous thoughts as a granite cliff stands out
+against the surge of an angry sea.
+
+“I could say nothing. When I am with her my wits desert me. She does not
+know how vile and contemptible she is. Nobody has ventured to bring her
+face to face with herself. She has played with many a man, no doubt; I
+will avenge them all.”
+
+For the first time, it may be, in a man’s heart, revenge and love were
+blended so equally that Montriveau himself could not know whether love
+or revenge would carry all before it. That very evening he went to the
+ball at which he was sure of seeing the Duchesse de Langeais, and almost
+despaired of reaching her heart. He inclined to think that there was
+something diabolical about this woman, who was gracious to him and
+radiant with charming smiles; probably because she had no wish to
+allow the world to think that she had compromised herself with M. de
+Montriveau. Coolness on both sides is a sign of love; but so long as
+the Duchess was the same as ever, while the Marquis looked sullen and
+morose, was it not plain that she had conceded nothing? Onlookers know
+the rejected lover by various signs and tokens; they never mistake the
+genuine symptoms for a coolness such as some women command their adorers
+to feign, in the hope of concealing their love. Everyone laughed at
+Montriveau; and he, having omitted to consult his cornac, was abstracted
+and ill at ease. M. de Ronquerolles would very likely have bidden him
+compromise the Duchess by responding to her show of friendliness by
+passionate demonstrations; but as it was, Armand de Montriveau came away
+from the ball, loathing human nature, and even then scarcely ready to
+believe in such complete depravity.
+
+“If there is no executioner for such crimes,” he said, as he looked up
+at the lighted windows of the ballroom where the most enchanting women
+in Paris were dancing, laughing, and chatting, “I will take you by the
+nape of the neck, Mme la Duchesse, and make you feel something that
+bites more deeply than the knife in the Place de la Greve. Steel against
+steel; we shall see which heart will leave the deeper mark.”
+
+For a week or so Mme de Langeais hoped to see the Marquis de Montriveau
+again; but he contented himself with sending his card every morning to
+the Hotel de Langeais. The Duchess could not help shuddering each time
+that the card was brought in, and a dim foreboding crossed her mind, but
+the thought was vague as a presentiment of disaster. When her eyes fell
+on the name, it seemed to her that she felt the touch of the implacable
+man’s strong hand in her hair; sometimes the words seemed like a
+prognostication of a vengeance which her lively intellect invented in
+the most shocking forms. She had studied him too well not to dread him.
+Would he murder her, she wondered? Would that bull-necked man dash out
+her vitals by flinging her over his head? Would he trample her body
+under his feet? When, where, and how would he get her into his power?
+Would he make her suffer very much, and what kind of pain would he
+inflict? She repented of her conduct. There were hours when, if he had
+come, she would have gone to his arms in complete self-surrender.
+
+Every night before she slept she saw Montriveau’s face; every night it
+wore a different aspect. Sometimes she saw his bitter smile, sometimes
+the Jovelike knitting of the brows; or his leonine look, or some
+disdainful movement of the shoulders made him terrible for her. Next day
+the card seemed stained with blood. The name of Montriveau stirred her
+now as the presence of the fiery, stubborn, exacting lover had never
+done. Her apprehensions gathered strength in the silence. She was
+forced, without aid from without, to face the thought of a hideous duel
+of which she could not speak. Her proud hard nature was more responsive
+to thrills of hate than it had ever been to the caresses of love. Ah! if
+the General could but have seen her, as she sat with her forehead
+drawn into folds between her brows; immersed in bitter thoughts in that
+boudoir where he had enjoyed such happy moments, he might perhaps
+have conceived high hopes. Of all human passions, is not pride alone
+incapable of engendering anything base? Mme de Langeais kept her
+thoughts to herself, but is it not permissible to suppose that M. de
+Montriveau was no longer indifferent to her? And has not a man gained
+ground immensely when a woman thinks about him? He is bound to make
+progress with her either one way or the other afterwards.
+
+Put any feminine creature under the feet of a furious horse or other
+fearsome beast; she will certainly drop on her knees and look for death;
+but if the brute shows a milder mood and does not utterly slay her,
+she will love the horse, lion, bull, or what not, and will speak of him
+quite at her ease. The Duchess felt that she was under the lion’s paws;
+she quaked, but she did not hate him.
+
+The man and woman thus singularly placed with regard to each other met
+three times in society during the course of that week. Each time,
+in reply to coquettish questioning glances, the Duchess received a
+respectful bow, and smiles tinged with such savage irony, that all her
+apprehensions over the card in the morning were revived at night.
+Our lives are simply such as our feelings shape them for us; and the
+feelings of these two had hollowed out a great gulf between them.
+
+The Comtesse de Serizy, the Marquis de Ronquerolles’ sister, gave a
+great ball at the beginning of the following week, and Mme de Langeais
+was sure to go to it. Armand was the first person whom the Duchess saw
+when she came into the room, and this time Armand was looking out for
+her, or so she thought at least. The two exchanged a look, and suddenly
+the woman felt a cold perspiration break from every pore. She had
+thought all along that Montriveau was capable of taking reprisals in
+some unheard-of way proportioned to their condition, and now the revenge
+had been discovered, it was ready, heated, and boiling. Lightnings
+flashed from the foiled lover’s eyes, his face was radiant with exultant
+vengeance. And the Duchess? Her eyes were haggard in spite of her
+resolution to be cool and insolent. She went to take her place beside
+the Comtesse de Serizy, who could not help exclaiming, “Dear Antoinette!
+what is the matter with you? You are enough to frighten one.”
+
+“I shall be all right after a quadrille,” she answered, giving a hand to
+a young man who came up at that moment.
+
+Mme de Langeais waltzed that evening with a sort of excitement and
+transport which redoubled Montriveau’s lowering looks. He stood in front
+of the line of spectators, who were amusing themselves by looking on.
+Every time that _she_ came past him, his eyes darted down upon her
+eddying face; he might have been a tiger with the prey in his grasp. The
+waltz came to an end, Mme de Langeais went back to her place beside the
+Countess, and Montriveau never took his eyes off her, talking all the
+while with a stranger.
+
+“One of the things that struck me most on the journey,” he was saying
+(and the Duchess listened with all her ears), “was the remark which the
+man makes at Westminster when you are shown the axe with which a man in
+a mask cut off Charles the First’s head, so they tell you. The King made
+it first of all to some inquisitive person, and they repeat it still in
+memory of him.”
+
+“What does the man say?” asked Mme de Serizy.
+
+“‘Do not touch the axe!’” replied Montriveau, and there was menace in
+the sound of his voice.
+
+“Really, my Lord Marquis,” said Mme de Langeais, “you tell this old
+story that everybody knows if they have been to London, and look at my
+neck in such a melodramatic way that you seem to me to have an axe in
+your hand.”
+
+The Duchess was in a cold sweat, but nevertheless she laughed as she
+spoke the last words.
+
+“But circumstances give the story a quite new application,” returned he.
+
+“How so; pray tell me, for pity’s sake?”
+
+“In this way, madame--you have touched the axe,” said Montriveau,
+lowering his voice.
+
+“What an enchanting prophecy!” returned she, smiling with assumed grace.
+“And when is my head to fall?”
+
+“I have no wish to see that pretty head of yours cut off. I only fear
+some great misfortune for you. If your head were clipped close, would
+you feel no regrets for the dainty golden hair that you turn to such
+good account?”
+
+“There are those for whom a woman would love to make such a sacrifice;
+even if, as often happens, it is for the sake of a man who cannot make
+allowances for an outbreak of temper.”
+
+“Quite so. Well, and if some wag were to spoil your beauty on a sudden
+by some chemical process, and you, who are but eighteen for us, were to
+be a hundred years old?”
+
+“Why, the smallpox is our Battle of Waterloo, monsieur,” she
+interrupted. “After it is over we find out those who love us sincerely.”
+
+“Would you not regret the lovely face that?”
+
+“Oh! indeed I should, but less for my own sake than for the sake of
+someone else whose delight it might have been. And, after all, if I were
+loved, always loved, and truly loved, what would my beauty matter to
+me?--What do you say, Clara?”
+
+“It is a dangerous speculation,” replied Mme de Serizy.
+
+“Is it permissible to ask His Majesty the King of Sorcerers when I made
+the mistake of touching the axe, since I have not been to London as
+yet?----”
+
+“_Not so_,” he answered in English, with a burst of ironical laughter.
+
+“And when will the punishment begin?”
+
+At this Montriveau coolly took out his watch, and ascertained the hour
+with a truly appalling air of conviction.
+
+“A dreadful misfortune will befall you before this day is out.”
+
+“I am not a child to be easily frightened, or rather, I am a child
+ignorant of danger,” said the Duchess. “I shall dance now without fear
+on the edge of the precipice.”
+
+“I am delighted to know that you have so much strength of character,” he
+answered, as he watched her go to take her place in a square dance.
+
+But the Duchess, in spite of her apparent contempt for Armand’s dark
+prophecies, was really frightened. Her late lover’s presence weighed
+upon her morally and physically with a sense of oppression that scarcely
+ceased when he left the ballroom. And yet when she had drawn freer
+breath, and enjoyed the relief for a moment, she found herself
+regretting the sensation of dread, so greedy of extreme sensations is
+the feminine nature. The regret was not love, but it was certainly akin
+to other feelings which prepare the way for love. And then--as if the
+impression which Montriveau had made upon her were suddenly revived--she
+recollected his air of conviction as he took out his watch, and in a
+sudden spasm of dread she went out.
+
+By this time it was about midnight. One of her servants, waiting with
+her pelisse, went down to order her carriage. On her way home she fell
+naturally enough to musing over M. de Montriveau’s prediction. Arrived
+in her own courtyard, as she supposed, she entered a vestibule almost
+like that of her own hotel, and suddenly saw that the staircase was
+different. She was in a strange house. Turning to call her servants, she
+was attacked by several men, who rapidly flung a handkerchief over her
+mouth, bound her hand and foot, and carried her off. She shrieked aloud.
+
+“Madame, our orders are to kill you if you scream,” a voice said in her
+ear.
+
+So great was the Duchess’s terror, that she could never recollect how
+nor by whom she was transported. When she came to herself, she was lying
+on a couch in a bachelor’s lodging, her hands and feet tied with silken
+cords. In spite of herself, she shrieked aloud as she looked round and
+met Armand de Montriveau’s eyes. He was sitting in his dressing-gown,
+quietly smoking a cigar in his armchair.
+
+“Do not cry out, Mme la Duchesse,” he said, coolly taking the cigar out
+of his mouth; “I have a headache. Besides, I will untie you. But listen
+attentively to what I have the honour to say to you.”
+
+Very carefully he untied the knots that bound her feet.
+
+“What would be the use of calling out? Nobody can hear your cries.
+You are too well bred to make any unnecessary fuss. If you do not stay
+quietly, if you insist upon a struggle with me, I shall tie your
+hands and feet again. All things considered, I think that you have
+self-respect enough to stay on this sofa as if you were lying on your
+own at home; cold as ever, if you will. You have made me shed many tears
+on this couch, tears that I hid from all other eyes.”
+
+While Montriveau was speaking, the Duchess glanced about her; it was
+a woman’s glance, a stolen look that saw all things and seemed to see
+nothing. She was much pleased with the room. It was rather like a
+monk’s cell. The man’s character and thoughts seemed to pervade it. No
+decoration of any kind broke the grey painted surface of the walls.
+A green carpet covered the floor. A black sofa, a table littered with
+papers, two big easy-chairs, a chest of drawers with an alarum clock by
+way of ornament, a very low bedstead with a coverlet flung over it--a
+red cloth with a black key border--all these things made part of a
+whole that told of a life reduced to its simplest terms. A triple
+candle-sconce of Egyptian design on the chimney-piece recalled the
+vast spaces of the desert and Montriveau’s long wanderings; a huge
+sphinx-claw stood out beneath the folds of stuff at the bed-foot;
+and just beyond, a green curtain with a black and scarlet border was
+suspended by large rings from a spear handle above a door near one
+corner of the room. The other door by which the band had entered was
+likewise curtained, but the drapery hung from an ordinary curtain-rod.
+As the Duchess finally noted that the pattern was the same on both, she
+saw that the door at the bed-foot stood open; gleams of ruddy light
+from the room beyond flickered below the fringed border. Naturally, the
+ominous light roused her curiosity; she fancied she could distinguish
+strange shapes in the shadows; but as it did not occur to her at the
+time that danger could come from that quarter, she tried to gratify a
+more ardent curiosity.
+
+“Monsieur, if it is not indiscreet, may I ask what you mean to do with
+me?” The insolence and irony of the tone stung through the words. The
+Duchess quite believed that she read extravagant love in Montriveau’s
+speech. He had carried her off; was not that in itself an acknowledgment
+of her power?
+
+“Nothing whatever, madame,” he returned, gracefully puffing the last
+whiff of cigar smoke. “You will remain here for a short time. First
+of all, I should like to explain to you what you are, and what I am. I
+cannot put my thoughts into words whilst you are twisting on the sofa
+in your boudoir; and besides, in your own house you take offence at the
+slightest hint, you ring the bell, make an outcry, and turn your lover
+out at the door as if he were the basest of wretches. Here my mind is
+unfettered. Here nobody can turn me out. Here you shall be my victim for
+a few seconds, and you are going to be so exceedingly kind as to listen
+to me. You need fear nothing. I did not carry you off to insult you, nor
+yet to take by force what you refused to grant of your own will to my
+unworthiness. I could not stoop so low. You possibly think of outrage;
+for myself, I have no such thoughts.”
+
+He flung his cigar coolly into the fire.
+
+“The smoke is unpleasant to you, no doubt, madame?” he said, and rising
+at once, he took a chafing-dish from the hearth, burnt perfumes, and
+purified the air. The Duchess’s astonishment was only equaled by her
+humiliation. She was in this man’s power; and he would not abuse his
+power. The eyes in which love had once blazed like flame were now quiet
+and steady as stars. She trembled. Her dread of Armand was increased by
+a nightmare sensation of restlessness and utter inability to move; she
+felt as if she were turned to stone. She lay passive in the grip of
+fear. She thought she saw the light behind the curtains grow to a blaze,
+as if blown up by a pair of bellows; in another moment the gleams of
+flame grew brighter, and she fancied that three masked figures suddenly
+flashed out; but the terrible vision disappeared so swiftly that she
+took it for an optical delusion.
+
+“Madame,” Armand continued with cold contempt, “one minute, just one
+minute is enough for me, and you shall feel it afterwards at every
+moment throughout your lifetime, the one eternity over which I have
+power. I am not God. Listen carefully to me,” he continued, pausing to
+add solemnity to his words. “Love will always come at your call. You
+have boundless power over men: but remember that once you called love,
+and love came to you; love as pure and true-hearted as may be on earth,
+and as reverent as it was passionate; fond as a devoted woman’s, as a
+mother’s love; a love so great indeed, that it was past the bounds of
+reason. You played with it, and you committed a crime. Every woman has a
+right to refuse herself to love which she feels she cannot share; and
+if a man loves and cannot win love in return, he is not to be pitied,
+he has no right to complain. But with a semblance of love to attract
+an unfortunate creature cut off from all affection; to teach him to
+understand happiness to the full, only to snatch it from him; to rob him
+of his future of felicity; to slay his happiness not merely today,
+but as long as his life lasts, by poisoning every hour of it and every
+thought--this I call a fearful crime!”
+
+“Monsieur----”
+
+“I cannot allow you to answer me yet. So listen to me still. In any case
+I have rights over you; but I only choose to exercise one--the right of
+the judge over the criminal, so that I may arouse your conscience. If
+you had no conscience left, I should not reproach you at all; but you
+are so young! You must feel some life still in your heart; or so I like
+to believe. While I think of you as depraved enough to do a wrong which
+the law does not punish, I do not think you so degraded that you cannot
+comprehend the full meaning of my words. I resume.”
+
+As he spoke the Duchess heard the smothered sound of a pair of bellows.
+Those mysterious figures which she had just seen were blowing up the
+fire, no doubt; the glow shone through the curtain. But Montriveau’s
+lurid face was turned upon her; she could not choose but wait with a
+fast-beating heart and eyes fixed in a stare. However curious she felt,
+the heat in Armand’s words interested her even more than the crackling
+of the mysterious flames.
+
+“Madame,” he went on after a pause, “if some poor wretch commits a
+murder in Paris, it is the executioner’s duty, you know, to lay hands on
+him and stretch him on the plank, where murderers pay for their crimes
+with their heads. Then the newspapers inform everyone, rich and poor, so
+that the former are assured that they may sleep in peace, and the latter
+are warned that they must be on the watch if they would live. Well, you
+that are religious, and even a little of a bigot, may have masses said
+for such a man’s soul. You both belong to the same family, but yours is
+the elder branch; and the elder branch may occupy high places in peace
+and live happily and without cares. Want or anger may drive your brother
+the convict to take a man’s life; you have taken more, you have taken
+the joy out of a man’s life, you have killed all that was best in his
+life--his dearest beliefs. The murderer simply lay in wait for his
+victim, and killed him reluctantly, and in fear of the scaffold; but
+_you_ ...! You heaped up every sin that weakness can commit against
+strength that suspected no evil; you tamed a passive victim, the better
+to gnaw his heart out; you lured him with caresses; you left nothing
+undone that could set him dreaming, imagining, longing for the bliss of
+love. You asked innumerable sacrifices of him, only to refuse to make
+any in return. He should see the light indeed before you put out his
+eyes! It is wonderful how you found the heart to do it! Such villainies
+demand a display of resource quite above the comprehension of those
+bourgeoises whom you laugh at and despise. They can give and forgive;
+they know how to love and suffer. The grandeur of their devotion dwarfs
+us. Rising higher in the social scale, one finds just as much mud as at
+the lower end; but with this difference, at the upper end it is hard and
+gilded over.
+
+“Yes, to find baseness in perfection, you must look for a noble bringing
+up, a great name, a fair woman, a duchess. You cannot fall lower than
+the lowest unless you are set high above the rest of the world.--I
+express my thoughts badly; the wounds you dealt me are too painful as
+yet, but do not think that I complain. My words are not the expression
+of any hope for myself; there is no trace of bitterness in them. Know
+this, madame, for a certainty--I forgive you. My forgiveness is so
+complete that you need not feel in the least sorry that you came hither
+to find it against your will.... But you might take advantage of other
+hearts as child-like as my own, and it is my duty to spare them anguish.
+So you have inspired the thought of justice. Expiate your sin here
+on earth; God may perhaps forgive you; I wish that He may, but He is
+inexorable, and will strike.”
+
+The broken-spirited, broken-hearted woman looked up, her eyes filled
+with tears.
+
+“Why do you cry? Be true to your nature. You could look on indifferently
+at the torture of a heart as you broke it. That will do, madame, do not
+cry. I cannot bear it any longer. Other men will tell you that you have
+given them life; as for myself, I tell you, with rapture, that you have
+given me blank extinction. Perhaps you guess that I am not my own, that
+I am bound to live for my friends, that from this time forth I must
+endure the cold chill of death, as well as the burden of life? Is it
+possible that there can be so much kindness in you? Are you like the
+desert tigress that licks the wounds she has inflicted?”
+
+The Duchess burst out sobbing.
+
+“Pray spare your tears, madame. If I believed in them at all, it would
+merely set me on my guard. Is this another of your artifices? or is it
+not? You have used so many with me; how can one think that there is any
+truth in you? Nothing that you do or say has any power now to move me.
+That is all I have to say.”
+
+Mme de Langeais rose to her feet, with a great dignity and humility in
+her bearing.
+
+“You are right to treat me very hardly,” she said, holding out a hand to
+the man who did not take it; “you have not spoken hardly enough; and I
+deserve this punishment.”
+
+“_I_ punish you, madame! A man must love still, to punish, must he not?
+From me you must expect no feeling, nothing resembling it. If I chose, I
+might be accuser and judge in my cause, and pronounce and carry out the
+sentence. But I am about to fulfil a duty, not a desire of vengeance of
+any kind. The cruelest revenge of all, I think, is scorn of revenge when
+it is in our power to take it. Perhaps I shall be the minister of your
+pleasures; who knows? Perhaps from this time forth, as you gracefully
+wear the tokens of disgrace by which society marks out the criminal, you
+may perforce learn something of the convict’s sense of honour. And then,
+you will love!”
+
+The Duchess sat listening; her meekness was unfeigned; it was no
+coquettish device. When she spoke at last, it was after a silence.
+
+“Armand,” she began, “it seems to me that when I resisted love, I was
+obeying all the instincts of woman’s modesty; I should not have looked
+for such reproaches from _you_. I was weak; you have turned all my
+weaknesses against me, and made so many crimes of them. How could you
+fail to understand that the curiosity of love might have carried me
+further than I ought to go; and that next morning I might be angry
+with myself, and wretched because I had gone too far? Alas! I sinned in
+ignorance. I was as sincere in my wrongdoing, I swear to you, as in
+my remorse. There was far more love for you in my severity than in my
+concessions. And besides, of what do you complain? I gave you my heart;
+that was not enough; you demanded, brutally, that I should give my
+person----”
+
+“Brutally?” repeated Montriveau. But to himself he said, “If I once
+allow her to dispute over words, I am lost.”
+
+“Yes. You came to me as if I were one of those women. You showed none
+of the respect, none of the attentions of love. Had I not reason to
+reflect? Very well, I reflected. The unseemliness of your conduct is not
+inexcusable; love lay at the source of it; let me think so, and
+justify you to myself.--Well, Armand, this evening, even while you were
+prophesying evil, I felt convinced that there was happiness in store for
+us both. Yes, I put my faith in the noble, proud nature so often tested
+and proved.” She bent lower. “And I was yours wholly,” she murmured in
+his ear. “I felt a longing that I cannot express to give happiness to a
+man so violently tried by adversity. If I must have a master, my master
+should be a great man. As I felt conscious of my height, the less I
+cared to descend. I felt I could trust you, I saw a whole lifetime of
+love, while you were pointing to death.... Strength and kindness always
+go together. My friend, you are so strong, you will not be unkind to
+a helpless woman who loves you. If I was wrong, is there no way of
+obtaining forgiveness? No way of making reparation? Repentance is the
+charm of love; I should like to be very charming for you. How could I,
+alone among women, fail to know a woman’s doubts and fears, the timidity
+that it is so natural to feel when you bind yourself for life, and
+know how easily a man snaps such ties? The bourgeoises, with whom you
+compared me just now, give themselves, but they struggle first. Very
+well--I struggled; but here I am!--Ah! God, he does not hear me!” she
+broke off, and wringing her hands, she cried out “But I love you! I am
+yours!” and fell at Armand’s feet.
+
+“Yours! yours! my one and only master!”
+
+Armand tried to raise her.
+
+“Madame, it is too late! Antoinette cannot save the Duchesse de
+Langeais. I cannot believe in either. Today you may give yourself;
+tomorrow, you may refuse. No power in earth or heaven can insure me the
+sweet constancy of love. All love’s pledges lay in the past; and now
+nothing of that past exists.”
+
+The light behind the curtain blazed up so brightly, that the Duchess
+could not help turning her head; this time she distinctly saw the three
+masked figures.
+
+“Armand,” she said, “I would not wish to think ill of you. Why are those
+men there? What are you going to do to me?”
+
+“Those men will be as silent as I myself with regard to the thing which
+is about to be done. Think of them simply as my hands and my heart. One
+of them is a surgeon----”
+
+“A surgeon! Armand, my friend, of all things, suspense is the hardest
+to bear. Just speak; tell me if you wish for my life; I will give it to
+you, you shall not take it----”
+
+“Then you did not understand me? Did I not speak just now of justice?
+To put an end to your misapprehensions,” continued he, taking up a small
+steel object from the table, “I will now explain what I have decided
+with regard to you.”
+
+He held out a Lorraine cross, fastened to the tip of a steel rod.
+
+“Two of my friends at this very moment are heating another cross, made
+on this pattern, red-hot. We are going to stamp it upon your forehead,
+here between the eyes, so that there will be no possibility of hiding
+the mark with diamonds, and so avoiding people’s questions. In short,
+you shall bear on your forehead the brand of infamy which your brothers
+the convicts wear on their shoulders. The pain is a mere trifle, but I
+feared a nervous crisis of some kind, of resistance----”
+
+“Resistance?” she cried, clapping her hands for joy. “Oh no, no! I would
+have the whole world here to see. Ah, my Armand, brand her quickly,
+this creature of yours; brand her with your mark as a poor little trifle
+belonging to you. You asked for pledges of my love; here they are all in
+one. Ah! for me there is nothing but mercy and forgiveness and eternal
+happiness in this revenge of yours. When you have marked this woman with
+your mark, when you set your crimson brand on her, your slave in soul,
+you can never afterwards abandon her, you will be mine for evermore?
+When you cut me off from my kind, you make yourself responsible for my
+happiness, or you prove yourself base; and I know that you are noble and
+great! Why, when a woman loves, the brand of love is burnt into her
+soul by her own will.--Come in, gentlemen! come in and brand her,
+this Duchesse de Langeais. She is M. de Montriveau’s forever! Ah! come
+quickly, all of you, my forehead burns hotter than your fire!”
+
+Armand turned his head sharply away lest he should see the Duchess
+kneeling, quivering with the throbbings of her heart. He said some word,
+and his three friends vanished.
+
+The women of Paris salons know how one mirror reflects another. The
+Duchess, with every motive for reading the depths of Armand’s heart, was
+all eyes; and Armand, all unsuspicious of the mirror, brushed away two
+tears as they fell. Her whole future lay in those two tears. When he
+turned round again to help her to rise, she was standing before him,
+sure of love. Her pulses must have throbbed fast when he spoke with the
+firmness she had known so well how to use of old while she played with
+him.
+
+“I spare you, madame. All that has taken place shall be as if it had
+never been, you may believe me. But now, let us bid each other goodbye.
+I like to think that you were sincere in your coquetries on your sofa,
+sincere again in this outpouring of your heart. Good-bye. I feel that
+there is no faith in you left in me. You would torment me again; you
+would always be the Duchess, and----But there, good-bye, we shall never
+understand each other.
+
+“Now, what do you wish?” he continued, taking the tone of a master of
+the ceremonies--“to return home, or to go back to Mme de Serizy’s
+ball? I have done all in my power to prevent any scandal. Neither your
+servants nor anyone else can possibly know what has passed between us
+in the last quarter of an hour. Your servants have no idea that you have
+left the ballroom; your carriage never left Mme de Serizy’s courtyard;
+your brougham may likewise be found in the court of your own hotel.
+Where do you wish to be?”
+
+“What do you counsel, Armand?”
+
+“There is no Armand now, Mme la Duchesse. We are strangers to each
+other.”
+
+“Then take me to the ball,” she said, still curious to put Armand’s
+power to the test. “Thrust a soul that suffered in the world, and must
+always suffer there, if there is no happiness for her now, down into
+hell again. And yet, oh my friend, I love you as your bourgeoises love;
+I love you so that I could come to you and fling my arms about your neck
+before all the world if you asked it off me. The hateful world has not
+corrupted me. I am young at least, and I have grown younger still. I am
+a child, yes, your child, your new creature. Ah! do not drive me forth
+out of my Eden!”
+
+Armand shook his head.
+
+“Ah! let me take something with me, if I go, some little thing to wear
+tonight on my heart,” she said, taking possession of Armand’s glove,
+which she twisted into her handkerchief.
+
+“No, I am _not_ like all those depraved women. You do not know the
+world, and so you cannot know my worth. You shall know it now! There are
+women who sell themselves for money; there are others to be gained by
+gifts, it is a vile world! Oh, I wish I were a simple bourgeoise, a
+working girl, if you would rather have a woman beneath you than a woman
+whose devotion is accompanied by high rank, as men count it. Oh, my
+Armand, there are noble, high, and chaste and pure natures among us;
+and then they are lovely indeed. I would have all nobleness that I might
+offer it all up to you. Misfortune willed that I should be a duchess;
+I would I were a royal princess, that my offering might be complete. I
+would be a grisette for you, and a queen for everyone besides.”
+
+He listened, damping his cigars with his lips.
+
+“You will let me know when you wish to go,” he said.
+
+“But I should like to stay----”
+
+“That is another matter!”
+
+“Stay, that was badly rolled,” she cried, seizing on a cigar and
+devouring all that Armand’s lips had touched.
+
+“Do you smoke?”
+
+“Oh, what would I not do to please you?”
+
+“Very well. Go, madame.”
+
+“I will obey you,” she answered, with tears in her eyes.
+
+“You must be blindfolded; you must not see a glimpse of the way.”
+
+“I am ready, Armand,” she said, bandaging her eyes.
+
+“Can you see?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Noiselessly he knelt before her.
+
+“Ah! I can hear you!” she cried, with a little fond gesture, thinking
+that the pretence of harshness was over.
+
+He made as if he would kiss her lips; she held up her face.
+
+“You can see, madame.”
+
+“I am just a little bit curious.”
+
+“So you always deceive me?”
+
+“Ah! take off this handkerchief, sir,” she cried out, with the passion
+of a great generosity repelled with scorn, “lead me; I will not open my
+eyes.”
+
+Armand felt sure of her after that cry. He led the way; the Duchess
+nobly true to her word, was blind. But while Montriveau held her hand
+as a father might, and led her up and down flights of stairs, he was
+studying the throbbing pulses of this woman’s heart so suddenly invaded
+by Love. Mme de Langeais, rejoicing in this power of speech, was glad to
+let him know all; but he was inflexible; his hand was passive in reply
+to the questionings of her hand.
+
+At length, after some journey made together, Armand bade her go forward;
+the opening was doubtless narrow, for as she went she felt that his hand
+protected her dress. His care touched her; it was a revelation surely
+that there was a little love still left; yet it was in some sort a
+farewell, for Montriveau left her without a word. The air was warm; the
+Duchess, feeling the heat, opened her eyes, and found herself standing
+by the fire in the Comtesse de Serizy’s boudoir.
+
+She was alone. Her first thought was for her disordered toilette; in a
+moment she had adjusted her dress and restored her picturesque coiffure.
+
+“Well, dear Antoinette, we have been looking for you everywhere.” It was
+the Comtesse de Serizy who spoke as she opened the door.
+
+“I came here to breathe,” said the Duchess; “it is unbearably hot in the
+rooms.”
+
+“People thought that you had gone; but my brother Ronquerolles told me
+that your servants were waiting for you.”
+
+“I am tired out, dear, let me stay and rest here for a minute,” and the
+Duchess sat down on the sofa.
+
+“Why, what is the matter with you? You are shaking from head to foot!”
+
+The Marquis de Ronquerolles came in.
+
+“Mme la Duchesse, I was afraid that something might have happened. I
+have just come across your coachman, the man is as tipsy as all the
+Swiss in Switzerland.”
+
+The Duchess made no answer; she was looking round the room, at the
+chimney-piece and the tall mirrors, seeking the trace of an opening.
+Then with an extraordinary sensation she recollected that she was again
+in the midst of the gaiety of the ballroom after that terrific scene
+which had changed the whole course of her life. She began to shiver
+violently.
+
+“M. de Montriveau’s prophecy has shaken my nerves,” she said. “It was
+a joke, but still I will see whether his axe from London will haunt me
+even in my sleep. So good-bye, dear.--Good-bye, M. le Marquis.”
+
+As she went through the rooms she was beset with inquiries and regrets.
+Her world seemed to have dwindled now that she, its queen, had fallen so
+low, was so diminished. And what, moreover, were these men compared with
+him whom she loved with all her heart; with the man grown great by all
+that she had lost in stature? The giant had regained the height that he
+had lost for a while, and she exaggerated it perhaps beyond measure. She
+looked, in spite of herself, at the servant who had attended her to the
+ball. He was fast asleep.
+
+“Have you been here all the time?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, madame.”
+
+As she took her seat in her carriage she saw, in fact, that her coachman
+was drunk--so drunk, that at any other time she would have been afraid;
+but after a great crisis in life, fear loses its appetite for common
+food. She reached home, at any rate, without accident; but even there
+she felt a change in herself, a new feeling that she could not shake
+off. For her, there was now but one man in the world; which is to say
+that henceforth she cared to shine for his sake alone.
+
+While the physiologist can define love promptly by following out natural
+laws, the moralist finds a far more perplexing problem before him if
+he attempts to consider love in all its developments due to social
+conditions. Still, in spite of the heresies of the endless sects that
+divide the church of Love, there is one broad and trenchant line of
+difference in doctrine, a line that all the discussion in the world can
+never deflect. A rigid application of this line explains the nature
+of the crisis through which the Duchess, like most women, was to pass.
+Passion she knew, but she did not love as yet.
+
+Love and passion are two different conditions which poets and men of the
+world, philosophers and fools, alike continually confound. Love implies
+a give and take, a certainty of bliss that nothing can change; it
+means so close a clinging of the heart, and an exchange of happiness so
+constant, that there is no room left for jealousy. Then possession is a
+means and not an end; unfaithfulness may give pain, but the bond is not
+less close; the soul is neither more nor less ardent or troubled, but
+happy at every moment; in short, the divine breath of desire spreading
+from end to end of the immensity of Time steeps it all for us in the
+selfsame hue; life takes the tint of the unclouded heaven. But Passion
+is the foreshadowing of Love, and of that Infinite to which all
+suffering souls aspire. Passion is a hope that may be cheated. Passion
+means both suffering and transition. Passion dies out when hope is
+dead. Men and women may pass through this experience many times without
+dishonor, for it is so natural to spring towards happiness; but there is
+only one love in a lifetime. All discussions of sentiment ever
+conducted on paper or by word of mouth may therefore be resumed by
+two questions--“Is it passion? Is it love?” So, since love comes into
+existence only through the intimate experience of the bliss which gives
+it lasting life, the Duchess was beneath the yoke of passion as yet; and
+as she knew the fierce tumult, the unconscious calculations, the fevered
+cravings, and all that is meant by that word _passion_--she suffered.
+Through all the trouble of her soul there rose eddying gusts of tempest,
+raised by vanity or self-love, or pride or a high spirit; for all these
+forms of egoism make common cause together.
+
+She had said to this man, “I love you; I am yours!” Was it possible that
+the Duchesse de Langeais should have uttered those words--in vain? She
+must either be loved now or play her part of queen no longer. And then
+she felt the loneliness of the luxurious couch where pleasure had never
+yet set his glowing feet; and over and over again, while she tossed and
+writhed there, she said, “I want to be loved.”
+
+But the belief that she still had in herself gave her hope of success.
+The Duchess might be piqued, the vain Parisienne might be humiliated;
+but the woman saw glimpses of wedded happiness, and imagination,
+avenging the time lost for nature, took a delight in kindling the
+inextinguishable fire in her veins. She all but attained to the
+sensations of love; for amid her poignant doubt whether she was loved in
+return, she felt glad at heart to say to herself, “I love him!” As for
+her scruples, religion, and the world she could trample them under foot!
+Montriveau was her religion now. She spent the next day in a state
+of moral torpor, troubled by a physical unrest, which no words could
+express. She wrote letters and tore them all up, and invented a thousand
+impossible fancies.
+
+When M. de Montriveau’s usual hour arrived, she tried to think that he
+would come, and enjoyed the feeling of expectation. Her whole life was
+concentrated in the single sense of hearing. Sometimes she shut her
+eyes, straining her ears to listen through space, wishing that she
+could annihilate everything that lay between her and her lover, and so
+establish that perfect silence which sounds may traverse from afar. In
+her tense self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful
+to her; she stopped its ill-omened garrulity. The twelve strokes of
+midnight sounded from the drawing-room.
+
+“Ah, God!” she cried, “to see him here would be happiness. And yet, it
+is not so very long since he came here, brought by desire, and the tones
+of his voice filled this boudoir. And now there is nothing.”
+
+She remembered the times that she had played the coquette with him, and
+how that her coquetry had cost her her lover, and the despairing tears
+flowed for long.
+
+Her woman came at length with, “Mme la Duchesse does not know, perhaps,
+that it is two o’clock in the morning; I thought that madame was not
+feeling well.”
+
+“Yes, I am going to bed,” said the Duchess, drying her eyes. “But
+remember, Suzanne, never to come in again without orders; I tell you
+this for the last time.”
+
+For a week, Mme de Langeais went to every house where there was a hope
+of meeting M. de Montriveau. Contrary to her usual habits, she came
+early and went late; gave up dancing, and went to the card-tables. Her
+experiments were fruitless. She did not succeed in getting a glimpse of
+Armand. She did not dare to utter his name now. One evening, however, in
+a fit of despair, she spoke to Mme de Serizy, and asked as carelessly as
+she could, “You must have quarreled with M. de Montriveau? He is not to
+be seen at your house now.”
+
+The Countess laughed. “So he does not come here either?” she returned.
+“He is not to be seen anywhere, for that matter. He is interested in
+some woman, no doubt.”
+
+“I used to think that the Marquis de Ronquerolles was one of his
+friends----” the Duchess began sweetly.
+
+“I have never heard my brother say that he was acquainted with him.”
+
+Mme de Langeais did not reply. Mme de Serizy concluded from the
+Duchess’s silence that she might apply the scourge with impunity to a
+discreet friendship which she had seen, with bitterness of soul, for a
+long time past.
+
+“So you miss that melancholy personage, do you? I have heard most
+extraordinary things of him. Wound his feelings, he never comes back,
+he forgives nothing; and, if you love him, he keeps you in chains. To
+everything that I said of him, one of those that praise him sky-high
+would always answer, ‘He knows how to love!’ People are always telling
+me that Montriveau would give up all for his friend; that his is a great
+nature. Pooh! society does not want such tremendous natures. Men of that
+stamp are all very well at home; let them stay there and leave us to our
+pleasant littlenesses. What do you say, Antoinette?”
+
+Woman of the world though she was, the Duchess seemed agitated, yet she
+replied in a natural voice that deceived her fair friend:
+
+“I am sorry to miss him. I took a great interest in him, and promised
+to myself to be his sincere friend. I like great natures, dear friend,
+ridiculous though you may think it. To give oneself to a fool is a clear
+confession, is it not, that one is governed wholly by one’s senses?”
+
+Mme de Serizy’s “preferences” had always been for commonplace men; her
+lover at the moment, the Marquis d’Aiglemont, was a fine, tall man.
+
+After this, the Countess soon took her departure, you may be sure Mme
+de Langeais saw hope in Armand’s withdrawal from the world; she wrote to
+him at once; it was a humble, gentle letter, surely it would bring him
+if he loved her still. She sent her footman with it next day. On the
+servant’s return, she asked whether he had given the letter to M. de
+Montriveau himself, and could not restrain the movement of joy at the
+affirmative answer. Armand was in Paris! He stayed alone in his house;
+he did not go out into society! So she was loved! All day long she
+waited for an answer that never came. Again and again, when impatience
+grew unbearable, Antoinette found reasons for his delay. Armand felt
+embarrassed; the reply would come by post; but night came, and she could
+not deceive herself any longer. It was a dreadful day, a day of pain
+grown sweet, of intolerable heart-throbs, a day when the heart squanders
+the very forces of life in riot.
+
+Next day she sent for an answer.
+
+“M. le Marquis sent word that he would call on Mme la Duchesse,”
+ reported Julien.
+
+She fled lest her happiness should be seen in her face, and flung
+herself on her couch to devour her first sensations.
+
+“He is coming!”
+
+The thought rent her soul. And, in truth, woe unto those for whom
+suspense is not the most horrible time of tempest, while it increases
+and multiplies the sweetest joys; for they have nothing in them of
+that flame which quickens the images of things, giving to them a second
+existence, so that we cling as closely to the pure essence as to its
+outward and visible manifestation. What is suspense in love but a
+constant drawing upon an unfailing hope?--a submission to the terrible
+scourging of passion, while passion is yet happy, and the disenchantment
+of reality has not set in. The constant putting forth of strength and
+longing, called suspense, is surely, to the human soul, as fragrance
+to the flower that breathes it forth. We soon leave the brilliant,
+unsatisfying colours of tulips and coreopsis, but we turn again and
+again to drink in the sweetness of orange-blossoms or volkameria-flowers
+compared separately, each in its own land, to a betrothed bride, full of
+love, made fair by the past and future.
+
+The Duchess learned the joys of this new life of hers through the
+rapture with which she received the scourgings of love. As this change
+wrought in her, she saw other destinies before her, and a better
+meaning in the things of life. As she hurried to her dressing-room, she
+understood what studied adornment and the most minute attention to
+her toilet mean when these are undertaken for love’s sake and not for
+vanity. Even now this making ready helped her to bear the long time of
+waiting. A relapse of intense agitation set in when she was dressed; she
+passed through nervous paroxysms brought on by the dreadful power which
+sets the whole mind in ferment. Perhaps that power is only a disease,
+though the pain of it is sweet. The Duchess was dressed and waiting
+at two o clock in the afternoon. At half-past eleven that night M.
+de Montriveau had not arrived. To try to give an idea of the anguish
+endured by a woman who might be said to be the spoilt child of
+civilization, would be to attempt to say how many imaginings the heart
+can condense into one thought. As well endeavour to measure the forces
+expended by the soul in a sigh whenever the bell rang; to estimate the
+drain of life when a carriage rolled past without stopping, and left her
+prostrate.
+
+“Can he be playing with me?” she said, as the clocks struck midnight.
+
+She grew white; her teeth chattered; she struck her hands together and
+leapt up and crossed the boudoir, recollecting as she did so how often
+he had come thither without a summons. But she resigned herself. Had she
+not seen him grow pale, and start up under the stinging barbs of irony?
+Then Mme de Langeais felt the horror of the woman’s appointed lot; a
+man’s is the active part, a woman must wait passively when she loves. If
+a woman goes beyond her beloved, she makes a mistake which few men can
+forgive; almost every man would feel that a woman lowers herself by this
+piece of angelic flattery. But Armand’s was a great nature; he surely
+must be one of the very few who can repay such exceeding love by love
+that lasts forever.
+
+“Well, I will make the advance,” she told herself, as she tossed on her
+bed and found no sleep there; “I will go to him. I will not weary myself
+with holding out a hand to him, but I will hold it out. A man of a
+thousand will see a promise of love and constancy in every step that a
+woman takes towards him. Yes, the angels must come down from heaven to
+reach men; and I wish to be an angel for him.”
+
+Next day she wrote. It was a billet of the kind in which the intellects
+of the ten thousand Sevignes that Paris now can number particularly
+excel. And yet only a Duchesse de Langeais, brought up by Mme la
+Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, could have written that delicious note; no
+other woman could complain without lowering herself; could spread wings
+in such a flight without draggling her pinions in humiliation; rise
+gracefully in revolt; scold without giving offence; and pardon without
+compromising her personal dignity.
+
+Julien went with the note. Julien, like his kind, was the victim of
+love’s marches and countermarches.
+
+“What did M. de Montriveau reply?” she asked, as indifferently as she
+could, when the man came back to report himself.
+
+“M. le Marquis requested me to tell Mme la Duchesse that it was all
+right.”
+
+Oh the dreadful reaction of the soul upon herself! To have her heart
+stretched on the rack before curious witnesses; yet not to utter a
+sound, to be forced to keep silence! One of the countless miseries of
+the rich!
+
+More than three weeks went by. Mme de Langeais wrote again and again,
+and no answer came from Montriveau. At last she gave out that she was
+ill, to gain a dispensation from attendance on the Princess and from
+social duties. She was only at home to her father the Duc de Navarreins,
+her aunt the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, the old Vidame de Pamiers
+(her maternal great-uncle), and to her husband’s uncle, the Duc de
+Grandlieu. These persons found no difficulty in believing that the
+Duchess was ill, seeing that she grew thinner and paler and more
+dejected every day. The vague ardour of love, the smart of wounded
+pride, the continual prick of the only scorn that could touch her,
+the yearnings towards joys that she craved with a vain continual
+longing--all these things told upon her, mind and body; all the forces
+of her nature were stimulated to no purpose. She was paying the arrears
+of her life of make-believe.
+
+She went out at last to a review. M. de Montriveau was to be there. For
+the Duchess, on the balcony of the Tuileries with the Royal Family,
+it was one of those festival days that are long remembered. She looked
+supremely beautiful in her languor; she was greeted with admiration in
+all eyes. It was Montriveau’s presence that made her so fair.
+
+Once or twice they exchanged glances. The General came almost to her
+feet in all the glory of that soldier’s uniform, which produces an
+effect upon the feminine imagination to which the most prudish will
+confess. When a woman is very much in love, and has not seen her lover
+for two months, such a swift moment must be something like the phase of
+a dream when the eyes embrace a world that stretches away forever.
+Only women or young men can imagine the dull, frenzied hunger in the
+Duchess’s eyes. As for older men, if during the paroxysms of early
+passion in youth they had experience of such phenomena of nervous power;
+at a later day it is so completely forgotten that they deny the very
+existence of the luxuriant ecstasy--the only name that can be given to
+these wonderful intuitions. Religious ecstasy is the aberration of a
+soul that has shaken off its bonds of flesh; whereas in amorous ecstasy
+all the forces of soul and body are embraced and blended in one. If
+a woman falls a victim to the tyrannous frenzy before which Mme de
+Langeais was forced to bend, she will take one decisive resolution
+after another so swiftly that it is impossible to give account of them.
+Thought after thought rises and flits across her brain, as clouds are
+whirled by the wind across the grey veil of mist that shuts out the sun.
+Thenceforth the facts reveal all. And the facts are these.
+
+The day after the review, Mme de Langeais sent her carriage and liveried
+servants to wait at the Marquis de Montriveau’s door from eight o’clock
+in the morning till three in the afternoon. Armand lived in the Rue de
+Tournon, a few steps away from the Chamber of Peers, and that very
+day the House was sitting; but long before the peers returned to their
+palaces, several people had recognised the Duchess’s carriage and
+liveries. The first of these was the Baron de Maulincour. That young
+officer had met with disdain from Mme de Langeais and a better reception
+from Mme de Serizy; he betook himself at once therefore to his mistress,
+and under seal of secrecy told her of this strange freak.
+
+In a moment the news was spread with telegraphic speed through all the
+coteries in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; it reached the Tuileries and the
+Elysee-Bourbon; it was the sensation of the day, the matter of all the
+talk from noon till night. Almost everywhere the women denied the facts,
+but in such a manner that the report was confirmed; the men one and
+all believed it, and manifested a most indulgent interest in Mme de
+Langeais. Some among them threw the blame on Armand.
+
+“That savage of a Montriveau is a man of bronze,” said they; “he
+insisted on making this scandal, no doubt.”
+
+“Very well, then,” others replied, “Mme de Langeais has been guilty of
+a most generous piece of imprudence. To renounce the world and rank, and
+fortune, and consideration for her lover’s sake, and that in the face
+of all Paris, is as fine a _coup d’etat_ for a woman as that barber’s
+knife-thrust, which so affected Canning in a court of assize. Not one
+of the women who blame the Duchess would make a declaration worthy of
+ancient times. It is heroic of Mme de Langeais to proclaim herself so
+frankly. Now there is nothing left to her but to love Montriveau. There
+must be something great about a woman if she says, ‘I will have but one
+passion.’”
+
+“But what is to become of society, monsieur, if you honour vice in this
+way without respect for virtue?” asked the Comtesse de Granville, the
+attorney-general’s wife.
+
+While the Chateau, the Faubourg, and the Chaussee d’Antin were
+discussing the shipwreck of aristocratic virtue; while excited young men
+rushed about on horseback to make sure that the carriage was standing in
+the Rue de Tournon, and the Duchess in consequence was beyond a doubt in
+M. de Montriveau’s rooms, Mme de Langeais, with heavy throbbing pulses,
+was lying hidden away in her boudoir. And Armand?--he had been out all
+night, and at that moment was walking with M. de Marsay in the Gardens
+of the Tuileries. The elder members, of Mme de Langeais’ family were
+engaged in calling upon one another, arranging to read her a homily
+and to hold a consultation as to the best way of putting a stop to the
+scandal.
+
+At three o’clock, therefore, M. le Duc de Navarreins, the Vidame de
+Pamiers, the old Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, and the Duc de Grandlieu
+were assembled in Mme la Duchesse de Langeais’ drawing-room. To them, as
+to all curious inquirers, the servants said that their mistress was not
+at home; the Duchess had made no exceptions to her orders. But these
+four personages shone conspicuous in that lofty sphere, of which the
+revolutions and hereditary pretensions are solemnly recorded year by
+year in the _Almanach de Gotha_, wherefore without some slight sketch of
+each of them this picture of society were incomplete.
+
+The Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, in the feminine world, was a most
+poetic wreck of the reign of Louis Quinze. In her beautiful prime, so it
+was said, she had done her part to win for that monarch his appellation
+of _le Bien-aime_. Of her past charms of feature, little remained save
+a remarkably prominent slender nose, curved like a Turkish scimitar, now
+the principal ornament of a countenance that put you in mind of an old
+white glove. Add a few powdered curls, high-heeled pantoufles, a cap
+with upstanding loops of lace, black mittens, and a decided taste for
+_ombre_. But to do full justice to the lady, it must be said that she
+appeared in low-necked gowns of an evening (so high an opinion of her
+ruins had she), wore long gloves, and raddled her cheeks with Martin’s
+classic rouge. An appalling amiability in her wrinkles, a prodigious
+brightness in the old lady’s eyes, a profound dignity in her whole
+person, together with the triple barbed wit of her tongue, and an
+infallible memory in her head, made of her a real power in the land. The
+whole Cabinet des Chartes was entered in duplicate on the parchment
+of her brain. She knew all the genealogies of every noble house in
+Europe--princes, dukes, and counts--and could put her hand on the last
+descendants of Charlemagne in the direct line. No usurpation of title
+could escape the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry.
+
+Young men who wished to stand well at Court, ambitious men, and young
+married women paid her assiduous homage. Her salon set the tone of the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain. The words of this Talleyrand in petticoats
+were taken as final decrees. People came to consult her on questions of
+etiquette or usages, or to take lessons in good taste. And, in truth,
+no other old woman could put back her snuff-box in her pocket as the
+Princess could; while there was a precision and a grace about the
+movements of her skirts, when she sat down or crossed her feet, which
+drove the finest ladies of the young generation to despair. Her voice
+had remained in her head during one-third of her lifetime; but she could
+not prevent a descent into the membranes of the nose, which lent to it a
+peculiar expressiveness. She still retained a hundred and fifty thousand
+livres of her great fortune, for Napoleon had generously returned her
+woods to her; so that personally and in the matter of possessions she
+was a woman of no little consequence.
+
+This curious antique, seated in a low chair by the fireside, was
+chatting with the Vidame de Pamiers, a contemporary ruin. The Vidame was
+a big, tall, and spare man, a seigneur of the old school, and had been
+a Commander of the Order of Malta. His neck had always been so tightly
+compressed by a strangulation stock, that his cheeks pouched over it a
+little, and he held his head high; to many people this would have given
+an air of self-sufficiency, but in the Vidame it was justified by a
+Voltairean wit. His wide prominent eyes seemed to see everything, and as
+a matter of fact there was not much that they had not seen. Altogether,
+his person was a perfect model of aristocratic outline, slim and
+slender, supple and agreeable. He seemed as if he could be pliant or
+rigid at will, and twist and bend, or rear his head like a snake.
+
+The Duc de Navarreins was pacing up and down the room with the Duc de
+Grandlieu. Both were men of fifty-six or thereabouts, and still hale;
+both were short, corpulent, flourishing, somewhat florid-complexioned
+men with jaded eyes, and lower lips that had begun to hang already. But
+for an exquisite refinement of accent, an urbane courtesy, and an ease
+of manner that could change in a moment to insolence, a superficial
+observer might have taken them for a couple of bankers. Any such mistake
+would have been impossible, however, if the listener could have heard
+them converse, and seen them on their guard with men whom they feared,
+vapid and commonplace with their equals, slippery with the inferiors
+whom courtiers and statesmen know how to tame by a tactful word, or to
+humiliate with an unexpected phrase.
+
+Such were the representatives of the great noblesse that determined to
+perish rather than submit to any change. It was a noblesse that deserved
+praise and blame in equal measure; a noblesse that will never be judged
+impartially until some poet shall arise to tell how joyfully the nobles
+obeyed the King though their heads fell under a Richelieu’s axe, and how
+deeply they scorned the guillotine of ‘89 as a foul revenge.
+
+Another noticeable trait in all the four was a thin voice that agreed
+peculiarly well with their ideas and bearing. Among themselves, at any
+rate, they were on terms of perfect equality. None of them betrayed
+any sign of annoyance over the Duchess’s escapade, but all of them had
+learned at Court to hide their feelings.
+
+And here, lest critics should condemn the puerility of the opening of
+the forthcoming scene, it is perhaps as well to remind the reader that
+Locke, once happening to be in the company of several great lords,
+renowned no less for their wit than for their breeding and political
+consistency, wickedly amused himself by taking down their conversation
+by some shorthand process of his own; and afterwards, when he read
+it over to them to see what they could make of it, they all burst out
+laughing. And, in truth, the tinsel jargon which circulates among the
+upper ranks in every country yields mighty little gold to the crucible
+when washed in the ashes of literature or philosophy. In every rank of
+society (some few Parisian salons excepted) the curious observer finds
+folly a constant quantity beneath a more or less transparent varnish.
+Conversation with any substance in it is a rare exception, and
+boeotianism is current coin in every zone. In the higher regions they
+must perforce talk more, but to make up for it they think the less.
+Thinking is a tiring exercise, and the rich like their lives to flow by
+easily and without effort. It is by comparing the fundamental matter of
+jests, as you rise in the social scale from the street-boy to the peer
+of France, that the observer arrives at a true comprehension of M. de
+Talleyrand’s maxim, “The manner is everything”; an elegant rendering of
+the legal axiom, “The form is of more consequence than the matter.” In
+the eyes of the poet the advantage rests with the lower classes, for
+they seldom fail to give a certain character of rude poetry to their
+thoughts. Perhaps also this same observation may explain the sterility
+of the salons, their emptiness, their shallowness, and the repugnance
+felt by men of ability for bartering their ideas for such pitiful small
+change.
+
+The Duke suddenly stopped as if some bright idea occurred to him, and
+remarked to his neighbour:
+
+“So you have sold Tornthon?”
+
+“No, he is ill. I am very much afraid I shall lose him, and I should be
+uncommonly sorry. He is a very good hunter. Do you know how the Duchesse
+de Marigny is?”
+
+“No. I did not go this morning. I was just going out to call when
+you came in to speak about Antoinette. But yesterday she was very ill
+indeed; they had given her up, she took the sacrament.”
+
+“Her death will make a change in your cousin’s position.”
+
+“Not at all. She gave away her property in her lifetime, only keeping
+an annuity. She made over the Guebriant estate to her niece, Mme de
+Soulanges, subject to a yearly charge.”
+
+“It will be a great loss for society. She was a kind woman. Her family
+will miss her; her experience and advice carried weight. Her son Marigny
+is an amiable man; he has a sharp wit, he can talk. He is pleasant, very
+pleasant. Pleasant? oh, that no one can deny, but--ill regulated to
+the last degree. Well, and yet it is an extraordinary thing, he is
+very acute. He was dining at the club the other day with that moneyed
+Chaussee-d’Antin set. Your uncle (he always goes there for his game
+of cards) found him there to his astonishment, and asked if he was a
+member. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘I don’t go into society now; I am living among
+the bankers.’--You know why?” added the Marquis, with a meaning smile.
+
+“No,” said the Duke.
+
+“He is smitten with that little Mme Keller, Gondreville’s daughter; she
+is only lately married, and has a great vogue, they say, in that set.”
+
+“Well, Antoinette does not find time heavy on her hands, it seems,”
+ remarked the Vidame.
+
+“My affection for that little woman has driven me to find a singular
+pastime,” replied the Princess, as she returned her snuff-box to her
+pocket.
+
+“Dear aunt, I am extremely vexed,” said the Duke, stopping short in his
+walk. “Nobody but one of Bonaparte’s men could ask such an indecorous
+thing of a woman of fashion. Between ourselves, Antoinette might have
+made a better choice.”
+
+“The Montriveaus are a very old family and very well connected, my
+dear,” replied the Princess; “they are related to all the noblest houses
+of Burgundy. If the Dulmen branch of the Arschoot Rivaudoults should
+come to an end in Galicia, the Montriveaus would succeed to the Arschoot
+title and estates. They inherit through their great-grandfather.
+
+“Are you sure?”
+
+“I know it better than this Montriveau’s father did. I told him about
+it, I used to see a good deal of him; and, Chevalier of several orders
+though he was, he only laughed; he was an encyclopaedist. But his
+brother turned the relationship to good account during the emigration.
+I have heard it said that his northern kinsfolk were most kind in every
+way----”
+
+“Yes, to be sure. The Comte de Montriveau died at St. Petersburg,”
+ said the Vidame. “I met him there. He was a big man with an incredible
+passion for oysters.”
+
+“However many did he eat?” asked the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+“Ten dozen every day.”
+
+“And did they not disagree with him?”
+
+“Not the least bit in the world.”
+
+“Why, that is extraordinary! Had he neither the stone nor gout, nor any
+other complaint, in consequence?”
+
+“No; his health was perfectly good, and he died through an accident.”
+
+“By accident! Nature prompted him to eat oysters, so probably he
+required them; for up to a certain point our predominant tastes are
+conditions of our existence.”
+
+“I am of your opinion,” said the Princess, with a smile.
+
+“Madame, you always put a malicious construction on things,” returned
+the Marquis.
+
+“I only want you to understand that these remarks might leave a wrong
+impression on a young woman’s mind,” said she, and interrupted herself
+to exclaim, “But this niece, this niece of mine!”
+
+“Dear aunt, I still refuse to believe that she can have gone to M. de
+Montriveau,” said the Duc de Navarreins.
+
+“Bah!” returned the Princess.
+
+“What do you think, Vidame?” asked the Marquis.
+
+“If the Duchess were an artless simpleton, I should think that----”
+
+“But when a woman is in love she becomes an artless simpleton,” retorted
+the Princess. “Really, my poor Vidame, you must be getting older.”
+
+“After all, what is to be done?” asked the Duke.
+
+“If my dear niece is wise,” said the Princess, “she will go to Court
+this evening--fortunately, today is Monday, and reception day--and you
+must see that we all rally round her and give the lie to this absurd
+rumour. There are hundreds of ways of explaining things; and if the
+Marquis de Montriveau is a gentleman, he will come to our assistance. We
+will bring these children to listen to reason----”
+
+“But, dear aunt, it is not easy to tell M. de Montriveau the truth to
+his face. He is one of Bonaparte’s pupils, and he has a position. Why,
+he is one of the great men of the day; he is high up in the Guards, and
+very useful there. He has not a spark of ambition. He is just the man to
+say, ‘Here is my commission, leave me in peace,’ if the King should say
+a word that he did not like.”
+
+“Then, pray, what are his opinions?”
+
+“Very unsound.”
+
+“Really,” sighed the Princess, “the King is, as he always has been, a
+Jacobin under the Lilies of France.”
+
+“Oh! not quite so bad,” said the Vidame.
+
+“Yes; I have known him for a long while. The man that pointed out the
+Court to his wife on the occasion of her first state dinner in public
+with, ‘These are our people,’ could only be a black-hearted scoundrel.
+I can see Monsieur exactly the same as ever in the King. The bad brother
+who voted so wrongly in his department of the Constituent Assembly was
+sure to compound with the Liberals and allow them to argue and talk.
+This philosophical cant will be just as dangerous now for the younger
+brother as it used to be for the elder; this fat man with the little
+mind is amusing himself by creating difficulties, and how his successor
+is to get out of them I do not know; he holds his younger brother in
+abhorrence; he would be glad to think as he lay dying, ‘He will not
+reign very long----’”
+
+“Aunt, he is the King, and I have the honour to be in his service----”
+
+“But does your post take away your right of free speech, my dear? You
+come of quite as good a house as the Bourbons. If the Guises had shown a
+little more resolution, His Majesty would be a nobody at this day. It is
+time I went out of this world, the noblesse is dead. Yes, it is all
+over with you, my children,” she continued, looking as she spoke at the
+Vidame. “What has my niece done that the whole town should be talking
+about her? She is in the wrong; I disapprove of her conduct, a useless
+scandal is a blunder; that is why I still have my doubts about this want
+of regard for appearances; I brought her up, and I know that----”
+
+Just at that moment the Duchess came out of her boudoir. She had
+recognised her aunt’s voice and heard the name of Montriveau. She
+was still in her loose morning-gown; and even as she came in, M.
+de Grandlieu, looking carelessly out of the window, saw his niece’s
+carriage driving back along the street. The Duke took his daughter’s
+face in both hands and kissed her on the forehead.
+
+“So, dear girl,” he said, “you do not know what is going on?”
+
+“Has anything extraordinary happened, father dear?”
+
+“Why, all Paris believes that you are with M. de Montriveau.”
+
+“My dear Antoinette, you were at home all the time, were you not?”
+ said the Princess, holding out a hand, which the Duchess kissed with
+affectionate respect.
+
+“Yes, dear mother; I was at home all the time. And,” she added, as she
+turned to greet the Vidame and the Marquis, “I wished that all Paris
+should think that I was with M. de Montriveau.”
+
+The Duke flung up his hands, struck them together in despair, and folded
+his arms.
+
+“Then, cannot you see what will come of this mad freak?” he asked at
+last.
+
+But the aged Princess had suddenly risen, and stood looking steadily
+at the Duchess, the younger woman flushed, and her eyes fell. Mme de
+Chauvry gently drew her closer, and said, “My little angel, let me kiss
+you!”
+
+She kissed her niece very affectionately on the forehead, and continued
+smiling, while she held her hand in a tight clasp.
+
+“We are not under the Valois now, dear child. You have compromised your
+husband and your position. Still, we will arrange to make everything
+right.”
+
+“But, dear aunt, I do not wish to make it right at all. It is my wish
+that all Paris should say that I was with M. de Montriveau this morning.
+If you destroy that belief, however ill grounded it may be, you will do
+me a singular disservice.”
+
+“Do you really wish to ruin yourself, child, and to grieve your family?”
+
+“My family, father, unintentionally condemned me to irreparable
+misfortune when they sacrificed me to family considerations. You may,
+perhaps, blame me for seeking alleviations, but you will certainly feel
+for me.”
+
+“After all the endless pains you take to settle your daughters
+suitably!” muttered M. de Navarreins, addressing the Vidame.
+
+The Princess shook a stray grain of snuff from her skirts. “My dear
+little girl,” she said, “be happy, if you can. We are not talking of
+troubling your felicity, but of reconciling it with social usages. We
+all of us here assembled know that marriage is a defective institution
+tempered by love. But when you take a lover, is there any need to make
+your bed in the Place du Carrousel? See now, just be a bit reasonable,
+and hear what we have to say.”
+
+“I am listening.”
+
+“Mme la Duchesse,” began the Duc de Grandlieu, “if it were any part of
+an uncle’s duty to look after his nieces, he ought to have a position;
+society would owe him honours and rewards and a salary, exactly as if
+he were in the King’s service. So I am not here to talk about my nephew,
+but of your own interests. Let us look ahead a little. If you persist in
+making a scandal--I have seen the animal before, and I own that I have
+no great liking for him--Langeais is stingy enough, and he does not care
+a rap for anyone but himself; he will have a separation; he will stick
+to your money, and leave you poor, and consequently you will be a
+nobody. The income of a hundred thousand livres that you have just
+inherited from your maternal great-aunt will go to pay for his
+mistresses’ amusements. You will be bound and gagged by the law;
+you will have to say _Amen_ to all these arrangements. Suppose M. de
+Montriveau leaves you----dear me! do not let us put ourselves in a
+passion, my dear niece; a man does not leave a woman while she is young
+and pretty; still, we have seen so many pretty women left disconsolate,
+even among princesses, that you will permit the supposition, an all but
+impossible supposition I quite wish to believe.----Well, suppose that
+he goes, what will become of you without a husband? Keep well with your
+husband as you take care of your beauty; for beauty, after all, is a
+woman’s parachute, and a husband also stands between you and worse. I
+am supposing that you are happy and loved to the end, and I am leaving
+unpleasant or unfortunate events altogether out of the reckoning. This
+being so, fortunately or unfortunately, you may have children. What are
+they to be? Montriveaus? Very well; they certainly will not succeed to
+their father’s whole fortune. You will want to give them all that you
+have; he will wish to do the same. Nothing more natural, dear me!
+And you will find the law against you. How many times have we
+seen heirs-at-law bringing a law-suit to recover the property from
+illegitimate children? Every court of law rings with such actions all
+over the world. You will create a _fidei commissum_ perhaps; and if the
+trustee betrays your confidence, your children have no remedy against
+him; and they are ruined. So choose carefully. You see the perplexities
+of the position. In every possible way your children will be sacrificed
+of necessity to the fancies of your heart; they will have no recognised
+status. While they are little they will be charming; but, Lord! some day
+they will reproach you for thinking of no one but your two selves. We
+old gentlemen know all about it. Little boys grow up into men, and men
+are ungrateful beings. When I was in Germany, did I not hear young de
+Horn say, after supper, ‘If my mother had been an honest woman, I should
+be prince-regnant!’ _If_?’ We have spent our lives in hearing plebeians
+say _if_. _If_ brought about the Revolution. When a man cannot lay the
+blame on his father or mother, he holds God responsible for his hard
+lot. In short, dear child, we are here to open your eyes. I will say all
+I have to say in a few words, on which you had better meditate: A woman
+ought never to put her husband in the right.”
+
+“Uncle, so long as I cared for nobody, I could calculate; I looked at
+interests then, as you do; now, I can only feel.”
+
+“But, my dear little girl,” remonstrated the Vidame, “life is simply a
+complication of interests and feelings; to be happy, more particularly
+in your position, one must try to reconcile one’s feelings with
+one’s interests. A grisette may love according to her fancy, that is
+intelligible enough, but you have a pretty fortune, a family, a name and
+a place at Court, and you ought not to fling them out of the window.
+And what have we been asking you to do to keep them all?--To manoeuvre
+carefully instead of falling foul of social conventions. Lord! I shall
+very soon be eighty years old, and I cannot recollect, under any regime,
+a love worth the price that you are willing to pay for the love of this
+lucky young man.”
+
+The Duchess silenced the Vidame with a look; if Montriveau could have
+seen that glance, he would have forgiven all.
+
+“It would be very effective on the stage,” remarked the Duc de
+Grandlieu, “but it all amounts to nothing when your jointure and
+position and independence is concerned. You are not grateful, my dear
+niece. You will not find many families where the relatives have courage
+enough to teach the wisdom gained by experience, and to make rash young
+heads listen to reason. Renounce your salvation in two minutes, if it
+pleases you to damn yourself; well and good; but reflect well beforehand
+when it comes to renouncing your income. I know of no confessor who
+remits the pains of poverty. I have a right, I think, to speak in this
+way to you; for if you are ruined, I am the one person who can offer you
+a refuge. I am almost an uncle to Langeais, and I alone have a right to
+put him in the wrong.”
+
+The Duc de Navarreins roused himself from painful reflections.
+
+“Since you speak of feeling, my child,” he said, “let me remind you that
+a woman who bears your name ought to be moved by sentiments which do
+not touch ordinary people. Can you wish to give an advantage to the
+Liberals, to those Jesuits of Robespierre’s that are doing all they
+can to vilify the noblesse? Some things a Navarreins cannot do
+without failing in duty to his house. You would not be alone in your
+dishonor----”
+
+“Come, come!” said the Princess. “Dishonor? Do not make such a fuss
+about the journey of an empty carriage, children, and leave me alone
+with Antoinette. All three of you come and dine with me. I will
+undertake to arrange matters suitably. You men understand nothing;
+you are beginning to talk sourly already, and I have no wish to see a
+quarrel between you and my dear child. Do me the pleasure to go.”
+
+The three gentlemen probably guessed the Princess’s intentions; they
+took their leave. M. de Navarreins kissed his daughter on the forehead
+with, “Come, be good, dear child. It is not too late yet if you choose.”
+
+“Couldn’t we find some good fellow in the family to pick a quarrel with
+this Montriveau?” said the Vidame, as they went downstairs.
+
+When the two women were alone, the Princess beckoned her niece to a
+little low chair by her side.
+
+“My pearl,” said she, “in this world below, I know nothing worse
+calumniated than God and the eighteenth century; for as I look back over
+my own young days, I do not recollect that a single duchess trampled the
+proprieties underfoot as you have just done. Novelists and scribblers
+brought the reign of Louis XV into disrepute. Do not believe them. The
+du Barry, my dear, was quite as good as the Widow Scarron, and the more
+agreeable woman of the two. In my time a woman could keep her dignity
+among her gallantries. Indiscretion was the ruin of us, and the
+beginning of all the mischief. The philosophists--the nobodies whom we
+admitted into our salons--had no more gratitude or sense of decency than
+to make an inventory of our hearts, to traduce us one and all, and to
+rail against the age by way of a return for our kindness. The people are
+not in a position to judge of anything whatsoever; they looked at the
+facts, not at the form. But the men and women of those times, my heart,
+were quite as remarkable as at any other period of the Monarchy. Not one
+of your Werthers, none of your notabilities, as they are called, never
+a one of your men in yellow kid gloves and trousers that disguise the
+poverty of their legs, would cross Europe in the dress of a travelling
+hawker to brave the daggers of a Duke of Modena, and to shut himself up
+in the dressing-room of the Regent’s daughter at the risk of his life.
+Not one of your little consumptive patients with their tortoiseshell
+eyeglasses would hide himself in a closet for six weeks, like Lauzun,
+to keep up his mistress’s courage while she was lying in of her child.
+There was more passion in M. de Jaucourt’s little finger than in
+your whole race of higglers that leave a woman to better themselves
+elsewhere! Just tell me where to find the page that would be cut in
+pieces and buried under the floorboards for one kiss on the Konigsmark’s
+gloved finger!
+
+“Really, it would seem today that the roles are exchanged, and women
+are expected to show their devotion for men. These modern gentlemen are
+worth less, and think more of themselves. Believe me, my dear, all these
+adventures that have been made public, and now are turned against our
+good Louis XV, were kept quite secret at first. If it had not been for
+a pack of poetasters, scribblers, and moralists, who hung about our
+waiting-women, and took down their slanders, our epoch would have
+appeared in literature as a well-conducted age. I am justifying the
+century and not its fringe. Perhaps a hundred women of quality were
+lost; but for every one, the rogues set down ten, like the gazettes
+after a battle when they count up the losses of the beaten side. And in
+any case I do not know that the Revolution and the Empire can reproach
+us; they were coarse, dull, licentious times. Faugh! it is revolting.
+Those are the brothels of French history.
+
+“This preamble, my dear child,” she continued after a pause, “brings
+me to the thing that I have to say. If you care for Montriveau, you are
+quite at liberty to love him at your ease, and as much as you can. I
+know by experience that, unless you are locked up (but locking people
+up is out of fashion now), you will do as you please; I should have done
+the same at your age. Only, sweetheart, I should not have given up my
+right to be the mother of future Ducs de Langeais. So mind appearances.
+The Vidame is right. No man is worth a single one of the sacrifices
+which we are foolish enough to make for their love. Put yourself in
+such a position that you may still be M. de Langeais’ wife, in case you
+should have the misfortune to repent. When you are an old woman, you
+will be very glad to hear mass said at Court, and not in some provincial
+convent. Therein lies the whole question. A single imprudence means an
+allowance and a wandering life; it means that you are at the mercy of
+your lover; it means that you must put up with insolence from women
+that are not so honest, precisely because they have been very vulgarly
+sharp-witted. It would be a hundred times better to go to Montriveau’s
+at night in a cab, and disguised, instead of sending your carriage in
+broad daylight. You are a little fool, my dear child! Your carriage
+flattered his vanity; your person would have ensnared his heart. All
+this that I have said is just and true; but, for my own part, I do not
+blame you. You are two centuries behind the times with your false ideas
+of greatness. There, leave us to arrange your affairs, and say that
+Montriveau made your servants drunk to gratify his vanity and to
+compromise you----”
+
+The Duchess rose to her feet with a spring. “In Heaven’s name, aunt, do
+not slander him!”
+
+The old Princess’s eyes flashed.
+
+“Dear child,” she said, “I should have liked to spare such of your
+illusions as were not fatal. But there must be an end of all illusions
+now. You would soften me if I were not so old. Come, now, do not vex
+him, or us, or anyone else. I will undertake to satisfy everybody; but
+promise me not to permit yourself a single step henceforth until you
+have consulted me. Tell me all, and perhaps I may bring it all right
+again.”
+
+“Aunt, I promise----”
+
+“To tell me everything?”
+
+“Yes, everything. Everything that can be told.”
+
+“But, my sweetheart, it is precisely what cannot be told that I want
+to know. Let us understand each other thoroughly. Come, let me put my
+withered old lips on your beautiful forehead. No; let me do as I wish. I
+forbid you to kiss my bones. Old people have a courtesy of their own....
+There, take me down to my carriage,” she added, when she had kissed her
+niece.
+
+“Then may I go to him in disguise, dear aunt?”
+
+“Why--yes. The story can always be denied,” said the old Princess.
+
+This was the one idea which the Duchess had clearly grasped in the
+sermon. When Mme de Chauvry was seated in the corner of her carriage,
+Mme de Langeais bade her a graceful adieu and went up to her room. She
+was quite happy again.
+
+“My person would have snared his heart; my aunt is right; a man cannot
+surely refuse a pretty woman when she understands how to offer herself.”
+
+That evening, at the Elysee-Bourbon, the Duc de Navarreins, M. de
+Pamiers, M. de Marsay, M. de Grandlieu, and the Duc de Maufrigneuse
+triumphantly refuted the scandals that were circulating with regard to
+the Duchesse de Langeais. So many officers and other persons had seen
+Montriveau walking in the Tuileries that morning, that the silly story
+was set down to chance, which takes all that is offered. And so,
+in spite of the fact that the Duchess’s carriage had waited before
+Montriveau’s door, her character became as clear and as spotless as
+Membrino’s sword after Sancho had polished it up.
+
+But, at two o’clock, M. de Ronquerolles passed Montriveau in a deserted
+alley, and said with a smile, “She is coming on, is your Duchess. Go on,
+keep it up!” he added, and gave a significant cut of the riding whip to
+his mare, who sped off like a bullet down the avenue.
+
+Two days after the fruitless scandal, Mme de Langeais wrote to M. de
+Montriveau. That letter, like the preceding ones, remained unanswered.
+This time she took her own measures, and bribed M. de Montriveau’s man,
+Auguste. And so at eight o’clock that evening she was introduced into
+Armand’s apartment. It was not the room in which that secret scene had
+passed; it was entirely different. The Duchess was told that the General
+would not be at home that night. Had he two houses? The man would give
+no answer. Mme de Langeais had bought the key of the room, but not the
+man’s whole loyalty.
+
+When she was left alone she saw her fourteen letters lying on an
+old-fashioned stand, all of them uncreased and unopened. He had not
+read them. She sank into an easy-chair, and for a while she lost
+consciousness. When she came to herself, Auguste was holding vinegar for
+her to inhale.
+
+“A carriage; quick!” she ordered.
+
+The carriage came. She hastened downstairs with convulsive speed, and
+left orders that no one was to be admitted. For twenty-four hours she
+lay in bed, and would have no one near her but her woman, who brought
+her a cup of orange-flower water from time to time. Suzette heard
+her mistress moan once or twice, and caught a glimpse of tears in the
+brilliant eyes, now circled with dark shadows.
+
+The next day, amid despairing tears, Mme de Langeais took her
+resolution. Her man of business came for an interview, and no doubt
+received instructions of some kind. Afterwards she sent for the
+Vidame de Pamiers; and while she waited, she wrote a letter to M.
+de Montriveau. The Vidame punctually came towards two o’clock that
+afternoon, to find his young cousin looking white and worn, but
+resigned; never had her divine loveliness been more poetic than now in
+the languor of her agony.
+
+“You owe this assignation to your eighty-four years, dear cousin,” she
+said. “Ah! do not smile, I beg of you, when an unhappy woman has reached
+the lowest depths of wretchedness. You are a gentleman, and after the
+adventures of your youth you must feel some indulgence for women.”
+
+“None whatever,” said he.
+
+“Indeed!”
+
+“Everything is in their favour.”
+
+“Ah! Well, you are one of the inner family circle; possibly you will be
+the last relative, the last friend whose hand I shall press, so I can
+ask your good offices. Will you, dear Vidame, do me a service which I
+could not ask of my own father, nor of my uncle Grandlieu, nor of any
+woman? You cannot fail to understand. I beg of you to do my bidding, and
+then to forget what you have done, whatever may come of it. It is this:
+Will you take this letter and go to M. de Montriveau? will you see him
+yourself, give it into his hands, and ask him, as you men can ask things
+between yourselves--for you have a code of honour between man and man
+which you do not use with us, and a different way of regarding things
+between yourselves--ask him if he will read this letter? Not in
+your presence. Certain feelings men hide from each other. I give you
+authority to say, if you think it necessary to bring him, that it is a
+question of life or death for me. If he deigns----”
+
+“_Deigns_!” repeated the Vidame.
+
+“If he deigns to read it,” the Duchess continued with dignity, “say one
+thing more. You will go to see him about five o’clock, for I know that
+he will dine at home today at that time. Very good. By way of answer he
+must come to see me. If, three hours afterwards, by eight o’clock, he
+does not leave his house, all will be over. The Duchesse de Langeais
+will have vanished from the world. I shall not be dead, dear friend, no,
+but no human power will ever find me again on this earth. Come and dine
+with me; I shall at least have one friend with me in the last agony.
+Yes, dear cousin, tonight will decide my fate; and whatever happens to
+me, I pass through an ordeal by fire. There! not a word. I will hear
+nothing of the nature of comment or advice----Let us chat and laugh
+together,” she added, holding out a hand, which he kissed. “We will be
+like two grey-headed philosophers who have learned how to enjoy life to
+the last moment. I will look my best; I will be very enchanting for
+you. You perhaps will be the last man to set eyes on the Duchesse de
+Langeais.”
+
+The Vicomte bowed, took the letter, and went without a word. At five
+o’clock he returned. His cousin had studied to please him, and she
+looked lovely indeed. The room was gay with flowers as if for a
+festivity; the dinner was exquisite. For the grey-headed Vidame the
+Duchess displayed all the brilliancy of her wit; she was more charming
+than she had ever been before. At first the Vidame tried to look on
+all these preparations as a young woman’s jest; but now and again the
+attempted illusion faded, the spell of his fair cousin’s charm was
+broken. He detected a shudder caused by some kind of sudden dread, and
+once she seemed to listen during a pause.
+
+“What is the matter?” he asked.
+
+“Hush!” she said.
+
+At seven o’clock the Duchess left him for a few minutes. When she came
+back again she was dressed as her maid might have dressed for a journey.
+She asked her guest to be her escort, took his arm, sprang into a
+hackney coach, and by a quarter to eight they stood outside M. de
+Montriveau’s door.
+
+Armand meantime had been reading the following letter:--
+
+
+“MY FRIEND,--I went to your rooms for a few minutes without your
+knowledge; I found my letters there, and took them away. This cannot
+be indifference, Armand, between us; and hatred would show itself quite
+differently. If you love me, make an end of this cruel play, or you will
+kill me, and afterwards, learning how much you were loved, you might be
+in despair. If I have not rightly understood you, if you have no feeling
+towards me but aversion, which implies both contempt and disgust, then
+I give up all hope. A man never recovers from those feelings. You will
+have no regrets. Dreadful though that thought may be, it will comfort me
+in my long sorrow. Regrets? Oh, my Armand, may I never know of them; if
+I thought that I had caused you a single regret----But, no, I will not
+tell you what desolation I should feel. I should be living still, and I
+could not be your wife; it would be too late!
+
+“Now that I have given myself wholly to you in thought, to whom else
+should I give myself?--to God. The eyes that you loved for a little
+while shall never look on another man’s face; and may the glory of God
+blind them to all besides. I shall never hear human voices more since I
+heard yours--so gentle at the first, so terrible yesterday; for it seems
+to me that I am still only on the morrow of your vengeance. And now
+may the will of God consume me. Between His wrath and yours, my friend,
+there will be nothing left for me but a little space for tears and
+prayers.
+
+“Perhaps you wonder why I write to you? Ah! do not think ill of me if I
+keep a gleam of hope, and give one last sigh to happy life before I take
+leave of it forever. I am in a hideous position. I feel all the inward
+serenity that comes when a great resolution has been taken, even while I
+hear the last growlings of the storm. When you went out on that terrible
+adventure which so drew me to you, Armand, you went from the desert to
+the oasis with a good guide to show you the way. Well, I am going out of
+the oasis into the desert, and you are a pitiless guide to me. And yet
+you only, my friend, can understand how melancholy it is to look back
+for the last time on happiness--to you, and you only, I can make moan
+without a blush. If you grant my entreaty, I shall be happy; if you are
+inexorable, I shall expiate the wrong that I have done. After all, it is
+natural, is it not, that a woman should wish to live, invested with all
+noble feelings, in her friend’s memory? Oh! my one and only love, let
+her to whom you gave life go down into the tomb in the belief that she
+is great in your eyes. Your harshness led me to reflect; and now that I
+love you so, it seems to me that I am less guilty than you think. Listen
+to my justification, I owe it to you; and you that are all the world to
+me, owe me at least a moment’s justice.
+
+“I have learned by my own anguish all that I made you suffer by my
+coquetry; but in those days I was utterly ignorant of love. _You_ know
+what the torture is, and you mete it out to me! During those first eight
+months that you gave me you never roused any feeling of love in me. Do
+you ask why this was so, my friend? I can no more explain it than I can
+tell you why I love you now. Oh! certainly it flattered my vanity that I
+should be the subject of your passionate talk, and receive those burning
+glances of yours; but you left me cold. No, I was not a woman; I had
+no conception of womanly devotion and happiness. Who was to blame? You
+would have despised me, would you not, if I had given myself without
+the impulse of passion? Perhaps it is the highest height to which we
+can rise--to give all and receive no joy; perhaps there is no merit in
+yielding oneself to bliss that is foreseen and ardently desired. Alas,
+my friend, I can say this now; these thoughts came to me when I played
+with you; and you seemed to me so great even then that I would not have
+you owe the gift to pity----What is this that I have written?
+
+“I have taken back all my letters; I am flinging them one by one on the
+fire; they are burning. You will never know what they confessed--all the
+love and the passion and the madness----
+
+“I will say no more, Armand; I will stop. I will not say another word of
+my feelings. If my prayers have not echoed from my soul through yours,
+I also, woman that I am, decline to owe your love to your pity. It is my
+wish to be loved, because you cannot choose but love me, or else to
+be left without mercy. If you refuse to read this letter, it shall be
+burnt. If, after you have read it, you do not come to me within three
+hours, to be henceforth forever my husband, the one man in the world for
+me; then I shall never blush to know that this letter is in your hands,
+the pride of my despair will protect my memory from all insult, and my
+end shall be worthy of my love. When you see me no more on earth, albeit
+I shall still be alive, you yourself will not think without a shudder
+of the woman who, in three hours’ time, will live only to overwhelm
+you with her tenderness; a woman consumed by a hopeless love, and
+faithful--not to memories of past joys--but to a love that was slighted.
+
+“The Duchesse de la Valliere wept for lost happiness and vanished power;
+but the Duchesse de Langeais will be happy that she may weep and be a
+power for you still. Yes, you will regret me. I see clearly that I was
+not of this world, and I thank you for making it clear to me.
+
+“Farewell; you will never touch _my_ axe. Yours was the executioner’s
+axe, mine is God’s; yours kills, mine saves. Your love was but mortal,
+it could not endure disdain or ridicule; mine can endure all things
+without growing weaker, it will last eternally. Ah! I feel a sombre joy
+in crushing you that believe yourself so great; in humbling you with the
+calm, indulgent smile of one of the least among the angels that lie at
+the feet of God, for to them is given the right and the power to protect
+and watch over men in His name. You have but felt fleeting desires,
+while the poor nun will shed the light of her ceaseless and ardent
+prayer about you, she will shelter you all your life long beneath the
+wings of a love that has nothing of earth in it.
+
+“I have a presentiment of your answer; our trysting place shall be--in
+heaven. Strength and weakness can both enter there, dear Armand; the
+strong and the weak are bound to suffer. This thought soothes the
+anguish of my final ordeal. So calm am I that I should fear that I had
+ceased to love you if I were not about to leave the world for your sake.
+
+                                                “ANTOINETTE.”
+
+
+“Dear Vidame,” said the Duchess as they reached Montriveau’s house, “do
+me the kindness to ask at the door whether he is at home.” The Vidame,
+obedient after the manner of the eighteenth century to a woman’s wish,
+got out, and came back to bring his cousin an affirmative answer that
+sent a shudder through her. She grasped his hand tightly in hers,
+suffered him to kiss her on either cheek, and begged him to go at once.
+He must not watch her movements nor try to protect her. “But the people
+passing in the street,” he objected.
+
+“No one can fail in respect to me,” she said. It was the last word
+spoken by the Duchess and the woman of fashion.
+
+The Vidame went. Mme de Langeais wrapped herself about in her cloak,
+and stood on the doorstep until the clocks struck eight. The last stroke
+died away. The unhappy woman waited ten, fifteen minutes; to the last
+she tried to see a fresh humiliation in the delay, then her faith ebbed.
+She turned to leave the fatal threshold.
+
+“Oh, God!” the cry broke from her in spite of herself; it was the first
+word spoken by the Carmelite.
+
+
+
+Montriveau and some of his friends were talking together. He tried to
+hasten them to a conclusion, but his clock was slow, and by the time he
+started out for the Hotel de Langeais the Duchess was hurrying on foot
+through the streets of Paris, goaded by the dull rage in her heart. She
+reached the Boulevard d’Enfer, and looked out for the last time through
+falling tears on the noisy, smoky city that lay below in a red mist,
+lighted up by its own lamps. Then she hailed a cab, and drove away,
+never to return. When the Marquis de Montriveau reached the Hotel de
+Langeais, and found no trace of his mistress, he thought that he had
+been duped. He hurried away at once to the Vidame, and found that worthy
+gentleman in the act of slipping on his flowered dressing-gown, thinking
+the while of his fair cousin’s happiness.
+
+Montriveau gave him one of the terrific glances that produced the effect
+of an electric shock on men and women alike.
+
+“Is it possible that you have lent yourself to some cruel hoax,
+monsieur?” Montriveau exclaimed. “I have just come from Mme de Langeais’
+house; the servants say that she is out.”
+
+“Then a great misfortune has happened, no doubt,” returned the Vidame,
+“and through your fault. I left the Duchess at your door----”
+
+“When?”
+
+“At a quarter to eight.”
+
+“Good evening,” returned Montriveau, and he hurried home to ask the
+porter whether he had seen a lady standing on the doorstep that evening.
+
+“Yes, my Lord Marquis, a handsome woman, who seemed very much put out.
+She was crying like a Magdalen, but she never made a sound, and stood
+as upright as a post. Then at last she went, and my wife and I that were
+watching her while she could not see us, heard her say, ‘Oh, God!’ so
+that it went to our hearts, asking your pardon, to hear her say it.”
+
+Montriveau, in spite of all his firmness, turned pale at those few
+words. He wrote a few lines to Ronquerolles, sent off the message at
+once, and went up to his rooms. Ronquerolles came just about midnight.
+
+Armand gave him the Duchess’s letter to read.
+
+“Well?” asked Ronquerolles.
+
+“She was here at my door at eight o’clock; at a quarter-past eight she
+had gone. I have lost her, and I love her. Oh! if my life were my own, I
+could blow my brains out.”
+
+“Pooh, pooh! Keep cool,” said Ronquerolles. “Duchesses do not fly off
+like wagtails. She cannot travel faster than three leagues an hour, and
+tomorrow we will ride six.--Confound it! Mme de Langeais is no ordinary
+woman,” he continued. “Tomorrow we will all of us mount and ride.
+The police will put us on her track during the day. She must have a
+carriage; angels of that sort have no wings. We shall find her whether
+she is on the road or hidden in Paris. There is the semaphore. We can
+stop her. You shall be happy. But, my dear fellow, you have made a
+blunder, of which men of your energy are very often guilty. They judge
+others by themselves, and do not know the point when human nature gives
+way if you strain the cords too tightly. Why did you not say a word
+to me sooner? I would have told you to be punctual. Good-bye till
+tomorrow,” he added, as Montriveau said nothing. “Sleep if you can,” he
+added, with a grasp of the hand.
+
+But the greatest resources which society has ever placed at the disposal
+of statesmen, kings, ministers, bankers, or any human power, in fact,
+were all exhausted in vain. Neither Montriveau nor his friends could
+find any trace of the Duchess. It was clear that she had entered a
+convent. Montriveau determined to search, or to institute a search, for
+her through every convent in the world. He must have her, even at the
+cost of all the lives in a town. And in justice to this extraordinary
+man, it must be said that his frenzied passion awoke to the same
+ardour daily and lasted through five years. Only in 1829 did the Duc de
+Navarreins hear by chance that his daughter had travelled to Spain as
+Lady Julia Hopwood’s maid, that she had left her service at Cadiz, and
+that Lady Julia never discovered that Mlle Caroline was the illustrious
+duchess whose sudden disappearance filled the minds of the highest
+society of Paris.
+
+
+
+The feelings of the two lovers when they met again on either side of the
+grating in the Carmelite convent should now be comprehended to the full,
+and the violence of the passion awakened in either soul will doubtless
+explain the catastrophe of the story.
+
+In 1823 the Duc de Langeais was dead, and his wife was free. Antoinette
+de Navarreins was living, consumed by love, on a ledge of rock in
+the Mediterranean; but it was in the Pope’s power to dissolve Sister
+Theresa’s vows. The happiness bought by so much love might yet bloom
+for the two lovers. These thoughts sent Montriveau flying from Cadiz to
+Marseilles, and from Marseilles to Paris.
+
+A few months after his return to France, a merchant brig, fitted out and
+munitioned for active service, set sail from the port of Marseilles for
+Spain. The vessel had been chartered by several distinguished men, most
+of them Frenchmen, who, smitten with a romantic passion for the East,
+wished to make a journey to those lands. Montriveau’s familiar knowledge
+of Eastern customs made him an invaluable travelling companion, and at
+the entreaty of the rest he had joined the expedition; the Minister
+of War appointed him lieutenant-general, and put him on the Artillery
+Commission to facilitate his departure.
+
+Twenty-fours hours later the brig lay to off the north-west shore of an
+island within sight of the Spanish coast. She had been specially chosen
+for her shallow keel and light mastage, so that she might lie at anchor
+in safety half a league away from the reefs that secure the island from
+approach in this direction. If fishing vessels or the people on the
+island caught sight of the brig, they were scarcely likely to feel
+suspicious of her at once; and besides, it was easy to give a reason for
+her presence without delay. Montriveau hoisted the flag of the United
+States before they came in sight of the island, and the crew of the
+vessel were all American sailors, who spoke nothing but English. One
+of M. de Montriveau’s companions took the men ashore in the ship’s
+longboat, and made them so drunk at an inn in the little town that
+they could not talk. Then he gave out that the brig was manned by
+treasure-seekers, a gang of men whose hobby was well known in the United
+States; indeed, some Spanish writer had written a history of them. The
+presence of the brig among the reefs was now sufficiently explained.
+The owners of the vessel, according to the self-styled boatswain’s mate,
+were looking for the wreck of a galleon which foundered thereabouts in
+1778 with a cargo of treasure from Mexico. The people at the inn and the
+authorities asked no more questions.
+
+Armand, and the devoted friends who were helping him in his difficult
+enterprise, were all from the first of the opinion that there was no
+hope of rescuing or carrying off Sister Theresa by force or stratagem
+from the side of the little town. Wherefore these bold spirits, with one
+accord, determined to take the bull by the horns. They would make a way
+to the convent at the most seemingly inaccessible point; like General
+Lamarque, at the storming of Capri, they would conquer Nature. The cliff
+at the end of the island, a sheer block of granite, afforded even less
+hold than the rock of Capri. So it seemed at least to Montriveau, who
+had taken part in that incredible exploit, while the nuns in his eyes
+were much more redoubtable than Sir Hudson Lowe. To raise a hubbub over
+carrying off the Duchess would cover them with confusion. They might as
+well set siege to the town and convent, like pirates, and leave not a
+single soul to tell of their victory. So for them their expedition wore
+but two aspects. There should be a conflagration and a feat of arms
+that should dismay all Europe, while the motives of the crime remained
+unknown; or, on the other hand, a mysterious, aerial descent which
+should persuade the nuns that the Devil himself had paid them a visit.
+They had decided upon the latter course in the secret council held
+before they left Paris, and subsequently everything had been done to
+insure the success of an expedition which promised some real excitement
+to jaded spirits weary of Paris and its pleasures.
+
+An extremely light pirogue, made at Marseilles on a Malayan model,
+enabled them to cross the reef, until the rocks rose from out of the
+water. Then two cables of iron wire were fastened several feet apart
+between one rock and another. These wire ropes slanted upwards and
+downwards in opposite directions, so that baskets of iron wire could
+travel to and fro along them; and in this manner the rocks were covered
+with a system of baskets and wire-cables, not unlike the filaments
+which a certain species of spider weaves about a tree. The Chinese, an
+essentially imitative people, were the first to take a lesson from the
+work of instinct. Fragile as these bridges were, they were always ready
+for use; high waves and the caprices of the sea could not throw them
+out of working order; the ropes hung just sufficiently slack, so as to
+present to the breakers that particular curve discovered by Cachin, the
+immortal creator of the harbour at Cherbourg. Against this cunningly
+devised line the angry surge is powerless; the law of that curve was
+a secret wrested from Nature by that faculty of observation in which
+nearly all human genius consists.
+
+M. de Montriveau’s companions were alone on board the vessel, and out of
+sight of every human eye. No one from the deck of a passing vessel could
+have discovered either the brig hidden among the reefs, or the men at
+work among the rocks; they lay below the ordinary range of the most
+powerful telescope. Eleven days were spent in preparation, before the
+Thirteen, with all their infernal power, could reach the foot of the
+cliffs. The body of the rock rose up straight from the sea to a height
+of thirty fathoms. Any attempt to climb the sheer wall of granite seemed
+impossible; a mouse might as well try to creep up the slippery sides of
+a plain china vase. Still there was a cleft, a straight line of fissure
+so fortunately placed that large blocks of wood could be wedged firmly
+into it at a distance of about a foot apart. Into these blocks the
+daring workers drove iron cramps, specially made for the purpose, with
+a broad iron bracket at the outer end, through which a hole had been
+drilled. Each bracket carried a light deal board which corresponded with
+a notch made in a pole that reached to the top of the cliffs, and was
+firmly planted in the beach at their feet. With ingenuity worthy of
+these men who found nothing impossible, one of their number, a skilled
+mathematician, had calculated the angle from which the steps must start;
+so that from the middle they rose gradually, like the sticks of a fan,
+to the top of the cliff, and descended in the same fashion to its
+base. That miraculously light, yet perfectly firm, staircase cost them
+twenty-two days of toil. A little tinder and the surf of the sea would
+destroy all trace of it forever in a single night. A betrayal of the
+secret was impossible; and all search for the violators of the convent
+was doomed to failure.
+
+At the top of the rock there was a platform with sheer precipice on all
+sides. The Thirteen, reconnoitring the ground with their glasses from
+the masthead, made certain that though the ascent was steep and rough,
+there would be no difficulty in gaining the convent garden, where the
+trees were thick enough for a hiding-place. After such great efforts
+they would not risk the success of their enterprise, and were compelled
+to wait till the moon passed out of her last quarter.
+
+For two nights Montriveau, wrapped in his cloak, lay out on the rock
+platform. The singing at vespers and matins filled him with unutterable
+joy. He stood under the wall to hear the music of the organ, listening
+intently for one voice among the rest. But in spite of the silence, the
+confused effect of music was all that reached his ears. In those sweet
+harmonies defects of execution are lost; the pure spirit of art comes
+into direct communication with the spirit of the hearer, making
+no demand on the attention, no strain on the power of listening.
+Intolerable memories awoke. All the love within him seemed to break into
+blossom again at the breath of that music; he tried to find auguries of
+happiness in the air. During the last night he sat with his eyes fixed
+upon an ungrated window, for bars were not needed on the side of the
+precipice. A light shone there all through the hours; and that instinct
+of the heart, which is sometimes true, and as often false, cried within
+him, “She is there!”
+
+“She is certainly there! Tomorrow she will be mine,” he said to himself,
+and joy blended with the slow tinkling of a bell that began to ring.
+
+Strange unaccountable workings of the heart! The nun, wasted by yearning
+love, worn out with tears and fasting, prayer and vigils; the woman of
+nine-and-twenty, who had passed through heavy trials, was loved more
+passionately than the lighthearted girl, the woman of four-and-twenty,
+the sylphide, had ever been. But is there not, for men of vigorous
+character, something attractive in the sublime expression engraven on
+women’s faces by the impetuous stirrings of thought and misfortunes of
+no ignoble kind? Is there not a beauty of suffering which is the most
+interesting of all beauty to those men who feel that within them there
+is an inexhaustible wealth of tenderness and consoling pity for a
+creature so gracious in weakness, so strong with love? It is the
+ordinary nature that is attracted by young, smooth, pink-and-white
+beauty, or, in one word, by prettiness. In some faces love awakens
+amid the wrinkles carved by sorrow and the ruin made by melancholy;
+Montriveau could not but feel drawn to these. For cannot a lover,
+with the voice of a great longing, call forth a wholly new creature? a
+creature athrob with the life but just begun breaks forth for him alone,
+from the outward form that is fair for him, and faded for all the world
+besides. Does he not love two women?--One of them, as others see her,
+is pale and wan and sad; but the other, the unseen love that his heart
+knows, is an angel who understands life through feeling, and is adorned
+in all her glory only for love’s high festivals.
+
+The General left his post before sunrise, but not before he had heard
+voices singing together, sweet voices full of tenderness sounding
+faintly from the cell. When he came down to the foot of the cliffs where
+his friends were waiting, he told them that never in his life had
+he felt such enthralling bliss, and in the few words there was that
+unmistakable thrill of repressed strong feeling, that magnificent
+utterance which all men respect.
+
+
+
+That night eleven of his devoted comrades made the ascent in the
+darkness. Each man carried a poniard, a provision of chocolate, and
+a set of house-breaking tools. They climbed the outer walls with
+scaling-ladders, and crossed the cemetery of the convent. Montriveau
+recognised the long, vaulted gallery through which he went to the
+parlour, and remembered the windows of the room. His plans were made and
+adopted in a moment. They would effect an entrance through one of the
+windows in the Carmelite’s half of the parlour, find their way along
+the corridors, ascertain whether the sister’s names were written on the
+doors, find Sister Theresa’s cell, surprise her as she slept, and carry
+her off, bound and gagged. The programme presented no difficulties to
+men who combined boldness and a convict’s dexterity with the knowledge
+peculiar to men of the world, especially as they would not scruple to
+give a stab to ensure silence.
+
+In two hours the bars were sawn through. Three men stood on guard
+outside, and two inside the parlour. The rest, barefooted, took up their
+posts along the corridor. Young Henri de Marsay, the most dexterous
+man among them, disguised by way of precaution in a Carmelite’s robe,
+exactly like the costume of the convent, led the way, and Montriveau
+came immediately behind him. The clock struck three just as the two men
+reached the dormitory cells. They soon saw the position. Everything was
+perfectly quiet. With the help of a dark lantern they read the names
+luckily written on every door, together with the picture of a saint or
+saints and the mystical words which every nun takes as a kind of
+motto for the beginning of her new life and the revelation of her
+last thought. Montriveau reached Sister Theresa’s door and read the
+inscription, _Sub invocatione sanctae matris Theresae_, and her motto,
+_Adoremus in aeternum_. Suddenly his companion laid a hand on his
+shoulder. A bright light was streaming through the chinks of the door.
+M. de Ronquerolles came up at that moment.
+
+“All the nuns are in the church,” he said; “they are beginning the
+Office for the Dead.”
+
+“I will stay here,” said Montriveau. “Go back into the parlour, and shut
+the door at the end of the passage.”
+
+He threw open the door and rushed in, preceded by his disguised
+companion, who let down the veil over his face.
+
+There before them lay the dead Duchess; her plank bed had been laid on
+the floor of the outer room of her cell, between two lighted candles.
+Neither Montriveau nor de Marsay spoke a word or uttered a cry; but they
+looked into each other’s faces. The General’s dumb gesture tried to say,
+“Let us carry her away!”
+
+“Quickly” shouted Ronquerolles, “the procession of nuns is leaving the
+church. You will be caught!”
+
+With magical swiftness of movement, prompted by an intense desire, the
+dead woman was carried into the convent parlour, passed through the
+window, and lowered from the walls before the Abbess, followed by the
+nuns, returned to take up Sister Theresa’s body. The sister left in
+charge had imprudently left her post; there were secrets that she longed
+to know; and so busy was she ransacking the inner room, that she heard
+nothing, and was horrified when she came back to find that the body was
+gone. Before the women, in their blank amazement, could think of making
+a search, the Duchess had been lowered by a cord to the foot of the
+crags, and Montriveau’s companions had destroyed all traces of their
+work. By nine o’clock that morning there was not a sign to show that
+either staircase or wire-cables had ever existed, and Sister Theresa’s
+body had been taken on board. The brig came into the port to ship her
+crew, and sailed that day.
+
+Montriveau, down in the cabin, was left alone with Antoinette
+de Navarreins. For some hours it seemed as if her dead face was
+transfigured for him by that unearthly beauty which the calm of death
+gives to the body before it perishes.
+
+“Look here,” said Ronquerolles when Montriveau reappeared on deck,
+“_that_ was a woman once, now it is nothing. Let us tie a cannon ball
+to both feet and throw the body overboard; and if ever you think of her
+again, think of her as of some book that you read as a boy.”
+
+“Yes,” assented Montriveau, “it is nothing now but a dream.”
+
+“That is sensible of you. Now, after this, have passions; but as for
+love, a man ought to know how to place it wisely; it is only a woman’s
+last love that can satisfy a man’s first love.”
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+  Note: The Duchesse de Langeais is the second part of a trilogy.
+  Part one is entitled Ferragus and part three is The Girl with
+  the Golden Eyes. In other addendum references all three stories
+  are usually combined under the title The Thirteen.
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Blamont-Chauvry, Princesse de
+       Madame Firmiani
+       The Lily of the Valley
+
+     Grandlieu, Duc Ferdinand de
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+
+     Granville, Comtesse Angelique de
+       A Second Home
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Keller, Madame Francois
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Langeais, Duc de
+       An Episode under the Terror
+
+     Langeais, Duchesse Antoinette de
+       Father Goriot
+       Ferragus
+
+     Marsay, Henri de
+       Ferragus
+       The Girl with the Golden Eyes
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Lily of the Valley
+       Father Goriot
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       A Marriage Settlement
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       The Ball at Sceaux
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Montriveau, General Marquis Armand de
+       Father Goriot
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Another Study of Woman
+       Pierrette
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Navarreins, Duc de
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Colonel Chabert
+       The Muse of the Department
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       The Peasantry
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       The Country Parson
+       The Magic Skin
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       Cousin Betty
+
+     Pamiers, Vidame de
+       Ferragus
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+
+     Ronquerolles, Marquis de
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Peasantry
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       A Woman of Thirty
+       Another Study of Woman
+       Ferragus
+       The Girl with the Golden Eyes
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Serizy, Comtesse de
+       A Start in Life
+       Ferragus
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       A Woman of Thirty
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     Soulanges, Comtesse Hortense de
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Peasantry
+
+     Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles-Maurice de
+       The Chouans
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       Gaudissart II
+
+
+
+
+
+III. THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES
+
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                    To Eugene Delacroix, Painter
+
+
+One of those sights in which most horror is to be encountered is,
+surely, the general aspect of the Parisian populace--a people fearful
+to behold, gaunt, yellow, tawny. Is not Paris a vast field in perpetual
+turmoil from a storm of interests beneath which are whirled along a crop
+of human beings, who are, more often than not, reaped by death, only to
+be born again as pinched as ever, men whose twisted and contorted faces
+give out at every pore the instinct, the desire, the poisons with
+which their brains are pregnant; not faces so much as masks; masks of
+weakness, masks of strength, masks of misery, masks of joy, masks of
+hypocrisy; all alike worn and stamped with the indelible signs of
+a panting cupidity? What is it they want? Gold or pleasure? A few
+observations upon the soul of Paris may explain the causes of its
+cadaverous physiognomy, which has but two ages--youth and decay: youth,
+wan and colorless; decay, painted to seem young. In looking at
+this excavated people, foreigners, who are not prone to reflection,
+experience at first a movement of disgust towards the capital, that
+vast workshop of delights, from which, in a short time, they cannot even
+extricate themselves, and where they stay willingly to be corrupted. A
+few words will suffice to justify physiologically the almost infernal
+hue of Parisian faces, for it is not in mere sport that Paris has been
+called a hell. Take the phrase for truth. There all is smoke and fire,
+everything gleams, crackles, flames, evaporates, dies out, then lights
+up again, with shooting sparks, and is consumed. In no other country has
+life ever been more ardent or acute. The social nature, even in fusion,
+seems to say after each completed work: “Pass on to another!” just as
+Nature says herself. Like Nature herself, this social nature is busied
+with insects and flowers of a day--ephemeral trifles; and so, too,
+it throws up fire and flame from its eternal crater. Perhaps, before
+analyzing the causes which lend a special physiognomy to each tribe of
+this intelligent and mobile nation, the general cause should be pointed
+out which bleaches and discolors, tints with blue or brown individuals
+in more or less degree.
+
+By dint of taking interest in everything, the Parisian ends by being
+interested in nothing. No emotion dominating his face, which friction
+has rubbed away, it turns gray like the faces of those houses upon which
+all kinds of dust and smoke have blown. In effect, the Parisian, with
+his indifference on the day for what the morrow will bring forth,
+lives like a child, whatever may be his age. He grumbles at everything,
+consoles himself for everything, jests at everything, forgets,
+desires, and tastes everything, seizes all with passion, quits all with
+indifference--his kings, his conquests, his glory, his idols of bronze
+or glass--as he throws away his stockings, his hats, and his fortune. In
+Paris no sentiment can withstand the drift of things, and their current
+compels a struggle in which the passions are relaxed: there love is
+a desire, and hatred a whim; there’s no true kinsman but the
+thousand-franc note, no better friend than the pawnbroker. This
+universal toleration bears its fruits, and in the salon, as in the
+street, there is no one _de trop_, there is no one absolutely useful,
+or absolutely harmful--knaves or fools, men of wit or integrity. There
+everything is tolerated: the government and the guillotine, religion and
+the cholera. You are always acceptable to this world, you will never
+be missed by it. What, then, is the dominating impulse in this country
+without morals, without faith, without any sentiment, wherein, however,
+every sentiment, belief, and moral has its origin and end? It is gold
+and pleasure. Take those two words for a lantern, and explore that great
+stucco cage, that hive with its black gutters, and follow the windings
+of that thought which agitates, sustains, and occupies it! Consider!
+And, in the first place, examine the world which possesses nothing.
+
+The artisan, the man of the proletariat, who uses his hands, his tongue,
+his back, his right arm, his five fingers, to live--well, this very man,
+who should be the first to economize his vital principle, outruns his
+strength, yokes his wife to some machine, wears out his child, and ties
+him to the wheel. The manufacturer--or I know not what secondary thread
+which sets in motion all these folk who with their foul hands mould
+and gild porcelain, sew coats and dresses, beat out iron, turn wood and
+steel, weave hemp, festoon crystal, imitate flowers, work woolen things,
+break in horses, dress harness, carve in copper, paint carriages, blow
+glass, corrode the diamond, polish metals, turn marble into leaves,
+labor on pebbles, deck out thought, tinge, bleach, or blacken
+everything--well, this middleman has come to that world of sweat and
+good-will, of study and patience, with promises of lavish wages, either
+in the name of the town’s caprices or with the voice of the monster
+dubbed speculation. Thus, these _quadrumanes_ set themselves to watch,
+work, and suffer, to fast, sweat, and bestir them. Then, careless of the
+future, greedy of pleasure, counting on their right arm as the painter
+on his palette, lords for one day, they throw their money on Mondays
+to the _cabarets_ which gird the town like a belt of mud, haunts of the
+most shameless of the daughters of Venus, in which the periodical money
+of this people, as ferocious in their pleasures as they are calm at
+work, is squandered as it had been at play. For five days, then, there
+is no repose for this laborious portion of Paris! It is given up to
+actions which make it warped and rough, lean and pale, gush forth with a
+thousand fits of creative energy. And then its pleasure, its repose,
+are an exhausting debauch, swarthy and black with blows, white with
+intoxication, or yellow with indigestion. It lasts but two days, but it
+steals to-morrow’s bread, the week’s soup, the wife’s dress, the child’s
+wretched rags. Men, born doubtless to be beautiful--for all creatures
+have a relative beauty--are enrolled from their childhood beneath the
+yoke of force, beneath the rule of the hammer, the chisel, the loom, and
+have been promptly vulcanized. Is not Vulcan, with his hideousness and
+his strength, the emblem of this strong and hideous nation--sublime
+in its mechanical intelligence, patient in its season, and once in a
+century terrible, inflammable as gunpowder, and ripe with brandy for
+the madness of revolution, with wits enough, in fine, to take fire at
+a captious word, which signifies to it always: Gold and Pleasure! If
+we comprise in it all those who hold out their hands for an alms, for
+lawful wages, or the five francs that are granted to every kind of
+Parisian prostitution, in short, for all the money well or ill earned,
+this people numbers three hundred thousand individuals. Were it not for
+the _cabarets_, would not the Government be overturned every Tuesday?
+Happily, by Tuesday, this people is glutted, sleeps off its pleasure, is
+penniless, and returns to its labor, to dry bread, stimulated by a need
+of material procreation, which has become a habit to it. None the
+less, this people has its phenomenal virtues, its complete men, unknown
+Napoleons, who are the type of its strength carried to its highest
+expression, and sum up its social capacity in an existence wherein
+thought and movement combine less to bring joy into it than to
+neutralize the action of sorrow.
+
+Chance has made an artisan economical, chance has favored him with
+forethought, he has been able to look forward, has met with a wife and
+found himself a father, and, after some years of hard privation, he
+embarks in some little draper’s business, hires a shop. If neither
+sickness nor vice blocks his way--if he has prospered--there is the
+sketch of this normal life.
+
+And, in the first place, hail to that king of Parisian activity, to whom
+time and space give way. Yes, hail to that being, composed of saltpetre
+and gas, who makes children for France during his laborious nights,
+and in the day multiplies his personality for the service, glory,
+and pleasure of his fellow-citizens. This man solves the problem
+of sufficing at once to his amiable wife, to his hearth, to the
+_Constitutionnel_, to his office, to the National Guard, to the opera,
+and to God; but, only in order that the _Constitutionnel_, his office,
+the National Guard, the opera, his wife, and God may be changed into
+coin. In fine, hail to an irreproachable pluralist. Up every day at five
+o’clock, he traverses like a bird the space which separates his dwelling
+from the Rue Montmartre. Let it blow or thunder, rain or snow, he is at
+the _Constitutionnel_, and waits there for the load of newspapers which
+he has undertaken to distribute. He receives this political bread with
+eagerness, takes it, bears it away. At nine o’clock he is in the bosom
+of his family, flings a jest to his wife, snatches a loud kiss from her,
+gulps down a cup of coffee, or scolds his children. At a quarter to ten
+he puts in an appearance at the _Mairie_. There, stuck upon a stool,
+like a parrot on its perch, warmed by Paris town, he registers until
+four o’clock, with never a tear or a smile, the deaths and births of an
+entire district. The sorrow, the happiness, of the parish flow beneath
+his pen--as the essence of the _Constitutionnel_ traveled before upon
+his shoulders. Nothing weighs upon him! He goes always straight before
+him, takes his patriotism ready made from the newspaper, contradicts no
+one, shouts or applauds with the world, and lives like a bird. Two yards
+from his parish, in the event of an important ceremony, he can yield
+his place to an assistant, and betake himself to chant a requiem from
+a stall in the church of which on Sundays he is the fairest ornament,
+where his is the most imposing voice, where he distorts his huge mouth
+with energy to thunder out a joyous _Amen_. So is he chorister. At four
+o’clock, freed from his official servitude, he reappears to shed joy and
+gaiety upon the most famous shop in the city. Happy is his wife, he has
+no time to be jealous: he is a man of action rather than of sentiment.
+His mere arrival spurs the young ladies at the counter; their bright
+eyes storm the customers; he expands in the midst of all the finery, the
+lace and muslin kerchiefs, that their cunning hands have wrought. Or,
+again, more often still, before his dinner he waits on a client, copies
+the page of a newspaper, or carries to the doorkeeper some goods that
+have been delayed. Every other day, at six, he is faithful to his
+post. A permanent bass for the chorus, he betakes himself to the opera,
+prepared to become a soldier or an arab, prisoner, savage, peasant,
+spirit, camel’s leg or lion, a devil or a genie, a slave or a
+eunuch, black or white; always ready to feign joy or sorrow, pity or
+astonishment, to utter cries that never vary, to hold his tongue, to
+hunt, or fight for Rome or Egypt, but always at heart--a huckster still.
+
+At midnight he returns--a man, the good husband, the tender father;
+he slips into the conjugal bed, his imagination still afire with the
+illusive forms of the operatic nymphs, and so turns to the profit
+of conjugal love the world’s depravities, the voluptuous curves of
+Taglioni’s leg. And finally, if he sleeps, he sleeps apace, and hurries
+through his slumber as he does his life.
+
+This man sums up all things--history, literature, politics, government,
+religion, military science. Is he not a living encyclopaedia, a
+grotesque Atlas; ceaselessly in motion, like Paris itself, and knowing
+not repose? He is all legs. No physiognomy could preserve its purity
+amid such toils. Perhaps the artisan who dies at thirty, an old man, his
+stomach tanned by repeated doses of brandy, will be held, according to
+certain leisured philosophers, to be happier than the huckster is.
+The one perishes in a breath, and the other by degrees. From his eight
+industries, from the labor of his shoulders, his throat, his hands,
+from his wife and his business, the one derives--as from so many
+farms--children, some thousands of francs, and the most laborious
+happiness that has ever diverted the heart of man. This fortune and
+these children, or the children who sum up everything for him, become
+the prey of the world above, to which he brings his ducats and his
+daughter or his son, reared at college, who, with more education than
+his father, raises higher his ambitious gaze. Often the son of a retail
+tradesman would fain be something in the State.
+
+Ambition of that sort carries on our thought to the second Parisian
+sphere. Go up one story, then, and descend to the _entresol_: or climb
+down from the attic and remain on the fourth floor; in fine, penetrate
+into the world which has possessions: the same result! Wholesale
+merchants, and their men--people with small banking accounts and much
+integrity--rogues and catspaws, clerks old and young, sheriffs’ clerks,
+barristers’ clerks, solicitors’ clerks; in fine, all the working,
+thinking, and speculating members of that lower middle class which
+honeycombs the interests of Paris and watches over its granary,
+accumulates the coin, stores the products that the proletariat have
+made, preserves the fruits of the South, the fishes, the wine from every
+sun-favored hill; which stretches its hands over the Orient, and takes
+from it the shawls that the Russ and the Turk despise; which harvests
+even from the Indies; crouches down in expectation of a sale, greedy
+of profit; which discounts bills, turns over and collects all kinds of
+securities, holds all Paris in its hand, watches over the fantasies
+of children, spies out the caprices and the vices of mature age,
+sucks money out of disease. Even so, if they drink no brandy, like the
+artisan, nor wallow in the mire of debauch, all equally abuse their
+strength, immeasurably strain their bodies and their minds alike, are
+burned away with desires, devastated with the swiftness of the pace. In
+their case the physical distortion is accomplished beneath the whip of
+interests, beneath the scourge of ambitions which torture the educated
+portion of this monstrous city, just as in the case of the proletariat
+it is brought about by the cruel see-saw of the material elaborations
+perpetually required from the despotism of the aristocratic “_I will_.”
+ Here, too, then, in order to obey that universal master, pleasure or
+gold, they must devour time, hasten time, find more than four-and-twenty
+hours in the day and night, waste themselves, slay themselves, and
+purchase two years of unhealthy repose with thirty years of old age.
+Only, the working-man dies in hospital when the last term of his stunted
+growth expires; whereas the man of the middle class is set upon living,
+and lives on, but in a state of idiocy. You will meet him, with his
+worn, flat old face, with no light in his eyes, with no strength in his
+limbs, dragging himself with a dazed air along the boulevard--the belt
+of his Venus, of his beloved city. What was his want? The sabre of the
+National Guard, a permanent stock-pot, a decent plot in Pere Lachaise,
+and, for his old age, a little gold honestly earned. _HIS_ Monday is on
+Sunday, his rest a drive in a hired carriage--a country excursion during
+which his wife and children glut themselves merrily with dust or bask
+in the sun; his dissipation is at the restaurateur’s, whose poisonous
+dinner has won renown, or at some family ball, where he suffocates till
+midnight. Some fools are surprised at the phantasmagoria of the monads
+which they see with the aid of the microscope in a drop of water;
+but what would Rabelais’ Gargantua,--that misunderstood figure of
+an audacity so sublime,--what would that giant say, fallen from the
+celestial spheres, if he amused himself by contemplating the motions of
+this secondary life of Paris, of which here is one of the formulae? Have
+you seen one of those little constructions--cold in summer, and with
+no other warmth than a small stove in winter--placed beneath the vast
+copper dome which crowns the Halle-auble? Madame is there by morning.
+She is engaged at the markets, and makes by this occupation twelve
+thousand francs a year, people say. Monsieur, when Madame is up, passes
+into a gloomy office, where he lends money till the week-end to the
+tradesmen of his district. By nine o’clock he is at the passport office,
+of which he is one of the minor officials. By evening he is at the
+box-office of the Theatre Italien, or of any other theatre you like. The
+children are put out to nurse, and only return to be sent to college or
+to boarding-school. Monsieur and Madame live on the third floor, have
+but one cook, give dances in a salon twelve foot by eight, lit by
+argand lamps; but they give a hundred and fifty thousand francs to their
+daughter, and retire at the age of fifty, an age when they begin to show
+themselves on the balcony of the opera, in a _fiacre_ at Longchamps; or,
+on sunny days, in faded clothes on the boulevards--the fruit of all this
+sowing. Respected by their neighbors, in good odor with the government,
+connected with the upper middle classes, Monsieur obtains at sixty-five
+the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and his daughter’s father-in-law, a
+parochial mayor, invites him to his evenings. These life-long labors,
+then, are for the good of the children, whom these lower middle classes
+are inevitably driven to exalt. Thus each sphere directs all its efforts
+towards the sphere above it. The son of the rich grocer becomes a
+notary, the son of the timber merchant becomes a magistrate. No link
+is wanting in the chain, and everything stimulates the upward march of
+money.
+
+Thus we are brought to the third circle of this hell, which, perhaps,
+will some day find its Dante. In this third social circle, a sort of
+Parisian belly, in which the interests of the town are digested, and
+where they are condensed into the form known as _business_, there moves
+and agitates, as by some acrid and bitter intestinal process, the crowd
+of lawyers, doctors, notaries, councillors, business men, bankers, big
+merchants, speculators, and magistrates. Here are to be found even
+more causes of moral and physical destruction than elsewhere. These
+people--almost all of them--live in unhealthy offices, in fetid
+ante-chambers, in little barred dens, and spend their days bowed down
+beneath the weight of affairs; they rise at dawn to be in time, not to
+be left behind, to gain all or not to lose, to overreach a man or his
+money, to open or wind up some business, to take advantage of some
+fleeting opportunity, to get a man hanged or set him free. They infect
+their horses, they overdrive and age and break them, like their own
+legs, before their time. Time is their tyrant: it fails them, it escapes
+them; they can neither expand it nor cut it short. What soul can remain
+great, pure, moral, and generous, and, consequently, what face retain
+its beauty in this depraving practice of a calling which compels one to
+bear the weight of the public sorrows, to analyze them, to weigh them,
+estimate them, and mark them out by rule? Where do these folk put aside
+their hearts?... I do not know; but they leave them somewhere or other,
+when they have any, before they descend each morning into the abyss of
+the misery which puts families on the rack. For them there is no such
+thing as mystery; they see the reverse side of society, whose confessors
+they are, and despise it. Then, whatever they do, owing to their contact
+with corruption, they either are horrified at it and grow gloomy, or
+else, out of lassitude, or some secret compromise, espouse it. In fine,
+they necessarily become callous to every sentiment, since man, his laws
+and his institutions, make them steal, like jackals, from corpses that
+are still warm. At all hours the financier is trampling on the living,
+the attorney on the dead, the pleader on the conscience. Forced to be
+speaking without a rest, they all substitute words for ideas, phrases
+for feelings, and their soul becomes a larynx. Neither the great
+merchant, nor the judge, nor the pleader preserves his sense of right;
+they feel no more, they apply set rules that leave cases out of count.
+Borne along by their headlong course, they are neither husbands nor
+fathers nor lovers; they glide on sledges over the facts of life, and
+live at all times at the high pressure conduced by business and the vast
+city. When they return to their homes they are required to go to a ball,
+to the opera, into society, where they can make clients, acquaintances,
+protectors. They all eat to excess, play and keep vigil, and their faces
+become bloated, flushed, and emaciated.
+
+To this terrific expenditure of intellectual strength, to such multifold
+moral contradictions, they oppose--not, indeed pleasure, it would be too
+pale a contrast--but debauchery, a debauchery both secret and alarming,
+for they have all means at their disposal, and fix the morality of
+society. Their genuine stupidity lies hid beneath their specialism. They
+know their business, but are ignorant of everything which is outside
+it. So that to preserve their self-conceit they question everything, are
+crudely and crookedly critical. They appear to be sceptics and are in
+reality simpletons; they swamp their wits in interminable arguments.
+Almost all conveniently adopt social, literary, or political prejudices,
+to do away with the need of having opinions, just as they adapt their
+conscience to the standard of the Code or the Tribunal of Commerce.
+Having started early to become men of note, they turn into mediocrities,
+and crawl over the high places of the world. So, too, their faces
+present the harsh pallor, the deceitful coloring, those dull, tarnished
+eyes, and garrulous, sensual mouths, in which the observer recognizes
+the symptoms of the degeneracy of the thought and its rotation in the
+circle of a special idea which destroys the creative faculties of the
+brain and the gift of seeing in large, of generalizing and deducing. No
+man who has allowed himself to be caught in the revolutions of the gear
+of these huge machines can ever become great. If he is a doctor, either
+he has practised little or he is an exception--a Bichat who dies young.
+If a great merchant, something remains--he is almost Jacques Coeur. Did
+Robespierre practise? Danton was an idler who waited. But who, moreover
+has ever felt envious of the figures of Danton and Robespierre, however
+lofty they were? These men of affairs, _par excellence_, attract money
+to them, and hoard it in order to ally themselves with aristocratic
+families. If the ambition of the working-man is that of the small
+tradesman, here, too, are the same passions. The type of this class
+might be either an ambitious bourgeois, who, after a life of privation
+and continual scheming, passes into the Council of State as an ant
+passes through a chink; or some newspaper editor, jaded with intrigue,
+whom the king makes a peer of France--perhaps to revenge himself on the
+nobility; or some notary become mayor of his parish: all people crushed
+with business, who, if they attain their end, are literally _killed_ in
+its attainment. In France the usage is to glorify wigs. Napoleon, Louis
+XVI., the great rulers, alone have always wished for young men to fulfil
+their projects.
+
+Above this sphere the artist world exists. But here, too, the faces
+stamped with the seal of originality are worn, nobly indeed, but worn,
+fatigued, nervous. Harassed by a need of production, outrun by their
+costly fantasies, worn out by devouring genius, hungry for pleasure, the
+artists of Paris would all regain by excessive labor what they have lost
+by idleness, and vainly seek to reconcile the world and glory, money
+and art. To begin with, the artist is ceaselessly panting under his
+creditors; his necessities beget his debts, and his debts require of
+him his nights. After his labor, his pleasure. The comedian plays till
+midnight, studies in the morning, rehearses at noon; the sculptor is
+bent before his statue; the journalist is a marching thought, like the
+soldier when at war; the painter who is the fashion is crushed with
+work, the painter with no occupation, if he feels himself to be a man of
+genius, gnaws his entrails. Competition, rivalry, calumny assail talent.
+Some, in desperation, plunge into the abyss of vice, others die young
+and unknown because they have discounted their future too soon. Few of
+these figures, originally sublime, remain beautiful. On the other hand,
+the flagrant beauty of their heads is not understood. An artist’s face
+is always exorbitant, it is always above or below the conventional lines
+of what fools call the _beau-ideal_. What power is it that destroys
+them? Passion. Every passion in Paris resolves into two terms: gold and
+pleasure. Now, do you not breathe again? Do you not feel air and space
+purified? Here is neither labor nor suffering. The soaring arch of
+gold has reached the summit. From the lowest gutters, where its
+stream commences, from the little shops where it is stopped by puny
+coffer-dams, from the heart of the counting-houses and great workshops,
+where its volume is that of ingots--gold, in the shape of dowries and
+inheritances, guided by the hands of young girls or the bony fingers of
+age, courses towards the aristocracy, where it will become a blazing,
+expansive stream. But, before leaving the four territories upon which
+the utmost wealth of Paris is based, it is fitting, having cited the
+moral causes, to deduce those which are physical, and to call attention
+to a pestilence, latent, as it were, which incessantly acts upon the
+faces of the porter, the artisan, the small shopkeeper; to point out
+a deleterious influence the corruption of which equals that of the
+Parisian administrators who allow it so complacently to exist!
+
+If the air of the houses in which the greater proportion of the middle
+classes live is noxious, if the atmosphere of the streets belches out
+cruel miasmas into stuffy back-kitchens where there is little air,
+realize that, apart from this pestilence, the forty thousand houses of
+this great city have their foundations in filth, which the powers that
+be have not yet seriously attempted to enclose with mortar walls solid
+enough to prevent even the most fetid mud from filtering through the
+soil, poisoning the wells, and maintaining subterraneously to Lutetia
+the tradition of her celebrated name. Half of Paris sleeps amidst the
+putrid exhalations of courts and streets and sewers. But let us turn
+to the vast saloons, gilded and airy; the hotels in their gardens,
+the rich, indolent, happy moneyed world. There the faces are lined and
+scarred with vanity. There nothing is real. To seek for pleasure is it
+not to find _ennui_? People in society have at an early age warped their
+nature. Having no occupation other than to wallow in pleasure, they
+have speedily misused their sense, as the artisan has misused brandy.
+Pleasure is of the nature of certain medical substances: in order to
+obtain constantly the same effects the doses must be doubled, and death
+or degradation is contained in the last. All the lower classes are on
+their knees before the wealthy, and watch their tastes in order to turn
+them into vices and exploit them. Thus you see in these folk at an early
+age tastes instead of passions, romantic fantasies and lukewarm loves.
+There impotence reigns; there ideas have ceased--they have evaporated
+together with energy amongst the affectations of the boudoir and the
+cajolements of women. There are fledglings of forty, old doctors
+of sixty years. The wealthy obtain in Paris ready-made wit and
+science--formulated opinions which save them the need of having wit,
+science, or opinion of their own. The irrationality of this world is
+equaled by its weakness and its licentiousness. It is greedy of time
+to the point of wasting it. Seek in it for affection as little as
+for ideas. Its kisses conceal a profound indifference, its urbanity
+a perpetual contempt. It has no other fashion of love. Flashes of wit
+without profundity, a wealth of indiscretion, scandal, and above all,
+commonplace. Such is the sum of its speech; but these happy fortunates
+pretend that they do not meet to make and repeat maxims in the manner of
+La Rochefoucauld as though there did not exist a mean, invented by the
+eighteenth century, between a superfluity and absolute blank. If a few
+men of character indulge in witticism, at once subtle and refined, they
+are misunderstood; soon, tired of giving without receiving, they remain
+at home, and leave fools to reign over their territory. This hollow
+life, this perpetual expectation of a pleasure which never comes, this
+permanent _ennui_ and emptiness of soul, heart, and mind, the lassitude
+of the upper Parisian world, is reproduced on its features, and stamps
+its parchment faces, its premature wrinkles, that physiognomy of the
+wealthy upon which impotence has set its grimace, in which gold is
+mirrored, and whence intelligence has fled.
+
+Such a view of moral Paris proves that physical Paris could not be other
+than it is. This coroneted town is like a queen, who, being always
+with child, has desires of irresistible fury. Paris is the crown of the
+world, a brain which perishes of genius and leads human civilization;
+it is a great man, a perpetually creative artist, a politician with
+second-sight who must of necessity have wrinkles on his forehead, the
+vices of a great man, the fantasies of the artist, and the politician’s
+disillusions. Its physiognomy suggests the evolution of good and evil,
+battle and victory; the moral combat of ‘89, the clarion calls of which
+still re-echo in every corner of the world; and also the downfall of
+1814. Thus this city can no more be moral, or cordial, or clean, than
+the engines which impel those proud leviathans which you admire
+when they cleave the waves! Is not Paris a sublime vessel laden with
+intelligence? Yes, her arms are one of those oracles which fatality
+sometimes allows. The _City of Paris_ has her great mast, all of bronze,
+carved with victories, and for watchman--Napoleon. The barque may roll
+and pitch, but she cleaves the world, illuminates it through the hundred
+mouths of her tribunes, ploughs the seas of science, rides with
+full sail, cries from the height of her tops, with the voice of her
+scientists and artists: “Onward, advance! Follow me!” She carries a
+huge crew, which delights in adorning her with fresh streamers. Boys
+and urchins laughing in the rigging; ballast of heavy _bourgeoisie_;
+working-men and sailor-men touched with tar; in her cabins the lucky
+passengers; elegant midshipmen smoke their cigars leaning over the
+bulwarks; then, on the deck, her soldiers, innovators or ambitious,
+would accost every fresh shore, and shooting out their bright lights
+upon it, ask for glory which is pleasure, or for love which needs gold.
+
+Thus the exorbitant movement of the proletariat, the corrupting
+influence of the interests which consume the two middle classes, the
+cruelties of the artist’s thought, and the excessive pleasure which is
+sought for incessantly by the great, explain the normal ugliness of
+the Parisian physiognomy. It is only in the Orient that the human race
+presents a magnificent figure, but that is an effect of the constant
+calm affected by those profound philosophers with their long pipes,
+their short legs, their square contour, who despise and hold activity
+in horror, whilst in Paris the little and the great and the mediocre run
+and leap and drive, whipped on by an inexorable goddess, Necessity--the
+necessity for money, glory, and amusement. Thus, any face which is fresh
+and graceful and reposeful, any really young face, is in Paris the most
+extraordinary of exceptions; it is met with rarely. Should you see one
+there, be sure it belongs either to a young and ardent ecclesiastic or
+to some good abbe of forty with three chins; to a young girl of pure
+life such as is brought up in certain middle-class families; to a mother
+of twenty, still full of illusions, as she suckles her first-born; to a
+young man newly embarked from the provinces, and intrusted to the care
+of some devout dowager who keeps him without a sou; or, perhaps, to some
+shop assistant who goes to bed at midnight wearied out with folding
+and unfolding calico, and rises at seven o’clock to arrange the window;
+often again to some man of science or poetry, who lives monastically in
+the embrace of a fine idea, who remains sober, patient, and chaste;
+else to some self-contented fool, feeding himself on folly, reeking of
+health, in a perpetual state of absorption with his own smile; or to the
+soft and happy race of loungers, the only folk really happy in Paris,
+which unfolds for them hour by hour its moving poetry.
+
+Nevertheless, there is in Paris a proportion of privileged beings to
+whom this excessive movement of industries, interests, affairs, arts,
+and gold is profitable. These beings are women. Although they also have
+a thousand secret causes which, here more than elsewhere, destroy their
+physiognomy, there are to be found in the feminine world little happy
+colonies, who live in Oriental fashion and can preserve their beauty;
+but these women rarely show themselves on foot in the streets, they lie
+hid like rare plants who only unfold their petals at certain hours, and
+constitute veritable exotic exceptions. However, Paris is essentially
+the country of contrasts. If true sentiments are rare there, there also
+are to be found, as elsewhere, noble friendships and unlimited devotion.
+On this battlefield of interests and passions, just as in the midst
+of those marching societies where egoism triumphs, where every one
+is obliged to defend himself, and which we call _armies_, it seems as
+though sentiments liked to be complete when they showed themselves,
+and are sublime by juxtaposition. So it is with faces. In Paris one
+sometimes sees in the aristocracy, set like stars, the ravishing faces
+of young people, the fruit of quite exceptional manners and education.
+To the youthful beauty of the English stock they unite the firmness
+of Southern traits. The fire of their eyes, a delicious bloom on their
+lips, the lustrous black of their soft locks, a white complexion, a
+distinguished caste of features, render them the flowers of the human
+race, magnificent to behold against the mass of other faces, worn, old,
+wrinkled, and grimacing. So women, too, admire such young people with
+that eager pleasure which men take in watching a pretty girl, elegant,
+gracious, and embellished with all the virginal charms with which our
+imagination pleases to adorn the perfect woman. If this hurried glance
+at the population of Paris has enabled us to conceive the rarity of a
+Raphaelesque face, and the passionate admiration which such an one must
+inspire at the first sight, the prime interest of our history will have
+been justified. _Quod erat demonstrandum_--if one may be permitted to
+apply scholastic formulae to the science of manners.
+
+Upon one of those fine spring mornings, when the leaves, although
+unfolded, are not yet green, when the sun begins to gild the roofs, and
+the sky is blue, when the population of Paris issues from its cells to
+swarm along the boulevards, glides like a serpent of a thousand coils
+through the Rue de la Paix towards the Tuileries, saluting the hymeneal
+magnificence which the country puts on; on one of these joyous days,
+then, a young man as beautiful as the day itself, dressed with taste,
+easy of manner--to let out the secret he was a love-child, the natural
+son of Lord Dudley and the famous Marquise de Vordac--was walking in the
+great avenue of the Tuileries. This Adonis, by name Henri de Marsay,
+was born in France, when Lord Dudley had just married the young lady,
+already Henri’s mother, to an old gentleman called M. de Marsay. This
+faded and almost extinguished butterfly recognized the child as his own
+in consideration of the life interest in a fund of a hundred thousand
+francs definitively assigned to his putative son; a generosity which
+did not cost Lord Dudley too dear. French funds were worth at that time
+seventeen francs, fifty centimes. The old gentleman died without having
+ever known his wife. Madame de Marsay subsequently married the Marquis
+de Vordac, but before becoming a marquise she showed very little anxiety
+as to her son and Lord Dudley. To begin with, the declaration of war
+between France and England had separated the two lovers, and fidelity
+at all costs was not, and never will be, the fashion of Paris. Then the
+successes of the woman, elegant, pretty, universally adored, crushed in
+the Parisienne the maternal sentiment. Lord Dudley was no more troubled
+about his offspring than was the mother,--the speedy infidelity of a
+young girl he had ardently loved gave him, perhaps, a sort of aversion
+for all that issued from her. Moreover, fathers can, perhaps, only love
+the children with whom they are fully acquainted, a social belief of the
+utmost importance for the peace of families, which should be held by all
+the celibate, proving as it does that paternity is a sentiment nourished
+artificially by woman, custom, and the law.
+
+Poor Henri de Marsay knew no other father than that one of the two who
+was not compelled to be one. The paternity of M. de Marsay was naturally
+most incomplete. In the natural order, it is but for a few fleeting
+instants that children have a father, and M. de Marsay imitated nature.
+The worthy man would not have sold his name had he been free from
+vices. Thus he squandered without remorse in gambling hells, and drank
+elsewhere, the few dividends which the National Treasury paid to
+its bondholders. Then he handed over the child to an aged sister, a
+Demoiselle de Marsay, who took much care of him, and provided him, out
+of the meagre sum allowed by her brother, with a tutor, an abbe without
+a farthing, who took the measure of the youth’s future, and determined
+to pay himself out of the hundred thousand livres for the care given to
+his pupil, for whom he conceived an affection. As chance had it, this
+tutor was a true priest, one of those ecclesiastics cut out to become
+cardinals in France, or Borgias beneath the tiara. He taught the child
+in three years what he might have learned at college in ten. Then the
+great man, by name the Abbe de Maronis, completed the education of
+his pupil by making him study civilization under all its aspects: he
+nourished him on his experience, led him little into churches, which
+at that time were closed; introduced him sometimes behind the scenes of
+theatres, more often into the houses of courtesans; he exhibited human
+emotions to him one by one; taught him politics in the drawing-rooms,
+where they simmered at the time, explained to him the machinery of
+government, and endeavored out of attraction towards a fine nature,
+deserted, yet rich in promise, virilely to replace a mother: is not the
+Church the mother of orphans? The pupil was responsive to so much care.
+The worthy priest died in 1812, a bishop, with the satisfaction of
+having left in this world a child whose heart and mind were so well
+moulded that he could outwit a man of forty. Who would have expected to
+have found a heart of bronze, a brain of steel, beneath external traits
+as seductive as ever the old painters, those naive artists, had given to
+the serpent in the terrestrial paradise? Nor was that all. In addition,
+the good-natured prelate had procured for the child of his choice
+certain acquaintances in the best Parisian society, which might equal
+in value, in the young man’s hand, another hundred thousand invested
+livres. In fine, this priest, vicious but politic, sceptical yet
+learned, treacherous yet amiable, weak in appearance yet as vigorous
+physically as intellectually, was so genuinely useful to his pupil, so
+complacent to his vices, so fine a calculator of all kinds of strength,
+so profound when it was needful to make some human reckoning, so
+youthful at table, at Frascati, at--I know not where, that the grateful
+Henri de Marsay was hardly moved at aught in 1814, except when he looked
+at the portrait of his beloved bishop, the only personal possession
+which the prelate had been able to bequeath him (admirable type of
+the men whose genius will preserve the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman
+Church, compromised for the moment by the feebleness of its recruits and
+the decrepit age of its pontiffs; but if the church likes!).
+
+The continental war prevented young De Marsay from knowing his real
+father. It is doubtful whether he was aware of his name. A deserted
+child, he was equally ignorant of Madame de Marsay. Naturally, he had
+little regret for his putative father. As for Mademoiselle de Marsay,
+his only mother, he built for her a handsome little monument in Pere
+Lachaise when she died. Monseigneur de Maronis had guaranteed to this
+old lady one of the best places in the skies, so that when he saw her
+die happy, Henri gave her some egotistical tears; he began to weep on
+his own account. Observing this grief, the abbe dried his pupil’s tears,
+bidding him observe that the good woman took her snuff most offensively,
+and was becoming so ugly and deaf and tedious that he ought to return
+thanks for her death. The bishop had emancipated his pupil in 1811.
+Then, when the mother of M. de Marsay remarried, the priest chose, in a
+family council, one of those honest dullards, picked out by him through
+the windows of his confessional, and charged him with the administration
+of the fortune, the revenues of which he was willing to apply to the
+needs of the community, but of which he wished to preserve the capital.
+
+Towards the end of 1814, then, Henri de Marsay had no sentiment of
+obligation in the world, and was as free as an unmated bird. Although he
+had lived twenty-two years he appeared to be barely seventeen. As a rule
+the most fastidious of his rivals considered him to be the prettiest
+youth in Paris. From his father, Lord Dudley, he had derived a pair of
+the most amorously deceiving blue eyes; from his mother the bushiest of
+black hair, from both pure blood, the skin of a young girl, a gentle
+and modest expression, a refined and aristocratic figure, and beautiful
+hands. For a woman, to see him was to lose her head for him; do you
+understand? to conceive one of those desires which eat the heart, which
+are forgotten because of the impossibility of satisfying them, because
+women in Paris are commonly without tenacity. Few of them say to
+themselves, after the fashion of men, the “_Je Maintiendrai_,” of the
+House of Orange.
+
+Underneath this fresh young life, and in spite of the limpid springs in
+his eyes, Henri had a lion’s courage, a monkey’s agility. He could cut a
+ball in half at ten paces on the blade of a knife; he rode his horse
+in a way that made you realize the fable of the Centaur; drove a
+four-in-hand with grace; was as light as a cherub and quiet as a lamb,
+but knew how to beat a townsman at the terrible game of _savate_ or
+cudgels; moreover, he played the piano in a fashion which would have
+enabled him to become an artist should he fall on calamity, and owned
+a voice which would have been worth to Barbaja fifty thousand francs a
+season. Alas, that all these fine qualities, these pretty faults, were
+tarnished by one abominable vice: he believed neither in man nor woman,
+God nor Devil. Capricious nature had commenced by endowing him, a priest
+had completed the work.
+
+To render this adventure comprehensible, it is necessary to add here
+that Lord Dudley naturally found many women disposed to reproduce
+samples of such a delicious pattern. His second masterpiece of this
+kind was a young girl named Euphemie, born of a Spanish lady, reared in
+Havana, and brought to Madrid with a young Creole woman of the Antilles,
+and with all the ruinous tastes of the Colonies, but fortunately married
+to an old and extremely rich Spanish noble, Don Hijos, Marquis de
+San-Real, who, since the occupation of Spain by French troops, had taken
+up his abode in Paris, and lived in the Rue St. Lazare. As much from
+indifference as from any respect for the innocence of youth, Lord Dudley
+was not in the habit of keeping his children informed of the relations
+he created for them in all parts. That is a slightly inconvenient form
+of civilization; it has so many advantages that we must overlook its
+drawbacks in consideration of its benefits. Lord Dudley, to make no more
+words of it, came to Paris in 1816 to take refuge from the pursuit of
+English justice, which protects nothing Oriental except commerce. The
+exiled lord, when he saw Henri, asked who that handsome young man might
+be. Then, upon hearing the name, “Ah, it is my son.... What a pity!” he
+said.
+
+Such was the story of the young man who, about the middle of the month
+of April, 1815, was walking indolently up the broad avenue of the
+Tuileries, after the fashion of all those animals who, knowing their
+strength, pass along in majesty and peace. Middle-class matrons turned
+back naively to look at him again; other women, without turning round,
+waited for him to pass again, and engraved him in their minds that they
+might remember in due season that fragrant face, which would not have
+disadorned the body of the fairest among themselves.
+
+“What are you doing here on Sunday?” said the Marquis de Ronquerolles to
+Henri, as he passed.
+
+“There’s a fish in the net,” answered the young man.
+
+This exchange of thoughts was accomplished by means of two significant
+glances, without it appearing that either De Ronquerolles or De Marsay
+had any knowledge of the other. The young man was taking note of the
+passers-by with that promptitude of eye and ear which is peculiar to the
+Parisian who seems, at first, to see and hear nothing, but who sees and
+hears all.
+
+At that moment a young man came up to him and took him familiarly by the
+arm, saying to him: “How are you, my dear De Marsay?”
+
+“Extremely well,” De Marsay answered, with that air of apparent
+affection which amongst the young men of Paris proves nothing, either
+for the present or the future.
+
+In effect, the youth of Paris resemble the youth of no other town. They
+may be divided into two classes: the young man who has something, and
+the young man who has nothing; or the young man who thinks and he who
+spends. But, be it well understood this applies only to those natives of
+the soil who maintain in Paris the delicious course of the elegant life.
+There exist, as well, plenty of other young men, but they are children
+who are late in conceiving Parisian life, and who remain its dupes. They
+do not speculate, they study; they _fag_, as the others say. Finally
+there are to be found, besides, certain young people, rich or poor, who
+embrace careers and follow them with a single heart; they are somewhat
+like the Emile of Rousseau, of the flesh of citizens, and they never
+appear in society. The diplomatic impolitely dub them fools. Be they
+that or no, they augment the number of those mediocrities beneath the
+yoke of which France is bowed down. They are always there, always ready
+to bungle public or private concerns with the dull trowel of their
+mediocrity, bragging of their impotence, which they count for
+conduct and integrity. This sort of social _prizemen_ infests the
+administration, the army, the magistracy, the chambers, the courts. They
+diminish and level down the country and constitute, in some manner, in
+the body politic, a lymph which infects it and renders it flabby. These
+honest folk call men of talent immoral or rogues. If such rogues require
+to be paid for their services, at least their services are there;
+whereas the other sort do harm and are respected by the mob; but,
+happily for France, elegant youth stigmatizes them ceaselessly under the
+name of louts.
+
+At the first glance, then, it is natural to consider as very distinct
+the two sorts of young men who lead the life of elegance, the amiable
+corporation to which Henri de Marsay belonged. But the observer, who
+goes beyond the superficial aspect of things, is soon convinced that
+the difference is purely moral, and that nothing is so deceptive as this
+pretty outside. Nevertheless, all alike take precedence over everybody
+else; speak rightly or wrongly of things, of men, literature, and the
+fine arts; have ever in their mouth the Pitt and Coburg of each year;
+interrupt a conversation with a pun, turn into ridicule science and the
+_savant_; despise all things which they do not know or which they fear;
+set themselves above all by constituting themselves the supreme
+judges of all. They would all hoax their fathers, and be ready to shed
+crocodile tears upon their mothers’ breasts; but generally they believe
+in nothing, blaspheme women, or play at modesty, and in reality are led
+by some old woman or an evil courtesan. They are all equally eaten
+to the bone with calculation, with depravity, with a brutal lust to
+succeed, and if you plumbed for their hearts you would find in all a
+stone. In their normal state they have the prettiest exterior, stake
+their friendship at every turn, are captivating alike. The same badinage
+dominates their ever-changing jargon; they seek for oddity in their
+toilette, glory in repeating the stupidities of such and such actor who
+is in fashion, and commence operations, it matters not with whom, with
+contempt and impertinence, in order to have, as it were, the first move
+in the game; but, woe betide him who does not know how to take a blow
+on one cheek for the sake of rendering two. They resemble, in fine, that
+pretty white spray which crests the stormy waves. They dress and dance,
+dine and take their pleasure, on the day of Waterloo, in the time of
+cholera or revolution. Finally, their expenses are all the same, but
+here the contrast comes in. Of this fluctuating fortune, so agreeably
+flung away, some possess the capital for which the others wait; they
+have the same tailors, but the bills of the latter are still to pay.
+Next, if the first, like sieves, take in ideas of all kinds without
+retaining any, the latter compare them and assimilate all the good.
+If the first believe they know something, know nothing and understand
+everything, lend all to those who need nothing and offer nothing to
+those who are in need; the latter study secretly others’ thoughts and
+place out their money, like their follies, at big interest. The one
+class have no more faithful impressions, because their soul, like
+a mirror, worn from use, no longer reflects any image; the others
+economize their senses and life, even while they seem, like the first,
+to be flinging them away broadcast. The first, on the faith of a hope,
+devote themselves without conviction to a system which has wind and tide
+against it, but they leap upon another political craft when the first
+goes adrift; the second take the measure of the future, sound it, and
+see in political fidelity what the English see in commercial integrity,
+an element of success. Where the young man of possessions makes a pun or
+an epigram upon the restoration of the throne, he who has nothing makes
+a public calculation or a secret reservation, and obtains everything by
+giving a handshake to his friends. The one deny every faculty to others,
+look upon all their ideas as new, as though the world had been made
+yesterday, they have unlimited confidence in themselves, and no crueler
+enemy than those same selves. But the others are armed with an incessant
+distrust of men, whom they estimate at their value, and are sufficiently
+profound to have one thought beyond their friends, whom they exploit;
+then of evenings, when they lay their heads on their pillows, they weigh
+men as a miser weighs his gold pieces. The one are vexed at an aimless
+impertinence, and allow themselves to be ridiculed by the diplomatic,
+who make them dance for them by pulling what is the main string of these
+puppets--their vanity. Thus, a day comes when those who had nothing have
+something, and those who had something have nothing. The latter look
+at their comrades who have achieved positions as cunning fellows; their
+hearts may be bad, but their heads are strong. “He is very strong!” is
+the supreme praise accorded to those who have attained _quibuscumque
+viis_, political rank, a woman, or a fortune. Amongst them are to be
+found certain young men who play this _role_ by commencing with having
+debts. Naturally, these are more dangerous than those who play it
+without a farthing.
+
+The young man who called himself a friend of Henri de Marsay was a
+rattle-head who had come from the provinces, and whom the young men then
+in fashion were teaching the art of running through an inheritance;
+but he had one last leg to stand on in his province, in the shape of a
+secure establishment. He was simply an heir who had passed without any
+transition from his pittance of a hundred francs a month to the entire
+paternal fortune, and who, if he had not wit enough to perceive that he
+was laughed at, was sufficiently cautious to stop short at two-thirds
+of his capital. He had learned at Paris, for a consideration of some
+thousands of francs, the exact value of harness, the art of not being
+too respectful to his gloves, learned to make skilful meditations upon
+the right wages to give people, and to seek out what bargain was the
+best to close with them. He set store on his capacity to speak in good
+terms of his horses, of his Pyrenean hound; to tell by her dress, her
+walk, her shoes, to what class a woman belonged; to study _ecarte_,
+remember a few fashionable catchwords, and win by his sojourn in
+Parisian society the necessary authority to import later into his
+province a taste for tea and silver of an English fashion, and to obtain
+the right of despising everything around him for the rest of his days.
+
+De Marsay had admitted him to his society in order to make use of him in
+the world, just as a bold speculator employs a confidential clerk. The
+friendship, real or feigned, of De Marsay was a social position for Paul
+de Manerville, who, on his side, thought himself astute in exploiting,
+after his fashion, his intimate friend. He lived in the reflecting
+lustre of his friend, walked constantly under his umbrella, wore his
+boots, gilded himself with his rays. When he posed in Henri’s company or
+walked at his side, he had the air of saying: “Don’t insult us, we are
+real dogs.” He often permitted himself to remark fatuously: “If I were
+to ask Henri for such and such a thing, he is a good enough friend of
+mine to do it.” But he was careful never to ask anything of him. He
+feared him, and his fear, although imperceptible, reacted upon the
+others, and was of use to De Marsay.
+
+“De Marsay is a man of a thousand,” said Paul. “Ah, you will see, he
+will be what he likes. I should not be surprised to find him one of
+these days Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nothing can withstand him.”
+
+He made of De Marsay what Corporal Trim made of his cap, a perpetual
+instance.
+
+“Ask De Marsay and you will see!”
+
+Or again:
+
+“The other day we were hunting, De Marsay and I, He would not believe
+me, but I jumped a hedge without moving on my horse!”
+
+Or again:
+
+“We were with some women, De Marsay and I, and upon my word of honor, I
+was----” etc.
+
+Thus Paul de Manerville could not be classed amongst the great,
+illustrious, and powerful family of fools who succeed. He would one day
+be a deputy. For the time he was not even a young man. His friend, De
+Marsay, defined him thus: “You ask me what is Paul? Paul? Why, Paul de
+Manerville!”
+
+“I am surprised, my dear fellow,” he said to De Marsay, “to see you here
+on a Sunday.”
+
+“I was going to ask you the same question.”
+
+“Is it an intrigue?”
+
+“An intrigue.”
+
+“Bah!”
+
+“I can mention it to you without compromising my passion. Besides,
+a woman who comes to the Tuileries on Sundays is of no account,
+aristocratically speaking.”
+
+“Ah! ah!”
+
+“Hold your tongue then, or I shall tell you nothing. Your laugh is too
+loud, you will make people think that we have lunched too well. Last
+Thursday, here on the Terrasse des Feuillants, I was walking along,
+thinking of nothing at all, but when I got to the gate of the Rue de
+Castiglione, by which I intended to leave, I came face to face with a
+woman, or rather a young girl; who, if she did not throw herself at my
+head, stopped short, less I think, from human respect, than from one of
+those movements of profound surprise which affect the limbs, creep down
+the length of the spine, and cease only in the sole of the feet, to nail
+you to the ground. I have often produced effects of this nature, a sort
+of animal magnetism which becomes enormously powerful when the
+relations are reciprocally precise. But, my dear fellow, this was not
+stupefaction, nor was she a common girl. Morally speaking, her face
+seemed to say: ‘What, is it you, my ideal! The creation of my thoughts,
+of my morning and evening dreams! What, are you there? Why this morning?
+Why not yesterday? Take me, I am thine, _et cetera_!’ Good, I said to
+myself, another one! Then I scrutinize her. Ah, my dear fellow, speaking
+physically, my incognita is the most adorable feminine person whom I
+ever met. She belongs to that feminine variety which the Romans call
+_fulva, flava_--the woman of fire. And in chief, what struck me the
+most, what I am still taken with, are her two yellow eyes, like a
+tiger’s, a golden yellow that gleams, living gold, gold which thinks,
+gold which loves, and is determined to take refuge in your pocket.”
+
+“My dear fellow, we are full of her!” cried Paul. “She comes here
+sometimes--_the girl with the golden eyes_! That is the name we have
+given her. She is a young creature--not more than twenty-two, and I
+have seen her here in the time of the Bourbons, but with a woman who was
+worth a hundred thousand of her.”
+
+“Silence, Paul! It is impossible for any woman to surpass this girl; she
+is like the cat who rubs herself against your legs; a white girl with
+ash-colored hair, delicate in appearance, but who must have downy
+threads on the third phalanx of her fingers, and all along her cheeks
+a white down whose line, luminous on fine days, begins at her ears and
+loses itself on her neck.”
+
+“Ah, the other, my dear De Marsay! She has black eyes which have never
+wept, but which burn; black eyebrows which meet and give her an air of
+hardness contradicted by the compact curve of her lips, on which the
+kisses do not stay, lips burning and fresh; a Moorish color that warms a
+man like the sun. But--upon my word of honor, she is like you!”
+
+“You flatter her!”
+
+“A firm figure, the tapering figure of a corvette built for speed, which
+rushes down upon the merchant vessel with French impetuosity, which
+grapples with her and sinks her at the same time.”
+
+“After all, my dear fellow,” answered De Marsay, “what has that got
+to do with me, since I have never seen her? Ever since I have studied
+women, my incognita is the only one whose virginal bosom, whose
+ardent and voluptuous forms, have realized for me the only woman of
+my dreams--of my dreams! She is the original of that ravishing picture
+called _La Femme Caressant sa Chimere_, the warmest, the most infernal
+inspiration of the genius of antiquity; a holy poem prostituted by those
+who have copied it for frescoes and mosiacs; for a heap of bourgeois
+who see in this gem nothing more than a gew-gaw and hang it on their
+watch-chains--whereas, it is the whole woman, an abyss of pleasure into
+which one plunges and finds no end; whereas, it is the ideal woman, to
+be seen sometimes in reality in Spain or Italy, almost never in France.
+Well, I have again seen this girl of the gold eyes, this woman caressing
+her chimera. I saw her on Friday. I had a presentiment that on the
+following day she would be here at the same hour; I was not mistaken.
+I have taken a pleasure in following her without being observed, in
+studying her indolent walk, the walk of the woman without occupation,
+but in the movements of which one devines all the pleasure that lies
+asleep. Well, she turned back again, she saw me, once more she adored
+me, once more trembled, shivered. It was then I noticed the genuine
+Spanish duenna who looked after her, a hyena upon whom some jealous
+man has put a dress, a she-devil well paid, no doubt, to guard this
+delicious creature.... Ah, then the duenna made me deeper in love. I
+grew curious. On Saturday, nobody. And here I am to-day waiting for
+this girl whose chimera I am, asking nothing better than to pose as the
+monster in the fresco.”
+
+“There she is,” said Paul. “Every one is turning round to look at her.”
+
+The unknown blushed, her eyes shone; she saw Henri, she shut them and
+passed by.
+
+“You say that she notices you?” cried Paul, facetiously.
+
+The duenna looked fixedly and attentively at the two young men. When the
+unknown and Henri passed each other again, the young girl touched him,
+and with her hand pressed the hand of the young man. Then she turned her
+head and smiled with passion, but the duenna led her away very quickly
+to the gate of the Rue de Castiglione.
+
+The two friends followed the young girl, admiring the magnificent grace
+of the neck which met her head in a harmony of vigorous lines, and upon
+which a few coils of hair were tightly wound. The girl with the golden
+eyes had that well-knitted, arched, slender foot which presents so
+many attractions to the dainty imagination. Moreover, she was shod with
+elegance, and wore a short skirt. During her course she turned from
+time to time to look at Henri, and appeared to follow the old woman
+regretfully, seeming to be at once her mistress and her slave; she
+could break her with blows, but could not dismiss her. All that was
+perceptible. The two friends reached the gate. Two men in livery let
+down the step of a tasteful _coupe_ emblazoned with armorial bearings.
+The girl with the golden eyes was the first to enter it, took her seat
+at the side where she could be best seen when the carriage turned,
+put her hand on the door, and waved her handkerchief in the duennna’s
+despite. In contempt of what might be said by the curious, her
+handkerchief cried to Henri openly: “Follow me!”
+
+“Have you ever seen a handkerchief better thrown?” said Henri to Paul de
+Manerville.
+
+Then, observing a fiacre on the point of departure, having just set down
+a fare, he made a sign to the driver to wait.
+
+“Follow that carriage, notice the house and the street where it
+stops--you shall have ten francs.... Paul, adieu.”
+
+The cab followed the _coupe_. The _coupe_ stopped in the Rue Saint
+Lazare before one of the finest houses of the neighborhood.
+
+De Marsay was not impulsive. Any other young man would have obeyed his
+impulse to obtain at once some information about a girl who realized so
+fully the most luminous ideas ever expressed upon women in the poetry
+of the East; but, too experienced to compromise his good fortune, he had
+told his coachman to continue along the Rue Saint Lazare and carry him
+back to his house. The next day, his confidential valet, Laurent by
+name, as cunning a fellow as the Frontin of the old comedy, waited in
+the vicinity of the house inhabited by the unknown for the hour at which
+letters were distributed. In order to be able to spy at his ease and
+hang about the house, he had followed the example of those police
+officers who seek a good disguise, and bought up cast-off clothes of
+an Auvergnat, the appearance of whom he sought to imitate. When the
+postman, who went the round of the Rue Saint Lazare that morning, passed
+by, Laurent feigned to be a porter unable to remember the name of a
+person to whom he had to deliver a parcel, and consulted the postman.
+Deceived at first by appearances, this personage, so picturesque in the
+midst of Parisian civilization, informed him that the house in which
+the girl with the golden eyes dwelt belonged to Don Hijos, Marquis de
+San-Real, grandee of Spain. Naturally, it was not with the Marquis that
+the Auvergnat was concerned.
+
+“My parcel,” he said, “is for the marquise.”
+
+“She is away,” replied the postman. “Her letters are forwarded to
+London.”
+
+“Then the marquise is not a young girl who...?”
+
+“Ah!” said the postman, interrupting the _valet de chambre_ and
+observing him attentively, “you are as much a porter as I’m...”
+
+Laurent chinked some pieces of gold before the functionary, who began to
+smile.
+
+“Come, here’s the name of your quarry,” he said, taking from his leather
+wallet a letter bearing a London stamp, upon which the address, “To
+Mademoiselle Paquita Valdes, Rue Saint Lazare, Hotel San-Real, Paris,”
+ was written in long, fine characters, which spoke of a woman’s hand.
+
+“Could you tap a bottle of Chablis, with a few dozen oysters, and a
+_filet saute_ with mushrooms to follow it?” said Laurent, who wished to
+win the postman’s valuable friendship.
+
+“At half-past nine, when my round is finished---- Where?”
+
+“At the corner of the Rue de la Chaussee-d’Antin and the Rue
+Neuve-des-Mathurins, at the _Puits sans Vin_,” said Laurent.
+
+“Hark ye, my friend,” said the postman, when he rejoined the valet an
+hour after this encounter, “if your master is in love with the girl, he
+is in for a famous task. I doubt you’ll not succeed in seeing her. In
+the ten years that I’ve been postman in Paris, I have seen plenty of
+different kinds of doors! But I can tell you, and no fear of being
+called a liar by any of my comrades, there never was a door so
+mysterious as M. de San-Real’s. No one can get into the house without
+the Lord knows what counter-word; and, notice, it has been selected on
+purpose between a courtyard and a garden to avoid any communication with
+other houses. The porter is an old Spaniard, who never speaks a word
+of French, but peers at people as Vidocq might, to see if they are not
+thieves. If a lover, a thief, or you--I make no comparisons--could get
+the better of this first wicket, well, in the first hall, which is shut
+by a glazed door, you would run across a butler surrounded by lackeys,
+an old joker more savage and surly even than the porter. If any one
+gets past the porter’s lodge, my butler comes out, waits for you at the
+entrance, and puts you through a cross-examination like a criminal. That
+has happened to me, a mere postman. He took me for an eavesdropper in
+disguise, he said, laughing at his nonsense. As for the servants, don’t
+hope to get aught out of them; I think they are mutes, no one in the
+neighborhood knows the color of their speech; I don’t know what wages
+they can pay them to keep them from talk and drink; the fact is, they
+are not to be got at, whether because they are afraid of being shot, or
+that they have some enormous sum to lose in the case of an indiscretion.
+If your master is fond enough of Mademoiselle Paquita Valdes to surmount
+all these obstacles, he certainly won’t triumph over Dona Concha
+Marialva, the duenna who accompanies her and would put her under her
+petticoats sooner than leave her. The two women look as if they were
+sewn to one another.”
+
+“All that you say, worthy postman,” went on Laurent, after having drunk
+off his wine, “confirms me in what I have learned before. Upon my word,
+I thought they were making fun of me! The fruiterer opposite told me
+that of nights they let loose dogs whose food is hung up on stakes just
+out of their reach. These cursed animals think, therefore, that any one
+likely to come in has designs on their victuals, and would tear one to
+pieces. You will tell me one might throw them down pieces, but it seems
+they have been trained to touch nothing except from the hand of the
+porter.”
+
+“The porter of the Baron de Nucingen, whose garden joins at the top that
+of the Hotel San-Real, told me the same thing,” replied the postman.
+
+“Good! my master knows him,” said Laurent, to himself. “Do you know,”
+ he went on, leering at the postman, “I serve a master who is a rare
+man, and if he took it into his head to kiss the sole of the foot of an
+empress, she would have to give in to him. If he had need of you, which
+is what I wish for you, for he is generous, could one count on you?”
+
+“Lord, Monsieur Laurent, my name is Moinot. My name is written exactly
+like _Moineau_, magpie: M-o-i-n-o-t, Moinot.”
+
+“Exactly,” said Laurent.
+
+“I live at No. 11, Rue des Trois Freres, on the fifth floor,” went on
+Moinot; “I have a wife and four children. If what you want of me doesn’t
+transgress the limits of my conscience and my official duties, you
+understand! I am your man.”
+
+“You are an honest fellow,” said Laurent, shaking his hand....
+
+“Paquita Valdes is, no doubt, the mistress of the Marquis de San-Real,
+the friend of King Ferdinand. Only an old Spanish mummy of eighty years
+is capable of taking such precautions,” said Henri, when his _valet de
+chambre_ had related the result of his researches.
+
+“Monsieur,” said Laurent, “unless he takes a balloon no one can get into
+that hotel.”
+
+“You are a fool! Is it necessary to get into the hotel to have Paquita,
+when Paquita can get out of it?”
+
+“But, sir, the duenna?”
+
+“We will shut her up for a day or two, your duenna.”
+
+“So, we shall have Paquita!” said Laurent, rubbing his hands.
+
+“Rascal!” answered Henri, “I shall condemn you to the Concha, if you
+carry your impudence so far as to speak so of a woman before she has
+become mine.... Turn your thoughts to dressing me, I am going out.”
+
+Henri remained for a moment plunged in joyous reflections. Let us say it
+to the praise of women, he obtained all those whom he deigned to desire.
+And what could one think of a woman, having no lover, who should
+have known how to resist a young man armed with beauty which is the
+intelligence of the body, with intelligence which is a grace of the
+soul, armed with moral force and fortune, which are the only two real
+powers? Yet, in triumphing with such ease, De Marsay was bound to grow
+weary of his triumphs; thus, for about two years he had grown very weary
+indeed. And diving deep into the sea of pleasures he brought back more
+grit than pearls. Thus had he come, like potentates, to implore of
+Chance some obstacle to surmount, some enterprise which should ask the
+employment of his dormant moral and physical strength. Although Paquita
+Valdes presented him with a marvelous concentration of perfections which
+he had only yet enjoyed in detail, the attraction of passion was almost
+_nil_ with him. Constant satiety had weakened in his heart the sentiment
+of love. Like old men and people disillusioned, he had no longer
+anything but extravagant caprices, ruinous tastes, fantasies, which,
+once satisfied, left no pleasant memory in his heart. Amongst young
+people love is the finest of the emotions, it makes the life of the soul
+blossom, it nourishes by its solar power the finest inspirations and
+their great thoughts; the first fruits in all things have a delicious
+savor. Amongst men love becomes a passion; strength leads to abuse.
+Amongst old men it turns to vice; impotence tends to extremes. Henri was
+at once an old man, a man, and a youth. To afford him the feelings of
+a real love, he needed like Lovelace, a Clarissa Harlowe. Without
+the magic lustre of that unattainable pearl he could only have either
+passions rendered acute by some Parisian vanity, or set determinations
+with himself to bring such and such a woman to such and such a point of
+corruption, or else adventures which stimulated his curiosity.
+
+The report of Laurent, his _valet de chambre_ had just given an enormous
+value to the girl with the golden eyes. It was a question of doing
+battle with some secret enemy who seemed as dangerous as he was cunning;
+and to carry off the victory, all the forces which Henri could dispose
+of would be useful. He was about to play in that eternal old comedy
+which will be always fresh, and the characters in which are an old man,
+a young girl, and a lover: Don Hijos, Paquita, De Marsay. If Laurent was
+the equal of Figaro, the duenna seemed incorruptible. Thus, the living
+play was supplied by Chance with a stronger plot than it had ever been
+by dramatic author! But then is not Chance too, a man of genius?
+
+“It must be a cautious game,” said Henri, to himself.
+
+“Well,” said Paul de Manerville, as he entered the room. “How are we
+getting on? I have come to breakfast with you.”
+
+“So be it,” said Henri. “You won’t be shocked if I make my toilette
+before you?”
+
+“How absurd!”
+
+“We take so many things from the English just now that we might well
+become as great prudes and hypocrites as themselves,” said Henri.
+
+Laurent had set before his master such a quantity of utensils, so many
+different articles of such elegance, that Paul could not refrain from
+saying:
+
+“But you will take a couple of hours over that?”
+
+“No!” said Henri, “two hours and a half.”
+
+“Well, then, since we are by ourselves, and can say what we like,
+explain to me why a man as superior as yourself--for you are
+superior--should affect to exaggerate a foppery which cannot be
+natural. Why spend two hours and a half in adorning yourself, when it is
+sufficient to spend a quarter of an hour in your bath, to do your hair
+in two minutes, and to dress! There, tell me your system.”
+
+“I must be very fond of you, my good dunce, to confide such high
+thoughts to you,” said the young man, who was at that moment having his
+feet rubbed with a soft brush lathered with English soap.
+
+“Have I not the most devoted attachment to you,” replied Paul de
+Manerville, “and do I not like you because I know your superiority?...”
+
+“You must have noticed, if you are in the least capable of observing any
+moral fact, that women love fops,” went on De Marsay, without replying
+in any way to Paul’s declaration except by a look. “Do you know why
+women love fops? My friend, fops are the only men who take care of
+themselves. Now, to take excessive care of oneself, does it not imply
+that one takes care in oneself of what belongs to another? The man who
+does not belong to himself is precisely the man on whom women are keen.
+Love is essentially a thief. I say nothing about that excess of niceness
+to which they are so devoted. Do you know of any woman who has had a
+passion for a sloven, even if he were a remarkable man? If such a fact
+has occurred, we must put it to the account of those morbid affections
+of the breeding woman, mad fancies which float through the minds of
+everybody. On the other hand, I have seen most remarkable people left in
+the lurch because of their carelessness. A fop, who is concerned about
+his person, is concerned with folly, with petty things. And what is a
+woman? A petty thing, a bundle of follies. With two words said to the
+winds, can you not make her busy for four hours? She is sure that the
+fop will be occupied with her, seeing that he has no mind for great
+things. She will never be neglected for glory, ambition, politics,
+art--those prostitutes who for her are rivals. Then fops have the
+courage to cover themselves with ridicule in order to please a woman,
+and her heart is full of gratitude towards the man who is ridiculous for
+love. In fine, a fop can be no fop unless he is right in being one. It
+is women who bestow that rank. The fop is love’s colonel; he has his
+victories, his regiment of women at his command. My dear fellow, in
+Paris everything is known, and a man cannot be a fop there _gratis_.
+You, who have only one woman, and who, perhaps, are right to have but
+one, try to act the fop!... You will not even become ridiculous, you
+will be dead. You will become a foregone conclusion, one of those men
+condemned inevitably to do one and the same thing. You will come to
+signify _folly_ as inseparably as M. de La Fayette signifies _America_;
+M. de Talleyrand, _diplomacy_; Desaugiers, _song_; M. de Segur,
+_romance_. If they once forsake their own line people no longer attach
+any value to what they do. So, foppery, my friend Paul, is the sign of
+an incontestable power over the female folk. A man who is loved by many
+women passes for having superior qualities, and then, poor fellow, it
+is a question who shall have him! But do you think it is nothing to have
+the right of going into a drawing-room, of looking down at people from
+over your cravat, or through your eye-glass, and of despising the most
+superior of men should he wear an old-fashioned waistcoat?... Laurent,
+you are hurting me! After breakfast, Paul, we will go to the Tuileries
+and see the adorable girl with the golden eyes.”
+
+When, after making an excellent meal, the two young men had traversed
+the Terrasse de Feuillants and the broad walk of the Tuileries, they
+nowhere discovered the sublime Paquita Valdes, on whose account some
+fifty of the most elegant young men in Paris where to be seen, all
+scented, with their high scarfs, spurred and booted, riding, walking,
+talking, laughing, and damning themselves mightily.
+
+“It’s a white Mass,” said Henri; “but I have the most excellent idea in
+the world. This girl receives letters from London. The postman must be
+bought or made drunk, a letter opened, read of course, and a love-letter
+slipped in before it is sealed up again. The old tyrant, _crudel
+tirano_, is certain to know the person who writes the letters from
+London, and has ceased to be suspicious of them.”
+
+The day after, De Marsay came again to walk on the Terrasse des
+Feuillants, and saw Paquita Valdes; already passion had embellished her
+for him. Seriously, he was wild for those eyes, whose rays seemed akin
+to those which the sun emits, and whose ardor set the seal upon that
+of her perfect body, in which all was delight. De Marsay was on fire to
+brush the dress of this enchanting girl as they passed one another in
+their walk; but his attempts were always vain. But at one moment, when
+he had repassed Paquita and the duenna, in order to find himself on the
+same side as the girl of the golden eyes, when he returned, Paquita,
+no less impatient, came forward hurriedly, and De Marsay felt his
+hand pressed by her in a fashion at once so swift and so passionately
+significant that it was as though he had received the emotions surged up
+in his heart. When the two lovers glanced at one another, Paquita seemed
+ashamed, she dropped her eyes lest she should meet the eyes of Henri,
+but her gaze sank lower to fasten on the feet and form of him whom
+women, before the Revolution, called _their conqueror_.
+
+“I am determined to make this girl my mistress,” said Henri to himself.
+
+As he followed her along the terrace, in the direction of the Place
+Louis XV., he caught sight of the aged Marquis de San-Real, who was
+walking on the arm of his valet, stepping with all the precautions due
+to gout and decrepitude. Dona Concha, who distrusted Henri, made Paquita
+pass between herself and the old man.
+
+“Oh, for you,” said De Marsay to himself, casting a glance of disdain
+upon the duenna, “if one cannot make you capitulate, with a little opium
+one can make you sleep. We know mythology and the fable of Argus.”
+
+Before entering the carriage, the golden-eyed girl exchanged certain
+glances with her lover, of which the meaning was unmistakable and which
+enchanted Henri, but one of them was surprised by the duenna; she said
+a few rapid words to Paquita, who threw herself into the _coupe_ with
+an air of desperation. For some days Paquita did not appear in the
+Tuileries. Laurent, who by his master’s orders was on watch by the
+hotel, learned from the neighbors that neither the two women nor the
+aged marquis had been abroad since the day upon which the duenna had
+surprised a glance between the young girl in her charge and Henri. The
+bond, so flimsy withal, which united the two lovers was already severed.
+
+Some days later, none knew by what means, De Marsay had attained his
+end; he had a seal and wax, exactly resembling the seal and wax affixed
+to the letters sent to Mademoiselle Valdes from London; paper similar
+to that which her correspondent used; moreover, all the implements and
+stamps necessary to affix the French and English postmarks.
+
+He wrote the following letter, to which he gave all the appearances of a
+letter sent from London:--
+
+
+  “MY DEAR PAQUITA,--I shall not try to paint to you in words the
+  passion with which you have inspired me. If, to my happiness, you
+  reciprocate it, understand that I have found a means of
+  corresponding with you. My name is Adolphe de Gouges, and I live
+  at No. 54 Rue de l’Universite. If you are too closely watched to
+  be able to write to me, if you have neither pen nor paper, I shall
+  understand it by your silence. If then, to-morrow, you have not,
+  between eight o’clock in the morning and ten o’clock in the
+  evening, thrown a letter over the wall of your garden into that of
+  the Baron de Nucingen, where it will be waited for during the
+  whole of the day, a man, who is entirely devoted to me, will let
+  down two flasks by a string over your wall at ten o’clock the next
+  morning. Be walking there at that hour. One of the two flasks will
+  contain opium to send your Argus to sleep; it will be sufficient
+  to employ six drops; the other will contain ink. The flask of ink
+  is of cut glass; the other is plain. Both are of such a size as
+  can easily be concealed within your bosom. All that I have already
+  done, in order to be able to correspond with you, should tell you
+  how greatly I love you. Should you have any doubt of it, I will
+  confess to you, that to obtain an interview of one hour with you I
+  would give my life.”
+
+
+“At least they believe that, poor creatures!” said De Marsay; “but they
+are right. What should we think of a woman who refused to be beguiled by
+a love-letter accompanied by such convincing accessories?”
+
+This letter was delivered by Master Moinot, postman, on the following
+day, about eight o’clock in the morning, to the porter of the Hotel
+San-Real.
+
+In order to be nearer to the field of action, De Marsay went and
+breakfasted with Paul, who lived in the Rue de la Pepiniere. At
+two o’clock, just as the two friends were laughingly discussing the
+discomfiture of a young man who had attempted to lead the life of
+fashion without a settled income, and were devising an end for him,
+Henri’s coachman came to seek his master at Paul’s house, and presented
+to him a mysterious personage who insisted on speaking himself with his
+master.
+
+This individual was a mulatto, who would assuredly have given Talma a
+model for the part of Othello, if he had come across him. Never did any
+African face better express the grand vengefulness, the ready suspicion,
+the promptitude in the execution of a thought, the strength of the Moor,
+and his childish lack of reflection. His black eyes had the fixity of
+the eyes of a bird of prey, and they were framed, like a vulture’s, by
+a bluish membrane devoid of lashes. His forehead, low and narrow, had
+something menacing. Evidently, this man was under the yoke of some
+single and unique thought. His sinewy arm did not belong to him.
+
+He was followed by a man whom the imaginations of all folk, from those
+who shiver in Greenland to those who sweat in the tropics, would paint
+in the single phrase: _He was an unfortunate man_. From this phrase,
+everybody will conceive him according to the special ideas of each
+country. But who can best imagine his face--white and wrinkled, red at
+the extremities, and his long beard. Who will see his lean and yellow
+scarf, his greasy shirt-collar, his battered hat, his green frock coat,
+his deplorable trousers, his dilapidated waistcoat, his imitation gold
+pin, and battered shoes, the strings of which were plastered in mud? Who
+will see all that but the Parisian? The unfortunate man of Paris is the
+unfortunate man _in toto_, for he has still enough mirth to know the
+extent of his misfortune. The mulatto was like an executioner of Louis
+XI. leading a man to the gallows.
+
+“Who has hunted us out these two extraordinary creatures?” said Henri.
+
+“Faith! there is one of them who makes me shudder,” replied Paul.
+
+“Who are you--you fellow who look the most like a Christian of the two?”
+ said Henri, looking at the unfortunate man.
+
+The mulatto stood with his eyes fixed upon the two young men, like a man
+who understood nothing, and who sought no less to divine something from
+the gestures and movements of the lips.
+
+“I am a public scribe and interpreter; I live at the Palais de Justice,
+and am named Poincet.”
+
+“Good!... and this one?” said Henri to Poincet, looking towards the
+mulatto.
+
+“I do not know; he only speaks a sort of Spanish _patois_, and he has
+brought me here to make himself understood by you.”
+
+The mulatto drew from his pocket the letter which Henri had written to
+Paquita and handed it to him. Henri threw it in the fire.
+
+“Ah--so--the game is beginning,” said Henri to himself. “Paul, leave us
+alone for a moment.”
+
+“I translated this letter for him,” went on the interpreter, when they
+were alone. “When it was translated, he was in some place which I don’t
+remember. Then he came back to look for me, and promised me two _louis_
+to fetch him here.”
+
+“What have you to say to me, nigger?” asked Henri.
+
+“I did not translate _nigger_,” said the interpreter, waiting for the
+mulatto’s reply....
+
+“He said, sir,” went on the interpreter, after having listened to the
+unknown, “that you must be at half-past ten to-morrow night on the
+boulevard Montmartre, near the cafe. You will see a carriage there, in
+which you must take your place, saying to the man, who will wait to
+open the door for you, the word _cortejo_--a Spanish word, which means
+_lover_,” added Poincet, casting a glance of congratulation upon Henri.
+
+“Good.”
+
+The mulatto was about to bestow the two _louis_, but De Marsay would not
+permit it, and himself rewarded the interpreter. As he was paying him,
+the mulatto began to speak.
+
+“What is he saying?”
+
+“He is warning me,” replied the unfortunate, “that if I commit a single
+indiscretion he will strangle me. He speaks fair and he looks remarkably
+as if he were capable of carrying out his threat.”
+
+“I am sure of it,” answered Henri; “he would keep his word.”
+
+“He says, as well,” replied the interpreter, “that the person from whom
+he is sent implores you, for your sake and for hers, to act with the
+greatest prudence, because the daggers which are raised above your
+head would strike your heart before any human power could save you from
+them.”
+
+“He said that? So much the better, it will be more amusing. You can come
+in now, Paul,” he cried to his friend.
+
+The mulatto, who had not ceased to gaze at the lover of Paquita Valdes
+with magnetic attention, went away, followed by the interpreter.
+
+“Well, at last I have an adventure which is entirely romantic,” said
+Henri, when Paul returned. “After having shared in a certain number I
+have finished by finding in Paris an intrigue accompanied by serious
+accidents, by grave perils. The deuce! what courage danger gives a
+woman! To torment a woman, to try and contradict her--doesn’t it give
+her the right and the courage to scale in one moment obstacles which it
+would take her years to surmount of herself? Pretty creature, jump then!
+To die? Poor child! Daggers? Oh, imagination of women! They cannot help
+trying to find authority for their little jests. Besides, can one think
+of it, Paquita? Can one think of it, my child? The devil take me, now
+that I know this beautiful girl, this masterpiece of nature, is mine,
+the adventure has lost its charm.”
+
+For all his light words, the youth in Henri had reappeared. In order
+to live until the morrow without too much pain, he had recourse to
+exorbitant pleasure; he played, dined, supped with his friends; he drank
+like a fish, ate like a German, and won ten or twelve thousand francs.
+He left the Rocher de Cancale at two o’clock in the morning, slept like
+a child, awoke the next morning fresh and rosy, and dressed to go to
+the Tuileries, with the intention of taking a ride, after having seen
+Paquita, in order to get himself an appetite and dine the better, and so
+kill the time.
+
+At the hour mentioned Henri was on the boulevard, saw the carriage,
+and gave the counter-word to a man who looked to him like the mulatto.
+Hearing the word, the man opened the door and quickly let down the step.
+Henri was so rapidly carried through Paris, and his thoughts left him so
+little capacity to pay attention to the streets through which he passed,
+that he did not know where the carriage stopped. The mulatto let him
+into a house, the staircase of which was quite close to the entrance.
+This staircase was dark, as was also the landing upon which Henri
+was obliged to wait while the mulatto was opening the door of a damp
+apartment, fetid and unlit, the chambers of which, barely illuminated
+by the candle which his guide found in the ante-chamber, seemed to him
+empty and ill furnished, like those of a house the inhabitants of which
+are away. He recognized the sensation which he had experienced from the
+perusal of one of those romances of Anne Radcliffe, in which the hero
+traverses the cold, sombre, and uninhabited saloons of some sad and
+desert spot.
+
+At last the mulatto opened the door of a _salon_. The condition of
+the old furniture and the dilapidated curtains with which the room was
+adorned gave it the air of the reception-room of a house of ill fame.
+There was the same pretension to elegance, and the same collection of
+things in bad taste, of dust and dirt. Upon a sofa covered with red
+Utrecht velvet, by the side of a smoking hearth, the fire of which was
+buried in ashes, sat an old, poorly dressed woman, her head capped by
+one of those turbans which English women of a certain age have invented
+and which would have a mighty success in China, where the artist’s ideal
+is the monstrous.
+
+The room, the old woman, the cold hearth, all would have chilled love to
+death had not Paquita been there, upon an ottoman, in a loose voluptuous
+wrapper, free to scatter her gaze of gold and flame, free to show her
+arched foot, free of her luminous movements. This first interview
+was what every _rendezvous_ must be between persons of passionate
+disposition, who have stepped over a wide distance quickly, who desire
+each other ardently, and who, nevertheless, do not know each other. It
+is impossible that at first there should not occur certain discordant
+notes in the situation, which is embarrassing until the moment when two
+souls find themselves in unison.
+
+If desire gives a man boldness and disposes him to lay restraint aside,
+the mistress, under pain of ceasing to be woman, however great may be
+her love, is afraid of arriving at the end so promptly, and face to face
+with the necessity of giving herself, which to many women is equivalent
+to a fall into an abyss, at the bottom of which they know not what they
+shall find. The involuntary coldness of the woman contrasts with her
+confessed passion, and necessarily reacts upon the most passionate
+lover. Thus ideas, which often float around souls like vapors, determine
+in them a sort of temporary malady. In the sweet journey which two
+beings undertake through the fair domains of love, this moment is like
+a waste land to be traversed, a land without a tree, alternatively damp
+and warm, full of scorching sand, traversed by marshes, which leads to
+smiling groves clad with roses, where Love and his retinue of pleasures
+disport themselves on carpets of soft verdure. Often the witty man
+finds himself afflicted with a foolish laugh which is his only answer to
+everything; his wit is, as it were, suffocated beneath the icy pressure
+of his desires. It would not be impossible for two beings of equal
+beauty, intelligence, and passion to utter at first nothing but the
+most silly commonplaces, until chance, a word, the tremor of a certain
+glance, the communication of a spark, should have brought them to the
+happy transition which leads to that flowery way in which one does not
+walk, but where one sways and at the same time does not lapse.
+
+Such a state of mind is always in proportion with the violence of the
+feeling. Two creatures who love one another weakly feel nothing similar.
+The effect of this crisis can even be compared with that which is
+produced by the glow of a clear sky. Nature, at the first view, appears
+to be covered with a gauze veil, the azure of the firmament seems black,
+the intensity of light is like darkness. With Henri, as with the Spanish
+girl, there was an equal intensity of feeling; and that law of statics,
+in virtue of which two identical forces cancel each other, might have
+been true also in the moral order. And the embarrassment of the moment
+was singularly increased by the presence of the old hag. Love takes
+pleasure or fright at all, all has meaning for it, everything is an omen
+of happiness or sorrow for it.
+
+This decrepit woman was there like a suggestion of catastrophe, and
+represented the horrid fish’s tail with which the allegorical geniuses
+of Greece have terminated their chimeras and sirens, whose figures, like
+all passions, are so seductive, so deceptive.
+
+Although Henri was not a free-thinker--the phrase is always a
+mockery--but a man of extraordinary power, a man as great as a man can
+be without faith, the conjunction struck him. Moreover, the strongest
+men are naturally the most impressionable, and consequently the most
+superstitious, if, indeed, one may call superstition the prejudice of
+the first thoughts, which, without doubt, is the appreciation of the
+result in causes hidden to other eyes but perceptible to their own.
+
+The Spanish girl profited by this moment of stupefaction to let herself
+fall into the ecstasy of that infinite adoration which seizes the heart
+of a woman, when she truly loves and finds herself in the presence of
+an idol for whom she has vainly longed. Her eyes were all joy, all
+happiness, and sparks flew from them. She was under the charm, and
+fearlessly intoxicated herself with a felicity of which she had dreamed
+long. She seemed then so marvelously beautiful to Henri, that all this
+phantasmagoria of rags and old age, of worn red drapery and of the green
+mats in front of the armchairs, the ill-washed red tiles, all this sick
+and dilapidated luxury, disappeared.
+
+The room seemed lit up; and it was only through a cloud that one could
+see the fearful harpy fixed and dumb on her red sofa, her yellow eyes
+betraying the servile sentiments, inspired by misfortune, or caused by
+some vice beneath whose servitude one has fallen as beneath a tyrant who
+brutalizes one with the flagellations of his despotism. Her eyes had the
+cold glitter of a caged tiger, knowing his impotence and being compelled
+to swallow his rage of destruction.
+
+“Who is that woman?” said Henri to Paquita.
+
+But Paquita did not answer. She made a sign that she understood no
+French, and asked Henri if he spoke English.
+
+De Marsay repeated his question in English.
+
+“She is the only woman in whom I can confide, although she has sold me
+already,” said Paquita, tranquilly. “My dear Adolphe, she is my mother,
+a slave bought in Georgia for her rare beauty, little enough of which
+remains to-day. She only speaks her native tongue.”
+
+The attitude of this woman and her eagerness to guess from the gestures
+of her daughter and Henri what was passing between them, were suddenly
+explained to the young man; and this explanation put him at his ease.
+
+“Paquita,” he said, “are we never to be free then?”
+
+“Never,” she said, with an air of sadness. “Even now we have but a few
+days before us.”
+
+She lowered her eyes, looked at and counted with her right hand on the
+fingers of her left, revealing so the most beautiful hands which Henri
+had ever seen.
+
+“One, two, three----”
+
+She counted up to twelve.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “we have twelve days.”
+
+“And after?”
+
+“After,” she said, showing the absorption of a weak woman before the
+executioner’s axe, and slain in advance, as it were, by a fear which
+stripped her of that magnificent energy which Nature seemed to have
+bestowed upon her only to aggrandize pleasure and convert the most
+vulgar delights into endless poems. “After----” she repeated. Her eyes
+took a fixed stare; she seemed to contemplate a threatening object far
+away.
+
+“I do not know,” she said.
+
+“This girl is mad,” said Henri to himself, falling into strange
+reflections.
+
+Paquita appeared to him occupied by something which was not himself,
+like a woman constrained equally by remorse and passion. Perhaps she had
+in her heart another love which she alternately remembered and forgot.
+In a moment Henri was assailed by a thousand contradictory thoughts.
+This girl became a mystery for him; but as he contemplated her with the
+scientific attention of the _blase_ man, famished for new pleasures,
+like that Eastern king who asked that a pleasure should be created
+for him,--a horrible thirst with which great souls are seized,--Henri
+recognized in Paquita the richest organization that Nature had ever
+deigned to compose for love. The presumptive play of this machinery,
+setting aside the soul, would have frightened any other man than Henri;
+but he was fascinated by that rich harvest of promised pleasures, by
+that constant variety in happiness, the dream of every man, and the
+desire of every loving woman too. He was infuriated by the infinite
+rendered palpable, and transported into the most excessive raptures
+of which the creature is capable. All that he saw in this girl more
+distinctly than he had yet seen it, for she let herself be viewed
+complacently, happy to be admired. The admiration of De Marsay became
+a secret fury, and he unveiled her completely, throwing a glance at her
+which the Spaniard understood as though she had been used to receive
+such.
+
+“If you are not to be mine, mine only, I will kill you!” he cried.
+
+Hearing this speech, Paquita covered her face in her hands, and cried
+naively:
+
+“Holy Virgin! What have I brought upon myself?”
+
+She rose, flung herself down upon the red sofa, and buried her head in
+the rags which covered the bosom of her mother, and wept there. The
+old woman received her daughter without issuing from her state of
+immobility, or displaying any emotion. The mother possessed in the
+highest degree that gravity of savage races, the impassiveness of a
+statue upon which all remarks are lost. Did she or did she not love her
+daughter? Beneath that mask every human emotion might brood--good and
+evil; and from this creature all might be expected. Her gaze passed
+slowly from her daughter’s beautiful hair, which covered her like a
+mantle, to the face of Henri, which she considered with an indescribable
+curiosity.
+
+She seemed to ask by what fatality he was there, from what caprice
+Nature had made so seductive a man.
+
+“These women are making sport of me,” said Henri to himself.
+
+At that moment Paquita raised her head, cast at him one of those looks
+which reach the very soul and consume it. So beautiful seemed she that
+he swore he would possess such a treasure of beauty.
+
+“My Paquita! Be mine!”
+
+“Wouldst thou kill me?” she said fearfully, palpitating and anxious, but
+drawn towards him by an inexplicable force.
+
+“Kill thee--I!” he said, smiling.
+
+Paquita uttered a cry of alarm, said a word to the old woman, who
+authoritatively seized Henri’s hand and that of her daughter. She gazed
+at them for a long time, and then released them, wagging her head in a
+fashion horribly significant.
+
+“Be mine--this evening, this moment; follow me, do not leave me! It must
+be, Paquita! Dost thou love me? Come!”
+
+In a moment he had poured out a thousand foolish words to her, with the
+rapidity of a torrent coursing between the rocks, and repeating the same
+sound in a thousand different forms.
+
+“It is the same voice!” said Paquita, in a melancholy voice, which
+De Marsay could not overhear, “and the same ardor,” she added. “So be
+it--yes,” she said, with an abandonment of passion which no words can
+describe. “Yes; but not to-night. To-night Adolphe, I gave too little
+opium to La Concha. She might wake up, and I should be lost. At this
+moment the whole household believes me to be asleep in my room. In two
+days be at the same spot, say the same word to the same man. That man is
+my foster-father. Cristemio worships me, and would die in torments for
+me before they could extract one word against me from him. Farewell,”
+ she said seizing Henri by the waist and twining round him like a
+serpent.
+
+She pressed him on every side at once, lifted her head to his, and
+offered him her lips, then snatched a kiss which filled them both with
+such a dizziness that it seemed to Henri as though the earth opened; and
+Paquita cried: “Enough, depart!” in a voice which told how little
+she was mistress of herself. But she clung to him still, still crying
+“Depart!” and brought him slowly to the staircase. There the mulatto,
+whose white eyes lit up at the sight of Paquita, took the torch from the
+hands of his idol, and conducted Henri to the street. He left the light
+under the arch, opened the door, put Henri into the carriage, and set
+him down on the Boulevard des Italiens with marvelous rapidity. It was
+as though the horses had hell-fire in their veins.
+
+The scene was like a dream to De Marsay, but one of those dreams
+which, even when they fade away, leave a feeling of supernatural
+voluptuousness, which a man runs after for the remainder of his life.
+A single kiss had been enough. Never had _rendezvous_ been spent in a
+manner more decorous or chaste, or, perhaps, more coldly, in a spot of
+which the surroundings were more gruesome, in presence of a more hideous
+divinity; for the mother had remained in Henri’s imagination like some
+infernal, cowering thing, cadaverous, monstrous, savagely ferocious,
+which the imagination of poets and painters had not yet conceived. In
+effect, no _rendezvous_ had ever irritated his senses more, revealed
+more audacious pleasures, or better aroused love from its centre to
+shed itself round him like an atmosphere. There was something sombre,
+mysterious, sweet, tender, constrained, and expansive, an intermingling
+of the awful and the celestial, of paradise and hell, which made De
+Marsay like a drunken man.
+
+He was no longer himself, and he was, withal, great enough to be able to
+resist the intoxication of pleasure.
+
+In order to render his conduct intelligible in the catastrophe of this
+story, it is needful to explain how his soul had broadened at an age
+when young men generally belittle themselves in their relations with
+women, or in too much occupation with them. Its growth was due to a
+concurrence of secret circumstances, which invested him with a vast and
+unsuspected power.
+
+This young man held in his hand a sceptre more powerful than that of
+modern kings, almost all of whom are curbed in their least wishes by the
+laws. De Marsay exercised the autocratic power of an Oriental despot.
+But this power, so stupidly put into execution in Asia by brutish men,
+was increased tenfold by its conjunction with European intelligence,
+with French wit--the most subtle, the keenest of all intellectual
+instruments. Henri could do what he would in the interest of his
+pleasures and vanities. This invisible action upon the social world
+had invested him with a real, but secret, majesty, without emphasis and
+deriving from himself. He had not the opinion which Louis XIV. could
+have of himself, but that which the proudest of the Caliphs, the
+Pharoahs, the Xerxes, who held themselves to be of divine origin, had
+of themselves when they imitated God, and veiled themselves from their
+subjects under the pretext that their looks dealt forth death. Thus,
+without any remorse at being at once the judge and the accuser, De
+Marsay coldly condemned to death the man or the woman who had seriously
+offended him. Although often pronounced almost lightly, the verdict
+was irrevocable. An error was a misfortune similar to that which a
+thunderbolt causes when it falls upon a smiling Parisienne in some
+hackney coach, instead of crushing the old coachman who is driving
+her to a _rendezvous_. Thus the bitter and profound sarcasm which
+distinguished the young man’s conversation usually tended to frighten
+people; no one was anxious to put him out. Women are prodigiously fond
+of those persons who call themselves pashas, and who are, as it were
+accompanied by lions and executioners, and who walk in a panoply of
+terror. The result, in the case of such men, is a security of action,
+a certitude of power, a pride of gaze, a leonine consciousness, which
+makes women realize the type of strength of which they all dream. Such
+was De Marsay.
+
+Happy, for the moment, with his future, he grew young and pliable, and
+thought of nothing but love as he went to bed. He dreamed of the girl
+with the golden eyes, as the young and passionate can dream. His dreams
+were monstrous images, unattainable extravagances--full of light,
+revealing invisible worlds, yet in a manner always incomplete, for an
+intervening veil changes the conditions of vision.
+
+For the next and succeeding day Henri disappeared and no one knew
+what had become of him. His power only belonged to him under certain
+conditions, and, happily for him, during those two days he was a private
+soldier in the service of the demon to whom he owed his talismanic
+existence. But at the appointed time, in the evening, he was
+waiting--and he had not long to wait--for the carriage. The mulatto
+approached Henri, in order to repeat to him in French a phrase which he
+seemed to have learned by heart.
+
+“If you wish to come, she told me, you must consent to have your eyes
+bandaged.”
+
+And Cristemio produced a white silk handkerchief.
+
+“No!” said Henri, whose omnipotence revolted suddenly.
+
+He tried to leap in. The mulatto made a sign, and the carriage drove
+off.
+
+“Yes!” cried De Marsay, furious at the thought of losing a piece of good
+fortune which had been promised him.
+
+He saw, moreover, the impossibility of making terms with a slave
+whose obedience was as blind as the hangman’s. Nor was it this passive
+instrument upon whom his anger could fall.
+
+The mulatto whistled, the carriage returned. Henri got in hastily.
+Already a few curious onlookers had assembled like sheep on the
+boulevard. Henri was strong; he tried to play the mulatto. When the
+carriage started at a gallop he seized his hands, in order to master
+him, and retain, by subduing his attendant, the possession of his
+faculties, so that he might know whither he was going. It was a vain
+attempt. The eyes of the mulatto flashed from the darkness. The fellow
+uttered a cry which his fury stifled in his throat, released himself,
+threw back De Marsay with a hand like iron, and nailed him, so to
+speak, to the bottom of the carriage; then with his free hand, he drew
+a triangular dagger, and whistled. The coachman heard the whistle and
+stopped. Henri was unarmed, he was forced to yield. He moved his head
+towards the handkerchief. The gesture of submission calmed Cristemio,
+and he bound his eyes with a respect and care which manifested a sort
+of veneration for the person of the man whom his idol loved. But, before
+taking this course, he had placed his dagger distrustfully in his side
+pocket, and buttoned himself up to the chin.
+
+“That nigger would have killed me!” said De Marsay to himself.
+
+Once more the carriage moved on rapidly. There was one resource still
+open to a young man who knew Paris as well as Henri. To know whither
+he was going, he had but to collect himself and count, by the number of
+gutters crossed, the streets leading from the boulevards by which the
+carriage passed, so long as it continued straight along. He could thus
+discover into which lateral street it would turn, either towards the
+Seine or towards the heights of Montmartre, and guess the name or
+position of the street in which his guide should bring him to a halt.
+But the violent emotion which his struggle had caused him, the rage into
+which his compromised dignity had thrown him, the ideas of vengeance
+to which he abandoned himself, the suppositions suggested to him by the
+circumstantial care which this girl had taken in order to bring him
+to her, all hindered him from the attention, which the blind have,
+necessary for the concentration of his intelligence and the perfect
+lucidity of his recollection. The journey lasted half an hour. When the
+carriage stopped, it was no longer on the street. The mulatto and the
+coachman took Henri in their arms, lifted him out, and, putting him
+into a sort of litter, conveyed him across a garden. He could smell its
+flowers and the perfume peculiar to trees and grass.
+
+The silence which reigned there was so profound that he could
+distinguish the noise made by the drops of water falling from the moist
+leaves. The two men took him to a staircase, set him on his feet, led
+him by his hands through several apartments, and left him in a room
+whose atmosphere was perfumed, and the thick carpet of which he could
+feel beneath his feet.
+
+A woman’s hand pushed him on to a divan, and untied the handkerchief for
+him. Henri saw Paquita before him, but Paquita in all her womanly
+and voluptuous glory. The section of the boudoir in which Henri found
+himself described a circular line, softly gracious, which was faced
+opposite by the other perfectly square half, in the midst of which a
+chimney-piece shone of gold and white marble. He had entered by a door
+on one side, hidden by a rich tapestried screen, opposite which was a
+window. The semicircular portion was adorned with a real Turkish divan,
+that is to say, a mattress thrown on the ground, but a mattress as broad
+as a bed, a divan fifty feet in circumference, made of white cashmere,
+relieved by bows of black and scarlet silk, arranged in panels. The top
+of this huge bed was raised several inches by numerous cushions, which
+further enriched it by their tasteful comfort. The boudoir was lined
+with some red stuff, over which an Indian muslin was stretched, fluted
+after the fashion of Corinthian columns, in plaits going in and out, and
+bound at the top and bottom by bands of poppy-colored stuff, on which
+were designs in black arabesque.
+
+Below the muslin the poppy turned to rose, that amorous color, which
+was matched by window-curtains, which were of Indian muslin lined with
+rose-colored taffeta, and set off with a fringe of poppy-color and
+black. Six silver-gilt arms, each supporting two candles, were attached
+to the tapestry at an equal distance, to illuminate the divan. The
+ceiling, from the middle of which a lustre of unpolished silver hung,
+was of a brilliant whiteness, and the cornice was gilded. The carpet was
+like an Oriental shawl; it had the designs and recalled the poetry of
+Persia, where the hands of slaves had worked on it. The furniture
+was covered in white cashmere, relieved by black and poppy-colored
+ornaments. The clock, the candelabra, all were in white marble and gold.
+The only table there had a cloth of cashmere. Elegant flower-pots held
+roses of every kind, flowers white or red. In fine, the least detail
+seemed to have been the object of loving thought. Never had richness
+hidden itself more coquettishly to become elegance, to express grace,
+to inspire pleasure. Everything there would have warmed the coldest
+of beings. The caresses of the tapestry, of which the color changed
+according to the direction of one’s gaze, becoming either all white
+or all rose, harmonized with the effects of the light shed upon the
+diaphanous tissues of the muslin, which produced an appearance of
+mistiness. The soul has I know not what attraction towards white, love
+delights in red, and the passions are flattered by gold, which has the
+power of realizing their caprices. Thus all that man possesses within
+him of vague and mysterious, all his inexplicable affinities, were
+caressed in their involuntary sympathies. There was in this perfect
+harmony a concert of color to which the soul responded with vague and
+voluptuous and fluctuating ideas.
+
+It was out of a misty atmosphere, laden with exquisite perfumes, that
+Paquita, clad in a white wrapper, her feet bare, orange blossoms in her
+black hair, appeared to Henri, knelt before him, adoring him as the god
+of this temple, whither he had deigned to come. Although De Marsay
+was accustomed to seeing the utmost efforts of Parisian luxury, he was
+surprised at the aspect of this shell, like that from which Venus rose
+out of the sea. Whether from an effect of contrast between the darkness
+from which he issued and the light which bathed his soul, whether from
+a comparison which he swiftly made between this scene and that of their
+first interview, he experienced one of those delicate sensations which
+true poetry gives. Perceiving in the midst of this retreat, which
+had been opened to him as by a fairy’s magic wand, the masterpiece of
+creation, this girl, whose warmly colored tints, whose soft skin--soft,
+but slightly gilded by the shadows, by I know not what vaporous effusion
+of love--gleamed as though it reflected the rays of color and light, his
+anger, his desire for vengeance, his wounded vanity, all were lost.
+
+Like an eagle darting on his prey, he took her utterly to him, set her
+on his knees, and felt with an indescribable intoxication the voluptuous
+pressure of this girl, whose richly developed beauties softly enveloped
+him.
+
+“Come to me, Paquita!” he said, in a low voice.
+
+“Speak, speak without fear!” she said. “This retreat was built for
+love. No sound can escape from it, so greatly was it desired to guard
+avariciously the accents and music of the beloved voice. However loud
+should be the cries, they would not be heard without these walls. A
+person might be murdered, and his moans would be as vain as if he were
+in the midst of the great desert.”
+
+“Who has understood jealousy and its needs so well?”
+
+“Never question me as to that,” she answered, untying with a gesture of
+wonderful sweetness the young man’s scarf, doubtless in order the better
+to behold his neck.
+
+“Yes, there is the neck I love so well!” she said. “Wouldst thou please
+me?”
+
+This interrogation, rendered by the accent almost lascivious, drew
+De Marsay from the reverie in which he had been plunged by Paquita’s
+authoritative refusal to allow him any research as to the unknown being
+who hovered like a shadow about them.
+
+“And if I wished to know who reigns here?”
+
+Paquita looked at him trembling.
+
+“It is not I, then?” he said, rising and freeing himself from the girl,
+whose head fell backwards. “Where I am, I would be alone.”
+
+“Strike, strike!...” said the poor slave, a prey to terror.
+
+“For what do you take me, then?... Will you answer?”
+
+Paquita got up gently, her eyes full of tears, took a poniard from one
+of the two ebony pieces of furniture, and presented it to Henri with a
+gesture of submission which would have moved a tiger.
+
+“Give me a feast such as men give when they love,” she said, “and whilst
+I sleep, slay me, for I know not how to answer thee. Hearken! I am bound
+like some poor beast to a stake; I am amazed that I have been able to
+throw a bridge over the abyss which divides us. Intoxicate me, then kill
+me! Ah, no, no!” she cried, joining her hands, “do not kill me! I love
+life! Life is fair to me! If I am a slave, I am a queen too. I could
+beguile you with words, tell you that I love you alone, prove it to you,
+profit by my momentary empire to say to you: ‘Take me as one tastes the
+perfume of a flower when one passes it in a king’s garden.’ Then, after
+having used the cunning eloquence of woman and soared on the wings of
+pleasure, after having quenched my thirst, I could have you cast into a
+pit, where none could find you, which has been made to gratify vengeance
+without having to fear that of the law, a pit full of lime which would
+kindle and consume you, until no particle of you were left. You would
+stay in my heart, mine forever.”
+
+Henri looked at the girl without trembling, and this fearless gaze
+filled her with joy.
+
+“No, I shall not do it! You have fallen into no trap here, but upon the
+heart of a woman who adores you, and it is I who will be cast into the
+pit.”
+
+“All this appears to me prodigiously strange,” said De Marsay,
+considering her. “But you seem to me a good girl, a strange nature; you
+are, upon my word of honor, a living riddle, the answer to which is very
+difficult to find.”
+
+Paquita understood nothing of what the young man said; she looked at
+him gently, opening wide eyes which could never be stupid, so much was
+pleasure written in them.
+
+“Come, then, my love,” she said, returning to her first idea, “wouldst
+thou please me?”
+
+“I would do all that thou wouldst, and even that thou wouldst not,”
+ answered De Marsay, with a laugh. He had recovered his foppish ease, as
+he took the resolve to let himself go to the climax of his good fortune,
+looking neither before nor after. Perhaps he counted, moreover, on his
+power and his capacity of a man used to adventures, to dominate this
+girl a few hours later and learn all her secrets.
+
+“Well,” said she, “let me arrange you as I would like.”
+
+Paquita went joyously and took from one of the two chests a robe of red
+velvet, in which she dressed De Marsay, then adorned his head with a
+woman’s bonnet and wrapped a shawl round him. Abandoning herself to
+these follies with a child’s innocence, she laughed a convulsive laugh,
+and resembled some bird flapping its wings; but he saw nothing beyond.
+
+If it be impossible to paint the unheard-of delights which these two
+creatures--made by heaven in a joyous moment--found, it is perhaps
+necessary to translate metaphysically the extraordinary and almost
+fantastic impressions of the young man. That which persons in the social
+position of De Marsay, living as he lived, are best able to recognize is
+a girl’s innocence. But, strange phenomenon! The girl of the golden eyes
+might be virgin, but innocent she was certainly not. The fantastic
+union of the mysterious and the real, of darkness and light, horror and
+beauty, pleasure and danger, paradise and hell, which had already been
+met with in this adventure, was resumed in the capricious and sublime
+being with which De Marsay dallied. All the utmost science or the most
+refined pleasure, all that Henri could know of that poetry of the senses
+which is called love, was excelled by the treasures poured forth by this
+girl, whose radiant eyes gave the lie to none of the promises which they
+made.
+
+She was an Oriental poem, in which shone the sun that Saadi, that Hafiz,
+have set in their pulsing strophes. Only, neither the rhythm of Saadi,
+nor that of Pindar, could have expressed the ecstasy--full of confusion
+and stupefaction--which seized the delicious girl when the error in
+which an iron hand had caused her to live was at an end.
+
+“Dead!” she said, “I am dead, Adolphe! Take me away to the world’s
+end, to an island where no one knows us. Let there be no traces of our
+flight! We should be followed to the gates of hell. God! here is the
+day! Escape! Shall I ever see you again? Yes, to-morrow I will see
+you, if I have to deal death to all my warders to have that joy. Till
+to-morrow.”
+
+She pressed him in her arms with an embrace in which the terror of death
+mingled. Then she touched a spring, which must have been in connection
+with a bell, and implored De Marsay to permit his eyes to be bandaged.
+
+“And if I would not--and if I wished to stay here?”
+
+“You would be the death of me more speedily,” she said, “for now I know
+I am certain to die on your account.”
+
+Henri submitted. In the man who had just gorged himself with pleasure
+there occurs a propensity to forgetfulness, I know not what ingratitude,
+a desire for liberty, a whim to go elsewhere, a tinge of contempt and,
+perhaps, of disgust for his idol; in fine, indescribable sentiments
+which render him ignoble and ashamed. The certainty of this confused,
+but real, feeling in souls who are not illuminated by that celestial
+light, nor perfumed with that holy essence from which the performance
+of sentiment springs, doubtless suggested to Rousseau the adventures of
+Lord Edward, which conclude the letters of the _Nouvelle Heloise_. If
+Rousseau is obviously inspired by the work of Richardson, he departs
+from it in a thousand details, which leave his achievement magnificently
+original; he has recommended it to posterity by great ideas which it is
+difficult to liberate by analysis, when, in one’s youth, one reads this
+work with the object of finding in it the lurid representation of the
+most physical of our feelings, whereas serious and philosophical writers
+never employ its images except as the consequence or the corollary of
+a vast thought; and the adventures of Lord Edward are one of the most
+Europeanly delicate ideas of the whole work.
+
+Henri, therefore, found himself beneath the domination of that confused
+sentiment which is unknown to true love. There was needful, in
+some sort, the persuasive grip of comparisons, and the irresistible
+attraction of memories to lead him back to a woman. True love rules
+above all through recollection. A woman who is not engraven upon the
+soul by excess of pleasure or by strength of emotion, how can she ever
+be loved? In Henri’s case, Paquita had established herself by both of
+these reasons. But at this moment, seized as he was by the satiety of
+his happiness, that delicious melancholy of the body, he could hardly
+analyze his heart, even by recalling to his lips the taste of the
+liveliest gratifications that he had ever grasped.
+
+He found himself on the Boulevard Montmartre at the break of day,
+gazed stupidly at the retreating carriage, produced two cigars from his
+pocket, lit one from the lantern of a good woman who sold brandy and
+coffee to workmen and street arabs and chestnut venders--to all the
+Parisian populace which begins its work before daybreak; then he went
+off, smoking his cigar, and putting his hands in his trousers’ pockets
+with a devil-may-care air which did him small honor.
+
+“What a good thing a cigar is! That’s one thing a man will never tire
+of,” he said to himself.
+
+Of the girl with the golden eyes, over whom at that time all the elegant
+youth of Paris was mad, he hardly thought. The idea of death, expressed
+in the midst of their pleasure, and the fear of which had more than once
+darkened the brow of that beautiful creature, who held to the houris of
+Asia by her mother, to Europe by her education, to the tropics by her
+birth, seemed to him merely one of those deceptions by which women seek
+to make themselves interesting.
+
+“She is from Havana--the most Spanish region to be found in the New
+World. So she preferred to feign terror rather than cast in my teeth
+indisposition or difficulty, coquetry or duty, like a Parisian woman. By
+her golden eyes, how glad I shall be to sleep.”
+
+He saw a hackney coach standing at the corner of Frascati’s waiting for
+some gambler; he awoke the driver, was driven home, went to bed, and
+slept the sleep of the dissipated, which for some queer reason--of which
+no rhymer has yet taken advantage--is as profound as that of innocence.
+Perhaps it is an instance of the proverbial axiom, _extremes meet_.
+
+About noon De Marsay awoke and stretched himself; he felt the grip of
+that sort of voracious hunger which old soldiers can remember having
+experienced on the morrow of victory. He was delighted, therefore, to
+see Paul de Manerville standing in front of him, for at such a time
+nothing is more agreeable than to eat in company.
+
+“Well,” his friend remarked, “we all imagined that you had been shut up
+for the last ten days with the girl of the golden eyes.”
+
+“The girl of the golden eyes! I have forgotten her. Faith! I have other
+fish to fry!”
+
+“Ah! you are playing at discretion.”
+
+“Why not?” asked De Marsay, with a laugh. “My dear fellow, discretion
+is the best form of calculation. Listen--however, no! I will not say
+a word. You never teach me anything; I am not disposed to make you a
+gratuitous present of the treasures of my policy. Life is a river which
+is of use for the promotion of commerce. In the name of all that is most
+sacred in life--of cigars! I am no professor of social economy for the
+instruction of fools. Let us breakfast! It costs less to give you a
+tunny omelette than to lavish the resources of my brain on you.”
+
+“Do you bargain with your friends?”
+
+“My dear fellow,” said Henri, who rarely denied himself a sarcasm,
+“since all the same, you may some day need, like anybody else, to use
+discretion, and since I have much love for you--yes, I like you! Upon my
+word, if you only wanted a thousand-franc note to keep you from blowing
+your brains out, you would find it here, for we haven’t yet done any
+business of that sort, eh, Paul? If you had to fight to-morrow, I would
+measure the ground and load the pistols, so that you might be killed
+according to rule. In short, if anybody besides myself took it into his
+head to say ill of you in your absence, he would have to deal with the
+somewhat nasty gentleman who walks in my shoes--there’s what I call a
+friendship beyond question. Well, my good fellow, if you should
+ever have need of discretion, understand that there are two sorts of
+discretion--the active and the negative. Negative discretion is that
+of fools who make use of silence, negation, an air of refusal, the
+discretion of locked doors--mere impotence! Active discretion proceeds
+by affirmation. Suppose at the club this evening I were to say: ‘Upon my
+word of honor the golden-eyed was not worth all she cost me!’ Everybody
+would exclaim when I was gone: ‘Did you hear that fop De Marsay, who
+tried to make us believe that he has already had the girl of the golden
+eyes? It’s his way of trying to disembarrass himself of his rivals: he’s
+no simpleton.’ But such a ruse is vulgar and dangerous. However gross a
+folly one utters, there are always idiots to be found who will believe
+it. The best form of discretion is that of women when they want to take
+the change out of their husbands. It consists in compromising a woman
+with whom we are not concerned, or whom we do not love, in order to save
+the honor of the one whom we love well enough to respect. It is what is
+called the _woman-screen_.... Ah! here is Laurent. What have you got for
+us?”
+
+“Some Ostend oysters, Monsieur le Comte.”
+
+“You will know some day, Paul, how amusing it is to make a fool of the
+world by depriving it of the secret of one’s affections. I derive an
+immense pleasure in escaping from the stupid jurisdiction of the crowd,
+which knows neither what it wants, nor what one wants of it, which takes
+the means for the end, and by turns curses and adores, elevates and
+destroys! What a delight to impose emotions on it and receive none from
+it, to tame it, never to obey it. If one may ever be proud of anything,
+is it not a self-acquired power, of which one is at once the cause and
+effect, the principle and the result? Well, no man knows what I love,
+nor what I wish. Perhaps what I have loved, or what I may have wished
+will be known, as a drama which is accomplished is known; but to let
+my game be seen--weakness, mistake! I know nothing more despicable than
+strength outwitted by cunning. Can I initiate myself with a laugh into
+the ambassador’s part, if indeed diplomacy is as difficult as life? I
+doubt it. Have you any ambition? Would you like to become something?”
+
+“But, Henri, you are laughing at me--as though I were not sufficiently
+mediocre to arrive at anything.”
+
+“Good Paul! If you go on laughing at yourself, you will soon be able to
+laugh at everybody else.”
+
+At breakfast, by the time he had started his cigars, De Marsay began to
+see the events of the night in a singular light. Like many men of great
+intelligence, his perspicuity was not spontaneous, as it did not at once
+penetrate to the heart of things. As with all natures endowed with the
+faculty of living greatly in the present, of extracting, so to speak,
+the essence of it and assimilating it, his second-sight had need of a
+sort of slumber before it could identify itself with causes. Cardinal
+de Richelieu was so constituted, and it did not debar in him the gift of
+foresight necessary to the conception of great designs.
+
+De Marsay’s conditions were alike, but at first he only used his weapons
+for the benefit of his pleasures, and only became one of the most
+profound politicians of his day when he had saturated himself with
+those pleasures to which a young man’s thoughts--when he has money and
+power--are primarily directed. Man hardens himself thus: he uses woman
+in order that she may not make use of him.
+
+At this moment, then, De Marsay perceived that he had been fooled by
+the girl of the golden eyes, seeing, as he did, in perspective, all that
+night of which the delights had been poured upon him by degrees until
+they had ended by flooding him in torrents. He could read, at last,
+that page in effect so brilliant, divine its hidden meaning. The purely
+physical innocence of Paquita, the bewilderment of her joy, certain
+words, obscure at first, but now clear, which had escaped her in the
+midst of that joy, all proved to him that he had posed for another
+person. As no social corruption was unknown to him, as he professed a
+complete indifference towards all perversities, and believed them to be
+justified on the simple ground that they were capable of satisfaction,
+he was not startled at vice, he knew it as one knows a friend, but he
+was wounded at having served as sustenance for it. If his presumption
+was right, he had been outraged in the most sensitive part of him. The
+mere suspicion filled him with fury, he broke out with the roar of a
+tiger who has been the sport of a deer, the cry of a tiger which united
+a brute’s strength with the intelligence of the demon.
+
+“I say, what is the matter with you?” asked Paul.
+
+“Nothing!”
+
+“I should be sorry, if you were to be asked whether you had anything
+against me and were to reply with a _nothing_ like that! It would be a
+sure case of fighting the next day.”
+
+“I fight no more duels,” said De Marsay.
+
+“That seems to me even more tragical. Do you assassinate, then?”
+
+“You travesty words. I execute.”
+
+“My dear friend,” said Paul, “your jokes are of a very sombre color this
+morning.”
+
+“What would you have? Pleasure ends in cruelty. Why? I don’t know, and
+am not sufficiently curious to try and find out.... These cigars are
+excellent. Give your friend some tea. Do you know, Paul, I live a
+brute’s life? It should be time to choose oneself a destiny, to employ
+one’s powers on something which makes life worth living. Life is a
+singular comedy. I am frightened, I laugh at the inconsequence of our
+social order. The Government cuts off the heads of poor devils who
+may have killed a man and licenses creatures who despatch, medically
+speaking, a dozen young folks in a season. Morality is powerless
+against a dozen vices which destroy society and which nothing can
+punish.--Another cup!--Upon my word of honor! man is a jester dancing
+upon a precipice. They talk to us about the immorality of the _Liaisons
+Dangereuses_, and any other book you like with a vulgar reputation; but
+there exists a book, horrible, filthy, fearful, corrupting, which is
+always open and will never be shut, the great book of the world; not to
+mention another book, a thousand times more dangerous, which is composed
+of all that men whisper into each other’s ears, or women murmur behind
+their fans, of an evening in society.”
+
+“Henri, there is certainly something extraordinary the matter with you;
+that is obvious in spite of your active discretion.”
+
+“Yes!... Come, I must kill the time until this evening. Let’s to the
+tables.... Perhaps I shall have the good luck to lose.”
+
+De Marsay rose, took a handful of banknotes and folded them into his
+cigar-case, dressed himself, and took advantage of Paul’s carriage to
+repair to the Salon des Etrangers, where until dinner he consumed the
+time in those exciting alternations of loss and gain which are the last
+resource of powerful organizations when they are compelled to exercise
+themselves in the void. In the evening he repaired to the trysting-place
+and submitted complacently to having his eyes bandaged. Then, with
+that firm will which only really strong men have the faculty of
+concentrating, he devoted his attention and applied his intelligence to
+the task of divining through what streets the carriage passed. He had
+a sort of certitude of being taken to the Rue Saint-Lazare, and
+being brought to a halt at the little gate in the garden of the Hotel
+San-Real. When he passed, as on the first occasion, through this gate,
+and was put in a litter, carried, doubtless by the mulatto and the
+coachman, he understood, as he heard the gravel grate beneath their
+feet, why they took such minute precautions. He would have been able,
+had he been free, or if he had walked, to pluck a twig of laurel,
+to observe the nature of the soil which clung to his boots; whereas,
+transported, so to speak, ethereally into an inaccessible mansion, his
+good fortune must remain what it had been hitherto, a dream. But it is
+man’s despair that all his work, whether for good or evil, is imperfect.
+All his labors, physical or intellectual, are sealed with the mark
+of destruction. There had been a gentle rain, the earth was moist. At
+night-time certain vegetable perfumes are far stronger than during the
+day; Henri could smell, therefore, the scent of the mignonette which
+lined the avenue along which he was conveyed. This indication was enough
+to light him in the researches which he promised himself to make in
+order to recognize the hotel which contained Paquita’s boudoir. He
+studied in the same way the turnings which his bearers took within the
+house, and believed himself able to recall them.
+
+As on the previous night, he found himself on the ottoman before
+Paquita, who was undoing his bandage; but he saw her pale and altered.
+She had wept. On her knees like an angel in prayer, but like an angel
+profoundly sad and melancholy, the poor girl no longer resembled the
+curious, impatient, and impetuous creature who had carried De Marsay
+on her wings to transport him to the seventh heaven of love. There was
+something so true in this despair veiled by pleasure, that the terrible
+De Marsay felt within him an admiration for this new masterpiece
+of nature, and forgot, for the moment, the chief interest of his
+assignation.
+
+“What is the matter with thee, my Paquita?”
+
+“My friend,” she said, “carry me away this very night. Bear me to some
+place where no one can answer: ‘There is a girl with a golden gaze here,
+who has long hair.’ Yonder I will give thee as many pleasures as thou
+wouldst have of me. Then when you love me no longer, you shall leave me,
+I shall not complain, I shall say nothing; and your desertion need cause
+you no remorse, for one day passed with you, only one day, in which I
+have had you before my eyes, will be worth all my life to me. But if I
+stay here, I am lost.”
+
+“I cannot leave Paris, little one!” replied Henri. “I do not belong to
+myself, I am bound by a vow to the fortune of several persons who stand
+to me, as I do to them. But I can place you in a refuge in Paris, where
+no human power can reach you.”
+
+“No,” she said, “you forget the power of woman.”
+
+Never did phrase uttered by human voice express terror more absolutely.
+
+“What could reach you, then, if I put myself between you and the world?”
+
+“Poison!” she said. “Dona Concha suspects you already... and,” she
+resumed, letting the tears fall and glisten on her cheeks, “it is easy
+enough to see I am no longer the same. Well, if you abandon me to the
+fury of the monster who will destroy me, your holy will be done! But
+come, let there be all the pleasures of life in our love. Besides, I
+will implore, I will weep and cry out and defend myself; perhaps I shall
+be saved.”
+
+“Whom will your implore?” he asked.
+
+“Silence!” said Paquita. “If I obtain mercy it will perhaps be on
+account of my discretion.”
+
+“Give me my robe,” said Henri, insidiously.
+
+“No, no!” she answered quickly, “be what you are, one of those angels
+whom I have been taught to hate, and in whom I only saw ogres, whilst
+you are what is fairest under the skies,” she said, caressing Henri’s
+hair. “You do not know how silly I am. I have learned nothing. Since I
+was twelve years old I have been shut up without ever seeing any one. I
+can neither read nor write, I can only speak English and Spanish.”
+
+“How is it, then, that you receive letters from London?”
+
+“My letters?... See, here they are!” she said, proceeding to take some
+papers out of a tall Japanese vase.
+
+She offered De Marsay some letters, in which the young man saw, with
+surprise, strange figures, similar to those of a rebus, traced in blood,
+and illustrating phrases full of passion.
+
+“But,” he cried, marveling at these hieroglyphics created by the
+alertness of jealousy, “you are in the power of an infernal genius?”
+
+“Infernal,” she repeated.
+
+“But how, then, were you able to get out?”
+
+“Ah!” she said, “that was my ruin. I drove Dona Concha to choose between
+the fear of immediate death and anger to be. I had the curiosity of
+a demon, I wished to break the bronze circle which they had described
+between creation and me, I wished to see what young people were like,
+for I knew nothing of man except the Marquis and Cristemio. Our coachman
+and the lackey who accompanies us are old men....”
+
+“But you were not always thus shut up? Your health...?”
+
+“Ah,” she answered, “we used to walk, but it was at night and in the
+country, by the side of the Seine, away from people.”
+
+“Are you not proud of being loved like that?”
+
+“No,” she said, “no longer. However full it be, this hidden life is but
+darkness in comparison with the light.”
+
+“What do you call the light?”
+
+“Thee, my lovely Adolphe! Thee, for whom I would give my life. All the
+passionate things that have been told me, and that I have inspired, I
+feel for thee! For a certain time I understood nothing of existence, but
+now I know what love is, and hitherto I have been the loved one only;
+for myself, I did not love. I would give up everything for you, take me
+away. If you like, take me as a toy, but let me be near you until you
+break me.”
+
+“You will have no regrets?”
+
+“Not one”! she said, letting him read her eyes, whose golden tint was
+pure and clear.
+
+“Am I the favored one?” said Henri to himself. If he suspected the
+truth, he was ready at that time to pardon the offence in view of a love
+so single minded. “I shall soon see,” he thought.
+
+If Paquita owed him no account of the past, yet the least recollection
+of it became in his eyes a crime. He had therefore the sombre strength
+to withhold a portion of his thought, to study her, even while
+abandoning himself to the most enticing pleasures that ever peri
+descended from the skies had devised for her beloved.
+
+Paquita seemed to have been created for love by a particular effort of
+nature. In a night her feminine genius had made the most rapid progress.
+Whatever might be the power of this young man, and his indifference in
+the matter of pleasures, in spite of his satiety of the previous night,
+he found in the girl with the golden eyes that seraglio which a loving
+woman knows how to create and which a man never refuses. Paquita
+responded to that passion which is felt by all really great men for the
+infinite--that mysterious passion so dramatically expressed in Faust, so
+poetically translated in Manfred, and which urged Don Juan to search
+the heart of women, in his hope to find there that limitless thought in
+pursuit of which so many hunters after spectres have started, which wise
+men think to discover in science, and which mystics find in God alone.
+The hope of possessing at last the ideal being with whom the struggle
+could be constant and tireless ravished De Marsay, who, for the first
+time for long, opened his heart. His nerves expanded, his coldness was
+dissipated in the atmosphere of that ardent soul, his hard and fast
+theories melted away, and happiness colored his existence to the tint of
+the rose and white boudoir. Experiencing the sting of a higher pleasure,
+he was carried beyond the limits within which he had hitherto confined
+passion. He would not be surpassed by this girl, whom a somewhat
+artificial love had formed all ready for the needs of his soul, and then
+he found in that vanity which urges a man to be in all things a victor,
+strength enough to tame the girl; but, at the same time, urged beyond
+that line where the soul is mistress over herself, he lost himself
+in these delicious limboes, which the vulgar call so foolishly “the
+imaginary regions.” He was tender, kind, and confidential. He affected
+Paquita almost to madness.
+
+“Why should we not go to Sorrento, to Nice, to Chiavari, and pass all
+our life so? Will you?” he asked of Paquita, in a penetrating voice.
+
+“Was there need to say to me: ‘Will you’?” she cried. “Have I a will? I
+am nothing apart from you, except in so far as I am a pleasure for you.
+If you would choose a retreat worthy of us, Asia is the only country
+where love can unfold his wings....”
+
+“You are right,” answered Henri. “Let us go to the Indies, there where
+spring is eternal, where the earth grows only flowers, where man can
+display the magnificence of kings and none shall say him nay, as in the
+foolish lands where they would realize the dull chimera of equality. Let
+us go to the country where one lives in the midst of a nation of slaves,
+where the sun shines ever on a palace which is always white, where the
+air sheds perfumes, the birds sing of love and where, when one can love
+no more, one dies....”
+
+“And where one dies together!” said Paquita. “But do not let us start
+to-morrow, let us start this moment... take Cristemio.”
+
+“Faith! pleasure is the fairest climax of life. Let us go to Asia; but
+to start, my child, one needs much gold, and to have gold one must set
+one’s affairs in order.”
+
+She understood no part of these ideas.
+
+“Gold! There is a pile of it here--as high as that,” she said holding up
+her hand.
+
+“It is not mine.”
+
+“What does that matter?” she went on; “if we have need of it let us take
+it.”
+
+“It does not belong to you.”
+
+“Belong!” she repeated. “Have you not taken me? When we have taken it,
+it will belong to us.”
+
+He gave a laugh.
+
+“Poor innocent! You know nothing of the world.”
+
+“Nay, but this is what I know,” she cried, clasping Henri to her.
+
+At the very moment when De Marsay was forgetting all, and conceiving the
+desire to appropriate this creature forever, he received in the midst of
+his joy a dagger-thrust, which Paquita, who had lifted him vigorously in
+the air, as though to contemplate him, exclaimed: “Oh, Margarita!”
+
+“Margarita!” cried the young man, with a roar; “now I know all that I
+still tried to disbelieve.”
+
+He leaped upon the cabinet in which the long poniard was kept. Happily
+for Paquita and for himself, the cupboard was shut. His fury waxed at
+this impediment, but he recovered his tranquillity, went and found his
+cravat, and advanced towards her with an air of such ferocious meaning
+that, without knowing of what crime she had been guilty, Paquita
+understood, none the less, that her life was in question. With one bound
+she rushed to the other end of the room to escape the fatal knot which
+De Marsay tried to pass round her neck. There was a struggle. On either
+side there was an equality of strength, agility, and suppleness. To end
+the combat Paquita threw between the legs of her lover a cushion which
+made him fall, and profited by the respite which this advantage gave
+to her, to push the button of the spring which caused the bell to ring.
+Promptly the mulatto arrived. In a second Cristemio leaped on De Marsay
+and held him down with one foot on his chest, his heel turned towards
+the throat. De Marsay realized that, if he struggled, at a single sign
+from Paquita he would be instantly crushed.
+
+“Why did you want to kill me, my beloved?” she said. De Marsay made no
+reply.
+
+“In what have I angered you?” she asked. “Speak, let us understand each
+other.”
+
+Henri maintained the phlegmatic attitude of a strong man who feels
+himself vanquished; his countenance, cold, silent, entirely English,
+revealed the consciousness of his dignity in a momentary resignation.
+Moreover, he had already thought, in spite of the vehemence of his
+anger, that it was scarcely prudent to compromise himself with the law
+by killing this girl on the spur of the moment, before he had arranged
+the murder in such a manner as should insure his impunity.
+
+“My beloved,” went on Paquita, “speak to me; do not leave me without one
+loving farewell! I would not keep in my heart the terror which you have
+just inspired in it.... Will you speak?” she said, stamping her foot
+with anger.
+
+De Marsay, for all reply, gave her a glance, which signified so plainly,
+“_You must die!_” that Paquita threw herself upon him.
+
+“Ah, well, you want to kill me!... If my death can give you any
+pleasure--kill me!”
+
+She made a sign to Cristemio, who withdrew his foot from the body of the
+young man, and retired without letting his face show that he had formed
+any opinion, good or bad, with regard to Paquita.
+
+“That is a man,” said De Marsay, pointing to the mulatto, with a
+sombre gesture. “There is no devotion like the devotion which obeys in
+friendship, and does not stop to weigh motives. In that man you possess
+a true friend.”
+
+“I will give him you, if you like,” she answered; “he will serve you
+with the same devotion that he has for me, if I so instruct him.”
+
+She waited for a word of recognition, and went on with an accent replete
+with tenderness:
+
+“Adolphe, give me then one kind word!... It is nearly day.”
+
+Henri did not answer. The young man had one sorry quality, for one
+considers as something great everything which resembles strength, and
+often men invent extravagances. Henri knew not how to pardon. That
+_returning upon itself_ which is one of the soul’s graces, was a
+non-existent sense for him. The ferocity of the Northern man, with which
+the English blood is deeply tainted, had been transmitted to him by his
+father. He was inexorable both in his good and evil impulses. Paquita’s
+exclamation had been all the more horrible to him, in that it had
+dethroned him from the sweetest triumph which had ever flattered his
+man’s vanity. Hope, love, and every emotion had been exalted with him,
+all had lit up within his heart and his intelligence, then these torches
+illuminating his life had been extinguished by a cold wind. Paquita, in
+her stupefaction of grief, had only strength enough to give the signal
+for departure.
+
+“What is the use of that!” she said, throwing away the bandage. “If he
+does not love me, if he hates me, it is all over.”
+
+She waited for one look, did not obtain it, and fell, half dead. The
+mulatto cast a glance at Henri, so horribly significant, that, for the
+first time in his life, the young man, to whom no one denied the gift of
+rare courage, trembled. “_If you do not love her well, if you give her
+the least pain, I will kill you_.” such was the sense of that brief
+gaze. De Marsay was escorted, with a care almost obsequious, along the
+dimly lit corridor, at the end of which he issued by a secret door into
+the garden of the Hotel San-Real. The mulatto made him walk cautiously
+through an avenue of lime trees, which led to a little gate opening upon
+a street which was at that hour deserted. De Marsay took a keen notice
+of everything. The carriage awaited him. This time the mulatto did not
+accompany him, and at the moment when Henri put his head out of the
+window to look once more at the gardens of the hotel, he encountered the
+white eyes of Cristemio, with whom he exchanged a glance. On either side
+there was a provocation, a challenge, the declaration of a savage
+war, of a duel in which ordinary laws were invalid, where treason and
+treachery were admitted means. Cristemio knew that Henri had sworn
+Paquita’s death. Henri knew that Cristemio would like to kill him before
+he killed Paquita. Both understood each other to perfection.
+
+“The adventure is growing complicated in a most interesting way,” said
+Henri.
+
+“Where is the gentleman going to?” asked the coachman.
+
+De Marsay was driven to the house of Paul de Manerville. For more than a
+week Henri was away from home, and no one could discover either what he
+did during this period, nor where he stayed. This retreat saved him from
+the fury of the mulatto and caused the ruin of the charming creature who
+had placed all her hope in him whom she loved as never human heart had
+loved on this earth before. On the last day of the week, about eleven
+o’clock at night, Henri drove up in a carriage to the little gate in the
+garden of the Hotel San-Real. Four men accompanied him. The driver was
+evidently one of his friends, for he stood up on his box, like a man who
+was to listen, an attentive sentinel, for the least sound. One of the
+other three took his stand outside the gate in the street; the second
+waited in the garden, leaning against the wall; the last, who carried in
+his hand a bunch of keys, accompanied De Marsay.
+
+“Henri,” said his companion to him, “we are betrayed.”
+
+“By whom, my good Ferragus?”
+
+“They are not all asleep,” replied the chief of the Devourers; “it is
+absolutely certain that some one in the house has neither eaten nor
+drunk.... Look! see that light!”
+
+“We have a plan of the house; from where does it come?”
+
+“I need no plan to know,” replied Ferragus; “it comes from the room of
+the Marquise.”
+
+“Ah,” cried De Marsay, “no doubt she arrived from London to-day. The
+woman has robbed me even of my revenge! But if she has anticipated me,
+my good Gratien, we will give her up to the law.”
+
+“Listen, listen!... The thing is settled,” said Ferragus to Henri.
+
+The two friends listened intently, and heard some feeble cries which
+might have aroused pity in the breast of a tiger.
+
+“Your marquise did not think the sound would escape by the chimney,”
+ said the chief of the Devourers, with the laugh of a critic, enchanted
+to detect a fault in a work of merit.
+
+“We alone, we know how to provide for every contingency,” said Henri.
+“Wait for me. I want to see what is going on upstairs--I want to know
+how their domestic quarrels are managed. By God! I believe she is
+roasting her at a slow fire.”
+
+De Marsay lightly scaled the stairs, with which he was familiar, and
+recognized the passage leading to the boudoir. When he opened the door
+he experienced the involuntary shudder which the sight of bloodshed
+gives to the most determined of men. The spectacle which was offered to
+his view was, moreover, in more than one respect astonishing to him.
+The Marquise was a woman; she had calculated her vengeance with that
+perfection of perfidy which distinguishes the weaker animals. She had
+dissimulated her anger in order to assure herself of the crime before
+she punished it.
+
+“Too late, my beloved!” said Paquita, in her death agony, casting her
+pale eyes upon De Marsay.
+
+The girl of the golden eyes expired in a bath of blood. The great
+illumination of candles, a delicate perfume which was perceptible,
+a certain disorder, in which the eye of a man accustomed to amorous
+adventures could not but discern the madness which is common to all
+the passions, revealed how cunningly the Marquise had interrogated the
+guilty one. The white room, where the blood showed so well, betrayed a
+long struggle. The prints of Paquita’s hands were on the cushions. Here
+she had clung to her life, here she had defended herself, here she
+had been struck. Long strips of the tapestry had been torn down by her
+bleeding hands, which, without a doubt, had struggled long. Paquita must
+have tried to reach the window; her bare feet had left their imprints
+on the edge of the divan, along which she must have run. Her body,
+mutilated by the dagger-thrusts of her executioner, told of the fury
+with which she had disputed a life which Henri had made precious to her.
+She lay stretched on the floor, and in her death-throes had bitten the
+ankles of Madame de San-Real, who still held in her hand her dagger,
+dripping blood. The hair of the Marquise had been torn out, she was
+covered with bites, many of which were bleeding, and her torn dress
+revealed her in a state of semi-nudity, with the scratches on her
+breasts. She was sublime so. Her head, eager and maddened, exhaled the
+odor of blood. Her panting mouth was open, and her nostrils were not
+sufficient for her breath. There are certain animals who fall upon their
+enemy in their rage, do it to death, and seem in the tranquillity of
+victory to have forgotten it. There are others who prowl around their
+victim, who guard it in fear lest it should be taken away from them, and
+who, like the Achilles of Homer, drag their enemy by the feet nine times
+round the walls of Troy. The Marquise was like that. She did not see
+Henri. In the first place, she was too secure of her solitude to be
+afraid of witnesses; and, secondly, she was too intoxicated with warm
+blood, too excited with the fray, too exalted, to take notice of the
+whole of Paris, if Paris had formed a circle round her. A thunderbolt
+would not have disturbed her. She had not even heard Paquita’s last
+sigh, and believed that the dead girl could still hear her.
+
+“Die without confessing!” she said. “Go down to hell, monster of
+ingratitude; belong to no one but the fiend. For the blood you gave him
+you owe me all your own! Die, die, suffer a thousand deaths! I have
+been too kind--I was only a moment killing you. I should have made you
+experience all the tortures that you have bequeathed to me. I--I shall
+live! I shall live in misery. I have no one left to love but God!”
+
+She gazed at her.
+
+“She is dead!” she said to herself, after a pause, in a violent
+reaction. “Dead! Oh, I shall die of grief!”
+
+The Marquise was throwing herself upon the divan, stricken with a
+despair which deprived her of speech, when this movement brought her in
+view of Henri de Marsay.
+
+“Who are you?” she asked, rushing at him with her dagger raised.
+
+Henri caught her arm, and thus they could contemplate each other face
+to face. A horrible surprise froze the blood in their veins, and their
+limbs quivered like those of frightened horses. In effect, the two
+Menoechmi had not been more alike. With one accord they uttered the same
+phrase:
+
+“Lord Dudley must have been your father!”
+
+The head of each was drooped in affirmation.
+
+“She was true to the blood,” said Henri, pointing to Paquita.
+
+“She was as little guilty as it is possible to be,” replied Margarita
+Euphemia Porraberil, and she threw herself upon the body of Paquita,
+giving vent to a cry of despair. “Poor child! Oh, if I could bring thee
+to life again! I was wrong--forgive me, Paquita! Dead! and I live! I--I
+am the most unhappy.”
+
+At that moment the horrible face of the mother of Paquita appeared.
+
+“You are come to tell me that you never sold her to me to kill,” cried
+the Marquise. “I know why you have left your lair. I will pay you twice
+over. Hold your peace.”
+
+She took a bag of gold from the ebony cabinet, and threw it
+contemptuously at the old woman’s feet. The chink of the gold was potent
+enough to excite a smile on the Georgian’s impassive face.
+
+“I come at the right moment for you, my sister,” said Henri. “The law
+will ask of you----”
+
+“Nothing,” replied the Marquise. “One person alone might ask for a
+reckoning for the death of this girl. Cristemio is dead.”
+
+“And the mother,” said Henri, pointing to the old woman. “Will you not
+always be in her power?”
+
+“She comes from a country where women are not beings, but
+things--chattels, with which one does as one wills, which one buys,
+sells, and slays; in short, which one uses for one’s caprices as you,
+here, use a piece of furniture. Besides, she has one passion which
+dominates all the others, and which would have stifled her maternal
+love, even if she had loved her daughter, a passion----”
+
+“What?” Henri asked quickly, interrupting his sister.
+
+“Play! God keep you from it,” answered the Marquise.
+
+“But whom have you,” said Henri, looking at the girl of the golden eyes,
+“who will help you to remove the traces of this fantasy which the law
+would not overlook?”
+
+“I have her mother,” replied the Marquise, designating the Georgian, to
+whom she made a sign to remain.
+
+“We shall meet again,” said Henri, who was thinking anxiously of his
+friends and felt that it was time to leave.
+
+“No, brother,” she said, “we shall not meet again. I am going back to
+Spain to enter the Convent of _los Dolores_.”
+
+“You are too young yet, too lovely,” said Henri, taking her in his arms
+and giving her a kiss.
+
+“Good-bye,” she said; “there is no consolation when you have lost that
+which has seemed to you the infinite.”
+
+A week later Paul de Manerville met De Marsay in the Tuileries, on the
+Terrasse de Feuillants.
+
+“Well, what has become of our beautiful girl of the golden eyes, you
+rascal?”
+
+“She is dead.”
+
+“What of?”
+
+“Consumption.”
+
+
+PARIS, March 1834-April 1835.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+  Note: The Girl with the Golden Eyes is the third part of a trilogy.
+  Part one is entitled Ferragus and part two is The Duchesse de
+  Langeais. In other addendum references all three stories are usually
+  combined under the title The Thirteen.
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Bourignard, Gratien-Henri-Victor-Jean-Joseph
+       Ferragus
+
+     Dudley, Lord
+       The Lily of the Valley
+       A Man of Business
+       Another Study of Woman
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Manerville, Paul Francois-Joseph, Comte de
+       The Ball at Sceaux
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Marriage Settlement
+
+     Marsay, Henri de
+       Ferragus
+       The Duchesse of Langeais
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Lily of the Valley
+       Father Goriot
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       A Marriage Settlement
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       The Ball at Sceaux
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Ronquerolles, Marquis de
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Peasantry
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       A Woman of Thirty
+       Another Study of Woman
+       Ferragus
+       The Duchesse of Langeais
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Thirteen, by Honore de Balzac
+
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