JBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA
SAN DIE60
>/. II
H. DE BALZAC
COMfiDIE HUMAINE
Edited by
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
CV.
A 11 rights reserved
H. DE BALZAC
A DAUGHTER OF EVE
(Une Fille d'Eve)
AND
LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES
{Memoires de deux jeunes Mariies)
Translated by
R. S. SCOTT
•with a Preface by
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
LONDON
J. M. DENT AND CO.
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
MDCCCXCVII
Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
CONTENTS
PREFACE
*A DAUGHTER OF EVE—
CHAP. I. THE TWO MARIES .
II. SISTERLY CONFIDENCES .
III. THE STORY OF A HAPPY WOMAN
IV. A MAN OF NOTE .
V. FLORINE ....
VI. LOVE VERSUS SOCIETY
VII. SUICIDE ....
VIII. A LOVER SAVED AND LOST
IX. A HUSBAND'S TRIUMPH .
LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES—
FIRST PART .....
SECOND PART ....
PAGE
ix
2
16
2 3
34
53
6 9
9 1
109
127
H3
343
LIST OF ETCHINGS
DU TILLET TOOK HIS WIFE'S ARM AND . . . PLANTED
HER BEFORE HIM (p. 22) . . . . Frontispiece
PAGE
A FAMOUS DRESSMAKER, BY NAME VICTORINE, HAS
COME I58
' FELIPE, MY BELOVED, FROM THIS MOMENT I AM
YOUR WIFE IN THOUGHT AND WILL ' . . . 266
Drawn and Etched by J. Ayton Symington.
PREFACE
Opinions of the larger division of this book will vary
in pretty direct ratio with the general taste of the
reader for Balzac in his more sentimental mood, and
for his delineations of virtuous or 'honest' women.
As is the case with the number of the Comedie which
immediately succeeds it in Scenes de la Vie Privee, I
cannot say of it that it appeals to me personally with
any strong attraction. It is, however, much later and
much more accomplished work than La Femme de
Trente Ans and its companions. It is possible also that
opinion may be conditioned by likes or dislikes for
novels written in the form of letters, but this cannot
count for very much. Some of the best novels in the
world, and some of the worst, have taken this form, so
that the form itself can have had nothing necessarily to
do with their goodness and badness by itself.
Something of the odd perversity which seems to make
it so difficult for a French author to imagine a woman,
not necessarily a model of perfection, who combines love
for her husband of the passionate kind with love for her
children of the animal sort, common-sense and good house-
wifery with freedom from the characteristics of the mere
menagere^ interest in affairs and books and things in general
without, in the French sense, 'dissipation' or neglect of
x Preface
home, — appears in the division of the parts of Louise de
Chaulieu and Renee de Maucombe. I cannot think that
Balzac has improved his book, though he has made it much
easier to write, by this separation. We should take more
interest in Renee's nursery — it is fair to Balzac to say
that he was one of the earliest, despite his lukewarm
affection for things English, to introduce this important
apartment into a French novel — if she had married her
husband less as a matter of business, and had regarded
him with a somewhat more romantic affection ; and
though it is perhaps not fair to look forward to the
Depute (PArcis (which, after all, is not in this part
probably Balzac's work), we should not in that case
have been so little surprised as we are to find the staid
matron very nearly flinging herself at the head of a
young sculptor, and 'making it up' to him (one of the
nastiest situations in fiction) with her own daughter.
So, too, if the addition of a little more romance to
Renee had resulted in the subtraction of a corresponding
quantity from Louise, there might not have been much
harm done. This very inflammable lady of high degree
irresistibly reminds one (except in beauty) of the terrible
spinster in Mr. Punch's gallery who 'had never seen
the man whom she could not love, and hoped to Heaven
she never might.' It was not for nothing that Mile, de
Chaulieu requested (in defiance of possibility) to be intro-
duced to Madame de Stael. She is herself a later and
slightly modernised variety of the Corinne ideal — a sort
of French equivalent in fiction of the actual English Lady
Caroline Lamb, a person with no repose in her affections,
and conceiving herself in conscience bound to make both
herself and her lovers or husbands miserable. It is true
Preface
XI
that in order to the successful accomplishment of this
cheerful life-programme, Balzac has provided her with
two singularly complaisant and adequate helpmates in
the shape of the Spaniard-Sardinian Felipe de Macumer
and the French-Englishman and lunatic Marie Gaston.
Nor do I know that she is more than they themselves
desire, being, as they are, walking gentlemen of a most
triste description, deplorable to consider as coming from
the hand that created not merely Goriot and Grandet,
but even Rastignac, Flore Brazier, and Lucien de
Rubempre. If this censure seems too hard, I can only
say that of all things that deserve the name of failure,
' sensibility ' that does not reach the actual boiling-point
of passion seems to me to fail most disagreeably.
There are, however, even for those who are thus
minded, considerable condolences and consolations in
Une Fille if Eve. It is perhaps unfortunate, and may not
improbably be the cause of that abiding notion of
Balzac as preferring moral ugliness to moral beauty,
which has been so often referred to, that he has rather
a habit of setting his studies in rose-pink side by side
with his far more vigorous exercitations in black and
crimson. Une Fille a" Eve is one of the best of these
latter in its own way. It is no doubt conditioned by
Balzac's quaint hatred of that newspaper press from
which he never could quite succeed in disengaging him-
self; and we should have been more entirely rejoiced
at the escape of Count Felix de Vandenesse from the
decoration so often alluded to by our Elizabethan poets
and dramatists if he had not been the very questionable
hero of Le Lys dans la Vallee. But the whole intrigue is
managed with remarkable ease and skill ; the c double
Xll
Preface
arrangement,' so to speak, by which Raoul Nathan
proves for a time at least equally attractive to such
very different persons as Florine and Madame de
Vandenesse, the perfidious manoeuvres of the respect-
able ladies who have formerly enjoyed the doubtful
honour of Count Felix's attentions — all are good. It
can hardly be said, considering the nature of the case,
that the Count's method of saving his honour, though
not quite the most scrupulous in the world, is contrary
to 'the game,' and the whole moves well.
Perhaps the character of Nathan himself cannot be
said to be quite fully worked out. Balzac seems to
have postulated, as almost necessary to the journalist
nature, a sort of levity half artistic, half immoral, which
is incapable of constancy or uprightness. Blondet, and
perhaps Claude Vignon, are about the only members of
the accursed vocation whom he allows in some measure
to escape the curse. But he has not elaborated and
instanced its working quite so fully in the case of
Nathan as in the cases of Lousteau and Lucien de
Rubempre. I do not know whether any special original
has been assigned to Nathan, who, it will be observed,
is something more than a mere journalist, being a
successful dramatist and romancer.
Memoires de Deux "Jeunes Mariees first appeared in
the Presse during the winter of 1841-42, and was pub-
lished as a book by Souverain in the latter year. The
Comedie in its complete form was already under weigh ;
and the Memoires being suitable for its earliest division,
the Scenes de la Vie Privee were entered at once on the
books, the same year, 1842, seeing the entrance.
Une Fille d* Eve was a little earlier. After appearing
Preface xiii
(with nine chapter divisions) in the Steele on the last
day of December 1838 and during the first fortnight of
January 1839, it was in the latter year published as a
book by Souverain with Massimilla Don't, and three
years later was comprised in the first volume of the
Come die. G. S.
A DAUGHTER OF EVE
To Madame la Comtesse de Bolognini,
nee Vimercati.
If you remember, dear lady, the pleasure your
conversation gave to a certain traveller, making
Paris live for him in Milan, you will not be sur-
prised that he should lay one of his works at your
feet, as a token of gratitude for so many delightful
evenings spent in your society, nor that he should
seek for it the shelter of a name" which, in old
times, was given to not a few of the tales by one
of your early writers, beloved of the Milanese.
You have an Eugenie, with more than the promise
of beauty, whose speaking smile proclaims her to
have inherited from you the most precious gifts a
woman can possess, and whose childhood, it is
certain, will be rich in all those joys which a harsh
mother refused to the Eugenie of these pages. If
Frenchmen are accused of being frivolous and incon-
stant, I, you see, am Italian in my faithfulness
and attachment. How often, as I wrote the name
of Eugenie, have my thoughts carried me back to
the cool stuccoed drawing-room and little garden of
the Vicolo dei Capuccini, which used to resound
to the dear chiWs merry laughter, to our quarrels,
and our stories. You have left the Corso for the
Tre Monasteri, where I know nothing of your
manner of life, and I am forced to picture you. no
A Daughter of Eve
longer amongst the pretty things, which doubtless
still surround you, but like one of the beautiful
heads of Carlo Dolci, Raphael, Titian, or Allori,
which, in their remoteness, seem to us like
abstractions.
If this book succeed in making its way across
the Alps, it will tell you of the lively gratitude and
respectful friendship of
Tour humble servant,
De Balzac.
CHAPTER I
THE TWO MARIES
It was half-past eleven in the evening, and two women
were seated by the fire of a boudoir in one of the finest
houses of the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins. The room
was hung in blue velvet, of the kind with tender melting
lights, which French industry has only lately learned to
manufacture. The doors and windows had been draped
by a really artistic decorator with rich cashmere curtains,
matching the walls in colour. From a prettily moulded
rose in the centre of the ceiling, hung, by three finely
wrought chains, a silver lamp, studded with turquoises.
The plan of decoration had been carried out to the very
minutest detail ; even the ceiling was covered with blue
silk, while long bands of cashmere, folded across the
silk at equal distances, made stars of white, looped up
with pearl beading. The feet sank in the warm pile of
a Belgian carpet, close as a lawn, where blue nosegays
were sprinkled over a ground the colour of unbleached
linen. The warm tone of the furniture, which was of
solid rosewood and carved after the best antique models,
saved from insipidity the general effect which a painter
A Daughter of Eve 3
might have called wanting in ' accent.' On the chair
backs small panels of splendid broche silk — white with
blue flowers — were set in broad leafy frames, finely
cut on the wood. On either side of the window stood
a set of shelves, loaded with valuable knick-knacks,
the flower of mechanical art, sprung into being at the
touch of creative fancy. The mantelpiece of African
marble bore a platinum timepiece with arabesques in
black enamel, flanked by extravagant specimens of old
Dresden — the inevitable shepherd with dainty bouquet
for ever tripping to meet his bride — embodying the
Teutonic conception of ceramic art. Above sparkled
the bevelled facets of a Venetian mirror in an ebony
frame, crowded with figures in relief, relic of some royal
residence. Two flower-stands displayed at this season the
sickly triumphs of the hothouse, pale, spirit-like blossoms,
the pearls of the world of flowers. The room might
have been for sale, it was so desperately tidy and prim.
It bore no impress of will and character such as marks
a happy home, and even the women did not break the
general chilly impression, for they were weeping.
The proprietor of the house, Ferdinand du Tillet, was
one of the richest bankers in Paris, and the very men-
tion of his name will account for the lavish style of the
house decoration, of which the boudoir may be taken as
a sample. Du Tillet, though a man of no family and
sprung from Heaven knows where, had taken for wife, in
1 83 1, the only unmarried daughter of the Comte de
Granville, whose name was one of the most illustrious on
the French bench, and who had been made a peer of the
realm after the Revolution of July. This ambitious
alliance was not got for nothing ; in the settlement, du
Tillet had to sign a receipt for a dowry of which he
never touched a penny. This nominal dowry was the
same in amount as the huge sum given to the elder
sister on her marriage with Comte Felix de Vandenesse,
and which, in fact, was the price paid by the Granvilles
4 A Daughter of Eve
in their turn for a matrimonial prize. Thus, in the
long run, the bank repaired the breach which aristocracy
had made in the finances of the bench. Could the
Comte de Vandenesse have seen himself, three years in
advance, brother-in-law of a Master Ferdinand, self-styled
du Tillet, it is possible he might have declined the
match ; but who could have foreseen at the close of
1828 the strange upheavals which 1830 was to produce
in the political, financial, and moral condition of France ?
Had Count Felix been told that in the general shuifle
he would lose his peer's coronet, to find it again on his
father-in-law's brow, he would have treated his informant
as a lunatic.
Crouching in a listening attitude in one of those low
chairs called a chauffeuse^ Mme. du Tillet pressed her
sister's hand to her breast with motherly tenderness, and
from time to time kissed it. This sister was known in
society as Mme. Felix de Vandenesse, the Christian name
being joined to that of the family, in order to distinguish
the Countess from her sister-in-law, wife of the former
ambassador, Charles de Vandenesse, widow of the late
Comte de Kergarouet, whose wealth she had inherited,
and by birth a de Fontaine. The Countess had thrown
herself back upon a lounge, a handkerchief in her other
hand, her eyes swimming, her breath choked with half-
stifled sobs. She had just poured out her confidences to
Mme. du Tillet in a way which proved the tenderness
of their sisterly love. In an age like ours it would have
seemed so natural for sisters, who had married into such
very different spheres, not to be on intimate terms,
that a rapid glance at the story of their childhood will
be necessary in order to explain the origin of this
affection which had survived, without jar or flaw, the
alienating forces of society and the mutual scorn of their
husbands.
The early home of Marie-Angelique and Marie-
Eugenie was a dismal house in the Marais. Here they
A Daughter of Eve 5
were brought up by a pious but narrow-minded woman,
* imbued with high principle,' as the classic phrase has
it, who conceived herself to have performed the whole
duty of a mother when her girls arrived at the door of
matrimony without ever having travelled beyond the
domestic circle embraced by the maternal eye. Up to
that time they had never even been to a play. A Paris
church was their nearest approach to a theatre. In
short, their upbringing in their mother's house was as
strict as it could have been in a convent. From the
time that they had ceased to be mere infants they
always slept in a room adjoining that of the Countess,
the door of which was kept open at night. The time
not occupied by dressing, religious observances, and the
minimum of study requisite for the children of gentle-
folk, was spent in making poor-clothes and in taking
exercise, modelled on the English Sunday walk, where
any quickening of the solemn pace is checked as being
suggestive of cheerfulness. Their lessons were kept
within the limits imposed by confessors, chosen from
among the least liberal and most Jansenist of ecclesiastics.
Never were girls handed over to their husbands more
pure and virgin : in this point, doubtless one of great
importance, their mother seemed to have seen the ful-
filment of her whole duty to God and man. Not a
novel did the poor things read till they were married.
In drawing an old maid was their instructor, and their
only copies were figures whose anatomy would have
confounded Cuvier, and so drawn as to have made a
woman of the Farnese Hercules. A worthy priest
taught them grammar, French, history, geography, and
the little arithmetic a woman needs to know. As for
literature, they read aloud in the evening from certain
authorised books, such as the Lettres edifiantes and
Noel's Lemons de litteraturc, but only in the presence
of their mother's confessor, since even here passages
might occur, which, apart from heedful commentary,
6 A Daughter of Eve
would be liable to stir the imagination. Fenelon's
Telemachus was held dangerous. The Comtesse de
Granville was not without affection for her daughters,
and it showed itself in wishing to make angels of
them in the fashion of Marie Alacoque, but the
daughters would have preferred a mother less saintly
and more human.
This education bore its inevitable fruit. Religion,
imposed as a yoke and presented under its harshest
aspect, wearied these innocent young hearts with a
discipline adapted for hardened sinners. It repressed
their feelings, and, though striking deep root, could
create no affection. The two Maries had no alternative
but to sink into imbecility or to long for independence.
Independence meant marriage, and to this they looked
as soon as they began to see something of the world and
could exchange a few ideas, while yet remaining
utterly unconscious of their own touching grace and
rare qualities. Ignorant of what innocence meant,
without arms against misfortune, without experience of
happiness, how should they be able to judge of life ?
Their only comfort in the depths of this maternal gaol
was drawn from each other. Their sweet whispered
talks at night, the few sentences they could exchange
when their mother left them for a moment, contained
sometimes more thoughts than could be put in words.
Often would a stolen glance, charged with sympathetic
message and response, convey a whole poem of bitter
melancholy. They found a marvellous joy in simple
things — the sight of a cloudless sky, the scent of flowers,
a turn in the garden with interlacing arms — and would
exult with innocent glee over the completion of a piece
of embroidery.
Their mother's friends, far from providing intellectual
stimulus or calling forth their sympathies, only deepened
the surrounding gloom. They were stiff-backed old
ladies, dry and rigid, whose conversation turned on their
A Daughter of Eve 7
ailments, on the shades of difference between preachers
or confessors, or on the most trifling events in the
religious world, which might be found in the pages
of La ghiotidienne or V Ami de la Religion. The
men again might have served as extinguishers to the
torch of love, so cold and mournfully impassive were
their faces. They had all reached the age when a man
becomes churlish and irritable, when his tastes are
blunted except at table, and are directed only to pro-
curing the comforts of life. Religious egotism had dried
up hearts devoted to task work and entrenched behind
routine. They spent the greater part of the evening
over silent card-parties. At times the two poor little
girls, placed under the ban of this sanhedrim, who
abetted the maternal severity, would suddenly feel that
they could bear no longer the sight of these wearisome
persons with their sunken eyes and frowning faces.
Against the dull background of this life stood out in
bold relief the single figure of a man, that of their music-
master. The confessors had ruled that music was a
Christian art, having its source in the Catholic church
and developed by it, and therefore the two little girls
were allowed to learn music. A spectacled lady, who
professed sol-fa and the piano at a neighbouring convent,
bored them for a time with exercises. But, when the
elder of his girls was ten years old, the Comte de Gran-
ville pointed out the necessity of finding a master.
Mme. de Granville, who could not deny it, gave to her
concession all the merit of wifely submissiveness. A
pious woman never loses an opportunity of taking credit
for doing her duty.
The master was a Catholic German, one of those
men who are born old and will always remain fifty, even
if they live to be eighty. His hollowed, wrinkled,
swarthy face had kept something childlike and simple in
its darkest folds. The blue of innocence sparkled in his
eyes, and the gay smile of spring dwelt on his lips. His
8 A Daughter of Eve
grey old hair, which fell in natural curls, like those of
Jesus Christ, added to his ecstatic air a vague solemnity
which was highly misleading, for he was a man to make
a fool of himself with the most exemplary gravity. His
clothes were a necessary envelope to which he paid no
attention, for his gaze soared too high in the clouds to
come in contact with material things. And so this
great unrecognised artist belonged to that generous race
of the absent-minded, who give their time and their
hearts to others, just as they drop their gloves on every
table, their umbrellas at every door. His hands were
of the kind which look dirty after washing. Finally,
his aged frame, badly set up on tottering, knotty limbs,
gave ocular proof how far a man's body can become a
mere accessory to his mind. It was one of those strange
freaks of nature which no one has ever properly described
except Hoffmann, a German, who has made himself the
poet of all which appears lifeless and yet lives. Such
was Schmucke, formerly choirmaster to the Margrave of
Anspach, a learned man who underwent inspection from
a council of piety. They asked him whether he fasted.
The master was tempted to reply, 4 Look at me ! ' but
it is ill work jesting with saints and Jansenist confessors.
This apocryphal old man held so large a place in the
life of the two Maries — they became so much attached
to the great simple-minded artist whose sole interest
was in his art — that, after they were married, each
bestowed on him an annuity of three hundred francs,
a sum which sufficed for his lodging, his beer, his pipe,
and his clothes. Six hundred francs a year and his
lessons were a Paradise for Schmucke. He had not
ventured to confide his poverty and his hopes to any one
except these two charming children, whose hearts had
blossomed under the snow of maternal rigour and the
frost of devotion, and this fact by itself sums up the
character of Schmucke and the childhood of the two
Maries.
A Daughter of Eve 9
No one could tell afterwards what abbe, what devout
old lady, had unearthed this German, lost in Paris. No
sooner did mothers of a family learn that the Comtesse
de Granville had found a music-master for her daughters
than they all asked for his name and address. Schmuclce
had thirty houses in the Marais. This tardy success
displayed itself in slippers with bronzed steel buckles and
lined with horse-hair soles, and in a more frequent
change of shirt. His childlike gaiety, long repressed
by an honourable and seemly poverty, bubbled forth
afresh. He let fall little jokes such as : — c Young ladies,
the cats supped off the dirt of Paris last night,' when a
frost had dried the muddy streets overnight, only they
were spoken in a Germano-Gallic lingo : — c Tounc
ladies^ de gads subbed off de dirt off ' Barees' Gratified at
having brought his adorable ladies this species of Verghs
mein nicht, culled from the flowers of his fancy, he put
on an air of such ineffable roguishness in presenting it
that mockery was disarmed. It made him so happy to
call a smile to the lips of his pupils, the sadness of whose
life was no mystery to him, that he would have made
himself ridiculous on purpose if nature had not saved
him the trouble. And yet there was no commonplace
so vulgar that the warmth of his heart could not
infuse it with fresh meaning. In the fine words of
the late Saint-Martin, the radiance of his smile might
have turned the mire of the highway to gold. The
two Maries, following one of the best traditions of
religious education, used to escort their master respect-
fully to the door of the suite when he left. There the
poor girls would say a few kind words to him, happy in
making him happy. It was the one chance they had of
exercising their woman's nature.
Thus, up to the time of their marriage, music became
for the girls a life within life, just as, we are told, the
Russian peasant takes his dreams for realities, his waking
life for a restless sleep. In their eagerness to find some
io A Daughter of Eve
bulwark against the rising tide of pettiness and consuming
ascetic ideas, they threw themselves desperately into the
difficulties of the musical art. Melody, harmony, and com-
position, those three daughters of the skies, rewarded their
labours, making a rampart for them with their aerial
dances, while the old Catholic faun, intoxicated by
music, led the chorus. Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn,
Paesiello, Cimarosa, Hummel, along with musicians of
lesser rank, developed in them sensations which never
passed beyond the modest limit of their veiled bosoms,
but which went to the heart of that new world of fancy
whither they eagerly betook themselves. When the
execution of some piece had been brought to perfection,
they would clasp hands and embrace in the wildest
ecstasy. The old master called them his Saint Cecilias.
The two Maries did not go to balls till they were
sixteen, and then only four times a year, to a few
selected houses. They only left their mother's side
when well fortified with rules of conduct, so strict that
they could reply nothing but yes and no to their
partners. The eye of the Countess never quitted her
daughters and seemed to read the words upon their lips.
The ball-dresses of the poor little things were models of
decorum — high-necked muslin frocks, with an extra-
ordinary number of fluffy frills and long sleeves. This
ungraceful costume, which concealed instead of setting
off their beauty, reminded one of an Egyptian mummy,
in spite of two sweetly pathetic faces which peeped out
from the mass of cotton.. With all their innocence, they
were furious to find themselves the objects of a kindly
pity. Where is the woman, however artless, who would
not inspire envy rather than compassion ? The white
matter of their brains was unsoiled by a single perilous,
morbid, or even equivocal thought ; their hearts were
pure, their hands were frightfully red ; they were
bursting with health. Eve did not leave the hands of
her Creator more guileless than were these two girls
A Daughter of Eve 1 1
when they left their mother's home to go to the mairie
and to the church, with one simple but awful command
in their ears — to obey in all things the man by whose side
they were to spend the night, awake or sleeping. To
them it seemed impossible that they should suffer more
in the strange house whither they were to be banished
than in the maternal convent.
How came it that the father of these girls did nothing
to protect them from so crushing a despotism ? The
Comte de Granville had a great reputation as a judge,
able and incorruptible, if sometimes a little carried away
by party feeling. Unhappily, by the terms of a remark-
able compromise, agreed upon after ten years of married
life, husband and wife lived apart, each in their own
suite of apartments. The father, who judged the
repressive system less dangerous for women than for men,
kept the education of his boys in his own hands, while
leaving that of the girls to their mother. The two
Maries, who could hardly escape the imposition of some
tyranny, whether in love or marriage, would suffer less
than boys, whose intelligence ought to be unfettered
and whose natural spirit would be broken by the harsh
constraint of religious dogma, pushed to an extreme.
Of four victims the Count saved two. The Countess
looked on her sons, both destined for the law — the one
for the maglstrature assise, the other for the magistrature
amovible 1 — as far too badly brought up to be allowed
any intimacy with their sisters. All intercourse between
the poor children was strictly guarded. When the
Count took his boys from school for a day he was
careful that it should not be spent in the house. After
luncheon with their mother and sisters he would find
something to amuse them outside. Restaurants, theatres,
1 The magistrature assise consists of the judges who sit in Court, and are
appointed for life. The members of the magistrature amovible conduct the
examination and prosecution of accused persons. They address the Court
standing, and are not appointed for life.
12 A Daughter of Eve
museums, an expedition to the country in summer-time,
were their treats. Only on important family occasions,
such as the birthday of the Countess or of their father,
New Year's Day, and prize-giving days, did the boys
spend day and night under the paternal roof, in extreme
discomfort, and not daring to kiss their sisters under the
eye of the Countess, who never left them alone together
for an instant. Seeing so little of their brothers, how
was it possible the poor girls should feel any bond
with them ? On these days it was a perpetual, ' Where
is Angelique ? ' c What is Eugenie about ? ' * Where can
my children be ? ' When her sons were mentioned,
the Countess would raise her cold and sodden eyes to
Heaven, as though imploring pardon for having failed to
snatch them from ungodliness. Her exclamations and
her silence in regard to them were alike eloquent as the
most lamentable verses of Jeremiah, and the girls not
unnaturally came to look on their brothers as hopeless
reprobates.
The Count gave to each of his sons, at the age of
eighteen, a couple of rooms in his own suite, and they then
began to study law under the direction of his secretary,
a barrister, to whom he intrusted the task of initiating
them into the mysteries of their profession.
The two Maries, therefore, had no practical know-
ledge of what it is to have a brother. On the occasion
of their sisters' weddings it happened that both brothers
were detained at a distance by important cases : the one
having then a post as avocat general 1 at a distant Court,
while the other was making his first appearance in the
provinces. In many families the reality of that home-
life, which we are apt to picture as linked together by
the closest and most vital ties, is something very different.
The brothers are far away, engrossed in money-making,
in pushing their way in the world, or they are chained
1 The term is applied to all the substitutes of the procurcur general or
Attorney-General.
A Daughter of Eve 13
to the public service ; the sisters are absorbed in a vortex
of family interests, outside their own circle. Thus the
different members spend their lives apart and indifferent
to each other, held together only by the feeble bond of
memory. If on occasion pride or self-interest reunites
them, just as often these motives act in the opposite
sense and divide them in heart, as they have already
been divided in life, so that it becomes a rare exception
to find a family living in one home and animated by one
spirit. Modern legislation, by splitting up the family
into units, has created that most hideous evil — the
isolation of the individual.
Angelique and Eugenie, amid the profound solitude
in which their youth glided by, saw their father but
rarely, and it was a melancholy face which he showed
in his wife's handsome rooms on the ground floor. At
home, as on the bench, he maintained the grave and
dignified bearing of the judge. When the girls had
passed the period of toys and dolls, when they were
beginning, at twelve years of age, to think for them-
selves, and had given up making fun of Schmucke, they
found out the secret of the cares which lined the Count's
forehead. Under the mask of severity they could read
traces of a kindly, lovable nature. He had yielded to
the Church his place as head of the household, his hopes
of wedded happiness had been blighted, and his father's
heart was wounded in its tenderest spot — the love he
bore his daughters. Sorrows such as these rouse strange
pity in the breasts of girls who have never known tender-
ness. Sometimes he would stroll in the garden between
his daughters, an arm round each little figure, fitting
his pace to their childish steps ; then, stopping in the
shrubbery, he would kiss them, one after the other, on
the forehead, while his eyes, his mouth, and his whole
expression breathed the deepest pity.
* You are not very happy, my darlings,' he said on
one such occasion ; c but I shall marry you early, and
14 A Daughter of Eve
it will be a good day for me when I see you take
wing.'
1 Papa,' said Eugenie, * we have made up our minds to
marry the first man who offers.'
' And this/ he exclaimed, ' is the bitter fruit of such a
system. In trying to make saints of them, they . . .'
He stopped. Often the girls were conscious of a
passionate tenderness in their father's farewell, or in the
way he looked at them when by chance he dined with
their mother. This father, whom they so rarely saw,
became the object of their pity, and whom we pity we
love.
The marriage of both sisters — welded together by
misfortune, as Rita-Christina was by nature — was the
direct result of this strict conventual training. Many
men, when thinking of marriage, prefer a girl taken
straight from the convent and impregnated with an
atmosphere of devotion to one who has been trained in
the school of society. There is no medium. On the
one hand is the girl with nothing left to learn, who
reads and discusses the papers, who has spun round ball-
rooms in the arms of countless young men, who has
seen every play and devoured every novel, whose knees
have been made supple by a dancing-master, pressing
them against his own, who does not trouble her head
about religion and has evolved her own morality ; on the
other is the guileless, simple girl of the type of Marie-
Angelique and Marie-Eugenie. Possibly the husband's
risk is no greater in the one case than in the other, but
the immense majority of men, who have not yet reached
the age of Arnolphe, would choose a saintly Agnes
rather than a budding Celimene.
The two Maries were identical in figure, feet, and
hands. Both were small and slight. Eugenie, the
younger, was fair like her mother ; Angelique, dark like
her father. But they had the same complexion — a skin
of that mother-of-pearl white which tells of a rich
A Daughter of Eve 15
and healthy blood and against which the carnation stands
out in vivid patches, firm in texture like the jasmine,
and like it also, delicate, smooth, and soft to the touch.
The blue eyes of Eugenie, the brown eyes of Angelique,
had the same naive expression of indifference and un-
affected astonishment, betrayed by the indecisive waver-
ing of the iris in the liquid white. Their figures were
good ; the shoulders, a little angular now, would be
rounded by time. The neck and bosom, which had
been so long veiled, appeared quite startlingly perfect in
form, when, at the request of her husband, each sister
for the first time attired herself for a ball in a low-necked
dress. What blushes covered the poor innocent things,
so charming in their shamefacedness, as they first saw
themselves in the privacy of their own rooms ; nor did
the colour fade all evening- !
At the moment when this story opens, with the younger
Marie consoling her weeping sister, they are no longer raw
girls. Each had nursed an infant — one a boy, the other
a girl — and the hands and arms of both were white as
milk. Eugenie had always seemed something of a mad-
cap to her terrible mother, who redoubled her watchful
care and severity on her behalf. Angelique, stately and
proud, had, she thought, a soul of high temper fitted to
guard itself, while the skittish Eugenie seemed to
demand a firmer hand. There are charming natures of
this kind, misread by destiny, whose life ought to be
unbroken sunshine, but who live and die in misery,
plagued by some evil genius, the victims of chance. Thus
the sprightly, artless Euge'nie had fallen under the
malign despotism of a parvenu when released from the
maternal clutches. Angelique, high-strung and sensitive,
had been sent adrift in the highest circles of Parisian
society without any restraining curb.
1 6 A Daughter of Eve
CHAPTER II
SISTERLY CONFIDENCES
Mme. de Vandenesse, it was plain, was crushed by
the burden of troubles too heavy for a mind still un-
sophisticated after six years of marriage. She lay at
length, her limbs flaccid, her body bent, her head fallen
anyhow on the back of the lounge. Having looked in
at the opera before hurrying to her sister's, she had still
a few flowers in the plaits of her hair, while others lay
scattered on the carpet, together with her gloves, her
mantle of fur-lined silk, her muff", and her hood. Bright
tears mingled with the pearls on her white bosom and
brimming eyes told a tale in gruesome contrast with the
luxury around. The Countess had no heart for further
words.
1 You poor darling,' said Mme. du Tillet, ( what
strange delusion as to my married life made you come to
me for help ? '
It seemed as though the torrent of her sister's grief
had forced these words from the heart of the banker's
wife, as melting snow will set free stones that are held the
fastest in the river's bed. The Countess gazed stupidly
on her with fixed eyes, in which terror had dried the
tears.
'Can it be that the waters have closed over your head
too, my sweet one ? ' she said in a low voice.
* Nay, dear, my troubles won't lessen yours.'
' But tell me them, dear child. Do you think I am
so sunk in self already as not to listen ? Then we are
comrades again in suffering as of old ! '
' But we suffer apart,' sadly replied Mme. du Tillet.
' We live in opposing camps. It is my turn to visit the
A Daughter of Eve 17
Tuileries now that you have ceased to go. Our hus-
bands belong to rival parties. I am the wife of an
ambitious banker, a bad man. Your husband, sweetest,
is kind, noble, generous '
c Ah ! do not reproach me,' cried the Countess. l No
woman has the right to do so, who has not suffered
the weariness of a tame, colourless life and passed
from it straight to the paradise of love. She must have
known the bliss of living her whole life in another, of
espousing the ever-varying emotions of a poet's soul.
In every flight of his imagination, in all the efforts
of his ambition, in the great part he plays upon the
stage of life, she must have borne her share, suffering in
his pain and mounting on the wings of his measureless
delights ; and all this while never losing her cold,
impassive demeanour before a prying world. Yes, dear,
a tumult of emotion may rage within, while one sits by
the fire at home, quietly and comfortably like this. And
yet what joy to have at every instant one overwhelming
interest which expands the heart and makes it live in
every fibre. Nothing is indifferent to you ; your very
life seems to depend on a drive, which gives you the
chance of seeing in the crowd the one man before the
flash of whose eye the sunlight pales ; you tremble if he
is late, and could strangle the bore who steals from you
one of those precious moments when happiness throbs in
every vein ! To be alive, only to be alive is rapture !
Think of it, dear, to live, when so many women would
give the world to feel as I do — and cannot. Remem-
ber, child, that for this poetry of life there is but
one season — the season of youth. Soon, very soon, will
come the chills of winter. Oh ! if you were rich as I
am in these living treasures of the heart and were
threatened with losing them '
Mme. du Tillet, terrified, had hidden her face in her
hands during this wild rhapsody. At last, seeing the
warm tears on her sister's cheek, she began —
p
1 8 A Daughter of Eve
' I never dreamed of reproaching you, my darling.
Your words have, in a single instant, stirred in my
heart more burning thoughts than all my tears have
quenched, for indeed the life I lead might well plead
within me for a passion such as you describe. Let me
clins: to the belief that if we had seen more of each
other we should not have drifted to this point. The
knowledge of my sufferings would have enabled you to
realise your own happiness, and I might perhaps have
learned from you courage to resist the tyranny which
has crushed the sweetness out of my life. Your misery
is an accident which chance may remedy, mine is
unceasing. My husband neither has real affection for
me nor does he trust me. I am a mere peg for his
magnificence, the hall-mark of his ambition, a tit-bit for
his vanity.
1 Ferdinand ' — and she struck her hand upon the
mantelpiece — 'is hard and smooth like this marble. He
is suspicious of me. If I ask anything for myself I
know beforehand that refusal is certain ; but for what-
ever may tickle his self-importance or advertise his
wealth I have not even to express a desire. He decorates
my rooms, and spends lavishly on my table ; my servants,
my boxes at the theatre, all the trappings of my life are
of the smartest. He grudges nothing to his vanity.
His children's baby-linen must be trimmed with lace,
but he would never trouble about their real needs, and
would shut his ears to their cries. Can you understand
such a state of things ? I go to court loaded with
diamonds, and my ornaments are of the most costly
whenever I am in society ; yet I have not a sou of my
own. Mme. du Tillet, whom envious onlookers no
doubt suppose to be rolling in wealth, cannot lay her
hand on a hundred francs. If the father cares little for
his children, he cares still less for their mother. Never
does he allow me to forget that I have been paid for as a
chattel, and that my personal fortune, which has never
A Daughter of Eve 19
been in my possession, has been filched from him. If
he stood alone I might have a chance of fascinating
him, but there is an alien influence at work. He is
under the thumb of a woman, a notary's widow, over
fifty, but who still reckons on her charms, and I can see
very well that while she lives I shall never be free.
'My whole life here is planned out like a sovereign's.
A bell is rung for my lunch and dinner as at your castle.
I never miss going to the Bois at a certain hour,
accompanied by two footmen in full livery, and return-
ing at a fixed time. In place of giving orders, I receive
them. At balls and the theatre, a lacquey comes up to me
saying, " Your carriage waits, madam," and I have to
go, whether I am enjoying myself or not. Ferdinand
would be vexed if I did not carry out the code of rules
drawn up for his wife, and I am afraid of him. Sur-
rounded by all this hateful splendour, I sometimes look
back with regret, and begin to think we had a kind
mother. At least she left us our nights, and I had you
to talk to. In my sufferings, then, I had a loving com-
panion, but this gorgeous house is a desert to me.'
It was for the Countess now to play the comforter.
As this tale of misery fell from her sister's lips she took
her hand and kissed it with tears.
c How is it possible for me to help you ? ' Eugenie
went on in a low voice. ' If he were to find us together
he would suspect something. He would want to know
what we had been talking about this hour, and it is not
easy to put off* the scent any one so false and full of
wiles. He would be sure to lay a trap for me. But
enough of my troubles ; let us think of you. Your
forty thousand francs, darling, would be nothing to
Ferdinand. He and the Baron de Nucingen, another
of these rich bankers, are accustomed to handle millions.
Sometimes at dinner I hear them talking of things
to make your flesh creep. Du Tillet knows I am no
talker, so they speak freely before me, confident that it
20 A Daughter of Eve
will go no further, and I can assure you that highway
murder would be an act of mercy compared to some of
their financial schemes. Nucingen and he make as
little of ruining a man as I do of all their display.
Among the people who come to see me, often there are
poor dupes whose affairs I have heard settled overnight,
and who are plunging into speculations which will
beggar them. How I long to act Leonarde in the
brigands' cave, and cry, " Beware ! " But what would
become of me ? I hold my tongue, but this luxurious
mansion is nothing but a den of cut-throats. And du
Tillet and Nucingen scatter bank-notes in handfuls for
any whim that takes their fancy. Ferdinand has bought
the site of the old castle at Tillet, and intends rebuilding
it, and then adding a forest and magnificent grounds.
He says his son will be a count and his grandson a peer.
Nucingen is tired of his house in the Rue Saint-Lazare
and is having a palace built. His wife is a friend of
mine. . . . Ah ! ' she cried, c she might be of use to
us. She is not in awe of her husband, her property is
in her own hands ; she is the person to save you.'
1 Darling,' cried Mme. de Vandenesse, throwing her-
self into her sister's arms and bursting into tears, c there
are only a few hours left. Let us go there to-night,
this very instant.'
' How can I go out at eleven o'clock at night ? '
'My carriage is here.'
' Well, what are you two plotting here ? ' It was du
Tillet who threw open the door of the boudoir.
A false geniality lit up the blank countenance which
met the sisters' gaze. They had been too much absorbed
in talking to notice the wheels of du Tillet's carriage, and
the thick carpets had muffled the sound of his steps.
The Countess, who had an indulgent husband and was
well used to society, had acquired a tact and address such
as her sister, passing straight from a mother's to a hus-
band's yoke, had had no opportunity of cultivating.
A Daughter of Eve 2 1
She was able then to save the situation, which she saw
that Eugenie's terror was on the point of betraying, by
a frank reply.
' 1 thought my sister wealthier than she is,' she said,
looking her brother-in-law in the face. 'Women some-
times get into difficulties which they don't care to speak
of to their husbands — witness Napoleon and Josephine
— and I came to ask a favour of her.'
'There will be no difficulty about that. Eugenie is a
rich woman,' replied du Tillet, in a tone of honeyed
acerbity.
' Only for you,' said the Countess, with a bitter smile.
' How much do you want ? ' said du Tillet, who was
not sorry at the prospect of getting his sister-in-law into
his toils.
' How dense you are ! Didn't I tell you that we
want to keep our husbands out of this ? ' was the prudent
reply of Mme. de Vandenesse, who feared to place her-
self at the mercy of the man whose character had by
good luck just been sketched by her sister. ' I shall
come and see Eugenie to-morrow.'
'To-morrow ? No,' said the banker coldly. ' Mme.
du Tillet dines to-morrow with a future peer of the
realm, Baron de Nucingen, who is resigning to me his
seat in the Chamber of Deputies.'
' Won't you allow her to accept my box at the
opera ? ' said the Countess, without exchanging even a
look with her sister, in her terror lest their secret under-
standing should be betrayed.
' Thank you, she has her own,' said du Tillet,
offended.
'Very well, then, I shall see her there,' replied the
Countess.
' It will be the first time you have done us that
honour,' said du Tillet.
The Countess felt the reproach and began to
laugh.
22 A Daughter of Eve
'Keep your mind easy, you shan't be asked to pay
this time,' she said. — 'Good-bye, darling.'
'The jade!' cried du Tillet, picking up the flowers
which had fallen from the Countess's hair. ' You would
do well,' he said to his wife, ' to take a lesson from Mme.
de Vandenesse. I should like to see you as saucy in
society as she was here just now. Your want of style
and spirit are enough to drive a man wild.'
For all reply, Eugenie raised her eyes to heaven.
' Well, madam, what have you two been about here ? '
said the banker after a pause, pointing to the flowers.
' What has happened to bring your sister to your box
to-morrow ? '
In order to get away to her bedroom, and escape the
cross-questioning she dreaded, the poor thrall made an
excuse of being sleepy. But du Tillet took his wife's
arm and, dragging her back, planted her before him
beneath the full blaze of the candles, flaming in their
silver-gilt branches between two beautiful bunches of
flowers. Fixing her eyes with his keen glance, he began
with cold deliberation.
' Your sister came to borrow forty thousand francs to
pay the debts of a man in whom she is interested, and
who, within three days, will be under lock and key in
the Rue de Clichy. He 's too precious to be left loose.'
The miserable woman tried to repress the nervous
shiver which ran through her.
'You gave me a fright,' she said. 'But you know
that my sister has too much principle and too much
affection for her husband to take that sort of interest in
any man.'
' On the contrary,' he replied drily. ' Girls brought
up as you were, in a very strait-laced and puritan fashion,
always pant for liberty and happiness, and the happiness
they have never comes up to what they imagined.
Those are the girls that m.Tke bad wives.'
'Speak for me if you like,' said poor Eugenie, in a tone
A Daughter of Eve 23
of bitter irony, ' but respect my sister. The Comtesse
de Vandenesse is too happy, too completely trusted by
her husband, not to be attached to him. Besides, sup-
posing what you say were true, she would not have
told me.'
' It is as I said,' persisted du Tillet, ' and I forbid you
to have anything to do with the matter. It is to my
interest that the man go to prison. Let that suffice.'
Mme. du Tillet left the room.
'She is sure to disobey me,' said du Tillet to himself,
left alone in the boudoir, ' and if I keep my eye on them
I may be able to find out what they are up to. Poor
fools, to pit themselves against us ! '
He shrugged his shoulders and went to rejoin his wife,
or, more properly speaking, his slave.
CHAPTER III
THE STORY OF A HAPPY WOMAN
The confession which Mme. Felix de Vandenesse had
poured into her sister's ear was so intimately connected
with her history during the six preceding years that a
brief narrative of the chief incidents of her married life
is necessary to its understanding.
Felix de Vandenesse was one of the band of distin-
guished men who owed their fortune to the Restoration,
till a short-sighted policy excluded them, as followers of
Martignac, from the inner circle of Government. In the
last days of Charles x. he was banished with some others
to the Upper Chamber ; and this disgrace, though in his
eyes only temporary, led him to think of marriage. He
was the more inclined to it from a sort of nausea of intrigue
and gallantry not uncommon with men when the hour of
youth's gay frenzy is past. There comes then a critical
24 A Daughter of Eve
moment when the serious side of social ties makes itself
felt. Felix de Vandenesse had had his bright and his
dark hours, but the latter predominated, as is apt to be
the case with a man who has quite early in life become
acquainted with passion in its noblest form. The
initiated become fastidious. A long experience of life
and study of character reconciles them at last to the
second best, when they take refuge in a universal tolerance.
Having lost all illusions, they are proof against guile ;
yet they wear their cynicism with a grace, and, being
prepared for the worst, are saved the pangs of disap-
pointment.
In spite of this, Felix still passed for one of the hand-
somest and most agreeable men in Paris. With women
his reputation was largely due to one of the noblest of
their contemporaries, who was said to have died of a
broken heart for him ; but it was the beautiful Lady
Dudley who had the chief hand in forming him. In the
eyes of many Paris ladies Felix was a hero of romance,
owing not a few of his conquests to his evil repute.
Madame de Manerville had closed the chapter of his
intrigues. Although not a Don Juan, he retired from
the world of love, as from that of politics, a disillusioned
man. That ideal type of woman and of love which, for his
misfortune, had brightened and dominated his youth, he
despaired of finding again. At the age of thirty, Count
Felix resolved to cut short by marriage pleasures which
had begun to pall. On one point he was determined :
he would have none but a girl trained in the strictest
dogmas of Catholicism. No sooner did he hear how the
Comtesse de Granville brought up her daughters than
he asked for the hand of the elder. His own mother
had been a domestic tyrant ; and he could still remember
enough of his dismal childhood to descry, through the
veil of maidenly modesty, what effect had been produced
on a young girl's character by such a bondage, to see
whether she were sulky, soured, and inclined to revolt,
A Daughter of Eve 25
or had remained sweet and loving, responsive to the
voice of nobler feeling. Tyranny produces two results,
exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolised
in those two great types of the slave in classical times —
Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its
evil train, the other, meekness with its Christian graces.
The Comte de Vandenesse read the history of his life
again in Marie-Angelique de Granville.
In thus choosing for wife a young girl in her fresh
innocence and purity, he had made up his mind before-
hand, as befitted a man old in everything but years, to
unite paternal with conjugal affection. He was con-
scious that in him politics and society had blighted
feeling, and that he had only the dregs of a used-up life
to offer in exchange for one in the bloom of youth.
The flowers of spring would be matched with winter
frosts, hoary experience with a saucy, impulsive way-
wardness. Having thus impartially taken stock of his
position, he entrenched himself in his married quarters
with an ample store of provisions. Indulgence and trust
were his two sheet anchors. Mothers with marriage-
able daughters ought to look out for men of this stamp,
men with brains to act as protecting divinity, with
worldly wisdom to diagnose like a surgeon, and with
experience to take a mother's place in warding off evil.
These are the three cardinal virtues in matrimony.
The refinements and luxuries to which his habits as a
man of fashion and of pleasure had accustomed Felix,
his training in affairs of state, the insight of a life alter-
nately devoted to action, reflection, and literature ; all
the resources, in short, at his command were applied
intelligently to work out his wife's happiness.
Marie-Angelique passed at once from the maternal
purgatory to the wedded paradise prepared for her by
Felix in their house in the Rue du Rocher, where
every trifle breathed of distinction at the same time that
the conventions of fashion were not allowed to interfere
26 A Daughter of Eve
with that gracious spontaneity natural to warm young
hearts. She began by enjoying to the full the merely
material pleasures of life, her husband for two years
acting as major-domo. Felix expounded to his wife very
gradually and with great tact the facts of life, initiated
her by degrees into the mysteries of the best society,
taught her the genealogies of all families of rank,
instructed her in the ways of the world, directed her in
the arts of dress and conversation, took her to all the
theatres, and put her through a course of literature and
history. He carried out this education with the assiduity
of a lover, a father, a master, and a husband combined ;
but with a wise discretion he allowed neither amuse-
ments nor studies to undermine his wife's faith. In
short, he acquitted himself of his task in a masterly
manner, and had the gratification of seeing his pupil, at
the end of four years, one of the most charming and
striking women of her time.
Marie-Angelique's feelings towards her husband were
precisely such as he wished to inspire — true friendship,
lively gratitude, sisterly affection, with a dash of wifely
fondness on occasion, not passing the due limits of
dignity and self-respect. She was a good mother to her
child.
Thus Felix, without any appearance of coercion,
attached his wife to himself by all possible ties, reckon-
ing on the force of habit to keep his heaven cloudless.
Only men practised in worldly arts and who have run
the gamut of disillusion in politics and love, have the
knowledge necessary for acting on this system. Felix
found in it also the pleasure which painters, authors, and
great architects take in their work, while in addition to
the artistic delight in creation he had the satisfaction
of contemplating the result and admiring in his wife
a woman of polished but unaffected manners and an
unforced wit, a maiden and a mother, modestly attrac-
tive, unfettered and yet bound.
A Daughter of Eve 27
The history of a happy household is like that of a
prosperous state; it can be summed up in half a dozen
words, and gives no scope for fine writing. Moreover,
as the only explanation of happiness is the fact that it
exists, these four years present nothing but the grey
wash of an eternal love-making, insipid as manna, and
as exciting as the romance of Astraea.
In 1833, however, this edifice of happiness, so care-
fully put together by Felix, was on the point of falling
to the ground ; the foundations had been sapped without
his knowledge. The fact, is the heart of a woman of
five-and-twenty is not that of a girl of eighteen, any
more than the heart of a woman of forty is that of one
ten years younger. A woman's life has four epochs and
each epoch creates a new woman. Vandenesse was
certainly not ignorant of the laws which determine this
development, induced by our modern habits, but he
neglected to apply them in his own case. Thus the
soundest grammarian may be caught tripping when he
turns author ; the greatest general on the field of battle,
under stress of fire, and at the mercy of the accidents of
the ground, will cast to the winds a theoretic rule of
military science. The man whose action habitually
bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest
genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease
to be human.
Four years had passed of unruffled calm, four years of
tuneful concert without one jarring note. The Countess,
under these influences, felt her nature expanding like a
healthy plant in good soil under the warm kisses of a sun
shining in unclouded azure, and she now began to ques-
tion her heart. The crisis in her life, which this tale is
to unfold, would be unintelligible but for some explana-
tions which may perhaps extenuate in the eyes of women
the guilt of this young Countess, happy wife and happy
mother, who at first sight might seem inexcusable.
Life is the result of a balance between two opposing
28 A Daughter of Eve
forces ; the absence of either is injurious to the creature.
Vandenesse, in piling up satisfaction, had quenched
desire, that lord of the universe, at whose disposal lie
vast stores of moral energy. Extreme heat, extreme
suffering, unalloyed happiness, like all abstract principles,
reign over a barren desert. They demand solitude, and
will suffer no existence but their own. Vandenesse was
not a woman, and it is women only who know the art
of giving variety to a state of bliss. Hence their
coquetry, their coldness, their tremors, their tempers,
and that ingenious battery of unreason, by which they
demolish to-day what yesterday they found entirely
satisfactory. Constancy in a man may pall, in a woman
never. Vandenesse was too thoroughly good-hearted
wantonly to plague the woman he loved ; the heaven
into which he plunged her could not be too ardent or
too cloudless. The problem of perpetual felicity is one
the solution of which is reserved for another and higher
world. Here below, even the most inspired of poets do
not fail to bore their readers when they attempt to sing
of Paradise. The rock on which Dante split was to be
the ruin also of Vandenesse : all honour to a desperate
courage !
His wife began at last to find so well-regulated an
Eden a little monotonous. The perfect happiness of
Eve in her terrestrial paradise produced in her the nausea
which comes from living too much on sweets. A
longing seized her, as it seized Rivarol on reading
Florian, to come across some wolf in the sheepfold.
This, it appears, has been the meaning in all ages of
that symbolical serpent to whom the first woman made
advances, some day no doubt when she was feeling
bored. The moral of this may not commend itself to
certain Protestants who take Genesis more seriously
than the Jews themselves, but the situation of Mme. de
Vandenesse requires no biblical images to explain it.
She was conscious of a force within, which found no
A Daughter of Eve 29
exercise. She was happy, but her happiness caused her
no pangs ; it was placid and uneventful ; she was not
haunted by the dread of losing it. It arrived every
morning with the same smile and sunshine, the same
soft words. Not a zephyr's breath wrinkled this calm
expanse ; she longed for a ripple on the glassy surface.
There was something childish in all this, which may
partly excuse her ; but society is no more lenient in its
judgments than was the Jehovah of Genesis. The
Countess was quite enough woman of the world now to
know how improper these feelings were, and nothing
would have induced her to confide them to her 'darling
husband.' This was the most impassioned epithet her
innocence could devise, for it is given to no one to forge
in cold blood that delicious language of hyperbole which
love dictates to its victims at the stake. Vandenesse,
pleased with this pretty reserve, applied his arts to keep
his wife within the temperate zone of wedded fervour.
Moreover, this model husband wanted to be loved for
himself, and judged unworthy of an honourable man those
tricks of the trade which might have imposed upon his
wife or awakened her feeling. He would owe nothing
to the expedients of wealth. The Comtesse Marie
would smile to see a shabby turn-out in the Bois, and
turn her eyes complacently to her own elegant equipage
and the horses which, harnessed in the English fashion,
moved with very free action and kept their distance
perfectly. Felix would not stoop to gather the fruit of
all his labours ; his lavish expenditure, and the good taste
which guided it, were accepted as a matter of course by
his wife, ignorant that to them she owed her perfect
immunity from vexations or wounding comparisons.
It was the same throughout. Kindness is not without
its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an
easy temper, and seldom recognise it as the secret striving
of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-
natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.
30 A Daughter of Eve
About this period Mme. de Vandenesse was sufficiently
drilled in the practices of society to abandon the insig-
nificant part of timid supernumerary, all eyes and ears,
which even Grisi is said, once on a time, to have played
in the choruses of the La Scala theatre. The young
Countess felt herself equal to the part of prima donna
and made some essays in it. To the great satisfaction
of Felix, she began to take her share in conversation.
Sharp repartees and shrewd reflections, which were the
fruit of talks with her husband, brought her into notice,
and this success emboldened her. Vandenesse, whose
wife had always been allowed to be pretty, was charmed
when she showed herself clever also. On her return
from the ball or concert or rout where she had shone,
Marie, as she laid aside her finery, would turn to Felix
and say with a little air of prim delight, 'Please, have I
done well to-night ? '
At this stage the Countess began to rouse jealousy in
the breasts of certain women, amongst whom was the
Marquise de Listomere, her husband's sister, who
hitherto had patronised Marie, looking on her as a good
foil for her own charms. Poor innocent victim ! A
Countess with the sacred name of Marie, beautiful,
witty, and good, a musician and not a flirt — no wonder
society whetted its teeth ! Felix de Vandenesse num-
bered amongst his acquaintance several women who
— although their connection with him was broken off,
whether by their own doing or his — were by no means
indifferent to his marriage. When these ladies saw in
Marie de Vandenesse a sheepish little woman with red
hands, rather silent, and to all appearance stupid also,
they considered themselves sufficiently avenged.
Then came the disasters of July 1830, and for the
space of two years society was broken up. Rich people
spent the troubled interval on their estates or travelling
in Europe ; and the salons hardly reopened before 1833.
The Faubourg Saint-Germain sulked, but it admitted as
A Daughter of Eve 31
neutral ground a few houses, amongst others, that of the
Ambassador of Austria. In these select rooms legiti-
mist society and the new society met, represented by
their most fashionable leaders. Vandenesse, though
strong in his convictions and attached by a thousand
ties of sympathy and gratitude to the exiled family, did
not feel himself bound to follow his party in its stupid
fanaticism. At a critical moment he had performed his
duty at the risk of life by breasting the flood of popular
fury in order to propose a compromise. He could afford
therefore to take his wife into a society which could not
possibly expose his good faith to suspicion.
Vandenesse's former friends hardly recognised the
young bride in the graceful, sparkling, and gentle
Countess, who took her place with all the breeding of
the high-born lady. Mmes. d'Espard and de Maner-
ville, Lady Dudley, and other ladies of less distinction
felt the stirring of a brood of vipers in their hearts ; the
dulcet moan of angry pride piped in their ears. The
happiness of Felix enraged them, and they would have
given a brand-new pair of shoes to do him an ill turn.
In place of showing hostility to the Countess, these
amiable intriguers buzzed about her with protestations
of extreme friendliness and sang her praises to their male
friends. Felix, who perfectly understood their little
game, kept his eye upon their intercourse with Marie
and warned her to be upon her guard. Divining, every
one of them, the anxiety which their assiduity caused
the Count, they could not pardon his suspicions. They
redoubled their flattering attentions to their rival and in
this way contrived an immense success for her, to the
disgust of the Marquise de Listomere, who was quite in
the dark about it all. The Comtesse Felix de Vande-
nesse was everywhere pointed to as the most charming
and brilliant woman in Paris ; and Marie's other sister-
in-law, the Marquise Charles de Vandenesse, endured
many mortifications from the confusion produced by
32 A Daughter of Eve
the similarity of name and the comparisons to which it
gave rise. For, though the Marquise was also a hand-
some and clever woman, the Countess had the advantage
of her in being twelve years younger, a point of which
her rivals did not fail to make use. They well knew
what bitterness the success of the Countess would
infuse into her relations with her sisters-in-law, who,
indeed, were most chilling and disagreeable to Marie-
Angelique in her triumph.
And so danger lurked in the family, enmity in friend-
ship. It is well known how the literature of that day
tried to overcome the indifference of the public, en-
grossed in the exciting political drama, by the produc-
tion of more or less Byronic works, exclusively occupied
with illicit love affairs. Conjugal infidelity furnished
at this time the sole material of magazines, novels, and
plays. This perennial theme came more than ever into
fashion. The lover, that nightmare of the husband,
was everywhere, except perhaps in the family circle,
which saw less of him during that reign of the middle-
class than at any other period. When the streets are
ablaze with light and 'Stop thief is shouted from every
window, it is hardly the moment robbers choose to be
abroad. If, in the course of those years, so fruitful in
civic, political, and moral upheavals, an occasional
domestic misadventure took place, it was exceptional
and attracted less notice than it would have done under
the Restoration. Nevertheless, women talked freely
among themselves of a subject in which both lyric and
dramatic poetry then revelled. The lover, that being
so rare and so bewitching, was a favourite theme. The
few intrigues which came to light supplied matter for such
conversation, which, then as ever, was confined to women
of unexceptionable life. The repugnance to this sort of
talk shown by women who have a stolen joy to conceal
is indeed a noteworthy fact. They are the prudes of
society, cautious, and even bashful ; their attitude is one
A Daughter of Eve 23
of perpetual appeal for silence or pardon. On the other
hand, when a woman takes pleasure in hearing of such
disasters and is curious about the temptations which lead
to them, you may be sure she is halting at the cross-
roads, uncertain and hesitating.
During this winter the Comtesse de Vandenesse
caught the distant roll of society's thunder, and the
rising storm whistled about her ears. Her so-called
friends, whose reputations were under the safeguard of
exalted rank and position, drew many sketches of the
irresistible gallant for her benefit, and dropped into her
heart burning words about love, the one solution of life
for women, the master passion, according to Mme. de
Stael, who did not speak without experience. When
the Countess, in a friendly conclave, naively asked why
a lover was so different from a husband, not one of these
women failed to reply in such a way as to pique her
curiosity, haunt her imagination, touch her heart, and
interest her mind. They burned to see Vandenesse in
trouble.
'With one's husband, dear, one simply rubs along j
with a lover it's life,' said her sister-in-law, the Mar-
quise de Vandenesse.
* Marriage, my child, is our purgatory, love is
paradise,' said Lady Dudley.
' Don't believe her,' cried Mile, des Touches, ' it 's
hell ! '
' Yes, but a hell with love in it,' observed the Mar-
quise de Rochefide. ' There may be more satisfaction
in suffering than in an easy life. Look at the martyrs ! '
'Little simpleton,' said the Marquise d'Espard, 'in
marriage we live, so to speak, our own life ; love is
living in another.'
'In short, a lover is the forbidden fruit, and that's
enough for me ! ' laughingly spoke the pretty Moina
de Saint-Heren.
When there were no diplomatic at homes, or balls
c
34 A Daughter of Eve
given by wealthy foreigners, such as Lady Dudley or
the Princesse de Galathionne, the Countess went almost
every evening after the opera to one of the few aristo-
cratic drawing-rooms still open — whether that of the
Marquise d'Espard, Mme. de Listomere, Mile, des
Touches, the Comtesse de Montcornet, or the Vicom-
tesse de Grandlieu. Never did she leave these gather-
ings without some seeds of evil scattered in her soul.
She heard talk about ' completing her life,' an expression
much in vogue then, or about being 'understood,'
another word to which women attach marvellous mean-
ings. She would return home uneasy, pensive, dreamy,
and curious. Her life seemed somehow impoverished,
but she had not yet gone so far as to feel it entirely
barren.
CHAPTER IV
A MAN OF NOTE
The most lively, but also the most mixed, company to
be found in any of the houses where Mme. de Vande-
nesse visited, was decidedly that which met at the
Comtesse de Montcornet's. She was a charming little
woman who opened her doors to distinguished artists,
commercial princes, and celebrated literary men ; but
the tests to which she submitted them before admission
were so rigorous that the most exclusive need not fear
rubbing up against persons of an inferior grade ; the
most unapproachable were safe from pollution. During
the winter, society (which never loses its rights, and at
all costs will be amused) began to rally again, and a few
drawing-rooms — including those of Mmes. d'Espard and
de Listomere, of Mile, des Touches, and of the Duchesse
de Grandlieu — had picked up recruits from among the
A Daughter of Eve 3$
latest celebrities in art, science, literature, and politics.
At a concert given by the Comtesse de Montcornet,
toward the end of the winter, Raoul Nathan, a well-
known name in literature and politics, made his entry,
introduced by Emile Blondet, a very brilliant but also
very indolent writer. Blondet too was a celebrity, but
only among the initiated few ; much made of by the
critics, he was unknown to the general public. Blondet
was perfectly aware of this, and in general was a man of
few illusions. In regard to fame, he said, among other
disparaging remarks, that it was a poison best taken in
small doses.
Raoul Nathan had a long struggle before emerging to
the surface. Having reached it, he had at once made
capital out of that sudden craze for external form then
distinguishing certain exquisites, who swore by the
middle ages, and were humorously known as 'young
France.' He adopted the eccentricities of genius, and
enrolled himself among these worshippers of art, whose
intentions at least we cannot but admire, since nothing
is more absurd than the dress of a Frenchman of the
nineteenth century, and courage was needed to change
it. Raoul, to do him justice, has something unusual
and fantastic in his person, which seems to demand a
setting. His enemies or his friends — there is little to
choose between them — are agreed that nothing in the
world so well matches the inner Nathan as the outer.
He would probably look even more remarkable if left to
nature than he is when touched by art. His worn and
wasted features suggest a wrestling with spirits, good or
evil. His face has some likeness to that which German
painters give to the dead Christ, and bears innumerable
traces of a constant struggle between weak human
nature and the powers on high. But the deep hollows
of his cheeks, the knobs on his craggy and furrowed
skull, the cavities round his eyes and temples, point to
nothing weak in the constitution. There is remarkable
36 A Daughter of Eve 1
solidity about the tough tissues and prominent bones ;
and though the skin, tanned by excess, sticks to them
as though parched by some fire within, it none the less
covers a massive framework. He is tall and thin. His
long hair, which always needs brushing, aims at effect.
He is a Byron, badly groomed and badly put together,
with legs like a heron's, congested knees, an exagge-
ratedly small waist, a hand with muscles of whip-cord,
the grip of a crab's claw, and lean, nervous fingers.
Raoul's eyes are Napoleonic, blue and soul-piercing ;
his nose is sensitive and finely chiselled, his mouth
charming and adorned with teeth white enough to
excite a woman's envy. There is life and fire in the
head, genius on the brow. Raoul belongs to the small
number of men who would not pass unnoticed in the
street, and who, in a drawing-room, at once form a
centre of light, drawing all eyes. He attracts attention
by his neglige , r if one may borrow from Moliere the
word used by Eliante to describe personal slovenliness.
His clothes look as though they had been pulled about,
frayed, and crumpled on purpose to harmonise with his
countenance. He habitually thrusts one hand into his
open waistcoat in the pose which Girodet's portrait of
Chateaubriand has made famous, but not so much for the
sake of copying Chateaubriand (he would disdain to copy
any one) as to take the stiffness out of his shirt front.
His tie becomes all in a moment a mere wisp, from a
trick he has of throwing back his head with a sudden
convulsive movement, like that of a race-horse champing
its bit and tossing its head in the effort to break loose
from bridle and curb. His long, pointed beard is very
different from that of the dandy, combed, brushed,
scented, sleek, shaped like a fan or cut into a peak ;
Nathan's is left entirely to nature. His hair, caught in
by his coat-collar and tie, and lying thick upon his
shoulders, leaves a grease spot wherever it rests. His
dry, stringy hands are innocent of nail-brush or the
A Daughter of Eve 37
luxury of a lemon. There are even journalists who
declare that only on rare occasions is their grimy skin
laved in baptismal waters.
In a word, this awe-inspiring Raoul is a caricature.
He moves in a jerky way, as though propelled by some
faulty machinery ; and when walking the boulevards or
Paris he offends all sense of order by impetuous zigzags
and unexpected halts, which bring him into collision
with peaceful citizens as they stroll along. His conver-
sation, full of caustic humour and stinging epigrams,
imitates the gait of his body ; of a sudden it will drop the
tone of fury to become, for no apparent reason, gracious,
dreamy, soothing, and gentle ; then come unaccount-
able pauses or mental somersaults, which at times grow
fatiguing. In society he does not conceal an unblushing
awkwardness, a scorn of convention, and an attitude of
criticism towards things usually held in respect there,
which make him objectionable to plain people, as well as
to those who strive to keep up the traditions of old world
courtliness. Yet, after all, he is an oddity, like a
Chinese image, and women have a weakness for such
things. Besides, with women he often puts on an
air of elaborate suavity, and seems to take a pleasure in
making them forget his grotesque exterior, and in
vanquishing their antipathy. This is a salve to his
vanity, his self-esteem, and his pride.
' Why do you behave so ? ' said the Marquise de
Vandenesse to him one day.
c Are not pearls found in oyster shells ? ' was the
pompous reply.
To some one else, who put a similar question, he
answered —
' If I made myself agreeable to every one, what
should I have left for her whom I design to honour
supremely ? '
Raoul Nathan carries into his intellectual life the
irregularity which he has made his badge. Nor is the
38 A Daughter of Eve
device misleading : like poor girls, who go out as maids-
of-all-work in humble homes, he can turn his hand to
anything. He began with serious criticism, but soon
became convinced that this was a losing trade. His
articles, he said, cost as much as books. The profits of
the theatre attracted him, but, incapable of the slow,
sustained labour involved in putting anything on the
boards, he was driven to ally himself with du Bruel,
who worked up his ideas and converted them into light
paying pieces with plenty of humour, and composed in
view of some particular actor or actress. Between them
they unearthed Florine, a popular actress.
Ashamed, however, of this Siamese-like union, Nathan,
unaided, brought out at the Theatre Francais a great
drama, which fell with all the honours of war amidst
salvoes from the artillery of the press. In his youth he
had already tried the theatre which represents the fine
traditions of the French drama with a splendid romantic
play in the style of Pinto^ and this at a time when
classicism held undisputed sway. The result was that
the Odeon became for three nights the scene of such
disorder that the piece had to be stopped. The second
play, no less than the first, seemed to many people a
masterpiece, and it won for him, though only within the
select world of judges and connoisseurs, a far higher
reputation than the light remunerative pieces at which
he worked with others.
{ One more such failure,' said Emile Blondet, c and
you will be immortal.'
But Nathan, instead of sticking to this arduous path,
was driven by stress of poverty to fall back upon more
profitable work, such as the production of spectacular
pieces or of an eighteenth century powder and patches
vaudeville, and the adaptation of popular novels to the
stage. Nevertheless, he was still counted as a man of
great ability, whose last word had not yet been heard.
He made an excursion also into pure literature and
A Daughter of Eve 39
published three novels, not reckoning those which he
kept going in the press, like fishes in an aquarium.
As often happens, when a writer has stuff in him for
only one work, the first of these three was a brilliant
success. Its author rashly put it at once in the front
rank of his works as an artistic creation, and lost no
opportunity of getting it puffed as the ' finest book of
the period,' the c novel of the century.'
Yet he complained loudly of the exigencies of art,
and did as much as any man towards having it accepted
as the one standard for all kinds of creative work — paint-
ing, sculpture, literature, architecture. He had begun
by perpetrating a book of verse, which won him a place
in the pleiad of poets of the day, and which contained
one obscure poem that was greatly admired. Compelled
by straitened circumstances to go on producing, he
turned from the theatre to the press, and from the press
back to the theatre, breaking up and scattering his
powers, but with unshaken confidence in his inspiration.
He did not suffer, therefore, from lack of a publisher for
his fame, differing in this from certain celebrities, whose
flickering flame is kept from extinction by the titles of
books still in the future, for which a public will be a
more pressing necessity than a new edition.
Nathan came near to being a genius, and, had destiny
crowned his ambition by marching him to the scaffold,
he would have been justified in striking his forehead
after Andre de Chenier. The sudden accession to
power of a dozen authors, professors, metaphysicians, and
historians fired him with emulation, and he regretted
not having devoted his pen to politics rather than
to literature. He believed himself superior to these
upstarts, who had foisted themselves on to the party-
machine during the troubles of 1830-3 and whose for-
tune now filled him with consuming envy. He belonged
to the type of man who covets everything and looks on
all success as a fraud on himself, who is always stumbling
40 A Daughter of Eve
on some luminous track but settles down nowhere,
drawing all the while on the tolerance of his neigh-
bours. At this moment he was travelling from Saint-
Simonism to Republicanism, which might serve, perhaps,
as a stage to Ministerialism. His eye swept every corner
for some bone to pick, some safe shelter whence he might
bark beyond the reach of kicks, and make himself a terror
to the passers-by. He had, however, the mortification
of finding himself not taken seriously by the great de
Marsay, then at the head of affairs, who had a low
opinion of authors as lacking in what Richelieu called
the logical spirit, or rather in coherence of ideas.
Besides, no minister could have failed to reckon on
Raoul's constant pecuniary difficulties which, sooner or
later, would drive him into the position of accepting
rather than imposing conditions.
Raoul's real and studiously suppressed character accords
with that which he shows to the public. He is carried
away by his own acting, declaims with great eloquence,
and could not be more self-centred were he, like
Louis xiv., the State in person. None knows better how
to play at sentiment or to deck himself out in a shoddy
greatness. The grace of moral beauty and the language
of self-respect are at his command, he is a very Alceste
in pose, while acting like Philinte. His selfishness
ambles along under cover of this painted cardboard, and
not seldom attains the end he has in view. Excessively
idle, he never works except under the prick of necessity.
Continuous labour applied to the construction of a last-
ing fabric is beyond his conception ; but in a paroxysm
of rage, the result of wounded vanity, or in some crisis
precipitated by his creditors, he will leap the Eurotas
and perform miracles of mental forestalment ; after
which, worn out and amazed at his own fertility, he
falls back into the enervating dissipations of Paris life.
Does necessity once more threaten, he has no strength
to meet it ; he sinks a step and traffics with his honour.
A Daughter of Eve 41
Impelled by a false idea of his talents and his future,
founded on the rapid rise of one of his old comrades
(one of the few cases of administrative ability brought
to light by the Revolution of July), he tries to regain his
footing by taking liberties with his friends, which are
nothing short of a moral outrage, though they remain
buried among the skeletons of private life, without a
word of comment or blame.
His heart devoid of nicety, his shameless hand, hail-
fellow-well-met with every vice, every degradation,
every treachery, every party, have placed him as much
beyond reach of attack as a constitutional king. The
peccadillo, which would raise hue and cry after a man
of high character, counts for nothing in him ; while
conduct bordering on grossness is barely noticed. In
making his excuses people find their own. The very
man who would fain despise him shakes him by the
hand, fearing to need his help. So numerous are his
friends that he would prefer enemies. This surface
good-nature which captivates a new acquaintance and is
no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is
never at fault for an excuse, which makes an outcry at
the wound which it condones, is one of the most dis-
tinctive features of the journalist. This camaraderie
(the word is a stroke of genius) corrodes the noblest
minds ; it eats into their pride like rust, kills the germ
of great deeds, and lends a sanction to moral cowardice.
There are men who, by exacting this general slackness
of conscience, get themselves absolved for playing the
traitor and the turncoat. Thus it is that the most
enlightened portion of the nation becomes the least
worthy of respect.
From the literary point of view Nathan is deficient
in style and information. Like most young aspirants in
literature he gives out to-day what he learned yesterday.
He has neither the time nor the patience to make an
author. He does not use his own eyes, but can pick up
42 A Daughter of Eve
from others, and, while he fails in producing a vigorously-
constructed plot, he sometimes covers this defect by the
fervour he throws into it. He c went in ' for passion, to
use a slang word, because there is no limit to the variety
of modes in which passion may express itself, while the
task of genius is to sift out from these various expres-
sions the element in each which will appeal to every one
as natural. His heroes do not stir the imagination ;
they are magnified individuals, exciting only a passing
sympathy ; they have no connection with the wider
interests of life, and therefore stand for nothing but
themselves. Yet the author saves himself by means of
a ready wit and of those lucky hits which billiard-players
call c flukes.' He is the best man for a flying shot at
the ideas which swoop down upon Paris, or which Paris
starts. His teeming brain is not his own, it belongs to
the period. He lives upon the event of the day, and, in
order to get all he can from it, exaggerates its bearing.
In short, we miss the accent of truth, his words ring
false ; there is something of the juggler in him, as
Count Felix said. One feels that his pen has dipped in
the ink of an actress's dressing-room.
In Nathan we find an image of the literary youth of
the day, with their sham greatness and real poverty ; he
represents their irregular charm and their terrible falls,
their life of seething cataracts, sudden reverses, and
unlooked-for triumphs. He is a true child of this
jealousy-ridden age, in which a thousand personal
rivalries, cloaking themselves under the name of schools,
make profit out of their failures by feeding fat with them
a hydra-headed anarchy ; an age which expects fortune
without work, glory without talent, and success without
effort, but which, after many a revolt and skirmish, is
at last brought by its vices to swell the civil list, in sub-
mission to the powers that be. When so many young
ambitions start on foot to meet at the same goal, there
must be competing wills, frightful destitution, and a
A Daughter of Eve 43
relentless struggle. In this merciless combat it is the
fiercest or the adroitest selfishness which wins. The
lesson is not lost on an admiring world ; spite of bawl-
ing, as Moliere would say, it acquits and follows suit.
When, in his capacity of opponent to the new dynasty,
Raoul was introduced to Mme. de Montcornet's drawing-
room his specious greatness was at its height. He was
recognised as the political critic of the de Marsays, the
Rastignacs, and the la Roche-Hugons, who constituted
the party in power. His sponsor, Emile Blondet, handi-
capped by his fatal indecision and dislike of action where
his own affairs were concerned, stuck to his trade of
scoffer and took sides with no party, while on good
terms with all. He was the friend of Raoul, of Rasti-
gnac, and of Montcornet.
i You are a political triangle,' said de Marsay, with a
laugh, when he met him at the Opera; 'that geo-
metrical form is the peculiar property of the deity, who
can afford to be idle ; but a man who wants to get on
should adopt a curve, which is the shortest road in
politics.'
Beheld from afar, Raoul Nathan was a resplendent
meteor. The fashion of the day justified his manner
and appearance. His pose as a Republican gave him,
for the moment, that puritan ruggedness assumed by
champions of the popular cause, men whom Nathan in
his heart derided. This is not without attraction for
women, who love to perform prodigies, such as shatter-
ing rocks, melting an iron will. Raoul's moral costume,
therefore, was in keeping with the external. He was
bound to be, and he was, for this Eve, listless in her
paradise of the Rue du Rocher, the insidious serpent,
bright to the eye and flattering to the ear, with magnetic
gaze and graceful motion, who ruined the first woman.
Marie, on seeing Raoul, at once felt that inward
shock, the violence of which is almost terrifying. This
would-be great man, by a mere glance, sent a thrill right
44 A Daughter of Eve
through to her heart, causing a delicious flutter there.
The resal mantle which fame had for the moment
draped on Nathan's shoulders dazzled this simple-
minded woman. When tea came Marie left the group
of chattering women, among whom she had stood silent
since the appearance of this wonderful being — a fact
which did not escape her so-called friends. The
Countess drew near the ottoman in the centre of the
room where Raoul was perorating. She remained stand-
ing, her arm linked in that of Mme. Octave de Camps,
an excellent woman, who kept the secret of the nervous
quivering by which Marie betrayed her strong emotion.
Despite the sweet magic distilled from the eye of the
woman who loves or is startled into self-betrayal, Raoul
was just then entirely occupied with a regular display of
fireworks. He was far too busy letting ofF epigrams
like rockets, winding and unwinding indictments like
catherine-wheels, and tracing blazing portraits in lines
of fire, to notice the naive admiration of a little Eve,
lost in the crowd of women surrounding him. The love
of novelty which would bring Paris flocking to the
Zoological Gardens, if a unicorn had been brought there
from those famous Mountains of the Moon, virgin yet of
European tread, intoxicates minds of a lower stamp, as
much as it saddens the truly wise. Raoul was enraptured
and far too much engrossed with women in general to
pay attention to one woman in particular.
* Take care, dear, you had better come away,' her fair
companion, sweetest of women, whispered to Marie.
The Countess turned to her husband and, with one
of those speaking glances which husbands are sometimes
slow in interpreting, begged for his arm. Felix led her
away.
'Well, you are in luck, my good friend,' said Mme.
d'Espard in Raoul's ear. 'You've done execution in
more than one quarter to-night, and, best of all, with
that charming Countess who has just left us so
abruptly.'
A Daughter of Eve 45
1 Do you know what the Marquise d'Espard meant ? '
asked Raoul of Blondet, repeating the great lady's
remark, when almost all the other guests had departed,
between one and two in the morning.
c Why, yes, I have just heard that the Comtesse de
Vandenesse has fallen wildly in love with you. Lucky
dog ! '
' I did not see her,' said Raoul. r
1 Ah ! but you will see her, you rascal,' said Emile
Blondet, laughing. ' Lady Dudley has invited you to
her great ball with the very purpose of bringing about a
meeting.'
Raoul and Blondet left together, and joining Rastignac,
who offered them a place in his carriage, the three made
merry over this conjunction of an eclectic Under-
Secretary of State with a fierce Republican and a political
sceptic.
c Suppose we sup at the expense of law and order ? '
said Blondet, who had a fancy for reviving the old-
fashioned supper.
Rastignac took them to Very's, and dismissed his
carriage ; the three then sat down to table and set
themselves to pull to pieces their contemporaries amidst
Rabelaisian laughter. During the course of supper
Rastignac and Blondet urged their counterfeit opponent
not to neglect the magnificent opportunity thrown in
his way. The story of Marie de Vandenesse was cari-
catured by these two profligates, who applied the scalpel
of epigram and the keen edge of mockery to that
transparent childhood, that happy marriage. Blondet
congratulated Raoul on having found a woman who so
far had been guilty only of execrable red-chalk drawings
and feeble water-colour landscapes, of embroidering
slippers for her husband, and performing sonatas with a
most lady-like absence of passion ; a woman who had
been tied for eighteen years to her mother's apron-
strings, pickled in devotion, trained by Vandenesse, and
46 A Daughter of Eve
cooked to a turn by marriage for the palate of love. At
the third bottle of champagne Raoul Nathan became
more expansive than he had ever shown himself before.
' My dear friends,' he said, 'you know my relations
with Florine, you know my life, you will not be
surprised to hear me confess that 1 have never yet
seen the colour of a Countess's love. It has often been
a humiliating thought to me that only in poetry could I
find a Beatrice, a Laura ! A pure and noble woman is
like a spotless conscience, she raises us in our own
estimation. Elsewhere we may be soiled, with her we
keep our honour, pride, and purity. Elsewhere life is a
wild frenzy, with her we breathe the peace, the freshness,
the bloom of the oasis.'
' Come, come, my good soul,' said Rastignac, ' shift
the prayer of Moses on to the high notes, as Paganini
does.'
Raoul sat speechless with fixed and besotted eyes.
At last he opened his mouth.
'This beast of a 'prentice minister does not under-
stand me ! '
Thus, whilst the poor Eve of the Rue du Rocher
went to bed, swathed in shame, terrified at the delight
which had filled her while listening to this poetic
pretender, hovering between the stern voice of gratitude
to Vandenesse and the flattering tongue of the serpent,
these three shameless spirits trampled on the tender
white blossoms of her opening love. Ah ! if women
knew how cynical those men can be behind their backs,
who show themselves all meekness and cajolery when by
their side ! if they knew how they mock their idols !
Fresh, lovely, and timid creature, whose charms lie at
the mercy of some graceless buffoon ! And yet she
triumphs ! The more the veils are rent, the clearer her
beauty shines.
Marie at this moment was comparing Raoul and
Felix, all-ignorant of the danger to her heart in such a
A Daughter of Eve 47
process. No better contrast could be found to the robust
and unconventional Raoul than Felix de Vandenesse,
with his clothes fitting like a glove, the finish of a fine
lady in his person, his charming natural disinvoltura,
combined with a touch of English refinement, picked up
from Lady Dudley. A contrast like this pleases the
fancy of a woman, ever ready to fly from one extreme
to another. The Countess was too well-principled and
pious not to forbid her thoughts dwelling on Raoul, and
next day, in the heart of her paradise, she took herself to
task for base ingratitude.
' What do you think of Raoul Nathan ? ' she asked her
husband during lunch.
* He is a charlatan,' replied the Count ; 'one of those
volcanoes which a sprinkling of gold dust will keep
tranquil. The Comtesse de Montcornet ought not to
have had him at her house.'
This reply was the more galling to Marie because
Felix, who knew the literary world well, supported his
verdict with proofs drawn from the life of Raoul — a life
of shifts, in which Florine, a well-known actress, played
a large part.
1 Granting the man has genius,' he concluded, ' he is
without the patience and persistency which make genius
a thing apart and sacred. He tries to impress people by
assuming a position which he cannot live up to. That
is not the behaviour of really able men and students ; if
they are honourable men they stick to their own line,
and don't try to hide their rags under frippery.'
A woman's thought has marvellous elasticity ; it may
sink under a blow, to all appearance crushed, but in a
given time it is up again, as though nothing had
happened.
'Felix must be right,' was the first thought of the
Countess.
Three days later, however, her mind travelled back to
the tempter, allured by that sweet yet ruthless emotion
48 A Daughter of Eve
which it was the mistake of Vandenesse not to have
aroused. The Count and Countess went to Lady
Dudley's great ball, where de Marsay made his last
appearance in society. Two months later he died,
leaving the reputation of a statesman so profound that,
as Blondet said, he was unfathomable. Here Vandenesse
and his wife again met Raoul Nathan, amid a concourse
of people made remarkable by the number of actors in
the political drama whom, to their mutual surprise, it
brought together.
It was one of the chief social functions in the great
world. The reception-rooms offered a magic picture to
the eye. Flowers, diamonds, shining hair, the plunder
of countless jewel-cases, every art of the toilet — all con-
tributed to the effect. The room might be compared to
one of those show hothouses where wealthy amateurs
collect the most marvellous varieties. There was the
same brilliancy, the same delicacy of texture. It seemed
as though the art of man would compete also with the
animal world. On all sides fluttered gauze, white or
painted like the wings of prettiest dragon-fly, crepe, lace,
blonde, tulle, pucked, puffed, or notched, vying in eccen-
tricity of form with the freaks of nature in the insect
tribe. There were spider's threads in gold or silver,
clouds of silk, flowers which some fairy might have
woven or imprisoned spirit breathed into life ; feathers,
whose rich tints told of a tropical sun, drooping willow-
like over haughty heads, ropes of pearls, drapery in
broad folds, ribbed, or slashed, as though the genius of
arabesque had presided over French millinery.
This splendour harmonised with the beauties gathered
together as though to form a 'keepsake.' The eye
roamed over a wealth of fair shoulders in every tone of
white that man could conceive — some amber-tinted,
others glistening like some glazed surface or glossy as
satin, others, again, of a rich lustreless colour which the
brush of Rubens might have mixed. Then the eyes,
A Daughter of Eve 49
sparkling like onyx stones or turquoises, with their dark
velvet edging or fair fringes ; and profiles of every
contour, recalling the noblest types of different lands.
There were brows lofty with pride ; rounded brows,
index of thought within ; level brows, the seat of an
indomitable will. Lastly — most bewitching of all in a
scene of such studied splendour — necks and bosoms in
the rich voluptuous folds adored by George iv., or with
the more delicate modelling which found favour in the
eighteenth century and at the court of Louis xv. ; but
all, whatever the type, frankly exhibited, either with-
out drapery or through the dainty plaited tuckers of
Raphael's portraits, supreme triumph of his laborious
pupils. Prettiest of feet, itching for the dance, figures
yielding softly to the embrace of the waltz, roused the
most apathetic to attention ; murmurings of gentle
voices, rustling dresses, whispering partners, vibrations of
the dance, made a fantastic burden to the music.
A fairy's wand might have called forth this witchery,
bewildering to the senses, the harmony of scents, the
rainbow tints flashing in the crystal chandeliers, the
blaze of the candles, the mirrors which repeated the
scene on every side. The groups of lovely women in
lovely attire stood out against a dark background of
men, where might be observed the delicate, regular
features of the aristocracy, the tawny moustache of the
sedate Englishman, the gay, smiling countenance of the
French noble. Every European order glittered in the
room, some hanging from a collar on the breast, others
dangling by the side.
To a watchful observer the scene presented more than
this gaily decorated surface. It had a soul ; it lived, it
thought, it felt, it found expression in the hidden
passions which now and again forced their way to the
surface. Now it would be an interchange of malicious
glances ; now some fair young girl, carried away by
excitement and novelty, would betray a touch of passion ;
D
5<d A Daughter of Eve
jealous women talked scandal behind their fans and paid
each other extravagant compliments. Society, decked
out, curled, and perfumed, abandoned itself to that
frenzy of the fete which goes to the head like the fumes
of wine. From every brow, as from every heart, seemed
to emanate sensations and thoughts, which, forming
together one potent influence, inflamed the most cold-
blooded.
It was the most exciting moment of this entrancing
evening. In a corner of the gilded drawing-room,
where a few bankers, ambassadors, and retired ministers,
together with that old reprobate, Lord Dudley (an un-
expected arrival), were seated at play, Mme. Felix de
Vandenesse found herself unable to resist the impulse to
enter into conversation with Nathan. She, too, may
have been yielding to that ballroom intoxication which
has wrung many a confession from the lips of the most
coy.
The sight of this splendid pageant of a world to
which he was still a stranger stung Nathan to the heart
with redoubled ambition. He looked at Rastignac,
whose brother, at the age of twenty-seven, had just been
made a Bishop, and whose brother-in-law, Martial de la
Roche-Hugon, held office, while he himself was an
Under Secretary of State, and about to marry, as rumour
said, the only daughter of the Baron de Nucingen. He
saw among the members of the diplomatic body an
obscure writer who used to translate foreign newspapers
for a journal that passed over to the reigning dynasty
after 1830 ; he saw leader-writers members of the
Council and professors peers of France. And he per-
ceived, with bitterness, that he had taken the wrong road
in preaching the overthrow of an aristocracy which
counted among its ornaments the true nobility of fortu-
nate talent and successful scheming. Blondet, though
still a mere journalistic hack, was much made of in
society, and had it yet in his power to strike the road to
A Daughter of Eve 51
fortune by means of his intimacy with Mme. de Mont-
cornet. Blondet, therefore, with all his ill-luck, was a
striking example in Nathan's eyes of the importance of
having friends in high places. In the depths of his
heart he resolved upon following the example of men
like de Marsay, Rastignac, Blondet, and Talleyrand,
the leader of the sect. He would throw conviction to
the winds, paying allegiance only to accomplished facts,
which he would wrest to his own advantage ; no system
should be to him more than an instrument; and on no
account would he upset the balance of a society so
admirably constructed, so decorative, and so consonant
with nature.
'My future,' he said to himself, 'is in the hands of a
woman belonging to the great world.'
Full of this thought, the outcome of a frantic cupidity,
Nathan pounced upon the Comtesse de Vandenesse like
a hawk upon its prey. She was looking charming in
a head-dress of marabout feathers, which produced the
delicious melting effect of Lawrence's portraits, well
suited to her gentle character. The fervid rhapsodies of
the poet, crazed by ambition, carried the sweet creature
quite off" her feet. Lady Dudley, whose eye was every-
where, secured the tete-a-tete by handing over the Comte
de Vandenesse to Mme. de Manerville. It was the
first time the parted lovers had spoken face to face since
their rupture. The woman, strong in the habit of
ascendency, caught Felix in the toils of a coquettish
controversy, with plenty of blushing confidences, regrets
deftly cast like flowers at his feet, and recriminations,
where self-defence was intended to stimulate reproach.
Whilst her husband's former mistress was raking
among the ashes of dead joys to find some spark of
life, Mme. Felix de Vandenesse experienced those
violent heart-throbs which assail a woman with the
certainty of going astray and treading forbidden paths.
These emotions are not without fascination, and rouse
52 A Daughter of Eve
many dormant faculties. Now, as in the days of Blue
Beard, all women love to use the blood-stained key,
that splendid mythological symbol which is one of
Perrault's glories.
The dramatist, who knew his Shakespeare, unfolded
the tale of his hardships, described his struggle with
men and things, opened up glimpses of his unstable
success, his political genius wasting in obscurity, his life
unblessed by any generous affection. Without a word
directly to that effect, he conveyed to this gracious lady
the suggestion that she might play for him the noble
part of Rebecca in Ivanhoe, might love and shelter him.
Not a syllable overstepped the pure regions of sentiment.
The blue of the forget-me-not, the white of the lily, are
not more pure than were his flowers of rhetoric and the
things signified by them ; the radiance of a seraph lighted
the brow of this artist, who might yet utilise his dis-
course with a publisher. He acquitted himself well of
the serpent's part, and flashed before the eyes of the
Countess the tempting colours of the fatal fruit. Marie
left the ball consumed by remorse, which was akin to
hope, thrilled by compliments flattering to her vanity,
and agitated to the remotest corner of her heart. Her
very goodness was her snare ; she could not resist her
own pity for the unfortunate.
Whether Mme. de Manerville brought Vandenesse to
the room where his wife was talking with Nathan,
whether he came there of his own accord, or whether
the conversation had roused in him a slumbering pain,
the fact remains, whatever the cause, that, when his wife
came to ask for his arm, she found him gloomy and
abstracted. The Countess was afraid she had been seen.
As soon as she was alone with Felix in the carriage, she
threw him a smile full of meaning, and began —
'Was not that Mme. de Manerville with whom you
were talking, dear ? '
Felix had not yet got clear of the thorny ground,
A Daughter of Eve 53
through which his wife's neat little attack marched
him, when the carriage stopped at their door. It was
the first stratagem prompted by love. Marie was
delighted to have thus got the better of a man whom
till then she had considered so superior. She tasted for
the first time the joy of victory at a critical moment.
CHAPTER V
FLORINE
In a passage between the Rue Basse-du-Rempart and
the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, Raoul had one or two
bare, cold rooms on the third floor of a thin, ugly house.
This was his abode for the general public, for literary
novices, creditors, intruders, and the whole race of bores
who were not allowed to cross the threshold of private
life. His real home, which was the stage of his wider
life and public appearances, he made with Florine, a
second-rate actress who, ten years before, had been
raised to the rank of a great dramatic artist by the
combined efforts of Nathan's friends, the newspaper
critics, and a few literary men.
For ten years Raoul had been so closely attached to
this woman, that he spent half his life in her house,
taking his meals there whenever he had no engagements
outside nor friends to entertain. Florine, to a "finished
depravity, added a very pretty wit, which constant inter-
course with artists and daily practice had developed and
sharpened. Wit is generally supposed to be a rare quality
among actors. It seems an easy inference that those who
spend their lives in bringing the outside to perfection
should have little left with which to furnish the interior.
But any one who considers the small number of actors
and actresses in a century, compared with the quantity
54 A Daughter of Eve
of dramatic authors and attractive women produced by
the same population, will see reason to dispute this
notion. It rests, in fact, on the common assumption
that personal feeling must disappear in the imitative
expression of passion, whereas the real fact is that
intelligence, memory, and imagination are the only
powers employed in such imitation. Great artists are
those who, according to Napoleon's definition, can
intercept at will the communication established by
nature between sensation and thought. Moliere and
Talma loved more passionately in their old age than is
usual with ordinary mortals.
Florine's position forced her to listen to the talk of
alert and calculating journalists and to the prophecies of
garrulous literary men, while keeping an eye on certain
politicians who used her house as a means of profiting
by the sallies of her guests. The mixture of angel and
demon which she embodied made her a fitting hostess
for these profligates, who revelled in her impudence
and found unfailing amusement in the perversity of her
mind and heart.
Her house, enriched with offerings from admirers,
displayed in its exaggerated magnificence an entire
regardlessness of cost. Women of this type set a purely
arbitrary value on their possessions ; in a fit of temper
they will smash a fan or a scent-bottle worthy of a
queen, and they will be inconsolable if anything happens
to a ten-franc basin which their lap-dogs drink out of.
The dining-room, crowded with rare and costly gifts,
may serve as a specimen of the regal and insolent pro-
fusion of the establishment.
The whole room, including the ceiling, was covered
with carved oak, left unstained, and set off with lines of
dull gold. In the panels, encircled by groups of children
playing with chimaeras, were placed the lights, which
illuminated here a rough sketch by Decamps ; there a
plaster angel holding a basin of holy water, a present
A Daughter of Eve 55
from Antonin Moine ; further on a dainty picture of
Eugene Deveria ; the sombre figure of some Spanish
alchemist by Louis Boulanger ; an autograph letter from
Lord Byron to Caroline in an ebony frame, carved by
Elschoet, with a letter of Napoleon to Josephine to
match it. The things were arranged without any view
to symmetry, and yet with a sort of unstudied art ; the
whole effect took one, as it were, by storm. There was
a union of carelessness and desire to please, such as can
only be found in the homes of artists. The exquisitely-
carved mantelpiece was bare except for a whimsical
Florentine statue in ivory, attributed to Michael Angelo,
representing a Pan discovering a woman disguised as a
young herd, the original of which is at the Treasury in
Vienna. On either side of this hung an iron candela-
brum, the work of some Renaissance chisel. A Boule
timepiece on a tortoise-shell bracket, lacquered with
copper arabesques, glittered in the middle of a panel
between two statuettes, survivals from some ruined
abbey. In the corners of the room on pedestals stood
gorgeously resplendent lamps — the fee paid by some
maker to Florine for trumpeting his wares among
her friends, who were assured that Japanese pots, with
rich fittings, made the only possible stand for lamps.
On a marvellous whatnot lay a display of silver, well-
earned trophy of a combat in which some English lord
had been forced to acknowledge the superiority of the
French nation. Next came porcelain reliefs. The
whole room displayed the charming profusion of an
artist whose furniture represents his capital.
The bedroom, in violet, was a young ballet-girl's
dream : velvet curtains, lined with silk, were draped over
inner folds of tulle ; the ceiling was in white cashmere
relieved with violet silk ; at the foot of the bed lay an
ermine rug ; within the bed-curtains, which fell in the
form of an inverted lily, hung a lantern by which to
read the proofs of next day's papers. A yellow drawing-
56 A Daughter of Eve
room, enriched with ornaments the colour of Florentine
bronze, carried out the same impression of magnificence,
but a detailed description would make these pages too
much of a broker's inventory. To find anything com-
parable to these treasures, it would be necessary to visit
the Rothschilds' house close by.
Sophie Grignoult, who, following the usual custom of
taking a stage name, was known as Florine, had made
her debut, beautiful as she was, in a subordinate capacity.
Her triumph and her wealth she owed to Raoul Nathan.
The association of these two careers, common enough
in the dramatic and literary world, did not injure
Raoul, who, in his character as a man of high preten-
sions, respected the proprieties. Nevertheless, Florine's
fortune was far from assured. Her professional income,
arising from her salary and what she could earn in her
holidays, barely sufficed for dress and housekeeping.
Nathan helped her with contributions levied on new
ventures in trade, and was always chivalrous and ready
to act as her protector j but the support he gave was
neither regular nor solid. This instability, this hand-to-
mouth life, had no terrors for Florine. She believed in
her talent and her beauty ; and this robust faith had
something comic in it for those who heard her, in
answer to remonstrances, mortgaging her future on such
security.
' I can live on my means whenever I like,' she would
say. ' I have fifty francs in the funds now.'
No one could understand how, with her beauty,
Florine had remained seven years in obscurity ; but as a
matter of fact, she was enrolled as a supernumerary
at the age of thirteen, and made her debut two years
later in a humble theatre on the boulevards. At fifteen,
beauty and talent do not exist ; there can only be
promise of the coming woman. She was now twenty-
eight, an age which with French women is the cul-
minating point of their beauty. Painters admired most
A Daughter of Eve 57
of all her shoulders, glossy white, with olive tints about
the back of the neck, but firm and polished, reflecting
the light like watered silk. When she turned her head,
the neck made magnificent curves in which sculptors
delighted. On this neck rose the small, imperious head
of a Roman empress, graceful and finely moulded, round
and self-assertive, like that of Poppaea. The features
were correct, yet expressive, and the unlined forehead
was that of an easy-going woman who takes all trouble
lightly, yet can be obstinate as a mule on occasion and
deaf to all reason. This forehead, with its pure un-
broken sweep, gave value to the lovely flaxen hair,
generally raised in front, in Roman fashion, in two
equal masses and twisted into a high knot at the back,
so as to prolong the curve of the neck and bring out its
whiteness. Dark, delicate eyebrows, such as a Chinese
artist pencils, framed the heavy lids, covered with a
network of tiny pink veins. The pupils, sparkling with
fire but spotted with patches of brown, gave to her look
the fierce fixity of a wild beast, emblematic of the
courtesan's cold heartlessness. The lovely gazelle-
like iris was a beautiful grey, and fringed with black
lashes, a bewitching contrast which brought out yet
more strikingly the expression of calm and expectant
desire. Darker tints encircled the eyes ; but it was
the artistic finish with which she used them that was
most remarkable. Those darting, sidelong glances
which nothing escaped, the upward gaze of her dreamy
pose, the way she had of keeping the iris fixed, while
charging it with the most intense passion and without
moving the head or stirring a muscle of the face — a
trick, this, learned on the stage — the keen sweep which
would embrace a whole room to find out the man she
wanted, — these were the arts which made of her eyes the
most terrible, the sweetest, the strangest in the world.
Rouge had spoilt the delicate transparency of her soft
cheeks. But if it was beyond her power to blush or
58 A Daughter of Eve
grow pale, she had a slender nose, indented by pink,
quivering nostrils, which seemed to breathe the sarcasm
and mockery of Moliere's waiting-maids. Her mouth,
sensual and luxurious, lending itself to irony as readily as
to love, owed much of its beauty to the finely-cut edges
of the little groove joining the upper lip to the nose.
Her white, rather fleshy, chin portended storms in love.
Her hands and arms might have been an empress's.
But the feet were short and thick, ineradicable sign of
low birth. Never had heritage wrought more woe. In
her efforts to change it, Florine had stopped short only
at amputation. But her feet were obstinate, like the
Bretons from whom she sprang, and refused to yield to
any science or manipulation. Florine therefore wore
long boots, stuffed with cotton, to give her an arched
instep. She was of medium height, and threatened with
corpulence, but her figure still kept its curves and
precision.
Morally, she was past mistress in all the airs and
graces, tantrums, quips, and caresses of her trade ; but
she gave them a special character by affecting childish-
ness and edging in a sly thrust under cover of innocent
laughter. With all her apparent ignorance and giddi-
ness, she was at home in the mysteries of discount and
commercial law. She had waded through so many bad
times to reach her day of precarious triumph ! She had
descended, story by story, to the ground-floor, through
such a coil of intrigue ! She knew life under so many
forms ; from that which dines off bread and cheese to that
which toys listlessly with apricot fritters ; from that
which does its cooking and washing in the corner of a
garret with an earthen stove to that which summons its
vassal host of big-paunched chefs and impudent scullions.
She had indulged in credit without killing it. She knew
everything of which good women are ignorant, and
could speak all languages. A child of the people by her
origin, the refinement of her beauty allied her to the
A Daughter of Eve 59
upper classes. She was hard to overreach and impossible
to mystify ; for, like spies, barristers, and those who have
grown old in statecraft, she kept an open mind for every
possibility. She knew how to deal with tradespeople
and their little tricks, and could quote prices with an
auctioneer. Lying back, like some fair young bride, on
her couch, with the part she was learning in her hand,
she might have passed for a guileless and ignorant girl of
sixteen, protected only by her innocence. But let some
importunate creditor arrive, and she was on her feet like
a startled fawn, a good round oath upon her lips.
'My good fellow,' she would address him, 'your
insolence is really too high an interest on my debt. I
am tired of the sight of you ; go and send the bailiffs.
Rather them than your imbecile face.'
Florine gave charming dinners, concerts, and crowded
receptions, where the play was very high. Her women
friends were all beautiful. Never had an old woman
been seen at her parties ; she was entirely free from
jealousy, which seemed to her a confession of weakness.
Among her old acquaintances were Coralie and la Tor-
pille ; among those of the day, the Tullias, Euphrasie,
the Aquilinas, Mme. du Val- Noble, Mariette ; — those
women who float through Paris like threads of gossamer
in the air, no one knowing whence they come or whither
they go ; queens to-day, to-morrow drudges. Her rivals,
too, came, actresses and singers, the whole company, in
short, of that unique feminine world, so kindly and
gracious in its recklessness, whose Bohemian life carries
away with its dash, its spirit, its scorn of to-morrow, the
men who join the frenzied dance. Though in Florine's
house Bohemianism flourished unchecked to a chorus of
gay artists, the mistress had all her wits about her, and
could use them as not one of her guests. Secret satur-
nalia of literature and art were held there side by side
with politics and finance. There passion reigned
supreme ; there temper and the whim of the moment
60 A Daughter of Eve
received the reverence which a simple society pays to
honour and virtue. There might be seen Blondet,
Finot, Etienne Lousteau, her seventh lover who be-
lieved himself to be the first, Felicien Vernou, the
journalist, Couture, Bixiou, Rastignac formerly, Claude
Vignon, the critic, Nucingen the banker, du Tillet,
Conti the composer ; in a word, the whole diabolic
legion of ferocious egotists in every walk of life. There
also came the friends of the singers, dancers, and
actresses whom Florine knew.
Every member of this society hated or loved every
other member according to circumstances. This house
of call, open to celebrities of every kind, was a sort of
brothel of wit, a galleys of the mind. Not a guest
there but had filched his fortune within the four corners
of the law, had worked through ten years of squalor,
had strangled two or three love affairs, and had made his
mark, whether by a book or a waistcoat, a drama or a
carriage and pair. Their time was spent in hatching
mischief, in exploring roads to wealth, in ridiculing
popular outbreaks, which they had incited the day before,
and in studying the fluctuations of the money market.
Each man, as he left the house, donned again the livery
of his beliefs, which he had cast aside on entering in
order to abuse at his ease his own party, and admire the
strategy and skill of its opponents, to put in plain words
thoughts which men keep to themselves, to practise, in
fine, that licence of speech which goes with licence in
action. Paris is the one place in the world where
houses of this eclectic sort exist, in which every taste,
every vice, every opinion, finds a welcome, so long as it
comes in decent garb.
It remains to be said that Florine is still a second-rate
actress. Further, her life is neither an idle nor an
enviable one. Many people, deluded by the splendid
vantage ground which the theatre gives to a woman,
imagine her to live in a perpetual carnival. How many
A Daughter of Eve 61
a poor girl, buried in some porter's lodge or under an
attic roof, dreams on her return from the theatre of
pearls and diamonds, of dresses decked with gold and
rich sashes, and pictures herself, the glitter of the foot-
lights on her hair, applauded, purchased, worshipped,
carried off. And not one of them knows the facts of
that treadmill existence, how an actress is forced to
attend rehearsals under penalty of a fine, to read plays,
and perpetually study new parts, at a time when two or
three hundred pieces a year are played in Paris. In the
course of each performance, Florine changes her dress
two or three times, and often she returns to her dressing-
room half-dead with exhaustion. Then she has to get
rid of the red or white paint with the aid of plentiful
cosmetics, and dust the powder out of her hair, if she
has been playing an eighteenth century part. Barely
has she time to dine. When she is playing, an actress
can neither lace her stays, nor eat, nor talk. For supper
again Florine has no time. On returning from a per-
formance, which nowadays is not over till past mid-
night, she has her toilet for the night to make and orders
to give. After going to bed at one or two in the
morning, she has to be up in time to revise her parts, to
order her dresses, to explain them and try them on ;
then lunch, read her love-letters, reply to them, transact
business with her hired applauders, so that she may be
properly greeted on entering and leaving the stage, and,
while paying the bill for her triumphs of the past month,
order wholesale those of the present. In the days
of Saint Genest, a canonised actor, who neglected no
means of grace and wore a hair-shirt, the stage, we
must suppose, did not demand this relentless activity.
Often Florine is forced to feign an illness if she wants to
go into the country and pick flowers like an ordinary
mortal.
Yet these purely mechanical occupations are nothing
in comparison with the mental worries, arising from
62 A Daughter of Eve
intrigues to be conducted, annoyances to vanity, prefer-
ences shown by authors, competition for parts, with
its triumphs and disappointments, unreasonable actors,
ill-natured rivals, and the importunities of managers and
critics, all of which demand another twenty-four hours
in the day.
And, lastly, there is the art itself and all the diffi-
culties it involves — the interpretation of passion, details
of mimicry, and stage effects, with thousands of opera-
glasses ready to pounce on the slightest flaw in the
most brilliant presentment. These are the things
which wore away the life and energy of Talma, Lekain,
Baron, Contat, Clairon, Champmesle. In the pande-
monium of the greenroom self-love is sexless ; the suc-
cessful artist, man or woman, has all other men and
women for enemies.
As to profits, however handsome Florine's salaries
may be, they do not cover the cost of the stage finery,
which — not to speak of costumes — demands an enormous
expenditure in long gloves and shoes, and does not do
away with the necessity for evening and visiting dresses.
One-third of such a life is spent in begging favours,
another in making sure the ground already won, and the
remainder in repelling attacks ; but all alike is work.
If it contains also moments of intense happiness, that is
because happiness here is rare and stolen, long waited
for, a chance godsend amid the hateful grind of forced
pleasure and stage smiles.
To Florine, Raoul's power was a sovereign protection.
He saved her many a vexation and worry, in the fashion
of a great noble of former days defending his mistress ;
or, to take a modern instance, like the old men who go
on their knees to the editor when their idol has been
scarified by some halfpenny print. He was more than
a lover to her ; he was a staff to lean on. She tended
him like a father, and deceived him like a husband ; but
there was nothing in the world she would not have sac-
A Daughter of Eve 63
rificed for him. Raoul was indispensable to her artistic
vanity, to the tranquillity of her self-esteem, and to her
dramatic future. Without the intervention of some
great writer, no great actress can be produced ; we owe
la Champmesle to Racine, as we owe Mars to Monvel
and Andrieux. Florine, on her side, could do nothing
for Raoul, much as she would have liked to be useful or
necessary to him. She counted on the seductions of
habit, and was always ready to open her rooms and
offer the profusion of her table to help his plans or his
friends. In fact, she aspired to be for him what Madame
de Pompadour was for Louis xv.; and there were
actresses who envied her position, just as there were
journalists who would have changed places with Raoul.
Now, those who know the bent of the human mind
to opposition and contrast will easily understand that
Raoul, after ten years of this rakish Bohemian life, should
weary of its ups and downs, its revelry and its writs, its
orgies and its fasts, and should feel drawn to a pure and
innocent love, as well as to the gentle harmony of a
great lady's existence. In the same way, the Comtesse
Felix longed to introduce the torments of passion into
a life the bliss of which had cloyed through its sameness.
This law of life is the law of all art, which exists only
through contrast. A work produced independently of
such aid is the highest expression of genius, as the
cloister is the highest effort of Christianity.
Raoul, on returning home, found a note from Florine,
which her maid had brought, but was too sleepy to read
it. He went to bed in the restful satisfaction of a tender
love, which had so far been lacking to his life. A few
hours later, he found important news in this letter, news
of which neither Rastignac nor de Marsay had dropped
a hint. Florine had learned from some indiscreet friend
that the Chamber was to be dissolved at the close of the
session. Raoul at once went to Florine's, and sent for
Blondet to meet him there.
64 A Daughter of Eve
In Florine's boudoir, their feet upon the fire-dogs,
Emile and Raoul dissected the political situation of
France in 1834. On what side lay the best chance for
a man who wanted to get on ? Every shade of opinion
was passed in review — Republicans pure and simple,
Republicans with a President, Republicans without a
republic, Dynastic Constitutionalists and Constitu-
tionalists without a dynasty, Conservative Ministerialists
and Absolutist Ministerialists; lastly, the compromising
right, the aristocratic right, the Legitimist right, the
Henri-quinquist right, and the Carlist right. As
between the party of obstruction and the party of pro-
gress there could be no question ; as well might one
hesitate between life and death.
The vast number of newspapers at this time in
circulation, representing different shades of party, was
significant of the chaotic confusion — the slush, as it
might vulgarly be called — to which politics were
reduced. Blondet, the man of his day with most
judgment, although, like a barrister unable to plead his
own cause, he could use it only on behalf of others,
was magnificent in these friendly discussions. His
advice to Nathan was not to desert abruptly.
* It was Napoleon who said that young republics can-
not be made out of old monarchies. Therefore, do you,
my friend, become the hero, the pillar, the creator of a
left centre in the next Chamber, and a political future
is before you. Once past the barrier, once in the
Ministry, a man can do what he pleases, he can wear
the winning colours.'
Nathan decided to start a political daily paper, of
which he should have the complete control, and to
affiliate to it one of those small society sheets with
which the press swarmed, establishing at the same time
a connection with some magazine. The press had
been the mainspring of so many fortunes around him
that Nathan refused to listen to Blondet's warnings
A Daughter of Eve 65
against trusting to it. In Blondet's opinion, the specu-
lation was unsafe, because of the multitude of competing
papers, and because the power of the press seemed to
him used up. Raoul, strong in his supposed friends and
in his courage, was keen to go forward ; with a gesture
of pride he sprang to his feet and exclaimed —
' 1 shall succeed ! '
' You haven't a penny ! '
' I shall write a play ! '
' It will fall dead.'
* Let it,' said Nathan.
He paced up and down Florine's room, followed by
Blondet, who thought he had gone crazy ; he cast
covetous glances on the costly treasures piled up around;
then Blondet understood him.
'There's more, than one hundred thousand francs'
worth here,' said Emile.
' Yes,' said Raoul, with a sigh towards Florine's
sumptuous bed ; ' but I would sell patent safety-chains
on the boulevards and live on fried potatoes all my life
rather than sell a single patera from these rooms.'
* Not one patera, no,' said Blondet, ' but the whole
lot ! Ambition is like death; it clutches all because life,
it knows, is hounding it on.'
' No! a thousand times, no! I would accept anything
from that Countess of yesterday, but to rob Florine of
her nest ? . . .'
' To overthrow one's mint,' said Blondet, with a
tragic air, ' to smash up the coining-press, and break
the stamp, is certainly serious.'
' From what I can gather, you are abandoning the
stage for politics,' said Florine, suddenly breaking in on
them.
'Yes, my child, yes,' said Raoul good-naturedly, putting
his arm round her neck and kissing her forehead. ' Why
that frown ? It will be no loss to vou. Won't the
minister be better placed than the journalist for getting
E
66 A Daughter of Eve
a first-rate engagement for the queen of the boards ?
You will still have your parts and your holidays.'
4 Where is the money to come from ? ' she asked.
1 From my uncle,' replied Raoul.
Florine knew this ' uncle.' The word meant a
money-lender, just as ( my aunt ' was the vulgar name
for a pawnbroker.
1 Don't bother yourself, my pretty one,' said Blondet
to Florine, patting her on the shoulder. l I will get
Massol to help him. He's a barrister, and, like the rest
of them, intends to have a turn at being Minister of
Justice. Then there's du Tillet, who wants a seat in
the Chamber; Finot, who is still backing a society paper;
Plantin, who has his eye on a post under the Conseil
d'Etat, and who has some share in a magazine. No
fear ! I won't let him ruin himself. We will iret a
meeting here with Etienne Lousteau, who will do the
light stuff, and Claude Vignon for the serious criticism.
Felicien Vernou will be the charwoman of the paper,
the barrister will sweat for it, du Tillet will look after
trade and the Exchange, and we shall see where this
union of determined men and their tools will land us.'
* In the workhouse or on the Government bench,
those refuges for the ruined in body or mind,' said
Raoul.
* What about the dinner ? '
4 We'll have it here,' said Raoul, ' five days hence.'
c Let me know how much you need,' said Florine
simply.
1 Why, the barrister, du Tillet, and Raoul can't start
with less than one hundred thousand francs a-piece,'
said Blondet. c That will run the paper very well for
eighteen months, time enough to make a hit or miss in
Paris.'
Florine made a gesture of approval. The two friends
then took a cab and set out in quest of guests, pens,
ideas, and sources of support. The beautiful actress on
A Daughter of Eve 67
her part sent for four dealers in furniture, curiosities,
pictures, and jewellery. The dealers, who were all men
of substance, entered the sanctuary and made an inven-
tory of its whole contents, just as though Florine were
dead. She threatened them with a public auction in
case they hardened their hearts in hope of a better
opportunity. She had, she told them, excited the
admiration of an English lord in a mediaeval part, and
she wished to dispose of all her personal property, in
order that her apparently destitute condition might
move him to present her with a splendid house, which
she would furnish as a rival to Rothschild's. With all
her arts, she only succeeded in getting an offer of seventy
thousand francs for the whole of the spoil, which was
well worth one hundred and fifty thousand. Florine,
who did not care a button for the things, promised they
should be handed over in seven days for eighty thousand
francs.
4 You can take it or leave it,' she said.
The bargain was concluded. When the dealers had
gone, the actress skipped for joy, like the little hills of
King David. She could not contain herself for delight;
never had she dreamed of such wealth. When Raoul
returned, she pretended to be offended with him, and
declared that she was deserted. She saw through it all
now ; men don't change their party or leave the stage
for the Chamber without some reason. There must be
a rival ! Her instinct told her so ! Vows of eternal
love rewarded her little comedy.
Five days later, Florine gave a magnificent entertain-
ment. The ceremony of christening the paper was
then performed amidst floods of wine and wit, oaths of
fidelity, of good fellowship, and of serious alliance.
The name, forgotten now, like the Liberal^ the Com-
munal^ the Departementaly the Garde National^ the
Federal^ the Impartial^ was something which ended
in al, and was bound not to take. Descriptions of
68 A Daughter of Eve
banquets have been so numerous in a literary period
which had more first-hand experience of starving in
an attic, that it would be difficult to do justice to
Florine's. Suffice it to say that, at three in the morning,
Florine was able to undress and go to bed as if she had
been alone, though not one of her guests had left.
These lights of their age were sleeping like pigs.
When, early in the morning, the packers, commis-
sionaires, and porters arrived to carry off the gorgeous
trappings of the famous actress, she laughed aloud to
see them lifting these celebrities like heavy pieces of
furniture and depositing them on the floor.
Thus the splendid collection went its way.
Florine carried her personal remembrances to shops
where the sight of them did not enlighten passers-by as
to how and when these flowers of luxury had been paid
for. It was agreed to leave her until the evening a
few specially reserved articles, including her bed, her
table, and her crockery, so that she might offer break-
fast to her guests. These witty gentlemen, having
fallen asleep under the beauteous drapery of wealth,
awoke to the cold, naked walls of poverty, studded with
nail-marks and disfigured by those incongruous patches
which are found at the back of wall decorations, as ropes
behind an opera scene.
1 Why, Florine, the poor girl has an execution in the
house ! ' cried Bixiou, one of the guests. * Quick ! your
pockets, gentlemen ! A subscription ! '
At these words the whole company was on foot. The
net sweepings of the pockets came to thirty-seven francs,
which Raoul handed over with mock ceremony to the
laughing Florine. The happy courtesan raised her
head from the pillow and pointed to a heap of bank-
notes on the sheet, thick as in the golden days of her
trade. Raoul called Blondet.
i I see it now,' said Blondet. * The little rogue has.
sold off without a word to us. Well done, Florine ! '
A Daughter of Eve 69
Delighted with this stroke, the few friends who
remained carried Florine in triumph and deshabille to the
dining-room. The barrister and the bankers had gone.
That evening Florine had a tremendous reception at
the theatre. The rumour of her sacrifice was all over
the house.
c I should prefer to be applauded for my talent,' said
Florine's rival to her in the greenroom.
* That is very natural on the part of an artist who has
never yet won applause except for the lavishness of her
favours,' she replied.
During the evening Florine's maid had her things
moved to Raoul's flat in the Passage Sandrie. The
journalist was to pitch his camp in the building where
the newspaper office was opened.
Such was the rival of the ingenuous Mme. de Vande-
nesse. Raoul's fancy was a link binding the actress to
the lady of title. It was a ghastly tie like this which
was severed by that Duchess of Louis xiv.'s time who
poisoned Lecouvreur ; nor can such an act of vengeance
be wondered at, considering the magnitude of the
offence.
CHAPTER VI
LOVE VERSUS SOCIETY
Florine proved no difficulty in the early stages of
Raoul's passion. Foreseeing financial disappointments
in the hazardous scheme into which he had plunged, she
begged leave of absence for six months. Raoul took an
active part in the negotiation, and by bringing it to a
successful issue still further endeared himself to Florine.
With the good sense of the peasant in La Fontaine's
fable, who makes sure of his dinner while the patricians
70 A Daughter of Eve
are chattering over plans, the actress hurried off to
the provinces and abroad, to glean the wherewithal to
support the great man during his place-hunting.
Up to the present time the art of fiction has seldom
dealt with love as it shows itself in the highest society, a
compound of noble impulse and hidden wretchedness.
There is a terrible strain in the constant check imposed
on passion by the most trivial and trumpery incidents,
and not unfrequently the thread snaps from sheer lassi-
tude. Perhaps some glimpse of what it means may be
obtained here.
The day after Lady Dudley's ball, although nothing
approaching a declaration had escaped on either side,
Marie felt that Raoul's love was the realisation of her
dreams, and Raoul had no doubt that he was the chosen
of Marie's heart. Neither of the two had reached that
point of depravity where preliminaries are curtailed, and
yet they advanced rapidly towards the end. Raoul,
sated with pleasure, was in the mood for Platonic affec-
tion ; whilst Marie, from whom the idea of an actual
fault was still remote, had never contemplated passing
beyond it. Never, therefore, was love more pure and
innocent in fact, or more impassioned and rapturous in
thought, than this of Raoul and Marie. The Countess
had been fascinated by ideas which, though clothed
in modern dress, belonged to the times of chivalry.
In her role, as she conceived it, her husband's dislike to
Nathan no longer appeared an obstacle to her love. The
less Raoul merited esteem, the nobler was her mission.
The inflated language of the poet stirred her imagina-
tion rather than her blood. It was charity which
wakened at the call of passion. This queen of the
virtues lent what in the eyes of the Countess seemed
almost a sanction to the tremors, the delights, the
turbulence of her love. She felt it a fine thing to be
the human providence of Raoul. How sweet to think
of supporting with her feeble, white hand this colossal
A Daughter of Eve 71
figure, whose feet of clay she refused to see, of sowing
life where none had been, of working in secret at the
foundation of a great destiny. With her help this man
of genius should wrestle with and overcome his fate ;
her hand should embroider his scarf for the tourney,
buckle on his armour, give him a charm against sorcery,
and balm for all his wounds !
In a woman with Marie's noble nature and religious
upbringing this passionate charity was the only form love
could assume. Hence her boldness. The pure in mind
have a superb disdain for appearances, which may be
mistaken for the shamelessness of the courtesan. No
sooner had the Countess assured herself by casuistical
arguments that her husband's honour ran no risk, than
she abandoned herself completely to the bliss of loving
Raoul. The most trivial things in life had now a charm
for her. The boudoir in which she dreamed of him
became a sanctuary. Even her pretty writing-table
recalled to her the countless joys of correspondence ;
there she would have to read, to hide, his letters ; there
reply to them. Dress, that splendid poem of a woman's
life, the significance of which she had either exhausted
or ignored, now appeared to her full of a magic hitherto
unknown. Suddenly it became to her what it is to all
women — a continuous expression of the inner thought,
a language, a symbol. What wealth of delight in a
costume designed for his pleasure, in his honour ! She
threw herself with all simplicity into those charming
nothings which make the business of a Paris woman's
life, and which charge with meaning every detail in her
house, her person, her clothes. Rare indeed are the
women who frequent dress shops, milliners, and fashion-
able tailors simply for their own pleasure. As they
become old they cease to think of dress. Scrutinise the
face which in passing you see for a moment arrested
before a shop-front : ' Would he like me better in this ? '
are the words written plain in the clearing brow, in
72 A Daughter of Eve
eyes sparkling with hope, and in the smile that plays
upon the lips.
Lady Dudley's ball took place on a Saturday evening ;
on the Monday the Countess went to the opera, allured
by the certainty of seeing Raoul. Raoul, in fact, was
there, planted on one of the staircases which lead down
to the amphitheatre stalls. He lowered his eyes as the
Countess entered her box. With what ecstasy did
Mme. de Vandenesse observe the unwonted carefulness
of her lover's attire ! This contemner of the laws of
elegance might be seen with well-brushed hair, which
shone with scent in the recesses of every curl, a fashion-
able waistcoat, a well-fastened tie, and an immaculate
shirt-front. Under the yellow gloves, which were the
order of the day, his hands showed very white. Raoul
kept his arms crossed over his breast, as though posing
for his portrait, superbly indifferent to the whole house,
which murmured with barely restrained impatience.
His eyes, though bent on the ground, seemed turned
towards the red velvet bar on which Marie's arm rested.
Felix, seated in the opposite corner of the box, had his
back to Nathan. The Countess had been adroit
enough to place herself so that she looked straight down
on the pillar against which Raoul leaned. In a single
hour, then, Marie had brought this clever man to
abjure his cynicism in dress. The humblest, as well
as the most distinguished, woman must feel her head
turned by the first open declaration of her power in such
a transformation. Every change is a confession of
servitude.
* They were right, there is a great happiness in being
understood,' she said to herself, calling to mind her
unworthy instructors.
When the two lovers had scanned the house in a rapid
all-embracing survey, they exchanged a glance of intel-
ligence. For both it was as though a heavenly dew had
fallen with cooling power upon their fevered suspense.
A Daughter of Eve 73
* I have been in hell for an hour j now the heavens
open,' spoke the eyes of Raoul.
4 1 knew you were there, but am I free ? ' replied
those of the Countess.
None but slaves of every variety, including thieves,
spies, lovers, and diplomatists, know all that a flash of
the eye can convey of information or delight. They
alone can grasp the intelligence, the sweetness, the
humour, the wrath, and the malice with which this
changeful lightning of the soul is pregnant, Raoul felt
his passion kick against the pricks of necessity and grow
more vigorous in presence of obstacles. Between the
step on which he was perched and the box of the
Comtesse Felix de Vandenesse was a space of barely thirty
feet, impassable for him. To a passionate man who, so
far in his life, had known but little interval between
desire and satisfaction, this abyss of solid ground, which
could not be spanned, inspired a wild desire to spring
upon the Countess in a tiger-like bound. In a
paroxysm of fury he tried to feel his way. He bowed
openly to the Countess, who replied with a slight, scorn-
ful inclination of the head, such as women use for snub-
bing their admirers. Felix turned to see who had
greeted his wife, and perceiving Nathan, of whom he
took no notice beyond a mute inquiry as to the cause of
this liberty, turned slowly away again, with some words
probably approving of his wife's assumed coldness.
Plainly the door of the box was barred against Nathan,
who hurled a threatening glance at Felix, which it
required no great wit to interpret by one of Florine's
sallies, c Look out for your hat ; it will soon not rest on
your head ! '
Mme. d'Espard, one of the most insolent women of
her time, who had been watching these manoeuvres from
her box, now raised her voice in some meaningless bravo.
Raoul, who was standing beneath her, turned. He
bowed, and received in return a gracious smile, which so
74 A Daughter of Eve
clearly said, ' If you are dismissed there, come to me ! '
that Raoul left his column and went to pay a visit to
Mme. d'Espard. He wanted to be seen there in order
to show that fellow Vandenesse that his fame was equal
to a patent of nobility, and that before Nathan blazoned
doors flew open. The Marchioness made him sit down
in the front of the box opposite to her. She intended
to play the inquisitor.
4 Mme. Felix de Vandenesse looks charming to-night,'
she said, congratulating him on the lady's dress, as
though it were a book he had just published.
4 Yes,' said Raoul carelessly, c marabouts are very
becoming to her. But she is too constant, she wore
them the day before yesterday,' he added, with an easy
air, as though by his critical attitude to repudiate the
flattering complicity which the Marchioness had laid to
his charge.
' You know the proverb ? ' she replied. ' " Every feast
day should have a morrow." '
At the game of repartee literary giants are not always
equal to ladies of title. Raoul took refuge in a pretended
stupidity, the last resource of clever men.
'The proverb is true for me,' he said, casting an
admiring look on the Marchioness.
i Your pretty speech, sir, comes too late for me to
accept it,' she replied, laughing. ' Come, come, don't
be a prude ; in the small hours of yesterday morning,
you thought Mme. de Vandenesse entrancing in
marabouts ; she was perfectly aware of it, and puts them
on again to please you. She is in love with you, and
you adore her ; no time has been lost, certainly ; still I
see nothing in it but what is most natural. If it were
not as I say, you would not be tearing your glove to
pieces in your rage at having to sit here beside me,
instead of in the box of your idol — which has just been
shut in your face by supercilious authority — whispering
low what you would fain hear said aloud.'
A Daughter of Eve 75
Raoul was in fact twisting one of his gloves, and the
hand which he showed was surprisingly white.
' She has won from you,' she went on, fixing his hand
with an impertinent stare, ' sacrifices which you refused
to society. She ought to be enchanted at her success,
and, I daresay, she is a little vain of it; but in her place
I think I should be more so. So far she has only been a
woman of good parts, now she will pass for a woman of
genius. We shall find her portrait in one of those
delightful books of yours. But, my dear friend, do me
the kindness not to forget Vandenesse. That man is
really too fatuous. I could not stand such self-com-
placency in Jupiter Olympus himself, who is said to have
been the only god in mythology exempt from domestic
misfortune.'
'Madame,' cried Raoul, 'you credit me with a very
base soul if you suppose that I would make profit out of
my feelings, out of my love. Sooner than be guilty of such
literary dishonour, I would follow the English custom,
and drag a woman to market with a rope round her
neck.'
4 But I know Marie ; she will ask you to do it.'
' No, she is incapable of it/ protested Raoul.
' You know her intimately then ? '
Nathan could not help laughing that he, a play-
wright, should be caught in this little comedy dialogue.
'The play is no longer there,' he said, pointing to the
footlights ; 'it rests with you.'
To hide his confusion, he took the opera-glass and
began to examine the house.
' Are you vexed with me ? ' said the Marchioness, with
a sidelong glance at him. 'Wouldn't your secret have
been mine in any case ? It won't be hard to make peace.
Come to my house, I am at home every Wednesday ;
the dear Countess won't miss an evening when she finds
you come, and I shall be the gainer. Sometimes she
comes to me between four and five o'clock; I will be very
y6 A Daughter of Eve
good-natured, and add you to the select few admitted at
that hour.'
' Only see,' said Raoul, * how unjust people are ! I
was told you were spiteful.'
'Oh ! so I am,' she said, ' when I want to be. One
has to fight for one's own hand. But as for your
Countess, I adore her. You have no idea how charming
she is ! You will be the first to have your name
inscribed on her heart with that infantine joy which
causes all lovers, even drill-sergeants, to cut their initials
on the bark of a tree. A woman's first love is a luscious
fruit. Later, you see, there is always some calculation
in our attentions and caresses. I'm an old woman, and
can say what I like ; nothing frightens me, not even a
journalist. Well, then, in the autumn of life, we know
how to make you happy ; but when love is a new thing,
we are happy ourselves, and that gives endless satisfaction
to your pride. We are full of delicious surprises then,
because the heart is fresh. You, who are a poet, must
prefer flowers to fruit. Six months hence you shall tell
me about it.'
Raoul began with denying everything, as all men do
when they are brought to the bar, but found that this
only supplied weapons to so practised a champion.
Entangled in the noose of a dialogue, manipulated with
all the dangerous adroitness of a woman and a Parisian,
he dreaded to let fall admissions which would serve as
fuel for the lady's wit, and he beat a prudent retreat
when he saw Lady Dudley enter.
' Well,' said the Englishwoman, ' how far have they
gone ? '
'They are desperately in love. Nathan has just told
me so.'
'I wish he had been uglier,' said Lady Dudley, with
a venomous scowl at Felix. 'Otherwise, he is exactly
what I would have wished ; he is the son of a Jewish
broker, who died bankrupt shortly after his marriage ;
A Daughter of Eve 77
unfortunately, his mother was a Catholic, and has made
a Christian of him.'
Nathan's origin, which he kept a most profound secret,
was a new discovery to Lady Dudley, who gloated in
advance over the delight of drawing thence some pointed
shaft to aim at Vandenesse.
'And I've just asked him to my house !' exclaimed
the Marchioness.
1 Wasn't he at my ball yesterday ? ' replied Lady
Dudley. c There are pleasures, my dear, for which one
pays heavily.'
The news of a mutual passion between Raoul and
Mme. de Vandenesse went the round of society that even-
ing, not without calling forth protests and doubts; but
the Countess was defended by her friends, Lady Dudley,
Mmes. d'Espard and de Manerville, with a clumsy eager-
ing which gained some credence for the rumour. Yield-
ing to necessity, Raoul went on Wednesday evening to
Mme. d'Espard's, and found there the usual distinguished
company. As Felix did not accompany his wife, Raoul
was able to exchange a few words with Marie, the
tone of which expressed more than the matter. The
Countess, warned against malicious gossips by Mme.
Octave de Camps, realised her critical position before
society, and contrivied to make Raoul understand it
also.
Amidst this gay assembly, the lovers found their only
joy in a long draught of the delicious sensations arising
from the words, the voice, the gestures, and the bearing
of the loved one. The soul clings desperately to such
trifles. At times the eyes of both will converge upon
the same spot, embedding there, as it were, a thought of
which they thus risk the interchange. They talk, and
longing looks follow the peeping foot, the quivering
hand, the fingers which toy with some ornament, flick-
ing it, twisting it about, then dropping it, in significant
fashion. It is no longer words or thoughts which make
78 A Daughter of Eve
themselves heard, it is things ; and that in so clear a voice,
that often the man who loves will leave to others the
task of handing a cup of tea, a sugar-basin, or what not,
to his lady-love, in dread lest his agitation should be
visible to eyes which, apparently seeing nothing, see all.
Thronging desires, mad wishes, passionate thoughts, find
their way into a glance and die out there. The pressure
of a hand, eluding a thousand Argus eyes, is eloquent as
written pages, burning as a kiss. Love grows by all
that it denies itself; it treads on obstacles to reach the
higher. And barriers, more often cursed than cleared,
are hacked and cast into the fire to feed its flames.
Here it is that women see the measure of their power,
when love, that is boundless, coils up and hides itself
within a thirsty glance, a nervous thrill, behind the
screen of formal civility. How often has not a single
word, on the last step of a staircase, paid the price of an
evening's silent agony and empty talk !
Raoul, careless of social forms, gave rein to his anger
in brilliant oratory. Everybody present could hear the
lion's roar, and recognised the artist's nature, intolerant
of disappointment. This Orlando-like rage, this cutting
and slashing wit, this laying on of epigrams as with a
club, enraptured Marie and amused the onlookers, much
as the spectacle of a maddened bull, covered with
streamers, in a Spanish amphitheatre, might have done.
4 Hit out as much as you like, you can't clear the ring,'
Blondet said to him.
This sarcasm restored to Raoul his presence of mind ;
he ceased making an exhibition of himself and his
vexation. The Marchioness came to offer him a cup of
tea, and said, loud enough for Marie to hear —
4 You are really very amusing ; come and see me
sometimes at four o'clock.'
Raoul took offence at the word 'amusing,' although
it had served as passport to the invitation. He began to
give ear, as actors do, when they are attending to the
A Daughter of Eve 79
house and not to the stage. Blondet took pity on
him.
' My dear fellow,' he said, drawing him aside into a
corner, 'you behave in polite society exactly as you
might at Florine's. Here nobody flies into a passion,
nobody lectures ; from time to time a smart thing may
be said, and you must look most impassive at the very
moment when you long to throw some one out of the
window j a gentle raillery is allowed, and some show of
attention to the lady you adore, but you can't lie down
and kick like a donkey in the middle of the road. Here,
my good soul, love proceeds by rule. Either carry off
Mme. de Vandenesse or behave like a gentleman. You
are too much the lover of one of your own romances.'
Nathan listened with hanging head ; he was a wild
beast caught in the toils.
' I shall never set foot here again,' said he. ' This
papier-mache Marchioness puts too high a price upon her
tea. She thinks me amusing, does she ? Now I know
why St. Just guillotined all these people.'
'You'll come back to-morrow.'
Blondet was right. Passion is as cowardly as it is
cruel. The next day, after fluctuating long between
' I '11 go ' and ' I won't go,' Raoul left his partners in the
middle of an important discussion to hasten to the
Faubourg St. Honore and Mme. d'Espard's house. The
sight of Rastignac's elegant cabriolet driving up as he
was paying his cabman at the door hurt Nathan's
vanity ; he too would have such a cabriolet, he resolved,
and the correct tiger. The carriage of the Countess
was in the court, and Raoul's heart swelled with joy as
he perceived it. Marie's movements responded to her
longings with the regularity of a clock-hand propelled by
its spring. She was reclining in an armchair by the fire-
place in the small drawing-room. Instead of looking at
Nathan as he entered, she gazed at his reflection in the
mirror, feeling sure that the mistress of the house would
80 A Daughter of Eve
turn to him. Love, baited by society, is forced to have
recourse to these little tricks ; it endows with life
mirrors, muffs, fans, and numberless objects, the
purpose of which is not clear at first sight, and is
indeed never found out by many of the women who use
them.
'The Prime Minister,' said Mme. d'Espard, with a
glance at de Marsay, as she drew Nathan into the con-
versation, 'was just declaring, when you came in, that
there is an understanding between the Royalists and
Republicans. What do you say ? You ought to know
something about it.'
'Supposing it were so, where would be the harm?'
said Raoul. 'The object of our animosity is the same ;
we agree in our hatred, and differ only in what we love.'
' The alliance is at least singular,' said de Marsay,
with a glance which embraced Raoul and the Comtesse
Felix.
'It will not last,' said Rastignac, who, like all novices,
took his politics a little too seriously.
' What do you say, darling ? ' asked Mme. d'Espard of
the Countess.
' I ! oh ! I know nothing about politics.'
' You will learn, Madame,' said de Marsay, 'and then
you will be doubly our enemy.'
Neither Nathan nor Marie understood de Marsay's
sally till he had gone. Rastignac followed him, and
Mme. d'Espard went with them both as far as the door
of the first drawing-room. Not another thought did
the lovers give to the minister's epigram ; they saw the
priceless wealth of a few minutes before them. Marie
swiftly removed her glove, and held out her hand to
Raoul, who took it and kissed it with the fervour of
eighteen. The eyes of the Countess were eloquent of
a devotion so generous and absolute that Raoul felt his
own moisten. A tear is always at the command of men
of nervous temperament.
A Daughter of Eve 81
' Where can I see you — speak to you ? ' he said. ' It
will kill me if I must perpetually disguise my looks and
my voice, my heart and my love.'
Moved by the tear, Marie promised to go to the Bois
whenever the weather did not make it impossible. This
promise gave Raoul more happiness than Florine had
brought him in five years.
* I have so much to say to you ! I suffer so from the
silence to which we are condemned ! '
The Countess was gazing at him rapturously, unable
to reply, when the Marchioness returned.
'So!' she exclaimed as she entered, 'you had no
retort for de Marsay ! '
' One must respect the dead,' replied Raoul. * Don't
you see that he is at the last gasp ? Rastignac is acting
as nurse, and hopes to be mentioned in the will.'
The Countess made an excuse of having calls to pay,
and took leave, as a precaution against gossip. For
this quarter of an hour Raoul had sacrified precious time
and most urgent claims. Marie as yet knew nothing of
the details of a life which, while to all appearance gay
and idle as a bird's, had yet its side of very complicated
business and extremely taxing work. When two beings,
united by an enduring love, lead a life which each day
knits them more closely in the bonds of mutual con-
fidence and by the interchange of counsel over difficulties
as they arise ; when two hearts pour forth their sorrows,
night and morning, with mingled sighs ; when they
share the same suspense and shudder together at a
common danger, then everything is taken into account.
The woman then can measure the love in an averted
gaze, the cost of a hurried visit, she has her part in the
business, the hurrying to and fro, the hopes and anxieties
of the hard-worked, harassed man. If she complains, it
is only of the actual conditions ; her doubts are at rest,
for she knows and appreciates the details of his life. But
in the opening chapters of passion, when all is eagerness,
F
82 A Daughter of Eve
suspicion, and demands ; when neither of the two know
themselves or each other ; when, in addition, the woman
is an idler, expecting love to stand guard all day at her
door — one of those who have an exaggerated estimate
of their own claims, and choose to be obeyed even when
obedience spells ruin to a career — then love, in Paris
and at the present time, becomes a superhuman task.
Women of fashion have not yet thrown off the traditions
of the eighteenth century, when every man had his own
place marked out for him. Few of them know anything
of the difficulties of existence for the bulk of men, all
with a position to carve out, a distinction to win, a
fortune to consolidate. Men of well-established fortune
are, at present, rare exceptions. Only the old have time
for love ; men in their prime are chained, like Nathan,
to the galleys of ambition.
Women, not yet reconciled to this change of habits,
cannot bring themselves to believe any man short of the
time which is so cheap a commodity with them ; they
can imagine no occupations or aims other than their
own. Had the gallant vanquished the hydra of Lerna
to get at them, he would not rise one whit in their
estimation ; the joy of seeing him is everything. They
are grateful because he makes them happy, but never
think of asking what their happiness has cost him.
Whereas, if they, in an idle hour, have devised some
stratagem such as they abound in, they flaunt it in your
eyes as something superlative. You have wrenched the
iron bars of destiny, while they have played with subter-
fuge and diplomacy — and yet the palm is theirs, dispute
were vain. After all, are they not right ? The woman
who gives up all for you, should she not receive all ?
She exacts no more than she gives.
Raoul, during his walk home, pondered on the
difficulty of directing at one and the same time a
fashionable intrigue, the ten-horse chariot of journalism,
his theatrical pieces, and his entangled personal affairs.
A Daughter of Eve 83
'It will be a wretched paper to-night,' he said to
himself as he went ; ' nothing from my hand, and the
second number too ! '
Mme. Felix de Vandenesse went three times to the
Bois de Boulogne without seeing Raoul ; she came
home agitated and despairing. Nathan was determined
not to show himself till he could do so in all the glory
of a press magnate. He spent the week in looking out
for a pair of horses and a suitable cabriolet and tiger, in
persuading his partners of the necessity of sparing time
so valuable as his, and in getting the purchase put down
to the general expenses of the paper. Massol and du
Tillet agreed so readily to this request, that he thought
them the best fellows in the world. But for this
assistance, life would have been impossible for Raoul.
As it was, it became so taxing, in spite of the exquisite
delights of ideal love with which it was mingled, that
many men, even of excellent constitution, would have
broken down under the strain of such distractions. A
violent and reciprocal passion is bound to bulk largely
even in an ordinary life ; but when its object is a
woman of conspicuous position, like Mme. de Vande-
nesse, it cannot fail to play havoc with that of a busy
man like Nathan.
Here are some of the duties to which his passion gave
the first place. Almost every day between two and
three o'clock he rode to the Bois de Boulogne in the style
of the purest dandy. He then learned in what house or at
what theatre he might meet Mme. de Vandenesse again
that evening. He never left a reception till close upon
midnight, when he had at last succeeded in snapping up
some long watched-for words, a few crumbs of tender-
ness, artfully dropped below the table, or in a corridor,
or on the way to the carriage. Marie, who had launched
him in the world of fashion, generally got him invita-
tions to dinner at the houses where she visited. Nothing
could be more natural. Raoul was too proud, and also
84 A Daughter of Eve
too much in love, to say a word about business. He had
to obey every caprice and whim of his innocent tyrant ;
while, at the same time, following closely the debates in
the Chamber and the rapid current of politics, directing
his paper, and bringing out two plays which were to
furnish the sinews of war. If ever he asked to be let
off a ball, a concert, or a drive, a look of annoyance
from Mme. de Vandenesse was enough to make him
sacrifice his interests to her pleasure.
When he returned home from these engagements at
one or two in the morning, he worked till eight or nine,
leaving scant time for sleep. Directly he was up, he
plunged into consultations with influential supporters as
to the policy of the paper. A thousand and one internal
difficulties meantime would await his settlement, for
journalism nowadays has an all-embracing grasp.
Business, public and private interests, new ventures,
the personal sensitiveness of literary men, as well as
their compositions — nothing is alien to it. When,
harassed and exhausted, Nathan flew from his office to
the theatre, from the theatre to the Chamber, from the
Chamber to a creditor, he had next to present himself,
calm and smiling, before Marie, and canter beside her
carriage with the ease of a man who has no cares, and
whose only business is pleasure. When, as sole reward
for so many unnoticed acts of devotion, he found only
the gentlest of words or prettiest assurances of undying
attachment, a warm pressure of the hand, if by chance
they escaped observation for a moment, or one or two
passionate expressions in response to his own, Raoul
began to feel that it was mere Quixotism not to make
known the extravagant price he paid for these ' modest
favours,' as our fathers might have called them.
The opportunity for an explanation was not long of
coming. On a lovely April day the Countess took
Nathan's arm in a secluded corner of the Bois de
Boulogne. She had a pretty little quarrel to pick with
A Daughter of Eve 85
him about one of those molehills which women have the
art of turning into mountains. There was no smiling
welcome, no radiant brow, the eyes did not sparkle
with fun or happiness ; it was a serious and burdened
woman who met him.
'What is wrong? ' said Nathan.
' Oh ! Why worry about trifles ? ' sh said. ' Surely
you know how childish women are.'
' Are you angry with me ? '
'Should I be here?'
' But you don't smile, you don't seem a bit glad to see
me.'
' I suppose you mean that I am cross,' she said, with
the resigned air of a woman determined to be a martyr.
Nathan walked on a few steps, an overshadowing
fear gripping at his heart. After a moment's silence,
he went on —
c It can only be one of those idle fears, those vague
suspicions, to which you give such exaggerated im-
portance. A straw, a thread in your hands is enough
to upset the balance of the world ! '
'Satire next! . . . Well, I expected it,' she said,
hanging her head.
' Marie, my beloved, do you not see that I say this
only to wring your secret from you ? '
' My secret will remain a secret, even after I have
told you.'
' Well, tell me . . .'
' I am not loved,' she said, with the stealthy side-look,
which is a woman's instrument for probing the man she
means to torture.
' Not loved ! ' exclaimed Nathan.
' No ; you have too many things on your mind. What
am I in the midst of this whirl ? You are only too glad
to forget me. Yesterday I came to the Bois, I waited
for you '
< But '
86 A Daughter of Eve
* I had put on a new dress for you, and you did not
come. Where were you ?
< But '
* I couldn't tell. I went to Mme. d'Espard's j you
were not there.'
'But '
1 At the opera in the evening my eyes never left the
balcony. Every time the door opened my heart beat so
that I thought it would break.'
< But '
4 What an evening ! You have no conception of such
agony ! '
< But '
* It eats into life '
< But '
4 Well?' she said.
1 Yes,' replied Nathan, * it does eat into life, and in a
few months you will have consumed mine. Your wild
reproaches have torn from me my secret also. . . . Ah !
you are not loved ? My God, you are loved too well.'
He drew a graphic picture of his straits. He told her
how he sat up at nights, how he had to keep certain
engagements at fixed hours, and how, above all things,
he was bound to succeed. He showed her how insati-
able were the claims of a paper, compelled, at risk of
losing its reputation, to be beforehand with an accurate
judgment on every event that took place, and how
incessant was the call for a rapid survey of questions,
which chased each other like clouds over the horizon in
that period of political convulsions.
In a moment the mischief was done. Raoul had been
told by the Marquise d'Espard that nothing is so ingenu-
ous as a first love, and it soon appeared that the Countess
erred in loving too much. A loving woman meets
every difficulty with delight and with fresh proof of her
passion. On seeing the panorama of this varied life
unrolled before her, the Countess was filled with
A Daughter of Eve 87
admiration. She had pictured Nathan a great man, but
now he seemed transcendent. She blamed herself for an
excessive love, and begged him to come only when he
was at liberty ; Nathan's ambitious struggles sank to
nothing before the glance she cast towards Heaven !
She would wait ! Henceforth her pleasure should be
sacrificed. She, who had wished to be a stepping-stone,
had proved only an obstacle. . . . She wept despair-
ingly.
'Women, it seems,' she said with tearful eyes, l are
fit only to love. Men have a thousand different ways of
spending their energy ; all we can do is to dream, and
pray, and worship.'
So much love deserved a recompense. Peeping
round, like a nightingale ready to alight from its branch
beside a spring of water, she tried to make sure whether
they were alone in this solitude, and whether no spec-
tator lurked in the silence. Then raising her head to
Raoul, who bent his to meet her, she allowed him a
kiss, the first, the only, contraband kiss she was destined
to give. At that instant she was happier than she had
been for five years, while Raoul felt himself repaid for all
that he had gone through.
They had to return to their carriages, and walked on,
hardly knowing whither, along the road from Auteuil
to Boulogne, moving with the even rhythmic step
familiar to lovers. Confidence came to Raoul in that
kiss, tendered with the modest frankness that is the out-
come of a pure mind. All the evil came from society,
not from this woman, who was so absolutely his. The
hardships of his frenzied existence were nothing now to
him ; and Marie, in the ardour of her first passion, was
bound, womanlike, soon to forget them, since she could
not witness from hour to hour the terrible throes of a
life too exceptional to be easily imagined.
Marie, penetrated by the grateful veneration, charac-
teristic of a woman's love, hastened with resolute and
88 A Daughter of Eve
active tread along the sand-strewn alley. Like Raoul,
she spoke but little, but that little came from the heart,
and was full of meaning. The sky was clear ; buds
were forming on the larger trees, where already spots of
green enlivened the delicate brown tracery ; while the
shrubs, birches, willows, and poplars showed their first
tender and still unsubstantial foliage. What heart can
resist the harmony of such a scene ? Love was now
interpreting nature to the Countess, as it had already
interpreted the ways of men.
' If only I were your first love ! ' she breathed.
1 You are,' replied Raoul. l We have each been the
first to reveal true love to the other.'
Nor did he speak falsely. In posing before this fresh
young heart as a man of pure life, he became affected
by the noble sentiments with which he embroidered his
talk. His passion, at first a matter of policy and
ambition, had become sincere. Starting from falsehood,
he had arrived at truth. Add to this that all authors
have a natural instinct, repressed only with efFort, to
admire moral beauty. Lastly, a man has but to make
enough sacrifices in order to become attached to the
person demanding them. Women of the world know
this intuitively, just as courtesans do, and it may even be
that they unconsciously act upon the knowledge.
The Countess, after her first burst of surprised grati-
tude, was delighted to have inspired so much devo-
tion and been the cause of such astounding feats. The
man who loved her was worthy of her. Raoul had not
the least idea to what this playing at greatness would
commit him. He forgot that no woman will allow her
lover to fall below her ideal of him, and that nothing paltry
can be suffered in a god. Marie had never heard that
solution of the problem which Raoul had disclosed to his
friends in the course of the supper at Very's. His
struggles as a man of letters, forcing his way upward
from the masses, had filled the first ten years of early
A Daughter of Eve 89
manhood ; now he was resolved to be loved by one of the
queens of the fashionable world. Vanity, without
which, as Chamfort said, love has no backbone, sustained
his passion, and could not fail to augment it day by
day.
' Can you swear to me,' said Marie, * that you are
nothing, and never will be anything, to another
woman ? '
4 My life has no space for another, even were my
heart free,' was his reply, made in all sincerity, so com-
pletely had Florine dropped out of sight.
And she believed him.
When they reached the road where the carriages
were waiting, Marie let go the arm of Nathan, who at
once assumed a respectful attitude, as though this were
a chance meeting. He walked with her, hat in hand, as
far as the carriage, and then followed it down the
avenue Charles x., inhaling the dust it raised, and
watching the drooping feathers swaying in the wind.
In spite of Marie's generous resolutions of sacrifice,
Raoul, spurred on by passion, continued to appear wher-
ever she went ; he adored the half-vexed, half-smiling air
with which she vainly tried to scold him for wasting the
time he could so badly spare. Marie began to take
Raoul's work in hand, laid down what he was to do
every hour in the day, and remained at home herself, so
as to leave him no excuse for taking a holiday. She
read his paper every morning, and she trumpeted the
praises of Etienne Lousteau the feuilletonist, whom she
thought charming, of Felicien Vernou, Claude Vignon,
and all the staff. It was she who advised Raoul to deal
generously with de Marsay when he died, and she read
with dizzy pride the fine dignified tribute which he paid
the late minister, while deploring his Machiavellianism
and hatred of the masses. She was of course present in
a stage box at the Gymnase on the first night of the
play, to which Raoul was trusting for the funds of his
9<d A Daughter of Eve
undertaking, and which seemed to her, deceived by the
hired applause, an immense success.
1 You did not come to say farewell to the opera ? '
asked Lady Dudley, to whose house she went after the
performance.
4 No ; I was at the Gymnase. It was a first night.'
' I can't bear vaudeville. I feel to it as Louis xiv.
did to a Teniers,' said Lady Dudley.
' For my part,' remarked Mme. d'Espard, £ I think they
have improved very much. Vaudevilles now are charm-
ing comedies, full of wit, and the work of very clever
men. I enjoy them immensely.'
'The acting is so good too,' said Marie. c The play
to-night at the Gymnase went capitally ; it seemed to
suit the actors, and the dialogue is spirited and amusing.'
1 A regular Beaumarchais business,' said Lady Dudley.
' M. Nathan is not a Moliere yet, but ' said
Mme. d'Espard, with a look at the Countess.
c But he makes vaudevilles,' said Mme. Charles de
Vandenesse.
4 And unmakes ministers,' retorted Mme. de Maner-
ville.
The Countess remained silent j she racked her brains
for pungent epigrams ; her heart burned with rage, but
nothing better occurred to her than —
c Some day perhaps he will make one.'
All the women exchanged glances of mysterious
understanding. When Mme. de Vandenesse had gone,
Moina de Saint-Heren exclaimed —
4 Why, she adores Nathan ! '
'She makes no mystery of it,' said Mme. d'Espard.
A Daughter of Eve 91
CHAPTER VII
SUICIDE
With the month of May, Vandenesse took his wife
away to their country seat. Here her only comfort
was in passionate letters from Raoul, to whom she wrote
every day.
The absence of the Countess might possibly have
saved Raoul from the abyss over which he hung had
Florine been with him. But he was alone amongst
friends, secretly turned to enemies ever since his deter-
mination to take the whip hand became plain. For
the moment he was an object of hatred to his staff, who
reserved however the right of holding out a consoling
hand in case he failed, or of cringing to him should he
succeed. This is the way in the literary world, where
people are friendly only to their inferiors, and the rising
man has everybody against him. This universal jealousy
increases tenfold the chance of mediocrities, who arouse
neither envy nor suspicion. Like moles, they work their
way underground, and, with all their incompetence, find
more than one snug corner in the official lists, while
really able men are struggling and blocking each other
at the door of promotion. Florine, with the inborn gift
of such women for putting their finger on the real thing
among a thousand presentments of it, would at once
have detected the underhand animosity of these false
friends.
But this was not Raoul's greatest danger. His two
partners, the barrister Massol and the banker du Tillet,
had conceived the idea of harnessing his energy to the
car in which they should loll at ease, with the full
intention of turning him adrift as soon as his resources
failed to keep the paper going, or of wresting it from his
92 A Daughter of Eve
hands the moment they saw their way to using this
powerful instrument for their own purposes. To their
minds, Nathan represented so much capital to run
through, a literary force, equal to that of ten ordinary
writers, to exploit.
Massol belonged to the type of barrister who takes a
flux of words for eloquence and can weary any audience
by his prolixity, who in every gathering of men acts as
a blight, shrivelling up their enthusiasm, yet who is
determined at all costs to be a somebody. Massol's
ambition, however, no longer pointed to the ministry of
justice. Within four years he had seen five or six men
clothed with the robes of ofHce, and this had cured him
of the fancy. Meanwhile he was ready to accept, as
something in hand, a professorship or a post under the
Council, with of course the Cross of the Legion of Honour
to season the dish. Du Tillet and the Baron de Nucin-
gen had guaranteed him the Cross and the desired post if
he fell in with their views; and as he judged them to
be in a better position than Nathan for fulfilling their
promises, he followed them blindly.
The better to hoodwink Raoul, these men allowed
him to exercise uncontrolled power. Du Tillet only
made use of the paper for his stock-jobbing interests,
which were outside Raoul's ken. He had, however, already
given Rastignac to understand, through the Baron de
Nucingen, that this organ was ready to give a silent
adhesion to the Government, on the one condition that
the Government should support du Tillet's candidature
as successor to M. de Nucingen, who would be a peer
some day, and who at present sat for a rotten borough,
where the paper was lavishly circulated, gratis. Thus
was Raoul jockeyed by both the banker and the barrister,
who took a huge delight in seeing him lord it at the
office, pocketing all the gains, as well as the less sub-
stantial dues of vanity and the like. Nathan could not
praise them enough ; again, as when they furnished his
A Daughter of Eve 93
stables, they were l the best fellows in the world,' and
he actually believed that he was duping them.
Men of imagination, whose whole life is based on
hope, never will admit that in business the moment of
danger is that when everything goes to a wish. Such a
moment of triumph had come for Nathan, and he made
full use of it, letting himself be seen both in political
and financial circles. Du Tillet introduced him to the
Nucingens, and he was received in a most friendly way
by Mme. de Nucingen, not so much for his own sake
as for that of Mme. de Vandenesse. Yet, when she
alluded to the Countess, Nathan thought himself a
marvel of discretion for taking refuge behind Florine,
and he enlarged with generous self-complacency on his
relations with the actress, which nothing, he declared,
could break. How could any man abandon an assured
happiness for the coquetry of the Faubourg Saint-
Germain ?
Nathan, beguiled by Nucingen and Rastignac, du
Tillet and Blondet, lent an ostentatious support to the
doctrinaire party in the formation of one of their
ephemeral cabinets. At the same time, wishing to start
in public life with clean hands, he refused, with much
parade, to accept any share in the profits of certain
enterprises, which had been launched by the help of this
paper. And this was the man who never hesitated to
compromise a friend, or was hampered by a scruple in
his relations with a certain class of business men at
critical moments ! Such startling contrasts, born of
vanity and ambition, may often be found in careers like
his. The mantle must make a brave show to the
public, but scraps raised from a friend will serve to
patch it.
But in the very midst of all his successes, Nathan was
roused to some uneasiness by a bad quarter of an hour
which he spent over his business accounts two monthsafter
the departure of the Countess. Du Tillet had advanced
94 A Daughter of Eve
a hundred thousand francs. The money given by
Florine, the third part of his original capital, had gone
in government dues and in the expenses of starting the
paper, which were enormous. The future had to be
provided for. The banker assisted him by accepting
bills for fifty thousand francs at four months, and
thereby fastened a halter round the author's neck.
Thanks to this subvention, the paper was in funds
again for six months. In the eyes of many literary
men, six months is an eternity. Further, by dint of
puffs and by sending round canvassers, who offered
illusory advantages to subscribers, they managed to
raise the circulation by two thousand. This semi-
triumph was an incentive to cast his latest borrowings
into the melting pot. One more effort of his wits, and
a political lawsuit or a sham persecution might give
Raoul a place among those modern Condottieri, whose
ink has to-day taken the place of gunpowder.
Unfortunately, these steps were already taken when
Florine returned with about fifty thousand francs. In-
stead of setting this aside as a reserve, Raoul, confident
of a success which was his only safety, humiliated at the
thought of having once before accepted money from the
actress, feeling that his love had raised him to a higher
plane, and dazzled by the specious plaudits of his flat-
terers, deceived Florine as to his situation, and obliged
her to spend the money in setting up house again.
Under present circumstances, a smart and dashing style
was, he assured her, essential. The actress, who needed
no spurring, got into debt for thirty thousand francs.
Instead of a flat, Florine took a charming house in the
Rue Pigalle, where her old friends came about her again.
The house of a woman in Florine's position supplied a
neutral ground, most convenient for pushing politicians,
who, following the example of Louis xiv. with the
Dutch, entertained at Raoul's house in Raoul's absence.
Nathan had reserved for the return of the actress a
A Daughter of Eve 95
play, the chief part in which suited her admirably.
This vaudeville-drama was intended as Raoul's farewell
to the theatre. The newspapers, by an attention to
Raoul which cost them nothing, planned beforehand
such an ovation to Florine that the Comedie-Francaise
began to speak of engaging her. Critics pointed to her
as the direct successor of Mile. Mars. This triumph
threw the actress so far off her balance as to prevent her
examining carefully the state of Nathan's affairs ; her
life was a whirl of banquets and revelry. Queen in a
of bustling suitors, each with something to push — a book,
a play, a ballet-girl, a theatre, a company, or an advertise-
ment — she revelled in the delights of this press influence,
which she pictured as the dawn of ministerial patronage.
In the mouths of those who frequented her house,
Nathan was a politician of high standing. His scheme
would succeed, he would be elected to the Chamber,
and beyond doubt have a turn at office, like so many
others. Actresses are rarely slow to believe what
flatters their hopes. How could Florine, lauded in the
notices, mistrust the paper or its contributors ? She
was too ignorant of the mechanism of the press to be
uneasy about its resources, and women of her stamp look
only to results.
As for Nathan, he no longer doubted that in the
course of the next session he would come to the
front, along with two former journalists, one of whom,
already in office, was anxious to strengthen his position
by turning out his colleagues. After six months of
absence, Nathan was glad to see Florine again, and
lazily fell back into his old habits. The coarse web of
his life was covertly embroidered by him with the love-
liest flowers of his ideal passion and with the pleasures
scattered by Florine. His letters to Marie were master-
pieces of love, elegance, and style. He made of her the
guiding star of his life ; he undertook nothing without
consulting his good genius. Miserable at being on the
96 A Daughter of Eve
popular side, he was tempted at times to join the aristo-
crats ; but, with all his skill in turning his back on
himself, it seemed impossible to make the leap from left
to right ; it was easier to get office.
Marie's precious letters were kept in a portfolio with
secret springs, an invention either of Huret or Fichet,
the two mechanists who carry on a war of emulation in
the newspaper columns and on the walls of Paris as to
the comparative efficacy and unobtrusiveness of their
locks. The portfolio lay in Florine's new boudoir,
where Raoul worked. No one is more easily deceived
than the woman who is used to frankness ; she has no
suspicions, because she believes herself to know and see all
that goes on. Moreover, since her return the actress
took her part in Nathan's daily life, which appeared to
go on just as usual. It never would have occurred to
her that this writing-case, which she had barely noticed,
and which Raoul made no mystery about locking, con-
tained love tokens in the shape of a rival's letters,
addressed, at Raoul's request, to the office. To all
appearance, therefore, Nathan's situation was of the
brightest. He had plenty of nominal friends. Two
plays, at which he had worked jointly with others, and
which had just made a success, kept him in luxuries and
removed all anxiety for the future. Indeed, his debt
to his friend du Tillet never gave him a moment's
uneasiness.
4 How can one suspect a friend ? ' he said, when now
and again Blondet would give utterance to doubts, which
were natural to his analytic turn of mind.
4 But we have no need to fear our enemies,' said
Florine.
Nathan stood up for du Tillet. Du Tillet was the
best, most good-natured, and most honourable of men.
This life upon the tight-rope, without even a steady-
ing pole, which might have appalled a mere onlooker
who had grasped its meaning, was watched by du Tillet
A Daughter of Eve 97
with the stoicism and hard-heartedness of a parvenu. At
times a fierce irony broke through the genial cordiality
of his manner with Nathan. One day he pressed his hand
as he was leaving Florine's, and watched him get into
his cabriolet.
'There goes our dandy off to the Bois in tiptop
style,' he said to Lousteau, the very incarnation of
envy, 'and in six months he may be laid by the heels
in Clichy.'
* Not he ! ' exclaimed Lousteau ; ' think of Florine.'
'And how do you know, my good fellow, that he'll
keep Florine ? I tell you, you 're worth a thousand of
him, and I expect six months will see you in the editorial
chair.'
In October the bills fell due, and du Tillet graciously
renewed them, but this time for two months only, and
the amount was increased by the discount and by a new
loan. Confident of victory, Raoul drained his till. An
overmastering desire to see him was bringing the Countess
back to town a month earlier than usual — within a few
days in fact — and it would not do to be crippled for
lack of funds when the moment had come for entering
the field again.
The pen is always bolder than the tongue, and the
letters she received had raised the Comtesse de Van-
denesse to the highest pitch of excitement. Thoughts
clothed in the flowers of rhetoric can express so much
without meeting a repulse. She saw in Raoul one of
the finest intellects of the day, a delicately-strung and
unappreciated heart, which in its unstained purity was
worthy of adoration. She watched him put forth a bold
hand upon the citadel of power. Ere long that voice,
so tuneful in love, would thunder from the tribune.
Marie was now entirely absorbed in that life of inter-
secting circles, which resemble the orbits of the planets,
and revolve round the sun of society as their centre.
Finding no flavour in the calm pleasures of home,
G
98 A Daughter of Eve
she received the shock of every agitation in this
whirling life, brought home to her by the pen of a
literary artist and a lover. She showered kisses on
letters which had been written in the thick of press
combats, or purloined from hours of study. She realised
now what they had cost and was well assured of being
his only love, with no rivals but glory and ambition.
Even in the depths of her solitude she found occupation
for all her powers and could dwell with satisfaction
upon the choice of her heart. There was no one like
Nathan.
Fortunately, her withdrawal into the country and the
barriers thus placed between her and Raoul had silenced
ill-natured gossip. During the last days of autumn,
therefore, Marie and Raoul were able once more to
begin their walks in the Bois de Boulogne, their only
meeting-place until the season opened. Raoul had now
a little more leisure to enjoy the exquisite delights of
his ideal life, and also to practise concealment with
Florine ; his work at the office had ceased to be so hard
since things were well in train there and each member
of the staff understood his duty. Involuntarily he made
comparisons which, though always favourable to Florine,
did the Countess no injury. Exhausted once more by
the various shifts to which his passion, alike of the
head and of the heart, for a woman of fashion impelled
him, Raoul put forth superhuman energy in the effort
to appear simultaneously on three different stages —
society, the office, and the green-room. While Florine,
always grateful and taking almost a partner's share in
his work and difficulties, appeared and vanished as
required, and showered on him a wealth of substantial
and unpretentious happiness, which called forth no re-
morse, the unapproachable Countess, with her hungry
eyes, had already forgotten his stupendous labours and
the trouble it often cost him to get a passing glimpse of
her. Florine, far from trying to impose her will, would
A Daughter of Eve 99
let herself be taken up and put down with the good-
natured indifference of a cat, which always falls on its
feet and walks off, shaking its ears. This easy way of
life is admirably fitted to the habits of brain-workers ;
and it is only in the artist's nature to'take full advantage
of it, as Nathan did, whilst not abandoning the pursuit
of that fine ideal love, that splendid passion, which
delighted at once his poetic instincts, the germ of great-
ness in him, and his social ambitions. Fully aware how
disastrous would be the effect of any indiscretion, he
told himself it was impossible that either the Countess
or Florine should find out anything. The chasm
between them was too great.
With the beginning of winter Raoul once more made
his appearance in society, and this time in the heyday
of his glory : he was all but a personage. Rastignac,
who had fallen with the Government which went to
pieces on de Marsay's death, leant upon Raoul, and in
return gave him the support of his good word. Mme.
de Vandenesse was curious to know whether her hus-
band had changed his opinion of Raoul. After the
lapse of a year she questioned him again, in the ex-
pectation of a signal revenge, such as the noblest and
least earthly of women do not disdain ; for we may be
sure that the angels in heaven have not lost all thought
of self as they range themselves round the throne.
'That he should become the tool of unscrupulous men
was the one thing lacking to him,' replied the Count.
Felix, with the keen insight of a politician and a man
of the world, had thoroughly gauged Raoul's position.
He calmly explained to his wife how the attempt of
Fieschi had resulted in rallying manv lukewarm people
round the interests threatened in the person of Louis-
Philippe. The comparatively neutral papers would go
down in circulation as journalism, along with politics,
fell into more definite lines. If Nathan had put his
capital into his paper, he would soon be done for. This
ioo A Daughter of Eve
summary of the situation, so clear and accurate in spite
of its brevity and the purely abstract point of view from
which it was made, and coming from a man well used
to calculate the chances of party, frightened Mme. de
Vandenesse.
' Do you take much interest in him then ? ' asked
Felix of his wife.
'Oh ! I like his humour, and he talks well.'
The reply came so naturally that it did not rouse the
Count's suspicions.
At four o'clock next day at Mme. d'Espard's, Marie
and Raoul held a long whispered conversation. The
Countess gave expression to fears which Raoul dis-
sipated, only too glad of this opportunity to damage
the husband's authority under a battery of epigrams.
He had his revenge to take. The Count, thus handled,
appeared a man of narrow mind and behind the day,
who judged the Revolution of July by the standard of
the Restoration, and shut his eyes to the triumph of the
middle-class, that new and substantial factor to be
reckoned with, for a time at least if not permanently,
in every society. The great feudal lords of the past
were impossible now, the reign of true merit had
begun. Instead of weighing well the indirect and im-
partial warning he had received from an experienced
politician in the expression of his deliberate opinion,
Raoul made it an occasion for display, mounted his
stilts, and draped himself in the purple of success.
Where is the woman who would not believe her lover
rather than her husband ?
Mme. de Vandenesse, reassured, plunged once more
into that life of repressed irritation, of little stolen
pleasures, and of covert hand-pressings which had
carried her through the preceding winter ; but which
can have no other end than to drag a woman over
the boundary line if the man she loves has any spirit
and chafes against the curb. Happily for her, Raoul,
A Daughter of Eve 101
kept in check by Florine, was not dangerous. He
was engrossed, too, in business which did not allow
him to turn his good fortune to account. Nevertheless,
some sudden disaster, a renewal of difficulties, an out-
burst of impatience, might at any moment precipitate
the Countess into the abyss.
Raoul was becoming conscious of this disposition in
Marie when, towards the end of December, du Tillet
asked for his money. The wealthy banker told Raoul
he was hard up, and advised him to borrow the amount
for a fortnight from a money-lender called Gigonnet —
a twenty-five per cent. Providence for all young men in
difficulties. In a few days the paper would make a fresh
financial start with the new year, there would be cash
iu the counting-house, and then du Tillet would see
what he could do. Besides, why should not Nathan
write another play ? Nathan was too proud not to
resolve on paying at any cost. Du Tillet gave him a
letter for the money-lender, in response to which
Gigonnet handed him the amount required and took bills
payable in twenty days. Raoul, instead of having his
suspicions roused by this accommodating reception, was
only vexed that he had not asked for more. This is the
way with men of the greatest intellectual power; they
see only matter for pleasantry in a grave predicament,
and reserve their wits for writing books, as though
afraid there might not be enough of them to go round
if applied to daily life. Raoul told Florine and Blondet
how he had spent his morning ; he drew a faithful pic-
ture of Gigonnet and his surroundings, his cheap Jleur-
de-lys wallpaper, his staircase, his asthmatic bell, his
stag's-foot knocker, his worn little door mat, his hearth
as devoid of fire as his eye ; he made them laugh at this
new ' uncle,' and neither du Tillet's professed need of
money nor the facility of the usurer caused them the
least uneasiness. — One can't account for every whim !
' He has only taken fifteen per cent, from you,' said
102 A Daughter of Eve
Blondet ; ' he deserves your thanks. At twenty-five
they cease to be gentlemen ; at fifty, usury begins ; at
this figure they are only contemptible ! '
' Contemptible ! ' cried Florine. ' I should like to
know which of your friends would lend you money at
this rate without posing as a benefactor ? '
'She is quite right ; I am heartily glad to be quit of
du Tillet's debt,' said Raoul.
Most mysterious is this lack of penetration in regard
to their private affairs on the part of men generally so
keen-sighted ! It may be that it is impossible for the
mind to be fully equipped on every side ; it may be that
artists live too entirely in the present to trouble about
the future ; or it may be that, always on the lookout for
the ridiculous, they are blind to traps, and cannot believe
in any one daring to fool them.
The end did not tarry. Twenty days later the bills
were protested ; but in the court Florine had a respite
of twenty-five days applied for and granted. Raoul
made an effort to see where he stood ; he sent for the
books ; and from these it appeared that the receipts of
the paper covered two-thirds of the cost, and that the
circulation was going down. The great man became
uneasy and gloomy, but only in the company of Florine,
in whom he confided. Florine advised him to borrow
on the security of plays not yet written, selling them in
a lump, and parting at the same time with the royalties
on his acted plays. By this means Nathan raised twenty
thousand francs, and reduced his debt to forty thousand.
On the ioth of February the twenty-five days ex-
pired. Du Tillet, determined to oust Nathan, as a
rival, from the constituency, where he intended to stand
himself (leaving to Massol another which was in the
pocket of the Government), got Gigonnet to refuse
Raoul all quarter. A man laid by the heels for debt
can hardly present himself as a candidate ; and the
embryo minister might disappear in the maw of a
A Daughter of Eve 103
debtor's prison. Florine herself was in constant com-
munication with the bailiffs on account of her own
debts, and in this crisis the only resource left to her
was the ' I ! ' of Medea, for her furniture was seized.
The aspirant to fame heard on every side the crack of
ruin in his freshly reared but baseless fabric. Unequal to
the task of sustaining so vast an enterprise, how could
he think of beginning again to lay the foundations ?
Nothing remained, therefore, but to perish beneath his
crumbling visions. His love for the Countess still
brought flashes of life, but only to the outer mask;
within, all hope was dead. He did not suspect du
Tillet ; the usurer alone filled his view. Rastignac,
Blondet, Lousteau, Vernou, Finot, Massol, carefully
refrained from enlightening a man of such dangerous
energy. Rastignac, who aimed at getting back to
power, made common cause with Nucingen and du
Tillet. The rest found measureless delight in watching
the expiring agony of one of their comrades, convicted
of the crime of aiming at mastery. Not one of them
would breathe a word to Florine ; to her, on the con-
trary, they were full of Raoul's praises. ' Nathan's
shoulders were broad enough to bear the world ; he
would come out all right, no fear ! '
'The circulation went up two yesterday,' said Blondet
solemnly. ' Raoul will be elected yet. As soon as the
budget is through the dissolution will be announced.'
Nathan, dogged by the law, could no longer look to
money-lenders ; Florine, her furniture distrained, had
no hope left save in the chance of inspiring a passion
in some good-natured fool, who never turns up at the
right moment. Nathan's friends were all men without
money or credit. His political chances would be ruined
by his arrest. To crown all, he saw himself pledged to
huge tasks, paid for in advance ; it was a bottomless pit
of horrors into which he gazed.
Before an outlook so threatening his self-confidence
104 A Daughter of Eve
deserted him. Would the Comtesse de Vandenesse
unite her fate to his and fly with him ? Only a fully
developed passion can bring a woman to this fatal step,
and theirs had never bound them to each other in the
mysterious ties of rapture. Even supposing the Countess
would follow him abroad, she would come penniless,
bare, and stripped, and would prove an added burden.
A proud man, of second-rate quality, like Nathan, could
not fail to see in suicide, as Nathan did, the sword with
which to cut this Gordian knot. The idea of over-
throw, in full view of that society into which he had
worked his way, and which he had aspired to dominate,
of leaving the Countess enthroned there, while he fell
back to join the mud-spattered rank and file, was un-
bearable. Madness danced and rang her bells before the
door of that airy palace in which the poet had made his
home. In this extremity, Nathan waited upon chance,
and put off killing himself till the last moment.
During the last days, occupied with the notice of
judgment, the writs, and publication of order of arrest,
Raoul could not succeed in throwing off that coldly
sinister look, observed by noticing people to haunt those
marked out for suicide, or whose minds are dwelling on
it. The dismal ideas which they fondle cast a grey,
gloomy shade over the forehead ; their smile is vaguely
ominous, and they move with solemnity. The unhappy
wretches seem resolved to suck dry the golden fruit of
life ; they cast appealing glances on every side, the toll
of the passing bell is in their ears, and their minds
wander. These alarming symptoms were perceived
by Marie one night at Lady Dudley's. Raoul had
remained alone on a sofa in the boudoir, while the
rest of the company were conversing in the drawing-
room ; when the Countess came to the door, he did not
raise his head ; he heard neither Marie's breath nor the
rustle of her silk dress ; his eyes, stupid with pain, were
fixed on a flower in the carpet. 'Sooner die than
A Daughter of Eve 105
abdicate,' was his thought. It is not every man who
has a Saint-Helena to retire upon. Suicide, moreover,
was at that time in vogue in Paris : what more suitable
key to the mystery of life for a sceptical society ? Raoul
then had just resolved to put an end to himself. Despair
must be proportioned to hope, and that of Raoul could
find no issue but the grave.
4 What is the matter ? ' said Marie, flying to him.
4 Nothing,' he replied.
Lovers have a way of using this word 'nothing'
which implies exactly the opposite. Marie gave a little
shrug.
4 What a child you are ! ' she said. 4 Something has
gone wrong with you ? '
' Not with me,' he said. 4 Besides,' he added affec-
tionately, c you will know it all too soon, Marie.'
4 What were you thinking of when I came in ? ' she
said, with an air that would not be denied.
4 Are you determined to know the truth ? '
She bowed her head.
'I was thinking of you ; I said to myself that many
men in my place would have wished to be loved with-
out reserve : I am loved, am I not ? '
4 Yes,' she said.
Braving the risk of interruption, Raoul put his arm
round her and drew her near enough to kiss her on the
forehead, as he continued —
4 And I am leaving you pure and free from remorse.
I might drag you into the abyss, but you stand upon the
brink in all your stainless glory. One thought, though,
haunts me . . .'
4 What thought ? '
4 You will despise me.'
She smiled a proud smile.
4 Yes, you will never believe in the holiness of my
love for you ; and then they will slander me, I know.
No woman can conceive how, from out of the filth in
106 A Daughter of Eve
which we wallow, we raise our eyes to heaven in single-
hearted worship of some radiant star — some Marie.
They mix up this adoration with painful questions ; they
cannot understand that men of high intellect and poetic
vision are able to wean their souls from pleasure and
keep them to lay entire upon some cherished altar.
And yet, Marie, our devotion to the ideal is more
ardent than yours; we embody it in a woman, while
she does not even seek for it in us.'
'Why this effusion?' she said, with the irony of a
woman who has no misgivings.
' I am leaving France ; you will learn how and why
to-morrow from a letter which my servant will bring
you. Farewell, Marie.'
Raoul went out, after pressing the Countess to his
heart in an agonised embrace, and left her dazed with
misery.
'What is wrong, dear ? ' said the Marquise d'Espard,
coming to look for her. ' What has M. Nathan
been saying ? He left us with quite a melodramatic
air. You must have been terribly foolish — or terribly
prudent.'
The Countess took Mme. d'Espard's arm to return to
the drawing-room, where, however, she only stayed a
few instants.
' Perhaps she is going to her first appointment,' said
Lady Dudley to the Marchioness.
'I shall make sure as to that,' replied Mme. d'Espard,
who left at once to follow the Countess's carriage.
But the coupe of Mme. de Vandenesse took the road
to the Faubourg St. Honore. When Mme. d'Espard
entered her house, she saw the Countess driving along
the Faubourg in the direction of the Rue du Rocher.
Marie went to bed, but not to sleep, and spent the night
in reading a voyage to the North Pole, of which she did
not take in a word.
At half-past eight next morning, she got a letter from
A Daughter of Eve 107
Raoul and opened it in feverish haste. The letter began
with the classic phrase —
' My loved one, when this paper is in your hands, I
shall be no more.'
She read no further, but crushing the paper with a
nervous motion, rang for her maid, hastily put on a loose
gown, and the first pair of shoes that came to hand,
wrapped a shawl round her, took a bonnet, and then
went out, instructing her maid to tell the Count that
she had gone to her sister, Mme. du Tillet.
c Where did you leave your master ? ' she asked of
Raoul's servant.
' At the newspaper office.'
c Take me there,' she said.
To the amazement of the household, she left the
house on foot before nine o'clock, visibly distraught.
Fortunately for her, the maid went to tell the Count
that her mistress had just received a letter from Mme. du
Tillet which had upset her very much, and that she had
started in a great hurry for her sister's house, accom-
panied by the servant who had brought the letter.
Vandenesse waited for further explanations till his wife's
return. The Countess got a cab and was borne rapidly
to the office. At that time of day the spacious rooms
occupied by the paper, in an old house in the Rue
Feydeau, were deserted. The only occupant was an
attendant, whose astonishment was great when a pretty
and distracted young woman rushed up and demanded
M. Nathan.
' I expect he is with Mile. Florine,' he replied, taking
the Countess for some jealous rival, bent on making a
scene.
c Where does he work ? ' she asked.
c In a small room, the key of which is in his pocket.'
C I must go there.'
The man led her to a dark room, looking out on a
back-yard, which had formerly been the dressing-closet
108 A Daughter of Eve
attached to a large bedroom. This closet made an
angle with the bedroom, in which the recess for the bed
still remained. By opening the bedroom window, the
Countess was able to see through that of the closet what
was happening within.
Nathan lay in the editorial chair, the death-rattle in
his throat.
4 Break open that door, and tell no one ! I will pay
you to keep silence/ she cried. ' Can't you see that M.
Nathan is dying ? '
The man went to the compositors' room to fetch an
iron chase with which to force the door. Raoul was
killing himself, like some poor work-girl, with the fumes
from a pan of charcoal. He had just finished a letter to
Blondet, in which he begged him to attribute his death
to a fit of apoplexy. The Countess was just in time;
she had Raoul carried into the cab ; and not knowing
where to get him looked after, she went to a hotel, took
a room there, and sent the attendant to fetch a doctor.
Raoul in a few hours was out of danger ; but the
Countess did not leave his bedside till she had obtained a
full confession. When the prostrate wrestler with fate
had poured into her heart the terrible elegy of his
sufferings, she returned home a prey to all the torturing
fancies which the evening before had brooded over
Nathan's brow.
4 Leave it all to me,' she had said, hoping to win him
back to life.
4 Well, what is wrong with your sister ? ' asked Felix,
on seeing his wife return. 4 You look like a ghost.'
4 It is a frightful story, but I must keep it an absolute
secret,' she replied, summoning all her strength to put
on an appearance of composure.
In order to be alone and able to think in peace, she
went to the opera in the evening, and thence had gone
on to unbosom her woes to Mme. du Tillet. After
describing the ghastly scene of the morning, she implored
A Daughter of Eve 109
her sister's advice and aid. Neither of them had an idea
then that it was du Tillet whose hand had put the
match to that vulgar pan of charcoal, the sight of which
had so dismayed Mme. de Vandenesse.
' He has no one but me in the world,' Marie had
said to her sister, 'and I shall not fail him.'
In these words may be read the key to women's
hearts. They become heroic in the assurance of being
all in all to a great and honourable man.
CHAPTER VIII
A LOVER SAVED AND LOST
Du Tillet had heard many speculations as to the
greater or less probability of his sister-in-law's love for
Nathan ; but he was one of those who deemed the
liaison incompatible with that existing between Raoul
and Florine, or who denied it on other grounds. In his
view, either the actress made the Countess impossible,
or vice versa. But when, on his return that evening, he
found his sister-in-law, whose agitation had been plainly
written on her face at the opera, he surmised that Raoul
had confided his plight to the Countess. This meant
that the Countess loved him, and had come to beg from
Marie-Eugenie the amount due to old Gigonnet. Mme.
du Tillet, at a loss how to explain this apparently
miraculous insight, had betrayed so much confusion,
that du Tillet's suspicion became a certainty. The
banker was confident that he could now get hold of the
clue to Nathan's intrigues.
No one knew of the poor wretch who lay ill in a
private hotel in the Rue du Mail, under the name of the
attendant, Francois Quillet, to whom the Countess
had promised five hundred francs as the reward for
no A Daughter of Eve
silence on the events of the night and morning. Quillet
in consequence had taken the precaution of telling the
portress that Nathan was ill from overwork. It was no
surprise to du Tillet not to see Nathan, for it was only-
natural the journalist should keep in hiding from the
bailiffs. When the detectives came to make inquiry,
they were told that a lady had been there that morning
and carried off the editor. Two days elapsed before
they had discovered the number of the cab, questioned
the driver, and identified and explored the house in
which the poor insolvent was coming back to life. Thus
Marie's wary tactics had won for Nathan a respite of
three days.
Each of the sisters passed an agitated night. Such a
tragedy casts a lurid light, like the glow of its own
charcoal, upon the whole substance of a life, throwing
out its shoals and reefs rather than the heights which
hitherto had struck the eye. Mme. du Tillet, over-
come by the frightful spectacle of a young man dying
in his editorial chair, and writing his last words with
Roman stoicism, could think of nothing but how to help
him, how to restore to life the being in whom her
sister's life was bound up. It is a law of the mind to
look at effects before analysing causes. Eugenie once
more approved the idea, which had occurred to her, of
applying to the Baronne Delphine de Nucingen, with
whom she had a dining acquaintance, and felt that it
promised well. With the generosity natural to those
whose hearts have not been ground in the polished mill
of society, Mme. du Tillet determined to take every-
thing upon herself.
The Countess again, happy in having saved Nathan's
life, spent the night in scheming how to lay her hands
on forty thousand francs. In such a crisis women are
beyond praise. Under the impulse of feeling they light
upon contrivances which would excite, if anything
could, the admiration of thieves, brokers, and usurers,
A Daughter of Eve 1 1 1
those three more or less licensed classes of men who live
by their wits. The Countess would sell her diamonds
and wear false ones. Then she was for asking Van-
denesse to give her the money for her sister, whom she
had already used as a pretext ; but she was too high-
minded not to recoil from such degrading expedients,
which occurred to her only to be rejected. To give
Vandenesse's money to Nathan ! At the very thought
she leapt up in bed, horrified at her own baseness.
Wear false diamonds ! her husband would find out
sooner or later. She would go and beg the money
from the Rothschilds, who had so much ; from the Arch-
bishop of Paris, whose duty it was to succour the poor.
Thus in her extremity she rushed from one religion to
another with impartial prayers. She lamented being in
opposition ; in old days she could have borrowed from
persons near to royalty. She thought of applying to her
father. But the ex-judge had a horror of any breach of
the law ; his children had learned from experience how
little sympathy he had with love troubles ; he refused to
hear of them, he had become a misanthrope, he could
not away with intrigue of any description. As to the
Comtesse de Granville, she had gone to live in retire-
ment on one of her estates in Normandy, and, icy to
the last, was ending her days, pinching and praying,
between priests and money-bags. Even were there time
for Marie to reach Bayeux, would her mother give her so
large a sum without knowing what it was wanted for ?
Imaginary debts ? Yes, possibly her favourite child
might move her to compassion. Well, then, as a last
resource, to Normandy the Countess would go. The
Comte de Granville would not refuse to give her a
pretext by sending false news of his wife's serious
illness.
The tragedy which had given her such a shock in the
morning, the care she had lavished on Nathan, the hours
passed by his bedside, the broken tale, the agony of a
H2 A Daughter of Eve
great mind, the career of genius cut short by a vulgar
and ignoble detail, all rushed upon her memory as so
many spurs to love. Once more she lived through
every heart-throb, and felt her love stronger in the hour
of Nathan's abasement than in that of his success.
Would she have kissed that forehead crowned with
triumph ? Her heart answered : No. The parting
words Nathan had spoken to her in Lady Dudley's
boudoir touched her unspeakably by their noble dignity.
Was ever farewell more saintly ? What could be more
heroic than to abandon happiness because it would have
made her misery ? The Countess had longed for sensa-
tions in her life, truly she had a wealth of them now,
fearful, agonising, and yet dear to her. Her life seemed
fuller in pain than it had ever been in pleasure. With
what ecstasy she repeated to herself, c I have saved him
already, and I will save him again !' She heard his cry,
4 Only the miserable know the power of love ! ' when he
had felt his Marie's lips upon his forehead.
' Are you ill ? ' asked her husband, coming into her
room to fetch her for lunch.
' I cannot get over the tragedy which is being enacted
at my sister's,' she said, truthfully enough.
'She has fallen into bad hands; it's a disgrace to the
family to have a du Tillet in it, a worthless fellow like
that. If your sister got into any trouble, she would find
scant pity with him.'
' What woman could endure pity ? ' said the Countess,
with an involuntary shudder. c Your ruthless harshness
is the truest homage.'
c There speaks your noble heart ! ' said Felix, kissing
his wife's hand, quite touched by her fine scorn. c A
woman who feels like that does not need guarding.'
1 Guarding ? ' she answered ; ' that again is another
disgrace which recoils on you.'
Felix smiled, but Marie blushed. When a woman
has committed a secret fault, she cloaks herself in an
A Daughter of Eve 1 1 3
exaggerated womanly pride, nor can we blame the fraud,
which points to a reserve of dignity or even high-
mindedness.
Marie wrote a line to Nathan, under the name of M.
Quillet, to tell him that all was going well and sent it
by a commissionaire to the Mail Hotel. At the Opera
in the evening the Countess reaped the benefit of her
falsehoods, her husband finding it quite natural that she
should leave her box to go and see her sister. Felix
waited to give her his arm till du Tillet had left his wife
alone. What were not Marie's feelings as she crossed
the passage, entered her sister's box, and took her seat
there, facing with calm and serene countenance the
world of fashion, amazed to see the sisters together !
< Tell me,' she said.
The reply was written on Marie-Eugenie's face, the
radiance of which many people ascribed to gratified
vanity.
' Yes, he will be saved, darling, but for three months
only, during which time we will put our heads together
and find some more substantial help. Mme. de Nucin-
gen will take four bills, each for ten thousand francs,
signed by any one you like, so as not to compromise
you. She has explained to me how they are to be made
out ; I don't understand in the least, but M. Nathan
will get them ready for you. Only it occurred to
me that perhaps our old master, Schmucke, might be use-
ful to us now ; he would sign them. If, in addition to
these four securities, you write a letter guaranteeing
their payment to Mme. de Nucingen, she will hand you
the money to-morrow. Do the whole thing yourself;
don't trust to anybody. Schmucke, you see, would, I
think, make no difficulty if you asked him. To disarm
suspicion, I said that you wanted to do a kindness to our
old music-master, a German, who was in trouble. In this
way I was able to beg for the strictest secrecy.'
'You angel of cleverness ! If only the Baronne de
H
114 A- Daughter of Eve
Nucingen does not talk till after she has given the
money ! ' said the Countess, raising her eyes as though
in prayer, regardless of her surroundings.
' Schmucke lives in the little Rue de Nevers, on the
Quai Conti ; don't forget, and go yourself.'
' Thanks,' said the Countess, pressing her sister's hand.
1 Ah ! I would give ten years of my life '
c From your old age '
1 To put an end to all these horrors,' said the Countess,
with a smile at the interruption.
The crowd at this moment, spying the two sisters
through their opera-glasses, might suppose them to be
talking of trivialities, as they heard the ring of their
frank laughter. But any one of those idlers, who
frequent the Opera rather to study dress and faces than
to enjoy themselves, would be able to detect the secret
of the Countess in the wave of feeling which suddenly
blotted all cheerfulness out of their fair faces. Raoul,
who did not fear the bailiffs at night, appeared, pale and
ashy, with anxious eye and gloomy brow, on the step of
the staircase where he regularly took his stand. He looked
for the Countess in her box and, finding it empty,
buried his face in his hands, leaning his elbows on the
balustrade.
4 Can she be here ! ' he thought.
c Look up, unhappy hero,' whispered Mine, du
Tillet.
As for Marie, at all risks she fixed on him that steady
magnetic gaze, in which the will flashes from the eye, as
rays of light from the sun. Such a look, mesmerisers
say, penetrates to the person on whom it is directed, and
certainly Raoul seemed as though struck by a magic
wand. Raising his head, his eyes met those of the
sisters. With that charming feminine readiness which
is never at fault, Mme. de Vandenesse seized a cross,
sparkling on her neck, and directed his attention to it by
a swift smile, full of meaning. The brilliance of the
A Daughter of Eve 115
gem radiated even upon Raoul's forehead, and he replied
with a look of joy ; he had understood.
c Is it nothing, then, Eugenie,' said the Countess, c thus
to restore life to the dead ? '
c You have a chance yet with the Royal Humane
Society,' replied Eugenie, with a smile.
4 How wretched and depressed he looked when he
came, and how happy he will go away ! '
At this moment du Tillet, coming up to Raoul with
every mark of friendliness, pressed his hand, and said —
4 Well, old fellow, how are you ? '
4 As well as a man is likely to be who has just got the
best possible news of the election. I shall be successful,'
replied Raoul, radiant.
4 Delighted,' said du Tillet. ' We shall want money
for the paper.'
4 The money will be found,' said Raoul.
4 The devil is with these women ! ' exclaimed du
Tillet, still unconvinced by the words of Raoul, whom
he had nicknamed Charnathan.
4 What are you talking about ? ' said Raoul.
4 My sister-in-law is there with my wife, and they are
hatching something together. You seem in high favour
with the Countess; she is bowing to you right across the
house.'
4 Look,' said Mme. du Tillet to her sister, 4 they told
us wrong. See how my husband fawns on M. Nathan,
and it is he who they declared was trying to get him put
in prison ! '
4 And men call us slanderers ! ' cried the Countess.
4 1 will give him a warning.'
She rose, took the arm of Vandenesse, who was wait-
ing in the passage, and returned jubilant to her box ; by
and by she left the Opera, ordered her carriage for the
next morning before eight o'clock, and found herself at
half-past eight on the Quai Conti, having called at the
Rue du Mail on her way.
1 1 6 A Daughter of Eve
The carriage could not enter the narrow Rue de Nevers;
but, as Schmucke's house stood at the corner of the Quay,
the Countess was not obliged to walk to it through the
mud. She almost leapt from the step of the carriage on
to the dirty and dilapidated entrance of the grimy old
house, which was held together by iron clamps, like a
poor man's crockery, and overhung the street in quite an
alarming fashion.
The old organist lived on the fourth floor, and rejoiced
in a beautiful view of the Seine, from the Pont Neuf
to the rising ground of Chaillot. The simple fellow
was so taken aback when the footman announced his
former pupil, that, before he could recover himself, she
was in the room. Never could the Countess have
imagined or guessed at an existence such as that suddenly
laid bare to her, though she had long known Schmucke's
scorn for appearances and his indifference to worldly
things. Who could have believed in so neglected a life,
in carelessness carried to such a pitch ? Schmucke was
a musical Diogenes ; he felt no shame for the hugger-
mugger in which he lived ; indeed, custom had made
him insensible to it.
The constant use of a fat, friendly, German pipe had
spread over the ceiling and the flimsy wallpaper — well
rubbed by the cat — a faint yellow tint, which gave a per-
vading impression of the golden harvests of Ceres. The
cat, whose long ruffled silky coat made a garment such as
a portress might have envied, did the honours of the
house, sedately whiskered, and entirely at her ease.
From the top of a first-rate Vienna piano, where she lay
couched in state, she cast on the Countess as she entered
the gracious yet chilly glance with which any woman,
astonished at her beauty, might have greeted her. She
did not stir, except to wave the two silvery threads of
her upright moustache and to fix upon Schmucke two
golden eyes. The piano, which had known better days,
and was cased in a good wood, painted black and gold, was
A Daughter of Eve 117
dirty, discoloured, chipped, and its keys were worn like
the teeth of an old horse and mellowed by the deeper
tints which fell from the pipe. Little piles of ashes on
the ledge proclaimed that the night before Schmucke
had bestridden the old instrument to some witches'
rendezvous. The brick floor, strewn with dried mud,
torn paper, pipe ashes, and odds and ends that defy
description, suggested the boards of a lodging-house
floor, when they have not been swept for a week and
heaps of litter, a cross between the contents of the ash-
pit and the rag-bag, await the servants' brooms. A more
practised eye than that of the Countess might have read
indications of Schmucke's way of living in the chestnut
parings, scraps of apple peel, and shells of Easter eggs,
which covered broken fragments of plates, all messed
with sauerkraut. This German detritus formed a carpet
of dusty filth which grated under the feet and lost itself
in a mass of cinders, dropping with slow dignity from a
painted stone fireplace, where a lump of coal lorded it
over two half-burnt logs that seemed to waste away
before it. On the mantelpiece was a pier-glass with
figures dancing a saraband round it ; on one side the
glorious pipe hung on a nail, on the other stood a china
pot in which the Professor kept his tobacco. Two arm-
chairs, casually picked up, together with a thin, flattened
couch, a worm-eaten chest of drawers with the marble
top gone, and a maimed table, on which lay the remains
of a frugal breakfast, made up the furniture, unpretend-
ing as that of a Mohican wigwam. A shaving-glass
hanging from the catch of a curtainless window, and
surmounted by a rag, striped by razor scrapings, were
evidence of the sole sacrifices paid by Schmucke to the
graces and to society.
The cat, petted as a feeble and dependent being, was
the best off. It rejoiced in an old armchair cushion,
beside which stood a white china cup and dish. But
what no pen can describe is the state to which Schmucke,
1 1 8 A Daughter of Eve
the cat, and the pipe — trinity of living beings — had
reduced the furniture. The pipe had scorched the table
in places. The cat and Schmucke's head had greased
the green Utrecht velvet of the two armchairs till it was
worn quite smooth. But for the cat's magnificent tail,
which did a part of the cleaning, the dust would have
lain for ever undisturbed on the uncovered parts of the
chest of drawers and piano. In a corner lay the army of
slippers, to which only a Homeric catalogue could do
justice. The tops of the chest of drawers and of the piano
were blocked with broken-backed, loose-paged music-
books, the boards showing all the pages peeping through,
with corners white and dogs-eared. Along the walls the
addresses of pupils were glued with little wafers. The
wafers without papers showed the number of obsolete
addresses. On the wallpaper chalk additions might be
read. The chest of drawers was adorned with last
night's tankards, which stood out quite fresh and bright
in the midst of all this stuffiness and decay. Hygiene
was represented by a water-jug crowned with a towel
and a bit of common soap, white marbled with blue,
which left its damp-mark here and there on the red
wood. Two hats, equally ancient, hung on pegs, from
which also was suspended the familiar blue ulster with
its three capes, without which the Countess would
hardly have known Schmucke. Beneath the window
stood three pots of flowers, German flowers presumably,
and close by a holly walking-stick.
Though the Countess was disagreeably affected both
in sight and smell, yet Schmucke's eyes and smile trans-
formed the sordid scene with heavenly rays, that gave a
glory to the dingy tones and animation to the chaos.
The soul of this man, who seemed to belong to another
world and revealed so many of its mysteries, radiated
light like a sun. His frank and hearty laugh at the
sight of one of his Saint Cecilias diffused the brightness of
youth, mirth, and innocence. He poured out treasures
A Daughter of Eve 119
of that which mankind holds dearest, and made a cloak
of them to veil his poverty. The most purse-proud up-
start would perhaps have blushed to think twice of the
surroundings within which moved this noble apostle of
the religion of music.
' Eh, py vot tchance came you here, tear Montame la
Gondesse ? ' he said. ' Must I den zing; de zone ov
Zimeon at mein asche ? '
This idea started him on another peal of ringing
laughter.
4 Is it dat I haf a conqvest made ? ' he went on, with
a look of cunning.
Then, laughing like a child again —
4 You com for de musike, not for a boor man, I know,'
he said sadly ; ' but come for vat you vill, you know dat
all is here for you, pody, zoul, ant coots ! '
He took the hand of the Countess, kissed it, and
dropped a tear, for with this good man every day was
the morrow of a kindness received. His joy had for a
moment deprived him of memory, only to bring it back
in greater force. He seized on the chalk, leaped on the
armchair in front of the piano, and then, with the
alacrity of a young man, wrote on the wall in large
letters, '■February 17th, 1835.' This movement, so
pretty and artless, came with such an outburst of
gratitude that the Countess was quite moved.
c My sister is coming too,' she said.
c De oder alzo ! Ven ? Ven ? May it pe bevor I
tie ! ' he replied.
c She will come to thank you for a great favour which
I am here now to ask from you on her behalf.'
* Qvick ! qvick! qvick! qvick!' cried Schmucke, £ vot
is dis dat I mosd to ? Mosd I to de teufel go ? '
* I only want you to write, I promise to pay the sum of
ten thousand francs on each of these papers,' she said,
drawing from her muff the four bills, which Nathan had
prepared in accordance with the formula prescribed.
120 A Daughter of Eve
4 Ach ! dat vill pe soon tone,' replied the German with
a lamblike docility. c Only, I know not vere are mein
bens and baber. — Get you away, Meinherr MirrJ he
cried to the cat, who stared at him frigidly. ' Dis is
mein gat,' he said, pointing it out to the Countess.
' Dis is de boor peast vich lifs mit de boor Schmucke.
He is peautivul, not zo ?'
The Countess agreed.
1 You vould vish him ? '
' What an idea ! Take away your friend ! '
The cat, who was hiding the ink-bottle, divined what
Schmucke wanted and jumped on to the bed.
' He is naughty ass ein monkey ! ' he went on, point-
ing to it on the bed. C I name him Mirr, for do glorivy
our creat Hoffmann at Berlin, dat I haf mosh known.'
The good man signed with the innocence of a child
doing its mother's bidding, utterly ignorant what it is
about, but sure that all will be right. He was far more
taken up with presenting the cat to the Countess than
with the papers, which, by the laws relating to
foreigners, might have deprived him for ever of liberty.
1 You make me zure dat dese leetl stambed babers.'
'Don't have the least uneasiness,' said the Countess.
c I haf not oneasiness,' he replied hastily. ' I ask if dese
leetl stambed babers vil plees do Montame ti Dilet? '
' Oh yes,' she said ; ' you will be helping her as a
father might.'
* I am fer habby do pe coot do her for zomting.
Com, do mein music ! ' he said, leaving the papers on
the table and springing to the piano.
In a moment the hands of this unworldly being were
flying over the well-worn keys, in a moment his glance
pierced the roof to heaven, in a moment the sweetest of
songs blossomed in the air and penetrated the soul.
But only while the ink was drying could this simple-
minded interpreter of heavenly things be allowed to
draw forth eloquence from wood and string, like
A Daughter of Eve 121
Raphael's St. Cecilia playing to the listening hosts of
Heaven. The Countess then slipped the bills into her
muff again, and recalled the radiant master from the
ethereal spheres in which he soared by a touch on the
shoulder.
'My good Schmucke,' she cried.
'Zo zoon,' he exclaimed, with a submissiveness pain-
ful to see. ' Vy den are you kom ? '
He did not complain, he stood like a faithful dog,
waiting for a word from the Countess.
'My good Schmucke,' she again began, 'this is a
question of life and death, minutes now may be the
price of blood and tears.'
' Efer de zame ! ' he said. ' Go den ! try de tears ov
oders ! Know dat de poor Schmucke counts your fisit
for more dan your pounty.'
'We shall meet again,' she said. 'You must come
and play to me and dine with me every Sunday, or else
we shall quarrel. I shall expect you next Sunday.'
' Truly ? '
' Indeed, I hope you will come ; and my sister, I am
sure, will fix a day for you also.'
'Mein habbiness vill be den gomplete,' he said, ' vor
I tid not zee you put at de Champes-Hailysees, ven you
passed in de carrisch, fery rarely.'
The thought of this dried the tears which had
gathered in the old man's eyes, and he offered his arm
to his fair pupil, who could feel the wild beats of his
heart.
' You thought of us then sometimes,' she said.
' Efery time ven I mein pret eat ! ' he replied. ' Virst
ass mein pountivul laties, ant den ass de two virst young
girls vurty of luf dat I haf zeen.'
The Countess dared say no more ! There was a
marvellous and respectful solemnity in these words,
as though they formed part of some religious service,
breathing fidelity. That smoky room, that den of
122 A Daughter of Eve
refuse, became a temple for two goddesses. Devotion
there waxed stronger, all unknown to its objects.
' Here, then, we are loved, truly loved,' she thought.
The Countess shared the emotion with which old
Schmucke saw her get into her carriage, as she blew
from the ends of her fingers one of those airy kisses,
which are a woman's distant greeting. At this sight,
Schmucke stood transfixed long after the carriage had
disappeared.
A few minutes later, the Countess entered the court-
yard of Mme. de Nucingen's house. The Baroness was
not yet up ; but, in order not to keep a lady of position
waiting, she flung round her a shawl and dressing-
gown.
4 1 come on the business of others, and promptitude is
then a virtue,' said the Countess. * This must be my
excuse for disturbing you so early.'
* Not at all ! I am only too happy,' said the banker's
wife, taking the four papers and the guarantee of the
Countess.
She rang for her maid.
* Theresa, tell the cashier to bring me up himself at
once forty thousand francs.'
Then she sealed the letter of Mme. de Vandenesse,
and locked it into a secret drawer of her table.
4 What a pretty room you have!' said the Coun-
tess.
4 M. de Nucingen is going to deprive me of it ; he is
getting a new house built.'
4 You will no doubt give this one to your daughter.
I hear that she is engaged to M. de Rastignac'
The cashier appeared as Mme. de Nucingen was on
the point of replying. She took the notes and handed
him the four bills of exchange.
c That balances,' said the Baroness to the cashier.
4 Egzebd for de disgound,' said the cashier. 4 Dis
Schmucke i?s ein musician vrom Ansbach,' he added, with
A Daughter of Eve 123
a glance at the signature, which sent a shiver through
the Countess.
'Do you suppose I am transacting business?' said
Mme. de Nucingen, with a haughty glance of rebuke
at the cashier. ' This is my affair.'
In vain did the cashier cast sly glances now at the
Countess, now at the Baroness ; not a line of their faces
moved.
4 You can leave us now. — Be so good as remain a
minute or two, so that you may not seem to have any-
thing to do with this matter,' said the Baroness to
Mme. de Vandenesse.
4 1 must beg of you to add to your other kind services
that of keeping my secret,' said the Countess.
4 In a matter of charity that is of course,' replied the
Baroness, with a smile. ' I shall have your carriage
sent to the end of the garden ; it will start without you ;
then we shall cross the garden together, no one will
see you leave this. The whole thing will remain a
mystery.'
4 You must have known suffering to have learned so
much thought for others,' said the Countess.
4 1 don't know about thoughtfulness, but I have
suffered a great deal,' said the Baroness ; 4 you, I trust,
have paid less dearly for yours.'
The orders given, the Baroness took her fur shoes
and cloak and led the Countess to the side door of the
garden.
When a man is plotting against any one, as du Tillet
did against Nathan, he makes no confidant. Nucingen
had some notion of what was going on, but his wife
remained entirely outside this Machiavellian scheming.
She knew, however, that Raoul was in difficulties, and
was not deceived therefore by the sisters ; she suspected
shrewdly into whose hands the money would pass, and
it gave her real pleasure to help the Countess. En-
124 -A Daughter of Eve
tanglements of the kind always roused her deepest
sympathy.
Rastignac, who was playing the detective on the
intrigues of the two bankers, came to lunch with Mme.
de Nucingen. Delphine and Rastignac had no secrets
from each other, and she told him of her interview with
the Countess. Rastignac, unable to imagine how the
Baroness had become mixed up in this affair, which in
his eyes was merely incidental, one weapon amongst
many, explained to her that she had this morning in all
probability demolished the electoral hopes of du Tillet
and rendered abortive the foul play and sacrifices of a
whole year. He then went on to enlighten her as to
the whole position, urging her to keep silence about her
own mistake.
* If only,' she said, * the cashier does not speak of it to
Nucingen.'
Du Tillet was at lunch when, a few minutes after
twelve, M. Gigonnet was announced.
1 Show him in,' said the banker, regardless of his
wife's presence. 'Well, old Shylock, is our man under
lock and key ? '
'No.'
4 No ! Didn't I tell you Rue du Mail, at the
hotel ? '
4 He has paid,' said Gigonnet, drawing from his
pocket-book forty bank notes.
A look of despair passed over du Tillet's face.
' You should never look askance at good money,' said
the impassive crony of du Tillet ; c it 's unlucky.'
* Where did you get this money, madam ? ' said the
banker, with a scowl at his wife, which made her scarlet
to the roots of her hair.
' I have no idea what you mean,' she said.
'I shall get to the bottom of this,' he replied, starting
up in a fury. * You have upset my most cherished
plans.'
A Daughter of Eve 125
4 You will upset your lunch,' said Gigonnet, laying
hold of the tablecloth, which had caught in the skirts of
du Tillet's dressing-gown.
Mme. du Tillet rose with frigid dignity, for his words
had terrified her. She rang, and a footman came.
c My horses,' she said. c And send Virginie ; I wish
to dress.'
4 Where are you going ? ' said du Tillet.
' Men who have any manners do not question their
wives. You profess to be a gentleman.'
4 You have not been yourself for the last two days,
since your flippant sister has twice been to see you.'
'You ordered me to be flippant,' she said. 'I am
practising on you.'
Gigonnet, who took no interest in family broils,
saluted Mme. du Tillet and went out.
Du Tillet looked fixedly at his wife, whose eyes met
his without wavering.
' What is the meaning of this ? ' he said.
' It means that I am no longer a child to be cowed by
you,' she replied. ' I am, and shall remain all my life,
a faithful, attentive wife to you ; you may be master if
you like, but tyrant, no.'
Du Tillet left her, and Marie-Eugenie retired to her
room, quite unnerved by such an effort.
'But for my sister's danger,' she said to herself, 'I
should never have ventured to beard him thus ; as the
proverb says, " It 's an ill wind that blows no good." '
During the night Mme. du Tillet again passed in
review her sister's confidences. RaouPs safety being
assured, her reason was no longer overpowered by the
thought of this imminent danger. She recalled the
alarming energy with which the Countess had spoken
of flying with Nathan, in order to console him in his
calamity if she could not avert it. She foresaw how
this man, in the violence of his gratitude and love,
might persuade her sister to do what to the well-
126 A Daughter of Eve
balanced Eugenie seemed an act of madness. There
had been instances lately in the best society of such
elopements, which pay the price of a doubtful pleasure
in remorse and the social discredit arising out of a false
position, and Eugenie recalled to mind their disastrous
results. Du Tillet's words had put the last touch to her
panic ; she dreaded discovery ; she saw the signature of
the Comtesse de Vandenesse in the archives of the
Nucingen firm and she resolved to implore her sister
to confess everything to Felix.
Mme. du Tillet did not find the Countess next morn-
ing ; but Felix was at home. A voice within called on
Eugenie to save her sister. To-morrow even might be
too late. It was a heavy responsibility, but she decided
to tell everything to the Count. Surely he would be
lenient, since his honour was still safe and the Countess
was not so much depraved as misguided. Eugenie hesi-
tated to commit what seemed like an act of cowardice
and treachery by divulging secrets which society, at one
in this, universally respects. But then came the thought
of her sister's future, the dread of seeing her some day
deserted, ruined by Nathan, poor, ill, unhappy, despair-
ing ; she hesitated no longer, and asked to see the
Count. Felix, greatly surprised by this visit, had a long
conversation with his sister-in-law, in the course of
which he showed such calm and self-mastery that
Eugenie trembled at the desperate steps he might be
revolving.
4 Don't be troubled,' said Vandenesse; C I shall act so
that the day will come when your sister will bless you.
However great your repugnance to keeping from her
the fact that you have spoken to me, I must ask you to
give me a few days' grace. I require this in order to see
my way through certain mysteries, of which you know
nothing, and above all to take my measures with pru-
dence. Possibly I may find out everything at once ! I
am the only one to blame, dear sister. All lovers play
A Daughter of Eve 127
their own game, but all women are not fortunate enough
to see life as it really is.'
CHAPTER IX
a husband's triumph
Mme. du Tillet left Vandenesse's house somewhat
comforted. Felix, on his part, went at once to draw
forty thousand francs from the Bank of France, and
then hastened to Mme. de Nucingen. He found her at
home, thanked her for the confidence she had shown in
his wife, and returned her the money. He gave, as the
reason for this mysterious loan, an excessive almsgiving,
on which he had wished to impose some limit.
' Do not trouble to explain, since Mme. de Van-
denesse has told you about it,' said the Baronne de
Nucingen.
'She knows all,' thought Vandenesse.
The Baroness handed him his wife's guarantee and
sent for the four bills. Vandenesse, while this was
going on, scanned the Baroness with the statesman's
piercing eye ; she flinched a little, and he judged the
time had come for negotiating.
'We live, madam,' he said, 'at a period when nothing
is stable. Thrones rise and disappear in France with a
disconcerting rapidity. Fifteen years may see the end of a
great empire, of a monarchy, and also of a revolution.
No one can take upon himself to answer for the future.
You know my devotion to the legitimist party. Such
words in my mouth cannot surprise you. Imagine a
catastrophe : would it not be a satisfaction to you to
have a friend on the winning side ? '
'Undoubtedly,' she replied with a smile.
'Supposing such a case to occur, will you have in me,
128 A Daughter of Eve
unknown to the world, a grateful friend, ready to secure
for M. de Nucingen under these circumstances the
peerage to which he aspires ? '
4 What do you ask from me ? ' she said.
* Not much. Only the facts in your possession about
M. Nathan.'
The Baroness repeated her conversation of the morn-
ing with Rastignac, and said to the ex-peer of France,
as she handed him the four bills which the cashier
brought her —
'Don't forget your promise.'
So far was Vandenesse from forgetting this magical
promise, that he dangled it before the eyes of the Baron
de Rastignac in order to extract from him further in-
formation.
On leaving the Baron, he dictated to a scrivener the
following letter addressed to Florine : —
4 If Mile. Florine wishes to know what part is await-
ing her, will she be so good as come to the approaching
masked ball, and bring M. Nathan as her escort ? '
This letter posted, he went next to his man of busi-
ness, a very acute fellow, full of resource, and withal
honest.
Him he begged to personate a friend, to whom the
visit of Mme. de Vandenesse should have been confided
by Schmucke, aroused to a tardy suspicion by the fourfold
repetition of the words, ' I promise to pay ten thousand
francs,' and who should have come to request from M.
Nathan a bill for forty thousand francs in exchange. It
was a risky game. Nathan might already have learned
how the thing had been arranged, but something had to
be dared for so great a prize. In her agitation, Marie
might easily have forgotten to ask her beloved Raoul for
an acknowledgment for Schmucke. The man of busi-
ness went at once to Nathan's office, and returned
A Daughter of Eve 129
triumphant to the Count by five o'clock with the bill
for forty thousand francs. The very first words ex-
changed with Nathan had enabled him to pass for an
emissary from the Countess.
This success obliged Felix to take steps for preventing
a meeting between Raoul and his wife before the
masked ball, whither he intended to escort her, in order
that she might discover for herself the relation in which
Nathan stood to Florine. He knew the jealous pride of
the Countess, and was anxious to bring her to renounce
the love affair of her own will, so that she might be
spared from humiliation before himself. He also hoped
to show her before it was too late her letters to Nathan
sold by Florine, from whom he reckoned on buying
them back. This prudent plan, so swiftly conceived
and in part executed, was destined to fail through one of
those chances to which the affairs of mortals are subject.
After dinner Felix turned the conversation on the
masked ball, remarking that Marie had never been to
one, and proposed to take her there the following day by
way of diversion.
1 1 will find some one for you to mystify.'
'Ah ! I should like that immensely.'
c To make it really amusing, a woman ought to get
hold of a foeman worthy of her steel, some celebrity or
wit, and make mincemeat of him. What do you say to
Nathan ? A man who knows Florine could put me up
to a few little things that would drive him wild.'
4 Florine,' said the Countess, ' the actress ? '
Marie had already heard this name from the lips of
Quillet the office attendant ; a thought flashed through
her like lightning.
I Well, yes, his mistress,' replied the Count. * What
is there surprising in that ? '
I I should have thought M. Nathan was too busy for
such things. How can literary men find time for
love ? '
130 A Daughter of Eve
' 1 say nothing about love, my dear, but they have to
lodge somewhere, like other people ; and when they have
no home and the bloodhounds of the law are after
them, they lodge with their mistresses, which may seem
a little strong to you, but which is infinitely preferable
to lodging in prison.'
The fire was less red than the cheeks of the Countess.
' Would you like him for your victim ? You could
easily give him a fright,' the Count went on, paying no
attention to his wife's looks. ' I can give you proofs by
which you can show him that he has been a mere child
in the hands of your brother-in-law du Tillet. The
wretch wanted to clap him in prison in order to dis-
qualify him for opposing his candidature in Nucingen's
constituency. I have learned from a friend of Florine's
the amount produced by the sale of her furniture, the
whole of which she gave to Nathan for starting his
paper, and I know what portion was sent to him of the
harvest which she reaped this year in the provinces and
Belgium ; money which, in the long run, all goes into
the pockets of du Tillet, Nucingen, and Massol. These
three have sold the paper in advance to the Govern-
ment, so confident are they of dispossessing the great
man.'
'M. Nathan would never take money from an
actress.'
' You don't know these people, my dear,' said the
Count ; c he won't deny the fact.'
' I shall certainly go to the ball,' said the Countess.
'You will have some fun,' replied Vandenesse. 'Armed
with such weapons, you will read a sharp lesson to
Nathan's vanity, and it will be a kindness to him. You
will watch the ebb and flow of his rage, and his writhings
under your stinging epigrams. Your badinage will be
quite enough to show a clever man like him the danger
in which he stands, and you will have the satisfaction
of getting a good trouncing for the juste milieu team
A Daughter of Eve 131
within their own stables. . . . You are not listening,
my child.'
c Yes, indeed, I am only too much interested,' she
answered. c I will tell you later why I am so anxious to
be certain about all this.'
* Certain ? ' replied Vandenesse. i If you keep on
your mask, I will take you to supper with Florine and
Nathan. It will be sport for a great lady like you to
take in an actress after having kept a famous man on the
stretch, manoeuvring round his most precious secrets ;
you can harness them both to the same mystification. I
shall put myself on the track of Nathan's infidelities. If
I can lay hold of the details of any recent affair, you
will be able to indulge yourself in the spectacle of a
courtesan's rage, which is worth seeing. The fury of
Florine will seethe like an Alpine torrent. She adores
Nathan ; he is everything to her, precious as the marrow
of her bones, dear as her cubs to a lioness. I remember
in my youth having seen a celeorated actress, whose
writing was like a kitchen-maid's, come to demand
back her letters from one of my friends. I have never
seen anything like it since ; that quiet fury, that im-
pudent dignity, that barbaric pose. . . . Are you ill,
Marie ? '
' No ! only the fire is so hot.'
The Countess went to fling herself down on a sofa.
All at once an incalculable impulse, inspired by the con-
suming ache of jealousy, drove her to her feet. Trem-
bling in every limb, she crossed her arms, and advanced
slowly towards her husband.
c How much do you know ? ' she asked. ' It is not
like you to torture me. Even were I guilty, you would
give me an easy death.'
1 What should I know, Marie ? '
* About Nathan ? '
4 You believe you love him,' he replied, l but you love
only a phantom made of words.'
132 A Daughter of Eve
4 Then you do know ? '
* Everything,' he said.
The word fell like a blow on Marie's head.
4 If you wish,' he continued, 'it shall be as though I
knew nothing. My child, you have fallen into an abyss,
and I must save you j already I have done something.
See '
He drew from his pocket her guarantee and Schmucke's
four bills, which the Countess recognised, and threw them
into the fire.
4 What would have become of you, poor Marie, in
three months from now ? You would have been
dragged into Court by bailiff's. Don't hang your head,
don't be ashamed ; you have been betrayed by the
noblest of feelings ; you have trifled, not with a man,
but with your own imagination. There is not a
woman — not one, do you hear, Marie ? — who would not
have been fascinated in your place. It would be absurd
that men, who, in the course of twenty years, have
committed a thousand acts of folly, should insist that a
woman is not to lose her head once in a lifetime. Pray
Heaven I may never triumph over you or burden you
with a pity such as you repudiated with scorn the other
day ! Possibly this wretched man was sincere when he
wrote to you, sincere in trying to put an end to him-
self, sincere in returning that very evening to Florine.
A man is a poor creature compared to a woman. I am
speaking now for you, not for myself. I am tolerant,
but society is not ; it shuns the woman who makes a
scandal ; it will allow none to be rich at once in its
regard and in the indulgence of passion. Whether this
is just or not, I cannot say. Enough that the world is
cruel. It may be that, taken in the mass, it is harsher
than are the individuals separately. A thief, sitting in
the pit, will applaud the triumph of innocence, and filch
its jewels as he goes out. Society has no balm for the
ills it creates j it honours clever roguery, and leaves
A Daughter of Eve 133
unrewarded silent devotion. Ail this I see and know ;
but if I cannot reform the world, at least I can protect
you from yourself. We have here to do with a man
who brings you nothing but trouble, not with a saintly
and pious love, such as sometimes commands self-efface-
ment and brings its own excuse with it. Perhaps I have
been to blame in not bringing more variety into your
peaceful life ; I ought to have enlivened our calm routine
with the stir and excitement of travel and change. I
can see also an explanation of the attraction which drew
you to a man of note, in the envy you roused in cer-
tain women. Lady Dudley, Mme. ; d'Espard, Mme.
de Manerville, and my sister-in-law Emilie count for
something in all this. These women, whom I warned
you against, have no doubt worked on your curiosity,
more with the object of annoying me than in order to
precipitate you among storms which, I trust, may have
only threatened without breaking over you.'
The Countess, as she listened to these generous words,
was tossed about by a host of conflicting feelings, but
lively admiration for Felix dominated the tempest. A
noble and high-spirited soul quickly responds to gentle
handling. This sensitiveness is the counterpart of phy-
sical grace. Marie appreciated a magnanimity which
sought in self-depreciation a screen for the blushes of an
erring woman. She made a frantic motion to leave
the room, then turned back, fearing lest her husband
should misunderstand and take alarm.
' Wait ! ' she said, as she vanished.
Felix had artfully prepared her defence, and he was
soon recompensed for his adroitness ; for his wife re-
turned with the whole of Nathan's letters in her hand,
and held them out to him.
4 Be my judge,' she said, kneeling before him.
1 How can a man judge where he loves ? ' he replied.
He took the letters and threw them on the fire ; later,
the thought that he had read them might have stood
134 A Daughter of Eve
between him and his wife. Marie, her head upon his
knees, burst into tears.
' My child, where are yours ? ' he said, raising her
head.
At this question, the Countess no longer felt the
intolerable burning of her cheeks, a cold chill went
through her.
' That you may not suspect your husband of slander-
ing the man whom you have thought worthy of you, I
will have those letters restored to you by Florine herself.'
' Oh ! surely he would give them back if I asked
him.'
' And supposing he refused ? '
The Countess hung her head.
'The world is horrid,' she said ; ' I will not go into it
any more ; I will live alone with you, if you forgive
me.'
'You might weary again. Besides, what would the
world say if you left it abruptly ? When spring comes,
we will travel, we will go to Italy, we will wander
about Europe, until another child comes to need your
care. We must not give up the ball to-morrow, for it
is the only way to get hold of your letters without
compromising ourselves ; and when Florine brings them
to you, will not that be the measure of her power ? '
' And I must see that ? ' said the terrified Countess.
c To-morrow night.'
Towards midnight next evening Nathan was pacing
the promenade at the masked ball, giving his arm to
a domino with a very fair imitation of the conjugal
manner. After two or three turns two masked women
came up to them.
' Fool ! you have done for yourself ; Marie is here
and sees you,' said Vandenesse, in the disguise of a
woman, to Nathan, while the Countess, all trembling,
addressed Florine —
1 If you will listen, I will tell you secrets which
A Daughter of Eve 135
Nathan has kept from you, and which will show you the
dangers that threaten your love for him.'
Nathan had abruptly dropped Florine's arm in order
to follow the Count, who escaped him in the crowd.
Florine went to take a seat beside the Countess, who had
drawn her away to a form by the side of Vandenesse,
now returned to look after his wife.
' Speak out, my dear,' said Florine, ' and don't suppose
you can keep me long on the tenter-hooks. Not a
creature in the world can get Raoul from me, I can tell
you. He is bound to me by habit, which is better than
love any day.'
' In the first place, are you Florine ? ' said Felix,
resuming his natural voice.
c A pretty question indeed ! If you don't know who
I am, why should I believe you, pray ? '
' Go and ask Nathan, who is hunting now for the
mistress of whom I speak, where he spent the night
three days ago ! He tried to stifle himself with char-
coal, my dear, unknown to you, because he was ruined.
That 's all you know about the affairs of the man whom
you profess to love ; you leave him penniless, and he kills
himself, or rather he doesn't, he tries to and fails.
Suicide when it doesn't come off is much on a par with
a bloodless duel.'
*It is a lie,' said Florine. 'He dined with me that
day, but not till after sunset. The bailiffs were after
him, poor boy. He was in hiding, that 's all.'
'Well, you can go and ask at the Hotel du Mail,
Rue du Mail, whether he was not brought there at the
point of death by a beautiful lady, with whom he has
had intimate relations for a year ; the letters of your
rival are hidden in your house, under your very nose.
If you care to catch Nathan out, we can go all three to
your house ; there I shall give you ocular proof that you
can get him clear of his difficulties very shortly if you
like to be good-natured.'
136 A Daughter of Eve
£ That 's not good enough for Florine, thank you, my
friend. I know very well that Nathan can't have a love
affair.'
4 Because, I suppose, he has redoubled his attentions
to you of late, as if that were not the very proof that he
is tremendously in love '
'With a society woman? — Nathan?' said Florine.
1 Oh ! I don't trouble about a trifle like that.'
' Very well, would you like him to come and tell you
himself that he won't take you home this evening ? '
'If you get him to say that,' answered Florine, * I will
let you come with me, and we can hunt together for
those letters, which I shall believe in when I see them.'
1 Stay here,' said Felix, ' and watch.'
He took his wife's arm and waited within a few steps
of Florine. Before long Nathan, who was walking up
and down the promenade, searching in all directions
for his mask like a dog who has lost its master, returned
to the spot where the mysterious warning had been
spoken. Seeing evident marks of disturbance on Raoul's
brow, Florine planted herself firmly in front of him and
said in a commanding voice —
' You must not leave me ; I have a reason for wanting
you.'
'Marie !' whispered the Countess, by her husband's
instructions, in Raoul's ear. Then she added, ' Who is
that woman ? Leave her immediately, go outside, and
wait for me at the foot of the staircase.'
In this terrible strait, Raoul shook off roughly the arm
of Florine, who was quite unprepared for such violence,
and, though clinging to him forcibly, was obliged to let
go. Nathan at once lost himself in the crowd.
' What did I tell you ? ' cried Felix in the ear of the
stupefied Florine, to whom he offered his arm.
' Come,' she said, ' let us go, whoever you are. Have
you a carriage ? '
Vandenesse's only reply was to hurry Florine out and
A Daughter of Eve 137
hasten to rejoin his wife at a spot agreed upon under the
colonnade. In a few minutes the three dominoes, briskly
conveyed by Vandenesse's coachman, arrived at the
house of the actress, who took off her mask. Mme.
de Vandenesse could not repress a thrill of surprise at
the sight of the actress, boiling with rage, magnificent
in her wrath and jealousy.
'There is,' said Vandenesse, 'a certuin writing-case,
the key of which has never been in your hands ; the
letters must be in it.'
' You have me there ; you know something, at any
rate, which has been bothering me for some days,' said
Florine, dashing into the study to fetch the writing-case.
Vandenesse saw his wife grow pale under her mask.
Florine's room told more of Nathan's intimacy with the
actress than was altogether pleasant for a romantic lady-
love. A woman's eye is quick to seize the truth in such
matters, and the Countess read in the promiscuous
household arrangements a confirmation of what Vande-
nesse had told her.
Florine returned with the case.
' How shall we open it ? ' she said.
Then she sent for a large kitchen knife, and when her
maid brought it, brandished it with a mocking air,
exclaiming —
'This is the way to cut off the pretty dears' heads ! '*
The Countess shuddered. She realised now, even
more than her husband's words had enabled her to do
the evening before, the depths from which she had so
narrowly escaped.
' What a fool I am ! ' cried Florine. ' His razor
would be better.'
She went to fetch the razor, which had just served
Nathan for shaving, and cut the edges of the morocco.
1 In the French, ' poulets,' which means 'love-letters' as well as
' chickens.'
138 A Daughter of Eve
They fell apart, and Marie's letters appeared. Florine
took up one at random.
4 Sure enough, this is some fine lady's work ! Only
see how she can spell ! '
Vandenesse took the letters and handed them to his
wife, who carried them to a table in order to see if they
were all there.
1 Will you give them up for this ? ' said Vandenesse,
holding out to Florine the bill for forty thousand
francs.
c What a donkey he is to sign such things ! . . . " Bond
for bills," ' cried Florine, reading the document. 'Ah!
yes, you shall have your fill of Countesses ! And
I, who worked myself to death, body and soul, raising
money in the provinces for him — I, who slaved like
a broker to save him ! That 's a man all over ; go
to the devil for him, and he '11 trample you under foot !
I shall have it out with him for this.'
Mme. de Vandenesse had fled with the letters.
4 Hi, there ! pretty domino ! leave me one, if you
please, just to throw in his face.'
'That is impossible now,' said Vandenesse.
* And why, pray ? '
' The other domino is your late rival.'
' You don't say so ! Well, she might have said
" Thank-you ! " ' cried Florine.
£ And what then do you call the forty thousand
francs ? ' said Vandenesse, with a polite bow.
It very seldom happens that a young fellow who has
once attempted suicide cares to taste for a second time
its discomforts. When suicide does not cure a man
of life altogether, it cures him of a self-sought death.
Thus Raoul no longer thought of making away with
himself even after Florine's possession of Schmucke's
guarantee — plainly through the intervention of Van-
denesse — had reduced him to a still worse plight than
that from which he had tried to escape. He made
A Daughter of Eve 139
an attempt to see the Countess again in order to
explain to her the nature of the love which burned
brighter than ever in his breast. But the first time they
met in society, the Countess fixed Raoul with that stony,
scornful glance which makes an impassable barrier
between a man and a woman. With all his audacity,
Nathan made no further attempt during the winter to
approach or address the Countess.
He unburdened his soul, however, to Blondet, dis-
coursing to him of Laura and Beatrice, whenever the
name of Mme. de Vandenesse occurred. He paraphrased
that beautiful passage of one of the greatest poets of his
day — c Dream of the soul, blue flower with golden heart,
whose spreading roots, finer a thousandfold than fairies'
silken tresses, pierce to the inmost being and draw their
life from all that is purest there : flower sweet and
bitter ! To uproot thee is to draw the heart's blood,
oozing in ruddy drops from thy broken stem ! Ah !
cursed flower, how thou hast thriven on my soul ! '
'You're drivelling, old boy,' said Blondet. 'I grant
you there was a pretty enough flower, only it has
nothing to do with the soul ; and instead of crooning like
a blind man before an empty shrine, you had better be
thinking how to get out of this scrape, so as to put
yourself straight with the authorities and settle down.
You are too much of the artist to make a politician.
You have been played on by men who are your inferiors.
Go and get yourself played on some other stage.'
'Marie can't prevent my loving her,' said Nathan.
' She shall be my Beatrice.'
4 My dear fellow, Beatrice was a child of twelve,
whom Dante never saw again ; otherwise, would she
have been Beatrice ? If we are to make a divinity of a
woman, we must not see her to-day in a mantle, to-
morrow in a low-necked dress, the day after on the
Boulevards, cheapening toys for her last baby. While
there is Florine handy to play by turns a comedy
140 A Daughter of Eve
duchess, a tragedy middle-class wife, a negress, a
marchioness, a colonel, a Swiss peasant girl, a Peruvian
virgin of the sun (the only virginity she knows much
about), I don't know why one should bother about
society women.'
Du Tillet, by means of a forced sale, compelled the
penniless Nathan to surrender his share in the paper.
The great man received only five votes in the constitu-
ency which elected du Tillet.
When the Comtesse de Vandenesse, after a long and
delightful time of travel in Italy, returned in the follow-
ing winter to Paris, Nathan had exactly carried out the
forecast of Felix. Following Blondet's advice, he was
negotiating with the party in power. His personal
affairs were so embarrassed that, one day in the Champs-
Elysees, the Comtesse Marie saw her ancient adorer
walking in the sorriest plight, with Florine on his arm.
In the eyes of a woman, the man to whom she is in-
different is always more or less ugly; but the man whom
she has ceased to love is a monster, especially if he is of
the type to which Nathan belonged. Mme. de Vande-
nesse felt a pang of shame as she remembered her fancy
for Raoul. Had she not been cured before of any
unlawful passion, the contrast which this man, already
declining in popular estimation, then offered to her
husband, would have sufficed to give the latter pre-
cedence over an angel.
At the present day this ambitious author, of ready pen
but halting character, has at last capitulated and installed
himself in a sinecure like any ordinary being. Having
supported every scheme of disintegration, he now lives in
peace beneath the shade of a ministerial broad-sheet.
The Cross of the Legion of Honour, fruitful text of his
mockery, adorns his buttonhole. Peace at any prlce^
the stock-in-trade of his denunciation as editor of a
revolutionary organ, has now become the theme of his
laudatory articles. The hereditary principle, butt of his
A Daughter of Eve 141
Saint-Simonian oratory, is defended by him to-day in
weighty arguments. This inconsistency has its origin
and explanation in the change of front of certain men
who, in the course of our latest political developments,
have acted as Raoul did.
Jardies, December 1838.
LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES
To George Sand
Tour name, dear George, while casting a
reflected radiance on my book, can gain no new
glory from this page. And yet it is neither self-
interest nor diffidence which has led me to place
it there, but only the wish that it should bear
witness to the solid friendship between us, which
has survived our wanderings and separations, and
triumphed over the busy malice of the world. This
feeling is hardly likely now to change. The goodly
company of friendly names, which will re?nain
attached to my works, forms an element of pleasure
in the midst of the vexation caused by their in-
creasing number. Each fresh book, in fact, gives
rise to fresh annoyance, were it only in the
reproaches aimed at my too prolific pen, as though
it could rival in fertility the world from which
I draw my ?nodels ! Would it not be a fine
thing, George, if the future antiquarian of dead
literatures were to find in this company none but
great names and generous hearts, friends bound by
pure and holy ties, the illustrious figures of the
century ? May I not justly pride myself on this
assured possession, rather than on a popularity
necessarily unstable f For him who knows you
well, it is happiness to be able to sign himself, as
I do here,
Tour friend,
De Balzac.
Paris, June 1840.
Letters of Two Brides 143
FIRST PART
LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE MAUCOMBE
Paris, September.
Sweetheart, I too am free ! And I am the first too,
unless you have written to Blois, at our sweet tryst of
letter-writing.
Raise those great black eyes of yours, fixed on my
opening sentence, and keep this excitement for the
letter which shall tell you of my first love. By the way,
why always * first ' ? Is there, I wonder, a second love ?
Don't go running on like this, you will say, but tell
me rather how you made your escape from the convent
where you were to take your vows. Well, dear, I don't
know about the Carmelites, but the miracle of my own
deliverance was, I can assure you, most humdrum. The
cries of an alarmed conscience triumphed over the
dictates of a stern policy — there's the whole mystery.
The sombre melancholy which seized me after you left
hastened the happy climax, my aunt did not want to
see me die of a decline, and my mother, whose one un-
failing cure for my malady was a novitiate, gave way
before her.
So I am in Paris, thanks to you too, my love ! Dear
Renee, could you have seen me the day I found myself
parted from you, well might you have gloried in the
deep impression you had made on so youthful a bosom.
We had lived so constantly together, sharing our dreams
and letting our fancy roam together, that I verily believe
our souls had become welded together, like those two
Hungarian girls, whose death we heard about from M.
Beauvisage — poor misnamed being ! Never surely was
144 Letters of Two Brides
man better cut out by nature for the post of convent
physician !
Tell me, did you not droop and sicken with your
darling ?
In my gloomy depression, I could do nothing but
count over the ties which bind us. But it seemed as
though distance had loosened them ; I wearied of life,
like a turtle-dove widowed of her mate. Death smiled
sweetly on me, and I was proceeding quietly to die.
To be at Blois, at the Carmelites, consumed by dread of
having to take my vows there, a Mile, de la Valliere,
but without her prelude, and without my Renee ! How
could I not be sick — sick unto death ?
How different it used to be ! That monotonous
existence, where every hour brings its duty, its prayer,
its task, with such desperate regularity that you can tell
what a Carmelite sister is doing in any place, at any hour
of the night or day ; that deadly dull routine, which
crushes out all interest in one's surroundings, had become
for us two a world of life and movement. Imagination
had thrown open her fairy realms, and in these our spirits
ranged at will, each in turn serving as magic steed to
the other, the more alert quickening the drowsy ; the
world from which our bodies were shut out became the
playground of our fancy, which revelled there in
frolicsome adventure. The very Lives of the Saints
helped us to understand what was so carefully left
unsaid ! But the day when I was reft of your sweet
company, I became a true Carmelite, such as they
appeared to us, a modern Danai'd, who, instead of trying
to fill a bottomless barrel, draws every day, from Heaven
knows what deep, an empty pitcher, thinking to find
it full.
My aunt knew nothing of this inner life. How
should she, who has made a paradise for herself within
the two acres of her convent, understand my revolt
against life ? A religious life, if embraced by girls of
Letters of Two Brides 145
our age, demands either an extreme simplicity of soul,
such as we, sweetheart, do not possess, or else an ardour
for self-sacrifice like that which makes my aunt so noble
a character. But she sacrificed herself for a brother to
whom she was devoted; to do the same for an unknown
person or an idea is surely more than can be asked of
mortals.
For the last fortnight I have been gulping down so
many reckless words, burying so many reflections in my
bosom, and accumulating such a store of things to tell,
fit for your ear alone, that I should certainly have been
suffocated but for the resource of letter-writing as a sorry
substitute for our beloved talks. How hungry one's
heart gets ! I am beginning my journal this morning,
and I picture to myself that yours is already started, and
that, in a few days, I shall be at home in your beautiful
Gemenos valley, which I know only through your
descriptions, just as you will live that Paris life, revealed
to you hitherto only in our dreams.
Well, then, sweet child, know that on a certain
morning — a red-letter day in my life — there arrived
from Paris a lady companion and Philippe, the last
remaining of my grandmother's valets, charged to carry
me off. When my aunt summoned me to her room and
told me the news, I could not speak for joy, and only
gazed at her stupidly.
4 My child,' she said, in her guttural voice, C I can see
that you leave me without regret, but this farewell is not
the last ; we shall meet again. God has placed on your
forehead the sign of the elect. You have the pride
which leads to heaven or to hell, but your nature is
too noble to choose the downward path. I know you
better than you know yourself; with you, passion, I can
see, will be very different from what it is with most
women.'
She drew me gently to her and kissed my forehead.
The kiss made my flesh creep, for it burned with that
K
146 Letters of Two Brides
consuming fire which eats away her life, which has turned
to black the azure of her eyes, and softened the lines
about them, has furrowed the warm ivory of her temples,
and cast a sallow tinge over the beautiful face.
Before replying, I kissed her hands.
' Dear aunt,' I said, ' I shall never forget your kind-
ness ; and if it has not made your nunnery all that it
ought to be for my health of body and soul, you may be
sure nothing short of a broken heart will bring me back
again — and that you would not wish for me. You will
not see me here again till my royal lover has deserted
me, and I warn you that if I catch him, death alone shall
tear him from me. I fear no Montespan.'
She smiled and said —
'Go, madcap, and take your idle fancies with you.
There is certainly more of the bold Montespan in you
than of the gentle la Valliere.'
I threw my arms round her. The poor lady could
not refrain from escorting me to the carriage. There
her tender gaze was divided between me and the
armorial bearings.
At Beaugency night overtook me, still sunk in a
stupor of the mind produced by these strange parting
words. What can be awaiting me in this world for
which I have so hungered ?
To begin with, I found no one to receive me ; my
heart had been schooled in vain. My mother was at the
Bois de Bologne, my father at the Council ; my brother,
the Due de Rhetore, never comes in, I am told, till it is
time to dress for dinner. Miss Griffith (she is not unlike
a griffin) and Philippe took me to my rooms.
The suite is the one which belonged to my beloved
grandmother, the Princesse de Vauremont, to whom I
owe some sort of a fortune which no one has ever told
me about. As you read this, you will understand the
sadness which came over me as I entered a place sacred
to so many memories, and found the rooms just as she
Letters of Two Brides 147
had left them ! I was to sleep in the bed where she
died.
Sitting down on the edge of her sofa, I burst into
tears, forgetting I was not alone, and remembering only
how often I had stood there by her knees, the better to
hear her words. There I had gazed upon her face,
buried in its brown laces, and worn as much by age as by
the pangs of approaching death. The room seemed to me
still warm with the heat which she kept up there. How
comes it that Armande-Louise-Marie de Chaulieu must
be like some peasant girl, who sleeps in her mother's
bed the very morrow of her death ? For to me it was
as though the Princess, who died in 18 17, had passed
away but yesterday.
I saw many things in the room which ought to have
been removed. Their presence showed the careless-
ness with which people, busy with affairs of State,
may treat their own, and also ihe little thought which
had been given since her death to this grand old lady,
who will always remain one of the striking figures of the
eighteenth century. Philippe seemed to divine some-
thing of the cause of my tears. He told me that the
furniture of the Princess had been left to me in her will
and that my father had allowed all the larger suites to
remain dismantled, as the Revolution had left them.
On hearing this I rose, and Philippe opened the door
of the small drawing-room which lead? into the reception
rooms.
In these I found all the well-remembered wreckage ;
the panels above the doors, which had contained
valuable pictures, bare of all but empty frames ; broken
marbles, mirrors carried off. In old days I was afraid
to go up the state staircase and cross these vast, deserted
rooms ; so I used to get to the Princess's rooms by a
small staircase which runs under the arch of the larger
one and leads to the secret door of her dressing-room.
My suite, consisting of a drawing-room, bedroom, and
148 Letters of Two Brides
the pretty morning-room in scarlet and gold, of which
I have told you, lies in the wing on the side of the
Invalides. The house is only separated from the boule-
vard by a wall, covered with creepers, and by a splendid
avenue of trees, which mingle their foliage with that of
the young elms on the side-walk of the boulevard. But
for the blue-and-gold dome of the Invalides and its grey
stone mass, you might be in a wood.
The style of decoration in these rooms, together with
their situation, indicates that they were the old show
suite of the duchesses, while the dukes must have had
theirs in the wing opposite. The two suites are
decorously separated by the two main blocks, as well as
by the central one, which contains those vast, gloomy,
resounding halls shown me by Philippe, all despoiled of
their splendour, as in the days of my childhood.
Philippe grew quite confidential when he saw the
surprise depicted on my countenance. For you must
know that in this home of diplomacy the very servants
have a reserved and mysterious air. He went on to tell me
that it was expected a law would soon be passed restoring
to the fugitives of the Revolution the value of their
property, and that my father is waiting to do up his
house till this restitution is made, the king's architect
having estimated the damage at three hundred thousand
livres.
This piece of news flung me back despairing on my
drawing-room sofa. Could it be that my father, instead
of spending this money in arranging a marriage for me,
would have left me to die in the convent ? This was
the first thought to greet me on the threshold of my
home.
Ah ! Renee, what would I have given then to rest my
head upon your shoulder, or to transport myself to the
days when my grandmother made the life of these
rooms ? You two in all the world have been alone in
loving me — you away at Maucombe, and she who
Letters of Two Brides 149
survives only in my heart, the dear old lady, whose still
youthful eyes used to open from sleep at my call. How
well we understood each other !
These memories suddenly changed my mood. What
at first had seemed profanation, now breathed of holy
association. It was sweet to inhale the faint odour of
the powder she loved still lingering in the room ; sweet
to sleep beneath the shelter of those yellow damask
curtains with their white pattern, which must have
retained something of the spirit emanating from her
eyes and breath. 1 told Philippe to rub up the old
furniture and make the rooms look as if they were lived
in ; I explained to him myself howl wanted everything
arranged, and where to put each piece of furniture. In
this way I entered into possession, and showed how an
air of youth might be given to the dear old things.
The bedroom is white in colour, a little dulled with
time, just as the gilding of the fanciful arabesques shows
here and there a patch of red ; but this effect harmonises
well with the faded colours of the Savonnerie tapestry,
which was presented to my grandmother by Louis xv.
along with his portrait. The timepiece was a gift
from the Marechal de Saxe, and the china ornaments on
the mantelpiece came from the Marechal de Richelieu.
My grandmother's portrait, painted at the age of
twenty-five, hangs in an oval frame opposite that of the
King. The Prince, her husband, is conspicuous by his
absence. I like this frank negligence, untinged by
hypocrisy — a characteristic touch which sums up her
charming personality. Once when my grandmother
was seriously ill, her confessor was urgent that the
Prince, who was waiting in the drawing-room, should
be admitted.
c He can come in with the doctor and his drugs,' was
the reply.
The bed has a canopy and well-stuffed back, and the
curtains are looped up with fine wide bands. The furni-
150 Letters of Two Brides
ture is of gilded wood, upholstered in the same yellow
damask with white flowers which drapes the windows,
and which is lined there with a white silk that looks as
though it were watered. The panels over the doors
have been painted, by what artist I can't say, but they
represent one a sunrise, the other a moonlight scene.
The fireplace is a very interesting feature in the
room. It is easy to see that life in the last century
centred largely round the hearth, where great events
were enacted. The copper-gilt grate is a marvel of work-
manship, and the mantelpiece is most delicately finished ;
the fire-irons are beautifully chased ; the bellows are
a perfect gem. The tapestry of the screen comes from
the Gobelins and is exquisitely mounted ; charming
fantastic figures run all over the frame, on the feet,
the supporting bar, and the wings ; the whole thing is
wrought like a fan.
Dearly should I like to know who was the giver of
this dainty work of art, which was such a favourite with
her. How often have I seen the old lady, her feet upon
the bar, reclining in the easy-chair, with her dress half
raised in front, toying with the snuff-box, which lay
upon the ledge between her box of pastilles and her silk
mits. What a coquette she was ! To the day of her
death she took as much pains with her appearance as
though the beautiful portrait had been painted only
yesterday, and she were waiting to receive the throng
of exquisites from the Court ! How the armchair recalls
to me the inimitable sweep of her skirts as she sank back
in it !
These women of a past generation have carried off
with them secrets which are very typical of their age.
The Princess had a certain turn of the head, a way of
dropping her glances and her remarks, a choice of words,
which I look for in vain, even in my mother. There
was subtlety in it all, and there was good-nature ; the
points were made without any affectation. Her talk
Letters of Two Brides 151
was at once lengthy and concise ; she told a good story,
and could put her meaning in three words. Above all,
she was extremely free-thinking, and this has undoubtedly
had its effect on my way of looking at things.
From seven years old till I was ten, I never left her
side ; it pleased her to attract me as much as it pleased
me to go. This preference was the cause of more than
one passage at arms between her and my mother,
and nothing intensifies feeling like the icy breath of
persecution. How charming was her greeting, c Here
you are, little rogue ! ' when curiosity had taught me
how to glide with stealthy snake-like movements to her
room. She felt that I loved her, and this childish affec-
tion was welcome as a ray of sunshine in the winter of
her life.
I don't know what went on in her rooms at night,
but she had many visitors; and when I came on tiptoe in
the morning to see if she were awake, I would find the
drawing-room furniture disarranged, the card-tables set
out, and patches of snuff scattered about.
This drawing-room is furnished in the same style as
the bedroom. The chairs and tables are oddly shaped,
with claw feet and hollow mouldings. Rich garlands
of flowers, beautifully designed and carved, wind over
the mirrors and hang down in festoons. On the
consoles are fine china vases. The ground colours are
scarlet and white. My grandmother was a high-spirited,
striking brunette, as might be inferred from her choice
of colours. I have found in the drawing-room a writing-
table I remember well; the figures on it used to fascinate
me ; it is plaited in graven silver, and was a present from
one of the Genoese Lomellini. Each side of the table
represents the occupations of a different season ; there
are hundreds of figures in each picture, and all in relief.
I remained alone for two hours, while old memories
rose before me, one after another, on this spot, hallowed
by the death of a woman most remarkable even among
152 Letters of Two Brides
the witty and beautiful Court ladies of Louis xv.'s
day.
You know how abruptly I was parted from her, at a
day's notice, in 181 6.
£ Go and bid good-bye to your grandmother,' said my
mother.
The Princess received me as usual, without any display
of feeling, and expressed no surprise at my departure.
' You are going to the convent, dear,' she said, c and
will see your aunt there, who is an excellent woman. I
shall take care, though, that they don't make a victim
of you ; you shall be independent, and able to marry
whom you please.'
Six months later she died. Her will had been given
into the keeping of the Prince de Talleyrand, the most
devoted of all her old friends. He contrived, while
paying a visit to Mile, de Chargeboeuf, to intimate to
me, through her, that my grandmother forbade me to
take the vows. I hope, sooner or later, to meet the
Prince, and then I shall doubtless learn more from him.
Thus, sweetheart, if I have found no one in flesh and
blood to meet me, I have comforted myself with the
shade of the dear Princess, and have prepared myself for
carrying out one of our pledges, which was, as you
know, to keep each other informed of the smallest
details in our homes and occupations. It makes such a
difference to know where and how the life of one we
love is passed ! Send me a faithful picture of the veriest
trifles around you, omitting nothing, not even the
sunset lights among the tall trees.
October 10th.
It was three in the afternoon when I arrived. About
half-past five, Rose came and told me that my mother
had returned, so I went downstairs to pay my respects
to her.
My mother lives in a suite on the ground floor, exactly
Letters of Two Brides 153
corresponding to mine, and in the same block. I am
just over her head, and the same secret staircase serves
for both. My father's rooms are in the block opposite,
but are larger by the whole of the space occupied by the
grand staircase on our side of the building. These
ancestral mansions are so spacious, that my father and
mother continue to occupy the ground-floor rooms, in
spite of the social duties which have once more devolved
on them with the return of the Bourbons, and are even
able to receive in them.
I found my mother, dressed for the evening, in her
drawing-room, where nothing is changed. I came
slowly down the stairs, speculating with every step how
I should be met by this mother who had shown herself
so little of a mother to me, and from whom, during eight
years, I had heard nothing beyond the two letters of
which you know. Judging it unworthy to simulate an
affection I could not possibly feel, I put on the air of a
pious imbecile, and entered the room with many inward
qualms, which however soon disappeared. My mother's
tact was equal to the occasion. She made no pretence
of emotion ; she neither held me at arm's-length nor
hugged me to her bosom like a beloved daughter, but
greeted me as though we had parted the evening before.
Her manner was that of the kindliest and most sincere
friend, as she addressed me like a grown person, first
kissing me on the forehead.
4 My dear little one,' she said, c if you were to die at
the convent, it is much better to live with your family.
You frustrate your father's plans and mine ; but the age
of blind obedience to parents is past. M. de Chaulieu's
intention, and in this I am quite at one with him, is to
lose no opportunity of making your life pleasant and of
letting you see the world. At your age I should have
thought as you do, therefore I am not vexed with you ;
it is impossible you should understand what we expected
from you. You will not find any absurd severity in me ;
154 Letters of Two Brides
and if you have ever thought me heartless, you will soon
find out your mistake. Still, though I wish you to feel
perfectly free, I think that, to begin with, you would do
well to follow the counsels of a mother, who wishes to
be a sister to you.'
I was quite charmed by the Duchess, who talked in a
gentle voice, straightening my convent tippet as she
spoke. At the age of thirty-eight she is still exquisitely
beautiful. She has dark-blue eyes, with silken lashes, a
smooth forehead, and a complexion so pink and white
that you might think she paints. Her bust and shoulders
are marvellous, and her waist is as slender as yours. Her
hand is milk-white and extraordinarily beautiful ; the
nails catch the light in their perfect polish, the thumb is
like ivory, the little finger stands just a little apart from
the rest. And the foot matches the hand ; it is the
Spanish foot of Mile, de Vandenesse. If she is like this
at forty, at sixty she will still be a beautiful woman.
I replied, sweetheart, like a good little girl. I was as
nice to her as she to me, nay, nicer. Her beauty com-
pletely vanquished me ; it seemed only natural that such
a woman should be absorbed in her regal part. I told
her this as simply as though I had been talking to you.
I daresay it was a surprise to her to hear words of affec-
tion from her daughter's mouth, and the unfeigned
homage of my admiration evidently touched her deeply.
Her manner changed and became even more engaging ;
she dropped all formality as she said —
' I am much pleased with you, and I hope we shall
remain good friends.'
The words struck me as charmingly naive, but I did
not let this appear, for I saw at once that the prudent
course was to allow her to believe herself much deeper
and cleverer than her daughter. So I only stared
vacantly and she was delighted. I kissed her hands
repeatedly, telling her how happy it made me to be so
treated and to feel at my ease with her. I even confided
Letters of Two Brides 155
to her my previous tremors. She smiled, put her arm
round my neck, and drawing me towards her, kissed me
on the forehead most affectionately.
c Dear child,' she said, ' we have people coming to
dinner to-day. Perhaps you will agree with me that it
is better for you not to make your first appearance
in society till you have been in the dressmaker's hands ;
so, after you have seen your father and brother, you can
go upstairs again.'
I assented most heartily. My mother's exquisite dress
was the first revelation to me of the world which our
dreams had pictured ; but I did not feel the slightest
desire to rival her.
My father now entered, and the Duchess presented
me to him.
He became all at once most affectionate, and played
the father's part so well, that I could not but believe his
heart to be in it. Taking my two hands in his, and kiss-
ing them, with more of the lover than the father in his
manner, he said —
c So this is my rebel daughter ! '
And he drew me towards him, with his arm passed
tenderly round my waist, while he kissed me on the
cheeks and forehead.
c The pleasure with which we shall watch your suc-
cess in society will atone for the disappointment we felt
at your change of vocation,' he said. Then, turning to
my mother, £ Do you know that she is going to turn
out very pretty, and you will be proud of her some day ?
— Here is your brother, Rhetore. — Alphonse,' he said to
a fine young man who came in, c here is your convent-
bred sister, who threatens to send her nun's frock to the
deuce.'
My brother came up in a leisurely way and took my
hand, which he pressed.
c Come, come, you may kiss her,' said my father.
And he kissed me on both cheeks.
156 Letters of Two Brides
1 1 am delighted to see you,' he said, c and T take your
side against my father.'
I thanked him, but could not help thinking he might
have come to Blois when he was at Orleans visiting our
Marquis brother in his quarters.
Fearing the arrival of strangers, I now withdrew. I
tidied up my rooms, and laid out on the scarlet velvet of
my lovely table all the materials necessary for writing to
you, meditating all the while on my new situation.
This, my fair sweetheart, is a true and veracious
account of the return of a girl of eighteen, after an
absence of nine years, to the bosom of one of the noblest
families in the kingdom. I was tired by the journey as
well as by all the emotions I had been through, so I went
to bed in convent fashion, at eight o'clock, after supper.
They have preserved even a little Saxe service which
the dear Princess used when she had a fancy for taking
her meals alone.
II
THE SAME TO THE SAME
November z$th.
Next day I found my rooms done out and dusted, and
even flowers put in the vases, by old Philippe. I begin
to feel at home. Only it didn't occur to anybody that a
Carmelite schoolgirl has an early appetite, and Rose had
no end of trouble in getting breakfast for me.
' Mile, goes to bed at dinner-time,' she said to me,
1 and gets up when the Duke is just returning home.'
I began to write. About one o'clock my father
knocked at the door of the small drawing-room and
asked if he might come in. I opened the door ; he
came in, and found me writing to you.
l My dear,' he began, 'you will have to get yourself
clothes, and to make these rooms comfortable. In this
Letters of Two Brides 157
purse you will find twelve thousand francs, which is
the yearly income I propose allowing you for your
expenses. You will make arrangements with your
mother as to some governess whom you may like, in case
Miss Griffith doesn't please you, for Mme. de Chaulieu
will not have time to go out with you in the mornings.
A carriage and man-servant shall be at your disposal.'
' Let me keep Philippe,' I said.
'So be it,' he replied. 'But don't be uneasy ; you
have money enough of your own to be no burden either
to your mother or me.'
' May I ask how much I have ? '
' Certainly, my child,' he said. ' Your grandmother
left you five hundred thousand francs ; this was the
amount of her savings, for she would not alienate a foot
of land from the family. This sum has been placed in
Government stock, and, with the accumulated interest,
now brings in about forty thousand francs a year. With
this I had purposed making an independence for your
second brother, and it is here that you have upset my
plans. Later, however, it is possible that you may fall
in with them. It shall rest with yourself, for I have
confidence in your good sense far more than I had
expected.
' I do not need to tell you how a daughter of the
Chaulieus ought to behave. The pride so plainly
written in your features is my best guarantee. Safe-
guards, such as common folk surround their daughters
with, would be an insult in our family. A slander
reflecting on your name might cost the life of the man
bold enough to utter it, or the life of one of your
brothers, if by chance the right should not prevail. No
more on this subject. Good-bye, little one.'
He kissed me on the forehead and went out. I cannot
understand the relinquishment of this plan after nine
years' persistence in it. My father's frankness is what I
like. There is no ambiguity about his words. My
158 Letters of Two Brides
money ought to belong to his Marquis son. Who,
then, has had bowels of mercy ? My mother ? My
father ? Or could it be my brother ?
I remained sitting on my grandmother's sofa, staring
at the purse which my father had left on the mantel-
piece, at once pleased and vexed that I could not with-
draw my mind from the money. It is true, further
speculation was useless. My doubts had been cleared
up and there was something fine in the way my pride
was spared.
Philippe has spent the morning rushing about among
the various shops and workpeople who are to undertake
the task of my metamorphosis. A famous dressmaker,
by name Victorine, has come, as well as a woman for
underclothing, and a shoemaker. I am as impatient as
a child to know what I shall be like when I emerge
from the sack which constituted the conventual uniform;
but all these tradespeople take a long time ; the corset-
maker requires a whole week if my figure is not to be
spoilt. You see, I have a figure, dear ; this becomes
serious. Janssen, the Operatic shoemaker, solemnly
assures me that I have my mother's foot. The whole
morning has gone in these weighty occupations. Even
a glovemaker has come to take the measure of my hand.
The underclothing woman has got my orders.
At the meal which I call dinner, and the others lunch,
my mother told me that we were going together to the
milliner's to see some hats, so that my taste should be
formed, and I might be in a position to order my own.
This burst of independence dazzles me. I am like a
blind man who has just recovered his sight. Now I
begin to understand the vast interval which separates a
Carmelite sister from a girl in society. Of ourselves
we could never have conceived it.
During this lunch my father seemed absent-minded,
and we left him to his thoughts ; he is deep in the
King's confidence, I was entirely forgotten ; but, from
Letters of Two Brides 159
what I have seen, I have no doubt he will remember me
when he has need of me. He is a very attractive man
in spite of his fifty years. His figure is youthful ; he is
well made, fair, and extremely graceful in his move-
ments. He has the diplomatic face, at once dumb and
expressive ; his nose is long and slender, and he has
brown eyes.
What a handsome pair ! Strange thoughts assail me
as it becomes plain to me that these two, so perfectly
matched in birth, wealth, and mental superiority, live
entirely apart, and have nothing in common but their
name. The show of unity is only for the world.
The cream of the Court and diplomatic circles were
here last night. Very soon I am going to a ball given
by the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and I shall be pre-
sented to the society I am so eager to know. A
dancing-master is coming every morning to give me
lessons, for I must be able to dance in a month, or I
can't go to the ball.
Before dinner, my mother came to talk about the
governess with me. I have decided to keep Miss
Griffith, who was recommended by the English am-
bassador. Miss Griffith is the daughter of a clergyman;
her mother was of good family, and she is perfectly well
bred. She is thirty-six, and will teach me English.
The good soul is quite handsome enough to have
ambitions ; she is Scotch — poor and proud — and will
act as my chaperon. She is to sleep in Rose's room.
Rose will be under her orders. I saw at a glance that
my governess would be governed by me. In the six
days we have been together, she has made very sure that
I am the only person likely to take an interest in her ;
while, for my part, I have ascertained that, for all her
statuesque features, she will prove accommodating. She
seems to me a kindly soul, but cautious. I have not
been able to extract a word of what passed between her
and my mother.
160 Letters of Two Brides
Another trifling piece of news ! My father has this
morning refused the appointment as Minister of State
which was offered him. This accounts for his pre-
occupied manner last night. He says he would prefer
an embassy to the worries of public debate. Spain in
especial attracts him.
This news was told me at lunch, the one moment of
the day when my father, mother, and brother see each
other in an easy way. The servants then only come
when they are rung for. The rest of the day my
brother, as well as my father, spends out of the house.
My mother has her toilet to make ; between two and
four she is never visible ; at four o'clock she goes out
for an hour's drive ; when she is not dining out, she
receives from six to seven, and the evening is given to
entertainments of various kinds — theatres, balls, concerts,
at homes. In short, her life is so full, that I don't believe
she ever has a quarter of an hour to herself. She must
spend a considerable time dressing in the morning ; for
at lunch, which takes place between eleven and twelve,
she is exquisite. The meaning of the things that are
said about her is dawning on me. She begins the day
with a bath barely warmed, and a cup of cold coffee with
cream ; then she dresses. She is never, except on some
great emergency, called before nine o'clock. In summer
there are morning rides, and at two o'clock she receives
a young man whom I have never yet contrived to see.
Behold our family life ! We meet at lunch and
dinner, though often I am alone with my mother at this
latter meal, and I foresee that still oftener I shall take it
in my own rooms (following the example of my grand-
mother) with only Miss Griffith for company, for my
mother frequently dines out. I have ceased to wonder
at the indifference my family have shown to me. In
Paris, my dear, it is a miracle of virtue to love the
people who live with you, for you see little enough of
them ; as for the absent — they do not exist !
Letters of Two Brides 161
Knowing as this may sound, I have not yet set foot
in the streets, and am deplorably ignorant. I must wait
till I am less of the country cousin and have brought my
dress and deportment into keeping with the society
I am about to enter, the whirl of which amazes me
even here, where only distant murmurs reach my ear.
So far I have not gone beyond the garden ; but the Italian
opera opens in a few days, and my mother has a box
there. I am crazy with delight at the thought of
hearing Italian music and seeing French acting.
Already I begin to drop convent habits for those of
society. I spend the evening writing to you till the
moment for going to bed arrives. This has been post-
poned to ten o'clock, the hour at which my mother goes
out, if she is not at the theatre. There are twelve
theatres in Paris.
I am grossly ignorant and I read a lot, but quite
indiscriminately, one book leading to another. I find
the names of fresh books on the cover of the one I am
reading ; but as I have no one to direct me, I light on
some which are fearfully dull. What modern literature
I have read all turns upon love, the subject which used
to bulk so largely in our thoughts, because it seemed
that our fate was determined by man and for man.
But how inferior are these authors to two little girls,
known as Sweetheart and Darling — otherwise Renee
and Louise. Ah ! my love, what wretched plots, what
ridiculous situations, and what poverty of sentiment !
Two books, however, have given me wonderful pleasure
— Corinne and Adolphe. Apropos of this, I asked my
father one day whether it would be possible for me to
see Mme. de Stael. My father, mother, and Alphonse
all burst out laughing, and Alphonse said —
' Where in the world has she sprung from ? '
To which my father replied —
' What fools we are ! She springs from the Car-
melites.'
1 62 Letters of Two Brides
1 My child, Mme. de Stael is dead,' said my mother
gently.
When I had finished Adolphe^ I asked Miss Griffith
how a woman could be betrayed.
4 Why, of course, when she loves,' was her reply.
Renee, tell me, do you think we could be betrayed
by a man ?
Miss Griffith has at last discerned that I am not
an utter ignoramus, that I have somewhere a hidden
vein of knowledge, the knowledge we learned from
each other in our random arguments. She sees that
it is only superficial facts of which I am ignorant.
The poor thing has opened her heart to me. Her curt
reply to my question, when I compare it with all the
sorrows I can imagine, makes me feel quite creepy.
Once more she urged me not to be dazzled by the
glitter of society, to be always on my guard, especially
against what most attracted me. This is the sum-
total of her wisdom, and I can get nothing more out of
her. Her lectures, therefore, become a trifle monoto-
nous, and she might be compared in this respect to the
bird which has only one cry.
Ill
THE SAME TO THE SAME
December.
My Darling,— Here I am ready to make my bow
to the world. By way of preparation I have been
trying to commit all the follies I could think of before
sobering down for my entry. This morning, I have
seen myself, after many rehearsals, well and duly
equipped — stays, shoes, curls, dress, ornaments, — all in
order. Following the example of duellists before a
meeting, I tried my arms in the privacy of my chamber.
Letters of Two Brides 163
I wanted to see how I would look, and had no difficulty
in discovering a certain air of victory and triumph,
bound to carry all before it. I mustered all my forces,
in accordance with that splendid maxim of antiquity,
1 Know thyself! ' and boundless was my delight in thus
making my own acquaintance. Griffith was the sole
spectator of this doll's play, in which I was at once
doll and child. You think you know me ? You are
hugely mistaken !
Here is a portrait, then, Renee, of your sister, formerly
disguised as a Carmelite, now brought to life again as a
frivolous society girl. She is one of the greatest beauties
in France — Provence, of course, excepted. I don't see
that I can give a more accurate summary of this interest-
ing topic.
True, I have my weak points ; but were I a man, I
should adore them. They arise from what is most
promising in me. When you have spent a fortnight
admiring the exquisite curves of your mother's arms, and
that mother the Duchesse de Chaulieu, it is impossible,
my dear, not to deplore your own angular elbows.
Yet there is consolation in observing the fineness of the
wrist, and a certain grace of line in those hollows, which
will yet fill out and show plump, round, and well
modelled, under the satiny skin. The somewhat crude
outline of the arms is seen again in the shoulders.
Strictly speaking, indeed, I have no shoulders, but only
two bony blades, standing out in harsh relief. My
figure also lacks pliancy ; there is a stiffness about the
side lines.
Poof! There's the worst out. But then the con-
tours are bold and delicate, the bright, pure flame of
health bites into the vigorous lines, a flood of life and of
blue blood pulses under the transparent skin, and the
fairest daughter of Eve would seem a negress beside me !
I have the foot of a gazelle ! My joints are finely
turned, my features of a Greek correctness. It is true,
164 Letters of Two Brides
madam, that the flesh tints do nut melt into each other ;
but, at least, they stand out clear and bright. In short,
I am a very pretty green fruit, with all the charm of
unripeness. I see a great likeness to the face in my
aunt's old missal, which rises out of a violet lily.
There is no siliy weakness in the blue of my insolent
eyes ; the white is pure mother-of-pearl, prettily marked
with tiny veins, and the thick, long lashes fall like a
silken fringe. My forehead sparkles, and the hair
grows deliciously ; it ripples into waves of pale gold,
growing browner towards the centre, whence escape
little rebel locks, which alone would tell that my fairness
is not of the insipid and hysterical type. I am a tropical
blonde, with plenty of blood in my veins, a blonde more
apt to strike than to turn the cheek. What do you
think the hairdresser proposed ? He wanted, if you
please, to smooth my hair into two bands and place
over my forehead a pearl, kept in place by a gold chain !
He said it would recall the Middle Ages.
I told him I was not aged enough to have reached
the middle, or to need an ornament to freshen me up !
The nose is slender, and the well-cut nostrils are
separated by a sweet little pink partition — an imperious,
mocking nose, with a tip too sensitive ever to grow fat
or red. Sweetheart, if this won't find a husband for a
dowerless maiden, I'm a donkey. The ears are daintily
curled, a pearl hanging from either lobe would show
yellow. The neck is long, and has an undulating
motion full of dignity. In the shade the white ripens to
a golden tinge. Perhaps the mouth is a little large.
But how expressive ! what a colour on the lips ! how
prettily the teeth laugh !
Then, dear, there is a harmony running through all.
What a gait ! what a voice ! We have not forgotten how
our grandmother's skirts fell into place without a touch.
In a word, I am lovely and charming. When the
mood comes, I can laugh one of our good old laughs,
Letters of Two Brides 165
and no one will think the less of me ; the dimples,
impressed by Comedy's light ringers on my fair cheeks,
will command respect. Or I can let my eyes fall
and my heart freeze under my snowy brows. I can
pose as a Madonna with melancholy, swan-like neck,
and the painters' virgins will be nowhere ; my place in
heaven would be far above them. A man would be
forced to chant when he spoke to me.
So, you see, my panoply is complete, and I can run
the whole gamut of coquetry from deepest bass to
shrillest treble. It is a huge advantage not to be all
of one piece. Now, my mother is neither playful nor
virginal. Her only attitude is an imposing one; when
she ceases to be majestic, she is ferocious. It is difncult
for her to heal the wounds she makes, whereas I can
wound and heal together. We are absolutely unlike,
and therefore there could not possibly be rivalry between
us, unless indeed we quarrelled over the greater or less
perfection of our extremities, which are similar. I
take after my father, who is shrewd and subtle. I
have the manner of my grandmother and her charm-
ing voice, which becomes falsetto when forced, but
is a sweet-toned chest voice at the ordinary pitch of a
quiet talk.
I feel as if I had left the convent to-day for the first
time. For society I do not yet exist ; I am unknown
to it. What a ravishing moment ! I still belong only
to myself, like a flower just blown, unseen yet of
mortal eye.
In spite of this, my sweet, as I paced the drawing-
room during my self-inspection, and saw the poor cast-ofF
school-clothes, a queer feeling came over me. Regret
for the past, anxiety about the future, fear of society, a long
farewell to the pale daisies which we used to pick and
strip of their petals in light-hearted innocence, there was
something of all that ; but strange, fantastic visions
also rose, which I crushed back into the inner depths,
1 66 Letters of Two Brides
whence they had sprung, and whither I dared not follow
them.
My Renee, I have a regular trousseau ! It is all
beautifully laid away and perfumed in the cedar-wood
drawers with lacquered front of my charming dressing-
table. There are ribbons, shoes, gloves, all in lavish
abundance. My father has kindly presented me with
the pretty gewgaws a girl loves — a dressing-case, toilet
service, scent-box, fan, sunshade, prayer-book, gold chain,
cashmere shawl. He has also promised to give me
riding lessons. And I can dance ! To-morrow, yes,
to-morrow evening, I come out !
My dress is white muslin, and on my head I wear a
garland of white roses in Greek style. I shall put on
my Madonna face ; I mean to play the simpleton, and
have all the women on my side. My mother is miles
away from any idea of what I write to you. She believes
me quite destitute of mind, and would be dumb-
founded if she read my letter. My brother honours
me with a profound contempt, and is uniformly and
politely indifferent.
He is a handsome young fellow, but melancholy, and
given to moods. I have divined his secret, though
neither the Duke nor Duchess has an inkling of it. In
spite of his youth and his title, he is jealous of his father.
He has no position in the State, no post at Court, he
never has to say, 'I am going to the Chamber.' I alone
in the house have sixteen hours for meditation. My
father is absorbed in public business and his own
amusements ; my mother, too, is never at leisure ; no
member of the household practises self-examination,
they are constantly in company, and have hardly time
to live.
I should immensely like to know what is the potent
charm wielded by society to keep people prisoner from
nine every evening till two or three in the morning, and
force them to be so lavish alike of strength and money.
Letters of Two Brides 167
When I longed for it, I had no idea of the separations it
brought about, or its overmastering spell. But, then, I
forget, it is Paris which does it all.
It is possible, it seems, for members of one family to
live side by side and know absolutely nothing of each
other. A half-fledged nun arrives, and in a couple of
weeks has grasped domestic details, of which the master
diplomatist at the head of the house is quite ignorant.
Or perhaps he does see, and shuts his eyes deliberately,
as part of the father's role. There is a mystery here
which I must plumb.
IV
THE SAME TO THE SAME
December i$th.
Yesterday, at two o'clock, I went to drive in the
Champs-Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne. It was one
of those autumn days which we used to find so beautiful
on the banks of the Loire. So I have seen Paris at last !
The Place Louis xv. is certainly very fine, but the
beauty is that of man's handiwork.
I was dressed to perfection, pensive, with set face
(though inwardly much tempted to laugh), under a
lovely hat, my arms crossed. Would you believe it ?
Not a single smile was thrown at me, not one poor
youth was struck motionless as I passed, not a soul turned
to look again ; and yet the carriage proceeded with a
deliberation worthy of my pose.
No, I am wrong, there was one — a duke, and a
charming man — who suddenly reined in as he went by.
The individual who thus saved appearances for me was
my father, and he proclaimed himself highly gratified
by what he saw. I met my mother also, who sent
1 68 Letters of Two Brides
me a butterfly kiss from the tips of her fingers. The
worthy Griffith, who fears no man, cast her glances
hither and thither without discrimination. In my
judgment, a young woman should always know exactly
what her eye is resting on.
I was mad with rage. One man actually inspected
my carriage without noticing me. This flattering
homage probably came from a carriage-maker. I have
been quite out in the reckoning of my forces. Plainly,
beauty, that rare gift which comes from heaven, is
commoner in Paris than I thought. I saw hats doffed
with deference to simpering fools ; a purple face called
forth murmurs of, ' It is she ! ' My mother received an
immense amount of admiration. There is an answer to
this problem, and I mean to find it.
The men, my dear, seemed to me generally very ugly.
The few exceptions are bad copies of us. Heaven
knows what evil genius has inspired their costume ; it is
amazingly inelegant compared with those of former
generations. It has no distinction, no beauty of colour
or romance ; it appeals neither to the senses, nor the
mind, nor the eye, and it must be very uncomfortable.
It is meagre and stunted. The hat, above all, struck
me ; it is a sort of truncated column, and does not adapt
itself in the least to the shape of the head; but I am told
it is easier to bring about a revolution than to invent a
graceful hat. Courage in Paris recoils before the thought
of appearing in a round felt ; and for lack of one day's
daring, men stick all their lives to this ridiculous
headpiece. And yet Frenchmen are said to be fickle!
The men are hideous any way, whatever they put on
their heads. I have seen nothing but worn, hard faces,
with no calm nor peace in the expression ; the harsh
lines and furrows speak of foiled ambition and smarting
vanity. A fine forehead is rarely seen.
{ And these are the product of Paris ! ' I said to Miss
Griffith.
Letters of Two Brides 169
* Most cultivated and pleasant men,' she replied.
I was silent. The heart of a spinster of thirty-six is
a well of tolerance.
In the evening I went to the ball, where I kept
close to my mother's side. She gave me her arm with a
devotion which did not miss its reward. All the
honours were for her ; I was made the pretext for
charming compliments. She was clever enough to find
me fools for my partners, who one and all expatiated on
the heat and the beauty of the ball, till you might sup-
pose I was freezing and blind. Not one failed to
enlarge on the strange, unheard-of, extraordinary, odd,
remarkable fact — that he saw me for the first time.
My dress, which dazzled me as I paraded alone in my
white-and-gold drawing-room, was barely noticeable
amidst the gorgeous finery of most of the married women.
Each had her band of faithful followers, and they all
watched each other askance. A few were radiant in
triumphant beauty, and amongst these was my mother.
A girl at a ball is a mere dancing machine — a thing of
no consequence whatever.
The men, with rare exceptions, did not impress me
more favourably here than at the Champs- Elysees.
They have a used-up look ; their features are meaning-
less, or rather they have all the same meaning. The
proud, stalwart bearing which we find in the portraits of
our ancestors — men who joined moral to physical vigour
— has disappeared. Yet in this gathering there was one
man of remarkable ability, who stood out from the rest
by the beauty of his face. But even he did not rouse in
me the feeling which I should have expected. I do not
know his works, and he is a man of no family. What-
ever the genius and the merits of a plebeian or a
commoner, he could never stir my blood. Besides,
this man was obviously so much more taken up with
himself than with anybody else, that I could not but
think these great brain-workers must look on us as things
170 Letters of Two Brides
rather than persons. When men of intellectual power
love, they ought to give up writing, otherwise their love
is not the real thing. The lady of their heart does not
come first in all their thoughts. I seemed to read all
this in the bearing of the man I speak of. I am told he
is a professor, orator, and author, whose ambition makes
him the slave of every bigwig.
My mind was made up on the spot. It was unworthy
of me, I determined, to quarrel with society for not
being impressed by my merits, and I gave myself up to the
simple pleasure of dancing, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I heard a great deal of inept gossip about people of
whom I knew nothing ; but perhaps it is my ignorance
on many subjects which prevents me from appreciating
it, as I saw that most men and women took a lively
pleasure in certain remarks, whether falling from their
own lips or those of others. Society bristles with
enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze
of intrigue. Yet I am fairly quick of sight and hearing,
and as to my wits, Mile, de Maucombe does not need to
be told !
I returned home tired with a pleasant sort of tiredness,
and in all innocence began describing my sensations to
my mother, who was with me. She checked me with
the warning that I must never say such things to any
one but her.
c My dear child,' she added, 'it needs as much tact to
know when to be silent as when to speak.'
This advice brought home to me the nature of the
sensations which ought to be concealed from every one,
not excepting perhaps even a mother. At a glance I
measured the vast field of feminine duplicity. I can
assure you, sweetheart, that we, in our unabashed sim-
plicity, would pass for two very wide-awake little
scandal-mongers. What lessons may be conveyed in a
finger on the lips, in a word, a look ! All in a moment
I was seized with excessive shyness. What ! may I
Letters of Two Brides 171
never again speak of the natural pleasure I feel in the
exercise of dancing ? c How then,' I said to myself,
' about the deeper feelings ? '
I went to bed sorrowful, and I still suffer from the
shock produced by this first collision of my frank, joyous
nature with the harsh laws of society. Already the
highway hedges are flecked with my white wool !
Farewell, beloved.
RENEE DE MAUCOMBE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU
October.
How deeply your letter moved me ; above all, when I
compare our widely different destinies ! How brilliant
is the world you are entering, how peaceful the retreat
where I shall end my modest career !
In the Castle of Maucombe, which is so well known
to you by description that I shall say no more of it, I
found my room almost exactly as I left it ; only now I
can enjoy the splendid view it gives of the Gemenos
valley, which my childish eyes used to see without com-
prehending. A fortnight after my arrival, my father
and mother took me, along with my two brothers, to
dine with one of our neighbours, M. de 1'Estorade, an
old gentleman of good family, who has made himself
rich, after the provincial fashion, by scraping and
paring.
M. de 1'Estorade was unable to save his only son from
the clutches of Buonaparte ; after successfully eluding
the conscription, he was forced to send him to the army
in 18 1 3, to join the Emperor's bodyguard. After
Leipsic no more was heard of him. M. de Montriveau,
whom the father interviewed in 18 14, declared that he
172 Letters of Two Brides
had seen him taken by the Russians. Mme. de l'Estorade
died of grief whilst a vain search was being made in
Russia. The Baron, a very pious old man, practised that
fine theological virtue which we used to cultivate at
Blois — Hope ! Hope made him see his son in dreams.
He hoarded his income for him, and guarded carefully
the portion of inheritance which fell to him from the
family of the late Mme. de l'Estorade, no one venturing
to ridicule the old man.
At last it dawned upon me that the unexpected return
of this son was the cause of my own. Who could have
imagined, whilst fancy was leading us a giddy dance,
that my destined husband was slowly travelling on foot
through Russia, Poland, and Germany ? His bad luck
only forsook him at Berlin, where the French Minister
helped his return to his native country. M. de l'Esto-
rade, the father, who is a small landed proprietor in
Provence, v/ith an income of about ten thousand livres,
has not sufficient European fame to interest the world
in the wandering Knight de l'Estorade, whose name
smacks of his adventures.
The accumulated income of twelve thousand livres
from the property of Mme. de l'Estorade, with the
addition of the father's savings, provides the poor guard
of honour with something like two hundred and fifty
thousand livres, not counting house and lands — quite a
considerable fortune in Provence. His worthy father
had bought, on the very eve of the Chevalier's return, a
fine but badly-managed estate, where he designs to plant
ten thousand mulberry-trees, raised in his nursery with
a special view to this acquisition. The Baron, having
found his long-lost son, has now but one thought, to
marry him, and marry him to a girl of good family.
My father and mother entered into their neighbour's
idea with an eye to my interests so soon as they dis-
covered that Renee de Maucombe would be acceptable
without a dowry, and that the money the said Renee
Letters of Two Brides 173
ought to inherit from her parents would be duly acknow-
ledged as hers in the contract. In a similar way, my
younger brother, Jean de Maucombe, as soon as he came
of age, signed a document stating that he had received from
his parents an advance upon the estate equal in amount to
one-third of the whole. This is the device by which the
nobles of Provence elude the infamous Civil Code of M.
de Buonaparte, a code which will drive as many girls of
good family into convents as it will find husbands for.
The French nobility, from the little I have been able to
gather, seem to be much divided on these matters.
The dinner, darling, was a first meeting between your
sweetheart and the exile. The Comte de Maucombe's
servants donned their old laced liveries and hats, the
coachman his great top-boots ; we sat five in the anti-
quated carriage, and arrived in state about two o'clock —
the dinner was for three — at the grange, which is the
dwelling of the Baron de l'Estorade.
My father-in-law to be has, you see, no castle, only a
simple country house, standing beneath one of our hills,
at the entrance of that noble valley, the pride of which
is undoubtedly the Castle of Maucombe. The building
is quite unpretentious : four pebble walls covered with a
yellowish wash, and roofed with hollow tiles of a good
red, constitute the grange. The rafters bend under
the weight of this brick-kiln. The windows, inserted
casually, without any attempt at symmetry, have enor-
mous shutters, painted yellow. The garden in which it
stands is a Provencal garden, enclosed by low walls,
built of big round pebbles set in layers, alternately
sloping or upright, according to the artistic taste of the
mason, which finds here its only outlet. The mud in
which they are set is falling away in places.
Thanks to an iron railing at the entrance facing the
road, this simple farm has a certain air of being a country-
seat. The railing, long sought with tears, is so emaciated
that it recalled Sister Angelique to me. A flight of
174 Letters of Two Brides
stone steps leads to the door, which is protected by a
pent-house roof, such as no peasant on the Loire would
tolerate for his coquettish white stone house, with its
blue roof, glittering in the sun. The garden and surround-
ing walks are horribly dusty, and the trees seem burnt
up. It is easy to see that for years the Baron's life has
been a mere rising up and going to bed again, day after
day, without a thought beyond that of piling up coppers.
He eats the same food as his two servants, a Provencal
lad and the old woman who used to wait on his wife.
The rooms are scantily furnished.
Nevertheless, the house of l'Estorade had done its
best ; the cupboards had been ransacked, and its last man
beaten up for the dinner, which was served to us on old
silver dishes, blackened and battered. The exile, my
darling pet, is like the railing, emaciated ! He is pale
and silent, and bears traces of suffering. At thirty-seven
he might be fifty. The once beautiful ebon locks of
youth are streaked with white like a lark's wing. His
fine blue eyes are cavernous ; he is a little deaf, which
suggests the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.
Spite of all this, I have graciously consented to become
Mme. de l'Estorade and to receive a dowry of two hundred
and fifty thousand livres, but only on the express condi-
tion of being allowed to work my will upon the grange
and make a park there. I have demanded from my
father, in set terms, a grant of water, which can be
brought thither from Maucombe. In a month I shall
be Mme. de l'Estorade ; for, dear, I have made a good
impression. After the snows of Siberia a man is ready
enough to see merit in those black eyes, which, according
to you, used to ripen fruit with a look. Louis de
l'Estorade seems well content to marry the fair Renee
de Maucombe — such is your friend's splendid title.
Whilst you are preparing to reap the joys of that
many-sided existence which awaits a young lady of the
Chaulieu family, and to queen it in Paris, your poor little
Letters of Two Brides 175
sweetheart, Renee, that child of the desert, has fallen from
the empyrean, whither together we had soared, into the
vulgar realities of a life as homely as a daisy's. I have
vowed to myself to comfort this young man, who has
never known youth, but passed straight from his mother's
arms to the embrace of war, and from the joys of his
country home to the frosts and forced labour of Siberia.
Humble country pleasures will enliven the monotony
of my future. It shall be my ambition to enlarge the
oasis round my house, and to give it the lordly shade
of fine trees. My turf, though Provencal, shall be
always green. I shall carry my park up the hillside
and plant on the highest point some pretty kiosque,
whence, perhaps, my eyes may catch the shimmer of
the Mediterranean. Orange and lemon trees, and all
choicest things that grow, shall embellish my retreat ;
and there will I be a mother among my children. The
poetry of Nature, which nothing can destroy, shall
hedge us round ; and standing loyally at the post of
duty, we need fear no danger. My religious feelings
are shared by my father-in-law and by the Chevalier.
Ah ! darling, my life unrolls itself before my eyes
like one of the great highways of France, level and easy,
shaded with evergreen trees. This century will not see
another Buonaparte ; and my children, if I have any,
will not be rent from me. They will be mine to train
and make men of — the joy of my life. If you also are
true to your destiny, you who ought to find your mate
amongst the great ones of the earth, the children of your
Renee will not lack a zealous protectress.
Farewell, then, for me at least, to the romances and
thrilling adventures in which we used ourselves to play
the part of heroine. The whole story of my life lies
before me now ; its great crises will be the teething and
nutrition of the young Masters de l'Estorade, and the
mischief they do to my shrubs and me. To embroider
their caps, to be loved and admired by a sickly man
176 Letters of Two Brides
at the mouth of the Gemenos valley — there are my
pleasures. Perhaps some day the country dame may go
and spend a winter in Marseilles ; but danger does not
haunt the purlieus of a narrow provincial stage. There
will be nothing to fear, not even an admiration such
as could only make a woman proud. We shall take
a great deal of interest in the silkworms for whose
benefit our mulberry-leaves will be sold ! We shall
know the strange vicissitudes of life in Provence, and
the storms that may attack even a peaceful household.
Quarrels will be impossible, for M. de l'Estorade has
formally announced that he will leave the reins in his
wife's hands; and as I shall do nothing to remind him of
this wise resolve, it is likely he may persevere in it.
You, my dear Louise, will supply the romance of my
life. So you must narrate to me in full all your adven-
tures, describe your balls and parties, tell me what you
wear, what flowers crown your lovely golden locks, and
what are the words and manners of the men you meet.
Your other self will be always there — listening, dancing,
feeling her finger-tips pressed — with you. If only I
could have some fun in Paris now and then, while you
played the house-mother at La Crampade ! such is the
name of our grange. Poor M. de l'Estorade, who
fancies he is marrying one woman ! Will he find out
there are two ?
I am writing nonsense now, and as henceforth I can
only be foolish by proxy, I had better stop. One kiss,
then, on each cheek — my lips are still virginal, he has
only dared to take my hand. Oh ! our deference and
propriety are quite disquieting, I assure you. There, I
am off again. . . . Good-bye, dear.
P. S. — I have just opened your third letter. My dear,
I have about one thousand livres to dispose of; spend
them for me on pretty things, such as we can't find
here, nor even at Marseilles. While speeding on your
Letters of Two Brides 177
own business, give a thought to the recluse of La Cram-
pade. Remember that on neither side have the heads
of the family any people of taste in Paris to make their
purchases. I shall reply to your letter later.
VI
DON FELIPE HENAREZ TO DON FERNAND
Paris, September.
The address of this letter, my brother, will show you
that the head of your house is out of reach of danger.
If the massacre of our ancestors in the Court of Lions
made Spaniards and Christians of us against our will, it
left us a legacy of Arab cunning ; and it may be that I
owe my safety to the blood of the Abencerrages still
flowing in my veins.
Fear made Ferdinand's acting so good, that Valdez
actually believed in his protestations. But for me the
poor Admiral would have been done for. Nothing, it
seems, will teach the Liberals what a king is. This
particular Bourbon has been long known to me; and the
more His Majesty assured me of his protection, the
stronger grew my suspicions. A true Spaniard has no
need to repeat a promise. A flow of words is a sure
sign of duplicity.
Valdez took ship on an English vessel. For myself,
no sooner did I see the cause of my beloved Spain
wrecked in Andalusia, than I wrote to the steward of
my Sardinian estate to make arrangements for my
escape. Some hardy coral fishers were despatched to
wait for me at a point on the coast; and when Ferdinand
urged the French to secure my person, I was already in
my barony of Macumer, amidst brigands who defy all
law and all avengers.
M
1 78 Letters of Two Brides
The last Hispano-Moorish family of Granada has
found once more the shelter of an African desert, and
even a Saracen horse, in an estate which comes to it
from Saracens. How the eyes of these brigands — who
but yesterday had dreaded my authority — sparkled with
savage joy and pride when they found they were pro-
tecting against the King of Spain's vendetta the Due
de Soria, their master and a Henarez — the first who
had come to visit them since the time when the island
belonged to the Moors. More than a score of rifles
were ready to point at Ferdinand of Bourbon, son of a
race which was still unknown when the Abencerrages
arrived as conquerors on the banks of the Loire.
My idea had been to live on the income of these
huge estates, which, unfortunately, we have so greatly
neglected ; but my stay there convinced me that this
was impossible, and that Queverdo's reports were only
too correct. The poor man had twenty-two lives at my
disposal, and not a single real ; prairies of twenty thou-
sand acres, and not a house ; virgin forests, and not a
stick of furniture ! A million piastres and a resident
master for half a century would be necessary to make
these magnificent lands pay. I must see to this.
The conquered have time during their flight to
ponder their own case and that of their vanquished
party. At the spectacle of my noble country, a corpse
for monks to prey on, my eyes filled with tears ; I read
in it the presage of Spain's gloomy future.
At Marseilles I heard of Riego's end. Painfully did
it come home to me that my life also would henceforth
be a martyrdom, but a martyrdom protracted and un-
noticed. Is existence worthy the name, when a man
can no longer die for his country or live for a woman ?
To love, to conquer, this twofold form of the same
thought, is the law graven on our sabres, emblazoned on
the vaulted roofs of our palaces, ceaselessly whispered by
the water, which rises and falls in our marble fountains.
Letters of Two Brides 179
But in vain does it nerve my heart ; the sabre is broken,
the palace in ashes, the living spring sucked up by the
barren sand.
Here, then, is my last will and testament.
Don Fernand, you will understand now why I put a
check upon your ardour and ordered you to remain
faithful to the rey netto. As your brother and friend, I
implore you to obey me ; as your master, I command.
You will go to the King and will ask from him the
grant of my dignities and property, my office and titles.
He will perhaps hesitate, and may treat you to some
regal scowls ; but you must tell him that you are loved by
Marie Heredia, and that Marie can marry none but a
Due de Soria. This will make the King radiant. It is
the immense fortune of the Heredia family which alone
has stood between him and the accomplishment of my
ruin. Your proposal will seem to him, therefore, to
deprive me of a last resource, and he will gladly hand
over to you my spoils.
You will then marry Marie. The secret of the
mutual love against which you fought was no secret to
me, and I have prepared the old Count to see you take
my place. Marie and I were merely doing what was
expected of us in our position and carrying out the
wishes of our fathers ; everything else is in your favour.
You are beautiful as a child of love, and are possessed of
Marie's heart. I am an ill-favoured Spanish grandee,
for whom she feels an aversion to which she will not
confess. Some slight reluctance there may be on the
part of the noble Spanish girl on account of my misfor-
tunes, but this you will soon overcome.
Due de Soria, your predecessor would neither cost
you a regret nor rob you of a maravedi. My mother's
diamonds, which will suffice to make me independent, I
will keep, because the gap caused by them in the family
estate can be filled by Marie's jewels. You can send
them, therefore, by my nurse, old Urraca, the only one
180 Letters of Two Brides
of my servants whom I wish to retain. No one can
prepare my chocolate as she does.
During our brief revolution, my life of unremitting
toil was reduced to the barest necessaries, and these my
salary was sufficient to provide. You will therefore
find the income of the two last years in the hands of
your steward. This sum is mine ; but a Due de Soria
cannot marry without a large expenditure of money,
therefore we will divide it. You will not refuse this
wedding-present from your brigand brother. Besides,
I mean to have it so.
The barony of Macumer, not being Spanish territory,
remains to me. Thus I have still a country and a name,
should I wish to take up a position in the world again.
Thank Heaven, this finishes our business, and the
house of Soria is saved !
At the very moment when I drop into simple Baron
de Macumer, the French cannon announce the arrival of
the Due d'Angouleme. You will understand why I
break off. . . .
October.
When I arrived here I had not ten doubloons in my
pocket. He would indeed be a poor sort of leader who,
in the midst of calamities he has not been able to avert,
has found means to feather his own nest. For the
vanquished Moor there remains a horse and the desert ;
for the Christian foiled of his hopes, the cloister and a
few gold pieces.
But my present resignation is mere weariness. I am
not yet so near the monastery as to have abandoned all
thoughts of life. Ozalga had given me several letters of
introduction to meet all emergencies, amongst these one to
a bookseller, who takes with our fellow countrymen the
place which Galignani holds with the English in Paris.
This man has found eight pupils for me at three francs
a lesson. I go to my pupils every alternate day, so tihat
Letters of Two Brides 181
I have four lessons a day and earn twelve francs, which
is much more than I require. When Urraca comes I
shall make some Spanish exile happy by passing on to
him my connection.
I lodge in the Rue Hillerin-Bertin with a poor widow,
who takes boarders. My room faces south and looks
out on a little garden. It is perfectly quiet ; I have
green trees to look upon, and spend the sum of one
piastre a day. I am amazed at the amount of calm,
pure pleasure which I enjoy in this life, after the fashion
of Dionysius at Corinth. From sunrise until ten o'clock
I smoke and take my chocolate, sitting at my window
and contemplating two Spanish plants, a broom which
rises out of a clump of jessamine — gold on a white
ground, colours which must send a thrill through any
scion of the Moors. At ten o'clock I start for my
lessons, which last till four, when I return for dinner.
Afterwards I read and smoke till I go to bed.
I can put up for a long time with a life like this, com-
pounded of work and meditation, of solitude and society.
Be happy, therefore, Fernand ; my abdication has
brought no afterthoughts ; I have no regrets like
Charles v., no longing to try the game again like
Napoleon. Five days and nights have passed since I
wrote my will ; to my mind they might have been five
centuries. Honour, titles, wealth, are for me as though
they had never existed.
Now that the conventional barrier of respect which
hedged me round has fallen, I can open my heart to you,
dear boy. Though cased in the armour of gravity, this
heart is full of tenderness and devotion, which have
found no object, and which no woman has divined, not
even she who, from her cradle, has been my destined
bride. In this lies the secret of my political enthusiasm.
Spain has taken the place of a mistress and received the
homage of my heart. And now Spain, too, is gone !
Beggared of all, I can gaze upon the ruin of what
1 82 Letters of Two Brides
once was me and speculate over the mysteries of my
being.
Why did life animate this carcase, and when will it
depart ? Why has that race, pre-eminent in chivalry,
breathed all its primitive virtues — its tropical love, its
fiery poetry — into this its last offshoot, if the seed was
never to burst its rugged shell, if no stem was to spring
forth, no radiant flower scatter aloft its Eastern per-
fumes ? Of what crime have I been guilty before my
birth that I can inspire no love ? Did fate from my
very infancy decree that I should be stranded, a useless
hulk, on some barren shore r I find in my soul the
image of the deserts where my fathers ranged, illumined
by a scorching sun which shrivels up all life. Proud
remnant of a fallen race, vain force, love run to waste,
an old man in the prime of youth, here better than else-
where shall I await the last grace of death. Alas !
under this murky sky no spark will kindle these ashes
again to flame. Thus my last words may be those of
Christ, My God^ Thou hast forsaken me! Cry of agony
and terror, to the core of which no mortal has ventured
yet to penetrate !
You can realise now, Fernand, what a joy it is to me
to live afresh in you and Marie. I shall watch you
henceforth with the pride of a creator satisfied in his
work. Love each other well and go on loving if you
would not give me pain ; any discord between you
would hurt me more than it would yourselves.
Our mother had a presentiment that events would
one day serve her wishes. It may be that the longing
of a mother constitutes a pact between herself and God.
Was she not, moreover, one of those mysterious beings
who can hold converse with Heaven and bring back
thence a vision of the future ? How often have I not
read in the lines of her forehead that she was coveting
for Fernand the honours and the wealth of Felipe !
When I said so to her, she would reply with tears,
Letters of Two Brides 183
laying bare the wounds of a heart, which of right was
the undivided property of both her sons, but which an
irresistible passion gave to you alone.
Her spirit, therefore, will hover joyfully above your
heads as you bow them at the altar. My mother,
have you not a caress for your Felipe now that he has
yielded to your favourite even the girl whom you regret-
fully thrust into his arms ? What I have done is pleas-
ing to our womankind, to the dead, and to the King ;
it is the will of God. Make no difficulty then, Fernand ;
obey, and be silent.
P.S. — Tell Urraca to be sure and call me nothing
but M. Henarez. Don't say a word about me to Marie.
You must be the one living soul to know the secrets of
the last Christianised Moor, in whose veins runs the
blood of a great family, which took its rise in the desert
and is now about to die out in the person of a solitary
exile.
Farewell.
VII
LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE MAUCOMBE
What ! To be married so soon ! But this is unheard
of. At the end of a month you become engaged to a
man who is a stranger to you, and about whom you
know nothing. The man may be deaf — there are so
many kinds of deafness ! — he may be sickly, tiresome,
insufferable !
Don't you see, Renee, what they want with you ?
You are needful for carrying on the glorious stock of the
l'Estorades, that is all. You will be buried in the pro-
vinces. Are these the promises we made each other ?
184 Letters of Two Brides
Were I you, I would sooner set off to the Hyeres islands
in a caique, on the chance of being captured by an
Algerian corsair and sold to the Grand Turk. Then I
should be a Sultana some day, and wouldn't I make a
stir in the harem while I was young — yes, and after-
wards too !
You are leaving one convent to enter another. I
know you ; you are a coward, and you will submit to
the yoke of family life with a lamb-like docility. But I
am here to direct you ; you must come to Paris. There
we shall drive the men wild and hold a court like queens.
Your husband, sweetheart, in three years from now may
become a member of the Chamber. I know all about
members now, and I will explain it to you. You will
work that machine very well ; you can live in Paris,
and become there what my mother calls a woman of
fashion. Oh ! you needn't suppose I will leave you in
your grange !
Monday.
For a whole fortnight now, my dear, I have been
living the life of society : one evening at the Italiens,
another at the Grand Opera, and always a ball after-
wards. Ah ! society is a witching world. The music
of the Opera enchants me ; and whilst my soul is plunged
in divine pleasure, I am the centre of admiration and the
focus of all the opera-glasses. But a single glance will
make the boldest youth drop his eyes.
I have seen some charming young men there ; all the
same, I don't care for any of them ; not one has roused
in me the emotion which I feel when I listen to Garcia
in his splendid duet with Pellegrini in Otello. Heavens !
how jealous Rossini must have been to express jealousy
so well ! What a cry in ' II mio cor si divide ' ! I 'm
speaking Greek to you, for you never heard Garcia, but
then you know how jealous I am !
What a wretched dramatist Shakespeare is ! Othello
is in love with glory ; he wins battles, he gives orders,
Letters of Two Brides 185
he struts about and is all over the place while Desdemona
sits at home ; and Desdemona, who sees herself neglected
for the silly fuss of public life, is quite meek all the time.
Such a sheep deserves to be slaughtered. Let the man
whom I deign to love beware how he thinks of anything
but loving me !
For my part, I like those long trials of the old-fashioned
chivalry. That lout of a young lord, who took offence
because his sovereign lady sent him down among the
lions to fetch her glove, was, in my opinion, very im-
pertinent, and a fool too. Doubtless the lady had in
reserve for him some exquisite flower of love, which he
lost, as he well deserved — the puppy !
But here am I running on as though I had not a great
piece of news to tell you ! My father is certainly going
to represent our master the King at Madrid. I say our
master, for I shall make part of the embassy. My mother
wishes to remain here, and my father will take me so as
to have some woman with him.
My dear, this seems to you, no doubt, very simple, but
there are horrors behind it, all the same : in a fortnight
I have probed the secrets of the house. My mother
would accompany my father to Madrid if he would take
M. de Canalis as a secretary to the embassy. But the
King appoints the secretaries ; the Duke dare neither
annoy the King, who hates to be opposed, nor vex my
mother ; and the wily diplomat believes he has cut the
knot by leaving the Duchess here. M. de Canalis, who
is the great poet of the day, is the young man who culti-
vates my mother's society, and who no doubt studies
diplomacy with her from three o'clock to five. Diplo-
macy must be a fine subject, for he is as regular as a
gambler on the Stock Exchange.
The Due de Rhetore, our elder brother, solemn, cold,
and whimsical, would be extinguished by his father at
Madrid, therefore he remains in Paris. Miss Griffith
has found out also that Alphonse is in love with a ballet-
1 86 Letters of Two Brides
girl at the Opera. How is it possible to fall in love with
legs and pirouettes ? We have noticed that my brother
comes to the theatre only when Tullia dances there ; he
applauds the steps of this creature, and then goes out.
Two ballet-girls in a family are, I fancy, more destruc-
tive than the plague. My second brother is with his
regiment, and I have not yet seen him. Thus it comes
about that I have to act as the Antigone of His Majesty's
ambassador. Perhaps I may get married in Spain, and
perhaps my father's idea is a marriage there without
dowry, after the pattern of yours with this broken-down
guard of honour. My father asked if I would go with
him, and offered me the use of his Spanish master.
* Spain, the country for castles in the air ! ' I
cried. c Perhaps you hope it may mean marriages
for me ! '
For sole reply he honoured me with a meaning look.
For some days he has amused himself with teasing me
at lunch ; he watches me, and I dissemble. In this way
I have played with him cruelly as father and ambassador
in petto. Hadn't he taken me for a fool ? He asked
what I thought of this and that young man, and of some
girls whom I had met in several houses. I replied with
quite inane remarks on the colour of their hair, their
faces, and the difference in their figures. My father
seemed disappointed at my crassness, and inwardly
blamed himself for having asked me.
c Still, father,' I added, ' don't suppose I am saying
what I really think : mother made me afraid the other
day that I had spoken more frankly than I ought of my
impressions.'
' With your family you can speak quite freely,' my
mother replied.
c Very well, then,' I went on. c The young men I
have met so far strike me as too self-centred to excite
interest in others ; they are much more taken up with
themselves than with their company. They can't be
Letters of Two Brides 187
accused of lack of candour at any rate. They put on a
certain expression to talk to us, and drop it again in a
moment, apparently satisfied that we don't use our eyes.
The man as he converses is the lover ; silent, he is the
husband. The girls, again, are so artificial that it is
impossible to know what they really are, except from
the way they dance ; their figures and movements alone
are not a sham. But what has alarmed me most in
this fashionable society is its brutality. The little
incidents which take place when supper is announced
give one some idea — to compare small things with
great — of what a popular rising might be. Courtesy
is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness. I
imagined society very different. Women count for
little in it ; that may perhaps be a survival of Buona-
partist ideas.
i Armande is coming on extraordinarily,' said my
mother.
' Mother, did you think I should never get beyond
asking to see Mme. de Stael ? '
My father smiled, and rose from the table.
Saturday.
My dear, I have left one thing out. Here is the
titbit I have reserved for you. The love which we
pictured must be extremely well hidden ; I have seen
not a trace of it. True, I have caught in drawing-rooms
now and again a quick exchange of glances, but how
colourless it all is ! Love, as we imagined it, a world of
wonders, of glorious dreams, of charming realities, of
sorrows that waken sympathy, and smiles that make
sunshine, does not exist. The bewitching words, the
constant interchange of happiness, the misery of absence,
the flood of joy at the presence of the beloved one —
where are they ? What soil produces these radiant
flowers of the soul ? Which is wrong ? We or the
world ?
1 88 Letters of Two Brides
I have already seen hundreds of men, young and
middle-aged ; not one has stirred the least feeling in me.
No proof of admiration and devotion on their part, not
even a sword drawn in my behalf, would have moved
me. Love, dear, is the product of such rare conditions
that it is quite possible to live a lifetime without coming
across the being on whom nature has bestowed the power
of making one's happiness. The thought is enough to
make one shudder ; for if this being is found too late,
what then ?
For some days I have begun to tremble when I think
of the destiny of women, and to understand why so many
wear a sad face beneath the flush brought by the un-
natural excitement of social dissipation. Marriage is a
mere matter of chance. Look at yours. A storm of
wild thoughts has passed over my mind. To be loved
every day the same, yet with a difference, to be loved as
much after ten years of happiness as on the first day ! —
such a love demands years. The lover must be allowed
to languish, curiosity must be piqued and satisfied, feel-
ing roused and responded to.
Is there, then, a law for the inner fruits of the heart,
as there is for the visible fruits of nature ? Can joy be
made lasting ? In what proportion should love mingle
tears with its pleasures ? The cold policy of the funereal,
monotonous, persistent routine of the convent seemed to
me at these moments the only real life ; while the wealth,
the splendour, the tears, the delights, the triumph, the
joy, the satisfaction, of a love equal, shared, and sanc-
tioned, appeared a mere idle vision.
I see no room in this city for the gentle ways of
love, for precious walks in shady alleys, the full moon
sparkling on the water, while the suppliant pleads
in vain. Rich, young, and beautiful, I have only to
love, and love would become my sole occupation, my
life ; yet in the three months during which I have come
and gone, eager and curious, nothing has appealed to me
Letters of Two Brides 189
in the bright, covetous, keen eyes around me. No voice
has thrilled me, no glance has made the world seem
brighter.
Music alone has filled my soul, music alone has at all
taken the place of our friendship. Sometimes, at night,
I will linger for an hour by my window, gazing into
the garden, summoning the future, with all it brings,
out of the mystery which shrouds it. There are days too
when, having r started for a drive, I get out and walk in
the Champs Elysees, and picture to myself that the man
who is to waken my slumbering soul is at hand, that
he will follow and look at me. Then I meet only
mountebanks, vendors of gingerbread, jugglers, passers-
by hurrying to their business, or lovers who try to escape
notice. These I am tempted to stop, asking them,
1 You who are happy, tell me what is love.'
But the impulse is repressed, and I return to my
carriage, swearing to die an old maid. Love is un-
doubtedly an incarnation, and how many conditions are
needful before it can take place ! We are not certain
of never quarrelling with ourselves, how much less so
when there are two ? This is a problem which God
alone can solve.
I begin to think that I shall return to the convent.
If I remain in society, I shall do things which will look
like follies, for I cannot possibly reconcile myself to
what I see. I am perpetually wounded either in my
sense of delicacy, my inner principles, or my secret
thoughts.
Ah ! my mother is the happiest of women, adored as
she is by Canalis, her great little man. My love, do
you know I am seized sometimes with a horrible craving
to know what goes on between my mother and that
young man ? Griffith tells me she has gone through
all these moods ; she has longed to fly at women, whose
happiness was written in their face ; she has blackened
their character, torn them to pieces. According to her,
190 Letters of Two Brides
virtue consists in burying all these savage instincts in
one's innermost heart. But what then of the heart ? It
becomes the sink of all that is worst in us.
It is very humiliating that no adorer has yet turned
up for me. I am a marriageable girl, but I have brothers,
a family, relations, who are sensitive on the point of
honour. Ah ! if that is what keeps men back, they are
poltroons.
The part of Chimene in the Cid and that of the Cid
delight me. What a marvellous play ! Well, good-
bye.
VIII
THE SAME TO THE SAME
January.
Our master is a poor refugee, forced to keep in hiding
on account of the part he played in the revolution
which the Due d'Angouleme has just quelled — a triumph
to which we owe some splendid fetes. Though a
Liberal, and doubtless a man of the people, he has
awakened my interest : I fancy that he must have been
condemned to death. I make him talk for the purpose
of getting at his secret ; but he is of a truly Castilian
taciturnity, proud as though he were Gonsalvo di Cordova,
and nevertheless angelic in his patience and gentleness.
His pride is not irritable like Miss Griffith's, it belongs
to his inner nature ; he forces us to civility because his
own manners are so perfect, and holds us at a distance
by the respect he shows us. My father declares that
there is a great deal of the nobleman in Senor Henarez,
whom, among ourselves, he calls in fun Don Henarez.
A few days ago I took the liberty of addressing him
thus. He raised his eyes, which are generally bent on
Letters of Two Brides 191
the ground, and flashed a look from them that quite
abashed me ; my dear, he certainly has the most beauti-
ful eyes imaginable. I asked him if I had offended him
in any way, and he said to me in his grand, rolling
Spanish —
c I am here only to teach you Spanish.'
I blushed, and felt quite snubbed. I was on the
point of making some pert answer, when I remembered
what our dear mother in God used to say to us, and I
replied instead —
'It would be a kindness to tell me if you have any-
thing to complain of.'
A tremor passed through him, the blood rose in his
olive cheeks; he replied in a voice of some emotion —
' Religion must have taught you, better than I can,
to respect the unhappy. Had I been a don in Spain, and
lost everything in the triumph of Ferdinand vu., your
witticism would be unkind ; but if I am only a poor
teacher of languages, is it not a heartless satire ?
Neither is worthy of a young lady of rank.'
I took his hand, saying —
1 In the name of religion also, I beg you to pardon
me.'
He bowed, opened my Don Quixote, and sat down.
This little incident disturbed me more than the
harvest of compliments, gazing, and pretty speeches on
my most successful evening. During the lesson I
watched him attentively, which I could do the more
safely, as he never looks at me.
As the result of my observations, I made out that
the tutor, whom we took to be forty, is a young man,
some years under thirty. My governess, to whom I
had handed him over, remarked on the beauty of his
black hair and of his pearly teeth. As to his eyes, they
are velvet and fire ; but here ends the catalogue of his
good points. Apart from this, he is plain and insignifi-
cant. Though the Spaniards have been described as not
192 Letters of Two Brides
a cleanly people, this man is most carefully got up, and
his hands are whiter than his face. He stoops a little,
and has an extremely large, oddly-shaped head. His
ugliness, which, however, has a dash of piquancy, is
aggravated by smallpox marks, which seam his face.
His forehead is very prominent, and the shaggy eyebrows
meet, giving a repellent air of harshness. There is a
frowning, plaintive look on his face, reminding one of
a sickly child, which owes its life to superhuman care,
as Sister Marthe did. As my father observed, his features
are a shrunken reproduction of those of Cardinal
Ximenes. The natural dignity of our tutor's manners
seems to disconcert the dear Duke, who doesn't like
him, and is never at ease with him : he can't bear to
come in contact with superiority of any kind.
As soon as my father knows enough Spanish, we
start for Madrid. When Henarez returned, two days
after the reproof he had given me, I remarked by way of
showing my gratitude —
C I have no doubt that you left Spain in conse-
quence of political events. If my father is sent there,
as seems to be expected, we shall be in a position to help
you, and might be able to obtain your pardon, in case
you are under sentence.'
c It is impossible for any one to help me,' he
replied.
' But,' I said, c is that because you refuse to accept
any help, or because the thing itself is impossible ?'
1 Both,' he said, with a bow, and in a tone which
forbade continuing the subject.
My father's blood chafed in my veins. I was
offended by this haughty demeanour, and promptly
dropped Senor Henarez.
All the same, my dear, there is something fine in
this rejection of any aid. * He would not accept
even our friendship,' I reflected, whilst conjugating a
verb. Suddenly I stopped short and told him what was
Letters of Two Brides 193
in my mind, but in Spanish. Henarez replied very
politely that equality of sentiment was necessary
between friends, which did not exist in this case, and
therefore it was useless to consider the question.
£ Do you mean equality in the amount of feeling on
either side, or equality in rank ? ' I persisted, determined
to shake him out of his provoking gravity.
He raised once more those awe-inspiring eyes, and
mine fell before them. Dear, this man is a hopeless
enigma. He seemed to ask whether my words meant
love ; and the mixture of joy, pride, and agonised
doubt in his glance went to my heart. It was plain
that advances, which would be taken for what they were
worth in France, might land me in difficulties with a
Spaniard, and I drew back into my shell, feeling not a
little foolish.
The lesson over, he bowed, and his eyes were elo-
quent of the humble prayer : i Don't trifle with a poor
wretch.'
This sudden contrast to his usual grave and dignified
manner made a great impression on me. It seems
horrible to think and to say, but I can't help believing
that there are treasures of affection in that man.
IX
MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MLLE. DE CHAULIEU
December.
All is over, my dear child, and it is Mme. de l'Estorade
who writes to you. But between us there is no change ;
it is only a girl the less.
Don't be troubled ; I did not give my consent reck-
lessly or without much thought. My life is henceforth
mapped out for me, and the freedom from all uncertainty
N
194 Letters of Two Brides
as to the road to follow suits my mind and disposition.
A great moral power has stepped in, and once for all
swept what we call chance out of my life. We have the
property to develop, our home to beautify and adorn j
for me there is also a household to direct and sweeten
and a husband to reconcile to life. In all probability I
shall have a family to look after, children to educate.
What would you have ? Everyday life cannot be
cast in heroic mould. No doubt there seems, at any
rate at first sight, no room left in this scheme of life for
that longing after the infinite which expands the mind
and soul. But what is there to prevent me from
launching on that boundless sea our familiar craft ? Nor
must you suppose that the humble duties to which I
dedicate my life give no scope for passion. To restore
faith in happiness to an unfortunate, who has been the
sport of adverse circumstances, is a noble work, and one
which alone may suffice to relieve the monotony of my
existence. I can see no opening left for suffering, and I
see a great deal of good to be done. I need not hide
from you that the love I have for Louis de l'Estorade is
not of the kind which makes the heart throb at the
sound of a step, and thrills us at the lightest tones of a
voice, or the caress of a burning glance ; but, on the
other hand, there is nothing in him which offends me.
What am I to do, you will ask, with that instinct for
all which is great and noble, with those mental energies,
which have made the link between us and which we still
possess ? I admit that this thought has troubled me.
But are these faculties less ours because we keep them
concealed, using them only in secret for the welfare of
the family, as instruments to produce the happiness of
those confided to our care, to whom we are bound to
give ourselves without reserve? The time during
which a woman can look for admiration is short, it will
soon be past ; and if my life has not been a great one, it
will at least have been calm, tranquil, free from shocks.
Letters of Two Brides 195
Nature has favoured our sex in giving us a choice
between love and motherhood. 1 have made mine.
My children shall be my gods, and this spot of earth my
Eldorado.
I can say no more to-day. Thank you much for
all the things you have sent me. Give a glance at my
needs on the enclosed list. I am determined to live in
an atmosphere of refinement and luxury, and to take
from provincial life only what makes its charm. In
solitude a woman can never be vulgarised — she remains
herself. I count greatly on your kindness for keeping
me up to the fashion. My father-in-law is so delighted
that he can refuse me nothing, and turns his house upside
down. We are getting workpeople from Paris and
renovating everything.
X
MLLE. DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE L'ESTORADE
January.
Oh ! Renee, you have made me miserable for days !
So that bewitching body, those beautiful proud features,
that natural grace of manner, that soul full of priceless
gifts, those eyes, where the soul can slake its thirst as at
a fountain of love, that heart with its exquisite deli-
cacy, that breadth of mind, those rare powers — fruit
of nature and of our interchange of thought — treasures
whence should issue a unique satisfaction for passion
and desire, hours of poetry to outweigh years, joys to
make a man serve a lifetime for one gracious gesture,
all this is to be buried in the tedium of a tame, common-
place marriage, to vanish in the emptiness of an existence
which you will come to loathe ! I hate your children
before they are born. They will be monsters !
$9 6 Letters of Two Brides
So you know all that lies before you ; you have
nothing left to hope, or fear, or suffer ? And supposing
the glorious morning rises which will bring you face to
face with the man destined to rouse you from the sleep
into which you are plunging ! . . . Ah ! a cold shiver
goes through me at the thought !
Well, at least you have a friend. You, it is under-
stood, are to be the guardian angel of your valley. You
will grow familiar with its beauties, will live with it in
all its aspects, till the grandeur of nature, the slow
growth of vegetation, compared with the lightning
rapidity of thought, become like a part of yourself; and
as your eye rests on the laughing flowers, you will
question your own heart. When you walk between
your husband, silent and contented, in front, and your
children screaming and romping behind, I can tell you
beforehand what you will write to me. Your misty
valley, your hills, bare or clothed with magnificent trees,
your meadow, the wonder of Provence, with its fresh
water dispersed in little runlets, the different effects of
the atmosphere, this whole world of infinity which laps
vou round, and which God has made so various, will
recall to you the infinite sameness of your soul's life.
But at least I shall be there, my Renee, and in me you
will find a heart which no social pettiness shall ever
corrupt, a heart all your own.
Monday.
My dear, my Spaniard is quite adorably melan-
choly ; there is something calm, severe, manly, and
mysterious about him which interests me profoundly.
His unvarying solemnity and the silence which envelops
him act like an irritant on the mind. His mute dignity
is worthy of a fallen king. Griffith and I spend our
time over him as though he were a riddle.
How odd it is ! A language master captures my
fancy as no other man has done. Yet by this time I
Letters of Two Brides 197
have passed in review all the young men of family, the
attaches to embassies, and the ambassadors, generals,
and inferior officers, the peers of France, their sons
and nephews, the court, and the town.
The coldness of the man provokes me. The sandy
waste which he tries to place, and does place, between
us is covered by his deep-rooted pride ; he wraps himself
in mystery. The hanging back is on his side, the bold-
ness on mine. This odd situation affords me the more
amusement because the whole thing is mere trifling.
What is a man, a Spaniard, and a teacher of languages
to me ? I make no account of any man whatever, were
he a king. We are worth far more, I am sure, than the
greatest of them. What a slave I would have made of
Napoleon ! If he had loved me, shouldn't he have felt
the whip !
Yesterday I aimed a shaft at M. Henarez which must
have touched him to the quick. He made no reply; the
lesson was over, and he bowed with a glance at me, in
which I read that he would never return. This suits
me capitally ; there would be something ominous in
starting an imitation Nouvelle Heloise. I have just been
reading Rousseau's, and it has left me with a strong
distaste for love. Passion which can argue and moralise
seems to me detestable.
Clarissa also is much too pleased with herself and her
long, little letter ; but Richardson's work is an admirable
picture, my father tells me, of English women. Rous-
seau's seems to me a sort of philosophical sermon, cast
in the form of letters.
Love, as I conceive it, is a purely subjective poem.
In all that books tell us about it, there is nothing which
is not at once false and true. And so, my pretty one, as
you will henceforth be an authority only on conjugal
love, it seems to me my duty — in the interest, of course,
of our common life — to remain unmarried and have a
grand passion, so that we may enlarge our experience.
198 Letters of Two Brides
Tell me every detail of what happens to you, especially
in the first few days, with that strange animal called a
husband. I promise to do the same for you if ever I am
loved.
Farewell, poor martyred darling.
XI
MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MLLE. DE CHAULIEU
La Crampade.
Your Spaniard and you make me shudder, my darling.
I write this line to beg of you to dismiss him. All that
you say of him corresponds with the character of those
dangerous adventurers who, having nothing to lose, will
take any risk. This man cannot be your husband, and
must not be your lover. I will write to you more fully
about the inner history of my married life when my
heart is free from the anxiety your last letter has roused
in it.
XII
MLLE. DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE L'ESTORADE
February.
At nine o'clock this morning, sweetheart, my father was
announced in my rooms. I was up and dressed. I
found him solemnly seated beside the fire in the drawing-
room, looking more thoughtful than usual. He pointed
to the armchair opposite to him. Divining his meaning,
I sank into it with a gravity, which so well aped his,
that he could not refrain from smiling, though the smile
was dashed with melancholy.
Letters of Two Brides 199
4 You are quite a match for your grandmother in
quick-wittedness,' he said.
' Come, father, don't play the courtier here,' I
replied ; c you want something from me.'
He rose, visibly agitated, and talked to me for half
an hour. This conversation, dear, really ought to
be preserved. As soon as he had gone, I sat down to
my table and tried to recall his words. This is the
first time that I have seen my father revealing his inner
thoughts.
He began by flattering me, and he did not do it badly.
I was bound to be grateful to him for having understood
and appreciated me.
'Armande,' he said, C I was quite mistaken in you,
and you have agreeably surprised me. When you
arrived from the convent, I took you for an average
young girl, ignorant and not particularly intelligent,
easily to be bought off" with gewgaws and ornaments,
and with little turn for reflection.'
4 You are complimentary to young girls, father.'
' Oh ! there is no such thing as youth nowadays,'
he said, with the air of a diplomat. ' Your mind is
amazingly open. You take everything at its proper
worth ; your clearsightedness is extraordinary, there is
no hoodwinking you. You pass for being blind, and
all the time you have laid your hand on causes, while
other people are still puzzling over effects. In short,
you are a minister in petticoats, the only person here
capable of understanding me. It follows, then, that if I
have any sacrifice to ask from you, it is only to yourself
I can turn for help in persuading you.
*I am therefore going to explain to you, quite frankly,
my former plans, to which I still adhere. In order to
recommend them to you, I must show that they are
connected with feelings of a very high order, and I shall
thus be obliged to enter into political questions of the
greatest importance to the kingdom, which might be
200 Letters of Two Brides
wearisome to any one less intelligent than you are.
When you have heard me, I hope you will take time for
consideration, six months if necessary. You are entirely
your own mistress; and if you decline to make the
sacrifice I ask, I shall bow to your decision and trouble
you no further.'
This preface, my sweetheart, made me really serious,
and I said —
4 Speak, father.'
Here, then, is the deliverance of the statesman : —
c My child, France is in a very critical position, which
is understood only by the King and by a few superior
minds. But the King is a head without arms ; the great
nobles, who are in the secret of the danger, have no
authority over the men whose co-operation is needful
in order to bring about a happy result. These men,
cast up by popular election, refuse to lend themselves as
instruments. Even the able men among them carry on
the work of pulling down society, instead of helping us
to strengthen the edifice.
4 In a word, there are only two parties — the party of
Marius and the party of Sulla. I am for Sulla against
Marius. This, roughly speaking, is our position. To
go more into details : the Revolution is still active ; it is
imbedded in the law and written on the soil ; it fills
people's minds. The danger is all the greater because
the greater number of the King's counsellors, seeing
it destitute of armed forces and of money, believe it com-
pletely vanquished. The King is an able man, and not
easily blinded ; but from day to day he is won over by
his brother's partisans, who want to hurry things on. He
has not two years to live, and thinks more of a peaceful
deathbed than of anything else.
' Shall I tell you, my child, which is the most destruc-
tive of all the consequences entailed by the Revolution ?
You would never guess. In Louis xvi. the Revolution
has decapitated every head of a family. The family has
Letters of Two Brides 201
ceased to exist ; we have only individuals. In their
desire to become a nation, Frenchmen have abandoned
the idea of empire ; in proclaiming the equal rights of
all children to their father's inheritance, they have killed
family spirit and have created the State treasury. But
all this has paved the way for weakened authority, for
the blind force of the masses, for the decay of art and the
supremacy of individual interests, and has left the road
open to the foreign invader.
4 We stand between two policies — either to found the
State on the basis of the family, or to rest it on individual
interest — in other words, between democracy and aris-
tocracy, between free discussion and obedience, between
Catholicism and religious indifference. I am among the
few who are resolved to oppose what is called the people,
and that in the people's true interest. It is not now a
question of feudal rights, as fools are told, nor of rank ;
it is a question of the State and of the existence of
France. The country which does not rest on the
foundation of paternal authority cannot be stable. That
is the foot of the ladder of responsibility and subordina-
tion, which has for its summit the King.
'The King stands for us all. To die for the King is
to die for oneself, for one's family, which, like the
kingdom, cannot die. All animals have certain instincts ;
the instinct of man is for family life. A country is
strong which consists of wealthy families, every member
of whom is interested in defending a common treasure ;
it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to
whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one,
a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own
plot of land, blind, in their wretched egotism, to the fact
that the day is coming when this too will be torn from
them.
'Terrible calamities are in store for us, in case our
party fails. Nothing will be left but penal or fiscal
laws — your money or your life. The most generous
202 Letters of Two Brides
nation on the earth will have ceased to obey the call of
noble instincts. Wounds past curing will have been
fostered and aggravated, an all-pervading jealousy being
the first. Then the upper classes will be submerged ;
equality of desire will be taken for equality of strength ;
true distinction, even when proved and recognised, will
be threatened by the advancing tide of middle-class pre-
judice. It was possible to choose one man out of a thou-
sand, but, amongst three millions, discrimination becomes
impossible, when all are moved by the same ambitions
and attired in the same livery of mediocrity. No fore-
sight will warn this victorious horde of that other terrible
horde, soon to be arrayed against them in the peasant
proprietors ; in other words, twenty million acres of
land, alive, stirring, arguing, deaf to reason, insatiable
of appetite, obstructing progress, masters in their brute
force '
' But,' said I, interrupting my father, 'what can I do
to help the State ? I feel no vocation for playing Joan
of Arc in the interests of the family or for finding a
martyr's block in the convent.'
'You are a little hussy,' cried my father. 'If I
speak sensibly to you, you are full of jokes ; when I
jest, you talk like an ambassadress.'
' Love lives on contrasts,' was my reply.
And he laughed till the tears stood in his eyes.
' You will reflect on what I have told you ; you will
do justice to the large and confiding spirit in which I
have broached the matter, and possibly events may assist
my plans. I know that, so far as you are concerned,
they are injurious and unfair, and this is the reason why
I appeal for your sanction of them less to your heart and
your imagination than to your reason. I have found
more judgment and common-sense in you than in any
one I know '
' You flatter yourself,' I said, with a smile, ' for I am
every inch your child ! '
Letters of Two Brides 203
' In short,' he went on, ' one must be logical. You
can't have the end without the means, and it is our duty
to set an example to others. From all this I deduce
that you ought not to have money of your own till your
younger brother is provided for, and I want to employ
the whole of your inheritance in purchasing an estate for
him to go with the title.'
'But,' I said, 'you won't interfere with my living in
my own fashion and enjoying life if I leave you my
fortune ? '
4 Provided,' he replied, c that your view of life does
not conflict with the family honour, reputation, and, I
may add, glory.'
' Come, come,' I cried, c what has become of my
excellent judgment ? '
'There is not in all France,' he said with bitterness,
' a man who would take for wife a daughter of one of
our noblest families without a dowry and bestow one on
her. If such a husband could be found, it would be
among the class of rich parvenus ; on this point I belong
to the eleventh century.'
' And I also,' I said. ' But why despair ? Are there
no aged peers ? '
' You are an apt scholar, Louise ! ' he exclaimed.
Then he left me, smiling and kissing my hand.
I received your letter this very morning, and it led me
to contemplate that abyss into which you say that I may
fall. A voice within seemed to utter the same warning.
So I took my precautions. Henarez, my dear, dares to
look at me, and his eyes are disquieting. They inspire
me with what I can only call an unreasoning dread.
Such a man ought no more to be looked at than a frog;
he is ugly and fascinating.
For two days I have been hesitating whether to tell
my father point-blank that I want no more Spanish
lessons and have Henarez sent about his business. But
in spite of all my brave resolutions, I feel that the
204 Letters of Two Brides
horrible sensation which comes over me when I see that
man has become necessary to me. I say to myself,
' Once more, and then I will speak.'
His voice, my dear, is sweetly thrilling ; his speaking
is just like la Fodor's singing. His manners are simple,
entirely free from affectation. And what teeth !
Just now, as he was leaving, he seemed to divine the
interest I take in him, and made a gesture — oh ! most
respectfully — as though to take my hand and kiss it ;
then checked himself, apparently terrified at his own
boldness and the chasm he had been on the point of
bridging. There was the merest suggestion of all this,
but I understood it and smiled, for nothing is more
pathetic than to see the frank impulse of an inferior
checking itself abashed. The love of a plebeian for a
girl of noble birth implies such courage !
My smile emboldened him. The poor fellow looked
blindly about for his hat ; he seemed determined not to
find it, and I handed it to him with perfect gravity.
His eyes were wet with unshed tears. It was a mere
passing moment, yet a world of facts and ideas were con-
tained in it. We understood each other so well that, on
a sudden, I held out my hand for him to kiss.
Possibly this was equivalent to telling him that love
might bridge the interval between us. Well, I cannot
tell what moved me to do it. Griffith had her back
turned as I proudly extended my little white paw. I
felt the fire of his lips, tempered by two big tears. Oh !
my love, I lay in my armchair, nerveless, dreamy. I
was happy, and I cannot explain to you how or why.
What I felt only a poet could express. My condescen-
sion, which fills me with shame now, seemed to me
then something to be proud of; he had fascinated me,
that is my one excuse.
Friday.
This man is really very handsome. He talks admir-
Letters of Two Brides 205
ably, and has remarkable intellectual power. My dear,
he is a very Bossuet in force and persuasiveness when he
explains the mechanism, not only of the Spanish tongue,
but also of human thought and of all language. His
mother tongue seems to be French. When I expressed
surprise at this, he replied that he came to France
when quite a boy, following the King of Spain to
Valencay.
What has passed within this enigmatic being ? He
is no longer the same man. He came, dressed quite
simply, but just as any gentleman would be for a morn-
ing walk. He put forth all his eloquence, and flashed
wit, like rays from a beacon, all through the lesson.
Like a man roused from lethargy, he revealed to me a
new world of thoughts. He told me the story of some
poor devil of a valet who gave up his life for a single
glance from a queen of Spain.
1 What could he do but die ? ' I exclaimed.
This delighted him, and he looked at me in a way
which was truly alarming.
In the evening I went to a ball at the Duchesse de
Lenoncourt's. The Prince de Talleyrand happened to
be there ; and I got M. de Vandenesse, a charming young
man, to ask him whether, among the guests at his
country-place in 1809, he remembered any one of the
name of Henarez. Vandenesse reported the Prince's
reply, word for word, as follows : —
'Henarez is the Moorish name of the Soria family,
who are, they say, descendants of the Abencerrages,
converted to Christianity. The old Duke and his two
sons were with the King. The eldest, the present Due
de Soria, has just had all his property, titles, and dignities
confiscated by King Ferdinand, who in this way avenges
a long-standing feud. The Duke made a huge mistake
in consenting to form a constitutional ministry with
Valdez. Happily, he escaped from Cadiz before the
arrival of the Due d'Angouleme, who, with the best
206 Letters of Two Brides
will in the world, could not have saved him from the
King's wrath.'
This information gave me much food for reflection.
I cannot describe to you the suspense in which I passed
the time till my next lesson, which took place this
morning.
During the first quarter of an hour I examined him
closely, debating inwardly whether he were duke or
commoner, without being able to come to any conclu-
sion. He seemed to read my fancies as they arose and
to take pleasure in thwarting them. At last I could
endure it no longer. Putting down my book suddenly,
I broke off the translation I was making of it aloud, and
said to him in Spanish —
1 You are deceiving us. You are no poor middle-
class Liberal. You are the Due de Soria ! '
'Mademoiselle,' he replied, with a gesture of sorrow,
' unhappily, I am not the Due de Soria.'
I felt all the despair with which he uttered the word
1 unhappily.' Ah ! my dear, never should I have con-
ceived it possible to throw so much meaning and passion
into a single word. His eyes had dropped, and he dared
no longer look at me.
1 M. de Talleyrand,' I said, ' in whose house you spent
your years of exile, declares that any one bearing the
name of Henarez must be either the late Due de Soria
or a lacquey.'
He looked at me with eyes like two black burning
coals, at once blazing and ashamed. The man might
have been in the torture-chamber. All he said was —
' My father was in truth a servant of the King of
Spain.'
Griffith could make nothing of this sort of lesson.
An awkward silence followed each question and answer.
4 In one word,' I said, c are you a nobleman or not ? '
* You know that in Spain even beggars are noble.'
This reticence provoked me. Since the last lesson I
Letters of Two Brides 207
had given play to my imagination in a little practical
joke. I had drawn an ideal portrait of the man whom I
should wish for my lover in a letter which I designed
giving to him to translate. So far, I had only put Spanish
into French, not French into Spanish ; I pointed this
out to him, and begged Griffith to bring me the last
letter I had received from a friend of mine.
4 1 shall find out,' I thought, ' from the effect my
sketch has on him, what sort of blood runs in his veins.'
I took the paper from Griffith's hands, saying —
' Let me see if I have copied it rightly.'
For it was all in my writing. I handed him the
paper, or, if you will, the snare, and I watched him while
he read as follows —
' He who is to win my heart, my dear, must be harsh
and unbending with men, but gentle with women. His
eagle eye must have power to quell with a single glance
the least approach to ridicule. He will have a pitying
smile for those who would jeer at sacred things, above
all, at that poetry of the heart, without which life would
be but a dreary commonplace. I have the greatest
scorn for those who would rob us of the living fountain
of religious beliefs, so rich in solace. His faith, there-
fore, should have the simplicity of a child, though united
to the firm conviction of an intelligent man, who has
examined the foundations of his creed. His fresh and
original way of looking at things must be entirely free
from affectation or desire to show off. His words will
be few and fit, and his mind so richly stored, that he
cannot possibly become a bore to himself any more than
to others.
4 All his thoughts must have a high and chivalrous
character, without alloy of self-seeking ; while his
actions should be marked by a total absence of interested
or sordid motives. Any weak points he may have will
arise from the very elevation of his views above those of
208 Letters of Two Brides
the common herd, for in every respect I would have
him superior to his age. Ever mindful of the delicate
attentions due to the weak, he will be gentle to all
women, but not prone lightly to fall in love with any j
for love will seem to him too serious to turn into a
game.
4 Thus it might happen that he would spend his life
in ignorance of true love, while all the time possessing
those qualities most fitted to inspire it. But if ever he
find the ideal woman who has haunted his waking
dreams, if he meet with a nature capable of understand-
ing his own, one who could fill his soul and pour sun-
shine over his life, could shine as a star through the
mists of this chill and gloomy world, lend fresh charm to
existence, and draw music from the hitherto silent
chords of his being — needless to say, he would recognise
and welcome his good fortune.
' And she, too, would be happy. Never, by word or
look, would he wound the tender heart which abandoned
itself to him, with the blind trust of a child reposing in
its mother's arms. For were the vision shattered, it
would be the wreck of her inner life. To the mighty
waters of love she would confide her all !
' The man I picture must belong, in expression, in
attitude, in gait, in his way of performing alike the
smallest and the greatest actions, to that race of the
truly great who are always simple and natural. He
need not be good-looking, but his hands must be
beautiful. His upper lip will curl with a careless, ironic
smile for the general public, whilst he reserves for those
he loves the heavenly, radiant glance in which he puts
his soul.'
' Will mademoiselle allow me,' he said in Spanish, in
a voice full of agitation, * to keep this writing in memory
of her ? This is the last lesson I shall have the honour
of giving her, and that which I have just received in
Letters of Two Brides 209
these words may serve me for an abiding rule of life. I
left Spain, a fugitive and penniless, but I have to-day
received from my family a sum sufficient for my needs.
You will allow me to send some poor Spaniard in my
place.'
In other words, he seemed to me to say, ' This little
game must stop.' He rose with an air of marvellous
dignity, and left me quite upset by such unheard-of
delicacy in a man of his class. He went downstairs
and asked to speak with my father.
At dinner my father said to me with a smile —
c Louise, you have been learning Spanish from an
ex-minister and a man condemned to death.'
4 The Due de Soria,' I said.
1 Duke ! ' replied my father. ' No, he is not that any
longer ; he takes the title now of Baron de Macumer
from a property which still remains to him in Sardinia.
He is something of an original, I think.'
' Don't brand with that word, which with you always
implies some mockery and scorn, a man who is your
equal, and who, I believe, has a noble nature.'
' Baronne de Macumer ? ' exclaimed my father, with
a laughing glance at me.
Pride kept my eyes fixed on the table.
* But,' said my mother, ' Henarez must have met the
Spanish ambassador on the steps ? '
c Yes,' replied my father, i the ambassador asked me
if I was conspiring against the King, his master ; but he
greeted the ex-grandee of Spain with much deference,
and placed his services at his disposal.'
All this, dear Mme. de l'Estorade, happened a fort-
night ago, and it is a fortnight now since I have seen
the man who loves me, for that he loves me there is not
a doubt. What is he about ? If only I were a fly, or a
mouse, or a sparrow ! I want to see him alone, myself
unseen, at his house. : Only think, a man exists, to
whom I can say, l Go and die for me ! ' And he is so
o
2io Letters of Two Brides
made that he would go, at least I think so. Anyhow,
there is in Paris a man who occupies my thoughts, and
whose glance pours sunshine into my soul. Is not such
a man an enemy, whom I ought to trample under foot ?
What ? There is a man who has become necessary to
me — a man without whom I don't know how to live !
You married, and I — in love ! Four little months, and
those two doves, whose wings erst bore them so high,
have fluttered down upon the flat stretches of real life !
Sunday.
Yesterday, at the Italian Opera, I could feel some one
was looking at me ; my eyes were drawn, as by a
magnet, to two wells of fire, gleaming like carbuncles
in a dim corner of the orchestra. Henarez never moved
his eyes from me. The wretch had discovered the one
spot from which he could see me — and there he was. I
don't know what he may be as a politician, but for love
he has a genius.
' Behold, my fair Renee, where our business now stands, 1
as the great Corneille has said.
XIII
MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MLLE. DE CHAULIEU
La Crampade, February.
My dear Louise, — I was bound to wait some time
before writing to you ; but now I know, or rather I have
learned, many things which, for the sake of your future
happiness, I must tell you. The difference between a
girl and a married woman is so vast, that the girl can
no more comprehend it than the married woman can go
back to girlhood again.
Letters of Two Brides 211
I chose to marry Louis de l'Estorade rather than return
to the convent ; that at least is plain. So soon as I realised
that the convent was the only alternative to marrying
Louis, I had, as girls say, to l submit,' and my submission
once made, the next thing was to examine the situation
and try to make the best of it.
The serious nature of what I was undertaking filled
me at first with terror. Marriage is a matter concerning
the whole of life, whilst love aims only at pleasure. On
the other hand, marriage will remain when pleasures
have vanished, and it is the source of interests far more
precious than those of the man and woman entering on
the alliance. Might it not therefore be that the only
requisite for a happy marriage was friendship — a friend-
ship which, for the sake of these advantages, would shut
its eyes to many of the imperfections of humanity ?
Now there was no obstacle to the existence of friendship
between myself and Louis de l'Estorade. Having re-
nounced all idea of finding in marriage those transports
of love on which our minds used so often, and with such
perilous rapture, to dwell, I found a gentle calm settling
over me. l If debarred from love, why not seek for
happiness ? ' I said to myself. ' Moreover, I am loved,
and the love offered me I shall accept. My married life
will be no slavery, but rather a perpetual reign. What
is there to say against such a situation for a woman who
wishes to remain absolute mistress of herself?'
The important point of separating marriage from
marital rights was settled in a conversation between
Louis and me, in the course of which he gave proof of
an excellent temper and a tender heart. Darling, my
desire was to prolong that fair season of hope which,
never culminating in satisfaction, leaves to the soul its
virginity. To grant nothing to duty or the law, to be
guided entirely by one's own will, retaining perfect
independence — what could be more attractive, more
honourable ?
212 Letters of Two Brides
A contract of this kind, directly opposed to the legal
contract, and even to the sacrament itself, could be con-
cluded only between Louis and me. This difficulty, the
first which has arisen, is the only one which has delayed
the completion of our marriage. Although, at first, I
may have made up my mind to accept anything rather
than return to the convent, it is only in human nature,
having got an inch, to ask for an ell, and you and I, sweet
love, are of those who would have all.
I watched Louis out of the corner of my eye, and
put it to myself, * Has suffering had a softening or a
hardening effect on him ? ' By dint of close study, I
arrived at the conclusion that his love amounted to a
passion. Once transformed into an idol, whose slightest
frown would turn him white and trembling, I realised
that I might venture anything. I drew him aside in the
most natural manner on solitary walks, during which I
discreetly sounded his feelings. I made him talk, and
got him to expound to me his ideas and plans for our
future. My questions betrayed so many preconceived
notions, and went so straight for the weak points in
this terrible dual existence, that Louis has since con-
fessed to me the alarm it caused him to find in me so little
of the ignorant maiden.
Then I listened to what he had to say in reply. He
got mixed up in his arguments, as people do when handi-
capped by fear ; and before long it became clear that
chance had given me for adversary one who was the less
fitted for the contest because he was conscious of what
you magniloquently call my ' greatness of soul.' Broken
by sufferings and misfortune, he looked on himself as a
sort of wreck, and three fears in especial haunted him.
First, we are aged respectively thirty-seven and seven-
teen ; and he could not contemplate without quaking the
twenty years that divide us. In the next place, he shares
our views on the subject of my beauty, and it is cruel
for him to see how the hardships of his life have robbed
Letters of Two Brides 213
him of youth. Finally, he felt the superiority of my
womanhood over his manhood. The consciousness
of these three obvious drawbacks made him distrustful
of himself; he doubted his power to make me happy,
and guessed that he had been chosen as the lesser of two
evils.
One evening he tentatively suggested that I only
married him to escape the convent.
' I cannot deny it,' was my grave reply.
My dear, it touched me to the heart to see the two
great tears which stood in his eyes. Never before had I
experienced the shock of emotion which a man can
impart to us.
'Louis,' I went on, as kindly as I could, 'it rests
entirely with you whether this marriage of convenience
becomes one to which I can give my whole heart. The
favour I am about to ask from you will demand unself-
ishness on your part, far nobler than the servitude to
which a man's love, when sincere, is supposed to reduce
him. The question is, Can you rise to the height of
friendship such as I understand it ?
'Life gives us but one friend, and I wish to be
yours. Friendship is the bond between a pair of kindred
souls, united in their strength, and yet independent.
Let us be friends and comrades to bear jointly the
burden of life. Leave me absolutely free. I would put
no hindrance in the way of your inspiring me with a
love similar to your own ; but I am determined to be
yours only of my own free gift. Create in me the
wish to give up my freedom, and at once I Jay it at your
feet.
'Infuse with passion, then, if you will, this friendship,
and let the voice of love disturb its calm. On my part
I will do what I can to bring my feelings into accord
with yours. One thing, above all, I would beg of you.
Spare me the annoyances to which the strangeness of our
mutual position might give rise in our relations with
214 Letters of Two Brides
others. I am neither whimsical nor prudish, and should
be sorry to get that reputation ; but I feel sure that I
can trust to your honour when I ask you to keep up the
outward appearance of wedded life.'
Never, dear, have I seen a man so happy as my pro-
posal made Louis. The blaze of joy which kindled in his
eyes dried up the tears.
i Do not fancy,' I concluded, ' that I ask this from
any wish to be eccentric. It is the great desire I have
for your respect which prompts my request. If you owe
the crown of your love merely to the legal and religious
ceremony, what gratitude could you feel to me later
for a gift in which my goodwill counted for nothing ?
If during the time that I remained indifferent to you
(yielding only a passive obedience, such as my mother has
just been urging on me) a child were born to us, do
you suppose that I could feel towards it as I would
towards one born of our common love ? A passionate
love may not be necessary in marriage, but, at least, you
will admit that there should be no repugnance. Our
position will not be without its dangers ; in a country
life, such as ours will be, ought we not to bear in mind
the evanescent nature of passion ? Is it not simple
prudence to make provision beforehand against the
calamities incident to change of feeling ? '
He was greatly astonished to find me at once so
reasonable and so apt at reasoning ; but he made me a
solemn promise, after which I took his hand and pressed
it affectionately.
We were married at the end of the week. Secure of
my freedom, I was able to throw myself gaily into the
petty details which always accompany a ceremony of
the kind, and to be my natural self. Perhaps I may have
been taken for an old bird, as they say at Blois. A
young girl, delighted with the novel and hopeful situa-
tion she had contrived to make for herself, may have
passed for a strong-minded female.
Letters of Two Brides 2 1 5
Dear, the difficulties which would beset my life had
appeared to me clearly as in a vision, and I was sincerely
anxious to make the happiness of the man I married.
Now, in the solitude of a life like ours, marriage soon
becomes intolerable unless the woman is the presiding
spirit. A woman in such a case needs the charm of a
mistress, combined with the solid qualities of a wife.
To introduce an element of uncertainty into pleasure is
to prolong illusion, and render lasting those selfish satis-
factions which all creatures hold, and justly hold, so
precious. Conjugal love, in my view of it, should
shroud a woman in expectancy, crown her sovereign,
and invest her with an exhaustless power, a redundancy
of life, that makes everything blossom around her. The
more she is mistress of herself, the more certainly will
the love and happiness she creates be fit to weather the
storms of life.
But, above all, I have insisted on the greatest secrecy
in regard to our domestic arrangements. A husband
who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object
of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely
concealed. The charm of all we do lies in its unob-
trusiveness. If I have made it my task to raise a droop-
ing courage and restore their natural brightness to gifts
which I have dimly descried, it must all seem to spring
from Louis himself.
Such is the mission to which I dedicate myself, a
mission surely not ignoble, and which might well satisfy
a woman's ambition. Why, I could glory in this secret
which shall fill my life with interest, in this task to-
wards which my every energy shall be bent, while it
remains concealed from all but God and you.
I am very nearly happy now, but should I be so
without a friendly heart in which to pour the confession ?
For how make a confidant of him ? My happiness would
wound him, and has to be concealed. He is sensitive
as a woman, like all men who have suffered much.
216 Letters of Two Brides
For three months we remained as we were before
marriage. As you may imagine, during this time I
made a close study of many small personal matters,
which have more to do with love than is generally sup-
posed. In spite of my coldness, Louis grew bolder, and
his nature expanded. I saw on his face a new expres-
sion, a look of youth. The greater refinement which I
introduced into the house was reflected in his person.
Insensibly I became accustomed to his presence, and
made another self of him. By dint of constant watching
I discovered how his mind and countenance harmonise.
* The animal that we call a husband,' to quote your words,
disappeared, and one balmy evening I discovered in his
stead a lover, whose words thrilled me and on whose
arm I leant with pleasure beyond words. In short, to
be open with you, as I would be with God, before whom
concealment is impossible, the perfect loyalty with which
he had kept his oath may have piqued me, and I felt a
fluttering of curiosity in my heart. Bitterly ashamed, I
struggled with myself. Alas ! when pride is the only
motive for resistance, excuses for capitulation are soon
found.
We celebrated our union in secret, and secret it must
remain between us. When you are married you will
approve this reserve. Enough that nothing was lacking
either of satisfaction for the most fastidious sentiment,
or of that unexpectedness which brings, in a sense, its
own sanction. Every witchery of imagination, of pas-
sion, of reluctance overcome, of the ideal passing into
reality, played its part.
Yet, spite of all this enchantment, I once more stood
out for my complete independence. I can't tell you
all my reasons for this. To you alone shall I confide
even as much as this. I believe that women, whether
passionately loved or not, lose much in their relation
with their husbands by not concealing their feelings
about marriage and the way they look at it.
Letters of Two Brides 217
My one joy, and it is supreme, springs from the
certainty of having brought new life to my husband
before I have borne him any children. Louis has
regained his youth, strength, and spirits. He is not the
same man. With magic touch I have effaced the very
memory of his sufferings. It is a complete metamor-
phosis. Louis is really very attractive now. Feeling
sure of my affection, he throws off his reserve and
displays unsuspected gifts.
To be the unceasing spring of happiness for a man
who knows it and adds gratitude to love, ah ! dear one,
this is a conviction which fortifies the soul, even more
than the most passionate love can do. The force thus
developed — at once impetuous and enduring, simple and
diversified — brings forth ultimately the family, that noble
product of womanhood, which I realise now in all its
animating beauty.
The old father has ceased to be a miser. He gives
blindly whatever I wish for. The servants are content ;
it seems as though the bliss of Louis had let a flood of sun-
shine into the household, where love has made me queen.
Even the old man would not be a blot upon my pretty
home, and has brought himself into line with all my
improvements ; to please me he has adopted the dress,
and with the dress, the manners of the day.
We have English horses, a coupe, a barouche, and a
tilbury. The livery of our servants is simple but in good
taste. Of course we are looked on as spendthrifts.
I apply all my intellect (I am speaking quite seriously)
to managing my household with economy, and obtaining
for it the maximum of pleasure with the minimum of
cost.
I have already convinced Louis of the necessity of
getting roads made, in order that he may earn the
reputation of a man interested in the welfare of his
district. I insist too on his studying a great deal.
Before long I hope to see him a member of the Council
2i 8 Letters of Two Brides
General of the department, through the influence of my
family and his mother's. I have told him plainly that I
am ambitious, and that I was very well pleased his father
should continue to look after the estate and practise
economies, because I wished him to devote himself
exclusively to politics. If we had children, I should like
to see them all prosperous and with good State appoint-
ments. Under penalty, therefore, of forfeiting my
esteem and affection, he must get himself chosen deputy
for the department at the coming elections ; my family
would support his candidature, and we should then have
the delight of spending all our winters in Paris. Ah !
my love, by the ardour with which he embraced my
plans, I can gauge the depth of his affection.
To conclude, here is a letter he wrote me yesterday
from Marseilles, where he had gone to spend a few
hours : —
' My sweet Renee, — When you gave me permission
to love you, I began to believe in happiness; now, I see it
unfolding endlessly before me. The past is merely a
dim memory, a shadowy background, without which
my present bliss would show less radiant. When I am
with you, love so transports me that I am powerless to
express the depth of my affection ; I can but worship
and admire. Only at a distance does the power of speech
return. You are supremely beautiful, Renee, and your
beauty is of the statuesque and regal type, on which time
leaves but little impression. No doubt the love of hus-
band and wife depends less on outward beauty than on
graces of character, which are yours also in perfection ;
still, let me say that the certainty of having your
unchanging beauty, on which to feast my eyes, gives
me a joy that grows with every glance. There is a
grace and dignity in the lines of your face, expressive of
the noble soul within, and breathing of purity beneath
the vivid colouring. The brilliance of your dark eyes,
Letters of Two Brides 219
the bold sweep of your forehead, declare a spirit of no
common elevation, sound and trustworthy in every rela-
tion, and well braced to meet the storms of life, should
such arise. The keynote of your character is its freedom
from all pettiness. You do not need to be told all this ;
but I write it because I would have you know that I
appreciate the treasure I possess. Your favours to me,
however slight, will always make my happiness in the
far-distant future as now ; for I am sensible how much
dignity there is in our promise to respect each other's
liberty. Our own impulse shall with us alone dictate
the expression of feeling. We shall be free even in our
fetters. I shall have the more pride in wooing you
again now that I know the reward you place on victory.
You cannot speak, breathe, act, or think, without adding
to the admiration I feel for your charm both of body and
mind. There is in you a rare combination of the ideal,
the practical, and the bewitching which satisfies alike
judgment, a husband's pride, desire, and hope, and which
extends the boundaries of love beyond those of life
itself. Oh ! my loved one, may the genius of love remain
faithful to me, and the future be full of those delights
by means of which you have glorified all that surrounds
me ! I long for the day which shall make you a
mother, that I may see you content with the fulness of
your life, may hear you, in the sweet voice I love and
with the words that so marvellously express your subtle
and original thoughts, bless the love which has refreshed
my soul and given new vigour to my powers, the love
which is my pride, and whence I have drawn, as from a
magic fountain, fresh life. Yes, I shall be all that you
would have me. I shall take a leading part in the public
life of the district, and on you shall fall the rays of a
glory which will owe its existence to the desire of
pleasing you.'
So much for my pupil, dear ! Do you suppose he
220 Letters of Two Brides
could have written like this before ? A year hence his
style will have still further improved. Louis is now in
his first transport; what I look forward to is the uniform
and continuous sensation of content which ought to be
the fruit of a happy marriage, when a man and woman,
in perfect trust and mutual knowledge, have solved the
problem of giving variety to the infinite. This is the
task set before every true wife ; the answer begins to
dawn on me, and I shall not rest till I have made it
mine.
You see that he fancies himself — vanity of men! — the
chosen of my heart, just as though there were no legal
bonds. Nevertheless, I have not yet got beyond that
external attraction which gives us strength to put up
with a good deal. Yet Louis is lovable ; his temper is
wonderfully even, and he performs, as a matter of course,
acts on which most men would plume themselves. In
short, if I do not love him, I shall find no difficulty in
being good to him.
So here are my black hair and my black eyes — whose
lashes act, according to you, like Venetian blinds — my
commanding air, and my whole person, raised to the
rank of sovereign power ! Ten years hence, dear, why
should we not both be laughing and gay in your Paris,
whence I shall carry you off now and again to my
beautiful oasis in Provence ?
Oh ! Louise, don't spoil the splendid future which
awaits us both ! Don't do the mad things with which
you threaten me. My husband is a young man, pre-
maturely old ; why don't you marry some young-hearted
greybeard in the Chamber of Peers ? There lies your
vocation.
Letters of Two Brides 221
XIV
THE DUC DE SORIA TO THE BARON DE MACUMER
Madrid.
My dear Brother, — You did not make me Due de
Soria in order that my actions should belie the name.
How could I tolerate my happiness if I knew you to be
a wanderer, deprived of the comforts which wealth every-
where commands ? Neither Marie nor I will consent
to marry till we hear that you have accepted the money
which Urraca will hand over to you. These two
millions are the fruit of your own savings and Marie's.
We have both prayed, kneeling before the same altar
— and with what earnestness, God knows ! — for your
happiness. My dear brother, it cannot be that these
prayers will remain unanswered. Heaven will send you
the love which you seek, to be the consolation of your
exile. Marie read your letter with tears, and is full of
admiration for you. As for me, I consent, not for
my own sake, but for that of the family. The
King justified your expectations. Oh ! that I might
avenge you by letting him see himself, dwarfed before
the scorn with which you flung him his toy, as you
might toss a tiger its food.
The only thing I have taken for myself, dear brother,
is my happiness. I have taken Marie. For this I shall
always be beholden to you, as the creature to the
Creator. There will be in my life and in Marie's one
day not less glorious than our wedding day — it will be
the day when we hear that your heart has found its
mate, that a woman loves you as you ought to be, and
would be, loved. Do not forget that if you live for
us, we also live for you.
222 Letters of Two Brides
You can write to us with perfect confidence under
cover to the Nuncio, sending your letters via Rome.
The French ambassador at Rome will, no doubt, under-
take to forward them to Monsignor Bemboni, at the
State Secretary's office, whom our legate will have
advised. No other way would be safe. Farewell,
dear exile, dear despoiled one. Be proud at least of the
happiness which you have brought to us, if you cannot
be happy in it. God will doubtless hear our prayers,
which are full of your name.
XV
LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE l'eSTORADE
March.
Ah ! my love, marriage is making a philosopher of
you ! Your darling face must, indeed, have been jaun-
diced when you wrote me those terrible views of human
life and the duty of women. Do you fancy you will
convert me to matrimony by your programme of sub-
terranean labours ?
Alas ! is this then the outcome for you of our too-
instructed dreams ! We left Blois all innocent, armed
with the pointed shafts of meditation, and, lo ! the
weapons of that purely ideal experience have turned
against your own breast ! If I did not know you for
the purest and most angelic of created beings, I declare I
should say that your calculations smack of vice. What,
my dear, in the interest of your country home, you
submit your pleasures to a periodic thinning, as you
do your timber. Oh ! rather let me perish in all the
violence of the heart's storms than live in the arid
atmosphere of your cautious arithmetic !
As girls, we were both unusually enlightened, because
Letters of Two Brides 223
of the large amount of study we gave to our chosen
subjects ; but, my child, philosophy without love, or
disguised under a sham love, is the most hideous of
conjugal hypocrisies. I should imagine that even the
biggest of fools might detect now and again the owl of
wisdom squatting in your bower of roses — a ghastly
phantom sufficient to put to flight the most promising of
passions. You make your own fate, instead of waiting,
a plaything in its hands.
We are each developing in strange ways. A large
dose of philosophy to a grain of love is your recipe ; a
large dose of love to a grain of philosophy is mine.
Why, Rousseau's Julie, whom I thought so learned, is
a mere beginner to you. Woman's virtue, quotha !
How you have weighed up life ! Alas ! I make fun of
you, and, after all, perhaps you are right.
In one day you have made a holocaust of your youth
and become a miser before your time. Your Louis will
be happy, I daresay. If he loves you, of which I make
no doubt, he will never find out, that, for the sake of
your family, you are acting as a courtesan does for
money ; and certainly men seem to find happiness with
them, judging by the fortunes they squander thus. A
keen-sighted husband might no doubt remain in love
with you, but what sort of gratitude could he feel in the
long run for a woman who had made of duplicity a sort
of moral armour, as indispensable as her stays ?
Love, dear, is in my eyes the first principle of all the
virtues, conformed to the divine likeness. Like all
other first principles, it is not a matter of arithmetic ; it
is the Infinite in us. I cannot but think you have been
trying to justify in your own eyes the frightful position
of a girl, married to a man for whom she feels nothing
more than esteem. You prate of duty, and make it
your rule and measure ; but surely to take necessity
as the spring of action is the moral theory of atheism ?
To follow the impulse of love and feeling is the secret
224 Letters of Two Brides
law of every woman's heart. You are acting a man's
part, and your Louis will have to play the woman !
Oh ! my dear, your letter has plunged me into an
endless train of thought. I see now that the convent
can never take the place of mother to a girl. I beg of
you, my grand angel with the black eyes, so pure and
proud, so serious and so pretty, do not turn away from
these cries, which the first reading of your letter has
torn from me ! I have taken comfort in the thought
that, while I was lamenting, love was doubtless busy
knocking down the scaffolding of reason.
It may be that I shall do worse than you without any
reasoning or calculations. Passion is an element in life
bound to have a logic not less pitiless than yours.
Monday.
Yesterday night I placed myself at the window as I
was going to bed, to look at the sky, which was wonder-
fully clear. The stars were like silver nails, holding up
a veil of blue. In the silence of the night I could hear
some one breathing, and by the half-light of the stars I
saw my Spaniard, perched like a squirrel on the branches
of one of the trees lining the boulevard, and doubtless
lost in admiration of my windows.
The first effect of this discovery was to make me
withdraw into the room, my feet and hands quite limp
and nerveless ; but, beneath the fear, I was conscious of
a delicious under-current of joy. I was overpowered
but happy. Not one of those clever Frenchmen, who
aspire to marry me, has had the brilliant idea of spending
the night in an elm-tree at the risk of being carried off
by the watch. My Spaniard has, no doubt, been there
for some time. Ah ! he won't give me any more
lessons, he wants to receive them — well, he shall have
one. If only he knew what I said to myself about his
superficial ugliness ! Others can philosophise besides
Letters of Two Brides 225
you, Renee ! It was horrid, I argued, to fall in love
with a handsome man. Is it not practically avowing
that the senses count for three parts out of four in a
passion which ought to be super-sensual ?
Having got over my first alarm, I craned my neck
behind the window in order to see him again — and well
was I rewarded ! By means of a hollow cane he blew
me in through the window a letter, cunningly rolled
round a leaden pellet.
Good Heavens ! will he suppose I left the window
open on purpose ?
But what was to be done ? To shut it suddenly
would be to make oneself an accomplice.
I did better. I returned to my window as though
I had seen nothing and heard nothing of the letter, then
I said aloud —
' Come and look at the stars, Griffith.'
Griffith was sleeping as only old maids can. But
the Moor, hearing me, slid down, and vanished with
ghostly rapidity.
He must have been dying of fright, and so was I,
for I did not hear him go away ; apparently he remained
at the foot of the elm. After a good quarter of an hour,
during which I lost myself in contemplation of the
heavens, and battled with the waves of curiosity, I
closed my window and sat down on the bed to unfold
the delicate bit of paper, with the tender touch of a
worker amongst the ancient manuscripts at Naples. It
felt redhot to my fingers. c What a horrible power
this man has over me ! ' I said to myself.
All at once I held out the paper to the candle — I
would burn it without reading a word. Then a thought
stayed me, c What can he have to say that he writes
so secretly ? ' Well, dear, I did burn it, reflecting that,
though any other girl in the world would have devoured
the letter, it was not fitting that I — Armande-Louise-
Marie de Chaulieu — should read it.
P
226 Letters of Two Brides
The next day, at the Italian opera, he was at his
post. But I feel sure that, ex-prime minister of a con-
stitutional government though he is, he could not
discover the slightest agitation of mind in any move-
ment of mine. I might have seen nothing and received
nothing the evening before. This was most satisfactory
to me, but he looked very sad. Poor man ! in Spain it
is so natural for love to come in at the window !
During the interval, it seems, he came and walked
in the passages. This I learned from the chief secretary
of the Spanish embassy, who also told the story of a
noble action of his.
As Due de Soria he was to marry one of the richest
heiresses in Spain, the young princess, Marie Heredia,
whose wealth would have mitigated the bitterness of
exile. But it seems that Marie, disappointing the
wishes of the fathers, who had betrothed them in their
earliest childhood, loved the younger son of the house of
Soria, to whom my Felipe gave her up, allowing himself
to be despoiled by the King of Spain.
' He would perform this piece of heroism quite
simply,' I said to the young man.
'You know him then ? ' was his ingenuous reply.
My mother smiled.
'What will become of him, for he is condemned to
death ? ' I asked.
'Though dead to Spain, he can live in Sardinia.'
' Ah ! then Spain is the country of tombs as well
as castles ? ' I said, trying to carry it off as a joke.
' There is everything in Spain, even Spaniards of the
old school,' my mother replied.
' The Baron de Macumer obtained a passport, not
without difficulty, from the King of Sardinia,' the
young diplomatist went on. ' He has now become a
Sardinian subject, and he possesses a magnificent estate
in the island with full feudal rights. He has a palace at
Sassari. If Ferdinand vn. were to die, Macumer would
Letters of Two Brides 227
probably go in for diplomacy, and the Court of Turin
would make him ambassador. Though young, he
is '
c Ah ! he is young ? '
c Certainly, mademoiselle . . . though young, he is
one of the most distinguished men in Spain.'
I scanned the house meanwhile through my opera-
glass, and seemed to lend an inattentive ear to the
secretary ; but, between ourselves, I was wretched at
having burnt his letter. In what terms would a man
like that express his love ? For he does love me. To
be loved, adored in secret ; to know that in this house,
where all the great men of Paris were collected, there
was one entirely devoted to me, unknown to every-
body ! Ah ! Renee, now I understand the life of Paris,
its balls, and its gaieties. It all flashed on me in the
true light. When we love, we must have society, were
it only to sacrifice it to our love. I felt a different
creature — and such a happy one ! My vanity, pride,
self-love, — all were flattered. Heaven knows what
glances I cast upon the audience !
' Little rogue ! ' the Duchess whispered in my ear
with a smile.
Yes, Renee, my wily mother had deciphered the
hidden joy in my bearing, and I could only haul down
my flag before such feminine strategy. Those two
words taught me more of worldlv wisdom than I have
been able to pick up in a year — for we are in March
now. Alas ! no more Italian opera in another month.
How will life be possible without that heavenly music,
when one's heart is full of love ?
When I got home, my dear, with determination
worthy of a Chaulieu, I opened my window to watch
a shower of rain. Oh ! if men knew the magic spell
that a heroic action throws over us, they would indeed
rise to greatness ! a poltroon would turn hero ! What
I had learned about my Spaniard drove me into a very
228 Letters of Two Brides
fever. I felt certain that he was there, ready to aim
another letter at me.
I was right, and this time I burnt nothing. Here,
then, is the first love-letter I have received, madam
logician : each to her kind : —
4 Louise, it is not for your peerless beauty I love
you, nor for your gifted mind, your noble feeling, the
wondrous charm of all you say and do, nor yet for your
pride, your queenly scorn of baser mortals — a pride blent
in you with charity, for what angel could be more
tender ? — Louise, I love you because, for the sake of a
poor exile, you have unbent this lofty majesty, because
by a gesture, a glance, you have brought consolation to
a man so far beneath you that the utmost he could hope
for was your pity, the pity of a generous heart. You
are the one woman whose eyes have shone with a
tenderer light when bent on me.
1 And because you let fall this glance — a mere grain of
dust, yet a grace surpassing any bestowed on me when
I stood at the summit of a subject's ambition — I long to
tell you, Louise, how dear you are to me, and that my
love is for yourself alone, without a thought beyond, a
love that far more than fulfils the conditions laid down
by you for an ideal passion.
4 Know, then, idol of my highest heaven, that there is
in the world an offshoot of the Saracen race, whose life
is in your hands, who will receive your orders as a slave,
and deem it an honour to execute them. I have given
myself to you absolutely and for the mere joy of giving,
for a single glance of your eye, for a touch of the hand
which one day you offered to your Spanish master. I
am but your servitor, Louise ; I claim no more.
' No, I dare not think that I could ever be loved ; but
perchance my devotion may win for me toleration.
Since that morning when you smiled upon me with
generous girlish impulse, divining the misery of my
Letters of Two Brides 229
lonely and rejected heart, you reign there alone. You
are the absolute ruler of my life, the queen of my
thoughts, the god of my heart ; I find you in the sun-
shine of my home, the fragrance of my flowers, the balm
of the air I breathe, the pulsing of my blood, the light
that visits me in sleep.
4 One thought alone troubled this happiness — your
ignorance. All unknown to you was this boundless
devotion, the trusty arm, the blind slave, the silent tool,
the wealth — for henceforth all I possess is mine only as
a trust — which lay at your disposal ; unknown to you,
the heart waiting to receive your confidence, and yearn-
ing to replace all that your life (I know it well) has
lacked — the liberal ancestress, so ready to meet your
needs, a father to whom you could look for protection in
every difficulty, a friend, a brother. The secret of your
isolation is no secret to me ! If I am bold, it is because
I long that you should know how much is yours.
4 Take all, Louise, and in so doing bestow on me the
one life possible for me in this world — the life of devotion.
In placing the yoke on my neck, you run no risk ; I ask
nothing but the joy of knowing myself yours. Needless
even to say you will never love me ; it cannot be other-
wise. I must love from afar, without hope, without
reward beyond my own love.
'In my anxiety to know whether you will accept me
as your servant, I have racked my brain to find some
way in which you may communicate with me without
any danger of compromising yourself. Injury to your
self-respect there can be none in sanctioning a devotion
which has been yours for many days without your
knowledge. Let this, then, be the token. At the opera
this evening, if you carry in your hand a bouquet con-
sisting of one red and one white camellia — emblem of a
man's blood at the service of the purity he worships —
that will be my answer. I ask no more ; thenceforth, at
any moment, ten years hence or to-morrow, whatever
230 Letters of Two Brides
you demand shall be done, so far as it is possible for man
to do it, by your happy servant,
'Felipe Henarez.'
P.S. — You must admit, dear, that great lords know
how to love ! See the spring of the African lion !
What restrained fire ! What loyalty ! What sincerity !
How high a soul in low estate ! I felt quite small and
dazed as I said to myself, c What shall I do ? '
It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight
all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and
touching, childlike and of the race of giants. In a
single letter Henarez has outstripped volumes from
Lovelace or Saint-Preux. Here is true love, no beating
about the bush. Love may be or it may not, but where
it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.
Here am I, shorn of all my little arts ! To refuse or
accept ! That is the alternative boldly presented me,
without the ghost of an opening for a middle course.
No fencing allowed ! This is no longer Paris ; we are
in the heart of Spain or the far East. It is the voice of
Abencerrage, and it is the scimitar, the horse, and the
head of Abencerrage which he offers, prostrate before a
Catholic Eve ! Shall I accept this last descendant of the
Moors ? Read again and again his Hispano-Saracenic
letter, Renee dear, and you will see how love makes a
clean sweep of all the Judaic bargains of your philosophy.
Renee, your letter lies heavy on my heart ; you have
vulgarised life for me. What need have I for finessing?
Am I not mistress for all time of this lion whose roar
dies out in plaintive and adoring sighs ? Ah ! how he
must have raged in his lair of the Rue Hillerin-Bertin !
I know where he lives, I have his card : F., Baron de
Macumer.
He has made it impossible for me to reply. All I can
do is to fling two camellias in his face. What fiendish
arts does love possess — pure, honest, simple-minded love!
Letters of Two Brides 231
Here is the most tremendous crisis of a woman's heart
resolved into an easy, simple action. Oh, Asia ! I have
read the Arabian Nights, here is their very essence : two
flowers, and the question is settled. We clear the four-
teen volumes of Clarissa Harlcwe with a bouquet. I
writhe before this letter, like a thread in the fire. To
take, or not to take, my two camellias. Yes or No,
kill or give life! At last a voice cries to me, 'Test
him ! ' And I will test him.
XVI
THE SAME TO THE SAME
March.
I am dressed in white — white camellias in my hair, and
another in my hand. My mother has red camellias ; so
it would not be impossible to take one from her — if I
wished ! I have a strange longing to put off the
decision to the last moment, and make him pay for his
red camellia by a little suspense.
What a vision of beauty ! Griffith begged me to
stop for a little and be admired. The solemn crisis of
the evening and the drama of my secret reply have
given me a colour ; on each cheek I sport a red camellia
laid upon a white !
I A.M.
Everybody admired me, but only one adored. He
hung his head as I entered with a white camellia, but
turned pale as the flower when, later, I took a red one
from my mother's hand. To arrive with the two
flowers might possibly have been accidental; but this
deliberate action was a reply. My confession, therefore,
is fuller than it need have been.
232 Letters of Two Brides
The Opera was Romeo and Juliet. As you don't know
the duet of the two lovers, you can't understand the
bliss of two neophytes in love, as they listen to this
divine outpouring of the heart.
On returning home I went to bed, but only to count
the steps which resounded on the side-walk. My heart
and head, darling, are all on fire now. What is he
doing ? What is he thinking of? Has he a thought, a
single thought, that is not of me ? Is he, in very truth,
the devoted slave he painted himself? How to be sure?
Or, again, has it ever entered his head that, if I accept
him, I lay myself open to the shadow of a reproach or am
in any sense rewarding or thanking him ? I am harrowed
by the hair-splitting casuistry of the heroines in Cyrus
and Astrtea, by all the subtle arguments of the court of
love.
Has he any idea that, in affairs of love, a woman's
most trifling actions are but the issue of long brooding
and inner conflicts, of victories won only to be lost !
What are his thoughts at this moment ? How can I
give him my orders to write every evening the particulars
of the day just gone ? He is my slave whom I ought to
keep busy. I shall deluge him with work !
Sunday Morning.
Only towards morning did I sleep a little. It is mid-
day now. I have just got Griffith to write the following
letter: —
' To the Baron de Macumer.
' Mademoiselle de Chaulieu begs me, Monsieur le
Baron, to ask you to return to her the copy of a letter
written to her by a friend, which is in her own hand-
writing, and which you carried away. — Believe me, etc.,
' Griffith.'
Letters of Two Brides 233
My dear, Griffith has gone out ; she has gone to the
Rue Hillerin-Bertin ; she has handed in this little love-
letter for my slave, who returned to me in an envelope
my ideal portrait, stained with tears. He has obeyed.
Oh ! my sweet, it must have been dear to him !
Another man would have refused to send it in a letter
full of flattery; but the Saracen has fulfilled his promises.
He has obeyed. It moves me to tears.
XVII
THE SAME TO THE SAME
April znd.
Yesterday the weather was splendid. I dressed
myself like a girl who wants to look her best in her
sweetheart's eyes. My father, yielding to my entreaties,
has given me the prettiest turnout in Paris — two dapple-
grey horses and a barouche, which is a masterpiece of
elegance. I was making a first trial of this, and peeped
out like a flower from under my sunshade lined with
white silk.
As I drove up the avenue of the Champs-Elysees, I
saw my Abencerrage approaching on an extraordinarily
beautiful horse. Almost every man nowadays is a
finished jockey, and they all stopped to admire and
inspect it. He bowed to me, and on receiving a friendly
sign of encouragement, slackened his horse's pace so that
I was able to say to him —
' You are not vexed with me for asking for my letter ;
it was no use to you.' Then in a lower voice, ' You
have already transcended the ideal. . . . Your horse
makes you an object of general interest,' I went on
aloud.
'My steward in Sardinia sent it to me. He is very
234 Letters of Two Brides
proud of it; for this horse, which is of Arab blood, was
born in my stables.'
This morning, my dear, Henarez was on an English
sorrel, also very fine, but not such as to attract attention.
My light, mocking words had done their work. He
bowed to me and I replied with a slight inclination of
the head.
The Due d'Angouleme has bought Macumer's horse.
My slave understood that he was deserting the role of
simplicity by attracting the notice of the crowd. A
man ought to be remarked for what he is, not for his
horse, or anything else belonging to him. To have too
beautiful a horse seems to me a piece of bad taste, just
as much as wearing a huge diamond pin. I was
delighted at being able to find fault with him. Perhaps
there may have been a touch of vanity in what he did,
very excusable in a poor exile, and I like to see this
childishness.
Oh ! my dear old preacher, do my love affairs amuse
you as much as your dismal philosophy gives me the
creeps ? Dear Philip the Second in petticoats, are you
comfortable in my barouche ? Do you see those velvet
eyes, humble, yet so eloquent, and glorying in their
servitude, which flash on me as some one goes by ? He
is a hero, Renee, and he wears my livery, and always a
red camellia in his buttonhole, while I have always a
white one in my hand.
How clear everything becomes in the light of love !
How well I know my Paris now ! It is all transfused
with meaning. And love here is lovelier, grander, more
bewitching than elsewhere.
I am convinced now that I could never flirt with a
fool or make any impression on him. It is only men of
real distinction who can enter into our feelings and feel
our influence. Oh ! my poor friend, forgive me. I
forgot our l'Estorade. But didn't you tell me you were
going to make a genius of him ? I know what that
Letters of Two Brides • 235
means. You will dry nurse him till some day he is able
to understand you.
Good-bye. I am a little off my head, and must stop.
XVIII
MME. DE l'eSTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU
My angel — or ought I not rather to say my imp of
evil? — you have, without meaning it, grieved me
sorely. I would say wounded were we not one soul.
And yet it is possible to wound oneself.
How plain it is that you have never realised the force
of the word indissoluble as applied to the contract bind-
ing man and woman ! I have no wish to controvert
what has been laid down by philosophers or legislators —
they are quite capable of doing this for themselves — but,
dear one, in making marriage irrevocable and imposing
on it a relentless formula, which admits of no exception?,
they have rendered each union a thing as distinct as one
individual is from another. Each has its own inner laws
which differ from those of others. The laws regulating
married life in the country, for instance, where husband
and wife are never out of each other's sight, cannot be
the same as those regulating a household in town, where
frequent distractions give variety to life. Or conversely,
married life in Paris, where existence is one perpetual
whirl, must demand different treatment from the more
peaceful home in the provinces.
But if place alters the conditions of marriage, much
more does character. The wife of a man born to be a
leader need only resign herself to his guidance ; whereas
the wife of a fool, conscious of superior power, is bound
to take the reins in her own hand if she would avert
calamity.
236 Letters of Two Brides
You speak of vice ; and it is possible that, after all,
reason and reflection produce a result not dissimilar from
what we call by that name. For what does a woman
mean by it but perversion of feeling through calculation ?
Passion is vicious when it reasons, admirable only when
it springs from the heart and spends itself in sublime
impulses that set at nought all selfish considerations.
Sooner or later, dear one, you too will say, ' Yes ! dis-
simulation is the necessary armour of a woman, if by
dissimulation be meant courage to bear in silence,
prudence to foresee the future.'
Every married woman learns to her cost the existence
of certain social laws, which, in many respects, conflict
with the laws of nature. Marrying at our age, it would
be possible to have a dozen children. What is this but
another name for a dozen crimes, a dozen misfortunes ?
It would be handing over to poverty and despair twelve
innocent darlings ; whereas two children would mean
the happiness of both, a double blessing, two lives
capable of developing in harmony with the customs and
laws of our time. The natural law and the code are in
hostility, and we are the battle ground. Would you
give the name of vice to the prudence of the wife who
guards her family from destruction through its own acts?
One calculation or a thousand, what matter, if the
decision no longer rests with the heart ?
And of this terrible calculation you will be guilty
some day, my noble Baronne de Macumer, when you
are the proud and happy wife of the man who adores
you ; or rather, being a man of sense, he will spare you
by making it himself. (You see, dear dreamer, that I
have studied the code in its bearings on conjugal rela-
tions.) And when at last that day comes, you will
understand that we are answerable only to God and to
ourselves for the means we employ to keep happiness
alight in the heart of our homes. Far better is the
calculation which succeeds in this than the reckless
Letters of Two Brides 237
passion which introduces trouble, heart-burnings, and
dissension.
I have reflected painfully on the duties of a wife and
mother of a family. Yes, sweet one, it is only by a
sublime hypocrisy that we can attain the noblest ideal of
a perfect woman. You tax me with insincerity because
I dole out to Louis, from day to day, the measure of his
intimacy with me ; but is it not too close an intimacy
which provokes rupture ? My aim is to give him, in
the very interest of his happiness, many occupations,
which will all serve as distractions to his love ; and this
is not the reasoning of passion. If affection be in-
exhaustible, it is not so with love : the task, therefore,
of a woman — truly no light one — is to spread it out
thriftily over a lifetime.
At the risk of exciting your disgust, I must tell you
that I persist in the principles I have adopted, and hold
myself both heroic and generous in so doing. Virtue,
my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations
with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Con-
stantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different
fruit, but is none the less virtue. Each human life is
a substance compacted of widely dissimilar elements,
though, viewed from a certain height, the general effect is
the same.
If I wished to make Louis unhappy and to bring
about a separation, all I need do is to leave the helm in
his hands. I have not had your good fortune in meeting
with a man of the highest distinction, but I may perhaps
have the satisfaction of helping him on the road to it.
Five years hence let us meet in Paris and see ! I
believe we shall succeed in mystifying you. You will
tell me then that I was quite mistaken, and that M. de
l'Estorade is a man of great natural gifts.
As for this brave love, of which I know only what
you tell me, these tremors and night watches by starlight
on the balcony, this idolatrous worship, this deification
238 Letters of Two Brides
of woman — I knew it was not for me. You can enlarge
the borders of your brilliant life as you please ; mine is
hemmed in to the boundaries of La Crampade.
And you reproach me for the jealous care which alone
can nurse this modest and fragile shoot into a wealth of
lasting and mysterious happiness ! I believed myself to
have found out how to adapt the charm of a mistress to
the position of a wife, and you have almost made me
blush for my device. Who shall say which of us is
right, which wrong ? Perhaps we are both right and
both wrong. Perhaps this is the heavy price which
society exacts for our furbelows, our titles, and our
children.
I too have my red camellias, but they bloom on my
lips in smiles for my double charge — the father and the
son — whose slave and mistress I am. But, my dear,
your last letters made me feel what I have lost ! You
have taught me all a woman sacrifices in marrying.
One single glance did I take at those beautiful wild
plateaus where you range at your sweet will, and I will
not tell you the tears that fell as I read. But regret
is not remorse, though it may be first cousin to it.
You say, ' Marriage has made you a philosopher ! '
Alas ! bitterly did I feel how far this was from the truth,
as I wept to think of you swept away on love's torrent.
But my father has made me read one of the profoundest
thinkers of these parts, the man on whom the mantle of
Bossuet has fallen, one of those hard-headed theorists
whose words force conviction. While you were reading
Corinne, I conned Bonald ; and here is the whole secret
of my philosophy. He revealed to me the Family in its
strength and holiness. According to Bonald, your father
was right in his homily.
Farewell, my dear fancy, my friend, my wild other self.
Letters of Two Brides 239
XIX
LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE L ESTORADE
Well, my Renee, you are a love of a woman, and I
quite agree now that we can only be virtuous by cheat-
ing. Will that satisfy you ? Moreover, the man who
loves us is our property ; we can make a fool or a genius
of him as we please ; only, between ourselves, the former
happens more commonly. You will make yours a
genius, and you won't tell the secret — there are two
heroic actions, if you will !
Ah ! if there were no future life, how nicely you
would be sold, for this is martyrdom into which you are
plunging of your own accord. You want to make him
ambitious and to keep him in love ! Child that you are,
surely the last alone is sufficient.
Tell me, to what point is calculation a virtue, or
virtue calculation ? You won't say ? Well, we won't
quarrel over that, since we have Bonald to refer to.
We are, and intend to remain, virtuous ; nevertheless
at this moment I believe that you, with all your pretty
little knavery, are a better woman than I am.
Yes, I am shockingly deceitful. I love Felipe, and I
conceal it from him with an odious hypocrisy. I long
to see him leap from his tree to the top of the wall, and
from the wall to my balcony — and if he did, how I
should wither him with my scorn ! You see, I am frank
enough with you.
What restrains me ? Where is the mysterious power
which prevents me from telling Felipe, dear fellow, how
supremely happy he has made me by the outpouring of
his love — so pure, so absolute, so boundless, so un-
obtrusive, and so overflowing ?
Mme. de Mirbel is painting my portrait, and I intend
240 Letters of Two Brides
to give it to him, my dear. What surprises me more
and more every day is the animation which love puts into
life. How full of interest is every hour, every action,
every trifle ! and what amazing confusion between the
past, the future, and the present ! One lives in three
tenses at once. Is it still so after the heights of happi-
ness are reached ? Oh ! tell me, I implore you, what is
happiness ? Does it soothe, or does it excite ? I am
horribly restless ; I seem to have lost all my bearings ; a
force in my heart drags me to him, spite of reason and
spite of propriety. There is this gain, that I am better
able to enter into your feelings.
Felipe's happiness consists in feeling himself mine ;
the aloofness of his love, his strict obedience, irritate me,
just as his attitude of profound respect provoked me when
he was only my Spanish master. I am tempted to cry
out to him as he passes, c Fool, if you love me so much as
a picture, what will it be when you know the real me ? '
Oh ! Renee, you burn my letters, don't you ? I will
burn yours. If other eyes than ours were to read these
thoughts which pass from heart to heart, I should send
Felipe to put them out, and perhaps to kill the owners,
by way of additional security.
Monday.
Oh ! Renee, how is it possible to fathom the heart of
man ? My father ought to introduce me to M. Bonald,
since he is so learned ; I would ask him. I envy the
privilege of God, who can read the under-currents of the
heart.
Does he still worship ? That is the whole question.
If ever, in gesture, glance, or tone, I were to detect
the slightest falling off in the respect he used to show
me in the days when he was my instructor in Spanish, I
feel that I should have strength to put the whole thing
from me. ' Why these fine words, these grand resolu-
tions ?' you will say. Dear, I will tell you.
Letters of Two Brides 241
My fascinating father, who treats me with the devo-
tion of an Italian cavaliere servente for his lady, had my
portrait painted, as I told you, by Mme. de Mirbel. I
contrived to get a copy made, good enough to do for
the Duke, and sent the original to Felipe. I despatched
it yesterday, and these lines with it : —
4 Don Felipe, your single-hearted devotion is met by
a blind confidence. Time will show whether this is not
to treat a man as more than human.'
It was a big reward. It looked like a promise and —
dreadful to say— a challenge ; but — which will seem to
you still more dreadful — I quite intended that it should
suggest both these things, without going so far as actu-
ally to commit me. If in his reply there is ' Dear
Louise ! ' or even ' Louise,' he is done for !
Tuesday.
No, he is not done for. The constitutional minister
is perfect as a lover. Here is his letter : —
c Every moment passed away from your sight has been
filled by me with ideal pictures of you, my eyes closed to
the outside world and fixed in meditation on your image,
which used to obey the summons too slowly in that
dim palace of dreams, glorified by your presence.
Henceforth my gaze will rest upon this wondrous ivory
— this talisman, might I not say ? — since your blue eyes
sparkle with life as I look, and paint passes into flesh and
blood. If I have delayed writing, it is because I could
not tear myself away from your presence, which wrung
from me all that I was bound to keep most secret.
' Yes, closeted with you all last night and to-day, I
have, for the first time in my life, given myself up to
full, complete, and boundless happiness. Could you but
see yourself where I have placed you, between the Virgin
242 Letters of Two Brides
and God, you might have some idea of the agony in
which the night has passed. But I would not offend you
by speaking of it ; for one glance from your eyes, robbed
of the tender sweetness which is my life, would be full of
torture for me, and I implore your clemency therefore
in advance. Queen of my life and of my soul, oh ! that
you could grant me but one-thousandth part of the love
I bear you !
'This was the burden of my prayer ; doubt worked
havoc in my soul as I oscillated between belief and
despair, between life and death, darkness and light. A
criminal whose verdict hangs in the balance is not more
racked with suspense than I, as I own to my temerity.
The smile imaged on your lips, to which my eyes turned
ever and again, was alone able to calm the storm roused
by the dread of displeasing you. From my birth no one,
not even my mother, has smiled on me. The beautiful
young girl who was designed for me rejected my heart
and gave hers to my brother. Again, in politics all my
efforts have been defeated. In the eyes of my king I
have read only thirst for vengeance ; from childhood he
has been my enemy, and the vote of the Cortes which
placed me in power was regarded by him as a personal
insult.
c Less than this might breed despondency in the
stoutest heart. Besides, I have no illusion ; I know the
gracelessness of my person, and am well aware how diffi-
cult it is to do justice to the heart within so rugged a
shell. To be loved had ceased to be more than a dream
to me when I met you. Thus when I bound myself to
your service I knew that devotion alone could excuse my
passion.
c But, as I look upon this portrait and listen to your
smile that whispers of rapture, the rays of a hope which
I had sternly banished pierce the gloom, like the light of
dawn, again to be obscured by rising mists of doubt
and fear of your displeasure, if the morning should break
Letters of Two Brides 243
to day. No, it is impossible you should love me yet — I
feel it ; but in time, as you make proof of the strength,
the constancy, and depth of my affection, you may yield
me some foothold in your heart. If my daring offends
you, tell me so without anger, and I will return to my
former part. But if you consent to try and love me, be
merciful and break it gently to one who has placed the
happiness of his life in the single thought of serving you.'
My dear, as I read these last words, he seemed to rise
before me, pale as the night when the camellias told their
story and he knew his offering was accepted. These
words, in their humility, were clearly something quite
different from the usual flowery rhetoric of lovers, and a
wave of feeling broke over me ; it was the breath of
happiness.
The weather has been atrocious ; impossible to go to
the Bois without exciting all sorts of suspicions. Even
my mother, who often goes out, regardless of rain,
remains at home, and alone.
Wednesday evening.
I have just seen him at the Opera, my dear ; he is
another man. He came to our box, introduced by the
Sardinian ambassador.
Having read in my eyes that this audacity was taken
in good part, he seemed awkwardly conscious of his
limbs, and addressed the Marquise d'Espard as 'Made-
moiselle.' A light far brighter than the glare of the
chandeliers flashed from his eyes. At last he went out
with the air of a man who didn't know what he might
do next.
' The Baron de Macumer is in love ! ' exclaimed
Mme. de Maufrigneuse.
' Strange, isn't it, for a fallen minister ? ' replied my
mother.
I had sufficient presence of mind myself to regard
244 Letters of Two Brides
with curiosity Mmes. de Maufrigneuse and d'Espard and
my mother, as though they were talking a foreign lan-
guage and I wanted to know what it was all about, but
inwardly my soul sank in the waves of an intoxicating
joy. There is only one word to express what I felt, and
that is : rapture. Such love as Felipe's surely makes him
worthy of mine. I am the very breath of his life, my
hands hold the thread that guides his thoughts. To be
quite frank, I have a mad longing to see him clear every
obstacle and stand before me, asking boldly for my hand.
Then I should know whether this storm of love would
sink to placid calm at a glance from me.
Ah ! my dear, I stopped here, and I am still all in a
tremble. As I wrote, I heard a slight noise outside, and
rose to see what it was. From my window I could see
him coming along the ridge of the wall at the risk of his
life. I went to the bedroom window and made him a
sign, it was enough ; he leapt from the wall — ten feet —
and then ran along the road, as far as I could see him, in
order to show me that he was not hurt. That he should
think of my fear at the moment when he must have
been stunned by his fall, moved me so much that I am
still crying ; I don't know why. Poor ungainly man !
what was he coming for ? what had he to say to me ?
I dare not write my thoughts, and shall go to bed
joyful, thinking of all that we would say if we were
together. Farewell, fair silent one. I have not time to
scold you for not writing, but it is more than a month
since I have heard from you ! Does this mean that you
are at last happy ? Have you lost the 'complete inde-
pendence ' which you were so proud of, and which
to-night has so nearly played me false ?
Letters of Two Brides 245
XX
RENEE DE l'eSTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU
May.
If love be the life of the world, why do austere philo-
sophers count it for nothing in marriage ? Why should
Society take for its first law that the woman must be
sacrificed to the family, introducing thus a note of dis-
cord into the very heart of marriage ? And this discord
was foreseen, since it was to meet the dangers arising
from it that men were armed with new-found powers
against us. But for these, we should have been able to
bring their whole theory to nothing, whether by the force
of love or of a secret, persistent aversion.
I see in marriage, as it at present exists, two opposing
forces which it was the task of the lawgiver to reconcile.
£ When will they be reconciled ? ' I said to myself, as I
read your letter. Oh ! my dear, one such letter alone is
enough to overthrow the whole fabric constructed by
the sage of Aveyron, under whose shelter I had so
cheerfully ensconced myself! The laws were made by
old men — any woman can see that — and they have been
prudent enough to decree that conjugal love, apart from
passion, is not degrading, and that a woman in yielding
herself may dispense with the sanction of love, provided
the man can legally call her his. In their exclusive
concern for the family they have imitated Nature, whose
one care is to propagate the species.
Formerly I was a person, now I am a chattel. Not
a few tears have I gulped down, alone and far from every
one. How gladly would I have exchanged them for a
consoling smile ! Why are our destinies so unequal ?
Your soul expands in the atmosphere of a lawful passion.
For you, virtue will coincide with pleasure. If you
246 Letters of Two Brides
encounter pain, it will be of your own free choice.
Your duty, if you marry Felipe, will be one with the
sweetest, freest indulgence of feeling. Our future is
big with the answer to my question, and I look for it
with restless eagerness.
You love and are adored. Oh ! my dear, let this
noble romance, the old subject of our dreams, take full
possession of your soul. Womanly beauty, refined and
spiritualised in you, was created by God, for His own
purposes, to charm and to delight. Yes, my sweet,
guard well the secret of your heart, and submit Felipe to
those ingenious devices of ours for testing a lover's metal.
Above all, make trial of your own love, for this is even
more important. It is so easy to be misled by the
deceptive glamour of novelty and passion, and by the
vision of happiness.
Alone of the two friends, you remain in your maiden
independence ; and I beseech you, dearest, do not risk
the irrevocable step of marriage without some guarantee.
It happens sometimes, when two are talking together,
apart from the world, their souls stripped of social
disguise, that a gesture, a word, a look lights up, as by a
flash, some dark abyss. You have courage and strength
to tread boldly in paths where others would be lost.
You have no conception in what anxiety I watch you.
Across all this space I see you ; my heart beats with
yours. Be sure, therefore, to write and tell me every-
thing. Your letters create an inner life of passion
within my homely, peaceful household, which reminds
me of a level high road on a grey day. The only event
here, my sweet, is that I am playing cross-purposes with
myself. But I don't want to tell you about it just now ;
it must wait for another day. With dogged obstinacy,
I pass from despair to hope, now yielding, now holding
back. It may be that I ask from life more than we
have a right to claim. In youth we are so ready to
believe that the ideal and the real will harmonise !
Letters of Two Brides 247
I have been pondering alone, seated beneath a rock in
my park, and the fruit of my pondering is that love in
marriage is a happy accident on which it is impossible to
base a universal law. My Aveyron philosopher is right
in looking on the family as the only possible unit in
society, and in placing woman in subjection to the
family, as she has been in all ages. The solution of this
great — for us almost awful — question lies in our first
child. For this reason, I would gladly be a mother,
were it only to supply food for the consuming energy of
my soul.
Louis's temper remains as perfect as ever ; his love is
of the active, my tenderness of the passive, type. He is
happy, plucking the flowers which bloom for him, with-
out troubling about the labour of the earth which has
produced them. Blessed self-absorption ! At whatever
cost to myself, I fall in with his illusions, as a mother,
in my idea of her, should be ready to spend herself to
satisfy a fancy of her child. The intensity of his joy
blinds him, and even throws its reflection upon me.
The smile or look of satisfaction which the knowledge
of his content brings to my face is enough to satisfy
him. And so, ' my child ' is the pet name which I give
him when we are alone.
And I wait for the fruit of all these sacrifices which
remain a secret between God, myself, and you. On
motherhood I have staked enormously ; my credit
account is now too large, I fear I shall never receive full
payment. To it I look for employment of my energy,
expansion of my heart, and the compensation of a
world of joys. Pray Heaven I be not deceived ! It is a
question of all my future and, horrible thought, of my
virtue.
248 Letters of Two Brides
XXI
LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE l'eSTORADE
June.
Dear wedded Sweetheart, — Your letter has arrived
at the very moment to hearten me for a bold step which
I have been meditating night and day. I feel within me
a strange craving for the unknown, or, if you will, the
forbidden, which makes me uneasy and reveals a conflict
in progress in my soul between the laws of society and
of nature. I cannot tell whether nature in me is the
stronger of the two, but I surprise myself in the act of
mediating between the hostile powers.
In plain words, what I wanted was to speak with Felipe,
alone, at night, under the lime-trees at the bottom of
our garden. There is no denying that this desire
beseems the girl who has earned the epithet of an ' up-
to-date young lady,' bestowed on me by the Duchess in
jest, and which my father has approved.
Yet to me there seems a method in this madness. I
should recompense Felipe for the long nights he has
passed under my window, at the same time that I should
test him, by seeing what he thinks of my escapade and
how he comports himself at a critical moment. Let
him cast a halo round my folly — behold in him my
husband ; let him show one iota less of the tremulous
respect with which he bows to me in the Champs
Elysees — farewell, Don Felipe.
As for society, I run less risk in meeting my lover
thus than when I smile to him in the drawing-rooms of
Mme. de Maufrigneuse and the old Marquise de Beau-
seant, where spies now surround us on every side ; and
Heaven only knows how people stare at the girl,
suspected of a weakness for a grotesque, like Macurner.
Letters of Two Brides 249
I cannot tell you to what a state of agitation I am
reduced by dreaming of this idea, and the time I have
given to planning its execution. I wanted you badly.
What happy hours we should have chattered away, lost
in the mazes of uncertainty, enjoying in anticipation all
the delights and horrors of a first meeting in the silence
of night, under the noble lime-trees of the Chaulieu
mansion, with the moonlight dancing through the
leaves ! As I sat alone, every nerve tingling, I cried,
1 Oh ! Renee, where are you ? ' Then your letter
came, like a match to gunpowder, and my last scruples
went by the board.
Through the window I tossed to my bewildered
adorer an exact tracing of the key of the little gate at
the end of the garden, together with this note : —
' Your madness must really be put a stop to. If you
broke your neck, you would ruin the reputation of the
woman you profess to love. Are you worthy of a new
proof of regard, and do you deserve that I should talk
with you under the limes at the foot of the garden at
the hour when the moon throws them into shadow ? '
Yesterday, at one o'clock, when Griffith was going to
bed, I said to her —
4 Take your shawl, dear, and come out with me. I
want to go to the bottom of the garden without any one
knowing.'
Without a word, she followed me. Oh ! my Renee,
what an awful moment when, after a little pause full of
delicious thrills of agony, I saw him gliding along like a
shadow. When he had reached the garden safely, I said
to Griffith —
' Don't be astonished, but the Baron de Macumer is
here, and, indeed, it is on that account I brought you
with me.'
No reply from Griffith.
250 Letters of Two Brides
* What would you have with me ? ' said Felipe, in a
tone of such agitation that it was easy to see he was
driven beside himself by the noise, slight as it was, of
our dresses in the silence of the night and of our steps
upon the gravel.
' I want to say to you what I could not write,' I
replied.
Griffith withdrew a few steps. It was one of those
mild nights when the air is heavy with the scent of
flowers. My head swam with the intoxicating delight
of finding myself all but alone with him in the friendly
shade of the lime-trees, beyond which lay the garden,
shining all the more brightly because the white facade
of the house reflected the moonlight. The contrast
seemed, as it were, an emblem of our clandestine love
leading up to the glaring publicity of a wedding.
Neither of us could do more at first than drink in
silently the ecstasy of a moment, as new and marvellous
for him as for me. At last I found tongue to say,
pointing to the elm-tree —
' Although I am not afraid of scandal, you shall not
climb that tree again. We have long enough played
schoolboy and schoolgirl, let us rise now to the height
of our destiny. Had the fall killed you, I should have
died disgraced . . .'
I looked at him. Every scrap of colour had left his face.
4 And if you had been found there, suspicion would
have attached either to my mother or to me . . .'
1 Forgive me,' he murmured.
' If you walk along the boulevard, I shall hear your
step ; and when I want to see you, I will open my window.
But I would not run such a risk unless some emergency
arose. Why have you forced me by your rash act to
commit another, and one which may lower me in your
eyes ? '
The tears which I saw in his eyes were to me the
most eloquent of answers.
Letters of Two Brides 251
4 What I have done to-night,' I went on with a smile,
i must seem to you the height of madness . . .'
After we had walked up and down in silence more
than once, he recovered composure enough to say —
1 You must think me a fool; and, indeed, the delirium
of my joy has robbed me of both nerve and wits. But
of this at least be assured, whatever you do is sacred in
my eyes from the very fact that it seemed right to you.
I honour you as I honour only God besides. And then,
Miss Griffith is here.'
c She is here for the sake of others, not for us,' I put
in hastily.
My dear, he understood me at once.
4 1 know very well,' he said, with the humblest glance
at me, ' that whether she is there or not makes no
difference. Unseen of men, we are still in the presence
of God, and our own esteem is not less important to us
than that of the world.'
' Thank you, Felipe,' I said, holding out my hand to
him with a gesture which you ought to see. l A woman,
and I am nothing if not a woman, is on the road to
loving the man who understands her. Oh ! only on
the road,' I went on, with a finger on my lips. * Don't
let your hopes carry you beyond what I say. My heart
will belong only to the man who can read it and know
its every turn. Our views, without being absolutely
identical, must be the same in their breadth and eleva-
tion. I have no wish to exaggerate my own merits ;
doubtless what seem virtues in my eyes have their
corresponding defects. All I can say is, I should be
heartbroken without them.'
1 Having first accepted me as your servant, you now
permit me to love you,' he said, trembling and looking
in my face at each word. ' My first prayer has been
more than answered.'
' But,' I hastened to reply, ' your position seems to me
a better one than mine. I should not object to change
252 Letters of Two Brides
places, and this change it lies with you to bring
about.'
4 In my turn, I thank you,' he replied. 'I know the
duties of a faithful lover. It is mine to prove that I am
worthy of you ; the trials shall be as long as you choose
to make them. If I belie your hopes, you have only
— God ! that I should say it — to reject me.'
' 1 know that you love me,' I replied. ' So farj
with a cruel emphasis on the words, 'you stand first in
my regard. Otherwise you would not be here.'
Then we began again to walk up and down as we talked,
and I must say that so soon as my Spaniard had recovered
himself he put forth the genuine eloquence of the
heart. It was not passion it breathed but a marvellous
tenderness of feeling, which he beautifully compared to
the divine love. His thrilling voice, which lent an
added charm to thoughts, in themselves so exquisite,
reminded me of the nightingale's note. He spoke low,
using only the middle tones of a fine instrument, and
words flowed upon words with the rush of a torrent.
It was the overflow of the heart.
' No more,' I said, ' or I shall not be able to tear
myself away.'
And with a gesture I dismissed him.
'You have committed yourself now, mademoiselle,'
said Griffith.
'In England that might be so, but not in France,'
I replied with nonchalance. ' I intend to make a love
match, and am feeling my way — that is all.'
You see, dear, as love did not come to me, I had to
do as Mahomet did with the mountain.
Friday.
Once more I have seen my slave. He has become
very timid, and puts on an air of pious devotion, which
I like, for it seems to say that he feels my power and
fascination in every fibre. But nothing in his look or
Letters of Two Brides 253
manner can rouse in these society sibyls any suspicion
of the boundless love which I see. Don't suppose
though, dear, that I am carried away, mastered, tamed ;
on the contrary, the taming, mastering, and carrying
away are on my side . . .
In short, I am quite capable of reason. Oh ! to feel
again the terror of that fascination in which I was held
by the schoolmaster, the plebeian, the man I kept at a
distance !
The fact is that love is of two kinds — one which
commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite
distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is
not the passion of the other. To get her full of life,
perhaps a woman ought to have experience of both.
Can the two passions ever co-exist ? Can the man in
whom we inspire love inspire it in us? Will the day
ever come when Felipe is my master ? Shall I tremble
then, as he does now ? These are questions which
make me shudder.
He is very blind ! In his place I should have
thought Mile, de Chaulieu, meeting me under the
limes, a cold, calculating coquette, with starched
manners. No, that is not love, it is playing with lire.
I am still fond of Felipe, but I am calm and at my ease
with him now. No more obstacles! What a terrible
thought ! It is all ebb-tide within, and I fear to question
my heart. His mistake was in concealing the ardour of
his love ; he ought to have forced my self-control.
In a word, I was naughty, and I have not got the
reward such naughtiness brings. No, dear, however
sweet the memory of that half-hour beneath the trees, it
is nothing like the excitement of the old time with its :
4 Shall I go ? Shall I not go ? Shall I write to him ?
Shall I not write ? '
Is it thus with all our pleasures ? Is suspense
always better than enjoyment ? Hope than fruition ?
Is it the rich who in very truth are the poor ? Have we
254 Letters of Two Brides
not both perhaps exaggerated feeling by giving to
imagination too free a rein ? There are times when
this thought freezes me. Shall I tell you why ? Because
lam meditating another visit to the bottom of the garden
— without Griffith. How far could I go in this direc-
tion ? Imagination knows no limit, but it is not so with
pleasure. Tell me, dear be-furbelowed Professor, how can
one reconcile the two goals of a woman's existence ?
XXII
LOUISE TO FELIPE
I am not pleased with you. If you did not cry over
Racine's Berenice^ and feel it to be the most terrible of
tragedies, there is no kinship in our souls ; we shall never
get on together, and had better break off at once. Let
us meet no more. Forget me j for if I do not have a
satisfactory reply, I shall forget you. You will become
M. le Baron de Macumer for me, or rather you will
cease to be at all.
Yesterday at Mme. d'Espard's you had a self-satisfied
air which disgusted me. No doubt, apparently, about
your conquest ! In sober earnest, your self-possession
alarms me. Not a trace in you of the humble slave or
your first letter. Far from betraying the absent-minded-
ness of a lover, you polished epigrams ! This is not the
attitude of a true believer, always prostrate before his
divinity.
If you do not feel me to be the very breath or your
life, a being nobler than other women, and to be judged
by other standards, then I must be less than a woman
in your sight. You have roused in me a spirit of mis-
trust, Felipe, and its angry mutterings have drowned
Letters of Two Brides 255
the accents of tenderness. When 1 look back upon what
has passed between us, I feel in truth that I have a right
to be suspicious. For know, Prime Minister of all the
Spains, that I have reflected much on the defenceless
condition of our sex. My innocence has held a torch,
and my fingers are not burnt. Let me repeat to you,
then, what my youthful experience taught me.
In all other matters, duplicity, faithlessness, and
broken pledges are brought to book and punished ; but
not so with love, which is at once the victim, the
accuser, the counsel, judge, and executioner. The
cruellest treachery, the most heartless crimes, are those
which remain for ever concealed, with two hearts alone
for witness. How indeed should the victim proclaim
them without injury to herself? Love, therefore, has
its own code, its own penal system, with which the
world has no concern.
Now, for my part, I have resolved never to pardon a
serious misdemeanour, and in love, pray, what is not
serious ? Yesterday you had all the air of a man success-
ful in his suit. You would be wrong to doubt it ; and
yet, if this assurance robbed you of the charming sim-
plicity which sprang from uncertainty, I should blame
you severely. I would have you neither bashful nor
self-complacent ; I would not have you in terror of
losing my affection — that would be an insult — but
neither would I have you wear your love lightly as a
thing of course. Never should your heart be freer
than mine. If you know nothing of the torture that a
single stab of doubt brings to the soul, tremble lest I
give you a lesson !
In a single glance I confided my heart to you, and
you read the meaning. The purest feelings that ever
took root in a young girl's breast are yours. The
thought and meditation of which I have told you served
indeed only to enrich the mind ; but if ever the
wounded heart turns to the brain for counsel, be sure the
256 Letters of Two Brides
young girl would show some kinship with the demon of
knowledge and of daring.
I swear to you, Felipe, if you love me, as I believe you
do, and if I have reason to suspect the least falling off in
the fear, obedience, and respect which you have hitherto
professed, if the pure flame of passion which first kindled
the fire of my heart should seem to me any day to burn less
vividly, you need fear no reproaches. I would not weary
you with letters bearing any trace of weakness, pride, or
anger, nor even with one of warning like this. But if
I spoke no words, Felipe, my face would tell you that
death was near. And yet I should not die till I had
branded you with infamy, and sown eternal sorrow in
your heart ; you would see the girl you loved dishonoured
and lost in this world, and know her doomed to ever-
lasting suffering in the next.
Do not therefore, I implore you, give me cause to
envy the old, happy Louise, the object of your pure
worship, whose heart expanded in the sunshine of happi-
ness, since, in the words of Dante, she possessed,
' Senza brama, sicura ricchezza !'
I have searched the Inferno through to find the most
terrible punishment, some torture of the mind to which
I might link the vengeance of God.
Yesterday, as I watched you, doubt went through me
like a sharp, cold dagger's point. Do you know what
that means ? I mistrusted you, and the pang was so
terrible, I could not endure it longer. If my service be
too hard, leave it, I would not keep you. Do I need any
proof of your cleverness ? Keep for me the flowers of
your wit. Show to others no fine surface to call forth
flattery, compliments, or praise. Come to me, laden
with hatred or scorn, the butt of calumny, come to me
with the news that women flout you and ignore you,
and not one loves you ; then, ah ! then you will know
the treasures of Louise's heart and love.
Letters of Two Brides 257
We are only rich when our wealth is buried so deep
that all the world might trample it under foot, unknow-
ing. If you were handsome, I don't suppose I should
have looked at you twice, or discovered one of the thou-
sand reasons out of which my love sprang. True, we
know no more of these reasons than we know why it is
the sun makes the flowers to bloom, and ripens the
fruit. Yet I could tell you of one reason very dear
to me.
The character, expression, and individuality that
ennoble your face are a sealed book to all but me. Mine
is the power which transforms you into the most lov-
able of men, and that is why I would keep your mental
gifts also for myself. To others they should be as
meaningless as your eyes, the charm of your mouth and
features. Let it be mine alone to kindle the beacon of
your intelligence, as I bring the love-light into your
eyes. I would have you the Spanish grandee of old
days, cold, ungracious, haughty, a monument to be
gazed at from afar, like the ruins of some barbaric power,
which no one ventures to explore. Now, you have
nothing better to do than to open up pleasant pro-
menades for the public, and show yourself of a Parisian
affability !
Is my ideal portrait, then, forgotten ? Your excessive
cheerfulness was redolent of your love. Had it not
been for a restraining glance from me, you would have
proclaimed to the most sharp-sighted, keen-witted, and
unsparing of Paris salons, that your inspiration was
drawn from Armande-Louise-Marie de Chaulieu.
I believe in your greatness too much to think for a
moment that your love is ruled by policy ; but if you
did not show a childlike simplicity when with me, I
could only pity you. Spite of this first fault, you are
still deeply admired by
Louise de Chaulieu.
258 Letters of Two Brides
XXIII
FELIPE TO LOUISE
When God beholds our faults, He sees also our repent-
ance. Yes, my beloved mistress, you are right. I felt
that I had displeased you, but knew not how. Now that
you have explained the cause of your trouble, I find in it
fresh motive to adore you. Like the God of Israel, you
are a jealous deity, and I rejoice to see it. For what is
holier and more precious than jealousy ? My fair
guardian angel, jealousy is an ever-wakeful sentinel ; it
is to love what pain is to the body, the faithful herald
of evil. Be jealous of your servant, Louise, I beg of
you ; the harder you strike, the more contrite will he be
and kiss the rod, in all submission, which proves that he
is not indifferent to you.
But, alas ! dear, if the pains it cost me to vanquish
my timidity and master feelings you thought so feeble
were invisible to you, will Heaven, think you, reward
them ? I assure you, it needed no slight effort to
show myself to you as I was in the days before I loved.
At Madrid I was considered a good talker, and I wanted
you to see for yourself the few gifts I may possess. If
this were vanity, it has been well punished.
Your last glance utterly unnerved me. Never had I
so quailed, even when the army of France was at the
gates of Cadiz and I read peril for my life in the dis-
sembling words of my royal master. Vainly I tried to
discover the cause of your displeasure, and the lack of
sympathy between us which this fact disclosed was
terrible to me. For in truth I have no wish but to act
by your will, think your thoughts, see with your eyes,
respond to your joy and suffering, as my body responds
to heat and cold. The crime and the anguish lay for
Letters of Two Brides 259
me in the breach of unison in that common life of feel-
ing which you have made so fair.
c I have vexed her ! ' I exclaimed over and over again,
like one distraught. My noble, my beautiful Louise, if
anything could increase the fervour of my devotion or
confirm my belief in your delicate moral intuitions, it
would be the new light which your words have thrown
upon my own feelings. Much in them, of which my
mind was formerly but dimly conscious, you have now
made clear. If this be designed as chastisement, what
can be the sweetness of your rewards ?
Louise, for me it was happiness enough to be accepted
as your servant. You have given me the life of which
I despaired. No longer do I draw a useless breath, I
have something to spend myself for; my force has an
outlet, if only in suffering for you. Once more I say,
as I have said before, that you will never find me other
than I was when first I offered myself as your lowly
bondman. Yes, were you dishonoured and lost, to use
your own words, my heart would only cling the more
closely to you for your self-sought misery. It would be
my care to staunch your wounds, and my prayers should
importune God with the story of your innocence and
your wrongs.
Did I not tell you that the feelings of my heart for
you are not a lover's only, that I will be to you father,
mother, sister, brother — ay, a whole family — anything
or nothing, as you may decree ? And is it not your own
wish which has confined within the compass of a lover's
feeling so many varying forms of devotion ? Pardon
me, then, if at times the father and brother disappear
behind the lover, since you know they are none the
less there, though screened from view. Would that
you could read the feelings of my heart when you
appear before me, radiant in your beauty, the centre of
admiring eyes, reclining calmly in your carriage in the
Champs Elysees, or seated in your box at the Opera !
260 Letters of Two Brides
Then would you know how absolutely free from selfish
taint is the pride with which I hear the praises of your
loveliness and grace, praises which warm my heart even
to the strangers who utter them ! When by chance
you have raised me to elysium by a friendly greeting,
my pride is mingled with humility, and I depart as
though God's blessing rested on me. Nor does the joy
vanish without leaving a long track of light behind. It
breaks on me through the clouds of my cigarette smoke.
More than ever do I feel how every drop of this surging
blood throbs for you.
Can you be ignorant how you are loved ? After see-
ing you, I return to my study, and the glitter of its
Saracenic ornaments sinks to nothing before the bright-
ness of your portrait, when I open the spring that keeps
it locked up from every eye and lose myself in endless
musings or link my happiness to verse. From the
heights of heaven I look down upon the course of a life
such as my hopes dare to picture it ! Have you never,
in the silence of the night, or through the roar of the
town, heard the whisper of a voice in your sweet, dainty
ear ? Does no one of the thousand prayers that I speed
to you reach home ?
By dint of silent contemplation of your pictured face,
I have succeeded in deciphering the expression of every
feature and tracing its connection with some grace of the
spirit, and then I pen a sonnet to you in Spanish on the
harmony of the twofold beauty in which nature has
clothed you. These sonnets you will never see, for my
poetry is too unworthy of its theme, I dare not send it
to you. Not a moment passes without thoughts of you,
for my whole being is bound up in you, and if you ceased
to be its animating principle, every part would ache.
Now, Louise, can you realise the torture to me of
knowing that I had displeased you, while entirely
ignorant of the cause ? The ideal double life which
seemed so fair was cut short. My heart turned to ice
Letters of Two Brides 261
within me as, hopeless of any other explanation, I con-
cluded that you had ceased to love me. With heavy
heart, and yet not wholly without comfort, I was falling
back upon my old post as servant ; then your letter came
and turned all to joy. Oh ! might I but listen for ever
to such chiding !
Once a child, picking himself up from a tumble,
turned to his mother with the words c Forgive me.'
Hiding his own hurt, he sought pardon for the pain he
had caused her. Louise, I was that child, and such as I
was then, I am now. Here is the key to my character,
which your slave in all humility places in your hands.
But do not fear, there will be no more stumbling.
Keep tight the chain which binds me to you, so that a
touch may communicate your lightest wish to him who
will ever remain your slave, Felipe.
XXIV
LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE l'eSTORADE
October, 1825.
My dear Friend, — How is it possible that you, who
brought yourself in two months to marry a broken-
down invalid in order to mother him, should know any-
thing of that terrible shifting drama, enacted in the
recesses of the heart, which we call love — a drama where
death lies in a glance or a light reply ?
I had reserved for Felipe one last supreme test which
was to be decisive. I wanted to know whether his love
was the love of a Royalist for his King, who can do no
wrong. Why should the loyalty of a Catholic be less
supreme ?
He walked with me a whole night under the limes at
the bottom of the garden, and not a shadow of suspicion
262 Letters of Two Brides
crossed his soul. Next day he loved me better, but the
feeling was as reverent, as humble, as respectful as ever ;
he had not presumed an iota. Oh ! he is a very
Spaniard, a very Abencerrage. He scaled my wall to
come and kiss the hand which in the darkness I reached
down to him from my balcony. He might have broken
his neck ; how many of our young men would do the
like ?
But all this is nothing ; Christians suffer the horrible
pangs of martyrdom in the hope of heaven. The day
before yesterday I took aside the royal ambassador- to-be
at the Court of Spain, my much respected father, and
said to him with a smile —
4 Sir, some of your friends will have it that you are
marrying your dear Armande to the nephew of an
ambassador who has been very anxious for this connec-
tion, and has long begged for it. Also, that the marriage-
contract arranges for his nephew to succeed on his death
to his enormous fortune and his title, and bestows on the
young couple in the meantime an income of a hundred
thousand livres, on the bride a dowry of eight hundred
thousand francs. Your daughter weeps, but bows to the
unquestioned authority of her honoured parent. Some
people are unkind enough to say that, behind her tears,
she conceals a worldly and ambitious soul.
1 Now, we are going to the gentleman's box at the
Opera to-night, and M. le Baron de Macumer will visit
us there.'
4 Macumer needs a touch of the spur then,' said my
father, smiling at me, as though I were a female ambas-
sador.
4 You mistake Clarissa Harlowe for Figaro ! ' I cried,
with a glance of scorn and mockery. * When you see
me with my right hand ungloved, you will give the lie
to this impertinent gossip, and will mark your displeasure
at it.'
4 1 may make my mind easy about your future. You
Letters of Two Brides 263
have no more got a girl's headpiece than Jeanne d'Arc
had a woman's heart. You will be happy, you will love
nobody, and will allow yourself to be loved.'
This was too much. I burst into laughter.
'What is it, little flirt ? ' he said.
' I tremble for my country's interests . . .'
And seeing him look quite blank, I added —
' At Madrid ! '
4 You have no idea how this little nun has learned, in
a year's time, to make fun of her father,' he said to the
Duchess.
£ Armande makes light of everything,' my mother
replied, looking me in the face.
' What do you mean ? ' I asked.
' Why, you are not even afraid of rheumatism on
these damp nights,' she said, with another meaning
glance at me.
c Oh ! ' I answered, ' the mornings are so hot ! '
The Duchess looked down.
'It's high time she were married,' said my father,
'and it had better be before I go.'
' If you wish it,' I replied demurely.
Two hours later, my mother and I, the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse and Mme. d'Espard, were all four blooming
like roses in the front of the box. I had seated myself
sideways, giving only a shoulder to the house, so that
I could see everything, myself unseen, in that spacious
box which fills one of the two angles at the back of the
hall, between the columns.
Macumer came, stood up, and put his opera-glasses
before his eyes so that he might be able to look at me
comfortably.
In the first interval entered the young man whom I
call ' king of the profligates.' The Comte Henri de
Marsay, who has great beauty of an effeminate kind,
entered the box with an epigram in his eyes, a smile
upon his lips, and an air of satisfaction over his whole
264 Letters of Two Brides
countenance. He first greeted my mother, Mme.
d'Espard, and the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, the Comte
d'Esgrignon, and M. de Canalis ; then turning to me,
he said —
' I do not know whether I shall be the first to con-
gratulate you on an event which will make you the
object of envy to many.'
' Ah ! a marriage ! ' I cried. c Is it left for me, a girl
fresh from the convent, to tell you that predicted
marriages never come off.'
M. de Marsay bent down, whispering to Macumer,
and I was convinced, from the movement of his lips,
that what he said was this —
' Baron, you are perhaps in love with that little
coquette, who has used you for her own ends ; but as the
question is one not of love, but of marriage, it is as well
for you to know what is going on.'
Macumer treated this officious scandalmonger to one
of those glances of his which seem to me so eloquent of
noble scorn, and replied to the effect that he was * not in
love with any little coquette.' His whole bearing so
delighted me, that directly I caught sight of my father,
the glove was off.
Felipe had not a shadow of fear or doubt. How well
did he bear out my expectations ! His faith is only in
me, society cannot hurt him with its lies. Not a
muscle of the Arab's face stirred, not a drop of the blue
blood flushed his olive cheek.
The two young Counts went out, and I said, laughing,
to Macumer —
4 M. de Marsay has been treating you to an epigram
on me.'
4 He did more,' he replied. * It was an epithalamium.'
c You speak Greek to me,' I said, rewarding him
with a smile and a certain look which always embar-
rasses him.
My father meantime was talking to Mme. de Mau-
frigneuse.
Letters of Two Brides 265
' I should think so!' he exclaimed. 'The gossip
which gets about is scandalous. No sooner has a girl
come out than every one is keen to marry her, and the
ridiculous stories that are invented ! I shall never force
Armande to marry against her will. I am going to
take a turn in the promenade, otherwise people will be
saying that I allowed the rumour to spread in order to
suggest the marriage to the ambassador ; and Caesar's
daughter ought to be above suspicion, even more than
his wife — if that were possible.'
The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Mme. d'Espard
shot glances first at my mother, then at the Baron,
brimming over with sly intelligence and repressed
curiosity. With their serpent's cunning they had at
last got an inkling of something going on. Of all
mysteries in life, love is the least mysterious ! It
exhales from women, I believe, like a perfume, and she
who can conceal it is a very monster ! Our eyes prattle
even more than our tongues.
Having enjoyed the delightful sensation of finding
Felipe rise to the occasion, as I had wished, it was only
in nature I should hunger for more. So I made the
signal agreed on for telling him that he might come to
my window by the dangerous road you know of. A
few hours later I found him, upright as a statue, glued
to the wall, his hand resting on the balcony of my
window, studying the reflections of the light in my
room.
' My dear Felipe,' I said, c you have acquitted yourself
well to-night ; you behaved exactly as I should have
done had I been told that you were on the point of
marrying.'
' I thought,' he replied, c that you would hardly have
told others before me.'
'And what right have you to this privilege?'
' The right of one who is your devoted slave.'
' In very truth ? '
266 Letters of Two Brides
' I am, and shall ever remain so.'
c But suppose this marriage were inevitable; suppose
that I had agreed . . .'
Two flashing glances lit up the moonlight — one
directed to me, the other to the precipice which the
wall made for us. He seemed to calculate whether a
fall together would mean death ; but the thought
merely passed like lightning over his face and sparkled
in his eyes. A power, stronger than passion, checked
the impulse.
c An Arab cannot take back his word,' he said in a
husky voice. 1 1 am your slave to do with as you will ;
my life is not mine to destroy.'
The hand on the balcony seemed as though its hold
were relaxing. I placed mine on it as I said —
' Felipe, my beloved, from this moment I am your
wife in thought and will. Go in the morning to ask
my father for my hand. He wishes to retain my
fortune ; but if you promise to acknowledge receipt of
it in the contract, his consent will no doubt be given.
I am no longer Armande de Chaulieu. Leave me at
once ; no breath of scandal must touch Louise de
Macumer.'
He listened with blanched face and trembling limbs,
then, like a flash, had cleared the ten feet to the ground
in safety. It was a moment of agony, but he waved
his hand to me and disappeared.
' I am loved then,' I said to myself, c as never woman
was before.' And I fell asleep in the calm content of
a child, my destiny for ever fixed.
About two o'clock next day my father summoned me
to his private room, where I found the Duchess and
Macumer. There was an interchange of civilities. I
replied quite simply that if my father and M. Henarez
were of one mind, I had no reason to oppose their wishes.
Thereupon my mother invited the Baron to dinner;
and after dinner, we all four went for a drive in the
Letters of Two Brides 267
Bois de Boulogne, where I had the pleasure of smiling
ironically to M. de Marsay as he passed on horseback
and caught sight of Macumer sitting opposite to us
beside my father.
My bewitching Felipe has had his cards reprinted as
follows : —
Henarez
(Baron de Macumer, formerly Due de Soria.)
Every morning he brings me with his own hands a
splendid bouquet, hidden in which I never fail to find
a letter, containing a Spanish sonnet in my honour,
which he has composed during the night.
Not to make this letter inordinately large, I send you
as specimens only the first and last of these sonnets,
which I have translated for your benefit, word for word,
and line for line : —
FIRST SONNET
Many a time I Ve stood, clad in thin silken vest,
Drawn sword in hand, with steady pulse,
Waiting the charge of a raging bull,
And the thrust of his horn, sharper-pointed than Phoebe's
crescent.
I Ve scaled, on my lips the lilt of an Andalusian dance,
The steep redoubt under a rain of tire ;
I Ve staked my life upon a hazard of the dice,
Careless, as though it were a gold doubloon.
My hand would seek the ball out of the cannon's mouth,
But now meseems I grow more timid than a crouching hare,
Or a child spying some ghost in the curtain's folds.
For when your sweet eye rests on me,
An icy sweat covers my brow, my knees give way,
I tremble, shrink, my courage gone.
268 Letters of Two Brides
SECOND SONNET
Last night I fain would sleep to dream of thee,
But jealous sleep fled my eyelids,
I sought the balcony and looked towards heaven,
Always my glance flies upward when I think of thee.
Strange sight ! whose meaning love alone can tell,
The sky had lost its sapphire hue,
The stars, dulled diamonds in their golden mount,
Twinkled no more nor shed their warmth.
The moon, washed of her silver radiance lily-white,
Hung mourning over the gloomy plain, for thou hast robbed
The heavens of all that made them bright.
The snowy sparkle of the moon is on thy lovely brow,
Heaven's azure centres in thine eyes,
Thy lashes fall like starry rays.
What more gracious way of saying to a young girl
that she fills your life ? Tell me what you think of
this love, which expends itself in lavishing the treasures
alike of the earth and of the soul. Only within the last
ten days have I grasped the meaning of that Spanish
gallantry, so famous in old days.
Ah me ! dear, what is going on now at La Cram-
pade ? How often do I take a stroll there, inspecting
the growth of our crops ! Have you no news to give of
our mulberry trees, our last winter's plantations ? Does
everything prosper as you wish ? And while the buds
are opening on our shrubs — I will not venture to speak of
the bedding-out plants — have they also blossomed in the
bosom of the wife ? Does Louis continue his policy of
madrigals ? Do you enter into each other's thoughts ?
I wonder whether your little runlet of wedded peace is
better than the raging torrent of my love ! Has my
sweet lady professor taken offence ? I cannot believe it j
and if it were so, I should send Felipe off at once, post-
haste, to fling himself at her knees and bring back to me
Letters of Two Brides 269
my pardon or her head. Sweet love, my life here is a
splendid success, and I want to know how it fares with
life in Provence. We have just increased our family by
the addition of a Spaniard with the complexion of a
Havana cigar, and your congratulations still tarry.
Seriously, my sweet Renee, I am anxious. I am
afraid lest you should be eating your heart out in silence,
for fear of casting a gloom over my sunshine. Write to
me at once, naught child ! and tell me your life in
its every minutest detail ; tell me whether you still
hold back, whether your 'independence' still stands
erect, or has fallen on its knees, or is sitting down com-
fortably, which would indeed be serious. Can you
suppose that the incidents of your married life are
without interest for me ? I muse at times over all that
you have said to me. Often when, at the Opera, I seem
absorbed in watching the pirouetting dancers, I am
saying to myself, c It is half-past nine, perhaps she is in
bed. What is she about ? Is she happy ? Is she alone
with her independence? or has her independence gone
the way of other dead and cast-off independences ? '
A thousand loves.
XXV
RENEE DE L'ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU
Saucy girl ! Why should I write ? What could I
say ? Whilst your life is varied by social festivities,
as well as by the anguish, the tempers, and the flowers
of love — all of which you describe so graphically, that I
might be watching some first-rate acting at the theatre
— mine is as monotonous and regular as though it were
passed in a convent.
We always go to bed at nine and get up with day-
270 Letters of Two Brides
break. Our meals are served with a maddening punctu-
ality. Nothing ever happens. I have accustomed
myself without much difficulty to this mapping out of
the day, which perhaps is, after all, in the nature of
things. Where would the life of the universe be but for
that subjection to fixed laws which, according to the
astronomers, so Louis tells me, rule the spheres ! It is
not order of which we weary.
Then I have laid upon myself certain rules of dress,
and these occupy my time in the mornings. I hold it
part of my duty as a wife to look as charming as possible.
I feel a certain satisfaction in it, and it causes lively
pleasure to the good old man and to Louis. After
lunch, we walk. When the newspapers arrive, I disap-
pear to look after my household affairs or to read — for I
read a great deal — or to write to you. I come back to
the others an hour before dinner ; and after dinner we
play cards, or receive visits, or pay them. Thus my
days pass between a contented old man, who has done
with passions, and the man who owes his happiness to
me. Louis's happiness is so radiant that it has at last
warmed my heart.
For women, happiness no doubt cannot consist in the
mere satisfaction of desire. Sometimes, in the evening,
when I am not required to take a hand in the game,
and can sink back in my armchair, imagination bears
me on its strong wings into the very heart of your life.
Then, its riches, its changeful tints, its surging passions
become my own, and I ask myself to what end such a
stormy preface can lead. May it not swallow up the
book itself? For you, my darling, the illusions of love
are possible ; for me, only the facts of homely life remain.
Yes, your love seems to me a dream !
Therefore I find it hard to understand why you are
determined to throw so much romance over it. Your
ideal man must have more soul than fire, more nobility
and self-command than passion. You persist in trying
Letters of Two Brides 271
to clothe in living form the dream of a girl on the
threshold of life ; you demand sacrifices for the pleasure
of rewarding them ; you submit your Felipe to tests in
order to ascertain whether desire, hope, and curiosity
are enduring in their nature. But, child, behind all
your fantastic stage scenery rises the altar, where ever-
lasting bonds are forged. The very morrow of your
marriage the graceful structure raised by your subtle
strategy may fall before that terrible reality which makes
of a girl a woman, of a gallant a husband. Remember
that there is no exemption for lovers. For them, as for
ordinary folk like Louis and me, there lurks beneath the
wedding rejoicings the great c Perhaps ' of Rabelais.
I do not blame you, though, of course, it was rash,
for talking with Felipe in the garden, or for spending a
night with him, you on your balcony, he on his wall ;
but you make a plaything of life, and I am afraid that
life may some day turn the tables. I dare not give you
the counsel which my own experience would suggest ;
but let me repeat once more from the seclusion of my
valley that the viaticum of married 
