' ' 
 
 , 
 
 
 -
 
 Madame de Macumer 
 
 Photogravure From an Original Drawing
 
 Illustrated Sterling edition 
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 BY 
 HONORE de BALZAC 
 
 With Introductions by 
 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 
 BOSTON 
 DANA ESTES & COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 COPYRIGHTED 
 
 JOHN D. AVIL 
 
 A II Rights Reserved
 
 CONTENTS 
 PART I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION- - - ix 
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE : 
 
 (UneFilled've.) 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. THE TWO MARIES - ... 2 
 
 II. SISTERLY CONFIDENCES - 14 
 
 III. THE STORY OF A HAPPY WOMAN 21 
 
 IV. A MAN OF NOTE - - - 3! 
 
 v. FLORINS - 48 
 
 VI. LOVE VERSUS SOCIETY - 64 
 
 VII. SUICIDE - 83 
 
 VIII. A LOVER SAVED AND LOST - IOO 
 
 IX. A HUSBAND'S TRIUMPH - - IIJ 
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES: 
 
 (Mfmoires de deux jeunes Mantes.) 
 
 FIRST PART - - 132 
 
 SECOND PART - ... 311 
 
 (Translator, R. S SCOTT.) 
 VOL. 5 I
 
 iv CONTENTS 
 
 PART II 
 
 PAOR 
 
 INTRODUCTION - . . ix 
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY: 
 
 (La Femme de Trente Ans.) 
 
 I. EARLY MISTAKES ... I 
 
 H. A HIDDEN GRIEF - - - - 72 
 
 III. AT THIRTY YEARS - - - 93 
 
 iv. THE FINGER OF GOD - - - - 116 
 
 V. TWO MEETINGS .... I3O 
 
 VI. THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER - - l8l 
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN - - . -197 
 
 (La Femme Abandonnte.) 
 
 LA GRENADIERS . . 243 
 
 (La Grenadier e.) 
 
 THE MESSAGE - - - - 269 
 
 (Le Message. ) 
 
 GOBSECK - - - - - 285 
 
 (Gobseck.) 
 
 PIERRE GRASSOU - - .349 
 
 (Pierre Grassou.) 
 (Translator, ELLEN MARRIAGK.)
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 AND 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 housewifery with 
 freedom from the characteristics of the mere menagere, in- 
 terest in affairs and books and things in general without, in 
 the French sense, "dissipation" or neglect of 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 
 
 (ix)
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 affec- 
 tion; and though it is perhaps not fair to look forward to 
 the Depute d'Arcis (which, after all, is not in this part prob- 
 ably 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 fic- 
 'tion) with her own daughter. So, too, if the addition of a 
 little more romance to Eenee 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 
 modernized 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 con- 
 ceiving herself in conscience bound to make both herself and 
 her lovers or husbands miserable. It is true that in order to 
 the successful accomplishment of this cheerful life-pro- 
 gramme, Balzac has provided her with two singularly com- 
 plaisant 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 gen-
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 tlemen of a most triste description, deplorable to consider as 
 coming from the hand that created not merely Goriot and 
 Grandet, but even Rastignac, More 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, "sensi- 
 bility" that does not reach the actual boiling-point of pas- 
 sion seems to me to fail most disagreeably. 
 
 There are, however, even for those who are thus minded, 
 considerable condolences and consolations in Une Fille d'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 d'five 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 himself; and we 
 should have been more entirely rejoiced at the escape of 
 Count Felix de Vandenesse from the decoration so often al- 
 luded 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 "double 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 respectable ladies who have 
 formerly enjoyed the doubtful honor of Count Felix's atten- 
 tions all are good. It can hardly be said, considering the 
 nature of the case, that the Count's method of saving his 
 honor, though not quite the most scrupulous in the world, is 
 contrary to "the game," and the whole moves well.
 
 ill INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 
 Eubempre. I do not know whether any special original has 
 been assigned to Nathan, who, it will be observed, is some- 
 thing 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 published 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 (with 
 nine chapter divisions) in the Siecle on the last day of De- 
 cember 1838 and during the first fortnight of January 1839, 
 it was in the latter year published as a book by Souverain with 
 Massimilla Doni, and three years later was comprised in the 
 first volume of the Comedie. 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 traveler, making Paris live for him in Milan, 
 
 you will not be surprised that he should lay one of his works at 
 your feet, as a token of gratitude for so many delightful even- 
 ings 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 child- 
 hood, 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 inconstant, 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 
 del Capucclni, which used to resound to the dear child's merry 
 laughter, to our quarrels, and our stories. You have left the 
 Cor so for the Tre Monasteri, where I know nothing of your man- 
 ner of life, and I am forced to picture you, no 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 
 
 Your humble servant, 
 DE BALZAC.
 
 2 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 wi'th 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 color. 
 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 color of unbleached linen. The 
 warm tone of the furniture, which was of solid rosewood 
 and carved after the best antique models, saved from in- 
 sipidity the general effect which a painter 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 wifh 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 beveled facets of a Venetian 
 mirror in an ebony frame, crowded with figures in relief, relic
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 3 
 
 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 mention 
 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 1831, 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 Eevolution 
 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 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 
 shuffle 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
 
 4 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 hand- 
 kerchief 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 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 
 traveled 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 gentlefolk, was spent in making poor- 
 clothes and in taking exercise, modeled on the English Sun- 
 day 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 5 
 
 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 fulfilment 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 authorized books, 
 such as the Lettres edifiantes and Noel's Legons de litterature, 
 but only in the presence of their mother's confessor, since 
 even here passages might occur, which, apart from heedful 
 commentary, would be liable to stir the imagination. Fene- 
 lon'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. Eeligion, im- 
 posed 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 remain- 
 ing 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 jail was drawn from each 
 other. Their sweet whispered talks at night, the few sen- 
 tences they could exchange when their mother left them foi
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 marvelous 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 em- 
 broidery. 
 
 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 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 Quotidienne or L'Ami 
 de la Religion. The men again might have served as ex- 
 tinguishers 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 procuring 
 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 
 neighboring convent, bored them for a time with exercises. 
 But, when the elder of the girls was ten years old, the Comte 
 de Granville pointed out the necessity of finding a master.
 
 A DAUU11TKK Ob' KVE 7 
 
 Mme. de Granville, who could not deny it, gave to her con- 
 cession 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 gray 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 ex- 
 emplar} r 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 unrecognized 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, "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 foi 
 his lodging, his beer, his pipe, and his clothes. Six hundred
 
 francs a year and his lessons were a Paradise for Schnracke. 
 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 rigor and the 
 frost of devotion, and this fact by itself sums up the character 
 of Schmucke and the childhood of the two Maries. 
 
 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. Schmucke had thirty houses 
 in the Marais. This tardy success displayed itself in slippers 
 with bronze steel buckles and lined with horse-hair soles, 
 and in a more frequent change of shirt. His childlike gaiety, 
 long repressed by an honorable and seemly poverty, bubbled 
 forth afresh. He let fall little jokes such as: 'Toung 
 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: "Younc ladies, de gads 
 subbed off de dirt off Barees" Gratified at having brought 
 his adorable ladies this species of Vergiss mein niclit, culled 
 from the flowers of his fancy, he put on an air of such in- 
 effable roguishness in. presenting it that mockery was dis- 
 armed. 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 respectfully 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 9 
 
 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 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 composition, those 
 three daughters of the skies, rewarded their labors, 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 ex- 
 traordinary 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
 
 10 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 
 
 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 con- 
 vent. 
 
 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 remarkable compro- 
 mise, 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 magistrature assise, 
 the other for the magistrature amovible* 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. Eestaurants, theatres, 
 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 
 
 *The magistrature assise consists of the judges who sit in court, and are appointed 
 tor 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.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 11 
 
 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 per- 
 petual, "Where is Angelique?" "What is Eugenie about?" 
 "Where can my children be?" When her sons were men- 
 tioned, 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 knowledge 
 of what it is to have a brother. On the occasion of their 
 sisters' weddings it happened that both brothers were de- 
 tained at a distance by important cases : the one having then 
 a post as avocat general* 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, en- 
 grossed in money-making, in pushing their way in the world, 
 or they are chained to the public service; the sisters are ab- 
 sorbed in a vortex of family interests, outside their own circle. 
 Tlius the different members spend their lives apart and in- 
 different 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 
 
 *The term is applied to all the substitutes of the procureur glntral, or Attorney 
 General.
 
 12 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 hand- 
 some 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 
 themselves, and had given up making fun of Schmucke, they 
 found out the secret of the cares which lined the Count's fore- 
 head. 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 tenderness. 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, ajid his whole ex- 
 pression breathed the deepest pity. 
 
 "You are not very happy, my darlings," he said on one 
 such occasion; "but I shall marry you early, and it will be 
 a good day for me when I see you take wing." 
 
 "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.
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 13 
 
 The marriage of both sisters welded together by misfor- 
 tune, as Bita-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 
 ballrooms 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 and healthy blood and against 
 which the carnation stands out in vivid patches, firm in tex- 
 ture 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 unaffected astonishment, betrayed by the indecisive wav- 
 ering 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 inno- 
 cent things, so charming in their shamefacedness, as they 
 first saw themselves in the privacy of their own rooms; nor 
 did the color fade all evening !
 
 14 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 
 
 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 madcap 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 Eugenie 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. 
 
 CHAPTEK II 
 
 SISTERLY CONFIDENCES 
 
 MME. DE VANDENESSE, it was plain, was crushed by the bur- 
 den of troubles too heavy for a mind still unsophisticated 
 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. 
 
 "You poor darling," said Mme. du Tillet, "what strange
 
 Copyright, 1900, byj. D. A. 
 
 
 The Countess de Vandenesse.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 15 
 
 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 Tuileries 
 now that you have ceased to go. Our husbands belong to 
 rival parties. I am the wife of an ambitious banker, a bad 
 man. Your husband, sweetest, is kind, noble, generous " 
 
 "Ah ! do not reproach me," cried the Countess. "N"o 
 woman has the right to do so, who has not suffered the 
 weariness of a tame, colorless 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-vary- 
 ing emotions of a poet's soul. In every flight of his imagina- 
 tion, 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 demeanor 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 de- 
 pend on a drive, which gives you the chance of seeing in the 
 crowd the one man before the flash of whose eye the sun- 
 light pales; you tremble if he is late, and could strangle
 
 16 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 can- 
 not. Kemember, 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: 
 
 "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 in- 
 deed the life I lead might well plead within me for a pas- 
 sion such as you describe. Let me cling 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 realize 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 un- 
 ceasing. 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 tidbit for his vanity. 
 
 "Ferdinand" and she struck her hand upon the mantel- 
 piece "is hard and smooth like this marble. He is sus- 
 picious of me. If I ask anything for myself I know before- 
 hand that refusal is certain; but for whatever 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 17 
 
 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 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 returning at a fixed lime. 
 In place of giving orders, I receive them. At balls and the 
 theatre, a lacquey comes up to me saying, 'Your carriage 
 waits, madame/ 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. Surrounded by all this hateful splendor, I some- 
 times 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 companion, 
 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. 
 
 "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 iL 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
 
 18 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 mill- 
 ions. 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 will go no fur- 
 ther, 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 
 banknotes 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 
 Hue Saint-Lazare and is having a palace built. His wife 
 is a friend of mine. . . . Ah!" she cried, "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." 
 
 "Darling/' cried Mme. de Vandenesse, throwing herself 
 into her sister's arms and bursting into tears, "there are only 
 a few hours left. Let us go there to-night, this very in- 
 stant." 
 
 "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 talk- 
 ing to notice the wheels of du Tillet's carriage, and the
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 1? 
 
 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 husband's yoke, had 
 had no opportunity of cultivating. 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. 
 
 "I thought my sister wealthier than she is," she said, look- 
 ing her brother-in-law in the face. "Women sometimes get 
 into difficulties which they don't care to speak of to their 
 husbands witness Napoleon and Josephine and I came to 
 ask a favor 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 herself 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 understanding 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 honor," said 
 du Tillet.
 
 20 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 The Countess felt the reproach and began to laugh. 
 
 "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' hair. "You would do well," 
 he said to his wife, "to take a lesson from Mme. de Van- 
 denesse. 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, madame, 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, drag- 
 ging her back, planted her before him beneath the full 
 blaze of the candles, flaming in their silver-gilt branches be- 
 tween 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 Eue 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, al- 
 ways pant for liberty and happiness, and the happiness they 
 have never comes up to what they imagined. Those are the 
 girls that make bad wives." 
 
 "Speak for me if you like," said poor Eugenie, in a tone 
 of bitter irony, "but respect my sister. The Comtesse de 
 Vandenesse is too happy, too completely trusted by her hus-
 
 Du Tillet took his wife's arm and . . . planted her before him
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 21 
 
 band, not to be attached to him. Besides, supposing 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 inter- 
 est 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. 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 THE STOEY 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 Yandenesse was one of the band of distinguished 
 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 uncom- 
 mon with men when the hour of youth's gay frenzy is past. 
 There comes then a critical 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
 
 22 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 the}' 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 disappointment. 
 
 In spite of this, Felix still passed for one of the handsomest 
 and most agreeable men in Paris. With women his reputa- 
 tion was largely due to one of the noblest of their con- 
 temporaries, 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 domi- 
 nated 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, or had remained sweet 
 and loving, responsive to the voice of nobler feeling. Tyranny 
 produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which 
 are symbolized 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-Anglique de Granville.
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 23 
 
 In thus choosing for wife a young girl in her fresh in- 
 nocence and purity, he had made up his mind beforehand, 
 as befitted a man old in everything but years, to unite pa- 
 ternal with conjugal affection. He was conscious 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 
 waywardness. 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 marriageable 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 train- 
 ing in affairs of state, the insight of a life alternately de- 
 voted 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 purga- 
 tory to the wedded paradise prepared for her by Felix in 
 their house in the Eue du Rocher, where every trifle breathed 
 of distinction at the same time that the conventions of 
 fashion were not allowed to interfere with that gracious spon- 
 taneity natural to warm young hearts. She began by enjoy- 
 ing to the full the merely material pleasures of life, her hus- 
 band 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
 
 24 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 amusements nor studies to un- 
 dermine 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 pre- 
 cisely 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, reckoning 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 attractive, 
 unfettered and yet bound. 
 
 The history of a happy household is like that of a pros- 
 perous state; it can be summed up in half a dozen words, 
 and gives no scope for fine writing. Moreover, the only 
 explanation of happiness is the fact that it exists, these 
 four years present nothing but the gray wash of an eternal 
 love-making, insipid as manna, and as exciting as the romance 
 of Astraa. 
 
 In 1833, however, this edifice of happiness, so carefully 
 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 DAUGHTER OF EVE 25 
 
 A woman's life has four epochs, and each epoch creates a 
 new woman. Vandenesse was certainly not ignorant of the 
 iaws which determine this development, induced by oiir 
 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 mili- 
 tary 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 question 
 her heart. The crisis in her life, which this tale is to un- 
 fold, would be unintelligible but for some explanations 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 forces ; 
 the absence of either is injurious to the creature. Van- 
 denesse, 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 happi- 
 ness, 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 de- 
 molish to-day what yesterday they found entirely satisfac- 
 tory. 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
 
 26 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 honor to a des- 
 perate 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 Kivarol on reading Morian, 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 cer- 
 tain Protestants who take Genesis more seriously than the 
 Jews themselves, but the situation of Madame de Vandenesse 
 requires no biblical images to explain it. She was conscious 
 of a force within, which found no 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 impas- 
 sioned epithet her innocence could devise, for it is given to 
 no one to forge in cold blood that delicious language of hy- 
 perbole which love dictates to its victims at the stake. Van- 
 denesse, pleased with this pretty reserve, applied his arts to 
 keep his wife within the temperate zone of wedded fervor. 
 Moreover, this model husband wanted to be loved for him- 
 self, and judged unworthy of an honorable man those tricks
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 27 
 
 of the trade which might have imposed upon his wife 
 or awakened her feeling. He would owe nothing to the ex- 
 pedients of wealth. The Comtesse Marie would smile to see 
 a shabby turnout 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 labors; 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 im- 
 munity 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 recognize 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. 
 
 About this period Mme. de Vandenesse was sufficiently 
 drilled in the practices of society to abandon the insignificant 
 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 pa- 
 tronized 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
 
 28 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 not a flirt no wonder society whetted its teeth. Felix fle 
 Vandenesse numbered 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 in- 
 different 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. Kich people spent the 
 troubled interval on their estates or traveling in Europe ; and 
 the salons hardly reopened before 1833. The Faubourg 
 Saint-Germain sulked, but it admitted as neutral ground a 
 few houses, amongst others, that of the Ambassador of Aus- 
 tria. In these select rooms legitimist 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 pos- 
 sibly expose his good faith to suspicion. 
 
 Vandenesse's former friends hardly recognized 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 Manerville, 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 29 
 
 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 nattering 
 attentions to their rival, and in this way contrived an im- 
 mense success for her, to the disgust of the Marquise de Lis- 
 tomeie, who was quite in the dark about it all. The Comtesse 
 Felix de Vandenesse 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 the 
 similarity of name and the comparisons to which it gave rise. 
 For, though the Marquise was also a handsome 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 suc- 
 cess of the Countess would infuse into her relations with her 
 sisters-in-law, who, indeed, were most chilling and disagree- 
 able to Marie-Angelique in her triumph. 
 
 And so danger lurked in the family, enmity in friendship. 
 It is well known how the literature of that day tried to 
 overcome the indifference of the public, engrossed in the 
 exciting political drama, by the production 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 reveled. The lover,
 
 30 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 
 
 that being so rare and so bewitching, was a favorite 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 of per- 
 petual 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 repu- 
 tations were under the safeguard of exalted rank and posi- 
 tion, 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 ex- 
 perience. 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 in- 
 terest her mind. They burned to see Vandenesse in trouble. 
 
 "With one's husband, dear, one simply rubs along; with 
 a lover it's life," said her sister-in-law, the Marquise de Van- 
 denesse. 
 
 "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 Marquise 
 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 mar- 
 riage, we live, so to speak, our own life; love is living in an- 
 other."
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 31 
 
 "In short, a lover is the forbidden fruit, and that's enough 
 for me !" laughingly spoke the pretty Moi'na de Saint- 
 Heren. 
 
 When there were no diplomatic at homes, or balls 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 aristocratic drawing-rooms still 
 open whether that of the Marquise d'Espard, Mme. de 
 Listomere, Mile, des Touches, the Comtesse de Montcornet, 
 or the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu. Never did she leave these 
 gatherings 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 marvelous meanings. 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 Vandenesse 
 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 ex- 
 clusive need not fear rubbing up against persons of an in- 
 ferior grade ; the most unapproachable were safe from pollu- 
 tion. 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
 
 32 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 the Duchesse de Grandlieu had picked up recruits from 
 among the latest celebrities in art, science, literature, and 
 politics. At a concert given by the Comtesse de Mont- 
 cornet, toward the end of the winter, Raoul Nathan, a well- 
 known name in literature and politics, made his entry, in- 
 troduced by fimile Blondet, a very brilliant but also very in- 
 dolent writer. Blondet too was a celebrity, but only among 
 the initiated few; much made of by the critics, he was un- 
 known 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 distinguish- 
 ing 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 
 worshipers 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 some- 
 thing 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 con- 
 stant 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 solidity about the tough tissues and prominent 
 bones ; and though the skin, tanned by excess, sticks to them
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 33 
 
 as though parched by same 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 exaggeratedly 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 chiseled, 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 un- 
 noticed in the street, and who, in a drawing-room, at once 
 form a centre of light, drawing all eyes. He attracts atten- 
 tion by his neglige, if one may borrow from Moliere the word 
 used in filiante to describe personal slovenliness. His clothes 
 look as though they had been pulled about, frayed, and 
 crumpled on purpose to harmonize 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 Chateau- 
 briand (he would disdain to copy any one) as to take the stiff- 
 ness 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 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
 
 34 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 machinery; and when walking the boulevards of Paris he 
 offends all sense of order by impetuous zigzags and unex- 
 pected halts, which bring him into collision with peaceful 
 citizens as they stroll along. His conversation, full of caustic 
 humor 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 unaccountable pauses or mental somersaults, 
 which at times grow fatiguing. In society he does not con- 
 ceal an unblushing awkwardness, a scorn of convention, and 
 an attitude of criticism towards things usually held in re- 
 spect 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. 
 
 "Are not pearls found in oyster shells?" was the pompous 
 reply. 
 
 To some one else, who put' a similar question, he an- 
 swered : 
 
 "If I made myself agreeable to every one, what should I 
 have left for her whom I design to honor supremely?" 
 
 Eaoul Nathan carries into his intellectual life the irregU' 
 larity which he has made his badge. Nor is the device mis- 
 leading: 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, in- 
 capable of the slow, sustained labor involved in putting any- 
 thing on the boards, he was driven to ally himself with du 
 Bruel, who worked up his ideas and converted them into
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 35 
 
 l?ght paying pieces with plenty of humor, 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 Frangais a great drama, 
 which fell with all the honors 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 reputa- 
 tion than the light remunerative pieces at which he worked 
 with others. 
 
 "One more such failure," said fimile Blondet, "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 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 
 "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 painting,
 
 36 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 sculpture, literature, architecture. He had begun by per- 
 petrating 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 nickering flame is kept from ex- 
 tinction by the titles of books still in the future, for which 
 a public will be a more pressing necessity than a new edi- 
 tion. 
 
 Nathan kept 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 de- 
 voted his pen to politics rather than to literature. He be- 
 lieved himself superior to these upstarts, who had foisted 
 themselves on to the party-machine during the troubles of 
 1830-3 and whose fortune 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 on some luminous track but settles down nowhere, 
 drawing all the while on the tolerance of his neighbors. At 
 this moment he was traveling from Saint-Simonism to Ee- 
 publicanism, which might serve, perhaps, as a stage to Min- 
 isterialism. 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 
 Eichelieu called the logical spirit, or rather in coherence 
 of ideas. Besides, no minister could have failed to reckon
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 37 
 
 on Raoul's constant pecuniary difficulties which, sooner or 
 later, would drive him into the position of accepting rather 
 than imposing conditions. 
 
 Eaoul'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-centered 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 hi? 
 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 labor applied to the construction 
 of a lasting fabric is beyond his conception; but in a par- 
 oxysm 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 f orestalment ; 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 honor. 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 re- 
 main 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 at- 
 tack 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.
 
 38 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 distinctive 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 en- 
 lightened 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 litera- 
 ture, 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 from others, 
 and, while he fails in producing a vigorously constructed plot, 
 he sometimes covers this defect by the fervor he throws 
 into it. He "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 expressions the element in each which 
 will appeal to every one as natural. His heroes do not 
 stir the imagination; they are magnified individuals, ex- 
 citing 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 "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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 39 
 
 miss the accent of truth., his words ring false ; there is some- 
 thing of the juggler in him, as Count Felix said. One feels 
 that his pen has dipped in the ink of an actress' dressing- 
 room. 
 
 In Nathan we find an image of the literary youth of the 
 day, with their sham greatness and real poverty; he repre- 
 sents their irregular charm and their terrible falls, their life 
 of seething cataracts, sudden reverses, and unlooked-for tri- 
 umphs. 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 submission 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 relent- 
 less 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 bawling, as Moliere would 
 say, it acquits and follows suit. 
 
 When, in his capacity of opponent to the new dynasty, 
 Eaoul was introduced to Mme. de Montcornet's drawing- 
 room his specious greatness was at its height. He was recog- 
 nized as the political critic of the de Marsays, the Eastignacs, 
 and the la Roche-Hugons, who constituted the party in 
 power. His sponsor, fimile Blondet, handicapped 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 Rastignac, and of Montcornet. 
 
 "You are a political triangle," said de Marsay, with a 
 laugh, when he met him at the Opera ; "that geometrical 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."
 
 40 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 
 
 Beheld from afar, Kaoul Nathan was a resplendent 
 meteor. 'The fashion of the day justified his manner and 
 appearance. His pose as a Eepublican 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 per- 
 form prodigies, such as shattering 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 in- 
 sidious 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 through to 
 her heart, causing a delicious flutter there. The regal mantle 
 which fame had for the moment draped on Nathan's shoul- 
 ders 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 standing, 
 her arm linked in that of Mme. Octave de Camps, an ex- 
 cellent 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 un- 
 winding indictments like Catherine-wheels, and tracing 
 blazing portraits in lines of fire, to notice the naive admira- 
 tion 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 41 
 
 of European tread, intoxicates minds of a lower stamp, as 
 much as it saddens the truly wise. Eaoul 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 charm- 
 ing Countess who has just left us so abruptly." 
 
 "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. 
 
 "Why, yes, I have just heard that the Comtesse de Van- 
 denesse has fallen wildly in love with you. Lucky dog !" 
 
 "I did not see her," said Raoul. 
 
 "Ah ! but you will see her, you rascal," said fimile 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. 
 
 "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 op- 
 portunity thrown in his way. The story of Marie de Van- 
 denesse was caricatured by these two profligates, who applied 
 the scalpel of epigram and the keen edge of mockery to that
 
 42 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 transparent childhood,* that happy marriage. Blondet con- 
 gratulated Eaoul on having found a woman who so far 
 had been guilty only of execrable red-chalk drawings snid 
 feeble water-color landscapes, of embroider'ng 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 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 I have never yet seen the color of a Countess' 
 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 honor, 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 Eastignac, "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 understand 
 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 43 
 
 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 Eaoul and Felix, 
 all-ignorant of the danger to her heart in such a process. 
 No better contrast could be found to the robust and uncon- 
 ventional Eaoul 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 con- 
 trast 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 Eaoul Nathan?" she asked her 
 husband during lunch. . 
 
 "He is a charlatan," replied the Count ; "one of those vol- 
 canoes which a sprinkling of gold-dust will keep tranquil. 
 The Comtesse de Montcoraet 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 Eaoul a life of shifts, in 
 which Florine, a well-known actress, played a large part. 
 
 "Granting the man has genius," he concluded, "he is with- 
 out 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 be- 
 havior of really able men and students ; if they are honorable 
 men they stick to their own line, and don't try to hide their 
 rags under frippery." 
 
 A woman's thought has marvelous 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 traveled back to the
 
 44 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 tempter, allured by that sweet yet ruthless emotion 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 pro- 
 found that, as Blondet said, he was unfathomable. Here 
 Vandenesse and his wife again met Kaoul 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 contributed to the ef- 
 fect. Tbe room might be compared to one of those show 
 hothouses where wealthy amateurs collect the most marvelous 
 varieties. There was the same brilliancy, the same delicacy 
 of texture. It seemed as though the art of man would com- 
 pete 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 eccentricity of form with the freaks of nature in the in- 
 sect 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 splendor harmonized with the beauties gathered to- 
 gether 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 color which the brush of Rubens might have 
 mixed. Then the eyes, sparkling like onyx stones or tur- 
 quoises, with their dark velvet edging or fair fringes; and
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 45 
 
 profiles of every contour, recalling the noblest types of differ- 
 ent 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 splendor necks and bosoms in the rich 
 voluptuous folds adored by George IV., or with the more 
 delicate modeling which found favor in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury and at the Court of Louis XV.; but all, whatever the 
 type, frankly exhibited, either without drapery or through the 
 dainty plaited tuckers of Kaphael's portraits, supreme tri- 
 umph 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, be- 
 wildering 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 deli- 
 cate, regular features of the aristocracy, the tawny mous- 
 tache of the sedate Englishman, the gay, smiling countenance 
 of the French aoble. 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 ; 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
 
 46 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 emanate sensations and thoughts, which, forming together 
 one potent influence, inflamed the most cold-blooded. 
 
 It was the most exciting moment of this entrancing even- 
 ing. In a corner of the gilded drawing-room, where a few 
 bankers, ambassadors, and retired ministers, together with 
 that old reprobate, Lord Dudley (an unexpected 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 re- 
 doubled 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 rumor 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 for- 
 eign 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 fortunate talent 
 and successful scheming. Blondet, though still a mere jour- 
 nalistic hack, was much made of in society, and had it yet 
 in his power to strike the road to fortune by means of his 
 intimacy with Mme. de Montcornet. 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 4T 
 
 more than an instrument ; and on no account would he upset 
 the balance of a society so admirably constructed, so decora- 
 tive, and so consonant with nature. 
 
 "My future," he said to himself, "is in +Hg bands of a wo- 
 man 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 everywhere, 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 tread- 
 ing forbidden paths. These emotions are not without fasci- 
 nation, and rouse many dormant faculties. Now, as in the 
 days of Bluebeard, all women love to use the blood-stained 
 key, that splendid mythological symbol which is one of Per- 
 rault's glories. 
 
 The dramatist, who knew his Shakespeare, unfolded the 
 tale of his hardships, described his straggle with m^n and 
 things, opened up glimpses of his unstable success, his polit- 
 ical 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 Eebecca in Ivanhoe, 
 might love and shelter him. Not a syllable overstepped the
 
 48 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 utilize 
 his discourse with a publisher. He acquitted himself well of 
 the serpent's part, and flashed before the eyes of the Countess 
 the tempting colors 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, 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. 
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 
 FLORINE 
 
 IN a passage between the Eue Basse-du-Kempart 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 49 
 
 his abode ^or the general public, for literary novices, cred- 
 itors, 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 intercourse 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, com- 
 pared with the quantity 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 as- 
 sumption that personal feeling must disappear in the imita- 
 tive expression of passion, whereas the real fact is that intel- 
 ligence, memory, and imagination are the only powers em- 
 ployed in such imitation. Great artists are those who, ac- 
 cording 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 reveled
 
 50 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 in her impudence and found unfailing amusement in the per- 
 versity of her mind and heart. 
 
 Her house, enriched with offerings from admirers, dis- 
 played in its exaggerated magnificence an entire regardless- 
 ness 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 profusion 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 
 chimasras, were placed the lights, which illuminated here a 
 rough sketch by Decamps; there a plaster angel holding a 
 basin of holy water, a present 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 ex- 
 cept 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 
 candelabrum, 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 Plorine for trumpeting his 
 wares among her friends, who were assured that Japanese
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 51 
 
 pots, with rich fittings, made the only possible stand for 
 lamps. On a marvelous 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 dis- 
 played 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-room, enriched with ornaments 
 the color of Florentine bronze, carried out the same impres- 
 sion of magnificence, but a. detailed description would make 
 these pages too much of a broker's inventory. To find any- 
 thing comparable to these treasures, it would be necessary to 
 visit the Eothschilds' 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 dra- 
 matic and literary world, did not injure Eaoul, who, in his 
 character as a man of high pretensions, respected the pro- 
 prieties. Nevertheless, Florine's fortune was far from as- 
 sured. 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; 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 some- 
 thing comic in it for those who heard her, in answer to re- 
 monstrances, mortgaging her future on such security.
 
 52 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 "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 culminating point of their beauty. Painters admired 
 most 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 Poppasa. 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 unbroken 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 
 beajit, emblematic of the courtesan's cold heartlessness. The 
 lovely gazelle-like iris was a beautiful gray, 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 53 
 
 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 ter- 
 rible, the sweetest, the strangest in the world. 
 
 Eouge had spoiled the delicate transparency of her soft 
 cheeks. But if it was beyond her power to blush or 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'. 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 childishness and edging in 
 a sly thrust under cover of innocent laughter. With all her 
 apparent ignorance and giddiness, 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 in-
 
 54 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 dulged in credit without killing it. She knew everything of 
 which good women are ignorant, and could speak all lan- 
 guages. A child of the people by her origin, the refinement 
 of her beauty allied her to the upper classes. She was hard 
 to overreach and impossible to mystify; for, like spies, bar- 
 risters, 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 re- 
 ceptions, 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 acquaint- 
 ances were Coralie and la Torpille ; among those of the day, 
 the Tullias, Euphrasie, the Aquilinas, Mme. du Val-N"oble, 
 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 gra- 
 cious 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 Bohe- 
 mianimn 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 saturnalia of literature and 
 art were held there side by side with politics and finance.
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 55 
 
 There passion reigned supreme ; there temper and the whim 
 of the moment received the reverence which a simple society 
 pays to honor and virtue. There might be seen Blondet, 
 Finot, fitienne Lousteau, her seventh lover, who believed him- 
 self to be the first, Felicien Vernou, the journalist, Couture, 
 Bixiou, Eastignac 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 license of 
 speech which goes with license in action. Paris is the one 
 place in the world where houses of this eclectic sort exist, in 
 which ever} r 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 ac- 
 tress. 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 per- 
 petual carnival. How many 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
 
 56 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 with gold and rich sashes, and pictures herself, the glitter 
 of the footlights on her hair, applauded, purchased, wor- 
 shiped, 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 per- 
 petually study new parts, at a time when two or three hun- 
 dred 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 heen 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 sup- 
 per again Florine has no time. On returning from a per- 
 formance, which nowadays is not over till past midnight, 
 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 ap- 
 plauders, so that she may be properly greeted on entering 
 and leaving the stage, and, while paying the bill for her tri- 
 umphs of the past month, order wholesale those of the present. 
 In the days of Saint Genest, a canonized actor, who neglected 
 no means of grace a*nd 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 intrigues 
 to be conducted, annoyances to vanity, preferences shown by 
 authors, competition for parts, with its triumphs and disap- 
 pointments, 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 difficulties
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 57 
 
 it involves the interpretation of passion, details of mim- 
 icry, and stage effects, with thousands of opera-glasses readj 
 to pounce on the slightest flaw in the most brilliant present- 
 ment. These are the things which wore away the life and 
 energy of Talma, Lekain, Baron, Contat, Clairon, Champ- 
 mesle. In the pandemonium of the greenroom self-love is 
 sexless; the successful 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 favors, 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, Eaoul'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 the\r 
 knees to the editor when their idol has been scarified by some 
 halfpenny print. He was more than a lover to her; he ws*& 
 a staff to lean on. She tended him like a father, and de- 
 ceived him like a husband; but there was nothing in the 
 world she would not have sacrificed for him. Eaoul was in- 
 dispensable to her artistic vanity, to the tranquillity of her 
 self-esteem, and to her dramatic future. Without the inter- 
 vention of some great writer, no great actress can be pro- 
 duced; we owe la Champmesle to Eacine, as we owe Mars 
 to Monvel and Andrieux. Florine, on her side, could do 
 nothing for Eaoul, 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 pro- 
 fusion of her table to help his plans or his friends. In fact,
 
 98 
 
 sh& 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 Eaoul. 
 
 Now, those who know the bent of the human mind to 
 opposition and contrast will easily understand that Eaoul, 
 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 Eastignac 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. Eaoul at 
 once went to Florine's, and sent for Blondet to meet him 
 there. 
 
 In Florine's boudoir, their feet upon the fire-dogs, fimile 
 and Eaoul 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 Constitutionalists without a dynasty, Conservative Min- 
 isterialists and Absolutist Ministerialists; lastly, the com- 
 promising 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 progress there
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 69 
 
 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 sliisli, 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 cannot 
 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 colors." 
 
 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 against trusting to it. In Blondet's 
 opinion, the speculation 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: 
 
 "I 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 Blon- 
 det, who thought he had gone crazy ; he cast covetous glances 
 on the costly treasures piled up around ; then Blondet under- 
 stood Mm.
 
 60 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 "There's more than one hundred thousand francs' worth 
 here," said fimile. 
 
 "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 you. Won't the minister be 
 better placed than the journalist for getting a first-rate en- 
 gagement for the queen of the boards? You will still have 
 your parts and your holidays." 
 
 "Where is the money to come from ?" she asked. 
 
 "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 pawn- 
 broker. 
 
 "Don't bother yourself, my pretty one," said Blondet to 
 Florine, patting her on the shoulder. "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'fitat, and who has some share in 
 a magazine. No fear! I won't let him ruin himself. We 
 will get a meeting here with Etienne Lousteau, who will do
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 61 
 
 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 deter- 
 mined 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?" 
 
 "We'll have it here," said Raoul, "five days hence." 
 
 "Let me know how much you need," said Florine simply. 
 
 "Why, the barrister, du Tillet, and Raoul can't start with 
 less than one hundred thousand francs apiece," said Blondet. 
 ''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 her part 
 sent for four dealers in furniture, curiosities, pictures, and 
 jewelry. The dealers, who were all men of substance, entered 
 the sanctuary and made an inventory of its whole contents, 
 just as though Florine were dead. She threatened them 
 with a public auction in case they hardened their hearts in 
 hopes 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 Rothschilds'. 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 thou- 
 sand. Florine, who did not care a button for the things, 
 promised they should be handed over in seven days for eighty 
 thousand francs. 
 
 "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
 
 02 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 dreamed of such wealth. When Kaoul returned, she pre- 
 tended to be ofi'ended 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 entertainment. 
 The ceremony of christening the paper was then performed 
 amidst floods of wine and wit, oaths of fidelity, of good fel- 
 lowship, and of serious alliance. The name, forgotten now, 
 like the Liberal, the Communal, the Departemental, the Garde 
 National, the Federal, the Impartial, was something which 
 ended in al, and was bound not to take. Descriptions of 
 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, 
 commissionaires, 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 tc leave her until the evening a few specially reserved 
 articles, including her bed, her table, and her crockery, so 
 that she might offer breakfast 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. 
 
 "Why, Florine, the poor girl has an execution in the
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE S3 
 
 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 
 Eaoul handed over with mock ceremony to the laughing 
 Florine. The happy courtesan raised her head from the pil- 
 low and pointed to a heap of bank-notes on the sheet, thick as 
 in the golden days of her trade. Raoul called Blondet. 
 
 "I see it now," said Blondet. "The little rogue has sold 
 off without a word to us. Well done, Florine !" 
 
 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 
 rumor of her sacrifice was all over the house. 
 
 "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 favors," she 
 replied. 
 
 During the evening Florine's maid had her things moved 
 to Eaoul'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 Vandenesse. 
 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.
 
 64 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 LOVE VERSUS SOCIETY 
 
 FLORINE proved no difficult}'' in the early stages of Raoul's 
 passion. Foreseeing financial disappointments in the haz- 
 ardous 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 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 com- 
 pound 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 unfre- 
 quently the thread snaps from sheer lassitude. Perhaps some 
 glimpse of what it means may be obtained here. 
 
 The day after Lady Dudley's ball, although nothing ap- 
 proaching a declaration had escaped on either side, Marie felt 
 that Raoul's love was the realization 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 affection ; whilst Marie, from whom 
 the idea of an actual fault was still remote, had never con- 
 templated 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 65 
 
 conceived it, her husband's dislike to Xathan no longer ap- 
 peared an obstacle to her love. The less Eaoul merited es- 
 teem, the nobler was her mission. The inflated language 
 of the poet stirred her imagination 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 
 Beemed 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 sup- 
 porting with her feeble, white hand this colossal 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 armor, give him a charm against 
 sorcery, and balm for all his wounds ! 
 
 In a woman with Marie's noble nature and religious up- 
 bringing this passionate charity was the only form love could 
 assume. Hence her boldness. The pure in mind have a 
 superb disdain for appaarances, which may be mistaken for 
 the shamelessness of the courtesan. No sooner had the 
 Countess assured herself by casuistical arguments that her 
 husband's honor ran no risk, than she abandoned herself 
 completely to the bliss of loving Eaoul. 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 ex- 
 hausted 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 honor! She threw herself 
 with all simplicity into those charming nothings which make 
 the business of a Paris woman's life, and which charge with
 
 66 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 meaning every detail in her house, her person, her clothes. 
 Rare indeed are the women who frequent dress shops, milli- 
 ners, and fashionable tailors simply for their own pleasure. 
 AB they become old they cease to think of dress. Scrutinize 
 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 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 Eaoul. 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 Mine, de Vandenesse observe the un- 
 wonted 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 fash- 
 ionable 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 un- 
 derstood," she said to herself, calling to mind her unworthy 
 instructors. 
 
 When the two lovers had scanned the house in a rapid
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 67 
 
 all-embracing survey, they exchanged a glance of intelligence. 
 For both it was as though a heavenly dew had fallen with 
 cooling power upon their fevered suspense. "I have been in 
 hell for an hour; now the heavens open," spoke the eyes of 
 Eaoul. 
 
 "I kut'W you were there, but am I free?" replied those of 
 the Countess. 
 
 Nona but slaves of every variety, including thieves, spies, 
 lovers, aad diplomatists, know all that a flash of the eye can 
 convey of information or delight. They alone can grasp 
 the intelligence, the sweetness, the humor, the wrath, and the 
 malice with which this changeful lightning of the soul is 
 pregnant. Kaoul 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 Comtsse 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, scornful inclination of the head, such as women 
 use for snubbing 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 threat- 
 ening glance at Felix, which it required no great wit to in- 
 terpret by one of Florine's sallies, "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 clearly said, "If you
 
 68 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 are dismissed there, come to me !" that Eaoul 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 in- 
 tended to play the inquisitor. 
 
 "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. 
 
 "Yes," said Eaoul carelessly, "marabouts are very becom- 
 ing 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. 
 
 "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." 
 
 Eaoul 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 69 
 
 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- 
 complacency in Jupiter Olympus himself, who is said to have 
 been the only god in mythology exempt from domestic mis- 
 fortune." 
 
 "Madame," cried Eaoul, "you credit me with a very base 
 soul if you suppose that I would make profit out of my feel- 
 ings, out of my love. Sooner than be guilty of such literary 
 dishonor, I would follow the English custom, and drag a 
 woman to market with a rope round her neck." 
 
 "But I know Marie ; she will ask you to do it," 
 
 "No, she is incapable of it," protested Eaoul. 
 
 "You know her intimately then?" 
 
 Nathan could not help laughing that he, a playwright, 
 should be caught in this little comedy dialogue. 
 
 "The play is no longer there," he said, pointing to the foot- 
 lights; "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 be- 
 tween four and five o'clock; I will be very good-natured, and 
 add you to the select few admitted at that hour." 
 
 "Only see," said Baoul, "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,
 
 70 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 wo- 
 man, 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 
 
 80." 
 
 "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; 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. 
 
 "Wasn't he at my ball yesterday?" replied Lady Dudley. 
 "There are pleasures, my dear, for which one pays heavily." 
 
 The news of a mutual passion between Eaoul and Mme. de
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 71 
 
 Vandenesse went the round of society that evening, not with- 
 out calling forth protests and doubts; but the Countess was 
 defended by her friends, Lady Dudley, Mmes. d'Espard, and 
 de Manerville, with a clumsy tjagerness which gained some 
 credence for the rumor. Yielding to necessity, Eaoul went 
 on Wednesday evening to Mme. d'Espard's, and found there 
 the usual distinguished company. As Felix did not accom- 
 pany his wife, Eaoul 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, realized her critical position before society, 
 and contrived 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 inter- 
 change. They talk, and longing looks follow the peeping 
 foot, the quivering hand, the fingers which toy with some 
 ornament, flicking it, twisting it about, then dropping it, in 
 significant fashion. It is no longer words or thoughts which 
 make 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 
 civilitv. How often has not a single word, on the last step
 
 72 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 recognized the artist's nature, intolerant of disap- 
 pointment. 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 amphi- 
 theatre, might have done. 
 
 "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 : 
 
 "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 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 ; 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 73 
 
 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'll go" and 
 "I won't go," Eaoul 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 Kastignac's ele- 
 gant 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 Eaoul'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 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 conversation, "was 
 just declaring, when you came in, that there is an understand- 
 ing between the Eoyalists and Eepublicans. What do you 
 say? You ought to know something about it." 
 
 "Supposing it were so, where would be the harm?" said 
 Eaoul. "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 Eaoul and the Comtesse Felix. 
 
 "It will not last," said Eastignac, who, like all novices, took 
 his politics a little too seriously. 
 
 "What do you say, darling?" asked Mme. d'Espard of the 
 Countess.
 
 74 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 "I 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 min- 
 ister'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 fervor 
 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. 
 
 "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 when- 
 ever 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 sacrificed 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 ex- 
 tremely taxing work. When two beings, united by an en-
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 75 
 
 during love, lead a life which each day knits them more 
 closely in the bonds of mutual confidence and by the inter- 
 change 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 shud- 
 der 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 com- 
 plains, 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, 
 suspicion, and demands ; when neither of the two know them- 
 selves 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 for- 
 tune 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, can- 
 not 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 gal- 
 lant 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 hap- 
 piness has cost him. Whereas, if they, in an idle hour, have
 
 76 A DAUGHTEK OF I3VE 
 
 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. 
 
 Eaoul, 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. 
 
 "It will be a wretched paper to-night," he said to him- 
 self 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 Eaoul; 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 get- 
 ting 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 Eaoul. 
 As it was, it became so taxing, in spite of the exquisite de- 
 lights 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 re- 
 ciprocal passion is bound to bulk largely even in an ordinary 
 life; but when its object is a woman of conspicuous posi- 
 tion, like Mme. de Vandenesse, 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 77 
 
 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 tenderness, 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 
 invitations to dinner at the houses where she visited. Noth- 
 ing could be more natural. Eaoul was too proud, and also 
 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 Cham- 
 ber 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, leav- 
 ing 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 mean- 
 time 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 un- 
 noticed 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 re- 
 sponse to his own, Eaoul began to feel that it was mere 
 Quixotism not to make known the extravagant price he paid
 
 78 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 for these "modest favors," as our fathers might have called 
 them. 
 
 The opportunity for an explanation was not long of com- 
 ing. 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 him about one of those mole- 
 hills 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?" she 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: 
 
 "It can only be one of those idle fears, those vague sus- 
 picions, to which you give such exaggerated importance. 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 tc 
 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.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 79 
 
 "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- 
 
 "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; you were 
 not there." 
 
 "But " 
 
 "At the opera in the evening my eyes never left the bal- 
 cony. Every time the door opened my heart beat so that I 
 thought it would break." 
 
 "But " 
 
 "What an evening! You have no conception of such 
 agony !" 
 
 "But " 
 
 "It eats into life " 
 
 "But " 
 
 "Well?" she said. 
 
 "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 insatiable were the claims of 
 a paper, compelled, at risk of losing its reputation, to be be- 
 forehand 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 ingenuous as a 
 first love, and it soon appeared that the Countess erred in
 
 80 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 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 despairingly. 
 
 <r Women, it seems," she said with tearful eyes, "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 wor- 
 ship." 
 
 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 spectator lurked in 
 the silence. Then raising her head to Eaoul, who bent his 
 to meet her, she allowed him a kiss, the first, the only, con- 
 traband kiss she was destined to give. At that instant she 
 was happier than she had been for five years, while Eaoul 
 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 Eaoul in that kiss, tendered with 
 the modest frankness that is the outcome 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 ardor of her first 
 passion, was bound, woman-like, 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, characteristic 
 of a woman's love, hastened with resolute and active tread
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 81 
 
 along the sand-strewn alley. Like Eaoul, she spoke but little, 
 but that little came from the heart, and was full of mean- 
 ing. 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 pop- 
 lars showed their first tender and 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. 
 
 "You are," replied Eaoul. "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 in- 
 tuitively, just as courtesans do, and it may even be that they 
 unconsciously act upon the knowledge. 
 
 The Countess, after her first burst of surprised gratitude,, 
 was delighted to have inspired so much devotion and been 
 the cause of such astounding feats. The man who loved her 
 was worthy of her. Eaoul 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 Eaoul 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 man- 
 hood; now he was resolved to be loved by one of the queens 
 of the fashionable world. Vanity, without which, as Cham-
 
 82 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 fort 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 noth- 
 ing, and never will be anything, to another woman?" 
 
 "My life has no space for another, even were my heart 
 free," was his reply, made in all sincerity, so completely had 
 Florine dropped out of sight. 
 
 And she believed him. 
 
 When they reached the road where the carriages were wait- 
 ing, 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, Eaoul, 
 spurred on by passion, continued to appear wherever 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 Kaoul's work in hand, 
 laid down what he was to do every hour in the day, and re- 
 mained 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 fitienne 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 
 Eaoul was trusting for the funds of his undertaking, and 
 which seemed to her, deceived by the hired applause, an im- 
 mense success. 
 
 "You did not come to say farewell to the opera?" asked 
 Lady Dudley, to whose house she went after the perform- 
 ance.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 83 
 
 "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 charming 
 comedies, full of wit, and the work of very clever men. I 
 enjoy them immensely." 
 
 "The acting is so good too," said Marie. "The play to- 
 night at the Gymnase went capitally; it seemed to suit the 
 actors, and the dialogue is spirited and amusing." 
 
 "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. 
 
 "But he makes vaudevilles," said Mme. Charles de Van- 
 denesse. 
 
 "And unmakes ministers," retorted Mme. de Manerville. 
 
 The Countess remained silent; she racked her brains for 
 pungent epigrams; her heart burned with rage, but noth- 
 ing better occurred to her than 
 
 "Some day perhaps -he will make one." 
 
 All the women exchanged glances of mysterious under- 
 standing. When Mme. de Vandenesse had gone, Moina de 
 Saint-Heren exclaimed: 
 
 "Why, she adores Nathan !" 
 
 "She makes no mystery of it," said Mme. d'Espard. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SUICIDE 
 
 WITH the month of May, Vandenesse took his wife away 
 to their country seat. Here her only comfort was in pas- 
 sionate letters from Eaoul, to whom she wrote every day. 
 
 The absence of the Countess might possibly have saved 
 Eaoul from the abyss over which he hung had Florine been 
 with him. But he was alone amongst friends, secretly turned
 
 84 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 to enemies ever since his determination 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 hold- 
 ing 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 ris- 
 ing 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 promo- 
 tion. Florine, with the inborn gift of such women for put- 
 ting their finger on the real thing among a thousand present- 
 ments of it, would at once have detected the underhand 
 animosity of these false friends. 
 
 But this was not Eaoul's greatest danger. His two part- 
 ners, the barrister Massol and the banker du Tillet, had con- 
 ceived 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 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, shriveling 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 
 office, and this had cured him of the fancy. Meanwmle 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 Honor to season the dish. Du Tillet and the Baron
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 85 
 
 de Nucingen 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 Eaoul, these men allowed him to 
 exercise uncontrolled power. Du Tillet only -made use of 
 the paper for his stock-jobbing interests, which were outside 
 Eaoul's ken. He had, however, already given Eastignac to 
 understand, through the Baron de ISTucingen, that this organ 
 was ready to give a silent adhesion to the Government, on 
 the one condition that the Government should support du Til- 
 let's candidature as successor to M. de Nucingen, who would 
 be a peer some day, and who at present sat for a rotten bor- 
 ough, where the paper was lavishly circulated, gratis. Thus 
 was Eaoul 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 substantial dues 
 of vanity and the like. Nathan could not praise them enough ; 
 again, as when they furnished his stables, they were "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 re- 
 ceived 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 him- 
 self a marvel of discretion for taking refuge behind Florine, 
 and he enlarged with generous self-complacency on his rela- 
 tions with the actress, which nothing, he declared, could 
 break. How could any man abandon an assured happiness 
 for the coquetry of the Faubourg S aint- Germain ? 
 
 Nathan, beguiled by Nucingen and Eastignac, du Tillet 
 
 id Blondet, lent an ostentatious support to the doctrinaire
 
 86 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 \ 
 
 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 months after the de- 
 parture of the Countess. Du Tillet had advanced 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 enor- 
 mous. The future had to be provided for. The banker as- 
 sisted 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. Instead of set- 
 ting this aside as a reserve, Raoul y 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 87 
 
 by the specious plaudits of his flatterers, 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 thou- 
 sand 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 poli- 
 ticians, 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 play, 
 the chief part in which suited her admirably. This vaude- 
 ville-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-Frangaise 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 
 world of bustling suitors, each with something to push a 
 book, a play, a ballet-girl, a theatre, a company, or an ad- 
 vertisement she reveled in the delights of this press in- 
 fluence, which she pictured as the dawn of ministerial pa- 
 tronage. 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
 
 88 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 anxious to strengthen his position by turning out his col- 
 leagues. 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 loveliest flowers of his ideal passion and with the 
 pleasures scattered by Florine. His letters to Marie were 
 masterpieces 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 popular 
 side, he was tempted at times to join the aristocrats; 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 news- 
 paper columns and on the walls of Paris as to the compara- 
 tive efficacy and unobtrusiveness of their locks. The port- 
 folio lay in Florine's new boudoir, where Eaoul 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 re- 
 turn the actress took her part in Nathan's daily life, which 
 appeared to go on just as usual. It never would have oc- 
 curred to her that this writing-case, which she had barely 
 noticed, and which Eaoul made no mystery about locking, 
 contained love tokens in the shape of a rival's letters, ad- 
 dressed, at Kaoul'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 suc- 
 cess, 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. 
 
 "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.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 89 
 
 *T3ut 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 honorable of men. 
 
 This life upon the tight-rope, without even a steadying- 
 pole, which might have appalled a mere onlooker who had 
 grasped its meaning, was watched by du Tillet with the 
 stoicism and hard-heartedness of a parvenu. At times a 
 fierce irony broke through the genial cordiality of his man- 
 ner 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, jny good fellow, that he'll keep 
 Florine? 1 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 re- 
 newed them, but this time for two months only, and the 
 amount was increased by the discount and by a new loan. 
 Confident of victory, Eaoul drained his till. An overmaster- 
 ing 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 Vandenesse to the 
 highest pitch of excitement. Thoughts clothed in the flowers 
 of rhetoric can express so much without meeting a repulse. 
 She saw in Baoul one of the finest intellects of the day, a 
 delicately-strung and unappreciated heart, which in its un- 
 stained 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 not entirely absorbed in that life of intersect- 
 ing circles, which resemble the orbits of the planets, and re- 
 volve round the sun of society as their centre. Finding no
 
 00 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 flavor in the calm pleasures of home, 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 realized 
 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, there- 
 fore, 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 prac- 
 tise 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 favorable 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 greenroom. 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 remorse, the unapproachable Countess, with 
 her hungry eyes, had already forgotten his stupendous labors 
 and the trouble it often cost him to get a passing glimpse 
 of her. Florine, far from trying to impose her will, would 
 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 91 
 
 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 in- 
 stincts, the germ of greatness in him, and his social am- 
 bitions. 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 husband had changed his opinion of Raoul. 
 After the lapse of a year she questioned him again, in the 
 expectation 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 many lukewarm people round the in- 
 terests 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 summary />f the situation, so 
 clear and accurate in spite of its brevity and the purely ab- 
 stract 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.
 
 92 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 "Oh ! I like his humor, 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 
 Kaoul held a long whispered conversation. The Countess 
 gave expression to fears which Raoul dissipated, 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 be- 
 hind 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 im- 
 possible now, the reign of true merit had begun. Instead 
 of weighing well the indirect and impartial warning he had 
 received from an experienced politician in the expression 
 of his deliberate opinion, Raoul made it an occasion for dis- 
 play, 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, 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 outburst of impatience, 
 might at any mome/it 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 93 
 
 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 in 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 in- 
 tellectual 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. Eaoul told Florine and Blon- 
 det how he had spent his morning ; he drew a faithful picture 
 of Gigonnet and his surroundings, his cheap fleur-de-lys wall- 
 paper, his staircase, his asthmatic bell, his stag-foot knocker, 
 his worn little door mat, his hearth as devoid of fire as his 
 eye; he made them laugh at his 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 Blon- 
 det; "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 Eaoul. 
 
 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
 
 04 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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. Eaoul 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, sell- 
 ing 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 thou- 
 sand. 
 
 On the 10th of February the twenty-five days expired. 
 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 Govern- 
 ment), 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 debtor's prison. Florine herself was in constant 
 communication 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 sustain- 
 ing 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. Eastignac, Blon- 
 det, Lousteau, Vernou, Finot, Massol, carefully refrained 
 from enlightening a man of such dangerous energy. Has-
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 95 
 
 tignac, who aimed at getting back to power, made common 
 cause with Nucingen and du Tillet. The rest found measure- 
 less 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 
 contrary, they were full of Eaoul'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. "Baoul 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 de- 
 serted 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 overthrow, 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 unbearable. Mad- 
 ness danced and rang her bells before the door of that airy 
 palace in which the poet had made his home. In this ex- 
 tremity, Nathan waited tipor. chance, and put off killing him- 
 self till the last moment.
 
 96 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 During the last days, occupied with the notice of judg- 
 ment, the writs, and publication of order of arrest, Eaoul 
 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 gray, gloomy shade over the fore- 
 head; 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 per- 
 ceived by Marie one night at Lady Dudley's. Eaoul had re- 
 mained 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 riot 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 car- 
 pet. "Sooner die than 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? 
 Eaoui then had just resolved to put an end to himself. De- 
 spair must be proportioned to hope, and that of Eaoul could 
 find no issue but the grave. 
 
 "What is the matter ?" said Marie, flying to him. 
 
 "Nothing," he replied. 
 
 Lovers have a way of using this word "nothing" which 
 implies exactly the opposite. Marie gave a little shrug. 
 
 "What a child you are!" she said. "Something has gone 
 wrong with you?" 
 
 "Not with me," he said. "Besides," he added affection- 
 ately, "you will know it all too soon, Marie." 
 
 "What were you thinking of when I came in?". she said, 
 with an air that would not be denied. 
 
 "Are you determined to know the truth?" 
 
 She bowed her head. 
 
 "I was thinking of you ; I said to myself that many men
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 97 
 
 in my place would have wished to be loved without reserve : 
 I am loved, am I not?" 
 
 "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 : 
 
 "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 . . ." 
 
 "What thought?" 
 
 "You will despise me." 
 
 She smiled a proud smile. 
 
 "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 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. Fare- 
 well, Marie." 
 
 Eaoul went out, after pressing the Countess to his heart 
 in an agonized embrace, and left her dazed with misery. 
 
 "What is wrong, dear?" said the Marquise d'Espard, com- 
 ing to look f 01 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
 
 96 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 drawing-room, where, however, she only stayed a few in- 
 stants. 
 
 "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' 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 
 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. 
 
 "Where did you leave your master?" she asked of Raoul's 
 servant. 
 
 "At the newspaper office." 
 
 "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, accompanied by the servant who had 
 brought the letter. Vandenesse waited for further explana- 
 tions 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 99 
 
 Feydeau, were deserted. The only occupant was an at- 
 tendant, 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. 
 
 "Where does he work?" she asked. 
 
 "In a small room, the key of which is in his pocket." 
 
 "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 attached to 
 a large bedroom. This closet made an angle with the bed- 
 room, 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. 
 
 "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 him- 
 self, 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 ob- 
 tained a full confession. When the prostrate wrestler with 
 fate had poured into her heart the terrible elegy of his suf- 
 ferings, she returned home a prey to all the torturing fancies 
 which the evening before had brooded over Nathan's brow. 
 
 "Leave it all to me," she had said, hoping to win him back 
 to life. 
 
 "Well, what is wrong with your sister?" asked Felix, on 
 seeing his wife return. "You look like a ghost."
 
 100 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 "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 un- 
 bosom her woes to Mme. du Tillet. After describing the 
 ghastly scene of the morning, she implored her sister's ad- 
 vice 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 honorable man. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 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 sus- 
 picion became a certainty. The banker was confident
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 101 
 
 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 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 in- 
 quiry, they were told that a lady had been there that morn- 
 ing 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, overcome by the frightful spectacle 
 of a young man dying in his editorial chair, and writing his 
 last words with Eoman 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 analyzing 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 de- 
 termined to take everything 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
 
 102 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 
 
 thieves, brokers, usurers, 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 
 Vandenesse 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 leaped 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 Eothschilds, who had so much; from the 
 Archbishop of Paris, whose duty it was to succor the poor. 
 Then in her extremity she rushed from one religion to an- 
 other with impartial prayers. She lamented being in op- 
 position; 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 retirement on one of her estates in Normandy, 
 and, icy to the last, was ending her days, pinching and pray- 
 ing, between priests and money-bags. Even were there time 
 for Marie to reach Bayeax, would her mother give her so 
 large a sum without knowing what it was wanted for? Im- 
 aginary debts? Yes, possibly her favorite child might move 
 her to compassion. Well, then, as a last resource, to Nor- 
 mandy 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 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 103 
 
 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 sensations in her life, truly she 
 had a wealth of them now, fearful, agonizing, 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, "I 
 have saved him already, and I will save him again!" She 
 heard his cry, "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. "Your ruthless harshness is the 
 truest homage." 
 
 "There speaks your noble heart !" said Felix, kissing his 
 wife's hand, quite touched by her fine scorn. "A woman who 
 feels like that does not need guarding." 
 
 "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 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 commis- 
 sionaire to the Mail Hotel. At the Opera in the evening the
 
 104 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 radi- 
 ance 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 Nucingen 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 useful 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 any- 
 body. 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 Nucin- 
 gen 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. 
 "Ah ! I would give ten years of my life " 
 
 "From your old age "
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 105 
 
 "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. Kaoul, who did not fear the bailiffs at night, ap- 
 peared, 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 balus- 
 trade. 
 
 "Can she be here !" he thought. 
 
 "Look up, unhappy hero," whispered Mme. 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, mesmerizers say, 
 penetrates to the person on whom it is directed, and certainly 
 Eaoul seemed as though struck by a magic wand. Eaising his 
 head, his eyes met those of the sisters. With that charming 
 feminine readiness which is never at fault, Mme. de Vande- 
 nesse seized a cross, sparkling on her neck, and directed his 
 attention to it by a swift smile, full of meaning. The brill- 
 iance of the gem radiated even upon Raoul's forehead, and 
 he replied with a look of joy ; he had understood. 
 
 "Is it nothing, then, Eugenie," said the Countess, "thus 
 to restore life to the dead ?" 
 
 "You have a chance yet with the Royal Humane Society," 
 replied Eugenie,, with a smile. 
 
 "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: 
 
 "Well, old fellow, how are you ?"
 
 108 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 "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 
 Eaoul, radiant. 
 
 "Delighted," said du Tillet. "We shall want money for the 
 paper." 
 
 "The money will be found," said Kaoul. 
 
 "The devil is with these women!" exclaimed du Tillet, 
 still unconvinced by the words of Eaoul, whom he had nick- 
 named Charnathan. 
 
 "What are you talking about?" said Eaoul. 
 
 "My sister-in-law is there with my wife, and they are 
 hatching something together. You seem in high favor with 
 the Countess ; she is bowing to you right across the house." 
 
 "Look," said Mme. du Tillet to her sister, "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 !" 
 
 "And men call us slanderers !" cried the Countess. "I 
 will give him a warning." 
 
 She rose, took the arm of Vandenesse, who was waiting 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 Eue du Mail on her 
 way. 
 
 The carriage could not enter the narrow Eue 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 10Y 
 
 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 in- 
 sensible to it. 
 
 The constant use of a fat, friendly, German pipe had 
 spread over the ceiling and the flimsy wall-paper well rubbed 
 by the cat a faint yellow tint, which gave a pervading im- 
 pression 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 honors 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 dirty, discolored, 
 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 descrip- 
 tion, 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 dig-
 
 108 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 nity 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 armchairs, 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, unpretending as that of a Mohican wigwam. A 
 shaving-glass hanging from the catch of a curtainless win- 
 dow, 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, 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 un- 
 covered 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 dog-eared. Along the 
 walls the addresses of pupils were glued with little wafers. 
 The wafers without paper showed the number of obsolete 
 addresses. On the wall-paper 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- 
 jag crowned with a towel and a bit of common soap, white
 
 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 109 
 
 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 transformed 
 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 of that which mankind holds dearest, 
 and made a cloak of them to veil his poverty. The most 
 purse-proud upstart 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 Gond- 
 esse ?" he said. "Must I den zing de zong ov Zimeon at mein 
 asche ?" 
 
 This idea started him on another peal of ringing laughter. 
 
 "Is it dat I haf a conqvest made?" he went on, with a 
 look of cunning. 
 
 Then, laughing like a child again : 
 
 "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
 
 110 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 movement, so pretty and artless, came with such an outburst 
 of gratitude that the Countess was quite moved. 
 
 "My sister is coming too," she said. 
 
 "De oder alzo ! Ven ? Ven ? May it pe bevor I tie !" he 
 replied. 
 
 "She will come to thank you for a great favor 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. 
 
 "Ach! dat vill pe soon tone," replied the German with a 
 lamblike docility. "Only, I know not vere are mein bens and 
 baber. Get you away, Meinherr Mirr," he cried to the cat, 
 who stared at him frigidly. "Dis is mein gat," he said, point- 
 ing it out to the Countess. "Dis is de boor peast vich lifs mit 
 de boor Schmucke. He is peautivul, not zo?" 
 
 The Countess agreed. 
 
 "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, pointing 
 to it on the bed. "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. 
 
 "You make me zure dat dese leetl stambed babers." 
 
 "Don't have the least uneasiness," said the Countess. 
 
 "I haf not oneasiness," he replied hastily. "I ask if dese 
 leetl stambed babers vill plees do Montame ti Dilet ?"
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 111 
 
 
 
 "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 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 wriich he soared by a touch on the shoulder. 
 
 "My good Schmucke," she cried. 
 
 "Zo zoon," he exclaimed, with a submissiveness painful 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 v 
 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
 
 112 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 marvelous 
 and respectful solemnity in these words, as though they 
 formed part of some religious service, breathing fidelity. 
 That smoky room, that den of 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 courtyard 
 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. 
 
 "I 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. 
 
 "What a pretty room you have !" said the Countess. 
 
 "M. de Nucingen is going to deprive me of it; he is getting 
 ft new house built." 
 
 "You will no doubt give this one to your daughter. I hear 
 that she is engaged to M. de Rastignac."
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 113 
 
 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. 
 
 "That balances/' said the Baroness to the cashier. 
 
 "Egzebd for de disgound," said the cashier. "Dis Schimicke 
 iss ein musician vrom Ansbach," he added, with 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. 
 
 "You can leave us now. Be so good as remain a minute 
 or two, so that you may not seem to have anything to do with 
 this matter," said the Baroness to Mme. de Vandenesse. 
 
 "I must beg of you to add to your other kind services that 
 of keeping my secret," said the Countess. 
 
 "In a matter of charity that is of course," replied the 
 Baroness, with a smile. "I shall have JOUT 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." 
 
 "You must have known suffering to have learned so much 
 thought for others," said the Countess. 
 
 "I don't know about thoughtfulness, but I have suffered 
 a great deal," said the Baroness ; "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 Eaoul 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
 
 114 A DAUGHTER OP EVE 
 
 the Countess. Entanglements 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. 9 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 mis- 
 take. 
 
 "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. 
 
 "Show him in/' said the hanker, regardless of his wife's 
 presence. "Well, old Shylock, is our man under lock and 
 key?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "No ! Didn't I tell you Rue du Mail, at the hotel?" 
 
 "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; "it's unlucky." 
 
 "Where did you get this money, madame ?" 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." 
 
 "You will upset your lunch," said Gigonnet, laying hold 
 of the tablecloth, which had caught in the skirts of du Tillet'a 
 dressing-gown.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 115 
 
 Mme. du Tillet rose with frigid dignity, for his words had 
 terrified her. She rang, and a footman came. 
 
 "My horses/' she said. "And send Virginie; I wish to 
 dress." 
 
 '"Where are you going?" said du Tillet. 
 
 "Men who have any manners do not question their wives. 
 You profess to be a gentleman." 
 
 "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 practis- 
 ing 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. Eaoul's 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- 
 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 Eu-
 
 116 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 genie recalled to mind their disastrous results. Du Tillet's 
 words had put the last touch to her panic; she dreaded dis- 
 covery; she saw the signature of the Comtesse de Van- 
 denesse in the archives of the Nucingen firm and she re- 
 solved to implore her sister to confess everything to Felix. 
 
 Mme. du Tillet did not find the Countess next morning; 
 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 honor 
 was still safe and the Countess was not so much depraved 
 as misguided. Eugenie hesitated 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, 
 despairing ; 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. 
 
 "Don't be troubled," said Vandenesse; "I shall act so that 
 the day will come when your sister will bless you. However 
 great your repugnance in 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 prudence. Possibly I may find out every- 
 thing at once ! I am the only one to blame, dear sister. All 
 lovers play their own game, but all women are not fortunate 
 enough to see life as it really is."
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 117 
 
 CHAPTEE IX 
 A HUSBAND'S TRIUMPH 
 
 MME. DU TILLET left Vandenesse's house somewhat com- 
 forted. Felix, on his part, went at once to draw forty thou- 
 sand 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 Vandenesse 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, madame," he said, "at a period when nothing is 
 stable. Thrones rise and disappear in France with a discon- 
 certing 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, 
 unknown to the world, a grateful friend, ready to secure for 
 M. de Nucingen under these circumstances the peerage to 
 which he aspires?" 
 
 "What do you ask from me ?" she said. 
 
 "Not much. Only the facts in your possession about M. 
 Nathan."
 
 118 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 The Baroness repeated her conversation of the morning 
 with Rastignac, and said to the ex-peer oi 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 prom- 
 ise, that he dangled it before the eyes of the Baron de Ras- 
 tignac in order to extract from him further information. 
 
 On leaving the Baron, he dictated to a scrivener the fol- 
 lowing letter addressed to Florine: 
 
 "If Mile. Florine wishes to know what part is awaiting 
 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 business, 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 for- 
 gotten to ask her beloved Raoul for an acknowledgment for 
 Schmucke. The man of business went at once to Nathan's 
 office, and returned triumphant to the Count by five o'clock 
 with the bill of forty thousand francs. The very first words 
 exchanged 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 119 
 
 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 pro- 
 posed to take her there the following day by way of diversion. 
 
 "I will find some one for you to mystify." 
 
 "Ah ! I should like that immensely." 
 
 "To make it really amusing, a woman ought to get hold of 
 a f oeman 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." 
 
 "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 light- 
 ning. 
 
 ''Well, yes, Lis mistress," replied the Count. "What is there 
 surprising in that ?" 
 
 "I should have thought M. Nathan was too busy for such 
 things. How can literary men find time for love?" 
 
 "I 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 disqualify him for opposing his candida- 
 ture in Nucingen's constituency. I have learned from a
 
 120 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 Government, so confi- 
 dent 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; 
 "he won't deny the fact." 
 
 "I shall certainly go to the ball," said the Countess. 
 
 "You will have some fun," replied Yandenesse. "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 sting- 
 ing 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 within their own stables. . . . 
 You are not listening, my child." 
 
 "Yes, indeed, I am only too much interested," she an- 
 swered. "I will tell you later why I am so anxious to be 
 certain about all this." 
 
 "Certain?" replied Vandenesse. "If you keep on yutu 
 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 celebrated actress, whose writing was like
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 121 
 
 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 impudent 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 consuming ache 
 of jealousy, drove her to her feet. Trembling in every limb, 
 she crossed her arms, and advanced slowly towards her hus- 
 band. 
 
 "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." 
 
 "What should I know, Marie?" 
 
 "About Nathan?" 
 
 "You believe you love him," he replied, "but you love only 
 a phantom made of words." 
 
 "Then you do know ?" 
 
 "Everything," he said. 
 
 The word fell like a blow on Marie's head. 
 
 "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; already I have done something. See " 
 
 He drew from his pocket her guarantee and Schmucke's 
 four bills, which the Countess recognized, and threw them 
 into the fire. 
 
 "What would have become of you, poor Marie, in three 
 months from now? You would have been dragged into 
 Court by bailiffs. 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 wo- 
 man is not to lose her head once in a lifetime. Pray Heaven 
 I may never triumph over you or burden you with a pity
 
 122 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 himself, 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 ap- 
 plaud the triumph of innocence, and filch its jewels as he 
 goes out. Society has no balm for the ills it creates; it 
 honors clever roguery, and leaves unrewarded silent devotion. 
 All 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- 
 effacement 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 certain 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 pre- 
 cipitate 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 ad- 
 miration for Felix dominated the tempest. A noble and 
 high-spirited soul quickly responds to gentle handling. This 
 sensitiveness is the counterpart of physical grace. Marie ap- 
 preciated a magnanimity which sought in self-depreciation a 
 screen for the blushes of an erring woman. She made a fran-
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 123 
 
 tic 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 returned with 
 the whole of Nathan's letters in her hand, and held them out 
 to him. 
 
 "Be my judge," she said, kneeling before him. 
 
 "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 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 slandering 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. 
 
 "To-morrow night." 
 
 Towards midnight next evening Nathan was pacing the 
 promenade at the masked ball, giving his arm to a domino
 
 124 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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: 
 
 "If you will listen, I will tell you secrets which 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 Eaoul 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. 
 
 "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 mis- 
 tress of whom I speak, where he spent the night three days 
 ago ! He tried to stifle himself with charcoal, my dear, un- 
 known 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 125 
 
 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." 
 
 "That's not good enough for Florine, thank you, my friend. 
 I know very well that Nathan can't have a love affair." 
 
 "Because, I suppose, he has redoubled his attentions to you 
 of late, as if that were not the very proof that he is tremen- 
 dously in love " 
 
 "With a society woman? Nathan?" said Florine. "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." 
 
 "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 his master, returned to the spot where the 
 mysterious warning had been spoken. Seeing evident marks 
 of disturbance on Eaoul'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 in- 
 structions, in Eaoul'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, Eaoul 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. Na- 
 than at once lost himself in the crowd. 
 
 "What did I tell you ?" cried Felix in the ear of the stupe- 
 fied Florine, to whom he offered his arm. 
 
 "Come," she said, "let us go, whoever you are. Have you 
 a carriage ?"
 
 126 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 Vandenesse's only reply was to hurry Florine out and 
 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 certain 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 mat- 
 ters, and the Countess read in the promiscuous household 
 arrangements a confirmation of what Vandenesse 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, exclaim- 
 ing: 
 
 "This is the way to cut off the pretty dears' heads!"* 
 
 The Countess shuddered. She realized 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. They fell 
 apart, and Marie's letters appeared. Florine took up one at 
 random. 
 
 In the French, "poulets," which means "love-letters" as well as "chickens."
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 127 
 
 "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. 
 
 "Will you give them up for this ?" said Vandenesse, holding 
 out to Florine the bill for forty thousand francs. 
 
 "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'll trample you 
 under foot ! I shall have it out with him for this." 
 
 Mme. de Vandenesse had fled with the letters. 
 
 "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 discom- 
 forts. 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 in- 
 tervention of Vandenesse had reduced him to a still worse 
 plight than that from which he had tried to escape. He 
 made 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.
 
 128 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 With all his audacity, Nathan made no further attempt 
 during the winter to address the Countess. 
 
 He unburdened his soul, however, to Blondet, discoursing 
 to him of Laura and Beatrice, whenever the name of Mme. 
 de Vandenesse occurred. He paraphrased that beautiful pas- 
 sage of one of the greatest poets of his day "Dream of the 
 soul, blue flower with golden heart, whose spreading roots, 
 finer a thousand-fold 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 driveling, 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." 
 
 "My dear fellow, Beatrice was a child of twelve, whom 
 Dante never saw again ; otherwise, would she have been Bea- 
 trice? 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 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 penni- 
 less Nathan to surrender his share in the paper. The great 
 man received only five votes in the constituency which elected 
 du Tillet.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 129 
 
 When the Comtesse de Vandenesse, after a long and de- 
 lightful time of travel in Italy, returned in the following 
 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 em- 
 barrassed 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 indifferent 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 Van- 
 denesse felt a pang of shame as she remembered her fancy for 
 Eaoul. Had she not been cured before of any unlawful pas- 
 sion, the contrast which this man, already declining in popular 
 estimation, then offered to her husband, would have sufficed 
 to give the latter precedence 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 sup- 
 ported every scheme of disintegration, he now lives in peace 
 beneath the shade of a ministerial broad-sheet. The Cross 
 of the Legion of Honor, fruitful text of his mockery, adorns 
 his buttonhole. Peace at any price, 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 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 Eaoul did. 
 
 JARDIES, December 1838.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 To George Sand 
 
 Your 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 remain attached to my works, 
 forms an element of pleasure in the midst of the vexation caused 
 by their increasing 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 models! 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 pos- 
 session, rather than on a popularity necessarily unstable? For 
 him who knows you well, it is happiness to be able to sign him 
 
 self, as I do here, 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 DE BALZAC. 
 PABIB, Juwe 18*X
 
 132 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 FIRST PART 
 
 LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO REN^E 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. 
 
 Eaise 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 unfailing 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 con- 
 stantly 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 man better cut out by nature for the post 
 of convent physician !
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 133 
 
 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 dis- 
 tance 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 
 Eenee ! 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 reveled 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 Danaid, 
 who, instead of trying to fill a bottomless barrel, draws every 
 day, from Heaven knows what deep, an empty pitcher, think- 
 ing 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 our age, demands either an ex- 
 treme simplicity of soul, such as we, sweetheart, do not pos- 
 sess, or else an ardor 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.
 
 134 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 
 
 For the last fortnight I have been gulping down so 
 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 grand- 
 mother'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. 
 
 "My child," she said, in her guttural voice, "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 fore- 
 head 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 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 kindness; 
 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 135 
 
 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 bear- 
 ings. 
 
 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 
 Boulogne, 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 grand- 
 mother, the Princess 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 had left them! I was to sleep 
 in the bed where she died. 
 
 Sitting down on the edge of the sofa, I burst into tears, 
 forgetting I was not a,lone, and remembering only how often 
 I had stood there by her knees, the better to hear her words. 
 There 1 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 mothers bed the very morrow of her 
 death ? For to me it was as though the Princess, who died in 
 1817, had passed away but yesterday.
 
 136 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 I saw many things in the room which ought to have been 
 removed. Their presence showed the carelessness with which 
 people, busy with the affairs of state, may treat their own, and 
 also the little thought which had been given since her death 
 to this grand old lady, who will always rema.in one of the 
 striking figures of the eighteenth century. Philippe seemed 
 to divine something 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 Kevolution had left them. On 
 hearing this I rose, and Philippe opened the door of the 
 small drawing-room which leads into the reception-rooms. 
 
 In these I found all the well-remembered wreckage; the 
 panels above the doors, which had contained valuable pict- 
 ures, 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' 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 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 boulevard 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 sidewalk 
 of the boulevard. But for the blue-and-gold dome of the 
 Invalides and its gray 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 splendor, 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 137 
 
 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 
 Eevolution 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 hun- 
 dred 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 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 associa- 
 tion. It was sweet to inhale the faint odor 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. I told Philippe to 
 rub up the old furniture and make the rooms look as if they 
 were lived in ; I explained to him myself how I wanted every- 
 thing 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 color, a little dulled with time, 
 just as the gilding of the fanciful arabesques shows here and 
 there a patch of red: but this effect harmonizes well with 
 the faded colors of the Savonnerie tapestry, which was pre- 
 sented to my grandmother by Louis XV. along with his por- 
 trait. The timepiece was a gift from the Marechal de Saxe,
 
 138 
 
 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 charm- 
 ing 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. 
 
 "He can come in with the doctor and his drugs," was the 
 reply : 
 
 The bed has a canopy and well-stuffed back, and the cur- 
 tains are looped up with fine wide bands. The furniture 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 centered largely 
 round the hearth, where great events were enacted. The 
 copper-gilt grate is a marvel of workmanship, and the mantel- 
 piece 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 favorite with her. How 
 often have I seen the old lady, her feet upon the bar, re- 
 clining 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 139 
 
 
 
 painted onty yesterday, and she were waiting to receive the 
 throng of exquisites from the Court ! How the armchair re- 
 calls 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 glance 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 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, "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, beauti- 
 fully designed and carved, wind over the mirrors and hang 
 down in festoons. On the consoles are fine china vases. The 
 ground colors are scarlet and white. My grandmother was 
 a high-spirited, striking brunette, as might be inferred from
 
 140 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 t> 
 
 her choice of colors. 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 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 1816. 
 
 "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, "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 Chargebreuf, 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 eacb 
 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 141 
 
 October Wth. 
 
 It was three in the afternoon when I arrived. About half- 
 past five, Eose came and told me that my mother had re- 
 turned, so I went downstairs to pay my respects to her. 
 
 My mother lives in a suite on the ground floor, exactly 
 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 huggeu 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 sin- 
 cere friend, as she addressed me like a grown person, first 
 "kissing me on the forehead. 
 
 "My dear little one," she said, "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 oppor- 
 tunity of making your life pleasant and of letting you see 
 the world. At your age I should have thought as you do,
 
 142 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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; 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 marvelous, and her waist 
 is as slender as yours. Her hand is milk-white and extra- 
 ordinarily 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 completely van- 
 quished 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 affection from her daughter's mouth, 
 and the unfeigned homage of ray 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 de- 
 lighted. 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 to her my previous tremors. She smiled,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 1-13 
 
 put her arm round my neck, and drawing me towards her, 
 kissed me on the forehead most affectionately. 
 
 "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 
 heen 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 kissing them, 
 with more of the lover than the father in his manner, he 
 said: 
 
 "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 fore- 
 head. 
 
 "The pleasure with which we shall watch your success 
 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, "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. 
 
 "Come, come, you may kiss her," said my farther. 
 
 And he kissed me on both cheeks. 
 
 "I am delighted to see you," he said, "and I take your side 
 against my father." 
 
 I thanked him, but could not help thinking he might have
 
 144 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 king- 
 dom. I was tired by the journey as well as by all the emo- 
 tions 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 25M. 
 
 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, "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. 
 
 "My dear," he began, "you will have to get yourself clothes, 
 and to make these rooms comfortable. In this purse you 
 will find twelve thousand francs, which is the yearly income 
 I purpose allowing you for your expenses. You will make 
 arrangements with your mother as to some governess whom
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 145 
 
 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. Safeguards, 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 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 mantelpiece, at
 
 146 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 once pleased and vexed that I could not withdraw 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 Vic- 
 torine, 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 morn- 
 ing has gone in these weighty occupations. Even a glove- 
 maker has come to take the measure of my hand. The under- 
 clothing 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 under- 
 stand 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 confi- 
 dence. I was entirely forgotten; but, from 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 movements. He has a 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 147 
 
 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 
 lagt night. Very soon I am going to a ball given by the 
 Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and I shall be presented 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 rec- 
 ommended by the English ambassador. 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 Hose's room. Eose 
 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. 
 
 Another trifling piece of news ! My father has this morn- 
 ing refused the appointment as Minister of State which was 
 offered him. This accounts for his preoccupied 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 nmke; between two and four she is never visible; at four
 
 148 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 grandmother) 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 ! 
 
 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 dis- 
 tant 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 postponed 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 149 
 
 I am grossly ignorant and I read a lot, but quite indis- 
 criminately, 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 fear- 
 fully 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 
 Eenee 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 Stae'l. 
 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 Carmelites." 
 
 "My child, Mme. de Stae'l is dead," said my mother gently. 
 
 When I had finished Adolphe, I asked Miss Griffith how a 
 woman could be betrayed. 
 
 "Why, of course, when she loves," was her reply. 
 
 Kenee, 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 at- 
 tracted me. This is the sum-total of her wisdom, and I can 
 get nothing more out of her. Her lectures, therefore, become 
 a, trifle monotonous, and she might be compared in this re- 
 spect to the bird which has only one cry.
 
 i50 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 III 
 
 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 re- 
 hearsals, well and duly equipped stays, shoes, curls, dress, 
 ornaments, all in order. Following the example of duelists 
 before a meeting, I tried my arms in the privacy of my cham- 
 ber. 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, "Know thyself !" and 
 boundless was my delight in thus making my own acquaint- 
 ance. 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, Eenee, of your sister, formerly 
 disguised as a Carmelite, now brought to life again as a frivo- 
 lous 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 interesting 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 ex- 
 quisite 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 ob- 
 serving 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 modeled, under the satiny skin. The some- 
 what crude outline of the arms is seen again in the shoulders. 
 Strictly speaking, indeed, I have no shoulders, but only two
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 151 
 
 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 contours 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 correct- 
 ness. It is true, madame, that the flesh tints do not 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 silly 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 color on the lips ! how prettily the 
 teeth laugh I
 
 152 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 Then, dear, there is a harmony running through all. What 
 a gait ! what a voice ! We have not forgotten how our grand- 
 mother'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, and no one will think the 
 less of me ; the dimples, impressed by Comedy's light fingers 
 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 difficult for her to heal the wounds she ma] 33, 
 whereas I can wound and heal together. We are absolut ely 
 unlike, and therefore there could not possibly be rivalry oe- 
 tween us, unless indeed we quarreled over the greater or ess 
 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 charming voice, which becomes 
 falsetto when forced, but is a sweet-toned chest voice at tne 
 ordinary pitch of a quiet talk. 
 
 I feel as if I had left the convent to-day for the first timtj- 
 For society I do not yet exist ; I am unknown to it. What a 
 ravishing moment ! I still belong only to myself, lixe 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. Kegret 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 cruaaed
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 153 
 
 back into the inner depths, whence they had sprung, and 
 whither I dared not follow them. 
 
 My Kenee, 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 prom- 
 ised 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 dumfounded if she read my letter. My brother 
 honors 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 busi- 
 ness and his own amusements; my mother, too, is never at 
 leisure; no member of the household practises self-examina- 
 tion, 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. 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.
 
 154 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 It is possible, it seems, for members of one family to 
 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 15th. 
 
 YESTERDAY, at two o'clock, I went to drive in the Champs- 
 Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne. It was one of those au- 
 tumn 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 car- 
 riage 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 we 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 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 proba-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 155 
 
 bly 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 color 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 head- 
 piece. 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 fore- 
 head is rarely seen. 
 
 "And these are the product of Paris !" I said to Miss 
 Griffith. 
 
 "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 honors 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 

 
 1S6 
 
 you might suppose I was freezing and blind. Not one failed 
 to enlarge on the strange, unheard-of, extraordinary, odd, re- 
 markable 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 gor- 
 geous 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 
 favorably here than at the Champs-Elysees. They have a used- 
 up look ; their features are meaningless, 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 vigor 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. Whatever 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 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 im- 
 pressed 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 157 
 
 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. So- 
 ciety 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. 
 
 "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 simplicity, would pass for two very 
 wide-awake little scandal-mongers. What lessons may be con- 
 veyed in a finger on the lips, in a word, a look! All in a 
 moment I was seized with excessive shyness. What ! may I 
 never again speak of the natural pleasure I feel in the exercise 
 of dancing ? "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 necked with my white wool! Farewell, beloved. 
 
 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 shal] end 
 my modest career!
 
 168 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 child- 
 ish eyes used to see without comprehending. A fortnight 
 after my arrival, my father and mother took me, along with 
 my two brothers, to dine with one of our neighbors, 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 Bonaparte; after successfully eluding the con- 
 scription, he was forced to send him to the army in 1813, 
 to join the Emperor's bodyguard. After Leipsic no more 
 was heard of him. M. de Montriveau, whom the father in- 
 terviewed in 1814, declared that he had seen him taken by 
 the Russians. Mme. de 1'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 care- 
 fully the portion of inheritance which fell to him from the 
 family of the late Mme. de 1'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 traveling 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 1'Estorade, the father, who is a small landed 
 proprietor in Provence, with an income of about ten thousand 
 livres, has not sufficient European fame to interest the world 
 in the wandering Knight de 1'Estorade, whose name smacks 
 of his adventures. 
 
 The accumulated income of twelve thousand livres from the 
 property of Mme. de 1'Estorade, with the addition of the
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 151 
 
 father's savings, provides the poor guard of honor with some- 
 thing 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 Cheva- 
 lier's return, a fine but badly-managed estate, where he de- 
 signs to plant ten thousand mulberry-trees, raised in his nur- 
 sery with a special view to this acquisition. The Baron, hav- 
 ing 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 neighbor's idea 
 with an eye to my interests so soon as they discovered that 
 Renee de Maucombe would be acceptable without a dowry, 
 and that the money the said Renee ought to inherit from her 
 parents would be duly acknowledged 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 Bonaparte, 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 antiquated 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 1'Esto- 
 rade. 
 
 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 un- 
 doubtedly 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-
 
 160 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 kiln. The windows, inserted casually, without any attempt at 
 symmetry, have enormous shutters, painted yellow. The gar- 
 den in which it stands is a Provengal 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 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 surrounding 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 
 lip coppers. He eats the same food as his two servants, a 
 Provengal lad and the old woman who used to wait on his 
 wife. The rooms are scantily furnished. 
 
 Nevertheless, the house of 1'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 Coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 Spite of all this, I have graciously consented to become 
 Mme. de PEstorade and to receive a dowry of two hundred 
 and fifty thousand livres, but only on the express condition 
 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 Mau-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 161 
 
 combe. In a month I shall be Mme. de 1'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 
 1'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 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 com- 
 fort 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 
 labor 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 Provengal, 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 Bona- 
 parte; 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.
 
 162 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 Farewell, then, for me at least, to the romances and thrill- 
 ing 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 1'Estorade, and the mischief they do to my shrubs 
 and me. To embroider their caps, to be loved and admired 
 by a sickly man 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 1'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 adventures, 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 1'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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 163 
 
 P. 8. I have just opened your third letter. My dear, 1 
 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 own business, give 
 a thought to the recluse of La Crampade. 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 PERNAND 
 
 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 Span- 
 iards and Christians of us against our will, it left us a legacy 
 of Arab cunning; and it may be that I owe my safety tc 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. 
 
 The last Hispano-Moorish family of Granada has found
 
 164 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 protecting against the King of Spain's ven- 
 detta 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 thousand 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 unnoticed. 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. 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.
 
 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 165 
 
 Don Fernand, you will understand now why I put a check 
 upon your ardor and ordered you to remain faithful to the 
 rey netto. As your brother and friend, I implore you to obey 
 me; as your master, 1 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 favor. You are beautiful as a child of love, 
 and are possessed of Marie's heart. I am an ill-favored 
 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, be- 
 cause 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 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 last two years in the hands of your steward. This 
 sum is mine; but a Due de Soria cannot marry without a
 
 166 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 Gali- 
 gnani 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 that 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 Eue 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 167 
 
 my window and contemplating two Spanish plants, a broom 
 which rises out of a clump of jessamine gold on a white 
 ground, colors 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 long- 
 ing 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. Honor, 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 armor 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 once was me and speculate over the mysteries 
 of my being. 
 
 Why did life animate this carcass, 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 perfumes? Of what crime have I 
 been guilty before my birth that T can inspire no love? Did 
 fate from my very infancy decree that I should be stranded, 
 a useless hulk, on some barren shore? 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
 
 168 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 the prime of youth, here better than elsewhere 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 he 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 realize now, Fernand, what a joy it is to me 
 to live afresh in you and Marie. I shall watch you hence- 
 forth 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 fore- 
 head that she was coveting for Fernand the honors and the 
 wealth of Felipe ! When I said so to her, she would reply 
 with tears, 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 favorite 
 even the girl whom you regretfully thrust into his arms? 
 What I have done is pleasing 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 
 Christianized 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 169 
 
 VII 
 
 LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO EEN^E 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 1'Es- 
 torades, that is all. You will be buried in the provinces. 
 Are these the promises we made each other? 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 afterwards 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 lamblike docility. But I am here to 
 direct you; you must come to Paris. There we shall drive 
 the rpf.n 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 vou. 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 afterwards. 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 oi admiration and the focus of all the opera-glasses.
 
 170 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 Ros- 
 sini 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, 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 de- 
 serves 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 be- 
 cause his sovereign-lady sent him down among the lions to 
 fetch her glove, was, in my opinion, very impertinent, 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 mas- 
 ter, 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 ac- 
 company 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 171 
 
 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 cultivates 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 Ehetore, 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-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 destructive 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 with- 
 out dowry, after the pattern of yours with this broken-down 
 guard of honor. 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. "Per- 
 haps you hope that it may mean marriages for me !" 
 
 For sole reply he honored 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 
 color 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. 
 
 "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."
 
 172 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 "With your family you can speak quite freely/' my mother 
 replied. 
 
 "Very well, then," I went on. "The young men I have 
 met so far strike me as too self-centered to excite interest in 
 others; they are much more taken up with themselves than 
 with their company. They can't be accused of lack of candor 
 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 ris- 
 ing 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 Bonapartist 
 ideas." 
 
 "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 tidbit 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 colorless 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?
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 173 
 
 I have already seen hundreds of men, young and middle- 
 aged; not one has stirred the least feeling in me. ISTo 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 unnatural ex- 
 citement 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, feeling 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 mo- 
 ments the only real life; while the wealth, the splendor, the 
 tears, the delights, the triumph, the joy, the satisfaction, of 
 a love equal, shared, and sanctioned, 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. Eich, 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 in the bright, covetous, keen eyes around me. 
 ]STo voice has thrilled me, no glance has made the world seem 
 brignte*.
 
 174 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 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 slumber- 
 ing 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, 
 "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 undoubtedly an in- 
 carnation, and how many conditions are needful before it 
 can take place ! We are not certain of never quarreling 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, 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 honor. 
 Ah ! if that is what keeps men back, they are poltroons.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 175 
 
 The part of Chimene in the Cid and that of the Cid 
 delight me. What a marvelous 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. 1 make him 
 talk for the purpose of getting at his secret; but he is of a 
 truly Castihan taciturnity, proud as though he were Gon- 
 salvc di Cordova, and nevertheless angelic in his patience 
 and gentleness. His pride is not irritable like Miss Grif- 
 fith'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 the ground, 
 and flashed a look from them that quite abashed me; my 
 dear, he certainly has the most beautiful eyes imaginable. 
 I asked him if I had offended him in any way, and he said 
 to me in his grand, rolling Spanish : 
 
 "I am here only to teach you Spanish." 
 
 1 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 in- 
 stead : 
 
 "It would be a kindness to tell me if you have anything to 
 complain of." 
 
 A tremor passed through him, the blood rose in his olive 
 cheeks; he replied in a voice of some emotion:
 
 176 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 "Religion must have taught you, better than I can, to re- 
 spect the unhappy. Had I been a don in Spain, and lost 
 everything in the triumph of Ferdinand VII., your witticism 
 would be unkind; but if I am only a poor teacher of lan- 
 guages, is it not a heartless satire? Neither is worthy of a 
 young lady of rank." 
 
 I took his hand, saying: 
 
 "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 suc- 
 cessful evening. During the lesson I watched him at- 
 tentively, 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 insignificant. Though the Spaniards have 
 been described as not a cleanly people, this man is most care- 
 fully 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 repro- 
 duction of those of Cardinal Ximenes. The natural dig- 
 nity 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 177 
 
 Madrid. When Henarez returned, two days after the re- 
 proof he had given me, I remarked by way of showing my 
 gratitude : 
 
 "I have no doubt that you left Spain in consequence 
 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 sen- 
 tence." 
 
 "It is impossible for any one to help me/' he replied. 
 
 "But," I said, "is that because you refuse to accept any 
 help, or because -the thing itself is impossible ?" 
 
 "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 demeanor, and promptly dropped Senor 
 Henarez. 
 
 All the same, my dear, there is something fine in this re- 
 jection of any aid. "He would not accept even our friend- 
 ship," I reflected, whilst conjugating a verb. Suddenly I 
 stopped short and told him what was 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 ques- 
 tion. 
 
 "Do you mean equality in the amount of feeling on either 
 side, or equality in rank?" I persisted, determined to shake 
 him out of this 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 mix- 
 ture of joy, pride, and agonized 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 eloquent of 
 the humble prayer : "Don't trifle with a poor wretch."
 
 178 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 1'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 recklessly 
 or without much thought. My life is henceforth mapped out 
 for me, and the freedom from all uncertainty 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 ; for me there is also a house- 
 hold 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 bound- 
 less 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 1'Estorade is not 
 of the kind which makes the heart throb at the sound of a
 
 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 179 
 
 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 instru- 
 ments 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. 
 
 Nature has favored our sex in giving us a choice between 
 love and motherhood. I 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 vul- 
 garized she remains herself. I count greatly on your kind- 
 ness 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. 
 
 MLLE. DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 January. 
 
 OH ! Eenee, 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,
 
 180 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 those eyes, where the soul can slake its thirst as at a fountain 
 of love, that heart, with its exquisite delicacy, that breadth 
 of mind, those rare powers fruit of nature and of our inter- 
 change of thought treasures whence should issue a unique 
 satisfaction for passion and desire, hours of poetry to out- 
 weigh 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, commonplace 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 ! 
 
 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 understood, 
 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 dis- 
 persed in little runlets, the different effects of the atmosphere, 
 this whole world of infinity which laps you round, and which 
 God has made so various, will recall to you the infinite same- 
 ness of your soul's life. But at least I shall be there, my 
 Eenee, and in me you will find a heart which no social petti- 
 ness shall ever corrupt, a heart all your own.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 181 
 
 Monday. 
 
 MY dear, my Spaniard is quite adorably melancholy; 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 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 cov- 
 ered by his deep-rooted pride; he wraps himself in mystery. 
 The hanging back is on his side, the boldness 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 Helo'ise. I have just been reading Eousseau's, and 
 it has left me with a strong distaste for love. Passion which 
 can argue and moralize seems to me detestable. 
 
 Clarissa also is much too pleased with herself and her 
 long, little letter; but Richardson's work is an admirable pict- 
 ure, my father tells me, of English women. Rousseau's 
 seems to me a sort of philosophical sermon, cast in the form 
 of letters.
 
 182 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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. 
 
 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 Orampade. 
 
 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 an- 
 nounced in my rooms. I was up and dressed. I found him 
 solemnly seated beside the fire in the drawing-room, look- 
 ing more thoughtful than usual. He pointed to the arm-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 183 
 
 chair opposite to him. Divining his meaning, I sank into it 
 with a gravity, which so well aped his, that he could not re- 
 frain from smiling, though the smile was dashed with melan- 
 choly. 
 
 "You are quite a match for your grandmother in quick- 
 wittedness," he said. 
 
 "Come, father, don't play the courtier here," I replied; 
 "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 nattering 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, "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." 
 
 "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 clear-sighted- 
 ness 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
 
 184 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 to the kingdom, which might be 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: 
 
 "Speak, father." 
 
 Here, then, is the deliverance of the statesman: 
 
 "My child, France is in a very critical position, which is 
 understood only by the King and 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. 
 
 "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 Eevolution is still active-; it is embedded 
 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 counselors, seeing it destitute of armed forces 
 and of money, believe it completely 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 destructive 
 of all the consequences entailed by the Revolution? You 
 would never guess. In Louis XVI. the Eevolution has de- 
 capitated every head of a family. The family has ceased to 
 exist; we have only individuals. In their desire to become 
 a nation, Frenchmen have abandoned the idea of empire; in
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 185 
 
 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. 
 
 "We stand between two policies either to found the State 
 on the basis of the family, or to rest it on individual inter- 
 est in other words, between democracy and aristocracy, be- 
 tween free discussion and obedience, between Catholicism 
 .ind religious indifference. I am among the few who are re- 
 solved 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 subordination, 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 con- 
 sists 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 Eussian 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 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
 
 186 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 recognized, will be threatened by the advancing tide of mid- 
 dle-class prejudice. It was possible to choose one man out 
 of a thousand, but, amongst three millions, discrimination 
 becomes impossible, when all are moved by the same ambi- 
 tions 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 pro- 
 prietors; in other words, twenty million acres of land, alive, 
 stirring, arguing, deaf to reason, insatiable of appetite, ob- 
 structing 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 sanc- 
 tion 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 !" 
 
 "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?"
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 187 
 
 "Provided," he replied, "that your view of life does not 
 conflict with the family honor, reputation, and, I may add, 
 glory." 
 
 "Come, come/' I cried, "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 cen- 
 tury." 
 
 "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 fascinat- 
 ing. 
 
 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 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, en- 
 tirely free from affectation. And what teeth! 
 
 Just now, as he was leaving, he seemed to divine the in- 
 terest I take in him, and made a gesture oh ! most respect- 
 fully 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
 
 188 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 ple- 
 beian 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 contained in it. We under- 
 stood 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 arm- 
 chair, nerveless, dreamy. I was happy, and I cannot explain 
 to you how or why. What I felt only a poet could express. 
 My condescension, 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 admirably, 
 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 Valengay. 
 
 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 morning 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 189 
 
 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. 
 
 "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 Lenon- 
 court'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. Vande- 
 nesse reported the Prince's reply, word for word, as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "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 Duke 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 will in the world, could not have saved him from 
 the King's wrath." 
 
 This information gave me much food for reflection. I can- 
 not 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 com- 
 moner, without being able to come to any conclusion. 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 : 
 
 "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, "un- 
 happily, I am not the Due de Soria."
 
 190 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 I felt all the despair with which he uttered the word 
 "unhappily." Ah ! my dear, never should I have conceived 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. 
 
 "M. de Talleyrand," I said, "in whose house you spent 
 your years of exile, declares that any one bearing the name 
 of Henarez must either be 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. 
 
 "In one word," I said, "are you a nobleman or not ?" 
 
 "You know that in Spain even beggars are noble." 
 
 This reticence provoked me. Since the last lesson I 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. 
 
 "I 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 ap- 
 proach to ridicule. He will have a pitying smile for those 
 who would jeer at sacred things, above all, at that poetry of
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 191 
 
 the heart, without which life would be but a dreary con- 
 monplace. I have the greatest scorn for those who would 
 rob us of the living fountain of religious beliefs, so rich in 
 solace. His faith, therefore, 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. 
 
 "All his thoughts must have a high and chivalrous char- 
 acter, 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 eleva- 
 tion of his views above those of 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; for love will seem to him too serious to turn into 
 a game. 
 
 "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 understanding his own, one who 
 could fill his soul and pour sunlight 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 
 recognize 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,
 
 192 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 care- 
 less, 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 honor of giving 
 her, and that which I have just received in 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 marvelous 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 : 
 
 "Louise, you have been learning Spanish from an ex-min- 
 ister and a man condemned to death." 
 
 "The Due de Soria," I said. 
 
 "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?"
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 193 
 
 "Yes," replied my father, "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 1'Estorade, happened a fortnight 
 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, "Go and die for me !" 
 And he is so 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 Ren6e, where our business now stands, 
 as the great Corneille has said.
 
 194 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 XIII 
 
 MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MLLE. DE CHAULIEU 
 
 LA CEAMPADE, 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. 
 
 I chose to marry Louis de 1'Estorade rather than return to 
 the convent; that at least is plain. So soon as I realized 
 that the convent was the only alternative to marrying Louis, 
 I had, as girls say, to "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 friendship which, for the sake of these 
 advantages, would shut its eyes to many of the imperfections 
 of humanity? Xow there was no obstacle to the existence 
 of friendship between myself and Louis de 1'Estorade. Hav- 
 ing renounced 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. "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 mis- 
 tress of herself ?"
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 195 
 
 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 
 honorable ? 
 
 A contract of this kind, directly opposed to the legal con- 
 tract, and even to the sacrament itself, could be concluded 
 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 con- 
 clusion that his love amounted to a passion. Once trans- 
 formed into an idol, whose slightest frown would turn him 
 white and trembling, I realized that I might venture any- 
 thing. 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 confessed 
 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 handicapped 
 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 misfor^
 
 196 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 tune, he looked on himself as a sort of wreck, and three fears 
 in especial haunted him. 
 
 First, we are aged respectively thirty-seven and seventeen ; 
 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 him of youth. 
 Finally, he felt the superiority of my womanhood over his 
 manhood. The consciousness of these three obvious draw- 
 backs 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 favor I am about to 
 ask from you will demand unselfishness 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 deter- 
 mined to be yours only of my own free gift. Create in me the 
 wish to give up my freedom, and at once I lay 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
 
 197 
 
 annoyances to which the strangeness of our mutual position 
 might give rise in our relations with others. I am neither 
 whimsical nor prudish, and should he sorry to get that repu- 
 tation; but I feel sure that I can trust to your honor when 
 I ask you to keep up the outward appearance of wedded life." 
 
 Never, dear, have I seen a man so happy as my proposal 
 made Louis. The blaze of joy which kindled in his eyes dried 
 up the tears. 
 
 "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 re- 
 mained 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 feel- 
 ing?" 
 
 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 situation she had contrived to 
 make for herself, may have passed for a strong-minded 
 female. 
 
 Dear, the difficulties which would beset my life had ap-
 
 198 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 
 
 peared to me clearly as in a vision, and I was sincerely 
 anxious to make the happiness of the man I married. Xow, 
 in the solitude of a life like ours, marriage soon becomes in- 
 tolerable 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 un- 
 certainty into pleasure is to prolong illusion, and render last- 
 ing those selfish satisfactions 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 sub- 
 mits 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 unobtrusiveness. If I have 
 made it my task to raise a drooping 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 towards 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. 
 
 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 suppose^. In spite of my coldness,
 
 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 199 
 
 Louis grew bolder, and his nature expanded. I saw on his 
 face a new expression, a look of youth. The greater refine- 
 ment 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 harmonize. "The 
 animal that we call a husband," to quote your words, disap- 
 peared, 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 capit- 
 ulation 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 satis- 
 faction for the most fastidious sentiment, or of that unex- 
 pectedness which brings, in a sense, its own sanction. Every 
 witchery of imagination, of passion, 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. 
 
 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 com- 
 plete metamorphosis. Louis is really very attractive now. 
 Feeling sure of my affection, he throws off his reserve and 
 displays unsuspected gifts.
 
 200 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 To be the unceasing spring of happiness for a man who 
 knows it and adds gratitude to love, all! 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 realize 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 sunshine 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 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 appointments. 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 ardor with which he 
 embraced my plans, I can gauge the depth of his affection.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BEIDES 201 
 
 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 unfold- 
 ing 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 coloring. The brilliance of your dark eyes, 
 the bold sweep of your forehead, declare a spirit of no com- 
 mon elevation, sound and trustworthy in every relation, 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 favors 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 be- 
 witching which satisfies alike judgment, a husband's pride,
 
 202 
 
 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 marvelously express your subtle and original 
 thoughts, bless the love which has refreshed my soul and 
 given new vigor 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 could 
 have written like this before? A year hence his style will 
 have still further improved. Louis is now in his first trans- 
 port; 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 attrac- 
 tion which gives us strength to put up with a good deal. Yet 
 Louis is lovable ; his temper is wonderfully even, and he per- 
 forms, 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 rani of sovereign
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 203 
 
 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, prematurely old; why 
 don't you marry some young-hearted graybeard in the Cham- 
 ber of Peers? There lies your vocation. 
 
 XIV 
 
 THE DUG DE SOKIA TO THE BAROJST 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, de- 
 prived of the comforts which wealth everywhere 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 
 pcorn 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
 
 204 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 youi 
 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. 
 
 You can write to us with perfect confidence under cover to 
 the Nuncio, sending your letters via Home. The French am- 
 bassador at Eome will, no doubt, undertake to forward them 
 to Monsignore 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 
 axe full of your name. 
 
 XV 
 
 LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 March. 
 
 AH ! my love, marriage is making a philosopher of you ! Your 
 darling face must, indeed, have been jaundiced 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 subterranean labors ? 
 
 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 of
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 205 
 
 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, in- 
 stead 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, Kousseau's Julie, 
 whom I thought so learned, is a mere beginner to you. Wo- 
 man'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 armor, as indispensable as her stays? 
 
 Love, dear, is in my eyes the first principle of all the vir- 
 tues, 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 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
 
 206 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDE8 
 
 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 com- 
 fort 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 wonderfully 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 philosophize besides 
 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 re-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 207 
 
 warded ! 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. "What a horrible 
 power this man has over me I" 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, "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. 
 
 The next day, at the Italian opera, he was at his post. 
 But I feel sure that, ex-prime minister of a constitutional 
 government though he is, he could not discover the slightest 
 agitation of mind in any movement 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
 
 208 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 heir- 
 esses 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 VII. were 
 to die, Macumer would probably go in for diplomacy, and 
 the Court of Turin would make him ambassador. Though 
 young, he is " 
 
 "Ah! he is young?" 
 
 "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
 
 209 
 
 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 everybody ! 
 Ah! Eenee, now 1 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, Kenee, 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 worldly 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 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, madame logician : each 
 to her kind : 
 
 "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
 
 210 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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. 
 
 "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 your- 
 self alone, without a thought beyond, a love that far more 
 than fulfils the conditions laid down by you for an ideal pas- 
 sion. 
 
 "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 honor to execute them. I have given myself to you abso- 
 lutely and for the mere joy of giving, for a single glance of 
 yvur 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 per- 
 chance my devotion may win for me toleration. Since that 
 morning when you smiled upon me with generous girlish im- 
 pulse, divining the misery of my 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 sunshine 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. 
 
 "One thought alone troubled this happiness your igno- 
 rance. 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 yearning 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 pro- 
 tection 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 211 
 
 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 otherwise. 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 consisting of one red and one white camellia em- 
 blem 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 you demand 
 shall be done, so far as it is possible for man to do it, by your 
 happy servant, 
 
 "FELIPE HE"NAREZ." 
 
 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 mvself, 
 "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
 
 212 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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? Eead again and 
 again his Hispano-Saracenic letter, Renee dear, and you 
 will see how love makes a clean sweep of all the Judaic bar- 
 gains of your philosophy. 
 
 Renee, your letter lies heavy on my heart; you have vul- 
 garized 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 ! 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 there very essence : two flowers, and the ques- 
 tion is settled. We clear the fourteen volumes of Clarissa 
 Harlowe 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 an- 
 other 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 213 
 
 "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 color; on each 
 cheek I sport a red camellia laid upon a white ! 
 
 1 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. 
 
 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 sidewalk. 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 Astrcea, 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 midday 
 now. I have just got Griffith to write the following letter :
 
 214 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 "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 handwriting, and which 
 you carried away. Believe me, etc.,, 
 
 "GRIFFITH/' 
 
 My dear, Griffith has gone out; she has gone to the Eue 
 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 2nd. 
 
 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 pret- 
 tiest turnout in Paris two dapple-gray horses and a ba- 
 rouche, 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 al- 
 ready transcended the ideal. . . . Your horse makes you 
 an object of general interest," I went on aloud.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 215 
 
 "My steward in Sardinia sent it to me. He is very 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 dia- 
 mond 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, Kenee, 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 mean- 
 ing. 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 dis- 
 tinction who can enter into our feelings and feel our influence. 
 Oh ! my poor friend, forgive me. I forgot our 1'Estorade. 
 But didn't you tell me you were going to make a genius of 
 him ? I know what that 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.
 
 21 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 XVIII 
 
 MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU 
 
 April 
 
 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 realized the force of 
 the word indissoluble as applied to the contract binding 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 exceptions, 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 con- 
 versely, married life in Paris, where existence is one perpetual 
 whirl, must demand different treatment from the more peace- 
 ful 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. 
 
 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 naught 
 all selfish considerations. Sooner or later, dear one, you too
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 217 
 
 will say, "Yes ! dissimulation is the necessary armor of a wo- 
 man, 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 relations.) 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 passion which intro- 
 duces 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 rup- 
 ture ? My aim is to give him, in the very interest of his hap- 
 piness, many occupations, which will all serve as distractions 
 to his love ; and this is not the reasoning of passion. If affec-
 
 218 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 tion be inexhaustible, 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 sur- 
 roundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in Lon- 
 don, 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 satisfac- 
 tion of helping him on the road to it. Five years hence let us 
 meet in Paris and see ! I believe we shall succeed in mystify- 
 ing you. You will tell me then that I was quite mistaken, and 
 that M. de FEstorade 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 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 last- 
 ing 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 219 
 
 slave and mistress I am. But, iny 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 re- 
 gret 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. 
 
 XIX 
 
 LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 WELL, my Renee, you are a love of a woman, and I quite 
 agree now that we can only be virtuous by cheating. Will 
 that satisfy you ? Moreover, the man who loves us is our prop- 
 erty; 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.
 
 220 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 Tell me, to what point is calculation a virtue, or virtue 
 calculation? You won't say? Well, we won't quarrel ovei 
 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 unobtrusive, and so over- 
 flowing ? 
 
 Mme. de Mirbel is painting my portrait, and I intend 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 happiness 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, "Fool, if you love me so much as a picture, 
 what will it be when you know the real me ?" 
 
 Oh! Eenee, 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
 
 LETTEKS OF TWO BRIDES 221 
 
 them out, and perhaps to kill the owners, by way of addi- 
 tional security. 
 
 Monday. 
 
 Oh ! Kenee, 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 undercurrents 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 resolutions?" you will say. 
 Dear, I will tell you. 
 
 My fascinating father, who treats me with the devotion 
 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: 
 
 "Don Felipe, your single-heartel 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 dread- 
 ful 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 actually 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 per- 
 fect as a lover. Here is his letter : 
 
 "Evecry moment passed away from your sight has been 
 filled by me with ideal pictures of you, my eyes closed to
 
 222 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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, com- 
 plete, and boundless happiness. Could you but see yourself 
 where I have placed you, between the Virgin 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 im- 
 plore your clemency therefore in advance. Queen of my life 
 and of my soul, oh! that you could grant me but one-thou- 
 sandth 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, be- 
 tween life and death, darkness and light. A criminal whose 
 verdict hangs in the balance is not more racked with sus- 
 pense 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 dis- 
 pleasing 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 child- 
 hood he has been my enemy, and the vote of the Cortes which 
 placed me in power was regarded by him as a personal in- 
 sult. 
 
 "Xiess than this might breed despondency in the stoutest 
 heart. Besides, -I have no illusion; I know the gracelessness
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 223 
 
 of my person, and am well aware how difficult 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. 
 
 "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 pierced 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 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 con- 
 sent 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 "mademoiselle." A light 
 far brighter than the glare of the chandeliers flashed from
 
 224 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 with 
 curiosity Mmes. de Maufrigneuse and d'Espard and my 
 mother, as though they were talking a foreign language 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 long- 
 ing to see him clear every obstacle and stand before me, ask- 
 ing 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 com- 
 ing 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 leaped 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 mo- 
 ment when he must have been stunned by his fall, moved me 
 so much that I am still crying ; I don't know why. Poor un- 
 gainly 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. Fare- 
 well, fair silent one. I have not time to scold you for not writ- 
 ing, 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 independence" which you were so proud 
 of, and which to-night has so nearly played me false ?
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 225 
 
 XX 
 
 BEN^E DE I/ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHATJLIETT 
 
 May. 
 
 IF love be the life of the world, why do austere philosophers 
 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 discord 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. 
 
 1 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 smilo! 
 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 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
 
 226 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 spiritualized 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 in- 
 dependence; and I beseech you, dearest, do not risk the ir- 
 revocable step of marriage without some guarantee. It hap- 
 pens 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 everything. Your 
 letters create an inner life of passion within my homely, 
 peaceful household, which reminds me of a level highroad 
 on a gray 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 be- 
 lieve that the ideal and the real will harmonize ! 
 
 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 uni- 
 versal law. My Aveyron philosopher is right in looking on 
 ihe family as the only possible unit in society, and in placing
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 227 
 
 woman in subjection to the family, as she has been in all 
 ages. The solution of this great for us almost awful ques- 
 tion 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' 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, without troubling 
 aj)out the labor 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 re- 
 flection 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 re- 
 main a secret between God, myself, and you. On mother- 
 hood 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. 
 
 XXI 
 
 LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RESTEE DE I/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 can-
 
 228 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 not 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 Beauseant, 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 Macumer. 
 
 I cannot tell you to what a state of agitation I am re- 
 duced 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 moon- 
 light dancing through the leaves ! As I sat alone, every 
 nerve tingling, I cried, "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:
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 229 
 
 "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: 
 
 "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. 
 
 "What would you have with me?" said Felipe, in a tone 
 of such agitation that it was easy to see he was driven be- 
 side himself by the noise, slight as it wais, 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 re- 
 plied. 
 
 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 fagade of the house reflected the moon- 
 light. 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 marvelous 
 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
 
 230 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 color had left his face. 
 
 "And if you had been found there, suspicion would have 
 attached either to my mother or to me . . " 
 
 "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. 
 
 "What I have done to-night," I went on with a smile, 
 "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: 
 
 "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 honor you 
 as I honor only God besides. And then, Miss Griffith is 
 here." 
 
 "She is here for the sake of others, not for us," I put in 
 hastily. 
 
 My dear, he understood me at once. 
 
 "I 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. "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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 231 
 
 beyond what I say. My heart will belong only to the man 
 who can read it and know its every turn. Our views, with- 
 out being absolutely identical, must be the same in their 
 breadth and elevation. 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." 
 
 "Having first accepted me as your servant, you now per- 
 mit me to love you," he said, trembling and looking in my 
 face at each word. "My first prayer has been more than an- 
 swered." 
 
 "But," I hastened to reply, "your position seems to me a 
 better one than mine. I should not object to change places, 
 and this change it lies with you to bring about." 
 
 "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." 
 
 "I know that you love me," I replied. "So far" 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 marvelous 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.
 
 232 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 "In England that might be so, but not in France," I re- 
 plied 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 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 fire. 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 ardor 
 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 mem-
 
 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 233 
 
 ory of that half -hour beneath the trees, it is nothing like 
 the excitement of the old time with its: "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 bet- 
 ter than enjoyment? Hope than fruition? Is it the rich 
 who in very truth are the poor? Have we 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 I am meditating another visit to 
 the bottom of the garden without Griffith. How far could 
 I go in this direction? Imagination knows no limit, but it 
 is not so with pleasure. Tell me, dear be-furbelowed pro- 
 fessor, how can one reconcile the two goals of a woman's ex- 
 istence? 
 
 XXII 
 
 LOUISE TO FELIPE 
 
 I AM not pleased with you. If you did not cry over Eacine's 
 Berenice, and feel it to be the most terrible of tragedies, 
 there is no kinship in our. souls; we shall never get on to- 
 gether, and had better break off at once. Let us meet no 
 more. Forget me; 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 con- 
 quest ! In sober earnest, your self-possession alarms me. Not 
 a trace in you of the humble slave of your first letter. Far 
 from betraying the absent-mindedness of a lover, you pol- 
 ished 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 of 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.
 
 234 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 You have roused in me a spirit of mistrust, Felipe, and its 
 angry mutterings have drowned the accents of tenderness. 
 When I 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 cruelest 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, there- 
 fore, 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 misdemeanor, and in love, pray, what is not serious ? 
 Yesterday you had all the air of a man successful in his suit. 
 You would be wrong to doubt it; and yet, if this assurance 
 robbed you of the charming simplicity 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 medita- 
 tion 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 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,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 235 
 
 and if I have reason to suspect the least falling off in the 
 fear,, obedience, and respect which you have hitherto pro- 
 fessed, 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 dishonored and lost in this world, and know her 
 doomed to everlasting 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 happiness, since, in the 
 words of Dante, she possessed, 
 
 Senza brama. sicura ricchezza! 
 
 I have searched the Inferno through to find the most ter- 
 rible 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 sur- 
 face 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. 
 
 We are only rich when our wealth is buried so deep that 
 all the world might trample it under foot, unknowing. If 
 you were handsome, I don't suppose I should have looked 
 at you twice, or discovered one of the thousand reasons out
 
 236 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 lovable 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 promenades for the 
 public, and show yourself of a Parisian affability ! 
 
 Is my ideal portrait, then, forgotten ? Your excessive cheer- 
 fulness 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 mo- 
 ment 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. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 FELIPE TO LOUISE 
 
 WHEN God beholds our faults, He sees also our repentance. 
 Yes, my beloved mistress, you are right. I felt that I had 
 displeased you, but knew not how. Now that you have ex-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 237 
 
 plained 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 pre- 
 cious 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 in- 
 visible to you, will Heaven, think you, reward them? I as- 
 sure you, it needed no slight effort to show myself to you 
 as I was in the days before I loved. At Madrid I was con- 
 sidered 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 dissembling 
 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 me in the breach of unison in that common life of 
 feeling which you have made so fair. 
 
 "I have vexed her !" I exclaimed over and over again, like 
 one distraught. My noble, my beautiful Louise, if anything 
 could increase the fervor 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 chastise- 
 ment, what can be the sweetness of your rewards? 
 
 Louise, for me it was happiness enough to be accepted
 
 238 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 as your servant. You have given me the life of which I de- 
 spaired. 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 dishonored 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 vary- 
 ing 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 ! 
 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 seeing 
 you, 1 return to my study, and the glitter of its Saracenic 
 ornaments sinks to nothing before the brightness of your 
 portrait, when I open the spring that keeps it locked up
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 239 
 
 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 mo- 
 ment 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 realize 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 within me as, hopeless of any 
 other explanation, I concluded that you had ceased to love 
 me. With heavy heart, and yet not wholly without com- 
 fort, 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 "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 re- 
 main your slave, FELIPE.
 
 240 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 XXIV 
 
 LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO REN^E DE I/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 anything 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 ofa Koyalist 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 crossed 
 his soul. Next day he loved me better, but the feeling was 
 as reverent, as humble, as regretful as ever; he had not pre- 
 sumed an iota. Oh! he is a very Spaniard, a very Aben- 
 cerrage. 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 : 
 
 "Sir, some of your friends will have it that you are marry- 
 ing your dear Armande to the nephew of an ambassador who 
 has been very anxious for this connection, and has long 
 begged for it. Also, that the marriage-contract arranges 
 for his nephew to succeed on his death to his enormous for- 
 tune and his title, and bestows on the young couple in the 
 meantime an income of a hundred thousand livres, on the
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 241 
 
 bride a dowry of eight hundred thousand francs. Your 
 daughter weeps, but bows to the unquestioned authority of 
 her honored parent. Some people are unkind enough to say 
 that, behind her tears, she conceals a worldly and ambitious 
 soul. 
 
 "Now, we are going to the gentleman's box at the Opera 
 to-night, and M. le Baron de Macumer will visit us there." 
 
 "Macumer needs a touch of the spur then," said my 
 father, smiling at me, as though I were a female ambas- 
 sador. 
 
 "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 imperti- 
 nent gossip, and will mark your displeasure at it." 
 
 "I may make my mind easy about your future. You 
 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 seeeing him look quite blank, I added: 
 
 "At Madrid!" 
 
 "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. 
 
 "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.
 
 242 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 Two hours later, my mother and I, the Duchesse de Mau- 
 frigneuse 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 col- 
 umns. 
 
 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 countenance. He first greeted 
 my mother, Mme. d'Espard, and the Duchesse de Mau- 
 frigneuse, 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 congratulate 
 you on an event which will make you the object of envy to 
 many." 
 
 "Ah ! a marriage !" I cried. "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 scandal-monger 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 243 
 
 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 : 
 
 "M. de Marsay has been treating you to an epigram on 
 me." 
 
 "He did more," he replied. "It was an epithalamium." 
 
 "You speak Greek to me," I said, rewarding him with 
 a smile and a certain look which always embarrasses him. 
 
 My father meantime was talking to Mme. de Mau- 
 frigneuse. 
 
 "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 rumor 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 ser- 
 pent's cunning they had at last got an inkling of something 
 going on. Of all mysteries in life, love is the least mys- 
 terious ! 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.
 
 244 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 "My dear Felipe," I said, "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, "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?" 
 
 "I am, and shall ever remain so." 
 
 "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. 
 
 "An Arab cannot take back his word," he said in a husky 
 voice. "I 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 con- 
 sent 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, "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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 245 
 
 private room, where I found the Duchess and Maeumer. 
 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 in- 
 vited the Baron to dinner ; and after dinner, we all four went 
 for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne, where I had the pleasure 
 of smiling ironically to M. de Marsay as he passed on horse- 
 back and caught sight of Maeumer sitting opposite to us be- 
 side my father. 
 
 My bewitching Felipe has had his cards reprinted as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 HENAREZ 
 (Baron de Maeumer, 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, con- 
 taining a Spanish sonnet in my honor, 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 cres- 
 cent. 
 
 I've scaled, on my lips the lilt of an Andalusian dance, 
 The steep redoubt under a rain of fire; 
 I've staked my life upon a hazard of the dice, 
 Careless, as though it were a gold doubloon.
 
 246 
 
 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. 
 
 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 Crampade ? 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
 
 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 247 
 
 will not venture to speak of the bedding-out plants have they 
 also blossomed in the bosom of the wife? Does Louis con- 
 tinue 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; 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 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 congratula- 
 tions still tarry. 
 
 Seriously, my sweet Benee, 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, 
 naughty 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 comfortably, 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, 
 "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 
 
 EENEE DE I/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
 
 248 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 daybreak. 
 Our meals are served with a maddening punctuality. Nothing 
 ever happens. I have accustomed myself without much dif- 
 ficulty 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, ac- 
 cording 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 disappear to look after my house- 
 hold 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' 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 deter- 
 mined to throw so much romance over it. Your ideal man 
 must have more soul than fire, more nobility and self-corn-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 249 
 
 mand than passion. You persist in trying to clothe in living 
 form the dream ideal 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 everlasting 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. Eemember 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 "Perhaps" of Eabelais. 
 
 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 
 life lies in these words resignation and self-sacrifice. For, 
 spite of all your tests, your coyness, and your vigilance, I can 
 see that marriage will mean to you what it has been to me. 
 .The greater the passion, the steeper the precipice we have 
 hewn for our fall that is the only difference. 
 
 Oh ! what I would give to see the Baron de Macumer and 
 talk with him for an hour or two ! Your happiness lies so 
 near niy heart. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 LOUISE DE MACUMER TO RENEE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 March 1825. 
 
 As Felipe has carried out, with a truly Saracenic generosity, 
 the wishes of my father and mother in acknowledging the 
 fortune he has not received from me, the Duchess has become 
 even more friendly to me than before. She calls me little
 
 250 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 sly-boots, little woman of the world, and says I know how 
 to use my tongue. 
 
 "But, dear mamma," I said to her the evening before the 
 contract was signed, "you attribute to cunning and smartness 
 on my part what is really the outcome of the truest, simplest, 
 most unselfish, most devoted love that ever was ! I assure 
 you that I am not at all the 'woman of the world' you do 
 me the honor of believing me to be." 
 
 "Come, come, Armande," she said, putting her arm on 
 my neck and drawing me to her, in order to kiss my forehead, 
 "you did not want to go back to the convent, you did not want 
 to die an old maid, and, like a fine, noble-hearted Chaulieu, 
 as you are, you recognized the necessity of building up your 
 fathers family. (The Duke was listening. If you knew, 
 Renee, what flattery lies for him in these words.) I have 
 watched you during a whole winter, poking your little nose 
 into all that goes on, forming very sensible opinions about 
 men and the present state of society in France. And you have 
 picked out the one Spaniard capable of giving you the splen- 
 did position of a woman who reigns supreme in her own 
 house. My dear little girl, you treated him exactly as Tullia 
 treats your brother." 
 
 "What lessons they give in my sister's convent !" exclaimed 
 my father. 
 
 A glance at my father cut him short at once ; then, turning 
 to the Duchess, I said : 
 
 "Madame, I love my future husband, Felipe de Soria, with 
 all the strength of my soul. Although this love sprang up 
 without my knowledge, and though I fought it stoutly when 
 it first made itself felt, I swear to you that I never gave way 
 to it till I had recognized in the Baron de Macumer a char- 
 acter worthy of mine, a heart of which the delicacy, the gen- 
 erosity, the devotion, and the temper are suited to my own." 
 
 "But, my dear," she began, interrupting me, "he is as 
 ugly as ..." 
 
 "As anything you like," I retorted quickly, "but I love his 
 ugliness."
 
 LETTEKS OF TWO BRIDES 251 
 
 "If you love him, Armande," said my father, "and have 
 the strength to master your love, you must not risk your hap- 
 piness. Now, happiness in marriage depends largely on the 
 first days " 
 
 "Days only ?" interrupted my mother. Then, with a glance 
 at my father, she continued, "You had better leave us, my 
 dear, to have our talk together." 
 
 "You are to be married, dear child," the Duchess then 
 began in a low voice, "in three days. It becomes my duty, 
 therefore, without silly whimpering, which would be unfitting 
 our rank in life, to give you the serious advice which every 
 mother owes to her daughter. You are marrying a man whom 
 you love, and there is no reason why I should pity you or 
 myself. I have only known you for a year ; and if this period 
 has been long enough for me to learn to love you, it is hardly 
 sufficient to justify floods of tears at the idea of losing you. 
 Your mental gifts are even more remarkable than those of 
 your person; you have gratified maternal pride, and have 
 shown yourself a sweet and loving daughter. I, in my turn, 
 can promise you that you will always fi-nd a staunch friend 
 in your mother. You smile ? Alas ! it too often happens that 
 a mother who has lived on excellent terms with her daughter, 
 so long as the daughter is a mere girl, comes to cross purposes 
 with her when they are both women together. 
 
 "It is your happiness which I want, so listen to my words. 
 The love which you now feel is that of a young girl, and is 
 natural to us all, for it is woman's destiny to cling to a man. 
 Unhappily, pretty one, there is but one man in the world for 
 a woman ! And sometimes this man, whom fate has marked 
 out for us, is not the one whom we, mistaking a passing fancy 
 for love, choose as husband. Strange as what I say may ap- 
 pear to you, it is worth noting. If we cannot love the man 
 we have chosen, the fault is not exclusively ours, it lies with 
 both, or sometimes with circumstances over which we have 
 no control. Yet there is no reason why the man chosen for 
 us by our family, the man to whom our fancy has gone out, 
 should not be the man whom we can love. The barrier?
 
 252 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 arise later between husband and wife are often due to lack 
 of perseverance on both sides. The task of transforming a 
 husband into a lover is not less delicate than that other task 
 of making a husband of the lover, in which you have just 
 proved yourself marvelously successful. 
 
 "I repeat it, your happiness is my object. Never allow 
 yourself, then, to forget that the first three months of your 
 married life may work your misery if you do not submit 
 to the yoke with the same forbearance, tenderness, and in- 
 telligence that you have shown during the days of courtship. 
 For, my little rogue, you know very well that you have in- 
 dulged in all the innocent pleasures of a clandestine love 
 affair. If the culmination of your love begins with disap- 
 pointment, dislike, nay, even with pain, well, come and tell 
 me about it. Don't hope for too much from marriage at first ; 
 it will perhaps give you more discomfort than joy. The hap- 
 piness of your life requires at least as patient cherishing as 
 the early shoots of love. 
 
 "To conclude, if by chance you should lose the lover, you 
 will find in his place the father of your children. In this, 
 my dear child, lies the whole secret of social life. Sacrifice 
 everything to the man whose name you bear, the man whose 
 honor and reputation cannot suffer in the least degree without 
 involving you in frightful consequences. Such sacrifice is 
 thus not only an absolute duty for women of our rank, it is 
 also their wisest policy. This, indeed, is the distinctive mark 
 of great moral principles, that they hold good and are ex- 
 pedient from whatever aspect they are viewed. But I need 
 say no more to you on this point. 
 
 "I fancy you are of a jealous disposition, and, my dear, 
 if you knew how jealous I am ! But you must not be stupid 
 over it. To publish your jealousy to the world is like playing 
 at politics with your cards upon the table, and those who let 
 their own game be seen learn nothing of their opponents'. 
 Whatever happens, we must know how to suffer in silence/' 
 
 She added that she intended having some plain talk about 
 me with Macumer the evening before the wedding.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 253 
 
 Kaising my mother's beautiful arm, I kissed her hand and 
 dropped on it a tear, which the tone of real feeling in her 
 voice had brought to my eyes. In the advice she had given 
 me, I read high principle worthy of herself and of me, true 
 wisdom, and a tenderness of heart unspoilt by the narrow code 
 of society. Above all, I saw that she understood my character. 
 These few simple words summed up the lessons which life 
 and experience had brought her, perhaps at a heavy price. 
 She was moved, and said, as she looked at me : 
 
 "Dear little girl, you've got a nasty crossing before you. 
 And most women, in their ignorance or their disenchantment, 
 are as wise as the Earl of Westmoreland !" 
 
 We both laughed ; but I must explain the joke. The even- 
 ing before, a Eussian princess had told us an anecdote of this 
 gentleman. He had suffered frightfully from sea-sickness in 
 crossing the Channel, and turned tail when he got near Italy, 
 because he heard some one speak of "crossing" the Alps. 
 "Thank you; I've had quite enough crossings already," he 
 said. 
 
 You will understand, Kenee, that your gloomy philosophy 
 and my mother's lecture were calculated to revive the fears 
 which used to disturb us at Blois. The nearer marriage ap- 
 proached, the more did I need to summon all my strength, 
 my resolution, and my affection to face this terrible passage 
 from maidenhood to womanhood. All our conversations 
 came back to my mind, I re-read your letters and discerned 
 in them a vague undertone of sadness. 
 
 This anxiety had one advantage at least; it helped me 
 to the regulation expression for a bride as commonly de- 
 picted. The consequence was that on the day of signing the 
 contract everybody said I looked charming and quite the right 
 thing. This morning, at the Mairie, it was an informal busi- 
 ness, and only the witnesses were present. 
 
 I am writing this tail to my letter while they are putting 
 out my dress for dinner. We shall be married at midnight 
 at the Church of Sainte-Valere, after a very gay evening. I 
 confess that my fears give me a martyr-like and modest air
 
 254 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 
 
 to which I have no right, but which will be admired why, 
 I cannot conceive. I am delighted to see that poor Felipe 
 is every whit as timorous as I am; society grates on him, he 
 is like a bat in a glass shop. 
 
 "Thank Heaven, the day won't last for ever !" he whispered 
 to Yne in all innocence. 
 
 In his bashfulness and timidity he would have liked to have 
 no one there. 
 
 The Sardinian ambassador, when he came to sign the con- 
 tract, took me aside in order to present me with a pearl neck- 
 lace, linked together by six splendid diamonds a gift from 
 my sister-in-law, the Duchesse de Soria. Along with the 
 necklace was a sapphire bracelet, on the under side of which 
 were engraved the words, "Though unknown, beloved." Two 
 charming letters came with these presents, which, however, I 
 would not accept without consulting Felipe. 
 
 "For," I said, "I should not like to see you wearing orna- 
 ments that came from any one but me." 
 
 He kissed my hand, quite moved, and replied: ' 
 
 "Wear them for the sake of the inscription, and also for the 
 kind feeling, which is sincere." 
 
 Saturday evening. 
 
 Here, then, my poor Eenee, are the last words of your girl 
 friend. After the midnight Mass, we set off for an estate 
 which Felipe, with kind thought for me, has bought in 
 Nivernais, on the way to Provence. Already my name is 
 Louise de Macumer, but I leave Paris in a few hours as Louise 
 de Chaulieu. However I am called, there will never be for 
 you but one Louise. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 THE SAME TO THE SAME 
 
 October 1825. 
 
 I HAVE not written to you, dear, since our marriage, nearly 
 eight months ago. And not a line from you ! Madame, you 
 are inexcusable.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 255 
 
 To begin with, we set off in a post-chaise for the Castle 
 of Chantepleurs, the property which Macumer has bought in 
 Mvernais. It stands on the banks of the Loire, sixty leagues 
 from Paris. Our servants, with the exception of my maid, 
 were there before us, and we arrived, after a very rapid 
 journey, the next evening. I slept all the way from Paris 
 to beyond Montargis. My lord and master put his arm round 
 me and pillowed my head on his shoulder, upon an arrange- 
 ment of handkerchiefs. This was the one liberty he took; 
 and the almost motherly tenderness which got the better of his 
 drowsiness, touched me strangely. I fell asleep then under 
 the fire of his eyes, and awoke to find them still blazing ; the 
 passionate gaze remained unchanged, but what thoughts had 
 come and gone meanwhile ! Twice he had kissed me on the 
 forehead. 
 
 At Briare we had breakfast in the carriage. Then fol- 
 lowed a talk like our old talks at Blois, while the same Loire 
 we used to admire called forth our praises, and at half-past 
 seven we entered the noble long avenue of lime-trees, acacias, 
 sycamores, and larches which leads to Chantepleurs. At 
 eight we dined; at ten we were in our bedroom, a charming 
 Gothic room, made comfortable with every modern luxury. 
 Felipe, who is thought so ugly, seemed to me quite beautiful 
 in his graceful kindness and the exquisite delicacy of his 
 affection. Of passion, not a trace. All through the journey 
 he might have been an old friend of fifteen years' standing. 
 Later, he has described to me, with all the vivid touches of his 
 first letter, the furious storms that raged within and were 
 not allowed to ruffle the outer surface. 
 
 "So far, I have found nothing very terrible in marriage," 
 I said, as I walked to the window and looked out on the glori- 
 ous moon which lit up a charming park, breathing of heavy 
 scents. 
 
 He drew near, put his arm again round me, and said: 
 
 "Why fear it ? Have I ever yet proved false to my promise 
 in gesture or look ? Why should I be false in the future ?" 
 
 Yet never were words or glances more full of mastery;
 
 256 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 his voice thrilled every fibre of my heart and roused a sleeping 
 force ; his eyes were like the sun in power. 
 
 "Oh!" I exclaimed, "what a world of Moorish perfidy in 
 this attitude of perpetual prostration !" 
 
 He understood, my dear. 
 
 So, my fair sweetheart, if I have let months slip by without 
 writing, you can now divine the cause. I have to recall the 
 girl's strange past in order to explain the woman to myself. 
 Benee, I understand you now. Not to her dearest friend, 
 not to her mother, not, perhaps, even to herself, can a happy 
 bride speak of her happiness. This memory ought to remain 
 absolutely her own, an added rapture a thing beyond words, 
 too sacred for disclosure ! 
 
 Is it possible that the name of duty has been given to the 
 delicious frenzy of the heart, to the overwhelming rush of 
 passion? And for what purpose? What malevolent power 
 conceived the idea of crushing a woman's sensitive delicacy 
 and all the thousand wiles of her modesty under the fetters 
 of constraint ? What sense of duty can force from her these 
 flowers of the heart, the roses of life, the passionate poetry 
 of her nature, apart from love ? To claim feeling as a right ! 
 Why, it blooms of itself under the sun of love, and shrivels 
 to death under the cold blast of distaste and aversion ! Let 
 love guard his own rights ! 
 
 Oh! my noble Renee! I understand you now. I bow to 
 your greatness, amazed at the depth and clearness of your 
 insight. Yes, the woman who has not used the marriage cere- 
 mony, as I have done, merely to legalize and publish the 
 secret election of her heart, has nothing left but to fly to 
 motherhood. When earth fails, the soul makes for heaven ! 
 
 One hard truth emerges from all that you have said. Only 
 men who are really great know how to love, and now I under- 
 stand the reason of this. Man obeys two forces one sensual, 
 one spiritual. Weak or inferior men mistake the first for the 
 last, whilst great souls know how to clothe the merely natural 
 instinct in all the graces of the spirit. The very strength 
 of this spiritual passion imposes severe self-restraint and in-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 257 
 
 spires them with reverence for women. Clearly, feeling is 
 sensitive in proportion to the calibre of the mental powers 
 generally, and this is why the man of genius alone has some- 
 thing of a woman's delicacy. He understands and divines 
 woman, and the wings of passion on which he raises her are 
 restrained by the timidity of the sensitive spirit. But when 
 the mind, the heart, and the senses all have their share in 
 the rapture which transports us ah ! then there is no falling 
 to earth, rather it is to heaven we soar, alas ! for only too brief 
 a visit. 
 
 Such, dear soul, is the philosophy of the first three months 
 of my married life. Felipe is angelic. Without figure of 
 speech, he is another self, and I can think aloud with him. 
 His greatness of soul passes my comprehension. Possession 
 only attaches him more closely to me, and he discovers in his 
 happiness new motives for loving me. For him, I am the 
 nobler part of himself. I can foresee that years of wedded 
 life, far from impairing his affection, will only make it more 
 assured, develop fresh possibilities of enjoyment, and bind us 
 in more perfect sympathy. What a delirium of joy ! 
 
 It is part of my nature that pleasure has an exhilarating 
 effect on me ; it leaves sunshine behind, and becomes a part of 
 my inner being. The interval which parts one ecstasy from 
 another is like the short night which marks off our long 
 summer days. The sun which flushed the mountain tops 
 with warmth in setting finds them hardly cold when it rises. 
 What happy chance has given me such a destiny ? My mother 
 had roused a host of fears in me; her forecast, which, though 
 free from the alloy of vulgar pettiness, seemed to me redolent 
 of jealousy, has been falsified by the event. Your fears and 
 hers, my own all have vanished in thin air ! 
 
 We remained at Chantepleurs seven months and a half, 
 for all the .world like a couple of runaway lovers fleeing the 
 parental wrath, while the roses of pleasure crowned our love 
 and embellished our dual solitude. One morning, when I was 
 even happier than usual, I began to muse over my lot, and 
 suddenly Eenee and her prosaic marriage flashed into my
 
 258 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 mind. It seemed to me that now I could grasp the inner 
 meaning of your life. Oh! my sweet, why do we speak a 
 different tongue ? Your marriage of convenience and my love 
 match are two worlds, as widely separated as the finite from 
 infinity. You still walk the earth, whilst I range the heavens ! 
 Your sphere is human, mine divine ! Love crowned me queen, 
 you reign by reason and duty. So lofty are the regions where 
 I soar, that a fall would shiver me to atoms. 
 
 But no more of this. I shrink from painting to you the 
 rainbow brightness, the profusion, the exuberant joy of love's 
 springtime, as we know it. 
 
 For ten days we have been in Paris, staying in a charming 
 house in the Eue du Bac, prepared for us by the architect 
 to whom Felipe intrusted the decoration of Chantepleurs. I 
 have been listening, in all the full content of an assured and 
 sanctioned love, to that divine music of Eossini's, which 
 used to soothe me when, as a restless girl, I hungered vaguely 
 after experience. They say I am more beautiful, and I have 
 a childish pleasure in hearing myself called "Madame." 
 
 Friday morning. 
 
 Ren6e, my fair saint, the happiness of my own life pulls 
 me for ever back to you. I feel that I can be more to you 
 than ever before, you are so dear to me ! I have studied your 
 wedded life closely in the light of my own opening chapters ; 
 and you seem to me to come out of the scrutiny so great, so 
 noble, so splendid in your goodness, that I here declare myself 
 your inferior and humble admirer, as well as your friend. 
 When I think what marriage has been to me, it seems to me 
 that I should have died, had it turned out otherwise. And you 
 live! Tell me what your heart feeds on! Never again shall 
 I make fun of you. Mockery, my sweet, is the child of igno- 
 rance; we jest at what we know nothing of. "Recruits will 
 laugh where the veteran soldier looks grave," was a remark 
 made to me by the Comte de Cbaulieu, that poor cavalry officer 
 whose campaigning so far has consisted in marches from Paris 
 to Fontainebleau and back again.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 259 
 
 I surmise, too, my dear love, that you have not told me all. 
 There are wounds which you have hidden. You suffer; I 
 am convinced of it. In trying to make out at this distance 
 and from the scraps you tell me the reasons of your conduct, 
 I have weaved together all sorts of romantic theories about 
 you. "She has made a mere experiment in marriage," I 
 thought one evening, "and what is happiness for me has 
 proved only suffering to her. Her sacrifice is barren of re- 
 ward, and she would not make it greater than need be. The 
 unctuous axioms of social morality are only used to cloak her 
 disappointment." Ah ! Eenee, the best of happiness is that 
 it needs no dogma and no fine words to pave the way; it 
 speaks for itself, while theory has been piled upon theory 
 to justify the system of women's vassalage and thralldom. If 
 self-denial be so noble, so sublime, what, pray, of my joy, shel- 
 tered by the gold-and-white canopy of the church, and wit- 
 nessed by the hand and seal of the most sour-faced of mayors ? 
 Is it a thing out of nature ? 
 
 For the honor of the law, for her own sake, but most of 
 all to make my happiness complete, I long to see my Eenee 
 content. Oh ! tell me that you see a dawn of love for this 
 Louis who adores you ! Tell me that the solemn, symbolic 
 torch of Hymen has not alone served to lighten your darkness, 
 but that love, the glorious sun of our hearts, pours his rays 
 on you. I come back always, you see, to this midday blaze, 
 which will be my destruction, I fear. 
 
 Dear Eenee, do you remember how, in your outbursts of 
 girlish devotion, you would say to me, as we sat under the 
 vine-covered arbor of the convent garden, "I love you so, 
 Louise, that if God appeared to me in a vision, I would pray 
 Him that all the sorrows of life might be mine, and all the 
 joy yours. I burn to suffer for you" ? Now, darling, the day 
 has come when I take up your prayer, imploring Heaven 
 to grant you a share in my happiness. 
 
 I must tell you my idea. I have a shrewd notion that you 
 are hatching ambitious plans under the name of Louu, de 
 1'Estorade. Very good; get him elected deputy at the ap-
 
 260 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 preaching election, for he will be very nearly forty then; 
 and as the Chamber does not meet till six months later, he 
 will have just attained the age necessary to qualify for a seat. 
 You will come to Paris there, isn't that enough? My 
 father, and the friends .1 shall have made by that time, will 
 learn to know and admire you ; and if your father-in-law will 
 agree to found a family, we will get the title of Comte for 
 Louis. That is something at least! And we shall be to- 
 gether. 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 BENEE DE I/ESTOKADE TO LOUISE DE MACUMER 
 
 December 1825 
 
 MY thrice happy Louise, your letter made me dizzy. For 
 a few moments I held it in my listless hands, while a tear 
 or two sparkled on it in the setting sun. I was alone beneath 
 the small barren rock where I have had a seat placed ; far off, 
 like a lance of steel, the Mediterranean shone. The seat 
 is shaded by aromatic shrubs, and I have had a very large jes- 
 samine, some honeysuckle, and Spanish brooms transplanted 
 there, so that some day the rock will be entirely covered with 
 climbing plants. The wild vine has already taken root there. 
 But winter draws near, and all this greenery is faded like a 
 piece of old tapestry. In this spot I am never molested ; it is 
 understood that here I wish to be alone. It is named Louise's 
 seat a proof, is it not, that even in solitude I am not alone 
 here? 
 
 If I tell you all these details, to you so paltry, and try 
 to describe the vision of green with which my prophetic gaze 
 clothes this bare rock on whose top some freak of nature 
 has set up a. magnificent parasol pine it is because in all 
 this I have found an emblem to which I cling. 
 
 It was while your blessed lot was filling me with joy and 
 must I confess it ? with bitter envy too, that I felt the first 
 movement of my child within, and this mystery of physical
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 261 
 
 life reacted upon the inner recesses of my soul. This inde- 
 finable sensation, which partakes of the nature at once of 
 a warning, a delight, a pain, a promise, and a fulfilment; 
 this joy, which is mine alone, unshared by mortal, this won- 
 der of wonders, has whispered to me that one day this rock 
 shall be a carpet of flowers, resounding to the merry laughter 
 of children, that I shall at last be blessed among women, 
 and from me shall spring forth fountains of life. Now I 
 know what I have lived for ! Thus the first certainty of 
 bearing within me another life brought healing to my wounds. 
 A joy that beggars description has crowned for me those long 
 days of sacrifice, in which Louis had already found his. 
 
 Sacrifice ! I said to myself, how far does it excel passion ! 
 What pleasure has roots so deep as one which is not personal 
 but creative ? Is not the spirit of Sacrifice a power mightier 
 than any of its results? Is it not that mysterious, tireless 
 divinity, who hides beneath innumerable spheres in an unex- 
 plored centre, through which all worlds in turn must pass? 
 Sacrifice, solitary and secret, rich in pleasures only tasted in 
 silence, which none can guess at, and no profane eye has ever 
 seen; Sacrifice, jealous God and tyrant, God of strength and 
 victory, exhaustless spring which, partaking of the very es- 
 sence of all that exists, can by no expenditure be drained below 
 its own level ; Sacrifice, there is the keynote of my life. 
 
 For you, Louise, love is but the reflex of Felipe's passion; 
 the life which I shed upon my little ones will come back to 
 me in ever-growing fulness. The plenty of your golden har- 
 vest will pass ; mine, though late, will be but the more endur- 
 ing, for each hour will see it renewed. Love may be the fair- 
 est gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what is 
 motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A 
 smile has dried my tears. Love makes my Louis happy, but 
 marriage has made me a mother, and who shall say I am not 
 happy also ? 
 
 With slow steps, then, I returned to my white grange, with 
 its green shutters, to write you these thoughts. 
 
 So it is, darling, that the most marvelous, and yet the
 
 262 LETTEKS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 simplest, process of nature has been going on in me for five 
 months; and yet in your ear let me whisper it so far it 
 agitates neither my heart nor my understanding. I see all 
 around me happy; the grandfather-to-be has become a child 
 again, trespassing on the grandchild's place ; the father wears 
 a grave and anxious look; they are all most attentive to me, 
 all talk of the joy of being a mother. Alas ! I alone remain 
 cold, and I dare not tell you how dead I am to all emotion, 
 though I affect a little in order not to damp the general 
 satisfaction. But with you I may be frank; and I confess 
 that, at my present stage, motherhood is a mere affair of the 
 imagination. 
 
 Louis was to the full as much surprised as I. Does not 
 this show how little, unless by his impatient wishes, the 
 father counts for in this matter? Chance, my dear, is the 
 sovereign deity in child-bearing. My doctor, while maintain- 
 ing that this chance works in harmony with nature, does not 
 deny that children who are the fruit of passionate love are 
 bound to be richly endowed both physically and mentally, 
 and that often the happiness which shone like a radiant star 
 over their birth seems to watch over them through life. It 
 may be then, Louise, that motherhood reserves joys for you 
 which I shall never know. It may be that the feeling of a 
 mother for the child of a man whom she adores, as you adore 
 Felipe, is different from that with which she regards the 
 offspring of reason, duty, and desperation! 
 
 Thoughts such as these, which I bury in my inmost heart, 
 add to the preoccupation only natural to a woman soon to be 
 a mother. And yet, as the family cannot exist without chil- 
 dren, I long to speed the moment from which the joys of 
 family, where alone I am to find my life, shall date their 
 beginning. At present I live a life all expectation and mystery, 
 except for a sickening physical discomfort, which no doubt 
 serves to prepare a woman for suffering of a different kind. 
 I watch my symptoms; and in spite of the attentions and 
 thoughtful care with which Louis' anxiety surrounds me, 
 I am conscious of a vague uneasiness, mingled with the
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 263 
 
 nausea, the distaste for food, and abnormal longings common 
 to my condition. If I am to speak candidly, I must confess, 
 at the risk of disgusting you with the whole business, to an 
 incomprehensible craving for rotten fruit. My husband goes 
 to Marseilles to fetch the finest oranges the world produces 
 from Malta, Portugal, Corsica and these I don't touch. 
 Then I hurry there myself, sometimes on foot, and in a 
 little back street, running down to the harbor, close to the 
 Town Hall, I find wretched, half -putrid oranges, two for a 
 sou, which I devour eagerly. The bluish, greenish shades on 
 the mouldy parts sparkle like diamonds in my eyes, they are 
 flowers to me; I forget the putrid odor, and find them de- 
 licious, with a piquant flavor, and stimulating as wine. My 
 dear, they are the first love of my life ! Your passion for 
 Felipe is nothing to this ! Sometimes I can slip out secretly 
 and fly to Marseilles, full of passionate longings, which grow 
 more intense as I draw near the street. I tremble lest the 
 woman should be sold out of rotten oranges ; I pounce on them 
 and devour them as I stand. It seems to me an ambrosial 
 food, and yet I have seen Louis turn aside, unable to bear 
 the smell. Then came to my mind the ghastly words of Ober- 
 mann in his gloomy elegy, which I wish I had never read, 
 "Roots slake their thirst in foulest streams." Since I took 
 to this diet, the sickness has ceased, and I feel much stronger. 
 This depravity of taste must have a meaning, for it seems 
 to be part of a natural process and to be common to most 
 women, sometimes going to most extravagant lengths. 
 
 When my situation is more marked, I shall not go beyond 
 the grounds, for I should not like to be seen under these 
 circumstances. I have the greatest curiosity to know at what 
 precise moment the sense of motherhood begins. It cannot 
 possibly be in the midst of frightful suffering, the very 
 thought of which makes me shudder. 
 
 Farewell, favorite of fortune! Farewell, my friend, in 
 whom I live again, and through whom I am able to picture 
 to myself this brave love, this jealousy all on fire at a look, 
 these whisperings in the ear, these joys which create for
 
 264 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 women, as it were, a new atmosphere, a new daylight, fresh 
 life ! Ah ! pet, I too understand love. Don't weary of telling 
 me everything. Keep faithful to our bond. I promise, in 
 my turn, to spare you nothing. 
 
 Nay to conclude in all seriousness I will not conceal 
 from you that, on reading your letter a second time, I was 
 seized with a dread which I could not shake off. This superb 
 love seems like a challenge to Providence. Will not the sov- 
 ereign master of this earth, Calamity, take umbrage if no 
 place be left for him at your feast? What mighty edifice of 
 fortune has he not overthrown? Oh! Louise, forget not, in 
 all this happiness, your prayers to God. Do good, be kind 
 and merciful ; let your moderation, if it may be, avert disaster. 
 Religion has meant much more to me since I left the convent 
 and since my marriage ; but your Paris news contains no men- 
 tion of it. In your glorification of Felipe, it seems to me 
 you reverse the saying,, and invoke God less than His saint. 
 
 But, after all, this panic is only excess of affection. You 
 go to church together, I do not doubt, and do good in secret. 
 The close of this letter will seem to you very primitive, I ex- 
 pect, but think of the too eager friendship which prompts 
 these fears a friendship of the type of 'La Fontaine's, which 
 takes alarm at dreams, at half-formed, misty ideas. You de- 
 serve to be happy, since, through it all, you still think of me, 
 no less than I think of you, in my monotonous life, which, 
 though it lacks color, is yet not empty, and, if uneventful, 
 is not unfruitful. God bless you, then ! 
 
 XXIX 
 
 M. DE L'ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE DE MACUMER 
 
 December 1825. 
 
 MADAME, It is the desire of my wife that you should not 
 learn first from the formal announcement of an event which 
 has filled us with joy. Renee has just given birth to a fine boy, 
 whose baptism we are postponing till your return to Chante-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 265 
 
 pleurs. Renee and I both earnestly hope that you may then 
 come as far as La Crampade, and will consent to act as god- 
 mother to our firstborn. In this hope, I have had him placed 
 on the register under the name of Armand-Louis de PEsto- 
 rade. 
 
 Our dear Eenee suffered much, but bore it with angelic 
 patience. You, who know her, will easily understand that 
 the assurance of bringing happiness to us all supported her 
 through this trying apprenticeship to motherhood. 
 
 Without indulging in the more or less ludicrous exaggera- 
 tions to which the novel sensation of being a father is apt 
 to give rise, I may tell you that little Armand is a beautiful 
 infant, and you will have no difficulty in believing it when 
 I add that he has Renee's features and eyes. So far, at least, 
 this gives proof of intelligence. 
 
 The physician and accoucheur assure us that Renee is now 
 quite out of danger ; and as she is proving an admirable nurse 
 Nature has endowed her so generously ! my father and I 
 are able to give free rein to our joy. Madame, may I be al- 
 lowed to express the hope that this joy, so vivid and intense, 
 which has brought fresh life into our house, and has changed 
 the face of existence for my dear wife, may ere long be 
 yours ? 
 
 Renee has had a suite of rooms prepared, and I only wish 
 I could make them worthy of our guests. But the cordial 
 friendliness of the reception which awaits you may perhaps 
 atone for any lack of splendor. 
 
 I have heard from Renee, madame, of your kind thought 
 in regard to us, and I take this opportunity of thanking 
 you for it, the more gladly because nothing could now be 
 more appropriate. The birth of a grandson has reconciled 
 my father to sacrifices which bear hardly on an old man. He 
 has just bought two estates, and La Crampade is now a prop- 
 erty with an annual rental of thirty thousand francs. My 
 father intends asking the King's permission to form an en- 
 tailed estate of it ; and if you are good enough to get for him 
 the title of which you spoke in your last letter, you will have 
 already done much for your godson.
 
 266 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 For my part, I shall carry out your suggestion solely with 
 the object of bringing you and Renee together during the 
 sessions of the Chamber. I am working hard with the view 
 of becoming what is called a specialist. But nothing could 
 give me greater encouragement in my labors than the thought 
 that you will take an interest in my little Armand. Come, 
 then, we beg of you, and with your beauty and your grace, 
 your playful fancy and your noble soul, enact the part of 
 good fairy to my son and heir. You will thus, madame, 
 add undying gratitude to the respectful regard of 
 Your very humble, obedient servant, 
 
 Louis DE L'ESTORADE. 
 
 XXX 
 
 LOUISE DE MACUMER TO RENEE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 January 1826. 
 
 MACUMER has just wakened me, darling, with your husband's 
 letter. First and foremost Yes. We shall be going to 
 Chantepleurs about the end of April. To me it will be a piling 
 up of pleasure to travel, to see you, and to be the godmother 
 of your first child. I must, please, have Macumer for god- 
 father. To take part in a ceremony of the Church with an- 
 other as my partner would be hateful to me. Ah ! if you could 
 see the look he gave me as I said this, you would know what 
 store this sweetest of lovers sets on his wife ! 
 
 "I am the more bent on our visiting La Crampade to- 
 gether, Felipe," I went on, "because I might have a child 
 there. I too, you know, would be a mother! . . . And 
 yet, can you fancy me torn in two between you and the infant ? 
 To begin with, if I saw any creature were it even my own 
 son taking my place in your heart, I couldn't answer for 
 the consequences. Medea may have been right after all. The 
 Greeks had some good notions !" 
 
 And he laughed.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 267 
 
 So, my sweetheart, you have the fruit without the flowers; 
 I the flowers without the fruit. The contrast in our lives 
 still holds good. Between the two of us we have surely 
 enough philosophy to find the moral of it some day. Bah ! 
 only ten months married ! Too soon, you will admit, to give 
 up hope. 
 
 We are leading a gay, yet far from empty life, as is the 
 way with happy people. The days are never long enough for 
 us. Society, seeing me in the trappings of a married woman, 
 pronounces the Baronne de Macumer much prettier than 
 Louise de Chaulieu : a happy love is a most becoming cosmetic. 
 When Felipe and I drive along the Champs-Elysees in the 
 bright sunshine of a crisp January day, beneath the trees, 
 frosted with clusters of white stars, and face all Paris on the 
 spot where last year we met with a gulf between us, the con- 
 trast calls up a thousand fancies. Suppose, after all, your last 
 letter should be right in its forecast, and we are too pre- 
 sumptuous ! 
 
 If I am ignorant of a mother's joys, you shall tell me about 
 them; I will learn by sympathy. But my imagination can 
 picture nothing to equal the rapture of love. You will laugh 
 at my extravagance; but, I assure you, that a dozen times in 
 as many months the longing has seized me to die at thirty, 
 while life was still untarnished, amidst the roses of love, in 
 the embrace of passion. To bid farewell to the feast at its 
 brightest, before disappointment has come, having lived in 
 this sunshine and celestial air, and well-nigh spent myself in 
 love, not a leaf dropped from my crown, not an illusion per- 
 ished in my heart, what a dream is there! Think what it 
 would be to bear about a young heart in an aged body, to see 
 only cold, dumb faces around me, where even strangers used 
 to smile; to be a worthy matron! Can Hell have a worse 
 torture ? 
 
 On this very subject, in fact, Felipe and I have had our first 
 quarrel. I contended that he ought to have sufficient moral 
 strength to kill me in my sleep when I have reached thirty, 
 so that I might pass from one dream to another. The wretch
 
 268 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 declined. I threatened to leave him alone in the world, and, 
 poor child, he turned white as a sheet. My dear, this distin- 
 guished statesman is neither more nor less than a baby. It is 
 incredible what youth and simplicity he contrived to hide 
 away. Now that I allow myself to think aloud with him, as I 
 do with you, and have no secrets from him, we are always 
 giving each other surprises. 
 
 Dear Kenee, Felipe and Louise, the pair of lovers, want 
 to send a present to the young mother. We would like to 
 get something that would give you pleasure, and we don't 
 share the popular taste for surprises ; so tell me quite frankly, 
 please, what you would like. It ought to be something which 
 would recall us to you in a ^easant way, something which 
 you will use every day, and which won't wear out with use. 
 The meal which with us is most cheerful and friendly is 
 lunch, and therefore the idea occurred to me of a special 
 luncheon service, ornamented with figures of babies. If you 
 approve of this, let me know at once; for it will have to be 
 ordered immediately if we are to bring it. Paris artists are 
 gentlemen of far too much importance to be hurried. This 
 will be my offering to Lucina. 
 
 Farewell, dear nursing mother. May all a mother's delights 
 be yours ! I await with impatience your first letter, which will 
 tell me all about it, I hope. Some of the details in your 
 husband's letter went to my heart. Poor Kenee, a mother 
 has a heavy price to pay. I will tell my godson how dearly he 
 must love you. No end of love, my sweet one. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 RENEE DE I/ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE MACUMER 
 
 IT is nearly five months now since baby was born, and not 
 once, dear heart, have T found a single moment for writing 
 to you. When you are a mother yourself, you will be more 
 ready to excuse me than you are now ; for you have punished
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 269 
 
 me a little bit in making your own letters so few and far be- 
 tween. Do write, my darling! Tell me of your pleasures; 
 lay on the blue as brightly as you please. It will not hurt 
 me, for I am happy now, happier than you can imagine. 
 
 I went in state to the parish church to hear the Mass for 
 recovery from childbirth, as is the custom in the old families 
 of Provence. I was supported on either side by the two grand- 
 fathers Louis' father and my own. Never had I knelt before 
 God with such a flood of gratitude in my heart. I have so 
 much to tell you of, so many feelings to describe, that I don't 
 know where to begin; but from amidst these confused memo- 
 ries, one rises distinctly, that of my prayer in the church. 
 
 When I found myself transformed into a joyful mother, 
 on the very spot where, as a girl, I had trembled for my 
 future, it seemed to my fancy that the Virgin on the altar 
 bowed her head and pointed to the infant Christ, who smiled 
 at me! My heart full of pure and heavenly love, I held out 
 little Armand for the priest to bless and bathe, in anticipation 
 of the regular baptism to come later. But you will see us 
 together then, Armand and me. 
 
 My child see how readily the word comes, and indeed 
 there is none sweeter to a mother's heart and mind or on her 
 lips well, then, dear child, during the last two months I 
 used to drag myself wearily and heavily about the gardens, 
 not realizing yet how precious was the burden, spite of all 
 the discomforts it brought ! I was haunted by forebodings 
 so gloomy and ghastly, that they got the better even of curi- 
 osity ; in vain did I reason with myself that no natural func- 
 tion could be so very terrible, in vain did I picture the de- 
 Rights of motherhood. My heart made no response even to 
 the thought of the little one, who announced himself by lively 
 kicking. That is a sensation, dear, which may be welcome 
 when it is familiar; but as a novelty, it is more strange than 
 pleasing. I speak for myself at least ; you know I would never 
 affect anything I did not really feel, and I look on my child 
 as a gift straight from Heaven. For one who saw in it 
 rather the image of the man she loved, it might be different.
 
 270 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 But enough of such sad thoughts, gone, I trust, for ever. 
 
 When the crisis came, I summoned all my powers of re- 
 sistance, and braced myself so well for suffering, that I. bore 
 the horrible agony so they tell me quite marvelously. For 
 about an hour I sank into a sort of stupor, of the nature of a 
 dream. I seemed to myself then two beings an outer cover- 
 ing racked and tortured by red-hot pincers, and a soul at 
 peace. In this strange state the pain formed itself into a 
 sort of halo hovering over me. A gigantic rose seemed to 
 spring out of my head and grow ever larger and larger, till 
 it enfolded me in its blood-red petals. The same color dyed 
 the air around, and everything I saw was blood-red. At last 
 the climax came, when soul and body seemed no longer able to 
 hold together; the spasms of pain gripped me like death 
 itself. I screamed aloud, and found fresh strength against 
 this fresh torture. Suddenly this concert of hideous cries 
 was overborne by a joyful sound the shrill wail of the new- 
 born infant. No words can describe that moment. It was as 
 though the universe took part in my cries, when all at once 
 the chorus of pain fell hushed before the child's feeble note. 
 
 They laid me back again in the large bed, and it felt like 
 paradise to me, even in my extreme exhaustion. Three or 
 four happy faces pointed through tears to the child. My dear, 
 I exclaimed in terror : 
 
 "It's just like a little monkey! Are you really and truly 
 certain it is a child ?" 
 
 I fell back on my side, miserably disappointed at my first 
 experience of motherly feeling. 
 
 "Don't worry, dear," said my mother, who had installed 
 herself as nurse. "Why, you've got the finest baby in the 
 world. You mustn't excite yourself; but give your whole mind 
 now to turning yourself as much as possible into an animal, 
 a milch cow, pasturing in the meadow." 
 
 I fell asleep then, fully resolved to let nature have her way. 
 
 Ah! my sweet, how heavenly it was to waken up from all 
 the pain and haziness of the first days, when everything was 
 still dim, uncomfortable, confused. A ray of light pierced
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 271 
 
 the darkness; my heart and soul, my inner self a self I had 
 never known before rent the envelope of gloomy suffering, 
 as a flower bursts its sheath at the first warm kiss of the 
 sun, at the moment when the little wretch fastened on my 
 breast and sucked. Not even the sensation of the child's first 
 cry was so exquisite as this. This is the dawn of motherhood, 
 this is the Fiat lux! 
 
 Here is happiness, joy ineffable, though it comes not with- 
 out pangs. Oh ! my sweet jealous soul, how you will relish 
 a delight which exists only for ourselves, the child, and God ! 
 For this tiny creature all knowledge is summed up in its 
 mother's breast. This is the one bright spot in its world, 
 towards which its puny strength goes forth. Its thoughts 
 cluster round this spring of life, which it leaves only to 
 sleep, and whither it returns on waking. Its lips have a 
 sweetness beyond words, and their pressure is at once a pain 
 and a delight, a delight which by every excess becomes pain, 
 or a pain which culminates in delight. The sensation which 
 rises from it, and which penetrates to the very core of my life, 
 baffles all description. It seems a sort of centre whence a 
 myriad joy-bearing rays gladden the heart and soul. To bear 
 a child is nothing; to nourish it is birth renewed every hour. 
 
 Oh ! Louise, there is no caress of lover with half the power of 
 those little pink hands, as they stray about, seeking 'whereby 
 to lay hold on life. And the infant glances, now turned upon 
 the breast, now raised to meet our own ! .What dreams come 
 to us as we watch the clinging nursling! All our powers, 
 whether of mind or body, are at its service ; for it we breathe 
 and think, in it our longings are more than satisfied ! The 
 sweet sensation of warmth at the heart, which the sound of his 
 first cry brought to me like the first ray of sunshine on the 
 earth came again as I felt the milk flow into his mouth, 
 again as his eyes met mine, and at this moment I have felt 
 it once more as his first smile gave token of a mind working 
 within for he has laughed, my dear ! A laugh, a glance, 
 a bite, a cry four miracles of gladness which go straight to 
 the heart and strike chords that respond to no other touch.
 
 272 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 A child is tied to our heart-strings, as the spheres are linked 
 to their creator; we cannot think of God except as a mother's 
 heart writ large. 
 
 It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her 
 motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of 
 every moment. The milk becomes flesh before our eyes; it 
 blossoms into the tips of those delicate flower-like fingers; it 
 expands in tender, transparent nails; it spins the silky 
 tresses ; it kicks in the little feet. Oh ! those baby feet, how 
 plainly they talk to us ! In them the child finds its first 
 language. 
 
 Yes, Louise, nursing is a miracle of transformation going 
 on before one's bewildered eyes. Those cries, they go to your 
 heart and not your ears; those smiling eyes and lips, those 
 plunging feet, they speak in words which could not be plainer 
 if God traced them before you in letters of fire ! What else 
 is there in the world to care about? The father? Why, you 
 could kill him if he dreamed of waking the baby ! Just as 
 the child is the world to us, so do we stand alone in the world 
 for the child. The sweet consciousness of a common life is 
 ample recompense for all the trouble and suffering for suf- 
 fering there is. Heaven save you, Louise, from ever knowing 
 the maddening agony of a wound which gapes afresh with 
 every pressure of rosy lips, and is so hard to heal the heaviest 
 tax perhaps imposed on beauty. For know, Louise, and be- 
 ware ! it visits only a fair and delicate skin. 
 
 My little ape has in five months developed into the prettiest 
 darling that ever mother bathed in tears of joy, washed, 
 brushed, combed, and made smart; for God knows what 
 unwearied care we lavish upon these tender blossoms ! So 
 my monkey has ceased to exist, and behold in his stead a ~baby, 
 as my English nurse says, a regular pink-and-white baby. 
 He cries very little too now, for he is conscious of the love 
 bestowed on him ; indeed, I hardly ever leave him, and I strive 
 to wrap him round in the atmosphere of my love. 
 
 Dear, I have a feeling now for Louis which is not love, 
 but which ought to be the crown of a woman's love where it
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 273 
 
 exists. Nay, I am not sure whether this tender fondness, this 
 unselfish gratitude,, is not superior to love. From all that 
 you have told me of it, dear pet, I gather that love has some- 
 thing terribly earthly about it, whilst a strain of holy piety 
 purifies the affection a happy mother feels for the author of 
 her far-reaching and enduring joys. A mother's happiness is 
 like a beacon, lighting up the future, but reflected also on the 
 past in the guise of fond memories. 
 
 The old 1'Estorade and his son have moreover redoubled 
 their devotion to me ; I am like a new person to them. Every 
 time they see me and speak to me, it is with a fresh holiday 
 joy, which touches me deeply. The grandfather has, I 
 verily believe, turned child again ; he looks at me admiringly, 
 and the first time I came down to lunch he was moved to tears 
 to see me eating and suckling the child. The moisture in 
 these dry old eyes, generally expressive only of avarice, was a 
 wonderful comfort to me. I felt that the good soul entered 
 into my joy. 
 
 As for Louis, he would shout aloud to the trees and stones 
 of the highway that he has a son; and he spends whole 
 hours watching your sleeping godson. He does not know, 
 he says, when he will grow used to it. These extravagant 
 expressions of delight show me how great must have been 
 their fears beforehand. Louis has confided in me that he 
 had believed himself condemned to be childless. Poor fellow ! 
 he has all at once developed very much, and he works even 
 harder than he did. The father in him has quickened his 
 ambition. 
 
 For myself, dear soul, I grow happier and happier every 
 moment. Each hour creates a fresh tie between the mother 
 and her infant. The very nature of my feelings proves to 
 me that they are normal, permanent, and indestructible; 
 whereas I shrewdly suspect love, for instance, of being in- 
 termittent. Certainly it is not the same at all moments, the 
 flowers which it weaves into the web of life are not all of 
 equal brightness; love, in short, can and must decline. But 
 a mother's love has no ebb-tide to fear; rather it grows with
 
 274 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 the growth of the child's needs, and strengthens with its 
 strength. Is it not at once a passion, a natural craving, a 
 feeling, a duty, a necessity, a joy? Yes, darling, here is 
 woman's true sphere. Here the passion for self-sacrifice can 
 expend itself, and no jealousy intrudes. 
 
 Here, too, is perhaps the single point on which society 
 and nature are at one. Society, in this matter, enforces the 
 dictates of nature, strengthening the maternal instinct by 
 adding to it family spirit and the desire of perpetuating a 
 name, a race, an estate. How tenderly must not a woman 
 cherish the child who has been the first to open up to her 
 these joys, the first to call forth the energies of her nature 
 and to instruct her in the grand art of motherhood ! The 
 right of the eldest, which in the earliest times formed a part 
 of the natural order and was lost in the origins of society, 
 ought never, in my opinion, to have been questioned. Ah! 
 how much a mother learns from her child ! The constant 
 protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an al- 
 liance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advan- 
 tage except as a mother. Then alone can her character ex- 
 pand in the fulfilment of all life's duties and the enjoyment 
 of all its pleasures. A woman who is not a mother is maimed 
 and incomplete. Hasten, then, my sweetest, to fulfil your 
 mission. Your present happiness will then be multiplied by 
 the wealth of my delights. 
 
 23i. 
 
 I had to tear myself from you because your godson was cry- 
 ing. I can hear his cry from the bottom of the garden. But 
 I would not let this go without a word of farewell. I have 
 just been reading over what I have said, and am horrified 
 to see how vulgar are the feelings expressed ! What I feel, 
 every mother, alas ! since the beginning must have felt, I sup- 
 pose, in the same way, and put into the same words. You 
 will laugh at me, as we do at the nai've father who dilates on 
 the beauty and cleverness of his (of course) quite excep- 
 tional offspring. But the refrain of my letter, darling, is
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 275 
 
 this, and I repeat it: I am as happy now as I used to be 
 miserable. This grange and is it not going to be an estate, 
 a family property? has become my land of promise. The 
 desert is past and over. A thousand loves, darling pet. Write 
 to me, for now I can read without a tear the tale of your 
 happy love. Farewell. 
 
 XXXII 
 
 MME. DE MACUMER TO MME. DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 March 1826 
 
 Do YOU know, dear, that it is more than three months since 
 I have written to you or heard from you? I am the more 
 guilty of the two, for I did not reply to your last, but you 
 don't stand on punctilio surely? 
 
 Macumer and I have taken your silence for consent as re- 
 gards the baby-wreathed luncheon service, and the little 
 cherubs are starting this morning for Marseilles. It took 
 six months to carry out the design. And so when Felipe 
 asked me to come and see the service before it was packed, 
 I suddenly waked up to the fact that we had not inter- 
 changed a word since the letter of yours which gave me an 
 insight into a mother's heart. 
 
 My sweet, it is this terrible Paris there's my excuse. 
 What, pray, is yours ? Oh ! what a whirlpool is society ! 
 Didn't I tell you once that in Paris one must be as the 
 Parisians? Society there drives out all sentiment; it lays 
 an embargo on your time; and unless you are very careful, 
 soon eats away your heart altogether. What an amazing mas- 
 terpiece is the character of Celimene in Moliere's Le Misan- 
 thrope! She is the society woman, not only of Louis XIV.'s 
 time, but of our own, and of all, time. 
 
 Where should I be but for my breastplate the love I bear 
 Felipe? This very morning I told him, as the outcome of 
 these reflections, that he was my salvation. If my evenings
 
 276 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 are a continuous round of parties, balls, concerts, and 
 theatres, at night my heart expands again, and is healed of 
 the wounds received in the world hy the delights of the pas- 
 sionate love which await my return. 
 
 I dine at home only when we have friends, so-called, with 
 us, and spend the afternoon there only on my day, for I 
 have a day now Wednesday for receiving. I have entered 
 the lists with Mmes. d'Espard and de Maufrigneuse, and 
 with the old Duchesse de Lenoncourt, and my house has the 
 reputation of being a very lively one. I allowed myself to 
 become the fashion, because I saw how much pleasure my 
 success gave Felipe. My mornings are his ; from four in the 
 afternoon till two in the morning I belong to Paris. Macu- 
 mer makes an admirable host, witty and dignified, perfect in 
 courtesy, and with an air of real distinction. No woman 
 could help loving such a husband even if she had chosen him 
 without consulting her heart. 
 
 My father and mother have left for Madrid. Louis XVIII. 
 being out of the way, the Duchess had no difficulty in ob- 
 taining from our good-natured Charles X. the appointment of 
 her fascinating poet; so he is carried off in the capacity of 
 attache. 
 
 My brother, the Due de Rhetore, deigns to recognize me 
 as a person of mark. As for my younger brother, the Comte 
 de Chaulieu, this buckram warrior owes me everlasting grati- 
 tude. Before my father left, he spent my fortune in acquir- 
 ing for the Count an estate of forty thousand francs a year, 
 entailed on the title, and his marriage with Mile, de Mort- 
 sauf, an heiress from Touraine, is definitely arranged. The 
 King, in order to preserve the name and titles of the de 
 Lenoncourt and de Givry families from extinction,, is to 
 confer these, together with the armorial bearings, by patent 
 on my brother. Certainly it would never have done to allow 
 these two fine names and their splendid motto, Faciem semper 
 monstramus, to perish. Mile, de Mortsauf, who is grand- 
 daughter and sole heiress of the Due de Lenoncourt-Givry. 
 it is said, inherit altogether more than one hundred
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 277 
 
 thousand livres a year. The only stipulation my father has 
 made is that the de Chaulieu arms should appear in the 
 centre of the de Lenoncourt escutcheon. Thus my brother 
 will be Due de Lenoncourt. The young de Mortsauf, to 
 whom everything would otherwise go, is in the last stage of 
 consumption; his death is looked for every day. The mar- 
 riage will take place next winter when the family are out of 
 mourning. I am told that I shall have a charming sister-in- 
 law in Mile, de Mortsauf. 
 
 . So you see that my father's reasoning is justified. The 
 outcome of it all has won me many compliments, and my 
 marriage is explained to everybody's satisfaction. To com- 
 plete our success, the Prince de Talleyrand, out of affection 
 for my grandmother, is showing himself a warm friend to 
 Macumer. Society, which began by criticising me, has now 
 passed to cordial admiration. 
 
 In short, I now reign a queen where, barely two years ago, 
 I was an insignificant item. Macumer finds himself the ob- 
 ject of universal envy, as the husband of "the most charming 
 woman in Paris." At least a score of women, as you know, 
 are always in that proud position. Men murmur sweet things 
 in my ear, or content themselves with greedy glances. This 
 chorus of longing and admiration is so soothing to one's 
 vanity, that I confess I begin to understand the uncon- 
 scionable price women are ready to pay for such frail and 
 precarious privileges. A triumph of this kind is like strong 
 wine to vanity, self-love, and all the self-regarding feelings. 
 To pose perpetually as a divinity is a draught so potent in 
 its intoxicating effects, that I am no longer surprised to see 
 women grow selfish, callous, and frivolous in the heart of 
 this adoration. The fumes of society mount to the head. You 
 lavish the wealth of your soul and spirit, the treasures of 
 your time, the noblest efforts of your will, upon a crowd of 
 people who repay you in smiles and jealousy. The false coin 
 of their pretty speeches, compliments, and flattery is the 
 only return they give for the solid gold of your courage and 
 sacrifices, and all the thought that must go to keep up with-
 
 278 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 out flagging the standard of beauty, dress, sparkling talk, and 
 general affability. You are perfectly aware how much it 
 costs, and that the whole thing is a fraud, but you cannot 
 keep out of the vortex. 
 
 Ah ! my sweetheart, how one craves for a real friend ! How 
 precious to me are the love and devotion of Felipe, and how 
 my heart goes out to you ! Joyfully indeed are we prepar- 
 ing for our move to Chantepleurs, where we can rest from 
 the comedy of the Eue du Bac and of the Paris drawing- 
 rooms. Having just read your letter again, I feel that I can- 
 not better describe this demoniac paradise than by saying that 
 no woman of fashion in Paris can possibly be a good mother. 
 
 Good-bye, then, for a short time, dear one. We shall stay 
 at Chantepleurs only a week at most, and shall be with you 
 about May 10th. So we are actually to meet again after 
 more than two years ! What changes since then ! Here we 
 are, both matrons, both in our promised land I of love, you 
 of motherhood. 
 
 If I have not written, my sweetest, it is not because I have 
 forgotten you. And what of the monkey godson ? Is he still 
 pretty and a credit to me? He must be more than nine 
 months' old now. I should dearly like to be present when -he 
 makes his first steps upon this earth ; but Macumer tells me 
 that even precocious infants hardly walk at ten months. 
 
 We shall have some good gossips there, and "cut pinafores," 
 as the Blois folk say. I shall see whether a child, as the say- 
 ing goes, spoils the pattern. 
 
 P. 8. If you deign to reply from your maternal heights, 
 address to Chantepleurs. I am just off.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 279 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 MME. DE L'ESTOEADE TO MME. DE MACUMER 
 
 MY CHILD, If ever you become a mother, you will find out 
 that it is impossible to write letters during the first two 
 months of your nursing. Mary, my English nurse, and I 
 are both quite knocked up. It is true I had not told you 
 that I was determined to do everything myself. Before the 
 event I had with my own fingers sewn the baby clothes and 
 embroidered and edged with lace the little caps. I am a slave, 
 my pet, a slave day and night. 
 
 To begin with, Master Armand-Louis takes his meals when 
 it pleases him, and that is always; then he has often to be 
 changed, washed, and dressed. His mother is so fond of 
 watching him asleep, of singing songs to him, of walking 
 him about in her arms on a fine day, that she has little time 
 left to attend to herself. In short, what society has been to 
 you, my child our child has been to me ! 
 
 I cannot tell you how full and rich my life has become, 
 and I long for your coming that you may see for yourself. 
 The only thing is, I am afraid he will soon be teething, and 
 that you will find a peevish, crying baby. So far he has not 
 cried much, for I am always at hand. Babies only cry when 
 their wants are not understood, and I am constantly on the 
 lookout for his. Oh ! my sweet, my heart has opened up so 
 wide, while you allow yours to shrink and shrivel at the bid- 
 ding of society ! I look for your coming with all a hermit's 
 longing. I want so much to know what you think of 1'Es- 
 torade, just as you no doubt are curious for my opinion of 
 Macumer. 
 
 Write to me from your last resting-place. The gentlemen 
 want to go and meet our distinguished guests. Come, Queen 
 of Paris, come to our humble grange, where love at least will 
 greet you !
 
 280 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 MME. DE MACUMER TO THE VICOMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 April 1826. 
 
 THE name on this address will tell you, dear, that my peti- 
 tion has been granted. Your father-in-law is now Comte de 
 1'Estorade. I would not leave Paris till I had obtained the 
 gratification of your wishes, and I am writing in the pres- 
 ence of the Keeper of the Seals, who has come to tell me that 
 the patent is signed. 
 
 Good-bye for a short time ! 
 
 XXXV 
 
 THE SAME TO THE SAME 
 
 MARSEILLES, My. 
 
 I AM ashamed to think how my sudden flight will have taken 
 you by surprise. But since I am above all honest, and since 
 I love you not one bit the less, I shall tell you the truth in 
 four words : I am horribly jealous ! 
 
 Felipe's eyes were too often on you. You used to have 
 little talks together at the foot of your rock, which were a 
 torture to me; and I was fast becoming irritable and unlike 
 myself. Your truly Spanish beauty could not fail to recall 
 to him his native land, and along with it Marie Heredia, and 
 I can be jealous of the past too. Your magnificent black- 
 hair, your lovely dark eyes, your brow, where the peaceful 
 joy of motherhood stands out radiant against the shadows 
 which tell of past suffering, the freshness of your southern 
 skin, far fairer than that of a blonde like me, the splendid 
 lines of your figure, the breasts, on which my godson hangs, 
 peeping through tbe lace like some luscioifs fruit, all this 
 stabbed me in the eyes and in the heart. In vain did I stick
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 281 
 
 cornflowers in my curls, in vain set off with cherry-colored 
 ribbons the tameness of my pale locks, everything looked 
 washed out when Renee appeared a Eenee so unlike the one 
 I expected to find in your oasis. 
 
 Then Felipe made too much of the child, whom I found 
 myself beginning to hate. Yes, I confess it, that exuberance 
 of life which fills your house, making it gay with shouts and 
 laughter I wanted it for myself. I read a regret in Macu- 
 mer's eyes, and, unknown to him, I cried over it two whole 
 nights. I was miserable in your house. You are too beauti- 
 ful as a woman, too triumphant as a mother, for me to endure 
 your company. 
 
 Ah ! you complained of your lot. Hypocrite ! What would 
 you have? L'Estorade is most presentable; he talks well; 
 he has fine eyes; and his black hair, dashel with white, is 
 very becoming; his southern manners, too, have something 
 attractive about them. As far as I can make out, he will, 
 sooner or later, be elected deputy for the Bouches-du-Rhone ; 
 in the Chamber he is sure to come to the front, for you can 
 always count on me to promote your interests. The sufferings 
 of his exile have given him that calm and dignified air which 
 goes half-way, in my opinion, to make a politician. For the 
 whole art of politics, dear, seems to me to consist in looking 
 serious. At this rate, Macumer, as I told him, ought cer- 
 tainly to have a high position in the state. 
 
 And so, having completely satisfied myself of your happi- 
 ness, I fly off contented to my dear Chantepleurs, where 
 Felipe must really achieve his aspirations. I have made up 
 my mind not to receive you there without a fine baby at my 
 breast to match yours. 
 
 Oh ! I know very well I deserve all the epithets you can 
 hurl at me. I am a fool, a wretch, an idiot. Alas ! that is 
 just what jealousy means. I am not vexed with you, but I 
 was miserable, and you will forgive me for escaping from 
 my misery. Two days more, and I should have made an ex- 
 hibition of myself; yes, there would have been an outbreak 
 of vulgarity.
 
 Z82 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 But in. spite of the rage gnawing at my heart, I am glad 
 to have come, glad to have seen you in the pride of your 
 beautiful motherhood, my friend still, as I remain yours in 
 all the absorption of my love. Why, even here at Marseilles, 
 only a step from your door, I begin to feel proud of you and 
 of the splendid mother that you will make. 
 
 How well you judged your vocation ! You seem to me born 
 for the part of mother rather than of lover, exactly as 
 the reverse is true of me. There are women capable of 
 neither, hard-favored or silly women. A good mother and 
 a passionately loving wife have this in common, that they 
 both need intelligence and discretion ever at hand, and an 
 unfailing command of every womanly art and grace. Oh ! 
 I watched you well; need I add, sly puss, that I admired 
 you too? Your children will be happy, but not spoilt, with 
 your tenderness lapping them round and the clear light of 
 your reason playing softly on them. 
 
 Tell Louis the truth about my going away, but find some 
 decent excuse for your father-in-law, who seems to act as 
 steward for the establishment ; and be careful to do the same 
 for your family a true Provengal version of the Harlowe 
 family. Felipe does not yet know why I left, and he will 
 never know. If he asks, I shall contrive to find some colorable 
 pretext, probably that you were jealous of me ! Forgive me 
 this little conventional fib. 
 
 Good-bye. I write in haste, as I want you to get this at 
 lunch-time; and the postilion, who has undertaken to convey 
 it to you, is here, refreshing himself while he waits. 
 
 Many kisses to my dear little godson. Be sure you come to 
 Chantepleurs in October. I shall be alone there all the time 
 that Macumer is away in Sardinia, where he is designing 
 great improvements in his estate. At least that is his plan 
 for the moment, and his pet vanity consists in having a plan. 
 Then he feels that he has a will of his own, and this makes 
 him very uneasy when he unfolds it to me. Good-bye !
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 283 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 THE VICOMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE DE MACUMEB 
 
 DEAR, No words can express the astonishment of all our 
 party when, at luncheon, we were told that you had both 
 gone, and, above all, when the postilion who took you to Mar- 
 seilles handed me your mad letter. Why, naughty child, it 
 was your happiness, and nothing else, that made the theme 
 of those talks below the rock, on the "Louise" seat, and you 
 had not the faintest justification for objecting to them. In- 
 grata! My sentence on you is that you return here at my 
 first summons. In that horrid letter, scribbled on the inn 
 paper, you did not tell me what would be your next stopping 
 place ; so I must address this to Chantepleurs. 
 
 Listen to me, dear sister of my heart. Know first, 
 that my mind is set on your happiness. Your husband, dear 
 Louise, commands respect, not only by his natural gravity 
 and dignified expression, but also because he somehow im- 
 presses one with the depth of his mind and thoughts. Add 
 to this the splendid power revealed in his piquant plainness 
 and in the fire of his velvet eyes; and you will understand 
 that it was some little time before I could meet him on those 
 easy terms which are almost necessary for intimate conversa- 
 tion. Further, this man has been Prime Minister, and he 
 idolizes you; whence it follows that he must be a profound 
 dissembler. To fish up secrets, therefore, from the rocky cav- 
 erns of this diplomatic soul is a work demanding a skilful 
 hand no less than a ready brain. Nevertheless, I succeeded 
 at last, without rousing my victim's suspicions, in discovering 
 many things of which you, my pet, have no conception. 
 
 You know that, between us two, my part is rather that 
 of reason, yours of imagination : I personify sober duty, you 
 reckless love. It has pleased fate to continue in our lives 
 this contrast in character wliich was imperceptible to all ex- 
 cept ourselves. I am a simple country viscountess, very am-
 
 284 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 bitious, and making it her task to lead her family on the 
 road to prosperity. On the other hand, Macumer, late Due 
 de Soria, has a name in the world, and you, a duchess by 
 right, reign in Paris, where reigning is no easy matter even 
 for kings. You have a considerable fortune, which will be 
 doubled if Macumer carries out his projects for developing 
 his great estates in Sardinia, the resources of which are mat- 
 ter of common talk at Marseilles. Deny, if you can, that if 
 either has a right to be jealous, it is not you. But, thank 
 God, we have both hearts generous enough to place our friend- 
 ship beyond reach of such vulgar pettiness. 
 
 I know you, dear; I know that, ere now, you are ashamed 
 of having fled. But don't suppose that your flight will save 
 you from a single word of the discourse which I had prepared 
 for your benefit to-day beneath the rock. Eead carefully 
 then, I beg of you, what I say, for it concerns you even more 
 closely than Macumer, though he also enters largely into my 
 sermon. 
 
 Firstly, my dear, you do not love him. Before two years 
 are over, you will be sick of adoration. You will never look 
 on Felipe as a husband; to you he will always be the lover 
 whom you can play with, for that is how all women treat 
 their lovers. You do not look up to him, or reverence, or 
 worship him as a woman should the god of her idolatry. 
 You see, I have made a study of love, my sweet, and more 
 than once have I taken soundings in the depth of my own 
 heart. Now, as the result of a careful diagnosis of your case, 
 I can say with confidence, this is not love. 
 
 Yes, dear Queen of Paris, you cannot escape the destiny of 
 all queens. The day will come when you long to be treated 
 as a light-o'-love, to be mastered and swept off your feet by 
 a strong man, one who will not prostrate himself in adora- 
 tion before you, but will seize your arm roughly in a fit of 
 jealousy. Macumer loves you too fondly ever to be able either 
 to resist you or find fault with you. A single glance from 
 you, a single coaxing word, would melt his sternest resolution. 
 Sooner or later, you will learn to scorn this excessive devo-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 285 
 
 tion. He spoils you, alas ! just as I used to spoil you at the 
 convent, for you are a most bewitching woman, and there is 
 no escaping your siren-like charms. 
 
 Worse than all, you are candid, and it often happens that 
 our happiness depends on certain social hypocrisies to which 
 you will never stoop. For instance, society will not tolerate 
 a frank display of the wife's power over her husband. The 
 convention is that a man must no more show himself the 
 lover of his wife, however passionately he adores her, than 
 a married woman may play the part of a mistress. This rule 
 you both disregard. 
 
 In the first place, my child, from what you have yourself 
 told me, it is clear that the one unpardonable sin in society 
 is to be happy. If happiness exists, no one must know of it. 
 But this is a small point. What seems to me important is 
 that the perfect equality which reigns between lovers ought 
 never to appear in the case of husband and wife, under pain 
 of undermining the whole fabric of society and entailing 
 terrible disasters. If it is painful to see a man whom nature 
 has made a nonentity, how much worse is the spectacle of a 
 man of parts brought to that position ? Before- very long 
 you will have reduced Macumer to the mere shadow of a man. 
 He will cease to have a will and character of his own, and 
 become mere clay in your hands. You will have so com- 
 pletely moulded him to your likeness, that your household 
 will consist of only one person instead of two, and that one 
 necessarily imperfect. You will regret it bitterly; but when 
 at last you deign to open your eyes, the evil will be past cure. 
 Do what we will, women do not, and never will, possess the 
 qualities which are characteristic of men, and these qualities 
 are absolutely indispensable to family life. Already Macu- 
 mer, blinded though he is, has a dim foreshadowing of this 
 future; he feels himself less a man through his love. His 
 visit to Sardinia is a proof to me that he hopes by this 
 temporary separation to succeed in recovering his old self. 
 
 You never scruple to use the power which his love has 
 placed in your hand. Your position of vantage may be read
 
 >86 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 in a gesture, a look, a tone. Oh ! darling, how truly are you 
 the mad wanton your mother called you ! You do not ques- 
 tion, I fancy, that I am greatly Louis' superior. Well, I 
 would ask you, have you ever heard me contradict him ? Am 
 I not always, in the presence of others, the wife who respects 
 in him the authority of the family? Hypocrisy! you will 
 say. Well, listen to me. It is true that if I want to give 
 him any advice which I think may be of use to him, I 
 wait for the quiet and seclusion of our bedroom to explain 
 what I think and wish; but, I assure you, sweetheart, that 
 even there I never arrogate to myself the place of mentor. 
 If I did not remain in private the same submissive wife 
 that I appear to others, he would lose confidence in himself. 
 Dear, the good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface our- 
 selves so completely that those we help have no sense of in- 
 feriority. There is a wonderful sweetness in these hidden 
 sacrifices, and what a triumph for me in your unsuspect- 
 ing praises of Louis! There can be no doubt also that the 
 happiness, the comfort, the hope of the last two years have 
 restored what misfortune, hardship, solitude, and despondency 
 had robbed him of. 
 
 This, then, is the sum-total of my observations. At the 
 present moment you love in Felipe, not your husband, but 
 yourself. There is truth in your father's words; concealed 
 by the spring-flowers of your passion lies all a great lady's 
 selfishness. Ah ! my child, how I must love you to speak 
 such bitter truths ! 
 
 Let me tell you, if you will promise never to breathe a 
 word of this to the Baron, the end of our talk. We had been 
 singing your praises in every key, for he soon discovered 
 that I loved you like a fondly-cherished sister, and having 
 insensibly brought him to a confidential mood, I ventured to 
 say: 
 
 "Louise has never yet had to struggle with life. She has 
 been the spoilt child of fortune, and she might yet have to 
 pay for this were you not there to act the part of father as 
 well as lover."
 
 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 287 
 
 "Ah! but is it possible? . . ." He broke off abruptly, 
 like a man who sees himself on the edge of a precipice. 
 But the exclamation was enough for me. No doubt, if you 
 had stayed, he would have spoken more freely later. 
 
 My sweet, think of the day awaiting you when your 
 husband's strength will be exhausted, when pleasure will 
 have turned to satiety, and he sees himself, I will not say 
 degraded, but shorn of his proper dignity before you. The 
 stings of conscience will then waken a sort of remorse in him, 
 all the more painful for you, because you will feel yourself 
 responsible, and you will end by despising the man whom 
 you have not accustomed yourself to respect. Remember, 
 too, that scorn with a woman is only the earliest phase of 
 hatred. You are too noble and generous, I know, ever to for- 
 get the sacrifices which Felipe has made for you; but what 
 further sacrifices will be left for him to make when he has, 
 so to speak, served up himself at the first banquet? Woe to 
 the man, as to the woman, who has left no desire unsatisfied ! 
 All is over then. To our shame or our glory the point is too 
 nice for me to decide it is of love alone that women are in- 
 satiable. 
 
 Oh ! Louise, change yet, while there is still time. If you 
 would only adopt the same course with Macumer that I have 
 done with PEstorade, you might rouse the sleeping lion in 
 your husband, who is made of the stuff of heroes. One might 
 almost say that you grudge him his greatness. Would you 
 feel no pride in using your power for other ends than your 
 own gratification, in awakening the genius of a gifted man, 
 as I in raising to a higher level one of merely common parts ? 
 
 Had you remained with us, I should still have written 
 this letter, for in talking you might have cut me short or 
 got the better of me with your sharp tongue. But I know 
 that you will read this thoughtfully and weigh my warn- 
 ings. Dear heart, you have everything in life to make you 
 happy, do not spoil your chances; return to Paris, I entreat 
 you, as soon as Macumer comes back. The engrossing claims 
 of society, of which I complained, are necessary for both of
 
 288 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 you; otherwise you would spend your life in mutual self- 
 absorption. A married woman ought not to be too lavish 
 of herself. The mother of a family, who never gives her 
 household an opportunity of missing her, runs the risk of 
 palling on them. If I have several children, as I trust for 
 my own sake I may, I assure you I shall make a point 
 of reserving to myself certain hours which shall be held 
 sacred; even to one's children one's presence should not be a 
 matter of daily bread. 
 
 Farewell, my dear jealous soul ! Do you know that many 
 women would be highly flattered at having roused this pass- 
 ing pang in you ? Alas ! I can only mourn, for what is not 
 mother in me is your dear friend. A thousand loves. Make 
 what excuse you will for leaving ; if you are not sure of Macu- 
 mer, I am of Louis. 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE VICOMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 Genoa. 
 
 MY BELOVED BEAUTY, I was bitten with the fancy to see 
 something of Italy, and I am delighted at having carried off 
 Macumer, whose plans in regard to Sardinia are postponed. 
 
 This country is simply ravishing. The churches above 
 all, the chapels have a seductive, bewitching air, which must 
 make every female Protestant yearn after Catholicism. 
 Macumer has been received with acclamation, and they are 
 all delighted to have made an Italian of so distinguished a 
 man. Felipe could have the Sardinian embassy at Paris if I 
 cared about it, for I am made much of at court. 
 
 If you write, address your letters to Florence. I have not 
 time now to go into any details, but I will tell you the 
 story of our travels whenever you come to Paris. We only 
 remain here a week, and then go on to Florence, taking Leg- 
 horn on the way. We shall stay a month in Tuscany and
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 289 
 
 a month at Naples, so as to reach Home in November. Thence 
 we return home by Venice, where we shall spend the first 
 fortnight of December, and arrive in Paris, via Milan and 
 Turin, for January. 
 
 Our journey is a perfect honeymoon; the sight of new 
 places gives fresh life to our passion. Macumer did not know 
 Italy at all, and we have begun with that splendid Cornice 
 road, which might be the work of fairy architects. 
 
 Good-bye, darling. Don't be angry if I don't write. It is 
 impossible to get a minute to oneself in traveling; my whole 
 time is taken up with seeing, admiring, and realizing my im- 
 pressions. But not a word to you of these till memory has 
 given them their proper atmosphere. 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 THE VICOMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE DE MACUMER 
 
 September. 
 
 MY DEAR, There is lying for you at Chantepleurs a full 
 reply to the letter you wrote me from Marseilles. This 
 honeymoon journey, so far from diminishing the fears I there 
 expressed, makes me beg of you to get my letter sent on from 
 Nivernais. 
 
 The Government, it is said, are resolved on dissolution. 
 This is unlucky for the Crown, since the last session of this 
 loyal Parliament would have been devoted to the passing of 
 laws, essential to the consolidation of its power; and it is not 
 less so for us, as Louis will not be forty till the end of 1827. 
 Fortunately, however, my father has agreed to stand, and 
 he will resign his seat when the right moment arrives. 
 
 Your godson has found out how to walk without his god- 
 mother's help. He is altogether delicious, and begins to make 
 the prettiest little signs to me, which bring home to one that 
 here is really a thinking being, not a mere animal or sucking
 
 290 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 machine. His smiles are full of meaning. I have been so 
 successful in my profession of nurse that I shall wean Ar- 
 mand in December. A year at the breast is quite enough; 
 children who are suckled longer are said to grow stupid, and 
 I am all for popular sayings. 
 
 You must make a tremendous sensation in Italy, my fair 
 one with the golden locks. A thousand loves. 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE VICOMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 YOUR atrocious letter has reached me here, the steward hav- 
 ing forwarded it by my orders. Oh! Kenee . . . but I 
 will spare you the outburst of my wounded feelings, and sim- 
 ply tell you the effect your letter produced. 
 
 We had just returned from a delightful reception given 
 in our honor by the ambassador, where I appeared in all my 
 glory, and Macumer was completely carried away in a frenzy 
 of love which I could not describe. Then I read him your hor- 
 rible answer to my letter, and I read it sobbing/ at the risk of 
 making a fright of myself. My dear Arab fell at my feet, de- 
 claring that you raved. Then he carried me off to the balcony 
 of the palace where we are staying, from which we have a 
 view over part of the city ; there he spoke to me words worthy 
 of the magnificent moonlight scene which lay stretched be- 
 fore us. We both speak Italian now, and his love, told in 
 that voluptuous tongue, so admirably adapted to the expres- 
 sion of passion, sounded in my ears like the most exquisite 
 poetry. He swore that, even were you right in your predic- 
 tions, he would not exchange for a lifetime a single one of 
 our blessed nights or charming mornings. At this reckon- 
 ing he has already lived a thousand years. He is content to 
 have me for his mistress, and would claim no other title 
 than that of lover. So proud and pleased is he to see 
 himself every day the chosen of my heart, that were Heaven
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 291 
 
 to offer him the alternative between living as you would have 
 us do for another thirty years with five children, and five 
 years spent amid the dear roses of our love, he would not 
 hesitate. He would take my love, such as it is, and death. 
 
 While he was whispering this in my ear, his arm round 
 me, my head resting on his shoulder, the cries of a bat, 
 surprised by an owl, disturbed us. This death-cry struck me 
 with such terror that Felipe carried me half-fainting to my 
 bed. But don't be alarmed! Though this augury of evil 
 still resounds in my soul, I am quite myself this morning. 
 As soon as I was up, I went to Felipe, and, kneeling be- 
 fore him, my eyes fixed on his, his hands clasped in mine, 
 I said to him : 
 
 "My love, I am a child, and Renee may be right after all. 
 It may be only your love that I love in you; but at least 
 I can assure you that this is the one feeling of my heart, 
 and that I love you as it is given me to love. But if there 
 be aught in me, in my lightest thought or deed, which jars 
 on your wishes or conception of me, I implore you to tell me, 
 to say what it is. It will be a joy to me to hear you and to 
 take your eyes as the guiding-stars of my life. Renee ha* 
 frightened me, for she is a true friend." 
 
 Macumer could not find voice to reply, tears choked him. 
 
 I can thank you now, Renee. But for your letter I should 
 not have known the depths of love in my noble, kingly Ma- 
 cumer. Rome is the city of love; it is there that passion 
 should celebrate its feast, with art and religion as confed- 
 erates. 
 
 At Venice we shall find the Due and Duchesse de Soria. 
 If you write, address now to Paris, for we shall leave Rome 
 in three days. The ambassador's was a farewell party. 
 
 P. 8. Dear, silly child, your letter only shows that you 
 knew nothing of love, except theoretically. Learn then that 
 love is a quickening force which may produce fruits so di- 
 verse that no theory can embrace or co-ordinate them. A word 
 this for my little Professor with her armor of stays.
 
 292 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 XL 
 
 THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE DE MACUMER 
 
 January 1827. 
 
 MY father has been elected to the Chamber, my father-in- 
 law is dead, and I am on the point of my second confinement ; 
 these are the chief events marking the end of the year for us. 
 I mention them at once, lest the sight of the black seal should 
 frighten you. 
 
 My dear, your letter from Eome made my flesh creep. You 
 are nothing but a pair of children. Felipe is either a dis- 
 sembling diplomat or else his love for you is the love a man 
 might have for a courtesan, on whom he squanders his all, 
 knowing all the time that she is false to him. Enough of 
 this. You say I rave, so I had better hold my tongue. Only 
 this I would say, from the comparison of our two very differ- 
 ent destinies I draw this harsh moral Love not if you would 
 be loved. 
 
 My dear, when Louis was elected to the provincial Coun- 
 cil, he received the Cross of the Legion of Honor. That is 
 now nearly three years ago; and as my father whom you 
 will no doubt see in Paris during the course of the session 
 has asked the rank of Officer of the Legion for his son- 
 in-law, I want to know if you will do me the kindness to 
 take in hand the bigwig, whoever he may be, to whom this 
 patronage belongs, and to keep an eye upon the little affair. 
 But, whatever you do, don't get entangled in the concerns 
 of my honored father. The Comte de Maucombe is fishing 
 for the title of Marquis for himself; but keep your good 
 services for me, please. When Louis is a deputy next winter ' 
 that is we shall come to Paris, and then we will move 
 heaven and earth to get some Government appointment for 
 him, so that we may be able to save our income by living on 
 his salary. My father sits between the centre and the right ; 
 a title will content him. Our family was distinguished even
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 293 
 
 in the days of King Rene, and Charles X. will hardly say no 
 to a Maucombe; but what I fear is that my father may take 
 it into his head to ask some favor for my younger brother. 
 Now, if the marquisate is dangled out of his reach, he will 
 have no thoughts to spare from himself. 
 
 January 15th. 
 
 Ah ! Louise, I have been in hell. If I can bear to tell you 
 of my anguish, it is because you are another self; even so, 
 I don't know whether I shall ever be able to live again in 
 thought those five ghastly days. The mere word "convul- 
 sions" makes my very heart sick. Five days ! to me they were 
 five centuries of torture. A mother who has not been through 
 this martyrdom does not know what suffering is. So frenzied 
 was I that I even envied you, who never had a child ! 
 
 The evening before that terrible day the weather was close, 
 almost hot, and I thought my little Armand was affected by 
 it. Generally so sweet and caressing, he was peevish, cried 
 for nothing, wanted to play, and then broke his toys. Per- 
 haps this sort of fractiousness is the usual sign of approaching 
 illness with children. While I was wondering about it, I 
 noticed Armand's cheeks flush, but this I set down to teeth- 
 ing, for he is cutting four large teeth at once. So I put him 
 to bed beside me, and kept constantly waking through the 
 night. He was a little feverish, but not enough to make me 
 uneasy, my mind being still full of the teething. Towards 
 morning he cried "Mamma!" and asked by signs for some- 
 thing to drink; but the cry was spasmodic, and there were 
 convulsive twitchings in the limbs, which turned me to ice. 
 I jumped out of bed to fetch him a drink. Imagine my horror 
 when, on my handing him the cup, he remained motionless, 
 only repeating "Mamma !" in that strange, unfamiliar voice, 
 which was indeed by this time hardly a voice at all. I took 
 his hand, but it did not respond to my pressure; it was quite 
 stiff. I put the cup to his lips ; the poor little fellow gulped 
 down three or four mouthfuls in a convulsive manner that 
 was terrible to see, and the water made a strange sound in
 
 294 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 his throat. He clung to me desperately, and I saw his eyes 
 roll, as though some hidden force within were pulling at 
 them, till only the whites were visible; his limbs were turn- 
 ing rigid. I screamed aloud, and Louis came. 
 
 "A doctor ! quick ! ... he is dying," I cried. 
 
 Louis vanished, and my poor Armand again gasped, 
 "Mamma ! Mamma !" The next moment he lost all conscious- 
 ness of his mother's existence. The pretty veins on his fore- 
 head swelled, and the convulsions began. For a whole hour 
 before the doctors came, I held in my arms that merry baby, 
 all lilies and roses, the blossom of my life, my pride, and my 
 joy, lifeless as a piece of wood ; and his eyes ! I cannot think 
 of them without horror. My pretty Armand was a mere 
 mummy black, shriveled, misshapen. 
 
 A doctor, two doctors, brought from Marseilles by Louis, 
 hovered about like birds of ill omen; it made me shudder 
 to look at them. One spoke of brain fever, the other saw 
 nothing but an ordinary case of convulsions in infancy. Our 
 own country doctor seemed to me to have the most sense, for 
 he offered no opinion. "It's teething," said the second doctor. 
 "Fever," said the first. Finally it was agreed to put 
 leeches on his neck and ice on his head. It seemed to me 
 like death. To look on, to see a corpse, all purple or black, 
 and not a cry, not a movement from this creature but now 
 so full of life and sound it was horrible ! 
 
 At one moment I lost my head, and gave a sort of hys- 
 terical laugh, as I saw the pretty neck which I used to devour 
 with kisses, with the leeches feeding on it, and his darling 
 head in a cap of ice. My dear, we had to cut those lovely 
 curls, of which we were so proud and with which you used to 
 play, in order to make room for the ice. The convulsions 
 returned every ten minutes with the regularity of labor pains, 
 and then the poor baby writhed and twisted, now white, now 
 violet. His supple limbs clattered like wood as they struck. 
 And this unconscious flesh was the being who smiled and 
 prattled, and used to say Mamma ! At the thought, a storm 
 of agony swept tumultuously over my soul, like the sea
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 295 
 
 tossing in a hurricane. It seemed as though every tie which 
 binds a child to its mother's heart was strained to rending. 
 My mother, who might have given me help, advice, or com- 
 fort, was in Paris. Mothers, it is my belief, know more than 
 doctors do about convulsions. 
 
 After four days and nights of suspense and fear, which 
 almost killed me, the doctors were unanimous in advising 
 the application of a horrid ointment, which would produce 
 open sores. Sores on my Armand ! who only five days before 
 was playing about, and laughing, and trying to say "God- 
 mother!" I would not have it done, preferring to trust 
 to nature. Louis, who believes in doctors, scolded me. A 
 man remains the same through everything. But there are 
 moments when this terrible disease takes the likeness of 
 death, and in one of these it seemed borne in upon me that 
 this hateful remedy was the salvation of Armand. Louise, 
 the skin was so dry, so rough and parched, that the ointment 
 would not act. Then I broke into weeping, and my tears 
 fell so long and so fast, that the bedside was wet through. 
 And the doctors were at dinner ! 
 
 Seeing myself alone with the child, I stripped him of all 
 medical appliances, and seizing him like a mad woman, 
 pressed him to my bosom, laying my forehead against his, 
 and beseeching God to grant him the life which I was striving 
 to pass into his veins from mine. For some minutes I held 
 him thus, longing to die with him, so that neither life nor 
 death might part us. Dear, I felt the limbs relaxing; the 
 writhings ceased, the child stirred, and the ghastly, corpse- 
 like tints faded away ! I screamed, just as I did when he 
 was taken ill ; the doctors hurried up, and I pointed to 
 Armand. 
 
 "He is saved !" exclaimed the oldest of them. 
 
 What music in those words ! The gates of heaven opened ! 
 And, in fact, two hours later Armand came back to life ; but 
 I was utterly crushed, and it was only the healing power of 
 joy which saved me from a serious illness. My God ! by 
 what tortures do you bind a mother to her child ! To fasten
 
 296 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 him to our heart, need the nails be driven into the very 
 quick? Was I not mother enough before? I, who wept 
 tears of joy over his broken syllables and tottering steps, 
 who spent hours together planning how best to perform my 
 duty, and fit myself for the sweet post of mother ? Why these 
 horrors, these ghastly scenes, for a mother who already idol- 
 ized her child ? 
 
 As I write, our little Armand is playing, shouting, laugh- 
 ing. What can be the cause of this terrible disease with chil- 
 dren? Vainly do I try to puzzle it out, remembering that 
 I am again with child. Is it teething? Is it some peculiar 
 process in the brain? Is there something wrong with the 
 nervous system of children who are subject to convulsions? 
 All these thoughts disquiet me, in view alike of the present 
 and the future. Our country doctor holds to the theory of 
 nervous trouble produced by teething. I would give every 
 tooth in my head to see little Armand's all through. The 
 sight of one of those little white pearls peeping out of the 
 swollen gum brings a cold sweat over me now. The heroism 
 with which the little angel bore his sufferings proves to me 
 that he will be his mother's son. A look from him goes to 
 my very heart. 
 
 Medical science can give no satisfactory explanation as 
 to the origin of this sort of tetanus, which passes off as 
 rapidly as it comes on, and can apparently be neither guarded 
 against nor cured. One thing alone, as I said before, is cer- 
 tain, that it is hell for a mother to see her child in convul- 
 sions. How passionately do I clasp him to my heart ! I 
 could walk for ever with him in my arms ! 
 
 To have suffered all this only six weeks before my confine- 
 ment made it much worse; I feared for the coming child. 
 Farewell, my dear beloved. Don't wish for a child there 
 is the sum and substance of my letter !
 
 LETTEKS OF TWO BRIDES 297 
 
 XLI 
 
 THE BARRONNE DE MACUMER TO THE YICOMTESSE 
 
 DE L'ESTORADE 
 
 Paris. 
 
 POOR SWEET, Macumer and I forgave you all your naughti- 
 ness when we heard of your terrible trouble. I thrilled with 
 pain as I read the details of that double agony, and there 
 seem compensations now in being childless. 
 
 I am writing at once to tell you that Louis has been pro- 
 moted. He can now wear the ribbon of an officer of the 
 Legion. You are a lucky woman, Kenee, and you will proba- 
 bly have a little girl, since that used to be your wish ! 
 
 The marriage of my brother with Mile, de Mortsauf was 
 celebrated on our return. Our gracious King, who really 
 is extraordinarily kind, has given my brother the reversion 
 of the post of first gentleman of the chamber, which his 
 father-in-law now fills, on the one condition that the 
 scutcheon of the Mortsaufs should be placed side by side with 
 that of the Lenoncourts. 
 
 "The office ought to go with the title," he said to the Due 
 de Lenoncourt-Givry. 
 
 My father is justified a hundred-fold. Without the help 
 of my fortune nothing of all this could have taken place. 
 My father and mother came from Madrid for the wedding, 
 and return there, after the reception which I give to-morrow 
 for the bride and bridegroom. 
 
 The carnival will be a very gay one. The Due and Duchesse 
 de Soria are in Paris, and their presence makes me a little 
 uneasy. Marie Heredia is certainly one of the most beautiful 
 women in Europe, and I don't like the way Felipe looks at 
 her. Therefore I am doubly lavish of sweetness and caresses. 
 Every look and gesture speak the words which I am careful 
 my lips should not utter, "She could not love like this !" 
 Heaven knows how lovely and fascinating I am ! Yesterday 
 Mme. de Maufrigneuse said to me:
 
 298 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 "Dear child, who can compete with you?" 
 
 Then I keep Felipe so well amused, that his sister-in-law 
 must seem as lively as a Spanish cow in comparison. I am 
 the less sorry that a little Abencerrage is not on his way, 
 because the Duchess will no doubt stay in Paris over her 
 confinement, and she won't be a beauty any longer. If fhe 
 baby is a boy, it will be called Felipe, in honor of the exile. 
 An unkind chance has decreed that I shall, a second time, 
 serve as godmother. 
 
 Good-bye, dear. I shall go to Chantepleurs early this year, 
 for our Italian tour was shockingly expensive. I shall leave 
 about the end of March, and retire to economize in Nivernais. 
 Besides, I am tired of Paris. Felipe sighs, as I do, after the 
 beautiful quiet of the park, our cool meadows, and our Loire, 
 with its sparkling sands, peerless among rivers. Chantepleurs 
 will seem delightful to me after the pomps and vanities of 
 Italy ; for, after all, splendor becomes wearisome, and a lover's 
 glance has more beauty than a capo d' opera or a bel qtiadro! 
 
 We shall expect you there. Don't be afraid that I shall be 
 jealous again. You are free to take what soundings you 
 please in Macumer's heart, and fish up all the interjections 
 and doubts you can. I am supremely indifferent. Since that 
 day at Rome Felipe's love for me has grown. He told me 
 yesterday (he is looking over my shoulder now) that his 
 sister-in-law, the Princess Heredia, his destined bride of old, 
 the dream of his youth, had no brains. Oh ! my dear, I am 
 worse than a ballet-dancer ! If you knew what joy that slight- 
 ing remark gave me ! I have pointed out to Felipe that she 
 does not speak French correctly. She says esemple for ex- 
 emple, sain for cinq, cheu for je. She is beautiful of course, 
 but quite without charm or the slightest scintilla of wit. 
 When a compliment is paid her, she looks at you as though 
 she didn't know what to do with such a strange thing. Felipe, 
 being what he is, could not have lived two months with Marie 
 after his marriage. Don Fernand, the Due de Soria, suits 
 her very well. He has generous instincts, but it's easy to see 
 he has been a spoilt child. I am tempted to be naughty and
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 299 
 
 make pou laugh; but I won't draw the long bow. Ever so 
 much love, darling. 
 
 XLII 
 
 RENEE TO LOUISE 
 
 MY little girl is two months old. She is called Jeanne- 
 Athenai's, and has for godmother and godfather my mother, 
 and an old grand-uncle of Louis'. 
 
 As soon as I possibly can, I shall start for my visit to 
 Chantepleurs, since you are not afraid of a nursing mother. 
 Your godson can say your name now; he calls it Matoumer, 
 for he can't say c properly. You will be quite delighted with 
 him. He has got all his teeth, and eats meat now like a 
 big boy; he is all over the place, trotting about like a little 
 mouse; but I watch him all the time with anxious eyes, and 
 it makes me miserable that I cannot keep him by me when 
 I am laid up. The time is more than usually long with me, 
 as the doctors consider some special precautions necessary. 
 Alas! my child, habit does not inure one to child-bearing. 
 There are the same old discomforts and misgivings. However 
 (don't show this to Felipe), this little girl takes after me, 
 and she may yet cut out your Armand. 
 
 My father thought Felipe looking very thin, and my dear 
 pet also not quite so blooming. Yet the Due and Duchesse 
 de Soria have gone ; not a loophole for jealousy is left ! Is 
 there any trouble which you are hiding from me ? Your letter 
 is neither so long nor so full of loving thoughts as usual. Is 
 this only a whim of my dear whimsical friend? 
 
 I am running on too long. My nurse is angry with me 
 for writing, and Mile. Athenais de FEstorade wants her 
 dinner. Farewell, then ; write me some nice long letters.
 
 3W LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 XLIII 
 
 MME. DE MACUMER TO THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE 
 
 FOR the first time in my life, my dear Renee, I have been 
 alone and crying. I was sitting under a willow, on a wooden 
 bench by the side of the long Chantepleurs marsh. The view 
 there is charming, but it needs some merry children to com- 
 plete it, and I wait for you. I have been married nearly 
 three years, and no child ! The thought of your quiver full 
 drove me to explore my heart. 
 
 And this is what I find there. "Oh ! if I had to suffer a 
 hundred-fold what Renee suffered when my godson was born ; 
 if I had to see my child in convulsions, even so would to 
 God that I might have a cherub of my own, like your Athe- 
 nai's !" I can see her from here in my mind's eye, and I know 
 she is beautiful as the day, for you tell me nothing about her 
 that is just like my Renee! I believe you divine my 
 trouble. 
 
 Each time my hopes are disappointed,. I fall a prey for 
 some days to the blackest melancholy. Then I compose sad 
 elegies. When shall I embroider little caps and sew lace 
 edgings to encircle a tiny head? When choose the cambric 
 for the baby-clothes? Shall I never hear baby lips shout 
 "Mamma," and have my dress pulled by a teasing despot 
 whom my heart adores? Are there to be no wheelmarks of 
 a little carriage on the gravel, no broken toys littered about 
 the courtyard ? Shall I never visit the toy-shops, as mothers 
 do, to buy swords, and dolls, and baby-houses ? And will it 
 never be mine to watch the unfolding of a precious life 
 another Felipe, only more dear? I would have a son, if only 
 to learn how a lover can be more to one in his second self. 
 
 My park and castle are cold and desolate to me. A childless 
 woman is a monstrosity of nature; we exist only to be 
 mothers. Oh! my sage in woman's livery, how well you 
 have conned the book of life ! Everywhere, too, barrenness
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 301 
 
 is a dismal thing. My life is a little too much like one of 
 Gessner's or Florian's sheepfolds, which Eivarol longed to see 
 invaded by a wolf. I too have it in me to make sacrifices ! 
 There are forces in me, I feel, which Felipe has no use for; 
 and if I am not to be a mother, I must be allowed to indulge 
 myself in some romantic sorrow. 
 
 I have just made this remark to my belated Moor, and it 
 brought tears to his eyes. He cannot stand any joking on 
 his love, so I let him off easily, and only called him a paladin 
 of folly. 
 
 At times I am seized with a desire to go on pilgrimage, to 
 bear my longings to the shrine of some madonna or to a 
 watering-place. Next winter I shall take medical advice. I 
 am too much enraged with myself to write more. Good-bye. 
 
 XLIY 
 
 THE SAME TO THE SAME 
 
 Parts, 1829. 
 
 A WHOLE year passed, my dear, without a letter ! What does 
 this mean? I am a little hurt. Do you suppose that your 
 Louis, who comes to see me almost every alternate day, makes 
 up for you ? It is not enough to know that you are well and 
 that everything prospers with you; for I love you, Renee, 
 and I want to know what you are feeling and thinking of, 
 just as I say everything to you, at the risk of being scolded, 
 or censured, or misunderstood. Your silence and seclusion 
 in the country, at a time when you might be in Paris enjoying 
 all the Parliamentary honors of the Comte de FEstorade, 
 cause me serious anxiety. You know that your husband's 
 "gift of the gab" and unsparing zeal have won for him quite a 
 position here, and he will doubtless receive some very good 
 post when the session is over. Pray, do you spend your life 
 writing him letters of advice ? Numa was not so far removed 
 from his Egeria.
 
 302 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 Why did you not take this opportunity of seeing Paris? 
 I might have enjoyed your company for four months. Louis 
 told me yesterday that you were coming to fetch him, and 
 would have your third confinement in Paris you terrible 
 mother Gigogne ! After bombarding Louis with queries, ex- 
 clamations, and regrets, I at last defeated his strategy so far 
 as to discover that his grand-uncle, the godfather of Athenais, 
 is very ill. Now I believe that you, like a careful mother, 
 would be quite equal to angling with the member's speeches 
 and fame for a fat legacy from your husband's last remaining 
 relative on the mother's side. Keep your mind easy, my 
 Renee we are all at work for Louis, Lenoncourts, Chaulieus, 
 and the whole band of Mme. de Macumer's followers. Mar- 
 tignac will probably put him into the audit department. But 
 if you won't tell me why you bury yourself in the country, 
 I shall be cross. 
 
 Tell me, are you afraid that the political wisdom of the 
 house of 1'Estorade should seem to centre in you? Or is it 
 the uncle's legacy? Perhaps you were afraid you would be 
 less to your children in Paris ? Ah ! what I would give to 
 know whether, after all, you were not simply too vain to 
 show yourself in Paris for the first time in your present con- 
 dition ! Vain thing ! Farewell. 
 
 XLV 
 
 TO LOUISE 
 
 You complain of my silence ; have you forgotten, then, those 
 two \ittle brown heads, at once my subjects and my tyrants? 
 And as to staying at home, you have yourself hit upon several 
 of my reasons. Apart from the condition of our dear uncle, 
 I didn't want to drag with me to Paris a boy of four and a 
 little girl who will soon be three, when I am again expecting 
 my confinement. I had no intention of troubling you and
 
 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 303 
 
 upsetting your household with such a party. I did not care 
 to appear, looking my worst, in the brilliant circle over which 
 you preside, and I detest life in hotels and lodgings. 
 
 When I come to spend the session in Paris, it will be in my 
 own house. Louis' uncle, when he heard of the rank his 
 grand-nephew had received,, made me a present of two hun- 
 dred thousand francs (the half of his savings) with which 
 to buy a house in Paris, and I have charged Louis to find one 
 in your neighborhood. My mother has given me thirty thou- 
 sand francs for the furnishing, and I shall do my best not 
 to disgrace the dear sister of my election no pun intended. 
 
 I am grateful to you for having already done so much at 
 Court for Louis. But though M. de Bourmont and M. de 
 Polignac have paid him the compliment of asking him to 
 join their ministry, I do not wish so conspicuous a place for 
 him. It would commit him too much ; and I prefer the Audit 
 Office because it is permanent. Our affairs here are in very 
 good hands ; so you need not fear ; as soon as the steward has 
 mastered the details, I will come and support Louis. 
 
 As for writing long letters nowadays, how can I? This 
 one, in which I want to describe to you the daily routine of 
 my life, will be a week on the stocks. Who can tell but Ar- 
 mand may lay hold of it to make caps for his regiments 
 drawn up on my carpet, or vessels for the fleets which sail his 
 bath! A single day will serve as a sample of the rest, for 
 they are all exactly alike, and their characteristics reduce 
 themselves to two either the children are well, or they are 
 not. For me, in this solitary grange, it is no exaggeration 
 to say that hours become minutes, or minutes hours, accord- 
 ing to the children's health. 
 
 If I have some delightful hours, it is when they are asleep 
 and I am no longer needed to rock the one or soothe the other 
 with stories. When I have them sleeping by my side, I say 
 to myself, "Nothing can go wrong now." The fact is, my 
 sweet, every mother spends her time, so soon as her children 
 are out of her sight, in imagining dangers for them. Perhaps 
 it is Araiand seizing the razors to play with, or his coat taking
 
 304 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 fire, or a snake biting him, or he might tumble in running 
 and start an abscess on his head, or he might drown himself 
 in a pond. A mother's life, you see, is one long succession 
 of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour 
 but has its joys and fears. 
 
 But at night, in my room, comes the hour for waking 
 dreams, when I plan out their future, which shines brightly 
 in the smile of the guardian angel, watching over their beds. 
 Sometimes Armand calls me in his sleep ; I kiss his forehead 
 (without rousing him), then his sister's feet, and watch them 
 both lying in their beauty. These are my merry-makings ! 
 Yesterday, it must have been our guardian angel who roused 
 me in the middle of the night and summoned me in fear to 
 Athenai's' cradle. Her head was too low, and I found Armand 
 all uncovered, his feet purple with cold. 
 
 "Darling mother!" he cried, rousing up and flinging his 
 arms round me. 
 
 There, dear, is one of our night scenes for you. 
 
 How important it is for a mother to have her children by 
 her side at night ! It is not for a nurse, however careful she 
 may be, to take them up, comfort them, and hush them to 
 sleep again, when some horrid nightmare has disturbed them. 
 For they have their dreams, and the task of explaining away 
 one of these dread visions of the night is the more arduous 
 because the child is scared, stupid, and only half awake. It 
 is a mere interlude in the unconsciousness of slumber. In 
 this way I have come to sleep so lightly, that I can see my 
 little pair and see them stirring, through the veil of my 
 eyelids. A sigh or a rustle wakens me. For me, the demon 
 of convulsions is ever crouching by their beds. 
 
 So much for the nights; with the first twitter of the birds 
 my babies begin to stir. Through the mists of dispersing 
 sleep, their chatter blends with the warblings that fill the 
 morning air, or with the swallows' noisy debates little cries 
 of joy or woe, whi?h make their way to my heart rather than 
 my ears. While Nais struggles to get at me, making the 
 passage from her cradle to my bed on all fours or with stag-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 305 
 
 gering steps, Armand climbs up with the agility of a monkey, 
 and has his arms round me. Then the merry couple turn my 
 bed into a playground, where mother lies at their mercy. The 
 baby-girl pulls my hair, and would take to. sucking again, 
 while Armand stands guard over my breast, as though de- 
 fending his property. Their funny ways, their peals of 
 laughter, are too much for me, and put sleep fairly to flight. 
 
 Then we play the ogress game; mother ogress eats up the 
 white, soft flesh with hugs, and rains kisses on those rosy 
 shoulders and eyes brimming over with saucy mischief; we 
 have little jealous tiffs too, so pretty to see. It has happened 
 to me, dear, to take up my stockings at eight o'clock and be 
 still bare-footed at nine ! 
 
 Then comes the getting up. The operation of dressing 
 begins. I slip on my dressing-gown, turn up my sleeves, and 
 don the mackintosh apron; with Mary's assistance, I wash 
 and scrub my two little blossoms. I am sole arbiter of the tem- 
 perature of the bath, for a good half of children's crying and 
 whimpering comes from mistakes here. The moment has 
 arrived for paper fleets and glass ducks, since the only way 
 to get children thoroughly washed is to keep them well 
 amused. If you knew the diversions that have to be invented 
 before these despotic sovereigns will permit a soft sponge to 
 be passed over every nook and cranny, you would be awestruck 
 at the amount of ingenuity and intelligence demanded by the 
 maternal profession when one takes it seriously. Prayers, 
 scoldings, promises, are alike in requisition; above all, the 
 jugglery must be so dexterous that it defies detection. The 
 case would be desperate had not Providence to the cunning 
 of the child matched that of the mother. A child is a diplo- 
 matist, only to be mastered, like the diplomatists of the great 
 world, through his passions ! Happily, it takes little to make 
 these cherubs laugh ; the fall of a brush, a piece of soap slip- 
 ping from the hand, and what merry shouts ! And if our tri- 
 umphs are dearly bought, still triumphs they are, though 
 hidden from mortal eye. Even the father knows nothing of 
 it all. None but God and His angels and perhaps you can
 
 306 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 fathom the glances of satisfaction which Mary and I exchange 
 when the little creatures' toilet is at last concluded, and they 
 stand, spotless and shining, amid a chaos of soap, sponges 
 combs, basins, blotting-paper, flannel, and all the nameless 
 litter of a true English "nursery." 
 
 For I am so far a convert as to admit that English women 
 have a talent for this department. True, they look upon the 
 child only from the point of view of material well-being; 
 but where this is concerned, their arrangements are ad- 
 mirable. My children shall always be bare-legged and wear 
 woollen socks. There shall be no swaddling nor bandages; 
 on the other hand, they shall never be left alone. The help- 
 lessness of the French infant in its swaddling-bands means 
 the liberty of the nurse that is the whole explanation. A 
 mother, who is really a mother, is never free. 
 
 There is my answer to your question why I do not write. 
 Besides the management of the estate, I have the upbringing 
 of two children on my hands. 
 
 The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive 
 self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too 
 minute. The soup warming before the fire must be watched 
 Am I the kind of woman, do you suppose, to shirk such cares ? 
 The humblest task may earn a rich harvest of affection. How 
 pretty is a child's laugh when he finds the food to his liking ! 
 Armand has a way of nodding his head when he is pleased 
 that is worth a lifetime of adoration. How could I leave 
 to any one else the privilege and delight, as well as the re- 
 sponsibility, of blowing on the spoonful of soup which is 
 too hot for my little Nai's, my nursling of seven months ago, 
 who still remembers my breast? When a nurse has allowed 
 a child to burn its tongue and lips with scalding food, she 
 tells the mother, who hurries up to see what is wrong, that 
 the child cried from hunger. How could a mother sleep in 
 peace with the thought that a breath, less pure than her own, 
 has cooled her child's food the mother whom Nature has 
 made the direct vehicle of food to infant lips. To mince 
 a chop for Nai's, who has just cut her last teeth, and mix the
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 307 
 
 meat, cooked to a turn, with potatoes, is a work of patience, 
 and there are times, indeed, when none but a mother could 
 succeed in making an impatient child go through with its 
 meal. 
 
 No number of servants, then, and no English nurse can 
 dispense a mother from taking the field in person in that 
 daily contest, where gentleness alone should grapple with 
 the little griefs and pains of childhood. Louise, the care of 
 these innocent darlings is a work to engage the whole soul. 
 To whose hand and eyes, but one's own, intrust the task of 
 feeding, dressing, and putting to bed? Broadly speaking, 
 a crying child is the unanswerable condemnation of mother 
 or nurse, except when the cry is the outcome of natural pain. 
 Now that I have two to look after (and a third on the road), 
 they occupy all my thoughts. Even you, whom I love so 
 dearly, have become a memory to me. 
 
 My own dressing is not always completed by two o'clock. 
 I have no faith in mothers whose rooms are in apple-pie order, 
 and who themselves might have stepped out of a bandbox. 
 Yesterday was one of those lovely days of early April, and I 
 wanted to take my children a walk, while I was still able 
 for the warning bell is in my ears. Such an expedition is 
 quite an epic to a mother ! One dreams of it the night before ! 
 Armand was for the first time to put on a little black velvet 
 jacket, a new collar which I had worked, a Scotch cap with 
 the Stuart colors and cock's feathers; Nai's was to be in 
 white and pink, with one of those delicious little baby caps ; 
 for she is a baby still, though she will lose that pretty title 
 on the arrival of the impatient youngster, whom I call my 
 beggar, for he will have the portion of a younger son. (You 
 see, Louise, the child has already appeared to me in a vision, 
 so I know it is a boy. ) 
 
 Well, caps, collars, jackets, socks, dainty little shoes, pink 
 garters, the muslin frock with silk embroidery, all was laid 
 out on my bed. Then the little brown heads had to be 
 brushed, twittering merrily all the time like birds, answering 
 each other's call. Armand's hair is in curls, while Nais' is
 
 308 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 brought forward softly on the forehead as a border to the 
 pink-and- white cap. Then the shoes are buckled ; and when 
 the little bare legs and well-shod feet have trotted off to the 
 nursery, while two shining faces (clean, Mary calls them) 
 and eyes ablaze with life petition me to start, my heart beats 
 fast. To look on the children whom one's own hand has 
 arrayed, the pure skin brightly veined with blue, that one 
 has bathed, laved, and sponged and decked with gay colors 
 of silk or velvet why, there is no poem comes near to it ! 
 With what eager, covetous longing one calls them back for 
 one more kiss on those white necks, which, in their simple 
 collars, the loveliest woman cannot rival. Even the coarsest 
 lithograph of such a scene makes a mother pause, and I feast 
 my eyes daily on the living picture ! 
 
 Once out of doors, triumphant in the result of my labors, 
 while I was admiring the princely air with which little Ar- 
 mand helped baby to totter along the path you know, I 
 saw a carriage coming, and tried to get them out of the way. 
 The children tumbled into a dirty puddle, and lo ! my works 
 of art are ruined ! We had to take them back and change 
 their things. I took the little one in my arms, never thinking 
 of my own, dress, which was ruined, while Mary seized Ar- 
 mand, and the cavalcade re-entered. With a crying baby 
 and a soaked child, what mind has a mother left for herself? 
 
 Dinner time arrives, and as a rule I have done nothing. 
 Now comes the problem which faces me twice every day 
 how to suffice in my own person for two children, put on 
 their bibs, turn up their sleeves, and get them to eat. In 
 the midst of these ever-recurring cares, joys, and catastro- 
 phes, the only person neglected in the house is myself, If 
 the children have been naughty, often I don't get rid of my 
 curl-papers all day. Their tempers rule my toilet. As the 
 price of the few minutes in which I write you these half- 
 dozen pages, I have had to let them cut pictures out of my 
 novels, build castles with books, chessmen, or mother-of- 
 pearl counters, and give Nai's my silks and wools to arrange 
 in her own fashion, which, I assure you, is so complicated,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 309 
 
 that she is entirely absorbed in it, and has not uttered a word. 
 
 Yet I have nothing to complain of. My children are both 
 strong and independent; they amuse themselves more easily 
 than you would think. They find delight in everything; a 
 guarded liberty is worth many toys. A few pebbles pink, 
 yellow, purple, and black, small shells, the mysteries of sand, 
 are a world of pleasure to them. Their wealth consists in 
 possessing a multitude of small things. I watch Armand and 
 find him talking to the flowers, the flies, the chickens, and 
 imitating them. He is on friendly terms with insects, and 
 never wearies of admiring them. Everything which is on 
 a minute scale interests them. Armand is beginning to ask 
 the "why" of everything he sees. He has come to ask what 
 I am saying to his godmother, whom he looks on as a fairy. 
 Strange how children hit the mark ! 
 
 Alas ! my sweet, I would not sadden you with the tale of 
 my joys. Let me give you some notion of your godson's char- 
 acter. The other day we were followed by a poor man beg- 
 ging beggars soon find out that a mother with her child 
 at her side can't resist them. Armand has no idea what 
 hunger is, and money is a sealed book to him ; but I have just 
 bought him a trumpet which had long been the object of 
 his desires. He held it out to the old man with a kingly air, 
 saying : 
 
 "Here, take this !" 
 
 What joy the world can give would compare with such a 
 moment ? 
 
 "May I keep it?" said the poor man to me. "I too, mad- 
 ame, have had children," he added, hardly noticing the 
 money I put into his hand. 
 
 I shudder when I think that Armand must go to school, 
 and that I have only three years and a half more to keep 
 him by me. The flowers that blossom in his sunny child- 
 hood will fall before the scythe of a public school system ; his 
 gracious ways and bewitching candor will lose their spon- 
 taneity. They will cut the .curls that I have brushed and
 
 310 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 
 
 smoothed and kissed so often ! What will they do with the 
 thinking being that is Armand? 
 
 And what of you? You tell me nothing of your life. 
 Are you still in love with Felipe ? For, as regards the Sara- 
 cen, I have no uneasiness. Good-bye; ISTais has just had a 
 tumble, and if I run. on like this, my letter will become a 
 volume. 
 
 XLVI 
 
 MME. DE MACUMER TO THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 1829. 
 
 MY sweet, tender Rene"e, you will have learned from the 
 papers the terrible calamity which has overwhelmed me. 
 I have not been able to write you even a word. For twenty 
 days I never left his bedside; I received his last breath 
 and closed his eyes; I kept holy watch over him with the 
 priests and repeated the prayers for the dead. The cruel 
 pangs I suffered were accepted by me as a rightful punish- 
 ment ; and yet, when I saw on his calm lips the smile which 
 was his last farewell to me, how was it possible to believe 
 that I had caused his death ! 
 
 Be it so or not, he is gone, and I am left. To you, who 
 have known us both so well, what more need I say? These 
 words contain all. Oh! I would give my share of Heaven 
 to hear the flattering tale that my prayers have power 
 to call him back to life ! To see him again, to have him once 
 more mine, were it only for a second, would mean that I 
 could draw breath again without mortal agony. Will you 
 not come soon and soothe me with such promises? Is not 
 your love strong enough to deceive me ? 
 
 But stay ! it was you who told me beforehand that he 
 would suffer through me. Was it so indeed ? Yes, it is true, 
 I had no right to his love. Like a thief, I took what was not 
 mine, and my frenzied grasp has crushed the life out of my
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 311 
 
 bliss. The madness is over now, but I feel that I am alone. 
 Merciful God! what torture of the damned can exceed the 
 misery in that word ? 
 
 When they took him away from me, I lay down on the same 
 bed and hoped to die. There was but a door between us, and 
 it seemed to me I had strength to force it ! But, alas ! I was 
 too young for death; and after forty days, during which, 
 with cruel care and all the sorry inventions of medical 
 science, they slowly nursed me back to life, I find myself in 
 the country, seated by my window, surrounded with lovely 
 flowers, which he made to bloom for me, gazing on the same 
 splendid view over which his eyes have so often wandered, 
 and which he was so proud to have discovered, since it gave 
 me pleasure. Ah ! dear Benee, no words can tell how new 
 surroundings hurt when the heart is dead. I shiver at the 
 sight of the moist earth in my garden, for the earth is a vast 
 tomb, and it is almost as though I walked on him! When 
 I first went out, I trembled with fear and could not move. 
 It was so sad to see his flowers, and he not there ! 
 
 My father and mother are in Spain. You know what my 
 brothers are, and you yourself are detained in the country. 
 But you need not be uneasy about me; two angels of mercy 
 flew to my side. The Due and the Duchesse de Soria hastened 
 to their brother in his illness, and have been everything that 
 heart could wish. The last few nights before the end found 
 the three of us gathered, in calm and wordless grief, round 
 the bed where this great man was breathing his last, a man 
 among a thousand, rare in any age, head and shoulders above 
 the rest of us in everything. The patient resignation of my 
 Felipe was angelic. The sight of his brother and Marie gave 
 him a moment's pleasure and easing of his pain. 
 
 "Darling," he said to me with the simple frankness which 
 never deserted him, "I had almost gone from life without 
 leaving to Fernand the Barony of Macumer; I must make a 
 new will. My brother will forgive me; he knows what it is 
 to love !" 
 
 I owe my life to the care of my brother-in-law and his 
 wife; they want to carry me off to Spain!
 
 312 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 Ah ! Renee, to no one but you can I speak freely of my 
 grief. A sense of my own faults weighs me to the ground, 
 and there is a hitter solace in pouring them out to you, poor, 
 unheeded Cassandra. The exactions, the preposterous jeal- 
 ousy, the nagging unrest of my passion wore him to death. 
 My love was the more fraught with danger for him because 
 we had both the same exquisitely sensitive nature, we spoke 
 the same language, nothing was lost on him, and often the 
 mocking shaft, so carelessly discharged, went straight to his 
 heart. You can have no idea of the point to which he car- 
 ried submissiveness. I had only to tell him to go and leave 
 me alone, and the caprice, however wounding to him, would 
 be obeyed without a murmur. His last breath was spent in 
 blessing me and in repeating that a single morning alone 
 with me was more precious to him than a lifetime spent with 
 another woman, were she even the Marie of his youth. My 
 tears fall as I write the words. 
 
 This is the manner of my life now. I rise at midday and 
 go to bed at seven; I linger absurdly long over meals; I 
 saunter about slowly, standing motionless,, an hour at a time, 
 before a single plant; I gaze into the leafy trees; I take a 
 sober and serious interest in mere nothings ; I long for shade, 
 silence, and night; in a word, I fight through each hour as 
 it comes, and take a gloomy pleasure in adding it to the 
 heap of the vanquished. My peaceful park gives me all the 
 company I care for; everything there is full of glorious im- 
 ages of my vanished joy, invisible for others but eloquent 
 to me. 
 
 "I cannot away with you Spaniards !" I exclaimed one 
 morning, as my sister-in-law flung herself on my neck. 
 "You have some nobility that we lack." 
 
 Ah ! Renee, if I still live, it is doubtless because Heaven 
 tempers the sense of affliction to the strength of those who 
 have to bear it. Only a woman can know what it is to lose 
 a love which sprang from the heart and was genuine through- 
 out, a passion which was not ephemeral, and satisfied at once 
 the spirit and the flesh. How rare it is to find a man so
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 313 
 
 gifted that to worship him brings no sense of degradation! 
 If such supreme fortune befall us once, we cannot hope for it 
 a second time. Men of true greatness, whose strength and 
 worth are veiled by poetic grace, and who charm by some 
 high spiritual power, men made to be adored, beware of love ! 
 Love will ruin you, and ruin the woman of your heart. This 
 is the burden of my cry as I pace my woodland walks. 
 
 And he has left me no child ! That love so rich in smiles, 
 which rained perpetual flowers and joy, has left no fruit. I 
 am a thing accursed. Can it be that, even as the two extremes 
 of polar ice and torrid sand are alike intolerant of life, so 
 the very purity and vehemence of a single-hearted passion 
 render it barren as hate? Is it only a marriage of reason, 
 such as yours, which is blessed with a family? Can Heaven 
 be jealous of our passions ? These are wild words. 
 
 You are, I believe, the one person whose company I could 
 endure. Come to me P then; none but Eenee should be with 
 Louise in her sombre garb. What a day when I first put 
 on my widow's bonnet ! When I saw myself all arrayed in 
 black, I fell back on a seat and wept till night came; and 
 I weep again as I recall that moment of anguish. 
 
 Good-bye. Writing tires me; thoughts crowd fast, but I 
 have no heart to put them into words. Bring your children ; 
 you can nurse baby here without making me jealous ; all that 
 is gone, he is not here, and I shall be very glad to see my 
 godson. Felipe used to wish for a child like little Armand. 
 Come, then, come and help me to bear my woe. 
 
 XLVII 
 
 BENEE TO LOUISE 
 
 1829- 
 
 MY DARLING, When you hold this letter in your hands, I 
 shall be already near, for I am starting a few minutes after 
 it. We shall be alone together. Louis is obliged to remain
 
 314 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 
 
 in Provence because of the approaching elections. He wants 
 to be elected again, and the Liberals are already plotting 
 against his return. 
 
 I don't come to comfort you ; I only bring you my heart to 
 beat in sympathy with yours, and help you to bear with life. 
 I come to bid you weep, for only with tears can you purchase 
 the joy of meeting him again. Remember, he is traveling 
 towards Heaven, and every step forward which you take 
 brings you nearer to him. Every duty done breaks a link in 
 the chain that keeps you apart. 
 
 Louise, in my arms you will once more raise your head 
 and go on your way to him, pure, noble, washed of all those 
 errors, which had no root in your heart, and bearing with you 
 the harvest of good deeds which, in his name, you will ac- 
 complish here. 
 
 I scribble these hasty lines in all the bustle of preparation, 
 and interrupted by the babies and by Armand, who keeps 
 crying, "Godmother, godmother! I want to see her," till I 
 am almost jealous. He might be your child!
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 815 
 
 SECOND PART 
 
 XLVIII 
 
 THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE COMTESSE TB 
 I/ESTORADE 
 
 October 15, 1838. 
 
 YES, "Renee, it is quite true ; you have been correctly informed. 
 I have sold my house, I have sold Chantepleurs, and the 
 farms in Seine-et-Marne, hut no more, please ! I am neither 
 mad nor ruined, I assure you. 
 
 Let us go into the matter. When everything was wound 
 up, there remained to me of my poor Macumer's fortune 
 about twelve hundred thousand francs. I will account, as to 
 a practical sister, for every penny of this. 
 
 I put a million into the Three per Cents when they were 
 at fifty, and so I have got an income for myself of sixty thou- 
 sand francs, instead of the thirty thousand which the property 
 yielded. Then, only think what my life was. Six months 
 of the year in the country, renewing leases, listening to the 
 grumbles of the farmers, who pay when it pleases them, and 
 getting as bored as a 'sportsman in wet weather. There was 
 produce to sell, and I always sold it at a loss. Then, in 
 Paris my house represented a rental of ten thousand francs; 
 I had to invest my money at the notaries ; I was kept waiting 
 for the interest, and could only get the money back by prose- 
 cuting; in addition I had to study the law of mortgage. In 
 short, there was business in Nivernais, in Seine-et-Marne, in 
 Paris and what a burden, what a nuisance, what a vexing 
 and losing game for a widow of twenty-seven !
 
 816 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 
 
 Whereas now my fortune is secured on the Budget. In 
 place of paying taxes to the State, I receive from it, every 
 half-year, in my own person, and free from cost, thirty thou- 
 sand francs in thirty notes, handed over the counter to me 
 by a dapper little clerk at the Treasury,, who smiles when 
 he sees me coming! 
 
 Supposing the nation became bankrupt? Well, to begin 
 with: 
 
 "Tis not mine to seek trouble so far from my door. 
 
 At the worst, too, the nation would not dock me of more 
 than half my income, so I should still be as well off as before 
 my investment, and in the meantime I shall be .drawing a 
 double income until the catastrophe arrives. A nation doesn't 
 become bankrupt more than once in a century, so I shall have 
 plenty of time to amass a little capital out of my savings. 
 
 And finally, is not the Comte de 1'Estorade a peer of this 
 July semi-republic ? Is he not one of those pillars of royalty 
 offered by the "people" to the King of the French ? How can 
 I have qualms with a friend at Court, a great financier, head 
 of the Audit Department ? I defy you to arraign my .sanity ! 
 I am almost as good at sums as your citizen king. 
 
 Do you know what inspires a woman with all this arith- 
 metic? Love, my dear! 
 
 Alas ! the moment has come for unfolding to you the mys- 
 teries of my conduct, the motives of which have baffled even 
 your keen - sight, your prying affection, and your subtlety. 
 I am to be married in a country village near Paris. I love 
 and am loved. I love as much as a woman can who knows 
 love well. I am loved as much as a woman ought to be by the 
 man she adores. 
 
 Forgive me, Ken^e, for keeping this a secret from you and 
 from every one. If your friend evades all spies and puts 
 curiosity on a false track, you must admit that my feeling 
 for poor Macumer justified some dissimulation. Besides, 
 de 1'Estorade and you would have deafened me with remon- 
 strances, and plagued me to death with your misgivings, to
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 317 
 
 which the facts might have lent some color. You know, if no 
 one else does, to what pitch my jealousy can go, and all this 
 would only have been useless torture to me. I was determined 
 to carry out, on my own responsibility, what you, Kenee, will 
 call my insane project, and I would take counsel only with 
 my own head and heart, for all the world like a schoolgirl 
 giving the slip to her watchful parents. 
 
 The man I love possesses nothing but thirty thousand 
 francs' worth of debts, which I have paid. What a theme 
 for comment here! You would have tried to make Gaston 
 out an adventurer; your husband would have set detectives 
 on the dear boy. I preferred to sift him for myself. He 
 has been wooing me now close on two years. I am twenty- 
 seven, he is twenty-three. The difference, I admit, is huge 
 when it is on the wrong side. Another source of lamentation ! 
 
 Lastly, he is a poet, and has lived by his trade that is to 
 say, on next to nothing, as you will readily understand. Be- 
 ing a poet, he has spent more time weaving day-dreams, and 
 basking, lizard-like, in the sun, than scribing in his dingy 
 garret. Now, practical people have a way of tarring with 
 the same brush of inconstancy authors, artists, and in general 
 all men who live by their brains. Their nimble and fertile 
 wit lays them open to the charge of a like agility in matters 
 of the heart. 
 
 Spite of the debts, spite of the difference in age, spite of 
 the poetry, an end is to be placed in a few days to a heroic 
 resistance of more than nine months, during which he has 
 not been allowed even to kiss my hand, and so also ends the 
 season of our sweet, pure, love-making. This is not the mere 
 surrender of a raw, ignorant, and curious girl, as it was 
 eight years ago; the gift is deliberate, and my lover awaits 
 it with such loyal patience that, if I pleased, I could postpone 
 the marriage for a year. There is no servility in this ; love's 
 slave he may be, but the heart is not slavish. Never have I 
 seen a man of nobler feeling, or one whose tenderness was 
 more rich in fancy, whose love bore more the impress of his 
 soul. Alas ! my sweet one, the art of love is his by heritage. 
 A few words will tell his story.
 
 318 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 My friend has no other name than Marie Gaston. He is 
 the illegitimate son of the beautiful Lady Brandon, whose 
 fame must have reached you, and who died broken-hearted, a 
 victim to the vengeance of Lady Dudley a ghastly story of 
 which the dear boy knows nothing. Marie Gaston was placed 
 by his brother Louis in a boarding-school at Tours, where he 
 remained till 1827. Louis, after settling his brother at 
 school, sailed a few days later for foreign parts "to seek his 
 fortune," to use the words of an old woman who had played 
 the part of Providence to him. This brother turned sailor 
 used to write him, at long intervals, letters quite fatherly in 
 tone, and breathing a noble spirit ; but a struggling life never 
 allowed him to return home. His last letter told Marie that 
 he had been appointed Captain in the navy of some American 
 republic, and exhorted him to hope for better days. 
 
 Alas! since then three years have passed, and my poor 
 poet has never heard again. So dearly did he love his 
 brother, that he would have started to look for him but 
 for Daniel d'Arthez, the well-known author, who took a 
 generous interest in Marie Gaston, and prevented him carry- 
 ing out his mad impulse. Nor was this all; often would 
 he give him a crust and a corner, as the poet puts it in his 
 graphic words. 
 
 For, in truth, the poor lad was in terrible straits; he 
 was actually innocent enough to believe incredible as it 
 seems that genius was the shortest road to fortune, and 
 from 1828 to 1833 his one aim has been to make a name 
 for himself in letters. Naturally his life was a frightful 
 tissue of toil and hardships, alternating between hope and 
 despair. The good advice of d'Arthez could not prevail 
 against the allurements of ambition, and his debts went on 
 growing like a snowball. Still he was beginning to come 
 into notice when I happened to meet him at Mme. d'Espard's. 
 At first sight he inspired me, unconsciously to himself, with 
 the most vivid sympathy. How did it come about that this 
 virgin heart had been left -for me? The fact is that my 
 poet combines genius and cleverness, passion and pride, and
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 319 
 
 women are always afraid of greatness which has no weak side 
 to it. How many victories were needed before Josephine 
 could see the great Napoleon in the little Bonaparte whom 
 she had married? 
 
 Poor Gaston is innocent enough to think he knows the 
 measure of my love! He simply has not an idea of it, but 
 to you I must make it clear; for this letter, Renee, is some- 
 thing in the nature of a last will and testament. Weigh 
 well what I am going to say, I beg of you. 
 
 At this moment I am confident of being loved as perhaps 
 not another woman on this earth, nor have I a shadow of 
 doubt as to the perfect happiness of our wedded life, to 
 which I bring a feeling hitherto unknown to me. Yes, for 
 the first time in my life, I know the delight of being swayed 
 by passion. That which every woman seeks in love will be 
 mine in marriage. As poor Felipe once adored me, so do I 
 now adore Gaston. I have lost control of myself, I tremble 
 before this boy as the Arab hero used to tremble before me. 
 In a word, the balance of love is now on my side, and 
 this makes me timid. I am full of the most absurd terrors. 
 I am afraid of being deserted, afraid of becoming old and 
 ugly while Gaston still retains his youth and beauty, afraid 
 of coming short of his hopes ! 
 
 And yet I believe I have it in me, I believe I have sufficient 
 devotion and ability, not only to keep alive the flame of his 
 love in our solitary life, far from the world, but even to 
 make it burn stronger and brighter. If I am mistaken, if 
 this splendid idyl of love in hiding must come to an end 
 an end! what am I saying? if I find Gaston's love less in- 
 tense any day than it was the evening before, be sure of 
 this, Eenee, I should visit my failure only on myself; no 
 blame should attach to him. I tell you now it would mean 
 my death. Not even if I had children could I live on these 
 terms, for I know myself, Renee, I know that my nature is 
 the lover's rather than the mother's. Therefore before tak- 
 ing this vow upon my soul, I implore you, my Renee, if this 
 disaster befall me, to take the place of mother to my children ;
 
 320 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 let them be my legacy to you ! All that I know of you, your 
 blind attachment to duty, your rare gifts, your love of chil- 
 dren, your affection for me, would help to make my death 
 I dare not say easy but at least less bitter. 
 
 The compact I have thus made with myself adds a vague 
 terror to the solemnity of my marriage ceremony. For this 
 reason I wish to have no one whom I know present, and it 
 will be performed in secret. Let my heart fail me if it will, 
 at least I shall not read anxiety in your dear eyes, and I 
 alone shall know that this new marriage-contract which I 
 sign may be my death warrant. 
 
 I shall not refer again to this agreement entered into be- 
 tween my present self and the self I am to be. I have con- 
 fided it to you in order that you might know the full extent 
 of your responsibilities. In marrying I retain full control 
 of my property; and Gaston, while aware that I have enough 
 to secure a comfortable life for both of us, is ignorant of its 
 amount. Within twenty-four hours I shall dispose of it 
 as I please; and in order to save him from a humiliating 
 position, I shall have stock, bringing in twelve thousand 
 francs a year, assigned to him. He will find this in his desk 
 on the eve of our wedding. If he declined to accept, I should 
 break off the whole thing. I had to threaten a rupture to get 
 his permission to pay his debts. 
 
 This long confession has tired me. I shall finish it the 
 day after to-morrow; I have to spend to-morrow in the 
 country. 
 
 October 2<MA. 
 
 I will tell you now the steps I have taken to insure se- 
 crecy. My object has been to ward off every possible incite- 
 ment to my ever-wakeful jealousy, in imitation of the Italian 
 princess, who, like a lioness rushing on her prey, carried it 
 off to some Swiss town to devour in peace. And I confide 
 my plans to you only because I have another favor to beg; 
 namely, that you will respect our solitude and never come 
 to see us uninvited.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 321 
 
 Two years ago I purchased a small property overlooking 
 the ponds of Ville d'Avray, on the road to Versailles. It 
 consists of twenty acres of meadow land, the skirts of a 
 wood, and a fine fruit garden. Below the meadows the land 
 has been excavated so as to make a lakelet of about three 
 acres in extent, with a charming little island in the middle. 
 The small valley is shut in by two graceful, thickly-wooded 
 slopes, where rise delicious springs that water my park by 
 means of channels cleverly disposed by my architect. Fi- 
 nally, they fall into the royal ponds, glimpses of which can 
 be seen here and there, gleaming in the distance. My little 
 park has been admirably laid out by the architect, who has 
 surrounded it by hedges, walls, or ha-has, according to the 
 lie of the land, so that no possible point of view may be 
 lost. 
 
 A chalet has been built for me half-way up the hillside, 
 with a charming exposure, having the woods of the Eonce 
 on either side, and in front a grassy slope running down to 
 the lake. Externally the chalet is an exact copy of those 
 which are so much admired by travelers on the road from 
 Sion to Brieg, and which fascinated me when I was return- 
 ing from Italy. The internal decorations will bear com- 
 parison with those of the most celebrated buildings of the 
 kind. 
 
 A hundred paces from this rustic dwelling stands a charm- 
 ing and ornamental house, communicating with it by a sub- 
 terranean passage. This contains the kitchen, and other 
 servants' rooms, stables, and coach-houses. Of all this series 
 of brick buildings, the fagade alone is seen, graceful in its 
 simplicity,, against a background of shrubbery. Another 
 building serves to lodge the gardeners and masks the en- 
 trance to the orchards and kitchen-gardens. 
 
 The entrance gate to the property is so hidden in the wall 
 dividing the park from the wood as almost to defy detection. 
 The plantations, already well grown, will, in two or three 
 years, completely hide the buildings, so that, except in win- 
 ter, when the trees are bare, no trace of habitation will ap-
 
 322 
 
 pear to the outside world, save only the smoke visible from 
 the neighboring hills. 
 
 The surroundings of my chalet have been modeled on what 
 is called the King's Garden at Versailles, but it has an out- 
 look on my lakelet and island. The hills on every side dis- 
 play their abundant foliage those splendid trees for which 
 your new civil list has so well cared. My gardeners have 
 orders to cultivate new sweet-scented flowers to any extent, 
 and no others, so that our home will be a fragrant emerald. 
 The chalet, adorned with a wild vine which covers the 
 roof, is literally embedded in climbing plants of all kinds 
 hops, clematis, jasmine, azalea, copaea. It will be a sharp 
 eye which can descry our windows ! 
 
 The chalet, my dear, is a good, solid house, with its heat- 
 ing system and all the conveniences of modern architecture, 
 which can raise a palace in the compass of a hundred square 
 feet. It contains a suite of rooms for Gaston and another 
 for me. The ground-floor is occupied by an ante-room, a 
 parlor, and a dining-room. Above our floor again are three 
 rooms destined for the nurseries. I have five first-rate 
 horses, a small light coupe, and a two-horse cabriolet. We 
 are only forty-minutes' drive from Paris; so that, when the 
 spirit moves us to hear an opera or see a new play, we can 
 start after dinner and return the same night to our bower. 
 The road is a good one, and passes under the shade of our 
 green dividing wall. 
 
 My servants cook, coachman, groom, and gardeners, in 
 addition to my maid are all very respectable people, whom 
 I have spent the last six months in picking up, and they will 
 be superintended by my old Philippe. Although confident of 
 their loyalty and good faith, I have not neglected to culti- 
 vate self-interest; their wages are small, but will receive 
 an annual addition in the shape of a New Year's Day pres- 
 ent. They are all aware that the slightest fault, or a mere 
 suspicion of gossiping, might lose them a capital place. 
 Lovers are never troublesome to their servants; they are 
 indulgent by disposition, and therefore I feel that I can reckon 
 on my household.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 323 
 
 All that is choice, pretty, or decorative in my house in the 
 Rue du Bac has been transported to the chalet. The Rem- 
 brandt hangs on the staircase, as though it were a mere daub ; 
 the Hobbema faces the Rubens in his study; the Titian, 
 which my sister-in-law Mary sent me from Madrid, adorns 
 the boudoir. The beautiful furniture picked up by Felipe 
 looks very well in the parlor, which the architect has deco- 
 rated most tastefully. Everything at the chalet is charm- 
 ingly simple, with the simplicity which can't be got under 
 a hundred thousand francs. Our ground-floor rests on cel- 
 lars, which are built of millstone and embedded in con- 
 crete; it is almost completely buried in flowers and shrubs, 
 and is deliciously cool without a vestige of damp. To com- 
 plete the picture, a fleet of white swans sail over my lake ! 
 
 Oh ! Renee, the silence which reigns in this valley would 
 bring joy to the dead ! One is awakened by the birds sing- 
 ing or the breeze rustling in the poplars. A little spring, 
 discovered by the architect in digging the foundations of the 
 wall, trickles down the hillside over silvery sand to the lake, 
 between two banks of water-cress, hugging the edge of the 
 woods. I know nothing that money can buy to equal it. 
 
 May not Gaston come to loathe this too perfect bliss? I 
 shudder to think how complete it is, for the ripest fruits 
 harbor the worms, the most gorgeous flowers attract the in- 
 sects. Is it not ever the monarch of the forest which is eaten 
 away by the fatal brown grub, greedy as death? I have 
 learned before now that an unseen and jealous power attacks 
 happiness which has reached perfection. Besides, this is the 
 moral of all your preaching, and you have been proved a 
 prophet. 
 
 When I went, the day before yesterday, to see whether my 
 last whim had been carried out, tears rose to my eyes; and, 
 to the great surprise of my architect, I at once passed his 
 account for payment. 
 
 "But, madame," he exclaimed, "your man of business will 
 refuse to pay this; it is a matter of three hundred thousand 
 francs." My only reply was to add the words, "To be paid
 
 324 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 without question," with the bearing of a seventeenth-century 
 Chaulieu. 
 
 "But," I said, "there is one condition to my gratitude. No 
 human being must hear from you of the park and buildings. 
 Promise me, on your honor, to observe this article in our 
 contract not to breathe to a soul the proprietor's name." 
 
 Now, can you understand the meaning of my sudden jour- 
 neys, my mysterious comings and goings ? Now, do you know 
 whither those beautiful things, which the world supposes to 
 be sold, have flown? Do you perceive the ultimate motive 
 of my change of investment? Love, my dear, is a vast busi- 
 ness, and they who would succeed in it should have no other. 
 Henceforth I shall have no more trouble from money mat- 
 ters; I have taken all the thorns out of my life, and done 
 my housekeeping work once for all with a vengeance, so as 
 never to be troubled with it again, except during the daily 
 ten minutes which I shall devote to my old major-domo 
 Philippe. I have made a study of life and its sharp curves; 
 there came a day when death also gave me harsh lessons. 
 Now I want to turn all this to account. My one occupa- 
 tion will be to please Mm and love him, to brighten with 
 variety what to common mortals is monotonously dull. 
 . Gaston is still in complete ignorance. At my request he 
 has, like myself, taken up his quarters at Ville d'Avray; to- 
 morrow we start for the chalet. Our life there will cost 
 but little; but if I told you the sum I am setting aside for 
 my toilet, you would exclaim at my madness, and with rea- 
 son. I intend to take as much trouble to make myself beauti- 
 ful for him every day as other women do for society. My 
 dress in the country, year in, year out, will cost twenty-four 
 thousand francs, and the larger portion of this will not go 
 in day costumes. As for him, he can wear a blouse if he 
 pleases ! Don't suppose that I am going to turn our life 
 into an amorous duel and wear myself out in devices for 
 feeding passion; all that I want is to have a conscience free 
 from reproach. Thirteen years still lie before me as a pretty 
 woman, and I am determined to be loved on the last day of
 
 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 325 
 
 the thirteenth even more fondly than on the morrow of our 
 mysterious nuptials. This time no cutting words shall mar 
 my lowly, grateful content. I will take the part of servant, 
 since that of mistress throve so ill with me before. 
 
 Ah! Eenee, if Gaston has sounded, as I have, the heights 
 and depths of love, my happiness is assured ! Nature at the 
 chalet wears her fairest face. The woods are charming; 
 each step opens up to you some fresh vista of cool greenery, 
 which delights the soul by the sweet thoughts it wakens. 
 They breathe of love. If only this be not the gorgeous thea- 
 tre dressed by my hand for my own martyrdom ! 
 
 In two days from now I shall be Mme. Gaston. My God ! 
 is it fitting a Christian so to love mortal man ? 
 
 "Well, at least you have the law with you," was the com- 
 ment of my man of business, who is to be one of my wit- 
 nesses, and who exclaimed, on discovering why my property 
 was to be realized, "I am losing a client !" 
 
 And you, my sweetheart (whom I dare no longer call my 
 loved one), may you not cry, "I am losing a sister?" 
 
 My sweet, address when you write in future to Mme. Gas- 
 ton, Poste Eestante, Versailles. We shall send there every 
 day for letters. I don't want to be known to the country 
 people, and we shall get all our provisions from Paris. In 
 this way I hope we may guard the secret of our lives. No- 
 body has been seen in the place during the year spent in 
 preparing our retreat; and the purchase was made in the 
 troubled period which followed the revolution of July. The 
 only person who has shown himself here is the architect; he 
 alone is known, and he will not return. 
 
 Farewell. As I write this word, I know not whether my 
 heart is fuller of grief or joy. That proves, does it not, 
 that the pain of losing you equals my love for Gaston?
 
 326 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 XLIX 
 
 MARIE GASTON TO DANIEL D^ARTHEZ 
 
 October 1833. 
 
 MY DEAR DANIEL, I need two witnesses for my marriage. 
 I beg of you to come to-morrow evening for this purpose, 
 bringing with you our worthy and honored friend, Joseph 
 Bridau. She who is to be my wife, with an instinctive divi- 
 nation of my dearest wishes, has declared her intention of 
 living far from the world in complete retirement. You, 
 who have done so much to lighten my penury, have been left 
 in ignorance of my love ; but you will understand that abso- 
 lute secrecy was essential. 
 
 This will explain to you why it is that, for the last year, 
 we have seen so little of each other. On the morrow of my 
 wedding we shall be parted for a long time; but, Daniel, 
 you are of stuff to understand me. Friendship can subsist 
 in the absence of the friend. There may be times when I 
 phall want you badly, but I shall not see you, at least not in 
 my own house. Here again she has forestalled our wishes. 
 She has sacrificed to me her intimacy with a friend of her 
 childhood, who has been a sister to her. For her sake, then, 
 I also must relinquish my comrade ! 
 
 From this fact alone you will divine that ours is no mere 
 passing fancy, but love, absolute, perfect, godlike ; love based 
 upon the fullest knowledge that can bind two hearts in sym- 
 pathy. To me it is a perpetual spring of purest delight. 
 
 Yet nature allows of no happiness without alloy ; and deep 
 down, in the innermost recess of my heart, I am conscious 
 of a lurking thought, not shared with her, the pang of which 
 is for me alone. You have too often come to the help of 
 my inveterate poverty to be ignorant how desperate matters 
 were with me. Where should I have found courage to keep 
 up the struggle of life, after seeing my hopes so often 
 blighted, but for your cheering words, your tactful aid, and 
 the knowledge of what you had come through? Briefly,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 327 
 
 then, my friend, she freed me from that crushing load of 
 debt, which was no secret to you. She is wealthy, I am 
 penniless. Many a time have I exclaimed, in one of my fits 
 of idleness, "Oh for some great heiress to cast her eye on 
 me !" And now, in presence of this reality, the boy's care- 
 less jest, the unscrupulous cynicism of the outcast, have 
 alike vanished, leaving in their place only a bitter sense 
 of humiliation, which not the most considerate tenderness 
 on her part, nor my own assurance of her noble nature, can 
 remove. Nay, what better proof of my love could there 
 exist, for her or for myself, than this shame, from which I 
 have not recoiled, even when powerless to overcome it ? The 
 fact remains that there is a point where, far from protect- 
 ing, I am the protected. 
 
 This is my pain which I confide to you. 
 
 Except in this one particular, dear Daniel, my fondest 
 dreams are more than realized. Fairest and noblest among 
 women, such a bride might indeed raise a man to giddy 
 heights of bliss. Her gentle ways are seasoned with wit, 
 her love comes with an ever-fresh grace and charm ; her mind 
 is well informed and quick to understand; in person, she is 
 fair and lovely, with a rounded slimness, as though Raphael 
 and Rubens had conspired to create a woman ! I do not know 
 whether I could have worshiped with such fervor at the 
 shrine of a dark beauty; a brunette always strikes me as an 
 unfinished boy. She is a widow, childless, and twenty-seven 
 years of age. Though brimful of life and energy, she has 
 her moods also of dreamy melancholy. These rare gifts go 
 with a proud aristocratic bearing; she has a fine presence. 
 
 She belongs to one of those old families who make a fetich 
 of rank, yet loves me enough to ignore the misfortune of my 
 birth. Our secret passion is now of long standing; we have 
 made trial, each of the other, and find that in the matter 
 of jealousy we are twin spirits; our thoughts are the rever- 
 beration of the same thunderclap. We both love for the first 
 time, and this bewitching springtime has filled its days for 
 as with all the images of delight that fancy can paint in
 
 328 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 laughing, sweet, or musing mood. Our path has been strewn 
 with the flowers of tender imaginings. Each hour brought 
 its own wealth, and when we parted, it was to put our 
 thoughts in verse. Not for a moment did I harbor the idea 
 of sullying the brightness of such a time by giving the rein 
 to sensual passion, however it might chafe within. She was 
 a widow and free; intuitively, she realized all the homage 
 implied in this constant self-restraint, which often moved her 
 to tears. Can you not read in this, my friend, a soul of noble 
 temper? In mutual fear we shunned even the first kiss of 
 love. 
 
 "We have each a wrong to reproach ourselves with," she 
 said one day. 
 
 "Where is yours?" I asked. 
 
 "My marriage/' was her reply. 
 
 Daniel, you are a giant among us, and you love one of the 
 most gifted women of the aristocracy, which has produced 
 my Armande ; what need to tell you more ? Such an answer 
 lays bare to you a woman's heart and all the happiness which 
 is in store for your friend, 
 
 MARIE GASTON. 
 
 MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MME. DE MACUMER 
 
 LOUISE, can it be that, with all your knowledge of the deep- 
 seated mischief wrought by the indulgence of passion, even 
 within the heart of marriage, you are planning a life of 
 wedded solitude? Having sacrificed your first husband in 
 the course of a fashionable career, would you now fly to the 
 desert to consume a second? What stores of misery you are 
 laying up for yourself ! 
 
 But I see from the way you have set about it that there is 
 no going back. The man who has overcome- your aversion 
 to a second marriage must indeed possess some magic of
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 329 
 
 mind and heart; and you can only be left to your illusions. 
 But have you forgotten your former criticism on young men ? 
 Not one, you would say, but has visited haunts of shame, 
 and has besmirched his purity with the filth of the streets. 
 Where is the change, pray in them or in you ? 
 
 You are a lucky woman to be able to believe in happiness. 
 I have not the courage to blame you for it, though the in- 
 stinct of affection urges me to dissuade you from this mar- 
 riage. Yes, a thousand times, yes, it is true that nature and 
 society are at one in making war on absolute happiness, be- 
 cause such a condition is opposed to the laws of both; pos- 
 sibly, also, because Heaven is jealous of its privileges. My 
 love for you forebodes some disaster to which all my penetra- 
 tion can give no definite form. I know neither whence nor 
 from whom it will arise ; but one need be no prophet to fore- 
 tell that the mere weight of a boundless happiness will over- 
 power you. Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount 
 of sorrow. 
 
 Against him I have not a word to say. You love him, 
 and in all probability I have never seen him; but some idle 
 day I hope you will send me a sketch, however slight, of this 
 rare, fine animal. 
 
 If you see me so resigned and cheerful, it is because I am 
 convinced that, once the honeymoon is over, you will both, 
 with one accord, fall back into the common track. Some 
 day, two years hence, when we are walking along this famous 
 road, you will exclaim, "Why, there is the chalet which was 
 to be my home for ever I" And you will laugh your dear old 
 laugh, which shows all your pretty teeth ! 
 
 I have said nothing yet to Louis ; it would be too good an 
 opening for his ridicule. I shall tell him simply that you 
 are going to be married, and that you wish it kept secret. 
 Unluckily, you need neither mother nor sister for your bridal 
 evening. We are in October now; like a brave woman, you 
 are grappling with winter first. If it were not a question 
 of marriage, I should say you were taking the bull by the 
 horns. In any case, you will have in me the most discreet
 
 330 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 and intelligent of friends. That mysterious region, known 
 as the centre of Africa, has swallowed up many travelers, and 
 you seem to me to be launching on an expedition which, in 
 the domain of sentiment, corresponds to those where so many 
 explorers have perished, whether in the sands or at the hands 
 of natives. Your desert is, happily, only two leagues from 
 Paris, so I can wish you quite cheerfully, "A safe journey 
 and speedy return." 
 
 LI 
 
 THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE TO MME. MARIE GASTON 
 
 1835. 
 
 WHAT has come to you, my dear? After a silence of two 
 years, surely Renee has a right to feel anxious about Louise. 
 So this is love ! It brushes aside and scatters to the winds 
 a friendship such as ours ! You must admit that, devoted as 
 I am to my children more even perhaps than you to your 
 Gaston a mother's love has something expansive about it 
 which does not allow it to steal from other affections, or inter- 
 fere with the claims of friendship. I miss your letters, I 
 long for a sight of your dear, sweet face. Oh ! Louise, my 
 heart has only conjecture to feed upon ! 
 
 As regards ourselves, I will try and tell you everything 
 as briefly as possible. 
 
 On reading over again your last letter but one, I find some 
 stinging comments on our political situation. You mocked 
 at us for keeping the post in the Audit Department, which, 
 as well as the title of Count, Louis owed to the favor of 
 Charles X. But I should like to know, please, how it would 
 be possible out of an income of forty thousand livres, thirty 
 thousand of which go with the entail, to give a suitable start 
 in life to Athe*nai's and my poor little beggar Rene. Was it 
 not a duty to live on our salary and prudently allow the in- 
 come of the estate to accumulate? In this way we shall, in
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 331 
 
 twenty years, have put together about six hundred thousand 
 francs, which Mall provide portions for my daughter and 
 for Kene, whom I destine for the navy. The poor little chap 
 will have an income of ten thousand livres, and perhaps we 
 may contrive to leave him in cash enough to bring his por- 
 tion up to the amount of his sister's. 
 
 When he is Captain, my beggar will be able to make a 
 wealthy marriage, and take a position in society as good 
 as his elder brother's. 
 
 These considerations of prudence determined the accept- 
 ance in our family of the new order of things. The new 
 dynasty, as was natural, raised Louis to the Peerage and 
 made him a grand officer of the Legion of Honor. The oath 
 once taken, 1'Estorade could not be half-hearted in his ser- 
 vices, and he has since then made himself very useful in 
 the Chamber. The position he has now attained is one in 
 which he can rest upon his oars till the end of his days. He 
 has a good deal of adroitness in business matters; and though 
 he can hardly be called an orator, speaks pleasantly and 
 fluently, which is all that is necessary in politics. His 
 shrewdness and the extent of his information in all matters 
 of government and administration are fully appreciated, 
 and all parties consider him indispensable. I may tell you 
 that he was recently offered an embassy, but I would not let 
 him accept it. I am tied to Paris by the education of Ar- 
 mand and Athenais who are now respectively thirteen and 
 nearly eleven and I don't intend leaving till little Kene has 
 completed his, which is just beginning. 
 
 We could not have remained faithful to the elder branch 
 of the dynasty and returned to our country life without al- 
 lowing the education and prospects of the three children to 
 suffer. A mother, my sweet, is hardly called on to be a 
 Decius, especially at a time when the type is rare. In fifteen 
 years from now, 1'Estorade will be able to retire to La Cram- 
 pade on a good pension, having found a place as referen- 
 rlary for Armand in the Audit Department. 
 
 ..4s for Eene, the navy will doubtless make a diplomatist
 
 332 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 of him. The little rogue, at seven years old, has all the cun- 
 ning of an old Cardinal. 
 
 Oh! Louise, I am indeed a happy mother. My children 
 are an endless source of joy to me. 
 
 Senza brama sicura ricchezza. 
 
 Armand is a day scholar at Henri IV.'s school. I made 
 up my mind he should have a public-school training, yet 
 could not reconcile myself to the thought of parting with 
 him; so I compromised, as the Due d'Orleans did before he 
 became or in order that he might become Louis Philippe. 
 Every morning Lucas, the old servant whom you will remem- 
 ber, takes Armand to school in time for the first lesson, 
 and brings him home again at half-past four. In the house 
 we have a private tutor, an admirable scholar, who helps 
 Armand with his work in the evenings, and calls him in the 
 morning at the school hour. Lucas takes him some lunch 
 during the play hour at midday. In this way I am with 
 m j by at dinner and until he goes to bed at night, and I 
 see him off in the morning. 
 
 Armand is the same charming little fellow, full of feel- 
 ing and unselfish impulse, whom you loved; and his tutor 
 is quite pleased with him. I still have Nai's and the baby 
 two restless little mortals but I am quite as much a child 
 as they are. I could not bring myself to lose the darlings' 
 sweet caresses. I could not live without the feeling that at 
 any moment I can fly to Armand's bedside and watch his 
 slumbers or snatch a kiss. 
 
 Yet home education is not without its drawbacks, to which 
 I am fully alive. Society, like nature, is a jealous power, 
 and will not have her rights encroached on, or her system 
 set at naught. Thus, children who are brought up at home 
 are exposed too early to the fire of the world; they see its 
 passions and become at home in its subterfuges. The finer 
 distinctions, which regulate the conduct of matured men 
 and women, elude their perceptions, and they take feeling
 
 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 333 
 
 and passion for their guide instead of subordinating those 
 to the code of society; whilst the gay trappings and tinsel 
 which attract so much of the world's favor blind them to the 
 importance of the more sober virtues. A child of fifteen 
 with the assurance of a man of the world is a thing against 
 all nature ; at twenty-five he will be prematurely old, and his 
 precocious knowledge only unfits him for the genuine study 
 on which all solid ability must rest. Life in society is one 
 long comedy, and those who take part in it, like other actors, 
 reflect back impressions which never penetrate below the sur- 
 face. A mother, therefore, who wishes not to part from her 
 children, must resolutely determine that they shall not enter 
 the gay world; she must have courage to resist their in- 
 clinations, as well as her own, and keep them in the back- 
 ground. Cornelia had to keep her jewels under lock and 
 key. Shall I do less for the children who are all the world 
 to me? 
 
 Now that I am thirty, the heat of the day is over, the 
 hardest bit of the road lies behind me. In a few years I 
 shall be an old woman, and the sense of duty done is an im- 
 mense encouragement. It would almost seem as though my 
 trio can read my thoughts and shape themselves accord- 
 ingly. A mysterious bond of sympathy unites me to these 
 children who have never left my side. If they knew the 
 blank in my life which they have to fill, they could not be 
 more lavish of the solace they bring. 
 
 Armand, who was dull and dreamy during his first three 
 years at school, and caused me some uneasiness, has made a 
 sudden start. Doubtless he realized, in a way most children 
 never do, the aim of all this preparatory work, which is to 
 sharpen the intelligence, to get them into habits of applica- 
 tion, and accustom them to that fundamental principle of 
 all society obedience. My dear, a few days ago I had the 
 proud joy of seeing Armand crowned at the great inter- 
 scholastic competition in the crowded Sorbonne, when your 
 godson received the first prize for translation. At the school 
 distribution he got two first prizes one for verse, and one
 
 334 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 for an essay. I went quite white when his name was called 
 out, and longed to shout aloud, "I am his mother!" Little 
 Na'is squeezed my hand till it hurt, if at such a moment it 
 were possible to feel pain. Ah ! Louise, a day like this might 
 outweigh many a dream of love! 
 
 His brother's triumphs have spurred on little Eene, who 
 wants to go to school too. Sometimes the three children 
 make such a racket, shouting and rushing about the house, 
 that I wonder how my head stands it. I am always with 
 them; no one else, not even Mary, is allowed to take care of 
 my children. But the calling of a mother, if taxing, has so 
 many compensating joys ! To see a child leave its play and 
 run to hug one, out of the fulness of its heart, what could be 
 sweeter ? 
 
 Then it is only in being constantly with them that one 
 can study their characters. It is the duty of a mother, and 
 one which she can depute to no hired teacher, to decipher 
 the tastes, temper, and natural aptitudes of her children from 
 their infancy. All home-bred children are distinguished by 
 ease of manner and tact, two acquired qualities which may 
 go far to supply the lack of natural ability, whereas no 
 natural ability can atone for the loss of this early training. 
 I have already learned to discriminate this difference of tone 
 in the men whom I meet in society, and to trace the hand 
 of a woman in the formation of a young man's manners. 
 How could any woman defraud her children of such a pos- 
 session? You see what rewards attend the performance of 
 my tasks ! 
 
 Arnand, I feel certain, will make an admirable judge, 
 the most upright of public servants, the most devoted of 
 deputies. And where would you find a sailor bolder, more 
 adventurous, more astute than my Eene will be a few years 
 hence? The little rascal ha? already an iron will, whatever 
 he wants he manages to get; he will try a thousand cir- 
 cuitous ways to reach his end, and if not successful then, will 
 devise a thousand and first. Where dear Armand quietly 
 resigns himself and tries to get at the reason of things,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 335 
 
 Kene will storm, and strive, and puzzle, chattering all the 
 time, till at last he finds some chink in the obstacle ; if there 
 is room for the blade of a knife to pass, his little carriage 
 will ride through in triumph. 
 
 And Na'is? Nai's is so completely a second self that I 
 can hardly realize her as distinct from my own flesh and 
 blood. What a darling she is, and how I love to make a little 
 lady of her, to dress her curly hair, tender thoughts mingling 
 the while with every touch ! I must have her happy ; I shall 
 only give her to the man who loves her and whom she loves. 
 But, Heavens ! when I let her put on her little ornaments, 
 or pass a cherry-colored ribbon through her hair, or fasten 
 the shoes on her tiny feet, a sickening thought comes over 
 me. How can one order the destiny of a girl? Who can 
 say that she will not love a scoundrel or some man who is 
 indifferent to her ? Tears often spring to my eyes as I watch 
 her. This lovely creature, this flower, this rosebud which 
 has blossomed in one's heart, to be handed over to a man 
 who will tear it from the stem and leave it bare ! Louise, it 
 is you you, who in two years have not written three -words 
 to tell me of your welfare it is you who have recalled to 
 my mind the terrible possibilities of marriage, so full of 
 anguish for a mother wrapped up, as I am, in her child. 
 Farewell now, for in truth you don't deserve my friendship, 
 and I hardly know how to write. Oh! answer me, dear 
 Louise. 
 
 LII 
 
 MME. GASTON TO MME. DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 The Chalet. 
 
 So, AFTER a silence of two years, you are pricked by curiosity, 
 and want to know why I have not written. My dear Kenee, 
 there are no words, no images, no language to express my 
 happiness. That we have strength to bear it sums up all 
 I could say. It costs us no effort, for we are in perfect
 
 336 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 sympathy. The whole two years have known no note of dis- 
 cord in the harmony, no jarring word in the interchange of 
 feeling, no shade of difference in our lightest wish. Not 
 one in this long succession of days has failed to bear its own 
 peculiar fruit; not a moment has passed without being en- 
 riched by the play of fancy. So far are we from dreading 
 the canker of monotony in our life, that our only fear is lest 
 it should not be long enough to contain all the poetic crea- 
 tions of a love as rich and varied in its development as 
 Mature herself. Of disappointment not a trace! We find 
 more pleasure in being together than on the first day, and each 
 hour as it goes by discloses fresh reason for our love. Every 
 day as we take our evening stroll after dinner, we tell each 
 other that we really must go and see what is doing in Paris, 
 just as one might talk of going to Switzerland. 
 
 "Only think," Gaston will exclaim, "such and such a 
 boulevard is being made, the Madeleine is finished. We 
 ought to see it. Let us go to-morrow." 
 
 And to-morrow comes, and we are in no hurry to get up, 
 and we breakfast in our bedroom. Then midday is on us, 
 and it is too hot; a siesta seems appropriate. Then Gaston 
 wishes to look at me, and he gazes on my face as though it 
 were a picture, losing himself in this contemplation, which, 
 as you may suppose, is not one-sided. Tears rise to the eyes 
 of both as we think of our love and tremble. I am still 
 the mistress, pretending, that is, to give less than I receive, 
 and I revel in this deception. To a woman what can be 
 sweeter than to see passion ever held in check by tenderness, 
 and the man who is her master stayed, like a timid suitor, by 
 a word from her, within the limits that she chooses? 
 
 You asked me to describe him ; but, Eenee, it is not pos- 
 sible to make a portrait of the man we love. How could 
 the heart be kept out of the work? Besides, to be frank 
 between ourselves, we may admit that one of the dire ef- 
 fects of civilization on our manners is to make of man in 
 society a being so utterly different from the natural man 
 of strong feeling, that sometimes not a single point of like-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 337 
 
 ness can be found between these two aspects of the same 
 person. The man who falls into the most graceful operatic 
 poses, as he pours sweet nothings into your ear by the fire 
 at night, ma} 7 be entirely destitute of those more intimate 
 charms which a woman values. On the other hand, an ugly^ 
 boorish, badly-dressed figure may mark a man endowed with 
 the very genius of love, and who has a perfect mastery over 
 situations which might baffle even us with our superficial 
 graces. A man whose conventional aspect accords with his real 
 nature, who, in the intimacy of wedded love, possesses that 
 inborn grace which can be neither given nor acquired, but 
 which Greek art has embodied in statuary, that careless in- 
 nocence of the ancient poets whioh. even in frank undress, 
 seems to clothe the soul as with a veil of modesty this is 
 our ideal, born of our own conceptions, and linked with the 
 universal harmony which seems to be the reality underlying 
 all created things. To find this ideal in life is the problem 
 which haunts the imagination of every woman in Gaston I 
 have found it. 
 
 Ah ! dear, I did not know what love could be, united to 
 youth, talent, and beauty. Gaston has no affectations, he 
 moves with an instinctive and unstudied grace. When we 
 walk alone together in the woods, his arm round my waist, 
 mine resting on his shoulder, body fitting to body, and head 
 touching head, our step is so even, uniform, and gentle, that 
 those who see us pass by night take the vision for a single 
 figure gliding over the graveled walks, like one of Homer's 
 immortals. A like harmony exists in our desires, our 
 thoughts, our words. More than once on some evening when 
 a passing shower has left the leaves glistening and the moist 
 grass bright with a more vivid green, it has chanced that we 
 ended our walk without uttering a word, as we listened to 
 the patter of falling drops and feasted our eyes on the scarlet 
 sunset, flaring on the hilltops or dyeing with a warmer tone 
 the gray of the tree trunks. 
 
 Beyond a doubt our thoughts then rose to Heaven in silent 
 prayer, pleading, as it were, for our happiness. At times
 
 338 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 a cry would escape us at the moment when some sudden 
 bend on the path opened up fresh beauties. What words can 
 tell how honey-sweet, how full of meaning, is a kiss half- 
 timidly exchanged within the sanctuary of nature it is as 
 though God had created us to worship in this fashion. 
 
 And we return home, each more deeply in love than ever. 
 
 A love so passionate between old married people would 
 be an outrage on society in Paris; only in the heart of the 
 woods, like lovers, can we give scope to it. 
 
 To come to particulars, Gaston is of middle height the 
 height proper to all men of purpose. Neither stout nor thin, 
 his figure is admirably made, with ample fulness in the pro- 
 portions, while every motion is agile; he leaps a ditch with 
 the easy grace of a wild animal. Whatever his attitude, he 
 seems to have an instinctive sense of balance, and this is 
 very rare in men who are given to thought. Though a dark 
 man, he has an extraordinarily fair complexion ; his jet-black 
 hair contrasts finely with the lustreless tints of the neck and 
 forehead. He has the tragic head of Louis XIII. His mous- 
 tache and tuft have been allowed to grow, but I made him 
 shave the whiskers and beard, which were getting too com- 
 mon. An honorable poverty has been his safeguard, and 
 handed him over to me, unsoiled by the loose life which 
 ruins so many young men. His teeth are magnificent, and he 
 has a constitution of iron. His keen blue eyes, for me full 
 of tenderness, will flash like lightning at any rousing thought. 
 
 Like all men of strong character and powerful mind, he 
 has an admirable temper; its evenness would surprise you, 
 as it did me. I have listened to the tale of many a woman's 
 home troubles; I ha.ve heard of the moods and depression 
 of men dissatisfied with themselves, who either won't get 
 old or age ungracefully, men who carry about through life 
 the rankling memory of some youthful excess, whose veins 
 run poison and whose eyes are never frankly happy, men 
 who cloak suspicion under bad temper, and make their 
 women pay for an hour's peace by a morning of annoyance, 
 who take vengeance on us for a beauty which is hateful to
 
 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 339 
 
 them because they have ceased themselves to be attractive, 
 all these are horrors unknown to youth. They are the pen- 
 alty of unequal unions. Oh! my dear, whatever you do, 
 don't marry Athenai's to an old man ! 
 
 But his smile how I feast on it ! A smile which is always 
 there, yet always fresh through the play of subtle fancy, a 
 speaking smile which makes of the lips a storehouse for 
 thoughts of love and unspoken gratitude, a smile which links 
 present joys to past. For nothing is allowed to drop out of 
 our common life. The smallest works of nature have become 
 part and parcel of our joy. In these delightful woods every- 
 thing is alive and eloquent of ourselves. An old moss-grown 
 oak, near the woodsman's house on the roadside, reminds 
 us how we sat there, wearied, under its shade, while Gaston 
 taught me about the mosses at our feet and told me their 
 story, till, gradually ascending from science to science, we 
 touched the very confines of creation. 
 
 There is something so kindred in our minds that they 
 seem to me like two editions of the same book. You see what 
 a literary tendency I have developed ! We both have the 
 habit, or the gift, of looking at every subject broadly, of tak- 
 ing in all its points of view, and the proof we are constantly 
 giving ourselves of the singleness of our inward vision is an 
 ever-new pleasure. We have actually come to look on this 
 community of mind as a pledge of love; and if it ever 
 failed us, it would mean as much to us as would a breach 
 of fidelity in an ordinary home. 
 
 My life, full as it is of pleasures, would seem to you, never- 
 theless, extremely laborious. To begin with, my dear, you must 
 know that Louise- Armande-Marie de Chaulieu does her own 
 room. I could not bear that a hired menial, some woman or 
 girl from the outside, should become initiated literary 
 touch again ! into the secrets of my bedroom. The veriest 
 trifles connected with the worship of my heart partake of its 
 sacred character. This is not jealousy; it is self-respect. 
 Thus my room is done out with all the care a young girl 
 in love bestows on her person, and with the precision of
 
 340 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 an old maid. My dressing-room is no chaos of litter ; on the 
 contrary, it makes a charming boudoir. My keen eye has 
 foreseen all contingencies. At whatever hour the lord and 
 master enters, he will find nothing to distress, surprise, or 
 shock him; he is greeted by flowers, scents, and everything 
 that can please the eye. 
 
 I get up in the early dawn, while he is still sleeping, and, 
 without disturbing him, pass into the dressing-room, where, 
 profiting by my mother's experience,. I remove the traces of 
 sleep by bathing in cold water. For during sleep the skin, 
 being less active, does not perform its functions adequately; 
 it becomes warm and covered with a sort of mist or atmos- 
 phere of sticky matter, visible to the eye. From a sponge- 
 bath a woman issues forth ten years younger, and this, per- 
 haps, is the interpretation of the myth of Venus rising from 
 the sea. So the cold water restores to me the saucy charm of 
 dawn, and, having combed and scented my hair and made a 
 most fastidious toilet, I glide back, snake-like, in order that 
 my master may find me, dainty as a spring morning, at his 
 wakening. He is charmed with this freshness, as of a newly- 
 opened flower, without having the least idea how it is pro- 
 duced. 
 
 The regular toilet of the day is a matter for my maid, 
 and this takes place later in a larger room, set aside for the 
 purpose. As you may suppose, there is also a toilet for 
 going to bed. Three times a day, you ,see, or it may be four, 
 do I array myself for the delight of my husband; which, 
 again, dear one, is suggestive of certain ancient myths. 
 
 But our work is not all play. We take a great deal of in- 
 terest in our flowers, in the beauties of the hothouse, and in 
 our trees. We give ourselves in all seriousness to horticul- 
 ture, and embosom the chalet in flowers, of which we are 
 passionately fond. Our lawns are always green, our shrub- 
 beries as well tended as those of a millionaire. And noth- 
 ing, I assure you, can match the beauty of our walled garden. 
 We are regular gluttons over our fruit, and watch with ten- 
 der interest our Montreuil peaches, our hotbeds, our laden 
 trellises, and pyramidal pear-trees.
 
 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 341 
 
 But lest these rural pursuits should fail to satisfy my be- 
 loved's mind, I have advised him to finish, in the quiet of 
 this retreat, some plays which were begun in his starva- 
 tion days, and which are really very fine. This is the only 
 kind of literary work which can be done in odd moments, 
 for it requires long intervals of reflection, and does not de- 
 mand the elaborate pruning essential to a finished style. One 
 can't make a task-work of dialogue; there must be biting 
 touches, summings-up, and flashes of wit, which are the 
 blossoms of the mind, and come rather by inspiration than 
 reflection. This sort of intellectual sport is very much in my 
 line. I assist Gaston in his work, and in this way manage 
 to accompany him even in the boldest flights of his imagina- 
 tion. Do you see now how it is that my winter evenings 
 never drag? 
 
 Our servants have such an easy time, that never once 
 since we were married have we had to reprimand any of 
 them. When questioned about us, they have had wit enough 
 to draw on their imaginations, and have given us out as the 
 companion and secretary of a lady and gentleman supposed 
 to be traveling. They never go out without asking permis- 
 sion, which they know will not be refused; they are con- 
 tented too, and see plainly that it will be their own fault if 
 there is a change for the worse. The gardeners are allowed 
 to sell the surplus of our fruit and vegetables. The dairy- 
 maid does the same with the milk, the cream, and the fresh 
 butter, on condition that the best of the produce is reserved 
 for us. They are well pleased with their profits, and we are 
 delighted with an abundance which no money and no in- 
 genuity can procure in that terrible Paris, where it costs a 
 hundred francs to produce a single fine peach. 
 
 All this is not without its meaning, my dear. I wish 
 to fill the place of society to my husband; now society is 
 amusing, and therefore his solitude must not be allowed to 
 pall on him. I believed myself jealous in the old days, when 
 I merely allowed myself to be loved; now I know real jeal- 
 ousy, the jealousy of the lover. A single indifferent glance
 
 342 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 
 
 unnerves me. From time to time I say to myself, "Suppose 
 he ceased to love me !" And a shudder goes through me. 
 I tremble before him, as the Christian before his God. 
 
 Alas ! Eenee, I am still without a child. The time will 
 surely come it must come when our hermitage will need 
 a father's and a mother's care to brighten it, when we shall 
 both pine to see the little frocks and pelisses, the brown or 
 golden heads, leaping, running through our shrubberies and 
 flowery paths. Oh ! it is a cruel jest of Nature's, a flower- 
 ing tree that bears no fruit. The thought of your lovely 
 children goes through me like a knife. My life has grown 
 narrower, while yours has expanded and shed its rays afar. 
 The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood 
 widens the circle of our feelings. How well I felt this dif- 
 ference when I read your kind, tender letter! To see you 
 thus living in three hearts roused my envy. Yes, you are 
 happy; you have had wisdom to obey the laws of social life, 
 whilst I stand outside, an alien. 
 
 Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a 
 woman for the loss of her beauty. I shall soon be thirty, 
 and at that age the dirge within begins. What though I am 
 still beautiful, the limits of my woman's reign are none the 
 less in sight. When they are reached, what then? I shall 
 be forty before he is; I shall be old while he is still young. 
 When this thought goes to my heart, I lie at his feet for an 
 hour at a time, making him swear to tell me instantly if ever 
 he feels his love diminishing. 
 
 But he is a child. He swears, as though the mere sug- 
 gestion were an absurdity, and he is so beautiful that 
 Renee, you understand I believe him. 
 
 Good-bye, sweet one. Shall we ever again let years pass 
 without writing? Happiness is a monotonous theme, and 
 that is, perhaps, the reason why, to souls who love, Dante 
 appears even greater in the Paradiso than in the Inferno. 
 I am not Dante ; I am only your friend, and I don't want to 
 bore you. You can write, for in your children you have an 
 ever-growing, ever-varying source of happiness, while mine 
 No more of this. A thousand loves.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 343 
 
 LIII 
 
 MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MME. GASTON" 
 
 MY DEAR LOUISE, I have read and re-read your letter, and 
 the more deeply I enter into its spirit, the clearer does it 
 become to me that it is the letter, not of a woman, but of a 
 child. You are the same old Louise, and you forget, what 
 I used to repeat over and over again to you, that the pas- 
 sion of love belongs rightly to a state of nature, and has only 
 been purloined by civilization. So fleeting is its character, 
 that the resources of society are powerless to modify its 
 primitive condition, and it becomes the effort of all noble 
 minds to make a man of the infant Cupid. But, as you your- 
 self admit, such love ceases to be natural. 
 
 Society, my dear, abhors sterility; by substituting a last- 
 ing sentiment for the mere passing frenzy of nature, it has 
 succeeded in creating that greatest of all human inventions 
 the family,, which is the enduring basis of all organized 
 society. To the accomplishment of this end, it has sacrificed 
 the individual, man as well as woman; for we must not 
 shut our eyes to the fact that a married man devotes his 
 energy, his power, and all his possessions to his wife. Is it 
 not she who reaps the benefit of all his care? For whom, 
 if not for her, are the luxury and wealth, the position and 
 distinction, the comfort and the gaiety of the home? 
 
 Oh ! my sweet, once again you have taken the wrong 
 turning in life. To be adored is a young girl's dream, which 
 may survive a few springtimes ; it cannot be that of the ma- 
 ture woman, the wife and mother. To a woman's vanity it is, 
 perhaps, enough to know that she can command adoration 
 if she likes. If you would live the life of a wife and mother, 
 return, I beg of you, to Paris. Let me repeat my warn- 
 ing: It is not misfortune which you have to dread, as others 
 do it is happiness. 
 
 Listen to me, my child! It is the simple things of life
 
 344 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 bread, air, silence of which we do not tire; they have no 
 piquancy which can create distaste; it is highly-flavored 
 dishes which irritate the palate, and in the end exhaust it. 
 Were it possible that I should to-day be loved by a man 
 for whom I could conceive a passion, such as yours for Gas- 
 ton, I would still cling to the duties and the children, who 
 axe so dear to me. To a woman's heart the feelings of a 
 mother are among the simple, natural, fruitful, and inex- 
 haustible things of life. I can recall the day, now nearly 
 fourteen years ago, when I embarked on a life of self-sacri- 
 fice with the despair of a shipwrecked mariner clinging to 
 the mast of his vessel; now, as I invoke the memory of past 
 years, I feel that I would make the same choice again. No 
 other guiding principle is so safe, or leads to such rich re- 
 ward. The spectacle of your life, which, for all the romance 
 and poetry with which you invest it, still remains based on 
 nothing but a ruthless selfishness, has helped to strengthen 
 my convictions. This is the last time I shall spealc to you 
 in this way; but I could not refrain from once more plead- 
 ing with you when I found that your happiness had been 
 proof against the most searching of all trials. 
 
 And one more point I must urge on you, suggested by 
 my meditations on your retirement. Life, whether of the 
 body or the heart, consists in certain balanced movements. 
 Any excess introduced into the working of this routine gives 
 rise either to pain or to pleasure, both of which are a more 
 fever of the soul, bound to be fugitive because nature is not 
 so framed as to support it long. But to make of life one long 
 excess is surely to choose sickness for one's portion. You 
 are sick because you maintain at the temperature of passion 
 a feeling which marriage ought to convert into a steadying, 
 purifying influence. 
 
 Yes, my sweet, I see it clearly now; the glory of a home 
 consists in this very calm, this intimacy, this sharing alike 
 of good and evil, which the vulgar ridicule. How noble was 
 the reply of the Duchesse de Sully, the wife of the great 
 Sullv, to some one who remarked that her husband, for all
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 345 
 
 his grave exterior, did not scruple to keep a mistress. <r What 
 of that?" she said. "I represent the honor of the house, 
 and should decline to play the part of a courtesan there." 
 
 But you, Louise, who are naturally more passionate than 
 tender, would be at once the wife and the mistress. With 
 the soul of a Heloise and the passions of a Saint Theresa, 
 you slip the leash on all your impulses, so long as they are 
 sanctioned by. the law ; in a word, you degrade the marriage 
 rite. Surely the tables are turned. The reproaches you 
 once heaped on me for immorally, as you said, seizing the 
 means of happiness from the very outset of my wedded life, 
 might be directed against yourself for grasping at every- 
 thing which may serve your passion. What! must nature 
 and society alike be in bondage to your caprice ? You are the 
 old Louise; you have never acquired the qualities which 
 ought to be a woman's ; self-willed and unreasonable as a girl, 
 you introduce withal into your love the keenest and most 
 mercenary of calculations ! Are you sure that, after all, the 
 price you ask for your toilets is not too high? All these 
 precautions are to my mind very suggestive of mistrust. 
 
 Oh, dear Louise, if only you knew the sweetness of a 
 mother's efforts to discipline herself in kindness and gentle- 
 ness to all about her ! My proud, self-sufficing temper grad- 
 ually dissolved into a soft melancholy, which in turn has 
 been swallowed up by those delights of motherhood which 
 have been its reward. If the early hours were toilsome, the 
 evening will be tranquil and clear. My dread is lest the day 
 of your life should take the opposite course. 
 
 When I had read your letter to a close, I prayed God to 
 send you among us for a day, that you might see what family 
 life really is, and learn the nature of those joys, which are 
 lasting and sweeter than tongue can tell, because they are 
 genuine, simple, and natural. But, alas !. what chance have 
 I with the best of arguments against a fallacy which makes 
 you happy ? As I write these words, my eyes fill with tears. 
 I had felt so sure that some months of honeymoon would 
 prove a surfeit and restore you to reason. But I see that
 
 346 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 there is no limit to your appetite, and that, having killed a 
 man who loved you, you will not cease till you have killed 
 love itself. Farewell, dear misguided friend. I am in de- 
 spair that the letter which I hoped might reconcile you to 
 society by its picture of my happiness should have brought 
 forth only a paean of selfishness. Yes, your love is selfish; 
 you love Gaston far less for himself than for what he is to 
 you. 
 
 LIV 
 
 MME. GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 May 20tf. 
 
 , calamity has come no, that is no word for it it 
 has burst like a thunderbolt over your poor Louise. You 
 know what that means; calamity for me is doubt; certainty 
 would be death. 
 
 The day before yesterday, when I had finished my first 
 toilet, I looked everywhere ior Gaston to take a little turn 
 with me before lunch, but in vain. I went to the stable, and 
 there I saw his mare all in a lather, while the groom was 
 removing the foam with a knife before rubbing her down. 
 
 "Who in the world has put Fedelta in such a state?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "Master," replied the lad. 
 
 I saw the mud of Paris on the mare's legs, for country 
 mud is quite different; and at once it flashed through me, 
 "He has been to Paris." 
 
 This thought raised a swarm of others in my heart, and 
 it seemed as though all the life in my body rushed there. 
 To go to Paris without telling me, at the hour when I leave 
 him alone, to hasten there and back at such speed as to dis- 
 tress Fedelta. Suspicion clutched me in its iron grip, till 
 I could hardly breathe. I walked aside a few steps to a seat, 
 where I tried to recover my self-command.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BFJDES 347 
 
 Here Gaston found me, apparently pale and fluttered, for 
 he immediately exclaimed, "What is wrong?" in a tone of 
 such alarm, that I rose and took his arm. But my muscles 
 refused to move, and I was forced to sit down again. Then 
 he took me in his arms and carried me to the parlor close 
 by, where the frightened servants pressed after us, till Gas- 
 ton motioned them away. Once left to ourselves, I refused 
 to speak, but was able to reach my room, where I shut myself 
 in, to weep my fill. Gaston remained something like two 
 hours at my door, listening to my sobs and questioning with 
 angelic patience his poor darling, who made no response. 
 
 At last I told him that I would see him when my eyes were 
 less red and my voice was steady again. 
 
 My formal words drove him from the house. But by- the 
 time I had bathed my eyes in iced water and cooled my 
 face, I found him in our room, the door into which was 
 open, though I had heard no steps. He begged me to tell 
 him what was wrong. 
 
 "Xothing," I said; "I saw the mud of Paris on Fedelta's 
 trembling legs; it seemed strange that you should go there 
 without telling me; but, of course, you are free." 
 
 "I shall punish you for such wicked thoughts by not giving 
 any explanation till to-inorrow," he replied. 
 
 "Look at me," I said. 
 
 My eyes met his ; deep answered to deep. No, not a trace 
 of the cloud of disloyalty which, rising from the soul, must 
 dim the clearness of the eye. I feigned satisfaction, though 
 really unconvinced. It is not women only who can lie and 
 dissemble ! 
 
 The whole of the day we spent together. Ever and again, 
 as I looked at him, I realized how fast my heart-strings were 
 bound to him. How I trembled and fluttered within when, 
 after a moment's absence, he reappeared. I live in him, not 
 in myself. My cruel sufferings gave the lie to your unkind 
 letter. Did I ever feel my life thus bound up in the noble 
 Spaniard, who adored me, as I adore this heartless boy? I 
 hate that mare ! Fool that I was to keep horses ! But the
 
 348 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 
 
 next thing would have been to lame Gaston or imprison him 
 in the cottage. Wild thoughts like these filled my brain; 
 you see how near I was to madness ! If love be not the cage, 
 what power on earth can hold back the man who wants to be 
 free? 
 
 I asked him point-blank, "Do I bore you ?" 
 
 "What needless torture you give yourself !" was his reply, 
 while he looked at me with tender,, pitying eyes. "Never 
 have I loved you so deeply." 
 
 "If that is true, my beloved, let me sell Fedelta," I an- 
 swered. 
 
 "Sell her, by all means !" 
 
 The reply crushed me. Was it not a covert taunt at my 
 wealth and his own nothingness in the house ? . This may 
 never have occurred to him, but I thought it had, and once 
 more I left him. It was night, and I would go to bed. 
 
 Oh! Kenee, to be alone with a harrowing thought drives 
 one to thoughts of death. These charming gardens, the 
 starry night, the cool air, laden with incense from our wealth 
 of flowers, our valley, our hills all seemed to me gloomy, 
 black, and desolate. It was as though I lay at the foot of 
 a precipice, surrounded by serpents and poisonous plants, 
 and saw no God in the sky. Such a night ages a woman. 
 
 Next morning I said : 
 
 "Take Fedelta and be off to Paris! Don't sell her; I love 
 her. Does she not carry you ?" 
 
 But he was not deceived; my tone betrayed the storm of 
 feeling which I strove to conceal. 
 
 "Trust me!" he replied; and the gesture with which he 
 held out his hand, the glance of his eye, were so full of 
 loyalty that I was overcome. 
 
 "What petty creatures women are !" I exclaimed. 
 
 "No, you love me, that is all," he said, pressing me to his 
 heart. 
 
 "Go to Paris without me," I said, and this time I made him 
 understand that my suspicions were laid aside. 
 
 He went; I thought he would have stayed. I won't at-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 349 
 
 tempt to tell you what I suffered. I found a second self 
 within, quite strange to me. A crisis like this has, for the 
 woman who loves, a tragic solemnity that baffles words; the 
 whole of life rises before you then, and you search in vain 
 for any horizon to it; the veriest trifle is big with meaning, 
 a glance contains a volume, icicles drift on uttered words, 
 and the death sentence is read in a movement of the lips. 
 
 I thought he would have paid me back in kind ; had I not 
 been magnanimous ? I climbed to the top of the chalet, and 
 my eyes followed him on the road. Ah ! my dear Kenee, he 
 vanished from my sight with an appalling swiftness. 
 
 "How keen he is to go !" was the thought that sprang of 
 itself. 
 
 Once more alone, I fell back into the hell of possibilities, 
 the maelstrom of mistrust. There were moments when I 
 would have welcomed any certainty, even the worst, as a 
 relief from the torture of suspense. Suspense is a duel car- 
 ried on in the heart, and we give no quarter to ourselves. 
 
 I paced up and down the walks. I returned to the house, 
 only to tear out again, like a mad woman. Gaston, who left 
 at seven o'clock, did not return till eleven. Now, as it only 
 takes half an hour to reach Paris through the park of St. 
 Cloud and the Bois de Boulogne, it is plain that he must 
 have spent three hours in town. He came back radiant, 
 with a whip in his hand for me, an india-rubber whip with a 
 gold handle. 
 
 For a fortnight I had been without a whip, my old one 
 being worn and broken. 
 
 "Was it for this you tortured me ?" I said, as I admired the 
 workmanship of this beautiful ornament, which contains a 
 little scent-box at one end. 
 
 Then it flashed on me that the present was a fresh arti- 
 fice. Nevertheless I threw myself at once on his neck, not 
 without reproaching him gently for having caused me so 
 much pain for the sake of a trifle. He was greatly pleased 
 with his ingenuity; his eyes and his whole bearing plainly 
 showed the restrained triumph of the successful plotter; for
 
 350 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 there is a radiance of the soul which is reflected in every 
 feature and turn of the body. While still examining the 
 beauties of this work of art, I asked him at a moment when 
 we happened to be looking each other in the face : 
 
 "Who is the artist ?" 
 
 "A friend of mine." 
 
 "Ah ! I see it has been mounted by Verdier," and I read 
 the name of the shop printed on the handle. 
 
 Gaston is nothing but a child yet. He blushed, and I 
 made much of him as a reward for the shame he felt in de- 
 ceiving me. I pretended to notice nothing, and he may well 
 have thought the incident was over. 
 
 May 25tft. 
 
 The next morning I was in my riding-habit by six o'clock, 
 and by seven landed at Verdier's, where several whips of 
 the same pattern were shown me. One of the men serving 
 recognized mine when I pointed it out to him. 
 
 "We sold that yesterday to a young gentleman," he said. 
 And from the description I gave him of my traitor Gaston, 
 not a doubt was left of his identity. I will spare you the 
 palpitations which rent my heart during that journey to 
 Paris and the little scene there, which marked the turning- 
 point of my life. 
 
 By half-past seven I was home again, and Gaston found 
 me, fresh and blooming, in my morning dress, sauntering 
 about with a make-believe nonchalance. I felt confident 
 that old Philippe, who had been taken into my confidence, 
 would not have betrayed my absence. 
 
 "Gaston," I said, as we walked by the side of the lake, 
 "you cannot blind me to the difference between a work of 
 art inspired by friendship and something which has been cast 
 in a mould." 
 
 He turned white, and fixed his eyes on me rather than on 
 the damaging piece of evidence I thrust before them. 
 
 "My dear," I went on, "this is not a whip ; it is a screen be- 
 hind which you are hiding something from me."
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 351 
 
 Thereupon I gave myself the gratification of watching 
 his hopeless entanglement in the coverts and labyrinths of 
 deceit and the desperate efforts he made to find some wall he 
 might scale and thus escape. In vain; he had perforce to 
 remain upon the field, face to face with an adversary, who 
 at last laid down her arms in a feigned complacence. But it 
 was too late. The fatal mistake, against which my mother 
 had tried to warn me, was made. My jealousy, exposed in 
 all its nakedness, had led to war and all its stratagems be- 
 tween Gaston and myself. Jealousy, dear, has neither sense 
 nor decency. 
 
 I made up my mind now to suffer in silence, but to keep 
 my eyes open, until my doubts were resolved one way or an- 
 other. Then I would either break with Gaston or bow to 
 my misfortune: no middle course is possible for a woman 
 who respects herself. 
 
 What can he be concealing? For a secret there is, and 
 the secret has to do with a woman. Is it some youthful 
 escapade for which he still blushes? But if so, what? The 
 word what is written in letters of fire on all I see. I read 
 it in the glassy water of my lake, in the shrubbery, in the 
 clouds, on the ceilings, at table, in the flowers of the car- 
 pets. A voice cries to me what? in my sleep. Dating from 
 the morning of my discovery, a cruel interest has sprung 
 into our lives, and I have become familiar with the bitterest 
 thought that can corrode the heart the thought of treach- 
 ery in him one loves. Oh ! my dear, there is heaven and 
 hell together in such a life. Never had I felt this scorching 
 flame, I to whom love had appeared only in the form of de- 
 voutest worship. 
 
 "So you wished to know the gloomy torture-chamber of 
 pain !" I said to myself. Good, the spirits of evil have heard 
 your prayer; go on your road, unhappy wretch! 
 
 May 20th. 
 
 Since that fatal day Gaston no longer works with the care- 
 less ease of the wealthy artist, whose work is merely pastime :
 
 352 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 he sets himself tasks like a professional writer. Four hours 
 a day he devotes to finishing his two plays. 
 
 "He wants money !" 
 
 A voice within whispered the thought. But why? He 
 spends next to nothing; we have absolutely no secrets from 
 each other; there is not a corner of his study which my eyes 
 and my fingers may not explore. His yearly expenditure 
 does not amount to two thousand francs, and I know that he 
 has thirty thousand, I can hardly say laid by, but scattered 
 loose in a drawer. You can guess what is coming. At mid- 
 night, while he was sleeping, I went to see if the money was 
 ^till there. An icy shiver ran through me. The drawer was 
 empty. 
 
 That same week I discovered that he went to Sevres to 
 fetch his letters, and these letters he must tear up immedi- 
 ately ; for though I am a very Figaro in contrivances, I have 
 never yet seen a trace of one. Alas ! my sweet, despite the 
 fine promises and vows by which I bound myself after the 
 scene of the whip, an impulse, which I can only call madness, 
 drove me to follow him in one of his rapid rides to the 
 post-office. Gaston was appalled to be thus discovered on 
 horseback, paying the postage of a letter which he held in 
 his hand. He looked fixedly at me, and then put spurs to 
 Fedelta. The pace was so hard that I felt shaken to bits 
 when I reached the lodge gate, though my mental agony was 
 such at the time that it might well have dulled all conscious- 
 ness of bodily pain. Arrived at the gate, Gaston said nothing ; 
 he rang the bell and waited without a word. I was more 
 dead than alive. I might be mistaken or I might not, but 
 in neither case was it fitting for Armande-Louise-Marie de 
 Chaulieu to play the spy. I had sunk to the level of the 
 gutter, by the side of courtesans, opera-dancers, mere crea- 
 tures of instinct; even the vulgar shop-girl or humble seam- 
 stress might look down on me. 
 
 What a moment ! At last the door opened ; he handed his 
 horse to the groom, and I also dismounted, but into his arms, 
 which were stretched out to receive me. I threw my skirt
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 353 
 
 over my left arm, gave him my right, and we walked on 
 still in silence. The few steps we thus took might be reckoned 
 to me for a hundred years of purgatory. A swarm of 
 thoughts beset me as I walked, now seeming to take visible 
 form in tongues of fire before my eyes, now assailing my 
 mind, each with its own poisoned dart. When the groom 
 and the horses were far away, I stopped Gaston, and, looking 
 him in the face, said, as I pointed, with a gesture that you 
 should have seen, to the fatal letter still in his right hand : 
 
 "May I read it?" 
 
 He gave it me. I opened it and found a letter from Na- 
 than, the dramatic author, informing Gaston that a play of 
 his had been accepted, learned, rehearsed, and would be pro- 
 duced the following Saturday. He also enclosed a box ticket. 
 
 Though for me this was the opening of heaven's gates to the 
 martyr, yet the fiend would not leave me in peace, but kept 
 crying, "Where are the thirty thousand francs?" It was a 
 question which self-respect, dignity, all my old self in fact, 
 prevented me from uttering. If my thought became speech, 
 I might as well throw myself into the lake at once, and yet I 
 could hardly keep the words down. Dear friend, was not -this 
 a trial passing the strength of woman? 
 
 I returned the letter, saying : 
 
 "My poor Gaston, you are getting bored down here. Let 
 us go back to Paris, won't you ?" 
 
 "To Paris?" he said. "But why? I only wanted to find 
 out if I had any gift, to taste the flowing bowl of success !" 
 
 Nothing would be easier than for me to ransack the drawer 
 some time when he is working and pretend great surprise at 
 finding the money gone. But that would be going half-way 
 to meet the answer, "Oh ! my friend So-and-So was hard up !" 
 etc., which a man of Gaston's quick wit would not have far 
 to seek. 
 
 The moral, my dear, is that the brilliant success of this 
 play, which all Paris is crowding to see, is due to us, though 
 the whole credit goes to Nathan. I am represented by one
 
 354 LETTERS OP TWO BRIDES 
 
 of the two stars in the legend: Et M * *. I saw the first 
 night from the depths of one of the stage boxes. 
 
 July 1st. 
 
 Gaston's work and his visits to Paris shall continue. He 
 is preparing new plays, partly because he wants a pretext 
 for going to Paris, partly in order to make money. Three 
 plays have been accepted, and two more are commissioned. 
 
 Oh! my dear, I am lost, all is darkness around me. I 
 would set fire to the house in a moment if that .would bring 
 light. What does it all mean? Is he ashamed of taking 
 money from me? He is too high-minded for so trumpery 
 a matter to weigh with him. Besides, scruples of the kind 
 could only be the outcome of some love affair. A man would 
 take anything from his wife, but from the woman he has 
 ceased to care for, or is thinking of deserting, it is different. 
 If he needs such large sums, it must be to spend them on a 
 woman. For himself, why should he hesitate to draw from 
 my purse? Our savings amount to one hundred thousand 
 francs ! 
 
 In short, my sweetheart, I have explored a whole continent 
 of possibilities, and after carefully weighing all the evidence, 
 am convinced I have a rival. I am deserted for whom? 
 At all costs I must see the unknown. 
 
 July 10th. 
 
 Light has come, and it is all over with me. Yes, Kenee, 
 at the age of thirty, in the perfection of my beauty, with all 
 the resources of a ready wit and the seductive charms of 
 dress at my command, I am betrayed and for whom? A 
 large-boned Englishwoman, with big feet and thick waist 
 a regular British cow! There is no longer room for doubt. 
 I will tell you the history of the last few days. 
 
 Worn out with suspicions, which were fed by Gaston's 
 guilty silence (for, if he had helped a friend, why keep it a 
 secret from me?), his insatiable desire for money, and his 
 frequent journeys to Paris; jealous too of the work from
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 355 
 
 which he seemed unable to tear himself, I at last made up 
 my mind to take certain steps, of such a degrading nature 
 that I cannot tell you about them. Suffice it to say that 
 three days ago I ascertained that Gaston, when in Paris, visits 
 a house in the Eue de la Ville 1'Eveque, where he guards 
 his mistress with jealous mystery, unexampled in Paris. The 
 porter was surly, and I could get little out of him, but that 
 little was enough to put an end to any lingering hope, and 
 with hope to life. On this point my mind was resolved, 
 and I only waited to learn the whole truth first. 
 
 With this object I went to Paris and took rooms in a house 
 exactly opposite the one which Gaston visits. Thence I 
 saw him with my own eyes enter the courtyard on horseback. 
 Too soon a ghastly fact forced itself on me. This English- 
 woman, who seems to me about thirty-six, is known as Mme. 
 Gaston. This discovery was my deathblow. 
 
 I saw him next walking to the Tuileries with a couple of 
 children. Oh ! my dear, two children, the living images of 
 Gaston ! The likeness is so strong that it bears scandal on the 
 face of it. And what pretty children! in their handsome 
 English costumes ! She is the mother of bis children. Here 
 is the key to the whole mystery. 
 
 The woman herself might be a Greek statue, stepped down 
 from some monument. Cold and white as marble, she moves 
 sedately with a mother's pride. She is undeniably beautiful, 
 but heavy as a man-of-war. There is no breeding or dis- 
 tinction about her; nothing of the English lady. Probably 
 she is a farmer's daughter from some wretched and remote 
 country village, or, it may be, the eleventh child of some poor 
 clergyman ! 
 
 I reached home, after a miserable journey, during which 
 all sorts of fiendish thoughts had me at their mercy, with 
 hardly any life left in me. Was she married? Did he know 
 her before our marriage? Had she been deserted by some 
 rich man, whose mistress she was, and thus thrown back upon 
 Gaston's hands? Conjectures without end flitted through
 
 356 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 my brain, as though conjecture were needed in the presence 
 of the children. 
 
 The next day I returned to Paris, and by a free use of my 
 purse extracted from the porter the information that Mme. 
 Gaston was legally married. 
 
 His reply to my question took the form, "Yes, Miss." 
 
 JulylSUi. 
 
 . My dear, my love for Gaston is stronger than ever since 
 that morning, and he has every appearance of being still 
 more deeply in love. He is so young ! A score of times it 
 has been on my lips, when we rise in the morning, to say, 
 "Then you love me better than the lady of the Eue de la 
 Ville 1'Evcque?" But I dare not explain to myself why the 
 words are checked on my tongue. 
 
 "Are you very fond of children ?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh yes !" was his reply ; "but children will come I" 
 
 "What makes you think so ?" 
 
 "I have consulted the best doctors, and they agree in ad- 
 vising me to travel for a couple of months." 
 
 "Gaston," I said, "if love in absence had been possible for 
 me, do you suppose I should ever have left the convent?" 
 
 He laughed ; but as for me, dear, the word "travel" pierced 
 my heart. Eather, far rather, would I leap from the top of 
 the house than be rolled down the staircase, step by step. 
 Farewell, my sweetheart. I have arranged for my death to 
 be easy and without horrors, but certain. I made my will 
 yesterday. You can come to me now, the prohibition is re- 
 moved. Come, then, and receive my last farewell. I will not 
 die by inches ; my death, like my life, shall bear the impress 
 of dignity and grace. 
 
 Good-bye, dear sister soul, whose affection has never wa- 
 vered nor grown weary, but has been the constant tender 
 moonlight of my soul. If the intensity of passion has not 
 been ours, at least we have been spared its venomous hiltftr- 
 ness. How rightly you have judged of life ! Farewell.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 357 
 
 LV 
 
 THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE TO MME. GASTON" 
 
 July 1A. 
 
 MY DEA.R LOUISE, I send this letter by an express before 
 hastening to the chalet myself. Take courage. Your last 
 letter seemed to me so frantic, that I thought myself justified, 
 under the circumstances, in confiding all to Louis; it was 
 a question of saving you from yourself. If the means we 
 have employed have been, like yours, repulsive, yet the result 
 is so satisfactory that I am certain you will approve. I went 
 so far as to set the police to work, but the whole thing re- 
 mains a secret between the prefect, ourselves, and you. 
 
 In one word, Gaston is a jewel ! But here are the facts. 
 His brother, Louis Gaston, died at Calcutta, while in the 
 service of a mercantile company, when he was on the very 
 point of returning to France, a rich, prosperous, married 
 man, having received a very large fortune with his wife, 
 who was the widow of an English merchant. For ten years 
 he had worked hard that he might be able to send home 
 enough to support his brother, to whom he was devotedly 
 attached, and from whom his letters generously concealed 
 all his trials and disappointments. 
 
 Then came the failure of the great Halmer house; the 
 widow was mined, and the sudden shock affected Louis Gas- 
 ton's brain. He had no mental energy left to resist the dis- 
 ease which attacked him, and he died in Bengal, whither he 
 had gone to try and realize the remnants of his wife's prop- 
 erty. The dear, good fellow had deposited with a banker 
 a first sum of three hundred thousand francs, which was 
 to go to his brother, but the banker was involved in the 
 Halmer crash, and thus their last resource failed them. 
 
 Louis' widow, the handsome woman whom you took for 
 your rival, arrived in Paris with two children your 
 nephews and an empty purse, her mother's jewels having 
 barely sufficed to pay for bringing them over. The instruc-
 
 358 LETTERS OF TWO BRlDES 
 
 tions which Louis Gaston had given the banker for sending 
 the money to his brother enabled the widow to find your 
 husband's former home. As Gaston had disappeared without 
 leaving any address, Mme. Louis Gaston was directed to 
 d'Arthez, the only person who could give any information 
 about him. 
 
 D'Arthez was the more ready to relieve the young woman's 
 pressing needs, because Louis Gaston, at the time of his 
 marriage four years before, had written to make inquiries 
 about his brother from the famous author, whom he knew 
 to be one of his friends. The Captain had consulted d'Arthez 
 as to the best means of getting the money safely transferred 
 to Marie, and d'Arthez had replied, telling him that Gaston 
 was now a rich man through his marriage with the Baronne 
 de Macumer. The personal beauty, which was the mother's 
 rich heritage to her sons, had saved them both one in India, 
 the other in Paris from destitution. A touching story, is it 
 not? 
 
 D'Arthez naturally wrote, after a time, to tell your husband 
 of the condition of his sister-in-law and her children, in- 
 forming him, at the same time, of the generous intentions 
 of the Indian Gaston towards his Paris brother, which an 
 unhappy chance alone had frustrated. Gaston, as you may 
 imagine, hurried off to Paris. Here is the first ride accounted 
 for. During the last five years he had saved fifty thousand 
 francs out of the income which you forced him to accept, 
 and this sum he invested in the public funds under the 
 names of his two nephews, securing them each, in this way, 
 an income of twelve hundred francs. Next he furnished 
 his sister-in-law's rooms, and promised her a quarterly al- 
 lowance of three thousand francs. Here you see the meaning 
 of his dramatic labors and the pleasure caused him by the 
 success of his first play. 
 
 Mme. Gaston, therefore, is no rival of yours, and has every 
 right to your name. A man of Gaston's sensitive delicacy 
 was bound to keep the affair secret from you, knowing, as 
 he did, your generous nature. Nor does he look on what
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 350 
 
 you give him as his own. D'Arthez read me the letter he 
 had from your husband, asking him to be one of the witnesses 
 at his marriage. Gaston in this declares that his happiness 
 would have been perfect but for the one drawback of his 
 poverty and indebtedness to you. A virgin soul is at the 
 mercy of such scruples. Either they make themselves felt 
 or they do not; and when they do, it is easy to imagine the 
 conflict of feeling and embarrassment to which they give rise. 
 Nothing is more natural than Gaston's wish to provide in 
 secret a suitable maintenance for the woman who is his 
 brother's widow, and who had herself set aside one hundred 
 thousand ecus for him from her own fortune. She is a hand- 
 some woman, warm-hearted, and extremely well-bred, but 
 not clever. She is a mother; and, you may be sure, I lost 
 my heart to her at first sight when I found her with one 
 child in her arms, and the other dressed like a little lord. 
 The children first ! is written in every detail of her house. 
 
 Far from being angry, therefore, with your beloved hus- 
 band, you should find in all this fresh reason for loving him. 
 I have met him, and think him the most delightful young 
 fellow in Paris. Yes ! dear child, when I saw him, I had 
 no difficulty in understanding that a woman might lose her 
 head about him; his soul is mirrored in his countenance. If 
 I were you, I should settle the widow and her children at 
 the chalet, in a pretty little cottage which you could have 
 built for them, and adopt the boys ! 
 
 Be at peace, then, dear soul, and plan this little surprise, 
 in your turn, for Gaston. 
 
 LVI 
 
 MME. GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 AH! my dear friend, what can I say in answer except the 
 cruel "It is too late" of that fool Lafayette to his royal mas- 
 ter? Oh! my life, my sweet life, what physician will give
 
 360 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 it back to me ? My own hand has dealt the deathblow. Alas ! 
 have I not been a mere will-o'-the-wisp, whose twinkling 
 spark was fated to perish before it reached a flame ? My eyes 
 rain torrents of tears and yet they must not fall when I am 
 with him. I fly him, and he seeks me. My despair is all 
 within. This torture Dante forgot to place in his Inferno. 
 Come to see me die ! 
 
 LVII 
 
 THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE TO THE COMTE DE 
 L'ESTORADE 
 
 THE CHALET, August 7th. 
 
 MY LOVE, Take the children away to Provence without me ; 
 I remain with Louise, who has only a few days yet to live. 
 I cannot leave either her or her husband, for whose reason 
 I fear. 
 
 You know the scrap of letter which sent me flying to Ville 
 d'Avray, picking up the doctors on my way. Since then 
 I have not left my darling friend, and it has been impossible 
 to write to you, for I have sat up every night for a fortnight. 
 
 When I arrived, I found her with Gaston, in full dress, 
 beautiful, laughing, happy. It was a heroic falsehood ! They 
 were like two lovely children together in their restored con- 
 fidence. For a moment I was deceived, like Gaston, by this* 
 effontery; but Louise pressed my hand, whispering: 
 
 "He must not know; I am dying." 
 
 An icy chill fell over me as I felt her burning hand and 
 saw the red spots on her cheeks. I congratulated myself 
 on my prudence in leaving the doctors in the wood till the} 
 should be sent for. 
 
 "Leave us for a little," she said to Gaston. "Two 
 women who have not met for five years have plenty of secrets 
 to talk over, and Kenee, I have no doubt, has things to confide 
 in me."
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 361 
 
 Directly we were alone, she flung herself into my arms, 
 unable longer to restrain her tears. 
 
 "Tell me about it," I said. "I have brought with me, in 
 case of need, the best surgeon and the best physician from 
 the hospital, and Bianchon as well ; there are four altogether." 
 
 "Ah !" she cried, "have them in at once if they can save me, 
 if there is still time. The passion which hurried me to death 
 now cries for life !" 
 
 "But what have you done to yourself ?" 
 
 "I have in a few days brought myself to the last stage of 
 consumption." 
 
 "But how?" 
 
 "I got myself into a profuse ^eispiration in the night, and 
 then ran out and lay down by the side of the laue in the dew. 
 Gaston thinks I have a cold, and I am dying !" 
 
 "Send him to Paris ; I will fetch the doctors myself," I said, 
 as I rushed out wildly to the spot where I had left them. 
 
 Alas ! my love, after the consultation was over, not one 
 of the doctors gave me the least hope; they all believe that 
 Louise will die with the fall of the leaves. The dear child's 
 constitution has wonderfully helped the success of her plan. 
 It seems she has a predisposition to this complaint; and 
 though, in the ordinary course, she might have lived a long 
 time, a few days' folly has made the case desperate. 
 
 I cannot tell you what I felt on hearing this sentence, 
 based on such clear explanations. You know that I have 
 lived in Louise as much as in my own life. I was simply 
 crushed, and could not stir to escort to the door these har- 
 bingers of evil. I don't know how long I remained lost in 
 bitter thoughts, the tears running down my cheeks, when 
 I was roused from my stupor by the words : 
 
 "So there is no hope for me !" in a clear, angelic voice. 
 
 It was Louise, with her hand on my shoulder. She made 
 me get up, and carried me off to her small drawing-room. 
 With a beseeching glance, she went on : 
 
 "Stay with me to the end ; I won't have doleful faces round 
 me. Above all, I must keep the truth from him. I know
 
 362 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 that I have strength to do it. I am full of youth and 
 spirit, and can die standing! For myself, I have no re- 
 grets. I am dying as I wished to die, still young and beauti- 
 ful, in the perfection of my womanhood. 
 
 "As for him, I can see very well now that I should have 
 made his life miserable. Passion has me in its grip, like a 
 struggling fawn, impatient of the toils. My groundless jeal- 
 ousy has already wounded him sorely. When the day came 
 that my suspicions met only indifference which in the long 
 run is the rightful meed of all jealousy well, that would 
 have been my death. I have had my share of life. There are 
 people whose names on the muster-roll of the world show 
 sixty years of service, and yet in all that time they have not 
 had two years of real life, whilst my record of thirty is 
 doubled by the intensity of my love. 
 
 "Thus for him, as well as for me, the close is a happy one. 
 But between us, dear Eenee, it is different. You lose a loving 
 sister, and that is a loss which nothing can repair. You alone 
 here have the right to mourn my death." 
 
 After a long pause, during which I could only see her 
 through a mist of tears, she continued : 
 
 "The moral of my death is a cruel one. My dear doctor in 
 petticoats was right; marriage cannot rest upon passion as 
 its foundation, nor even upon love. How fine and noble is 
 your life ! keeping always to the one safe road, you give your 
 husband an ever-growing affection; while the passionate 
 eagerness with which I threw myself into wedded life was 
 bound in nature to diminish. Twice have I gone astray, and 
 twice has Death stretched forth his bony hand to strike my 
 happiness. The first time, he robbed me of the noblest and 
 most devoted of men; now it is my turn, the grinning 
 monster tears me from the arms of my poet husband, with 
 all his beauty and his grace. 
 
 "Yet I would not complain. Have I not known in turn 
 two men, each the very pattern of nobility one in mind, 
 the other in outward form? In Felipe, the soul dominated 
 and transformed the body ; in Gaston, one could not say which
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 363 
 
 was supreme heart, mind, or grace of form. I die adored 
 what more could I wish for? Time, perhaps, in which 
 to draw near the God of whom I may have too little thought. 
 My spirit will take its flight towards Him, full of love, and 
 with the prayer that some day, in the world above, He will 
 unite me once more to the two who made a heaven of my life 
 below. Without them, paradise would be a desert to me. 
 
 "To others, my example would be fatal, for mine was no 
 common lot. To meet a Felipe or a Gaston is more than 
 mortals can expect, and therefore the doctrine of society 
 in regard to marriage accords with the natural law. Woman 
 is weak, and in marrying she ought to make an entire sacrifice 
 of her will to the man who, in return, should lay his selfish- 
 ness at her feet. The stir which women of late years have 
 created by their whining and insubordination is ridiculous, 
 and only shows how well we deserve the epithet of children, 
 bestowed by philosophers on our sex." 
 
 She continued talking thus in the gentle voice you know 
 so well, uttering the gravest truths in the prettiest manner, 
 until Gaston entered, bringing with him his sister-in-law, the 
 two children, and the English nurse, whom, at Louise's re- 
 quest, he had been to fetch from Paris. 
 
 "Here are the pretty instruments of my torture," she said, 
 as her nephews approached. "Was not the mistake excusable ? 
 What a wonderful likeness to their uncle !" 
 
 She was most friendly to Mme. Gaston the elder, and 
 begged that she would look upon the chalet as her home; in 
 short, she played the hostess to her in her best de Chaulieu 
 manner, in which no one can rival her. 
 
 I wrote at once to the Due and Duchesse de Chaulieu, the 
 Due de Ehetore, and the Due de Lenoncourt-Givry, as well as 
 to Madeleine. It was time. Next day, Louise, worn out 
 with so much exertion, was unable to go out; indeed, she 
 only got up for dinner. In the course of the evening, Made- 
 leine de Lenoncourt, her two brothers, and her mother ar- 
 rived. The coolness which Louise's second marriage had 
 caused between herself and her family disappeared. Every
 
 364 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 day since that evening, Louise's father and both her brothers 
 have ridden over in the morning, and the two duchesses 
 spend all their evenings at the chalet. Death unites as well 
 as separates; it silences all paltry feeling. 
 
 Louise is perfection in her charm, her grace, her good sense, 
 her wit, and her tenderness. She has retained to the last 
 that perfect tact for which she has been so famous, and she 
 lavishes on us the treasures of her brilliant mind, which made 
 her one of the queens of Paris. 
 
 "I should like to look well even in my coffin," she said 
 with her matchless smile, as she lay down on the bed where 
 she was to linger for a fortnight. 
 
 Her room has nothing of the sick-chamber in it ; medicines, 
 ointments, the whole apparatus of nursing, is carefully con- 
 cealed. 
 
 "Is not my deathbed pretty !" she said to the Sevres priest 
 who came to confess her. 
 
 We gloated over her like misers. All this anxiety, and the 
 terrible truths which dawned on him, have prepared Gaston 
 for the worst. He is full of courage, but the blow has gone 
 home. It would not surprise me to see him follow his wife in 
 the natural course. Yesterday, as we were walking round the 
 lake, he said to me : 
 
 "I must be a father to those two children," and he pointed 
 to his sister-in-law, who was taking the boys for a walk. "But 
 though I shall do nothing to hasten my end, I want your 
 promise that you will be a second mother to them, and will 
 persuade your husband to accept the office of guardian, which 
 I shall depute to him in conjunction with my sister-in-law." 
 
 He said this quite simply, like a man who knows he is not 
 long for this world. He has smiles on his face to meet 
 Louise's, and it is only I whom he does not deceive. He is 
 a mate for her in courage. 
 
 Louise has expressed a wish to see her godson, but I am not 
 sorry he should be in Provence ; she might want to remember 
 him generously, and I should be in a great difficulty. 
 
 Good-bye, my love.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 365 
 
 August 25th (her birthday). 
 
 Yesterday evening Louise was delirious for a short time; 
 but her delirium was the prettiest babbling, which shows that 
 even the madness of gifted people is not that of fools or no- 
 bodies. In a mere thread of a voice she sang some Italian 
 airs from I Puritani, La Sonnambula, Moise, while we stood 
 round the bed in silence. Not one of us, not even the Due 
 de Bhetore, had dry eyes, so clear was it to us all that her soul 
 was in this fashion passing from us. She could no longer 
 see us ! Yet she was there still in the charm of the faint 
 melody, with its sweetness not of this earth. 
 
 During the night the death agony began. It is now seven 
 in the morning, and I have just myself raised her from 
 bed. Some nicker of strength revived; she wished to sit by 
 her window, and asked for Gaston's hand. And then, my 
 love, the sweetest spirit whom we shall ever see on this earth 
 departed, leaving us the empty shell. 
 
 The last sacrament had been administered the evening be- 
 fore, unknown to Gaston, who was taking a snatch of sleep 
 during this agonizing ceremony; and after she was moved 
 to the window, she asked me to read her the De Profundis 
 in French, while she was thus face to face with the lovely 
 scene, which was her handiwork. She repeated the words 
 after me to herself, and pressed the hands of her husband, 
 who knelt on the other side of the chair. 
 
 August 1<oUi. 
 
 My heart is broken. I have just seen her in her winding- 
 sheet ; her face is quite pale now with purple shadows. Oh ! 
 I want my children ! my children ! Bring me my children ! 
 
 THE END
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 AND OTHER STORIES
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THERE are not a few volumes of Balzac of which it is pos j 
 sible to speak with more editorial enthusiasm, perhaps in- 
 deed there is hardly any of which it is possible to speak with 
 less, than of the volume which opens with La Femme de 
 Trente Ans. All its contents, or all with the exception of 
 Gobseck, are tainted with a kind of sentimentalism which, in 
 Balzac's hands and to English taste, very rarely escapes a 
 smatch of the rancid; few of them exhibit him at his best 
 as an artist, and one or two show him almost at his worst. 
 
 The least good of all though its title and a very small 
 part of its contents have had the honor to meet with an ap- 
 proval from Saiute-Beuve, which that critic did not always 
 bestow upon Balzac's work is the first or title-story. As 
 M. de Lovenjoul's patient investigations have shown, and as 
 the curiously wide date 1828-1844 would itself indicate to 
 any one who has carefully studied Balzac's ways of proceed- 
 ing, it is not really a single story at all, but consists of half 
 a dozen chapters or episodes originally published at different 
 times and in different places, and stuck together with so much 
 less than even the author's usual attention to strict construc- 
 tion, that the general title is totally inapplicable to the 
 greater part of the book, and that the chronology of that part 
 to which it does apply fits in very badly with the rest. 
 This, however, is the least of the faults of the piece. It is 
 more though still not most serious that Balzac never seems 
 to have made up anything like a clear or consistent idea of
 
 X INTRODUCTION 
 
 Julie d'Aiglemont in his mind. First she is a selfish and 
 thoughtless child; then an angelic and persecuted but faith- 
 ful wife; then a somewhat facile victim to a very common- 
 place seducer, after resisting an exceptional one. So, again, 
 she is first a devoted mother, then an almost unnatural 
 parent, and then again devoted, being punished par oil elle 
 a peche once more. Even this, however, might have been 
 atoned for by truth, or grace, or power of handling. I can- 
 not find much of any of these things here. Not to mention 
 the unsavoriness of part of Julie's trials, they are not such 
 as, in me at least, excite any sympathy; and Balzac has 
 drenched her with the sickly sentiment above noticed to an 
 almost nauseous extent. Although he would have us take 
 the Marquis as a brutal husband, he does not in effect repre- 
 sent him as such, but merely as a not very refined and rather 
 clumsy "good fellow," who for his sins is cursed with a mi- 
 jauree of a wife. The Julie- Arthur love-passages are in the 
 very worst style of "sensibility ;" and though I fully acknowl- 
 edge the heroism of my countryman Lord Arthur in allow- 
 ing his fingers to be crushed and making no sign although 
 1 question very much whether I could have done the same 
 I fear this romantic act does not suffice to give verisimilitude 
 to a figure which is for the most part mere pasteboard, with 
 sawdust inside and tinsel out. Many of the incidents, such 
 as the pushing of the child into the water, and, still more, 
 the scene on shipboard where the princely Corsair takes 
 millions out of a piano and gives them away, have the crude 
 and childish absurdity of the (Euvres de Jeunesse, which they 
 very much resemble, and with which, from the earliest date 
 given, they may very probably have been contemporary. 
 Those who are fortunate enough to find Julie, in her early 
 afternoon of femme incomprise, attractive, may put up with
 
 INTRODUCTION xl 
 
 these defects. I own that I am not quite able to find the com- 
 pensation sufficient. The worse side of the French "sensi- 
 bility" school from Kousseau to Madame de Stael appears 
 here; and Balzac, genius as he was, had quite weak points 
 enough of his own without borrowing other men's and 
 women's. 
 
 La Femme Abandonnee, with its two successors, rather be- 
 longs to that class of Balzac's stories to which I have else- 
 where given the title of anecdotes. It is better than the title- 
 story, or rather it has fewer and less variable faults. The 
 first meeting of Madame de Beauseant and M. de Nueil is 
 positively good ; and the introduction, with its sketch of what 
 Balzac knew or dreamed to be society, has the merit of most 
 of his overtures. But the tale as a whole has the drawback 
 of almost all this special class of love-stories, except Adolphe 
 from which so many of them were imitated, and which 
 Balzac, I think, generally had in his mind when he attempted 
 the style. Benjamin Constant, either by sheer literary skill, 
 or as the result of transferring to his book an intense personal 
 experience, has made the somewhat monotonous and unre- 
 lieved as well as illicit passion of his personages intensely 
 real and touching. Balzac, here, has not. It is not Philistin- 
 ism, but common-sense, which objects to M. de Nueil's neglect 
 of the most sensible of proverbs about the old love and the 
 new. 
 
 "Sensibility" pursues us still in La Grenadiere, and does 
 not set us free in Le Message, a story which, by the way, was 
 much twisted about in its author's hands, and underwent 
 transformations too long to be summarized here. It may 
 be brutal to feel little or no sympathy with the woes and wil- 
 low-wearing of the guilty and beautiful Madame Willemsens 
 (otherwise Lady Brandon) by the water of Loire; but I con-
 
 xll INTRODUCTION 
 
 fess that they leave me tearless, and I do not know that the 
 subsequent appearances of Marie Gaston in Deux Jeunes 
 Mariees and Le Depute d'Arcis add to the attraction of this 
 novelette. Jules Sandeau could have made a really touch- 
 ing thing of what was, I think, out of Balzac's way. Le 
 Message was less so ; there is a point of irony in it which com- 
 mends itself to him, and which keeps it sweet and prevents 
 it from sharing the mawkishness of the earlier stories. But 
 it is slight. 
 
 In Gob seek, though not entirely, we shake off this un- 
 wonted and uncongenial influence, and come to matters in 
 which Balzac was much more at home. The hero himself is 
 interesting, the story of Derville and Jenny escapes mawkish- 
 ness, and all the scenes in which the Restauds and Maxime 
 de Trailles figure are admirably done and well worth read- 
 ing. It is not necessary to take into consideration the im- 
 portant part which the Dutch Jew's granddaughter or grand- 
 niece Esther afterwards plays in the Comedie he is good in 
 himself, and a famous addition to Balzac's gallery of misers, 
 the most interesting, if not the most authentic, ever arranged 
 on that curious subject. It is lucky that Gobseck comes in 
 this connection, for it tones up a dreary book wonderfully. 
 Pierre Grassou, which is included here for convenience, 
 is a shorter sketch ; but it is good in itself ; it is very charac- 
 teristic of its time, and is especially happy as giving the vol- 
 ume a touch of comedy which is grateful. The figure of the 
 artist-bourgeois, neither Bohemian nor buveur d'eau, is ex- 
 cellently hit off, and the thing leaves us with all the sense 
 of a pleasant afterpiece. 
 
 It takes M. de Lovenjoul nearly three of his large pages 
 of small type to give an exact bibliography of the extra- 
 ordinary mosaic which bears the title of La Femme de Trente
 
 INTRODUCTION xlll 
 
 Ans. It must be sufficient here to say that most of its parts 
 appeared separately in different periodicals (notably the 
 Revue de Paris') during the very early thirties; that when 
 in 1832 most of them appeared together in the Scenes de la 
 Vie Privee they were independent stories; and that when the 
 author did put them together, he at first adopted the title 
 Meme Histoire. 
 
 La Femme Abandonnee appeared in the Revue de Paris for 
 September 1832, was a Scene de la Vie de Province next year, 
 and was shifted to the Vie Privee when the Comedie was first 
 arranged. La Grenadiere followed it in the same review next 
 month, and had the same subsequent history. The record 
 of Le Message is much more complicated ; and I must again 
 refer those who wish to follow it exactly to M. de Lovenjoul. 
 It is enough here to say that it at first appeared in the mid- 
 February issue of the Deux Mondes for 1832, then compli- 
 cated itself with La Grande Breteche and its companion tales, 
 and then imitated the stories which here precede it by being 
 first a "provincial," and then, as it had already been, a "pri- 
 vate" scene. Gobseck, unlike all these, had no newspaper 
 ushering, but was a Scene de la Vie Privee from the first use 
 of that title in 1830. Its own title, however, Les Dangers 
 de flnconduite and Papa Gobseck, varied a little, and it once 
 made an excursion to the Scenes de la Vie Parisienne, but 
 returned. Pierre Grassou was first printed in a miscellany 
 named Babel in the year 1840, was republished with Pierrette 
 in the same year, and joined the "Maison de Balzac" in 1844. 
 
 G. S.
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 To Louis Boulanger, Painter. 
 I. 
 
 EARLY MISTAKES 
 
 IT was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a 
 morning which gave promise of one of those bright days when 
 Parisians, for the first time in the year, behold dry pavements 
 underfoot and a cloudless sky overhead. It was not yet noon 
 when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by two spirited horses, 
 turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Eue de Rivoli, 
 and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the 
 newly opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse des Feuil- 
 lants. The owner of the carriage looked anxious and out of 
 health; the thin hair on his sallow temples, turning gray 
 already, gave a look of premature age to his face. He flung 
 the reins to a servant who followed on horseback, and alighted 
 to take in his arms a young girl whose dainty beauty had 
 already attracted the eyes of loungers on the Terrasse. The 
 little lad}% standing upon the carriage step, graciously sub- 
 mitted to be taken by the waist, putting an arm round the 
 neck of her guide, who set her down upon the pavement with- 
 out so much as ruffling the trimming of her green rep dress. 
 No lover would have been so careful. The stranger could only 
 be the father of the young girl, who took his arm familiarly 
 without a word of thanks, and hurried him into the Garden 
 of the Tuileries. 
 
 The old father noted the wondering stare which some of the 
 young men gave the couple, and the sad expression left his 
 VOL. 5-25 (1)
 
 2 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 face for a moment. Although lie had long since reached the 
 time of life when a man is fain to be content with such il- 
 lusory delights as vanity bestows, he began to smile. 
 
 "They think you are my wife," he said in the young lady's 
 ear, and he held himself erect and walked with slow steps, 
 which filled his daughter with despair. 
 
 He seemed to take up the coquette's part for her; perhaps 
 of the two, he was the more gratified by the curious glances 
 directed at those little feet, shod with plum-colored prunella ; 
 at the dainty figure outlined by a low-cut bodice, filled in with 
 an embroidered chemisette, which only partially concealed the 
 girlish throat. Her dress was lifted by her movements as she 
 walked, giving glimpses higher than the shoes of delicately 
 moulded outlines beneath open-work silk stockings. More 
 than one of the idlers turned and passed the pair again, to ad- 
 mire or to catch a second glimpse of the young face, about 
 which the brown tresses played ; there was a glow in its white 
 and red, partly reflected from the rose-colored satin lining 
 of her fashionable bonnet, partly due to the eagerness and im- 
 patience which sparkled in every feature. A mischievous 
 sweetness lighted up the beautiful, almond-shaped dark eyes, 
 bathed in liquid brightness, shaded by the long lashes and 
 curving arch of eyebrow. Life and youth displayed their 
 treasures in the petulant face and in the gracious outlines of 
 the bust unspoiled even by the fashion of the day, which 
 brought the girdle under the breast. 
 
 The young lady herself appeared to be insensible to ad- 
 miration. Her eyes were fixed in a sort of anxiety on the 
 Palace of the Tuileries, the goal, doubtless, of her petulant 
 promenade. It wanted but fifteen minutes of noon, yet even 
 at that early hour several women in gala dress were coming 
 away from the Tuileries, not without backward glances at 
 the gates and pouting looks of discontent, as if they regretted 
 the lateness of the arrival which had cheated them of a longed- 
 for spectacle. Chance carried a few words let fall by one 
 of these disappointed fair ones to the ears of the charming 
 stranger, and put her in a more than common uneasiness. The
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 3 
 
 elderly man watched the signs of impatience and appre- 
 hension which flitted across his companion's pretty face with 
 interest, rather than amusement, in his eyes, observing her 
 with a close and careful attention, which perhaps could only 
 be prompted by some after-thought in the depths of a father's 
 mind. 
 
 It was the thirteenth Sunday of the year 1813. In two 
 
 days' time Napoleon was to set out upon the disastrous cam- 
 paign in which he was to lose first Bessieres, and then Duroc ; 
 he was to win the memorable battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, 
 to see himself treacherously deserted by Austria, Saxony, 
 Bavaria, and Bernadotte, and to dispute the dreadful field of 
 Leipsic. The magnificent review commanded for that day 
 by the Emperor was to be the last of so many which had long 
 drawn forth the admiration of Paris and of foreign visitors. 
 For the last time the Old Guard would execute their scientific 
 military manoeuvres with the pomp and precision which some- 
 times amazed the Giant himself. Napoleon was nearly ready 
 for his duel with Europe. It was a sad sentiment which 
 brought a brilliant and curious throng to the Tuileries. Each 
 mind seemed to foresee the future, perhaps too in every mind 
 another thought was dimly present, how that in that future, 
 when the heroic age of France should have taken the half- 
 fabulous color with which it is tinged for us to-day, men's 
 imaginations would more than once seek to retrace the picture 
 of the pageant which they were assembled to behold. 
 
 "Do let us go more quickly, father ; I can hear the drums," 
 the young girl said, and in a half-teasing, half-coaxing man- 
 ner she urged her companion forward. 
 
 "The troops are marching into the Tuileries," said he. 
 
 "Or marching out of it everybody is coming away," she 
 answered in childish vexation, which drew a smile from her 
 father. 
 
 "The review only begins at half-past twelve," he said; he 
 had fallen half behind his impetuous daughter. 
 
 It might have been supposed that she meant to hasten their
 
 4 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 progress by the movement of her right arm, for it swung like 
 an oar blade through the water. In her impatience she had 
 crushed her handkerchief into a ball in her tiny, well-gloved 
 fingers. Now and then the old man smiled, but the smiles 
 were succeeded by an anxious look which crossed his withered 
 face and saddened it. In his love for the fair young girl by 
 his side, he was as fain to exalt the present moment as to dread 
 the future. "She is happy to-day; will her happiness last?" 
 he seemed to ask himself, for the old are somewhat prone to 
 foresee their own sorrows in the future of the young. 
 
 Father and daughter reached the peristyle under the tower 
 where the tricolor flag was still waving; but as they passed 
 under the arch by which people came and went between the 
 Gardens of the Tuileries and the Place du Carrousel, the 
 sentries on guard called out sternly : 
 
 "No admittance this way." 
 
 By standing on tiptoe the young girl contrived to catch a 
 glimpse of a crowd of well-dressed women, thronging either 
 side of the old marble arcade along which the Emperor was to 
 pass. 
 
 "We were too late in starting, father ; you can see that quite 
 well." A little piteous pout revealed the immense importance 
 which she attached to the sight of this particular review. 
 
 "Very well, Julie let us go away. You dislike a crush." 
 
 "Do let us stay, father. Even here I may catch a glimpse 
 of the Emperor ; he might die during this campaign, and then 
 I should never have seen him." 
 
 Her father shuddered at the selfish speech. There were 
 tears in the girl's voice ; he looked at her, and thought that he 
 saw tears beneath her lowered eyelids; tears caused not so 
 much by the disappointment as by one of the troubles of early 
 youth, a secret easily guessed by an old father. Suddenly 
 Julie's face flushed, and she uttered an exclamation. Neither 
 her father nor the sentinels understood the meaning of the 
 cry ; but an officer within the barrier, who sprang across the 
 court towards the staircase, heard it, and turned abruptly 
 at the sound. He went to the arcade by the Gardens of the
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 5 
 
 Tuileries, and recognized the young lady who had been hidden 
 for a moment by the tall bearskin caps of the grenadiers. He 
 set aside in favor of the pair the order which he himself had 
 given. Then, taking no heed of the murmurings of the fash- 
 ionable crowd seated under the arcade, he gently drew the en- 
 raptured child towards him. 
 
 "I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, 
 if you are in waiting," the old man said with a half-mocking, 
 half-serious glance at the officer. 
 
 "If you want a good position, M. le Due," the young man 
 answered, "we must not spend any time in talking. The 
 Emperor does not like to .be kept waiting, and the Grand 
 Marshal has sent me to announce our readiness." 
 
 As he spoke, he had taken Julie's arm with a certain air of 
 old acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the 
 Place du Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An 
 immense crowd was penned up in a narrow space, shut in be- 
 tween the gray walls of the palace and the limits marked out 
 by chains round the great sanded squares in the midst of the 
 courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of sentries posted 
 to keep a clear passage for the Emperor and his staff had 
 great difficulty in keeping back the eager humming swarm of 
 human beings. 
 
 "Is it going to be a very fine sight?" Julie asked (she was 
 radiant now). 
 
 "Pray take care !" cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the 
 waist, he lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set 
 her down beside a pillar. 
 
 But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would 
 have come into collision with the hindquarters of a white horse 
 which Napoleon's Mameluke held by the bridle ; the animal in 
 its trappings of green velvet and gold stood almost under the 
 arcade, some ten paces behind the rest of the horses in readi- 
 ness for the Emperor's staff. 
 
 The young officer placed the father and daughter in front 
 of the crowd in the first space to the right, and recommended 
 them by a sign to the two veteran grenadiers on either side.
 
 6 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 Then he went on his way into the palace ; a look of great joy 
 and happiness had succeeded to his horror-struck expression 
 when the horse backed. Julie had given his hand a mysterious 
 pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little service 
 he had done her, or did she tell him, "After all, I shall really 
 see you ?" She bent her head quite graciously in response to 
 the respectful bow by which the officer took leave of them be- 
 fore he vanished. 
 
 The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked 
 grave. He seemed to have left the two young people together 
 for some purpose of his own, and now he furtively watched the 
 girl, trying to lull her into false securit} r by appearing to give 
 his whole attention to the magnificent sight in the Place du 
 Carrousel. When Julie's eyes turned to her father with the 
 expression of a schoolboy before his master, he answered her 
 glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had fol- 
 lowed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that 
 passed was lost upon him. 
 
 "What a grand sight !" said Julie in a low voice, as she 
 pressed her father's hand; and indeed the pomp and pictur- 
 esqueness of the spectacle in the Place du Carrousel drew the 
 same exclamation from thousands upon thousands of specta- 
 tors, all agape with wonder. Another array of sightseers, as 
 tightly packed as the ranks behind the old noble and his 
 daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the railings 
 which crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a 
 line parallel with the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense 
 living mass, variegated by the colors of the women's dresses, 
 traced out a bold line across the centre of the Place du Car- 
 rousel, filling in the fourth side of a vast parallelogram, sur- 
 rounded on three sides by the Palace of the Tuileries itself. 
 Within the precincts thus railed off stood the regiments of the 
 Old Guard about to be passed in review, drawn up opposite the 
 Palace in imposing blue columns, ten ranks in depth. With- 
 out and beyond in the Place du Carrousel stood several regi- 
 ments likewise drawn up in parallel lines, ready to march 
 in through the arch in the centre ; the Triumphal Arch, where
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY ? 
 
 the bronze horses of St. Mark from Venice used to stand in 
 those days. At either end, by the Galeries du Louvre, the 
 regimental bands were stationed, masked by the Polish 
 Lancers then on duty. 
 
 The greater part of the vast graveled space was empty as an 
 arena, ready for the evolutions of those silent masses disposed 
 with the symmetry of military art. The sunlight blazed back 
 from ten thousand bayonets in thin points of flame; the breeze 
 ruffled the men's helmet plumes till they swayed like the crests 
 of forest-trees before a gale. The mute glittering ranks of 
 veterans were full of bright contrasting colors, thanks to their 
 different uniforms, weapons, accoutrements, and aiguillettes ; 
 and the whole great picture, that miniature battle-field before 
 the combat, was framed by the majestic towering walls of the 
 Tuileries, which officers and men seemed to rival in their im- 
 mobility. Involuntarily the spectator made the comparison 
 between the walls of men and the walls of stone. The spring 
 sunlight, flooding white masonry reared but yesterday and 
 buildings centuries old, shone full likewise upon thousands 
 of bronzed faces, each one with its own tale of perils passed, 
 each one gravely expectant of perils to come. 
 
 The colonels of the regiments came and went alone before 
 the ranks of heroes ; and behind the masses of troops, check- 
 ered with blue and silver and gold and purple, the curious 
 could discern the tricolor pennons on the lances of some half- 
 a-dozen indefatigable Polish cavalry, rushing about like shep- 
 herds' dogs in charge of a flock, caracoling up and down be- 
 tween the troops and the crowd, to keep the gazers within their 
 proper bounds. But for this slight flutter of movement, the 
 whole scene might have been taking place in the courtyard of 
 the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. The very spring breeze, 
 ruffling up the long fur on the grenadiers' bearskins, bore 
 witness to the men's immobility, as the smothered murmur 
 of the crowd emphasized their silence. Now and again the 
 jingling of Chinese bells, or a chance blow to a big drum, woke 
 the reverberating echoes of the Imperial Palace with a sound 
 like the far-off rumblings of thunder.
 
 8 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 An indescribable, unmistakable enthusiasm was manifest in 
 the expectancy of the multitude. France was about to take 
 farewell of Napoleon on the eve of a campaign of which the 
 meanest citizen foresaw the perils. The existence of the 
 French Empire was at stake to be, or not to be. The whole 
 citizen population seemed to be as much inspired with this 
 thought as that other armed population standing in serried 
 and silent ranks in the enclosed space, with the Eagles and 
 the genius of Napoleon hovering above them. 
 
 Those very soldiers were the hope of France, her last drop 
 of blood ; and this accounted for not a little of the anxious in- 
 terest of the scene. Most of the gazers in the crowd had bidden 
 farewell perhaps farewell for ever to the men who made 
 up the rank and file of the battalions; and even those most 
 hostile to the Emperor, in their hearts, put up fervent prayers 
 to heaven for the glory of France ; and those most weary of the 
 struggle with the rest of Europe had left their hatreds 
 behind as they passed in under the Triumphal Arch. They 
 too felt that in the hour of danger Napoleon meant France 
 herself. 
 
 The clock of the Tuileries struck the half-hour. In a mo- 
 ment the hum of the crowd ceased. The silence was so deep 
 that you might have heard a child speak. The old noble and 
 his daughter, wholly intent, seeming to live only by their eyes, 
 caught a distinct sound of spurs and clank of swords echoing 
 up under the sonorous peristyle. 
 
 And suddenly there appeared a short, somewhat stout figure 
 in a green uniform, white trousers, and riding boots ; a man 
 wearing on his head a cocked hat well-nigh as magically po- 
 tent as its wearer; the broad red ribbon of the Legion of 
 Honor rose and fell on his breast, and a short sword hung 
 at his side. At one and the same moment the man was seen 
 by all eyes in all parts of the square. 
 
 Immediately the drums beat a salute, both bands struck 
 up a martial refrain, caught and repeated like a fugue by every 
 instrument from the thinnest flutes to the largest drum. The 
 clangor of that call to arms thrilled through every soul. The
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 9 
 
 colors dropped, and the men presented arras, one unanimous 
 rhythmical movement shaking every bayonet from the fore- 
 most front near the Palace to the last rank in the Place du 
 Carrousel. The words of command sped from line to line like 
 echoes. The whole enthusiastic multitude sent up a shout of 
 "Long live the Emperor !" 
 
 Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon 
 had mounted his horse. It was his movement that had put 
 life into those silent masses of men; the dumb instruments 
 had found a voice at his coming, the Eagles and the colors 
 had obeyed the same impulse which had brought emotion into 
 all faces. 
 
 The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed 
 to cry aloud, "Long live the Emperor I" 
 
 There was something preternatural about it it was magic 
 at work, a counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or 
 rather it was a fugitive image of a reign itself so fugitive. 
 
 And he the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and de- 
 votion, and so many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven 
 the clouds from the sky, was sitting there on his horse, three 
 paces in front of his Golden Squadron, with the Grand 
 Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-waiting on his right. 
 Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his presence not a 
 feature of his face appeared to alter. 
 
 "Oh ! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the 
 field of Borodino, among the dead, always as cool as a 
 cucumber he is !" said the grenadier, in answer to the questions 
 with which the young girl plied him. For a moment Julie 
 was absorbed in the contemplation of that face, so quiet in the 
 security of conscious power. The Emperor noticed Mile, de 
 Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to 
 Duroc, which drew a .smile from the Grand Marshal. Then 
 the review began. 
 
 If hitherto the young lady's attention had been divided 
 between Napoleon's impassive face and the blue, red, and 
 green ranks of troops, from this time forth she was wholly 
 intent upon a young officer moving among the lines as they
 
 10 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 performed their swift symmetrical evolutions. She watched 
 him gallop with tireless activity to and from the group where 
 the plainly dressed Napoleon shone conspicuous. The officer 
 rode a splendid black horse. His handsome sky-blue uniform 
 marked him out amid the variegated multitude as one of the 
 Emperor's orderly staff-officers. His gold lace glittered in the 
 sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on his tall, narrow 
 shako, so that the gazer might have compared him to a will- 
 o'-the-wisp, or to a visible spirit emanating from the Em- 
 peror to infuse movement into those battalions whose swaying 
 bayonets flashed into flames; for, at a mere glance from his 
 eyes, they broke and gathered again, surging to and fro like 
 the waves in a bay, or again swept before him like the long 
 ridges of high-crested wave which the vexed Ocean directs 
 against the shore. 
 
 When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back 
 at full speed, pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He 
 was not ten paces from Julie as he stood before the Emperor, 
 much as General Rapp stands in Gerard's Battle of Austerlitz. 
 The young girl could behold her lover in all his soldierly 
 splendor. 
 
 Colonel Victor d'Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was 
 tall, slender, and well made. His well-proportioned figure 
 never showed to better advantage than now as he exerted his 
 strength to hold in the restive animal, whose back seemed to 
 curve gracefully to the rider's weight. His brown masculine 
 face possessed the indefinable charm of perfectly regular 
 features combined with youth. The fiery eyes under the broad 
 forehead, shaded by thick eyebrows and long lashes, looked 
 like white ovals bordered by an outline of black. His nose 
 had the delicate curve of an eagle's beak ; the sinuous lines of 
 the inevitable black moustache enhanced the crimson of the 
 lips. The brown and tawny shades which overspread the 
 wide high-colored cheeks told a tale of unusual vigor, and his 
 whole face bore the impress of dashing courage. He was the 
 very model which French artists seek to-day for the typical 
 hero of Imperial France. The horse which he rode was covered
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 11 
 
 with sweat, the animal's quivering head denoted the lastdegree 
 of restiveness; his hind hoofs were set down wide apart and 
 exactly in a line, he shook his long thick tail to the wind ; in 
 his fidelity to his master he seemed to be a visible presentment 
 of that master's devotion to the Emperor. 
 
 Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor's 
 glances, and felt a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet he 
 'had not given her a look. Suddenly at a word from his 
 sovereign Victor gripped his horse's flanks and set out at a 
 gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow cast by a post, 
 shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his rider was all 
 but thrown off. Julie cried out, her face grew white, people 
 looked at her curiously, but she saw no one, her eyes were fixed 
 upon the too mettlesome beast. The officer gave the horse 
 a sharp admonitory cut with the whip, and galloped off with 
 Napoleon's order. 
 
 Julie was so absorbed, so dizzy with sights and sounds, that 
 unconsciously she clung to her father's arm so tightly that he 
 could read her thoughts by the varying pressure of her fingers. 
 When Victor was all but flung out of the saddle, she clutched 
 her father with a convulsive grip as if she herself were in 
 danger of falling, and the old man looked at his daughter's 
 tell-tale face with dark and painful anxiety. Pity, jealousy, 
 something even of regret stole across every drawn and wrin- 
 kled line of mouth and brow. When he saw the unwonted 
 light in Julie's eyes, when that cry broke from her, when the 
 convulsive grasp of her fingers drew away the veil and put 
 him in possession of her secret, then with that revelation 
 of her love there came surely some swift revelation of the 
 future. Mournful forebodings could be read in his own face. 
 
 Julie's soul seemed at that moment to have passed into the 
 officer's being. A torturing thought more cruel than any 
 previous dread contracted the old man's painworn features, 
 as he saw the glance of understanding that passed between 
 the soldier and Julie. The girl's eyes were wet, her cheeks 
 glowed with unwonted color. Her father turned abruptly and 
 led her away into the Garden of the Tuileries.
 
 12 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 "Why, father," she cried, "there are still the regiments in 
 the Place du Carrousel to be passed in review." 
 
 "No, child, all the troops are marching out." 
 
 "I think you are mistaken, father ; M. d'Aiglemont surely 
 told them to advance " 
 
 "But I feel ill, my child, and I do not care to stay." 
 . Julie could readily believe the words when she glanced 
 at his face ; he looked quite worn out by his fatherly anxieties. 
 
 "Are you feeling very ill?" she asked indifferently, her 
 mind was so full of other thoughts. 
 
 "Every day is a reprieve for me, is it not?" returned her 
 father. 
 
 "Now do you mean to make me miserable again by talking 
 about your death ? I was in such spirits ! Do pray get rid 
 of those horrid gloomy ideas of yours." 
 
 The father heaved a sigh. "Ah! spoiled child," he cried, 
 "the best hearts are sometimes very cruel. We devote our 
 whole lives to you, you are our one thought, we plan for your 
 welfare, sacrifice our tastes to your whims, idolize you, give 
 the very blood in our veins for you, and all this is nothing, 
 is it ? Alas ! yes, you take it all as a matter of course. If we 
 would always have your smiles and your disdainful love, we 
 should need the power of God in heaven. Then comes another, 
 a lover, a husband, and steals away your heart." 
 
 Julie looked in amazement at her father ; he walked slowly 
 along, and there was no light in the eyes which he turned upon 
 her. 
 
 "You hide yourself even from us," he continued, "but, per- 
 haps, also you hide yourself from yourself " 
 
 "What do you mean by that, father ?" 
 
 "I think that you have secrets from me, Julie. You love," 
 he went on quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. "Oh ! 
 I hoped that you would stay with your old father until he 
 died. I hoped to keep you with me, still radiant and happy, 
 to admire you as you were but so lately. So long as I knew 
 nothing of your future I could believe in a happy lot for you ; 
 but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope of happi-
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 13 
 
 ness for your life, for you love the colonel even more than 
 the cousin. I can no longer doubt it." 
 
 "And why should I be forbidden to love him ?" asked Julie, 
 with lively curiosity in her face. 
 
 "Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me," sighed the 
 father. 
 
 "Tell me, all the same," said Julie, with an involuntary 
 petulant gesture. 
 
 "Very well, child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine 
 noble and enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their 
 own minds; they have fanciful extravagant ideas about men, 
 and sentiment, and life; and then they innocently endow 
 somebody or other with all the perfections of their day-dreams, 
 and put their trust in him. They fall in love with this imag- 
 inary creature in the man of their choice; and then, when it 
 is too late to escape from their fate, behold their first 
 idol, the illusion made fair with their fancies, turns to an 
 odious skeleton. Julie, I would rather have you fall in love 
 with an old man than with the Colonel. Ah ! if you could but 
 see things from the standpoint of ten years hence, you would 
 admit than my old experience was right. I know what Victor 
 is, that gaiety of his is simply animal spirits the gaiety of 
 the barracks. He has no ability, and he is a spendthrift. He is 
 one of those men whom Heaven created to eat and digest four 
 meals a day, to sleep, to fall in love with the first woman that 
 comes to hand, and to fight. He does not understand life. 
 His kind heart, for he has a kind heart, will perhaps lead him 
 to give his purse to a sufferer or to a comrade ; but he is care- 
 less, he has not the delicacy of heart which makes us slaves to 
 a woman's happiness, he is ignorant, he is selfish. There are 
 plenty of buts " 
 
 "But, father, he must surely be clever, he must have ability, 
 or he would not be a colonel 
 
 "My dear, Victor will be a colonel all his life. I have 
 seen no one who appears to me to be worthy of you," the Old 
 father added, with a kind of enthusiasm. 
 
 He paused an instant, looked at his daughter, and added.
 
 14 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 "Why, my poor Julie, you are still too young, too fragile, too 
 delicate for the cares and rubs of married life. D'Aiglemont's 
 relations have spoiled him, just as your mother and I have 
 spoiled you. What hope is there that you two could agree, 
 with two imperious wills diametrically opposed to each other ? 
 You will be either the tyrant or the victim, and either alter- 
 native means, for a wife, an equal sum of misfortune. But 
 you are modest and sweet-natured, you would yield from the 
 first. In short," he added, in a quivering voice, "there is a 
 grace of feeling in you which would never be valued, and 
 then " he broke off, for the tears overcame him. 
 
 "Victor will give you pain through all the girlish quali- 
 ties of your young nature," he went on, after a pause. "I 
 know what soldiers are, my Julie; I have been in the army. 
 In a man of that kind, love very seldom gets the better of old 
 habits, due partly to the miseries arnid which soldiers live, 
 partly to the risks they run in a life of adventure." 
 
 "Then you mean to cross my inclinations, do you, 
 father?" asked Julie, half in earnest, half in jest. "Am 
 I to marry to please you and not to please myself ?" 
 
 "To please me I" cried her father, with a start of surprise. 
 "To please me, child ? when you will not hear the voice that 
 upbraids you so tenderly very much longer ! But I have always 
 heard children impute personal motives for the sacrifices that 
 their parents make for them. Marry Victor, my Julie ! Some 
 day you will bitterly deplore his ineptitude, his thriftless ways, 
 his selfishness, his lack of delicacy, his inability to under- 
 stand love, and countless troubles arising through him. Then, 
 remember, that here under these trees your old father's pro- 
 phetic voice sounded in your ears in vain." 
 
 He said no more ; he had detected a rebellious shake of the 
 head on his daughter's part. Both made several paces towards 
 the carriage which was waiting for them at the grating. Dur- 
 ing that interval of silence, the young girl stole a glance at her 
 father's face, and little by little her sullen brow cleared. The 
 intense pain visible on his bowed forehead made a lively im- 
 pression upon her.
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 15 
 
 "Father," she began in gentle tremulous tones, "I promise 
 to say no mo-re about Victor until you have overcome your 
 prejudices against him." 
 
 The old man looked at her in amazement. Two tears which 
 filled his eyes overflowed down his withered cheeks. He could 
 not take Julie in his arms in that crowded place; but he 
 pressed her hand tenderly. A few minutes later when they 
 had taken their places in the cabriolet, all the anxious thought 
 which had gathered about his brow had completely disap- 
 peared. Julie's pensive attitude gave him far less concern 
 than the innocent joy which had betrayed her secret during 
 the review. 
 
 Nearly a year had passed since the Emperor's last re- 
 view. In early March 1814 a caleche was rolling along the 
 highroad from Amboise to Tours. As the carriage came 
 out from beneath the green-roofed aisle of walnut trees by the 
 post-house of la Frilliere, the horses dashed forward with such 
 speed that in a moment they gained the bridge built across the 
 Cise at the point of its confluence with the Loire. There, how- 
 ever, they came to a sudden stand. One of the traces had 
 given way in consequence of the furious pace at which the 
 post-boy, obedient to his orders, had urged on four horses, the 
 most vigorous of their breed. Chance, therefore, gave the 
 two recently awakened occupants of the carriage an oppor- 
 tunity of seeing one of the most lovely landscapes along the 
 enchanting banks of the Loire, and that at their full leisure. 
 
 At a glance the travelers could see to the right the whole 
 winding course of the Cise meandering like a silver snake 
 among the meadows, where the grass had taken the deep, 
 bright green of early spring. To the left lay the Loire in all 
 its glory. A chill morning breeze, ruffling the surface of the 
 stately river, had fretted the broad sheets of water far and 
 wide into a network of ripples, which caught the gleams of the 
 sun, so that the green islets here and there in its course shone 
 like gems set in a gold necklace. On the opposite bank the 
 fair rich meadows of Touraine stretched away as far as the eye
 
 16 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 could see ; the low hills of the Cher, the only limits to the view, 
 lay on the far horizon, a luminous line against the clear blue 
 sky. Tours itself, framed by the trees on the islands in a 
 setting of spring leaves, seemed to rise like Venice out of the 
 waters, and her old cathedral towers soaring in air were 
 blended with the pale fantastic cloud shapes in the sky. 
 
 Over the side of the bridge, where the carriage had come 
 to a stand, the traveler looks along a line of cliffs stretching 
 as far as Tours. Nature in some freakish mood must have 
 raised these barriers of rock, undermined incessantly by the 
 rippling Loire at their feet, for a perpetual wonder for 
 spectators. The village of Vouvray nestles, as it were, among 
 the clefts and crannies of the crags, which begin to describe 
 a bend at the junction of the Loire and Cise. A whole popu- 
 lation of vine-dressers lives, in fact, in appalling insecurity in 
 holes in their jagged sides for the whole way between Vou- 
 vray and Tours. In some places there are three tiers of dwell- 
 ings hollowed out, one above the other, in the rock, each row 
 communicating with the next by dizzy staircases cut likewise 
 in the face of the cliff. A little girl in a short red petticoat 
 runs out into her garden on the roof of another dwelling ; you 
 can watch a wreath of hearth-smoke curling up among the 
 shoots and trails of the vines. Men are at work in their 
 almost perpendicular patches f of ground, an old woman sits 
 tranquilly spinning under a blossoming almond tree on a 
 crumbling mass of rock, and smiles down on the dismay of the 
 travelers far below her feet. The cracks in the ground trouble 
 her as little as the precarious state of the old wall, a pendant 
 mass of loose stones, only kept in position by the crooked stems 
 of its ivy mantle. The sound of coopers' mallets rings through 
 the skyey caves ; for here, where Nature stints human industry 
 rf soil, the soil is everywhere tilled, and everywhere fertile. 
 
 No view along the whole course of the Loire can compare 
 with the rich landscape of Tourainc, here outspread beneath 
 the traveler's eyes. The triple picture, thus barely sketched 
 in outline, is one of those scenes which the imagination en- 
 graves for ever upon the memory; let a poet fall under its
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 17 
 
 charm, and he shall 'be haunted by visions whicK shall re- 
 produce its romantic loveliness out of the vague substance of 
 dreams. 
 
 As the carriage stopped on the bridge over the Cise, white 
 sails came out here and there from among the islands in the 
 Loire to add new grace to the perfect view. The subtle scent 
 of the willows by the water's edge was mingled with the damp 
 :>dor of the breeze from the river. The monotonous chant of 
 a goat-herd added a plaintive note to the sound of birds' 
 songs in a chorus which never ends ; the cries of the boatmen 
 brought tidings of distant busy life. Here was Touraine 
 in all its glory, and the very height of the splendor of spring. 
 Here was the one peaceful district in France in those troublous 
 days ; for it was so unlikely that a foreign army should trouble 
 its quiet that Touraine might be said to defy invasion. 
 
 As soon as the caleche stopped, a head covered with a forag- 
 ing cap was put out of the window, and soon afterwards an im- 
 patient military man flung open the carriage door and sprang 
 down into the road to pick a quarrel with the postilion, but 
 the skill with which the Tourangeau was repairing the trace 
 restored Colonel d'Aiglemont's equanimity. He went back 
 to the carriage, stretched himself to relieve his benumbed 
 muscles, yawned, looked about him, and finally laid a hand 
 on the arm of a young woman warmly wrapped up in a furred 
 pelisse. 
 
 "Come, Julie," he said hoarsely, "just wake up and take a 
 look at this country. It is magnificent." 
 
 Julie put her head out of the window. She wore a traveling 
 cap of sable fur. Nothing could be seen of her but her face, 
 for the whole of her person was completely concealed by the 
 folds of her fur pelisse. The young girl who tripped to the 
 review at the Tuileries with light footsteps and joy and glad- 
 ness in her heart was scarcely recognizable in Julie d'Aigle- 
 mont. Her face, delicate as ever, had lost the rose-color which 
 once gave it so rich a glow. A few straggling locks of black 
 hair, straightened out by the damp night air, enhanced its 
 
 dead whiteness, and all its life and sparkle seemed to be torpid. 
 VOL. 5 26
 
 18 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 Yet her eyes glittered with preternatural brightness in spite 
 of the violet shadows under the lashes upon her wan cheeks. 
 
 She looked out with indifferent eyes over the fields towards 
 the Cher, at the islands in the river, at the line of the crags 
 of Vouvray stretching along the Loire towards Tours; then 
 she sank back as soon as possible into her seat in the caleche. 
 She did not care to give a glance to the enchanting valley of 
 the Cise. 
 
 "Yes, it is wonderful/' she said, and out in the open air her 
 voice sounded weak and faint to the last degree. Evidently 
 she had had her way with her father, to her misfortune. 
 
 "Would you not like to live here, Julie ?" 
 
 "Yes ; here or anywhere," she answered listlessly. 
 
 "Do you feel ill ?" asked Colonel d'Aiglemont. 
 
 "No, not at all," she answered with momentary energy ; and, 
 smiling at her husband, she added, "I should like to go to 
 sleep." 
 
 Suddenly there came a sound of a horse galloping towards 
 them. Victor d'Aiglemont dropped his wife's hand and 
 turned to watch the bend in the road. No sooner had he 
 taken his eyes from Julie's pale face than all the assumed 
 gaiety died out of it ; it was as if a light had been extinguished. 
 She felt no wish to look at the landscape, no curiosity to see 
 the horseman who was galloping towards them at such a furi- 
 ous pace, and, ensconcing herself in her corner, stared out 
 before her at the hindquarters of the post-horses, looking 
 as blank as any Breton peasant listening to his recteur's 
 sermon. 
 
 Suddenly a young man riding a valuable horse came out 
 from behind the clump of poplars and flowering briar-rose. 
 
 "It is an Englishman," remarked the Colonel. 
 
 "Lord bless you, yes, General," said the post-boy; "he be- 
 longs to the race of fellows who have a mind to gobble up 
 France, they say." 
 
 The stranger was one of the foreigners traveling in France 
 at the time when Napoleon detained all British subjects within 
 the limits of the Empire, by way of reprisals for the violation
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 19 
 
 of the Treaty of Amiens, an outrage of international law per- 
 petrated by the Court of St. James. These prisoners, com- 
 pelled to submit to the Emperor's pleasure, were not all 
 suffered to remain in the houses where they were arrested, nor 
 yet in the places of residence which at first they were permitted 
 to choose. Most of the English colony in Touraine had been 
 transplanted thither from different places where their presence 
 was supposed to be inimical to the interests of the Continental 
 Policy. 
 
 The young man, who was taking the tedium of the early 
 morning hours on horseback, was one of these victims of 
 bureaucratic tyranny. Two years previously, a sudden order 
 from the Foreign Office had dragged him from Montpellier, 
 whither he had gone on account of consumptive tendencies. He 
 glanced at the Comte d'Aiglemont, saw that he was a military 
 man, and deliberately looked away, turning his head some- 
 what abruptly towards the meadows by the Cise. 
 
 "The English are all as insolent as if the globe belonged 
 to them," muttered the Colonel. "Luckily, Soult will give 
 them a thrashing directly." 
 
 The prisoner gave a glance to the caleche as he rode by. 
 Brief though that glance was, he had yet time to notice the 
 sad expression which lent an indefinable charm to the Count- 
 ess' pensive face. Many men are deeply moved by the mere 
 semblance of suffering in a woman ; they take the look of pain 
 for a sign of constancy or of love. Julie herself was so much 
 absorbed in the contemplation of the opposite cushion that 
 she saw neither the horse nor the rider. The damaged trace 
 meanwhile had been quickly and strongly repaired ; the Count 
 stepped into his place again ; and the post-boy, doing his best 
 to make up for lost time, drove the carriage rapidly along the 
 embankment. On they drove under the overhanging cliffs, 
 with their picturesque vine-dressers' huts and stores of wine 
 maturing in their dark sides, till in the distance uprose the 
 spire of the famous Abbey of Marmoutiers, the retreat of St. 
 Martin. 
 
 "What can that diaphanous milord want with us?" ex-
 
 20 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 claimed the Colonel, turning to assure himself that the horse- 
 man who had followed them from the bridge was the young 
 Englishman. 
 
 After all, the stranger committed no breach of good man- 
 ners by riding along on the footway, and Colonel d'Aiglemont 
 was fain to lie back in his corner after sending a scowl in the 
 Englishman's direction. But in spite of his hostile instincts, 
 he could not help noticing the beauty of the animal and the 
 graceful horsemanship of the rider. The young man's face 
 was of that pale, fair-complexioned, insular type, which is 
 almost girlish in the softness and delicacy of its color and 
 texture. He was tall, thin, and fair-haired, dressed with the 
 extreme and elaborate neatness characteristic of a man of 
 fashion in prudish England. Any one might have thought 
 that bashfulness rather than pleasure at the sight of the 
 Countess had called up that flush into his face. Once only 
 Julie raised her eyes and looked at the stranger, and then only 
 because she was in a manner compelled to do so, for her hus- 
 band called upon her to admire the action of the thorough- 
 bred. It so happened that their glances clashed ; and the shy 
 Englishman, instead of riding abreast of the carriage, fell 
 behind on this, and followed them at a distance of a few paces. 
 
 Yet the Countess had scarcely given him a glance ; she saw 
 none of the various perfections, human and equine, com- 
 mended to her notice, and fell back again in the carriage 
 with a slight movement of the eyelids intended to express her 
 acquiescence in her husband's views. The Colonel fell asleep 
 again, and both husband and wife reached Tours without 
 another word. Not one of those enchanting views of ever- 
 changing landscape through which they sped had drawn so 
 much as a glance from Julie's eyes. 
 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont looked now and again at her sleeping 
 husband. While she looked, a sudden jolt shook something 
 down upon her knees. It was her father's portrait, a miniature 
 which she wore suspended about her neck by a black cord. At 
 the sight of it, the tears, till then kept back, overflowed her 
 eyes, but no one, save perhaps the Englishman, saw them
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 21 
 
 glitter there for a brief moment before they dried upon her 
 pale cheeks. 
 
 Colonel d'Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal 
 Soult was repelling an English invasion of Beam; and 
 d'Aiglemont, the bearer of the Emperor's orders to the Mar- 
 shal, seized the opportunity of taking his wife as far as Tours 
 to leave her with an elderly relative of his own, far away 
 from the dangers threatening Paris. 
 
 Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of 
 Tours, over the bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped 
 at last before the old mansion of the ci-devant Marquise de 
 Listomere-Landon. 
 
 The Marquise de Listomere-Landon, with her white hair, 
 pale face, and shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies 
 who still seem to wear the paniers of the eighteenth century, 
 and affects caps of an extinct mode. They are nearly alway 
 caressing in their manners, as if the heyday of love still 
 lingered on for these septuagenarian portraits of the age of 
 Louis Quinze, with the faint perfume of poudre a la marechale 
 always clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and 
 less of bigots than they seem, women who can tell a story well 
 and talk still better, their laughter comes more readily for an 
 old memory than for a new jest the present intrudes upon 
 them. 
 
 When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de 
 Listomere-Landon (to give her the title which she was soon to 
 resume) the arrival of a nephew whom she had not seen since 
 the outbreak of the war with Spain, the old lady took off her 
 spectacles with alacrity, shut the Galerie de I'ancienne Cour 
 (her favorite work), and recovered something like youthful 
 activity, hastening out upon the flight of steps to greet the 
 young couple there. 
 
 Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey. 
 
 "Good-morning, dear aunt," cried the Colonel, giving the 
 old lady a hasty embrace. "I am bringing a young lady to 
 put under your wing. I have come to put my treasure in your 
 keeping. My Julie is neither jealous nor a coquette, she is
 
 22 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 as good as an angel. I hope that she will not be spoiled here," 
 he added, suddenly interrupting himself. 
 
 "Scapegrace !" returned the Marquise, with a satirical 
 glance at her nephew. 
 
 She did not wait for her niece to approach her, but with a 
 certain kindly graciousness went forward herself to kiss Julie, 
 who stood there thoughtfully, to all appearance more embar- 
 rassed than curious concerning her new relation. 
 
 "So we are to make each other's acquaintance, are we, my 
 love ?" the Marquise continued. "Do not be too much alarmed 
 of me. I always try not to be an old woman with young 
 people." 
 
 On the way to the drawing-room, the Marquise ordered 
 breakfast for her guests in provincial fashion ; but the Count 
 checked his aunt's flow of words by saying soberly that he 
 could only remain in the house while the horses were changing. 
 On this the three hurried into the drawing-room. The 
 Colonel had barely time to tell the story of the political and 
 military events which had compelled him to ask his aunt 
 for a shelter for his young wife. While he talked on with- 
 out interruption, the older lady looked from her nephew to her 
 niece, and took the sadness in Julie's white face for grief at 
 the enforced separation. "Eh ! eh !" her looks seemed to say, 
 "these young things are in love with each other." 
 
 The crack of the postilion's whip sounded outside in the 
 silent old grass-grown courtyard. Victor embraced his aunt 
 once more, and rushed out. 
 
 "Good-bye, dear," he said, kissing his wife, who had fol- 
 lowed him down to the carriage. 
 
 "Oh! Victor, let me come still further with you," she 
 pleaded coaxingly. "I do not want to leave you " 
 
 "Can you seriously mean it ?" 
 
 "Very well," said Julie, "since you wish it." The carriage , 
 disappeared. 
 
 "So you are very fond of my poor Victor?" said the Mar- 
 quise, interrogating her niece with one of those sagacious 
 glances which dowagers give younger women.
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 23 
 
 "Alas, madame !" said Julie, "must one not love a man well 
 indeed to marry him ?" 
 
 The words were spoken with an artless accent which re- 
 vealed either a pure heart or inscrutable depths. How could 
 a woman, who had been the friend of Duclos and the Marechal 
 de Richelieu, refrain from trying to read the riddle of this 
 marriage ? Aunt and niece were standing on the steps, gazing 
 after the fast vanishing caleche. The look in the young 
 Countess' eyes did not mean love as the Marquise understood 
 it. The good lady was a Provengale, and her passions had 
 been lively. 
 
 "So you were captivated by my good-for-nothing of a 
 nephew ?" she asked. 
 
 Involuntarily Julie shuddered, something in the experi- 
 enced coquette's look and tone seemed to say that Mme. de 
 Listomere-Landon's knowledge of her husband's character 
 went perhaps deeper than his wife's. Mme. d'Aiglemont, in 
 dismay, took refuge in this transparent dissimulation, ready 
 to her hand, the first resource of an artless unhappiness. Mme. 
 de Listomere appeared to be satisfied with Julie's answers ; but 
 in her secret heart she rejoiced to think that here was a love 
 affair on hand to enliven her solitude, for that her niece had 
 some amusing flirtation on foot she was fully convinced. 
 
 In the great drawing-room, hung with tapestry framed in 
 strips of gilding, young Mme. d'Aiglemont sat before a blazing 
 fire, behind a Chinese screen placed to shut out the cold 
 draughts from the windows, and her heavy mood scarcely 
 lightened. Among the old eighteenth-century furniture, 
 under the old paneled ceiling, it was not very easy to be gay. 
 Yet the young Parisienne took a sort of pleasure in this en- 
 trance upon a life of complete solitude and in the solemn 
 silence of the old provincial house. She exchanged a few 
 words with the aunt, a stranger, to whom she had written a 
 bride's letter on her marriage, and then sat as silent as if she 
 had been listening to an opera. Not until two hours had been 
 spent in an atmosphere of quiet befitting la Trappe, did she 
 suddenly awaken to a sense of uncourteous behavior, anri
 
 24 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 bethink herself of the short answers which she had given her 
 aunt. Mme. de Listomere, with the gracious tact character- 
 istic of a bygone age, had respected her niece's mood. When 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont became conscious of her shortcomings, the 
 dowager sat knitting, though as a matter of fact she had 
 several times left the room to superintend preparations in the 
 Green Chamber, whither the Countess' luggage had been trans- 
 ported ; now, however, she had returned to her great armchair, 
 and stole a glance from time to time at this young relative. 
 Julie felt ashamed of giving way to irresistible broodings, 
 and tried to earn her pardon by laughing at herself. 
 
 "My dear child, we know the sorrows of widowhood," re- 
 turned her aunt. But only the eyes of forty years could have 
 distinguished the irony hovering about the old lady's mouth. 
 
 Next morning the Countess improved. She talked. Mme. 
 de Listomere no longer Despaired of fathoming the new-made 
 wife, whom yesterday she had set down as a dull, unsociable 
 creature, and discoursed on the delights of the country, of 
 dances, of houses where they could visit. All that day the 
 Marquise's questions were so many snares ; it was the old habit 
 of the old Court, she could not help setting traps to discover 
 her niece's character. For several days Julie, plied with 
 temptations, steadfastly declined to seek amusement abroad; 
 and much as the old lady's pride longed to exhibit her pretty 
 niece, she was fain to renounce all hope of taking her into 
 society, for the young Countess was still in mourning for her 
 father, and found in her i,~ is and her mourning dress a pre- 
 text for her sadness and desire for seclusion. 
 
 By the end of the week the dowager admired Julie's angelic 
 sweetness of disposition, her diffident charm, her indulgent 
 temper, and thenceforward began to take a prodigious inter- 
 est in the mysterious sadness gnawing at this young heart. 
 The Countess was one of those women who seem born to be 
 loved and to bring happiness with them. Mme. de Listomere 
 found her niece's society grown so sweet and precious, that 
 she doted upon Julie, and could no longer think of parting 
 with her. A month sufficed to establish an eternal friend
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 25 
 
 ship between the two ladies. The dowager noticed, not 
 without surprise, the changes that took place in Mine. d'Aiglo- 
 mont; gradually her bright color died away, and her face 
 became dead white. Yet, Julie's spirits rose as the bloom 
 faded from her cheeks. Sometimes the dowager's sallies pro- 
 voked outbursts of merriment or peals of laughter, promptly 
 repressed, however, by some clamorous thought. 
 
 Mme. de Listomere had guessed by this time that it was 
 neither Victor's absence nor a father's death which threw 
 a shadow over her niece's life; but her mind was so full of 
 dark suspicions, that she found it difficult to lay a finger upon 
 the real cause of the mischief. Possibly truth is only dis- 
 coverable by chance. A day came, however, at length when 
 Julie flashed out before her aunt's astonished eyes into a com- 
 plete forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the wild 
 spirits of careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and 
 there made up her mind to fathom the depths of this soul, 
 for its exceeding simplicity was as inscrutable as dissimula- 
 tion. 
 
 Night was falling. The two ladies were sitting by the 
 window which looked out upon the street, and Julie was 
 looking thoughtful again, when some one went by on horse- 
 back. 
 
 "There goes onp of your victims," said the Marquise. 
 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont looked up ; dismay and surprise blended 
 in her face. 
 
 "He is a young Englishman, the Honorable Arthur Or- 
 mond, Lord Grenville's eldest son. His history is interest- 
 ing. His physician sent him to Montpellier in 1802 ; it was 
 hoped that in that climate he might recover from the lung 
 complaint which was gaining ground. He was detained, like 
 all his fellow-countrymen, by Bonaparte when war broke out.. 
 That monster cannot live without fighting. The young 
 Englishman, by way of amusing himself, took to study- 
 ing his own complaint, which was believed to be incur- 
 able. By degrees he acquired a liking for anatomy and 
 physic, and took quite a craze for that kind of thing, a most
 
 ~28 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 extraordinary taste in a man of quality, though the Eegent 
 certainly amused himself with chemistry! In short, Mon- 
 sieur Arthur made astonishing progress in his studies; his 
 health did the same under the faculty of Montpellier; he 
 consoled his captivity, and at the same time his cure was 
 thoroughly completed. They say that he spent two whole 
 years in a cowshed, living on cresses and the milk of a cow 
 brought from Switzerland, breathing as seldom as he could, 
 and never speaking a word. Since he came to Tours he has 
 lived quite alone; he is as proud as a peacock; but you have 
 certainly made a conquest of him, for probably it is not on 
 my account that he has ridden under the window twice every 
 day since you have been here. He has certainly fallen in 
 love with you." 
 
 That last phrase roused the Countess like magic. Her in- 
 voluntary start and smile took the Marquise by surprise. So 
 far from showing a sign of the instinctive satisfaction felt by 
 the most strait-laced of women when she learns that she has 
 destroyed the peace of mind of some male victim, there was a 
 hard, haggard expression in Julie's face a look of repulsion 
 amounting almost to loathing. 
 
 A woman who loves will put the whole world under the 
 ban of Love's empire for the sake of the one whom she loves ; 
 but such a woman can laugh and jest; and Julie at that 
 moment looked as if the memory of some recently escaped 
 peril was too sharp and fresh not to bring with it a quick 
 sensation of pain. Her aunt, by this time convinced that 
 Julie did not love her nephew, was stupefied by the discovery 
 that she loved nobody else. She shuddered lest a further 
 discovery should show her Julie's heart disenchanted, lest the 
 experience of a day, or perhaps of a night, should have re- 
 vealed to a young wife the full extent of Victor's emptiness. 
 
 "If she has found him out, there is an end of it," thought 
 the dowager. "My nephew will soon be made to feel the in- 
 conveniences of wedded life." 
 
 The Marquise now proposed to convert Julie to the mon- 
 archical doctrines of the times of Louis Quinze; but a few
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 27 
 
 hours later she discovered, or, more properly speaking, 
 guessed, the not uncommon state of affairs, and the real cause 
 of her niece's low spirits. 
 
 Julie turned thoughtful on a sudden, and went to her room 
 earlier than usual. When her maid left her for the night, 
 she still sat by the fire in the yellow velvet depths of a great 
 chair, an old-world piece of furniture as well suited for sor- 
 row as for happy people. Tears flowed, followed by sighs 
 and meditation. After a while she drew a little table to her, 
 sought writing materials, and began to write. The hours 
 went by swiftly. Julie's confidences made to the sheet of 
 paper seemed to cost her dear ; every sentence set her dream- 
 ing, and at last she suddenly burst into tears. The clocks 
 were striking t\vo. Her head, grown heavy as a dying wo- 
 man's, was bowed over her breast. When she raised it, her 
 aunt appeared before her as suddenly as if she had stepped 
 out of the background of tapestry upon the walls. 
 
 "What can be the matter with you, child?" asked the 
 Marquise. "Why are you sitting up so late? And why, in 
 the first place, are you crying alone, at your age?" 
 
 Without further ceremony she sat down beside her niece, 
 her eyes the while devouring the unfinished letter. 
 
 "Were you writing to your husband?" 
 
 "Do I know where he is?" returned the Countess. 
 
 Her aunt thereupon took up the sheet and proceeded to 
 read it. She had brought her spectacles; the deed was pre- 
 meditated. The innocent writer of the letter allowed her to 
 take it without the slightest remark. It was neither lack of 
 dignity nor consciousness of secret guilt which left her thus 
 without energy. Her aunt had come in upon her at a crisis. 
 She was helpless; right or wrong, reticence and confidence, 
 like all things else, were matters of indifference. Like some 
 young maid who has heaped scorn upon her lover, and feels 
 so lonely and sad when evening comes, that she longs for him 
 to come back or for a heart to which she can pour out her 
 sorrow, Julie allowed her aunt to violate the seal which 
 honor places upon an open letter, and sat musing while the 
 Marquise read on:
 
 28 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 "MY DEAR LOUISA, Why do you ask so often for the ful- 
 filment of as rash a promise as two young and inexperienced 
 girls could make? You say that you often ask yourself why 
 I have given no answer to your questions for these six months. 
 If my silence told you nothing, perhaps you will understand 
 the reasons for it to-day, as you read the secrets which I am 
 about to betray. I should have buried them for ever in the 
 depths of my heart if you had not announced your own ap- 
 proaching marriage. You are about to be married, Louisa. 
 The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one ! marry, yes, in 
 a few months' time one of the keenest pangs of regret will 
 be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the two 
 young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest oak- 
 trees on the hillside at ficouen, and looked along the fair val- 
 ley at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us in 
 its glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which sobered 
 down into melancholy of the gentlest. You were the first to 
 discover that the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. How 
 inquisitive and how silly we were ! Do you remember all the 
 absurd things we said and did? We embraced each other; 
 'like lovers/ said we. We solemnly promised that the first 
 bride should faithfully reveal to the other the mysteries of 
 marriage, the joys which our childish minds imagined to be 
 so delicious. That evening will complete your despair, 
 Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and 
 careless, if not radiantly happy ; a few days of marriage, and 
 you will be, what I am already ugly, wretched, and old. 
 Need I tell you how proud I was and how vain and glad to 
 be married to Colonel Victor d'Aiglemont? And besides, 
 how could I tell you now? for I cannot remember that old 
 self. A few moments turned my girlhood to a dream. All 
 through the memorable day which consecrated a chain, the 
 extent of which was hidden from me, my behavior was riot 
 free from reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress 
 my spirits ; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought un- 
 befitting the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply be-
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 29 
 
 cause I was so innocent. I played endless child's tricks with 
 my bridal veil, my wreath, my gown. Left alone that night 
 in the room whither I had been conducted in state, I planned 
 a piece of mischief to tease Victor. While I awaited his 
 coming, my heart beat wildly, as it used to do when I was a 
 child stealing into the drawing-room on the last day of the old 
 year to catch a glimpse of the New Year's gifts piled up there 
 in heaps. 'When my husband came in and looked for me, my 
 smothered laughter ringing out from beneath the lace in 
 which I had shrouded myself, was the last outburst of the 
 delicious merriment which brightened our games in child- 
 hood . . ." 
 
 When the dowager had finished reading the letter, and after 
 such a beginning the rest must have been sad indeed, she 
 slowly laid her spectacles on the table, put the letter down 
 beside them, and looked fixedly at her niece. Age had not 
 dimmed the fire in those green eyes as yet. 
 
 "My little girl," she said, "a married woman cannot write 
 such a letter as this to a young unmarried woman; it is 
 scarcely proper " 
 
 "So I was thinking," Julie broke in upon her aunt. "I 
 felt ashamed of myself while you were reading it." 
 
 "If a dish at table is not to our taste, there is no occasion 
 to disgust others with it, child," the old lady continued 
 benignly, "especially when marriage has seemed to us all, 
 from Eve downwards, so excellent an institution. . . . 
 You have no mother?" 
 
 The Countess trembled, then she raised her face meekly, 
 and said : 
 
 "I have missed my mother many times already during the 
 past year; but I have myself to blame, I would not listen 
 to my father. He was opposed to my marriage; he dis- 
 approved of Victor as a son-in-law/' 
 
 She looked at her aunt. The old face was lighted up with 
 a kindly look, and a thrill of joy dried Julie's tears. She 
 held out her young, soft hand to the old Marquise, who seemed
 
 30 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 to ask for it, and the understanding between the two women 
 was completed by the close grasp of their fingers. 
 
 "Poor orphan child !" 
 
 The words came like a final flash of enlightenment to 
 Julie. It seemed to her that she heard her father's prophetic 
 voice again. 
 
 "Your hands are burning! Are they always like this?" 
 asked the Marquise. 
 
 "The fever only left me seven or eight days ago." 
 
 "You had a fever upon you, and said nothing about it to 
 me!" 
 
 "I have had it for a year," said Julie, with a kind of. timid 
 anxiety. 
 
 "My good little angel, then your married life hitherto has 
 been one long time of suffering ?" 
 
 Julie did not venture to reply, but an affirmative sign re- 
 vealed the whole truth. 
 
 "Then you are unhappy ?" 
 
 "Oh ! no, no, aunt. Victor loves me, he almost idolizes 
 me, and I adore him, he is so kind." 
 
 "Yes, you love him ; but you avoid him, do you not ?" 
 
 "Yes . . . sometimes. . . . He seeks me too 
 often." 
 
 "And often when you are alone you are troubled with the 
 fear that he may suddenly break in upon your solitude ?" 
 
 "Alas ! yes, aunt. But, indeed, I love him, I do assure 
 you." 
 
 "Do you not, in your own thoughts, blame yourself be- 
 cause you find it impossible to share his pleasures? Do you 
 never think at times that marriage is a heavier yoke than an 
 illicit passion could be?" 
 
 "Oh ! that is just it," she wept. "It is all a riddle to me, 
 and can you guess it all ? My faculties are benumbed, I have 
 no ideas, I can scarcely see at all. I am weighed down by 
 vague dread, which freezes me till I cannot feel, and keeps 
 me in continual torpor. I have no voice with which to pity 
 myself, no words to express my trouble. I suffer, and I am 
 ashamed to suffer when Victor is happy at my cost,"
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 31 
 
 "Babyish nonsense, and rubbish, all of it I" exclaimed the 
 aunt, and a gay smile, an after-glow of the joys of her own 
 youth, suddenly lighted up her withered face. 
 
 "And do you too laugh!" the younger woman cried de- 
 spairingly. 
 
 "It was just my own case," the Marquise returned 
 promptly. "And now that Victor has left you, you have 
 become a girl again, recovering a tranquillity without pleasure 
 and without pain, have you not ?" 
 
 Julie opened wide eyes of bewilderment. 
 
 "In fact, my angel, you adore Victor, do you not? But 
 still you would rather be a sister to him than a wife, and, in 
 short, your marriage is emphatically not a success ?" 
 
 "Well no, aunt. But why do you smile ?" 
 
 "Oh! you are right, poor child! There is nothing very 
 amusing in all this. Your future would be big with more 
 than one mishap if I had not taken you under my pro- 
 tection, if my old experience of life had not guessed the very 
 innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did not de- 
 serve his good fortune, the blockhead ! In the reign of our 
 well-beloved Louis Quinze, a young wife in your position 
 would very soon have punished her husband for behaving like 
 a ruffian. The selfish creature ! The men who serve under 
 this Imperial tyrant are all of them ignorant boors. They 
 take brutality for gallantry; they know no more of women 
 than they know of love ; and imagine that because they go out 
 to face death on the morrow, they may dispense to-day with 
 all consideration and attentions for us. The time was when 
 a man could love and die too at the proper time. My niece, 
 I will form you. I will put an end to this unhappy di- 
 vergence between you, a natural thing enough, but it would 
 end in mutual hatred and desire for a divorce, always sup- 
 posing that you did not die on the way to despair." 
 
 Julie's amazement equaled her surprise as she listened 
 to her aunt. She was surprised by her language, dimly 
 divining rather than appreciating the wisdom of the words 
 she heard, and very much dismayed to find what this relative,
 
 32 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 out of a great experience, passed judgment upon Victor as 
 her father had done, though in somewhat milder terms. 
 Perhaps some quick prevision of the future crossed her mind ; 
 doubtless, at any rate, she felt the heavy weight of the burden 
 which must inevitably overwhelm her, for she burst into 
 tears, and sprang to the old lady's arms. "Be my mother," 
 she sobbed. 
 
 The aunt shed no tears. The Kevolution had left old 
 ladies of the Monarchy but few tears to shed. Love, in by- 
 gone days, and the Terror at a later time, had familiarized 
 them with extremes of joy and anguish in such a sort that, 
 amid the perils of life, they preserved their dignity and cool- 
 ness, a capacity for sincere but undemonstrative affection 
 which never disturbed their well-bred self-possession, and a 
 dignity of demeanor which a younger generation has done 
 very ill to discard. 
 
 The dowager took Julie in her arms, and kissed her on the 
 forehead with a tenderness and pity more often found in 
 women's ways and manner than in their hearts. Then she 
 coaxed her niece with kind, soothing words, assured her of a 
 happy future, lulled her with promises of love, and put her to 
 bed as if she had been not a niece, but a daughter, a much- 
 loved daughter whose hopes and cares she had made her own. 
 Perhaps the old Marquise had found her own youth and in- 
 experience and beauty again in this nephew's wife. And the 
 Countess fell asleep, happy to have found a friend, nay, a 
 mother, to whom she could tell everything freely. 
 
 Next morning, when the two women kissed each other with 
 heartfelt kindness, and that look of intelligence which marks 
 a real advance in friendship, a closer intimacy between two 
 souls, they heard the sound of horsehoofs, and, turning both 
 together, saw the young Englishman ride slowly past the 
 window, after his wont. Apparently he had made a certain 
 study of the life led by the two lonely women, for he never 
 failed to ride by as they sat at breakfast, and again at dinner. 
 His horse slackened pace of its own accord, and for the space 
 df time required to pass the two windows in the room, its
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 38 
 
 rider turned a melancholy look upon the Countess, who 
 seldom deigned to take the slightest notice of him. Not so 
 the Marquise. Minds not necessarily little find it difficult 
 to resist the little curiosity which fastens upon the most 
 trifling event that enlivens provincial life ; and the English- 
 man's mute way of expressing his timid, earnest love tickled 
 Mme. de Listomere. For her the periodically recurrent 
 glance became a part of the day's routine, hailed daily with 
 new jests. As the two women sat down to table, both of 
 them looked out at the same moment. This time Julie's eyes 
 met Arthur's with such a precision of sympathy that the color 
 rose to her face. The stranger immediately urged his horse 
 into a gallop and went. 
 
 "What is to be done, madame?" asked Julie. "People 
 see this Englishman go past the house, and they will take it 
 for granted that I 
 
 "Yes," interrupted her aunt. 
 
 "Well, then, could I not tell him to discontinue his 
 promenades ?" 
 
 "Would not that be a way of telling him that he was 
 dangerous ? You might put that notion into his head. And 
 besides, can you prevent a man from coming and going as 
 he pleases? Our meals shall be served in another room to- 
 morrow; and when this young gentleman sees us no longer, 
 there will be an end of making love to you through the 
 window. There, dear child, that is how a woman of tke 
 world does." 
 
 But the measure of Julie's misfortune was to be filled up. 
 The two women had scarcely risen from table when Victors 
 man arrived in hot haste from Bourges with a letter for the 
 Countess from her husband. The servant had ridden by un- 
 frequented ways. 
 
 Victor sent his wife news of the downfall of the Empire 
 and the capitulation of Paris. He himself had gone over to 
 the Bourbons, and all France was welcoming them oack with 
 transports of enthusiasm. He could not go so far as Tours, 
 but he begged her to come at once to join him at Orleans, 
 
 VOL. 527
 
 34 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 where he hoped to be in readiness with passports for her. His 
 servant, an old soldier, would be her escort as far as Orleans ; 
 he (Victor) believed that the road was still open. 
 
 "You have not a moment to lose, madame," said the man. 
 "The Prussians, Austrians, and English are about to effect 
 a junction either at Blois or at Orleans." 
 
 A few hours later, Julie's preparations were made, and she 
 started out upon her journey in an old traveling carriage lent 
 by her aunt. 
 
 "Why should you not come with us to Paris?" she asked, 
 as she put her arms about the Marquise. "Now that the 
 Bourbons have come back, you would be " 
 
 "Even if there had not been this unhoped-for return, I 
 should still have gone to Paris, my poor child, for my advice 
 is only too necessary to both you and Victor. So I shall 
 make all my preparations for rejoining you there." 
 
 Julie set out. She took her maid with her, and the old 
 soldier galloped beside the carriage as escort. At nightfall, 
 as they changed horses for the last stage before Blois, Julie 
 grew uneasy. All the way from Amboise she had heard the 
 sound of wheels behind them, a carriage following hers had 
 kept at the same distance. She stood on the step and looked 
 out to see who her traveling companions might be, and in the 
 moonlight saw Arthur standing three paces away, gazing 
 fixedly at the chaise which contained her. Again their eyes 
 met. The Countess hastily flung herself back in her seat, 
 but a feeling of dread set her pulses throbbing. It seemed to 
 her, as to most innocent and inexperienced young wives, that 
 she was herself to blame for this love which she had all unwit- 
 tingly inspired. With this thought came an instinctive terror, 
 perhaps a sense of her own helplessness before aggressive 
 audacity. One of a man's strongest weapons is the terrible 
 power of compelling a woman to think of him when her 
 naturally lively imagination takes alarm or offence at the 
 thought tV""t she is followed. 
 
 The Countess bethought herself of her aunt's advice, and 
 made up her mind that she would not stir from her place
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 35 
 
 during the rest of the journey; hut every time the horses were 
 changed she heard the Englishman pacing round the two 
 carriages, and again upon the road heard the importunate 
 sound of the wheels of his caleche. Julie soon began to think 
 that, when once reunited to her husband, Victor would know 
 how to defend her against this singular persecution. 
 
 "Yet suppose that in spite of everything, this young man 
 does not love me?" This was the thought that came last of 
 all. 
 
 No sooner did she reach Orleans than the Prussians stopped 
 the chaise. It was wheeled into an inn-yard and put under a 
 guard of soldiers. Resistance was out of the question. The 
 foreign soldiers made the three travelers understand by signs 
 that they were obeying orders, and that no one could be 
 allowed to leave the carriage. For about two hours the 
 Countess sat in tears, a prisoner surrounded by the guard, who 
 smoked, laughed, and occasionally stared at her with insolent 
 curiosity. At last, however, she saw her captors fall away 
 from the carriage with a sort of respect, and heard at the 
 same time the sound of horses entering the yard. Another 
 moment, and a little group of foreign officers, with an 
 Austrian general at their head, gathered about the door of the 
 traveling carriage. 
 
 "Madame," said the General, "pray accept our apologies. 
 A mistake has been made. You may continue your journey 
 without fear ; and here is a passport which will spare you all 
 further annoyance of any kind." 
 
 Trembling the Countess took the paper, and faltered out 
 some vague words of thanks. She saw Arthur, now wearing 
 an English uniform, standing beside the General, and could 
 not doubt that this prompt deliverance was due to him. The 
 young Englishman himself looked half glad, half melancholy ; 
 his face was turned away, and he only dared to steal an oc- 
 casional glance at Julie's face. 
 
 Thanks to the passport, Mme. d'Aiglemont reached Paris 
 without further misadventure, and there she found her hus- 
 band. Victor d'Aiglemont, released from his oath of allegiance
 
 36 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 to the Emperor, had met with a most flattering reception from 
 the Comte d'Artois, recently appointed Lieutenant-General of 
 the kingdom by his brother Louis XVIII. D'Aiglemont re- 
 ceived a commission in the Life Guards, equivalent to the 
 rank of general. But amid the rejoicings over the return of 
 the Bourbons, fate dealt poor Julie a terrible blow. The 
 death of the Marquise de Listomere-Landon was an irrepa- 
 rable loss. The old lady died of joy and of an accession of 
 gout to the heart when the Due d'Angouleme came back to 
 Tours, and the one living being entitled by her age to en- 
 lighten Victor, the woman who, by discreet counsels, might 
 have brought about perfect unanimity of husband and wife, 
 was dead ; and Julie felt the full extent of her loss. Hence- 
 forward she must stand alone between herself and her hus- 
 band. But she was young and timid; there could be no 
 doubt of the result, or that from the first she would elect to 
 bear her lot in silence. The very perfection of her character 
 forbade her to venture to swerve from her duties, or to at- 
 tempt to inquire into the cause of her sufferings, for to put an 
 end to them would have been to venture on delicate ground, 
 and Julie's girlish modesty shrank from the thought. 
 
 A word as to M. d'Aigleniont's destinies under the Restora- 
 tion. 
 
 How many men are there whose utter incapacity is a secret 
 kept from most of their acquaintance. For such as these 
 high rank, high office, illustrious birth, a certain veneer of 
 politeness, and considerable reserve of manner, or the prestige 
 of great fortunes, are but so many sentinels to turn back 
 critics who would penetrate to the presence of the real man. 
 Such men are like kings, in that their real figure, character, 
 and life can never be known nor justly appreciated, because 
 they are always seen from too near or too far. Factitious 
 merit has a way of asking questions and saying little; and 
 understands the art of putting others forward to save the 
 necessity of posing before them ; then, with a happy knack of 
 its own, it draws and attaches others by the thread of the 
 ruling passion or self-interest, keeping men of far great n
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 37 
 
 abilities in play like puppets, and despising those whom it has 
 brought down to its own level. The petty fixed idea naturally 
 prevails ; it has the advantage of persistence over the plastic- 
 ity of great thoughts. 
 
 The observer who should seek to estimate and appraise the 
 negative values of these empty heads needs subtlety rather 
 than superior wit for the task; patience is a more necessary 
 part of his judicial outfit than great mental grasp, cunning 
 and tact rather than any elevation or greatness of ideas. Yet 
 skilfully as such usurpers can cover and defend their weak 
 points, it is difficult to delude wife and mother and children 
 and the house-friend of the family; fortunately for them, 
 however, these persons almost always keep a secret which in 
 a manner touches the honor of all, and not unfrequently go so 
 far as to help to foist the imposture upon the public. And 
 if, thanks to such domestic conspiracy, many a noodle passes 
 current for a man of ability, on the other hand many another 
 who has real ability is taken for a noodle to redress the bal- 
 ance, and the total average of this kind of false coin in circu- 
 lation in the state is a pretty constant quantity. 
 
 Bethink yourself now of the part to be played by a clever 
 woman quick to think and feel, mated with a husband of this 
 kind, and can you not see a vision of lives full of sorrow and 
 self-sacrifice? Nothing upon earth can repay such hearts 
 so full of love and tender tact. Put a strong-willed woman 
 in this wretched situation, and she will force a way out of it 
 for herself by a crime, like Catherine II., whom men never- 
 theless style "the Great." But these women are not all seated 
 upon thrones, they are for the most part doomed to domestic 
 unhappiness none the less terrible because obscure. 
 
 Those who seek consolation in this present world for their 
 woes often effect nothing but a change of ills if they remain 
 faithful to their duties; or they commit a sin if they break 
 the laws for their pleasure. All these reflections are ap- 
 plicable to Julie's domestic life. 
 
 Before the fall of Napoleon nobody was jealous of d'Aigle- 
 mont. He was one colonel among many, an efficient orderly
 
 38 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 staff-officer, as good a man as you could find for a dangerous 
 mission, as unfit as well could be for an important command. 
 D'Aiglemont was looked upon as a dashing soldier such as 
 the Emperor liked, the kind of man whom his mess usually 
 calls "a good fellow." The Kestoration gave him back his 
 title of Marquis, and did not find him ungrateful ; he followed 
 the Bourbons into exile at Ghent, a piece of logical loyalty 
 which falsified the horoscope drawn for him by his late father- 
 in-law, who predicted that Victor would remain a colonel all 
 his life. After the Hundred Days he received the appoint- 
 ment of Lieutenant-General, and for the second time became 
 a marquis ; but it was M. d' Aiglemont's ambition to be a peer 
 of France. He adopted, therefore, the maxims and the 
 politics of the Conservateur, cloaked himself in dissimula- 
 tion which hid nothing (there being nothing to hide), cul- 
 tivated grayity of countenance and the art of asking questions 
 and saying little, and was taken for a man of profound 
 wisdom. Nothing drew him from his intrenchments 
 behind the forms of politeness; he laid in a provision of 
 formulas, and made lavish use of his stock of the catch-words 
 coined at need in Paris to give fools the small change for the 
 ore of great ideas and events. Among men of the world he 
 was reputed a man of taste and discernment ; and as a bigoted 
 upholder of aristocratic opinions he was held up for a noble 
 character. If by chance he slipped now and again into his 
 old light-heartedness or levity, others were ready to discover 
 an undercurrent of diplomatic intention beneath his inanity 
 and silliness. "Oh ! he only says exactly as much as he means 
 to say," thought these excellent people. 
 
 So d' Aiglemont's defects and good qualities stood him alike 
 in good stead. He did nothing to forfeit a high military 
 reputation gained by his dashing courage, forhehadneverbeen 
 a commander-in-chief. Great thoughts surely were engraven 
 upon that manly aristocratic countenance, which imposed upon 
 every one but his own wife. And when everybody else be- 
 lieved in the Marquis d'Aiglemont's imaginary talents, the 
 Marquis persuaded himself before he had done that he was
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 3 
 
 one of the most remarkable men at Court, where, thanks to his 
 purely external qualifications, he was in favor and taken at 
 his own valuation. 
 
 At home, however, M. d'Aiglemont was modest. In- 
 stinctively he felt that his wife, young though she was, was his 
 superior; and out of this involuntary respect there grew an 
 occult power which the Marquise was obliged to wield in spite 
 of all her efforts to shake off the burden. She became her 
 husband's adviser, the director of his actions and his fortunes. 
 It was an unnatural position; she felt it as something of a 
 humiliation, a source of pain to be buried in the depths of her 
 heart. From the first her delicately feminine instinct told 
 her that it is a far better thing to obey a man of talent than 
 to lead a fool; and that a young wife compelled to act and 
 think like a man is neither man nor woman, but a being who 
 lays aside all the charms of her womanhood along with its 
 misfortunes, yet acquires none of the privileges which our 
 laws give to the stronger sex. Beneath the surface her life 
 was a bitter mockery. Was she not compelled to protect her 
 protector, to worship a hollow idol, a poor creature who flung 
 her the love of a selfish husband as the wages of her continual 
 self-sacrifice; who saw nothing in her but the woman; and 
 who either did not think it worth while, or (wrong quite 
 as deep) did not think at all of troubling himself about her 
 pleasures, of inquiring into the cause of her low spirits and 
 dwindling health? And the Marquis, like most men who 
 chafe under a wife's superiority, saved his self-love by argu- 
 ing from Julie's physical feebleness a corresponding lack of 
 mental power, for which he was pleased to pity her; and he 
 would cry out upon fate which had given him a sickly girl 
 for a wife. The executioner posed, in fact, as the victim. 
 
 All the burdens of this dreary lot fell upon the Marquise, 
 who still must smile upon her foolish lord, and deck a house 
 of mourning with flowers, and make a parade of happiness 
 in a countenance wan with secret torture. And with this 
 sense of responsibility for the honor of both, with the mag- 
 nificent immolation of self, the young Marquise unconsciously
 
 40 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 acquired a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue which 
 became her safeguard amid many dangers. 
 
 Perhaps, if her heart were sounded to the very depths, this 
 intimate closely hidden wretchedness, following upon her un- 
 thinking girlish first love, had roused in her an abhorrence of 
 passion; possibly she had no conception of its rapture, nor of 
 forbidden but frenzied bliss for which some women will re- 
 nounce all the laws of prudence and the principles of conduct 
 upon which society is based. She put from her like a dream 
 the thought of bliss and tender harmony of love promised by 
 Mme. de Listomere-Lan don's mature experience, and waited 
 resignedly for the end of her troubles with a hope that she 
 might die young. 
 
 Her health had declined daily since her return from Tou- 
 raine ; her life seemed to be measured to her in suffering ; yet 
 her ill-health was graceful, her malady seemed little more 
 than languor, and might well be taken by careless eyes for a 
 fine lady's whim of invalidism. 
 
 Her doctors had condemned her to keep to the sofa, and 
 there among her flowers lay the Marquise, fading as they 
 faded. She was not strong enough to walk, nor to bear the 
 open air, and only went out in a closed carriage. Yet with 
 all the marvels of modern luxury and invention about 
 her, she looked more like an indolent queen than an in- 
 valid. A few of her friends, half in love perhaps with 
 her sad plight and her fragile look, sure of finding her 
 at home, and speculating no doubt upon her future 
 restoration to health, would come to bring her the news 
 of the day, and kept her informed of the thousand and 
 one small events which fill life in Paris with variety. Her 
 melancholy, deep and real though it was, was still the melan 
 choly of a woman rich in many ways. The Marquise d'Aigle- 
 mont was like a flower, with a dark insect gnawing at its 
 root. 
 
 Occasionally she went into society, not to please herself, 
 but in obedience to the exigencies of the position which her 
 husband aspired to take. In society her beautiful voice and
 
 41 
 
 the perfection of her singing could always gain the social 
 success so gratifying to a young woman; but what was social 
 success to her, who drew nothing from it for her heart or her 
 hopes? Her husband did not care for music. And, more- 
 over, she seldom felt at her ease in salons, where her beauty 
 attracted homage not wholly disinterested. Her position 
 excited a sort of cruel compassion, a morbid curiosity. She 
 was suffering from an inflammatory complaint not infre- 
 quently fatal, for which our nosology as yet has found no 
 name, a complaint spoken of among women in confidential 
 whispers. In spite of the silence in which her life was spent, 
 the cause of her ill-health was no secret. She was still but a 
 girl in spite of her marriage; the slightest glance threw her 
 into confusion. In her endeavor not to blush, she was always 
 laughing, always apparently in high spirits ; she would never 
 admit that she was not perfectly well, and anticipated ques- 
 tions as to her health by shame-stricken subterfuges. 
 
 In 1817, however, an event took place which did much to 
 alleviate Julie's hitherto deplorable existence. A daughter 
 was born to her, and she determined to nurse her child her- 
 self. For two years motherhood, its all-absorbing multiplicity 
 of cares and anxious joys, made life less hard for her. She and 
 her husband lived necessarily apart. Her physicians pre- 
 dicted improved health, but the Marquise herself put no 
 faith in these auguries based on theory. Perhaps, like many 
 a one for whom life has lost its sweetness, she looked forward 
 to death as a happy termination of the drama. 
 
 But with the beginning of the year 1819 life grew harder 
 than ever. Even while she congratulated herself upon the 
 negative happiness which she had contrived to win, she caught 
 a terrifying glimpse of yawning depths below it. She had 
 passed by degrees out of her husband's life. Her fine 
 tact and her prudence told her that misfortune must come, 
 and that not singly, of this cooling of an affection already 
 lukewarm and wholly selfish. Sure though she was of her 
 ascendency over Victor, and certain as she felt of his unalter- 
 able esteem, she dreaded the influence of unbridled passions 
 upon a head so empty, so full of rash self-conceit.
 
 42 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 Julie's friends often found her absorbed in prolonged mus- 
 ings; the less clairvoyant among them would jestingly ask 
 her what she was thinking about, as if a young wife would 
 think of nothing but frivolity, as if there were not almost 
 always a depth of seriousness in a mother's thoughts. 
 TJnhappiness, like great happiness, induces dreaming. Some- 
 times as Julie played with her little Helene, she would gaze 
 darkly at her, giving no reply to the childish questions in 
 which a mother delights, questioning the present and the 
 future as to the destiny of this little one. Then some sudden 
 recollection would bring back the scene of the review at the 
 Tuileries and fill her eyes with tears. Her father's prophetic 
 warnings rang in her ears, and conscience reproached her 
 that she had not recognized its wisdom. Her troubles had 
 all come of her own wayward folly, and often she knew not 
 which among so many was the hardest to bear. The sweet 
 treasures of her soul were unheeded, and not only so, she 
 could never succeed in making her husband understand her, 
 even in the commonest everyday things. Just as the power to 
 love developed and grew strong and active, a legitimate 
 channel for the affections of her nature was denied her, and 
 wedded love was extinguished in grave physical and mental 
 sufferings. Add to this that she now felt for her husband 
 that pity closely bordering upon contempt, which withers all 
 affection at last. Even if she had not learned from con- 
 versations with some of her friends, from examples in life, 
 from sundry occurrences in the great world, that love can 
 bring ineffable bliss, her own wounds would have taught her to 
 divine the pure and deep happiness which binds two kindred 
 souls each to each. 
 
 In the picture which her memory traced of the past, 
 Arthur's frank face stood out daily nobler and purer; it was 
 but a flash, for upon that recollection she dared not dwell. 
 The young Englishman's shy, silent love for her was the one 
 event since her marriage which had left a lingering sweetness 
 in her darkened and lonely heart. It may be that all the 
 blighted hopes, all the frustrated longings which gradually
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 43 
 
 clouded Julie's mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of 
 imagination, about this man whose manners, sentiments, 
 and character seemed to have so much in common with her 
 own. This idea still presented itself to her mind fitfully 
 and vaguely, like a dream ; yet from that dream, which always 
 ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater wretchedness, to 
 keener consciousness of the latent anguish brooding beneath 
 her imaginary bliss. 
 
 Occasionally her self-pity took wilder and more daring 
 flights. She determined to have happiness at any cost; but 
 still more often she lay a helpless victim of an indescribable 
 numbing stupor, the words she heard had no meaning to her, 
 or the thoughts which arose in her mind were so vague and 
 indistinct that she could not find language to express them. 
 Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred harshly 
 upon her girlish dreams of life, but she was obliged to devour 
 her tears. To whom could she make complaint? Of whom 
 be understood ? She possessed, moreover, that highest degree 
 of woman's sensitive pride, the exquisite delicacy of feeling 
 which silences useless complainings and declines to use an 
 advantage to gain a triumph which can only humiliate both 
 victor and vanquished. 
 
 Julie tried to endow M. d'Aiglemont with her own abilities 
 and virtues, flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the 
 happiness lacking in her lot. All her woman's ingenuity 
 and tact was employed in making the best of the situation; 
 pure waste of pains unsuspected by him, whom she thus 
 strengthened in his despotism. There were moments when 
 misery became an intoxication, expelling all ideas, all self- 
 control; but, fortunately, sincere piety always brought her 
 back to one supreme hope; she found a refuge in the belief 
 in a future life, a wonderful thought which enabled her to 
 take up her painful task afresh. No elation of victory fol- 
 lowed those terrible inward battles and throes of anguish; 
 no one knew of those long hours of sadness; her haggard 
 glances met no response from human eyes, and during the 
 brief moments snatched by chance for weeping, her bitter 
 tears fell unheeded and in solitude.
 
 44 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 One evening in January 1820, the Marquise became aware 
 of the full gravity of the crisis, gradually brought on by 
 force of circumstances. When a husband and wife know 
 each other thoroughly, and their relation has long been a 
 matter of use and wont, when the wife has learned to in- 
 terpret every slightest sign, when her quick insight discerns 
 thoughts and facts which her husband keeps from her, a 
 chance word, or a remark so carelessly let fall in the first 
 instance, seems, upon subsequent reflection, like the swift 
 breaking out of light. A wife not seldom suddenly awakes 
 upon the brink of a precipice or in the depths of the abyss; 
 and thus it was with the Marquise. She was feeling glad 
 to have been left to herself for some days, when the real 
 reason of her solitude flashed upon her. Her husband, whether 
 fickle and tired of her, or generous and full of pity for her, 
 was hers no longer. 
 
 In the moment of that discovery she forgot herself, her 
 sacrifices, all that she had passed through, she remembered 
 only that she was a mother. Looking forward, she thought 
 of her daughter's fortune, of the future welfare of the one 
 creature through whom some gleams of happiness came to 
 her, of her Helene, the only possession which bound her to 
 life. 
 
 Then Julie wished to live to save her child from a step- 
 mother's terrible thraldom, which might crush her darling's 
 life. Upon this new vision of threatened possibilities fol- 
 lowed one of those paroxysms of thought at fever-heat which 
 consume whole years of life. 
 
 Henceforward husband and wife were doomed to be sepa- 
 rated by a whole world of thought, and all the weight of that 
 world she must bear alone. Hitherto she had felt sure that 
 Victor loved her, in so far as he could be said to love ; she had 
 been the slave of pleasures which she did not share; to-day 
 the satisfaction of knowing that she purchased his content- 
 ment with her tears was hers no longer. She was alone in the 
 world, nothing was left to her now but a choice of evils. In 
 the calm stillness of the night her despondency drained her
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 45 
 
 of all her strength. She rose from her sofa beside the dying 
 fire, and stood in the lamplight gazing, dry-eyed, at her child, 
 when M. d'Aiglemont came in. He was in high spirits. 
 Julie called to him to admire Helene as she lay asleep, but he 
 met his wife's enthusiasm with a commonplace : 
 
 "All children are nice at that age." 
 
 He closed the curtains about the cot after a careless kiss 
 on the child's forehead. Then he turned his eyes on Julie, 
 took her hand and drew her to sit beside him on the sofa, 
 where she had been sitting with such dark thoughts surging 
 up in her mind. 
 
 "You are looking very handsome to-night, Mme. d'Aigle- 
 mont," he exclaimed, with the gaiety intolerable to the Mar- 
 quise, who knew its emptiness so well. 
 
 "Where have you spent the evening ?" she asked, with a pre- 
 tence of complete indifference. . 
 
 "At Mme. de Serizy's." 
 
 He had taken up a fire-screen, and was looking intently 
 at the gauze. He had not noticed the traces of tears on his 
 wife's face. Julie shuddered. Words could not express the 
 overflowing torrent of thoughts which must be forced down 
 into inner depths. 
 
 "Mme. de Serizy is giving a concert on Monday, and is 
 dying for you to go. You have not been anywhere for some 
 time past, and that is enough to set her longing to see you at 
 her house. She is a good-natured woman, and very fond of 
 you. I should be glad if you would go; I all but promised 
 that you should " 
 
 "I will go." 
 
 There was something so penetrating, so significant in the 
 tones of Julie's voice, in her accent, in the glance that went 
 with the words, that Victor, startled out of his indifference, 
 stared at his wife in astonishment. 
 
 That was all. Julie had guessed that it was Mme. de 
 Serizy who had stolen her husband's heart from her. Her 
 brooding despair benumbed her. She appeared to be deeply 
 interested in the fire. Victor meanwhile still played with the
 
 46 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 fire-screen. He looked bored, like a man who has enjoyed 
 himself elsewhere, and brought home the consequent lassi- 
 tude. He yawned once or twice, then he took up a candle 
 in one hand, and with the other languidly sought his wife's 
 neck for the usual embrace; but Julie stooped and received 
 the good-night kiss upon her forehead; the formal, loveless 
 grimace seemed hateful to her at that moment. 
 
 As soon as the door closed upon Victor, his wife sank into 
 a seat. Her limbs tottered beneath her, she burst into tears. 
 None but those who have endured the torture of some such 
 scene can fully understand the anguish that it means, or 
 divine the horror of the long-drawn tragedy arising out of it. 
 
 Those simple, foolish words, the silence that followed be- 
 tween the husband and wife, the Marquis' gesture and ex- 
 pression, the way in which he sat before the fire, his attitude 
 as he made that futile attempt to put a kiss on his wife's 
 throat, all these things made up a dark hour for Julie, and 
 the catastrophe of the drama of her sad and lonely life. In 
 her madness she knelt down before the sofa, burying her face 
 in it to shut out everything from sight, and prayed to 
 Heaven, putting a new significance into the words of the 
 evening prayer, till it became a cry from the depths of her 
 own soul, which would have gone to her husband's heart if he 
 had heard it. 
 
 The following week she spent in deep thought for her 
 future, utterly overwhelmed by this new trouble. She made 
 a study of it, trying to discover a way to regain her ascendency 
 over the Marquis, scheming how to live long enough to watch 
 over her daughter's happiness, yet to live true to her own 
 heart. Then she made up her mind. She would struggle 
 with her rival. She would shine once more in society. She 
 would feign the love which she could no longer feel, she would 
 captivate her husband's fancy; and when she had lured him 
 into her power, she would coquet with him like a capricious 
 mistress who takes delight in tormenting a lover. This hate- 
 ful strategy was the only possible way out of her troubles. 
 In this way she would become mistress of the situation; she
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 47 
 
 would prescribe her own sufferings at her good pleasure, and 
 reduce them by enslaving her husband, and bringing him 
 under a tyrannous yoke. She felt not the slightest remorse 
 for the hard life which he should lead. At a bound she 
 reached cold, calculating indifference -for her daughter's 
 sake. She had gained a sudden insight into the treacherous, 
 lying arts of degraded women; the wiles of coquetry, the re- 
 volting cunning which arouses such profound hatred in men 
 at the mere suspicion of innate corruption in a woman. 
 
 Julie's feminine vanity, her interests, and a vague desire to 
 inflict punishment, all wrought unconsciously with the 
 mother's love within her to force her into a path where new 
 sufferings awaited her. But her nature was too noble, her 
 mind too fastidious, and, above all things, too open, to be 
 the accomplice of these frauds for very long. Accustomed 
 as she was to self-scrutiny, at the first step in vice for vice it 
 was the cry of conscience must inevitably drown the clamor 
 of the passions and of selfishness. Indeed, in a young wife 
 whose heart is still pure, whose love has never been mated, 
 the very sentiment of motherhood is overpowered by modesty. 
 Modesty; is not all womanhood summed up in that? But 
 just now Julie would not see any danger, anything wrong, 
 in her new life. 
 
 She went to Mme. de Serizy's concert. Her rival had ex- 
 pected to see a pallid, drooping woman. The Marquise wore 
 rouge, and appeared in all the splendor of a toilet which 
 enhanced her beauty. 
 
 Mme. de Serizy was one of those women who claim to ex- 
 ercise a sort of sway over fashions and society in Paris; she 
 issued her decrees, saw them received in her own circle, and 
 it seemed to her that all the world obeyed them. She aspired 
 to epigram, she set up for an authority in matters of taste. 
 Literature, politics, men and women, all alike were submitted 
 to her censorship, and the lady herself appeared to defy the 
 censorship of others. Her house was in every respect a model 
 of good taste. 
 
 Julie triumphed over the Countess in her own salon, filled
 
 48 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 as it was with beautiful women and women of fashion. Julie's 
 liveliness and sparkling wit gathered all the most dis- 
 tinguished men in the rooms about her. Her costume was 
 faultless, for the despair of the women, who one and all 
 envied her the fashion of her dress, and attributed the 
 moulded outline of her bodice to the genius of some unknown 
 dressmaker, for women would rather believe in miracles 
 worked by the science of chiffons than in the grace and per- 
 fection of the form beneath. 
 
 When Julie went to the piano to sing Desdemona's song, 
 the men in the rooms flocked about her to hear the celebrated 
 voice so long mute, and there was a deep silence. The 
 Marquise saw the heads clustered thickly in the doorways, 
 saw all eyes turned upon her, and a sharp thrill of excitement 
 quivered through her. She looked for her husband, .gave 
 him a coquettish side-glance, and it pleased her to see that 
 his vanity was gratified to no small degree. In the joy of tri- 
 umph she sang the first part of Al piu salice. Her audience 
 was enraptured. Never had Malibran nor Pasta sung with 
 expression and intonation so perfect. But at the beginning 
 of the second part she glanced over the listening groups and 
 saw Arthur. He never took his eyes from her face. A 
 quick shudder thrilled through her, and her voice faltered. 
 Up hurried Mme. de Serizy from her place. 
 
 "What is it, dear? Oh! poor little thing! she is in such 
 weak health; I was so afraid when I saw her begin a piece 
 so far beyond her strength." 
 
 The song was interrupted. Julie was vexed. She had not 
 courage to sing any longer, and submitted to her rival's 
 treacherous sympathy. There was a whisper among the 
 women. The incident led to* discussions ; they guessed that 
 the struggle had begun between the Marquise and Mme. de 
 Serizy, and their tongues did not spare the latter. 
 
 Julie's strange, perturbing presentiments were suddenly 
 realized. Through her preoccupation with Arthur she had 
 loved to imagine that with that gentle, refined face he must 
 remain faithful to his first love. There were times when she
 
 felt proud that this ideal, pure, and passionate young love 
 sh/mld have been hers; the passion of the young lover whose 
 thoughts are all for her to whom he dedicates every moment 
 of his life, who blushes as a woman blushes, thinks as a 
 woman might think, forgetting ambition, fame, and fortune 
 in devotion to his love, she need never fear a rival. All 
 these things she had fondly and idly dreamed of Arthur ; now 
 all at once it seemed to her that her dream had come true. In 
 the young Englishman's half-feminine face she read the same 
 deep thoughts, the same pensive melancholy, the same passive 
 acquiescence in a painful lot, and an endurance like her own. 
 She saw herself in him. Trouble and sadness are the most 
 eloquent of love's interpreters, and response is marvelously 
 swift between two suffering creatures, for in them the powers 
 of intuition and of assimilation of facts and ideas are well- 
 nigh unerring and perfect. So with the violence of the shock 
 the Marquise's eyes were opened to the whole extent of the 
 future danger. She was only too glad to find a pretext for 
 her nervousness in her chronic ill-health, and willingly sub- 
 mitted to be overwhelmed by Mme. de Serizy's insidious com- 
 passion. 
 
 That incident of the song caused talk and discussion which 
 differed with the various groups. Some pitied Julie's fate, 
 and regretted that such a remarkable woman was lost to 
 society; others fell to wondering what the cause of her ill- 
 health and seclusion could be. 
 
 "Well, now, my dear Ronquerolles," said the Marquis, ad- 
 dressing Mme. de Serizy's brother, "you used to envy me my 
 good fortune, and you used to blame me for my infidelities. 
 Pshaw, you would not find much to envy in my lot if, like 
 me, you had a pretty wife so fragile that for the past two 
 years you might not so much as kiss her hand for fear of 
 damaging her. Do not you encumber yourself with one of 
 these fragile ornaments, only fit to put in a glass case, so 
 brittle and so costly that you are always obliged to be careful 
 of them. They tell me that you are afraid of snow or wet 
 for that fine horse of yours; how often do you ride him? 
 VOL. 5 28
 
 50 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 That is just my own case. It is true that my wife gives me 
 no ground for jealousy, but my marriage is a purely orna- 
 mental business; iff. you think that I am a married man, you 
 are grossly mistaken. So there is some excuse for my un- 
 faithfulness. I should dearly like to know what you gentle- 
 men who laugh at me would do in my place. Not many men 
 would be so considerate as I am. I am sure," (here he 
 lowered his voice) "that Mme. d'Aiglemont suspects nothing. 
 And then, of course, I have no right to complain at all; I 
 am very well off. Only there is nothing more trying for 
 a man who feels things than the sight of suffering in a poor 
 creature to whom you are attached " 
 
 "You must have a very sensitive nature, then/' said M. de 
 Ronquerolles, "for you are not often at home." 
 
 Laughter followed on the friendly epigram; but Arthur, 
 who made one of the group, maintained a frigid imper- 
 turbability in his quality of an English gentleman who takes 
 gravity for the very basis of his being. D'Aiglemont's 
 eccentric confidence, no doubt, had kindled some kind of hope 
 in Arthur, for he stood patiently awaiting an opportunity 
 of a word with the Marquis. He had not to wait long. 
 
 "My Lord Marquis," he said, "I am unspeakably pained to 
 see the state of Mme. d'Aiglemont's health. I do not think 
 that you would talk jestingly about it if you knew that unless 
 she adopts a certain course of treatment she must die miser- 
 ably. If I use this language to you, it is because I am in a 
 manner justified in using it, for I am quite certain that I can 
 save Mme. d'Aiglemont's life and restore her to health and 
 happiness. It is odd, no doubt, that a man of my rank should 
 be a physician, yet nevertheless chance determined that I 
 should study medicine. I find life dull enough here," he 
 continued, affecting a cold 3elfishness to gain his ends, "it 
 makes no difference to me whether I spend my time and 
 travel for the benefit of a suffering fellow-creature, or waste 
 it in Paris on some nonsense or other. It is very, very seldom 
 that a cure is completed in these complaints, for they require 
 constant care, time, and patience, and, above all things,
 
 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 51 
 
 money. Travel is needed, and a punctilious following out of 
 prescriptions, by no means unpleasant, and varied daily. Two 
 gentlemen" (laying a stress on the word in its English sense) 
 "can understand each other. I give you warning that if you 
 accept my proposal, you shall be a judge of my conduct at 
 every moment. I will do nothing without consulting you, 
 without your superintendence, and I will answer for the 
 success of my method if you will consent to follow it. Yes, 
 unless you wish to be Mme. d'Aiglemont's husband no longer, 
 and that before long," he added in the Marquis' ear. 
 
 The Marquis laughed. "One thing is certain that only 
 an Englishman could make me such an extraordinary pro- 
 posal," he said. "Permit me to leave it unaccepted and unre- 
 jected. I will think it over ; and my wife must be consulted 
 first in any case." 
 
 Julie had returned to the piano. This time she sang 
 a song from Semiramide, Son regina, son guerriera, and the 
 whole room applauded, a stifled outburst of wellbred acclama- 
 tion which proved that the Faubourg Saint-Germain had been 
 roused to enthusiasm by her singing. 
 
 The evening was over. D'Aiglemont brought his wife 
 home, and Julie saw with uneasy satisfaction that her first 
 attempt had at once been successful. Her husband had been 
 roused out of indifference by the part which she had played, 
 and now he meant to honor her with such a passing fancy as 
 he might bestow upon some opera nymph. It amused Julie 
 that she, a virtuous married woman, should be treated thus. 
 She tried to play with her power, but at the outset her kind- 
 ness broke down once more, and she received the most terrible 
 of all the lessons held in store for her by fate. 
 
 Between two and three o'clock in the morning Julie sat up, 
 sombre and moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room 
 dimly lighted by the flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. 
 Her agony of remorse had lasted near an hour; how bitter 
 her tears had been none perhaps can realize save women who 
 have known such an experience as hers. Only such natures 
 as Julie's can feel her loathing for a calculated caress, the
 
 52 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 horror of a loveless kiss, of the heart's apostasy followed 
 by dolorous prostitution. She despised herself; she cursed 
 marriage. She could have longed for death; perhaps if it 
 had not been for a cry from her child, she would have sprung 
 from the window and dashed herself upon the pavement. 
 M. d'Aiglemont slept on peacefully at her side; his wife's hot 
 dropping tears did not waken him. 
 
 But next morning Julie could be gay. She made a great 
 effort to look happy, to hide, not her melancholy, as hereto- 
 fore, but an insuperable loathing. From that day she no 
 longer regarded herself as a blameless wife. Had she not 
 been false to herself ? Why should she not play a double part 
 in the future, and display astounding depths of cunning in 
 deceiving her husband? In her there lay a hitherto undis- 
 covered latent depravity, lacking only opportunity, and her 
 marriage was the cause. 
 
 Even now she had asked herself why she should struggle 
 with love, when, with her heart and her whole nature in revolt, 
 she gave herself to the husband whom she loved no longer. 
 Perhaps, who knows? some piece of fallacious reasoning, 
 some bit of special pleading, lies at the root of all sins, of all 
 crimes. How shall society exist unless every individual of 
 which it is composed will make the necessary sacrifices of in- 
 clination demanded by its laws? If you accept the benefits 
 of civilized society, do you not by implication engage to ob- 
 serve the conditions, the conditions of its very existence ? And 
 yet, starving wretches, compelled to respect the laws of prop- 
 erty, are not less to be pitied than women whose natural in- 
 stincts and sensitiveness are turned to so many avenues of 
 pain. 
 
 A few day after that scene of which the secret lay buried 
 in the midnight couch, d'Aiglemont introduced Lord Gren- 
 ville. Julie gave the guest a stiffly polite reception, which 
 did credit to her powers of dissimulation. Resolutely she 
 silenced her heart, veiled her eyes, steadied her voice, and so 
 kept her future in her own hands. Then, when by these de- 
 vices, this innate woman-craft, as it may be called, she had
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 53 
 
 discovered the full extent of the love which she inspired, Mme. 
 d'Aiglemont welcomed the hope of a speedy cure, and no 
 longer opposed her husband, who pressed her to accept the 
 young doctor's offer. Yet she declined to trust herself with 
 Lord Grenville until, after some further study of his words 
 and manner, she could feel certain that he had sufficient 
 generosity to endure his pain in silence. She had absolute 
 power over him, and she had begun to abuse that power 
 already. Was she not a woman? 
 
 Montcontour is an old manor-house built upon the sandy 
 cliffs above the Loire, not far from the bridge where Julie's 
 journey was interrupted in 1814. It is a picturesque, white 
 chateau, with turrets covered with fine stone carving like 
 Mechlin lace; a chateau such as you often see in Touraine, 
 spick and span, ivy clad, standing among its groves of mul- 
 berry trees and vineyards, with its hollow walks, its stone 
 balustrades, and cellars mined in the rock escarpments 
 mirrored in the Loire. The roofs of Montcontour gleam in 
 the sun ; the whole land glows in the burning heat. Traces of 
 the romantic charm of Spain and the south hover about the 
 enchanting spot. The breeze brings the scent of bell flowers 
 and golden broom, the air is soft, all about you lies a sunny 
 land, a land which casts its dreamy spell over your soul, a 
 land of languor and of soft desire, a fair, sweet-scented 
 country, where pain is lulled to sleep and passion wakes. 
 No heart is cold for long beneath its clear sky, beside its 
 sparkling waters. One ambition dies after another, and you 
 sink into a serene content and repose, as the sun sinks at the 
 end of the day swathed about with purple and azure. 
 
 One warm August evening in 1821 two people were climb- 
 ing the paths cut in the crags above the chateau, doubtless 
 for the sake of the view from the heights above. The two 
 were Julie and Lord Grenville, but this Julie seemed to be 
 a new creature. The unmistakable color of health glowed in 
 her face. Overflowing vitality had brought a light into her 
 eyes, which sparkled through a moist film with that liquid
 
 54 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 brightness which gives such irresistible charm to the eyes 
 of children. She was radiant with smiles ; she felt the joy of 
 living and all the possibilities of life. From the very way in 
 which she lifted her little feet, it was easy to see that no suffer- 
 ing trammeled her lightest movements; there was no heavi- 
 ness nor languor in her eyes, her voice, as heretofore. Under 
 the white silk sunshade which screened her from the hot sun- 
 light, she looked like some young bride beneath her veil, or a 
 maiden waiting to yield to the magical enchantments of Love. 
 
 Arthur led her with a lover's care, helping her up the path- 
 way as if she had been a child, finding the smoothest ways, 
 avoiding the stones for her, bidding her see glimpses of 
 distance, or some flower beside the path, always with the un- 
 failing goodness, the same delicate design in all that he did; 
 the intuitive sense of this woman's wellbeing seemed to be 
 innate in him, and as much, na} r , perhaps more, a part of his 
 being as the pulse of his own life. 
 
 The patient and her doctor went step for step. There was 
 nothing strange for them in a sympathy which seemed to have 
 existed since the day when first they walked together. One 
 will swayed them both; they stopped as their senses received 
 the same impression ; every word and every glance told of the 
 same thought in either mind. They had climbed up through 
 the vineyards, and now they turned to sit on one of the long 
 white stones, quarried out of the caves in the hillside; but 
 Julie stood awhile gazing out over the landscape. 
 
 "What a beautiful country!" she cried. "Let us put up a 
 tent and live here. Victor, Victor, do come up here I" 
 
 M. d'Aiglemont answered by a halloo from below. He 
 did not, however, hurry himself, -merely giving his wife a 
 glance from time to time when the windings of the path gave 
 him a glimpse of her. Julie breathed the air with delight. 
 She looked up at Arthur, giving him one of those subtle 
 glances in which a clever woman can put the whole of her 
 thought. 
 
 "Ah, I should like to live here always," she said. "Would 
 it be possible to tire of this beautiful valley? What is the 
 picturesque river called, do you know ?"
 
 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 55 
 
 is the Cise." 
 
 "The Cise/' she repeated. "And all this country below, 
 before us?" 
 
 "Those are the low hills above the Cher." 
 
 "And away to the right ? Ah, that is Tours. Only see how 
 fine the cathedral towers look in the distance." 
 
 She was silent, and let fall the hand which she had stretched 
 out towards the view upon Arthur's. Both admired the wide 
 landscape made up of so much blended beauty. Neither of 
 them spoke. The murmuring voice of the river, the pure air, 
 and the cloudless heaven were all in tune with their thronging 
 thoughts and their youth and the love in their hearts. 
 
 "Oh ! mon Dieu, how I love this country !" Julie continued, 
 with growing and ingenuous enthusiasm. "You lived here 
 for a long while, did you not ?" she added after a pause. 
 
 A thrill ran through Lord Grenville at her words. 
 
 "It was down there," he said, in a melancholy voice, in- 
 dicating as he spoke a cluster of walnut trees by the roadside, 
 "that I, a prisoner, saw you for the first time." 
 
 "Yes, but even at that time I felt very sad. This country 
 
 looked wild to me then, but now She broke off, and 
 
 Lord Grenville did not dare to look at her. 
 
 "All this pleasure I owe to you," Julie began at last, after 
 a long silence. "Only the living can feel the joy of life, and 
 until now have I not been dead to it all? You have given 
 me more than health, you have made me feel all its 
 worth- 
 Women have an inimitable talent for giving utterance to 
 strong feelings in colorless words; a woman's eloquence lies in 
 tone and gesture, manner and glance. Lord Grenville hid his 
 face in his hands, for his tears filled his eyes. This was 
 Julie's first word of thanks since they left Paris a year ago. 
 
 For a whole year he had watched over the Marquise, putting 
 his whole self into the task. D'Aiglemont seconding him. he 
 had taken her first to Aix, then to la Eochelle, to be near the 
 sea. From moment to moment he had watched the changes 
 worked in Julie's shattered constitution by his wise and simple
 
 56 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 prescriptions. He had cultivated her health as an enthusiastic 
 gardener might cultivate a rare flower. Yet, to all appearance, 
 the Marquise had quietly accepted Arthur's skill and care with 
 the egoism of a spoiled Parisienne, or like a courtesan who 
 has no idea of the cost of things, nor of the worth of a man, 
 and judges of both by their comparative usefulness to her. 
 
 The influence of places upon us is a fact worth remarking. 
 If melancholy comes over us by the margin of a great water, 
 another indelible law of our nature so orders it that the moun- 
 tains exercise a purifying influence upon our feelings, and 
 among the hills passion gains in depth by all that it apparently 
 loses in vivacity. Perhaps it was the sight of the wide country 
 by the Loire, the height of the fair sloping hillside on which 
 the lovers sat, that induced the calm bliss of the moment when 
 the whole extent of the passion that lies beneath a few insig- 
 nificant-sounding words is divined for the first time with a 
 delicious sense of happiness. 
 
 Julie had scarcely spoken the words which had moved Lord 
 Grenville so deeply, when a caressing breeze ruffled the tree- 
 tops and filled the air with coolness from the river; a few 
 clouds crossed the sky, and the soft cloud-shadows brought 
 out all the beauty of the fair land below. 
 
 Julie turned away her head, lest Arthur should see the tears 
 which she succeeded in repressing; his emotion had spread at 
 once to her. She dried her eyes, but she dared not raise them 
 lest he should read the excess of joy in a glance. Her woman's 
 instinct told her that during this hour of danger she must 
 hide her love in the depths of her heart. Yet silence might 
 prove equally dangerous, and Julie saw that Lord Grenville 
 was unable to utter a word. She went on, therefore, in a 
 gentle voice : 
 
 "You are touched by what I have said. Perhaps such a 
 quick outburst of feeling is the way in which a gracious and 
 kind nature like yours reverses a mistaken judgment. You 
 must have thought me ungrateful when T was cold and re- 
 served, or cynical and hard, all through the journey which, 
 fortunately, is very near its end. I should not have been
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 57 
 
 worthy of your care if I had been unable to appreciate it. I 
 have forgotten nothing. Alas ! I shall forget nothing, not the 
 anxious way in which you watched over me as a mother 
 watches over her child, nor, and above all else, the noble 
 confidence of our life as brother and sister, the delicacy of your 
 conduct winning charms, against which we women are de- 
 fenceless. My lord, it is out of my power to make you a 
 return " 
 
 At those words Julie hastily moved further away, and Lord 
 Grenville made no attempt to detain her. She went to a rock 
 not far away, and there sat motionless. What either felt re- 
 mained a secret known to each alone; doubtless they wept in 
 silence. The singing of the birds about them, so blithe, so 
 overflowing with tenderness at sunset time, could only increase 
 the storm of passion which had driven them apart. Nature 
 took up their story for them, and found a language for the 
 love of which they did not dare to speak. 
 
 "And now, my lord/' said Julie, and she came and stood 
 before Arthur with a great dignity, which allowed her to take 
 his hand in hers. "I am going to ask you to hallow and 
 purify the life which you have given back to me. Here, we 
 will part. I know," she added, as she saw how white his face 
 grew, "I know that I am repaying you for your devotion by 
 requiring of you a sacrifice even greater than any which you 
 have hitherto made for me, sacrifices so great that they should 
 receive some better recompense than this. . . . But it 
 must be. ... You must not stay in France. By laying 
 this command upon you, do I not give you rights which shall 
 be held sacred?" she added, holding his hand against her 
 beating heart. 
 
 "Yes," said Arthur, and he rose. 
 
 He looked in the direction of d'Aiglemont, who appeared 
 on the opposite side of one of the hollow walks with the child 
 in his arms. He had scrambled up on the balustrade by the 
 chateau that little Helene might jump down. 
 
 "Julie, I will not say a word of my love; we understand 
 each other too well. Deeply and carefully though I have
 
 58 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 hidden the pleasures of my heart, you have shared them all. 
 I feel it, I know it, I see it. And now, at this moment, as I 
 receive this delicious proof of the constant sympathy of our 
 hearts, I must go. ... Cunning schemes for getting rid 
 of him have crossed my mind too often ; the temptation might 
 be irresistible if I stayed with you." 
 
 "I had the same thought," she said, a look of pained sur- 
 prise in her troubled face. 
 
 Yet in her tone and involuntary shudder there was such 
 virtue, such certainty of herself, won in many a hard-fought 
 battle with a love that spoke in Julie's tones and involuntary 
 gestures, that Lord Grenville stood thrilled with admiration 
 of her. The mere shadow of a crime had been dispelled from 
 that clear conscience. The religious sentiment enthroned on 
 the fair forehead could not but drive away the evil thoughts 
 that arise unbidden, engendered by our imperfect nature, 
 thoughts which make us aware of the grandeur and the perils 
 of human destiny. 
 
 "And then," she said, "I should have drawn down your 
 
 scorn upon me, and 1 should have been saved," she added, 
 
 and her eyes fell. "To be lowered in your eyes, what is that 
 but death ?" 
 
 For a moment the two heroic lovers were silent, choking 
 down their sorrow. Good or ill, it seemed that their thoughts 
 were loyally one, and the joys in the depths of their heart were 
 no more experiences apart than the pain which they strove 
 most anxiously to hide. 
 
 "I have no right to complain," she said after a while, "my 
 misery is of my own making," and she raised her tear-filled 
 eyes to the sky. 
 
 "Perhaps you don't remember it, but that is the place where 
 we met each other for the first time," shouted the General 
 from below, and he waved his hand towards the distance. 
 "There, down yonder, near those poplars !" 
 
 The Englishman nodded abruptly by way of answer. 
 
 "So I was bound to die young and to know no happiness," 
 Julie continued. "Yes, do not think that I live. Sorrow
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 59 
 
 is just as fatal as the dreadful disease which you have cured. 
 I do not think that I am to blame. No. My love is stronger 
 than I am, and eternal ; but all unconsciously it grew in me ; 
 and I will not be guilty through my love. Nevertheless, 
 though I shall be faithful to my conscience as a wife, to my 
 duties as a mother, I will be no less faithful to the instincts of 
 my heart. Hear me," she cried in an unsteady voice, "hence- 
 forth I belong to him no longer." 
 
 By a gesture, dreadful to see in its undisguised loathing, 
 she indicated her husband. 
 
 "The social code demands that I should make his existence 
 happy," she continued. "I will obey, I will be his servant, my 
 devotion to him shall be boundless; but from to-day I am a 
 widow. I will neither be a prostitute in my own eyes nor in 
 those of the world. If I do not belong to M. d'Aiglemont, I 
 will never belong to another. You shall have nothing, nothing- 
 save this which you have wrung from me. This is the doom 
 which I have passed upon myself," she said, looking proudly 
 at him. "And now, know this if you give way to a single 
 criminal thought, M. d'Aiglemont's widow will enter a con- 
 vent in Spain or Italy. By an evil chance we have spoken of 
 our love ; perhaps that confession was bound to come ; but our 
 hearts must never vibrate again like this. To-morrow you 
 will receive a letter from England, and we shall part, and 
 never see each other again." 
 
 The effort had exhausted all Julie's strength. She felt her 
 knees trembling, and a feeling of deathly cold came over her. 
 Obeying a woman's instinct, she sat down, lest she should 
 sink into Arthur's arms. 
 
 "Julie !" cried Lord Grenville. 
 
 The sharp cry rang through the air like a crack of thunder. 
 Till then he could not speak; now, all the words which the 
 dumb lover could not utter gathered themselves in that heart- 
 rending appeal. 
 
 "Well, what is wrong with her?" asked the General, who 
 had hurried up at that cry, and now suddenly confronted 
 the two.
 
 6G A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 "Nothing serious," said Julie, with that wonderful self- 
 possession which a woman's quick-wittedness usually brings 
 to her aid when it is most called for. "The chill, damp air 
 under the walnut tree made me feel quite faint just now, and 
 that must have alarmed this 'doctor of mine. Does he not 
 look on me as a very nearly finished work of art? He was 
 startled, I suppose, by the idea of seeing it destroyed." With 
 ostentatious coolness she took Lord Grenville's arm, smiled at 
 her husband, took a last look at the landscape, and went down 
 the pathway, drawing her traveling companion with her. 
 
 "This certainly is the grandest view that we have seen," 
 she said; "I shall never forget it. Just look, Victor, what 
 distance, what an expanse of country, and what variety in it ! 
 I have fallen in love with this landscape." 
 
 Her laughter was almost hysterical, but to her husband 
 it sounded natural. She sprang gaily down into the hollow 
 pathway and vanished. 
 
 "What ?" she cried, when they had left M. d'Aiglemont far 
 behind. "So soon? Is it so soon? Another moment, and 
 we can neither of us be ourselves ; we shall never be ourselves 
 again, our life is over, in short " 
 
 "Let us go slowly," said Lord Grenville, "the carriages are 
 still some way off, and if we may put words into our glances, 
 our hearts may live a little longer." 
 
 They went along the footpath by the river in the late even- 
 ing light, almost in silence ; such vague words as they uttered, 
 low as the murmur of the Loire, stirred their souls to the 
 depths. Just as the sun sank, a last red gleam from th sky 
 fell over them; it was like a mournful symbol of their ill- 
 starred love. 
 
 The General, much put out because the carriage was not 
 at the spot where they left it, followed and outstripped the 
 pair without interrupting their converse. Lord Grenville's 
 high-minded and delicate behavior throughout the journey 
 had completely dispelled the Marquis' suspicions. For some 
 time past he had left his wife in freedom, reposing confidence 
 in the noble amateur's Punic faith. Arthur and Julie walked
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 61 
 
 on together in the close and painful communion of two hearts 
 laid waste. 
 
 So short a while ago as they climbed the cliffs at Mont- 
 contour, there had been a vague hope in either mind, an un- 
 easy joy for which they dared not account to themselves ; but 
 now as they came along the pathway by the river, they pulled 
 down the frail structure of imaginings, the child's card- 
 castle, on which neither of them had dared to breathe. That 
 hope was over. 
 
 That very evening Lord Grenville left them. His last look 
 at Julie made it miserably plain that since the moment when 
 sympathy revealed the full extent of a tyrannous passion, he 
 did well to mistrust himself. 
 
 The next morning, M. d'Aiglemont and his wife took their 
 places in the carriage without their traveling companion, and 
 were whirled swiftly along the road to Blois. The Marquise 
 was constantly put in mind of the journey made in 1814, when 
 as yet she knew nothing of love, and had been almost ready 
 to curse it for its persistency. Countless forgotten impres- 
 sions were revived. The heart has its own memory. A 
 woman who cannot recollect the most important great events 
 will recollect through a lifetime things which appealed to her 
 feelings; and Julie d'Aiglemont found all the most trifling 
 details of that journey laid up in her mind. It was pleasant 
 to her to recall its little incidents as they occurred to her one 
 by one; there were points in the road when she could even 
 remember the thoughts that passed through her mind when 
 she saw them first. 
 
 Victor had fallen violently in love with his wife since she 
 had recovered the freshness of her youth and all her beauty, 
 and now he pressed close to her side like a lover. Once he 
 tried to put his arm round her, but she gently disengaged her- 
 self, finding some excuse or other for evading the harmless 
 caress. In a little while she shrank from the close contact with 
 Victor, the sensation of warmth communicated by their po- 
 sition. She tried to take the unoccupied place opposite, but 
 Victor gallantly resigned the back seat to her. For this at-
 
 62 A WOMAN OK THIRTY 
 
 tention she thanked him with a sigh, whereupon he forgot 
 himself, and the Don Juan of the garrison construed his wife's 
 melancholy to his own advantage, so that at the end of the day 
 she was compelled to speak with a firmness which impressed 
 him. 
 
 "You have all but killed me, dear, once already, as you 
 know," said she. "If I were still an inexperienced girl, I 
 might begin to sacrifice myself afresh; but I am a mother, 
 I have a daughter to bring up, and I owe as much to her as to 
 you. Let us resign ourselves to a misfortune which affects 
 us both alike. You are the less to be pitied. Have you not, 
 as it is, found consolations which duty and the honor of both, 
 and (stronger still) which Nature forbids to me? Stay," 
 she added, "you carelessly left three letters from Mme. de 
 Serizy in a drawer; here they are. My silence about this 
 matter should make it plain to you that in me you have a wife 
 who has plenty of indulgence and does not exact from you the 
 sacrifices prescribed by the law. But I have thought enough 
 to see that the roles of husband and wife are quite different, 
 and that the wife alone is predestined to misfortune. My 
 virtue is based upon firmly fixed and definite principles. I 
 shall live blamelessly, but let me live." 
 
 The Marquis was taken aback by a logic which women grasp 
 with the clear insight of love, and overawed by a certain 
 dignity natural to them at such crises. Julie's instinctive re- 
 pugnance for all that jarred upon her love arid the instincts 
 of her heart is one of the fairest qualities of woman, and 
 springs perhaps from a natural virtue which neither laws 
 nor civilization can silence. And who shall dare to blame 
 women? If a woman can silence the exclusive sentiment 
 which bids her "forsake all other" for the man whom she 
 loves, what is she but a priest who has lost his faith ? If a 
 rigid mind here and there condemns Julie for a sort of com- 
 promise between love and wifely duty, impassioned souls will 
 lay it to her charge as a crime. To be thus blamed by both 
 sides shows one of two things very clearly that misery neces- 
 sarily follows in the train of broken laws, or else that there
 
 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 63 
 
 are deplorable flaws in the institutions upon which society 
 in Europe is based. 
 
 Two years went by. M. and Mme. d'Aiglemont went their 
 separate ways, leading their life in the world, meeting each 
 other more frequently abroad than at home, a refinement upon 
 divorce, in which many a marriage in the great world is apt 
 to end. 
 
 One evening, strange to say, found husband and wife in 
 their own drawing-room. Mme. d'Aiglemont had been dining 
 at home with a friend, and the General, who almost invariably 
 dined in town, had not gone out for onqe. 
 
 "There is a pleasant time in store for you, Madame la 
 Marquise," said M. d'Aiglemont, setting his coffee cup down 
 upon the table. He looked at the guest, Mme. de Wimphen, 
 and half-pettishly, half-mischievously added, "I am starting 
 off for several days' sport with the Master of the Hounds. For 
 a whole week, at any rate, you will be a widow in good 
 earnest; just what you wish for, I suppose. Guillaume," he 
 said to the servant who entered, "tell them to put the horses 
 in." 
 
 Mme. de Wimphen was the friend to whom Julie had begun 
 the letter upon her marriage. The glances exchanged by the 
 two women said plainly that in her Julie had found an in- 
 timate friend, an indulgent and invaluable confidante. Mme. 
 de Wimphen's marriage had been a very happy one. Perhaps 
 it was her own happiness which secured her devotion to Julie's 
 unhappy life, for under such circumstances, dissimilarity of 
 destiny is nearly always a strong bond of union. 
 
 "Is the hunting season not over yet?" asked Julie, with 
 an indifferent glance at her husband. 
 
 "The Master of the Hounds comes when and where he 
 pleases, madame. We are going boar-hunting in the Royal 
 Forest." 
 
 "Take care that no accident happens to you." 
 
 "Accidents are usually unforeseen," he said, smiling. 
 
 "The carriage is ready, my Lord Marquis," said the servant.
 
 64 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 "Madame, if I should fall a victim to the boar " he con- 
 tinued, with a suppliant air. 
 
 "What does this mean ?" inquired Mme. de Wimphen. 
 
 "Come, come/' said Mme. d'Aiglemont, turning to her 
 husband; smiling at her friend as if to say, "You will soon 
 see." 
 
 Julie held up her head; but as her husband came close to 
 her, she swerved at the last, so that his kiss fell not on her 
 throat, but on the broad frill about it. 
 
 "You will be my witness before heaven now that I need a 
 firman to obtain this little grace of her," said the Marquis, 
 addressing Mme. de Wimphen. "This is how this wife of 
 mine understands love. She has brought me to this pass, 
 by what trickery I am at a loss to know. ... A pleasant 
 time to you !" and he went. 
 
 "But your poor husband is really very good-natured," cried 
 Louisa de Wimphen, when the two women were alone to- 
 gether. "He loves you." 
 
 "Oh ! not another syllable after that last word. The name 
 I bear makes me shudder 
 
 "Yes, but Victor obeys you implicitly," said Louisa. 
 
 "His obedience is founded in part upon the great esteem 
 which I have inspired in him. As far as outward things go, 
 I am a model wife. I make his house pleasant to him ; I shut 
 my eyes to his intrigues ; I touch not a penny of his fortune. 
 He is free to squander the interest exactly as he pleases; I 
 only stipulate that he shall not touch the principal. At this 
 price I have peace. He neither explains nor attempts to ex- 
 plain my life. But though my husband is guided by me, that 
 does not say that I have nothing to fear from his character. 
 I am a bear leader who daily trembles lest the muzzle should 
 give way at last. If Victor once took it into his head that I 
 had forfeited my right to his esteem, what would happen next 
 I dare not think ; for he is violent, full of personal pride, and 
 vain above all things. While his wits are not keen enough 
 to enable him to behave discreetly at a delicate crisis when 
 his lowest passions are involved, his character is weak, and he
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 65 
 
 would very likely kill me provisionally even if he died of re- 
 morse next day. But there is no fear of that fatal good for- 
 tune." 
 
 A brief pause followed. Both women were thinking of the 
 real cause of this state of affairs. Julie gave Louisa a glance 
 which revealed her thoughts. 
 
 "I have been cruelly obeyed/' she cried. "Yet I never for- 
 bade him to write to me. Oh ! he has forgotten me, and he is 
 right. If his life had been spoiled, it would have been too 
 tragical ; one life is enough, is it not ? Would you believe it, 
 dear; I read English newspapers simply to see his name in 
 print. But he has not yet taken his seat in the House of 
 Lords." 
 
 "So you know English ?" 
 
 "Did I not tell you ? Yes, I learned." 
 
 "Poor little one !" cried Louisa, grasping Julie's hand in 
 hers. "How can you still live ?" 
 
 "That is the secret," said the Marquise, with an involuntary 
 gesture almost childlike in its simplicity. "Listen, I take 
 laudanum. That duchess in London suggested the idea ; you 
 know the story, Maturin made use of it in one of his novels. 
 My drops are very weak, but I sleep; I am only awake for 
 seven hours in the day, and those hours I spend with my 
 child." 
 
 Louisa gazed into the fire. The full extent of her friend's 
 misery was opening out before her for the first time, and she 
 dared not look into her face. 
 
 "Keep my secret, Louisa," said Julie, after a moment's 
 silence. 
 
 Just as she spoke the footman brought in a letter for the 
 Marquise. 
 
 "Ah !" she cried, and her face grew white. 
 
 "I need not ask from whom it comes," said Mme. de 
 Wimphen, but the Marquise was reading the letter, and heeded 
 nothing else. 
 
 Mme. de Wimphen, watching her friend, saw strong feeling 
 
 wrought to the highest pitch, ecstasy of the most dangerous 
 VOL. 529
 
 66 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 kind painted on Julie's face in swift changing white and red. 
 At length Julie flung the sheet into the fire. 
 
 "It burns like fire," she said. "Oh ! my heart beats till I 
 cannot breathe." 
 
 She rose to her feet and walked up and down. Her eyes 
 were blazing. 
 
 "He did not leave Paris !" she cried. 
 
 Mme. de Wimphen did not dare to interrupt the words that 
 followed, jerked-out sentences, measured by dreadful pauses 
 in between. After every break the deep notes of her voice 
 sank lower and lower. There was something awful about the 
 last words. 
 
 "He has seen me, constantly, and I have not known it. A 
 look, taken by stealth, every day, helps him to live. Louisa, 
 you do not know ! He is dying. He wants to say good-bye 
 to me. He knows that my husband has gone away for several 
 days. He will be here in a moment. Oh ! I shall die : I am 
 lost. Listen, Louisa, stay with me ! Two women and he will 
 not dare Oh ! stay with me ! I am afraid!" 
 
 "But my husband knows that I have been dining with you ; 
 he is sure to come for me," said Mme. de Wimphen. 
 
 "Well, then, before you go I will send him away. I will 
 play the executioner for us both. Oh me ! he will think that I 
 do not love him any more And that letter of his ! Dear, 
 I can see those words in letters of fire." 
 
 A carriage rolled in under the archway. 
 
 "Ah !" cried the Marquise, with something like joy in her 
 voice, "he is coming openly. He makes no mystery of it." 
 
 "Lord Grenville," announced the servant. 
 
 The Marquise stood up rigid and motionless; but at the 
 sight of Arthur's white face, so thin and haggard, how was it 
 possible to keep Tip the show of severity ? Lord Grenville saw 
 that Julie was not alone, but he controlled his fierce annoy- 
 ance, and looked cool and unperturbed. Yet for the two 
 women who knew his secret, his face, his tones, the look in his 
 eyes had something of the power attributed to the torpedo. 
 Their faculties were benumbed by the sharp shock of contact
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 67 
 
 with his horrible pain. The sound of his voice set Julie'& 
 heart beating so cruelly that she could not trust herself to 
 speak ; she was afraid that he would see the full extent of his 
 power over her. Lord Grenville did not dare to look at Julie, 
 and Mme. de Wimphen was left to sustain a conversation 
 to which no one listened. Julie glanced at her friend with 
 touching gratefulness in her eyes to thank her for coming 
 to her aid. 
 
 By this time the lovers had quelled emotion into silence, 
 and could preserve the limits laid down by duty and con- 
 vention. But M. de Wimphen was announced, and as he 
 came in the two friends exchanged glances. Both felt the 
 difficulties of this fresh complication. It was impossible to 
 enter into explanations with M. de Wimphen, and Louisa 
 could not think of any sufficient pretext for asking to be left. 
 
 Julie went to her, ostensibly to wrap her up in her shawl. 
 "I will be brave," she said, in a low voice. "He came here 
 in the face of all the world, so what have I to fear? Yet 
 but for you, in that first moment, when I saw how changed 
 he looked, I should have fallen at his feet." 
 
 "Well, Arthur, you have broken your promise to me," she 
 said, in a faltering voice, when she returned. Lord Gren- 
 ville did not venture to take the seat upon the sofa by her 
 side. 
 
 "I could not resist the pleasure of hearing your voice, of 
 being near you. The thought of it came to be a sort of mad- 
 ness, a delirious frenzy. I am no longer master of myself. 
 I have taken myself to task; it is no use, I am too weak, I 
 ought to die. But to die without seeing you, without having 
 heard the rustle of your dress, or felt your tears. What a 
 death !" 
 
 He moved further away from her ; but in his hasty uprising 
 a pistol fell out of his pocket. The Marquise looked down 
 blankly at the weapon; all passion, all expression had died 
 out of her eyes. Lord Grenville stooped for the thing, raging 
 inwardly over an accident which seemed like a piece of love- 
 sick strategy.
 
 68 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 "Arthur!" 
 
 "Madame/' he said, looking down, "I came here in utter 
 desperation; I meant " he broke off. 
 
 "You meant to die by your own hand here in my house !" 
 
 "Xot alone !" he said in a low voice. 
 
 "Not alone ! My husband, perhaps 
 
 "No, no," he cried in a choking voice. "Reassure your- 
 self," he continued, "I have quite given up my deadly purpose. 
 As soon as I came in, as soon as I saw you, I felt that I was 
 strong enough to suffer in silence, and to die alone." 
 
 Julie sprang up, and flung herself into his arms. Through 
 her sobbing he caught a few passionate words, "To know hap- 
 piness, and then to die. Yes, let it be so." 
 
 All Julie's story was summed up in that cry from the 
 lepths; it was the summons of nature and of love at which 
 women without a religion surrender. With the fierce energy 
 of unhoped-for joy, Arthur caught her up and carried her to 
 the sofa; but in a moment she tore herself from her lover's 
 arms, looked at him with a fixed despairing gaze, took his 
 hand, snatched up a candle, and drew him into her room. 
 When they stood by the cot where Helene lay sleeping, she 
 put the curtains softly aside, shading the candle with her 
 hand, lest the light should dazzle the half-closed eyes beneath 
 the transparent lids. Helene lay smiling in her sleep, with 
 her arms outstretched on the coverlet. Julie glanced from 
 her child to Arthur's face. That look told him all. 
 
 "We may leave a husband, even though he loves us : a man 
 is strong; he has consolations. We may defy the world and 
 its laws. But a motherless child !" all these thoughts, and 
 a thousand others more moving still, found language in that 
 glance. 
 
 "We can take her with us," muttered he; "I will love her 
 dearly." 
 
 "Mamma !" cried little Helene, now awake. Julie burst 
 into tears. Lord Grenville sat down and folded his arms in 
 gloomy silence.
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 69 
 
 "Mamma !" At the sweet childish name, so many nobler 
 feelings, so many irresistible yearnings awoke, that for a 
 moment love was effaced by the all-powerful instinct of 
 motherhood ; the mother triumphed over the woman in Julie, 
 and Lord Grenville could not hold out, he was defeated by 
 Julie's tears. 
 
 Just at that moment a door was flung noisily open. "Ma- 
 dame d'Aiglemont, are you hereabouts ?" called a voice which 
 rang like a crack of thunder through the hearts of the two 
 lovers. The Marquis had come home. 
 
 Before Julie could recover her presence of mind, her hus- 
 band was on the way to the door of her room which opened 
 into his. Luckily, at a sign, Lord Grenville escaped into the 
 dressing-closet, and she hastily shut the door upon him. 
 
 <f Well, my lady, here am I" said' Victor, "the hunting party 
 did not come off. I am just going to bed." 
 
 "Good-night, so am I. So go and leave me to undress/' 
 
 "You are very cross to-night, Madame la Marquise." 
 
 The General returned to his room, Julie went with him to 
 the door and shut it. Then she sprang to the dressing-closet 
 to release Arthur. All her presence of mind returned; she 
 bethought herself that it was quite natural that her sometime 
 doctor should pay her a visit ; she might have left him in the 
 drawing-room while she put her little girl to bed. She was 
 about to tell him, under her breath, to go back to the draw- 
 ing-room, and had opened the door. Then she shrieked aloud. 
 Lord Grenville's fingers had been caught and crushed in the 
 door. 
 
 "Well, what is it ?" demanded her husband. 
 
 "Oh ! nothing, nothing, I have just pricked my finger with 
 a pin." 
 
 The General's door opened at once. Julie imagined that 
 the irruption was due to a sudden- concern for her, and cursed 
 a solicitude in which love had no part. She had barely time to 
 close the dressing-closet, and Lord Grenville had not extri- 
 cated his hand. The General did, in fact, appear, but his 
 wife had mistaken his motives; Ms apprehensions were en- 
 tirely on his own account.
 
 70 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 "Can you lend me a bandana handkerchief? That stupid 
 fool Charles leaves me without a single one. In the early 
 days you used to bother me with looking after me so carefully. 
 Ah, well, the honeymoon did not last very long for me, nor 
 yet for my cravats. Nowadays I am given over to the secular 
 arm, in the shape of servants who do not care one jack straw 
 for what I say." 
 
 "There ! There is a bandana for you. Did you go into 
 the drawing-room ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Oh! you might perhaps have been in time to see Lord 
 Grenville. 
 
 "Is he in Paris?" 
 
 "It seems so." 
 
 "Oh ! I will go at once. The good doctor." 
 
 "But he will have gone by now !" exclaimed Julie. 
 
 The Marquis, standing in the middle of the room, was 
 tying the handkerchief over his head. He looked complacently 
 at himself in the glass. 
 
 "What has become of the servants is more than I know," he 
 remarked. "I have rung the bell three times for Charles, and 
 he has not answered it. And your maid is not here either. 
 Eing for her. I should like another blanket on my bed to- 
 night." 
 
 "Pauline is out," the Marquise said drily. 
 
 "What, at midnight !" exclaimed the General. 
 
 "I gave her leave to go to the Opera." 
 
 "That is funny !" returned her husband, continuing to un- 
 dress. "I thought I saw her coming upstairs." 
 
 "She has come in then, of course," said Julie, with assumed 
 impatience, and to allay any possible suspicion on her hus- 
 band's part she pretended to ring the bell. 
 
 The whole history of that night has never been known, but 
 no doubt it was as simple and as tragically commonplace as 
 the domestic incidents that preceded it.
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 71 
 
 Next day the Marquise d'Aiglemont took to her bed,, nor 
 did she leave it for some days. 
 
 "What can have happened in your family so extraordinary 
 that every one is talking about your wife ?" asked M. de Ron- 
 qnerolles of M. d'Aiglemont a short time after that night of 
 catastrophes. 
 
 "Take my advice and remain a bachelor," said d'Aigle- 
 mont. "The curtains of Helene's cot caught fire, and gave 
 my wife such a shock that it will be a twelvemonth before she 
 gets over it; so the doctor says. You marry a pretty wife, 
 and her looks fall off; you marry a girl in blooming health, 
 and she turns into an invalid. You think she has a passion- 
 ate temperament, and find her cold, or else under her ap- 
 parent coldness there lurks a nature so passionate that she 
 is the death of you, or she dishonors your name. Sometimes 
 the meekest of them will turn out crotchety, though the 
 crotchety ones never grow any sweeter. Sometimes the mere 
 child, so simple and silly at first, will develop an iron will 
 to thwart you and the ingenuity of a fiend. I am tired of 
 marriage." 
 
 "Or of your wife ?" 
 
 "That would be difficult. By-the-by, do you feel inclined 
 to go to Saint-Thomas d'Aquin with me to attend Lord Gren- 
 ville's funeral?" 
 
 "A singular way of spending time. Is it really known 
 how he came by his death ?" added Ronquerolles. 
 
 "His man says that he spent a whole night sitting on some- 
 body's window sill to save some woman's character, and it has 
 been infernally cold lately." 
 
 "Such devotion would be highly creditable to one of us old 
 stagers ; but Lord Grenville was a youngster and an English- 
 man. Englishmen never can do anything like anybody else." 
 
 "Pooh !" returned d'Aiglemont, "these heroic exploits all 
 depend upon the woman in the case, and it certainly was not 
 for one that I know, that poor Arthur came by his death."
 
 72 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 II. 
 
 A HIDDEN GRIEF 
 
 BETWEEN the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat 
 country, skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontaine- 
 bleau, and marked out as to its southern limits by the towns 
 of Moret, Montereau, and Nemours. It is a dreary country; 
 little knolls of hills appear only at rare intervals, and a coppice 
 here and there among the fields affords cover for game; and 
 beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or yellow- 
 ish horizon peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri. 
 
 In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from 
 Moret and Montereau, the traveler passes the old chateau of 
 Saint-Lange, standing amid surroundings which lack neither 
 dignity nor stateliness. There are magnificent avenues of 
 elm-trees, great gardens encircled by the moat, and a cir- 
 cumference of walls about a huge manorial pile which 
 represents the profits of the maltote, the gains of farmers- 
 general, legalized malversation, or the vast fortunes of great 
 houses now brought low beneath the hammer of the Civil 
 Code. 
 
 Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray 
 along the roads full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which 
 secures the place against intrusion, he will wonder how it 
 happened that this romantic old place was set down in a 
 savanna of corn-land, a desert of chalk, and sand, and marl, 
 where gaiety dies away, and melancholy is a natural product 
 of the soil. The voiceless solitude, the monotonous horizon 
 line which weigh upon the spirits are negative beauties, 
 which only suit with sorrow that refuses to be comforted. 
 
 Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still 
 young, well known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and 
 her wit; and to the immense astonishment of the little village 
 a mile away, this woman of high rank and corresponding 
 fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange.
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 73 
 
 From time immemorial, farmers and laborers had seen no 
 gentry at the chateau. The estate, considerable though it 
 was, had been left in charge of a land-steward and the house 
 to the old servants. Wherefore the appearance of the lady 
 of the manor caused a kind of sensation in the district. 
 
 A group had gathered in the yard of the wretched little 
 wineshop at the end of the village (where the road forks to 
 Nemours and Moret) to see the carriage pass. It went by 
 slowly, for the Marquise had come from Paris with her own 
 horses, and those on the lookout had ample opportunity of 
 observing a waiting-maid, who sat with her back to the 
 horses holding a little girl, with a somewhat dreamy look, 
 upon her knee. The child's mother lay back in the carriage ; 
 she looked like a dying woman sent out into country air by 
 her doctors as a last resource. Village politicians were by 
 no means pleased to see the young, delicate, downcast face; 
 they had hoped that the new arrival at Saint-Lange would 
 bring some life and stir into the neighborhood, and clearly 
 any sort of stir or movement must be distasteful to the suffer- 
 ing invalid in the traveling carriage. 
 
 That evening, when the notables of Saint-Lange were drink- 
 ing in the private room of the wineshop, the longest head 
 among them declared that such depression could admit of but 
 one construction the Marquise was ruined. His lordship 
 the Marquis was away in Spain with the Due d'Angouleme 
 (so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her lady- 
 ship had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill- 
 luck on the Bourse. The Marquis was one of the greatest 
 gamblers on the face of the globe. Perhaps the estate would 
 be cut up and sold in little lots. There would be some good 
 strokes of business to be made in that case, and it behooved 
 everybody to count up his cash, unearth his savings and to 
 see how he stood, so as to secure his share of the spoil of 
 Saint-Lange. 
 
 So fair did this future seem, that the village worthies, 
 dying to know whether it was founded on fact, began to think 
 of ways of getting at the truth through the servants at the
 
 74 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 chateau. None of these, however, could throw any light on 
 the calamit}- which had brought their mistress into the coun- 
 try at the beginning of winter, and to the old chateau of Saint- 
 Lange of all places, when she might have taken her choice of 
 cheerful country-houses famous for their beautiful gardens. 
 
 His worship the mayor called to pay his respects: but he 
 did not see the lady. Then the land-steward tried with no 
 better success. 
 
 Madame la Marquise kept her room, only leaving it, while 
 it was set in order, for the small adjoining drawing-room, 
 where she dined; if, indeed, to sit down to a table, to look 
 with disgust at the dishes, and take the precise amount of 
 nourishment required to prevent death from sheer starvation, 
 can be called dining. The meal over, she returned at once 
 to the old-fashioned low chair, in which she had sat since the 
 morning, in the embrasure of the one window that lighted 
 her room. 
 
 Her little girl she only saw for a few minutes daily, during 
 the dismal dinner, and even for that short time she seemed 
 scarcely able to bear the child's presence. Surely nothing 
 but the most unheard-of anguish could have extinguished a 
 mother's love so early. 
 
 None of the servants were suffered to come near, her own 
 woman was the one creature whom she liked to have about 
 her ; the chateau must be perfectly quiet, the child must play 
 at the other end of the house. The slightest sound had grown 
 so intolerable, that any human voice, even the voice of her own 
 child, jarred upon her. 
 
 At first the whole countryside was deeply interested in these 
 eccentricities; but time passed on, every possible hypothesis 
 had been advanced to account for them, and the peasants and 
 dwellers in the little country towns thought no more of the 
 invalid lady. 
 
 So the Marquise was left to herself. She might live on, 
 perfectly silent, amid the silence which she herself had 
 created ; there was nothing to draw her forth from the tapes- 
 tried chamber where her grandmother had died, whither
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 75 
 
 she herself had come that she might die, gently, without 
 witnesses, without importunate solicitude, without suffering 
 from the insincere demonstrations of egoism masquerading 
 as affection, which double the agony of death in great cities. 
 
 She was twenty-six years old. At that age, with plenty of 
 romantic illusions still left, the mind loves to dwell on the 
 thought of death when death seems to come as a friend. But 
 with youth, death is coy, coming up close only to go away, 
 showing himself and hiding again, till youth has time to fall 
 out of love with him during this dalliance. There is that un- 
 certainty too that hangs over death's to-morrow. Youth 
 plunges back into the world of living men, there to find the 
 pain more pitiless than death, that docs not wait to strike. 
 
 This woman who refused to live was to know the bitter- 
 ness of these reprieves in the depths of her loneliness; in 
 moral agony, which death would not come to end, she was to 
 serve a terrible apprenticeship to the egoism which must take 
 the bloom from her heart and break her in to the life of the 
 world. 
 
 This harsh and sorry teaching is the usual outcome of our 
 early sorrows. For the first, and perhaps for the last time 
 in her life, the Marquise d'Aiglemont was in very truth 
 suffering. And, indeed, would it not be an error to suppose 
 that the same sentiment can be reproduced in us? Once 
 develop the power to feel, is it not always there in the depths 
 of our nature? The accidents of life may lull or awaken it, 
 but there it is, of necessity modifying the self, its abiding 
 place. Hence, every sensation should have its great day once 
 and for all, its first day of storm, be it long or short. Hence, 
 likewise, pain, the most abiding of our sensations, could be 
 keenly felt only at its first irruption, its intensity diminish- 
 ing with every subsequent paroxysm, either because we grow 
 accustomed to these crises, or perhaps because a natural in- 
 stinct of self-preservation asserts itself, and opposes to the de- 
 stroying force of anguish an equal but passive force of inertia. 
 
 Yet of all kinds of suffering, to which does the name of 
 anguish belong? For the loss of parents, Nature has in a
 
 76 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 manner prepared us ; physical suffering, again, is an evil which 
 passes over us and is gone; it lays no hold upon the soul; 
 if it persists, it ceases to be an evil, it is death. The young 
 mother loses her firstborn, but wedded love ere long gives her 
 a successor. This grief, too, is transient. After all, these, 
 and many other troubles like unto them., are in some sort 
 wounds and bruises; they do not sap the springs of vitality, 
 and only a succession of such blows can crush in us the in- 
 stinct that seeks happiness. Great pain, therefore, pain that 
 arises to anguish, should be suffering so deadly, that past, 
 present, and future are alike included in its grip, and no part 
 of life is left sound and whole. Never afterwards can we 
 think the same thoughts as before. Anguish engraves itself 
 in ineffaceable characters on mouth and brow; it passes 
 through us, destroying or relaxing the springs that vibrate to 
 enjoyment, leaving behind in the soul the seeds of a disgust 
 for all things in this world. 
 
 Yet, again, to be measureless, to weigh like this upon body 
 and soul, the trouble should befall when soul and body have 
 just come to their full strength, and smite down a heart that 
 beats high with life. Then it is that great scars are made. 
 Terrible is the anguish. None, it may be, can issue from this 
 soul-sickness without undergoing some dramatic change. 
 Those who survive it, those who remain on earth, return to 
 the world to wear an actor's countenance and to play an 
 actor's part. They know the side-scenes where actors may 
 retire to calculate chances, shed their tears, or pass their jests. 
 Life holds no inscrutable dark places for those who have 
 passed through this ordeal; their judgments are Khada- 
 manthine. 
 
 For young women of the Marquise d'Aiglemont's age, this 
 first, this most poignant pain of all, is always referable to the 
 same cause. A woman, especially if she is a young woman, 
 greatly beautiful, and by nature great, never fails to stake 
 her whole life as instinct and sentiment and society all unite 
 to bid her. Suppose that that life fails her, suppose that she 
 still lives on, she cannot but endure the most cruel pangs,
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 77 
 
 inasmuch as a first love is the loveliest of all. How comes it 
 that this catastrophe has found no painter, no poet? And 
 yet, can it be painted ? Can it be sung ? No ; for the anguish 
 arising from it eludes analysis and defies the colors of art. 
 And more than this, such pain is never confessed. To con- 
 sole the sufferer, you must be able to divine the past which 
 she hugs in bitterness to her soul like a remorse; it is like 
 an avalanche in a valley; it laid all waste before it found a 
 permanent resting-place. 
 
 The Marquise was suffering from this anguish, which will 
 for long remain unknown, because the whole world condemns 
 it, while sentiment cherishes it, and the conscience of a true 
 woman justifies her in it. It is with such pain as with chil- 
 dren steadily disowned of life, and therefore bound more 
 closely to the mother's heart than other children more 
 bounteously endowed. Never, perhaps, was the awful catas- 
 trophe in which the whole world without dies for us, so deadly, 
 so complete, so cruelly aggravated by circumstance as it had 
 been for the Marquise. The man whom she had loved was 
 young and generous; in obedience to the laws of the world, 
 she had refused herself to his love, and he had died to save 
 a woman's honor, as the world calls it. To whom could she 
 speak of her misery? Her tears would be an offence against 
 her husband, the origin of the tragedy. By all laws written 
 and unwritten she was bound over to silence. A woman would 
 have enjoyed the story; a man would have schemed for his 
 own benefit. No; such grief as hers can only weep freely in 
 solitude and in loneliness; she must consume her pain or be 
 consumed by it; die or kill something within her her con- 
 science, it may be. 
 
 Day after day she sat gazing at the flat horizon. It lay 
 out before her like her own life to come. There was nothing 
 to discover, nothing to hope. The whole of it could be seen 
 at a glance. It was the visible presentment in the outward 
 world of the chill sense of desolation which was gnawing rest- 
 lessly at her heart. The misty mornings, the pale, bright 
 sky, the low clouds scudding under the gray dome of heaven,
 
 78 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 fitted with the moods of her soul-sickness. Her heart did not 
 contract, was neither more nor less seared, rather it seemed 
 as if her youth, in its full blossom, was slowly turned to 
 stone by an anguish intolerable because it was barren. She 
 suffered through herself and for herself. How could it end 
 save in self -absorption ? Ugly torturing thoughts probed her 
 conscience. Candid self-examination pronounced that she 
 was double, there were two selves within her; a woman who 
 felt and a woman who thought; a self that suffered and a 
 self that would fain suffer no longer. Her mind traveled 
 back to the joys of childish days; they had gone by, and she 
 had never known how happy they were. Scenes crowded up 
 in her memory as in a bright mirror glass, to demonstrate 
 the deception of a marriage which, all that it should be in 
 the eyes of the world, was in reality so wretched. What had 
 the delicate pride of young womanhood done for her the 
 bliss foregone, the sacrifices made to the world? Everything 
 in her expressed love, awaited love ; her movements still were 
 full of perfect grace; her smile, her charm, were hers as be- 
 fore; why? she asked herself. The sense of her own youth 
 and physical loveliness no more affected her than some mean- 
 ingless reiterated sound. Her very beauty had grown in- 
 tolerable to her as a useless thing. She shrank aghast from 
 the thought that through the rest of life she must remain 
 an incomplete creature; had not the inner self lost its power 
 of receiving impressions with that zest, that exquisite sense 
 of freshness which is the spring of so much of life's glad- 
 ness ? The impressions of the future would for the most part 
 be effaced as soon as received, and many of the thoughts 
 which once would have moved her now would move her no 
 more. 
 
 After the childhood of the creature dawns the childhood of 
 the heart; but this second infancy was over, her lover had 
 taken it down with him into the grave. The longings of 
 youth remained; she was young yet; but the completeness of 
 youth was gone, and with that lost completeness the whole 
 value and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Should she
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 79 
 
 not always bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, 
 ready to grow up and rob emotion of its springtide of fervor ? 
 Conscious she must always be that nothing could give her 
 now the happiness so longed for, that seemed so fair in her 
 dreams. The fire from heaven that sheds abroad its light 
 in the heart, in the dawn of love, had been quenched in tears, 
 the first real tears which she had shed; henceforth she must 
 always suffer, because it was no longer in her power to be 
 what once she might have been. This is a belief which turns 
 us in aversion and bitterness of spirit from any proffered new 
 delight, 
 
 Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of 
 age about to die. Young though she felt, the heavy weight 
 of joyless days had fallen upon her, and left her broken- 
 spirited and old before her time. "With a despairing cry, she 
 asked the world what it could give her in exchange for the 
 love now lost, \>y which she had lived. She asked herself 
 whether in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will 
 had not been more criminal than her deeds, and chose 
 to believe herself guilty; partly to affront the world, partly 
 for her own consolation, in that she had missed the close 
 union of body and soul, which diminishes the pain of the one 
 who is left behind by the knowledge that once it has known 
 and given joy to the full, and retains within itself the im- 
 press of that which is no more. 
 
 Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of 
 her part mingled with the pain which thrilled through every 
 fibre of her heart and brain. Her nature had been thwarted, 
 her vanity wounded, her woman's generosity cheated of self- 
 sacrifice. Then, when she had raised all these questions, set 
 vibrating all the springs in those different phases of being 
 which we distinguish as social, moral, and physical, her ener- 
 gies were so far exhausted and relaxed that she was powerless 
 to grasp a single thought amid the chase of conflicting ideas. 
 
 Sometimes as the mists fell, she would throw her window 
 open, and would stay there, motionless, breathing in unheed- 
 ingly the damp earthy scent in the air, her mind to all ap-
 
 80 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 pearance an unintelligent blank, for the ceaseless burden of 
 sorrow humming in her brain left her deaf to earth's har- 
 monies and insensible to the delights of thought. 
 
 One day, towards noon, when the sun shone out for a little, 
 her maid came in without a summons. 
 
 "This is the fourth time that M. le Cure has come to see 
 Mme. la Marquise; to-day he is so determined about it, that 
 we did not know what to tell him." 
 
 "He has come to ask for some money for the poor, no 
 doubt; take him twenty-five louis from me." 
 
 The woman went only to return. 
 
 "M. le Cure 1 will not take the money, my lady; he wants 
 to speak to you." 
 
 "Then let him come!" said Mme. d'Aiglemont, with an 
 involuntary shrug which augured ill for the priest's recep- 
 tion. Evidently the lady meant to put a stop to persecution 
 by a short and sharp method. 
 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont had lost her mother in her early child- 
 hood; and as a natural consequence in her bringing-up, she 
 had felt the influences of the relaxed notions which loosened 
 the hold of religion upon France during the Eevolution. 
 Piety is a womanly virtue which women alone can really 
 instil; and the Marquise, a child of the eighteenth century, 
 had adopted her father's creed of philosophism, and practised 
 no religious observances. A priest, to her way of thinking, 
 was a civil servant of very doubtful utility. In her present 
 position, the teaching of religion could only poison her 
 wounds; she had, moreover, but scanty faith in the lights of 
 country cures, and made up her mind to put this one gently 
 but firmly in his place, and to rid herself of him, after the 
 manner of the rich, by bestowing a benefit. 
 
 At first sight of the cure the Marquise felt no inclination 
 to change her mind. She saw before her a stout, rotund little 
 man, with a ruddy, wrinkled, elderly face, which awkwardly 
 and unsuccessfully tried to smile. His bald, quadrant-shaped 
 forehead, furrowed by intersecting lines, was too heavy for 
 the rest of his face, which seemed to be dwarfed by it. A
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 81 
 
 fringe of scanty white hair encircled the back of his head, 
 and almost reached his ears. Yet the priest looked as if by 
 nature he had a genial disposition; his thick lips, his slightly 
 curved nose, his chin, which vanished in a double fold of 
 wrinkles, all marked him out as a man who took cheerful 
 views of life. 
 
 At first the Marquise saw nothing but these salient charac- 
 teristics, but at the first word she was struck by the sweet- 
 ness of the speaker's voice. Looking at him more closely, she 
 saw that the eyes under the grizzled eyebrows had shed tears, 
 and his face, turned in profile, wore so sublime an impress 
 of sorrow, that the Marquise recognized the man in the cure. 
 
 "Madame la Marquise, the rich only come within our 
 province when they are in trouble. It is easy to see that the 
 troubles of a young, beautiful, and wealthy married woman, 
 who has lost neither children nor relatives, are caused by 
 wounds whose pangs religion alone can soothe. Your soul is 
 in danger, madame. I am not speaking now of the hereafter 
 which awaits us. No, I am not in the confessional. But it 
 is my duty, is it not, to open your eyes to your future life 
 .here on earth? You will pardon an old man, will you not, 
 for importunity which has your own happiness for its object ?" 
 
 "There is no more happiness for me, monsieur. I shall 
 soon be, as you say, in your province ; but it will be for ever." 
 
 "Nay, madame. You will not die of this pain which lies 
 heavy upon }^ou, and can be read in your face. If you had 
 been destined to die of it, you would not be here at Saint- 
 Lange. A definite regret is not so deadly as hope deferred. 
 I have known others pass through more intolerable and more 
 awful anguish, and yet they live." 
 
 The Marquise looked incredulous. 
 
 "Madame, I know a man whose affliction was so sore that 
 your trouble would seem to you to be light compared with 
 his." 
 
 Perhaps the long solitary hours had begun to hang heavily ; 
 perhaps in the recesses of the Marquise's mind lay the thought 
 that here was a friendly heart to whom she might be able 
 
 VOL. 530
 
 82 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 to pour out her troubles. However it was, she gave the cure" 
 a questioning glance which could not be mistaken. 
 
 "Madame," he continued, "the man of whom I tell you 
 had but three children left of a once large family circle. 
 He lost his parents, his daughter, and his wife, whom he dearly 
 loved. He was left alone at last on the little farm where he 
 had lived so happily for so long. His three sons were in the 
 army, and each of the lads had risen in proportion to his 
 time of service. During the Hundred Days, the oldest went 
 into the Guard with a colonel's commission; the second was 
 a major in the artillery ; the youngest a major in a regiment 
 
 r of dragoons. Madame, those three boys loved their father as 
 much as he loved them. If you but knew how careless young 
 fellows grow of home ties when they are carried away by the 
 current of their own lives, you would realize from this one 
 little thing how warmly they loved the lonely old father, who 
 only lived in and for them never a week passed without a 
 letter from one of the boys. But then he on his side had 
 never been weakly indulgent, to lessen their respect for him; 
 nor unjustly severe, to thwart their affection; nor apt to 
 grudge sacrifices, the thing that estranges children's hearts. 
 He had been more than a father; he had been a brother to 
 
 them, and their friend. 
 
 "At last he went to Paris to bid them good-bye before they 
 set out -for Belgium; he wished to see that they had good 
 horses and all that they needed. And so they went, and the 
 father returned to his home again. Then the war began. 
 He had letters from Fleurus, and again from Ligny. AH 
 went well. Then came the battle of Waterloo, and you know 
 the rest. France was plunged into mourning; every family 
 waited in intense anxiety for news. You may imagine, 
 madame, how the old man waited for tidings, in anxiety that 
 knew no peace nor rest. He used to read the gazettes; he 
 went to the coach office every day. One evening he was told 
 that the colonel's servant had come. The man was riding 
 his master's horse what need was there to ask any ques- 
 tions? the colonel was dead, cut in two by a shell. Before
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 83 
 
 the evening was out the youngest son's servant arrived the 
 youngest had died on the eve of the battle. At midnight 
 came a gunner with tidings of the death of the last; upon 
 whom, in those few hours, the poor father had centered all 
 his life. Madame, they all had fallen." 
 
 After a pause the good man controlled his feelings, and 
 added gently: 
 
 "And their father is still living, madame. He realized 
 that if God had left him on earth, he was bound to live on 
 and suffer on earth; but he took refuge in the sanctuary. 
 What could he be?" 
 
 The Marquise looked up and saw the cure's face, grown 
 sublime in its sorrow and resignation, and waited for him to 
 speak. When the words carne, tears broke from her. 
 
 ."A priest, madame; consecrated by his own tears pre- 
 viously shed at the foot of the altar." 
 
 Silence prevailed for a little. The Marquise and the cure 
 looked out at the foggy landscape, as if they could see the 
 figures of those who were no more. 
 
 "Not a priest in a city, but a simple country cure," added 
 he. 
 
 "At Saint-Lange," she said, drying her eyes. 
 
 "Yes, madame." 
 
 Never had the majesty of grief seemed so great to Julie. 
 The two words sank straight into her heart with the weight 
 of an infinite sorrow. The gentle, sonorous tones troubled 
 her heart. Ah ! that full, deep voice, charged with plangent 
 vibration, was the voice of one who had suffered indeed. 
 
 "And if I do not die, monsieur, what will become of me ?" 
 The Marquise spoke almost reverently. 
 
 "Have you not a child, madame?" 
 
 "Yes," she said stiffly. 
 
 The cure gave her such a glance as a doctor gives a patient 
 whose life is in danger. Then he determined to do all that 
 in him lay to combat the evil spirit into whose clutches she 
 had fallen. 
 
 "We must live on with our sorrows you see it yourself,
 
 84 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 madame, and religion alone offers us real consolation. Will 
 you permit me to come again? -to speak to you as a man 
 who can sympathize with every trouble, a man about whom 
 there is nothing very alarming, I think?" 
 
 "Yes, monsieur, come back again. Thank you for your 
 thought of me." 
 
 "Very well, madame; then I shall return very shortly." 
 
 This visit relaxed the tension of soul, as it were ; the heavy 
 strain of grief and loneliness had been almost too much for 
 the Marquise's strength. The priest's visit had left a sooth- 
 ing balm in her heart, his words thrilled through her with 
 healing influence. She began to feel something of a prisoner's 
 satisfaction, when, after he has had time to feel his utter 
 loneliness and the weight of his chains, he hears a neighbor 
 knocking on the wall, and welcomes the sound which brings 
 a sense of human fellowship. Here was an unhoped-for confi- 
 dant. But this feeling did not last for long. Soon she sank 
 back into the old bitterness of spirit, saying to herself, as the 
 prisoner might say, that a companion in misfortune could 
 neither lighten her own bondage nor her future. 
 
 In the first visit the cure had feared to alarm the sus- 
 ceptibilities of self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he 
 hoped to make some progress towards religion. He came back 
 again two days later, and from the Marquise's welcome it was 
 plain that she had looked forward to the visit. 
 
 "Well, Mme. la Marquise, have you given a little thought 
 to the great mass of human suffering ? Have you raised your 
 eyes above our earth and seen the immensity of the universe ? 
 the worlds beyond worlds which crush our vanity into in- 
 significance, and with our vanity reduce our sorrows?" 
 
 "No, monsieur," she said; "I cannot rise to such heights, 
 our social laws lie too heavily upon me, and rend my heart 
 with a too poignant anguish. And laws perhaps are less cruel 
 than the usages of the world. Ah ! the world !" 
 
 "Madame, we must obey both. Law is the doctrine, and 
 custom the practice of society." 
 
 "Obey society?" cried the Marquise, with an involuntary
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 85 
 
 shudder. "Eh ! monsieur, it is the source of all our woes. 
 God laid down no law to make us miserable; but mankind, 
 uniting together in social life, have perverted God's work. 
 Civilization deals harder measure to us women than nature 
 does. Nature imposes upon us physical suffering which you 
 have not alleviated; civilization has developed in us thoughts 
 and feelings which you cheat continually. Nature exter- 
 minates the weak ; you condemn them to live, and by so doing, 
 consign them to a life of misery. The whole weight of the 
 burden of marriage, an institution on which society is based, 
 falls upon us; for the man liberty, duties for the woman. 
 We must give up our whole lives to you, you are only bound 
 to give us a few moments of yours. A man, in fact, makes 
 a choice, while we blindly submit. Oh, monsieur, to you I can 
 speak freely. Marriage, in these days, seems to me to be 
 legalized prostitution. This is the cause of my wretchedness. 
 But among so many miserable creatures so unhappily yoked, 
 I alone am bound to be silent, I alone am to blame for my 
 misery. My marriage was my own doing." 
 
 She stopped short, and bitter tears fell in the silence. 
 
 "In the depths of my wretchedness, in the midst of this 
 sea of distress," she went on, "I found some sands on which 
 to set foot and suffer at leisure. A great tempest swept 
 everything away. And here am I, helpless and alone, too 
 weak to cope with storms." 
 
 "We are never weak while God is with us," said the priest. 
 "And if your cravings for affection cannot be satisfied here 
 on earth, have you no duties to perform ?" 
 
 "Duties continually!" she exclaimed, with something of 
 impatience in her tone. "But where for me are the senti- 
 ments which give us strength to perform them? Nothing 
 from nothing, nothing for nothing, this, monsieur, is one of 
 the most inexorable laws of nature, physical or spiritual. 
 Would you have these trees break into leaf without the sap 
 which swells the buds? It is the same with our human na- 
 ture ; and in me the sap is dried up at its source." 
 
 "I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments
 
 86 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 of which resignation is born," said the cure., "but of mother- 
 hood, madamc, surely 
 
 "Stop, monsieur !" said the Marquise, "with you I will be 
 sincere. Alas ! in future I can be sincere with no one ; I 
 am condemned to falsehood. The world requires continual 
 grimaces, and we are bidden to obey its conventions if we 
 would escape reproach. There are two kinds of motherhood, 
 monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but I 
 know them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it 
 were better for me if I had not been a mother at all. Helene 
 is not his child ! Oh ! do not start. At Saint-Lange there are 
 volcanic depths whence come lurid 'gleams of light and earth- 
 quake shocks to shake the fragile edifices of laws not based 
 on nature. I have borne a child, that is enough, I am a 
 mother in the eye of the law. But you, monsieur, with your 
 delicately compassionate soul, can perhaps understand this 
 cry from an unhappy woman who has suffered no lying illu- 
 sions to enter her heart. God will judge me, but surely I 
 have only obeyed His laws by giving way to the affections 
 which He Himself set in me, and this I have learned from 
 my own soul. What is a child, monsieur, but the image of 
 two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously 
 blended? Unless it is owned by every fibre of the body, as 
 by every chord of tenderness in the heart; unless it recalls 
 the bliss of love, the hours, the places where two creatures 
 were happy, their words that overflowed with the music of 
 humanit} r , and their sweet imaginings, that child is an incom- 
 plete creation. Yes, those two should find the poetic dreams 
 of their intimate double life realized in their child as in an 
 exquisite miniature; it should be for them a never- failing 
 spring of emotion, implying their whole past and their whole 
 future. 
 
 "My poor little Helene is her father's child, the offspring 
 of duty and of chance. In me she finds nothing but the af- 
 fection of instinct, the woman's natural compassion for the 
 child of her womb. Socially speaking, I am above reproach. 
 Have I not sacrificed my life and my happiness to my child ?
 
 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 87 
 
 Her cries go to my heart ; if she were to fall into the water, 
 I should spring to save her, but she is not in my heart. 
 
 "Ah! love set me dreaming of a motherhood far greater 
 and more complete. In a vanished dream I held in my arms 
 a child conceived in desire before it was begotten, the ex- 
 quisite flower of life that blossoms in the soul before it sees 
 the light of day. I am Helene's mother only in the sense 
 that I brought her forth. When she needs me no longer, 
 there will be an end of my motherhood; with the extinction 
 of the cause, the effects will cease. If it is a woman's adorable 
 prerogative that her motherhood may last through her child's 
 life, surely that divine persistence of sentiment is due to the 
 far-reaching glory of the conception of the soul? Unless a 
 child- has lain wrapped about from life's first beginnings by 
 the mother's soul, the instinct of motherhood dies in her as 
 in the animals. This is true; I feel that it is true. As 
 my poor little one grows older, my heart closes. My sacrifices 
 have driven us apart. And yet I know, monsieur, that to 
 another child my heart would have gone out in inexhaustible 
 love; for that other I should not have known what sacrifice 
 meant, all had been delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts 
 are stronger than reason, stronger than religion or all else 
 in me. Does the woman who is neither wife nor mother sin 
 in wishing to die when, for her misfortune, she has caught 
 a glimpse of the infinite beauty of love, the limitless joy of 
 motherhood ? What can become of her ? / can tell you what 
 she feels. I cannot put that memory from me so resolutely 
 but that a hundred times, night and day, visions of a happi- 
 ness, greater it may be than the reality, rise before me, fol- 
 lowed by a shudder which shakes brain and heart and body. 
 Before these cruel visions, my feelings and thoughts grow 
 colorless, and I ask myself, 'W T hat would my life have been 
 if ?'" 
 
 She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears. 
 
 "There you see the depths of my heart !" she continued. 
 "For his child I could have acquiesced in any lot however 
 dreadful. He who died, bearing the burden of the sins of the
 
 88 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 world, will forgive this thought of which I am dying; but 
 the world, I know, is merciless. In its ears my words are 
 blasphemies ; I am outraging all its codes. Oh ! that I could 
 wage war against this world and break down and refashion 
 its laws and traditions ! Has it not turned all my thoughts, 
 and feelings, and longings, and hopes, and every fibre in me 
 into so many sources of pain? Spoiled my future, present, 
 and past ? For me the daylight is full of gloom, my thoughts 
 pierce me like a sword, my child is and is not. 
 
 "Oh, when Helene speaks to me, I wish that her voice were 
 different, when she looks into my face I wish that she had 
 other eyes. She constantly keeps me in mind of all that 
 should have been and is not. I cannot bear to have her near 
 me. I smile at her, 1 try to make up to her for the real 
 affection of which she is defrauded. I am wretched, mon- 
 sieur, too wretched to live. And I am supposed to be a pat- 
 tern wife. And I have committed no sins. And I am re- 
 spected ! I have fought down forbidden love which sprang 
 up at unawares within me; but if I have kept the letter of 
 the law, have I kept it in my heart? There has never been 
 but one here," she said, laying her right hand on her breast, 
 "one and no other; and my child feels it. Certain looks and 
 tones and gestures mould a child's nature, and my poor little 
 one feels no thrill in the arm I put about her, no tremor 
 comes into my voice, no softness into my eyes when I speak 
 to her or take her up. She looks at me, and I cannot endure 
 the reproach in her eyes. There are times when I shudder 
 to think that some day she may be my judge and condemn 
 her mother unheard. Heaven grant that hate may not grow 
 up between us ! Ah ! God in heaven, rather let the tomb open 
 for me, rather let me end my days here at Saint-Lange ! I 
 want to go back to the world where I shall find my other soul 
 and become wholly a mother. Ah! forgive me, sir, I am 
 mad. Those words were choking me; now they are spoken. 
 Ah ! you are weeping too ! You will not despise me 
 
 She heard the child come in from a walk. "Helene, my 
 child, come here !" she called. The words sounded like a cry 
 of despair.
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 89 
 
 The little girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother 
 to see a butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of 
 that mother's tears she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up 
 close, and received a kiss on her forehead. 
 
 "She will be very beautiful some day," said the priest. 
 
 "She is her father's child," said the Marquise, kissing the 
 little one with eager warmth, as if she meant to pay a debt 
 of affection or to extinguish some feeling of remorse. 
 
 "How hot you are, mamma !" 
 
 "There, go away, my angel," said the Marquise. 
 
 The child went. She did not seem at all sorry to go; she 
 did not look back; glad perhaps to escape from a sad face, 
 and instinctively comprehending already an antagonism of 
 feeling in its expression. A mother's love finds language in 
 smiles; they are a part of the divine right of motherhood. 
 The Marquise could not smile. She flushed red as she felt 
 the cure's eyes. She had hoped to act a mother's part before 
 him, but neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, 
 indeed, when a woman loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives 
 there is a divine honey ; it is as if a soul were breathed forth 
 in the caress, a subtle flame of fire which brings warmth to 
 the heart ; the kiss that lacks this delicious unction is meagre 
 and formal. The priest had felt the difference. He could 
 fathom the depths that lie between the motherhood of the 
 flesh and the motherhood of the heart. He gave the Marquise 
 a keen, scrutinizing glance, then he said : 
 
 "You are right, madame; it would be better for you if 
 you were dead " 
 
 "Ah !" she cried, "then you know all my misery ; I see 
 you do if, Christian priest as you are, you can guess my de- 
 termination to die and sanction it. Yes, I meant to die, 
 but I have lacked the courage. The spirit was strong, but 
 the flesh was weak, and when my hand did not tremble, the 
 spirit within me wavered. 
 
 "I do not know the reason of these inner struggles, and 
 alternations. I am very pitiably a woman no doubt, weak in 
 my will, strong only to love. Oh, I despise myself. At night,
 
 90 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 when all my household was asleep, I would go out bravely 
 as far as the lake; but when I stood on the brink, my cow- 
 ardice shrank from self-destruction. To you I will confess 
 my weakness. When I lay in my bed, again, shame would 
 come over me, and courage would come back. Once I took 
 a dose of laudanum ; I , was ill, but I did not die. I thought 
 I had emptied the phial, but I had only taken half the dose." 
 
 "You are lost, madame," the cure said gravely, with tears 
 in his voice. "You will go back into the world, and you will 
 deceive the world. You will seek and find a compensation 
 (as you imagine it to be) for your woes; then will come a 
 day of reckoning for your pleasures 
 
 "Do you think," she cried, "that / shall bestow the last, 
 the most precious treasures of my heart upon the first base, im- 
 postor who can play the comedy of passion ? That I would pol- 
 lute my life for a moment of doubtful pleasure? No ; the flame 
 which shall consume my soul shall be love, and nothing but 
 love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of their sex, but 
 not all have the man's soul which satisfies all the require- 
 ments of our nature, drawing out the melodious harmony 
 which never breaks forth save in response to the pressure of 
 feeling. Such a soul is not found twice in our lifetime. 
 The future that lies before me is hideous; I know it.' A 
 woman is nothing without love; beauty is nothing without 
 pleasure. And even if happiness were offered to me a second 
 time, would not the world frown upon it ? I owe my daughter 
 an honored mother. Oh ! I am condemned to live in an iron 
 circle, from which there is but one shameful way of escape. 
 The round of family duties, a thankless and irksome task, 
 is in store for me. I shall curse life ; but my child shall have 
 at least a fair semblance of a mother. I will give her treasures 
 of virtue for the treasures of love of which I defraud her. 
 
 "I have not even the mother's desire to live to enjoy her 
 child's happiness. I have no belief in happiness. What will 
 Helene's fate be? My own, beyond doubt. How can a 
 mother insure that the man to whom she gives her daughter 
 will be the husband of her heart? You pour scorn on the
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 91 
 
 miserable creatures who sell themselves for a few coins 
 to any passer-by, though want and hunger absolve the brief 
 union; while another union, horrible for quite other reasons, 
 is tolerated, na} r , encouraged, by society, and a young and 
 innocent girl is married to a man whom she has only met 
 occasionally during the previous three months. She is sold 
 for her whole lifetime. It is true that the price is high! 
 If you allow her no compensation for her sorrows, you might 
 at least respect her ; but no, the most virtuous of women can- 
 not escape calumny. This is our fate in its double aspect. 
 Open prostitution and shame; secret prostitution and un- 
 happiness. As for the poor, portionless girls, they may die 
 or go mad, without a soul to pity them. Beauty and virtue 
 are not marketable in the bazaar where souls and bodies are 
 bought and sold in the den of selfishness which you call 
 society. Why not disinherit daughters? Then, at least, you 
 might fulfil one of the laws of nature, and guided by your 
 own inclinations, choose your companions." 
 
 "Madame, from your talk it is clear to me that neither the 
 spirit of family nor the sense of religion appeals to you. 
 Why should you hesitate between the claims of the social 
 selfishness which irritates you, and the purely personal selfish- 
 ness which craves satisfactions " 
 
 "The family, monsieur does such a thing exist? I de- 
 cline to recognize as a family a knot of individuals bidden 
 by society to divide the property after the death of father 
 and mother, and to go their separate ways. A family means 
 a temporary association of persons brought together by no 
 will of their own, dissolved at once by death. Our laws have 
 broken up homes and estates, and the old family tradition 
 handed down from generation to generation. I see nothing 
 but wreck and ruin about me." 
 
 "Madame, you will only return to God when His hand 
 has been heavy upon you, and I pray that you have time 
 enough given to you in which to make your peace with Him. 
 Instead of looking to heaven for comfort, you are fixing your 
 eyes on earth. Philosophism and personal interest have in-
 
 92 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 vaded your heart ; like the children of the sceptical eighteenth 
 century, you are deaf to the voice of religion. The pleasures 
 of this life bring nothing but misery. You are about to make 
 an exchange of sorrows, that is all." 
 
 She smiled bitterly. 
 
 "I will falsify your predictions," she said. "I shall be 
 faithful to him who died for me." 
 
 "Sorrow," he answered, "is not likely to live long save in 
 souls disciplined by religion," and he lowered his eyes re- 
 spectfully lest the Marquise should read his doubts in them. 
 The energy of her outburst had grieved him. He had seen 
 the self that lurked beneath so many forms, and despaired of 
 softening a heart which affliction seemed to sear. The divine 
 Sower's seed could not take root in such a soil, and His 
 gentle voice was drowned by the clamorous outcry of self- 
 pity. Yet the good man returned again and again with an 
 apostle's earnest persistence, brought back by a hope of lead- 
 ing so noble and proud a soul to God; until the day when 
 he made the discovery that the Marquise only cared to talk 
 with him because it was sweet to speak of him who was no 
 more. He would not lower his ministry by condoning her 
 passion, and confined the conversation more and more to 
 generalities and commonplaces. 
 
 Spring came, and with the spring the Marquise found dis- 
 traction from her deep melancholy. She busied herself for 
 lack of other occupation with her estate, making improve- 
 ments for amusement. 
 
 In October she left the old chateau. In the life of leisure 
 at Saint-Lange she had recovered from her grief and grown 
 fair and fresh. Her grief had been violent at first in its 
 course, as the quoit hurled forth with all the player's strength, 
 and like the quoit after many oscillations, each feebler than 
 the last, it had slackened into melancholy. Melancholy is 
 made up of a succession of such oscillations, the first touch- 
 ing upon despair, the last on the border between pain and 
 pleasure; in youth, it is the twilight of dawn; in age, the 
 dusk of night.
 
 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 93 
 
 As the Marquise drove through the village in her travel- 
 ing carriage, she met the cure on his way back from the 
 church. She bowed in response to his farewell greeting, but 
 it was with lowered eyes and averted face. She did not wish 
 to see him again. The village cure had judged this poor 
 Diana of Ephesus only too well. 
 
 III. 
 
 AT THIRTY YEARS 
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI was giving a ball. M. Charles de Vande- 
 nesse, a young man of great promise, the bearer of one of 
 those historic names which, in spite of the efforts of legisla- 
 tion, are always associated with the glory of France, had 
 received letters of introduction to some of the great lady's 
 friends in Naples, and had come to thank the hostess and 
 to take his leave. 
 
 Vandenesse had already acquitted himself creditably on 
 several diplomatic missions; and now that he had received 
 an appointment as attache to a plenipotentiary at the Con- 
 gress of Laybach, he wished to take advantage of the op- 
 portunity to make some study of Italy on the way. This ball 
 was a sort of farewell to Paris and its amusements and its 
 rapid whirl of life, to the great eddying intellectual centre 
 and maelstrom of pleasure; and a pleasant thing it is to be 
 borne along by the current of this sufficiently slandered great 
 city of Paris. Yet Charles de Vandenesse had little to regret, 
 accustomed as he had been for the past three years to salute 
 European capitals and turn his back upon them at the capri- 
 cious bidding of a diplomatist's destiny. Women no longer 
 made any impression upon him; perhaps he thought that a 
 real passion would play too large a part in a diplomatist's 
 life ; or perhaps that the paltry amusements of frivolity were 
 too empty for a man of strong character. We all of us have
 
 M A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 huge claims to strength of character. There is no man in 
 France, be he never so ordinary a member of the rank and 
 file of humanity, that will waive pretensions to something be- 
 yond mere cleverness. 
 
 Charles, young though he was he was scarcely turned 
 thirty looked at life with a philosophic mind, concerning 
 himself with theories and means and ends, while other men 
 of his age were thinking of pleasure, sentiments, and the like 
 illusions. He forced back into some inner depth the gene- 
 rosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was gener- 
 ous. He tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the, 
 fund of wealth which chanced to be in his nature into gra- 
 cious manners, and courtesy, and . attractive arts ; 'tis the 
 proper .task of an ambitious man, to play a sorry part to 
 gain "a good position," as we call it in modern days. 
 
 He had been dancing, and now he gave a farewell glance 
 over the rooms, to carry away a distinct impression of the 
 ball, moved, doubtless, to some extent by the feeling which 
 prompts a theatre-goer to stay in his box to see the final 
 tableau before the curtain falls. But M. de Vandenesse had 
 another reason for his survey. He gazed curiously at the 
 scene before him, so French in character and in movement, 
 seeking to carry away a picture of the light and laughter and 
 the faces at this Parisian fete, to compare with novel faces 
 and picturesque surroundings awaiting him at Naples, where 
 he meant to spend a few days before presenting himself at his 
 post. He seemed to be drawing the comparison now between 
 this France so variable, changing even as you study her, with 
 the manners and aspects of that other land known to him as 
 yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel, for 
 the most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat 
 poetical cast, albeit hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, 
 crossed his brain, in response to some longing of which, per- 
 haps, he himself was hardly conscious, a desire in the depths 
 of a heart fastidious rather than jaded, vacant rather than 
 seared. 
 
 "These are the wealthiest and most fashionable women and
 
 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 95 
 
 the greatest ladies in Paris," he Said to himself. "These are 
 the great men of the day, great orators and men of letters, 
 great names and titles; artists and men in power; and yet in 
 it all it seems to me as if there were nothing but petty in- 
 trigues and still-born loves, meaningless smiles and causeless 
 scorn, eyes lighted by no flame within, brain-power in abun- 
 dance running aimlessly to waste. All those pink-and-white 
 faces are here not so much for enjoyment, as to escape from 
 dulness. None of the emotion is genuine. If you ask for 
 nothing but court feathers properly adjusted, fresh gauzes 
 and pretty toilettes and fragile, fair women, if you desire 
 simply to skim the surface of life, here is your world for you. 
 Be content with meaningless phrases and fascinating simpers, 
 and do not ask for real feeling. For my own part, I abhor 
 the stale intrigues which end in sub-prefectures and receiver- 
 generals' places and marriages; or, if love comes into the 
 question, in stealthy compromises, so ashamed are we of the 
 mere semblance of passion. Not a single one of all these elo- 
 quent faces tells you of a soul, a soul wholly absorbed by one 
 idea as by remorse. Eegrets and misfortune go about shame- 
 facedly clad in jests. There is not one woman here whose re- 
 sistance I should care to overcome, not one who could drag 
 you down to the pit. Where will you find energy in Paris? 
 A poniard here is a curious toy to hang from a gilt nail, in 
 a picturesque sheath to match. The women, the brains, and 
 hearts of Paris are all on a par. There is no passion left, 
 because we have no individuality. High birth and intellect 
 and fortune are all reduced to one level ; we all have taken to 
 the uniform black coat by way of mourning for a dead France. 
 There is no love between equals. Between two lovers there 
 should be differences to efface, wide gulfs to fill. The charm 
 of love fled from us in 1789. Our dulness and our humdrum 
 lives are the outcome of the political system. Italy at any rate 
 is the land of sharp contrasts. Woman there is a malevolent 
 animal, a dangerous unreasoning siren, guided only by her 
 tastes and appetites, a creature no more to be trusted than a 
 tiger "
 
 96 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 Mme. Firmiani here came up to interrupt this soliloquy 
 made up of vague, conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts 
 which cannot be reproduced in words. The whole charm of 
 such musing lies in its vagueness what is it but a sort of 
 mental haze? 
 
 "I want to introduce you to some one who has the greatest 
 wish to make your acquaintance, after all that she has heard 
 of you," said the lady, taking his arm. 
 
 She brought him into the next room, and with such a 
 smile and glance as a Parisienne alone can give, she indicated 
 a woman sitting by the hearth. 
 
 "Who is she ?" the Comte de Vandenesse asked quickly. 
 
 "You have heard her name more than once coupled with 
 praise or blame. She is a woman who lives in seclusion a 
 perfect mystery." 
 
 "Oh ! if ever you have been merciful in your life, for pity's 
 sake tell me her name." 
 
 "She is the Marquise d'Aiglemont." 
 
 "I will take lessons from her; she has managed to make a 
 peer of France of that eminently ordinary person her hus- 
 band, and a dullard into a power in the land. But, pray tell 
 me this, did Lord Grenville die for her sake, do you think, as 
 some women say?" 
 
 "Possibly. Since that adventure, real or imaginary, she is 
 very much changed, poor thing ! She has not gone into so- 
 ciety since. Four years of constancy that is something in 
 
 Paris. If she is here to-night " Here Mme. Firmiani 
 
 broke off, adding with a mysterious expression, "I am for- 
 getting that I must say nothing. Go and talk with her." 
 
 For a moment Charles stood motionless, leaning lightly 
 against the frame of the doorway, wholly absorbed in his 
 scrutiny of a woman who had become famous, no one exactly 
 knew how or why. Such curious anomalies are frequent 
 enough in the world. Mme. d'Aiglemont's reputation was 
 certainly no more extraordinary than plenty of other great 
 reputations. There are men who are always in travail of some 
 great work which never sees the light, statisticians held to
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 97 
 
 be profound on the score of calculations which they take very 
 good care not to publish, politicians who live on a newspaper 
 article, men of letters and artists whose performances are 
 never given to the world, men of science who pass current 
 among those who know nothing of science, much as Sganarelle 
 is a Latinist for those who know no Latin ; there are the men 
 who are allowed by general consent to possess a peculiar ca- 
 pacity for some one thing, be it for the direction of arts, or 
 for the conduct of an important mission. The admirable 
 phrase, "A man with a special subject," might have been in- 
 vented on purpose for these acephalous species in the domain 
 of literature and politics. 
 
 Charles gazed longer than he intended. He was vexed with 
 himself for feeling so strongly interested ; it is true, however, 
 that the lady's appearance was a refutation of the young 
 man's ballroom generalizations. 
 
 The Marquise had reached her thirtieth year. She was 
 beautiful in spite of her fragile form and extremely delicate 
 look. Her greatest charm lay in her still face, revealing un- 
 fathomed depths of soul. Some haunting, ever-present 
 thought veiled, as it were, the full brilliance of eyes which 
 told of a fevered life and boundless resignation. So seldom 
 did she raise the eyelids soberly downcast, and so listless were 
 her glances, that it almost seemed as if the fire in her eyes 
 were reserved for some occult contemplation. Any man of 
 genius and feeling must have felt strangely attracted by her 
 gentleness and silence. If the mind sought to explain the 
 mysterious problem of a constant inward turning from the 
 present to the past, the soul was no less interested in initiat- 
 ing itself into the secrets of a heart proud in some sort of 
 its anguish. Everything about her, moreover, was in keep- 
 ing with these thoughts which she inspired. Like almost all 
 women who have very long hair, she was very pale and per- 
 fectly white. The marvelous fineness of her skin (that almost 
 unerring sign) indicated a quick sensibility which could be 
 seen yet more unmistakably in her features; there was the 
 same minute and wonderful delicacy of finish in them that 
 VOL. 5 31
 
 98 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 the Chinese artist gives to his fantastic figures. Perhaps her 
 neck was rather too long, but such necks belong to the most 
 graceful type, and suggest vague affinities between a woman's 
 head and the magnetic curves of the serpent. Leave not a 
 single one of the thousand signs and tokens by which the 
 most inscrutable character betrays itself to an observer of 
 human nature, he has but to watch carefully the little move- 
 ments of a woman's head, the ever-varying expressive turns 
 and curves of her neck and throat, to read her nature. 
 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont's dress harmonized with the haunting 
 thought that informed the whole woman. Her hair was 
 gathered up into a tall coronet of broad plaits, without orna- 
 ment of any kind; she seemed to have bidden farewell for 
 ever to elaborate toilettes. Xor were any of the small arts 
 of coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in her. 
 Perhaps her bodice, modest though it was, did not altogether 
 conceal the dainty grace of her figure, perhaps, too, her gown 
 looked rich from the extreme distinction of its fashion; and 
 if it is permissible to look for expression in the arrangement 
 of stuffs, surely those numerous straight folds invested her 
 with a great dignity. There may have been some lingering 
 trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care be- 
 stowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to 
 be seen with some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost 
 malice of a rival to discover any affectation in her gestures, 
 so natural did they seem, so much a part of old childish 
 habit, that her careless grace absolved this vestige of vanity. 
 
 All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which 
 combine to make up the sum of a woman's prettiness or ugli- 
 ness, her charm or lack of charm, can only be indicated, when, 
 as with Mme. d'Aiglemont, a personality dominates and gives 
 coherence to the details, informing them, blending them all 
 in an exquisite whole. Her manner was perfectly in accord 
 with her style of beauty and her dress. Only to certain 
 women at a certain age is it given to put language into their 
 attitude. Is it joy or is it sorrow that teaches a woman of 
 thirty the secret of that eloquence of carriage, so that she
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 99 
 
 must always remain an enigma which each interprets by the 
 aid of his hopes, desires, or theories? 
 
 The way in which the Marquise leaned both elbows on 
 the arm of her chair, the toying of her interclasped fingers, 
 the curve of her throat, the indolent lines of her languid but 
 lissome body as she lay back in graceful exhaustion, as it 
 were; her indolent limbs, her unstudied pose, the utter lassi- 
 tude of her movements, all suggested that this was a woman 
 for whom life had lost its interest, a woman who had known 
 the joys of love only in dreams, a woman bowed down by the 
 burden of memories of the past, a woman who had long since 
 despaired of the future and despaired of herself, an unoccu- 
 pied woman who took the emptiness of her own life for the 
 nothingness of life. 
 
 Charles de Vandenesse saw and admired the beautiful pict- 
 ure before him, as a kind of artistic success beyond an 
 ordinary woman's powers of attainment. He was acquainted 
 with d'Aiglemont; and now, at the first sight of d'Aigle- 
 mont's wife, the young diplomatist saw at a glance a dispro- 
 portionate marriage, an incompatibility (to use the legal jar- 
 gon) so great that it was impossible that the Marquise should 
 love her husband. And yet the Marquise d'Aiglemont's life 
 was above reproach, and for any observer the mystery about 
 her was the more interesting on this account. The first im- 
 pulse of surprise over, Vandenesse cast about for the best way 
 of approaching Mine. d'Aiglemont. He would try a common- 
 place piece of diplomacy, he thought; he would disconcert 
 her by a piece of clumsiness and see how she would receive it. 
 
 "Madame," he said, seating himself near her, "through a 
 fortunate indiscretion I have learned that, for some reason 
 unknown to me, I have had the good fortune to attract your 
 notice. I owe you the more thanks because I have never been 
 so honored before. At the same time, you are responsible 
 for one of my faults, for I mean never to be modest 
 again " 
 
 "You will make a mistake, monsieur," she laughed; 
 "vanity should be left to those who have nothing else to 
 recommend them."
 
 TOO A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 The conversation thus opened ranged at large, in the usual 
 way, over a multitude of topics art and literature, politics, 
 men and things fill insensibly they fell to talking of the 
 eternal theme in France and all the world over love, senti- 
 ment, and women. 
 
 "We are bond-slaves/' 
 
 "You are queens." 
 
 This was the gist and substance of all the more or less in- 
 genious discourse between Charles and the Marquise, as of all 
 such discourses past, present, and to come. Allow a certain 
 space of time, and the two formulas shall begin to mean 
 "Love me," and "I will love you." 
 
 "Madame," Charles de Vandenesse exclaimed under his 
 breath, "you have made me bitterly regret that I am leaving 
 Paris. In Italy I certainly shall not pass hours in intellectual 
 enjoyment such as this has been." 
 
 "Perhaps, monsieur, you will find happiness, and happiness 
 is worth more than all the brilliant things, true and false, 
 that are said every evening in Paris." 
 
 Before Charles took leave, he asked permission to pay a 
 farewell call on the Marquise d'Aiglemont, and very lucky 
 did he feel himself when the form of words in which he ex- 
 pressed himself for once was used in all sincerity; and that 
 night, and all day long on the morrow, he could not put the 
 thought of the Marquise out of his mind. 
 
 At times he wondered why she had singled him out, what 
 she had meant when she asked him to come to see her, and 
 thought supplied an inexhaustible commentary. Again it 
 seemed to him that he had discovered the motives of her 
 curiosity, and he grew intoxicated with hope or frigidly sober 
 with each new construction put upon that piece of common- 
 place civility. Sometimes it meant everything, sometimes 
 nothing. He made up his mind at last that he would not 
 yield to this inclination, and went to call on Mme. d'Aigle- 
 mont. 
 
 There are thoughts which determine our conduct, while we 
 do not so much as suspect their existence. If at first sight
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 101 
 
 this assertion appears to be less a truth than a paradox, let 
 any candid inquirer look into his own life and he shall find 
 abundant confirmation therein. Charles went to Mme. 
 d'Aiglemont, and so obeyed one of these latent, pre-existent 
 germs of thought, of which our experience and our intel- 
 lectual gains and achievements are but later and tangible 
 developments. 
 
 For a young man a woman of thirty has irresistible attrac- 
 tions. There is nothing more natural, nothing better estab- 
 lished, no human tie of stouter tissue than the heart-deep 
 attachment between such a woman as the Marquise d'Aigle- 
 mont and such a man as Charles de Vandenesse. You can 
 see examples of it every day in the world. A girl, as a matter 
 of fact, has too many young illusions, she is too inexperienced, 
 the instinct of sex counts for too much in her love for a 
 young man to feel flattered by it. A woman of thirty knows 
 all that is involved in the self-surrender to be made. Among 
 the impulses of the first, put curiosity and other motives than 
 love; the second acts with integrity of sentiment. The first 
 yields ; the second makes deliberate choice. Is not that choice 
 in itself an immense flattery? A woman armed with ex- 
 perience, forewarned by knowledge, almost always dearly 
 bought, seems to give more than herself; while the inexpe- 
 rienced and credulous girl, unable to draw comparisons for 
 lack of knowledge, can appreciate nothing at its just worth. 
 She accepts love and ponders it. A woman is a counselor 
 and a guide at an age when we love to be guided and obedience 
 is delight; while a girl would fain learn all things, meeting 
 us with a girl's naivete instead of a woman's tenderness. She 
 affords a single triumph; with a woman there is resistance 
 upon resistance to overcome; she has but joy and tears, a 
 woman has rapture and remorse. 
 
 A girl cannot play the part of a mistress unless she is so 
 corrupt that we turn from her with loathing; a woman 
 has a thousand ways of preserving her power and her dignity ; 
 she has risked so much for love, that she must bid him pass 
 through his myriad transformations, while her too submissive
 
 102 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 rival gives a sense of too serene security which palls. If 
 the one sacrifices her maidenly pride, the other immolates the 
 honor of a whole family. A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, 
 she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a 
 woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after 
 veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice 
 responds but to one. 
 
 And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations trouble and 
 storm in the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be 
 found in a young girl's love. At thirty years a woman asks 
 her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for 
 his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his 
 future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it 
 glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, 
 or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort 
 when a young girl can only make moan. And with all the 
 advantages of her position, the woman of thirty can be a 
 girl again, for she can play all parts, assume a girl's bashful- 
 ness, and grow the fairer even for a mischance. 
 
 Between these two feminine types lies the immeasurable 
 difference which separates the foreseen from the unforeseen, 
 strength from weakness. The woman of thirty satisfies every 
 requirement ; the young girl must satisfy none, under penalty 
 of ceasing to be a young girl. Such ideas as these, developing 
 in a young man's mind, help to strengthen the strongest of 
 all passions, a passion in which all spontaneous and natural 
 feeling is blended with the artificial sentiment created by con- 
 ventional manners. 
 
 The most important and decisive step in a woman's life is 
 the very one that she invariably regards as the most insig- 
 nificant. After her marriage she is no longer her own mis- 
 tress, she is the queen and the bond-slave of the domestic 
 hearth. The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with 
 social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipa- 
 tion means corruption. If you give a stranger the right of 
 entry into the sanctuary of home, do you not put yourself at 
 his mercy ? How then if she herself bids him enter in ? Is not
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 103 
 
 this an offence, or, to speak more accurately, a first step to- 
 wards an offence? You must either accept this theory with 
 all its consequences, or absolve illicit passion. French society 
 hitherto has chosen the third and middle course of looking 
 on and laughing when offences come, apparently upon the 
 Spartan principle of condoning the theft and punishing 
 clumsiness. And this system, it may be, is a very wise one. 
 'Tis a most appalling punishment to have all your neighbors 
 pointing the finger of scorn at you, a punishment that a 
 woman feels in her very heart. Women are tenacious, and 
 all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem 
 they cannot exist, esteem is the first demand that they make 
 of love. The most corrupt among them feels that she must, 
 in the first place, pledge the future to buy absolution for the 
 past, and strives to make her lover understand that only for 
 irresistible bliss can she barter the respect which the world 
 henceforth will refuse to her. 
 
 Some such reflections cross the mind of any woman who 
 for the first time and alone receives a visit from a young 
 man; and this especially when, like Charles de Vandenesse, 
 the visitor is handsome or clever. And similarly there are 
 not many young men who would fail to base some secret wish 
 on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the in- 
 stinct that attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy 
 woman like the Marquise d'Aiglemont. 
 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont, therefore, felt troubled when M. de 
 Vandenesse was announced; and as for him, he was almost 
 confused in spite of the assurance which is like a matter of 
 costume for a diplomatist. But not for long. The Marquise 
 took refuge at once in the friendliness of manner which 
 women use as a defence against the misinterpretations of 
 fatuity, a manner which admits of no afterthought, while it 
 paves the way to sentiment (to make use of a figure of 
 speech), tempering the transition through the ordinary 
 forms of politeness. In this ambiguous position, where the 
 four roads leading respectively to Indifference, Eespect, Won- 
 der, and Passion meet, a woman may stay as long as she
 
 104 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 pleases, but only at thirty years does she understand all the 
 possibilities of the situation. Laughter, tenderness, and jest 
 are all permitted to her at the crossing of the ways; she has 
 acquired the tact by which she finds all the responsive chords 
 in a man's nature, and skill in judging the sounds which 
 she draws forth. Her silence is as dangerous as her speech. 
 You will never read her at that age, nor discover if she is 
 frank or false, nor how far she is serious in her admissions 
 or merely laughing at you. She gives you the right to en- 
 gage in a game of fence with her, and suddenly by a glance, 
 a gesture of proved potency, she closes the combat and turns 
 from you with your secret in her keeping, free to offer you 
 up to a jest, free to interest herself in you, safe alike in her 
 weakness and your strength. 
 
 Although the Marquise d'Aiglemont took up her position 
 upon this neutral ground during the first interview, she knew 
 how to preserve a high womanly dignity. The sorrows of 
 which she never spoke seemed to hang over her assumed 
 gaiety like a light cloud obscuring the sun. When Vandenesse 
 went out, after a conversation which he had enjoyed more 
 than he had thought possible, he carried with him the con- 
 viction that this was like- to be too costly a conquest for his 
 aspirations. 
 
 "It would mean sentiment from here to yonder," he 
 thought, "and correspondence enough to wear out a deputy 
 second-clerk on his promotion. And yet if I really cared 
 
 Luckless phrase that has been the ruin of many an in- 
 fatuated mortal. In France the way to love lies through 
 self-love. Charles went back to Mme. d'Aiglemont, and im- 
 agined that she showed symptoms of pleasure in his conver- 
 sion. And then, instead of giving himself up like a boy to 
 the joy of falling in love, he tried to play a double role. He 
 did his best to act passion and to keep cool enough to analyze 
 the progress of this flirtation, to be lover and diplomatist at 
 once; but youth and hot blood and analysis could only end 
 in one way, over head and ears in love ; for, natural or arti- 
 ficial, the Marquise was more than his match. Each time
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 105 
 
 as he went out from Mme. d'Aiglemont, he strenuously held 
 himself to his distrust, and submitted the progressive situa- 
 tions of his case to a rigorous scrutiny fatal to his own emo- 
 tions. 
 
 "To-day she gave me to understand that she has been very 
 unhappy and lonely," said he to himself, after the third 
 visit, "and that but for her little girl she would have longed 
 for death. She was perfectly resigned. Now as I am neither 
 her brother nor her spiritual director, why should she con- 
 fide her troubles to me? She loves me." 
 
 Two days later he came away apostrophizing modern man- 
 ners. 
 
 "Love takes on the hue of every age. In 1822 love is a 
 doctrinaire. Instead of proving love by deeds, as in times 
 past, we have taken to argument and rhetoric and debate. 
 Women's tactics are reduced to three shifts. In the first 
 place, they declare that we cannot love as they love. (Co- 
 quetry ! the Marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge, 
 this evening ! ) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our 
 natural generosity or self-love; for does it not flatter a young 
 man's vanity to console a woman for a great calamity? And 
 lastly, they have a craze for virginity. She must have thought 
 that I thought her very innocent. My good faith is like to 
 become an excellent speculation." 
 
 But a day came when every suspicious idea was exhausted. 
 He asked himself whether the Marquise was not sincere; 
 whether so much suffering could be feigned, and why she 
 should act the part of resignation? She lived in complete 
 seclusion; she drank in silence of a cup of sorrow scarcely 
 to be guessed unless from the accent of some chance ex- 
 clamation in a voice always well under control. From that 
 moment Charles felt a keen interest in Mme. d'Aiglemont. 
 And yet, though his visits had come to be a recognized thing, 
 and in some sort a necessity to them both, and though the 
 hour was kept free by tacit agreement, Vandenesse still 
 thought that this woman with whom he was in love was more 
 clever than sincere. "Decidedly, she is an uncommonly clever 
 woman/' he used to say to himself as he went away.
 
 106 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 When he came into the room, there was the Marquise in 
 her favorite attitude, melancholy expressed in her whole 
 form. She made no movement when he entered, only raised 
 her eyes and looked full at him., but the glance that she gave 
 him was like a smile. Mme. d'Aiglemont's manner meant 
 confidence and sincere friendship, but of love there was no 
 trace. Charles sat down and found nothing to say. A sensa- 
 tion for which no language exists troubled him. 
 
 "What is the matter with you?" she asked in a softened 
 voice. 
 
 "Nothing. . . . Yes; I am thinking of something of 
 which, as yet, you have not thought at all." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "Why the Congress is over." 
 
 "Well," she said, "and ought you to have been at the Con- 
 
 gress 
 
 9 
 
 A direct answer would have been the most eloquent and 
 delicate declaration of love; but Charles did not make it. 
 Before the candid friendship in Mme. d'Aiglemont's face 
 all the calculations of vanity, the hopes of love, and the 
 diplomatist's doubts died away. She did not suspect, or she 
 seemed not to suspect, his love for her ; and Charles, in utter 
 confusion turning upon himself, was forced to admit that 
 he had said and done nothing which could warrant such a 
 belief on her part. For M. de Vandenesse that evening, the 
 Marquise was, as she had always been, simple and friendly, 
 sincere in her sorrow, glad to have a friend, proud to find a 
 nature responsive to her own nothing more. It had not 
 entered her mind that a woman could yield twice; she had 
 known love love lay bleeding still in the depths of her 
 heart, but she did not imagine that bliss could bring her its 
 rapture twice, for she believed not merely in the intellect, 
 but in the soul; and for her love was no simple attraction; 
 it drew her with all noble attractions. 
 
 In a moment Charles became a young man again, en- 
 thralled by the splendor of a nature so lofty. He wished for 
 a fuller initiation into the secret history of a life blighted
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 107 
 
 rather by fate than by her own fault. Mme. d'Aiglemont 
 heard him ask the cause of the overwhelming sorrow which 
 had blended all the harmonies of sadness with her beauty; 
 she gave him one glance, but that searching look was like a 
 seal set upon some solemn compact. 
 
 "Ask no more such questions of me," she said. "Four years 
 ago, on this very day, the man who loved me, for whom I 
 would have given up everything, even my own self-respect, 
 died, and died to save my name. That love was still young 
 and pure and full of illusions when it came to an end. Be- 
 fore I gave way to passion and never was woman so urged 
 by fate I had been drawn into the mistake that ruins many 
 a girl's life, a marriage with a man whose agreeable manners 
 concealed his emptiness. Marriage plucked my hopes away 
 one by one. And now, to-day, I have forfeited happiness 
 through marriage, as well as the happiness styled criminal, 
 and I have known no happiness. Nothing is left to me. If 
 I could not die, at the least I ought to be faithful to my memo- 
 ries." 
 
 No tears came with the words. Her eyes fell, and there 
 was a slight twisting of the fingers interclasped, according 
 to her wont. It was simply said, but in her voice there was 
 a note of despair, deep as her love seemed to have been, which 
 left Charles without a hope. The dreadful story of a life 
 told in three sentences, with that twisting of the fingers for 
 all comment, the might of anguish in a fragile woman, the 
 dark depths masked by a fair face, the tears of four years 
 of mourning fascinated Vandenesse ; he sat silent and dimin- 
 ished in the presence of her woman's greatness and nobleness, 
 seeing not the physical beauty so exquisite, so perfectly com- 
 plete, but the soul so great in its power to feel. He had found, 
 at last, the ideal of his fantastic imaginings, the ideal so 
 vigorously invoked by all who look on life as the raw material 
 of a passion for which many a one seeks ardently, and dies 
 before he has grasped the whole of the dreamed-of treasure. 
 
 With those words of hers in his ears, in the presence of her 
 sublime beauty, his own thoughts seemed poor and narrow.
 
 108 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 Powerless as he felt himself to find words of his own, simple 
 enough and lofty enough to scale the heights of this exalta- 
 tion, he took refuge in platitudes as to the destiny of women. 
 
 "Madame, we must either forget our pain, or hollow out 
 a tomb for ourselves." 
 
 But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment ; the 
 one being essentially restricted, like everything that is posi- 
 tive, while the other is infinite. To set to work to reason 
 where you are required to feel, is the mark of a limited 
 nature. Vandenesse therefore held his peace, sat awhile with 
 his eyes fixed upon her, then came away. A prey to novel 
 thoughts which exalted woman for him, he was in something 
 the same position as a painter who has taken the vulgar 
 studio model for a type of womanhood, and suddenly con- 
 fronts the Mnemosyne of the Musee that noblest and least 
 appreciated of antique statues. 
 
 Charles de Vandenesse was deeply in love. He loved Mme. 
 d'Aiglemont with the loyalty of youth, with the fervor that 
 communicates such ineffable charm to a first passion, with a 
 simplicity of heart of which a man only recovers some frag- 
 ments when he loves again at a later day. Delicious first pas- 
 sion of youth, almost always deliciously savored by the woman 
 who calls it forth ; f 6r at the golden prime of thirty, from the 
 poetic summit of a woman's life, she can look out over the 
 whole course of love backwards into the past, forwards 
 into the future and, knowing all the price to be paid for 
 love, enjoys her bliss with the dread of losing it ever present 
 with her. Her soul is still fair with her waning youth, and 
 passion daily gathers strength from the dismaying prospect 
 of the coming days. 
 
 "This is love," Vandenesse said to himself this time as he 
 left the Marquise, "and for my misfortune I love a woman 
 wedded to her memories. It is hard work to struggle against 
 a dead rival, never present to make blunders and fall out of 
 favor, nothing of him left but his better qualities. What is 
 it but a sort of high treason against the Ideal to attempt 
 to break the charm of memory, to destroy the hopes that sur-
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 109 
 
 vive a lost lover, precisely because he only awakened long- 
 ings, and all that is loveliest and most enchanting in love?" 
 These sober reflections, due to the discouragement and 
 dread of failure with which love begins in earnest, were the 
 last expiring effort of diplomatic reasoning. Thenceforward 
 he knew no afterthoughts, he was the plaything of his love, 
 and lost himself in the nothings of that strange inexplicable 
 happiness which is full fed by a chance word, by silence, or 
 a vague hope. He tried to love Platonically, came daily to 
 breathe the air that she breathed, became almost a part of 
 her house, and went everywhere with her, slave as he was of 
 a tyrannous passion compounded of egoism and devotion of 
 the completest. Love has its own instinct, finding the way 
 to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, 
 with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside. If 
 feeling is sincere, its destiny is not doubtful. Let a woman 
 begin to think that her life depends on the sincerity or fervor 
 or earnestness which her lover shall put into his longings, 
 and is there not sufficient in the thought to put her through 
 all the tortures of dread? It is impossible for a woman, be 
 she wife or mother, to be secure from a young man's love. 
 One thing it is within her power to do to refuse to see him 
 as soon as she learns a secret which she never fails to guess. 
 But this is too decided a step to take at an age when marriage 
 has become a prosaic and tiresome yoke, and conjugal affec- 
 tion is something less than tepid (if indeed her husband has 
 not already begun to neglect her). Is a woman plain? She 
 is flattered by a love which gives her fairness. Is she young 
 and charming? She is only to be won by a fascination as 
 great as her own power to charm, that is to say, a fascination 
 well-nigh irresistible. Is she virtuous? There is a love sub- 
 lime in its earthliness which leads her to find something like 
 absolution in the very greatness of the surrender and glory 
 in a hard struggle. Everything is a snare. No lesson, there- 
 fore, is too severe where the temptation is so strong. The 
 seclusion in which the Greeks and Orientals kept and keep 
 their women, an example more and more followed in modern
 
 110 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 England, is the only safeguard of domestic morality; but 
 Tinder this system there is an end of all the charm of social 
 intercourse; and society, and good breeding, and refinement 
 of manners become impossible. The nations must take their 
 choice. 
 
 So a few months went by, and Mme. d'Aiglemont dis- 
 covered that her life was closely bound with this young man's 
 life, without overmuch confusion in her surprise, and felt 
 with something almost like pleasure that she shared his 
 tastes and his thoughts. Had she adopted Vandenesse's 
 ideas? Or was it Vandenesse who had made her lightest 
 whims his own? She was not careful to inquire. She had 
 been swept out already into the current of passion, and yet 
 this adorable woman told herself with the confident reitera- 
 tion of misgiving : 
 
 "Ah! no. i will be faithful to him who died for me." 
 
 Pascal said that "the doubt of God implies belief in God." 
 And similarly it may be said that a woman only parleys when 
 she has surrendered. A day came when the Marquise ad- 
 mitted to herself that she was loved, and with that admis- 
 sion came a time of wavering among countless conflicting 
 thoughts and feelings. The superstitions of experience spoke 
 their language. Should she be happy? Was it possible that 
 she should find happiness outside the limits of the laws which 
 society rightly or wrongly has set up for humanity to live by ? 
 Hitherto her cup of life had been full of bitterness. Was 
 there any happy issue possible for the ties which united two 
 human beings held apart by social conventions? And might 
 not happiness be bought too dear? Still, this so ardently 
 desired happiness, for which it is so natural to seek, might 
 perhaps be found after all. Curiosity is always retained on 
 the lover's side in the suit. The secret tribunal was still sit- 
 ting when Vandenesse appeared, and his presence put the 
 metaphysical spectre, reason, to flight. 
 
 If such are the successive transformations through which 
 a sentiment, transient though it be, passes in a young man 
 and a woman of thirty, there comes a moment of time when
 
 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 111 
 
 the shades of difference blend into each other, when all rea- 
 sonings end in a single and final reflection which is lost and 
 absorbed in the desire which it confirms. Then the longer the 
 resistance, the mightier the voice of love. And here endeth 
 this lesson, or rather this study made from the ecorclie, to 
 borrow a most graphic term from the studio, for in this his- 
 tory it is not so much intended to portray love as to lay bare 
 its mechanism and its dangers. From this moment every day 
 adds color to these dry bones, clothes them again with living 
 flesh and blood and the charm of youth, and puts vitality 
 into their movements; till they glow once more with the 
 beauty, the persuasive grace of sentiment, the loveliness of 
 life. 
 
 Charles found Mme. d'Aiglemont absorbed in thought, and 
 to his "What is it?" spoken in thrilling tones grown per- 
 suasive with the heart's soft magic, she was careful not to 
 reply. The delicious question bore witness to the perfect 
 unity of their spirits ; and the Marquise felt, with a woman's 
 wonderful intuition, that to give any expression to the sor- 
 row in her heart would be to make an advance. If, even 
 now, each one of those words was fraught with significance 
 for them both, in what fathomless depths might she not 
 plunge at the first step? She read herself with a clear and 
 lucid glance. She was silent, and Vandenesse followed her 
 example. 
 
 "I am not feeling well," she said at last, taking alarm at 
 the pause fraught with such great moment for them both, 
 when the language of the eyes completely filled the blank left 
 by the helplessness of speech. 
 
 "Madame," said Charles, and his voice was tender but un- 
 steady with strong feeling, "soul and body are both de- 
 pendent on each other. If you were happy, you would be 
 young and fresh. Why do you refuse to ask of love all that 
 love has taken from you? You think that your life is over 
 when it is only just beginning. Trust yourself to a friend's 
 care. It is so sweet to be loved."
 
 112 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 "I am old already," she said; "there is no reason why i 
 should not continue to suffer as in the past. And 'one must 
 love/ do you say? Well, I must not, and I cannot. Your 
 friendship has put some sweetness into my life, but beside 
 you I care for no one, no one could efface my memories. A 
 friend I accept; I should fly from a lover. Besides, would it 
 be a very generous thing to do, to exchange a withered heart 
 for a young heart; to smile upon illusions which now I can- 
 not share, to cause happiness in which I should either have 
 no belief, or tremble to lose? I should perhaps respond to 
 his devotion with egoism, should weigh and deliberate while 
 he felt ; my memory would resent the poignancy of his happi- 
 ness. No, if you love once, that love is never, replaced, you 
 see. Indeed, who would have my heart at this price?" 
 
 There was a tinge of heartless coquetry in the words, the 
 last effort of discretion. 
 
 "If he loses courage, well and good, I shall live alone and 
 faithful." The thought came from the very depths of the 
 woman, for her it was the too slender willow twig caught 
 in vain by a swimmer swept out by the current. 
 
 Vandenesse's involuntary shudder at her dictum plead 
 more eloquently for him than all his past assiduity. Noth- 
 ing moves a woman so much as the discovery of a gracious 
 delicacy in us, such a refinement of sentiment as her own, 
 for a woman the grace and delicacy are sure tokens of truth. 
 Charles' start revealed the sincerity of his love. Mme. 
 d'Aiglemont learned the strength of his affection from the 
 intensity of his pain. 
 
 "Perhaps you are right," he said coldly. "New love, new 
 vexation of spirit." 
 
 Then he changed the subject, and spoke of indifferent mat- 
 ters; but he was visibly moved, and he concentrated his gaze 
 on Mme. d'Aiglemont as if he were seeing her for the last 
 time. 
 
 "Adieu, madame," he said, with emotion in his voice. 
 
 "Au revoir" said she, with that subtle coquetry, the secret 
 of a very few among women.
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 113 
 
 He made no answer and went. 
 
 When Charles was no longer there, when his empty chair 
 spoke for him, regrets nocked in upon her, and she found 
 fault with herself. Passion makes an immense advance as 
 soon as a woman persuades herself that she has failed some- 
 what in generosity or hurt a noble nature. In love there is 
 never any need to be on our guard against the worst in us; 
 that is a safeguard; a woman only surrenders at the sum- 
 mons of a virtue. "The floor of hell is paved with good in- 
 tentions," it is no preacher's paradox. 
 
 Vandenesse stopped away for several days. Every evening 
 at the accustomed hour the Marquise sat expectant in re- 
 morseful impatience. She could not write that would be 
 a declaration, and, moreover, her instinct told her that he 
 would come back. On the sixth day he was announced, and 
 never had she heard the name with such delight. Her joy 
 frightened her. 
 
 "You have punished me well," she said, addressing him. 
 
 Vandenesse gazed at her in astonishment. 
 
 "Punished?" he echoed. "And for what?" He under- 
 stood her quite well, but he meant to be avenged for all that 
 he had suffered as soon as she suspected it. 
 
 "Why have you not come to see me?" she demanded with 
 a smile. 
 
 "Then have you seen no visitors?" asked he, parrying the 
 question. 
 
 "Yes. M. de Eonquerolles and M. de Marsay and young 
 d'Escrignon came and stayed for nearly two hours, the first 
 two yesterday, the last this morning. And besides, I 
 have had a call, I believe, from Mme. Firmiani and from 
 your sister, Mme. de Listomere." 
 
 Here was a new infliction, torture which none can compre- 
 hend unless they know love as a fierce and all-invading tyrant 
 whose mildest symptom is a monstrous jealousy, a perpetual 
 desire to snatch away the beloved from every other influence. 
 
 "What !" thought he to himself, "she has seen visitors, she 
 has been with happy creatures, and talking to them, while I 
 was unhappy and all alone." 
 
 VOL. 532
 
 114 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to 
 the depths of his heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts 
 were of the kind that never find expression in words; they 
 pass through the mind swiftly as a deadly acid, that poisons 
 as it evaporates and vanishes. His brow, however, was over- 
 clouded; and Mme. d'Aiglemont, guided by her woman's in- 
 stinct, shared his sadness without understanding it. She had 
 hurt him, unwittingly, as Vandenesse knew. He talked over 
 his position with her, as if his jealousy were one of those 
 hypothetical cases which lovers love to discuss. Then the 
 Marquise understood it all. She was so deeply moved, that 
 she could not keep back the tears and so these lovers entered 
 the heaven of love. 
 
 Heaven and Hell are two great imaginative conceptions 
 formulating our ideas of Joy and Sorrow those two poles 
 about which human existence revolves. Is not heaven a figure 
 of speech covering now and for evermore an infinite of human 
 feeling impossible to express save in its accidents since that 
 Joy is one ? And what is Hell but the symbol of our infinite 
 power to suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain it is 
 possible to fashion works of art, for no two human sorrows 
 are alike ? 
 
 One evening the two lovers sat alone and side by side, 
 silently watching one of the fairest transformations of the 
 sky, a cloudless heaven taking hues of pale gold and purple 
 from the last rays of the sunset. With the slow fading of 
 the daylight, sweet thoughts seem to awaken, and soft stir- 
 rings of passion and a mysterious sense of trouble in the 
 midst of calm. Nature sets before us vague images of bliss, 
 bidding us enjoy the happiness within our reach, or lament 
 it when it has fled. In those moments fraught with enchant- 
 ment, when the tender light in. the canopy of the sky blends 
 in harmony with the spells working within, it is difficult to 
 resist the heart's desires grown so magically potent. Cares 
 are blunted, joy becomes ecstasy; pain, intolerable anguish. 
 The pomp of sunset gives the signal for confessions and draws 
 them forth. Silence grows more dangerous than speech, for
 
 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 115 
 
 it gives to eyes all the power of the infinite of the heavens 
 reflected in them. And for speech, the least word has irre- 
 sistible might. Is not the light infused into the voice and 
 purple into the glances? Is not heaven within us, or do we 
 feel that we are in the heavens ? 
 
 Vandenesse and Julie for so she had allowed herself to 
 be called for the past few days by him whom she loved to 
 speak of as Charles Vandenesse and Julie were talking to- 
 gether, but they had drifted very far from their original sub- 
 ject: and if their spoken words had grown meaningless they 
 listened in delight to the unspoken thoughts that lurked in 
 the sounds. Her hand lay in his. She had abandoned it to 
 him without a thought that she had granted a proof of love. 
 
 Together they leaned forward to look out upon a majestic 
 cloud country, full of snows and glaciers and fantastic 
 mountain peaks with gray stains of shadow on their sides, 
 a picture composed of sharp contrasts between fiery red and 
 the shadows of darkness, filling the skies with a fleeting 
 vision of glory which cannot be reproduced magnificent 
 swaddling-bands of sunrise, bright shrouds of the dying sun. 
 As they leaned, Julie's hair brushed lightly against Vande- 
 nesse's cheek. She felt that light contact, and shuddered vio- 
 lently, and he even more, for imperceptibly they both had 
 reached one of those inexplicable crises when quiet has 
 wrought upon the senses until every faculty of perception is 
 so keen that the slightest shock fills the heart lost in melan- 
 choly with sadness that overflows in tears; or raises joy to 
 ecstasy in a heart that is lost in the vertigo of love. Almost 
 involuntarily Julie pressed her lover's hand. That wooing 
 pressure gave courage to his timidity. All the joy of the 
 present, all the hopes of the future were blended in the emo- 
 tion of a first caress, the bashful trembling kiss that Mme. 
 d'Aiglemont received upon her cheek. The slighter the con- 
 cession, the more dangerous and insinuating it was. For 
 their double misfortune it was only too sincere a revelation. 
 Two noble natures had met and blended, drawn each to each 
 by every law of natural attraction, held apart by every ordi- 
 nance.
 
 116 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 General d'Aiglemont came in at that very moment. 
 
 "The Ministry has gone out/' he said. "Your uncle will 
 be in the new cabinet. So you stand an uncommonly good 
 chance of an embassy, Vandenesse." 
 
 Charles and Julie looked at each other and flushed red. 
 That blush was one more tie to unite them; there was one 
 thought and one remorse in either mind; between two lovers 
 guilty of a kiss there is a bond quite as strong and terrible 
 as the bond between two robbers who have murdered a man. 
 Something had to be said by way of reply. 
 
 "I do not care to leave Paris now," Charles said. 
 
 "We know why," said the General, with the knowing air 
 of a man who discovers a secret. "You do not like to leave 
 your uncle, because you do not wish to lose your chance of 
 succeeding to the title." 
 
 The Marquise took refuge in her room, and in her mind 
 passed a pitiless verdict upon her husband. 
 
 "His stupidity is really beyond anything!" 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE FINGER OF GOD 
 
 BETWEEN the Barriere d'ltalie and the Barriere de la Sant6, 
 along the boulevard which leads to the Jardin des Plantes, 
 you have a view of Paris fit to send an artist or the tourist, 
 the most blase in matters of landscape, into ecstasies. Reach 
 the slightly higher ground where the line of boulevard, 
 shaded by tall, .thick-spreading trees, curves with the grace 
 of some green and silent forest avenue, and you see spread 
 out at your feet a deep valley populous with factories look- 
 ing almost countrified among green trees and the brown 
 streams of the Bievre or the Gobelins. 
 
 On the opposite slope, beneath some thousands of roof? 
 packed close together like heads in a crowd, lurks the squalor
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 117 
 
 of the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. The imposing cupola of 
 the Pantheon, and the grim melancholy dome of the Val-du- 
 Grace, tower proudly up above a whole town in itself, built 
 amphitheatre-wise; every tier being grotesquely represented 
 by a crooked line of street, so that the two public monuments 
 look like a huge pair of giants dwarfing into insignificance 
 the poor little houses and the tallest poplars in the valley. 
 To your left behold the observatory, the daylight, pouring 
 athwart its windows and galleries, producing such fantastical 
 strange effects that the building looks like a black spectral 
 skeleton. Further yet in the distance rises the elegant lan- 
 tern tower of the Invalides, soaring up between the bluish 
 pile of the Luxembourg and the gray tours of Saint-Sulpice. 
 From this standpoint the lines of the architecture are 
 blended with green leaves and gray shadows, and change 
 every moment with every aspect of the heavens, every altera- 
 tion of light or color in the sky. Afar, the skyey spaces 
 themselves seem to be full of buildings; near, wind the ser- 
 pentine curves of waving trees and green footpaths. 
 
 Away to your right, through a great gap in this singular 
 landscape, you see the canal Saint-Martin, a long pale stripe 
 with its edging of reddish stone quays and fringes of lime 
 avenue. The long rows of buildings beside it, in genuine 
 Eoman style, are the public granaries. 
 
 Beyond, again, on the very last plane of all, see the smoke- 
 dimmed slopes of Belleville covered with houses and wind- 
 mills, which blend their freaks of outline with the chance 
 effects of cloud. And still, between that horizon, vague as 
 some childish recollection, and the serried range of roofs in 
 the valley, a whole city lies out of sight : a huge city, en- 
 gulfed, as it were, in a vast hollow between the pinnacles of 
 the Hopital de la Pitie and the ridge line of the Cimetiere 
 de 1'Est, between suffering on the one hand and death on the 
 other; a city sending up a smothered roar like ocean grum- 
 bling at the foot of a cliff, as if to let you know that "I am 
 here !" 
 
 When the sunlight pours like a flood over this strip of
 
 118 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 Paris, purifying and ethereal izing the outlines, kindling an- 
 swering lights here and there in the window panes, brighten- 
 ing the red tiles, flaming about the golden crosses, whitening 
 walls and transforming the atmosphere into a gauzy veil, call- 
 ing up rich contrasts of light and fantastic shadow; when 
 the sky is blue and earth quivers in the heat, and the bell? 
 are pealing, then you shall see one of the eloquent fairj 
 scenes which stamp themselves for ever on the imaginations 
 a scene that shall find as fanatical worshipers as the won- 
 drous views of Naples and Byzantium or the isles of Florida. 
 Nothing is wanting to complete the harmony, the murmur 
 of the world of men and the idyllic quiet of solitude, the 
 voices of a million human creatures and the voice of God. 
 There lies a whole capital beneath the peaceful cypresses of 
 Pere-Lachaise. 
 
 The landscape lay in all its beauty, sparkling in the spring 
 sunlight, as I stood looking out over it one morning, my back 
 against a huge elm-tree that flung its yellow flowers to the 
 wind. And at the sight of the rich and glorious view before 
 me, I thought bitterly of the scorn with which even in our 
 literature we affect to hold this land of ours, and poured 
 maledictions on the pitiable plutocrats who fall out of love 
 with fair France, and spend their gold to acquire the right 
 of sneering at their own country, by going through Italy at 
 a gallop and inspecting that desecrated land through an opera- 
 glass. I cast loving eyes on modern Paris. I was beginning 
 to dream dreams, when the sound of a kiss disturbed the soli- 
 tude and put philosophy to flight. Down the sidewalk, along 
 the steep bank, above the rippling water, I saw beyond the 
 Ponte des Gobelins the figure of a woman, dressed with 
 the daintiest simplicity ; she was still young, as it seemed to 
 me, and the blithe gladness of the landscape was reflected 
 in her sweet face. Her companion, a handsome young man, 
 had just set down a little boy. A prettier child has never 
 been seen, and to this day I do not know whether it was the 
 little one or his mother who received the kiss. In their young 
 faces, in their eyes, their smile, their every movement, you
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 119 
 
 could read the same deep and tender thought. Their arms 
 were interlaced with such glad swiftness; they drew close to- 
 gether with such marvelous unanimity of impulse that, con- 
 scious of nothing but themselves, they did not so much as see 
 me. A second child, however a little girl, who had turned 
 her back upon them in sullen discontent threw me a glance, 
 and the expression of her eyes startled me. She was as pretty 
 and as engaging as the little brother whom she left to run 
 about by himself, sometimes before, sometimes after their 
 mother and her companion; but her charm was less childish, 
 and now., as she stood mute and motionless, her attitude and 
 demeanor suggested a torpid snake. There was something 
 indescribably mechanical in the way in which the pretty 
 woman and her companion paced up and down. In absence 
 of mind, probably, they were content to walk to and fro be- 
 tween the little bridge and a carriage that stood waiting near- 
 by at a corner in the boulevard, turning, stopping short now 
 and again, looking into each other's eyes, or breaking into 
 laughter as their casual talk grew lively or languid, grave or 
 
 gay- 
 
 I watched this delicious picture a while from my hiding- 
 place by the great elm-tree, and should have turned away no 
 doubt and respected their privacy, if it had not been for a 
 chance discovery. In the face of the brooding, silent, elder 
 child I saw traces of thought overdeep for her age. When her 
 mother and the young man at her side turned and came near, 
 her head was frequently lowered ; the furtive sidelong glances 
 of intelligence that she- gave the pair and the child her 
 brother were nothing less than extraordinary. Sometimes 
 the pretty woman or her friend would stroke the little boy's 
 fair curls, or lay a caressing finger against the baby throat 
 or the white collar as he played at keeping step with them; 
 and no words can describe the shrewd subtlety, the ingenuous 
 malice, the fierce intensity which lighted up that pallid little 
 face with the faint circles already round the eyes. Truly there 
 was a man's power of passion in that strange-looking, delicate 
 little girl. Here were traces of suffering or of thought in her ;
 
 120 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 and which is the more certain token of death when life is in 
 blossom physical suffering, or the malady of too early 
 thought preying upon a soul as yet in bud? Perhaps a 
 mother knows, ior my own part, I know of nothing more 
 dreadful to see than an old man's thoughts on a child's fore- 
 head; even blasphemy from girlish lips is less monstrous. 
 
 The almost stupid stolidity of this child who had begun 
 to think already, her rare gestures, everything about her, in- 
 terested me. I scrutinized her curiously. Then the common 
 whim of the observer drew me to compare her with her 
 brother, and to note their likeness and unlikeness. 
 
 Her brown hair and dark eyes and look of precocious power 
 made a rich contrast with the little one's fair curled head 
 and sea-green eyes and winning helplessness. She, perhaps, 
 was seven or eight years of age; the boy was full four years 
 younger. Both children were dressed alike; but here again, 
 looking closely, I noticed a difference. It was very slight, 
 a little thing enough; but in the light of after events I saw 
 that it meant a whole romance in the past, a whole tragedy 
 to come. The little brown-haired maid wore a linen collar 
 with a plain hem, her brother's was edged with dainty em- 
 broidery, that was all; but therein lay the confession of a 
 heart's secret, a tacit preference which a child can read in 
 the mother's inmost soul as clearly as if the spirit of God re- 
 vealed it. The fair-haired child, careless and glad, looked 
 almost like a girl, his skin was so fair and fresh, his move- 
 ments so graceful, his look so sweet; while his older sister, 
 in spite of her energy, in spite of the beauty of her features 
 and her dazzling complexion, looked like a sickly little boy. 
 In her bright eyes there was none of the humid softness which 
 lends such charm' to children's faces; they seemed, like 
 courtiers' eyes, to be dried by some inner fire; and in her 
 pallor there was a certain swarthy olive tint, the sign of 
 vigorous character. Twice her little brother came to her, 
 holding out a tiny hunting-horn with a touching charm, a 
 winning look, and wistful expression, which would have sent 
 Charlet into ecstasies, but she only scowled in answer to his
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 121 
 
 "Here, Helene, will you take it?" so persuasively spoken. 
 The little girl, so sombre and vehement beneath her apparent 
 indifference, shuddered, and even flushed red when her 
 brother came near her ; but the little one seemed not to notice 
 his sister's dark mood, and his unconsciousness, blended with 
 earnestness, marked a final difference in character between the 
 child and the little girl, whose brow was overclouded already 
 by the gloom of a man's knowledge and cares. 
 
 "Mamma, Helene will not play," cried the little one, seiz- 
 ing an opportunity to complain while the two stood silent 
 on the Pont des Gobelins. 
 
 "Let her alone, Charles; you know very well that she is 
 always cross." 
 
 Tears sprang to Helene's eyes at the words so thoughtlessly 
 uttered by her mother as she turned abruptly to the young 
 man by her side. The child devoured the speech in silence, 
 but she gave her brother one of those sagacious looks that 
 seemed inexplicable to me, glancing with a sinister expression 
 from the bank where he stood to the Bievre, then at the 
 bridge and the view, and then at me. 
 
 I was afraid lest my presence should disturb the happy 
 couple; I slipped away and took refuge behind a thicket of 
 elder trees, which completely screened me from all eyes. Sit- 
 ting quietly on the summit of the bank, I watched the ever- 
 changing landscape and the fierce-looking little girl, for with 
 my head almost on a level with the boulevard I could still 
 see her through the leaves. Helene seemed uneasy over my 
 disappearance, her dark eyes looked for me down the alley 
 and behind the trees with indefinable curiosity. What was 
 I to her ? Then Charles' baby laughter rang out like a bird's 
 song in the silence. The tall, young man, with the same fair 
 hair, was dancing him in his arms, showering kisses upon 
 him, and the meaningless baby words of that "little lan- 
 guage" which rises to our lips when we play with children. 
 The mother looked on smiling, now and then, doubtless, put- 
 ting in some low word that came up from the heart, for her 
 companion would stop short in his full happiness, and the
 
 122 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 blue eyes that turned towards her were full of glowing light 
 and love and worship. Their voices, blending with the child's 
 voice, reached me with a vague sense of a caress. The three 
 figures, charming in themselves, composed a lovely scene in 
 a glorious landscape, filling it with a pervasive unimaginable 
 grace. A delicately fair woman, radiant with smiles, a child 
 of love, a young man with the irresistible charm of youth, 
 a cloudless sky; nothing was wanting in nature to complete 
 a perfect harmony for the delight of the soul. I found my- 
 self smiling as if their happiness had been my own. 
 
 The clocks struck nine. The young man gave a tender 
 embrace to his companion, and went towards the tilbury 
 which an old servant drove slowly to meet him. The lady 
 had grown grave and almost sad. The child's prattle sounded 
 unchecked through the last farewell kisses. Then the tilbury 
 rolled away, and the lady stood motionless, listening to the 
 sound of the wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised 
 by its passage along the road. Charles ran down the green 
 pathway back to the bridge to join his sister. I heard his 
 silver voice calling to her. 
 
 "Why did you not come to say good-bye to my good 
 friend?" cried he. 
 
 Helene looked up. Never surely did such hatred gleam 
 from a child's eyes as from hers at that moment when she 
 turned them on the brother who stood beside her on the bank 
 side. She gave him an angry push. Charles lost his footing 
 on the steep slope, stumbled over the roots of a tree, and fell 
 headlong forwards, dashing his forehead on the sharp-edged 
 stones of the embankment, and, covered with blood, disap- 
 peared over the edge into the muddy river. The turbid 
 water closed over a fair, bright head with a shower of 
 splashes; one sharp shriek after another rang in my ears; 
 then the sounds were stifled by the thick stream, and the poor 
 child sank with a dull sound as if a stone had been thrown 
 into the water. The accident had happened with more than 
 lightning swiftness. I sprang down the footpath, and 
 Helene, stupefied with horror, shrieked again and again :
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 123 
 
 "Mamma ! mamma !" 
 
 The mother was there at my side. She had flown to the 
 spot like a bird. But neither a mother's eyes nor mine could 
 find the exact place where the little one had gone under. 
 There was a wide space of black hurrying water, and below 
 in the bed of the Bievre ten feet of mud. There was not the- 
 smallest possibility of saving the child. No one is stirring 
 at that hour on a Sunday morning, and there are neither 
 barges nor anglers on the Bievre. There was not a creature 
 in sight, not a pole to plumb the filthy stream. What need 
 was there for me to explain how the ugly-looking accident 
 had happened accident or misfortune, whichever it might 
 be? Had Helene avenged her father? Her jealousy surely 
 was the sword of God. And yet when I looked at the mother 
 I shivered. What fearful ordeal awaited her when she should 
 return to her husband, the judge before whom she must stand 
 all her days? And here with her was an inseparable, incor- 
 ruptible witness. A child's forehead is transparent, a child's 
 face hides no thoughts, and a lie, like a red flame set within* 
 glows out in red that colors even the eyes. But the unhappy 
 woman had not thought as yet of the punishment awaiting 
 her at home ; she was staring into the Bievre. 
 
 Such an event must inevitably send ghastly echoes 
 through a woman's life, and here is one of the most terrible 
 of the reverberations that troubled Julie's love from time to 
 time. 
 
 Several years had gone by. The Marquis de Vandenesse 
 wore mourning for his father, and succeeded to his estates. 
 One evening, therefore, after dinner it happened that a 
 notary was present in his house. This was no pettifogging 
 lawyer after Sterne's pattern, but a very solid, substantial 
 notary of Paris, one of your estimable men who do a stupid 
 thing pompously, set down a foot heavily upon your private 
 corn, and then ask what in the world th'ere is to cry out 
 about? If, by accident, they come to know the full extent 
 of the enormity, "Upon my word," cry they, "I hadn't a no-
 
 124 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 tion !" This was a well-intentioned ass, in short, who could 
 see nothing in life but deeds and documents. 
 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont had been dining with M. de Vandenesse ; 
 her husband had excused himself before dinner was over, for 
 he was taking his two children to the play. They were to 
 go to some Boulevard theatre or other, to the Ambigu- 
 Comique or the Gaiete, sensational melodrama being judged 
 harmless here in Paris, and suitable pabulum for childhood, 
 because innocence is always triumphant in the fifth act. The 
 boy and girl had teased their father to be there before the 
 curtain rose, so he had left the table before dessert was 
 served. 
 
 But the notary, the imperturbable notary, utterly incapable 
 of asking himself why Mme. d'Aiglemont should have al- 
 lowed her husband and children to go without her to the 
 play, sat on as if he were screwed to his chair. Dinner was 
 over, dessert had been prolonged by discussion, and coffee 
 delayed. All these things consumed time, doubtless precious, 
 and drew impatient movements from that charming woman; 
 she looked not unlike a thoroughbred pawing the ground be- 
 fore a race; but the man of law, to whom horses and women 
 were equally unknown quantities, simply thought the Mar- 
 quise a very lively and sparkling personage. So enchanted 
 was he to be in the company of a woman of fashion and a 
 political celebrity, that he was exerting himself to shine in 
 conversation, and taking the lady's forced smile for approba- 
 tion, talked on with unflagging spirit, till the Marquise was 
 almost out of patience. 
 
 The master of the house, in concert with the lady, had 
 more than once maintained an eloquent silence when the law- 
 yer expected a civil reply; but these significant pauses were 
 employed by the talkative nuisance in looking for anecdotes 
 in the fire. M. de Vandenesse had recourse to his watch; 
 the charming Marquise tried the experiment of fastening her 
 bonnet strings, and made as if she would go. But she did 
 not go, and the notary, blind and deaf, and delighted with
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 125 
 
 himself, was quite convinced that his interesting conversa- 
 tional powers were sufficient to k^eep the lady on the spot. 
 
 "I shall certainly have that woman for a client," said he 
 to himself. 
 
 Meanwhile the Marquise stood, putting on her gloves, twist- 
 ing her fingers, looking from the equally impatient Marquis 
 de Vandenesse to the lawyer, still pounding away. At every 
 pause in the worthy man's fire of witticisms the charming 
 pair heaved a sigh of relief, and their looks said plainly, "At 
 last ! He is really going !" 
 
 Nothing of the kind. It was a nightmare which could 
 only end in exasperating the two impassioned creatures, on 
 whom the lawyer had something of the fascinating effect of 
 a snake on a pair of birds ; before long they would be driven 
 to cut him short. 
 
 The clever notary was giving them the history of the dis- 
 creditable ways in which one du Tillet (a stockbroker then 
 much in favor) had laid the foundations of his fortune; all 
 the ins and outs of the whole disgraceful business were ac- 
 curately put before them; and the narrator was in the very 
 middle of his tale when M. de Vandenesse heard the clock 
 strike nine. Then it became clear to him that his legal ad- 
 viser was very emphatically an idiot who must be sent forth- 
 with about his business. He stopped him resolutely with a 
 gesture. 
 
 "The tongs, my lord Marquis?" queried the notary, hand- 
 ing the object in question to his client. 
 
 "No, monsieur, I am compelled to send you away. Mme. 
 d'Aiglemont wishes to join her children, and I shall have the 
 honor of escorting her." 
 
 "Nine o'clock already ! Time goes like a shadow in pleas- 
 ant company," said the man of law, who had talked on end 
 for the past hour. 
 
 He looked for his hat, planted himself before the fire, with 
 a suppressed hiccough; and, without heeding the Marquise's 
 withering glances, spoke once more to his impatient 
 client :
 
 126 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 "To sum up, my lord Marquis. Business before all things. 
 To-morrow, then, we must subpoena your brother; we will 
 proceed to make out the inventory, and faith, after that " 
 
 So ill had the lawyer understood his instructions, that his 
 impression was the exact opposite to the one intended. It 
 was a delicate matter, and Vandenesse, in spite of himself, 
 began to put the thick-headed notary right. The discussion 
 which followed took up a certain amount of time. 
 
 "Listen," the diplomatist said at last at a sign from the 
 lady, "you are puzzling my brains; come back to-morrow at 
 nine o'clock, and bring my solicitor with you." 
 
 "But as I have the honor of observing, my lord Marquis, 
 we are not certain of finding M. Desroches to-morrow, and 
 if the writ is not issued by noon to-morrow, the days of grace 
 will expire, and then " 
 
 As he spoke, a carriage entered the courtyard. The poor 
 woman turned sharply away at the sound to hide the tears 
 in her eyes. The Marquis rang to give the servant orders to 
 say that he was not at home; but before the footman could 
 answer the bell, the lady's husband reappeared. He had re- 
 turned unexpectedly from the Gaiete, and held both children 
 by the hand. The little girl's eyes were red; the boy was 
 fretful and very cross. 
 
 "What can have happened?" asked the Marquise. 
 
 "I will tell you by and by," said the General, and catch- 
 ing a glimpse through an open door of newspapers on the 
 table in the adjoining sitting-room, he went off. The Mar- 
 quise, at the end of her patience, flung herself down on the 
 sofa in desperation. The notary, thinking it incumbent upon 
 him to be amiable with the children, spoke to the little boy 
 in an insinuating tone: 
 
 "Well, my little man, and what is there on at the 
 theatre?" 
 
 "The Valley of the Torrent/' said Gustave sulkily. 
 
 "Upon my word and honor," declared the notary, "authors 
 nowadays are half crazy. The Valley of the Torrent! Why 
 not the Torrent of the Valley ? It is conceivable that a valley
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 127 
 
 might be without a torrent in it; now if they had said the 
 Torrent of the Valley, that would have been something clear, 
 something precise, something definite and comprehensible. 
 But never mind that. Now, how is a drama to take place in 
 a torrent and in a valley? You will tell me that in these 
 days the principal attraction lies in the scenic effect, and 
 the title is a capital advertisement. And did you enjoy it, 
 my little friend?" he continued, sitting down before the 
 child. 
 
 When the notary pursued his inquiries as to the possibili- 
 ties of a drama in the bed of a torrent, the little girl turned 
 slowly away and began to cry. Her mother did not notice 
 this in her intense annoyance. 
 
 "Oh! yes, monsieur, I enjoyed it very much," said the 
 child. "There was a dear little boy in the play, and he was 
 all alone in the world, because his papa could not have been 
 his real papa. And when he came to the top of the bridge 
 over the torrent, a big, naughty man with a beard, dressed 
 all in black, came and threw him into the water. And then 
 Helene began to sob and cry, and everybody scolded us, and 
 father brought us away quick, quick " 
 
 M. de Vandenesse and the Marquise looked on in dull 
 amazement, as if all power to think or move had been sud- 
 denly paralyzed. 
 
 "Do be quiet, Gustave!" cried the General. "I told you 
 that you were not to talk about anything that happened at 
 the play, and you have forgotten what I said already." 
 
 "Oh, my lord Marquis, your lordship must excuse him," 
 cried the notary. "I ought not to have asked questions, but 
 I had no idea " 
 
 "He ought not to have answered them," said the General, 
 looking sternly at the child. 
 
 It seemed that the Marquise and the master of the house 
 both perfectly understood why the children had come back 
 so suddenly. Mme. d'Aiglemont looked at her daughter, and 
 rose as if to go to her, but a terrible convulsion passed over 
 her face, and all that could be read in it was relentless se- 
 verity.
 
 128 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 "That will do, Helene," she said. "Go into the other 
 room, and leave off crying." 
 
 "What can she have done, poor child!" asked the notary, 
 thinking to appease the mother's anger and to stop Helene's 
 tears at one stroke. "So pretty as she is, she must be as 
 good as can be; never anything but a joy to her mother, I 
 will be bound. Isn't that so, my little girl ?" 
 
 Helene cowered, looked at her mother, dried her eyes, 
 struggled for composure, and took refuge in the next room. 
 
 "And you, madame, are too good a mother not to love all 
 your children alike. -You are too good a woman, besides, 
 to have any of those lamentable preferences which have such 
 fatal effects, as we lawyers have only too much reason to 
 know. Society goes through our hands; we see its passions 
 in that most revolting form, greed. Here it is the mother 
 of a family trying to disinherit her husband's chil- 
 dren to enrich the others whom she loves better; or it is the 
 husband who tries to leave all his property to the child who 
 has done his best to earn his mother's hatred. And then 
 begin quarrels, and fears, and deeds, and defeasances, and 
 sham sales, and trusts, and all the rest of it; a pretty mess, 
 in fact, it is pitiable, upon my honor, pitiable ! There are 
 fathers that will spend their whole lives in cheating their 
 children and robbing their wives. Yes, robbing is the only 
 word for it. We were talking of tragedy ; oh ! I can assure 
 you of this, that if we were at liberty to tell the real reasons 
 of some donations that I know of, our modern dramatists 
 would have the material for some sensational bourgeois 
 dramas. How the wife manages to get her way, as she in- 
 variably does, I cannot think; for in spite of appearances, 
 and in spite of their weakness, it is always the women who 
 carry the day. Ah! by the way, they don't take me in. I 
 always know the reason at the bottom of those predilections 
 which the world politely styles 'unaccountable.' But in jus- 
 tice to the husbands, I must say that they never discover any- 
 thing. You will tell me that this is a merciful dispens " 
 
 Helene had come back to the drawing-rooin with her
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 129 
 
 father, and was listening attentively. So well did she under- 
 stand all that was said, that she gave her mother a frightened 
 glance, feeling, with a child's quick instinct, that these re- 
 marks would aggravate the punishment hanging over her. 
 The Marquise turned her white face to Vandenesse; and, 
 with terror in her eyes, indicated her husband, who stood 
 with his eyes fixed absently on the flower pattern of the car- 
 pet. The diplomatist, accomplished man of the world though 
 he was, could no longer contain his wrath, he gave the man 
 of law a withering glance. 
 
 "Step this way, sir," he said, and he went hurriedly to the 
 door of the ante-chamber; the notary left his sentence half 
 finished, and followed, quaking, and the husband and wife 
 were left together. 
 
 "Now, sir," said the Marquis de Vandenesse he banged 
 the drawing-room door, and spoke with concentrated rage 
 "ever since dinner you have done nothing but make blunders 
 and talk folly. For heaven's sake, go. You will make the 
 most frightful mischief before you have done. If you are 
 a clever man in your profession, keep to your profession ; and 
 if by any chance you should go into society, endeavor to be 
 more circumspect." 
 
 With that he went back to the drawing-room, and did not 
 even wish the notary good-evening. For a moment that 
 worthy stood dumfounded, bewildered, utterly at a loss. 
 Then, when the buzzing in his ears subsided, he thought he 
 heard some one moaning in the next room. Footsteps came 
 and went, and bells were violently rung. He was by no 
 means anxious to meet the Marquis again, and found the 
 use of his legs to make good his escape, only to run against 
 a hurrying crowd of servants at the door. 
 
 "Just the way with all these grand folk," said he to him- 
 self outside in the street as he looked about for a cab. "They 
 lead you on to talk with compliments, and you think you 
 are amusing them. Not a bit of it. They treat you inso- 
 lently; put you at a distance; even put you out at the door 
 without scruple. After all, I talked very cleverly, I said 
 VOL. 533
 
 130 
 
 nothing but what was sensible, well turned, and discreet ; and, 
 upon my word, he advises me to be more circumspect in fu- 
 ture. 1 will take good care of that ! Eh ! the mischief take 
 it ! I am a notary and a member of my chamber ! Pshaw ! 
 it was an ambassador's fit of temper, nothing is sacred for 
 people of that kind. To-morrow he shall explain what he 
 meant by saying that I had done nothing but blunder and 
 talk nonsense in his house. I will ask him for an explana- 
 tion that is, I will ask him to explain my mistake. After 
 
 all is done and said, I am in the wrong perhaps Upon 
 
 my word, it is very good of me to cudgel my brains like this. 
 What business is it of mine?" 
 
 So the notary went home and laid the enigma before his 
 spouse, with a complete account of the evening's events re- 
 lated in sequence. 
 
 And she replied, "My dear Crottat, His Excellency was 
 perfectly right when he said that you had done nothing but 
 blunder and talk folly." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "My dear, if I told you why, it would not prevent you 
 from doing the same thing somewhere else to-morrow. 1 tell 
 you again talk of nothing but business when you go out; 
 that is my advice to you." 
 
 "If you will not tell me, I shall ask him to-morrow " 
 
 "Why, dear me ! the veriest noodle is careful to hide a 
 thing of that kind, and do you suppose that an ambassador 
 will tell you about it? Really, Crottat, I have never known 
 you so utterly devoid of common-sense." 
 
 "Thank you, my dear." 
 
 V. 
 
 TWO MEETINGS 
 
 ONE of Napoleon's orderly staff-officers, who shall be known in 
 this history only as the General or the Marquis, had come 
 to spend the spring at Versailles. He had made a large for-
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 131 
 
 tune under the Restoration ; and as his place at Court would 
 not allow him to go very far from Paris, he had taken a coun- 
 try house between the church and the harrier of Montreuil, 
 on the road that leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud. 
 
 The house had been built originally as a retreat for the 
 short-lived loves of some grand seigneur. The grounds were 
 very large; the gardens on either side extending from the 
 first houses of Montreuil to the thatched cottages near the 
 barrier, so that the owner could enjoy all the pleasures of 
 solitude with the city almost at his gates. By an odd piece 
 of contradiction, the whole front of the house itself, with 
 the principal entrance, gave directly upon the street. Per- 
 haps in time past it was a tolerably lonely road, and in- 
 deed this theory looks all the more probable when one comes 
 to think of it; for not so very far away, on this same road, 
 Louis Quinze built a delicious summer villa for Mile, de 
 Romans, and the curious in such things will discover that 
 the wayside casinos are adorned in a style that recalls tradi- 
 tions of the ingenious taste displayed in debauchery by our 
 ancestors who,, with all the license laid to their charge, sought 
 to invest it with secrecy and mystery. 
 
 One winter evening the family were by themselves in the 
 lonely house. The servants had received permission to go to 
 Versailles to celebrate the wedding of one of their number. 
 It was Christmas time, and the holiday makers, presuming 
 upon the double festival, did not scruple to outstay their 
 leave of absence; yet, as the General was well known to be a 
 man of his word, the culprits felt some twinges of con- 
 science as they danced on after the hour of return. The 
 clocks struck eleven, and still there was no sign of the ser- 
 vants. 
 
 A deep silence prevailed over the country-side, broken only 
 by the sound of the northeast wind whistling through the 
 black branches, wailing about the house, dying in gusts along 
 the corridors. The hard frost had purified the air, and held 
 the earth in its grip; the roads gave back every sound with 
 the hard metallic ring which always strikes us with a new
 
 132 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 surprise; the heavy footsteps of some belated reveler, or a 
 cab returning to Paris, could be heard for a long distance 
 with unwonted distinctness. Out in the courtyard a few 
 dead leaves set a-dancing by some eddying gust found a 
 voice for the night which fain had been silent. It was, in 
 fact, one of those sharp, frosty evenings that wring barren 
 expressions of pity from our selfish ease for wayfarers and 
 the poor, and fills us with a luxurious sense of the comfort 
 of the fireside. 
 
 But the family party in the salon at that hour gave not 
 a thought to absent servants nor houseless folk, nor to the 
 gracious charm with which a winter evening sparkles. N"o 
 one played the philosopher out of season. Secure in the 
 protection of an old soldier, women and children gave them- 
 selves up to the joys of home life, so delicious when there is 
 no restraint upon feeling; and talk and play and glances are 
 bright with frankness and affection. 
 
 The General sat, or more properly speaking, lay buried, 
 in the depths of a huge, high-back armchair by the hearth. 
 The heaped-up fire burned scorching clear with the excessive 
 cold of the night. The good father leaned his head slightly 
 to one side against the back of the chair, in the indolence of 
 perfect serenity and a glow of happiness. The languid, half- 
 sleepy droop of his outstretched arms seemed to complete 
 his expression of placid content. He was watching his 
 youngest, a boy of five or thereabouts, who, half clad as he 
 was, declined to allow his mother to undress him. The little 
 one fled from the night-gown and cap with which he was 
 threatened now and again, and stoutly declined to part with 
 his embroidered collar, laughing when his mother called to 
 him, for he saw that she too was laughing at this declaration 
 of infant independence. The next step was to go back to 
 a game of romps with his sister. She was as much a child 
 as he, but more mischievous; and she was older by two years, 
 and could speak distinctly already, whereas his inarticulate 
 words and confused ideas were a puzzle even to his parents. 
 Little Moina's playfulness, somewhat coquettish already, pro-
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 133 
 
 yoked inextinguishable laughter, explosions of merriment 
 which went off like fireworks for no apparent cause. As they 
 tumbled about before the fire, unconcernedly displaying little 
 plump bodies and delicate white contours, as the dark and 
 golden curls mingled in a collision of rosy cheeks dimpled 
 with childish glee, a father surely, a mother most certainly, 
 must have understood those little souls, and seen the char- 
 acter and power of passion already developed for their eyes. 
 As the cherubs frolicked about, struggling, rolling, and 
 tumbling without fear of hurt on the soft carpet, its flowers 
 looked pale beside the glowing white and red of their cheeks 
 and the brilliant color of their shining eyes. 
 
 On the sofa by the fire, opposite the great armchair, the 
 children's mother sat among a heap of scattered garments, 
 with a little scarlet shoe in her hand. She seemed to have 
 given herself up completely to the enjoyment of the moment ; 
 wavering discipline had relaxed into a sweet smile engraved 
 upon her lips. At the age of six-and-thirty, or thereabouts, 
 she was a beautiful woman still, by reason of the rare perfec- 
 tion of the outlines of her face, and at this moment light 
 and warmth and happiness filled it with preternatural 
 brightness. 
 
 Again and again her eyes wandered from her children, and 
 their tender gaze was turned upon her husband's grave face; 
 and now and again the eyes of husband and wife met with 
 a silent exchange of happiness and thoughts from some inner 
 depth. 
 
 The General's face was deeply bronzed, a stray lock of 
 gray hair scored shadows on his forehead. The reckless 
 courage of the battlefield could be read in the lines carved 
 in his hollow cheeks, and gleams of rugged strength in the 
 blue eyes ; clearly the bit of red ribbon flaunting at his button- 
 hole had been paid for by hardship and toil. An inexpressi- 
 ble kindliness and frankness shone out of the strong, resolute 
 face which reflected his children's merriment; the gray- 
 haired captain found it not so very hard to become a child
 
 134 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 again. Is there not always a little love of children in the 
 heart of a soldier who has seen enough of the seamy side 
 of life to know something of the piteous limitations of 
 strength and the privileges of weakness? 
 
 At a round table rather farther away, in a circle of bright 
 lamplight that dimmed the feebler illumination of the wax 
 candles on the chimney-piece, sat a boy of thirteen, rapidly 
 turning the pages of a thick volume which he was reading, 
 undisturbed by the shouts of the children. There was a 
 boy's curiosity in his face. From his lyceens uniform he was 
 evidently a schoolboy, and the book he was reading was the 
 Arabian Nights. Small wonder that he was deeply absorbed. 
 He sat perfectly still in a meditative attitude, with his elbow 
 on the table, and his hand propping his head the white 
 fingers contrasting strongly with the brown hair into which 
 they were thrust. As he sat, with the light turned full upon 
 his face, and the rest of his body in shadow, he looked like 
 one of Raphael's dark portraits of himself a bent head and 
 intent eyes filled with visions of the future. 
 
 Between the table and the Marquise a tall, beautiful girl 
 sat at her tapestry frame; sometimes she drew back from her 
 work, sometimes she bent over it, and her hair, picturesque 
 in its ebony smoothness and darkness, caught the light of 
 the lamp. Ilelene was a picture in herself. In her beauty 
 there was a rare distinctive character of power and refine- 
 ment. Though her hair was gathered up and drawn back 
 from her face, so as to trace a clearly marked line about her 
 head, so thick and abundant was it, so recalcitrant to the 
 comb, that it sprang back in curl-tendrils to the nape of 
 her neck. The bountiful line of eyebrows was evenly marked 
 out in dark contrasting outline upon her pure forehead. On 
 her upper lip, beneath the Grecian nose with its sensitively 
 perfect curve of nostril, there lay a faint, swarthy shadow, 
 the sign-manual of courage; but the enchanting roundness 
 of contour, the frankly innocent expression of her other 
 features, the transparence of the delicate carnations, the 
 voluptuous softness of the lips, the flawless oval of the out-
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 135 
 
 line of the face, and with these, and more than all these, 
 the saintlike expression in the girlish eyes, gave to her 
 vigorous loveliness the distinctive touch of feminine grace, 
 that enchanting modesty which we look for in these angels 
 of peace and love. Yet there was no suggestion of fragility 
 about her; and, surely, with so grand a woman's frame, so 
 attractive a face, she must possess a corresponding warmth 
 of heart and strength of soul. 
 
 She was as silent as her schoolboy brother. Seemingly a 
 prey to the fateful maiden meditations which baffle a father's 
 penetration and even a mother's sagacity, it was impossible 
 to be certain whether it was the lamplight that cast those 
 shadows that flitted over her face like thin clouds over a 
 bright sky, or whether they were passing shades of secret and 
 painful thoughts. 
 
 Husband and wife had quite forgotten the two older chil- 
 dren at that moment, though now and again the General's 
 questioning glance traveled to that second mute picture; a 
 larger growth, a gracious realization, as it were, of the hopes 
 embodied in the baby forms rioting in the foreground. Their 
 faces made up a kind of living poem, illustrating life's various 
 phases. The luxurious background of the salon, the different 
 attitudes, the strong contrasts of coloring in the faces, differ- 
 ing with the character of differing ages, the modeling of the 
 forms brought into high relief by the light altogether it was 
 a page of human life, richly illuminated beyond the art of 
 painter, sculptor, or poet. Silence, solitude, night and winter 
 lent a final touch of majesty to complete the simplicity and 
 sublimity of this exquisite effect of nature's contriving. Mar- 
 ried life is full of these sacred hours, which perhaps owe their 
 indefinable charm to some vague memory of a better world. 
 A divine radiance surely shines upon them, the destined com- 
 pensation for some portion of earth's sorrows, the solace which 
 enables man to accept life. We seem to behold a vision of 
 an enchanted universe, the great conception of its system 
 widens out before our eyes, and social life pleads for its laws 
 by bidding us look to the future.
 
 136 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 Yet in spite of the tender glances that Helene gave Abel 
 and Mo'ina after a fresh outburst of merriment ; in spite of the 
 look of gladness in her transparent face whenever she stole 
 a glance at her father, a deep melancholy pervaded her 
 gestures, her attitude, and more than all, her eyes veiled by 
 their long lashes. Those white, strong hands, through which 
 the light passed, tinting them with a diaphanous, almost fluid 
 red those hands were trembling. Once only did the eyes 
 of the mother and daughter clash without shrinking, and the 
 two women read each other's thoughts in a look, cold, wan, 
 and respectful on Helene's part, sombre and threatening on 
 her mother's. At once Helene's eyes were lowered to her 
 work, she plied her needle swiftly, and it was long before she 
 raised her head, bowed as it seemed by a weight of thought 
 too heavy to bear. Was the Marquise over harsh with this 
 one of her children? Did she think this harshness needful? 
 Was she jealous of Helene's beauty? She might still hope 
 to rival Helene, but only by the magic arts of the toilette. 
 Or again, had her daughter, like many a girl who reaches 
 the clairvoyant age, read the secrets which this wife (to all 
 appearance so religiously faithful in the fulfilment of her 
 duties) believed to be buried in her own heart as deeply as 
 in a grave ? 
 
 Helene had reached an age when purity of soul inclines 
 to pass over-rigid judgments. A certain order of mind is 
 apt to exaggerate transgression into crime; imagination re- 
 acts upon conscience, and a young girl is a hard judge be- 
 cause she magnifies the seriousness of the offence. Helene 
 seemed to think herself worthy of no one. Perhaps there 
 was a secret in her past life, perhaps something had hap- 
 pened, unintelligible to her at the time, but with gradually 
 developing significance for a mind grown susceptible to re- 
 ligious influences; something which lately seemed to have 
 degraded her, as it were, in her own eyes, and according to 
 her own romantic standard. This change in her demeanor 
 dated from the day of reading Schiller's noble tragedy of 
 Wilhelm Tell in a new series of translations. Her mother
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 137 
 
 scolded her for letting the book fall, and tken remarked to 
 herself that the passage which had so worked on Helene's 
 feelings was the scene in which Wilhelm Tell, who spilt the 
 blood of a tyrant to save a nation, fraternizes in some sort 
 with John the Parricide. Helene had grown humble, dutiful, 
 and self-contained ; she no longer cared for gaiety. Never had 
 she made so much of her father, especially when the Marquise 
 was not by to watch her girlish caresses. And yet, if Helene's 
 affection for her mother had cooled at all, the change in her' 
 manner was so slight as to be almost imperceptible ; so slight 
 that the General could not have noticed it, jealous though he 
 might be of the harmony of home. No masculine insight 
 could have sounded the depths of those two feminine natures ; 
 the one was young and generous, the other sensitive and 
 proud ; the first had a wealth of indulgence in her nature, the 
 second was full of craft and love. If the Marquise made 
 her daughter's life a burden to her by a woman's subtle 
 tyranny, it was a tyranny invisible to all but the victim; 
 and for the rest, these conjectures only called forth after 
 the event must remain conjectures. Until this night no ac- 
 cusing flash of light had escaped either of them, but an 
 ominous mystery was too surely growing up between them, 
 a mystery known only to themselves and God. 
 
 "Come, Abel," called the Marquise, seizing on her oppor- 
 tunity when the children were tired of play and still for a 
 moment. "Come, come, child; you must be put to bed " 
 
 And with a glance that must be obeyed, she caught him 
 up and took him on her knee. 
 
 "What!" exclaimed the General. "Half -past ten o'clock, 
 and not one of the servants has come back ! The rascals ! 
 Gustave," he added, turning to his son, "I allowed you to read 
 that book only on the condition that you should put it away 
 at ten o'clock. You ought to have shut up the book at the 
 proper time and gone to bed, as you promised. If you mean 
 to make your mark in the world, you must keep your word; 
 let it be a second religion to you, and a point of honor. Fox, 
 one of the greatest of English orators, was remarkable, above
 
 138 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 all things, for the beauty of his character, and the very first 
 of his qualities was the scrupulous faithfulness with which he 
 kept his engagements. When he was a child, his father (an 
 Englishman of the old school) gave him a pretty strong les- 
 son which he never forgot. Like most rich Englishmen, 
 Fox's father had a country house and a considerable park 
 about it. Now, in the park there was an old summer-house, 
 and orders had been given that this summer-house was to 
 be pulled clown and put up somewhere else where there was 
 a finer view. Fox was just about your age, and had come 
 home for the holidays. Boys are fond of seeing things pulled 
 to pieces, so young Fox asked to stay on at home for a few 
 days longer to see the old summer-house taken down ; but his 
 father said that he must go back to school on the proper day, 
 so there was anger between father and son. Fox's mother 
 (like all mammas) took the boy's part. Then the father 
 solemnly promised that the summer-house should stay where 
 it was till the next holidays. 
 
 "So Fox went back to school; and his father, thinking 
 that lessons would soon drive the whole thing out of the boy's 
 mind, had the summer-house pulled down and put up in the 
 new position. But as it happened, the persistent youngster 
 thought of nothing but that summer-house; and as soon as 
 he came home again, his first care was to go out to look at 
 the old building, and he came in to breakfast looking quite 
 doleful, and said to his father, 'You have broken your 
 promise.' The old English gentleman said with confusion 
 full of dignity, 'That is true, my boy; but I will make 
 amends. A man ought to think of keeping his word before 
 he thinks of his fortune; for by keeping to his word he will 
 gain fortune, while all the fortunes in the world will not 
 efface the stain left on your conscience by a breach of faith.' 
 Then he gave orders that the summer-house should be put up 
 again in the old place, and when it had been rebuilt he had 
 it taken down again for his son to see. Let this be a lesson 
 to you, Gustave." 
 
 Gustave had been listening with interest, and now he
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 139 
 
 closed the book at once. There was a moment's silence, while 
 the General took possession of Moina, who could scarcely keep 
 her eyes open. The little one's languid head fell back on 
 her father's breast, and in a moment she was fast asleep, 
 wrapped round about in her golden curls. 
 
 Just then a sound of hurrying footsteps rang on the pave- 
 ment out in the street, immediately followed by three knocks 
 on the street door, waking the echoes of the house. The re- 
 verberating blows told, as plainly as a cry for help, that here 
 was a man flying for his life. The house dog barked 
 furiously. A thrill of excitement ran through Helene and 
 Gustave and the General and his wife ; but neither Abel, with 
 the night-cap strings just tied under his chin, nor Moina 
 awoke. 
 
 "The fellow is in a hurry !" exclaimed the General. He 
 put the little girl down on the chair, and hastened out of 
 the room, heedless of his wife's entreating cry, "Dear, do 
 not go down 
 
 He stepped into his own room for a pair of pistols, lighted 
 a dark lantern, sprang at lightning speed down the staircase, 
 and in another minute reached the house door, his oldest boy 
 fearlessly following. 
 
 "Who is there?" demanded he. 
 
 "Let me in," panted a breathless voice. 
 
 "Are you a friend ?" 
 
 "Yes, friend." 
 
 "Are you alone ?" 
 
 "Yes ! But let me in ; they are after me !" 
 
 The General had scarcely set the door ajar before a man 
 slipped into the porch with the uncanny swiftness of a 
 shadow. Before the master of the house could prevent him, 
 the intruder had closed the door with a well-directed kick, 
 and set his back against it resolutely, as if he were deter- 
 mined that it should not be opened again. In a moment 
 the General had his lantern and pistol at a level with the 
 stranger's breast, and beheld a man of medium height in a 
 fur-lined pelisse. It was an old man's garment, both too
 
 140 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 large and too long for its present wearer. Chance or caution 
 had slouched the man's hat over his eyes. 
 
 "You can lower your pistol, sir," said this person. "I do 
 not claim to stay in your house against your will; but if I 
 leave it, death is waiting for me at the barrier. And what 
 a death ! You would be answerable to God for it ! I ask 
 for your hospitality for two hours. And bear this in mind, 
 sir, that, suppliant as I am, I have a right to command with 
 the despotism of necessity. I want the Arab's hospitality. 
 Either I and my secret must be inviolable, or open the door 
 and I will go to my death. I want secrecy, a safe hiding- 
 place, and water. Oh ! water !" he cried again, with a rattle 
 in his throat. 
 
 "Who are you?" demanded the General, taken aback by 
 the stranger's feverish volubility. 
 
 "Ah! who am I? Good, open the door, and I will put 
 a distance between us," retorted the other, and there was a 
 diabolical irony in his tone. 
 
 Dexterously as the Marquis passed the light of the lantern 
 over the man's face, he could only see the lower half of it, 
 and that in nowise prepossessed him in favor of this singular 
 claimant of hospitality. The cheeks were livid and quiver- 
 ing, the features dreadfully contorted. Under the shadow 
 of the hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out like flames; the 
 feeble candle-light looked almost dim in comparison. Some 
 sort of answer must be made however. 
 
 "Your language, sir, is so extraordinary that in my place 
 you yourself 
 
 "My life is in your hands !" the intruder broke in. The 
 sound of his voice was dreadful to hear. 
 
 "Two hours?" said the Marquis, wavering. 
 
 "Two hours," echoed the other. 
 
 Then quite suddenly, with a desperate gesture, he pushed 
 back his hat and left his forehead bare, and, as if he meant 
 to try a final expedient, he gave the General a glance that 
 seemed to plunge like a vivid flash into his very soul. That 
 electrical discharge of intelligence and will was swift as light'
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 141 
 
 ning and crushing as a thunderbolt; for there are moments 
 when a human being is invested for a brief space with inex- 
 plicable power. 
 
 "Come, whoever you may be, you shall be in safety under 
 my roof," the master of the house said gravely at last, acting, 
 as he imagined, upon one of those intuitions which a man 
 cannot always explain to himself. 
 
 "God will repay you !" said the stranger, with a deep, in- 
 voluntary sigh. 
 
 "Have you weapons ?" asked the General. 
 
 For all answer the stranger flung open his fur pelisse, and 
 scarcely gave the other time for a glance before he wrapped 
 it about him again. To all appearance he was unarmed and in 
 evening dress. Swift as the soldier's scrutiny had been, he 
 saw something, however, which made him exclaim: 
 
 "Where the devil have you been to get yourself in such 
 a mess in such dry weather?" 
 
 "More questions !" said the stranger haughtily. 
 
 At the words the Marquis caught sight of his son, and his 
 own late homily on the strict fulfilment of a given word came 
 up in his mind. In lively vexation, he exclaimed, not without 
 a touch of anger: 
 
 "What! little rogue, you here when you ought to be in 
 bed?" 
 
 "Because I thought I might be of some good in danger," 
 answered Gustave. 
 
 "There, go up to your room," said his father, mollified by 
 the reply. "And you" (addressing the stranger), "come with 
 me." 
 
 The two men grew as silent as a pair of gamblers who 
 watch each other's play with mutual suspicions. The General 
 himself began to be troubled with ugly presentiments. The 
 strange visit weighed upon his mind already like a night- 
 mare; but he had passed his word, there was no help for it 
 now, and he led the way along the passages and stairways 
 till they reached a large room on the second floor immediately 
 above the salon. This was an empty room where linen was
 
 142 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 dried in the winter. It had but the one door, and for all 
 decoration boasted one solitary shabby looking-glass above the 
 chimney-piece, left by the previous owner, and a great pier 
 glass, placed provisionally opposite the fireplace until such 
 time as a use should be found for it in the rooms below. The 
 four yellowish walls were bare. The floor had never been 
 swept. The huge attic was icy-cold, and the furniture con- 
 sisted of a couple of rickety straw-bottomed chairs, or rather 
 frames of chairs. The General set the lantern down upon the 
 chimney-piece. Then he spoke: 
 
 "It is necessary for your own safety to hide you in this 
 comfortless attic. And, as you have my promise to keep 
 your secret, you will permit me to lock you in." 
 
 The other bent his head in acquiescence. 
 
 "I asked for nothing but a hiding-place, secrecy, and 
 water," returned he. 
 
 "I will bring you some directly," said the Marquis, shut- 
 ting the door cautiously. He groped his way down into the 
 salon for a lamp before going to the kitchen to look for a 
 carafe. 
 
 "Well, what is it ?" the Marquise asked quickly. 
 
 "Nothing, dear," he returned coolly. 
 
 "But we listened, and we certainly heard you go upstairs 
 with somebody." 
 
 "Helene," said the General, and he looked at his daughter, 
 who raised her face, "bear in mind that your father's honor 
 depends upon your discretion. You must have heard noth- 
 ing." 
 
 The girl bent her head in answer. The Marquise was con- 
 fused and smarting inwardly at the way in which her hus- 
 band had thought fit to silence her. 
 
 Meanwhile the General went for the bottle and a tumbler, 
 and returned to the room above. His prisoner was leaning 
 against the chimney-piece, his head was bare, he had flung 
 down his hat on one of the two chairs. Evidently he had 
 not expected to have so bright a light turned upon him, and 
 he frowned and looked anxious as he met the General's keen
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 143 
 
 eyes; but his face softened and wore a gracious expression 
 as he thanked his protector. When the latter placed the 
 bottle and glass on the mantel-shelf, the stranger's eyes 
 flashed out on him again; and when he spoke, it was in 
 musical tones with no sign of the previous guttural convul- 
 sion, though his voice was still unsteady with repressed emo- 
 tion. 
 
 "I shall seem to you to be a strange being, sir, but you 
 must pardon the caprices of necessity. If you propose to re- 
 main in the room, I beg that you will not look at me while 
 I am drinking." 
 
 Vexed at this continual obedience to a man whom he dis- 
 liked, the General sharply turned his back upon him. The 
 stranger thereupon drew a white handkerchief from his 
 pocket and wound it about his right hand. Then he seized 
 the carafe and emptied it at a draught. The Marquis, star- 
 ing vacantly into the tall mirror across the room, without a 
 thought of breaking his implicit promise, saw the stranger's 
 figure distinctly reflected by the opposite looking-glass, and 
 saw, too, a red stain suddenly appear through the folds of 
 the white bandage. The man's hands were steeped in blood. 
 
 "Ah ! you saw me I" cried the other. He had drunk off the 
 water and wrapped himself again in his cloak, and now 
 scrutinized the General suspiciously. "It is all over with me ! 
 Here they come I" 
 
 "I don't hear anything," said the Marquis. 
 
 '"You have not the same interest that I have in listening 
 for sounds in the air." 
 
 "You have been fighting a duel, I suppose, to be in such 
 a state?" queried the General, not a little disturbed by the 
 color of those broad, dark patches staining his visitor's cloak. 
 
 "Yes, a duel; you have it," said the other, and a bitter 
 smile flitted over his lips. 
 
 As he spoke a sound rang along the distant road, a sound 
 of galloping horses ; but so faint as yet, that it was the merest 
 dawn of a sound. The General's trained ear recognized the 
 advance of a troop of regulars.
 
 144 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 "That is the gendarmerie," said he. 
 
 He glanced at his prisoner to reassure him after his own 
 involuntary indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to 
 the salon. He had scarcely laid the key of the room above 
 upon the chimney-piece when the hoof beats sounded louder, 
 and came swiftly nearer and nearer the house. The General 
 felt a shiver of excitement, and indeed the horses stopped at 
 the house door ; a few words were exchanged among the men, 
 and one of them dismounted and knocked loudly. There was 
 no help for it ; the General went to open the door. He could 
 scarcely conceal his inward perturbation at the sight of half 
 a dozen gendarmes outside, the metal rims of their caps 
 gleaming like silver in the moonlight. 
 
 "My lord," said the corporal, "have you heard a man run 
 past towards the barrier within the last few minutes?" 
 
 "Towards the barrier? No." 
 
 "Have you opened the door to any one ?" 
 
 "Now, am I in the habit of answering the door myself - " 
 
 "I ask your pardon, General, but just now it seems to me 
 
 "Eeally !" cried the Marquis wrathfully. "Have you a 
 mind to try joking with me? What right have you - ?" 
 
 "None at all, none at all, my lord," cried the corporal, 
 hastily putting in a soft answer. "You will excuse our zeal. 
 We know, of course, that a peer of France is not likely to 
 harbor a murderer at this time of night ; but as we want any 
 information we can get - " 
 
 "A murderer!" cried the General. "Who can have 
 been - " 
 
 "M. le Baron de Mauny has just been murdered. It was 
 a blow from an axe, and we are in hot pursuit of the criminal. 
 We know for certain that he is somewhere in this neighbor- 
 hood, and we shall hunt him down. By your leave, General," 
 and the man swung himself into the saddle as he spoke. It 
 was well that he did so, for a corporal of gendarmerie trained 
 to alert observation and quick surmise would have had his 
 suspicions at once if he had caught sight of the General's
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 145 
 
 face. Everything that passed through the soldier's mind was 
 faithfully revealed in his frank countenance. 
 
 "Is it known who the murderer is ?" asked he. 
 
 "No," said the other, now in the saddle. "He left the 
 bureau full of banknotes and gold untouched." 
 
 "It was revenge, then," said the Marquis. 
 
 "On an old man ? pshaw ! No, no, the fellow hadn't time to 
 take it, that was all," and the corporal galloped after his com- 
 rades, who were almost out of sight by this time. 
 
 For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexi- 
 ties which need no explanation; but in a moment he heard 
 the servants returning home, their voices were raised in some 
 sort of dispute at the cross-roads of Montreuil. When they 
 came in, he gave vent to his feelings in an explosion of rage, 
 his wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and all the 
 echoes of the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In 
 the midst of the storm his- own man, the boldest and cleverest 
 of the party, brought out an excuse; they had been stopped, 
 he said, by the gendarmerie at the gate of Montreuil, a mur- 
 der had been committed, and the police were in pursuit. In 
 a moment the General's anger vanished, he said not another 
 word; then, bethinking himselt of his own singular position, 
 drily ordered them all off to bed at once, and left them 
 amazed at his readiness to accept their fellow servant's lying 
 excuse. 
 
 While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently 
 trifling occurrence had changed the relative positions of three 
 characters in this story. The Marquis had scarcely left the 
 room before his wife looked first towards the key on the 
 mantel-shelf, and then at Helene; and, after some wavering, 
 bent towards her daughter and said in a low voice, "Helene, 
 your father has left the key on the chimney-piece." 
 
 The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her 
 mother. The Marquise's eyes sparkled with curiosity. 
 
 "Well, mamma?" she said, and her voice had a troubled 
 ring. 
 
 "I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If 
 VOL. 534
 
 146 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 there is anybody up there, he has not stirred yet. Just go 
 up 
 
 "It" cried the girl, with something like horror in her 
 tones. 
 
 "Are you afraid?" 
 
 "No, mainrna, but I thought I heard a man's footsteps." 
 
 "If I could go myself, I should not have asked you to go, 
 Helene," said her mother with cold dignity. "If your father 
 were to come back and did not see me, he would go to look for 
 me perhaps, but he would not notice your absence." 
 
 "Madame, if you bid me go, I will go," said Helene, "but 
 I shall lose my father's good opinion " 
 
 "What is this!" cried the Marquise in a sarcastic tone. 
 "But since you take a thing that was said in joke in earnest, 
 I now order you to go upstairs and see who is in the room 
 above. Here is the key, child. When your father told you 
 to say nothing about this thing that happened, he did not 
 forbid you to go up to the room. Go at once and learn that 
 a daughter ought never to judge her mother." 
 
 The last words were spoken with all the severity of a justly 
 offended mother. The Marquise took the key and handed it 
 to Helene, who rose without a word and left the room. 
 
 "My mother can always easily obtain her pardon," thought 
 the girl ; "but as for me, my father will never think the same 
 of me again. Does she mean to rob me of his tenderness? 
 Does she want to turn me out of his house ?" 
 
 These were thoughts that set her imagination in a sudden 
 ferment, as she went down the dark passage to the mysterious 
 door at the end. When she stood before it, her mental con- 
 fusion grew to a fateful pitch. Feelings hitherto forced down 
 into inner depths crowded up at the summons of these con- 
 fused thoughts. Perhaps hitherto she had never believed 
 that a happy life lay before her, but now, in this awful mo- 
 ment, her despair was complete. She shook convulsively as 
 she set the key in the lock ; so great indeed was her agitation, 
 that she stopped for a moment and laid her hand on her 
 heart, as if to still the heavy throbs that sounded in her ears. 
 Then she opened the door.
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 147 
 
 The creaking of the hinges sounded doubtless in vain on 
 the murderer's ears. Acute as were his powers, of hearing, he 
 stood as if lost in thought, and so motionless that he might 
 have heen glued to the wall against which he leaned. In the 
 circle of semi-opaque darkness, dimly lit by the bull's-eye lan- 
 tern, he looked like the shadowy figure of some dead knight, 
 standing for ever in his shadowy mortuary niche in the 
 gloom of some Gothic chapel. Drops of cold sweat trickled 
 over the broad, sallow forehead. An incredible fearlessness 
 looked out from every tense feature. His eyes of fire were 
 fixed and tearless; he seemed to be watching some struggle 
 in the darkness beyond him. Stormy thoughts passed swiftly 
 across a face whose firm decision spoke of a character of no 
 common order. His whole person, bearing, and frame bore 
 out the impression of a tameless spirit. The man looked 
 power and strength personified ; he stood facing the darkness 
 as if it were the visible image of his own future. 
 
 These physical characteristics had made no impression upon 
 the General, familiar as he was with the powerful faces of 
 the group of giants gathered about Napoleon; speculative 
 curiosity, moreover, as to the why and wherefore of the ap- 
 parition had completely filled his mind; but Helene, with 
 feminine sensitiveness to surface impressions, was struck by 
 the blended chaos of light and darkness, grandeur and pas- 
 sion, suggesting a likeness between this stranger and Lucifer 
 recovering from his fall. Suddenly the storm apparent in 
 his face was stilled as if by magic ; and the indefinable power 
 to sway which the stranger exercised upon others', and perhaps 
 unconsciously and as by reflex action upon himself, spread its 
 influence about him with the progressive swiftness of a flood. 
 A torrent of thought rolled away from his brow as his face 
 resumed its ordinary expression. Perhaps it was the strange- 
 ness of this meeting, or perhaps it was the mystery into which 
 she had penetrated, that held the young girl spellbound in the 
 doorway, so that she could look at a face pleasant to behold 
 and full of interest. For some moments she stood in the 
 magical silence; a trouble had come upon her never known
 
 145 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 beforis in her young life. Perhaps some exclamation broke 
 from Helene, perhaps she moved unconsciously; or it may be 
 that the hunted criminal returned of his own accord from 
 the world of ideas to the material world, and heard some one 
 breathing in the room; however it was, he turned his head 
 towards his host's daughter, and saw dimly in the shadow a 
 noble face and queenly form, which he must have taken for 
 an. angel's, so motionless she stood, so vague and like a 
 spirit. 
 
 "Monsieur . . ."a trembling voice cried. 
 
 The murderer trembled. 
 
 "A woman I" he cried under his breath. "Is it possible ? 
 Go/' he cried, "I deny that any one has a right to pity, to 
 absolve, or condemn me. I must live alone. Go, my child," 
 he added, with an imperious gesture, "I should ill requite 
 the service done me by the master of the house if I were to 
 allow a single creature under his roof to breathe the same 
 air with me. I must submit to be judged by the laws of the 
 world." 
 
 The last words were uttered in a lower voice. Even as he 
 realized with a profound intuition all the manifold misery 
 awakened by that melancholy thought, the glance that 
 he gave Helene had something of the power of the serpent, 
 stirring a whole dormant world in the mind of the strange 
 girl before him. To her that glance was like a light revealing 
 unknown lands. She was stricken with strange trouble, help- 
 less, quelled by a magnetic power exerted unconsciously. Trem- 
 bling and ashamed, she went out and returned to the salon. 
 She had scarcely entered the room before her father came 
 back, so that she had not time to say a word to her mother. 
 
 The General was wholly absorbed in thought. He folded 
 his arms, and paced silently to and fro between the win- 
 dows which looked out upon the street and the second row 
 which gave upon the garden. His wife lay the sleeping Abel 
 on her knee, and little Moina lay in untroubled slumber in 
 the low chair, like a bird in its nest. Her older sister stared 
 into the fire, a skein of silk in one hand, a needle in the 
 other.
 
 He turned his head toward his host's daughter
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 149 
 
 Deep silence prevailed, broken only by lagging footsteps 
 oi, the stairs, as one by one the servants crept away to bed; 
 th,?re was an occasional burst of stifled laughter, a last echo 
 of the wedding festivity, or doors were opened as they still 
 talked among themselves, then shut. A smothered sound 
 came now and again from the bedrooms, a chair fell, the 
 old coachman coughed feebly, then all was silent. 
 
 In a little while the dark majesty with which sleeping earth 
 is invested at midnight brought all things under its sway. 
 No lights shone but the light of the stars. The frost gripped 
 the ground. There was not a sound of a voice, nor a living 
 creature stirring. The crackling of the fire only seemed to 
 make the depth of the silence more fully felt. 
 
 The church clock of Montreuil had just struck one, when 
 an nlmost inaudible sound of a light footstep came from 
 the second flight of stairs. The Marquis and his daughter, 
 both believing that M. de Mauny's murderer was a prisoner 
 above, thought that one of the maids had come down, and no 
 one was at all surprised to hear the door open in the ante- 
 chairiber. Quite suddenly the murderer appeared in their 
 mid*.};. The Marquis himself was sunk in deep musings, 
 the mother and daughter were silent, the one from keen cu- 
 riosity, the other from sheer astonishment, so that the visitor 
 was almost half-way across the room when he spoke to the 
 General. 
 
 "fc>ir, the two hours are almost over," he said, in a voice that 
 was strangely calm and musical. 
 
 "You here!" cried the General. "By what means ?" 
 
 and he gave wife and daughter a formidable questioning 
 glance. Helene grew red as fire. 
 
 ''You!" he went on, in a tone filled with horror. "You 
 among us ! A murderer covered with blood ! You are a blot 
 on chis picture ! Go, go out !" he added in a burst of rage. 
 
 At that word "murderer," the Marquise cried out; as for 
 Helene, it seemed to mark an epoch in her life, there was 
 noc a trace of surprise in her face. She looked as if she had 
 been waiting for this for him. Those so vast thoughts of
 
 150 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 hers had found a meaning. The punishment reserved by 
 Heaven for her sins flamed out before her. In her own eyes 
 she was as great a criminal as this murderer; she confronted 
 him with her quiet gaze; she was his fellow, his sister. It 
 seemed to her that in this accident the command of God had 
 been made manifest. If she had been a few years older, 
 reason would have disposed of her remorse, but at this mo- 
 ment she was like one distraught. 
 
 The stranger stood impassive and self-possessed ; a scornful 
 smile overspread his features and his thick, red lips. 
 
 "You appreciate the magnanimity of my behavior very 
 badly," he said slowly. "I would not touch with my fingers 
 the glass of water you brought me to allay my thirst; I did 
 not so much as think of washing my blood-stained hands 
 under your roof; I am going away, leaving nothing of my 
 crime" (here his lips were compressed) "but the memory; I 
 have tried to leave no trace of my presence in this house. In- 
 deed, I would not even allow your daughter to " 
 
 "My daughter!" cried the General, with a horror-stricken 
 glance at Helene. "Vile wretch, go, or I will kill you " 
 
 "The two hours are not yet over," said the other; "if you 
 kill me or give me up, you must lower yourself in your own 
 eyes and in mine." 
 
 At these last words, the General turned to stare at the 
 criminal in dumb amazement; but he could not endure the 
 intolerable light in those eyes which for the second time dis- 
 organized his being. He was afraid of showing weakness 
 once more, conscious as he was that his will was weaker 
 already. 
 
 "An old man ! You can never have seen a family," he 
 said, with a father's glance at his wife and children. 
 
 "Yes, an old man," echoed the stranger, frowning slightly. 
 
 "Fly !" cried the General, but he did not dare to look at 
 his guest. "Our compact is broken. I shall not kill you. 
 No! I will never be purveyor to the scaffold. But go out. 
 You make us shudder." 
 
 "I know that," said the other patiently. "There is not
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 151 
 
 a spot on French soil where I can set foot and be safe; but 
 if man's justice, like God's, took all into account, if man's 
 justice deigned to inquire which was the monster the mur- 
 derer or his victim then I might hold up my head among 
 my fellows. Can you not guess that other crimes preceded 
 that blow from an axe? I constituted myself his judge and 
 executioner; I stepped in where man's justice failed. That 
 was my crime. Farewell, sir. Bitter though you have made 
 yoiir hospitality, I shall not forget it. I shall always bear 
 in my heart a feeling of gratitude towards one man in the 
 world, and you are that man. . . . But I could wish that 
 you had showed yourself more generous !" 
 
 He turned towards the door, but in the same instant 
 Helene leaned to whisper something in her mother's ear. 
 
 "Ah! . . ." 
 
 At the cry that broke from his wife, the General trembled 
 as if he had seen Mo'ina lying dead. There stood Helene, 
 and the murderer had turned instinctively, with something 
 like anxiety about these folk in his face. 
 
 "What is it, dear?" asked the General. 
 
 "Helene wants to go with him." 
 
 The murderer's face flushed. 
 
 "If that is how my mother understands an almost involun- 
 tary exclamation," Helene said in a low voice, "I will fulfil 
 her wishes." She glanced about her with something like 
 fierce pride ; then the girl's eyes fell, and she stood, admirable 
 in her modesty. 
 
 "Helene, did you go up to the room where ?" 
 
 "Yes, father." 
 
 "Helene" (and his voice shook with a convulsive tremor), 
 "is this the first time that you have seen this man ?" 
 
 "Yes, father." 
 
 "Then it is not natural that you should intend to " 
 
 "If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true." 
 
 "Oh! child," said the Marquise, lowering her voice, but 
 not so much but that her husband could hear her, "you are 
 false to all the principles of honor, modesty, and right which
 
 152 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 I have tried to cultivate in your heart. If until this fatal 
 hour your life has only been one lie, there is nothing to regret 
 in your loss. It can hardly be the moral perfection of this 
 stranger that attracts you to him? Can it be the kind of 
 power that commits crime? I have too good an opinion of 
 you to suppose that 
 
 "Oh, suppose everything, madame," Helene said coldly. 
 
 But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her 
 flashing eyes could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. 
 The stranger, watching her, guessed the mother's language 
 from the girl's tears, and turned his eagle glance upon the 
 Marquise. An irresistible power constrained her to look at 
 this terrible seducer ; but as her eyes met his bright/glittering 
 gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame, such a shock as 
 we feel at the sight of a reptile or the contact of a Leyden 
 jar. 
 
 "Dear!" she cried, turning to her husband, "this is the 
 Fiend himself. He can divine everything !" 
 
 The General rose to his feet and went to the bell. 
 
 "He means ruin for you/' Helene said to the murderer. 
 
 The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the 
 General's arm, and compelled him to endure a steady gaze 
 which benumbed the soldier's brain and left him powerless. 
 
 "I will repay you now for your hospitality," he said, "and 
 then we shall be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving 
 myself up. After all, what should 1 do now with my life ?" 
 
 "You could repent," answered Helene, and her glance con- 
 veyed such hope as only glows in a young girl's eyes. 
 
 "/ shall never repent/' said the murderer in a sonorous 
 voice, as he raised his head proudly. 
 
 "His hands are stained with blood," the father said. 
 
 "I will wipe it away," she answered. 
 
 "But do you so much as know whether he cares for you?" 
 said her father, not daring now to look at the stranger. 
 
 The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within 
 seemed to glow through Helene's beauty, grave and maidenly 
 though it was, coloring and bringing into relief, as it were,
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 15i> 
 
 the least details, the most delicate lines in her face. The 
 stranger, with that terrible fire still blazing in his eyes, gave 
 one tender glance to her enchanting loveliness, then he spoke, 
 his tones revealing how deeply he had been moved. 
 
 "And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so 
 discharge my debt of two hours of existence to your father; 
 is not this love, love for yourself alone?" 
 
 "Then do you too reject me ?" Helene's cry rang painfully 
 through the hearts of all who heard her. "Farewell, then, to 
 you all; I will die." 
 
 "What does this mean?" asked the father and mother. 
 
 Helene gave her mother an eloquent glance and lowered 
 her eyes. 
 
 Since the first attempt made by the General and his wife 
 to contest by word or action the intruder's strange presump- 
 tion to the right of staying in their midst, from their first 
 experience of the power of those glittering eyes, a mysterious 
 torpor had crept over them, and their benumbed faculties 
 struggled in vain with a preternatural influence. The air 
 seemed to have suddenly grown so heavy, that they could 
 scarcely breathe; yet, while they could not find the reason of 
 this feeling of oppression, a voice within told them that this 
 magnetic presence was the real cause of their helplessness. 
 In this moral agony, it flashed across the General that he 
 must make every effort to overcome this influence on his 
 daughter's reeling brain; he caught her by the waist and 
 drew her into the embrasure of a window, as far as possible 
 from the murderer. 
 
 "Darling," he murmured, "if some wild love has been sud- 
 denly born in your heart, I cannot believe that you have not 
 the strength of soul to quell the mad impulse; your innocent 
 life, your pure and dutiful soul, has given me too many proofs 
 of your character. There must be something behind all this. 
 Well, this heart of mine is full of indulgence, you can tell 
 everything to me ; even if it breaks, dear child, I can be silent 
 about my grief, and keep your confession a secret. What is 
 it? Are you jealous of our love for your brothers or your
 
 154 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 little sister ? Is it some love trouble ? Are you unhappy here 
 at home ? Tell me about it, tell me the reasons that urge you 
 to leave your home, to rob it of its greatest charm, to leave 
 your mother and brothers and your little sister ?" 
 
 "I am in love with no one, father, and jealous of no one, 
 not even of your friend the diplomatist, M. de Vandenesse." 
 
 The Marquise turned pale; her daughter saw this, and 
 stopped short. 
 
 "Sooner or later I must live under some man's protection, 
 must I not ?" 
 
 "That is true." 
 
 "Do we ever know," she went on, "the human being to 
 whom we link our destinies? Now, I believe in this man." 
 
 "Oh, child," said the General, raising his voice, "you have 
 no idea of all the misery that lies in store for you." 
 
 "I am thinking of liis." 
 
 "What a life!" groaned the father. 
 
 "A woman's life," the girl murmured. 
 
 "You have a great knowledge of life !" exclaimed the Mar- 
 quise, finding speech at last. 
 
 "Madame, my answers are shaped by the questions; but 
 if you desire it, I will speak more clearly." 
 
 "Speak out, my child ... I am a mother." 
 
 Mother and daughter looked each other in the face, and 
 the Marquise said no more. At last she said : 
 
 "Helene, if you have any reproaches to make, I would 
 rather bear them than see you go away with a man from whom 
 the whole world shrinks in horror." 
 
 "Then you see yourself, madame, that but for me he would 
 be quite alone." 
 
 "That will do, madame," the General cried; "we have but 
 one daughter left to us now," and he looked at Moina, who 
 slept on. "As for you," he added, turning to Helene, "I will 
 put you in a convent." 
 
 "So be it, father," she said, in calm despair, "I shall die 
 there. You are answerable to God alone for my life and for 
 his soul."
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 155 
 
 A deep, sullen silence fell after those words. The on- 
 lookers during this strange scene, so utterly at variance with 
 all the sentiments of ordinary life, shunned each other's eyes. 
 
 Suddenly the Marquis happened to glance at his pistols. 
 He caught up one of them, cocked the weapon, and pointed 
 it at the intruder. At the click of firearms the other turned 
 his piercing gaze full upon the General; the soldier's arm 
 slackened indescribably and fell heavily to his side. The 
 pistol dropped to the floor. 
 
 "Girl, you are free," said he, exhausted by this ghastly 
 struggle. "Kiss your mother, if she will let you kiss her. For 
 my own part, I wish never to see nor to hear of you again." 
 
 "Helene," the mother began, "only think of the wretched 
 life before you." 
 
 A sort of rattling sound came from the intruder's deep 
 chest, all eyes were turned to him. Disdain was plainly 
 visible in his face. 
 
 The General rose to his feet. "My hospitality has cost me 
 dear," he cried. "Before you came you had taken an old man's 
 life; now you are dealing a deadly blow at a whole family. 
 Whatever happens, there must be unhappiness in this house." 
 
 "And if your daughter is happy ?" asked the other, gazing 
 steadily at the General. 
 
 The father made a superhuman effort for self-control. "If 
 she is happy with you," he said, "she is not worth regretting." 
 
 Helene knelt timidly before her father. 
 
 "Father, I love and revere you," she said, "whether you 
 lavish all the treasures of your kindness upon me, or make 
 me feel to the full the rigor of disgrace. . . . But I en- 
 treat that your last words of farewell shall not be words of 
 anger." 
 
 The General could not trust himself to look at her. The 
 stranger came nearer; there was something half-diabolical, 
 half-divine in the smile that he gave Helene. 
 
 "Angel of pity, you that do not shrink in horror from a 
 murderer, come, since you persist in your resolution of in- 
 trusting your life to me."
 
 156 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 "Inconceivable !" cried her father. 
 
 The Marquise then looked strangely at her daughter, 
 opened her arms,, and Helene fled to her in tears. 
 
 "Farewell," she said, "farewell, mother!" The stranger 
 trembled as Helene, undaunted, made sign to him that she 
 was ready. She kissed her father's hand ; and, as if perform- 
 ing a duty, gave a hasty kiss to Mo'ina and little Abel, then 
 she vanished with the murderer. 
 
 "Which way are they going ?" exclaimed the General, listen- 
 ing to the footsteps of the two fugitives. "Madame," he 
 turned to his wife, "I think I must be dreaming; there is 
 some mystery behind all this, I do not understand it; you 
 must know what it means." 
 
 The Marquise shivered. 
 
 "For some time past your daughter has grown extra- 
 ordinarily romantic and strangely high-flown in her ideas. 
 In spite of the pains I have taken to combat these tendencies 
 in her character 
 
 "This will not do " began the General, but fancying 
 
 that he heard footsteps in the garden, he broke off to fling 
 open the window. 
 
 "Helene !" he shouted. 
 
 His voice was lost in the darkness like a vain prophecy. 
 The utterance of that name, to which there should never be 
 answer any more, acted like a counterspell ; it broke the 
 charm and set him free from the evil enchantment which lay 
 upon him. It was as if some spirit passed over his face. 
 He now saw clearly what had taken place, and cursed his in- 
 comprehensible weakness. A shiver of heat rushed from his 
 heart to his head and feet; he became himself once more, 
 terrible, thirsting for revenge. He raised a dreadful cry. 
 
 "Help !" he thundered, "help !" 
 
 He rushed to the bell-pull, pulled till the bells rang with a 
 strange clamor of din, pulled till the cord gave way. The 
 whole house was roused with a start. Still shouting, he flung 
 open the windows that looked upon the street, called for the 
 police, caught up his pistols, and fired them off to hurry the
 
 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 157 
 
 mounted patrols, the newly-aroused servants, and the neigh- 
 bors. The dogs barked at the sound of their master's voice; 
 the horses neighed and stamped in their stalls. The quiet 
 night was suddenly filled with hideous uproar. The General 
 on the staircase, in pursuit of his daughter, saw the scared 
 faces of the servants flocking from all parts of the house. 
 
 "My daughter !" he shouted. "Helene has been carried off. 
 Search the garden. Keep a lookout on the road ! Open the 
 gates for the gendarmerie ! Murder ! Help !" 
 
 With the strength of fury he snapped the chain and let 
 loose the great house-dog. 
 
 "Helene !" he cried, "Helene !" 
 
 The dog sprang out like a lion, barking furiously, and 
 dashed into the garden, leaving the General far behind. A 
 troop of horses came along the road at a gallop, and he flew 
 to open the gates himself. 
 
 "Corporal !" he shouted, "cut off the retreat of M. de 
 Mauny's murderer. They have gone through my garden. 
 Quick ! Put a cordon of men to watch the ways by the Butte 
 de Picardie. I will beat up the grounds, parks, and houses. 
 The rest of you keep a lookout along the road," he ordered 
 the servants, "form a chain between the barrier and Ver- 
 sailles. Forward, every man of you!" 
 
 He caught up the rifle which his man had brought out, 
 and dashed into the garden. 
 
 "Find them !" he called to the dog. 
 
 An ominous baying came in answer from the distance, and 
 he plunged in the direction from which the growl seemed to 
 come. 
 
 It was seven o'clock in the morning; all the search made 
 by gendarmes, servants, and neighbors had been fruitless, 
 and the dog had not come back. The General entered the 
 salon, empty now for him though the other three children 
 were there; he was worn out with fatigue, and looked old 
 already with that night's work. 
 
 "You have been very cold to your daughter," he said, turn- 
 ing his eyes on his wife. "And now this is all that is left
 
 158 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 to us of her/' he added, indicating the embroidery frame, 
 and the flower just begun. "Only just now she was there, 
 and now she is lost . . . lost I" 
 
 Tears followed; he hid his face in his hands, and for a 
 few minutes he said no more; he could not bear the sight 
 of the room, which so short a time ago had made a setting 
 to a picture of the sweetest family happiness. The winter 
 dawn was struggling with the dying lamplight; the tapers 
 burned down to their paper- wreaths and flared out; every- 
 thing was all in keeping with the father's despair. 
 
 "This must be destroyed," he said after a pause, pointing 
 to the tambour-frame. "I shall never bear to see anything 
 again that reminds us of her!" 
 
 The terrible Christmas night when the Marquis and his 
 wife lost their oldest daughter, powerless to oppose the mys- 
 terious influence exercised by the man who involuntarily, as 
 it were, stole Helene from them, was like a warning sent by 
 Fate. The Marquis was ruined by the failure of his stock- 
 broker; he borrowed money on his wife's property, and lost 
 it in the endeavor to retrieve his fortunes. Driven to des- 
 perate expedients, he left France. Six years went by. His 
 family seldom had news of him ; but a few days before Spain 
 recognized the independence of the American Republics, he 
 wrote that he was coming home. 
 
 So, one fine morning, it happened that several French mer- 
 chants were on board a Spanish brig that lay a few leagues 
 out from Bordeaux, impatient to reach their native land 
 again, with wealth acquired by long years of toil and perilous 
 adventures in Venezuela and Mexico. 
 
 One of the passengers, a man who looked aged by trouble 
 rather than by years, was leaning against the bulwark netting, 
 apparently quite unaffected by the sight to be seen from the 
 upper deck. The bright day, the sense that the voyage was 
 safely over, had brought all the passengers above to greet their 
 land. The larger number of them insisted that they could 
 see, far off in the distance, the houses and lighthouses on the 
 coast of Gascony and the Tower of Cordouan, melting into the
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 159 
 
 fantastic erections of white cloud along the horizon. But 
 for the silver fringe that played about their bows, and the 
 long furrow swiftly effaced in their wake, they might have 
 been perfectly still in mid-ocean, so calm was the sea. The 
 sky was magically clear, the dark blue of the vault above 
 paled by imperceptible gradations, until it blended with the 
 bluish water, a gleaming line that sparkled like stars mark- 
 ing the dividing line of sea. The sunlight caught myriads of 
 facets over the wide surface of the ocean, in such a sort that 
 the vast plains of salt water looked perhaps more full of 
 light than the fields of sky. 
 
 The brig had set all her canvas. The snowy sails, 
 swelled by the strangely soft wind, the labyrinth of cordage, 
 and the yellow flags flying at the masthead, all stood out 
 sharp and uncompromisingly clear against the vivid back- 
 ground of space, sky, and sea ; there was nothing to alter the 
 color but the shadow cast by the great cloudlike sails. 
 
 A glorious day, a fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, 
 a sea like a mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, 
 a fair, solitary vessel, gliding across the surface of the water 
 like a woman stealing out to a tryst it was a picture full of 
 harmony. That mere speck full of movement was a starting- 
 point whence the soul of man could descry the immutable vast 
 of space. Solitude and bustling life, silence and sound, were 
 all brought together in strange abrupt contrast ; you could not 
 tell where life, or sound, or silence, and nothingness lay, and 
 no human voice broke the divine spell. 
 
 The Spanish captain, the crew, and the French passengers 
 sat or stood, in a mood of devout ecstasy, in which many 
 memories blended. There was idleness in the air. The beam- 
 ing faces told of complete forgetfulness of past hardships, 
 the men were rocked on the fair vessel as in a golden dream. 
 Yet, from time to time the elderly passenger, leaning oven 
 the bulwark nettings, looked with something like uneasiness 
 at the horizon. Distrust of the ways of Fate could be read 
 in his whole face ; he seemed to fear that he should not reach 
 the coast of France in time. This was the Marquis. For
 
 160 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 tune had not been deaf to his despairing cry and struggles. 
 After five years of endeavor and painful toil, he was a 
 wealthy man once more. In his impatience tc reach his 
 home again and to bring the good news to his family, he 
 had followed the example set by some French merchants in 
 Havana, and embarked with them on a Spanish vessel with 
 a cargo for Bordeaux. And now, grown tired of evil fore- 
 bodings, his fancy was tracing out for him the most delicious 
 pictures of past happiness. In that far-off brown line of land 
 he seemed to see his wife and children. He sat in his place 
 by the fireside; they were crowding about him; he felt their 
 caresses. Mo'ina had grown to be a young girl; she was 
 beautiful, and tall, and striking. The fancied picture had 
 grown almost real, when the tears filled his eyes, and, to hide 
 his emotion, he turned his face towards the sea-line, opposite 
 the hazy streak that meant land. 
 
 "There she is again. . . . She is following us!" he 
 said. 
 
 "What?" cried the Spanish captain. 
 
 "There is a vessel," muttered the General. 
 
 "I saw her yesterday," answered Captain Gomez. He looked 
 at his interlocutor as if to ask what he thought; then he 
 added, in the General's ear, "She has been chasing us all 
 along." 
 
 "Then why she has not come up with us, I do not know," 
 said the General, "for she is a faster sailer than your damned 
 Saint-Ferdinand." 
 
 "She will have damaged herself, sprung a leak " 
 
 "She is gaining on us !" the General broke in. 
 
 "She is a Colombian privateer," the captain said in his 
 ear, "and we are still six leagues from land, and the wind is 
 dropping." 
 
 "She is not going ahead, she is flying, as if she knew that 
 in two hours' time her prey would escape her. What au- 
 dacity !" 
 
 "Audacity !" cried the captain. "Oh ! she is not called the 
 Othello for nothing. Not so long back she sank a Spanish
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 161 
 
 frigate that carried thirty guns! This is the one thing I 
 was afraid of, for I had a notion that she was cruising about 
 somewhere off the Antilles. Aha !" he added after a pause, 
 as he watched the sails of his own vessel, "the wind is rising; 
 we are making way. Get through we must, for 'the Parisian' 
 will show us no mercy." 
 
 "She is making way too !" returned the General. 
 
 The Othello was scarce three leagues away by this time; 
 and although the conversation between the Marquis and Cap- 
 tain Gomez had taken place apart, passengers and crew, at- 
 tracted by the sudden appearance of a sail, came to that 
 side of the vessel. With scarcely an exception, however, they 
 took the privateer for a merchantman, and watched her course 
 with interest, till all at once a sailor shouted with some energy 
 of language : 
 
 "By Saint- James, it is all up with us! Yonder is the 
 Parisian captain I" 
 
 At that terrible name dismay, and a panic impossible to 
 describe, spread through the brig. The Spanish captain's 
 orders put energy into the crew for a while ; and in his reso- 
 lute determination to make land at all costs, he set all the 
 studding sails, and crowded on every stitch of canvas on board. 
 But all this was not the work of a moment; and naturally 
 the men did not work together with that wonderful unanimity 
 so fascinating to watch on board a man-of-war. The Othello 
 meanwhile, thanks to the trimming of her sails, flew over the 
 water like a swallow; but she was making, to all appearance, 
 so little headway, that the unlucky Frenchmen began to en- 
 tertain sweet delusive hopes. At last, after unheard-of ef- 
 forts, the Saint-Ferdinand sprang forward, Gomez himself 
 directing the shifting of the sheets with voice and gesture, 
 when all at once the man at the tiller, steering at random 
 (purposely, no doubt), swung the vessel round. The wind 
 striking athwart the beam, the sails shivered so unexpectedly 
 that the brig heeled to one side, the booms were carried away, 
 and the vessel was completely out of hand. The captain's 
 
 face grew whiter than his sails with unutterable rage. He 
 VOL. 535
 
 162 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 sprang upon the man at the tiller, drove his dagger at him 
 in such blind fury, that he missed him, and hurled the weapon 
 overboard. Gomez took the helm himself, and strove to right 
 the gallant vessel. Tears of despair rose to his eyes, for it is 
 harder to lose the result of our carefully-laid plans through 
 treachery than to face imminent death. But the more the 
 captain swore, the less the men worked, and it was he himself 
 who fired the alarm-gun, hoping to be heard on shore. The 
 privateer, now gaining hopelessly upon them, replied with a 
 cannon-shot, which struck the water ten fathoms away from 
 the Saint-Ferdinand. 
 
 "Thunder of heaven !" cried the General, "that was a close 
 shave ! They must have guns made on purpose." 
 
 "Oh ! when that one yonder speaks, look you, you have 
 to hold your tongue," said a sailor. "The Parisian would not 
 be afraid to meet an English man-of-war." 
 
 "It is all over with us," the captain cried in desperation; 
 he had pointed his telescope landwards, and saw not a sign 
 from the shore. "We are further from the coast than I 
 thought." 
 
 "Why do you despair?" asked the General. "All your 
 passengers are Frenchmen; they have chartered your vessel. 
 The privateer is a Parisian, you say? Well and good, run 
 up the white flag, and 
 
 "And he would run us down," retorted the captain. "He 
 can be anything he likes when he has a mind to seize on a 
 rich booty !" 
 
 "Oh! if he is a pirate " 
 
 "Pirate !" said the ferocious looking sailor. "Oh ! he al- 
 ways has the law on his side, or he knows how to be on the 
 same side as the law." 
 
 "Very well," said the General, raising his eyes, 'let us 
 make up our minds to it," and his remaining fortitude was 
 still sufficient to keep back the tears. 
 
 The words were hardly out of his mouth before a second 
 cannon-shot, better aimed, came crashing through the hull 
 of the Saint-Ferdinand.
 
 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 163 
 
 "Heave to !" cried the captain gloomily. 
 
 The sailor who had commended the Parisian's law-abiding 
 proclivities showed himself a clever hand at working a ship 
 after this desperate order was given. The crew waited for 
 half an hour in an agony of suspense and the deepest dismay. 
 The Saint-Ferdinand had four millions of piastres on board, 
 the whole fortunes of the five passengers, and the General's 
 eleven hundred thousand francs. At length the Othello lay 
 not ten gunshots away, so that those on the Saint-Ferdinand 
 could look into the muzzles of her loaded guns. The vessel 
 seemed to be borne along by a breeze sent by the Devil him- 
 self, but the eyes of an expert would have discovered the 
 secret of her speed at once. You had but to look for a mo- 
 ment at the rake of her stern, her long, narrow keel, her tall 
 masts, to see the cut of her sails, the wonderful lightness of 
 her rigging, and the ease and perfect seamanship with which 
 her crew trimmed her sails to the wind. Everything about 
 her gave the impression of the security of power in this deli- 
 cately curved inanimate creature, swift and intelligent as a 
 greyhound or some bird of prey. The privateer crew stood 
 silent, ready in case of resistance to shatter the wretched mer- 
 chantman, which, luckily for her, remained motionless, like 
 a schoolboy caught in flagrant delict by a master. 
 
 <r We have guns on board !" cried the General, clutching the 
 Spanish captain's hand. But the courage in Gomez's eyes was 
 the courage of despair. 
 
 "Have we men?" he said. 
 
 The Marquis looked round at the crew of the Saint-Fer- 
 dinand, and a cold chill ran through him. There stood the 
 four merchants, pale and quaking for fear, while the crew 
 gathered about some of their own number who appeared to 
 be arranging to go over in a body to the enemy. They 
 watched the Othello with greed and curiosity in their faces. 
 The captain, the Marquis, and the mate exchanged glances; 
 they were the only three who had a thought for any but 
 themselves. 
 
 "Ah! Captain Gomez, when I left my home and country,
 
 164 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 my heart was half dead with the bitterness of parting, and 
 now must I bid it good-bye once more when I am bringing 
 back happiness and ease for my children?" 
 
 The General turned his head away towards the sea, with 
 tears of rage in his eyes and saw the steersman swimming 
 out to the privateer. 
 
 "This time it will be good-bye for good," said the captain 
 by way of answer, and the dazed look in the Frenchman's 
 eyes startled the Spaniard. 
 
 By this time the two vessels were almost alongside, and 
 at the first sight of the enemy's crew the General saw that 
 Gomez's gloomy prophecy was only too true. The three men 
 at each gun might have been bronze statues, standing like 
 athletes, with their rugged features, their bare sinewy arms, 
 men whom Death himself had scarcely thrown off their feet. 
 
 The rest of the crew, well armed, active, light, and vigorous, 
 also stood motionless. Toil had hardened, and the sun had 
 deeply tanned, those energetic faces; their eyes glittered like 
 sparks of fire with infernal glee and clear-sighted courage. 
 Perfect silence on the upper deck, now black with men. bore 
 abundant testimony to the rigorous discipline and strong will 
 which held these fiends incarnate in check. 
 
 The captain of the Othello stood with folded arms at the 
 foot of the main mast; he carried no weapons, but an axe 
 lay on the deck beside him. His face was hidden by the 
 shadow of a broad felt hat. The men looked like dogs crouch- 
 ing before their master. Gunners, soldiers, and ship's crew 
 turned their eyes first on his face, and then on the merchant 
 vessel. 
 
 The two brigs came up alongside, and the shock of con- 
 tact roused the privateer captain from his musings; he spoke 
 a word in the ear of the lieutenant who stood beside him. 
 
 "Grappling-irons!" shouted the latter, and the Othello 
 grappled the Saint-Ferdinand with miraculous quickness. 
 The captain of the privateer gave his orders in a low voice to 
 the lieutenant, who repeated them; the men, told off in succes- 
 sion for each duty, went on the upper deck of the Saint-Ferdi-
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 165 
 
 nand, like seminarists going to mass. They bound crew and 
 passengers hand and foot and seized the booty. In the twink- 
 ling of an eye, provisions and barrels full of piastres were 
 transferred to the Othello; the General thought that he must 
 be dreaming when he himself, likewise bound, was flung down 
 on a bale of goods as if he had been part of the cargo. 
 
 A brief conference took place between the captain of the 
 privateer and his lieutenant and a sailor, who seemed to be 
 the mate of the vessel; then the mate gave a whistle, and 
 the men jumped on board the Saint-Ferdinand, and com- 
 pletely dismantled her with the nimble dexterity of a soldier 
 who strips a dead comrade of a coveted overcoat and shoes. 
 
 "It is all over with us," said the Spanish captain coolly. 
 He had eyed the three chiefs during their confabulation, and 
 saw that the sailors were proceeding to pull his vessel to 
 pieces. 
 
 "Why so?" asked the General. 
 
 "What would you have them do with us?" returned the 
 Spaniard. "They have just come to the conclusion that they 
 will scarcely sell the Saint-Ferdinand in any French or 
 Spanish port, so they are going to sink her to be rid of her. 
 And as for us, do you suppose that they will put themselves 
 to the expense of feeding us, when they don't know what 
 port they are to put into ?" 
 
 The words were scarcely out of the captain's mouth before 
 a hideous outcry went up, followed by a dull splashing sound, 
 as several bodies were thrown overboard. He turned, the 
 four merchants were no longer to be seen, but eight ferocious- 
 looking gunners were still standing with their arms raised 
 above their heads. He shuddered. 
 
 "What did 1 tell you ?" the Spanish captain asked coolly. 
 
 The Marquis rose to his feet with a spring. The surface 
 of the sea was quite smooth again; he could not so much as 
 see the place where his unhappy fellow-passengers had dis- 
 appeared. By this time they were sinking down, bound hand 
 and foot, below the waves, if, indeed, the fish, had not de- 
 voured them already.
 
 166 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 Only a few paces away, the treacherous steersman and the 
 sailor who had boasted of the Parisian's power were fraterniz- 
 ing with the crew of the Othello, and pointing sut those 
 among their own number who, in their opinion, were worthy 
 to join the crew of the privateer. Then the boys tied the rest 
 together by the feet in spite of frightful oaths. It was soon 
 over; the eight gunners seized the doomed men and flung 
 them overboard without more ado, watching the different 
 ways in which the drowning victims met their death, their con- 
 tortions, their last agony, with a sort of malignant curiosity, 
 but with no sign of amusement, surprise, or pity. For them it 
 was an ordinary event to which seemingly they were quite ac- 
 customed. The older men looked instead with grim, set 
 smiles at the casks of piastres about the main mast. 
 
 The General and Captain Gomez, left seated on a bale of 
 goods, consulted each other with well-nigh hopeless looks; 
 they were, in a sense, the sole survivors of the Saint-Ferdi- 
 nand, for the seven men pointed out by the spies were trans- 
 formed amid rejoicings into Peruvians. 
 
 "What atrocious villains !" the General cried. Loyal and 
 generous indignation silenced prudence and pain on his own 
 account. 
 
 "They do it because they must," Gomez answered coolly. 
 "If you came across one of those fellows, you would run him 
 through the body, would you not?" 
 
 The lieutenant now came up to the Spaniard. 
 
 "Captain," said he, "the Parisian has heard of you. He 
 says that you are the only man who really knows the passages 
 of the Antilles and the Brazilian coast. Will you ?" 
 
 The captain cut him short with a scornful exclamation. 
 
 "I shall die like a sailor," he said, "and a loyal Spaniard 
 and a Christian. Do you hear?" 
 
 "Heave him overboard !" shouted the lieutenant, and a 
 couple of gunners seized on Gomez. 
 
 "You cowards!" roared the General, seizing hold of the 
 men. 
 
 "Don't get too excited, old boy," said the lieutenant. "If
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 167 
 
 your red ribbon has made some impression upon our captain, 
 I myself do not care a rap for it. You and I will have our 
 little bit of talk together directly." 
 
 A smothered sound, with no accompanying cry, told the 
 General that the gallant captain had died "like a sailor," as he 
 had said. 
 
 "My money or death !" cried the Marquis, in a fit of rage 
 terrible to see. 
 
 "Ah ! now you talk sensibly !" sneered the lieutenant. "That 
 is the way to get something out of us 
 
 Two of the men came up at a sign and hastened to bind 
 the Frenchman's feet, but with unlooked-for boldness he 
 snatched the lieutenant's cutlass and laid about him like a 
 cavalry officer who knows his business. 
 
 "Brigands that you are ! You shall not chuck one of Na- 
 poleon's troopers over a ship's side like an oyster !" 
 
 At the sound of pistol shots fired point blank at the French- 
 man, "the Parisian" looked round from his occupation of 
 superintending the transfer of the rigging from the Saint- 
 Ferdinand. He came up behind the brave General, seized 
 him, dragged him to the side, and was about to fling him 
 over with no more concern than if the man had been a broken 
 spar. They were at the very edge when the -General looked 
 into the tawny eyes of the man who had stolen his daughter. 
 The recognition was mutual. 
 
 The captain of the privateer, his arm still upraised, sud- 
 denly swung it in the contrary direction as if his victim was 
 but a feather weight, and set him down at the foot of the 
 main mast. A murmur rose on the upper deck, but the cap- 
 tain glanced round, and there was a sudden silence. 
 
 "This is Helene's father," said the captain in a clear, firm 
 voice. "Woe to any one who meddles with him !" 
 
 A hurrah of joy went up at the words, a shout rising to the 
 sky like a prayer of the church ; a cry like the first high notes 
 of the Te Deum. The lads swung aloft in the rigging, the 
 men below flung up their caps, the gunners pounded away on 
 the deck, there was a general thrill of excitement, an outburst
 
 168 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 of oaths, yells., and shrill cries in voluble chorus. The men 
 cheered like fanatics, the General's misgivings deepened, and 
 he grew uneasy; it seemed to him that there was some hor- 
 rible mystery in such wild transports. 
 
 "My daughter!" he cried, as soon as he could speak. 
 "Where is my daughter?" 
 
 For all answer, the captain of the privateer gave him a 
 searching glance, one of those glances which throw the bravest 
 man into a confusion which no theory can explain. The 
 General was mute, not a little to the satisfaction of the crew ; 
 it pleased them to see their leader exercise the strange power 
 which he possessed over all with whom he came in contact. 
 Then the captain led the way down a staircase and flung open 
 the door of a cabin. 
 
 "There she is," he said, and disappeared, leaving the Gen- 
 eral in a stupor of bewilderment at the scene before his eyes. 
 
 Helene cried out at the sight of him, and sprang up from 
 the sofa on which she was lying when the door flew open. 
 So changed was she that none but a father's eyes could have 
 recognized her. The sun of the tropics had brought warmer 
 tones into the once pale face, and something of Oriental 
 charm with that wonderful coloring; there was a certain 
 grandeur about her, a majestic firmness, a profound senti- 
 ment which impresses itself upon the coarsest nature. Her 
 long, thick hair, falling in large curls about her queenly 
 throat, gave an added idea of power to the proud face. The 
 consciousness of that power shone out from every movement, 
 every line of Helene's form. The rose-tinted nostrils were 
 dilated slightly with the joy of triumph; the serene happi- 
 ness of her life had left its plain tokens in the full develop- 
 ment of her beauty. A certain indefinable virginal grace met 
 in her with the pride of a woman who is loved. This was a 
 slave and a queen, a queen who would fain obey that she 
 might reign. 
 
 Her dress was magnificent and elegant in its richness; 
 India muslin was the sole material, but her sofa and cushions 
 were of cashmere. A Persian carpet covered the floor in the
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 169 
 
 large cabin, and her four children playing at her feet were 
 building castles of gems and pearl necklaces and jewels of 
 price. The air was full of the scent of rare flowers in Sevres 
 porcelain vases painted by Madame Jacotot; tiny South 
 American birds, like living rubies, sapphires, and gold, 
 hovered among the Mexican jessamines and camellias. A 
 pianoforte had been fitted into the room, and here and there 
 on the paneled walls, covered with red silk, hung small pict- 
 ures by great painters a Sunset by Hippolyte Schinner be- 
 side a Terburg, one of Eaphael's Madonnas scarcely yielded 
 in charm to a sketch by Gericault, while a Gerard Dow 
 eclipsed the painters of the Empire. On a lacquered table 
 stood a golden plate full of delicious fruit. Indeed, Helene 
 might have been the sovereign lady of some great country, and 
 this cabin of hers a boudoir in which her crowned lover had 
 brought together all earth's treasure to please his consort. 
 The children gazed with bright, keen eyes at their grand- 
 father. Accustomed as they were to a life of battle, storm, 
 and tumult, they recalled the Eoman children in David's 
 Brutus, watching the fighting and bloodshed with curious in- 
 terest. 
 
 "What ! is it possible ?" cried Helene, catching her father's 
 arm as if to assure herself that this was no vision. 
 
 "Helene !" 
 
 "Father !" 
 
 They fell into each other's arms, and the old man's em- 
 brace was not so close and warm as Helene's. 
 
 "Were you on board that vessel ?" 
 
 "Yes," he answered sadly, and looking at the little ones, 
 who gathered about him and gazed with wide open eyes. 
 
 "I was about to perish, but " 
 
 "But for my husband," she broke in. "I see how it was/' 
 
 "Ah !" cried the General, "why must I find you again like 
 this, Helene? After all the many tears that I have shed, 
 must I still groan for your fate?" 
 
 "And why?" she asked, smiling. "Why should you be 
 sorry to learn that I am the happiest woman under the sun ?'' 
 
 "Happy T' he cried with a start of surprise.
 
 170 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 "Yes, happy, my kind father," and she caught his hands 
 in hers and covered them with kisses, and pressed them to 
 her throbbing heart. Her caresses, and a something in the 
 carriage of her head, were interpreted yet more plainly by 
 the joy sparkling in her eyes. 
 
 "And how is this ?" he asked, wondering at his daughter's 
 life, forgetful now of everything but the bright glowing face 
 before him. 
 
 "Listen, father; I have for lover, husband, servant, and 
 master one whose soul is as great as the boundless sea, as 
 infinite in his kindness as heaven, a god on earth ! Never 
 during these seven years has a chance look, or word, or gesture 
 jarred in the divine harmony of his talk, his love, his caresses. 
 His eyes have never met mine without a gleam of happiness 
 in them; there has always been a bright smile on his lips 
 for me. On deck, his voice rises above the thunder of storms 
 and the tumult of battle; but here below it is soft and melo- 
 dious as Rossini's music for he ha's Rossini's music sent for 
 me. I have everything that woman's caprice can imagine. 
 My wishes are more than fulfilled. In short, I am a queen on 
 the seas ; I am obeyed here as perhaps a queen may be obeyed. 
 Ah !" she cried, interrupting herself, "happy did I say ? 
 Happiness is no word to express such bliss as mine. All the 
 happiness that should have fallen to all the women- in the 
 world has been my share. Knowing one's own great love and 
 self-devotion, to find in his heart an infinite love in which a 
 woman's soul is lost, and lost for ever tell me, is this happi- 
 ness ? I have lived through a thousand lives even now. Here, 
 I am alone; here, I command. No other woman has set 
 foot on this noble vessel, and Victor is never more than a few 
 paces distant from me, he cannot wander further from me 
 than from stern to prow," she added, with a shade of mischief 
 in her manner. "Seven years! A love that outlasts seven 
 years of continual joy, that endures all the tests brought by 
 all the moments that make up seven years is this love ? Oh, 
 no, no! it is something better than all that I know of life 
 , . . human language fails to express the bliss of heaven."
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 171 
 
 A sudden torrent of tears fell from her burning eyes. The 
 four little ones raised a piteous cry at this, and flocked like 
 chickens about their mother. The oldest boy struck the Gen- 
 eral with a threatening look. 
 
 "Abel, darling," said Helene, "I am crying for joy/* 
 
 Helene took him on her knee, and the child fondled her, 
 putting his arms about her queenly neck, as a lion's whelp 
 might play with the lioness. 
 
 "Do you never weary of your life ?" asked the General, be- 
 wildered by his daughter's enthusiastic language. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "sometimes, when we are on land, yet even 
 then I have never parted from my husband." 
 
 "But you used to be fond of music and balls and fetes." 
 
 "His voice is music for me; and for fetes, I devise new 
 toilettes for him to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if 
 all the world admired me. Simply for that reason I keep 
 the diamonds and jewels, the precious things, the flowers and 
 masterpieces of art that he heaps upon me, saying, 'Helene, 
 as you live out of the world, I will have the world come to 
 you/ But for that I would fling them all overboard." 
 
 "But there are others on board, wild, reckless men whose 
 passions " 
 
 "I understand, father," she said, smiling. "Do not fear 
 for me. Never was empress encompassed with more ob- 
 servance than I. The men are very superstitious; they look 
 upon me as a sort of tutelary genius, the luck of the vessel. 
 But he is their god ; they worship him. Once, and once only, 
 one of the crew showed disrespect, mere words," she added, 
 laughing; "but before Victor knew of it, the others flung 
 the offender overboard, although I forgave him. They love 
 me as their good angel ; I nurse them when they are ill ; sev- 
 eral times I have been so fortunate as to save a life, by con- 
 stant care such as a woman can give. Poor fellows, they are 
 giants, but they are children at the same time." 
 
 "And when there is fighting overhead?" 
 
 "I am used to it now; I quaked for fear during the first 
 engagement, but never since. I am used to such peril, and 
 T am your daughter," she said; "I love it."
 
 172 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 "But how if he should fall?" 
 
 "I should die with him." 
 
 "And your children." 
 
 "They are children of the sea and of danger; they share 
 the life of their parents. We have but one life, and we do 
 not flinch from it. We have but the one life, our names 
 are written on the same page of the book of Fate, one skiff 
 bears us and our fortunes, and we know it." 
 
 "Do you so love him that he is more to you than all be- 
 side?" 
 
 "All beside ?" echoed she. "Let us leave that mystery alone. 
 Yet stay ! there is this dear little one well, this too is he" 
 and straining Abel to her in a tight clasp, she set eager 
 kisses on his cheeks and hair. 
 
 "But I can never forget that he has just drowned nine 
 men!" exclaimed the General. 
 
 "There was no help for it, doubtless," she said, "for he is 
 generous and humane. He sheds as little blood as may be, 
 and only in the interests of the little world which he defends, 
 and the sacred cause for which he is fighting. Talk to him 
 about anything that seems to you to be wrong, and he will 
 convince you, you will see." 
 
 "There was that crime of his," muttered the General to 
 himself. 
 
 "But how if that crime was a virtue?" she asked, with 
 cold dignity. "How if man's justice had failed to avenge a 
 great wrong?" 
 
 "But a private revenge !" exclaimed her father. 
 
 "But what is hell," she cried, "but a revenge through all 
 eternity for the wrong done in a little day?" 
 
 "Ah ! you are lost ! He has bewitched and perverted you. 
 You are talking wildly." 
 
 "Stay with us one day, father, and if you will but listen to 
 him, and see him, you will love him." 
 
 "Helene, France lies only a few leagues away," he said 
 gravely. 
 
 Helene trembled; then she went to the porthole and
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 173 
 
 pointed to the savannas of green water spreading far and 
 wide. 
 
 "There lies my country/' she said, tapping the carpet with 
 her foot. 
 
 "But are you not coming with me to see your mother and 
 your sister and brothers?" 
 
 "Oh ! yes," she cried, with tears in her voice, "if he is will- 
 ing, if he will come with me." 
 
 "So," the General said sternly, "you have neither country 
 nor kin now, Helene?" 
 
 "I am his wife," she answered proudly, and there was some- 
 thing very noble in her tone. "This is the first happiness 
 in seven years that has not come to me through him," she 
 said then, as she caught her father's hand and kissed it 
 "and this is the first word of reproach that I have heard." 
 
 "And your conscience?" 
 
 "My conscience ; he is my conscience !" she cried, trembling 
 from head to foot. "Here he is ! Even in the thick of a fight 
 I can tell his footstep among all the others on deck," she 
 cried. 
 
 A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her 
 features, her eyes lighted up, her complexion changed to 
 velvet whiteness, there was joy and love in every fibre, in the 
 blue veins, in the unconscious trembling of her whole frame. 
 That quiver of the sensitive plant softened the General. 
 
 It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in 
 an easy-chair, took up his oldest boy, and began to play with 
 him. There was a moment's silence, for the General's deep 
 musing had grown vague and dreamy, and the daintily fur- 
 nished cabin and the playing children seemed like a nest of 
 halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and sea, safe in 
 the protection of this man who steered his way amid the 
 perils of war and tempest, as other heads of households guide 
 those in their care among the hazards of common life. He 
 gazed admiringly at Helene a dreamlike vision of some sea 
 goddess, gracious in her loveliness, rich in happiness; all the 
 treasures about her grown poor in comparison with the wealth
 
 174 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 of her nature, paling before the brightness of her eyes, the 
 indefinable romance expressed in her and her surroundings. 
 
 The strangeness of the situation took the General by sur- 
 prise; the ideas of ordinary life were thrown into confusion 
 by this lofty passion and reasoning. Chill and narrow social 
 conventions faded away before this picture. All these things 
 the old soldier felt, and saw no less how impossible it was 
 that his daughter should give up so wide a life, a life so vari- 
 ously rich, filled to the full with such passionate love. And 
 Helene had tasted danger without shrinking; how could she 
 return to the petty stage, the superficial circumscribed life 
 of society? 
 
 It was the captain who broke the silence at last. 
 
 "Am I in the way?" he asked, looking at his wife. 
 
 "No," said the General, answering for her. "Helene has 
 told me all. I see that she is lost to us " 
 
 "No," the captain put in quickly ; "in a few years' time the 
 statute of limitations will allow me to go back to France. 
 When the conscience is clear, and a man has broken the law 
 in obedience to " he stopped short, as if scorning to jus- 
 tify himself. 
 
 "How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen 
 with my own eyes, without remorse ?" 
 
 "We had no provisions," the privateer captain retorted 
 calmly. 
 
 "But if you had set the men ashore " 
 
 ''They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war 
 after us, and we should never have seen Chili again." 
 
 "Before France would have given warning to the Spanish 
 admiralty " began the General. 
 
 "But France might take it amiss that a man, with a war- 
 rant still out against him, should seize a brig chartered by 
 Bordeaux merchants. And for that matter, have you never 
 fired a shot or so too many in battle?" 
 
 The General shrank under the other's eyes. He said no 
 more, and his daughter looked at him half sadly, half tri- 
 umphant.
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTT 175 
 
 "General," the privateer continued, in a deep voice, "I have 
 made it a rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, 
 my share will beyond a doubt be far larger than your for- 
 tune. Permit me to return it to you in another form 
 
 He drew a pile of banknotes from the piano, and with- 
 out counting the packets handed a million of francs to the 
 Marquis. 
 
 "You can understand," he said, "that I cannot spend my 
 time in watching vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the 
 dangers of this Bohemian life of ours have some attraction 
 for you, unless you care to see South America and the nights 
 of the tropics, and a bit of fighting now and again for the 
 pleasure of helping to win a triumph for a young nation, or 
 for the name of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long boat 
 manned with a trustworthy crew is ready for you. And now 
 let us hope that our third meeting will be completely happy." 
 
 "Victor," said Helene in a dissatisfied tone, "I should like 
 to see a little more of my father." 
 
 "Ten minutes more or less may bring up a French frigate. 
 However, so be it, we shall have a little fun. The men find 
 things dull." 
 
 "Oh, iather, go !" cried Helene, "and take these keepsakes 
 from me to my sister and brothers and mother," she added. 
 She caught up a handful of jewels and precious stones, folded 
 them in an Indian shawl, and timidly held it out. 
 
 "But what shall I say to them from you ?" asked he. Her 
 hesitation on the word "mother" seemed to have struck him. 
 
 "Oh ! can you doubt me ? I pray for their happiness every 
 day." 
 
 "Helene," he began, as he watched her closely, "how if we 
 should not meet again? Shall I never know why you left 
 us?" 
 
 "That secret is not mine," she answered gravely. "Even 
 if I had the right to tell it, perhaps I should not. For ten 
 years I was more miserable than words can say " 
 
 She broke off, and gave her father the presents for her fam- 
 ily. The General had acquired tolerably easy views as to
 
 176 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 booty in the course of a soldier's career, so he took Helene's 
 gifts and comforted himself with the reflection that the Pa- 
 risian captain was sure to wage war against the Spaniards as 
 an honorable man, under the influence of Helene's pure and 
 high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried all 
 before it. It was ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in 
 the matter; so he shook hands cordially with his captor, and 
 kissed Helene, his only daughter, with a soldier's expansive- 
 ness; letting fall a tear on the face with the proud, strong 
 look that once he had loved to see. "The Parisian," deeply 
 moved, brought the children for his blessing. The parting 
 was over, the last good-bye was a long farewell look, with 
 something of tender regret on either side. 
 
 A strange sight to seaward met the General's eyes. The 
 Saint-Ferdinand was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men 
 told off to sink the Spanish brig had found a cargo of rum on 
 board; and as the Othello was already amply supplied, had 
 lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high seas, by way of a 
 joke ; a pleasantry pardonable enough in sailors, who hail any 
 chance excitement as a relief from the apparent monotony of 
 life at sea. As the General went over the side into the long- 
 boat of the Saint-Ferdinand, manned by six vigorous row- 
 ers, he could not help looking at the burning vessel, as well 
 as at the daughter who stood by her husband's side on the 
 stern of the Othello. He saw Helene's white dress flutter 
 like one more sail in the breeze ; he saw the tall, noble figure 
 against a background of sea, queenly still even in the pres- 
 ence of Ocean; and so many memories crowded up in his 
 mind, that, with a soldier's recklessness of life, he forgot that 
 he was being borne over the grave of the brave Gomez. 
 
 A vast column of smoke rising spread like a brown cloud, 
 pierced here and there by fantastic shafts of sunlight. It 
 was a second sky, a murky dome reflecting the glow of the 
 fire as if the under surface had been burnished ; but above it 
 soared the unchanging blue of the firmament, a thousand 
 times fairer for the short-lived contrast. The strange hues 
 of the smoke cloud, black and red, tawny and pale by turns,
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 177 
 
 blurred and blending into each other, shrouded the burn- 
 ing vessel as it flared, crackled and groaned ; the hissing 
 tongues of flame licked up the rigging, and flashed across 
 the hull, like a rumor of riot flashing along the streets of a 
 city. The burning rum sent up blue flitting lights. Some 
 sea god might have been stirring the furious liquor as a stu- 
 dent stirs the joyous flames of punch in an orgy. But in the 
 overpowering sunlight, jealous of the insolent blaze, the colors 
 were scarcely visible, and the smoke was but a film fluttering 
 like a thin scarf in the noonday torrent of light and heat. 
 
 The Othello made the most of the little wind she could 
 gain to fly on her new course. Swaying first to one side, then 
 to the other, like a stag beetle on the wing, the fair vessel 
 beat to windward on her zigzag flight to the south. Some- 
 times she was hidden from sight by the straight column of 
 smoke that flung fantastic shadows across the water, then 
 gracefully she shot out clear of it, and Helene, catching sight 
 of her father, waved her handkerchief for yet one more fare- 
 well greeting. 
 
 A few more minutes, and the Saint-Ferdinand went down 
 with a bubbling turmoil, at once effaced by the ocean. 
 Nothing of all that had been was left but a smoke cloud hang- 
 ing in the breeze. The Othello was far away, the long-boat 
 had almost reached land, the cloud came between the frail 
 skiff and the brig, and it was through a break in the swaying 
 smoke that the General caught the last glimpse of Helene. 
 A prophetic vision ! Her dress and her white handkerchief 
 stood out against the murky background. Then the brig 
 was not even visible between the green water and the blue sky, 
 and Helene was nothing but an imperceptible speck, a faint 
 graceful line, an angel in heaven, a mental image, a memory. 
 
 The Marquis had retrieved his fortunes, when he died, 
 worn out with toil. A few months after his death, in 1833, 
 the Marquise was obliged to take Moi'na to a watering-place 
 in the Pyrenees, for the capricious child had a wish to see 
 the beautiful mountain scenery. They left the baths, and 
 the following tragical incident occurred on their way home. 
 VOL. 536
 
 178 A WOMAN OF THIKTY 
 
 "Dear me, mother," said Moi'na, "it was very foolish of us 
 not to stay among the mountains a few days longer. It was 
 much nicer there. Did you hear that horrid child moaning 
 all night, and that wretched woman, gabbling away in patois 
 no doubt, for I could not understand a single word she said. 
 What kind of people can they have put in the next room to 
 ours? This is one of the horridest nights I have ever spent 
 in my life." 
 
 "I heard nothing," said the Marquise, "but I will see the 
 landlady, darling, and engage the next room, and then we 
 shall have the whole suite of rooms to ourselves, and there 
 will be no more noise. How do you feel this morning? Are 
 you tired?" 
 
 As she spoke, the Marquise rose and went to Moma's bed- 
 side. 
 
 "Let us see," she said, feeling for the girl's hand. 
 
 "Oh ! let me alone, mother," said Moina ; "your fingers are 
 cold." 
 
 She turned her head round on the pillow as she spoke, pet- 
 tishly, but with such engaging grace, that a mother could 
 scarcely have taken it amiss. Just then a wailing cry echoed 
 through the next room, a faint prolonged cry, that must 
 surely have gone to the heart of any woman who heard it. 
 
 "Why, if you heard that all night long, why did you not 
 wake me? We should have " 
 
 A deeper moan than any that had gone before it inter- 
 rupted the Marquise. 
 
 "Some one is dying there," she cried, and hurried out of 
 the room. 
 
 "Send Pauline to me !" called Mo'ina. "I shall get up and 
 dress." 
 
 The Marquise hastened downstairs, and found the land- 
 lady in the courtyard with a little group about her, appar- 
 ently much interested in something that she was telling them. 
 
 "Madame, you have put some one in the next room who 
 seems to be very ill indeed " 
 
 "Oh ! don't talk to me about it !" cried the mistress of the
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 179 
 
 house. "I have just sent some one for the mayor. Just im- 
 agine it; it is a woman, a poor unfortunate creature that 
 came here last night on foot. She comes from Spain; she 
 has no passport and no money ; she was carrying her baby on 
 her back, and the child was dying. I could not refuse to take 
 her in. I went up to see her this morning myself ; for when 
 she turned up yesterday, it made me feel dreadfully bad to 
 look at her. Poor soul ! she and the child were lying in bed, 
 and both of them at death's door. 'Madame,' says she, pull- 
 ing a gold ring off her finger, 'this is all that I have left; 
 take it in payment, it will be enough; I shall not stay here 
 long. Poor little one ! we shall die together soon !' she said, 
 looking at the child. I took her ring, and I asked her who 
 she was, but she never would tell me her name. ... I 
 have just sent for the doctor and M. le Maire." 
 
 "Why, you must do all that can be done for her,' 5 cried the 
 Marquise. "Good heavens ! perhaps it is not too late ! I will 
 pay for everything that is necessary 
 
 "Ah! my lady, she looks to me to be uncommonly proud, 
 and I don't know that she would allow it." 
 
 "I will go to see her at once." 
 
 The Marquise went up forthwith to the stranger's room, 
 without thinking of the shock that the sight of her widow's 
 weeds might give to a woman who was said to be dying. At 
 the sight of that dying woman the Marquise turned pale. In 
 spite of the changes wrought by fearful suffering in Helene's 
 beautiful face, she recognized her eldest daughter. 
 
 But Helene, when she saw a woman dressed in black, sat 
 upright in bed with a shriek of horror. Then she sank back ; 
 she knew her mother. 
 
 "My daughter," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, "what is to be 
 done ? Pauline ! . . . Moina ! . . ." 
 
 "Nothing now for me," said Helene, faintly. "I had 
 
 hoped to see my father once more, but your mourning " 
 
 she broke off, clutched her child to her heart as if to give 
 it warmth, and kissed its forehead. Then she turned her 
 eyes on her mother, and the Marquise met the old reproach 
 in them, tempered with forgiveness, it is true, but still re-
 
 180 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 proach. She saw it, and would not see it. She forgot that 
 Helene was the child conceived amid tears and despair, the 
 child of duty, the cause of one of the greatest sorrows in her 
 life. She stole to her eldest daughter's side, remembering 
 nothing but that Helene was her firstborn, the child who had 
 taught her to know the joys of motherhood. The mother's 
 eyes were full of tears. "Helene, my child ! . . ." she 
 cried, with her arms about her daughter. 
 
 Helene was silent. Her own babe had just drawn its last 
 breath on her breast. 
 
 Moina came into the room with Pauline, her maid, and 
 the landlady and the doctor. The Marquise was holding her 
 daughter's ice-cold hand in both of hers, and gazing at her 
 in despair; but the widowed woman, who had escaped ship- 
 wreck with but one of all her fair band of children, spoke 
 in a voice that was dreadful to hear. "All this is your 
 work," she said. "If you had but been for me all that " 
 
 "Moina, go ! Go out of the room, all of you !" cried Mme. 
 d'Aiglemont, her shrill tones drowning Helene's voice. "For 
 pity's sake," she continued, "let us not begin these miserable 
 quarrels again now ; " 
 
 "I will be silent," Helene answered with a preternatural 
 effort. "I am a mother ; I know that Moina ought not . . . 
 Where is my child?" 
 
 Moina came back, impelled by curiosity. 
 
 "Sister," said the spoiled child, "the doctor " 
 
 "It is all of no use," said Helene. "Oh ! why did I not die 
 as a girl of sixteen when I meant to take my own life ? There 
 is no happiness outside the laws. Moina . . . you . . ." 
 
 Her head sank till her face lay against the face of the little 
 one; in her agony she strained her babe to her breast, and 
 died. 
 
 "Your sister, Moina," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, bursting 
 into tears when she reached her room, "your sister meant no 
 doubt to tell you that a girl will never find happiness in a 
 romantic life, in living as nobody else does, and, above all 
 things, far away from her mother."
 
 A WOY4N OF THIRTY 181 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER 
 
 IT was one of the earliest June days of the year 1844. A lady 
 of fifty or thereabouts, for she looked older than her actual 
 age, was pacing up and down one of the sunny paths in the 
 garden of a great mansion in the Rue Plumet in Paris. It 
 was noon. The lady took two or three turns along the gently 
 winding garden walk, careful never to lose sight of a certain 
 row of windows, to which she seemed to give her whole at- 
 tention; then she sat down on a bench, a piece of elegant 
 semi-rusticity made of branches with the bark left on the 
 wood. From the place where she sat she could look through 
 the garden railings along the inner boulevards to the won- 
 derful dome of the Invalides rising above the crests of a forest 
 of elm-trees, and see the less striking view of her own grounds 
 terminating in the gray stone front of one of the finest hotels 
 in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. 
 
 Silence lay over the neighboring gardens, and the boule- 
 vards stretching away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins 
 at noon in that aristocratic quarter, and masters and servants 
 are all alike asleep, or just awakening, unless some young 
 lady takes it into her head to go for an early ride, or a gray- 
 headed diplomatist rises betimes to redraft a protocol. 
 
 The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Mar- 
 quise d'Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Hereen, to 
 whom the great house belonged. The Marquise had made 
 over the mansion and almost her whole fortune to her daugh- 
 ter, reserving only an annuity for herself. 
 
 The Comtesse Moina de Saint-Hereen was Mme. d'Aigle- 
 mont's youngest child. The Marquise had made every sac- 
 rifice to marry her daughter to the eldest son of one of the 
 greatest houses of France; and this was only what might 
 have been expected, for the lady had lost her sons, first one 
 and then the other. Gustave, Marquis d'Aiglemont, had died
 
 182 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 of the cholera; Abel, the second, had fallen in Algeria. Gus- 
 tave had left a widow and children, but the dowager's affec- 
 tion for her sons had been only moderately warm, and for 
 the next generation it was decidedly tepid. She was always 
 civil to her daughter-in-law, but her feeling towards the 
 young Marquise was the distinctly conventional affection 
 which good taste and good manners require us to feel for our 
 relatives. The fortunes of her dead children having been set- 
 tled, she could devote her savings and her own property to her 
 darling Moi'na. 
 
 Moi'na, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont's favorite; loved beyond all the others 
 with an instinctive or involuntary love, a fatal drawing of 
 the heart, which sometimes seems inexplicable, sometimes, 
 and to a close observer, only too easy to explain. Her dar- 
 ling's pretty face, the sound of Moina's voice, her ways, her 
 manner, her looks and gestures, roused all the deepest emo- 
 tions that can stir a mother's heart with trouble, rapture, or 
 delight. The springs of the Marquise's life, of yesterday, to- 
 morrow, and to-day, lay in that young heart. Moi'na, with 
 better fortune, had survived four older children. As a mat- 
 ter of fact, Mme. d'Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, 
 a charming girl, in a most unfortunate manner, said gossip, 
 nobody knew exactly what became of her; and then she lost 
 a little boy of five by a dreadful accident. 
 
 The child of her affections had, however, been spared to 
 her, and doubtless the Marquise saw the will of Heaven in 
 that fact; for of those who had died, she kept but very 
 shadowy recollections in some far-off corner of her heart ; her 
 memories of her dead children were like the headstones on a 
 battlefield, you can scarcely see them for the flowers that have 
 sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had 
 chosen, it might have said some hard truths about the Mar- 
 quise, might have taken her to task for shallowness and an 
 overweening preference for one child at the expense of the 
 rest; but the world of Paris is swept along by the full flood 
 of new events, new ideas, and new fashions, and it was inevi-
 
 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 183 
 
 table that Mme. d'Aiglemont should be in some sort allowed 
 to drop out of sight. So nobody thought of blaming her for 
 coldness or neglect which concerned no one, whereas her 
 quick, apprehensive tenderness for Moina was found highly 
 interesting by not a few who respected it as a sort of super- 
 stition. Besides, the Marquise scarcely went into society at 
 all; and the few families who knew her thought of her as a 
 kindly, gentle, indulgent woman, wholly devoted to her fam- 
 ily. What but a curiosity, keen indeed, would seek to pry be- 
 neath the surface with which the world is quite satisfied? 
 And what would we not pardon to old people, if only they will 
 efface themselves like shadows, and consent to be regarded 
 as memories and nothing more ! 
 
 Indeed, Mme. d'Aiglemont became a kind of example com- 
 placently held up by the younger generation to fathers of 
 families, and frequently cited to mothers-in-law. She had 
 made over her property to Mo'ina in her own lifetime; the 
 young Countess' happiness was enough for her, she only 
 lived in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose 
 uncle here and there condemned the course with "Perhaps 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont may be sorry some day that she gave up 
 her fortune to her daughter; she may be sure of Mo'ina, but 
 how can she be equally sure of her son-in-law?" these 
 prophets were cried down on all sides, and from all sides a 
 chorus of praise went up for Moina. 
 
 "It ought to be said, in justice to Mme. de Saint-Hereen, 
 that her mother cannot feel the slightest difference," re- 
 marked a young married woman. "Mme. d'Aiglemont is ad- 
 mirably well housed. She has a carriage at her disposal, and 
 can go everywhere just as she used to do " 
 
 "Except to the Italiens," remarked a low voice. (This was 
 an elderly parasite, one of those persons who show their in- 
 dependence as they think by riddling their friends with 
 epigrams.) "Except to the Italiens. And if the dowager 
 cares for anything on this earth but her daughter it is 
 music. Such a good performer she was in her time ! But the 
 Countess' box is always full of young butterflies, and the
 
 184 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 
 
 Countess' mother would be in the way; the young lady is 
 talked about already as a great flirt. So the poor mother 
 never goes to the Italiens." 
 
 "Mme. de Saint-Hereen has delightful 'At Homes' for her 
 mother," said a rosebud. "All Paris goes to her salon." 
 
 "And no one pays any attention to the Marquise," returned 
 the parasite. 
 
 "The fact is that Mme. d'Aiglemont is never alone," re- 
 marked a coxcomb, siding with the young women. 
 
 "In the morning," the old observer continued in a discreet 
 voice, "in the morning dear Moina is asleep. At four o'clock 
 dear Moina drives in the Bois. In the evening dear Mo'ina 
 goes to a ball or to the Bouffes. Still, it is certainly true that 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont has the privilege of seeing her dear daugh- 
 ter while she dresses, and again at dinner, if dear Moina hap- 
 pens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago, sir," con- 
 tinued the elderly person, laying his hand on the arm of the 
 shy tutor, a new arrival in the house, "not a week ago, I saw 
 the poor mother, solitary and sad, by her own fireside. 
 'What is the matter ?' I asked. The Marquise looked up smil- 
 ing, but I am quite sure that she had been crying. 'I was 
 thinking that it is a strange thing that I should be left alone 
 when I have had five children,' she said, 'but that is our des- 
 tiny ! And besides, I am happy when I know that Moina is 
 enjoying herself.' She could say that to me, for I knew her 
 husband when he was alive. A poor stick .he was, and un- 
 commonly lucky to have such a wife; it was certainly owing 
 to her that he was made a peer of France, and had a place 
 at Court under Charles X." 
 
 Yet such mistaken ideas get about in social gossip, and 
 such mischief is done by it, that the historian of manners is 
 bound to exercise his discretion, and weigh the assertions so 
 recklessly made. After all, who is to say that either mother 
 or daughter was right or wrong ? There is but One who can 
 read and judge their hearts ! And how often does He wreak 
 His vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time 
 children as His instruments against their mothers, and fathers
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 185 
 
 against their sons, raising up peoples against kings, and 
 princes against peoples, sowing strife and division every- 
 where? And in the world of ideas, are not old opinions and 
 feelings expelled by new feelings and opinions, much as 
 withered leaves are thrust forth by the young leaf-buds in the 
 spring? all in obedience to the immutable Scheme; all to 
 some end which God alone knows. Yet, surely, all things 
 proceed to Him, or rather, to Him all things return. 
 
 Such thoughts of religion, the natural thoughts of age, 
 floated up now and again on the current of Mme. d'Aigle- 
 mont's thoughts ; they were always dimly present in her mind, 
 but sometimes they shone out clearly, sometimes they were 
 carried under, like flowers tossed on the vexed surface of a 
 stormy sea. 
 
 She sat on the garden-seat, tired with walking, exhausted 
 with much thinking with the long thoughts in which a 
 whole lifetime rises up before the mind, and is spread out like 
 a scroll before the eyes of those who feel that Death is near. 
 
 If a poet had chanced to pass along the boulevard, he would 
 have found an interesting picture in the face of this woman, 
 grown old before her time. As she sat under the dotted 
 shadow of the acacia, the shadow the acacia casts at noon, a 
 thousand thoughts were written for all the world to see on 
 her features, pale and cold even in the hot, bright sunlight. 
 There was something sadder than the sense of waning life in 
 that expressive face, some trouble that went deeper than the 
 weariness of experience. It was a face of a type that fixes 
 you in a moment among a host of characterless faces that fail 
 to draw a second glance, a face to set you thinking. Among 
 a thousand pictures in a gallery, you are strongly impressed 
 by the sublime anguish on the face of some Madonna of Mu- 
 rillo's ; by some Beatrice Cenci in which Guido's art portrays 
 the most touching innocence against a background of horror 
 and crime; by the awe and majesty that should encircle a 
 king, caught once and for ever by Velasquez in the sombre 
 face of a Philip II., and so is it with some living human 
 faces; they are tyrannous pictures which speak to you, sub-
 
 186 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 mit you to searching scrutiny, and give response to your in- 
 most thoughts, nay, there are faces that set forth a whole 
 drama, and Mme. d'Aiglemont's stony face was one of these 
 awful tragedies, one of such faces as Dante Alighieri saw by 
 thousands in his vision. 
 
 For the little season that a woman's beauty is in flower 
 it serves her admirably well in the dissimulation to which 
 her natural weakness and our social laws condemn her. A 
 young face and rich color, and eyes that glow with light, a 
 gracious maze of such subtle, manifold lines and curves, flaw- 
 less and perfectly traced, is a screen that hides everything 
 that stirs the woman within. A flush tells nothing, it only 
 heightens the coloring so brilliant already; all the fires that 
 burn within can add little light to the flame of life in eyes 
 which only seem the brighter for the flash of a passing pain. 
 Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mo- 
 bile ; it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and the fresh- 
 ness of a lake. There is no character in women's faces before 
 the age of thirty. The painter discovers nothing there but 
 pink and white, and the smile and expression that repeat the 
 same thought in the same way a thought of youth and love 
 that goes no further than youth and love. But the face of an 
 old woman has expressed all that lay in her nature; passion 
 has carved lines on her features; love and wifehood and 
 motherhood, and extremes of joy and anguish, have wrung 
 them, and left their traces in a thousand wrinkles, all of 
 which speak a language of their own; then is it that a wo- 
 man's face becomes sublime in its horror, beautiful in its mel- 
 ancholy, grand in its calm. If it is permissible to carry the 
 strange metaphor still further, it might be said that in the 
 dried-up lake you can see the traces of all the torrents that 
 once poured into it and made it what it is. An old face is 
 nothing to the frivolous world ; the frivolous world is shocked 
 by the sight of the destruction of such comeliness as it can 
 understand; a commonplace artist sees nothing there. An 
 old face is the province of the poets among poets of those who 
 can recognize that something which is called Beauty, apart
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 187 
 
 from all the conventions underlying so many superstitions 
 in art and taste. 
 
 Though Mme. d'Aiglemont wore a fashionable bonnet, it 
 was easy to see that her once black hair had been bleached by 
 cruel sorrows ; yet her good taste and the gracious acquired in- 
 stincts of a woman of fashion could be seen in the way she 
 wore it, divided into two bandeaux, following the outlines of 
 a forehead that still retained some traces of former dazzling 
 beauty, worn and lined though it was. The contours of her 
 face, the regularity of her features, gave some idea, faint in 
 truth, of that beauty of which surely she had once been 
 proud ; but those traces spoke still more plainly of the anguish 
 which had laid it waste, of sharp pain that had withered 
 the temples, and made those hollows in her cheeks, and em- 
 purpled the eyelids, and robbed them of their lashes, and the 
 eyes of their charm. She was in every way so noiseless; she 
 moved with a slow, self-contained gravity that showed itself 
 in her whole bearing, and struck a certain awe into others. 
 Her diffident manner had changed to positive shyness, due ap- 
 parently to a habit now of some years' growth, of effacing 
 herself in her daughter's presence. She spoke very seldom, 
 and in the low tones used by those who perforce must live 
 within themselves a life of reflection and concentration. 
 This demeanor led others to regard her with an indefinable 
 feeling which was neither awe nor compassion, but a mys- 
 terious blending of the many ideas awakened in us by com- 
 passion and awe. Finally, there was something in her wrin- 
 kles, in the lines of her face, in the look of pain in those wan 
 eyes of hers, that bore eloquent testimony to tears that never 
 had fallen, tears that had been absorbed by her heart. Un- 
 happy creatures, accustomed to raise their eyes to heaven, in 
 mute appeal against the bitterness of their lot, would have 
 seen at once from her eyes that she was broken in to the cruel 
 discipline of ceaseless prayer, would have discerned the al- 
 most imperceptible symptoms of the secret bruises which de- 
 stroy all the flowers of the soul, even the sentiment of mother- 
 hood.
 
 188 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 Painters have colors for these portraits, but words, and 
 the mental images called up by words, fail to reproduce such 
 impressions faithfully ; there are mysterious signs and tokens 
 iii the tones of the coloring and in the look of human faces, 
 which the mind only seizes through the sense of sight; and 
 the poet is fain to record the tale of the events which 
 wrought the havoc to make their terrible ravages understood. 
 
 The face spoke of cold and steady storm, an inward con- 
 flict between a mother's long-suffering and the limitations of 
 our nature, for our human affections are bounded by our hu- 
 manity, and the infinite has no place in finite creatures. Sor- 
 row endured in silence had at last produced an indefinable 
 morbid something in this woman. Doubtless mental anguish 
 had reacted on the physical frame, and some disease, perhaps 
 an aneurism, was undermining Julie's life. Deep-seated 
 grief lies to all appearance very quietly in the depths where it 
 is conceived, yet, so still and apparently dormant as it is, it 
 ceaselessly corrodes the soul, like the terrible acid which eats 
 away crystal. 
 
 Two tears made their way down the Marquise's cheeks; 
 she rose to her feet as if some thought more poignant than 
 any that preceded it had cut her to the quick. She had 
 doubtless come to a conclusion as to Moi'na's future ; and now, 
 foreseeing clearly all the troubles in store for her child, the 
 sorrows of her own unhappy life had begun to weigh once 
 more upon her. The key of her position must be sought in 
 her daughter's situation. 
 
 The Comte de Saint-Hereen had been away for nearly six 
 months on a political mission. The Countess, whether from 
 sheer giddiness, or in obedience to the countless instincts of 
 woman's coquetry, or to essay its power with all the vanity 
 of a frivolous fine lady, all the capricious waywardness of a 
 child was amusing herself, during her husband's absence, by 
 playing with the passion of a clever but heartless man, dis- 
 tracted (so he said) with love, the love that combines readily 
 with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited coxcomb. 
 Mine. d'Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a
 
 A WOMAN OP THIRTY 189 
 
 knowledge of life, and taught her to judge of men and to 
 dread the world, watched the course of this flirtation, and 
 saw that it could only end in one way, if her daughter should 
 fall into the hands of an utterly unscrupulous intriguer. 
 How could it be other than a terrible thought for her that 
 her daughter listened willingly to this roue? Her darling 
 stood on the brink of a precipice, she felt horribly sure of it, 
 yet dared not hold her bac-k. She was afraid of the Countess. 
 She knew too that Mo'ina would not listen to her wise warn- 
 ings ; she knew that she had no influence over that nature 
 iron for her, silken-soft for all others. Her mother's tender- 
 ness might have led her to sympathize with the troubles of a 
 passion called forth by the nobler qualities of a lover, but 
 this was no passion it was coquetry, and the Marquise de- 
 spised Alfred de Vandenesse, knowing that he had entered 
 upon this flirtation with Mo'ina as if it were a game of chess. 
 But if Alfred de Vandenesse made her shudder with dis- 
 gust, she was obliged unhappy mother ! to conceal the 
 strongest reason for her loathing in the deepest recesses of 
 her heart. She was on terms of intimate friendship with the 
 Marquis de Vandenesse, the young man's father; and this 
 friendship, a respectable one in the eyes of the world, excused 
 the son's constant presence in the house, he professing an old 
 attachment, dating from childhood, for Mme. de Saint- 
 Hereen. More than this, in vain did Mme. d'Aiglemont nerve 
 herself to come between Mo'ina and Alfred de Vandenesse 
 with a terrible word, knowing beforehand that she should not 
 succeed; knowing that the strong reason which ought to sep- 
 arate them would carry no weight; that she should humiliate 
 herself vainly in her daughter's eyes. Alfred was too cor- 
 rupt; Mo'ina too clever to believe the revelation; the young 
 Countess would turn it off and treat it as a piece of ma- 
 ternal strategy. Mme. d'Aiglemont had built her prison 
 walls with her own hands; she had immured herself only to 
 see Moina's happiness ruined thence before she died ; she was 
 to look on helplessly at the ruin of the young life which had 
 been her pride and joy and comfort, a life a thousand times
 
 190 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 dearer to her than her own. What words can describe anguish 
 so hideous beyond belief, such unfathomed depths of pain? 
 
 She waited for Mo'ina to rise, with the impatience and sick- 
 ening dread of a doomed man, who longs to have done with 
 life, and turns cold at the thought of the headsman. She 
 had braced herself for a last effort, but perhaps the prospect 
 of the certain failure of the attempt was less dreadful to her 
 than the fear of receiving yet again one of those thrusts that 
 went to her very heart before that fear her courage ebbed 
 away. Her mother's love had come to this. To love her child, 
 to be afraid of her, to shrink from the thought of the stab, 
 yet to go forward. So great is a mother's affection in a lov- 
 ing nature, that before it can fade away into indifference the 
 mother herself must die or find support in some great power 
 without her, in religion or another love. Since the Marquise 
 rose that morning, her fatal memory had called up before her 
 some of those .things, so slight to all appearance, that make 
 landmarks in a life. Sometimes, indeed, a whole tragedy 
 grows out of a single gesture ; the tone in which a few words 
 were spoken rends a whole life in two; a glance into indiffer- 
 ent eyes is the deathblow of the gladdest love ; and, unhappily, 
 such gestures and such words were only too familiar to Mme. 
 d'Aiglemont she had met so many glances that wound the 
 soul. Xo, there was nothing in those memories to bid her 
 hope. On the contrary, everything went to show that Alfred 
 had destroyed her hold on her daughter's heart, that the 
 thought of her was now associated with duty not with glad- 
 ness. In ways innumerable, in things that were mere trifles 
 in themselves, the Countess' detestable conduct rose up be- 
 fore her mother; and the Marquise, it may be, looked on 
 Moina's undutifulness as a punishment, and found excuses 
 for her daughter in the will of Heaven, that so she still might 
 adore the hand that smote her. 
 
 Ail these things passed through her memory that morning, 
 and each recollection wounded her afresh so sorely, that with 
 a very little additional pain her brimming cup of bitterness 
 must have overflowed. A cold look might kill her.
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 191 
 
 The little details of domestic life are difficult to paint; 
 but one or two perhaps will suffice to give an idea of the rest. 
 
 The Marquise d'Aiglemont, for instance, had grown rather 
 deaf, but she could never induce Mo'ina to raise her voice for 
 her. Once, with the naivete of suffering, she had begged 
 Mo'ina to repeat some remark which she had failed to catch, 
 and Mo'ina obe} r ed, but with so bad a grace, that Mme. 
 d'Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her mod- 
 est request again. Ever since that day when Mo'ina was talk- 
 ing or retailing a piece of news, her mother was careful to 
 come near to listen; but this infirmity of deafness appeared 
 to put the Countess out of patience, and she would grumble 
 thoughtlessly about it. This instance is one from among very 
 many that must have gone to the mother's heart; and yet 
 nearly all of them might have escaped a close observer, they 
 consisted in faint shades of manner invisible to any but a wo- 
 man's eyes. Take another example. Mme. d'Aiglemont hap- 
 pened to say one day that the Princesse de Cadignan had 
 called upon her. "Did she come to see you!" Mo'ina ex- 
 claimed. That was all; but the Countess' voice and man- 
 ner expressed surprise and well-bred contempt in semitones. 
 Any heart, still young and sensitive, might well have ap- 
 plauded the philanthropy of savage tribes who kill off their 
 old people when they grow too feeble to cling to a strongly 
 shaken bough. Mme. d'Aiglemont rose smiling, and went 
 away to weep alone. 
 
 Well-bred people, and women especially, only betray their 
 feelings by imperceptible touches; but those who can look 
 back over their own experience on such bruises as this 
 mother's heart received, know also how the heart-strings vi- 
 brate to these light touches. Overcome by her memories, 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont recollected one of those microscopically 
 small things, so stinging and so painful was it that never till 
 this moment had she felt all the heartless contempt that 
 lurked beneath smiles. 
 
 At the sound of shutters thrown back at her daughter's 
 windows, she dried her tears, and hastened up the
 
 192 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 by the railings. As she went, it struck her that the gardener 
 had been unusually careful to rake the sand along the walk 
 which had been neglected for some little time. As she stood 
 under her daughter's windows, the shutters were hastily 
 closed. 
 
 "Mo'ina, is it you ?" she asked. 
 
 No answer. 
 
 The Marquise went on into the house. 
 
 "Mme. la Comtesse is in the little drawing-room," said the 
 maid, when the Marquise asked whether Mme. de Saint- 
 Hereen had finished dressing. 
 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont hurried to the little drawing-room ; 
 her heart was too full, her brain too busy to notice matters 
 so slight; but there on a sofa sat the Countess in her loose 
 morning-gown, her hair in disorder under the cap tossed care- 
 lessly on her head, her feet thrust into slippers. The key of 
 her bedroom hung at her girdle. Her face, aglow with color, 
 bore traces of almost stormy thought. 
 
 "What makes people come in !" she cried, crossly. "Oh ! 
 it is you, mother," she interrupted herself, with a preoccupied 
 look. 
 
 "Yes, child; it is your mother " 
 
 Something in her tone turned those words into an outpour- 
 ing of the heart, the cry of some deep inward feeling, only to 
 be described by the word "holy." So thoroughly in truth 
 had she rehabilitated the sacred character of a mother, that 
 her daughter was impressed, and turned towards her, with 
 something of awe, uneasiness, and remorse in her manner. 
 The room was the furthest of a suite, and safe from indis- 
 creet intrusion, for no one could enter it without giving 
 warning of approach through the previous apartments. The 
 Marquise closed the door. 
 
 "It is my duty, my child, to warn you in one of the most 
 serious crises in the lives of us women ; you have perhaps 
 reached it unconsciously, and I am come to speak to you as a 
 friend rather than as a mother. When you married, you ac- 
 quired freedom of action; von are only accountable to your
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 193 
 
 husband now ; but I asserted my authority so little (perhaps 
 I was wrong), that I think I have a right to expect you to 
 listen to me, for once at least, in a critical position when you 
 must need counsel. Bear in mind, Moina, that you are mar- 
 ried to a man of high ability, a man of whom you may well 
 be proud, a man who 
 
 "I know what you are going to say, mother !" Moi'na broke 
 in pettishly. "I am to be lectured about Alfred 
 
 "Moma," the Marquise said gravely, as she struggled with 
 her tears, "you would not guess at once if you did not 
 feel " 
 
 "What?" asked Moi'na, almost haughtily. "Why, really, 
 mother " 
 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont summoned up all her strength. 
 "Moi'na," she said, "you must attend carefully to this that I 
 ought to tell you " 
 
 "I am attending," returned the Countess, folding her arms, 
 and affecting insolent submission. "Permit me, mother, to 
 ring for Pauline," she added with incredible self-possession; 
 "I will send her away first." 
 
 She rang the bell. 
 
 "My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear " 
 
 "Mamma," interrupted the Countess, with a gravity 
 which must have struck her mother as something unusual, "I 
 must 
 
 She stopped short, for the woman was in the room. 
 
 "Pauline, go yourself to Baudran's, and ask why my hat 
 has not yet been sent." 
 
 Then the Countess reseated herself and scrutinized her 
 mother. The Marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, 
 in painful agitation, which none but a mother can fully un- 
 derstand, began to open Moina's eyes to the risk that she was 
 running. But either the Countess felt hurt and indignant 
 at her mother's suspicions of a son of the Marquis de Vande- 
 nesse, or she was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable lev- 
 ity caused by the inexperience of youth. She took advan- 
 tage of a pause. 
 VOL. 537
 
 194 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
 
 "Mamma, I thought you were only jealous of the father 
 " she said, with a forced laugh. 
 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the 
 words, with a very faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked 
 up and out into space, as if she felt the common overmaster- 
 ing impulse to appeal to God at the great crises of our lives; 
 then she looked at her daughter, and her eyes were full of 
 awful majesty and the expression of profound sorrow. 
 
 "My child," she said, and her voice was hardly recogniz- 
 able, "you have been less merciful to your mother than he 
 against whom she sinned; less merciful than perhaps God 
 Himself will be !" 
 
 Mme. d'Aiglemont rose; at the door she turned; but she 
 saw nothing but surprise in her daughter's face. She went 
 out. Scarcely had she reached the garden when her strength 
 failed her. There was a violent pain at her heart, and she 
 sank down on a bench. As her eyes wandered over the path, 
 she saw fresh marks on the path, a man's footprints were 
 distinctly recognizable. It was too late, then, beyond a doubt. 
 Now she began to understand the reason for that order given 
 to Pauline, and with these torturing thoughts came a revela- 
 tion more hateful than any that had gone before it. She 
 drew her own inferences the son of the Marquis de Van- 
 denesse had destroyed all feeling of respect for her in her 
 daughter's mind. The physical pain grew worse; by degrees 
 she lost consciousness, and sat like one asleep upon the gar- 
 den-seat. 
 
 The Countess de Saint-Hereen, left to herself, thought 
 that her mother had given her a somewhat shrewd home- 
 thrust, but a kiss and a few attentions that evening would 
 make all right again. 
 
 A shrill cry came from the garden. She leaned carelessly 
 out, as Pauline, not yet departed on her errand, called out 
 for help, holding the Marquise in her arms. 
 
 "Do not frighten my daughter !" those were the last words 
 the mother uttered. 
 
 Moina saw them carry in a pale and lifeless form that
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY 195 
 
 struggled for breath, and arms moving restlessly as in pro- 
 test or effort to speak ; and overcome by the sight, Moina fol- 
 lowed in silence, and helped to undress her mother and lay 
 her on her bed. The burden of her fault was greater than 
 she could bear. In that supreme hour she learned to know 
 her mother too late, she could make no reparation now. 
 She would have them leave her alone with her mother; and 
 when there was no one else in the room, when she felt that the 
 hand which had always been so tender for her was now grown 
 cold to her touch, she broke out into weeping. Her tears 
 aroused the Marquise; she could still look at her darling 
 Mo'ina ; and at the sound of sobbing, that seemed as if it must 
 rend the delicate, disheveled breast, could smile back at her 
 daughter. That smile taught the unnatural child that for- 
 giveness is always to be found in the great deep of a mother's 
 heart. 
 
 Servants on horseback had been dispatched at once for the 
 physician and surgeon and for Mme. d'Aiglemont's grand- 
 children. Mme. d'Aiglemont the younger and her little sons 
 arrived with the medical men, a sufficiently impressive, silent, 
 and anxious little group, which the servants of the house 
 came to join. The j'oung Marquise, hearing no sound, 
 tapped gently at the door. That signal, doubtless, roused 
 Mo'ina from her grief, for she flung open the doors and stood 
 before them. No words could have spoken more plainly than 
 that disheveled figure looking out with haggard eyes upon 
 the assembled family. Before that living picture of Re- 
 morse the rest were dumb. It was easy to see that the Mar- 
 quise's feet were stretched out stark and stiff with the agony 
 of death; and Mo'ina, leaning against the door-frame, look- 
 ing into their faces, spoke in a hollow voice: 
 
 "I have lost my mother !" 
 
 PARIS, 1828-1844.
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 To Her Grace the Duchesse d'Abrantes, 
 from her devoted servant, 
 
 Honore de Balzac. 
 
 PARES, August 1835. 
 
 IN the early spring of 1822, the Paris doctors sent to Lower 
 Normandy a young man just recovering from an inflamma- 
 tory complaint, brought on by overstudy, or perhaps by excess 
 of some other kind. His convalescence demanded complete 
 rest, a light diet, bracing air, and freedom from excitement 
 of every kind, and the fat lands of Bessin seemed to offer 
 all these conditions of recovery. To Bayeux, a picturesque 
 place about six miles from the sea, the patient therefore be- 
 took himself, and was received with the cordiality character- 
 istic of relatives who lead very retired lives, and regard a new 
 arrival as a godsend. 
 
 All little towns are alike, save for a few local customs. 
 When M. le Baron Gaston de Nueil, the young Parisian in 
 question, had spent two or three evenings in his cousin's 
 house, or with the friends who made up Mme. de Sainte- 
 Severe's circle, he very soon had made the acquaintance of 
 the persons whom this exclusive society considered to be "the 
 whole town." Gaston de Nueil recognized in them the in- 
 variable stock characters which every observer finds in every 
 one of the many capitals of the little States which made up 
 the France of an older day. 
 
 First of all comes the family whose claims to nobility are 
 regarded as incontestable, and of the highest antiquity in the 
 department, though no one has so much as heard of them a 
 bare fifty leagues away. This species of royal family on a 
 small scale is distantly, but unmistakably, connected with the 
 
 (197)
 
 198 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 Navarreins and the Grandlieu family, and related to the 
 Cadignans, and the Blamont-Chauvrys. The head of the 
 illustrious house is invariably a determined sportsman. He 
 has no manners, crushes everybody else with his nominal 
 superiority, tolerates the sub-prefect much as he submits to 
 the taxes, and declines to acknowledge any of the novel 
 powers created by the nineteenth century, pointing out to 
 you as a political monstrosity the fact that the prime minister 
 is a man of no birth. His wife takes a decided tone, and 
 talks in a loud voice. She has had adorers in her time, but 
 takes the sacrament regularly at Easter. She brings up her 
 daughters badly, and is of the opinion that they will always 
 be rich enough with their name. 
 
 Neither husband nor wife has the remotest idea of modern 
 luxury. They retain a livery only seen elsewhere on the 
 stage, and cling to old fashions in plate, furniture, and 
 equipages, as in language and manner of life. This is a kind 
 of ancient state, moreover, that suits passably well with pro- 
 vincial thrift. The good folk are, in fact, the lords of the 
 manor of a bygone age, minus the quitrents and heriots, the 
 pack of hounds and the laced coats; full of honor among 
 themselves, and one and all loyally devoted to princes whom 
 they only see at a distance. The historical house incognito is 
 as quaint a survival as a piece of ancient tapestry. Vegetating 
 somewhere among them there is sure to be an uncle or a 
 brother, a lieutenant-general, an old courtier of the King's, 
 who wears the red ribbon of the order of Saint-Louis, and 
 went to Hanover with the Marechal de Richelieu: and here 
 you will find him like a stray leaf out of some old pamphlet 
 of the time of Louis Quinze. 
 
 This fossil greatness finds a rival in another house, 
 wealthier, though of less ancient lineage. Husband and wife 
 spend a couple of months of every winter in Paris, bringing 
 back with them its frivolous tone and short-lived contem- 
 porary crazes. Madame is a woman of fashion, though she 
 looks rather conscious of her clothes, and is always behind 
 the mode. She scoffs, however, at the ignorance affected by
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 199 
 
 her neighbors. Her plate is of modern fashion; she has 
 "grooms," negroes, a valet-de-chambre, and what-not. Her 
 oldest son drives a tilbury, and does nothing (the estate is 
 entailed upon him), his younger brother is auditor to a 
 Council of State. The father is well posted up in official 
 scandals, and tells you anecdotes of Louis XVIII. and 
 Madame du Cayla. He invests his money in the five per 
 cents, and is careful to 'avoid the topic of cider, but has been 
 known occasionally to fall a victim to the craze for rectify- 
 ing the conjectural sums-total of the various fortunes of 
 the department. He is a member of the Departmental Coun- 
 cil, has his clothes from Paris, and wears the Cross of the 
 Legion of Honor. In short, he is a country gentleman who 
 has fully grasped the significance of the Restoration, and is 
 coining money at the Chamber, but his Eoyalism is less pure 
 than that of the rival house; he takes the Gazette &.jd the 
 Debats, the other family only read the Quotidienne. 
 
 His lordship the Bishop, a sometime Vicar-General, 
 fluctuates between the two powers, who pay him the respect 
 due to religion, but at times they bring home to him the 
 moral appended by the worthy Lafontaine to the fable of 
 the Ass laden with Relics. The good man's origin is dis- 
 tinctly plebeian. 
 
 Then come stars of the second magnitude, men of family 
 with ten or twelve hundred livres a year, captains in the navy 
 or cavalry regiments, or nothing at all. Out on the roads, 
 on horseback, they rank half-way between the cure bearing 
 the sacraments and the tax collector on his rounds. Pretty 
 nearly all of them have been in the Pages or in the House- 
 hold Troops, and now are peaceably ending their days in a 
 faisance-valoir, more interested in felling timber and the 
 cider prospects than in the Monarchy. 
 
 Still they talk of the Charter and the Liberals while the 
 cards are making, or over a game at backgammon, when they 
 have exhausted the usual stock topic of dots, and have married 
 everybody off according to the genealogies which they all 
 know by heart. Their womenkind are haughty dames, who
 
 200 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 assume the airs of Court ladies in their basket chaises. They 
 huddle themselves up in shawls and caps by way of full dress ; 
 and twice a year, after ripe deliberation, have a new bonnet 
 from Paris, brought as opportunity oilers. Exemplary wives 
 are they for the most part, and garrulous. 
 
 These are the principal elements of aristocratic gentility, 
 with a few outlying old maids of good family, spinsters who 
 have solved the problem: given a human being, to remain 
 absolutely stationary. They might be sealed up in the houses 
 where you see them ; their faces and their dresses are literally 
 part of the fixtures of the town, and the province in which 
 they dwell. They are its tradition, its memory, its quintes- 
 sence, the genius loci incarnate. There is something frigid 
 and monumental about these ladies; they know exactly when 
 to laugh and when to shake their heads, and every now and 
 then glye out some utterance which passes current as a witti- 
 cism. 
 
 A few rich townspeople have crept into the miniature Fau- 
 bourg Saint-Germain, thanks to their money or their aristo- 
 cratic leanings. But despite their forty years, the circle still 
 say of them, "Young So-and-so has sound opinions," and of 
 such do they make deputies. As a rule, the elderly spinsters 
 are their patronesses, not without comment. 
 
 Finally, in this exclusive little set include two or three 
 ecclesiastics, admitted for the sake of their cloth, or for their 
 wit ; for these great nobles find their own society rather dull, 
 and introduce the bourgeois element into their drawing- 
 rooms, as a baker puts leaven into his dough. 
 
 The sum-total contained by all heads put together consists 
 of a certain quantity of antiquated notions; a few new re- 
 flections brewed in company of an evening being added from 
 time to time to the common stock. Like sea-water in a little 
 creek, the phrases which represent these ideas surge up daily, 
 punctually obeying the tidal laws of conversation in their 
 flow and ebb ; you hear the hollow echo of yesterday, to-day, 
 to-morrow, a year hence, and for evermore. On all things 
 here below they pass immutable judgments, which go to make
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 201 
 
 np a body of tradition into which no power of mortal man 
 can infuse one drop of wit or sense. The lives of these per- 
 sons revolve with the regularity of clockwork in an orbit of 
 use and wont which admits of no more deviation or change 
 than their opinions on matters religious, political, moral, or 
 literary. 
 
 If a stranger is admitted to the cenacle, every member of 
 it in turn will say (not without a trace of irony), "You will 
 not find the brilliancy of your Parisian society here," and 
 proceed forthwith to criticise the life led by his neighbors, 
 as if he himself were an exception who had striven, and vainly 
 striven, to enlighten the rest. But any stranger so ill advised 
 as to concur in any of their freely expressed criticism of each 
 other, is pronounced at once to be an ill-natured person, a 
 heathen, an outlaw, a reprobate Parisian "as Parisians mostly 
 are." 
 
 Before Gaston de Nueil made his appearance in this little 
 world of strictly observed etiquette, where every detail of life 
 is an integrant part of a whole, and everything is known; 
 where the values of personalty and real estate are quoted like 
 stocks on the vast sheet of the newspaper before his arrival 
 he had been weighed in the unerring scales of Bayeusaine 
 judgment. 
 
 His cousin, Mme. de Sainte-Severe, had already given out 
 the amount of his fortune, and the sum of his expectations, 
 had produced the family tree, and expatiated on the talents, 
 breeding, and modesty of this particular branch. So he re- 
 ceived the precise amount of attention to which he was en- 
 titled; he was accepted as a worthy scion of a good stock; 
 and, for he was but twenty-three, was made welcome without 
 ceremony, though certain young ladies and mothers of 
 daughters looked not unkindly upon him. 
 
 He had an income of eighteen thousand livres from land 
 in the valley of the Auge; and sooner or later his father, as 
 in duty bound, would leave him the chateau of Manerville, 
 with the lands thereunto belonging. As for his education, 
 political career, personal qualities, and qualifications no one
 
 202 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 so much as thought of raising the questions. His land was 
 undeniable, his rentals steady; excellent plantations had been 
 made; the tenants paid for repairs, rates, and taxes; the 
 apple-trees were thirty-eight years old ; and, to crown all, his 
 father was in treaty for two hundred acres of woodland just 
 outside the paternal park, which he intended to enclose with 
 walls. No hopes of a political career, no fame on earth, can 
 compare wi^h such advantages as these. 
 
 Whether out of malice or design, Mme. de Sainte-Severe 
 omitted to mention that Gaston had an elder brother; nor 
 did Gaston himself say a word about him. But, at the same 
 time, it is true that the brother was consumptive, and to all 
 appearance would shortly be laid in earth, lamented and for- 
 gotten. 
 
 At first Gaston de Nueil amused himself at the expense of 
 the circle. He drew, as it were, for his mental album, a 
 series of portraits of these folk, with their angular, wrinkled 
 faces, and hooked noses, their crotchets and ludicrous eccen- 
 tricities of dress, portraits which possessed all the racy flavor 
 of truth. He delighted in their "Normanisms," in the 
 primitive quaintness of their ideas and characters. For a 
 phort time he flung himself into their squirrel's life of busy 
 gyrations in a cage. Then he began to feel the want of 
 variety, and grew tired of it. It was like the life of the 
 cloister, cut short before it had well begun. He drifted on 
 till he reached a crisis, which is neither spleen nor disgust, 
 but combines all the symptoms of both. When a human be- 
 ing is transplanted into an uncongenial soil, to lead a starved, 
 stunted existence, there is always a little discomfort over the 
 transition. Then, gradually, if nothing removes him from 
 his surroundings, he grows accustomed to them, and adapts 
 himself to the vacuity which grows upon him and renders 
 him powerless. Even now, Gaston's lungs were accustomed 
 to the air; and he was willing to discern a kind of vegetable 
 happiness in days that brought no mental exertion and no 
 responsibilities. The constant stirring of the sap of life, the 
 fertilizing influences of mind on mind, after which he had
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 203 
 
 sought so eagerly in Paris, were beginning to fade from his 
 memory, and he was in a fair way of becoming a fossil with 
 these fossils, and ending his days among them, content, like 
 the companions of Ulysses, in his gross envelope. 
 
 One evening Gaston de Xueil was seated between a dowager 
 and one of the vicars-general of the diocese, in a gray-paneled 
 drawing-room, floored with large white tiles. The family 
 portraits which adorned the walls looked down upon four 
 card-tables, and some sixteen persons gathered about them, 
 chattering over their whist. Gaston, thinking of nothing, 
 digesting one of those exquisite dinners to which the pro- 
 vincial looks forward all through the day, found himself 
 justifying the customs of the country. 
 
 He began to understand why these good folk continued to 
 play with yesterday's pack of cards and shuffle them on a 
 threadbare tablecloth, and how it was that they had ceased 
 to dress for themselves or others. He saw the glimmerings 
 of something like a philosophy in the even tenor of their per- 
 petual round, in the calm of their methodical monotony, in 
 their ignorance of the refinements of luxury. Indeed, he al- 
 most came to think that luxury profited nothing; and even 
 now, the city of Paris, with its passions, storms, and pleas- 
 ures, was scarcely more than a memory of childhood. 
 
 He admired in all sincerity the red hands, and shy, bashful 
 manner of some young lady who at first struck him as an 
 awkward simpleton, unattractive to the last degree, and sur- 
 passingly ridiculous. His doom was sealed. He had gone 
 from the provinces to Paris; he had led the feverish life of 
 Paris ; and now he would have, sunk back into the lifeless life 
 of the provinces, but for a chance remark which reached his 
 ear a few words that called up a swift rush of such emotion 
 as he might have felt when a strain of really great music 
 mingles with the accompaniment of some tedious opera. 
 
 "You went to call on Mme. de Beauseant yesterday, did 
 you not?" The speaker was an elderly lady, and she ad- 
 dressed the head of the local royal family. 
 
 "I went this morning. She was so poorly and depressed, 
 that I could not persuade her to dine with us to-morrow."
 
 204 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 "With Mme. de Champignelles ?" exclaimed the dowager, 
 with something like astonishment in her manner. 
 
 "With my wife," calmly assented the noble. "Mme. de 
 Beauseant is descended from the House of Burgundy, on the 
 spindle side, 'tis true, but the name atones for everything. 
 My wife is very much attached to the Vicomtesse, and the 
 poor lady has lived alone for such a long while, that " 
 
 The Marquis de Champignelles looked round about him 
 while he spoke with an air of cool unconcern, so that it was 
 almost impossible to guess whether he made a concession to 
 Mme. de Beauseant's misfortunes, or paid homage to her 
 noble birth; whether he felt flattered to receive her in his 
 house, or, on the contrary, sheer pride was the motive that 
 led him to try to force the country families to meet the Vi- 
 comtesse. 
 
 The women appeared to take counsel of each other by a 
 glance; there was a sudden silence in the room, and it was 
 felt that their attitude was one of disapproval. 
 
 "Does this Mme. de Beauseant happen to be the lady whose 
 adventure with M. d'Ajuda-Pinto made so much noise?" 
 asked Gaston of his neighbor. 
 
 "The very same," he was told. "She came to Courcelles 
 after the marriage of the Marquis d'Ajuda ; nobody visits her. 
 She has, besides, too much sense not to see that she is in a 
 false position, so she has made no attempt to see any one. 
 M. de Champignelles and a few gentlemen went to call upon 
 her, but she would see no one but M. de Champignelles, per- 
 haps because he is a connection of the family. They are re- 
 lated through the Beauseants; the father of the present Vi- 
 comte married a Mile, de Champignelles of the older branch. 
 But though the Vicomtesse de Beauseant is supposed to be 
 a descendant of the House of Burgundy, you can understand 
 that we could not admit a wife separated from her husband 
 into our society here. We are foolish enough still to cling 
 to these old-fashioned ideas. There was the less excuse for 
 the Vicomtesse, because M. de Beauseant is a well-bred man 
 of the world, who would have been quite ready to listen to
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 205 
 
 reason. But his wife is quite mad " and so forth and so 
 forth. 
 
 M. de Nueil, still listening to the speaker's voice, gathered 
 nothing of the sense of the words; his brain was too full of 
 thick-coming fancies. Fancies? What other name can you 
 give to the alluring charms of an adventure that tempts the 
 imagination and sets vague hopes springing up in the soul; 
 to the sense of coming events and mysterious felicity and fear 
 at hand, while as yet there is no substance of fact on which 
 these phantoms of caprice can fix and feed ? Over these fan- 
 cies thought hovers, conceiving impossible projects, giving in 
 the germ all the joys of love. Perhaps, indeed, all passion 
 is contained in that thought-germ, as the beauty, and fra- 
 grance, and rich color of the flower is all packed in the seed. 
 
 M. de Nueil did not know that Mme. de Beauseant had 
 taken refuge in Normandy, after a notoriety which women 
 for the most part envy and condemn, especially when youth 
 and beauty in some sort excuse the transgression. Any sort 
 of celebrity bestows an inconceivable prestige. Apparently 
 for women, as for families, the glory of the crime effaces 
 the stain; and if such and such a noble house is proud of it? 
 tale of heads that have fallen on the scaffold, a young and 
 pretty woman becomes more interesting for the dubious re- 
 nown of a happy love or a scandalous desertion, and the more 
 she is to be pitied, the more she excites our sympathies. We 
 are only pitiless to the commonplace. If, moreover, we attract 
 all eyes, we are to all intents and purposes great; how, in- 
 deed, are we to be seen unless we raise ourselves above other 
 people's heads? The common herd of humanity feels an in- 
 voluntary respect for any person who can rise above it, and 
 is not over-particular as to the means by which they rise. 
 
 It may have been that some such motives influenced Gaston 
 de Nueil at unawares, or perhaps it was curiosity, or a craving 
 for some interest in his life ; or, in a word, that crowd of in- 
 explicable impulses which, for want of a better name, we are 
 wont to call "fatality," that drew him to Mme. de Beauseant. 
 
 The figure of the Vicomtesse de Beauseant rose up sud-
 
 206 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 denly before him with gracious thronging associations. She 
 was a new world for him, a world of fears and hopes, a world 
 to fight for and to conquer. Inevitably he felt the contrast 
 between this vision and the human beings in the shabby room ; 
 and then, in truth, she was a woman; what woman had he 
 seen so far in this dull, little world, where calculation re- 
 placed thought and feeling, where courtesy was a cut-and- 
 dried formality, and ideas of the very simplest were too alarm- 
 ing to be received or to pass current? The sound of Mme. 
 de Beauseant's name revived a young man's dreams and 
 wakened urgent desires that had lain dormant for a little. 
 
 Gaston de Nueil was absent-minded and preoccupied for the 
 rest of that evening. He was pondering how he might gain ac- 
 cess to Mme. de Beauseant, and truly it was no very easy mat- 
 ter. She was believed to be extremely clever. But if men and 
 women of parts may be captivated by something subtle or ec- 
 centric, they are also exacting, and can read all that lies 
 below the surface; and after the first step has been taken, 
 the chances of failure and success in the difficult task of 
 pleasing them are about even. In this particular case, more- 
 over, the Vicomtesse, besides the pride of her position, had 
 all the dignity of her name. Her utter seclusion was the least 
 of the barriers raised between her and the world. For which 
 reasons it was well-nigh impossible that a stranger, however 
 well born, could hope for admittance ; and yet, the next morn- 
 ing found M. de Nueil taking his walks abroad in the direc- 
 tion of Courcelles, a dupe of illusions natural at his age. 
 Several times he made the circuit of the garden walls, look- 
 ing earnestly through every gap at the closed shutters or open 
 windows, hoping for some romantic chance, on which he 
 founded schemes for introducing himself into this unknown 
 lady's presence, without a thought of their impractica- 
 bility. Morning after morning was spent in this way to 
 mighty little purpose; but with each day's walk, that vision 
 of a woman living apart from the world, of love's martyr 
 buried in solitude, loomed larger in his thoughts, and was 
 enshrined in his soul. So Gaston de Nueil walked under the
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 207 
 
 walls of Courcelles, and some gardener's heavy footstep would 
 set his heart beating high with hope. 
 
 He thought of writing to Mme. de Beauseant, but on ma- 
 ture consideration, what can you say to a woman whom you 
 have never seen, a complete stranger? And Gaston had little 
 self-confidence. Like most young persons with a plentiful 
 crop of illusions still standing, he dreaded the mortifying 
 contempt of silence more than death itself, and shuddered 
 at the thought of sending his first tender epistle forth to face 
 so many chances of being thrown on the fire. He was dis- 
 tracted by innumerable conflicting ideas. But by dint of in- 
 venting chimeras, weaving romances, and cudgeling his 
 brains, he hit at last upon one of the hopeful stratagems 
 that are sure to occur to your mind if you persevere long 
 enough, a stratagem which must make clear to the most in- 
 experienced woman that here was a man who took a fervent 
 interest in her. The caprice of social conventions puts as 
 many barriers between lovers as any Oriental imagination 
 can devise in the most delightfully fantastic tale ; indeed, the 
 most extravagant pictures are seldom exaggerations. In real 
 life, as in the fairy tales, the woman belongs to him who can 
 reach her and set her free from the position in which she 
 languishes. The poorest of calenders that ever fell in love 
 with the daughter of the Khalif is in truth scarcely further 
 from his lady than Gaston de Nueil from Mme. de Beauseant. 
 The Vicomtesse knew absolutely nothing of M. de Nueil's 
 wanderings round her house; Gaston de Nueil's love grew to 
 the height of the obstacles to overleap; and the distance set 
 between him and his extemporized lady-love produced the 
 usual effect of distance, in lending enchantment. 
 
 One day, confident in his inspiration, he hoped everything 
 from the love that must pour forth from his eyes. Spoken 
 words, in his opinion, were more eloquent than the most pas- 
 sionate letter; and, besides, he would engage feminine cu- 
 riosity to plead for him. He went, therefore, to a M. de 
 Champignelles, proposing to employ that gentleman for the 
 better success of his enterprise. He informed the Marquis
 
 208 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 that he had been entrusted with a delicate and important 
 commission which concerned the Vicomtesse de Beauseant, 
 that he felt doubtful whether she would read a letter written 
 in an unknown handwriting, or put confidence in a stranger. 
 Would M. de Champignelles, on his next visit, ask the Vi- 
 comtesse if she would consent to receive him Gaston de 
 Nueil? While he asked the Marquis to keep his secret in 
 case of a refusal, he very ingeniously insinuated sufficient 
 reasons for his own admittance, to be duly passed on to the 
 Vicomtesse. Was not M. de Champignelles a man of honor, 
 a loyal gentleman incapable of lending himself to any trans- 
 action in bad taste, nay, the merest suspicion of bad taste! 
 Love lends a young man all the self-possession and astute 
 craft of an old ambassador; all the Marquis' harmless vani- 
 ties were gratified, and the haughty grandee was completely 
 duped. He tried hard to fathom Gaston's secret; but the 
 latter, who would have been greatly perplexed to tell it, 
 turned off M. de Champignelles' adroit questioning with a 
 Norman's shrewdness, till the Marquis, as a gallant French- 
 man, complimented his young visitor upon his discretion. 
 
 M. de Champignelles hurried off at once to Courcelles, with 
 that eagerness to serve a pretty woman which belongs to his 
 time of life. In the Vicomtesse de Beauseant's position, such 
 a message was likely to arouse keen curiosity; so, although 
 her memory supplied no reason at all that could bring M. 
 de Nueil to her house, she saw no objection to his visit 
 after some prudent inquiries as to his family and condition. 
 At the same time, she began by a refusal. Then she dis- 
 cussed the propriety of the matter with M. de Champignelles, 
 directing her questions so as to discover, if possible, whether 
 he knew the motives for the visit, and finally revoked her 
 negative answer. The discussion and the discretion shown 
 perforce by the Marquis had piqued her curiosity. 
 
 M. de Champignelles had no mind to cut a ridiculous figure. 
 He said, with the air of a man who can keep another's coun- 
 sel, that the Vicomtesse must know the purpose of this visit 
 perfectly well; while the Vicomtesse, in all sincerity, had no
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 209 
 
 notion what it could be. Mme. de Beauseant, in perplexity, 
 connected Gaston with people whom he had never met, went 
 astray after various wild conjectures, and asked herself if 
 she had seen this M. de Nueil before. In truth, no love-letter, 
 however sincere or skilfully indited, could have produced so 
 much effect as this riddle. Again and again Mme. de Beau- 
 seant puzzled over it. 
 
 When Gaston heard that he might call upon the Vi- 
 comtesse, his rapture at so soon obtaining the ardently 
 longed-for good fortune was mingled with singular embar- 
 rassment. How was he to contrive a suitable sequel to this 
 stratagem ? 
 
 "Bah ! I shall see her," he said over and over again to him- 
 self as he dressed. "See her, and that is everything !" 
 
 He fell to hoping that once across the threshold of Cour- 
 celles he should find an expedient for unfastening this Gor- 
 dian knot of his own tying. There are believers in the om- 
 nipotence of necessity who never turn back ; the close presence 
 of danger is an inspiration that calls out all their powers for 
 victory. Gaston de Nueil was one of these. 
 
 He took particular pains with his dress, imagining, as 
 youth is apt to imagine, that success or failure hangs on the 
 position of a curl, and ignorant of the fact that anything is 
 charming in youth. And, in any case, such women as 
 Mme. de Beauseant are only attracted by the charms of wit 
 or character of an unusual order. Greatness of character 
 flatters their vanity, promises a great passion, seems to imply 
 a comprehension of the requirements of their hearts. Wit 
 amuses them, responds to the subtlety of their natures, and 
 they think that they are understood. And what do all women 
 wisn but to be amused, understood, or adored? It is only 
 after much reflection on the things of life that we under- 
 stand the consummate coquetry of neglect of dress and re- 
 serve at a first interview; and by the time we have gained 
 sufficient astuteness for successful strategy, we are too old to 
 profit by our experience 
 
 While Gaston's lack of confidence in his mental equipment 
 VOL. 538
 
 210 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 drove him to borrow charms from his clothes, Madame de 
 Beauseant herself was instinctively giving more attention to 
 her toilette. 
 
 "I would rather not frighten people, at all events," she said 
 to herself as she arranged her hair. 
 
 In M. de Nueil's character, person, and manner there was 
 that touch of unconscious originality which gives a kind of 
 flavor to things that any one might say or do, and absolves 
 everything that they may choose to do or say. He was highly 
 cultivated, he had a keen brain, and a face, mobile as his own 
 nature, which won the goodwill of others. The promise of 
 passion and tenderness in the bright eyes was fulfilled by an 
 essentially kindly heart. The resolution which he made as 
 he entered the house at Courcelles was in keeping with his 
 frank nature and ardent imagination. But, bold as he was 
 with love, his heart beat violently when he had crossed the 
 great court, laid out like an English garden, and the man- 
 servant, who had taken his name to the Vicomtesse, returned 
 to say that she would receive him. 
 
 "M. le Baron de Nueil." 
 
 Gaston came in slowly, but with sufficient ease of manner ; 
 and it is a more difficult thing, be it said, to enter a room 
 where there is but one woman, than a room that holds a 
 score. 
 
 A great fire was burning on the hearth in spite of the mild 
 weather, and by the soft light of the candles in the sconces 
 he saw a young woman sitting on a high-backed berg ere in 
 the angle by the hearth. The seat was so low that she could 
 move her head freely ; every turn of it was full of grace and 
 delicate charm, whether she bent, leaning forward, or raised 
 and held it erect, slowly and languidly, as though it were a 
 heavy burden, so low that she could cross her feet and let 
 them appear, or draw them back under the folds of a long 
 black dress. 
 
 The Vicomtesse made as if she would lay the book that 
 she was reading on a small, round stand; but as she did so, 
 ehe turned towards M. de Nueil, and the volume, insecurely
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 211 
 
 laid upon the edge, fell to the ground between the stand and 
 the sofa. This did not seem to disconcert her. She looked 
 up, bowing almost imperceptibly in response to his greeting, 
 without rising from the depths of the low chair in which she 
 lay. Bending forwards, she stirred the fire briskly, and 
 stooped to pick up a fallen glove, drawing it mechanically 
 over her left hand, while her eyes wandered in search of its 
 fellow. The glance was instantly checked, however, for she 
 stretched out a thin, white, all-but-transparent right hand, 
 with flawless ovals of rose-colored nail at the tips of the 
 slender, ringless fingers, and pointed to a chair as if to bid 
 Gaston be seated. He sat down, and she turned her face 
 questioningly towards him. Words cannot describe the 
 subtlety of the winning charm and inquiry in that gesture; 
 deliberate in its kindliness, gracious yet accurate in expres- 
 sion, it was the outcome of early education and of a constant 
 use and wont of the graciousness of life. These movements 
 of hers, so swift, so deft, succeeded each other so smoothly, 
 that Gaston de Nueil was fascinated by the blending of a 
 pretty woman's fastidious carelessness with the high-bred 
 manner of a great lady. 
 
 Mme. de Beauseant stood out in such strong contrast 
 against the automatons among whom he had spent two months 
 of exile in that out-of -the- world district of Normandy, that 
 he could not but find in her the realization of his romantic 
 dreams; and, on the other hand, he could not compare her 
 perfections with those of other women whom he had for- 
 merly admired. Here in her presence, in a drawing-room 
 like some salon in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, full of costly 
 trifles lying about upon the tables, and flowers and books, he 
 felt as if he were back in Paris. It was a real Parisian carpet 
 beneath his feet, he saw once more the high-bred type of 
 Parisienne, the fragile outlines of her form, her exquisite 
 charm, her disdain of the studied effects which did so much 
 to spoil provincial women. 
 
 Mme. de Beauseant had fair hair and dark eyes, and the 
 pale complexion that belongs to fair hair. She held up her
 
 212 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 brow nobly like some fallen angel, grown proud through the 
 fall, disdainful of pardon. Her way of gathering her thick 
 hair into a crown of plaits above the broad, curving lines of 
 the bandeaux upon her forehead, added to the queenliness 
 of her face. Imagination could discover the ducal coronet 
 of Burgundy in the spiral threads of her golden hair; all 
 the courage of her house seemed to gleam from the great 
 lady's brilliant eyes, such courage as women use to repel au- 
 dacity or scorn, for they were full of tenderness for gentle- 
 ness. The outline of that little head, so admirably poised 
 above the long, white throat, the delicate, fine features, the 
 subtle curves of the lips, the mobile face itself, wore an ex- 
 pression of delicate discretion, a faint semblance of irony 
 suggestive of craft and insolence. Yet it would have been 
 difficult to refuse forgiveness to those two feminine failings 
 in her; for the lines that came out in her forehead whenever 
 her face was not in repose, like her upward glances (that 
 pathetic trick of manner), told unmistakably of unhappiness, 
 of a passion that had all but cost her her life. A woman, 
 sitting in the great, silent salon, a woman cut off from the 
 rest of the world in this remote little valley, alone, with the 
 memories of her brilliant, happy, and impassioned youth, 
 of continual gaiety and homage paid on all sides, now re- 
 placed by the horrors of the void was there not something in 
 the sight to strike awe that deepened with reflection? Con- 
 sciousness of her own value lurked in her smile. She was 
 neither wife nor mother, she was an outlaw; she had lost 
 the one heart that could set her pulses beating without shame ; 
 she had nothing from without to support her reeling soul; 
 she must even look for strength from within, live her own 
 life, cherish no hope save that of forsaken love, which looks 
 'forward to Death's coming, and hastens his lagging footsteps. 
 And, this while life was in its prime. Oh! to feel destined 
 for happiness and to die never having given nor received 
 it! A woman too! What pain was this! These thoughts, 
 flashing across M. de Nueil's mind like lightning, left him 
 very humble in the presence of the greatest charm with which
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 213 
 
 woman can be invested. The triple aureole of beauty, noble- 
 ness, and misfortune dazzled him; he stood in dreamy, almost 
 open-mouthed, admiration of the Vicomtesse. But he found 
 nothing to say to her. 
 
 Mme. de Beauseant, by no means displeased, no doubt, by 
 his surprise, held out her hand with a kindly but imperious 
 gesture; then, summoning a smile to her pale lips, as if 
 obeying, even yet, the woman's impulse to be gracious : 
 
 "I have heard from M. de Champignelles of a message 
 which you have kindly undertaken to deliver, monsieur," she 
 said. "Can it be from " 
 
 With that terrible phrase Gaston understood, even more 
 clearly than before, his own ridiculous position, the bad taste 
 and bad faith of his behavior towards a woman so noble and 
 so unfortunate. He reddened. The thoughts that crowded 
 in upon him could be read in his troubled eyes ; but suddenty, 
 with the courage which youth draws from a sense of its own 
 wrongdoing, he gained confidence, and very humbly inter- 
 rupted Mme. de Beauseant. 
 
 "Madame," he faltered out, "I do not deserve the happi- 
 ness of seeing you. I have deceived you basely. However 
 strong the motive may have been, it can never excuse the 
 pitiful subterfuge which I used to gain my end. But, ma- 
 dame, if your goodness will permit me to tell you " 
 
 The Vicomtesse glanced at M. de Nueil, haughty disdain 
 in her whole manner. She stretched her hand to the bell and 
 rang it. 
 
 "Jacques," she said, "light this gentleman to the door," 
 and she looked with dignity at the visitor. 
 
 She rose proudly, bowed to Gaston, and then stooped for 
 the fallen volume. If all her movements on his entrance had 
 been caressingly dainty and gracious, her every gesture now 
 was no less severely frigid. M. de Nueil rose to his feet, but 
 he stood waiting. Mme. de Beauseant flung another glance 
 at him. "Well, why do you not go ?" she seemed to say. 
 
 There was such cutting irony in that glance that Gaston 
 grew white as if he were about to faint. Tears came into
 
 214 THE DESEI TED WOMAN 
 
 his eyes, but he would not let them fall, and scorching shame 
 and despair dried them. He looked back at Madame de Beau- 
 seant, and a certain pride and consciousness of his own worth 
 was mingled with his humility; the Vicomtesse had a right 
 to punish him, but ought she to use her right? Then he 
 went out. 
 
 As he crossed the ante-chamber, a clear head, and wits 
 sharpened by passion, were not slow to grasp the danger of 
 his situation. 
 
 "If I leave this house, I can never come back to it again," 
 he said to himself. "The Vicomtesse will always think of me 
 as a fool. It is impossible that a woman, and such a woman, 
 should not guess the love that she has called forth. Perhaps 
 she feels a little, vague, involuntary regret for dismissing 
 me so abruptly. But she could not do otherwise, and she 
 cannot recall her sentence. It rests with me to understand 
 her." 
 
 At that thought Gaston stopped short on the flight of steps 
 with an exclamation ; he turned sharply, saying, "I have for- 
 gotten something," and went back to the salon. The lackey, 
 all respect for a baron and the rights of property, was com- 
 pletely deceived by the natural utterance, and followed him. 
 Gaston returned quietly and unannounced. The Vicomtesse, 
 thinking that the intruder was the servant, looked up and 
 beheld M. de Nueil. 
 
 "Jacques lighted me to the door," he said, with a half- 
 sad smile which dispelled any suspicion of jest in those words, 
 while the tone in which they were spoken went to the heart. 
 Mme. de Beauseant was disarmed. 
 
 "Very well, take a seat," she said. 
 
 Gaston eagerly took possession of a chair. His eyes were 
 shining with happiness ; the Vicomtesse, unable to endure the 
 brilliant light in them, looked down at the book. She was 
 enjoying a delicious, ever new sensation; the sense of a man's 
 delight in her presence is an unfailing feminine instinct. 
 And then, besides, he had divined her, and a woman is so 
 grateful to the man who has mastered the apparently ca-
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 215 
 
 pricious, yet logical, reasoning of her heart; who can track 
 her thought through the seemingly contradictory workings 
 of her mind, and read the sensations, or shy or bold., written 
 in fleeting red, a bewildering maze of coquetry and self-revela- 
 tion. 
 
 "Madame," Gaston exclaimed in a low voice, "my blunder 
 you know, but you do not know how much I am to blame. 
 If you only knew what joy it was to " 
 
 "Ah! take care," she said, holding up one finger with an 
 air of mystery, as she put out her hand towards the bell. 
 
 The charming gesture, the gracious threat, no doubt called 
 up some sad thought, some memory of the old happy time 
 when she could be wholly charming and gentle without an 
 afterthought; when the gladness of her heart justified every 
 caprice, and put charm into every least movement. The lines 
 in her forehead gathered between her brows, and the expres- 
 sion of her face grew dark in the soft candle-light. Then 
 looking across at M. de Nueil gravely but not unkindly, she 
 spoke like a woman who deeply feels the meaning of every 
 word. 
 
 "This is all very ridiculous ! Once upon a time, monsieur, 
 when thoughtless high spirits were my privilege, I should have 
 laughed fearlessly over your visit with you. But now my life 
 is very much changed. I cannot do as I like, I am obliged to 
 think. What brings j'ou here ? Is it curiosity ? In that case 
 I am paying dearly for a little fleeting pleasure. Have you 
 fallen passionately in love already with a woman whom you 
 have never seen, a woman with whose name slander has, of 
 course, been busy? If so, your motive in making this visit 
 is based on disrespect, on an error which accident brought 
 into notoriety." 
 
 She flung her book down scornfully upon the table, then, 
 with a terrible look at Gaston, she went on: "Because I once 
 was weak, must it be supposed that I am always weak? This 
 is horrible, degrading. Or have you come here to pity me? 
 You are very young to offer sympathy with heart troubles. 
 Understand this clearly, sir, that I would rather have scorn 
 than pity. I will not endure compassion from any one."
 
 216 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 There was a brief pause. 
 
 "Well, sir," she continued (and the face that she turned 
 to him was gentle and sad), "whatever motive induced this 
 rash intrusion upon my solitude, it is very painful to me, you 
 see. You are too young to be totally without good feeling, 
 so surely you will feel that this behavior of yours is improper. 
 I forgive you for it, and, as you see, I am speaking of it to 
 you without bitterness. You will not come here again, will 
 you? I am' entreating when I might command. If you 
 come to see me again, neither you nor I can prevent the whole 
 place from believing that you are my lover, and you would 
 cause me great additional annoyance. You do not mean to 
 do that, I think." 
 
 She said no more, but looked at him with a great dignity 
 which abashed him. 
 
 "I have done wrong, madame," he said, with deep feeling 
 in his voice, "but it was through enthusiasm and thoughtless- 
 ness and eager desire of happiness, the qualities and defects 
 of my age. Now, I understand that I ought not to have tried 
 to- see you," he added; "but, at the same time, the desire was 
 a very natural one" and making an appeal to feeling rather 
 than to the intellect, he described the weariness of his en- 
 forced exile. He drew a portrait of a young man in whom 
 the fires of life were burning themselves out, conveying the 
 impression that here was a heart worthy of tender love, a heart 
 which, notwithstanding, had never known the joys of love 
 for a young and beautiful woman of refinement and taste. 
 He explained, without attempting to justify, his unusual con- 
 duct. He flattered Mme. de Beauseant by showing that she 
 had realized for him the ideal lady of a young man's dream, 
 the ideal sought by so many, and so often sought in vain. 
 Then he touched upon his morning prowlings under the walls 
 of Courcelles, and his wild thoughts at the first sight of the 
 house, till he excited that vague feeling of indulgence which 
 a woman can find in her heart for the follies committed for 
 her sake. 
 
 An impassioned voice was speaking in the chill solitude;
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 217 
 
 the speaker brought with him a warm breath of youth and 
 the charms of a carefully cultivated mind. It was so long 
 since Mme. de Beauseant had felt stirred by real feeling deli- 
 cately expressed, that it affected her very strongly now. In 
 spite of herself, she watched M. de Xueil's expressive face, 
 and admired the noble countenance of a soul, unbroken as 
 yet by the cruel discipline of the life of the world, unfretted 
 by continual scheming to gratify personal ambition and 
 vanity. Gaston was in the flower of his youth, he impressed 
 her as a man with something in him, unaware as yet of the 
 great career that lay before him. So both these two made 
 reflections most dangerous for their peace of mind, and both 
 strove to conceal their thoughts. M. de jSTueil saw in the 
 Vicomtesse a rare type of woman, always the victim of her 
 perfection and tenderness; her graceful beauty is the least 
 of her charms for those who are privileged to know the in- 
 finite of feeling and thought and goodness in the soul within ; 
 a woman whose instinctive feeling for beauty runs through 
 all the most varied expressions of love, purifying its trans- 
 ports, turning them to something almost holy; wonderful 
 secret of womanhood, the exquisite gift that Nature so seldom 
 bestows. And the Vicomtesse, on her side, listening to the 
 ring of sincerity in Gaston's voice, while he told of his youth- 
 ful troubles, began to understand all that grown children 
 of five-and-twenty suffer from diffidence, when hard work 
 has kept them alike from corrupting influences and inter- 
 course with men and women of the world whose sophistical 
 reasoning and experience destroys the fair qualities of youth. 
 Here was the ideal of women's dreams, a man unspoiled as 
 yet by the egoism of family or success, or by that narrow 
 selfishness which blights the first impulses of honor, devo- 
 tion, self-sacrifice, and high demands of self; all the flowers 
 so soon wither that enrich at first the life of delicate but 
 strong emotions, and keep alive the loyalty of the heart. 
 
 But these two, once launched forth into the vast of senti- 
 ment, went far indeed in theory, sounding the depths in either 
 soul, testing the sincerity of their expressions; only, whereas
 
 218 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 Gaston's experiments were made unconsciously, Mme. de 
 Beauseant had a purpose in all that she said. Bringing her 
 natural and acquired subtlety to the work, she sought to learn 
 M. de Nueil's opinions by advancing, as far as she could do 
 so, views diametrically opposed to her own. So witty and so 
 gracious was she, so much herself with this stranger, with 
 whom she felt completely at ease, because she felt sure that 
 they should never meet again, that, after some delicious epi- 
 gram of hers, Gaston exclaimed unthinkingly : 
 
 "Oh ! madame, how could any man have left you ?" 
 
 The Vicomtesse was silent. Gaston reddened, he thought 
 that he had offended her; but she was not angry. The first 
 deep thrill of delight since the day of her calamity had taken 
 her by surprise. The skill of the cleverest roue could not have 
 made the impression that M. de Nueil made with that cry 
 from the heart. That verdict wrung from a young man's 
 candor gave her back innocence in her own eyes, condemned 
 the world, laid the blame upon the lover who had left her, 
 and justified her subsequent solitary drooping life. The 
 world's absolution, the heartfelt sympathy, the social esteem 
 so longed for, and so harshly refused, nay, all her secret de- 
 sires were given her to the full in that exclamation, made 
 fairer yet by the heart's sweetest flatteries and the admira- 
 tion that women alway relish eagerly. He understood her, 
 understood all, and he had given her, as if it were the most 
 natural thing in the world, the opportunity of rising higher 
 through her fall. She looked at the clock. 
 
 "Ah ! madame, do not punish me for my heedlessness. If 
 you grant me but one evening, vouchsafe not to shorten it." 
 
 She smiled at the pretty speech. 
 
 "Well, as we must never meet again," she said, "what sig- 
 nifies a moment more or less? If you were to care for me, 
 it would be a pity." 
 
 "It is too late now," he said. 
 
 "Do not tell me that," she answered gravely. "Under any 
 other circumstances I should be very glad to see you. I will 
 speak frankly, and you will understand how it is that I do
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 219 
 
 toot choose to see you again, and ought not to do so. You 
 have too much magnanimity not to feel that if I were so 
 much as suspected of a second trespass, every one would think 
 of me as a contemptible and vulgar woman; I should be like 
 other women. A pure and blameless life will bring my char- 
 acter into relief. I am too proud not to endeavor to live like 
 one apart in the world, a victim of the law through my mar- 
 riage, man's victim through my love. If I were not faithful 
 to the position which I have taken up, then I should deserve 
 all the reproach that is heaped upon me ; I should be lowered 
 in my own eyes. I had not enough lofty social virtue to re- 
 main with a man whom I did not love. I have snapped the 
 bonds of marriage in spite of the law; it was wrong, it was a 
 crime, it was anything you like, but for me the bonds meant 
 death. I meant to live. Perhaps if I had been a mother I 
 could have endured the torture of a forced marriage of suit- 
 ability. At eighteen we scarcely know what is done with us, 
 poor girls that we are ! I have broken the laws of the world, 
 and the world has punished me ; we both did rightly. I sought 
 happiness. Is it not a law of our nature to seek for hap- 
 piness? I was young, I was beautiful ... I thought 
 that I had found a nature as loving, as apparently passion- 
 ate. I was loved indeed; for a little while . . ." 
 
 She paused. 
 
 "I used to think," she said, "that no one could leave a wo- 
 man in such a position as mine. I have been forsaken; I 
 must have offended in some way. Yes, in some way, no doubt, 
 I failed to keep some law of our nature, was too loving, too 
 devoted, too exacting I do not know. Evil days have 
 brought light with them ! For a long while I blamed an- 
 other, now I am content to bear the whole blame. At my own 
 expense, I have absolved that other of whom I once thought 
 I had a right to complain. I had not the art to keep him; 
 fate has punished me heavily for my lack of skill. I only 
 knew how to love; how can one keep oneself in mind when 
 one loves? So I was a slave when I should have sought to 
 be a tyrant. Those who know me may condemn me, but they
 
 220 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 will respect me too. Pain has taught me that I must not 
 lay myself open to this a second time. I cannot understand 
 how it is that I am living yet, after the anguish of that first 
 week of the most fearful crisis in a woman's life. Only from 
 three years of loneliness would it be possible to draw strength 
 to speak of that time as I am speaking now. Such agony, 
 monsieur, usually ends in death; but this well, it was the 
 agony of death with no tomb to end it. Oh ! I have known 
 pain indeed !" 
 
 The Vieomtesse raised her beautiful eyes to the ceiling; 
 and the cornice, no doubt, received all the confidences which 
 a stranger might not hear. When a woman is afraid to look 
 at her interlocutor, there is in truth no gentler, meeker, more 
 accommodating confidante than the cornice. The cornice is 
 quite an institution in the boudoir; what is it but the con- 
 fessional, minus the priest? 
 
 Mme. de Beauseant was eloquent and beautiful at that 
 moment; nay, "coquettish," if the word were not too heavy. 
 By justifying herself, by raising insurmountable barriers be- 
 tween herself and love, she was stimulating every sentiment 
 in the man before her ; nay, more, the higher she set the goal, 
 the more conspicuous it grew. At last, when her eyes had 
 lost the too eloquent expression given to them by painful 
 memories, she let them fall on Gaston. 
 
 "You acknowledge, do you not, that I am bound to lead 
 a solitary, self-contained life?" she said quietly. 
 
 So sublime was she in her reasoning and her madness, that 
 M. de Nueil felt a wild longing to throw himself at her feet ; 
 but he was afraid of making himself ridiculous, so he held 
 his enthusiasm and his thoughts in check. He was afraid, 
 too, that he might totally fail to express them, and in no 
 less terror of some awful rejection on her part, or of her 
 mockery, an apprehension which strikes like ice to the most 
 fervid soul. The revulsion which led him to crush down 
 every feeling as it sprang up in his heart cost him the intense 
 pain that diffident and ambitious natures experience in the 
 frequent crises when they are compelled to stifle their long-
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 221 
 
 ings. And yet, in spite of himself, he broke the silence to say 
 in a faltering voice : 
 
 "Madame, permit me to give way to one of the strongest 
 emotions of my life, and own to all that you have made me 
 feel. You set the heart in me swelling high ! I feel within 
 me a longing to make you forget your mortifications, to de- 
 vote my life to this, to give you love for all who ever have 
 given you wounds or hate. But this is a very sudden out- 
 pouring of the heart, nothing can justify it to-day, and I 
 ought not " 
 
 "Enough, monsieur," said Mme. de Beauseant; "we have 
 both of us gone too far. By giving you the sad reasons for a 
 refusal which I am compelled to give, I meant to soften it 
 and not to elicit homage. Coquetry only suits a happy wo- 
 man. Believe me, we must remain strangers to each other. 
 At a later day you will know that ties which must inevitably 
 be broken ought not to be formed at all." 
 
 She sighed lightly, and her brows contracted, but almost 
 immediately grew clear again. 
 
 "How painful it is for a woman to be powerless to follow 
 the man she loves through all the phases of his life ! And if 
 that man loves her truly, his heart must surely vibrate with 
 pain to the deep trouble in hers. Are they not twice un- 
 happy?" 
 
 There was a short pause. Then she rose smiling. 
 
 "You little suspected, when you came to Courcelles, that 
 you were to hear a sermon, did you?" 
 
 Gaston felt even further than at first from this extraordi- 
 nary woman. Was the charm of that delightful hour due 
 after all to the coquetry of the mistress of the house? She 
 had been anxious to display her wit. He bowed stiffly to the 
 Vicomtesse, and went away in desperation. 
 
 On the way home he tried to de'tect the real character of a 
 creature supple and hard as a steel spring; but he had seen 
 her pass through so many phases, that he could not make up 
 his mind about her. The tones of her voice, too, were ring- 
 ing in his ears; her gestures, the little movements of her
 
 222 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 head, and the varying expression of her eyes grew more gra- 
 cious in memory, more fascinating as he thought of them. 
 The Vicomtesse's beauty shone out again for him in the 
 darkness; his reviving impressions called up yet others, and 
 he was enthralled anew by womanly charm and wit, which 
 at first he had not perceived. He fell to wandering musings, 
 in which the most lucid thoughts grow refractory and flatly 
 contradict each other, and the soul passes through a brief 
 frenzy fit. Youth only can understand all that lies in the 
 dithyrambic outpourings of youth when, after a stormy siege, 
 of the most frantic folly and coolest common-sense, the heart 
 finally yields to the assault of the latest comer, be it hope, or 
 despair, as some mysterious power determines. 
 
 At three-and-twenty, diffidence nearly always rules a man's 
 conduct ; he is perplexed with a young girl's shyness, a girl's 
 trouble; he is afraid lest he should express his love ill, sees 
 nothing but difficulties, and takes alarm at them; he would 
 be bolder if he loved less, for he has no confidence in himself, 
 and with a growing sense of the cost of happiness comes a 
 conviction that the woman he loves cannot easily be won ; per- 
 haps, too, he is giving himself up too entirely to his own 
 pleasure, and fears that he can give none; and when, for his 
 misfortune, his idol inspires him with awe, he worships in 
 secret and afar, and unless his love is guessed, it dies away. 
 Then it often happens that one of these dead early loves lin- 
 gers on, bright with illusions in many a young heart. What 
 man is there but keeps within him these virgin memories that 
 grow fairer every time they rise before him, memories that 
 hold up to him the ideal of perfect bliss ? Such recollections 
 are like children who die in the flower of childhood, before 
 their parents have known anything of them but their smiles. 
 
 So M. de Nueil came home from Courcelles, the victim of a 
 mood fraught with desperate resolutions. Even now he felt 
 that Mme. de Beauseant was one of the conditions of his ex- 
 istence, and that death would be preferable to life without 
 her. He was still young enough to feel the tyrannous fasci- 
 nation which fully-developed womanhood exerts over imma-
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 223 
 
 ture and impassioned natures; and, consequently, he was to 
 spend one of those stormy nights when a young man's 
 thoughts travel from happiness to suicide and back again 
 nights in which youth rushes through a lifetime of bliss and 
 falls asleep from sheer exhaustion. Fateful nights are they, 
 and the worst misfortune that can happen is to awake a phil- 
 osopher afterwards. M. de Nueil was far too deeply in love 
 to sleep; he rose and betook to inditing letters, but none of 
 them were satisfactory, and he burned them all. 
 
 The next day he went to Courcelles to make the circuit of 
 her garden walls, but he waited till nightfall ; he was afraid 
 that she might see him. The instinct that led him to act 
 in this way arose out of so obscure a mood of the soul, that 
 none but a young man, or a man in like case, can fully under- 
 stand its mute ecstasies and its vagaries, matter to set those 
 people who are lucky enough to see life only in its matter-of- 
 fact aspect shrugging their shoulders. After painful hesita- 
 tion, Gaston wrote to Mme. de Beauseant. Here is the let- 
 ter, which may serve as a sample of the epistolary style pe- 
 culiar to lovers, a performance which, like the drawings pre- 
 pared with great secrecy by children for the birthdays of 
 father or mother, is found insufferable by every mortal ex- 
 cept the recipients: 
 
 ''MADAME, Your power over my heart, my soul, myself, 
 is so great that my fate depends wholly upon you to-day. Do 
 not throw this letter into the fire; be so kind as to read it 
 through. Perhaps you may pardon the opening sentence 
 when you see that it is no commonplace, selfish declaration, 
 but that it expresses a simple fact. Perhaps you may feel 
 moved, because I ask for so little, by the submission of one 
 who feels himself so much beneath you, by the influence that 
 your decision will exercise upon my life. At my age, ma- 
 dame, I only know how to love, I am utterly ignorant of ways 
 of attracting and winning a woman's love, but in my own 
 heart I know raptures of adoration of her. I am irresistibly 
 drawn to you by the great happiness that I feel through you;
 
 224 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 my thoughts turn to you with the selfish instinct which bids 
 us draw nearer to the fire of life when we find it. I do not 
 imagine that I am worthy of you; it seems impossible that 
 I, young, ignorant, and shy, could bring you one-thousandth 
 part of the happiness that I drink in at the sound of your 
 voice and the sight of you. For me you are the only woman 
 in the world. I cannot imagine life without you, so I have 
 made up my mind to leave France, and to risk my life till I 
 lose it in some desperate enterprise, in the Indies, in Africa, 
 I care not where. How can I quell a love that knows no 
 limits save by opposing to it something as infinite ? Yet, if 
 you will allow me to hope, not to be yours, but to win your 
 friendship, I will stay. Let me come, not so very often, 
 if you require it, to spend a few such hours with you as those 
 stolen hours of yesterday. The keen delight of that brief hap- 
 piness, to be cut short at the least over-ardent word from me, 
 will suffice to enable me to endure the boiling torrent in my 
 veins. Have I presumed too much upon your generosity by 
 this entreaty to suffer an intercourse in which all the gain 
 is mine alone? You could find ways of showing the world, 
 to which you sacrifice so much, that I am nothing to you ; you 
 are so clever and so proud ! What have you to fear ? If I 
 could only lay bare my heart to you at this moment, to con- 
 vince you that it is with no lurking afterthought that I make 
 this humble request ! Should I have told you that my love 
 was boundless, while I prayed you to grant me friendship, if 
 I had any hope of your sharing this feeling in the depths of 
 my soul? No, while I am with you, I will be whatever you 
 will, if only I may be with you. If you refuse (as you have 
 the power to refuse), I will not utter one murmur, I will go. 
 And if, at a later day, any other woman should enter into my 
 life, you will have proof that you were right; but if I am 
 faithful till death, you may feel some regret perhaps. The 
 hope of causing you a regret will soothe my agony, and that 
 thought shall be the sole revenge of a slighted heart. . . ." 
 
 Only those who have passed through all the exceeding trib-
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 225 
 
 ulations of youth, who have seized on all the chimeras with 
 two white pinions, the nightmare fancies at the disposal of a 
 fervid imagination, can realize the horrors that seized upon 
 Gaston de Nueil when he had reason to suppose that his ulti- 
 matum was in Mme. de Beauseant's hands. He saw the Vi- 
 comtesse, wholly untouched, laughing at his letter and his 
 love, as those can laugh who have ceased to believe in love. 
 He could have wished to have his letter back again. It was an 
 absurd letter. There were a thousand and one things, now 
 that he came to think of it, that he might have said, things 
 infinitely better and more moving than those stilted phrases 
 of his, those accursed, sophisticated, pretentious, fine-spun 
 phrases, though, luckily, the punctuation had heen pretty 
 bad, and the lines shockingly crooked. He tried not to think, 
 not to feel; but he felt and thought, and was wretched. If 
 he had been thirty years old, he might have got drunk, but 
 the innocence of three-and-twenty knew nothing of the re- 
 sources of opium nor of the expedients of advanced civiliza- 
 tion. Nor had he at hand one of those good friends of the 
 Parisian pattern who understand so well how to say Pcete, non 
 dolet! by producing a bottle of champagne, or alleviate the 
 agony of suspense by carrying you off somewhere to make a 
 night of it. Capital fellows are they, always in low water 
 when you are in funds, always off to some watering-place 
 when you go to look them up, always with some bad bargain in 
 horse-flesh to sell you ; it is true, that when you want to bor- 
 row of them, they have always just lost their last louis at 
 play; but in all other respects they are the best fellows on 
 earth, always ready to embark with you on one of the steep 
 down-grades where you lose your time, your soul, and your 
 life! 
 
 At length M. de Nueil received a missive through the in- 
 strumentality of Jacques, a letter that bore the arms of Bur- 
 gundy on the scented seal, a letter written on vellum note- 
 paper. 
 
 He rushed away at once to lock himself in, and read and 
 re-read her letter: 
 VOL. 539
 
 226 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 <f You are punishing me very severely, monsieur, both for; 
 the friendliness of my effort to spare you a rebuff, and for 
 the attraction which intellect always has for me. I put con- 
 fidence in the generosity of youth, and you have disappointed 
 me. And yet, if I did not speak unreservedly (which would 
 have been perfectly ridiculous), at any rate I spoke frankly 
 of my position, so that you might imagine that I was not to 
 be touched by a young soul. My distress is the keener for my 
 interest in you. I am naturally tender-hearted and kindly, 
 but circumstances force me to act unkindly. Another woman 
 would have flung your letter, unread, into the fire ; I read it, 
 and I am answering it. My answer will make it clear to you 
 that while I am not untouched by the expression of this feel- 
 ing which I have inspired, albeit unconsciously, I am still far 
 from sharing it, and the step which I am about to take will 
 show you still more plainly that I mean what I say. I wish 
 besides, to use, for your welfare, that authority, as it were, 
 which you give me over your life; and I desire to exercise 
 it this once to draw aside the veil from your eyes. 
 
 "I am nearly thirty years old, monsieur; you are barely 
 two-and-twenty. You yourself cannot know what your 
 thoughts will be at my age. The vows that you make so 
 lightly to-day may seem a very heavy burden to you then. I 
 am quite willing to believe that at this moment you would 
 give me your whole life without a regret, you would even be 
 ready to die for a little brief happiness; but at the age of 
 thirty experience will take from you the very power of making 
 daily sacrifices for my sake, and I myself should feel deeply 
 humiliated if I accepted them. A day would come when every- 
 thing, even Nature, would bid you leave me, and I have 
 already told you that death is preferable to desertion. Mis- 
 fortune has taught me to calculate ; as you see, I am arguing 
 perfectly dispassionately. You force me to tell you that I 
 have no love for you ; I ought not to love, I cannot, and I will 
 not. It is too late to yield, as women yield, to a blind unrea- 
 soning impulse of the heart, too late to be the mistress whom 
 you seek. My consolations spring from God, not from earth.
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 227 
 
 Ah, and besides, with the melancholy insight of disappointed 
 love, I read hearts too clearly to accept your proffered friend- 
 ship. It is only instinct. I forgive the boyish ruse, for 
 which you are not responsible as yet. In the name of this 
 passing fancy of yours, for the sake of your career and my 
 own peace of mind, I bid you stay in your own country; you 
 must not spoil a fair and honorable life for an illusion which, 
 by its very nature, cannot last. At a later day, when you 
 have accomplished your real destiny, in the fully developed 
 manhood. that awaits you, you will appreciate this answer 
 of mine, though to-day it may be that you blame its hard- 
 ness. You will turn with pleasure to an old woman whose 
 friendship will certainly be sweet and precious to you then; 
 a friendship untried by the extremes of passion and the dis- 
 enchanting processes of life; a friendship which noble 
 thoughts and thoughts of religion will keep pure and sacred. 
 Farewell; do my bidding with the thought that your suc- 
 cess will bring a gleam of pleasure into my solitude, and only 
 think of me as we think of absent friends." 
 
 Gaston de Kueil read the letter, and wrote the following 
 lines : 
 
 "MADAME, If I could cease to love you, to take the 
 chances of becoming an ordinary man which you hold out to 
 me, you must admit that I should thoroughly deserve my fate. 
 No, I shall not do as you bid me ; the oath of fidelity which I 
 swear to you shall only be absolved by death. Ah ! take my 
 life, unless indeed you do not fear- to carry a remorse all 
 through your own " 
 
 When the man returned from his errand, M. de Nueil askedi 
 him with whom he left the note? 
 
 "I gave it to Mme. la Vicomtesse herself, sir; she was ill 
 her carriage and just about to start." 
 
 "For the town?" 
 
 "I don't think so, sir. Mme. la Vicomtesse had poat- 
 horses."
 
 228 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 "Ah ! then she is going away," said the Baron. 
 
 "Yes, sir," the man answered. 
 
 Gaston de Nueil at once prepared to follow Mme. de 
 Beauseant. She led the way as far as Geneva, without a sus- 
 picion that he followed. And he ? Amid the many thoughts 
 that assailed him during that journey, one all-absorbing 
 problem filled his mind "Why did she go away?" Theories 
 grew thickly on such ground for supposition, and naturally he 
 inclined to the one that flattered his hopes "If the Vicomt- 
 esse cares for me, a clever woman would, of course, choose 
 Switzerland, where nobody knows either of us, in preference 
 to France, where she would find censorious critics." 
 
 An impassioned lover of a certain stamp would not feel 
 attracted to a woman clever enough to choose her own 
 ground; such women are too clever. However, there is 
 nothing to prove that there was any truth in Gaston's sup- 
 position. 
 
 The Vicomtesse took a small house by the side of the lake. 
 As soon as she was installed in it, Gaston came one summer 
 evening in the twilight. Jacques, that flunkey in grain, 
 showed no sign of surprise, and announced M. le Baron de 
 Nueil like a discreet domestic well acquainted with good 
 society. At the sound of the name, at the sight of its owner, 
 Mme. de Beauseant let her book fall from her hands; her 
 surprise gave him time to come close to her, and to say in 
 tones that sounded like music in her ears: 
 
 "What joy it was to me to take the horses that brought you 
 on this journey !" 
 
 To have the inmost desires of the heart so fulfilled! 
 Where is the woman who could resist such happiness as this ? 
 An Italian woman, one of those divine creatures who, psycho- 
 logically, are as far removed from the Parisian as if they 
 lived at the Antipodes, a being who would be regarded as 
 profoundly immoral on this side the Alps, an Italian (to 
 resume) made the following comment on some French novels 
 which she had been reading. "I cannot see," she remarked, 
 "why these poor lovers take such a time over coming to an
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 229 
 
 arrangement which ought to be the affair of a single morn- 
 ing." Why should not the novelist take a hint from this 
 worthy lady, and refrain from exhausting the theme and 
 the reader? Some few passages of coquetry it would cer- 
 tainly be pleasant to give in outline; the story of Mme. de 
 Beauseant's demurs and sweet delayings, that, like the vestal 
 virgins of antiquity, she might fall gracefully, and by linger- 
 ing over the innocent raptures of first love draw from it its 
 utmost strength and sweetness. M. de Nueil was at an age 
 when a man is the dupe of these caprices, of the fence which 
 women delight to prolong; either to dictate their own terms, 
 or to enjoy the sense of their power yet longer, knowing 
 instinctively as they do that it must soon grow less. But, 
 after all, these little boudoir protocols, less numerous than 
 those of the Congress of London, are too small to be worth 
 mention in the history of this passion. 
 
 For three years Mme. de Beauseant and M. de Nueil lived 
 in the villa on the lake of Geneva. They lived quite alone, 
 received no visitors, caused no talk, rose late, went out to- 
 gether upon the lake, knew, in short, the happiness of which 
 we all of us dream. It was a simple little house, with green 
 shutters, and broad balconies shaded with awnings, a house 
 contrived of set purpose for lovers, with its white couches, 
 soundless carpets, and fresh hangings, everything within it 
 reflecting their joy. Every window looked out on some new 
 view of the lake ; in the far distance lay the mountains, fan- 
 tastic visions of changing color and evanescent cloud; above 
 them spread the sunny sky, before them stretched the broad 
 sheet of water, never the same in its fitful changes. All their 
 surroundings seemed to dream for them, all things smiled 
 upon them. 
 
 Then weighty matters recalled M. de Nueil to France. 
 His father and brother died, and he was obliged to leave 
 Geneva. The lovers bought the house ; and if they could have 
 had their way, they would have removed the hills piecemeal, 
 drawn off the lake with a siphon, and taken everything away 
 with them.
 
 230 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 Mme. de Beauseant followed M. de Nueil. She realized 
 her property, and bought a considerable estate near Maner- 
 ville, adjoining Gaston's lands, and here they lived together; 
 Gaston very graciously giving up Manerville to his mother 
 for the present in consideration of the bachelor freedom in 
 which she left him. 
 
 Mme. de Beauseant's estate was close to a little town in 
 one of the most picturesque spots in the valley of the Auge. 
 Here the lovers raised barriers between themselves and social 
 intercourse, barriers which no creature could overleap, and 
 here the happy days of Switzerland were lived over again. 
 For nine whole years they knew happiness which it serves 
 no purpose to describe; happiness which may be divined from 
 the outcome of the story by those whose souls can comprehend 
 poetry and prayer in their infinite manifestations. 
 
 All this time Mme. de Beauseant's husband, the present 
 Marquis (his father and elder brother having died), enjoyed 
 the soundest health. There is no better aid to life than a 
 certain knowledge that our demise would confer a benefit on 
 some fellow-creature. M. de Beauseant was one of those iron- 
 ical and wayward beings who, like holders of life-annuities, 
 wake with an additional sense of relish every morning to a 
 consciousness of good health. For the rest, he was a man of 
 the world, somewhat methodical and ceremonious, and a cal- 
 culator of consequences, who could make a declaration of love 
 as quietly as a lackey announces that "Madame is served." 
 
 This brief biographical notice of his lordship the Marquis 
 de Beauseant is given to explain the reasons why it was im- 
 possible for the Marquise to marry M. de Nueil. 
 
 So, after a nine years' lease of happiness, the sweetest 
 agreement to which a woman ever put her hand, M. de Nueil 
 and Mme. de Beauseant were still in a position quite as 
 natural and quite as false as at the beginning of their ad- 
 venture. And yet they had reached a fatal crisis, which may 
 be stated as clearly as any problem in mathematics. 
 
 Mme. la Comtesse de Nueil, Gaston's mother, a strait-laced 
 and virtuous person, who had made the late Baron happy in
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 231 
 
 strictly legal fashion, would never consent to meet Mme. de 
 Beauseant. Mme. de Beauseant quite understood that the 
 wortlry dowager must of necessity be her enemy, and that 
 she would try to draw Gaston from his unhallowed and im- 
 moral way of life. The Marquise de Beauseant would will- 
 ingly have sold her property and gone back to Geneva, but she 
 could not bring herself to do it; it would mean that she 
 distrusted M. de Nueil. Moreover, he had taken a great fancy 
 to this very Valleroy esta-te, where he was making plantations 
 and improvements. She would not deprive him of a piece 
 of pleasurable routine- work, such as women always wish for 
 their husbands, and even for their lovers. 
 
 A Mile, de la Rodiere, twenty-two years of age, an heiress 
 with a rent-roll of forty thousand livres, had come to live in 
 the neighborhood. Gaston always met her at Manerville 
 whenever he was obliged to go thither. These various per- 
 sonages being to each other as the terms of a proportion sum, 
 the following letter will throw light on the appalling problem 
 which Mme. de Beauseant had been trying for the past month 
 to solve: 
 
 "My beloved angel, it seems like nonsense, does it not, to 
 write to you when there is nothing to keep us apart, when a 
 caress so often takes the place of words, and words too are 
 caresses? Ah, well, no, love. There are some things that a 
 woman cannot say when she is face to face with the man she 
 loves; at the bare thought of them her voice fails her, and 
 the blood goes back to her heart; she has no strength, no 
 intelligence left. It hurts me to feel like this when you are 
 near me, and it happens often. I feel that my heart should 
 be wholly sincere for you ; that I should disguise no thought, 
 however transient, in my heart ; and I love the sweet careless- 
 ness, which suits me so well, too much to endure this em- 
 barrassment and constraint any longer. So I will tell you 
 about my anguish yes, it is anguish. Listen to me ! do not 
 begin with the little 'Tut, tut, tut/ that you use to silence 
 me, an impertinence that I love, because anything from you
 
 232 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 pleases me. Dear soul from heaven, wedded to mine, let me 
 first tell you that you have effaced all memory of the pain 
 that once was crushing the life out of me. I did not know 
 what love was before I knew you. Only the candor of your 
 beautiful young life, only the purity of that great soul of 
 yours, could satisfy the requirements of an exacting woman's 
 heart. Dear love, how very often I have thrilled with joy to 
 think that in these nine long, swift years, my jealousy has 
 not been once awakened. All the flowers of your soul have 
 been mine, all your thoughts. There has not been the faint- 
 est cloud in our heaven; we have not known what sacrifice 
 is; we have always acted on the impulses of our hearts. I 
 have known happiness, infinite for a woman. Will the tears 
 that drench this sheet tell you all my gratitude? I could 
 wish that I had knelt to write the words ! Well, out of this 
 felicity has arisen torture more terrible than the pain of de- 
 sertion. Dear, there are very deep recesses in a woman's 
 heart ; how deep in my own heart, I did not know myself until 
 to-day, as I did not know the whole extent of love. The 
 greatest misery which could overwhelm us is a light burden 
 compared with the mere thought of harm for him whom we 
 love. And how if we cause the harm, is it not enough to make 
 one die ? . . . This is the thought that is weighing upon 
 me. But it brings in its train another thought that is heav- 
 ier far, a thought that tarnishes the glory of love, and slays 
 it, and turns it into a humiliation which sullies life as long 
 as it lasts. You are thirty years old; I am forty. What 
 dread this difference in age calls up in a woman who loves ! 
 It is possible that, first of all unconsciously, afterwards in 
 earnest, you have felt the sacrifices that you have made by 
 renouncing all in the world for me. Perhaps you have 
 thought of your future from the social point of view, of the 
 marriage which would, of course, increase your fortune, and 
 give you avowed happiness and children who would inherit 
 your wealth; perhaps you have thought of reappearing in 
 the world, and filling your place there honorably. And then, 
 if so, you must have repressed those thoughts, and felt glad
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 233 
 
 to sacrifice heiress and fortune and a fair future to me with- 
 out my knowledge. In your young man's generosity, you 
 must have resolved to be faithful to the vows which bind us 
 each to each in the sight of God. My past pain has risen 
 up before your mind, and the misery from which you res- 
 cued me has been my protection. To owe your love to your 
 pity ! The thought is even more painful to me than the fear 
 of spoiling your life for you. The man who can bring him- 
 self to stab his mistress is very charitable if he gives her her 
 deathblow while she is happy and ignorant of evil, while illu- 
 sions are in full blossom. . . . Yes, death is preferable 
 to the two thoughts which have secretly saddened the hours 
 for several days. To-day, when you asked 'What ails you?' 
 so tenderly, the sound of your voice made me shiver. I 
 thought that, after your wont, you were reading my very 
 soul, and I waited for your confidence to come, thinking that 
 my presentiments had come true, and that I 'had guessed at 
 all that was going on in your mind. Then I began to think 
 over certain little things that you always do for me, and I 
 thought I could see in you the sort of affectation by which a 
 man betrays a consciousness that his loyalty is becoming a 
 burden. And in that moment I paid very dear for my hap- 
 piness. I felt that Nature always demands the price for the 
 treasure called love. Briefly, has not fate separated us ? Can 
 you have said, 'Sooner or later I must leave poor Claire; 
 why not separate in time?' I read that thought in the 
 depths of your eyes, and went away to cry by myself. Hid- 
 ing my tears from you ! the first tears that I have shed for 
 sorrow for these ten years ; I am too proud to let you see them, 
 but I did not reproach you in the least. 
 
 "Yes, you are right. I ought not to be so selfish as to bind 
 your long and brilliant career to my so-soon out-worn life. 
 . . . And yet how if I have been mistaken? How if I 
 have taken your love melancholy for a deliberation? Oh, my 
 love, do not leave me in suspense; punish this jealous wife 
 of yours, but give her back the sense of her love and yours; 
 the whole woman lies in that that consciousness sanctifies 
 everything.
 
 284 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 "Since your mother came, since you paid a visit to Mile, 
 de Kodiere, I have been gnawed by doubts dishonoring to us 
 both. Make me suffer for this, but do not deceive me; I want 
 to know everything that your mother said and that you 
 think! If you have hesitated between some alternative and 
 me, I give you back your liberty. . . .1 will not let you 
 know what happens to me; I will not shed tears for you to 
 see ; only I will not see you again. . . . Ah ! I cannot 
 go on, my heart is breaking . . . 
 
 I have been sitting benumbed and stupid for some moments. 
 Dear love, I do not find that any feeling of pride rises against 
 you; you are so kind-hearted, so open; you would find it im- 
 possible to hurt me or to deceive me; and you will tell me 
 the truth, however cruel it may be. Do you wish me to en- 
 courage your confession ? Well, then, heart of mine, I shall 
 find comfort in- a woman's thought. Has not the youth of 
 your being been mine, your sensitive, wholly gracious, beau- 
 tiful, and delicate youth? No woman shall find henceforth 
 the Gaston whom I have known, nor the delicious happiness 
 that he has given me. . . . No ; you will never love again 
 as you have loved, as you love me now ; no, I shall never have 
 a rival, it is impossible. There will be no bitterness in my 
 memories of our love, and I shall think of nothing else. It 
 is out of your power to enchant any woman henceforth by the 
 childish provocations, the charming ways of a young heart, 
 the soul's winning charm, the body's grace, the swift com- 
 munion of rapture, the whole divine cortege of young love, 
 in fine. 
 
 "Oh, you are a man now, you will obey your destiny, 
 weighing and considering all things. You will have cares, 
 and anxieties, and ambitions, and concerns that will rob her 
 of the unchanging smile that made your lips fair for me. 
 The tones that were always so sweet for me will be troubled 
 at times; and your eyes that lighted up with radiance from 
 heaven at the sight of me, will often be lustreless for her. 
 And besides, as it is impossible to love you as I love you,
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 235 
 
 you will never care for that woman as you have cared for 
 me. She will never keep a constant watch over herself as I 
 have done; she will never study your happiness at every 
 moment with an intuition which has never failed me. Ah, 
 yes, the man, the heart and soul, which I shall have known 
 will exist no longer. I shall bury him deep in my memory, 
 that I may have the joy of him still; I shall live happy in 
 that fair past life of ours, a life hidden from all but our 
 inmost selves. 
 
 "Dear treasure of mine, if all the while no least thought 
 of liberty has risen in your mind, if my love is no burden on 
 you, if my fears are chimerical, if I am still your Eve the 
 one woman in the world for you come to me as soon as you 
 have read this letter, come quickly ! Ah, in one moment I will 
 love you more than I have ever loved you, I think, in these 
 nine years. After enduring the needless torture of these 
 doubts of which I am accusing myself, every added day of 
 love, yes, every single day, will be a whole lifetime of bliss. 
 So speak, and speak openly; do not deceive me, it would be 
 a crime. Tell me, do you wish for your liberty? Have you 
 thought of all that a man's life means? Is there any regret 
 in your mind ? That I should cause you a regret ! I should 
 die of it. I have said it: I love you enough to set your hap- 
 piness above mine, your life before my own. Leave on one 
 side, if you can, the wealth of memories of our nine years' 
 happiness, that they may not influence your decision, but 
 speak ! I submit myself to you as to God, the one Consoler 
 who remains if you forsake me." 
 
 When Mme. de Beauseant knew that her letter was in M. 
 de Nueil's hands, she sank in such utter prostration, the over- 
 pressure of many thoughts so numbed her faculties, that she 
 seemed almost drowsy. At any rate, she was suffering from 
 a pain not always proportioned in its intensity to a woman's 
 strength; pain which women alone know. And while the 
 unhappy Marquise awaited her doom, M. de JSTueil, reading 
 her letter, felt that he was "in a very difficult position/' to
 
 336 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 use the expression that young men apply to a crisis of this 
 kind. 
 
 By this time he had all but yielded to his mother's impor- 
 tunities and to the attractions of Mile, de la Rodiere, a some- 
 what insignificant, pink-and-white young person, as straight 
 as a poplar. It is true that, in accordance with the rules laid 
 down for marriageable young ladies, she scarcely opened her 
 mouth, but her rent-roll of forty thousand livres spoke quite 
 sufficiently for her. Mme. de Nueil, with a mother's sincere 
 affection, tried to entangle her son in virtuous courses. She 
 called his attention to the fact that it was a flattering dis- 
 tinction to be preferred by Mile, de la Rodiere, who had re- 
 fused so many great matches; it was quite time, she urged, 
 that he should think of his future, such a good opportunity 
 might not repeat itself, some day he would have eighty thou- 
 sand livres of income from land; money made anything 
 bearable; if Mme. de Beauseant loved him for his own sake, 
 she ought to be the first to urge him to marry. In short, the 
 well-intentioned mother forgot no arguments which the 
 feminine intellect can bring to bear upon the masculine mind, 
 and by these means she had brought her son into a wavering 
 condition. 
 
 Mme. de Beauseant's letter arrived just as Gaston's love 
 of her was holding out against the temptations of a settled 
 life conformable to received ideas. That letter decided the 
 day. He made up his mind to break off with the Marquise 
 and to marry. 
 
 "One must live a man's life," said he to himself. 
 
 Then followed some inkling of the pain that this decision 
 would give to Mme. de Beauseant. The man's vanity and 
 the lover's conscience further exaggerated this pain, and a 
 sincere pity for her seized upon him. All at once the im- 
 mensity of the misery became apparent to him, and he 
 thought it necessary and charitable to deaden the deadly 
 blow. He hoped to bring Mme. de Beauseant to a calm 
 frame of mind by gradually reconciling her to the idea of 
 separation; while Mile, de la Rodiere, always like a shadowy
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 237 
 
 third between them, should be sacrificed to her at first, only 
 to ba imposed upon her later. His marriage should take 
 place later, in obedience to Mme. de Beauseant's expressed 
 wish. He went so far as to enlist the Marquise's nobleness 
 and pride and all the great qualities of her nature to help 
 him to succeed in this compassionate design. He would write 
 a letter at once to allay her suspicions. A letter! For a 
 woman with the most exquisite feminine perception, as well 
 as the intuition of passionate love, a letter in itself was a sen- 
 tence of death. 
 
 So when Jacques came and brought Mme. de Beauseant 
 a sheet of paper folded in a triangle, she trembled, poor 
 woman, like a snared swallow. A mysterious sensation of 
 physical cold spread from head to foot, wrapping her about 
 in an icy winding sheet. If he did not rush to her feet, if he 
 did not come to her in tears, and pale, and like a lover, she 
 knew that all was lost. And yet, so many hopes are there 
 in the heart of a woman who loves, that she is only slain by 
 stab after- stab, and loves on till the last drop of life-blood 
 drains away. 
 
 "Does madame need anything?" Jacques asked gently, as 
 he went away. 
 
 "No," she said. 
 
 "Poor fellow !" she thought, brushing a tear from her eyes, 
 "he guesses my feelings, servant though he is !" 
 
 She read: "My beloved, you are inventing idle terrors for 
 yourself . . ." The Marquise gazed at the words, and a 
 thick mist spread before her eyes. A voice in her heart cried, 
 "He lies !" Then she glanced down the page with the clair- 
 voyant eagerness of passion, and read these words at the foot, 
 "Nothing has been decided as yet . . ." Turning to the 
 other side with convulsive quickness, she saw the mind of the 
 writer distinctly through the intricacies of the wording; this 
 was no spontaneous outburst of love. She crushed it in her 
 fingers, twisted it, tore it with her teeth, flung it in the fire, 
 and cried aloud, "Ah ! base that he is ! I was his, and he had 
 ceased to love me!"
 
 238 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 She sank half dead upon the couch. 
 
 M. de Nueil went out as soon as he had written his letter. 
 When he came back, Jacques met him on the threshold with 
 a note. "Madame la Marquise has left the chateau," said 
 the man. 
 
 M. de Nueil, in amazement, broke the seal and read : 
 
 "MADAME, If I could cease to love you, to take the 
 chances of becoming an ordinary man which you hold out 
 to me, you must admit that I should thoroughly deserve my 
 fate. No, I shall not do as you bid me ; the oath of fidelity 
 which I swear to you shall only be absolved by death. Ah ! 
 take my life, unless indeed you do not fear to carry a remorse 
 all through your own . . ." 
 
 It was his own letter, written to the Marquise as she set 
 out for Geneva nine years before. At the foot of it Claire de 
 Bourgogne had written, "Monsieur, you are free." 
 
 M. de Nueil went to his mother at Manerville. In less 
 than three weeks he married Mile. Stephanie de la Rodiere. 
 
 If this commonplace story of real life ended here, it would 
 be to some extent a sort of mystification. The first man you 
 meet can tell you a better. But the widespread fame of the 
 catastrophe (for, unhappily, this is a true tale), and all the 
 memories which it may arouse in those who have known the 
 divine delights of infinite passion, and lost them by their own 
 deed, or through the cruelty of fate, these things may per- 
 haps shelter the story from criticism. 
 
 Mme. la Marquise de Beauseant never left Valleroy after 
 her parting from M. de Nueil. After his marriage she still 
 continued to live there, for some inscrutable woman's reason ; 
 any woman is at liberty to assign the one which most appeals 
 to her. Claire de Bourgogne lived in such complete retire- 
 ment that none of the servants, save Jacques and her own 
 woman, ever saw their mistress. She required absolute si-
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 239 
 
 lence all about her, and only left her room to go to the chapel 
 on the Valleroy estate, whither a neighboring priest came to 
 say mass every morning. 
 
 The Comte de Nueil sank a few days after his marriage 
 into something like conjugal apathy, which might be inter- 
 preted to mean happiness or unhappiness equally easily. 
 
 "My son is perfectly happy," his mother said everywhere. 
 
 Mme. Gaston de Nueil, like a great many young women, 
 was a rather colorless character, sweet and passive. A month 
 after her marriage she had expectations of becoming a 
 mother. All this was quite in accordance with ordinary 
 views. M. de Nueil was very nice to her; but two months 
 after his separation from the Marquise, he grew notably 
 thoughtful and abstracted. But then he always had been 
 serious, his mother said. 
 
 After seven months of this tepid happiness, a little thing 
 occurred, one of those seemingly small matters which imply 
 such great development of thought and such widespread 
 trouble of soul, that only the bare fact can be recorded; the 
 interpretation of it must be left to the fancy of each indi- 
 vidual mind. One day, when M. de Nueil had been shooting 
 over the lands of Manerville and Valleroy, he crossed Mme. 
 de Beauseant's park on his way home, summoned Jacques, and 
 when the man came, asked him, "Whether the Marquise was 
 as fond of game as ever?" 
 
 Jacques answering in the affirmative, Gaston offered him 
 a good round sum (accompanied by plenty of specious rea- 
 soning) for a very little service. Would he set aside for the 
 Marquise the game that the Count would bring? It seemed 
 to Jacques to be a matter of no great importance whether 
 the partridge on which his mistress dined had been shot by 
 her keeper or by M. de Nueil, especially since the latter par- 
 ticularly wished that the Marquise should know nothing 
 about it. 
 
 "It was killed on her land," said the Count, and for some 
 days Jacques lent himself to the harmless deceit. Day after 
 day M*. de Nueil went shooting, and came back at dinner-
 
 240 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 time with an empty bag. A whole week went by in this way. 
 Gaston grew bold enough to write a long letter to the Mar- 
 quise, and had it conveyed to her. It was returned to him 
 unopened. The Marquise's servant brought it back about 
 nightfall. The Count, sitting in the drawing-room listening, 
 while his wife at the piano mangled a Caprice of Herold's, 
 suddenly sprang up and rushed out to the Marquise, as if he 
 were flying to an assignation. He dashed through a well- 
 known gap into the park, and went slowly along the avenues, 
 stopping now and again for a little to still the loud beating 
 of his heart. Smothered sounds as he came nearer the 
 chateau told him that the servants must be at supper, and 
 he went straight to Mme. de Beauseant's room. 
 
 Mme. de Beauseant never left her bedroom. M. de Nueil 
 could gain the doorway without making the slightest sound. 
 There, by the light of two wax candles, he saw the thin, white 
 Marquise in a great armchair ; her head was bowed, her hands 
 hung listlessly, her eyes gazing fixedly at some object which 
 she did not seem to see. Her whole attitude spoke of hope- 
 less pain. There was a vague something like hope in her bear- 
 ing, but it was impossible to say whither Claire de Bourgogne 
 was looking forwards to the tomb or backwards into the 
 past. Perhaps M. de NueiPs tears glittered in the deep 
 shadows; perhaps his breathing sounded faintly; perhaps 
 unconsciously he trembled, or again it may have been impos- 
 sible that he should stand there, his presence unfelt by that 
 quick sense which grows to be an instinct, the glory, the de- 
 light, the proof of perfect love. However it was, Mme. de 
 Beauseant slowly turned her face towards the doorway, and 
 beheld her lover of bygone days. Then Gaston de Nueil came 
 forward a few paces. 
 
 "If you come any further, sir," exclaimed the Marquise, 
 growing paler, "I shall fling myself out of the window !" 
 
 She sprang to the window, flung it open, and stood with 
 one foot on the ledge, her hand upon the iron balustrade, her 
 face turned towards Gaston. 
 
 "Go out ! go out !" she cried, "or I will throw myself over."
 
 THE DESERTED WOMAN 241 
 
 At that dreadful cry the servants began to stir, and M. de 
 Nueil fled like a criminal. 
 
 When he reached his home again he wrote a few lines and 
 gave them to his own man, telling him to give the letter him- 
 self into Mme. de Beauseant's hands, and to say that it was 
 a matter of life and death for his master. The messenger 
 went. M. de Nueil went back to the drawing-room where 
 his wife was still murdering the Caprice, and sat down to wait 
 till the answer came. An hour later, when the Caprice had 
 come to an end, and the husband and wife sat in silence on 
 opposite sides of the hearth, the man came back from Valle- 
 roy and gave his master his own letter, unopened. 
 
 M. de Nueil went into a small room beyond the drawing- 
 room, where he had left his rifle, and shot himself. 
 
 The swift and fatal ending of the drama, contrary as it is 
 to all the habits of young France, is only what might have 
 been expected. Those who have closely observed, or known 
 for themselves by delicious experience, all that is meant by the 
 perfect union of two beings, will understand Gaston de 
 NueiFs suicide perfectly well. A woman does not bend and 
 form herself in a day to the caprices of passion. The 
 pleasure of loving, like some rare flower, needs the most 
 careful ingenuity of culture. Time alone, and two souls 
 attuned each to each, can discover all its resources, and call 
 into being all the tender and delicate delights for which we 
 are steeped in a thousand superstitions, imagining them to 
 be inherent in the heart that lavishes them upon us. It is 
 this wonderful response of one nature to another, this 
 religious belief, this certainty of finding peculiar or excessive 
 happiness in the presence of one we love, that accounts in 
 part for perdurable attachments and long-lived passion. If a 
 woman possesses the genius of her sex, love never comes to 
 be a matter of use and wont. She brings all her heart and 
 brain to love, clothes her tenderness in forms so varied, there 
 is such art in her most natural moments, or so much nature 
 in her art, that in absence her memory is almost as potent as 
 VOL. 540
 
 242 THE DESERTED WOMAN 
 
 her presence. All other women are as shadows com- 
 pared with her. Not until we have lost or known the dread 
 of losing a love so vast and glorious, do we prize it at its just 
 worth. And if a man who has once possessed this love shuts 
 himself out from it by his own act and deed, and sinks to 
 some loveless marriage; if by some incident, hidden in the 
 obscurity of married life, the woman with whom he hoped to 
 know the same felicity makes it clear that it will never be 
 revived for him; if, with the sweetness of divine love still on 
 his lips, he has dealt a deadly wound to her, his wife in 
 truth, whom he forsook for a social chimera, then he must 
 either die or take refuge in a materialistic, selfish, and heart- 
 less philosophy, from- which impassioned souls shrink in 
 horror. 
 
 As for Mme. de Beauseant, she doubtless did not imagine 
 that her friend's despair could drive him to suicide, when he 
 had drunk deep of love for nine years. Possibly she may 
 have thought that she alone was to suffer. At any rate, she 
 did quite rightly to refuse the most humiliating of all posi- 
 tions; a wife may stoop for weighty social reasons to a kind 
 of compromise which a mistress is bound to hold in abhor- 
 rence, for in the purity of her passion lies all its justification. 
 
 ANGOTIL^MK, September 1832.
 
 LA GRENADIERE 
 
 To D. W. 
 
 LA GRENADI^RE is a little house on the right bank of the 
 Loire as you go down stream, about a mile below the bridge 
 of Tours. At this point the river, broad as a lake, and cov- 
 ered with scattered green islands, flows between two lines of 
 cliff, where country houses built uniformly of white stone 
 stand among their gardens and vineyards. The finest fruit 
 in the world ripens there with a southern exposure. The 
 patient toil of many generations has cut terraces in the cliff, 
 so that the face of the rock reflects the rays of the sun, and 
 the produce of hot climates may be grown out of doors in an 
 artificially high temperature. 
 
 A church spire, rising out of one of the shallower dips in 
 the line of cliff, marks the little village of Saint-Cyr, to which 
 the scattered houses all belong. And yet a little further the 
 Choisille flows into the Loire, through a fertile valley cut in 
 the long low downs. 
 
 La Grenadiere itself, half-way up the hillside, and about 
 a hundred paces from the church, is one of those old- 
 fashioned houses dating back some two or three hundred 
 years, which you find in every picturesque spot in Touraine. 
 A fissure in the rock affords convenient space for a flight of 
 steps descending gradually to the "dike" the local name 
 for the embankment made at the foot of the cliffs to keep 
 the Loire in its bed, and serve as a causeway for the highroad 
 from Paris to Nantes. At the top of the steps a gate opens 
 upon a narrow stony footpath between two terraces, for here 
 the soil is banked up, and walls are built to prevent landslips. 
 These earthworks, as it were, are crowned with trellises and 
 
 (243)
 
 244 LA GRENADIERS 
 
 espaliers, so that the steep path that lies at the foot of the 
 upper wall is almost hidden by the trees that grow on the top 
 of the lower, upon which it lies. The view of the river 
 widens out before you at every step as you climb to the house. 
 
 At the end you come to a second gateway, a Gothic arch- 
 way covered with simple ornament, now crumbling into ruin 
 and overgrown with wildflowers moss and ivy, wallflowers 
 and pellitory. Every stone wall on the hillside is decked with 
 this ineradicable plant-life, which springs up along the 
 cracks between the courses of masonry, tracing out the lines 
 afresh with new wreaths for every time of year. 
 
 The worm-eaten gate gives into a little garden, a strip of 
 turf, a few trees, and a wilderness of flowers and rose bushes 
 a garden won from the rock on the highest terrace of all, 
 with the dark, old balustrade along its edge. . Opposite the 
 gateway, a wooden summer-house stands against the neigh- 
 boring wall, the posts are covered with jessamine and honey- 
 suckle, vines and clematis. 
 
 The house itself stands in the middle of this highest gar- 
 den, above a vine-covered flight of steps, with an arched 
 doorway beneath that leads to vast cellars hollowed out in 
 the rock. All about the dwelling trellised vines and pome- 
 granate-trees (the grenadiers, which give the name to the 
 little close) are growing out in the open air. The front of 
 the house consists of two large windows on either side of a 
 very rustic-looking house door, and three dormer windows in 
 the roof a slate roof with two gables, prodigiously high- 
 pitched in proportion to the low ground-floor. The house 
 walls are washed with yellow color; and door, and first-floor 
 shutters, and the Venetian shutters of the attic windows, all 
 are painted green. 
 
 Entering the house, you find yourself in a little lobby with 
 a crooked staircase straight in front of you. It is a crazy 
 wooden structure, the spiral balusters are brown with age, and 
 the steps themselves take a new angle at every turn. The 
 great old-fashioned paneled dining-room, floored with square 
 white tiles from Chateau-Kegnault, is on your right; to the
 
 LA GBENADIERE 245 
 
 left is the sitting-room, equally large, but here the walls are 
 not paneled; they have been covered instead with a saffron- 
 colored paper, bordered with green. The walnut-wood rafters 
 are left visible, and the intervening spaces filled with a kind 
 of white plaster. 
 
 The first story consists of two large whitewashed bed- 
 rooms with stone chimney-pieces, less elaborately carved than 
 those in the rooms beneath. Every door and window is on 
 the south side of the house, save a single door to the north, 
 contrived behind the staircase to give access to the vineyard. 
 Against the western wall stands a supplementary timber- 
 framed structure, all the woodwork exposed to the weather 
 being fledged with slates, so that the walls are checkered 
 with bluish lines. This shed (for it is little more) is the 
 kitchen of the establishment. You can pass from it into the 
 house without going outside; but, nevertheless, it boasts an 
 entrance door of its own, and a short flight of steps that 
 brings you to a deep well, and a very rustical-looking pump, 
 half hidden by water-plants and savin bushes and tall 
 grasses. The kitchen is a modern addition, proving beyond 
 doubt that La Grenadiere was originally nothing but a simple 
 vendangeoir a vintage-house belonging to townsfolk in 
 Tours, from which Saint-Cyr is separated by the vast river- 
 bed of the Loire. The owners only came over for the day for 
 a picnic, or at the vintage-time, sending provisions across in 
 the morning, and scarcely ever spent the night there except 
 during the grape harvest; but the English settled down on 
 Touraine like a cloud of locusts, and La Grenadiere must, of 
 course, be completed if it was to find tenants. Luckily, how- 
 ever, this recent appendage is hidden from sight by the first 
 two trees of a lime-tree avenue planted in a gully below the 
 vineyards. 
 
 There are only two acres of vineyard at most, the ground 
 rising at the back of the house so steeply that it is no very 
 easy matter to scramble up among the vines. The slope, 
 covered with green trailing shoots, ends within about five 
 feet of the house wall in a ditch-like passage always damp and
 
 246 LA GRENADIERS 
 
 cold and full of strong growing green things, fed by the 
 drainage of the highly cultivated ground above, for rainy 
 weather washes down the manure into the garden on the 
 terrace. 
 
 A vinedresser's cottage also leans against the western 
 gable, and is in some sort a continuation of the kitchen. 
 Stone walls or espaliers surround the property, and all sorts 
 of fruit-trees are planted among the vines, in short, not an 
 inch of this precious soil is wasted. If by chance man over- 
 looks some dry cranny in the rocks, Nature puts in a fig- 
 tree, or sows wildflowers or strawberries in sheltered nooks 
 among the stones. 
 
 Nowhere else in all the world will you find a human 
 dwelling so humble and yet so imposing, so rich in fruit, and 
 fragrant scents, and wide views of country. Here is a minia- 
 ture Touraine in the heart of Touraine all its flowers and 
 fruits and all the characteristic beauty of the land are fully 
 represented. Here are grapes of every district, figs and 
 peaches and pears of every kind; melons are grown out of 
 doors as easily as licorice plants, Spanish broom, Italian 
 oleanders, and jessamines from the Azores. The Loire lies at 
 your feet. You look down from the terrace upon the ever- 
 changing river nearly two hundred feet below; and in the 
 evening the breeze brings a fresh scent of the sea, with the 
 fragrance of far-off flowers gathered upon its way. Some 
 cloud wandering in space, changing its color and form at 
 every moment as it crosses the pure blue of the sky, can 
 alter every detail in the widespread wonderful landscape in 
 a thousand ways, from every point of view. The eye em- 
 braces first of all the south bank of the Loire, stretching 
 away as far as Amboise, then Tours with its suburbs and 
 buildings, and the Plessis rising out of the fertile plain; 
 further away, between Vouvray and Saint- Symphorien, you 
 see a sort of crescent of gray cliff full of sunny vineyards; 
 the only limits to your view are the low, rich hills along the 
 Cher, a bluish line of horizon broken by many a chateau 
 and the wooded masses of many a park. Out to the west you
 
 LA GRENADIERS 24T 
 
 lose yourself in the immense river, where vessels come and 
 go, spreading their white sails to the winds which seldom fail 
 them in the wide Loire basin. A prince might build a sum- 
 mer palace at La Grenadiere, but certainly it will always be 
 the home of a poet's desire, and the sweetest of retreats for 
 two young lovers for this vintage house, which belongs to a 
 substantial burgess of Tours, has charms for every imagina- 
 tion, for the humblest and dullest as well as for the most 
 impassioned and lofty. No one can dwell there without 
 feeling that happiness is in the air, without a glimpse of all 
 that is meant by a peaceful life without care or ambition. 
 There is that in the air and the sound of the river that sets 
 you dreaming; the sands have a language, and are joyous 
 or dreary, golden or wan; and the owner of the vineyard 
 may sit motionless amid perennial flowers and tempting 
 fruit, and feel all the stir of the world about him. 
 
 If an Englishman takes the house for the summer, he is 
 asked a thousand francs for six months, the produce of the 
 vineyard not included. If the tenant wishes for the orchard 
 fruit, the rent is doubled ; for the vintage, it is doubled again. 
 What can La Grenadiere be worth, you wonder ; La Grena- 
 diere. with its stone staircase, its beaten path and triple ter- 
 race, its two acres of vineyard, its flowering roses about the 
 balustrades, its worn steps, well-head, rampant clematis, and 
 cosmopolitan trees? It is idle to make a bid! La Grena- 
 diere will never be in the market; it was bought once and 
 sold, but that was in 1690; and the owner parted with it 
 for forty thousand francs, reluctant as any Arab of the desert 
 to relinquish a favorite horse. Since then it has remained 
 in the same family, its pride, its patrimonial jewel, its Ke- 
 gent diamond. "While you behold, you have and hold," says 
 the bard. And from La Grenadiere you behold three valleys 
 of Touraine and the cathedral towers aloft in air like a 
 bit of filigree work. How can one pay for such treasures? 
 Could one ever pay for the health recovered there under the 
 linden-trees ? 
 
 In the spring of one of the brightest years of the Kestora-
 
 248 LA GRENADIERB 
 
 tion, a lady with her housekeeper and her two children (the 
 oldest a boy thirteen years old, the youngest apparently about 
 eight) came to Tours to look for a house. She saw La Grena- 
 diere and took it. Perhaps the distance from the town was 
 an inducement to live there. 
 
 She made a bedroom of the drawing-room, gave the chil- 
 dren the two rooms above, and the housekeeper slept in a 
 closet behind the kitchen. The dining-room was sitting- 
 room and drawing-room all in one for the little family. The 
 house was furnished very simply but tastefully; there was 
 nothing superfluous in it, and no trace of luxury. The wal- 
 nut-wood furniture chosen by the stranger lady was perfectly 
 plain, and the whole charm of the house consisted in its neat- 
 ness and harmony with its surroundings. 
 
 It was rather difficult, therefore, to say whether the 
 strange lady (Mme. Willemsens, as she styled herself) be- 
 longed to the upper middle or higher classes, or to an equivo- 
 cal, unclassified feminine species. Her plain dress gave rise 
 to the most contradictory suppositions, but her manners 
 might be held to confirm those favorable to her. She had not 
 lived at Saint- Cyr, moreover, for very long before her reserve 
 excited the curiosity of idle people, who always, and espe- 
 cially in the country, watch anybody or anything that 
 promises to bring some interest into their narrow lives. 
 
 Mme. Willemsens was rather tall; she was thin and slen- 
 der, but delicately shaped. She had pretty feet, more re- 
 markable for the grace of the instep and ankle than for the 
 more ordinary merit of slenderness; her gloved hands, too, 
 were shapely. There were flitting patches of deep red in a 
 pale face, which must have been fresh and softly colored once. 
 Premature wrinkles had withered the delicately modeled 
 forehead beneath the coronet of soft, well-set chestnut hair, 
 invariably wound about her head in two plaits, a girlish 
 coiffure which suited the melancholy face. There was a de- 
 ceptive look of calm in the dark eyes, with the hollow, shadowy 
 circles about them; sometimes, when she was off her guard, 
 their expression told of secret anguish. The oval of her face
 
 LA GRENADIERE 249 
 
 was somewhat long; but happiness and health had perhaps 
 filled and perfected the outlines. A forced smile, full of 
 quiet sadness, hovered continually on her pale lips ; -but when 
 the children, who were always with her, looked up at their 
 mother, or asked one of the incessant idle questions which 
 convey so much to a mother's ears, then the smile brightened, 
 and expressed the joys of a mother's love. Her gait was 
 slow and dignified. Her dress never varied; evidently she 
 had made up her mind to think no more of her toilette, and 
 to forget a world by which she meant no doubt to be for- 
 gotten. She wore a long, black gown, confined at the waist 
 by a watered-silk ribbon, and by way of scarf a lawn hand- 
 kerchief with a broad hem, the two ends passed carelessly 
 through her waistband. The instinct of dress showed itself 
 in that she was daintily shod, and gray silk stockings carried 
 out the suggestion of mourning in this unvarying costume. 
 Lastly, she always wore a bonnet after the English fashion, 
 always of the same shape arid the same gray material, and 
 a black veil. Her health apparently was extremely weak; 
 she looked very ill. On fine evenings she would take her 
 only walk, down to the bridge of Tours, bringing the two 
 children ' with her to breathe the fresh, cool air along the 
 Loire, and to watch the sunset effects on a landscape as wide 
 as the Bay of Naples or the Lake of Geneva. 
 
 During the whole time of her stay at La Grenadiere she 
 went but twice into Tours; once to call on the headmaster 
 of the school, to ask him to give her the names of the best 
 masters of Latin, drawing, and mathematics; and a second 
 time to make arrangements for the children's lessons. But 
 her appearance on the bridge of an evening, once or twice 
 a week, was quite enough to excite the interest of almost all 
 the inhabitants of Tours, who make a regular promenade of 
 the bridge. Still, in spite of a kind of spy system, by which no 
 harm is meant, a provincial habit bred of want of occupation 
 and the restless inquisitiveness of the principal society, noth- 
 ing was known for certain of the newcomer's rank, fortune, 
 or real condition. Only, the owner of La Grenadiere told
 
 250 LA GRENADIERE 
 
 one or two of his friends that the name under which the 
 stranger had signed the lease (her real name, therefore, in 
 all probability) was Augusta Willemsens, Countess of Bran- 
 don. This, of course, must be her husband's name. Events, 
 which will be narrated in their place, confirmed this revela- 
 tion; but it went no further than the little world of men of 
 business known to the landlord. 
 
 So Madame Willemsens was a continual mystery to people 
 of condition. Hers was no ordinary nature; her manners 
 were simple and delightfully natural, the tones of her voice 
 were divinely sweet, this was all that she suffered others 
 to discover. In her complete seclusion, her sadness, her 
 beauty so passionately obscured, nay, almost blighted, there 
 was so much to charm, that several young gentlemen fell in 
 love; but the more sincere the lover, the more timid he be- 
 came; and besides, the lady inspired awe, and it was a diffi- 
 cult matter to find enough courage to speak to her. Finally, 
 if a few of the bolder sort wrote to her, their letters must 
 have been burned unread. It was Mme. Willemsens' prac- 
 tice to throw all the letters which she received into the fire, 
 as if she meant that the time spent in Touraine should be 
 untroubled by any outside cares even of the slightest. She 
 might have come to the enchanting retreat to give herself 
 up wholly to the joy of living. 
 
 The three masters whose presence was allowed at La Grena- 
 diere spoke with something like admiring reverence of the 
 touching picture that they saw there of the close, unclouded 
 intimacy of the life led by this woman and the children. 
 
 The two little boys also aroused no small interest. Mothers 
 could not see them without a feeling of envy. Both children 
 were like Mme. Willemsens, who was, in fact, their mother. 
 They had the transparent complexion and bright color, the 
 clear, liquid eyes, the long lashes, the fresh outlines, the daz- 
 zling characteristics of childish beauty. 
 
 The elder, Louis-Gaston, had dark hair and fearless eyes. 
 Everything about him spoke as plainly of robust, physical 
 health as his broad, high brow, with its gracious curves, spoke
 
 LA. GRENADIERS 251 
 
 of energy of character. He was quick and alert in his move- 
 ments, and strong of limb, without a trace of awkwardness. 
 Nothing took him at unawares, and he seemed to think about 
 everything that he saw. 
 
 Marie-Gaston, the other child, had hair that was almost 
 golden, though a lock here and there had deepened to the 
 mother's chestnut tint. Marie-Gaston was slender; he had 
 the delicate features and the subtle grace so charming in 
 Mme. Willemsens. He did not look strong. There was a 
 gentle look in his gray eyes; his face was pale, there 
 was something feminine about the child. He still wore his 
 hair in long, wavy curls, and his mother would not have him 
 give up embroidered collars, and little jackets fastened with 
 frogs and spindle-shaped buttons; evidently she took a thor- 
 oughly feminine pleasure in the costume, a source of as much 
 interest to the mother as to the child. The elder boy's plain 
 white collar, turned down over a closely fitting jacket, made 
 a contrast with his brother's clothing, but the color and ma- 
 terial were the same; the two brothers were otherwise 
 dressed alike, and looked alike. 
 
 No one could see them without feeling touched by the 
 way in which Louis took care of Marie. There was an 
 almost fatherly look in the older boy's eyes; and Marie, 
 child though he was, seemed to be full of gratitude to 
 Louis. They were like two buds, scarcely separated from the 
 stem that bore them, swayed by the same breeze, lying in the 
 same ray of sunlight ; but the one was a brightly colored 
 flower, the other somewhat bleached and pale. At a glance, 
 a word, an inflection in their mother's voice, they grew heed- 
 ful, turned to look at her and listened, and did at once what 
 they were bidden, or asked, or recommended to do. Mme. 
 Willemsens had so accustomed them to understand her wishes 
 and desires, that the three seemed to have their thoughts in 
 common. When they went for a walk, and the children, ab- 
 sorbed in their play, ran away to gather a flower or to look at 
 some insect, she watched them with such deep tenderness in 
 her eyes, that the most indifferent passer-by would feel moved,
 
 252 LA GRENADIERE 
 
 and stop and smile at the children, and give the mother a 
 glance of friendly greeting. Who would not have admired the 
 dainty neatness of their dress, their sweet, childish voices, the 
 grace of their movements, the promise in their faces, the in- 
 nate something that told of careful training from the cradle ? 
 They seemed as if they had never shed tears nor wailed like 
 other children. Their mother knew, as it were, by elec- 
 trically swift intuition, the desires and the pains which she 
 anticipated and relieved. She seemed to dread a complaint 
 from one of them more than the loss of her soul. Everything 
 in her children did honor to their mother's training. Their 
 threefold life, seemingly one life, called up vague, fond 
 thoughts; it was like a vision of the dreamed-of bliss of a 
 better world. And the three, so attuned to each other, lived 
 in truth such a life as one might picture for them at first 
 sight the ordered, simple, and regular life best suited for 
 a child's education. 
 
 Both children rose an hour after daybreak and repeated 
 a short prayer, a habit learned in their babyhood. For 
 seven years the sincere petition had been put up every morn- 
 ing on their mother's bed, and begun and ended by a kiss. 
 Then the two brothers went through their morning toilet 
 as scrupulously as any pretty woman; doubtless they had 
 been trained in habits of minute attention to the person, so 
 necessary to health of body and mind, habits in some sort 
 conducive to a sense of wellbeing. Conscientiously they went 
 through their duties, so afraid were they lest their mother 
 should say when she kissed them at breakfast-time, "My 
 darling children, where can you have been to have such 
 black finger-nails already?" Then the two went out into 
 the garden and shook off the dreams of the night in the 
 morning air and dew, until sweeping and dusting operations 
 were completed, and they could learn their lessons in the 
 sitting-room until their mother joined them. But although 
 it was understood that they must not go to their mother's 
 room before a certain hour, they peeped in at the door con- 
 tinually; and these morning inroads, made in defiance of
 
 LA GRENADIERS 253 
 
 the original compact, were delicious moments for all three. 
 Marie sprang upon the bed to put his arms about his idolized 
 mother, and Louis, kneeling by the pillow, took her hand in 
 his. Then came inquiries, anxious as a lover's, followed by 
 angelic laughter, passionate childish kisses, eloquent silences, 
 lisping words, and the little ones' stories interrupted and 
 resumed by a kiss, stories seldom finished, though the 
 listener's interest never failed. 
 
 "Have you been industrious?" their mother would ask, 
 but in tones so sweet and so kindly that she seemed ready 
 to pity laziness as a misfortune, and to glance through tears 
 at the child who was satisfied with himself. 
 
 She knew that the thought of pleasing her put energy 
 into the children's work; and they knew that their mother 
 lived for them, and that all her thoughts and her time were 
 given to them. A wonderful instinct, neither selfishness nor 
 reason, perhaps the first innocent beginnings of sentiment, 
 teaches children to know whether or no they are the first 
 and sole thought, to find out those who love to think of them 
 and for them. If you really love children, the dear little 
 ones, with open hearts and unerring sense of justice, are mar- 
 velously ready to respond to love. Their love knows passion 
 and jealousy and the most gracious delicacy of feeling; they 
 find the tenderest words of expression; they trust you put 
 an entire belief in you. Perhaps there are no undutiful 
 children without undutiful mothers, for a child's affection 
 is always in proportion to the affection that it receives in 
 early care, in the first words that it hears, in the response 
 of the eyes to which a child first looks for love and life. All 
 these things draw them closer to the mother or drive them 
 apart. God lays the child under the mother's heart, that 
 she may learn that for a long time to come her heart must 
 be its home. And yet there are mothers cruelly slighted, 
 mothers whose sublime, pathetic tenderness meets only a 
 harsh return, a hideous ingratitude which shows how diffi- 
 cult it is to lay down hard-and-fast rules in matters of feel- 
 ing.
 
 254 LA GRENADIERE 
 
 Here, not one of all the thousand heart ties that bind child 
 and mother had been broken. The three were alone in the 
 world ; they lived one life, a life of close sympathy. If Mme. 
 Willemsens was silent in the morning, Louis and Marie 
 would not speak, respecting everj^thing in her, even those 
 thoughts which they did not share. But the older boy, with 
 a precocious power of thought, would not rest satisfied with 
 his mother's assertion that she was perfectly well. He 
 scanned her face with uneasy forebodings; the exact danger 
 he did not know, but dimly he felt it threatening in those 
 purple rings about her eyes, in the deepening hollows under 
 them, and the feverish red that deepened in her face. If 
 Marie's play began to tire her, his sensitive tact was quick 
 to discover this, and he would call to h,is brother: 
 
 "Come, Marie! let us run in to breakfast, I am hungry!" 
 
 But when they reached the door, he would look back to 
 catch the expression on his mother's face. She still could 
 find a smile for him, nay, often there were tears in her eyes 
 when some little thing revealed her child's exquisite feel- 
 ing, a too early comprehension of sorrow. 
 
 Mme. Willemsens dressed during the children's early 
 breakfast and game of play, she was coquettish for her dar- 
 lings; she wished to be pleasing in their eyes; for them she 
 would fain be in all things lovely, a gracious vision, with 
 the charm of some sweet perfume of which one can never 
 have enough. 
 
 She was always dressed in time to hear their lessons, 
 which lasted from ten till three, with an interval at noon 
 for lunch, the three taking the meal together in the summer- 
 house. After lunch the children played for an hour, while 
 she poor woman and happy mother lay on a long sofa in 
 the summer-house, so placed that she could look out over the 
 soft, ever-changing country of Touraine, a land that you 
 learn to see afresh in all the thousand chance effects produced 
 by daylight and sky and the time of year. 
 
 The children scampered through the orchard, scrambled 
 about the terraces, chased the lizards, scarcely less nimble
 
 LA GRENADIERE 255 
 
 than they; investigating flowers and seeds and insects, con- 
 tinually referring all questions to their mother, running to 
 and fro between the garden and the summer-house. Chil- 
 dren have no need of toys in the country, everything amuses 
 them. 
 
 Mme. Willemsens sat at her embroidery during their les- 
 sons. She never spoke, nor did she look at masters or pupils ; 
 but she followed attentively all that was said, striving to 
 gather the sense of the words to gain a general idea of 
 Louis' progress. If Louis asked a question that puzzled his 
 master, his mother's eyes suddenly lighted up, and she would 
 smile and glance at him with hope in her eyes. Of Marie she 
 asked little. Her desire was with her eldest son. Already 
 she treated him, as it were, respectfully, using all a woman's, 
 all a mother's tact to arouse the spirit of high endeavor in 
 the boy, to teach him to think of himself as capable of great 
 things. She did this with a secret purpose, which Louis was 
 to understand in the future; nay, he understood it already. 
 
 Always, the lesson over, she went as far as the gate with 
 the master, and asked strict account of Louis' progress. So 
 kindly and so winning was her manner, that his tutors told 
 her the truth, pointing out where Louis was weak, so that 
 she might help him in his lessons. Then came dinner, and 
 play after dinner, then a walk, and lessons were learned till 
 bedtime. 
 
 So their da} 7 s went. It was a uniform but full life; work 
 and amusements left them not a dull hour in the day. Dis- 
 couragement and quarreling were impossible. The mother's 
 boundless love made everything smooth. She taught her 
 little sons moderation by refusing them nothing, and sub- 
 mission by making them see underlying Necessity in its many 
 forms; she put heart into them with timely praise; develop- 
 ing and strengthening all that was best in their natures with 
 the care of a good fairy. Tears sometimes rose to her burn- 
 ing eyes as she watched them play, and thought how they 
 had never caused her the slightest vexation. Happiness so 
 far-reaching and complete brings such tears, because for ug
 
 256 LA GRENADIERS 
 
 it represents the dim imaginings of Heaven which we all of 
 us form in our minds. 
 
 Those were delicious hours spent on that sofa in the gar- 
 den-house, in looking out on sunny days over the wide 
 stretches of river and the picturesque landscape, listening 
 to the sound of her children's voices as they laughed at their 
 own laughter, to the little quarrels that told most plainly 
 of their union of heart, of Louis' paternal care of Marie, of 
 the love that both of them felt for her. They spoke Eng- 
 lish and French equally well (they had had an English nurse 
 since their babyhood), so their mother talked to them in 
 both languages; directing the bent of their childish minds 
 with admirable skill, admitting no fallacious reasoning, no 
 bad principle. She ruled by kindness, concealing nothing, 
 explaining everything. If Louis wished for books, she was 
 careful to give him interesting yet accurate books books of 
 biography, the lives of great seamen, great captains, and 
 famous men, for little incidents in their history gave her 
 numberless opportunities of explaining the world and life 
 to her children. She would point out the ways in which men, 
 really great in themselves, had risen from obscurity; how 
 they had started from the lowest ranks of society, with no 
 one to look to but themselves, and achieved noble destinies. 
 
 These readings, and they were not the least useful of 
 Louis' lessons, took place while little Marie slept on his 
 mother's knee in the quiet of the summer night, and the 
 Loire reflected the sky; but when they ended, this adorable 
 woman's sadness always seemed to be doubled; she would 
 cease to speak, and sit motionless and pensive, and her eyes 
 would fill with tears. 
 
 "Mother, why are you crying?" Louis asked one balmy 
 June evening, just as the twilight of a soft-lit night suc- 
 ceeded to a hot day. 
 
 Deeply moved by his trouble, she put her arm about the 
 child's neck and drew him to her. 
 
 "Because, my boy, the lot of Jameray Duval, the poor and 
 friendless lad who succeeded at last, will be your lot, yours
 
 LA GRBNADIERE 257 
 
 and your brother's, and I have brought it upon you. Be- 
 fore very long, dear child, you will be alone in the world, 
 with no one to help or befriend you. While you are still 
 children, I shall leave you, and yet, if only I could wait till 
 you are big enough and know enough to be Marie's guardian ! 
 But I shall not live so long. I love you so much that it 
 makes me very unhappy to think of it. Dear children, if 
 only you do not curse me some day ! 
 
 "But why should I curse you some day, mother?" 
 
 "Some day," she said, kissing him on the forehead, "you 
 will find out that I have wronged you. I am going to leave 
 you, here, without money, without" here she hesitated 
 "without a father," she added, and at the word she burst 
 into tears and put the boy from her gently. A sort of in- 
 tuition told Louis that his mother wished to be alone, and 
 he carried off Marie, now half awake. An hour later, when 
 his brother was in bed, he stole down and out to the summer- 
 house where his mother was sitting. 
 
 "Louis! come here." 
 
 The words were spoken in tones delicious to his heart. 
 The bo}' sprang to his mother's arms, and the two held each 
 other in an almost convulsive embrace. 
 
 "Cherie," he said at last, the name by which he often 
 called her, finding that even loving words were too weak to 
 express his feeling, "cherie, why are you afraid that you are 
 going to die?" 
 
 "I am ill, my poor darling ; every day I am losing strength, 
 and there is no cure for my illness; I know that." 
 
 "What is the matter with you?" 
 
 "Something that I ought to forget; something that you 
 must never know. You must not know what caused my 
 death." 
 
 The boy was silent a while. He stole a glance now and 
 again at his mother ; and she, with her eyes raised to the sky, 
 was watching the clouds. It was a sad, sweet moment. 
 Louis could not believe that his mother would die soon, but 
 instinctively he felt trouble which he could not guess. He 
 VOL. 541
 
 258 L.A GRENADIERS 
 
 respected her long musings. If he had been rather older, 
 he would have read happy memories blended with thoughts 
 of repentance, the whole story of a woman's life in that sub- 
 lime face the careless childhood, the loveless marriage, a 
 terrible passion, flowers springing up in storm and struck 
 down by the thunderbolt into an abyss from which there is 
 no return. 
 
 "Darling mother/' Louis said at last, "why do you hide 
 your pain from me?" 
 
 "My boy, we ought to hide our troubles from strangers," 
 she said; "we should show them a smiling face, never speak 
 of ourselves to them, nor think about ourselves; and these 
 rules, put in practice in family life, conduce to its happiness. 
 You will have much to bear one day ! Ah me ! then 
 think of your poor mother who died smiling before your 
 eyes, hiding her sufferings from you, and you will take 
 courage to endure the ills of life." 
 
 She choked back her tears, and tried to make the boy un- 
 derstand the mechanism of existence, the value of money, 
 the standing and consideration that it gives, and its bearing 
 on social position; the honorable means of gaining a liveli- 
 hood, and the necessity of a training. Then she told him 
 that one of the chief causes of her sadness and her tears was 
 the thought that, on the morrow of her death, he and Marie 
 would be left almost resourceless, with but a slender stock 
 of money, and no friend but God. 
 
 "How quick I must be about learning!" cried Louis, giv- 
 ing her a piteous, searching look. 
 
 "Oh ! how happy I am !" she said, showering kisses and 
 tears on her son. "He understands me ! Louis," she went on, 
 "you will be your brother's guardian, will you not? You 
 promise me that? You are no longer a child!" 
 
 "Yes, I promise," he said ; "but you .are not going to die 
 yet say that you are not going to die !" 
 
 "Poor little ones!" she replied, "love for you keeps the 
 life in me. And this country is so sunny, the air is so brac- 
 ing, perhaps "
 
 LA GRENADIERE 258 
 
 "You make me love Touraine more than ever," said the 
 child. 
 
 From that day, when Mine. Willemsens, foreseeing the 
 approach of death, spoke to Louis of his future, he concen- 
 trated his attention on his work, grew more industrious, and 
 less inclined to play than heretofore. When he had coaxed 
 Marie to read a book and to give up boisterous games, there 
 was less noise in the hollow pathways and gardens and ter- 
 raced walks of La Grenadiere. They adapted their lives to 
 their mother's melancholy. Day by day her face was grow- 
 ing pale and wan, there were hollows now in her temples, 
 the lines in her forehead grew deeper night after night. 
 
 August came. The little family had been five months at 
 La Grenadiere, and their whole life was changed. The old 
 servant grew anxious and gloomy as she watched the almost 
 imperceptible symptoms of slow decline in the mistress, who 
 seemed to be kept in life by an impassioned soul and intense 
 love of her children. Old Annette seemed to see that death 
 was very near. That mistress, beautiful still, was more care- 
 ful of her appearance than she had ever been; she was at 
 pains to adorn her wasted self, and wore paint on her cheeks ; 
 but often while she walked on the upper terrace with the 
 children, Annette's wrinkled face would peer out from be- 
 tween the savin trees by the pump. The old woman would 
 forget her work, and stand with the wet linen in her hands, 
 scarce able to keep back her tears at the sight of Mme. Wil- 
 lemsens', so little like the enchanting woman she once had 
 been. 
 
 The pretty house itself, once so gay and bright, looked 
 melancholy; it was a very quiet house now, and the family 
 seldom left it, for the walk to the bridge was too great an 
 effort for Mme. Willemsens. Louis had almost identified 
 himself, as it were, with his mother, and with his suddenly 
 developed powers of imagination he saw the weariness and 
 exhaustion under the red color, and constantly found rea- 
 sons for taking some shorter walk. 
 
 So happy couples coming to Saint-Cyr, then the Petite
 
 260 LA GRENADIERE 
 
 Courtille of Tours, and knots of folk out for their evening 
 walk along the "dike," saw a pale, thin figure dressed in 
 black, a woman with a worn yet bright face, gliding like a 
 shadow along the terraces. Great suffering cannot be con- 
 cealed. The vinedresser's household had grown quiet also. 
 Sometimes the laborer and his wife and children were gath- 
 ered about the door of their cottage, while Annette was 
 washing linen at the well-head, and Mme. Willemsens and 
 the children sat in the summer-house, and there was not the 
 faintest sound in those gardens gay with flowers. Unknown 
 to Mme. Willemsens, all eyes grew pitiful at the sight of 
 her, she was so good, so thoughtful, so dignified with those 
 with whom she came in contact. 
 
 And as for her. When the autumn days came on, days so 
 sunny and bright in Touraine, bringing with them grapes 
 and ripe fruits and healthful influences which must surely 
 prolong life in spite of the ravages of mysterious disease 
 she saw no one but her children, taking the utmost that the 
 hour could give her, as if each hour had been her last. 
 
 Louis had worked at night, unknown to his mother, and 
 made immense progress between June and September. In 
 algebra he had come as far as equations with two unknown 
 quantities; he had studied descriptive geometry, and drew 
 admirably well; in fact, he was prepared to pass the en- 
 trance examination of the Ecole polytechnique. 
 
 Sometimes of an evening he went down to the bridge of 
 Tours. There was a lieutenant there on half-pay, an Im- 
 perial naval officer, whose manly face, medal, and gait had 
 made an impression on the boy's imagination, and the officer 
 on his side had taken a liking to the lad, whose eyes 
 sparkled with energy. Louis, hungering for tales of adven- 
 ture, and eager for information, used to follow in the lieu- 
 tenant's wake for the chance of a chat with him. It so 
 happened that the sailor had a friend and comrade in the 
 colonel of a regiment of infantry, struck off the rolls like 
 himself; and young Louis-Gaston had a chance of learning 
 what life was like in camp or on board a man-of-war. 01
 
 LA GRENADIERB 261 
 
 course, he plied the veterans with questions; and when he 
 had made up his mind to the hardships of their rough call- 
 ings, he asked his mother's leave to take country walks by 
 way of amusement. Mme. Willemsens was beyond measure 
 glad that he should ask; the boy's astonished masters had 
 told her that he was overworking himself. So Louis went 
 for long walks. He tried to inure himself to fatigue, 
 climbed the tallest trees with incredible quickness, learned to 
 swim, watched through the night. He was not like the 
 same boy; he was a young man already, with a sunburned 
 face, and a something in his expression that told of deep pur- 
 pose. 
 
 When October came, Mme. Willemsens could only rise at 
 noon. The sunshine, reflected by the surface of the Loire, 
 and stored up by the rocks, raised the temperature of the 
 air till it was almost as warm and soft as the atmosphere 
 of the Bay of Naples, for which reason the faculty recom- 
 mend the place of abode. At mid-day she came out to sit 
 under the shade of green leaves with the two boys, who never 
 wandered from her now. Lessons had come to an end. 
 Mother and children wished to live the life of heart and 
 heart together, with no disturbing element, no outside cares. 
 No tears now, no joyous outcries. The elder boy, lying in 
 the grass at his mother's side, basked in her eyes like a lover, 
 and kissed her feet. Marie, the restless one, gathered flowers 
 for her, and brought them with a subdued look, standing on 
 tiptoe to put a girlish kiss on her lips. And the pale woman, 
 with the great tired eyes and languid movements, never ut- 
 tered a word of complaint, and smiled upon her children, 
 so full of life and health it was a sublime picture, lacking 
 no melancholy autumn pomp of yellow leaves and half-de- 
 gpoiled branches, nor the softened sunlight and pale clouds 
 of the skies of Touraine. 
 
 At last the doctor forbade Mme. Willemsens to leave her 
 room. Every day it was brightened by the flowers that she 
 loved, and her children were always with her. One day, early 
 in November, she sat at the piano for the last time. A pict-
 
 262 LA GRENADIERS 
 
 ure a Swiss landscape hung above the instrument; and at 
 the window she could see her children standing with their 
 heads close together. Again and again she looked from the 
 children to the landscape, and then again at the children. 
 Her face flushed, her fingers flew with passionate feeling 
 over the ivory keys. This was her last great day, an un- 
 marked day of festival, held in her own soul by the spirit of 
 her memories. When the doctor came, he ordered her to 
 stay in bed. The alarming dictum was received with be- 
 wildered silence. 
 
 When the doctor had gone, she turned to the older boy. 
 
 "Louis," she said, "take me .out on the terrace, so that I 
 may see my country once more." 
 
 The boy gave his arm at those simply uttered words, 
 and brought his mother out upon the terrace; but her eyes 
 turned, perhaps unconsciously, to heaven rather than to the 
 earth, and, indeed, it would have been hard to say whether 
 heaven or earth was the fairer for the clouds traced shadowy 
 outlines, like the grandest Alpine glaciers, against the sky. 
 Mme. Willemsens' brows contracted vehemently; there was 
 a look of anguish and remorse in her eyes. She caught the 
 children's hands, and clutched them to a heavily-throbbing 
 heart. 
 
 " 'Parentage unknown !' " she cried, with a look that went 
 to their hearts. "Poor angels, what will become of you? 
 And when you are twenty years old, what strict account 
 may you not require of my life and your own?" 
 
 She put the children from her, and leaning her arms upon 
 the balustrade, stood for a while hiding her face, alone with 
 herself, fearful of all eyes. When she recovered from the 
 paroxysm, she saw Louis and Marie kneeling on either side 
 of her, like two angels; they watched the expression of her 
 face, and smiled lovingly at her. 
 
 "If only I could take that smile with me !" she said, dvy- 
 ing her eyes. 
 
 Then she went into the house and took to the bed, 
 she would only leave for her coffin.
 
 LA GRENADIERB 203 
 
 A week went by, one day exactly like another. Old An- 
 nette and Louis took it in turns to sit up with Mme. Wil- 
 lemsens, never taking their eyes from the invalid. It was 
 the deeply tragical hour that comes in all our lives, the hour 
 of listening in terror to every deep breath lest it should be 
 the last, a dark hour protracted over many days. On the 
 fifth day of that fatal week the doctor interdicted flowers 
 in the room. The illusions of life were going one by one. 
 
 Then Marie and his brother felt their mother's lips hot 
 as fire beneath their kisses; and at last, on the Saturday 
 evening, Mme. Willemsens was too ill to bear the slightest 
 sound, and her room as left in disorder. This neglect for 
 a woman of refined taste, who clung so persistently to the 
 graces of life, meant the beginning of the death-agony. 
 After this, Louis refused to leave his mother. On Sunday 
 night, in the midst of the deepest silence, when Louis 
 thought that she had grown drowsy, he saw a white, moist 
 hand move the curtain in the lamplight. 
 
 "My son I" she said. There was something so solemn in 
 the dying woman's tones, that the power of her wrought-up 
 soul produced a violent reaction on the boy; he felt an in- 
 tense heat pass through the marrow of his bones. 
 
 "What is it, mother?" 
 
 "Listen ! To-morrow all will be over for me. We shall 
 see each other no more. To-morrow you will be a man, my 
 child. So I am obliged to make some arrangements, which 
 must remain a secret, known only to us. Take the key of 
 my little table. That is it. Now open the drawer. You 
 will find two sealed papers to the left. There is the name of 
 Louis on one, and on the other MARIE." 
 
 "Here they are, mother." 
 
 "Those are your certificates of birth, darling; you will 
 want them. Give them to our poor, old Annette to keep for 
 you ; ask her for them when you need them. Now," she con- 
 tinued, "is there not another paper as well, something in my 
 handwriting ?" 
 
 "Yes, mother," and Louis began to read, "Marie Willem- 
 sens, born at "
 
 264 LA GRENADIER^ 
 
 "That is enough," she broke in quickly, "do not go on. 
 When I am dead, give that paper, too, to Annette, and tell 
 her to send it to the registrar at Saint-Cyr; it will be wanted 
 if my certificate of death is to be made out in due form. Now 
 find writing materials for a letter which I will dictate to 
 you." 
 
 When she saw that he was ready to begin, and turned to- 
 wards her for the words, they came from her quietly: 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte, your wife, Lady Brandon, died at 
 Saint-Cyr, near Tours, in the department of Indre-et-Loire. 
 She forgave you." 
 
 "Sign yourself " she stopped, hesitating and per- 
 turbed. 
 
 "Are you feeling worse?" asked Louis. 
 
 "Put *Louis-Gaston,' " she said. 
 
 She sighed, then she went on. 
 
 "Seal the letter, and direct it. To Lord Brandon, Bran- 
 don Square, Hyde Park, London, Angleterre. That is right. 
 When I am dead, post the letter in Tours, and prepay the 
 postage. Now," she added, after a pause, "take the little 
 pocketbook that you know, and come here, my dear child. 
 . . . There are twelve thousand francs in it," she said, 
 when Louis had returned to her side. "That is all your own. 
 Oh me ! you would have been better off if your father 
 
 "My father," cried the boy, "where is he?" 
 
 "He is dead," she said, laying her finger on her lips; "he 
 died to save my honor and my life." 
 
 She looked upwards. If any tears had been left to her, 
 she could have wept for pain. 
 
 "Louis," she continued, "swear to me, as I lie here, that 
 you will forget all that you have written, all that I have told 
 you." 
 
 "Yes, mother." 
 
 "Kiss me, dear angel." 
 
 She was silent for a long while, she seemed to be drawing
 
 LA GRENADIERE 265 
 
 strength from God, and to be measuring her words by the 
 life that remained in her. 
 
 "Listen," she began. "Those twelve thousand francs are 
 all that you have in the world. You must keep the money 
 upon you, because when I am dead the lawyers will come and 
 seal everything up. Nothing will be yours then, not even 
 your mother. All that remains for you to do will be to go 
 out, poor orphan children, God knows where. I have made 
 Annette's future secure. She will have an annuity of a hun- 
 dred crowns, and she will stay at Tours no doubt. But what 
 will you do for yourself and your brother?" 
 
 She raised herself, and looked at the brave child, standing 
 by her bedside. There were drops of perspiration on his 
 forehead, he was pale with emotion, and his eyes were dim 
 with tears. 
 
 "I have thought it over, mother," he answered in a deep 
 voice. "I will take Marie to the school here in Tours. I 
 will give ten thousand francs to our old Annette, and ask 
 her to take care of them, and to look after Marie. Then, 
 with the remaining two thousand francs, I will go to Brest, 
 and go to sea as an apprentice. While Marie is at school, 
 I will rise to be a lieutenant on board a man-of-war. There, 
 after all, die in peace, rny mother; I shall come back again 
 a rich man, and our little one shall go to the Ecole poly- 
 technique, and I will find a career to suit his bent." 
 
 A gleam of joy shone in the dying woman's eyes. Two 
 tears brimmed over, and fell over her fevered cheeks; then 
 a deep sigh escaped between her lips. The sudden joy 
 of finding the father's spirit in the son, who had grown all 
 at once to be a man, almost killed her. 
 
 "Angel of heaven," she cried, weeping, "by one word you 
 have effaced all my sorrows. Ah ! I can bear them. This is 
 my son," she said, "I bore, I reared this man," and she 
 raised her hands above her, and clasped them as if in ec- 
 stasy, then she lay back on the pillow. 
 
 "Mother, your face is growing pale !" cried the lad. 
 
 "Some one must go for a priest,'-" she answered, with a 
 dying voice. 
 
 v --y
 
 2(56 LA GREXADIERE 
 
 Louis wakened Annette, and the terrified old woman hur- 
 ried to the parsonage at Saint-Cyr. 
 
 When morning came, Mme. Willemsens received the sacra- 
 ment amid the most touching surroundings. Her children 
 were kneeling in the room, with Annette and the vine- 
 dresser's family, simple folk, who had already become part 
 of the household. The silver crucifix, carried by a chorister, 
 a peasant child from the village, was lifted up, and the 
 dying mother received the Viaticum from an aged priest. The 
 Viaticum ! sublime word, containing an idea yet more sub- 
 lime, an idea only possessed by the apostolic religion of the 
 Roman church. 
 
 "This woman has suffered greatly !" the old cure said in 
 his simple way. 
 
 Marif Willemsens heard no voices now, but her eyes were 
 still fixed upon her children. Those about her listened in 
 terror to her breathing in the deep silence; already it came 
 more slowly, though at intervals a deep sigh told them that 
 she still lived, and of a struggle within her; then at last it 
 ceased. Every one burst into tears except Marie. He, poor 
 child, was still too young to know what death meant. 
 
 Annette and the vinedresser's wife closed the eyes of the 
 adorable woman, whose beauty shone out in all its radiance 
 after death. Then the women took possession of the chamber 
 of death, removed the furniture, wrapped the dead in her 
 winding-sheet, and laid her upon the couch. They lit tapers 
 about her, and arranged everything the crucifix, the sprigs 
 of box, and the holy-water stoup after the custom of the 
 countryside, bolting the shutters and drawing the curtains. 
 Later the curate came to pass the night in prayer with Louis, 
 who refused to leave his mother. On Tuesday morning an 
 old woman and two children and a vinedresser's wife fol- 
 lowed the dead to her grave. These were the only mourners. 
 Yet this was a woman whose wit and beauty and charm had 
 won a European reputation, a woman whose funeral, if it had 
 taken place in London, would have been recorded in pompous 
 newspaper paragraphs, as a sort of aristocratic rite, if she
 
 L.A GRENADIERE 267 
 
 had not committed the sweetest of crimes, a crime always 
 expiated in this world, so that the pardoned spirit may 
 enter heaven. Marie cried when they threw the earth on 
 his mother's coffin; he understood that he should see her 
 no more. 
 
 A simple, wooden cross, set up to mark her grave, bore 
 this inscription, due to the cure of Saint-Cyr: 
 
 HERE LIES 
 
 AN UNHAPPY WOMAN, 
 
 WHO DIED AT THE AGE OF THIRTY-SIX. 
 KNOWN IN HEAVEN BY THE NAME OF AUGUSTA. 
 
 Pray for her! 
 
 When all was over, the children came back to La Grena- 
 diere to take a last look at their home; then, hand in hand, 
 they turned to go with Annette, leaving the vinedresser in 
 charge, with directions to hand over everything duly to the 
 proper authorities. 
 
 At this moment, Annette called to Louis from the steps 
 by the kitchen door, and took him aside with, "Here is ma- 
 dame's ring, Monsieur Louis." 
 
 The sight of this vivid remembrance of his dead mother 
 moved him so deeply that he wept. In his fortitude, he 
 had not even thought of this supreme piety ; and he flung his 
 arms round the old woman's neck. Then the three set 
 out down the beaten path, and the stone staircase, and so 
 to Tours, without turning their heads. 
 
 "Mamma used to come there !" Marie said when they 
 reached the bridge. 
 
 Annette had a relative, a retired dressmaker, who lived in 
 the Rue de la Guerche. She took the two children to this 
 cousin's house, meaning that they should live together
 
 268 LA GRENADIERE 
 
 thenceforth. But Louis told her of his plans, gave Marie's 
 certificate of birth and the ten thousand francs into her 
 keeping, and the two went the next morning to take Marie 
 to school. 
 
 Louis very briefly explained his position to the headmaster, 
 and went. Marie came with him as far as the gateway. 
 There Louis gave solemn parting words of the tenderest coun- 
 sel, telling Marie that he would now be left alone in the 
 world. He looked at his brother for a moment, and put his 
 arms about him, took one more long look, brushed a tear 
 from his eyes, and went, turning again and again till the 
 very last to see his brother standing there in the gateway of 
 the school. 
 
 A month later Louis-Gaston, now an apprentice on board 
 a man-of-war, left the harbor of Rochefort. Leaning over 
 the bulwarks of the corvette Iris, he watched the coast of 
 France receding swiftly till it became indistinguishable from 
 the faint blue horizon line. In a little while he felt that he 
 was really alone, and lost in the wide ocean, lost and alone 
 in the world and in life. 
 
 "There is no need to cry, lad; there is a God for us all," 
 said an old sailor, with rough kindliness in his thick voice. 
 
 The boy thanked him with pride in his eyes. Then he 
 bowed his head, and resigned himself to a sailor's life. He 
 was a father. 
 
 ANGOULfisiE, August 1832.
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 To M. le Marquis Damaso Pareto. 
 
 I HAVE always longed to tell a simple and true story, which 
 should strike terror into two young lovers, and drive them 
 to take refuge each in the other's heart, as two children cling 
 together at the sight of a snake by a woodside. At the risk 
 of spoiling my story and of being taken for a coxcomb, I 
 state my intention at the outset. 
 
 I myself played a part in this almost commonplace trag- 
 edy; so if it fails to interest you, the failure will be in part 
 my own fault, in part owing to historical veracity. Plenty of 
 things in real life are superlatively uninteresting; so that 
 it is one-half of art to select from realities those which con- 
 tain possibilities of poetry. 
 
 In 1819 I was traveling from Paris to Moulins. The state 
 of my finances obliged me to take an outside place. Eng- 
 lishmen, as you know, regard those airy perches on the top 
 of the coach as the best seats; and for the first few miles 
 1 discovered abundance of excellent reasons for justifying 
 the opinion of our neighbors. A young fellow, apparently 
 in somewhat better circumstances, who came to take the seat 
 beside me from preference, listened to my reasoning with in- 
 offensive smiles. An approximate nearness of age, a simi- 
 larity in ways of thinking, a common love of fresh air, and 
 of the rich landscape scenery through which the coach was 
 lumbering along, these things, together with an indescrib- 
 able magnetic something, drew us before long into one of 
 those short-lived traveler's intimacies, in which we unbend 
 with the more complacency because the intercourse is by its 
 very nature transient, and makes no implicit demands upon 
 the future.
 
 270 THE MESSAGE 
 
 We had not come thirty leagues before we were talking of 
 women and of love. Then, with all the circumspection de- 
 manded in such matters, we proceeded naturally to the topic 
 of our lady-loves. Young as we both were, we still admired 
 "the woman of a certain age," that is to say, the woman be- 
 tween thirty-five and forty. Oh ! any poet who should have 
 listened to our talk, for heaven knows how many stages be- 
 yond Montargis, would have reaped a harvest of naming 
 epithet, rapturous description, and very tender confidences. 
 Our bashful fears, our silent interjections, our blushes, as 
 we met each other's eyes, were expressive with an eloquence, 
 a boyish charm, which I have ceased to feel. One must re- 
 main young, no doubt, to understand youth. 
 
 Well, we understood one another to admiration on all the 
 essential points of passion. We had laid it down as an 
 axiom at the very outset, that in theory and practice there 
 was no such piece of driveling nonsense in this world as a 
 certificate of birth ; that plenty of women were younger 
 at forty than many a girl of twenty; and, to come to the 
 point, that a woman is no older than she looks. 
 
 This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck 
 out, in all good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when 
 we had portrayed our mistresses as young, charming, and 
 devoted to us, women of rank, women of taste, intellectual 
 and clever; when we had endowed them with little feet, a 
 satin, nay, a delicately fragrant skin, then came the ad- 
 mission on his part that Madame Such-an-one was thirty- 
 eight years old, and on mine that I worshiped a woman of 
 forty. Whereupon, as if released on either side from some 
 kind of vague fear, our confidences came thick and fast, 
 when we found that we were of the same confraternity of 
 love. It was which of us should overtop the other in senti- 
 ment. 
 
 One of us had traveled six hundred miles to see his mis- 
 tress for an hour. The other, at the risk of being shot for 
 a wolf, had prowled about her park to meet her one night. 
 Out came all our follies in fact. If it is pleasant to re-
 
 THE MESSAGE 271 
 
 member past dangers, is it not. at least as pleasant to re- 
 call past delights? We live through the joy a second time. 
 We told each other everything, our perils, our great joys, 
 our little pleasures, and even the humors of the situation. 
 My friend's countess had lighted -a cigar for him; mine 
 made chocolate for me, and wrote to me every day when 
 we did not meet; his lady had come to spend three days 
 with him at the risk of ruin to her reputation; mine had 
 done even better, or worse, if you will have it so. Our count- 
 esses, moreover, were adored by their husbands; these gen- 
 tlemen were enslaved by the charm possessed by every woman 
 who loves ; and, with even supererogatory simplicity, afforded 
 us that just sufficient spice of danger which increases pleasure. 
 Ah ! how quickly the wind swept away our talk and our 
 happy laughter! 
 
 When we reached Pouilly, I scanned my new friend with 
 much interest, and truly, it was not difficult to imagine him 
 the hero of a very serious love affair. Picture to yourselves 
 a young man of middle height, but very well proportioned, 
 a bright, expressive face, dark hair, blue eyes, moist lips, 
 and white and even teeth. A certain not unbecoming pallor 
 still overspread his delicately cut features, and there were 
 faint dark circles about his eyes, as if he were recovering 
 from an illness. Add, furthermore, that he had white and 
 shapely hands, of which he was as careful as a pretty woman 
 should be; add that he seemed to be very well informed, 
 and was decidedly clever, and it should not be difficult for 
 you to imagine that my traveling companion was more than 
 worthy of a countess. Indeed, many a girl might have 
 wished for such a husband, for he was a Vicomte with an in- 
 come of twelve or fifteen thousand livres, "to say nothing of 
 expectations." 
 
 About a league out of Pouilly the coach was overturned. 
 My luckless comrade, thinking to save himself, jumped to 
 the edge of a newly-ploughed field, instead of following the 
 fortunes of the vehicle and clinging tightly to the roof, as I 
 did. He either miscalculated in some way, or he slipped;
 
 272 THE MESSAGE 
 
 how it happened, I do not know, but the coach fell over upon 
 him, and he was crushed under it. 
 
 We carried him into a peasant's cottage, and there, amid 
 the moans wrung from him by horrible sufferings, he con- 
 trived to give me a commission a sacred task, in that it was 
 laid upon me by a dying man's last wish. Poor boy, all 
 through his agony he was torturing himself in his young sim- 
 plicity of heart with the thought of the painful shock to his 
 mistress when she should suddenly read of his death in a 
 newspaper. He begged me to go myself to break the news 
 to her. He bade me look for a key which he wore on a 
 ribbon about his neck. I found it half buried in the flesh, 
 but the dying boy did not utter a sound as I extricated it 
 as gently as possible from the wound which it had made. 
 He had scarcely given me the necessary directions I was 
 to go to his home at La Charite-sur-Loire for his mistress' 
 love-letters, which he conjured me to return to her when 
 he grew speechless in the middle of a sentence ; but from his 
 last gesture, I understood that the fatal key would be my 
 passport in his mother's house. It troubled him that he was 
 powerless to utter a single word to thank me, for of my wish 
 to serve him he had no doubt. He looked wistfully at me 
 for a moment, then his eyelids drooped in token of farewell, 
 and his head sank, and he died. His death was the only fatal 
 accident caused by the overturn. 
 
 "But it was partly his own fault," the coachman said to 
 me. 
 
 At La Charite, I executed the poor fellow's dying wishes. 
 His mother was away from home, which in a manner was 
 fortunate for me. Nevertheless, I had to assuage the grief 
 of an old woman-servant, who staggered back at the tidings 
 of her young master's death, and sank half-dead into a chair 
 when she saw the blood-stained key. But I had another and 
 more dreadful sorrow to think of, the sorrow of a woman 
 who had lost her last love; so I left the old woman to her 
 prosopopeia, and carried off the precious correspondence, 
 carefully sealed by my friend of a day.
 
 THE MESSAGE 273 
 
 The Countess chateau was some eight leagues heyond 
 Moulins, and then there was some distance to walk across 
 country. So it was not exactly an easy matter to deliver my 
 message. For divers reasons into which I need not enter, 
 I had barely sufficient money to take me to Moulins. How- 
 ever, my youthful enthusiasm determined to hasten thither 
 on foot as fast as possible. Bad news travels swiftly, and I 
 wished to be first at the chateau. I asked for the shortest way, 
 and hurried through the field paths of the Bourbonnais, bear- 
 ing, as it were, a dead man on my back. The nearer I 
 came to the Chateau de Montpersan, the more aghast I felt 
 at the idea of my strange self-imposed pilgrimage. Vast 
 numbers of romantic fancies ran in my head. I imagined 
 all kinds of situations in which I might find this Comtesse 
 de Montpersan, or, to observe the laws of romance, this 
 Juliette, so passionately beloved of my traveling companion. 
 I sketched out ingenious answers to the questions which she 
 might be supposed to put to me. At every turn of a wood, in 
 every beaten pathway, I rehearsed a modern version of the 
 scene in which Sosie describes the battle to his lantern. To 
 my shame be it said, I had thought at first of nothing but 
 the part that / was to play, of my own cleverness, of how 
 I should demean myself; but now that I was in the coun- 
 try, an ominous thought flashed through my soul like a 
 thunderbolt tearing its way through a veil of gray cloud. 
 
 What an awful piece of news it was for a woman whose 
 whole thoughts were full of her young lover, who was look- 
 ing forward hour by hour to a joy which no words can ex- 
 press, a woman who had been at a world of pains to invent 
 plausible pretexts to draw him to her side. Yet, after all, 
 it was a cruel deed of charity to be the messenger of death ! 
 So 1 hurried on, splashing and bemiring myself in the by- 
 ways of the Bourbonnais. 
 
 Before very long I reached a great chestnut avenue with 
 a pile of buildings at the further end the Chateau of Mont- 
 persan stood out against the sky like a mass of brown cloud, 
 with sharp, fantastic outlines. All the doors of the chateau 
 VOL. 542
 
 274 THE MESSAGE 
 
 stood open. This in itself disconcerted me, and routed all 
 my plans: but I went in boldl} r , and in a moment found my- 
 self between a couple of dogs, barking as your true country- 
 bred animal can bark. The sound brought out a hurrying 
 servant-maid; who, when informed that I wished to speak 
 to Mme. la Comtesse, waved a hand towards the masses of 
 trees in the English park which wound about the chateau, 
 with "Madame is out there " 
 
 "Many thanks," said I ironicall}'. I might have wan- 
 dered for a couple of hours in the park with her "out there" 
 to guide me. 
 
 In the meantime, a pretty little girl, with curling hair, 
 dressed in a white frock, a rose-colored sash, and a broad frill 
 at the throat, had overheard or guessed the question and 
 its answer. She gave me a glance and vanished, calling in 
 shrill, childish tones: 
 
 "Mother, here is a gentleman who wishes to speak to 
 you !" 
 
 And, along the winding alleys, I followed the skipping 
 and dancing white frill, a sort of will-o'-the-wisp, that 
 showed me the way among the trees. 
 
 I must make a full confession. I stopped behind the last 
 shrub in the avenue, pulled up my collar, rubbed my shabby 
 hat and my trousers with the cuffs of my sleeves, dusted my 
 coat with the sleeves themselves, and gave them a final cleans- 
 ing rub one against the other. I buttoned my coat care- 
 fully so as to exhibit the inner, always the least worn, side of 
 the cloth, and finally had turned down the tops of my 
 trousers over my boots, artistically cleaned in the grass. 
 Thanks to this Gascon toilet, I could hope that the lady 
 would not take me for the local rate collector ; but now when 
 my thoughts travel back to that episode of my youth, I 
 sometimes laugh at my own expense. 
 
 Suddenly, just as I was composing myself, at a turning 
 in the green walk, among a wilderness of flowers lighted 
 up by a hot ray of sunlight, I saw Juliette Juliette and her 
 husband. The pretty little girl held her mother by the hand,
 
 THE MESSAGE 275 
 
 and it was easy to see that the lady had quickened her pace 
 somewhat at the child's ambiguous phrase. Taken aback by 
 the sight of a total stranger, who bowed with a tolerably awk- 
 ward air, she looked at me with a coolly courteous expres- 
 sion and an adorable pout, in which I, who knew her secret, 
 could read the full extent of her disappointment. I sought, 
 but sought in vain, to remember any of the elegant phrases 
 so laboriously prepared. 
 
 This momentary hesitation gave the lady's husband time 
 to come forward. Thoughts by the myriad flitted through 
 my brain. To give myself a countenance, I got out a few 
 sufficiently feeble inquiries, asking whether the persons pres- 
 ent were really M. le Comte and Mme. la Comtesse de Mont- 
 persan. These imbecilities gave me time to form my own 
 conclusions at a glance, and, with a perspicacity rare at that 
 age, to analyze the husband and wife whose solitude was 
 about to be so rudely disturbed. 
 
 The husband seemed to be a specimen of a certain type 
 of nobleman, the fairest ornaments of the provinces of our 
 day. He wore big shoes with stout soles to them. I put the 
 shoes first advisedly, for they made an even deeper impres- 
 sion upon me than a seedy black coat, a pair of threadbare 
 trousers, a flabby cravat, or a crumpled shirt collar. There 
 was a touch of the magistrate in the man, a good deal more 
 of the Councillor of the Prefecture, all the self-importance 
 of the mayor of the arrondissement, the local autocrat, and the 
 soured temper of the unsuccessful candidate who has never 
 been returned since the year 1816. As to countenance a 
 wizened, wrinkled, sunburned face, and long, sleek locks 
 of scanty gray hair; as to character an incredible mixture 
 of homely sense and sheer silliness; of a rich man's over- 
 bearing ways, and a total lack of manners ; just the kind 
 of husband who is almost entirely led by his wife, yet im- 
 agines himself to be the master; apt to domineer in trifles, 
 and to let more important things slip past unheeded there 
 you have the man! 
 
 But the Countess 1 Ah, how sharp and startling the con-
 
 276 THE MESSAGE 
 
 trast between husband and wife ! The Countess was a little 
 woman, with a flat, graceful figure and enchanting shape; 
 so fragile, so dainty was she, that you would have feared to 
 break some bone if you so much as touched her. She wore 
 a white muslin dress, a rose-colored sash, and rose-colored rib- 
 bons in the pretty cap on her head; her chemisette was 
 moulded so deliriously by her shoulders and the loveliest 
 rounded contours, that the sight of her awakened an irre- 
 sistible desire of possession in the depths of the heart. Her 
 eyes were bright and dark and expressive, her movements 
 graceful, her foot charming. An experienced man of 
 pleasure would not have given her more than thirty years, 
 her forehead was so girlish. She had all the most transient 
 delicate detail of youth in her face. In character she seemed 
 to me to resemble the Comtesse de Lignolles and the Mar- 
 quise de B , two feminine types always fresh in the mem- 
 ory of any young man who has read Louvet's romance. 
 
 In a moment I saw how things stood, and took a diplomatic 
 course that would have done credit to an old ambassador. 
 For once, and perhaps for the only time in my life, I used 
 tact, and knew in what the special skill of courtiers and men 
 of the world consists. 
 
 I have had so many battles to fight since those heedless 
 days, that they have left me no time to distil all the least 
 actions of daily life, and to do everything so that it falls in 
 with those rules of etiquette and good taste which wither the 
 most generous emotions. 
 
 "M. le Comte," I said with an air of mystery, "I should 
 like a few words with you," and I fell back a pace or two. 
 
 He followed my example. Juliette left us together, going 
 away unconcernedly, like a wife who knew that she can 
 learn her husband's secrets as soon as she chooses to know 
 them. 
 
 I told the Count briefly of the death of my traveling com- 
 panion. The effect produced by my news convinced me that 
 his affection for his young collaborator was cordial enough, 
 and this emboldened me to make reply as I did. 
 
 "My wife will be in despair," cried he; "I shall be obliged 
 to break the news of this unhappy event with great caution."
 
 THE MESSAGE 277 
 
 "Monsieur," said I, "I addressed myself to you in the first 
 instance, as in duty bound. I could not, without first inform- 
 ing you, deliver a message to Mme. la Comtesse, a message 
 intrusted to me by an entire stranger; but this commission 
 is a sort of sacred trust, a secret of which I have no power 
 to dispose. From the high idea of your character which he 
 gave me, I felt sure that you would not oppose me in the ful- 
 filment of a dying request. Mme. la Comtesse will be at 
 liberty to break the silence which is imposed upon me." 
 
 At this eulogy, the Count swung his head very amiably, 
 responded with a tolerably involved compliment, and finally 
 left me a free field. We returned to the house. The bell 
 rang, and I was invited to dinner. As we came up to the 
 house, a grave and silent couple, Juliette stole a glance at us. 
 Not a little surprised to find her husband contriving some 
 frivolous excuse for leaving us together, she stopped short, 
 giving me a glance such a glance as women only can give 
 you. In that look of hers there was the pardonable curiosity 
 of the mistress of the house confronted with a guest dropped 
 down upon her from the skies and innumerable doubts, 
 certainly warranted by the state of my clothes, by my youth 
 and my expression, all singularly at variance; there was all 
 the disdain of the adored mistress, in whose eyes all men save 
 one are as nothing; there were involuntary tremors and 
 alarms; and, above all, the thought that it was tiresome to 
 have an unexpected guest just now, when, no doubt, she had 
 been scheming to enjoy full solitude for her love. This mute 
 eloquence I understood in her eyes, and all the pity and com- 
 passion in me made answer in a sad smile. I thought of her, 
 as I had seen her for one moment, in the pride of her beauty ; 
 standing in the sunny afternoon in the narrow alley with the 
 flowers on either hand; and as that fair wonderful picture 
 rose before my eyes, I could not repress a sigh. 
 
 "Alas, niadame, I have just made a very arduous journey 
 , undertaken solely on your account." 
 
 "Sir !" 
 
 "Oh! it is on behalf of one who calls you Juliette that I 
 am come," I continued. Her face grew white.
 
 278 THE MESSAGE 
 
 "You will not see him to-day." 
 
 "Is he ill?" she asked, and her voice sank lower. 
 
 "Yes. But for pity's- sake, control yourself. ... He 
 intrusted me with secrets that concern you, and you may 
 be sure that never messenger could be more discreet nor more 
 devoted than I." 
 
 "What is the matter with him?" 
 
 "How if he loved you no longer?" 
 
 "Oh ! that is impossible !" she cried, and a faint smile, 
 nothing less than frank, broke over her face. Then all at 
 once a kind of shudder ran through her, and she reddened, 
 and she gave me a wild, swift glance as she asked: 
 
 "Is he alive?" 
 
 Great God ! What a terrible phrase ! I was too young to 
 bear that tone in her voice; I made no reply, only looked at 
 the unhappy woman in helpless bewilderment. 
 
 "Monsieur, monsieur, give me an answer!" she cried. 
 
 "Yes, madame." 
 
 "Is it true ? Oh ! tell me the truth ; I can hear the truth. 
 Tell me the truth! Any pain would be less keen than this 
 suspense." 
 
 1 answered by two tears wrung from me by that strange 
 tone of hers. She leaned against a tree with a faint, sharp 
 cry. 
 
 "Madame, here comes your husband !" 
 
 "Have I a husband?" and with those words she fled away 
 out of sight. 
 
 "Well," cried the Count, "dinner is growing cold. Come, 
 monsieur." 
 
 Thereupon I followed the master of the house into the 
 dining-room. Dinner was served with all the luxury which 
 we have learned to expect in Paris. There were five covers 
 laid, three for the Count and Countess and their little 
 daughter; my own, which should have been his; and another 
 for the canon of Saint-Denis, who said grace, and then 
 asked : 
 
 "Why, where can our dear Countess be?"
 
 THE MESSAGE 279 
 
 "Oh! she will be here directly/' said the Count. He had 
 hastily helped us to the soup, aud was dispatching an ample 
 plateful with portentous speed. 
 
 "Oh! nephew/' exclaimed the canon, "if your wife were 
 here, you would behave more rationally." 
 
 "Papa will make himself ill !" said the child with a mis- 
 chievous look. 
 
 Just after this extraordinary gastronomical episode, as the 
 Count was eagerly helping himself to a slice of venison, a 
 housemaid came in with, "We cannot find madame any- 
 where, sir !" 
 
 I sprang up at the words with a dread in my mind, my 
 fears written so plainly in my face, that the old canon came 
 out alter me into the garden. The Count, for the sake of ap- 
 pearances, came as far as the threshold. 
 
 "Don't go, don't go !" called he. "Don't trouble yourselves 
 in the least," but he did not offer to accompany us. 
 
 We three the canon, the housemaid, and I hurried 
 through the garden walks and over the bowling-green in the 
 park, shouting, listening for an answer, growing more uneasy 
 every moment. As we hurried along, I told the story of the 
 fatal accident, and discovered how strongly the maid was 
 attached to her mistress, for she took my secret dread far 
 more seriously than the canon. We went along by the pools 
 of water ; all over the park we went ; but we neither found the 
 Countess nor any sign that she had passed that way. At last 
 we turned back, and under the Avails of some outbuildings I 
 heard a smothered, wailing cry, so stifled that it was scarcely 
 audible. The sound seemed to come from a place that might 
 have been a granary. I went in at all risks, and there we 
 found Juliette. With the instinct of despair, she had buried 
 herself deep in the hay, hiding her face in it to deaden those 
 dreadful cries pudency even stronger than grief. She was 
 sobbing and crying like a child, but there was a more poign- 
 ant, more piteous sound in the sobs. There was nothing left 
 in the world for her. The maid pulled the hay from her, 
 her mistress submitting with the supine listlessness of a dying
 
 280 THE MESSAGE 
 
 animal. The maid could find nothing to say but "There! 
 madame; there, there " 
 
 "What is the matter with her ? What is it, niece ?" the old 
 canon kept on exclaiming. 
 
 At last, with the girl's help, I carried Juliette to her room, 
 gave orders that she was not to be disturbed, and that every 
 one must be told that the Countess was suffering from a sick 
 headache. Then we came down to the dining-room, the 
 canon and I. 
 
 Some little time had passed since we left the dinner-table ; 
 I had scarcely given a thought to the Count since we left him 
 under the peristyle; his indifference had surprised me, but 
 my amazement increased when we came back and found him 
 seated philosophically at table. He had eaten pretty nearly 
 all the dinner, to the huge delight of his little daughter; the 
 child was smiling at her father's flagrant infraction of the 
 Countess' rules. The man's odd indifference was explained 
 to me by a mild altercation which at once arose with the 
 canon. The Count was suffering from some serious com- 
 plaint. I cannot remember now what it was, but his med- 
 ical advisers had put him on a very severe regimen, and the 
 ferocious hunger familiar to convalescents, sheer animal 
 appetite, had overpowered all human sensibilities. In that 
 little space I had seen frank and undisguised human nature 
 under two very different aspects, in such a sort that there was 
 a certain grotesque element in the very midst of a most ter- 
 rible tragedy. 
 
 The evening that followed was dreary. I was tired. The 
 canon racked his brains to discover a reason for his niece's 
 tears. The lady's husband silently digested his dinner; con- 
 tent, apparently, with the Countess' rather vague explana- 
 tion, sent through the maid, putting forward some feminine 
 ailment as her excuse. We all went early to bed. 
 
 As I passed the door of the Countess' room on the way to 
 my night's lodging, I asked the servant timidly for news of 
 her. She heard my voice, and would have me come in, and 
 tried to talk, but in vain she could not utter a sound. She
 
 THE MESSAGE 281 
 
 bent her head, and I withdrew. In spite of the painful agita- 
 tion, which I had felt to the full as youth can feel, I fell 
 asleep, tired out with my forced march. 
 
 It was late in the night when I was awakened by the 
 grating sound of curtain rings drawn sharply over the metal 
 rods. There sat the Countess at the foot of my bed. The 
 light from a lamp set on my table fell full upon her face. 
 
 "Is it really true, monsieur, quite true?" she asked. "I 
 do not know how I can live after that awful blow which 
 struck me down a little while since ; but just now I feel calm. 
 I want to know everything." 
 
 "What calm !" I said to myself as I saw the ghastly pallor 
 of her face contrasting with her brown hair, and heard the 
 guttural tones of her voice. The havoc wrought in her drawn 
 features filled me with dumb amazement. 
 
 Those few hours had bleached her; she had lost a woman's 
 last glow of autumn color. Her eyes were red and swollen, 
 nothing of their beauty remained, nothing looked out of them 
 save her bitter and exceeding grief ; it was as if a gray cloud 
 covered the place through which the sun had shone. 
 
 I gave her the story of the accident in a few words, without 
 laying too much stress on some too harrowing details. I told 
 her about our first day's journey, and how it had been filled 
 with recollections of her and of love. And she listened 
 eagerly, without shedding a tear, leaning her face towards 
 me, as some zealous doctor might lean to watch any change 
 in a patient's face. When she seemed to me to have opened 
 her whole heart to pain, to be deliberately plunging herself 
 into misery with the first delirious frenzy of despair. I caught 
 at my opportunity, and told her of the fears that troubled 
 the poor dying man, told her how and why it was that he had 
 given me this fatal message. Then her tears were dried by 
 the fires that burned in the dark depths within her. She 
 grew even paler. When I drew the letters from beneath my 
 pillow and held them out to her, she took them mechanically ; 
 then, trembling from head to foot, she said in a hollow 
 voice:
 
 282 THE MESSAGE 
 
 "And / burned all his letters! I have nothing of him 
 left ! Nothing ! nothing !" 
 
 She struck her hand against her forehead. 
 
 "Madame " I began. 
 
 She glanced at me in the convulsion of grief. 
 
 "I cut this from his head, this lock of his hair." 
 
 And I gave her that last imperishable token that had been 
 a very part of him she loved. Ah ! if you had felt, as I felt 
 then, her burning tears falling on your hands, you would 
 know what gratitude is, when it follows so closely upon the 
 benefit. Her eyes shone with a feverish glitter, a faint ray 
 of happiness gleamed out of her terrible suffering, as she 
 grasped my hands in hers, and said, in a choking voice: 
 
 "Ah ! you love ! May you be happy always. May you 
 never lose her whom you love." 
 
 She broke off, and fled away with her treasure. 
 
 Next morning, this night-scene among my dreams seemed 
 like a dream ; to make sure of the piteous truth, I was obliged 
 to look fruitlessly under my pillow for the packet of letters. 
 There is no need to tell you how the next day went. I spent 
 several hours of it with the Juliette whom my poor comrade 
 had so praised to me. In her lightest words, her gestures, in 
 all that she did and said, I saw proofs of the nobleness of 
 soul, the delicacy of feeling which made her what she was, 
 one of those beloved, loving, and self-sacrificing natures so 
 rarely found upon this earth. 
 
 In the evening the Comte de Montpersan came himself as 
 far as Moulins with me. There he spoke with a kind of em- 
 barrassment : 
 
 "Monsieur, if it is not abusing your good-nature, and act- 
 ing very inconsiderately towards a stranger to whom we are 
 already under obligations, would you have the goodness, as 
 you are going to Paris, to remit a sum of money to M. de 
 (I forget the name), in the Eue du Sentier; I owe him an 
 amount, and he asked me to send it as soon as possible." 
 
 "Willingly," said I. And in the innocence of my heart, I 
 took charge of a rouleau of twenty-five louis d'or, which paid
 
 THE MESSAGE 283 
 
 the expenses of my journey back to Paris ; and only when, on 
 my arrival, I went to the address indicated to repay the 
 amount to M. de Montpersan's correspondent, did I under- 
 stand the ingenious delicacy with which Julie had obliged 
 me. Was not all the genius of a loving woman revealed in 
 such a way of lending, in her reticence with regard to a 
 poverty easily guessed? 
 
 And what rapture to have this adventure to tell to a woman 
 who clung to you more closely in dread, saying, "Oh, my 
 dear, not you! you must not die!" 
 
 PARIS, January 1832.
 
 GOBSECK 
 
 To M. le Baron Barchou de Penhoen. 
 
 Among all the pupils of the Oratorian school at VendSme, we 
 are, I think, the only two who have afterwards met in mid- 
 career of a life of letters we who once were cultivating Philo- 
 sophy when by rights we should have been minding our De 
 viris. When we met, you were engaged upon your noble works 
 on German philosophy, and I upon this study. So neither of us 
 has missed his vocation; and you, when you see your name 
 here, will feel, no doubt, as much pleasure as he who inscribes 
 his work to you. Your old schoolfellow, 
 1840. DE BALZAC. 
 
 IT was one o'clock in the morning, during the winter of 1829- 
 30, but in the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu's salon two persons 
 stayed on who did not belong to her family circle. A young 
 and good-looking man heard the clock strike, and took his 
 leave. When the courtyard echoed with the sound of a de- 
 parting carriage, the Vicomtesse looked up, saw that no one 
 was present save her brother and a friend of the family finish- 
 ing their game of piquet, and went across to her daughter. 
 The girl, standing by the chimney-piece, apparently exam- 
 ining a transparent fire-screen, was listening to the sounds 
 from the courtyard in a way that justified certain maternal 
 fears. 
 
 "Camille," said the Vicomtesse, "if you continue to behave 
 to young Comte de Eestaud as you have done this evening, 
 you will oblige me to see no more of him here. Listen, child, 
 and if you have any confidence in my love, let me guide you 
 in life. At seventeen one cannot judge of past or future, nor 
 
 (285)
 
 286 GOBSECK 
 
 of certain social considerations. I have only one thing to 
 say to you. M. de Restaud has a mother, a mother who 
 would waste millions of francs; a woman of no birth, a Mile. 
 Goriot ; people talked a good deal about her at one time. She 
 behaved so badly to her own father, that she certainly does 
 not deserve to have so good a son. The young Count adores 
 her, and maintains her in her position with dutifulness 
 worthy of all praise, and he is extremely good to his brother 
 and sister. But however admirable his behavior may be," 
 the Vicomtesse added with a shrewd expression, "so long as 
 his mother lives, any family would take alarm at the idea of 
 intrusting a daughter's fortune and future to young 
 Restaud." 
 
 "I overheard a word now and again in your talk with Mile, 
 de Grandlieu," cried the friend of the family, "and it made 
 me anxious to put in a word of my own. I have won, M. le 
 Comte/' he added, turning to his opponent. "I shall throw 
 you over and go to your niece's assistance." 
 
 "See what it is to have an attorney's ears !" exclaimed 
 the Vicomtesse. "My dear Derville, how could you know 
 what I was saying to Camille in a whisper?" 
 
 "I knew it from your looks," answered Derville, seating 
 himself in a low chair by the fire. 
 
 Camille's uncle went to her side, and Mme. de Grandlieu 
 took up her position on a hearth stool between her daughter 
 and Derville. 
 
 "The time has come for telling a story, which should 
 modify your judgment as to Ernest de Restaud's prospects." 
 
 "A story?" cried Camille. "Do begin at once, monsieur." 
 
 The glance that Derville gave the Vicomtesse told her that 
 this tale was meant for her. The Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, 
 be it said, was one of the greatest ladies in the Faubourg 
 Saint-Germain, by reason of her fortune and her ancient 
 name; and though it may seem improbable that a Paris 
 attorney should speak so familiarly to her, or be so much at 
 home in her house, the fact is nevertheless easily explained. 
 
 When Mme. de Grandlieu returned to France with the
 
 GOBSECK 287 
 
 Royal family, she came to Paris, and at first lived entirely on 
 the pension allowed her out of the Civil List by Louis XVIII. 
 an intolerable position. The Hotel de Grandlieu had been 
 sold by the Eepublic. It came to Derville's knowledge that 
 there were flaws in the title, and he thought that it ought to 
 return to the Vicomtesse. He instituted proceedings for 
 nullity of contract, and gained the day. Encouraged by this 
 success, he used legal quibbles to such purpose that he com- 
 pelled some institution or other to disgorge the Forest of 
 Liceney. Then he won certain lawsuits against the Canal 
 d'Orleans, and recovered a tolerably large amount of prop- 
 erty, with which the Emperor had endowed various public 
 institutions. So it fell out that, thanks to the young attor- 
 ney's skilful management, Mme. de Grandlieu's income 
 reached the sum of some sixty thousand francs, to say 
 nothing of the vast sums returned to her by the law of in- 
 demnity. And Derville, a man of high character, well 
 informed, modest, and pleasant in company, became the 
 house-friend of the family. 
 
 By his conduct of Mme. de Grandlieu's affairs he had fairly 
 earned the esteem of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and num- 
 bered the best families among his clients ; but he did not take 
 advantage of his popularity, as an ambitious man might have 
 done. The Vicomtesse would have had him sell his practice 
 and enter the magistracy, in which career advancement 
 would have been swift and certain with such influence at his 
 disposal ; but he persistently refused all offers. He only went 
 into society to keep up his connections, but he occasionally 
 spent an evening at the Hotel de Grandlieu. It was a very 
 lucky thing for him that his talents had been brought into 
 the light by his devotion to Mme. de Grandlieu, for his prac- 
 tice otherwise might have gone to pieces. Derville had not 
 an attorney's soul. Since Ernest de Restaud had appeared 
 at the Hotel de Grandlieu, and he had noticed that Camille 
 felt attracted to the young man, Derville had been as assidu- 
 ous in his visits as any dandy of the Chaussee-d'Antin newly 
 admitted to the noble Faubourg. At a ball only a few days
 
 288 GOBSECK 
 
 before, when he happened to stand near Camille, and said, 
 indicating the Count : 
 
 "It is a pity that yonder youngster has not two or three 
 million francs, is it not ?" 
 
 "Is it a pity ? I do not think so," the girl answered. "M. 
 de Restaud has plenty of ability ; he is well educated, and the 
 Minister, his chief, thinks well of him. He will be a remark- 
 able man, I have no doubt. 'Yonder youngster' will have as 
 much money as he wishes when he comes into power." 
 
 "Yes,- but suppose that he were rich already ?" 
 
 "Eich already?" repeated Camille, flushing red. "Why, 
 all the girls in the room would be quarreling for him," she 
 added, glancing at the quadrilles. 
 
 "And then," retorted the attorney, "Mile, de Grandlieu 
 might not be the one towards whom his eyes are always 
 turned ? That is what that red color means ! You like him, 
 do you not ? Come, speak out." 
 
 Camille suddenly rose to go. 
 
 "She loves him," Derville thought. 
 
 Since that evening, Camille had been unwontedly attentive 
 to the attorney, who approved of her liking for Ernest de 
 Restaud. Hitherto, although she knew well that her family 
 lay under great obligations to Derville, she had felt respect 
 rather than real friendship for him, their relation was more 
 a matter of politeness than of warmth of feeling ; and by her 
 manner, and by the tones of her voice, she had always made 
 him sensible of the distance which socially lay between them. 
 Gratitude is a charge upon the inheritance which the second 
 generation is apt to repudiate. 
 
 "This adventure," Derville began after a pause, "brings 
 the one romantic event in my life to my mind. You are 
 laughing already," he went on; "it seems so ridiculous, 
 doesn't it, that an attorney should speak of a romance in his 
 life? But once I was five-and-twenty, like everybody else, 
 and even then I had seen some queer things. I ought to begin 
 at the beginning by telling you about some one whom it is
 
 GOBSECK 289 
 
 impossible that you shnjld have known. The man in ques- 
 tion was a usurer. 
 
 "Can you grasp a clear notion of that sallow, wan face of 
 his? I wish the Academie would give me leave to dub such 
 faces the lunar type. It was like silver-gilt, with the gilt 
 rubbed off. His hair was iron-gra3 r , sleek, and carefulty 
 combed ; his features might have been cast in bronze ; Talley- 
 rand himself was not more impassive than this money- 
 lender. A pair of little eyes, yellow as a ferret's, and with 
 scarce an eyelash to them, peered out from under the shelter- 
 ing peak of a shabby old cap, as if they feared the light. He 
 had the thin lips that you see in Eembrandt's or Metsu's 
 portraits of alchemists and shrunken old men, and a nose so 
 sharp at the tip that it put you in mind of a gimlet. His 
 voice was low; he always spoke suavely; he never flew into a 
 passion. His age was a problem; it was hard to say whether 
 he had grown old before his time, or whether by economy of 
 youth he had saved enough to last him his life. 
 
 "This room, and everything in it, from the green baize of 
 his bureau to the strip of carpet by the bed, was as clean and 
 threadbare as the chilly sanctuary of some elderly spinster 
 who spends her days in rubbing her furniture. In winter 
 time, the live brands of the fire smouldered all day in a bank 
 of ashes; there was never any flame in his grate. He went 
 through his day, from his uprising to his evening coughing- 
 fit, with the regularity of a pendulum, and in some sort was 
 a clockwork man, wound up by a night's slumber. Touch a 
 wood-louse on an excursion across your sheet of paper, and 
 the creature shams death; and in something the same way 
 my acquaintance would stop short in the middle of a sen- 
 tence, while a cart went by, to save the strain to his voice. 
 Following the example of Fontenelle, he was thrifty of pulse- 
 strokes, and concentrated all human sensibility in the inner- 
 most sanctuary of Self. 
 
 "His life flowed soundless as the sands of an hour-glass. 
 His victims sometimes flew into a rage and made a great deal 
 VOL. 543
 
 290 GOBSECK 
 
 of noise, followed by a great silence; so is it in a kitchen after 
 a fowl's neck has been wrung. 
 
 "Toward evening this bill of exchange incarnate would 
 assume ordinary human shape, and his metals were meta- 
 morphosed into a human heart. When he was satisfied with 
 his day's business, he would rub his hands; his inward glee 
 would escape like smoke through every rift and wrinkle of 
 his face; in no other way is it possible to give an idea of 
 the mute play of muscle which expressed sensations similar to 
 the soundless laughter of Leather Stocking. Indeed, even in 
 transports of joy, his conversation was confined to monosyl- 
 lables; he wore the same non-committal countenance. 
 
 "This was the neighbor Chance found for me in the house 
 in the Rue des Gres, where I used to live when as yet I was 
 only a second clerk finishing my third year's studies. The 
 house is damp and dark, and boasts no courtyard. All the 
 windows look on the street; the whole dwelling, in claustral 
 fashion, is divided into rooms or cells of equal size, all open- 
 ing upon a long corridor dimly lit with borrowed lights. The 
 place must have been part of an old convent once. So 
 gloomy was it, that the gaiety of eldest sons forsook them 
 on the stairs before they reached my neighbor's door. He 
 and his house were much alike; even so does the oyster 
 resemble his native rock. 
 
 "I was the one creature with whom he had any communi- 
 cation, socially speaking ; he would come in to ask for a light, 
 to borrow a book or a newspaper, and of an evening he would 
 allow me to go into his cell, and when he was in the humor 
 we would chat together. These marks of confidence were the 
 results of four years of neighborhood and my own sober con- 
 duct. From sheer lack of pence, I was bound to live pretty 
 much as he did. Had he any relations or friends? Was he 
 rich or poor? Nobody could give an answer to these ques- 
 tions. I myself never saw money in his room. Doubtless his 
 capital was safely stowed in the strong rooms of the Bank. 
 He used to collect his bills himself as they fell due, running 
 all over Paris on a pair of shanks as skinny as a stag's. On
 
 GOBSECK 291 
 
 occasion he could be a martyr to prudence. One day, when 
 he happened to have gold in his pockets, a double napoleon 
 worked its way, somehow or other, out of his fob and fell, and 
 another lodger following him up the stairs picked up the 
 coin and returned it to its owner. 
 
 " 'That isn't mine !' said he, with a start of surprise. 
 'Mine indeed ! If I were rich, should I live as I do !' 
 
 "He made his cup of coffee himself every morning on the 
 cast-iron chafing dish which stood all day in the black angle 
 of the grate; his dinner came in from a cookshop; and our 
 old porter's wife went up at the prescribed hour to set his 
 room in order. Finall}^, a whimsical chance, in which Sterne 
 would have seen predestination, had named the man Gobseck. 
 When I did business for him later, I came to know that he 
 was about seventy-six years old at the time when we became 
 acquainted. He was born about 1740, in some outlying 
 suburb of Antwerp, of a Dutch father and a Jewish mother, 
 and his name was Jean-Esther Van Gobseck. You remember 
 how all Paris took an interest in that murder case, a woman 
 named La belle Hollandaise? I happened to mention it to 
 my old neighbor, and he answered without the slightest 
 symptom of interest or surprise, 'She is my grandniece.' 
 
 "That was the only remark drawn from him by the death 
 of his sole surviving next of kin, his sister's granddaughter. 
 From reports of the case I found that La belle Hollandaise 
 was in fact named Sara Van Gobseck. When I asked by 
 what curious chance his grandniece came to bear his surname, 
 he smiled: 
 
 " 'The women never marry in our family/ 
 
 "Singular creature, he had never cared to find out a single 
 relative among four generations counted on the female side. 
 The thought of his heirs was abhorrent to him; and the idea 
 that his wealth could pass into other hands after his death 
 simply inconceivable. 
 
 "He was a child, ten years old, when his mother shipped 
 him off as a cabin boy on a voyage to the Dutch Straits Set- 
 tlements, and there he knocked about for twenty years. The
 
 293 GOBSECK 
 
 inscrutable lines on that sallow forehead kept the secret of 
 horrible adventures, sudden panic, unhoped-for luck, roman- 
 tic cross events, joys that knew no limit, hunger endured and 
 love trampled under foot, fortunes risked, lost, and recovered, 
 life endangered time and time again, and saved, it may be, 
 by one of the rapid, ruthless decisions absolved by necessity. 
 He had known Admiral Simeuse, M. de Lally, M. de Ker- 
 garouet, M. d'Estaing, le Bailli de Suffren, M. de Porten- 
 duere, Lord Cornwallis, Lord Hastings, Tippoo Sahib's 
 father, Tippoo Sahib himself. The bully who served Maha- 
 daji Sindhia, King of Delhi, and did so much to found the 
 power of the Mahrattas, had had dealings with Gobseck. 
 Long residence at St. Thomas brought him in contact with 
 Victor Hughes and other notorious pirates. In his quest of 
 fortune he had left no stone unturned; witness an attempt 
 to discover the treasure of that tribe of savages so famous in 
 Buenos Ayres and its neighborhood. He had a personal 
 knowledge of the events of the American War of Independ- 
 ence. But if he spoke of the Indies or of America, as he did 
 very rarely with me, and never with any one else, he seemed 
 to regard it as an indiscretion and to repent of it afterwards. 
 If humanity and sociability are in some sort a religion, Gob- 
 seck might be ranked as an infidel; but though I set myself 
 to study him, I must confess, to my shame, that his real 
 nature was impenetrable up to the very last. I even felt 
 doubts at times as to his sex. If all usurers are like this one, 
 I maintain that they belong to the neuter gender. 
 
 "Did he adhere to his mother's religion? Did he look on 
 Gentiles as his legitimate prey? Had he turned Roman 
 Catholic, Lutheran, Mahometan, Brahmin, or what not? I 
 never knew anything whatsoever about his religious opinions, 
 and so far as I could see, he was indifferent rather than in- 
 credulous. 
 
 "One evening I went in to see this man who had turned 
 himself to gold; the usurer, whom his victims (his clients, 
 as he styled them ) were wont to call Daddy Gobseck, perhaps 
 ironically, perhaps by way of antiphrasis. He was sitting in
 
 . GOBSBCK 293 
 
 his armchair, motionless as a statue, staring fixedly at the 
 mantel-shelf, where he seemed to read the figures of hia 
 statements. A lamp, with a pedestal that had once been 
 green, was burning in the room ; but so far from taking color 
 from its smoky light, his face seemed to stand out positively 
 paler against the background. He pointed to a chair set for 
 me, but not a word did he say. 
 
 " 'What thoughts can this being have in his mind ?' said I 
 to myself. 'Does he know that a God exists; does he know 
 there are such things as feeling, woman, happiness?' I pitied 
 him as I might have pitied a diseased creature. But, at the 
 same time, I knew quite well that while he had millions of 
 francs at his command, he possessed the world no less in idea 
 that world which he had explored, ransacked, weighed, 
 appraised, and. exploited. 
 
 " 'Good day, Daddy Gobseck,' I began. 
 
 "He turned his face towards me, with a slight contraction 
 of his bushy, black eyebrows; this characteristic shade of 
 expression in him meant as much as the most jubilant smile 
 on a Southern face. 
 
 " 'You look just as gloomy as you did that day when the 
 news came of the failure of that bookseller whose sharpness 
 you admired so much, though you were one of his victims.' 
 
 " 'One of his victims?' he repeated, with a look of aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 " 'Yes. Did you not refuse to accept composition at the 
 meeting of creditors until he undertook privately to pay you 
 your debt in full; and did he not give you bills accepted by 
 the insolvent firm; and then, when he set up in business 
 again, did he not pay you the dividend upon those bills of 
 yours, signed as they were by the bankrupt firm?' 
 
 " 'He was a sharp one, but I had it out of him.' 
 
 " 'Then have you some bills to protest ? To-day is the 
 30th, I believe.' 
 
 "It was the first time that I had spoken to him of money. 
 He looked ironically up at me; then in those bland accents, 
 not unlike the husky tones which the tyro draws from a 
 flute, he answered, 'I am amusing myself.'
 
 294 GOBSECK 
 
 "'So you amuse yourself now and again?' 
 
 " 'Do you imagine that the only poets in the world are 
 those who print their verses?' he asked, with a pitying look 
 and shrug of the shoulders. 
 
 " 'Poetry in that head !' thought I, for as yet I knew 
 nothing of his life. 
 
 " 'What life could be as glorious as mine ?' he continued, 
 and his eyes lighted up. 'You are young, your mental visions 
 are colored by youthful blood, you see women's faces in the 
 fire, while I see nothing but coals in mine. You have all sorts 
 of beliefs, while I have no beliefs at all. Keep your illusions 
 if you can. Now I will show you life with the discount 
 taken off. Go wherever you like, or stay at home by the fire- 
 side with your wife, there always comes a time when you settle 
 down in a certain groove, the groove of your preference ; and 
 then happiness consists in the exercise of your faculties by 
 applying them to realities. Anything more in the way of 
 precept is false. My principles have been various, among 
 various men; I had to change them with every change of 
 latitude. Things that we admire in Europe are punishable 
 in Asia, and a vice in Paris becomes a necessity when you 
 have passed the Azores. There are no such things as hard- 
 and-fast rules; there are only conventions adapted to the 
 climate. Fling a man headlong into one social melting pot 
 after another, and convictions and forms and moral systems 
 become so many meaningless words to him. The one thing 
 that always remains, the one sure instinct that nature has 
 implanted in us, is the instinct of self-preservation. In 
 European society you call this instinct self-interest. If you 
 had lived as long as I have, you would know that there is but 
 one concrete reality invariable enough to be worth caring 
 about, and that is GOLD. Gold represents every form of 
 human power. I have traveled. I found out that there were 
 either hills or plains everywhere : the plains are monotonous, 
 the hills a weariness; consequently, place may be left out of 
 the question. As to manners; man is man all the world over. 
 The same battle between the poor and the rich is going on
 
 GOBSECK 295 
 
 everywhere; it is inevitable everywhere; consequently, it is 
 better to exploit than to be exploited. Everywhere you find 
 the man of thews and sinews who toils, and the lymphatic 
 man who torments himself; and pleasures are everywhere 
 the same, for when all sensations are exhausted, all that sur- 
 vives is Vanity Vanity is the abiding substance of us, the / 
 in us. Vanity is only to be satisfied by gold in floods. Our 
 dreams need time and physical means and painstaking 
 thought before they can be realized. Well, gold contains all 
 things in embryo; gold realizes all things for us. 
 
 " 'None but fools and invalids can find pleasure in shuffling 
 cards all evening long to find out whether they shall win a 
 few pence at the end. None but driveling idiots could spend 
 time in inquiring into all that is happening around them, 
 whether Madame Such-an-One slept single on her couch or 
 in company, whether she has more blood than lymph, more 
 temperament than virtue. None but the dupes, who fondly 
 imagine that they are useful to their like, can interest them- 
 selves in laying down rules for political guidance amid events 
 which neither they nor any one else foresees, nor ever will 
 foresee. None but simpletons can delight in talking about 
 stage players and repeating their sayings; making the daily 
 promenade of a caged animal over a rather larger area; 
 dressing for others, eating for others, priding themselves on 
 a horse or a carriage such as no neighbor can have until three 
 days later. What is all this but Parisian life summed up 
 in a few phrases? Let us find a higher outlook on life than 
 theirs. Happiness consists either in strong emotions which 
 drain our vitalit} r , or in methodical occupation which makes 
 existence like a bit of English machinery, working with the 
 regularity of clockwork. A higher happiness than either 
 consists in a curiosity, styled noble, a wish to learn Nature's 
 secrets, or to attempt by artificial means to imitate Nature 
 to some extent. What is this in two words but Science and 
 Art, or passion or calm ? Ah ! well, every human passion 
 wrought up to its highest pitch in the struggle for existence 
 comes to parade itself here before me as I live in calm. As
 
 296 GOBSECK 
 
 for your scientific curiosity, a kind of wrestling bout in which 
 man is never uppermost, l t replace it by an insight into all the 
 springs of action in man and woman. To sum up, the world 
 is mine without effort of mine, and the world has not the 
 slightest hold on me. Listen to this/ he went on, 'I will tell 
 you the history of my morning, and you will divine my 
 pleasures/ 
 
 "He got up, pushed the bolt of the door, drew a tapestry 
 curtain across it with a sharp grating sound of the rings on 
 the rod, then he sat down again. 
 
 " 'This morning/ he said, 'I had only two amounts to col- 
 lect; the rest of the bills that were due I gave away instead 
 of cash to my customers yesterday. So much saved, you see, 
 for when I discount a bill I always deduct two francs for a 
 hired brougham expenses of collection. A pretty thing it 
 would be, would it not, if my clients were to set me trudg- 
 ing all over Paris for half-a-dozen francs of discount, when 
 no man is my master, and I only pay seven francs in the 
 shape of taxes? 
 
 " 'The first bill for a thousand francs was presented by a 
 young fellow, a smart buck with a spangled waistcoat, and 
 an eyeglass, and a tilbury and an English horse, and all the 
 rest of it. The bill bore the signature of one of the prettiest 
 women in Paris, married to a Count, a great landowner. 
 Now, how came that Countess to put her name to a bill of 
 exchange, legally not worth the paper it was written upon, 
 but practically very good business; for these women, poor 
 things, are afraid of the scandal that a protested bill makes 
 in a family, and would give themselves away in payment 
 sooner than fail? I wanted to find out what that bill of 
 exchange really represented. Was it stupidity, imprudence, 
 love, or charity? 
 
 " 'The second bill, bearing the signature "Fanny Malvaut," 
 came to me from a linen-draper on the highway to bank- 
 ruptcy. Now, no creature who has any credit with a bank 
 comes to me. The first step to my door means that a man 
 is desperately hard up ; that the news of his failure will soon
 
 GOBSEGK 297 
 
 come out : and, most of all, it means that he has been every- 
 where else first. The stag is always at bay when I see him, 
 and a pack of creditors are hard upon his track. The 
 Countess lived in the Rue du Helder, and my Fanny in the 
 Rue Montmartre. How many conjectures I made as I set 
 out this morning ! If these two women were not- able to pay, 
 they would show me more respect than they would show their 
 own fathers. What tricks and grimaces would not the 
 Countess try for a thousand francs ! She would be so nice 
 to me, she would talk to me in that ingratiating tone peculiar 
 to endorsers of bills, she would pour out a torrent of coaxing 
 words, perhaps she would beg and pray, and I . . .' (here 
 the old man turned his pale eyes upon me 'and I not to be 
 moved, inexorable !' he continued. 'I am there as the 
 avenger, the apparition of Remorse. So much for hypotheses. 
 I reached the house. 
 
 " ' "Madame la Comtesse is asleep," says the maid. 
 
 ""'When can I see her?" 
 
 "'"At twelve o'clock." 
 
 "'"Is Madame la Comtesse ill?" 
 
 " ' "No, sir, but she only came home at three o'clock this 
 morning from a ball." 
 
 " ' "My name is Gobseck, tell her that I shall call again at 
 twelve o'clock," and out I went, leaving traces of my muddy 
 boots on the carpet which covered the paved staircase. I like 
 to leave mud on a rich man's carpet; it is not petty spite; I 
 like to make them feel a touch of the claws of Necessity. In 
 the Rue Montmartre I thrust open the old gateway of a poor- 
 looking house, and looked into a dark courtyard where the 
 sunlight never shines. The porter's lodge was grimy, the 
 window looked like the sleeve of some shabby wadded gown 
 greasy, dirty, and full of holes. 
 
 " ' "Mile. Fanny Malvaut ?" 
 
 " ' "She has gone out ; but if you have come about a bill, 
 the money is waiting for you." 
 
 " ' "I will look in again," said I. 
 
 " 'As soon as I knew that the porter had the money for
 
 298 GOBSECK 
 
 me, I wanted to know what the girl was like ; I pictured her 
 as pretty. The rest of the morning I spent in looking at the 
 prints in the shop windows along the boulevard; then, just 
 as it struck twelve, I went through the Countess' ante- 
 chamber. 
 
 " ' "Madame has just this minute rung for me/' said the 
 maid; "I don't think she can see you yet." 
 
 " ' "I will wait," said I, and sat down in an easy-chair. 
 
 " 'Venetian shutters were opened, and presently the maid 
 came hurrying back. 
 
 " < "Come in, sir." 
 
 " 'From the sweet tone of the girl's voice, I knew that the 
 mistress could not be ready to pay. What a handsome woman 
 it was that I saw in another moment ! She had flung an 
 Indian shawl hastily over her bare shoulders, covering her- 
 self with it completely, while it revealed the bare outlines of 
 the form beneath. She wore a loose gown trimmed with 
 snowy ruffles, which told plainly that her laundress' bills 
 amounted to something like two thousand francs in the 
 course of a year. Her dark curls escaped from beneath a 
 bright Indian handkerchief, knotted carelessly about her head 
 after the fashion of Creole women. The bed lay in disorder 
 that told of broken slumber. A painter would have paid 
 money to stay a while to see the scene that I saw. Under the 
 luxurious hanging draperies, the pillow, crushed into the 
 depths of an eider-down quilt, its lace border standing out 
 in contrast against the background of blue silk, bore a 
 vague impress that kindled the imagination. A pair of satin 
 slippers gleamed from the great bear-skin rug spread by the 
 carved mahogany lions at the bed-foot, where she had flung 
 them off in her weariness after the ball. A crumpled gown 
 hung over a chair, the sleeves touching the floor; stockings 
 which a breath would have blown away were twisted about 
 the leg of an easy-chair; while ribbon garters straggled over 
 a settee. A fan of price, half unfolded, glittered on the 
 chimney-piece. Drawers stood open; flowers, diamonds, 
 gloves, a bouquet, a girdle, were littered about. The room
 
 GOBSECK 299 
 
 was full of vague sweet perfume. And beneath all the lux- 
 ury and disorder, beauty and incongruity, I saw Misery 
 crouching in wait for her or for her adorer, Misery rearing 
 its head, for the Countess had begun to feel the edge of those 
 fangs. Her tired face was an epitome of the room strewn 
 with relics of past festival. The scattered gewgaws, pitiable 
 this morning, when gathered together and coherent, had 
 turned heads the night before. 
 
 " 'What efforts to drink of the Tantalus cup of bliss I 
 could read in these traces of love stricken by the thunder- 
 bolt remorse in this visible presentment of a life of luxury, 
 extravagance, and riot. There were faint red marks on her 
 young face, signs of the fineness of the skin ; but her features 
 were coarsened, as it were, and the circles about her eyes were 
 unwontedly dark. Nature nevertheless was so vigorous in 
 her, that these traces of past folty did not spoil her beauty. 
 Her eyes glittered. She looked like some Herodias of da 
 Vinci's (I have dealt in pictures), so magnificently full of 
 life and energy was she; there was nothing starved nor 
 stinted in feature or outline; she awakened desire; it seemed 
 to me that there was some passion in her yet stronger than 
 love. I was taken with her. It was a long while since my 
 heart had throbbed; so I was paid then and there for I 
 would give a thousand francs for a sensation that should 
 bring me back memories of youth. 
 
 " ' "Monsieur," she said, finding a chair for me, "will 
 you be so good as to wait?" 
 
 " ' "Until this time to-morrow, madame," I said, folding 
 up the bill again. "I cannot legally protest this bill any 
 sooner." And within myself I said "Pay the price of your 
 luxury, pay for your name, pay for your ease, pay for the 
 monopoly which you enjo} r ! The rich have invented judges 
 and courts of law to secure their goods, and the guillotine 
 that candle in which so many an ignorant moth burns his 
 wings. But for you who lie in silk, under silken coverlets, 
 there is remorse, and grinding of teeth beneath a smile, and 
 those fantastical lions' jaws are gaping to set their fangs in 
 your heart."
 
 300 GOBSECK 
 
 "'"Protest the bill! Can you mean it?" she cried, with 
 her eyes upon me ; "could you have so little consideration for 
 me?" 
 
 " ' "If the King himself owed money to me, madame, and 
 did not pay it, I should summons him even sooner than any 
 other debtor." 
 
 " 'While we were speaking, somebody tapped gently at the 
 door. 
 
 " ' "I cannot see any one," she cried imperiously. 
 
 " ' "But, Anastasie, I particularly wish to speak to you." 
 
 " ' "Not just now, dear," she answered in a milder tone, 
 but with no sign of relenting. 
 
 " ' "What nonsense ! You are talking to some one," said 
 the voice, and in came a man who could only be the Count. 
 
 " 'The Countess gave me a glance. I saw how it was. She 
 was thoroughly in my power. There was a time, when I 
 was young, and might perhaps have been stupid enough not 
 to protest the bill. At Pondicherry, in 1763, I let a woman 
 off, and nicely she paid me out afterwards. I deserved it; 
 what call was there for me to trust her? 
 
 " *' "What does this gentleman want ?" asked the Count. 
 
 " 'I could see that the Countess was trembling from head 
 to foot; the white satin skin of her throat was rough, 
 "turned to goose flesh," to use the familiar expression. As 
 for me, I laughed in myself without moving a muscle. 
 
 " ' "This gentleman is one of my tradesmen," she said. 
 
 " 'The Count turned his back on me ; I drew the bill half 
 out of my pocket. After that inexorable movement, she came 
 over to me and put a diamond into my hands. "Take it,'"' 
 she said, "and be gone." 
 
 " 'We exchanged values, and I made my bow and went. 
 The diamond was quite worth twelve hundred francs to me. 
 Out in the courtyard I saw a swarm of flunkeys, brushing 
 their liveries, waxing their boots, and cleaning sumptuous 
 equipages. 
 
 " ' "This is what brings these people to me I" said I to 
 myself. "It is to keep up this kind of thing that they steal
 
 GOBSECK 301 
 
 millions with all due formalities, and betray their country. 
 The great lord, and the little man who apes the great lord, 
 bathes in mud once for all to save himself a splash or two 
 when he goes afoot through the streets." 
 
 " 'Just then the great gates were opened to admit a 
 cabriolet. It was the same young fellow who had brought 
 the bill to me. 
 
 " ' "Sir," I said, as he alighted, "here are two hundred 
 francs, which I beg you to return to Mine, la Comtesse, and 
 have the goodness to tell her that 1 hold the pledge which 
 she deposited with me this morning at her disposition for a 
 week." 
 
 " 'He took the two hundred francs, and an ironical smile 
 stole over his face ; it was as if he had said, "Aha ! so she has 
 paid it, has she? . . . Faith, so much the better!" I 
 read the Countess' future in his face. That good-looking, 
 fair-haired young gentleman is a heartless gambler; he will 
 ruin himself, ruin her, ruin her husband, ruin the chil- 
 dren, eat up their portions, and work more havoc in Parisian 
 salons than a whole battery of howitzers in a regiment. 
 
 " 'I went back to see Mile. Fanny in the Rue Montmartre, 
 climbed a very steep, narrow staircase, and reached a two- 
 roomed dwelling on the fifth floor. Everything was as neat 
 as a new ducat. I did- not see a speck of dust on the furni- 
 ture in the first room, where Mile. Fanny was sitting. Mile. 
 Fanny herself was a young Parisian girl, quietly dressed, with 
 a delicate fresh face, and a winning look. The arrangement 
 of her neatly brushed chestnut hair in a double curve on her 
 forehead lent a refined expression to blue eyes, clear as crys- 
 tal. The broad daylight streaming in through the short cur- 
 tains against the window pane fell with softened light on 
 her girlish face. A pile of shaped pieces of linen told me 
 that she was a sempstress. She looked like a spirit of soli- 
 tude. When I held out the bill, I remarked that she had not 
 been at home when I called in the morning. 
 
 " ' "But the money was left with the porter's wife," said 
 she.
 
 302 GOBSECK 
 
 " 'I pretended not to understand. 
 
 " ' "You go out early, mademoiselle, it seems." 
 
 " ' "I very seldom leave my room ; but when you work all 
 night, you are obliged to take a bath sometimes." 
 
 " 'I looked at her. A glance told me all about her life. 
 Here was a girl condemned by misfortune to toil, a girl who 
 came of honest farmer folk, for she had still a freckle or two 
 that told of country birth. There was an indefinable atmos- 
 phere of goodness about her; I felt as if I were breathing 
 sincerity and frank innocence. It was refreshing to my 
 lungs. Poor innocent child, she had faith in something; 
 there was a crucifix and a sprig or two of green box above 
 her poor little painted wooden bedstead; I felt touched, or 
 somewhat inclined that way. I felt ready to offer to charge 
 no more than twelve per cent, and so give something towards 
 establishing her in a good way of business. 
 
 " ' "But maybe she has a little youngster of a cousin," I 
 said to myself, "who would raise money on her signature and 
 sponge on the poor girl." 
 
 ''' 'So I went away, keeping my generous impulses well 
 under control; for I have frequently had occasion to observe 
 that when benevolence does no harm to him who gives, it is 
 the ruin of him who takes. When you came in I was think- 
 ing that Fanny Malvaut would make a nice little wife; I 
 was thinking of the contrast between her pure, lonely life 
 and the life of the Countess she has sunk as low as a bill 
 of exchange already, she will sink to the lowest depths of 
 degradation before she has done !' I scrutinized him during 
 the deep silence that followed, but in a moment he spoke 
 again. 'Well,' he said, 'do you think that it is nothing to 
 have this power of insight into the deepest recesses of the 
 human heart, to embrace so many lives, to see the naked 
 truth underlying it all? There are no two dramas alike: 
 there are hideous sores, deadly chagrins, love scenes, misery 
 that soon will lie under the ripples of the Seine, young men's 
 joys that lead to the scaffold, the laughter of despair, and 
 sumptuous banquets. Yesterday it was a tragedy. A worthy
 
 GOBSECK 303 
 
 soul of a father drowned himself because he could not sup- 
 port his family. To-morrow is a comedy; some youngster 
 will try to rehearse the scene of M. Dimanche, brought up to 
 date. You have heard people extol the eloquence of our lat- 
 ter day preachers; now and again I have wasted my time by 
 going to hear them ; they produced a change in my opinions, 
 but in my conduct (as somebody said, I can't recollect his 
 name), in my conduct never! Well, well; these good 
 priests and your Mirabeaus and Vergniauds and the rest of 
 them, are mere stammering beginners compared with these 
 orators of mine. 
 
 " 'Often it is some girl in love, some gray-headed merchant 
 on the verge of bankruptcy, some mother with a son's wrong- 
 doing to conceal, some starving artist, some great man whose 
 influence is on the wane, and, for lack of money, is like to 
 lose the fruit of all his labors the power of their pleading 
 has made me shudder. Sublime actors such as these play 
 for me, for an audience of one, and they cannot deceive me. I 
 can look into their inmost thoughts, and read them as God 
 reads them. Nothing is hidden from me. Nothing is refused 
 to the holder of the purse-strings to loose and to bind. I 
 am rich enough to buy the consciences of those who control 
 the action of ministers, from their office boys to their mis- 
 tresses. Is not that power? I can possess the fairest 
 women, receive their softest caresses; is not that Pleasure? 
 And is not your whole social economy summed up in terms 
 of Power and Pleasure? 
 
 " 'There are ten of us in Paris, silent, unknown kings, the 
 arbiters of your destinies. What is life but a machine set in 
 motion by money? Know this for certain methods are al- 
 ways confounded with results ; you will never succeed in sepa- 
 rating the soul from the senses, spirit from matter. Gold 
 is the spiritual basis of existing society. The ten of us are 
 bound by the ties of common interest; we meet on certain 
 days of the week at the Cafe Themis near the Pont Neuf, 
 and there, in conclave, we reveal the mysteries of finance. 
 No fortune can deceive us; we are in possession of family
 
 304 GOBSEGK 
 
 secrets in all directions. We keep a kind of Black Book, in 
 which we note the most important bills issued, drafts on pub- 
 lic credit, or on banks, or given and taken in the course of 
 business. We are the Casuists of the Paris Bourse, a kind of 
 Inquisition weighing and analyzing the most insignificant 
 actions of every man of any fortune, and our forecasts are 
 infallible. One of us looks out over the judicial world, one 
 over the financial, another surveys the administrative, and 
 yet another the business world. I myself keep an eye on eldest 
 sons, artists, people in the great world, and gamblers on the 
 most sensational side of Paris. Every one who comes to us lets 
 us into his neighbor's secrets. Thwarted passion and morti- 
 fied vanity are great babblers. Vice and disappointment and 
 vindictiveness are the best of all detectives. My colleagues, 
 like myself, have enjoyed all things, are sated with all things, 
 and have reached the point when power and money are loved 
 for their own sake. 
 
 " 'Here/ he said, indicating his bare, chilly room, 'here 
 the most high-mettled gallant, who chafes at a word and 
 draws swords for a syllable elsewhere, will entreat with 
 clasped hands. There is no city merchant so proud, no woman 
 so vain of her beauty, no soldier of so bold a spirit, but that 
 they entreat me here, one and all, with tears of rage or an- 
 guish in their eyes. Here they kneel the famous artist, 
 and the man of letters, whose name will go down to posterity. 
 Here, in short' (he lifted his hand to his forehead), 'all the 
 inheritances and all the concerns of all Paris are weighed in 
 the balance. Are you still of the opinion that there are no 
 delights behind the blank mask which so often has amazed 
 you by its impassiveness ?' he asked, stretching out that livid 
 face which reeked of money. 
 
 "I went back to my room, feeling stupefied. The little, 
 wizened old man had grown great. He had been metamor- 
 phosed under my eyes into a strange visionary symbol; he 
 had come to be the power of gold personified. I shrank, shud- 
 dering, from life and my kind. 
 
 " 'Is it really so ?' I thought ; 'must everything be resolved 
 into gold?'
 
 GOBSECK 305 
 
 *'I remember that it was long before I slept that night. 
 I saw heaps of gold all about me. My thoughts were full of 
 the lovely Countess; I confess, to my shame, that the vision 
 completely eclipsed another quiet, innocent figure, the figure 
 of the woman who had entered upon a life of toil and ob- 
 scurity; but on the morrow, through the clouds of slumber, 
 Fanny's sweet face rose before me in all its beauty, and I 
 thought of nothing else." 
 
 "Will you take a glass of eau sucree ?" asked the Vicomtesse, 
 interrupting Derville. 
 
 "I should be glad of it." 
 
 "But I can see nothing in this that can touch our con- 
 cerns," said Mme. de Grandlieu, as she rang the bell. 
 
 "Sardanapalus !" cried Derville, flinging out his favorite 
 invocation. "Mademoiselle Camille will be wide awake in 
 a moment if I say that her happiness depended not so long 
 ago upon Daddy Gobseck; but as the old gentleman died at 
 the age of ninety, M. de Eestaud will soon be in possession 
 of a handsome fortune. This requires some explanation. As 
 for Fanny Malvaut, you know her ; she is my wife." 
 
 "Poor fellow, he would admit that, with his usual frank- 
 ness, with a score of people to hear him !" said the Vicomtesse. 
 
 "I would proclaim it to the universe," said the attorney. 
 
 "Go on, drink your glass, my poor Derville. You will 
 never be anything but the happiest and the best of men." 
 
 "I left you in the Rue du Helder," remarked the uncle, 
 raising his face after a gentle doze. "You had gone to see 
 a Countess; what have you done with her?" 
 
 "A few days after my conversation with the old Dutch- 
 man," Derville continued, "I sent in my thesis, and became 
 first a licentiate in law, and afterwards an advocate. The 
 old miser's opinion of me went up considerably. He con- 
 sulted me (gratuitously) on all the ticklish bits of business 
 which he undertook when he had made quite sure how he 
 stood, business which would have seemed unsafe to any or- 
 VOL. 544
 
 306 GOBSECK 
 
 dinary practitioner. This man, over whom no one appeared 
 to have the slightest influence, listened to my advice with 
 something like repect. It is true that he always found that 
 it turned out very well. 
 
 "At length I became head-clerk in the office where I had 
 worked for three years and then I left the Eue des Gres for 
 rooms in my employer's house. I had my board and lodging 
 and a hundred and fifty francs per month. It was a great 
 day for me ! 
 
 "When I went to bid the usurer good-bye, he showed no 
 sign of feeling, he was neither cordial nor sorry to lose me, 
 he did not ask me to come to see him, and only gave me 
 one of those glances which seemed in some sort to reveal a 
 power of second-sight. 
 
 "By the end of a week my old neighbor came to see me 
 with a tolerably thorny bit of business, an expropriation, and 
 he continued to ask my advice with as much freedom as if 
 he paid for it. 
 
 "My principal was a man of pleasure and expensive tastes ; 
 before the second year (1818-1819) was out he had got him- 
 self into difficulties, and was obliged to sell his practice. A 
 professional connection in those days did not fetch the pres- 
 ent exorbitant prices, and my principal asked a hundred and 
 fifty thousand francs. Now an active man, of competent 
 knowledge and intelligence, might hope to pay off the capital 
 in ten years, paying interest and living respectably in the 
 meantime if he could command confidence. But I was the 
 seventh child of a small tradesman at Noyon, I had not a 
 sou to my name, nor personal knowledge of any capitalist 
 but Daddy Gobseck. An ambitious idea, and an indefinable 
 glimmer of hope, put heart into me. To Gobseck I betook 
 myself, and slowly one evening I made my way to the Eue 
 des Gres. My heart thumped heavily as I knocked at his 
 door in the gloomy house. I recollected all the things that 
 he used to tell me, at a time when I myself was very far from 
 suspecting the violence of the anguish awaiting those who 
 crossed his threshold. Now it was I who was about to beg 
 and pray like so many others.
 
 GOBSECK 307 
 
 '"Well, no, not that,' I said to myself; f an honest man 
 must keep his self-respect wherever he goes. Success is not 
 worth cringing for; let us show him a front as decided as 
 his own.' 
 
 "Daddy Gobseck had taken my room since I left the house, 
 so as to have no neighbor; he had made a little grated win- 
 dow too in his door since then, and did not open until he had 
 taken a look at me and saw who I was. 
 
 " 'Well/ said he, in his thin, flute notes, 'so your principal 
 is selling his practice ?' 
 
 " 'How did you know that ?' said I ; 'he has not spoken of 
 it as yet except to me.' 
 
 "The old man's lips were drawn in puckers, like a curtain, 
 to either corner of his mouth, as a soundless smile bore a hard 
 glance company. 
 
 " 'Nothing else would have brought you here/ he said 
 drily, after a pause, which I spent in confusion. 
 
 " 'Listen to me, M. Gobseck,' I began, with such serenity 
 as I could assume before the old man, who gazed at me with 
 steady eyes. There was a clear light burning in them that 
 disconcerted me. 
 
 "He made a gesture as if to bid me 'Go on.' 'I know 
 that it is not easy to work on your feelings, so I will not 
 waste my eloquence on the attempt to put my position before 
 you I am a penniless clerk, with no one to look to but you, 
 and no heart in the world but yours can form a clear idea 
 of my probable future. Let us leave hearts out of the ques- 
 tion. Business is business, and business is not carried on 
 with sentimentality like romances. Now to the facts. My 
 principal's practice is worth in his hands about twenty thou- 
 sand francs per annum ; in my hands, I think it would bring 
 in forty thousand. He is willing to sell it for a hundred and 
 fifty thousand francs. And here' I said, striking my fore- 
 head, 'I feel that if you would lend me the purchase-money, 
 I could clear it off in ten years' time.' 
 
 "'Come, that is plain speaking," said Daddy Gobseck, 
 and he held out his hand and grasped mine. 'Nobody since
 
 308 GOBSECK 
 
 I have been in business has stated the motives of his visit 
 more clearly. Guarantees?' asked he, scanning me from 
 head to foot. 'None to give/ he added after a pause. 'How- 
 old are you?' 
 
 " Twenty-five in ten days' time/ said I, 'or I could not 
 open the matter/ 
 
 " 'Precisely/ 
 
 "'Well?' 
 
 " 'It is possible/ 
 
 " 'My word, we must be quick about it, or I shall have 
 some one buying over my head.' 
 
 " 'Bring your certificate of birth round to-morrow morn- 
 ing, and we .will talk. I will think it over/ 
 
 " 'Next morning, at eight o'clock, I stood in the old man's 
 room. He took the document, put on his spectacles, coughed, 
 spat, wrapped himself up in his black greatcoat, and read 
 the whole certificate through from beginning to end. Then 
 he turned it over and over, looked at me, coughed again, 
 fidgeted about in his chair, and said, 'We will try to arrange 
 this bit of business/ 
 
 "I trembled. 
 
 " 'I make fifty per cent on my capital/ he continued, 
 'sometimes I make a hundred, two hunderd, five hundred per 
 cent/ 
 
 "I turned pale at the words. 
 
 " 'But as we are acquaintances, I shall be satisfied to take 
 twelve and a half per cent per' (he hesitated) 'well, yes, 
 from you I would be content to take thirteen per cent per 
 annum. Will that suit you?' 
 
 " 'Yes/ I answered. 
 
 " 'But if it is too much, stick up for yourself, Grotius !' 
 (a name he jokingly gave me). 'When I ask you for thirteen . 
 per cent, it is all in the way of business; look into it, see if 
 you can pay it; I don't like a man to agree too easily. Is it 
 too much?' 
 
 " 'No/ said I, 'I will make up for it by working a little 
 harder/
 
 GOBSECK 309 
 
 your clients will pay for it!' said lie, looking at 
 me wickedly out of the corner of his eyes. 
 
 " 'No, by all the devils in hell !' cried I, 'it shall be I who 
 will pay. I would sooner cut my hand off than flay people/ 
 
 " 'Good-night/ said Daddy Gobseck. 
 
 " 'Why, fees are all according to scale/ I added. 
 
 " 'Not for compromises and settlements out of Court, 
 and cases where litigants come to terms/ said he. 'You can 
 send in a bill for thousands of francs, six thousand even at 
 a swoop (it depends on the importance of the case), for con- 
 ferences with So-and-so, and expenses, and drafts, and me- 
 morials, and your jargon. A man must learn to look out 
 for business of this kind. I will recommend you as a most 
 competent, clever attorney. I will send you such a lot of 
 work of this sort that your colleagues will be fit to burst with 
 envy. Werbrust, Palma, and Gigonnet, my cronies, shall 
 hand over their expropriations to you; they have plenty of 
 them, the Lord knows! So you will have two practices 
 the one you are buying, and the other I will build up for 
 you. You ought almost to pay me fifteen per cent on my 
 loan/ 
 
 " 'So be it, but no more/ said I, with the firmness which 
 means that a man is determined not to concede another 
 point. 
 
 "Daddy Gobseck's face relaxed ; he looked pleased with me. 
 
 " 'I shall pay the money over to your principal myself/ 
 said he, 'so as to establish a lien on the purchase and cau- 
 tion-money/ 
 
 " 'Oh, anything you like in the way of guarantees/ 
 
 " 'And besides that, you will give me bills for the amount 
 made payable to a third party (name left blank), fifteen bills 
 of ten thousand francs each/ 
 
 " 'Well, so long as it is acknowledged in writing that this 
 is a double ' 
 
 " 'No !' Gobseck broke in upon me. 'No ! Why should I 
 trust you any more than you trust me?' 
 
 "I kept silence.
 
 310 GOBSECK 
 
 " ' And furthermore/ he continued, with a sort of good 
 humor, 'you will give me your advice without charging fees 
 as long as I live, will you not?' 
 
 " 'So be it ; so long as there is no outlay.' 
 
 " 'Precisely/ said he. 'Ah, by the by, you will allow me 
 to go to see you?' (Plainly the old man found it not so 
 easy to assume the air of good-humor.) 
 
 " 'I shall always be glad.' 
 
 "'Ah! yes, but it would be very difficult to arrange of a 
 morning. You will have your affairs to attend to, and I have 
 mine.' 
 
 " 'Then come in the evening/ 
 
 " 'Oh, no !' he answered briskly, 'you ought to go into 
 society and see your clients, and I myself have my friends at 
 my cafe.' 
 
 " 'His friends !' thought I to myself. 'Very well/ said 
 I, 'why not come at dinner-time?' 
 
 " 'That is the time/ said Gobseck, 'after 'Change, at five 
 o'clock. Good, you will see me Wednesdays and Saturdays. 
 We will talk over business like a pair of friends. Aha ! I 
 am gay sometimes. Just give me the wing of a partridge 
 and a glass of champagne, and we will have our chat together. 
 I know a great many things that can be told now at this dis- 
 tance of time; I will teach you to know men, and what is 
 more women !' 
 
 " 'Oh ! a partridge and a glass of champagne if you like.' 
 
 " 'Don't do anything foolish, or I shall lose my faith in 
 you. And don't set up housekeeping in a grand way. Just 
 one old general servant. I will come and see that you keep 
 your health. I have capital invested in your head, he ! he ! so I 
 am bound to look after you. There, come round in the even- 
 ing and bring your principal with you !' 
 
 " 'Would you mind telling me, if there is no harm in ask- 
 ing, what was the good of my birth certificate in this busi- 
 ness?' I asked, when the little old man and I stood on the 
 doorstep. 
 
 "Jean-Esther Van Gobseck shrugged his shoulders, smiled
 
 GOBSECK 311 
 
 maliciously, and said, 'What blockheads youngsters are! 
 Learn, master attorney (for learn you must if you don't mean 
 to be taken in), that integrity and brains in a man under 
 thirty are commodities which can be mortgaged. After that 
 age there is no counting on a man.' 
 "And with that he shut the door. 
 
 "Three months later I was an attorney. Before very long, 
 madame, it was my good fortune to undertake the suit for 
 the recovery .of your estates. I won the day, and my name 
 became known. In spite of the exorbitant rate of interest, 
 I paid off Gobseck in less than five years. I married Fanny 
 Malvaut, whom I loved with all my heart. There was a 
 parallel between her life and mine, between our hard work 
 and our luck, which increased the strength^ of feeling on 
 either side. One of her uncles, a well-to-do farmer, died and 
 left her seventy thousand francs, which helped to clear off 
 the loan. From that day my life has been nothing but happi- 
 ness and prosperity. Nothing is more utterly uninteresting 
 than a happy man, so let us say no more on that head, and 
 return to the rest of the characters. 
 
 "About a year after the purchase of the practice, I was 
 dragged into a bachelor breakfast-party given by one of 
 our number who had lost a bet to a young man greatly in 
 vogue in the fashionable world. M. de Trailles, the flower 
 of the dandyism of that day, enjoyed a prodigious reputa- 
 tion." 
 
 "But he is still enjoying it," put in the Comte de Born. 
 "No one wears his clothes with a finer air, nor drives a tan- 
 dem with a better grace. It is Maxime's gift ; he can gamble, 
 eat, and drink more gracefully than any man in the world. 
 He is a judge of horses, hats, and pictures. All the women 
 lose their heads over him. He always spends something like 
 a hundred thousand francs a year, and no creature can dis- 
 cover that he has an acre of land or a single dividend war- 
 rant. The typical knight errant of our salons, our boudoirs, 
 our boulevards, an amphibian half-way between a man and
 
 312 GOBSECK 
 
 a woman Maxime de Trailles is a singular being, fit for 
 anj thing, and good for nothing, quite as capable of perpe- 
 trating a benefit as of planning a crime; sometimes base, 
 sometimes noble, more often bespattered with, mire than be- 
 sprinkled with blood, knowing more of anxiety than of re- 
 morse, more concerned with his digestion than with any men- 
 tal process, shamming passion, feeling nothing. Maxime de 
 Trailles is a brilliant link between the hulks and the best 
 society; he belongs to the eminently intelligent class from 
 which a Mirabeau, or a Pitt, or a Richelieu springs at times, 
 though it is more wont to produce Counts of Horn, Fouquier- 
 Tinvilles, and Coignards." 
 
 "Well/* pursued Derville, when he had heard the Vi- 
 comtesse's brother to the end, "I had heard a good deal about 
 this individual^from poor old Goriot, a client of mine; and 
 I had already been at some pains to avoid the dangerous 
 honor of his acquaintance, for I came across him sometimes 
 in society. Still, my chum was so pressing about this break- 
 fast-party of his, that I could not well get out of it, unless 
 I wished to earn a name for squeamishness. Madame, you 
 could hardly imagine what a bachelor's breakfast-party is 
 like. It means superb display and a studied refinement sel- 
 dom seen; the luxury of a miser when vanity leads him to 
 be sumptuous for a day. 
 
 "You are surprised as you enter the room at the neatness 
 of the table, dazzling by reason of its silver and crystal and 
 linen damask. Life is here in full bloom; the young fellows 
 are graceful to behold; they smile and talk in low, demure 
 voices like so many brides; everything about them looks 
 girlish. Two hours later you might take the room for a 
 battlefield after the fight. Broken glasses, serviettes 
 crumpled and torn to rags lie strewn about among the nau- 
 seous-looking remnants of food on the dishes. There is an 
 uproar that stuns you, jesting toasts, a fire of witticisms and 
 bad jokes; faces are empurpled, eyes inflamed and expres- 
 sionless; unintentional confidences tell you the whole truth. 
 Bottles are smashed, and songs trolled out in the height of a
 
 GOBSECK 313 
 
 diabolical racket; men call each other out, hang on each 
 other's necks, or fall to fisticuffs ; the room is full of a horrid, 
 close scent made up of a hundred odors, and noise enough for 
 a hundred voices. No one has any notion of what he is eat- 
 ing or drinking or saying. Some are depressed, others 
 babble; one will turn monomaniac, repeating the same word 
 over and over again like a bell set jangling; another tries to 
 keep the tumult within bounds; the steadiest will propose 
 an orgy. If any one in possession of his faculties should come 
 in, he would think that he had interrupted a Bacchanalian 
 rite. 
 
 "It was in the thick of such a chaos that M. de Trailles 
 tried to insinuate himself into my good graces. My head 
 was fairly clear, I was upon my guard. As for him, though 
 he pretended to be decently drunk, he was perfectly cool, and 
 knew very well what he was about. How it was done I do 
 not know, but the upshot of it was that when we left 
 Grignon's rooms about nine o'clock in the evening, M. de 
 Trailles had thoroughly bewitched me. I had given him my 
 promise that I would introduce him the next day to our 
 Papa Gobseck. The words 'honor,' 'virtue,' 'countess,' Tion- 
 est woman,' and 'ill-luck' were mingled in his discourse with 
 magical potency, thanks to that golden tongue of his. 
 
 "When I awoke next morning, and tried to recollect what 
 I had done the day before, it was with great difficulty that 
 I could make a connected tale from my impressions. At last, 
 it seemed to me that the daughter of one of my clients was 
 in danger of losing her reputation, together with her hus- 
 band's love and esteem, if she could not get fifty thousand 
 francs together in the course of the morning. There had 
 been gaming debts, and carriage-builders' accounts, money 
 lost to Heaven knows whom. My magician of a boon com- 
 panion had impressed it upon me that she was rich enough 
 to make good these reverses by a few years of economy. But 
 only now did I begin to guess the reasons of his urgency. I 
 confess, to my shame, that I had not the shadow of a doubt 
 but that it was a matter of importance that Daddy Gobseck
 
 314 GOBSECK 
 
 should make it up with this dandy. I was dressing when the 
 young gentleman appeared. 
 
 " 'M. le Comte/ said I, after the usual greetings, 'I fail 
 to see why you should need me to effect an introduction to 
 Van Gobseck, the most civil and smooth-spoken of capitalists. 
 Money will be forthcoming if he has any, or rather, if you 
 can give him adequate security.' 
 
 " 'Monsieur/ said he, 'it does not enter into my thoughts 
 to force you to do me a service, even though you have passed 
 your word.' 
 
 " 'Sardanapalus !' said I to myself, 'am I going to let that 
 fellow imagine that I will not keep my word with him?' 
 
 " '1 had the honor -of telling you yesterday,' said he, 'that 
 I had fallen out with Daddy Gobseck most inopportunely; 
 and as there is scarcely another man in Paris who can come 
 down on the nail with a hundred thousand francs, at the 
 end of the month, I begged of you to make my peace with 
 him. But let us say no more about it ' 
 
 "M. de Trailles looked at me with civil insult in his ex- 
 pression, and made as if he would take his leave. 
 
 " 'I am ready to go with you,' said I. 
 
 "When we reached the Eue des Gres, my dandy looked 
 about him with a circumspection and uneasiness that set me 
 wondering. His face grew livid, flushed, and yellow, turn and 
 turn about, and by the time that Gobseck's door came in sight 
 the perspiration stood in drops on his forehead. We were 
 just getting out of the cabriolet, when a hackney cab turned 
 into the street. My companion's hawk eye detected a woman 
 in the depths of the vehicle. His face lighted up with a 
 gleam of almost savage joy; he called to a little boy who 
 was passing, and gave him his horse to hold. Then we went 
 up to the old bill discounter. 
 
 " M. Gobseck/ said I, 'I have brought one of my most 
 intimate friends to see you (whom I trust as I would trust 
 the Devil/ I added for the old man's private ear). 'To oblige 
 me you will do your best for him (at the ordinary rate), and 
 pull him out of his difficulty (if it suits your convenience)/
 
 GOBSECK 315 
 
 "M. de Trailles made his bow to Gobseck, took a seat, and 
 listened to us with a courtier-like attitude; its charming 
 humility would have touched your heart to see, but my Gob- 
 seck sits in his chair by the fireside without moving a muscle, 
 or changing a feature. He looked very like the statue of Vol- 
 taire under the peristyle of the Theatre-Frangais, as you see 
 it of an evening; he had partly risen as if to bow, and the 
 skull cap that covered the top of his head, and the narrow 
 strip of sallow forehead exhibited, completed his likeness to 
 the man of marble. 
 
 " 'I have no money to spare except for my own clients,' 
 said he. 
 
 " 'So you are cross because I may have tried in other quar- 
 ters to ruin myself?' laughed the Count. 
 
 " 'Ruin yourself !' repeated Gobseck ironically. 
 
 " 'Were you about to remark that it is impossible to ruin 
 a man who has nothing?' inquired the dandy. 'Why, I defy 
 you to find a better stock in Paris !' he cried, swinging round 
 on his heels. 
 
 "This half-earnest buffoonery produced not the slightest 
 effect upon Gobseck. 
 
 " 'Am I not on intimate terms with the Ronquerolles, the 
 Marsays, the Franchessinis, the two Vandenesses, the 
 Ajuda-Pintos, all the most fashionable young men in Paris, 
 in short? A prince and an ambassador (you know them 
 both) are my partners at play. I draw my revenues from 
 London and Carlsbad and Baden and Bath. Is not this the 
 most brilliant of all industries!' 
 
 " 'True.' 
 
 " 'You make a sponge of me, begad ! you do. You en- 
 courage me to go and swell myself out in society, so that you 
 can squeeze me when I am hard up; but you yourselves are 
 sponges, just as I am, and death will give you a squeeze some 
 day.' 
 
 " 'That is possible.' 
 
 "'If there were no spendthrifts, what would become of 
 you? The pair of us are like soul and body.'
 
 316 GOBSECK 
 
 " 'Precisely so.' 
 
 " 'Come, now, give us your hand, Grandaddy Gobseck, 
 and be magnanimous if this is "true" and "possible" and 
 "precisely so." ; 
 
 " 'You come to me,' the usurer answered coldly, 'because 
 Girard, Palma, Werbrust, and Gigonnet are full up of your 
 paper ; they are offering it at a loss of fifty per cent ; and as 
 it is likely they only gave you half the figure on the face 
 of the bills, they are not worth five-and-twenty per cent of 
 their supposed value. I am your most obedient ! Can I in 
 common decency lend a stiver to a man who owes thirty 
 thousand francs, and has not one farthing?' Gobseck con- 
 tinued. 'The day before yesterday you lost ten thousand 
 francs at a ball at the Baron de Nucingen's/ 
 
 " 'Sir/ said the Count, with rare impudence, 'my affairs 
 are no concern of yours,' and he looked the old man up and 
 down. 'A man has no debts till payment is due.' 
 
 " 'True/ 
 
 " 'My bills will be duly met/ 
 
 " 'That is possible/ 
 
 " 'And at this moment the question between you and me is 
 simply whether the security I am going to offer is sufficient 
 for the sum I have come to borrow/ 
 
 " 'Precisely/ 
 
 "A cab stopped at the door, and the sound of wheels filled 
 the room. 
 
 " 'I will bring something directly which perhaps will 
 satisfy you/ cried the young man, and he left the room. 
 
 " 'Oh ! my son/ exclaimed Gobseck, rising to his feet, and 
 stretching out his arms to me, 'if he has good security, you 
 have saved my life. It would be the death of me. Werbrust 
 and Gigonnet imagined that they were going to play off a 
 trick on me; and now, thanks to you, I shall have a good 
 laugh at their expense to-night/ 
 
 "There was something frightful about the old man's 
 ecstasy. It was the one occasion when he opened his heart 
 to me; and that flash of joy, swift though it was, will never 
 be effaced from my memory.
 
 GOBSECK 317 
 
 " 'Favor me so far as to stay here/ he added. 'I am 
 armed, and a sure shot. I have gone tiger-hunting, and 
 fought on the deck when there was nothing for it but to win 
 or die; but I don't care to trust yonder elegant scoundrel/ 
 
 "He sat down again in his armchair before his bureau, 
 and his face grew pale and impassive as before. 
 
 " 'Ah !' he continued, turning to me, 'you will see that 
 lovely creature I once told you about ; I can hear a fine lady's 
 step in the corridor; it is she, no doubt;' and, as a matter 
 of fact, the young man came in with a woman on his arm. 
 I recognized the Countess, whose levee Gobseck had de- 
 scribed for me, one of old Goriot's two daughters. 
 
 "The Countess did not see me at first; I stayed where I 
 was in the window bay, with my face against the pane; but 
 I saw her give Maxime a suspicious glance as she came into 
 the money-lender's damp, dark room. So beautiful she was, 
 that in spite of her faults I felt sorry for her. There was 
 a terrible storm of anguish in her heart ; her haughty, proud 
 features were drawn and distorted with pain which she strove 
 in vain to disguise. The young man had come to be her evil 
 genius. I admired Gobseck, whose perspicacity had fore- 
 seen their future four years ago at the first bill which she 
 endorsed. 
 
 " 'Probably,' said I to myself, 'this monster with the angel 
 face controls every possible spring of action in her : rules her 
 through vanity, jealousy, pleasure, and the current of life 
 in the world.' " 
 
 The Vicomtesse de Grandlieu broke in on the story. 
 
 " 'Why, the woman's very virtues have been turned against 
 her," she exclaimed. "He has made her shed tears of devo- 
 tion, he has brought out the utmost natural generosity of 
 woman, and then abused her kindness and made her pay very 
 dearly for unhallowed bliss." 
 
 Derville did not understand the signs which Mme. de 
 Grandlieu made to him. 
 
 "I confess," he said, "that I had no inclination to shed 
 tears over the lot of this unhappy creature, so brilliant in
 
 318 GOBSECK 
 
 society, so repulsive to eyes that could read her heart; I 
 shuddered rather at the sight of her murderer, a young angel 
 with such a clear brow, such red lips and white teeth, such 
 a winning smile. There they stood before their judge, he 
 scrutinizing them much as some fifteenth-century Domini- 
 can inquisitor might have peered into the dungeons of the 
 Holy Office while the torture was administered to two Moors. 
 
 "The Countess spoke tremulously. 'Sir/ she said, 'is there 
 any way of obtaining the value of these diamonds, and of 
 keeping the right of repurchase?' She held out a jewel- 
 case. 
 
 " 'Yes, madame/ I put in, and came forwards. 
 
 "She looked at me, and a shudder ran through her as she 
 recognized me, and gave me the glance which means, 'Say 
 nothing of this/ all the world over. 
 
 " 'This/ said I, 'constitutes a sale with faculty of redemp- 
 tion, as it is called, a formal agreement to transfer and de- 
 liver over a piece of property, either real estate or personalty, 
 for a given time, on the expiry of which the previous owner 
 recovers his title to the property in question, upon payment 
 of a stipulated sum/ 
 
 "She breathed more freely. The Count looked black; he 
 had grave doubts whether Gobseck would lend very much on 
 the diamonds after such a fall in their value. Gobseck, im- 
 passive as ever, had taken up his magnifying glass, and was 
 quietly scrutinizing the jewels. If I were to live for a hun- 
 dred years, I should never forget the sight of his face at that 
 moment. There was a flush in his pale cheeks; his eyes 
 seemed to have caught the sparkle of the stones, for there 
 was an unnatural glitter in them. He rose and went to the 
 light, holding the diamonds close to his toothless mouth, as 
 if he meant to devour them; mumbling vague words over 
 them, holding up bracelets, sprays, necklaces, and tiaras one 
 after another, to judge their water, whiteness, and cutting; 
 taking them out of the jewel-case and putting them in again, 
 letting the play of the light bring out all their fires. He
 
 GOBSBCK 319 
 
 was more like a child than an old man; or, rather, childhood 
 and dotage seemed to meet in him. 
 
 " 'Fine stones ! The set would have fetched three hundred 
 thousand francs before the Kevolution. What water! 
 Genuine Asiatic diamonds from Golconda or Visapur. Do 
 you know what they are worth ? No, no ; no one in Paris but 
 Gobseck can appreciate them. In the time of the Empire 
 such a set would have cost another two hundred thousand 
 francs !' 
 
 "He gave a disgusted shrug, and added: 
 
 " 'But now diamonds are going down in value every day. 
 The Brazilians have swamped the market with them since 
 the Peace; but the Indian stones are a better color. Others 
 wear them now besides court ladies. Does madame go to 
 court?' 
 
 "While he flung out these terrible words, he examined 
 one stone after another with delight which no words can de- 
 scribe. 
 
 " 'Flawless !' he said. 'Here is a speck ! . . . here 
 is a flaw ! . . . A fine stone that !' 
 
 "His haggard face was so lighted up by the sparkling 
 jewels, that it put me in mind of a dingy old mirror, such 
 as you see in country inns. The glass receives every lumi- 
 nous image without reflecting the light, and a traveler bold 
 enough to look for his face in it beholds a man in an apo- 
 plectic fit. 
 
 " Well ?' asked the Count, clapping Gobseck on the 
 shoulder. 
 
 "The old boy trembled. He put down his playthings on 
 his bureau, took his seat, and was a money-lender once more 
 hard, cold, and polished as a marble column. 
 
 " 'How much do you want ?' 
 
 " ''One hundred thousand francs for three years,' said the 
 Count. 
 
 " 'That is possible,' said Gobseck, and then from a ma- 
 hogany box (Gobseck's jewel-case) he drew out a faultlessly 
 adjusted pair of scales !
 
 320 GOBSECK 
 
 "He weighed the diamonds, calculating the value of 
 stones and setting at sight (Heaven knows how!), delight 
 and severity struggling in the expression of his face the 
 meanwhile. The Countess was plunged in a kind of stupor; 
 to me, watching her, it seemed that she was fathoming the 
 depths of the abyss into which she had fallen. There was 
 remorse still left in that woman's soul. Perhaps a hand 
 held out in human charity might save her. I would try. 
 
 "'Are the diamonds your personal property, madame?' I 
 asked in a clear voice. 
 
 " 'Yes, monsieur,' she said, looking at me with proud eyes. 
 
 " 'Make out the deed of purchase with power of redemp- 
 tion, chatterbox,' said Gobseck to me, resigning his chair at 
 the bureau in my favor. 
 
 " 'Madame is without doubt a married woman ?' I tried 
 again. 
 
 "She nodded abruptly. 
 
 " 'Then I will not draw up the deed,' said I. 
 
 " 'And why not ?' asked Gobseck. 
 
 " 'Why not ?' echoed I, as I drew the old man into the bay 
 window so as to speak aside with him. 'Why not? This 
 woman is under her husband's control ; the agreement would 
 be void in law; you could not possibly assert your ignorance 
 of a fact recorded on the very face of the document itself. 
 You would be compelled at once to produce the diamonds 
 deposited with you, according to the weight, value, and cut- 
 ting therein described/ 
 
 "Gobseck cut me short with a nod, and turned towards the 
 guilty couple. 
 
 " 'He is right !' he said. 'That puts the whole thing in 
 a different light. Eighty thousand francs down, and you 
 leave the diamonds with me,' he added, in the husky, flute- 
 like voice. 'In the way of property, possession is as good as 
 a title.' 
 
 " 'But ' objected the young man. 
 
 " 'You can take it or leave it,' continued Gobseck, return- 
 ing the jewel-case to the lady as he spoke.
 
 GOBSECK 321 
 
 " 1 have too many risks to run/ 
 
 ' 'It would be better to throw yourself at your husband's 
 feet/ I bent to whisper in her ear. 
 
 "The usurer doubtless knew what I was saying from the 
 movement of my lips. He gave me a cool glance. The 
 Count's face grew livid. The Countess was visibly wavering. 
 Maxime stepped up to her, and, low as he spoke, I could 
 catch the words : 
 
 "Adieu, dear Anastasie, may you be happy! As for me, 
 by to-morrow my troubles will be over.' 
 
 " 'Sir !' cried the lady, turning to Gobseck, 'I accept your 
 offer.' 
 
 " 'Come, now/ returned Gobseck. 'You have been a long 
 time in coming to it, my fair lady.' 
 
 "He wrote out a cheque for fifty thousand francs on the 
 Bank of France, and handed it to the Countess. 
 
 " 'Now/ continued he with a smile, such a smile as you 
 will see in portraits of M. Voltaire, 'now I will give you the 
 rest of the amount in bills, thirty thousand francs' worth of 
 paper as good as bullion. This gentleman here has just said, 
 "My bills will be met when they are due," ' added he, produc- 
 ing certain drafts bearing the Count's signature, all pro- 
 tested the da} r before at the request of some of the confra- 
 ternity, who had probably made them over to him (Gob- 
 seck) at a considerably reduced figure. 
 
 "The young man growled out something, in which the 
 words 'Old scoundrel !' were audible. Daddy Gobsqck did 
 not move an eyebrow. He drew a pair of pistols out of a 
 pigeon-hole, remarking coolly: 
 
 " 'As the insulted man, I fire first.' 
 
 " 'Maxime, you owe this gentleman an explanation/ cried 
 the trembling Countess in a low voice. 
 
 " 'I had no intention of giving offence/ stammered 
 Maxime. 
 
 " 1 am quite sure of that/ Gobseck answered calmly ; 'you 
 had no intention of meeting your bills, that was all.' 
 
 "The Countess rose, bowed, and vanished, with a great 
 VOL. 545
 
 322 GOBSECK 
 
 dread gnawing her, I doubt not. M. de Trailles was bound 
 to follow, but before he went he managed to say: 
 
 " 'If either of you gentlemen should forget himself, I will 
 have his blood, or he will have mine.' 
 
 " 'Amen !' called Daddy Gobseck as he put his pistols back 
 in their place ; 'but a man must have blood in his veins though 
 before he can risk it, my son, and you have nothing but mud 
 in yours/ 
 
 "When the door was closed, and the two vehicles had gone, 
 Gobseck rose to his feet and began to prance about. 
 
 "'I have the diamonds! I have the diamonds!' he cried 
 again and again, 'the beautiful diamonds! such diamonds! 
 and tolerably cheaply. Aha ! aha ! Werbrust and Gigonnet, 
 you thought you had old Papa Gobseck! Ego sum papa! 
 I am master of the lot of you ! Paid ! paid, principal and 
 interest ! How silly they will look to-night when I shall 
 come out with this story between two games of dominoes!' 
 
 "The dark glee, the savage ferocity aroused by the pos- 
 session of a few water-white pebbles, set me shuddering. I 
 was dumb with amazement. 
 
 " 'Aha ! There you are, my boy !' said he. 'We will dine 
 together. We will have some fun at your place, for I haven't 
 a home of my own, and these restaurants, with their broths, 
 and sauces, and wines, would poison the Devil himself.' 
 
 "Something in my face suddenly brought back the usual 
 cold, impassive expression to his. 
 
 " 'You don't understand it,' he said, and sitting down by the 
 hearth, he put a tin saucepan full of milk on the brazier. 
 'Will you breakfast with me?' continued he. 'Perhaps there 
 will be enough here for two.' 
 
 " 'Thanks,' said I, 'I do not breakfast till noon.' 
 
 "I had scarcely spoken before hurried footsteps sounded 
 from the passage. The stranger stopped at Gobseck's door 
 and rapped; there was that in the knock which suggested a 
 man transported with rage. Gobseck reconnoitred him 
 through the grating; then he opened the door, and in came 
 a man of thirty-five or so, judged harmless apparently in
 
 GOBSECK 323 
 
 spite of his anger. The newcomer, who was quite plainly 
 dressed, bore a strong resemblance to the late Due de Riche- 
 lieu. You must often have met him, he was the Countess' 
 husband, a man with the aristocratic figure (permit the ex- 
 pression to pass) peculiar to statesmen of your faubourg. 
 
 " 'Sir,' said this person, addressing himself to Gobseck, 
 who had quite recovered his tranquillity, 'did my wife go out 
 of this house just now?' 
 
 " 'That is possible.' 
 
 " 'Well, sir ? do you not take my meaning ?' 
 
 " 'I have not the honor of the acquaintance of my lady 
 your wife/ returned Gobseck. 'I have had a good many vis- 
 itors this morning, women and men, and mannish young 
 ladies, and young gentlemen who look like young ladies. I 
 should find it very hard to say 
 
 " 'A truce to jesting, sir ! I mean the woman who has 
 this moment gone out from you.' 
 
 " 'How can I know whether she is your wife or not ? I 
 never had the pleasure of seeing you before.' 
 
 " 'You are mistaken, M. Gobseck/ said the Count, with 
 profound irony in his voice. 'We have met before, one morn- 
 ing in my wife's^ bedroom. You had come to demand pay- 
 ment for a bill no bill of hers.' 
 
 " 'It was no business of mine to inquire what value she 
 had received for it/ said Gobseck, with a malignant look 
 at the Count. 'I had come by the bill in the way of business. 
 At the same time, monsieur/ continued Gobseck, quietly 
 pouring coffee into his bowl of milk, without a trace of ex- 
 citement or hurry in his voice, 'you will permit me to observe 
 that your right to enter my house and expostulate with me 
 is far from proven to my mind. I came of age in the sixty- 
 first year of the preceding century.' 
 
 " 'Sir/ said the Count, 'you have just bought family dia- 
 monds, which do not belong to my wife, for a mere trifle.' 
 
 " 'Without feeling it incumbent upon me to tell you my 
 private affairs, I will tell you this much, M. le Comte if 
 Mme. la Comtesse has taken your diamonds, you should have
 
 324 GOBSBCK 
 
 sent a circular around to all the jewelers, giving them notice 
 not to buy them ; she might have sold them separately/ 
 
 " 'You know my wife, sir !' roared the Count. 
 
 " 'True.' 
 
 " 'She is in her husband's power/ 
 
 " 'That is possible/ 
 
 "'She had no right to dispose of those diamonds- ' 
 
 " 'Precisely/ 
 
 '"Very well, sir?' 
 
 " 'Very well, sir. I knew your wife, and she is in her 
 husband's power; I am quite willing, she is in the power of a 
 good many people ; but I do not know your diamonds. 
 If Mme. la Comtesse can put her name to a bill, she can go 
 into business, of course, and buy and sell diamonds on her 
 own account. The thing is plain on the face of it !' 
 
 " 'Good-day, sir !' cried the Count, now white with rage. 
 'There are courts of justice/ 
 
 "'Quite so/ 
 
 " 'This gentleman here/ he added, indicating me, Vas a 
 witness of the sale/ 
 
 " 'That is possible/ 
 
 "The Count turned to go. Feeling the gravity of the af- 
 fair, I suddenly put in between the two belligerents. 
 
 " 'M. le Comte,' said I, 'you are right, and M. Gobseck 
 is by no means in the wrong. You could not prosecute the 
 purchaser without bringing your wife into court, and the 
 whole of the odium would not fall on her. I am an attorney, 
 and I owe it to myself, and still more to my professional 
 position, to declare that the diamonds of which you speak 
 were purchased b} r M. Gobseck in my presence; but, in my 
 opinion, it would be unwise to dispute the legality of the 
 sale, especially as the goods are not readily recognizable. In 
 equity your contention would lie, in law it would collapse. 
 M. Gobseck is too honest a man to deny that the sale was 
 a profitable transaction, more especially as my conscience, 
 no less than my duty, compels me to make the admission. 
 But once bring the case into a court of law, M. le Comte, the 

 
 GOBSECK 325 
 
 issue would be doubtful. My advice to you is to come to 
 terms with M. Gobseck, who can plead that he bought the dia- 
 monds in all good faith; you would be bound in any case to 
 return the purchase-money. Consent to an arrangement, 
 with power to redeem at the end of seven or eight months, 
 or a year even, or any convenient lapse of time, for the re- 
 payment of the sum borrowed by Mme. la Comtesse, unless 
 you would prefer to repurchase them outright and give se- 
 curity for repayment.' 
 
 "Gobseck dipped his bread into the bowl of coffee, and ate 
 with perfect indifference; but at the words 'come to terms,' 
 he looked at me as who should say, 'A fine fellow that! he 
 has learned something from my lessons !' And I, for my 
 part, riposted with a glance, which he understood uncom- 
 monly well. The business was dubious and shady; there was 
 pressing need of coming to terms. Gobseck could not deny 
 all knowledge of it, for I should appear as a witness. The 
 Count thanked me with a smile of good-will. 
 
 "In the debate which followed, Gobseck showed greed 
 enough and skill enough to baffle a whole congress of diplo- 
 matists ; but in the end I drew up an instrument, in which the 
 Count acknowledged the receipt of eighty-five thousand francs, 
 interest included, in consideration of which Gobseck undertook 
 to return the diamonds to the Count. 
 
 " 'What waste !' exclaimed he as he put his signature to 
 the agreement. 'How is it possible to bridge such a gulf?' 
 
 " 'Have you many children, sir ?' Gobseck asked gravely. 
 
 "The Count winced at the question; it was as if the old 
 money-lender, like an experienced physician, had put his 
 finger at once on the sore spot. The Comtesse's husband did 
 not reply. 
 
 " 'Well,' said Gobseck, taking the pained silence for an- 
 swer, 'I know your story by heart. The woman is a fiend, 
 but perhaps you love her still ; I can well believe it ; she made 
 an impression on me. Perhaps, too, you would rather save 
 your fortune, and keep it for one or two of your children? 
 Well, fling yourself into the whirlpool of society, lose that
 
 326 GOBSECK 
 
 fortune at pla} r , come to Gobseck pretty often. The world 
 will say that I am a Jew, a Tartar, a usurer, a pirate, will 
 say that I have ruined you! I snap my fingers at them! 
 If anybody insults me, I lay my man out ; nobody is a surer 
 shot nor handles a rapier better than your servant. And 
 every one knows it. Then, have a friend if you can find 
 one and make over your property to him by a fictitious, 
 sale. You call that a fidei commissum, don't you?' he 
 asked, turning to me. 
 
 "The Count seemed to be entirely absorbed in his own 
 thoughts. 
 
 " 'You shall have your money to-morrow/ he said, 'have 
 the diamonds in readiness,' and he went. 
 
 " 'There goes one who looks to me to be as stupid as an 
 honest man/ Gobseck said coolly when the Count had gone. 
 
 " 'Say rather stupid as a man of passionate nature.' 
 
 " 'The Count owes you your fee for drawing up the 
 agreement!' Gobseck called after me as I took my leave. 
 
 "One morning, a few days after the scene which initiated 
 me into the terrible depths beneath the surface of the life 
 of a woman of fashion, the Count came into my private 
 office. 
 
 " 'I have come to consult you on a matter of grave mo- 
 ment/ he said, 'and I begin by telling you that I have per- 
 fect confidence in you, as I hope to prove to you. Your be- 
 havior to Mme. de Grandlieu is above all praise/ the Count 
 went on. (You see, madame, that you have paid me a thou- 
 sand times over for a very simple matter.) 
 
 "I bowed respectfully, and replied that I had done nothing 
 but the duty of an honest man. 
 
 " 'Well/ the Count went on, 'I have made a great many 
 inquiries about the singular personage to whom you owe your 
 position. And from all that I can learn, Gobseck is a phil- 
 osopher of the Cynic school. What do you think of his 
 probity ?" 
 
 " 'M. le Comte/ said I, 'Gobseck is my benefactor at fif-
 
 GOBSECK 327 
 
 teen per cent,' I added, laughing. 'But his avarice does 
 not authorize me to paint him to the life for a stranger's 
 benefit.' 
 
 '' 'Speak out, sir. Your frankness cannot injure Gobseck 
 or yourself. I do not expect to find an angel in a pawn- 
 broker.' 
 
 " 'Daddy Gobseck,' I began, 'is intimately convinced of 
 the truth of the principle which he takes for a rule of life. 
 In his opinion, money is a commodity which you may sell 
 cheap or dear, according to circumstances, with a clear con- 
 science. A capitalist, by charging a high rate of interest, 
 becomes in his eyes a secured partner by anticipation in the 
 profits of a paying concern or speculation. Apart from 
 the peculiar philosophical views of human nature and 
 financial principles, which enable him to behave like a usurer, 
 1 am fully persuaded that, out of his business, he is the most 
 loyal and upright soul in Paris. There are two men in him ; 
 he is petty and great a miser and a philosopher. If I were 
 to die and leave a family behind me, he would be the 
 guardian whom I should appoint. This was how I came 
 to see Gobseck in this light, monsieur. I know nothing of 
 his past life. He may have been a pirate, may, for anything 
 I know, have been all over the world, trafficking in dia- 
 monds, or men, or women, or State secrets; but this I affirm 
 of him never has human soul been more thoroughly tem- 
 pered and tried. When I paid off my loan, I asked him, with 
 a little circumlocution of course, how it was that he had 
 made me pay such an exorbitant rate of interest; and why, 
 seeing that I was a friend, and he meant to do me a kindness, 
 he should not have yielded to the wish and made it complete. 
 "My son," he said, "I released you from all need to feel anv 
 gratitude by giving you ground for the belief that you owed 
 me nothing." So we are the best friends in the world. That 
 answer, monsieur, gives you the man better than any amount 
 of description.' 
 
 " 'I have made up my mind once and for all,' said the 
 Count. 'Draw up the necessary papers; I am going to trans-
 
 328 GOBSECK 
 
 fer my property to Gobseck. I have no one but you to trust 
 to in the draft of the counter-deed, which will declare that 
 this transfer is a simulated sale, and that Gobseck as trustee 
 will administer my estate (as he knows how to administer), 
 and undertakes to make over my fortune to my eldest son 
 when he comes of age. Now, sir, this I must tell you: I 
 should be afraid to have that precious document in my own 
 keeping. My boy is so fond of his mother, that I cannot 
 trust him with it. So dare I beg of you to keep it for me? 
 In case of death, Gobseck would make you legatee of my 
 property. Every contingency is provided for/ 
 
 "The Count paused for a moment. He seemed greatly agi- 
 tated. 
 
 " 'A thousand pardons,' he said at length ; 'I am in great 
 pain, and have very grave misgivings as to my health. Re- 
 cent troubles have disturbed me very painfully, and forced 
 me to take this great step.' 
 
 " 'Allow me first to thank you, monsieur,' said I, 'for the 
 trust you place me in. But I am bound to deserve it by 
 pointing out to you that you are disinheriting your other 
 children. They bear your name. Merely as the children 
 of a once-loved wife, now fallen from her position, they have 
 a claim to an assured existence. I tell you plainly that I 
 cannot accept the trust with which you propose to honor 
 me unless their future is secured.' 
 
 "The Count trembled violently at the words, and tears 
 came into his eyes as he grasped my hand, saying, 'I did 
 not know my man thoroughly. You have made me both glad 
 and sorry. We will make provision for the children in the 
 counter-deed.' 
 
 "I went with him to the door; it seemed to me that there 
 was a glow of satisfaction in his face at the thought of this 
 act of justice. 
 
 "Now, Camille, this is how a young wife takes the first 
 step to the brink of a precipice. A quadrille, a ballad, a 
 picnic party is sometimes cause sufficient of frightful evils. 
 You are hurried on by the presumptuous voice of vanity and
 
 GOBSECK 329 
 
 pride, on the faith of a smile, or through giddiness and folly ! 
 Shame and misery and remorse are three Furies awaiting 
 every woman the moment she oversteps the limits "" 
 
 "Poor Camille can hardly keep awake," the Vicomtesse 
 hastily broke in. "Go to bed, child; you have no need of 
 appalling pictures to keep you pure in heart and conduct.'* 
 
 Camille de Grandlieu took the hint and went. 
 
 "You were going rather too far, dear M. Derville," said 
 the Vicomtesse, "an attorney is not a mother of daughters 
 nor yet a preacher." 
 
 "But any newspaper is a thousand times " 
 
 "Poor Derville!" exclaimed the Vicomtesse, "what has 
 come over you ? Do you really imagine that I allow a daugh- 
 ter of mine to read the newspapers? Go on," she added 
 after a pause. 
 
 "Three months after everything was signed and sealed be- 
 tween the Count and Gobseck " 
 
 "You can call him the Comte de Restaud, now that Camille 
 is not here," said the Vicomtesse. 
 
 "So be it ! Well, time went by, and I saw nothing of the 
 counter-deed, which by rights should have been in my hands. 
 An attorney in Paris lives in such a whirl of business that 
 with certain exceptions which we make for ourselves, we have 
 not the time to give each individual client the amount of 
 interest which he himself takes in his affairs. Still, one day 
 when Gobseck came to dine with me, I asked him as we left 
 the table if he knew how it was that I had heard no more of 
 M. de Restaud. 
 
 " 'There are excellent reasons for that,' he said ; 'the noble 
 Count is at death's door. He is one of the soft stamp that 
 cannot learn how to put an end to chagrin, and allow it to 
 wear them out instead. Life is a craft, a profession; every 
 man must take the trouble to learn that business. When he 
 has learned what life is by dint of painful experiences, the 
 fibre of him is toughened, and acquires a certain elasticity, so 
 that he has his sensibilities under his own control; he disci- 
 plines himself till his nerves are like steel springs, which
 
 330 GOBSECK 
 
 always bend, but never break ; given a sound digestion, and a 
 man in such training ought to live as long as the cedars of 
 Lebanon, and famous trees they are/ 
 
 "'Then is the Count actually dying?' I asked. 
 
 " 'That is possible/ said Gobseck ; 'the winding up of his 
 estate will be a juicy bit of business for you.' 
 
 "I looked at my man, and said, by way of sounding him: 
 
 " 'Just explain to me how it is that we, the Count and I, 
 are the only men in whom you take an interest?' 
 
 " 'Because you are the only two who have trusted me with- 
 out finessing/ he said. 
 
 "Although this answer warranted my belief that Gobseck 
 would act fairly even if the counter-deed were lost, I resolved 
 to go to see the Count. I pleaded a business engagement, and 
 we separated. 
 
 "I went straight to the Eue du Helder, and was shown into 
 a room where the Countess sat playing with her children. 
 When she heard my name, she sprang up and came to meet 
 me, then she sat down and pointed without a word to a chair 
 by the fire. Her face wore the inscrutable mask beneath which 
 women of the world conceal their most vehement emotions. 
 Trouble had withered that face already. Nothing of its 
 beauty now remained, save the marvelous outlines in which 
 its principal charm had lain. 
 
 " 'It is essential, madame, that I should speak to M. le 
 Comte " 
 
 "'If so, you would be more favored than I am/ she said, 
 interrupting me. 'M. de Eestaud will see no one. He will 
 hardly allow his doctor to come, and will not be nursed even 
 by me. When people are ill, they have such strange fancies ! 
 They are like children, they do not know what they want.' 
 
 " 'Perhaps, like children, they know very well what they 
 want.' 
 
 "The Countess reddened. I almost repented a thrust 
 worthy of Gobseck. So, by way of changing the conversa- 
 tion, I added, 'But M. de Restaud cannot possibly lie there 
 alone all day, madame.'
 
 GOBSECK 331 
 
 " 'His oldest boy is with him,' she said. 
 
 "It was useless to gaze at the Countess; she did not blush 
 this time, and it looked to me as if she were resolved more 
 firmly than ever that I should not penetrate into her secrets. 
 
 " 'You must understand, madame, that my proceeding is 
 no way indiscreet. It is strongly to his interest I bit my 
 lips, feeling that I had gone the wrong way to work. The 
 Countess immediately took advantage of my slip. 
 
 " 'My interests are in no way separate from my husband's, 
 sir,' said she. 'There is nothing to prevent your addressing 
 yourself to me ' 
 
 " 'The business which brings me here concerns no one but 
 M. le Comte,' I said firmly. 
 
 " 'I will let him know of your wish to see him/ 
 
 "The civil tone and expression assumed for the occasion 
 did not impose upon me; I divined that she would never 
 allow me to see her husband. I chatted on about indifferent 
 matters for a little while, so as to study her ; but, like all 
 women who have once begun to plot for themselves, she 
 could dissimulate with the rare perfection which, in your 
 sex, means the last degree of perfidy. If I may dare to say 
 it, I looked for anything from her, even a crime. She pro- 
 duced this feeling in me, because it was so evident from her 
 manner and in all that she did or said, down to the very in- 
 flections of her voice, that she had an eye to the future. I 
 went. 
 
 "Now, I will pass on to the final scenes of this adventure, 
 throwing in a few circumstances brought to light by time, 
 and some details guessed by Gobseck's perspicacity or by my 
 own. 
 
 "When the Comte de Kestaud apparently plunged into the 
 vortex of dissipation, something passed between the husband 
 and wife, something which remains an impenetrable secret, 
 but the wife sank even lower in the husband's eyes. As soon 
 as he became so ill that he was obliged to take to his bed, he 
 manifested his aversion for the Countess and the two young- 
 est children. He forbade them to enter his room, and any
 
 332 GOBSEGK 
 
 attempt to disobey his wishes brought on such dangerous at- 
 tacks that the doctor implored the Countess to submit to her 
 husband's wish. 
 
 "Mme. de Eestaud had seen the family estates and property, 
 nay, the very mansion in which she lived, pass into the hands 
 of Gobseck, who appeared to play the fantastic ogre so far 
 as their wealth was concerned. She partially understood 
 what her husband was doing, no doubt. M. de Trailles was 
 traveling in England (his creditors had been a little too 
 pressing of late), and no one else was in a position to en- 
 lighten the lady, and explain that her husband was taking 
 precautions against her at Gobseck's suggestion. It is said 
 that she held out for a long while before she gave the signa- 
 ture required by French law for the sale of the property; 
 nevertheless the Count gained his point. The Countess was 
 convinced that her husband was realizing his fortune, and 
 that somewhere or other there would be a little bunch of 
 notes representing the amount ; they had been deposited with 
 a notary, or perhaps at the Bank, or in some safe hiding- 
 place. Following out her train of thought, it was evident 
 that M. de Restaud must of necessity have some kind of docu- 
 ment in his possession by which any remaining property 
 could be recovered and handed over to his son. 
 
 "So she made up her mind to keep the strictest possible 
 watch over the sick-room. She ruled despotically in the 
 house, and everything in it was submitted to this feminine 
 espionage. All day she sat in the salon adjoining her hus- 
 band's room, so that she could hear every syllable that he 
 uttered, every least movement that he made. She had a bed 
 put there for her of a night, but she did not sleep very much. 
 The doctor was entirely in her interests. Such wifely devo- 
 tion seemed praiseworthy enough. With the natural subtlety 
 of perfidy, she took care to disguise M. de Restaud's repug- 
 nance for her, and feigned distress so perfectly that she 
 gained a sort of celebrity. Strait-laced women were even 
 found to say that she had expiated her sins. Always before 
 her eyes she beheld a vision of the destitution to follow on
 
 GOBSBCK 333 
 
 the Count's death if her presence of mind should fail her; 
 and in these ways the wife, repulsed from the bed of pain on 
 which her husband lay and groaned, had drawn a charmed 
 circle round about it. So near, yet kept at a distance; all- 
 powerful, but in disgrace, the apparentty devoted wife was 
 lying in wait for death and opportunity; crouching like the 
 ant-lion at the bottom of his spiral pit, ever on the watch for 
 the prey that cannot escape, listening to the fall of every grain 
 of sand. 
 
 "The strictest censor could not but recognize that the 
 Countess pushed maternal sentiment to the last degree. Her 
 father's death had been a lesson to her, people said. She 
 worshiped her children. They were so young that she could 
 hide the disorders of her life from their eyes, and could win 
 their love; she had given them the best and most brilliant 
 education. I confess that I cannot help admiring her and 
 feeling sorry for her. Gobseck used to joke me about it. 
 Just about that time she had discovered Maxime's baseness, 
 and was expiating the sins of the past in tears of blood. I 
 am sure of it. Hateful as were the measures which she took 
 for regaining control of her husband's money, were they not 
 the result of a mother's love, and a desire to repair the wrongs 
 she had done her children ? And again, it may be, like many 
 a woman who has experienced the storms of lawless love, she 
 felt a longing to lead a virtuous life again. Perhaps she 
 only learned the worth of that life when she came to reap 
 the woeful harvest sown by her errors. 
 
 "Every time that little Ernest came out of his father's 
 room, she put him through a searching examination as to all 
 that his father had done or said. The boy willingly complied 
 with his mother's wishes, and told her even more than she 
 asked in her anxious affection, as he thought. 
 
 "My visit was a ray of light for the Countess. She was 
 determined to see in me the instrument of the Count's venge- 
 ance, and resolved that I should not be allowed to go near 
 the dying man. I augured ill of all this, and earnestly wished 
 for an interview, for I was not easy in my mind about the
 
 334 GOBSECK 
 
 fate of the counter-deed. If it should fall into the Countess' 
 hands, she might turn it to her own account, and that would 
 be the beginning of a series of interminable lawsuits between 
 her and Gobseck. I knew the usurer well enough to feel con- 
 vinced that he would never give up the property to her ; there 
 was room for plenty of legal quibbling over a series of trans- 
 fers, and I alone knew all the ins and outs of the matter. I 
 was minded to prevent such a tissue of misfortune, so I went 
 to the Countess a second time. 
 
 "I have noticed, madame," said Perville, turning to the 
 Vicomtesse, and speaking in a confidential tone, "certain 
 moral phenomena to which we do not pay enough attention. I 
 am naturally an observer of human nature, and instinctively 
 I bring a spirit of analysis to the business that I transact in 
 the interest of others, when human passions are called into 
 lively play. Now, I have often noticed, and always with new 
 wonder, that two antagonists almost always- divine each 
 other's inmost thoughts and ideas. Two enemies sometimes 
 possess a power of clear insight into mental processes, and 
 read each other's minds as two lovers read in either soul. So 
 when we came together, the Countess and I, I understood at 
 once the reason of her antipathy for me, disguised though 
 it was by the most gracious forms of politeness and civility. 
 I had been forced to be her confidant, and a woman cannot 
 but hate the man before whom she is compelled to blush. 
 And she on her side knew that if I was the man in whom 
 her husband placed confidence, that husband had not as yet 
 given up his fortune. 
 
 "1 will spare you the conversation, but it abides in my 
 memory as one of the most dangerous encounters in my 
 career. Nature had bestowed on her all the qualities which, 
 combined, are irresistibly fascinating; she could be pliant 
 and proud by turns, and confiding and coaxing in her man- 
 ner; she even went so far as to try to arouse curiosity and 
 kindle love in her effort to subjugate me. It was a failure. 
 As I took my leave of her, I caught a gleam of hate and rage 
 in her eyes that made me shudder. We parted enemies. She
 
 GOBSBCK 335 
 
 would fain have crushed me out of existence; and for my 
 own part, I felt pity for her, and for some natures pity is the 
 deadliest of insults. This feeling pervaded the last repre- 
 sentations I put before her; and when I left her, I left, I 
 think, dread in the depths of her soul, by declaring that, turn 
 which way she would, ruin lay inevitably before her. 
 
 " 'If I were to see M. le Comte, your children's property 
 at any rate would 
 
 " 'I should be at your mercy,' she said, breaking in upon 
 me, disgust in her gesture. 
 
 "Now that we had spoken frankly, I made up my mind 
 to save the family from impending destitution. I resolved 
 to strain the law at need to gain my ends, and this was what 
 I did. I sued the Comte de Restaud for a sum of money, 
 ostensibly due to Gobseck, and gained judgment. The 
 Countess, of course, did not allow him to know of this, but I 
 had gained my point, I had a right to affix seals to every- 
 thing on the death of the Count. I bribed one of the servants 
 in the house the man undertook to let me know at any hour 
 of the day or night if his master should be at the point of 
 death, so that I could intervene at once, scare the Countess 
 with a threat of affixing seals, and so secure the counter- 
 deed. 
 
 "I learned later on that the woman was studying the Code, 
 with her husband's dying moans in her ears. If we could 
 picture the thoughts of those who stand about a deathbed, 
 whfct fearful sights should we not see? Money is always the 
 mot ve- spring of the schemes elaborated, of all the 
 plan? that are made and the plots that are woven 
 abou~. it ! Let us leave these details, nauseating in 
 the nature of them; but perhaps they may have given you 
 some nsight into all that this husband and wife endured ; per- 
 haps 100 they may unveil much that is passing in secret in 
 other aouses. 
 
 "Fo' two months the Comte de Restaud lay on his bed, 
 alone, ind resigned to his fate. Mortal disease was slowly
 
 836 GOBSECK 
 
 sapping the strength ot mind and body. Unaccountable and 
 grotesque sick fancies preyed upon him; he would not suffer 
 them to set his room in order, no one should nurse him, he 
 would not even allow them to make his bed. All his sur- 
 roundings bore the marks of this last degree of apathy, the 
 furniture was out of place, the daintiest trifles were covered 
 with dust and cobwebs. In health he had been a man of 
 refined and expensive tastes, now he positively delighted in 
 the comfortless look of the room. A host of objects required 
 in illness rows of medicine bottles, empty and full, most of 
 them dirty, crumpled linen and broken plates, littered the 
 writing-table, chairs, and chimney-piece. An open warming- 
 pan lay on the floor before the grate ; a bath, still full of min- 
 eral water, had not been taken away. The sense of coming 
 dissolution pervaded all the details of an unsightly chaos. 
 Signs of death appeared in things inanimate before the 
 Destroyer came to the body, on the bed. The Comte de 
 Restaud could not bear the daylight, the Venetian shutters 
 were closed, darkness deepened the gloom in the dismal 
 chamber. The sick man himself had wasted greatly. All 
 the life in him seemed to have taken refuge in the still brill- 
 iant eyes. The livid whiteness of his face was something 
 horrible to see, enhanced as it was by the long dank locks of 
 hair that straggled along his cheeks, for he would never 
 suffer them to cut it. He looked like some religious fanatfc 
 in the desert. Mental suffering was extinguishing all humin 
 instincts in this man of scarce fifty years of age, whom all 
 Paris had known as so brilliant and so successful. 
 
 "One morning at the beginning of December 1824, he 
 looked up at Ernest, who sat at the foot of his bed gazing at 
 his father with wistful eyes. 
 
 " 'Are you in pain ?' the little Vicomte asked. 
 
 "'No/ said the Count, with a ghastly smile, 'it al lies 
 here and about my heart!' 
 
 "He pointed to his forehead, and then laid his \fasted 
 fingers on his hollow chest. Ernest began to cry at the sight. 
 
 " 'How is it that M. Derville does not come to me?' the
 
 GOBSECK 337 
 
 Count asked his servant (he thought that Maurice was really 
 attached to him, but the man was entirely in the Countess' 
 interest) 'What! Maurice!' and the dying man suddenly 
 sat upright in his bed, and seemed to recover all his presence 
 of mind, 'I have sent for my attorney seven or eight times 
 during the last fortnight, and he does not come !' he cried. 
 'Do you imagine that I am to be trifled with? Go for him, 
 at once, this very instant, and bring him back with you. If 
 you do not carry out m}^ orders, I shall get up and go myself." 
 
 " 'Madame,' said the man as he came into the salon, 'you 
 heard M. le Comte; what ought I to do?' 
 
 " 'Pretend to go to the attorney, and when you come back, 
 tell your master that his man of business is forty leagues 
 away from Paris on an important lawsuit. Say that he is 
 expected back at the end of the week. Sick people Clever 
 know how ill they are,' thought the Countess ; 'he will wait till 
 the man comes home.' 
 
 "The doctor had said on the previous evening that the 
 Count could scarcely live through the day. When the servant 
 came back two hours later to give that hopeless answer, the 
 dying man seemed to be greatly agitated. 
 
 " '0 God !' he cried again and again, 'I put my trust in 
 none but Thee.' 
 
 "For a long while he lay and gazed at his son, and spoke 
 in a feeble voice at last. 
 
 " 'Ernest, my boy, you are very young ; but you have a 
 good heart; you can understand, no doubt, that a promise 
 given to a dying man is sacred ; a promise to a father . . . 
 Do you feel that you can be trusted with a secret, and keep it 
 so well and closely that even your mother herself shall not 
 know that you have a secret to keep? There is no one else 
 in this house whom I can trust to-day. You will not betray 
 my trust, will you?' 
 
 " 'No, father.' 
 
 " 'Very well, then, Ernest, in a minute or two I will give 
 you a sealed packet that belongs to M. Derville; you must 
 take such care of it that no one can know that you have it; 
 vol.. 5 46
 
 338 GOBSECK 
 
 then you must slip out of the house and put the letter into 
 the post-box at the corner/ 
 
 " 'Yes, father/ 
 
 " 'Can I depend upon you ?' 
 
 '"Yes, father/ 
 
 " 'Come and kiss me. You have made death less bitter to 
 me, dear boy. In six or seven years' time you will understand 
 the importance of this secret, and you will be well rewarded 
 then for your quickness and obedience, you will know then 
 how much I love you. Leave me alone for a minute, and 
 let no one no matter whom come in meanwhile/ 
 
 "Ernest went out and saw his mother standing in the next 
 room. 
 
 " 'Ernest/ said she, 'come here/ 
 
 "She sat down, drew her son to her knees, and clasped him 
 in her arms, and held him tightly to her heart. 
 
 " 'Ernest, your father said something to you just now/ 
 
 " 'Yes, mamma/ 
 
 '"What did he say?' 
 
 " 'I cannot repeat it, mamma/ 
 
 " 'Oh, my dear child !' cried the Countess, kissing him in 
 rapture. 'You have kept your secret; how glad that makes 
 me ! Never tell a lie ; never fail to keep your word those 
 are two principles which should never be forgotten/ 
 
 " 'Oh ! mamma, how beautiful you are ! You have never 
 told a lie, I am quite sure/ 
 
 " 'Once or twice, Ernest dear, I have lied. Yes, and I 
 have not kept my word under circumstances which speak 
 louder than all precepts. Listen, my Ernest, you are big 
 enough and intelligent enough to see that your father drives 
 me away, and will not allow me to nurse him, and this is not 
 natural, for you know how much I love him/ 
 
 '"Yes, mamma/ 
 
 "The Countess began to cry. 'Poor child!' she said, 'this 
 misfortune is the result of treacherous insinuations. Wicked 
 people have tried to separate me from your father to satisfy 
 their greed. They mean to take all our money from us and to
 
 GOBSECK 339 
 
 keep it for themselves. If your father were well, the division 
 between us would soon be over; he would listen to me; he is 
 loving and kind; he would see his mistake. But now his 
 mind is affected, and his prejudices against me have become 
 a fixed idea, a sort of mania with him. It is one result of his 
 illness. Your father's fondness for you is another proof that 
 his mind is deranged. Until he fell ill you never noticed that 
 he loved you more than Pauline and Georges. It is all caprice 
 with him now. In his affection for you he might take it into 
 his head to tell you to do things for him. If you do not want 
 to ruin us all, my darling, and to see your mother begging 
 her bread like a pauper woman, you must tell her every- 
 thing ' 
 
 " 'Ah !' cried the Count. He had opened the door and 
 stood there, a sudden, half-naked apparition, almost as thin 
 and fleshless as a skeleton. 
 
 "His smothered cry produced a terrible effect upon the 
 Countess; she sat motionless, as if a sudden stupor had seized 
 her. Her husband was as white and wasted as if he had risen 
 out of his grave. 
 
 " 'You have filled my life to the full with trouble, and now 
 you are trying to vex my deathbed, to warp my boy's mind, 
 and make a depraved man of him !' he cried, hoarsely. 
 
 "The Countess flung herself at his feet. His face, working 
 with the last emotions of life, was almost hideous to see. 
 
 " 'Mercy ! mercy !' she cried aloud, shedding a torrent of 
 tears. 
 
 " 'Have you shown me any pity ?' he asked. 'I allowed you 
 to squander your own money, and now do you mean to 
 squander my fortune, too, and ruin my son?' 
 
 " 'Ah ! well, yes, have no pity for me, be merciless to me !' 
 she cried. 'But the children? Condemn your widow to live 
 in a convent; I will obey you; I will do anything, anything 
 that you bid me, to expiate -the wrong I have done you, if that 
 so the children may be happy! The children! Oh, the 
 children !' 
 
 " 'I have only one child/ said the Count, stretching out a 
 wasted arm, in his despair, towards his son.
 
 340 GOBSECK 
 
 " 'Pardon a penitent woman, a penitent woman ! . . .' 
 wailed the Countess, her arms about her husband's damp feet. 
 She could not speak for sobbing; vague, incoherent sounds 
 broke from her parched throat. 
 
 " 'You dare to talk of penitence after all that you said to 
 Ernest !' exclaimed the dying man, shaking off the Countess, 
 who lay groveling over his feet. 'You turn me to ice !' he 
 added, and there was something appalling in the indifference 
 with which he uttered the words. 'You have been a bad 
 daughter; you have been a bad wife; you will be a bad 
 mother/ 
 
 "The wretched woman fainted away. The dying man 
 reached his bed and lay down again, and a few hours later 
 sank into unconsciousness. The priests came and adminis- 
 tered the sacraments. 
 
 "At midnight he died; the scene that morning had ex- 
 hausted his remaining strength, and on the stroke of mid- 
 night I arrived with Daddy Gobseck. The house was in 
 confusion, and under cover of it we walked up into the little 
 salon adjoining the death-chamber. The three children were 
 there in tears, with two priests, who had come to watch with 
 the dead. Ernest came over to me, and said that his mother 
 desired to be alone in the Count's room. 
 
 " 'Do not go in/ he said ; and I admired the child for his 
 tone and gesture ; 'she is praying there/ 
 
 "Gobseck began to laugh that soundless laugh of his, but 
 I felt too much touched by the feeling in Ernest's little face 
 to join in the miser's sardonic amusement. When Ernest 
 saw that we moved towards the door, he planted himself in 
 front of it, crying out, 'Mamma, here are some gentlemen in 
 black who want to see you !' 
 
 "Gobseck lifted Ernest out of the way as if the child had 
 been a feather, and opened the door. 
 
 "What a scene it was that met our eyes ! The room was 
 in frightful disorder; clothes and papers and rags lay tossed 
 about in a confusion horrible to see in the presence of 
 Death ; and there, in the midst, stood the Countess in dishev-
 
 GOBSBGK 341 
 
 eled despair, unable to utter a word, her eyes glittering. The 
 Count had scarcely breathed his last before his wife came -in 
 and forced open the drawers and the desk; the carpet was 
 strewn with litter, some of the furniture and boxes were 
 broken, the signs of violence could be seen everywhere. But 
 if her search had at first proved fruitless, there was that in 
 her excitement and attitude which led me to believe that 
 she had found the mysterious documents at last. I glanced 
 at the bed, and professional instinct told me all that had 
 happened. The mattress had been flung contemptuously 
 down by the bedside, and across it, face downwards, lay the 
 body of the Count, like one of the paper envelopes that 
 strewed the carpet he too was nothing now but an envelope. 
 There was something grotesquely horrible in the attitude of 
 the stiffening rigid limbs. 
 
 "The dying man must have hidden the counter-deed under 
 his pillow to keep it safe so long as life should last ; and his 
 wife must have guessed his thought; indeed, it might be 
 read plainly in his last dying gesture, in the convulsive 
 clutch of his claw-like hands. The pillow had been flung to 
 the floor at the foot of the bed ; I could see the print of her 
 heel upon it. At her feet lay a paper with the Count's arms 
 on the seals ; I snatched it <up, and saw that it was addressed 
 to me. I looked steadily at the Countess with the piti- 
 less clear-sightedness of an examining magistrate confronting 
 a guilty creature. The contents were blazing in the grate; 
 she had flung them on the fire at the sound of our approach, 
 imagining, from a first hasty glance at the provisions which 
 I had suggested for her children, that she was destroying a 
 will which disinherited them. A tormented conscience and 
 involuntary horror of the deed which she had done had taken 
 away all power of reflection. She had been caught in the 
 act, and possibly the scaffold was rising before her eyes, and 
 she already felt the felon's branding iron. 
 
 "There she stood gasping for breath, waiting for us to 
 <speak, staring at us with haggard eyes. 
 
 "I went across to the grate and pulled out an unburned
 
 342 GOBSECK 
 
 fragment. 'Ah, madame!' I exclaimed, 'you have ruined 
 your children! Those papers were their titles to their 
 property.' 
 
 "Her mouth twitched, she looked as if she were threatened 
 by a paralytic seizure. 
 
 " 'Eh ! eh !' cried Gobseck ; the harsh, shrill tone grated 
 upon our ears like the sound of a brass candlestick scratching 
 a marble surface. 
 
 "There was a pause, then the old man turned to me and 
 said quietly: 
 
 " 'Do you intend Mme. la Comtesse to suppose that I am 
 not the rightful owner of the property sold to me by her late 
 husband? This house belongs to me now/ 
 
 "A sudden blow on the head from a bludgeon would have 
 given me less pain and astonishment. The Countess saw 
 the look of hesitation in my face. 
 
 " 'Monsieur/ she cried, 'Monsieur !' She could find no 
 other words. 
 
 " 'You are a trustee, are you not ?' I asked. 
 
 "'That is possible/ 
 
 " 'Then do you mean to take advantage of this crime of 
 hers?' 
 
 " 'Precisely/ 
 
 "I went at that, leaving the Countess sitting by her hus- 
 band's bedside, shedding hot tears. Gobseck followed me. 
 Outside in the street I separated from him., but he came after 
 me, flung me one of those searching glances with which he 
 probed men's minds, and said in the husky flute-tones, 
 pitched in a shriller key: 
 
 " 'Do you take it upon yourself to judge me ?' 
 
 "From that time forward we saw little of each other. 
 Gobseck let the Count's mansion on lease ; he spent the sum- 
 mers on the country estates. He was a lord of the manor in 
 earnest, putting up farm buildings, repairing mills and 
 roadways, and planting timber. I came across him one day 
 in a walk in the Jardin des Tuileries.
 
 GOBSECK 343 
 
 "'The Countess is behaving like a heroine,' said I; 'she 
 gives herself up entirely to the children's education; she is 
 giving them a perfect bringing up. The oldest boy is a 
 charming young fellow ' 
 
 " 'That "is possible/ 
 
 " 'But ought you not to help Ernest ?' I suggested. 
 
 " 'Help him !' cried Gobseck. 'Not I. Adversity is the 
 greatest of all teachers; adversity teaches us to know the 
 value of money and the worth of men and women. Let him 
 set sail on the seas of Paris ; when he is a qualified pilot, we 
 will give him a ship to steer.' 
 
 "I left him without seeking to explain the meaning of his 
 words. 
 
 "M. de Restaud's mother has prejudiced him against me, 
 and he is very far from taking me as his legal adviser; still, 
 I went to see Gobseck last week to tell him about Ernest's 
 love for Mile. Camille, and pressed him to carry out his con- 
 tract, since that young Restaud is just of age. 
 
 "I found that the old bill-discounter had been kept to his 
 bed for a long time by the complaint of which he was to die. 
 He put me off, saying that he would give the matter his atten- 
 tion when he could get up again and see after his business; 
 his idea being no doubt that he would not give up any of his 
 possessions so long as the breath was in him ; no other -reason 
 could be found for his shuffling answer. He seemed to me to 
 be much worse than he at all suspected. I stayed with him 
 long enough to discern the progress of a passion which age 
 had converted into a sort of craze. He wanted to be alone 
 in the house, and had taken the rooms one by one as they 
 fell vacant. In his own room he had changed nothing; the 
 furniture which I knew so well sixteen years ago looked the 
 same as ever; it might have been kept under a glass case. 
 Gobseck's faithful old portress, with her husband, a pen- 
 sioner, who sat in the entry while she was upstairs, was still 
 his housekeeper and charwoman, and now in addition his 
 sick-nurse. In spite of his feebleness, Gobseck saw his clients 
 himself as heretofore, and received sums of money; his affairs
 
 344 GOBSfiCK 
 
 had been so simplified, that he only needed to send his pen- 
 sioner out now and again on an errand, and could carry on 
 business in his bed. 
 
 "After the treaty, by which France recognized the Haytian 
 Republic, Gobseck was one of the members of the commission 
 appointed to liquidate claims and assess repayments due by 
 Hayti; his special knowledge of old fortunes in San Do- 
 mingo, and the planters and their heirs and assigns to whom 
 the indemnities were due, had led to his nomination. Gob- 
 seck's peculiar genius had then devised an agency for dis- 
 counting the planters' claims on the government. The 
 business was carried on under the names of Werbrust and 
 Gigonnet, with whom he shared the spoil without disburse- 
 ments, for his knowledge was accepted instead of capital. 
 The agency was a sort of distillery, in which money was 
 extracted from doubtful claims, and the claims of those who 
 knew no better, or had no confidence in the government. As 
 a liquidator, Gobseck could make terms with the large landed 
 proprietors; and these, either to gain a higher percentage of 
 their claims, or to ensure prompt settlements, would send him 
 presents in proportion to their means. In this way presents 
 came to be a kind of percentage upon sums too large to pass 
 through his control, while the agency bought up cheaply the 
 small and dubious claims, or the claims of those persons who 
 preferred a little ready money to a deferred and somewhat 
 hazy repayment by the Republic. Gobseck was the insatiable 
 boa constrictor of the great business. Every morning he 
 received his tribute, eyeing it like a Nabob's prime minister, 
 as he considers whether he will sign i pardon. Gobseck would 
 take anything, from the present of game sent him by some 
 poor devil or the pound's weight of wax candles from devout 
 folk, to the rich man's plate and tho speculator's gold snuff- 
 box. Nobody knew what became of th< presents sent to the 
 old money-lender. Everything went in, but nothing came 
 out. 
 
 " 'On the word of an honest woman,' said the portress, 
 an old acquaintance of mine, 'I believe he swallows it all and
 
 GOBSECK 345 
 
 is none the fatter for it; he is as thin and dried up as the 
 cuckoo in the clock.' 
 
 "At length, last Monday, Gobseck sent his pensioner for 
 me. The man came up to my private office. 
 
 " 'Be quick and come, M. Derville,' said he, 'the governor 
 is just going to hand in his checks ; he has grown as yellow as 
 a lemon: he is fidgeting to speak with you; death has fail- 
 hold of him ; the rattle is working in his throat.' 
 
 "When I entered Gobseck's room, I found the dying man 
 kneeling before the grate. If there was no fire on the hearth, 
 there was at any rate a monstrous heap of ashes. He had 
 dragged himself out of bed, but his strength had failed him, 
 and he could neither go back nor find voice to complain. 
 
 " 'You felt cold, old friend,' I said, as I helped him back 
 to his bed; 'how can you do without a fire?' 
 
 " 'I am not cold at all,' he said. 'No fire here ! no fire ! I 
 am going, I know not where, lad,' he went on, glancing at me 
 with blank, lightless eyes, 'but I am going away from this. 
 I have carpology' said he (the use of the technical term 
 showing how clear and accurate his mental processes were 
 even now). 'I thought the room was full of live gold, and I 
 got up to catch some of it. To whom will all mine go, I 
 wonder? Not to the Crown; I have left a will, look for it, 
 Grotius. La belle Hollandaise had a daughter; I once saw 
 the girl somewhere or other, in the Rue Vivienne, one even- 
 ing. They call her "La Torpille" I believe ; she is as pretty as 
 pretty can be; look her up, Grotius. You are my executor; 
 take what you like ; help yourself. There are Strasburg pies, 
 there, and bags of coffee, and sugar, and gold spoons. Give 
 the Odiot service to your wife. But who is to have the dia- 
 monds ? Are you going to take them, lad ? There is snuff too 
 sell it at Hamburg, tobaccos are worth half as much again 
 at Hamburg. All sorts of things I have in fact, and now I 
 must go and leave them all. Come, Papa Gobseck, no weak- 
 ness, be yourself!' 
 
 "He raised himself in bed, the lines of his face standing 
 out as sharply against the pillow as if the profile had been
 
 346 GOBSEOK 
 
 cast in bronze; he stretched out a lean arm and bony hand 
 along the coverlet and clutched it, as if so he would fain keep 
 his hold on life, then he gazed hard at the grate, cold as his 
 own metallic eyes, and died in full consciousness of death. 
 To us the portress, the old pensioner, and myself he 
 looked like one of the old Romans standing behind the 
 Consuls in Lethiere's picture of the Death of the Sons of 
 Brutus. 
 
 " 'He was a good-plucked one, the old Lascar !' said the 
 pensioner in his soldierly fashion. 
 
 "But as for me, the dying man's fantastical enumeration 
 of his riches was still sounding in my ears, and my eyes, 
 following the direction of his, rested on that heap of ashes. 
 It struck me that it was very large. I took the tongs, and as 
 soon a* I stirred the cinders, I felt the metal 'underneath, a 
 mass of gold and silver coins, receipts taken during his ill- 
 ness, doubtless, after he grew too feeble to lock the money 
 up, and could trust no one to take it to the bank for him. 
 
 " 'Run for the justice of the peace/ said I, turning to the 
 old pensioner, 'so that everything can be -sealed here at once.' 
 
 "Gobseck's last words and the old portress' remarks had 
 struck me. I took the keys of the rooms on the first and 
 second floor to make a visitation. The first door that I 
 opened revealed the meaning of the phrases which I took for 
 mad ravings; and I saw the length to which covetousness 
 goes when it survives only as an illogical instinct, the last 
 stage of greed of which you find so many examples among 
 misers in country towns. 
 
 "In the room next to the one in which Gobseck had died, a 
 quantity of eatables of all kinds were stored putrid pies, 
 mouldy fish, nay, even shell-fish, the stench almost choked 
 me. Maggots and insects swarmed. These comparatively 
 recent presents were put down, pell-mell, among chests of 
 tea, bags of coffee, and packing-cases of every shape. A 
 silver soup tureen on the chimney-piece was full of advices of 
 the arrival of goods consigned to his order at Havre, bales 
 of cotton, hogsheads of sugar, barrels of rum, coffees, indigo,
 
 GOBSECK 347 
 
 tobaccos, a perfect bazaar of colonial produce. The room 
 itself was crammed with furniture, and silver-plate, and 
 lamps, and vases, and pictures ; there were books, and curiosi- 
 ties, and fine engravings lying rolled up, unframed. Perhaps 
 these were not all presents, and some part of this vast quan- 
 tity of stuff had been deposited with him in the shape of 
 pledges, and had been left on his hands in default of pay- 
 ment. I noticed jewel-cases, with ciphers and armorial- 
 bearings stamped upon them, and sets of fine table-linen, and 
 weapons of price; but none of the things were docketed. I 
 opened a book which seemed to be misplaced, and found a 
 thousand-franc note in it. I promised myself that I would 
 go through everything thoroughly; I would try the ceilings, 
 and floors, and walls, and cornices to discover all the gold, 
 hoarded with such passionate greed by a Dutch miser worthy 
 of a Kembrandt's brush. In all the course of my professional 
 career I have never seen such impressive signs of the eccen- 
 tricity of avarice. 
 
 "I went back to his room, and found an explanation of this 
 chaos and accumulation of riches in a pile of letters lying 
 under the paper-weights on his desk Gobseck's correspond- 
 ence with the various dealers to whom doubtless he usually 
 sold his presents. These persons had, perhaps, fallen victims 
 to Gobseck's cleverness, or Gobseck may have wanted fancy 
 prices for his goods; at any rate, every bargain hung in sus- 
 pense. He had not disposed of the eatables to Chevet, because 
 Chevet would only take them of him at a loss of thirty per 
 cent. Gobseck haggled for a few francs between the prices, 
 and while they wrangled the goods became unsalable. Again, 
 Gobseck had refused free delivery of his silver-plate, and 
 declined to guarantee the weights of his coffees. There had 
 been a dispute over each article, the first indication in Gob- 
 seck of the childishness and incomprehensible obstinacy of 
 age, a condition of mind reached at last by all men in whom 
 a strong passion survives the intellect. 
 
 "1 said to myself, as he had said, 'To whom will all these 
 riches go?' . . . And when I think of the grotesque
 
 348 GOBSECK 
 
 information he gave me as to the present address of his heir- 
 ess, I foresee that it will be my duty to search all the houses 
 of ill-fame in Paris to pour out an immense fortune on some 
 worthless jade. But, in the first place, know this that in a 
 few days time Ernest de Eestaud will come into a fortune to 
 which his title is unquestionable, a fortune which will put him 
 in a position to marry Mile. Camille,. even after adequate pro- 
 vision has been made for his mother the Comtesse de Eestaud. 
 and his sister and brother.'*
 
 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 To Lieutenant-Colonel Periollas (of the Artillery) as a proof 
 of the author's affection and esteem. 
 
 DE BALZAC. 
 
 ON every occasion when you have gone seriously to study the 
 Exhibition of works in sculpture and painting, such as it 
 has been since the Revolution of 1830, have you not been 
 seized by a feeling of discomfort, boredom, and melancholy 
 at the sight of the long, over-filled galleries ? Since 1830 the 
 Salon has ceased to exist. Once more the Louvre has been 
 taken by storm by the mob of artists, and they have kept 
 possession. Formerly, when the Salon gave us a choice col- 
 lection of works of art, it secured the greatest honors for the 
 examples exhibited there. Among the two hundred selected 
 pictures the public chose again; a crown was awarded to the 
 masterpieces by unknown hands. Impassioned discussions 
 arose as to the merits of a painting. The abuse heaped on 
 Delacroix and on Ingres were not of less service to rhem than 
 the praises and fanaticism of their adherents. 
 
 In our day neither the crowd nor the critic can be vehement 
 over the objects in this bazaar. Being compelled to make 
 the selection which was formerly undertaken by the examin- 
 ing jury, their attention is exhausted by the effort; and by 
 the time it is finished the Exhibition closes. 
 
 Until 1817 the pictures accepted never extended beyond 
 the first two columns of the long gallery containing the works 
 of the old masters, and this year they filled the whole of this 
 space, to the great surprise of the public. Historical paint- 
 ing, genre, easel pictures, landscape, flowers, animals, and 
 water-color painting, each of these eight classes could never 
 yield more than twenty pictures worthy of the eye of the 
 
 (349)
 
 350 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 public, who cannot give attention to a larger collection of 
 pictures. 
 
 The more the number of artists increases, the more exact- 
 ing should the jury of selection become. All was lost as soon 
 as the Salon encroached further on the gallery. The Salon 
 should have been kept within fixed and restricted limits, in- 
 flexibly defined, where each class might exhibit its best works. 
 The experience of ten years has proved the excellence of the 
 old rules. Instead of a tourney, you now have a riot ; instead 
 of a glorious exhibition, you have a medley bazaar; instead 
 of a selection, you have everything at once. What is the 
 result? A great artist is swamped. The Turkish Cafe, the 
 Children at the Well, the Torture by Hooks, and the Joseph 
 by Decamps would have done more for his glory if exhibited 
 all four, in the great room with the hundred other good pict- 
 ures of the year, than his twenty canvases buried among 
 three thousand paintings, and dispersed among six galleries. 
 
 With strange perversity, since the doors have been thrown 
 open to all, there has been much talk of unappreciated genius. 
 When, twelve years before, the Courtesan, by Ingres, and Siga- 
 lon's pictures, Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, Delacroix's 
 Massacre of Scio, and Eugene Deveria's Baptism of Henri 
 IV. accepted, as they were, by yet more famous men, who 
 were taxed with jealousy revealed to the world, notwith- 
 standing the carping of critics, the existence of youthful and 
 ardent painters, not a complaint was ever heard. But now, 
 when the veriest dauber of canvas can display his works, we 
 hear of nothing but misunderstood talent. Where there is no 
 longer any judgment, nothing is judged. Our artists, do 
 what they may, will come back to the ordeal of selection which 
 recommends their work to the admiration of the public for 
 whom they toil. Without the choice exercised by the Acad- 
 emy, there will be no Salon ; and without the Salon, art may 
 perish. 
 
 Since the catalogue has grown to be a fat volume, many 
 names are found there which remain obscure, notwithstand- 
 ing the list of ten or twelve pictures that follows them.
 
 PIERRE GRASSOTJ 351 
 
 Among these names, the least known of all perhaps is that 
 of an artist named Pierre Grassou, a native of Fougeres, and 
 called, for shortness, Fougeres in the artist world a name 
 which nowadays fills so much space on the page, and which 
 has suggested the bitter reflections introducing this sketch 
 of his life, and applicable to some other members of the artist 
 tribe. 
 
 In 1832 Fougeres was living in the Eue de Navarin, on 
 the fourth floor of one of those tall, narrow houses that are 
 like the obelisk of Luxor, which have a passage and a dark, 
 narrow staircase with dangerous turnings, which are not wide 
 enough for more than three windows on each floor, and have 
 a courtyard, or, to be exact, a square well at the back. Above 
 the three or four rooms inhabited by Fougeres was his studio, 
 looking out over Montmartre. The studio, painted brick red; 
 the floor, carefully stained brown and polished; each chair 
 provided with a square, bordered mat ; the sofa, plain enough, 
 but as clean as that in a tradeswoman's bedroom, everything 
 betrayed the petty existence of a narrow mind and the care- 
 fulness of a poor man. There was a closet for keeping the 
 studio properties in, a breakfast table, a sideboard, a desk, 
 and the various objects necessary for painting, all clean and 
 in order. The stove, too, had the benefit of this Dutch neat- 
 ness, which was all the more conspicuous because the pure 
 and steady northern sky flooded the back room with clear, 
 cold light. Fougeres, a mere painter of genre, had no need 
 fcr the huge machinery which ruins historical painters; he 
 had never discerned in himself faculties competent to venture 
 on the higher walks of art, and was still content with small 
 easels. 
 
 In the beginning of the month of December of that year, 
 the season when Paris Philistines are periodically attacked 
 by the burlesque idea of perpetuating their faces in them- 
 selves a sufficient burden Pierre Grassou, having risen early, 
 was setting his palette, lighting his stove, eating a roll soaked 
 in milk, and waiting to work till his window panes should 
 have thawed enough to let daylight in. The weather was dry
 
 352 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 and fine. At this instant, the painter, eating with the patient, 
 resigned look that tells so much, recognized the footfall of a 
 man who had had the influence over his life which people of 
 his class have in the career of most artists Elias Magus, a 
 picture dealer, an usurer in canvas. And, in fact, Elias 
 Magus came in, at the moment when the painter was about 
 to begin work in his elaborately clean studio. 
 
 "How is yourself, old rascal?" said the painter. 
 
 Fougeres had won the Cross; Elias bought his pictures 
 for two or three hundred francs, and gave himself the most 
 artistic airs. 
 
 "Business is bad," replied Elias. "You all are such lords ; 
 you talk of two hundred francs as soon as you have six sous 
 worth of paint on the canvas. But you are a very good fel- 
 low, you are. You are a man of method, and I have come 
 to bring you a good job." 
 
 "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes," said Fougeres. "Do 
 you know Latin?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Well, that means that the Greeks did not offer a bit of 
 good business to the Trojans without making something out 
 of it. In those days they used to say, "Take my horse.' 
 Nowadays we say, 'Take my trash V Well, what do you want, 
 Ulysses-Lagningeole-Elias-Magus?" 
 
 This speech shows the degree of sweetness and wit which 
 Fougeres could put into what painters call studio-chaff. 
 
 "I don't say that you will not have to paint me two pict- 
 ures for nothing." 
 
 "Oh! oh!" 
 
 "I leave it to you; I do not ask for them. You are an 
 honest artist." 
 
 "Indeed?" 
 
 "Well. I am bringing you a father, a mother, and an 
 only daughter." 
 
 "All unique specimens ?" 
 
 "My word, yes, indeed! to have their portraits painted. 
 The worthy folks, crazy about art, have never dared venture
 
 PIERRE GRASSOTJ 353 
 
 into a studio. The daughter will have a hundred thousand 
 francs on her marriage. You may do well to paint such 
 people. Family portraits for yourself, who knows?" 
 
 The old German image, who passes muster as a man, and 
 is called Elias Magus, broke off to laugh a dry cackle that 
 horrified the painter. He felt as if he had heard Mephis- 
 topheles talking of marriage. 
 
 "The portraits are to be five hundred francs apiece; you 
 may give me three pictures." 
 
 "Eight you are !" said Fougeres cheerfully. 
 
 "And if you marry the daughter, you will not forget 
 me " 
 
 "Marry ? I !" cried Pierre Grassou ; "I, who am used to have 
 a bed to myself, to get up early, whose life is all laid out " 
 
 "A hundred thousand francs," said Magus, "and a sweet 
 girl, full of golden lights like a Titian !" 
 
 "And what position do. these people hold ?" 
 
 "Retired merchants: in love with the arts at the present 
 moment ; they have a country house at Ville-d'Avray, and ten 
 or twelve thousand francs a year." 
 
 "What was their business?" 
 
 "Bottles." 
 
 "Don't speak that, word ; I fancy I hear corks being cut, 
 and it sets my teeth on edge." 
 
 "Well; am I to bring them?" 
 
 "Three portraits; I will send them to the Salon; I might 
 go in for portrait-painting. All right, yes." 
 
 And old Elias went downstairs to fetch the Vervelle 
 family. 
 
 To understand exactly what the outcome of such a pro- 
 posal would be on the painter, and the effect produced on 
 him by Monsieur and Madame Vervelle, graced by the ad- 
 dition of their only daughter, it is necessary to glance for 
 a moment at the past life of Pierre Grassou of Fougeres. 
 As a pupil, he had learned to draw of Servin, who was re- 
 garded in the academical world as a great draughtsman. 
 He afterwards worked under Schinner, to discover the secrets 
 VOL. 547
 
 354 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 of the powerful and splendid coloring that characterizes that 
 master. The master and his disciples had kept the secrets; 
 Pierre had discovered nothing. From thence Fougeres had 
 gone to Sommervieux's studio to familiarize himself with 
 that part of art which is called composition; but composi- 
 tion was shy and held aloof from him. Then he had tried 
 to steal from Granet and Drolling the mystery of their 
 luminous interiors; the two masters had not allowed him 
 to rob them. Finally, Fougeres had finished his training un- 
 der Duval-Lecamus. 
 
 Through all these studies and various transformations, 
 Fougeres' quiet, steady habits had furnished materials for 
 mockery in every studio where he had worked; but he every- 
 where disarmed his comrades by his diffidence and his lamb- 
 like patience and meekness. The masters had no sympathy 
 with this worthy lad ; masters like brilliant fellows, eccentric 
 spirits, farcical and fiery, or gloomy and deeply meditative, 
 promising future talent. Everything in Fougeres proclaimed 
 mediocrity. His nickname of Fougeres the name of the 
 painter in the play by Fabre d'Eglantine was the pretext 
 for endless affronts, but by force of circumstances he was 
 saddled with the name of the town "where he first saw the 
 light." 
 
 Grassou de Fougeres matched his name. Plump and 
 rather short, he had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, 
 a thick prominent nose, a rather wide mouth, and long ears. 
 His placid, gentle, resigned expression did little to improve 
 these features of a face that was full of health but not of 
 movement. He could never suffer from the flow of blood, the 
 vehemence of thought, or the spirit of comedy by which a 
 great artist is to be known. This youth, born to be a vir- 
 tuous citizen, had come from his provincial home to serve 
 as shop clerk to a color-man, a native of Mayenne, dis- 
 tantly related to the d'Orgemonts, and he had made himself 
 a painter by the sheer obstinacy which is the backbone of the 
 Breton character. What he had endured, and the way in 
 which he lived during his period of study, &od alone knows.
 
 PIERRE GRASSOU 855 
 
 He suffered as much as great men suffer when they are 
 haunted by want, and hunted down like wild beasts by the 
 pack of inferior souls, and the whole army of vanity thirsting 
 for revenge. 
 
 As soon as he thought himself strong enough for flight 
 on his own wings, he took a studio at the top of the Rue des 
 Martyrs, and there he began to work. He first sent in a 
 picture in 1819. The picture he offered the jury for their 
 exhibition at the Louvre represented a Village Wedding, a 
 laborious imitation of Greuze's picture. It was refused. 
 When Fougeres heard the fatal sentence, he did not fly into 
 those furies or fits of epileptic vanity to which proud spirits 
 are liable, and which sometimes end in a challenge sent to 
 the President or the Secretary, or in threats of assassination. 
 Fougeres calmly received his picture back, wrapped it in a 
 handkerchief, and brought it home to his studio swearing 
 that he would yet become a great painter. 
 
 He placed the canvas on the easel and went to call on his 
 old master, a man of immense talent Schinner a gentle 
 and patient artist, whose success had been brilliant in the 
 last Salon. He begged him to come and criticise the re- 
 jected work. The great painter left everything and went. 
 When poor Fougeres had placed him in front of the paint- 
 ing, Schinner at the first glance took Fougeres by the hand: 
 
 "You are a capital good fellow; you have a heart of gold, 
 it will not be fair to deceive you. Listen; you have kept all 
 the promise you showed at the studio. When a man has 
 such stuff as that at the end of his brush, my good fellow, 
 he had better leave his paints in Brullon's shop, and not de- 
 prive others of the canvas. Get home early, pull on your 
 cotton night-cap, be in bed by nine; and to-morrow morn- 
 ing at ten o'clock go to some office and ask for work, and have 
 done with art." 
 
 "My good friend," said Fougeres, "my picture is con- 
 demned already. It is not a verdict that I want, but the rea- 
 sons for it." 
 
 <f Well, then, your tone is gray and cold; you see nature
 
 356 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 through a crape veil; your drawing is heavy and clumsy; 
 your composition is borrowed from Greuze, who only re- 
 deemed his faults by qualities which you have not." 
 
 As he pointed out the faults of the picture, Schinner saw 
 in Fougeres' face so deep an expression of grief that he took 
 him away to dine, and tried to comfort him. 
 
 Next day, by seven in the morning, Fougeres, before his 
 easel, was working over the condemned canvas; he warmed 
 up the color, made the corrections suggested by Schinner, 
 and touched up the figures. Then, sick of such patching, 
 he took it to Elias Magus. Elias Magus, being a sort of 
 Dutch-Belgian-Fleming, had three reasons for being what 
 he was miserly and rich. He had lately come from Bor- 
 deaux, and was starting in business in Paris as a picture- 
 dealer; he lived on the Boulevard Bonne-lSTouvelle. Fou- 
 geres, who trusted to his palette to take him to the baker's, 
 bravely ate bread and walnuts, or bread and milk, or bread 
 and cherries, or bread and cheese, according to the season. 
 Elias Magus, to whom Pierre offered his first picture, eyed 
 it for a long time, and then gave him fifteen francs. 
 
 "Taking fifteen francs a year and spending a thousand, I 
 shall go fast and far," said Fougeres, smiling. 
 
 Elias Magus gave a shrug and bit his thumb at the thought 
 that he might have had the picture for five francs. Every 
 morning, for some days, Fougeres went down to the Rue des 
 Martyrs, lost himself in the crowd in the boulevard opposite 
 Magus' shop, and fixed his eyes on his picture which did not 
 attract the gaze of the passers-by. Towards the end of the 
 week the picture disappeared. Fougeres wandered up the 
 boulevard towards the picture-dealer's shop with an affecta- 
 tion of amusing himself. The Jew was standing in the door- 
 way. 
 
 "Well, you have sold my picture?" 
 
 "There it is," said Magus. "I am having it framed to show 
 to some man who fancies himself knowing in paintings." 
 
 Fougeres did not dare to come along the boulevard any 
 more. He began a new picture; for two months he labored
 
 PIERRE GRASSOU 337 
 
 at it, feeding like a mouse and working like a galley-slave. 
 One evening he walked out on the boulevard; his feet car- 
 ried him involuntarily to Magus' shop; he could nowhere 
 see his picture. 
 
 "I have sold your picture/' said the dealer to the artist. 
 
 "For how much?" 
 
 "I got my money back with a little interest. Paint me 
 some Flemish interiors, an Anatomy lecture, a landscape; 
 I will take them of you," said Elias. 
 
 Fougeres could have hugged Magus in his arms ; he looked 
 upon him as a father. He went home with joy in his heart. 
 Then Schinner, the great Schinner, was mistaken! In that 
 vast city of Paris there were some hearts that beat in unison 
 with that of Grassou; his talent was discerned and appre- 
 ciated ! 
 
 The poor fellow, at seven-and-twenty, had the artlessness 
 of a boy of sixteen. Any one else, one of your distrustful, 
 suspicious artists, would have noticed Elias' diabolical ex- 
 pression, have seen the quiver of his beard, the ironical curl 
 of his moustache, the action of his shoulders, all betraying 
 the satisfaction of Walter Scott's Jew cheating a Christian. 
 Fougeres paraded the boulevards with a joy that gave his face 
 an expression of pride. He looked like a schoolboy pro- 
 tecting a woman. He met Joseph Bridau, one of his fellow- 
 students, one of those eccentric men of genius who are pre- 
 destined to glory and disaster. Joseph Bridau, having a 
 few sous in his pocket, as he expressed it, took Fougeres to the 
 opera. Fougeres did not see the ballet, did not hear the 
 music; he was imagining pictures, he was painting. 
 
 He left Joseph half-way through the evening, and ran 
 home to make sketches by lamplight ; he invented thirty pict- 
 ures, full of reminiscences, and believed himself a genius. 
 Next day he bought some colors and canvases of various 
 sizes : he spread out some bread and some cheese on his table; 
 he got some water in a jug, and a store of wood for his stove ; 
 then, to use the studio phrase, he pegged away at his paint- 
 ing; he employed a few models, and Magus lent him
 
 358 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 draperies. After two months of seclusion, the Breton had 
 finished four pictures. He again asked Schinner's advice, 
 with the addition of Joseph Bridau's. The two painters 
 found these works to be a servile imitation of Dutch land- 
 scapes, of Metzu's interiors, and the fourth was a version of 
 Rembrandt's Anatomy lecture. 
 
 "Always imitations !" said Schinner. "Ah ! Fougeres 
 would find it hard to be original." 
 
 "You ought to turn your attention to something else than 
 painting," said Bridau. 
 
 "To what?" said Fougeres. 
 
 "Go in for literature." 
 
 Fougeres bent his head as sheep do before rain. Then he 
 asked and got some practical advice, touched up his paint- 
 ings, and carried them to Elias. Elias gave him twenty-five 
 francs for each. At this price Fougeres made nothing, but, 
 thanks to his abstemiousness, he lost nothing. He took some 
 walks to see what became of his pictures, and had a singular 
 hallucination. His works, so firmly painted, so neat, as hard 
 as tin-plate iron, and as shining as painting on porcelain, 
 seemed to be covered with a fog; they looked quite like old 
 masters. 
 
 Elias had just gone out; Fougeres could obtain no in- 
 formation as to this phenomenon. He thought his eyes de- 
 ceived him. 
 
 The painter went home to his studio to make new old 
 masters. After seven years of constant work, Fougeres was 
 able to compose and paint fairly good pictures. He did as 
 well as all the other artists of the second class. Elias bought 
 and sold all the poor Breton's pictures, while he laboriously 
 earned a hundred louis a year, and did not spend more than 
 twelve hundred francs. 
 
 At the Exhibition of 1829, Leon de Lora, Schinner, and 
 Bridau, who all three filled a large space, and were at the 
 head of the new movement in art, took pity on their old com- 
 rade's perseverance and poverty; they managed to get a 
 picture by Fougeres accepted and hung in the great room.
 
 PIERRE GRASSOD 359 
 
 This work, of thrilling interest, recalling Vigneron in its 
 sentiment, and Dubufe's early manner in its execution, repre- 
 sented a young man in prison having the back of his head 
 shaved. On one side stood a priest, on the other a young 
 woman in tears. A lawyer's clerk was reading an official 
 document. On a wretched table stood a meal which no one 
 had eaten. The light came in through the bars of a high 
 window. It was enough to make the good folks shudder, and 
 they shuddered. 
 
 Fougeres had borrowed directly from Gerard Dow's mas- 
 terpiece: he had turned the group of the Dropsical Woman 
 towards the window instead of facing the spectator. He had 
 put the condemned prisoner in the place of the dying 
 woman the same pallor, the same look, the same appeal to 
 heaven. Instead of the Dutch physician, there was the rigid 
 official figure of the clerk dressed in black ; but he had added 
 an old woman by the side of Gerard Dow's young girl. The 
 cruelly good-humored face of the executioner crowned the 
 group. The plagiarism, skilfully concealed, was not recog- 
 nized. 
 
 The catalogue contained these words : 
 
 510, GRASSOU DE FOUGERES (PIERRE), Eue de Navarin, 2. 
 The Chouan's Toilet; condemned to Death, 1809. 
 
 Though quite mediocre,' the picture had a prodigious suc- 
 cess, for it reminded the spectators of the affair of the rob- 
 bers known as the Chauffeurs of Mortagne. A crowd 
 collected every day in front of the picture, which became the 
 fashion, and Charles X. stopped to look at it. Madame, hav- 
 ing heard of the poor Breton's patient life, grew enthusiastic 
 about him. The Due d'Orleans asked the price of the paint- 
 Jng. The priests told Madame the Dauphiness that the 
 work was full of pious feeling ; it had no doubt a very satis- 
 factory suggestion of religion. Monseigneur the Dauphin 
 admired the dust on the window panes, a stupid, dull mis- 
 take, for what Fougeres had intended was a greenish tone,
 
 360 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 which spoke of damp at the bottom of the walls. Madame 
 bought the picture for a thousand francs, and the Dauphin 
 gave a commission for another. Charles X. bestowed the 
 Cross on this son of a peasant who had fought for the Eoyal 
 Cause in 1799; Joseph Bridau, a great painter, was not 
 decorated. The Minister of the Interior ordered two sacred 
 pictures for the church at Fougeres. This Salon was to 
 Pierre Grassou fortune, glory, a future, and life. 
 
 To invent in any kind is to die by inches; to copy is to 
 live. Having at last discovered a vein full of gold, Grassou 
 of Fougeres practised that part of this barbarous maxim to 
 which the world owes the atrocious mediocrity whose duty 
 it is to elect its superiors in every class of society, but which 
 naturally elects itself, and wages pitiless war against all real 
 talent. The principle of election universally applied is a bad 
 one; France will get over it. At the same time, Fougeres 
 was so gentle and kind that his modesty, his simplicity, and 
 his astonishment silenced recriminations and envy. Then, 
 again, he had on his side all the successful Grassous, repre- 
 senting all the Grassous to come. Some people, touched by 
 the energy of a man whom nothing had discouraged, spoke 
 of Domenichino, and said, "Hard work in the arts must be 
 rewarded. Grassou has earned his success. He has been 
 pegging at it for ten years, poor old fellow !" 
 
 This exclamation, "poor old fellow !" counted for a great 
 deal in the support and congratulations the painter received. 
 Pity elevates as many second-rate talents as envy runs down 
 great artists. The newspapers had not been sparing of criti- 
 cism, but the Chevalier Fougeres took it all as he took his 
 friend's advice, with angelic patience. Eich now, with fif- 
 teen thousand francs very hardly earned, he furnished his 
 rooms and his studio in the Rue de Navarin, he painted the 
 picture ordered by Monseigneur the Dauphin, and the two 
 sacred works commanded by the Minister, finishing them to 
 the day, with a punctuality perfectly distracting to the 
 cashier of the Ministry, accustomed to quite other ways. But 
 note the good luck of methodical people ! If he had delayed,
 
 PIERRE GRASSOU 361 
 
 Grassou, overtaken by the revolution of July, would never 
 have been paid. 
 
 By the time he was seven-and-thirty Fougeres had manu- 
 factured for Eli as Magus about two hundred pictures, all 
 perfectly unknown, but by which he had gained with prac- 
 tice that satisfactory handling, that pitch of dexterity at 
 which an artist shrugs his shoulders, and which is dear to 
 the Philistine. Fougeres was loved by his friends for his 
 rectitude of mind and steadfastness of feeling, for his per- 
 fectly obliging temper and loyal spirit; though they had no 
 respect for his palette, they were attached to the man who 
 held it. 
 
 "What a pity that Fougeres should indulge in the vice 
 of painting!" his friends would say. 
 
 Grassou, however, could give sound advice, like the news- 
 paper writers, who are incapable of producing a book, but 
 who know full well where a book is faulty. But there was 
 a difference between Fougeres and these literary critics; he 
 was keenly alive to every beauty, he acknowledged it, and his 
 advice was stamped with a sense of justice which made his 
 strictures acceptable. 
 
 After the revolution of July Fougeres sent in ten or more 
 paintings to every exhibition, of which the jury would ac- 
 cept four or five. He lived with the strictest economy, and 
 his whole household consisted of a woman to manage the 
 housework. His amusements lay solely in visits to his 
 friends, and in going to see works of art; he treated him- 
 self to some little tours in France, and dreamed of seeing 
 inspiration in Switzerland. This wretched artist was a 
 good citizen ; he served in the Guard, turned out for inspec- 
 tion, and paid his rent and bills with the vulgarest punctu- 
 ality. Having lived in hard work and penury, he had never 
 had time to be in love. A bachelor and poor, up to the present 
 day he had had no wish to complicate his simple existence. 
 
 Having no idea of any way of increasing his wealth, he 
 took his savings and his earnings every quarter to his notary, 
 Cardot. When the notary had a thousand crowns in hand,
 
 362 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 he invested them in a first mortgage, with substitution in 
 favor of the wife's rights if the borrower should marry, or in 
 favor of the seller if the borrower should wish to pay it off. 
 The notary drew the interest and added it to the sums de- 
 posited by Grassou de Fougeres. The painter looked for- 
 ward to the happy day when his investments should reach 
 the imposing figure of two thousand francs a year, when he 
 would indulge in the otium cum dignitate of an artist and 
 paint pictures oh! but such pictures! Real pictures, fin- 
 ished pictures something like, clipping, stunning! His 
 fondest hope, his dream of joy, the climax of all his hopes 
 would you like to know it? It was to be elected to the In- 
 stitute and wear the rosette of the officers of the Legion of 
 Honor ! To sit by Schinner and Leon de Lora ! To get into 
 the Academy before Bridau! To have a rosette in his but- 
 ton-hole. What a vision ! Only your commonplace mind 
 can think of everything. 
 
 On hearing several footsteps on the stairs, Fougeres pushed 
 his fingers through his top-knot of hair, buttoned his bottle- 
 green waistcoat, and was not a little surprised at the en- 
 trance of a face of the kind known in the studio as a melon. 
 This fruit was perched on a pumpkin dressed in blue cloth, 
 and graced with a dangling bunch of jingling seals. The 
 melon snorted like a porpoise, the pumpkin walked on turnips 
 incorrectly called legs. A real artist would at once have 
 sketched such a caricature of the bottle merchant and then 
 have shown him out, saying that he did not paint vegetables. 
 Fougeres looked at his customer without laughing, for M. 
 Yervelle wore in his shirt-front a diamond worth a thou- 
 sand crowns. Fougeres glanced at Magus, and said in the 
 studio slang of the day, "A fat job," meaning that the worthy 
 was rich. 
 
 M. Vervelle heard it and frowned. He brought in his train 
 some other vegetable combinations in the persons of his wife 
 and daughter. The wife had in her face a fine mahogany 
 tone; she looked like a cocoanut surmounted by a head and
 
 PIERRE GRASSOU 363 
 
 tightened in with a belt; she twirled round on her feet; her 
 dress was yellow, with black stripes. She proudly dis- 
 played absurd mittens on a pair of hands as swollen as a 
 glover's sign. The feathers of a first-class funeral waved 
 over a coal-scuttle bonnet ; lace frills covered a figure as round 
 behind as before, thus the spherical form of the cocoanut 
 was perfect. Her feet, which a painter would have termed 
 hoofs, had a garnish of half-an-inch of fat projecting beyond 
 her patent-leather shoes. How had her feet been got into the 
 shoes? Who can tell? 
 
 Behind her came a young asparagus shoot, green and yel- 
 low as to her dress, with a small head covered with hair in flat 
 braids of a carroty yellow which a Eoman would have adored, 
 thread-paper arms, a fairly white but freckled skin, large 
 innocent -eyes, with colorless lashes and faintly marked eye- 
 brows, a Leghorn straw hat, trimmed with a couple of honest 
 white satin bows, and bound with white satin, virtuously red 
 hands, and feet like her mother's. 
 
 These three persons, as they looked round the studio, had 
 a look of beatitude which showed a highly-respectable en- 
 thusiasm for art. 
 
 "And it is you, sir, who are going to take our likenesses?" 
 said the father, assuming a little dashing air. 
 
 "Yes, sir," replied Grassou. 
 
 "Vervelle, he has the Cross," said the wife to her hus- 
 band in a whisper while the painter's back was turned. 
 
 "Should I have our portraits painted by an artist who was 
 not 'decorated'?" retorted the bottle-merchant. 
 
 Elias Magus bowed to the Vervelle family and went away. 
 Grassou followed him on to the landing. 
 
 "Who but you would have discovered such a set of 
 phizzes ?" 
 
 "A hundred thousand francs in settlement !" 
 
 "Yes, but what a family !" 
 
 "And three hundred thousand francs in expectations, a 
 house in the Rue Boucherat, and a country place at Ville 
 d'Avray."
 
 364 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 "Boucherat, bottles, bumpkins, and bounce!" said the 
 painter. 
 
 "You will be out of want for the rest of your days," said 
 Elias. 
 
 This idea flashed into Pierre Grassou's brain as the morn- 
 ing light had broken on his attic. As he placed the young 
 lady's father in position, he thought him really good-looking, 
 and admired his face with its strong purple tones. The 
 mother and daughter hovered round the painter, wondering 
 at all his preparations ; to them he seemed a god. This visible 
 adoration was pleasing to Fougeres. The golden calf cast 
 its fantastic reflection on this family. 
 
 "You must earn enormous sums; but you spend it as fast 
 as you get it?" said the mother. 
 
 "No, madame," replied the painter, "I do not spend. I 
 have not means to amuse myself. My notary invests my 
 money; he knows what I have, and when once the money is 
 in his hands I think no more about it." 
 
 "And I have always been told that painters were a thrift- 
 less set !" said father Vervelle. 
 
 "Who is your notary, if it is not too great a liberty ?" said 
 Madame Vervelle. 
 
 "A capital fellow all round Cardot." 
 
 "Lord! lord! Isn't that funny nowl" said Vervelle. 
 "Why, Cardot is ours too." 
 
 "Do not move," said the painter. 
 
 "Sit still, do, Antenor," said his wife; "you will put the 
 gentleman out; if you could see him working you would 
 understand." 
 
 "Gracious me, why did you never have me taught art?" 
 said Mademoiselle Vervelle to her parents. 
 
 "Virginie !" exclaimed her mother, "there are certain 
 things a young lady cannot learn. When you are married 
 well and good. Till then be content." 
 
 In the course of this first sitting the Vervelle family be- 
 came almost intimate with the worthy artist. They were to 
 come again two days after. After they left, the father and
 
 PIERRE GRASSOU 365 
 
 mother desired Virginie to go first; but in spite of the dis- 
 tance between them, she heard these words, of which the 
 meaning must have roused her curiosity: 
 
 "Decore thirty-seven an artist who gets commissions, 
 and places his money in our notary's hands. We will consult 
 Cardot. Madame de Fougeres, heh! not a bad name! He 
 does not look like a bad fellow ! A man of business, you 
 would say? But so long as a merchant has not retired from 
 business, you can never tell what your daughter may come 
 to ; while an artist who saves. And then we are fond of art. 
 Well, well ! " 
 
 While the Vervelles were discussing him, Pierre Grassou 
 was thinking of the Vervelles. He found it impossible to 
 remain quietly in his studio; he walked up and down the 
 boulevard, looking at every red-haired woman who went by! 
 He argued with himself in the strangest way : Gold was the 
 most splendid of the metals, yellow stood for gold; the an- 
 cient Romans liked red-haired women, and he became a 
 Eoman, and so forth. After being married two years, what 
 does a man care for his wife's complexion? Beauty fades 
 but ugliness remains ! Money is half of happiness. That 
 evening, when he went to bed, the painter had already per- 
 suaded himself that Virginie Vervelle was charming. 
 
 When the trio walked in on the day fixed for the second 
 sitting, the artist received them with an amiable smile. The 
 rogue had shaved, had put on a clean white shirt; he had 
 chosen a becoming pair of trousers, and red slippers with 
 Turkish toes. The family responded with a smile as flatter- 
 ing as the artist's ; Virginie turned as red as her hair, dropped 
 her eyes, and turned away her head, looking at the studies. 
 Pierre Grassou thought these little affectations quite bewitch- 
 ing. Virginie was graceful; happily, she was like neither 
 father nor mother. But whom was she like? 
 
 "Ah, I see/' said he to himself ; "the mother has had an eye 
 to business." 
 
 During the sitting there was a war of wits between the 
 family and the painter, who was so audacious as to say that
 
 306 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 father Vervelle was witty. After this piece of flattery the 
 family took possession of the painter's heart in double-quick 
 time; he gave one of his drawings to Virginie, and a sketch 
 to her mother. 
 
 "For nothing ?" they asked. 
 
 Pierre Grassou could not help smiling. 
 
 "You must not give your works away like this; they are 
 money," said Vervelle. 
 
 At the third sitting old Vervelle spoke of a fine collection 
 of pictures he had in his country house at Ville d'Avray 
 Kubens, Gerard Dow, Mieris, Terburg, Kembrandt, a Titian, 
 Paul Potter, etc. 
 
 "M.Vervelle has been frightfully extravagant," said Ma- 
 dame Vervelle pompously. "He has a hundred thousand 
 francs' worth of pictures." 
 
 "I am fond of the arts," said the bottle-merchant. 
 
 When Madame Vervelle's portrait was begun, that of her 
 husband was nearly finished. The enthusiasm of the family 
 now knew no bounds. The notary had praised the artist in 
 the highest terms. Pierre Grassou was in his opinion the 
 best fellow on earth, one of the steadiest of artists, who had 
 indeed saved thirty-six thousand francs; his days of poverty 
 were past; he was making ten thousand francs a year, he 
 was reinvesting his interest, and he was incapable of making 
 a woman unhappy. This last sentence was of great weight 
 in the scale. The friends of the family heard nothing talked 
 of but the celebrated Fougeres. 
 
 By the time Fougeres began the portrait of Virginie he 
 was already the son-in-law elect of the Vervelle couple. The 
 trio expanded in this studio, which they had begun to regard 
 as a home; there was an inexplicable attraction to them in 
 this cleaned, cared-for, neat, artistic spot. Abyssus abyssum, 
 like to like. 
 
 Towards the end of the sitting the stairs were shaken, 
 the door was flung open, and in came Joseph Bridau ; he rode 
 the whirlwind, his hair was flying ; in he came with his broad, 
 deeply-seamed face, shot lightning glances all round the
 
 By the time Fougeres began the portrait of Virginie hi 
 already the sou-in-law elect of the Vervelle couple

 
 PIERRE GRASSOU 367 
 
 room, and came suddenly up to Grassou, pulling his coat 
 across the gastric region, and trying to button it, but in vain, 
 for the button mold had escaped from its cloth cover. 
 
 "Times are bad," he said to Grassou. 
 
 "Hah?" 
 
 "The duns are at my heels. Hallo ! are you painting that 
 sort of thing ?" 
 
 "Hold your tongue !" 
 
 "To be sure " 
 
 The Vervelle family, excessively taken aback by this ap- 
 parition, turned from the usual red to the cherry scarlet of a 
 fierce fire. 
 
 "It pays," said Joseph. "Have you any shot in your 
 locker?" 
 
 "Do you want much?" 
 
 "A five hundred franc note. . . . There is a party 
 after me of the bloodhound kind, who, when once they have 
 set their teeth, do not let go without having the piece out. 
 What a set !" 
 
 "I will give you a line to my notary " 
 
 "What ! have you a notary ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then that accounts for your still painting cheeks rose- 
 pink, only fit for a hair-dresser's doll !" 
 
 Grassou could not help reddening, for Virginie was sitting 
 to him. 
 
 "Paint nature as it is," the great painter went on. "Made- 
 moiselle is red-haired. Well, is that a deadly sin? Every- 
 thing is fine in painting. Squeeze me out some cinnabar, 
 warm up those cheeks, give me those little brown freckles, 
 butter your canvas boldly ! Do you want to do better than 
 Nature?" 
 
 "Here," said Fougeres, "take my place while I write." 
 
 Vervelle waddled to the writing-table and spoke in Gras- 
 sou's ear. 
 
 "That interfering muddler will spoil it," said the bottle- 
 merchant.
 
 368 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 "If lie would paint your Virginia's portrait, it would be 
 worth a thousand of mine," replied Fougeres indignantly. 
 
 On hearing this, the goodman quietly beat a retreat to join 
 his wife, who sat bewildered at the invasion of this wild 
 beast, and not at all happy at seeing him co-operating in her 
 daughter's portrait. 
 
 "There, carry out those hints," said Bridau, returning the 
 palette, and taking the note. "I will not thank you. I can 
 get back to D'Arthez's chateau; I am painting a dining- 
 room for him, and Leon de Lora is doing panels over the 
 doors masterpieces. Come and see us !" 
 
 He went off without bowing even, so sick was he of looking 
 at Virginie. 
 
 "Who is that man?" asked Madame Vervelle. 
 
 "A great artist," replied Grassou. 
 
 There was a moment's silence. 
 
 "Are you quite sure," said Virginie, "that he has brought 
 no ill-luck to my portrait? ... He frightened me." 
 
 "He has only improved it," said Grassou. 
 
 "If he is a great artist, I prefer a great artist like you," 
 said Madame Vervelle. 
 
 "Oh, mamma, Monsieur Fougeres is a much greater artist. 
 He will take me full length," remarked Virginie. 
 
 The eccentricities of genius had scared these steadygoing 
 Philistines. 
 
 The year had now reached that pleasant autumn season 
 prettily called Saint-Martin's summer. It was with the shy- 
 ness of a neophyte in the presence of a man of genius that 
 Vervelle ventured to invite Grassou to spend the following 
 Sunday at his country house. He knew how little attraction 
 a bourgeois family could offer to an artist. 
 
 "You artists," said he, "must have excitement, fine scenes, 
 and clever company. But I can give you some good wine, 
 and I rely on my pictures to make up for the dulness an 
 artist like you must feel among tradesfolks." 
 
 This worship, which greatly soothed his vanity, delighted 
 poor Pierre Grassou, who was little used to such compliments.
 
 PIERRE GRASSOU 369 
 
 This worthy artist, this ignominious mediocrity, this heart 
 of gold, this loyal soul, this blundering draughtsman, this 
 best of good fellows, displaying the Cross of the Royal Order 
 of the Legion of Honor, got himself up with care to go and 
 enjoy the last fine days of the year at Ville d'Avray. The 
 painter arrived unpretentiously by the public conveyance, 
 and could not help admiring the bottle-merchant's handsome 
 residence placed in the midst of a park of about five acres, 
 at the top of the hill, and the best point of view. To marry 
 Virginie meant owning this fine house some day ! 
 
 He was received by the Vervelles with an enthusiasm, a 
 delight, a genuine heartiness, a simple, commonplace stu- 
 pidity that overpowered him. It was a day of triumph. The 
 future son-in-law was taken to walk along the nankeen-col- 
 ored paths, which had been raked, as was due, for a great 
 man. The very trees looked as if they had been brushed 
 and combed, the lawns were mown. The pure country air 
 diluted kitchen odors of the most comforting character. 
 Everything in the house proclaimed, "We have a great artist 
 here !" Little father Vervelle rolled about his paddock like 
 an apple, the daughter wriggled after him like an eel, and 
 the mother followed with great dignity. For seven hours 
 these three beings never released Grassou. 
 
 After a dinner, of which the length matched the splendor, 
 Monsieur and Madame Vervelle came to their grand sur- 
 prise the opening of the picture gallery, lighted up by lamps 
 carefully arranged for effect. Three neighbors, all retired 
 business men, an uncle from whom they had expectations, 
 invited in honor of the great artist, an old Aunt Vervelle, 
 and the other guests followed Grassou into the gallery, all 
 curious to hear his opinion of little Daddy Vervelle's famous 
 collection, for he overpowered them by the fabulous value of 
 his pictures. The bottle-merchant seemed to wish to vie with 
 King Louis-Philippe and the galleries of Versailles. 
 
 The pictures, splendidly framed, bore tickets, on which 
 might be read in black letters on a gold label : 
 VOL. 548
 
 370 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 EUBENS 
 
 A Dance, of Fauns and Nymphs 
 
 EEMBKANDT 
 
 Interior of a Dissecting-room 
 
 Doctor Tromp giving a Lesson to his Pupils 
 
 There were a hundred and fifty pictures, all varnished and 
 dusted ; a few had green curtains over them, not to be raised 
 in the presence of the young person. 
 
 The artist stood with limp arms and a gaping mouth, with- 
 out a word on his lips, as he recognized in this gallery half 
 his own works; he, He was Kubens, Paul Potter, Mieris, 
 Metzu, Gerard Dow ! He alone was twenty great masters ! 
 
 "What is the matter? you look pale." 
 
 "Daughter, a glass of water!" cried Madame Vervelle. 
 
 The painter took the old man by the button of his coat 
 and led him into a corner, under pretence of examining a 
 Murillo. Spanish pictures were then the fashion. 
 
 "You bought your pictures of Elias Magus ?" said he. 
 
 "Yes. All original works." 
 
 "Between ourselves, what did he make you pay for those 
 I will point out to you?" 
 
 The couple went round the gallery. The guests were 
 amazed at the solemnity with which the artist, following his 
 host, examined all these masterpieces. 
 
 "Three thousand francs!" exclaimed Vervelle in an un- 
 dertone, as he came to the last. "But I tell you forty thou- 
 sand francs!" 
 
 "Forty thousand francs for a Titian!" said the artist 
 aloud; "why, it is dirt-cheap!" 
 
 "When I told you I had a hundred thousand crowns' worth 
 of pictures " exclaimed Vervelle. 
 
 "I painted every one of those pictures," said Pierre Gras-
 
 PIERRE GRASSOU 371 
 
 sou in his ear; "and I did not get more than ten thousand 
 francs for the whole lot." 
 
 "Prove it," replied the bottle-merchant, "and I will double 
 my daughter's settlements; for in that case you are Eubens, 
 Eembrandt, Terburg, Titian!" 
 
 "And Magus is something like a picture-dealer !" added the 
 painter, who could account for the antique look of the pict- 
 ures, and the practical end of the subjects ordered by the 
 dealer. 
 
 Far from falling in his admirer's estimation, M. de Fou- 
 geres for so the family insisted on calling Pierre Grassou 
 rose so high that he painted his family for nothing, and of 
 course presented the portraits to his father-in-law, his 
 mother-in-law, and his wife. 
 
 Pierre Grassou, who never misses a single exhibition, is 
 now regarded in the Philistine world as a very good portrait- 
 painter. He earns about twelve thousand francs a year, and 
 spoils about five hundred francs' worth -of canvas. His wife 
 had six thousand francs a year on her marriage, and they 
 live with her parents. The Vervelles and the Grassous, who 
 get on perfectly well together, keep a carriage, and are the 
 happiest people on earth. Pierre Grassou moves in a com- 
 monplace circle, where he is considered one of the greatest 
 artists of the period. Not a family portrait is ordered be- 
 tween the Barriere du Trone and the Eue du Temple that is 
 not the work of this great painter, or that costs less than 
 five hundred francs. The great reason why the townsfolk 
 employ this artist is this: "Say what you like, he invests 
 twenty thousand francs a year through his notary." 
 
 As Grassou behaved very well in the riots of the 12th of 
 May, he has been promoted to be an officer of the Legion of 
 Honor. He is major in the National Guard. The Ver- 
 sailles gallery was bound to order a battle scene of so worthy 
 a citizen, who forthwith walked all about Paris to meet his 
 old comrades and to say with an air of indifference, "The 
 King has ordered me to paint a battle!"
 
 372 PIERRE GRASSOU 
 
 Madame de Fougeres adores her husband, whom she has 
 presented with two children. The painter, however, a good 
 father and a good husband, cannot altogether get rid of a 
 haunting thought : other painters make fun of him ; his name 
 is a term of contempt in every studio; the newspapers never 
 notice his works. Still, he works on, and is making his way 
 to the Academy; he will be admitted. And then a revenge 
 that swells his heart with pride he buys pictures by famous 
 artists when they are in difficulties, and he is replacing the 
 daubs at the Ville d'Avray by real masterpieces not of his 
 own painting. 
 
 There are mediocrities more vexatious and more spiteful 
 than that of Pierre Grassou, who is in fact anonymously 
 benevolent and perfectly obliging. 
 
 PARIS, December 1839L
 
 EGlONAL LIBRARY FAQLJT 
 
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